
DE 5 














































A 


CLASSICAL DICTIONARY: 


CONTAINING AN ACCOUNT OF 


THE PRINCIPAL PROPER NAMES 



MENTIONED IN 

ANCIENT AUTHORS, 

AND 

INTENDED TO ELUCIDATE ALL THE IMPORTANT POINTS CONNECTED WITH THE 
GEOGRAPHY, HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, MYTHOLOGY, AND FINE ARTS 

OF THE 

GREEKS AND ROMANS. 


TOGETHER WITH 

AN ACCOUNT OF COINS, WEIGHTS, AND MEASURES, 

WITH TABULAR VALUES OF THE SAME. 


BY 

CHARLES ANTHON, LL.D., 

JAY-PROFESSOR OF THE GREEK AND LATIN LANGUAGES IN COLUMBIA COLLEGE, 
-NEW YORK, AND RECTOR OF THE GRAMMAR-SCHOOL. 


“Hue undique gaza .”—Virg. 


NEW YORK: 

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 

329 & 331 PEARL STREET, 

FRANKLIN SQUARE. 

1857 . 

4 A 


HE 5 " 

• ^6 
125 ? 


Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1841, by 
Charles Anthon, LL.D., 

In the Clerk’s Office of the Southern District of New York. 


Gift from 

tha Estate of Miss Ruth Putnam 
Sept.14,1331 





* 


TO 


JOHN A N T H 0 N, ESQ, 

COUNSELLOR AT LAW, 4c, 


WHO, AMID THE DUTIES OF A LABORIOUS PROFESSION, CAN STILL FIND LEISURE 

FOR HOLDING CONVERSE WITH THE PAGES OF ANTIQUITY, AND IN WHOM 

LEGAL ERUDITION IS SO HAPPILY BLENDED WITH THE LIGHTER 

, \ 

GRACES OF ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE, 

THIS WORK 

i s 

AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED, 

AS A FEEBLE RETURN FOR MANY ACTS OF FRATERNAL KINDNESS, AND (iF A BROTHER 
MAY BE ALLOWED TO EXPRESS HIMSELF IN THIS WAY) AS A TESTIMONIAL 
OF FOND REGARD FOR EMINENT ABILITIES IN UNISON ' 

WITH EMINENT INTEGRITY AND WORTH. 


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PREFACE 

TO THE FOURTH EDITION. 


In laying the result of his labours before the public, the author wishes it to he distinctly 
understood, that the present volume is not, as some might perhaps imagine, merely an im¬ 
proved edition of the Classical Dictionary of Lempriere, hut a work entirely new, and re¬ 
sembling its predecessor in nothing but the name. The author owes it, in fact, to himself 
to be thus explicit in his statement, since he would feel but poorly compensated for the 
heavy toil expended on the present work, were he regarded as having merely remodelled, 
or given a new arrangement to, the labours of another. So far from this having been 
done, there are, in truth, but few articles, and those not very important ones, wherein any 
resemblance can be traced between Lempriere’s work and the present. In every other 
respect, the Classical Dictionary now offered to the public will be found to be as different 
from Lempriere’s as the nature of the case can possibly admit. 

It cannot be denied that Lempriere’s Classical Dictionary was a very popular work in 
its day. The numerous editions through which it ran would show this very conclusively, 
without the necessity of any farther proof. Still, however, it may be asserted with equal 
safety, that this same popularity was mainly owing to the circumstance of there being no 
competitor in the field. Considered in itself, indeed, the work put forth but very feeble 
claims to patronage, for its scholarship was superficial and inaccurate, and its language 
was frequently marked by a grossness of allusion, which rendered the book a very unfit 
one to be put into the hands of the young. And yet so strong a hold had it taken of public 
favour both at home and in our own country, that not only were no additions or correc¬ 
tions made in the work, but the very idea itself of making such was deemed altogether 
visionary. The author of the present volume remembers very well what surprise was 
excited, when, on having been employed to prepare a new edition of Lempriere in 1825, 
he hinted the propriety of making some alterations in the text. The answer received from 
a certain quarter was, that one might as well think of making alterations in the Scriptures 
as in the pages of Dr. Lempriere ! and that all an editor had to do was merely to revise 
the references contained in the English work. When, however, several palpable errors, 
on the part of Lempriere, had been pointed out by him, and the editor was allowed to cor¬ 
rect these and others of a similar kind, he still felt the impossibility of presenting the 
work to the American public in that state in which alone it ought to have appeared, partly 
from the undue estimation in which the labours of Dr. Lempriere were as yet generally 
held, and partly from a consciousness of his own inability, through the want of a more 
extended course of reading, to do justice to such a task. With all its imperfections, how¬ 
ever, the edition referred to was well received; and when a second one was soon after 
called for, the publisher felt himself imboldened to allow the editor the privilege of in¬ 
troducing more extensive improvements, and of making the work, in every point of view, 
more deserving of patronage. 

The republication of this latter edition in England, and the implied confession, connected 
with such a step, that the original work of Lempriere stood in need of improvement, now 
broke the charm which had fettered the judgments of so many of our own countrymen, 
and it then began to be conceded on all sides that the Classical Dictionary of Dr. Lem¬ 
priere was by no means entitled to the claim of infallibility ; nay, indeed, that it was de¬ 
fective throughout. When the ownership of the work, therefore, passed into the hands 
of the Messrs. Carvill, and a new edition was again wanted, those intelligent and enter¬ 
prising publishers gave the editor permission to make whatever alterations and improve¬ 
ments he might see fit; and the Classical Dictionary now appeared in two octavo vol¬ 
umes, enriched with new materials derived from various sources, and presenting a much 
fairer claim than before to the attention of the student. 

This last-mentioned edition became, in its turn, soon exhausted, and a new one was 
demanded ; when the copyright of the work passed from the Messrs. Carvill to the Brothers 
Harper. To individuals of less liberal spirit, and more alive to the prospect of immediate 


/ 



VI 


PREFACE. 


advantage, it would have appeared sufficient to republish merely the edition in two vol¬ 
umes, without any farther improvement. The Messrs. Harper, however, thought differ¬ 
ently on the subject. They wished a Classical Dictionary in as complete and useful a 
form as it could possibly he made ; and, with this view, notwithstanding the large amount 
which had been expended on the purchase of the work, the stereotype plates were de¬ 
stroyed, though still perfectly serviceable, and the editor was employed to prepare a work, 
which, while it should embrace all that was valuable in the additions that had from time 
to time been made by him, was to retain but a very small portion of the old matter of 
Lempriere, and to supply its place with newly-prepared articles. This has now, accords 
ingly, been done. A new work is the result; not an improved edition of the old one, but 
a work on which the patient labour of more than two entire years has been faithfully ex¬ 
pended, and which, though comprised in a single volume, will be found to contain much 
more than even the edition of Lempriere in two volumes, as published by the Messrs. 
Carvill. "Whatever was worth preserving among the additions previously made by the 
editor, he has here retained; but, in general, even these are so altered and improved as, 
in many instances, to be difficult of recognition; while, on the other hand, all the old j 
articles of Lempriere, excepting a few, have been superseded by new ones. 

Such is a brief history of the present work. It remains now to give a general idea of 
the manner in which it has been executed. The principal heads embraced in the volume i: 
are, as the title indicates, the Geography, History, Biography, Mythology, and Fine Arts f 
of the Greeks and Romans. The subject of Archeeology is only incidentally noticed, as it 
is the intention of the author to edit, with all convenient speed, a Dictionary of Greek 
and Roman Antiquities, which will contain an abstract of all the valuable matter con¬ 
nected with these subjects that is to be be found in the writings of the most eminent 
German philologists. Only a few, therefore, of the more important topics that have a 
bearing on Archaeology, are introduced into the present volume, such as the Greek The¬ 
atre, and theatrical exhibitions in general, the national games of Greece, the dictatorship 
and agrarian laws of the Romans, and some other points of a similar kind. 

If the author were asked on what particular subject, among the many that are discussed 
in the present volume, the greatest amount of care had been expended, he would feel 
strongly inclined to say, that of Ancient Geography. Not that the others have been by 
any means slighted, and the principal degree of labour concentrated under this head.. 
Far from it. But the fact is, that in a work like the present, the articles which relate to 
Ancient Geography are by far the most numerous, and, in some respects, the most import¬ 
ant, and require a large portion of assiduous care. In what relates, therefore, to the Ge¬ 
ography of former days, the author thinks he can say, without the least imputation of van¬ 
ity, that in no work in the English language will there be found a larger body of valua¬ 
ble information on this most interesting subject, than in that which is here offered to 
the American student. In connexion with the geography of past ages, various theories, 
moreover, are given respecting the origin and migration of different communities, and 
some of the more striking legends of antiquity are referred to concerning the changes 
which the earth’s surface has from time to time undergone. Some idea of the nature of 
these topics may be formed by consulting the following articles : jEgyptus , Atlantis , GaL 
lia, Gracia , Lectonia, Mediterranean Mare, Meroe, Ogyges , Pelasgi , and Phoenicia. Nor is 
this all. Books of Travels have been made to contribute their stores of information, and 
the student is thus transported in fancy to the scenes of ancient story, and wanders, as 
it were, amid the most striking memorials of the past. 

The historical department has also been a subject of careful attention. Here ao-ain 
the origin of nations forms a very attractive field of inquiry, and the student is put in 
possession of the ablest and most recent speculations of both German and English schol¬ 
arship. The Argonautic expedition, for example, the legend of the Trojan war, events 
dimly shadowed forth in the distant horizon of “ gray antiquity the origin of Rome, the 
early movements of the Doric aryl Ionic races among the Greeks; or, what may prove 
still more interesting to some, the origin of civilization in India and the remote East • all 
these topics will be found discussed under their respective heads, and will, it is hoped, 
teach the young student that history is something more than a mere record of dates, or 
a chronicle of wars and crimes. 

Particular attention has also been paid to the department of Biography. This subject 
will be found divided into several heads : biographical sketches, namely, of public men, 
of individuals eminent in literature, of scientific characters, of physicians, of philosophers', 
and also of persons distinguished in the early history of the Christian Church. The lit- 


PREFACE. 


Vll 


erary biographies, in particular, will, it is conceived, be found both attractive and useful 
to the student, since we have no work at present in the English language in which a full 
view is given of Grecian and Roman literature. The sketches of ancient mathematicians, 
and of other individuals eminent for their attainments in science, will not be found with¬ 
out interest even in our own day. Nor will the medical man depart altogether unre¬ 
warded from a perusal of those biographies which treat of persons distinguished of old 
in the healing art. In the accounts, moreover, that are given of the philosophers and 
philosophic systems of antiquity, although half-learned' sciolists have passed upon these 
topics so sweeping a sentence of condemnation, much curious information may neverthe¬ 
less be obtained, and much food for speculation, too, on what the mind can effect by its 
own unaided powers in relation to subjects that are of the utmost importance to us all. 
The ecclesiastical biographies will also be found numerous, and, it is hoped, not uninter¬ 
esting. None of them fall properly, it is true, within the sphere of a Classical Dictionary, 
yet they could not well have been omitted, since many of the matters discussed in them 
have reference more immediately to classical times. 

The subject of Mythology has supplied, next to that of Ancient Geography, the largest 
number of articles to the present work. In the treatment of these, it has been the chief 
aim of the author to lay before the student the most important speculations of the two 
great schools (the Mystic and anti-Mystic) which now divide the learned of Europe. At 
the head of the former stands Creuzer, whose elaborate work (Symbolik und Mythologie 
der alten Volker) has reappeared under so attractive a form through the taste and learning 
of Guigniaut. The champion of the anti-Mystic school appears to be Lobeck, although 
many eminent names are also marshalled on the same side. It has been the aim of the 
author to give a fair and impartial view of both systems, although he cannot doubt but 
that the former will appear to the student by far the more attractive one of the two. In 
the discussion of mythological topics, very valuable materials have been obtained from 
the excellent work of Keightley, who deserves the praise of having first laid* open to the 
English reader the stores of German erudition in the department of Mythology. The 
author will, he trusts, be pardoned for having intruded some theories of his own on sev¬ 
eral topics of a mythological’ character, more particularly under the articles Amazones , 
Asi, Io, Odinus, and Orpheus. It is a difficult matter, in so attractive a field of inquiry 
as this, to resist the temptation of inflicting one’s own crude speculations upon the pa¬ 
tience of the reader. In preparing the mythological articles, the greatest care has been 
also taken to exclude from them everything offensive, either in language or detail, and 
to present such a view of the several topics connected with this department of inquiry 
as may satisfy the most scrupulous, and make the present work a safe guide, in a moral 
point of view, to the young of either sex. 

The department of the Fine Arts forms an entirely new feature in the present work. 
The biographies of Artists have been prepared with great care, and criticisms upon their 
known productions have been given from the most approved authorities, both ancient and 
modern. The information contained under this head will, it is conceived, prove not un¬ 
acceptable either to the modern artist or the general reader. 

In a work like the present, the materials for which have been drawn from so many 
sources, it would be a difficult task to specify, within the limits of an ordinary preface, 
the different quarters to which obligations are due. The author has preferred, therefore, 
appending to the volume a formal catalogue of authorities, at the risk of being thought 
vain in so doing. A few works, however, to which he has been particularly indebted, 
deserve to be also mentioned here. These are the volumes of Cramer on Ancient Ge¬ 
ography ; the historical researches of Thirlwall; and the work of Keightley already re¬ 
ferred to. From the Encyclopsedia also, published by the Society for the Diffusion of 
Useful Knowledge, numerous excellent articles have been obtained, which contribute in 
no small degree to the value of the present publication. In every instance care has been 
taken to give at the end of each article the main authority from which the materials have 
been drawn, a plan generally pursued in works of a similar nature, and which was fol¬ 
lowed by the author in all the editions of Lempriere prepared by him for the press. A 
fairer mode of proceeding cannot well be imagined. And yet complaint has been made 
in a certain quarter, that the articles taken from the Encyclopsedia just mentioned are 
not duly credited to that work, and that the title of the work itself has been studiously 
changed. Of the fallacy of the first charge, any one can satisfy himself by referring to 
the pages of the present volume where those articles appear; while, with regard to the 
second, the author has merely to remark, that in substituting the title of “ Encyclopsedia 


PREFACE. 


viii 

of Useful Knowledge” for the more vulgar one of “Penny Cyclopaedia,” he always con¬ 
ceived that he was doing a service to that very publication itself. At all events, the 
change of title, if it were indeed such, appears to have been a very proper one, since it 
met with the tacit approbation of certain so-called critics, who would never have allowed 
this opportunity of gratifying personal animosity to have passed unheeded, had they con¬ 
ceived it capable of furnishing any ground of attack. 

The account of Coins, Weights, and Measures, which accompanied the edition of Lem- 
priere in two volumes, has been appended to the present work in a more condensed and 
convenient form. It is from the pen of Abraham B. Conger, Esq., formerly one of the 
Mathematical instructors in Columbia College, but at present a member of the New-York 
bar. The very great clearness and ability which characterize this essay have been fully 
acknowledged by its republication abroad in the Edinburgh edition of Potter’s Grecian 
Antiquities, and it will be found far superior to the labours of Arbuthnot, as given in the 
Dictionary of Lempriere. 

Before concluding, the author must express his grateful obligations to his friend, Fran¬ 
cis Adams, Esq., of Banchory Ternan, near Aberdeen (Scotland), for the valuable contri¬ 
butions furnished by him under the articles Actius, Alexander of Tralles, Aret&us, Celsus , 
Dioscorides, Galenas, Hippocrates, Nicander, Oribasius, Paulus AEgineta, and many other 
medical biographies scattered throughout the present work. Mr. Adams is well known 
abroad as the learned author of “ Hermes Philologicus,” and the English translator of 
“ Paul of HSgina.” Whatever comes from his pen, therefore, carries with it the double 
recommendation of professional talent and sound and accurate scholarship. 

With regard to the typographical execution of the present volume, the author need say 
but little. The whole speaks for itself, and for the unsparing liberality of the publishers. 
In point of accuracy, the author is sure that no work of its size has ever surpassed it; 
and for this accuracy he is mainly indebted to the unremitting care of his talented young 
friend, Mr. Henry Drisler, a graduate of Columbia College, and one of the Instructors in 
the College-school, of whose valuable services he has had occasion to speak in the preface 
to a previous work. 

Columbia College , August 1, 1842. 


In preparing the present edition for the press, the greatest care has been taken to cor¬ 
rect any typographical errors that may hitherto have escaped notice, and to introduce 
such other alterations as the additional reading of the author, and new materials, fur¬ 
nished by works of a similar nature, have enabled him to make. In furtherance of this 
view, he has appended a Supplement to the present volume, containing all that appeared 
to him important in the first number of the new Classical Dictionary, now in a course of 
publication from the London press, as well as in the numbers, which have thus far ap¬ 
peared, of Pauly’s “ Real-Encyclopadie der Classischen Alterthumswissenschaftf which con¬ 
stitutes, in fact, the principal source of supply from which the authors of the new Clas¬ 
sical Dictionary have drawn their materials. The articles contained in the Supplement 
will be found referred to in the body of the work under their respective heads, thus en¬ 
abling the reader to ascertain, at a glance, what additions have been actually made. 

Columbia College, March 1, 1843. 






LIST OF WORKS, 

EXCLUSIVE OP THE CLASSICS, 

FORMING PART OF THE AUTHOR’S PRIVATE COLLECTION, AND WHICH HAVE BEES CONSULTED 

FOR THE PURPOSES OF THE PRESENT EDITION. 


A. 

Abulfedae Descriptio ^gypti, Arabice et Latine, ed. Mi- 
chaelis, Gotting., 1776, 8vo. 

Ackerman, Numismatic Manual, Lond., 1840, 8vo. 

Adagia Veterum, Antv„ 1629, fol. . 

Adelon, Physiologie de l’Homme, 3 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1829. 

Adelung, Glossarium mediae et infimae Latinitatis, 6 
vols. 8vo, Halae, 1772-84. . . , , 

.-, Mithridates, oder allgemeine Sprachenkunde, 

4 vols. 8vo, Berlin, 1806-17. 

Adrichomius, Theatrum Terrae Sanctae, Col. Agripp., 
1628, fol. 

Ahmedis Arabsiadae Vitae et rerum gestarum 1 imuri, 
&c., Historia, Lugd. Bat., 1636. 

Alphabetum Brammhanicum, seu Indostanum, Umver- 
sitatis Kasi, 12mo, Romae, Congr. de Propag. Fid., 1771. 

Alphabetalndica, id est, Granthamieum seu Samscrdam- 
ico - Malabaricum, Indostanum sive Vanarense, Na- 
srancum Vulgare et Talmganicum, 12mo, Romae, 
Congr. de Propag. Fid., 1791. . 

Alphabetum Barmanorum, seu regni Avensis, 12mo, 
Romae, Congr. de Propag. Fid. 1787. 

Alphabetum Tangutanum sive Tibetanum, 12mo, Romae, 
Congr. de Propag. Fid., 1773. . 

Alphabetum AEthiopicum, sive Gheer et Amphancum, 
12mo, Romae, Congr. de Propag. Fid., 1789. 

Alphabetum Coptum, 12mo, Romae, Congr. de Propag. 

Fid. t, 

Alphabetum Persicum, 12mo, Romae, Congr. de Propag. 
Fid., 1783. 

American Quarterly Review. 

Arndt, Ueber den Ursprung der Europaisehen Sprachen, 
8vo, Frankfurt, 1827. 

Arnold’s History of Rome, Lond., 1838, 1st vol. 8vo. 

Arundell, Visit to the Seven Churches of Asia, 8vo, 
London, 1828. 

--, Discoveries in Asia Minor, Lond., 1834,2 vols. 

8vo. 

Asiatic Researches, 5 vols. 4to, London, 1799. 

Ast, Grundriss der Philologie, 8vo, Landshut, 1808. 

-, Platon's Leben und Schriften, 8vo, Lips., 1816. 

Attisches Museum, 7 vols. 8vo, Zurich (Neues Att. 
Mus., 3 vols.). 

Aurelius, De Cognominibus Deorum, 12mo, Franq., 1696. 

B. 

Bahr, Geschichte der Romischen Literatur, 2 vols. 8vo, 
Carlsruhe, 1832-6. 

Bailly, Lettres sur l’Atlantide de Platon, &c., 8vo, Pans, 
1779. 

-, Lettres sur l’Ongine des Sciences, 8vo, Pans, 

1777. 

Balbi, Atlas Ethnographique du Globe, fol., Pans, 1826. 

-, Introduction a l’Atlas Ethnographique, 8vo, Paris, 

1826. 

-, Abrege de Geographic, 8vo, Paris, 1833. 

Balduinus de Calceo Antiquo. 12mo, Lips., 1733. 

Banier, Mythology of the Ancients, 4 vols. 8vo, London, 
1739. 

Barailon, Recherches sur plusieurs Monumens Celtiques 
et Romains, Paris, 1808, 8vo. 

Barth, Ueber die Druiden der Kelten, 8vo, Erlang., 1816. 

Barthelemy, Voyage du jeune Anacharsis, 7 vols. 8vo, 
Paris, 1810. 

Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary (Eng. trans.), 

* fol., 10 vols., 1734-41. 

Beaufort, Uncertainty of early Roman History, 12mo, 
London, 1740. 

Beck, Allgemeines Repertorium, 8vo, 15 vols., 1828-33. 

Beckmann, History of Inventions and Discoveries, 4 
vols. 8vo, London, 1814. 

Bell, Pantheon, 4to, 2 vols., London, 1790. 


Beloe, Anecdotes of Literature, 6 vols. 8vo,Lond., 1814. 

Bentley, Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalans, &c., 
edited by Dyce, 2 vols. 8vo, London, 1836. 

-, Life of, by Monk, 4to, London, 1830. 

Berlier, Precis Historique de l’ancienne Gaul, 8vo, Brux¬ 
elles, 1822. 

Berwick, Life of Scipio Africanus, 12mo, London, 181 1 . 

Bibliotheca Critica, 3 vols. 8vo, Amstelod., 1779-1808. 

Bibliotheca Critica Nova, 5 vols. 8vo, Lugd. Bat., 1825- 
30. _ . 

Bilhon, Du Gouvernement des Romaines, 8vo, Pans, 

1807. • n 

_, Principes D’Administration et D’Economie Po¬ 
litique, des Anciens Peuples, 8vo, Paris, 1819. 

Biographie Universelle, Ancienne et Moderne, 52 vols. 
8vo, 1811-28. 

BischofF und Moller, Worterbuch der Geographie, 8vo, 
Gotha, 1829. 

Blair, Enquiry into the State of Slavery among the Ro 
mans, 12mo, Edinburgh, 1833. 

Blondell, Des Sibylles, &c., 4to, Charenton, 1649. 

Blum, Einleitung, in Rom’s alte Geschichte, 12mo, Ber¬ 
lin, 1828. 

Blume, Iter Italicum, 12mo, 2 vols., Berlin, 1824. 

Bobrik, Geographie des Herodot, 8vo, Konigsberg, 1838, 
nebst einem Atlasse von zehn Karten, fol. 

Bochart, Opera Omnia, fol., 2 vols., Lugd. Bat., 1692. 

Bdckh, Corpus lnscriptionum Grsecarum, fol., Berol., 
1825. 

, Die Staatshaushaltung der Athener, 2 vols. 8vo, 


Berlin, 1817. 

-, Public Economy of Athens, 2 vols. 8vo, London, 


i828. _ . , 

-, Metrologische Untersuchungen uber Gewichte, 

Munzfusse, und Masse des Alterthums, 8vo, Berlin, 
1838. 

Bode, G. H., Geschichte der Hellenischen Dichtkunst, 
3 vols. 8vo, Leipzig, 1838^-9. 

_, Quiestiones de antiquissima carminum Orphicorum 

aetate, &c,, 4to, Gottingse, 1838, 2d edit. 

Bohmen, Heidnische Opferplatze, 8vo, Prague, 1836. 

Bottiger, C. A., Archseologie und Kunst, vol. 1, 8vo, 
Breslau, 1828. 

-, Andeutungen, &c., uber Archseologie, 


8vo, Dresden, 1806. . 

Sabina, oder Morgenszenen lm Putz 


zimmer einer reichen Romerin, 12mo, 2 vols., 1806. 

., Amalthea, oder Museum der Kunst 


mythologie, &c., 8vo, 3 vols., Lips., 1820-5. 

--, Ideen zur Kunst-mythologie, 8vo, Dres¬ 


den, 1826. 

W., Geschichte der Carthager, 8vo, Berlin, 1827. 


Bohlen, Das’alte Indien, mit besonderer Rucksicht auf 
AEgypten, 8vo, 2 vols., Konigsb., 1830. 

Bondelmonti, Insulae Archipelagi, ed. De Sinner, 8vo, 
Lips., 1824. 

Bonucci, Pompei descritta, 8vo, Napoli, 1827. 

Bopp, Vergleichende Gr 3 . 1 r 1 rn 3 .t 1 k. dss S3nskrit 1 Zend, 
Griech., Latein., Litthau., Altslawisch., Gothischen, 
und Deutschen, 3 pts., 4to, 1833-7. . . , 

Bouillet, Dictionnaire Classique de l’Antiquite, 2 vols. 
8vo, 1826. 

Braunschweig, Geschichte des politischen Lebens im 
Alterthume, &c., vol. T, 8vo, Hamburg, 1830. 

Bredow, Handbuch der alten Geschichte, 8vo, Altona, 
1816. 

Brouerius, De Adorationibus, Amstelod., 1713. 

Brucker, Historia Critica Philosophise, 4to, 6 vols., Lips., 
1.767. 

Brunet, Manuel du Libraire,4 vols. 8vo, Bruxelles, 1838. 

Bryant, Dissertation concerning the War of Troy, 4to, 
London, 1799. 





















X 


LIST OF WORKS, ETC. 


Bryant, New System of Mythology, 6 vols. 8vo, London, 
1807. 

Bucke, Ruins of Ancient Cities, 2 vols. 18mo, Lond., 1840. 

Buckingham’s Travels in Assyria, Media, and Persia, 
8vo, 2 vols., London, 1830. 

Budaeus, De Asse, Venet. ap. Aldum, 1522. 

Buffon, Histoire Naturelle, 18mo, 70 vols., Paris. 

Bulenger, De Conviviis, Lugduni, 1627. 

Bulwer's Athens, &c.. 2 vols. 12mo, New York, 1837. 

Bunsen, De jure hereditario Atheniensium, 4to, Got- 
ting., 1813. 

Burgess, Description of the Circus on the Via Appia, 
&c., 12mo, London, 1828. 

• -, Topography and Antiquities of Rome, 2 vols. 

8vo, London, 1831. 

Burney, History of Music, 4to, 4 vols. Lond., 1776-89. 

Burnouff, Essai sur le Pali, 8vo, Paris, 1826. 

Buttmann, Mythologus, 8vo, 2 vols., Berlin, 1828. 

C. 

Calmet, Dictionary of the Bible, 4to, 5 vols., Charles¬ 
town, 1812. 

Cambden, Britannia, 4to, London, 1600. 

Cardwell, Lectures on Coins, 8vo, Oxford, 1832. 

Carion-Nisas, Histoire de l’Art Militaire, 8vo, 2 vols., 
Paris, 1824. 

Carli, Lettres Americaines, 8vo, 2 vols., Paris, 1788. 

Carus, Ideen zur Geschichte der Menscheit, 8vo, Leipz., 
1809. 

• -, Ideen zur Geschichte der Philosophie, 8vo, 

Leipz., 1809. 

-, Geschichte der Psyc.hologie, 8vo, Leipz., 1809. 

Casaubon, De Poesi Satyrica, 8vo, Hal., 1774. 

Cavriani, Delle Scienze, &c., del Romani, 8vo, 2 vols., 
Mantova, 1822. 

Cellarius, Notitia Orbis Antiqui, ed. Schwartz, 4to, 2 
vols., Lips., 1773. 

-, Historia Universalis, 12mo, 2 vols., Jense, 1702. 

Champollion, Precis du Systeme Hieroglyphique, 8vo, 
2 vols., Paris, 1824. 

Chardin, Voyage en Perse, &c., 11 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1811. 

Chesnow, Introduction a l'etude de l’histoire du Moyen 
Age, 8vo, Bayeux, 1827. 

Clarke, E. D., Travels, 8vo, 11 vols., London, 1816-24 
(4th edition). 

■-, A., Bibliographical Dictionary, 12mo, 8 vols., 

Liverpool, 1802. 

Classical Journal, 8vo, 40 vols., London, 1810-29. 

-Manual, 8vo, London, 1827. 

Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, 4to, 2 vols., Oxford, 1827-30. 

Cluvenus, Introductio in Universam Geographiam, 8vo, 
Amst., 1682. 

Coleridge, Introduction to the Study of the Greek Clas¬ 
sic Poets, 12mo, pt. 1, Philad., 1831. 

Collectio Dissertationum rarissimarum, cura Graevii, 4to, 
Traj. Batav., 1716. 

Constant, De la Religion, 8vo, 5 vols., Paris, 1826-31. 

-, Melanges de Literature et de Politique, 8vo, 

Paris, 1829. 

Conversations-Lexicon, 12mo, 14 vols., Leipz., 1824-26. 

Court de Gebelin, Monde Primitif, 4to, 9 vols., Paris, 
1787. 

Crabb, Historical Dictionary, 4to, 2 vols., London, 1825. 

Cramer, J. A., Description of Ancient Greece, 8vo, 3 
vols. Oxford, 1828. 

-, Description of Ancient Italy, 8vo, 2 vols., Ox¬ 
ford, 1826. 

-, Description of Asia Minor, 2 vols. 8vo, Oxford, 

1832. 

-and Wickham, Dissertation on the Passage of 

Hannibal over the Alps, 8vo, London, 1828. 

-, Geschichte der Erziehung und des Unterrichts 

im Alterthume, 8vo, 2 vols., Elberfeld, 1832-8. 

Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Volker, 
8vo., 4 vols., Leipz., 1819. 

-> Abriss der Romischen Antiquitaten, 8vo, 

Leipz., 1829. 

1 -> Dionysus, sive Commentationes Academicae 

de Rerum Bacchicarum Orphicarumque Originibus et 
Causis, 4to, Heidelb., 1809. 

-, Commentationes Herodotem, 8vo, pt. 1, Lips., 

1819. 

--, Symbolik, im Auszuge von Moser, 8vo, Leipz., 

1822. 

• -, ein alte Athenischen Gefass, 12mo, Leipzig, 

1832. 


Crevier, Histoire des Empereurs Romains, 8vo, 6 vols.. 
Pans, 1818. 

Crusius, Lives of the Roman Poets, 12mo, 2 vols., Lon¬ 
don, 1733. 

Cudworth, Intellectual System of the Universe, 4 vols., 
London, 1820. 

Cuvier, Discours sur les Revolutions de la surface du 
Globe, 8vo, Paris, 1828, 5th edition. 

-, Theory of the Earth, by Jameson, 8vo, Edinb., 


Dankovsky, Die Griechen als Stamm und Sprachver- 
wandte der Slaven, 8vo, Presburg, 1828. 

D'Anville, Ancient Geography, 2 vols. 8vo, N.York, 1814. 

-, Antiquite Geographique de l’lnde, 8vo, Pans, 

1775. 

D’Arc, Histoire des Conquttes des Normands en Italie, 
&c., Paris, 1830. 

Davies, Celtic Researches, 8vo, London, 1804. 

Dean, J. B., On the Worship of the Serpent, 8vo, Lon¬ 
don, 1830. 

De Ballu, Histoire Antique de l’Eloquence chez les 
Grecques, 2 vols, 8vo, Paris, 1813. 

De Chazelle, Etudes sur l’histoire des Arts, 8vo, Paris, 
1834. 

Degerando, Histoire comparee des Systemes de Philoso¬ 
phie, 4 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1823. 

De la Bergerie, Histoire de l’Agriculture Ancienne des 
Grecs, 2 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1830. 

Della Valle, Voyages dans la Turquie, &c., 7 vols. 8vo, 
Rouen, 1745. 

Delambre, Histoire de l’Astronomie Ancienne, 2 vols. 
4to, Paris, 1817. 

Demosthenes als Staatsmann und Redner, von A. A. 
Becker, 8vo, Halle und Leipz., 1815. 

De Maries, Histoire generale de l'lnde, 8vo, 6 yols., 
Paris, 1828. 

De Pauw, Recherches Philosophiques, 7 vols. 8vo, Paris, 
1795. 

Derham, Physieo-Theology, 12mo, 2 vols., Lond., 1749. 

Descrizione di Roma Antica, 12mo, Rom., 1697. 

Deuber, Geschichte der Schiffahrt im Atlantischen 
Ocean, 12mo, Bamberg, 1814. 

D’Hancarville, Antiquites Etrusques, Grecques et Ro- 
maines, 4to, 5 vols., Paris, 1787. 

Dibdin, Introduction to the Greek and Latin Classics, 
8vo, 2 vols., 1827, 4th edition. 

Dictionnaire d’Histoire Naturelle, 17 vols. 8vo, Paris, 
1822-31. 

-Historique des Cultes Religieux, 8vo, 4 

vols., Versailles, 1820. 

Diderot, Essai sur les regnes de Claude et de Neron, ou 
Vie de Seneque le Phxlosophe, 8vo, 2 vols., Paris, 1823. 

Dillon, Viscount, the Tactics of HDlian, containing the 
Military System of the Grecians, 4to, London, 1814. 

Dodwell, Classical and Topographical Tour through 
Greece, 4to, 2 vols., London, 1819. 

Donkin, Dissertation on the course, &c., of the Niger, 
8vo, London, 1829. 

Drummond, Origines, 8vo. 2 vols., London, 1826. 

Dubois, Description of the Character, Manners, and 
Customs of the People of India (Eng. trans.), 8vo, 2 
vols. Philad., 1818. 

Ducaurroy, Institutes de Justinien, 4 vols. 8vo, Paris, 
1836. 

Du Choul, Discours de la Religion des Anciens Ro¬ 
mains, 8vo, Lyon, 1580. 

Dulaure, Histoire des Cultes, 2 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1825. 

Dumbeck, Geographia pagorum, German. Cis-Rhenan., 
8vo, Berol., 1818. 

Dunbar, Inquiry into the Structure and Affinity of the 
Greek and Latin Languages, 8vo, Edinburgh, 1827. 

Dunlop, History of Roman Literature, 8vo, 3 vols., Lon¬ 
don, 1823-28. 

Dupuis, Originede tousles Cultes, 7vols. 8vo, Paris,1822. 

Dureau de la Malle, Geographie Physique de la Mer 
Noire, &c., 8vo, Paris, 1807. 

-, Recherches sur la topographie de Carthage, 

8vo, Paris, 1835. 

Dutens, Origine des decouvertes attributes aux mo- 
dernes, 3me edit., a Londres, 1796, 4to. 

E. 

Ebn-Haukal, Oriental Geography, translated by Sir W 
Ouseley, 4to, London, 1800. 
























LIST OF WORKS, ETC. 


xi 


Edinburgh Review, 8vo, 72 vols. 

Edwards’s and Park’s Selections from German Litera¬ 
ture, 8vo, Andover, 1839. 

Eichhoff, Vergleichung der Sprac-hen von Europa und 
Indien iibers. von Kaltschmidt, 8vo, Leipzig, 1840. 

■-, Paralldle des langues de l’Europe et de l’Inde, 

4to, Paris, 1836. 

Eichhorn, Weltgeschichte, 8vo, 5 vols., Gottingen, 1817. 

Eichwald, Alte Geographie des Kaspischen Meeres, 
&c., 8vo, Berlin, 1838. 

Eisendecher, Biirgerrecht im alten Rom, 8vo, Hamburg, 
1829. 

Elgin Marbles, 2 vols. 12mo, London, 1833. 

Elmes, Dictionary of the Fine Arts, 8vo, London, 1826. 

Elton, History of the Roman Emperors, 12mo, London, 
1835. 

Encyclopedia of Useful Knowledge, 17 vols. 8vo, Lon¬ 
don, 1833-40. 

Encyclopaedia Americana, 8vo, 13 vols., Philadelphia, 
1830-3. 

Enfield, History of Philosophy, 8vo, 2 vols., Lond., 1819. 

Ephemerides Universelles, 8vo, 7 vols., Paris, 1828-30. 

Erasmus, Adagiorum Chiliades, ft>l., Paris, 1558. 

Eschenberg, Handbuch der Classischen Literatur, 8vo, 
Berlin, 1816. 

Essais sur l’Allegoire, &c., 8vo, 2 vols., Paris, 1798. 

Etudes sur les podtes Latins de la decadence, par Ni- 
sard, 3 vols., Bruxelles, 1834. 

Eusebii Chronica, ed. Maius et Zohrabus, 4to, Mediol., 
1818. 

-Demonstratio Evangelica, fob, Colon., 1688. 

-Praeparatio Evangelica, fob, Colon., 1688. 

Eustace, Classical Tour through Italy, 8vo, 4 vols., Lon¬ 
don, 1815 (3d edition). 


F. 


Faber, Origin of Pagan Idolatry, 4to, 3 vols., Lond., 1816. 

-, Dissertation on the Mysteries of the Cabiri, 8vo, 

2 vols., Oxford, 1803. 

Fabricius, Menologium, sive Libellus de Mensibus cen¬ 
tum circiter populorum, &c., 12mo, Hamburg, 1712. 

Farmer, Essay on the Demoniacs of the New Testa¬ 
ment, 12mo, London, 1818. 

Fauriel, Histoire de la Gaule Meridionale, 4 vols. 8vo, 
Paris, 1836. 

Fee, Flore de Virgile, 8vo, Paris, 1822. 

Fellows, Tour in Asia Minor, 4to, London, 1839. 

Felton, Dissertation on the Classics, 12mo, Lond., 1718. 

Fetes et Courtisanes de la Grdce, 4 vols. 8vo, Paris, 
1821. 

Flaxman, Lectures on Sculpture, 8vo, London, 1829. 

Folard, Histoire de Polybe, 4to, 6 vols., Paris, 1727. 

Foreign Quarterly Review, 8vo,25 vols., Lond., 1827-40. 

Foreign Review, 8vo, 5 vols., London, 1828-30. 

Fraser, Journal of a Tour to the Himala Mountains, 4to, 


London, 1820. 

Fuhrmann, Handbuch der Classischen Literatur, 8vo, 2 
vols., Rudolstadt, 1809. 

Funccius, De Origine, &c., Lingua3 Latina?, 4to, Mar¬ 
burg, 1735. 

Fuss, Roman Antiquities, translated by Street, Oxford, 
1840, 8vo. 


G. 

Gail, Cartes, &c., relatives a la Geographie d’Herodote, 
&c., 4to, Paris, 1822. 

Garre, Die Politik des Aristoteles, 12mo, 2 vols.,. Bres¬ 
lau, 1799. 

Gell, Geography and Antiquities of Ithaca, 4to, London, 
1807. s, 

-, Itinerary of Argolis, 4to, London, 1807. 

-, Pompeiana, 2 vols. 8vo, London, 1832. 

-, Rome and its vicinity, London, 1834, 8vo, 2 vols. 

Gesenius, Geschichte der Hebraischen Sprache und 
Schrift, 8vo, Leipz., 1815. 

-, Scripturae Linguaeque Phoenicia? quotquot su- 

persunt Monumenta, 4to, Lipsia?, 1837. 

Gibbon, Miscellaneous Works, 5 vols. 8vo, Lond., 1814. 

-, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 8vo, 12 

vols., London, 1818. 

Gieseler, Text-book of Ecclesiastical History, 3 vols. 
8vo, Philad., 1836. 

Goller, De situ et origine Syracusarum, 8vo, Lips., 1818. 

Gorres, Das Heldenbuch von Iran, 8vo, 2 vols., Berlin, 
1820. 


Gorres, Mythengeschichte der Asiatischen Welt, 8vo, 2 
vols., Heidelb., 1810. 

Goguet, Origin of Laws, &c., 8vo, 3 vols., Edinburgh, 
1.775. 

Good, Book of Nature, 8vo, 2 vols., Boston, 1826. 

Gorton, Biographical Dictionary, 2 vols. 8vo, Lond., 1828. 

Gossellin, Recherches sur la Geographie des Anciennes, 
4to, 4 vols., Paris. 

Gray, Connexion between the Sacred Writings, &c., 
and Heathen Authors, 8vo, 2 vols., London, 1819 (2d 
edition). 

Greaves, Miscellaneous Works, 2 vols. 8vo, Lond., 1737. 

Greppo, Essay on the Hieroglyphic System, 12mo, Bos¬ 
ton, 1830. 

Grotefend, Rudimenta Linguae Umbricse, 8 pts., 4to, 
Hannov., 1835-9. 

-, Rudimenta Linguae Oscae, 4to, Hannov., 

1839. 

Gruber, Worterbuch der altclassischen Mythologie, 8vo, 
3 vols., Weimar, 1811. 

Gruchius, de Comitiis Romanorum, 8vo, Venetia, 1559. 

Guigniaut, Religions de l’Antiquite, 8vo, 6 vols., Paris, 
1825-39. 

-, Serapis et son Origine, 8vo, Paris, 1828. 

Guilletier, Lacedemone Ancienne et Nouvelle, 8vo, 
Paris, 1689. 

H. 

Hale, Analysis of Chronology, 8vo, 4 vols., London, 
1830 (2d edition). 

Halma, Traite de Geographie de Claude Ptolemee, 4to, 
Paris, 1828. 

Hamaker, Miscellanea Phoenicia, sive Commentarii de 
rebus Phcenicum, 4to, Lugd. Bat., 1828. 

Hannibal’s Passage of the Alps, by a member of the 
University of Cambridge, London, 1830. 

Harles, Notitia Literatur® Romanes, 12mo, Lips., 1789. 

-, Supplementa in Notitiam Lit. Rom, 12mo, 3 

vols., Lips., 1799. 

-, Notitia Literatures Graecae, 12mo, Lips., 1812. 

Hase, Public and Private Life of the Ancient Greeks, 
12mo, London, 1840. 

Hasse, Entdeckungen im Felde der altesten Erd-und 
Menschengeschichte, 8vo, Halle, 1801. 

Heeren, Geschichte der Kunste und Wissenchaften, 
&c., 8vo, 2 vols., Gottingen, 1797. 

-, Ideen, 8vo, 6 vols., Gottingen, 1824-26. 

-, Handbuch der Geschichte der Staaten des Al- 

terthums, 8vo, Gottingen, 1821. 

-, Historical Researches, Asiatic Nations, 3 vols. 

8vo, Oxford, 1833. 

-,-, African Nations, 2 vols. 

8vo, Oxford, 1832. 

-, Ancient History, 8vo, Northampton, 1828. 

Hegewisch, Gliickliehste Epoche in der Romischen 
Geschichte, 8vo, Hamburg, 1800. 

-, Geschichte der Gracchischen Unruhen, 8vo, 

Hamburg, 1801. 

Heineccius, Antiquitatum Romanarum Syntagma, ed. 
Haubold, 8vo, Francof., 1822. 

Heinecke, Homer und Lycurg, Leipzig, 1833. 

Hennequin, Esprit de l’Encyclopedie, 15 vols. 8vo, Paris, 
1822. 

Henry, Leltre a Champollion le Jeune, &c., 8vo, Paris, 
1828. 

Herbert, Edward, Lord, Ancient Religion of the Gen¬ 
tiles, London, 1705. 

Herder, Sammtliche Werke, 8vo, 16 vols., Carlsruhe, 
1820. 

Hermann, G., Opuscula, 8vo, 7 vols., Lips., 1827-39. 

-, C. F., Geschichte und System der Platonis- 

chen Philosophic, 1 vol., 3 pts., Heidelberg, 1838-9. 

-,-, Manual of Political Antiquities of An¬ 
cient Greece, Oxford, 1836. 

Hetherington’s History of Rome, reprinted from the En¬ 
cyclopaedia Britannica, Edinburgh, 1839, 8vo. 

Heyne, Opuscula Academica, 8vo, 6 vols., Gottingm r 
1785. 

-, Sammiung Antiquarischer Aufsatze, 2 vols. 8vo, 

Leipzig, 1778. 

--•, Beschreibung der Ebene von Troja, 8vo, Leip¬ 
zig, 1792. 

Higgins, Celtic Druids, 4to, London, 1827. 

Hirt, Geschichte der Baukunst bei den Alten, 4to, 2 
vols., Berlin, 1822. 

Histoire du Ciel, &c., 2 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1757. 

























Xll 


LIST OF WORKS, ETC. 


Hoare, Classical Tour through Italy and Sicily, 8 vo, 2 
vols., London, 1819. 

Hobhouse, Journey through Albania, &c., 8 vo, 2 vols., 
Philadelphia, 1817. 

Hock, Kreta, 8 vo, 3 vols., Gottingen, 1823. 

Hoffmann, Grammatica Syriaca, 4to, Halae, 1827. 

-, S. F. G., Lexicon Bibliographicum, 3 vols. 

8 vo, Leipzig, 1832-36. 

Hooper’s Essay on Ancient Measures, London, 1721. 

Horapollo Niloiis, translated by Cory, 12mo, London, 
1840. 

Horne, Introduction to the Scriptures, 8 vo, 4 vols., Phil¬ 
adelphia, 1826. 

Horschelmann, Geschichte, &c., der Insel Sardinien, 
8 vo, Berlin, 1828. 

Hoskins’ Travels in .Ethiopia, 4to, London, 1835. 

Hug, Die Erfindung der Buchstabensehrift, 4to, Ulm, 
1801. 

Hughes, Travels in Sicily, Greece, and Albania, 4to, 2 
vols., London, 1820. 

Hullmann, Geschichte des Byzantischen Handels, 
12 mo, Frankfort, 1808. 

-, Wurdigung des Delphischen Orakels, 8 vo, 

Bonn, 1837. 

Humboldt, Monumens Americains, 8 vo, 2 vols., Paris, 
1816. 

-, Tableaux de la Nature, 8 vo, 2 vols., Paris, 

1828. 

Hunter’s Observations on Tacitus, 8 vo, London, 1752. 

Hutton, History of the Roman Wall, 8 vo, London, 1802. 

Hyde, Syntagma Dissertationum, 4to, Oxon., 1767. 

I. 

Identity of the Religions called Druidical and Hebrew, 
12 mo, London, 1829. 

Ideler, Untersuchung iiber den Ursprung und die Be- 
deutung der Sternnamen, 8 vo, Berlin, 1809. 

--, Astronomische Beobachtungen der Alten, 8 vo, 

Berlin, 1806. 

J. 

Jablonskii Opuscula, ed., &c., T. G. Te Water, Lugd. 
Bat., 4 vols. 8 vo, 1804-13. 

Jakel, Der Germanische Ursprung der Lateinischen 
Sprache und des Romischen Yolkes, 8 vo, Breslau, 
1830. 

Jahn, Introduction to the Old Testament, 8 vo, New 
York, 1827. 

-, History of the Hebrew Commonwealth, &c., 8 vo, 

Andover, 1828. 

-, Biblical Archaeology, translated by Upham, An¬ 
dover, 1823, 8 vo. 

Jamieson, Hermes Scythicus, 8 vo, Edinb., 1814. 

Jones, Sir William, Poesis Asiatica, 8 vo, London, 1774. 

Journal Asiatique, 8 vo, Paris. 

Junius, De pictura veterum, folio, Rotterdam, 1694. 

K. 

Kawi-Sprache auf der Insel Java, von Wilhelm Yon 
Humboldt, 3 vols. 4 to, Berlin, 1836. 

Keightley’s Mythology of Ancient Greece and Italy, 8 vo, 
London, 1838, 2 d edition. 

Kennedy, Researches into the Origin and Affinity of the 
principal Languages of Asia and Europe, 4to, Lond., 
1828. 

Kennet’s Lives and Characters of the Ancient Greek 
Poets, 8 vo, London, 1697. 

Klaproth, Asia Polyglotta, 4to, Paris, 1823. 

-, Memoires relatifs a l’Asie, 3 vols. 8 vo, Paris, 

1826. 

-, Tableaux Historiques de l’Asie, depuis la mo¬ 
narchic de Cyrus jusqu’a nos jours, 4to, Paris, 1826. 

Klausen, De Carmine Fratrum'Arvalium, 12mo, Bonn, 
1836. 

-, -Eneas und die Penaten, 1st vol. 8 vo, Hamburg, 

1839. 

Klemm, Handbuch der Germanischen Alterthumskun- 
de, 8 vo, Dresden, 1836. 

Knight, Analytical Essay on the Greek Alphabet, 4 to, 
London, 1791. 

-, Inquiry into the Symbolical Language, &c. 

(Class Journal). 

-, Prolegomena ad Homerum, edidit Ruhkopf, 8vo, 

Lipsise, 1816. 

Kdppen, Nordische Mythologie, 12mo, Berlin, 1837. 

-j Erklarende Anmerkungen zum Homer, he- 


rausgegeben von Ruhkopf, Spitzner, und Krauso, 7 
vols. 12mo, Hannover, 1794-1823. 

Kruger, Leben des Thukydides, 4to, Berlin, 1832. 

Kruse, Archiv fur alte Geographic, Geschichte, &c., 
12mo, Leipzig, 1822. 

-, Hellas, oder Darstellung des alten Griechenlan- 

des, &c., 3 vols. 8 vo, Leip., 1825. 

-, Deutsche Alterthumer, 12mo, 4 vols., Halle, 

i827. 

Kuhner, R., Ciceronis in Philosophiam ejusque partes 
merita, 8 vo, Lipsise, 1825. 


L. 


Lanzi, Saggio di Lingua Etrusca, 8 vo, 3 vols., Firenze, 
1824 (2d edition). 

—:-, Notizie della Scultura degli Antichi, &c., 8 vo, 

Fiesole, 1824. 

Larcher, Histoire d’Herodote, &c., 6 vo, 9 vols., Paris, 
1802. 

Lassen, Die Alt-Persischen Keil-Inschriften von Persep- 
olis, 8 vo, Bonn, 1836. 

-, Geschichte der Griechische und Indo-Skythis- 

chen Konige im Baktrien, Kabul, und Indien, 8 vo, 
Bonn, 1838. 

Laurent, Ancient Geography, 8 vo, Oxford, 1830. 

Lawrence, Lectures on Physiology, &c., 8 vo, Salem, 

1828. 

Leake, Travels in the Morea, 8 vo, 3 vols., Lond., 1830. 

-, Tour in Asia Minor, 8 vo, London, 1824. 

Le Beau, Histoire du Bas-Empire, 8 vo, 13 vols., Paris, 
1819-20. 

Le Clerc, Des Journaux chez les Romains, 8 vo, Paris, 
1838. 

Legis, Fundgruben des alten Nordens, 8 vo, Leipz., 1829. 

Leipzig Literatur-Zeitung, 4to. 

Lelewel, Die Entdeckungen der Carthagerund Griechen 
auf dem Atlantischen Ocean, 8 vo, Berlin, 1831. 

Lenoir, Description Historique et Chronologique des 
Monumens de Sculpture, 7th edit., 8 vo, Paris, 1803. 

Leo, Geschichte der Italienischen Staaten, 3 vols. 8 vo, 
Hamburg, 1829. 

-Entwickelung der Yerfassung der Lombardischen 

Stadte, 8 vo, Hamburg, 1824. 

Lersch, De versu quern vocant Saturnio, 8 vo, Bonn, 1838. 

Levesque, Histoire Critique de la Republique Romaine, 
8 vo, 3 vols., Paris, 1807. 

Lipsii Miscellanea, 8 vo, 4 vols., Yesal., 1675. 

Lobeck, Aglaophamus, sive de Theologize Mysticze Grse- 
corum Causis, 8 vo, 2 vols., Regimont. Pruss., 1829. 

Lo-Looz, Recherches d’Antiquites Militaires, &c., 4to, 
Paris, 1770. 

Luden, Allgemeine Geschichte, 8 vo, Jena, 1824. 

Lyell’s Geology, 4 vols. 12 mo, London, 1837. 


M. 

Maetzner, De Jove Homeri, Berol., 8 vo, 1839. 

Magnier, Analyse Critique et Literaire de l’Eneide, 2 
vols. 12mo, Paris, 1828. 

Magnusen, Borealium, Mythologize Lexicon, 4 to, Hav- 
niae, 1828. 

Maizeroi, Institutes Militaires de l’Empereur Leon, 2 
vols., Paris, 1770. 

Malden’s History of Rome, Lib. Use. Knowl., 5 parts, 
London, 1830-33, 8 vo. 

Malkin, Classical Disquisitions, 8 vo, London, 1825. 

M alte-Bran, Dictionnaire Geographique portatif, &c., 2 
vols. 12mo, 1827. 

- 5 Precis de la Geographie Universelle, 8 vo, 

4 vols., Bruxelles, 1830. 

-* Universal Geography (English trans.), 8 vo, 

8 vols., Boston, 1824-31. 

Mannert, Geschichte der Alten Deutschen, &c., 8 vo, 
Stuttgart, 1829. 

-, Geographie der Griechen und Romer, 8 vo, 10 

vols., 1799-1825. 

, Handbuch der alten Geschichte, 8 vo, Berlin, 


1818. 

Mansford, Scripture Gazetteer, 8 vo, London, 1829. 
Manso, Sparta, 5 vols. 8 vo, Leipzig, 1800. 

Mantell’s Wonders of Geology, 2 vols. 12mo, Lond., 1838. 
Manuel du Libraire, &c., 8 vo, 2 vols., Paris, 1824. 
Manuel de Literature Classique Ancienne, 8 vo, 2 vols., 
1802. 

Manwaring on the Classics, Lond., 1737, 8 vo. 

Marcoz, Astronomie Solaire d’Hipparquc, 8vo, Paris, 
1828. 
























LIST OF WORKS, ETC. 


xiii 


Maurice, Indian Antiquities, 7 vols. 8vo, London, 1806. 

Mayo, System of Mythology, 8vo, 4 vols., Philadelphia, 
1815. 

M'Culloch, Researches concerning the Aboriginal His¬ 
tory of America, 8vo, Baltimore, 1829. 

Menard, Antiquites de la ville de Nismes, 8vo, Nismes, 
1829. 

Menzel, Geschichte der Teutschen, 4to, Stuttgard, 1837. 

Mercy, Traites d’Hippocrate, &c., 12mo, Paris, 1818. 

Merian, L’Etude comparative des Langues, 8vo, Pari*, 
1828. 

Micali, L’ltalia avanti il dominio dei Romani, 8vo, 4 
vols., Firenze, 1821. 

-, Storia degli antichi Popoli Italiani, 3 vols. 8vo, 

Firenze, 1832. 

Michaelis, Spicilegium Geographiae Hebraeorum exterae, 
4to, 2 vols., Gottingae, 1769. 

Michelet, Histoire Romaine, 3 vols. 12mo, Brux., 1835. 

Middleton’s Life of Cicero, 2 vols. 8vo, London, 1823. 

Milman, History of the Jews, 12mo, 3 vols., New York, 
1831. 

Milner, History of the Seven Churches of Asia, 8vo, 
London, 1832. 

Miscellanea Dramatica, 8vo, Cambridge, 1828. 

Mitchell, Comedies of Aristophanes, 8vo, 2 vols., Lon- 
do^, 1820-22. 

Mitford, History of Greece, 8 vols. 8vo, Boston, 1823. 

Mohnike, Geschichte der Literatur der Griechen und 
Romer, 8vo, vol. 1, Greifswald, 1813. 

Mone, Geschichte des Heidenthums in Nordlichen Eu- 
ropa, 2 vols. 8vo, Leipzig, 1823. 

Montesquieu, CEuvres de, 8vo, 8 vols., Paris, 1822. 

Monumenta Paderbornensia, 4to, Francof., 1713. 

Moore, Lectures on the Greek Language and Literature, 
12mo, New York, 1835. 

-, Ancient Mineralogy, 12mo, New York, 1834. 

Moreri, Grand Dictionnaire Historique, fol., 6 vols., 1724. 

Moritz, Gotterlehre, 12mo, Berlin, 1825. 

Moss, Manual of Classical Biography, 2 vols. 8vo, 1837, 
2d edit. 

Muller, C. O., Die Etrusker, 2 vols. 8vo, Breslau, 1828. 

-, Geschichte hellenischer Stamme, &c., 

8vo, 3 vols., Breslau, 1828. 

Vol. 1, Orchomenos und die Minyer; 
vols. 2 and 3, Die Dorier. 

--, De Phidiae Vita et Operibus, 4to, Gottin- 

gm, 1827. 

-, Prolegomena zu einer wissenschaftlichen 

Mythologie, 8vo, Gotting., 1835. 

- 1 Dorians, translated by TufFnell and Lew¬ 
is, 2 vols. 8vo, Oxford, 1830. * 

-, Archaeologie der Kunst, 8vo, Breslau,1835. 

-, History of Greek Literature, prepared for 

the Library of Useful Knowledge, vol. 1, London, 8vo, 
1835-40. 

-, C., iEgineticorum Liber, 12mo, Berol., 1817. 

-, P. E., Sagaenbibliothek des Scandinavischen 

Alterthums, 8vo, Berlin, 1816. 

—--, Ueber die achtheit der Asalehre, 12mo, 

Kopenhagen, 1811. 

--, J. G., Allgemeine Geschichte, 3 vols. 8vo, Tu¬ 
bingen, 1817. 

-, W., Homerische Vorschule, 8vo, Leipzig, 1836. 

Munter, Religion der Karthager, 8vo, Copenhagen, 1816. 

Muratori, Storia d’ltalia, 4to, 12 vols., Monaco, 1761-4. 

Murray, A., History of European Languages, 2 vols. 
8vo, Edinburgh, 1823. 

-~, H., Historical Account of Discoveries and 

Travels in Africa, 8vo, 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1818. 

Museum Criticum, or Cambridge Classical Researches, 
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Museum der Alterthumswissenschaft, 8vo, 2 vols., Ber¬ 
lin, 1807. 

Museum Antiquitatis Studiorum, 8vo, Berol., 1808. 

N. 

Neapels Antike Bildwerke, 8vo, vol. 1, Stuttgart, 1828. 

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8vo, Rom., 1819. 

Niebuhr, Romische Geschichte, 3 vols. 8vo, Berlin, 
1828-32. 

-, Kleine Schriften, 8vo, Bonn., 1828. 

--, Brief an einen jungen Philologen, 8vo, Leip¬ 
zig, 1839. 

-, History of Rome, abridged'by Twiss, 8vo, Ox¬ 
ford, 1836. 


Niebuhr, Roman History (Cambridge trans.), 2 vols. 
8vo, 1828-32. 

-, -- -(Waller’s trans.), 2 vols. 8vo, 

London, 1827. 

-, Dissertation on the Geography of Herodotus, 

8vo, Oxford, 1830. 

Neugriechische, oder sogenannte Reuchlinische Aus- 
sprache der Hellenischen Sprache ; aus dem Danis- 
chen ubersetzt von P. Friedrichsen, 8vo, Parchim, 
1839. 

Nieupoort, Historia Romana, 12mo, 2 vols., Traj., 1723. 

-, Rituum Romanorum Explicatio, 12mo, Traj., 

1734. 

Nitzsch, Beschreibung des Zustandes, &c., der Griech¬ 
en, 12mc, 4 vols., Erfurt, 1806. 

-, Beschreibung des Zustandes, &c., der Romer, 

vol. 1, 12mo, Erfurt, 1807. 

-, Entwurf der alten Geographie, ed. Mannert, 

12mo, Leipzig, 1829. 

-, G. W., De Historia Homeri, 4to, fasc. 1, 2, 

Han., 1830-7. 

-, Anmerkungen zu Homer’s Odyssee, 

8vo, 2 vols., Hannov., 1826-31. 

Noel, Dictionnaire de la Fable, 2 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1803. 

Notitia Utraque Dignitatum, cum Orientis, turn Oeci- 
dentis, fol., Lugd., 1608. 

Notitia Dignitatum, cura Ed. Booking, 3 vols. 8vo, Bonn, 
1839. 

Numismatique Ancienne, Grecque et Romaine, 2 vols. 
8vo, Paris, 1825. 

Numismatique du Voyage du Jeune Anacharsis, 8vo, 
Paris, 1823. 

Numismata Regum et Imperatorum Romanorum, fob, 
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Nyerup, Worterbuch und Sprache der Scandinavischen 
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O. 

Oracula Sibyllina, ed. Gallaeus, 4to, 2 vols., Amstelod., 
1689. 

Orellius, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, 2 vols. 8vo, Tu- 
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Origenis Hexaplorum quae supersunt, ed. Bahrdt, 8vo, 2 
vols., Lips., 1769. 

Osiander, De Asylis Hebraeorum, Gentilium, Christiano- 
rum, 12mo, Tubing., 1673. 

Ouvaroff, Essai sur les Mysteres d’Eleusis, 8vo, Paris, 
1816. 

P. 

Pacho, Voyage dans la Marmarique, &c.,4to, Paris, 1828. 

Pancirolius, Res Memorabiles, 2pts. 4to, Francof., 1629- 
3L 

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Parallele des Religions, 4to, 6 vols., Paris, 1792. 

Paschalius, De Coronis, 8vo, Lugd. Bat., 1681. 

Passerii Paralipomena, fob, Lucae, 1767. 

Patterson, National Character of the Athenians, Edinb., 
8vo, 1828. 

Pauly, Real-Encyclopadie der Classischen Alterthums r 
wissenschaft, vols. 1, 2, 8vo, Stuttgart, 1839-40. 

Pelloutier, Histoire des Celtes, 2 vols. 4to, Paris, 1771. 

Penn, Primary argument of the Iliad, 8vo, Lond., 1821. 

Peritsol, Cosmographia, ed. Hyde, Oxon, 1691. 

Perizonius, Origines Babylonicae et iEgyptiacae, 12mo, 
2 vols., Lugd. Bat. 1711. 

Peyrard, Les CEuvres d’Euclide, 3 vols. 4to, Paris, 1814. 

Pezron, Antiquities of Nations (Eng. trans.), 8vo, Lon¬ 
don, 1706. 

Pfister, Geschichte der Teutschen, 8vo, 2 vols., Ham¬ 
burg, 1829. 

Philological Museum, 8vo, Cambridge, 1831-33, 5 Nos. 

Picot, Tablettes Chronologiques, &c., 8vo, 2 vols., Ge. 
neve, 1808. 

Pictet, De l’affinite des langues Celtiques avec le San¬ 
scrit, 8vo, Paris, 1837. 

Pierer, Universal-Lexikon, 26 vols. 8vo, Altenburg, 
1835-6. 

Pinkerton, Dissertation on the Scythians or Goths, 8vo, 
London, 1787. 

Plass, Vor-und Ur-Geschichte der Helener, 2 vols. 8vo, 
Leipz., 1832. 

Platonische iEsthetik von A. Ruge, 8vo, Halle, 1832. 

Pline, Histoire Naturelle, annotee par plusieurs savans, 
20 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1829-33. 

Pott, Etymologische Forschungen, 8vo, Lemgo, 1833. 





























xiv 


LIST OF WORKS, ETC. 


Pouqueville, Voyage de la Grece, 6 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1826. 

Prescott, Homer the Sleeper in Horace, 8vo, Camb., 1773. 

Prichard, Physical History of Mankind, 8vo, 2 vols., 
London, 1826. 

-, Analysis of Egyptian Mythology, 8vo, Lond., 

1819. 

-, Origin of the Celtic Nations, 8vo, Oxf., 1831. 

Prideaux, Connexions, &c., 2 vols. 8vo, London, 1831 
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Q. 

Quarterly Review, 8vo, 66 vols. 

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R. 

Rabelleau, Histoire des Hebreux, 2 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1828. 

Raoul-Rochette, Cours d’Archeologie, 8vo, Paris, 1828. 

Rasche, Lexicon Universae rei numariae veterum, 8vo, 
12 vols., Lipsiae, 1775-1802. 

Reichard, kleine geographische Schriften, 8vo, Guns, 
1836. 

Reingarum, Das alte Megaris, 12mo, Berlin, 1825. 

Reisig, Vorlesungen iiber Lateinische Sprachwissen- 
schaft, 8vo, Leipzig, 1839. 

Relandi, Palaestina, ex monumentis veteribus illustrata, 
4to, Norimb., 1716. 

Remusat, Melanges Asiatiques, 2 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1825. 

-, Nouveaux Melanges Asiatiques, 8vo, 2 vols., 

Paris, 1829. 

Rennell, Geography of Herodotus, 8vo, 2 vols., London, 
1830. 

-, Geography of Western Asia, 8vo, 2 vols., Lon¬ 
don, 1831 (with atlas). 

-, Illustrations of Xenophon’s Anabasis, 4to, Lon¬ 
don, 1816. 

-, Observations on the Topography of the Plain 

of Troy, 4to, London, 1814. 

Repertorium fur Biblische und Morgenlandische Litera- 
tur, 18 vols. in 5, 8vo, Leipzig, 1777-85. 

Retrospective Review, 16 vols. 8vo, London, 1820-28. 

Rheinisches Museum, 8vo, Bonn, 1827. 

Rhode, Dieheilige Sage, &c.,der Alten Baktrer, Meder, 
&c., 8vo, Frankfurt, 1820. 

-, Die religiose Bildung, &c., der Hindus, 8vo, 2 

vols., Leipzig, 1827. 

Rich, Journey to the Site of Babylon, &c., 8vo, London, 
1839. 

Richerand, Nouveaux Elemens de Physiologie, 8vo, 2 
vols., Paris, 1825 (9th edition). 

Rio, L’Histoire de l’Esprit Humain dans l’Antiquite, 2 
vols. 8vo, Paris, 1829. 

Ritter, C., Die Erdkunde, &c.,2vols. 8vo, Berlin, 1817. 

--,-,-, vol. 1, Berlin, 1822 (2d 

edition). 

-, Die Stupa’s (Topes) und die Colosse von Ba- 

miyan, 12mo, Berlin, 1838. 

-, Die Vorhalle Europaischer Volkergeschich- 

ten, &c., 8vo, Berlin, 1820. 

-, H., Geschichte der Philosophie, 8vo, 4 vols., 

Hamburg, 1836-39, 2d edit. 

-, Geschichte der Pythagorischen Philoso¬ 
phie, 8vo, Hamburg, 1826. 

-, History of Ancient Philosophy, translated 

by Morrison, 3 vols. 8vo, Oxford, 1838-9. 

Rolle, Recherches sur le Culte de Bacchus, 8vo, 3 vols., 
Paris, 1824. 

-, Religions de la Gr£ce, 8vo, vol. 1, Chatillon-sur- 

Seine, 1828. 

Rollin, Histoire Romaine, 3 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1838. 

-, Ancient History, 8vo, New York, 1839. 

Romanelli, Viaggio a Pompei, &c., 12mo, 2 vols., Na¬ 
poli, 1817. 

Rome in the Nineteenth Century, 12mo, 2 vols., New- 
York, 1827. 

Rosenkranz, Handbuch einer Geschichte der Poesie, 2 
vols. 8vo, Halle, 1832. 

Rosenmuller, Biblical Geography of Central Asia, trans¬ 
lated by N. Morren, 2 vols. 12mo, Edinburgh, 1836. 

-, Scholia in Yetus Testamentum, 18 vols. 

8vo, Lipsiae, 1822. 

T-, Scholia in Novum Testamentum, 8vo, 5 

vols., Norimbergae, 1808. 

Rosini, Antiquitates Romanae cura Dempster, 4to Am- 
stel, 1685. 

Rotteck, Allgemeine Geschichte, 9 vols. 8vo, Frevburg 
1832-4. 


Rougier, Considerations generales sur l’Histoire, 8vo, 
Paris, 1829. 

-, L’Agriculture Ancienne des Grecs, 8vo, Paris, 

1830. 

-, L’Agriculture des Gaulois, 8vo, Paris, 1829. 

Riidemann, von den Saeculum, 12mo, Copenhagen, 1699. 

Ruhnker, Opuscula, 2 vols. 8vo, Lugd. Bat., 1823. 

Ruhs, Die Edda, 8vo, Berlin, 1812. 

Russell, View of Ancient and Modem Egypt, 12mo, 
Edinburgh, 1831. 

S. 

Sainte-Croix, Examen des historiens d’Alexandre le 
Grand, 4to, Paris, 1810 (2d edition). 

-, Recherches sur les Mystdres du Paganis- 

me, 8vo, 2 vols., Paris, 1817 (2d edition). 

Salverte, Des Sciences Occultes, &c., 2 vols. 8vo, Paris, 
1829. 

-, Essai Historique et Philosophique sur les 

Noms d’Hommes, de Peuples, et de Lieux, 2 vols. 
8vo, Paris, 1824. 

Sartorius, Geschichte der Ostgothen, 8vo, Leipz., 1830. 

Schaaff, Encyclopaedic der Classischen Alterthumskun- 
de, 8vo, 2 vols., Magdeburg, 1820. 

Schelling, Die Gottheiten von Samothrace, 8vo, Stutt¬ 
gart, 1817. 4 

Schlegel, F., Geschichte der Alten und neuen Littera- 
tur, 8vo, 2 vols., Wien, 1815. 

-, Die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier, 12mo, 

Heidelburg, 1808. 

-, Sammtliche Werke, 8vo, 8 vols., Wien, 

1822. 

-, A. W., Ueber Dramatische Kunst und Litter- 

atur, 12mo, 3 vols., Heidelb., 1817. 

-, A. G., Lepons sur 1’Histoire et la Theorie des 

Beaux Arts, 8vo, Paris, 1830. 

Schleiermacher, Platons Werke, 8vo, 5 vols., Berlin, 
1817-26. 

-, Introduction to the Dialogues of Plato, 

translated by Dobson, 8vo, London, 1836. 

Schlichthorst, Geographia Africae Herodoteae, 12mo, Got- 
tingae, 1788. 

Schmieder, Lehrbuch der alten Erdbeschreibung, 12mo, 
Berlin, 1802. 

Scholl, Histoire de la Litterature Grecque, 8vo, 8 vols., 
Paris, 1823-25. 

-, Histoire abregee de la Litterature Romaine, 8vo, 

4 vols., Paris, 1815. 

-—, Histoire abregee de la Litterature Grecque sa- 

cree, 8vo, Paris, 1832. 

-, Geschichte der Griechischen Litteratur, aus dem 

Franzosischen ubersetzt von Schwarze und Pinder, 3 
vols. 8vo, Leipzig, 1828-30. 

Schwenck, Etymologisch-Mythologische Andeutungen, 
&c., 8vo, Elberfeld, 1823. 

Selden, De anno civili veterum Judaeorum, 12mo, Lugd. 
Bat., 1683. 

Seyfarth, Rudimenta Hieroglyphices, 4to, Lipsiae, 1826. 

-, Brevis defensio, &c., Lipsiae, 1827. 

■-> Beitrage zur Kenntniss der Litteratur, &c., 

des alten .Egypten, 4to, heft. 1, Leipzig, 1826. 

Sharp, Early History of Egypt, 4to, London, 1836. 

—-, History of the Ptolemies, 4to, London, 1838. 

Sidharubam, seu Grammatica Samscrdamica, cui acce* 
dit Dissertatio Historico-Critica in Linguam Samscrd- 
amicam, 4to, Romae, Congr. de Prop. Fid., 1790. 

Sigonius, Fasti Consulares, 12mo, Oxonii, 1801. 

Sillig, Dictionary of the Artists of Antiquity, translated 
by Williams, 8vo, London, 1837. 

Simon, Die Bewohner des linken Rheinufers, Koln, 
8vo, 1833. 

Sismondi, Fall of the Roman Empire, 8vo, Philad., 1835. 

Spangenberg, de veteris Latii religionibus domesticis, 
4to, Gotting., 1806. 

Spanheim, Introductio ad Geographiam Sacram, 12mo, 
Ultrajecti, 1696. 

-, Orbis Romanus, 8vo, London, 1703. 

Spence, Origin of the Laws and Institutions of Modern 
Europe, 8vo, London, 1826. 

Spohn, Commentatio de extrema Odysseae parte, 8vo, 
Lips., 1816. 

Sprengel, Histoire de la Medecine, 8vo, 9 vols., Paris, 
1815. 

Stahr, Aristotelia, 2 vols. 8vo, Halle, 1833. 

Stieglitz, Archaeologische Unterhaltungen, 8vo> Leipzig 
1820. 








































XV 


LIST OF WORKS, ETC. 


Strad® Prolusiones Academic®, 8vo, Oxon., 1745. 

Stuart and Revett’s Antiquities of Athens, &c., abridg¬ 
ed, 12mo, London, 1837. 

-, Dictionary of Architecture, 3 vols. 8vo, London. 

Systema Brahmanicum, Liturgicum Mythologicum ci¬ 
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4to, Rom®, 1791. 

T. 

Tennemann, Geschichte der Philosophic, 8vo, vol. 1, 
Leipzig, 1829 (2d edition). 

-, Geschichte der Philosophie, 8vo, 11 vols., 

Leipzig, 1798-1819. 

-, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, 

8vo, Leipzig, 1829 (5th edit.). 

-, System der Platonischen Philosophie, 8vo, 

4 vols., Leipzig, 1792-94. 

-, Manual of the History of Philosophy, trans¬ 
lated by Johnson, 8vo, Oxford, 1832. 

Terpstra, Antiquitas Homerica, 8vo, Lugd. Bat., 1831. 

Theatre of the Greeks, 8vo, Cambridge, 1830 (3d edit.). 

-, by Donaldson, 8vo, Cambridge, 

1836 (4th edit.). 

Thierry, Histoire des Gaulois, 3 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1828. 

Thirlwall, History of Greece, 7 vols. 12mo, Lond., 1835- 
40. 

Tiraboschi, Storia della Letteratura Italiana, 8vo, 20 
vols., Firenze, 1805-13. 

Tissot, Etudes sur Virgile, 3 vols. 8vo, Bruxelles, 1826- 
28. 

Tittmann, Darstellung der Griechischen Staatsverfas- 
sungen, 8vo, Leipzig, 1822. 

Tofanelli, Description des objets de Sculpture et de 
Peinture au Capitol, 12mo, Rome, 1825. 

Tolken, Ueber das Basrelief, 12mo, Berlin, 1815. 

Toulotte, Barbarie et Lois au Moyen Age, 8vo, 3 vols., 
Paris, 1829. 

Tournefort, Voyage du Levant, 3 vols. 8vo, Lyon, 1717. 

Townley Gallery, 2 vols. 12mo, London, 1836. 

Trapp’s Pr®lectiones Poetic®, 8vo, 3 vols., Oxon., 1711— 

i9. 

Turner, Tour in the Levant, 3 vols. 8vo, London, 1820. 

Twining, Translation of Aristotle’s Poetics, with notes, 
4to, London, 1789. 

Tzchirner, Der Fall des Heidenthums, 8vo, vol. 1, Leip¬ 
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U. 

Ukert, Geographie der Griechen und Romer, 2 vols. 8vo, 
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Usserius (Usher), De Macedonum et Asianorum Anno 
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V. 

Valery, Voyage Historique et Litteraire en Italie, 8vo, 
Brux., 1835. 

Van Heusde, Initia philosophi® Platonic®, 5 parts 8vo, 
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-, Characterismi principum. philosophorum 

veterum, Socratis, Platonis, Aristotelis, 8vo, Amster¬ 
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Viaggi di Petrarca, in Francia, in Germania, ed in Italia, 
8vo, 5 vols., Milano, 1820. 

Vico, Principes de la philosophie de l’Histoire, 2 vols. 
12mo, Brux., 1835. 

Vincent, Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients, 
&c., 4to, 2 vols., London, 1807. 

( Vol. 1, Voyage of Nearchus. 

( Vol. 2, Periplus. 

Virey, Histoire Naturelle du Genre Humain, 12mo, 3 
vols., Bruxelles, 1827. 

Visconti, E. Q., Iconografia Greca, 8vo, 7 vols., Milano, 
1823. 

--, Iconografia Romana, 3 vols. 8vo, Milano, 

1818. 

-, Museo Pio-Clementino, 8vo, 3 vols., 

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*-, F. A., Museo Charamonti, 8vo, Milano, 1820. 


Volcker, fiber Homerische Geographie und Weltkunde, 
8vo, Hannov., 1830. 

-, Mythische Geographie der Griechen und Ro¬ 
mer, 8vo, Hannov., 1830. 

-» Mythologie des Iapetischen Geschlechtes, 

12mo, Giessen, 1824. 

Vollmer, Worterbuch der Mythologie, 8vo, Stuttgard, 
1836. 

Voss, J. H., Mythologische Briefe, 12mo, 5 vols., Stutt¬ 
gart, 1827-34. 

—-, Anti-Symbolik, 2 vols. 12mo, Stuttgart, 1824. 

Vossius, De Historicis Gr®cis, ed. Westermann, 8vo, 
Lips., 1838. 

Voyage a Pompei, 12mo, Paris, 1829. 

Vyacarana, seu locupletissima Samscrdamic® lingu® 
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Vyse, Pyramids of Gizeh, 2 vols. 4to, London, 1840. 

W. 

Wachler, Handbuch der Geschichte der Litteratur, 8vo, 
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Wagner, Die Tempel und Pyramiden der Urbewohner, 
auf dem rechten Elbufer, 8vo, Leipzig, 1828. 

Wahl, Vorder und Mittel Asien, 8vo, Leipzig, 1795. 

Walch, Historia Critica Lingu® Latin®, 12mo, Lips., 
1716. 

Walker, Analysis of Female Beauty, London, 1836, 8vo. 

Walpole, Memoirs relating to European and Asiatic 
Turkey, &c., 4to, 2 vols., London, 1818. 

Walsh, Essay on Ancient Coins, &c., 12mo, Lond., 1828. 

-, Narrative of a Journey from Constantinople to 

England, 12mo, London, 1831 (4th edition). 

Weber, Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, 4to, Edin¬ 
burgh, 1814. 

Weisse, Darstellung der Griechischen Mythologie, 8vo, 
vol. 1, Leipzig, 1828. 

Welcker, Der Epische Cyclus, 8vo, Bonn, 1835. 

-, iEschylische Trilogie, 8vo, Darmstadt, 1824. 

-, Nachtrag zu der Schrift fiber die JEschylische 

Trilogie, 8vo, Frankfort, 1826. 

-, Die Griechischen Tragodien, 2 vols. 8vo, 

Bonn, 1839. 

-, Ueber eine Kretische Kolonie in Theben, 8vo, 

Bonn, 1824. 

Wells, Sacred Geography, 4to, Charlestown, 1817. 

Westminster Review, 17 vols. 8vo, Westminst., 1824-33. 

Wharton, Works of Virgil, 4 vols. 8vo, London, 1753. 

Whiter, Etymological Dictionary, 4to, 3 vols., Camb., 
1822. 

Wilkinson, Topography of Thebes, 8vo, London, 1835. 

-, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyp¬ 
tians, 3 vols. 8vo, London, 1837. 

Williams, Life of Alexander the Great, 12mo, New- 
York, 1837. 

-, Essays on the Geography of Ancient Asia, 

8vo, London, 1829. 

Winckelmann, Werke, 8vo, 9 vols., Dresden, 1808. 

-, Monumenti Antichi inediti, fol., 3 vols., 

Roma, 1821. 

Wiseman, Lectures on Science and Revealed Religion, 
8vo, Andover, 1837. 

Witsius, ASgyptiaca, 4to, Bas., 1739. 

Wolf, Analecta, 8vo, 2 vols., Berlin, 1820. 

Wordsworth, Pictorial History of Greece, 8vo, London, 
1839. 

Wurm, De Ponderum, &c., rationibus apud Romanos 
et Gr®cos, 8vo, Stuttgard, 1821. 

Wyttenbach, Opuscula, 2 vols. 8vo, Lugd. Bat., 1821. 

-, Epistol® Select®, 8vo, Gandavi, 1830. 

--- } Lectiones Quinque, 8vo, Gandavi, 1824. 

Z. 

Zeller, Platonische Studien, 8vo, Tubingen, 1839. 

Zumpt, Abstimmung des Romischen Volks in Centurial 
comitien, &c., Berlin, 1837. 

































IX 

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A 


CLASSICAL DICTIONARY, 

&c. &c. &c. 


ABA 

ABH3, a city of Phocis, near and to the right of 
Elatea, towards Opus. The inhabitants had a tradition 
that they were of Argive descent, and that their city 
was founded by Abas, son of Lynceus and Hypermnes- 
tra, grandson of Danaus ( Paus. 10, 35). It was most 
probably of Thracian, or, in other words, Pelasgic ori¬ 
gin. Abse was early celebrated for its oracle of Apol¬ 
lo, of greater antiquity than that at Delphi ( Steph. 
B.). In later days, the Romans also testified respect 
for the character of the place, by conceding important 
privileges to the Abaeans, and allowing them to live 
under their own laws (Paus. 1. c.). During the Persian 
invasion, the army of Xerxes set fire to the temple, and 
nearly destroyed it; soon after it again gave oracles, 
though in this dilapidated state, and was consulted for 
that purpose by an agent of Mardonius {Herod. 8,134). 
In the Sacred war, a body of Phocians having fled to it 
for refuge, the Thebans burned what remained of the 
temple, destroying, at the same time, the suppliants 
(•Diod. S. 16,58). Hadrian caused another temple to be 
built, but much inferior in size. The city possessed also 
a forum and a theatre. Ruins are pointed out by Sir 
VV. Gell {Itin. 266) near the modern village of Exar- 
cho. 

Ab^eus, a surname of Apollo, derived from the town 
of Abse in Phocis, where the god had a rich temple, 
(j Hesych., s. v. V A6 cu. — Herod. 8, 33.) 

Abac^enum, a city of the Siculi, in Sicily, situated 
on a steep hill southwest of Messana. Its ruins are 
supposed to be in the vicinity of Tripi. Being an all} 
of Carthage, Dionysius of Syracuse wrested from it 
part of the adjacent territory, and founded in its vicin¬ 
ity the colony of Tyndaris {Diod. S. 14, 78, 90). 
Ptolemy calls this city ’A bduaiva, all other writers 
’A Sanaivov. According to Bochart, the Punic appel¬ 
lation was Abaein, from Abac, “ cxtoll&re,' 1 ' 1 in refer¬ 
ence to its lofty situation. {Cluver. Sic. Ant. 2,386.) 

Abalus. Vid. Basilia. 

Abantes, an ancient people of Greece, whose origin 
is not ascertained ; probably they came from Thrace, 
and having settled in Phocis, built the city Abae. 
From this quarter a part of them seem to have remo¬ 
ved to Euboea, and hence its name Abantias, or Aban- 
tis ( Strabo , 444). Others of them left Euboea, and set¬ 
tled for a time in Chios (Paus. 7, 4); a third band, 
returning with some of the Locri from the Trojan war, 
were driven to the coast of Epirus, settled in part of 
Thesprotia, inhabited the city Thronium, and gave 
the name Abantis to the adjacent territory {Pans. 5, 
22). The Thracian origin of the Abantes is contest¬ 
ed by Mannert (8, 246), though supported, in some de¬ 
gree, by Aristotle, as cited by Strabo. They had a 
custom of cutting off the hair of the head before, and 
suffering it to grow long behind {II. 2, 542). Plutarch 
( Vit. Thes. 5) states, that they did this to prevent the 
enemy, whom they always boldly fronted, from seizing 
A 


ABA 

them by the fore part of their heads. The truth is, they 
wore their hair long behind as a badge of valour, and so 
the scholiast on Homer means by dvdpeiag X“P LV - 
The custom of wearing long hair characterized many, if 
not all of the warlike nations of antiquity ; it prevailed 
among the Scythians, who were wont also to cut off the 
hair of their captives as indicative of slavery {Hesych. 
—Baycn Mem. Scyth. in comment. Acad. Petr. 1732, 
p. 388) ; and also among the Thracians, Spartans, 
Gauls {Galli comati), and the early Romans {intonsi 
Romani). As to the origin of this custom among the 
Spartans, Herodotus (1,82) seems to be in error, in da¬ 
ting it from the battle ofThyrea, since Xenophon {Lac. 
Pol. 11, 3) expressly refers it to the time of Lycur- 
gus {Plat. Vit. Lys. 1). The practice of scalping, 
which, according to Herodotus (4, 64), existed among 
the ancient Scythians {Casaub. ad Athen. 524), and 
is still used by the North American Indians, appears 
to owe its origin to this peculiar regard for the hair of 
the head. The greatest trophy for the victor to gain, 
or the vanquished to lose, would be a portion of what 
each had regarded as the truest badge of valour, and the 
skin of the head would be taken with it to keep the 
hair together. On the other hand, shaving the head 
was a peaceful and religious custom, directly opposed 
to that just mentioned. It was an indispensable rite 
among the priests of Egypt {Herod. 2, 36) ; and even 
the deities in the hieroglyphics have their heads with¬ 
out hair. Hence, too, may be explained what is said 
of the Argippsei, or Bald-headed Scythians {Herod. 4, 
23). No one offered violence to them ; they were ac¬ 
counted sacred, and had no warlike weapons. Were 
they not one of those sacerdotal colonies which, mi¬ 
grating at a remote period from India, spread them¬ 
selves over Scythia, and a large portion of the farther 
regions of the Westl 

Abantiades, a masculine patronymic given to the 
descendants of Abas, king of Argos, such as Acrisius, 
Perseus, &c. {Ovid, Met. 4, 673.) 

Abantias, I. one of the ancient names of Euboea. 

( Vid. Abantes.) Strabo (444) calls it Abantis.—II. A 
female patronymic from Abas, as Danae, Atalanta, &c. 

Abantidas, a tyrant of Sicyon, in the third cen¬ 
tury B.C. He seized upon the sovereign power, 
after having slain Clinias, who was then in charge of 
the administration. Clinias was the father of the cele¬ 
brated Aratus, and the latter, at this time only seven 
years of age, narrowly escaped sharing the fate of his 
parent. {Plut. Vit. Arat. 2.) 

Abantis. Vid. Abantias II. 

Abaris, I. a Scythian, or Hyperborean, mentioned 
by several ancient writers. Iamblichus states that 
Abaris was a disciple of Pythagoras, and performed 
many wonders with an arrow received from Apollo. 
{Vit. Pythag., p. 28, ed. Raster.) Herodotus informs 
us (4, 36) that he was carried on this arrow over the 

I 







ABA 


ABD 


whole earth without tasting food. But there are strong 
doubts as to the accuracy of the text given by Wes- 
seling and Yalckenaer. The old editions read cog tov 
oLctov Tveptfyepe ovdev oireoyevog, which agrees with 
the account given in the Fragment of Lycurgus cited 
by Eudocia ( Villois . Anecd. 1 , 20), where he is said 
to have traversed all Greece, holding an arrow as the 
symbol of Apollo. The time of his arrival in Greece 
is variously given ( Bentl. Phal. 95). Some fix it in the 
3d Olympiad ( Harpocr. — Smd.), others in the 21st, 
others much lower. One authority is weighty : Pin¬ 
dar, as cited by Harpocration, states that Abaris came 
to Greece while Croesus was king of Lydia. An ex¬ 
traordinary occasion caused his visit. The whole earth 
was ravaged by a pestilence ; the oracle of Apollo, 
being consulted, gave answer that the scourge would 
only cease when the Athenians should offer up vows 
for all nations. Another account makes him to have 
left his native country during a famine ( Villois. Anecd. 
1. c.). He made himself known throughout Greece as 
a performer of wonders ; delivered oracular responses 
{Clem. Alex. Str. 399); healed maladies by charms 
or exorcisms {Plato, Charm. 1, 312, Bekk.) ; drove 
away storms, pestilence, and evils. His oracles are 
said to have been left in writing {Apollon. Hist. Com¬ 
ment. c. 4. Compare Schol. Aristoplian. p. 331, as 
emended by Scaliger). The money obtained for these 
various services, Abaris is said to have consecrated, on 
his return, to Apollo {Iambi. V. P. 19), whence Bayle 
concludes, that the collecting of a pious contribution 
formed the motive of his journey to Greece {Diet. 
Hist, et Grit. 1, 4). He formed also a Palladium out 
of the bones of Pelops, and sold it to the Trojans (Jul. 
Firmicus, 16). Modern opinions vary : Brucker {Hist. 
Phil. 1, 355.— Enfield , 1, 115) regards him as one who, 
like Empedocles, Epimenides, Pythagoras, and others, 
went about imposing on the vulgar by false preten¬ 
sions to supernatural powers ; and Lobeck {Aglaoph. 
vol. i., p. 313, seq .) is of the same opinion. Creuzer 
{Symb. 2, 1, 267) considers Abaris as belonging to the 
curious chain of connexion between the religions of 
the North, and those of Southern Europe, so distinctly 
indicated by the customary offerings sent to Delos 
from the country of the Hyperboreans. The same 
writer then cites a remarkable passage from the Hial- 
marsaga : “ From Greece came Abor and Samolis, 
with many excellent men ; they met with a very cor¬ 
dial reception ; their servant and successor was ITerse 
of Glisisvalr.” The allusion here is evidently to 
Abaris and Zamolxis ; and if this passage be authen¬ 
tic, Abaris would have been a Druid of the North, and 
the country of the Hyperboreans the Hebrides. The 
doctrines of the Druids, as well as those of Zamolxis, 
resemble the tenets of the Pythagorean school, and 
in this way we may explain that part of the story of 
Abaris which connects him with Pythagoras ( Origen. 
Philos. 882, 906, cd. de la Rue.—Chardon de la Ro- 
clictte, Mclang. de Crit. vol. i., p. 58.) Unfortunate¬ 
ly, the Saga of Hialmar is by the ablest critics of the 
North considered a forgery {Muller's Sagabibl. 2, 663). 
Still, other grounds have been assumed for making Ab¬ 
aris a Druidical priest; and the opinion is maintained 
by several writers {Toland's Misc. Works, 1, 181.— 
Higgins' Celtic Druids, 123.— Southern Rev. 7, 21). 
One argument is derived from Himerius {Phot. Bibl. 
vol. ii., p. 374, ed. Bekkcr ), that he travelled in Celtic 
costume ; in a plaid and pantaloons. Creuzer, after 
some remarks on this history, indulges in an inge¬ 
nious speculation, by which Abaris becomes a personi¬ 
fication of writing, and the doctrines communicated by 
it, as well as the advantages resulting from these doc¬ 
trines, and from science or wisdom in general. As 
the Runic characters of the North are here referred to, 
apart of his argument rests on the etymology of “ Ru¬ 
nic,” rinnen,runen, “to run,” “to move rapidly along.” 
This, together with the arrow-like form of most of 
2 


them, will make Abaris, travelling on his arrow, to be 
him that moves rapidly along, Runa, the scribe, prophet, 
deliverer ; and, at the same time, the personification of 
writing, as the source of all knowledge, and of safety to 
man. Thus the legend of Abaris may mark the prop¬ 
agation of writing from the summits of Caucasus, for 
spreading civilization as well to the Greeks, as the na¬ 
tions of the North. For other speculations, compare 
Muller {Dorier, 1, 364) and Schwenk {Etymol.-Myth. 
Andeut. 358), who see in Abaris the god himself, Apol¬ 
lo ’A(j)apevg or 'Analog, “ luminous ,” under the Macedo¬ 
nian form "Abapig, become his own priest {Creuzer, 2,1, 
269). — II. A city of Egypt, called also Avaris {’Abapip, 
or A vapig). Manetho places it to the east of the Bu- 
bastic mouth of the Nile, in the Sa’itic Nome {Joseph, 
c. Ap. 1, 14). Mannert identifies it with what was 
afterward called Pelusium ; for the name Abaris dis¬ 
appeared, when the shepherd-race retired from Egypt, 
and the situation of Pelusium coincides sufficiently 
with the site of Abaris, as far as authorities have 
reached us. Manetho, as cited by Josephus, says, that 
Salatis, the first shepherd-king, finding the position 
of Abaris well adapted to his purpose, rebuilt the city, 
and strongly fortified it with walls, garrisoning it with 
a force of 240,000 men. To this city Salatis repaired 
in summer time, in order to collect his tribute, and 
to pay his troops, and to exercise his soldiers with the 
view of striking terror into foreign states. Manetho 
also informs us, that the name of the city had an an¬ 
cient theological reference {uaAovyevr/v 6’ dro rivog 
dpxalag Jeolojlag Avapiv). Other writers make the 
term Abaris denote “ a pass,” or “ crossing over,” a 
name well adapted to a stronghold on the borders. 
Compare the Sanscrit upari (over, above), the Gothic 
ufar, the Old High German ubar, the Persian cber , 
the Latin super, the Greek vreep, &c. 

Abarnis, or -us, I. a name given to that part of 
Mysia in which Lampsacus was situate. Venus, ac¬ 
cording to the fable, here disowned (uiryovycaTo ) her 
offspring Priapus, whom she had just brought forth*, 
being shocked at his deformity. Hence the appella¬ 
tion. The first form Aparnis, was subsequently altered 
to Abarnis {Steph. B .).— II. A city in the above-men¬ 
tioned district, lying south of Lampsacus {Steph. B.). 

Abas, I. or Abus, a mountain of Armenia Major ; 
according to D’Anville, the modern Abi-dag, according 
to Mannert (5, 196), Ararat ; giving rise to the south¬ 
ern branch of the Euphrates. {Vid. Arsanias.) — II. A 
river of Albania, rising in the chain of Caucasus, and 
falling into the Caspian Sea. Ptolemy calls it Albanus. 
On its banks Pompey defeated the rebellious Albanians 
(Plut. Vit. Pomp. 35). —III. The 12th king of Ar¬ 
gos. ( Vid. Supplement.) —IV. A son of Metaneira, 
changed by Ceres into a lizard for having mocked the 
goddess in her distress. Others refer this to Ascala- 
phus.—V. A Latin chief who assisted HCneas against 
Turnus, and was killed by Lausus. {A3n. 10, 170, &c.) 

■—VI. A soothsayer, to whom the Spartans erected a 
statue for his services to Lysander, before the battle 
of TEgospotamos. He is called by some writers Ha- 
gias ('A ylag). 

Abascantus. Vid. Supplement. 

Abasitis, a district of Phrygia Epictetus, in the vi¬ 
cinity of Mysia ; in it was the city of Ancyra, and here, 
according to Strabo (576), the Macestus or Megistus 
arose. 

Abatos. Vid. Philse. 

Abdalonimus, one of the descendants of the kings 
of Sidon, so poor that, to maintain himself, he worked 
in a garden. When Alexander took Sidon, he made 
him king, and enlarged his possessions for his disin¬ 
terestedness. ( Justin, 11, 10. — Curt. 4, 1.) Diodo¬ 
rus Siculus (17, 46) calls him Ballonymus, a corrup¬ 
tion of the true name as given by Curtius and Justin. 
Wesseling {ad. Diod. S. 1. c.) considers the word equiv¬ 
alent, in the Phoenician tongue, to Abd-al-anim, “ Ser*■ 





ABE 


A B I 


mas Dei prcedatoris ,” and thinks that the latter part of 
the compound, anim, may be traced in the name of the 
god Anamme/ech (2 Kings, 17, 31). Gesenius ( Gesch. 
dcr Hebr. Sprache und Schrift, 228) makes Abdalon- 
imu.s , as an appellation, the same with Abd-alonim, 
“Servant of the gods.” > 

Abdera, I. a city of Thrace, at the mouth of the 
Nestus : Ephorus ( Steph. B.) wrote in sing. *A bdppov, 
but the plural is more usual, rd “Abdijpa. The Clazo- 
menian Timesius commenced founding this place, but, 
in consequence of the Thracian inroads, was unable to 
complete it ; soon after, it was recolonized by a large 
body of Teians from Ionia, who abandoned their city, 
when besieged by Harpagus, general of Gyrus (Herod- 
1, 168). Many Teians subsequently returned home; 
yet Abdera remained no inconsiderable city. There 
are several other accounts of the origin of this place, but 
the one which we have given is most entitled to credit. 
The city of Abdera was the birthplace of many distin¬ 
guished men, as Anaxarchus, Democritus, Hecataeus, 
and Protagoras ; the third, however, must not be con¬ 
founded with the native of Miletus. ( Creuzcr, Hist. 
Antiq. Gr. Fragm. 9, 28.) But, notwithstanding the 
celebrity of some of their fellow-citizens, the people of 
Abdera, as a body, were reputed to be stupid. In the 
Chiliads of Erasmus, and the Adagia Vcterum, many 
sayings record this failing ; Cicero styles Rome, from 
the stupidity of the senators, an Abdera (Ep. ad Att. 
4, 16) ; Juvenal calls Abdera itself, “ the native land 
of blockheads” (vervecum patnam, 10, 50 ; compare 
Martial, 10, 25 ; “ Abderitance pectora plebis"). Much 
of this is exaggeration. Abdera was the limit of the 
Odrysian empire to the west (Thuc. 2, 29). It after¬ 
ward fell under the power of Philip ; and, at a later 
period, was delivered up by one of its citizens to Eume- 
nes, king of Pergamus (Diod. S. Fragm. 30, 9, 413, 
Btp.). Under the Romans it became a free city ( Abde¬ 
ra libera), and continued so even as late as the time of 
Pliny (4, 11). It was famous for mullets, and other 
fish ( Dono, ap. Athen. 3, 37.— Archcstr. ap. eund. 7, 
124). In the middle ages Abdera degenerated into a 
very small town, named Polystylus, according to the 
Byzantine historian, Curopalate ( Wasse, ad Thuc. 2, 
97). Its ruins exist near Cape Baloustra. (French 
Strabo, 3, 180, § 3.)—II. A town of Hispania Baetica, 
east of Malaca, in the territory of the Bastuli Pceni, 
lying on the coast; Strabo calls the place A vdqpa 
(157). Ptolemy V A 66apa, Steph. B. ”A 6dqpa, a coin 
of Tiberius Abdera (Vaillant, col. 1, p. 63.— Raschc’s 
Lex Rci Num. 1, 23). It was founded by a Phoeni¬ 
cian colony, and is thought to correspond to the mod¬ 
ern Adra. (Ukert's Geogr. 2, 351.) 

Abderus, a Locrian, armour-bearer of Hercules ; 
torn to pieces by the mares of Diomedes, which the 
hero, warring against the Bistones, had intrusted to 
his care. According to Philostratus (Icon. 2, 35), 
Hercules built the city of Abdera in memory of him. 

Abdias. Vid. Supplement. 

Abella, a town of Campania, northeast of Nola, 
founded by a colony from Chalcis, in Euboea, according 
to Justin (20, 1). Its ruins still exist in Avella Vecchia. 
Small as was Abella, it possessed a republican govern¬ 
ment, retaining it until subdued by the Romans ; the 
inabitants Abellam, are frequently mentioned by an¬ 
cient writers ; the only fact worthy of record is, that 
their territory produced a species of nut, nux Abellana 
•or Avellana, apparently the same with what the Greek 
writers call ndpvov Tlovrucov, 'HpaaleujTiKov or A-eir- 
tov (Dioscor. 1, 179.— Athen. 2 , 42). The tree it¬ 
self is the napva n ovtikij, and corresponds to the 
corylus of Virgil, and the corylus Avellana of Lin- 
n©us, class 21. (Fee, Flore de Virgile, 223.) 

AbellInum, I. now Abcllino , a city of the Hirpini, 
in Samnium; the inhabitants of which were called, 
for distinction’ sake, Abellinates Protrovi (Plin. 3, 2.— 
Ptol. 67).—II. A city of Lucania, near the source of 


the Aciris ; called Abellinum Marsicum. It is thought 
by Cluver (Ital. Antiq. 2, 1280) and D’Anville (Geogr. 
Anc. 57) to accord with Marsico Vetere. 

Abellio. Vid. Supplement. 

Abgarus, I. a name common to many kings ofEdes- 
sa, in Mesopotamia; otherwise written Abagarus, Ag- 
barus, A ugarus, &c. The first monarch of this name 
(Euseb. H. E. 1, 13) wrote a letter to our Saviour, 
and received a reply from him (vid. Edessa). The 
genuineness of these letters has been much disputed 
among the learned. (Cave’s Lit. Hist. 1 , 2. — Lard- 
ncr’s Crcd. 7, 22.)—II. The name, according to some 
authorities, of the Arabian prince or chieftain who 
perfidiously drew Crassus into a snare, which proved 
his ruin; called "A/c bapoq by Appian (B. P. 34), 
’A pidpuvyq (Plat. Crass. 21), A vyapog (Dio Cass. 40, 
20 ). 

Abia, I. the southernmost city of Messenia, on the 
eastern shore of the Messenian Gulf. Pausanias (4, 
30) identifies it with Ire, Tpy, one of the places offer¬ 
ed by Agamemnon to Achilles (II. 9, 292). Abia, to¬ 
gether with the adjacent cities of Thuria and Pherre, 
separated from Messenia, and became part of the 
Achaean confederacy ; afterward they again attached 
themselves to the Messenian government. At a later 
period, Augustus, to punish the Messenians for hav¬ 
ing favoured the party of Antony, annexed these three 
cities to Laconia. But this arrangement continued 
only for a short time, since Ptolemy and Pausanias 
include them again among the cities of Messenia.— 
II. Nurse of Hyllus, in honour of whom Cresphontes 
changed the name of Ire to Abia. (Paus. 4, 30, 1.) 

Abii, a Scythian nation, supposed by the earlier 
Greeks to inhabit the banks of the Tanai's. Homer is 
thought to allude to them, II. 13, 6, where for dyavdv. 
some read ’A 6'uov re. By others they are supposed to 
be identical with the Macrobii. The name “Athoi is 
thought by Heyne (ad II. 1. c .) to allude to their living 
on lands common to the whole nation, or to their hav¬ 
ing a community of goods, or perhaps to their pov¬ 
erty, and their living in wagons. Curtius (7, 6) states, 
that these Abii sent ambassadors to Alexander with 
professions of obedience. But the Macedonians en¬ 
countered no Abii; they only believed that they had 
found them. The name they probably had learned 
from Homer, and knew that they were a people to the 
north, forming part of the great Scythian race. Sup¬ 
posing themselves, therefore, on the banks of the Ta- 
nais, they gave the name Abii to the people, who had 
sent ambassadors, merely because they had heard th?' - 
the Abii dwelt on that river. 

Abila, or Abyla, I. a mountain of Africa, opposite 
Calpe ( Gibraltar ), supposed to coincide with Cape Ser- 
ra. It is an elevated point of land, forming a penin¬ 
sula, of which a place named Ceuta closes the isthmus 
Of the two forms given to the name of this mountain 
by ancient writers, that of Abyla is the more common. 
The name is written by Dionysius (Perieg. 336), 
’AAvby. According to Avienus (Ora Marit. 345), 
Abila is a Carthaginian or Punic appellative for “ any 
lofty mountain.” This name appears to have passed 
over into Europe, and to have been applied, with slight 
alteration of form, to the opposite mountain, the rock 
of Gibraltar. Eustathius (ad Dionys. P. 64) informs 
us that in his time the latter mountain was named 
Calpe by the Barbarians, but Ahba by the Greeks ; and 
that the true Abila, on the African side, was called 
Abenna by the natives, by the Greeks KvvyyyTUcy. 
At what time the present Gibraltar began to be cah- 
ed Calpe, is difficult to determine ; probably long an¬ 
tecedent to the age of Eustathius. Calpe itself is 
only Ahba shortened, and pronounced Avith a strong 
Oriental aspirate. In the word Ahba we likewise de¬ 
tect the root of Alp, or, rather, the term itself, which 
may be traced directly to the Celtic radical Alb. Thff 
situation of Abila gave it, wi*h the opposite Calpe, i 



ABO 


AB S 


conspicuous place in the Greek mythology. ( Vid. Her- 
eulis Columnae, and Mediterraneum Mare.)—II. A city 
of Palestine, 12 miles east of Gadara ( Euseb. v.*A6Gb 
’AfiTTsXuv). Ptolemy is supposed to refer to it under 
the name Alula, an error probably of copyists. (Man¬ 
ner t, 6, 1, 323.)—III. A city of Ccelesyria, now Beili¬ 
nas, in a mountainous country, about 18 miles north¬ 
west of Damascus. Ptolemy gives it the common 
name *A 6ika. Josephus calls it "Abeha, and also ’A 6el- 
fiaxea, the latter coming from the Hebrew name Abel 
Beth Maacha , or Malacha (Rcland,, Palest ., 520). 

Abilene, a district of Coelesyria. ( Vid. Abila III.) 

Abisares. Vid. Supplement. 

Abitianus. Vid. Supplement. 

Ablabius. Vid. Supplement. 

Abnoba, according to Ptolemy (2, 11), a chain of 
mountains in Germany, which commenced on the 
banks of the Moenus, now Mayne, and, running be¬ 
tween what are now Hesse and Westphalia, terminated 
in the present Duchy of Padcrborn. Out of the north¬ 
eastern part of this range, springs, according to the 
same authority, the Amisus, now Ems. Subsequent 
writers, however, seem to have limited the name Abno¬ 
ba to that portion of the Black Forest where the Dan¬ 
ube commences its course, and in this sense the term 
is used by Tacitus. A stone altar, with ABNOBA 
inscribed, was discovered in the Black Forest in 1778 ; 
and in 1784, a pedestal of white marble was found 
in the Duchy of Baden, bearing the words DIANAE 
ABNOBAE. These remains of antiquity, besides 
tending to designate more precisely the situation of 
the ancient Mons Abnoba, settle also the orthography 
of the name, which some commentators incorrectly 
write Arnoba. (Compare La Germanic de Tacite, par 
Panckouke, p. 4, and the Atlas, Planchc deuxieme.) 

Abonitichos, a small town and harbour of Paphla- 
gonia southeast of the promontory Carambis. It was 
the birthplace of an impostor who assumed the char¬ 
acter of yEsculapius. Lucian (Pseud. 58) states, 
that he petitioned the Roman emperor to change the 
name of his native city to lonopolis, and that the re¬ 
quest of the impostor was actually granted. The 
modern name Ineboli is only a corruption of lonopolis. 
(Marciam, Penpl., p. 72.— Steph. B.) 

Aborigines, a name given by the Roman writers 
to the primitive race, who, blending with the Siculi, 
founded subsequently the nation of the Latins. 'The 
name is equivalent to the Greek avroxOoveg, as indi¬ 
cating an indigenous race. According to the most 
credible traditions, they dwelt originally around Mount 
Velino, and the Lake Fucinus, now Celano, extending 
as far as Carseoli, and towards Reate. This was 
Cato’s account (Dwnys. H. 2, 49) ; and if Varro, 
who enumerated the towns they had possessed in 
those parts (Id. 1, 14), was not imposed on, not only 
were the sites of these towns distinctly preserved, as 
well as their names, but also other information, such 
as writings alone can transmit through centuries. 
Their capital, Lista, was lost by surprise ; and exer¬ 
tions of many years to recover it, by expeditions from 
Reate, proved fruitless. Withdrawing from that dis¬ 
trict, they came down the Anio; and even at Tibur, An¬ 
tenna, Ficulea, Tellena, and farther on at Crustume- 
rium and Aricia, they found Siculi, whom they sub¬ 
dued or expelled. The Aborigines are depicted by 
Sallust and Virgil as savages living in hordes, without 
manners, law, or agriculture, on the produce of the 
chase, and on wild fruits. This, however, does not 
a^ree with the traces of their towns in the Apen¬ 
nines ; but the whole account was, perhaps, little else 
than an ancient speculation on the progress of man¬ 
kind from rudeness to civilization. The Aborigines 
are said to have revered Janus and Saturn. The latter 
taught them husbandry, and induced them to choose 
settled habitations, as the founders of a better way of 
life. From this ancient rs,;ie, as has already been re¬ 


marked, blending with a remnant of the Siculi, sprang 
the nation of the Latins ; and between Saturn and 
the time assigned for the Trojan settlement, only three 
kings of the Aborigines are enumerated, Picus, Fau- 
nus, and Latinus. (Niebuhr, Rom. Hist. 1, 62, Cambr.) 
As to the name of this early race, the old and genu¬ 
ine one seems to have been Casci or Cassei (Saufeius 
in Scrv. ad JEn. 1, 10); and the appellation of Abo¬ 
rigines was only given them by the later Roman wri¬ 
ters. (Heync, Excurs. 4, ad JEn. 7.) Cluver, and 
others, have maintained the identity of the Aborigines 
and Pelasgi, a position first assumed by Dionysius of 
Halicarnassus. Mannert (9, 436) thinks, that the 
Pelasgi were a distinct race, who, on their arrival in 
Italy, united with the people in question, and that 
both became gradually blended into one race, the 
Etrurian. Some are in favour of writing Aberngines, 
and refer to the authority of Festus, who so styles them 
as having been wanderers ( ab , erro), when they took 
possession of that part of the country where they sub¬ 
sequently dwelt. In this Festus is supported by the 
author of the Origin of the Romans, but the opinion 
is an incorrect one. 

Aborras. Vid. Chaboras. 

Abradatas, a king of Susa, who submitted, with 
his army, to Cyrus, when he learned that his wife Pan- 
thea, who had been made prisoner by the latter, was 
treated by him with great kindness and humanity. 
He was subsequently slain in fighting for Cyrus. His 
wife, unable to survive his loss, slew herself upon his 
corpse. Cyrus erected a monument to their memory. 
(Xen. Cyrop. 5, 6, &.c.) 

Abrincatui, a nation of Gaul, situate, according to 
the common opinion, on the western coast, north of 
the Liger, or Loire, and whose capital, Ingena, is sup¬ 
posed to coincide with Avranches (D'An. Geogr. Anc .—■ 
Cellar. Geogr. Ant. 1, 161, Schw.). If we follow Ptol¬ 
emy, this people rather seem to have occupied what 
would now correspond to a part of Eastern Nor¬ 
mandy, in the district of Ouche, and stretching from 
the vicinity of the Rille to the banks of the Seine 
(Mannert, 2, 167). 

Abro, I. an Athenian, who wrote on the festivals 
and sacrifices of the Greeks. His work is lost. 
(Steph. B. s. v. Butt].) —II. A grammarian of Rhodes, 
who taught rhetoric at Rome in the reign of Augus¬ 
tus. He was a pupil of Tryphon. (Suid. s. v.) —III. 
A grammarian, who wrote a treatise on Theocritus, 
now lost.—IV. An Athenian, son of the orator Lycur- 
gus. (Plut. Vit. X. Or at.) —V. An Argive of most 
luxurious and dissolute life, who gave rise to the 
proverb, V A bpuvog j3iog (Abronis vita). (Erasm. Chil. 
p. 487.) 

Abrocom as, I. a son of Darius, by Phrataguna, daugh¬ 
ter of Otanes. He accompanied Xerxes in his Gre¬ 
cian expedition, and was slain at Thermopylae. (He¬ 
rod. 7, 224.)—II. A satrap. (Vid. Supplement.) 

Abron or Habron. Vid. Supplement. 

Abronius, Silo, a Latin poet of the Augustan age, 
and the pupil of Porcius Latro. He wrote some fables, 
now lost. (Senec. Suasor. 2, 23.) Vossius says there 
were two of this name, father and son. 

Abronychus. Vid. Supplement. 

Abrostola, a town of Galatia, on the frontiers of 
Phrygia, and, according to the Itinerary, twenty-four 
miles from Pessinus. It is recognised by Ptolemy 
(p. 120), who assigns it to Phrygia Magna. 

Abrota, the wife of Nisus, king of Megaris. As 
a memorial of her private virtues, Nisus, after her 
death, ordered the garments which she wore to be¬ 
come models of female attire in his kingdom. Hence, 
according to Plutarch, the name of the Megarian robe 
utydfjpuya. (Quest. Grcec. p. 294.) 

Abrotonum, a town of Africa, near the Syrtis Mi¬ 
nor, and identical with Sabrata. (Vid. Sabrata.) 

Absintiiii. Vid. Apsynthii. 





ABY 


ABY 


Absyrtides, islands at the head of the Adriatic, in 
the Sinus Flanaticus, Gulf of Quarnero ; named, as 
tradition reported, from Absyrtus the brother of Me¬ 
dea, who, according to one account was killed here. 
(Hygin. 23.— Strabo, 315.— Mela, 2, 7.— Pliny, 3, 2G.) 
Apollonius Ilhodius (4, 330) calls them Brygeides, 
and states ( v. 470) that there was in one of the group 
a temple erected to the Brygian Diana. Probably 
the name given to these islands was a corruption of 
some real apellation, which, though unconnected with 
the fable, still, from similarity of sound, induced the 
poets to connect it with the name of Medea’s brother. 
- Ye principal island is Absorus, with a town of the 
same name. ( Ptol. 63.) These four islands are, in 
modern geography, Cherso, Oscro (the ancient Abso¬ 
rus), Ferosina, Chao. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, 1, 137.) 

Absyrtos, a river falling into the Adriatic Sea, 
near which Absyrtus was murdered. The more cor¬ 
rect form of the name, however, would seem to have 
been Absyrtis , or, following the Greek, Apsyrtis 
(’Aifmprig). Consult Grotius and Cortc, ad, Luc. 
Pharsal. 3, 190. 

Absyrtus ("Aipyprog), a son of JEetes, and brother 
of Medea. According to the Orphic Argonautica (v. 
1027), Absyrtus was despatched by his lather with a 
large force in pursuit of Jason and Medea, when their 
flight 'vas discovered. Medea, on the point of falling 
into the hands of the young prince, deceived him by 
a stratagem, and the Argonauts, having slain him, 
cast his body into the sea. The corpse, floating about 
for some time, was at last thrown up on one of the 
islands, thence called Absyrtides. According to Apol¬ 
lonius Rhodius (4, 207), Absyrtus, having reached the 
Adriatic before the Argonauts, waited there to give 
them battle. Mutual fear, however, brought about a 
treaty, by which the Argonauts were to retain the 
fleece, but Medea was to be placed in one of the 
neighbouring islands, until some monarch should de- 
cide whether she ought to accompany Jason, or return 
with her brother. Medea, accordingly, was placed on 
an island sacred to Diana, and the young prince, by 
treacherous promises, was induced to meet his sister 
by night in order to persuade her to return. In the 
midst of their conference he was attacked and slain 
by Jason, who lay concealed near the spot, and had 
concerted this scheme in accordance with the wishes 
of Medea. The body was interred in the island. 
Both these accounts differ from the common one, 
which makes Medea to have taken her brother with 
her in her flight, and to have torn him in pieces to 
stop her father’s pursuit, scattering the limbs of the 
young prince on the probable route of her parent. 
This last account makes the murder of Absyrtus to have 
taken place near Torni, on the Euxine, and hence the 
name given to that city from the Greek royr/, sectio; 
just as Absyrtus, or Apsyrtus, is said to have been so 
called from and and cvpu. (Hygin. 23.— Apollod. 1, 
9, 24.— Cic. N. D. 3, 19.— Ovid, Trist. 3, 9, 11.— 
Heync, ad Apollod. 1. c.) According to the Orphic 
Poem, Absyrtus was killed on the banks of the Pha- 
sis, in Colchis. 

AbulItes. Vid. Supplement. 

Aburia Gens. Vid. Supplement. 

Aburnus Valens. Vid. Supplement. 

Abus, a river of Britain, now the Humber. Cam¬ 
den (Brit., p. 634) derives the ancient name from the 
old British word Aber, denoting the mouth of a river, 
or an estuary. The appellation will suit the Humber 
extremely well, as it is rendered a broad estuary by 
the waters of the Ouse. 

Abydenus, I. a pupil of Berosus, flourished 268 
B.C. He wrote in Greek an historical account of the 
Chaldeans, Babylonians, and Assyrians, some frag¬ 
ments of which have been preserved to us by Euse¬ 
bius, Cyrill, and Syncellus. An important fragment, 
which clears up some difficulties in Assyrian history, 


has been discovered in the Armenian translation of the 
Chronicon of Eusebius.—II. A surname of Palrepha- 
tus. ( Vid Palaephatus, IV ) 

Abydos, I. a celebrated city of Upper Egypt, north¬ 
west of Diospolis Parva. Strabo (813) describes it as 
once next to Thebes in size, though reduced in his 
days to a small place. The same writer mentions the 
palace of Memnon in this city, built on the plan of the 
labyrinth, though less intricate. Osiris had here a 
splendid temple, in which neither vocal nor instru¬ 
mental music was allowed at the commencement of 
sacrifices. Plutarch (de Is. et Os. 359, 471, Wytt.) 
makes this the true burial-place of Osiris, an honour 
to which so many cities of Egypt aspired ; he also in¬ 
forms us that the more distinguished Egyptians fre¬ 
quently selected Abydos for a place of sepulture. 
(Zoega, de Obcl. 284.— Creuzcr's Comment. Herod. 1, 
97.) All this proves the high antiquity of this city, 
and accounts for the consideration in which it was held. 
Ammianus Marcellinus states (19, 12) that there was 
a very ancient oracle of the god Besa in this place, to 
which applications were wont to be made orally and 
in writing. (Compare Euseb. H. E. 6, 41.) Abydos 
is now a heap of ruins, as its modern name, Madfune, 
implies. The ancient appellation has been made to 
signify, by the aid of the Coptic, “ abode, or habita¬ 
tion, common to many.” (Creuzer, l. c., 1, 100.)—II. 
An ancient city in Mysia, in Asia Minor, founded by 
the Thracians, and still inhabited by them after the 
Trojan war. Homer (II. 2, 837) represents it as un¬ 
der the sway of prince Asius, a name associated with 
many of the earliest religious traditions of the ancient 
world (vid. Asia). At a later period the Milesians 
sent a strong colony to this place to aid their com¬ 
merce with the shores of the Propontis and Euxine. 
(Strabo, 591 .—Thuc 8, 62.) Abydos was directly on 
the Hellespont, in nearly the narrowest part of the 
strait. This, together with its strong walls and safe 
harbour, soon made it a place of importance. It is re 
markable for its resistance against Philip the Younger 
of Macedon, who finally took it, partly by force, partly 
by stratagem. (Polyb. 16, 31.) In this quarter, too, 
was laid the scene of the fable of Hero and Leander. 
Over against Abydos was the European town Sestos ; 
not directly opposite, however, as the latter was some¬ 
what to the north. The ruins of Abydos are still to be 
seen on a promontory of low land, called Nagara-Bor- 
nou, or Pesquies Point. (Hobhouse's Jour. 2, 217, Am. 
ed.) Wheeler has rectified in this particular the mis¬ 
take of Sandys ( Voyage, 1, 74), who supposed the mod¬ 
ern castle of Natolia to be on the site of the ancient 
Abydos. The castles Chanak-Kalessi , or Sultanic- 
Kalessi, on the Asiatic side, and Chelit-Bawri, or Ke- 
lidir-Bahar, on the European shore, are called by the 
Turks Bogaz-IIessarleri, and by the Franks the old 
castles of Natolia and Roumelia. The town of Cha- 
ndk-Kalcssi, properly called Dardanelles, has extend¬ 
ed its name to the strait itself ( Hobhouse, 215). Over 
the strait between Abydos and Sestos, Xerxes caused 
two bridges to be erected when marching against 
Greece, and it was here that, seated on an eminence, 
where a throne had been erected for him, he surveyed 
his fleet, which covered the Hellespont, while the 
neighbouring plains swarmed with his innumerable 
troops. (Herod. 7, 44.) The intelligent traveller above 
quoted remarks : “ The Thracian side of the strait, 
immediately opposite to Nagara, is a strip of stony 
shore, projecting from behind two cliflfe ; and to this 
spot, it seems, the European extremities of Xerxes’ 
bridges must have been applied, for the height of the 
neighbouring cliffs would have prevented the Persian 
monarch from adjusting them to any other position. 
There is certainly some ground to believe, that this 
was the exact point of shore called from that circum¬ 
stance Apobathra (Strabo, 591), since there is, within 
any probable distance, no other flat land on the Thra- 

5 



ACA 


ACA 


dan side, except at the bottom of deep bays, the 
choice of which would have doubled the width of the 
passage. Sestos was not opposite to the Asiatic town, 
nor was the Hellespont in this case called the Straits 
of Sestos and Abydos, but the Straits of Abydos. 
Sestos was so much nearer the Propontis than the 
other town, that the ports of the two places were 30 
stadia, or more than 3 1-2 miles from each other. 
The bridges were on the Propontic side of Abydos, 
but on the opposite quarter of Sestos ; that is to say, 
they were on the coasts between the two cities, but 
nearer to the first than to the last.” ( Hobhouse, l. c.) 
The ancient accounts make the strait in this quarter 
seven stadia, or 875 paces, broad, but to modern trav¬ 
ellers it appears to be nowhere less than a mile 
across. 

Acacallis. Vid. Supplement. 

AcacesIum, a town of Arcadia, situate on a hill call¬ 
ed Acacesius, and lying near Lycosura, in the south¬ 
western angle of the country. Mercury Acacesius 
was worshipped here ( Paus . 8, 36). Some make the 
epithet equivalent to pr/Sevog na/cov TtapaiTioq, nullius 
mali auctor, ranking Mercury among the dei averrunci 
( Spanh. ad Callim. H. in D. 143.— Heyne , ad 11. 16, 
185). 

Acacius, I. a disciple of Eusebius, bishop of Caesa¬ 
rea, whom he succeeded in 338 or 340. He was sur- 
named M ovotyOaX/aog ( Luscus ), and wrote a Life of 
Eusebius , not extant; 17 volumes of Commentaries 
on Ecclesiastes; and 6 volumes of Miscellanies. Aca¬ 
cius was the leader of the sect called Acacians, who 
denied the Son to be of the same substance as the 
Father. ( Socr. Hist. 2, 4.— Epiph. Liar. 72.— Fabr. 
Bibl. Gr. 5, 19.— Cave's Lit. Hist. 1, 206.)—II. A 
patriarch of Constantinople in 471, who established 
the superiority of his see over the eastern bishops. 
He was a favourite with the Emperor Zeno, who pro¬ 
tected him against the pope. Two letters of his are 
extant, to Petrus Trullo, and Pope Simplicius. ( Theo¬ 
dor. 5, 32.— Cave , 1,417.)—III. A bishop of Bercea, as¬ 
sisted at the Council of Constantinople in 381. ( The¬ 

odor.. 5, 32.)—IV. A bishop of Melitene, in Armenia 
Minor, present at the Council of Ephesus in 431, and 
has left in the Councils (vol. 3) a Homily against 
Nestorius (Nicephor. 16, 17.— Cave 1, 417).—V. A 
bishop of Amida, distinguished for piety and charity 
in having sold church-plate, &c., to redeem 7000 Per¬ 
sian prisoners on the Tigris, in Mesopotamia. His 
death is commemorated in the Latin Church on April 
9th. (Socr. 7, 21.— Fabr. Bibl. Gr. 5, 19.) 

Acacus. Vid. Supplement. 

Academia, I. a public garden or grove in the suburbs 
of Athens, about 6 stadia from the city, named from 
Academus or Hecademus, who left it to the citizens for 
gymnastics (Paus. 1, 29). It was surrounded with a 
wall by Hipparchus (Suid.) ; adorned with statues, tem¬ 
ples, and sepulchres of illustrious men ; planted with 
olive and plane trees ; and watered by the Cephissus. 
The olive-trees, according to Athenian fables, were 
reared from layers taken from the sacred olive in the 
Erechtheum (Schol. CEd. Col. 730.— Paus. 1. 30), and 
afforded the oil given as a prize to victors at the Pana- 
thensean festival (Schol. 1 . c. — Suid. v. Moplai). The 
Academy suffered severly during the siege of Athens 
by Sylla; many trees being cut down to supply tim¬ 
ber for machines of war (Appian, B. M. 30). ' Few 
retreats could be more favourable to philosophy and 
the Muses. Within this enclosure Plato possessed, as 
part of his humble patrimony, a small garden, in which 
he opened a school for the reception of those inclined 
to attend his instructions (Diog. L. Vit. Plat.). Hence 
arose the Academic sect, and hence the term Academy 
has descended, though shorn of many early honours, 
even to our own times. The appellation Academia is 
frequently used in philosophical writings, especially in 
Cicero, as indicative of the Academic sect. In this 
6 


sense, Diogenes Laertius makes a threefold division of 
the Academy, into the Old, the Middle, and the New. 
At the head of the Old he puts Plato, at the head of 
the Middle Academy, Arcesilaus, and of the New, La- 
cydes. Sextus Empiricus enumerates five divisions of 
the followers of Plato. He makes Plato founder of 
the 1st Academy ; Arcesilaus of the 2d ; Carneades of 
the 3d ; Philo and Charmides of the 4th; Antiochus of 
the 5th. Cicero recognises only two Academies, the 
Old and New, and makes the latter commence as above 
with Arcesilaus. In enumerating those of the Old 
Academy, he begins, not with Plato, but Democritus, 
and gives them in the following order : Democritus, 
Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Parmenides, Xenophanes, 
Socrates, Plato, Speusippus, Xenocrates, Polemo, 
Crates, and Crantor. In the New, or Younger, he 
mentions Arcesilaus, Lacydes, Evander, Hegesinus, 
Carneades, Clitomachus, and Philo. (Acad. Qucest. 
4, 5.) If we follow the distinction laid down by Di¬ 
ogenes, and alluded to above, the Old Academy will 
consist of those followers of Plato who taught the 
doctrine of their master without mixture or corruption; 
the Middle will embrace those who, by certain inno¬ 
vations in the manner of philosophizing, in some meas¬ 
ure receded from the Platonic system without entirely 
deserting it; while the New will begin with those who 
relinquished the more obnoxious tenets of Arcesilaus, 
and restored, in some measure, the declining reputa¬ 
tion of the Platonic school. — II. A villa of Cicero 
near Puteoli (Pliny, 31, 2). As to the quantity of the 
penult in Academia, Forcellini (Lex. Tot. Lat.) makes 
it common. Bailey cites Dr. Parr in favour of its being 
always long in the best writers. Maltby (in MoreWs 
Thes .) gives ’A nadrjgia, and ’A Kadrjgeia. Hermann 
(ad Aristoph. Nub. 1001) makes the penult of’A nadiigla 
short by nature, but lengthened by the force of the ac¬ 
cent, as the term was in common and frequent use. 
(Compare the remarks of the same scholar, in his 
work de Mctris, p. 36, Glasg.) 

Academus, an ancient hero, whom some identify 
with Cadmus. According to others (Pint. Thes. 32), 
he was an Athenian, who disclosed to Castor and 
Pollux the place where Theseus had secreted their 
sister Helen, after having carried her ofif from Sparta; 
and is said to have been highly honoured, on this ac¬ 
count, by the Lacedaemonians. From him the garden 
of the Academia, presented to the people of Athens, 
is thought to have been named (vid. Academia). 

Acalandrus, or Acalyndrus, a river of Magna 
Grsecia, falling into the Bay of Tarentum. Pliny (3, 
2) places it to the north of Heraclea, but incorrectly, 
since, according to Strabo (283), it flowed in the vi¬ 
cinity of Thurii. The modern name, according to 
D’Anville, is the Salandrella; but, according to Man- 
nert (9, 2, 231), the Roccanello. 

Acamantis, I. a name given to the island of Cy¬ 
prus, from the promontory Acamas. (Steph. B.) —II. 
An Athenian tribe. 

Acamas, I. a promontory of Cyprus, to the north¬ 
west of Paphos. It is surmounted by two sugarloaf 
summits, and the remarkable appearance which it thus 
presents to navigators as they approach the island on 
this side, caused them, according to Pliny (5, 31), to 
give the name of Acamantis to the whole island.—II. 
A son of Theseus and Phsedra. He was deputed to 
accompany Diomede, when the latter was sent to Troy 
to demand Helen. During his stay at Troy he became 
the father of Munitus by Laodic’ea, one of the daugh¬ 
ters of Priam. He afterward went to the Trojan war, 
and was one of the warriors enclosed in the wooden 
horse. On his return to Athens, he gave name to the 
tribe Acamantis. (Paus. 10, 26.— Quint. Sm. 12.— 
Hygin. 108.) 

Acampsis, a river of Colchis, running into the Eux- 
ine ; the Greeks called it Acampsis from its impetuous 
course, which forbade approach to the shore, a, non , 




AC A 


ACC 


Ka/uipuinjlectio. This name more particularly applied 
to its mouth ; the true appellation in the interior was 
Boas. ( Arrian, Per. M. Eux. 119, Blanc.) 

Acanthus, I. a city near Mt. Athos, founded by a 
colony of Andrians, on a small neck of land connect¬ 
ing the promontory of Athos with the continent. Stra¬ 
bo ( Epit. 1. 7, 330) places it on the Singiticus Sinus, 
as does Ptolomy (p. 82), but Herodotus distinctly fixes 
it on the Strymonicus Sinus (6, 44 ; 7, 22), as well as 
Scymnus (u. 646) and Mela (2, 3), and their opinions 
must prevail against the two authors above mention¬ 
ed. Mannert (7, 451) supposes the city to have been 
placed on the Singiticus Sinus, the harbour on the Si¬ 
nus Strymonicus. On the other hand, Gail ( Gcogr. 
d'Herod. 2, 280. — Atlas, Ind. 2. — Anal, dcs Cartes, 
p. 21) makes two places of this name to have existed, 
one on the Strymonicus, the other on the Singiticus 
Sinus. Probably Erissos is the site of Ancient Acan¬ 
thus. Ptolemy speaks of a harbour named Panormus, 
probably its haven (p. 82.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, 1, 
262.— Walpole's Collect. 1, 225). The Persian fleet 
despatched under Mardonius, suffered severely in 
doubling the promontory of Athos ; and Xerxes, to 
guard against a similar accident, caused a canal to be 
dug through the neck of land on which Acanthus was 
situated ; through this his fleet was conducted. ( He¬ 
rod , 7, 22.) From the language of Juvenal (10, 173), 
and the general sarcasm of Pliny (5, 1, “ portentosa 
Grcecice mendacia"), many regard this account of the 
canal as a fable, invented by the Greeks to magnify the 
expedition of Xerxes, and thus increase their own re¬ 
nown. But vestiges of the canal were visible in the 
time of JElian (H. A. 13, 20); modern travellers also 
discover traces of it ( Choiseul-Gouffier , Voy. Pitto- 
resque 2, 2, 148.— Walpole, l. c.). —II. A city of 
Egypt, the southernmost in the Memphitic Nome. 
Ptolemy gives it a plural form, probably from the 
thorny thickets in its vicinity, anavOai ; Strabo (809) 
adopts the singular form, as does also Diodorus Sicu¬ 
lus (1, 97). Ptolemy places this city 15 minutes dis¬ 
tant from Memphis. It is the modern Dashur. 

Acarnan. Vid. Supplement. 

Acarnania, a country of Greece Proper, along the 
western coast, having iEtolia on the east. The natu¬ 
ral boundary on the JHtolian side was the Acheloiis, 
but it was not definitely regarded as the dividing limit 
until the period of the Roman dominion. ( Strab. 450.) 
Acarnania was for the most part a productive country, 
with good harbours ( Scylax 13). The inhabitants, 
however, were but little inclined to commercial inter¬ 
course with their neighbours ; they were almost con¬ 
stantly engaged in war against the HStolians, and con¬ 
sequently remained far behind the rest of the Greeks 
in culture. Hence, too, we find scarcely any city of 
importance within their territories; for Anactorium 
and Leucas were founded by Corinthian colonies, and 
formed no part of the nation, though they engrossed 
nearly all its traffic. Not only Leucadia, indeed, but 
also Cephalenia, Ithaca, and other adjacent islands, 
were commonly regarded as a geographical portion of 
Acarnania, though, politically considered, they did not 
belong to it, being inhabited by a different race. ( Man¬ 
nert, 8, 33.) The Acarnanians and HStolians were de¬ 
scended from the same parent-stock of the Leleges or 
Curetes, though almost constantly at variance. The 
most important event for the Acarnanians was the ar¬ 
rival among them of Alcmseon, son of Amphiaraus, 
who came with a band of Argive settlers a short time 
previous to the Trojan war, and united the inhabitants 
of the land and his o.wn followers into one nation. 
His new territories were called Acarnania, and the 
people Acarnanians. The origin of the name Acar- 
nania, however, is uncertain. It was apparently not 
used in the age of Homer, who is silent about it, 
though he mentions by name the HStolians, Curetes, 
the inhabitants of the Echinades, and the Teleboans 


or Taphians. According to some, it was derived from 
Acarnas, son of Alcmseon ( Strabo, 462.— Apollod. 3, 
7, 7.— Thuc. 2, 102.— Paus. 8, 24). But the remark 
just made relative to the silence of Homer about the 
Acarnanes seems to oppose this. More likely the ap¬ 
pellation was grounded on a custom, common to the 
united race of wearing the hair of the head cut very 
short, uKapqq, a intens., and uelpo, in imitation of the 
Curetes, who cut their hair close in front, and allowed 
it to grow long behind ( vid. Abantes). The yEtoli- 
ans and Acarnanians were in almost constant hostil¬ 
ity against each other, a circumstance adverse to the 
idea of a common origin. It is curious, however, that 
the HUtolians appear to have had no other object in 
view, in warring on their neighbours, than to compel 
them to form with them one common league ; which 
they would scarcely have done towards persons of a 
different race. ( Mannert , 8, 46.) This constant and 
mutual warfare so weakened the two countries event¬ 
ually, that they both fell an easy prey to the Macedo¬ 
nians, and afterward to the Romans. The latter peo¬ 
ple, however, amused the Acarnanians in the outset 
with a show of independence, declaring the country to 
be free, but soon annexed it to the province of Epirus. 
The dominion of the Romans was far from beneficial 
to Acarnania; the country soon became a mere wil¬ 
derness ; and as a remarkable proof, no Roman road 
was ever made through Acarnania or iEtolia, but the 
public route lay along the coast, from Nicopolis on the 
Ambracian Gulf to the mouth of the Achelous. ( Man¬ 
nert, 8, 60.) The present state of Acarnania (now 
Carnia) is described by Hobhouse ( Journ. 174, Am. 
ed.) as a wilderness of forests and unpeopled plains. 
The people of Acarnania were in general of less re¬ 
fined habits than the rest of the Greeks ; and from 
Lucian’s words {Dial. Meretr. 8, 227, Bip.), xocptcncoq 
’Aicapvuviog, their morals were generally supposed to 
be depraved. Independently, however, of the injus¬ 
tice of thus stigmatizing a people on slight grounds, 
considerable doubt attaches to the correctness of the 
received reading, and the explanation commonly as¬ 
signed to it. Guyetus conjectures ’Axapvevq, and 
Erasmus, explaining the adage, favours this correction. 
(Compare Bayle, Diet. Hist. 1, 40.) The Acarnani¬ 
ans, according to Censorinus {D. N. 19), made the 
year consist of but six months, in which respect they 
resembled the Carians ; Plutarch {Num. 19) states the 
same fact. (Compare Fabncii Menol. p. 7.) 

Acarnas and Amphoterus, sons of Alcmseon and 
Callirhoe. Alcmseon having been slain by the brothers 
of Alphesiboea,his former wife, Callirhoe obtained from 
Jupiter, by her prayers, that her two sons, then in the 
cradle, might grow up to manhood, and avenge their 
father. On reaching man’s estate, they slew Pronous 
and Agenor, brothers of Alphesiboea, and, soon after, 
Phegeus her father. Acarnas, according to some, gave 
name to Acarnania ; but vid. Acarnania. (Pans. 8, 24.) 

Acastus, son of Pelias, king of Iolcos in Thessaly. 
Peleus, while in exile at his court, was falsely accused 
by Astydamia, or, as Horace calls her, Hippolyte, the 
wife of Acastus, of improper conduct. The monarch, 
believing the charge, led Peleus out, under the pre¬ 
tence of a hunt, to a lonely part of Mount Pelion, and 
there, having deprived him of every means of defence, 
left him exposed to the Centaurs. Chiron came to 
his aid, having received for this purpose a sword from 
Vulcan, which he gave to Peleus as a means of de¬ 
fence. According to another account, his deliverer 
was Mercury. Peleus returned to Iolcos, and slew 
the monarch and his wife. There is some doubt, 
however, whether Acastus suffered with his queen on 
this occasion. He is thought by some to have been 
merely driven into exile. ( Oo. Met. 8, 306.— Heroid, 
13, 25.— Apollod. 1, 9, &c.— Schol. ad Apoll. Rh. 1, 
224.) 

Acca Laurentia, I. more properly Larentia 

7 




ACE 


ACE 


{Heins, ad Ovid. Fast. 3, 55), the wife of Faustulus, 
shepherd of king Numitor's flocks. She became fos¬ 
ter-mother of Romulus and Remus, who had been 
found by her husband while exposed on the banks of 
the Tiber and suckled by a she-wolf. Some explain 
the tradition by making Lupa{ u she-wolf”) to have been 
a name given by the shepherds to Larentia, from her 
immodest character {Plut. Rom. 4); a most improba¬ 
ble solution. We have here, in truth, an old poetic 
legend, in which the name Larentia ( Lar ), and the an¬ 
imals said to have supplied the princes with sustenance 
{vid. Romulus), point to an Etrurian origin for the fa¬ 
ble. AVhen the milk of the wolf failed, the wood¬ 
pecker, a bird sacred to Mars, brought other food; oth¬ 
er birds, too, consecrated to auguries by the Etrurians, 
hovered over the babes to drive away the insects. 

( Niebuhr's Rom. Hist. 1, 185.)—II. The Romans 
yearly celebrated certain festivals, called Larentalia, 
a foolish account of the origin of which is given by 
Plutarch ( Quoest. Rom. 272). There is some resem¬ 
blance between Plutarch’s story and that told by He¬ 
rodotus (2, 122) of Rhampsinitus, king of Egypt, and 
the goddess Ceres ; and it may, therefore, like the lat¬ 
ter, have for its basis some agricultural or astronom¬ 
ical legend. (Consult Baehr, ad Herod. 1. c.) 

Accia, or, more correctly, Atia, the sister of Julius 
Caesar, and mother of Augustus. Cicero {Phil. 3, 6) 
gives her a high character. She v/as the daughter of 
M. Atius Balbus. (Cic. 1. c. — Suet. Aug. 4.) 

Accius, I. ( Vid. Supplement.) — II. Accius T., 
a native of Pisaurum in Umbria, and a R,oman knight, 
was the accuser of A. Cluentius, whom Cicero defend¬ 
ed, B.C. 66. He was a pupil of Hermagoras, and is 
praised by Cicero for accuracy and fluency. (Brut. 
23.) 

Acco, a general of the Gauls, at the head of the 
confederacy formed against the Romans by the Se- 
nones, Carnutes, and Treviri. Caesar ( B. G. 6, 4, 44), 
by the rapidity of his march, prevented the execution 
of Acco’s plans ; and ordered a general assembly of 
the Gauls to inquire into the conduct of these nations. 
Sentence of death was pronounced on Acco, and he 
was instantly executed. 

Ace, a seaport town of Phoenicia, a considerable 
distance south of T}^re. On the gold and silver coins 
of Alexander the Great, struck in this place with 
Phoenician characters, it is called Aco. The Hebrew 
Scriptures ( Judges , 1, 31) term it Accho , signifying 
“straitened” or “confined.” Strabo calls it ’A/a; 
(758). It was afterward styled Ptolemais, in honour 
of Ptolemy, son of Lagus, who long held part of south¬ 
ern Syria under his sway. The Romans, in a later 
age, appear to have transformed the Greek accusative 
Ptolemaida into a Latin nominative, and to have des¬ 
ignated the city by this name ; at least it is so writ¬ 
ten in the Itin. Antonin, and Hicrosol. The Greeks, 
having changed the original name before this into 
’Any, connected with it the fabulous legend of Her¬ 
cules having been bitten here by a serpent, and of his 
having cured ( dneopai ) the wound by a certain leaf. 

( Stcph. B. v. Tiro negate;.) The compiler of the Etym. 
Magn. limits the name of ’A id] to the citadel, but as^ 
signs a similar reason for its origin. (Compare the 
learned remarks of Reland, on the name of this city, 
in his Palest., p. 535, seq.) Accho was one of the 
cities of Palestine, which the Israelites were unable 
to take ( Judges , 1, 31). The city is now called Acre, 
more properly Acca , and lies at the northern angle of 
the bay, to which it gives its name, which extends, in 
a semicircle of three leagues, as far as the point of 
Carmel. During the crusades it sustained several 
sieges. After the expulsion of the Knights of St. John, 
it fell rapidly to decay, and was almost deserted till 
Sheikh Daher, and, after him, Djezzar Pasha, by re¬ 
pairing the town and harbour, made it one of the first 
places on the coast. In modern times it has been I 
8 


rendered celebrated for the successful stand which it 
made, with the aid of the British, under Sir Sidney 
Smith, against the French, under Bonaparte, who was 
obliged to raise the siege after twelve assaults. The 
strength of the place arose in part from its situation. 
The port of Acre is bad, but Dr. Clarke {Travels, 6, 
89) represents it as better than any other along the 
coast. All the rice, the staple food of the people, en¬ 
ters the country by Acre; the master of which city, 
therefore, is able to cause a famine over all Syria. 
This led the French to direct their eflorts towards the 
possession of the place. Hence, too, as Dr. Clarke 
observes, we find Acre to have been the last position 
in the Holy Land from which the Christians were ex¬ 
pelled. 

Acelum, a town of Cisalpine Gaul, among the Eu- 
ganei, north of Patavium, and east of the Medoacus 
Major, or Brenta. It is now Asola. {Plin. 3, 19.— 
Ptol. 63.) 

Acerbas, a priest of Hercules at Tyre, who mar¬ 
ried Dido, the sister of Pygmalion the reigning mon¬ 
arch, and his own niece. Pygmalion murdered him 
in order to get possession of his riches, and endeav¬ 
oured to conceal the crime from Dido ; but the shade 
of her husband appeared to her, and disclosing to her 
the spot where he had concealed his riches during 
life, exhorted her to take these and flee from the coun' 
try. Dido instantly obeyed, and leaving Phoenicia, 
founded Carthage on the coast of Africa. ( Vid. Dido.) 
Virgil calls the husband of Dido Sichceus; but Servi- 
us, in his commentary, informs us, that this appella¬ 
tion of Sichceus is softened down from Sicharbes. 
Justin (18, 4) calls him Acerbas, which appears to be 
an intermediate form. Gesenius {Phcen. Mon., p. 414) 
makes Sicharbas come from Isicharbas (“ vir gladii”) 
or Masicharbas (“opus gladii,” i. e., qui gladio omnia 
sua debet). If we reject the explanation of Servius, 
the name Sichceus may come from Zachi , “ purus, 
justus.” 

Acerrae, I. a town of Cisalpine Gaul, west of Cre¬ 
mona and north of Placentia ; supposed to have oc¬ 
cupied the site of Pizzighetone ; called by Polybius 
(2, 34) ’Axijb/bai, and regarded as one of the strong¬ 
holds of the Insubres. It must not be confounded with 
another Celtic city, Acara {"Anapa, Strabo, 216), or 
Acerrce ( Plin. 3, 14), south of the Po, not far from Fo¬ 
rum Lepidi and Mutina {Mannert, 9, 170): Tzschucke 
incorrectly reads ’Axepai for * Anapa, making the two 
places identical. {Tzsch. ad Strab. 1. c .)—II. A city 
of Campania, to the east of Atella, called by the 
Greeks ’A x^/bai, and made a Municipium by the Ro- 
mons at a very early period {Livy, 8, 14). It remain¬ 
ed faithful when Capua yielded to Hannibal, and w'as 
hence destroyed by that commander. It was subse¬ 
quently rebuilt, and in the time of Augustus received 
a Roman colony, but at no period had many inhabi¬ 
tants, from the frequent and destructive inundations 
of the Clanius. {Frontinus, de Col. 102.— Virg. G. 2, 
225, ct Schol .) The modern Acerra stands nearly on 
the site {Mannert, 9, 780). 

Acersecomes, a surname of Apollo, signifying “ un " 
shorn," i. e., ever young {Juv. 8, 128). Another form 
is dneipenogyp. Both are compounded of d priv., 
neipco, fut., JEol. nepcio, to cut, and nogy, the hair of 
the head. The term is applied, however, as well to 
Bacchus as to Apollo. (Compare the Lat. intonsus, 
and Ruperti, ad Juv. 1. c.) 

Aces, a river of Asia, on the confines, according to 
Herodotus (3, 117), of the Chorasmians, Hyrcanians, 
Parthians, Sarangeans, and Thamaneans. The terri¬ 
tories of all these nations were irrigated by it, through 
means of water-courses ; but when the Persians con¬ 
quered this part of Asia, they blocked up the outlets 
of the stream, and made the reopening of them a 
source of tribute. The whole story is a very improb¬ 
able one. Rennell thinks that there is some allusion 






ACH 


ACH 


in it to the Oxus or Ochus, both of which rivers have 
undergone considerable changes in their courses. 

Acesander. Vid. Supplement. 

Acesas. Vid. Supplement. 

Acesias. Vid. Supplement. 

AcesInes, a large and rapid river of India, falling 
into the Indus. It is commonly supposed to be the 
Ravci, but Rennell makes it, more correctly, the Je- 
iiaub. (Vincent's Comm, and Nav. of the Anc.) 

Acesius, I. a surname of Apollo, under which he 
was worshipped in Elis, where he had a splendid tem¬ 
ple in the agora. This surname is the same as ’A/te£t- 
KaKog, and means the averter of evil.—II. ( Vid. Sup¬ 
plement.) 

Acestes. Vid. ^Egestes. 

Acestodorus. Vid. Supplement. 

Acestor, I. an ancient statuary mentioned by Pausa- 
nias (6, 7, 2). He was a native of Cnossus, or at least 
exercised his art there for some time, and was the fa¬ 
ther of that Amphion who was the pupil of Ptolichus 
of Corcyra. Ptolichus lived about Olymp. 80, 82, 
and Acestor must have been his contemporary. ( Sillig , 
Diet, of Anc. Artists.) —II. Vid. Supplement. 

Ach^ea, ’A xata, a surname of Pallas. Her temple 
among the Daunians, in Apulia, contained the arms of 
Diomede and his followers. It was defended by dogs, 
which fawned on the Greeks, but fiercely attacked all 
other persons ( Aristot. de Mirab.). —II. Ceres was 
also called Achiea, from her grief (dxog) at the loss of 
Proserpina (Pint, in Is. et Os.). Other explanations are 
given by the scholiast ( ad Anstoph. Acharn. 674). Con¬ 
sult also Kuster and Brunch, ad loc., and Suidas, s. v. 

Ach^i, one of the main branches of the great AHo- 
lic race. ( Vid. Achaia and Graecia, especially the latter 
article.) 

Achjemenes, the founder of the Persian monarchy, 
according to some writers, who identify him with the 
Giem Schid, or Djcmschid, of the Oriental historians 
(vid. Persia). The genealogy of the royal line is giv¬ 
en by Herodotus (7, 11) from Achsemenes to Xerxes. 
The earlier descent, as given by the Grecian writers, 
and according to which, Perses, son of Perseus and 
Andromeda, was the first of the line, and the individual 
from whom the Persians derived their national appella¬ 
tion, is purely fabulous. TEschylus (Pcrs. 762) makes 
the Persians to have been first governed by a Mede, 
who was succeeded by his son; then came Cyrus, 
succeeded by one of his sons ; next Merdis, Maraphis, 
Artaphernes, and Darius ; the last not being, howev¬ 
er, a lineal descendant. For a discussion on this sub¬ 
ject, consult Stanley, ad loc.: Larcher, ad Herod. 7, 
11, and Schiitz, Excurs. 2, ad ASsch. Pers. 1. c. 

Ach^emenides, I. a branch of the Persian tribe of 
Pasargadse, named from Achsemenes, the founder of 
the line. From this family the kings of Persia were 
descended (Herod. 1, 126). Cambyses, on his death¬ 
bed, entreated the Achaemenides not to suffer the king¬ 
dom to pass into the hands of the Medes (3, 65).—II. 
A Persian of the royal line, whom Ctesias (32) makes 
the brother, but Herodotus (7, 7) and Diodorus Sicu¬ 
lus (11, 74) call the uncle of Artaxerxes I. The lat¬ 
ter styles him Achsemenes. ( Baehr , ad Ctes. 1. c. — 
Wessel. ad Herod. 1. c.) 

AcHiEORUM statio, I. a place on the coast of the 
Thracian Chersonesus, where Polyxena was sacrificed 
to the shade of Achilles, and where Hecuba killed 
Polymnestor, who had murdered her son Polydorus.— 
II. The name of Achseorum Portus was given to the 
harbour of Corone, in Messenia. 

Ach^eus, I. a son of Xuthus. (Vid. Graecia, rela¬ 
tive to the early movements of the Grecian tribes.)— 
II. A tragic poet, born at Eretria, B.C. 484, the very 
year riSschylus won his first prize. We find him con¬ 
tending with Sophocles and Euripides, B.C. 447. 
With such competitors, however, he was, of course, 
not very successful. He gained the dramatic victory 


only once. Athenseus, however (6, p. 270), accuses 
Euripides of borrowing from this poet. The number 
of plays composed by him is not correctly ascertained- 
Suidas (s. v.) gives three accounts, according to one 
of which he exhibited 44 plays ; according to another, 
30 ; while a third assigns to him only 24. Most of 
the plays ascribed to him by the ancients are suspected 
by Casaubon (de Sat. Poes. 1, 5) to have been satyric. 
The titles of seven of his satyrical dramas, and of ten 
of his tragedies, are still known. The extant fragments 
of his pieces have been collected and edited by Urlichs, 
Bonn, 1834. He should not be confounded with a la¬ 
ter tragic writer of the same name, who was a native 
of Syracuse.—III. A river, which falls into the Euxine 
on the eastern shore, above the Promontorium Heracle- 
um. The Greek form of the name is ’kxcuovg, -ovvrog. 
(Arrian , Per. Mar. Eux. 130, Blanc.) —IV. An his¬ 
torian mentioned by the scholiast on Pindar (01. 7, 42). 
Vossius (Hist. Gr. 4, p. 501) supposes him to be the 
same with the Achaeus alluded to by the scholiast on 
Aratus (v. 171); but Boeckh throws very great doubt 
on the whole matter. (Boeckh, ad Schol. Ptnd. 1. c., 
vol. ii., p. 166.)—Y. A general of Antiochus the Great. 
( Vid. Supplement.) 

Achaia, I. a district of Thessaly, so named from the 
Achaei (vid. Graecia). It embraced more than Phthiotis, 
since Herodotus (7, 196) makes it cpmprehend the 
country along the Apidanus. Assuming this as its 
western limit, we may consider it to have reached as 
far as the Sinus Pelasgicus and Sinus Maliacus on the 
east. (Mannert, 7, 599.) Larcher (Hist. d'Hcrod. 
8, 7, Table Gcogr.) regards Melitaea as the limit on 
the west, which lies considerably east of the Apida¬ 
nus. That Phthiotis formed only part of Achaia, ap¬ 
pears evident from the words of Scynmus (v. 604), 
“ViTtelt’ ’kxcuol .TcapdTiioi QOuvrinoi (Gail, ad loc.). 
Homer (II. 3, 258) uses the term ’ kxcuida sc. x^pav, 
in opposition to Argos, "kpyoe;, and seems to indicate 
by the former, according to one scholiast, the Pelo¬ 
ponnesus ; according to another, the whole country oc¬ 
cupied by the Hellenes (tt)v rrdoav r E ?Ar/vov yr/v, 
Schol. II. 3, 75).—II. A harbour on the northeastern 
coast of the Euxine, mentioned by Arrian, in his Pen- 
plus of the Euxine (131, Blanc.), and called by him 
Old Achaia (t7)v rxalaidv ’kxaiav). The Greeks, ac¬ 
cording to Strabo (416), had a tradition, that the inhab¬ 
itants of this place were of Grecian origin, and natives 
of the Boeotian Orchomenus. They were returning, 
it seems, from the Trojan war, when, missing their 
way, they wandered to this quarter. Appian (B. M. 
67, 102, Schw.) makes them to have been Achaeans, 
but in other respects coincides with Strabo. Muller 
(Gcsch. Hellcn. Stamme, &c., 1, 282) supposes the 
Greeks to have purposely altered the true name of the 
people in question, so as to make it resemble Achcei 
(’kxcuoi ), that they might erect on this superstructure 
a mere edifice of fable.—III. A country of the Pelo¬ 
ponnesus, lying along the Sinus Corinthiacus, north of 
Elis and Arcadia. A number of mountain-streams, 
descending from the ridges of Arcadia, watered this re¬ 
gion, but they were small in size, and many mere winter- 
torrents. The coast was for the most part level, and 
was hence exposed to frequent inundations. It had 
few harbours ; not one of any size, or secure for ships. 
On this account we find, that of the cities along the 
coast of Achaia, none became famous for maritime en¬ 
terprise. In other respects, Achaia may be ranked, as 
to extent, fruitfulness, and population, among the mid¬ 
dling countries of Greece. Its principal productions 
were like those of the rest of the Peloponnesus, name¬ 
ly, oil, wine, and corn. (Mannert, 8, 384.— Hceren's 
Ideen, &c., 3, 27.) The most ancient name of this 
region was TEgialea or vEgialos, kiyialoq, “ sea¬ 
shore," derived from its peculiar situation. It em¬ 
braced originally the territory of Sicyon, since here 
stood the early capital of the ^Egialii or HCgialenses. 

9 



ACHAIA. 


ACH 


The origin of the iEgialii appears to connect them 
with the great Ionic race. Ion, son of Xuthus, came 
from Attica, according to the received accounts, set¬ 
tled in this quarter (Paus. 7, 1.— Strabo , 383), obtain¬ 
ed in marriage the daughter of King Selinus, and from 
this period the inhabitants were denominated AEgia- 
lean Ionians. Pausanias, however, probably from other 
sources of information, makes Xuthus, not Ion, to 
have settled here. The Pelasgi appear also to have 
spread over this region, and to have gradually blended 
with the primitive inhabitants into one community, 
under the name of Pelasgic HEgialeans (Herod. 7, 94). 
Twelve cities now arose, the capital being Helice, 
founded by Ion. At the period of the Trojan war, 
these cities were subject to the Achseans, and ac¬ 
knowledged the sway of Agamemnon as the head of 
that race. Matters continued in this state until the 
Dorian invasion of the Peloponnesus. The Achseans, 
driven by the Dorians from Argos and Lacedaemon, 
took refuge in HEgialea, under the guidance of Tisa- 
menos, son of Orestes. The Ionians gave their new 
visiters an unwelcome reception ; a battle ensued, the 
Ionians were defeated, and shut up in Helice ; and at 
last were allowed by treaty to leave this city unmolest¬ 
ed, on condition of removing entirely from their former 
settlements. They migrated, therefore, into Attica 
(Paus. 7, 1), but soon after left this latter country for 
Asia Minor (vid. Iones and Ionia). The Achseans now 
took possession of the vacated territory, and changed 
its name to Achaia. Tisamenos having fallen in the 
war with the Ionians, his sons and the other leaders 
divided the land among themselves by lot, and hence 
the old division of twelve cantons or districts, as well 
as the regal form of government, continued until the 
time of Ogygus or Gygus. (Strabo, 384.— Paus. 7, 
6.— Polyb. 2, 41.) After this monarch’s decease, 
each city assumed a republican government. The 
Dorians, from the very first, had made several attempts 
to drive the Achseans from their newly-acquired pos¬ 
sessions, and had so far succeeded as to wrest from 
them Sicyon, with its territory, which was ever after 
regarded as a Dorian state. All farther attempts at 
conquest were unsuccessful, from the defence made 
by the Achseans, and the aid afforded to them by their 
Pelasgic neighbours in Arcadia. The result of this 
was an aversion on the part of the Achseans to every¬ 
thing Dorian. Hence they took no part with the rest 
of the Greeks against Xerxes ; hence, too, we find 
them, even before the Peloponnesian war, in alliance 
with the Athenians ; though, in the course of that war, 
they were forced to remain neutral, or else at times, 
from a consciousness of their weakness, to admit the 
Dorian fleets into their harbours. (Thucyd. 1, 111 
and 115.— Id. 2, 9.— Id. 8, 3.— Id. 2, 84.) The 
Achseans preserved their neutrality also in the wars 
raised by the ambition of Macedon; but the result 
proved most unfortunate. The successors of Alex¬ 
ander seemed to consider the cities of Achaia as 
fair booty, and what they spared became the prey of 
domestic tyrants. Even after the Peloponnesus had 
ceased to be the theatre of war, and a Macedonian 
garrison was merely kept at the Isthmus, the public 
troubles seemed only on the increase. The whole 
country, too, began to be infested by predatory bands, 
whose numbers were daily augmented by the starving 
cultivators of the soil. At length, four of the princi¬ 
pal cities of Achaia, viz., Patras, Dyme, Tritsea, and 
Pharae, formed a mutual league for their common safe¬ 
ty. (Polyb. 2, 41.) The plan succeeded, and soon 
ten cities were numbered in the alliance. About 
twenty-five years after, Sicyon was induced to join 
the league by the exertions of Aratus, and he himself 
was chosen commander-in-chief of the confederacy. 
All the more important cities of the Peloponnesus 
gradually joined the coalition. Sparta alone kept aloof, 
and, in endeavouring to enforce her compliance, Ara- 
10 


tus was defeated by the Lacedaemonian monarch Cle- 
omenes. The Achaean commander, in an evil hour, 
called in the aid of Macedon ; for though he succeeded 
by these means in driving Cleomenes from Sparta, yet 
the Macedonians from this time remained at the head 
of the league, and masters of the Peloponnesus. 
Aratus himself fell a victim to the jealous policy of 
Philip. The troubles that ensued gave the Romans 
an opportunity of interfering in the affairs of Greece, 
and at last Corinth was destroyed, and the Achsean 
league annihilated by these new invaders. (Vid. HEto- 
lia and Corinth.) Mummius, the Roman general, 
caused the walls of all the confederate cities to be de¬ 
molished, and the inhabitants to be deprived of every 
warlike weapon. The land was also converted into a 
Roman province, under the name of Achaia, embra¬ 
cing, besides Achaia proper, all the rest of the Pelo¬ 
ponnesus, together with all the country north of the 
isthmus, excepting Thessaly, Epirus, and Macedonia. 
(Vid. Epirus and Macedonia.) The dismantled cities 
soon became deserted, with the exception of a few, 
and in what had been Achaia proper only three remain¬ 
ed in later times, HEgium, HEgira, and Patras. In our 
own days, the last alone survives, under the name of 
Patras. The entire coast from Corinth to Patras 
shows only one place that deserves the name of a city, 
or, rather, a large village ; this is Vostitza , near the 
ruins of the ancient HEgium. (Manncrt, 8, 392.) 

Achaicus, a philosopher, whose time is unknown. 
He wrote a work on Ethics. (Diog. Lacrt. 6, 99.) 

Acharnje, ’A xapvai (or, as Stephanus Byzantinus 
writes the name, ’A xdpva), one of the most important 
boroughs of Attica, lying northwest of Athens and 
north of Eleusis. It furnished 3000 heavy-armed men 
as its quota of troops, which, on the supposition that 
slaves are not included, will make the entire popula¬ 
tion about 15,000. (Thucyd. 2, 20.— Manncrt, 8, 330.) 
This large number, however, did not all dwell in vil¬ 
lages, but were scattered over the borough, which 
contained some of the finest and most productive land 
in Attica. From a sarcasm of Aristophanes (Acharn. 
213.— lb. ibid. 332, seqq.), we learn, that many of the 
Acharnenses (’A xapveiq) followed the business of char¬ 
coal-burning. This borough belonged to the tribe 
CEneis (O Ivyig), and was distant 60 stadia from Athens. 
(Thucyd. 2, 21.) 

Achates, a friend of HEneas, whose fidelity was so 
exemplary, that Fidus Achates became a proverb. 
(Virg. AHn. 1, 312.) 

Acheloides, a patronymic given to the Sirens as 
daughters of Achelous. (Ovid, Met. 5, fab. 15.— 
Gierig, ad loc.) 

Achelous, I. a river of Epirus, now the Aspro 
Potamo, or “ White River,” which rises in Mount Pin- 
dus, and, after dividing Acarnania from HEtolia (Strab. 
450), falls into the Sinus Corinthiacus. It was a large 
and rapid stream, probably the largest in all Greece, 
and formed at its mouth, by depositions of mud and 
sand, a number of small islands called Echinades. 
The god of this river was the son of Oceanus and 
Tethys, or of the Sun and Terra. Fable speaks of a 
contest between Hercules and the river god for the 
hand of Deianira. The deity of the Achelous assu¬ 
med the form of a bull, but Hercules was victorious 
and tore off one of his horns. His opponent, upon 
this, having received a horn from Amalthea, the daugh¬ 
ter of Oceanus, gave it to the victor, and obtained his 
own in return. Another account (Ovid, Met. 9, 63) 
makes him to have first assumed the form of a serpent, 
and afterward that of a bull, and to have retired in 
disgrace into the bed of the river Thoas, which thence¬ 
forward was denominated Achelous. A third version 
of the fable states, that the Naiads took the horn of 
the conquered deity, and, after filling it with the vari¬ 
ous productions of the seasons, gave it to the goddess 
of plenty, whence the origin of the cornu copice. They 



ACH 


ACH 


who pretend to see in history an explanation of this le¬ 
gend, make the river Achelous to have laid waste, by 
its frequent inundations, the plains of Calydon This, 
introducing confusion among the landmarks, became 
the occasion of continual wars between the JEtolians 
and Acarnanians, whose territories the river divided 
as above stated, until Hercules, by means of dikes, re¬ 
strained its ravages, and made the course of the stream 
uniform. Hence, according to this explanation, the 
serpent denoted the windings of the stream, and the 
bull its swellings and impetuosity, while the tearing oti’ 
of the horn refers to the turning away of a part of the 
waters of the river, by means of a canal, the result of 
which draining was shown in the fertility that succeed¬ 
ed ( Diod. Sic. 4, 35.) The Achelous must have 
been considered a river of great antiquity as well as 
celebrity, since it is often introduced as a general rep¬ 
resentative of rivers, and is likewise frequently used 
for the element of water. ( Eustath ad II. 21, 194.— 
Eurip. Bacch. 625.— Id. Androm. 167.— Aristoph. 
Lysistr. 381— Heyne , ad II. 21, 194.) The reason 
of this peculiar use of the term will be found in the 
remarks of the scholiast. The Achelous was the lar¬ 
gest river in Epirus and JEtolia, in which quarter were 
the early settlements of the Pelasgic race, from whom 
the Greeks derived so much of their religion and my¬ 
thology. Hence the frequent directions of the Oracle 
at Dodona, “ to sacrifice to the Achelous,’' and hence 
the name of the stream became associated with some 
of their oldest religious rites, and was eventually used 
in the language of poetry as an appellation, nar’ e^oxyv, 
for the element of water and for rivers, as stated above 
(’A^eAwou ndv nyyalov vSup ).—II. There was an¬ 
other river of the same name, of which nothing farther 
is known, than that, according to Pausanias (8, 38), it 
flowed from Mount Sipylus. Homer, in relating the 
story of Niobe (II. 24, 615), speaks of the desert 
mountains in Sipylus, where are the beds of the god¬ 
dess-nymphs, who dance around the Achelous.—III. 
A river of Thessaly, flowing near Lamia. (Strab. 434.) 

Acherdus, a borough of the tribe Hippothoontis, in 
Attica. ( Slcph. B. — Aristoph. Ecclcs. 360.) 

Acheron, I. a river of Epirus, rising in the mount¬ 
ains to the west of the chain of Pindus, and falling 
into the Ionian sea near Glykys Limcn (Thvnvg Atpijn) 
In the early part of its course, it forms the Pains 
Achcrusia (’Axepovcria A Ipvy), and, after emerging 
from this sheet of water, disappears under ground, 
from which it again rises and pursues its course to the 
sea. Strabo (324) makes mention of this stream only 
after its leaving the Palus Acherusia, and appears to 
have been unacquainted with the previous part of its 
course. Thucydides, on the other hand (1, 46), would 
seem to have misunderstood the information which he 
had received respecting it. His account is certainly a 
confused one, and has given rise to an inaccuracy in 
D'Anville’s map. The error of D'Anville and others 
consists in placing the Palus Acherusia directly on the 
coast, and the city of Ephyre at its northeastern ex¬ 
tremity ; in the position of the latter contradicting the 
very words of the writer on whom they rely. No 
other ancient authority places the Palus Acherusia on 
the coast. Pausanias (1, 17) makes the marsh, the 
river, and the city, to have been situated in the interior 
of Thesprotis ; and Re mentions also the stream Co- 
cytus (which he styles vdup urepireGraTov ), as being in 
the same quarter. He likewise states it as his opin¬ 
ion, that Homer, having visited these rivers in the 
course of his wanderings, assigned them, on account 
of their peculiar nature and properties, a place among 
the rivers of the lower world. The poets make Ache¬ 
ron to have been the son of Sol and Terra, and to 
have been precipitated into the infernal regions, and 
there changed into a river, for having supplied the 
Titans with water during the war which they waged 
with Jupiter. Hence its waters were muddy and bit¬ 


ter; and it was the stream over which the souls of the 
dead were first conveyed. The Acheron is represent¬ 
ed under the form of an old man arrayed in a humid 
vestment. He reclines upon an urn of a dark col¬ 
our. In Virgil and later poets Acheron sometimes 
designates the lower world.—IT. A river of Brut- 
tium, flowing into the Mare Tyrrhenum a short distance 
below Pandosia. Alexander, king of Epirus, who had 
come to the aid of the Tarentines, lost his life in pass¬ 
ing this river, being slain by a Lucanian exile. He had 
been warned by an oracle to beware of the Acherusian 
waters and the city Pandosia, but supposed that it re¬ 
ferred to Epirus and not to Italy. (Justin, 12, 2.— 
Liv. 8, 24.)—III. A river of Elis, which falls into the 
Alpheus. On its banks were temples dedicated to 
Ceres, Proserpina, and Hades, which were held in high 
veneration. (Strab. 344.)—IV. A river of Bithynia, 
near the cavern Acherusia, and in the vicinity of He- 
raclea. (Apollon. Rhod. 2, 745.) 

Acherontia, I. a town of Bruttium, placed by Pliny 
on the river Acheron (Plin. 3, 5).—II. A city of 
Lucania, now Accrenza, on the confines of Apulia. 
It was situated high up on the side of a mountain, and 
from its lofty position is called by Horace nidus Ache- 
rontice , “the nest of Acherontia.” Procopius speaks 
of it as a strong fortress in his days. (Horat. Od. 3, 
4, 14, ct schol. ad loc. — Procop. 3, 23.) 

Acherusia, I. a lake in Epirus, into which the 
Acheron flows. ( Vid. Acheron.) — II. According to 
some modern expounders of fable, a lake in Egypt, 
near Memphis, over which the bodies of the dead were 
conveyed, previous to their being judged for the ac¬ 
tions of their past lives. The authority cited in sup¬ 
port of this is Diodorus Siculus (1, 92). A proper 
examination of the passage, however, will lead to the 
following conclusions : 1st, that no name whatever is 
given by Diodorus for any particular lake of this kind ; 
and, 2d, that each district of Egypt had its lake for the 
purpose mentioned above, and that there was not mere¬ 
ly one for the whole of Egypt. (Diod. Sic. 1, 92, ct 
Wessehng, ad loc.) —III. A cavern in Bithynia, near 
the city of Heraclea and the river Oxinas, probably on 
the very spot which Arrian (Penpl. Mar. Eux., p. 
125, cd. Blancard) calls Tyndaridae. Xenophon (An- 
ab. 6, 2) names the whole peninsula, in which it lies, 
the Acherusian Promontory. This cavern was two 
stadia in depth, and was regarded by the adjacent in¬ 
habitants as one of the entrances into the lower world. 
Through it Hercules is said to have dragged Cerberus 
up to the light of day ; a fable which probably owed 
its origin to the inhabitants of Heraclea (Diod. Sic. 
14, 31.r— Dionys. Pcricg. 790, ct Eustath. ad. loc.) 
Apollonius Rhodius (2, 730) places a river, with the 
name of Acheron, in this quarter. This stream was 
afterward called, by the people of Heraclea, Soonautes 
(Zouvavryg), on account of their fleet having been 
saved near it from a storm. (Apollon. Rhod. 2, 746, 
ct schol. ad loc.) Are the Acheron and the Oxinas 
the same river 1 

Achillas, I. a bishop of Alexandrea from A.D. 311 
to 321. His martyrdom is commemorated on the 7th 
of November.—II. An Alexandrean priest, banished 
with Arius, 319 A.D. He fled to Palestine.—III. 
(Vid. Supplement.) 

Achillea, an island near the mouth of the Borys- 
thenes, or, more properly, the western part of the Dro- 
mus Achillis insulated by a small arm of the sea. (Vid. 
Dromus Achillis and Leuce.) 

Achilleis, a poem of Statius, turning on the story 
of Achilles. (Fid. Statius.) 

Achilles, I. a son of the Earth (yyycvye), unto 
whom Juno fled for refuge from the pursuits of Jupi¬ 
ter, and who persuaded her to return and marry that 
deity. Jupiter, grateful for this service, promised him 
that all who bore this name for the time to come 
should be illustrious personages. (Ptol. Hcphast. 

11 



ACHILLES. 


ACHILLES 


apud Photium, Bibliolh., vol. i., p. 152, cd. Bckkcr.) 
—II. The preceptor of Chiron (Id.). —III. The invent¬ 
or of the ostracism (Id.). —IV. A son of Jupiter and 
Lamia. His beauty was so perfect, that, in the judg¬ 
ment of Pan, he bore away the prize from every com¬ 
petitor. Venus was so offended at this decision, that 
she inspired Pan with a fruitless passion for the nymph 
Echo, and also wrought a hideous change in his own 
person (Id.). —V. A son of Galatus, remarkable for 
his light coloured, or, rather, whitish hair (Id.). —VI. 
The son of Peleus, king of Phthiotis in Thessaly. 
His mother’s name appears to have been a matter of 
some dispute among the ancient expounders of my¬ 
thology (Schol. ad Apoll. Rhod. 1, 558), although the 
more numerous authorities are in favour of Thetis, 
one of the sea-deities. According to Lycophron (v. 
178), Thetis became the mother of seven male chil¬ 
dren by Peleus, six of whom she threw into the fire, 
because, as Tzetzes informs us in his scholia, they 
were not of the same nature with herself, and the 
treatment she had received was unworthy of her rank 
as a goddess. The scholiast on Homer, however (II. 
16, 37), states, that Thetis threw her children into the 
fire in order to ascertain whether they were mortal or 
not, the goddess supposing that the fire would consume 
what was mortal in their natures, while she would 
preserve what was immortal. The scholiast adds, 
that six of her children perished by this harsh experi¬ 
ment, and that she had, in like manner, thrown the 
seventh, afterward named Achilles, into the flames, 
when Peleus, having beheld the deed, rescued his off¬ 
spring from this perilous situation. Tzetzes (ubi su¬ 
pra) assigns a different motive to Thetis in the case 
of Achilles. He makes her to have been desirous of 
conferring immortality upon him, and states that with 
this view she anointed him (sxpiev) with ambrosia 
during the day, and threw him into fire at evening. 
Peleus, having discovered the goddess in the act of 
consigning his child to the flames, cried out with 
alarm, whereupon Thetis, abandoning the object she 
had in view, left the court of Peleus and rejoined the 
nymphs of the ocean. Dictys Cretensis makes Peleus 
to have rescued Achilles from the fire before any part 
of his body had been injured but the heel. Tzetzes, 
following the authority of Apollodorus, gives his first 
name as Ligyron (Aiyvpuv), but the account of Aga- 
mestor, cited by the same scholiast, is more in ac¬ 
cordance with the current tradition mentioned above. 
Agamestor says, that the first name given to Achilles 
was Pyrisous (HvpiGoog), i. e., “ saved from the fire.” 
What has thus far been stated in relation to Achilles, 
with the single exception of the names of his parents, 
Peleus and Thetis, is directly at variance with the au¬ 
thority of Homer, and must therefore be regarded as 
a mere posthomeric fable. The poet makes Achilles 
say, that Thetis had no other child but himself; and 
though a daughter of Peleus, named Polydora, is men¬ 
tioned in a part of the Iliad (16, 175), she must have 
been, according to the best commentators, only a half 
sister of the hero. (Compare Hcync, ad loc.) Equally 
at variance with the account given by the bard, is the 
more popular fiction, that Thetis plunged her son into 
the waters of the Styx, and by that immersion render¬ 
ed the whole of his body invulnerable, except the heel 
by which she held him. On this subject Homer is al¬ 
together silent; and, indeed, such a protection from 
danger would have derogated too much from the char¬ 
acter of his favourite hero. There are several passa¬ 
ges in the Iliad which plainly show, that the poet does 
not ascribe to Achilles the possession of any peculiar 
physical defence against the chances of battle. (Com¬ 
pare II. 20, 262 : id. 288 : and especially, 21, 166, 
where Achilles is actually wounded by Asteropaeus.) 
The care of his education was intrusted, according to 
the common authorities, to the centaur Chiron, and to 
Phoenix, son of Amyntor. Homer, however, mentions 
12 


Phoenix as his first instructer (II. 9, 481, scqq.), while 
from another passage (II. 11, 831) it would appear, 
that the young chieftain merely learned from the cen¬ 
taur the principles of the healing art. Those, how¬ 
ever, who pay more regard in this case to the state¬ 
ments of other writers, make Chiron to have had 
charge of Achilles first, and to have fed him on the 
marrow of wild animals ; according to Libanius, on 
that of lions, but according to the compiler of the 
Etymol. Mag., on that of stags. (Compare Bayle, 
Diet. Hist. 1, 53.) Chiron is said to have given him 
the name of Achilles (’A^/tAer^), from the circum¬ 
stance of his food being unlike that of the rest of men 
(a priv., and x l ^V> “ fructus quibus vescuntur homi¬ 
nes''). Other etymologies are also given; but most 
likely none are true. (Compare, on this part of our 
subject, the Etymol. Mag. — Ptol. Hcphcest. apud 
Photium, Biblioth., vol. i., p. 152, ed. Bekker. — Hcync, 
ad II. 1, 1— Wassenbcrg, ad schol. in II. 1, p. 130 ) 
Calchas having predicted, when Achilles had attained 
the age of nine years, that Troy could not be taken 
without him, Thetis, well aware that her son, if he 
joined that expedition, was destined to perish, sent 
him, disguised in female attire, to the court o t Lycom- 
edes, king of the island of Scyros, for the purpose 
of being concealed there. A difficulty, however, arises 
in this part of the narrative, on account of the early 
age of Achilles when he was sent to Scyros, which 
can only be obviated by supposing, that he remained 
several years concealed in the island, and that the 
Trojan war occupied many years in preparation. (Com¬ 
pare the remarks of Hcyne, ad Apollod., 1. c., p. 316, 
and Gruber, Worterbuch der altclassischen Mytholcgie 
und Religion, vol. i., p. 32.) At the court of Lycom- 
edes, he received the name of Pyrrha (Tlvfifia, “ Ru~ 
fa"), from his golden locks, and became the father of 
Neoptolemus by Dei’damia, one of the monarch’s 
daughters. (Apollod. 1. c.) In this state of conceal¬ 
ment Achilles remained, until discovered by Ulysses, 
who came to the island in the disguise of a travelling 
merchant. The chieftain of Ithaca offered, it seems, 
various articles of female attire for sale, and mingled 
with them some pieces of armour. On a sudden blast 
being given with a trumpet, Achilles discovered him¬ 
self by seizing upon the arms. (Apollod. 1. c. — Sta¬ 
tius, Achill. 2, 201.) The young warrior then joined 
the army against Troy. This account, however, £>f 
the concealment of Achilles is contradicted by the ex¬ 
press authority of Homer, who represents him as pro¬ 
ceeding directly to the Trojan war from the court of 
his father. (II. 9, 439.) As regards the forces which 
he brought with him, the poet makes them to have 
come from the Pelasgian Argos, from Alus, Alope, and 
Trachis, and speaks of them as those who possessed 
Phthia and Hellas, and who were called Myrmidones, 
Hellenes, and Achan. (II. 2, 681, scqq.) Hence, 
according to Heyne, the sway of Achilles extended 
from Trachis, at the foot of Mount CEta, as far as the 
river Enipeus, where Pharsalus was situated, and 
thence to the Peneus.—The Greeks, having made 
good their landing on the shores of Troas, proved so 
superior to the enemy as to compel them to seek shel¬ 
ter within their walls. (Thucyd. 1, 11.) No sooner 
was this done than the Greeks^were forced to turn 
their principal attention to the means of supporting 
their numerous forces. A part of the army was there¬ 
fore sent to cultivate the rich vales of the Thracian 
Chersonese, then abandoned by their inhabitants on 
account of the incursions of the barbarians from the 
interior. (Thucyd. ubi supra.) But the Grecian ar¬ 
my, being weakened by this separation of its force, 
could no longer deter the Trojans from again taking 
the field, nor prevent succours and supplies from being 
sent into the city. Thus the siege was protracted to 
the length of ten years. During a great part of this 
time, Achilles was employed in lessening the resources 



ACHILLES. 


ACHILLES. 


of Priam by the reduction of the tributary cities of 
Asia Minor. With a fleet of eleven vessels he rav¬ 
aged the coasts of Mysia, made frequent disembarca- 
tions of his forces, and succeeded eventually in de¬ 
stroying eleven cities, among which, according to 
Strabo (584), were Hypoplacian Thebe, Lyrnessus, 
and Pedasus, and in laying waste the island of Lesbos. 
(Compare Homer , II. 9, 328.) Among the spoils of 
Lyrnessus, Achilles obtained the beautiful Briseis, 
while, at the taking of Thebe, Chryseis the daughter 
of Chryses, a priest of Apollo at Chrysa, became the 
prize of Agamemnon. A pestilence shortly after ap¬ 
peared in the Grecian camp, and Calchas, encouraged 
by the proffered protection of Achilles, ventured to 
attribute it to Agamemnon’s detention of the daughter 
of Chryses, whom her father had endeavoured to ran¬ 
som, but in vain The monarch, although deeply of¬ 
fended, was compelled at last to surrender his captive, 
but, as an act of retaliation, and to testify his resent¬ 
ment, he deprived Achilles of Briseis. Hence arose 
“the anger of the son of Peleus,” on which is based 
the action of the Iliad. Achilles on his part withdrew 
his forces from the contest, and neither prayers, nor 
entreaties, nor direct offers of reconciliation, couched 
in the most tempting and flattering terms (II. 9, 119, 
seqq.), could induce him to return to the field. Among 
other things the monarch promised him, if he would 
forget the injurious treatment which he had received, 
the hand of one of his daughters, and the sovereignty 
of seven cities of the Peloponnesus. (11. 9, 142 and 
149.) The death of his friend Patroclus, however, 
by the hand of Hector (II. 16, 821, seqq.), roused him 
at length to action and revenge, and a reconciliation 
having thereupon taken place between the two Grecian 
leaders, Briseis was restored. (II. 19, 78, seqq. — Id. 
246, seqq.) As the arms of Achilles, having been 
worn by Patroclus, had become the prize of Hector, 
Vulcan, at the request of Thetis, fabricated a suit of 
impenetrable armour for her son. (II. 18, 468, seqq.) 
Arrayed in this, Achilles took the field, and after a 
great slaughter of the Trojans, and a contest with the 
god of the Scamander, by whose waters he was nearly 
overwhelmed, met Hector, chased him thrice around 
the walls of Troy, and finally slew him by the aid of 
Minerva. (II. 22, 136, seqq.) According to Homer 
(11. 24, 14, seqq ), Achilles dragged the corpse of Hec¬ 
tor, at his chariot-wheels, thrice round the tomb of 
Patroclus and from the language of the poet, he 
would appear to have done this for several days in 
succession. Virgil, however, makes Achilles to have 
dragged the body of Hector twice round the walls of 
Troy. In this it is probable that the Roman poet fol¬ 
lowed one of the Cyclic, or else Tragic writers. ( Hcyne, 
Excitrs. 18, ad A$n. 1.) The corpse of the Trojan 
hero was at last yielded up to the tears and supplica¬ 
tions of Priam, who had come for that purpose to the 
tent of Achilles, and a truce was granted the Trojans 
for the performance of the funeral obsequies. (II. 24, 
599.— Id. 669.) Achilles did not long survive his il¬ 
lustrious opponent. • Some accounts make him to have 
died the day after Hector was slain. The common 
authorities, however, interpose the combats with Pen- 
thesilea and Memnon previous to his death. (Com¬ 
pare Hcyne, Excurs. 19, ad JEn. 1.— Quint. Smyrn. 
1, 21, seqq.) According to the more received account, 
as it is given by the scholiast on Lycophron (v. 269), 
and also by Dictys Cretensis and Dares Phrygius, 
Achilles, having become enamoured of Polyxena, the 
daughter of Priam, signified to the monarch that he 
would become his ally on condition of receiving her 
hand in marriage. Priam consented, and the parties 
having come for that purpose to the temple of the 
T.hymbrEean Apollo, Achilles was treacherously slain 
by Paris, who had concealed himself there, being 
wounded by him with an arrow in the heel. Another 
tradition, related by Arctinus, makes him to have been 


slain (in accordance with Hector’s prophecy, II 21, 
452), in the Scasan gate, while rushing into the city. 
Hyginus states that Achilles went round the walls of 
Troy boasting of his exploit in having slain Hector, 
until Apollo, in anger, assumed the form of Paris, and 
slew him with an arrow (Hygin. fab. 107), but, with 
surprising inconsistency, he mentions in another place 
(fab. 110), that he was slain by Deiphobus and Alex¬ 
ander of Paris. The scholiast on Lycophron, cited 
above, says that the Trojans would not give up the 
corpse of Achilles until the Greeks had restored the 
various presents with which Priam had redeemed the 
dead body of Hector. The ashes of the hero were 
mingled in a golden urn with those of Patroclus, and 
the promontory of SigEeuin is said to mark the place 
where both repose. A tomb was here erected to his 
memory, and near it Thetis caused funeral games to 
be celebrated in honour of her son, which were after¬ 
ward annually observed by a decree of the oracle of 
Dodona (vid. Sigaeum.) It is said, that, after the ta¬ 
king of Troy, the ghost of Achilles appeared to the 
Greeks, and demanded of them Polyxena, who was 
accordingly sacrificed on his tomb by his son Neopto- 
lemus, or Pyrrhus. (Eurip. Hec. 35, seqq. — Senec. 
Troad. 191 ^— Ovid, Met. 13, 441, seqq. — Q. Calab. 
14.) Another account makes the Trojan princess to 
have killed herself through grief at his loss. (Tzetzes, 
ad Lycophr. 323.— Philostratus, Heroica., p. 714, cd. 
Morcllus.) The Thessalians, in accordance with the 
oracle just mentioned, erected a temple to his memory 
at Sigasum, and rendered him divine honours. Every 
year they brought thither two bulls, one white and the 
other black, crowned with garlands, and along with 
them some of the water of the Sperchius. (Gruber, 
Worterb. dcr altclassischcn Mythologie, vol. i., p. 48.) 
Another and still stranger tradition informs us, that 
Achilles survived the fall of Troy and married Helen ; 
but others maintain that this union took place after his 
death, in the island of Leuce, where many of the an¬ 
cient heroes lived in a separate elysium (vid. Leuce). 
When Achilles was young, his mother asked him 
whether he preferred a long life spent in obscurity, or 
a brief existence of military glory. He decided in 
favour of the latter. (Compare II. 9, 410, seqq ) 
Some ages after the Trojan war, Alexander, in the 
course of his march into the East, offered sacrifices on 
the tomb of Achilles, and expressed his admiration as 
well of the hero, as of the bard wTiom he had found to 
immortalize his name. (Plutarch, Vit. Alexand. 15.) 
—VII. Tatius, a native of Alexandrea, commonly as¬ 
signed to the second or third century of the Christian 
era. The best critics, however, such as Huet, Char- 
don la Rochette, Coray, and Jacobs, make him to have 
flourished after the time of Heliodorus, since they have 
discovered in him what they consider manifest imita¬ 
tions of the latter writer. Nay, if it be true that Mu- 
sseus, whom he has also imitated, composed his poem 
of Hero and Leander before 430 or 450 of our era, 
we must then place Achilles Tatius even as low as the 
middle of the 5th century. (Schoell, Hist. Litt. Gr. 
6, 231.) According to Suidas, he became, towards the 
end of his life, a Christian and bishop. But as the 
lexicographer makes no mention of liis episcopal see, 
and as Photius, who speaks in three different places of 
him, is silent on this head, it may be permitted us to 
doubt the accuracy of Suidas’s statement. (Photii 
Bibhothec., vol. i., p. 33, cd. Bekker. — Id. ibid., p. 50.— 
Id. ibid., p. 66.) Equally unworthy of reliance would 
appear to be another remark of the same lexicographer, 
that Achilles Tatius wrote a treatise on the sphere. 
If this were correct, we ought to put him one or two 
centuries earlier, inasmuch as Firmicus, a Latin writer 
of the middle of the fourth century, cites the “ Sphere 
of Achilles.” (Astron. 4, 10.) Suidas, however, 
who is not accustomed to discriminate very nicely be¬ 
tween persons bearing the same name, here confounds 

13 




ACHILLES 


AC I 


him with the author of the “ Introduction to the Phe¬ 
nomena of Aratus” {vid. No. VIII ). Achiiles Tatius 
is the author of a romance, entitled, Td Kara Aev- 
kI-thjv Kai K liTO<j)uVTa, “ The loves of Leucippe and 
Clitophon,” as it is commonly translated. Some crit¬ 
ics, such as Huet and Saumaise, have preferred it to 
the work of Heliodorus ; but Villoison, Coray, Wyt- 
tenbach, Passow, Villemain, and Schoell, restore the 
pre-eminence to the latter ( Schoell , Hist. Litt. Gr., 
vol. vi., p 233 — Foreign Quarterly Review , No 9, p 
131.) “ The book,” says Villemain, “ is written under 
an influence altogether pagan, and in constant allusion 
to the voluptuous fables of mythology.” The remark 
is perfectly correct Pictures of the utmost licen¬ 
tiousness, and traces of everything that is infamous in 
ancient manners, are seen throughout. Unchaste in 
imagination, and coarse in sentiment, the author has 
made his hero despise at once the laws of morality 
and those of love. Clitophon is a human body, unin¬ 
formed by the human soul, but delivered up to all the 
instincts of nature and the senses. He neither com¬ 
mands respect by his courage nor affection by his 
constancy. Struggling, however, in the writer’s mind, 
some finer ideas may be seen wandering through the 
gloom, and some pure and lofty aspirations contrasting 
strangely with the chaos of animal instincts and de¬ 
sires. His Leucippe glides like a spirit among actors 
of mere flesh and blood. Patient, high-minded, re¬ 
signed, and firm, she endures adversity with grace ; 
preserving, throughout the helplessness and tempta¬ 
tions of captivity, irreproachable purity, and constancy 
unchangeable. The critics, while visiting with proper 
severity the sins both of the author and the man, do 
not refuse to render full justice to the merits of the 
work. It possesses interest, variety, probability, and 
simplicity. “ The Romance of Achilles Tatius,” says 
Villemain, “ purified as it should be, will appear one 
of the most agreeable in the collection of the Greek 
Romances. The adventures it relates present a preg¬ 
nant variety ; the succession of incidents is rapid ; its 
wonders are natural; and its style, although some¬ 
what affected, is not wanting in spirit and effect.” 
Photius also, as rigorous in morals as a bishop should 
be, praises warmly the elegance of the style, observ¬ 
ing that the author’s periods are precise, clear, and eu- 
phonous. ( Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 9, p. 131.) 
Saumaise was of opinion, that Achilles Tatius had 
given to the w r orld two several editions of his romance, 
and that some of the manuscripts which remain be¬ 
long to the first publication of the work, while others 
supply us with the production in its revised state. Ja¬ 
cobs, however, in the prolegomena to his edition, has 
shown that the variations in the manuscripts, which 
gave rise to this opinion, are to be ascribed solely to 
the negligence of copyists, as they occur only in those 
W T ords which have some resemblance to others, and in 
which it was easy to err. Few works, moreover, were 
as often copied as this of Achilles Tatius. The best 
edition is that of Jacobs, 2 vols. 8vo, Lips., 1821, in 
which may be seen a very just, though unfavourable, 
critique on the editions of Saumaise and Bodcn, the 
former of which appeared in 1640, 12mo, Lugd. Bat., 
and the latter in 1776, 8vo, Lips. A French version 
of the work is given in the “ Collection des Romans 
Grccs, traduits en Franpais; avec des notes, par MM. 
Courier, Lurcher, ct autres Hellcnistcsf 14 vols. 
l6mo, Paris, 1822-1828. — VIII. Tatius, an astro¬ 
nomical writer, supposed to have lived in the first half 
of the fourth century, since he is quoted by Firmicus 
( Astron. 4, 10), who wrote about the middle of the 
same century. Suidas confounds him with the indi¬ 
vidual mentioned in No. VII. We possess, under the 
title of LiGayoyy elg rd'kpdrov <baivofizva, “Intro¬ 
duction to the Phenomena of Aratus,” a fragment of 
his work on the sphere. This fragment is given in the 
Uranologia of Pctavius (Petau), Paris, 1630, fol. 

14 


Achilleum, a town on the Cimmerian Bosporus., 
where anciently was a temple of Achilles. It lay near 
the modern Buschuk. {Mannert, 4, 326.) 

Achilleus, I. a relation of Zenobia, invested with 
the purple by the people of Palmyra, when they revolt¬ 
ed from Aurelian. ( Vopisc .) Zosimus calls lum An- 
tiochus (1, 60). — II. A Roman commander, in the 
reign of Dioclesian, who assumed the purple in Egypt. 
The emperor marched against him, shut him up in 
Alexandrea, and took the place after a siege of eight 
months. Achilleus was put to death, having been ex¬ 
posed to lions, and Alexandrea was given up to pil¬ 
lage {Oros. 7, 25.— Aurcl. Viet, de Cces., c. 39.) 

AchTvi, properly speaking, the name of the Achsean 
race (Aqyuoi) Latinized. Its derivation through the 
JE olic dialect is marked by the digammated sound of 
the letter v {'A%aiFoi). This appellation was gener¬ 
ally applied by the Roman poets, especially Virgil, as 
a name for the whole Greek nation, in imitation of the 
Homeric usage. In legal strictness it should have 
been confined by the Romans to the inhabitants of the 
province of Achaia. 

Achlys. Vid. Supplement. 

Achmet. Vid. Supplement. 

Acholius. Vid. Supplement. 

Acichorius, a general with Brennus in the expe¬ 
dition which the Gauls undertook against Pseonia. 
(Paus. 10, 19.) He was chosen by Brennus as his 
lieutenant, or, rather, as a kind of colleague, which of¬ 
fice the name itself, in the original language of the 
Gauls, is said to designate. Thus the true Gallic ap¬ 
pellation w r as Kikhouiaour, or Akikhouiaour, which the 
Greeks softened into K ixdpiop Died. Sic. frag lib. 
22—vol. ix., p. 301, ed. Bip.) and ’A uixupioq {Paus. 
10, 19), and which they mistook for a proper name. 
(Compare Thierry, His/oire des Gaulois, vol. i., p. 145, 
and Owen's Welsh Dictionary, s. v. Cycwiawr.) Dio¬ 
dorus Siculus (/. c.) makes Cichorius to have succeed¬ 
ed Brennus. 

Acidalia, a surname of Venus, from a fountain of 
the same name at Orchomcnus, in Bceotia, sacred to 
her. The Graces bathed in this fountain. 

AcidTnus. Vid. Supplement. 

Acilia, I. gens, a plebeian family of Rome, of whom 
many medals are extant. {Rasche, Lex. Ret Hum., 
vol. i., col. 47 ) The name of this old and distinguish¬ 
ed line occurs five times in the consular fasti, during 
the time of the republic, and twelve times in those of 
the empire, down to the reign of Constantine. ( Si gen. 

Fast. Cons.) The two most celebrated branches of 
the house were those of Acilius Glabrio and Acilius 
Balbus.—II. Lex, a law introduced by Acilius the 
tribune, A.U.C. 556, for the planting of five colonies 
along the coast of Italy, two at the mouths of the Vul- 
turnus and Liternus, one at Puteoli, one at Salernum, 
and one at Buxentum. {Liv. 32, 29.) — III. Calpur- 
nia Lex (introduced A.U.C. 686), excluded from the 
senate, and from all public employments, those w ho 
had been guilty of bribery at elections. Cicero calls 
it merely Calpurnia Lex, but others Acilia Calpurnia 
Lex. {Ernesli, Ind. Leg.) — IV. Lex, a law introdu¬ 
ced A.U.C. 683, by the consul Manius Acilius Gla¬ 
brio, relative to actions de pccvmis rcpetundis. It de¬ 
termined the forms of proceeding, and the penalties 
to be inflicted. (Compare Erncsti, Ind. Leg.) 

Acilius, I. a Roman, who w^rote a work in Greek 
on the history of his country, and commentaries on 
the twelve tables. He lived B.C. 210, and was a con¬ 
temporary of Cato’s. His history was translated into 
Latin by an individual named Claudius, and was enti¬ 
tled, in this latter language, Annales Acilienscs. (Foss. 
Hist. Gr. 1, 10.)—II. Quintus, appointed a commis¬ 
sioner, about 200 B.C., for distributing among the new 
colonists the conquered lands along the Po.—III. A 
tribune, author of the law respecting the maritime col¬ 
onies. {Vid. Acilia II.)—iV. Glabrio M., a consul 





ACR 


ACR 


with P. Corn. Scipio Nasica, A.U.O. 561, and the 
conqueror of Antiochus at Thermopylte. ( Liv . 35, 
24.— Id. 36, 19.)—V. Glabrio M., son of the prece¬ 
ding, a decemvir. He built a temple to Piety, in ful¬ 
filment of a vow which his father had made when 
fighting against Antiochus. He erected also a gilded 
statue ( statuam auratam) to his father, the first of the 
kind ever seen at Rome. ( Val. Max. 2, 5.— Liv. 40, 34. 
Compare Hase, ad loc.) —VI. A consul, A.U.C. 684, 
appointed to succeed Lucullus in the management 
of the Mithradatic war. (Cic. in Verr. 7, 61.)—VII. 
Aviola Manius, a lieutenant under Tiberius in Gaul, 
A.D. 19, and afterward consul. He was roused from 
a trance by the flames of the funeral pile, on which he 
had been laid as a corpse, but could not be rescued. 
( Plin. 7, 53.— Val. Max. 1, 8.)—VIII. Son of the 
preceding, consul under Claudius, A.D. 54.—IX. A 
consul with M. Ulpian Trajanus, the subsequent em¬ 
peror. He was induced to engage with wild beasts 
in the arena, and, proving successful, was put to death 
by Domitian, who was jealous of his strength. 

Aciris, now the Agn, a river of Lucania, rising 
near Absellinum Marsicum, and falling into the Sinus 
Tarentinus. Near its mouth stood Heraclea, 

Acindynus. Vid. Supplement. 

Acis, a Sicilian shepherd, son of Faunus and the 
nymph Simsethis. He gained the affections of Gala- 
tsea, but his rival Polyphemus, through jealousy, crush¬ 
ed him to death with a fragment of rock, which he 
hurled upon him. Acis was changed into a stream, 
which retained his name. According to Servius (ad 
Virg. Eclog. 9, 39) it was also called Acilius. Cluve- 
rius places it about two miles distant from the modern 
Castello di Acci. Fazellus, however, without much 
reason, assigns the name of Acis to the Fiume Freddo, 
near Taormina. Sir Richard Hoare describes the 
Acis of Cluverius as a limpid though small stream. 
The story of Acis is given by Ovid (Met. 13, 750, seq.) 

Acoetes. Vid. Supplement. 

Acominatus. Vid. Nicetas. 

Acontius, a youth of Cea, who, when he went to 
Delos to sacrifice to Diana, fell in love with Cydippe, 
a beautiful virgin, and, being unable to obtain her, by 
reason of his poverty, had recourse to a stratagem. 
A sacred law obliged every one to fulfil whatever 
promise they had made in the temple of the goddess ; 
and Acontius having procured an apple or quince, 
wrote on it the following words : “ I swear by Diana 
I will wed Acontius.” This he threw before her. The 
nurse took it up, and handed it to Cydippe, who read 
aloud the inscription, and then threw the apple away. 
After some time, when Cydippe’s father was about to 
give her in marriage to another, she was taken ill just 
before the nuptial ceremony. Acontius thereupon has¬ 
tened to Athens, and, the Delphic oracle having decla¬ 
red that the illness of Cydippe was the punishment of 
her perjury, the parties were united. 

Acoris. Vid. Supplement. 

Acra, I. a village on the Cimmerian Bosporus. 
(Strab., p. 494.)—II. A promontory and town of Scyth¬ 
ia Minor, now Ekerne or Cavarna. 

AchradIna, one of the five divisions of Syracuse, 
and deriving its name from the wild pear-trees with 
which it once abounded (dxpup, a wild pear-tree). It 
is sometimes called the citadel of Syracuse, but in¬ 
correctly, although a strongly fortified quarter. It was 
very thickly inhabited, and contained many fine build- 
ings, yielding only to Ortygia. (Laporte Du Theil , 
ad Strab., vol. 2., p. 358, not. 3, French transl.) As 
regards the situation of Achradina, and its aspect in 
more modern times, compare Swinburn, Travels in 
the Two Sicilies , 3, 382 (French transl.), and Goller, 
dc Situ et Origins Syracusarum, p. 49, seqq. 

Acr/ea. Vid. Supplement. 

Acr^ephnia, a city of Boeotia, situate on Mount 
Ptou o, towards the northeast extremity of the Lake Co- 


pais. It was founded either by Afhamas, or by Acra> 
plieus, a son of Apollo. Pausanias calls the place 
Acr;ephnium (9, 23.—Compare Steph. Byz. s. v.). 

Acragallid^e. Vid. Crauallidse. 

Acragas, I. The Greek name of Agrigentum.—IL 
A river in Sicily, on which Agrigentum was situate. 
It gave its Greek name to the city. The modern 
name is San Blasio. (Mannert, 9, 2, 354.)—III. An 
engraver on silver, whose country and age are both 
uncertain. He is noticed by Pliny (33, 12, 55), who 
speaks of cups of his workmanship, adorned with 
sculptured work, preserved in the temple of Bacchus 
at Rhodes. His hunting pieces on cups were very 
famous. (Sillig, Diet. Art. s. v.) 

Acratus, a freedman of Nero, sent into Asia to 
plunder the temples of the gods, which commission he 
executed readily, being, according to Tacitus (Ann, 
15, 45), “ cuicumque jlagitio promptus.” Secundus 
Carinas was joined with him on this occasion, whom 
Lipsius (ad Tac. 1. c.) suspects to be the same with 
the Carinas sent into exile (Dio Cassius, 59, 20) by 
the Emperor Caligula, for declaiming against tyrants. 
Compare Juvenal, 7, 204. 

Aoridophagi, an ./Ethiopian nation, who fed upon 
locusts. Diodorus Siculus (3, 28) says, that they 
never lived beyond their 40th year, and that they then 
perished miserably, being attacked by swarms ofwinged 
lice (iTTepioTol (pdeipeg), which issued forth from their 
skin. The account given of their diet is much more 
probable. The locust is said to be a very common and 
palatable food in many parts of the East, after having 
been dried in the sun. This is thought by some to have 
constituted the food of the Israelites on the occasion 
mentioned in Exodus (16, 14). Wesseling (ad Diod. 
Sic. 3, 28) is of this opinion. But the salvim of Mo¬ 
ses evidently mean quails, as the received version has 
rendered the word. 

Acrion, a Locrian, was a Pythagorean philosopher ; 
he is mentioned by Valerius Maximus (8, 7) under the 
name of Arion, which is a false reading instead oi Ac¬ 
rion. (Cic. Fin. 5, 9.) 

Acrisioneis, a patronymic appellation given to 
Danae, as daughter of Acrisius. (Virg. Mn. 7, 410, 
and Servius, ad loc.) 

Acrisioniades, a patronymic of Perseus, from his 
grandfather Acrisius. (Ovid, Met. 5, v. 70.) 

Acrisius, son of Abas, king of Argos, by Ocalea, 
daughter of Mantineus. He was born at the same 
birth as Proetus, with whom it is said that he quarrel¬ 
led even in his mother’s womb. After many dissen¬ 
sions, Prcetus was driven from Argos. Acrisius had 
Danae by Eurydice, daughter of Lacedaemon ; and an 
oracle having declared that he should lose his life by 
the hand of his grandson, he endeavoured to frustrate 
the prediction by the imprisonment of his daughter, in 
order to prevent her becoming a mother (vid. Danae). 
His efforts failed of success, and he was eventually 
killed by Perseus, son of Danae and Jupiter. Acrisi¬ 
us, it seems, had been attracted to Larissa by the re¬ 
ports which had reached him of the prowess of Per- 
| seus. At Larissa, Perseus, wishing to show his skill 
in throwing a quoit, killed an old man who proved to 
be his grandfather, whom he knew not, and thus the 
oracle was fulfilled. Acrisius reigned about 31 years. 
(Hygin. fab. 63.— Ovid, Met. 4, fab. 16.— Horat. 3, 

! od. 16.— Apollod. 2, 2, &c.— Paus. 2, 16, &c.— Vid. 
Danae, Perseus, Polydectes.) 

Acritas, a promontory of Messenia, in the Pelopon- 
' nesus. (Plin. 4, 5.— Mela, 2, 3.) Now Cape Gallo. 

I Acroathos, or Acrothoum. The name of Acroathos 
properly denotes the promontory of the peninsula of 
Athos, now Cape Monte Santo. It is the lower one 
i of the two, the upper one being called Nymphseum 
(Promontorium). By Acrothoum (or Acrothoi) is 
meant a town on the peninsula of Athos, situate some 
distance up the mountain, and of which Mela observes 

15 






ACR 


ACT 


( 2 , 3), that the inhabitants were supposed to live be¬ 
yond the usual time allotted to man. (Compare 77m- 
cyd. 4, 109.— Scylax , p. 26.— Stcph. Byz. s. v."Adoq. 
-— Strab. epit. Lib. 7, 331.) 

Acroceraunia, or Acroceraunii Montes. Vid. Ce- 
raunia. 

Acrocorinthus, a high hill, overhanging the city of 
Corinth, on which was erected a citadel, called also by 
the same name. This situation was so important a 
one as to be styled by Philip the fetters of Greece. 
The fortress was surprised by Antigonus, but recover¬ 
ed in a brilliant manner by Aratus. (Strab. 8 , 380.— 
Paus. 2 , 4. — Pint. Vit. Arat. — Stat. Theb. 7, v. 106.) 
“ The Acrocorinthus, or Acropolis of Corinth,” ob¬ 
serves Dodwell, “ is one of the finest objects in 
Greece, and, if properly garrisoned, would be a place 
of great strength and importance. It abounds with 
excellent water, is in most parts precipitous, and there 
is only one spot from which it can be annoyed with ar¬ 
tillery. This is a pointed rock, at a few hundred yards 
to the southwest of it, from whence it was battered by 
Mohammed II. Before the introduction of artillery, 
it was deemed almost impregnable, and had never been 
taken except by treachery or surprise. Owing to its 
natural strength, a small number of men was deemed 
sufficient to garrison it; and in the time of Aratus, 
according to Plutarch, it was defended by 400 soldiers, 
50 dogs, and as many keepers. It was surrounded 
with a wall by Cleomenes. It shoots up majestically 
from the plain to a considerable height, and forms a 
conspicuous object at a great distance : it is clearly 
seen from Athens, from which it is not less than forty- 
four miles in a direct line. Strabo affirms that it is 
3 1-2 stadia in perpendicular height, but that the ascent 
to the top is 30 stadia by the road, the circuitous in¬ 
flections of which render this no extravagant computa¬ 
tion. The Acrocorinthus contains within its walls a 
town and three mosques. Athenssus commends the 
water in the Acrocorinthus as the most salubrious in 
Greece. It was at this fount that Pegasus was drink¬ 
ing when taken by Bellerophon.” (Dodwell, vol. 2 , 
p. 187.) All modern travellers who have visited this 
spot, give a glowing description of the view obtained 
from the ridge. Consult, in particular, Clarke's Trav¬ 
els, vol. 6 , p. 750. 

Acron, I. a king of the CEeninenses, whom Romu¬ 
lus slew in battle, after the affair of the Sabine women. 
His arms were dedicated to Jupiter Feretrius, and his 
subjects were incorporated with the Roman people. 
(Plut. Vit. Rom.) Propertius styles him Ccemnus 
Acron, from the name of his city and people (4, 10 , 7), 
and also Herculeus (4, 10 , 9), from the circumstance 
of all the Sabine race tracing their descent from Her¬ 
cules or Sancus.—II. A celebrated physician of Agri- 
gentum in Sicily, contemporary with Empedocles 
(Diog. Laert. 8 , 65). Plutarch speaks of his having 
been at Athens during the time of the great plague, 
which occurred B.C. 430. He aided the Athenians 
on that occasion, by causing large fires to be kindled 
in their streets. (Plut. Is. et Os. 383.) Acron is 
generally regarded as the founder of the sect of Em¬ 
pirics or Experimentalists (Pseud. Gal. Isag. 372). 
As this school of medicine, however, had a much la¬ 
ter date, it is probable that he was merely one of the 
class of physicians called 7 repiodevrai, who did not 
confine themselves to mere theory, but went round 
and visited patients. His contempt for the mysterious 
charlatanism of Empedocles drew upon him the hatred 
of that philosopher. At least it is fair to suppose that 
this was the cause of their enmity. Acron wrote, ac¬ 
cording to Suidas, a treatise in Doric Greek, on the 
healing art, and another on diet. He appears also, 
from the words of the lexicographer, to have turned 
his attention in some degree to the influence of cli¬ 
mate. (Consult Sprengcl, Hist. Med. 1 , 273.)—III. 
Helenius Acron, an ancient commentator. The period 


when he lived is uncertain: he is thought, however, lo 
have been later than Servius. Acron’s scholia on 
Horace have descended to us in part, or at least only 
a part was ever published. They are valuable on ac¬ 
count of their containing the remarks of C. JEmilius, 
Julius Modestus, and Q. Terentius Scaurus, the oldest 
commentators on Horace. Acron also wrote scholia 
on Terence, which are cited by Charisius, but they 
have not reached us. Some critics ascribe to him the 
scholia which we have on Persius. (Schoell, Hist. 
Litt. Rom. 3, 326.) 

Acropolis, in a special sense, the citadel of Athens, 
an account of which will be given under the article 
Athenae. 

Acropolita. Vid. Supplement. 

Acrotatus, I. son of Cleomenes, king of Sparta, 
died before his father, leaving a son called Areus, who 
contended for the crown with Cleonymus his uncle, 
and obtained it through the suffrages of the senate. 
Cleonymus, in his disappointment, called in Pyrrhus 
of Epirus. (Paus. 3, 6. — Plut. vit. Pyrrh. — Paus. 
1, 13.) — II. A king of Sparta, son of Areus, and 
grandson of the preceding. He reigned one year. 
Before ascending the throne, he distinguished himself 
by courageously defending Sparta against Pyrrhus. 
(Plut. vit. Pyrrh.) 

Acrothoum. Vid. Acroathos. 

Acta or Acte, strictly speaking, a beach or shore 
on which the waves break, from uyo, “ to break,” 
According to Apollodorus (Stcph. B. s. v. ’A/cr;/), the 
primitive name of Attica was ’A ary (Acte), from the 
circumstance of two of its sides being washed by the 
sea. The name is also applied by Thucydides to that 
part of the peninsula of Athos which is below the city 
of Sane and including it. Besides Sane, the historian 
mentions five other cities as being situate upon it. 
(Thucyd. 4, 109.) 

Action, a celebrated hunter, son of Aristaeus and 
Autonoe the daughter of Cadmus. Having inadver¬ 
tently, on one occasion, seen Diana bathing, he was 
changed by the goddess into a stag, and was hunted 
down and killed by his own hounds. (Ov. Met. 3 , 155, 
seqq.) The scene of the fable is laid by the poets at 
Gargaphia, a fountain of Bceotia, on Mount Citha)- 
ron, about a mile and a half from Platsea. From a 
curious passage in Diodorus Siculus ( 4 , 81), a suspi¬ 
cion arises, that the story of Actseon is a corruption of 
some earlier tradition, respecting the fate of an intru¬ 
der into the mysteries of Diana. Wesseling’s expla¬ 
nation does not appear satisfactory, although it may 
serve as a clew to the true one. ( Wesseling, ad Diod. 
Sic. 1. c.) 

Actjeus, the first king of Attica, according to the 
ancient writers. He was succeeded by Cecrops, to 
whom he had given one of his daughters in marriage. 
(Paus. 1 , 2 .— Clem. Alex. 1 , 321.) He is called by 
some Actseon. (Strab. 397. — Harpocr. s. v. ’ Akt y. 
—Consult Siebelis, ad Paus. 1. c.) 

Acte, a freed woman of Asiatic origin. Suetonius 
(Vit. Her.. 28) informs us, that Nero, at one time, was 
on the point of making her his wife, having suborned 
certain individuals of consular rank to testify, under 
oath, that she was descended from Attalus. From a 
passage in Tacitus (Ann. 14, 2 ) it would appear, that 
Seneca introduced this female to the notice of the 
tyrant, in order to counteract, by her means, the dread¬ 
ed ascendency of Agrippina. (Compare Dio Cass 
61, 7.) 

Actia, games renewed by Augustus in commem¬ 
oration of his victory at Actium. They are also styled 
Ludi Actiaci by the Latin writers, and were celebrated 
in the suburbs of Nicopolis. Strabo makes them to 
have been quinquennial. Previously, however, to the 
battle of Actium they occurred every three years 
(Strab. 7, 325.) 

Actis, one of the Heliades, or offspring of the Sun, 






ACT 


ADD 


who, according to Diodorus Siculus (5, 57), migrated 
from Rhodes into Egypt, founded Heliopolis, and 
taught the Egyptians astrology. The same writer 
states, that the Greeks, having lost by a deluge nearly 
all their memorials of previous events, became ignorant 
of their el*iim to the invention of the science in ques¬ 
tion, and allowed the Egyptians to arrogate it to them¬ 
selves. Wesseling considers this a mere fable, based 
on the national vanity of the Greeks, who, it is well 
known, inverted so many of the ancient traditions, and 
in this case, for example, made that pass from Greece 
into Egypt, which came in reality from Egypt to 
Greece. (Wess. ad Diod. Sic. 1. c.) 

Actisanes, according to Diodorus Siculus (1, 60), 
a king of ./Ethiopia, who conquered Egypt and de¬ 
throned Amasis. He was remarkable for his modera¬ 
tion towards his new subjects, as well as for his jus¬ 
tice and equity. All the robbers and malefactors, too, 
were collected from every part of the kingdom, and, 
having had their noses cut off, were established in 
Rhinocolura, a city which he had founded for the pur¬ 
pose of receiving them. We must read, no doubt, 
with Stephens and Wesseling, in the text of Diodorus, 
'Appoaiq instead of "Apaaig, for the successor of 
Apries cannot here be meant. Who the Actisanes of 
Diodorus was, appears to be undetermined. Accord¬ 
ing to Wesseling (ad loc.), Strabo is the only other 
writer that makes mention of him. ( Strabo , 759.) 

Actium, originally the name of a small neck of 
land, called also Acte (’A urq), at the entrance of the 
Sinus Ambracius, on which the inhabitants of Anacto- 
rium had erected a small temple in honour of Apollo. 
On the outer side of this same promontory was a small 
harbour, the usual rendezvous of vessels which did not 
wish to enter the bay. Scylax (p. 13) calls this har¬ 
bour Acte. Thucydides, however, applies this name 
to the temple itself. Polybius (4, 63) makes mention 
of the temple, under the appellation of Actium, and 
speaks of it as belonging to the Acarnanians. Actium 
became famous, in a later age, for the decisive victory 
which Augustus gained in this quarter over the fleet of 
Marc Antony. From the accounts given of it by the 
Roman writers, Actium appears to have been, about 
the time of this battle, nothing more than a temple on 
a height, with a small harbour below. The conqueror 
beautified the sacred edifice, and very probably a num¬ 
ber of small buildings began after this to arise in the vi¬ 
cinity of the temple. ( Strab . 325.— Sueton. Vit. Aug. 
17.— Cic. ep. ad farm. 16, 9.) Hence Strabo (451) 
applies to it the epithet of x^plov. It never, however, 
became a regular city, although an inattentive reader 
would be likely to form this opinion from the language 
of Mela (2, 3) and Pliny (4, 1). Both these writers, 
however, in fact, confound it with Nicopolis. There 
are no traces of the temple at the present day, but 
Pouqueville found some remains of the Hippodrome 
and Stadium. More within the Sinus Ambracius 
(Gulf of Aria ) lies the small village of Azio. Plence 
probably, according to Mannert, originated the error 
of D’Anville, who places Actium, in contradiction to 
all ancient authorities, at some distance within the 
bay. (Vtd. Nicopolis, and compare Mannert , 8, 70.— 
Poaqucville, 3, 445.) 

Actius, a surname of Apollo, from Actium, where 
he had a temple. (Virg. JEn. 8, v. 704.) 

Actius Navius. Vid. Attus Navius. 

Actor, the father of Menoetius, and grandfather of 
Patroclus, who is hence called Actorides. The birth 
of Actor is by some placed in Locris, by others in 
Thessaly. As a Thessalian, he is said to have been 
the son of Myrmidon and Pisidia, the daughter of iEo- 
lus, and husband of vEgina, daughter of the Asopus ; 
and to have conceded his kingdom, on account of the 
rebellion of his sons, to Peleus. (Ov. Trist. 1, 9.) 
Consult, on the different individuals of this name, the 
remarks of Heyne, ad Apollod. 3, 13. 

C 


Actorides, I. a patronymic given to Patroclus, 
grandson of Actor (Ovid, Met. 13, fab. 1.)—II. The 
sons of Actor and Molione. (Vid. Molionides.) 

Actorius. Vid. Supplement. 

Actuarius. Vid. Supplement. 

Aculeo. Vid. Supplement. 

Acumenus. Vid. Supplement. 

Acusilaus, a Greek historian, born at Argos, and 
who lived, according to Josephus (contr. Ap. 1, 2), a 
short time previous to the Persian invasion of Greece, 
being a contemporary of Cadmus of Miletus. He 
wrote a work entitled “ Genealogies ,” in which he 
gave the origin of the principal royal lines among his 
countrymen. He made historic times commence with 
Phoroneus, son of Inachus, and he reckoned 1020 
years from him to the first Olympiad, or 776 B.C. 
We have only a few fragments of his work, collected 
by Sturz, and placed by him at the end of those of 
Pherecydes, published at Gera, 2d ed., 1824. 

Acutious, M., an ancient comic writer, author of 
various pieces, entitled, Leones, Gemini , Bceotia, &c., 
and ascribed by some to Plautus. (Foss, de Poet. 
Lat. c. 1.) 

Ad Aquas, ad. Aquilas, &c., a form common to 
very many names of places. The Roman legions, on 
many occasions, when stopping or encamping in any 
quarter, did not find any habitation or settlement by 
which the place in question might be designated, and 
therefore selected for this purpose some natural object, 
or some peculiar feature in the adjacent scenery. Thus 
Ad Aquas indicated a spot near which there was water, 
or an encampment near water, &c. Another form of 
common occurrence is that which denotes the number 
of miles on any Roman road. Thus, Ad Quartum, 
“ at the fourth mile-stone,” supply lapidem. So also, 
Ad Quintum, Ad Decimum, &c. 

Ada, the sister of Artemisia. She married Hi- 
drieus, her brother (such unions being allowed among 
the Carians), and, after the death of Artemisia, as¬ 
cended the throne of Caria, and reigned seven years 
conjointly with her husband. On the death of Hi- 
drieus she reigned four years longer, but was then 
driven from her dominions by Pixodarus, the youngest 
of her brothers, who had obtained the aid of the satrap 
Orontobates. Alexander the Great afterward restored 
her to her throne. She was the last queen of Caria. 
(Quint. Curt. 2, 8.) 

Ad ad, an Assyrian deity, supposed to be the sun. 
Macrobius (Sat. 1, 23) states, that the name Adad 
means “ One ” ( Unus ), and that the goddess Adargatis 
was assigned to this deity as his spouse, the former rep¬ 
resenting the Sun, and the latter the Earth. He also 
mentions, that the effigy of Adad was represented with 
rays inclining downward, whereas they extend upward 
from that of Adargatis. Selden (de Diis Syris, c. 6, 
synt. 1) thinks that Macrobius must be in error when 
he makes Adad equivalent to “ One,” and that he must 
have confounded it with the word Chad, which has that 
meaning. 

Adieus. Vid. Supplement. 

Adamant/ea, Jupiter’s nurse in Crete, who sus¬ 
pended him in his cradle from a tree, that he might 
be found neither on the earth, the sea, nor in heaven. 
To drown the infant’s cries, she caused young boys 
to clash small brazen shields and spears as they moved 
around the tree. She is probably the same as Amal- 
thea. 

Adamantius. Vid. Supplement. 

Adana, a city of Cilicia, southeast of Tarsus, on the 
Sarus, or Sihon. It was at one timte a large and well- 
known place, and was said to have been founded by 
Adanus, son of Uranus and Gaea. (Steph B.) 

Addua, now Adda, a river of Cisalpine Gaul, rising 
in the Rlnetian Alps, traversing the Lacus Larius, and 
falling into the Po to the west of Cremona In the 
old editions of Strabo, it is termed in one passage 

17 



ADM 


ADO 


(204) the Adula (6 ’A doping), but this is an error of 
ihe copyists, arising probably from the name of Mount 
Adula, which precedes. Tzschucke restores 6 ’Ad- 
dovag. 

Ades, or Hades, an epithet originally of Pluto, the 
monarch of the shades ; afterward applied to the lower 
world itself. The term is derived by most etymolo¬ 
gists from a privative, and eldo, video, alluding to the 
darkness supposed to prevail in this abode of the dead. 
That this is the true derivation, indeed, will appear from 
what the poets tell us of the helmet of Piuto (kvvt/ 
’A tdov), which had the power of rendering the wearer 
invisible. (Horn. II. 5, 845.) For farther remarks on 
the Hades of the Greeks, vid. Tartarus. 

Aogandestrius, a prince of the Catti, who wrote 
a letter to the Roman senate, in which he promised to 
destroy Arminius, if poison should be sent him for that 
purpose from Rome. The senate answered, that the 
Romans fought their enemies openly, and never used 
perfidious measures. {Tacit. Ann. 2, c. 88.) 

Adherbal, son of Micipsa, and grandson of Masi- 
nissa, was besieged at Cirta, and put to death by Ju- 
gurtha, after vainly imploring the aid of Rome, B.C. 
112. {Sallust., Jug. 5, 7, &c.) According to Ge- 
senius {Pham. Mon., p. 399, seqq.), the more Oriental 
form of the name is Atherbal, signifying “ the wor¬ 
shipper of Baal.” From this the softer form Adherbal 
arose. The MSS. of Sallust often give Atherbal, with 
which we may compare the Greek ' At dpbag. {Diod. 
Sic., lib. 34, fragm. —vol. 10, p. 132, cd. Bip. — Polyb. 
1, 46, &c.) 

Adiabene, a region in the northern part of Assyria, 
and to the east of the Tigris. During the Macedonian 
sway, it comprised all the country between the Zabus 
Major and Minor. Under the Parthian sway it com¬ 
prehended the country as far as the Euphrates, inclu¬ 
ding what was previously Aturia. It was afterward 
the seat of a kingdom dependant on the Parthian power, 
which disappeared from history, however, on the rise 
of the second Persian empire. {Plin. 5, 12, &c.) 

Adiatorix. Vid. Supplement. 

Adimantus. Vid. Supplement. 

Admete, I. ( Vid. Supplement.) — II. A daughter 
of Oceanus and Tethys, whom Hyginus, in the preface 
to his fables, calls Admeto, and a daughter of Pontus 
and Thalassa, which last was the offspring of ZEther 
and Hemera. {Horn. Hymn, in Cererem, 421.— He¬ 
siod. Theog. 349.) 

Admetus, I. son of Pheres, king of Pherasa in Thes¬ 
saly, and who succeeded his father on the throne. He 
married Theone, daughter of Thestor, and, after her 
death, Alcestis, daughter of Pelias, so famous f©r her 
conjugal heroism. It was to the friendship of Apollo 
that he owed this latter union. The god having been 
banished from the sky for one year, in consequence 
of his killing the Cyclopes, tended during that period 
the herds of Admetus. Pelias had promised his 
daughter to the man who should bring him a chariot 
drawn by a lion and a wild boar, and Admetus suc¬ 
ceeded in this by the aid of Apollo. The god also 
obtained from the Fates, that Admetus should not die 
if another person laid down his or her life for him, and 
Alcestis heroically devoted herself to death for her 
husband. Admetus was so deeply affected at her loss, 
that Proserpina actually relented ; but Pluto remained 
inexorable, and Hercules at last descended to the 
shades and bore back Alcestis to life. Admetus was 
one of the Argonauts, and was also present at the hunt 
of the Calydonian boar. Euripides composed a tragedy 
on the story of Alcestis, which has come down to us. 
{Apollod. 1, 8 — Tibull. 2, 3 .—Hygin. fab 50, 51, 
&c.)—II. A king of the Molossi, to whom Themisto- 
cles, when banished, fled for protection. {Vid. The- 
mistocles ) — III A Greek epigrammatic poet, who 
lived in the early part of the second century after 
Christ. J 


Admo, an engraver on precious stones in the time 
of Augustus. His country is uncertain. An elegant 
portrait of Augustus, engraved by him, is described by 
Mongez, Icon. Rom., tab. 18, n. 6. 

Adonia, a festival in honour of Adonis, celebrated 
both at Byblus in Phoenicia, and in most of the Gre¬ 
cian cities. Lucian {de Syria Dea. —vol. 9, p. 88, 
seqq., cd. Bip.) has left us an account of the manner in 
which it was held at Byblus. According to this writer, 
it lasted during two days, on the first of which every, 
thing wore an appearance of sorrow, and the death of 
the favourite of Venus was indicated by public mourn¬ 
ing. On the following day, however, the aspect of 
things underwent a complete change, and the greatest 
joy prevailed on account of the fabled resurrection of 
Adonis from the dead. During this festival the priests 
of Byblus shaved their heads, in imitation of the priests 
of Isis in Egypt. In the Grecian cities, the manner of 
holding this festival was nearly, if not exactly, the same 
with that followed in Phoenicia. On the first day all the 
citizens put themselves in mourning ; coffins were ex¬ 
posed at every door ; the statues of Venus and Adonis 
were borne in procession, with certain vessels full of 
earth, in which the worshippers had raised corn, herbs, 
and lettuce, and these vessels were called the gardens 
of Adonis (Aduvidog Kqrroi). After the ceremony was 
over they were thrown into the sea or some river, where 
they soon perished, and thus became emblems of the 
premature death of Adonis, who had fallen, like a young 
plant, in the flower of his age. {Histoire du Culte 
d'Adonis: Mem. Acad, dcs Inscrip, &c., vol. 4, p. 136, 
seqq. — Dupuis, Originc de Cultes, vol. 4, p. 118, seqq., 
ed. 1822.— Valckenaer, ad Theoc. ’Ado)viu£. in Arg.) 
The lettuce was used among the other herbs on this 
occasion, because Venus was fabled to have deposited 
the dead body of her favourite on a bed of lettuce. In 
allusion to this festival, the expression 'Aduvidog kt) 7 toi 
became proverbial, and was applied to whatever per¬ 
ished previous to the period of maturity. {Adagia Vc- 
terum, p. 410.) Plutarch relates, in his life of Nicias, 
that the expedition against Syracuse set sail from the 
harbours of Athens, at the very time when the women 
of that city were celebrating the mournful part of the 
festival of Adonis, during which there were to be seen, 
in every quarter of the city, images of the dead, and 
funeral processions, the women accompanying them 
with dismal lamentations. Hence an unfavourable 
omen was drawn of the result of the expedition, which 
the event but too fatally realized. Theocritus, in his 
beautiful Idyll entitled ’A doviu^ovoai, has left us an 
account of the part of this grand anniversary spec¬ 
tacle termed rj evpeoig, “ the finding ,” i. e., the resur¬ 
rection of Adonis, the celebration of it having been 
made by order of Arsinoe, queen of Ptolemy Phila- 
delphus. Boettiger {Sabina, p. 265) has a very in¬ 
genious idea in relation to the fruits exhibited on this 
joyful occasion. He thinks it impossible, that even so 
powerful a queen as Arsinoe should be able to obtain 
in the spring of the year, when this festival was always 
celebrated, fruits which had attained their full maturity 
(cjpm). He considers it more than probable that they 
were of wax. This conjecture will also furnish anoth¬ 
er, and perhaps a more satisfactory, explanation of the 
phrase ’A donndog kt/ttol, denoting things whose exterior 
promised fairly, while there was nothing real or sub¬ 
stantial within. Adonis was the same deity with the 
Syrian Tammuz, whose festival was celebrated even 
by the Jews, when they degenerated into idolatry 
{Ezekiel, 8, 14); and Tammuz is the proper Syriac 
name for the Adonis of the Greeks. {Creuzer's Sym- 
bolik, vol. ii., p. 86 ) {Vid Adonis.) 

Adonis, I. son of Cinyras, by his daughter Myrrha 
{vid. Myrrha), and famed for his beauty. He was ar¬ 
dently attached to the chase, and notwithstanding the 
entreaties of Venus, who feared for his safety and loved 
, him tenderly, he exposed himself day after day in the 


18 




ADR 


ADR 


hunt, and at last lost his life by the tusk of a wild 
boar whom he had wounded. His blood produced the 
anemone, according to Ovid {Met. 10, 735); but ac¬ 
cording to others, the adonium, while the anemone 
arose from the tears of Venus. ( Bion, Epitaph. Ad. 66.) 
The goddess was inconsolable at his loss, and at last 
obtained from Proserpina, that Adonis should spend al¬ 
ternately six months with her on earth, and the remain¬ 
ing six in the shades. This fable is evidently an alle¬ 
gorical allusion to the periodical return of winter and 
summer. {Apollod. 3, 14.— Ov. 1. c. — Bion, l. c. — 
Virg. Eel. 10, 18, &c.) “ Adonis, or Adonai,” ob¬ 

serves R. P. Knight, “ was an Oriental title of the 
sun, signifying Lord; and the boar, supposed to have 
killed him, was the emblem of winter; during which 
the productive powers of nature being suspended, Ve¬ 
nus was said to lament the loss of Adonis until he was 
again restored to life ; whence both the Syrian and Ar- 
give women annually mourned his death and celebra¬ 
ted his renovation ; and the mysteries of Venus and 
Adonis at Byblus in Syria were held in similar esti¬ 
mation with those of Ceres and Bacchus at Eleusis, 
and Isis and Osiris in Egypt. Adonis was said to 
pass six months with Proserpina and six with Venus ; 
whence some learned persons have conjectured that 
the allegory was invented near the pole, where the sun 
disappears during so long a time ; but it may signify 
merely the decrease and increase of the productive 
powers of nature as the sun retires and advances. The 
Vishnoo or Juggernaut of the Hindus is equally said 
to lie in a dormant state during the four rainy months 
of that climate ; and the Osiris of the Egyptians was 
supposed to be dead or absent forty days in each year, 
during which the people lamented his loss, as the Sy¬ 
rians did that of Adonis, and the Scandinavians that of 
Frey ; though at Upsal, the great metropolis of their 
worship, the sun never continues any one day entirely 
below their horizon.” An Inquiry into the Symbol¬ 
ical Language of Ancient Art and Mythology {Class. 
Journal, vol. 25, p. 42.)—II. A river of Phoenicia, 
which falls into the Mediterranean below Byblus. It 
is now called Nahr Ibrahim. At the anniversary of 
the death of Adonis, which was in the rainy season, its 
waters were tinged red with the ochrous particles from 
the mountains of Libanus, and were fabled to flow with 
his blood. But Dupuis (4, p. 121), with more proba¬ 
bility, supposes this red colour to have been a mere ar¬ 
tifice on the part of the priests. 

Adramyttium, a city of Asia Minor, on the coast of 
Mysia, and at the head of an extensive bay (Sinus Ad- 
ramy ttenus) facing the island of Lesbos. Strabo (605) 
makes it an Athenian colony. Stephanus Byzantinus 
follows Aristotle, and mentions Adramys, the brother 
of Croesus, as its founder. This last is more proba¬ 
bly the true account, especially as an adjacent district 
bore the name of Lydia. According, however, to Eu¬ 
stathius and other commentators, the place existed be¬ 
fore the Trojan war, and was no other than the Peda- 
sus of Homer {Plin. 5, 32). This city became a place 
of importance under the kings of Pergamus, and con¬ 
tinued so in the time of the Roman power, although 
it suffered severely during the war with Mithradates. 
{Strab. 605.) Here the Convcntus Juridicus was 
held. The modern name is Adramyt, and it is repre¬ 
sented as being still a place of some commerce. It 
contains 1000 houses, but mostly mean and miserably 
built. Adramyttium is mentioned in the Acts of the 
Apostles (ch. 27, 2). 

Adrana, a river in Germany, in the territory of the 
Catti, and emptying into the Visurgis. Now the Eder. 

Adrantus. Vid. Supplement. 

Adranus. Vid. Supplement. 

Adrastea (A dpdcTELa), I. a region of Mysia, in 
Asia Minor, near Priapus, at the entrance of the Pro¬ 
pontis, and containing a plain and city of the same 
name. The appellation was said to have been derived 


from Adrastus, who founded in the latter a temple to 
Nemesis. {Strab. 558.— Steph. B. s. v.) This ety¬ 
mology, however, appears very doubtful. A more cor¬ 
rect one is given under No. II. The city had origi¬ 
nally an oracle of Apollo and Diana, which was af¬ 
terward removed to Parium in its vicinity. Homer 
makes mention of Adrastea, but Pliny is in error (5, 
32) when he supposes Parium and Adrastea to have 
been the same.—II. A daughter of Jupiter and Neces¬ 
sity, so called, not from Adrastus, who is said to have 
erected the first temple to her, but from the impossi¬ 
bility of the wicked escaping her power : a privative, 
and dpuco, 11 to flee .” She is the same as Nemesis.— 
III. A Cretan nymph, daughter of Melisseus, to whom 
the goddess Rhea intrusted the infant Jupiter in the 
Dictaean grotto. In this office Adrastea was assisted 
by her sister Ida and the Curetes {Apollod. 1 , 1 , 6 ; 
Callim. Hymn, in Jov. 47), whom the scholiast on Cal¬ 
limachus calls her brothers. Apollonius Rhodius (3, 
132, seqq.) relates that she gave to the infant Jupiter a 
beautiful globe {otyalpa) to play with, and on some Cre¬ 
tan coins Jupiter is represented sitting on a globe. 
{Spanheim ad Callim. 1. c.) 

Adrastus, .1. a king of Argos, son of Talaus and 
Lysimache. ( Vid. Supplement.)—II. A son of the 
Phrygian king Gordius, who had unintentionally killed 
his brother, and was, in consequence, expelled by his 
father, and deprived of everything. He took refuge as 
a suppliant at the court of Croesus, king of Lydia, w r ho 
received him kindly and purified him. After some 
time he was sent out as guardian of Atys, the son of 
Croesus, who was to deliver the country around the 
Mysian Olympus from a wild boar which had made 
great havoc in it. Adrastus had the misfortune to kill 
the young prince Atys while throwing his javelin at 
the wild beast: Croesus pardoned the unfortunate man, 
as he saw in this accident the will of the gods and the 
fulfilment of a prophecy ; but Adrastus could not en¬ 
dure to live longer, and accordingly killed himself on 
the tomb of Atys. {Herod., 1, 35-45.)—III. A Per¬ 
ipatetic philosopher, born at Aphrodisias in Caria, and 
who flourished about the beginning of the second cen¬ 
tury of our era. He was the author of a treatise on 
the arrangement of Aristotle’s writings and his sys¬ 
tem of philosophy, quoted by Simplicius {Prcefat. in. 
viii. lib. phys.), and by Achilles Tatius (p. 82). Some 
commentaries of his on the Timseus of Plato are also 
quoted by Porphyry (p. 270, in Harm. Ptol.), and a 
treatise on the categories of Aristotle by Galen. None 
of these have come down to us, but a work on Har¬ 
monics {rcepl 'kpyovLKuv) is preserved in manuscript 
in the Vatican library.—IV. Father of Eurydice, and 
grandfather of Laomedon. {Apollod. 3, 12, 3.)—V. 
Son of the soothsayer Merops of Percote. He went 
to the Trojan war with his brother, against the will of 
his father, and was slain by Diomede. 

Adria, Atria, or Hadria, I. in the time of the Ro¬ 
mans a small city of Cisalpine Gaul, on the river Tar¬ 
tarus, near the Po. Its site is still occupied by the 
modern town of Atri. In the ages preceding the Ro¬ 
man power, Adria appears to have been a powerful 
and flourishing commercial city, as far as an opinion 
may be deduced from the circumstance of its having 
given name to the Adriatic, and also from the numer¬ 
ous canals which were to be found in its vicinity. 
(Compare Liv. 5, 33.— Strab. 218.— Justin, 20, 1.— 
Plin. 3, 16.) It had been founded by a colony of 
Etrurians, to whose labours these canals must evi¬ 
dently be ascribed, the name given to them by the 
Romans {fossiones Philistina) proving that they were 
not the work of the people. (Compare Muller, Etrusk. v 
vol. 1, p. 228, in notis .) The fall of Adria was ow¬ 
ing to the inroads of the Gallic nations, and the conse¬ 
quent neglect of the canals. Livy, Justin, and most 
of the ancient historians, write the name of this city 
Adria; the geographers, on the other hand, prefer 

19 



ADR 


ADU 


Atria. In Strabo alone the reading is doubtful. Ma- 
nutius and Cellarius, and the authority of inscriptions 
and coins, give the preference to the form Hadria. 
Berkel ( ad Steph. Byzant., v. 'A 6pia) is also in favour 
of it. It must be observed, however, that Adria is 
found on coins as well as the aspirated form. ( Rasche, 
Lex Rci Num ., vol. 4, col. 9. — Cellarius, Gcogr. 
Ant. 1, 509.) — II. A town of Picenum, capital of the 
Prsetutii, on the coast of the Adriatic. Here the fam¬ 
ily of the Emperor Adrian, according to his own ac¬ 
count, took its rise. The modern name of the place 
is Adri or Atri. 

Adrianopolis, or Hadrianopolis, I. one of the 
most important cities of Thrace, founded by and named 
after the Emperor Adrian or Hadrian. Being of com¬ 
paratively recent date, it is consequently not mentioned 
by the old geographical writers. Even Ptolemy is 
silent respecting it, since his notices are not later than 
the reign of Trajan. The site of this city, however, 
was previously occupied by a small Thracian settle¬ 
ment named Uskudama; and its very advantageous 
situation determined the emperor in favour of erecting 
f. large city on the spot. ( Ammian. Marcell. 14, 11. 
l — Eutrop. 6,8.) Adrianopolis stood on the right bank 
i>f the Hebrus, now Maritza, which forms a junction in 
this quarter w T ith the Arda, or Ardiscus, now Arda, 
and the Tonzus, now Tundscha. (Compare Zosimus, 
2, 22.— Lamprid. Elagab. 7.) This city became fa¬ 
mous in a later age for its manufactories of arms, and 
in the fourth century succeeded in withstanding the 
Goths, who laid siege to it after their victory over the 
Emperor Yalens. {Ammian. Marcell. 31,15.) Hier- 
ocles (p. 635) makes it the chief city of the Thracian 
province of Hsemimontius. The inhabitants were prob¬ 
ably ashamed of their Thracian origin, and borrowed 
therefore a primitive name for their city from the my¬ 
thology of the Greeks. {Vid. Orestias.) Mannert 
(7, 263) thinks that the true appellation was Odrysos, 
which they thus purposely altered. The modern name 
of the place is Adrianople, or rather Edrineh. It was 
taken by the Turks in 1360 or 1363, and the Em¬ 
peror Anaurath made it his residence. It continued 
to be the imperial city until the fall of Constantinople ; 
but, though the court has been removed to the latter 
place, Adrianople is still the second city in the empire, 
and very important, in case of invasion by a foreign 
power, as a central point for collecting the Turkish 
strength. Its present population is not less than 
100,000 souls.—II. A city of Bithynia in Asia Minor, 
founded by the Emperor Adrian. D’Anville places it 
in the southern part of the territory of the Mariandyni, 
and makes it correspond to the modern Boli. —III. 
Another city of Bithynia, called more properly Adriani 
or Hadriani (’A dpiavoi). It is frequently mentioned 
in ecclesiastical writers, and by Hierocles (p. 693), and 
there are medals existing of it, on which it is styled 
Adriani near Olympus. Hence D’Anville, on his 
map, places it to the southwest of Mount Olympus, in 
the district of Olympena, and makes it the same with 
the modern Edrenos. Mannert opposes this, and places 
it in the immediate vicinity of the river Rhyndacus.— 
IY. A city of Epirus, in the district of Thesprotia, 
situate to the southeast of Antigonea, on the river Ce- 
lydnus. Its ruins are still found upon a spot named 
Drinopolis , an evident corruption of its earlier name. 
( Hughes ’ Travels, 2, 236.) — Y. A name given to a 
part of Athens, in which the Emperor Adrian or Ha¬ 
drian had erected many new and beautiful structures. 
{Gruter, Inscrip., p. 177.) 

Adrianus, a Roman emperor. {Vid. Hadrianus.) 

Adrianus. Vid. Supplement. 

Adrias, the name properly of the territory in which 
the city of Adria in Cisalpine Gaul was situated. 
Herodotus (5, 9) first speaks of it under this appella¬ 
tion (o A dpiap), which is given also by many subse¬ 
quent Greek writers. (Compare Scylax, p. 5.) Most 


of them, however, considered it very probably a name 
for the Adriatic. Strabo (123) certainly uses it 
in this sense ('O d’ ’I oviop icoArcop gepop earl rov 
vvv ’A dpiov A eyogevov). More careful writers, how¬ 
ever, and especially Polybius, give merely 6 ’Adpiap, 
without any mention of its referring to the Adriatic. 
The latter author, although acquainted with the form 
Adriaticus {rdv ’Adpianadv gvxov, 2, 16), yet, when 
he wishes to designate the entire gulf, has either <5 
Kara rov ’A dpiav KoArcop (2, 14), or y Kara rov ’Adpi- 
av AdAarra (2, 16). So, in speaking of the mouths 
of the Po, he uses the expression oi Kara rdv ’Adpiav 
koAttqi (2, 14). Hence both Casaubon and Schwei- 
ghseuser, in their respective editions of Polybius, are 
wrong, in translating 6 ’Adpiap by Mare Adriaticum 
and Sinus Adriaticus. 

Adriaticum (or Hadriaticum) mare, called also 
Sinus Adriaticus (or Hadriaticus), the arm of the sea 
between Italy and the opposite shores of Illyricum, 
Epirus, and Greece, comprehending, in its greatest ex¬ 
tent, not only the present Gulf of Venice, but also 
the Ionian Sea. Herodotus, in one passage (7, 20), 
calls the whole extent of sea along the coast of Illyri¬ 
cum and Western Greece, as far as the Corinthian 
Gulf, by the name of the Ionian Sea (T uviop novrop). 
In another passage he styles the part in the vicinity of 
Epidamnus, the Ionian Gulf (6, 127). Scylax makes 
the Ionian Gulf the same with what he calls Adrias 
(to de avro ’Adpiap sort, aai ’luyiop, p. 11), and places 
the termination of both at Hydruntum {Aigyv 'Y dpovp 
ercl r<p rov ’Adpiov y rov ’loviov ko?itcov aroyan, 

р. 5). He is silent, however, respecting the Ionian 
Sea, as named by Herodotus. Thucydides, like He¬ 
rodotus, distinguishes between the Ionian Gulf and 
Ionian Sea. The former he makes a part of the latter, 
which reaches to the shores of Western Greece. Thus 
he observes, in relation to the site of Epidamnus, 
’Vrridagvdp carl izoAip ev detjia eoTC?Iovn rdf ’luviov 
koAtcov (1, 24). These ideas, however, became changed 
at a later period. The limits of what Scylax had styled 
’Adpiap, and made synonymous with 1 uviop KoAuop 
were extended to the shores of Italy and the western 
coast of Greece, so that now the Ionic Gulf was re¬ 
garded only as a part of ’A dpiap, or the Adriatic. 
Eustathius informs us, that the more accurate writers 
always observed this distinction {oi dd uKpiEeGrepoi 
rdv T 6vlov gepop rov ’Adpiov <paci. Eustath. ad Di- 
onys. Perieg. v. 92). Hence we obtain a solution of 
Ptolemy’s meaning, when he makes the Adriatic ex¬ 
tend along the entire coast of Western Greece to the 
southern extremity of the Peloponnesus. The Mare 
Superum of the Roman writ ers is represented on clas¬ 
sical charts as coinciding with the Sinus Hadriaticus, 
which last is made to terminate near Hydruntum, the 
modern Otranto. By Mare Superum, however, in the 
strictest acceptation of the phrase, appears to have 
been meant not only the present Adriatic, but also the 
sea along the southern coast of Italy, as far as the Si¬ 
cilian straits, which would make it correspond, there¬ 
fore, very nearly, if not exactly, to the 6 ’Adpiap of the 
later Greek writers. 

Adrumetum. Vid. ITadrumetum. 

Aduatucum, a city of Gaul, in the territory of the 
Tungri, who appear to have been the same with the 
Aduatuci or Aduatici of Csesar {B. G. 2, 29), unless 
the former appellation is to be regarded as a general 
one for the united German tribes, of whom the Aduat¬ 
uci formed a part. (Compare Tacitus, de mor. Germ. 

с. 2.) This city is called ’A rovdnovrov by Ptolemy, 
and Aduaca Tongrorum in the Itinerarium Anton. 
and Tab. Pcuting. At a later period it took the name 
of Tongri from the people themselves. Mannert makes 
it the same with the modern Tongres, and D’Anville 
with Falais on the Mehaigne. The former of these 
geographers, however, thinks that it must have been 
distinct from the Aduatuca Castellum mentioned by Ca- 





A E AC 


EDI 


sar ( B. G., 6 , 32), which he places nearer the Rhine. 
(Manncrt, 2, 200.) 

Aihtatljci or AduatTci, a German nation who ori¬ 
ginally formed a part of the great invading army of 
the Teutones and Cimbri. They were left behind in 
Gaul, to guard a part of the baggage, and finally set¬ 
tled there. Their territory extended from the Scaldis, 
or Schcltl, eastward as far as Mosse Pons, or Mcestncht. 
( Manncrt, 2, 199.) 

Adulis, called by Pliny ( 6 , 29) Oppidum Adulita- 
rum, the principal commercial city along the coast of 
Ethiopia. It was founded by fugitive slaves from 
Egypt, but fell subsequently under the power of the 
neighbouring kingdom of Auxume. Ptolemy writes 
the name ’A 6ovXr], Strabo ’A Sbv'Xei, and Stephanus 
Byzantinus "kdovTag. Adulis has become remarkable 
on account of the two Greek inscriptions found in it. 
Cosmas Indicopleustes, as he is commonly called, was 
the first who gave an account of them (/. 2 , p. 140, 
apud Montfauc.). One is on a kind of throne, or rather 
armchair, of white marble, the other on a tablet of 
touchstone (and (daoav'iTov XiQov), erected behind the 
throne. Cosmas gives copies of both, and his MS. 
has also a drawing of the throne or chair itself. The 
inscription on the tablet relates to Ptolemy Euergetes, 
and his conquests in Asia Minor, Thrace, and Upper 
Asia. It is imperfect, however, towards the end ; al¬ 
though, if the account of Cosmas be correct, the part 
of the stone which was broken off was not large, and, 
consequently, but a small part of the inscription was 
lost. Cosmas and his coadjutor Menas believed that 
the other inscription, which was to b 6 found on the 
throne or chair, would be the continuation of the for¬ 
mer, and therefore give it as such. It was reserved 
for Salt and Buttmann to prove, that the inscription on 
the tablet alone related to Ptolemy, and that the one 
on the throne or chair was of much more recent origin, 
probably as late as the second or third century, and 
made by some native prince in imitation of the former. 
One of the principal arguments by which they arrive at 
this conclusion is, that the inscription on the throne 
speaks of conquests in Ethiopia which none of the 
Ptolemies ever made. (Museum dcr Alterthumswis- 
scnschaft , vol. 2, p. 105, seqq.) 

Adyrmachid^:, a maritime people of Africa, near 
Egypt. Ptolemy {lib. 4, c. 5) calls them Adyrmach- 
ites, but Herodotus (4, 168), Pliny (5, 6 ), and Silius 
Italicus (3, 279), make the name to be Adyrmachidae 
(’A dvppaxldai). Hence, as Larcher observes {Histoire 
d'Hcrodolc, vol. 8 , p. 10, Table Geogr.), the text of 
Ptolemy ought to be corrected by these authorities. 
The Adyrmachidae were driven into the interior of 
the country when the Greeks began to settle along the 
coast. 

Ea, the city of KingEtes, said to have been situate 
on the river Phasis in Colchis. The most probable 
opinion is, that it existed only in the imaginations of 
the poets. ( Manncrt , 4, 397.) 

yEaces, a tyrant of Samos, deprived of his tyranny 
by Aristagoras, B.C. 500. He fled to the Persians, 
and induced the Samians to abandon the other Ionians 
in the sea-fight with the Persians. He was restored 
by the Persians in the year B.C. 494. ( Hcredotus, 

4, 138.) 

EacIdes, I. a patronymic of the descendants ofEa- 
cus, such as Achilles, Peleus, Pyrrhus, &c. ( Virg. 

Afin. 1 , 99, &c.) The line of the Eacidse is given 
as follows : Eacus became the father of Telamon and 
Peleus by his wife Endeis. {Tzctzes, ad Lycophr., v. 
175, calls her Deis, A pig.) From the Nereid Psam- 
a-the was born to him Phocus {Hesiod., Theog., 1003, 
seqq.), whom he preferred to his other sons, and who 
became more conspicuous in gymnastic and naval ex¬ 
ercises than either Telamon or Peleus. ( Muller, 
JEgmet.., p 22.) Phocus was, in consequence, slain 
by his brothers, who thereupon fled from the vengeance 


of their father. {Dorotheas, apud Tint. Parall., 25, 
277, W. — Heyne, ad Apollod., 12, 6, 6.) Telamon 
took refuge at the court of Cychreus of Salamis, Pe¬ 
leus retired to Phthia in Thessaly. {Apollod. I c .— 
Pherccyd. apud Tzclz. in Lycophr., v. 175.) From 
Peleus came Achilles, from Telamon Ajax. Achilles 
was the father of Pyrrhus, from whom came the line 
of the kings of Epirus. From Teucer, the brother of 
Ajax, were descended the princes of Cyprus; while 
from Ajax himself came some of the most illustrious 
Athenian families. {Midler, Mginct., p. 23.) — II. 
The son of Arymbas, king of Epirus, succeeded to the 
throne on the death of his cousin Alexander, who was 
slain in Italy. {Livy, 28, 24.) Eacides married 
Phthia, the daughter of Menon of Pharsalus, by whom 
he had the celebrated Pyrrhus, and two daughters, 
Dei'damea and Troias. In B.C. 317, he assisted Po- 
lysperchon in restoring Olympias and the young Alex^ 
ander, who was then only five years old, to Macedonia. 
In the following year he marched to the assistance of 
Olympias, who was hard pressed by Cassander. But 
the Epirotes disliked the service, rose against Eaci¬ 
des, and drove him from his kingdom. Pyrrhus, who 
was then only two years old, was with difficulty saved 
from destruction by some faithful servants. But, be¬ 
coming tired of the Macedonian rule, the Epirotes re¬ 
called Eacides in B.C. 313. Cassander immediately 
sent an army against him under Philip, who conquer¬ 
ed him the same year in two battles, in the last ol 
which he was killed. {Pausan., 1 , 11.) 

Eacus. Vid. Supplement. 

E^:a, a name given to Circe, because born at Ea. 
{Virg., JEn., 3, 386.) 

Eanteum, a small settlement on the coast of Troas, 
near the promontory of Rhceteum. It was founded by 
the Rhodians, and was remarkable for containing the 
tomb of Ajax, and a temple dedicated to his memory. 
The old statue of the hero was carried away by An¬ 
tony to Egypt, but was restored by Augustus. {Stra¬ 
bo, 595.) In Pliny’s time this place had ceased to ex¬ 
ist, as may be inferred from his expression, “ Fait et 
Manteum ” (5, 30). Mannert asserts that Lecheva- 
lier is wrong in placing the mound of Ajax on the sum¬ 
mit of the hill by Intcpc. 

EantTdes, I. one of the Tragic Pleiades. {Vid. 
Alexandrina Schola.) He lived in the time of the 
second Ptolemy.—II. The tyrant of Lampsacus, to 
whom Hippias gave his daughter Archedice. 

Eas, a river of Epirus, thought to be the modern 
Vajussa, falling into the Ionian Sea. Isaac Vossius, 
in his commentary on Pomponius Mela (2, 3, cxtr.), 
charges Ovid with an error in geography, in making 
this river fall into the Peneus {Met., 1 , 577). But 
Vossius was wrong himself in making the verb con- 
vcmunt, as used by Ovid, in the passage in question, 
equivalent to ingrcdiuntur. Ovid only means that 
the deities of the river mentioned by him met together 
in the cave of the Peneus. 

Edepsus, a town of Euboea in the district Histiaeo- 
tis, famed for its hot baths, which even at the present 
day are the most celebrated in Greece. The modem 
name of the place is Dipso. But, according to Sib- 
thorpe {Walpole's Coll., vol. 2, p. 71), Lipso. In Plu¬ 
tarch {Sympos., 4, 4), this place is called Galepsus 
{TaXyipog), which many regard as an error of the copy¬ 
ists. If the modern name as given by Sibthorpe be 
correct, it appears more likely that Lrpso is a corrup¬ 
tion of Galepsus, and that the latter was only another 
name for the place, and no error. 

Edesia. Vid. Supplement. 

Edesius, a Cappadocian, called a Platonic, or per¬ 
haps, more correctly, an Eclectic philosopher, who 
lived in the 4th century, and was the friend and most 
distinguished scholar of Iambliahus. After the death 
of his master, the school of Syria was dispersed, and 
Edesius, fearing the real or fancied hostility of the 

21 



MG IE 


MGE 


Christian emperor Constantine to philosophy, took ref¬ 
uge in divination. An oracle in hexameter verse rep¬ 
resented a pastoral life as his only retreat; but his dis¬ 
ciples, perhaps calming his fears by a metaphorical in¬ 
terpretation, compelled him to resume his instructions. 
He settled at Pergamos, where he numbered among 
his pupils the Emperor Julian. After the accession of 
the latter to the imperial purple, he invited HEdesius to 
continue his instructions, but the latter, being unequal 
to the task through age, sent in his stead Chrysanthes 
and Eusebius, his disciples. ( Eunap., Vit. lEdes.) 

HEdessa. Vid. Edessa. 

Aedon. Vid. Philomela. 

HEdui, a powerful nation of Gaul. Their confeder¬ 
ation embraced all the tract of country comprehended 
between the Alhcr, the middle Loire , and the Saonc , 
and extending a little beyond this river towards the 
south. The proper capital was Bibracte, and the sec¬ 
ond city in importance Noviodunum. The political 
influence ofthe HEdui extended over theMandubes or 
Mandubii, whose chief city Alesia traced its origin to 
the most ancient periods of Gaul, and passed for a 
work of the Tyrian Hercules. ( Diod. Sic., 4, 19.) 
This same influence reached also the Ambarri, the In- 
subres, and the Segusiani. The Bituriges themselves, 
who had been previously one of the most flourishing 
nations of Gaul, were held by the JEdui in a condition 
approaching that of subjects. ( Thierry, Histoire des 
Gaulois, 2, 31.) When Caesar came into Gaul, he 
found that the HEdui, after having long contended with 
the Arverni and Sequani for the supremacy in Gaul, 
had been overcome by the two latter, who called 
in Ariovistus and the Germans to their aid. The 
arrival of the Roman commander soon changed the 
aspect of affairs, and the HEdui were restored by the 
Roman arms to the chief power in the country. They 
became, of course, valuable allies for Csesar in his Gal¬ 
lic conquests. Eventually, however, they embraced 
the party of Vercingetorix against Rome ; but, when 
the insurection was quelled, they were still favourably 
treated on account of their former services. ( Cces., B. 
G., 1, 31, seqq .) 

Meta, or HEetes, king of Colchis, son of Sol, and 
Perseis, the daughter of Oceanus, was father of Medea, 
Absyrtus, and Chalciope, by Idyia, one of the Oceani- 
des. He killed Phryxus, son of Athamas, who had 
fled to his court on a golden ram. This murder he 
committed to obtain the fleece of the golden ram. The 
Argonauts came against Colchis, and recovered the 
golden fleece by means of Medea, though it was guard¬ 
ed by bulls that breathed fire, and by a venomous drag¬ 
on. (1 id. Jason, Medea, and Phryxus ) He was 
afterward, according to Apollodorus, deprived of his 
kingdom by his brother Perses, but was restored to it 
by Medea, who had returned from Greece to Colchis. 
(Apollod., 1, 9, 28.— Hcyne, ad Apollod., 1. c. — Ov., 
Met., 7, 11, seqq., &c.) 

HEetTas, HEetis, and HEetine, patronymic forms 
from HEetes, used by Roman poets to designate his 
daughter Medea. (Ovid, Met., 7, 9, 296.) 

HEga. Vtd. Supplement. 

Mgje, I. a small town on the western coast of 
Euboea, southeast of HEdepsus. It contained a tem¬ 
ple sacred to Neptune, and was supposed to have giv¬ 
en name to the Hgean. ( Strab ., 386.)—II. A city 
of Macedonia, the same with Edessa.—III. A town 
of Achaia, near the mouth of the Crathis. It appears 
to have been abandoned eventually by its inhabitants, 
who retired to HEgira. The cause of their removal is 
not known. . ( Sliabo , 386.)—IV. A town and sea¬ 
port of Cilicia Campestris, at the mouth of the Py- 
ramus, and on the upper shore ofthe Sinus Issicus. 
The modern village of Ay as occupies its site. (Strab 
676.— Phn., 5, 27.— Lucan, 3, 225.) 

HEG./Ea, I. a city of Mauritania Csesariensis. ( Ptol.) 

H. A surname of Venus, from her worship in the 


islands of the HEgean Sea. (Statius, Thebais, 8, 4, 
7, 8.) 

HEg^eon, I. one of the fifty sons of Lycaon, whom 
Jupiter slew. (Apollod., 3, 8, 1.)—II. A giant, son of 
Uranus by Gaea. ( Vid. Supplement.) 

HEg^eum make, that part ofthe Mediterranean lying 
between Greece and Asia Minor. It is now called the 
Archipelago , which modern appellation appears to be 
a corruption of Egio Pclago, itself a modern Greek 
form for A lyalov Ttelayoq. Various etymologies are 
given for the ancient name. The most common 
is that which deduces it from HEgeus, father of 
Theseus; the most plausible is that which derives it 
from HEgee in Euboea. ( Stiab ., 386.) In all proba¬ 
bility, however, neither is correct. The HEgean was 
accounted particularly stormy and dangerous to navi¬ 
gators, whence the proverb tov A iyalov Kiel (soil. 
KoTinov). (Erasm. Chil. Col., 632.) 

HEg^eus, a surname of Neptune, given him as an 
appellation to denote the god of the waves. Compare 
Muller, Geschichte, &c. (Die Dorier), vol. 2, p. 238, 
in notis. 

HEgaleos, a mountain of Attica, from the summit 
of which Xerxes beheld the battle of Salamis. (Her¬ 
od., 8, 90.) According to Thucydides (2, 19), it was 
situate to the left of the road from Athens to Eleusis. 
Mount HEgaleos seems indeed to be a continuation of 
Corydallus, stretching northward into the interior of 
Attica. The modern name is Skaramanga. (Cra¬ 
mer's Greece, 2, 355.) 

HEgates, or HEgusae, three islands off the western 
extremity of Sicily, between Drepana and Lilybseum. 
The name AEgusa (klyovaa) properly belonged to but 
one of the number. As this, however, was the prin¬ 
cipal and most fertile one (now Favignana), the ap¬ 
pellation became a common one for all three. The 
Romans corrupted the name into HEgades. (Mela, 
2. 7. — Floras, 2, 2.) Livy, however (21, 10, &c.), 
uses the form HEgates. The northernmost of these 
islands is called by Ptolemy Phorbantia (<4 opdavria ), 
i. e., the pasture-land, which the Latin writers trans¬ 
late by Bucina, i. e., Oxen-island, it being probably 
uninhabited, and used only for pasturing cattle. This 
island is very rocky, and bears in modern times the 
name of Levanzo. The third and westernmost island 
was called Hiera ('lepu), which Pliny converts into 
Hieronesus, i. e., Sacred island. At a later period, 
however, the Romans changed the name into Mari.ti- 
ma, as it lay the farthest out to sea. Under this ap¬ 
pellation the ltin. Mar it. (p. 492) makes mention of 
it, but errs in giving the distance from Lilybseum as 
300 stadia, a computation which is much too large. 
The modern name is Marettmo. Off'these islands the 
Roman fleet, under Lutatius Catulus, obtained a de¬ 
cisive victory over that of the Carthaginians, and which 
put an end to the first Punic war. (Liv., 21, 10. — Id. 
ibid., 41.— Id., 22, 54.) 

HEgesta, an ancient city of Sicily, in the western 
extremity of the island, near Mount Eryx. The Greek 
writers name it, at one time HEgesta (Aiyecra), at an¬ 
other Egesta ( v Eye<xra). The cause of the slight va¬ 
riation would seem to have been, that the citv was one 
not of Greek origin, and that the name was written 
from hearing it pronounced. In a later age, when the 
inhabitants attached themselves to the Roman power, 
they called their city Segcsta, and themselves Segcs- 
tani, according to Festus (s. v. Segcsta), who states 
that the alteration was made to obviate an improper 
ambiguity in the term. (Praposita est ci S. liter a ne 
obsceno nomine appellaretur.) It is more probable, 
however, that the Romans caused it to be done on ac¬ 
count of the ill-omened analogy m sound between 
JEgesta or Egesta, and the Latin term egestas, “want.” 

1 hucydides (6, 2) states, that after the destruction 
of Troy, a body of the fugitives found their way to 
this quarter, and, uniting with the Sicani, whom they 





iEGE 


JEGl 


found settled here, formed with them one people, under 
the name of Elymi. In the course of time their num¬ 
bers were still farther increased by the junction of 
some wandering Achffii. This seems to have been the 
generally-received idea among the Greeks, respecting 
the origin of the Elymi and HEgestaei. Its improba¬ 
bility, however, is apparent even at first view. When 
the Romans became masters of these parts, after the 
first Punic war, they readily adopted the current tra¬ 
dition respecting the people of yEgesta, as well as the 
idea of an affinity, through the line of yEneas, between 
themselves and the latter, and the legend is interwoven 
also with the subject of the yEneid (5, 36, seqq .— Vid. 
yEgestes). From the circumstance of the Romans 
having recognised the affinity of the yEgestseans to 
themselves, we find them styled, in the Duilian in¬ 
scription, “ the kinsmen of the Roman people.” COG- 
NATI P. R. ( Ciaccomus , de Col. Rostr. Dull., Lugd. 
Bat. 1597.) Cicero, too (in Verrem. 4, 33), adopts 
the current tradition of the day. Whatever our opin¬ 
ion may be relative to the various details of these le¬ 
gends, one thing at least very clearly appears, which 
is, that yEgesta was not of Grecian origin. Thucyd¬ 
ides (7, 58), in enumerating the allies of Syracuse, 
speaks of the people of Himera as forming the only 
Grecian settlement on the northern coast of Sicily ; 
and in another part (7, 57), expressly classes the 
yEgestaeans among Barbarians (B apSapuv ’'Eyeoraloi). 
The origin of yEgesta, therefore, may be fairly as¬ 
cribed to a branch of the Pelasgic race, the Trojans 
themselves being of the same stock. (Vid. yEneas.) 
Previous to the arrival of the Romans in Sicily, the 
yEgestseans were engaged in a long contest with the 
inhabitants of Selinus. Finding themselves, however, 
the weaker party, they solicited and obtained the aid 
of Athens. The unfortunate issue of the Athenian 
expedition against Syracuse compelled the yEgestse- 
ans to look for new allies in the Carthaginians. These 
came to their aid, and Selinus fell ; but yEgesta also 
shared its fate, and the city remained under this new 
control, until, for the purpose of regaining its freedom, 
it espoused the cause of Agathocles. The change, 
however, was for the worse ; and the tyrant, offended 
at their unwillingness to contribute supplies, murdered 
a part of the inhabitants, drove the rest into exile, and 
changed the name of the city to Dicseopolis, settling in 
it at the same time a body of deserters that had come 
over to him. (Polyb. 20, 71.) The death of Agatho¬ 
cles very probably restored the old name, and brought 
back the surviving part of the former inhabitants, since 
we find the appellation yEgesta reappearing in the 
first Punic war (Polyb. 1, 24), and since the yEgestse- 
ans, during that same conflict, after slaughtering a Car¬ 
thaginian garrison which had been placed within their 
walls, were able to declare themselves the kinsmen of 
the Roman people. (Zonaras, 8, 4.) It was this pre¬ 
tended affinity between the two communities that pre¬ 
served yEgesta from oblivion after it had fallen be¬ 
neath the Roman sway, and we find Pliny (3, 8) na¬ 
ming the inhabitants among the number of those who 
enjoyed the jus Latinum. The ruins of the place are 
found, at the present day, near the modern Alcamo. 
(Mannert , 9, 2, 393, seqq. — Hoarc's Classical Tour , 
2,61.) .. 

^Egestes, yEgestus, or, as Virgil writes it, Acestes, 
a son of the river-god Cjimisus, by a Trojan mother, 
according to one account, while another makes both 
his parents to have been ofTrojan origin. Laomedon, 
it seems, had given the daughters of a distinguished 
person among his subjects to certain Sicilian mariners, 
to carry away and expose to wild beasts They were 
brought to Sicily, where the god of the Crimisus uni¬ 
ted himself to one of them, and became father of yEges- 
tes. This is the first account just alluded to. The 
other one is as follows: A young Trojan, of noble 
birth, being enamoured of one of the three females 


already mentioned, accompanied them to Sicily, and 
there became united to the object of his afiection. 
The offspring of this union was yEgestes. (Dion. 
Hal. 1, 52.) Both accounts, of course, are purely 
fabulous. In accordance, however, with the popular 
legend respecting him, Virgil makes yEgestes, whom 
he calls, as already stated, Acestes, to have given 
yEneas a hospitable reception, when the latter, as the 
poet fables, visited Sicily in the course of his wander¬ 
ings. ( Vid. yEgesta.) 

yEGEus, I. a king of Athens, son of Pandion. His 
legitimacy, however, was disputed ; and when, after 
the death of Pandion, he entered Africa at the head of 
an army, and recovered his patrimony, he was still the 
object of jealousy to his three brothers, although he 
shared his newly-acquired power with them. As he 
was long childless, they began to cast a wishful eye 
towards his inheritance. But a mysterious oracle 
brought him to Trcezene, where fate had decreed that 
the future hero of Athens should be born. yEthra, the 
daughter of the sage King Pittheus, son of Pelops, 
was his mother, but the Trcezenian legend called Nep¬ 
tune, not yEgeus, his father. yEgeus, however, re¬ 
turned to Athens, with the hope that, in the course of 
years, he should be followed by a legitimate heir. At 
parting he showed yEthra a huge mass of rock, under 
which he had hidden a sword and a pair of sandals : 
when her child, if a boy, should be able to lift the stone, 
he was to repair to Athens with the tokens it con¬ 
cealed, and to claim yEgeus as his father. From this 
deposite, yEthra gave her son the name of Theseus 
(Or/oevr, from Aeu, Ayou, to deposite or place). When 
Theseus had grown up and been acknowledged by his 
father (vid. Theseus), he freed the latter from the cruel 
tribute imposed by Minos (vid. Minotaurus); but, on 
his return from Crete, forgot to hoist the white sails, 
the preconcerted signal of success, and yEgeus, think¬ 
ing his son had perished, threw himself from a high 
rock into the sea. (Apollod. 3, 15, 5, seqq. — Plut. 
Vit. Thcs., &c.) The whole narrative respecting 
yEgeus is a figurative legend. Tie is the same as 
Neptune ; his name A iyaloq, indicating the “ god of 
the waves,” from alyeq, the waves of the sea, and 
hence the Trcezenian legend makes Neptune at once 
to have been the father of Theseus. Theseus himself, 
moreover, appears to be nothing more than a mythic 
personage. He is merely the type of the establishment 
of the worship of Neptune (Qpoevg, from Aea, Ar/co, to 
place or establish). Even his mother’s name, yEthra, 
would seem to allude figuratively to the pure, clear at¬ 
mosphere of religious worship connected with the rites 
of Neptune, when firmly established. (A Wpa, i. e., 
aidpa, pure, clear air.) So, also, the contest between 
Theseus and the Pallantides (vid. Pallantides), would 
seem to be nothing more than a religious contest be¬ 
tween the rival systems of Neptune and Minerva. 
The worship of Neptune prevailed originally in the 
Ionian cities ( Muller , Dorians, 1 , 266), and the legend 
of Theseus is an Ionian one ; whereas the worship of 
Minerva, at Athens, dates back to the time of Ce- 
crops.—II. An eponymic hero at Sparta, son of yEol- 
icus. (Vid. Supplement.) 

TEgialea, I. according to the common account, a 
daughter of Adrastus, but more probably the daughter 
of his son yEgialeus. (Heyne, ad Apollod. 1, 86.) 
She was the wife of Diomede, and is said to have been 
guilty of the grossest incontinence during her husband’s 
absence in the Trojan war. (Apollod. 1. c. — Ov. Ib. 
350, &c ) The beautiful passage in the Iliad, how¬ 
ever (5, 412, seqq.), where mention is made of her, 
strongly countenances the idea that the story of her 
improper conduct is a mere posthomeric or cyclic fa¬ 
ble.—II. An island of the yEgean, between Cythera 
and Crete, now Cerigotto. Bondelmonti (Ins. Arch. 
10, 65) calls it Sichilus or Sequilus, a corruption, 
probably, from the modern Greek elg kiyvXiav. (De 

23 




HEGI 


iEGI 


Sinner, ad loc.) —III. The earliest name for the coun¬ 
try along the northern shore of the Peloponnesus. 
(Vid. Aehaia, III.) 

JSgialeus, son of Adrastus, by Amphithea, daugh¬ 
ter of Pronax, and a member of the expedition led by 
the Epigoni against Thebes. He was the only leader 
slain in this war, as his father had been the only one 
that survived the previous contest. ( Vid. Epigoni.) 
Compare the scholiast, ad Find. Pyth. 8, 68. 

Guides, a patronymic of Theseus. (Homer, II. 1, 
265.) 

HEgIla, a town in Laconia, where Ceres had a tem¬ 
ple. Aristomenes, the Messenian leader, endeavoured 
on one occasion to seize a party of Laconian females 
who were celebrating here the rites of the goddess. 
The attempt failed, through the courageous resistance 
of the women, and Aristomenes himself was taken 
prisoner. He was released, however, the same night, 
by Archidamea, the priestess of Ceres, who had before 
this cherished an affection for him. She pretended 
that he had burned off his bonds, by moving himself up 
towards the fire, and remaining near enough to have 
them consumed. ( Paus. 4, 17.) 

# TEgimius, a king of the Dorians, reigning at the 
time in Thessaly, near the range of Pindus. ( Heyne, 
ad Apollod. 2, 7, 7.) He aided Hercules, according 
to the Doric legend, in his contest with the Lapithse, 
and received, as a reward, the territory from which 
they were driven. {Apollod. 1. c.) ^Egimius is a con- 
spicuous name among the founders of the Doric line, 
and mention is made by the ancient writers of an epic 
poem, entitled klyipiog, which is ascribed by some to 
Hesiod, by others to Cecrops the Milesian. {Heyne, 
l. c.) The posterity of HEgimius formed part of the 
expedition against the Peloponnesus, and the Doric 
institutions of HEgimius are spoken of by Pindar {Pyth. 

1, 124), as forming the rule or model of government 
for the Doric race. (Compare Muller, Dorians, vol. 

2, p. 12.) 

HEgimurus, a small island in the Gulf of Carthage. 
There were two rocks near this island, called Arcs 
Mgimuri, which were so named, because the Romans 
and Carthaginians concluded a treaty on them. The 
modern Zowamoore is the TEgjmurus of antiquity. 

HEgimus. Vid. Supplement. 

TEgIna, I. a daughter of the river Asopus, carried 
away by Jupiter under the form of an eagle, from 
Phlius to the island of CEnone (Compare Spanhcim, 
ad Calhm. Hymn, in Del. v. 77. — Heyne, ad Apollod 

3, 12, 6.— Sturz, ad Hellanic., p. 50.— Id. ad Plicrc- 
cyd., p. 178.) She gave her name to the island. Some 
authorities make Jupiter to have assumed, on this oc¬ 
casion, the appearance of a flame of fire ; but this evi¬ 
dently is corrupted from another part of the same fable, 
which states that Asopus was struck with thunder by the 
god for presuming to follow him. {Apollod. 3, 12, 6 ) 
The Asopus here alluded to is the Sicyonian stream 
which flowed by the walls of Phlius. It must not be 
confounded with the Boeotian river of the same name. 
(Compare Pindar, Nem. 9, 9.— Aristarch. ad N. 3, 1. 
— Pausan. 2, 5, 2.)—II. An island in the Sinus Sa- 
ronicus, near the coast of Argolis. The earliest ac¬ 
counts given by the Greeks make it to have been 
originally uninhabited, and to have been called, while 
in this state, by the name of GEnone ; for such is evi¬ 
dently the meaning of the fable, which states, that Ju¬ 
piter, in order to gratify HEacus, who was alone there, 
changed a swarm of ants into men, and thus peopled 
the island. (b id. HEacus, Myrmidones, and compare 
Pausan. 2, 29, and Apollod. 3, 12, 7.) It afterward 
took the name of JEgina, from the daughter of the 
Asopus. ( Vid. HEgina, I.) But, whoever may have 
been, the earliest settlers on the island, it is evident 
that its stony and unproductive soil must have driven 
them at an early period to engage in maritime affairs. 
Hence they are said to have been the first who coined 


I money for the purposes of commerce, and used regu¬ 
lar measures, a tradition which, though no doubt un¬ 
true, still points very clearly to their early commercial 
habits. {Strabo, 375.— Milan, Var. Hist. 12 , 10 .— 
Vid. Phidon.) It is more than probable, that their 
commercial relations caused the people of HEgina to be 
increased by colonies from abroad, and Strabo ex¬ 
pressly mentions Cretans among the foreign inhabitants 
who had settled there. After the return of the Herac- 
lidse, this island received a Dorian colony from Epi- 
daurus {Pausan. 2 , 29.— Tzetz. ad Lyc. 176), and 
from this period the Dorians gradually gained the as¬ 
cendency in it, until at last it became entirely Doric, 
both in language and form of government. HEgina, for 
a time, was the maritime rival of Athens, and the com¬ 
petition eventually terminated in open hostilities, in 
which the Athenians were only able to obtain advan¬ 
tages by the aid of the Corinthians, and by means of 
intestine divisions among their opponents. {Herod. 
8 , 46, and 5, 83.) When Darius sent deputies into 
Greece to demand earth and water, the people offfEgina, 
partly from hatred toward the Athenians, and partly 
from a wish to protect their extensive commerce along 
the coasts of the Persian monarchy, gave these tokens 
of submission. {Herod. 6 , 49.) For this conduct they 
were punished by the Spartans. In the war with 
Xerxes, therefore, they sided with their countrymen, 
and acted so brave a part in the battle of Salamis as 
to be able to contest the prize of valour with the Athe¬ 
nians themselves, and to bear it off, as well by the 
universal suffrages of the confederate Greeks {Herod. 
8 , 93), as by the declaration of the Pythian oracle. 
{Id. ibid. 122 : compare Flut. Vit. Thcmist.) After 
the termination of the Persian war, however, the 
strength of Athens proved too great for them. Their 
fleet of seventy sail Avas annihilated in a sea-fight by 
Pericles, and many of the inhabitants were driven 
from the island, while the remainder were reduced to 
the condition of tributaries. The fugitives settled at 
Thyrea in Cynuria, under the protection of Sparta 
{Thucyd. 1 , 105, and 108. — Id. 2 , 27. — Id. 4 , 57 ), 
and it was not until after the battle ofHEgos Potamos, 
and the. fall of Athens, that they were able to regain 
possession of their native island. {Xcn. Hist. Gr. 2 , 
2 , 5. - Strabo, 8 , p. 376.) They never attained, 
however, to their former prosperity. The situation of 
HEgina made it subsequently a prize for each succeed¬ 
ing conqueror, until at last it totally disappeared from 
history. In modern times the island nearly retains 
its ancient name, being called Mgina , or with a slight 
corruption Engia, and is represented by travellers as 
being beautiful, fertile, and well cultivated. As far 
back as the time of Pausanias, the ancient city would 
appear to have been in ruins. That writer makes 
mention of some temples that were standing, and of 
the large theatre built after the model of that in Epi- 
daurus. . The most remarkable remnant of antiquity 
aa Inch this island can boast of at the present day, is the 
temple of Jupiter Panhellenius, situated on a mount 
of the same name, about four hours’ distance from the 
port, and which is supposed to be one of the most an¬ 
cient temples in Greece, and one of the oldest speci¬ 
mens of the Done style of architecture. Mr. Dodwell 
pronounces it the most picturesque and interesting ruin 
m Greece. For a full account of the HEgina marbles, 
consult Quarterly Journal of Sciences, No. 12 p 327 
seqq., and No. 14, p. 229, seqq. 

JLgineta Paulus, I. or Paul of HEgina, a cele¬ 
brated Greek physician, born in the island of HEgina. 
He appears to have lived, not in the fourth century, as 
Rene Moreau and Daniel Leclerc (Clericus) have as¬ 
serted, but in the time of the conquests of the Calif 
Omar, and, consequently, in the seventh century. We 
have very few particulars of his life handed down to 
us. We know merely that he pursued his medical 
studies at Alexandrea some time before the takimr 0 f 

O 





E GI 


E GL 


this city by Amrou, and that, for the purpose of adding 
to his stock of professional knowledge, he travelled not 
only through all Greece, but likewise in other countries. 
Paul of Angina closes the list of the classic Greek 
physicians, for after him the healing art fell, like so 
many others, into neglect and barbarism, and did not 
regain any portion of its former honours until towards 
the twelfth century. As Paul made himself very able 
in surgery, and displayed great skill also in accouche- 
ments, the Arabians testified their esteem for him by 
styling him the accoucheur. Though he cannot be 
regarded as altogether original, since he abridged Ga¬ 
len, and obtained many materials from Aetius and 
Oribasus, yet he frequently lays down opinions of his 
own, differing from those of Galen, and more than once 
has the courage to refute the positions of Hippocrates. 
His descriptions of maladies are short and succinct, 
but exact and complete. He frequently assumes, as 
the basis of his explanations, the Galenian theory of 
the cardinal humours. It is in surgery particularly 
that Paul ofEgina appears to advantage, not only be¬ 
cause he had acquired more experience than any other 
Greek physician in this branch of his art, but also be¬ 
cause he does not servilely copy his predecessors. In 
this respect some authors place him by the side of 
Celsus, and on certain points even give him the pref¬ 
erence. One of the most curious chapters in that 
part of his writings which relates to surgery, is the one 
which treats of the various kinds of arrows used among 
the ancients, and of the wounds inflicted by them. 
The work of this physician, which has come down to 
us, is entitled An Abridgment of All Medicine, and 
consists of seven books, compiled from the writings 
of the more ancient physicians, with his own observa¬ 
tions subjoined. It has passed through many editions, 
of which the following are the principal ones. The 
Greek text merely, Venet. ap. Aid., 1528, and Basil., 

1538, fol. This latter edition is much superior to the 
former, as it was corrected by Gemusaeus, and contains 
his learned annotations. Latin editions : Basil., 1532 
and 1546, fol. : Col. Agr ., 1534 and 1548, fol.: Paris, 
1532, fol.: Vend., 1553 and 1554, 8vo : Lugd., 1562 
and 1567, 8vo. This last is the best of the Latin 
editions, since it contains the notes and commenta¬ 
ries of Gonthier, D’Andernach, Cornarius, J. Goupil, 
and Dalechamp. An Arabic edition was published 
also by Honain, a celebrated Syrian physician. Parts 
of the work have also been printed separately at various 
times, and particularly the first book, under the title 
of Prceccpta Salubna {Paris, 1510, ap. Hcnr. Stcph., 
4to.— Argent., 1511, 4to, &c.). A French translation 
of the surgical writings of Paul ofEgina was given in 

1539, from the Lyons press, in 12mo, by Pierre Tolet. 
The excellent version, however, by F. Adams, Esq., 
of Banchory-Ternan, Aberdeen, will supersede all 
others. Only one volume has thus far been published. 
{Bwgr. Univ., vol. 33, p. 186, seqq. — Scholl , Hist. 
Litt. Gr., vol. 7, p. 256.)—II. A modeller of Egina, 
adverted to by Pliny (35, 11). There is some doubt 
whether JEgincta was his own name, or merely an 
epithet designating the place of his birth. The former is 
the more probable opinion, and is advocated by Muller 
{JEgin., 107.— Sillig, Did. Art., s. v.). 

Egiochus, or “ Egis bearer” (from alyig and l%«), 
a poetical appellation of Jove. ( Vid. Egis.) 

Egipan, a poetical appellation of Pan, either from 
his having the legs of a goat, or as the guardian of 
goats. Plutarch {Parall., p. 311) makes it analogous 
to the Latin Silvanus. 

EgTra, a city of Achaia, near the coast of the 
Sinus Corinthiacus, and to the northwest of Pellene. 
It was a place of some importance, and the population 
is supposed to have been from 8 to 10,000. Polybius 
(4, 57) makes the distance from the sea seven stadia; 
Pausania 3 , however (7, 26), removes the harbour 
twelve stadia from the city. There is no contradic¬ 


tion in this, as the harbour lay, not directly north, but 
northeast from the city. In the middle ages, Egira 
took the name of Votstitza. ' {Georg. Phranza, 2, 9.) 
It is now Vostica, a deserted place to the east of 
Vostitza, the ancient Egium. {Manned, Geogr , 
vol. 8, p. 396.) 

Egis, the shield of Jupiter, made for him by Vul¬ 
can {II., 15, 310), and borne also by Apollo {II., 15, 229) 
and Minerva (5, 738). It inspired terror and dismay, 
and, by its movements, darkness, clouds, thunder and 
lightning were collected. {II, 17, 594.) Hence, in 
later poets, it has also the meaning of a storm or hurri¬ 
cane. {jEsch. Chocph. 584.— Eurip. Ion, 996.) Ac¬ 
cording to some, Minerva had an aegis of her own, dis¬ 
tinct from Jupiter’s, and she placed in the centre of it 
the head of Medusa ; but the Gorgon’s head appears 
also on Jupiter's shield. {Eustath. ad II., 5, 741.— 
Heyne, ad Apollod., 2, 43.) As Minerva typifies the 
mind or wisdom of Jove, there is a peculiar propriety 
in her wielding the same aegis with her great parent.— 
The etymology of the term aiylg is disputed. The 
common derivation makes it come from ail;, alyog, 
“ a goat,” and to have been so named from its being 
covered with the skin of the goat that had suckled the 
infant Jove. This derivation, however, appears to be 
based entirely on an accidental resemblance between 
aiycg and ail;, alyog, and is evidently the invention of 
later writers and fabulists. The true etymology is 
from dicau, utijo, “ to move rapidly ,” “ to rush,” “ to 
arouse ,” &c., and comports far better with the idea 
of brandishing to and fro a terror-inspiring shield.— 
The meaning of a coat of mail, or, rather, leathern 
tunic, with or without plates of metal, belongs to an¬ 
other alylg, which is correctly deduced from ail;. 
(Compare Herod., 4, 189.) 

Egisthus, son of Thyestes by his own daughter 
Pelopea. {Vid. Atreus.) Having been left guardian 
of Agamemnon’s kingdom when that monarch sailed 
for Troy, he availed himself of his absence to gain the 
affections of Clytemnestra his queen, and, when Ag¬ 
amemnon returned from the war, caused him to be 
slain. {Vid. Agamemnon and Clytemnestra.) On 
the death of the monarch he usurped the throne, and 
reigned seven years, when he was slain, together with 
Clytemnestra, by Orestes, the son of Agamemnon. 
( Vid. Orestes.— Hygin., fab. 87, seq. — Paus., 2, 16 
— Soph. Electr. — JEsch. Agam. — Eunp. Orest, efc ) 

Egitium, a town of Etolia, northeast of Naupac- 
tus, and about eighty stadia from the sea. It occupied 
an elevated situation in a mountainous tract of coun¬ 
try. {Thucyd., 3, 97.) Egitium is perhaps Egse 
(A lyat), which Stephanus Byzantinus places in Etolia. 

Egium, a city of Achaia, on the coast of the Sinus 
Corinthiacus, and northwest of Egira. After the 
submersion of Helice it became the chief place in 
the country, and here the deputies from the states of 
Achaia long held their assemblies, until a law was 
made by Philopoemen, ordaining that each of the feder¬ 
al cities should become in its turn the place of rendez¬ 
vous. {Liv., 38, 7, and 30. — Compare Polybius, 2, 
54, and 4, 7 ) According to Strabo (385, 387), these 
meetings were convened near the town, in a spot call¬ 
ed Enarium, where was a grove consecrated to Ju¬ 
piter. Pausanias (7, 24) affirms, that in his time the 
Achaeans still collected together at Egium, as the 
Amphictyons did at Delphi and Thermopylae. Ac¬ 
cording to Strabo, Egium derived its name from the 
goat {ail;) which was said to have nourished Jupiter 
here. The modern town of Vostitza lies in the im¬ 
mediate neighbourhood. 

Egle. Vid. Supplement. 

Egreis. Vid. Supplement. 

Egles, a Samian wrestler, born dumb. Seeing 
some unlawful measures pursued in a contest, which 
would deprive him of the prize, his indignation gave 
him on a sudden the powers of utterance which had 

25 




EGYPTUS. 


EGYPTUS. 


been denied him from his birth, and he ever after spoke 
with ease. ( Val. Max., 1, 8, 4.— Aul. Gcll., 5, 9.) 

Egletes, a surname of Apollo as the god of day. 
(A iyWyvyq, from alyXrj, “brightness.”) In the legend 
given by Apollodorus (1, 9, 26) respecting the island 
of Anaphe, the epithet Egletes appears to point to 
Apollo as the darter of the lightning also ( Apollo Ful- 
gurator). Compare Heyne, ad Apollod., 1, 9, 26, not. 
crit. 

Egobolus, an appellation given to Bacchus at Pot- 
nise in Bceotia, because he had substituted a goat in 
the place of a youth, who was annually sacrificed 
there, (ait;, and fdalXu.) Compare Pausanias, 9, 8, 
where Kuhn, however, proposes klyobopov for A lyo- 
bo'Xov. —By AEgobolium, on the other hand, is meant 
a species of mystic purification. The catechumen was 
placed in a pit, covered with perforated boards, upon 
which a goat was sacrificed, so as to bathe him in the 
blood that flowed from it. Sometimes, for a goat, a 
bull or ram was substituted, and the ceremony was 
then called, in the first case, Taurobolium , in the sec¬ 
ond, Criobolium. (Knight, Inquiry, Ac., <$> 168.) 

.Egos potamos, i. e., the goat's river, called also 
Egos Potamoi, and by the Latin writers JEgos Flu- 
men, a small river in the Thracian Chersonese, and 
south of Callipolis, which apparently gave its name to 
a town or port situate at its mouth. (Herod., 9, 119. 
— Steph. Byz., s. v. A lydq Jlorajuoi.) Mannert thinks, 
that the town just mentioned was the same with that 
called Cressa by Scylax (p. 28), and Cissa by Pliny 
(4, 9). But consult Gail, ad Scyl., 1. c., as regards the 
meaning of the phrase ivrdq klyoq irorapov, employed 
by Scylax. (Geogr. Gr. Alin., 1, 439, ed. Gail.) At 
Egos Potamos the Athenian fleet was totally defeat¬ 
ed by the Spartan admiral Lysander, an event which 
completely destroyed the power of the former state, 
and finally led to the capture of Athens. (Xen., Hist. 
Gr., 2, 19.— Diod. Sic., 13, 105.— Pint., Vit. Alcib .— 
Corn. Ncp., Vit. Alcib.) The village of Galata prob¬ 
ably stands on the site of the town or harbour. (Cra¬ 
mer's Ancient Greece, vol. 1, p. 330.) 

Egosag^, a Gallic nation, who served in the army 
of Attalus on one of his expeditions. He afterward 
assigned them a settlement along the Hellespont. 
(Polyb., 5, 77, seq.) Casaubon, in his Latin version 
of Polybius, has “ AZgosages (swe ii sunt Tectosa- 
ges) ” Schweighseuser, misled by this conjecture, 
introduces T eicrooayaq into the Greek text of the his¬ 
torian in place of kiyboayaq, the common reading. 
In his annotations, however, he acknowledges his pre¬ 
cipitancy. Compare the Historical and Geographical 
index to his edition of Polybius (vol. 8, pt. i., p. 198), 
in which he conjectures that r P lyoaayeq, which occurs 
in another passage of Polybius (5, 53), ought to be 
written kiybcayeq also. 

Egys, a town of Laconia, on the borders of Arca¬ 
dia, and contiguous to Belmina. (Polyb., 2, 54.) 

Egypsus, or more correctly Egyssus, a city of 
Moesia Inferior, in the region called Parva Scythia, and 
situate on the bank of the Danube, not far above its 
mouth. It is mentioned by Ovid (Ep. ex. Pont., 1,8, 
13) Near this place, according to D’Anville, Darius 
Hystaspis constructed his bridge over the Danube, in 
his expedition against the Scythians. (As regards the 
true reading, consult Ccllanus, Geogr., 2, 468.) 

Egyptii, the inhabitants of Egypt. Vid. Egyptus. 

Egyptium mare, that part of the Mediterranean'Sea 
which is on the coast of Egypt. 

Egyptus, I. a son ofBelus, and brother ofDanaus. 
He received from his parent the country of Arabia to 
rule over ; but subsequently conquered the land of 
“ the black-footed race” (MeAo/zTrodwp), and gave it 
his name. Egyptus was the father of 50 sons, and 
Danaus, to whom Libya had been assigned, of 50 
daughters. Jealousy breaking out between Danaus 
and the sons of Egyptus, who aimed at depriving him 
26 


of his dominions, the former fled with his 50 daugh¬ 
ters, and settled eventually in Argolis. The sons of 
Egyptus came, after some interval of time, to Argos, 
and entreated their uncle to bury in oblivion all enmi¬ 
ty, and to give them their cousins in marriage. Da¬ 
naus, retaining a perfect recollection of the injuries they 
had done him, and distrusting their promises, con¬ 
sented to bestow his daughters upon them, and divided 
them accordingly by lot among the suitors. But on 
the wedding day he armed the hands of the brides with 
daggers, and enjoined upon them to slay in the night 
their unsuspecting bridegrooms. All but Hyperm- 
nestra obeyed the cruel order, while she, relenting, 
spared her husband Lynceus. Her father at first put 
her in close confinement, but aftemard forgave her, and 
consented to her union with Lynceus. ( Vid. Danaus, 
Danaides, 6qc. — Apollod, 2, 1, 5, seqq. — Hygm., 
fab. 168, 170. —Ov Heroid., 14, Ac.)—II. An exten¬ 
sive country of Africa, bounded on the w est by part 
of Marmarica and by the deserts of Libya, on the 
north by the Mediterranean, on the east by the Sinus 
Arabicus and a line drawn from Arsinoe to Rhinocolu- 
ra, and on the south by Ethiopia. Egypt, properly 
so called, may be described as consisting of the long 
and narrow valley which follows the course of the Nile 
from Syene (or Assooan) to Cairo, near the site of the 
ancient Memphis. To the Nile, Egypt owes its ex¬ 
istence as a habitable country, since, without the rich 
and fertilizing mud deposited by the river in its annual 
inundations, it would be a sandy desert. At three 
different places previous to its entering Egypt, this no¬ 
ble stream is threatened to be interrupted in its course by 
a barrier of mountains, and at each place the barrier is 
surmounted. The second cataract, in Turkish Nubia, 
is the most violent and unnavigable. The third is at 
Syene, and introduces the Nile into Upper Egypt. 
From Syene to Cairo the river flows along a valley 
about eight miles broad, between two mountain ridges, 
one of which extends to the Red Sea, and the other 
terminates in the deserts of ancient Libya. The river 
occupies the middle of the valley as far as the strait 
called Jebel-el-Silsili. This space, about forty miles 
long, has very little arable land on its banks. It con-; 
tains some islands, which, from their low level, easily 
admit of irrigation. At the mouth of the Jebel-el-Sil- 
sih (Girard, Mem. sur VEgypte, vol 3, p. 13), the 
Nile runs along the right side of the valley, which in 
several places has the appearance of a steep line of 
rocks cut into peaks, while the ridge of the hills on 
the left side is always accessible by a slope of various 
acclivity These last mountains begin near the town 
of Sioot, the ancient Lycopolis, and go down towards 
Faioom, the ancient Arsinoitic Nome, diverging grad¬ 
ually to the west, so that between them and the culti¬ 
vated valley there is a desert space, becoming grad¬ 
ually wdder, and which in several places is bordered 
on the valley-side by a line of sandy downs lying nearly 
south and north. The mountains which confine the 
basin of the Nile in Upper Egypt are intersected by 
defiles, which on one side lead to the shores of the 
Red Sea, and on the other to the Oases. These nar¬ 
row passes might be habitable, since the winter rains 
maintain for a time a degree of vegetation, and form 
springs which the Arabs use for themselves and their 
flocks. The strip of desert land which generally ex¬ 
tends along each side of the valley, parallel to the 
course of the Nile (and which must not be confound¬ 
ed with the barren ocean of sand that lies on each side 
of Egypt), now contains two very distinct kinds of 
land; the one immediately at the bottom of the mount¬ 
ain, consists of sand and round pebbles ; the other, 
composed of light drifting sand, covers an extent of 
ground formerly arable. If a section of the valley is 
made by a plane perpendicular to its direction, the 
surface will be observed to decline from the margins 
of the river to the bottom of the hills, a circumstance 




iEGYPTUS. 


7EGYPTUS. 


also remarked on the banks of the Mississippi, the Po, 
part of the Borysthenes, and some other rivers. Near 
Bcni-soocf , the valley of the Nile, already much widen¬ 
ed on the west, has on that side an opening, through 
which a view is obtained of the fertile plains of Fai- 
oom. These plains form properly a sort of table-land, 
separated from the surrounding mountains on the 
north and west by a wide valley, of which a certain 
proportion, always laid under water, forms what the 
inhabitants call Birket-el-Karoon. ( Vid. Moeris. ) 
Near Cairo, the chains which limit the valley of the 
Nile diverge on both sides. The one, under the name 
ol Jibbel-al-N airon , runs northwest towards the Med¬ 
iterranean ; the other, called Jibbel-al-Atta/ca , runs 
straight east of Suez. In front of these chains a vast 
plain extends, composed of sands, covered with the 
mud of the Nile. At the place called Batu-cl-Baha- 
ra , near the ancient Cercasorus, the river divides into 
two branches ; the one of which flowing to Rosetta , 
near the ancient Ostium Bolbitinum, and the other to 
Damietta , the ancient Tamiathis, at the Ostium Phat- 
neticum, contain between them the present Delta. 
But this triangular piece of insulated land was in for¬ 
mer times much larger, being bounded on the east by 
the Pelusian branch, which is now choked up with 
sand or converted into marshy pools ; while on the 
west it was bounded by the Canopic branch, which is 
now partly confounded with the canal of Alexandrea, 
and partly lost in Lake Etko. But the correspondence 
of the level of the surface with that of the present 
Delta, and its depression as compared with that of the 
adjoining desert, together with its greater verdure and 
fertility, still mark the limits of the ancient Delta, al¬ 
though irregular encroachments are made by shifting 
banks of drifting sand, which are at present on the 
increase. Egypt then, in general language, may be 
described as an immense valley or longitudinal basin, 
terminating in a Delta or triangular plain of alluvial 
formation; being altogether, from the heights of Syene 
to the shores of the Mediterranean, about 600 miles in 
length, and of various width. ( Malte-Brun , Geogr., 
vol. 4, p. 21, seqq.) 

1. Fertility of Egypt, 

Almost the whole of the productive soil of Egypt 
consists of mud deposited by the Nile; and the Delta, 
as in all similar tracts of country, is entirely composed 
of alluvial earth and sand. To ascertain the depth of 
this bed, the French savans, who accompanied the mil¬ 
itary expedition into Egypt, sank several wells at dis¬ 
tant intervals ; and from their observations have been 
obtained the following results. First, that the surface 
of the soil, as already mentioned, descends more or 
less rapidly towards the foot of the hills, which is the 
reverse of what occurs in most valleys : secondly , that 
the depth of the bed of mud is unequal, being in gen¬ 
eral about five feet near the river, and increasing grad¬ 
ually as it recedes from it: thirdly , that beneath the 
mud there is a bed of sand similar to that always 
brought down by the river. The first-mentioned pe¬ 
culiarity is satisfactorily explained by the absence of 
rain, which, in other countries, washes down the soil 
from the hills, and, carrying it to the stream in the 
bottom of the valley, forms a basin, the sides of which 
have a concave surface ; whereas, in Egypt, the soil is 
conveyed by the inundation from the river into the 
valley, and the deposites, therefore, will be greatest 
near its banks. The more rapid the current, also, the 
smaller will be the quantity of mud deposited. The 
bed of quartzose sand upon which it rests is about 
thirty-six feet in depth, and is superposed on the cal¬ 
careous rock which forms the basis of the lower coun¬ 
try. The waters of the river filter through this bed of 
sand, and springs are found as soon as the borer has 
reached any considerable depth. Ancient Egypt was 
remarkable for its fertility. The staple commodity 


was its grain, the growth of which was so abundant 
as to afford at all times considerable supplies to the 
neighbouring countries, particularly Syria and Arabia ; 
and in times of scarcity or famine, which were fre¬ 
quently felt in those countries, Egypt alone could save 
their numerous population from starving. Egypt, in 
fact, unlike every other country on the globe, brought 
forth its produce independent of the seasons and the 
skies ; and while continued drought in the neighbour¬ 
ing countries brought one season of scarcity after an¬ 
other, the granaries of Egypt were full. Hence, too, 
Egypt became regarded as one of the granaries of 
Rome. ( Aurel . Victor , Epit., c. 1.) The Rev. Mr. 
Jewett has given a striking example of the extraordi¬ 
nary fertility of the soil of Egypt. “ I picked up at 
random,” says he, “ a few stalks out of the thick corn¬ 
fields. We counted the number of stalks which sprout¬ 
ed from single grains of seed ; carefully pulling to 
pieces each root, in order to see that it was but one 
plant. The first had seven stalks ; the next three ; 
the next nine ; then eighteen ; then fourteen. Each 
stalk would have been an ear.’’ Numerous canals 
served to carry the waters of the Nile to some of those 
parts which the inundation could not reach, while ma¬ 
chinery was employed to convey the means of irriga¬ 
tion to others. Many of these canals still exist, many 
have long since disappeared, and not a few tracts of 
sandy country have displayed themselves in modern 
times where formerly all was smiling and fertile. 
Nearly the whole extent from the southern confines to 
the neighbourhood of Thebes is one barren and sandy 
waste. Assigning to Upper Egypt an average breadth 
of ten miles, and allowing for the lateral valleys stretch¬ 
ing out from the Delta, it is supposed that the portion 
of territory, at the present day, in Egypt, capable of 
cultivation, may amount to about 16,000 square miles, 
or, in round numbers, ten millions of acres. The total 
population is estimated at about two millions and a 
half, which would give about 156 to every square mile. 
Nearly one half of this territory, it is supposed, is either 
periodically inundated, or capable of artificial irrigation. 
The remaining part requires a more laborious cultiva¬ 
tion, and yields a more scanty produce. The inunda¬ 
ted lands, though they have successively borne one 
crop, and frequently two, year after year, without in¬ 
termission, for more than 3000 years, still retain their 
ancient fertility, without any perceptible impoverish¬ 
ment, and without any farther tillage than the adventi¬ 
tious top-dressing of black, slimy mould by the over¬ 
flowing of the river. Where the inundation does not 
reach, the crops are very scanty ; wheat does not yield 
above five or six for one ; but for maize and millet 
the soil is particularly adapted, and these, with rice, 
lentils, and pulse, constitute the principal food of nine 
tenths of the inhabitants, allowing the exportation 
of the greater part of the wheat produced. Taking, 
then, into consideration the quantity of land once arable, 
which is now covered with sand, the double harvest, 
and, of some productions, more than semi-annual crops, 
the smaller quantity of food which is requisite to sus¬ 
tain life in southern latitudes, and the extent to which 
the more barren soil was formerly rendered available 
by the cultivation of the olive, the fig-tree, the vine, 
and the date-palm, we shall no longer be at a loss to 
account for the immense fertility and populousness of 
ancient Egypt, a country said to have contained in 
former days 7,500,000 souls.—One of the most cele¬ 
brated productions of Egypt is the lotus. The plant 
usually so denominated is a species of water-lily 
(nymphcea lotus), called by the Arabs nuphar , which, 
on the disappearance of the inundation, covers all the 
canals and pools with its broad round leaves, amid 
which the flowers, in the form of cups of bright white 
or azure, expand on the surface, and have a most 
elegant appearance. Sonnini says, that its roots form 
a tubercle, which is gathered when the waters of the 

27 



iEGYPTUS. 


^EGYPTUS. 


Nile subside, and is boiled and eaten like potatoes, 
which it somewhat resembles in taste. Herodotus 
(2, 92) states, that the Egyptians not only ate the root, 
but made a sort of bread of the seed, which resembled 
that of the poppy. He adds, that there is a second 
species, the root of which is very grateful, either fresh 
or dried. The plant which was chiefly eaten by the 
ancient Egyptians, and which is so frequently carved 
on the ancient monuments, is supposed to be the 
nymph wa nelumbo , or nelumbium spcciosum, the “ sa¬ 
cred bean” of India, now found only in that country. 
Its seeds, which are about the size of a bean, have a 
delicate flavour resembling almonds, and its roots also 
are edible. The lotus of Homer, however, the fruits 
of which so much delighted the companions of Ulysses, 
is a very different plant, namely, the ziziphus lotus 
( rhamnus ), or jujube, which bears a fruit the size of a 
sloe, with a large stone, and is one of the many plants 
which have been erroneously fixed on by learned com¬ 
mentators as the dudaim (mandrakes) of the sacred 
writings. The papyrus , not less celebrated in ancient 
times than the lotus, and which is believed to have 
disappeared from the banks of the Nile, has been re¬ 
discovered in the cyperus papyrus of Linnasus. The 
colocasmm is still cultivated in Egypt for its large es¬ 
culent roots. The banks of the river and the canals 
sometimes present coppices of acacia and mimosa, and 
there are groves of rose-laurel, willow, cassia, and other 
shrubs. Faioom contains impenetrable hedges of cac¬ 
tus, or Indian fig. But, though so rich in plants, Egypt 
is destitute of timber, and all the firewood is imported 
from Caramania. ( Malte-Brun, Geogr., vol.4, p. 38, 
seqq.—Modern Traveller (Egypt), p. 18, seqq.) 

2. Animal Kingdom. 

The animal kingdom of Egypt will not detain us 
long. The want of meadows prevents the multiplica¬ 
tion of cattle. They must be kept in stables during 
the inundation. The Mamelukes used to keep a beau¬ 
tiful race of saddle-horses. Asses, mules, and camels 
appear here in all their vigour. There are also nu¬ 
merous herds of buffaloes. In Lower Egypt there are 
sheep of the Barbary breed. The large beasts of prey 
find in this country neither prey nor cover. Hence, 
though the jackal and hyena are common, the lion is 
but rarely seen in pursuit of the gazelles which traverse 
the deserts of the Thebaid. The crocodile and the hip¬ 
popotamus, those primeval inhabitants of the Nile, 
seem to be banished from the Delta, but are still seen in 
Upper Egypt.—The islands adjoining the cataracts are 
sometimes found covered with crocodiles, which choose 
these places for depositing their eggs. The voracity 
of the hippopotamus has, by annihilating his means of 
support, greatly reduced the number of his race. Ab- 
dollatif, with some justice, denominates this ugly ani¬ 
mal an enormous water-pig. It has been long known 
that the ichneumon is not tamed in Upper Egypt, as 
Buffon had believed. The ichneumon is the same an¬ 
imal which the ancients mention under that name, and 
which has never been found except in this country. 
It possesses a strong instinct of destruction, and, in 
searching for its prey, exterminates the young of many 
noxious reptiles. The eggs of crocodiles form its fa¬ 
vourite food; and in addition to this its favourite repast, 
it eagerly sucks the blood of every creature which it is 
able to overcome. Its body is about a foot and a half 
in length, and its tail is of nearly equal dimensions. 
Its general colour is a grayish brown ; but, when 
closely inspected, each hair is found annulated with a 
paler and a darker hue. Zoology has lately been en¬ 
riched with several animals brought from Egypt, among 
which are the coluber haje, an animal figured in all the 
hieroglyphical tables as the emblem of Providence ; 
and the coluber vipera , the true viper of the ancients. 
The Nile seems to contain some singular fishes hith¬ 
erto unknown to systematic naturalists. Of this the 
28 


Polyptere bichir, described by Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire 
(. Annales du Museum , vol. 1, p. 57), is a very remarka¬ 
ble example. That able naturalist observes, in general, 
that the birds of Egypt differ not much from those of 
Europe. He saw the Egyptian swan represented in 
all the temples of Upper Egypt, both in sculptures and 
in coloured paintings, and entertains no doubt that this 
bird was the chcnalopex ( vulpanscr ) of Herodotus, to 
which the ancient Egyptians paid divine honours, and 
had even dedicated a town in Upper Egypt, called by 
the Greeks Chenoboscium. It is not peculiar to Egypt, 
but is found all over Africa, and almost all over Eu¬ 
rope. The Ibis, which was believed to be a destroyer 
of serpents, is, according to the observations of Cuvier, 
a sort of curlew, called at present Aboohannes. Gro- 
bert and Geoflfroy-Saint-Hilaire have brought home 
mummies of this animal, which had been prepared and 
entombed with much superstitious care. (Memoire sur 
ITbis, par M. Cuvier. — Malte-Brun, Geogr., vol. 4, p. 
45, seqq.) 

3. Name of Egypt. 

The name by which this country is known to Euro¬ 
peans comes from the Greeks, some of whose writers 
inform us that it received this appellation from AEgyp- 
tus, son of Belus, having been previously called Ae- 
ria. (Compare Eusebius, Chron., lib. 2, p. 284, ed. 
Mail et Zohrab.) In the Hebrew Scriptures it is styled 
Mitsraim, and also Matsor, and harets Cham: of 
these names, however, the first is the one most com¬ 
monly employed. The Arabians and other Orientals 
still know it by the name of Mesr or Mizr. Accoid- 
ing to general opinion, Egypt was called Mitsraim 
after the second son of Ham. Bochart, however, op¬ 
poses this (Geogr. Sacr. 4, 24), and contends that the 
name of Mitsraim, being a dual form, indicates the 
two divisions of Egypt into Upper and Lower. Cal- 
met (Diet., art. Misraim) supposes that it denotes the 
people of the country rather than the father of the 
people. Josephus (Ant. Jud., 1, 6) calls Egypt Mes- 
tra; the Septuagint translators, Metsraim; Eusebius 
and Suidas, Meslraia. The Coptic name of Old Cairo 
is still Mistraim ; the Syrians and Arabs call it Masra 
or Massera. The other appellation, Matsor, as given 
above, Bochart has clearly proved to mean a fortress; 
and, according to him, Egypt was so called, either from 
its being a region fortified by nature, or from the word 
tsor, which signifies narrow, and which he thinks suf¬ 
ficiently descriptive of the valley of Upper Egypt. Sir 
W. Drummond (Origines, 2, 55) inclines to" the first 
of these two etymologies, because Diodorus Siculus 
(1, 30) and Strabo (803) remark, that Egypt was a 
country extremely difficult of access; and Diodorus, 
speaking of the Upper Egypt, observes, that it seems 
not a little to excel other limited places in the kingdom, 
by a natural fortification (oxvporrjTL tyvcuKij) and by 
the beauty of the country. The third appellation men¬ 
tioned above, namely, harets Cham, “the land of 
Ham,” seems to have been the poetical name for Egypt 
among the Hebrews, and accordingly it occurs only in 
the Psalms. It is a tradition, at least as old as the time 
of St. Jerome, that the land of Ham was so named 
after the son of Noah. (Qucest. m Genesin. — Drum¬ 
mond's Origines, 2, 45, seqq.) There may, however, 
be reason to think, that the patriarch was named after 
the country where it is supposed he finally settled. In 
Hebrew, cham signifies “ calidus ;” and chcm , “ fuscus,” 
“ niger.” In Egyptian we find several words which are 
nearly the same both in sound and sense. Thus xfioy, 
chmom, signifies “ ca.lor," and ^e/ze, chame, “ niger." 
The Egyptians always called their country Chcmia or 
Chame , probably from the burned and black appearance 
of the soil. (Compare Pint., de Is. et Os., p. 364.— 
Shawe's Travels, fol. ed., p. 432.— Calmet's Diet., art. 
Ham.) The name Aeria has a similar reference, and 
would seem to have been a translation of the u at j VB 





riEGYPTUS. 


iEGYPTUS. 


word, the primitive ayp denoting obscurity, duskiness. 
Thus, the scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius (1, 580) 
says, that Thessaly was called ’He/ua, according to one 
explanation, on account of the dark colour of its soil ; 
and adds that Egypt was denominated ’Hepia for a 
similar reason. Bryant (6, 149). who cites this pas¬ 
sage of the scholiast, represents it as a vulgar error ; 
but his reasoning is, as usual, unsatisfactory. The 
etymology of the word Egypt has occupied the atten¬ 
tion and baffled the ingenuity of many learned writers. 
The most common opinion is, that AlyvKrog is com¬ 
posed of ala (for yaia ), land, and yvirrog, or rather kott- 
rog, and that, consequently, Egypt signifies the land of 
Kopl, or the Koptic land. Others derive it from ala, and 
yvf, the black vulture, the colour of that bird (whence 
the Latin subvulturius, “ blackish”) being, according 
to them, characteristic of the soil or its inhabitants. 
Mode conceives the primitive form to have been Aia 
Cuphti, the land of Cuphti; while Bruce says, that 
Y Gypt, the name given to Egypt in Ethiopia, means 
the country of canals. Eusebius, who is supposed to 
have followed Manetho, the Egyptian historian, states, 
that Ramses, or Ramesses, who reigned in Egypt 
(according to Usher) B.C. 1577, was also called 
vEgyptus, and that he gave it his name, as has already 
been mentioned. ( Easeb. Chron. 2, p. 284, ed. Mail 
cl Zohrab.) 

4. Divisions of Egypt. 

In the time of the Pharaohs, Egypt was divided into 
the Thebais, Middle, and Lower Egypt. The Thebais 
extended from Syene, or, more correctly speaking, Phi- 
lse, as far as Abydos, and contained ten districts, juris¬ 
dictions, or, as the Greeks called them, nomes (N o/uoc. 
Herod. 2,164). The Coptic word is Pthosch. ( Cham- 
pollion, VEgypte sous les Pharaons , 1 , 66.) To these 
succeeded the sixteen nomes of Middle Egypt ( Strabo , 
787), reaching to Cercasorus, where the Nile began to 
branch off’. Then came the ten nomes of Lower Egypt, 
or the Delta, extending to the sea. The whole num¬ 
ber of nomes then was thirty-six, and this arrangement 
is said by Diodorus Siculus (1, 50) to have been in¬ 
troduced by Sesostris (Sethosis-Ramesses) previous to 
his departure on his expedition into Asia, in order that, 
by means of the governors pdaced over each of these 
nomes, his kingdom might be the better governed du¬ 
ring his absence, and justice more carefully administer¬ 
ed. It is more than probable, however, that this divis¬ 
ion w r as much older than the time of Sesostris ( Cham - 
pollion, VEgypte, &c., 1, 71), and the account given 
by Strabo, respecting the halls of the labyrinth, would 
seem to confirm this. The geographer informs us, that 
the halls of this structure coincided with the number 
of the nomes, and the building would seem to have oc¬ 
cupied a central position with respect to these various 
districts, having eighteen nomes to the north, and as 
many to the south, and thus answering a civil as well 
as a religious purpose. ( Ritter, Erdkunde , 2 d ed., 1, 
704.) Under the dynasty of the Ptolemies the num¬ 
ber of the nomes became enlarged, partly by reason of 
the new and improved state of things in that quarter 
of Egypt where Alexandrea was situated, partly by the 
addition of the Oases to Egypt, and partly also by the 
alterations which an active commerce had produced 
along the borders of the Arabian Gulf. A change also 
took place, about this same period, in the three main 
divisions of the land. Lower Egypt now no longer 
confined itself to the limits of the Delta, but had its 
extent enlarged by an addition of some of the neigh¬ 
bouring nomes. In like manner, Upper Egypt, or the 
Thebais, received a portion of what had formerly been 
included within the limits of Middle Egypt, so that 
eventually but seven nomes remained to this last-men¬ 
tioned section of country, which therefore received the 
name of Heptanomis. (Manncrt, Geogr., 10, 1, 303.) 


Under the Roman dominion, Thebais alone was re¬ 
garded as a separate division of the country ; ail the 
rest of the land obtained no farther division than that 
produced by its nomes. Hence Pliny (5, 9). after 
mentioning eleven nomes as forming the district of 
Thebais, speaks of the country around Pelusium as 
consisting of four others, and then, without any other 
division, enumerates thirty nomes in the rest of Egypt. 
At this time, then, the nomes had increased to 45. 
They became still farther increased, at a subsequent 
period, by various subdivisions of the older ones. 
Hence we find Ptolemy enumerating still more nomes 
than Pliny, while he omits the mention of others re¬ 
corded by the latter, which probably existed no longer 
in his own days. At a still later period we hear little 
more of the nomes. A new division of the country 
took place under the Eastern empire. An imperial 
Prefect exercised sway over not only Egypt, but also 
Libya as far as Cyrene, while a Comes Militans had 
charge of the forces. The power of the latter extend¬ 
ed over all Egypt as far as Ethiopia, but a Dux, who 
was dependant on him, exercised particular control 
over the .Thebais. This arrangement seems to have 
been introduced in the time of the Emperor Theodo¬ 
sius, as appears from the language of the Nohtia. 
From this time, the whole of Middle Egypt, previously 
named Heptanomis, bore the name of Arcadia, in hon¬ 
our of Arcadius, eldest son of Theodosius. A new 
province had also arisen a considerable time before 
this, named Augustamnica, from its lying chiefly along 
the Nile. It comprised the eastern half of the Delta, 
together with a portion of Arabia as far as the Arabian 
Gulf, and also the cities on the Mediterranean coast as 
far as the Syrian frontier. Its capital was Pelusium. 
The name of this province is mentioned by the eccle¬ 
siastical writers as early as the time of Constantine, 
and it occurs also in the history of Ammianus Marcel- 
linus (22, 16). About the time of Justinian, in the 
sixth century, the position of the various archbishop¬ 
rics and bishoprics, all subject to the patriarchate of 
Alexandrea, gave rise to a new distribution of provin¬ 
ces. The territory of Alexandrea, with the western 
portion of the Delta in the vicinity of the Ostium Ca- 
nopicum, was called “ The First Egypt,” and the 
more eastern part, as far as the Ostium Phatneticum, 
was termed “ The Second Egypt.” The northeast¬ 
ern quarter of the Delta, on the Pelusiac arm of the 
Nile, together with the eastern tract as far as the Ara¬ 
bian Gulf, received the appellation of “ The First Au¬ 
gustamnica,” and had Pelusium for its capital. The 
inner part of the western Delta, as far as the Ostium 
Phatneticum, was named “ The Second Augustam¬ 
nica.” Its capital was Leontopolis. Thus the Delta, 
with the country immediately adjacent, embraced four 
small provinces. Middle Egypt still retained a large 
part of its previous extent, under the name of Mid¬ 
dle Egypt or Arcadia (M cay Alyvizrog, y 'Apnadia). 
Memphis belonged to it as the northernmost state ; 
but it was by this time greatly sunk in importance, 
and Oxyrynchus had succeeded it as the metropolis. 
Amid all these changes, the Thebais was continually 
regarded as a separate district. It now received new 
accessions from the north, and a double appellation 
arose. The northern and smaller portion, which had 
originally formed a part of Middle Egypt, was called 
“ The First Thebais.” To it vras appended the Oa¬ 
sis Magna , and its metropolis w r as Antseopolis. The 
southern regions as far as Philse and Thatis, including 
a small part of Ethiopia, formed “ The Second The¬ 
bais.” Its capital was Coptos. It seems unnecessary 
to pursue the subsequent changes that gradually en¬ 
sued, especially as they are of no peculiar importance 
either in point of history or geography. (Compare 
Hierocles, Synekdemos; in Wesseling’s Rom. Itin., 
Amst., 1735, 4to.— Manncrt, Geogr., 10, 1, 305, seqq.) 

29 



JUGYPTUS. 


^EGYPTUS. 


5. Population of Egypt. 

Diodorus Siculus (1, 31) states, on the authority of 
the ancient Egyptian records, that the land contained, 
in the time of the Pharaohs, more than 18,000 cities 
and villages. The same writer informs us, that, in 
the time of the first Ptolemy, the number was above 
30,000. In this latter statement, however, there is an 
evident exaggeration. Theocritus {Idyll. 17, 82, seqq ) 
assigns to Ptolemy Philadelphus the sovereignty over 
33,333 cities. In this also there is exaggeration, but 
not of so offensive a character as in the former case, 
since the sway of Philadelphus did, in fact, extend 
over other countries besides Egypt; such as Syria, 
Phoenicia, Cyprus, Pamphylia, Caria, &c. Pomponius 
Mela (1, 9), and Pliny (5, 9), who frequently copies 
him, confine themselves with good reason to a more 
moderate number. According to them, the Egyptians 
occupied, in the time of Amasis, 20,000 cities. This 
number is borrowed from Herodotus (2, 77), and may 
be made to correspond with that first given from Dio¬ 
dorus Siculus, if we take into consideration that Ama¬ 
sis had extended his sway over Cyrenaica also, and 
that this may serve to swell the number as given by 
Herodotus, Mela, and Pliny, leaving about 18,000 for 
Egypt itself. Diodorus Siculus {l. c.) gives the an¬ 
cient population of the country as seven millions, an 
estimate which does not appear excessive, when com¬ 
pared with that of other lands. The number would 
seem to have been somewhat increased during the 
reign of the Ptolemies, and to have continued so under 
the Roman sway, since we find Josephus {Bell. Jud. 
2, 16) estimating the population of Egypt, in the time 
of Vespasian, at 7,500,000, without counting that of 
Alexandrea, which, according to Diodorus (17, 52), 
was 300,000, exclusive of slaves. When we read, 
however, in the same Diodorus (1, 31), that in his 
days the inhabitants of Egypt amounted to “ not less 
than three millions” {ova eXurrovg rival TpicinooLuv sc. 
fivpidduv ), we must regard this number as the interpo¬ 
lation of a scribe, and must consider Diodorus as mere¬ 
ly wishing to convey this idea, that, in more ancient 
times, the population was said to have been seven mil¬ 
lions, and that in his own days it was not inferior to this. 
(Tot) 6r cvqnravTog laov to gbv rraXaiov (jraai yryovevai 
Tcepl hrraKoolag /wpiddag, nai na6' r/fzdg db ovk e?mt- 
rovg elvai [rpiaKoaiov ]. Compare Wcsseling, ad 
loc.—Manner t, 10, 2, 309, seqq.) 

6. Complexion arid Physical Structure of the 
Egyptians. 

A few remarks relative to the physical character of 
this singular people, may form no uninteresting prel¬ 
ude to their national history. There are two sources 
of information respecting the physical character of the 
ancient Egyptians. These are, first, the descriptions 
of their persons incidentally to be met with in the an¬ 
cient writers ; and, secondly, the numerous remains 
of paintings and sculptures, as well as of human bodies, 
preserved among the ruins of ancient Egypt. It is not 
easy to reconcile the evidence derived from these dif¬ 
ferent quarters. The principal data from which a 
judgment is to be formed are as follows : 1. Accounts 
given by the ancients. If we were to judge from the 
remarks in some passages of the ancient writers alone, 
we should perhaps be led to the opinion that the Egyp¬ 
tians were a woolly-haired and black people, like the 
negroes of Guinea. There is a well-known passage 
of Herodotus (2, 104), which has often been cited to 
this purpose. The authority of this historian is of the 
more weight, as he had travelled in Egypt, and was, 
therefore, well acquainted, from his own observation, 
with the appearance of the people ; and it is well 
known that he is in general very accurate and faithful 
in relating the facts and describing the objects which 
fell under his personal observation. In his account 
30 


of the people of Colchis, he says, that they were a 
colony gf Egyptians, and he supports his opinion by this 
argument, that they were peTidyxpo^g Kai ovXorpixsg, 
or, “ black in complexion, and woolly-haired.” These 
are exactly the words used in the description of un¬ 
doubted negroes. The same Colchians, it may be 
observed, are mentioned by Pindar {Pyth. 4, 377) 
as being black, with the epithet of KrhaivCmeg, on 
which passage the scholiast observes, that the Col¬ 
chians were black, and that their dusky hue was at¬ 
tributed to their descent from the Egyptians, who were 
of the same complexion. Herodotus, in another place 
(2, 57), alludes to the complexion of the Egyptians, 
as if it was very strongly marked, and, indeed, as if 
they were quite black. After relating the fable of the 
foundation of the Dodonean oracle by a black pigeon, 
which had fled from Thebes in Egypt, and uttered its 
prophecies from the oaks at Dodona, he adds his con¬ 
jecture respecting the true meaning of the tale. He 
supposes the oracle to have been instituted by a female 
captive from the Thebaid, who was enigmatically de¬ 
scribed as a bird, and subjoins, that, “ by representing 
the bird as black, they marked that the woman was an 
Egyptian.” Some other writers have left us expres¬ 
sions equally strong. HCschylus, in the Suppiices 
{v. 722, seqq.), mentions the crew of an Egyptian 
bark, as seen from an eminence on shore. The per¬ 
son who espies them concludes them to be Egyptians 
from their black complexion : 

TrpeTTOvm 6’ dvdpeg vrjioi ge'Xayx'i.goig 

yvioiai levKtiv ek ttetcXuiiutov idelv. 

There are other passages in ancient writers, in 
which the Egyptians are mentioned as a swarthy peo¬ 
ple, which might with equal propriety be applied to a 
perfect black, or to a brown or dusky Nubian. We 
have, in one of the dialogues of Lucian {Navigium scu 
Vota. —vol. 8, 157, ed. Bip.), a ludicrous description 
of a young Egyptian, who is represented as belong¬ 
ing to the crew of a trading vessel at the Piraeus. It 
is said of him, that, “besides being black, he had pro¬ 
jecting lips, and was very slender in the legs, and that 
his hair and the curls bushed up behind marked him 
to be of servile rank. The words of the original are, 
ovrog de rrpog rip p.E?idyxpovg dvai, Kai npox^iAog eg- 

ti, ual IrTcrog dyav rolv gke’Xolv .. i] Ko/urj 

Kai eg TovTciao 6 nXoKajuog GWEGrreipa/uevog, ovk e?.ev- 
dspiov (firjaiv avrov rival. The expression, how r ever, 
which is here applied to the hair, seems rather to 
agree with the description of the bushy curls worn by 
the Nouba, than with the woolly heads of negroes. 
Mr. Legh, in speaking of the Barabras, near Syene, 
says, “ The hair of the men is sometimes frizzled at 
the sides, and stiffened with grease, so as perfectly to 
resemble the extraordinary projection on the head of 
the Sphinx. But the make of the limbs corresponds 
with the negro.” {Legh's Travels in Egypt , p. 98.) 
In another physical peculiarity the Egyptian race is 
described as resembling the negro. HHian {Hist. 
Anim. 7, 12) informs us, that the Egyptians used to 
boast that their women, immediately after they were 
delivered, could rise from their beds, and go about their 
domestic labour. Some of these passages are very 
strongly expressed, as if the Egyptians were negroes ; 
and yet it must be confessed, that if they really were 
such, it is singular we do not find more frequent allu¬ 
sion to the fact. The Hebrews were a fair people, 
fairer at least than the Arabs. Yet, in all the inter¬ 
course they had with Egypt, we never find in the sa¬ 
cred history the least intimation that the Egyptians 
were negroes ; not even on the remarkable occasion 
of the marriage of Solomon with the daughter of Pha¬ 
raoh. Were a modern historian to record the nuptials 
of a European monarch with the daughter of a negro 
king, such a circumstance would surely find its place. 
And since Egypt was so closely connected, first with 






J2GYPTUS 


.hgyptus. 


Grecian affairs when under the Ptolemies, and after¬ 
ward with the rest of Europe when it had become a 
Roman province, it is very singular, on the supposition 
that this nation was so remarkably different from the 
rest of mankind, that we have no allusion to it. We 
seldom find the Egyptians spoken of as a very peculiar 
race of men. These circumstances induce us to hes¬ 
itate in explaining the expressions of the ancients in 
that very strong sense in which they at first strike us. 
—2. The second class of data, from which we may 
form a judgment on this subject, are Paintings in 
Temples , and other remains. If we may judge of the 
complexion of the Egyptians from the numerous paint¬ 
ings found in the recesses of temples, and in the tombs 
of the kings in Upper Egypt, in which the colours are 
preserved in a very fresh state, we must conclude that 
the general complexion of this people was a chocolate, 
or a red copper colour. This may be seen in the 
coloured figures given by Belzoni, and in numerous 
plates in the splendid “Description de l’Egypte.” 
This red colour is evidently intended to represent the 
complexion of the people, and is not put on in the want 
of a lighter paint or flesh colour : for when the limbs 
or bodies are represented as seen through a thin veil, 
the tint used resembles the complexion of Europeans. 
The same shade might have been generally adopted 
if a darker one had not been preferred, as more truly 
representing the natural complexion of the Egyptian 
race. (Compare Belzoni's Remarks, p. 239.) Female 
figures are sometimes distinguished by a yellow or 
tawny colour, and hence it is probable that the shade 
of complexion was lighter in those who were protected 
from the sun. A very curious circumstance in the 
paintings found in Egyptian temples remains to be 
noticed. Besides the red figures, which are evidently 
meant to represent the Egyptians, there are other fig¬ 
ures which are of a black colour. Sometimes these 
represent captives or slaves, perhaps from the negro 
countries ; but there are also paintings of a very dif¬ 
ferent kind, which occur chiefly in Upper Egypt, and 
particularly on the confines of Egypt and Ethiopia. In 
these the black and the red figures hold a singular re¬ 
lation to each other. Both have the Egyptian costume, 
and the habits of priests, while the black figures are 
represented as conferring on the red the instruments 
and symbols of the sacerdotal office. “ This singular 
representation,” says Mr. Hamilton, “which is often 
repeated in all the Egyptian temples, but only here at 
Phila 3 and at Elephantine with this distinction of col¬ 
our, may very naturally be supposed to commemorate 
the transmission of religious fables and the social in¬ 
stitutions from the tawny Ethiopians to the compara¬ 
tively fair Egyptians.” It consists of three priests, 
two of whom, with black faces and hands, are repre¬ 
sented as pouring from two jars strings of alternate 
sceptres of Osiris and cruces ansatce over the head of 
another whose face is red. There are other paintings 
which seem to be nearly of the same purport. In the 
temple of Philse, the sculptures frequently depict two 
persons who equally represent the characters and sym¬ 
bols of Osiris, and two persons equally answering to 
those of Isis ; but in both cases one is invariably much 
older than the other, and appears to be the superior 
divinity. Mr. Hamilton conjectures that such figures 
represent the communication of religious rites from 
Ethiopia to Egypt, and the inferiority of the Egyptian 
Osiris. In these delineations there is a very marked 
and positive distinction between the black figures and 
those of fairer complexion ; the former are most fre¬ 
quently conferring the symbols of divinity and sov¬ 
ereignty on the other. Besides these paintings de¬ 
scribed by Mr. Hamilton, there are frequent repetitions 
of a very singular representation, of which different 
examples may be seen in the beautiful plates of the 
“ Description de l'Egypte.” In these it is plain, that 
the idea meant to be conveyed can be nothing else than 


this, that the red Egyptians were connected by kind* id, 
and were, in fact, the descendants of a black race, prob¬ 
ably the Ethiopian. (Compare plate 92 of the work just 
alluded to, and also plates 84 and 86.) In the same 
volume of the “ Description de l'Egypte” is a plate 
representing a painting at Eilithyia. Numerous fig¬ 
ures of the people are seen. It is remarkable that 
their hair is black and curled. “ Les cheveux noirs 
et frises, sans etre court et crepus comme ceux des 
Negres.” This is probably a correct account of the 
hair of the Egyptian race.—3. The third class of data 
for the present investigation is obtained from the 
form of the scull. In reference to the form of the 
scull among the ancient Egyptians, and their osteologi- 
cal characters in general, there is no want of informa¬ 
tion. The innumerable mummies, in which the whole 
nation may be said to have remained entire to modern 
times, afford sufficient means of ascertaining the true 
form of the race and all its varieties. Blumenbach, who 
has collected much information on everything relating 
to the history of mummies, in his excellent “ Beytrage 
zur Naturgeschichte,” concludes with a remark that 
the Egyptian race, in his opinion, contains three varie¬ 
ties. These are, first. , the Ethiopian form ; secondly, 
the “ Elindus-artige,” or a figure resembling the Hin¬ 
dus ; and, thirdly, the “ Berber-ahnliche,” or, more 
properly, Berberin-ahnliche, a form similar to that 
of the Berbers or Berberins. It must be observed, 
however, that Blumenbach has been led to adopt this 
opinion, not so much from the mummies he has exam¬ 
ined, as from the remains of ancient arts and from 
historical testimonies. As far as their osteological 
characters are concerned, it does not appear that the 
Egyptians differed very materially from Europeans. 
They certainly had not the character of the scull which 
belonged to the negroes in the western parts of Africa ; 
and if any approximation to the negro scull existed 
among them, it must have been rare and in no great 
degree. Sommering has described the heads of four 
mummies seen by him ; two of them differed in nothing 
from the European formation ; the third had only one 
African character, viz., that of a larger space marked 
out for the temporal muscle ; the characters of the 
fourth are not particularized. Mr. Lawrence, in whose 
work ( Lectures on Physiology , p. 299, Am. cd.) the 
above evidence of Sommering is cited, has collected 
a variety of statements respecting the form of the head 
in the mummies deposited in the museums and other 
collections in several countries. He observes, that 
in the mummies of females seen by Denon, in those 
from the Theban catacombs engraved in the great 
French work, and in several sculls and casts in the 
possession of Dr. Leach, the osteological character is 
entirely European ; lastly, he adduces the strong evi¬ 
dence of Cuvier, who says, that he has examined in 
Paris, and in the various collections of Europe, more 
than fifty heads of mummies, and that not one among 
them presented the characters of the negro or Hot¬ 
tentot. ( Lawrence's Lectures, p. 301.— Observations 
sur le cadavre de la Venus Hottentotte, par M. Cuvier, 
Mem. du Museum d'Hist. Natur., 3, 173, seqq.) It 
could therefore be only in the features, as far as they 
depend on the soft part, that the Egyptians bore any 
considerable resemblance to the negro. And the sam& 
thing might probably be affirmed of several other na¬ 
tions, who must be reckoned among the native Afri¬ 
cans. Particularly it might be asserted of the Berberins 
or Nubians already mentioned, and of some tribes of 
Abyssinians. A similar remark might be made of the 
Copts. In neither of these races is it at all probable 
that the scull would exhibit any characteristic of the 
negro. It is here, then, that we are to look for the 
nearest representatives of the ancient Egyptians and 
Ethiopians, and particularly to the Copts, who are de¬ 
scended from the former, and to the copper-coloured 
races resembling the Berberins or Nubians. Denon 

31 




M GYPTUS. 


^EGYPTUS. 


makes mention of the resemblance which the Copts 
bear to the human figures painted or sculptured among 
the ruins of ancient Egypt. He adds the following 
remarks. “ As to the character of the human figure, 
as the Egyptians borrowed nothing from other nations, 
they could only copy from their own, which is rather 
delicate than fine. The female forms, however, re¬ 
sembled the figures of beautiful women of the present 
day ; round and voluptuous ; a small nose, the eyes 
long, half shut, and turned up at the outer angle like 
those of all persons whose sight is habitually fatigued 
by the burning heat of the sun or the dazzling white¬ 
ness of snow ; the cheeks round and rather thick, 
the lips full, the mouth large, but cheerful and smiling ; 
displaying, in short, the African character, of which 
the negro is the exaggerated picture, though perhaps 
the original type.” The visages carved and painted 
on the heads of the sarcophagi may* be supposed to 
give an idea of an Egyptian countenance. In these 
there is a certain roundness and flatness of the features, 
and the whole countenance, which strongly resembles 
the description of the Copts, and in some degree that 
of the Berberins. The colour of these visages is the 
red coppery hue of the last-mentioned people, and is 
nearly the same, though not always so dark, as that 
of the figures painted in the temples and catacombs. 
The most puzzling circumstance in this comparison 
refers to the hair. The Copts are said to have frizzled 
or somewhat crisp, though not woolly, hair. The old 
Egyptians, as well as the Ethiopians, are termed by 
the Greeks ovlorpixeg. But the hair found in mum¬ 
mies is generally, if not always, in flowdng ringlets, 
as long and as smooth as that of any European. Its 
colour, which is often brown, may depend on art, or 
the substance used in embalming. But the texture is 
different from what we should expect it to be, either 
from the statements of ancient writers, or from the 
description of the races now existing in the same 
countries. — Conclusion. From what has been ad¬ 
duced, we may consider it as tolerably well proved, 
that the Egyptians and Ethiopians were natives of the 
same race, whose abodes, from the earliest periods of 
history, were the regions bordering on the Nile. 
These nations were not negroes, such as the negroes 
of Guinea, though they bore some resemblance to 
that description of men, at least when compared 
with the people of Europe. This resemblance, how¬ 
ever, did not extend to the shape of the scull, in any 
great degree at least, or in the majority of instances. 
It perhaps only depended on a complexion and physi¬ 
ognomy similar to those of the Copts and Nubians. 
These races partake, in a certain degree, of the Afri¬ 
can countenance. The hair in the Ethiopians and 
Egyptians must sometimes have been of a more crisp 
or bushy kind than that which is often found in mum¬ 
mies ; for such is the case in respect to the Copts, 
and the description of the Egyptians by all ancient 
writers obliges us to adopt this conclusion. In com¬ 
plexion it seems probable that the race was a coun¬ 
terpart of the Foulahs, in the west of Africa, nearly in 
the same latitude. The blacker Foulahs resemble in 
complexion the darkest people of the Nile ; they are 
of a deep brown or mahogany colour. The fairest of 
the Foulahs are not darker than the Copts, or even 
than some Europeans. Other instances of as great 
a variety may be found among the African nations, 
within the limits of one race, as in the Bishuane Kaf- 
fers, who are of a clear brown colour, while the Kaf- 
fers of Natal on the coast are of a jet black. From 
some remarks of Diodorus and Plutarch, it would ap¬ 
pear that the birth of fair, and even red-haired indi¬ 
viduals occasionally happened in the Egyptian race. 
Both these writers say, that Typhon was mfipbc, or 
red-haired; the former adds that a few of the native 
Egyptians were of that appearance : oHyovg tiviiq. 
{Diod. Sic., 1, 88.— Pint., dc Is. ct Os., p. 363 — 
32 


Prichard's Physical History of Mankind, 1, 316, seqq., 
2 d ed.) 

7. Origin of Egyptian Civilization. 

The question that now presents itself is one of a 
singularly interesting character. Whence arose the 
arts and civilization of Egypt 1 W ere they indigenous, 
or did they come to her as the gift of another land l 
Everything seems to countenance the idea that civil¬ 
ization came gradually down the valley of the Nile, 
from the borders of Ethiopia to the shores of the Med¬ 
iterranean. It would appear, that when the arts of civ¬ 
ilized life were first introduced into Upper Egypt, the 
lower section of this country formed merely a vast mo¬ 
rass or gulf of the sea, and that they followed in their 
progressive development the course of the stream. 
(Compare Herodotus, 2, 4.— Id. ibid. 5.— Id. ibid. 11, 
seqq. — Diod. Sic. 1, 34 ; and the memoirs of Girard, 
Andrcossy, &c., in the Description de VEgyptc. Com¬ 
pare also the remarks in the present volume under the 
article Delta.) Monuments, tradition, analogies of 
every kind, are here in accordance with natural prob¬ 
abilities. There was a period when the names of 
Ethiopia and Egypt were confounded together, when 
the two nations were thought to form but a single 
people. (Compare the proofs of this assertion, as col¬ 
lected and discussed by Creuzer, Commcntat. Herodot., 
p. 178, seqq., in opposition to Champollion the youn¬ 
ger ; and also the remarks in the present volume, un¬ 
der the articles ^Ethiopia and Meroe.) In all the re¬ 
citals and legends of the earliest antiquity, the Egyp¬ 
tians are associated with the Ethiopians, and to the lat¬ 
ter is assigned a distinguished character for wisdom, 
knowledge, and piety, which testifies to their priority 
in the order of civilization. (Compare Hecren, Idccn, 
2, 1, 314, 405, &c.) We see also the common tradi¬ 
tions of the two nations referring to Meroe the origin 
of most of the cities of Upper Egypt, and, among oth¬ 
ers, of Thebes. It is to Meroe, its ancient metropolis, 
that Thebes attaches itself, when, for the purpose of 
extending their commercial interests, they send a col¬ 
ony to found, in the midst of the deserts, a new city 
of Ammon. {Herod. 2, 42. — Diod. Sic. 2, 3.) The 
same institutions, a similar religion, language, and 
mode of writing, together wuth manners most strongly 
resembling one another, attest the primitive connexion 
that subsisted between these three sacred cities, though 
so widely apart. It appears, then, that a sacred caste, 
established from a remote period on the borders of the 
Nile, in the island, or, rather, peninsula formed by the 
Astapus and Astaboras, sent forth gradually its sacer¬ 
dotal colonies, carrying with them agriculture and the 
first arts of civilized life, along the regions to the north, 
and that these, proceeding slowly onward, passed 
eventually the cataract of Syene, and entered upon the 
valley of Egypt. Placing commerce under the safe¬ 
guard of religion, and subjugating the inhabitants of the 
regions to which they came, more by the benefits they 
conferred than by any exercise of force, these stran¬ 
gers became at last the controlling power of the land, 
and laid the foundation of that brilliant character in 
the annals of civilization which has acquired for Egypt 
so imperishable a name. (Compare Hecrcn, Ideen, 2, 
1, 363, seqq.—Id. ibid. 2, 532, seqq.—Gocrrcs, My- 
thcngeschichte, 2, 331, seqq.— Creuzer , Commcntat. 
Herodot., p. 178, seqq. — Id. S)ymbohk, par Guigniaut, 

1, 2, 778, seqq.) But whence came the civilization 
of Meroe 1—This question will be considered in a dif¬ 
ferent article. ( Vid. Meroe.) 

8. Egyptian History. 

The Egyptians, like the Hindus and Persians, had 
allegorical traditions among them respecting the in¬ 
troduction of agriculture and the first beginnings of 
civilization in their country. Such were the Songs of 
Isis, whose high antiquity is attested by Plato (dc^Leg. 





-EGYPTUS. 


JEGYPTUS. 


2. — Pt. 3, vol. 2, p. 239, cd. Bekker). They had, in 
the second place, epic traditions, a kind of poetic chron¬ 
icles, embracing the succession of high priests, and 
the dynasties of the Pharaohs, or monarchs of the 
country. Such were the volumes of papyrus, which 
the priests unrolled to satisfy the questions of Herod¬ 
otus (2, 100). We would err greatly, however, were 
we to suppose that these were actual histories. They 
were rather a species of heroic tales, intermingled with 
religious legends, and where allegory still played the 
chief part, as in the Ramayan and Mahabharat of the 
Hindus, the Schahnameh of the Persians, and the tra¬ 
ditions of the Greeks previous to the return, or inva¬ 
sion, of the Heraclidte. These originals are unfortu¬ 
nately lost for us. In their stead we have the sacred 
books of the Hebrews, which offer a great number 
of recitals on this subject, but fragmentary in their 
nature, without development, and often extremely 
vague. Hence it is difficult to conciliate these recit¬ 
als with those of the Greeks, which are in general 
more circumstantial and extended. Some time before 
Herodotus, Plippys of Rhegium and other travellers 
had visited Egypt. Among these Hecatseus of Miletus 
is the most conspicuous. He travelled thither about 
the 59th Olympiad, and described particularly the up¬ 
per part of Egypt, bestowing especial attention on the 
state or city of Thebes, and the history of its kings. 
Hence the reason why Herodotus says so little on 
these points. {Creuzer, fragm. Hist. Grcec. antiquis- 
sim ., p. 16, seqq. — Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., 2, 135, seqq.) 
About the same period, Hellanicus of Lesbos also 
gave a description of Egypt. ( Hcllanici fragm., cd. 
Sturz., p. 39, seqq.) Herodotus succeeded. Visiting 
the country about seventy years after its conquest by 
the Persians, he traversed the whole extent, and con¬ 
signed to his great work all that he had seen, all that 
he had heard from the priests, as well with regard to 
the monuments as the history of Egypt, and added to 
these his own opinions on what had passed under his 
view or been related to him by others. {Herod., lib. 
2 et 3 ) The state or city of Memphis is the principal 
subject of his narrative. After him came Theopom- 
pus of Chios, Ephorus of Cumse {Fragm., ed. Marx., 
p. 213, seqq.), Eudoxus of Cnidus, and Philistus of 
Syracuse. But their works have either totally perish¬ 
ed, or at best only a few fragments remain. At a la¬ 
ter period, and subsequent to the founding of Alexan- 
drea, Hecatseus of Abdera travelled to Thebes. This 
took place under the first Ptolemy. ( Creuzer, fragm., 
&c., p. 23, seqq. — Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., 3, 211, seqq.) 
In the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, two centuries 
and a half before the Christian era, Manetho, an Egyp¬ 
tian priest, of Heliopolis in Lower Egypt, wrote, by 
order of that prince, the history of his own country in 
the Greek language, translating it, as he states himself, 
out of the sacred records. His work is, most unfor¬ 
tunately, lost; but the fragments which have been 
preserved to us by the writings of Josephus, in the 
first century of the Christian era, as well as by the 
Christian chronographists, are, if entitled to confidence, 
of the highest historical value. What we have re¬ 
maining of the work of Manetho presents us with a 
chronological list of the successive rulers of Egypt, 
from the first foundation of the monarchy to the time 
of Alexander of Macedon, who succeeded the Per¬ 
sians. This list is divided into thirty dynasties. It 
originally contained the length of reign as well as the 
name of every king ; but, in consequence of successive 
transcriptions, variations have crept in, and some few 
omissions also occur in the record, as it has reached 
us through the medium of different authors. The 
chronology of Manetho, adopted with confidence by 
some, and rejected with equal confidence by others 
(his name and his information not being even noticed 
by some of the modern systematic writers on Egyptian 
history), has received the most unquestionable and 

E 


decisive testimony of his general fidelity by the inter¬ 
pretation of the hieroglyphic inscriptions on the exist¬ 
ing monuments ; so much so, that, by the accordance 
of the facts attested by these monuments with the rec¬ 
ord of the historian, we have reason to expect the en¬ 
tire restoration of the annals of the Egyptian monarchy 
antecedent to the Persian conquest, and which, indeed, 
is already accomplished in part. {Quarterly Journal 
of Science, New Series, vol. 1 , p. 180.) The next 
authority after Manetho is Eratosthenes. He was 
keeper of the Alexandrean library in the reign of Ptol¬ 
emy Euergetes, the successor to Ptolemy Philadel¬ 
phus. Among the few fragments of his works which 
have reached us, transmitted through flhe Greek histo¬ 
rians, is a catalogue of thirty-eight or thirty-nine kings 
of Thebes, commencing with Menes (who is mentioned 
by the other authorities also as the first monarch of 
Egypt), and occupying by their successive reigns 1055 
years. {Foreign Quarterly, No. 24, p. 358.) These 
names are stated to have been compiled from original 
records existing at Thebes, which city Eratosthenes 
visited expressly to consult them. The names of the 
first two kings of the first dynasty of Manetho are the 
same with those of the first two kings in the catalogue 
of Eratosthenes ; but the remainder of the catalogue 
presents no farther accordance, either in the names or 
in the duration of the reigns. Next to Herodotus, 
Manetho, and Eratosthenes, the most important author¬ 
ity, in relation to Egypt and its institutions, is Diodo¬ 
rus Siculus, who lived under Caesar and Augustus, and 
who, independent of his own observations and his re¬ 
searches on the spot, refers frequently, in this part of 
his work, to the old Gre^k historians, and particularly 
to Hecataeus of Miletus, after whom he describes the 
ancient kingdom of Thebes, and gives an account of 
the monuments of this famous city, with surprising 
fidelity. ( Description dc I'Fgyptc, 2,* 59, seqq. —Com¬ 
pare Heync, dc fontibus Diod. Sic. in Comment. Soc. 
Gott., 5, 104, seqq.) Strabo, the celebrated geogra¬ 
pher, visited Egypt in the suite of JElius Gallus, about 
the commencement of our era. He does not content 
himself, however, with merely recounting what fell 
under his own personal observation, but frequently re¬ 
fers to the earlier writers. Plutarch, in many of his 
biographies, and especially in his treatise on Isis and 
Osiris; Philostratus, in his life of Apollonius ; Por¬ 
phyry, Iamblichus, Horapollo, and many other writers, 
have preserved for us a large number of interesting 
particulars relative to the antiquities and the religion 
of Egypt.—We have already alluded to the quarter 
whence the germe of Egyptian civilization is supposed 
to have been derived. The first impression having 
been one of a sacerdotal character, we find the begin¬ 
nings of Egyptian history partaking, in consequence, 
of the same. Hence the tradition, emanating from 
the priests of Egypt, according to which the supreme 
deities first reigned over the country ; then those of the 
second class ; after these the inferior deities ; then the 
demigods ; and, last of all, men. The first deity that 
reigned was Kneph : this embraces the most ancient 
period, of an unknown duration. To Kneph succeed¬ 
ed Phtha, who has for his element, fire, and whose 
reign it is impossible to calculate. Next came the 
Sun, his offspring, who reigned thirty thousand years. 
After him, Cronos (Saturn) and the other gods occu¬ 
py, by their respective rules, a period of three thou¬ 
sand nine hundred and eighty-four years. Then suc¬ 
ceeded the Cabiri, or planetary gods of the second 
class. After these came the demigods, to the number 
of eight, of whom Osiris was probably regarded as the 
first. After the gods and demigods appeared human 
kings and the first dynasty of Thebes, composed of 
thirty-seven kings, who succeeded one another for the 
space of fourteen hundred years, or, according to oth¬ 
ers, one thousand and fifty-five. (Compare Chron. 
JEgypt. ap. Euseb., Thcs. Temp., 2, p. 7, and Manetho 

33 




iEGYPTUS. 


^GYPTUS. 


ap. Synccll.) Gorres thinks that these thirty-seven 
kings, who are given as so many mortals, may have 
been nothing else but the thirty-seven Decans, with 
Menes at their head ; so that, by rejecting this dynasty 
as a continuation of the divine dynasties, those of a 
strictly human nature, and, with them, the historical 
times of Egypt, will have commenced, according to 
the calculations of this ingenious and profound writer, 
2712 years before the Christian era. ( Gorres , My- 
thengeschichte, vol. 2, p. 412. — Compare Crcuzcr , 
Symbolik , 1, 469, seqq ., and Guigniaut's note, 1, 2, 
841.) Be this, however, as it may, the common ac¬ 
count makes Menes to have been the first human king 
of Egypt, and nis name begins the dynasties of Thebes, 
of This, and of Memphis. Menes completed the 
work of the gods, by perfecting the arts of life, and 
dictating to men the laws he had received from the 
skies. This Menes , or Menas , or Mines (a name 
which Eratosthenes makes equivalent to Dionios, i. e., 
Jovialis), can hardly be an historical personage. He 
resembles a sort of intermediate king between the 
gods and the human kings of the lands, a divine type 
of man, a symbol of intelligence descended from the 
skies, and creating human society upon earth ; similar 
to the Menou or Manou of India, the Minos of Crete, 
&c. He is a conqueror, a legislator, and a benefac¬ 
tor of men, like Osiris-Bacchus ; like him he perish¬ 
es under the blows of Typhon, for he was killed by a 
hippopotamus, the emblem of this evil genius; like 
him, moreover, he has the ox for his symbol, Mne- 
vis the legislator being none other than the bull Mne- 
vis of Heliopolis. (Compaq Volney, Keekerches sur 
mist. Anc., 3, 282, seqq. — Prichard's Analysis of 
Egyptian Mythology , p. 381. — Creuzer's Symbolik , 
par Guigniaut, 1, 2, 780.) The successor of Menes 
was Thoth, or Athothes, to whom is ascribed the in¬ 
vention of writing and many other useful arts. We 
have in the fragments of Manetho a full list of two dy¬ 
nasties seated at This, at the head of the first of which 
we find these two names. These two dynasties in¬ 
clude fifteen kings, and may therefore have continued 
about 400 years ; the duration assigned to their col¬ 
lective reigns, in Eusebius’s version of Manetho, is 
554 years, but this is probably too long, as it is a sum 
that far exceeds what would be the result of a similar 
series of generations of the usual length. From the 
time of Menes to that of Moeris, Herodotus leaves us 
entirely in the dark. He states merely (2, 100) tha?t 
the priests enumerated between them 330 kings. 
Diodorus Siculus (1,45) counts, in an interval of 1400 
years between Menes and Busiris, eight kings, sev¬ 
en of whom are nameless, but the last was Busiris 
II. This prince is succeeded by eight descendants, 
six of whom are in like manner nameless, and the 
seventh and eighth are both called Uchoreus. From 
Uchoreus to Moeris he reckons twelve generations. 
Manetho, on the other hand, reckons between Menes 
and the time at which we may consider his history 
as becoming authentic, sixteen dynasties, which in¬ 
cludes nearly three thousand years. But, whatever 
opinion we may form relative to these obscure and 
conflicting statements, whether we regard these early 
dynasties as collateral and contemporary reigns ( Creu¬ 
zer's Symbolik, par Guigniaut, 1, 2, 780), or as be¬ 
longing merely to the fabulous periods of Egyptian 
history, the following particulars may be regarded as 
tolerably authentic. Egypt, during this interval, had 
undergone numerous revolutions. She had detached 
herself from Ethiopia ; the government, wrested from 
the priestly caste, had passed into the hands of the 
military order; Thebes, now become powerful in re¬ 
sources, and asserting her independence, had com¬ 
menced, under a line probably of native princes, her ca¬ 
reer of conquests and brilliant undertakings. On a sud¬ 
den, in the time of a king called, by Manetho, Timaos, 
but who does not appear among the names in his list of 
34 


dynasties, a race of strangers entered from the east 
into Egypt. ( Josephus contra Ap., 1, 14.—Compare 
Eusebius , Proep. Ev., 10, 13.) Everything yielded 
to these fierce invaders, who, having taken Memphis, 
and fortified Avaris (or Abaris), afterward Pelusium, 
organized a species of government, gave themselves 
kings, and, if we believe certain traditions, founded 
On (the city of the Sun ; Heliopolis), to the east of 
the apex of the Delta. {Juba, cited by Pliny, 6, 34. 
Compare Volney, Recherches sur I'Hist. Anc., 3, 247, 
seqq. — Prichard's Analysis of Egyptian Mythology, 
p. 66, Append. — Crcuzcr , Commentat. Hcrodot., p. 
188, seqq.) More than two centuries passed under 
the dominion of this race. They are commonly called 
the shepherd race, and their dynasty that of the Hycsos, 
or Shepherd-kings. The sway of these invaders is 
said by Manetho to have been tyrannical and cruel. 
They exercised the utmost atrocity towards the native 
inhabitants, putting the males to the sword, and redu¬ 
cing their wives and children to slavery. The con¬ 
quest of Egypt by the Shepherds, as they are called, 
dates in the year 2082 B.C. Their dynasty continued 
to rule at Memphis 260 years, and their kings, six in 
number, were Salatis, Boeon, Apachnas, Apophis, Ja- 
nias, and Asseth. It was during the rule of the shep¬ 
herd race that Joseph was in Egypt. Thus we have 
it at once explained how strangers, of whom the Egyp¬ 
tians were so jealous, should be admitted into power; 
how the king should be even glad of new settlers, oc¬ 
cupying considerable tracts of his territory ; and how 
the circumstance of their being shepherds, though odi¬ 
ous to the conquered people, would endear them to a 
sovereign whose family followed the same occupation. 
After the death of Joseph, the Scripture tells us that a 
king arose who knew not Joseph. This strong ex¬ 
pression could hardly be applied to any lineal succes¬ 
sor of a monarch who had received such signal benefits 
from him. It would lead us rather to suppose, that a 
new dynasty, hostile to the preceding, had obtained 
possession of the throne. Now this is exactly the 
case. For a few years later, the Hycsos, or Shepherd- 
kings, were expelled from Egypt by Amosis, called on 
monuments Amenophtiph, the founder of the eigh¬ 
teenth, or Diospolitan dynasty. He would naturally 
refuse to recognise the services of Joseph, and would 
consider all his family as necessarily his enemies; 
and thus, too, we understand his fears lest they should 
join the enemies of Egypt, if any war fell out with 
them. {Exod., 1 , 10.) For the Flycsos, after their 
expulsion, continued long to harass the Egyptians by 
attempts to recover their lost dominion. {Roselli- 
ni, p. 291.) Oppression was, of course, the means 
employed to weaken first, and then extinguish, the 
Hebrew population. The children of Israel were 
employed in building up the cities of Egypt. It has 
been observed by Champollion, that many of the edi¬ 
fices erected by the eighteenth dynasty are upon the 
ruins ot older buildings, which had been manifestly 
destroyed. (2 de Lett., p. 7, 10, 17.) This circum¬ 
stance, with the absence of older monuments in the 
parts of Egypt occupied by the Hycsos, confirms the 
testimony ot historians, that these conquerors destroyed 
the monuments of native princes; and thus was an 
opportunity given to the restorers of a native sover- 
to employ those whom they considered their en¬ 
emies’ allies in repairing their injuries. To this pe¬ 
riod belong the magnificent edifices of Karnac, Luxor, 
and Medinet-Abou. At the same time we have the 
express testimony of Diodorus Siculus, that it was the 
boast of the Egyptian kings that no Egyptian had put his 
hand to the work, but that foreigners had been com¬ 
pelled to do it (1, 56). With regard to the opinion 
entertained by many learned men, that the children of 
Israel were themselves the shepherd race, it may be 
sufficient to remark, that the Hycsos, as represented 
on monuments, have the features, colour, and other 





jEGYPTUS 


jEGYPTUS. 


distinctives, not of the Jewish, but of the Scythian 
tribes. It was under a king of the eighteenth dynasty 
that the Israelites went out from Egypt, namely, Ram¬ 
ses V., the 16th monarch of the line. We have here, 
in this eighteenth dynasty, the commencement of what 
may be properly termed the second period of Egyptian 
history. The names of the monarchs are given as fol¬ 
lows by the aid of Champollion’s discoveries: 1. 
Tkoutmosis I., of whom there is a colossal statue in 
the museum at Turin. 2. Thoutmosis II. ( Amon- 
Mai), whose name appears on the most ancient parts 
of the palace of Karnac. 3. His daughter Amcnsi, 
who governed Egypt for the space of twenty-one years, 
and erected the greatest of the obelisks of Karnac. 
This vast monolith is erected in her name to the god 
Ammon, and the memory of her father. 4. Thout¬ 
mosis III., surnamed Meri , the Moeris of the Greeks. 
The remaining paonuments of his reign are the pilaster 
and granite halls of Karnac, several temples in Nubia, 
the great Sphinx of the Pyramids, and the colossal ob¬ 
elisk now in front of the church of St. John Lateran 
at Rome. 5. His successor was Amenophis I., who 
was succeeded by, 6. Thoutmosis IV. This king 
finished the temples of the Wady Alfa and Arnada, in 
Nubia, which Amenoph had begun. 7. Amenophis 
II., whose vocal statue, of colossal size, attracted the 
notice of the Greeks and Romans. ( Vid. Memnon 
and Memnonium.) The most ancient parts of the pal¬ 
ace at Luxor, the temple of Cnouphis at Elephantine, 
the Memnonium, and a palace at Sohled, in Nubia, are 
monuments of the splendour and piety of this monarch. 
8. Horus, who built the grand colonnade of the palace 
at Luxor. 9. Queen Amencheres , or Tmau-Mot, com¬ 
memorated in an inscription preserved in the museum 
at Turin. 10. Ramses I., who built the hypostyle 
hall at Karnac, and excavated a sepulchre for himself 
at Beban-el-Moulouk. 11 and 12. Two brothers 
Mandoueli and Ousirei. They have left monuments 
of their existence, the last in the grand obelisk now in 
the Piazza del Popolo at Rome ; the first in the beau¬ 
tiful palace at Kourna, and the splendid tomb discov¬ 
ered by Belzoni. 13. Their successor caused the two 
great obelisks at Luxor to be erected. This was the 
second Ramses. 14. Ramses III. Of this king dedi¬ 
catory inscriptions are found in the second court of 
the palace of Karnac, and his tomb still exists at 
Thebes. 15. Ramses IV., surnamed Mci-Amoun , 
built the great palace of Medinet-Abou, and a temple 
near the southern gate of Karnac. The magnificent 
sarcophagus which formerly enclosed the body of this 
king, has been removed from the catacombs of Beban- 
el-Moulouk, and-is now in the Museum of the Louvre. 
He was succeeded by his son, 16. Ramses V., sur¬ 
named Amenophis , who is considered as the last of 
this dynasty, and who was the father of Sesostris. 
The acts of none of the kings of this dynasty are com¬ 
memorated by the Greek historians, with the exception 
of Moeris. He is celebrated by them for a variety of 
useful labours, and appears to have done much to pro¬ 
mote the prosperity of Egypt, particularly by form¬ 
ing a lake to receive the surplus waters of the Nile 
during the inundation, and to distribute them for ag¬ 
ricultural purposes during its fall. (Vid. Moeris.) 
The reign of Ramses Amenophis is the era of the Ex¬ 
odus. The Scripture narrative describes this event as 
connected with the destruction of a Pharaoh, and the 
^chronological calculation adopted by Rosellini would 
make it coincide with the last year of this monarch’s 
reign. Wilkinson and Greppo, however, maintain that 
we need not necessarily suppose the death of a king to 
coincide with the exit from Egypt, as the Scripture 
speaks, with the exception of one poetical passage, of 
the destruction of Pharaoh’s host rather than of the 
monarch’s own death. But in Rosellini’s scheme, this 
departure from the received interpretation is not want¬ 
ed. Wilkinson makes the exodus to have taken place 


in the fourth year of the reign of Thothmes III. (Mat. 
Hicrog., p. 4. —Manners and Customs , &c., vol. 1, p. 
54.) Vast, however, as was the glory of this line of 
kings, it was eclipsed by the greater reputation of the 
chief of the next, or nineteenth dynasty, Ramses VI., 
the famed SeSostris (called also Sesoosis or Scthos , 
and likewise Mgyptus , or Ramcsses the Great. —Com¬ 
pare Champollion , Syst. Iiierogl., p. 224, seqq.) Se¬ 
sostris regenerated, in some sense, his country and na¬ 
tion, by chasing from it the last remnant of the stran¬ 
ger-races which had dwelt within the borders of Egypt, 
by giving to the Egyptian territory certain fixed limits, 
by dividing it into nomes, and by giving a powerful 
impulse to arts, to commerce, and to the spirit of con¬ 
quest. One may see in Herodotus and Diodorus what 
a strong remembrance his various exploits in Africa, 
Asia, and perhaps even Europe, had left behind them. 
His labours in Egypt are attested by numerous monu¬ 
ments, not only from the Mediterranean to Syene, but 
far beyond, in Ethiopia, which at this time probably 
formed a portion of Egypt. ( Champollion , Syst. Hie- 
rogl., p. 239, 391.) The result of his military expe¬ 
ditions was to enrich his country with the treasures of 
Ethiopia, Arabia Felix, and India, and to establish a 
communication with the countries of the East by means 
of fleets which he equipped on the Red Sea. That 
the history of his conquests has been exaggerated by 
the priests of Egypt, whose interests he favoured, can¬ 
not be denied. Equally apparent is it that his history 
bears some resemblance to the legends of Osiris. 
These assimilations, however, of their heroes to their 
gods, were familiar to the priests of the land. ( Vid. 
Sesostris.) This nineteenth dynasty, at the head of 
which stands Sesostris, consisted of six kings, all of 
whom bear, upon monuments, the name of Ramses, 
with various distinguishing epithets. The last of these 
is supposed to have been contemporary with the Tro¬ 
jan war, and to be the one called Polybus by Homer. 
The twentieth dynasty of Manetho also took its title 
from Thebes. Their names may still be read upon 
the temples of Egypt; but the extracts from Manetho 
do not give their epithets. In the failure of his testi¬ 
mony, Champollion Figeac has had recourse to the list 
given by Syncellus. The chief of this dynasty is cel¬ 
ebrated, under the name of Remphis, or Ilempsinitus, 
for his great riches. Herodotus gives him, for his suc¬ 
cessor, Cheops, the builder of the largest of the Pyra¬ 
mids. The same authority places Cephrenes, the build¬ 
er of the second Pyramid, next in order; and, after 
him, Mycerinus, for whom is claimed the erection of 
the third Pyramid. The researches of the two Cham- 
pollions have not discovered any confirmation of 
this statement of the father of profane history. The 
next dynasty, the twenty-first of Manetho, derived its 
name from Tanis, a city of Lower Egypt. It was 
composed of seven kings, the first of whom was the Mcn- 
des of the Greek historians, the Smendis of Manetho, 
whose name Champollion reads upon the monument 
of his reign, Mandouthcph. He was the builder of the 
fabric known in antiquity by the name of the labyrinth. 
The other kings of this family are also commemorated. 
The account which has reached us of the building of 
the labyrinth throws great light upon the state of the 
government of Egypt during the reign of Mendes and 
his successors. It was divided into as many separate 
compartments as there were nomes in Egypt, and in 
them, at fixed periods, assembled deputations, from 
each of these districts, to decide upon the most impor¬ 
tant questions. Hence we may infer, that, in the change 
of dynasty, the Egyptians had succeeded in the estab¬ 
lishment of a limited monarchy, controlled like the con¬ 
stitutional governments of Europe, if not by the im¬ 
mediate representatives of the people, at least by the 
expression of the opinion of the notables. The ruins 
of Bubastis, in turn, present memorials of the reigns 
of the Bubastite kings. (Bulletin des Sciences Hist., 

35 




ZEGYPTUS. 


ZEGYPTUS. 


7, 472.) These succeeded the first dynasty of Ta- 
nites ; and we find Egypt again immediately connect¬ 
ed with Judea, and its history with that of the Scrip¬ 
tures. Sesonchis, the head of this dynasty, was the 
conqueror of Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, and the 
plunderer of the treasures of David. This king, the 
iSesak of the second Book of Kings, built the great 
temple of Bubastis, which is described by Herodotus, 
and likewise the first court of the palace of Karnac at 
Thebes. His son Osorchon (Zoroch), who also led 
an army into Syria, continued the important works com¬ 
menced by his father. But their successor Takelliothis 
is only known to us by a simple funereal picture, con¬ 
secrated to the memory of one of his sons. This paint¬ 
ing has been broken, and one half is preserved in the 
Vatican, while the other forms a part of the royal col¬ 
lection at Turin. Various buildings are found among 
the ruins of Heliopolis, and still more among those of 
Tanis, constructed in the reigns of the Pharaohs of 
the second Tanite dynasty. ( Bulletin des Sciences 
Hist., 7, 472.) Upon these the names of three of them 
have been deciphered, Pctubastcs, Osorthos, and 
Psammos. Champpllion considers them as having 
immediately preceded the great Ethiopian invasion, 
which gave to Egypt a race of kings from that country. 
Manetho, however, places Bocchoris between these two 
races, forming his twenty-fourth dynasty of one Saite. 
The yoke of these foreign conquerors does not appear 
to have been oppressive, as is evident from the number 
of monuments that exist, not only in Ethiopia, but in 
Egypt, bearing dedications made in the name of the 
kings of this race, who ruled at the same time in both 
countries. The names inscribed on these monuments 
are Schabak, Sevekotheph, Tahrah, and Amcnasa , all 
of whom are mentioned either by Greek or sacred his¬ 
torians, under the names of Sabacon, Sevechus, Tha- 
raca , and Ammeris. (Bulletin des Sciences Hist., ubi 
supra.) No more than three of these kings are men¬ 
tioned in the list of Manetho as belonging to this dy¬ 
nasty, the last being included in that which follows. 
On the departure of the Ethiopians, the affairs of Egypt 
appear to have fallen into great disorder. This civil 
discord was at last composed by Psammiticus I. Me¬ 
morials of his reign are found in the obelisk now on 
Monte Litorio at Rome, and in the enormous columns 
of the first court of the palace of Karnac at Thebes. 
{Bulletin des Sciences Hist., vol. 7, p. 471.) The 
rule of Nechao II. is commemorated by several stehz 
and statues. It was this monarch that took Jerusalem, 
and carried King Jehoahaz into captivity. On the isle 
of Philae are found buildings bearing the legend of 
Psammiticus II., as well as of Apnes (the Hophra of 
Scripture). An obelisk of his reign also exists at Rome. 
The greater part of the fragments of sculpture, scatter¬ 
ed among the ruins of Sais, bear the royal legend of 
the celebrated Amasis, and a monolith chapel of rose 
granite, dedicated by him to the Egyptian Minerva, is 
in the museum of the Louvre. Psammenitus was the 
last of this dynasty of Saites. Few tokens of his short 
reign are extant, besides the inscription of a statue in 
the Vatican. He was defeated and dethroned by Cam- 
byses : nor did he long survive his misfortune. With 
him fell the splendour of the kingdom of Egypt; and 
from this date (525 B.C.), the edifices and monu¬ 
ments assume a character of far less importance. Still, 
however, we find materials for history. Even the fe¬ 
rocious Cambyscs is commemorated in an inscription 
on the statue of a priest of Sais, now in the Vatican. 
The name of Darius is sculptured on the columns of 
the great temple of the Oasis ; and in Egypt we still 
read inscriptions dated in different years of the reigns 
of Xerxes and Artaxerxes. (Bulletin des Sciences 
Hist., 7, 471.) During the reigns of the last three 
kings, a constant struggle was kept up by the Egyptians 
for their independence. The Persian yoke was for a 
moment shaken off by Amyrteeus and Nevhere'm. Two 
36 


Sphinges in the Louvre bear the legend of Ncphcreus 
and his successor Achons, who are also commemorated 
by the sculptures of the temple of Eilithyia. In the in¬ 
stitute of Bologna there is a statue of the Mendesian 
Ncpherites; and the names of the two Ncctanebi, who 
succeeded him in the conduct of this national war, are 
still extant on several buildings of the isle of Philse, and 
at Karnac, Ivourna, and Saft. Darius Ochus, in spite 
of the valiant resistance of these last kings, again re¬ 
duced Egypt to the condition of a Persian province ; 
but his name is nowhere to be found among the re¬ 
mains yet discovered in Egypt. Thus, then, the re¬ 
searches of Champollion have brought to our view an 
almost complete succession of the kings of Egypt, from 
the invasion of the Hycsos to the final conquest by the 
Persians, whose empire fell to Alexander in 332 B.C. 
It tallies throughout, in a remarkable manner, with the 
remains of the historian Manetho ; apd, by the aid of 
his series of dynasties, the gaps still left by hieroglyphic 
discoveries maybe legitimately filled up. Before the 
former era all is dark and obscure ; in the next part 
we have little but a list of names ; but, from the reign 
of Psammiticus I., ample materials exist in the histo¬ 
ries of Herodotus and Diodorus; and from the reign 
of Darius Ochus, the annals of Egypt become incorpo 1 - 
rated with those of Greece. Any farther reference, 
therefore, to the history of Egypt becomes superfluous 
in this place. (Vid. Ptolemaeus.) With regard, how¬ 
ever, to the discoveries of Champollion, the following 
interesting particulars may be stated. Philip Andce- 
us, the brother of Alexander, is commemorated at Kar¬ 
nac, and on the columns of the temple at Aschmouneim. 
The name of the other Alexander, the son of the con¬ 
queror by Roxana, is engraved on the granite propylsea 
at Elephantine. Ptolemy Soter, and his son Ptolemy 
Philadelphus, have left the remembrance of their pros¬ 
perous reigns in various important works. Euergeles 
I. not only ruled over Egypt, but rendered his name 
celebrated by his military expeditions, both in Africa 
and Asia. Plis titles are, therefore, not only inscribed 
on the edifices constructed during his reign in Egypt,' 
but are to be met with in Nubia, particularly on the 
temple of Dakkhe ; and the basso relievos, on a tri¬ 
umphal gate constructed by him at Thebes, may be ad¬ 
mired even among the ancient relics of the magnifi¬ 
cence of the eighteenth dynasty. The temple of An- 
tseopolis dates from the reign of Ptolemy Plnlopator and 
Arsinoe his wife. In his reign, too, the ancient palaces 
of Karnac and Luxor, at Thebes, were repaired. Ptole¬ 
my Epiphanes, and his wife Cleopatra of Syria, dedi¬ 
cated one of the many temples of Philae, as well as the 
temple of Edfou. Ot the Roman emperors we find in¬ 
scribed in hieroglyphics the names and titles of Au¬ 
gustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Vespa¬ 
sian, Titus, Domitian, Nerva, Trajan, Adrian, Mar¬ 
cus Aurelius, Lucius Vcrus, and Commodus. This 
last name is to be read four times among the inscrip¬ 
tions of the temple of Esne ; which, before this discov¬ 
ery, was considered to have been erected in an age far 
more remote than is reached by any of our histories. 
So far from this, it is, in truth, with but one exception, 
the most modern of all the edifices yet discovered in 
the Egyptian style of architecture. Thus, then, as far 
down as the year 180 of our present era, the worship 
-of the ancient Egyptian deities was publicly exercised, 
and preserved all its external splendour; for the tem¬ 
ples of Dendera, Esne, and others constructed under 
the Roman rule, are, for size and labour, if not for their 
style of art, well worthy of the ages of Egyptian inde¬ 
pendence. Previous to these # discoveries, it had be¬ 
come a matter of almost universal belief, that the arts, 
the writing, and even the ancient religion of Egypt, 
had ceased to be used from the time of the Persian con¬ 
quest. {American Quarterly Rev.. No. 7, p. 34, seqq . 
—Quarterly Journal of Science, &c., New Series, 1, 
183, seqq.) 




/EGYPTUS. 


JSGYPTUS. 


9. Egyptian Writing. 

In writing their language, the ancient Egyptians em¬ 
ployed three different kinds of characters. First: fig¬ 
urative ; or representations of the objects themselves. 
Secondly : symbolic; or representations of certain 
physical or material objects, expressing metaphorical¬ 
ly, or conventionally, certain ideas ; such as, a people 
obedient to their king, figured, metaphorically, by a 
bee ; the universe, conventionally, by a beetle. Third¬ 
ly : phonetic , or representative of sounds, that is to say, 
strictly alphabetical characters. The phonetic signs 
were also portraits of physical and material objects ; 
and each stood for the initial sound of the word in the 
Egyptian language which expressed the object por¬ 
trayed : thus a lion was the sound L, because a lion 
was called Labo ; and a hand a T, because a hand 
was called Tot. The form in which these objects 
were presented, when employed as phonetic charac¬ 
ters, was conventional and definite , to distinguish 
them from the same objects used either figuratively or 
symbolically. Thus, the conventional form of the 
phonetic T was the hand open and outstretched. In 
any other form the hand would be either a figurative or 
a symbolic sign. The number of distinct characters 
employed as phonetic signs appears to have been about 
120 ; consequently, many were homophones, or hav¬ 
ing the same signification. The three kinds of char¬ 
acters were used indiscriminately in the same writing, 
and occasionally in the composition of the same word. 
The formal Egyptian writing, therefore, such as we 
see it still existing on the monuments of the country, 
was a series of portraits of physical and material ob¬ 
jects, of which a small proportion had a symbolical 
meaning, a still smaller proportion a figurative mean¬ 
ing, but the great body were phonetic or alphabetical 
signs : and to these portraits, sculptured or painted 
with sufficient fidelity to leave no doubt of the object 
represented, the name of hieroglyphics or sacred char¬ 
acters has been attached from their earliest historic 
notice. The manuscripts of the same ancient period 
make us acquainted with two other forms of writing 
practised by the ancient Egyptians, both apparently 
distinct from the hieroglyphic, but which, on careful 
examination, are found to be its immediate derivatives ; 
every hieroglyphic having its corresponding sign in the 
hieratic , or writing of the priests, in which the funeral 
rituals, forming a large portion of the manuscripts, are 
principally composed ; and in the demotic , called also 
the enchorial , which was employed for all more ordi¬ 
nary and popular usages. The characters of the hie¬ 
ratic are, for the most part, obvious running imitations 
or abridgments of the corresponding hieroglyphics ; 
but in the demotic, which is still farther removed from 
the original type, the derivation is less frequently and 
less obviously traceable. In the hieratic, fewer figu¬ 
rative or symbolic signs are employed than in the hie- 
roglyphic; their absence being supplied by means of 
the phonetic or alphabetical characters, the words be¬ 
ing spelt instead of figured ; and this is still more the 
case in the demotic, which is, in consequence, almost 
entirely alphabetical. After the conversion of the 
Egyptians to Christianity, the ancient mode of writing 
their language fell into disuse ; and an alphabet was 
adopted in substitution, consisting of the twenty-five 
Greek letters, with six additional signs expressing ar¬ 
ticulations and aspirations unknown to the Greeks, the 
characters for which were retained from the demotic. 
This is the Coptic alphabet, in which the Egyptian ap¬ 
pears as a written language in the Coptic books and 
manuscripts preserved in our libraries ; and in which, 
consequently, the language of the inscriptions on the 
monuments may be studied. The original mode in 
which the language was written having thus fallen into 
disuse, it happened at length that the signification of 
the characters, and even the nature of the system of 


writing which they formed, became enrircly lost, such 
notices of the subject as existed in the early histori¬ 
ans being either too imperfect, or appearing too vague, 
to furnish a clew, although frequently and carefully 
studied for this purpose. The repossession of this 
knowledge will form, in literary history, one of the most 
remarkable distinctions, if not the principal one, of the 
age in which we live. It is due primarily to the dis¬ 
covery by the French, during their possession of Egypt, 
of the since well-known monument, called the Rosetta 
Stone, which, on their defeat and expulsion by the 
British troops, remained in the hands of the victors, 
was conveyed to England, and deposited in the Brit¬ 
ish Museum. On this monument the same inscription 
is repeated in the Greek and in the Egyptian language, 
being written in the latter both in hieroglyphics and in 
the demotic or enchorial character. The words Ptole¬ 
my and Cleopatra, written in hieroglyphics, and recog¬ 
nised by means of the corresponding Greek of the 
Rosetta inscription, and by a Greek inscription on the 
base of an obelisk at Philse, gave the phonetic charac¬ 
ters of the letters which form those words : by their 
means the names were discovered, in hieroglyphic wri¬ 
ting, on the monuments of all the Grecian kings and 
Grecian queens of Egypt, and by the comparison of 
these names one with another, the value of all the pho¬ 
netic characters was finally ascertained. The first step 
in this great discovery was made by a distinguished 
scholar of England, the late Dr. Young ; the key found 
by him has been greatly improved, and applied with 
indefatigable perseverance, ingenuity, and skill to the 
monuments of Egypt, by the celebrated Champollion. 
(Quarterly Journal ofi Science, &c., New Scries, vol. 
1, p. 176, seqq. —Compare Edinburgh Review , Nos 
89 and 90.— American Quarterly Review , No. 2, p. 
438, seqq. — Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 8, p. 438, 
seqq., and the Supplement to the Encyclopedia Bri- 
tannica, vol. 4, pt. 1, s. v. Egypt. — Wiseman's Lec¬ 
tures, p. 255, seqq.) 

10. Animal Worship. 

There was no single feature in the character and 
customs of the ancient Egyptians which appeared to 
foreigners so strange and portentous as the religious 
worship paid to animals. The pompous processions 
and grotesque ceremonies of this celebrated people ex¬ 
cited the admiration of all spectators, and their admi¬ 
ration was turned into ridicule on beholding the object 
of their devotions. It was remarked by Clemens 
( Pcedag ., lib. 3) and Origen ( adv. Cels., 3, p. 121), that 
those who visited Egypt approached with delight its 
sacred groves, and splendid temples, adorned with su¬ 
perb vestibules and lofty porticoes, the scenes of many 
solemn and mysterious rites. “ The walls,” says Cle¬ 
mens, “ shine with gold and silver, and with amber, and 
sparkle with the various gems of India and Ethiopia ; 
and the recesses are concealed by splendid curtains. 
But if you enter the penetralia, and inquire for the 
image of the god for whose sake the fane was built, 
one of the Pastophori, or some other attendant on the 
temple, approaches with a solemn and mysterious as¬ 
pect, and, putting aside the veil, suffers you to peep in 
and obtain a glimpse of the divinity. There you be¬ 
hold a snake, a crocodile, or a cat, or some other beast, 
a fitter inhabitant of a cavern or a bog than a temple.” 
The devotion with which their sacred animals w'ere re¬ 
garded by the Egyptians, displayed itself in the most 
whimsical absurdities. It was a capital crime to kill 
any of them voluntarily {Herod., 2, 65); but if an 
ibis or a hawk were accidentally destroyed, the unfor¬ 
tunate author of the deed was often put to death by 
the multitude, without form of law. In order to avoid 
suspicion of such an impious act, and the speedy fate 
which often ensued, a man who chanced to meet with 
the carcass of such a bird began immediately to wail 
and lament with the utmost vociferation, and to protest 

37 



^EGYPTUS. 


.EGYPTUS. 


that he found it already dead. ( Diodorus Siculus, 
1, 83.) When a house happened to be set on fire, the 
chief alarm of the Egyptians arose from the propensity 
of the cats to rush into the flames over the heads or 
between the legs of the spectators : if this catastrophe 
took place, it excited a general lamentation. At the 
death of a cat, every inmate of the house cut off his 
eyebrows , but at the funeral of a dog, he shaved his 
head and whole body. (Herod., 2, 66.) The carcasses 
of all the cats were salted, and carried to Bubastus to 
be interred (Herod., 2, 67) ; and it is said that many 
Egyptians, arriving from warlike expeditions to foreign 
countries, were known to bring with them dead cats 
and hawks, which they had met with accidentally, and 
had salted and prepared for sepulture with much pious 
grief and lamentation. (Diod. Sic., 1,83.) In the ex¬ 
tremity of famine, when they were driven by hunger 
to devour each other, the Egyptians were never ac¬ 
cused of touching the sacred animals. Every nome in 
Egypt paid a particular worship to the animal that was 
consecrated to its tutelar god ; but there were certain 
species which the whole nation held in great reverence. 
These were the ox (vid. Apis), the dog, and the cat; 
the hawk and the ibis ; and the fishes termed oxyrhyn- 
chus and lepidotus. (Strabo, 812.) In each nome 
the whole species of animals, to the worship of which 
it was dedicated, was held in great respect ; but one 
favoured individual was selected to receive the adora¬ 
tion of the multitude, and supply the place of an image 
of the god. Perhaps this is not far from the sense in 
which Strabo distinguishes the sacred from the divine 
animals. Thus, in the nome of Arsinoe, where croc¬ 
odiles were sacred, one of this species was kept in the 
temple and worshipped as a god. He was tamed and 
watched with great care by the priests, who called him 
“ Suchos,” and he ate meat and cakes which were of¬ 
fered to him by strangers. (Strabo, 811.) In the 
same neighbourhood there was a pond appropriated to 
the feeding of crocodiles, with which it was filled, the 
Arsinoites carefully abstaining from hunting any of 
them. Sacred bulls were kept in several towns and 
villages, and nothing was spared that seemed to con¬ 
tribute to the enjoyment of these homed gods, which 
were pampered in the utmost luxury. Among insects, 
the cantharus, scarabjeus, or beetle, was very celebra¬ 
ted as an object of worship. Plutarch says it was an 
emblem of the sun ; but Horapollo is more particu¬ 
lar, and informs us that there were three species of 
sacred beetles, of which one was dedicated to the god 
of Heliopolis, or the Sun ; another was sacred to the 
Moon ; and a third to Hermes or Thoth. The reasons 
he assigns for the consecration of this insect are de¬ 
rived from the notions entertained respecting its mode 
of reproduction and its habits, in which the Egyptians 
traced analogies to the movements of the heavenly 
bodies. It was believed that all these insects were of 
the male sex. The beetle was said to fecundate a 
round ball of earth, which it formed for the purpose. 
In this they saw a type of the sun, in the office of dem- 
iurgus, or as forming and fecundating the lower world. 
(Horapoll. Hieroglyph., 1, 10.— Hint., de Is. et Os., p. 
355. — Porpkyr., de Abstin., lib. 4. — Euseb., Prcep. 
Evang., 3,4.) Nor was the adoration of the Egyptians 
confined to animals merely. Many plants were re¬ 
garded as mystical or sacred, and none more so than 
the lotus, of which mention has already been made, in 
the section that treats of the fertility of Egypt. In 
the lotus, or nymphaea nelumbo, which throws its flow¬ 
ers above the surface of the water, the Egyptians found 
an allusion to the sun rising from the surface of the 
ocean, and it is on the blossom of this plant that the 
infant Harpocrates is represented as reposing. The 
peach-tree was also sacred to Harpocrates ; and to him 
the first fruits of lentils and other plants were of¬ 
fered, in the month Mesori. It is well known, too, that 
the Egyptians worshipped the onion. Plutarch refers 
38 


this superstition to a fancied relation between this plant 
and the moon. Leeks also, and various legumina, 
were heltf in similar veneration. (Minulius Felix, p. 
278.) The acacia and the heliotrope are said to have 
been among the number of those plants that were con¬ 
secrated to the sun. (Compare Kirchcr’s CEdipus, 3, 
2.) The laurel was regarded as the most noble of all 
plants. We learn from Clemens Alexandrinus that 
there were thirty-six plants dedicated to the thirty-six 
genii, or decans, who presided over their portions of 
the twelve signs of the zodiac. (Prichard's Analysis 
of Egyptian Mythology, p. 301, seqq.) 

11. Explanation of Animal Worship. 

The origin of animal worship, and the reasons or 
motives which induced the Egyptians to represent their 
gods under such strange forms, or to pay divine hon¬ 
ours to irrational brutes, and even to the meanest ob¬ 
jects in nature, is an inquiry which has occupied the 
attention of the learned in various times. Herodotus 
pretended to be in possession of more information on 
this subject than he chose to make public. It has been 
conjectured that he was desirous of concealing his ig¬ 
norance under a cloak of mystery. The later Greek 
writers seem to have been more intent on offering ex¬ 
cuses for the follies of the Egyptians, than on unfold¬ 
ing the real principles of their mythology ; and we find 
various and' contradictory opinions maintained with 
equal confidence. It appears, indeed, that the Egyp¬ 
tian priests themselves, in the time of the Ptolemies, 
and at the era of the Roman conquest, were by no 
means agreed on this subject. To endeavour to ex- 
'plain it by a reference to the metamorphoses which the 
gods underwent, when they fled from Typhon and 
sought concealment under the forms of animals, is to 
account for an absurdity by a fable. To go back, as 
some do, to the standards, or banners, borne by the dif¬ 
ferent' tribes or communities that formed the compo¬ 
nent parts of the earlier population, is to invert the or¬ 
der of ideas. A people may choose for a standard the 
representation of an object which they adore ; but they 
will not be found to adore any particular object be¬ 
cause they may have chosen it for a standard or ban¬ 
ner. The opinion, on the other hand, which refers an¬ 
imal worship to the policy of kings, and to their seek¬ 
ing to divide their subjects by giving them different 
objects of religious veneration, is an awkward applica¬ 
tion of the system of Euhemerus, according to which 
all religions were nothing in effect but civil institu¬ 
tions, the offspring of skilful legislators. Fetichism 
has been anterior to all positive law. Favoured by the 
interests of a particular class, it has been enabled, it is 
true, to prolong itself during a state of civilization and 
by the force of authority ; but it must spring originally 
and freely from the very bosom of barbarism. Equal¬ 
ly untenable is the position which supposes that the 
Egyptians were induced to pay divine honours to ani¬ 
mals, out of gratitude for the benefits w hich they de¬ 
rived from them ; to the cow and the sheep, for the 
clothing and sustenance which they afford ; to the dog, 
for his care in protecting their houses against thieves ; 
to the ibis, for delivering their country from serpents ; 
and to the ichneumon, for destroying the eggs of the 
crocodile. This conjecture is refuted by the well- 
known fact, that a variety of animals which are of no 
apparent utility, and even several species w r hich are 
noxious and destructive, and the natural enemies of 
mankind, received their appropriate honours, and were 
regarded with as much reverence as the more obvious¬ 
ly useful members of the animal creation. The shrew- 
mouse, the pike, the beetle, the crow, the hawk, the 
hippopotamus, can claim no particular regard for the 
benefits they are known to confer on the human race ; 
still less can the crocodile, the lion, the wolf, or the 
venomous asp urge any such pretension. Yet w r e 
have seen that all these creatures, and others of a sim- 




iEGYPTUS. 


^EGYPTUS. 


liar description, were worshipped by the Egyptians 
with the most profound devotion; nay, mothers even 
rejoiced when their children were devoured by croco¬ 
diles. It may be farther observed, that some of those 
animals which atford us food and raiment, and which 
are, on that account, among the most serviceable, were 
rendered of little or no utility to the Egyptians on ac¬ 
count of this very superstition. They regarded it as un¬ 
lawful to kill oxen for the sake of food, and not only 
abstained from slaughtering the sheep, but likewise, un¬ 
der a variety of circumstances, from wearing any gar¬ 
ment made of its wool, which was regarded as impure, 
and defiling the body that was clothed with it. These 
considerations seem to prove, that the adoration of an¬ 
imals among the Egyptians was not founded on the 
advantages which mankind derives from them. An¬ 
other attempt at explaining this mystery, which re¬ 
ceives greater countenance from the general character 
of the Egyptian manners and superstition, is the con¬ 
jecture of Lucian. ( De Astrolog. — ed. Bip ., vol. 5, p. 
218.) This writer pretends, that the sacred animals 
were only types or emblems of the asterisms, or of 
those imaginary figures or groups into which the an¬ 
cients had, at a very early period, distributed the stars ; 
distinguishing them by the names of living creatures 
and other terrestrial objects. According to Lucian, 
the worshippers of the bull Apis adored a living image 
of the celestial Taurus ; and Anubis represented the 
Dog-star or the constellation of Sirius. This hypoth¬ 
esis has received more attention than any other among 
modern writers. Dupuis has made it the basis of a 
very ingenious attempt to explain the mythologue of 
Isis and Osiris, and several other fables of antiquity, 
which this author resolves into astronomical figments, 
or figurative accounts of certain changes in the posi¬ 
tions of the heavenly bodies. ( Origine de tons les 
Cultcs , 2, 270, seqq., ed. 1822.) The hypothesis of 
Lucian, however, will not endure the test of a rigid 
scrutiny. For if we examine the constellations of the 
most ancient spheres, we find but few coincidences 
between the zodia or celestial images, and that exten¬ 
sive catalogue of brute creatures which were adored as 
divinities on the banks of the Nile. Where, for ex¬ 
ample, shall we discover the ibis, the cat, the hippopot¬ 
amus, or the crocodile 1 Besides, if we could trace 
the whole series of deified brutes in the heavens, it 
would still remain doubtful, whether the Egyptian 
animals were consecrated subsequently to the forma¬ 
tion of the sphere, as types or images of the constella¬ 
tions or the stars distributed into groups, and these 
groups named with reference to the quadrupeds, birds, 
and fishes that were already regarded as sacred. There 
are, indeed, many circumstances which might render 
the latter alternative the more probable. But the rela¬ 
tion between the animals of the sphere and those of 
the Egyptian temples are by far too limited to warrant 
any such speculation ; and Lucian, moreover, is an au¬ 
thor who is by no means deserving of much credit on 
a subject of this nature. Porphyry, in his conjectures, 
approaches nearer the truth. The divinity, according 
to him, embraces all beings ; he resides, therefore, in 
animals also, and man adores him wherever he is found. 
In other words, the worship of animals was intimately 
connected, according to this writer, with the doctrine 
of emanation. ( Porphyr. de Abstinentia, 4, 9.—Com¬ 
pare Eusebius , Prccp. Evang., 3, 4.) This explana¬ 
tion, however, does not go far enough. It takes no 
notice of that peculiar combination by which the wor¬ 
ship of animals is made to assume a regular form, and 
to continue itself long after man has placed the deity 
far above the limits of physical existence.—The dis¬ 
covery of a mode of worship among certain savage 
tribes in our own days, perfectly analogous to the sys¬ 
tem of animal adoration which prevailed among the 
Egyptians, furnishes us with a certain clew amid these 
conflicting hypotheses, and that clew is Fetichism. We 


perceive, remarks Heeren ( Ideen, vol. 2, p. 664), the 
worship of animals from Ethiopia to Senegal, among 
nations completely uncivilized. Why, then, seek for a 
different origin among the Egyptians 1 Place among 
the African negroes of the present day corporations of 
priests arrived at the knowledge of the movement of 
the heavenly bodies, and preserving in their sanctuary 
this branch of human science screened from the curi¬ 
osity of the uninitiated and profane. These sacerdo¬ 
tal corporations will never seek to change the objects 
of vulgar adoration; on the contrary, they will conse¬ 
crate the worship that is paid them, and will give that 
worship more of pomp and regularity. They will seek, 
above all, to make the intervention of the sacerdotal 
caste a necessary requisite in every ceremony ; they 
will then attach, in a mystic sense, these material ob¬ 
jects of worship to their hidden science ; and the re¬ 
sult will be a system of religion precisely similar to 
that of Egypt, with Fetichism for its basis, the worship 
of the heavenly bodies for its outward characteristic, 
and within, a science founded on astronomy, and by 
the operations of which the fetichs, that serve as gods 
for the people, become merely symbols for the priests. 
It was thus that the priests of Meroe, in sending forth 
their sacerdotal colonies, carefully observed the rule 
of attaching to themselves the natives among whom 
they chanced to come, by adopting a part of their ex¬ 
ternal worship, and by assigning to the animals which 
these natives adored a place in the temples erected by 
them, which thence became the common sanctuaries 
and the centres of religion for all. To invert the or¬ 
der to which w T e have just alluded is a palpable error. 
What had been for a long time acknowledged for a 
sign or symbol, could not, on a sudden, be transformed 
into a god ; but it is easy to conceive how that which 
passes for a god with the mass of the people may be¬ 
come an allegory or emblem with a more enlightened 
caste. Apis, for example, owed to certain spots, at 
first fortuitous, afterward renewed by art, the honour 
of being one of the signs of the zodiac. The salacity 
of the goat made it a type of the great productive pow¬ 
er in nature. The cat was indebted to its glossy fur, 
and the ibis to its equivocal colour, which appeared, as 
it were, something intermediate between the night and 
the day, for being symbols of the moon; the falcon 
became one of the year, and the scarabseus of the sun. 
The case was the same with trees and plants, fetichs 
no less highly revered than animals. The leaves of 
the palm, the longevity of which tree seemed a special 
privilege from on high, adorned the couches of the 
priests, because this tree, putting forth branches every 
month, marks the renewal of the lunar cycle. ( Diod . 
Sic., 1, 34.— Plin., 13, 17.) The lotus, known also 
as a sacred plant to the people of India, the cradle of 
Brahma ( Maurice , Hist, of Indost., 1, 60), as well as 
that of Harpocrates ; the persea, brought from Ethio¬ 
pia by a sacerdotal colony (Diod. Sic., 1. c. — Schol. in 
Nicandr. Therapcut., v. 764); the amoglossum, whose 
seven sides recall to mind the seven planets; and 
which was styled, on this account, the glory of the 
skies (Kircher, (Ed. JEgypt., 3, 2) ; the onion, whose 
pellicles were thought to resemble so many concentric 
spheres, and which was therefore viewed as a vegeta¬ 
ble image of the universe, always different and yet al¬ 
ways the same, and where each part served as the rep¬ 
resentative of the whole ; all these became so many 
symbols having more or less connexion with astronom¬ 
ical science. In them the people beheld the objects 
of ancient adoration, and the priests characteristics that 
enabled them to mark out and perpetuate their scien¬ 
tific discoveries. To these elements of worship was 
added, without doubt, the influence of localities, that 
at one time disturbed by partial differences the uni¬ 
formity which the sacred caste were desirous of estab¬ 
lishing, and at another associated with the rites, that 
had reference to the general principles of astronomical 


39 




JEGYPTUS. 


^EGYPTUS. 


science, certain practices which resulted merely from 
peculiarity of situation. Hence, on the one hand, the 
diversity of animals adored by the communities of 
Egypt. Had these been merely pure symbols, would 
the priests, who sought to impart a uniform character to 
their institutions, have ever introduced them 1 These 
varieties in the objects of worship are only to be ex¬ 
plained by the yielding, on the part of a sacerdotal or¬ 
der, to the antecedent habits of the people. (Vogel, 
Rcl. der Mg., p. 97, scqq.) Hence, too, on the other 
hand, those numerous allegories, heaped up together 
without being connected by any common bond, and 
forming, if the expression be allowed, so many layers 
of fable. Apis, for example, at first the manitou-pro- 
totype of his kind, afterward the depository of the 
soul of Osiris, is found to have a third meaning, which 
holds a middle place between the other two. He is 
the symbol of the Nile, the fertilizing stream of Egypt; 
and while his colour, the spots of white on his front, 
and the duration of his existence, which could not ex¬ 
ceed twenty-five years, have a reference to astronomy, 
the festival of his reappearance was celebrated on the 
day when the river begins to rise. The result, then, 
of what we have here advanced, is simply this : The 
animal-worship of the Egyptians originated in feti- 
chism. The sacerdotal caste, in allowing it to remain , 
unmolested, arrayed it in a more imposing garb, and, 
while they permitted the mass of the people to indulge 
in this gross and humiliating species of adoration, re¬ 
served for themselves a secret and visionary system of 
pantheism or emanation. ( Constant, de la Religion, 3, 
62, seqq. — Prichard's Analysis of Egyptian Mythology, 
p. 330, seqq.) 

12. Egyptian Castes. 

Among the institutions of Egypt, none was more 
important in its influence on the character of the na¬ 
tion, than the division of the people into tribes or fam¬ 
ilies, who were obliged by the laws and superstitions 
of the country to follow, without deviation, the profes¬ 
sions and habits of their forefathers. Such an institu¬ 
tion could not fail of impressing the idea of abject ser¬ 
vility on the lower classes; and, by removing in a great 
measure the motive of emulation, it must have created, 
in all, an apathy and indifference to improvement in 
their particular profession. Wherever the system of 
castes has existed, it has produced a remarkably perma¬ 
nent and uniform character in the nation ; as in the ex¬ 
ample furnished by the natives of Hindustan. These 
people agree in almost every point with the description 
given of them by Megasthenes, who visited the court of 
an Indian king soon after the conquest of the East by 
the Macedonians. We have no very accurate and cir¬ 
cumstantial account of the castes into which the Egyp¬ 
tian people were divided, and of the particular customs 
of each. It appears, indeed, that innovations on the 
old civil and religious constitution of Egypt had begun 
to be introduced as early as the time of Psammetichus, 
when the ancient aversion of the people to foreigners 
was first overcome. The various conflicts which the 
nation underwent, between that era and the time when 
Plerodotus visited Egypt, could not fail to break down 
many of the fences which ancient priestcraft had es¬ 
tablished for maintaining the influence of superstition. 
Herodotus is the earliest writer who mentions the 
castes or hereditary classes of the Egyptians, and his 
account appears to be the result of his personal obser¬ 
vation only. Had this historian understood the native 
language of the people ; had he been able to read the 
books of Hermes, in which the old sacerdotal institu¬ 
tions were contained, we might have expected from 
him as correct and ample a description of the distribu¬ 
tion ot the castes in Egypt, as that which modern wri¬ 
ters have gained in India from the code of Menu, re¬ 
specting the orders and subdivisions of the community 
in Hindustan. Diodorus, who had more favourable 
40 


opportunities of information, and who seems to have 
made a very diligent use of them, may be supposed to 
be more accurate, in what refers to the internal policy 
of this nation, than Plerodotus. Strabo has mentioned, 
in a very summary manner, the division of the Eg}>p*- 
tians into classes. He distinguishes the two higher 
ranks, namely, the sacerdotal and the military classes, 
and includes ail the remainder of the community under 
the designation of the agricultural class, to whom he 
assigns the employments of agriculture and the arts. 
Diodorus subdivides this latter class. After distin¬ 
guishing from it the sacerdotal and military orders, he 
observes, that the remainder of the community is dis¬ 
tributed into three divisions, which he terms Herds¬ 
men, Agriculturists, and Artificers, or men who la¬ 
boured at trades. Herodotus very nearly agrees in his 
enumeration with that of Diodorus. His names for 
the different classes are as follows : 1. Priests, or the 
sacerdotal class. 2. Warriors, or the military class. 
3. Cowherds. 4. Swineherds. 5. Traders. 6. In¬ 

terpreters. 7. Pilots. In this catalogue the third and 
fourth classes are plainly subdivisions of the third of 
Diodorus, whom that writer includes under the gener¬ 
al title of herdsmen. The caste of interpreters, as well 
as that of pilots, must have comprised a very small 
number of men, since the Egyptians had little inter¬ 
course with foreigners, and, until the time of the Greek 
dynasty, their navigation was principally confined to 
sailing up and down the Nile. The pilots were proba¬ 
bly a tribe of the same class with the artificers or la¬ 
bouring artisans of Diodorus. The traders of Herod¬ 
otus must be the same class who are called agricul¬ 
turists by Diodorus. Thus, by comparing the differ¬ 
ent accounts, we are enabled to arrange the several 
branches of the Egyptian community into the follow¬ 
ing classes. 1. The Sacerdotal order. 2. The Mil¬ 
itary. 3. The Herdsmen. 4. The Agricultural and 
Commercial class. 5. The Artificers, or labouring 
artisans. The employments of all these classes were 
hereditary, and no man was allowed by the law to en¬ 
gage in any occupation different from that in which he 
had been educated by his parents. It was accounted 
an honourable distinction to belong either to the sacer¬ 
dotal or the military class. The other orders were 
considered greatly inferior in dignity, and no Egyptian 
could mount the throne who was not descended from 
the priesthood or the soldiery. (Prichard's Analysis 
of Egyptian Mythology, p. 373, seqq.) After death, 
however, no grade was regarded, and every good soul 
was supposed to become united to that essence from 
which it derived its origin. ( Wilkinson, Manners and 
Customs, &c., 1, 245.) 

13. Egyptian Priesthood. 

The inquiry respecting the sacerdotal caste of 
Egypt i s rendered a difficult one principally on the 
following account, because the writers, from whose 
statements we obtain our information, lived in an age 
when the Egyptian priesthood had already suffered 
many and important alterations, and had been deprived 
of a large portion of their former consideration and in¬ 
fluence. Each successive revolution in the state must 
have had a direct bearing upon them, or, rather, they 
must have been the first with whom it came in con¬ 
tact. Their political influence, therefore, must have 
been gradually diminished, and their sphere of action 
circumscribed. Under the Persian sway, in particu¬ 
lar, their power must have been reduced to wdthin but 
narrow limits, and our only wonder is, when we con¬ 
sider the strong hostility displayed by these conquer¬ 
ors towards the sacerdotal or ruling caste, that it did 
not fall entirely to the ground. Herodotus then, and 
still more the writers from whom Diodorus Siculus has 
received his information on this subject, saw merely 
the shadow of that extensive power and influence 
which the priests of Egypt had formerly possessed. 




.EGYPTUS 


gEGYPTUS. 


And yet, even in the statements which we obtain from 
this quarter, traces may easily be found of what the 
Egyptian hierarchy once was ; so that from these, 
when taken together, we are enabled to form a tolera¬ 
bly accurate idea of the earlier power which this re¬ 
markable order had enjoyed. The sacerdotal caste 
Was spread over the whole of Egypt; their chief places 
of abode* however, were the great cities, which, at one 
time or other, had been the capitals of the land, or else 
had held a high rank among the other Egyptian cities. 
These were Thebes, Memphis, Sais, Heliopolis, &c. 
Here, too, were the chief temples, which are so often 
mentioned in the accounts of Herodotus and other 
writers. Every Egyptian priest had to belong to the 
service of some particular deity, or, in other words, to 
be attached to some temple. The number of priests 
for any deity was never determined ; nor could it in¬ 
deed have been subjected to any regulations on this 
head, since priesthood was hereditary in families, and 
these must have been more or less numerous accord¬ 
ing to circumstances. Not only was the priestly caste 
hereditary in its nature, but also the priesthoods of in¬ 
dividual deities. The sons, for example, of the priests 
of Vulcan at Memphis, could not enter as members 
into the sacerdotal college at Heliopolis ; nor could 
the offspring of the priests of Heliopolis belong to the 
college of Memphis. Strange as this regulation may 
appear, it was nevertheless a natural one. Each tem¬ 
ple had extensive portions of land attached to it, the 
revenues of which, belonging as they did to those 
whose forefathers had erected the temple, were receiv¬ 
ed by the priests as matters of hereditary right, and 
made those who tilled these lands be regarded as their 
dependants or subjects. Hence, as both the temple- 
lands and revenues were inherited, the sacerdotal col¬ 
leges had of consequence to be kept distinct. The 
priesthood, moreover, of each temple was carefully 
organized. They had a high-priest over them, whose 
office was likewise hereditary. It need hardly be re¬ 
marked, that there must have been gradations also 
among the various high-priests, and that those of 
Thebes, Memphis, and the other chief cities of the coun¬ 
try, must have stood at the head of the order. These 
were, in a certain sense, a species of hereditary princes, 
who stood by the side of the monarchs, and enjoyed al¬ 
most equal privileges Their Egyptian title was Pi- 
romis, which Herodotus translates by KaXog ndyadog , 
i. e., “ noble and good,” and which points not so much 
to moral excellence as to nobility of origin. (Com¬ 
pare Welker , Theognidis Reliquice, p. xxiv.) Their 
statues were placed in the temples. Whenever they 
are mentioned in the history of the country, they ap¬ 
pear as the first persons in the state, even in the Mo¬ 
saic age. When Joseph was to be elevated to power, 
he had to connect himself by marriage with the sacer¬ 
dotal caste, and was united to the daughter of the 
high-priest at On, or Heliopolis. The organization of 
the inferior priesthood was different probably in differ¬ 
ent cities, according to the situation and wants of the 
surrounding country. They formed not only the ru- 
liifg caste, and supplied from their number all the of¬ 
fices of government, but were in possession likewise of 
all the learning and knowledge of the land, and the ex¬ 
ercise of this last had always immediate reference to 
the wants of the adjacent population. We must ban¬ 
ish the idea, then, that the priests of Egypt were 
merely the ministers of religion, or that religious ob¬ 
servances constituted their principal employment. 
They were, on the contrary, judges also, physicians, 
astronomers, architects ; in a word, they had charge of 
every department that was in any way connected with 
learning and science. It appears, from the whole ten- 
our of Egyptian history, that each of the great cities of 
the land possessed originally one chief temple, which, 
in process of time, became the head temple of the sur¬ 
rounding district, and the deity worshipped in it the I 


local patron or deity of the adjacent country The 
priests of Memphis were always styled (according to 
the nomenclature of the Greeks) priests of Vulcan; 
those of Thebes, priests of the Theban Jove ; those of 
Sais, priests of the Sun, &c. These head-temples 
mark the first settlement of the sacerdotal colonies as 
they gradually descended the valley of the Nile. The 
number of deities to whom temples were erected, in 
Upper Egypt at least, seem to have been always very 
limited. In this quarter we hear merely of the tem¬ 
ples of Ammon, Osiris, Isis, and Typhon. In Middle 
and Lower Egypt, the number appears to have been 
gradually enlarged.—The next subject of inquiry has 
reference to the revenues of the sacerdotal order Here 
also we must dismiss the too common opinion, that the 
priests of Egypt were a class supported by the mon¬ 
arch or the state. They were, on the contrary, the 
principal landholders of the country, and, besides them, 
the right of holding lands was enjoyed only by the king 
and the military caste. Changes, of course, must 
have ensued amid the various political revolutions to 
which the state has been subject, in this important 
branch of the sacerdotal power, yet none of such a 
nature as materially to affect the right itself; and 
hence we find that a large, if not the largest and fair¬ 
est portion of the lands of Egypt, remained always in 
the hands of the priests. To each temple, as has al¬ 
ready been remarked, were attached extensive do¬ 
mains, the common possession of the whole fraternity, 
and their original place of settlement. These lands 
were let out for a moderate sum, and the revenue de¬ 
rived from them went to the common treasury of the 
temple, over which a superintendent, or treasurer, was 
placed, who was also a member of the sacerdotal body. 
From this treasury were supplied the wants of the va¬ 
rious families that composed the sacred college. They 
had also a common table in their respective temples, 
which was daily provided with all the good things, not 
excepting imported wines, that their rules allowed. 
So that no part of their private property was required 
for their immediate support. For that they possessed 
private property is not only apparent from the circum¬ 
stance of their marrying and having families, but it is 
also expressly asserted by Herodotus. From all that 
has been said, then, it follows that the sacerdotal fahi- 
ilies of Egypt were the richest and most distinguished 
in the land, and that the whole order formed, in fact, 
a highly privileged nobility. The priests of Egypt 
were distinguished for great cleanliness of person and 
peculiarity of attire. It cannot be doubted but that 
the nature of the climate and the character of the 
country exercised a great influence, not only on these 
points, but also on their general mode of life ; though, 
independent of this, they would seem to have been 
well aware how important agents general cleanliness 
and frequent ablutions become in producing and es¬ 
tablishing the blessings of health, both in individuals 
and communities. Hence the conspicuous example of 
external cleanliness which they made a point of show¬ 
ing the lower orders. They wore garments of linen, 
not, as some think, of fine cotton ( Schmidt , de Sa~ 
cerdotibus JEgypt., p. 26), fresh washed, taking particu¬ 
lar care to have them always clean. They shaved all 
parts of their body once in three days. They wore 
shoes made of byblus, bathed themselves twice in cold 
water by day and twice by night, and entirely rejected 
the use of woollen garments. (HecrcrCs Ideen, 2, 2, 
125, seqq.) 

14. Motives for Embalming Bodies. 

It has often been observed that the practice of em¬ 
balming the dead, and preserving them with so much 
care and in so costly a manner, seems to indicate some 
peculiarity in the opinions of the Egyptian philosophers 
respecting the fate of the soul. On this subject we 
have no precise and satisfactory information. The an- 

41 




iEGYPTIJS. 


./EGYPT US. 


cient writers have left us only a few hints, more or less 
obscure, which scarcely afford anything beyond a mere 
foundation for conjectures. The President de Goguet, 
relying on a statement of Servius, supposes that the 
Egyptians embalmed their dead for the sake of main¬ 
taining the connexion between the soul and the body, 
and preventing the former from transmigrating. ( Or¬ 
igin of Laws, &c., vol. 3, p. 68, Eng. transl.) Ac¬ 
cording to the Egyptian doctrine of transmigration, as 
explained by Herodotus (2, 127), the soul of a man 
passed through the bodies of living creatures, and re¬ 
turned to inhabit a human form at the expiration of 
three thousand years The cycle, however, does not 
commence until the body begins to perish, and the sec¬ 
ond human habitation of the soul is a new one The 
pains and torments, therefore, of passing through this 
cycle of three thousand years, and through animals in¬ 
numerable, might be reserved for those whose actions 
in life did not entitle them to be made into mummies, 
and whose bodies would therefore be exposed to de¬ 
cay. In a second trial in the world, the unfortunate 
penitent might avoid his former errors. Hence, say 
the advocates for this opinion, the body of a father or 
ancestor was often given as a pledge or security, and it 
was one that was valued more highly than any other. 
It was the most sacred of all the obligations which a 
man could bind himself by, and the recovery of the 
pledge, by performing the stipulated condition, was an 
indispensable duty. ( Long's Ancient Geogr., p. 61.) 
Others have imagined, that the views with which the 
Egyptians embalmed their dead bodies were more 
akin to those which rendered the Greeks and Romans 
so anxious to perform the usual rites of sepulture to 
their departed warriors, namely, an idea that these so¬ 
lemnities expedited the journey of the soul to the ap¬ 
pointed region, where it was to receive judgment for 
its former deeds, and to have its future doom fixed ac¬ 
cordingly. This, they maintain, is implied by the pray¬ 
er, said to have been uttered by the embalmers in the 
name of the deceased, entreating the divine powers to 
receive his soul into the regions of the gods. (Por- 
phyr., de Abstinent., 4, 10.— Prichard's Analysis of 
Egyptian Mythology, p. 200.) Perhaps, however, the 
practice of embalming in Egypt was the result more of 
necessity than of choice, and, like many other of the 
customs of the land, may have been identified by the 
priests with the national religion, in order to ensure its 
continuance. The rites of sepulture in Egypt grew 
out of circumstances peculiar to that country. The 
scarcity of fuel precluded the use of the funeral pile ; 
the rocks which bounded the valley denied a grave ; 
and the sands of the deserts afforded no protection from 
outrage by wild beasts ; while the valley, regularly in¬ 
undated, forbade it to be used as a charnel-house, un¬ 
der penalty of pestilence to the living. Hence grew 
the use of antiseptic substances, in which the nation 
became so skilled, as to render the bodies of their dead 
inaccessible to the ordinary process of decay. 

15 Arts and Manufactures of the Egyptians. 

The topics on which we intend here to touch, derive 
no small degree of elucidation from the paintings dis¬ 
covered in the tombs of Egypt. Weaving appears to 
have been the employment of a large majority of the 
nation. According to Plerodotus (2, 35), it was an 
occupation of the men, and, therefore, not merely a do¬ 
mestic employment, but a business carried on also in 
large establishments or manufactories. The process 
of weaving is frequently the subject of Egyptian paint¬ 
ings It is depicted in the most pleasing manner in 
the drawing given by Minutoli (pi. 24, 2) from the 
tombs of Beni Hassan. The loom is here of very 
simple construction, and is fastened to four props or 
supports driven into the ground. The finished part of 
the work is checkered green and yellow, the byssus 
being generally dyed before weaving. Even as early 
42 


! as the time of Moses, this class of Manufactures had 
attained a very great perfection ( Goguet, Origin of 
Laws , &c., vol. 2, p. 86, scqq.) ; and, at a. still more 
distant period, the time of Joseph ( Genesis , 45, 22), 
fine vestments were among the articles most usually 
bestowed as presents. We have no necessity, how¬ 
ever, to go back to these authorities ; the monuments 
speak a language that cannot be misunderstood. Both 
in the plates accompanying the great French work 
on Egypt, as well as the drawings obtained by Belzoni 
from the tombs of the kings at Thebes, and those given 
by Minutoli, we see these vestments in all their gay 
colours, and of various degrees of fineness. Some are 
so fine that the limbs appear through them. (Compare, 
in particular, the vestment of the king, as given in the 
Description de l'Egypt, Planches, vol. 2, pi. 31, and 
Belzoni’s plates.) Others, on the contrary, are of a 
thicker texture. The kings and warriors commonly 
wear short garments ; the agricultural and working 
classes, merely a kind of white apron. The priests 
have long vestments, sometimes white, at other times 
with white and red stripes ; sometimes adorned with 
stars, at other times with flowers, and again glittering 
with all the colours of the East. Whether silk vest¬ 
ments can be found among them remains still unde¬ 
cided. ( Heeren's Idcen , vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 368, seqq ) 
The Egyptians, from a most remote era, were cele¬ 
brated for their manufacture of linen. The quantity, 
indeed, that was manufactured and used in Egypt was 
truly surprising ; and, independently of that made up 
into articles of dress, the great abundance used for en¬ 
veloping the mummies, both of men and animals, show 
how large a supply must have been kept ready for the 
constant demand at home, as well as for that of the 
foreign market. That the bandages employed in 
wrapping the dead are of linen, and not, as some have 
imagined, of cotton, has been ascertained by the most 
satisfactory tests. (Wilkinson, \ ol. 3, p. 115.) That 
the skill of the Egyptians in the application of colours 
kept pace with that displayed in the art of weaving, is 
evident from what has already been remarked. We 
find among them all colours ; white, yellow, red, blue, 
green, and black. What the colouring materials them¬ 
selves were, how far they were obtained from Egypt, 
or to what extent they were brought from Babylonia 
and India, cannot be clearly determined. That the 
Tyrians had a share in these will appear more than 
probable, when we call to mind that they were per¬ 
mitted to have an establishment or factory at Memphis. 
Pliny (35,42) extols the beautiful pigments of the Egyp¬ 
tians, and the testimony of all modern travellers is in 
full accordance with his statements. The Egyptians 
mixed their paint with water, and it is probable that a 
little portion of gum was sometimes added, to render it 
more tenacious and adhesive. In most instances we 
find red, green, and blue adopted ; a union which, 
for all subjects and in all parts of Egypt, was a par¬ 
ticular favourite. When black was introduced, yellow 
was added to counteract or harmonize with it; and, in 
like manner, they sought for every hue its congenial 
companion. The following analysis of Egyptian col¬ 
ours, that were brought by Wilkinson from Thebes, 
is given by Dr. Ure. “ The colours are green, blue, 
red, black, yellow, and white. 1. The green pigment, 
scraped from the painting in distemper, resists the sol¬ 
vent action of muriatic acid, but becomes thereby of a 
brilliant blue colour, in consequence of the abstraction 
of a small portion of yellow ochreous matter. The 
residuary blue powder has a sandy texture ; and, when 
viewed in the microscope, is seen to consist of small 
particles of blue glass. On fusing this vitreous matter 
with potash, digesting the compound in diluted muri¬ 
atic acid, and treating the solution with water of am¬ 
monia in excess, the presence of copper becomes 
manifest. A certain portion of precipitate fell, which, 
being dissolved in muriatic acid and tested, proved to 


I 




JEGYPTUS. 


.EGYPTUS. 


be the oxyde of iron. We may hence conclude, that 
the green pigment is a mixture of a little ochre, with a 
pulverulent glass, made by vitrifying the oxydes of cop¬ 
per and iron with sand and soda. 2. The blue pigment 
is a pulverulent blue glass, of like composition, without 
the ochreous admixture, brightened with a little of the 
chalky matter used in the distemper preparation. 3. 
The red pigment is merely a red earthy bole. 4. The 
black is bone black, mixed with a little gum, and con¬ 
taining some traces of iron. 5. The white is nothing 
but a very pure chalk, containing hardly any alumina, 
and a mere trace of iron. 6. The yellow pigment is 
a yellow iron ochre.” ( Wilkinson , vol. 3, p. 301.) 
Next in importance to weaving must be ranked Metal¬ 
lurgy. As far as we can judge from the colour, which 
is always green, brass seems to have been constantly 
employed where in other nations iron would be. The 
war-chariots appear to be entirely of the former metal. 
Their green colour, as well as their shape, and the 
lightness and elegance of their wheels, are thought 
clearly to indicate this. The arms, moreover, of the 
Egyptians appear to be entirely all of brass, and not 
only the swords, but the bows also, and quivers are 
made of it. These, together with the instruments for 
cutting that are found depicted among the hieroglyph¬ 
ics, are always green. In the infancy of the arts and 
sciences, the difficulty of working iron might long 
withhold the secret of its superiority over copper or 
bronze ; but it cannot reasonably be supposed that a 
nation so far advanced, and so eminently skilled in the 
art of working metals as the Egyptians, should have 
remained ignorant of its use, even if we had no evi¬ 
dence of its having been known to the Greeks and 
other people ; and the constant employment of bronze 
arms and implements is not a sufficient argument 
against their knowledge of iron, since we find the 
Greeks and Romans made the same things of bronze, 
long after the period when iron was universally known. 
If we reject this view of the question, we must come 
at once to the conclusion that the Egyptians possessed 
an art of hardening copper and bronze which is now 
lost to the world. The skill of the Egyptians in com¬ 
pounding metals is abundantly proved by the vases, 
mirrors, arms, and implements of bronze discovered at 
Thebes ; and the numerous methods they adopted for 
varying the composition of bronze by a judicious mix¬ 
ture of alloys, are shown in the many qualities of 
the metal. They had even the secret of giving to 
bronze or brass blades a certain degree of elasticity, 
as may be seen in the dagger of the Berlin museum. 
Another remarkable feature in their bronze is the re¬ 
sistance it offers to the effects of the atmosphere ; 
some continuing smooth and bright, though buried for 
ages, and since exposed to the damp of European 
climates. ( Wilkinson , vol. 3, p. 253.) Other lost arts 
in metallurgy may be evidenced by the well-known 
fact, that the Hebrew legislator inferentially ascribes 
to the Egyptian chemists the art of making gold liquid, 
and of retaining it in that state. This we have not 
the power to do. Still, however, it must be confessed, 
that the Egyptians cannot properly be considered as at 
any time acquainted with the science of chemistry ; 
though they were early made aware of various chemi¬ 
cal facts, and many and indubitable proofs of this have 
been collected in one or two not inconsiderable works 
devoted to the subject. Their progress in the manu¬ 
facture of not only white but coloured glass may also 
be instanced. Seneca informs us that they made arti¬ 
ficial gems of extraordinary beauty. ( Epist ., 90.) 
They had a method of purifying natron, and of ex¬ 
tracting potash from cinders. They prepared lime by 
the calcination of calcareous stones, and had an inti¬ 
mate knowledge of the uses to which it may be applied, 
as also that it renders the carbonate of soda caustic. 
Litharge, together with the vitriolic and many other 


salts, were perfectly known to them They made 
wine, vinegar, and even beer. Their method of em¬ 
balming, whatever it was, may be reckoned among 
the evidences of their chemical knowledge. The 
statements on this subject by Herodotus and Diodorus 
Siculus are very unsatisfactory; and there is reason 
to believe, as it was the object of the embalmers to 
shroud their art in mystery, that those writers were 
either totally deceived, or, at least, that the mummify¬ 
ing drug was artfully concealed from their knowledge. 
Another important branch of the domestic arts was 
Pottery , in which the Egyptians displayed a skill not 
at all inferior to that of the Greeks ; and they who sup-" 
pose that graceful forms in pottery, porcelain, bronze, 
or even more precious materials, were indigenous 
to Greece alone, will find many things to undeceive 
them in the paintings of Egypt. The country pos¬ 
sessed a species of clay extremely well adapted to 
this purpose, and which is still found there. ( Rey- 
nicr, Economies dcs Egypt., p. 274.) Coptos was 
the chief seat of this branch of industry, as Kcft 
(or Kuft), in its immediate vicinity, is at the present 
day. The vases thus manufactured served for hold¬ 
ing the water of the Nile, to which they were believed 
to impart an agreeable coolness, an opinion that pre¬ 
vails even in modern times. Besides, however, being 
applied to household purposes, they were used also for 
the purpose of holding the mummies of the sacred 
animals, such as the ibis and others. The vases 
depicted on the monuments of Egypt are sometimes 
adorned with the most brilliant colours. As to the 
elegance of form and ornament in domestic and other 
articles, the Egyptians can stand comparison with any 
other nation of antiquity, the Greeks not excepted. 
Their couches and seats might serve as patterns even 
for our own ; their silver tripods, beautiful baskets, 
and distaffs, as we see them in paintings, were known 
even in the days of the Odyssey (4, 128), and their 
musical instruments exceed those of modern times in 
the beauty and variety of their shape. Those who 
wish to examine more fully into this branch of our 
subject are referred to Rosellini’s great work, or the 
more accessible one of Wilkinson. The productions 
of the goldsmiths and silversmiths of Thebes are ex¬ 
hibited by Rosellini, and they fully demonstrate the 
high pitch of refinement to which they had brought 
the working of the precious metals. He exhibits gold 
and silver tureens, urns, vases, banqueting cups, &c., 
of the most exquisitely beautiful workmanship, and of 
the most tasteful as well as elegant forms. In sur¬ 
veying them, the classical reader will be convinced 
that Iiomer drew little on his imagination in describing 
the gift of plate made to Helen by the wife of the 
Egyptian king Thone. But Homer ascribes still 
more extraordinary wonders to the goldsmiths of the 
same time. They must have succeeded in uniting the 
most skilful mechanical clockwork with the workman¬ 
ship of gold ; for he describes golden statues, thrones, 
and footstools moving about as if instinct with life. 
It would appear, indeed, that we had made, at the 
present day, little or perhaps no improvement on the 
forms of the vases and vessels to which we have above 
referred, and that an Egyptian buffet or sideboard, with 
all its details, not excluding dishes, plates, knives, and 
spoons, near four thousand years ago, bore a striking 
resemblance to the sideboards of modern palaces and 
villas. Still farther, a survey of the trades and manu¬ 
factures of Egypt, as afforded by the ancient paintings, 
exhibits, in a great degree, the same tools, implements, 
and processes, as are employed in workshops and 
manufactories at the present day. The whole process 
of manufacturing silk and cotton, with all its details of 
reeling, carding, weaving, dying, and patterning, may 
be more especially named. (Foreign Quarterly Re¬ 
view , No. 32, p. 308, seqq .) 


43 



iEGYPTUS. 


jEGYPTUS. 


16. Trade of Egypt. 

Nature has destined Egypt, by its products, its gen¬ 
eral character, and its geographical position, for one of 
the principal trading countries of the globe. Neither 
the despotism under which it has groaned for centu¬ 
ries, nor the bloody feuds and wars of which it has so 
often been the scene, have operated, for any length of 
time, to deprive it of these advantages ; the purposes 
of Nature may be impeded, but they cannot be wholly 
destroyed. The situation of Egypt, a fertile district, 
abounding in the first necessaries of life, between the 
arid deserts of Asia and Africa, has in all ages given 
it a value which, in another position, it could not nave. 
From the time of Jacob to the present day, it has been 
the granary of the less fertile neighbouring countries. 
The natural facilities for internal communication were, 
at an early period, increased by the formation of canals, 
which united the various arms of the river that bound 
or flow through the Delta. From Syene to about lat. 
31° north there is one uninterrupted boat-navigation, 
which is seldom impeded for want of water. The con¬ 
veyance of articles up the stream is favoured at cer¬ 
tain seasons by the steady winds from the north. A 
description of the Nile-boat, called Baris, is given by 
Herodotus (2, 96). One of the great national festivals, 
that of Artemis at Bubastis, was celebrated during the 
annual inundation ; the people, in boats, sailed from 
one town to another, and their numbers were increased 
by the inhabitants of every town that was visited. As 
it was an idle time for the agriculturists, like the winter 
of other climates, it was spent in carousing and drunk¬ 
enness. The quantity of wine consumed was immense, 
and the whole of it was procured by giving in exchange 
Egyptian commodities. The Egyptians were never a 
nation of sailors, for their country furnished no mate¬ 
rials for building large vessels. Till the time of Psam- 
metichus, foreigners, though allowed to trade there, 
were subject to many strict regulations, and were 
regarded as suspicious persons. Egypt, being a 
grain-country, would be more likely to receive the 
visits of foreigners, than to make, herself, any active 
commercial speculations. The later Pharaohs, after 
Psammetichus, as also the Ptolemies, could only then 
build fleets when the woods of Phoenicia were under 
their control; and it is well-known what bloody wars 
were carried on for the possession of these regions be¬ 
tween the Ptolemies and Seleucidse. It may be easily 
imagined, too, that the Tyrians and Sidonians were 
never anxious to make the Egyptians a maritime peo¬ 
ple, even if the latter had possessed the inclination to 
become such. The true reason why the Egyptians 
forbade all foreigners to approach their coast, is to be 
found in the peculiar character of early commerce. 
All the nations that trafficked on the Mediterranean 
were at that time pirates, with whom the carrying 
away the inhabitants from the coasts and selling them 
for slaves had become a lucrative branch of commerce. 
It was natural, then, that a people who had no ships 
of their own to oppose such visitants, should forbid 
them, under any pretext, to approach their coasts. 
Passages occur, it is true, in the ancient writers, 
which render it doubtful whether there were not some 
exceptions to what has just been remarked. Homer 
makes Menelaus to have sailed to Egypt, and Diodo¬ 
rus Siculus mentions a maritime city, named Thonis, 
to which he assigns a great antiquity. The colonies, 
too, that are said to have sailed from Egypt to Greece, 
as, for example, those of Danaus and Cecrops, suppose 
an acquaintance with the art of navigation. The ques¬ 
tion, however, admits of a serious consideration, wheth¬ 
er the Phoenicians were not in these cases the agents of 
commerce and transportation. The reign of Psam¬ 
metichus and his successors changed the character of 
the Egyptians, or at least altered the old and settled ; 
polity of the country. Foreign merchants were sub- i 


ject to fewer restraints ; the exchange of Egyptian 
commodities was extended ; and, as Herodotus ex¬ 
pressly remarks, agriculture and individual wealth 
were never so much improved in Egypt as under this 
system of free trade. The Egyptian kings now ac¬ 
quired a fleet, the materials for which, or the vessels 
themselves, they could procure from the Phoenicians or 
the Greeks. Neco, the successor of Psammetichus, 
and the conqueror of Jerusalem {Herod., 2,159.—Com¬ 
pare Kings , book 2, ch. 23, and Jeremiah, ch. 46), 
formed the project of uniting the Nile to the Red Sea 
by a canal: this canal was not completed till the time 
of Darius I., the Persian king. The object of the Pha¬ 
raohs and the monarchs of Persia was to facilitate the 
transportation of commodities from the Red Sea to 
Egypt; for the Egyptians had long been accustomed 
to receive the products of India and Arabia up this 
gulf. This artificial channel was neglected on ac¬ 
count of the difficulty of navigating the northern part 
of the Red Sea ; it existed under the Ptolemies, but 
a land communication was also formed between Cop- 
tos and the ports of Myos-hormos and Berenice on the 
gulf, and this remained for a long time the great com¬ 
mercial road between the western and the eastern 
world. In Upper Egypt, the city of Thebes was once 
the centre of commerce for Africa and Arabia : under 
its colossal porticoes and market-houses, the wares of 
southern Africa, and the products of Arabia and India, 
were collected. Its fame had spread, probably through 
the Phoenician traders, as far as the country of the Ho¬ 
meric poems (7Z., 9, 381). A modern traveller, Denon, 
standing among the ruins of Thebes, could feel and 
comprehend the advantages of its situation: he could 
compute the number of days’ journey which separated 
him from the towns of Arabia, the emporium of Me- 
roe, and the cities of central Africa. In the mount¬ 
ains east of Thebes, the precious metals were once 
found : the mines were worked by prisoners of war 
or by slaves. Agatharchides, a Greek geographer, 
{Geogr. Gr. Min., vol. 1, p. 212, ed. Hudson ), in the 
time of the sixth Ptolemy, visited these mines, of 
which he has given a most exact description. Thus 
Thebes possessed, in the precious metals, one of those 
articles of commerce which invite strangers. Mem¬ 
phis, in Lower Egypt, was the centre of commerce 
when Herodotus visited Egypt. The gold, the ivory, 
and the slaves of Africa, the salt of the desert, wine 
imported from Greece and Phoenicia twice a year, with 
the products of India and Yemen, were collected in 
this market. In exchange, the merchants received the 
precious metals, grain, and linen (or perhaps cotton) 
cloths, which Herodotus compares with those of Col¬ 
chis. Amasis, who was a usurper, and a prince fond 
of foreign luxuries, did not scruple to make great in¬ 
novations. He admitted foreigners more freely into 
Lower Egypt, and appointed Naucratis, on the Cano¬ 
pic branch, as the residence of the Greek merchants. 
He carried his liberality so far as to permit non-resi¬ 
dent Greeks to build temples to their national gods, 
and use the precincts as market-places : several Ionian 
and Dorian cities of Asia, together with the town of 
Mytilene, built a noble temple, called the Hellenium, 
and, by their joint votes, appointed the superintendents 
of the market and the commercial establishment. 
Some other Greek towns also followed their example. 
{Long's Anc. Geogr., p. 64, seqq. — Hceren's Ideen , 
vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 373, seqq.) 

17. Style of Egyptian Art. 

The same veneration for ancient usage and the stem 
regulations of the priesthood, which forbade any inno¬ 
vation in the form of the human figure, particularly in 
subjects connected with religion, fettered the genius 
of the Egyptian artists, and prevented its development, 
j The same formal outline, the same attitudes and pos- 
i tures of the body, the same conventional mode of rep- 




,/EGYPTUS. 


JEG YPTUS. 


resenting the different parts, were adhered to at the 
latest as at the earliest periods. No improvements, 
resulting from experience and observation, were admit¬ 
ted in the mode of drawing the figure ; no attempt was 
made to copy nature, or to give proper action to the 
limbs. Certain rules, certain models, had been estab¬ 
lished by law, and the faulty conceptions of earlier 
times were copied and perpetuated by every successive 
artist. Egyptian bas-relief appears to have been, in 
its origin, a mere copy of painting, its predecessor. 
The first attempt to represent the figures of the gods, 
sacred emblems, and other subjects, consisted in paint¬ 
ing simple outlines of them on a flat surface, the details 
being afterward put in with colour. But, in process of 
time, these forms were traced on stone with a tool, and 
the intermediate space between the various figures 
being afterward cut away, the once level surface as¬ 
sumed the appearance of a bas-relief. It was, in fact, 
a pictorial representation on stone, which is evidently 
the character of all the bas-reliefs on Egyptian monu¬ 
ments, and which readily accounts for the imperfect 
arrangement of their figures. Deficient in conception, 
and, above all, in a proper knowledge of grouping, they 
were unable to form those combinations which give 
true expression. Every picture was made up of iso¬ 
lated parts, put together according to some general 
notions, but without harmony or preconceived effect. 
The human face, the whole body, and everything they 
introduced, were composed, in the same manner, of 
separate members, placed together one by one, accord¬ 
ing to their relative situations : the eye, the nose, and 
other features, composed a face ; but the expression 
of feelings and passions was entirely wanting; and the 
countenance of the king, whether charging an enemy’s 
phalanx in the heat of battle, or peaceably offering in¬ 
cense in a sombre temple, presented the same outline, 
and the same inanimate look. The peculiarity of the 
front view of an eye, introduced in a profile, is thus ac¬ 
counted for; it was the ordinary representation of that 
feature added to a profile, and no allowance was made 
for any change in the position of the head. It was the 
same with drapery. The figure was first drawn, and 
the drapery was then added, not as a par-t of the whole, 
but as an accessory. They had no general conception, 
no previous idea of the effect required to distinguish 
the warrior or the priest, beyond the impression re¬ 
ceived from costume, or from the subject of which they 
formed a part; and the same figure was dressed accord¬ 
ing to the character it was intended to perform. Every 
portion of a picture was conceived by itself, and in¬ 
serted as it was wanted to complete the scene; and 
when the walls of a building, where a subject was to 
be drawn, had been accurately ruled with squares, the 
figures were introduced, and fitted to this mechanical 
arrangement. The members were appended to the 
body, and these squares regulated their form and dis¬ 
tribution, in whatever posture they might be placed. 
In the paintings of the tombs, greater license was al¬ 
lowed in the representation of subjects relating to pri¬ 
vate life, the trades, or the manners and occupations 
of the people ; and some indications of perspective in 
the position of the figures may occasionally be ob¬ 
served ; but the attempt was imperfect, and, probably, 
to an Egyptian eye, unpleasing ; for such is the force 
of habit, that, even where nature is copied, a conven¬ 
tional style is sometimes preferred to a more accurate 
representation. In the battle scenes on the temples 
of Thebes, some of the figures representing the mon¬ 
arch pursuing the flying enemy, despatching a hostile 
chief with his sword, and drawing his bow, as his j 
horses carry his car over the prostrate bodies of the j 
slain, are drawn with much spirit; but still the same , 
imperfections of style and want of truth are observed; j 
there is action, but no sentiment, no expression of the | 
passions, or life in the features. In the representation j 
of animals they appear not to have been restricted to , 


the same rigid style ; but genius once cramped can 
scarcely be expected to make any great effort to rise, 
or to succeed in the attempt; and the same union of 
parts into a whole, the same preference for profile, are 
observable in these as in the human figure. It must, 
however, be allowed, that, in general, the character and 
form of animals were admirably portrayed ; the parts 
were put together with greater truth ; and the same 
license was not resorted to as in the shoulders and 
other portions of the human body. ( Wilkinson , vol. 
3, p. 263, seqq.) 

18. Egyptian Architecture. 

The earliest inhabitants of Egypt appear to have 
been of Troglodytic habits, or, in other words, to 
have inhabited caves. The mountain ranges on either 
side of the stream would easily supply them with 
abodes of this kind. From the site of ancient Mem¬ 
phis, until we ascend the Nile beyond Thebes, these 
mountains are composed of stratified limestone, full of 
organic remains. Such rocks, it is well known, abound 
in natural caverns in all eastern countries; and although 
no cavities are now found in Egypt that do not bear 
marks of human skill, we have no right to assert that 
it was not in many cases merely called in for the aid 
of nature, to smooth and embellish abodes originally 
provided by her. Much of this rock, too, was of a 
highly sectile and friable nature, and easily worked, 
therefore, by the hand of man. When the natural 
caverns then became insufficient for the growing pop¬ 
ulation, the artificial formation of others would be no 
difficult task. With the demand, the skill of work¬ 
manship would naturally increase ; harder limestone 
would be worked, then the flinty but friable sandstones 
of the quarries of Selseleh, and, finally, the hard and 
imperishable rock that still bears the name of the city 
of Syene. To understand fully the causes which led 
to the erection of such enormous works by the Egyp¬ 
tians, as still astonish and have for ages astonished the 
world, we must investigate other circumstances besides 
those of climate and position. The government of 
Egypt was monarchical from the very earliest date ; 
and a monarchical and despotic government, if it be 
only stable, is incontestibly more favourable to the ex¬ 
ecution of magnificent structures than one more free. 
Hence one cause for the vast structures of Egypt. 
The population, too, of the country was probably re¬ 
dundant beyond any modem parallel. Considered as 
a grain country alone, it was capable of supporting a 
population three times as great as one of equal extent 
in a less favoured climate. It produces, besides, those 
tropical plants which yield more fruit on a given space 
of ground than any of the vegetables of the temperate 
zone, and which grow where, from the aridity of the 
soil, the cereal gramina cannot Vegetate. Domestic 
animals, too, multiply with great rapidity, and the pro¬ 
lific influence of the waters of the Nile is said to extend 
to the human race. With a population created and 
supported by such causes, we cannot wonder that a 
government, commanding without fear of accountabil¬ 
ity the whole resources of the country, could project 
and execute works, at which the richest and most pow¬ 
erful nations of modern times would hesitate. Many 
causes must have conspired to induce the abandonment 
of the cavern habitations of the early inhabitants. Be¬ 
sides the necessity which existed of providing recep¬ 
tacles for the embalmed bodies of the dead, and for 
which purpose these caverns would admirably answer, 
a growing and improving people could not long endure 
to be shut up in rocky grottoes during the inundation, 
or to pursue their agricultural labours at other seasons, 
far from a fixed abode. A remedy for these incon¬ 
veniences was found in the erection of mounds in the 
plain, and quays upon the banks of the river, exceeding 
in elevation its utmost rise, and extended with the in¬ 
crease of population until they could contain important 

45 



^EGYPTUS. 


xELI 


cities. Such artificial mounds are still to be seen 
forming the basis of all the important ruins that exist. 
When we consider the remarkable skill exhibited by 
the Egyptians in the art of stone-cutting, manifested, 
too, at the most remote period to which we can trace 
them historically, we cannot but ascribe this charac¬ 
teristic taste to something in their original habits. 
The first necessities of their ancestors must have given 
this impulse to the national genius, and determined the 
character which their architecture manifests, down to 
the latest period of their existence, not merely as an 
independent nation, but as a separate people. In the 
same way that the Tyrians, and the inhabitants of Pal¬ 
estine, owed to their cedar forests their taste and skill 
in the workmanship of wood, the Egyptians derived 
from their original mode of life, from their abundant 
quarries, and from the facility they found in excavating 
the rocks into dwellings, the taste for the workmanship 
of stone which distinguishes them ; and this taste ex¬ 
plains the high degree of perfection they attained in 
this art. In inquiring into the origin and principles of 
Egyptian architecture, certain prominent characters 
strike us at once that cannot be mistaken. The plans 
and great outlines of their buildings are remarkable 
for simplicity and sameness, however diversified they 
may be in decoration and ornament. Openings are 
extremely rare, and the interior of their temples is as 
dark as the primitive 'caverns themselves ; so that, 
when within them, it is difficult to distinguish between 
an excavation and a building ; the pillars are of enor¬ 
mous diameter, and resemble in their proportions the 
masses left to support the roofs of mines and quarries. 
Nay, their hypostyle halls are almost similar in appear¬ 
ance to this kind of excavation ; the portals, porticoes, 
and doors are enclosed in masses, in such a way as to 
present the appearance of the entrance of a cave ; and 
the roofs of vast stones, lying horizontally, could have 
been imitated from no shelter erected in the open air. 
All the buildings yet existing between Denderah and 
Syene are constructed of a kind of sandstone, furnished 
in abundance by the quarries of the adjacent country. 
This stone is composed of quartzose grains, usually 
united by a calcareous cement. Its colours are gray¬ 
ish, yellowish, or even almost white ; some have a 
slight tinge of rose colour, and others various veins of 
different shades of yellow. But when forming a part 
of the mass of a building, they produce an almost uni¬ 
form effect of colour, namely, a light gray. One great 
advantage connected with this species of stone is the 
ease with which it can be wrought; and the mode of 
its aggregation, and the uniformity of its structure, so 
far from resisting, offerthe greatest facilities for the ex¬ 
ecution of hieroglyphic and symbolic sculptures. The 
obelisks and statues, on the other hand, which adorned 
the approaches and entrances of the sandstone struc¬ 
tures, were made of a more costly and enduring sub¬ 
stance, the granite of Syene, the Cataracts, and Ele¬ 
phantine. The most important of the rocks of this 
species is the rose-granite, remarkable for the beauty 
of its colours, the large size of its crystals, its hardness 
and durability. A part of the monuments which have 
been made of it have been preserved almost uninjured 
for many centuries. The mode of building among the 
Egyptians was very peculiar. They placed in their 
columns rude stones upon each other, after merely 
smoothing the surfaces of contact, and the figure of 
the column, with all its decorations, was finished after 
it was set up. In their walls, the outer and inner 
surfaces of the stones were also left unfinished, to be 
reduced to shape by one general process, after the 
whole mass had been erected. Of the private archi¬ 
tecture of the Egyptians, but few remains have come 
down to us. It was composed chiefly of perishable 
materials, namely, of bricks dried in the sun: those 
burned in a kiln being rarely employed, except in damp 
situations The arch appears to have been known to 
46 


the Egyptians at a very early period. It consisted of 
brick, as appears from monuments, as far back as the 
year 1540 before our era, and of stone in B.C. 600.— 
Before concluding this head it may not be unimportant 
to remark, that the Greek orders of architecture, more 
especially the Doric and Corinthian, can all be traced 
to Egyptian originals. ( Description de VEgypte , t. 1, 
2, 3, &c. — Quatremere de Quincy, de VArchitecture 
Egypticnne. — American Quarterly Rev., No. 9, p. 1, 
seqq .— Wilkinson , vol. 2, p. 95, seqq. ; vol. 3, p. 316, 
seqq.) 

.tElia, I. Gens, a celebrated Plebeian house, of which 
there were various branches, such as the Pati, Lamia , 
Tuberones, Galli, &c.—II. The wife of Sylla. ( Plut ., 
Vit. Syll .)—III. Patina, of the family of the Tuberos, 
and wife of the Emperor Claudius. She was repudi¬ 
ated, in order to make way for Messalina. ( Sueton ., 
Claud., 26.)—IV. Lex, a law proposed by the tribune 
^Elius Tubero, and enacted A.U.C. 559, for sending 
two colonies into Bruttium. (Liv., 34, 53.)—V. An¬ 
other, commonly called Lex JElia et Fusia. These 
were, in fact, two separate laws, though they are some¬ 
times joined by Cicero. The first (Lex JElia ) w r as 
brought forward by the consul Q. .JElius Pretus, A.U.C. 
586, and ordained, that when the comitia were to be 
held for passing laws, the magistrates, or the augurs 
by their authority, might take observations from the 
heavens, and, if the omens were unfavourable, might 
prevent or dissolve the assembly. And also, that any 
other magistrate of equal or greater authority than he 
who presided, might declare that he had heard thunder 
or seen lightning, and in this way put off the assembly 
to some other time.—The second ( Lex Furia or Fusia), 
proposed either by the consul Furius, or by one Fusius 
or Fufius, was passed A.U.C. 617, and ordained that 
it should not be lawful to enact laws on any dies fastus. 
—VI. Sentia Lex, brought forward by the consuls 
JElius and Sentius, and enacted A.U.C. 756. It or¬ 
dained that no slave who had ever, for the sake of a 
crime, been bound, publicly whipped, tortured, or 
branded in the face, although freed by his master, should 
obtain the freedom of the city, but should always remain 
in the class of the deditii, who were indeed free, but 
could not aspire to the advantages of Roman citizens. 
(Suet., Aug., AO.) —VILA name given to various cities, 
either repaired or built by the Emperor Hadrian, whose 
family name was ./Elius.—VIII. Capitolina, a name 
given to Jerusalem by the Emperor Hadrian, when he 
rebuilt the city, from his own family title .JElius, and 
also from his erecting within that city a temple to Ju¬ 
piter Capitolinus. (Vid. Hierosolyma.) 

^Elianus, I. a Greek writer, who flourished about 
the middle of the second century of our era. He com¬ 
posed a treatise on military tactics, which he dedica¬ 
ted to the Emperor Hadrian. The best edition is that 
of Arcerius and Meursius, Lugd. Bat., 1613, 4to.—II. 
Claudius, a native of Prseneste, who flourished during 
the reigns of Heliogabalus and Alexander Severus 
(218-235 A.D.). Although born in Italy, and of Latin 
parents, and almost constantly residing within the lim¬ 
its of his native country, he nevertheless acquired so 
complete a knowledge of the language of Greece, that 
Philostratus, if his testimony be worth quoting, makes 
him worthy of being compared with the purest Atticists, 
while Suidas states that he obtained the appellations 
of Me/l icpdoyyoq (“ Honey-voiced”), and M eJlyhuGooc 
(“ Honey-tongued”). He appears to have been a man 
of extensive reading and considerable information. 
His “ Various History,” n oikiKt] 'laropla, in fourteen 
books, is a collection of extracts from different works, 
themes very probably which he composed for the pur¬ 
pose of exercising himself in the Grecian tongue, and 
which his heirs very indiscreetly gave to the world. 
These extracts may be regarded as the earliest on the 
list of Ana. The Various History of .Elian evinces 
neither taste, judgment, nor powers of critical discrim' 




t 


iEMI 


mation. Its chief claim to attention rests on its having 
preserved from oblivion some fragments of authors, the 
rest of whose works are lost. It is to be regretted 
that BElian, instead of giving these extracts in the lan¬ 
guage of the writers themselves, has thought fit to ar¬ 
ray them in a garb of his own. Gillian composed also 
a pretended history of animals, Ilep^ £6ov Idiorproq, 
in seventeen books, each of which is subdivided into 
small chapters. This zoological compilation is full of 
absurd stories, intermingled occasionally with inter¬ 
esting notices. To this same writer are also ascribed 
twenty epistles on rural affairs (’kypouanal eTTioTo'kai) 
which possess very little interest. BElian led a life of 
celibacy, and died at the age of 60 years or over. The 
best editions of the Various History are, that of Gro- 
novius, Amst., 4to, 1731, 2 vols., and that of Kuhnius, 
Lips., 8vo, 1780, 2 vols. The best edition of the His¬ 
tory of Animals is that of F. Jacobs, Lips., 8vo, 1784. 
—III., IV. {Vid. Supplement.) 

BElius, a name common to many Romans, and mark¬ 
ing also the plebeian house of the BElii. ( Vid. BElia 
I.) The most noted individuals that bore this name 
were, I. Publius, a quaestor, A.U.C. 346, the first year 
that the plebeians were admitted to this office. {Liv., 
4, 54.)—II. C. Stalenus, a judge, who suffered him¬ 
self to be corrupted by Statius Albius. ( Cic. pro Scxt., 
81.)—-III. Sextus BElius Catus, an eminent Roman 
lawyer, who lived in the sixth century from the foun¬ 
dation of the city. He filled in succession the offices 
of aedile, consul, and censor, and gave his name to a 
part of the Roman law. When Cneius Flavius, the 
clerk of Appius Claudius Csecus, had made known to 
the people the forms to be observed in prosecuting 
lawsuits, and the days upon which actions could be 
brought, the patricians, irritated at this, contrived new 
forms of process, and, to prevent their being made pub¬ 
lic, expressed them in writing by certain secret marks. 
These forms, however, were subsequently published 
by BElius Catus, and his book was named Jus JElia- 
num, as that of Flavius was styled Jus Flavianum. 
Ennius calls him, on account of his knowledge of the 
civil law, egregie cordatus homo , “ a remarkably wise 
man.” {Cic., de Orat., 1, 45.) Notwithstanding the 
opinions of Grotius and Bertrand, BElius must be re¬ 
garded as the author of the work entitled Tripartita 
JElii, which is so styled from its containing, 1st. The 
text of the law. 2d. Its interpretation. 3d. The le- 
gis actio, or the forms to be observed in going to law. 
BElius Catus, on receiving the consulship, became re¬ 
markable for the austere simplicity of his manners, eat¬ 
ing from jearthen vessels, and refusing the silver ones 
which the BEtolian deputies offered him. When cen¬ 
sor, with M. Cethegus, he assigned to the senate at 
the public games separate seats from the people.—IV. 
Lucius, surnamed Lamia, the friend and defender of 
Cicero, was driven out of the city by Piso and Ga- 
binius. {Cic. in Pis., 27.)—V. Gallus, a Roman 
knight, and the friend of Strabo, to whom Virgil dedi¬ 
cated his tenth eclogue. (Fid. Gallus III.)—VI. Seja- 
nus. {Vid. Sejanus.)—VII. An engraver on precious 
stones, who lived in the first century of our era. A 
gem exhibiting the head of Tiberius, engraved by him, 
is described by Bracci, tab. 2.—VIII. Promotus, an an¬ 
cient physician. {Vid. Supplement.)—IX. Gordianus, 
an eminent lawyer, in the reign of Alexander Severus. 
—X. Serenianus, a lawyer, and pupil of Papinian. 
He flourished during the reign of Severus, and is high¬ 
ly praised by Lampridius. {Lampr., Vit. Sev.) 

Aello (’AeilAw), one of the Harpies. {Vid. Har- 
pyise.) Her name is derived from deXka, a tempest, 
the rapidity of her course being compared to a stormy 
wind. Compare Hesiod, Theog., 267, and Schol., ad 
loc. 

BEmathia. Vid. Emathia. 

BEmathion. Vid. Emathion. 

BEmilia lex, I. a law of the dictator Mamercus 


BEMI 

BEmilius, A.U.C. 309, ordaining that the censors 
should be elected as before, every five years, but that 
their power should continue only a year and a half. 
{Liv., 4, 24.— Id., 9, 33.)—II. Sumtuaria, vel cibaria, 
a sumptuary law, brought forward by M. BEmilius Le- 
pidus, and enacted A.U.C. 675. It limited the kind 
and quantity of meats to be used at an entertain¬ 
ment. {Macrob., Sat., 2,13.— Aul. Cell., 2,24.) Pliny 
ascribes this law to M. Scaurus (8, 57). 

BEmilia, I. Gens, the name of a distinguished Ro¬ 
man family among the patricians, originally written 
Aimilia. {Vid. Supplement.)—-II. The third daugh¬ 
ter of L. BEmilius Paullus, who fell in the battle of 
Cannae. She was the wife of the elder Africanus, and 
the mother of the celebrated Cornelia. She was of a 
mild disposition, and long survived her husband. Her 
property, which was large, was inherited by her adopt¬ 
ed grandson Africanus the Younger, who gave it to 
his own mother Papiria, who had been divorced by his 
own father L. BEmilius.—III. Lepida. {Vid. Lepida 
I.)—IV. A part of Italy, extending from Ariminum to 
Placentia. It formed one of the later subdivisions of 
the country.—V. Via Lepidi, a Roman road. There 
were two roads, in fact, of this name, both branch¬ 
ing off from Mediolanum {Milan) to the eastern and 
southern extremities of the province of Cisalpine Gaul; 
the one leading to Verona and Aquileia, the latter to 
Placentia and Ariminum. The same name, howev¬ 
er, of Via BEmilia Lepidi, was applied to both. They 
were made by M. BEmilius Lepidus, who was con¬ 
sul A.U.C. 567, in continuation of the Via Flamin- 
ia, which had been carried from Rome to Arimi¬ 
num.—VI. Via Scauri, a Roman road, a continuation 
of the Aurelian way, from Pisa to Dertona. {Strab., 
217.) 

BEmilianus, I. the second agnomen of P. Cornelius 
Scipio Africanus the younger, which he received as 
being the son of Paulius BEmilius. His adoption by 
the elder Africanus united the houses of the Scipios 
andBEmilii.—II. A native of Mauritania, who was gov¬ 
ernor of Pannonia and Moesia under Hostilianus and 
Gallus. Some successes over the barbarians caused 
him to be proclaimed emperor by his soldiers. Gallus 
marched against him, but was murdered, together with 
his son Volusianus, by his own soldiers, who went 
over to the side of BEmilianus. The reign of the lat¬ 
ter, however, was of short duration. Less than four 
months intervened between his victory and his fall. 
Valerian, one of the generals of Gallus, who had been 
sent by that emperor to bring the legions of Gaul and 
Germany to his aid, met BEmilianus in the plains of 
Spoletum, where the latter, like Gallus, was murdered 
by his own troops, who thereupon went over to Vale¬ 
rian. {Zosimus, 21, p. 25, seqq. — Auyd. Viet. — Eu- 
trop., 9, 6.)—III. A prefect of Egypt, m the reign of 
Gallienus. He assumed the imperial purple, but was 
defeated by Theodotus, a general of the emperor’s, 
who sent him prisoner to Rome, where he was stran¬ 
gled. {Treb. Gall., Tr. Tyr., 22.— Euseb., Hist. Ec- 
cles.,1 .)—IV. {Vid. Supplement.) 

BEmilius, I. Censorinus, a cruel tyrant of Sicily. 
A person named Aruntius Paterculus having given 
him a brazen horse, intended as a means of torture, 
was the first that was made tatfsuffer by it. Compare 
the story of Phalaris and his Drazen bull. {Pint., de 
Fort. Rom., 315.)—II. L., three times consul, and the 
conqueror of the Volsci, A.U.C. 273. {Liv., 2, 42.)— 
III. Mamercus, once consul and three times dictator, 
obtained a triumph over the Fidenates, A.U.C. 329. 
{Liv., 4, 16.)—IV. Paulus, father of the celebrated 
Paulus BEmilius. He was one of the consuls slain 
at Cannse. {Liv., 23, 49.)—V. Paulus Macedonicus. 
( Vid. Paulus I.)—VI. Scaurus. {Vid. Scaurus.)—• 
VII. Lepidus, twice consul, once censor, and six times 
Pontifex Maximus. He was also Princeps Senatus, 
and guardian to Ptolemy Epiphanes, in the name of 

47 ' 




AENEAS. 


ENEAS. 


the Roman people. It was this individual to whom a 
civic crown was given Avhen a youth of 15, for having 
saved the life of a citizen, an allusion to which is made 
on the medals of the Emilian family. ( Liv., 41, 42. 
— Epit. 48.)—VIII. Lepidus, the triumvir. (Vid. Le- 
pidus.) 

Emonia. Vid. Hffimonia. 

Enaria, an island off the coast of Campania, at the 
entrance of the Bay of Naples. Properly speaking, 
there are two islands, and hence the plural form of the 
name which the Greeks applied to them, al UtdyKov- 
cai ( Pithecusce). This latter appellation, according to 
Pliny (3, 6), was not derived from the number of apes 
(TridqKoi) which the islands were supposed to contain, 
but from the earthen casks or barrels ( 7 xiduiaov, dolio- 
lum ) which were made there. The Romans called 
the largest of the two islands JEnaria, probably from 
the copper which they found in it. Enaria was a 
volcanic island, and Virgil (Mn., 9, 716) gives it the 
name of Inarime, in accordance with the old traditions 
which made the body of Typhoeus to have been placed 
under this island and the Phlegrsean plain. Homer, 
however (II., 2, 783), describes Typhoeus as lying in 
Arima (dv ’A pi/aoeg). The modem name of Enaria 
is Ischia. 

Enea or Eneia, a town of Macedonia, on the 
coast of the Sinus Thermaicus, northwest from Olyn- 
thus, and almost due south from Thessalonica. It 
was founded by a colony of Corinthians and Potidse- 
ans. The inhabitants themselves, however, affected 
to believe that .Eneas was its founder, and conse¬ 
quently offered to him an annual sacrifice. Enea 
was a place of some importance in the war between 
the Macedonians and Romans. Soon afterward, how¬ 
ever, it disappeared from history. (Scymnus, v. 627. 
— Liv., 40, 4, and 44, 10.— Strabo, cpit. 7.) 

Enead/e, I. the companions of Eneas, a name 
given them in Virgil. (xEn., 1, 157, &c.)—II. The 
descendants of /Eneas, an appellation given by the 
poets to the whole Roman nation. Hence Venus is 
called by Lucretius (1, 1), JEneadum genetrix. 

.Eneas, a celebrated Trojan warrior, son of Anchi- 
ses and Venus, whose wanderings and adventures form 
the subject of Virgil’s Eneid, and from whose final 
settlement in Italy the Romans traced their origin. 
He was born, according to the poets, on Mount Ida, 
or, as some legends stated, on the banks of the Simois, 
and was nurtured by the Dryads until he had reached 
his fifth year, when he was brought to Anchises. The 
remainder of his early life was spent under the care of 
his brother-in-law Alcathous, in the city of Dardanus, 
his father’s place of residence, at the foot of Ida. He 
first took part in the Trojan war when Achilles had 
despoiled hirq^ of his flocks and herds. Priam, how¬ 
ever, gave him a cold reception, either because the 
great Trojan families were at variance with each other, 
from the influence of ambitious feelings, or, what is 
more probable, because an oracle had declared that 
Eneas and his posterity should rule over the Trojans. 
Hence, although he married Creusa, the daughter of 
Priam, he never lived, according to Homer (II., 13, 
460), on very friendly terms with that monarch. Ene¬ 
as was regarded as the bravest and boldest of the Tro¬ 
jan leaders after Hed^pr, and is even brought by Ho¬ 
mer in contact with Achilles. (II., 20,175, seqq.) He 
was also conspicuous for his piety and justice, and was 
therefore the only Trojan whom the otherwise angry 
Neptune protected in the fight. The posthomeric 
bards assign him a conspicuous part in the scenes that 
took place on the capture of Troy, and Virgil, taking 
these for his guides, has done the same in his Eneid. 
Eneas fought manfully in the midst of the blazing 
city until all was lost, and then retired with a large 
number of the inhabitants, accompanied by their wives 
and children, to the neighbouring mountains of Ida. 
It was on this occasion that he signalized his piety, by 


bearing away on his shoulders his aged parent Anchi¬ 
ses. His wife Creusa, however, was lost in the hur¬ 
ried flight. From this period the legends respecting 
Eneas differ. While, according to one tradition, of 
which there are traces even in the Homeric poems, he 
remained in Troas, and ruled over the remnant of the 
Trojan population, he wandered from his native land 
according to another account, and settled in Italy. 
This latter tradition is adopted by the Roman writers, 
who trace to him the origin of their nation, and it forms 
the basis of the Eneid, in which poem his various 
wanderings are related, until he is brought to the Ital¬ 
ian shores. Following the account of Virgil and the 
poets from whom he has copied, as far as any remains 
of these last have come down to us, we find that 
Eneas, in the second year after the destruction of 
Troy, set sail, with a newly-constructed fleet of twenty 
vessels, from the Trojan shores, and visited, first 
Thrace, and then the island of Sicily. From this lat¬ 
ter island he proceeded with his ships for Italy, in the 
seventh year of his wanderings, but was driven by a 
storm on the coast of Africa, near Carthage. After a 
residence of some time at the court of Dido, he set sail 
for Italy, and reached eventually, after many dangers 
and adventures, the harbour of Cumse. From Cunue 
he proceeded along the shore and entered the mouth 
of the Tiber. After a war with the neighbouring na¬ 
tions, in which he proved successful, and slew Tur- 
nus, the leader of the foe, Eneas received in marriage 
Lavinia, the daughter of King Latinus, and built the 
city of Lavinium. The Trojans and native inhabitants 
became one people, under the common name of Lati- 
ni. The flourishing state of the new community ex¬ 
cited, however, the jealousy of the neighbouring na¬ 
tions, and war was declared by them against the sub¬ 
jects of Eneas, Mezentius, king of Etruria, being 
placed at the head of the coalition. The arms of 
Eneas proved successful, but he lost his life in the 
conflict. According to another account, he was 
drowned during the action in the river Numicus. 
Divine honours were paid him after death by his sub¬ 
jects, and the Romans also in a later age regarded him 
as one of the Dii Indigetcs. The tale of Eneas and 
his Trojan colony is utterly rejected by Niebuhr, but 
he thinks it a question worth discussion, whether it 
was domestic or transported. Having shown that 
several Hellenic poets had supposed Eneas to have 
escaped from Troy, and that Stesichorus had even ex¬ 
pressly represented him as having sailed to Hesperia, 
i. e., the west; and then noticed the general belief 
among the Greeks, of Trojan colonies in different 
parts, he still regards all this as quite insufficient to 
account for the belief in a Trojan descent becoming an 
article of state-faith, with so proud a people as the Ro¬ 
mans. The fancied descent must have been domes¬ 
tic, like that of the Britons from Brute and Troy, the 
Hungarians from the Huns, &c., all of which have 
been related with confidence by native writers. The 
only difficulty is to account for its origin, on which 
Niebuhr advances the following hypothesis : Every¬ 
thing contained in mythic tales respecting the affinity 
of nations indicates the affinity between the Trojans 
and those of the Pelasgian stem, as the Arcadians, 
Epirotes, QEnotrians, and especially the Tyrrhenian 
Pelasgians. Such tales are those of the wanderings 
of Dardanus from Corythus to Samothrace and thence 
to the Simois, the coming of the Trojans to Latiurn, 
of the Tyrrhenians to Lemnos. Now, that the Pe¬ 
nates at Lavinium, which some of the Lavinians told 
Timseus were Trojan images, were the Samothracian 
gods, is acknowledged, and the Romans recognised the 
affinity of the people of that island. From this nation¬ 
al as well as religious unity, and the identity of lan¬ 
guage, it may have happened that various branches of 
the nation may have been called Trojans, or have 
claimed a descent from Troy, and have boasted the 




AENEAS. 


/E N 0 


K ssession of relics which /Eneas was reported to 
ve saved. Long after the original natives of Italy 
had overcome them, Tyrrhenians may have visited 
Samothrace ; Herodotus may there have heard Cres- 
tonians and Placianians conversing together; and La- 
vinians and Gergithians may have met there, and ac¬ 
counted for their affinity by the story of /Eneas. 
‘‘We have,” the Lavinians may have said, “ the same 
language and religion with you, and we have clay 
images at home, just like these here.” “ Then,” 
may the others have replied, “ you must be descended 
from /Eneas and his followers, who saved the relics in 
Troy, and sailed, our fathers say, away to the west 
with them.” And it requires but a small knowledge 
of human nature to perceive how easily such reason¬ 
ing as this would be embraced and propagated. {Nie¬ 
buhr's Rom. Hist., 2d cd., vol. 1, p. 150, seqq., Cam¬ 
bridge transl.—Foreign Quarterly Review , No. 4, p. 
533.)—II. Silvius, a son of /Eneas and Lavinia, said 
to have derived his name from the circumstance of his 
having been brought up in the woods {in silvis), 
whither his mother had retired on the death of /Eneas. 

( Vid. Lavinia.) Virgil follows the account which 
makes him the founder of the Alban line of kings. 
{AEn., 6, 766.) According to others, he was the son 
and successor of Ascanius. Others again give a dif¬ 
ferent statement. (Compare Liv., 1, 3.— Aurel. Viet., 
16, 17.— Dion. Hal., 1 , 70. — Ovid, Fast., 4, 41, and 
consult Heyne, ad Virg., 1. c.) —III. An ancient writer, 
surnamed Tacticus. By some he is supposed to have 
flourished about 148 B.C. ; others, however, make 
him anterior to Alexander the Great. Casaubon sus¬ 
pects that he is the same with /Eneas of Stymphalus, 
who, according to Xenophon {Hist. Gr., 7, 3), was 
commander of the Arcadians at the time of the battle 
of Mantinea, about 360 B.C. (Compare Sax. Onom., 
1, p. 73.) Of his writings on the military art {'Lrparr]- 
yuid. (3i6Xia) there remains to us a single book, enti¬ 
tled T auriKov re teal Iio?uopK7]TiKbv vrropvr/pa, &c. 
This work is not only of great value on account of the 
number of technical terms which it contains, but serves 
also to elucidate various points of antiquity, and makes 
mention of facts which cannot elsewhere be found. 
The best edition is that of Orellius, Lips., 1818, 8vo, 
published as a supplement to Schweighseuser’s edition 
of Polybius.—IV. A native of Gaza, a disciple of 
Hierocles, who flourished during the latter part of the 
5th century of our era, or about 480 A.C. He ab¬ 
jured paganism, and was an eyewitness of the perse¬ 
cution which Huneric, king of the Vandals, instituted 
against the Christians, 484 A.C. Although a Chris¬ 
tian, he professed Platonism. We have a dialogue of 
his remaining, entitled Qeotypaorog, which treats of 
the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the 
body. The interlocutors are /Egyptus an Alexan- 
drean, Axitheus a Syrian, and Theophrastus an Athe¬ 
nian. /Eneas exhibits and illustrates the Christian 
doctrines in the person of Axitheus, and Theophras¬ 
tus conducts the argument for the heathen schools, 
while /Egyptus now and then interrupts the grave dis¬ 
cussion by a specimen of Alexandrean levity. ./Eneas 
defends the immortality of the soul and the resurrec¬ 
tion of the body against the philosophers who deny it. 
He explains how the soul, although created, may be¬ 
come immortal, and proves that the world, being ma¬ 
terial, must perish. In conducting this chain of argu¬ 
ment, he mingles the Platonic doctrine of the Logos 
and Anima mundi with that of the Christian Trinity. 
He then refutes the objections urged against the res¬ 
urrection of the body : this leads him to speak of holy 
men who have restored dead bodies to life, and to re¬ 
late as an eyewitness the miracle of the confessors, 
who, after having had their tongues cut out, were still; 
able to speak distinctly. This piece is entitled to ^ 
high praise for the excellence of the design, and the : 
general ability with which the argument is sustained ; ! 


although, as the author was of the school of Plato, 
there is something in it, of course, that savours of 
the Academy. (An able analysis of its contents is 
given in the N. Y. Churchman, vol. 9, No. 4, by an 
anonymous writer.) There also remain of his writings 
twenty-five letters. These last are contained in the 
epistolary collections of Aldus and Cujas. The latest 
edition is that of Bath, Lips., 1655, 4to. 

JEneIa. Vid. /Enea. 

/Eneis, the celebrated epic poem of Virgil, com¬ 
memorating the wanderings of /Eneas after the fall of 
Troy, and his final settlement in Italy. {Vid. Virgil- 
ius.) 

/Enesidemus, a philosopher, born at Gnossus in 
Crete, but who lived at Alexandrea. He flourished, 
very probably, a short period subsequent to Cicero. 
/Enesidemus revived the scepticism which had been 
silenced in the Academy, with the view of making it 
aid in re-introducing the doctrines of Heraclitus. For, 
in order to show that everything has its contrary, we 
must first prove that opposite appearances are present¬ 
ed in one and the same thing to each individual. To 
strengthen, therefore, the cause of scepticism, he ex¬ 
tended its limits to the utmost, admitting and defend¬ 
ing the ten topics attributed to Pyrrho, to justify a sus¬ 
pense of all positive opinion. He wrote eight books 
on the doctrines of Pyrrho {Tlyfifiovlov hoyoi ?/), of 
which extracts are to be found in Photius, cod. 212. 
{Tennemann, Gesch. Phil., ed. Wendt, p. 196.) 

/Enianes, or Enienes, a Thessalian tribe, appa¬ 
rently of great antiquity, but of uncertain origin, whose 
frequent migrations have been alluded to by more than 
one writer of antiquity, but by none more than Plu¬ 
tarch in his Greek Questions. He states them to have 
occupied, in the first instance, the Dotian plain (com¬ 
pare GelVs Itinerary, p. 242); after which they wan¬ 
dered to the borders of Epirus, and finally settled in 
the upper valley of the Sperchius. Their antiquity 
and importance are attested by the fact of their belong¬ 
ing to the Amphictyonic council. {Pausan., 10, 8.— 
Harpocrat., s. v. ’A/utyucrvovcg. — Herod., 7, 198.) At 
a later period we find them joining other Grecian 
states against Macedonia, in the confederacy which 
gave rise to the Lamiac war. {Diod. Sic., 17, 111.) 
But in Strabo’s time they had nearly disappeared, hav¬ 
ing been almost exterminated, as that author reports, 
by the /Etolians and Athamanes, upon whose terri¬ 
tories they bordered. {Strabo, 427.) Their principal 
town was Hypata, on the river Sperchius. 

/Eniochi. Vid. Heniochi. 

zEnobarbus, or Ahenob arbus, the surname of L. 
Domitius. When Castor and Pollux acquainted him 
with a victory, he discredited them ; upon which they 
touched his chin and beard, which instantly became of 
a copper colour, whence the surname given to himself 
and his descendants. This fabulous story is told by 
Plutarch, in his life of Paulus /Emilius (c. 25) ; by 
Suetonius, in his biography of Nero {c. 1), that emper¬ 
or being descended from zEnobarbus ; by Livy (45, 
1 ); and by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (6, 13). Many 
of the descendants of zEnobarbus are said to have been 
marked by beards of a reddish hue. ( Sueton., 1. c.) 
The victory mentioned above was that at the Lake 
Regillus. For an account of the members of this 
family, vid. Supplement. 

zEnos, a city on the coast of Thrace, at the mouth 
of the estuary formed by the river Hebrus, and where 
it communicates by a narrow passage with the sea. 
Scymnus of Chios ascribes its foundation to Mytiiene. 
{Scymn., v. 696.—Compare Eustath. ad Dionys. Pc- 
neg., v. 538, and Gail, ad Scymn., 1. c.) Stephanus 
Byzantinus, however, makes Cumse to have been the 
parent-city. Apollodorus (2, 5, 9) and Strabo (319) 
inform us, that its more ancient name was Polt.yobria 
(“ City of Poltys”), from a Thracian leader. The ad¬ 
jacent country was occupied by the Cicones, whom 

49 




JSOLES. 


HEOLES. 


Homer enumerates among the allies of the Trojans. 
Virgil supposes AEneas to have landed on this coast af¬ 
ter quitting Troy, and to have discovered here the tomb 
of the murdered Polydorus (IEn., 3, 22, scqg ): he 
also intimates that he founded a city in this quarter, 
which was named after himself. Pliny (4, 11) like¬ 
wise states, that the tomb of Polydorus was at HEnos. 
But it is certain, that, according to Homer (II., 4, 520), 
the city was called HEnos before the siege of Troy. 
./Enos first makes its appearance in history about the 
time of the Persian war. It fell under the power of 
Xerxes, and, after his expulsion from Greece, was al¬ 
ways tributary to that state which chanced to have the 
ascendency by sea. The Romans declared it a free 
city. This place is often mentioned by the Byzantine 
writers. The modern town, or, rather, village of Eno 
occupies the site of the ancient city, but th^harbour is 
now a mere marsh. The climate of JEno§, it seems, 
was peculiarly ungenial, since it was observed by an 
ancient writer, that it was cold there during eight 
months of the year, and that a severe frost prevailed 
for the other four. (Athenceus, 8, 44—vol. 3, p. 295, 
ed. Schwcigh.) —II. A small town in Thessaly, near 
Mount Ossa, situate on a river of the same name. 
(Stcph. Byz., s. v. A Ivog.) 

JEnus. Vid. CEnus. 

AEoles, or yEolii, one of the main branches of the 
great Hellenic race (vid. Hellenes), who are said to 
have derived their name from HEolus, the eldest son 
of Hellen. The father reigned over Phthiotis, and 
particularly over the city and district then called Hel¬ 
las. To these dominions JEolus succeeded, and his 
brothers Dorus and Xuthus were compelled to look for 
settlements elsewhere. (Strabo, 383.— Conon, Nar- 
rat., 27.— Pausan., 7, 1.— Herod., 1,56.) According to 
Apollodorus (1,7, 2), AEolus ruled over all Thessaly ; 
this, however, is contradicted by the authority of He¬ 
rodotus, from whom it appears (1, 56) that the Dori¬ 
ans held Histissotis under their sway. From HEolus, 
the Hellenes, in Hellas properly so called, and the 
Phthiotic Pelasgi, who became blended with them into 
one common race, received the appellation of JEolians. 
(Compare Herod., 1, 57.— Id., 7, 95.) The sons and 
later descendants of HEolus spread the name of AEo- 
lia beyond these primitive seats of the HEolic tribe. 
Cretheus, the eldest son of HEolus, reigned at first over 
the territories of his parents, Phthiotis and Hellas ; 
subsequently, however, he led a colony to Iolcos 
(Apollod., 1, 9, 11), and from this latter place, Pheres, 
his son, colonized Pherse, on the Anaurus. (Apollod., 

1, 9, 14.) Magnes, the second son of HEolus, found¬ 
ed Magnesia (Apollod., 1, 9, 6), and his own sons Poly- 
dectes and Dictys led a colony to Seriphus. Another 
son, Pierus, settled in Pieria. (Apollod., 1. e.) Sisy¬ 
phus, the third son of HEolus, founded Corinth (Apol¬ 
lod., 1, 9,13), whose HEolic population, previous to the 
irruption of the Dorians into the Peloponnesus, is ac¬ 
knowledged even by Thucydides (4, 42). Athamas 
led an HEolic colony into Boeotia (Apollod., 1, 9, 1), and, 
as Pausanias informs us, to Orchomenus, and to the 
district where Haliartus and Coronea were afterward 
built. (Pausan., 9,34.—Compare the scholiast on Apol¬ 
lonius Rhodius, 2, 1190, who calls the Orchomenians 
uttoikol tQv QeaaaXcjv.) Hence Apollodorus calls 
Orchomenus an AEolic city, although it existed long 
before this, in the time of Ogyges, under the name of 
Athense. (Stcph. Byz., s. v. ’Adyvai.) Thucydides 
ment ions the ^Eolic origin of the Boeotians ( Tkucyd., 3, 

2. —Id., 7, 57), and we see from Pausanias (9, 22), that 
the language of the Boeotians was more ./Eolic than Do¬ 
ric The name of Athamas may be traced in that of 
the Athamantian field, between Mount Acraephnium 
and the sea (Pausan., 9, 24), and which was called af¬ 
ter the Athamantian field, in the primitive HEolic set¬ 
tlements in Thessaly, where Athamas had killed his 
own son. (Etym. Mag., s. v. ’Adaydvnov. — Raoul- 


Rochetlc, Col. Gr., vol. 2, p. 26, calls this “ un canton 
de la Boeotie” merely, but the words of the etymolo¬ 
gist are express : lari db nediue; Iv Qtacakia uaAov- 
jUEvrj ’AOayavria, did to eKelae, k. t. 7i.) Even Thebes 
itself, built at the foot of the Phoenician mountain Cad- 
mea, would seem, from the remark of the scholiast on 
Pindar (Ncm., 3, 127), and from the analogy between 
its name and that of Phthiotic Thebes, to have been 
an AEolian settlement. From the sons of Athamas 
the city of Schoenus and Mount Ptous received their 
appellations. (Steph. Byz.,s. v. ^xoivove. — Pausan., 
9, 23.) The name, too, of the Boeotian national god¬ 
dess, the Itonian Minerva, at Orchomenus, is, most 
probably, not to be derived from a fabulous hero Itonus 
(Stcph. Byz., s. v. ’AcrrXydov. — Pausan., 9, 34), but 
from the city of Itonus, in the primitive settlements of 
the HEolic Boeotians. Aspledon also was founded by 
the same JEolians who had settled in Orchomenus. 
(Steph. Byz., 1. c .) An HEolic colony, according to 
Apollodorus (1,9, 4), was also led into Phocis, under 
Deion, the fifth son of HEolus, and where Phocus, a 
later descendant of Sisyphus, gave his name to the race. 
(Pausan., 2, 22.) The sixth son of HEolus, called by 
Hesiod the “ lawless Salmoneus,” remained for a long 
time in Thessaly (Apollod., 1, 9, 7, and 8), where his 
daughter Tyro married Cretheus. His departure from 
this country coincides, very probably, with the expul¬ 
sion of Cretheus from the primitive settlements ot the 
Hellenes. He migrated to the Peloponnesus, and set¬ 
tled in the district of Elis, which had not, as yet, been 
occupied by Phrygian colonists. He built Salmonea, 
and is called by Hesiod the “ lawless,” from his at¬ 
tempt to imitate Jove while hurling the thunderbolt. 
(Scrv. ad Virg., 6,585.) Among his posterity we may 
name Neleus, who founded Pylos in the adjacent re¬ 
gion of Messenia (Apollod., 1, 9, 9.— Pausan., 4, 36), 
and is said to have renewed, in conjunction with his 
brother Pelias, the Olympic games. (Pausan., 5, 1,8.) 
So also Perieres, king of Messenia, is made a son of 
HEolus (Hesiod, Fragm., v. 75. — Apollod., 1 , 9, 3), al¬ 
though the Spartans claimed him as a descendant of 
the royal line of Laconia, and a son ofCynortas. (Apol¬ 
lod., 1, 9, 3.) Besides these sons of HEolus, respect¬ 
ing whose origin the ancient mythographers in gener¬ 
al agree, and who spread the AEolic race over middle 
Greece, there are also mentioned, as sons of HEo- 
lus, Ceraphus (Demetrius Seeps, ap. Strab., 9, 
p. 438), whose son founded Ormenium, on the Si¬ 
nus Pagasams (Steph. Byz., s. v. ’laT^uos), and Maced- 
nus or Macedo (Hellanicus ap. Const. Porph. Them., 
2, 2.— Eustath. ad Dionys. Peneg., v. 427), whose 
descent from Thyia, a daughter of Deucalion, is alluded 
to by Hesiod (Hcs. ap. Const. Porph. Them., 2, 2). 
The posterity of HEolus spread the dominion and name 
of the ./Eolic race still farther. HEtolus, who was 
compelled to fly from the court of his father Endymion 
(a son-in-law of HEolus) at Elis, retired to the land of 
the Curetes, and gave name to AEtolia. (Vid. Acar- 
nania.) Flis sons Pleuron and Calydon founded there 
two cities, called after them, and established two petty 
principalities. (Apollod., 1, 7, 7.) Epeus, another son 
of Endymion, gave to the Eleans the name of Epei 
(Pausan., 5, 1, 1), while Paeon, the third son, settled, 
with his HEolian followers, on the banks of the Axius, 
and gave to the united race of ^Eolians and Pelasgi in 
this quarter the name of Paeonians. In the Trojan war, 
these Paeonians fought on the side of the Trojans (Hem., 
II., 2, 848); whence we may infer, that, although the 
tribes around the Axius were Plellenized, yet the Pe- 
lasgic population still retained the numerical superior¬ 
ity. During this time Pelops had taken possession of 
Pisa, and had driven the Epei from Olympia. (Pau¬ 
san. , 5, 1 , 1.) Eleus, however, the son-in-law of En¬ 
dymion, had received the kingdom in place of the fugi¬ 
tive HEtolus, and from him the Epei were now called 
Elei, or, according to the HEolic mode of writing, Falei, 



E 0 L 


EOL 


FAAEIOI. (Compare Bockh , Co?-p. Inscript. Grac., 
fasc. 1, p. 28.) Among the sons of Etolus was Lo- 
crus ( Eustath. ad Horn. It ., 2, 531), from whom the 
Locri Ozolas, on the borders of Etolia, are supposed to 
have derived their name. The Aeolic branch of Sisy¬ 
phus, in Corinth, spread itself through Ornythion 
(Schol . ad Horn., II ., 2, 517, cd. Villois ), and his son 
Phocus, over Phocis ( Pausan ., 2, 1), a name first ap¬ 
plied to the country around Delphi and Tithorea. The 
latter of these places was the primitive settlement of 
Phocus ( Pausan 2, 4), while Hiampolis was the early 
colony of Ornythion. (Schol. ad Eurip., cited by Kuhn, 
ad Pausan ., 1. c.) The farther settling of Phocis is 
ascribed by some to another Phocus, who is said to have 
led an Eolic colony to this quarter from the island of 
Egina. (Compare Pausan., 2, 29 .—Id., 10 , 1. — Eus¬ 
tath. ad II., 2, 522.— Schol. ad, Apol. Rhod., 1 , 507.) 
Raoul-Rochette, however, correctly remarks, that the 
murder of the young Phocus by Telamon and Pe- 
leus contradicts this tradition. (Col. Gr., vol. 2, p. 
56.) The Eolic branch of Cretheus finally spread it¬ 
self through Amythaon, the son of Cretheus, over Mes- 
senia (Apollod., 1 , 9, 11), and through Melampus and 
Bias, sons of Amythaon, over the territory of Argos, 
and also over Acarnania, through Acarnan, a descend¬ 
ant of Melampus. — From the enumeration through 
which we have gone, it would appear that the Hellenic- 
Eolic stem, before the Trojan war, was spread, in 
northern Greece, over almost all Thessaly, over Pieria, 
Pseonia, and Athamania: in Middle Greece, over the 
greater part of Boeotia, Phocis, Locris, Etolia, and 
Acarnania : in southern Greece, or the Peloponnesus, 
over Argos, Elis, and Messenia. It would appear, also, 
that, during this period, Leleges, Curetes, Pelasgi, Hy- 
antes, and Lapithse became intermingled with the Hel- 
lenic-Eolic tribes, and that a close union was formed 
likewise between the latter and the Phoenician Cad- 
mseans in Bceotia. The state of things which has here 
been described, continued until tine Trojan war and 
the subsequent invasion of the Peloponnesus, by the 
Dorians, produced an entire change of affairs, and sent 
forth numerous colonies both to the eastern and west¬ 
ern quarters of the world. For some account of these 
movements, consult the following articles : Achaia, 
JEolia, Doris, Gracia, Hellenes, and Ionia. 

A Eolia, or E5lis, a region of Asia Minor, deriving 
its name from the Eolians who settled there. The 
Eolians were the first great body of Grecian colo¬ 
nists that established themselves in Asia Minor, and, 
not long after the Trojan war, founded several towns 
on different points of the Asiatic coast, from Cyzicus 
to the river Hermus. But it was more especially in 
Lesbos, which has a right to be considered as the seat 
of their power, and al-ong the neighbouring shores of 
the Gulf of Elea, that they finally concentrated their 
principal cities, and formed a federal union, called the 
Eolian league, consisting of twelve states, with sever¬ 
al inferior towns to the number of thirty. The Eo- 
lian colonies, according to Strabo, were anterior to the 
Ionian migrations by four generations. He states, that 
Orestes had himself designed to lead the first; but his 
death preventing the execution of the measure, it was 
prosecuted by his son Penthilus, who advanced with 
liis followers as far as Thrace. This movement was 
contemporary with the return of the Heraclidse into the 
Peloponnesus, and most probably was occasioned by 
it. After the decease of Penthilus, Archelaus, or Eche- 
latus, his son, crossed over with the colonies into the 
territory of Cyzicus, and settled in the vicinity of 
Dascylium. Gras, his youngest son, subsequently 
advanced with a detachment as far as the Granicus, 
and not long after crossed over to the island of Lesbos 
and took possession of it. Some years after these 
events, another body of adventurers crossed over from 
Locris, and founded Cyme, and other towns on the Gulf 
of Elea. They also took possession of Smyrna, which 


became one of the twelve states of the league. But 
this city having been wrested from them by the Ioni- 
ans, the number was reduced to eleven in the time of 
Herodotus. These, according to that historian (1, 149), 
were Cyme, Larissa, Neontichos, Temnus, Cilia, No- 
tium, Egiroessa, Pitane, Egsese, Myrina and Gry- 
nea. Eolis extended in the interior from the Hermus 
on the south, to the Cai’cus, or perhaps, to speak more 
correctly, as far as the country around Mount Ida. On 
the coast it reached from Cyme to Pitane. All the 
yEolian cities were independent of each other, and had 
their own constitutions, which underwent many chan¬ 
ges. An attempt was frequently made to restore quiet, 
by electing arbitrary rulers, with the title ofEsymne- 
tae, for a certain time, even for life, of whom Pittacus, 
in Mytilene, the contemporary of Sappho and Alcaeus, is 
best known. The yEolians, in common with the oth¬ 
er Greek colonies of Asia, excepting those established 
in the islands, had become subject to Croesus ; but, on 
the overthrow of the Lydian monarch by Cyrus, they 
submitted, along with many of the islanders, to the arms 
of the conqueror, and were thenceforth annexed to the 
Persian empire. They contributed sixty ships to the 
fleet of Xerxes. Herodotus observes of Eolis, that 
its soil was more fertile than that of Ionia, but the cli¬ 
mate inferior (1, 149). In the time of Xenophon, 
Eolis formed part of the. Plellespontinc satrapy held by 
Pharnabazus, and it appears to have comprised a con¬ 
siderable portion of the country, that was known at an 
earlier period by the name of Troas. (Hell., 3, 18.) 
Wrested by the Romans from Antiochus, it was an¬ 
nexed to the dominions of Eumenes. (Lw., 33,38, &c.) 
For an account of the Eolic movements in Lesbos, 
consult the description of that island, s. v. Lesbos. 

EolLe, seven islands, situate off the northern coast 
of Sicily, and to the west of Italy. According to Mela 
(2, 7), their names were Lipara, Osteodes, Ileraclea, 
Didyme, Phanicusa, Hiera, and Strongyle. Pliny (3, 
9) and Diodorus (5, 7), however, give them as follows : 
Lipara, Didyme, Phcemcusa, Hiera, Strongyle , Eri- 
cusa , and Euonymus. They are the same with Ho¬ 
mer’s UTiayuraL or “wandering islands.” (Od., 12,68, 
&c.) Other names for the group were Hephcestiades 
and Vulcania Insula, from their volcanic character; 
and Liparcce , from Lipara, the largest. The appella¬ 
tion of JEolia was given them from their having form¬ 
ed the fabled domain of Eolus, god or ruler of the 
wind. The island in which he resided is said by some 
to have been Lipara, but the greater part of the ancient 
authorities are in favour of Strongyle, the modern 
Stromholi. (Hcyne, Excurs. ad JEn., 1, 51.) A pas¬ 
sage in Pliny (3, 9, 14) contains the germe of the whole 
fable respecting Eolus, wherein it is stated that the 
inhabitants of the adjacent islands could tell from the 
smoke of Strongyle what winds were going to blow for 
three days to come. ( Vid. Lipara, Strongyle, and Eo¬ 
lus.) 

Eolides, a patronymic applied to various individ¬ 
uals. I. Athamas, son of Eolus. (Ov., Met., 4, 511.) 
— II. Cephalus, grandson of Eolus. (Id. ibid., 6, 
681.)—III. Sisyphus, son of Eolus. (Id. ibid., 13, 26.) 
—IV. Ulysses, to whom this patronymic appellation 
was given, from the circumstance of his mother, Anti- 
clea, having been pregnant by Sisyphus, son of Eolus, 
when she married Laerfes. (Virg., JEn., 6, 529, and 
Hcyne, in Var. Led., ad loc .)—V. Misenus, the trum¬ 
peter of Eneas, called Eolides, figuratively, from his 
skill in blowing on that instrument. Consult, however, 
Heyne, Excurs. ad JEn., 6, 162. 

Eolus, I. the god or ruler of the winds, son of Hip- 
potas and Melanippe, daughter of Chiron. He reign¬ 
ed over the Eolian islands, and made his residence at 
Strongyle, the modern Stromboli. ( Vid. Eolian) Ho¬ 
mer calls him “Eolus Ilippotades (i. e., son of Hip- 
potas), dear to the immortal gods,” from which passage 
we might perhaps justly infer, that Eolus was not, 

51 



JEFY 


ZEIII 


properly speaking, himself a god. ( Od., 10, 2.) His 
island was entirely surrounded by a wall of brass, and 
by smooth precipitous rocks ; and here he dwelt in 
continual joy and festivity, with his wife and his six 
sons and as many daughters. The island had no oth¬ 
er tenants. The sons and daughters were married to 
each other, after the fashion set by Jupiter (uad’d sal 
6 Zevq gvvcjkei rij "H pa, Eustath ad loc.), and are no¬ 
thing more than a poetic type of the twelve months of 
the year. (Compare Eustath. ad loc.) The office of 
directing and ruling the winds had been conferred on 
ZJolus by Jupiter (Od., 10, 21, seqq — Virg., JEn., 1, 
65); but his great protectress was Juno ( Virg ., Ain., 
1, 78, seqq.), which accords very well with the ideas 
of the earlier poets, who made Juno merely a type of 
the atmosphere, the movements of which produce the 
winds.—Ulysses came in the course of his wanderings 
to the island of ZEolus, and was hospitably entertained 
there for an entire month. On his departure, he receiv¬ 
ed from ZEolus all the winds but Zephyrus, tied up in a 
bag of ox-hide. Zephyrus was favourable for hispassage 
homeward. During nine days and nights the ships ran 
merrily before the wind : on the tenth they were with¬ 
in sight of Ithaca ; when Ulysses, who had hitherto 
held the helm himself, fell asleep : his comrades, who 
fancied that ZEolus had given him treasure in the bag, 
opened it : the winds rushed out, and hurried them 
back to ZEolia. Judging from what had befallen them, 
that they w T ere hated by the gods, the ruler of the winds 
drove them with reproaches from his isle. (Keightley's 
Mythology, p. 240.)—The name ZEolus has been de¬ 
rived from aloTiog, “ varying ,” “ unsteady ,” as a de¬ 
scriptive epithet of the winds.—II. A son of Hellen, 
father of Sisyphus, Cretheus, and Athamas, and the 
mythic progenitor of the great ZEolic race.—III. A 
son of Neptune and the nymph Arne. ( Eustath. ad 
Od., 10, 2.) 

ZEones (a'uoveq), or ZEons, a term occurring fre¬ 
quently in the philosophical speculations of the Gnos¬ 
tics. The Gnostics conceived the emanations from 
Deity to be divided into two classes; the one com¬ 
prehended all those substantial powers which are con¬ 
tained within the Divine Essence, and which completes 
the infinite plenitude of the Divine Nature : the other, 
existing externally with respect to the Divine Essence, 
and including all finite and imperfect natures. With¬ 
in the Divine Essence, they, with wonderful ingenuity, 
imagined a long series of emanative principles, to 
which they ascribed a real and substantial existence, 
connected with the first substance as a branch with 
its root, or a solar ray with the sun. When they be¬ 
gan to unfold the mysteries of this system in the 
Greek language, these Substantial Powers, which they 
conceived to be comprehended within the irhjpoya, 
or Divine Plenitude, they called aloveq, ZEons. (En¬ 
field's History of Philosophy, vol. 2, p. 142.) 

ZEpea, or ZEpeia, a town in the island of Cyprus. 
Vul. Soloe. 

ZEpolianus, an engraver on precious stones, who 
flourished in the second century of our era. One of his 
gems, with the head of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, is 
still extant. (Bracci, P. 1, tab. 3.— Sillig, Diet. Art., 
s. v.) 

ZEpytus, I. king of Messenia, and son of Cres- 
phontes. His father and his two brothers w r ere put 
to death by Polyphontes, who usurped, upon this, the 
throne of the country. ZEpytus, however, was saved 
by his mother, Merope, who had been compelled to 
marry the murderer of her husband, and was sent by 
her to the court of her father Cypselus, king of Arca¬ 
dia, to be there brought up. On attaining to manhood, 
he slew Polyphontes, and recovered the throne. His 
descendants were called ^Epytidse. (Apollod., 2, 8, 5. 
— Heyne, ad Apollod., 1. c.)— II. A king of Arcadia, 
and son of Elatus. He was killed, in hunting, by a 
small species of serpent, called Gijip. (Pausan., 8,4,4.) 


— III. A king of Arcadia, son of Hippothous, and 
contemporary with Orestes, son of Agamemnon, who, 
in obedience to the Delphic oracle, migrated into Ar¬ 
cadia from Mycenae during this monarch's reign. ZEp¬ 
ytus having, on one occasion, boldly entered the tem¬ 
ple of Neptune, near Mantinea, which no mortal was 
allowed to do, is said to have been deprived of 
sight by a sudden eruption of salt water from the sanc¬ 
tuary, and to have died soon after. (Pausan., 8, 10.) 
This story, if true, points of course to some artifice on 
the part of the priests of the temple. The “ salt wa¬ 
ter” was probably some strong acid. (Compare Sal - 
verte, Sciences Occultes, vol. 1, ch. 15.)—IV. A mon¬ 
arch who ruled in the southern part of Arcadia, and 
who brought up Evadne, daughter of Neptune and the 
Laconian Pitane. (Pind., Ol., 6, 54.—Compare Bockh, 
ad loc.) 

ZEqui orZEouicuLi, a people of Italy, distinguished 
in history for their early and incessant hostility against 
Rome, more than for the extent of their territory or 
their numbers. Livy himself (7, 12) expresses his 
surprise, that a nation, apparently so small and insig¬ 
nificant, should have had a population adequate to the 
calls of a constant and harassing warfare, which it car¬ 
ried on against the city of Rome for so many years. 
But it is plain, from the narrow limits which must be 
assigned this people, that their contests with Rome 
cannot be viewed in the light of a regular war, but as 
a succession of marauding expeditions, made by these 
hardy but lawless mountaineers on the territory of that 
city, and which could only be effectually checked by 
the most entire and rigid subjection. (Liv., 10, 1.) 
The ZEqui are to be placed next to the Sabines, and 
between them and the Marsi, chiefly in the upper val¬ 
ley of the Anio, which separated them from the Latins. 
They are said at one time to have been possessed of 
forty towns ; but many of these must certainly have 
been little more than villages, and some also were 
subsequently included within the boundaries of La- 
tiurn. The only cities of note, which all geographers 
agree in assigning to the ZEqui, are Varia and Carse- 
oli, on the Via Valeria. (Cramer's Anc. Italy,v ol. 1, 
p. 322.) “Almost inseparable from the Volscians in 
Roman story,” observes Niebuhr (Rom. Hist., vol. 1, 
p. 58, Cambridge transl), “we find the ZEqui or 
ZEquiculi, who are described as an ancient people, 
and threatening Rome. They are so often confound¬ 
ed with the Volscians, that the fortress on the Lake 
Fucinus, which the Romans took in the year of the 
city 347, may with probability be called ZEquian ; and 
when Livy says that the Volscian wars had lasted from 
the time of Tarquinius Superbus for more than two 
hundred years, he considers the Volscians and ZEqui as 
one people.” This remark of Niebuhr’s, however, 
admits of some modification, as will appear from what 
precedes. The ZEqui and Volsci should undoubtedly 
be kept distinct, though originating evidently from the 
same parent-race. 

ZEquimelxum, a place at Rome, in the Vicus Juga- 
rius, at the base of the Capitoline Hill, where once 
had stood the mansion of Spurius Melius. This indi¬ 
vidual, having aspired to supreme power, was slain by 
Ahala, master of the horse to the dictator Cincinna- 
tus, and his dwelling was razed to the ground. Hence, 
according to Varro (L. L., 4, 32), the etymology of the 
term ZEquimelium, “quod solo cequata sit Mein 
domus.” (Compare Liv., 4, 16.) Cicero and Vale¬ 
rius Maximus, however, assign another, but less cor¬ 
rect, derivation, from the just nature of the punish¬ 
ment inflicted upon Melius (“ ex cequo seu justo sup¬ 
plier Mehi ."—Consult Cic. pro Dom., c. 38, and 
Val. Max., 6, 3). 

ZErias, an ancient king of Cyprus, who built the 
temple of Venus at Paphos. A later tradition made 
this temple to have been founded by Cinyras. ( Tacit., 
Hist., 2, 3.) 




A1SA 


AESCHINES. 


AerSpe, I. daughter of Catreus, king of Crete, and 
granddaughter, on the father’s side, of Minos. She 
and her sister Clymene, having been guilty of incon¬ 
tinence, were delivered over, by their father, into the 
hands of Nauplius of Euboea, to be conveyed by him 
to foreign lands, and there sold into slavery. 'Nau¬ 
plius, however, married Clymene, and sold merely 
Aerope. She was purchased by Plisthenes, son of 
•Atreus, and became by him the mother of Agamem¬ 
non and Menelaus. Plisthenes, however, dying young, 
Atreus, his father, took Aerope to wife, and brought up 
Agamemnon and Menelaus as his own sons. Aerope 
subsequently was seduced by Thyestes, brother of 
Atreus, an act which was punished so horridly by the 
injured husband. ( Vid. Atreus and Thyestes.) Ac¬ 
cording to some authorities, Aerope was cast into the 
sea by Atreus. ( Apollod ., 3, 2, 3.— Heyne ad Apollod., 

1. c. — Schol. in Eurip., Orest., 812.— Brunch ad Soph., 
Aj., 1255.)—II. Daughter of Cepheus, became the 
mother of Aeropus by the god Mars. She died in 
giving birth to her offspring. ( Pausan., 8, 44.) 

Aeropus, I. son of Mars and Aerope. ( Vid. Aerope 
II.)—II. Son of Temenus, who, with his two brothers, 
left Argos, and settled in Macedonia. Perdiccas, the 
youngest of the three, was the founder of the Mace¬ 
donian royal line. (Herod., 8,137.—Compare Thucyd., 

2, 99, and consult the article Macedonia.) — III. A 
king of Macedonia, who succeeded, while yet an in¬ 
fant, his father Philip the First. The Illyrians having 
made an inroad into Macedonia, and having proved 
successful at first, were afterward defeated by the 
Macedonians, the infant king being placed in his cra¬ 
dle in the rear of their line. (Justin, 7, 2.)—IV. 
A regent of Macedonia during the minority of Orestes, 
son of Archelaus. He usurped the supreme power, 
and held it,.six years, from 409 B.C. to 394 B.C.— 
V. A mountain of Epirus, now Mount Trebeeshna, 
near the defile anciently called Stena Aoi, or “ Gorge 
of the Aous.” On one of the precipices of this mount¬ 
ain stands the fortress of Clissura. (Consult Hughes' 
Travels, vol. 2, p. 272.) 

AEsIcus, according to Ovid (Met., 11, 762, scqq.), 
a son of Priam and Alexirrhoe, who at an early age 
quitted his father’s court and retired to rural scenes. 
He became enamoured of the nymph Hesperia ; but 
she treated his suit with disdain, and, in endeavouring 
on one occasion to escape from him, lost her life by 
the bite of a serpent. AEsacus, in despair, threw 
himself headlong from a rock into the sea; but Tethys, 
pitying his fate, suspended his fall, and changed him 
into a cormorant.—A different account is given by 
Apollodorus. According to this writer, AEsacus was 
the son of Priam, by his first wife Arisba, and mar¬ 
ried Asterope, who did not long survive her union with 
him. His grief for her loss induced him to put an end 
to his existence. AEsacus was endued by his grand¬ 
mother Merope with the gift of Prophecy ; and he 
transmitted this art to his brother and sister, Helenus 
and Cassandra. Priam, having divorced Arisba that 
he might espouse Hecuba, and the latter having 
dreamed that she had brought forth a blazing torch, 
which wrapped in flames the whole city, AEsacus pre¬ 
dicted that the offspring of this marriage would oc¬ 
casion the destruction of his family and country. On 
this account, the infant Paris, immediately after his 
birth, was exposed on Mount Ida. (Apollod., 3, 12, 5, 
scqq., and Heyne, ad loc .) 

AE sar, an Etrurian word, equivalent to the Latin 
Dcus. (Sueton., Vit. Aug., 97.) The lightning, having 
struck a statue of Augustus at Rome, effaced the letter 
C from the name of CAESAR on the pedestal. The 
augurs declared that, as C was the mark of a hundred, 
and AESAR the ‘vame as Dcus, the emperor had only 
a hundred days to spend on earth, after which he 
would be taken to the gods. The death of Augustus, 
soon after, was thought to have verified this prediction. 


(Sueton., 1. c.—Dio Cass., 56, 29.) Casaubon de¬ 
rives the Etrurian term just referred to from the 
Greek A loa, u fate;" and Dickinson (Delph. Phceniciz., 
c. 11) from the Hebrew, comparing it also with the 
Arabic asara, “ to create." Lanzi (Saggio di Ling. 
Etrusc., vol. 3, p. 708), after quoting Casaubon’s 
etymology, suggests the Greek form cioi, the same 
with -&E 01 , as the root. The Asi (or, more correctly, 
JEsir ) of Scandinavian mythology will furnish, how¬ 
ever, a more obvious and satisfactory ground of com¬ 
parison. The term As is equivalent to “ Dcus" or 
“ God," and the plural form is AE sir, “ Gods.” Hence 
As gar d, or Asa-gard, the old northern term for “ heav¬ 
en." It is curious to observe that Os in Coptic like¬ 
wise signifies “ God ” or u Lord," with which we may 
compare the Greek oc-iog, “ holy." So, also, the ear¬ 
lier term for “ altar" in the Latin language was asa. 
(Tcrent. Scaur., p. 2252, 2258.) In Berosus, more¬ 
over, the gods are termed Isi; and good deities or 
geniuses were called by the ancient Persians Ized. 
(Miiller, Etruskcr, vol. 2, p. 81.— Kanne, System dcr 
Indischen Mythen, p. 228.) 

AEsara. Vid. Supplement. 

AEsarus, a river of Bruttium, on which Crotona was 
situate. It formed a haven, which, however incom¬ 
modious compared with those ofTarentum and Brun- 
disium, was long a source of great wealth to this city, 
as we are assured by Polybius (Frag., 10, 1). The 
modern name is the Esaro. (Compare Theocritus, 
Id., 4, 17.) 

AEschines, I. an Athenian philosopher, of mean birth 
and indigent circumstances, styled the Socratic (6 2ok- 
pariKog ) for distinction’ sake from the orator of the 
same name mentioned below. He flourished during 
the fourth century B.C., and obtained instruction from 
Socrates, who honoured his ardent zeal for knowledge, 
and held him in high estimation. (Diog. Laert., 2, 
60. — Senec., de Benef., 1, 8.) When AEschines ad¬ 
dressed himself to the sage for the purpose of becoming 
his disciple, it was in the following words: “ I am poor, 
but I give myself up entirely to you, which is all I have 
to give.” The reply of Socrates was characteristic: 
“You know not the value of your present.” After the 
death of his master, he endeavoured to better his world¬ 
ly condition, and, having borrowed a sum of money, 
became a perfumer. It appears, however, that he did 
not succeed in this new vocation ; and, not paying the 
interest of the sum he had borrowed, he was sued for 
the debt. Athenseus (13, p. 611, d) has preserved for 
us part of a speech delivered by Lysias on this occa¬ 
sion, in which he handles AEschines with considerable 
severity, and charges him with never paying his debts, 
with defrauding a certain individual of his property, 
corrupting his wife, Ac. Not being able to live any 
longer at Athens, he betook himself to Sicily, and 
sought to win the favour of the tyrant Dionysius. Ac¬ 
cording to Lucian (de Parasit. — ed. Bip., vol. 7, p. 
127), he accomplished his object by reading one of his 
dialogues, entitled Miltiades, to the tyrant, who liberal¬ 
ly rewarded him. Plutarch (de Discr. amic. ct adulat. 
— ed. Reiske, vol. 6, p. 248) informs us, that he had 
been strongly recommended to Dionysius by Plato, in 
a conversation which they had together subsequent to 
the arrival of AEschines, in which Plato complained to 
the tyrant of his neglecting a man who had come to 
him with the most friendly intention, that of improving 
him by philosophy. The statement of Diogenes Laer¬ 
tius, however, is directly opposite to this, for he in¬ 
forms us that AEschines was slighted by Plato, and in¬ 
troduced to the prince by Aristippus. He remained in 
Sicily till the expulsion of Dionysius, and then return¬ 
ed to Athens. Here, not daring to become a public 
rival of Plato or Aristippus, he taught philosophy in 
private, and received payment for his instructions. He 
also composed orations and pleadings for others. Be¬ 
sides orations and epistles, AEschines wrote seven So- 

53 





AESCHINES. 


AESCHINES. 


cratic dialogues in the true spirit of his master, on 
temperance, moderation, humanity, integrity, and other 
virtues. Their titles were, M tAmudyg, K a'A?aag, ’A £to- 
XOC, 'Acnama, ’A Dathddyc, TyXavyijq, and Tcvuv. 
Of these none remain. We have, indeed, three dia¬ 
logues extant, which go under the name of AEschines, 
but the first and second are not his, and very probably 
the third also was never composed by him. ( Meincrs , 
Judicium de quibusdam Socrattcorum reliquiis. — Com¬ 
ment. Soc. Goett., vol. 5, p. 45, 1782.— Fischer, ad 
JEsch. Dial., p. 23, 49, 107, cd. 1786.) Their titles 
are : 1. Ilept ’A peryq, el ScSaurov. “ Concerning vir¬ 
tue, and whether it can be communicated by instruc¬ 
tion.” 2. ’E pv^iag, rj nept tcTiovtov. “Eryxias, or 
concerning riches.” 3. ’A£/o;pof, y irepl Javarov. 
“ Axiochus, or concerning death.” This last is attrib¬ 
uted by some to Xenocrates of Chalcedon, and, what 
makes it extremely probable that Xenocrates was the 
author of the piece, is the circumstance of its contain¬ 
ing the word u'h.EKTpvovoTpofyog, for which Pollux cites 
the Axiochus of this very philosopher. Diogenes Laer¬ 
tius, moreover, informs us, that Xenocrates wrote a 
work on death, but the manner in which he speaks of 
this production does not seem to indicate that it had 
the form of a dialogue. A letter, ascribed to AEschi- 
nes, is, in like manner, supposed to be the production 
of another writer. Aeschines pretended to have re¬ 
ceived his dialogues from Xanthippe, the wife of Soc¬ 
rates ; and Diogenes Laertius states that Aristippus, 
when reading them, called out, Txodev 001 , Tiijgtu, ravra ; 
“where did you get these from, you thief'?” Little 
reliance, however, can be placed on either of these ac¬ 
counts. The three dialogues ascribed to AEschines 
are found in the old editions of Plato, since that of Al¬ 
dus, 1513. The Axiochus is given by Wolf, in the 
collection entitled Doctnna rcctc vivendi ac moncndi, 
Basil., 1577 and 1586, 8vo. Le Clerc first published 
these dialogues separately, at Amsterdam, 1711, in 8vo. 
Horrseus gave a new edition and a new Latin version 
at Leuwarde, 1718, in 8vo. Fischer published four 
editions successively at Leipsic, in 1758, 1766, 1786, 
and 1788, 8vo. The last contains merely the text 
with an Index, so that the third is the most useful to 
the student. Fischer’s editions are decidedly the best. 
The letter mentioned above was published by Sammet, 
in his edition of the letters of AEschines the orator.—II. 
An Athenian orator, born 397 B.C., sixteen years be¬ 
fore Demosthenes. According to the account which 
AEschines gives of his own parentage, his father was 
of a family that had a community of altars with the race 
of the Eteobutadse. Having lost his property by the 
calamities of war, he turned his attention, as the son 
tells us, to gymnastic exercises; but, being subsequent¬ 
ly driven out by the thirty tyrants, he retired to Asia, 
where he served in a military capacity, and greatly dis¬ 
tinguished himself. He contributed afterward to the 
restoration of the popular power in Athens. One of 
the orator’s brothers served under Iphicrates, and held 
a command for three years, while another, the youngest, 
was sent as ambassador from the republic to the king 
of Persia. Such is the account of AEschines himself 
(de male gesta leg., p. 47 and 48, ed. Steph.). That 
given by Demosthenes, however, in his oration for the 
crown, is widely different. According to the latter, 
the father of AEschines was originally a slave to a 
schoolmaster, and his first name was Tromes, which, 
upon gaining his freedom, he changed to Atrometus, in 
accordance with Athenian usage. His mother was at 
first named Empusa, an appellation which Demosthenes 
informs us was given to her on account of her habits 
of life, she being a common courtesan. This name 
was afterward changed to Glaucothea. ( Dcmosth., de 
Corona , p. 270, ed. Reiskc.) The statement of De¬ 
mosthenes, coming as it does from the lips of a rival, 
might well be suspected of exaggeration ; and as AEs- 
chines did not reply to the speech of his opponent, we 


know not how he might have met these disgraceful 
charges. If, however, any inference is to be drawn 
from the feeble manner in which he replies to similar 
charges, made by the same orator on a diff erent occa¬ 
sion, we should be led to suspect that they were, in 
some degree, based upon the truth. Nor, indeed, is 
it probable, that, with all the license allow ed the ancient 
orators, Demosthenes would have ventured to mak| 
such assertions in the presence of the Athenian peo¬ 
ple if unsupported by facts. Suidas calls the mother 
of AEschines reXearpia, a retainer to the female priest¬ 
hood in initiations. Photius ( Biblioth ., vol. 1, p. 20, 
ed. Bekker ) says, that she was iepeia, “ a priestess 
while another authority ( Lucian , in Scmn. —vol. 1, cd. 
Bip., p. 13) makes her to have been rryTravicrpia, a 
kind of minstrel w ho beat the tabour in the feasts of 
Cybele. From all that we can learn of the early life 
of AEschines, it would appear, that, after having aided 
his father in the management of a school, he became 
clerk to one of the lower class of magistrates. Tired 
of this station, he attached himself to a company of tra¬ 
gedians, but was intrusted merely with third-rate char¬ 
acters. It is said that, on one occasion, when person¬ 
ating (Enomaus, he chanced to fall upon the stage, a 
circumstance which occasioned his disgraceful dismis¬ 
sion from the troop. Hence the name of CEnomaus, 
which Demosthenes, in ridicule, applies to him. ( De - 
mosth., de Corona , 307, ed. Reiske.) On the v other 
hand, AEschines himself states, that from early life he 
followed the profession of arms, served on many occa¬ 
sions with distinction, and had a crown decreed him by 
the people for his meritorious exertions. It is more 
than probable that AEschines here selects the fairest 
parts of his career, and Demosthenes, on the contrary, 
w'hatever was calculated to bring him into contempt. 
Some ancient writers make him to have bs£n a disciple 
of Isocrates and Plato, but others, with far more proba¬ 
bility, assign him Nature alone for an instructress, and 
affirm that the public tribunals and the theatre were his 
only places of initiation into the precepts of the oratori¬ 
cal art. AEschines must have possessed strong natu¬ 
ral talents to become as eminent as he did, and to be 
able to contest the prize of eloquence with so powerful 
a competitor as Demosthenes. It w 7 as a long time, 
however, before he became much known as a public 
speaker, and he w T as already advanced in life w'hen he 
commenced taking part in the politics of the day. 

(Recherchcs sur la vie et sur les ouvrages d'Eschine, 
par l'Abbe Vatry. — Mem. Acad, dcs laser., &c., vol. 
14, p. 87.). When AEschines began his public career, 
the Athenians w 7 ere engaged in a war w ith Philip of 
Macedon. The orator showed himself at first one of 
the most violent opposers of this monarch, and pro¬ 
posed sending ambassadors throughout Greece, in or¬ 
der to raise up enemies against him. He himself went 
in this capacity to Megalopolis, to confer with the 
general council of Arcadia. When the Athenians sent 
ten ambassadors to negotiate a peace wuth Philip, w'ho 
had been at w'ar with them on account of Amphipolis, 
AEschines, who was thought to be devoted to the pub¬ 
lic good, was one of the number. Demosthenes was 
a colleague of his on that occasion, and we have the ex¬ 
press testimony of the latter in favour of the correct¬ 
ness and integrity which on this occasion marked the 
conduct of his rival. A change, however, soon took 
place. AEschines, on his return, after having at first 
strenuously opposed the projected peace, on the mor¬ 
row as earnestly advised it. The gold of Macedon had, 
without doubt, been instrumental in producing this rev¬ 
olution in his sentiments, and we find him ever after¬ 
ward a warm partisan of Philip’s, and blindly second¬ 
ing all his ambitious designs. From this period AEs¬ 
chines and Demosthenes became open antagonists. 
The latter, in concert wuth Timarchus, having medi¬ 
tated an impeachment of his rival for his conduct on 
another embassy, w'hen he and four colleagues purpose- 



AESCHINES. 


AESCHYLUS. 


ly wasted time in Macedonia, while Philip was prose¬ 
cuting his conquests in Thrace, yEschines anticipated 
their attack by an accusation of Timarchus himself, and 
spoke with so much energy, that the latter either hung 
himself in despair, or, according to another authority, 
was condemned, and deprived of his rights as a citizen. 
Demosthenes, however, not intimidated by the blow, 
preferred his original charge against yEschines, and, 
according to Photius ( Biblioth ., vol. 1, p. 20, ed. Bek¬ 
ker), came so near accomplishing the object he had in 
view, that his rival was only saved by the active inter¬ 
ference of a wealthy citizen named Eubulus, an open 
enemy of Demosthenes, and by the judges rising from 
their seats before the accusation was brought to a close. 
After many subsequent collisions, yEschines was com¬ 
pelled to yield to the- patriotism and eloquence of his 
adversary. Their most famous controversy was that 
which related to the crown. A little after the battle 
of Cheronsea, Demosthenes was commissioned to re¬ 
pair the fortifications of Athens. Pie expended, in the 
performance of this task, thirteen talents, ten of which 
he received from the public treasury, while the remain¬ 
ing three were generously given from his own private 
purse. As a mark of public gratitude for this act of 
liberality, Ctesiphon proposed to the people to decree 
a crown of gold to the orator. yEschines immediately 
preferred an impeachment against Ctesiphon, alleging 
that such a decree was an infringement of the estab¬ 
lished laws of the republic, since Demosthenes still held 
some public offices, and his accounts had not therefore 
been settled, and besides, since he was not such a friend 
to the state as Ctesiphon had represented him to be, 
who had, therefore, put upon record documents of a 
false and erroneous character. Demosthenes, on whom 
the attack was virtually made, appeared in defence of 
the accused. This celebrated cause, after having been 
delayed for some time in consequence of the troubles 
attendant on the death of Philip, was at last brought 
to a hearing. Ability and eloquence was displayed on 
both sides, but the palm was won by Demosthenes ; 
and his rival, being found guilty of having brought an 
unjust accusation, was obliged to undergo the punish¬ 
ment he had intended for Ctesiphon, and was banished 
from his country. It is stated by Photius {Biblioth., 
vol. 2, p. 493, ed. Bekker ), that yEschines, when he 
left Athens, was followed and assisted by Demosthe¬ 
nes, and that, upon the latter’s offering him consolation, 
he replied, “ How shall I be able to bear my exile 
from a city, in which I leave behind me enemies more 
generous than it is possible to find friends in any other!” 
Plutarch, however, ascribes this very answer to De¬ 
mosthenes, when his opponents made a similar offer to 
him as he was departing from Athens into exile. yEs¬ 
chines retired to Asia with the intention of presenting 
himself before Alexander ; but the death of that mon¬ 
arch compelled him to change his views, and take up 
his residence at Rhodes. Here he opened a school of 
eloquence, and commenced his lectures by reading the 
two orations which had been the occasion of his banish¬ 
ment. His hearers loudly applauded his own speech ; 
but when he came to that of Demosthenes, they were 
thrown into transports of admiration. “ What would 
you have said,” exclaimed JEschines, according to the 
common account, “ had you heard Demosthenes, him¬ 
self pronounce this oration V The statement of Pho¬ 
tius, however, is different from this, and certainly more 
probable. The auditors of yEschines at Rhodes ex¬ 
pressed, as he informs us, their surprise that a man of 
so much ability should have been overcome by De¬ 
mosthenes ; “ Had you heard that wild beast ( tov x) r]- 
plov hceivov)” exclaimed yEschines, “ you would have 
ceased to be at a loss on this head” {ei pnovaare rod 
firipiov eiceivov ova dv vp.lv tovto pnopriro. Phot., 
Biblioth., vol. 1, p. 20, ed. Bekker). He subsequently 
transferred his school from Rhodes to Samos, where 
he died at the age of 75 years. We have only three 


orations of Aeschines, and it would seem that these 
were his sole remaining productions, even at an early 
period, since Photius states that it was customary to 
designate these speeches by the name of “ the Graces 
of yEschines.” The most celebrated of these ha¬ 
rangues is the one ostensibly directed against Ctesi¬ 
phon, but in reality against Demosthenes.' It is re¬ 
markable for order, clearness, and precision, and was 
selected by Cicero to be translated into Latin.—The 
Abbe Barthelemy makes the eloquence of yEschines to 
be distinguished by a happy flow of words, by an abun¬ 
dance and clearness of ideas, and by an air of great 
ease, which arose less from art than nature. The an¬ 
cient writers appear to agree in this, that the manner 
of yEschines is softer, more insinuating, and more del¬ 
icate than that of Demosthenes, but that the latter is 
more grave, forcible, and convincing. The one has 
more of address, and the other more of strength and 
energy. The one endeavours to steal, the other to 
force, the assent of his auditors. In the harmony and 
elegance, the strength and beauty of their language, 
both are deserving of high commendation, but the fig¬ 
ures of the one are finer, of the other bolder. In De¬ 
mosthenes we see a more sustained effort, in yEschi¬ 
nes vivid, though momentary, flashes of oratory.—Be¬ 
sides the speeches above mentioned, twelve epistles 
are attributed to yEschines, which he is supposed to 
have written from Rhodes. Photius makes the num¬ 
ber only nine, and states that they were called, from 
this circumstance, the Muses of YEschines. One of 
the best editions of yEschines is that of Wolf, con¬ 
taining also the orations of Demosthenes. It was first 
printed at Basle by Oporinus, afterward at the same 
place in 1549 and 1572, at Venice in 1550, and at 
Frankfort in 1604. The orations of yEschines are also 
contained in Reiske’s excellent edition of the Greek 
Orators, Lips., 1770, &c., 12 vols. 8vo, and in the val¬ 
uable London edition, recently published, of the works 
of Demosthenes and yEschines, 10 vols. 8vo, 1827. To 
these may be added the edition of Foulkes and Friend, 
Oxon., 1696, 8vo, and that of Stock, Dublin , 1769, 2 
vols. 8vo. These last two editions, however, contain 
merely the orations of yEschines and Demosthenes re¬ 
specting the crown. The epistles were published sep¬ 
arately by Sammet, Lips., 1771, 8vo.—III. The au¬ 
thor of a harangue entitled Deliaca, which some have 
attributed to the orator yEschines. {Diog. Laert .)— 
IV. An Arcadian, a disciple of Isocrates. {Id.) —V. A 
Mytilenean, surnamed the scourge of orators, firjropo- 
pdari f. {Id .)—VI. A native of Neapolis, and member 
of the Academic sect, about B.C. 109. — VII. A na¬ 
tive of Miletus, and orator, whose style of speaking is 
represented by Cicero as of the florid and Asiatic kind. 
{Cic., Brut., c. 95.)—VIII. An Athenian physician who 
cured the quinsy, affections of the palate, cancers, &c., 
by employing the cinders of excrements. {Plin., 28, 4.) 
—IX. A distinguished individual among the Eretrians, 
who disclosed to the Athenians the treacherous designs 
of some of his countrymen, when the former had march¬ 
ed to their aid against the Persians. {Herod., 6, 100.) 

yEscuRioN, I. a Mytilenean poet, intimate with 
Aristotle. He accompanied Alexander in his Asiatic 
expedition. Consult Vossius, de Poet. Grace. —II. An 
Iambic poet of Samos. He is mentioned by Athenseus 
(7, 296, e, and 8, 335, c), and also by Tzetzes, in his 
scholia on Lycophron {v. 688-9). Some of his verses 
are preserved by Athenzeus and in the Anthology. 
(Compare Jacobs, ad Anthol., vol. 1, part 1, p. 385.) 
—III. A physician, preceptor to Galen. {Vid. Sup¬ 
plement.)—IV. A Greek writer, who composed a work 
on husbandry, &c., which is cited by Pliny, and also 
by Varro, R. R., 1, 1. 

yEscHVLus, I. a celebrated tragic writer, son of Eu- 
phorion, born of a noble family at Eleusis in Attica, 
in the fourth year of the sixty-third Olympiad, B.C. 
525. (Compare Vit. Anonym, given in Stanley's ed., 

55 



AESCHYLUS. 


iESCHYLUS. 


and the Arundel Marbles.) Pausanias (1, 14) records 
a story of his boyhood, professedly on the authority of 
the poet himself, that, having fallen asleep while watch¬ 
ing the clusters of grapes in a vineyard, Bacchus ap¬ 
peared to him, and bade him turn his attention to tragic 
composition. This account, if true, shows that his 
mind was, at a very early period, enthusiastically 
struck with the exhibitions of the infant drama. An 
impression like this, acting upon his fervid imagination, 
would naturally produce such a dream as is described. 
To this same origin must, no doubt, be traced the 
common account relative to ./Eschylus, that he was 
accustomed to write under the influence of wine ; and 
in confirmation of which Lucian ( Demosth. Encom .— 
cd. Bip .—vol. 9, p. 144) cites the authority of Callis- 
th^nes, and Athenseus (10, 33) that of Chameleon. 
The inspiration of Bacchus, in such a case, can mean 
nothing more than the true inspiration of poetry. 
(: Mohnike, Litt. dcr Gr. und Rom., vol. 1, p. 359.) 
At the age of twenty-five, /Eschylus made his first 
public attempt as a tragic author, in the 70th Olympiad, 
B.C. 499. ( Suid. in klax- — Clinton’s Fasti Hellen- 

ici, p. 21, 2 ded.) The next notice which we have of 
him is in the third year of the 72d Olympiad, B.C. 490, 
when, along with his two celebrated brothers Cynsegi- 
rus and Aminias, he was graced at Marathon with the 
praises due to pre-eminent bravery, being then in his 
35th year. ( Marm. Arund., No. 49.— Vit. Anonym.) 
Six years after that memorable battle, he gained his 
first tragic victory. Four years after this was fought 
the battle of Salamis, in which /Eschylus took part 
with his brother Aminias, to whose extraordinary valour 
the dpiarela were decreed. {Herod., 8, 93.— JElian, 
Var. Hist., 5, 19.) In the following year he served in 
the Athenian troops at Platsea. Eight years afterward 
{Argument, ad Pers.) he gained the prize with a te¬ 
tralogy, composed of the Pcrsce, the Phineus, the 
Glaucus Potniensis, and the Prometheus Ignifcr, a 
satyric drama (or, to give their Greek titles, the Ilep- 
oai, Qivevg, VXavKog IT orvievg, and Upopydevg irvpdo- 
pog). The latter part of the poet’s life is involved in 
much obscurity. (Compare Blomjield, ad Pers. Prcef., 
p. xxii.— Id. ad Arg. inAgamcm., p. xix. etxx. — Bockh, 
de Grcec. Trag. Princip., c. 4, scqq.) That he quitted 
Athens and died in Sicily, is agreed on all hands, but 
the time and cause of his departure are points of 
doubt and conjecture. It seems that /Eschylus had 
laid himself open to a charge of profanation, by too 
boldly introducing on the stage something Connected 
with the mysteries. According to Clemens Alexan- 
drinus, he was tried and acquitted of the charge {ev 
’Apeip irdyo upiOelg, ovrog dtyeiody, irudei^ag, avrbv 
py pepvypevov. — Clem. Alex., Strom., 2.) The more 
romantic narrative of/Elian ( Var. Hist., 5, 19) informs 
us, that the Athenians stood ready to stone him to 
death, when his brother Aminias, who interceded for 
him, dexterously dropped his robe and showed the stump 
of his own arm lost at the battle of Salamis. This act of 
fraternal affection and presence of mind had the desired 
effect on the quick and impulsive temper of the Athe¬ 
nians, and /Eschylus was pardoned. But the peril 
which he had encountered, the dread of a multitude 
ever merciless in their superstitions, indignation at the 
treatment which,he had received, joined, in all likeli¬ 
hood, to feelings of vexation and jealousy at witnessing 
the preference occasionally given to young and aspi¬ 
ring rivals, were motives sufficiently powerful to induce 
the proud-spirited poet to abandon his native city, and 
seek a retreat in the court of the munificent and lite¬ 
rary Hiero, prince of Syracuse. ( Vit. Anonym.. — 
Pausan., 1, 2.— Plut., de Exit, Op., vol. 8, p. 385, ed. 
Reiske.) This must have been before the second year 
of the 78th Olympiad, B.C. 467, for in that year Hiero 
died. The author of the anonymous life of /Eschylus, 
which has come down to us, mentions, among other 
reasons for his voluntary banishment, a victory obtained 
56 


over him by Simonides, in an elegiac contest; and 
what is more probable, the success of Sophocles, who 
carried off from him the tragic prize, according to the 
common account, in the 78th Olympiad, B.C. 468. 
Plutarch, in his life of Cimon, confirms the latter 
statement. If so, /Eschylus could not have been more 
than a year in Sicily before Hiero’s death. The com¬ 
mon account, relative to the cause which drove the poet 
from his country, is grounded upon an obscure allusion 
in Aristotle’s Ethics, explained by Clemens Alexandri- 
nus and ./Elian. In Sicily, /Eschylus composed a 
drama, entitled JEtna, to gratify his royal host, who 
had recently founded a city of that name. During the 
remainder of his life, it is doubtful whether he ever re¬ 
turned to Athens. If he did not, those pieces of his, 
which w r ere composed in the interval, might be exhibit¬ 
ed on the Athenian stage under the care of some friend 
or relation, as was not unfrqquently the case. Among 
these dramas was the Orestean tetralogy {Argument, 
ad Agamem. — Schol. ad Aristoph., Ran., 1155), which 
won the prize in the second year of the 80th Olympiad, 
B.C. 458, two years before his death. At any rate, 
his residence in Sicily must have been of considerable 
length, as it was sufficient to affect the purity of his 
language. We are told by Athenaeus, that many Si¬ 
cilian words are to be found in his later plays. /Es- 
chylus certainly has some Sicilian forms in his extant 
dramas : thus rredupGiog, TcedatxpioL, rreduopoi, paG' 
gov, pd, &cc., for perapciog, peralxpioi, pereopoi, 
pe'pov, pyrep, &c. (Comp. Blomjield, Prom. Vinct., 
277, Gloss., and Bockh, de Trag. Grcec., c. 5.) The 
poet died at Gela, in the 69th year of his age, in the 
81st Olympiad, B. C. 456. His death, if the common 
accounts be true, was of a most singular nature. Sit¬ 
ting motionless, in silence and meditation, in the fields, 
his head, now bald, was mistaken for a stone by an 
eagle, which happened to be flying over him with a 
tortoise in her claws. The bird dropped the tortoise to 
break the shell; and the poet was killed by the blow. 
It is more than probable, however, that this statement 
is purely fabulous, and that it was invented in order to 
meet a supposed prophecy, that he would receive his 
death from on high. The Geloans, to show their re-, 
spect for so illustrious a sojourner, interred him with 
much pomp in the public cemetery.—/Eschylus is said 
to have composed seventy dramas, of w hich five were 
satyric, and to have been thirteen times victor. The 
account of Pausanias, however, would almost imply a 
larger proportion of satyric dramas. In fact, consid¬ 
erable discrepance exists respecting the number of 
plays ascribed to /Eschylus. Only seven of his trage¬ 
dies remain, together with fragments of others pre¬ 
served in the citations of the grammarians, and two 
epigrams in the Anthology. The titles of the dramas 
which have reached us are as follows : 1. Upopydevg 
deopdryg {Prometheus Vinctus). 2. 'E tttu. cttI QyCag 
{Septcm contra Thebas). 3. Uepaai {Persee). 4. 
’A yapepvov {Agamemnon). 5. Xoytpopoi {Choepho- 
rce). 6. E vpevideg {Eumenides). 7. 'bcerideg {Sup- 
plices). A short account of each of these will be 
given towards the close of the present article. This 
great dramatist was the author of the fifth form of 
tragedy. {Vxd. Theatrum.) He added a second actor 
to the locutor of Thespis and Phrynichus, and thus in¬ 
troduced the dialogue. He abridged the immoderate 
length of the choral odes, making them more subservient 
to the main interest of the plot, and expanded the short 
episodes into scenes of competent extent. To these 
improvements in the economy of the drama, he added 
the decorations of art in its exhibition. A regular 
stage {Vitruv., Prcef., lib. 7), with appropriate scenery, 
was erected ; the actors were furnished with becoming 
dresses, and raised to the stature of the heroes repre¬ 
sented by the thick-soled cothurnus {Horat., Ep. ad 
Pis., 280); while the face was brought to the heroic 
cast by a mask of proportionate size and strongly- 



.ESCHYLUS. 


AESCHYLUS. 


marked character, which was also so contrived as to 
give power aud distinctness to the voice. He paid 
great attention to the choral dances, and invented sev¬ 
eral figure-dances himself. Among his other improve¬ 
ments is mentioned the introduction of a practice, 
which subsequently became established as a fixed and 
essential rule, the removal of all deeds of bloodshed 
and murder from the public view ( Philostr., Vit. 
Apollon., 6, 11), a rule only violated on one occasion, 
namely, by Sophocles in his play of the Ajax. In 
short, so many and so important were the alterations 
and additions of iEschylus, that he was considered by 
the Athenians as the Father of Tragedy (Philostr., 1. 
c.), and, as a mark of distinguished honour paid to 
his merits, they passed a decree, after his death, that 
a chorus should be allowed to any poet who chose to 
re-exhibit the dramas of HCschylus. (Philostr., 1. c.) 
Aristophanes alludes to this custom of re-exhibiting 
the plays ofHSschylus in the opening of the Acharni- 
ans (v. 9, seqq). Quintilian, however (10, 1), assigns 
a very different reason for this practice, and makes it 
to have been adopted for the purpose of presenting 
these dramas in a more correct form than that in which 
they were left by the author himself. What authority 
he had for such an assertion, does not now appear. 
In philosophical sentiments, TEschylus is said to have 
been a Pythagorean. (Cic., Tusc. Disp., 2, 9.) In his 
extant dramas the tenets of this sect may occasionally 
be traced ; as, deep veneration in what concerns the 
gods (Agamern., 371), high regard for the sanctity of 
an oath and the nuptial bond (Eumen., 217), the im¬ 
mortality of the soul (Cho'eph., 321), the origin of 
names from imposition and not from nature (Agamern., 
682.— Prom. Vinct., 84, 742), the importance of num¬ 
bers (Prom. Vinct., 468), the science of physiognomy 
(Agamern., 797), the sacred character of suppliants 
(Suppl., 351. — Eumen., 233), &c. vEschylus, ob¬ 
serves Schlegel (Dram. Lit.,]). 135, seqq.), must be con¬ 
sidered as the creator of tragedy ; it sprang forth from 
his head in complete armour, like Minerva from the brain 
of Jove. He clothed it as became its dignity, and not 
only instructed the chorus in the song and the dance, 
but came forward himself as an actor. (Athenceus, 1, 
22.) He sketches characters with a few bold and 
powerful strokes. His plots are extremely simple. 
He had not yet arrived at the art of splitting an action 
into parts numerous and rich, and distributing their 
complication and denouement into well-proportioned 
steps. Hence in his writings there often arises a ces¬ 
sation of action, which he makes us feel still more by 
his unreasonably long choruses. But, on the other 
hand, all his poetry displays a lofty and grave disposi¬ 
tion. No soft emotions, but terror alone remains in 
him ; the head of Medusa is held up before the petrified 
spectators. His method of considering destiny is ex¬ 
tremely harsh ; it hovers over mortals in all its gloomy 
magnificence. The buskin of JEschylus has, as it 
were, the weight of brass ; on it none but gigantic 
forms stalk before us. It almost seems to cost him 
an effort to paint mere men; he frequently brings gods 
on the stage, particularly the Titans, those ancient 
deities who shadow forth the dark primeval powers of 
nature, and who had long been driven into Tartarus, 
beneath a world governed in tranquillity. In con¬ 
formity with the standard of his dramatis persons, he 
seeks to swell out the language which they employ to 
a colossal size ; hence there arise rugged compound 
words, an over-multitude of epithets, and often an ex¬ 
treme intricacy of syntax in the choruses, which is the 
cause of great obscurity. He is similar to Dante and 
Shakspeare in the peculiar strangeness of his imagina¬ 
tions and expressions, yet these images are not deficient 
in that terrible grace which the ancients particularly 
praise in TEschylus, The poet flourished exactly when 
the freedom of Greece, rescued from its enemies, was 
in its first strength, with a consciousness of which he 


seems to be proudly penetrated. He had lived to be 
an eyewitness of the greatest and most glorious event 
of which Greece could boast, the defeat and destruction 
of the enormous hosts of the Persians under Darius and 
Xerxes, and had fought with distinguished valour in 
the combats of Marathon and Salamis. In the Persce, 
and the Seven against Thebes, he pours forth a warlike 
strain ; the personal inclination of the poet for the life 
of a hero beams forth in a manner which cannot be 
mistaken. The tragedies of TEschylus are, on the 
whole, one proof among many, that in art, as in nature, 
gigantic proportions precede those of the ordinary 
standard, which then grow less and less, till they reach 
meanness and insignificance ; and also that poetry, on 
its first appearance, is always next to religion in esti¬ 
mation, whatever form the latter may take among the 
race of men then existing. The tragic style of TEs- 
chylus is far from perfect (compare Porson , Prcelect. 
in Eurip., p. 6), and frequently deviates into the Epic 
and the Lyric, elements not qualified to harmonize 
with the drama. He is often abrupt, disproportioned, 
and harsh. It was very possible that more skilful 
tragic writers might compose after him, but he must 
always remain unsurpassed in his almost superhuman 
vastness, since even Sophocles, his more fortunate 
and more youthful rival, could not equal him in this. 
The latter uttered a sentiment concerning him by 
which he showed himself to have reflected on the art 
in which he excelled. “ vEschylus does what is right, 
but without knowing it.” Simple words, which, how¬ 
ever, exhaust all that we understand by a genius which 
produces its effects unconsciously. (Theatre of the 
Greeks, p. 114, seqq., 2 d ed.) —It only remains to 
give a brief account of the tragedies of JEschylus 
which have reached us entire. 1. Tlpo/urjdevc deo/utj- 
ryq (“ Prometheus in chains”). All the personages 
of this tragedy are divinities, and yet the piece, not¬ 
withstanding, carries with it an air of general interest, 
for it involves the well-being of the human race. The 
subject is Prometheus, punished for having been the 
benefactor of men in stealing for them the fire from 
the skies ; or, to express the same idea in a moral 
point of view, it is strength and decision of character 
struggling against injustice and adversity. In this 
drama, which stands alone of its kind, we recognise, 
amid strength and sublimity of conception, a wild and 
untutored daring, which betrays the rudeness of early 
tragedy, and the infancy of the art. The scenery is 
awfully terrific: the lonely rock frowning over the 
waves, the stern and imperious sons of Pallas and 
Styx holding up Prometheus to its rifted side while 
Vulcan fixes his chains, Oceanus on his hippogriff, the 
fury of the whirlwind, the pealing thunder, and Prome¬ 
theus himself undismayed amid the warfare of the ele¬ 
ments, and bidding defiance even to the monarch of 
the skies, present a picture pregnant with fearful in¬ 
terest, and worthy the genius of TEschylus. This 
drama was translated into Latin by the poet Attius, 
some fragments of whose version are preserved for us 
by Cicero (Tusc. Qucest., 2, 10). The question rela¬ 
tive to the remaining pieces of the Tetralogy, of which 
this play formed a part, may be seen discussed in 
Schiitz’s edition of HCschylus (vol. 5, p. 120, seqq.). 
—2. 'Errrd eirl Qr/baq (“ The Seven Chiefs against 
Thebes”). The subject of the piece is the siege of 
Thebes, by the seven confederated chieftains, who had 
espoused the cause of Polynices against his brother 
Eteocles. It is said that .ZEschylus particularly valued 
himself on this tragedy, and certainly not without rea¬ 
son, both as regards the animation of the scenes that 
are portrayed, the sublimity of the dialogue, and the 
strong delineations of character which it contains. 
This drama has the additional merit of having given 
birth to the Antigone of'Sophocles, the PhcBnissae of 
Euripides, and the Thebaid of Statius. Besides the 
Siege of Thebes, HEschylus wrote three tragedies also 

57 



AESCHYLUS. 


AESCULAPIUS. 


on the events which preceded it, viz., the “ Laius,” the 
“CEdipus,” and the “Sphinx.” Some critics, how¬ 
ever, make the last to have been a satyric drama. 

.—3. Id cpoai (“ The Persians”). This piece is so 
called because the chorus is composed of aged Per¬ 
sians. The subject is purely an historical one : it is 
the defeat of the naval armament of Xerxes. This 
play was performed eight years after the battle of Sal- 
amis, and it has been considered by some a defect 
that so recent an event should have been represented 
on the stage. But, as Racine has remarked in the 
preface to Bajazet, distance of place supplies the want 
of distance of time. The scene is laid at Susa, be¬ 
fore the ancient structure appropriated to the great 
council of state, and near the tomb of Darius. The 
shade of this monarch comes forth from the sepulchre, 
for the purpose of counselling Xerxes to cease from 
the war against a people whom the gods protect. The 
piece contains great beauties ; every instant the trouble 
of the Persians increases, and the interest augments. 
By some it has been supposed to have been written 
with a political intent, the poet endeavouring, by an 
animated description of the pernicious effects of an 
obstinate pride, and by filling the spectators with a 
malignant compassion for the vanquished Xerxes, in¬ 
directly disposing them to break off the war which 
Themistocles wished to prolong. — 4. ’A yapepvuiv 
(“Agamemnon”). This prince, returning from the 
siege of Troy with his female captive Cassandra, is as¬ 
sassinated by Clytemnestra and AEgisthus. The part 
of Cassandra, who predicts the woes that are about to 
fall upon the house of Agamemnon, forms the chief 
interest of the piece, and is one of the finest that has 
ever been conceived. The commencement of this 
tragedy is somewhat languid, but as the play proceeds 
all is movement and feeling. — 5. Xoqtyopoi (“ The 
Choephorse”). This drama is so entitled, because the 
chorus, composed of female Trojan captives, slaves of 
Clytemnestra, are charged with the office of bringing 
the liquor for making libations at the tomb of Agamem¬ 
non ix or h a libation, and tyepo, to bring). The subject of 
the piece is Orestes avenging the death of Agamemnon 
on Clytemnestra and her paramour. When this horri¬ 
ble deed has been accomplished, the parricide is deliv¬ 
ered over to the Furies, who disturb his reason. 
“ The spirit of AEschylus,” observes Potter, “ shines 
through this tragedy ; but a certain softening of grief 
hangs over it, and gives it an air of solemn magnifi¬ 
cence.” The characters of Orestes and Electra are 
finely supported.—6. E vpevideg (“ The Eumenides,” 
or “Furies”). This play derives its name from the 
circumstance of the chorus being composed of Furies 
who pursue Orestes. The latter pleads his cause be¬ 
fore the Areopagus, and is acquitted by the vote of 
Minerva. This drama is remarkable for its violation 
of the unity of place, the scene being first laid at Del¬ 
phi and afterward at Athens. Muller has written a 
very able work on the scope and character of this pro¬ 
duction, in which he discusses incidentally some of 
the most important points connected with the Greek 
drama. As regards the object which the poet had in 
view when composing the piece, he considers it to be 
a political one. AEschylus was a zealous partisan of 
Aristides, and opponent of Themistocles, and evident 
symptoms of this partiality are to be found in some of 
his plays. As an Athenian citizen and patriot, the 
poet on every occasion recommends to his countrymen 
temperance and moderation in their enjoyment of dem¬ 
ocratic liberty, and in their ambitious schemes against 
the rest of Greece. The party of Themistocles had 
made themselves obnoxious, in these respects, to the 
patriotic feelings of AEschylus ; and a demagogue 
named Ephialtes, having attacked the authority of the 
venerable court of the Areopagus, the poet in this play 
of the Eumenides appeared in its defence, and strove 
to save this excellent institution, though ineffectually, 
58 


from the levelling doctrines of the day. Pollux inform* 
us, that the tragic chorus, up to the time when this 
play was first represented, consisted of fifty persons, 
but that the terror occasioned by a chorus of fifty furies 
caused a law to be passed, fixing the tragic chorus, for 
the time to come, at fifteen, and the comic chorus at 
twenty-four. (Iul. Pol., 4, 110.) Pollux evidently is 
in error here. The number of choreut® for the whole 
tetralogy consisted of fifty (originally, as Muller thinks, 
of forty-eight), and these choreutae it was the poet's 
business to distribute into choruses for the individual 
tragedies and satyric drama composing the tetralogy. 
Pollux, therefore, in all probability, misconceived 
something which he had learned relative to the number 
of choreutae for the whole tetralogy, of which number 
at least three fourths were on the stage at the end of 
the Eumenides. But this was done in order to afford 
the people a splendid and expressive spectacle; neither 
were the choreutae thus combined all habited as furies. 
{Muller, Eumenides, p. 52, seqq.) — With regard to 
the number of the tragic chorus in each particular 
play, it may be remarked, that Sophocles first brought 
in fifteen, the previous number having been twelve, 
and that AEschylus employed only twelve in more than 
one of his dramas, although in others very possibly he 
adopted the number so extended by Sophocles. (Con¬ 
sult the remarks of Muller, Eumen., p. 58.)—This play 
did not prove, at first, very successful. It was altered 
by the poet, and reproduced some years after, during 
his residence in Sicily, when' it carried off the prize. 
—7. 'bceTideg (“The Female Suppliants”). Danaiis 
and his daughters solicit and obtain the protection of 
the Argives against AEgyptus and his sons. This play 
forms one of the feeblest productions of AEschylus. 
It possesses one remarkable feature, that the chorus 
acts the principal part. The scene is near the shore, 
in an open grove, close to the altar and the images of 
the gods presiding over the sacred games, with a view 
of the sea and the ships of AEgyptus on one side, and 
of the towers of Argos on the other; with hills, and 
woods, and vales, a river flowing between them.—We 
have no good edition, as yet, of all the plays of AEschy¬ 
lus. That of Schiitz, Halcz, 1808-21, 5 vols. 8vo, 
although useful in some respects, is not held in very 
high estimation ; neither is that of Butler, Cantab., 
1809, 8 vols. 8vo, regarded with a very favourable eye 
by European scholars. Wellauers edition, also, Lips., 
1823-1831, 3 vols. 8vo, though highly lauded by some, 
is far from being satisfactory to all. The edition by 
Scholefield, Cantab., 1828, 8vo, is a useful one. The 
best text is that given by W. Dindorf, Lips., 1827. 
The best editions of the separate plays are those of 
Blomfield, as far as they extend, comprising, namely, 
the Prometheus, Septem contra Thebas, Agamemnon, 
Persae, and Cho'ephorce. His edition of the Pcrsce, 
however, was very severely handled by Seidler, in one 
of the German reviews, though the edge of the critique 
was in a great measure blunted by the personal feeling 
visible throughout. The editions of Dr. Blomfield ap¬ 
peared originally from the Cambridge press. There 
are good editions of the Agamemnon and Choephorse 
by Klausen and Peile. Muller’s edition of the Eumen¬ 
ides, appended to the dissertations above alluded to, is 
an excellent and scholar-like performance, though it 
provoked the ire of Hermann and his school, having 
been severely criticised by him and one of his disciples. 
A translation of it appeared from the Cambridge press 
in 1835.—II., III. ( Vid . Supplement.) 

AEsculapius, son of Apollo and the nymph Coronis, 
and god of the healing art. Pausanias (2, 26) gives 
three different accounts of his origin, on which our lim¬ 
its forbid us to dwell. The one of these that has been 
followed by Ovid makes Coronis to have been unfaith¬ 
ful to Apollo, and to have been, in consequence, put to 
death by him, the offspring of her womb having been 
first taken from her and spared. Apollo received the 




AESCULAPIUS. 


aESCULAPIUS. 


information respecting the unfaithfulness of Coronis, 
from a raven, and the angry deity is said by Apollodo¬ 
rus to have changed the colour of the raven from white 
to black, as a punishment for his unwelcome officious¬ 
ness. As Coronis, in Greek, signifies a crow, hence 
another fable arose that AEsculapius had sprung from 
an egg of that bird, under the figure of a serpent. The 
first of the accounts given by Pausanias makes the 
birthplace of AEsculapius to have been on the borders 
of the Epidaurian territory ; the second lays the scene 
in Thessaly ; the third in Messenia. AEsculapius was 
placed, at an early age, under the care of the centaur 
Chiron. Being of a quick and lively genius, he made 
' such progress as soon to become not only a great phy¬ 
sician, but at length to be reckoned the god and invent¬ 
or of medicine, though the Greeks, not very careful of 
consistency in the history of those early ages, gave to 
Apis, son of Phoroneus, the glory of having invented 
the healing art. AEsculapius accompanied Jason in 
his expedition to Colchis, and in his medical capacity 
was of great service to the Argonauts. He married 
Epione, whom some call Lampetia, by whom he had. 
two sons, Machaon and Podalirius, and four daughters, 
Hygiea, AEgle, Panacea, and Iaso, of whom Hygiea, 
goddess of health, was the most celebrated. In the fab¬ 
ulous traditions of antiquity, AEsculapius is said to have 
restored many to life. According to Apollodorus (3, 
10, 3), he received from Minerva the blood that flow¬ 
ed from the veins of Medusa, and with that which pro¬ 
ceeded from the veins on the left, he operated to the 
destruction of men, while he used that which was ob¬ 
tained from the veins on the right for the benefit of 
his fellow-creatures. (Compare Heyne, ad Apollod ., 
/. c .) With this last he brought back to the light of 
day Capaneus and Lycurgus, according to some, or 
Eriphyle and Hippolytus according to others, or, as 
other ancient authorities state, Hymenseus, and Glau- 
cus the son of Minos. Jupiter, alarmed at this, and 
fearing, says Apollodorus, lest men, being put in pos¬ 
session of the means of triumphing over death, might 
cease to render honour to the gods, struck AEsculapius 
with thunder. The common account makes this to 
have been done on the complaint of Pluto. Apollo, 
enraged at the loss of his son, destroyed the Cyclopes 
who had forged the thunderbolts of Jove, for which 
offence the monarch of the skies was about to hurl 
him into Tartarus, but, on the supplication of Latona, 
banished him for a season from Olympus, and compel¬ 
led him to serve with a mortal ( vid . Admetus and 
Amphrysus).—Thus far we have traced the Greek ac¬ 
counts respecting AEsculapius. If, however, a careful 
inquiry be instituted, the result will be a decided con¬ 
viction that the legend of AEsculapius is one of Orient¬ 
al origin. According to Sanchoniathon, AEsculapius 
was the same with the Phoenician Esmun, the son of 
Sydyk, called “ the just,” and the brother of the seven 
Cabiri. (Sanction., Frag., ay. Euseb., Pray. Evang., 
p. 39 . — Cory's Ancient Fragments , p. 13.) Hence 
the meaning of Esmun, which signifies “ the eighth.” 
(Compare the Schmoun, or Mendes, of Egypt.) The 
seven Cabiri are the seven planets; and, in the Egyp¬ 
tian mythology, Phtha is added to them as the eighth. 
Phtha and AEsculapius, then, are identical, and the lat¬ 
ter, like the former, though added to the number of the 
Cabiri, becomes in a mysterious sense their parent and 
guide. (Creuzer's Symbohk, vol. 2, p. 285 and 336.) 
In Esmun-AEsculapius, then, we have a solar deity, 
personified in his beauty and his weakness, for he is 
the same with the youth of Berytus, who mutilated 
himself and was placed in the number of the gods, and 
in this quality he receives the name of Paean or Paeon, 
“ the physician.” He becomes identified also with the 
beauteous Apollo, for whose son he passes among the 
Greeks ; while, as a mutilated deity, he is the same 
with the Phrygian Atys, the fair Adonis, and the chain¬ 
ed Hercules of the Tyrians, all varied forms of the 


same idea. He is the sun, without strength at the 
close of autumn. In all these different points of view, 
we find AEsculapius corresponding to the Egyptian di¬ 
vinities ; to Horus, to Harpocrates, to Sent, and to the 
god of the earth, Serapis. Egypt was always famed 
for the knowledge possessed by its priests of the heal¬ 
ing art; and it always represented its great deities, the 
symbols of the power of nature, as endued with a heal¬ 
ing influence. ( Creuzer's Symbolik, par Guigniaut, 
vol. 2 , p. 337 and 170, scqq.) Isis receives, in in¬ 
scriptions, the epithet of “ salutary.” ( Gruter , p. 83. 
— Fabrctt., p. 470.— Heines, col. 1 , n. 132.) Serapis, 
whose name frequently occurs by the side of that of his 
spouse, had, at Canopus, a city already famous by its 
temple of Hercules, a sanctuary no less renowed for 
the wonderful cures performed within it, and of which 
a register was carefully preserved. ( Strabo, 801. — 
Compare Crcuzer, Dionys., 1 , p. 122 , and Guigniaut's 
dissertation on the god Serapis, u Sur le Dieu Serapis 
et son origine ,” p. 20 and 22 .) Both of these divini¬ 
ties, in the scenes figured on the monuments, bear ser¬ 
pents, or agathodemons, as the emblems of health : 
they carry also the chalice, or salutary cup of nature, 
surrounded by serpents, and which formed, perhaps, the 
most ancient idol connected with their worship. ( Crcu¬ 
zer's Symbolik, par Guigniaut , vol. 1 , p. 818, seqq.) 
One thing at least is certain, that these sacred ser¬ 
pents were nourished in their temples as living images 
of these deities of health. (Guigniaut's Serapis , p. 
19, seqq.) The nurture of these national fetichs con¬ 
sisted in cakes of honey, and such was also the food 
of the serpents consecrated to the powers beneath the 
earth, the divinities of the dead. In fact, the god of 
medicine is, at the same time, a telluric power; and 
it is he that causes the mineral waters, the sources of 
health, to spring from the bosom of the earth. AEscu¬ 
lapius, then, is identical, in his essence, with the Ca¬ 
nopic Serapis : like him, he has for a symbol a vase 
surrounded by serpents, and he was originally this 
same vase, the sacred Canopus. (Compare Creuzcr, 
Dionys., p. 220.— Symbolik, par Guigniaut, vol. 1 , p. 
415 and 818, seqq.) It is curious to observe the 
strong analogy that exists between the Oriental wor¬ 
ship of Serapis, and the Grecian ideas, rites, and usa¬ 
ges in the case of AEsculapius. At AEgium, in Achaia, 
near the ancient temple of Ilithyia, were to be seen the 
statues of the god and goddess of health, Asclepius 
(AEsculapius) and Hygiea. (Pausan., 7, 23.) At Ti- 
tane, a city of Sicyonia, the first settler of which was, 
according to tradition, Titon, brother of the Sun, Alex- 
anor, the son of Machaon and grandson of AEsculapius, 
had erected a temple to this deity. His statue, at this 
place, was almost entirely enveloped in a tunic of white 
wool, with a mantle thrown over it, so that the face, 
and the extremities of the hands and feet, alone appear¬ 
ed to view. AEsculapius was carried, it is said, from 
Epidaurus to Pergamus ; and we are also told that, in 
this Asiatic city, the Acesius of Epidaurus took the 
name of Telesphorus. (Pausan., 2 , 11 .) Now Tc- 
lesphorus indicates the autumnal season, the sun that 
has come to his maturity together with the productions 
of the earth, and, consequently, verging to his decline. 
Hence the Arcadians gave to AEsculapius a nurse na¬ 
med Trygon, an appellation derived probably from the 
Greek rpvyrj or Tpvydu, and referring to the labours of 
harvest. AEsculapius, moreover, according to a tradi¬ 
tion preserved in littica, offered himself on the eighth 
day for admission into the Eleusinian mysteries, and 
was accordingly initiated. (Philostrat., Vit. Apollon., 
4, 18.) He is, in this point of view, the tardy one, the 
last comer assisting at the festival of autumn and the 
harvest. The subterranean powers and the deities of 
death are also the divinities of sleep. Such, too, is the 
case with AEsculapius. He gives slumber and repose, 
and by their means bestows health. (Lyd., de Mens., 
p. 78, cd. Schow.) Hence the custom of going to his 

59 



AESCULAPIUS. 


MSE 


temple at Epidaurus for the purpose of sleeping there¬ 
in, and recovering health by the means which the god 
of health would indicate in a dream to the invalids. 
(Compare Sprengel, Gcsch. dcr Median., vol. 1 , p. 107, 
seqq.) The ancient AEsculapius, introduced at an 
early period into the religion of Samothrace, appeared 
at first in Greece under a form closely assimilated to 
that of the vase-gods, dwarfs, or pigmies, that were 
accustomed to be enveloped in garments, and to which 
was attributed a magic influence. ( Creuzer's Sym- 
bolik, par Guigniaut, vol. 2 , p. 310, seqq.) In these 
mysterious idols, the richness of hidden meaning was 
as great as the mode of decking the exterior was whim¬ 
sical. The spirit of the old Pelasgic belief would 
seem, however, to have been continually employed in 
decomposing, as it were, this body of ideas united in 
one particular symbol, and in individualizing each for 
itself. It was thus that, by degrees, there arose round 
the god of medicine a cortege of genii, of both sexes, 
regarded either as his wives, or as his sons and daugh¬ 
ters, or even as his grandchildren. In the sculptured 
representations of AEsculapius, to which the develop¬ 
ment of Grecian art had subsequently given birth, we 
find the figure of Jove, a little modified, becoming the 
model of this deity. And yet, though the Grecian 
perception of the beautiful led them to deviate, in gen¬ 
eral, from the grosser representations of the Pelasgic 
worship, we find them, in the present case, still re¬ 
taining an attachment for the ancient, and, at the same 
time, more significant and mysterious images. Hence, 
by the side of the new deity is placed one of his per¬ 
sonified attributes, under the figure of an enveloped 
dwarf. In every quarter, where the Asclepiades {vid. 
that article) taught the principles of the healing art, or 
cured diseases in the temples of their master and re¬ 
puted father, ^Esculapius and his good genii were cel¬ 
ebrated as saving divinities, on votive tablets, inscrip¬ 
tions, medals, and gems. The Romans, too, in the 
year of their city 461, in order to be delivered from a 
pestilence, sent a solemn embassy to Epidaurus to ob¬ 
tain the sacred serpent nourished at that place in the 
temple of AEsculapius. A temple was likewise erect¬ 
ed to this deity on an island in the Tiber, where the 
sacred reptile had disappeared among the reeds. ( Val. 
Max., 1 , 8 , 2 .) Not content with this, however, they 
resolved to have also a family of Asclepiades, and they 
pretended to have found it in the house of Acilius.— 
The principal and most ancient temples of AEsculapi- 
us {’AoKXqTrieia), were those at Titane in Sicyonia 
( Paasan ., 2 , 11 ); atTricca in Thessaly ( Strabo, 438); 
at Tithorea in Phocis, where he was revered under the 
name of Archegetes ( Pausan., 10 , 32); at Epidaurus 
( Pausan., 2 , 26); in the island of Cos ( Strabo , 657); 
at Megalopolis {Pausan., 8 , 32); at Cyllene in Elis 
{Pausan., 6 , 26) ; and at Pergamus in Asia Minor 
{Pausan., 2 , 26). Among all these temples, that of 
Epidaurus was at first the most celebrated, for it was 
from this city that the worship of ^Esculapius was car¬ 
ried into Sicyonia, and also to Pergamus and Cyllene. 
{Pausa7i., 2 , 10.) It appears, however, that the tem¬ 
ple of Cos became in time the most famous of all, since 
the Epidaurians, on one occasion, sent deputies thither. 
{Pausan., 3, 23.) At a more recent period, AEgea, in 
Cilicia, could boast of a temple of AEsculapius which 
was held in high repute. It was here that Apollonius 
of Tyana practised many of his impostures. {Philostr., 
\it. Apollon., 1 , t .) Constantine destroyed this tem¬ 
ple in his zeal for Christianity. {Euseb., Vit. Con¬ 
stant., ed. Reading, 3, 56.) Almost all these edifices 
were regarded as sanctuaries, which none of the pro¬ 
fane could approach except after repeated purifications. 
Epidaurus was called the sacred country {Pausan., 2 , 
26), a name which also appears on its medals. {Eck- 
hcl, Doctr. Num. Vet., vol. 2 , p. 290. — Villoison, 
Prolcgom., p. lh.) The temple at Asopus took the 
appellation of Hypertclcaton, as if it concealed within 
60 


its walls the most sacred mysteries. ( Pausan, 3, 22.) 
The statue of Hygiea, at AEgium in Achaia, could only 
be viewed by the priests. {Pausan., 7, 24.) No fe¬ 
male was allowed to be delivered, and no sick persons 
were permitted to die, wdthin the environs of the tem¬ 
ple at Epidaurus. {Pausan., 2 , 27.) The temple at 
Tithorea was surrounded by a hedge, in the vicinity of 
which no edifice could be erected. The hedge was 
forty stadia from the building itself. {Pausan., 10, 32.) 
Most of these temples stood in healthy situations. That 
of Cyllene, for example, was situate on Cape Hyrmine, 
in one of the most fertile and smiling countries in the 
Peloponnesus ; while that of Epidaurus, erected, like 
the former, in the immediate neighbourhood of the sea, 
was surrounded by hills covered with the thick foliage 
of groves. {Pausan., 2 , 27. — Compare Villoison , 
Prolegom., p. liii., and Chandler's Travels, eh. 53, p. 
223.) Others again were built near rivers, or in the 
vicinity of mineral springs ; and it would appear from 
Xenophon {Mem., 3, 13), that the temple of AEsculapi¬ 
us at Athens contained within it a source of warm wa¬ 
fer. The worship rendered to AEsculapius had for its 
object the occupying the imagination of the sick by 
the ceremonies of which they were witnesses, and the 
exciting them to a sufficient degree in order to produce 
the desired result. For an account of these ceremo¬ 
nies, and the mode of curing that was generally adopt¬ 
ed, consult Sprengel, Hist, de la Medicine, vol. 1 , p. 
154, seqq. —AEsculapius was sometimes represented, 
either standing, or sitting on a throne, holding in one 
hand a staff, and grasping with the other the head of a 
serpent: at his feet a dog lay extended. {Pausan., 2 , 
27. — Compare Montfaucon, Antiquite expliq., vol. 1 , 
pt. 2 , pi. 187, 188.) At Corinth, Megalopolis, and 
Ladon, the god was represented under the form of an 
infant, or rather, perhaps, a dwrnrf, holding in one hand 
a sceptre, and in the other a pine-cone. {Pausan., 2 , 
10.) Most generally, however, he appeared as an old 
man with a flowing beard. {Pausan., 10 , 32.) On 
some ancient monuments we see him with one hand 
applied to his beard, and having in the other a knotted 
staff encircled by a serpent. {Minucius Felix, cd. El- 
menhorst., p. 14.) He oftentimes bears a crown of 
laurel {Antichita d'Ercol., vol. 5, p. 264, 271.— Maffei, 
Gcmm. ant., 2 , n. 55), while at his feet are placed, on 
one side, a cock, and, on the other, the head of a ram ; 
on other occasions, a vulture or an owl. Frequently 
a vase of circular form is seen below his statues ( Eriz - 
zo, Discorso, &c., p. 620), or, according to others, a 
serpent coiled up. ( Buonarotti, Osservazioni, &c., p. 
201.) At other times he has his body encircled by an 
enormous serpent. {Theodorct. affect, curat. disp.~ 
Op., ed. Shulze, vol. 4 and 8, p. 906.) Among all the 
symbols with which H 2 sculapius is adorned, the ser¬ 
pent plays the principal part. The gems, medals, and 
other monuments of antiquity connected with the wor¬ 
ship of this deity, most commonly bear such an em¬ 
blem upon them. {Spanhcim, Epist. 4, ad Morell., p. 
217, 218, ed. Lips., 1695.—Compare Knight's Inquiry 
into the Symbolical Language of Ancient Art and My¬ 
thology, 25.— Class. Journ., vol. 23, p. 13.) 

HCsepus, a river of Mysia, in Asia Minor, rising in 
Mount Cotylus, and falling, after a course of 500 sta¬ 
dia, into the Propontis, to the east of the Granicus. 
Strabo (582) conceives, that Homer extended the 
boundaries of Priam’s kingdom to this river. Chishull 
{Travels in Turkey, p. 59) makes the modern name 
to be the Boklu, but Gossellin gives it as the Sataldere. 
{French Strabo, vol. 4, p. 187, not.) 

AEsernTa, a city of Samnium, in the northern part 
of the country, and not far from the western confines. 
It was situate about twelve miles northwest of Bovi- 
anum, and is mentioned by Livy {Epit., 16) as having 
been colonized about the beginning of the first Punic 
war. The same writer (27, 10) speaks of it as one 
of those colonies which distinguished themselves by 




iESOPUS. 


.dESOPUS. 


their firm adherence to the Roman power during the 
war with Hannibal. It was subsequently recolonized 
by Augustus and Nero ( Front., de Col.), but Strabo 
(239 and 249) makes it a very inconsiderable place, 
having suffered materially in the Marsic war. The 
modern Isernia is supposed to represent HEsernia. 

HEsion. Vid. Supplement. 

-dEsoN, son of Cretheus and Tyro. He succeed¬ 
ed his father in the kingdom of Iolchos, but was de¬ 
throned by his half-brother Pelias. HEson became the 
father, by Alcimede, of the celebrated Jason, the lead¬ 
er of the Argonauts. Through fear of the usurper, 
Jason was intrusted to the care of the centaur Chiron, 
and brought up at a distance from the court of Pelias. 
On his arriving at manhood, however, he came to Iol¬ 
chos, according to one account, to claim his inherit¬ 
ance ; but, according to another, he was invited by Pe¬ 
lias to attend a sacrifice to Neptune on the seashore. 
The result of the interview, whatever may have been 
the cause of it, was an order from Pelias to go in quest 
of the golden fleece. {Vid. Jason.) During the ab¬ 
sence of Jason on this well-known expedition, the tyr¬ 
anny of Pelias, according to one version of the story, 
drove HEson and Alcimedes to self-destruction; an act 
of cruelty, to which he was prompted by intelligence 
having been received that all the Argonauts had perish¬ 
ed, and by a consequent wish on his part to make him¬ 
self doubly secure, by destroying the parents of Jason. 
He put to death also their remaining child. ( Apollod., 
1 , 9, 16, seqq. — Diod. Sic., 4, 50.— Hygin., 24.) Ovid, 
however, gives quite a different account of the latter 
days of HEson. According to the poet {Met., 7, 297, 
seqq.), Jason, on his return with Medea, found his 
father JEson still alive, but enfeebled by age ; and the 
Colchian enchantress, by drawing the blood from his 
veins and then filling them with the juices of certain 
herbs which she had gathered for the purpose, restored 
him to a manhood of forty years. The daughters of 
Pelias having entreated Medea to perform the same 
operation on their aged father, she embraced this op¬ 
portunity of avenging the wrongs inflicted on Jason 
and his parents by the death of the usurper. {Vid. 
Pelias.) 

HEsonides, a patronymic of Jason, as being de¬ 
scended from TEson. 

HEsopus, I. a celebrated fabulist, who is supposed 
to have flourished about 620 B.C. {Larcher, Hist. 
d'Herod., Table Chronol., vol. 7, p. 539.) Much un¬ 
certainty, however, prevails both on this point, as well 
as in relation to the country that gave him birth. 
Some ancient writers make him to have been a Thra¬ 
cian. (Compare Mohmke, Gesch. Lit. Gr. und R., 
vol. 1, p. 291.) Suidas states that he was either of 
Samos or Sardis ; but most authorities are in favour 
of his having been a Phrygian, and born at Cotyseum. 
All appear to agree, however, in representing him as 
of servile origin, and owned in succession by several 
masters. The first of these was Demarchus, or, ac¬ 
cording to the reading of the Florence MS., Timar- 
chus, who resided at Athens, where TEsop, conse¬ 
quently, must have had many means of improvement 
within his reach. From Demarchus he came into the 
possession of Xanthus, a Samian, who sold him to 
Iadmon, a philosopher of the same island, under whose 
roof he had for a fellow-slave the famous courtesan 
Rhodope. {Herod., 2, 134.) Iadmon subsequently 
gave him his freedom, on account of the talents which 
he displayed, and yEsop now turned his attention to 
foreign travel, partly to extend.the sphere of his own 
knowledge, and partly to communicate instruction to 
others. The vehicles in which this instruction was 
conveyed were fables, the peculiar excellence of which 
has caused his name to be associated with this pleas¬ 
ing branch of composition through every succeeding 
period. HEsop is said to have visited Persia, Egypt, 
Asia Minor, and Greece, in the last of which countries 


his name was rendered peculiarly famous. The rep- 
i utation for wisdom which he enjoyed, induced Croe- 
I sus, king of Lydia, to invite him to his court. The 
j fabulist obeyed the call, but, after residing some time 
at Sardis, again journeyed into Greece. At the period 
of his second visit, the Athenians are said to have been 
oppressed by the usurpation of Pisistratus, and to con¬ 
sole them under this state of things, HEsop is related 
to have invented for them the fable of the frogs peti¬ 
tioning Jupiter for a king. The residence of *Esop 
in Greece at this time would seem to have been a long 
one, if any argument for such an opinion may be 
drawn from a line of Phaedrus (3, 14), in which the 
epithet of senez is applied to the fabulist during the 
period of this his stay at Athens. He returned, how¬ 
ever, eventually to the court of the Lydian monarch. 
Whether the well-known conversation between rEsop 
and Solon occurred after the return of the former from 
his second journey into Greece, or during his previous 
residence with Croesus, cannot be satisfactorily ascer¬ 
tained : the latter opinion is most probably the more 
correct one, if we can believe that the interview be¬ 
tween Solon and Croesus, as mentioned bv Herodotus 
(1, 30, seqq.), ever took place. It seems that Solon 
had offended Croesus by the low estimation in which 
he held riches as an ingredient of happiness, and was, 
in consequence, treated with cold indifference. {He¬ 
rod., 1 , 33.) JEsop, concerned at the unkind treat¬ 
ment which Solon had encountered, gave him the fol¬ 
lowing advice: “A wise man should resolve either 
not to converse with kings at all, or to converse with 
them agreeably.” To which Solon replied, Nay, he 
should either not converse with them at all, or con¬ 
verse with them usefully.” {Plut., Vit. Sol., 28.) The 
particulars of HEsop’s death are stated as follows by 
Plutarch {de sera numims vindicta, p. 556.— Op., ed. 
Reiske, vol. 8, p. 203). Croesus sent him to Delphi 
with a large amount of gold, in order to offer a mag¬ 
nificent sacrifice to Apollo, and also to present four 
mince to each inhabitant of the sacred city. Having 
had some difference, however, with the people of Del¬ 
phi, he offered the sacrifice, but sent back the money to 
Sardis, regarding the intended objects of the king’s 
bounty as totally unworthy of it. The irritated Del- 
phians, with one accord, accused him of sacrilege, and 
he was thrown down the rock Hyampea. Suidas 
makes him to have been hurled from the rocks called 
Phaedriades, but the remark is an erroneous one, since 
these rocks were too far from Delphi, and the one from 
which he was thrown was, according to Lucian, in the 
neighbourhood of that city. {Phalans prior. — Op., 
ed. Bip., vol. 5, p. 46.—Compare Larcher, Hist. d'He¬ 
rod., vol. 7, p. 539.) Apollo, offended at this deed, 
sent all kinds of maladies upon the Delphians, who, in 
order to free themselves, caused proclamations to be 
made at all the great celebrations of Greece, that if 
there was any one entitled so to do, who would de¬ 
mand satisfaction from them for the death of HEsop, 
they would render it unto him. In the third genera¬ 
tion came a Samian, named Iadmon, a descendant of 
one of the former masters of the fabulist, and the Del¬ 
phians, having made atonement, were delivered from 
the evils under which they had been suffering. Such 
is the narrative of Plutarch. And we are also in¬ 
formed, that, to evince the sincerity of their repent¬ 
ance, they transferred the punishment of sacrilege, for 
the time to come, from the rock Hyampea to that 
named Nauplia. Other accounts, however, inform us, 
that HEsop offended the people of Delphi by compa¬ 
ring them to floating sticks, which appear at a dis¬ 
tance to be something great, but, on a near approach, 
dwindle away into insignificance, and that he was ac¬ 
cused, in consequence, of having carried off one of the 
vases consecrated to Apollo. The scholiast on Aris¬ 
tophanes {Vesp., 1486) informs us, that HEsop had ir¬ 
ritated the Delphians by remarking of them, that they 

61 



AESOPUS. 


AEST 


had no land, like other people, on the produce of which 
to support themselves, but were compelled to depend 
for subsistence on the remains of the sacrifices. De¬ 
termined to be revenged on him, they concealed a 
consecrated cup amid his baggage, and, when he was 
some distance from their city, pursued and arrested 
him. The production of the cup sealed his fate, and 
he was thrown from the rock Hyampea, as already 
mentioned. As they were leading him away to exe¬ 
cution, he is said to have recited to them the fable of 
the eagle and beetle, but without producing any effect. 
The memory of AEsop was highly honoured through¬ 
out Greece, and the Athenians erected a statue to him 
(.Phoedrus , 2 , Epil., 2 , seqq.), the work of the cele¬ 
brated Lysippus, which was placed opposite those of 
the seven sages. It must be candidly confessed, 
however, that little, if anything, is known with cer¬ 
tainty respecting the life of the fabulist, and what we 
have thus detailed of him appears to rest on little more 
than mere tradition, and the life which Planudes, a 
monk of the fourteenth century, is supposed to have 
given to the world; a piece of biography possessing 
few intrinsic claims to our belief. Hence some wri¬ 
ters have doubted whether such an individual as Asop 
ever existed. (Compare Visconti, Iconografia Greca, 
vol. 1, p. 154, where the common opinion is advoca¬ 
ted.) But, whatever we may think on this head, one 
point at least is certain, that none of the fables which 
at present go under the name of Asop were ever 
written by him. They appear to have been preserved 
for a long time in oral tradition, and only collected and 
reduced to writing at a comparatively late period. 
Plato ( Phcedon. — Op., pt. 2 , vol. 3, p. 9, ed. Bckker) 
informs us, that Socrates amused himself in prison, to¬ 
wards the close of his life, with versifying some of 
these fables. (Compare Pint., de And. Poet., p. 16, c., 
and Wyttenbach, ad loc.) His example found numer¬ 
ous imitators. A collection of the fables of Asop, 
as they were called, was also made by Demetrius 
Phalereus ( Diog. Laert., 5, 80), and another, between 
150 and 50 B.C., by a certain Babrius. (Compare 
Tyrwhitt, Dissert, de Babno, Bond., 1776, 8 vo.) The 
former of these was probably in prose ; the latter was 
in choliambic verse {rid. Babrius). But the bad taste 
of the grammarians, in a subsequent age, destroyed the 
metrical form of the fables of Babrius, and reduced 
them to prose. To them we owe the loss of a large 
portion of this collection. Various collections of Aeso¬ 
pian fables have reached our times, among which six 
have attained to a certain degree of celebrity. Of 
these the most ancient is not older than the thirteenth 
century ; the author is unknown. It is called the 
collection of Florence, and contains one hundred and 
ninety-nine fables, together with a puerile life of the 
fabulist by Planudes, a Greek monk of the fourteenth 
century. The second collection was made by an un¬ 
known hand in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. 
The monk Planudes formed the third collection. The 
fourth, called the Heidelberg collection, together with 
the fifth and sixth, styled, the former the Augsburg 
collection, the latter that of the Vatican, are the work 
of anonymous compilers. These last three contain 
many of the fables of Babrius reduced to bad prose. 
Besides the collections which have just been enumer¬ 
ated, we possess one of a character totally distinct 
from the rest. It is a Greek translation, executed in 
the fifteenth century by Michael Andreopulus, from a 
Syriac original, which would appear itself to have been 
nothing more than a translation from the Greek, by a 
Persian named Syntifa. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 
1 , p. 253.)—As regards the question, whether the fa¬ 
bles of the Arabian Lokman have served as a proto¬ 
type for those of Asop, or otherwise, it may be re¬ 
marked, that, in the opinion of De Sacy ( Biographie 
Universelle, vol. 24, p. 631, s. v. Lokman), the apo¬ 
logues of the Arabian fabulist are nothing more than 
62 


an imitation of some of those ascribed to Asop, and 
that they in no respect bear the marks of an Arabian 
invention. (Compare the observations of Erpenius, 
in the preface to his edition of Lokman, 1615.)—With 
respect to the person of Asop, it has been generally 
supposed that the statement of Planudes, which makes 
him to have been exceedingly deformed, his head of a 
conical shape, his belly protuberant, his limbs distort¬ 
ed, &c., was unworthy of credit. Visconti, however, 
supports the assertions of Planudes in this particular, 
from the remains of ancient sculpture. ( Iconografia 
Greca, vol. 1, p. 155.) — The best editions of Asop 
are the following : that of Heusinger, Lips., 1741, 
8 vo ; that of Ernesti, Lips., 1781, 8vo; that of Co¬ 
ray, Paris, 1810, 8vo ; and that of De Furia, Lips., 
1810, 8vo. — II. An eminent Roman tragedian, and 
the most formidable rival of the celebrated Roscius, 
though in a different line. Hence Quintilian (11,3) 
remarks, “ Roscius citatior, JEsopus gravior fuit, 
quod ille comeedias, hie tragoedias cgit .” His surname 
was Clodius, probably from his being a freedman of 
the Clodian or Claudian family. He is supposed to 
have been born in the first half of the seventh century 
of Rome, since Cicero, in a letter written A.U.C. 699 
( Ep. ad Fam., 7, 1), speaks of him as advanced in 
years. Some idea of the energy with which he acted 
his parts on the stage may be formed from the anec¬ 
dote related by Plutarch ( Vit. Cic., 5), who informs us, 
that on one occasion, as Asopus was perfoiming the 
part of Atreus, at the moment when he is meditating 
vengeance, he gave so violent a blow with his sceptre 
to a slave who approached, as to strike him lifeless to 
the earth. A circumstance mentioned by Valerius 
Maximus (8, 10, 2) shows with what care Asopus 
and Roscius studied the characters which they repre¬ 
sented on the stage. Whenever a cause of any im¬ 
portance was to be tried, and an orator of any emi¬ 
nence was to plead therein, these two actors were 
accustomed to mix with the spectators, and carefully 
observe the movements of the speakers as well as the 
expression of their countenances. AEsopus, like Ros¬ 
cius, lived in great intimacy with Cicero, as may be 
seen in various passages in the correspondence of the 
latter. He appeared for the last time in public on 
the day when the theatre of Pompey w as dedicated, 
A.U.C. 699, but his physical powers were unequal to 
the effort, and his voice failed him at the very begin¬ 
ning of an adjuration, “ Si sciens fallo.” (Cic., Ep. 
ad Fam., 7, 1.) He amassed a very large fortune, 
which his son squandered in a career of the most ridic¬ 
ulous extravagance. It is this son of w hom Horace 
(Sat., 2, 3, 239) relates, that he dissolved a costly pearl 
in vinegar, and drank it off. Compare the statement 
of Pliny (9, 59).—III. An engraver, most probably 
of Sigseum. The time when he lived is uncertain. In 
connection with some brother-artist, he made a large 
cup, with a stand and strainer, dedicated by Phanodi- 
cus, son of Hermocrates, in the Prytaneum at Sigseum. 
(Consult the remarks of Hermann, iiber Bockh's Be- 
handlung der Gnech. lnschnft., p. 216-219.) — IV. 
Vid. Supplement. 

Astii, a nation of Germany, dwelling along the 
southeastern shores of the Baltic Sea. Hence the 
origin of their name, from the Teutonic Est, “ east,” 
as indicating a community dwelling in the eastern part 
of Germany. (Compare the English Essex, i. e., 
JEstsexia.) They carried on a traffic in amber, which 
was found in great abundance along their shores. 
This circumstance alone would lead us to place them 
in a part of modern Prussia, in the country probably 
beyond Dantzic. Tacitus calls their position “ the 
right side of the Suevic” or Baltic “ Sea.” It is incor¬ 
rect to assign them to modern Esthonia. Either this 
last is a general name for any country lying to the 
east, or else the Esthians of Esthonia came originally 
from what is now Prussia. The Astii worshipped, 




ETH 


ETHIOPIA. 


according to Tacitus, the mother of the gods, Hertha, 
and the symbol of her worship was a wild boar. Now, 
as this animal was sacred to Freya, the Scandinavian 
"V enus, and as Freya is often confounded with Frigga, 
the mother of the gods in the Scandinavian mythology, 
Tacitus evidently fell into a similar error, and misun¬ 
derstood his informers. (Tacit., M. G., 45.— Pink¬ 
erton, Diss. on Scythians, &c., p. 168.) 

Esula, a town of Latium, the site of which remains 
undiscovered. Horace (Od., 3, 29, 6) speaks of it in 
the same line with Tibur, whence it is naturally sup¬ 
posed to have stood in the vicinity of that place. Pliny 
(3,5) enumerates Esula among the Latin towns, which 
no longer existed in his time. Velleius Paterculus 
(1,14) calls the place Esulum, and reckons it among 
the colonies of Rome. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, 2, 66.) 

Esyetes, a Trojan prince, supposed by some to 
have been the parent of Antenor and Ucalegon, while 
others make him to have been descended from a more 
ancient Ucalegon, who had married Ilios, the daughter 
of Laomedon. Homer (II., 13, 427) mentions Alcath- 
ous as the son of Esyetes, and the son-in-law of An- 
chises, who had given him his eldest daughter Hippo- 
damia in marriage. (Ilcync, ad II., 2, 793.) The 
tomb of Esyetes is alluded to by Homer (II., 2, 793), 
and is said by Strabo (599) to have been five stadia dis¬ 
tant from Troy, and on the road leading to Alexandrea 
Troas. It afforded a very convenient post of observa¬ 
tion in the Trojan war. Dr. Clarke gives the follow¬ 
ing account of it (Travels, &c., vol. 3, p. 92, seqq., 
Eng. ed.) : “ Coming opposite to the bay, which has 
been considered as the naval station used by the Greeks 
during the Trojan war, and which is situate on the 
eastern side of the embouchure of the Mender, the eye 
of the spectator is attracted by an object predomina¬ 
ting over every other, and admirably adapted, by the 
singularity of its form, as well as by the peculiarity 
of its situation, to overlook that station, together 
with the whole of the low coast near the mouth of the 
river. This object is a conical mound, rising from a 
line of elevated territory behind the bay and the mouth 
of the river. It has, therefore, been pointed out as the 
tomb of Esyetes, and is now called Udjek Tepc. If 
we had never heard or read a single syllable concern¬ 
ing the war of Troy, or the works of Homer, it would 
have been impossible not to notice the remarkable ap¬ 
pearance presented by this tumulus, so peculiarly 
placed as a post of observation commanding all ap¬ 
proach to the harbour and river.” In another part (p. 
198), the same intelligent traveller observes : “ The 
tumulus of HCsyetes is, of all others, the spot most re¬ 
markably adapted for viewing the Plain of Troy, and 
it is visible in almost all parts of Troas. From its top 
may be traced the course of the Scamander ; the whole 
chain of Ida, stretching towards Lectum ; the snowy 
heights of Gargarus, and all the shores of the Helles¬ 
pont near the mouth of the river, with Sigseum, and 
the other tumuli upon the coast.” Bryant endeavours 
to show, that what the Greeks regarded as the tombs of 
princes and warriors, were not so in reality, but were, 
for the most part, connected with old religious rites 
and customs, and used for religious purposes. (My¬ 
thology, vol. 2, p. 167, seqq.) Lechevalier, however, 
successfully refutes this. 

Esymnetes. Vid. Supplement. 

Ethalia. Vid. Ilva. 

Ethalides, a son of Mercury, and herald of the Ar¬ 
gonauts, who obtained from his father the privilege of 
being among the dead and the living at stated times. 
Hence he was called erepr/yepoq uppuS,, from his spend¬ 
ing one day in Hades, and the next upon earth, alter¬ 
nately. It is said also that his soul underwent various 
transmigrations, and that he appeared successively as 
Euphorbus, son of Panthus, Pyrus the Cretan, anElean 
whose name is not known, and Pythagoras. (Schol., 
ad loc.) 


-Ether (A Wyp), a personified idea of the mythical 
cosmogonies. ( Vid. Supplement.) 

Ethices, a Thessalian tribe of uncertain but ancient 
origin, since they are mentioned by Homer (II., 2, 744), 
who states that the Centaurs, expelled by Pirithous from 
Mount Pelion, withdrew to the Ethices. Strabo (327 
and 434) says, that they inhabited the Thessalian side 
of Pindus, near the sources of the Peneus, but that their 
possession of the latter was disputed by the Tymphsei, 
who were contiguous to them on the Epirotic side of 
the mountain. Marsyas, a writer cited by Stephanus 
Byzantinus (s. v. AWuda), described the Ethices as a 
most daring race of barbarians, whose sole object was 
robbery and plunder. Lycophron (u. 802) calls Poly- 
sperchon A W'uciov npoyop. Scarcely any trace of this 
people remained in the time of Strabo. 

Ethicus. Vid. Supplement. 

-Ethiopia, an extensive country of Africa, to the 
south of Egypt, lying along the Sinus Arabicus and 
Mare Erythrseum, and extending also far inland. An 
idea of its actual limits will best be formed from a view 
of the gradual progress of Grecian discovery in relation 
to this region. Ethiops (A Wioip) was the expression 
used by the Greeks for everything which had contract¬ 
ed a dark or swarthy colour from exposure to the heat 
of the sun (aldo, “ to burn," and dnp, “ the visage"). 
The term was applied also to men of a dark complexion, 
and the early Greeks named all of such a colour Ethi- 
opes, and their country -Ethiopia, wherever situated. 
It is more than probable that the Greeks obtained their 
knowledge of the existence of such a race of men from 
the Phoenician sand Egyptians, and that this knowledge, 
founded originally on mere report, w T as subsequently 
confirmed by actual inspection, when the Greek colo¬ 
nists along the shores of Asia Minor, in their commer¬ 
cial intercourse with Sidon and Egypt, beheld there 
the caravans which had come in from Southern Africa. 
Homer makes express mention of the Ethiopians in 
many parts of his poems, and speaks of two divisions 
of them, the Eastern and Western. The explanation 
given by Eustathius and other Greek writers respect¬ 
ing these two classes of men, as described by the poet, 
cannot be the true one. They make the Nile to have 
been the dividing line (Eustath., p. 1386, ad Hem., Od., 
1 , 23); but this is too refined for Homer’s geographi¬ 
cal acquaintance with the interior of Africa. By the 
Eastern Ethiopians he means merely the imbrowned 
natives of Southern Arabia, who brought their wares 
to Sidon, and who were believed to dwell in the imme¬ 
diate vicinity of the rising sun. The Egyptians were ac¬ 
quainted with another dark-coloured nation, the Liby¬ 
ans. These, although the poet carefully distinguishes 
their country from that ofthe Ethiopians (Od., 4, 84), 
still become, in opposition to the Eastern, the poet’s 
Western Ethiopians, the more especially as it remain¬ 
ed unknown how far the latter extended to the west and 
south. This idea, originating thus in early antiquity, 
respecting the existence of two distinct classes of dark- 
coloured men, gained new strength at a later period. 
In the immense army of Xerxes were to be seen men 
of a swarthy complexion from the Persian provinces in 
the vicinity of India, and others again, of similar visage, 
from the countries lying to the south of Egypt. With 
the exception of colour, they had nothing in common 
with each other. Their language, manners, physical 
make, armour, &c., were entirely different. Notwith¬ 
standing this, however, they were both regarded as 
Ethiopians. (Compare Herodotus, 7, 69, seqq., and 3, 
94, seqq.) The Ethiopians of the farther east disap¬ 
peared gradually from remembrance, while a more in¬ 
timate intercourse with Egypt brought the Ethiopians 
of Africa more frequently into view, and it is to these, 
therefore, that we now turn our attention.—Ethiopia, 
according to Herodotus, includes the countries above 
Egypt, the present Nubia and Abyssinia. Immediate¬ 
ly above Syene and Elephantine, remarks this writer 

63 



^ETHIOPIA. 


^ETHIOPIA. 


(2, 29), the /Ethiopian race begins. As far as the town 
and island of Tachompso, seventy or eighty miles above 
Syene, these are mixed with Egyptians, and higher up 
dwell /Ethiopians alone. The /Ethiopians he distin¬ 
guishes into the inhabitants ofMeroe and the Macrobii. 
In Strabo (800) and Pliny (6,29) we find other tribes and 
towns referred to, but the most careful division is that 
by Agatharchides, whose work on the Red Sea is unfor¬ 
tunately lost, with the exception of some fragments. 
Agatharchides divides them according to their way of 
life. Some carried on agriculture, cultivating the mil¬ 
let ; others were herdsmen ; while some lived by the 
chase and on vegetables, and others, again, along the 
sea-shore, on fish and marine animals. The rude tribes 
who lived on the coast and fed on fish are called by 
Agatharchides the Ichthyophagi. Along both banks of 
the Astaboras dwelt another nation, who lived on the 
roots of reeds growing in the neighbouring swamps : 
these roots they cut to pieces with stones, formed them 
into a tenacious mass, and dried them in the sun. Close 
to these dwelt the Hylophagi, who lived on the fruits 
of trees, vegetables growing in the valleys, &c. To 
the west of these were the hunting nations, who fed 
on wild beasts, which they killed with the arrow. There 
were also other tribes, who lived on the flesh of the ele¬ 
phant and the ostrich, the Elephantophdgi and Struth- 
ophagi. Besides these, he mentions another and less 
populous tribe, who fed on locusts, which came in 
swarms from the southern and unknown districts. 
( Agatharch ., de Ruhr. Mar. — Gcograph. Gr. Min., ed. 
Hudson, vol. 1, p. 37, seqq .) The accuracy with which 
Agatharchides has pointed out the situation of these 
tribes, does not occasion much difficulty in assimilating 
them to the modern inhabitants of /Ethiopia. Accord¬ 
ing to him, they dwelt along the banks of the Astabo¬ 
ras, which separated them from Meroe ; this river is 
the Atbar, or, as it is also called, the Tacazze; they 
must, consequently, have dwelt in the present Shan- 
galla. The mode of life with these people has not in 
the least varied for 2000 years ; although cultivated 
pations are situate around them, they have made no 
progress in improvement themselves. Their land be¬ 
ing unfavourable both to agriculture and the rearing of 
cattle, they are compelled to remain mere hunters. 
Most of the different tribes mentioned by Agatharchi¬ 
des subsist in a similar manner. The Dobenahs, the 
most powerful tribe among the Shangallas, still live 
on the elephant and the rhinoceros. The Baasa, in 
the plains of Sire, yet eat the flesh of the lion, the 
wild hog, and even serpents : and farther to the west 
dwells a tribe, who subsist in the summer on the locust, 
and at other seasons on the crocodile, hippopotamus, and 
fish. Diodorus Siculus (3, 28) remarks, that almost all 
these people die of verminous diseases produced by this 
food ; and Bruce ( Travels, 3 d ed., vol. 5, p. 83) makes 
the same observation with respect to the Waito, on the 
Lake Dambea, who live on crocodiles and other Nile 
animals. Besides these inhabitants of the plains, ^Ethi¬ 
opia was peopled by a more powerful, and somewhat 
more civilized, shepherd-nation, who dwelt in the caves 
of the neighbouring mountains, namely, the Troglo¬ 
dytes. A chain of high mountains runs along the Afri¬ 
can shore of the Arabian Gulf, which in Egypt are com¬ 
posed ofgranite, marble, and alabaster, but farther south 
of a softer kind of stone. At the foot of the gulf these 
mountains turn inward, and bound the southern portion 
of Abyssinia. This chain was, in the most ancient 
times, inhabited by these Troglodytes, in the holes and 
grottoes formed by nature but enlarged by human la¬ 
bour. These people were not hunters ; they were 
herdsmen, and had their chiefs or princes of the race. 
Remains of the Troglodytes still exist in the Shipo, 
Hazorta, &c., mentioned by Bruce (vol. 4, p. 266). 
A still more celebrated ./Ethiopian nation, and one 
which has been particularly described to us by Herod¬ 
otus (3, 17, seqq.), was the Macrobii, for an account of 
64 


whom, and of the state and city ofMeroe, the student 
is referred to these articles respectively. Under the 
latter of these heads some remarks will also be offered 
respecting the trade of /Ethiopia.—The early and cu¬ 
rious belief respecting the /Ethiopian race, that they 
stood highest in the favour of the gods, and that the 
deities of Olympus, at stated seasons, enjoyed among 
them the festive hospitality of the banquet, would seem 
to have arisen from the peculiar relation in which Me¬ 
roe stood to the adjacent countries as the parent city 
of civilization and religion. Piety and rectitude were 
the first virtues with a nation whose dominion was 
founded on religion and commerce, not on oppression. 
The active imagination, however, of the early Greeks, 
gave a different turn to this feature in the /Ethiopian 
character, and, losing sight of the true cause, or, per¬ 
haps, never having been acquainted with it, they sup¬ 
posed that a race of men, who could endure such in¬ 
tense heat as they were thought to encounter, must be a 
nobler order of beings than the human family in gen¬ 
eral ; and that they who dwelt so near the rising and 
setting of the orb of day, could not but be in closer 
union than the rest of their species with the inhabitants 
of the skies. (Compare Mannert , 10, 103.)—The ^Ethi¬ 
opians were intimately connected with the Egyptians 
in the early ages of their monarchy, and ./Ethiopian 
princes, and whole dynasties, occupied the throne of 
the Pharaohs at various times, even to a late period 
before the Persian conquest. The ^Ethiopians had 
the same religion, the same sacerdotal order, the 
same hieroglyphic writing, the same rites of sepul¬ 
ture and ceremonies as the Egyptians. Religious 
pomps and processions were celebrated in common 
between the two nations. The images of the gods 
were at certain times conveyed up the Nile, from their 
Egyptian temples to others in /Ethiopia ; and, after the 
conclusion of a festival, were brought back again into 
Egypt. ( Diod . Sic., 1 , 33.— Eustath. ad II., 1 , 423.) 
The ruins of temples found of late in the countries 
above Egypt (vid. Meroe), and which are quite in the 
Egyptian style, confirm these accounts ; they were, 
doubtless, the temples of the ancient /Ethiopians. It 
is nowhere asserted that the ^Ethiopians and Egyptians 
used the same language, but this seems to be implied, 
and is extremely probable. We learn from Diodorus, 
that the /Ethiopians claimed the first invention of the 
arts and philosophy of Egypt, and even pretended to 
have planted the first colonies of Egypt, soon after that 
country had emerged from the waters of the Nile, or 
rather of the Mediterranean, by which it was tradition¬ 
ally reported to have been covered. The /Ethiopians, 
in later times, had political relations with the Ptole¬ 
mies, and Diodorus saw ambassadors of this nation 
in Egypt in the time of Caesar, or Augustus. An 
/Ethiopian queen, named Candace, made a treaty with 
Augustus, and a princess of the same name is men¬ 
tioned by St. Luke in the Acts of the Apostles. How 
far the dominion of the /Ethiopian princes extended 
is unknown, but they probably had at one period pos¬ 
sessions on the coast of the Red Sea, and relations 
with Arabia. After this we find no farther mention of 
the ancient /Ethiopian empire. Other names occur in 
the countries intervening between Egypt and Abys¬ 
sinia ; and when the term /Ethiopian is again met with 
in a later age, it is found to have been transferred to 
the princes and people of Habesh. Such is the his¬ 
tory ofHCthiopia among the profane writers. By the 
Hebrews the same people are mentioned frequently 
under the name of Cush, which by the Septuagint 
translators is always rendered kldioTveg, or /Ethiopians. 
The Hebrew term is, however, applied sometimes to 
nations dwelling on the eastern shore of the Red Sea, 
and hence a degree of ambiguity respecting its mean¬ 
ing in some instances. This subject has been amply 
discussed by Bochart and Michaelis. Among the He¬ 
brews of later times, the term Cush clearly belongs to 



/ETHIOPIA. 


^TH 


the /Ethiopians. The /Ethiopians, who were con¬ 
nected with the Egyptians by affinity and intimate po¬ 
litical relations, are by the later Hebrew historians 
termed Cush. Thus Tizhakah, the Cushite invader of 
Judah, is evidently Tearchon the ./Ethiopian leader 
mentioned by Strabo, and the same who is termed 
Tarakos, and is set down by Manetho, in the well- 
known tables of dynasties, as an /Ethiopian king of 
Egypt. In the earlier ages the term Cush belonged 
apparently to the same nation or race ; though it would 
appear that the Cush or /Ethiopians of those times oc¬ 
cupied both sides of the Red Sea. The Cush men¬ 
tioned by Moses are pointed out by him to be a nation 
of kindred origin with the Egyptians. In the Toldoth 
Beni Noach, or Archives of the sons of Noah, which 
Michaelis ( Spicileg. Geogr. Hcbr. Ext.) has proved to 
contain a digest of the historical and geographical 
knowledge of the ancient world, it is said, that the Cush 
and the Misraim were brothers, which means, as it is 
generally allowed, nations nearly allied by kindred. 
It is very probable that the first people who settled in 
Arabia were Cushite nations, who were afterward ex¬ 
pelled or succeeded by the Beni Yoktan or true Arabs. 
In the enumeration of the descendants of Cush in the 
Toldoth Beni Noach, several tribes or settlements are 
mentioned in Arabia, as Saba and Havila. When the 
author afterward proceeds to the descendants of Yok¬ 
tan, the very same places are enumerated among their 
settlements. That the Cush had in remote times 
possessions in Asia, is evident from the history ofNim- 
rod, a Cushite chieftain, who is said to have possessed 
several cities of the Assyrians, among which was Ba¬ 
bel, or Babylon, in Shinar. Long after their departure 
the name of the Cush remained behind them on the 
coast of the Red Sea. It is probable that the name 
of Cush continued to be given to tribes which had suc¬ 
ceeded the genuine Cushites in the possession of their 
ancient territories in Arabia, after the whole of that 
people had passed into Africa, just as the English are 
termed Britons, and the Dutch race of modern times 
Belgians. In this way it happened, that people, re¬ 
mote in race from the family of Ham, are yet named 
Cush, as the Midianites, who were descended from 
Abraham. The daughter of Jethro, the Midianite, is 
termed a Cushite woman. Even in this instance, the 
correspondence of Cush and /Ethiopia has been pre¬ 
served. We find the word rendered Mthioyissa by 
the Septuagint translators, and in the verses of Eze¬ 
kiel, the Jewish Hellenistic poet, Jethro is placed in 
Africa, and his people are termed /Ethiopians. On the 
whole, it may be considered as clearly established, 
that the Cush are the genuine /Ethiopian race, and 
that the country of the Cush is generally in Scripture 
that part of Africa which lies above Egypt. In support 
of these positions may be cited, not only the authority 
of the Septuagint, and the writers already mentioned, 
but the concurring testimony of the Vulgate, and all 
other ancient versions, with that of Philo, Josephus, 
Eupolemus, and all the Jewish commentators and 
Christian fathers. There is only one writer of anti¬ 
quity on the other side, and he was probably misled 
by the facts which we have already considered. This 
single dissentient is the writer of Jonathan’s Targum, 
and on this authority the learned Bochart, supported by 
some doubtful passages, maintains that the land of Cush 
was situated on the eastern side of the Arabian Gulf. 
It has been satisfactorily shown, however, by the au¬ 
thors of the Universal History, and by Michaelis, that 
many of these passages require a different version, and 
prove that the land of Cush was /Ethiopia. ( Prich¬ 
ard's Physical History of Man , 2d cd., vol. 1, p. 289, 
scqq .)—As regards the physical character of the ancient 
/Ethiopians, it may be remarked that the Greeks com¬ 
monly used the term /Ethiopian nearly as we use that 
of negro : they constantly spoke of the /Ethiopians, as 
we speak of the negroes, as if they were the blackest 
I 


people known in the world. “ To wash the /Ethiopian 
white,” was a proverbial expression applied to a hope¬ 
less attempt. It may be thought that the term /Ethiopi¬ 
an was perhaps used vaguely, to signify all or many Af¬ 
rican nations of dark colour, and that the genuine /Ethi¬ 
opians may not have been quite so black as others 
But it must be observed, that though other black na¬ 
tions may be called by that name when taken in a 
wider sense, this can only have happened in conse¬ 
quence of their resemblance to those from whom the 
term originated. It is improbable that the /Ethiopians 
were destitute of a particular character, the possession 
of which was the very reason why other nations parti¬ 
cipated in their name, and came to be confounded with 
them. And the most accurate writers, as Strabo, for 
example, apply the term /Ethiopian in the same way. 
Strabo, in the 15th book (686), cites the opinion of 
Theodectes, who attributed to the vicinity of the sun 
the black colour and woolly hair of the /Ethiopians. 
Herodotus expressly affirms (7, 70), that the /Ethiopi¬ 
ans of the west, that is, of Africa, have the most woolly 
hair of all nations : in this respect, he says, they dif¬ 
fered from the Indians and Eastern /Ethiopians, who 
were likewise black, but had straight hair. Moreover, 
the Hebrews, who, in consequence of their intercourse 
with Egypt under the Pharaohs, could not fail to know 
the proper application of the national term Cush, seem 
to have had a proverbial expression similar to that of 
the Greeks, “ Can the Cush change his colour, or the 
leopard his spots'?” ( Jeremiah , 13, 23.) This is 
sufficient to prove, that the /Ethiopian was the darkest 
race of people known to the Greeks, and, in earlier 
times, to the Hebrews. The only way of avoiding 
the inference, that the /Ethiopians were genuine ne¬ 
groes, must be by the supposition, that the ancients, 
among whom the foregoing expressions were current, 
were not acquainted with any people exactly resem¬ 
bling the people of Guinea, and therefore applied the 
terms woolly-haired, flat-nosed, &c., to nations who 
had these characters in a much less degree than those 
people whom we now term negroes. It seems possi¬ 
ble, that the people termed /Ethiopians by the Greeks, 
and Cush by the Hebrew writers, may either of them 
have been of the race of the Shangalla, Shilluk, or 
other negro tribes, who now inhabit the countries 
bordering on the Nile, to the southward of Sennaar; or 
they may have been the ancestors of the present Nouba 
or Barabra, or of people resembling them in descrip¬ 
tion. The chief obstacle to our adopting the supposi¬ 
tion that these /Ethiopians were of the Shangalla race, 
or of any stock resembling them, is the circumstance, 
that so near a connexion appears to have subsisted be¬ 
tween the former and the Egyptians; and we know 
that the Egyptians were not genuine negroes. Per¬ 
haps, after all, however, we would be more correct in 
considering the Bedjas, and their descendants the 
Abadbe and Bisharein, as the posterity of the ancient 
/Ethiopians. Both the Abadbe and Bisharein belong 
to the class of red, or copper-coloured people. The 
former are described by Belzoni ( Travels , p. 310), 
and the latter by Burckhardt ( Travels in Nubia). 

/Ethlius. Vid. Supplement. 

/Ethra, daughter of Pittheus, king ofTroezene, and 
mother of Theseus by/Egeus. (Vid. /Egeus.) She 
was betrothed, in the first instance, to Bellerophon; 
but this individual being compelled to fly, in conse¬ 
quence of having accidentally killed his brother, /Ethra 
remained under her father’s roof. When /Egeus came 
to consult Pittheus respecting an obscure oracle which 
the former had received from the Delphic shrine, Pit¬ 
theus managed to intoxicate him, and give him the 
company of his daughter. From this intercourse sprang 
Theseus. ( Vid. /Egeus.) /Ethra was afterward taken 
captive by Castor and Pollux, when these two came in 
quest of Helen, whom Theseus had carried off, and , 
made themselves masters of Athens. She accompa- 

65 




AETIUS. 


AETIUS. 


nied Helen to Troy when the latter was abducted by 
Paris, and, on the fall of Troy, she was restored to 
her home by Acamas and Demophoon, her grandsons, 
and the sons of Theseus. ( Apollod ., 3, 15, 4.— Id., 
3, 10, 7.— Heyne, ad Apollod., 1. c.) 

Aetion, I. a famous painter, who lived in the time 
of Alexander the Great. He executed a painting of 
the nuptials of Alexander and Roxana ; and the piece 
was so much admired at the Olympic Games, whither 
the artist had carried it for exhibition, that the presi¬ 
dent of the games gave him his daughter in marriage. 
Such is Lucian’s account {Her., 5), who saw this 
painting in Italy. In another passage, likewise, he 
refers to this production of Aetion’s, and bestows the 
highest praises on the lips of Roxana. {Imag., 7.) 
Raphael is said to have traced, from Lucian’s descrip¬ 
tion of this work of art, one of his most brilliant com¬ 
positions.—II. A sculptor, who flourished about the 
middle of the third century before the Christian era, 
and who is known from Theocritus {Epigr., 7). At 
the request of Nicias, then a celebrated physician at 
Miletus, he made a statue of iEsculapius out of 
cedar. (As regards the reading ’A eriovi, for the com¬ 
mon ’H et'lcjvl, consult Kiessling, ad loc .) — III. An 
engraver on precious stones, whose age is uncertain. 
{Bracci, 18.— Silhg, Diet. Art., s. v.) 

Aetius, I. an heresiarch of the fourth century, sur- 
named by his adversaries the Atheist. He was the 
son of a common soldier, and born at Antioch. His 
poverty compelling him to live by the labour of his 
hands, he commenced by being a vine-dresser, and 
was afterward, in succession, a coppersmith and jew¬ 
eller. Being forced to abandon this latter calling, for 
having substituted a bracelet of gilt copper for one of 
gold, he followed the trade of an empiric, or charlatan, 
with some success, but was at last driven from Anti¬ 
och, and went to study logic at Alexandrea. As he 
never attained any great skill in this latter science, and 
was, at the same time, but little versed in the sacred 
w'ritings, he easily fell into the new religious errors of 
the day, to which he added many others of his own. 
Epiphanius has preserved forty-seven erroneous prop¬ 
ositions, selected from his works, which contained 
more than three hundred. The principal ones con¬ 
sisted in teaching, that the Son of God was not like 
the Father; in pretending to know God by himself; 
in regarding the most culpable actions as the wants of 
nature ; in rejecting the authority of the prophets and 
apostles ; in rebaptizing in the name of the uncreated 
God, and of the Holy Spirit procreated by the created 
Son ; in asserting that faith is sufficient without works, 
&c. His other errors were nothing more than mere 
sophisms founded on verbal equivocations. He was 
ordained deacon by Leontius, an Arian bishop, who 
was soon compelled to forbid him the exercise of his 
ministerial functions. After a succession of stormy 
conflicts, he was exiled by Constantius to Cilicia. 
Julian recalled him, and assigned him lands near Myt- 
ilene, in the island of Lesbos. He was even ordained 
bishop ; and, having escaped punishment, which hb 
w r as afterward on the point of undergoing for his at¬ 
tachment to the cause of the Emperor Valens, he died 
at Constantinople A.D. 366, and was honoured with a 
splendid funeral. ( S. Athanas., de Synod. — Socrat., 
Hist. Eccles., 1, 28.— August. Hcer. — Baron., Annal. 
Ann., 356.)—II. A celebrated Roman general, born 
at Dorostolus, in Mcesia. His father Gaudentius, a 
Scythian, attained to the highest military employments, 
and was killed in Gaul during a mutiny of the soldiers. 
Aetius, brought up among the imperial body-guards, 
and given at an early period as a hostage to the formida¬ 
ble Alaric, learned the art of war under this conqueror, 
and profited by his stay among the barbarians to secure 
the attachment of a people whom he was destined to 
have alternately as enemies and allies. In A.D. 424, the 
usurper John wishing to seize the sceptre of the west, 
66 


Aetius undertook to procure for him the assistance of 
the Huns. John, however, was conquered, and Aetius 
immediately submitted to Yalentinian, who reigned in 
the west under the guardianship of his mother Placid- 
ia. Eagerly desirous of the imperial favours, and jeal¬ 
ous of the credit of Count Boniface, Aetius formed a 
treacherous scheme against him, the result of which 
was the revolt of Boniface, who invited Genseric and 
the Vandals into Africa. A subsequent explanation 
between Boniface and Placidia came too late to save 
Africa, but it served to expose the intrigues of Aetius, 
who at this time was crushing the Franks and Bur¬ 
gundians in Gaul. Placidia did not dare to punish 
him, but she bestowed new honours upon Boniface. 
Rendered furious by this, Aetius flew back to Italy 
with a few troops, encountered and gave battle to his 
rival, was conquered, but with his own hand wounded 
Boniface, who died shortly after, A.D. 432. Placidia 
was desirous of avenging his death, but Aetius retired 
among the Huns, and reappeared subsequently at the 
head of sixty thousand barbarians to demand his par¬ 
don. Placidia restored to him his charges and hon¬ 
ours, and Aetius returned to Gaul to serve the empire, 
which he defended with great valour as long as his 
own ambitious views permitted this to be done. His 
most brilliant feat in this quarter w r as the overthrow 
of Attila, who had crossed the Rhine and Seine with 
his Huns, and laid siege to Orleans. Aetius marched 
against him with a powerful army, and met his adver¬ 
sary, who had raised the siege of Orleans and recross¬ 
ed the Seine, in the Catalaunian plains, near the mod¬ 
ern Chalons. The contest was bloody but decisive, 
and three hundred thousand men fell on both sides. 
Notwithstanding, however, this brilliant achievement, 
Aetius, in his turn, became the' victim of court in¬ 
trigue, and being sent for by Yalentinian, and having 
approached him without distrust, was on a sudden 
stabbed to the heart by that suspicious and cowardly 
emperor. His death happened A.D. 454. {Procop., 
de Reh. Goth., 5.*— Jornandes, de Regn. Success., c. 
19. —Paul Diacon., Hist. Miscell., 19, 16.— Biogra- 
phie Universelle, vol. 1, p. 267.)—III. A physician 
of Amida, in Mesopotamia, who flourished at the close 
of the fifth century and the beginning of the sixth. 
The works of Aetius are a valuable collection of med¬ 
ical facts and opinions, being deficient only in arrange¬ 
ment ; since on several subjects their merit is trans¬ 
cendent. For example, the principles of the Materia 
Medica are delivered with admirable precision in the 
beginning of the first book. Of all the ancient trea¬ 
tises on fever, that contained in the fifth book of Ae¬ 
tius may be instanced as being the most complete; 
and it would not be easy perhaps, at the present day, 
to point out a work so full on all points, and so correct 
in practice. Of contagion, as an exciting cause of 
fever, he makes no mention ; and as his silence, and 
that of the other medical authors of antiquity, has often 
been thought unaccountable, it may be proper to say a 
few words in explanation. Palladius, w 7 ho has given 
a most comprehensive abstract of the doctrines of Ga¬ 
len and his successors on the subject of fever, enu¬ 
merates the following exciting causes of fevers : 1st. 
The application of a suitable material; as when things 
of a caleficient nature, such as pepper, mustard, and 
the like, are taken immoderately by a person of a hot 
temperament: 2d. Motion ; which may be either men¬ 
tal or corporeal: 3d. Constriction of the pores of the 
skin, occasioned either by the thickness of the hu¬ 
mours, or the coldness and dryness of the surround¬ 
ing atmosphere (this, by-the-by, accords with Dr. 
Cullen’s Theory of spasm of the extreme vessels): 
4th. Putrefaction of the fluids : 5th. The application 
of heat, such as by exposure of the head to the sun.— 
Epidemical fevers the ancients considered as being oc¬ 
casioned by a depraved state of the atmosphere, ari¬ 
sing from putrid miasmata, or similar causes. With- 




AETIUS. 


ETNA. 


out doubt, in cases of malignant fevers, they were 
aware that the effluvia from the bodies of those afflict¬ 
ed with them contaminated the surrounding atmo¬ 
sphere, and that the fevers were propagated in this 
manner. Hence Galen, Caelius Aurelianus, Rhazes, 
and Avicenna, rank the plague among those complaints 
which pass from one person to another ; and Isidorus 
defines the plague thus : “ Pcstilcntia est contagmm, 
quod, dum unum apprehenderit, celenter ad plurcs 
transit .” At the same time, as they did not ascribe 
the origin and propagation of these disorders to a pe¬ 
culiar virus, they did not think it necessary to treat of 
contagion as a distinct cause of fever, because, in this 
view of the matter, it is clearly referrible to some one 
of the general causes enumerated above. Thus, the 
atmosphere of the ill-ventilated apartment of a patient 
in fever becoming vitiated, and being inhaled by a per¬ 
son in health, might occasion fever, either by produ¬ 
cing constriction of the pores of the skin, or putrefac¬ 
tion of the fluids, and accordingly would be referred 
either to the 3d or the 4th class of general causes. In 
a word, the opinions of the ancients upon this subject 
seem to have corresponded very much with those of 
the more reasonable Macleanites of the present day, 
who, although they deny that fever, strictly speaking, 
is contagious, admit that it is contaminative.—Aetius 
is the first medical author who has given a distinct ac¬ 
count of the Dracunculus, or Vermis Medinensis, now 
commonly known by the name of Guinea-worm. He 
treats of this disease so fully, that Rhazes and Avicem 
na have supplied but little additional information, nor 
have the moderns, in any considerable degree, im¬ 
proved upon the knowledge of the ancients. The 
method of treating Aneurism at the elbow-joint is de¬ 
serving of attention, as being a near approximation to 
the improved method of operating introduced by John 
Hunter and Abernethy. He directs the operator to 
make a longitudinal incision along the inner side of the 
arm, three or four fingers’ breadth below the armpit, 
and having laid bare the artery, and dissected it from 
the surrounding parts, to raise it up with a blind hook, 
and, introducing two threads, to tie them separately 
and divide the artery in the middle. Had he stopped 
here, his method would have been a complete antici¬ 
pation of the plan of proceeding now practised ; but, 
unfortunately, not having sufficient confidence in the 
absorbing powers of the system, he gives directions to 
open the tumour and evacuate its contents. Many 
nice operations upon the eye and surrounding parts 
are accurately described by him.—On the obstetrical 
department of surgery he is fuller than any other an¬ 
cient writer.—He has also given an account of many 
pharmaceutical operations which are not noticed else¬ 
where. The work of Aetius, divided by the copyists 
into four Tetrabibli , and each Tetrabiblus into four 
discourses, consisted originally of sixteen books. The 
first eight only were printed in Greek at Venice, by 
the heirs of Aldus Manutius, fol., 1534. The others 
have remained in MS., in the libraries of Vienna and 
Paris. Various editions have been published of the 
Latin translation of the entire work by Janus Corna- 
rius, under the title of Contracts ex veteribus Mcdi- 
cince tetrabiblis, at Venice, 1543, in 8vo ; at Basle, 
1542, 1549, in fol. ; another at Basle, 1535, fol., of 
which the first seven and the last three books were trans¬ 
lated by Montanus ; two at Lyons, 1549, fol., and 1560, 
4 vols. 12mo, with notes of but little value, by Hugo de 
Soleriis ; and one at Paris, 1567, fol., among the Med¬ 
ico, Artis Principes. —IV. Sicanus, or Siculus, a phy¬ 
sician, and native of Sicily, as is commonly supposed, 
to whom is ascribed a treatise on Melancholy. The 
truth is, however, that the treatise in question is no¬ 
thing more than a selection from the second discourse 
of the second Tetrabiblus of Aetius of Amida; so 
that Aetius the Sicilian becomes a mere nonentity. 
(Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., 7, p. 253.) 


Etna, I. a celebrated volcano of Sicily, now Etna 
or Monte Gibello (shortened into Mongibello ), the lat¬ 
ter of these modem appellations being adopted from 
the Arabic Gibel, “ a mountain,” given to .Etna on 
account of its vast size, and recalling the remembrance 
of the Arabian conquests in Sicily. (Compare the 
Map of Southern Italy and Sicily, accompanying the 
“ Histoire dcs Conquetes des Normands ,” by D'Arc, 
where the Arabic names are given.) This volcano, so 
immense in size, that Vesuvius, in comparison, seems 
merely a hill, rises on the eastern side of Sicily. It 
is 180 miles in circumference at the base, and attains 
by a gradual ascent to the height of 10,954 feet above 
the level of the sea. From Catania (the ancient Ca- 
tana), which stands at the foot, to the summit, is 30 
miles, and the traveller passes through three distinct 
zones, called the cultivated, the woody, and the desert. 
The lowest, or cultivated zone, extends through an 
interval of ascent of 16 miles, and it contains numer¬ 
ous small mountains of a conical form, about 300 or 
400 feet high, each having a crater at the top, from 
which the lava flows over the surrounding country. 
The fertility of this region is wonderful, and its fruits 
are the finest in the island. The woody region forms 
a zone of the brightest green all around the mountain, 
and reaches up the side about eight miles. In the 
desert region vegetation entirely disappears, and the 
surface presents a dreary expanse of snow and ice. 
The summit of the mountain consists of a conical hill, 
containing a crater above two miles in circumference. 
—The silence of Homer respecting the fires of Etna 
has given rise to the opinion, that the mountain in his 
time was in the same state of repose as Vesuvius in 
the days of Strabo. The earliest writers who make 
mention of Etna, and its eruptions, are the author of 
the Orphic poems (Argonaut., v. 12), and more par¬ 
ticularly Pindar (Pyth., 1 , 21, seqq., ed. Boeckh. 
Compare Aulus Gellius, 17, 10), whose description, 
in its fearful sublimity, bears with it all the marks 
of truth, and points evidently to some accurate ac¬ 
counts of the volcano, as received by the bard, per¬ 
haps from King Hiero. Thucydides (3, 116) is next 
in order. He speaks of the stream of lava, which, in 
his time (Ol. 88, 3, B.C. 426), desolated the territory 
of Catana ; he asserts, that, fifty years before, a similar 
flow of lava had taken place, and, without any farther 
chronological reference, makes mention also of a third. 
These were the only three eruptions with which the 
Greeks had become acquainted since their settlement 
in Sicily. That Etna, however, had, at a much ear¬ 
lier period, given proof of its volcanic character, is 
evident from the narrative of Diodorus Siculus (5, 6), 
where we are informed, that the Sicani were compell¬ 
ed to retire to the western parts of the island, by rea¬ 
son of the devastation and terror which the fiery erup¬ 
tions from the mountain had occasioned. The ac¬ 
count which Strabo gives (274) of the state of things 
on the summit of Etna, accords pretty accurately with 
the narratives of modern travellers. The geographer 
informs us, that those who had lately ascended the 
mountain found on the top a crater, or, as he terms it, 
a level plain (tt ediov opaXov), about twenty stadia in 
circumference, enclosed by a bank of cinders having 
the height of a wall. In the middle of the plain was 
a hill of an ashy colour, like the surface of the plain. 
Over the hill a column of smoke hung suspended, ex¬ 
tending about two hundred feet in height. Two of 
the party from whom Strabo received his information 
undertook to descend the banks and enter upon the 
plain, but the hot and deep sand soon compelled them 
to retrace their steps. The geographer, after this 
statement, then proceeds to contradict the common 
story respecting the fate of Empedocles, the party as¬ 
suring him that the crater, or opening into the bowels 
of the mountain, could neither be seen nor approached. 
—The whole number of eruptions on record, in the 

67 



JETOLI-A. 


yETOLIA. 


case of yEtna, is said to be eighty-one, of which the 
following may be regarded as an accurate enumeration. 
Those mentioned by Thucydides amount to three. 
In 122 B.C. there was one. In 44 A.D. one. In 
352 A.D. one. During the 12th century, two hap¬ 
pened. During the 13th, one. During the 14th, two 
During the 15th, four. During the 16th, four. Du¬ 
ring the 17th, twenty-two. During the 18th, thirty - 
two. Since the commencement of the 19th, nine. 

( Maltc-Brun, Geogr., vol. 4, p. 293, Brussels ed.) 
That the Greeks did not suffer this mountain to re¬ 
main unemployed in their mythological legends may 
easily be imagined, and hence the fable that yEtna 
lay on part of the giant form of Typhon, enemy of the 
gods. ( Pindar, Pyth., 1. c. — Compare JEschylus , 
Prom. Vinct., v. 365. — Hyginus , c. 152. — Apollod., 
1, 6, 3, and Heyne, ad loc., where the different tradi¬ 
tions respecting Typhon are collected.) According 
to Virgil (ASn., 3, 578), Enceladus lay beneath this 
mountain. Another class of mythographers placed the 
Cyclopes of Homeric fable on yEtna, though the poet 
never dreamed of assigning the island Thrinakia as an 
abode for his giant creations. ( Mannert , vol. 3, p. 9, 
seqq.) When the Cyclopes were regarded as the aids 
of Vulcan in the labours of the forge, they were trans¬ 
lated, by the wand of fable, from the surface to the 
bowels of the mountain, though the Lipari islands 
were more commonly regarded as the scene of Vul¬ 
can’s art. ( Mannert, 9, pt. 2, p. 297.)—II. A small 
city on the southern declivity of yEtna. The first 
name of the place was Inessa, or Inessos, and Thucyd¬ 
ides (6, 94) speaks of the inhabitants under the ap¬ 
pellation of Inesssei (’Ivijooaioi). The form of the 
name, therefore, as given by Strabo (268), namely, In- 
nesa (T vvyaa), as well as that found in Diodorus Sic¬ 
ulus (14, 14), Ennesia (’E vvpoia), are clearly errone¬ 
ous. The name of the place was changed to yEtna 
by the remains of the colony which Hiero had settled 
at Catana, and which the Siculi had driven out from 
that place. Hiero had called Catana by the name of 
yEtna, and the new-comers applied it to the city which 
now furnished them with an abode. This migration 
to Inessa happened 01. 79, 4. At a subsequent pe¬ 
riod (01. 94, 2) we find the elder Dionysius master of 
the place, a possession of much importance to him, 
since it commanded the road from Catana to the west¬ 
ern parts of the island. The ancient site is now 
marked by ruins, and the place bears the name of Cas¬ 
tro. (Mannert , 10, pt. 2, p. 291, seqq.) 

yETOLiA, a country of Greece, situate to the east of 
Acarnania. The most ancient accounts which can be 
traced respecting this region, represent it as formerly 
possessed by the Curetes, and from them it first re¬ 
ceived the name of Curetis. (Strab., 465.) A change 
was subsequently effected by yEtolus, the son of En- 
dymion, who arrived from Elis in the Peloponnesus, 
at the head of a band of followers, and, having defeat¬ 
ed the Curetes in several actions, forced them to aban¬ 
don their country (vid. Acarnania), and gave the ter¬ 
ritories which they had left the name of yEtolia. 
(Ephor. ap. Strab., 463. — Pausan., 5, 1.) Homer 
represents the yEtolians as a hardy and warlike race, 
engaged in frequent conflicts with the Curetes. He 
informs us, also, that they took part in the siege of 
Troy, under the command of Thoas their chief, and 
often alludes to their prowess in the field. (11 ., 9, 
527 ; 2, 638, &c.) Mythology has conferred a de¬ 
cree of celebrity and interest on this portion of Greece, 
lrom the story of the Calydonian boar, and the exploits 
of Meleager and Tydeus, with those of other yEtolian 
warriors of the heroic age ; but, whatever may have 
contributed to give renown to this province, Thucydi¬ 
des (1, 5) assures us, that the yEtolians, in general, 
like most of the northwestern clans of the Grecian 
continent, long preserved the wild and uncivilized 
Vabits of a barbarous age. The more remote tribes 
08 


were especially distinguished for the uncouthness of 
their language and the ferocity of their habits. (Thu- 
cyd., 3, 94.)" In this historian’s time they had as yet 
made no figure among the leading republics of Greece, 
and are seldom mentioned in the course of the war 
which he undertook to narrate. From him we learn 
that the yEtolians favoured the interests of the Lace¬ 
daemonians, probably more from jealousy of the Athe¬ 
nians, whom they wished to dislodge from Naupactus, 
than from any friendship they bore to the former. The 
possession of that important place held out induce¬ 
ments to the Athenians, in the sixth year of the war, 
to attempt the occupation, if not the ultimate conquest, 
of all yEtolia : the expedition, however, though ably 
planned, and conducted by Demosthenes himself, pro¬ 
ved signally disastrous. We scarcely find any subse¬ 
quent mention of the yEtolians during the more im¬ 
portant transactions which, for upward of a century, 
occupied the different states of Greece. We may 
collect, however, that they were at that time engaged 
in perpetual hostilities with their neighbours the Acar- 
nanians. On the death of Philip and the accession of 
Alexander, the yEtolians exhibited symptoms of hos¬ 
tile feelings towards the young monarch (Diod. Sic., 
17, 3), which, together with the assistance they afford¬ 
ed to the confederate Greeks in the Lamiac war, drew 
upon them the vengeance of Antipater and Craterus, 
who, with a powerful army, invaded their country, which 
they laid waste with fire and sword. The yEtolians, 
on this occasion, retired to their mountain-fastnesses, 
where they intrenched themselves until the ambitious 
designs of Perdiccas forced the Macedonian generals 
to evacuate their territory. (Diod. Sic., 18, 25.) If 
the accounts Pausanias has followed are correct, 
Greece was afterward mainly indebted to the yEto¬ 
lians for her deliverance from a formidable irruption of 
the Gauls, who had penetrated into Phocis and yEto¬ 
lia. On being at length compelled to retreat, these 
barbarians were so vigorously pursued by the yEto¬ 
lians, that scarcely any of them escaped. (Pausan., 
10, 23.— Polyb., 9, 30.) From this time we find 
yEtolia acquiring a degree of importance among the 
other states of Greece, to which it had never aspired 
during the brilliant days of Sparta and Athens ; but 
these republics were now on the decline, while north¬ 
ern Greece, after the example of Macedonia, was train¬ 
ing up a numerous and hardy population to the prac¬ 
tice of war. It is rarely, however, that history has to 
record achievements or acts of policy honourable to 
the yEtolians : unjust, rapacious, and without faith or 
religion, they attached themselves to whatever side the 
hope of gain and plunder allured them, which they 
again forsook in favour of a richer prize w henever the 
temptation presented itself. (Polyb., 2, 45 and 46.— 
Id., 4, 67.) We thus find them leagued with Alex¬ 
ander of Epirus, the son of Pyrrhus, for the purpose 
of dismembering Acarnania, and seizing upon its cities 
and territory. (Polyb., 2, 45.— Id., 9, 34.) Again 
with Cleomenes, in the hope of overthrowing the 
Achaean confederacy. (Polyb., 2, 45.) Frustrated, 
however, in these designs by the able counsels ofAra- 
tus, and the judicious and liberal policy of Antigonus 
Doson, they renewed their attempts on the death of 
that prince, and carried their arms into the Pelopon¬ 
nesus ; which gave rise to the social war, so ably de¬ 
scribed by Polybius. This seems to have consisted 
rather in predatory incursions and sudden attacks on 
both sides, than in a regular and systematic plan of 
operations. The yEtolians suffered severely ; for 
Philip, the Macedonian king, whose youth they had de¬ 
spised, advanced into the heart of yEtolia at the head 
of a considerable force, and avenged, by sacking and 
plundering Thermus, their chief city, the sacrilegious 
attack made by them on Dodona, and also the capture 
of Dium in Macedonia. (Polyb., 5, 7, seqq.) When 
the Romans, already hard pressed by the second Pu- 




JSTOLIA. 


AFE 


nic war, then raging in Italy, found themselves threat¬ 
ened on the side of Greece by the secret treaty con¬ 
cluded by the King of Macedon with Hannibal, they 
saw the advantage of an alliance with the HEtolians in 
order to avert the storm ; and, though it might reflect 
but little credit on their policy, in a moral point of 
view, to form a league with a people of such question¬ 
able character, the soundness of judgment which dic¬ 
tated the measure cannot be doubted; since they were 
thus enabled, with a small fleet and an army under the 
command of M. Valerius Lsevinus, to keep in check 
the whole of the Macedonian force, and effectually to 
preclude Philip from affording aid to the Carthagin¬ 
ians in Italy. {Livy, 26, 24.) The HEtolians also 
proved very useful allies to the Romans in the Mace¬ 
donian war, during which they displayed much zeal 
and activity, particularly in the battle of Cynoscepha- 
lae, where their cavalry greatly distinguished itself, and 
contributed essentially to that decisive victory. ( Liv ., 
33, 7.) On the conclusion of peace, the JEtolians flat¬ 
tered themselves that their exertions in favour of the 
Romans would be rewarded with a share of the prov¬ 
inces taken from the enemy. But the crafty Romans 
considered HStolia already sufficiently powerful to ren¬ 
der any considerable addition to its territory impolitic, 
and even dangerous. The ^Etolians were, at this 
time, no longer confined within the narrow limits 
which the early history of Greece assigns to them, but 
had extended their dominions on the west and north¬ 
west as far as Epirus, where they were in possession 
of Ambracia, leaving to Acarnania a few towns only 
on the coast: towards the north, they occupied the dis¬ 
tricts of Amphilochia and Aperantia, a great portion of 
Dolopia, and, from their connexion with Athamantia, 
their influence in that direction was felt even to the 
borders of Macedonia. On the side of Thessaly they 
had made themselves masters of the country of the 
./Enianes, a large portion of Phthiotis, with the can¬ 
tons of the Melians and Trachinians. On the coast 
they had gained the whole of the Locrian shore to the 
Crissaean Gulf, including Naupactus. In short, they 
wanted but little to give them the dominion over the 
whole of Northern Greece. The Romans, therefore, 
satisfied with having humbled and weakened the Ma¬ 
cedonian prince, still left him power enough to check 
and curb the arrogant and ambitious projects of this 
people. The HUtolians appear to have keenly felt the 
disappointment of their expectations. {Liv., 33, 13 
and 31.) They now saw all the consequences of the 
fault they had committed, in opening for the Romans 
a way to Greece ; but, too weak of themselves to eject 
these formidable intruders, they turned their thoughts 
towards Antiochus, king of Syria, whom they induced 
to come over into that country, this monarch having 
been already urged to the same course by Hannibal. 
{Liv., 35, 33.) With the assistance of this new ally, 
they made a bold attempt to seize at once the three 
important towns of Demetrias, Lacedsemon, and Chal- 
cis, in which they partly succeeded ; and, had Antio¬ 
chus prosecuted the war as vigorously as it was com¬ 
menced, Greece, in all probability, would have been 
saved, and Italy might again have seen Hannibal in 
her territories at the head of a victorious army ; but a 
single defeat at Thermopylae crushed the hopes of the 
coalition, and drove the feeble Antiochus back into 
Asia. {Liv., 36, 19.) The yEtolians, deserted by 
their ally, remained alone exposed to the vengeance of 
the foe. Heraclea, Naupactus, and Ambracia were 
in turn besieged and taken ; and no other resource be¬ 
ing left, they were forced to sue for peace. This was 
granted A.U.C. 563 ; but on conditions that for ever 
humbled their pride, crippled their strength, and left 
them but the semblance of a republic. {Liv., 38, 11. 
— Polyb., Fra?., 22, 13.)—The JEtolian polity appears 
to have consisted of a federal government, somewhat 
similar to the Achaean league. Deputies from the 


several states met in a common assembly, called Pan- 
a3tolium, and formed one republic under the adminis¬ 
tration of a praetor. The officer was chosen annually ; 
and upon him devolved more especially the direction 
of military affairs, subject, however, to the authority 
of the national assembly. Besides this, there was 
also a more select council called Apocleti. In addi¬ 
tion to the chief magistrate, we hear of other officers, 
such as a general of cavalry and a public secretary. 
{Liv., 31, 29.— Polyb., 4, 5.— Id., Frag., 22, 15.— 
Tittmann, Griechisch. Slaatsvcrfass., p. 386, seqq .)— 
The following are the limits of .JEtolia, according to 
Strabo (450). To the west it was separated from Acar¬ 
nania by the Achelous; to the north it bordered on the 
mountain districts occupied by the Athamanes, Dolo- 
pes, and ^Enianes; to the east it was contiguous to 
the country of the Locri Ozolae, and, more to the 
north, to that of the Dorians ; on the south it was 
washed by the Corinthian Gulf. The same geogra¬ 
pher informs us, that it was usual to divide the country 
within these boundaries into iEtoIia Antiqua and 
Epictetus. The former extended along the coast from 
the Achelous to Calydon ; and included also a con¬ 
siderable tract of rich champaign country along the 
Achelous as far as Stratus. This appears to have 
been the situation chosen by JEtolus for his first set¬ 
tlement. The latter, as its name implies, was a ter¬ 
ritory subsequently acquired, and comprehended the 
most mountainous and least fertile parts of the prov¬ 
ince, stretching towards the Athamanes on the north 
side, and the Locri OzolaB on the eastern. {Cramer's 
Ancient Greece, vol. 2, p. 60, seqq.) iEtolia was, in 
general, a rough and mountainous country. (Compare 
Hobkouse, Journey, &c., Letter 16, vol. 1, p. 189, 
Am. ed. — Pouqueville, Voyage, &c., vol. 3, p. 231.) 
Some parts, however, were remarkable for their fertil¬ 
ity ; such as, 1. The large ^Etolian field (A IroXcov 
Tcedlov fieya. — Dionys. Perieg., v. 432). 2. Parach- 

eloitis, or the fruitful region at the mouth of the Ache¬ 
lous, formed from the mud brought down by the river, 
and drained, or, according to the legend, torn by Her¬ 
cules from the river-god. {Vid. Achelous.) 3. The 
Lelantian field, at the mouth of the Evenus. {Kruse, 
Hellas, vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 189, seqq.) 

^Etolus, son of Endymion (the founder of Elis), 
and of Neis, or, according to others, Iphianassa. Hav¬ 
ing accidentally killed Apis, son of Phoroneus, he fled 
with a band of followers into the country of the Cu- 
retes, which received from him the name of HJtolia. 
{Apollod., 1, 7, 5.— Vid. .JEtolia.) 

^Ex, I. a rocky island between Tenos and Chios, 
deriving its name from its resemblance to a goat 
{ail;). It is said by some to have given the appella¬ 
tion of “ vEgean” {klyalov) to the sea in which it 
stood. {Plin., 4, 11.)—II. The goat that suckled Ju¬ 
piter, changed into a constellation. 

Afer, Cn. Domitius, an orator during the reigns 
of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. He was 
born at Nemausus {Nismcs), B.C. 15 or 16, of ob¬ 
scure parents, and not, as some maintain ( Faydit, Re¬ 
marques sur Virgile), of the Domitian line. After 
receiving a good education in his native city, he re¬ 
moved, at an early age, to Rome, where he subse¬ 
quently distinguished himself by his talents at the bar, 
and rose to high honours under Tiberius. His ser¬ 
vices as an informer, however, most of all endeared 
him to the reigning prince, and in this infamous trade 
he numbered among his victims Claudia Pulchra, the 
cousin of Agrippina, and Q. Varus, son of the former. 
A skilful flatterer, he managed to preserve all his fa¬ 
vour under the three emperors who came after Tibe¬ 
rius, and finally died of intemperance under the last 
of the three, Nero, A.D. 59. He was the preceptor 
of Quintilian, who has left a very favourable account 
of his oratorical abilities. {Tacitus, Ann., 4, 52.— Id. 
tbid., 14, 19.— Quintil., 5, 7.) 


69 





AFRICA. 


AFRICA. 


Afrania. Vid. Supplement. 

Afrania Gens. Vid. Supplement. 

Afranius, I. a Latin comic poet, who flourished 
about 100 B.C. Cicero (Brut., 45) says that he imita¬ 
ted C. Titius, and praises him for acuteness of percep¬ 
tion, as well as for an easy style. (“ Homo perargutus , 
in fabulis quidem etiam, ut satis, disertus .”) Horace 
speaks of him as an imitator of Menander. ( Epist., 
2, 1, 57.—Compare Cic., de Fin., 1, 3.) Afranius 
himself admits, in his Compitalcs, that he derived 
many even of his plots from Menander and other 
Greek writers. In other instances, however, he made 
the manners and customs of his own country the basis 
of his pieces. Quintilian (10, 1, 100) praises the tal¬ 
ents of Afranius, but censures him, at the same time, 
for his frequent and disgusting obscenities. Of all his 
works, only some titles, and 266 verses remain, which 
are to be found in the Corpus Poetarum of Maittaire, 
and have also been published by Bothe and Neukirch. 
(Bdhr, Gesch. Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. 111.— Scholl, Hist. 
Lit. Rom., vol. 1, p. 139.)—II. Nepos, a commander 
who had served under Pompey, and was named by him 
consul, A.U.C. 694, a period when Pompey was be¬ 
ginning to dread the power and ambition of Caesar. 
Afranius, however, performed nothing remarkable at 
this particular time, having a distaste for public affairs. 
Fourteen years later, when Pompey and Caesar had 
come to an open rupture, Afranius was in Spain, as the 
lieutenant of the former, along with Petreius, who held 
a similar appointment. Caesar entered the country at 
this period, and the two lieutenants, uniting their for¬ 
ces, awaited his approach in an advantageous position 
near Uerda (the modern Lenda). Caesar was defeat¬ 
ed in the first action, and two days afterward saw 
himself blockaded, as it were, in his very camp, by the 
sudden rise of the two rivers between which it was 
situate. His genius, however, triumphed over every 
obstacle, and he eventually compelled the two lieu¬ 
tenants of Pompey to submit without a second encoun¬ 
ter. They disbanded their troops and returned to It¬ 
aly, after having promised never to bear arms against 
C$sar for the future. Afranius, however, either for¬ 
getful of his word, or having in some way released 
himself from the obligation he had assumed, took part 
with Pompey in the battle of Pharsalia, being intrust¬ 
ed with the command of the right wing, although his 
capitulation in Spain had laid him open to the charge 
of having betrayed the interests of his chief. After the 
battle of Thapsus, Afranius and Faustus Sylla moved 
along the coast of Africa, with a small body of troops, 
in the design of passing over to Spain, and joining the 
remains of Pompey’s party in that quarter. They were 
encountered, however, by Sittius, one of the partisans 
of Caesar, who defeated and made them prisoners. It 
was the intention of Sittius to have saved their lives, 
but they were both massacred by his soldiers. (Cas., 
Bell. Civ., 1, 38.— Cic., ep. ad Att., 1, 18.— Pint.. Vit. 
Pomp.—Sue ton., Vit. Cczs., 34.— Florus, 4, 2.)—III. 
Potitus, a plebeian, in the reign of Caligula, who, in a 
spirit of foolish flattery, bound himself by an oath that 
he would depart from existence in case the emperor 
recovered from a dangerous malady under which he 
was labouring. Caligula was restored to health, and 
Potitus compelled to fulfil his oath. (Dio Cass., 59, 

8 —Compare the remarks of Rcimar, ad loc., on the 
belief prevalent throughout the ancient world that the 
life of an individual could be prolonged if another 
would lay down his own in its stead.) 

Africa, one of the main divisions of the ancient 
world, known to history for upward of three thousand 
years ; yet, notwithstanding its ancient celebrity, and 
notwithstanding its vicinity to Europe, still in a great 
measure eluding the examination of science. Modern 
observation and discoveries make it to be a vast penin¬ 
sula, 5000 miles in length, and almost 4600 in breadth, 
presenting in an area of nearly 13,430,000 square miles’ 


few long or easily-navigated rivers.—The Greeks 
would seem to have been acquainted, from a very ear¬ 
ly period, with the Mediterranean coast of this coun¬ 
try, since every brisk north wind would carry their 
vessels to its shores. Hence we find Homer already 
evincing a knowledge of this portion of the continent. 
(Od., 4, 84.) A tawny-coloured population roamed 
along this extensive region, to whom the name of Lib¬ 
yans (Aibvec) was given by the Greeks, a corruption, 
probably, of some native term ; while the country oc¬ 
cupied by them was denominated Libya (y Aibvy). 
To this same coast belonged, in strictness, the lower 
portion of Egypt; but the name of this latter region 
had reached the Greeks as early as, if not earlier than, 
that of Libya, and the two therefore remained always 
disunited. Egypt, in consequence, was regarded as a 
separate country, until the now firmly-established idea 
of three continents superinduced the necessity of at¬ 
taching it to one of the three. By some, therefore, it 
was considered as a part of Asia, while others made 
the Nile the dividing limit, and assigned part of Libya 
to Egypt, while the portion east of the Nile was made 
to belong to the Asiatic continent. As regarded the 
extent of Libya inland, but little was at that time known. 
Popular belief made the African continent of small di¬ 
mensions, and supposed it to be washed on the south 
by the great river Oceanus, which encircled also the 
whole of what was then supposed to be the flat and 
circular disk of the earth. In this state, or very nearly 
so, Herodotus found the geographical knowledge and 
opinions of his contemporaries. The historian oppo¬ 
ses many of the speculations of the day on this subject 
(4, 36, seqq .); he rejects the earth-encompassing Oce¬ 
anus, as well as the idea that the earth was round as 
if made by a machine. He condemns also the division 
into Europe, Asia, and Africa, on account of the great 
disproportion of these regions. Compelled, however, 
to acquiesce in the more prevalent opinions of the day, 
he recognises Libya as distinct from Egypt, or, more 
properly speaking, makes the Nile the dividing line, 
though, from his own private conviction, it is easy to 
perceive that he himself takes for the eastern limit of 
Africa what is regarded as such at the present day. 
None of the later geographers, dow 7 n to the time of 
Ptolemy, appear to have disturbed this arrangement. 
Eratosthenes, Timosthenes, and Artemidorus, all adopt 
it, Strabo also does the same, though he considers 
the Arabian Gulf, with the isthmus to the north, as af¬ 
fording the far more natural boundary on the east. As 
Alexandrea, however, was built to the west of the 
mouths ot the Nile, the canal which led off to this city 
was regarded as a part of the eastern boundary of the 
continent, and hence we find the city belonging on one 
side to Libya, and on the other to Asia. ( Hierocles, 
Bel turn Alexandr., c. 14.) The Romans, as in most 
of their other geographical views, followed here also 
the usages of the Greeks, and hence Mela (1, 1) re¬ 
marks, “ Quod terrarum jacet a freto ad Nilum, Af- 
ncam yocamus:' 1 As, however, in their subdivisions 
of territory, the district of Marmarica was added to the 
government of Africa, they began gradually to contract 
the limits of Libya, and to consider the Catabathmus 
Magnus as the dividing point. Hence we find the 
same Mela remarking (1, 8), “ Catabathmus, valhs 
devexa in Mgyplum, finit Afncam .” In consequence 
of this new arrangement, Egypt on both sides of the 
Nile began to be reckoned a part of the continent of 
Asia. (“ Mgyptus Asia: pnma pars, inter Catabath- 
mum et Arabas.”—Mela, 1, 9.) Ptolemy laid aside, 
in his day, all these arbitrary points of separation, and, 
assuming the Arabian Gulf as the true and natural di¬ 
viding line on the east, made Egypt a part of Africa, 
and added to the same continent the whole western 
coast of the same gulf, which had before been retard¬ 
ed as an appendage of Arabia. (Mannert, 10, pt. 2, 
p. 1, seqq .)—The name of Africa seems to have been 





AFRICA. 


AFRICA. 


originally applied by the Romans to the country around 
Carthage, the first part of the continent with which 
they became acquainted, and the appellation is said to 
have been derived from a small Carthaginian district 
on the northern coast, called Frigi. ( Ritter, Erdkun- 
dc, 1, p. 955, 2d ed.) Hence, even when the name 
had become applied to the whole continent, there still 
remained, in Roman geography, the district of Africa 
Proper, on the Mediterranean coast, corresponding to 
the modern kingdom of Tunis , with part of that of Trip¬ 
oli. The term Libya, on the other hand, though used 
by the Greeks to designate the entire country, became 
limited with the Romans to a part merely ; and thus 
we have with the latter, the region of Libya, extending 
along the coast from the Greater Syrtis to Egypt, and 
stretching inland to the deserts.—The knowledge 
which Herodotus possessed of this continent was far 
from extensive. He considered Africa as terminating 
north of the equinoctial line ; and, even in these nar¬ 
row limits, Egypt alone, ranking it as a part of Africa 
in fact, is clearly described. If we exclude Egypt, the 
acquaintance possessed by the historian relative to the 
other parts of the continent, and which is founded on 
the information imparted by others, follows merely 
three lines of direction : one proceeds along the Nile, 
and reaches probably the limit of modern discoveries 
in that quarter ; another, leaving the temple and Oasis 
of Ammon, loses itself in the great desert; while a 
third advances along the Mediterranean coast as far as 
the environs of Carthage. ( Malte-Brun , 1, p. 26, 
Brussels ed.) The natives of Africa are divided by 
Herodotus into two races, the Africans, or, to adopt 
the Greek phraseology, Libyans, and the ./Ethiopians ; 
one possessing the northern, the other the southern 
part (4, 197). By these appear to be meant the 
Moors, and the Negroes, or the darker-coloured nations 
of the interior. The common boundary of the Afri¬ 
cans and ./Ethiopians in ancient times may be placed 
at the southern border of the Great Desert. Hanno 
found the .Ethiopians in possession of the western 
coast, about the parallel of 19° ; and Pliny (5, 31) 
places them at five journeys beyond Cerne. At pres¬ 
ent the negroes are not found higher up than the Sen¬ 
egal river, or about 17°, and that only in the inland 
parts. ( Rcnnell , Geography of Herodotus , p. 427, 
seqq.) Nothing, however, can be more indeterminate 
than the terms ^Ethiopia and .Ethiopian ; and it is 
certain that many distinct races were included under 
the latter denomination. ( Vid. /Ethiopia.) The whole 
of Africa, except where it is joined to Asia, was known 
by the ancients in general to be surrounded by the sea; 
but of its general figure and extension towards the south 
they had no accurate knowledge. There is strong rea¬ 
son, however, to believe, that, at an era anterior to the 
earliest records of history, the circumnavigation of Af¬ 
rica was accomplished by the Phoenicians in the ser¬ 
vice of Necho, king of Egypt. Herodotus, to whom 
we are indebted for the knowledge of this interesting 
fact, speaking of the peninsular figure of the continent 
of Africa, says (4, 42): “ This discovery was first 
made by Necho, king of Egypt, as far as we are able 
to judge. When he had desisted from opening the 
canal that leads from the Nile to the Arabian Gulf, he 
sent certain Phoenicians in ships, with orders to pass 
by the Columns of Hercules into the sea that lies to 
the north of Africa, and then to return to Egypt. 
These Phoenicians thereupon set sail from the Red 
Sea, and entered into the Southern Ocean. On the 
approach of autumn, they landed in Africa, and planted 
some grain in the quarter to which they had come : 
when this was ripe and they had cut it down, they put 
to sea again. Having spent two years in this way, 
they in the third passed the Columns of Hercules, and 
returned to Egypt. Their relation may obtain credit 
from others, but to me it seems impossible to be be¬ 
lieved ; for they affirmed, that, as they sailed around 


the coast of Africa, they had the sun on their right 
hand.” The report which Herodotus thought so strange 
as to throw discredit on the whole narrative, namely, 
that in passing round Africa the navigators had the 
sun to the right, affords to us, as'has been well re¬ 
marked, the strongest presumption in favour of its truth, 
since this never could have been imagined in an age 
when astronomy was yet in its infancy. The Phoeni¬ 
cians must of course have had the sun on their right after 
having passed the line. ( Lurcher , ad Herod., 1. c .— 
vol. 3, p. 458.—Compare Rennell, Geography of He¬ 
rodotus, p. 718.) Many writers, however, have la¬ 
boured to prove that the voyage, in all probability, 
never took place ; that the time in which it is said to 
have been performed was too short for such an enter¬ 
prise at that early day ; in a word, that the underta¬ 
king was altogether beyond any means which nav¬ 
igation at that era could command. ( Gossellin, Re- 
cherches, &c., vol. 1, p. 199, seqq. — Mannert, 1, p. 
21, seqq. — Malte-Brun , 1 , p. 30.) But the learn¬ 
ed arguments of Rennell impart to the tradition a 
strong aspect of probability. ( Rennell, Geography 
of Herodotus , p. 672, seqq. — Compare Lurcher, ad 
Herod , l. c., vol. 3, p. 458, seqq. — Murray, Account 
of Discoveries in Africa, 1, p. 10, seqq.) The date 
of this first circumnavigation of Africa is supposed to 
be about 600 B.C. In that rude stage of the art of 
navigation, however, the knowledge of a passage by 
the Southern Ocean was as unavailable for any mer¬ 
cantile or practical purposes, as the discovery of a north¬ 
west passage in modern days. The precarious and 
tardy nature of the voyage, as well as the great expense 
attending it, would necessarily preclude its being made 
the channel of a regular commerce ; nor was there any 
sufficient inducement for repeating the attempt, as the 
articles of merchandise most in request were to be had 
much nearer home. Exaggerated representations, 
moreover, of the frightful coast, and of the stormy and 
boundless ocean into which it projected, would natu¬ 
rally concur in intimidating future adventurers. Ac¬ 
cordingly, we are informed by Herodotus (4, 43), that 
Sataspes, a Persian nobleman, who was condemned by 
Xerxes to be impaled, had his sentence commuted for 
the task of sailing round the African continent. He 
made the attempt from the west, passing the Col¬ 
umns of Hercules, and sailing southward along the 
western coast for several months ; till baffled probably 
by the adverse winds and currents, or finding himself 
carried out into an immense and apparently boundless 
sea, he in despair abandoned the enterprise as imprac¬ 
ticable, and returned by the way of the Straits to Egypt; 
upon which the monarch ordered the original sentence 
to be executed upon him. These attempts to circum¬ 
navigate Africa were made under the direction of the 
most powerful monarchs of the age ; the next was un¬ 
dertaken by a private adventurer. We are informed 
by Strabo (98), who cites Posidonius as his authority, 
that a certain Eudoxus, a native of Cyzicus, having 
been deputed by his fellow-citizens to convey their sol¬ 
emn offering to the Isthmian celebration at Corinth, 
went, after having executed this commission, to Egypt, 
and had several conferences with the reigning monarch, 
Euergetes II., and also with his ministers, respecting 
various topics, but particularly concerning the naviga¬ 
tion of the Nile in the upper part of its course. This 
man was an enthusiast in topographical researches, and 
not wanting in erudition. It happened that, about this 
same time, the guard-vessels on the coast of the Ara¬ 
bian Gulf picked up an Indian, whom they found alone 
in a bark and half dead. He was brought to the king; 
but no one understanding his language, the monarch 
ordered him to be instructed in Greek; and when he 
could speak the tongue, the Indian stated that, having 
set sail from the coast of India, he had lost his way, 
and had seen all his companions perish through famine. 
He promised, if the king would send him back, to show 

71 




AFRICA. 


AFRICA. 


the way to India to those whom the monarch should 
charge with this commission. Euergetes assented, and 
Eudoxus was one of those directed to go on this er¬ 
rand. He sailed with a cargo of various articles calcu¬ 
lated for presents, and brought back in exchange aro¬ 
matics and precious stones. He was disappointed, 
however, in the expectations of profit which he had en¬ 
tertained, since the king appropriated all the return- 
cargo to himself. After the death of Euergetes, Cleo¬ 
patra, his widow, assumed the reins of government, and 
sent Eudoxus on a second voyage to India with a rich¬ 
er supply of merchandise than before. On his return, 
he was carried by the winds to the coast of ./Ethiopia, 
where, landing at several points, he conciliated the na¬ 
tives by distributing among them corn, wine, and dried 
figs, things of which until then they had been ignorant. 
He received in exchange water anil guides. He noted 
down also some words of their language ; and found, 
moreover, in this quarter, the extremity of a ship’s prow, 
carved in the shape of a horse’s head. This fragment, 
he was told, had belonged to a shipwrecked vessel that 
came from the west. Having reached Egypt, he found 
the son of Cleopatra on the throne, and he was again 
despoiled of the fruits of his voyage, being charged 
with having converted many things to his own use. 
As regards the fragment of the shipwrecked vessel 
brought home with him, he exposed it in the market¬ 
place for the examination of pilots and masters of ves¬ 
sels, who informed him that it must have belonged to 
a ship from Gades {Cadiz). The grounds of their be¬ 
lief were as follows : the traders of Gades, according 
to them, had large vessels ; but the less wealthy, small¬ 
er ones, which they called horses, from the ornament 
on their prows, and which they used in fishing along 
the coasts of Mauritania as far as the river Lixus. 
Some shipmasters even recognized the fragment as hav¬ 
ing belonged to a certain vessel of this class, which, 
with many others, had attempted to advance beyond 
the Lixus, and had never after been heard of. From 
these statements Eudoxus conceived the possibility of 
circumnavigating Africa. He returned home, disposed 
of all his effects, and put to sea again with the money 
thus obtained, intending to attempt the enterprise in 
question. Haying visited Dicearchia, Massilia, and 
other commercial cities, he everywhere announced his 
project, and collected funds and adventurers. He was 
at length enabled to equip one large and two small ves¬ 
sels, well-stored with provisions and merchandise, man¬ 
ned chiefly by volunteers, and carrying, moreover, a 
pompous train of artisans, physicians, and young slaves 
skilled in music. Having set sail, he was carried on his 
way at first by favourable breezes from the west. The 
crews, however, became fatigued, and he was compell¬ 
ed, though reluctantly, to keep nearer the shore, and 
soon experienced the disaster which he had dreaded, 
his ship grounding on a sandbank. As the vessel did 
not immediately go to pieces, he was enabled to save 
the cargo and great part of her timbers. With the 
latter he constructed another vessel of the size of one 
of fifty oars. Resuming his route, he came to a part 
inhabited by nations who spoke the same language, as 
he thought, with those on the eastern coast whom he 
had visited in his second voyage from India, and of 
whose tongue he had noted down some words. Hence 
he inferred that these were a part of the great HUthio- 
pian race. The smallness of his vessels, however, in¬ 
duced him at length to return, and he remarked on his 
way back a deserted island, well supplied with wood 
and water. Having reached Mauritania, he sold his 
vessels and repaired to the court of Bocchus, and ad¬ 
vised the king to send out a fleet of discovery along 
the coast of Africa. The monarch's friends, however, 
inspired him with the fear that his kingdom might, in 
this way, become gradually exposed to the visits and 
incursions of strangers. He made fair promises, there¬ 
fore, to Eudoxus, but secretly intended to have him 
72 


left on some desert island ; and the latter, having dis¬ 
covered this, escaped into the Roman province, and 
thence passed over into Spain. Here he constructed 
two vessels, one intended to keep near the coast, the 
other to sail in deep water ; and, having taken on board 
agricultural implements, various kinds of grain, and 
skilful artificers, he set sail on a second voyage, resolv¬ 
ing, if the navigation became too long, to winter in the 
island which he had previously discovered. At this 
point, unfortunately, the narrative of Posidonius, as 
detailed by Strabo, stops short, leaving us totally in the 
dark as to the result. Pomponius Mela (3, 9, 10) tells 
us, on the alleged authority of Cornelius Nepos, that 
Eudoxus actually made the circuit of Africa, adding 
some particulars of the most fabulous description 
respecting the nations whom he saw. But no de- 
pendance can be placed on this doubtful authority; 
whereas the narrative of Posidonius bears every mark 
of authenticity. (Compare Murray , 1, p. 13, seqq., 
and Malte-Brun, 1, p. 68, where the voyage of Eudoxus 
is defended against the remarks of Gossellin in his Re- 
cherches, &c., 1, p. 217, seqq.) These are the only 
instances on record in which the circumnavigation of 
Africa was either performed or attempted by the an¬ 
cients. Other voyages were, however, undertaken 
with a view to the exploration of certain parts of its 
unknown coasts. The most memorable is that per¬ 
formed along the western coast by Hanno, about 570 
years before the Christian era. The Carthaginians 
fitted out this expedition with a view partly to coloni¬ 
zation and partly to discovery. The armament con¬ 
sisted of sixty ships, of fifty oars each, on board ofwhich 
were embarked persons of both sexes to the number of 
30,000. After two days’ sail from the Columns of 
Hercules, they founded, in the midst of an extensive 
plain, the city of Thymiaterium. In two days more 
they came to a wooded promontory, and, after sailing 
round a bay, founded successively four other cities. 
They then passed the mouth of a great river, called the 
Lixus, flowing from lofty mountains inhabited by in¬ 
hospitable /Ethiopians, who lived in caves. Thence 
they proceeded for three days along a desert coast to a 
small island, to which they gave the name of Cerne, 
and where they founded another colony ; and afterward 
sailed southward along the coast, till their farther prog¬ 
ress was arrested by the failure of provisions. {Hann. 
Peripl. , in Geogr. Gr. Min., ed. Gail, 1, p. 113, 
seqq.) With regard to the extent of coast actually ex¬ 
plored by this expedition, the brief and indistinct nar¬ 
rative affords ample room for learned speculation and 
controversy. According to Rennell ( Geogr. of Herod., 
p. 719, seqq ), the island of Cerne is the modern Ar- 
guin, the Lixus is the Senegal, and the voyage extend¬ 
ed a little beyond Sierra Leone. M. Gossellin, on the 
other hand (Rccherches , &c., 1, p. 61, seqq.), contends 
that the whole course was along the coast of Maurita¬ 
nia ; that the Lixus was the modern Lucos, Cerne was 
Fcdala, and the voyage extended little beyond Cape 
Nun. Malte-Brun (1, p. 33, Brussels ed.) carries 
Hanno as far as the bays called the Gulf dos Mcdaios, 
and the Gull of Gonzalo de Cintra, on the shore of the 
desert: and he is induced to assume this distance, in 
some degree, from the fact of Himilco, another Car¬ 
thaginian, having advanced in the same direction as 
far to the north as the coasts of Britain, a voyage much 
longer and more perilous than that said to have been 
performed by Hanno along the African coast. {Phn., 
7, 67 . — Rest. Amen. Ora Marit., v. 80, seqq.) A 
translation of the Periplus, however, will fie found un¬ 
der the article Hanno , from which the student may 
draw his own conclusions.—At a much later period 
this part of the coast excited the curiosity of the Ro¬ 
man conquerors. Polybius, th'e celebrated historian, 
was sent out by Scipio on an exploratory voyage in 
the same direction ; but, from the meager account pre¬ 
served by Pliny, M. Gossellin infers "that he did not 





AFRICA. 


AFRICA. 


sail quite so far as the Carthaginian navigator had done. 
—Let us now turn our attention, for a moment, to the 
interior of the country. We have already alluded in 
general terms to the knowledge possessed by Herodo¬ 
tus of Africa. To what we have stated on this sub¬ 
ject may be added the following curious narrative, 
which we receive from the historian himself (2, 32). 
“ I was also informed,” says Herodotus, “ by some 
Cyreneans, that in a journey they took to the oracle of 
Ammon, they had conferred with Etearchus; king of 
the Ammonians ; and that, among other things, dis¬ 
coursing with him concerning the sources of the Nile, 
as of a thing altogether unknown, Etearchus acquaint¬ 
ed them, that certain Nasamones, a nation of Libya in¬ 
habiting the Syrtis, and a tract of land of no great ex¬ 
tent eastward of the Syrtis, came into his country, and, 
being asked by him if they had learned anything touch¬ 
ing the Libyan deserts, answered that some petulant 
young men, sons to divers persons of great power 
among them, had, after many extravagant actions, re¬ 
solved to send five of their number to the coast of 
Libya, to see if they could make any farther discov¬ 
eries than others had done. The young men chosen 
by their companions to make this expedition, having 
furnished themselves with water and other necessary 
provisions, first passed through the inhabited country ; 
and when they had likewise traversed that region which 
abounds in wild beasts, they entered the deserts, ma¬ 
king their way towards the west. After they had trav¬ 
elled many days through the sands, they at length saw 
some trees growing in a plain, and they approached, 
and began to gather the fruit which was on them ; and 
while they were gathering, several little men, less than 
men of middle size, came up, and, having seized them, 
carried them away. The Nasamones did not at all 
understand what they said, neither did they understand 
the speech of the Nasamones. However, they conduct¬ 
ed them over vast morasses to a city built on a great river 
running from the west to the east, and abounding in 
crocodiles ; where the Nasamones found all the inhab¬ 
itants black, and of no larger size than their guides. 
To this relation Etearchus added, as the Cyreneans 
assured me, that the Nasamones returned safe to their 
own country, and that the men to whom they had thus 
come were all enchanters.” (Compare the remarks 
under the article Nasamones.) Rennell ( Geogr. of 
Herod., p. 432) observes, that it is extremely probable 
that the river seen by the Nasamones was that which, 
according to the present state of our geography, is 
known to pass by Tombuctoo, and thence eastward 
through the centre of Africa (in effect, the river com¬ 
monly known by the name of Niger). What is called 
the inhabited country in this narrative, he makes the 
same with the modern Fezzan, in which also he finds 
the sandy and desert region traversed by the Nasa¬ 
mones. It appears certain to him, as well as to Larcher, 
that the city in question was the modern Tombuctoo. 
Malte-Brun, however (1, p. 28, Brussels ed.), thinks it 
impossible that Tombuctoo can be the place alluded 
to, since it is separated from the country of the Nasa¬ 
mones by so many deserts, rivers, and mountains.—In 
the days of Strabo, the knowledge possessed by the 
ancients of Africa was little, if at all, improved. The 
Mediterranean coast and the banks of the Nile were 
the only ports frequented by the Greeks. Their opin¬ 
ion respecting the continent itself was that it formed 
a trapezium, or else that the coast from the Columns 
of Hercules to Pelusium might be considered as the 
base of a right-angled triangle ( Strabo , 17, p. 825, ed. 
Casaub.), of which the Nile formed the perpendicular 
side, extending to ^Ethiopia and the ocean, while the 
hypothenuse was the coast comprehended between the 
extremity of this line and the straits. The apex of the 
triangle reached beyond the limits of the habitable 
world, and was consequently regarded as inaccessible : 
hence Strabo declares his inability to assign any precise 


length to the continent in question. His knowledge 
of the western coast is far from extensive or accurate. 
In passing the straits, we find, according to him, a 
mountain called by the Greeks Atlas, and by the bar¬ 
barians Dyris : advancing thence towards the west, 
we see Cape Cotes, and afterward the city of Tinga, 
situate opposite to Gades in Spain. To the south of 
Tinga is the Sinus Emporicus, where the Phoenicians 
used to have establishments. After this the coast 
bends in, and proceeds to meet the extremity of the 
perpendicular line on the opposite side. We may 
pardon Strabo for too lightly rejecting the discoveries 
of the Carthaginians along the western coast, since 
nothing proves him to have read the periplus of Hanno. 
An error, however, which cannot be excused, is that 
of placing Mount Atlas directly on the straits, since he 
might have learned from the account of Polybius, that 
this mountain was situate far beyond, on the western 
coast, and giving name to the adjacent ocean. With 
regard to the eastern shores of Africa, Strabo cites a 
periplus of Artemidorus, from the Straits of Dir® 
{Bab-el-Mandeb) to the Southern Horn, which, from 
a comparison of distances as given by Ptolemy and 
Marinus of Tyre, answers to Cape Bandellans, to the 
south of Cape Gardafui. {Gossellin, Recherches, vol. 
1, p. 177, seqq.) Here a desert coast for a long time 
arrested the progress of maritime discovery on the 
part of the Greeks.—The knowledge of the day then, 
respecting the eastern and western coast of Africa, 
appears to have extended no farther than 12° north 
latitude, or perhaps 12° 30". The two sides were 
supposed to approximate, and between the Hesperii 
JEthiopes to the west, and the Cinnamomifera regio, 
to the east, the distance was supposed to be compara¬ 
tively small. ( Strabo , 119.) This intervening space 
was exposed to excessive heats, according to the com¬ 
mon belief, and which forbade the traveller’s penetra¬ 
ting within its precincts ; while, at a little distance 
beyond, the Atlantic and Indian Oceans were brought 
to unite. The hypothesis which we have here stated 
made Africa terminate at about one half of its true 
length, and represented this continent as much smaller 
than Europe. ( Plin ., 2, 108.— Id., 6, 33. — Pomp. 
Mela, 1, 4.) Still it was the one generally adopt¬ 
ed by the Alexandrean school. ( Eratosthenes ap. 
Strab., passim.—Crates ap. Gemin., Elem. Astron., 
c. 13.— Aratus, Phcenom., v. 537. — Cleanthes ap. 
Gemin., 1. c. — Cleomedes, Meteor., 1, 6, &c.) On 
the other hand, the opinion of Hipparchus, which united 
eastern Africa to India ( Hipp. ap. Strab., 6), remained 
for a long period contemned, until Marinus of Tyre 
and Ptolemy had adopted it. This adoption, however, 
did not prevent the previous hypothesis from keeping 
its ground, in some measure, in the west of Europe 
( Macrob., Somn. Scip., 2, 9. — Isidor., Ong., 14, 5), 
where it contributed to the discovery of the route by 
the Cape of Good Hope. ( Malte-Brun, 1, p. 67, 
seqq., Brussels ed .)—Africa, according to Pliny (6, 
33), is three thousand six hundred and forty-eight Ro¬ 
man miles from east to west. This measure, estima¬ 
ted in stadia of seven hundred to a degree, would seem 
to represent the length of the coast from the valley of 
the Catabathmus to Cape Nun, which was also the 
limit of the voyage of Polybius, according to Gossellin. 
{Recherches, 1, p. 117, seqq.) The length of the in¬ 
habited part of Africa was supposed nowhere to exceed 
two hundred and fifty Roman miles. In passing, 
however, from the frontiers of Cyrenaica across the 
deserts and the country of the Garamantes, Agrippa 
{Plin., 1. c.) gave to this part of the world nine hun¬ 
dred and ten miles of extent. This measure, which 
we owe, without doubt, to the expedition against the 
Garamantes, conducts us beyond the Agades and Bor- 
nou, but does not reach the Niger. Whatever may be 
the discussions to which the very corrupt state of the 
Roman numerals in the pages of Pliny are calculated 

73 



AFRICA. 


AFRICA. 


to give rise, one thing is sufficiently evident, that the 
Romans knew only a third part of Africa. Pliny, 
moreover, gives us an account of two Roman expedi¬ 
tions into the interior of Africa. The first is that of 
Suetonius Paulinus. (Plin., 5,1.) This officer, hav¬ 
ing set out from the river Lixus with some Roman 
troops, arrived in ten days at Mount Atlas, passed over 
some miles of the chain, and met, in a desert of black 
sand, with a river called Ger. This appears to have 
been the Gyr of Segelmessa. The second expedition 
was that of Cornelius Balbus. “ We have subdued,” 
says Pliny (5, 5), “ the nation of the Phazanii, together 
with their cities Aide and Cillaba : and likewise Cyd- 
amus. From these a chain of mountains, called the 
Black by reason of their colour, extends in a direction 
from east to west. Then come deserts, and afterward 
Matelgse, a town of the Garamantes, the celebrated 
fountain of Debris, whose waters are hot from midday 
to midnight, and cold from midnight to midday ; and 
also Garama, the capital of the nation. All these 
countries have been subjugated by the Roman arms, 
and over them did Cornelius Balbus triumph.” Pliny 
then enumerates a large crowd of cities and tribes, 
whose names were said to have adorned the triumph. 
Malte-Brun, after a fair discussion of this subject, is 
of opinion that Balbus must have penetrated as far as 
Bornou and Dongala, which appear to coincide with 
the Boin and Daunagi of Pliny. The black mountains 
were probably those of Tibesti. (Malte-Brun , 1, p. 
85, Brussels ed .)—Marinus of Tyre, who came before 
Ptolemy, pretended to have read the itinerary of a Ro¬ 
man expedition under Septimius Flaccus and Julius 
Maternus. (Ptol., 1, 8, seqq.) These officers set 
out from Leptis Magna for Garama, the capital of the 
Garamantes, which they found to be 5400 stadia from 
the former city. Septimius, after this, marched di¬ 
rectly south for the space of three months, and came 
to a country called Agyzimba, inhabited by negroes. 
Marinus, after some reasoning, fixes the position of 
the country at 24° south of the equator. A strict 
application of the laws of historical criticism will con¬ 
sign to the regions of fable this Roman expedition, un¬ 
known even to the Romans themselves. How can we 
possibly admit, that a general executed a march more 
astonishing than even that of Alexander, and that no 
contemporary writer has preserved the least mention 
of it ! At what epoch, or under what reign, are we 
to place this event 1 How, moreover, could an army, 
in three months, traverse a space equal to eleven hun¬ 
dred French leagues 1 ( Malte-Brun , 1, p. 128, Brus¬ 

sels ed .)—The form of Africa was totally changed by 
Ptolemy. We have seen that Strabo and Pliny re¬ 
garded this part of the world as an island, terminating 
within the equinoctial line. The Atlantic Ocean was 
thought to join the Indian Sea under the torrid zone, 
the heats of which were regarded as the most powerful 
barrier to the circumnavigation of Africa. Ptolemy, 
who did not admit the communication of the Atlantic 
with the Erythrean or Indian Sea, thought, on the 
contrary, that the western coast of Africa, after having 
formed a gulf of moderate depth, which he calls Hes- 
pericus ( E crTreptnoq), extended indefinitely between 
south and west, while he believed that the eastern 
coast, after Gape Prasum, proceeded to join the coast 
of Asia below Catigara. (Ptol, 7, 3.) This opinion, 
which made the Atlantic and Indian Oceans only large 
basins, sepaiated the one from the other, had been 
supported by Hipparchus. The interior of Africa pre¬ 
sents, in the pages of Ptolemy, amass of confused no¬ 
tions. And yet he is the first ancient writer that an¬ 
nounces with certainty the existence of the Niger, ob¬ 
scurely indicated by Pliny. The most difficult point 
to explain in the Central Africa of Ptolemy, is to know 
what river he means by the Gyr. (Ptol., 4, 6.) Some 
are in favour of the river of Bornou, or the Bahr-al- 
Gazel. (D'Anmllc, Mem. sur les fieuves de Vinte- 
74 


rieur de VAfrique, Acad, des Inscr., vol. 26, p. 64.) 
Others declare for the Bakr-el-Missclad. ( Pennell, 
Geogr. of Herod., p. 418.) Neither, however, of 
these rivers suits the description of Claudian (Laud. 
Stilich., 1, v. 253), reproducing the image of the Nile by 
the abundance of its waters : “ simili mentitus gurgtte 
Nilum .” In the midst of so many contradictions, and 
in a region still almost unknown, the boldness of igno¬ 
rance may hazard any assertion, and pretend to decide 
any point, while the modesty of true science resigns 
itself to doubt. 

Africanus, I. Sextus Julius, a native of Palestine, 
belonging to a family that had come orginally from 
Africa. He lived under the Emperor Heiiogabalus, 
and fixed his residence at Emmaiis. This city hav¬ 
ing been ruined, he was deputed to wait on the em¬ 
peror and obtain an order for rebuilding it, in which 
mission he succeeded, and the new city took the name 
of Nicopolis. (Chron. Paschale, ann. 223.) About 
A.D. 231, Julius Africanus visited Alexandrea to hear 
the public discourses of Heraclas. Pie had been 
brought up in paganism, but he subsequently embraced 
the Christian faith, attained the priesthood, and died 
at an advanced age. He was acquainted with the 
Hebrew tongue, applied himself to various branches 
of scientific study, but devoted himself particularly to 
the perusal and investigation of the sacred writings, on 
which he published a commentary. The work, how¬ 
ever, that most contributed to his reputation, was a 
Chronography in five books (Uevtu6i67uov xpovolo- 
jlkov), commencing with the Creation, which he 
fixes at 5499 B.C., and continued down to A.D. 221. 
This calculation forms the basis of a particular era, of 
which use is made in the Eastern Church, and which 
is styled the Historical Era, or that of the Historians 
of Alexandrea. Fragments of this work are preserved 
by Eusebius, Syncellus, Joannes Malala, Theophanes, 
Cedrenus, and in the Chronicon Paschale. Photius 
says of this production, that, though concise, it omits 
nothing important. (Billioth., vol. 1, p. 7, ed. Bekker.) 
Eusebius has most profited by it, and, in his Chronog- 
raphy, often copies him. He has preserved for us 
also a letter of Africanus, addressed to Aristides, the 
object of which is to reconcile the discrepance between 
St. Matthew and St. Luke on the question of our Sa¬ 
viour’s genealogy. We have also another letter of 
his, addressed to Origen, in which he contests the au¬ 
thenticity of the story of Susanna. Africanus likewise 
composed a large work in nine, or, according to others, 
in fourteen, or even twenty-four books, entitled K eotol, 

“ Cestuses.” This name was given it by the author, 
because, like the Cestus of V enus, his collection con¬ 
tained a mingled variety of pleasing things selected 
from numerous works. In it were discussed questions 
of natural history, medicine, agriculture, chemistry, 
&c. In the part that principally remains to us, and 
which appears to have been extracted from the main 
work in the eighth century, the art of war forms the 
topic of consideration. It is printed in the Mathcmat- 
tci veteres, Paris, 1693, fob, and also in the seventh 
volume of the works of Meursius, Florence, 1746. It 
has also been translated by Guischardt in his Mcmoires 
Militaires des Grecs et des Romains, 1758, 4to. From 
some scattered fragments of other portions of the same 
work, it would appear to have been, in general, of no 
very valuable character. For example, in order to 
prevent wine from turning, we are directed to write on 
the bottom of the vessel the words of the psalmist, 

“ Taste and see how sweet is the Lord !” Again, in 
order to drink a good deal of wine with impunity, we 
must repeat, on taking the first glass, the 170th verse 
of the 8th book of the Iliad, “ Jove thundered thrice 
from the summits of Olympus.” He gives us also 
other precepts for things less useful than curious in 
their natures, and which may serve to amuse an agri¬ 
culturist; as, for example, how to force fruits to^as- 






AGAMEMNON. 


AGAMEMNON. 


sume the shape of any animal, or even the form of the 
human visage ; how to produce pomegranates without 
seeds, figs of two colours, &c. ( Scholl , Hist. Lit. 
Gi., vol. 4, p. 205, and 5, 269. — Biographie Univer- 
selle, vol. 1, p. 274.)—II. The surname of the Scipios, 
from their victories in Africa over the Carthaginians. 
(Vid . Scipio.)—III., IV., V. (Vid. Supplement.) 

Agaclytus. Vid. Supplement. 

Agallis. Vid. Supplement. 

Agamede. Vid. Supplement. 

Agamedes and Trophonius, two architects and 
brothers, who built the temple of Apollo at Delphi, 
when erected for the fourth time. ( Bockh, ad Bind ., 
Fragm., vol. 3, p. 570.) According to Plutarch, they 
Were informed by the god, when asking him for a rec¬ 
ompense, that they would receive one on the seventh 
day from that time, and were ordered to spend the in¬ 
tervening period in festive indulgence. They did so, 
and on the seventh night were found dead in their beds. 
(Pint., Consol. adAp. — Op., ed. Reiske , vol. 6, p. 413, 
scq.) Cicero relates the same story, but makes the 
two brothers ask Apollo for that which was best for 
man (“ quod esset optimum homini ,” where Plutarch 
merely has ahelv fuotiov), and also gives the prescri¬ 
bed time as three days. ( Cic ., Tusc. Qucest., 1 , 47.) 
A very different version, however, is found in Pausa- 
nias. This writer informs us, that Agamedes and Tro- 
phonius were the sons ofErginus, monarch of Orchom- 
enus, or rather that Trophonius was the son of Apol¬ 
lo, and Agamedes of the king. When they had at¬ 
tained to manhood, they became very skilful in build¬ 
ing temples for the gods, and palaces for kings. 
Among other labours, they constructed a temple for 
Apollo at Delphi, and a treasury for Hyrieus. (Vid. 
Hyrieus.) In the wall of this building they placed a 
stone in such a manner that they could take it out 
whenever they pleased ; and, in consequence of this, 
they carried away from time to time portions of the 
deposited treasure. Agamedes was at last caught in 
a trap placed so as to secure the robber, whereupon 
his brother cut off his head in order to prevent discov¬ 
ery. After this, Trophonius was swallowed up in an 
opening of the earth, in the grove of Lebedea. The 
whole story appears to wear a figurative character. 
Erginus is the protector of labour (epylvop, epyov); 
Trophonius is the “ nourisher ” (rpscjuj, rpotpog) ; and 
Agamedes is the “ very prudent one ” (dyav and pydog). 
Trophonius, even after he has descended to the lower 
world, makes his voice to be heard from those profound 
depths. He rules over the powers of the abyss, be¬ 
comes Jupiter-Trophonius, and gives counsel to those 
who have the courage to descend into the cave at Le¬ 
bedea. He is Hades, the wise and good deity, as 
Plato calls him ( Pheedon, § 68). He is therefore, also, 
the supreme intelligence that rules in the lower world, 
Which serves as a guide to the souls of the departed, 
and accompanies them in their migrations. In the 
name Hyrieus, moreover, we see “a keeper of bees,” 
a “ bee-master” ('Y pievg, from vpov, vpiov, “ a bee¬ 
hive”), and the bee was connected with the mysteries 
of Ceres, and also the transmigration of souls. There 
is, moreover, a strong analogy between the story as 
here told, and that related of the Egyptian monarch 
Rhampsinitus. Both fables appear to be allegorical 
illustrations, connected with agriculture. (Creuzer, 
Symbolik, vol. 2, p. 381.— Guigniaut, vol. 2, p. 330 ) 
Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and commander of 
the Grecian forces against Troy. He was brother to 
Menelaus, and was, according to most authorities, the 
son of Plisthenes. As, however, Plisthenes died 
young, and his widow Aerope was taken in marriage 
by Atreus, the sons of Plisthenes, Agamemnon and 
Menelaus namely, were brought up by their grand¬ 
father, now become their stepfather, and were called 
Atridae, as if they had been his own sons. ( Apollod., 
3 , 2, 2. — Heyne, ad loc. — Schol. ad II., 2 , 249 .) On 


the murder of Atreus (vid. Atreus, ACgisthus), and the 
accession of his uncle Thyestes to the vacant throne, 
Agamemnon fled to Sparta, accompanied by his brother 
Menelaus, after having previously found an asylum, 
first with Polyphides, king of Sicyon, and then with 
Oeneus, king of Calydon. Tyndarus was reigning at 
Sparta, and had married his daughter Clytemnestra to 
a son of Thyestes ; but, being dissatisfied with the al¬ 
liance, he stipulated with Agamemnon to aid him in 
recovering the kingdom of Atreus, provided he would 
carry off Clytemnestra and make her his queen. This 
stipulation was agreed to ; and the plan having suc¬ 
ceeded, Agamemnon married the daughter of Tyn¬ 
darus, and became the father of Orestes, Iphigenia (or 
Iphianassa), Laodice (or Electra), and Chrysothemis. 
Agamemnon was one of the most powerful princes of 
his time, and on this account was chosen command¬ 
er-in-chief of the Greeks in their expedition against 
Troy. The Grecian fleet being detained by contrary 
winds at Aulis, owing to the wrath of Diana, whom 
Agamemnon had offended by killing one of her favour¬ 
ite deer, Calchas, the soothsayer, was consulted, and 
he declared that, to appease the goddess, Iphigenia, 
the monarch’s eldest daughter, must be sacrificed. 
She was accordingly led to the altar, and was about to 
be offered as a victim, when (contrary to the statement 
of Virgil that she was actually immolated) she is 
generally said to have suddenly disappeared, and a stag 
to have been substituted by the goddess herself. ( Vid. 
Iphigenia.)—The dispute of Agamemnon with Achil¬ 
les, before the walls of Troy, respecting the captive 
Chryseis; the consequent loss to the Greeks of the 
services of Achilles ; his return to the war, in order 
to avenge the death of Patroclus ; and his victory 
over Hector, form the principal subject of the Iliad.— 
In the division of the captives after the taking of Troy, 
Cassandra, one of the daughters of Priam, fell to the 
lot of Agamemnon. She was endued with the gift of 
prophecy, and warned Agamemnon not to return to 
Mycenae ; but from the disregard with which her pre¬ 
dictions were generally treated (vid. Cassandra), he 
was deaf to her admonitory voice, and was consequent¬ 
ly, upon his arrival in the city, assassinated, with her 
and their two children, by his queen Clytemnestra and 
her paramour iEgisthus. (Vid. Clytemnestra, TEgis- 
thus.) The manner of Agamemnon’s death is va¬ 
riously given. According to the Homeric account, 
the monarch, on his return from Troy, was carried by 
a storm to that part of the coast of Argolis where 
TEgisthus, the son of Thyestes, resided. During his 
absence, iEgisthus had carried on an adulterous in¬ 
tercourse with Clytemnestra, and he had set a watch¬ 
man, with a promise of a large reward, to give him the 
earliest tidings of the return of the king. As soon as 
he learned that he was on the coast, he went out to 
\yelcome him, and invited him to his mansion. At the 
banquet in the evening, however, he placed, with the 
participation of Clytemnestra, twenty men in conceal¬ 
ment, who fell on and slaughtered him, together with 
Cassandra and all his companions. They died not, 
however, unavenged, for iEgisthus alone was left alive. 
(Od., 4, 512, seqq. — Od., 11, 405, seqq.) The post- 
homeric account, followed by the Tragic writers, 
makes Agamemnon to have fallen by the hands of his’ 
wife, after he had just come forth from the bath, and 
while he was endeavouring to put on a garment, the 
sleeves of which had been sewed together, as well as 
the opening for the head, and by which, of course, all 
his movements were obstructed, and, as it were, fetter¬ 
ed. (Schol. ad Eurip., Hec., 1277.—Compare Eurip., 
Orest., 25. — JEsch., Agam., 1353. — Id., Eumen., 
631.) His death was avenged by his son Orestes. 

( Vid. Orestes.) Before concluding this article, it may 
not be amiss to remark, that Homer knows nothing of 
Plisthenes as the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus; 
he calls them simply the offspring of Atreus. Accord- 

75 




AGA 


AGA 


ing to this point of the case, Atreus, who, as eldest 
son, had succeeded Pelops, left on his deathbed Aga¬ 
memnon and Menelaus, still under age, to the guard¬ 
ianship of his brother Thyestes, who resigned the king¬ 
dom to his nephews when they had reached maturity. 
The variations introduced into this story, therefore, 
would seem to be the work of later poets, especially 
of the Tragic writers, from whom the grammarians 
and scholiasts borrowed. ( Heyne, ad 11 , 2, v. 106. — 
Suppl. et Emend. — vol. 4, p. 685.) With respect 
to the extent of Agamemnon’s sway, we are informed 
by Homer (II., 2, 108) that he ruled over many isl¬ 
ands and over all Argos (no'X'AyGt vyGotot Kal ’Apyei 
navrt). By Argos appears to be here meant, not the 
city of that name, for that was under the sway of Dio¬ 
mede, but a large portion of the Peloponnesus, in¬ 
cluding particularly the cities of Mycenae and Tiryns. 
(Heyne, Excurs., 1, ad E., 2.) The islands to which 
the poet alludes can hardly be those of the Sinus Ar- 
golicus, which are few in number and small. Homer 
himself says, that Agamemnon possessed the most 
powerful fleet, and from this it would appear that he 
held many islands under his sway, though we are un¬ 
acquainted with their names. (Heyne, l. c. — Thucyd., 
I; 6.)—Thus much for Agamemnon, on the supposi¬ 
tion that such an individual once actually existed. If 
we follow, however, the theory advocated by Hermann 
and others, and make not only the Trojan war itself to 
have been originally a mere allegory, but the names 
of the leading personages to be also allegorical, and 
indicative of their respective stations or characters, 
Agamemnon becomes the “ permanent ,” or “ general 
leader of the host” (ayo and pipvu), the termination 
uv strengthening the idea implied by the two compo¬ 
nent words from which the appellation is derived, and 
denoting collection or aggregation. The name Aga¬ 
memnon is also connected with the early religion of 
Greece, for we find mention made of a Z evq ’A yapip- 
vo)v. (Meurs., Miscell. Lacon., 1,4.— Eustath. ad II, 
2, p. 168. — Consult Hermann und Creuzer, Briefe 
uber Horn, und Hes., p. 20, and Creuzer, Symbolik, 
vol. 2, p. 450.) 

Agamemnonius, an epithet applied to Orestes, a son 
of Agamemnon. (Virg., Mn., 4, v. 471.) 

Aganippe, a celebrated fountain of Boeotia, on 
Mount Helicon. The grove of the Muses stood on 
the summit of the mountain, and a little below was 
Aganippe. The source Hippocrene was some dis¬ 
tance above. These two springs supplied the small 
rivers Olmius and Permessus, which, after uniting their 
waters, flowed into the Copaic lake near Haliartus. 
(Strabo, 407 and 411.) Pausanias (9, 31) calls the 
former Lemnus. Aganippe was sacred to the Muses, 
who from it were called Aganippides. • Ovid (Fast., 5, 
7) has the expression “ fontcs Aganippidos Hippo- 
crenes ,” whence some are led to imagine that he makes 
Aganippe and Hippocrene the same. This, however, 
is incorrect: the epithet Aganippis, as used by the 
poet, being equivalent here merely to “ Musis sacra.” 
—II. A nymph of the fountain. 

Agapenor, the son of Ancaeus, and grandson of Ly- 
curgus, who led the Arcadian forces in the expedition 
against Troy, and, after the fall of that city, was car¬ 
ried by a storm, on his return home, to the island of 
Cyprus, where he founded the city of Paphos. 

Agapetus. Vid. Supplement. 

Agar, a town of Africa Propria, in the district of 
Byzacium, and probably not far from Zella. 

Agapius. Vid. Supplement. 

Agar a, a city of India intra Gangem, on the south¬ 
ern bank of the Iomanes (Dschumna ), and northwest 
of Palibothra. It is now Agra. (Bxschoff und Moller, 
Worterb. der Gcogr., s. d.) 

Agari (’Ayupov noXtg, or ’Apydpov nSlip, Ptol. _ 

Argari Urbs, Tab. Peut.), a city of India intra Gangem, 
on the Sinus Argaricus. It is thought to correspond to ! 


the modern Artingari. (Bis chaff und Moller, Worterb. 
der Geogr., s. v.) 

Agarista, I. a daughter of Hippocrates, who mar¬ 
ried Xanthippus. She dreamed that she had brought 
forth a lion, and a few days after was delivered of Peri¬ 
cles.—II. ( FVd Supplement.) 

Agasias, or Hegesias, I. a sculptor of Ephesus, to 
whose chisel we owe the celebrated work of art called 
the Borghese Gladiator. This is indicated by an in¬ 
scription on the pedestal of the statue. This statue 
was found, together with the Apollo Belvidere, on the 
site of ancient Antium, the birthplace of Nero, and 
where that emperor had collected a large number of 
chefs-d oeuvre, which had been carried off from Greece 
by his freedman Acratus. It is maintained by more 
recent antiquarians that the statue in question does 
not represent a gladiator ; it appears to have belonged 
to a group, and the attention and action of the figure 
are directed towards some object more elevated than 
itself, such, for example, as a horseman whose attack 
it is sustaining. With regard to the form of the name, 
it may be remarked, that the yEolic and vulgar form 
was Agesias; the Doric, Agasias; and the Ionic, 
Hegesias. This Ionic form was adopted by the Attii 
writers.—II. Another Ephesian sculptor, who exer¬ 
cised his art in4he island of Delos, while it was under 
the Roman sway. (Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.) 

Agassi, a city of Thessaly, supposed by Mannert 
(7, 470) to be the same with the yEgaaa of Ptolemy, 
which he places to the south of Beroea. (Ptol., p. 
84.) It was given up to plunder by Paulus yEmilius. 
for having revolted to Perseus after its surrender. 
(Liv., 45, 27.) There are ruins near the modern Co- 
jani, which, in all probability, mark the site of the an¬ 
cient place. 

Agasus, a harbour of Apulia, near the Promontorium 
Garganum. (Plin., 3, 11.) It is supposed to answer 
to the modern Porto Greco. (Cluver, Ital. Ant., vol. 

2, p. 1212.) 

Agatharchides, I. or Agatharchus, a native of Cni¬ 
dus, in the time of Ptolemy VI. (Philometor) and his 
successor. Photius states (Btblioth., vol. 1, p. 171, 
ed. Bekker), that he had read or was acquainted with 
the following geographical productions of this writer. 

1. A work on Asia (Td Karu ryv ’A oiav), in ten books : 

2. A work on Europe (T« Karu ryv Eipunyv), in 

forty books : and, 3. A work on the Erythraean Sea 
(IIep2 ’E pvOpag dahuGoyg). The patriarch adds, 

that there existed the following other works of the same 
writer. 1. An abridged description of the Erythraean 
Sea (’E7 rtrop?) ruv nept rye ’E pvOpdg daXaGoyc), in one 
book : 2. An account of the Troglodytes (Hep; T poy- 
lodvrtiv), in five books : 3. An abridgment of the 
poem of Antimachus, entitled Lyde (Entropy ryy 
’Avrtpdxov Avdyg) : 4. An abridgment of a work o.n 
extraordinary winds (’Entropy rtov nept cvvaytvyyp 
tiavpactov uvepov) : 5. An abridged history (’E/cAo- 
yat iGropttiv) : and, 6. A treatise on the art of living 
happily with one’s friends. Photius passes a high eu- 
logium on this writer, and makes him to have imitated 
the manner of Thucydides. The patriarch has also 
preserved for us some extracts from the first and fifth 
books of the work of Agatharchides on the Erythrsean 
Sea, in which some curious particulars are found 
respecting the Sabseans and other nations dwelling 
along the coasts. Here also we have an account of 
the mode of hunting elephants, of the method em¬ 
ployed by the Egyptians in extracting gold from mar¬ 
ble, where nature had concealed it; while the whole 
is intermingled with details appertaining to natural his¬ 
tory. The valuable information furnished by Agathar¬ 
chides respecting the people of yEthiopia, lias already 
been alluded to under that article. The fragments of 
Agatharchides were published, along with those of Cte- 
sias and Memnon, by H. Stephens, Paris, 1557, 8vo. 
They are given, however, in a more complete form by 




AG A 


AG A 


Hudson, in his edition of the minor Greek geographers. 
( Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 3, p. 391.)—II. A native 
of Samos, whose IT epouca is cited by Plutarch in his 
Parallels. He is otherwise entirely unknown, and 
hence some have supposed him to be identical with 
Agatharchides of Cnidus, and the Repoinu to be merely 
a section of the work on Asia by this writer. ( Scholl, 
Hist. Litt. Gr., 1. c.) 

Agatharchus, I. an Athenian artist, mentioned by 
Vitruvius ( lib. 7, preef.), and said by him to have in¬ 
vented scene-painting. He was contemporary with 
iEschylus, and prepared the scenery and decorations 
for his theatre. Sillig {Diet. Art., s. v.) maintains, 
that the words of Vitruvius, in the passage just referred 
to, namely, “ scenam fecit," merely mean, that Aga¬ 
tharchus constructed a stage for ZEschylus, since, ac¬ 
cording to Aristotle (Poet., 4), Sophocles first brought 
in the decorations of scenery (oKyvoypatyia). But the 
language of Vitruvius; taken in connection with what 
follows, evidently refers to perspective and scene- 
painting, and Bentley also understands them in this 
sense. (Diss. Phal., p. 286.) Nor do the words of 
Aristotle present any serious obstacle to this opinion, 
since Sophocles may have completed what Agatharchus 
began.—II. A painter, a native of Samos, and con¬ 
temporary with Zeuxis. We have no certain state¬ 
ment respecting the degree of talent which he pos¬ 
sessed. Sillig (Diet. Art., s. v.) thinks it was small, 
and cites in support of his opinion the language of An- 
docides (Or at., c. Alcib., <) 17). Plutarch, however, 
informs us, that Alcibiades confined Agatharchus in 
his mansion until he had decorated it with paintings, 
and then sent him home with a handsome present. 
(Vit. Alcib., 16.) Andocides charges Alcibiades with 
detaining Agatharchus three whole months, and com¬ 
pelling him during that period to adorn his mansion 
with the pencil. And he states that the painter es¬ 
caped to his house only in the fourth month of his du¬ 
ress. Sillig thinks that this was done in order to cast 
ridicule upon the artist, an inference far from probable, 
though it would seem to derive some support from the 
remark of the scholiast on Demosthenes (c. Mid., p. 
360), as to the nature of the provocation which Aga¬ 
tharchus had given to Alcibiades. Bentley makes 
only one artist of the name of Agatharchus, but is 
silent as to the difficulty which would then arise in re¬ 
lation to this artist’s being contemporaneous with both 
yEschylus and Zeuxis. Agatharchus prided himself, 
upon his rapidity of execution, and received the famous 
retort from Zeuxis, that if the former executed his 
works in a short time, he, Zeuxis, painted “ for a long 
time,” i. e., for posterity. 

Agathemerus, I. a Greek geographer. The period 
when he flourished is not known ; it is certain, how¬ 
ever, that he came after Ptolemy ; and very probably 
he lived during the third century of our era. The only 
work by which he is known is an abridgment of geog¬ 
raphy, entitled 'TTcorviruGiq ryq yeoypatyiaq, ev etzit- 
o/urj, in two books. This little production appears to 
have reached us in a very imperfect state. It is a 
series of lessons dictated to a disciple named Philo, to 
serve him as an outline for a course of mathematical 
and physical geography. In the first chapter he gives 
a sketch of history and geography, and names the most 
useful writers in these departments. He gives us 
here some particulars worthy of notice that we might 
search in vain for in Strabo. In the chapters that fol¬ 
low, Agathemerus treats of the divisions of the earth, 
of winds, seas, islands, &c. After the sixteenth chap¬ 
ter comes an extract from Ptolemy. The second book 
is only a confused repetition of the first, and is the work, 
probably, of some ignorant disciple. The first edition 
of Agathemerus is that of Tennulius, in Greek and 
Latin, Amst., 1671, 8vo. It is to be found also in 
the collection of ancient geographical writers, by Gro- 
novius, Lugd. Bat., 1679 and 1700, 4to, and in Hud¬ 


son’s collection. ( Scholl , Hist. Litt. Gr., vol. 5, p. 
324.)—II. A physician. ( Vid. Supplement.) 

Agathias, a poet and historian, born at Myrina, in 
-Eolis, on the coast of Asia Minor, probably about 536 
A.D. He studied at Alexandrea, and went in the year 
554 to Constantinople. He possessed some talent 
for poetry, and wrote a variety of amorous effusions, 
which he collected in nine books, under the title of 
“ Daphniaca.” A collection of epigrams, in seven 
books, was also made by him, of which a great number 
are still extant, and to be found in the Anthology. 
His principal production,however, is an historical work, 
which he probably wrote after the death of the Emperor 
Justinian. It contains, in five books, an account of his 
own times, from the wars of Narses to the death of 
Chosroes, king of Persia. Plis work is of great impor¬ 
tance for the history of Persia. According to his own 
account, he would appear to have been conversant with 
the Persian language, since he states that he compiled 
his narrative from Persian authorities (ek tuv irapu 
atyiciv eyyEypappEvuv, p. 125). He writes, perhaps, 
with more regard for the truth than poets are wont to 
do ; but his style is pompous and full of affectation, 
and his narrative continually interspersed with com¬ 
monplace reflections. The mediocrity of a bastard 
time is clinging fast to him, and the highest stretch of 
his ambition seems to have been to imitate the ancient 
writers. By faith he was undoubtedly a Christian, 
and probably prided himself upon his orthodoxy ; for 
when he mentions that the Franks were Christians, 
he adds, nal rrj opdordry xp^ ) H- ev0i His remi¬ 

niscences of the Homeric poems supplied him with a 
large stock of epic words, which swim on the smooth 
surface of his narrative like heavy logs upon stagnant 
water. The work of Agathias may be regarded, in point 
of learning and diction, as a fair specimen of the age in 
which he lived; few men at Alexandrea or Constantino¬ 
ple may have surpassed him as a writer. (Foreign Re¬ 
view, No. 2, p. 575.) The best edition is that published 
in 1828, as Part III. in the collection of Byzantine his¬ 
torians, at present publishing at Bonn. 

AgathInus. Vid. Supplement. 

Agatho, an Athenian tragic writer, the contempo¬ 
rary and friend of Euripides. At his house Plato lays 
the scene of his Symposium, given in honour of a 
tragic victory won by the poet. Agatho was no mean 
dramatist. He is called ’A yuduv 6 K^Eivoq by Aris¬ 
tophanes. ( Thesmoph., 29.) The same writer pays 
a handsome tribute to his memory as a poet and a 
man, in the Ranee (v. 84), where Bacchus calls him 
dyadoq Troiyrr/q nai; Tcodsivoq rolq (piXoiq. In the 
Thesmophoriazusee, however, which was exhibited six 
years before the Ranee, Agatho, then alive, is introduced 
as the friend of Euripides, and ridiculed for his effem¬ 
inacy. His poetry seems to have corresponded with 
his personal appearance ; profuse in trope, inflexion, 
and metaphor; glittering with sparkling ideas, and 
flowing softly on withffiarmonious words and nice con¬ 
struction, but deficient in manly thought and vigour. 
Agatho may, in some degree, be charged with having 
begun the decline of true tragedy. It was he who first 
commenced the practice of inserting choruses between 
the acts of the drama, which had no reference whatever 
to the circumstances of the piece ; thus infringing the 
law by which the chorus was made One of the actors. 
(Aristot.,.Po'et., 18, 22.) He is blamed also by Aris¬ 
totle (Poet., 18, 17) for want of judgment, in selecting 
too extensive subjects. Pie occasionally wrote pieces 
with fictitious names (a transition towards the new 
comedy), one of which was called the Flower, and was 
probably, therefore, neither seriously affecting nor ter¬ 
rible, but in the style of the Idyl. (Schlegel. Dram. 
Litt., vol. 1, p. 189.) One of Agatho’s tragic victo¬ 
ries is recorded, 01. 91, 2, B.C. 416. He too, like 
Euripides, left Athens for the court of Archelaus. 

Agathoclea. Vid. Supplement. 


77 



AGATHOCLES. 


AGA 


Agathocles, I. one of the boldest adventurers of 
antiquity. His history is principally drawn from Dio¬ 
dorus Siculus (books nineteen and twenty, and frag¬ 
ments of book twenty-one), and from Justin (books 
twenty-two and twenty-three). They derived their 
accounts from different sources, and differ, therefore, 
especially in the history of his youth. Agathocles 
was the son of Carcinus, who, having been expelled 
from Rhegium, resided at Thermae in Sicily. On ac¬ 
count of a mysterious oracle, he was exposed in his 
infancy, but was secretly brought up by his mother. 
At the age of seven years the boy was again received 
by his repentant father, and sent to Syracuse to learn 
the trade of a potter, where he continued to reside, 
being admitted by Timoleon into the number of the 
citizens. He was drawn from obscurity by Damas, a 
noble Syracusan, to whom his beauty recommended 
him, and was soon placed at the head of an army sent 
against Agrigentum. By a marriage with the widow 
of Damas, he became one of the most wealthy men of 
Syracuse. Under the dominion of Sosistratus, he was 
obliged to fly to Tarentum, but returned after the death 
of the latter, usurped the sovereignty, in which he es¬ 
tablished himself by the murder of several thousand of 
the principal inhabitants, and conquered the greater 
part of Sicily (317 B.C.). He maintained his power 
twenty-eight years, till 289 B.C. To strengthen his 
authority in his native country, and to give employment 
to the people, he endeavoured, like Dionysius, to drive 
the Carthaginians from Sicily. Having been defeated 
by them, and besieged in Syracuse, he boldly resolved 
to pass over into Africa with a portion of his army. 
Here he fought for four years, till 307, generally with 
success. Disturbances in Sicily compelled him to 
leave his army twice, and at his second return into 
Africa he found it in rebellion against his son Archa- 
gathus. He appeased the commotion by promising 
the troops the booty they should win; but, being de° 
feated, he did not hesitate to give up his own sons to the 
vengeance of his exasperated soldiery, and expose these 
latter, without a leader, to the enemy. His sons were 
murdered ; the army surrendered to the Carthaginians. 
He himself restored quiet to Sicily, and concluded a 
peace 306 B.C., which secured to both parties their 
former possessions. He then engaged in several hos¬ 
tile expeditions to Italy, where he vanquished the 
Bruttii and sacked Crotona. His latter days were 
saddened by domestic strife. His intention was, that 
his youngest son, Agathocles, should inherit the throne. 
This stimulated his grandson Archagathus to rebellion. 
He murdered the intended heir, and persuaded Msenon, 
a favourite of the king’s, to poison him. This was done 
by means of a feather, with which the king cleaned his 
teeth after a meal. His mouth, and soon his \vhole 
body, became a mass of corruption. Before he was 
entirely dead he was thrown upon a funeral pile. Ac¬ 
cording to some authors, he died at the age of seventy- 
two years ; according to others,*at that of ninety-five. 
Before his death, his wife Texena and two sons were 
sent to Egypt. His son-in-law, Pyrrhus, king of Epi¬ 
rus, inherited his influence in Sicily and Southern Italy. 
Agathocles possessed the talents of a general and a 
sovereign. He was proud of his ignoble descent. 
His cruelty, luxury, and insatiable ambition, however, 
accelerated his ruin. {Justin, 22, 1, seqq.—Id., 23, 

1, seqq. Polyb., 12, 15.— Id., 15, 35.— Id., 9, 23, 

A son of Lysimachus, taken prisoner by 
the Getse. He was ransomed, and married Lysandra, 
daughter of Ptolemy Lagus. His father, in his old 
age, married Arsinoe, the eldest sister of Lysandra, 
who, fearful lest her oflspring by Lysimachus might, on 
the death of the latter, come under the power of Agath¬ 
ocles and be destroyed, planned, and succeeded in 
bringing about, the death of this prince. After the 
destruction of Agathocles she fled to Seleucus. An¬ 
other account makes Agathocles to have lost his life 
78 


through the resentment of Arsinoe, in consequence 
of his refusing to listen to certain dishonourable pro¬ 
posals made by her. {Pausan., 1, 9 . — Id., 1, 10.)— 
III. A brother of Agathoclea, and minister of Ptolemy 
Philopator. ( Vid. Agathoclea.)—IV. A Greek histo¬ 
rian, a native of Samos, who wrote a work on the gov¬ 
ernment of Pessinus. ( Vossius, de Hist. Grcec., 3, p. 
158. — Ernesti, Clav. Cic. Ind. Hist., s. v.) —V. An 
archon at Athens, 01. 105, at the period when the Pho- 
cians undertook to plunder Delphi.—VI. An historian. 
{Vid. Supplement.) 

Agathod^emon, or the Good Genius, I. a name ap¬ 
plied by the Greeks to the Egyptian Cnepli, as indic¬ 
ative of the qualities and attributes assigned to him 
in the mythology of that nation. (Compare Eusebius, 
Prcep. Ev., 1, 10, p. 41. — Jablonski, Panth. JEgypt., 
1, p. 86.) It is the same with the Nouf, and Poeman- 
der, of the Alexandrean school; and the hieroglyphic 
which represents this deity is the circle, or disk, hav¬ 
ing in the centre a serpent with a hawk’s head, or else 
a globe encircled by a serpent, the symbol of the spir¬ 
it, or eternal principle, male and female, that animates 
and controls the world, as well as of the light, which 
illumines all things. {Creuzer’s Symbolik, par Guig- 
maut, vol. 1, p. 824.) — II. A name applied by the 
Greeks to the serpent, as an image of Cneph, the good 
genius. {Plut., de Is. et Os., p. 418.) The serpent 
here meant is of a harmless kind, and was also called 
Urceus (O vpaloe), or the royal serpent {Zoega, Hum. 

P- 400.— Id., de Obelise., p. 431, n. 41), and 
hence it is also the symbol of royalty, and appears on 
the heads of kings as well as of gods. (Compare re¬ 
marks under the article Cleopatra.) The term Agatho- 
dsemon is said to be nothing more than a translation of 
the Egyptian term Cneph. ( Jablonski , Vocc., p. 112. 
— Ouvaroff, Essai sur les Myst. d'Eleusis, p. 106, 
seqq .— Creuzer’s Symbolik, vol. 1, p. 505, of the Ger¬ 
man work.— Champollion, Precis, &c., p. 91.)—III. 
A name given by the Greek residents in Egypt to the 
Canopic arm of the Nile. ( Ptol., 4, 5.) The native 
appellation was Schetnouphi, i. e., “ the good arm of 
the river;” from Schet, “the arm of a river,” and 
nouphi, “ good,” and was used in opposition to the 
Phatnetic, or evil arm of the Nile. {Champollion, 
VEgypte sous les Pharaons , vol. 2, p. 23.) The words 
Cneph (Cnuphi) and Canobus (Canopus) were, in 
fact, the same ; and we have in the following, also, 
.merely different forms of the same appellation : Chno~ 
phi, Anubis, Mnevis, &c.—III. {Vid. Supplement.) 

Agathotycus. Vid. Supplement. 

Agathon, I. {Vid. Agatho.) — II., III. {Vid. Sup. 
plement.) 

Agathyrna, or Agathyrnum, a city of Sicily, on the 
northern coast, between Tyndaris and Calacta. It ap¬ 
pears to have been originally a settlement of the Siculi, 
and, owing to this circumstance probably, as well as 
to its remote position, would seem to have escaped 
the notice of the Greek geographers. Its name ap¬ 
pears, for the first time, in the history of the second 
Punic war, where Livy (26, 40) states, that the Ro¬ 
man consul Laevinus carried away from the place a 
motley rabble, four thousand in number, consisting of 
abandoned characters, and brought them to the coast 
of Italy near Rhegium, the people of which place want¬ 
ed a band trained to robberies, for the purpose of rav- 
a c9 n S Bruttium. Livy writes the name Agathyrna, of 
the first declension : the more common form is Acra- 
thyrnum {'kydOvpvov). The modern St. Agatha stands 
near the site of the ancient city. ( Mannert , Geotrr 
vol. 9, pt. 2, p. 411.) 

Agathyrsi, a nation respecting whom the accounts 
of ancient writers are greatly at variance. (Compare 
Vossius, Annot. in Hudson, Geog. Min., vol. 1, p. 
79.) Herodotus (4, 49) places them in the vicinity 
of the Maris, the modern Marosch, in what is now 
Transylvania, and most writers agree in placing them 







AGE 


AGE 


in this country and in upper Hungary. (Compare 
Rennell, Geogr. of Herod., p. 83, scqq. — Mannert, 4, 
p. 102. — Niebuhr, Verm. Schrift ., 1, p. 377, &c.) 
Scymnus of Chios, however, makes them to have dwelt 
on the Palus Maeotis. The name perhaps, after all, is 
a mere appellative, a"nd may have been applied by dif¬ 
ferent authors to different tribes. What serves to 
strengthen this opinion is the fact, that the latter half 
of the term Agathyrsi frequently occurs in other na¬ 
tional designations, such as Idanthyrsi, Thyrsagetce, 
Thyssagetce, Thyrsi , &c. The reference probably is 
to the god Tyr, another name for the sun. What 
Herodotus (4, 104) states respecting this race, that 
they were accustomed to array themselves in very 
handsome attire, to wear a great number of golden or¬ 
naments, to have their women in common, and to live, 
in consequence of this last-mentioned arrangement, 
like brethren and members of one family, is received 
with great incredulity by many. (Compare Valcke- 
naer, Herod.., ed. Wessel., p. 328, n. 31.) All this, 
however, clearly shows their Asiatic origin, and con¬ 
nects them with the nations in the interior of the east¬ 
ern continent. The community of wives seems to have 
been a remnant, in some degree, of an early Buddhis¬ 
tic system. The civilized habits of the Agathyrsi are, 
at all events, worthy of notice, and favour the theory 
of those who see in them a fragment of early civiliza¬ 
tion, emanating from some highly cultivated race, and 
subsequently shattered by the inroads of the Scythians 
and other barbarous tribes. ( Ritter , Vorhal., 286, seqq.) 

Agaue (’A yavTj), or, with the Reuchlinian pronun¬ 
ciation, Agave, I. daughter of Cadmus, and wife of 
Echion, by whom she had Pentheus. Her son suc¬ 
ceeded his grandfather in the government of Thebes. 
While he was reigning, Bacchus came from the east, 
and sought to introduce his orgies into his native city. 
The women all gave enthusiastically into the new re¬ 
ligion, and Mount Cithaeron rang to the frantic yells of 
the Bacchantes. Pentheus sought to check their fury; 
but, deceived by the god, he went secretly and ascend¬ 
ed a tree on Cithseron, to be an ocular witness of their 
revels. While here, he was descried by his mother 
and aunts, to whom Bacchus made him appear to be a 
wild beast, and he was torn to pieces by them. This 
adventure of Pentheus has furnished the groundwork 
of one of the finest dramas of Euripides, his Bacchae. 

( Apollod ., 3, 4, 4.— Id., 3, 5, 1.— Ovid, Met., 3, 514, 
seqq. — Hygin., F., 184. — Keightlefs Mythology, p. 
298.)—II. A tragedy of Statius, now lost. ( Juv ., 7, 
87.)—III. A daughter of Danaus. She slew her hus¬ 
band Lycus, in obedience to her father’s orders. (Apol¬ 
lod., 2, 1 , 5.) — IV. A Nereid. (Apollod., 1 , 2, 7.) 

Agdestis, I. a genius or deity mentioned in the 
legends of Phrygia, and connected with the mythus of 
Cybele and Atys. An account of his origin, as well 
as other particulars respecting him, may be obtained 
from Pausanias (7, 17). He was an androgynous de¬ 
ity, and appears to be the same with the Adagoiis of 
the ancient writers. (Creuzer, Symbolik, vol. 2, p. 
48.—Compare the note of Guigniaut.) —II. One of 
the summits of Mount Dindymus in Phrygia, on which 
Atys was said to have been buried. (Pausan., 1, 4.) 

Ageladas, I. an excellent statuary, and illustrious 
also as having been the instructer of Phidias, Poly- 
cletus, and Myron. His parents were inhabitants of 
Argos, according to Pausanias (34,8), and he himself 
was born there, probably about B.C. 540. The par¬ 
ticular time, however, when he lived, has given rise 
to much discussion. Sillig, after a long and able ar¬ 
gument, comes to the conclusion that Ageladas, the 
instructer of Phidias, attained the height of his renown 
about Olymp. 70, or 500 B.C. (Diet. Art., s. v .)—II. 
Another artist, probably a nephew of the former, as¬ 
signed by Pliny to Olymp. 87, or 432 B.C., which can 
hardly be correct. He was thinking, perhaps, of the 
elder Ageladas\ (Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.) 


Agelastus (’A -yehaarog), an appellation given to M. 
Crassus, father of the celebrated orator, and grandfa^ 
ther of Crassus the rich, from his extraordinary gravity. 
Lucilius said of him, that he laughed only once in the 
course of his life, while Pliny informs us that he was 
reported never to have laughed at all. Hence the 
name ’ kyeTiaarog, “one that does not laugh,” or “ that 
never laughs.” (Cic., de Fin., 5, 30.— Douza, ad Lu- 
cil., Fragm., p. 20.— Plin., 7, 18.) 

Agelaus, I. a king of Corinth, son of Ixion.—II. 
A son of Hercules and Omphale, from whom CrcESUs 
was descended. (Apollod., 2, 7, 8.) Diodorus Sicu¬ 
lus (4, 31) gives the name of this son as Lamus. 
Herodotus, on the other hand, deduces the royal line 
of Lydia from a son of Hercules and a female slave 
belonging to Jardanus, the father of Omphale. (He¬ 
rod., 1,7.) This last is generally considered to be the 
more correct opinion. (Consult Bdhr, ad Herod., 1. c. 
— Creuzer, Hist. Grcec. antiquiss., &c., p. 186.)—III. 
A servant of Priam, who preserved Paris when expo¬ 
sed on Mount Ida. (Vid. Paris.— Apollod., 3, 12, 5, 
and Heyne, ad loc., not. cr.) 

Agendicum, Agedincum, or Agedlcum (’A yr/ducov, 
Ptol.), a city of Gaul, the metropolis of Senonia, or 
Lugdunensis Quarta. Its later name was Senones, 
now Sens. (Cces., B. G., 6, extr. — Eutrop., 10, 7.— 
Amm. Marcell., 15, 27.) 

Agenor, I. a son of Neptune and Libya, king of 
Phoenicia, and twin-brother of Belus (Apollod., 2, 1, 
4); he married Telephassa, by whom he became the 
father of Cadmus, Phoenix, Cylix, Tharsus, Phineus, 
and, according to some, of Europa also. (Schol. ad 
Eurip., Pheen., 5. — Hygin., Fab., 178.— Paus., 5, 25, 
7. — Schol. ad Apoll. Rhod., 2, 178; 3, 1185.) Af¬ 
ter his daughter Europa had been carried off by Jupi¬ 
ter, Agenor sent out his sons in search of her, and en¬ 
joined on them not to return without their sister. As 
Europa was not to be found, none of them returned, 
and all settled in foreign countries. (Apollod., 3, 1, 1. 
— Hygin., Fab., 178.) Virgil (2En., 1, 338) calls Car¬ 
thage the city of Agenor, by which he alludes to the 
descent of Dido from Agenor. Buttmann (Mytholog., 
1, p. 232, seq.) points out that the genuine Phoenician 
name of Agenor was Cnas, which is the same as Ca¬ 
naan, and upon these facts he builds the hypothesis, 
that Agenor or Cnas is the same as the Canaan in the 
Books of Moses.—II. A son of Iasus, and father of 
Argus Panoptes, king of Argos. (Apollod., 2, 1, 2.) 
Hellanicus (Fragm., p. 47, ed. Sturz.) states that Age¬ 
nor was a son of Phoroneus, and brother of Iasus and 
Pelasgus, and that, after their father’s death, the two el¬ 
der brothers divided his dominions between themselves 
in such a manner, that Pelasgus received the country 
about the river Eracinus, and built Larissa, and Iasus 
the country about Elis. After the death of these two, 
Agenor, the youngest, invaded their dominions, and 
thus became King of Argos.—III. The son and suc¬ 
cessor of Triopas in the kingdom of Argos. He be¬ 
longed to the house of Phoroneus, and was father of 
Crotopus. (Paus., 2, 16, 1.— Hygin., Fab., 145.)— 
IV. A son of Pleuron and Xanthippe, and grandson of 
JEtolus. Epicaste, the daughter of Calydon, became 
by him the mother of Porthaon and Demonice. (Apol¬ 
lod., 1, 7, 7.) According to Pausanias (3, 13, 5), 
Thestius, the father of Leda, is likewise a son of this 
Agenor.—V. A son of Phegeus, king of Psophis, in 
Arcadia. He was brother of Pronous and Arsinoe, 
who was married to Alcmaeon, but was abandoned by 
him. When Alcmaeon wanted to give the celebrated 
necklace and peplus of Harmonia to his second wife, 
Callirrhoe, the daughter of Achelous, he was slain by 
Agenor and Pronous at the instigation of Phegeus. 
But when the two brothers came to Delphi, where they 
intended to dedicate the necklace and peplus, they were 
killed by Amphoterus and Acarnan, the sons of Alc- 
mason and Callirrhoe. (Apollod., 3, 7, 5.) Pausanias 

79 





AGE 


AGESILAUS. 


(8, 24, 4), who relates the same story, calls the chil¬ 
dren of Phegeus Temenus, Axion, and Alphesiboea. 
—VI. A son of the Trojan Antenor, and of Theano, a 
priestess of Minerva. (//., 6, 298.) He appears as 
one of the bravest of the Trojans, and as leader in the 
storming of the Grecian encampment. He hastens 
with other Trojans to the assistance of Hector when 
prostrated by Ajax, and, being encouraged by Apollo, 
he engages in combat with Achilles, whom he wounds. 
As, however, danger threatened him in this conflict, 
Apollo assumed Agenor’s form, in order that, while 
Achilles turned against the god, the Trojans might be 
able to escape to the city. (II., 21, sub Jin. — Hygin., 
Fab., 112.) According to Pausanias (10, 27, 1), Age- 
nor was slain by Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, 
and was represented by Polygnotus in the great paint¬ 
ing in the Lesche of Delphi. 

Agenorides, a patronymic of Agenor, designating a 
descendant of an Agenor, such as Cadmus, Phineus, 
and Perseus. 

Agesander, I. or Agesilaus, from dyecv and uvyp 
or Aaog, a surname of Pluto or Hades, describing him 
as the god who carries away all men. ( Callim., Hymn, 
in Falla,d., 130. — Spank., ad loc. — Hesych., s. v .— 
JEschyl. ap. Athen., 3, p. 99.) Nicander (ap. Athen., 
15, p. 684) uses the form ’H yea'Daog .—II. A sculp¬ 
tor, a native of the island of Rhodes. His name oc¬ 
curs in no author except Pliny (H. N., 36, 5, 4), and 
we know of but one work which he executed ; it is a 
work, however, which bears the most decisive testi¬ 
mony to his surpassing genius. In conjunction with 
Apollodorus and Athenodorus, he sculptured the group 
of Laocoon. ( Vid. Laocoon.) This celebrated group 
w T as discovered in the year 1506, near the baths of Ti¬ 
tus on the Esquiline Hill: it is now preserved in the 
Museum of the Vatican. A great deal has been writ¬ 
ten about the age when Agesander flourished, and vari¬ 
ous opinions have been formed on the subject. Winck- 
elmann and Muller, forming their judgment from the 
style of art displayed in the work itself, assign it to the 
age of Lysippus. Muller thinks the intensity of suf¬ 
fering depicted, and the somewhat theatrical air which 
pervades the group, show that it belongs to a later 
age than that of Phidias. Lessing and Thiersch, on 
the other hand, after subjecting the passage of Pliny 
to an accurate examination, have come to the conclu¬ 
sion, that Agesander and the other two artists lived in 
the age of Titus, and sculptured the group expressly 
for that emperor ; and this opinion is pretty generally 
acquiesced in. Thiersch has written a great deal to 
show that the plastic art did not decline so early as is 
generally supposed, but continued to flourish in full 
vigour from the time of Phidias uninterruptedly down 
to the reign of Titus. Pliny was deceived in saying 
that the group was sculptured out of one block, as the 
lapse of time has discovered a join in it. It appears from 
an inscription on the pedestal of a statue found at Nct- 
tuno (the ancient Antium), that Athenodorus was the 
son of Agesander. This makes it not unlikely that 
Polydorus also was his son, and that the father execu¬ 
ted the figure of Laocoon himself, his two sons the re¬ 
maining two figures. ( Lessing , Laokoon .— Winckel- 
mann, Gesch. de Kunst, 10,1, 10.— Thiersch, Epochen 
der Bildkunst , p. 318, &c. — Muller, Archceol. dcr 
Kunst, p. 152.) 

Agesianax, a Greek poet, of whom a beautiful frag¬ 
ment, descriptive of the moon, is preserved in Plutarch 
(De facie in orb. Luna, p. 920.) It is uncertain wheth¬ 
er the poem to which this fragment belonged was of 
an epic or didactic character. 

Agesias, one of the Iambidae, and an hereditary priest 
of Jupiter at Olympia. He gained the victory there in 
the mule-race, and is celebrated on that account by 
Pindar in the 6th Olympic Ode. Bockh places his 
victory in the 78th Olympiad. 

Agesidamus, son of Archestratus, an Epizephyrian 
80 


Locrian, who conquered, when a boy, in boxing in the 
Olympic games. His victory is celebrated by Pindar 
in the 10th and 11th Olympic Odes. The scholiast pla¬ 
ces his victory in the 74th Olympiad. He should not 
be confounded with Agesidamus the father of Chromi- 
us, who is mentioned in the Nemean Odes (1, 42 ; 9, 
99). 

Agesilaus, I. son of Doryssus, sixth king of the 
Agid line of Sparta, excluding Aristodemus, accord¬ 
ing to Apollodorus, reigned 44 years, and died 886 
B.C. Pausanias makes his reign a short one, but con¬ 
temporary with the legislation of Lycurgus. (Pausan., 
3, 2, 3.— Clinton, Fast. Hell., 1, p. 335.)—II. Son by 
his second wife, Eupolia, of Archidamus II., succeed¬ 
ed his half-brother, Agis II., as nineteenth king of the 
Eurypontid line ; excluding, on the ground of spurious 
birth, and by the interest of Lysander, his nephew, Le- 
otychides. (Vid. Leotychides.) His reign extends 
from 398 to 361 B.C., both inclusive ; during most of 
which time he was, in Plutarch’s words, “ as good as 
thought commander and king of all Greece,” and was 
for the whole of it greatly identified with his country’s 
deeds and fortunes. The position of that country, 
though internally weak, was externally, in Greece, 
dowm to 394, one of supremacy acknowledged : the 
only field of its ambition was Persia ; from 394 to 387, 
the Corinthian or first Theban war, one of supremacy 
assaulted : in 387 that supremacy was restored over 
Greece, in the peace of Antalcidas, by the sacrifice of 
Asiatic prospects ; and thus, more confined and more 
secure, it became also more wanton. After 378, when 
Thebes regained her freedom, we find it again assailed, 
and again for one moment restored, though on a lower 
level, in 371 ; then overthrown forever at Leuctra, the 
next nine years being a struggle for existence amid 
dangers within and without. 

Of the youth of Agesilaus we have no detail, beyond 
the mention of his intimacy with Lysander. On the 
throne, which he ascended about the age of forty, we 
first hear of him in the suppression of Cinadon’s con¬ 
spiracy. In his third year (396), he crossed into Asia, 
and after a short campaign, and a winter of preparation, 
he in the next overpowered the two satraps, Tissapher- 
nes and Pharnabazus ; and in the spring of 394 was 
encamped in the plain of Thebe, preparing to advance 
into the heart of the empire, when a message arrived 
to summon him to the war at home. He calmly and 
promptly obeyed, expressing, however, to the Asiatic 
Greeks, and doubtless himself indulging, hopes of a 
speedy return. Marching rapidly by Xerxes’ route, he 
met and defeated at Coroneia in Boeotia the allied for¬ 
ces. In 393 he was engaged in a ravaging invasion 
of Argolis ; in 392 in one of the Corinthian territory ; 
in 391 he reduced the Acarnanians to submission ; but 
in the remaining years of the war he is not mentioned. 
In the interval of peace, we find him declining the com¬ 
mand in Sparta’s aggression on Mantineia ; but head¬ 
ing, from motives, it is said, of private friendship, that 
on Phlius, and openly justifying Phoebidas’s seizure of 
the Cadmeia. Of the next w r ar, the first two years he 
commanded in Boeotia, more, however, to the enemy’s 
gain in point of experience than loss in any other; from 
the five remaining he was withdrawn by severe illness. 
In the congress of 371 an altercation is recorded be¬ 
tween him and Epaminondas; and by his advice 
Thebes w r as peremptorily excluded from the peace, 
and orders given for the fatal campaign of Leuctra. In 
379 we find him engaged in an embassy to Mantineia, 
and reassuring the Spartans by an invasion of Arcadia; 
and in 369 to his skill, courage, and presence of mind, 
is to be ascribed the maintenance of the unwalled Spar¬ 
ta, amid the attacks of four armies, and revolts and 
conspiracies of Helots, Perioeci, and even Spartans. 
Finally, in 362, he led his countrymen into Arcadia; 
by fortunate information was enabled to return in time 
to prevent the surprise of Sparta, and was, it seems, 




AGESILAUS. 


AGESIPOLIS. 


joint, if not sole commander at the battle ofMantineia. 
To the ensuing winter must probably be referred his 
embassy to the coast of Asia, and negotiations for mon¬ 
ey with the revolted satraps, alluded to in an obscure 
passage of Xenophon ( Agesilaus , 2, 26, 27); and, in 
performance, perhaps, of some stipulation then made, he 
crossed, in the spring of 361, with a body of Lacedae¬ 
monian mercenaries, into Egypt. Here, after display¬ 
ing much of his ancient skill, he died, while preparing 
for his voyage home, in the winter of 361-60, after a 
life of above eighty years, and a reign of thirty-eight. 
His body was embalmed in wax, and splendidly buried 
at Sparta. 

Referring to our sketch of Spartan history, we find 
Agesilaus shining most in its first and last period, as 
commencing and surrendering a glorious career in 
Asia, and as, in extreme age, maintaining his prostrate 
country. From Coroneia to Leuctra we see him part¬ 
ly unemployed, at times yielding to weak motives, at 
times joining in wanton acts of public injustice. No 
one of Sparta’s great defeats, but some of her bad pol¬ 
icy, belongs to him. In what others do, we miss him ; 
in what he does, we miss the greatness and consisten¬ 
cy belonging to unity of purpose and sole command. 
No doubt he was hampered at home ; perhaps, too, 
from a man withdrawn, when now near fifty, from his 
chosen career, great action in a new one of any kind 
could not be looked for. Plutarch gives, among nu¬ 
merous apophthegmata, his letter to the ephors on his 
recall: “We have reduced most of Asia, driven back 
the barbarians, made arms abundant in Ionia. But 
since you bid me, according to the decree, come home, 
I shall follow my letter, may perhaps be even before it. 
For my command is not mine, but my country’s and 
her allies’. And a commander then commands truly 
according to right when he sees his own commander 
in the laws and ephors, or others holding office in the 
state.” Also, an exclamation on hearing of the battle 
of Corinth : “ Alas for Greece ! she has killed enough 
of her sons to have conquered all the barbarians.” Of 
his courage, temperance, and hardiness, many instan¬ 
ces are given : to these he added, even in excess, the 
less Spartan qualities of kindness and tenderness as 
a father and a friend. Thus we have the story of his 
riding across a stick with his children ; and, to gratify 
his son’s affection for Cleonymus, son of the culprit, 
he saved Sphodrias from the punishment due, in right 
and policy, for nis incursion into Attica in 378. So, 
too,the appointment of Pisander. (Vid. Pisander.) A 
letter of his runs, “ If Nicias is innocent, acquit him 
for that; if guilty, for my sake ; any how, acquit him.” 
From Spartan cupidity and dishonesty, and mostly, 
even in public life, from ill faith, his character is clear. 
In person he was small, mean-looking, and lame, on 
which last ground objection had been made to his ac¬ 
cession, an oracle, curiously fulfilled, having warned 
Sparta of evils awaiting her under a “ lame sovereign¬ 
ty.” In his reign, indeed, her fall took place, but not 
through him. Agesilaus himself was Sparta’s most 
perfect citizen and most consummate general; in many 
ways, perhaps, her greatest man. (Xen., Hell., 3, 3, to 
the.end; Agesilaus. — Diod., 14, 15.— Paus., 3, 9, 10. 
— Plut. and C. Nepos, in Vita. — Pint., Apophthegm.) 
—III. A Greek historian, who wrote a work on the 
early history of Italy (’IraXiid), fragments of which 
are presented in Plutarch ( Parallela , p. 312) and Sto- 
bseus. ( Flonleg., 9, 27, 54, 49, 65, 10, ed.-Gaisf.)— 
IV. A brother of Themistocles, who went into the Per¬ 
sian camp, and stabbed one of the body-guards instead 
of Xerxes, whom he intended to assassinate, but knew 
i*ot. Upon being arraigned before Xerxes, he thrust 
his hand into the fire, and informed the monarch that 
all his countrymen were prepared to do the same. Plu¬ 
tarch cites this incident on the authority of Agathar- 
chides, in his Parallels. (Op., ed. Reiske, vol. 7, p. 
217.) If the story be true, it shows the source whence 
L 


the Roman fable of Mucius Scsevola was borrowed. 
(Vid. Agatharchides II.) 

Agesipolis, I. king of Sparta, the twenty-first of the 
Agids beginning with Eurysthenes, succeeded his fa¬ 
ther Pausanias, while yet a minor, in B.C. 394, and 
reigned fourteen years. He was placed under the 
guardianship of Aristodemus, his nearest of kin. He 
came to the crown just about the time that the confed¬ 
eracy (partly brought about by the intrigues of the Per¬ 
sian satrap Tithraustes), which was formed by Thebes, 
Athens, Corinth, and Argos, against Sparta, rendered 
it necessary to recall his colleague, Agesilaus II., from 
Asia ; and the first military operation of his reign was 
the expedition to Corinth, where the forces of the con¬ 
federates were then assembled. The Spartan army 
was led by Aristodemus, and gained a signal victory 
over the allies. (Xen., Hell., 4, 2, § 9.) In the year 
B.C. 390, Agesipolis, who had now reached his major¬ 
ity, was intrusted with the command of an army for the 
invasion of Argolis. Having procured the sanction of 
the Olympic and Delphic gods for disregarding any at¬ 
tempt which theArgives might make to stop his march, 
on the pretext of a religious truce, he carried his rava¬ 
ges still farther than Agesilaus had done in B.C. 393 ; 
but, as he suffered the aspect of the victims to deter 
him from occupying a permanent post, the expedi¬ 
tion yielded no fruit but the plunder. (Xen., Hell., 
4, 7, <) 2-6.— Paus., 3, 5, § 8.) In B.C. 385 the Spar¬ 
tans, seizing upon some frivolous pretexts, sent an ex¬ 
pedition against Mantineia, in which Agesipolis under¬ 
took the command, after it had been declined by Ages¬ 
ilaus. In this expedition the Spartans were assisted 
by Thebes, and in a battle with the Mantineans, Epam- 
inondas and Pelopidas, who were fighting side by side, 
narrowly escaped death. He took the town by divert¬ 
ing the river Ophis, so as to lay the low grounds at the 
foot of the walls under water. The basements, being 
made of unbaked bricks, were unable to resist the ac¬ 
tion of the water. The walls soon began to totter, and 
the Mantineans were forced to surrender. They were 
admitted to terms on condition that the population 
should be dispersed among the four hamlets, out of 
which it had been collected to form the capital. The 
democratical leaders were permitted to go into exile. 
(Xen., Hell., 5, 2, <) 1-7.— Paus., 8, 8, <) 5.— Diod., 
15, 5, &c.— Pint, Pelop., 4. — Isocr., Paneg., p. 67, 
a, De Pace, p. 179, c.) 

Early in B.C. 382, an embassy came to Sparta from 
the cities of Acanthus and Apollonia, requesting as¬ 
sistance against the Olynthians, who were endeavour¬ 
ing to pompel them to join their confederacy. The 
Spartans granted it, but were not at first very success¬ 
ful. After the defeat and death of Teleutias in the 
second campaign (B.C. 381), Agesipolis took the com¬ 
mand. He set out in 381, but did not begin opera¬ 
tions till the spring of 380. He then acted with great 
vigour, and took Torone by storm; but in the midst 
of his successes he was seized with a fever, which car¬ 
ried him off in seven days. He died at Aphytis, in 
the peninsula of Pallene. His body was immersed 
in honey, and conveyed home to Sparta for burial. 
Though Agesipolis did not share the ambitious views 
of foreign conquest cherished by Agesilaus, his loss 
was deeply regretted by that prince, who seems to have 
had a sincere regard for him. (Xen., Hell., 5, 3, <) 8-9, 
18-19.— Diod., 15, 22.— Thirlwall, Hist, of Greece, 4, 
p. 405, 428, &c.; 5, p. 5, &c., 20.)—it. Son of Cle- 
ombrotus, was the 23d king of the Agid line. He as¬ 
cended the throne B.C. 371, and reigned one year. 
(Paus., 3, 6, $ 1.— Diod., 15, 60.)—III. The 31st of 
the Agid line, was the son of Agesipolis, and grandson 
of Cleombrotus II. After the death of Cleomenes he 
was elected king while still a minor, and placed under 
the guardianship of his uncle Cleomenes. (Polyh., 4, 
35.) He was, however, soon deposed by his colleague 
Lycurgus, after the death of Cleomenes. We hear of 

81 





A G I 


AGIS. 


him next in B.C. 195, when he was at the head of the 
Lacedaemonian exiles, who joined Flamininus in his 
attack upon Nabis, the tyrant of Lacedaemon. ( Liv., 
34, 26.) He formed one of an embassy sent about 
B.C. 183 to Rome by the Lacedaemonian exiles, and, 
with his companions, was intercepted by pirates and 
killed. ( Polyb., 24, 11.) 

Agesistrate. Vid. Agis IV. 

Agetor (’Ayyrup), a surname given to several gods: 
for instance, to Jupiter at Lacedaemon ( Stob., Serin., 
42): the name seems to describe Zeus as the leader 
and ruler of men ; but others think that it is synony¬ 
mous with Agamemnon (vid. Agamemnon): to Apol¬ 
lo (Eurip., Med., 426), where, however, Elmsley and 
others prefer dyyrop: to Mercury, who conducts the 
souls of men to the lower world. Under this name 
Mercury had a statue at Megalopolis. (Paus., 8, 31, 

$ 4.) . 

Aggenus Urbicus, a writer on the science of the 
Agrimensores. (Diet, of Ant., p. 38.) It is uncertain 
when he lived ; but he appears to have been a Chris¬ 
tian, and it is not improbable, from some expressions 
which he uses, that he lived at the latter part of the 
fourth century of our era. The extant works ascribed 
to him are : “ Aggeni Urbici inJuliumFrontinum Com- 
mentarius,” a commentary upon the work “ De Agro¬ 
rum Qualitate,” which is ascribed to Frontinus ; “ In 
Julium Frontinum Commentariorum Liber secundus 
qui Diazographus dicitur and “ Commentariorum de 
Controversiis Agrorum Pars prior et altera.” The 
last-named work Niebuhr supposes to have been writ¬ 
ten by Frontinus, and in the time of Domitian, since the 
author speaks of “ praestantissimus Domitianus an 
expression which would never have been applied to 
this tyrant after his death. (Hist, of Rome, vol. 2, p. 
62L) 

Aggrammes, called Xandrames (aavdpdpyg) by Di¬ 
odorus, the ruler of the Gangaridae and Prasii in India, 
was said to be the son of a barber, whom the queen 
had married. Alexander was preparing to march 
against him, when he was compelled by his soldiers, 
who had become tired of the war, to give up farther 
conquests in India. (Curt., 5, 2.— Diod., 17, 93, 94. 
— Arrian, Anab., 5, 25, &c.— Pint., Alex., 60.) 

Agias (’A yiag), I. a Greek poet, whose name was 
formerly written Augias, through a mistake of the first 
editor of the Excerpta of Proclus. It has been cor¬ 
rected by Thiersch in the Acta Philol. Monac., 2, p. 
584, from the Codex Monacensis, which in one pas¬ 
sage has Agias, and in another Hagias. The name 
itself does not occur in early Greek writers, unless it 
be supposed that Egias or Hegias ('Hymf) in Clemens 
Alexandrinus (Strom., 6, p. 622) and Pausanias (1, 
2, <$> 1) are only different forms of the same name. 
He was a native of Trcezen, and the time at which he 
wrote appears to have been about the year B.C. 740. 
His poem was celebrated in antiquity, under the name 
of Ndoroi, i. e., the history of the return of the Achsean 
heroes from Troy, and consisted of five books. The 
poem began with the cause of the misfortunes which 
befell the Achseans on their way home and after their 
arrival, that is, with the outrage committed upon Cas¬ 
sandra and the Palladium ; and the whole poem filled 
up the space which was left between the work of the 
poet Arctinus and the Odyssey. The ancients them¬ 
selves appear to have been uncertain about the author 
of this poem, for they refer to it simply by the name 
of N ootoi, and when they mention the author, they 
only call him 6 tovq Ndcrrouf ypuipag. (Athen., 7, p. 
281. — Paus., 10, 28, $ 4; 29, $ 2 ; 30, $ 2. — Apol- 
lod., 2, 1, § 5. — Schol. ad Odyss., 4, 12. — Schol. ad 
Aristoph., Equit., 1332. — Lucian, De Saltat., 46.) 
Hence some writers attributed the Nocrrof to Hqmer 
(Suid., s. v. vootoi .— Anthol. Planud., 4, 30), while 
others call its author a Colophonian. (Eustath. ad 
Odyss., 16, 118.) Similar poems, and with the same 
82 


title, were written by other poets also, such as Eume- 
lus of Corinth (Schol. ad Pind., Ol., 13, 31), Anticlei- 
des of Athens (Athen., 4, p. 157; 9, p. 466), Cleide- 
mus (Athen., 13, p. 609), and Lysimachus. (Athen., 
4, p. 158.— Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod., 1, 558.) Where 
the Nooroi is mentioned without a name, we have gen¬ 
erally to understand the work of Agias.—II. A comic 
writer. (Pollux, 3,36.— Meineke, Hist. Comic. Grccc., 

р. 404, 416.) He is by some considered as the same 
person with the writer of the ’A pyoTuud, mentioned be¬ 
low. Casaubon, however, in his remarks on Athen ec¬ 
us, thinks that this is an error. (Ad Athen., 3, 10, p. 
169.)—III. The author *of a work on Argolis (’ApyoA- 
ind, Athen., 3, p. 86, f.), mentioned in connexion with 
Dercylus. Clemens of Alexandrea quotes-him under 
the name of Aigias (Strom., 1, p. 236), which is writ¬ 
ten Agis in Eusebius, who has also given Kerkylus in¬ 
correctly for Dercylus. (Casaub. ad Athen., lib. 3, 

с. 10, p. 169.) He is called 6 povciKog in another 

passage of Athenaeus (14, p. 626, f.), but the musician 
may be another person.—IV. Brother of Tisamenus, 
the renowned seer of the Spartans, who took part in 
the battle of Plataea. Both of these were of the race 
of the Iamidae, and received the right of citizenship at 
Sparta. Another Agias, son of Agelochus, grandson 
of Tisamenus, was the seer of Lysander, and predict¬ 
ed the victory of that commander over the Athenians 
at TEgospotami. (Paus., 3, 11, 5, 6.)—V. The Ar¬ 

cadian, one of the Grecian commanders in the army 
of Cyrus the Younger, when he marched against his 
brother Artaxerxes. He was entrapped, along with 
the other Grecian leaders, by Tissaphernes, and put 
to death by that treacherous satrap, together with his 
fellow-officers. Xenophon praises his courage and 
fidelity. (Anab., 2, 5, 31 ; 2, 6, 30.) 

Agiatis. Vid. Agis IV. 

Agidve, or Eurysthenidse, descendants of Agis, king 
of Sparta and son of Eurysthenes. This family sha¬ 
red the throne of LacedEemon along with the Proclidse, 
or, as they were more commonly called, the Eurypon- 
tidae. According to Pausanias, the line of the Agidaa 
became extinct in the person of Leonidas, son of Cle- 
omenes. (Pausan., 3, 2.— Id., 3, 6.— Id., 3, 7.) 

Aginnum or Aginum, also written Agennum (Hie- 
ron., De Script. Ecclcs. in Scebadio, al. Phcebadio), a 
city of the Nitiobriges, who were the same as the Agin- 
nenses, in Gallia Aquitania. It lay on the river Ga¬ 
ronne, between Fines and Excisum. (Ptol., Itin., p. 
461.— Tab. Peut. Scgm., 1. — Auson., Ep., 24, 79.) 
There was a road leading from this city to Laclura, 
which was situated at the distance of 15 miles, men¬ 
tioned in the Iliner. Antonini , for an account of which 
consult the remarks of Chaudruc de Crazanes , 1. I, p: 
392. Numerous remains of ancient works of art, in¬ 
scriptions, &c., have been found at this place, which 
are described in a dissertation published in the Me¬ 
moir es de la Societe Roy ale des Antiq. de France, tom. 

2, p. 368. It was the birthplace of Jos. Scaliger, who 
has written about it in his Led. Auson., 1. 2, c. 10. 

Agis (’A yig), I. king of Sparta, son of Eurysthenes, 
began to reign, it is said, about B.C. 1032. (Muller, 
Dor., vol. 2, p. 511, transl.) According to Eusebius 
(Chron., 1, p. 166), he reigned only one year ; accord¬ 
ing to Apollodorus, as it appears, about 31 years. Du¬ 
ring the reign of Eurysthenes, the conquered people 
were admitted to an equality of political rights with 
the Dorians. Agis deprived them of these, and redu¬ 
ced them to the condition of subjects to the Spartans. 
The inhabitants of the town of Helos attempted to 
shake off the yoke, but they were subdued, and gave 
rise and name to the class called Helots. (Ephor. ap. 
Strab., 8, 364.) To his reign was referred the colony 
which went to Crete under Pollis and Delphus. (Co- 
non., Narr., 36.) From him the kings of that line 
were called V A yidai. His colleague was Sous. (Paus., 

3, 2, § 1.)—II. The 17th of the Eurypontid line (be- 





AGIS. 


AGIS. 


ginning with Procles), succeeded his father Archida- 
mus B.C. 427, and reigned a little more than 28 years. 
In the summer of B.C. 426, he led an army of Pelo¬ 
ponnesians and their allies as far as the isthmus, with 
the intention of invading Attica; but they were deterred 
from advancing farther by a succession of earthquakes 
■which happened when they had got so far. ( Thucyd., 
3, 89.) In the spring of the following year he led an 
army into Attica, but quitted it fifteen days after he 
had entered it. (Thucyd., 4, 2, 6.) In B.C. 419, the 
Argives, at the instigation of Alcibiades, attacked Epi- 
daurus; and Agis, with the whole force of Lacedae¬ 
mon, set out at the same time, and marched to the 
frontier city, Leuctra. No one, Thucydides tells us, 
knew the purpose of this expedition. It was probably 
to make a diversion in favour of Epidaurus.' ( Thirl - 
wall, vol. 3, p. 342.) At Leuctra the aspect of the 
sacrifices deterred him from proceeding. He therefore 
led his troops back, and sent round notice to the allies 
to be ready for an expedition at the end of the sacred 
month of the Garnean festival; and when the Argives 
repeated their attack on Epidaurus, the Spartans again 
marched to the frontier town, Garyas, and again turned 
back, professedly on account of the aspect of the vic¬ 
tims. In the middle of the following summer (B.C. 
418), the Epidaurians being still hard pressed by the 
Argives, the Lacedaemonians, with their whole force 
and some allies, under the command of Agis, invaded 
Argolis. By a skilful manoeuvre, he succeeded in in¬ 
tercepting the Argives, and posted his army advanta¬ 
geously between them and the city. But just as the 
battle was about to begin, Thrasyllus, one of the Ar- 
give generals, and Alciphron came to Agis, and pre¬ 
vailed on him to conclude a truce for four months. 
Agis, without disclosing his motives, drew off his army. 
On his return he was severely censured for having thus 
throw n away the opportunity of reducing Argos, espe¬ 
cially as the Argives had seized the opportunity afford¬ 
ed by his return, and taken Orchomenos. It was pro¬ 
posed to pull down his house, and inflict on him a fine 
of 100,000 drachmae. But, on his earnest entreaty, 
they contented themselves with appointing a council 
of war, consisting of 10 Spartans, without whom he 
was not to lead an army out of the city. (Thucyd., 
5, 54, 57, &c.) Shortly afterward they received in¬ 
telligence from Tegea, that, if not promptly succoured, 
the party favourable to Sparta in that city would be 
compelled to give way. The Spartans immediately 
sent their whole force under the command of Agis. 
He restored tranquillity at Tegea, and then marched 
to Mantineia. By turning the waters so as to flood 
the lands of Mantineia, he succeeded in drawing the 
army of the Mantineans and Athenians down to the 
level ground. A battle ensued, in which the Spartans 
were victorious. This was one of the most important 
battles ever fought between Grecian states. ( Thucyd., 

5, 71-73.) In B.C. 417, when news reached Sparta 
of the counter-revolution at Argos, in which the oli¬ 
garchical and Spartan faction was overthrown, an army 
was sent there under Agis. He was unable to restore 
the defeated party, but he destroyed the long walls 
which the Argives had begun to carry down to the sea, 
and took Hysise. (Thucyd., 5, 83.) In the spring of 
B.C. 413, Agis entered Attica with a Peloponnesian 
army, and fortified Deceleia, a steep eminence about 
15 miles northeast of Athens (Thucyd., 7, 19, 27); 
and in the winter of the same year, after the news of 
the disastrous fate of the Sicilian expedition had reach¬ 
ed Greece, he marched northward to levy contributions 
on the allies of Sparta, for the purpose of constructing 
a fleet. While at Deceleia he acted in a great meas¬ 
ure independently of the Spartan government, and 
received embassies as well from the disaffected al¬ 
lies of the Athenians as from the Boeotians and other 
allies of Sparta. (Thucyd., 8, 3, 5.) He seems to 
have remained at Deceleia till the end of the Pelopon- < 


nesian war. In 411, during the administration of the 
Four Hundred, he made an unsuccessful attempt on 
Athens itself. (Thucyd., 8, 71.) In B.C. 401, the 
command of the war against Elis was intrusted to 
Agis, who in the third year compelled the Eleans to sue 
for peace. As he was returning from Delphi, whither 
he had gone to consecrate a tenth of the spoil, he fell 
sick at Hersea in Arcadia, and died in the course of a 
few days after he reached Sparta. (Xen., Hell., 3, 2, 
§ 21, &c. ; 3, § 1-4.) He left a son, Leotychides, 
who, however, was excluded from the throne, as there 
was some suspicion with regard to his legitimacy. 
While Alcibiades was at Sparta he made Agis his im¬ 
placable enemy. Later writers (Justin, 5, 2.— Plut., 
Alcib., 23) assign as a reason, that the latter suspect¬ 
ed him of having dishonoured his queen Timsea. It 
was probably at the suggestion of Agis that orders 
were sent out to Astyochus to put him to death. Al¬ 
cibiades, however, received timely notice (according to 
some accounts, from Timaea herself), and kept out 
of the reach of the Spartans. (Thucyd., 8, 12, 45.— 
Plut., Lysand., 22.— Agesil., 3.)—III. The eldest son 
of Archidamus III., was the 20th king of the Eurypon- 
tid line. His reign was short, but eventful. He suc¬ 
ceeded his father in B.C. 338. In B.C. 333, we find 
him going with a single trireme to the Persian com¬ 
manders in the iEgean, Pharnabazus and Autophrada- 
tes, to request money and an armament for carrying 
on hostile operations against Alexander in Greece. 
They gave him 30 talents and 10 triremes. The news 
of the battle of Issus, however, put a check upon their 
plans. He sent the galleys to his brother Agesilaus, 
with instructions to sail with them to Crete, that he 
might secure that island for the Spartan interest. In 
this he seems in a great measure to have succeeded. 
Two years afterward (B.C. 331), the Greek states 
which were leagued together against Alexander seized 
the opportunity of the disaster of Zopyrion and the re¬ 
volt of the Thracians, to declare war against Macedo¬ 
nia. Agis was invested with the command, and with 
the Lacedaemonian troops, and a body of 8000 Greek 
mercenaries, who had been present at the battle of Is¬ 
sus, gained a decisive victory over a Macedonian army 
under Corragus. Having been joined by the other for¬ 
ces of the league, he laid siege to Megalopolis. The 
city held out till Antipater came to its relief, when a 
battle ensued, in which Agis was defeated and killed. 
It happened about the time of the battle of Arbela. 
(Arrian, 2, 13. — Diod., 16, 63, 68; 17, 62.— AEsch. 
c. Ctesiph., p. 77.— Curt., 6, 1.— Justin, 12, 1.)—IV. 
The elder son of Eudamidas II., was the 24th king of 
the Eurypontid line. He succeeded his father in B.C. 
244, and reigned four years. In B.C. 243, after the 
liberation of Corinth by Aratus, the general of the 
Ach$an league, Agis led an army against him, but was 
defeated. (Paus., 2, 8, § 4.) The interest of his 
reign, however, is derived from events of a different 
kind. Through the influx of wealth and luxury, with 
their concomitant vices, the Spartans had greatly de¬ 
generated from the ancient simplicity and severity of 
manners. Not above 700 families of the genuine 
Spartan stock remained, and, in consequence of the 
innovation introduced by Epitadeus, who procured a 
repeal of the law which secured to every Spart an head 
of a family an equal portion of land, the landed prop¬ 
erty had passed into the hands of a few individuals, of 
whom a great number were females, so that not above 
100 Spartan families possessed estates, while the poor 
were burdened with debt. Agis, who from his earliest 
youth had shown his attachment to the ancient disci¬ 
pline, undertook to reform these abuses, and re-estab¬ 
lish the institutions of Lycurgus. For this end he de¬ 
termined to lay before the Spartan senate a proposition 
for the abolition of all debts and a new partition of the 
lands. Another part of his plan was to give landed 
estates to the Perioeci. His schemes were warmly 

83 








AGIS. 


AGN 


seconded by the poorer classes and the young men, 
and as strenuously opposed by the wealthy. He suc¬ 
ceeded, however, in gaining over three very influen¬ 
tial persons—his uncle Agesilaus (a man of large prop¬ 
erty, but who, being deeply involved in debt, hoped to 
profit by the innovations of Agis), Lysander, and Man- 
drocleides. Having procured Lysander to be elected 
one of the ephors, he laid his plans before the senate. 
He proposed that the Spartan territory should be divi¬ 
ded into two portions, one to consist of 4500 equal 
lots, to be divided among the Spartans, whose ranks 
were to be filled up by the admission of the most re¬ 
spectable of the Periceci and strangers ; the other to 
contain 15,000 equal lots, to be divided among the 
Periceci. The senate could not, at first, come to a de¬ 
cision on the matter. Lysander, therefore, convoked 
the assembly of the people, to whom Agis submitted 
his measure, and offered to make the first sacrifice, by 
giving up his lands and money, telling them that his 
mother and grandmother, who were possessed of great 
wealth, with all his relations and friends, would follow 
his example. His generosity drew down the applauses 
of the multitude. The opposite party, however, head¬ 
ed by Leonidas, the other king, who had formed his 
habits at the luxurious court of Seleucus, king of Syria, 
got the senate to reject the measure, though only by 
one vote. Agis now determined to rid himself of Le¬ 
onidas. Lysander, accordingly, accused him of having 
violated the laws by marrying a stranger and living in 
a foreign land. Leonidas was deposed, and was suc¬ 
ceeded by his son-in-law, Cleombrotus, who co-opera¬ 
ted with Agis. Soon afterward, however, Lysander’s 
term of office expired, and the ephors of the following 
year were opposed to Agis, and designed to restore 
Leonidas. They brought an accusation against Ly¬ 
sander and Mandrocleides, of attempting to violate the 
laws. Alarmed at the turn events were taking, the 
two latter prevailed on the kings to depose the ephors 
by force, and appoint others in their room. Leonidas, 
who had returned to the city, fled to Tegea, and in his 
flight was protected by Agis from the violence medi¬ 
tated against him by Agesilaus. The selfish avarice 
of the latter frustrated the plans of Agis, when there 
now seemed nothing to oppose the execution of them. 
He persuaded his nephew and Lysander that the most 
effectual way to secure the consent of the wealthy to 
the distribution of their lands, would be to begin by 
cancelling the debts. Accordingly, all bonds, registers, 
and securities were piled up in the market-place and 
burned. Agesilaus, having secured his own ends, 
contrived various pretexts for delaying the division of 
the lands. Meanwhile, the Achseans applied to Sparta 
for assistance against the iEtolians. Agis was accord¬ 
ingly sent at the head of an army. The cautious move¬ 
ments of Aratus gave Agis no opportunity of distin¬ 
guishing himself in action, but he gained great credit 
by the excellent discipline he preserved among his 
troops. During his absence Agesilaus so incensed the 
poorer classes by his insolent conduct and the contin¬ 
ued postponement of the division of the lands, that they 
made no opposition when the enemies of Agis openly 
brought back Leonidas and set him on the throne. 
Agis and Cleombrotus fled for sanctuary, the former 
to the temple of Athene Chalcioecus, the latter to the 
temple of Poseidon. Cleombrotus was suffered to go 
into exile. Agis was entrapped by some treacherous 
friends and thrown into prison. Leonidas immediate¬ 
ly came with a band of mercenaries, and secured the 
prison without, while the ephors entered it, and went 
through the mockery of a trial. When asked if he did 
not repent of what he had attempted, Agis replied that 
he should never repent of so glorious a design, even in 
the face of death. He was condemned, and precipi¬ 
tately executed, the ephors fearing a rescue, as a great 
concourse of people had assembled round the prison 
gates. Agis, observing that one of his executioners 
84 


was moved to tears, said, “ Weep not for me : suffer* 
ing as I do, unjustly, I am in a happier case than my 
murderers.” His mother, Agesistrate, and his grand¬ 
mother, were strangled on his body. Agis was the 
first king of Sparta who had been put to death by the 
ephors. Pausanias, who, however, is undoubtedly 
wrong, says (8, 10, § 4; 27, § 9) that he fell in battle. 
His widow, Agiatis, was forcibly married by Leonidas 
to his son, Cleomenes, but, nevertheless, they enter¬ 
tained for each other a mutual affection and esteem. 
( Plutarch, Agis, Cleomenes, Aratus. — Pans., 7, 7, § 
2.)—V. A Greek poet, a native of Argos, and a con¬ 
temporary of Alexander the Great, whom he accompa¬ 
nied on his Asiatic expedition. Curtius (8, 5), as well 
as Arrian ( Anab ., 4, 9) and Plutarch ( De adulat. et 
amic. discrim., p. 60), describe him as one of the basest 
flatterers of the king. Curtius calls him “ pessimo- 
rum carminum post Chcerilum conditor,” which prob¬ 
ably refers rather to their flattering character than to 
their worth as poetry. The Greek Anthology (6, 152) 
contains an epigram, which is probably the work of 
this flatterer. ( Jacobs, Anthol., 3, p. 836.— Zimmer- 
mann, Zeitschrift fur die Alterth., 1841, p. 164.) 

Athenseus (12, p. 516) mentions one Agis as the 
author of a work on the art of cooking ( oipapTVTind ). 

Agisimba, a district of .Ethiopia, the most southern 
with which the ancients were acquainted. It is sup¬ 
posed to correspond to Ashen in Nigritia. ( Bischoff 
und Moller, Worterb. der Geogr., s. v.) It is some¬ 
times written Agizymba. 

Aglaia, I. one of the Graces, called sometimes Pas- 
iphae. (Pausan., 9, 35.— Vid. Charites.)—II. Daugh¬ 
ter of Thespius, and mother, by Hercules, of Antiades. 
(Apollod., Biblioth., 2, 7, § 8.)—III. The wife of King 
Charopus, and mother of Nireus, who came with three 
vessels and a small band of followers from the island 
of Syme against Troy. (. Horn., 11., 2, 671. — Diod. 
Sic., 5, 53.) Homer says nothing farther about him 
than that he was the most beautiful man in the Gre¬ 
cian army after Achilles (vid. Nireus) ; his story, how¬ 
ever, was related at length in the Cyclic bards. ( Vid. 
Heynii Annot. ad Horn., II., 2, 671-3.) Lucian has 
ironically represented him as contesting the palm of 
personal beauty with Thersites in the lower world. 
(Dial. Mort., 25.) 

Aglaopheme (’A-yTiaoQyyy), one of the Sirens. (Vid. 
Sirenes.) 

Aglaonice, a Thessalian female, who prided her¬ 
self on her skill in predicting eclipses, &c. She boast¬ 
ed even of her power to draw down the moon to earth. 
Hence the Greek adage, ri/v ce’kyvrjv icardcnra, u She 
draws down the moon," applied to a boastful person. 
(Erasm. Chil., col. 853.) 

Aglaophon, I. a painter of the isle of Thasos, who 
flourished in the 70th Olympiad, 500 B.C. He was 
the father and master of Polygnotus and Aristophon. 
Quintilian (12, 10) speaks of his style in common with 
that of Polygnotus, as indicating, by its simplicity of 
colouring, the early stages of the art, and yet being pref¬ 
erable, by its air of nature and truth, to the efforts of 
the great masters that succeeded.—II. A son of Aris¬ 
tophon, and grandson of the preceding, also distinguish¬ 
ed as a painter. He celebrated, by his productions, the 
victories of Alcibiades. (Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.) 

Aglauros. Vid. Agraulos. 

Aglaus, a native of Psophis, and the poorest man 
in all Arcadia, but still pronounced, by the Delphic or¬ 
acle, a happieT man than Gyges, monarch of Lydia. 
(Val. Max., 7, 1.) 

Agna, or Hagna, a female in the time of Horace, 
who, though troubled with a polypus in the nose, and 
having her visage, in consequence, greatly deformed, 
yet found, on this very account, an admirer in one Bal- 
binus. The commentators make her to have been a 
freed-woman and a native of Greece. (Horat., Serm , 
1,3,40.) 



AGO 


A G R 


Agnodice, an Athenian virgin, who disguised her 
sex to learn medicine, it being ordained by the Athe¬ 
nian laws, that no slave or female should learn the heal¬ 
ing art. She was taught by Hierophilus the art of mid¬ 
wifery, and when employed, always discovered her sex 
to her patients. This brought her into so much prac¬ 
tice, that the males of her profession, who were now 
out of employment, accused her before the Areopagus 
of corrupt conduct, “ quod dicerent eum glabrum esse, 
et corruptorem earum , et Mas simulare imbecillitatem.' 1 ' 
Agnodice was about to be condemned, when she dis¬ 
covered her sex to the judges. A law was immedi¬ 
ately passed authorizing all freeborn women to learn 
the healing art. ( Hygin., Fab., 274.) 

Agnon, I. son of Nicias, was present at the taking of 
Samos by Pericles, having brought reinforcements from 
Athens. After the Peloponnesian war had broken out, 
he and Cleopompus, both colleagues of Pericles, were 
despatched with the forces which the last-mentioned 
commander had previously led, to aid in the reduction 
of Potidffia. The expedition was frustrated, however, 
by sickness among the troops. Agnon was also the 
founder of Amphipolis ; but the citizens of that place, 
forgetful of past services, opened their gates to Brasi- 
das, the Spartan general, and when the body of this com¬ 
mander was subsequently interred within Amphipolis, 
they threw down every memorial of Agnon. ( Thucyd., 
1, 117.— Id., 2, 58.)—II. Vid. Supplement. 

Agnonides, an orator, and popular leader at Athens, 
who accused Phocion of treason for not having opposed 
with more activity the movements of Nicanor. After 
the death of Phocion, and when the people, repenting 
of their conduct towards him, were doing everything to 
honour his memory, Agnonides suffered capital pun¬ 
ishment, by a decree passed for that special purpose. 
( Plut., Vit. Phoc., c. 33, 38.) 

Agonalia and Agonia, a festival at Rome in hon¬ 
our of Janus, celebrated on the ninth of January, the 
20th of May, and the 10th of December. (Vid. Dic¬ 
tionary of Antiquities.) 

Agonius (’A yuvioc), a surname or epithet of sever¬ 
al gods. Aeschylus (Agam., 513) and Sophocles 
(Track., 26) use it of Apollo and Jupiter, and appa¬ 
rently in the sense of helpers in struggles and contests. 
But it is more especially used as a surname of Mercu¬ 
ry, who presides over all kinds of solemn contests. 

Agones Capitolini, contests instituted by Domitian 
in honour of Jupiter Capitolinus, and celebrated every 
fifth year on the Capitoline Hill. According to Sue¬ 
tonius (Domit., 4), they were of a threefold character : 
musical, which included poetic contests, equestrian, 
and gymnastic. Prizes were awarded also for the best 
specimens of Greek and Latin prose composition. 
Censorinus informs us, that they were instituted in 
the twelfth consulship of Domitian and Dolabella 
(A.U.C. 839). It was at these contests that the poet 
Statius was defeated. (Cens., c. 18.— Crusius, ad 
Suet., I. c .) Games similar to these had been pre¬ 
viously instituted by Nero. (Suet., Ner., 12.) 

Agoracritus, a statuary of Paros, and the favourite 
pupil of Phidias, who, according to Pliny (26, 5), car¬ 
ried his attachment so far as even to have inscribed on 
some of his own works the name of his young disciple. 
The same writer informs us, that Agoracritus contend¬ 
ed with Alcamenes, another pupil of Phidias, and a 
native of Athens, in making a statue of Venus, and had 
the mortification to see his rival crowned as victorious, 
in consequence of the prejudice of the Athenians in fa¬ 
vour of their countryman. Full of resentment, he sold 
his statue to the inhabitants of Rhamnus, a borough 
of Attica, on condition that it should never re-enter 
within the walls of Athens. Pliny adds, that Agoracri¬ 
tus named this statue Nemesis, and that Varro regarded 
it as the finest specimen of sculpture that he had ever 
seen. Pausanias (1, 33) gives an entirely different 
account; for, without mentioning the name of Agorac¬ 


ritus, he says that the statue of the Rhamnusian Nem¬ 
esis was the work of Phidias. Strabo, again, differs 
from both Pliny and Pausanias, for he asserts that the 
celebrated statue in question was ascribed to both Ago¬ 
racritus and Diodotus (the latter of whom is not men¬ 
tioned in any other passage), and that it was not at all 
inferior to the works of Phidias. (Strab., 396.) It is 
difficult to reconcile these conflicting statements. Per¬ 
haps the statue was by Phidias, and the name of his 
favourite pupil was inscribed upon it by the artist. 
Equally difficult is it to conceive how a statue of Ve¬ 
nus could be so modified as to be transformed into one 
of the goddess of Vengeance, for such was Nemesis. 
Sillig endeavours to explain this, but with little suc¬ 
cess. (Diet. Art., s. v.) 

Agoranomi, ’A yopavogoi, sometimes called A oyiorai, 
ten Athenian magistrates, five of whom officiated in 
the city, and five in the Piraeus. To them a certain 
toll or tribute was paid by those who brought anything 
into the market to sell. They had the care of all sale¬ 
able commodities in the market except corn, and they 
were employed in maintaining order, and in seeing that 
no one defrauded another, or took any unreasonable 
advantage in buying and selling. ( Wachsmuth, Alter- 
thums., vol. 2, p. 65.) 

Agragas, or Acragas, I. a small river of Sicily, 
running near Agrigentum. It is now the San Blasio. 
(Mannert, 9, pt. 2, p. 354.) — II. The Greek name 
of Agrigentum. ( Vid. Agrigentum.) 

Agragian^e, or Acragian^e, Portae, gates of Syr¬ 
acuse. There were in this quarter a great number of 
sepulchres, and here Cicero discovered the tomb of 
Archimedes. (Tusc. Qucest., 5, 23.) The name of 
these gates has given great trouble to the commenta¬ 
tors. Dorville (ad Chant., p. 193) reads Agragajiti- 
nas in the passage of Cicero just referred to, because 
the gates in question looked towards Agrigentum and 
the south, according to the Antonin. Itin., p. 95. 
Schiitz gives Achradinas in his edition of Cicero, 
which is superior to Acradinas, the reading of H. Ste¬ 
phens and Davis, though the last is adopted by Goller. 
(Syracus., p. 64.) The argument in its favour turns 
upon the circumstance of a, porta Achradina being men¬ 
tioned among the gates of Syracuse, but not a porta 
Agragantina. Thus we have in Diodorus Siculus 
(13, 75), tc j /card, ryv ’ Axpadivyv nv'Ativi, and (13, 
113), npoq TTjV Trvhyv Trjg'’ Axpadivr/g. The preferable 
reading, therefore, in Cicero (l. c .) is portas Achradinas, 
as indicating gates in that quarter of Syracuse termed 
Achradina. (Vid. Achradina.) 

AgrarLse leges, laws enacted in Rome for the di¬ 
vision of public lands. In the valuable work on Roman 
history by Niebuhr (vol. 2, p. 129, seqq., Cambr. 
transl.), it is satisfactorily shown, that these laws, 
which have so long been considered as unjust attacks 
upon private property, had for their object only the 
distribution of lands which were the property of the 
state, and that the troubles to which they gave rise 
were occasioned by the opposition of persons wdio had 
settled on these lands without having acquired any title 
to them. These laws of the Romans were so intimate¬ 
ly connected with their system of establishing colonies 
in the different parts of their territories, that, to attain 
a proper understanding of them, it is necessary to be¬ 
stow a moment’s consideration on that system.—Ac¬ 
cording to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, their plan of 
sending out colonies or settlers began as early as the 
time of Romulus, who generally placed colonists from 
the city of Rome on the lands taken in -war. The same 
policy was pursued by the kings w ho succeeded him ; 
and, when the kings were expelled, it was adopted by 
the senate and the people, and then by the dictators. 
There were several reasons inducing the Roman gov¬ 
ernment to pursue this policy, which w r as continued for 
a long period without any intermission ; first, to have 
a check on the conquered people; secondlv, to have 

85 




AGRARLE LEGES. 


AGRARLE LEGES. 


a protection against the incursions of an enemy; third¬ 
ly, to augment their population; fourthly, to free the 
city of Rome from an excess of inhabitants ; fifthly, to 
quiet seditions; and, sixthly, to reward their veteran 
soldiers. These reasons abundantly appear in all the 
best ancient authorities. In the later periods of the 
republic, a principal motive for establishing colonies 
was to have the means of disposing of soldiers, and re¬ 
warding them with donations of lands ; and such col¬ 
onies were, on this account, denominated military col¬ 
onies. Now, for whichever of these causes a colony 
was to be established, it was necessary that some law 
respecting it should be passed either by the senate or 
people. This law in either case was called lex agra¬ 
rian an agrarian law, which will now be explained.— 
An agrarian law contained various provisions; it de¬ 
scribed the land which was to be divided, and the class¬ 
es of people among whom, and their numbers, and by 
whom, and in what manner, and by what bounds, the 
territory was to be parcelled out. The mode of divi¬ 
ding the lands, as far as we now understand it, was two¬ 
fold ; either a Roman population was distributed over 
the particular territory, without any formal erection of 
a colony, or general grants of land were made to such 
citizens as were willing to form a colony there. The 
lands which were thus distributed were of different de¬ 
scriptions, which we must keep in mind in order to have 
a just conception of the operation of the agrarian laws. 
They were either lands taken from an enemy, and not 
actually treated by the government as public property ; 
or public lands which had been artfully and clandestine¬ 
ly taken possession of by rich and powerful individuals; 
or, lastly, lands which were bought with money from 
the public treasury, for the purpose of being distributed. 
Now all such agrarian laws as embraced either lands 
of the enemy, or those which were treated and occu¬ 
pied as public property, or those which had been bought 
with the public money, were carried into effect with¬ 
out any public commotions ; but those which operated 
to disturb the rich and powerful citizens in the posses¬ 
sion of the lands which they unjustly occupied, and to 
place colonists (or settlers) on them, were never pro¬ 
mulgated without creating great disturbances. The 
first law of this kind was proposed by Spurius Cas¬ 
sius ; and the same measure was afterward attempted 
by the tribunes of the commons almost every year, 
but was as constantly defeated by various artifices of 
the nobles ; it was, however, at length passed. It ap¬ 
pears, both from Dionysius and Varro, that, at first, 
Romulus allotted two jugera (about 1£ acres) of the 
public lands to each man ; then Numa divided the lands 
which Romulus had taken in war, and also a portion 
of the other public lands ; afterward Tullus divided 
those lands which Romulus and Numa had appropria¬ 
ted to the private expenses of the regal government; 
then Servius distributed among those who had recent¬ 
ly become citizens, certain lands which had been taken 
from the Veientes, the Cserites and Tarquinii; and, 
upon the expulsion of the kings, it appears that the 
lands of Tarquinius Superbus, with the exception of 
the Campus Martius, were, by a decree of the senate, 
granted to the people. After this period, as the re¬ 
public, by means of its continual wars, received con¬ 
tinual accessions of conquered lands, those lands were 
either occupied by colonists or remained public prop- 
erty, until the period when Spurius Cassius, twenty- 
four years after the expulsion of the kings, proposed 
a law (already mentioned) by which one part of the 
land taken from the Hernici was allotted to the Latins, 
and the other part to the Roman people ; but as this 
law comprehended certain lands which he accused pri¬ 
vate persons of having taken from the public, and as 
the senate also opposed him, he could not accomplish 
the passage of it. This, according to Livy, was the 
first proposal of an agrarian law, of which, he adds, not 
one was ever proposed, down to the period of his re- 
86 


membrance, without very great public commotions. 
Dionysius informs us, farther, that this public land, by 
the negligence of the magistrate, had been suffered to 
fall into the possession of rich men ; but that, notwith¬ 
standing this, a division of the lands would have taken 
place under this law, if Cassius had not included among 
the receivers of the bounty the Latins and the Hernici, 
whom he had but a little while before made citizens. 
After much debate in the senate on this subject, a de¬ 
cree was passed to the following effect: that commis¬ 
sioners, called decemvirs (ten in number), appointed 
from among the persons of consular rank, should mark 
out, by boundaries, the public lands, and should desig¬ 
nate how much was to be let out, and how much was 
to be distributed among the common people ; that, if 
any land had been acquired by joint service in war, it 
should be divided, according to treaty, with those al¬ 
lies who had been admitted to citizenship; and that 
the choice of the commissioners, the appointment of 
the lands, and all other things relating to this subject, 
should be committed to the care of the succeeding con¬ 
suls. Seventeen years after this, there was a vehe¬ 
ment contest about the division, which the tribunes 
proposed to make, of lands then unjustly occupied by 
the rich men ; and, three years after that, a similar at¬ 
tempt on the part of the tribunes, would, according to 
Livy, have produced a ferocious controversy, had it 
not been for Quintus Fabius. Some years after this, 
the tribunes proposed another law of the same kind, by 
which the estates of a great part of the nobles would 
have been seized to the public use ; but it was stopped 
in its progress. Appian says, that the nobles and rich 
men, partly by getting possession of the public lands, 
partly by buying out the shares of indigent owners, had 
made themselves owners of all the lands in Italy, and 
had thus, by degrees, accomplished the removal of the 
common people from their possessions. This abuse 
stimulated Tiberius Gracchus to revive the Licinian 
law, which prohibited any individual from holding 
more than 500 jugera , or about 350 acres of land; 
and would, consequently, compel the owners to relin¬ 
quish all the surplus to the use of the public; but 
Gracchus proposed that the owners should be paid the 
value of the lands relinquished. The law, however, 
did not operate to any great extent, and, after having 
cost the Gracchi their lives, was by degrees rendered 
wholly inoperative. After this period, various other 
Agrarian laws were attempted, and with various suc¬ 
cess, according to the nature of their provisions and 
the temper of the times in which they were proposed. 
One of the most remarkable was that of Rullus, which 
gave occasion to the celebrated oration against him by 
Cicero, who prevailed upon the people to reject the 
law.—From a careful consideration of these laws, and 
the others of the same kind, on which we have not 
commented, it is apparent that the whole object of the 
Roman agrarian laws was, the lands belonging to the 
state, the public lands or national domains, which, as 
already observed, were acquired by conquest or treaty, 
and, we may add also, by confiscations or direct sei¬ 
zures of private estates by different factions, either for 
lawful or unlawful causes ; of the last of which we 
have a well-known example in the time of Sylla’s pro¬ 
scriptions. The lands thus claimed by the public be¬ 
came naturally a subject of extensive speculation with 
the wealthy capitalists, both among the nobles and 
other classes. In our own times, we have seen, du¬ 
ring the revolution in France, the confiscation of the 
lands belonging to the clergy, the nobility, and emi¬ 
grants, lead to similar results. The sales and pur¬ 
chases of lands by virtue of the agrarian laws of Rome, 
under the various complicated circumstances which 
must ever exist in such cases, and the attempts by the 
government to resume or regrant such as had been 
sold, whether by right or by wrong, especially after a 
purchaser had been long in possession, under a title 




AGR 


AGR 


which he supposed the existing laws gave him, nat¬ 
urally occasioned great heat and agitation ; the sub¬ 
ject itself being intrinsically one of great difficulty, 
even when the passions and interests of the parties 
concerned would permit a calm and deliberate exam¬ 
ination of their respective rights.—From the commo¬ 
tions which usually attended the proposal of agrarian 
laws, and from a want of exact attention to their true 
object, there has been a general impression, among 
readers of the Roman history, that those laws were al¬ 
ways a direct and violent infringement of the rights of 
private property. Even such men, it has been ob¬ 
served, as Machiavelli, Montesquieu, and Adam Smith, 
have shared in this misconception of them. This er¬ 
roneous opinion, however, has lately been exposed by 
the genius and learning of Niebuhr in his Roman his¬ 
tory above mentioned, a work which may be said to 
make an era in that department of learning, and in 
which he has clearly shown that the original and pro¬ 
fessed object of the agrarian laws was the distribution 
of the public lands only, and not those of private citi¬ 
zens. Of the Licinian law, enacted about 376 B.C., 
on which all subsequent agrarian laws were modelled, 
Niebuhr enumerates the following as among the chief 
provisions: 1. The limits of the public land shall be 
accurately defined. Portions of it, which have been 
encroached on by individuals, shall be restored to the 
state. 2. Every estate in the public land, not greater 
than this law allows, which has not been acquired by 
violence or fraud, and which is not on lease, shall be 
good against any third person. 3. Every Roman cit¬ 
izen shall be competent to occupy a portion of newly- 
acquired public land, within the limits prescribed by 
this law, provided this l^nd be not divided by law 
among the citizens, nor granted to a colony. 4. No 
one shall occupy of the public land more than five 
hundred jugcra , nor pasture on the public commons 
more than a hundred head of large, nor more than five 
hundred head of small, stock. 5. Those who occupy 
the public land shall pay to the state the tithe of the 
produce of the field, the fifth of the produce of the 
fruit-tree and the vineyard, and for every head of large 
stock, and for every head of small stock yearly. 6. 
The public lands shall be farmed by the censors to 
those willing to take them on these terms. The funds 
hence arising are to be applied to pay the army.—The 
foregoing were the most important permanent provis¬ 
ions of the Licinian law, and, for its immediate effect, 
it provided that all the public land occupied by indi¬ 
te viduals, over five hundred jugera, should be divided 
by lot in portions of seven jugera to the plebeians.— 
•But we must not hastily infer, as some readers of 
Niebuhr’s works have done, that these agrarian laws 
did not in any manner violate private rights- This 
would be quite as far from the truth as the prevailing 
opinion already mentioned, which is now exploded. 
Besides the argument we might derive from the very 
nature of the case, we have the direct testimony of 
ancient writers to the injustice of such laws, and their 
violation of private rights. It will suffice to refer to 
that of Cicero alone, who says in his De Offciis (2,21), 
“ Those men who wish to make themselves popular, 
and who, for that purpose, either attempt agrarian 
laws, in order to drive people from their possessions, 
or who maintain that creditors ought to forgive debt¬ 
ors what they owe, undermine the foundations of the 
state ; they destroy all concord, which cannot exist 
when money is taken from one man to be given to 
another; and they set aside justice, whidh is always 
violated when every man is not suffered to retain 
what is his own which reflections would not have 
been called forth, unless the laws in question had di¬ 
rectly and plainly violated private rights. ( Encyclo - 
pcedia Americana , vol. 1, p. 100, seqq.) 

Agraulia, a festival celebrated at Athens in hon¬ 
our of Agraulos, the daughter of Cecrops, and priest¬ 


ess of Minerva. The Cyprians also honoured her 
with an annual festival, in the month Aphrodisius, at 
which they offered human victims. (Robinson's An¬ 
tiquities of Greece , 2 d cd., p. 276.) 

Agraulos, I. the daughter of Actseus, king of At¬ 
tica, and the wife of Cecrops. She became by him the 
mother of Erysichthon, Agraulos, Herse, and Pandro- 
sos. — II. A daughter of Cecrops and Agraulos, and 
mother of Alcippe by Mars. ( Vid . Supplement.) 

Agresphon, a Greek grammarian mentioned by Sui- 
das (s. v. ’A7 toXXuvioc). He wrote a work, Ilep^ 'O qi- 
(jjvvficov ( concerning persons of the same name). He 
cannot have lived earlier than the reign of Hadrian, as 
in his work he spoke of an Apollonius who lived in the 
time of that emperor. 

Agreus, the hunter, an epithet of Pan. 

Agrianes, I. a small river of Thrace, running into 
the Hebrus. It is now the Ergene. —II. A Thracian 
tribe dwelling in the vicinity of the river Agrianes. 
(Herod ., 5,16.)—III. A people of Illyria, on the fron¬ 
tiers of lower Moesia. They were originally from 
Thrace, and very probably a branch of the Thracian 
Agrianes. 

Agriasp.®, a nation of Asia, mentioned by Quintus 
Curtius (7, 3). Some difference of opinion, however, 
exists with regard to the true reading in this passage. 
Most editors prefer Arimaspce, while others, and evi¬ 
dently with more correctness, consider Ariaspce the 
proper lection. (Compare Schmieder, ad Quint. Curt., 
1. c., and vid. Ariaspse.) 

Agricola, Cneius Julius, an eminent Roman com¬ 
mander, born A.D. 40, in the reign of Caligula, by 
whom his father Julius Graecinus was put to death for 
nobly refusing to plead against Marcus Silanus. His 
mother, to whom he owed his excellent education, was 
Julia Procilla, unhappily murdered on her estate in 
Liguria by a descent of freebooters from the piratical 
fleet of Otho. The first military service of Agricola 
was under Suetonius Paulinus in Britain ; and, on his 
return to Rome, he married a lady of rank, and was 
made qusestor in Asia, where, in a rich province, pe¬ 
culiarly open to official exactions, he maintained the 
strictest integrity. He was chosen tribune of the 
people, and praetor, under Nero, and, unhappily, in 
the commotion which followed the accession of Galba, 



i ; \ ;— - r - 7 

1 and governor of Aquitania, which post he held for 
l three years. The dignity of consul followed, and in 
the same year he married his daughter to the historian 
Tacitus. He was soon afterward made governor of 
Britain, where he subjugated the Ordovices, in North 
Wales , and reduced the island of Mona, or Anglesca. 
He adopted the most wise and generous plans for civ¬ 
ilizing the Britons, by inducing the nobles to assume 
the Roman habit, and have their children instructed in 
the Latin language. He also gradually adorned the 
| country with magnificent temples, porticoes, baths, 
and public edifices, of a nature to excite the admira¬ 
tion and emulation of the rude people whom he gov¬ 
erned. With these cares, however, he indulged the 
usual ambition of a Roman commander, to add to the 
limits of the Roman territory, by extending his arms 
northward; and in the succeeding three years he 
passed the river Tuesis, or Tweed, subdued the coun¬ 
try as far as the Frith of Tay, and erected a chain of 
protective fortresses from the Clota, or Clyde, to the 
Boderia ASstuarium, or Frith of Forth. He also sta¬ 
tioned troops on the coast of Scotland opposite to Ire¬ 
land, on which island he entertained views of con¬ 
quest ; and, in an expedition to the eastern part of 
Scotland, beyond the Frith of Forth, was accompanied 
by his fleet, which explored the inlets and harbours, 
and hemmed in the natives on every side. His seventh 
summer was passed in the same parts of Scotland, and 
the Grampian Hills became the scene of a decisive en- 

87 








AGR 


AGRIPPA. 


gagement with the Caledonians under their most able 
leader Galgacus. The latter made a noble stand, but 
was at last obliged to yield to Roman valour and dis¬ 
cipline ; and, having taken hostages, Agricola gradual¬ 
ly withdrew his forces into the Roman limits. In the 
mean time, Domitian had succeeded to the empire, to 
whose mean and jealous nature the brilliant character 
and successes ot Agricola gave secret uneasiness. 
Artfully spreading a rumour that he intended to make 
the latter governor of Syria, he recalled him, received 
him coldly, and allowed him to descend into private 
life. The jealousy of the tyrant still pursued him; 
and as, after he had been induced to resign his pre¬ 
tension to the proconsulship of Asia or Africa, he was 
soon seized with an illness of which he died, Domi¬ 
tian, possibly without reason, has been suspected of a 
recourse to poison. Agricola died A.D. 93, in his 
fifty-fourth year, leaving a widow, and one daughter, 
the wife of Tacitus. It is this historian who has so 
admirably written his life, and preserved his high char¬ 
acter for the respect of posterity. ( Tac ., Vit. Agric.) 

.Agrigentum, a celebrated city of Sicily, about three 
miles from the southern coast, in what is now called 
the valley of Mazara. The Greek form of the name 
Was Acragas ( V A Kpayag), derived from that of a small 
stream in the neighbourhood. The primitive name 
was Camicus, or, to speak more correctly, this was the 
appellation of an old city of the Sicani, situate on the 
summit of a mountain, which afterward was regarded 
merely as the citadel of Agrigentum. The founding 
of Camicus is ascribed to Daedalus, who is said to have 
built it, after his flight from Crete, for the Sicanian 
prince, Cocalus. In the first year of the 56th Olym¬ 
piad, 556 B.C., a colony was sent from Gela to this 
quarter, which founded Agrigentum, on a neighbour¬ 
ing height, to the southeast. Its situation was, indeed, 
peculiarly strong and imposing, standing as it did on a 
bare and precipitous rock, 1100 feet ab.ove the level of 
the sea. To this advantage the city added others of 
a commercial nature, being near to the sea, which af¬ 
forded the means of an easy intercourse with the ports 
of Africa and the south of Europe. The adjacent coun- 
try, moreover, was very fertile. From the combined 
operation of all these causes, Agrigentum soon became 
a wealthy and powerful city, and was considered in¬ 
ferior to Syracuse alone. According to Diodorus Sic¬ 
ulus (13, 81, seqq.), it drew on itself the enmity of the 
Carthaginians (406 B.C.), by refusing to embrace their 
alliance, or even to remain neutral. It was according¬ 
ly besieged by their generals Hannibal and Hamilcar. 
The former, with many of his troops, died of a pestilential 
disorder, derived from the putrid effluvia of the tombs, 
which were opened and destroyed for the sake of the 
stone. But, from want of timely assistance and scar¬ 
city of provisions, the Agrigentines were obliged to 
abandon their city, and fly for protection to Gela, 
whence tljey were transferred to the city of the Leon- 
tines, which was allotted to them by the republic of 
Syracuse. The conqueror Hamilcar despoiled Agri¬ 
gentum of all its riches, valuable pictures, and statues. 
Among the trophies sent to Carthage was the celebra¬ 
ted bull of Phalaris, which, two hundred and sixty years 
afterward, on the destruction of Carthage, was restored 
to the Agrigentines by Scipio. At a subsequent pe¬ 
riod, when a general peace had taken place, 01. 96, 1 
( Diod. Sic., 14, 78), we find the Agrigentines return¬ 
ing to their native city ; though, from a passage in Di¬ 
odorus (13, 113), it would seem that the place had not 
been entirely destroyed by the foe, and that many of 
its previous inhabitants might have come back at an 
earlier date. (01. 93, 4.) Agrigentum soon recover¬ 
ed its importance, but the tyranny of Phintias having 
induced the inhabitants to call in the aid of Carthage, 
the city once more fell under that power. Not long 
after, it revolted to Pyrrhus (Diod. Sic., 22, exc., 14), 
but, on his departure from the island, was compelled to 
88 


return to its former i^asters. On the commencement of 
the Punic wars, Agrigentum was one of the most impor¬ 
tant strongholds which the Carthaginians possessed in 
the island. It suffered severely during these conflicts, 
being alternately in the hands of either party (Diod. 
Sic., 23, 7.— Polyb., 1 , 17, seqq. — Diod. Sic., 23, 9. 
— Id., 23, 14), but it eventually fell under the Roman 
power, and, notwithstanding its losses, continued for 
a long period a flourishing place, though it is supposed 
to have been confined, after it came permanently un¬ 
der the Romans, to the limits of the ancient Camicus, 
with which the modern Girgenti nearly corresponds. 
Diodorus states the population, in its best days, to have 
been not less than 120,000 persons. (Mannert, 9, pt. 
2, p. 353, seqq. — Hcare's Classical Tour, vol. 2, p. 
90, seqq.) 

Agrionia, annual festivals in honour of Bacchus, 
generally celebrated in the night. They wer.e insti¬ 
tuted, as some suppose, because the god was attended 
with wild beasts. The appellation, however, should 
rather be viewed as referring back to an early period, 
when human sacrifices were offered to Bacchus. 
Hence the terms "’iLpyoryg and ’A ypiuviog applied to 
this deity. (Creuzer's Symbolik, vol. 3, p. 334.) 
Plutarch even speaks of a human sacrifice to this god 
as late as the days of Themistocles (Vit., 13), when 
three Persian prisoners were offered up by him to Bac¬ 
chus, at the instigation of the diviner Eurantides. The 
same writer elsewhere (Vit. Ant., 24) uses both ’£2 pya- 
ryg and ’A ypiuvioc, in speaking of Bacchus ; where 
Reiske, without any necessity, proposes ’A ypiu/aog 
(from ohhvpi) as an emendation.—In celebrating this 
festival, the Grecian women, being assembled, sought 
eagerly for Bacchus, who, they pretended, had fled 
from them ; but, finding their labour ineffectual, they 
said that he had retired to the Muses and concealed 
himself among them. The ceremony being thus end¬ 
ed, they regaled themselves with an entertainment. 
(Pint., Sympos., 8, 1.) Has this a figurative reference 
to the suspension of human sacrifices, and the conse¬ 
quent introduction of a milder form of worship 1 Cas- 
tellanus, however (Syntagm. de Festis Grcecor., s. v. 
Agrionia ), makes the festival in question to have been 
a general symbol of the progress of civilization and re¬ 
finement. (Compare Rolle, Recherches sur le Culte de 
Bacchus, vol. 3, p. 251.) 

Agrippa (’ AypiTmag), I- a skeptical philosopher, only 
known to have lived later than ACnesidemus, the con¬ 
temporary of Cicero, from whom he is said to have 
been the fifth in descent. He is quoted by Diogenes 
Laertius, who probably wrote about the time of M. An¬ 
toninus. The “five grounds of doubt” (ol n ivre rpo- 
noi), which are given by Sextus Empiricus as a sum¬ 
mary of the later skepticism, are ascribed by Diogenes 
Laertius (9, 88) to Agrippa. 

1. The first of these argues from the uncertainty of 
the rules of common life, and of the opinions of philos¬ 
ophers. 2. The second from the “ rejectio ad infini¬ 
tum all proof requires some farther proof, and so on 
to infinity. 3. All things are changed as their rela¬ 
tions become changed, or as we look upon them in dif¬ 
ferent points of view. 4. The truth asserted is merely 
an hypothesis ; or, 5. Involves a vicious circle. (Sex¬ 
tus Empiricus, Pyrrhon. Hypot., 1, 15.) 

With reference to these ttevtc rporcoi, it need only 
be remarked, that the first and third are a short summa¬ 
ry of the ten original grounds of doubt which were the 
basis of the earlier skepticism. The three additional 
ones show’a progress in the skeptical system, and a 
transition from the common objections derived from the 
fallibility of sense and opinion, to more abstract and met¬ 
aphysical grounds of doubt. They seem to mark a new 
attempt to systematize the skeptical philosophy, and 
adapt it to the spirit of a later age. (Ritter, Geschtchte 
der Philosophic, 12, 4.)—II. M. Asinius, consul A.D. 
25, died A.D. 26, was descended from a family more 






AGRIPPA. 


AGRIPPA. 


illustrious than ancient, and did not disgrace it by his 
mode of life. ( Tac., Ann., 4, 34, 61.)—III. Agrippa 
Castor, about A.D. 135, praised as an historian by Eu¬ 
sebius, and for his learning by St. Jerome ( de Viris II- 
lustr., c. 21), lived in the reign of Hadrian. He wrote 
against the twenty-four books of the Alexandrean Gnos¬ 
tic, Basilides, on the Gospel. Quotations are made 
from his work by Eusebius. (Hist. Ecclcs., 4, 7.— 
See Gallandi's Bibliotheca Patrum, vol. 1 , p. 330.)— 
IV. Fonteius, one of the accusers of Libo, A.D. 16, 
is again mentioned in A.D. 19, as offering his daugh¬ 
ter for a vestal virgin. (Tac., Ann., 2, 30, 86.) — 
Y. Probably the son of the preceding, commanded the 
province of Asia with proconsular power, A.D. 69, and 
was recalled from thence by Vespasian, and placed 
over Mcesia in A.D. 70. He was shortly afterward 
killed in battle by the Sarmatians. (Tac., Hist., 3, 
46.— Joseph., B. Jud., 7, 4, § 3.)—VI. Herodes I. 
('Hpwd?7f ’ kypinnag), called by Josephus (Ant. Jud., 
17, 2, § 2) * Agrippa the Great,” was the son of Aris- 
tobulus and Berenice, and grandson of Herod the Great. 
Shortly before the death of his grandfather he came 
to Rome, where he was educated with the future em¬ 
peror Claudius, and Drusus, the son of Tiberius. He 
squandered his property in giving sumptuous enter¬ 
tainments to gratify his princely friends, and in bestow¬ 
ing largesses on the freedmen of the emperor, and be¬ 
came so deeply involved in debt that he was compelled 
to fly from Rome, and betook himself to a fortress at 
Malatha in Idumsea. Through the mediation of his 
wife Cypros, with his sister Herodias, the wife of He¬ 
rodes Antipas, he was allowed to take up his abode at 
Tiberias, and received the rank of redile in that city, 
with a small yearly income. But, having quarrelled 
with his brother-in-law, he fled to Flaccus, the pro- 
consul of Syria. Soon afterward he was convicted, 
through the information of his brother Aristobulus, of 
having received a bribe from the Damascenes, who 
wished to purchase his influence with the proconsul, 
and was again compelled to fly. He was arrested, as 
he was about to sail for Italy, for a sum of money 
which he owed to the treasury of Caesar, but made his 
escape, and reached Alexandrea, where his wife suc¬ 
ceeded in obtaining a supply of money from Alexan¬ 
der the Alabarch. He then set sail, and landed at Pu- 
teoli. He was favourably received by Tiberius, who 
intrusted him with the education of his grandson, Ti¬ 
berius. He also formed an intimacy with Caius Ca¬ 
ligula. Having one day incautiously expressed a wish 
that the latter might soon succeed to the throne, his 
words were reported by his freedman Eutychus to Ti¬ 
berius, who forthwith threw him into prison. Calig¬ 
ula, on his accession (A.D. 37), set him at liberty, and 
gave him the tetrarchies of Lysanias (Abilene) and 
Philippus (Batansea, Trachonitis, and Auranitis). He 
also presented him with a golden chain of equal weight 
with the iron one which he had worn in prison. In 
the following year Agrippa took possession of his king¬ 
dom, and, after the banishment of Herodes Antipas, the 
tetrarchy of the latter was added to his dominions. 

On the death of Caligula, Agrippa, who was at the 
time in Rome, materially assisted Claudius in gaining 
possession of the empire. As a reward for his servi¬ 
ces, Judaea and Samaria were annexed to his domin¬ 
ions, which were now even more extensive than those 
of Herod the Great. He was also invested with the 
consular dignity, and a league was publicly made 
with him by Claudius in the forum. At his request, 
the kingdom of Chalcis was given to his brother He¬ 
rodes (A.D. 41). He then went to Jerusalem, where 
he offered sacrifices, and suspended in the treasury of 
the temple the golden chain which Caligula had giv¬ 
en him. His government was mild and gentle, and 
he was exceedingly popular among the Jews. In the 
city of Berytus he built a theatre and amphitheatre, 
baths and porticoes. The suspicions of Claudius pre¬ 


vented him from finishingthe impregnable fortifications 
with which he had begun to surround Jerusalem. His 
friendship was courted by many of the neighbouring 
kings and rulers. It was probably to increase his pop¬ 
ularity with the Jews that he caused the apostle James, 
the brother of John, to be beheaded, and Peter to be 
cast into prison (A.D. 44.— Acts, 12). It was not, 
however, merely by such acts that he strove to win 
their favour, as we see from the way in which, at the 
risk of his own life, or, at least, of his liberty, he in¬ 
terceded with Caligula on behalf of the Jews, when 
that emperor was attempting to set up his statue in the 
Temple at Jerusalem. The manner of his death, which 
took place at Caesarea in the same year, as he was ex¬ 
hibiting games in honour of the emperor, is related in 
Acts, 12, and is confirmed in all essential points by 
Josephus, who repeats Agrippa’s words, in which he 
acknowledged the justice of the punishment thus in¬ 
flicted on him. After lingering five days, he expired, 
in the fifty-fourth year of his age. 

By his wife Cypros he had a son named Agrippa, 
and three daughters, Berenice, who first married her 
uncle Herodes, king of Chalcis, afterward lived with 
her brother Agrippa, and subsequently married Pola- 
mo, king of Cilicia ; she is alluded to by Juvenal (Sat., 
6, 156); Mariamne and Drusilla, who married Felix, 
the procurator of Judaea. (Joseph., Ant. Jud., 17, 1, 
§ 2; 18, 5-8; 19, 4-8.— Bell. Jud., 1, 28, § 1 ; 2, 
9, 11.— Dion Cass., 60, 8.— Euseb., Hist. Ecclcs., 
2, 10.)—VII. Herodes II., the son of Agrippa I., was 
educated at the court of the Emperor Claudius, and at 
the time of his father’s death was only seventeen years 
old. Claudius, therefore, kept him at Rome, and sent 
Cuspius Fadus as procurator of the kingdom, which 
thus again became a Roman province. On the death 
of Herodes, king of Chalcis (A.D. 48), his little prin¬ 
cipality, with the right of superintending the Temple 
and appointing the high-priest, was given to Agrippa, 
who four years afterward received in its stead the te¬ 
trarchies formerly held by Philip and Lysanias, with 
the title of king. In A.D. 55, Nero added the cities 
of Tiberias and Tarichese in Galilee, and Julias, with 
fourteen villages near it, in Peraea. Agrippa expend¬ 
ed large sums in beautifying Jerusalem and other cit¬ 
ies, especially Berytus. His partiality for the latter 
rendered him unpopular among his own subjects, and 
the capricious manner in which he appointed and de¬ 
posed the high-priests, with some other acts which 
were distasteful, made him an object of dislike to the 
Jews. Before the outbreak of the war with the Ro¬ 
mans, Agrippa attempted in vain to dissuade the peo¬ 
ple from rebelling. When the war was begun he si¬ 
ded with the Romans, and was wounded at the siege 
of Gamala. After the capture of Jerusalem, he went 
with his sister Berenice to Rome, where he was in¬ 
vested with the dignity of praetor. He died in the 
seventieth year of his age, in the third year of the reign 
of Trajan. He was the last prince of the house of the 
Herods. It was before this Agrippa that the apostle 
Paul made his defence (A.D. 60.— Acts, 25, 26). He 
lived on terms of intimacy with the historian Josephus, 
who has preserved two of the letters he received from 
him. (Joseph., Ant. Jud., 17, 5, § 4 ; 19, 9, 2 ; 20, 

1, § 3, 5 ; <5> 2, 7 ; § 1, 8 ; <$> 4 and 11, 9, § 4.— Bell. Jud., 

2, 11, $ 6, 12; $ 1, 16, 17; $ 1, 4, 1 ; $ 3.— Vit., s. 
54.— Phot., Cod., 33.)—VIII. Menenxus. (Vid. Me- 
nenius.)—-IX. Posthumus, a posthumous son of M. 
Vipsanius Agrippa, by Julia, the daughter of Augustus, 
was born in B.C. 12. He was adopted by Augustus, 
together with Tiberius, in A.D. 4, and he assumed the 
toga virilis in the following year, A.D. 5. (Suet., Oc- 
tav., 64, 65.— Dion Cass., liv. 29, 55, 22.) Notwith¬ 
standing his adoption, he was afterward banished by 
Augustus to the island of Planasia, on the coast of 
Corsica: a disgrace which he incurred on account of his 
savage and intractable character, but he was not guilty 

89 





AGRIPPA. 


AGRIPPA. 


of any crime. There he was under the surveillance 
of soldiers, and Augustus obtained a senatus consultum, 
by which the banishment was legally confirmed for the 
time of his life. The property of Agrippa was assign¬ 
ed by Augustus to the treasury of the army. It is said 
that during his captivity he received the visit of Au¬ 
gustus, who secretly went to Planasia, accompanied by 
Fabius Maximus. Augustus and Agrippa, both deep- 
ty affected, shed tears when they met, and it was be¬ 
lieved that Agrippa would be restored to liberty. But 
the news of this visit reached Livia, the mother of Ti¬ 
berius, and Agrippa remained a captive. After the ac¬ 
cession of Tiberius, in A.D. 14, Agrippa was murder¬ 
ed by a centurion, who entered his prison and killed 
him, after a long struggle, for Agrippa was a man of 
great bodily strength. When the centurion afterward 
went to Tiberius to give him an account of the execu¬ 
tion, the emperor denied having given any order for it, 
and it is very probable that Livia was the secret au¬ 
thor of the crime. There was a rumour that Augus¬ 
tus had left an order for the execution of Agrippa, but 
this is positively contradicted by Tacitus. ( Tac ., Ann., 
1, 3-6.— Dion Cass., 55, 32; 57, 3. — Suet., 1. c., 
Tib., 22.— Vellei., 2, 104, 112.) 

After the death of Agrippa, a slave of the name of 
Clemens, who was not informed of the murder, landed 
on Planasia with the intention of restoring Agrippa to 
liberty and carrying him off to the army in Germany. 
When he heard of what had taken place, he tried to 
profit by his great resemblance to the murdered cap¬ 
tive, and he gave himself out as Agrippa. He landed 
at Ostia, and found many who believed him, or affect¬ 
ed to believe him, but he was seized and put to death 
by order of Tiberius. {Tac., Ann., 2, 39, 40.) 

The name of Agrippa Ceesar is found on a medal of 
Corinth. — IX. M. Vipsanlus, was born in B.C. 63. 
He was the son of Lucius, and was descended from a 
very obscure family. At the age of twenty he studied 
at Apollonia in Illyria, together with young Octavius, 
afterward Octavianus and Augustus. After the mur¬ 
der of J. Caesar in B.C. 44, Agrippa was one of those 
intimate friends of Octavius who advised him to pro¬ 
ceed immediately to Rome. Octavius took Agrippa 
with him, and charged him to receive the oath of fidel¬ 
ity from several legions which had declared in his fa¬ 
vour. Having been chosen consul in B.C. 43, Octa¬ 
vius gave to his friend Agrippa the delicate commis¬ 
sion of prosecuting C. Cassius, one of the murderers 
of J. Caesar. At the outbreak of the Perusinian war 
between Octavius, now Octavianus, and L. Antonius, 
in B.C. 41, Agrippa, who was then praetor, command¬ 
ed part of the forces of Octavianus, and, after distin¬ 
guishing himselfby skilful manoeuvres, besieged L. An¬ 
tonius in Perusia. He took the town in B.C. 40, and 
towards the end of the same year retook Sipontum, 
which had fallen into the hands of M. Antonius. In 
B.C. 38, Agrippa obtained fresh success in Gaul, where 
he quelled a revolt of the native chiefs ; he also pene¬ 
trated into Germany as far as the country of the Catti, 
and transplanted the Ubii to the left bank of the Rhine ; 
whereupon he turned his arms against the revolted 
Aquitani, whom he soon brought to obedience. His 
victories, especially those in Aquitania, contributed 
much to securing the power of Octavianus, and he 
was recalled by him to undertake the command of the 
war against Sextus Pompeius, which was on the point 
of breaking out, B.C. 37. Octavianus offered him a 
triumph, which Agrippa declined, but accepted the 
consulship, to which he was promoted by Octavianus 
in B.C. 37. Dion Cassius (48, 49) seems to say that 
he was consul when he went to Gaul, but the words 
vtcuteve fierh Aovmov TdX?iov seem to be suspi¬ 
cious, unless they are to be inserted a little higher, 
after the passage tu> 6’ ’Kypimza ttjv rov vavrinov tt ap- 
aoKEvijv eyxeipicac, which refer to an event that took 
place during the consulship of Agrippa. For, imme¬ 


diately after his promotion to this dignity, he was char¬ 
ged by Octavianus with the construction of a fleet, 
which was the more necessary, as Sextus Pompey was 
master of the sea. 

Agrippa, in whom thoughts and deeds were never 
separated {Vellei., 2, 79), executed this order with 
prompt energy. The Lucrine Lake, near Baise, was 
transformed by him into a safe harbour, which he calk 
ed the Julian port in honour of Octavianus, and where 
he exercised his sailors and mariners till they were able 
to encounter the experienced sailors of Pompey. In 
B.C. 36, Agrippa defeated Sextus Pompey first at 
Mylse, and afterward at Naulochus on the coast of Si¬ 
cily, and the latter of these victories broke the naval 
supremacy of Pompey. He received, in consequence, 
the honour of a naval crown, which was first conferred 
upon him ; though, according to other authorities, M. 
Varro was the first who obtained it from Pompey the 
Great. {Vellei., 2, 81. — Liv., Epit., 129.— Dion 
Cass., 49, 14.— Plin., H. N., 16, 13, s. 4.— Virg., 
Mn., 8, 684.) 

In B.C. 35, Agrippa had the command of the war in 
Illyria, and afterward served under Octavianus, when 
the latter had proceeded to that country. On his re¬ 
turn, he voluntarily accepted the sedileship in B.C. 33, 
although he had been consul, and expended immense 
sums of money upon great public works. He restored 
the Appian, Marcian, and Anienian aqueducts, con¬ 
structed a new one, fifteen miles in length, from the 
Tepula to Rome, to which he gave the name of the 
Julian, in honour of Octavianus, and had an immense 
number of smaller water-works made, to distribute the 
water within the town. He also had the large cloaca 
of Tarquinius Priscus entirely cleansed. His various 
works were adorned with statues by the first artists of 
Rome. These splendid buildings he augmented in 
B.C. 27, during his third consulship, by several others ; 
and among these was the Pantheon, on which we still 
read the inscription, “ M. Agrippa L. F. Cos. Terti- 
um fecit.” {Dion Cass., 49, 43 ; 53, 27 .—Plin., H. 
N., 36, 15, s. 24, § 3.— Strab., 5, p. 235.— Frontin., 
De Aquced., 9.) 

When the war broke out between Octavianus and 
M. Antonius, Agrippa was appointed commander-in- 
chief of the fleet, B.C 32. He took Methone in the 
Peloponnesus, Leucas, Patrse, and Corinth ; and in the 
battle of Actium (B.C. 31), where he commanded, the 
victory was mainly owing to his skill. On his return to 
Rome in B.C. 30, Octavianus, now Augustus, reward¬ 
ed him with a “ vexillum caeruleum,” or sea-green flag. 

In B.C. 28, Agrippa became consul for the second 
time with Augustus, and about this time married Mar¬ 
cella, the niece of Augustus, and the daughter of his 
sister Octavia. His former wife, Pomponia, the daugh¬ 
ter of T. Pomponius Atticus, was either dead or di¬ 
vorced. In the following year, B.C. 27, he was again 
consul the third time with Augustus. 

In B.C. 25, Agrippa accompanied Augustus to the 
war against the Cantabrians. About this time jeal¬ 
ousy arose between him and his brother-in-law, Mar¬ 
cellus, the nephew of Augustus, and who seemed to be 
destined as his successor. Augustus, anxious to pre¬ 
vent differences that might have had serious conse¬ 
quences for him, sent Agrippa as proconsul to Syria. 
Agrippa, of course, left Rome, but he stopped at Myt- 
ilene in the island of Lesbos, leaving the government 
of Syria to his legate. The apprehensions of Augus¬ 
tus were removed by the death of Marcellus in B.C. 
23, and Agrippa immediately returned to Rome, where 
he was the more anxiously expected, as troubles had 
broken out during the election of the consuls in B.C. 
21. Augustus resolved to receive his faithful friend 
into his own family, and, accordingly, induced him to 
divorce his wife Marcella, and marry Julia, the widow 
of Marcellus and the daughter of Augustus by his third 
wife, Scribonia (B.C. 21). 




AGRIPPA. 


AGRIPPINA. 


In B.C. 19, Agrippa went into Gaul. He pacified 
the turbulent natives, and constructed four great pub¬ 
lic roads and a splendid aqueduct at Nemausus (Ni- 
mes). From thence he proceeded to Spain, and sub¬ 
dued the Cantabrians after a short but bloody and ob¬ 
stinate struggle ; but, in accordance with his usual 
prudence, he neither announced his victories in pom¬ 
pous letters to the senate, nor did he accept a a triumph 
which Augustus offered him. In B.C. 18, he was in¬ 
vested with the tribunician power for five years togeth¬ 
er with Augustus ; and in the following year (B.C. 
17), his two sons, Caius and Lucius, were adopted by 
Augustus. At the close of the year, he accepted an 
invitation of Herod the Great, and went to Jerusalem. 
He founded the military colony of Berytus (Beyrout); 
thence he proceeded, in B.C. 16, to the Pontus Euxi- 
nus, and compelled the Bosporani to accept Polemo 
for their king, and to restore the Roman eagles which 
had been taken by Mithradates. On his return he stay¬ 
ed some time in Ionia, where he granted privileges to 
the Jews, whose cause was pleaded by Herod {Joseph., 
Antiq. Jud., 16, 2), and then proceeded to Rome, 
where he arrived in B.C. 13. After his tribunician 
power had been prolonged for five years, he went to 
Pannonia to restore tranquillity to that province. He 
returned in B.C. 12, after having been successful as 
usual, and retired to Campania. There he died unex¬ 
pectedly, in the month of March, B.C. 12, in his 51st 
year. His body was carried to Rome, and was buried 
in the mausoleum of Augustus, who himself pronoun¬ 
ced a funeral oration over it. 

Dion Cassius tells us (52, 1, &c.), that in the year 
B.C. 29 Augustus assembled his friends and counsel¬ 
lors, Agrippa and Maecenas, demanding their opinion 
as to whether it would be advisable for him to usurp 
monarchical power, or to restore to the nation its for¬ 
mer republican government. This is corroborated by 
Suetonius ( Octav ., 28), who says that Augustus twice 
deliberated upon that subject. The speeches which 
Agrippa and Maecenas delivered on this occasion are 
given by Dion Cassius ; but the artificial character of 
them makes them suspicious. However, it does not 
seem likely, from the general character of Dion Cas¬ 
sius as an historian, that these speeches are invented by 
him ; and it is not improbable, and such a supposition 
suits entirely the character of Augustus, that those 
speeches were really pronounced, though preconcerted 
between Augustus and his counsellors to make the 
Roman nation believe that the fate of the Republic 
was still a matter of discussion, and that Augustus 
would not assume monarchical power till he had been 
convinced that it was necessary for the welfare of the 
nation. Besides, Agrippa, who, according to Dion 
Cassius, advised Augustus to restore the Republic, 
was a man whose political opinions had evidently a 
monarchical tendency. 

Agrippa was one of the most distinguished and im¬ 
portant men of the age of Augustus. He must be con¬ 
sidered as a chief support of the rising monarchical con¬ 
stitution, and without Agrippa Augustus could scarce¬ 
ly have succeeded in making himself the absolute mas¬ 
ter of the Roman Empire. Dion Cassius (54, 29, &c.), 
Velleius Paterculus (2, 79), Seneca (Ep., 94), and 
Horace {Od., 1 , 6) speak with equal admiration of his 
merits. 

Pliny constantly refers to the “ Commentarii” of 
Agrippa as an authority {Elenchus, 3, 4, 5, 6, comp. 
3, 2), which may indicate certain official lists drawn 
up by him in the measurement of the Roman world 
under Augustus ( vid. iEthicus), in which he may have 
taken part. 

Agrippa left several children. By his first wife, 
Pomponia, he had Vipsania, who was married to Tibe¬ 
rius Caesar, the successor of Augustus. By his sec¬ 
ond wife, Marcella, he had several children, who are 
not mentioned ; and by his third wife, Julia, he had 


two daughters, Julia, married to L.iEmilius Paullusy 
and Agrippina, married to Germanicus, and three sons, 
Caius {vid. Caesar, C.), Lucius {vid. Caesar, L.), and 
Agrippa Postumus. {Dion Cass., lib. 45-54.— Liv., 
Epit., 117-136. — Appian, Bell. Civ., lib. 5. — Suet., 
Octav. — Frandsen, M. Vipsanius Agrippa, eine histo- 
rische Untersuchung. iiber dessen Leben und Wirken, 
Altona, 1836.) There are several medals of Agrip¬ 
pa, on one ot which he is represented with a naval 
crown ; on the reverse is Neptune indicating his suc¬ 
cess by sea. 

Agrippina, I. the youngest daughter of M. Vipsa¬ 
nius Agrippa and of Julia, the daughter of Augustus, 
was born some time before B.C. 12. She married 
Caesar Germanicus, the son of Drusus Nero Germani¬ 
cus, by whom she had nine children. Agrippina was 
gifted with great powers of mind, a noble character, 
and all the moral and physical qualities that constituted 
the model of a Roman matron : her love for her hus¬ 
band was sincere and lasting, her chastity was spot¬ 
less, her fertility was a virtue in the eyes of the Ro¬ 
mans, and her attachment to her children was an emi¬ 
nent feature of her character. She yielded to one dan¬ 
gerous passion, ambition. Augustus showed her par¬ 
ticular attention and attachment. {Sueton., Calig., 8.) 

At the death of Augustus in A.D. 14, she was on 
the Lower Rhine with Germanicus, who commanded 
the legions there. Her husband was the idol of the 
army, and the legions on the Rhine, dissatisfied with 
the accession of Tiberius, manifested their intention 
of proclaiming Germanicus master of the state. Ti¬ 
berius hated and dreaded Germanicus, and he showed 
as much antipathy to Agrippina as he had love to her 
elder sister, his first wife. In this perilous situation, 
Germanicus and Agrippina saved themselves by their 
prompt energy ; he quelled the outbreak, and pursued 
the war against the Germans. In the ensuing year his 
lieutenant, Csecina, after having made an invasion into 
Germany, returned to the Rhine. The campaign was 
not inglorious for the Romans, but they were worn 
out by hardships, and, perhaps, harassed on their march 
by some bands of Germans. Thus the rumour was 
spread that the main body of the Germans was ap¬ 
proaching to invade Gaul. Germanicus was absent, 
and it was proposed to destroy the bridge over the 
Rhine. (Compare Strab., 4, p. 194.) If this had 
been done, the retreat of Caecina’s army would have 
been cut oil', but it was saved by the firm opposition 
of Agrippina to such a cowardly measure. When the 
troops approached, she went to the bridge, acting as a 
general, and receiving the soldiers as they crossed it; 
the wounded among them were presented by her with 
clothes, and they received from her own hands every¬ 
thing necessary for the cure of their wounds. {Tac., 
Ann., 1, 69.) Germanicus having been recalled by 
Tiberius, she accompanied her husband to Asia (A.D. 
17), and after his death, or, rather, murder {vid. Ger¬ 
manicus), she returned to Italy. She stayed some 
days at the island of Corcyra to recover from her grief, 
and then landed at Brundisium, accompanied by two 
of her children, and holding in her arms the urn with 
the ashes of her husband. At the news of her arrival, 
the port, the walls, and even the roofs of the houses 
were occupied by crowds of people who were anxious 
to see and salute her. She was solemnly received by 
the officers of two praetorian cohorts, which Tiberius 
had sent to Brundisium for the purpose of accompany¬ 
ing her to Rome ; the urn containing the ashes of Ger¬ 
manicus was borne by tribunes and centurions, and the 
funeral procession was received on its march by the 
magistrates of Calabria, Apulia, and Campania ; by 
Drusus, the son of Tiberius ; Claudius, the brother of 
Germanicus ; by the other children of Germanicus; 
and, at last, in the environs of Rome, by the consuls, 
the senate, and crowds of the Roman people. {Tac., 
Ann., 3, 1, &c.) 


91 




AGRIPPINA. 


AGRIPPINA. 


During some years Tiberius disguised his hatred of 
Agrippina, but she soon became exposed to secret ac¬ 
cusations and intrigues. She asked the emperor’s per¬ 
mission to choose another husband, but Tiberius nei¬ 
ther refused nor consented to the proposition. Seja- 
nus, who exercised an unbounded influence over Ti¬ 
berius, then a prey to mental disorders, persuaded 
Agrippina that the emperor intended to poison her. 
Alarmed at such a report, she refused to eat an apple 
which the emperor offered her from his table, and Ti¬ 
berius, in his turn, complained of Agrippina regarding 
him as a poisoner. According to Suetonius, all this 
was an intrigue preconcerted between the emperor and 
Sejanus, who, as it seems, had formed the plan of lead¬ 
ing Agrippina into false steps. Tiberius was extreme¬ 
ly suspicious of Agrippina, and showed his hostile feel¬ 
ings by allusive words or neglectful silence. There 
were no evidences of ambitious plans formed by Agrip¬ 
pina, but the rumour having been spread that she would 
fly to the army, he banished her to the island of Pan- 
dataria (A.D. 30), where her mother, Julia, had died 
in exile. Her sons, Nero and Drusus, were likewise 
banished, and both died an unnatural death. She liv¬ 
ed three years on that barren island ; at lgst she refu¬ 
sed to take any food, and died, most probably, by vol¬ 
untary starvation. Her death took place precisely two 
years after, and on the same date, as the murder of Se¬ 
janus, that is, in A.D. 33. Tacitus and Suetonius tell 
us that Tiberius boasted that he had not strangled her. 

( Saeton., Tib., 53.— Tac., Ann., 6, 25.) The ashes 
of Agrippina, and those of her son Nero, were after¬ 
ward brought to Rome by order of her son, the Em¬ 
peror Caligula, who struck various medals in honour 
of his mother. In one of these the head of Caligula 
is on one side, and that of his mother on the other. 
The words on each side are respectively, c. c^esar.' 

AVG. GER. P.M. TR. POT., and AGRIPPINA. MAT. C. C^ES. 

AVG. GERM. (Tac., Ann., 1-6. — Sueton., Octav., 64; 
Tib., 1. c.; Calig., 1. c. — Dion Cass., 57, 5, 6 ; 58, 
22.)—II. The daughter of Germanicus and Agrippina 
the elder, daughter of M. Vipsanius Agrippa. She was 
born between A.D. 13 and 17, at the Oppidum Ubio- 
rum, afterward called, in honour of her, Colonia Agrip¬ 
pina, now Cologne, and then the headquarters of the 
legions commanded by her father. In A.D. 28, she 
married Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus, a man not unlike 
her, and whom she lost in A.D. 40. After his death 
she married Crispus Passienus, who died some years 
afterward ; and she was accused of having poisoned 
him, either for the purpose of obtaining his great for¬ 
tune, or for some secret motive of much higher impor¬ 
tance. She was already known for her scandalous 
conduct, for her most perfidious intrigues, and for an 
unbounded ambition. She was accused of having com¬ 
mitted incest with her own brother, the Emperor Ca- 
ius Caligula, who, under the pretext of having discover¬ 
ed that she had lived in an adulterous intercourse with 
M.iEmilius Lepidus, the husband of her sister Drusil- 
Ia, banished her to the island of Pontia, which was sit¬ 
uated in the Sinus Syrticus Major, on the coast of Lib¬ 
ya. Her sister Drusilla was likewise banished to Pon¬ 
tia, and it seems that their exile was connected with 
the punishment of Lepidus, who was put to death for 
having conspired against the emperor. Previously to 
her exile, Agrippina was compelled by her brother to 
carry to Rome the ashes of Lepidus. This happened 
in A.D. 39. Agrippina and her sister were released 
in A.D. 41, by their uncle, Claudius, immediately af¬ 
ter his accession, although his wife, Messalina, was the 
mortal enemy of Agrippina. Messalina was put to 
death by order of Claudius in A.D. 48 ; and in the fol¬ 
lowing year, A.D. 49, Agrippina succeeded in marry¬ 
ing the emperor. Claudius was her uncle, but her mar¬ 
riage was legalized by a senatus consultum, by which 
the marriage of a man with his brother’s daughter was 
declared valid ; this senatus consultum was afterward 
92 


abrogated by the Emperors Constantine and Constans. 
In this intrigue Agrippina displayed the qualities of an 
accomplished courtesan, and such was the influence 
of her charms and superior talents over the old emper¬ 
or, that, in prejudice of his own son, Britannicus, he 
adopted Domitius, the son of Agrippina by her first 
husband, Cn.Domitius Ahenobarbus (A.D. 51). Agrip¬ 
pina was assisted in her secret plans by Pallas, the per¬ 
fidious confidant of Claudius. By her intrigues, L. 
Junius Silanus, the husband of Octavia, the daughter 
of Claudius, was put to death, and in A.D. 53 Octa¬ 
via was married to young Nero. Lollia Paullina, once 
the rival of Agrippina for the hand of the emperor, was 
accused of high treason and condemned to death, but 
she put an end to her own life. Domitia Lepida, the 
sister of Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus, met with a simi¬ 
lar fate. After having thus removed those whose ri- 
valship she dreaded, or whose virtues she envied, Agrip¬ 
pina resolved to get rid of her husband, and to govern 
the empire through her ascendency over her son Nero, 
his successor. A vague rumour of this reached the 
emperor; in a state of drunkenness, he forgot prudence, 
and talked about punishing his ambitious wife. Hav¬ 
ing no time to lose, Agrippina, assisted by Locusta and 
Xenophon, a Greek physician, poisoned the old emper¬ 
or, in A.D. 54, at Sinuessa, a watering-place to which 
he had retired for the sake of his health. Nero was pro¬ 
claimed emperor, and presented to the troops by Bur¬ 
ras, whom Agrippina had appointed praefectus praetorio. 
Narcissus, the rich freedman of Claudius, M. Junius 
Silanus, proconsul of Asia, the brother of Lucius Junius 
Silanus, and a great-grandson of Augustus, lost their 
lives at the instigation of Agrippina, who would have 
augmented the number of her victims but for the op¬ 
position of Burras and Seneca, recalled by Agrippina 
from his exile to conduct the education of Nero. 
Meanwhile the young emperor took some steps to shake 
off the insupportable ascendency of his mother. The 
jealousy of Agrippina rose from her son’s passion for 
Acte, and, after her, for Poppaea Sabina, the wife of 
M. Salvius Otho. To reconquer his affection, Agrip¬ 
pina employed, but in vain, most daring and most re¬ 
volting means. She threatened to oppose Britannicus 
as a rival to the emperor; but Britannicus was poi¬ 
soned by Nero; and she even solicited her son to an 
incestuous intercourse. At last her death was resolv¬ 
ed upon by Nero, who wished to repudiate Octavia 
and marry Poppaea, but whose plan was thwarted by 
his mother. Thus petty feminine intrigues became 
the cause of Agrippina’s ruin. Nero invited her, un¬ 
der the pretext of a reconciliation, to visit him at Baiie, 
on the coast of Campania. She went thither by sea. 
In their conversation hypocrisy was displayed on both 
sides. She left Baiae by the same way ; but the ves¬ 
sel was so contrived that it was to break to pieces 
when out at sea. It only partly broke, and Agrippina 
saved herself by swimming to the shore ; her attend¬ 
ant, Acerronia, was killed. Agrippina fled to her villa 
near the Lucrine Lake, and informed her son of her 
happy escape. Now Nero charged Burras to murder 
his mother ; but Burras declining it, Anicetus, the 
commander of the fleet, who had invented the strata¬ 
gem of the ship, was compelled by Nero and Burras to 
undertake the task. Anicetus went to her villa with 
a chosen band, and his men surprised her in her bed¬ 
room. “ Ventrem fieri,” she cried out, after she was 
but slightly wounded, and immediately afterward ex¬ 
pired under the blows of a centurion (A.D. 60). (Tac., 
Ann., 14,8.) It was told that Nero went to the villa! 
and that he admired the beauty of the dead body of his 
mother : this was believed by some, doubted by others 
(14, 9). Agrippina left commentaries concerning her 
history and that of her family, which Tacitus consult¬ 
ed, according to his own statement. (Tb., 4, 54.__ 

Compare Dim., Hist. Nat., 7, 6, s. 8 ; Elenchus, 7, 
&c.) 





AGR 


AGR 


There are several medais of Agrippina, which are 
distinguishable from those of her mother by the title of 
Augusta, which those of her mother never have. On 
some of her medals she is represented with her hus¬ 
band Claudius, in others with her son Nero. ( Tac., 
Ann., lib. 12, 13, 14.— Dion Cass., lib. 59-61.— Su- 
eton., Claud., 43, 44; Nero, 5, 6.) — III. Vipsania, 
daughter of M. Yipsanius Agrippa and Pomponia, the 
daughter of T. Pomponius Atticus, his first wife. She 
was married to Tiberius, afterward emperor, by whom 
she had Drusus. Tiberius was much attached to her, 
and with great reluctance divorced her when com¬ 
manded by Augustus, that he might marry Julia, the 
daughter of the emperor. She now married Asinius 
Gallus, the son of the celebrated Asinius Pollio, and 
bore him several children. This gave rise to a feeling 
of hatred in the breast of Tiberius against Asinius, 
which ultimately proved his ruin. (Vid. Asinius II.) 
The children of Agrippina by Asinius were, C. Asinius 
Saloninus, Asinius Gallus, Asinius Pollio, consul 
A.U.C. 776, Asinius Agrippa, consul A.U.C. 778, and 
Asinius Celer. Agrippina died A.U.C. 773, and, ac¬ 
cording to Tacitus (Ann., 3, 19), she was the only one 
of all the children of Agrippa that died a natural death. 
(Tac., Ann., 1, 12; 3, 19; 3, 75; 4, 1, 34.— Sue- 
ton., Tib., ch. 7.— Id., Claud., ch. 13.) — IV. Colo- 
nia, also called Colonia Agrippinensis (Tac., Hist., 
1, 57; 4, 55), and on inscriptions Colonia Claudia 
Augusta Agrippinensium , or simply Agrippina (Amm. 
Marc., 15, 8, 11), originally the chief town of the Ubii, 
and called Oppidum Ubiorum. These are mentioned, 
by Caesar as a German nation, dwelling on the right 
bank of the Rhine, who were afterward transferred to 
the left, or Gallic side 5< by Agrippa. At this town 
Agrippina, daughter of Germanicus, was born ; and, 
when she had attained to the dignity of empress by 
marriage with Claudius, she sent hither a military col¬ 
ony, A.C. 50, and caused the place to be named after 
herself. It soon became large and wealthy, and was 
adorned with a temple of Mars. The inhabitants re¬ 
ceived the jus Italicum. It answers to the modern 
Koln or Cologne. (Tac., Ann., 1 , 35; 12, 27. — Id., 
Hist., 4, 28 ; 1, 57; 4, 55.— Dion Cassius, 48, 49.) 

AgrippInus, bishop of Carthage, of venerable mem¬ 
ory, but known for being the first to maintain the neces¬ 
sity of rebaptizing all heretics. ( Vincent. Lirin., Com- 
monit., 1, 9.) St. Cyprian regarded this opinion as the 
correction of an error (St. Augustin., De Baptismo, 2, 
7, vol. 9, p. 102, ed. Bened.), and St. Augustine seems 
to imply he defended his error in writing. (Epist., 93, 
c. 10.) He held the council of seventy bishops at 
Carthage, about A.D. 200 (Vulg. A.D. 215, Mans. 
A.D. 217), on the subject of Baptism. Though he er¬ 
red in a matter yet undefined by the Church, St. Au¬ 
gustine notices that neither he nor St. Cyprian thought 
of separating from the Church. (De Baptismo, 3, 2, 
p. 109.)—II. Paconius, whose father was put to death 
by Tiberius on a charge of treason. (Suet., Tib., 61.) 
Agrippinus was accused at the same time as Thrasea, 
A.D. 67, and was banished from Italy. (Tac., Ann., 
16, 28, 29, 33.) He was a Stoic philosopher, and is 
spoken of with praise by Epictetus (ap. Stob., Serm., 
7), and Arrian (1, 1). 

Agrius (“Aypiop), I. a son of Porthaon and Euryte, 
and brother of CEneus, king of Calydon, in -dEtolia, 
Alcathous, Melas, Leucopeus, and Sterope. He was 
father of six sons, of whom Thersites was one. These 
sons of Agrius deprived CEneus of his kingdom, and 
gave it to their father ; but all of them, with the ex¬ 
ception of Thersites, were slain by Diomedes, the 
grandson of CEneus. (Apollod., 1, 7, § 10, 8; $ 5, &c.) 
Apollodorus places these events before the expedition 
of the Greeks against Troy, while Hyginus (Fab., 175 : 
compare 242, and Antonin. Lib., 37) states that Diome¬ 
des, when he heard, after the fall of Troy, of the mis¬ 
fortunes of his grandfather CEneus, hastened back and 


expelled Agrius, who then put an end to his own life ; 
according to others, Agrius and his sons were slain by 
Diomedes. (Compare Pausan., 2, 25, () 2.— Ov., He - 
roid, 9, 153.) In the mythic history of the Greeks we 
find several Agrii, and in almost all the allusion appears 
to be a symbolical one. Thus, for example, in the case 
of the one first mentioned, Agrius is the “ Wild Man,” 
the “ Man of the fields,” while CEneus, on the other 
hand, is the “ Wine-man,” the “ cultivator of the vine.” 
(Compare Creuzer, Symbolik, vol. 4, p. 372. — Apol- 
lodor., 1 , 8, 6. — Anton. Lib., Fab., 37. — Verhcyk ad 
Anton. Lib., Fab., 21, p. 136.) In the case of the 
father of Thersites, the name ig-rws may be intended 
as a figurative allusion to the rude and lawless manners 
of the son.—II. According to Hesiod ( Theog ., 1013), 
a son of Ulysses and Circe, and brother of Latinus and 
Telegonus, “ who, afar in the recess of the Holy Isles, 
ruled over all the renowned Tyrsenians.” He is the 
same, in all probability, with the god or hero called 
Agrius by the Arcadians (a term to be derived from ’Ay- 
pof, ager), and whose most solemn festival the Parrhasii 
introduced into the island of Ceos, one of the Cycla¬ 
des. There was a deity of the same name in Thessa¬ 
ly, whence hjs worship was carried to Cyrene in Afri¬ 
ca. There was an Agrius also in Boeotia, whose name 
appears in the Cadmean genealogy. The mythology 
connected with this son of Ulysses and Circe appears 
in Italy under a new form, and he is there to be iden¬ 
tified with the Arcadian Evander of the Latins, while 
his mother, Circe, seems to be the same with Carmen- 
ta, a name equivalent to the Latin Maga. (Compare 
Livy, 1, 7.) This Agrius is mentioned also by the 
scholiast on Apollonius (3, 200), and by Eustathius 
(ad Horn., II, p. 1796); nor should it be omitted here 
that there was among the Romans a gens Agria. ( Var- 
ro, De Re Rust., 1, 2.— Cic., Flacc., 13.) Gottling, 
a recent editor of Hesiod, has a very learned note on 
the subject of Agrius, in which he appears to favour 
the reading of Vpalnov r’ yde A arlvov in place of ’Ay- 
piov i]6b Aarlvov as occurring in Hesiod (Theog., 
1013). 

Agrcecius or Agrcetius, a Roman grammarian, the 
author of an extant work “ De Orthographia et Differ¬ 
entia Sermonis,” intended as a supplement to a work 
on the same subject, by Flavius Caper, and dedicated 
to a bishop, Eucherius. He is supposed to have lived 
in the middle of the 5th century of our era. His work 
is printed in Putschius’s “ Grammatics Latins Auc- 
tores Antiqui,” p. 2266-2275. 

Agrcetas (’A ypoirag), a Greek historian, who wrote 
a work on Scythia (htivOind), from the thirteenth book 
of which the scholiast on Apollonius (2, 1248) quotes, 
and one on Libya (A i6vnd), the fourth book of which 
is quoted by the same scholiast (4,1396). He is also 
mentioned by Stephanus Byz. (s. v. “Apnel of). 

Agroira, the early name of Attalea, a city of Lyd¬ 
ia, on the Hermus, northeast of Sardis. Major Kep- 
pel (Travels, vol. 2, p. 335) remarks, “It is on the 
rifht bank of the Hermus, which flows at the base of 
a rocky mountain, through a chasm of which it disap¬ 
pears. The passage here is rather dangerous. The 
direct road from Cassaba to Adala (Agroira) is twelve 
hours. No vestiges of antiquity were observed here : 
there are coins, however, of Attalea.” (Sestini, p. 
106.— Cramer’s Asia Minor, v. 1, p. 435.) 

Agron ("Aypov), I. the son of Ninus, the first of 
the Lydian dynasty of the Heracleidse. The tradition 
was, that this dynasty supplanted a native race of kings, 
having been originally intrusted with the government 
as deputies. The names Ninus and Belus, in their 
genealogy, render it probable that they were either As¬ 
syrian governors, or princes of Assyrian origin, and 
that their accession marks the period of an Assyrian 
conquest. (Herod., 1, 7.)—II. The son of Pleuratus, 
a king of Illyria. In the strength of his land and naval 
forces he surpassed all the ureceding kings of that coun- 

93 



AGR 


A JA 


try. When the ^Etolians attempted to compel the 
Medionians to join their confederacy, Agron undertook 
to protect them, having been induced to do so by a 
large bribe which he received from Demetrius, the fa¬ 
ther of Philip. He accordingly sent to their assistance 
a force of 5000 Illyrians, who gained a decisive victory 
over the *®tolians. Agron, overjoyed at the news of 
this success, gave himself up to feasting, and, in con¬ 
sequence of his excess, contracted a pleurisy, of which 
he died (B.C. 231). He was succeeded in the gov¬ 
ernment by his wife Teuta. Just after his death, an 
embassy arrived from the Romans, who had sent to 
mediate in behalf of the inhabitants of the island of Issa, 
who had revolted from Agron, and placed themselves 
under the protection of the Romans. By his first wife, 
Triteuta, whom he divorced, he had a son named Pin- 
nes, or Pinneus, who survived him, and was placed un¬ 
der the guardianship of Demetrius Pharius, who mar¬ 
ried his mother after the death of Teuta. ( Dion Cass., 
34, 46, 151.— Polyb., 2, 2-4 .—Appian, III., l.—Flor., 
5. — Plin., H. N., 34, 6.)— III. Son of Eumelus, 
grandson of Merops, lived with his sisters, Byssa and 
Meropis, in the island of Cos. They worshipped the 
earth, as the giver of the fruits of harvest, without pay¬ 
ing regard to any other deity. When they were invi¬ 
ted to the festival of Minerva, the brother replied that 
the black eyes of his sisters would not please the 
blue-eyed goddess, and that, for himself, the owl was 
an object of aversion. If desired to offer sacrifice to 
Mercury, he declared that he would show no honour 
to a thief. At the sacrifices of Diana he did not ap¬ 
pear, because that goddess roamed abroad the whole 
night long. Provoked at this conduct, Minerva, Diana, 
and Mercury came to their dwelling, the latter as a 
shepherd, the two goddesses as maidens, to invite Eu¬ 
melus and Agron to a sacrifice to Mercury, and the sis¬ 
ters to the grove of Minerva and Diana. When, how¬ 
ever, Meropis reviled Minerva, she and her sisters were 
changed into birds, together with Agron, who attempt¬ 
ed to seize upon the divinities, and Eumelus, who 
heaped reproaches upon Mercury for the metamorpho¬ 
sis of his son. The legend makes Meropis to have been 
changed into a small bird of the owl kind : Byssa re¬ 
tained her name, and became, as a species of sea-fowl, 
the bird of Leucothea : Agron became the bird Chara- 
drius. {Anton. Lib., 15.) 

AgrSlas, surrounded the citadel of Athens with 
walls, except that part which was afterward repaired by 
Cimon. {Pausan., 1, 28.) We have here one of the 
old traditions respecting the Pelasgic race. Agrolas 
was aided in the work by his brother Hyperbius, both 
of them Pelasgi. According to Pausanias {l. c.), they 
came originally from Sicily. It is more than proba¬ 
ble, however, that the names in question are those of 
two leaders or two tribes, and that the work was ex¬ 
ecuted under their orders. The wall erected on this 
occasion was styled Pelargicon, and the builders of it 
would seem to have erected also a town or small set¬ 
tlement for themselves, which afterward became paft 
of the Acropolis. (Compare Siebelis, ad Pausan., 1, 
28. Muller , Gesch. Hellen. Stamme, &c., vol. 1, p 
440.) ’ F ‘ 

Agrotera, I. an annual festival, celebrated at 
Athens to Diana Agrotera {’A prS/udi ’Aypore pa). It 
was instituted by Callimachus the polemarch, in con¬ 
sequence of a vow made by him before the battle of 
Marathon, that he would sacrifice to the goddess as 
many yearling she-goats {xipalpaq) as there might be 
enemies slain in the approaching conflict. {Schol. ad 
Aristoph., Equit., 657.—Xen., Anab., 3, 2, 11.) The 
number of the Persians who fell was so great, that a 
sufficient amount of victims could not be obtained. 
Every year, therefore, 500 goats were slain, in order 
to make up the requisite number, until, at last, the 
whole thing grew into a regular custom. ^Elian ( V. 
H., 2, 25) makes the vow in question to have been 
94 


offered up by Miltiades, and the number of annual vic¬ 
tims 300.—II. The name Agrotera (’A yporepa) is also 
sometimes applied to Diana herself. In this usage it 
is equivalent to KvvyyeTiKy, dr/pevTiKy, “ the hun¬ 
tress.” Its primitive meaning, however, is the same 
as i] bpeia, “ she that frequents the mountains.” 
(Compare Heync, ad Horn., II, 21, 471.) 

Agyieus, an appellation given to Apollo. The 
term is of Greek origin (’A yvievq), and, if the com¬ 
mon derivation be correct, denotes “ the guardian 
deity of streets ” (from dyvia, “ a street"), it being 
the custom at Athens to erect a small conical cippi, in 
honour of Apollo, in the vestibules and before the 
doors of their houses. Here he was invoked as the 
Averter of evil {-&eoq dnoTpoTraiog, “ Dcus overrun- 
cus"), and the worship here offered him consisted in 
burning perfumes before these pillars, in adorning 
them with myrtle garlands, hanging fillets upon them, 
&c. We must not suppose, however, that this cus¬ 
tom originated in Athens. It appears to have been 
borrowed from the Dorians, and introduced into this 
city in obedience to an oracle. {Schol. in Aristoph., 
Vesp., 870.— Pausan., 8, 53.— Midler, Gesch. Hellen. 
Stamme , &c., vol. 2, p. 299, seqq.) As respects the 
pillars erected at Athens, the ancients seem to have 
been at a loss whether to regard them as altars, or as 
a species of statues. (Compare, on this point, the 
scholiast on Aristophanes, Vesp., 870, and Thesm., 
496. Harpocration, s. v.—Suidas, s. v.—Hclladius, 
ap. Phot., Cod., 279, vol. 2, p. 535, ed. Bekker. — 

I lautus, Merc., 4, 1, 9. — Zoega, de Obeliscis, p. 
210.) Muller states, that this emblem of Apollo ap¬ 
pears on coins of Apollonia in Epirus, Aptera in Crete, 
Megara, Byzantium, Oricum, Ambracia, &c. {Mill 
ler, Gesch. Hellen. Stamme, l. c.) 

Agylla. Vid. Caere. 

, Agyrium, a city of Sicily, northeast of Enna, and 
in the vicinity of the river Symaethus. It would seem 
to have been one of the oldest settlements of the Sic- 
uli, and w T as remarkable for the worship of a hero, 
whom a later age confounded with the Grecian Her¬ 
cules. {Diod. Sic., 4, 25.) The place is noted as 
having given birth to Diodorus Siculus. The modern 
town of San Filippo d'Argiro is supposed to corre¬ 
spond to the ancient city ; the site of the latter, how- 
ever, would appear to have been two miles farther east. 
{Mannert, vol. 9, pt. 2, p. 418.) 

Agyrrhius. Vid. Supplement. 

Ahala. Vid. Supplement. 

Ahenobarbus. Vid. Supplement. 

Ajax (A laq), I. son of Telamon by Peribcea, dauo-h- 
ter of Alcathous, was, next to Achilles, the bravest of 
all the Greeks in the Trojan war, but, like him, of an 
imperious and ungovernable spirit. In other pecu¬ 
liarities of their history, there was also a striking re¬ 
semblance. At the birth of Ajax, Hercules is said to 
have wrapped him in the skin of the Nemean lion, 
and to have thus rendered him invulnerable in every 
part, of his body, except that which was left exposed by 
the aperture in the skin, caused by the wound which 
the animal had received from Hercules. This vulner¬ 
able part was in his breast, or, as others say, behind 
the neck. {Lycophr., 454. — Tzetz., ad loc. — Schol. 
ad. II, 23, 821.) To Ajax fell the lot of opposing 
Hector, when that hero, at the instigation of Apollo 
and Minerva, had challenged the bravest of the Greeks 
to single combat. The glory of the antagonists was 
equal m the engagement; and, at parting, they ex¬ 
changed arms, the baldric of Ajax serving, most sin¬ 
gularly, as the instrument by which Hector was, after 
his fall, attached to the car of Achilles. In the games 
celebrated by Achilles in honour of Patroclus, Ajax 
(as commentators have remarked) was unsuccessful, 
although he was a competitor on not less than three 
occasions: in hurling the quoit; in wrestling; and in 
single combat with arms. After the death of Achilles 







AID 


ALiE 


Ajax and Ulysses disputed their claims to the arms of 
the hero. When they were given to the latter, Ajax 
became so infuriated, that, in a fit of delirium, he 
slaughtered all the sheep in the camp, under the delu¬ 
sion that his rival and the Atrida), who had favoured 
the cause of the former, were the objects of his attack. 
When reason returned, Ajax, from mortification and 
despair, put an end to his existence, by stabbing him¬ 
self to the heart. The sword which he used as the 
instrument of his death had been received by him from 
Hector in exchange for the baldric, and thus, by a sin¬ 
gular fatality, the present mutually conferred contrib¬ 
uted to their mutual destruction. The blood which 
ran to the ground from the wound produced the flower 
hyacinthus , of a red colour, and on the petal of which 
may be traced lines, imitating the form of the letters 
AI, the first and second of the Greek name AIAS 
(Ajax). The flower here meant appears to be iden¬ 
tical with the Lilium Martagon (“ Imperial Martagon”), 
and not the ordinary hyacinth. (Fee, Flore de Virgile, 
p. lxvii.)—Some authorities give a different account 
of the cause of his death, and make the Palladium to 
have been the subject of dispute between Ajax and 
Ulysses, and state also that Ulysses, in concert with 
Agamemnon, caused Ajax to be assassinated. The 
Greeks erected a tomb over his remains on the pro¬ 
montory of Rhoeteum, which was visited in a later 
age by Alexander the Great. Sophocles has made the 
death of Ajax the subject of one of his tragedies. Ac¬ 
cording to the plot of this-piece, the rites of sepulture 
are at first refused to the corpse of Ajax, but afterward 
allowed through the intercession of Ulysses. Ajax is 
the Homeric type of great valour, unaccompanied by 
any corresponding powers of intellect. Ulysses, on 
the other hand, typifies great intellect, unaccompanied 
by an equal degree of heroic valour, although he is 
far, at the same time, from being a coward. (Horn., II., 
passim. — Apollod., 3, 12, 7.— Ovid, Met., 13, 1, 
seqq.) —II. The son of Oileus, king of Locris, was 
surnamed Locrian, in contradistinction to the son of 
Telamon. The term Narycian was also applied to 
him from his birthplace, the Locrian town Narycium, 
or Naryx. He went with forty ships to the Trojan war, 
as being one of Helen’s suitors. Homer describes 
him as small of size, particularly dexterous in the use 
of the lance, but as remarkable for brutality and cru¬ 
elty. The night that Troy was taken, he offered vio¬ 
lence to Cassandra, who had fled into Minerva’s tem¬ 
ple ; and for this offence, as he returned home, the 
goddess, who had obtained the thunders of Jupiter, 
and the power of tempests from Neptune, destroyed 
his ship in a storm. Ajax swam to a rock, and said 
that he was safe in spite of all the gods. Such im¬ 
piety offended Neptune, who struck the rock with his 
trident, and Ajax tumbled into the sea with part of 
the rock, and was drowned. His body was afterward 
found by the Greeks, and black sheep offered on his 
tomb. According to Virgil’s account, Minerva seized 
him in a whirlwind, and dashed him against a rock, 
where he expired consumed by the flame of the light¬ 
ning. (Horn., II., 2, 527, &c.— Virg., Alin., 1, 43, 
seqq. — Hygin., Fab., 116, &c.) 

Aidoneus, (’A'idovevc), I. a surname of Pluto. It 
is only another form for ’Aldyg, “ the invisible one." 
—II. A king of the Thesprotians in Epirus, who de¬ 
feated the forces of Theseus and Pirithous, when the 
two latter had marched against him for the purpose 
of carrying off his wife Proserpina. Pirithous was 
torn to pieces by Cerberus, the monarch’s dog, while 
Theseus was made prisoner and loaded with fetters. 
Hence, according to Pausanias (1, 17), who relates 
this story, arose the fable of the descent of Theseus 
and Pirithous to the lower world. This explanation 
has met with the approbation of many of the learned, 
and, among the rest, of Wesseling and Perizonius. 
But it is quite untenable. (Consult Creuzer, Sym- 


bolik, vol. 4, p. 168.) Plutarch calls Aidoneus king 
of the Molossians in Epirus. (Vit. Thes., 30.) 

Aius Locutius, a deity to whom the Romans erect¬ 
ed an altar from the following circumstance : one of 
the common people, called Ceditius, informed the tri¬ 
bunes, that, as he passed one night through one of the 
streets of the city, a voice more tlian human, issuing 
from above Vesta’s temple, told him that Rome would 
soon be attacked by the Gauls. His information was 
neglected, but, as its truth was subsequently confirmed 
by the event itself, Camillus, after the departure of the 
Gauls, built a temple to that supernatural voice which 
had given Rome warning of the approaching calamity, 
under the name of the Aius Locutius. ( Liv ., 5, 50.— 
Plut., Vit. Camill., 30.) Thus much for the story it¬ 
self. We have here an instance of the imposition 
practised by the patricians, the depositaries of religion, 
upon the lower orders of the state. The commonly- 
received narrative respecting the Gallic invasion and 
the taking of Rome, is abundantly supplied with the 
decorations of fable, the work of the higher classes. 
The object of the patricians, in the various legends 
which they invented on this point, seems to have been 
a wish to impress on the minds of the people the con¬ 
viction, that divine vengeance had armed itself against 
them, for having dared to injure an individual of sen- 
atorian rank. It was to avenge the banishment of Ca¬ 
millus that the gods had brought the Gauls to Rome, 
and to Camillus alone did they assign the honour of 
removing these formidable visitants. (Compare Le¬ 
vesque, Hist. Grit, de la Rep. Romaine, vol. 1, p. 287.) 

Alabanda, a city of Caria, one of the most impor¬ 
tant of those in the interior of the country. It was 
situate a short distance to the south of the Msander. 
Strabo (14, p. 660, ed. Casaub.) describes its position 
between two hills, and compares the appearance thus 
presented to that of a loaded ass. He speaks of the 
inhabitants as addicted to the pleasures of the table 
and a luxurious life. From Pliny (5, 29) we learn 
that it was a free city, and the seat also of a Conven- 
tus Juridicus. Hierocles incorrectly names the place 
Alapanda. This city was said to have obtained its 
appellation from the hero Alabandus, its found«r, who 
was deified after death, and worshipped within its 
walls. ( Cic., N. D., 3, 19.) Stephanus Byzantinus, 
however, speaks of another Alabanda, commonly call¬ 
ed Antiochia ad Mtzandrum, and makes this one to 
have been founded by Alabandus, son of Enippus ; 
while he assigns as a founder to the other city, Car, 
a son of whose received the name of Hipponicus, from 
his having conquered in an equestrian conflict; which 
appellation, according to Stephanus, was the same with 
Alabandus in the Carian tongue, Ala denoting “ a 
horse,” and Banda, “ a victory.” From this son, 
Alabanda, as he states, took its name. (Compare the 
remarks of Berkel, ad loc., p. 86, and Adelung, Gloss. 
Man., vol. 1, p. 555.) The remains of Alabanda were 
discovered by Pococke (vol. 3, book 2, c. 5), and, af¬ 
ter him, by Chandler (c. 59), in the neighbourhood of 
the village of Karpusler or Karpuseli. The inhabit¬ 
ants of this place were called ’kTiabavdelg, and by the 
Roman writers Alabandenses. The name of the city 
is given by the latter as neuter, but by Strabo and Ste¬ 
phanus as feminine. (Manncrt, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 3, 
p. 278, seqq.) 

Alabandus, I. a son of Enippus, and the founder of 
Antiochia ad Mceandrum. ( Vid. Alabanda.) — II. A 
son of Car, who was otherwise called Hipponicus, and 
who gave name to Alabanda. (Vid. Alabanda.) 

Alvea ( v A/t aia or y A Xeia), a surname of Minerva, 
by which she was worshipped at Tegea in Arcadia. 
There was also a festival celebrated here in honour of 
the goddess, and called by the same name. ( Pausan ., 
8,46.) Creuzer traces a connexion between the festival 
termed Alaea and the solar worship. (Symbolik, vol. 
2, p. 779.) 


95 



ALA 


ALB 


Alagonia, a town of Messenia, distant about thirty- 
stadia from Gerenia. Pausanias (3, 26) notices its 
temples of Bacchus and Diana. 

Alala, an appellation given to Bellona, the goddess 
of war and sister of Mars. It appears to be nothing 
more than the battle-cry personified, and occurs in what 
appears to be a fragment of an old war-song. ( Plut., 
de Frat. Am., p. 483, c.) 

Alalcomen.®, I. a city of Bceotia, near the Lake 
Copais, and to the southeast of Chseronea. It was 
celebrated for the worship of Minerva, thence surna- 
med Alalcomeneis. ( Strab ., 410 and 413.—Compare 
JtJeync, ad Horn., II., 4, 8, and Midler, Gesch. Hellen. 
Stamme, &c., vol. 1, p. 70.) The temple of the god¬ 
dess was plundered and stripped of its statues by Sylla. 
(Pausan ., 9, 33.) It is said, that when Thebes was 
taken by the Epigoni, many of the inhabitants retired 
to Alalcomense, as being held sacred and inviolable. 
{Strab., 413.— Steph. Byz., s. v. ’AXaXuoyeviov.) The 
ruins of this place, according to Sir W. Gell ( Itin., p. 
162), are observable near the village of Sulinara, on 
a projecting knoll, on which there is some little appear¬ 
ance of a small ancient establishment or town; and 
higher up may be discovered a wall or peribolus, of 
ancient and massive polygons, founded upon the solid 
rock. This is probably the site of the temple of the 
Alalcomenian Minerva. ( Cramer’s Anc. Greece, vol. 2, 
p. 236.)—II. A town, situate on a small island off the 
coast of Acarnania, between Ithaca and Cephallenia. 
The name of the island was Asteris, and it is the place 
■where Homer describes the suitors as lying in wait 
for Telemachus on his return from Sparta and Pylos. 
{Horn., Od., 4, 844.—Compare Strabo, 456.) Plutarch, 
however, speaks of AlalcomenEe as being in Ithaca. 
{Istr. Alex., ap. Plut., Qucest. Grcec.) Stephanus By- 
zantinus writes it Alcomenae. 

Alalcomenia. Vid. Supplement. 

Alalia, a city of Corsica. Vid. Aleria. 

Alamanni. Vid. Alemanni. 

Alani, a Scythian race, occupying the regions be¬ 
tween the Rha and the Tanais. Their name and man¬ 
ners, however, would appear to have been also diffused 
over the wide extent of their conquests. (Compare 
Balbi, Introduction a VAtlas Ethnographique, vol. 1, 
p. 116. The Agathyrsi and Geloni were numbered 
among their vassals. Towards the north their power 
extended into the regions of Siberia, and their southern 
inroads were pushed as far as the confines of Persia 
and India. They were conquered eventually by the 
Huns. A part of the vanquished nation thereupon took 
refuge in the mountains of Caucasus. Another band 
advanced towards the shores of the Baltic, associated 
themselves with the northern tribes of Germany, and 
shared the spoil of the Roman provinces of Gaul and 
Spain. But the greatest part of the Alani united with 
their conquerors, the Huns, and proceeded along with 
them to invade the limits of the Gothic empire. ( Amm. 
Marcell., 21, 19.— Id., 23, 4 .—Ptol., 6, 14.) 

Alaricus, in German Al-ric, i. e., all rich, king of 
the Visigoths, remarkable as being the first of the bar¬ 
barian chiefs who entered and sacked the city of Rome, 
and the first enemy who had appeared before its walls 
since the time of Hannibal. His first appearance in 
history is in A.D. 394, when he was invested by The¬ 
odosius with the command of the Gothic auxiliaries in 
his war with Eugenius. In 396, partly from anger at 
being refused the command of the armies of the East¬ 
ern Empire, partly at the instigation of Rufinus, he in¬ 
vaded and devastated Greece, till by the arrival of Stil- 
icho, in 397, he was compelled to escape to Epirus. 
He was elected king by his countrymen in 398, hav¬ 
ing been previously, by the weakness of Arcadius, ap¬ 
pointed prefect of Eastern Illyricum. The rest of his 
life was spent in the two invasions of Italy. The first 
(400-403), apparently unprovoked, brought him only 
to Ravenna, and, after a bloody defeat at Pollentia, in 


which his wife and treasures were taken, and a mas¬ 
terly retreat to Verona, was ended by the treaty with 
Stilicho, which transferred his services from Arcadius 
to Honorius, and made him prefect of the Western in¬ 
stead of the Eastern Illyricum. The second invasion 
(408-10) was occasioned by delay in fulfilling his de¬ 
mands for pay, and for a western province as the fu¬ 
ture home of his nation, as also by the massacre of 
the Gothic families in Italy on Stilicho’s death. It is 
marked by the three sieges of Rome, in 408, 409, and 
410. The first of these was raised by a ransom ; the 
second ended in the unconditional surrender of the city, 
and in the disposal of the empire by Alaric to Atta- 
lus, till, on discovery of his incapacity, he restored it 
to Honorius. The third was ended by the treacherous 
opening of the Salarian Gate, on August 24th, and the 
sack of the city for six days. It was immediately fol¬ 
lowed by the occupation of the south of Italy, and the 
design of invading Sicily and Africa. This intention, 
however, was frustrated by his death, after a short ill¬ 
ness, at Consentia, where he was buried in the bed of 
the adjacent river Busentinus, and the place of his in¬ 
terment was concealed by the massacre of all the work¬ 
men employed on the occasion. The few personal 
traits that are recorded of him are in the true savage 
humour of a barbarian conqueror. But the impression 
left upon us by his general character is of a higher or¬ 
der. The real military skill shown in his escape from 
Greece, and in his retreat to Verona; the wish at Ath¬ 
ens to show that he adopted the use of the bath, and 
the other external forms of civilized life ; the modera¬ 
tion and justice which he observed towards the Ro¬ 
mans in time of peace ; the humanity which distin¬ 
guished him during the sack of Rome, indicate some¬ 
thing superior to the mere craft and lawless ambition 
which he seems to have possessed in common with 
other barbarian chiefs. So, also, his scruples against 
fighting on Easter-day when attacked at Pollentia, and 
his reverence for the churches during the sack of the 
city, imply that the Christian faith had laid some hold 
at least on his imagination. 

Alazon, a river of Albania, rising in Mount Cauca¬ 
sus, and flowing into the Cyrus. Now the Alozon or 
Alason. ( Plin., 6, 10.) 

Alba, I. Sylvius, one of the pretended kings of Alba, 
said to have succeeded his father Latinus, and to have 
reigned 36 years.—II. Longa, one of the most ancient 
cities of Latium, the origin of which is lost in conjec¬ 
ture. According to the common account, the place 
was built by Ascanius, B.C. 1152, on the spot where 
Himeas found, in conformity with the prediction of 
Helenus ( V lT g., Mn., 3, 390, seqq.) and of the god of 
the river (IEn., 8, 43), a white sow with thirty young 
ones. Many, however, have been led to conjecture, 
that Alba was founded by the Siculi, and, after the mi¬ 
gration of that people, was occupied by the Aborigines 
and Pelasgi. (Compare Dion. Hal., 2, 2.) The word 
Alba appears to be of Celtic origin, for we find several 
places of that name in Liguria and ancient Spain ; and 
it is observed that all were situated on elevated spots ; 
from which circumstance it is inferred that Alba is de¬ 
rived trom Alp. (Bardetti dell. Ling, dei Prim. Abit, 
&c., p. 109.) As Alba was entirely destroyed by 
Tullus Hostilius ( Liv., 1, 29), and no vestiges of it 
are now remaining, its exact position has been much 
discussed by modern topographers. If we take Strabo 
for our guide, we shall look for Alba on the slope of the 
Mount Albanus, and at a distance of twenty miles from 
Rome. (Strab., 229.) This position cannot evidently 
agree with the modern town of Albano, which is at the 
foot of the mountain, and only twelve miles from 
Rome. Dionysius also informs us (1, 66), that it was 
situated on the declivity of the Alban Mount, midway 
between the summit and the lake of the same name, 
which protected it as a wall. This description and that 
of Strabo agree sufficiently well with the position of 




ALBA. 


ALB 


Palazzolo, a village belonging to the Colonna family, 
on the eastern side of the lake, and some distance 
above its margin. ( Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 
37, seqq.) “The site,” observes Niebuhr, “where 
Alba stretched, in a long street, between the upper part 
of the mountain and the lake, is still distinctly marked: 
along this whole extent the rock is cut away under it 
down to the lake. These traces of man’s ordering 
hand are more ancient than Rome. The surface of the 
lake, as it has been determined by the tunnel, now lies 
far beyond the ancient city ; when Alba was stand¬ 
ing, and before the lake swelled to a ruinous height in 
consequence of obstructions in clefts of the rock, it 
must have lain yet lower ; for in the age of Diodorus 
and Dionysius, during extraordinary droughts, the re¬ 
mains of spacious buildings might be seen at the bot¬ 
tom, taken by the common people for the palace of 
an impious king which had been swallowed up. ( Nie¬ 
buhr's Rom. Hist., vol. 1, p. 168, seqq., Cambridge 
transl .)—The line of the Alban kings is given as fol¬ 
lows : 1. Ascanius, reigned 8 years ; 2. Sylvius Post- 
humus, 29 years ; 3. .Eneas Sylvius, 31 years ; 4. 
Latinus, 5 years ; 5. Alba Sylvius, 36 years ; 6. Atys 
or Capetus, 26 years ; 7. Capys, 28 years ; 8. Calpe- 
tus, 13 years; 9. Tiberinus, 8 years; 10. Agrippa, 
33 years ; 11. Remulus, 19 years ; 12. Aventinus, 37 
years ; 13. Procas, 13 years ; 14. Numitor and Amu- 
lius. The destruction of Alba took place, according 
to the common acount, 665 B.C., when the inhabitants 
were carried to Rome. “ The list of the Alban kings,” 
remarks Niebuhr, “ is a very late and extremely clum¬ 
sy fabrication ; a medley of names, in part quite un- 
Italian, some of them repeated from earlier or later 
times, others framed out of geographical names ; and 
having scarcely anything of a story connected with 
them. We are told that Livy took this list from L. 
Cornelius Alexander the Polyhistor ( Serv. ad Virg., 
uEn., 8, 330); hence it is probable that this client of 
the dictator Sylla introduced the imposture into his¬ 
tory. Even the variations in the lists are not very 
important, and do not at all prove that there were sev¬ 
eral ancient sources. Some names may, have occur¬ 
red in older traditions : kings of the Aborigines were 
also mentioned by name (Stercenius, for instance, un¬ 
less it be a false reading.— Serv. ad Virg., jEn., 11, 
850), entirely different from those of Alba. In the 
case of the latter, even the years of each reign are num¬ 
bered ; and the number so exactly fills up the interval 
between the fall of Troy and the founding of Rome, 
according to the canon of Eratosthenes, as of itself to 
prove the lateness of the imposture.” ( Niebuhr's 
Rom. Hist., vol. 1, p. 170, Cambridge transl.) — III. 
Docilia, a city of Liguria, now Albizzola. —IV. Fucen- 
tia or Fucensis, a city of the Marsi, near the northern 
shore of the Lake Fucinus, whence its name. It was 
a strong and secluded place, and appears to have been 
selected by the Roman senate, after it became a colony 
of Rome, A.U.C. 450, as a fit place of residence for 
captives of rank and consequence, as well as for noto¬ 
rious offenders. ( Strab ., 241.—Compare Liv., 10, 1, 
and Veil. Paterc., 1, 14.) Syphax was long detained 
here, though finally he was removed to Tibur (Liv., 
30, 45); as were also Perses, king of Macedon, and 
his son Alexander. (Liv., 45, 52.— Veil. Paterc., 1, 
11.— Val. Max., 5, 1.) At the time of Caesar’s in¬ 
vasion of his country, we find Alba adhering to the 
cause of Pompey (Coes., Bell. Civ., 1, 15), and subse¬ 
quently repelling the attack of Antony; on which oc¬ 
casion it obtained a warm and eloquent eulogium from 
Cicero. (Phil., 3, 3. — Appian, Bell. Civ., 3, 45.) 
The ruins of this city, which are said to be considera¬ 
ble ( Romanelli, vol. 3, p. 211), stand about a mile 
from the modern Alba (Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 
330).—Y. Pompeia, a city of Liguria, on the river 
Tanarus, now Alba. It probably owed its surname to 
Pompeius Strabo, who colonized several towns in the 
N 


north of Italy. It was the birthplace of the Emperor 
Pertinax. (Dio Cass., 83. — Zon. Ann., 2.)-—VI. A 
city of Spain, in the territory of the Varduli, eight ge¬ 
ographical miles to the west of Pamplona, and as many 
to the east of the Iberus. It was about two geograph¬ 
ical miles, therefore, to the west of the modern Estel- 
la. (Mannert, vol. 1 , p. 375.)—VII. Augusta, a city 
of the Helvii, in Gaul, near the Rhone, and answering 
to the modern Aps. Pliny (14, 3) names the place 
Alba Helvorum, and praises the skill of the inhabitants 
in the cultivation of the vine.—VIII. Graeca, a city of 
Dacia Ripensis, at the confluence of the Danube and 
the Saavus, or Saave. It is now Belgrade. 

Albania, a country of Asia, between the Caspian 
Sea and Iberia, bounded on the north by the chain of 
Caucasus, and on the south by the Cyrus and an arm 
of the Araxes. The Romans were best acquainted 
with the southern part, which Strabo describes as a 
kind of paradise, and in fertility and mildness of cli¬ 
mate gives it the preference to Egypt. Trajan’s ex¬ 
peditions made the northern and mountainous part bet¬ 
ter known. The inhabitants approached nearer a bar¬ 
barous than a civilized race. They cultivated the soil, 
it is true, but with great carelessness, and yet it af¬ 
forded them more than sufficed for their wants. The 
forces of the nation were respectable, and they brought 
into the field against Pompey an army of 60,000 in¬ 
fantry and 22,000 horse. As regards the origin of this 
people, all is uncertainty. The common account is 
unworthy of a moment’s'attention, according to which 
they were from Alba in Latium, having left that place, 
under the conduct of Hercules, after the defeat of Ge- 
ryon. (Dion. Hal., 1, 15. — Justin, 42, 3, 4.) It is 
more likely that they belonged to the great race which 
occupied the whole extent of the Tauric range along 
the southern shores of the Caspian. Mannert makes 
them Alani, and progenitors of the European Alani. 
(Vol. 4, p. 410.)—What was ancient Albania is now 
divided into innumerable cantons, but which modern 
geography comprehends under two denominations, 
Daghestan, which includes all the declivities of Cau¬ 
casus towards the Caspian Sea, and Lesghistan, con¬ 
taining the more elevated valleys towards Georgia, and 
the country of the Kistes. (Malte-Brun, vol. 2, p. 23, 
Brussels cd.) The Lesghians appear to be the same 
with the Legse of the ancients. (Malte-Brun, l. c .— 
Reineggs, 1, 183.) 

Albania Portae. Vid. Pyl^e I. 

Albanus, I. Mons, a mountain of Latium, about 
twelve miles from Rome, on the slope of which stood 
Alba Longa. It is now called Monte Cavo. This 
mountain is celebrated in history, from the circum¬ 
stance of its being peculiarly dedicated to Jove, under 
the title of Latialis. (Lucan, 1, 198.— Cic. pro Mil., 
31.) It was on the Alban Mount that the Feriae Lati- 
nae, or holydays kept by all the cities of the Latin 
name, were celebrated. The Roman generals also oc¬ 
casionally performed sacrifices on this mountain, and 
received there the honours of a triumph when refused 
one at home. This appears, however, to have occur¬ 
red only five times, if we may credit the Fasti Capito- 
lini, in which the names of the generals are recorded. 
(Vulp. Vet. Lat., 12, 4.) Some vestiges of the road 
which led to the summit of the mountain are still to be 
traced a little beyond Albano. —II. Lacus, a lake at 
the foot of the Alban Mount. (Compare remarks un¬ 
der the article Alba.) This lake, which is doubtless 
the crater of an extinct volcano, is well known in his¬ 
tory from the prodigious rise of its waters, to such an 
extent, indeed, as to threaten the whole surrounding 
country, and Rome itself, with an overwhelming in¬ 
undation. The oracle of Delphi, being consulted on 
that occasion, declared, that unless the Romans con¬ 
trived to carry off the waters of the lake, they would 
never take Veii, the siege of which had already lasted 
for nearly ten years This led to the construction of 

97 




ALB 


ALB 


that wonderful subterraneous canal, or emisSario, as the 
Italians call it, which is to be seen at this very day, in 
remarkable preservation, below the town of Castel 
Gandolfo. This channel is said to be carried through 
the rock for the space of a mile and a half, and the 
water which it discharges unites with the Tiber about 
five miles below Rome. ( Cic., de Div., 1,44.— Liv., 5, 
15.— Val. Max., 1,6.— Plut., Vit. Camill.) Near this 
opening are to be seen considerable ruins and various 
foundations of buildings, supposed by some to have 
belonged to the palace of Domitian, to which Martial 
and Statius frequently allude. ( Cramer's Anc. Italy , 
'vol. 2, p. 40.) — III. A river of Albania, falling into 
the Caspian, to the north of the mouth of the Cyrus, 
or Kur. It is supposed by some to be the same with 
the Samure. Mannert, however, is in favour of the 
Bilbana. 

Albici, a people of Gaul, of warlike character, oc¬ 
cupying the mountains above Massilia, or Marseilles. 
Strabo places them to the north of the Salyes, and 
there Ptolemy also makes them to have resided, on the 
southeast side of the Druentia, or Durance. This 
latter writer is blamed, without any reason, by those 
who suppose that he here means the Helvii, and, con¬ 
sequently, places them too far to the east. Strabo calls 
the Albici, ’AMielq and ’AMAoikol, Ptolemy ’E Alkokol, 
and Pliny Alebeci. Their capital, according to Pliny, 
was named Alebece, now Ricz. ( Cces ., Bell. Civ., 1, 
57 and 34.— Strabo, 203.— Plm., 3,4.—Compare Man¬ 
nert, vol. 2, p. 105.) 

Albigaunum. Vid. Albium Ingaunum. 

Albinovanus, I. Celsus, a young Roman, and ac¬ 
quaintance of Horace. He formed one of the retinue 
of Tiberius Claudius Nero, when the latter was march¬ 
ing to Armenia, under the orders of Augustus, in order 
to replace Tigranes on the throne. Horace alludes to 
him in Epist. 1, 3, 15, and addresses to him Epist. 
1, 8. He appears to have been of a literary turn, but 
addicted to habits of plagiarism.—II. Pedo, a Roman 
poet, the friend of Ovid, who has inscribed to him one 
of the Epistles from Pontus (10th of 4th book). Pie 
distinguished himself in heroic versification, but only 
a few fragments of his labours in this department of 
poetry have reached our times. In epigram also he 
would appear to have done something. ( Martial , 5, 
5.) As an elegiac poet, he composed, according to 
Joseph Scaliger and many others, the three follow¬ 
ing pieces which have descended to us : 1. “ Conso- 
latio ad Liviam Augustam de morte Drusi.” (Fa¬ 
bric., Bibl. Lat., 1, 12, f) 11, 8, p. 376, seqq.) 2. 
“ De Obitu Msecenatis.” (Fabric., 1. c., 1, 12, § 11, 
7, p. 376. — Burmann, Anthol. Lat., 2, ep. 119. — 
Lion, Macenatiana, Getting., 1824, c. 1.) 3. “ De 

Msecenate moribundo.” (Burmann, l. c., 2, ep: 120.) 
Of these elegies, the first has been ascribed by many 
to Ovid, even on MS. authority, and printed in the 
works of that poet. (Compare Fabric., 1. c. — Passer- 
at. in Prcefat., vol. 4, p. 220, ed. Burm. — Amar, ad 
Ov. Carm., ed. Lemaire, vol. 1, p. 399, seqq., and on 
the opposite side, Jos. Scaliger, and Burmann, vol. 1, 
p. 796.) The grounds on which the claim of Pedo 
rests are not by any means satisfactory : the piece in 
question, however, would seem to have been the pro¬ 
duction of the Augustan age. Still weaker are the ar¬ 
guments which seek to establish the claim of Pedo to 
the other two elegies, which, according to Wernsdorff 
(Poet. Lat. Min., vol. 3, p. 112, seqq.), are unworthy 
of him, and must be regarded as the productions of 
some late scholastic poet.—III. P. Tullius. (Vid. Sup¬ 
plement.) 

Albintemelium. Vid. Albium Intemelium. 

AlbInus, I. Decimus Claudius, a Roman general, 
born at Adrumetum in Africa, and surnamed Albinus 
from the extreme whiteness of his skin when brought 
into the world. He made at first some progress in lit¬ 
erary pursuits, and wrote a Treatise on Agriculture, 


together with some Tales after the manner of those 
denominated Milesian. An invincible attachment to 
arms, however, caused him to embrace, at an early pe¬ 
riod, the military profession, in which he soon attained 
distinction. In the year 175 of the present era, and 
the 15th of the reign of Marcus Aurelius, he prevent ed 
the army, which he commanded in Bithynia, from join¬ 
ing the rebel Avidius Cassius. For this, according to 
some, he was rewarded with the consulship ; though 
his name does not appear at this epoch in the Fasti 
Consulares. Governor of Gaul under Commodus, he 
defeated the Frisii, and afterward had intrusted to him 
the command of Britain. The death of Commodus 
brought forward Severus, Julian, and Pescennius Ni¬ 
ger, as candidates for the vacant throne. The first of 
these competitors made overtures to Albinus, and of¬ 
fered him the title of Caesar, which the latter accepted, 
and declared for his cause. But Severus had only 
contributed to the elevation of Albinus in order to di¬ 
minish the number of his own opponents. When he 
had conquered his other rivals, he resolved to rid him¬ 
self of Albinus by the aid of assassins. The latter, 
however, suspected his odious projects, and his sus¬ 
picions were confirmed by the arrest and confession of 
Severus’s emissaries. Albinus immediately took up 
arms to dispute the imperial power with his enemy. 
He gained several successes in Gaul, but was at last 
defeated in a decisive battle in the same country, near 
Lugdunum (Lyons), A.D. 198. Finding himself on 
the point of falling into the hands of the foe, he put an 
end to his own existence. His head was brought to 
Severus, who ordered it to be cast into the Rhone. 
The details of this last-mentioned conflict are variously 
given. The armies are said to have consisted each of 
150,000 men ; and the victory is reported to have been 
for a long time doubtful : at last the left wing of Al¬ 
binus was totally defeated and his camp pillaged ; 
while his right wing, on the other hand, proved so de¬ 
cidedly superior to the foe, that Severus, according to 
Herodian (3, 7, 7), was compelled to fly, after having 
thrown aside the badges of his rank. Spartianus (c. 
11) adds, that Severus was wounded, and that his 
army, believing him to have been slain, were on the 
point of proclaiming a new emperor. Dio Cassius 
(75, 21) states, that he had his horse killed under him, 
and that, having thrown himself, sword in hand, into 
the midst of his flying soldiers, he succeeded in bring¬ 
ing them back to the fight and gaining the day. Seme 
writers inform us that Albinus was slain by his own 
troops ; others relate that he w r as dragged, mortally 
wounded, into the presence of Severus, who beheld 
him expire. The account of his death, which xve have 
given above, is from Dio Cassius, and seems entitled 
to the most credit. According to Capitolinus (c. 10, 
seqq.), Albinus was severe, gloomy, and unsocial, in¬ 
temperate in wine, and remarkable for his voracious 
gluttony. This account, however, must be received 
with caution. If we form an idea of Albinus from his 
life and actions, we must pronounce him a brave wmr- 
rior, a talented man, but deficient in stratagem and 
address. (Biographie Univcrselle, x ol. l,p. 431, seqq. 
— Compare Crevier, Hist, des Emp. Rom., vol. 5, p. 
153, seqq .)—II. A Platonic philosopher, who resided 
at Smyrna, in the reign of Antoninus Pius, and was 
the preceptor of Galen. He is the author of an In¬ 
troduction to the Dialogues of Plato, which Fabricius 
| has inserted in the second volume of his Bibliotheca 
Grceca. It is also given in Etwml’s edition of three 
of the dialogues of Plato, Oxon., 1771, 8vo.—III. The 
name of Albinus was common to a great number of 
individuals belonging to the Gens Posthumia, for an 
account of whom, vid. Supplement. 

Albion, I. a giant, the son of Neptune, who, togeth¬ 
er with his brother Bergion, endeavoured to prevent 
Hercules from passing the Rhone. When the weap¬ 
ons of the latter failed him in this conflict, he prayed 




ALB 


ALB 


to Jove for aid, and that deity destroyed the two broth¬ 
ers by a showier of stones. The battle-ground was 
called, from the appearance which it presented, the 
Campus Lapideus , or “ Stony plain” ( Mela , 2, 5), and 
lay between Massilia and the Rhone. Apollodorus 
(2, 5, 10) calls the brothers Alebion and Dercynus ! 
(’A ?ie6lcjv re kccl A epuvvos), and lays the scene in Li¬ 
guria (Aiyvy). This, however, as Vossius (ad Mel., 

1. c.) remarks, should not have misled Salmasius (Sau- 
maise,) since Liguria and the Ligures once extended 
even to the Rhone. (Compare Heyne, ad Apollod., 1. 
c.) To Albion is ascribed by some, if indeed so ridicu¬ 
lous an etymology be worth mentioning, one of the 
names of Britain.—II. The earlier name of the island 
of Great Britain, called by the Romans Britannia Ma¬ 
jor, from which they distinguished Britannia Minor, 
the modern French province of Bretagne. Agatheme- 
rus (11, 4), speaking of the British islands, uses the 
names Hibernia and Albion for the two largest; Ptol¬ 
emy (2, 3) calls Albion a British island ; and Pliny 
(4, 16) says, that the island of Britain was formerly 
called Albion, the name of Britain being common to 
all the islands around it. (“ Britannia insula . Al¬ 

bion ipsi nomen fuit , cum Britanniccz vocarenter om- 
nes.”) The etymology of the name is uncertain. 
Some writers derive it from the Greek altyov (the 
neuter of aTityoc), “ white,” in reference to the chalky 
cliffs on the coasts ; others have recourse to the He¬ 
brew alben, “ white ;” and others again to the Phoeni¬ 
cian alp or alpin, “ high,” and “ high mountain ;” from 
the height of the coast. Sprengel thinks it of Gallic 
origin, the same with Albin , the name of the Scotch 
highlands. It appears to him the plural of Alp or Ailp, 
which signifies “ Rocky Mountains,” and to have been 
given to the island, because the shore, which looks 
towards France, appears like a long row of rocks. The 
term evidently comes from the same source with the 
word Alpes , and conveys the associate ideas of a high 
and chalky, or whitish, coast. (Vid. Alpes, and com¬ 
pare Adelung , Mithradates, vol. 2, p. 42, seqq.) The 
ancient British poets call Britain Inis Wen, “the white 
island.” ( Mannert, Geogr., vol. 2, p. 32, seqq.) 

Albis, a river of Germany, now the Elbe. It is 
called Albios by Dio Cassius (55, 1). This was the 
easternmost stream in Germany with which the Ro¬ 
mans became acquainted in the course of their expedi¬ 
tions ; and they knew it, moreover, only in the north¬ 
ern part of its course. Tacitus learned that the Her- 
munduri dwelt near its sources. (Germ., 41.) Ptol¬ 
emy also was acquainted with the quarter where it 
rose, on the east side of his Sudetes, near the confines 
of the modern Moravia. The only Roman who passed 
this stream with an army was L. Domitius Ahenobar- 
bus, A.U.C. 744 ; and though he made no farther prog¬ 
ress, the passage of the Albis was deemed worthy of a 
triumph. (Plin., 4, 14.— Veil. Pat., 2, 106.— Tacit., 
Ann., 1,59.— Id. ib., 13, sub fin. — Flav. Vop. Prob., 13.) 

Albium, I. Ingaunum, a city of Liguria, on the 
coast, some distance to the southwest of Genua. It 
was the capital of the Ingauni, and answers to the 
modern Albenga. (Strab., 202. — -Plin., 3, 5.) — II. 
Intemelium, a city of Liguria, on the coast, to the 
southwest of the preceding. It w T as the capital of the 
Intemelii, and corresponds to the modern Vintimiglia. 

( Strabo, 202.— Plin., 3, 5.) From Tacitus (Hist., 2, 
13), we learn that it was a municipium. 

Albula, the more ancient name of the Tiber. Man¬ 
nert considers Albula the Latin, and Tiberis the Etru¬ 
rian, name for the stream ; which last became in the 
course of time the prevailing one. (Vid. Tiberis.— 
Geogr., vol. 9, p. 607.) 

Albul^e aqu^e, a name given to some cold mephitic 
springs, about sixteen miles from Rome, which issued 
from a small but deep lake, and flowed into the neigh¬ 
bouring river Anio. They were highly esteemed by 
the Romans for their medicinal properties, and were 


used both for drinking and bathing. (Vitruv., 8, 3.— 
Plin., 31, 11.) 

Albunea, the largest of the springs or fountains 
which formed the Albulae Aquas. It proceeded, like 
the rest, from a small but deep lake, and flowed with 
them into the Anio. In the immediate vicinity of the 
fountain was a thick grove, in which were a temple 
and oracle of Faunus. (Virg., Mn., 7, 82, seqq. — 
Heyne, ad Virg., I c .) Both the grove and fountain 
were sacred to the nymph or sibyl Albunea, who was 
worshipped at Tibur, and whose temple still remains 
on the summit of the cliff, and overhanging the cas¬ 
cade. “ This beautiful temple,” observes a recent 
traveller, “which stands on the very spot where the 
eye of taste would have placed it, and on which it ever 
reposes with delight, is one of the most attractive fea¬ 
tures of the scene, and perhaps gives to Tivoli its 
greatest charm.” (Rome in the Nineteenth Century, 
vol. 2, p. 398, Am. ed.) Varro, as cited by Lactan- 
tius (de Falsa Rcl., 1, 6), gives a list of the ancient 
sibyls, and among them enumerates the one at Tibur, 
surnamed Albunea, as the tenth and last. Suidas 
also says, Aekuttj y T ibovpria, bvopari ’A/l Sovvala. 
(Compare Hor., Od., 1, 7, 12, and Mitscherlich and 
Fea, ad loc. —Consult also Creuzer, Symbolik, vol. 2, 
p. 975, and vol. 4, p. 27.) 

Alburnus, a ridge of mountains in Lucania, near 
the junction of the Silarus and Tanager, and between 
the latter river and the Calor. It is now called Monte 
di Postiglione, and sometimes Alburno. Near a part 
of the ridge, and on the shores of the Sinus Passtanus, 
was a harbour of the same name (Alburnus Portus), 
where the Silarus emptied into the sea. (Virg., Georg., 
3, 146.— Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 376.) 

Albus, I. Portus, a harbour on the coast of Syria, 
supposed by Gail to be the harbour of Laodicea to 
which Appian alludes (ual bq to rreTiayog ex ovca bppov. 
Bell. Civ., 4, 60), and placed by him to the west of 
the promontory of Ziaret. (Gail, ad Anon. Stadiasm.' 
Maris Mag. — Ge'ogr. Gr. Min., vol. 2, p. 538.) — II. 
Vicus (y Aevny Kupy), a harbour in Arabia, from which 
Gallus set out on his expedition into the interior. 
(Strab., 781.) It is supposed by Mannert to be the 
same with the modern harbour of Iambo. (Geogr., 
vol. 6, pt. 1, p. 50. — Compare Peripl. Mar. Erythr., 

р. 11.— Geogr. Gr. Min., ed. Hudson, vol. 1.) 

Albutius, I. a wealthy Roman, remarkable for his 

severity towards his slaves. According to an ancient 
scholiast, he even punished them sometimes before 
they had committed any offence, “ lest,” said he, “ I 
should have no time to punish them when they do of¬ 
fend.” (Horat., Serm., 2, 2, 67.— Schol. ad Horat., 1. 

с . ) Porphyrion (ad Hor., 1. c .) styles him, “ et avarus, 
et elegans conviviorum apparator .” The epithet ava¬ 
rus, however, must evidently be thrown out, as con¬ 
tradicting what follows.—II. T., a Roman of the Epi¬ 
curean school. He was educated at Athens, and ren¬ 
dered himself ridiculous, on his return home, by his 
excessive attachment to the manners and language of 
Greece. About A.U.C. 648, he was sent as praetor 
to Sardinia. For some unimportant services ren¬ 
dered here, he believed himself entitled to a triumph. 
The senate, however, rejected his application, and he 
was accused, on his return, by the augur Mucius 
Scsevola, of extortion in his government. Being con¬ 
demned, he went into exile at Athens, where he con¬ 
soled himself, amid his disgrace, by philosophical in¬ 
vestigations, and by composing satires in the style of 
Lucilius. (Cic., Brut., 35. — Id., de Fin., 1, 3.— Id., 
Orat., 44. — Id., in Pis., 38. — Id., Brut., 2, 6. — Id., 
Tusc. Qurest., 5, 37.)—III. C. Silus, a rhetorician in 
the age of Augustus. He was a native of Novaria in 
Cisalpine Gaul, where he exercised for a time the func¬ 
tions of- sedile. Being grossly insulted, however, by 
some individuals against whom he was pronouncing a 
decision, and beino- draped by the feet from his tri- 

O OO J 





ALC 


ALC 


bunal, he left his native city and came to Rome, where 
he soon attained to distinction as a pleader. A sin¬ 
gular adventure induced him to leave the bar. Intend¬ 
ing, on one occasion, merely to employ a rhetorical 
figure, he said to the opposite party, who was accused 
of impiety towards his parents, “ Swear by the ashes 
of thy father and mother” (and thou shalt gain thy 
cause.) The defendant immediately accepted the con¬ 
dition, and, though Albutius protested that he merely 
employed a figure of rhetoric, the judges admitted the 
oath, and the defendant was acquitted. In his old age 
Albutius returned to Novaria, where he assembled his 
fellow-citizens, and represented to them that his age 
and the maladies under which he was labouring ren¬ 
dered life insupportable. When he had finished his 
harangue he retired to his dwelling, and starved him¬ 
self.—IV. ( Vid. Supplement.) 

Alcaeus, I. a celebrated poet of Mytilene, in Les¬ 
bos, and the contemporary of Sappho, Pittacus, and 
Stesichorus. ( Clinton's Fast. Hell., vol. 1, p. 5, 2d ed.) 
He was famed as well for his resistance to tyranny and 
his unsettled life, as for his lyric productions. Having 
aided Pittacus to deliver his country from the tyrants 
which oppressed it, he quarrelled with this friend, 
when the people of Mytilene had placed uncontrolled 
power in the hands of the latter, and some injurious 
verses, which he composed against Pittacus, caused 
himself and his adherents to be driven into exile. An 
endeavour to return by force of arms proved unsuc¬ 
cessful, and Alcaeus fell into the power of his former 
friend, who, forgetting all that had passed, generously 
granted him both life and freedom. In his odes Al¬ 
caeus treated of various topics. At one time he in¬ 
veighed against tyrants ; at another he deplored the 
misfortunes which had attended him, and the pains of 
exile : while, on other occasions, he celebrated the 
praises of Bacchus and the goddess of love. He wrote 
in the iEolic dialect. Dionysius of Halicarnassus 
•speaks in high commendation of the lofty character of 
his compositions, the conciseness of his style, and the 
clearness of his images. His productions, indeed, 
breathed the same spirit with his life. A strong, 
manly enthusiasm for freedom and justice pervaded 
even those in which he sang the pleasures of love and 
wine. But the sublimity of his nature shone brightest 
when he praised valour, chastised tyrants, described 
the blessings of liberty, and the misery and hardships 
of exile. His lyric muse was versed in all the forms 
and subjects of poetry, and antiquity attributes to him 
hymns, odes, and songs. A few fragments only are 
left of all of them, and a distant echo of his poetry 
reaches us in some of the odes of Horace. Alcaeus 
was the inventor of the metre that bears his name, one 
of the most beautiful and melodious of all the lyric 
measures. Horace has employed it in many of his 
odes. As regards the personal character of the poet, 
it may be remarked, that the charge of cowardice 
which some have endeavoured to fasten upon him, for 
his misfortune in having lost his shield during a con¬ 
flict between the Mytileneans and Athenians for the 
possession ofSigaeum, would seem to be anything but 
just. Equally unjust is the same charge, as brought 
against Horace for his conduct at Philippi. (Consult 
the work of Van Ommeren, Horaz als Mensch und 
Burger von Rom., &c., Aus dem Holland., von L. 
Walch .)—The fragments that remain to us of the po¬ 
etry of Alcaeus, are to be found in the collections of 
H. Stephens and Fulvius Ursinus. Jani, one of the 
editors of Horace, published, from 1780 to 1782, three 
Prolusiones , containing those fragments of Alcseus 
which the Latin poet had imitated. In 1812, Stange 
united these opuscula in a volume which appeared at 
Halle, under the title of “Alccei poetce lynci fragmen- 
ta." The most complete and accurate collection, how¬ 
ever, is that by Matthise, Lips., 1827. A collection 
Was also made by Blomfield in the Museum Criticum, 
100 


1, p. 421, &c., Camb., 1826, reprinted in Gaisford’s 
Poetae Grseci Minores. Additional Iragments have 
been printed in the Rhenish Museum lor 1829, 1833, 
and 1835 ; in Jahn’s Jahrbuch. fur Philolog. for 1830 ; 
and in Cramer’s Anecdota Grseca, Oxon., 1835. 

( Scholl, Hist. Litt. Gr., vol. 1, p. 204.— Bode, Gesch. 
der Lyrischen Dichtkunst der Hcllenen, 2, p. 378, seqq.) 
—II. An epigrammatic poet. ( Vid. Supplement.)— 
III. A comic poet of Athens, contemporary with Aris¬ 
tophanes. Some of his contemporaries are cited by 
Athenseus (3, p. 107.—vol. 1, p. 418, ed. Schweigh.), 
and others. (Compare Casaubon, ad Athcn., 1. c. — 
Clinton’s Fasti Hellenici, vol. 1, p. 101.) — IV. An 
Athenian tragic poet, whom some, according to Sui- 
das, made to have been the first writer in tragedy. 
(Compare Casaubon, ad Athen., 3, p. 107, and the re¬ 
marks of Schweighceuser, vol. 9, p. 14.)—V. A son of 
Perseus, and father of Amphitryon, from whom Her¬ 
cules has been called Alcides. ( Apollod., 2, 4, 12.— 
Compare Heyne, ad loc.) 

Alcamenes, I. ninth king of Sparta, and one of the 
Agidae (vid. Agidae), succeeded his father A.M. 3235, 
B.C. 769, and reigned thirty-seven years, in which 
time there was a rebellion of the Helots. Plutarch 
cites some of his apophthegms. (Pint., Apoph. La- 
con., 32.— Pausan., 3, 2.— Meursius, de Reg. Lacon., 
9.)—II. A statuary and sculptor of Athens, who flourish¬ 
ed about 448 B.C. He was the pupil of Phidias, and 
adorned his country with numerous specimens of his 
superior skill, a skill which almost equalled that of his 
master. ( Quintil ., 12, 10. — Dionys. Hal., de De- 
mosth. Acum., pt. 6, p. 1108, ed. Reiske.) The most 
celebrated of his productions was his statue of Venus, 
commonly styled y ’Atypoday kv roiq Kynoiq, and 
sometimes simply nynoi. It is said to have received 
its last polish from the hand of Phidias himself, and is 
spoken of in high terms by Lucian and others. (Luc., 
Imag. , 4 et 6.) Whether this was the statue of Venus, 
by which Alcamenes obtained his victory over Agora- 
critus (vid. Agoracritus), cannot be determined with 
certainty from the words of Pliny. If we suppose it 
to have been the same, we have this difficulty, that all 
ancient writers pronounce the Venus h nynoic; of Alca¬ 
menes, one of the highest productions of the art, while 
Pliny asserts, that the artist was indebted for his suc¬ 
cess, in the contest just mentioned, not to the superi¬ 
ority of his performance, but to the spirit of party which 
influenced the umpires. Another highly celebrated 
work of his was the rear pediment of the temple of 
Jupiter at Olympia, of which Pausanias has left us a 
description (5,10). On it was represented the conflict 
between the Centaurs and Lapithae. Cicero (N. D., 
1, 30) speaks of a statue of Vulcan by this artist, and 
Valerius Maximus (8, 11, 3) informs us, that although 
the god was exhibited as lame, yet the lameness was 
in a great measure concealed by the drapery and posi¬ 
tion. The distinguished merit of Alcamenes obt ained 
for him the honour of being placed in a bas-relief on 
the temple at Eleusis. (Plin., 34, 8.— Id. ibid., 36, 
5.— Pausan., 1, 19.)—III. An artist whose name oc¬ 
curs on some Roman embossed work, described by 
Zoega. (Bass. Ant., &c., tav. 23.—Consult Sillig, 
Diet. Art., s. v .) He is called a duumvir, and it has 
been conjectured that, besides being raised to civil 
honours in the municipal state to which he belonged, 
he also obtained his livelihood by exercising the art of 
modelling. (Sillig, ubi supra.) 

Alcander, a Lacedaemonian youth, of hasty tem¬ 
per, but not otherwise ill-disposed, who, during a pop¬ 
ular tumult, struck out one of the eyes of Lycurgus. 
The people were so moved with shame and sorrow at 
the outrage, that they surrendered Alcander into his 
hands, to do with him as he pleased. Lycurgus took 
him to his own home, and so won upon him by mild 
treatment, that Alcander became one of his warmest 
friends and an excellent citizen. (Pint., Vit. Lye., 11.) 




ALC 


ALC 


Alcathous, I. a son of Pelops, who, being suspect¬ 
ed of murdering his brother Chrysippus, came to Me- 
gara, where he killed a lion, which had destroyed the 
king’s son. The monarch had promised the hand of 
his daughter, and the succession to the throne, unto 
him who should succeed in destroying the wild beast. 
Alcathous, therefore, gained both of these prizes, and 
succeeded in the course of time to the kingdom of Me- 
gara. In commemoration of him, festivals, called Al- 
cathoia, were instituted at Megara. ( Pausan ., 1, 41, 
&c.)—II One of the two citadels of Megara, so called 
from its founder Alcathous. (Pausan., 1, 40 and 42.) 

Alce, a town of the Celtiberi, in Hispania Tarra- 
conensis, called also Alcaratium. It answers to the 
modern Alcaraz, in New Castile, on the river Guarda- 
mena. (Liv ., 40, 47, seqq.) 

Alcenor, an Argive, who, along with Chronius, 
survived on his side, the battle between 300 of his 
countrymen and 300 Lacedaemonians. ( Vid. Othrya- 
des.— Herodot., 1, 82.) 

Alcestis, daughter of Pelias and wife of Admetus. 
Her father had ottered to give her in marriage to this 
prince, on condition of his previously yoking lions and 
boars to a chariot, and Admetus successfully accom¬ 
plished this through the aid of Apollo. This same deity, 
who was then serving with Admetus, in accordance 
Vfj^h the sentence that had been passed against him 
(vid. Aesculapius, Amphrysus, and Cyclopes), obtained 
from the fates, that when Admetus should be about 
to end his existence, his life would be spared and pro¬ 
longed, provided another willingly died in his stead. 
When the day came, Alcestis heroically devoted her¬ 
self for her husband, but was rescued from the lower 
world and restored to the regions of day by Hercules. 
According to another version of the legend, she was 
sent back again to life by Proserpina. Euripides has 
founded upon this story of Alcestis one of his most 
beautiful tragedies. (Apollod., 1, 9, 14.) This same 
legend is also given in a different and more historical 
form, as follows: when Medea had prevailed upon the 
daughters of Pelias to cut their father in pieces, in ex¬ 
pectation of seeing him restored to youth, and they 
were pursued by their brother Acastus, Alcestis fled 
for protection to her cousin Admetus. This prince 
refusing to deliver her up, Acastus marched against 
him, took him prisoner, and threatened to put him to 
death, when Alcestis heroically surrendered herself 
into her brother's hands, and saved the life of Adme¬ 
tus. It happened, however, that, just at this time, 
Hercules came that way with the horses of Diomede, 
and was hospitably entertained by Admetus. On 
learning from him whdihad taken place, the hero was 
fired with indignation, attacked Acastus, destroyed his 
army, and rescued Alcestis, whom he restored in safe¬ 
ty to his royal host. (Ezidocia, Ion. ap. Villoison., 
Anecd. Grcec., vol. 1, 21, seqq.) 

Alcetas, I. a king of Epirus, descended from Pyr¬ 
rhus, the son of Achilles, and an ancestor of Pyrrhus, 
king of Epirus. He was driven by his subjects from 
the throne, but regained his power by the aid of Dio¬ 
nysius the elder, of Syracuse.—II. King of Epirus, 
son of Arymbas, and grandson of the preceding. His 
subjects strangled him, together with his two sons, 
B.C. 312.—III. The eighth king of Macedonia, son 
of ACropus, and father of Amyntas I. He reigned 29 
years, from 576 to 547 B.C.—IV. A general of Al¬ 
exander the Great, and brother of Perdiccas. He slew 
himself after a defeat b} r Antigonus, during the contests 
that ensued after Alexander’s decease.—V. An his¬ 
torian who wrote an account of the offerings at Delphi, 
7 rept rtiv tv AeTupolg uvadiyaurov. (Athenceus, 13, p. 
591, c.) 

Alcibiades, a celebrated Athenian commander, son 
of Clinias, nephew to Pericles, and lineally descended, 
as was said, from the Telamonian Ajax. He was 
born B.C. 450. Conspicuous for beauty, and for an 


insinuating and graceful demeanour, he made himself 
still more conspicuous for his extravagant expenditures, 
his contempt of order, and his dissolute mode of life. 
The lessons and the example of Socrates, who num¬ 
bered him for some time among his disciples, operated 
but feebly in checking the vicious propensities of the 
young Athenian, or in restraining his bold and ambi¬ 
tious designs. He took Pericles as his model in pub¬ 
lic life, and resolved to tread in the footsteps of that 
illustrious statesman, and succeed, if possible, to the 
authority which he had enjoyed. The Athenians, in 
the time of Pericles, had entertained a strong desire of 
becoming masters of Sicily, and Alcibiades, after the 
death of his uncle, succeeded in prevailing upon them 
to send an armament for that purpose. This was du¬ 
ring the Peloponnesian war. The expedition was di¬ 
rected against Syracuse, and Alcibiades, with Nicias 
and Lamachus, received the command. A short time, 
however, before the departure of the fleet, the Herm® 
or images of Mercury, placed throughout Athens, were 
all mutilated in the course of one night, and suspicion 
fell upon Alcibiades, who was supposed to have been 
guilty of this act of profanation during a drunken ca¬ 
rousal with some of his young friends. After having 
been allowed to sail with the expedition, he was soon 
sent for, and summoned to stand trial for this and other 
alleged acts of impiety. Avoiding, however, a return 
to Athens, he took refuge, first in Argos, and after¬ 
ward at Sparta, at which latter place he excited very 
friendly feelings towards himself by the important ad¬ 
vice he gave respecting the future movements of the 
war, and became an object of wonder by the ease with 
which he adopted the plain and austere manners of 
the Spartans, so directly at variance with his previous 
mode of life. Distrusting, however, at last, the sin¬ 
cerity of the Laced®monians, he betook himself to Tis- 
saphernes, satrap of the King of Persia, and soon at¬ 
tained to great favour. Not long after this, he was 
restored, by a strange turn of fortune, to the good-will 
of his countrymen ; the sentence of banishment that 
had been passed against him was revoked, he was 
appointed to a command, and, after a career of brill¬ 
iant success, returned in triumph to Athens. His pop¬ 
ularity, however, was of short continuance. Lysander, 
the Spartan admiral, defeated the Athenian fleet, and 
slew Antiochus, to whom Alcibiades had left it in 
charge, when departing for Cairo, in order to raise 
money for the war; and Alcibiades soon found himself 
compelled to solicit once more the protection of the 
Persians. Pharnabazus, the satrap, allowed him for a 
while a safe residence in Phrygia, but finally, through 
the solicitations of Lysander, he caused Alcibiades 
to be slain, by an armed party, at his place of abode, 
in a small village. This remarkable man died in his 
46th year, B.C. 404. If the Athenians had only known 
how to retain among them an individual of so rare merit 
both as a civilian and a soldier, they might easily have 
given the law to all Greece. And yet impartial his¬ 
tory, while it awards him the highest praise for his tal¬ 
ents as a statesman, and his skill and intrepidity as a 
commander, cannot but condemn, in the most unequiv¬ 
ocal manner, the licentiousness of his private life, the 
versatility and chameleon-like character of his princi¬ 
ples of action, and his traitorous conduct, on more 
than one occasion, to the best interests of his country 
(Plut.,Vit. Alcib. — Corn. Nep.,Vit. Alcib.) 

Alcidamas, a Greek rhetorician. (Vid. Supple¬ 
ment.) 

Alcidas, a naval commander of Sparta in the time 
of the Peloponnesian war, B.C. 428. He, on one oc¬ 
casion, lost, in consequence of his habitual caution, the 
opportunity of following up a victory gained by him 
over the Athenians and Corcyreans. 

AlcIdes, I. a name of Hercules, either from his 
strength, oKkt], or from his grandfather Alc®us.—II. 
A surname of Minerva in Macedonia. (Liv., 42, 51.) 

101 



ALC 


ALCIVLEON. 


For Alcidem in the passage of Livy here quoted, we 
should no doubt read, according to Turnebus (Advers., 
30, 57), Alcidemum, “ the people's strength.” 

Alcimachus, a painter. ( Vid . Supplement.) 

Alcimedon, I. an Arcadian hero. ( Vid. Supple¬ 
ment.)—II. An embosser or chaser spoken of by Vir¬ 
gil ( Eclog ., 3, 37, 44), who mentions some goblets of 
his workmanship. Sillig thinks he was a contempo¬ 
rary of the poet’s. 

Alcimenes. Vid. Supplement. 

Alcimus. Vid. Supplement. 

Alcinous, I. a son of Nausithous, king ofPhaeacia, 
praised for his love of agriculture. He kindly enter¬ 
tained Ulysses, who had been shipwrecked on his coast. 
The gardens of Alcinous are beautifully described by 
Homer, and have afforded, also, a favourite theme for 
succeeding poets. The island of the Phseacians is 
called by Homer Scheria. Its more ancient name 
was Drepane. After the days of Homer it was called 
Corcyra. Now Corfu. ( Vid. Corcyra.— Homer, Od., 
7.— Orph., in Argon. — Virg., G., 2, 87.— Stat., 1.— 
Sylv., 3, 81.) — II. A Platonic philosopher. {Vid. 
Supplement.)—III. A son of Hippothoon, who, in con¬ 
junction with his father and eleven brothers, expelled 
Icarion and Tyndareus from Lacedtemon, but was af¬ 
terward killed, with his father and brothers, by Hercu¬ 
les. {Apollod., 3, 10, 5.) 

Alciphron, the most distinguished of the Greek 
epistolary writers. Nothing is known of his life, and 
even his era is uncertain. Some critics place him be¬ 
tween Lucian, whom he has imitated, and Aristsene- 
tus, to whom he served as a model; in other words, 
between the years 170 and 350 of the present era. 
Others, however, are inclined to transfer him to the 
fifth century. Neither side have attended to the cir¬ 
cumstance of there being among the letters of Aris- 
tsenetus a kind of correspondence between Lucian 
and Alciphron. This correspondence, it is true, is 
fictitious ; yet it indicates, at the same time, that Aris- 
tsenetus regarded those two writers as contemporaries, 
and we have no good reason to accuse him of any er¬ 
ror in this respect. Though a contemporary, Alciph¬ 
ron might still have imitated Lucian : it is much more 
probable, however, that the passages which appear to 
us to be imitations are borrowed by these two writers 
from some ancient comic poets. The letters of Al¬ 
ciphron are 116 in number, forming three books. They 
are distinguished for purity, clearness, and simplicity, 
and are important as giving us a representation of 
Athenian manners, drawn from dramatic poets whose 
writings are now lost. The best portion of the work 
is the 2d book, containing the letters of the hetserae, or 
courtesans ; and, among these, that of Menander to 
Glycerion, and that of Glycerion to Menander. The 
principal editions are, that of Bergler, Lips., 1715, 8vo, 
with an excellent commentary ; that of Wagner, Lips., 
1778, 2 vols. 8vo, containing a corrected text, a Latin 
version, the commentary of Bergler, and the editor’s 
own notes ; and that of Boissonade, Paris, 1822, 8vo. 
Wagner had been furnished by Bast with the readings 
of two Vienna MSS., but, according to the Critical 
Epistle of the last-mentioned scholar, did not make all 
the use of these collated readings which he might have 
done. Among the papers of Bast, after his decease, 
were found various readings of the Letters of Alciph¬ 
ron, derived from four Paris MSS., two of the Vat¬ 
ican, and one of Heidelberg. Many of these were 
preferable to the received readings. Along with them 
were found various unedited fragments, and even en¬ 
tire letters, which had never yet been printed. These 
papers are now in England, and were used by Bois¬ 
sonade in his edition. {Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 
4, p. 313, seqq. — Wackier, Handbuch der Gesch. der 
Lit., vol. 1, p. 241.) 

Alcippe, I. a daughter of the god Mars, by Agrau- 
los.—II. The daughter of CEnomaus. 

102 , 


Alcis, a surname of Minerva, and the name of a 
deity among the Naharvali. ( Vid. Supplement.) 

Alcithoe, a Theban female, who, together with her 
sisters, contemned and ridiculed the orgies of Bac¬ 
chus, and, while these rites were getting celebrated 
without, employed themselves at home with the distaff, 
and beguiled the time by recounting poetic legends. 
They were changed into bats, and the spindles and 
yarn, with which they worked, into vines and ivy. ( Ov., 
Met., 4, 1, seqq. — Id. ib., 389, seqq ) As regards the 
terms Minycias and Minycia proles, which Ovid ap¬ 
plies to the sisters, consult Gierig, ad loc. 

Alcm^eon, I. a son of Amphiaraus and Eriphyle, 
and a native of Argos. When his father went to the 
Theban war, where he knew he was to perish, Alc- 
m£eon was directed by him, when he should hear of his 
death, to kill Eriphyle who had betrayed him. ( Vid. 
Eriphyle.) The son obeyed the father’s injunctions, 
and was pursued, in consequence, by the furies, the 
avengers of parricide. According to another account, 
being chosen chief of the seven Epigoni, he took and 
destroyed Thebes, and, after this event, put his moth¬ 
er to death, in obedience to an oracle of Apollo. 
{Apollod., 3, 7, 5.) While in the state of phrensy which 
was sent upon him as a punishment for this deed, he 
came first to Arcadia, to Oicleus, and, from the resi¬ 
dence of this his paternal grandfather, went subsequent¬ 
ly to the city of Psophis, to Phegeus, its king. Being 
purified of the murder by Phegeus, he married Arsinoe, 
the daughter of the latter, and gave to her, as a bridal 
present, the fatal collar and robe {tov te opyov udi tuv 
ttsitXov) which his mother Eriphyle had received to be¬ 
tray his father. The country, however, becoming bar¬ 
ren, in consequence of his residing in it {6d avrov), he 
was directed by an oracle, as the only means of es¬ 
caping the vengeance of the furies, to find, and dwell 
in, a land which was not in existence when he slew his 
parent. {Pausan., 8, 24.—Compare Heyne, ad Apol¬ 
lod., 1. c.) He at last found rest, for a short time, on 
an island at the mouth of the Achelous, formed by the 
alluvial deposites of that stream. {Vid. Echinades.) 
Here he married Callirhoe, the daughter of the river- 
god, after repudiating his former wife Arsinoe. But 
he did not long enjoy repose. At the request of his 
wife, he attempted to recover from his former father- 
in-law the collar and robe which he had presented to 
his daughter, and, as a pretext for obtaining them, 
stated that he had been directed by an oracle, as the 
only means of freeing himself from the furies, to con¬ 
secrate the articles in question to Apollo at Delphi. 
Phegeus gave them up, but the imposition being made 
known to him by an attendant, he ordered his sons to 
waylay and destroy Alcnueon, which was accordingly 
done. Alcmaeon’s death was avenged by the two sons 
whom he had by Callirhoe. Their mother entreated 
of Jupiter that they might speedily attain to manhood, 
and retaliate on their father’s murderers. The prayer 
was heard ; they became on a sudden men in the prime 
of life, and slew not only the two sons of Phegeus, but 
the monarch himself and his wife. The sons of Alc- 
mseon by Callirhoe were Amphoterus and Acarnan, 
and are said to have settled subsequently in Acarna- 
nia, the latter giving name to the country. {Apollod., 

I. c.) Pausanias calls Arsinoe by the name of Alphe- 
sibma {vid. Alphesiboea), and, in other parts of his nar¬ 
rative also, differs from Apollodorus. On these and 
other variations, consult Heyne, ad Apollod., 1. c .— 

II. The founder of an illustrious family at Athens, call¬ 
ed after him Alcnneonidse. He was the son of Sillus, 
and great grandson of Nestor ; and, being driven from 
Messenia, with the rest ofNestor’s family, by the Herac- 
lidse, settled at Athens. {Pausan., 2, 18.—Compare 
the note of Clinton, Fast. Hell., vol. 1, p. 299, 2 d ed., 
where he disproves the assertion of Larcher, ad Herod., 
6, 125, who makes the Alcmseonidae to have been de¬ 
scended from Melanthus.) — III. A son of Megacles. 



ALC 


ALC 


Having shown much kindness and attention to the 
persons whom Croesus had sent to Delphi for the pur- 
ose of consulting the oracle, that monarch invited 
im to Sardis, and gave him permission to carry from 
the royal treasury as much gold as he could bear off 
with him at one visit. Herodotus (6, 125) gives an 
account of the mode in which he availed himself of 
the royal offer, filling with gold his arms, the folds of 
his habit, his large shoes worn expressly for the occa¬ 
sion, and having not only his hair powdered with gold- 
dust, but his mouth full of it. To these Croesus even 
added other valuable presents ; and to this source He¬ 
rodotus traces the wealth of the family. We must not, 
however, regard this Alcmseon as the founder of the 
line. (Compare Alcmseon II.)—IV. The last of the 
perpetual archons at Athens, was succeeded by Cha- 
rops, the son of ./Eschylus, as decennial archon. 
Boeckh ( Explic. ad Pmd., Pyth., 7, p 301) makes him 
not to have belonged to the family of the Alcmaeonidaj 
proper, but to have been reckoned among the Alcmaeon- 
idae merely because his mother belonged to that house. 

■—V. A natural philosopher. ( Vid . Supplement.) 

Alcm^eonid^e, a noble family of Athens, descended 
from Alcmseon. (Vid. Alcmseon II.) When driven 
from Athens by the tyranny of the Pisistratidse, they 
first endeavoured to return by force of arms ; but hav¬ 
ing met with a serious check at Lipsydrion, in the 
Pseonian borough of Attica, they turned their atten¬ 
tion to a surer and more pacific mode of operation. 
The temple at Delphi having been burned, and having 
remained in ruins for some considerable time, the Alc- 
maeonidae, after their defeat, engaged with the Am- 
phictyonic council to rebuild the structure for the 
sum of 300 talents. They finished the work, however, 
in a much more splendid manner than the terms of 
their contract required, and attained, in consequence, to 
great popularity. By dint of the favour with which 
they were now regarded, as well as by means of a 
large sum of money, they prevailed upon the Pytho¬ 
ness, whenever application of a public or private na¬ 
ture was made from Lacedaemon to the god at Delphi, 
to conclude the answer of the oracle, whatever it might 
be, with an admonition to the Lacedaemonians to give 
liberty to Athens. This artifice had the desired effect; 
and, though Sparta was in friendly relations with the 
Pisistratidse, it was determined to invade Attica, 
which was accordingly done, and the result was, that 
the Spartans expelled Hippias, and restored the Alc- 
mseonidae (B.C. 510). The restored family found 
themselves in an isolated position, between the nobles, 
who appeared to have been opposed to them, and the 
popular party, which had been hitherto attached to the 
Pisistratidse. Clisthenes, now the head of the Alc- 
mseonidse, joined the latter party, and gave a new con¬ 
stitution to Athens. He abolished the four ancient 
tribes, and made a fresh geographical division of Atti- 
* ca into ten new tribes, each of which bore a name de¬ 
rived from some Attic hero. The ten tribes were sub¬ 
divided into districts of various extent called demes or 
boroughs , each containing a town or village as its chief 
place. The constitution of Clisthenes had the effect 
of transforming the commonalty into a new body. The 
whole frame of the state was recognized to corre¬ 
spond with the new division of the country. To Clis¬ 
thenes, also, is ascribed the formal institution of the 
ostracism. 

Alcman. Vid. Supplement. 

Alcmena, was daughter of Electryon, king of My- 
cense, and Anaxo, whom Plutarch calls Lysidice, and 
Diodorus Siculus Eurymede. She was engaged in 
marriage to her cousin Amphitryon, son of Alcaeus, 
when an unexpected event caused the nuptials to be 
deferred. Electryon had undertaken an expedition 
against the Teleboans, or subjects of Taphius, in or¬ 
der to avenge the death of his sons, whom the sons of 
Taphius had slain in a combat. Returning victorious, 


he was met by Amphitryon, and was killed by an acci¬ 
dental blow. This deed, though involuntary, lost Am¬ 
phitryon the kingdom, which he would otherwise have 
enjoyed in right of his wife. Sthenelus, the brother of 
Alcmena, availing himself of the public odium against 
Amphitryon, drove him from Argolis, and seized upon 
the vacant throne, the possession of which devolved, 
at his death, upon his son Eurystheus. Amphitryon 
fled to Thebes, where he was purified by Creon ; but 
when he expected that Alcmena, who had accompanied 
him hither, would have given him her hand, she de¬ 
clined, on the ground that she was not satisfied with 
the punishment inflicted by her father on the Tele¬ 
boans, and intended to give her hand to him who 
should make war upon them. Amphitryon, in conse¬ 
quence of this, made an alliance with Creon and other 
neighbouring princes, and ravaged the isles of the Te¬ 
leboans. While Amphitryon was absent on this ex¬ 
pedition, Jupiter, who had become enamoured of Alc¬ 
mena, assumed the form of Amphitryon, related to 
her all the events of the war, his success over the foe, 
and finally persuaded her to a union. Amphitryon, 
on his return, was surprised at the indifference with 
which he was regarded by Alcmena ; but, on coming to 
an explanation with her, and consulting Tiresias, the 
famous diviner of Thebes, he discovered that it was 
no less a personage than Jove himself who had as¬ 
sumed his form. Alcmena brought forth twins, Her¬ 
cules the son of Jupiter, and Iphicles the progeny of 
her mortal lord. According to the ancient poets, 
Juno retarded the birth of Hercules until the mother 
of Eurystheus was delivered of a son, unto whom, by 
reason of a rash oath of Jupiter’s, Hercules was made 
subject. It seems that the day on which Alcmena 
was to be delivered in Thebes, Jove, in exultation, 
announced to the gods that a man of his race was that 
day to see the light, who would rule over all his neigh¬ 
bours. Juno, pretending incredulity, exacted from him 
an oath that what he had said should be accomplish¬ 
ed. Jupiter, unsuspicious of guile, gave it, and Juno 
hastened down to Argos, where the wife of Sthene¬ 
lus, the son of Perseus, was seven months gone of a 
son. The goddess brought on a premature labour, and 
Eurystheus came to light that day, while she checked 
the parturition of Alcmena, and kept back Lucina. 
(Vid. Galanthis.) The oath of Jove was not to be 
recalled, and his son was fated to serve Eurystheus. 
(Horn., II., 19, 101, seqq. — Ovid, Met., 9, 285, seqq .—• 
Anton. Lib., c. 29. — Keightley's Mythology, p. 310, 
seqq.) According to Pherecydes (ay. Anton. Lib., c. 
33), when Alcmena, who long survived her son, died, 
and the Heraclidse were about to bury her at Thebes, 
Jove directed Mercury to steal her away, and convey 
her to the islands of the blessed, where she should es¬ 
pouse Rhadamanthus. Mercury obeyed, and placed 
a stone instead of her in the coffin. When the Herac- 
lidae went to carry her forth to be buried, they were 
surprised at the weight, and, on opening the coffin, 
found the stone, which they took out, and set it up 
in the grove where her Heroum stood at Thebes : 
odLTcep eoriv to ppCrov to Tpg ’AXKjurjvyq ev 0 ybaiq. 

Alcon, I. a statuary, who made an iron statue of 
Hercules, kept at Thebes. Pliny assigns the reason for 
the choice of this metal, W'hen he says, “ Laborum 
dei patientia inductus ” (35, 14). — II. A surgeon un¬ 
der Claudius. (Vid. Supplement.) — III. A son of 
Erechtheus, king of Athens, and father of Phalerus. 

Alcyone, or Halcyone, I. daughter of ^Eolus, 
married Ceyx, who was drowned as he was going to 
consult the oracle. The gods apprized Alcyone in a 
dream of her husband’s fate ; and when she found, on 
the morrow, his body washed on the seashore, she 
threw herself into the sea. To reward their mutual 
affection, the gods metamorphosed them into halcyons, 
and, according to the poets, decreed that the sea 
should remain calm while these birds built their nests 

103 




ALE 


ALE 


upon it. The halcyon was, on this account, though a 
querulous, lamenting bird, regarded by the ancients as 
a symbol of tranquillity ; and, from living principally 
on the water, was consecrated to Thetis. According 
to Pliny (10, 47), the halcyons only showed them¬ 
selves at the setting of the Pleiades and towards the 
winter-solstice, and even then they were but rarely 
seen. They made their nests, according to the same 
writer, during the seven days immediately preceding 
the winter-solstice, and laid their eggs during the seven 
days that follow. These fourteen days are the “ dies 
halcyonii ,” or “ halcyon-days,” of antiquity. He de¬ 
scribes their nests as resembling, while they float upon 
the waters, a kind of ball, a little lengthened out at the 
top, with a very narrow opening, and the whole not 
unlike a large sponge. A great deal of this is pure 
fable. The. only bird in modern times at all resem¬ 
bling either of the two kinds of halcyons described by 
Aristotle (8, 3), is the Alcedo Ispida, or what the 
French call martin-pecheur. All that is 6aid, too, 
about the nest floating on the water, and the days of 
calm, is untrue. What the ancients took for a nest 
of a bird, is in reality a zoophyte, of the class named 
halcyonium by Linnaeus, and of the particular species 
called geodie by Lamarck. The martin-pecheur makes 
its nest in holes along the shore, or, rather, it deposites 
its eggs in such holes as it finds there. Moreover, it 
lays its eggs in the spring, and has no connexion 
whatever with calm weather. {G. Cuvier, ad Plin., 
1. c .)—II. A daughter of Atlas, and one of the Pleia¬ 
des. ( Vid. Pleiades.— Apollod., 3, 10.)—III. An ap¬ 
pellation given to Cleopatra, daughter of Idas and 
Marpessa. The mother had been carried off, in her 
younger days, by Apollo, but had been rescued by her 
husband Idas, and from the plaintive cries which she 
uttered while being abducted, resembling the lament 
of the halcyon, the appellation Alcyone was given as 
a kind of surname to her daughter Cleopatra. ( Horn., 
U., 9, 553, seqq.) 

Alcyonia, Palus, a pool in Argolis, not far from 
the Lernean marsh. Nero attempted to measure it by 
means of a plummet several stadia in length, but could 
discover no bottom. ( Pausan ., 2, 37.) 

Alcyonium mare, a name given to an arm of the Si¬ 
nus Corinthiacus, or Gulf of Lcpanto, which stretched 
between the western coast of Boeotia, the northern coast 
of Megaris, and the northwestern extremity of Corin- 
thia, as far as the promontory of Olmise. ( Strab., 336.) 

Alduabis. Vid. Dubis. 

Alea, a town of Arcadia, near the eastern confines, 
and to the northeast of Orchomenus. It had three 
famous temples, that of the Ephesian Diana, of Miner¬ 
va Alea, and of Bacchus. The feast of Bacchus, call¬ 
ed Skiria, was celebrated here every third year, at 
which time, according to Pausanias, the women were 
scourged, in obedience to a command of the oracle at 
Delphi. {Pausan., 8, 23.) 

Alebion and Dercynus, sons of Neptune. {Vid. 
Albion I.) 

Alecto, one of the Furies. The name is derived 
from (1, priv., and Tirjya, “ to cease,” from her never 
ceasing to pursue the wicked. {Vid. Eumenides.) 

Alector. Vid. Supplement. 

Alectryon, a youth whom Mars, during his meet¬ 
ing with Venus, stationed at the door to watch against 
the approach of the sun. He fell asleep, and Apollo 
came and discovered the guilty pair. Mars was so 
incensed that he changed Alectryon into a cock, who, 
still mindful of his neglect, announces, say the an¬ 
cient writers, at early dawn, the approach of the sun. 
{Lucian, Somn. seu. Gall., 3.) 

Alectus, a military prefect and usurper in Britain, 
who slew Carausius, but was in turn slain by Asclepio- 
dotus, a general under Constantius Chlorus. He died 
A.D. 296. {Eumen. paneg. Const. Cces. — Crevier, 
Hist, des Emp. Rom., 6, p. 202, seqq.) 

104 


Aleuts Campus {’Ahyiov nediov), a tract in Cilicia 
Campestris, to the east of the river Sarus, between 
Adana and the sea. The poets fabled that Bellero- 
phon wandered and perished here, after having been 
thrown from the horse Pegasus. The name comes 
from akuofiai, “ to wander .” {Homer, II., 6, 201.— 
Dionys. Perieg., 872.— Ovid, Ibis, 259.) 

Alemanni, or Alamanni, a name assumed by a 
confederacy of German tribes situate between the 
Neckar and the Upper Rhine, who united to resist the 
encroachments of Roman power. According to Man- 
nert {Geogr., vol. 3, p. 235, seqq.), the shattered re¬ 
mains of the army of Ariovistus retired, after the de¬ 
feat and death of their leader, to the mountainous 
country of the Upper Rhine. (Compare, however, 
Pfister, Gesch. der Teutschen, vol. 1, p. 179, seqq., 
where a different account is given of the origin of the 
Alemanni.) Their descendants in after days, in order 
to oppose a barrier to the continued advance of the 
Roman arms, united in a common league with the 
German tribes who had originally settled on the left 
bank of the Rhine, but had been driven across by their 
more powerful opponents. The members of this union 
styled themselves Alemanni or all-men, i. e., men of 
all tribes, to denote at once their various lineage and 
their common bravery. They first appeared in a hos¬ 
tile attitude on the banks of the. Mayn, but were de¬ 
feated by Caracalla, who was hence honoured with the 
surname of Alemanicus. In the succeeding reigns, 
we find them at one time ravaging the Roman territo¬ 
ries, at another, defeated and driven back to their na¬ 
tive forests. At last, after their overthrow by Clovis, 
king of the Salian Franks, they ceased to exist as one 
nation, and were dispersed over Gaul, Switzerland, 
and Northern Italy. 

Aleria, a city of Corsica, on the eastern coast. It 
was founded by the Phocseans, under the name of Ala¬ 
lia (’ Alalia), and about twenty years after its first 
settlement, was much enlarged by the addition of those 
of the inhabitants of Phocaea, who fled from the sway 
of Cyrus. {Vid. Phocasa.) Its rapid advance in mari¬ 
time power, subsequent to this increase of numbers, 
excited the jealousy of the Etrurians and Carthagin¬ 
ians. A naval contest ensued, in which the people of 
Alalia, though victorious, suffered so severely, as to be 
convinced of the impossibility of long withstanding the 
united strength of their foes. They migrated, there¬ 
fore, once more, and settled on the southwestern coast 
of Italy {Herod., 1 , 165), where they founded the city 
of Hyela, or Velia. A portion of them, however, went 
to the Phocaean colony of Massilia. {Seneca, dc Con¬ 
sol., ad Helv. matr., 8.) The history of Alalia, after this 
event, remains for a long period enveloped in obscuri¬ 
ty. The Carthaginians, probably, took possession of 
the place. In the second Punic war, it fell, together 
with the whole island, under the Roman sway ; at least 
Zonaras (8, 11) speaks of a place called Valeria as 
the most important city in the island, and as having 
been taken by Lucius Scipio. Alalia remained in 
obscurity under its new masters also, until Sylla sent 
thither a Roman colony, as Marius had done a short 
time previous to the same island, founding in it the 
colony of Mariana. From this period Alalia was known 
under the name of Aleria, and the earlier appellation 
fell into disuse. When, and under what circumstances, 
this city was finally destroyed, is not ascertained. Its 
ruins are to be found a short distance below the 
mouth of the river Tarignano. {Manncrt, 9, pt. 2, p. 
516, seqq.) 

• Ales, a small river of Ionia in Asia Minor, "which emp¬ 
ties into the Aegean near Colophon. {Pausan., 8, 28.) 

Alesa, Alaesa, or Halesa, a very ancient city of 
Sicily, built by Archonides, B.C. 403. It stood near 
the modern city of Caronia, on the river Aljesus, or 
Fiume di Caronia. The inhabitants were exempted by 
the Romans from taxes. {Died. Sic., 14, 16.) 





ALE 


ALEXANDER. 


Ale si a or Alexia, a famous and strongly fortified 
city of the Mandubii, in Gallia Celtica. It was so an¬ 
cient a city, that Diodorus Siculus (4, 19) ascribes 
the building of it to Hercules. (Compare the learned 
and ingenious remarks of Ritter, in his Vorhalle, p. 
378, on the subject of the Celtic Hercules.) It was 
situate on a high hill, supposed to be Mount Auxois, 
near the sources of the Sequana or Seine , and washed 
on two sides by the small rivers Lutosa and Ozera, 
now Lose and Ozerain. Alesia was taken and destroy¬ 
ed by Csesar after a famous siege, but was rebuilt, and 
became a place of considerable consequence under the 
Roman emperors. It was laid in ruins in the 9th 
century by the Normans. At the foot of Mount Aux¬ 
ois is a village called Alise (Depart. Cote d’Or), with 
several hundred inhabitants. ( FLor., 3, 10.— Cces., 
B. G., 7, 69.) 

Alesium, a mountain in the vicinity of Mantinea, on 
which was a grove dedicated to Ceres ; also the tem¬ 
ple of the equestrian Neptune, an edifice of great an¬ 
tiquity, which had been originally built, according to 
tradition, by Agamedes and Trophonius, but was af¬ 
terward enclosed within a new structure by order of 
Hadrian. The mountain was said to have taken its 
name from the wanderings of Rhea (ro bpog to ’kly- 
clov, did T7)v akyv , cjq tyaaiy naTiov/usvov ryv 'Piaq. 
— Pausan., 8, 10). 

Aletes (’AXijryq), a son of Hippotes, and descend¬ 
ant of Hercules in the fifth degree. He is said to have 
taken possession of Corinth, and to have expelled the 
Sisyphid® thirty years after the first invasion of the 
Peloponnesus by the Heraclid®. His family, some¬ 
times called the Aletid®, maintained themselves at 
Corinth down to the time of Bacchis. (Pans., 2, 4, 
3 ; 5, 18, 2.— Strab., 8, p. 389.— Callirn., Frag ., 103. 
— Find., Olym. 13, 17.) Velleius Paterculus (1, 3) 
calls him a descendant of Hercules in the sixth de¬ 
gree. He received an oracle promising him the sov¬ 
ereignty of Athens, if during the war which was then 
going on its kings should remain uninjured. This 
oracle became known at Athens, and Codrus sacri¬ 
ficed himself for his country. ( Vid. Codrus.— Conon., 
Narrat., 26.) Other persons of this name are men¬ 
tioned in Apollod., 3, 10, 6; Hygin., Fab., 122; and 
Virgil, Mn., 1, 121 ; 9,462. 

Aleuad^e. Vid. Supplement. 

Aleuas. Vid. Supplement. 

Alexamenus, I. a native of Teos. (Vid. Supple¬ 
ment.)—II. A general of the AStolians, who, with a body 
of his countrymen, slew Nabis, tyrant of Sparta. He 
had been sent at the head of a band of auxiliaries, by the 
ACtolians, ostensibly to aid Nabis, but in reality to get 
possession of Laced®mon. The inhabitants, however, 
rallied after the fall of the tyrant, defeated the AEtoli- 
ans, who were scattered throughout the city and plun¬ 
dering it, and slew Alexamenus. ( Liv., 35, 34, seqq.) 

Alexander, a name of very common occurrence, 
as designating not only kings, but private individuals. 
We will classify the monarchs by countries, and then 
come to private or less conspicuous personages. 

1. Kings of Macedonia. 

Alexander I., son of Amyntas, and tenth king of 
Macedon. He ascended the throne 497 B.C., and 
reigned 43 years. It was he who, while still a youth, 
slew, in company with a party of his young friends, 
habited in female attire, the Persian ambassadors at 
his father’s court, having been provoked to the act by 
their immodest behaviour towards the females present 
at a banquet. With this prince the glory of Macedon 
may be said to have commenced. He enlarged his 
territories, partly by‘conquest, and partly by the gift 
which Xerxes bestowed upon him, of all the country 
from Mount Olympus to the range of H®mus. (Herod., 
5, 18, seqq. — Justin, 7, 3.) 

Alexander II., son of Amyntas II. He was treach- 

O 


erously slain by Ptolemy Alorites, after having reigned 
from B.C. 369 to B.C. 367, and not, according to the 
common account, for one year merely. Ptolemy Al¬ 
orites, however, who slew him, was neither king nor 
the son of Amyntas, although called so by Diodo¬ 
rus (15, 71). It seems probable, from a compari¬ 
son of Aeschines (de Fals. Leg., p. 32) with a frag¬ 
ment in Syncellus (Dexippus ap. Syncell., p. 263, B.), 
that Ptolemy was appointed regent in a regular way, 
during the minority of Perdiccas ; that he afterward 
abused his trust, and was, in consequence, cut off by 
Perdiccas. The duration of his administration, three 
years, is mentioned by Diodorus (15, 77) P 

Alexander III., surnamed the Great, son of Philip 
of Macedon, was born in the city of Pella, B.C. 356. 
His mother was Olympias, the daughter of Neoptole- 
mus, king of Epirus. Leonnatus, a relation of his 
mother’s, an austere map, and of great severity of 
manners, was his early governor, and at the age of 
eight years, Lysimachus, an Acarnanian, became his 
instructer. Plutarch gives this individual an unfa¬ 
vourable character, and insinuates that he was more 
desirous of ingratiating himself with the royal family 
than of effectually discharging the duties of his office. 
It was his delight to call Philip, Peleus; Alexander, 
Achilles ; and to claim for himself the honorary name 
of Phoenix. Early impressions are the strongest, and 
even the pedantic allusions of the Acarnanian might 
render the young prince more eager in after life to im¬ 
itate the Homeric model. In his fifteenth year, Alex¬ 
ander was placed under the immediate tuition of the 
celebrated Aristotle. The philosopher joined his royal 
pupil B.C. 342, and did not finally quit him until he 
came to the throne. The master was worthy of the 
scholar, and the scholar of his master. The mental 
stores of Aristotle were vast, and all arranged with 
admirable accuracy and judgment; while, on the other 
hand, Alexander was gifted with great quickness of 
apprehension, an insatiable desire of knowledge, and 
an ambition not to be satisfied with the second place 
in any pursuit. At a distance from the court, this 
great philosopher instructed him in all the branches of 
human knowledge, especially those necessary for a 
ruler, and wrote, for his benefit, a work on the art of 
government, which is unfortunately lost. As Mace¬ 
don was surrounded by dangerous neighbours, Aris¬ 
totle sought to cultivate in his pupil the talents and 
virtues of a military commander. With this view he 
recommended to him the reading of the Iliad, and re¬ 
vised this poem himself. The poet, as Aristotle em¬ 
phatically names Homer, was the philosopher’s insep¬ 
arable companion : from him he drew his precepts and 
maxims ; from him he borrowed his models. The pre¬ 
ceptor imparted his enthusiasm to his pupil, and the 
most accurate copy of the great poem was prepared by 
Aristotle, and placed by Alexander in a precious cas¬ 
ket which he found among the spoils of Darius. The 
frame of the young prince was, at the same time, 
formed by gymnastic exercises. He gave several 
proofs of manly skill and courage while very young; 
one of which, the breaking in of his fiery courser Bu¬ 
cephalus, which had mastered every other rider, is 
mentioned by all his historians as an incident that con¬ 
vinced his father Philip of his future unconquerable 
spirit. When he was sixteen years old, Philip, set¬ 
ting out on an expedition against Byzantium, delega¬ 
ted the government to him during his absence. Two 
years later (B.C. 338), he performed prodigies of val¬ 
our in the battle at Chseronea, where he obtained great 
reputation by conquering the sacred band of the The¬ 
bans. “ My son,” said Philip, after the battle, em¬ 
bracing him, “ seek another empire, for that which I 
shall leave you is not worthy of you.” The father 
and son, however, quarrelled when Philip repudiated 
Olympias. Alexander, who took the part of his moth¬ 
er, was obliged to flee to Epirus to escape the ven- 




ALEXANDER. 


ALEXANDER. 


geance of his father, but he soon obtained pardon and 
returned. He afterward accompanied Philip on an 
expedition against the Triballi, and saved his life in a 
battle. Philip, having been elected chief commander 
of the Greeks, was preparing for a war against Per¬ 
sia, when he was assassinated, B.C. 336. This occur¬ 
rence, at an eventful crisis, excited some suspicion 
against Alexander and Olympias ; but as it was one 
of his first acts to execute justice on those of his fa¬ 
ther’s assassins who fell into his hands, several of the 
nobility being implicated in the plot, this imputation 
rests on little beyond surmise. It is more than prob¬ 
able that the conspirators were in correspondence with 
the Persian court, and that ample promises of protec¬ 
tion and support were given to men undertaking to 
deliver the empire from the impending invasion of the 
captain-general of Greece. Alexander, who succeed¬ 
ed without opposition, was a/fc this time in his twentieth 
year ; and his youth, in the first instance, excited sev¬ 
eral of the states of Greece to endeavour to set aside 
the Macedonian ascendency. By a sudden march into 
Thessaly he, however, soon overawed the most active ; 
and when, on a report of his death, chiefly at the in¬ 
stigation of Demosthenes and his party, the various 
states were excited to great commotion, he punished 
the open revolt of Thebes with a severity which ef¬ 
fectually prevented any imitation of its example. In¬ 
duced to stand a siege, that unhappy city, after being 
mastered with dreadful slaughter, was razed to the 
ground, with the ostentatious exception of the house 
of the poet Pindar alone ; while the unfortunate sur¬ 
viving inhabitants were stripped of all their posses¬ 
sions and sold indiscriminately into slavery. Intimi¬ 
dating by this cruel policy, the Macedonian party 
gained the ascendency in every state throughout 
Greece, and 'Athens particularly disgraced itself by 
the meanness of its submission. Alexander then pro¬ 
ceeded to Corinth, where, in a general assembly of 
the states, his office of superior commander was rec¬ 
ognised and defined ; and in the twenty-second year 
of his age, leaving Antipater, his viceroy, in Macedon, 
he passed the Hellespont, to overturn the Persian em¬ 
pire, with an army not exceeding four thousand five 
hundred horse and thirty thousand foot. To secure 
the protection of Minerva, he sacrificed to her on the 
plain of Ilham, crowned the tomb of Achilles, and con¬ 
gratulated this hero, from whom he was descended 
through his mother, on his good fortune in having had 
such a friend as Patroclus, and such a poet as Homer 
to celebrate his fame. The rapid movements of Alex¬ 
ander had evidently taken the Persian satraps by sur¬ 
prise. They had, without making a single attempt to 
molest his passage, allowed him, with a far inferior 
fleet, to convey his troops into Asia. They now re¬ 
solved to advance and contest the passage of the river 
Granicus. A force of twenty thousand cavalry was 
drawn up on the right bank of the stream, while an 
equal number of Greek mercenaries crowned the hills 
in the rear. Unintimidated, however, by this array, 
Alexander led his army across, and, after a severe con¬ 
flict, gained a decisive victory. The loss on the Per¬ 
sian side was heavy, on that of their conquerors so 
extremely slight (only eighty-five horsemen and thirty 
foot soldiers) as to lead at once to the belief, that the 
general, who wrote the account of Alexander’s cam¬ 
paigns, mentioned the loss of only the native-born 
Macedonians. Splendid funeral obsequies were per¬ 
formed in honour of those of his army who had fallen ; 
various privileges were granted to their fathers and 
children ; and as twenty-five of the cavalry that had 
been slain on the Macedonian side belonged to the 
royal troop of the “ Companions,” these were honour¬ 
ed with monumental statues of bronze, the workman¬ 
ship of the celebrated Lysippus. The immediate con¬ 
sequence of this victory was the freedom and restora¬ 
tion of all the Greek cities in Asia Minor, and its sub- 
106 


sequent results were shown in the reduction of almost 
the whole of that country. A dangerous sickness, 
however, brought on by bathing in the Cydnus, check¬ 
ed for a time his career. He received a letter from 
Parmenio, saying that Philip, his physician, had been 
bribed by Darius to poison him. Alexander gave the 
letter to the physician, and at the same time drank the 
potion which the latter had prepared for him. Scarcely 
was he restored to health when he advanced towards 
the defiles of Cilicia, whither Darius had imprudently 
betaken himself with an immense army, instead of 
awaiting his adversary on the plains of Assyria. The 
second battle took place near Issus, between the sea 
and the mountains, and victory again declared for the 
Macedonian monarch. The Macedonians conquered 
on this day, not the Persians alone, but the united ef¬ 
forts of Southern Greece and Persia ; for the army of 
Darius, besides its eastern troops, contained thirty 
thousand Greek mercenaries, the largest Greek force 
of that denomination mentioned in history. It was 
this galling truth that, among other causes, rendered 
the republican Greeks so hostile to Alexander. All 
the active partisans of that faction were at Issus, nor 
were the survivors dispirited by their defeat. Agis, 
king of Sparta, gathered eight thousand who had re¬ 
turned to Greece by various ways, and fought with 
them a bloody battle against Antipater, who with dif¬ 
ficulty defeated the Spartans and their allies. With¬ 
out taking these facts into consideration, it is impos¬ 
sible duly to estimate the difficulties surmounted by 
Alexander. After the defeat at Issus, the treasures 
and family of Darius fell into the hands of the con¬ 
queror. The latter were treated most magnanimous¬ 
ly. Alexander did not pursue the Persian monarch, 
who fled towards the Euphrates, but, in order to cut 
him off from the sea, turned towards Coele-Syria and 
Phoenicia. Here he received a letter from Darius, 
proposing peace. Alexander answered, that if he 
would come to him he would restore, not only his 
mother, wife, and children, without ransom, but also 
his empire. This reply produced no effect. The 
victory at Issus had opened the whole country to the 
Macedonians. Alexander took possession of Damas¬ 
cus, which contained a large portion of the royal treas¬ 
ures, and secured all the towns along the Mediterra¬ 
nean Sea. Tyre, imboldened by the strength of its 
insular situation, resisted, but was taken, after seven 
months of incredible exertion, and destroyed. The 
capture of Tyre was perhaps the greatest military 
achievement of the Macedonian monarch ; but it was 
tarnished by his cruel severity towards the conquered, 
thirty thousand of the inhabitants having been sold by 
him as slaves. Some excuse, however, may be found 
in the excited feelings of the Macedonian army, oc¬ 
casioned by numerous insults on the part of the Tyri- 
ns ; by acts of cruelty towards some of their Mace¬ 
donian captives ; and also by the length and obstinacy 
of the siege ; for more men were slain in winning 
Tyre, than in achieving the three great victories over 
Darius. Alexander continued his victorious march 
through Palestine, where all the towns surrendered 
except Gaza, which shared the fate of Tyre. Egypt, 
wearied of the Persian yoke, received him as a deliv¬ 
erer. In order to confirm his power, he restored the 
former customs and religious rites, and founded Alex- 
andrea, wffiich became one of the first cities of ancient 
times. Hence he went through the desert of Libya, 
to consult the oracle of Jupiter Ammon, an adventure 
resembling more the wildness of romance than the so¬ 
berness of history, and which has on this very account 
been regarded by some with an eye of incredulity. 
It rests, however, on too firm a basis to he invalidated. 
After having been acknowledged, say the ancient wri¬ 
ters, as the son of the god ( vid . Ammon), Alexander, 
at the return of spring, marched against Darius, who 
in the mean time had collected an army in Assyria, 



ALEXANDER. 


ALEXANDER. 


and rejected the proposals of Alexander for peace. 
A battle was fought at Gaugamela, not far from Arbe- 
la, B.C. 331. Arrian estimates the army of Darius at 
1,000,000 of infantry and 40,000 cavalry ; while that 
of Alexander consisted of only 40,000 infantry and 
7000 horse. On the Persian side, moreover, were 
some of the bravest and hardiest tribes of upper Asia. 
Notwithstanding the immense numerical superiority of 
his enemy, Alexander was not a moment doubtful of 
victory. At the head of his cavalry he attacked the 
Persians, and routed them after a short conflict. One 
great object of his ambition was to capture the Per¬ 
sian monarch on the field of battle ; and that object 
was at one time apparently within his grasp, when he 
received, at the instant, a message from Parmenio that 
the left wing, which that general commanded, was hard 
pressed by the Sacae, Albanians, and Parthians, and he 
was compelled, of course, to hasten to its relief. Dari¬ 
us fled from the field of battle, leaving his army, bag¬ 
gage, and immense treasures to the victor. Babylon 
and Susa, where the riches of the East lay accumula¬ 
ted, opened their gates to Alexander, who directed his 
march to Persepolis, the capital of Persia. The only 
passage thither was defended by 40,000 men under 
Ariobarzanes. Alexander attacked them in the rear, 
routed them, and entered Persepolis triumphant. 
From this time the glory of Alexander began to decline. 
Master of the greatest empire in the world, he became 
a slave to his own passions ; gave himself up to arro¬ 
gance and dissipation ; showed himself ungrateful and 
cruel, and in the arms of pleasure shed the blood of 
his bravest generals. Hitherto sober and moderate, 
this hero, who strove to equal the gods, and called 
himself a god, sunk to the level of vulgar men. Per¬ 
sepolis, the wonder of the world, he burned in a fit of 
intoxication. Ashamed of this act, he set out with his 
cavalry to pursue Darius. Learning that Bessus, sa¬ 
trap of Bactriana, kept the king prisoner, he hastened 
his march with the hope of saving him. But Bessus, 
when he saw himself closely pursued, caused Darius 
to be assassinated (B.C. 330), because he was an im¬ 
pediment to his flight. Alexander beheld on the fron¬ 
tiers of Bactriana a dying man, covered with wounds, 
lying on a chariot. It was Darius. The Macedonian 
hero could not restrain his tears. After interring him 
with all the honours usual among the Persians, he took 
possession of Hyrcania and Bactriana, and caused 
himself to be proclaimed King of Asia. He was form¬ 
ing still more gigantic plans, when a conspiracy broke 
out in his own camp. Philotas, the son of Parmenio, 
was implicated. Alexander, not satisfied with the 
blood of the son, caused the father also to be put to 
death. This act of injustice excited general displeas¬ 
ure. At the same time, his power in Greece was threat¬ 
ened ; and it required all the energy of Antipater to 
dissolve, by force of arms, the league formed by the 
Greeks against the Macedonian authority. In the 
mean time, Alexander marched in the winter through 
the north of Asia as far as it was then known, check¬ 
ed neither by Mount Caucasus nor the Oxus, and 
reached the Caspian Sea, hitherto unknown to the 
Greeks. Insatiable of glory and thirsting for conquest, 
he spared not even the hordes of the Scythians. Re¬ 
turning to Bactriana, he hoped to gain the affections of 
the Persians by assuming their dress and manners ; but 
this hope was not realized. The discontent of the 
army gave occasion to the scene which ended in the 
death of Clitus. Alexander, whose pride he had offend¬ 
ed, killed him with his own hand at a banquet. Clitus 
had been one of his most faithful friends and brave of¬ 
ficers, and Alexander was afterward a prey to the 
keenest remorse. In the following year he subdued 
the whole of Sogdiana. Oxyantes, one of the leaders 
of the enemy, had secured his family in a castle built 
on a lofty rock. The Macedonians stormed it. Rox¬ 
ana, the daughter of Oxyantes, one of the most beau¬ 


tiful virgins of Asia, was among the prisoners. Al¬ 
exander fell in love with and married her. Upon the 
news of this, Oxyantes thought it best to submit, and 
came to Bactria, where Alexander received him with 
distinction. Here a new conspiracy was discovered, 
at the head of which was Hermolaus, and among the 
accomplices Callisthenes. All the conspirators were 
condemned to death except Callisthenes, who was 
mutilated and carried about with the army in an iron 
cage, until he terminated his torments by poison. Al¬ 
exander now formed the idea of conquering India, the 
name of which was scarcely known. He passed the 
Indus, and formed an alliance with Taxilus, the ruler 
of the region beyond this river, who assisted him with 
troops and 130 elephants. Conducted by Taxilus, he 
marched towards the river Hydaspes, the passage of 
which, Porus, another king, defended at the head of 
his army. Alexander conquered him in a bloody bat¬ 
tle, took him prisoner, but restored him to his king¬ 
dom. He then marched victoriously on, established. 
Greek colonies, and built, according to Plutarch, sev¬ 
enty towns, one of which he called Bucephala, after 
his horse, which had been killed on the Hydaspes. 
Intoxicated by success, he intended to advance as far 
as the Ganges, and was preparing to pass the Hypha- 
sis, when the discontent of his army obliged him to 
terminate his progress and return. Previous to turn¬ 
ing back, however, he erected on the banks of the 
Hyphasis twelve towers, in the shape of altars ; mon¬ 
uments of the extent of his career, and testimonials of 
his gratitude towards the gods. On these gigantic al¬ 
tars he offered sacrifices with all due solemnity, and 
horse-races and gymnastic contests closed the festiv¬ 
ities. When he had reached the Hydaspes, he built 
a fleet, in which he sent a part of his troops down the 
river, while the rest of his army proceeded along the 
banks. On his march he encountered several Indian 
princes, and, during the siege of a town belonging to 
the Malli, was severely wounded. Having recovered, 
he continued his course down the Indus, and thus 
reached the sea. Having entered the Indian Ocean 
and performed some rites in honour of Neptune, he left 
his fleet; and, after ordering Nearchus, as soon as the 
season would permit, to sail to the Persian Gulf, and 
thence up the Tigris, he himself prepared to march to 
Babylon. He had to wander through immense deserts, 
in which the greater part of his army, destitute of wa¬ 
ter and food, perished in the sand. Only the fourth 
part of the troops with which he had set out returned 
to Persia. On his route he quelled several mutinies, 
and placed governors over various provinces. In Susa 
he married two Persian princesses, and rewarded those 
of his Macedonians who had married Persian women; 
because it was his intention to unite the two nations 
as closely as possible. He distributed rich rewards 
among his troops. At Opis, on the Tigris, he declared 
his intention of sending the invalids home with pres¬ 
ents. The rest of the army mutinied ; but he persist¬ 
ed, and effected his purpose. Soon after, his favour¬ 
ite, Hephsestion, died. His grief was unbounded, and 
he buried his body with royal splendour. On his return 
from Ecbatana to Babylon, the magicians are said to 
have predicted that this city would be fatal to him. 
The representations of his friends induced him to de¬ 
spise these warnings. He went to Babylon, where 
many foreign ambassadors waited for him, and was 
engaged in extensive plans for the future, when he 
became suddenly sick after a banquet, and died in a 
few days, B.C. 323. Such was the end of this con¬ 
queror, in his 32d year, after a reign of 12 years and 
8 months. He left behind him an immense empire, 
which became the scene of continual wars. He had 
designated no heir, and being asked by his friends to 
whom he left the empire, answered, “ To the worthi¬ 
est.” After many disturbances, the generals acknowl¬ 
edged Aridaeus, a man of a very weak mind, the son 

107 




ALEXANDER. 


ALEXANDER. 


of Philip and the dancer Philinna, and Alexander the 
posthumous son of Alexander and Roxana, as kings, 
and divided the provinces among themselves, under 
the name of satrapies. They appointed Perdiccas, to 
whom Alexander, on his deathbed, had given his ring, 
prime minister of the two kings. The body of Alex¬ 
ander was interred by Ptolemy in Alexandrea, in a 
golden coffin, and divine honours were paid to him, 
not only in Egypt, but also in other countries. The 
sarcophagus in which the coffin was enclosed has been 
in the British Museum since 1802. The English na¬ 
tion owe the acquisition of this relic to the exertions 
of Dr. Clarke, the celebrated traveller, who found it in 
the possession of the French troops in Egypt, and was 
the means of its being surrendered to the English 
army. In 1805, the same individual published a disser¬ 
tation on this sarcophagus, fully establishing its iden¬ 
tity.—No character in history has afforded matter for 
more discussion than that of Alexander ; and the ex¬ 
act quality of his ambition is to this day a subject of 
dispute. By some he is regarded as little more than 
a heroic madman, actuated by the mere desire of per¬ 
sonal glory ; others give him the honour of vast and 
enlightened views of policy, embracing the consolida¬ 
tion and establishment of an empire, in which com¬ 
merce, learning, and the arts should flourish in com¬ 
mon with energy and enterprise of every description. 
Each class of reasoners find facts to countenance their 
opinion of the mixed character and actions of Alexan¬ 
der. The former quote the wildness of his personal 
daring, the barren nature of much of his transient mas- 
tery, and his remorseless and unnecessary cruelty to 
the vanquished on some occasions, and capricious 
magnanimity and lenity on others. The latter advert 
to facts like the foundation of Alexandrea, and other 
acts indicative of large and prospective views of true 
policy ; and regard his expeditions rather as schemes 
of discovery and exploration than mere enterprises for 
fruitless conquest. The truth appears to embrace a 
portion of both these opinions. Alexander was too 
much smitten with military glory, and the common self¬ 
engrossment of the mere conqueror, to be a great and 
consistent politician ; while such was the strength of 
his intellect, and the light opened to him by success, 
that a glimpse of the genuine sources of lasting great¬ 
ness could not but break in upon him. The fate of a 
not very dissimilar character in our days shows the 
nature of this mixture of lofty intellect and personal 
ambition, which has seldom effected much permanent 
good for mankind in any age. The fine qualities and 
defects of the man were, in Alexander, very similar to 
those of the ruler. His treatment of Parmenio and of 
Clitus, and various acts of capricious cruelty and in¬ 
gratitude, are contrasted by many instances of extra¬ 
ordinary greatness of mind. He was also a lover and 
favourer of the arts and literature, and carried with 
him a train of poets, orators, and philosophers, although 
his choice of his attendants of this description did not 
always do honour to his judgment. He, however, en¬ 
couraged and patronised the artists Praxiteles, Lysip¬ 
pus, and Apelles; and his munificent presents to Ar¬ 
istotle, to enable him to pursue his inquiries in natural 
history, were very serviceable to science. Alexander 
also exhibited that unequivocal test of strong intellect, 
a disposition to employ and reward men of talents in 
every department of knowledge. In person this extra¬ 
ordinary individual was of the middle size, with a neck 
somewhat awry, but possessed of a fierce and majestic 
countenance. It may not be amiss, before concluding 
this sketch, to consider for a moment the circumstan¬ 
ces connected with the death of this celebrated leader. 
His decease has usually been ascribed either to excess 
in drinking or to poison. Neither of these suppositions 
appears to be correct. The fever to which he fell a 
victim (for the Royal Diary whence Arrian has copied 
uis account of the last illness of Alexander, speaks ex- 
108 r 


pressly of a violent fever having been the cause of 
his decease) was contracted very probably in his visit 
to the marshes of Assyria. The thirst which subse¬ 
quently compelled him, on a public day, to quit his 
military duties, proves that this fever was raging in his 
veins before it absolutely overcame him. The carou¬ 
sals in which he afterward indulged must have seri¬ 
ously increased the disease. Strong men like Alex¬ 
ander have often warded off attacks of illness by in¬ 
creased excitement; but, if this fail to produce the de¬ 
sired effect, the reaction is terrible. It is curious to 
observe, in Arrian’s account of Alexander’s last illness, 
that no physician is mentioned. The king seems to 
have trusted to two simple remedies, abstinence and 
bathing. His removal to a summer-house, close to the 
large cold bath, shows how much he confided in the 
latter remedy. But the extraordinary fatigues which 
he had undergone, the exposure within the last three 
years to the rains of the Pendjab, the marshes of the 
Indus, the burning sands of Gedrosia, the hot vapours 
of Susiana, and the marsh miasma of the Babylonian 
Lakes, proved too much even for his iron constitution. 
The numerous wounds by which his body had been 
perforated, and especially the serious injury done to his 
lungs by an arrow among the Malli, must in some de¬ 
gree have impaired the vital functions, and enfeebled 
the powers of healthy reaction. (Pint., Vit. Alex. — 
Arrian, Exp. Alex. —Quintus Curtius. — Diod. Sic., 
17 et 18. — Encyclop. Americ., vol. 1, p. 151, scqq .— 
Biogr. Univ., vol. 1, p. 195.— Williams's Life of Al¬ 
exander^ the Great, p. 346, &c., Am. ed.)— After many 
dissensions and bloody wars among themselves, the 
generals of Alexander laid the foundations of several 
great empires in the three quarters of the globe. Ptol¬ 
emy seized Egypt, where he firmly established him¬ 
self, and where his successors were called Ptolemies, 
in honour of the founder of their empire, which sub¬ 
sisted till the time of Augustus. Seleucus and his 
posterity reigned in Babylon and Syria. Antigonus 
at first established himself in Asia Minor, and Antipa¬ 
ter in Macedonia. The descendants of Antipater were 
conquered by the successors of Antigonus, who reign¬ 
ed in Macedonia till it was reduced by the Romans^in 
the time of King Perseus. Lysimachus made himself 
master of Thrace ; and Leonatus, who had taken pos¬ 
session of Phrygia, meditated for a while to drive An¬ 
tipater from Macedonia. Eumenes established him¬ 
self in Cappadocia, but was soon overpowered by his 
rival Antigonus, and starved to death. During his 
lifetime, Eumenes appeared so formidable to the suc¬ 
cessors of Alexander, that none of them dared to as¬ 
sume the title of king. 

Alexander IV., son of Alexander the Great and 
Roxana. He was born after his father’s death, and 
was proclaimed king while yet an infant, along with 
Philip Andaeus, an illegitimate brother of Alexander 
the Great. Soon after, however, he was put to death, 
together with Roxana, by Cassander, who thereupon 
assumed the sovereign power. ( Justin, 15, 2 ) 
Alexander V., son of Cassander. He ascended 
the throne of Macedonia along with his brother An¬ 
tipater, B.C. 298. Antipater, however, having put to 
death Thessalomca, their mother, Alexander, in order 
to avenge his parent, called in the aid of Demetrius, 
son of Antigonus. A reconciliation, however, having 
taken place between the brothers, Demetrius, who was 
apprehensive lest this might thwart his dwn views on 
the crown of Macedon, slew Alexander and seized upon 
the royal authority. {Justin, 16, 1.) 

2. Kings of Epirus. 

Alexander I., surnamed Molossus, was brother of 
Olympias, and successor to Arybas. He came into 
Italy to aid the Tarentines against the Romans, and 
used to Say, that while his nephew, Alexander the 
Great, was warring against women (meaning the ef- 




ALEXANDER. 


ALEXANDER. 


feminate nations of the East), he was lighting against 
men. (Justin, 17, 3. — Liv ., 8, 17, et 27.) As re¬ 
gards the circumstances connected with his death, vid. 
A aileron II. 

Alexander II., son of the celebrated Pyrrhus. To 
avenge the death of his father, who had been slain at 
Argos, fighting against Antigonus, he seized upon 
Macedonia, of which the latter was king. He was 
soon, however, driven out, not only from Macedonia, 
but also from his own dominions, by Demetrius, son 
of Antigonus. Taking refuge, on this, among the 
Acarnanians, he succeeded, by their aid, in regaining 
the throne of Epirus. ( Justin , 26, 3.— Id ., 28, 1 .— 
Pint., Vit. Pyrr., 34.) 

3. Kings of Syria. 

Alexander I., surnamed Bala or Balas, a man of 
low origin, but of great talents and still greater auda¬ 
city, who claimed to be the son of Antiochus Epipha- 
nes, assumed the name of Alexander, and, being ac¬ 
knowledged by Ptolemy Philometor, Ariarathes, and 
Attalus, seized upon the throne of Syria. He was 
afterward defeated and driven out by Demetrius Nica- 
tor, the lawful heir ; and, having taken refuge with an 
Arabian prince, was put to death by the latter. ( Jus¬ 
tin , 35, 1, seq.) 

Alexander II., surnamed Zabina the Slave, a 
usurper of the throne of Syria. He was the son of a 
petty trader in Alexandrea, but claimed, at the insti¬ 
gation of Ptolemy VII., to have been adopted by An¬ 
tiochus VIII. Ptolemy aided him with troops, and 
Demetrius Nicator was defeated at Damascus, and 
driven out of his kingdom. A few years after, how¬ 
ever, Alexander was himself defeated by Antiochus 
Grypus, aided in his turn by the same Ptolemy, and 
put to death. Grypus was son of Demetrius Nicator. 
{Justin, 39, 1, seq.) 

4. Princes of Judcea. 

Alexander I., JannaBus, monarch of Judaea, son of 
Hyrcanus, and brother of Aristobulus, to whom he suc¬ 
ceeded, B.C. 106. He was a warlike prince, and dis¬ 
played great ability in the different wars in which he 
was engaged during his reign. Driven from his king¬ 
dom by his subjects, who detested him, he took up 
arms against them, and waged a cruel warfare for the 
space of six years, slaying upward of 50,000 of his 
foes. Having at last re-entered Jerusalem, he cruci¬ 
fied, for the amusement of his concubines, 800 of his 
revolted subjects, and at the same time caused their 
wives and children to be massacred before their eyes. 
Being re-established on the throne, he made various 
conquests in Syria, Arabia, and Idumea, and finally 
died of intemperance at Jerusalem, B.C. 76, after a 
reign of 27 years. ( Josephus , Ant. Jud., 17, 22, &c.) 

Alexander II., son of Aristobulus II., was made 
prisoner, along with his father, by Pompey, but man¬ 
aged to escape while being conducted to Rome, raised 
an army, and made some conquests. Hyrcanus, son 
of Alexander Jannseus, being then on the throne, so¬ 
licited the aid of the Romans, and Marc Antony being 
sent by Gabinius, defeated Alexander near Jerusalem. 
After standing a siege for some time in the fortress 
Alexandreion, he obtained terms of peace; but not 
long after, having taken up arms for Caesar, who had 
released his father, he fell into the hands of Metellus 
Scipio, and was beheaded at Antioch. ( Josephus , 
Antiq. Jud., 14, 13.) 

Alexander III., son of Herod the Great, put to 
death by his father, along with Aristobulus his brother, 
on false charges brought against them by Pheroras 
their uncle, and Salome their aunt, ( Josephus, Antiq. 
Jud., 16, 17.) 

5. Kings of Egypt. 

Alexander I., II., III., vid. Ptolemseus IX., X., XI. 


6. Individuals. 

Alexander, I. tyrant of Pherse in Thessaly, who 
seized upon the sovereign power, B.C. 368. Pie wa' 
of a warlike spirit, but, at the same time, cruel and vin¬ 
dictive, and his oppressed subjects were induced to 
supplicate the aid of the Thebans, who sent Pelopidas 
with an army. The tyrant was compelled to yield; 
but, having subsequently escaped from the power of 
the Theban commander, he reassembled an army, and 
Pelopidas having been imprudent enough to come to 
him without an escort, the tyrant seized and threw him 
into prison, whence he was only released on the ap¬ 
pearance of Epaminondas at the head of an armed 
force. By dint of negotiation, he now obtained a 
truce, but renewed his acts of violence and cruelty as 
soon as the Thebans had departed. Pelopidas marched 
against and defeated him, but lost his own life in the 
action. Stripped upon this of all his conquests, and 
restricted to the city of Pheree, he no longer dared to 
carry on war by land, but turned his attention to pira¬ 
cy, and had even the audacity to pillage the Pirseus or 
main harbour of Athens. He was assassinated at last 
by his wife Thebe. ( Val. Max., 9, 13.— Corn. Nep., 
Vit. Pelop. — Pausan., 6, 5.)—II. Lyncestes, was ac¬ 
cused of being one of the conspirators in the plot 
against Philip of Macedon, which resulted in the death 
of that monarch. He was pardoned on account of hi3 
having been the first to salute Alexander, Philip’s son, 
as king. Not long after, however, he was detected in 
a treacherous correspondence with Darius, and put to 
death. ( Justin , 11, 2.)—III. Son of Polysperchon, 
at first a general on the side of Antigonus, after the 
death of Alexander the Great, and very active in dri¬ 
ving out for him, from the Peloponnesus, the garrisons 
of Cassander. He afterward went over to Cassan- 
der, but was assassinated by some Sicyonians, after 
no long interval of time, at the siege of Dymse.—IV. 
A famous impostor of Paphlagonia, who lived in the 
time of Lucian, under the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. 
By his artifices he succeeded in passing himself for a 
person sent by Aesculapius, and prevailed upon the 
Paphlagonians to erect a temple to this deity. As the 
priest and prophet of the god, he ran a long career of 
deception, a full account of which is given in the Sup¬ 
plement.—V. Severus, a Roman emperor. ( Vid. Se- 
verus.)—VI. An Athenian painter, whose portrait ap¬ 
pears on a marble tablet found at Resina in 1746, and 
stating the name and country of the artist. The age 
in which he lived is not known.—VII. A native of Acar- 
nania. {Vid. Supplement.) — VIII. TEtolus. {Vid. 
Supplement.)—IX. A commander of horse in the army 
of Antigonus Doson. {Vid. Supplement.)—X. A son 
of Marc Antony and Cleopatra. {Vid. Supplement.) 
—XI. Brother of Molo. {Vid. Supplement.) — XII. 
A native of Cotyaeum, in Phrygia, or, according to 
Suidas, of Miletus, who flourished in the second cen¬ 
tury of our era. He took the name of Cornelius 
Alexander, from his having been a slave of Corne¬ 
lius Lentulus, who gave him his freedom, and made 
him the instructer to his children. He was sur¬ 
named Polyhistor, from the variety and multiplicity 
of his knowledge. The ancient writers cite one of 
his works in forty books, each one of which appears 
to have contained the description of some particular 
country, and to have had a separate title, such as 
Alyvnnaicd, K apiand, &c. Pliny often refers to him. 
It is probable that he was the author of a work enti¬ 
tled Qavpaoiov cvvayoyy, “ A collection of wonderful 
things,” of which Photius speaks as the production of 
an individual named Alexander, without designating 
him any farther. This work contained accounts of 
animals, plants, rivers, &c. {Scholl, Hist. Lilt. Gr., 
vol. 5, p. 276, seq.) —XIII. A native ofAEg® in Achaia, 
the disciple of Xenocrates, and, as is thought, of Sosi¬ 
genes. He was one of the instructers of the Emperor 
Nero. Some critics regard him as the author of the 

109 



ALEXANDER. 


ALEXANDREA. 


commentary on Aristotle, which commonly passes un¬ 
der the name of Alexander of Aphrodisia. ( Scholl , 
Hist. Litt. Gr., vol. 5, p. 156.) — XIV. A native of 
Aphrodisia in Caria, who flourished in the beginning 
of the third century. He is regarded as the restorer 
of the true doctrine of Aristotle, and he is the princi¬ 
pal peripatetic, after the founder of this school, who 
adopted the system of the latter in all its purity, with¬ 
out intermingling along with it, as Alexander of Agse 
and his disciples did, the precepts of other schools. 
He was surnamed, by way of compliment, ’E^tiyrjTrjg, 
Exegetes (“the interpreter,” or “expounder”), and 
became the head of a particular class of Aristotelian 
commentators, styled “ Alexandreans.” He wrote, 1. 
A treatise on Destiny and Free Agency (Ilep^ E i/uap- 
pevriq ical rov ppuv), a work held in high estima¬ 
tion, and which the author addressed to the emperors 
Septimius Severus and Antoninus Caracalla. In it 
he combats the Stoic dogma, as hostile to free agency, 
and destructive, in consequence, of all morality. The 
best edition of this work is that printed at London, in 
1658,12mo. It is inserted also, with new corrections, 
in the 3d vol. of Grotius’s Theological Works, Amst., 
1679, fol. 2. A commentary on the first book of the 
first Analytics of Aristotle, Gr., fob, Venet., 1489, and 
4to, Florent., 1521. Translated into Latin by Feli- 
cianus, fob, Venet., 1542, 1546, and 1560. 3. A com¬ 

mentary on the eight books of the Topica, fob, Venet., 
1513 and 1526. A Latin translation by Dorotheus, 
which appeared for the first time in 1524, fob, Venet., 
has been often reprinted. In 1563, a translation by 
Rasarius appeared, fob, Venet., which is preferable to 
the other. 4. Commentaries on the Elenchi sophistici 
of Aristotle, Gr., fob, Venet., 1520, and 4to, Florent., 
1552. Translated into Latin by Rasarius, Venet., 
1557. 5. A commentary on the twelve books of the 

metaphysics of Aristotle. The Greek text has never 
been printed, although there are many MS. copies in 
the Royal Library at Paris, and other libraries. A 
Latin translation, however, by Sepulveda, appeared at 
Rome, 1527, in fob, and has been often reprinted. 6. 
A commentary on Aristotle’s work De Sensu, &c., Gr., 
at the end of Simplicius’s commentary on the work 
of Aristotle respecting the Soul, fob, Venet., 1527. 
7. A commentary on the Meteorologica of Aristotle, 
Gr., fob, Venet., 1527, and in the Latin of Alex. Pi- 
colomini, fob, 1540, 1548, 1575. 8. A treatise nepl 

gitjeug (De Mistione), directed against the dogma of 
the Stoics respecting the penetrability of bodies, Gr., 
with the preceding. Two Latin translations have ap¬ 
peared, one by Caninius, Venet., 1555, fob, and the 
other by Schegk, Tubing., 1540, 4to. 9. A treatise 
on the Soul, in two books, or, more correctly speak¬ 
ing, two treatises on this subject, since there is little 
if any connexion between these books. Gr., at the 
end of Themistius ; and in Latin by Donati, Venet., 
1502, folio. 10. Physica Scholia, &c. (Qvgucuv crjo- 
'kiov, urropiuv, ual Xvgeuv, d'), Gr., fob, Ve¬ 

net., 1536, and in Latin by Bagolinus, Venet., 1541, 
1549, 1555, 1589. 11. Problemata Medica, &c., the 

best Greek edition of which is in Sylburgius’s works 
of Aristotle ; this is attributed by some to Alexander 
Trallianus. 12. A treatise on Fevers; never pub¬ 
lished in Greek, but translated by Valla, and insert¬ 
ed in a collection of various works, Vcnetia, 1488. 
For medical works, vid. the Supplement.—XV. A 
native of Myndus, quoted by Athenseus. (Compare 
Meursius, Bibl., in Thes. Gronov., vol. 10, p. 1208, 
seqq.) He is supposed by some to be the same with 
the writer mentioned by Athenseus under the name of 
Alexon. ( Schweigh., Index Auct. ad Athen .— Op., 
vol. 9, p. 24, seqq.) —XVI A native of Tralles, who 
lived in the sixth century, and distinguished himself as 
a physician. He wrote several treatises on medicine, 
some of which are extant, and have been published 
at different times ; namely, a Greek edition, fob, Pans, 
110 


1548; a Latin edition among the “Medicse artis 
Principes,” fob, Paris, 1567, &c. Alexander Tralli¬ 
anus is a most judicious, elegant, and original author. 
No medical writer, whether of ancient or modern times, 
has treated of diseases more methodically than he has 
done ; for, after all the Nosological systems which 
have been proposed and tried, we can name none 
more advantageous to the student than the method 
adopted by him, of treating of diseases according to 
the part of the body which they affect, beginning with 
the head and proceeding downward. The same plan 
is pursued in the third book of Paulus iEgineta, who 
has copied freely from Alexander. Of the ancient 
medical writers subsequent to Galen, Alexander shows 
the least of that blind deference to his authority for 
which all have been censured : nay, in many instances 
he ventures to differ from him; not, however, appa¬ 
rently from a spirit of rivalship, but from a commenda¬ 
ble love of truth. In his eleventh book, he has given 
the fullest account of the causes, symptoms, and treat¬ 
ment of gout which is to be met with in any ancient 
writer; and as it contains many things not to be met 
with elsewhere, it deserves to be carefully studied. 
He judiciously suits the treatment to the circumstances 
of the case, but his general plan of cure appears to 
have consisted in the administration of purgative 
medicines, either cathartic salts or drastic purgatives, 
such as scammony, aloes, and hermodactylus. The 
last-mentioned medicine was most probably a species 
of Colchicum Autumnale, which forms the active in¬ 
gredient of a French patent medicine called L'Eau 
Medicinale d'Hyssop, much celebrated some years 
ago for the cure of gout and rheumatism. Dr. Haden 
lately published a small pamphlet, wherein Colchicum 
was strongly recommended as an antiphlogistic remedy 
of great powers. The writers, both Greek and Ara¬ 
bian, subsequent to Alexander Trallianus, repeat the 
praises bestowed by him upon the virtues of hermo¬ 
dactylus. Demetrius Pepagomenos has written a pro¬ 
fessed treatise to recommend this medicine in gout.— 
The style of Alexander, although less pointed than 
that of Celsus, and less brilliant than that of Areta3us, 
is remarkable for perspicuity and elegance. It must 
be mentioned with regret, however, as a lamentable 
instance of a sound judgment being blinded by super¬ 
stition, that our author had great confidence in charms 
and amulets. Such weakness is to be bewailed, but 
need not be wondered at, when we recollect that Wise¬ 
man, one of the best English authorities on surgery, 
had great confidence in the royal touch for the cure 
of Scrofula. — XVII. Isius. (Vid. Supplement.) — 
XVIII. Lychnus. (Vid. Supplement.)—XIX. Myn- 
dius. (Vid. Supplement.)—XX. Noumenius. (Vid. 
Supplement.) — XXI. A Greek rhetorician. (Vid. 
Supplement.) — XXII. Philalethes. (Vid. Supple¬ 
ment.)—XXIII. A Roman usurper. (Vid. Supple¬ 
ment.)—XXIV. Tiberius. (Vid. Supplement.) 

Alexandrea (less correctly Alexandria, Burmann, 
'ad Propert., 3, 9, 33.— Ur sin., ad Cic., Ep. ad Fam., 
4, 2, 10.— Fca, ad Horat., Od., 4, 14, 35), the name 
of eighteen cities, founded by Alexander during his 
conquests in Asia, among which the most deserving of 
mention are the following : I. The capital of Egypt, 
under the Ptolemies, built B.C. 332. It was situate 
about 12 miles to the west of the Canopic mouth of 
the Nile, between the Lake Mareotis and the beauti¬ 
ful harbour formed by the Isle of Pharos. It was the 
intention of its founder to make Alexandrea at once 
the seat of empire and the first commercial city in the 
world. The latter of these plans completely succeed¬ 
ed ; and for a long period of years, from the time of 
the Ptolemies to the discovery of the Cape of Good 
Hope, the capital of Egypt was the link of connexion 
between the commerce of the east and west. The 
goods and other articles of traffic were brought up the 
Red Sea, and landed at one of three different points 



ALEXANDRIA. 


ALE 


Of these, the first was at the head of the western 
gulf of the Red Sea, where the canal of Neco com¬ 
menced, and where stood the city of Arsinoe or Cleo- 
patris. This route, however, was not much used, on 
account of the dangerous navigation of the higher parts 
of the Red Sea. The second point was the harbour 
of Myos Hormus, in latitude 27°. The third was 
Berenice, south of Myos Hormus, in latitude 23° 30'. 
What the ships deposited at either of the last two 
places, the caravans brought to Coptos on the Nile, 
whence they were conveyed to Alexandrea by a canal 
connecting this capital with the Canopic branch. Be¬ 
tween Coptos and Berenice a road was constructed by 
Ptolemy Philadelphus, 258 miles in length. Ptolemy, 
the son of Lagus, who received Egypt in the general 
division, improved what Alexander had begun. On 
the long, narrow island of Pharos, which is very near 
the coast, and formed a port with a double entrance, 
a magnificent tower of white marble was erected, to 
serve as a beacon and guide for navigators. The ar¬ 
chitect was Sostratus of Cnidus.—The first inhabi¬ 
tants of Alexandrea were a mixture of Egyptians and 
Greeks, to whom must be added numerous colonies of 
Jews, transplanted thither in 336, 320, and 312 B.C., 
to increase the population of the city. It was they 
who made the well-known Greek translation of the 
Old Testament, under the name of Septuaginta or 
the Septuagint.—The most beautiful part of the city, 
near the great harbour, where stood the royal palaces, 
magnificently built, was called Bruchion. There was 
the large and splendid edifice, belonging to the acad¬ 
emy and Museum, where the greater portion of the 
royal library (400,000 volumes) was placed ; the rest, 
amounting to 300,000, were in the Serapion, or temple 
of Jupiter Serapis. The larger portion was burned 
during the siege of Alexandrea by Julius Csesar, but 
was afterward in part replaced by the library of Per- 
gamus, which Antony presented to Cleopatra. The 
Museum, where many scholars lived and were sup¬ 
ported, ate together, studied, and instructed others, re¬ 
mained unhurt till the reign of Aurelian, when it was 
destroyed in a period of civil commotion. The libra¬ 
ry in the Serapion was preserved to the time of The¬ 
odosius the Great. He caused all the heathen tem¬ 
ples throughout the Roman empire to be destroyed; 
and even the splendid temple of Jupiter Serapis was 
not spared. A crowd of fanatic Christians, headed by 
their archbishop, Theodosius, stormed and destroyed it. 
At that time, the library, it is said, was partly burned, 
partly dispersed; and the historian Orosius, towards 
the close of the fourth century, saw only the empty 
shelves. The common account, therefore, is an erro¬ 
neous one, which makes the library in question to have 
been destroyed by the Saracens at the command of 
the Calif Omar, A.D. 642, and to have furnished fuel 
during six months to the 4000 baths of Alexandrea. 
This narrative rests merely on the authority of the 
historian Abulpharagius, and has no other proof at all 
to support it. But, whatever may have been the cause 
of this disastrous event, the loss resulting to science 
was irreparable. The Alexandrean library, called by 
Livy “ Elegantice regum curceque egregium opus,” em¬ 
braced the whole Greek and Latin literature, of which 
we possess but simple fragments. — In the divis¬ 
ion of the Roman dominions, Alexandrea, with the 
rest of Egypt, was comprehended in the Eastern em¬ 
pire. The Arabs possessed themselves of it in 640; 
the Calif Motawakel, in 845, restored the library and 
academy; but the Turks took the city in 868, and it 
declined more and more, retaining, however, a flour¬ 
ishing commerce, until, as has already been remarked, 
the Portuguese, at the end of the 15th century, 
discovered a way to the East Indies by sea.—The 
modern city, called in Turkish Scanderia, does not 
occupy the site of the old town, of which nothing re¬ 
mains except a portico in the vicinity of the gate lead¬ 


ing to Rosetta, the southwestern amphitheatre, the 
obelisk, or needle of Cleopatra, and Pompey’s pillar, 
88 feet 6 inches high, which, according to an English 
writer ( Walpole's Collection, vol. 1, p. 380), was erect¬ 
ed by Pompeius, governor of part of Lower Egypt, in 
honour of the Emperor Dioclesian. The equestrian 
statue on the top is no longer standing. ( Manncrt, 
10, pt. 1 , p. 611, seqq. — Encyclop. Americ., vol. 1 , p. 
162, seqq .)—II. A city of Sogdiana, on the river Iax- 
artes, to the east of Cyropolis. It was founded by 
Alexander on the farthest limits of his Scythian expe¬ 
dition, and hence it was also called Alexandreschata 
(’A Xe^avdpeoxuTa, i. e., ’A/ie^dvdpeia iox&Tr) • Alex¬ 
andrea Ultima).—III. A city of Arachosia, near the 
confines of India; now Scandcne of Arokhage , or 
Vaihend. —IV. A city of India, at the junction of the 
Indus and Acesines ; now, according to some, Labor, 
but, according to others, Vch. —V. A city in the vicin¬ 
ity of the range of Paropamisus, on the east side of the 
Coas.—VI. A city of Aria, at the mouth of the river 
Arius ; now Corra. —VII. A city of Carmania, near 
Sabis.—VIII. A city of Gedrosia ; now Hormoz, or 
Houz. —There were several other cities of the same 
name, called after Alexander, though not founded by 
him. Among these may be mentioned the follow¬ 
ing.—IX. Troas (’A 'Ae^dvdpeia r) Tpuuq), a city on 
the western coast of Mysia, above the promontory of 
Lectum. It was more commonly called Alexandrea; 
sometimes, however, Troas. (Act. Apost., 16, 8.— Itin. 
Ant., p. 334.) The place owed its origin to Anti- 
gonus, who gave it the name of Antigonia Troas. Af¬ 
ter the fall of Antigonus, the appellation wrns changed 
to Alexandrea Tjoas by Lysimachus, in honour of 
Alexander. Antigonus had already increased its pop¬ 
ulation by sending thither the inhabitants of Cebrene, 
Neandria, and other towns ; and it received a farther 
increase under Lysimachus. Under the Romans it 
acquired still greater prosperity, and became one of 
the most flourishing of their Asiatic colonies. (S trab., 
593.— Pliny, 5, 30.) In the Acts of the Apostles it 
is simply called Troas, and it was from its port that 
St. Paul and St. Luke set sail for Macedonia (16, 
11). We are informed by Suetonius ( Vit. Coes., 79), 
that Julius Caesar once had it in contemplation to 
transfer the seat of empire to this quarter; a plan far 
from happy, since the port was not large, and the fer¬ 
tility of the surrounding country not at all such as to 
warrant the attempt. The same idea, however, is 
said to have been entertained by Augustus. (Faber, 
Epist., 2, 43.—Compare the commentators on Ho¬ 
race, Od., 3, 3.) In a later age, Constantine actually 
commenced building a new capital here, but the su¬ 
perior situation of Byzantium soon induced him to 
abandon the undertaking. (Zosimus, 2, 30, p. 151, 
seqq., ed. Reitcmeier. — Compare Zonaras, 13, 3.) 
Augustus, when he gave over the design just alluded 
to, still sent a Roman colony to this place, and hence 
the language used by Strabo (13, p. 594, ed. Casaub.), 
vvv di nal Pupalcov dnouiiav dide/crai. (Compare 
Plin., 5, 30.— Caius, in leg. 7, dig. de Cens.) The 
ruins of this city are called by the Turks Eski (Old) 
Stamboul. (Manncrt, 6, pt. 3, p. 473, seqq. —X. Ad 
Issum (icard v lacrov ), a city of Syria, on the coast 
of the Sinus Issicus, about sixteen miles from Issus 
in Cilicia. The founder is unknown. The Itin. 
Hieros. (p. 580) gives it the name of Alexandrea Sca- 
biosa. (Compare Chron. Alexandr., p. 170, where the 
appellation is given as Gabiosa.) The modern Scan- 
deroon , or Alexandretta, occupies the site of the an¬ 
cient city. 

Alexandrea ultima. Vid. Alexandrea II. 

Alexandri ar.e, according to some, the limits of 
Alexander’s victories near the Tanai's. This, however, 
is all a mere fable of the ancients, who made Alexan¬ 
der to have crossed the Tanais, and approached what 
they considered the limits of the world in that quarter. 

Ill 



ALEXANDRINA SCHOLA. 


ALEXANDRINA SCHOLA. 


(Mannert , 4, p. 159 and 256.) For the true Alexan¬ 
dri Arae, vid. Hypliasis. 

Alexandri castra (y ’ k’ke!;<ivdpov napeju6o?i.y), a 
place in Marmarica, at the Oasis of Ammon, where 
the Macedonian forces were encamped while Alexan¬ 
der was consulting the oracle. ( Ptol .) 

Alexandri insula, an island in the Sinus Persi- 
cus, on the Persian coast. (Ptol. — Plin., 6, 25.) 

Alexandri portus, a harbour of Gedrosia, where 
the fleet of Nearchus was detained four weeks by ad¬ 
verse winds. (Arrian, Indie., 22.) It was in the 
immediate vicinity of Eirus Promontorium, or Cape 
Monze. (Compare Vincent's Commerce of the An¬ 
cients, vol. 1, p. 197.) 

Alexandrine aque, baths in Rome, built by the 
Emperor Alexander Severus. 

AlexandrIna sciiola. When the flourishing pe¬ 
riod of Greek poetry was past, study was called in to 
supply what nature no longer furnished. Alexandrea 
in Egypt was made the seat of learning by the Ptole¬ 
mies, admirers of the arts, whence this age of liter¬ 
ature took the name of the Alexandrean. Ptolemy 
Philadelphus founded the famous library of Alexan¬ 
drea, the largest and most valuable one of antiquity, 
which attracted many scholars from all countries ; and 
also the Museum, which may justly be considered the 
first academy of sciences and arts. ( Vid. Alexandrea.) 
The grammarians and poets are the most important 
among the scholars of Alexandrea. These gramma¬ 
rians were philologists and literati, who explained 
things as well as words, and may be considered a kind 
of encyclopedists. Such were Zenodotus the Ephe¬ 
sian, who established the first grammar-school in Alex¬ 
andrea, Eratosthenes of Cyrene, Aristophanes of By¬ 
zantium, Aristarchus of Samothrace, Crates ofMallus, 
Dionysius the Thracian, Apollonius the Sophist, and 
Zoilus. Their merit is to have collected, examined, 
reviewed, and preserved the existing monuments of 
intellectual culture. To them we are indebted for 
what is called the Alexandrean Canon, a list of the 
authors whose works w r ere to be regarded as models 
in the respective departments of Grecian literature. 
The names composing this Canon, with some remarks 
upon its claims to attention, will be given at the close 
of the present article.—To the poets of the Alexan¬ 
drean age belong Apollonius the Rhodian, Lyco- 
phron, Aratus, Nicander, Euphorion, Callimachus, 
Theocritus, Philetas, Phanocles, Timon the Phliasian, 
Scymnus, Dionysius, and seven tragic poets, who were 
called the Alexandrean Pleiades. The Alexandrean 
age of literature differed entirely, in spirit and charac¬ 
ter, from the one that preceded. Great attention was 
paid to the study of language; correctness, purity, 
and elegance were cultivated ; and several writers of 
this period excel in these respects. But that which 
no study can give, the spirit which filled the earlier 
poetry of the Greeks, is not to be found in most of 
their works. Greater art in composition took its 
place ; criticism was now to perform what genius had 
accomplished before. But this was impossible. Ge-„ 
nius was the gift of only a few, and they soared far 
above their contemporaries. The rest did what may 
be done by criticism and study; but their works are 
tame, without soul and life, and those of their disci¬ 
ples, of course, still more so. Perceiving the want of 
originality, but appreciating its value, and striving af¬ 
ter it, they arrived the sooner at the point where poe¬ 
try is lost. Their criticism degenerated into a dispo¬ 
sition to find fault, and their art into subtilty. They 
seized on what was strange and new, and endeavoured 
to adorn it with learning. The larger part of the Al- 
exandreans, commonly grammarians and poets at the 
same time, are stiff and laborious versifiers, without 
genius.—Besides the Alexandrean school of poetry, 
one of philosophy is also spoken of, but the expres¬ 
sion is not to be understood too strictly. Their dis- 
112 


tinguishing character arises from this circumstance, 
that, in Alexandrea, the eastern and western philoso¬ 
phy met, and an effort took place to unite the two 
systems ; for which reason the Alexandrean philoso¬ 
phers have often been called Eclectics. This name, 
however, is not applicable to all. The new Platon- 
ists form a distinguished series of philosophers, who, 
renouncing the skepticism of the New Academy, en¬ 
deavoured to reconcile the philosophy of Plato with 
that of the East. The Jew Philo, of Alexandrea, be¬ 
longs to the earlier New Platonists. Plato and Aris¬ 
totle were diligently interpreted and compared in the 
1st and 2d centuries after Christ. Ammonius the 
Peripatetic belongs here, the teacher of Plutarch. 
But the real New Platonic school of Alexandrea was 
established at the close of the 2d century after Christ 
by Ammonius of Alexandrea (about 193 A.D.), whose 
disciples were Plotinus and Origen. Being for the 
most part Orientals, formed by the study of Greek learn¬ 
ing, their writings are strikingly characterized, e.g., 
those of Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus, Iamblicus, Por- 
phyrius, by a strange mixture of Asiatic and European 
elements, which had become amalgamated in Alexan¬ 
drea, owing to the mingling of the eastern and west¬ 
ern race in its population, as well as to its situation 
and commercial intercourse. Their philosophy had a 
great influence on the manner in which Christianity 
was received and taught in Egypt. The principal 
Gnostic systems had their origin in Alexandrea. The 
leading teachers of the Christian catechetical schools, 
which had risen and flourished together with the ec¬ 
lectic philosophy, had imbibed the spirit of this phi¬ 
losophy. The most violent religious controversies 
disturbed the Alexandrean church, until the orthodox 
tenets were established in it by Athanasius in the con¬ 
troversy with the Arians.—Among the scholars at 
Alexandrea are to be found great mathematicians, as 
Euclid, the father of scientific geometry ; Apollonius 
of Perga in Pamphylia, whose work on Conic Sections 
still exists ; Nicomachus, the first scientific arithmeti¬ 
cian : astronomers, who employed the Egyptian hiero¬ 
glyphics for marking the northern hemisphere, and 
fixed the images and names (still in use) of the con¬ 
stellations ; who left astronomical writings (e. g., the 
Phenomena of Aratus, a didactic poem, the Sphcerica 
of Menelaus, the astronomical works of Eratosthenes, 
and especially the Magna Syntaxis of the geographer 
Ptolemy), and made improvements in the theory of the 
calendar, which were afterward adopted into the Ju¬ 
lian calendar: natural philosophers, anatomists, as 
Herophilus andErasistratus: physicians and surgeons, 
as Demosthenes Philalethes, who wrote the first work 
on diseases of the eye ; Zopyrus and Cratevas, who 
improved the art of pharmacy and invented antidotes: 
instructers in the art of medicine, to whom Asclepia- 
des, Soranus, and Galen owed their education : medi¬ 
cal theorists and empirics, of the sect founded by 
Philirus. All these belonged to the numerous asso¬ 
ciations of scholars continuing under the Roman do¬ 
minion, and favoured by the Roman emperors, which 
rendered Alexandrea one of the most renowned and 
influential seats of science in antiquity.—The best 
work on the learning of Alexandrea is the prize-essay 
of Jacob Matter ; Essai Historique sur VEcole d'Al- 
exandrie, Paris, 1819, 2 vols. (Encyclop. Americ., 
vol. 1, p. 164, seqq.) — We alluded, near the com¬ 
mencement of the present article, to the literary Canon , 
settled by the grammarians of Alexandrea. We will 
now proceed to give its details, after some prefatory 
remarks respecting its merits. The canon of classical 
authors, as it has been called, was arranged by Aris¬ 
tophanes of Byzantium, curator of the Alexandrean 
library, in the reign of Ptolemy Euergetes ; and his 
celebrated disciple Aristarchus. The daily increasing 
multitude of books of every kind had now become so 
great, that there was no expression, however faulty, 




ALE 


ALI 


for which precedent might not be found ; and as there 
were far more bad than good writers, the authority 
and weight of numbers was likely to prevail, and the 
language, consequently, to grow more and more cor¬ 
rupt. It was thought necessary, therefore, to draw a 
line between those classic writers, to whose authority 
an appeal in matter of language might be made, and 
the common herd of inferior authors. In the most cul¬ 
tivated modern tongues, it seems to have been found 
expedient to erect some such barrier against the in¬ 
roads of corruption ; and to this preservative caution 
are we indebted for the vocabulary of the Academi¬ 
cians della Crusca, and the list of authors therein cited 
as affording “ testi di lingua .” To this we owe the 
Dictionaries of the Royal Academies of France and 
Spain, of their respective languages ; and Johnson’s 
Dictionary of our own. But, as for the example first 
set in this matter by the Alexandrean critics, its eifects 
upon their own literature have been of a doubtful na¬ 
ture. In so far as the canon has contributed to pre¬ 
serve to us some of the best authors included in it, we 
cannot but rejoice. On the other hand, there is rea¬ 
son to believe, that the comparative neglect into which 
those not received into it were sure to fall, has been 
the occasion of the loss of a vast number of writers, 
who would have been, if not for their language, yet for 
their matter, very precious; and who, perhaps, in many 
cases, were not easily to be distinguished, even on the 
score of style, from those that were preferred. ( Moore's 
Lectures, p. 55, seqq.) The details of the canon are 
as follows: 1. Epic Poets. Homer, Hesiod, Pisan- 

der, Panyasis, Antimachus. 2. Iambic Poets. Ar¬ 
chilochus, Simonides, Hipponax. 3. Lyric Poets. 
Aleman, Alcaeus, Sappho, Stesichorus, Pindar, Bac- 
chylides, Ibycus, Anacreon, Simonides. 4. Elegiac 
Poets. Callinus, Mimnermus, Philetas, Callimachus. 
5. Tragic Poets. (First Class): ^Eschylus, Sopho¬ 
cles, Euripides, Ion, Achaeus, Agathon. (Second 
Class, or Tragic Pleiades): Alexander the iEtolian, 
Piiiliscus of Corcyra, Sositheus, Homer the younger, 
ZEantides, Sosiphanes or Sosicles, Lycophron. 6. 
Comic Poets. (Old Comedy) : Epicharmus, Cratinus, 
Eupolis, Aristophanes, Pherecrates, Plato. (Middle 
Comedy): Antiphanes, Alexis. (New Comedy): Me¬ 
nander, Philippides, Diphilus, Philemon, Apollodorus. 
7. Historians. Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, 
Theopompus, Ephorus, Philistus, Anaximenes, Cal- 
listhenes. 8. Orators. (The ten Attic Orators): 
Antiphon, Andocides, Lysias, Isocrates, Isaeus, ZEs- 
chines, Lycurgus, Demosthenes, Hyperides, Dinar- 
chus. 9. Philosophers. Plato, Xenophon, iEschines, 
Aristotle, Theophrastus. 10. Poetic Pleiades. (Sev¬ 
en poets of the same epoch with one another): Apol¬ 
lonius the Rhodian, Aratus, Philiscus, Homer the 
younger, Lycophron, Nicander, Theocritus. ( Scholl , 
Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 3, p. 186, seqq.) 

Alexandropolis, a city of Parthia, probably east 
of Nisaea, built by Alexander the Great. ( Plin ., 6, 25.) 

Alexarchus, a Greek historian. Vid. Supplement. 

Alexicacus, an epithet applied to various deities, 
particularly to Jupiter, Apollo, Hercules, &c. It means 
“ an averter of evil,” and is derived from aAcfw, “ to 
avert,” or “ ward off,” and kukov, “ evil.” Another 
Greek term of the same import is unoTpoTtaiog, and 
analogous to both is the Latin averruncus. (Consult 
Fischer, ad Anstoph., Plut., 359.) 

Alexias, a Greek physician. Vid. Supplement. 

Alexinus, a native of Elis, the disciple of Eubuli- 

des, and a member of the Megaric sect. He set him¬ 
self in array against almost all of his contemporaries 
that were in any way distinguished for talent, such as 
Aristotle, Zeno, Menedemus, Stilpo, and the historian 
Ephorus, and from his habit of finding fault with others 
was nicknamed Elenxinus (’E Xey^ivoq), or “ the fault¬ 
finder.” In particular, he vented the most calumni¬ 
ous imputations against Aristotle, and wrote a work 

P 


containing pretended conversations between Philip 
and Alexander of Macedon, in which the character of 
the Stagirite was very rudely assailed. Full of vanity 
and self-conceit, he retired to Olympia for the purpose, 
as he gave out, of establishing a sect to which he 
wished to give the appellation of Olympiac; the un¬ 
healthy state of the neighbourhood, and its deserted 
condition, except at the period of the games, caused 
his disciples to abandon him. He died in consequence 
of being wounded in the foot by the point of a reed, as 
he was bathing in the Alpheus. ( Diog. Laert.) Alex- 
inus and his preceptor Eubulides are only known as 
the authors of certain captious questions (uIvto) 
which they levelled at their antagonists. (Diog Laert, 
2, 108, seqq. — Cic., Acad., 4, 29.) 

Alexion, a physician, intimate with Cicero. (Cic., 
ad Att., 13, ep. 25.) 

Alexis, I a comic poet of Thurium, uncle on the 
father’s side to Menander, and his instructer in the 
drama. (Proleg. AAistoph., p. xxx.) He flourished 
in the time of Alexander the Great, and, according to 
Suidas, wrote 245 pieces for the stage (edidal-E dpdpara 
ape). Athenseus calls him 6 xapieip, “ the gracefully 
sportive,” and the extracts which he as well as Sto- 
bseus give from the productions of the poet appear to 
justify the appellation. If he did not invent the char¬ 
acter of the parasite, he at least introduced it more 
frequently into his comedies, or portrayed it more suc¬ 
cessfully than any of his predecessors. The titles of 
several of his pieces have been preserved, besides the 
extracts which are given by Athenseus and Stobseus. 
(Athen., 2, 59, f.— Schiveigh. ad Athen., 1. c .) The 
remains of this poet are also to be found in the Ex- 
cerptaex Trag. et Comoed. Gr. of Grotius, Paris, 1626, 
4to.—II. An artist mentioned by Pliny as one of the 
pupils of Polycletus, but without any statement of his 
country or the works which he executed. (Plin. r 
34, 8.) 

Alfenus, or Publius Alfenus Varus, a barber of 
Cremona, who, growing out of conceit with his line of 
business, quitted it and came to Rome. Here he at¬ 
tended the lectures of Servius Sulpicius, a celebrated 
lawyer of the day, and made so great proficiency in his 
studies as to become eventually the ablest lawyer of 
his time. His name often occurs in the Pandects. 
He was advanced to some of the highest offices in the 
empire, and was at last made consul, A U.C. 755. 
(Compare the commentators on Horace, Serm., 1, 3, 
130.) In some editions of Horace, Alfenus is styled 
Sutor, “ a shoemaker.” Bentley, however, on the au¬ 
thority of two MSS., one of them a MS. copy of Acron, 
changes the lection to tonsor, “ a barber.” His em¬ 
endation has been very generally adopted. 

Algidum, a town of Latium, on the Via Latina, 
situate in a hollow about twelve miles from Rome. 
Antiquaries seem to agree in fixing its position at 
V Ostena delVAglio. (Holstein, Adnot., p. 158.— 
Vulp. Lat. Vet., 15, 1, p. 248.— Nibby, Viag. Antiq., 
vol. 2, p. 62.) 

Algidus, a chain of mountains in Latium, stretching 
from the rear of the Alban Mount, and running parallel 
to the Tusculan Hills, being separated from them by 
the valley along which ran the Via Latina. Tlie neigh¬ 
bourhood is remarkable for the numberless conflict* 
between the Roman armies and their unwearied an¬ 
tagonists the .Equi and Volsci. Mount Algidus, in 
fact, was advantageously placed for making inroads on 
the Roman territory, either by the Via Latina or the 
Via Lavicana. The woods of the bleak Algidus are 
a favourite theme with Horace. (Od., 1, 21, 6.—3, 
23, 9.—4, 4, 58.— Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 
48.) This mountainous range was sacred to Diana 
(Hor., Carm. Scec., 69) and to Fortune. (Liv., 21, 62.) 

Aliacmon. Vid. Haliacmon. 

Aliartus. Vid. Haliartus. 

Alienus C-fficlNA. Vid. Carina. 


113 





ALL 


Alimentus, C., a Roman historian, who flourished 
during the period of the second Punic war, of which 
he wrote an account in Greek. He was the author 
also of a biographical sketch, in Latin, of the Sicilian 
rhetorician Gorgias of Leontini, and of a work De Re 
Militan. This last-mentioned production is cited by 
Aulus Gellius, and is acknowledged by Vegetius as 
the foundation of his more elaborate commentaries on 
the same subject. ( Dunlop’s Roman Lit, vol. 2, p 
25, m notis.) 

Alinda, a city of Caria, southeast of Stratonicea. 
It was a place of some note and strength, and was held 
by Ada, queen of Caria, at the time that Alexander 
undertook the siege of Halicarnassus. ( Arrian, Exp. 
Al, 1, 23.— Strab., 657.) The site has been iden¬ 
tified by many antiquaries with the modern Moglah, 
the principal town of modern Caria, but on what au¬ 
thority is not apparent. Another traveller, from the 
similarity of names, places it at Aleina, between 
Moglah and Tshina. (Rennell's Geogr. of Western 
Asia , vol. 2, p. 53.— Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, 

p. 208.) 

Alipius. Vid. Alypius. 

Alirrothius. Vid. Halirrothius. 

Allectus, a prsetorian prefect, who slew Carausius 
in Britain, and took possession of his throne, holding 
it for three years, from 294 to 297 A.D. He was at 
last defeated and slain by Asclepiodotus, a general of 
Constantius Chlorus, who landed on the coast of the 
island with an army. ( Aurel. Viet., 39.) 

AllTa, a river of Italy, running down, according to 
Livy, from the mountains of Crustumium, at the 
eleventh milestone, and flowing into the Tiber. It 
was crossed by the Via Salaria, about four miles beyond 
the modern Marcigliano, and is now the Aia. Cluve- 
rius ( Ital. Ant., vol. 1, p. 707) is mistaken when he 
identifies the Allia with the Rio di Mosso, as that riv¬ 
ulet is much beyond the given distance from Rome. 

( Nibby , dclle Vie degli Antichi , p. 87.) On its banks 
the Romans were defeated by the Gauls under Bren- 
nus, July 17th, B.C. 387. Forty thousand Romans 
were either killed or put to flight. Hence in the Ro¬ 
man calendar, “ Alliensis dies” was marked as a most 
unlucky day. {Livy, 5, 37. — Floras, 1, 13. — Pint., 
Vit. Cam.) The true name of the river is Alia, with 
the first vowel short. Our mode of pronouncing and 
writing the name is derived from the poets, who length¬ 
ened the initial vowel by the duplication of the con¬ 
sonant. {Niebuhr, Roman Hist., vol. 2, p. 291, Wal¬ 
ter's transl., in notis.) 

Allieni forum. Vid. Forum II. 

Allif^e, a town of Samnium, northwest of the Vul- 
turnus, the name of which often occurs in Livy. It 
was taken, according to that historian, by the consul 
Petilius, A.U.C. 429 ; and again by Rutilius. {Liv., 
8, 25.— Id., 9, 38.) This place was famous for the 
large-sized drinking-cups made there. {Horat., Serm., 
2, 8, 39.) The ancient site is occupied by the modern 
Allife. For a description of the numerous antiquities 
existing at Allife, consult Trutta, Diss. sopr. le An- 
tich. Alif. {Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 233.) 

Allobroges, a people of Gailia, between the Isara 
or Isere, and the Rhodanus or Rhone, in the country 
answering to Dauphine, Piedmont, and Savoy. Their 
chief city was Vienna, now Vienne, on the left bank 
of the Rhodanus, thirteen miles below Lugdunum or 
Lyons. They were finally reduced beneath the Roman 
power by Fabius Maximus, who hence was honoured 
with the surname of Allobrogicus. (For the particulars 
of this war, consult Thierry, Histoire des Gaulois, 
vol. 2, p. 168, seqq., and the authorities there cited.) 
At a later day we find the ambassadors of this nation 
at Rome, tampered with by Catiline, but eventually 
remaining firm in their allegiance. {Sallust, Cat., 40, 
seqq. — Cic., in Cat., 3, 3, seqq.) The name Allo¬ 
broges means “ Highlanders,” and is formed from Al, 


ALO 

“ high,” and Broga, “ land.” {Addung's Mithridatcs, 
vol. 2, p 50 ) 

Allucius, a prince of the Celtiberi in Spain, whose 
affianced bride having fallen into the hands of Scipio 
Africanus, was restored to him uninjured by the Ro¬ 
man commander; an act of self-control rendered still 
more illustrious by reason of the surpassing beauty of 
the maiden. {Liv., 26, 50.) 

Almo, a small river near Rome, falling into the Tiber. 
It is now the Dachia, a corruption of Aqua d'Acio. 
At the junction of this stream with the Tiber, the 
priests of Cybele, every year, on the 25th March, 
washed the statue and sacred things of the goddess. 
Vid. Lara. {Ovid, Fast., 4, 337.— Lucan, 1, 600. 
Compare Vales, et Lindenbr., ad Ammian. Marcell., 
23. 3— Lucan, ed. Cort. et Weber, vol. 1, p. 157, 
seqq ) 

Aloa, a festival at Athens, in the month Poseidon (a 
month including one third of December and two thirds 
of January), in honour of Ceres and Bacchus. These 
deities were propitiated on this occasion, as by their 
blessing the husbandmen received the recompense of 
their toil and labour. The oblations, therefore, con¬ 
sisted of nothing but the productions of the earth. 
Hence Ceres was called Aldas (’A luuq), Alois (’Aao- 
ig), and Eualosia (E valooia). All these names are de¬ 
rived from the Greek dAwf, “ a threshing-floor." Ac¬ 
cording to Philochorus (p. 86, Fragm.), the Aloa was a 
united festival in honour of Bacchus, Ceres, and Pro¬ 
serpina. (Compare Corsini, Fast. Alt., 2, p. 302.) 
We have written ’AAwa'f, &c., with the lenis in place 
of the aspirate, although the root be ahug. The un¬ 
aspirated form is, in fact, the earlier of the two, and 
the more likely, therefore, to be retained as a religious 
appellation. (Compare the remarks of Bcrgler, ad Al- 
ciphron, 1, ep. 33.) Reitz, however, favours the op¬ 
posite form, though less correctly. {Ad Luc., Dial. 
Meretr., 1.) Creuzer gives 'AlCrn for the name of the 
festival, as we have done. {Symbolik, vol. 4, p. 308.) 

Aloeus, I. son of Apollo and Circe. From him, 
through his son Epopeus, was descended the Marathon, 
after whom the famous plain in Attica was named. 
{Suid., s. v. Mapaduv.) Callimachus applied to this 
same Marathon, son of Apollo, the epithets of divypog, 
“ all humid," and cvvdpog, “ dwelling in the water ” 
{Suid., 1. c.), a remark that will serve as an introduc¬ 
tion to the explanation given by Creuzer to the fable 
of the Aloidae. Vid. Aloidse.—II. Son of Neptune and 
Iphimedia. He married Iphimedia, the daughter of 
his brother Triops ; but Iphimedia having a stronger 
attachment for Neptune than for her own husband, be¬ 
came by the former the mother of two sens, Otus and 
Ephialtes, whom Aloeus, however, brought* up as his 
own (Homer makes them to have been nurtured by 
Earth), and who were hence called Aloidce. Vid. 
Aloidae. {Horn., Od., 11, 304, seqq.) 

AloId^e (’AAweidai), sons of Aloeus in name, but 
in reality the offspring of Neptune and Iphimedia. 
{Vid. Aloeus II.) They were two in number, Otus 
and Ephialtes, and, according to Homer (Od., 11, 310, 
seqq.), were, in their ninth year, nine cubits in width 
and nine fathoms in height. At this early age, they 
undertook to make war upon heaven, with the intention 
of dethroning Jupiter; and, in order to reach the heav¬ 
ens, they strove to place Mount Ossa upon Olympus, 
and Pelion upon Ossa; but they were destroyed by 
Apollo before, to use the graphic language of Homer, 
“ the down had bloomed beneath their temples, and 
had thickly covered their chin with a well-flowering 
beard.” According to the animated narrative of the 
same bard, they would have accomplished their object 
had they made the attempt, not in childhood, but after 
having “ reached the measure of youth.” {Od., 1. c.) 
Such is the Homeric legend respecting the Aloidee, as 
given in the Odyssey. In the Iliad (5, 385) they are 
said to have bound Mars, and kept him captive for the 




ALO 


ALP 


space of thirteen months, until Mercury “ stole him 
away” (k&nleipEv). Later writers add, of course, 
many other particulars. Apollodorus makes Ephialtes 
to have aspired to a union with Juno, and Otus with 
Diana. (Compare Nonnas, Dionys., 48, 402. — Hy- 
ginFab., 28.) He farther states, that Diana effected 
their destruction in the island of Naxos. She changed 
herself, it seems, into a hind, and bounded between 
the two brothers, who, in their eagerness each to slay 
the animal, pierced one another with their weapons 
(efi eavrovc ijnovTumv). Diodorus Siculus (5, 51) 
gives an historical air to the narrative, making the two 
brothers to have held sway in Naxos, and to have fallen 
in a quarrel by each other’s hand. (Compare Pind., 
Pyth., 4, 88, ed. Bockh, and the scholiast, ad loc.) Vir¬ 
gil assigns the Aloidae a place of punishment in Tarta¬ 
rus (AZn., 6,582), and some of the ancient fabulists make 
them to have been hurled thither by Jupiter, others by 
Apollo. So in the Odyssey (l. c .) they are spoken of 
as inhabiting the lower world, though no reason is as¬ 
signed by the poet for their being there, except what 
we may infer from the legend itself, that they were cut 
off in early life, lest, if they had been allowed to attain 
their full growth, they might have obtained the empire 
of the skies. ( Heyne, ad Apollod., 1. c.) Pausanias 
makes the Aloidae to have founded Ascra in Boeotia, 
and to have been the first that sacrificed to the Muses 
on Mount Helicon (9, 29). Muller regards the Aloidae 
as the mythic leaders of the old Thracian colonies, he¬ 
roes by land and sea. They appear in Pieria (at 
Aloi'um, near Tempe) and at Mount Helicon, and in 
both quarters have reference to the digging of canals 
and the draining of mountain-dales. ( Orchomenus , p. 
387.) Creuzer, on the other hand, sees in the fable 
of the Aloidae a figurative allusion to a contest, as it 
were, between the water and the land. Aloeus is 
“ the man of the threshing-floor ” (d/lwf), whose efforts 
are all useless on account of the infidelity of his spouse 
(the Earth, “ the very wise one," tQi and yrjdof;). She 
unites against him with Neptune, and the sea there¬ 
upon begets thejnighty energies of the tempests (Otus 
and Ephialtes), which darken the day ( r S2rof, from 
d)roc, “ the horned owl," the bird of night), which brood 
heavily over the earth, and cause the waves of ocean 
to leap and dash upon the cultivated regions along the 
shore (’E (fuuhTTjz, from errt, and aXkoycu, “ to leap," as 
indicating “the one that attacks” or “leaps upon,” 
the spirit that oppresses and torments, “ the night¬ 
mare”). At last the god of day (Apollo) comes forth, 
and the storm ceases, first along the mountain-tops, 
and at last even on the shore. ( Creuzer, Symbolik, 
vol. 2, p. 386.) If we a'dopt the other version of the 
fable, that the Aloidae were destroyed by Diana, the 
storm will then be hushed by the influence and chang¬ 
ing of the moon. 

Aloium, a town of Thessaly, near Tempe. ( Steph. 
Byz., s. v. ’A Tiunov.) 

Alope, I. daughter of Cercyon, king of Eleusis, and 
mother of Hippothoon by Neptune. She was put to 
death by her father, and her tomb is spoken of by Pau¬ 
sanias (1, 29). Hyginus says that Neptune, not being 
able to save her life, changed her corpse into a fountain 
( Fab., 187). The son, on having been exposed by or¬ 
der of its mother, was at first suckled by a mare (innoc), 
whence his name Hippothoon ; and was afterward ta¬ 
ken care of and brought up by some shepherds. When 
he had attained to manhood, he was placed on his grand¬ 
father’s throne by Theseus, who had slain Cercyon. 
(Pausan., 1, 5, et 39.— Hygin., 1. c.) —II. A town of 
Thessaly, situate, according to Steph. Byz. ( s. v. ’AAo- 
nr]), between Larissa Cremaste and Echinus. (Com¬ 
pare Strabo, 432.— Pomp. Mel., 2, 3.) It is probably 
the same with the Alitrope noticed by Scylax (p. 24), and 
retains its name on the shore of the Melian Gulf, be¬ 
low Makalla. —III. A town of the Locri Ozolae, ac¬ 
cording to Strabo (427). It is, perhaps, no other than 


the Olpae of Thucydides (3, 101).—IV. A town of the 
Locri Opuntii, above Daphnus. It was here that, ac¬ 
cording to Thucydides, the Athenians obtained some 
advantages over the Locrians in a descent they made 
on this coast during the Peloponnesian war. ( Thucyd., 
2, 26.) 

Alopece, I. an island in the Palus Maeotis, near the 
mouth of the Tanais. Strabo and Ptolemy call it Alo¬ 
pecia (’ klonenta), but Pliny (4, 26) names it Alopece. 
— II. An island in the Cimmerian Bosporus, near 
Panticapaeum. Constantine Porphyrogenitus ( de adm. 
imp., c. 42) calls it Atech (’A rex)- —ID- A borough of 
Attica, north of Hymettus, and near the Cynosarges, 
consequently close to Athens. According to Herodo¬ 
tus (5, 63), it contained the tomb of Anchimolius, a 
Spartan chief, who fell in the first expedition underta¬ 
ken by the Spartans to expel the Pisistratidae. Ac¬ 
cording to iEschines (in Timarch., p. 119), it was not 
more than eleven or twelve stadia from the walls of the 
city. This was the borough or demus of Socrates and 
Aristides. It was enrolled in the tribe Antiochis. 
(Steph. Byz., s. v. ’AXotteki].) Chandler thought that 
he passed some vestiges belonging to it in his journey 
from Athens to Hymettus. (Travels, vol. 2, c. 30.) 

Alopeconnesus, a town on the northern coast of the 
Thracian Chersonese. It was an iEolian colony, ac¬ 
cording to Scymnus (v. 705), and it is mentioned as one 
of the chief towns of the Chersonese by Demosthenes 
(de Cor., p. 256). It was taken by Philip, king of 
Macedon, towards the commencement of his wars with 
the Romans (Liv., 31, 16). According to Athenaeus 
(2, 60), truffles of excellent quality grew near it. The 
site of the ancient town still retains the name of Alexi. 
(Mannert, 7, p. 197.) 

Alos, or Halos, I. a city in Thessaly, situate near 
the sea, on the river Amphrysus. It was founded by 
Athamas, whose memory was here held in the highest 
veneration. (Strab., 432.— Herodot., 7,197.) This 
place was called the “ Phthiotic” or “ Achaean” Alos, 
to distinguish it from another city of the same name 
among the Locri.—II. A city of the Locri Opuntii. 

Alpenus, a town of the Locri Epicnemidii, south of 
Thermopylae, whence, as Herodotus (7, 229) informs 
us, Leonidas and his little band drew their supplies. It 
is also called Alpeni (’AA 7 ryvoi). This is probably the 
same town which ^Eschines names Alponus, since he 
describes it as being close to Thermopylae. (AEsch., 
de Fals. Leg., p. 46.) 

Alpes, a chain of mountains, separating Italia from 
Gallia, Helvetia, and Germania. Their name is de¬ 
rived from their height, Alp being the old Celtic ap¬ 
pellation for a lofty mountain. (Adelung, Mithndates , 
vol. 2, p. 42.—Compare remarks under the article Al¬ 
bion II.) They extend from the Sinus Flanaticus, or 
Gulf of Carnero, at the top of the Gulf of Venice, and 
the sources of the river Colapis, or Kulpe, to Vada 
Sabatia, or Savona, on the Gulf of Genoa. The whole 
extent, which is in a crescent form, Livy makes only 
250 miles, Pliny 700 miles. The true amount is near¬ 
ly 600 British miles. They have been divided by both 
ancient and modern geographers into various portions, 
of which the principal are, 1. The Maritime Alps (Al¬ 
pes Maritimae), beginning from the environs of Nice 
(Nicaea), and extending to Mons Vesulus, Monte Viso. 

2. The Cottian Alps (Alpes Cottias), reaching from the 
last-mentioned point to Mont Ccnis. (Vid. Cottius.) 

3. The Graian Alps (Alpes Graiae), lying between Mont 
Iseran and the Little St. Bernard inclusively. The 
name Graice is said to refer to the tradition of Hercules 
having crossed over them on his return from Spain into 
Italy and Greece. 4. The Pennine Alps (Alpes Pen- 
ninae), extending from the Great St. Bernard to the 
sources of the Rhone and Rhine. The name is deri¬ 
ved from the Celtic Penn, “ a summit,” and not, as 
Livy and other ancient writers, together with some 
modem ones, pretend, from Hannibal having crossed 

115 



ALP 


A LP 


into Italy by this path, and who, therefore, make the 
orthography Pocnina, from Poenus. 5. The Rhsetic 
or Tridentine Alps (Alpes Rhseticse sive Tridentinse), 
from the St. Gothard, whose numerous peaks bore the 
name of Adula, to Mont Brenner in the Tyrol. 6. 
The Noric Alps (Alpes Noricse), from the latter point 
to the head of the river Plavis, or la Piave. 7. The 
Carnic or Julian Alps (Alpes Carnic® sive Julise), ter¬ 
minating in the Mons Albius on the confines of Illyri- 
cum.—It was not till the reign of Augustus that the 
Alps became well known. That emperor finally sub¬ 
dued the numerous and savage clans which inhabited 
the Alpine valleys, and cleared the passes of the ban¬ 
ditti that infested them. He improved the old roads 
and constructed new ones ; and finally succeeded in 
establishing a free and easy communication through 
these mountains. ( Strab., 204.) It was then that 
the whole of this great chain was divided into the seven 
portions which have just been mentioned. Among the 
Pennine Alps is Mont Blanc , 14,676 feet high. The 
principal passes at the present day are, that over the 
Great St. Bernard, that over Mont Simplon, and that 
over Mont St. Gothard. The manner in which Han¬ 
nibal is said to have effected his passage over these 
mountains is now generally regarded as a fiction. 
( Vid. Hannibal, under which article some remarks will 
also be offered upon the route of the Carthaginian com¬ 
mander in crossing the Alps.) Besides the divisions 
of the Alps already mentioned, we sometimes meet 
with others, such as the Lepontine Alps (Alpes Lepon- 
tise), between the sources of the Rhine and the Lacus 
Verbanus ( Lago Maggiore) ; the Alpes Summse 
( Cces., B. G., 3, 1, and 4, 10), running off from the 
Pennine Alps, and reaching as far as the Lake Verba¬ 
nus, &c. 

Alphesibcea, daughter of Phygeus, or Phegeus, 
king of Psophis in Arcadia, married Alcmseon, son of 
Amphiaraus, who had fled to her father’s court after 
the murder of his mother. She received, as a bridal 
present, the fatal collar and robe which had been given 
to Eriphyle, to induce her to betray her husband Am¬ 
phiaraus. The ground, however, becoming barren on 
his account, Alcmaeon left Arcadia and his newly- 
married wife, in obedience to an oracle, and came, first 
to Calydon unto king CEneus, then to the Thesprotii, 
and finally to the Achelous. Here he was purified by 
the river-god from the stain of his mother’s blood, and 
married Callirrhoe, the daughter of the stream. Cal- 
lirrhoe had two sons by him, and begged of him, as a 
present, the collar and robe, which were then in the 
hands of Alphesiboea. He endeavoured to obtain them, 
under the pretence that he wished to consecrate them 
at Delphi; but the deception being discovered, he was 
slain by the two brothers of Alphesiboea, who had lain 
in wait for him. Alphesiboea, showing too much sor¬ 
row for the loss of her former husband, was conveyed 
by her brothers to Tegea, and given into the hands of 
Agapenor. The more usual name by which Alphe¬ 
sibcea is known among the ancient fabulists is Arsinoe. 
(Apollod ., 3, 7.— Heyne, ad loc.) 

Alpheus and Alpheus (’AA tyeioq, and ’A/1 tyeog, the 
short penult marking the earlier, the long one the later 
and more usual, pronunciation), I. a river of Pelopon¬ 
nesus, flowing through Arcadia and Elis. It rose in 
the Laconian border of Arcadia, about five stadia from 
Asea, and mingled its waters, at its source, with those 
of the Eurotas. The united streams continued their 
course for the space of twenty stadia, when they dis¬ 
appeared in a chasm. The Alpheus was seen to rise 
again at a place called Pegae ( nyyal ), or “ the fburces," 
in the territory of Megalopolis, and the Eurotas in that 
of Belmina, in Laconia. Flowing onward from this 
quarter, the Alpheus passes through the intervening 
part of Arcadia, enters Elis, passes through the plain 
of Olympia, and discharges its waters, now swelled by 
numerous tributary streams, into the Sicilian Sea. 

116 


The modern name of the river is the Rouphia. —There 
are few streams so celebrated in antiquity as the Al¬ 
pheus. Its proximity to the scene of the Olympic 
contests connects its name continually with the men¬ 
tion of those memorable games, on the part of the an¬ 
cient poets, and gives it, in particular, a conspicuous 
place in the verses of Pindar. There is also a pleas¬ 
ing legend connected with the stream. According to 
the poets, the god of the Alpheus became enamoured 
of and pursued the nymph Arethusa, who was only sa¬ 
ved from him by the intervention of Diana, and chang¬ 
ed for that purpose into a fountain. This fountain she 
placed in the island of Ortygia, near the coast of Sici¬ 
ly, and forming in a later age one of the quarters of the 
city of Syracuse. The ardent river-god, however, did 
not even then desist, but worked a passage for his 
stream amid the intervening ocean, and, rising up again 
in the Ortygian island, commingled its waters with 
those of the fountain of Arethusa. Hence, according 
to popular belief, if anything were thrown upon the Al¬ 
pheus in Elis, it was sure to reappear, after a certain 
lapse of time, upon the bosom of the Ortygian foun¬ 
tain. ( Pausan ., 5, 7.— Id., 8, 54.— Strab., 269 et 343. 
— Pind., Nem., 1, 1, seqq. — Moschvs, Id., 8.— Virg., 
JEn., 3, 692, seqq. — Id., Georg., 3, 180.— Nonnus, in 
Creuz., Melet., 1, p. 78.) According to another ver¬ 
sion, however, of the same legend, it was Diana her¬ 
self, and not the nymph Arethusa, whom the river-god 
of the Alpheus pursued, and, when this pursuit had 
ended in the island of Ortygia, the fountain of Are¬ 
thusa arose there. ( Schol. ad Pind., Nem., 1, 3.— 
vol. 2, p. 428, ed. Bockh.) The account last given 
will afford us a clew to the true meaning of the entire 
fable The goddess Diana had, it seems, a common 
altar at Olympia with the god of the Alpheus. ( He¬ 
rodotus, in Schol. ad Pind., Olymp., 5, 10. — Pau¬ 
san., 5, 14.) To the same Diana water was held sa- 
cred. (Bockh, ad Pind., Nem., 1. — Creuzefs Sytm 
bolik, vol. 2, p. 182.) This part of the worship of 
Diana having passed from the Peloponnesus into Sici¬ 
ly, the worship of the Alpheus accompanied it; or, in 
other words, a common altar for the two divinities -was 
erected by the Syracusans in Ortygia, similar in its at¬ 
tendant rites and ceremonies to the altar at Olympia. 
For in the island of Ortygia all water was held sacred 
(Schol. ad Pind., Nem., 1 , 1 . —2, p. 428, ed. Bockh), 
and Diana, besides, was worshipped at the fountain of 
Arethusa, under the titles of tt ora/iia and ’A Acpeiua. 
From this commingling of rites arose, therefore, the 
poetic legend, that the Alpheus had passed through the 
ocean to Ortygia, and blended its waters with those of 
Arethusa, or, in other wordfe, its rites with those of 
Diana. (Bockh, ad Pind., Nem., 1. c.) —II. An engra¬ 
ver on gems, who executed many works in connexion 
with Arethon, one of his contemporaries. Ahead of 
Caligula, engraved by him when a young man, is still 
extant. (Bracci, pt. 1, tab. 16.) 

Alphius. Avitus, a Roman poet, who wrote an ac¬ 
count of illustrious men, in two volumes. Terentia- 
nus Maurus has cited some verses of the work, having 
reference to the story of Camillus and the schoolmas¬ 
ter of Falisci. (Compare Burmann, Anthol. Lat., vol. 
1, p. 452.) 

AlpInus (Cornelius), a wretched poet, ridiculed by 
Horace (Serm., 1, 10, 36, seqq). In describing Mem- 
non slain by Achilles, he kills him, as it w T ere, accord¬ 
ing to Horace, by the miserable character of his own de¬ 
scription. So also the same poet is represented by the 
Venusian bard as giving the Rhine a head of mud. 
Who this Alpinus actually was cannot be exactly as¬ 
certained, and no wonder, since it would have been 
strange if any particulars of so contemptible a poet had 
escaped oblivion. Cruquius, without any authority, 
discovers in Alpinus the poet Cornelius Gallus, the 
friend of Virgil. Nor is Bentley’s supposition of any 
great value. According to this latter critic, Horace 



ALT 


ALY 


alludes, under the name of Alpinus, to Furius Bibacu- 
lus ; and Bentley thinks that the appellation was given 
him by Horace, either on account ofhis being a native of 
Gaul, or because he described in verse the Gallic war, 
or else, and what Bentley considers most probable, in 
allusion to a foolish line of his composition, “ Jupiter 
hibernas cana nive conspuit Alpes .” { Bentl., ad Horat., 

1, 10, 36.) 

Alpis, a river falling into the Danube. Mannert 
(Geogr ., vol. 3, p. 510) supposes this to have been the 
same with the HCnus, or Inn. It is mentioned by He¬ 
rodotus (4, 29). 

Alsium, a maritime town of Etruria, southeast from 
Caere, now Palo. {Sil. Ital ., 8, 475.) 

Althaea, daughter of Thestius and Eurythemis, 
married CEneus, king of Calydon, by whom she had 
many children, among whom was Meleager, consider¬ 
ed by some to be the son of Mars. Seven days after 
the birth of Meleager, the Destinies came unto Althaea, 
and announced that the life of Meleager depended upon 
a brand then burning on the hearth, and that he would 
die when it was consumed. The mother saved the 
brand from the flames, and kept it very carefully ; but 
when Meleager killed his two uncles, Althaea’s broth¬ 
ers, Althaea, to revenge their death, threw the piece of 
wood into the fire, and, as soon as it was burned, Me¬ 
leager expired. She was afterward so deeply griev¬ 
ed for the loss of her son, that she made away with her 
own existence. ( Apollod ., 1 , 8, 1. — Ovid , Met., 8, 
446, seqq.) Another version of the story is also given 
{Apollod., 1. c.), which appears to have been derived 
from Homer {II., 9, 551.—Compare with this Anton. 
Lib., c. 2, and Heyne, ad Apollod., 1. c.). 

Althemenes (’A XOypevyq, more correct than Al- 
thaemenes, ’AA daipevyg, the common form. Heyne, 
ad Apollod., 3, 2, 1, not. cnt.), son of Catreus, king of 
Crete. Hearing that either he or his brothers were to 
be their father’s murderer, he fled to Rhodes, where he 
made a settlement, to avoid becoming a parricide, and 
built, on Mount Atabyrus, the famous temple of Jupi¬ 
ter Atabyrius. After the death of all his other sons, 
Catreus went after his son Althemenes : when he land¬ 
ed in Rhodes, the inhabitants attacked him, supposing 
him to be an enemy, and he was killed by the hand of 
his own son. When Althemenes knew that he had 
killed his father, he entreated the gods to remove him ; 
and the earth immediately opened, and swallowed him 
up. {Apollod., 3, 2.) According to Diodorus Sicu¬ 
lus, however, he shunned the society of men after the 
fatal deed, and died eventually of grief. {Diod. Sic., 
5, 59.) 

AltInum, a flourishing city near Aquileia. Accord¬ 
ing to Cluverius, the precise site of the ancient Alti- 
num seems uncertain. D’Anville, however, asserts 
{Anal. Geogr. de Vital., p. 84) that its place is yet 
marked by the name of Altino, on the right bank of 
the river Silis {Sile), and near its mouth. According 
to Strabo (214), the situation of Altinum bore much 
resemblance to that of Ravenna. The earliest men¬ 
tion of it is in Velleius Paterculus (2. 76). At a la¬ 
ter period of the Roman empire it must have become 
a place of considerable note, since Martial compares 
the appearance of its shore, lined with villas, to that 
of Baise. {Ep., 4, 25.) It was also celebrated for its 
wool. {Martial, Ep., 14, 153.) 

Altis, the sacred grove of Olympia, on the banks 
of the Alpheus, in the centre of which stood the tem¬ 
ple of Jupiter. It was composed of olive and plane- 
trees, and was surrounded by an enclosure. Besides 
the temple just mentioned, the grove contained those 
of Juno and Lucina, the theatre, and the prytaneum. 
In front of it, or, if we follow Strabo, within its pre¬ 
cincts, was the stadium, together with the race-ground 
or hippodromus. The whole grove was filled with 
monuments and statues, erected in honour of gods, 
heroes, and conquerors. Pausanias mentions more than 


two hundred and thirty statues; of Jupiter alone he 
describes twenty-three, and these were, for the most 
part, works of the first artists. {Pausan., 5, 13.) 
Pliny (34, 17) estimates the whole number of these 
statues, in his time, at three thousand. The Altis con¬ 
tained also numerous treasuries, belonging to different 
Grecian cities, similar to those at Delphi. These were 
situated on a basement of Porine stone, to the north 
of the temple of Juno. {Vid. Olympia.) 

Aluntium, a town of Sicily, on the northern coast, 
not far from Calacta. Now Alontio. Cicero {in Verr., 

4, 29) calls the place Haluntium. 

Alyattes, a king of Lydia, father of Croesus, suc¬ 
ceeded Sadyattes. He drove the Cimmerians from 
Asia, and made war against Cyaxares, king of the 
Medes, the grandson of Deioces. He died after a 
reign of 57 years, and after having brought to a close 
a war against the Milesians. An immense barrow or 
mound was raised upon his grave, composed of stones 
and earth. This is still visible within about five miles 
of Sardis or Sart. For some curious remarks on the 
resemblance between this tomb, as described by He¬ 
rodotus, and that said to have been erected in memory 
of Porsenna {Varro, ap. Plin., 36, 13), and which af¬ 
fords a new argument in favour of the Lydian origin 
of Etrurian civilization, consult the Excursus of Creu- 
zer, ad Herod., 1 , 93 {ed. Bahr, vol. 1 , p. 924).—It 
is also related that an eclipse of the sun terminated a 
battle between this monarch and Cyaxares, and that 
this eclipse had been predicted by Thales. {Herod., 
1, 74.— Bdhr, ad loc.) Modern investigations make 
it to have been a total one. {Oltmann, Act. Soc. Be- 
rolin. Mathemat., 1812.) It is worthy of notice, too, 
that the same eclipse is mentioned in the Persian poem 
Schahnameh, as having taken place under king Kei- 
kawus, who is thought to have been the Cyaxares of 
the Greek writers. ( Von Hammer, Wiener Jahrbiich., 
9, p. 13.) For remarks on the chronology of this reign, 
consult Clinton's Fasti Hellenici, vol. 1 , 2 d ed., p. 296 
et 298, and also Larcher, Histoire d'Herodote, vol. 7, p. 
537. {Table Chronol.) 

Alypius, I. a philosopher of Alexandrea in Egypt, 
contemporary with Jamblichus. He was remarkably 
small of size, but possessed, according to Eunapius, a 
very subtle turn of mind, and was very skilful in dia¬ 
lectics. Alypius wrote nothing; all his instruction 
was given orally. Jamblichus composed a life of this 
philosopher. {Biogr. Univ., vol. 1, p. 657.) — II. A 
native of Alexandrea, who wrote a work on music, en¬ 
titled, E icayuyrj povoiuy, or “ Introduction to Music.” 
He divides the whole musical art into seven portions : 
1. Sounds. 2. Intervals. 3. Systems. 4. Kinds. 

5. Tones. 6. Changes. 7. Compositions. He treats, 
however, of only one of these, the fifth ; whence Mei- 
bomius concludes that only a fragment ofhis work has 
reached us. There is some difference of opinion as 
to the period when Alypius flourished. Cassiodorus 
{De Musica, sub fin.) believes, that he was anterior to 
Ptolemy, and even to Euclid. De la Borde {Essai sur 
la Musique, vol. 3, p. 133) places him in the latter 
half of the fourth century after Christ. Of all the an¬ 
cient writers on music that have come down to us, he 
is the only one through whom we are made acquainted 
with the notes employed by the Greeks ; so that, with¬ 
out him, our knowledge of the ancient music would be 
greatly circumscribed. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 
8, p. 270.)—III. A native of Antioch, an architect and 
engineer, who lived in the reign of Julian the apostate, 
to whom he dedicated a geographical description of the 
ancient world. This production is considered by some 
to be the same with the short abridgment, first pub¬ 
lished by Godefroy (Gothofredus), in Greek and Latin, 
at Geneva, 1628, in 4to. There is, however, no good 
reason whatever to suppose this work to have been 
written by Alypius. The Greek text published by 
Godefroy appears rather to have been forged after the 

117 



AM A 


AM A 


Latin version, which is very old and very badly done. 
We perceive, from the letters of Julian that have come 
down to us, that Alypius was also a poet: and that 
he had commanded, mareover, in Britain, where his 
mildness and firmness combined had gained him 
great praise. It was Alypius whom Julian charged 
with the execution of his order for rebuilding the tem¬ 
ple of Jerusalem ; a w r ork that was broken off, in so re¬ 
markable a manner, by globes of fire bursting forth 
from the ground, and wounding and putting to flight 
the workmen. ( Biogr. Univ., vol. 1, p. 657.—Con¬ 
sult Salverte, des Sciences Occultes, vol. 2, p. 224.) 

Alypus, a statuary of Sicyon, pupil of Naucydes, 
the Argive. He cast in brass the statues of certain 
Lacedemonians who fought with Lysander in the bat¬ 
tle ofiEgos Potamos. ( Pausan ., 10, 9.) 

Alyzia (’A?iv&a), a town of Acarnania, about fif¬ 
teen stadia from the sea, and, as Cicero informs us in 
one of his letters (ad Fam., 16, 2), one hundred and 
twenty stadia from Leucas. It appears to have been 
a place of some note, as it is noticed by several wri¬ 
ters. The earliest of these are Scylax ( Peripl. , p. 13) 
and Thucydides (7, 31). A naval action was fought 
in its vicinity, between the Athenians under Timothe- 
us, and the Lacedaemonians, not long before the bat¬ 
tle of Leuctra. ( Xen., Hist. Gr., 5, 4, 65.) Belong¬ 
ing to Alyzia was a port consecrated to Hercules, with 
a grove, where was at one time a celebrated group, 
the work of Lysippus, representing the labours of Her¬ 
cules ; but a Roman general caused it to be removed 
to Rome, as more worthy to possess such a chef- 
d’oeuvre. (Strabo, 459.) This port appears to an¬ 
swer to the modern Porto Candili. (Cramer's Anc. 
Greece, vol. 2, p. 18, seqq.) 

Amagetobria. Vid. Magetobria. 

Amalthaa, I. the name of the goat that suckled 
Jupiter. The monarch of Olympus, as a reward for 
this act of kindness, translated her to the skies, along 
with her two young ones, whom she had put aside in or¬ 
der to accommodate the infant deity, and he made them 
stars in the northern hemisphere, on the arm of Auriga. 
The whole legend appears to be of a mixed character, 
and from a simple origin, adapted to the rude ideas of 
an early race, to have gradually assumed an astronomi¬ 
cal character. Thus, according to the legend, the in¬ 
fant Jove was nurtured by the milk of the goat, while 
the wild-bees deposited their honey on his lips. We 
have here the milk and the honey that play so conspic¬ 
uous a part in Oriental imagery, as typifying the highest 
degree of human felicity and abundance, and, there¬ 
fore, well worthy to be the food of an infant deity ap¬ 
pearing in human form. From the milk and honey, 
moreover, of early fable, come the ambrosia and nec¬ 
tar of a later age, since nectar was regarded as a quin¬ 
tessence of honey, and ambrosia as an extract from the 
purest milk. (Bottiger, Amalthcea, vol. 1, p. 22.) The 
early legend goes on to state, that the infant Jove, 
when playing with his four-footed foster parent, acci¬ 
dentally broke off one of her horns. This was made 
at first to serve as a drinking cup, and thus recalls the 
custom of a primitive age, when the horns of animals 
were generally employed for this purpose ; the horn- 
cup appearing as well in the earliest symposia and the 
Bacchanalian orgies of the Greeks, as in the legends 
of the Scandinavian Edda and in the halls of Odin. 
With the progress of ideas, a new feature was added 
to the fable. The horn of Amalthsea is no longer a 
mere cup. This use has ended, and Jupiter now or¬ 
dains, that it shall be ever full to overflowing with what¬ 
ever its possessor shall wish. (Apostolius, Cent., 2, 
86, p. 30. —Compare Fischer , ad Palaphat., 46, p. 
1/9.) Hence arose the beautiful fiction of the horn 
of plenty, the Cornu Copia , one of the happiest and 
most prolific allegories of the plastic art. Jove was 
said, in this later version of the fable, to have broken 
off the horn, filled it with all the richest fruits, and flow¬ 


ers, and teeming productions of earth, and to have given 
it to a nymph, Adrastea, who had charge, with others, 
of his earlier years.—A change had also been made in 
another part of the primitive legend. The goat Amal¬ 
thsea, though so kind to the infant deity, and though 
all white and beautiful of form, was said, nevertheless, 
to have had a look so fearful and terror-inspiring, that 
the Titans, unable to endure it, entreated the earth to 
hide the animal from view. (Eratosthenes, Cataster., 
13, p. 10, seqq., ed. Schaub. — Hygin., Poet. Astron., 
2, 13.) We have here a clew to the origin of the whole 
fable. The ancient navigators had observed that the 
constellations of the She-Goat and the Kids (Capella 
and Hcedi) brought stormy and rainy weather, and they 
were therefore regarded as inauspicious for mariners 
and dangerous for ships. (Arat. Phan., 156, seqq. — 
Schol. ad, Arat., p. 46, ed. Buhlc. — Foss., ad Virg ., 
Georg., 1, 205.) Hence probably the name alf was ap¬ 
plied to the constellation of the She-Goat, in its primi¬ 
tive meaning of a tempest, a primitive meaning which 
afterward disappeared from use, while the secondary 
one of a she-goat usurped its place. (Buttmann, ad 
Ideler, Sternnamen, p. 309.) With this earlier mean¬ 
ing of alt; is connected that of aljic, “ a storm" or “ tem¬ 
pest," subsequently indicative of the JIgis of Jupiter, 
w’hich he was believed to wield amid the warfare of 
the elements. From all this arose the early legend. 
The bright stars in the constellation of Capella become 
the fair, white she-goat Amalthaea. The storms and 
clouds which the constellation brings with it, become 
the fear-inspiring look on the part of the animal, and, 
by the rude simplicity of early times, the she-goat is 
made the foster-parent of Jove. (Compare Hock, Cre- 
ta, vol. 1 , p. 177, seqq. — Creuzer, Symbolik, vol. 2, 
p. 424, seqq.) —II. A daughter of Melisseus, king of 
Crete. She and her sister Melissa had charge of the 
infant Jupiter, and fed him with goat’s milk and honey. 
This is merely a later version of the early fable men¬ 
tioned under Amalthaea I. The she-goat and bees are 
now two females. (Diod. Sic., 5, 70.—Compare Bot¬ 
tiger, Amalthaa, vol. 1, p. 24.)—III. A sibyl of Cumae, 
called also Hierophile and Demophile. She is sup¬ 
posed to be the same who brought nine books of proph¬ 
ecies to Tarquin, king of Rome. (Vid. Sibyllae.) 

Amaltheum, a gymnasium, or, rather, gymnasium 
and study combined, which Atticus had arranged in 
his villa in Epirus. It was replete with all that could 
amuse or instruct, and here, too, were placed the statues 
of all the illustrious men by whom the glory of the Ro¬ 
man state had been advanced to its proud elevation, 
just as Jupiter had been nurtured by the goat Amal¬ 
thaea. Hence its name Amaltheum (’ApaMeiov). 
(Cic., Ep. ad Att., 1, 16. — Compare Erncsti, Clav. 
Cic., Ind. Graco-Lat.) —Cicero appears to have had 
something of the kind in his villa at Arpinum, and 
which he calls his Amalthaa, in the singular (fern.). 
(Ep. ad Att., 2, 1.) 

Amanus, I. a continuation of the chain of Mount 
Taurus, stretching to the north as far as Melitene and 
the Euphrates. It is situate at the eastern extremity 
of the Mediterranean, near the Gulf of Issus, and sep¬ 
arates Cilicia from Syria. The defile or pass in these 
mountains was called Portus Amanicus, or Pyle Syr- 
ise. Its valleys and recesses were inhabited by wild 
and fierce tribes, who lived chiefly by plundering their 
neighbours, though they boasted of their freedom un¬ 
der the sonorous name of Eleuthero-Cilices, or Free 
j Cilicians. The modern name of the chain is, accord- 
! ing to Mannert, Almadag; but, according to D’An- 
| ville, Al-Lukan. (Strab., 521. —Lucan, 8, 224.— Cic , 

\ Ep. ad Att., 5, 20.— Plin., 5, 27.)—II. A deity wor¬ 
shipped in Pontus and Cappadocia, and also called 
Omanus and Anandatus. (Compare Tschucke, ad 
j Strabo. 11, p. 512, ed. Casaub. —vol. 4, p. 478.) Bo- 
I chart identifies him with the sun (Geogr. Sacr., p. 

I 277), and others with the Persian Horn, a type of the 




AMA 


AMA 


same luminary. ( Creuzer, Symbolik , vol. 2, p. 164.) 
Mount Amanus thus becomes the mountain of the sun, 
even as Lebanon appears in the Phoenician Cosmog¬ 
ony of Sanchoniathon 

Amaracus, a son of Cynaras, king of Cyprus, who, 
having fallen and broken a vase of perfumes which he 
was carrying, pined away, being either overpowered by 
the strong fragrance, or struck with grief at the loss 
he had sustained. The gods, out of compassion, 
changed him into the amaracus , or sweet-marjoram. 
Servius ( ad. Virg., JEn., 1, 692) gives a somewhat dif¬ 
ferent account, and makes Amaracus, not a son, but an 
attendant, of the king’s. As regards the plant amara¬ 
cus itself, and its identity with the of the 

Greeks, consult Fee, Flore de Virgile, p. clxxxv. 

Amardi, a nation of Asia. Ptolemy (5, 13) places 
them in the greater Armenia, on the borders of Me¬ 
dia; Nearchus, Pliny (6,17), and Strabo, in the mount¬ 
ains of Elymais, in Persia. Others assign Margiana 
as the country in which they lived. It is possible 
that there were several tribes of this same name 
spread over different countries, or perhaps several colo¬ 
nies of this people. Vossius thinks that all robbers 
and fugitives inhabiting the mountains were called 
Amardi by the Persians. {Voss., ad Pomp. Mel., b. 
6. — Compare Pomp. Mel., French transl., vol. 1, p. 
202 .) 

Amaryllis, the name of a female in Virgil’s ec¬ 
logues. Some commentators have supposed that the 
poet spoke of Rome under this fictitious appellation, 
but this supposition is a very improbable one. (Con¬ 
sult Heyne, ad Virg., Eclog., 1, 28, towards the con¬ 
clusion of the note.) 

Amarynthus, a town of Euboea, seven stadia from 
Eretria, celebrated for the temple and worship of Diana 
Amarynthia. {Strab., 448.— Liv., 35, 38.— Pausan., 
1, 31.) 

Amasenus, a small river of Latium, crossing the 
Pontine Marshes, and falling into the Tyrrhenian Sea, 
now La Toppia. {Virg., JEn., 7, 685.) 

AmasIa or Amasea (’A puaeia, by the later Greeks 
'A fiaoia), a city of Pontus, on the river Iris, the ori¬ 
gin of which is not ascertained. It was the birthplace 
of Mithradates the Great and of Strabo the geogra¬ 
pher. At a later period, when under the Roman sway, 
it became the capital of Pontus Galaticus ( Hicrocles, 
p. 701), and bore upon its coins the title of Metropo¬ 
lis. Strabo (560) gives us a particular description of 
his native city. The modern Amasyah or Amassia 
is supposed to occupy the site of the ancient Amasea. 
{Mannert, 6, pt. 2, p, 461, seqq.) 

Amasis, I. a king of Egypt, of one of the earlier 
dynasties. He rendered himself odious to his subjects 
by his violent and tyrannical conduct, and, on the in¬ 
vasion of Egypt by Actisanes, king of ^Ethiopia, the 
greater part of the inhabitants went over to the latter. 
Such is the account given by Diodorus Siculus (1, 60), 
where many think we should read Amosis for Amasis. 
(Consult Steph. and Wesseling, ad Diod., 1. c.) Jus¬ 
tin Martyr {Parcencs., p. 10) makes him to have been 
the first Pharaoh of the 18th dynasty. Eusebius 
{Chron.) asserts that he was the same king during 
whose reign Jacob died. Olearius {ad Philostr., Vit. 
Apoli, 42) maintains that he was monarch of Egypt 
in the time of the Exodus. All is uncertainty respect¬ 
ing him.—II. An Egyptian, who, from having been a 
common soldier, became king of Egypt. He succeed¬ 
ed in gaining the favour of king Apries, and was de¬ 
spatched by that monarch to quell a sedition which 
had broken out. As he was endeavouring to dissuade 
those who had revolted from the step they had taken, 
one of them came behind him and put a helmet on his 
head, saying that he put it on him to make him a king. 
Amasis was thereupon proclaimed king by the insur¬ 
gents, and immediately marched against and defeated 
his former master, B.C. 569. He governed with pru¬ 


dence and energy. Under his reign Egypt enjoyed 
for many years uninterrupted prosperity. To prevent 
those offences which an idle and overflowing popula¬ 
tion might commit, he ordained that every one of his 
subjects should yearly give an account, to the ruler of 
the nome or district in which he resided, of the means 
of subsistence which he enjoyed, and the manner in 
which he lived. He showed also an enlightened spirit 
in the permission which he granted to strangers, and 
particularly to the Greeks, to visit Egypt; he gave 
them settlements along his coasts, and permitted them 
to erect temples there for the performance of their na¬ 
tional worship. Solon was one of those who visited 
Egypt during the reign of this prince. Amasis es¬ 
poused a Grecian female, a native of Cyrene : he dis¬ 
played his attachment to the Greeks in various ways, 
and contributed liberally, not only to the rebuilding of 
the temple at Delphi, but to the improvement and em¬ 
bellishment of many cities and temples of Greece. In 
his own country he constructed numerous magnificent 
works, in the massy and gigantic style so peculiar to 
Egypt. He subjected also the isle of Cyprus, and 
made it tributary to his crown. The prosperity of 
Amasis, however, was disturbed, at last, by the prep¬ 
arations which Cambyses, king of Persia, made to at¬ 
tack his kingdom. The Persian monarch had demand¬ 
ed the daughter of Amasis in marriage; but the father, 
knowing that Cambyses meant to make her, not his 
wife, but his concubine, endeavoured to deceive him 
by sending in her stead the daughter of Apries. The 
female herself disclosed the imposition to Cambyses, 
and the latter, in great wrath, resolved to march against 
Egypt. The defection of Phanes, moreover, an offi¬ 
cer among the Greek auxiliaries, who fled to Cam¬ 
byses on account of some dissatisfaction with Ama¬ 
sis, proved a serious injury to the Egyptian prince. 
The Greek informed Cambyses how he might pass the 
intervening deserts, and gave him also very important 
information respecting the kingdom he was about to 
invade. Amasis escaped by death the perils which 
threatened his country. He died B.C. 525, after a 
reign of 44 years, and the whole fury of the storm fell 
upon his son Psammeticus. Cambyses, however, de¬ 
termined not to be disappointed of his revenge, caused 
the body of the deceased monarch to be taken from 
the royal sepulchre at Sais ; and, after having practised 
various indignities upon it, commanded it to be burned, 
an order equally revolting to the religious feelings of 
both the Persians and Egyptians. The story of Ama¬ 
sis and Polycrates is well known {vid. Polycrates), 
though the reason commonly assigned for the former’s 
refusing to continue the alliance is perhaps less worthy 
of credit than that given by Diodorus Siculus, 1, 15. 
{Hcrodot., 2, 162, seqq. — Id., 3, 1, seqq.) Athenaeus 
(15, 25.—vol. 5, p. 479, ed. Schwcigh.) informs us, 
that Amasis first insinuated himself into the good 
graces of Apries by a chaplet of flowers which he pre¬ 
sented to him on his birthday. The king, enchanted 
with the beauty of the chaplet, invited him to a feast, 
which he gave on that occasion, and received him 
among the number of his friends. 

Amastris, I. a daughter of the brother of Darius 
Codomannus. Alexander intended giving her in mar- 
rige to Craterus, but, in the confusion and political 
changes which followed the death of the conqueror, 
the plan, of course, fell to the ground, and she became 
the wife of Dionysius, tyrant of Heraclea in Pontus. 
{Memnon, c. 5.) Dionysius, at his death, left her as 
the guardian of his children, on account of the in¬ 
fluence she enjoyed among the Macedonians. She 
was subsequently married to Lysimachus, and, though 
some time after separated from him by reason of the 
political movements of the day, continued to enjoy 
high consideration and respect. She founded a city at 
this period, and called it after her name. She was mur¬ 
dered by her own sons, who were punished by Lysima- 

119 



AMAZONES. 


AMAZONES. 


chus for the unnatural deed.—II. A city on the coast 
of Paphlagonia, near the mouth of the Parthenius. It 
was founded by Amastris, the niece of Darius Codo- 
mannus, and wife of Dionysius, tyrant of Heraclea, 
who gave her name to the new settlement. The ear¬ 
lier town of Sesamus, mentioned by Homer (II., 2, 
853), served for its citadel. It is praised as a beauti¬ 
ful city by both the younger Pliny (Ep., 10, 99) and 
the later ecclesiastical writers. (Compare Nicetoe 
Paph. Or., in S. Hyacint., 17.) Amastris, like Sinope, 
was built on a small peninsula, and had, in conse¬ 
quence, a double harbour. ( Strabo , 544.) The mod¬ 
ern name is Amastra. (Mannert , 6, pt. 3, p. 25.) 

Amata, the wife of King Latinus, and mother of 
Lavinia. She hung herself in despair, on finding that 
she could not prevent the marriage of her daughter 
with Aeneas. ( Virg., JEn., 12, 603.) 

Amathus (gen. untis), a city on the southern side 
of the island of Cyprus, and of great antiquity. Ado¬ 
nis was worshipped here as well as Venus. Scylax 
affirms that the Amathusians were autochthonous (Per- 
ipl., p. 41); and it appears from Hesychius that they 
had a peculiar dialect (s. v. 'ErdXai, Kvbudda, Ma- 
/U/ca). Amathus was celebrated as a favourite resi¬ 
dence of Venus. (JEn., 10, 51.— Catull., Ep., 36.) 
The goddess, as an author who wrote a history of 
Amathus, and is quoted by Hesychius ( s. v. ’A (ppodi- 
rof), reported, was represented with a beard. Ama¬ 
thus was the see of a Christian bishop under the By¬ 
zantine emperors. ( Hierocl. , p. 706.) Its ruins are 
to be seen near the little town of Limmeson or Lim- 
mesol , somewhat to the north of Cape Gatto. (Cra¬ 
mer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 377, seqq.) 

Amazones, a name given by the ancient writers to 
certain female warriors, and derived, according to the 
popular opinion, from a , priv., and pu^oq, “ a female 
breast, ” because it was believed that they burned off 
the right breast in order to handle the bow more con¬ 
veniently. The men among them were held in an in¬ 
ferior, and, as it were, servile condition, attending to all 
the employments which occupy the time and care of 
females in other nations, while the Amazons them¬ 
selves took charge of all things relating to government 
and warfare. (Diod. Sic., 2, 45.— Id., 3, 52.) The 
Greek writers speak of African and Asiatic Amazons. 
(Diod. Sic., I, c.) The Amazons of Africa were the 
more ancient, and were also the more remarkable for 
the number and splendour of their warlike achieve¬ 
ments. They dwelt in the western regions of Africa, 
occupying an island in a lake called Tritonis, and 
which was near the main ocean. Diodorus describes 
this island as beautiful and productive, and names it 
Hesperia. Under the guidance of a warlike queen, 
whom he calls Myrina, they conquered the people of 
Atlantis, their neighbours, traversed a large portion of 
Africa, established friendly relations with Horus, son 
of Isis, then on the throne of Egypt, subdued Arabia, 
Syria, various parts of Asia Minor, and penetrated 
even into Thrace. After this long career of conquest 
they returned to Africa, and were annihilated by Her¬ 
cules. At this same time, too, the Lake Tritonis dis¬ 
appeared as such, and became part of the ocean, the 
intervening land having been swallowed up. (Diod. 
Sic., 3, 54.)—The Amazons of Asia are described by 
the same writer (2, 45) as having dwelt originally on 
the banks of the Thermodon in Pontus, and with this 
statement the ancient poets all agree. Herodotus 
also (9, 27) places the Amazons on this same river, 
and he affirms that it was from thence they advanced 
into Greece and invaded Attica. He likewise speaks 
of an expedition undertaken by the Greeks against 
these warlike females, in which the latter were defeat¬ 
ed near the Thermodon and led away captive. A part 
of them, however, escaped to Scythia, and became the 
mothers of the Sauromatse (4, 110). The same his¬ 
torian adds, that the Scythian term, which answered 
120 


j to the Greek word ’Apufav, was Oiorpata, or “ man- 
slayer.” We have here what are sometimes called the 
Scythian Amazons, making, in fact, a third class.—Di¬ 
odorus gives an account of the victories of the Asiatic 
Amazons, as he had done in the case of the African. 
He makes them to have conquered a large portion of 
Asia, extending their victorious arms from the regions 
beyond the Tanais (or Don) as far as Syria (2, 46). 
Other accounts tell of their invasion of Attica, in or¬ 
der to recover their queen Antiope, who had been car¬ 
ried off by Theseus (Plut., Vit. Thes., c. 26, seqq.); 
of their previous wars wfith Hercules ; and still more 
anciently of their contest with Bacchus. (Pausan., 

1, 15.— Id., 7, 2.— Plut., Qurcst. Gr., p. 541.— Justin , 

2, 4.) They are also mentioned by Homer, who speaks 
of their wars with the kings of Phrygia (II., 3, 184), 
and of their defeat by Bellerophon ( II ., 6,186). They 
are said also to have been among the allies of the Tro¬ 
jans in the war with the Greeks, and their queen Pen- 
thesilea was slain by Achilles. (Hygin., Fab., 112.—- 
Diet. Crit., 4, 2, 3. — Tzetz. ad Lycophron, 999.— 
Diod. Sic., 2, 46.) They make their appearance again, 
in a later age, in the history of Alexander’s expedition 
into Asia, and their queen Thalestris is said to have 
paid a visit to the victorious monarch, having come 
for that purpose from the vicinity of Hyrcania ; but 
Quintus Curtius, who gives us this information, deals, 
as usual, in the marvellous, and with his wonted igno¬ 
rance of geography, places the plains of Themiscyra, 
and the river Thermodon which waters them, contigu¬ 
ous to the country of the Hyrcanians. (Q. Curt., 6, 5, 
25.—Compare Freinshem, ad loc.) —The Amazons are 
described as armed with bow and arrow's, and as having 
also battle-axes and crescent shields (“ pclta, lunata .” 
— Virg., JEn., 1 , 490). Some waiters, differing from 
Diodorus, as cited above, make the Amazons to have 
had no males among them, but to have merely visited, 
at stated times, the neighbouring communities, for the 
purpose of a temporary union and the obtaining of off¬ 
spring. They farther state, that the female children 
thus born to them were carefully reared, after having 
the right breast seared with a red-hot iron, but that all 
the male ones were destroyed immediately after birth. 
Diodorus, however, informs us, in speaking of the 
Asiatic Amazons, that they merely mutilated (hny- 
povv) the legs and arms of the male children, in order 
to render them unfit for w r ar. About the treatment of 
the male offspring among the African Amazons he is 
altogether silent.—Thus much for the Amazons, as 
they have been described or referred to by the ancient 
writers. Various explanations, as may well be sup¬ 
posed, have been given of this curious legend. Some 
see in it an old tradition, founded, in a measure, on 
historical truth, of a community of women, who ac¬ 
tually formed themselves into a regular state, after 
getting rid of, or subjugating their husbands. This is 
too improbable to need any serious refutation. R. P. 
Knight thinks that “the fable” of the Amazons (for so 
he terms it) “ arose from some symbolical composition 
of an androgynous character, and which sought to ex¬ 
press the blending of the two sexes into one shape; 
the full, prominent form of the female breast being 
given on one side, and the flat form of the male on 
the other.” (Inquiry into the Symbol. Lang., &c., § 
50.— Class. Journ., vol. 23, p. 238.) Creuzer agrees 
with Knight in making the legend a religious one, but 
he sees in the story of the Amazons evident traces of 
some accounts that must have reached the early Greeks, 
respecting a female priesthood of a warlike character, 
connected with the worship of the great powers of na¬ 
ture, and on whom, as a part of that worship, either a 
periodical or perpetual continence was enjoined. The 
change of vestments and of characters, so common 
in this same class of Asiatic religions, was indicated, 
according to this same writer, by the removal of one 
of the breasts. The Amazons, therefore^ according 





AMAZONES. 


AMB 


to this explanation, will be a band of warlike priest¬ 
esses or Hierodul®, who, in renouncing maternity, and 
in giving themselves up to martial exercises, sought 
to imitate the periodical sterility of the great powers 
of light, the sun and moon, and the combats in which 
these were from time to time engaged, against the 
gloomy energies of night and winter. ( Creuzer, Sym- 
boli/c, par Guigniaut, vol. 2, p. 90, seqq ) That the 
legend of the Amazons rests on a religious basis, we 
readily admit, but that any Amazons ever existed, 
even as warlike priestesses, we do not at all believe. 
The first source of error respecting them is the ety¬ 
mology commonly assigned to the name. To derive 
this from the negative a and ydfrq, and to make 
it indicate the loss of one of the breasts, is, we think, 
altogether erroneous. If a Greek derivation is to be 
assigned to the term Amazon, it is far more correct to 
deduce the word from the intensive a, and ydt^og, and 
to regard it as denoting, not the absence of one breast, 
but the presence of many. The name ’kyufav 
( Amazmi) then becomes equivalent to the Greek 
UolvyuOToq (Polymastus) and the Latin Multimam- 
mia, both of which epithets are applied by the ancient 
mythologists to the Ephesian Diana, with her numer¬ 
ous breasts, as typifying the great mother and nurse 
of all created beings. It is curious to connect with 
this the well-known tradition, that the Amazons found¬ 
ed the city of Ephesus, and at a remote period sacri¬ 
ficed to the goddess there. ( Callim ., H. in Dian., 
238. — Dionys. Perieg., 828.) But how does the 
view which we have just taken of the erroneous nature 
of the common etymology, in the case of the name 
Amazon , harmonize with the remains of ancient sculp¬ 
ture 1 In the most satisfactory manner. No monu¬ 
ment of antiquity represents the Amazons with a mu¬ 
tilated bosom, but, wherever their figures are given, 
they have both breasts fully and plainly developed. 
Thus, for example, the Amazons on the Phigaleian 
frieze have both breasts entire, one being generally ex¬ 
posed, while the other is concealed by drapery, but 
still in the latter the roundness of form is very percept¬ 
ible. Both breasts appear also in the fine figure of 
the Amazon belonging to the Lansdowne collection ; 
and so again in the basso-relievo described by Winckel- 
mann in his Monumenti Inediti. The authorities, in¬ 
deed, on this head are altogether incontrovertible. 

( Winckelmann , Gesch. der Kunst des Alterthums, vol. 
2, p. 131.— Id., Mon. Ined., pt. 2, c. 18, p. 184.— 
Muller, Archdologie der Kunst, p. 530. — Elgin and 
Phigaleian Marbles, vol. 2, p. 179.— Heyne, ad Apol- 
lod., 2, 5, 9.) The first Greek writer that made men¬ 
tion of females who removed their right breast was 
Hippocrates (Ilepi depov, ic. t. A., § 43). His remarks, 
however, were meant to apply merely to the females 
of the Sauromat®, a Scythian tribe ; but subsequent 
writers made them extend to the fabled race of the 
Amazons.—It appears to us, then, from a careful ex¬ 
amination of the subject, that the term Amazon origi¬ 
nally indicated neither a warlike female, nor a race of 
such females, but faas merely an epithet applied to the 
Ephesian Diana, the great parent and source of nur¬ 
ture, and was intended to express the most striking 
of her attributes. The victories and conquests of the 
Amazonian race are nothing more, then, than a figura¬ 
tive allusion to the spread of her worship over a large 
portion of the globe, and the contests with Bacchus, 
Hercules, and Theseus refer in reality to the struggles 
of this worship with other rival systems of faith, for 
Bacchus, Hercules, and Theseus are nothing more 
than mythic types of three different forms of belief. 
Hence we see why the conflict of the Amazons with 
Theseus, who was nothing more than the symbol of 
the establishment of the Ionic worship, became a most 
appropriate ornament for the frieze of the Parthenon, 
the temple of the great national goddess Minerva. It 
was, in fact, a delineation of the downfall of a rival sys- 

Q 


tem of belief.—Before we conclude, it may not be 
amiss to examine more closely into the etymology of 
the term Amazon. We have thus far regarded the 
word as of Grecian origin. What if, after all, it be 
of Oriental birth, and have reference to the far-famed 
Asi of Oriental and Scandinavian mythology 1 Sal- 
verte sees in them a class of female divinities, the 
spouses of the Asi, and he traces the first part of the 
name to the Pehlvi am, denoting “ a mother,” or “ a 
female” generally. ( Essai sur les Noms, &c., vol. 2, 
p. 178.). Ritter also detects in the name an allusion 
to the Asi (Vorhalle , p. 465, seqq.) ; and, in connex¬ 
ion with this view of the subject, we may state that 
the name of Asia (the land of the Asi) was first given 
to a small district near the Cayster, and in the very vi¬ 
cinity of Ephesus, the city which the Amazons had 
founded. Ephesus, moreover, first bore, it is said, the 
name of Smyrna, an appellation afterward bestowed 
on the city of Smyrna, which was founded by an Ephe¬ 
sian colony. This term Smyrna is said to have been 
originally the name of an Amazonian leader. Would 
it be too fanciful to deduce it from Asa-Myrina, and 
thus blend together the name of the African Amazon 
Myrina with the sacred appellation of the Asi 1 

Amazonius, a surname of Apollo at Pyrrhicus, in La¬ 
conia, from the protection he is said to have afforded 
to the inhabitants when attacked by the Amazons. 
(Pausan., 3, 25.) » 

Ambarri, a people of Gallia Celtica, situate be¬ 
tween the iEdui and Allobroges, along either bank of 
the Arar or Saone. Following D’Anville’s authority, 
we would place them in the present Department de 
l'Ain. Livy enumerates them among the Gallic tribes 
that crossed the Alps in the time of Tarquinius Pris- 
cus. (Liv., 5, 34.— Coes., B. G., 1, 11, et 14.) 

Ambarvalia, sacred rites in honour of Ceres, pre¬ 
vious to the commencement of reaping, which were 
called sacra ambarvalia, because the victim was 
carried around the fields ( arva ambiebat .— Vid. Ar- 
vales). 

Ambiani, a people of Gallia Belgica, whose capital 
was Samarobriva, afterward called Ambiani or Ambi- 
anum, now Amiens. Their territory corresponds to 
what is now the Department de la Somme. (Coes., B. 
G., 2, 4.— Id. ib., 7, 75.) 

AmbiatInus Vicus, a village of Germany, where 
the Emperor Caligula was born. It was situate be¬ 
tween Confluentes and Baudobriga, and is supposed 
by some to be now Capelle, on the Rhine, by others, 
Konigstuhl. Mannert, without fixing the modern site, 
thinks it lay on the Moselle . (Geogr., 2, p. 210.— 

Sueton., Vit. Calig., 8.) 

Ambigatus, a king of the. Celt®, in the time of 
Tarquinius Priscus. According to the account given 
by Livy (5, 34), he sent his two nephews, Sigovesus 
and Bellovesus, in quest of new settlements, with the 
view of diminishing the overflowing numbers at home. 
The two chieftains drew lots respecting their course, 
and Sigovesus obtained the route that led towards the 
Hercynian forest, Bellovesus the road to Italy. What 
is here stated, however, appears to be a mere fable, 
owing its origin to the simultaneous emigrations of 
two hordes of Gallic warriors. (Compare Thierry, 
Histoire des Gaulois, vol. 1, p. 39.) 

Ambiorix, a king of one half of the Eburones in 
Gaul, Cativolcus being king of the other half. He 
was an inveterate foe to the Romans, and after in¬ 
flicting several serious losses upon, narrowly escaped 
the pursuit of, C®sar’s men, on being defeated by that 
commander. (Cces., B. G., 5, 24, et 26.— Id., 6, 30.) 

Ambivareti and Ambivareti (for we have, in the 
Greek Paraphrase of C®sar, b. 7, c. 75, ’ kfibiCaphov, 
and at c. 90, ’kybibapr/rov), a Gallic tribe, ranked 
among the clients of the ^Edui, whence Glareanus 
and Ciacconius suspect them to be the same with 
the Ambarri. Almost all the MSS. of Caesar call them 

121 




AMB 


AMBROSITJS. 


Ambluareti. The ancient geographical writers are 
silent respecting them. 

AmbivakIti, a tribe of Gallia Belgica, a short dis¬ 
tance beyond the Mosa or Meuse. (Cces., B. G., 4, 9.) 

Ambracia, a celebrated city of Epirus, the capital 
of the country, and the royal residence of Pyrrhus 
and his descendants. It was situate on the banks of 
the Aracthus or Arethon, a short distance from the 
waters of the Ambracian Gulf. The founders of the 
place were said to have been a colony of Corinthians, 
headed by Tolgus or Torgus, 650 B.C., who was 
either the brother or the son of Cypselus, chief of 
Corinth. ( Strabo , 325. — Scymn., Ch., v. 452.) It 
early acquired some maritime celebrity, by reason of 
its advantageous position, and was a powerful and in¬ 
dependent city towards the commencement of the Pe¬ 
loponnesian war, in which it espoused the cause of Co¬ 
rinth and Sparta. At a later period we find its in¬ 
dependence threatened by Philip, who seems to have 
entertained the project of annexing it to the dominions 
of his brother-in-law, Alexander, king of the Molos- 
sians. ( Demosth., Phil., 3, 85.) Whether it actually 
fell into the possession of that monarch is uncertain, 
but there can be no doubt of its having been in the 
occupation of Philip, since Diodorus Siculus (17, 3) 
asserts that the Ambraciots, on the accession of Alex¬ 
ander the Great to the throne, ejected the Macedonian 
garrison stationed in their city. Ambracia, however, 
did not long enjoy the freedom which it thus regained, 
for, having fallen into the hands of Pyrrhus, we are 
told that it was selected by that prince as his usual 
place of residence. ( Strabo , 325. — Ltv., 38, 9.) 
Ovid (Ibis, v. 306) seems to imply that he was inter¬ 
red there. Many years after, being under the domin¬ 
ion of the iEtolians, who were at that time involved 
in hostilities with the Romans, this city sustained a 
siege against the latter almost unequalled in the an¬ 
nals of ancient warfare for the gallantry and perseve¬ 
rance displayed in defence of the place. ( Polyb., Frag., 
22, 13.) Ambracia, at last, opened its gates to the 
foe, on a truce being concluded, and was stripped by 
the Roman consul, M. Fulvius Nobilior, of all the 
statues and pictures with which it had been so richly 
adorned by Pyrrhus. From this time Ambracia began 
to sink into a state of insignificance, and Augustus, 
by transferring its inhabitants to Nicopolis, completed 
its desolation. (Strabo, 325.— Pausan., 5, 23.) In 
regard to the topography of this ancient city, most 
travellers and antiquaries are of opinion, that it must 
have stood near the town of Arta, which now gives 
its name to the gulf. ( Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 
1, p. 145, seqq.) 

Ambracius Sinus, a gulf of the Ionian Sea be¬ 
tween Epirus and Acamania. Scylax ( Peripl., p. 13) 
calls it the Bay of Anactorium, and observes that the 
distance from its mouth to the farthest extremity was 
one hundred and twenty stadia, while the entrance was 
scarcely four stadia broad. Strabo (325) makes the 
whole circuit three hundred stadia. ( Cramer's Ancient 
Greece, vol. 1, p. 153.) 

Ambrones, a Gallic horde, who invaded the Roman 
territories along with the Teutones and Cimbri, and 
were defeated with great slaughter by Marius. The 
name is thought to mean, “ dwellers on the Rhone” 
(Amb-rones). So Ambidravii, “dwellers on the 
Draave;” Sigambri, “dwellers on the Sieg,” &c. 
(Compare PJister, Gesch. tier Teutschen, vol. 1, p. 
35.) 

Ambrosia, the celestial food on which the gods 
were supposed to subsist, and to which, along with 
nectar, they were believed to owe their immortality. 
The name is derived from ugbporog, “ immortal.” 
(Compare Hcyne, Excurs. 9, ad II., 1.— Id., Obs. ad 
Horn., II., 1, 190.) There is a striking resemblance 
between the Grecian and Hindoo mythology in this 
respect. The Amrita, or water of life, recalls imme- 
122 


diately to mind the Ambrosia of Olympus. (Compare 
Horn., Od., 1, 359, where ambrosia and nectar appear 
to be used as synonymous terms.— Heyne, Excurs. 
9, ad II ., 1, and consult the remarks of Buttmann in 
his Lexilogus, s. v. ’A/ubpocnoq, &c.) 

Ambrosius, bishop of Milan in the fourth century, 
and one of the latest and most distinguished of what 
are denominated the Fathers of the Christian Church. 
He was born at Arelate (Arles), then the metropolis 
of Gallia Narbonensis, according to some authorities, 
A.D. 333, according to others, 340. His father was 
the emperor’s lieutenant in that district, and, after his 
death, Ambrose, who was the youngest of three chil¬ 
dren, returned with the widow and family to Rome. 
Here, under the instructions of his mother and his 
sister Marcellina, who had vowed virginity, he received 
a highly religious education, and that bias in favour of 
Catholic orthodoxy by which he was subsequently so 
much distinguished. Having studied law, he pleaded 
causes in the court of the prsetorian prefect, and was 
in due time appointed proconsul of Liguria* He 
thereupon took up his residence at Milan, where a 
circumstance occurred which produced a sudden change 
in his fortunes, and transformed him from a civil gov¬ 
ernor into a bishop. Auxentius, bishop of Milan, the 
Arian leader in the west, died, and left that see va¬ 
cant, when a warm contest for the succession ensued 
between the Arians and Catholics. In the midst of a 
tumultuous dispute, Ambrose appeared in the midst 
of the assembly, and exhorted them to conduct the 
election peaceably. At the conclusion of his address, 
a child in the crowd exclaimed, “ Ambrose is bishop !” 
and, whether accidentally or by management, the re¬ 
sult throws a curious light upon the nature of the 
times ; for the superstitious multitude, regarding the 
exclamation as a providential and miraculous sugges¬ 
tion, by general acclamation declared Ambrose to be 
elected. After various attempts to decline the epis¬ 
copal office, Ambrose at length entered upon the dis¬ 
charge of its duties, and rendered himself conspicuous 
by his decided and unremitting opposition to the tenets 
ot Arianism. To his zealous endeavours also was 
owing the failure of the attempt made by the remains 
of a pagan party to re-establish the worship of pagan¬ 
ism. The strength and ability of Ambrose w r ere such, 
that, although opposed to him on ecclesiastical points, 
Valentinian and his mother respected his talents, and 
in moments of political exigency, required his assist¬ 
ance. The most conspicuous act on the part of Am¬ 
brose was his treatment of Theodosius for the mas¬ 
sacre at Thessalonica. The emperor was consigned 
to a retirement of eight months, and not absolved even 
then until he had signed an edict, which ordained that 
an interval of thirty days should pass before any sen¬ 
tence of death, or even of confiscation, should be 
executed. After having paid the funeral honours to 
Theodosius, who died soon after obtaining peaceable 
possession of the entire Roman empire, the bishop 
departed from this world with a composure worthy of 
his firm character, in the year 397. • It is evident that 
Ambrose was one of those men of great energy of 
mind and temperament, who, in the adoption of a 
theory or a party, hold no middle course, but act with 
determination towards the fulfilment of their purposes. 
Regarded within their own circles, there is generally 
something in such characters to admire ; and, beyond 
that, as certainly much to condemn. It must be con¬ 
ceded, however, that men resembling Ambrose effected 
much to advance the Roman Catholic Church to the 
power to which it afterward attained, and, by necessary 
sequence, to the abuse of it which produced the Ref¬ 
ormation. 1 he writings of this father are numerous, 
and the great object of almost all of them was to 
maintain the faith and discipline of the Catholic 
Church, while some of them are written to recommend 
celibacy as the summit of Christian perfection. His 




AMI 


AMM 


best work is “ De Officiis," intended to explain the 
duties of Christian ministers The most accurate 
edition of his works is that of the Benedictines, Parts, 
2 vols. fol, 1682-90. ( Gorton's Biogr. Diet, vol. l,p 

67.) 

Ambryssus, a city of Phocis, said to have been 
founded by the hero Ambryssus, situate between two 
chains of mountains, west of Lebedas, and north¬ 
west of Anticyra It was destroyed by the Amphic- 
tyons, but rebuilt and fortified by the Thebans before 
the battle of Chseronea. ( Pausan ., 10, 3, and 36.) 
Its ruins were first discovered by Chandler, near the 
village of Dystomo. (Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol, 2, 
p. 159.) 

Ambubai^e, female minstrels, of Syrian origin, who 
exercised their vocation at Rome, and were also of 
dissolute lives. ( Acron, ad Horat., Serm., 1, 2, 1.— 
Nork, Etymol. Handworterbuch, vol. 1, p. 45, scq.) 
The name is supposed to be derived from the Syriac 
abub or anbub, “ a flute.” 

Ambuli, a surname of Castor and Pollux, in Sparta, 
and also of Jupiter and Minerva. They were so 
named, it is said, from dpboTiij, delay, because it was 
thought that they could delay the approach of death. 
Some, on the other hand, consider the term in ques¬ 
tion to be of Latin origin, and derived from ambulare. 
(Compare the remarks of Vollmer, Worterb. der My- 
thol., s. v.) 

Ameles, a river of the lower world, according to 
Plato, whose waters no vessel could contain: tov 
’Aye/iTjTa Tcora/uov, ov to vdup dyyelov ovdev oriyeiv. 

(De Rep., 10, vol. 7, p. 229, ed. Bekk.) 

Amenanus, a river of Sicily, near Catania. It is 
now the Judicello. (Strabo, 360. — Ovid, Met., 15, 
279.) 

Ameria, one of the most considerable and ancient 
cities of Umbria. It lay south of Tuder, and in the 
vicinity of the Tiber. According to Cato, who is 
quoted by Pliny (3, 14), Ameria could boast of an 
origin greatly anterior to that of Rome, having been 
founded, it is said, 964 years before the war with 
Perseus, or 1045 years before the Christian era. Ci¬ 
cero, in his defence of the celebrated Roscius, who 
was a native of Ameria, has frequent occasion to speak 
of this town. From him we learn its municipal rank, 
and from Frontinus, that it became a colony under 
Augustus. (Compare Strabo , 228. — Festus, s v 
Ameria.) The small episcopal town of Amelia now 
represents this ancient city. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, 
vol. 1, p. 273.) 

Amestratus, a town of Sicily, near the Halesus. 
The Romans besieged it for seven months when in 
the hands of the Carthaginians, but without success. 
It was taken, however, after a third siege, and razed 
to the ground, the surviving inhabitants being sold as 
slaves. Steph. Byz. calls the place Amestratus; Di¬ 
odorus Siculus, My stratum; and Polybius, Myttistra- 
tum. (Diod. Sic., 23, eel. 9.— Polyb., 1, 24.) It is now 
Mistretta, in the Val de Demona. 

Amestris, queen of Persia, and wife to Xerxes. 

•Having discovered an intrigue between her husband 
and Artaynta, and imputing all the blame solely to the 
mother of the latter, she requested her from the king 
at a royal festival; and, when she had her in her 
power, cut off her breasts, nose, ears, lips, and tongue, 
and sent her home in this shocking condition. She 
also, on another occasion, sacrificed fourteen Persian 
children of noble birth, “ to propitiate,” says Herodo¬ 
tus, “ the deity who is said to dwell beneath the 
earth.” ( Herodot., 9, 110, seqq. — Id., 7,114.) 

Amida, a city of Mesopotamia, taken and destroy¬ 
ed by Sapor, king of Persia. It was repeopled by the 
inhabitants of Nisibis, after Jovian’s treaty with the 
Persians, and by a new colony which was sent to it. 
It was called also Constantia, from the Emperor Con- 
stantius. Its ancient walls, constructed with black 


stones, have caused it to be termed by the Turks 
Kara-Amid (“ black Amid”), although it is more com¬ 
monly denominated Diar-Bekir, from the name of its 
district. ( Ammian. Marcell., 18,22.— Procop., de Bell. 
Pers , 1, 8.— Salmas., Exercit. Plin., p. 488.) 

Amilcar. Vid. Hamilcar. 

Aminei, a people of Campania, mentioned by Ma- 
crobius (Sat., 2, 16) as having occupied the spot 
where was afterward the Falernus Ager The Ainin- 
ean wine is thought to have derived its name from 
them. (Consult, however, the remarks of Heyne, ad 
Virg., Georg., 2, 97, Var. Led.) The more correct 
opinion appears to be, that the Aminean wine was so 
called, because made from a grape transplanted into 
Italy from Aminaeum, a place-in Thessaly. Macrobius, 
however, asserts, that the Falernian wine was more 
anciently called Aminean. (Compare Heyne, ad Virg., 
Georg., 2, 97.) 

Amisenus sinus, a gulf of the Euxine, east of the 
mouth of the Halys, on the coast of Pontus, so called 
from the town of Amisus. 

Amisia, now the Ems, a river of Germany, falling 
into the German Ocean. Strabo (201) calls it Amasia 
(’Apaoia), and Pliny (4, 14) Amasis. 

Amisus, a city of Pontus, on the coast of the Eux¬ 
ine, northwest from the mouth of the Iris. It was 
founded by a colony of Milesians, was the largest city 
in Pontus next to Sinope, and was made by Pharnaces 
the metropolis of his kingdom. It is now called Sam- 
soun. (Strabo, 547. — Polyb., Exc. de legat., 55.— 
Manncrt, 6, pt. 2, p. 448, seqq.) 

Amiternum, a city in the territory of the Sabines, 
the birthplace of Sallust the historian. It was situate 
a short distance below the southern boundary of the 
Praetutii, and its ruins are to be seen near S. Vittorino, 
a few miles to the north of Aquila. From Livy (10, 
39) we learn, that this town, having fallen into the 
hands of the Samnites, was recovered by the consul 
Sp. Carvilius (A.U.C. 459). Under the Romans it 
became successively a preefedura and a colony, as we 
are informed by Frontinus and several inscriptions. 
(Romanelli,\ ol. 3, p. 330.) In Ptolemy’s time, Am- 
iternum seems to have been included among the cities 
of the Vestini. ( Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol. 1, p. 
319.) 

Ammianus. Vid. Marcellinus. 

Ammochostus, a promontory of Cyprus, whence by 
corruption comes the modern name Famagosta, or, 
more properly, Amoste : now the principal place in the 
island ( Ptol. — Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 381.) 

Ammon, or Hammon, a name given to Jupiter, as 
worshipped in Libya. When Bacchus was conquering 
Africa, he is said to have come with his army to a spot 
called, from the vast quantity of sand lying around, by 
the name of Hammodes (Appddrjq, i. e., sandy, from 
uppog, “ sand," and eldoq, “ aspect ” or “ appearance"). 
Here his forces were in great danger of perishing from 
want of water, when a ram on a sudden appeared, and 
guided them to a verdant spot, or oasis, in the midst 
of the desert. When they reached this place, the ram 
disappeared, and they found an abundant supply of 
water. Bacchus, therefore, out of gratitude, erect¬ 
ed on the spot a temple to Jupiter giving him, at the 
same time, the surname of Ammon or Hammon, from 
the Greek uppoq or uppoq, “ sand," in allusion to the 
circmnstances connected with his appearance; and the 
statue of the deity had the head and horns of a ram. 

( Hygin., Poet. Astron., 2, 20.) According to an¬ 
other version of the fable, Bacchus, in his extremity, 
prayed to Jupiter for aid, and the god, appearing under 
the form of a ram, indicated the place of the fountain 
with his foot, the water, before unseen, immediately 
bubbling up through the sand.—The spot to which the 
fable points is the Oasis of Ammon (vid. Oasis), and 
the fountain is the famous Fons Solis, or fountain of 
the Sun, which, according to Herodotus (4, 181), was 

123 



AMMON. 


AMM 


tepid at dawn, cool as the day advanced, very cool at 
noon, diminishing in coolness as the day declined, warm 
at sunset, and boiling hot at midnight Here also was 
the celebrated oracle of Ammon, which Alexander the 
Great visited, in order to obtain an answer respecting 
the divinity of his origin. An account of the expedi¬ 
tion is given by Plutarch (Vit. Alex., c. 26), and, as may 
well be expected, the answer of the oracle was alto¬ 
gether acceptable to the royal visitant, though the 
credit previously attached to its answers was seriously 
impaired by the gross flattery which it had on this oc¬ 
casion displayed. The temple of Ammon, like that of 
Delphi, was famed for its treasures, the varied offer¬ 
ings of the pious ; and these, in the time of the Per¬ 
sian invasion of Egypt, excited so far the cupidity of 
Cambyses as to induce him to send a large body of 
forces across the desert to seize upon the place. The 
expedition, however, proved a signal failure ; no ac¬ 
counts of it were ever received, and it is probable, 
therefore, that the Persian troops were purposely mis¬ 
led on their route by the Egyptian guides, and that all 
perished in the desert. ( Vid. Cambyses.)—Herodotus 
(2, 54, scqq.) gives us two accounts respecting the or¬ 
igin of the temple of Ammon. One, which he heard 
from the priests of Jupiter in Thebes, stated, that two 
priestesses had been carried off by some Phoenicians 
from Thebes, and that one of them had been conveyed 
to Libya and there sold as a slave, and the other to 
Greece. These two females, according to them, had 
founded oracles in each of these countries. Accord¬ 
ing to the other story, which he heard from the priest¬ 
esses at Dodona, two black pigeons had flown 
from Thebes in Egypt; one of these had passed 
into Libya, the other had come to Dodona in Greece, 
and both had spoken with a human voice, and di¬ 
rected the establishment of oracles in each of these 
places.—Thus much for the ordinary narrative. Am¬ 
mon, says Plutarch {de Is. et Os., p. 354), is the Egyp¬ 
tian name for Jupiter. This god was particularly wor¬ 
shipped at Thebes, called in the sacred books Hammon- 
no, “ the possession of Hammon,” and in the Septua- 
gint version ( Ezek., c. 20) the city of Ammon. Jablon- 
ski derives the word Ammon from Am-oein, “ shining.” 
According, however, to Champollion the younger, the 
term in question (Amon or Amen) denoted, in the 
Egyptian language, “ secret,” “ concealed,” or “ he 
who reveals his secret powers.” It is sometimes also, 
as the same writer informs us, united with the word 
Kncph, another appellation of the Supreme Being, and 
from this results the compound Amenehs (Amen-Neb) 
which is found on a Greek inscription in the greater 
Oasis. ( Letronne , Rech. sur VEgyp., p. 237, seqq.) 
The Greek etymology of the name Ammon, from ujugog 
or ipdyyoq, “ sand,” is fanciful and visionary, and only 
affords another proof of the constant habit in which that 
nation indulged, of referring so many things to them¬ 
selves, with which they had not, in truth, the slightest 
connexion. From all that has been said by the ancient 
writers, it would appear very clearly, that the allusion 
in the legend of Ammon is an astronomical one. This 
is very apparent from the story told by Herodotus (2, 
42), and which he received from the priests of Thebes. 
According to this narrative, Hercules was very desi¬ 
rous of seeing Jupiter, whereas the god was unwilling 
to be seen ; until, at last, Jupiter, yielding to his im¬ 
portunity, contrived the following artifice. Having 
, separated the head from the body of a ram, and flayed 
the whole carcass, he put on the skin with the wool, 
and in that form showed himself to Hercules. Now, 
if Hercules denote the sun, and aries the first sign of 
the zodiac, the whole may be an allegory illustrative 
of the opening of the year.—As regards the establish¬ 
ment of the oracle of Ammon, it may be observed, that 
the account respecting the two doves or pigeons, which 
is given by Herodotus, and has already been alluded to, 
came, as that historian informs us, from the priestess¬ 


es of Dodona ; whereas the priests of Thebes ascribed 
the origin of the oracles at Dodona and in the Oasis of 
Ammon to the two Egyptian females connected with 
the service of the temple at Thebes, and who had been 
carried away and sold into slavery by certain Phoeni¬ 
cians. Herodotus, with no little plausibility, seeks to 
reconcile these two statements, by conjecturing that 
the Dodoneans gave the name of doves or pigeons 
to the females carried off, because they used a foreign 
tongue, and their speech resembled the chattering of 
birds ; and the remark of the same Dodoneans, that the 
pigeons were of a black colour, he explains by the cir¬ 
cumstance of these females being, like the other Egyp¬ 
tians, of a dark complexion. It is very evident that 
we have here some allusion to Egj^ptian colonies, and 
to the influence which prophetic influence would exer¬ 
cise in such colonies recently established. The only 
difficulty, however,is how to connect the Pelasgic shrine 
of Dodona with anything of an Egyptian character. 
(Consult the remarks of Creuzer , Symbohk , vol. 4, p. 
151, and of Heeren, Idecn, vol. 2, pt. 1, p. 486.) — 
Browne, an English traveller, discovered in 1782 the 
site of the temple of Ammon, in a fertile spot called 
the Oasis of Siwah, situated in the midst of deserts, 
five degrees nearly west of Cairo. In 1788, Horneman 
discovered the Fons Solis. In 1816 Belzoni visited 
the spot, and found the fountain situated in the midst 
of a beautiful grove of palms. He visited the fountain 
at noon, evening, midnight, and morning. He had un¬ 
fortunately no thermometer with him. But, judging 
from his feelings at those several periods, it might be 
100° at midnight, 80° in the morning early, and at 
noon about 40°. The truth appears to be, that no 
change takes place in the temperature of the water, but 
in that of the surrounding atmosphere ; for the w ell is 
deeply shaded, and about 60 feet deep. The account 
of Herodotus, w'ho was never on the spot, is evidently 
incorrect. He must have misunderstood his informer. 
(Compare RennelVs Gccgr. of Herod., p. 583, scqq.) 

Ammonii, a people of Africa, occupying what is now 
the Oasis of Siwah. According to Herodotus (2, 42), 
the Ammonians were a colony of Egyptians and ^Ethi¬ 
opians, speaking a language composed of words taken 
lrom both those nations.—The arable territory of the 
Oasis of Siwah is about six miles long and four bread. 
The chief plantation consists of date-trees ; there are 
also pomegranates, fig-trees, olives, apricots, and ba¬ 
nanas. A considerable quantity of a reddish-grained 
rice is cultivated here, being a different variety ficm 
that which is grown in the Egyptian Delta. It also 
produces wheat for the consumption of the inhabitants. 
Abundance of water, both fresh and salt, is found. 
Ihe fresh-water springs are mostly W'aim, and are ac¬ 
cused of giving rise to dangerous fevers w hen used by 
strangers. The population of Siwah is capable of fur¬ 
nishing about 1500 armed men. ( Maltc-Brun, Geogr., 
vol. 4, p. 173, Am. cd.) For remarks on the celebra¬ 
ted Fons Solis, consult preceding article towards its 
close. 

Ammonius, I. the preceptor of Plutarch. He taught , 
philosophy and mathematics at Delphi, and lived du- * 
ring the first century of the Christian era, in the reign 
of Nero, to whom he acted as interpreter w hen that 
monarch visited the temple at Delphi. Plutarch makes 
frequent mention of him in his waitings, and particu¬ 
larly in his treatise on the inscription of the Delphic 
temple.—-II. Saccas, or Saccophorus (so called because 
in early life he had been a sack-bearer), a celebrated 
philosopher, who flourished about the beginning of the 
third century. He was born at Alexandrea, of Chris¬ 
tian parents, and was early instructed in the catechet¬ 
ical schools established in that city. Here, under the 
Christian preceptors, Athenagoras, Pantoenus, and 
Clemens Alexandrinus, he acquired a strong propen¬ 
sity towards philosophical studies, and became ex¬ 
ceedingly desirous of reconciling the different opinions 



AMMONIUS. 


AMP 


which at that time subsisted among philosophers. 
Porpnyry ( ap. Euseb., Hist. Ecc., 6, 19) relates, that 
Ammonius passed over to the legal establishment, that 
is, apostatized to the pagan religion. Eusebius (l. c., 
p. 221) and Jerome (Dc S. E., c. 55, p. 132), on the 
contrary, assert that Ammonius continued in the Chris¬ 
tian faith until the end of his life. But it is probable 
that those Christian fathers refer to another Ammoni¬ 
us who, in the third century, wrote a Harmony of the 
Gospels, or to some other person of this name ; for 
they refer to the sacred books of Ammonius: whereas 
Ammonius Saccas, as his pupil Longinus attests, wrote 
nothing. (Compare Fabricius, Bibl. Gr., vol. 4, p. 
160, 172.) It is not easy, indeed, to account for the 
particulars related of this philosopher, but upon the 
supposition of his having renounced the Christian faith. 
According to Hierocles (De Fato, ap. Phot., Bibl., vol. 
2, p. 461, ed. Bek/cer), Ammonius was induced to 
adopt the plan of a distinct eclectic school, by a desire 
of putting an end to those contentions which had so 
long distracted the philosophical world. Ammonius 
had many eminent followers and hearers, both pagan 
and Christian, who all, doubtless, promised themselves 
much illumination from a preceptor that undertook to 
collect into a focus all the rays of ancient wisdom. 
Pie taught his select disciples certain sublime doctrines 
and mystical practices, and was called -&eo6i6aKTog, 
“ the heaven-taught philosopher.” These mysteries 
were communicated to them under a solemn injunction 
of secrecy. Porphyry relates, that Plotinus, with the 
rest of the disciples of Ammonius, promised not to di¬ 
vulge certain dogmas which they learned in his school, 
•but to lodge them safely in their purified minds. This 
circumstance accounts for the fact mentioned on the 
authority of Longinus, that he left nothing in writing. 
Ammonius probably died about the year 243. ( En¬ 

field's History of Philosophy , vol. 2, p. 58, seqq. — 
Compare Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 5, p. 119, scqq.) 
—III. A Christian writer, a native of Alexandrea, who 
lived about 250 A.D. He wrote a Harmony of the 
Gospels, which Jerome cites with commendation.—IV. 
The son of Hermias, so called for distinction’ sake 
from other individuals of the name, was a native of 
Alexandrea, and a disciple of Proclus. He taught 
philosophy at Alexandrea about the beginning of the 
sixth century. His system was an eclectic one, em¬ 
bracing principles both derived from Aristotle and Pla¬ 
to. He cannot be regarded as an original thinker: he 
was very strong, however, in mathematics, and in the 
study of the exact sciences, which rectified his judg¬ 
ment, and preserved him, no doubt, from the extrava¬ 
gances of the New Platonism. Ammonius has left 
commentaries on the Introduction of Porphyry ; on the 
Categories of Aristotle, together with a life of that phi¬ 
losopher ; on his treatise of Interpretation ; and scho¬ 
lia on the first seven books of the Metaphysics. Of the 
commentaries on the Introduction of Porphyry we have 
the following editions : Venice, 1500, fol., Gr. ; Ven¬ 
ice, 1546, 8vo, ap. Aid., Gr.; Venice , 1569, fob, Lat. 
transl .—Of the commentary on the Categories, and of 
that on the treatise of Interpretation, Venice, 1503, fob ; 
Venice, 1546, ap. Aid., 8vo. Of the commentary on 
the treatise of Interpretation alone, Venice, 1549, 8vo, 
Gr. et Lat. The scholia on the metaphysics have 
never been edited. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., yob 7, p. 
123, seqq.) —V. A priest of one of the Egyptian tem¬ 
ples. He was one of the literary men who fled from 
Alexandrea to Constantinople after the destruction of 
the pagan temples. There he became, together with 
HelladTus, one of the masters of Socrates, the eccle¬ 
siastical writer: this is a fact which appears firmly es¬ 
tablished, and the reasons alleged by Valckenaer for 
placing him in the first or second century have been 
generally considered insufficient. Ammonius has left 
us a work on Greek synonymes, &c., under the title 
nepi o/xoUov nal diacjropav hetjeov. It is a production 


! of very inferior merit. The best edition is that of 
Valckenaer, Lugd. Bat., 1739, 4to. An abridgment 
of this edition was published at Erlang, in 1787, 8vo, 
| under the care of Ammon. Valckenaer’s edition has 
also been reprinted entire, but in a more portable form, 
: at Leipzig, 1822, 8vo, under the care of Schaeffer, 
! who has added the inedited notes of Kulencamp, and 
j the critical letter of Segaar, addressed to Valckenaer 
and published at Utrecht in 1776, 8vo. We have also 
a treatise of Ammonius, Ilep* uKvpoXoyiag, “ On the 
improper use of words,” which has never been printed. 
—VI. A physician of Alexandrea, surnamed the Li- 
thotomist, from his skill in cutting for the stone; an op¬ 
eration which, according to some, he first introduced. 
He invented an instrument for crushing the larger cal¬ 
culi while in the bladder. He was accustomed also to 
make use of caustic applications, especially red arse¬ 
nic in hemorrhages. (Sprengel, Hist. Med., vol. 1, p. 
465.) 

AmnIsus, a port ofGnossus in Crete, southeast from 
Gnossus, with a small river of the same name in its 
vicinity. (Horn., Od., 19, 188.— Apoll. Rhod., 3,877.) 

Amor, the son of Venus, was the god of love. ( Vid. 
Cupido.) 

Amorgos, now Amorgo, one of the Cyclades, and 
situate to the east of Nicasia. According to Scylax 
( Peripl., p. 22) and Stephanus Byzantinus (s. v. v Apop- 
yog), it contained three towns, Arcesine, HCgialus, and 
Minoa. The former yet preserves its name, and 
stands on the northern extremity of the island. yEgia- 
lus is perhaps Porto S. Anna. Minoa was the birth¬ 
place of Simonides, an iambic poet, mentioned by 
Strabo (487) and others. Amorgus gave its name to 
a peculiar linen dress manufactured in the island. 
( Steph. Byz., s. v. "Ayopyog .— Cramer's Anc. Greece, 
vol. 3, p. 416.) 

Ampelius, Lucius, the author of a work that has 
reached us, entitled Liber Memorialis. The particular 
period when he lived is unknown. Bahr makes him 
to have flourished after Trajan, and before Theodosius. 
His work is divided into fifty small chapters, and is 
addressed to a certain Macrinus. It contains a brief 
account of the world, the elements, the earth, history, 
&c., and appears to be compiled from previous writers. 
Marks of declining Latinity are visible in it. The 
best editions are that of Tzschucke, Lips., 1793, 8vo, 
and that of Beck, Lips., 1826, 8vo. (Bahr, Gesch - 
Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. 454, seqq.) 

Ampelus, I. a promontory of Crete, on the'eastern 
coast, south of the promontory of Sammonkun. It is 
now Cape Sacro. (Ptol., p. 91.) Pliny (4, 12) as¬ 
signs to Crete a town of this same name ; and there 
are, in fact, some ruins between the mouth of the riv¬ 
er Sacro and the promontory. (Cramer's Ancient 
Greece, vol. 3, p. 372.) — II. A promontory bf Mace¬ 
donia, at the eastern extremity of the peninsula of Si- 
thonia, and forming the lower termination of the Sinus 
Singiticus. Livy calls it the Toronean promontory 
(31, 45). 

Ampelusia, called also Cote and Soloe, a promon¬ 
tory of Africa, on the coast of Mauritania, and form¬ 
ing the point of separation between the Fretum Her- 
culeum (Straits of Gibraltar) and the shore of the 
Western Ocean. It is now Cape Spartel. The an¬ 
cient name Ampelusia refers to its abounding in vines, 
a signification which Cote is said to have had in the 
Punic or Phoenician tongue. (Compare the remarks 
of Hamaker, Miscell. Phoenic., p. 247, Lugd. Bat., 
1824, 4to.) 

Amphiaraides, a patronymic of Alcmseon, as being 
son of Amphiaraiis. (Ovid, Fast., 2, 43.) 

Amphiaraus, a famous soothsayer and warrior, ac¬ 
cording to some a son of Oicleus, according to others of 
Apollo. So, also, one account makes his mother to have 
been named Clytaemnestra; another, Hypermnestra, 
daughter of the iEtolian king Thestius. He appears 

125 






AMP 


AMPHICTYONES. 


to have been a descendant of a distinguished augur 
family, his grandfather having been Antiphates, and 
his great-grandfather Melampus. From various scat¬ 
tered accounts respecting him in the ancient writers, 
the following particulars may be gleaned. He was, in 
his youth, at the famous hunt of the Calydonian boar; 
he afterward returned to Argos, his native city, and, 
with the aid of his brother, drove Adrastus from the 
throne. A reconciliation, however, taking place, the 
monarch was restored to his kingdom, and gave Am- 
phiaraus his sister Eriphyle in marriage. The offspring 
of this union were two sons, Alcmseon and Amphilo- 
chus. When Adrastus, at the request of Polynices, 
resolved to march against Thebes, Amphiaraus was 
unwilling to accompany him, for he knew that the ex¬ 
pedition would prove fatal to himself, and he endeav¬ 
oured also to dissuade the other chieftains from going. 
Polynices thereupon presented Eriphyle with the fa¬ 
mous necklace of Harmonia, to induce her to overcome 
her husband’s scruples, and she not only, in conse¬ 
quence, made known his place of concealment, but 
prevailed upon him to accompany the army. Amphi¬ 
araus thereupon, previous to his departure, knowing 
what was about to befall him, charged his sonAlcmaeon 
to kill his mother the moment he should hear of his 
father’s death. The Theban war proved fatal to the 
Argives, and Amphiaraus, while engaged in dangerous 
conflict with Periclymenes, was swallowed up by the 
earth, Jupiter having caused the ground to open for 
the purpose of receiving his favourite prophet, and sa¬ 
ving him from the dishonour of being overcome by his 
antagonist. The news of his death was brought to 
Alcmaeon, who immediately executed his father’s com¬ 
mand, and murdered Eriphyle. Amphiaraus received 
divine honours after death, and had a celebrated temple 
and oracle at Oropos in Attica. His statue was made 
of white marble, and near his temple was a fountain, 
whose waters were held sacred. They only who had 
consulted his oracle, or had been delivered from a dis¬ 
ease, were permitted to bathe in it, after which they 
threw pieces of gold and silver into the stream. Those 
who consulted the oracle of Amphiaraus, sacrificed a 
ram to the prophet, and spread the skin upon the ground, 
upon which they slept, in expectation of receiving in 
a dream the answer of which they were in quest. 
(Apollod., 3, 6, 2.— Horn ., Od., 15, 243, &c.— JEsch., 
Sept. c. Theb. — Hygin., Fab., 70, 73, &c.— Pausan., 
1, 34.) 

Amphicrates, I. a biographer, who, according to 
Diogenes Laertius (Vit. Aristip.), was condemned to 
die by poison. (Compare Athenceus, 13, 5.)—II. An 
Athenian orator, who, being banished from his country, 
retired to Seleucia on the Tigris, and took up his resi¬ 
dence there under the protection of Cleopatra, daugh¬ 
ter of Mithradates. He starved himself to death, be¬ 
cause suspected by this princess of treason. Jonsius 
(de Script. Hist. Phil., 2, 15) thinks that this is the 
same with the preceding.—III. An artist, mentioned 
by Pliny (34, 8), according to a new reading proposed 
by Sillig (Diet. Art., s. v.). 

Amphictyon, a mythic personage, son of Deucalion, 
who is said to have reigned in Attica after driving out 
Cranaus, his father-in-law, and to have been himself 
expelled by Erichthonius. (Apollod., 3, 14, 6.) The 
establishment of the Amphictyonic council is ascribed 
to him by some. (Compare Hcyne , ad loc.) 

Amphictyones, the deputies of the cities and people 
of Greece, who represented their respective nations in 
a general assembly called the Amphictyonic Council. 
The most authentic list of the communities thus rep¬ 
resented is as follows: Thessalians, Boeotians, Dorians, 
Ionians, Perrhaffiians, Magnetes, Locrians, CEtaeans 
or yEnianians, Phthiotes or Achseans of Phthia, Meli- 
ans or Malians, and Phocians. The orator Aeschines, 
who furnishes this list, shows, by mentioning the num¬ 
ber twelve, that one name is wanting. The other lists 


supply two names to fill up the vacant place: the 
Dolopes and the Delphians. It seems not improbable, 
that the former were finally supplanted by the Delphi¬ 
ans, who appear to have been a distinct race from the 
Phocians. After the return of the Heraclid®, the 
number of the Amphictyonic tribes, then perhaps al¬ 
ready hallowed by time, continued the same ; but the 
geographical compass of the league was increased by 
all that part of the Peloponnesus which was occupied 
by the new Doric states. It would be wrong to regard 
this council as a kind of national confederation. The 
causes which prevented it from acquiring this charac¬ 
ter will be evident, when we consider the mode in 
which the council was constituted, and the nature of 
its ordinary functions. The constitution of the Am¬ 
phictyonic Council rested on the supposition, once, 
perhaps, not very inconsistent with the tact, of a perfect 
equality among the tribes represented by it. Each 
tribe, however feeble, had two votes in the deliberation 
of the congress : none, however powerful, had more. 
The order in which the right of sending representatives 
to the council was exercised by the various states in¬ 
cluded in one Amphictyonic tribe was, perhaps, regula¬ 
ted by private agreement; but, unless one state usurped 
the whole right of its tribe, it is manifest that a petty 
tribe, which formed but one community, had greatly 
the advantage over Sparta or Argos, which could only 
be represented in their turn, the more rarely in propor¬ 
tion to the magnitude of the tribe to which they be¬ 
longed.—"With regard to other details less affecting 
the general character of the institution, it will be suffi¬ 
cient here to observe, that the council was composed 
of two classes of representatives, called Pylagora and 
Hieromnemones, whose functions are not accurately 
distinguished. It seems, however, that the former 
were intrusted with the power of voting, while the 
office of the latter consisted in preparing and directing 
their deliberations, and carrying their decrees into ef¬ 
fect. At Athens, three Pylagoroe were annually elect¬ 
ed, while one Htcromnemon was appointed by lot: we 
do not know the practice in other states. One pe¬ 
culiar feature of the Amphictyonic Council was, that 
its meetings were held at two different places. There 
were two regularly convened every year ; one in the 
spring, at Delphi, the other in the autumn, near the lit¬ 
tle town of Anthela, within the pass of Thermopylae, 
at a temple of Ceres. It has been supposed, in at¬ 
tempting to account for this, that there were originally 
two distinct confederations ; one formed of inland, the 
other of maritime tribes ; and that when these were 
united by the growing influence of Delphi, the ancient 
places of meeting were retained, as a necessary con¬ 
cession to the dignity of each sanctuary. A constitu¬ 
tion such as the Amphictyonic Council appears to have 
possessed, could not have been suffered to last if any 
important political interests had depended on the de¬ 
cision of this assembly. The truth is, the ordinary 
functions of the Amphictyonic Congress were chiefly, 
if not altogether, connected with religion, and it was 
only by accident that it was ever made subservient to 
political ends. The original objects, or, at least, the es¬ 
sential character, of this institution, seem to be faith¬ 
fully expressed in the terms of the oath preserved by 
Aeschines, which bound the members of the league to 
refrain from utterly destroying any Amphictyonic city, 
and from cutting off its supply of water, even in war, 
and to defend the sanctuary and the treasures of the 
Delphic god from sacrilege. In this ancient and half- 
symbolical form we perceive two main functions as¬ 
signed to the council; to guard the temple, and to re¬ 
strain the violence of hostility among Amphictyonic 
states. There is no intimation of any confederacy 
against foreign enemies, except for the protection of 
the temple ; nor of any right of interposing between 
members of the league, unless where one threatens the 
existence of another. A review, then, of the history 





AMP 


AMPHIPOLIS. 


of this council shows that it was almost powerless for 
good, except, perhaps, as a passive instrument, and 
that it was only active for purposes that were either 
unimportant or pernicious. Its most legitimate sphere 
of action lay in cases where the honour and safety of 
the Delphic sanctuary were concerned, and in these it 
might safely reckon on general co-operation from all the 
Greeks. A remarkable instance is afforded by the 
Sacred or Crissaean war. ( Vid . Crissa and Phocis.) 
The origin of the Amphictyonic Council is altogether 
uncertain. Acrisius is said to have founded the one 
at Delphi, Amphictyon the other at Thermopylae, a tra¬ 
dition in favour of the opinion above advanced, that the 
great council was a union of two. Independently, 
however, of these two, it is probable that many Am- 
phictyonics (so to call them) once existed in Greece, 
all trace of which has been lost. % ( Thirlwall's History 
of Greece, vol. I, p. 374, seqq.j —The name of this 
confederation, if we give credit to Androtion, as cited 
by Pausanias (10, 8), was originally Amyhiction.es (’A p- 
(pucTiovec), and referred to its being composed of the 
tribes that dwelt round about. An alteration took 
place when Amphictyon , the son of Deucalion, found¬ 
ed a temple of Ceres at Thermopylae, one of the places 
of assembling. From this time, we are informed, the 
confederation took the name of Ampkictyones (’A y- 
<j>iKTvoveg). 

Amphidromia, a festival observed by private families 
at Athens, the fifth day after the birth of every child. 
It was customary to run round the fire with a child in 
their arms ; thereby, as it were, making it a member 
of the family, and putting it under the protection of the 
household deities, to whom the hearth served as an 
altar. Hence the name of the festival, from uytpidpa- 
pelv, “ to run around." (Potter, Gr. Ant., 4, 14.) 

AmphigenIa, a town of Messenia, near the river 
Hypsoeis. According to Homer (II., 2, 593), it be¬ 
longed to Nestor. Some critics assigned it to Triphy- 
lia. ( Strabo, 349.) 

AmphilSchus, I. son of Amphiaraus and Eriphyle. 
After the Trojan war he left Argos, his native country, 
retired to Acarnania, and there built Argos Amphi- 
lochium. This is the account of Thucydides (2, 68); 
but vid. Argos IV. — II. An Athenian philosopher 
who wrote upon agriculture. ( Varro, de R. R., 1.) 

Amphinomus and Anapus, two brothers, who, when 
Catana and the neighbouring cities were in flames by 
an eruption from Mount Vesuvius, saved their parents 
upon their shoulders. The fire, as it is said, spared 
them while it consumed others by their side; and 
Pluto, to reward their uncommon piety, placed them 
after death in the island of Leuce. They received di¬ 
vine honours in Sicily. ( Val. Max., 5, 4.— Sil. Ital ., 
14, 197.— Claud., Idyll., 7, 41.) 

AmphIon, I. a Theban prince, son of Antiope and 
Jupiter, or, rather, of Epopeus, king of Sicyon. An¬ 
tiope, the niece of Lycus, king of Thebes, having be¬ 
come the mother of twins, Amphion and Zethus, ex¬ 
posed them on Mount Cithaeron, where they were found 
and brought up by shepherds. Having learned, on 
reaching manhood, the cruelties inflicted upon their 
mother by Lycus and Dirce (vid. Antiope), the twin 
brothers avenged her wrongs by the death of both the 
offending parties (vid. Lycus and Dirce), and made 
themselves masters of Thebes, where they reigned con¬ 
jointly. Under their rule the kingdom of Thebes ac¬ 
quired new splendour, and the arts of peace flourished. 
Amphion cultivated music with the greatest success, 
having received lessons in this art from Mercury him¬ 
self, who gave him a lyre of gold, with which, it is said, 
he built the wall of Thebes, causing the stones to take 
their respective places in obedience to the tones of his 
instrument. The meaning of this legend is supposed 
to be, that Amphion, by his mild and persuasive man¬ 
ners, prevailed upon his rude subjects to build walls 
around. Thebes. Muller, however, sees in it an allu¬ 


sion to the old Dorian and JEolian custom of erecting 
the walls of cities to the sound of musical instruments. 
—Amphion, after this, married Niobe, daughter of Tan¬ 
talus, and became by her the father of seven sons and 
seven daughters, who were all slain by Apollo and Di¬ 
ana. (Vid. Niobe.) According to one account, he 
destroyed himself after this cruel loss, while another 
version of the story makes him to have fallen in a se¬ 
dition. (Horn., Od., 11, 262 , seqq. — Apollod., 3, 5, 4, 
seqq. — Muller, Gesch. Hellen. Stamme, &,c., vol. 1, 
p. 267.)—II. A painter, contemporary with Apelles, by 
whom he was highly respected as an artist, and who 
yielded to him in the grouping of his pictures. (Plin., 
35, 10.)—III. A statuary of Cnossus, and pupil of 
Ptolichus. (Pausan., 10, 15.) He flourished about 
Olymp. 88. 

Amphipolis, a city of Thrace, near the mouth of the 
Sfrrymon. It was founded by the Athenians in the 
immediate vicinity of what was termed ’E vvta 'O Sol, 
or the “ Nine Ways,” a spot so called from the num¬ 
ber of roads which met here from different parts of 
Thrace and Macedon. The occupation of the Nine 
Ways seems to have excited the jealousy of the Thra-' 
cians, which led to frequent rencounters between them 
and the Athenian colonists, in one of which the latter 
sustained a severe defeat. (Thucyd., 1 , 100.) After 
a lapse of twenty-nine years, a fresh colony was sent 
out under the command of Agnon, son of Nicias, which 
succeeded in subduing the Edoni. Agnon gave the 
name of Amphipolis to the new city, from its being 
surrounded by the waters of the Strymon. (Thucyd., 
4, 102.— Scylax, p. 27.) Amphipolis soon became one 
of the most flourishing cities of Thrace ; and at the 
time of the expedition of Brasidas into that country, it 
was already a large and populous place. Its surrender 
to that general was a severe blow to the prosperity and 
good fortune of the Athenians ; and we may estimate 
the importance they attached to its possession, from 
their displeasure against Thucydides, who arrived too 
late to prevent its falling into the hands of the enemy 
(Thucyd., 4, 106); and also from the exertions they 
afterward made, under Cleon, to repair the loss. The 
attempt proved unsuccessful, through the ignorance and 
rashness of the Athenian general, who was slain in an 
engagement. Brasidas fell in the same battle, and the 
Amphipolitans paid the highest honors to his memory, 
resolving thenceforth to revere him as the true founder 
of their city ; and with this view they threw down the 
statues of Agnon, and erected those of Brasidas in their 
stead. Athens never regained possession of this im¬ 
portant city ; for though it was agreed, by the terms of 
the peace soon after concluded with Sparta, that this 
colony should be restored, that stipulation was never 
fulfilled, the Amphipolitans themselves refusing to ac¬ 
cede to it, and the Spartans expressing their inability 
to compel them. The Athenians, in the twelfth year 
of the war, sent an expedition under Euetion to at¬ 
tempt the reconquest of the place, but without success. 
(Thucyd., 7, 9.) Mitford, in his history of Greece, 
affirms, that Amphipolis was restored to the Athenians; 
but there is no proof of this fact. Amphipolis, at a 
later period, fell into the hands of Philip of Macedon, 
after a siege of some duration. It became from that 
time a Macedonian town, and, on the subjugation of 
this country by the Romans, it was constituted the 
chief town of the first region of the conquered territory. 
(Dexipp. ap. Syncell., Chron., p. 268.— Liv., 45, 29.) 
During the continuance of the Byzantine empire, it 
seems to have exchanged its name for that of Chrysop- 
olis, if we may believe an anonymous geographer, in 
Hudson’s Geogr. Min., vol. 4, p. 42. The spot on 
which the ruins of Amphipolis are still to be traced, 
bears the name of Jenikevi. The position of Amphip¬ 
olis, observes Col. Leake (Walpole's Collection, p. 
510), is one of the most important in Greece. It 
stands in a pass which traverses the mountains border- 

127 




AMP 


AMY 


ing the Strymonic Gulf; and it commands the only 
easy communication from the coast of that gulf into 
the great Macedonian plains, which extend for sixty 
miles from beyond Meleniko to Philippi. ( Cramer's 
Ancient Greece, vol. 1, p. 292, scqq.) 

Amphis, a Greek comic poet of Athens, contempo¬ 
rary with Plato. His works are lost, though some of 
the titles of his pieces have reached us. (Consult 
Schweigh. ad Athen., vol. 9, Index Auct., s. v.) 

Amphissa, I. a daughter of Macareus, fabled to 
have given her name to the city of Amphissa.—II. 
The chief city of the Locri Ozolse. We find, from 
Strabo, that it stood at the head of the Crisssean Gulf, 
and Aeschines (in Ctes., p. 71) informs us that its dis¬ 
tance from Delphi was sixty stadia: Pausanias reck¬ 
ons one hundred and twenty. Amphissa was said to 
have derived its name from the circumstance of its 
being surrounded on every side by mountains. ( Aris- 
tot. ap. Harpocrat., Lex. — Steph. Byz., s. v. 'kyfyioca.) 
Amphissa was destroyed by order of the Amphictyons, 
for having dared to restore the walls of Crissa, and to 
cultivate the ground, which was held to be sacred ; and 
lastly, on account of the manner in which they molest¬ 
ed travellers who had occasion to pass through their 
territory. (Strabo, 419. — JEschin. in Ctes., p. 71, 
seqq.) At a later period, however, it appears to have 
somewhat recovered from this ruined state when under 
the dominion of the HUtolians. In the war carried on 
by the Romans against this people, they besieged Am¬ 
phissa, when the inhabitants abandoned the town and 
retired into the citadel, which was deemed impregna¬ 
ble. (Liv., 37, 5.) It is generally agreed, that the 
modem town of Salona represents the ancient Amphis¬ 
sa. Sir William Gell ( Itinerary, p. 196) observes, 
that the real distance between Delphi and Amphissa is 
seven miles. (Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 111.) 

Amphitheatrum, an edifice of an elliptical form, 
used for exhibiting combats of gladiators, wild beasts, 
and other spectacles. The word is derived from dycpi 
and t9 Jarpov, from the spectators being so ranged as 
to see equally well from every side. The first dura¬ 
ble amphitheatre of stone was built by Statilius Taurus, 
at the desire of Augustus. The largest one was begun 
by Vespasian, and completed by Titus, now called 
Colisteum, from the Colossus, or large statue of Nero, 
which Vespasian transported to the square in front of 
it. It is said to have contained 87,000 spectators, to 
have been 5 years in building, and to have cost a sum 
equal to 10 millions of crowns. 12,000 Jews were 
employed upon it, who were made slaves at the con¬ 
quest of Jerusalem. Its magnificent ruins still remain. 
—There are amphitheatres still standing in various de¬ 
grees of perfection, at several other places besides 
Rome—at Pola in Istria, at Nismes, at Arles, Bour- 
dcaux, and particularly at Verona. —The place where 
the gladiators fought was called the arena, because it 
was covered with sand or sawdust to prevent the glad¬ 
iators from sliding, and to absorb the blood. 

Amphitrite, a daughter of Nereus and Doris, and 
the spouse of Neptune. She for a long time shunned 
the addresses of this deity ; but her place of conceal¬ 
ment was discovered to Neptune by a dolphin, and 
the god, out of gratitude, placed this fish among the 
stars. Amphitrite had, by Neptune, Triton, one of 
the sea-deities. (Ovid, Metamorph., 1, 14.— Hesiod, 
Theog.) 

Amphitryon, a Theban prince, son of AIcebus and 
Hipponome. His sister Anaxo had married Electryon, 
king of Mycenae, whose sons were killed in a battle by 
the Teleboans. (Vid Alcmena.) 

Amphitryoniades, a surname of Hercules, as the 
supposed son of Amphitryon. (Virg., JEn., 8, 103.) 

Amphrysus, a river of Thessaly, flowing into the 
Sinus Pagasieus, above Phthiotic Thebes. Near this 
stream, Apollo, when banished from heaven, fed the 
flocks of King Admetus. Hence, among the Latin 
128 


poets, the epithet Amphrysius becomes equivalent to 
Apollineus. (Lucan, 6, 367.— Virg., JEn., 6, 398.) 

Ampsagas, a river of Africa, forming the boundary 
between Mauritania Caesariensis and Numidia, and 
falling into the sea to the east of Igilgilis, or JigeL On 
a branch of it stood Cirta, the capital of Numidia. 
The modern name is Wad-il-Kibir, i. e., the Great 
River. (Ptol. — Mela, 1, 6.— Plin., 5, 3.) 

Amsanctus, or Amsancti Vai.lis et Lacus, a cel¬ 
ebrated valley and lake of Italy, in Samnium, to the 
southwest of Trivicum. Virgil (JEn., 7, 563) has 
left us a fine description of the place. The waters of 
the lake were remarkable for their sulphureous proper¬ 
ties and exhalations. Some antiquaries have confound¬ 
ed this spot with the lake of Cutilise, near Reate ; but 
Servius, in his commentary on the passage of Virgil just 
referred to, distinctly tells us that it was situate in the 
country of the Hirpini, which is also confirmed by Cice¬ 
ro (de Div., 1) and Pliny (H. N., 2, 93). The latter 
writer mentions a temple consecrated to the goddess 
Mephitis, on the banks of this sulphureous lake, of 
which a good description is given by Romanelli, taken 
from a work of Leonardo di Capoa. (Romanelli, vol. 
2, p. 351.) The lake is now called Mujiti, and is close 
to the little town of Fncento. (Cramer's Ancient 
Italy, vol. 2, p. 251.) 

Amulius, son of Procas, king of Alba, and younger 
brother of Numitor. The crown belonged of right to 
the latter, but Amulius dispossessed him of it, put to 
death his son Lausus, and fearing lest he might be 
dethroned by a nephew, compelled Rhea Sylvia, the 
daughter of Numitor, to become a vestal, which priest¬ 
hood bound her to perpetual virginity. Notwithstand¬ 
ing, however, all these precautions, Rhea became the 
mother of Romulus and Remus by the god Mars. 
Amulius thereupon ordered her to be buried alive for 
having violated her vow as a priestess of Vesta, and 
the two children to be thrown into the Tiber. They 
were providentially saved, however, by some shep¬ 
herds, or, as others say, by a she-wolf; anti when they 
attained to manhood, they put to death the usurper 
Amulius, and restored the crown to their grandfather 
Numitor. (Ovid, Fast., 3, 67. — Liv., 1, 3, seqq .— 
Plut., Vit. Rom., &c.) 

Amyci Portus, a harbour on the Thracian Bos¬ 
porus, north of Nicopolis, and south of the temple of 
Jupiter Urius. Here Amycus, an ancient king of the 
Bebryces, was slain in combat with Pollux. His tomb 
was covered, according to some, with a laurel, and 
hence they maintain that the harbour was also called 
Daphnes Portus. Arrian, however, speaks of a har¬ 
bour of the insane Daphne near this, which no doubt 
has given rise to the mistake. (Arrian, Peripl. Eux., 
p. 25.— Plin., 5, 43.) 

Amycl^e, I. a city of Italy, in Latium, in the vi¬ 
cinity of Fundi and the Csecubus Ager. It was said 
to have been of Greek origin, being colonized from 
the town of Amyclse in Laconia. Concerning the de¬ 
struction of Amyclse, in Italy, strange tales were re¬ 
lated. According to some accounts, it was infested 
and finally rendered desolate by serpents. (Plin., 3, 
5, who also quotes Varro to the same effect.— Isi- 
gon. ap. Sot., de Mir. Font., &c.) Another tradition 
represented the fall of Amyclse as having been the re¬ 
sult of the silence enjoined by law on its inhabitants, 
in order to put a stop to the false rumours of hostile at¬ 
tacks which had been so frequently circulated. The 
enemy at last, however, really appeared ; and, finding 
the town in a defenceless state, it was destroyed. 
This account is in general acceptation with the poets. 
(Virg., JEn., 10, 563.— Sil. Ital., 8, 528.— Cramer's 
Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 123.)—II. One of the most an¬ 
cient cities of Laconia, a short distance to the south¬ 
west of Sparta. It was founded long before the ar¬ 
rival of the Dorians and Heraclidae, who conquered 
and reduced it to the condition of a small town. It 




AMY 


ANA 


was, however, conspicuous, even in Pausanias’s time, 
for the number of its temples and other edifices, many 
of which were richly adorned with sculptures and other 
works of art. Its most celebrated structure was the 
temple of the Amyclean Apollo. ( Polyb., 4, 9, 3.) 
AmycloB is mentioned by Homer {II., 2, 584) and 
Pindar {Pyth., 1, 122. — Isthm., 7, 18). Polybius 
states that Amyclse was only twenty stadia from Spar¬ 
ta {Polyb., 5, 18); but Dodwell observes, that Sclavo- 
Chorio, which occupies its ancient site, is nearly 
double that distance. {Classical Tour, vol. 2, p. 
413. — Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 3, p. 213.) 
Polybius describes the country around Amyclse as 
most beautifully wooded and of great fertility ; which 
account is corroborated by Dodwell, who says, “ it 
luxuriates in fertility, and abounds in mulberries, ol¬ 
ives, and all the fruit-trees which grow in Greece.” 

Amyclas, I. son of Lacedsemon and Sparta, built 
the city of Amyclse. {Pausan., 3, 1.)—II. The name 
which Lucan gives to the master of the small twelve- 
oared vessel in which Caesar had embarked in disguise, 
for the purpose of sailing to Brundisium, and bringing 
from that place over into Greece the remainder of his 
forces. A violent wind producing a rough sea, the 
pilot despaired of making good his passage, and or¬ 
dered the mariners to turn back. Caesar, perceiving 
this, rose up, and showing himself to the pilot accord¬ 
ing to Plutarch, but, according to Lucan, to Amyclas 
the master of the vessel, exclaimed, “ Go forward, my 
friend, and fear nothing; thou carriest Caesar and 
Caesar’s fortunes in thy vessel.” The effect of this 
speech was instantaneous ; the mariners forgot the 
storm and made new efforts ; but they were at length 
permitted to turn about by Ca3sar himself. {Plut., Vit. 
Cces.) The noble simplicity of Caesar’s reply, as given 
above by Plutarch, has been amplified by Lucan into 
tumid declamation. {Pharsal., 5, 578, seqq.) 

Amycus, son of Neptune by Melia, was king of the 
Bebryces. He was famous for his skill in boxing with 
the cestus or gauntlets, and challenged all strangers to 
a trial of strength. After destroying many persons in 
this way, he was himself slain in a contest with Pol¬ 
lux, whom he had defied to the combat, when the Ar¬ 
gonauts, in their expedition, had stopped for a season 
on his coasts. {Apoll. Rhod., 2, 1, seqq. — Virg., ttn., 
5, 373.) m 

Amymone, I. one of the Danaides, and mother of 
Nauplius by Neptune. The god produced a fountain, 
by striking the ground with his trident, on the spot 
where he had first seen her. Vid. Amymone II. 
{Propert., 2, 26, 46.— Hygin., Fab., 169.)—II. A foun¬ 
tain of Argolis, called after Amymone the daughter of 
Danaus. It was the most famous among the streams 
which contributed to form the Lernean Lake. {Eurip., 
Pham., 195.— Pausan., 2, 37.) 

Amyntas, I. was king of Macedonia, and succeeded 
his father Alcetas, B.C. 547. His son Alexander mur¬ 
dered the ambassadors of Megabyzus for their improp¬ 
er behaviour to the ladies of his father’s court. Bu- 
bares, a Persian general, was sent with an army to re¬ 
venge the death of the ambassadors ; but he was gain¬ 
ed over by rich presents, and by receiving in marriage 
the hand of a daughter of Amyntas, to whom he had 
been previously attached. {Herod., 5, 19.— Justin, 
7, 3.) — II. Successor to Archelaus, B.C. 399. He 
reigned only one year, and performed nothing remark¬ 
able.—III. The third of the name, ascended the throne 
of Macedonia B.C. 397, after having dispossessed 
Pausanias of the regal dignity. He was expelled by 
the Illyrians, but restored by the Thessalians and Spar¬ 
tans. He made war against the Illyrians and Olyn- 
thians, with the assistance of the Lacedaemonians, and 
lived to a great age. His wife Eurydice conspired 
against his life; but her snares were seasonably dis¬ 
covered by one of his daughters by a former wife. 
He had Alexander, Perdiccas, and Philip (father of I 
R 


Alexander the Great) by his first wife; and by the otheT 
he had Archelaus, Aridseus, and Menelaus. He reign¬ 
ed 24 years. {Justin, 7, 4 et 9.)—IV. Grandson of 
Amyntas III. He was yet an infant, when Per¬ 
diccas his father and his uncle Alexander were slain 
by the orders of Eurydice their mother. He was, of 
course, the lawful heir to the crown ; but Philip, having 
in his favour the wishes of the nation, ascended the 
throne in preference to him. He afterward served in 
the armies of both Philip and Alexander. Having 
conspired against the latter, he was put to death. 
{Justin, 7, 4, seqq. — Id., 12, 7.)—V. One of the dep¬ 
uties sent by Philip of Macedon to the Thebans, B.C. 
339, to induce them to remain faithful to his interests. 
—VI. A general of Alexander’s, B.C. 331, sent back 
to Macedonia to make new levies. {Quint. Curt., 4, 
6.— Id., 5, 1.)—VII. Another officer of Alexander’s, 
who went over to Darius, and was slain in attempting 
to seize upon Egypt. {Quint. Curt., 3, 9.) — VIII. 
Son of Arrhabeus, commanded a squadron of cavalry 
in Alexander’s army. He was implicated in the con¬ 
spiracy of Philotas, but acquitted. {Quint. Curt., 4, 
15, &c.) — IX. A king of Galatia, who succeeded 
Deiotarus. He was the last ruler of this country, 
which was added to the Roman empire, after his 
death, by Augustus.—X. A geographical writer, au¬ 
thor of a work entitled ’Eradpol, or the Encamp¬ 
ments of Alexander in his conquest of Asia. {Athen., 

10, 422, b., &c.) It has not come down to us. 

Amyntor, king of Ormenium, a city of the Dolo- 

pians. He put out the eyes of his son Phoenix on a 
false charge of having corrupted one of the royal con¬ 
cubines. He was slain by Hercules on attempting to 
oppose the passage of that hero through his territories. 
{Apollod., 2, 7. — Id., 3, 13. — Compare Homer, II., 
9, 448.) 

Amyricus Campus, a plain of Thessaly, in the dis¬ 
trict of Magnesia, near the town and river of Amyrus. 
It was famed for its wines. {Polyb., 5, 99.) 

Amyrt^eus, an Egyptian leader during the revolu¬ 
tion under Inarus. He succeeded the latter. {Herod., 
2, 140, and 3, 15. —Thucyd., 1, 110.— Diod. Sic., 11, 
74.) Ctesias, however, makes him to have been a 
king of Egypt in the time of Cambyses, whereas the 
other account places him in the reign of Artaxerxes 
Longimanus. As regards this discrepance, consult 
Bahr, ad Ctes., p. 121. 

Amyrus, I. a river of Thessaly, in the upper part 
of the district of Magnesia, and near the town of Me- 
liboea. {Apoll. Rhod., 1, 595.)—II. A city of Thes¬ 
saly, near the river of the same name. {Schol. in 
Apoll. Rhod., 1. c.) 

Amystis, a river of India falling into the Ganges. 
Mannert makes it to be the same with the Patterea, 
near the modern city of Hurdwar. {Geogr., vol. 5, p. 
93.) 

Amythaon, a son of Cretheus, king of Iolcos, by 
Tyro. He married Idomene, by whom he had Bias 
and Melampus. After his father’s death, he estab¬ 
lished himself in Messenia. He is said to have given 
a more regular form to the Olympic games. ( Apol¬ 
lod., 1, 9.— Heyne, ad loc.) —Melampus is called Amy- 
thaonius, from his father Amythaon. ( Virg., G., 3, 
550.) 

Amytis, I. a daughter of Astyages, whom Cyrus 
married. {Ctesias, p. 91.—Consult Bahr, ad loc.) — 

11. A daughter of Xerxes, who married Megabyzus, 
and disgraced herself by her licentious conduct. 

Anaces or Anactes, a name given to Castor and 
Pollux. Their festivals were called Anaceia {’kva- 
uela). The Athenians applied the term Anaces 
(" kvaK.es ) in a general sense to all those deities who 
were believed to watch over the interests, as well pub¬ 
lic as private, of the city of Athens : in a special sense, 
however, the appellation was given to the Dioscuri, on 
account of the peculiar advantages which the capital 

129 



ANA 


ANA 


of Attica had derived from them. (Compare Tzctz., | 
ad 11, p. 69.) Spanheim (ad Callim., Hymn, in Joy., 
79) and Schelling ( Samothr. Gottheit., p. 95) derive 
the form y A vaiceg from the Hebrew Enakim. (Deu - 
teron., 1, 28.) The Greek grammarians, on the other 
hand, have sought for an etymology in their own lan¬ 
guage, and make the term in question come from dvo, 

“ above,” as expressive of the idea of superiority and 
dominion. They attach to this name the triple sense 
of Jeog, /3a<7L?iEvg, and obcodecnroTyc. Hence also the 
adverb dvauioc (Herodot., 1, 24. — Thucyd., 8, 102), 
which the scholiasts explain by TrpovorjTiKug sal <f>v- 
laKTLKug. (Compare Eustath., ad Od., 1, 397. — 
Creuzcr's Symbolik, par Guigniaut, vol. 2, p. 305, in 
notis.) 

Anacharsis, a Scythian philosopher, who flourish¬ 
ed nearly six centuries before the Christian era. He 
was the son of a Scythian prince, who had married a 
native of Greece. Early instructed by his mother in 
the Greek language, he became desirous of acquiring 
a portion of Greek wisdom, and obtained from the 
king of Scythia an embassy to Athens, where he ar¬ 
rived in the year 592 B.C., and was introduced to So¬ 
lon by his countryman Toxaris. On sending in word 
that a Scythian was at the door, and requested his 
friendship, Solon replied that friends were best made 
at home. “ Then let Solon, who is at home, make 
me his friend,” was the smart retort of Anacharsis ; 
and, struck by its readiness, Solon not only admitted 
him, but, finding him worthy of his confidence, favour¬ 
ed him with his advice and friendship. He accord¬ 
ingly resided some years at Athens, and was the first 
stranger whom the Athenians admitted to the honours 
of citizenship. He then travelled into other countries, 
and finally returned to Scythia, with a view to com¬ 
municate to his countrymen the information he had re¬ 
ceived, and to introduce among them the laws and re¬ 
ligion of Greece. The attempt was, however, unsuc¬ 
cessful ; for the Scythians were not only indisposed to 
receive them, but it is said that Anacharsis was killed 
by an arrow, from the king, his brother’s, own hand, 
who detected him performing certain rites in a wood, 
before an image of Cybele. Great respect, however, 
was paid to him after death, which is not unusual. 
Anacharsis was famous for a manly and nervous kind 
of language, which was called, from his country, Scy¬ 
thian eloquence. The apophthegms attributed to him 
are shrewd, and better worth quoting than many of the 
ancient saws, which are often indebted for their celeb¬ 
rity much more to their antiquity than to their wisdom. 
His repartee to an Athenian, who reproached him with 
the barbarism of his country, is well known : “ My 
country is a disgrace to me, but you are a disgrace to 
your country.” Strabo tells us, from an old historian, 
that Anacharsis invented the bellows, the anchor, and 
the potter’s wheel: but this account is very doubtful, 
as Pliny, Seneca (Epist., 90), Diogenes Laertius, and 
Suidas, who likewise speak of the inventions ascribed 
to that philosopher, mention only the last two : while 
Strabo, moreover, remarks that the potter’s wheel is 
noticed in Homer. ( Beckman's History of Inventions, 
vol. 1, p. 104. — Compare Ritter's Vorhalle, p. 237 
and 262.) The epistles which bear the name of Ana¬ 
charsis, and which were published in Greek and Latin, 
at Paris, 1552, are unequivocally spurious. They are 
supposed to have been produced at a later period, in 
the school of the sophists. ( Gorton's Biogr. Diet., 
vol. 1, p. 72. — Enfield's History of Philosophy, vol. 
1, p. 116, seqq.) 

AnacIum (’ kvanelov), a temple at Athens, sacred 
to Castor and Pollux, and standing at the foot of the 
Acropolis. It was a building of great antiquity, and 
contained paintings of Polygnotus and Micon. ( Pau - 
san., 1, 18.— Harpocr., s. v. 'kvantlov.) 

Anacreon, a celebrated Greek poet, of whose life 
little is actually known. It is, however, generally ad- 
130 


mitted that he was born at Teos, a city of Ionia, in 
the early part of the sixth century before the Christian 
era, and that he flourished in the sixtieth Olympiad. 
From Abdera, to which city his parents had fled from 
the dominion of Crcesus, the young Anacreon betook 
himself to the court of Polycrates, tyrant of Samos. 
Here he was received with great distinction, but sub¬ 
sequently retired to Athens, where he remained in 
great favour with Hipparchus, who then possessed the 
power which Pisistratus had usurped. The death of 
his patron caused him to return to his native city, 
whence he retired to Abdera on the breaking out of 
the disturbances under Histiseus. He attained the 
age of eighty-five years. The time and manner of 
his death are uncertain, and variously reported : the 
most popular opinion is, that he died from suffocation, 
in consequence of swallowing a grape-stone while in 
the act of drinking. The bacchanalian turn of his 
poetry is, however, and not without some appearance 
of reason, supposed by many to be the sole foundation 
for this tradition. In the poetry generally attributed 
to him, a great difference, as to quality, is easily dis¬ 
cernible, a circumstance which has contributed not a 
little to strengthen the supposition that the whole is 
not genuine. Indeed, some critics have not hesitated 
to affirm, that very few of the compositions which go 
under his name are to be ascribed to Anacreon. The 
fragments collected by Ursinus, with a few others, 
seem, according to them, to be his most genuine pro¬ 
ductions. To decide from the internal evidence con¬ 
tained in his writings, as well as from the general tenour 
of the meager accounts handed down to us, he was 
himself an amusing voluptuary and an elegant profli¬ 
gate. Few Grecian poets have obtained greater pop¬ 
ularity in modern times, for which in England he is 
indebted to some excellent translations, in part by 
Cowley, and altogether by Fawkes, not to mention the 
point and elegance of the more paraphrastic version of 
Moore.—Of the editions in the original Greek, the 
most celebrated is the quarto, printed at Rome in 
1781, by Spaletti: the most learned and useful is that 
of Fischer, Lips., 1754 (reprinted in 1776 and 1793 
with additions), in 8vo. Other editions worthy of no¬ 
tice are, that of Brunck, Argent., 1778, 16mo (re¬ 
printed in 1786, in 32mo and 16mo) ; that of Gail, 
Paris, 1799, 4to, with a French version*dissertations, 
music, &c. ; that of Moebius, Halle, 1810, 8vo, and 
that of Mehlhorn, Glogav., 1825, 8vo. 

Anactorium, the first town on the northern coast 
of Acarnania, situate on a low neck of land opposite 
Nicopolis, of which it was the emporium. ( Strabo, 
450.) The site is now called Punta, which many an¬ 
tiquaries, however, have identified with Actium : but 
this is evidently an error. Thucydides reports (1, 
55), that Anactorium had been colonized jointly by 
the Corcyreans and Corinthians. These were subse¬ 
quently ejected by the Acarnanians, who occupied the 
place in conjunction with the Athenians. (Thucyd., 
4, 49, and 7, 31.—Compare Scymnus, Ch., v. 459.) 
Anactorium ceased to exist as a town when Augustus 
transferred its inhabitants to Nicopolis. ( Pausan., 7, 
23.) 

Anadyomene (’A vadvopevy scil. ’A (ppodny), a cele¬ 
brated picture of Venus, painted by Apelles, which 
originally adorned the temple of JEsculapius at Cos. 
It represented the goddess rising out of the sea ( uva- 
dvopevyv) and wringing her hair. Augustus transfer¬ 
red it to the temple of Julius Csesar, and remitted to 
the inhabitants of Cos a tribute of one hundred talents 
in return. The lower part of the figure having been 
injured, no Roman painter could be found to supply it. 
(Plin., 35, 10.) 

Anagnia, the principal town of the Hernici, situate 
about thirty-six miles to the east of Rome. It is 
now Anagni. The fertility of the surrounding coun¬ 
try is much commended by Silius Italicus (8, 392). 





ANA 


ANA 


Anagnia was colonized by Drusus. ( Front., de Col.) I 
From Tacitus (Hist., 3, 62) we learn, that it was the 1 
birthplace of Valens, a general of Vitellius, and the 
chief supporter of his party. The Latin way was 
joined near this city by the Via Praenestina, which 
from that circumstance was called Compitum Anag- 
ninum. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 79, seqq.) 

Anaitis, a goddess of Armenia, who appears to be 
the same with the Venus of the western nations. 
She is identical also with the goddess of Nature, wor¬ 
shipped among the Persians. ( Creuzer, Symbolik, 
vol. 2, p. 27.) The temple of Anaitis, in Armenia, 
stood in the district of Acilisene, in the angle between 
the northern and southern branches of the Euphrates. 
She was worshipped also in Zela, a city of Pontus, 
and in Comana. ( Creuzer, l. c.) As regards the 
origin of the name itself, much difference of opinion 
exists. Von Hammer ( Fundgr. des Or., vol. 3, p. 
275) derives it from the Persian Anahid, the name 
of the morning star, and of the female genius that di¬ 
rects with her lyre the harmony of the spheres. Ack- 
erblad, on the other hand (Lettre an Cheval. Italinski, 
&c., Rom., 1817), referring to Clemens Alexandrinus, 
(Protreptr., 5, p. 57) and Eustathius (ad Dionys. 
Perieg., v. 845), where mention is made of an ’A <j>po- 
61 tt] T avatg, and a T avatng, and also to the Phoenician 
T avdr, asserts, that the true name of the goddess in 
question was T avatrig (corrupted in most passages 
of the ancient writers into ’A vatrig), and that the root 
is Tanat, the appellation of an Asiatic goddess, who 
is at one time confounded with Diana, and at another 
with Minerva. (Compare also the Egyptian Neith 
with the article prefixed, A-neith, and ’A velriq, another | 
form of the name Anaitis, as appearing in Plutarch, 
Vit. Artazerx., c. 27.) Silvestre de Sacy, however j 
(Journal, d. Sav. Juillet, 1817, p. 439), in opposition 
to Ackerblad, remarks, that the Persians, most indu¬ 
bitably, call the planet Venus Anahid or Nahid, and 
that the name Anaitis is evidently derived from this 
source : he observes, moreover, that T avalnq is it- 
self a false reading.—The temple of the goddess Anai-1 
tis had a large tract of land set apart for its use, and 
a great number of male and female slaves to cultivate 
it (lepoSovXoi). It was famed for its riches, and it 
was from this sacred edifice that Antony, in his Par¬ 
thian expedition, carried off a statue of the goddess 
of solid gold. (Plin., 33, 4.) The commercial rela¬ 
tions which subsisted between the Armenians and , 
other countries, caused the worship of Anaitis to be 
spread over other lands, and hence we read of its hav¬ 
ing been introduced into Persia, Media, Bactria, &c. 
(Compare Strabo, 535, and Heyne, de Sacerdotio Co- 
manensi, in Nov. Comment. Soc. Scient. Gotting., 16, 
p. 117, seqq.) Artaxerxes Mnemon is said to have 
been the first that introduced the worship of Anaitis 
into Susa, Babylon, and Ecbatana,. (Clemens Alex- 
andr., Protreptr., p. 57, ed. Potter. — Creuzer's Sym¬ 
bolik, vol. 2, p. 26, seqq.) 

Anamares, a Gallic tribe, in Gallia Cispadana, to 
the south of the Po, and at the foot of the Apennines. 
They occupied what is now a part of the modern Duchy 
of Parma. (Polyb., 2, 32.) 

Anapiie, one of the Sporades, northeast of Thera. 
It was said to have been made to rise by thunder from 
the bottom of the sea, in order to receive the Argo¬ 
nauts during a storm, on their return from Colchis. 
The meaning of the fable evidently is, that the island 
was of volcanic origin. Apollonius Rhodius, however 
(4, 1717), gives a different account, according to which 
the island received its name from Apollo’s having ap¬ 
peared there to the Argonauts in a storm. A temple 
was in consequence erected to him, under the name 
of ^Egletes (Aly/b?ref), in the island. (Strabo, 484.) 
The modern name of the island is Amphio. 

Anapus, I. a river of Epirus, near the town of Stra- 
tos, mentioned by Thucydides (2, 82). — II. A river 


of Sicily, near Syracuse, now Alfeo. It was a small 
stream, but is frequently mentioned by the poets. 
They fabled that the deity of the stream fell in love 
with the nymph Cyane, who was changed into a fount¬ 
ain. (Ovid, Pont., 2, 10, 26.— Met., 5, Fab., 5, &c.) 

Anas, a river of Spain, now the Guadiana. The 
modern name is a corruption from the Arabic, Wadi- 
Ana, i. e., the river Ana. (Plin., 3, 1.) 

Anaurus, a small river of Thessaly, near the foot 
of Pelion, and running into the Onchestus. In this 
stream Jason, according to the poets, lost his sandal. 
(Apollon. Rhod., 1 , 48.) 

Anaxagoras, I. a monarch of Argos, son of Ar- 
geius, and grandson of Megapenthes. He shared the 
sovereign power with Bias and Melampus, who had 
cured the women of Argos of madness. (Pausan., 
2, 18.)—II. A Grecian philosopher, born at Clazoin- 
enae, Olymp. 70," according to Apollodorus (Diog. 
Laert., 2, 7), a date, however, that is inconsistent 
with his reputed friendship with Pericles. The state¬ 
ment commonly received makes him a scholar of 
Anaximenes, which the widely fluctuating date as¬ 
signed to the latter renders impossible to refute on 
chronological grounds : however, the philosophical di¬ 
rections they respectively followed were so opposite, 
that they cannot consistently be referred to the same 
school. From Clazomenas he removed to Athens, 
and here we find him living in the strictest intimacy 
with Pericles, to the formation of whose eloquence 
his precepts are said to have greatly contributed. As 
scholars of Anaxagoras, several highly distinguished 
individuals have been mentioned, most of them on the 
sole authority of a very dubious tradition ; and only 
of Euripides the tragedian, and Archelaus the natural¬ 
ist, is it certain that they stood with him in the closest 
relation of intimacy. His connexion with the most 
powerful Athenians, however, profited him but little ; 
for not only does he seem to have passed his old age 
in poverty, but he was not even safe from the persecu¬ 
tion which assailed the friends of Pericles on the de¬ 
cline of his ascendency. He was accused of impiety 
towards the gods, thrown into prison, and eventually 
forced to fly to Lampsacus. Some foundation for the 
charge of impiety was probably found in his general 
views, which undoubtedly were far from according 
with the popular notions of religion, since he re¬ 
garded the sun and moon as consisting of earth and 
stone, and miraculous indications at sacrifices as ordi¬ 
nary appearances of nature. He also gave a moral 
exposition of the myths of Homer, and an allegorical 
explanation of the names of the gods. Anaxagoras 
was an old man when he arrived at Lampsacus, and 
died there soon after his arrival, in the eighty-eighth 
Olympiad, or thereabout. His memory was honoured 
by the people of Lampsacus with a yearly festival. 
In addition to his philosophical labours, Anaxagoras 
is said to have been well acquainted with several other 
branches of knowledge. He occupied himself much 
with mathematics and the kindred sciences, especially 
astronomy, as the character of the discoveries attribu¬ 
ted to him sufficiently shows. He is represented as 
having conjectured the right explanation of the moon’s 
light, and of the solar and lunar eclipses. His work 
on nature, of which several fragments have been pre¬ 
served, especially by Simplicius, was much known and 
celebrated in ancient times. A full analysis of his 
doctrines, as far as they have reached us, is given by 
Ritter, in his History of Ancient Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 
281, seqq., Oxford transl. ; 

Anaxander, son of Eurycrates, and king of Sparta. 
He was of the family of the Agidae. The second Mes- 
senian war began in his reign. (Herodot., 7, 204. — 
Pausan., 3, 3.) 

Anaxandrides, I. son of Leon, was king of Sparta. 
Being directed by the Ephori to put away his wife on 
account of her barrenness, he only so far obeyed as to 

131 





ANA 


ANA 


take a second wife, retaining also the first By his 
second spouse he became the father of Cleomenes, 
while the first one, hitherto steril, bore to him, after 
this, Dorieus, Leonidas, and Cleombrotus. ( Pausan., 
3, 3.)—II. A comic writer, born at Camirus in Rhodes. 
He was the author of sixty-five comedies. Endowed 
by nature with a handsome person and fine talents, 
Anaxandrides, though studiously elegant and effemi¬ 
nate in dress and manner, was yet the slave of passion. 
It is said (Athenceus, 9, 16) that he used to tear his 
unsuccessful dramas into pieces, or send them as waste 
paper to the perfumers’ shops. He introduced upon 
the stage scenes of gross intrigue and debauchery ; 
and not only ridiculed Plato and the Academy, but 
proceeded to lampoon the magistracy of Athens. For 
this attack he is reported by some to have been tried 
and condemned to die by starvation. ( Theatre of the 
Greeks , 2 d ed., p. 183.) 

Anaxarchus, a philosopher of Abdera, from the 
school of Democritus, who flourished about the 110th 
Olympiad. He is chiefly celebrated for having lived 
with Alexander and enjoyed his confidence. ( JElian, 
Var. Hist., 9, 3.— Arrian, Exp. Alex., 4, p. 84.— Plat., 
ad Princ. indoct.) It reflects no credit, however, 
upon his philosophy, that, when the mind of the mon¬ 
arch was torn with regret for having killed his faithful 
Clitus, he administered the balm of flattery, saying, 

“ that kings, like the gods, could do no wrong.” This 
philosopher addicted himself to pleasure ; and it was 
on this account, and not, as some supposed, on ac¬ 
count of the apathy and tranquillity of his life, that he 
obtained the surname of E vdai/aovinog, “ the Fortu¬ 
nate.” A marvellous story is related of his having 
been pounded in an iron mortar by Nicocreon, king 
of Cyprus, in revenge for the advice which he had 
given to Alexander, to serve up the head of that prince 
at an entertainment; and of his enduring the torture 
with invincible hardness. But the tale, for which 
there is no authority prior to the time of Cicero, is 
wholly inconsistent with the character of a man who 
had through his life been softened by effeminate 
pleasures. The same story is also related of Zeno the 
Eleatic. ( Enfield's History of Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 
435.) 

Anaxarete, a young female of Salamis, beloved by 
Iphis, a youth of humble birth. She slighted his ad¬ 
dresses, and he hung himself in despair. Gazing on 
the funeral procession as it passed near her dwelling, 
and evincing little emotion at the sight, she was 
changed into a stone. {Ovid, Met., 14, 698, seqq.) 

Anaxibia, a daughter of Bias, brother to the physi¬ 
cian Melampus. She married Pelias, king of Iolcos, 
by whom she had Acastus, and four daughters, Pisi- 
dice, Pelopea, Hippothoe, and Alcestis. {Apollod., 

I, 9.) 

Anaxidamus, succeeded his father Zeuxidamus on 
the throne of Sparta. {Pausan., 3, 7.) 

Anaxilaus, a Messenian, tyrant of Rhegium. He 
was so mild and popular during his reign, that when he 
died, 476 B.C., he left his infant sons to the care ofpne 
of his slaves, named Micythus, of tried integrity, and 
the citizens chose rather to obey a slave than revolt 
from their benevolent sovereign’s children. Micythus, 
after completing his guardianship, retired to Tegea in 
Arcadia, loaded with presents and encomiums from the 
inhabitants of Rhegium. {Justin, 4, 2. — Diod. Sic., 

II, 66.— Herod., 7, 170.— Justin, 3, 2.— Pausan., 4, 
23.— Thucyd., 6, 5.— Herod., 6, 23.) 

Anaximander, a native of Miletus, who first taught 
philosophy in a public school, and is therefore often 
spoken of as the founder ot the Ionian sect. He was 
born in the third year of the 42d Olympiad (B.C. 610), 
and was the first who laid aside the defective method of 
oral tradition, and committed the principles of natural 
science to writing. It is related of him that he predict¬ 
ed an earthquake: but that he should have been able, in 
132 


the infancy of knowledge, to do what is at this day be¬ 
yond the reach of philosophy, is incredible. He lived 
64 years. {Eiog. Laert., 2, 1. — Cic., Acad. Qucest., 

4, 37.) The general doctrine of Anaximander con¬ 
cerning nature and the origin of things, was, that infin¬ 
ity, to uneipov, is the first principle in all things ; that 
the universe, though variable in its parts, as one whole 
is immutable; and that all things are produced from 
infinity and terminate in it. What this philosopher 
meant by “ infinity” has been a subject of much con¬ 
troversy. If we follow the testimony of Aristotle and 
Theophrastus, it will appear that he understood by the 
term in question a mixture of multifarious elementary 
parts, out of which individual things issued by separa¬ 
tion. Mathematics and astronomy were greatly in¬ 
debted to him. He framed connected series of geo¬ 
metrical truths, and wrote a summary of his doctrine. 
He was the first who undertook to delineate the sur¬ 
face of the earth, and mark the divisions of land and 
water upon an artificial globe. The invention of the 
sundial is also ascribed to him. This, however, has 
been controverted ; but even if the invention has been 
wrongfully ascribed to him, he nevertheless seems to 
have been the first among the Greeks who pointed out 
the use of the dial. He is said also to have been the 
first that made calculations upon the size and distance 
of the heavenly bodies. He believed that the stars 
are globular collections of air and fire, borne about in 
their respective spheres, and animated by portions of 
the divinity ; that the earth is a globe in the midst of 
the universe, and stationary, and that the sun is 28 
times larger than the earth. {Enfield's History of 
Philosophy, vol. 1 , p. 154, seqq. — Ritter , Hist. Anc. 
Phil., vol. 1, 265, seqq., Oxford trans .) 

Anaximenes, I. a native of Miletus, born about the 
56th Olympiad (B.C. 556). He is usually regarded 
as the pupil of Anaximander, but this is controverted 
by Ritter, who sees a striking resemblance between 
his doctrines and those of Thales. This same writer 
rejects the birth-date commonly assigned to Anaxim¬ 
enes, and receives that given by Apollodorus, namely, 
Olymp. 63. Anaximenes taught that the first princi¬ 
ple of all things is air, which he held to be infinite or im¬ 
mense. “ Anaximenes,” says Simplicius {ad Physic., 

1, 2), “ taught the unity and immensity of matter, but 
under a more definite term than Anaximander, calling 
it air. He held air to be God, because it is diffused 
through all nature, and is perpetually active.” The air 
of Anaximenes is, then, a subtile ether, animated with 
a divine principle, whence it becomes the origin of all 
beings. In this sense Lactantius (1,5) understood his 
doctrine ; for, speaking of Cleanthes as adopting the 
doctrine of Anaximenes, he adds, “ the poet assents 
to it when he sings, ‘ Turn pater omnipotens fcccundis 
imbribus oetlier,' ” &c. {Virg., Georg., 2,325.) Anax¬ 
imenes is said to have taught, that all minds are air; 
that fire, water, and earth proceed from it, by rarefac¬ 
tion or condensation ; that the sun and moon are fiery 
bodies, whose form is that of a circular plate; that the 
stars, which also are fiery substances, are fixed in the 
heavens, as nails in a crystalline plane ; and that the 
earth is a plane tablet resting upon the air. ( Plut., 
Plac. Phil., 1 , 17, and 2, 11. — Cic., N. D., 1 , 10.— 
Enfield's History of Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 156.— Rit¬ 
ter, Hist. Anc. Phil., vol. 1, p. 203, seqq., Oxford 
trans.) —II. A native of Lampsacus, and son of Aris- 
tocles. He was celebrated for his skill in rhetoric, and 
was the disciple both of Zoilus, notorious for his hy¬ 
percriticisms on Homer, and of Diogenes the Cynic. 
Anaximenes was one of the preceptors of Alexander the 
Great. He accompanied his illustrious pupil through 
most of his campaigns, and afterward wrote the histo-, 
ry of his reign and that of his father Philip. It is re¬ 
corded that, during the Persian war, his native city 
having espoused the cause of Darius, Alexander ex¬ 
pressed his determination of punishing the inhabitants 





ANC 


ANC 


by laying it in ashes. Anaximenes was deputed by 
his countrymen as a mediator ; but the conqueror, 
guessing his intention, when he saw him entering the 
royal tent as a suppliant, cut short his anticipated pe¬ 
tition by declaring that he was determined to refuse 
his request, whatever it might be. Of this hasty ex¬ 
pression the philosopher availed himself, and immedi¬ 
ately implored that Lampsacus might be utterly de¬ 
stroyed, and a pardon refused to its citizens. The 
stratagem was successful; Alexander was unwilling 
to break his promise ; and the presence of mind ex¬ 
hibited by its advocate saved the town. Anaximenes 
was also the author of a history of Greece. ( Pausan., 
6, 18.— Val. Max., 7, 3, 4.) 

Anazarbus, a city of Cilicia Campestris, situate on 
the river Pyramus, at some distance from the sea, and 
taking its name apparently from a mountain called An¬ 
azarbus, at the foot of which it was situate. The ad¬ 
jacent territory was famed for its fertility. It after¬ 
ward took the appellation of Caesarea ad Anazarbum, 
but from what Roman emperor is not known, though 
prior to the time of Pliny (5, 27). The original appel¬ 
lation, however, finally prevailed, as we find it so desig¬ 
nated in Hierocles and the imperial Notitiae, at which 
period it had become the chief town of Cilicia Secunda. 
It was nearly destroyed by a terrible earthquake under 
Justinian. Anazarbus was the birthplace of Dioscor- 
ides and Oppian. The Turks call it, at the present day, 
Ain-Zerbeh. (Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 354.) 

Anc^eus, I. the son of Lycurgus and Cleophile, or, 
according to others, Astypalaea, was in the expedition 
of the Argonauts. He was also at the chase of the 
Calydonian boar, in which he perished. ( Apollod., 3, 
9.— Id., 1, 8.— Hygin., Fab., 173 et 248.)—II. King 
of Samos, and son of Neptune and Astypalaea. He 
went with the Argonauts, and succeeded Tiphys as pi¬ 
lot of the ship Argo. He reigned in Ionia, where he 
married Sarnia, daughter of the Mseander, by whom he 
had four sons, Perilas, Enudus, Samus, Alithersus, and 
one daughter called Parthenope. He paid particular 
attention to the culture of the vine, and on one occa¬ 
sion was told by a slave, whom he was pressing with 
hard labour in his vineyard, that he would never taste 
of its produce. After the vintage had been gathered 
in and the wine made, Ancaeus, in order to falsify the 
prediction, was about to raise a cup of the liquor to his 
lips, deriding, at the same time, the pretended prophet 
(who, however, merely told him, in reply, that there 
were many things between the cup and the lip), when 
tidings came that a boar had broken into his vineyard. 
Throwing down the cup, with the untasted liquor, 
Ancaeus rushed forth to meet the animal, and lost his 
life in the encounter. Hence arose the Greek proverb, 

TLohXd, /aera^v -xeXei uvTaKog aal unpov. 

Multa cadunt inter calicem supremaque labra. 

The Latin translation is by Erasmus, who, as Dacier 
thinks, read tcetel for tteTiel, a supposition not at all 
probable, since u cadunt" gives the spirit, though not 
the literal meaning, of tteIel .—The story just given is 
related somewhat differently by other writers, but the 
point in all is the same. ( Eustath., ad II., p. 77, ed. 
Rom. — Festus, s. v. Manum. — Aul. Gell., 13, 17.— 
Dacier, ad Fest., 1. c.) 

Ancalites, a people of Britain, near the Atrebatii, 
and probably a clan of that nation. Baxter supposes 
them to have been the herdsmen and shepherds of the 
Atrebatii, and to have possessed those parts of Oxford¬ 
shire and Buckinghamshire most proper for pasturage. 
Horsley, on the other hand, makes their country cor¬ 
respond to the modern Berkshire. But it is all uncer¬ 
tainty. (Coes., Bell. G., 5, 21.) 

Anchemolus, son of Rhoetus, king of the Marrubii 
in Italy, was expelled by his father for criminal con¬ 
duct towards his stepmother. He fled to Turnus, and 


was killed by Pallas, son of Evander, in the w r ars of 
^Eneas against the Latins. (Virg., JEn., 10, 389.) 

Anchesmus, a mountain of Attica, where Jupiter 
Anchcsmius had a statue. It is now Agios Georgios, 
taking its modern name from a church of St. George, 
which has displaced the statue. (Leake's Topogr. of 
Athens , p. 69.) 

Anchiale, a city of Cilicia, west of the mouth of 
the Cydnus, and a short distance from the coast. It 
was a place of great antiquity, and the Greek writers 
assign its origin to Sardanapalus, king of Assyria. 
The authority, however, from which they derive their 
information, is Aristobulus, who is entitled to but lit¬ 
tle credit in general. The founder was said by them 
to have been buried here, and they speak of his tomb's 
still existing in the time of Alexander the Great. On 
the tomb was the statue of a man in the act of clap¬ 
ping his hands, with an Assyrian inscription to this 
effect, “ Sardanapalus, the son of Anacyndaraxes. 
built Anchiale and Tarsus in one day ; but do thou, 
oh stranger, eat, drink, and sport, since the rest of hu¬ 
man things are not worth this,” i. e., a clap of the 
hands. ( Arrian , Exp. Alex., 2, 5.) It is more than 
probable, supposing that a Sardanapalus did found the 
place, that we are to regard him, not as the last king 
of that name, but some earlier monarch of Assyria, 
who had pushed his conquests into the western part 
of Asia. The situation of Anchiale was bad ; it had 
no harbour, no river, no great road, in its immediate 
vicinity. It disappeared, therefore, at last from histo¬ 
ry, while Tarsus, more favourably placed, continued to 
flourish. Pliny calls the name Anchiales ; and Arri¬ 
an, Anchialos. (Mannert, 6, pt. 2, p. 66.) 

Anchialus, a term occurring in one of Martial’s 
epigrams (11, 94), about which the learned are greatly 
divided in opinion. Scaliger thinks that it comes from 
the Hebrew Chai and Alah, and is equivalent to Vi¬ 
xens Deus. 

AnchIs,® Portus, according to Dionysius of Hali¬ 
carnassus (Ant. Rom., 1 , 32), the real name of On' 
chesmus in Epirus. 

Anchises, son of Capys, by Themis, daughter of 
IIus, and the father of iEneas. Venus was so struck 
with his beauty, that she introduced herself to his no¬ 
tice in the form of a nymph, on Mount Ida, and urged 
him to a union. Anchises no sooner discovered that 
he had been in the company of a celestial being, than 
he dreaded the vengeance of the gods. Venus quiet¬ 
ed his apprehensions ; but, for his imprudence subse¬ 
quently in boasting of the partiality of the goddess, 
Jupiter struck him with blindness, or, according to 
some, enfeebled and maimed him by a stroke of thun¬ 
der. The offspring of his union with Venus was the 
celebrated JEneas. When Troy was in flames, he was 
saved from the victorious Greeks by his son, who bore 
him away on his shoulders from the burning city. He 
afterward accompanied ./Eneas in his voyage to Italy, 
but died before that land was reached, in the island of 
Sicily, at the harbour of Drepanum, and was buried on 
Mount Eryx. ( Virg., JEn., 2, 647.— Id. ib., 3, 707.— 
Heyne, Excurs., 17, ad Virg., JEn., 2, &c.) 

Anchisia, a mountain of Arcadia, on which, accord¬ 
ing to Pausanias, was the tomb of Anchises. This, 
of course, is different from the common account, fol¬ 
lowed by Virgil, which makes Anchises to have been 
buried on Mount Eryx in Sicily. At the foot of Mount 
Anchisia there was a road leading to Orchomenus, 
which city lay to the northwest. (Pausan., 8, 12.) 

Anchisiades, a patronymic of /Eneas, as being son 
of Anchises. (Virg., JEn., 6, 348, &c.) 

Anchoe, a place in Boeotia, where the Cephissus, 
or rather the Lake Copals, issued from under ground. 
It was near Larymna, and on the coast. (Strabo, 
404.) 

Anchora. Vid. Nicsea II. 

Anchurus, a son of Midas, king of Phrvgia, who 

133 





ANC 


ANC 


sacrificed himself for the good of his country, when 
the earth had opened and swallowed up many build¬ 
ings. The oracle had been consulted, and gave for 
answer, that the gulf would never close if Midas did 
not throw into it whatever he had most precious. 
Though the king cast in much gold and silver, yet the 
gulf continued open, till Anchurus, thinking nothing 
more precious than life, and regarding himself, there¬ 
fore, as the most valuable of his father's possessions, 
took a tender leave of his wife and family, and leaped 
into the earth, which closed immediately over his head. 
Midas erected there an altar of stone to Jupiter, and 
that altar was the first object which he turned into 
gold when he had received his fatal gift from the gods. 
Every year, when the day came round on which the 
chasm had been first formed, the altar became one of 
stone again ; but, when this day had passed by, it 
once more changed to gold. ( Pint., Parall., p. 306.) 

Ancile, a sacred shield, which fell from heaven in 
the reign of Numa, when the Roman people laboured 
under a pestilence. Upon the preservation of this 
shield depended the fate of the Roman empire, ac¬ 
cording to the admonition given to Numa by the nymph 
Egeria, and the monarch therefore ordered eleven of 
the same size and form to be made, that if ever any 
attempt was made to carry them away, the plunderer 
might find it difficult to distinguish the true one. 
They were made with such exactness, that the king 
promised Yeturius Mamurius, the artist, whatever 
reward he desired. ( Vid. Mamurius.) They were 
kept in the temple of Vesta, and an order of priests 
was chosen to watch over their safety. These priests 
were called Salii, and were twelve in number; they 
carried every year, on the first of March, the shields 
in a solemn procession through the streets of Rome, 
dancing and singing praises to the god Mars. ( Vid. 
Salii.) This sacred festival continued three days, du¬ 
ring which every important business was stopped. It 
was deemed unfortunate to be married on those days, 
or to undertake any expedition. Hence Suetonius 
(Oth., 8) states, that Otho marched from Rome, on 
his unsuccessful expedition against Yitellius, during 
the festival of the Ancilia, “ nulla rehgionum cura ,” 
without any regard for sacred ceremonies, and Tacitus 
(Hist., 1 , 89) remarks, that many ascribed to this cir¬ 
cumstance the unfortunate issue of the campaign. 
The form of the ancile occurs in ancient coins. Rep¬ 
resentations of it are also given by modern writers on 
Roman Antiquities. (Consult Lipsius, Mil. Rom.; 
Anal., lib. 3, dial. 1.) Plutarch, in explaining their 
shape, remarks, “ they are neither circular, nor yet, 
like the pelta, semicircular, but fashioned in two crook¬ 
ed indented lines, the extremities of which, meeting 
close, form a curve (dyicvXov)." According to this ety¬ 
mology, the name should be written in Latin Ancyle. 
Ovid says the shield was called ancile, “ quod ah omni 
parte recisum est," a derivation much worse than Plu¬ 
tarch’s. The name is very probably of Etrurian ori¬ 
gin, and the whole legend would appear to be a myth, 
turning on the division of the Roman year into twelve 
months by the fabulous Numa. (Plut., Vit. Num., c. 
13 .—Ovid, Fast., 3, 377.) 

Ancona, a city of Italy, on the coast of Picenum, 
which still retains its name. The appellation is sup¬ 
posed to be of Greek origin, and to express the angu¬ 
lar form of the promontory on which the city is placed. 
(Mela, 2, 4.— Procop., Rer. Got., 2.) This bold head¬ 
land was called Cumerium Promontorium ; its modern 
name is Monte Comero, and sometimes Monte Guasco. 
The foundation of Ancona is ascribed by Strabo (241) 
to some Syracusans, who wmre fleeing from the tyran¬ 
ny of Dionysius. These Syracusans of Strabo are by 
many critics supposed to be the same with the Siculi 
of Pliny, to whom that writer attributes the origin of 
this city. (Plin., 3,13.—Compare Solin., 8.) But, on 
the other hand, it is contended, that the foundation of 
134 


Ancona must be anterior to the reign of Dionysius, 
since it is noticed in the Periplus of Scylax (p. 12) as 
belonging to the Umbri; and, therefore, that the Siculi 
of Pliny must be that ancient race who settled in Italy 
at a very remote period, and afterward passed over into 
Sicily. (Bardetti, pt. 2, c. 10.— Olivieri, della fond, di 
Pesaro dissert., p. 13.— Gius. Colucci, Delle Anticliitd 
Picene, vol. 1, diss. 1.) Ancona is spoken of by Livy 
(41, 1) as a naval station of great importance in the 
wars of Rome with the Illyrians. (Compare Tacit., 
Ann., 3, 9.) It was occupied by Caesar soon after his 
passage of the Rubicon. (Bell. Civ., 1, 11.— Cic., Ep. 
ad Fam., 16, 12.) It continued to be a port of conse¬ 
quence in Trajan’s time, if we may judge from the 
works erected by that emperor, which are still extant 
there. (Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol. 1, p. 280, seqq.) 

Ancus Marcius, the fourth king of Rome, was 
grandson to Numa by his daughter. His name Ancus 
was said to be derived from the Greek uynibv, because 
he had a crooked arm, which he could not stretch out 
to its full length ; an etymology of no value whatever, 
the term in question being very probably Etrurian. 
Like his ancestors, he first turned his attention to the 
re-establishment of religion, and had the ritual law 
transcribed on tables, that all might read it. He then 
directed his arms against the Latins with success, and 
carried away several thousand of this nation to Rome, 
whom he settled on the Aventine. He extended his 
conquests into Etruria, and along both banks of the 
Tiber to the seacoast, where he founded Ostia, the 
oldest of the Roman colonies, as the harbour of Rome. 
He built the first bridge over the Tiber, and annexed 
additional defences to the city. The oldest remaining 
monument in Rome, the prison formed out of a stone 
quarry in the Capitoline Hill, is called the work of 
Ancus. It was on the side of the hill above the forum 
(the place of meeting for the plebeians); and until an 
equality of laws was introduced, it served only to keep 
the plebeians and those who were below them in cus¬ 
tody. The original common law of the plebs was re¬ 
garded as the fruit of his legislation, in the same man¬ 
ner as the rights of the three ancient tribes were looked 
upon to be the laws of the first three kings. And be¬ 
cause all landed property, by the principles of the Ro¬ 
man law, proceeded from the state, and, on the incor¬ 
poration of new communities, was surrendered by them, 
and conferred back on them by the state, the assign¬ 
ment of public lands is attributed to Ancus. This 
act, being viewed as a parcelling out of public territo¬ 
ries, was probably the cause which led the plebeians 
to bestow the epithet of “ good” upon him in the old 
poems. The new subjects could not be admitted into 
a new tribe, as the Luceres had been, since the num¬ 
ber of tribes was completed. They constituted a com¬ 
munity which stood side by side with the people formed 
by the members of the thirty curiae, as the body of the 
Latin towns had stood in relation to Alba. This was 
the beginning of the plebs, which was the strength 
and the life of Rome, the people of Ancus as distin¬ 
guished from that of Romulus ; and this is a fresh 
reason for Ancus being placed in the middle of the 
Roman kings. (Niebuhr, Rom. Hist., p. 86, Twiss's 
abridgment.) Ancus reigned, according to the fabu¬ 
lous Roman chronology, twenty-four years. (Liv., I, 
32, seqq. — Florus, 1 , 4.— Dion. Hal., 3, 9, &c.) 

Ancyra, I. a city of Galatia, west of the Halys. Ac¬ 
cording to Pausanias (2,4), it was founded by Midas, and 
the name was derived from an anchor (dynvpa) wffiich 
was found here and preserved in the temple of Jupiter. 
This city was greatly enlarged by Augustus, whence 
the grammarian Tzetzes is led to style him the founder 
of the city, and under Nero it was styled the metropolis 
of Galatia. Its situation was extremely well adapted 
for inland trade, and Ancyra became a kind of staple- 
place for the commodities of the East. It is famous 
also as having been the spot where the Monumentum 



AND 


AND 


Ancyranum was found in modern times, a spurious in¬ 
scription on a temple erected in honour of Augustus, 
which gives a history of the several actions and pub¬ 
lic merits of Augustus, and which shows also that 
he had been a great patron of the Ancyrani. Ancyra 
is now called by the Turks Angouri, and by the Eu¬ 
ropeans Angora , and is the place whence the celebra¬ 
ted shawls and hosiery made of goats’ hair were ori¬ 
ginally brought. Near this place, Bajazet was con¬ 
quered and made prisoner by Timur, or, as the name 
is commonly, though incorrectly, written, Tamerlane. 
(Mannert, vol. 6, pt. 3, p. 46, seqq.) —II. A town of 
Phrygia, on the confines of Mysia. Strabo (576) 
places it in the district of Abasitis, near the sources 
of the river Makestus, which flows into the Rhyndacus. 
(Mannert, vol. 6, pt. 3, p. 111.) 

Andabat^b, gladiators who fought blindfolded, 
whence the proverb Andabatarum more pugnare , to 
denote rash and inconsiderate measures. The name 
comes from the Greek dvabdrai, because they fought 
in chariots or on horseback. (Consult Erasmus , 
Chil., p. 461.) 

Andania, a city of Messenia, situate, according to 
Pausanias (4, 33), at the distance of eight stadia from 
Carnasium. It had been the capital of Messenia be¬ 
fore the domination of the Heraclidse. (Pausan., 4, 
3.) Strabo (360) places it on the road from Messene 
to Megalopolis. It is also mentioned by Livy (36, 31) 
as situated between these two cities. Sir W. Gell 
(Itin., p. 69) observed its ruins between Sakona and 
Krano, on a hill formed by the foot of Mount Tetrage. 
(Cramer's Ancient Greece , vol. 3, p. 147.) 

Andecavi or Andes, a people of Gaul, east of the 
Namnetes, and lying along the northern bank of the 
Liger or Loire. Their capital was Juliomagus, now 
Angers, and their territory corresponded in part to 
what is now the department de la Mayenne. (Cces., 
B. G., 2, 35.) 

Andes, I. a people of Gaul. Vid. Andecavi.—II. A 
village near Mantua, where Virgil was born. (Compare 
Hieron., Chron. Euseb., 2, and Sil. Ital., 8, 594.) 
Tradition has long assigned to a small place, now 
named Pietola, the honour of representing this birth¬ 
place of Virgil; but as this opinion appears to derive 
no support from the passages in which the poet is sup¬ 
posed to speak of his own farm, the prevailing notion 
among the learned seems to contradict the popular re¬ 
port which identifies Andes with Pietola. (Maffei, 
Verona Illustr., vol. 2, p. 1.— Viso, Memorie Istoriche, 
vol. 1, p. 31.— Bonelli, Mem. Mantor., vol. 1, p. 120.) 
It may be observed, however, that Virgil’s birthplace 
and his farm may not necessarily have been one and 
the same : in this case it would seem that no argument 
could be objected to a local, but very ancient and well- 
established tradition. (Cramer's Ancient Italy , vol. 
1, p. 69, seqq.) 

Andocides, an Athenian orator, son of Leogoras, 
and born in the first year of the 78th Olympiad, B.C. 
468. He commanded the Athenian fleet in the war 
between the Corinthians and Corcyreans, and was af¬ 
terward accused of having been concerned in mutila¬ 
ting the Hermse, or statues of Mercury, a crime of 
which Alcibiades was regarded as one of the authors. 
Andocides, having been arrested for this sacrilege, es¬ 
caped punishment by denouncing his real or pretended 
accomplices. Photius informs us, that among these 
was Leogoras, but that Andocides found the means of 
obtaining his father’s pardon. (Phot., Bibl., vol. 2, p. 
488, ed. Bekker.) The same author mentions various 
other incidents in the life of this orator, which com¬ 
pelled him at last to quit Athens. He returned during 
the government of the four hundred, and was cast into 
prison, whence, however, he succeeded in escaping. 
He returned a second time to his native country after 
the fall of the thirty tyrants. Having failed in an em¬ 
bassy to Sparta, which had been confided to him, he 


no longer dared to show himself in Athens, but died 
in exile. Andocides employed his abilities as an orator 
merely in his own affairs. The four discourses of his 
which have come down to us are important for the 
history of Greece. The first has reference to the 
Mysteries of Eleusis, which he had been accused 
of violating (Ilepi M vaTrjpiov). The second (Hepi 
nadodov), treats of his (second) return to Athens. 
The third (Ilept E ipqvrjg), “ Concerning Peace," was 
pronounced in the fourth year of the 95th Olympiad, 
on occasion of the peace with Sparta; the fourth is 
directed against Alcibiades (Kara ’A Xnibiddov). Tay¬ 
lor, led into an error by a passage of Plutarch (Vit. 
Alcib., 13. — Ed. Reiske, vol. 2, p. 21), thinks that 
this discourse was delivered by Phaeax, one of the an¬ 
tagonists of Alcibiades ; but Ruhnken has shown this 
opinion to be incorrect. (Hist. Grit. Orat. Gr. — p. 
54, of the edition of Rutilius Lupus.— Scholl, Hist. 
Lit. Gr., vol. 2, p. 205, seqq.) The discourses of 
Andocides are given in Reiske’s edition of the Greek 
orators ; in that of Bekker, and in the edition of Dob¬ 
son, Lond., 1828, 16 vols. 8vo. 

Andomatis, a river of India, falling into the Ganges. 
Accordingto D’Anville, the modern Sonn-sou. (Vid. 
Sonus.) 

Andriclus, a mountain of Cilicia Trachea, north of 
the promontory Anemurium. (Strab., 670.) 

Andriscus, an obscure individual, a native of Adra- 
myttium in Asia Minor, who, from his strong resem¬ 
blance to Philip, son of Perseus, the last king of Ma¬ 
cedonia, was induced to pass himself off for that prince, 
and hence received the name of Pseudophilippus, or 
“the false Philip.” Having deceived the Macedoni¬ 
ans, he induced them to revolt against the Roman 
power, and gained at first some advantages, but was at 
length defeated by Caecilius Metellus, and led in tri¬ 
umph, B.C. 148. (Flor., 2, 14.— Veil. Paterc., 1, 11.) 

Androcydes, I. a painter of Cyzicus, contemporary 
with Pelopidas and Zeuxis, the latter of whom he at¬ 
tempted to rival. Two of his productions are men¬ 
tioned by the ancient writers, a painting of a battle and 
a portrait of Scylla, the latter being celebrated for the 
accuracy with which the fish accompanying the monster 
were represented. (Plut., Vit. Pelop., 25.— Plin., 35, 
10.— Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.) —II. A physician in the 
time of Alexander the Great, who, in writing to the 
king, in condemnation of the use of wine, observed, to 
quote the Latin version of Pliny, “ Vinum poturus 
rex, memento te bibere sanguinem terra: cicuta homi- 
num venenum est, cicuta vinum." (Plin., 14, 5.) 

Androgeus, son of Minos and Pasiphae. He was 
famous for his skill in wrestling, and overcame every 
antagonist at Athens during the contest at the Pan- 
athenaic festival, and iEgeus, through envy, sent him 
against the Marathonian bull, by which animal he 
was destroyed. According to another account, he 
was waylaid and assassinated while proceeding to 
Thebes to attend the games of Laius, and his mur¬ 
derers were the combatants whom he had conquered 
at Athens, and who were led by envy to perpetrate 
the deed. Minos declared war against Athens to re¬ 
venge the death of his son, and peace was at last re¬ 
established on condition that Aegeus sent yearly seven 
boys and seven girls from Athens to Crete, to be de¬ 
voured by the Minotaur. (Vid. Minotaurus.) The 
Athenians established festivals, by order of Minos, in 
honour of his son, and called them Androgeia. (Apol- 
lod., 3, 15.— Hygin., Fab., 41. — Virg., JEn., 6, 20.) 
The whole story of Androgeus is an allegorical one, 
and has an agricultural reference. Androgeus is the 
man of the earth, the cultivator ('kvdpoyeuc). The 
Marathonian bull, by whose fire, according to one ac¬ 
count (Scrv. ad Virg., IEn., 6, 20), he was injured in 
the conflict, recalls to mind the fire-breathing bulls of 
Colchis, the land of H3etes, the first man of the earth. 
A new field of exertion now opens on the son of 

135 




AND 


AND 


Minos, and a new name is given him; Eurygyes 
( Evpvyvrp :), “the far-plougher,” or “the possessor of 
wide-extended acres” ( evpvq and jvq), and it is worth 
noticing, that, after having been slain, and previous 
to his new appellation, he was reawakened to life by 
iEsculapius, or the sun. (Compare Hesych., vol. 1, 
p. 1332, ed. Alberti , and Creuzer's Symbolik, vol. 4, 
p. 107.) 

Andromache, a daughter of Eetion, king of Hy- 
poplacian Thebe, in Mysia, married Hector, son of 
Priam, and became the mother of Astyanax. She 
was equally remarkable for her domestic virtues, and 
for attachment to her husband. In the division of the 
prisoners by the Greeks, after the taking of Troy, 
Andromache fell to the share of Pyrrhus, who carried 
her to Epirus, where she became the mother of three 
sons, Molossus, Pielus, and Pergamus. Pyrrhus sub¬ 
sequently conceded her to Helenus, the brother of 
Hector, who had also been among the captives of the 
prince. She reigned with Helenus over part of Epirus, 
and became by him the mother of Cestrinus. (Homer, 
II. , 6, 22 et 24.— Virg ., IEn., 3, 485.— Hygin., Fab., 
123.) 

Andromachus, I. an opulent Sicilian, father of the 
historian Timeeus. He collected together the inhabi¬ 
tants of the city of Naxos, which Dionysius the tyrant 
had destroyed, and founded with them Tauromenium. 
Andromachus, as prefect of the new city, subsequent¬ 
ly aided Timoleon in restoring liberty to Syracuse. 
(Diod. Sic., 16, 7 et 68.) — II. A general of Alex¬ 
ander, to whom Parmenio gave the government of 
Syria. He was burned alive by the Samaritans, but 
his death was avenged by Alexander. (Quint. Curt., 
4, 5.) — III. A brother-in-law of Seleucus Callinicus. 
—IV. A traitor, who discovered to the Parthians all 
the measures of Crassus, and, on being chosen guide, 
led the Roman army into a situation whence there was 
no mode of escape.—V. A physician of Crete in the 
age of Nero : he was physician to the emperor, and 
inventor of the famous medicine, called after him, 
Theriaca Andromachi. It was intended at first as an 
antidote against poisons, but became afterward a kind 
of panacea. This medicine enjoyed so high a rep¬ 
utation among the Romans, that the Emperor Antoni¬ 
nus, at a later period, took some of it every day, and 
had it prepared every year in his palace. It consisted 
of 61 ingredients, the principal of which were squills, 
opium, pepper, and dried vipers! This absurd com¬ 
pound was in vogue even in modern times, as late as 
1787, in Paris. (Galen, de Theriac., p. 470.— Id. 
de Antidot., lib. 1, p. 4333. — Sprengel, Hist. Med., 
vol. 2, p. 56.) 

Andromeda, a daughter of Cepheus, king of ^Ethi¬ 
opia, by Cassiope. She was promised in marriage to 
Phineus, her uncle, when Neptune inundated the coasts 
of the country, and sent a sea-monster to ravage the 
land, because Cassiope had boasted herself fairer than 
Juno and the Nereides. The oracle of Jupiter Am¬ 
mon being consulted, returned for answer that the 
calamity could only be removed by exposing Androm¬ 
eda to the monster. She was accordingly secured to 
a rock, and expected every moment to be destroy¬ 
ed, when Perseus, who was returning through the 
air from the conquest of the Gorgons, saw her, and 
was captivated with her beauty. He promised to de¬ 
liver her and destroy the monster if he received her 
in marriage as a reward. Cepheus consented, and 
Perseus changed the sea-monster into a rock, by show¬ 
ing him Medusa’s head, and unbound Andromeda. 
The marriage of Andromeda with Perseus was op¬ 
posed by Phineus, but, in the contest that ensued, he 
and his followers were changed to stone by the head 
of the Gorgon. Andromeda was made a constellation 
in the heavens after her death. Consult remarks un¬ 
der the article Perseus. (Apollod., 2, 4.— Hygin., 
Fab., 64.— Manil., 5, 533.) 

136 


AndronTcus Livius. Vid. Livius. 

Andronicus, I. a peripatetic philosopher, a native 
of Rhodes, who flourished about 80 B.C. He arran¬ 
ged and published the writings of Aristotle, which had 
been brought to Rome with the library of Apellicon. 
He commented on many parts of these writings ; but 
no portion of his works has reached us, for the treatise 
Tvepi naOQv, and the Paraphrase of the Nicomachean 
ethics, which have been published under his name, 
are the productions of another. The treatise tt epi 
iradtiv was published by Hoesschel in 1593, in 8vo, 
and was afterward printed conjointly with the Para¬ 
phrase, in 1617, 1679, and 1809. The Paraphrase 
was published by Heinsius in 1607, 4to, at Leyden, 
as an anonymous work (Incerti Auctoris Paraphrasis, 
&c.), and afterward under the name of Andronicus of 
Rhodes, by the same scholar, in 1617, 8vo, with the 
treatise nepl nadcov added to it. The two works were 
reprinted in this form at Cambridge, in 1679, 8vo, 
and at Oxford, 1809, 8vo. — II. Cyrrhestes, an as¬ 
tronomer of Athens, who erected, B.C. 159, an octag¬ 
onal marble tower in that city to the eight winds. On 
every side of the octagon he caused to be wrought a 
figure in relievo, representing the wind which blew 
against that side. The top of the tower was finished 
with a conical marble, on which he placed a brazen 
Triton, holding a wand in his right hand. This Triton 
was so contrived that he turned round with the wind, 
and always stopped when he directly faced it, pointing 
with his wand over the figure of the wind at that time 
blowing. Within the structure was a water-clock, 
supplied from the fountain of Clepsydra. Beneath the 
eight figures of the winds lines were traced on the 
walls of the tower, which, by the shadows cast upon 
them by styles fixed above, indicated the hour of the 
day, as the Triton’s wand did the quarter of the wind. 
When the sun did not shine, recourse was had to the 
water-clock within the tower, which building thus 
supplied both a vane and a chronometer. The struc¬ 
ture still stands, though in a damaged state. To the 
correctness of the sundials, the celebrated Delambre 
bears testimony, and he describes the series as “ the 
most curious existing monument of the practical gno- 
monics of antiquity.” There are two entrances, fa¬ 
cing respectively to the northeast and northwest: each 
of these openings has a portico supported by two col¬ 
umns. When Stuart explored this building, the lower 
part of the interior was covered to a considerable 
depth by rubbish ; and the dervishes who had taken 
possession of the building performed their religious 
rites on a wooden platform which had been thrown 
over the fragments. All this, however, he was per¬ 
mitted to remove, and he found manifest traces of a 
clepsydra or water-clock carefully channelled in the 
original floor. (Stuart and Revett's Athens Abridged, 
p. 8, seqq .— Wordsworth's Greece, p. 146.) 

Andros, an island in the HSgean Sea, one of the 
Cyclades, lying to the southeast of the lower extremi¬ 
ty of Euboea. It bore also several other appellations, 
enumerated by Pliny (4, 12). According to this wri¬ 
ter, it is ten miles from the promontory of Geraestus, 
and thirty-nine from Ceos. The Andrians, as we 
learn from Herodotus (8, 111 and 121), were com¬ 
pelled to join the armament of Xerxes ; and, after the 
battle of Salamis, they were called upon by Thernis- 
tocles, at the head of an Athenian squadron, to pay a 
large sum of money as a contribution: with this de¬ 
mand they declared themselves unable to comply, ob¬ 
serving that they were close beset by the two deities, 
Poverty and Want, which never quitted the island, and 
Themistocles, after a fruitless attempt to reduce them 
by force, withdrew to Euboea. We learn, however, 
from Thucydides (2, 55, and 4, 42), that the island 
was subsequently reduced and rendered tributary to 
the Athenians. In the Macedonian war, Livy relates 
(31, 45), that the town of Andros was taken by Alta* 



ANI 




ANN 


lus and the Romans. The modern name of the island 
is the same with the ancient, or else varies from it 
only in dropping the final letter. ( Cramer's Anc. 
Greece , vol. 3, p. 410.) 

Anemorea, a town of Phocis, mentioned by Homer 
(II., 2, 521) in conjunction with Hyampolis, and 
doubtless in the immediate vicinity of that city, with 
which it was even sometimes confounded. (Compare 
the French Strabo, Ecelairciss., No. 34, vol. 3, Ap¬ 
pend., p. 154.) Strabo affirms, that it obtained its 
name from the violent gusts of wind which blew from 
Mount Catopterius, a peak belonging to the chain of 
Parnassus. He adds that it was named by some au¬ 
thors Anemolea. ( Strabo , 423.— Cramer's Ancient 
Greece, vol. 2, p. 186.) 

Angelion, an artist, invariably named in connexion 
with Tectaeus, as his constant associate. It is uncer¬ 
tain whether they excelled chiefly in casting brass or 
in carving marble. They are supposed by Sillig to 
have flourished about 548 B.C. Mention is made in 
particular, by the ancient writers, of a statue of Apol¬ 
lo by these artists. According to Muller, they imi¬ 
tated a very ancient statue of the Delian Apollo, made, 
as Plutarch states, in the time of Hercules. (Sillig, 
Diet. Art., s. v.) 

Angli, a people of Germany, at the base of the Cher- 
sonesus Cimbrica, in the country answering now to 
the northeastern part of the Duchy of Holstein. 
From them the English have derived their name. 
There is still, at the present day, in that quarter, a 
district called Angela. (Tacit., Germ., 40.— Vid. 
Saxones.) 

Angrus, a river of Illyricum, pursuing a northern 
course, according to Herodotus, and joining the Bron- 
gus, which flows into the Danube. (Herodot., 4, 49.) 

Anguitia, or Angitia, a grove in the country of the 
Marsi, to the west of the Lacus Fucinus. The name 
is derived, according to Solinus, from a sister of Circe, 
who dwelt in the vicinity. It is now Silva d'Albi. 
(Solin., 8.— Serv. ad Virg., AEn., 7, 759.) 

Anicetus, I. a son of Hercules by Hebe, the god¬ 
dess of youth. (Apollod., 2, 7.)—II. A freedman who 
directed the education of Nero, and became the instru¬ 
ment of his crimes. It was he who encouraged the 
emperor to destroy his mother Agrippina, and who 
gave the first idea of the galley, which, by falling on a 
sudden to pieces, through secret mechanism, was to 
have accomplished this horrid purpose. (Suet., Vit. 
Ner.) 

Anicia, Gens, a family at Rome, which, in the flour¬ 
ishing times of the republic, produced many brave and 
illustrious citizens. 

Anicius Gallus, I. triumphed over the Illyrians 
and their king Gentius, and obtained the honors of a 
triumph A.U.C. 585. He obtained the consulship 
A.U.C. 594, B.C. 150.—II. Probus, a Roman consul, 
A.D. 371, celebrated for his humanity. 

Anigrus, a river of Elis, in the district of Triphylia, 
to the north of Lepraeum. This stream formed into 
marshes at its mouth, from the want of a fall to carry 
off the water. The stagnant pool thus created ex¬ 
haled an odour so fetid as to be perceptible at the dis¬ 
tance of twenty stadia, and the fish caught there were so 
tainted with the infection that they could not be eaten. 
(Strabo, 346.) Pausanias, however, affirms (5, 5) that 
this miasma was not confined to the marshes, but could 
be traced to the very source of the river. It was as¬ 
cribed to the centaur’s having washed the wounds in¬ 
flicted by Hercules’s envenomed shafts in the stream. 
The Anigrus received the water of a fountain said to 
possess the property of curing cutaneous disorders. 
This source issued from a cavern sacred to the Nymphs, 
called Anigriades. (Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, 
P- 114) 

Anio, a river of Italy, the earlier name of which was 
Anien , whence comes the genitive Anienis, which is 
S 


joined in inflection with the later nominative Anio .—• 
It rose in the Apennines, near the Sabine town of Tre- 
ba, and pursued its course at first to the northwest; it 
then turned to the southeast, and joined the Tiber three 
miles north of Rome. It is not so full a stream as the 
Nar, but was considered, however, by the Romans as 
the most important among the tributaries of the Tiber, 
and hence received also the appellation of Tiberinus, 
whence comes by corruption the modern name Tever one. 
The Anio was regarded as the boundary between La- 
tium and the country of the Sabines, not, however, in 
a very strict sense, for on the left bank lay Antemnae 
and Collatia, two Sabine towns, while the Albani and 
other Latins had founded Fidense, on the right bank of 
the Anio, in the Sabine territory. ( Mannert , vol. 9, 
p. 517.) The Anio, in its course, passed by the town 
of Tibur, the modern Tivoli, where it formed some 
beautiful cascades, the admiration of the present as 
well as of former times. Of late, however, the scenery 
has been marred by an earthquake. It has been doubt¬ 
ed by some writers whether there was always a fall of 
the Anio at Tibur. But, without pretending to examine 
what change the bed of the river may have undergone in 
remote ages, we may affirm that, since the days of Stra¬ 
bo, no alteration of consequence has taken place ; for 
that geographer (238) talks of the cataract which the 
Anio, then navigable, formed there : so also Dionysius 
of Halicarnassus (5, 37), and several of the poets. 
(Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol. 2, p. 64.) 

Anistorgis, a city of Spain, in the southern part of 
Lusitania, near Pax Julia, called also Conistorgis. 
(Mannert, vol. 1, p. 343.) Some have doubted, how¬ 
ever, whether these two cities were the same. ( Cel - 
larius, Geogr. Ant., vol. 1, p. 77.— Ukert, Geogr., vol. 
2, p. 389.) 

Anius, son of Apollo and Rhoeo or Rhoio. He was 
high-priest of Apollo, and gave ./Eneas a hospitable re¬ 
ception when the Trojan prince touched at his island. 
He had by Dorippe three daughters, CEno, Spermo, 
and Elaia, to whom Bacchus had given the power of 
changing whatever they pleased into wine, corn, and 
oil. When Agamemnon went to the Trojan war, he 
wished to carry them with him to supply his army with 
provisions ; but they complained to Bacchus, who 
changed them into doves. Thus far we have given 
Ovid’s account. (Met., 13, 642. — Compare Virg., 
AEn., 3, 80.) Tzetzes, however, states, that Anius 
endeavoured to prevail upon the forces of Agamemnon 
to remain with him nine years, and told them that, in 
the tenth year, they would take Troy. He promised 
to nurture them also by the aid of his daughters. 
Tzetzes cites as his authority the author of the Cypri¬ 
an epic (ad Lycoph., 570). Creuzer sees in all this 
an agricultural myth, Rhoeo being the pomegranate, 
or, in other words, a new Proserpina, and her three 
children the daughters of the seed. (Symbolik, vol. 4, 
p. 379.) 

Anna, a goddess, in whose honour the Romans in¬ 
stituted a festival. She was, according to the com¬ 
mon account, Anna, the daughter of Belus, and sister of 
Dido, who, after her sister’s death, gave up Carthage to 
Iarbas, king of Gaetulia, who had besieged the place, and 
fled to Melita, now Malta. From Melita she proceed¬ 
ed to Italy, and was there kindly received by ./Eneas. 
Lavinia, however, conceived so violent a jealousy 
against her, that Anna, warned in a dream, by Dido, 
of her danger, took flight during the night, and threw 
herself into the Numicius, where she was transform¬ 
ed into a Naiad. The Romans instituted a festival, 
which was always celebrated on the 15th of March, 
in her honour, and generally invoked her aid to obtain 
a long and happy life; thence, according to some, the 
explanation of the epithet Anna Perenna assigned to 
her after deification. (Ovid, Fast., 3, 653.— Sil. Ital., 
8, 79, &c.) The key to the different legends relative 
to Anna Perenna is to be found in the rites and cere- 

137 





ANNA COMNENA. • 

monies attending her festival. It was a feast com¬ 
memorative of the year and the spring, and the hymns 
sung on this occasion bore the free and joyous charac¬ 
ter of orgiastic strains. In them Anna Perenna was 
entreated to make the entire year roll away in health 
and prosperity (“ Ut annare perennareque commode 
liceat." — Macrob., Sat., 1, 12). Now, this new year, 
this year full of freshness and of benefits invoked, is 
no other than Anna herself, a personification of the old 
lunar year. (Compare Hermann und Creuzer, Briefe, 
&c., p. 135.) Anna is the same word, in fact, as an¬ 
nus, or anus according to the primitive Roman orthog¬ 
raphy ; in Greek ivoq or ivoq, whence the expression 
£v?j ual via, proving that the word carries with it the 
accessory idea of antiquity, just as eroq appears analo¬ 
gous to vctus. (Compare Lennep, Etymol. Gr., p. 
210, seqq .— Valckenaer, ad Ammon., p. 196, 197.) 
Anna Perenna is called the moon, /car’ e^oxvv, and it 
is she that conducts the moons her sisters, and who 
at the same time directs and governs the humid sphere : 
thus she reposes for ever in the river Numicius, and 
runs on for ever with it. She is the course of the moons, 
of the years, of time in general. It is she that gives 
the flowers and fruits, and causes the harvest to ripen : 
the annual produce of the seasons ( a'nnona) is placed 
under her protecting care.—The Anna Perenna of 
the Romans has been compared with the Anna Pourna 
Devi, or Annada, of the Hindu mythology ; the god¬ 
dess of abundance and nourishment, a beneficent form 
of Bhavani. The characteristic traits appear to be the 
same. (Compare the remarks of Paterson and Cole- 
brooke, in the Asiatic Researches, vol. 8, p. 69, seqq., 
and p. 85.— Creuzer's Symbolik, par Guigniaut, vol. 2, 
p. 501, seqq.) 

Anna Comnena, a Greek princess, daughter of 
Alexius Comnenes I., emperor of the East. She was 
born A.D. 1083, and was originally betrothed to Con¬ 
stantine Ducas ; but his death preventing the engage¬ 
ment from being ratified, she subsequently married Ni- 
cephorus Bryennius. On the decease of her father, 
she conspired against her brother John (Calo-Johannes), 
who had succeeded him in the empire, and when the 
design was prevented by the fears or scruples of her 
husband, she passionately exclaimed that nature had 
mistaken the two sexes, and had endowed Bryennius 
with the soul of a woman. After the discovery of her 
treason, the life and fortune of Anna were forfeited to 
the laws ; the former, however, was spared by the 
clemency of the emperor. After the death of her hus¬ 
band she retired to a convent, where, at the age of six¬ 
ty years, she sought to relieve the disappointment of 
her ambitious feelings by writing a life of her father. 
The character of this history does not stand very high, 
either for authenticity or beauty of composition : the 
historian is lost in the daughter; and instead of that 
simplicity of style and narrative which wins our belief, 
an elaborate affectation of rhetoric and science betrays 
in every page the vanity of a female author. ( Gibbon's 
Decline and Fall, c. 48.) And yet, at the same time, 
her work forms a useful contrast to the degrading and 
partial statements of the Latin historians of that period. 
The details, moreover, which she gives respecting the 
first Crusaders on their arrival at Constantinople, are 
peculiarly interesting; and we may there see the im¬ 
pression produced by the simple and rude manners of 
the heroes of Tasso on a polished, enlightened, and 
effeminate court. The work of Anna is entitled Alex¬ 
ias, and is divided into fifteen books. It commences 
with A.D. 1069, and terminates with A.D. 1118. The 
first edition of the Alexias appeared in 1610, 4to, by 
Hoeschel, Argent. It contains only the first eight 
books. Some copies bear the date of 1618. A com¬ 
plete edition was published in 1651, Paris. The best 
edition, however, will be the one intended to form 
part of the Byzantine Historians ( Corpus Scriptorum 
Historic Byzantina), at present in a course of publi- 


ANNALES. 

cation in Germany. (Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 6, p. 
389, seqq.) 

Annales, a chronological history which gives an ac¬ 
count of all the important events of every year in a state, 
without entering into the causes which produced them. 
The annals of Tacitus may be considered in this light. 
The Romans had journalists or annalists from the very 
beginning of the state. The Annals of the Pontiffs 
were of the same date, if we may believe Cicero (de 
Orat., 2, 13), as the foundation of the city ; but others 
have placed their commencement in the reign of Numa 
( Vopiscus , Vit. Tacit.), and Niebuhr not until after the 
battle of Regillus, which terminated the hopes of Tar- 
quin. ( Romische Gesch., vol. 1, p. 367.) In order 
to preserve the memory of public transactions, the Pon- 
tifex Maximus, who was the official historian of the 
republic; annually committed to writing, on wooden 
tablets, the leading events of each year, and then set 
them up at his own house for the instruction of the peo¬ 
ple. ( Cic., de Orat., 2, 13.) The Pontifex Maximus 
was aided in this task by his four colleagues, down 
to A.U.C. 453, and after that period by four addition¬ 
al pontiffs, created by the Ogulnian law. {Cic., de 
Rep., 2, 14.) These annals were continued to the- 
pontificate of Mucius, A.U.C. 629, and were called 
Annales Maximi, as being periodically compiled and 
kept by the Pontifex Maximus , or Publici, as record¬ 
ing public transactions. Having been inscribed on 
wooden tablets, they would necessarily be short, and 
destitute of all circumstantial detail ; and being an¬ 
nually formed by successive pontiffs, could have no ap¬ 
pearance of a continued history, their contents would 
resemble the epitome prefixed to the books of Livy, or 
the Register of Remarkable Occurrences in modern al¬ 
manacs. But though short, jejune, and unadorned, 
still, as records of facts, these annals, if spared, would 
have formed an inestimable treasure of early history. 
Besides, the method which, Cicero informs us, was 
observed in preparing these annals, and the care that 
was taken to insert no fact of which the truth had not 
been attested by as many witnesses as there were cit¬ 
izens at Rome, who were all entitled to judge and make 
their remarks on what either ought to be added or re¬ 
trenched, must have formed the most authentic body 
of history that could be desired. The memory of 
transactions which were yet recent, and whose con¬ 
comitant circumstances every one could remember, 
was therein transmitted to posterity. By this means 
they were proof against falsification, and their veracity 
w as incontestably fixed. These valuable records, how¬ 
ever, were, for the most part, consumed in the confla¬ 
gration of the city consequent on its capture by the 
Gauls ; an event which was, to the early history of 
Rome, what the English invasion by Edward I. proved 
to the history of Scotland. The practice of the Pon¬ 
tifex Maximus in preserving such records was discon¬ 
tinued after that eventful period. A feeble attempt 
was made to revive it towards the end of the second 
Punic war ; and from that time the custom was not 
entirely dropped till the pontificate of Mucius, in the 
year 629. It is to this second series of Annals, or to 
some other late and ineffectual attempt to revive the an¬ 
cient Roman history, that Cicero must allude when he 
talks of the Great Annals in his work De Lcgilus 
(1,2), since it is undoubted, that the pontifical records 
of events previous to the capture of Rome by the Gauls 
almost entirely perished in the conflagration of the city. 
{Livy, 6, 1.) Accordingly, Livy never cites these 
records, and there is no appearance that he had any 
opportunity of consulting them, nor are they men¬ 
tioned by Dionysius of Halicarnassus in the long cata¬ 
logue of records and memorials which he had employ¬ 
ed in the composition of his Historical Antiquities. 
The books of the pontiffs, some of w'hich were re¬ 
covered in the search after what the flames had spared, 
are, indeed, occasionally mentioned. But these were 



ANT 


ANT 


works explaining the mysteries of religion, with in¬ 
structions as to the ceremonies to be observed in its 
practical exercise, and could have been of no more ser¬ 
vice to Roman, than a collection of breviaries or mis¬ 
sals to modern, history. {Dunlop's Rom. Lit., vol. 2, 
p. 97, seqq., Lond. ed.—Le Clerc, des Journaux chez 
les Romains, Introd.) 

Annalis lex, settled the age at which, among the 
Romans, a citizen could be admitted to exercise the 
offices of the state. Originally there was no certain 
age fixed for enjoying the different offices. A law was 
first made for this purpose {Lex Annalis ) by L. Vil- 
lius or L. Julius, a tribune of the commons, A.U.C. 
573, whence his family got the surname of Annales. 
{Lw., 40, 43.) What was the year fixed for enjoying 
each office is not ascertained. It is certain that the 
prsetorshipused to be enjoyed two years after the sedile- 
ship {Cic.,Ep. ad Fam., 10, 25), and that the forty- 
third was the year fixed for the consulship. {Cic., 
Phil., 5, 17.) If we are to judge from Cicero, who 
frequently boasts that he had enjoyed every office 
in its proper year, the years appointed for the differ¬ 
ent offices by the Lex Yillia were, for the qusestor- 
ship thirty-one, for the sedileship thirty-seven, for the 
prsetorship forty, and for the consulship forty-three. 
But even under the republic popular citizens were freed 
from these restrictions, and the emperors, too, granted 
that indulgence to whomsoever they pleased. 

Annibal. Vid. Hannibal. 

Annicerris, a philosopher of the Cyrena'ic sect, and 
a follower of Aristippus. He so far receded from the 
doctrine of his master as to acknowledge the merit of 
filial piety, friendship, and patriotism, and to allow that 
a wise man might retain the possession of himself in 
the midst of external troubles ; but he inherited so 
much of his frivolous taste as to value himself upon 
the most trivial accomplishments, particularly upon his 
dexterity in being able to drive a chariot twice round 
a course in the same ring. ( Diog. Laert., 2, 87.— 
Suidas, s. v. — Enfield's History of Philosophy, vol. 1, 
p. 196.) 

Anno. Vid. Hanno. 

Anop^ea, a mountain of Greece, part of the chain 
of CEta. A small pass in this mountain, called by the 
same name, formed a communication between Thes¬ 
saly and the country of the Epicnemidian Locri. {He- 
rodot., 7, 216.) 

Anser, a Roman poet, intimate with the triumvir 
Antony, and one of the destroyers of Virgil. (Com¬ 
pare Virg., Eclog., 9, 36. — Servius , ad Virg., 1. c.) 
Ovid {Trist., 2, 435) calls him “ procax." 

Ansibarii, a people of Germany, mentioned by Taci¬ 
tus {Ann., 13, 55) as having made an irruption, du¬ 
ring the reign of Nero, into the Roman territories 
along the Rhine. Mannert makes them to have been 
a branch of the Cherusci. The same writer alludes 
to the hypothesis which would consider their name as 
denoting “ dwellers along the Ems,” and as marking 
this for their original place of settlement. He views 
it, however, as untenable. {Geogr., vol. 6, p. 156, 
seqq.) 

Ant^eopolis, a city of Egypt on the eastern bank 
of the Nile, and the capital of the nome Antseopolites. 
It derived its name from Antaeus, whom Osiris, ac¬ 
cording to Diodorus Siculus (1, 17), left as governor 
of his Libyan and .Ethiopian possessions, and whom 
Hercules destroyed. It was a place of no great im¬ 
portance. The modern village of Kau (Qaou) stands 
near the ruins of the ancient city. ( Mannert , vol. 10, 
pt. 2, p. 388, seqq. —Compare Description de l'Egypte, 
vol. 4, p. 111.) 

Antaeus, I. a monarch of Libya, of gigantic dimen¬ 
sions, son of Neptune and Terra. He was famed for 
his strength and his skill in wrestling, and engaged in 
a contest with Hercules. As he received new strength 
from his mother as often as he touched the ground, the 


hero lifted him up in the air and squeezed him to death 
in his arms. {Apollod., 2, 5.) — II. A governor of 
Libya and ^Ethiopia under Osiris. {Diod. Sic., 1, 
17.)—Both these accounts are, in fact, fabulous, and 
refer to one and the same thing. The legend of Her¬ 
cules and Antseus is nothing more than the triumph of 
art and labour over the encroaching sands of the desert. 
Hercules, stifling his adversary, is, in fact, the Nile 
divided into a thousand canals, and preventing the arid 
sand from returning to its native deserts, whence 
again to come forth with the winds and cover with its 
waves the fertile valley. {Constant, de la Religion, 
vol. 2, p. 416.) The very position of Antaeopolis, in¬ 
deed, has reference to the identity of Antaeus with the 
sands of the desert; for the place was situate in a long 
and deep valley of the Arabian chain, where the most 
fearful hurricanes and sand-winds were accustomed to 
blow. (Compare Ritter, Erdkunde, 2d ed., vol. 1, p. 
779.) 

Antagoras, a Rhodian poet, who lived at the court 
of Antigonus Gonatas, where he acquired the reputa¬ 
tion of a gourmand. He composed a poem entitled 
Thebais; and the Boeotians, to whom he read it, heard 
him with yawns. {Mich. Apost. Proverb. Cent., 5, 82.) 
We have one of his epigrams remaining. ( Scholl, Hist. 
Lit. Gr., vol. 3, p. 128.) 

Antalcidas, of Sparta, son of Leon, was sent into 
Persia, where he made the well-known peace with 
Artaxerxes Mnemon. The terms of this peace were 
as follows : that all the Greek cities of Asia should be¬ 
long to the Persian king, together with the island of 
Clazomena) (as it was called) and that of Cyprus: that 
all other Grecian cities, small and great, should be in¬ 
dependent, except the islands of Lemnos, Imbros, and 
Scyros, which were to remain subject to the Atheni¬ 
ans. {Xen., Hist. Gr., 5. 1. — Consult Schneider, ad 
loc.) Polybius (1, 6) fixes the year of this celebrated 
peace, and Aristides (vol. 2, p. 286) the name of the 
archon {Qeodorot; e<f oil y elpyvy eyevero). The treaty 
seems to have been concluded in the beginning of the 
year of Theodotus, about autumn ; because the Man- 
tinean war, which was carried on in the archonship of 
Mystichides, was in the second year after the peace; 
and because the restoration of Plataea, accomplished 
after the treaty, took place nevertheless in the year of 
the treaty, as Pausanias implies. {Clinton's Fasti 
Hellenici, 2d ed., p. 102.) 

Antandrus, a city of Troas, on the northern side 
of the Gulf of Adramyttium. According to Thucydi¬ 
des (8, 108), it was founded by an JEolian colony, 
which had probably dispossessed a body of the Pelasgi 
in this quarter, since Herodotus (7, 42) names the 
place the Pelasgic Antandrus. If we follow the an¬ 
cient mythology, however, we will find different ac¬ 
counts of its origin. These are given by Mela (1, 18), 
who states that the city was called Antandrus accord¬ 
ing to some, because Ascanius, the son of 7Eneas, 
having fallen into the hands of the Pelasgi, gave them 
up this city as a ransom ; and hence Antandrus, i. e., 
dvr’ dvdpoc; (“ in the stead,” or “ place, of a man”) ; 
while others maintain that it was founded by certain 
inhabitants of Andros, who had been driven from home 
by civil dissensions, and that hence the city was called 
Antandrus, i. e., “ instead of Andros,” implying that it 
was to them a second country. Pliny (5, 30), on the 
other hand, believes that its first name was Edonis, and 
that it was subsequently styled Cimmens. During 
the Persian times, Antandrus, like many other parts 
of this coast, was subject to Mytilene, in the island of 
Lesbos. The Persians, however, held the citadel, 
which would seem to have stood on a mountain near 
the city. This mountain is probably the same with 
the one called Alexandrea, and on which, according 
to Strabo (606), the controversy between Juno, Mi¬ 
nerva, and Venus was decided by Paris. ( Mannert, 
vol. 6, pt. 3, p. 418.) 


139 



ANT 


ANT 


Antemn^e, a city of Italy, in the territory of the 
Sabines, at the confluence of the Anio and Tiber. It 
is said to have been more ancient than Rome itself. 
We are told by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (2, 36), 
that Antemnae belonged at first to the Siculi, but that 
afterward it was conquered by the Aborigines, to 
whom, probably, it owes its Latin name. ( Varro, de 
Ling. Lat., 4.— Fcstus, s. v. Antemnce.) That it 
afterward formed a part of the Sabine confederacy is 
evident from its being one of the first cities which re¬ 
sented the outrage offered to that nation by the rape 
of their women. (Liv., 1, 10. — Strabo, 226. — Cra¬ 
mer's Ancient Italy, vol. 1, p. 301.) 

Antenor, I. a Trojan prince related to Priam. He 
was the husband of Theano, daughter of Cisseus, king 
of Thrace, and father of nineteen sons, of whom the 
most known were Polybus (17., 11, 59), Acamas (77., 

2, 823), Agenor (77., 4, 533), Polydamas, Helicaon, 
Archilochus (77., 2, 823), and Laodocus (17., 4, 87). 
He is accused by some of having betrayed his country, 
not only because he gave a favourable reception to 
Diomedes, Ulysses, and Menelaus, when they came 
to Troy, as ambassadors from the Greeks, to demand 
the restitution of Helen, but also because he with¬ 
held the fact of his recognising Ulysses, at the time 
that hero visited the city under the guise of a mendi¬ 
cant. ( Od ., 4, 335.) After the conclusion of the war, 
Antenor, according to some, migrated with a party of 
followers into Italy, and built Patavium. According 
to others, he went with a colony of the Heneti from 
Paphlagonia to the shores of the Hadriatic, where the 
new settlers established themselves in the district 
called by them Venetia. Both accounts are fabulous. 
(Liv., 1, 1. — Plm., 3, 13.— Virg., AZn., 1, 242.— 
Tacit., 16, 21.) — II. A statuary, known only as the 
maker of the original statues of Harmodius and Aris- 
togiton, which were carried off by Xerxes, and restored 
by Alexander. ( Pausan., 1, 8.— Arrian, Exp. Al. , 3, 
16.— Plin., 34, 8.) 

Antenorides, a patronymic given to the sons of 
Antenor. 

Anteros. The original meaning of the name An- 
teros is the deity who avenges slighted love. By 
later writers it is applied to a brother of Cupid, but in 
constant opposition to him ; and in the palaestra at 
Elis he was represented contending with him. The 
signification of mutual love is given to the word only 
by later writers, according to Bottiger. ( Schneider, 
Worterb., s. v. — Pausan., 1, 30. — Id., 6, 23.— Plu¬ 
tarch, Erot., 20.) 

Anthea, one of the three towns on the site of which 
the city of Patrse, in Achaia, is said to have been built. 
The other two were Aroe and Messatis. These three 
were founded by the Ionians when they held posses¬ 
sion of the country. ( Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 

3, p. 66.) 

Anthedon, I. a city of Boeotia, on the shore of the 
Euripus, and, according to Dicsearchus, about seventy 
stadia to the north of Salganeus. (Stat. Graze., p. 
19.) The same writer informs us, that from Thebes 
to Anthedon the distance was 160 stadia by a cross¬ 
road open to carriages. The inhabitants were, for the 
most part, mariners and shipwrights ; at least, so says 
Dicsearchus ; and the fisheries of the place were very 
important. The wine of Anthedon was celebrated. 
(Athenocus, 1, 56.) Pausanias states (9, 22) that the 
Cabiri were worshipped here ; there was also a tem¬ 
ple of Proserpina in the town, and one of Bacchus 
without the walls. Near the sea was a spot called the 
leap of Glaucus. ( Strabo , 404. — Steph. Byz., s. v. 
'Avdrjduv. — Pliny, Hist. Nat., 4, 7.) Sir W. Gell 
reports, that the ruins of this city are under Mount 
Ktypa, about seven miles from Portzum.adi, and six 
from Egripo. (Itin ., p. 147. — Cramer's Ancient 
Greece, vol. 2, p. 254.)—II. A town of Palestine, 
called also Agrippias, on the seacoast, to the south¬ 


west of Gaza. Herod gave it the second name in 
honour of Agrippa. It is now Daron. (Plin., 4, 7.) 

Anthele, a small town of Thessaly, in the inter¬ 
val between the river Phoenix and the Straits of Ther¬ 
mopylae, and near the spot where the Asopus flows 
into the sea. In the immediate vicinity were the tem¬ 
ples of Ceres Amphictyonia, that of Amphictyon, and 
the seats of the Amphictyons. It was one of the two 
places where the Amphictyonic council used to meet, 
the other being Delphi. The place for holding the as¬ 
sembly here was the temple of Ceres. (Vid. Amphic- 
tyones.— Herodot., 7, 200.— Strabo, 428.) 

Anthemus, a town of Macedonia, to the northeast 
of Thessalonica, and which Thucydides seems to com¬ 
prise within Mygdonia. (Thucyd., 2, 99.) 

Anthemusia, I. a district in the northern part of 
Mesopotamia, which was subsequently incorporated 
into Osroene. (4mm. Marcell., 14, 9. — Eutrop., 8, 
2.) — II. The capital of the district just mentioned, 
lying east of the Euphrates and west of the city of 
Edessa. It is also called Anthemus. The name was 
derived from the Macedonian city of Anthemus. 
(Plin., 6, 26.— Strab., 514.) 

Anthene, a town of Cynuria in Argolis, once oc¬ 
cupied by the TEginetae together with Thyrea. (Pau¬ 
san., 2, 38.) It was restored to the Argives after the 
battle of Amphipolis. (Thucyd., 5, 41.) 

Anthermus, a Chian sculptor, son of Micciades, 
and grandson to Malas. He flourished about Olymp. 
50, and was the father of the two artists Bupalus and 
Athenis. (Vid. Bupalus.) As the name Anthermus 
is not Greek, Brotier reads Archennus, which Sillig 
follows. (Plin., 36, 5.— Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.) 

Anthesphoria, a festival celebrated by the people 
of Syracuse in honour of Proserpina, who was carried 
away by Pluto as she was gathering flowers. The word 
is derived from uno rov (pepeiv dvOea, i. e., from car¬ 
rying flowers. The Syracusans showed, near their 
city, the spot where Proserpina was carried oflf, and 
from which a lake had immediately proceeded. Around 
this the festival was celebrated. The lake in question 
is formed by the sources of the Cyane, whose waters 
join the Anapus. (Compare Miinter, Nachricht von 
Neap, und Sicil., p. 374.) — Festivals of the same 
name were also observed at Argos in honour of Juno, 
who was called Antheia. (Pollux, Onom., 1, 1.) 

Anthesteria, festivals in honour of Bacchus among 
the Greeks. They were celebrated in the month of 
February, called Anthesterion, whence the name is 
derived, and continued three days. The first day was 
called ThOoiyia, arco rov uWovq olyeiv, because they 
tapped their barrels of liquor. The second day was 
called Xoef, from the measure %oa, because every in¬ 
dividual drank of his own vessel, in commemoration of 
the arrival of Orestes, who, after the murder of his 
mother, came, without being purified, to Demophcdn, 
or Pandion, king of Athens, and was obliged, with all 
the Athenians, to drink by himself for fear of polluting 
the people by drinking with them before he was puri¬ 
fied of the parricide. It was usual on that day to ride 
out in chariots, and ridicule those that passed by. The 
best drinker was rewarded with a crown of leaves, or 
rather of gold, and with a cask of wine. The third 
day was called Xvrpoi, from jurpa, a vessel brought 
out full of all sorts of seeds and herbs, deemed sacred 
to Mercury, and therefore not touched. The slaves 
had the permission of being merry and free during 
these festivals ; and at the end of the solemnity a her¬ 
ald proclaimed, Ovpdfr, Kdpey, oba It' 'AvdeoTr/pia, 
i e., Depart, ye C-arian slaves, the festivals are at an 
end. ( JElian , V. 77, 2, 41. — Potter, Gr. Antiq., vol. 
1, p. 422, seqqi) Ruhnken (Auct. Emend, ad Hesych , 
vol. 2, 5. v. Siovvq) makes the Athenians to have cel¬ 
ebrated three festivals in honour of Bacchus . 1. Those 
of the country, in the month Posideon : 2. Those of 
the city, or the greater festivals, in the m^uth Ela- 




ANT 


ANT 


phebolion ; and, 3. The Anthesteria or Lemea, in the 
month Anthesterion. These last were celebrated 
within a large enclosure called Lenseum, and in a quar¬ 
ter of the city termed Limnae, or “ the pools.” Meur- 
sius had before distinguished the Lenaea from the An¬ 
thesteria. ( Grcec. Fer ., vol. 3, Op. col., 917 and 
918.) Bockh also regards the Lenaea as a distinct 
festival from the Anthesteria. {Vom Unterscheide der 
Attischen Lenceen, &c., Jahrg., 1816, 1817, p. 47, 
scqq.) Both the latter opinions, however, are incorrect. 
(Compare Creuzer, Symbolik, vol. 3, p. 319, seqq.) 

Antheus, I. a son of Antenor.—II. One of the com¬ 
panions of /Eneas. (Vug., JEn., 1, 514.) — III. A 
statuary mentioned by Pliny (34, 8) as having flour¬ 
ished in Olymp. 155, and as approved among the ar¬ 
tists of his own time. In some editions of Pliny the 
name is written Antaeus. ( Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.) 

Anthium, a town of Thrace, afterward called Apol- 
lonia. The name was subsequently changed to Sozop- 
olis, and is now pronounced Sizeboli. {Plin ., 4, 11.) 

Anthores, a companion of Hercules, who followed 
Evander, and settled in Italy. He was killed in the 
war of Turnus against .Eneas. ( Virg ., JEy., 10, 778.) 

Anthropophagi, a people of Scythia that fed on hu¬ 
man flesh. Herodotus (4, 106) calls them the An- 
drophagi, and states that they lived in a more savage 
manner than any other nation, having no public distri¬ 
bution of justice nor established laws. He informs 
us also that they applied themselves to the breeding 
of cattle, clothed themselves like the Scythians, and 
spoke a peculiar language. Rennell thinks that they 
must have occupied Polish Russia, and both banks of 
the river Prypetz, the western head of the Borysthe- 
nes. ( Rennell, Geogr. of Herod., p. 86, 4to ed.) 

Anthylla, a city of Egypt, about west from the 
Canopic branch of the Nile, and northwest from Nau- 
cratis. It is supposed by Larcher to have been the 
same with Gynaecopolis. (Compare Mannert, Geogr., 
vol. 10, p. 596.) According to Herodotus, it furnish¬ 
ed sandals to the wife of the Persian satrap, who was 
viceroy, for the time being, over Egypt. This was in 
imitation of the royal custom at home, in the case of 
the queens of Persia. {Herod., 2, 98.—Consult Bdhr, 
ad loc.) Athenseus says it supplied girdles (1, p. 33. 
—Compare Bdhr, ad Ctes., p. 209.) 

Antia lex, was made for the suppression of luxury 
at Rome. Its particulars are not known, but it could 
not be enforced. The enactor was Antius Resto, who 
afterward never supped abroad for fear of being him¬ 
self a witness of the profusion and extravagance which 
his law meant to destroy, but without effect. {Ma- 
crob., 3, 17.) 

Antia s, a name given to the goddess Fortune, from 
her splendid temple at Antium, where she was par¬ 
ticularly worshipped. ( Vid. Antium.) 

Anticlea, a daughter of Autolycus and Amphithea. 
She was the mother of Ulysses, but not, it is said, by 
Laertes. This individual was only the reputed fa¬ 
ther of the chieftain of Ithaca, and the actual paternity 
belonged to Sisyphus. It is said that Anticlea killed 
herself when she heard a false report of her son’s 
death. {Homer, Od., 11,19.— Hygin., Fab., 201, 243. 
— Pausan ., 10, 29.) 

Anticlides, a Greek historian, a native of Athens, 
whose works are lost. (Consult Athenceus, ed. Schw. 
— Ind. Auct., s. v., vol. 9.) 

Anticragus, a detached chain of the ridge of Mount 
Cragus in Lycia, running in a northeast direction along 
the coast of the Sinus Glaucus. It is now called 
Soumbourlou. Captain Beaufort estimates the height 
at not less than 6000 feet. {Cramer's Asia Minor, 
vol. 2, p. 245.) 

Anticrates, a Spartan, who, according to Plutarch, 
stabbed Epaminondas, the Theban general, at the bat¬ 
tle of Mantinea. Great honours and rewards were 
decreed to him by the Spartans, and an exemption 


from taxes to his posterity. {Pl.ut., Vit. Ages., c. 35.) 
There were, however, other claimants for this honour. 
The Mantimeans asserted that one of their citizens, by 
name Machaerion, gave the fatal blow. The Athenians, 
on the other hand, make Epaminondas to have fallen 
by the hand of Gryllus, son of Xenophon. (Compare 
Pausan., 8, 11.— Id., 9, 15 ; and Wesseling, ad Diod. 
Sic., 15, 87.) 

Anticyra, I. a town of Thessaly, at the mouth of 
the Sperchius. {Herodot., 7, 198.— Strabo, 428.) It 
was said to produce the genuine hellebore, so much 
recommended by ancient physicians as a cure for in¬ 
sanity. {Steph. Byz., s. v. ’Avr'uivpa.) —II. A town 
of Phocis, on the isthmus of a small peninsula in the 
Sinus Corinthiacus. It was celebrated, in common 
with the one already mentioned, for its hellebore. 
{Scylax, p. 14. — Theophr., 9, 10. — Strabo, 418.) 
Pausanias affirms (10, 36) that the inhabitants of An¬ 
ticyra were driven from their town by Philip, the son 
of Amyntas, on the termination of the Sacred War. 
At a later period it was besieged and taken by Laevi- 
nus, the Roman praetor, who delivered it up to the 
Etolians. {Liv., 26, 26.) And subsequently, in the 
Macedonian war, it was occupied by Titus Q. Flam- 
ininus, on account of the facilities which its harbour 
presented for the operations of the Roman fleet in the 
Corinthian Gulf. {Liv., 32, 18.— Pausan., 10, 36.— 
Polyb., 18, 28.— Id., 27, 14.) The site of Anticyra 
corresponds, as is generally believed, with that of As- 
propiti, in a bay of some extent, parallel to that of Sa- 
lona. “ Here is a good port,” says Sir W. Gell {Itin., 
p. 174), “ and some remains of antiquity.” Chand¬ 
ler remarks, that “ the site is now called Asprospiha, 
or the white houses ; and some traces of the buildings, 
from which it was so named, remain. The port is 
land-locked, and frequented by vessels for corn.” 
{Travels, vol. 2, p. 301.)—The ancients had a prov¬ 
erb, Navigct Anticyram, applied to a person that was 
regarded as insane, and alluding to the hellebore pro¬ 
duced at either Anticyra. (Compare Erasmus, Chil., 
1, cent. 8, 52. — Naviget Anticyras, II Xcvoeisv etc 
’AvTiKvpaq .) Horace has been supposed by some to 
allude to three places of this name, but this is a mis¬ 
take ; the poet merely speaks of a head so insane as 
not to be cured by the produce of three Anticyras, if 
there even were three, and not merely two. {Ep., ad 
Pis., 300.) 

Antidotus, a Greek painter, a pupil of Euphranor. 
He flourished about 364 B.C. His colouring was se¬ 
vere, and his productions were remarkable for their 
careful execution rather than their number. His prin¬ 
cipal pieces were a Wrestler and a Flute-player. He 
was the instructor of Nicias of Athens. {Plin., H. N., 
35, 11.— Biogr. Univ., vol. 2, p. 249.) 

Antigenes, one of Alexander’s generals, publicly 
rewarded for his valour. {Quint. Curt., 5, 14.) 

Antigenidas, a famous musician of Thebes, disci¬ 
ple to Philoxenus. He introduced certain innova¬ 
tions in the construction of the flute, and in the art of 
playing upon it. {Cic., Brut., 97.) 

Antigone, a daughter of CEdipus, king of Thebes, 
by his mother Jocasta. After the death of CEdipus 
and his sons Eteocles and Polynices, Antigoife repair¬ 
ed to Thebes, in order to effect the sepulture of her 
brother Polynices. Creon, monarch of Thebes, her 
maternal uncle, had forbidden the interment of the 
young prince under the penalty of death, on account 
of the war which the latter had waged against his 
own country. Antigone, however, disregarding all 
personal considerations, succeeded in sprinkling dust 
three times on her brother’s remains, which was equiv¬ 
alent to sepulture, but was subsequently seized by the 
guards who had been placed to watch the corpse and 
prevent its interment. For this she was immured 
alive in a tomb, where she hung herself. Haemon, 
the son of Creon, to whom she had been betrothed, 

141 



ANTIGONUS. 


ANT 


effected an entrance and killed himself by her corpse, 
and his mother Eurydice likewise put an end to her 
existence. This sad story forms the basis of one of 
the tragedies of Sophocles. ( Vid. Sophocles.) 

Antigonea, I. a city of Epirus, southwest of Apol- 
lonia. ( Phn ., 4, 1.)—II. One of Macedonia, in the 
district of Mygdonia, founded by Antigonus, son of 
Gonatas. (Id., 4, 10.) — III. One in Syria, on the 
borders of the Orontes, built by Antigonus, and in¬ 
tended as the residence of the governors of Egypt 
and Syria, but destroyed by him when Seleucia was 
built, and the inhabitants removed to the latter city.— 
IV. Another in Asia Minor. (Vid. Alexandrea IX.) 

Antigonus, I. a general of Alexander’s, and one of 
those who played the most important part after the 
death of that monarch. In the division of the provin¬ 
ces after the king’s death, he received Pamphylia, Ly- 
cia, and Phrygia. Two years after the decease of Al¬ 
exander, he united with Antipater and Ptolemy against 
Perdiccas, who aimed at the supremacy. Perdiccas 
having died this same year (B.C. 322), and Antipater 
being placed at the head of the government, Antigonus 
was named commander of all the forces of the empire, 
and marched against Eumenes. After various con¬ 
flicts, during a war of three years, he succeeded in 
getting Eumenes into his power by treachery, and 
starved him to death. Become now all powerful by 
the death of this formidable rival, he ruled as king, but 
without assuming the title, over all Asia Minor and 
Syria ; but his conduct eventually excited against him 
a formidable league, in which Seleucus, Ptolemy, Ly- 
simachus, and Cassander arrayed themselves against 
Antigonus, and the celebrated Demetrius, his son. 
After varied success, the confederates made a treaty 
with him, and surrendered to him the possession of 
the whole of Asia, upon condition that the Grecian 
cities should remain free. This treaty was soon 
broken, and Ptolemy made a descent into Lesser Asia 
and on some of the Greek isles, which was at first suc¬ 
cessful, but he was defeated in a seafight by Deme¬ 
trius, the son of Antigonus, who took the island of Cy¬ 
prus, made 16,000 prisoners, and sunk 200 of his ships. 
After this famous naval battle, which happened 26 
years after Alexander’s death, Antigonus and his son 
assumed the title of kings, and their example was fol¬ 
lowed by all the rest of Alexander’s generals. From 
this period, B.C. 306, his own reign in Asia, that of 
Ptolemy in Egypt, and those of the other captains of 
Alexander in their respective territories, properly com¬ 
mence. Antigonus now formed the design of driving 
Ptolemy from Egypt, but failed. His power soon be¬ 
came so formidable that a new confederacy was formed 
against him by Cassander, Lysimachus, Seleucus, and 
Ptolemy. The contending parties met in the plain of 
Ipsas in Phrygia, B.C. 301. Antigonus was defeated, 
and died of his wounds ; and his son Demetrius fled 
from the field. Antigonus was 84 years old when 
he died. (Vid. Demetrius. — Pausan., 1, 6, &c.— 
Justin, 13, 14, et 15.— C. Nep., Vit. Eumen. — Plut., 
Vit. Demetr. — Eumen. et Arat.) —II. Gonatas, so call¬ 
ed from Gonni in Thessaly, the place of his birth, was 
the son of Demetrius, and grandson of Antigonus 
He made himself master of Macedonia B.C. 277, and 
assumed the title of king. In the course of his reign, 
he defeated, with great slaughter, the Gauls, who had 
made an irruption into his kingdom. Having refused 
succours to Pyrrhus of Epirus, he was driven from 
his throne by that warlike monarch. He afterward 
recovered a great part of Macedonia, and followed 
Pyrrhus to the neighbourhood of Argos. In a conflict 
that ensued there, Pyrrhus was slain. After the death 
of Pyrrhus, he recovered the remainder of Macedonia, 
and died after a reign of 34 years, leaving his son, De¬ 
metrius the Second, to succeed, B.C. 243. (Justin, 
21 et 25.)—III. The guardian of his nephew, Philip, 
the son of Demetrius, who married the widow of De- 
142 


metrius, and usurped the kingdom. He was called 
Doson (Suauv, “ about to give,” i. e., always promis¬ 
ing), from his promising much and giving nothing. 
He conquered Cleomenes, king of Sparta, and obli¬ 
ged him to retire into Egypt, because he favoured the 
HCtolians against the Greeks. He died B.C. 222, 
after a reign of 11 years, leaving his crowrn to the 
lawful possessor, Philip, who became conspicuous by 
his cruelties and the war he made against the Homans. 
(Justin, 28 et 29.— Plut., Vit. Cleom.) —IV. Son of 
Echecrates, and nephew of Philip, the father of Per¬ 
seus. He was the only one of the Macedonian no¬ 
bles who remained faithful when Perseus conspired 
against his parents ; and to him, moreover, Philip 
owed the discovery of the plot. Charmed with his 
virtuous and upright character, the monarch intended 
to make him his successor, but the death of Philip pre¬ 
vented this being done. Perseus succeeded his father, 
and, a few days after, put Antigonus to death, B.C. 
179. (Liv., 40, 54, &c.)—V. Son of Aristobulus II., 
king of Judasa, was conducted to Rome along with 
his father, after the capture of Jerusalem by Pompey. 
When Caesar became dictator, Antigonus endeavoured, 
but in vain, to get himself re-established in his hered¬ 
itary dominions, and at last was compelled to apply 
to Pacorus, king of the Parthians. Pacorus, on the 
promise of 1000 talents, marched into Judaea at the 
head of a large army, and replaced Antigonus on the 
throne ; but Marc Antony, at the solicitation of Herod, 
sent Gabinius against him, who took Jerusalem, and 
put Antigonus to an ignominious death. He reigned 
3 years and 3 months. (Justin, 20, 29, &c.)—VI. 
Carystius, an historian in the age of Ptolemy Phila- 
delphus, who wrote the lives of some of the ancient 
philosophers: also a heroic poem, entitled “ Anti¬ 
pater,” mentioned by Athenseus ; and other works. 
The only remains we have of them are his “ Collec¬ 
tions of wonderful Stories” concerning animals and 
other natural bodies. This work was first published 
at Basle, 1568, and was afterward reprinted at Ley¬ 
den by Meursius, 1619, in 4to. It forms a part also 
of the volume entitled Hisloriarum Mirabilium Auc- 
tores Grceci, printed at Leyden in 1622, in 4to. 

Antilibanus, a ridge of mountains in Syria, east 
of, and running parallel wfith, the ridge of Libanus. 
(Vid. Libanus.— Plin., 5, 20.) 

Antilochus, I. the eldest son of Nestor by Euryd¬ 
ice. He went to the Trojan war w r ith his father, and 
was killed by Memnon, the son of Aurora, according 
to Plomer (Od., 4, 187), who is followed by Pindar 
(Pyth., 6, 28), and by Hyginus (Fab., 113). Ovid, 
on the contrary, makes him to have been slain by Hec¬ 
tor (Her., 1, 15). We must therefore alter the text 
of the latter, and for Antilochum read either Anchia- 
lum with Muncker (from Horn., II., 18, 185), or Am- 
phimachum with Scoppa (from Dares Phrygius, c. 
20).—II. A poet, who wrote some verses in praise of 
Lysander, and received a cap full of silver in return. 
(Plut., Vit. Lysandr., c. 18.) 

Antimachus, I. a poet of Colophon, and pupil of 
Panyasis. He was the contemporary of Choerilus, 
and flourished between 460 and 431 B.C. With 
Antimachus would have commenced a new era in the 
history of epic verse, if that department of poetry had 
been capable of resuming its former lustre. In com¬ 
mon with Choerilus, he perceived that the period of 
the Homeric epic had irrevocably passed ; but in place 
of substituting the historic epic, as the former did, he 
returned to mythological subjects ; merely treating 
them, however, in a manner more in accordance with 
the taste of the day. The success which he obtained, 
and the admiration which was subsequently testified 
for his productions by the Alexandrean school, prove 
that he w’as not mistaken in the judgment he had form¬ 
ed of the spirit of the age, and that he augured well 
respecting the opinion of posterity. The Alexandrean 




ANT 


ANT 


critics (according to Quintilian, 10, 1) cited his The- 
bais as a work worthy of being compared with the 
poems of Homer, and of terminating the list of epic 
poems of the first class. They extolled the grandeur 
of his ideas and the energy of his style, but they con¬ 
fessed, at the same time, that he was deficient in ele¬ 
gance and grace. Antimachus was also the author 
of an elegy entitled Lyde, which the ancients regarded 
as a chef-d’oeuvre. It is now entirely lost. The An¬ 
thology has preserved for us one of his epigrams. 
The fragments of Antimachus have been collected and 
published by Schellenberg. under the title “ Antimachi 
Colophonii fragmenta, nunc primum conquisita ,” &c., 
Halve, 1786, 8vo. (Scholll, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 1, p. 
245, and 2, p. 126.)—II. A Trojan whom Paris bribed 
to oppose the restoring of Helen to Menelaus and 
Ulysses, who had come as ambassadors to recover her. 
He recommended to put them to death. His sons, 
Hippolochus and Pisander, were killed by Agamem¬ 
non. (11., 11, 122, seqq.) 

Antinoeia, annual sacrifices and quinquennial games 
in honour of Antinous, instituted by the Emperor Ha¬ 
drian at Mantinea, where Antinous was worshipped as 
a divinity. They were celebrated also at Argos. 
(Potter, Gr. Antiq., vol. 1, p. 424.) 

Antinoopolis or Antinoe, a town of Egypt, built 
in, honour of Antinous, opposite Hermopolis Magna, 
on the eastern bank of the Nile. It was previously an 
obscure place called Besa, but became a magnificent 
city. (Vid. Antinous.) It is now called Ensene, 
and a revered sepulchre has also caused it to receive 
the name of Shck-Abade. (Ammian. Marcellin., 19, 
12. —Dio Cass., 69, 11.— Spartian., Vit. Hadr., 14. 
—Description de VEgypte, vol. 4, p. 197, seqq.) 

Antinous, I. a youth of Bithynia, of whom the 
Emperor Hadrian was so extremely fond, that at his 
death he erected temples to him, established a priest¬ 
hood for the new divinity, built a city in honour of him 
(vid. Antinoopolis), and caused a constellation in the 
heavens to be called by his name. According to one 
account, Antinous was drowned in the Nile, while 
another and more correct statement gives the occasion 
of his death as follows : Hadrian, consulting an oracle 
at Besa, was informed that he was threatened with 
great danger, unless a person that was dear to him 
was immolated for his preservation. Upon hearing 
this, Antinous threw himself from a rock into the Nile, 
as an offering for the safety of the emperor, who built 
Antinoopolis on the spot. Nor was this all. The 
artists of the empire were ordered to immortalize by 
their skill the grief of the monarch and the memory 
of his favourite. Painters and statuaries vied with 
each other, and some of the master-pieces of the lat¬ 
ter have descended to our own times. The absurd 
and disgusting conduct of Hadrian needs no comment. 
—II. A native of Ithaca, son of Eupeithes, and one 
of Penelope’s suiters. He was brutal and cruel in his 
manners, and was the first of the suiters that was slain 
by Ulysses on his return. (Od., 22, 8, &c.) 

AntiochIa, I. a city of Syria, once the third city 
of the world for beauty, greatness, and population. 
It was built by Seleucus Nicator, in memory of his 
father Antiochus, on the river Orontes, about 20 miles 
from its mouth, and was equidistant from Constanti¬ 
nople and Alexandria, being about 700 miles from 
each. Here the disciples of our Saviour were first 
called Christians, and the chief patriarch of Asia re¬ 
sided. It was afterward known by the name of Te- 
trapolis, being divided, as it were, into four cities, 
each having its separate wall, besides a common one 
enclosing all. The first was built by Seleucus Nica¬ 
tor, the second by those who repaired thither on its 
being made the capital of the Syro-Macedonian empire, 
the third by Seleucus Callinicus, and the fourth by 
Antiochus Epiphanes. ( Strabo , 750.—Compare Man- 
nert , vol. 6, part 1, p. 468, seqq.) It is now called 


Antakia, and has suffered severely by a late earth¬ 
quake. At the distance of four or five miles below 
was a celebrated grove called Daphne ; whence, for 
the sake of distinction, it has been called Antiochia 
near Daphne, or Antiochia Epidaphnes ^kvrib\ua y 
rrpoq Adcpvrjv. Hierocl. Synccdem, p. 711.— Plin., 5, 
21.— Antiochia Epidaphnes, vid. Daphne).—II. A city 
of Lycaonia, near the northern confines of Pisidia, 
sometimes called Antiochia of Pisidia (’Avrtoxua 
Thoidiaq). According to Strabo, it was founded by 
a colony from Magnesia, on the Maeander. This prob¬ 
ably took place under the auspices of Antiochus, from 
whom the place derived its name. It became, under 
the Romans, the chief city of their province of Pisidia, 
which extended farther to the north than Pisidia proper. 
(Hicrocles, p. 672.)—III. A city of Cilicia Trachea, 
situate on a rocky projection of the coast termed Cra- 
gus, whence the place, for distinction’ sake, was 
called ’Avrioxeia hrl K pdyip. (Strabo, 669.) The 
Byzantine writers call it the Isaurian Antiochia. Hi- 
erocles makes mention of it (Synecdem, p. 708), as 
also the writers on the Crusades, under the name of 
Antioccta. (Sanuti, seer eta Jidelium, l. 2, p. 4, c. 26. 
— Mannert, vol. 6, pt. 2, p. 84.)—IV. A city at the 
foot of Mount Taurus, in Comagene, a province of 
Syria. (Maifnert, vol. 6, pt. 1 , p. 497.)—V. A city 
of Caria, on the river Maeander, w’here that stream was 
joined by the Orsimfs or Massinus. (Plin., 5, 29.) 
Steph. Byz. states, that it was founded by Antiochus, 
son of Seleucus, in honour of his mother. It had been 
previously called Pythopolis. The environs abounded 
in fruit of every kind, but especially in the fig called 
“ triphylla.” The ancient site corresponds with Jeni- 
sher. (Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 209.)—VI. A 
city of Cilicia Trachea, in the district of Lamotis. 
(Ptol., p. 129.) 

Antiochis, I. the name of the mother of Antiochus, 
the son of Seleucus.—II. A tribe of Athens. 

Antiochus, I. surnamed Soter, was the eldest son 
of Seleucus, the first king of Syria and Babylonia. 
He succeeded his father B.C. 280. When still young, 
he fell into a lingering disease, which none of his fa¬ 
ther’s physicians could cure for some time, till it was 
discovered that his pulse was more irregular than usual 
when Stratonice, his stepmother, entered his room, 
and that love for her was the cause of his illness. 
This was told to the father, who willingly gave Strat¬ 
onice to save a son on whom he founded all his hopes. 
When Antiochus came to the throne, he displayed, at 
the head of his forces, talents worthy of his sire, and 
gained many battles over the Bithynians, Macedonians, 
and Galatians. He attacked also Ptolemy Philadel- 
phus, king of Egypt, at the instigation of Magas, who 
had revolted against this prince, but without success. 
He failed also in an expedition which he undertook 
after the death of Phileterus, king of Pergamus, with 
a view of seizing on his kingdom, and he was van¬ 
quished near Sardis by Eumenes, the successor of 
that prince. He returned after this to Antioch, and 
died not long subsequently, having occupied the throne 
for nineteen years. He was called Soter (huryp) or 
“ Preserver,” for having preserved his subjects from 
an irruption of the Galatians or Gauls, whom he de¬ 
feated in battle. His successor was Antiochus Theos. 
(Justin, 17, 2, &c.)—II. Son of Antiochus Soter, and 
surnamed Theos (Qeoq), “ God,” by the Milesians, 
because he put to death their tyrant Timarchus. He 
succeeded his father B.C. 261, and at the instigation of 
his sister Apamea, the widow of Magas, renewed the 
war with Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt. He 
was as unsuccessful, however, as his father had been; 
and, being compelled to sue for peace, only obtained 
it on condition of repudiating his wife Laodice, and 
espousing Berenice the sister of Ptolemy. The male 
issue, moreover, of this latter marriage were to inherit 
the crown. It was during this war that he lost all his 

143 




ANTIOCHUS. 


ANTIOCHUS. 


provinces beyond the Euphrates by a revolt of the 
Parthians and Bactrians. Ptolemy dying two years 
after this, Antiochus repudiated Berenice and restored 
Laodice. The latter, resolving to secure the succes¬ 
sion to her son, poisoned Antiochus arid suborned Ar- 
temon, whose features were similar to his, to represent 
him as king. Artemon, subservient to her will, pre¬ 
tended to be indisposed, and, as king, recommended 
to them Seleucus, surnamed Callinicus, son of Laodice, 
as his successor. After this ridiculous imposture, it 
was made public that the king had died a natural death, 
and Laodice placed her son on the throne, and de¬ 
spatched Berenice and her son, B-C. 249. ( Justin, 27, 
1.— Appian.) —III. Surnamed Hierax (Tepaf), “bird 
of prey,” son of Antiochus Theos and Laodice, was 
the brother of Seleucus Callinicus. From his early 
years this prince was devoured by ambition. In order 
to attain to power, no crime or evil act deterred him ; 
his thirst for rule, as well as his wicked and turbulent 
spirit, obtained for him the appellation, so characteristic 
of his movements, which we have mentioned above. 
Under pretext of aiding his brother against Ptolemy 
Euergetes, he attempted to dethrone him. Seleucus 
having marched against him for the purpose of coun¬ 
teracting his ambitious designs, Hierax defeated him 
near Ancyra. He could not, however, derive any ad¬ 
vantage from this victory, since the Gauls, who formed 
the principal part of his army Revolted and declared 
themselves independent; and it was only by paying 
a large sum of money that Hierax could save his life. 
Eumenes, king of Pergamus, took advantage of this 
circumstance to rid himself of an unquiet and trouble¬ 
some neighbour. He attacked Hierax, defeated him, 
and compelled him to take refuge with his brother-in 
law Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia. Ariarathes soon 
became tired of him, and formed the design of putting 
him to death ; but Hierax, informed of his design, fled 
into Egypt. He was thrown into prison by Ptolemy, 
and perished a few years after in attempting to make 
his escape.—IV. The Great, as he was surnamed, was 
the third of the name that actually reigned, and the son 
of Seleucus Ceraunus, and succeeded his father 223 
B.C. He passed the first years of his reign in regu¬ 
lating the affairs of his kingdom, and in bringing back 
to their duty several of his officers who had made them¬ 
selves independent. Desirous after this of regaining 
Syria, which had been wrested from Seleucus Callini¬ 
cus by Ptolemy Euergetes of Egypt, he was met at 
Raphia and defeated by Ptolemy Philopater, 218 B.C., 
and was compelled to surrender the whole of his con¬ 
quests in Syria which he had thus far made. He was 
more successful, however, in Upper Asia, where he re¬ 
covered possession of Media, and made treaties with the 
kings of Parthia and Bactria, who agreed to aid him in 
regaining other of his former provinces, if their respect¬ 
ive kingdoms were secured to them. He crossed over 
also into India, and renewed his alliance with the king 
of that country. After the death of Philopater, he re¬ 
sumed his plans of conquest, and Ptolemy Epiphanes 
being yet quite young, he seized upon the whole of 
Syria. He granted, however, peace to Ptolemy, and 
even gave him his daughter Cleopatra in marriage, 
with Syria for her dowry. Antiochus then turned his 
arms against the cities of Asia Minor and Greece ; but 
these cities having implored the aid of Rome, the sen¬ 
ate sent to Antiochus to summon him to surrender 
his conquests. Excited, however, by Hannibal, to 
whom he had given an asylum, he took no notice of 
this order, and a war ensued. The plan, however, 
which Hannibal traced out for him, was not followed. 
Defeated at Thermopylae by Glabrio, he fled into Asia, 
where a second and more complete defeat, by Scipio 
Asiaticus, at Magnesia, compelled him to sue for 
peace, which he obtained only on the hardest condi¬ 
tions. He was obliged to retire beyond Mount Taurus. 
All his territories on this side of Taurus became Roman 
144 


provinces, and he had also to pay a yearly tribute of 
2000 talents. His revenues being insufficient for this 
heavy demand, he attempted to plunder the treasures 
of the temple of Belus in Susiana; but the inhabitants 
of the country were so irritated at this sacrilege, that 
they slew him, together with his escort, B.C. 187. He 
had reigned thirty-six years. In his character of king, 
Antiochus was humane and liberal, the patron of learn¬ 
ing, and the friend of merit. He had three sons, 
Seleucus Philopater, Antiochus Epiphanes, and Deme¬ 
trius. The first succeeded hip, and the two others 
were kept as hostages by the Romans. ( Justin , 31 et 
32.— Liv., 34, 59.— Flor., 2, 1.— Appian, Bell. Syr.) 
—V. Surnamed Epiphanes, or Illustrious, was king of 
Syria after the death of his brother Seleucus Philopa¬ 
ter, having ascended the throne 175 B.C. He was the 
fourth of the name, and was surnamed Epiphanes 
(’~E,7TL(j)av7jg), “ the Illustrious,' 1 ' 1 and reigned eleven 
years. Taking advantage of the infancy of Ptolemy 
Philometor, he seized upon Coelosyria, and even pen¬ 
etrated into Egypt, where he took Memphis, and ob¬ 
tained possession of the person of the young king, 
whom he kept prisoner for many years. The guardi¬ 
ans of the young Ptolemy, however, having applied 
for aid to the Romans, the senate sent Popilius Lamas 
unto Epiphanes, who compelled him to renounce his 
conquests and set the Egyptian monarch at liberty. 
The Jews having revolted during the reign of Epiph¬ 
anes, he marched against Jerusalem, deposed the high- 
priest Onias, profaned the temple by sacrifices to Ju¬ 
piter Olympius, plundered all the sacred vessels, and 
slaughtered, it is said, 80,000 inhabitants of this ill- 
fated city. After this he proceeded into Persia, and, 
while traversing Elymais, wished to plunder the tem¬ 
ples that were there ; but the inhabitants having re¬ 
volted, he was compelled to retreat to Babylon. There 
he learned that the Jews, commanded by Matathias 
and Judas Maccabseus, had gained several victories 
over the generals whom he had left in Judaea. Trans¬ 
ported with fury at the intelligence, he assembled a 
new army, and swore to destroy Jerusalem ; but, at the 
moment of his departure, he fell from his chariot, was 
subsequently seized with a disgusting malady, and 
died in the most agonizing sufferings. The Persians 
attributed the manner of his death to his impious en¬ 
terprise against the temple of Elymais ; the Jews saw 
in it the anger of Heaven, for his having profaned the 
temple of Jerusalem. He died B.C. 164. Epiphanes 
was not without some good qualities. He was gen¬ 
erous, loved the arts, and displayed considerable abil¬ 
ity in the wars in which he was engaged ; but his 
vices and follies tarnished his character. ( Justin, 34, 
5- — Macchab., 1 , 1 , &c.) — VI. Eupator, son of the 
preceding (from ei> and rcarr/p, “ born of an illustrious 
sire’ 1 ' 1 ), succeeded to the throne at the age of nine years. 
The generals of this prince continued the war against 
the Jews, and Jerusalem was on the point of becoming, 
for the second time, the prey of the Syrians, when 
Demetrius Soter, the cousin-german of Eupator, by a 
sudden invasion, seized upon the capital of Syria. 
The generals of Eupator made peace with the Jews, 
and marched against Demetrius; but the soldiers, 
ashamed of serving a mere child, went over to the in¬ 
vader, who put Eupator to death after a reign of about 
eighteen months.—VII. (the sixth of the name) Son 
of Alexander Bala, took the surname of Theos (“ God”), 
claiming descent, like his father, from Antiochus Theos 
already mentioned. To this surname he afterward 
added that of Epiphanes (“ the illustrious'’'). Deme¬ 
trius Nicator having disbanded his army, and being 
entirely without apprehension of any foe, Tryphon took 
advantage of this, and having brought Antiochus from 
Arabia, still young in years, caused him to be pro¬ 
claimed king, about 144 B.C. The attempt succeed¬ 
ed. Demetrius was defeated, and Antiochus ascend¬ 
ed the throne. He reigned, however, only in name 



ANTIOCHUS. 


ANT 


The actual monarch was Tryphon, who had him put to 
death at the end of about two years, and caused him¬ 
self to be proclaimed in his stead. (Justin, 36, 1.)— 
VIII. Surnamed Sidetes (ZidqTijg), “the hunter,” son 
of Demetrius Soter, ascended the throne 139 B.C. 
He drove from Syria the usurper Tryphon, made war 
on the Jews, besieged Jerusalem, and compelled it to 
pay a tribute. He then marched against Phraates, 
king of Parthia, who menaced his kingdom, gained 
three victories over him, and obtained possession of 
Babylon. The following year he was vanquished in 
turn by the Parthian king, and lost his life in the con¬ 
flict. He was a prince of many virtues, but he tar¬ 
nished all by his habits of intemperance.—IX. The 
eighth of the name, surnamed Grypus (Tpv7roc) from 
his aquiline nose, was son of Demetrius Nicanor and 
Cleopatra. He was raised to the throne B.C. 123, to 
the prejudice of his brothers, by the intrigues of his 
mother, who hoped to reign in his name. When he 
was declared king, the throne of Syria was occupied 
by Alexander Zebinas. He marched against this im¬ 
postor, defeated, and put him to death. He then mar¬ 
ried Tryphena, daughter of Ptolemy Euergetes II., 
which ensured peaceable relations between Syria and 
Egypt. After having for some time yielded to the au¬ 
thority of his mother, he resolved at last to reign in his 
own name, a step which nearly cost him his life. His 
mother prepared a poisoned draught for her son, but, 
being suspected by him, was compelled to drink it 
herself. A bloody war soon after broke out between 
this prince and Antiochus the Cyzicenian, his brother, 
in which the latter compelled Grypus to cede to him 
Coelosyria. They thus reigned conjointly for some 
time. Grypus was at last assassinated by one of his 
subjects, B.C. 96. (Justin, 39, 1 . — Joseph., Ant. 
Jud.) —X. Surnamed Cyzicenus, from his having been 
brought up in the city of Cyzicus, was the ninth of 
the name. He was son of Antiochus Sidetes, and suc¬ 
ceeded his brother Grypus, after having reigned over 
Coelosyria, which he had previously compelled his 
brother to yield to him. He was a dissolute and indo¬ 
lent prince, and possessed of considerable mechanical 
talent. His nephew Seleucus, son of Grypus, de¬ 
throned him, B.C. 95.—XI. The tenth of the name, 
ironically surnamed Pius, because he married Selena, 
the wife of his father and of his uncle. Pie was the 
son of Antiochus IX., and he expelled Seleucus, the 
son of Grypus, from Syria ; but he could not prevent 
two other sons of Grypus, namely, Philip and Deme¬ 
trius, from seizing on a part of Syria. He perished 
soon after by their hands. (Appian. — Joseph., Ant. 
Jud., 13, 21.)—After his death, the kingdom of Syria 
was torn to pieces by the factions of the royal family 
or usurpers, who, under a good or false title, under the 
name of Antiochus or his relations, established them¬ 
selves for a little time either as sovereigns of Syria, or 
Damascus, or other dependant provinces. At last An¬ 
tiochus, surnamed Asiaticus, the son of Antiochus the 
ninth, was restored to his paternal throne by the influ¬ 
ence of Lucullus, the Roman general, on the expulsion 
of Tigranes, king of Armenia, from the Syrian domin¬ 
ions ; but four years after, Pompey deposed him, and 
observed that he who hid himself while a usurper 
sat upon his throne, ought not to be a king. From 
that time, B.C. 65, Syria became a Roman province, 
and the race of Antiochus was extinguished.—There 
were also other individuals of the same name, among 
whom the most deserving of mention are the following: 
I. A native of Syracuse, descended from an ancient 
monarch of the Sicani. He wrote a history of Sicily, 
which was brought down to the 98th Olympiad, and 
which Diodorus Siculus cites among the sources 
whence he derived aid for his compilation. He com¬ 
posed also what appears to have been a very curious 
history of Italy, some fragments of which are pre¬ 
served by Dionysius of Halicarnassus. (Compare 
T 


Hcyne, de Fontibus Hist. Diod. —vol. 1, p. Ixxxv., 
ed. Bip.) — II. A rhetorician and sophist of TEgsea, 
the pupil of Dionysius of Miletus. Dio Cassius (77, 
p. 878) relates, that, in order to rouse the spirits of 
the Roman army, who were worn out with fatiguing 
marches, he assumed the character of a cynic, and 
rolled about in the snow. This conduct gained for him 
the favour of Septimius Severus and Caracalla. He af¬ 
terward went over to Tiridates, king of the Parthians, 
whence Suidas styles him kvrou.o'koq, or “ the desert¬ 
er.”—III. A native of Ascalon, the last preceptor of 
the Platonic school in Greece. He was the disciple 
of Philo, and one of the philosophers whose lectures 
Yarro, Cicero, and Brutus attended, for he taught, at 
different times, at Athens, Alexandrea, and Rome. 
He attempted to reconcile the tenets of the different 
sects, and maintained that the doctrines of the Stoics 
were to be found in the writings of Plato. Cicero 
greatly admired his eloquence and the politeness of his 
manners, and Lucullus took him as his companion into 
Asia. He resigned the academic chair in the 175th 
Olympiad. After his time the professors of the Aca¬ 
demic philosophy were dispersed by the tumults of 
war, and the school itself was transferred to Rome. 
(Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 5, p. 199, seqq. — Enfield’s 
History of Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 258, seqq.) 

Antiope, I. a daughter of Nycteus, who was a son of 
Neptune and king of Thebes, received the addresses 
of Jupiter, the god having appeared to her under the 
form of a satyr. Terrified at the threats of her father, 
on the consequences of her fault becoming apparent, 
Antiope fled to Sicyon, where she married Epopeus. 
Nycteus, out of grief, put an end to himself, having 
previously charged his brother Lycus to punish Epo¬ 
peus and Antiope. Lycus accordingly marched an 
army against Sicyon, took it, slew Epopeus, and led 
away Antiope captive. On the way to Thebes, she 
brought forth twins at Eleuthera. The unhappy babes 
were exposed on a mountain ; but a shepherd having 
found them, reared them both, calling the one Zethus, 
the other Amphion. The former devoted himself to 
the care of cattle, while Amphion passed his time in 
the cultivation of music, having been presented with a 
lyre by Mercury. Meanwhile, Lycus had put Antiope 
in bonds, and she was treated with the utmost cruelty 
by him and his wife Dirce. But her chains became 
loosed of themselves, and she fled to the dwelling of 
her sons in search of shelter and protection. Having 
recognised her, they resolved to avenge her wrongs. 
Accordingly, they attacked and slew Lycus, and ty¬ 
ing Dirce by the hair to a wild bull, let the animal 
drag her until she was dead. (Vid. Dirce, Amphion, 
Zethus.— Apollod ., 3, 5. — Kcightlcy's Mythology, p. 
299.) — II. A queen of the Amazons. According to 
one account, Hercules, having taken her prisoner, 
gave her to Theseus as a reward of his valour. The 
more common tradition, however, made her to have 
been taken captive and carried off by Theseus himself, 
when he made an expedition with his own fleet against 
the Amazonian race. She is also called Hippolyta. 
Justin says that Hercules gave Hippolyta to Theseus, 
and kept Antiope for himself. (Plut., Vit. Thes., 27. 
— Justin, 2, 4.) 

Antiparos, a small island in the iEgean, ranked 
by Artemidorus among the Cyclades, but excluded 
from them by Strabo (10, p. 484, ed. Casaub.). It 
lay opposite to Paros, and was separated from this lat¬ 
ter island, according to Heraclides of Pontus (Steph. 
Byz., s. v. ’SLhiapoq), by a strait eighteen stadia wide. 
The same wniter affirms (Plin., H. N., 4,12), that it 
had been colonized by Sidonians. Its more ancient 
name was Oliarus. It is now Antiparo. This island 
is famed for its grotto, which is of great depth, and 
was believed by the ancient Greeks to communicate, 
beneath the waters, with some of the neighbouring 
islands. 


145 



ANTIPATER. 


ANT 


Antipater, I. son of Iolaus, a Macedonian, was 
first an officer under Philip, and was afterward raised 
to the rank of a general under Alexander the Great. 
When the latter invaded Asia, Antipater was appoint¬ 
ed governor of Macedonia ; and in this station he serv¬ 
ed his prince with the greatest fidelity. He reduced 
the Spartans, who had formed a confederacy against 
the Macedonians ; and, having thus secured the tran¬ 
quillity of Greece, he marched into Asia, with a pow¬ 
erful reinforcement for Alexander. After that mon¬ 
arch’s death, the government of Macedonia and of the 
other European provinces was allotted to Antipater. 
He was soon involved in a severe contest with the 
Grecian states; was defeated by the Athenians, who 
came against him with an army of 30,000 men and a 
fleet of 200 ships, and was closely besieged in Lamia, 
a town of Thessaly. But Leosthenes, the Athenian 
commander, having been mortally wounded under the 
walls of the city, and Antipater having received as¬ 
sistance from Craterus, his son-in-law, the fortune of 
the war was completely changed. The Athenians 
were routed at Cranon, and compelled to submit at 
discretion. They were allowed to retain their rights 
and privileges, but were obliged to deliver up the ora¬ 
tors Demosthenes and Hyperides, who had instigated 
the war, and to receive a Macedonian # garrison into the 
Munychia. Antipater was equally successful in re¬ 
ducing the other states of Greece, who were making 
a noble struggle for their freedom ; but he settled their 
respective governments with much moderation. In 
conjunction with Craterus, he was the first who at¬ 
tempted to control the growing power of Perdiccas ; 
and after the death of that commander he was invest¬ 
ed with all his authority. He exercised this jurisdic¬ 
tion over the other governors with unusual fidelity, 
integrity, and impartiality, and died in the 80th year 
of his age, B.C. 319. At his death, he left his son 
Cassander in a subordinate station ; appointed Poly- 
sperchon his own immediate successor ; and recom¬ 
mended him to the other generals as the fittest person 
to preside in their councils. Antipater received a 
learned education, and was the friend and disciple of 
Aristotle. He appears to have possessed very emi¬ 
nent abilities, and was peculiarly distinguished for his 
vigilance and fidelity in every trust. It was a saying 
of Philip, father of Alexander, “ I have slept soundly, 
for Antipater has been awake.” ( Justin , 11, 12, 13, 
&c.— Diod., 17, 18, &c.)—II. The Idumsean, was the 
father of Herod the Great, and was the second son of 
Antipas, governor of Idumsea. He embraced the party 
of Hyrcanus against Aristobulus, and took a very ac¬ 
tive part in the contest between the two brothers re¬ 
specting the office of high-priest in Judasa. Aristob¬ 
ulus at first, however, succeeded; but when Pom- 
pey had deposed him and restored Hyrcanus to the 
pontifical dignity, Antipater soon became the chief 
director of affairs in Judsea, ingratiated himself with 
the Romans, and used every effort to aggrandize his 
own family. He gave very effectual aid to Csesar 
in the Alexandrean war, and the latter, in return, made 
him a Roman citizen and procurator of Judaea. In 
this latter capacity he exerted himself to restore the 
ancient Jewish form of government, but was cut off 
by a conspiracy, the brother of the high-priest having 
been bribed to give him a cup of poisoned wine. Jo¬ 
sephus makes him to have been distinguished for piety, 
justice, and love of country. ( Joseph., Ant. Jud ., 14, 
3.)—III. A son of Cassander, ascended the throne of 
Macedonia B.C. 298. He disputed the crown with 
his brother Philip IV., and caused his mother Thes- 
salonica to be put to death for favouring Philip’s side. 
The two brothers, however, reigned conjointly, not¬ 
withstanding this, for three years, when they were de¬ 
throned by Demetrius Poliorcetes. Antipater there¬ 
upon retired to the court of Lysimachus, his father-in- 
law, where he ended his days. {Justin, 26, 1.)—IV. 
146 


A native of Tarsus, the disciple and successor of Dio¬ 
genes the Babylonian, in the Stoic school. He flour¬ 
ished about 80 B.C., and is applauded by both Cicero 
and Seneca as an able supporter of that sect. His 
chief opponent was Carneades. ( Cic., de Off., 3, 12. 
— Sen., Ep., 92.)—V. A native of Cyrene, and one of 
the Cyrenaic sect. He was a disciple of the first 
Aristippus, and the preceptor of Epitimides. — ’VI. A 
philosopher of Tyre, who wrote a work on Duty. He 
is supposed to have been of the Stoic sect. Cicero 
{de Orat., 3, 50) speaks of him as an improvisator. 
Crassus, into whose mouth the Roman orator puts this 
remark, might have known the poet when he was 
quaestor in Macedonia, the same year in which Cicero 
was born (106 B.C.). Pliny relates (7, 51) that he 
had every year a fever on the day of his birth, and 
that, without ever experiencing any other complaint, 
he attained to a very advanced age. Some of his 
epigrams remain, the greater part of which fall under 
the class of epitaphs {h-LTv/u6ta). Boivin {Mem. de 
VAcad. des Inscr., &c., vol. 3) states, that the epi¬ 
grams of this poet are written in the Doric dialect; 
the remark, however, is an incorrect one, since some 
are in Ionic. {Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 4, p. 45.)— 
VII. A poet of Thessalonica, who flourished towards 
the end of the last century preceding the Christian 
era. We have thirty-six of his epigrams remaining. 
—VIII. A native of Hierapolis. He was the secre¬ 
tary of Septimius Severus, and Praefect of Bithynia. 
He was the preceptor also of Caracalla and Geta, and 
reproached the former with the murder of his brother. 

Antipatria, a town of Illyricum, on the borders of 
Macedonia. It was taken and sacked by L. Apustius, 
a Roman officer detached by the consul Sulpicius to 
ravage the territory of Philip, in the breaking out of 
the war against that prince. {Liv., 31, 27.) 

Antipatris, or Capharsaba, a town of Palestine, 
situate in Samaria, near the coast, southeast of Apol- 
lonias. It was rebuilt by Herod the Great, and called 
Antipatris, in honour of his father Antipater. {Joseph., 
B. J., 16,1, 4.— Id., Ant., 16, 5, and 3, 15.) The city 
still existed, though in a dilapidated state, in the time 
of Theophanes (8th century). Its site is at present 
unknown: the modern Arsuf does not coincide with 
this place, but rather with Apollonias. {Mannert, vol. 
6, pt. 1, p. 271, seqq.) 

Antiphanes, I. a comic poet of Rhodes, Smyrna, 
or Carystus, was born B.C. 408, of parents in the low 
condition of slaves. This most prolific writer (he is 
said to have composed upward of three hundred dra¬ 
mas), notwithstanding the meanness of his origin, was 
so popular in Athens, that on his decease a decree was 
passed to remove his remains from Chios to that city, 
where they were interred with public honours. {Sui- 
das, s. v. — Theatre of the Greeks, 2 d ed., p. 183.) — 
II. A statuary of Argos, the pupil of Pericletus, one 
of those who had studied under Polycletus. He flour¬ 
ished about 400 B.C. Several works of this artist 
are mentioned by Pausanias (10, 9). He formed 
statues of the Dioscuri and other heroes ; and he made 
also a brazen horse, in imitation of the horse said to 
have been constructed by the Greeks before Troy. 
The inhabitants of Argos sent it as a present to Del¬ 
phi. Other imitations performed by this artist are 
enumerated by Heyne. {Excurs., 3, ad JEn., 11. — 
Sillig, Diet. Art., s.v.) — III. A poet of Macedonia, 
nine of whose epigrams are preserved in the Antholo¬ 
gy. He flourished between 100 B.C. and the reign of 
Augustus. (Consult Jacobs, Catal. Poet. Epig., s. v .) 

Antiphates, a king of the Lsestrygones, descended 
from Lamus. Ulysses, returning from Troy, came 
upon his coasts, and sent three men to examine the 
country. Antiphates devoured one of them, and pur¬ 
sued the others, and sunk the fleet of Ulysses with 
stones, except the ship in which the hero himself was. 
{Od., 10, 81, seqq.) 





ANTIPHON. 


ANT 


Antiphili (oppidum), a town and harbour, accord¬ 
ing to Ptolemy, on the Sinus Arabicus, in -Egyptus 
Inferior. Others, however, place it in .Ethiopia, to 
the north of Saba. ( Bisch. und Moll., Worterb., &c., 
5. v.) 

Antiphilus, I. a painter born in Egypt, and men¬ 
tioned by Quintilian (12, 10) as possessing the great¬ 
est readiness in his profession, and compared by many 
to the most eminent artists, Apelles, Protogenes, and 
Lysippus. He is twice alluded to in Pliny, with an 
enumeration of his most remarkable productions (35, 
10 and 11). One of his pictures represented a boy 
blowing the fire, with the effect of the light on the 
boy’s countenance and the surrounding objects stri¬ 
kingly delineated. The subject of another and very 
famous piece was a satyr, arrayed in a panther’s skin. 
He flourished during the ages of Alexander the Great 
and Ptolemy I. of Egypt. This makes him a con¬ 
temporary of Apelles, whom, according to Lucian, he 
endeavoured to rival. ( Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.) —II. 
An architect, whose age and country are uncertain. 
In connexion with Pothaeus and Megacles, he con¬ 
structed, at Olympia, for the Carthaginians, a reposi¬ 
tory for their presents. ( Pausan., 6, 19.— Sillig, Diet. 
Art., s. v.) 

Antiphon, I. a tragic poet, who lived at the court 
of Dionysius the elder, and was eventually put to death 
by the tyrant. Aristotle cites his Meleager, Androm¬ 
ache, and Jason. — II. A native of Attica, born at 
Rhamnus about 479 B.C. (Compare Spaan, de An- 
tiphont., Lugd. Bat., 1765, 4to, and Ruhnken, Dis¬ 
sert. de Antiph. — Or at. Gr., ed. Reiske, vol. 7, p. 795.) 
He was the son of the orator Sophilus, who was also 
his preceptor in the rhetorical art. He was a pupil 
also of Gorgias. According to the ancient writers, 
he was himself the inventor of rhetoric. Their mean¬ 
ing, however, in making this assertion, is simply as 
follows : Before his time, the Sicilian school had 
taught and practised the art of speaking; but Anti¬ 
phon was the first who knew how to apply this art to 
judiciary eloquence, and to matters that were treated 
before the assemblies of the people. Thus, Hermo- 
genes ( de Form. Or., 2, p. 498) says, that he was the 
inventor tov tvtxov tcoTutuiov. Antiphon exercised 
his art with great success, and gave instructions also 
in a school of rhetoric which he opened, and in which 
Thucydides formed himself. If reliance is to be placed 
on the statement of Photius, Antiphon put up over 
the entrance of his abode the following inscription : 
“ Here consolation is given to the afflicted.” He 
composed, for many, speeches to be delivered by ac¬ 
cused persons, which the latter got by heart; and also 
harangues for demagogues. This practice, which he 
was the first to follow, exposed him to the satire of 
the poets of the day. He himself only spoke once in 
public, and this was for the purpose of defending him¬ 
self against a charge of treason. Antiphon, during 
the Peloponnesian war, frequently commanded bodies 
of Athenian troops ; he equipped, also, at his own ex¬ 
pense, sixty triremes. He had, moreover, the prin¬ 
cipal share in the revolution which established at 
Athens the government of the four hundred, of which 
he was a member. During the short duration of this 
oligarchy, Antiphon was sent to Sparta for the pur¬ 
pose of negotiating a piece. The ill-success of this 
embassy overthrew the government at home, and 
Antiphon was accused of treason and condemned to 
death. According to another account, given by Pho¬ 
tius ( Biblioth., 2, p. 486, ed. Bekker), which, however, 
is wholly incorrect, Antiphon was put to death by 
Dionysius of Syracuse, either for having criticised the 
tragedies of the tyrant, or else for having hazarded an 
unlucky bonmot in his presence. Some one having 
asked Antiphon what was the best kind of brass, he 
replied, that of which the statues of Harmodius and 
Aristogiton were made.—The ancient writers cite a | 


work of Antiphon’s on the Rhetorical Art, T exvr) 
^rjTopiKr], and they remark that it was the oldest work 
of the kind ; which means merely that Antiphon, as 
has already been remarked, was the first that applied 
the art in question to the business of the bar. They 
make mention also of thirty-five, and even sixty, of 
his discourses, that is, discourses held before the as¬ 
sembly of the people {Tioyoi dyyriyopinoi) ; judiciary 
discourses {dmaviKoi), &c. We have fifteen ha¬ 
rangues of Antiphon remaining, which are all of the 
class termed by Hermogenes loyoi (povinoi, that is, 
having reference to criminal proceedings. Twelve of 
them, however, are rather to be regarded as so many 
studies, than discourses actually completed and pro¬ 
nounced. Hermogenes passes the following judg¬ 
ment upon Antiphon : “ He is clear in his expositions, 
true in his delineation of sentiment, faithful to nature, 
and, consequently, persuasive ; but he possesses not 
these qualities to the extent to which they were car¬ 
ried by the orators who came after him. His diction, 
though often swelling, is nevertheless polished : in 
general, it wants vivacity and energy.” The remains 
of Antiphon are given in Reiske’s edition of the Greek 
Orators, in that of Bekker, Berol., 1823, 5 vols. 8vo, 
and in that of Dobson, Lond., 1828, 16 vols. 8vo. 
Three of his discourses, 1. K arpyopia (papyaKeiaq, 
Kara Tyq yrjTpviaq : 2. Ilepi tov 'Hpwdou (povov : 3. 
Tlepl tov x°p£ vtov, deserve the attention of scholars, 
as giving an idea of the form of proceeding in Athens 
in criminal prosecutions. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 
2, p. 202, seqq .)—II. A sophist of Athens. Plutarch 
and Photius, in speaking of the conversation which 
Socrates had with this individual, and of which Xeno¬ 
phon {Mem. Socr., 1, 6) has preserved an account, 
confound him with the orator of the same name. 
Hermogenes ascribes to him a work on truth {rrepl 
’A/l rjdeiag), of which Suidas cites a fragment {s. v. 
’Adeyrog), wherein the sophist speaks of the Deity. 
{Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 2, p. 332.) 

Antiphus, brother of Ctymenus, and son of Ganyc- 
tor the Naupactian. He and Ctymenus slew the poet 
Hesiod, for a supposed connivance in an outrage per¬ 
petrated upon their sister. {Vid. Hesiodus.) 

Antipolis, a city of Gaul, on the coast of the Med¬ 
iterranean, southeast of the river Varus, built and 
colonized by the Massilians. It is now Antibes. 
{Strabo, 180.— Id. ibid., p. 184.) 

Antirrhium, a promontory of Etolia, so called 
from its being opposite to Rhium, another point of 
Achaia. It was sometimes surnamed Molycricum, 
from its vicinity to the town of Molvcrium {Thucyd., 
2, 86), and was also called Rhium Etolicum {Polyb., 
5, 94). Here the Crisssean, or, as Scylax terms it, 
the Delphic, Gulf properly commenced. {Peripl., p. 
14.) Thucydides states that the interval between the 
two capes was barely seven stadia ; the geographer 
just quoted says ten stadia. The narrowness of the 
strait rendered this point of great importance for the 
passage of troops to and from Etolia and the Pelo- 
ponnesus. {Polyb., 4, 10 and 19.) On Antirrhium 
was a temple sacred to Neptune. The Turkish for¬ 
tress, which now occupies the site of Antirrhium, is 
known by the name of Roumelia. {Gell's Itiner., p. 
293.) 

Antissa, a city of Lesbos, between the promontory 
Sigeum and Methymne. Having offended the Ro¬ 
mans, it was depopulated by Labeo, and the inhabi¬ 
tants were removed to Methymne. It was afterward 
rebuilt, and is supposed to have been insulated by an 
arm of the sea from the rest of the island. Hence the 
name Antissa, it being opposite to Lesbos, whose more 
ancient name was Issa. {Plin., 5, 31.— Id., 2, 91.— 
Liv., 45, 31.— Lycophron, v. 219.— Eustath. ad Horn., 
II, 2, 129.) 

Antisthenes, an Athenian philosopher, founder of 
the Cynic sect, born about 420 B.C., of a Phrygian or 

147 * 




ANTISTHENES. 


ANT 


Thracian mother. In his youth he was engaged in 
military exploits, and acquired fame by the valour 
which he displayed in the battle of Tanagra. His first 
studies were under the direction of the sophist Gorgias, 
who instructed him in the art of rhetoric. Soon grow¬ 
ing dissatisfied with the futile labours of this school, 
he sought for more substantial wisdom from Socrates. 
Captivated by the doctrine and the manner of his new 
master, he prevailed upon many young men, who had 
been his fellow-students under Gorgias, to accompany 
him. So great was his ardour for moral wisdom, that, 
though he lived at the Pirseus, he came daily to Athens 
to attend upon Socrates. Despising the pursuits of 
avarice, vanity, and ambition, Socrates sought the re¬ 
ward of virtue in virtue itself, and declined no labour 
or suffering which virtue required. This noble con¬ 
sistency of mind was the part of the character of Soc¬ 
rates which Antisthenes chiefly admired ; and he re¬ 
solved to make it the object of his diligent imitation. 
While he was a disciple of Socrates, he discovered 
his propensity towards severity of manners by the 
meanness of his dress. He frequently appeared in a 
threadbare and ragged cloak. Socrates, who had great 
penetration in discovering the characters of men, re¬ 
marking that Anthistenes took pains to expose, rather 
than to conceal, the tattered state of his dress, said to 
him, “Why so ostentatious 1 Through your rags I 
see your vanity.” While Plato and other disciples of 
Socrates were, after his death, forming schools in 
Athens, Antisthenes chose for his sehool a public place 
of exercise without the walls of the city, called the 
Cynosarges, whence some writers derive the name of 
the sect of which he was the founder. Others suppose 
that his followers were called Cynics from the habits 
of the school, which, to the more refined Athenians, 
appeared those of dogs rather than of men. Here he 
inculcated, both by precept and example, a rigorous dis¬ 
cipline. In order to accommodate his own manners 
to his doctrine, he wore no other garment than a coarse 
cloak, suffered his beard to grow, and carried a wallet 
and staff like a wandering beggar. Undoubtedly this 
was nothing more than an expression of opposition to 
the gradually increasing luxury of the age ; his wish 
and object being to bring men back to their original 
simplicity in life and manners. Thus he set himself 
directly against the tendency and civilization of his 
age, as is clear from many of his sayings, which are 
tinctured at once with bitterness and wit. And al¬ 
though this was scarcely more than a negative resist¬ 
ance, yet, as he obstinately placed himself in opposition 
to the circumstances in which he lived, and to the ad¬ 
vancing progress of science, his position must naturally 
have reacted upon the feelings of his contemporaries 
towards himself. We consequently find that his school 
met with little encouragement, and this so annoyed 
him that he drove away the few scholars he had. 
Diogenes of Sinope, who resembled him in character, 
is said to have been the only one that remained with 
him to his death. The doctrine of Antisthenes was 
mainly confined to morals; but, even in this portion 
of philosophy, it is exceedingly meager and deficient, 
scarcely furnishing anything beyond a general defence 
of the olden simplicity and moral energy, against the 
luxurious indulgence and effeminacy of later times. 
Instead, however, of being duly tempered by the So- 
cratic moderation, Antisthenes appears to have been 
carried to excess in his virtuous zeal against the luxury 
of the age ; unless we suppose, what may perhaps be 
true, that in many of the accounts which have come 
down to us respecting him, his doctrine is painted in 
somewhat exaggerated colours. With regard to his 
religious tenets, it may be observed that Antisthenes, 
in accordance with the Socratic doctrine, maintained 
that, in the universe, all is regulated by a divine intel¬ 
ligence, from design, so as to benefit the good man, 
who is the friend of God. For the sage shall possess 
148 


all things. This doctrine of God, therefore, was con¬ 
nected with his ethical opinions, by indicating the 
physical conditions of a happy life. It led him, how¬ 
ever, to deviate from Socrates, and to declare that, in 
opposition to the vulgar polytheism, there is but one 
natural God, but many popular deities ; that God can¬ 
not be known or recognised in any form or figure, 
since he is like to nothing on earth. Hence undoubt¬ 
edly arose his allegorical explanation of mythology, 
and his doubts respecting the demoniac intimations of 
Socrates. Towards the close of his life, the gloomy 
cast of his mind and the moroseness of his temper in¬ 
creased to such a degree, as to render him troublesome 
to his friends, and an object of ridicule to his enemies. 
Antisthenes wrote many books, of which none are ex¬ 
tant except two declamations under the names of 
Ajax and Ulysses. These were published in the col¬ 
lection of ancient orators by Aldus, in 1513 ; by H. 
Stephens, in 1575 ; and by Canter, as an appendix to 
his edition of Aristides, printed at Basle in 1566.— 
For some remarks on the Cynic sect, vid. the article 
Diogenes. ( Enfield's History of Philosophy , vol. 1, p. 
299, seqq. — Ritter's Hist. Anc. Phil., vol. 2, p. 108, 
seqq., Oxford trans.) 

Antistius Labeo, a distinguished lawyer in the 
reign of Augustus, who, in the spirit of liberty, fre¬ 
quently spoke and acted with great freedom against 
the emperor. According to most commentators, Hor¬ 
ace ( Serm ., 1, 3, 82), in order to pay his court to the 
monarch, salutes Labeo with the appellation of mad 
( Labeone insanior, &c.). But it has been well ob¬ 
served, in opposition to this, that, whatever respect the 
poet had for his emperor, we never find that he treats 
the patrons of liberty with outrage. Nor can we well 
imagine that he would dare thus cruelly to brand a 
man of Labeo’s abilities, riches, power, and employ¬ 
ments in the state, and to whom Augustus himself had 
offered the consulship. Bentley, Wieland, Wetzel, 
and other critics are of opinion, therefore, that this in¬ 
dividual cannot be the one to whom Horace alludes, 
but that he refers to some other personage of the day, 
whose history has not come down to us. Bentley even 
goes so far as to suggest Lahieno for Labeone in the 
text of Horace, and cites Seneca in support of his con¬ 
jecture ( Prcefad lib., 5, Controv.), according to 
whom, Labienus was a public speaker of the day, so 
noted for the freedom of his tongue as to have received 
the name of Rabienus in derision. Heindorflf, how¬ 
ever, thinks that Horace may here actually refer to 
Antistius Labeo, not for -the reason given by some of 
the commentators, but in allusion to his earlier years, 
and to a violent and impetuous temperament which 
he may have at that time possessed (ad Horat., 1. c.). 

Antitaurus, a chain of mountains, running from 
Armenia through Cappadocia to the west and south¬ 
west. It connects itself with the chain of Mount Tau¬ 
rus, between Cataonia and Lycaonia. ( Vid. Taurus 
and Parvadres.— Mannert, vol. 6, pt. 2, p. 5.) 

Antium, a city of Italy, on the coast of Latium, 
about 32 miles below Ostia. According to Xenagoras, 
a Greek writer quoted by Dionysius of Halicarnassus 
(1, 73), the foundation of Antium is to be ascribed to 
Anthias, a son of Circe. Solinus (c. 8) attributes it 
to Ascanius. But, whatever may have been its ori¬ 
gin, there can be no doubt that Antium was, at an 
early period, a maritime place of considerable note, 
since we find it comprised in the first treaty made by 
Rome with Carthage ( Polyb ., 3, 22); and Strabo re¬ 
marks (232) that complaints were made to the Romans 
by Alexander and Demetrius, of the piracies exercised 
by the Antiates, in conjunction with the Tyrrhenians, 
on their subjects ; intimating that it was done with 
the connivance of Rome. Antium appears also to 
have been the most considerable city of the Yolsci; it 
was to this place, according to Plutarch, that Coriola- 
nus retired after he had been banished from his coun- 



ANT 


ANT 


try, and was here enabled to form his plans of ven¬ 
geance in conjunction with the Volscian chief Tullus 
Aufidius. It was here, too, that, after his failure, he 
met his death from the hands of his discontented al¬ 
lies. Antium was taken for the first time by the con¬ 
sul T. Quintius Capitolinus, A.U.O. 286, and the year 
following it received a Roman colony. This circum¬ 
stance, however, did not prevent the Antiates from re¬ 
volting frequently, and joining in the Volscian and 
Latin wars ( Liv ., 6, 6.— Dion. Hal., 10, 21), till they 
were finally conquered in a battle near the river As- 
tura, with many Latin confederates. In consequence 
of this defeat, Antium fell into the hands of the victors, 
when most of its ships were destroyed, and the rest re¬ 
moved to Rome by Camillus. The beaks of the former 
were reserved to ornament the elevated seat in the Fo¬ 
rum of that city, from which orators addressed the peo¬ 
ple, and which, from that circumstance, was thenceforth 
designated by the term rostra. (Liv ., 8, 14.— Flor., 
1, 11.— Plin., 34, 5.) Antium now received a fresh 
supply of colonists, to whom the rights of Roman cit¬ 
izens were granted. From that period it seems to 
have enjoyed a state of quiet till the civil wars of Ma¬ 
rius and Sylla, when it was nearly destroyed by the 
former. But it rose again from its ruins during the 
empire, and attained to a high degree of prosperity 
and splendour; since Strabo reports, that in his time 
it was the favourite resort of the emperors and their 
court ( Strab ., 232), and we know it was here that Au¬ 
gustus received from the senate the title of Father of 
nis Country. (Suet., Aug., 50.) Antium became suc¬ 
cessively the residence of Tiberius and Caligula; it was 
also the birthplace of Nero (Suet., Ner., 6), who, having 
recolonized it, built a port there, and bestowed upon it 
various other marks of his favour. Hadrian is also said 
to have been particularly fond ofthis town. (Philostrat., 
Vit. Apoll. Tyan., 8, 8.) There were two temples of 
celebrity at Antium ; one sacred to Fortune, the other 
to JSsculapius. (Horat., Od., 1 , 35, 1 . — Martial, 
Ep., 5, 1.— Val. Max., 1, 8.) The famous Apollo 
Belvidere, the fighting gladiator, as it is termed, and 
many other statues discovered at Antium, attest also 
its former magnificence. The site of the ancient city 
is sufficiently marked by the name of Porto d'Anzo 
attached to its ruins. But the city must have reached 
as far as the modern town of Nettuno, which derives 
its name probably from some ancient temple dedicated 
to Neptune. (Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol. 2, p. 86, 
seqq.) 

Antonia lex, I. was enacted by Marc Antony, when 
consul, A.U.C. 708. It abrogated the lex Atia, and 
renewed the lex Cornelia, by taking away from the 
people the privilege of choosing priests, and restoring 
it to the college of priests, to which it originally be¬ 
longed. (Cic., Phil., 1, 9.)—II. Another by the same, 
A.U.C. 703. It ordained that a new decuria of judg¬ 
es should be added to the two former, and that they 
should be chosen from the centurions.—III. Another 
by the same. It allowed an appeal to the people, to 
those who were condemned de majestate, or of per¬ 
fidious measures against the state. Cicero calls this 
the destruction of all laws.—IV. Another by the same, 
during his triumvirate. It made it a capital offence to 
propose, ever after, the election of a dictator, and for 
any person to accept of the office. (Appian, de Bell. 
Civ., 3.) 

Antonia, I. the name of two celebrated Roman 
families, the one patrician, the other plebeian. They 
both pretended to be descendants of Hercules.—II. A 
daughter of Marc Antony, by Octavia. She married 
Domitius HSnobarbus, and was mother of Nero and 
two daughters. (Tacit., Ann., 4, 44.)—III. A daugh¬ 
ter of Claudius and HClia Petina. She was of the 
family of the Tuberos’, and was repudiated for her 
levity. Nero wished after this to marry her, but, on 
her refusal, caused her to be put to death. (Suet., Vit. 


Ner., 35.)—IV. A daughter of Marc Antony, and the 
wife of Drusus, who was the son of Livia and brother 
of Tiberius. She became mother of three children, 
Germanicus, Caligula’s father; Claudius the emperor; 
and Livia Drusilla. Her husband died very early, and 
she never would marry again, but spent her time in the 
education of her children. , Caligula conferred on her 
the same honours that Tiberius had bestowed upon 
Livia, but is thought to have cut her off subsequently 
by poison. (Suet., Cal., 15 et 23.)—V. (Turris) a 
fortress of Jerusalem, founded by Hyrcanus, and en¬ 
larged and strengthened by Herod, who called it An¬ 
tonia, in honour of Marc Antony. It stood alone on a 
high and precipitous rock, at the northwest angle of 
the temple. The whole face of the rock was fronted 
with smooth stone for ornament, and to make the as¬ 
cent so slippery as to be impracticable. Round the 
top of the rock there was first a low wall, rather more 
than five feet high. The fortress itself was 70 feet in 
height; the rock on which it stood, 90 feet. It had 
every luxury and convenience of a sumptuous palace, 
or even of a city; spacious halls, courts, and baths. 
It appeared like a vast square tower, with four other 
towers at the corner: three of them between 80 and 
90 feet high: that at the corner next to the temple, 
above 120. This famous structure was taken by Ti¬ 
tus, and its fall was the prelude to the capture of the 
city and temple. (Joseph., Bell. Jud., 5, 15.— Mil- 
man's History of the Jews, vol. 3, p. 21.) 

Antoninus, I. Pius (or Titus Aurelius Fulvius 
Boionius Antoninus), was born at Lanuvium in Italy, 
A.D. 86, of a highly respectable family. He was first 
made proconsul of Asia, then governor of Italy, and in 
A.D. 120, consul; in all which employments he dis- 
played the same virtue and moderation that afterward 
distinguished him on the imperial throne. When Ha¬ 
drian, after the death of Verus, determined upon the 
adoption of Antoninus, he found some difficulty in per¬ 
suading him to accept of so great a charge as the ad¬ 
ministration of the Roman empire. This reluctance 
being overcome, his adoption was declared in a coun¬ 
cil of senators ; and in a few months afterward he suc¬ 
ceeded by the death of his benefactor, who had caused 
him, in his turn, to adopt the son of Verus, then seven 
years of age, and Marcus Annius, afterward Aurelius, 
a kinsman to Hadrian, at that time of the age of sev¬ 
enteen. The tranquillity enjoyed by the Roman em¬ 
pire under the sway of Antoninus affords few topics 
for history ; and, in respect to the emperor himself, his 
whole reign was one display of moderation, talents, 
and virtues. The few disturbances which arose in dif¬ 
ferent parts of the empire were easily subdued by his 
lieutenants ; and in Britain, the boundaries of the Ro¬ 
man province were extended by building a new wall to 
the north of that of Hadrian, from the mouth of the 
Esk to that of the Tweed. On the whole, the reign 
of Antoninus was uncommonly pacific; and he was 
left at leisure fully to protect the Roman people and 
advance their welfare. Under his reign the race of 
informers was altogether abolished, and, in conse¬ 
quence, condemnation and confiscation were propor- 
tionably rare. Though distinguished for economy in 
the distribution of the public revenues, he was con¬ 
scious, at the same time, of the necessity of adequate¬ 
ly promoting public works of magnificence and utility ; 
and it is thought that Nismes, whence his family ori¬ 
ginally came, was indebted to him for the amphithea¬ 
tre and aqueduct, the remains of which so amply tes¬ 
tify their original grandeur. His new decrees were 
all distinguished for their morality and equity ; and if 
his rescript in favour of the Christians, addressed to 
the people of Asia Minor, be authentic (and there is 
much argument in its favour), no better proof of his 
philosophy and justice, on the great point of religious 
toleration, can well be afforded. The high reputation 
acquired by Antoninus for virtue and wisdom gave 




ANTONINUS. 


ANTONINUS. 


him great influence, even beyond the bounds of the 
Roman empire ; and neighbouring monarchs sponta¬ 
neously made him the arbiter of their differences. 
His private life was frugal and modest, and in his 
mode of living and conversing he adopted that air of 
equality and of popular manners which, in men of 
high station, is at once so rare and attractive. Too 
much indulgence to an unworthy wife (Faustina) is 
the only weakness attributed to him, unless we include 
a small share of ridicule thrown upon his minute ex¬ 
actness by those who are ignorant of its value in com¬ 
plicated business. He died A.D. 161, aged seventy- 
three, having previously married Marcus Aurelius to 
his daughter Faustina, and associated him with him¬ 
self in the cares of government. His ashes were de¬ 
posited in the tomb of Hadrian, and his death was la¬ 
mented throughout the empire as a public calamity. 
The sculptured pillar erected by Marcus Aurelius and 
the senate to his memory, under the name of the An- 
tonine column, is still one of the principal ornaments 
of Rome. ( Gorton's Biogr. Diet., vol. 4, p. 87, seqq.) 
—II. Marcus Annius Aurelius, was born at Rome 
A.D. 121. Upon the death of Ceionius Commodus, 
the Emperor Hadrian turned his attention towards 
Marcus Aurelius ; but he being then too young for an 
early assumption of the cares of empire, Hadrian 
adopted Antoninus Pius, on condition that he in his 
turn should adopt Marcus Aurelius. His father dying 
early, the care of his education devolved on his pater¬ 
nal grandfather, Annius Yerus, who caused him to re¬ 
ceive a general education ; but philosophy so early be¬ 
came the object of his ambition, that he assumed the 
philosophic mantle when only twelve years old. The 
species of philosophy to which he attached himself 
was the stoic, as being most connected with morals 
and the conduct of life ; and such w r as the natural 
sweetness of his temper, that he exhibited none of the 
pride which sometimes attended the artificial eleva¬ 
tion of the stoic character. This was the more re¬ 
markable, as all the honour and power that Antoninus 
could bestow upon him became his own at an early 
period, since he was practically associated with him 
in the administration of the empire for many years. 
On his formal accession to the sovereignty, his first 
act was of a kind which at once proved his great dis¬ 
interestedness, for he immediately took Lucius Verus 
as his colleague, who had indeed been associated with 
him by adoption, but who, owing to his defects and 
vices, had been excluded by Antoninus from the suc¬ 
cession, which, at his instigation, the senate had con¬ 
fined to Marcus Aurelius alone. Notwithstanding 
their dissimilarity of character, the two emperors reign¬ 
ed conjointly without any disagreement. Yerus took 
the nominal guidance of the war against the Parthians, 
which was successfully carried on by the lieutenants 
under him, and, during the campaign, married Lucilla, 
the daughter of his colleague. The reign of Marcus 
Aurelius was more eventful than that of Antoninus. 
Before the termination of the Parthian war, the Mar- 
comanni and other German tribes began those disturb¬ 
ances which more or less annoyed him for the rest of 
his life. Against these foes, after the termination of 
hostilities with Parthia, the two emperors marched; 
but what was effected during three years’ war and ne¬ 
gotiation, until the death of Verus, is little known. 
The sudden decease of that unsuitable colleague, by an 
apoplexy, restored to Marcus Aurelius the sole domin¬ 
ion ; and for the next five years he carried on the Pan- 
nonian war in person, without ever returning to Rome. 
During these fatiguing campaigns he endured all the 
hardships incident to a rigorous climate and a military 
life, with a patience and serenity which did the high¬ 
est honour to his philosophy. Few of the particular 
actions of this tedious warfare have been fully descri¬ 
bed ; although, owing to conflicting religious zeal, one 
of them has been exceedingly celebrated This was 
150 


the deliverance of the emperor and his army from im¬ 
minent danger, by a victory over the Quadi, in conse¬ 
quence of an extraordinary storm of rain, hail, and 
lightning, which disconcerted the barbarians, and was, 
by the conquerors, regarded as miraculous. The em¬ 
peror and the Romans attributed the timely event to 
Jupiter Tonans ; but the Christians affirmed that God 
granted this favour on the supplications of the Chris¬ 
tian soldiers in the Roman army, w r ho are said to have 
composed the twelfth or Meletine legion; and, as a 
mark of distinction, we are informed by Eusebius that 
they received from an emperor who persecuted Chris¬ 
tianity the title of the “ Thundering Legion.” Yet 
this account, not of a fact, but of the cause of one, and 
that of such a nature as no human testimony can ever 
determine, was made the subject of a controversy, in 
the early part of the last century, between Moyle and 
the eccentric Whiston, the latter of whom elaborately 
supported the genuineness of the miracle. The date 
of this event is fixed by Tillemont in A.D. 174. The 
general issue of the war was, that the barbarians were 
repressed, but admitted to settle in the territories of 
the empire as colonists ; and a complete subjugation 
of the Marcomanni might have followed, had not the 
emperor been called off’by the conspiracy of Avidius 
Cassius, who assumed the purple in Syria. This 
usurper was quickly destroyed by a conspiracy among 
his own officers ; and the clemency shown by the em¬ 
peror to his family was most exemplary. After the 
suppression of this revolt, he made a progress through 
the East, in which journey he lost his wife Faustina, 
daughter of Antoninus Pius, a woman as dissolute as 
she was beautiful, but whose irregularities he never 
seems to have noticed ; a blindness or insensibility that 
has made him the theme of frequent ridicule. While 
on this tour he visited Athens, added greatly to its 
privileges, and, like Hadrian, was initiated in the 
Eleusinian Mysteries. His return to Rome did not 
take place until after an absence of eight years, and 
his reception was in the highest degree popular and 
splendid. After remaining in the capital for nearly 
two years, and effecting several popular reforms, he 
was once more called away by the necessity of check¬ 
ing the Marcomanni, and was again successful, but 
fell ill, at the expiration of two years, at Vindobona, 
now Vienna. His illness arose from a pestilential dis¬ 
ease which prevailed in the army ; and it cut him off 
in the 59th year of his age, and 19th of his reign. 
His death occasioned universal mourning throughout 
the empire. "W ithout waiting for the usual decree on 
the occasion, the Roman senate and people voted him 
a god by acclamation; and his image was long after¬ 
ward regarded with peculiar veneration. Marcus Au¬ 
relius, however, was no friend to the Christians, who 
were persecuted during the greater part of his reign; 
an anomaly in a character so universally merciful and 
clement, that may be attributed to an excess of pa¬ 
gan devotion on his part, and still more to the influ¬ 
ence of the sophists by whom he was surrounded. In 
all other points of policy and conduct he was one of 
the most excellent princes on record, both in respect 
to. the salutary regulations he adopted and the temper 
with which he carried them into practice. Compared 
with Trajan or Antoninus Pius, he possibly fell short 
of the manly sense of the one, and the simple and un¬ 
ostentatious virtue of the other; philosophy or scholar¬ 
ship on a throne always more or less assuming the ap¬ 
pearance of pedantry. The emperor was also himself 
a writer, and his “ Meditations,” composed in the 
Greek language, have descended to posterity. They 
are a collection ot maxims and thoughts in the spirit 
of the stoic philosophy, which, without much connex¬ 
ion or skill in composition, breathe the purest senti¬ 
ments of piety and benevolence. Marcus Aurelius 
left one son, the brutal Commodus, and three daugh¬ 
ters, Among the weaknesses of this good emperor, 





ANT 


ANTONIUS. 


his too great consideration for his son is deemed one 
of the most striking ; for although he was unremit¬ 
ting in his endeavours to reclaim him, they were ac¬ 
companied by much erroneous indulgence, and espe¬ 
cially by an early and ill-judged elevation to titles and 
honours, which uniformly operate injuriously upon a 
base and dissolute character. The best edition of the 
Meditations of Antoninus is that of Gataker, Cantab., 
1652, 4to. ( Gorton's Biogr. Diet., vol. 1, p. 88.) — 
III. Bassianus Caracalla. Vid. Caracalla.—IV. Two 
works have come down to us, styled Itineraria Anto- 
nini, which may be compared to our modern books of 
routes. They give merely the distances between 
places, unaccompanied by any geographical remarks. 
One gives the routes by land, the other those by sea. 
They have been supposed by some to be the produc¬ 
tions of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, while others 
assign them to a geographical writer named Antoni¬ 
nus, whose age is unknown. Both these opinions are 
evidently incorrect. It is more than probable, that the 
works in question were originally compiled in the cab¬ 
inet of some one of the Roman emperors, perhaps that 
of Augustus, and were enlarged by various additions 
made during successive reigns, according as new 
routes or stations were established. Some critics, 
however, dissatisfied with this mode of solving the 
question, have sought for an ancient writer, occupied 
with pursuits of an analogous nature, to whom the au¬ 
thorship of these works might be assigned. They 
find two ; and their suffrages, consequently, are divi¬ 
ded between them. The first of these is Julius Hono- 
rius, a contemporary of Julius Csesar’s, of whose pro¬ 
ductions we have a few leaves remaining, entitled, 
“ Excerpta , qua ad Cosmographiam pertinent .” The 
other writer is a certain dEthicus, surnamed Ister, a 
Christian of the fourth century, to whom is attributed 
a work called “ Cosmographia ,” which still exists. 
Mannert declares himself unconditionally in favour of 
dEtnicus. ( Introd. ad Tab. Peut., p. 8, seqq.) Wes- 
seling is undecided. The best edition of the Itinera¬ 
ries is that of Wesseling, Amst., 1735, 4to. ( Scholl , 
Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 3, p. 258, seqq.) — V. Liberalis, 
a mythological writer, supposed to have lived in the 
age of the Antonines, and to have been a freedman of 
one of them. He has left us a work entitled Mera- 
p.opcj)(jO£coi> ’Zvvayoyr}, “ A Collection of Metamor¬ 
phoses,” in forty-one chapters ; a production of con¬ 
siderable interest, from the fragments of ancient poets 
contained in it. An idea of the nature of the work 
may perhaps be formed from the following titles of 
some of the chapters: Ctesylla, the Mcleagrides, 
Cragaleus, Lamia , the Emathides, and many others 
drawn from the Heterceumena of Nicander; Hieraz, 
JEgyptus, Anthus, Aedon, &c., from the Ornithogo- 
nia of Boeus ; Clinis from Simmias ; Battus from the 
Eoece of Hesiod ; Metiocha and Menippa from Corin- 
na, &c. There exists but a single MS. of Antoninus 
Liberalis, which, after various migrations, has returned 
to the library of Heidelberg. It has been decried by 
Bast, in his Critical Epistle. The best edition of this 
writer is that of Verheyk, Lugd. Bat., 1774, 8vo. It 
does not, however, supply all the wants of the scholar; 
and some future editor, by ascending to the sources 
whence Antonius drew his materials, and taking for 
his model the labour bestowed by Heyne and Clavier 
on Apollodorus, may have it in his power to supply us 
with an editio optima. ( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 5, 
p. 44.) 

Antoninopolis, a city of Mesopotamia, placed by 
D’Anville on the northern confines of the country, but 
more correctly, by Mannert, in the vicinity, and to the 
northeast, of Charrae and Edessa. ( Mannert , Geogr., 
vol. 5, p. 304.) It is supposed to have been founded 
by Severus or Caracalla, and named after the emperor 
Antoninus. It was subsequently called Constantia, 
from Constantine, who enlarged and strengthened it. 


Mannert supposes it to be the same with the ruined 
city of Uran Schar, mentioned by Niebuhr (vol. 2, p. 
390). 

Antonius, I. M. Antonius Gnipho, a native of Gaul, 
instructed in Greek literature at Alexandrea, where he 
was educated, and in Latin literature at Rome. He 
first gave instruction in grammar at this latter city, 
in the paternal mansion of Julius Csesar, who was 
then very young. Afterward he opened a school at 
his own residence, where he also professed rhetoric. 
Cicero attended his lectures when praetor. Gnipho 
left a work on the Latin tongue, in two volumes. Ac¬ 
cording to Suetonius ( de Illustr. Gramm., 7), he never 
stipulated with his pupils for any fixed compensation, 
and hence obtained the more from their liberality. 
The same writer informs us that he did not live be¬ 
yond his 50th year.—II. Marcus Antonius, a Roman 
orator, and the most truly illustrious of the Antonian 
family, flourished about the middle of the seventh cen¬ 
tury of Rome. After rising successively through the 
various offices of the commonwealth, he was made 
consul in the year of the city 655, and then governor 
of Cilicia, in quality of proconsul, where he performed 
so many valorous exploits that a public triumph was 
decreed to him. In order to improve his talent for 
eloquence, he became a scholar to the most able men 
in Rhodes and Athens. He was one of the greatest 
orators among the Romans ; and, according to Cicero, 
who in the early part of his life Was a contemporary, 
it was owing to him that Rome became a rival in elo¬ 
quence to Greece. The same great authority has 
given us the character of his oratory, from which it 
appears that earnestness, acuteness, copiousness, and 
variety formed his distinguishing qualities ; and that 
he excelled as much in action as in language. By 
his worth and abilities he had rendered himself dear to 
the most illustrious characters of Rome, when he fell 
a sacrifice in the midst of the bloody confusion excited 
by Marius and Cinna. Taking refuge at the house of 
a friend from their relentless proscription, he was ac¬ 
cidentally discovered and betrayed to Marius, who im¬ 
mediately sent an officer, with a band of soldiers, to 
bring him the orator’s head. It was brought accord¬ 
ingly ; and that sanguinary leader, after making it the' 
subject of his brutal ridicule, ordered it to be stuck 
upon a pole before the rostra, and, on the whole, treat¬ 
ed it as Marc Antony, the worthless grandson of An¬ 
tonius, treated the head of Cicero. This event oc¬ 
curred B.C. 87. He left two sons, Marcus, surnamed 
Creticus, and Caius, both of whom discredited their 
parentage. ( Cic., de Orat., 1, 24.— Id. ibid., 2, 1.—• 
Gorton's Biogr. Diet., vol. 1 , p. 90. — Ernesti , Clav. 
Cic. Index Hist., s. v .)—III. Marcus, surnamed Cret¬ 
icus, elder son of the orator. He was guilty, while 
prsetor, of great extortion in Sicily and other quarters, 
having received the same commission which Pompey 
afterward obtained, for importing corn and extermina¬ 
ting the pirates. He afterward invaded Crete, without 
any declaration of war, but was deservedly and shame¬ 
fully defeated, whence he obtained, in derision, the 
surname of Creticus.—IV. Caius, brother of the pre¬ 
ceding, and son of the orator. He bore arms under 
Sylla, in the war against Mithradates, and raised such 
disturbances in Greece, that for this and other mal¬ 
practices he was afterward expelled from the senate 
by the censors. Obtaining, however, the consulship 
with Cicero, at a subsequent period, through the aid 
of Crassus and Ciesar, he was appointed to head the 
forces sent against Catiline. A pretended attack of 
the gout, however, caused him to confide the army of 
the republic, on the day of battle, to his lieutenant 
Petreius. He was afraid, it seems, of meeting Cati¬ 
line, with whom he had at first been concerned in the 
conspiracy, lest the latter might taunt him with un¬ 
pleasing reminiscences. He received, as proconsul, 
the province of Macedonia, by yielding which unto 

151 




ANTONIUS. 


ANTONIUS. 


him, Cicero had induced him to prove faithful to the 
state ; but he governed it with such extortion and vio¬ 
lence, that he was tried, convicted, and sent into ban¬ 
ishment. — V. Marcus, son of Antonius Creticus, 
grandson of the orator, and well known by the histori¬ 
cal title of the Triumvir. Losing his father when 
young, he led a very dissipated and extravagant life, 
and wasted his whole patrimony before he had assu¬ 
med the manly gown. He afterward went abroad to 
learn the art of war under Gabinius, who gave him the 
command of his cavalry in Syria, where he signalized 
his courage and ability in the restoration of Ptolemy, 
king of Egypt. He also distinguished himself on oth¬ 
er occasions, and obtained high reputation as a com¬ 
mander. From Egypt he proceeded to Gaul, where 
he remained some time with Caesar, and the latter hav¬ 
ing furnished him with money and credit, he returned 
upon this to Rome, and succeeded in obtaining first 
the quaestorship, and afterward the office of tribune. 
In this latter office he was very active for Caesar, but 
finding the senate exasperated against this commander, 
he pretended to be alarmed for his own safety, and 
fled in disguise to Caesar’s camp. Caesar, upon this, 
marched immediately into Italy, the flight of the trib¬ 
unes giving him a plausible pretext for commencing 
operations. Caesar, having made himself master of 
Rome, gave Antony the government of Italy. During 
the civil contest, the latter proved himself on several 
occasions a most valuable auxiliary, and, after the bat¬ 
tle of Pharsalia, was appointed by Csesar his master of 
the horse. After the death of Caesar Antony deliv¬ 
ered a very powerful address over his corpse in the 
forum, and inflamed to such a degree the soldiers and 
populace, that Brutus and Cassius were compelled to 
depart from the city. Antony now soon became pow¬ 
erful, and began to tread in Caesar’s footsteps, and 
govern with absolute sway. The arrival of Octavius 
at Rome thwarted, however, his ambitious views. 
The latter soon raised a formidable party in the sen¬ 
ate, and was strengthened by the accession of Cicero 
to his cause. Violent quarrels then ensued between 
Octavius and Antony. Endeavours were made to rec¬ 
oncile them, but in vain. Antony, in order to have 
a pretence of sending for the legions from Macedonia, 
prevailed on the people to grant him the government 
of Cisalpine Gaul, which the senate had before con¬ 
ferred on Decimus Brutus, one of the conspirators 
against Caesar. Matters soon came to an open rup¬ 
ture. Octavius offered his aid to the senate, who ac¬ 
cepted it, and passed a decree, approving of his con¬ 
duct and that of Brutus, who, at the head of three le¬ 
gions, was preparing to oppose Antony, then on his 
march to seize Cisalpine Gaul. Brutus, not being 
strong enough to keep the field against Antony, shut 
himself up in Mutina, where his opponent besieged 
him. The senate declared Antony an enemy to his 
country. The consuls Hirtius and Pansa took the 
field against him along with Octavius, and advanced 
•to Mutina in order to raise the siege. In the first en¬ 
gagement, Antony had the advantage, and Pansa was 
mortally wounded, but he was defeated the same day 
by Hirtius as he was returning to his camp. In a 
subsequent engagement, Antony was again vanquish¬ 
ed, his lines were forced, and Octavius had an oppor¬ 
tunity of distinguishing himself, Hirtius being slain in 
the action, and the whole command devolving upon the 
former. Antony, after this check, abandoned the siege 
of Mutina, and crossed the Alps, in hopes of receiving 
succours from his friends. This was all that Octavius 
wanted ; his intent was to humble Antony, not to de¬ 
stroy him, foreseeing plainly that the republican party 
would be uppermost, and his own ruin must soon en¬ 
sue. A reconciliation was soon effected between him 
and Antony, who had already gained an accession of 
strength by the junction of Lepidus. These three 
leaders had an interview near Bononia, in a small 
152 


island of the river Rhenus, where they came to an 
agreement to divide all the provinces of the empire, 
and the supreme authority, among themselves for five 
years, under the name of triumvirs, and as reformers 
of the republic with consular power. Thus was form¬ 
ed the second triumvirate. The most horrid part of 
the transaction was the cold-blooded proscription of 
many of their friends and relatives, and Cicero’s head 
was given in exchange by Octavius for Antony’s un¬ 
cle and for the uncle of Lepidus. Octavius and Anto¬ 
ny then passed into Macedonia, and defeated Brutus 
and Cassius at Philippi. After this, the latter passed 
over to the eastern provinces, where he lived for a 
time in great dissipation and luxury with the famous 
Cleopatra, at Alexandrea. Upon the death of his 
wife Fulvia, he became reconciled to Octavius, against 
whom Fulvia had raised an army in Italy, for the pur¬ 
pose, it is supposed, of drawing her husband away 
from Cleopatra, and inducing him to come to the lat¬ 
ter country. Octavius gave Antony his sister Octa- 
via in marriage, and a new division was made of the 
empire. Octavius had Dalmatia, Italy, the two Gauls, 
Spain, and Sardinia ; Antony all the provinces east of 
Codropolis in Ulyricum, as far as the Euphrates ; 
while Lepidus received Africa. On returning to the 
east, Antony became once more enslaved by the 
charms of Cleopatra. An unsuccessful expedition 
against the Parthians ensued, and at last the repudia¬ 
tion of Octavia involved him in a new war with Octa¬ 
vius. The battle of Actium put an end to this con¬ 
test and to all the hopes of Antony. It was fought at 
sea, contrary to the advice of Antony’s best officers, 
and chiefly through the persuasion of Cleopatra, who 
was proud of her naval force. She abandoned him in 
the midst of the fight with her fifty galleys, and took to 
flight. This drew Antony from the battle and ruined 
his cause. Besieged, after this, in Alexandrea, by the 
conqueror, abandoned by all his followers, and betray¬ 
ed, as he thought, even by Cleopatra herself, he fell by 
his own hand, in the 56th year of his age, B.C. 30. 
The peculiar events connected with the life of Marc 
Antony have given him a celebrity which one would 
never have expected from his character. Gifted with 
some brilliant qualities, he possessed neither sufficient 
genius nor sufficient strength of soul to entitle him to 
be ranked among great men. Neither can he be rank¬ 
ed among men of worth, since he was always without 
principle, immoderately attached to pleasure, and often 
cruel. And yet few men had more devoted friends 
and partisans, for many of his actions announced a 
generosity of disposition far preferable to the cautious 
prudence and cold policy of his rival Octavius. ( Plut ., 
Vit. Ant.) — VI. lulus, a son of Marc Antony and 
Fulvia. He stood high in the favour of Augustus, 
and received from him his sister’s daughter in mar¬ 
riage. After having filled, however, some of the most 
important offices in the state, he engaged in an intrigue 
with Julia, the daughter of the emperor, and was put 
to death by order of the latter. According to Velleius 
Paterculus (2, 100), he fell by his own hand. It 
would appear that he had formed a plot, along with the 
notorious female just mentioned, against the life of 
Augustus. (Compare Lips., ad Tacit., Ann., 1, 10.) 
Acron informs us, in his scholia to Horace ( Od ., 4, 2, 
33), that Antonius had distinguished himself by an epic 
poem, in twelve books, entitled Diomcdeis. — VII. 
Caius, a brother of Marc Antony. Having fallen into 
the hands of Brutus, his life was spared until that 
commander heard of Cicero’s end, when he was put to 
death on the principle of retaliation. (Consult Erncsti , 
Clav. Cic., s. v.) — Lucius, another brother of Marc 
Antony, who was consul A.U.C. 713. Having quar¬ 
relled with Octavius during his continuance in this of¬ 
fice, he was besieged in Perusia, and compelled to sur¬ 
render. The conqueror spared his life, and he passed 
the rest of his days in obscurity. (Veil. Paterc., 2, 




AON 


APA 


74.)—IN. Felix, a freedman of the Emperor Claudius, 
appointed governor of Judaea. ( Vid . Felix.) — X. 
Musa, a celebrated physician in the time of Augustus. 
(Vid■ Musa.) — XI. Primus, a Roman commander 
whose efforts were very influential in gaining the 
crown for Vespasian. He was also an able public 
speaker, and had a turn likewise for poetic composi¬ 
tion, having written numerous epigrams. He was a 
friend of the poet Martial. ( Tac ., Ann., 14, 40.— Id., 
Hist., 11, 86.) 

AntorIdes, a painter, who flourished according to 
Pliny (35, 10), about Olympiad 110. ( SiUig, Diet. 

Art., s. v.) 

Anubis, an Egyptian deity, the offspring of Osiris, 
and of Nephthys the sister and spouse of Typhon. He 
inherited all the wisdom and goodness of his father, 
but possessed the nature of the dog, and had also the 
head of that animal. He accompanied Isis in her 
search after the remains of Osiris. Jablonski ( Panth. 
Mgypt., p. 19) derives the name from the Coptic 
Noub, “ gold.” In this he is opposed by Champollion 
(Precis , p. 101, seqq.), who denies also the propriety 
of confounding Anubis with Hermes. Plutarch says 
(de Is. et Os., p. 368 et 380), that some of the 
Egyptian writers understood by Anubis the horizontal 
circle which divides the invisible from the visible part 
of the world. Other writers tell us that Anubis pre¬ 
sided at the two solstitial points, and that two dogs 
(or, rather, two jackals), living images of this god, 
were supposed to guard the tropics along which the 
sun rises towards the north or descends towards the 
south. If this be correct, we must suppose two dei¬ 
ties, an Anubis, properly so called, the guardian of the 
lower hemisphere and of the darker portion of the year, 
and an Hermanubis, the guardian of the luminous por¬ 
tion and of the upper hemisphere. On the whole sub¬ 
ject of Anubis, however, and particularly on his non¬ 
identity with Thoth and Sirius, consult the learned 
annotations of Guigniaut to Creuzer's Symbolik (vol. 
2, pt. 2, p. 851, seqq.). 

Anxur, the Volscian name of Terracina. (Vid. 
Terracina.) La Cerda and others contend for the 
Greek derivation of the name, which makes Ju¬ 
piter d^vpog, or “the beardless,” to have been wor¬ 
shipped here ; and they maintain that, in conformity 
with this, the name of the place should be written 
Axur, as it is found on some old coins. Heyne, how¬ 
ever, supposes the letter n to have been sometimes 
omitted, in consequence of its slight sound. (Heyne, 
ad Virg., IEn., 9, 799, in Var. Lect.) 

Anyta, a poetess of Tegea, who flourished about 
300 B.C. She exercised the calling of Xpijo/uonoioc, 
“maker of oracles,” that is to say, she versified the 
oracles of Aesculapius at Epidaurus. We have only 
a few remains of her productions, namely, twenty epi- 

f rams, remarkable for their great simplicity. (Scholl, 
list. Lit. Gr., vol. 3, p. 70.) 

Anytus, an Athenian demagogue, who, in conjunc¬ 
tion with Meiitus and Lycon, preferred the charges 
against Socrates which occasioned that philosopher’s 
condemnation and death. After the sentence had 
been inflicted on Socrates, the fickle populace repent¬ 
ed of what had been done ; Meiitus was condemned 
to death, and Anytus, to escape a similar fate, went 
into exile. (JElian, V. H., 2, 13.) 

Aon., a son of Neptune, who first collected together 
into cities, as is said, the scattered inhabitants of Eu¬ 
boea and Boeotia. Hence the name Aonians given to 
the earlier inhabitants of Boeotia. ( Vid. Aones.) 

Aones, the earlier inhabitants of Boeotia. They, 
jointly with the Hyantes, succeeded the Ectenes. On 
the arrival of Cadmus, the Hyantes took up arms to 
oppose him, but were routed, and left the country on 
the ensuing night. The Aones, however, submitted, 
and were incorporated with the Phoenicians. The 
Muses were called Aonyz, from Mount Helicon in Boe- 
U , 


otia. (Pausan., 9, 5. — Ovid, Met., 3, 7, 10, 13.—• 
Virg., G., 3, 11.) 

AonL®, an epithet applied to the Muses, from 
Mount Helicon in Boeotia, the earlier name of this 
country having been Aonia. 

Aornos, or Aornis, a lofty rock in India, taken 
by Alexander. It was situate on the Suastus, or Su- 
vat. The Macedonians gave it the name of Aornos 
(dopvog ) on account of its great height; the appella¬ 
tion implying that it was so high that no bird could 
fly over it (a priv. et opvig. — Curt., 8, 11.— Arrian, 
4, 28.— Pint., Vit. Alex.) —II. Another in Bactriana, 
east of Zariaspa Bactria. It is now Telckan, situate 
on a high mountain called Nork-Koh, or the mountain 
of silver. 

Aous, or Aeas, a river of Illyria, now Voioussa, 
which flowed close to Apollonia. It was said by the 
ancients to rise in that part of the chain of Pindus to 
which the name of Mount Lacmon jvas given. (He¬ 
rod., 9, 94. — S trab., 316.) According to Polybius 
and Livy, it was navigable from its mouth to Apollo¬ 
nia. (Polyb., 5, 109.— Liv., 24, 40.) 

Apama, I. wife of Seleucus Nicator, and mother of 
Antiochus Soter. (Strab., 578.) — II. Sister of An- 
tiochus Theos, married to Magas. After her hus¬ 
band’s death, she prevailed upon Antiochus to make 
war against Ptolemy Philadelphus. — III. Wife of 
Prusias, king of Bithynia, and mother of Nicomedes. 
(Strab., 563.) 

Apamea, I. a city of Phrygia, built by Antiochus 
Soter on the site of the ancient Cibotus, and called, 
after his mother, Apama. The name of the earlier 
place, Cibotus, is thought to have been derived from 
KiduTop, an ark or coffer, because it was the mart or 
common treasury of those who traded from Italy and 
Greece to Asia Minor. This name was afterward 
added, for a similar reason, to Apamea. It was situ¬ 
ate above the junction of the Orgas and Masander, and, 
according to Mannert, is now called Aphiom Kara- 
Hisar, or the black castle of opium, which drug is col¬ 
lected in its environs. (Mannert, vol. 6, pt. 3, p. 120, 
seqq.) The more correct opinion, however, would 
seem to be in favour of Dinglare or Deenare. (Po- 
cocke, Trav., vol. 3, p. 2, c. 15.— Arundell, Visit, &c., 
p. 107, seqq. — Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 51, 
seqq .)— II. Another in Bithynia, near the coast of the 
Sinus Cianus. It was originally called Myrlea, and 
flourished under this name, as an independent city, for 
several years, until it was taken and destroyed by Phil¬ 
ip, father of Perses, who ceded the territory to Prusias, 
sovereign of Bithynia, his ally. This prince rebuilt the 
town, and called it Apamea, after his queen. (Strab., 
563.) The ruins of Apamea are near the site now 
called Modania, about six hours north of Broussa. 
(Wheeler, vol. 1, p. 209.— Pococke, vol. 3, b. 2, c. 
25.)— III. Another in Syria, at the confluence of 
the Orontes and Marsyas, which form here a small 
lake. It was founded by Seleucus Nicator, and called 
after his wife. It is now Famieh. Seleucus is said 
to have kept in the adjacent pastures 500 war-ele¬ 
phants. (Mannert,\o\. 6,pt. 1, p.463.) — IV. Another 
in Mesopotamia, on the Tigris, in a district which lay 
between the canal and the river, whence the epithet 
Messene applied to this city, because it was in the 
midst of that small territory which is now called Digel. 
(Mannert, vol. 5, pt. 2, p. 271.)—V. Another on the 
confines of Media and Parthia, not far from Rag®. It 
was surnamed Raphane. (Mannert, vol. 5, pt. 2, p. 
179.) — VI. Another at the confluence of the Tigris 
and Euphrates, now Koma. (Mannert, vol. 5, pt. 2, 
p. 361.) 

Apaturia, a festival at Athens, which received its 
name, according to the common, but erroneous account, 
from aTTuTy, deceit, because it was instituted (say the 
etymologists who favour this derivation) in memory 
of a stratagem by which Xanthus, king of Boeotia, was 

153 



APE 


APELLES. 


killed by Melanthus, king of Athens, upon the follow¬ 
ing occasion : when a war arose between the Boeotians 
and Athenians about a piece of ground which divided 
their territories, Xanthus made a proposal to the 
Athenian king to decide the point by single combat. 
Thymoetes, who was then on the throne of Athens, re¬ 
fused, and his successor Melanthus accepted the chal¬ 
lenge. When they began the engagement, Melanthus 
exclaimed that his antagonist had some person behind 
him to support him ; upon which Xanthus looked be¬ 
hind, and was killed by Melanthus. From this suc¬ 
cess, Jupiter was called uiraryvcop, deceiver; and 
Bacchus, who was supposed to be behind Xanthus, 
was called M ehavaiylg, clothed in the skin of a black 
goal .—Thus much for the commonly received deri¬ 
vation of the term 'AiraTovpia. It is evident, how¬ 
ever, that the word is compounded of either iraryp or 
rrurpa, which expression varies, in its signification, be¬ 
tween yevoq and jpparpia, and with the Ionians coinci¬ 
ded rather with the latter word. Whether it was 
formed immediately from naryp or ndrpa, is difficult 
to determine on etymological grounds, on account of 
the antiquity of the word : reasoning, however, from 
the analogy of Qparyp or typarop, (pparopla and (ppdr- 
pa, the most natural transition appears to be it arrjp 
(in composition nardip), tt aropioq (whence narovpiog, 
rrpaTovpia), it dr pa; and, accordingly, the ’Anarovpia 
means a festival of the paternal unions, of the iraroplat, 
of the narpai. ( Muller, Dorians , vol. 1, p. 95.) — 

The Apaturia was peculiar to the great Ionic race. 
The festival lasted three days ; the first day was called 
doprrsia, because suppers ( dopnoi ) were prepared for 
all those who belonged to the same Phratna. The 
second day was called dvd^vaig (dirb tov uvo epveiv), 
because sacrifices were offered to Jupiter and Minerva, 
and the head of the victim was generally turned up 
towards the heavens. The third was called Kou- 
petirig, from Kovpog , a youth , because on that day it 
was usual to enrol the names of young persons of both 
sexes on the registers of their respective phratrise ; the 
enrolment of bypoixoLyroi proceeded no farther than 
that of assignment to a tribe and borough, and, con¬ 
sequently, precluded them from holding certain offices 
both in the state and priesthood. (Consult Wach- 
smuth, Gr. Ant., vol. 1, 44.)—The Ionians in Asia 

had also their Apaturia, from which, however, Colo¬ 
phon and Ephesus were excluded; but exclusions of 
this nature rested no more on strictly political grounds, 
than did the right to partake in them, and the celebra¬ 
tion of festivals in general. A religious stigma was, 
for the most part, the ground of exclusion. ( Wach- 
smuth , vol. 1 , <$> 22.— Compare Herodotus, 1 , 147.— 
The authorities in favour of the erroneous etymology 
from uiraTT] may be found by consulting Fischer, Ind. 
ad Thrcophrast. Charact., s. v. 'Airarovpia. — Far¬ 
ther, ad Ha-od., Vit. Horn., c. 29. — Schol., Plat, ad 
Tim,., p. 201, ed Ruhnken. — Schol., Aristid., p. 118, 
seqq., ed. Jebb.—Ephori fragm., p. 120, ed. Marx.) 

Apella, a word occurring in one of the satires of 
Horace (1,5, 100), and about the meaning of which a 
great difference of opinion has existed. ' Scaliger is 
undoubtedly right in considering it a mere proper name 
of some well-known and superstitious Jew of the day. 
Wieland adopts the same idea in his German version 
of Horace’s satires : “ Das glaub’ Apella der Jud, ich 
nicht!” Bentley’s explanation appears rather forced. 
It is as follows: “ Judcei habitabant trans Tiberim, et 
multo maximum partem crant libertini, ut fatetur Philo 
in legatione ad Caium. Apella, autem libertinorum 
est nomen satis frequens in inscriptionibus vetustis. 
ltaque credat Judseus Apella, quasi tu dicas, credat su- 
perstitiosus aliquis Judaeus Transtiberinus.” {Ep. ad 
Mill., p. 520, ed. Lips.) As regards the opinion of 
those who make Apella a contemptuous allusion to 
the rite of circumcision, it is sufficient to observe, that 
such a mode of forming compounds (i. e., half Greek 
154 


and half Latin— a priv. et pellis) is at variance with 
every principle of analogy, and cannot for a moment 
be admitted. 

Apelles, a painter in the age of Alexander the 
Great, exalted by the united testimony of all antiquity 
to the very highest rank in his profession, so that the 
art of painting was sometimes termed “ ars Apellla ,” 
as by Martial (11, 9) and Statius ( Sylv ., 1 , 1 , 100). 
Ancient writers differ as to the country of Apelles. 
Pliny (35, 10) and Ovid (A. A., 3, 401) mention the 
island of Cos ; Suidas contends for Colophon ; while 
Strabo (642) and Lucian {Caium. non tern, cred., 2) 
notice him as an Ephesian. The origin of this last 
opinion, however, is sufficiently accounted for in the 
remark of Suidas, who makes him to have been an 
Ephesian by adoption merely. Another reason for his 
being called by some an Ephesian-, may be found in 
the circumstance of his having been instructed at 
Ephesus. {Tolken, ap. Bottig., Amalth., 3, 123.) 
And so, in modern times, Titian is sometimes styled a 
Venetian, though born at Cadore in Friuli; and Ra¬ 
phael a Roman, though his native place was Urbino. 
There can be no question, however, as to the period 
in which Apelles flourished, because it is universally 
admitted that Alexander the Great would not suffer 
his portrait to be taken by any other artist. Apelles 
must have been engaged in his profession, according 
to the most exact calculation, from about Olymp. 107 
to Olymp. 118. His instructers were Ephorus the 
Ephesian, Pamphilus of Amphipolis, and Melanthius ; 
and when he became the pupil of these artists, he had 
himself acquired some distinction by his paintings. 

( Plut., Vit. Arat., 13.) Athenseus assigns him a 
fourth instructer, name Arcesilaus (10, p. 420). The 
most important passage respecting Apelles occurs in 
Pliny (35, 10), and this passage contains an enumera¬ 
tion of nearly all his productions. One of the most 
celebrated of these was the Venus Anadyomene, or 
Venus rising from the waves, i. e., the sea-born. 
This famous painting was subsequently placed by Au¬ 
gustus in the temple of Julius Caesar. The lower part 
of the picture becoming injured by time, no artist was 
found who would venture to retouch it. When it 
was at last quite destroyed by age, the Emperor Nero 
substituted for it another Venus from the pencil of 
Dorotheus. The Venus Anadyomene was univer¬ 
sally regarded as the masterpiece of Apelles. {Pro- 
pert., El., 3, 7, 11.) A description of it is given in 
several Greek epigrams {Antip. Sidon., in Anthol. 
Planud., 4, 12, 178, &c.—Compare Ilgen, Opusc., 1, 
15, 34). Apelles commenced another Venus, repre¬ 
sented in a sleeping state, for the Coans, which he 
meant should surpass his previous effort; but he died 
before completing it, having painted merely the head 
and neck of the figure, which, according to Cicero, 
were executed with the utmost skill. {Cic., Ep. ad 
Earn., 1, 9.— Plin., 35, 11.) Another famous paint¬ 
ing of this artist’s represented Alexander holding a 
thunderbolt; and Pliny says that the fingers which 
grasped the bolt, as well as the bolt itself, appeared to 
project from the canvass. This picture was purchased 
for twenty talents of gold, about $211,000, and hung 
up in the temple of Diana at Ephesus. He painted 
also a horse ; and, finding that his rivals in the art, 
who contested the palm with him on this occasion, 
were about to prevail through unfair means, he caused 
his own piece and those of the rest to be shown to 
some horses, and these animals, fairer critics in this 
case than men had proved to be, neighed at his paint¬ 
ing alone. The name of Apelles, indeed, in Pliny, is 
the synonyme of unrivalled and unattainable excel¬ 
lence ; but the enumeration of his works points out 
the modification which we ought to apply to that su¬ 
periority. It neither comprises exclusive sublimity of 
invention, the most acute discrimination of character, 
the widest sphere of comprehension, the most judicious 





APELLES. 


APE 


and best-balanced composition, nor the deepest pathos 
of expression ; his great prerogative consisted more in 
the unison than in the extent of his powers ; he knew 
better what he could do, what ought to be done, at 
what point he could arrive, and what lay beyond his 
reach, than any other artist. Grace of conception and 
refinement of taste were his elements, and went hand 
in hand with grace of execution and taste in finish ; 
powerful and seldom possessed singly, irresistible when 
united : that he built both on the firm basis of the for¬ 
mer system, not on its subversion, his well-known 
contest of lines with Protogenes irrefragably proves. 
(Vid. Protogenes.) What those lines were, drawn 
with nearly miraculous subtlety in different colours, 
one upon the other, or, rather, within each other, it 
would be equally unavailing and useless to inquire ; 
but the corollaries we may deduce from the contest are 
obviously these, that the schools of Greece recog¬ 
nised all one elemental principle ; that acuteness and 
fidelity of eye, and obedience of hand, form precision; 
precision, proportion; proportion, beauty : that it is 
the “ little more or less,” imperceptible to vulgar eyes, 
which constitutes grace, and establishes the superiority 
of one artist over another ; that the knowledge of the 
degrees of things or taste presupposes a perfect knowl¬ 
edge of the things themselves ; that colour, grace, 
and taste are ornaments, not substitutes, of form, ex¬ 
pression, and character, and, when they usurp that 
title, degenerate into splendid faults. Such were the 
principles on which Apelles formed his Venus, or, 
rather, the personification of Female Grace, the won¬ 
der of art, the despair of artists ; \yhose outline baffled 
every attempt at emendation, while imitation shrunk 
from the purity, the force, the brilliancy, the evanescent 
gradations of her tints. ( Fuseli's Lectures , 1, p. 62, 
seqq.) Apelles, indeed, used to say of his contempo¬ 
raries, that they possessed, as artists, all the requisite 
qualities except one, namely, grace, and that this was 
his alone. On one occasion, when contemplating a pic¬ 
ture by Protogenes, a work of immense labour, and in 
which exactness of detail had been carried to excess, 
he remarked, “Protogenes equals or surpasses me in 
all things but one, the knowing when to remove his 
hand from a painting.” Apelles was also, as is sup¬ 
posed, the inventor of what artists call glazing. Such, 
at least, is the opinion of Sir Joshua Reynolds and 
others. ( Reynolds on Du Fresnoy, note 37, vol. 2.) 
The ingredients probably employed by him for this 
purpose are given by Jahn, in his Malerei der Alton, 

. 150.—The modesty of Apelles, says Pliny, equalled 
is talents. He acknowledged the superiority of Me- 
lanthius in the art of grouping, and that of Asclepio- 
dorus in adjusting on canvass the relative distances of 
objects. Apelles never allowed a day to pass, how¬ 
ever much he might be occupied by other matters, 
without drawing one line at least in the exercise of his 
art; and from this circumstance arose the proverb, 
“ nulla dies sine lined” or, as it is sometimes given, 
“ nullum hodie lineam duxi ,” in Greek, rrjgepov ovde- 
I uiav ypap.jj.rjv pyayov. He was accustomed also, when 
he had completed any one of his pieces, to expose it to 
the view of passengers, and to hide himself behind it 
in order to hear the remarks of the spectators. On 
one of these occasions, a shoemaker censured the 
painter for having given one of the slippers of a fig¬ 
ure a less number of ties, by one, than it ought to 
have had. The next day the shoemaker, emboldened 
by the success of his previous criticism, began to find 
fault with a leg, when Apelles indignantly put forth his 
head, and desired him to confine his decisions to the 
slipper, “we supra crepidam judicaret.” Hence arose 
another common saying, “ nc sutor ultra crepidam.” 
( Erasmus, Chil., p. 196.) Apelles is said to have 
possessed great suavity of manners, and to have been, 
in consequence, a favourite of Alexander the Great; 
and the monarch, on one occasion, paid a remarkable 


homage to the talents of the artist. Having desired 
the latter to paint a likeness of Campaspe, one of his 
concubines, and distinguished for her beauty, the artist 
became enamoured of her, and, on the monarch’s dis¬ 
covering this, received her as a present from his hands. 
This same Campaspe, according to Pliny, served as 
the prototype for the Venus Anadyomene.—II. An 
engraver on precious stones. ( Bracci , tab. 27.— Sil- 
lig, Diet. Art., s. v.) 

Apellicon, a peripatetic philosopher, born at Teos, 
in Asia Minor, and one. of those to whom we owe the 
preservation of many of the works of Aristotle. The 
Stagirite, on his deathbed, confided his works to The¬ 
ophrastus, his favourite pupil; and Theophrastus, by 
his will, left them to Neleus, who had them conveyed 
to Scepsis, in Troas, his native city. After the death 
of Neleus, his heirs, illiterate persons, fearing lest they 
might fall into the hands of the King of Pergamus, 
who was enriching, in everyway, his newly-established 
library, concealed the writings of Aristotle in a cave, 
where they remained for more than 130 years, and 
suffered greatly from worms and dampness. At the 
end of this period Apellicon purchased them for a 
high price. His wish was to arrange them in proper 
order, and to fill up the lacunas that were now of fre¬ 
quent occurrence in the manuscripts, in consequence 
of their neglected state. Being, however, but little 
versed in philosophy, and possessing still less judg¬ 
ment, he acquitted himself ill in this difficult task, and 
published the works of the Stagirite full of faults. 
Subsequently, the library of Apellicon fell, among the 
spoils of Athens, into the hands of Sylla, and was car¬ 
ried to Rome, where the grammarian Tyrannion had 
access to them. From him copies were obtained by 
Andronicus of Rhodes, which served for the basis of 
his arrangement of the works of Aristotle. — Ritter 
thinks that too much has been built upon this story. 
On its authority it has even been pretended that the 
works of Aristotle have reached us in a more broken 
and ill-arranged shape than any other productions of 
antiquity. He thinks the story arose out of some lau¬ 
datory commendations of the edition of Aristotle by 
Andronicus, and that it is probable, not to say certain, 
that there were other editions, of the respective merits 
of which it was possible to make a comparison. At 
any rate, according to him, the acroamatic works of 
Aristotle have not reached us solely from the library 
of Neleus, and, consequently, it was not necessary to 
have recourse merely to the restoration by Apellicon, 
either to complete or retain the chasms resulting from 
the deterioration of the manuscripts.—To return to 
Apellicon, it is said that his large fortune, indeed, sup¬ 
plied him abundantly with the means of gratifying his 
passion for books ; but that, when they could not be 
obtained in this way, he made no scruple of getting 
possession of them by what deserves in plainness the 
name of theft. Thus, he carried off from the archives 
of the Athenians the original decrees of the people, and 
was compelled to flee for the act. Apellicon is said 
to have written a work in defence of Aristotle. Prob¬ 
ably some needy author wrote it, and Apellicon pur¬ 
chased the paternity of the work. ( Ritter, Hist. Anc. 
Phil., vol. 3, p. 24, seqq.) 

ApennInus, a great chain of mountains, branching 
off from the Maritime Alps, in the neighbourhood of 
Genoa, running diagonally from the Ligurian Gulf to 
the Adriatic, in the vicinity of Ancona; from thence 
continuing nearly parallel with the latter gulf, as far as 
the promontory of Garganus, and again inclining to the 
Mare Inferum, till it finally terminates in the promon¬ 
tory of Leucopetra near Rhegium. ( Polyb ., 2, 16.—• 
Strabo, 211.— Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol. 1, p. 5.— 
Compare also the following poetic authorities : Lucan , 
2, 396.— Rutil., Itin., 2, 27.— Claudian., Paneg., 6.— 
Id., Cons. Hon. ,285.— Sil.ltal., 4, 742.— Virg., JEn., 
12, 703.) The Apennines may be equal in length to 



APH 


APH 


670 miles. They are divided by modern geographers 
into three parts ; the Northern Apennines extend from 
the neighbourhood of Urbino to the Adriatic; the 
Central Apennines terminate near the banks of the 
Sa.ngro; the Southern Apennines, situated at an 
equal distance from the two seas, form two branches 
near Micro; the least important separates the territory 
of Barri from that of Otranto; the other, composed of 
lofty mountains, traverses both Calabrias, and termi¬ 
nates near Aspromonte .—The etymology of the name 
given to these mountains must be traced to the Celtic, 
and appears to combine two terms of that language 
nearly synonymous, Alp or Ap, “ a high mountain,” and 
Penn , “a summit.” Some write the name Apceninus 
(i. e.,Alpes Poeninae), as if derived from the circum¬ 
stance of Hannibal’s having led his army over them, 
Poenus meaning “ Carthaginian.” This etymology, 
however, is altogether erroneous ; nor is it at all more 
tenable when applied to the Pennine Alps. 

Aper, I. Marcus, a Roman orator, who flourished 
during the latter half of the first century of our era. 
He was a native of Gaul, but distinguished himself at 
Rome by his eloquence and general ability. Aper is 
one of the interlocutors in the dialogue on the causes 
of the decline of oratory, which some ascribe to Taci¬ 
tus, others to Quintilian, and others again to Aper 
himself. He died A.D. 85. ( Schulze, Prolegg.. c. 

2, p. xxi., seqq.) —II. Flavius, supposed by some to 
have been the son of the preceding. He was consul 
A.D. 130, under Hadrian. ( Oberlin., ad Dial, de 
causs. corr. eloq., c. 2.)—III. Arrius, a prefect of the 
Praetorian guards under Cams, and afterward under his 
successor Numerianus. Aspiring to the purple, he 
took advantage of a violent thunder-storm that arose, 
assassinated Cams, who was lying sick at the time, set 
fire to the royal tent, and ascribed the death of the 
prince and the conflagration to lightning. The corpse 
was so much burnt that no traces of the murder were 
perceptible. Numerianus, son of Cams, and son-in- 
law of Aper, having succeeded to the empire, contin¬ 
ued the latter in the office of prefect; but the only re¬ 
turn that Aper made was to poison the young monarch, 
after he had reigned about eight or nine months. 
Suspicion immediately fell upon Aper, and he was 
slain by Dioclesian, whom the army had elected em¬ 
peror. ( Aurel. Viet ., c. 38.— Vopiscus, Car., c. 8.— 
Id., Numer., c. 12, seq. — Compare the remarks of 
Crevier, Hist. Emp. Rom., vol. 6, p. 140.) 

Apesas, a mountain of Argolis, near Nemea, on 
which, according to Pausanias (2, 16), Perseus first 
sacrificed to Jupiter Apesantius. It is a remarkable 
mountain, with a flat summit, which can be seen, as 
we are assured by modern travellers, from Argos and 
Corinth. ( Chandler, vol. 2, ch. 5 Q.—Dodwell, Class. 
Tour, vol. 2, p. 210.) 

Aphaca, a town of Syria, between Heliopolis and 
Byblus, where Venus was worshipped. The temple 
is said to have been a school of wickedness, and was 
razed to the ground by Constantine the Great. 

( Euseb., Vit. Const. Mag., 3, 55.) 

Aph^ea, a name of Diana, who had a temple in 
iEgina. ( Pausan., 2, 30.—Consult Heyne, Excurs. 
ad Virg., Cir., 220.— Muller, JEginetica, p. 163, seqq.) 

Aphar, a city of Arabia, situate on the coast of the 
Red Sea, not far north from the Promontorium Aro- 
matum. It was the capital of the Homeritse, and is 
supposed to correspond to Al-Fara, between Mecca 
and Medina. The ancient name is more commonly 
given as Suphar. {Plm., 6, 23. — Ptol. — Arrian, 
Peripl. Mar. Erythr ., p. 154. ed. Blancard.) 

Aphareus, I. a king of Messenia, who married 
Arene, daughter of G2balus, by whom he had three 
sons. {Pausan., 3, 1.)—II. A step-son of Isocrates, 
who produced thirty-five or thirty-seven tragedies, and 
was four times victor. He began to exhibit B.C. 341. 

(Theatre of the Greeks, 2 d ed., p. 158.) 


Aphas, a river of Greece, which falls into the bay 
of Ambracia. D’Anville calls it the Avas. It is now 
the Vuvo. {Plin., 4, 1.) 

Aphesas, a mountain of Argolis, near Nemea, said 
to have been the one on which Perseus first sacrificed 
to Jupiter Apesantius. The more correct form of the 
name is Apesas. ( Vid. Apesas.) 

Aphet^e, a city of Thessaly, at the entrance of the 
Sinus Pelasgicus, or Gulf of Volo, from which the 
ship Argo is said to have taken her departure for Col¬ 
chis. {Apoll. Rhod., 1, 591.) Herodotus informs us 
(7, 193 and 196) that the fleet of Xerxes was station¬ 
ed here previous to the engagement off Artemisium. 
The same writer makes the distance between Aphetsa 
and Artemisium about eighty stadia. Aphetse is sup¬ 
posed to correspond to the modern Fetio. {Cramer's 
Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 411.) 

Aphidna, a borough of Attica, belonging to the 
tribe Leontis, where Theseus is said to have secreted 
Helen. {Herodot., 9, 73. — Pint., Vit. Thes.) De¬ 
mosthenes reports that Aphidna was more than 120 
stadia from Athens. {De Cor., p. 238.) 

Aphrodisia, festivals in honour of Venus, celebrated 
in different parts of Greece, but chiefly in Cyprus. 

Aphrodisias, I. a city of Laconia, to the west of 
Nymbseum, the same as Boea. {Strabo, 251.— Pliny, 
4, 5. — Polybius, 5, 19.) — II. A city in the Thracian 
Chersonese, between Heraclea to the east and Car- 
dia to the west. {Procopius, JEdiftc., 4, 10.) — III. 
A city of Caria, lying south of the Mseander and 
west of Cibyra. In the time of Hierocles it was 
the capital of the country (p. 688). Stephanus in¬ 
forms us that it was founded by the Pelasgi Lele- 
ges, and was successively called, city of the Leleges, 
Megalopolis, Ninoe, and Aphrodisias. In Strabo’s 
time it appears to have belonged to Phrygia; Pliny, 
however, assigns it to Caria, and styles it a free 
city (5, 29.—Compare Tacit., Ann., 3, 62, and Bro- 
tier, ad loc.). The site of the ancient city at Geyra, 
about two hours from Antiochia on the Maeander, was 
discovered by Pococke. (Vol. 2, p. 2, c. 12. — Cra¬ 
mer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 210.) — IV. A city and 
promontory of Cilicia Trachea, east of Celenderis. 
According to Livy, it was a place of some conse¬ 
quence in the reign of Antiochus the Great. {Liv., 
33, 20. — Compare Diod. Sic., 19, 61.) The ruins 
found by Capt. Beaufort, at the northeast corner of a 
bay west of Cape Cavaliere, appear to mark the site 
of the ancient city. {Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 
329.)—V. Another name for the Isle of Erythea.— 
VI. An island sacred to Venus and Mercury, on the 
coast of Carmania. It is thought by some to have 
been identical with the Catsea of Arrian. {Plm., 6, 
25.)—VII. An island on the coast of Cyrenaica, in 
the vicinity of Apollonia. {Herodot., 4, 168.) 

Aphrodisium, I. a city on the eastern parts of Cy¬ 
prus, and in the narrowest part of the island, being 
only nine miles from Salamis. {Strabo, 682.) — II. 
One of the three minor harbours into which the Pirasus 
was subdivided. It seems to have been the middle one 
of the three. {Cramer's Anc. Gr., vol. 2, p. 350.) 

Aphrodite, the Grecian name of Venus, from 
a(f>p6g, “ foam," because Venus is said to have been 
born from the froth of the ocean. This is the account 
given by Hesiod {Theog., 196). Homer, however, 
as well as the Cretan system {Apollod., 1 , 3, 1 , and 
Heyne, ad loc.), made her the daughter of Dione. 
{Vid,. Venus, where some remarks will be offered on 
the origin of the Greek name.) 

Aphroditopolis, I. a city of Egypt, the capital of 
the 36th nome, now Alfieh. —II. Another in the same 

country, the capital of the 42d nome, now Itfu. _ 

III. Another in the same country, belonging to the 
nome Hermonthites, now Asf-un. {Strab., 566.— 
Steph. Byz., s. v.) 

Aphthonius, a rhetorician of Antioch, who lived 








API 


in the third or fourth century of our era. We have 
from him a work entitled Progymnasmata, consisting 
of Rhetorical Exercises, adapted to the precepts of Her- 
mogenes ; and also forty fables. Aphthonius, accord¬ 
ing to Suidas, labours under the defect of having neg¬ 
lected to treat of the first elements of rhetoric, and of 
having nowhere attempted to form the style of those 
whom he wished to instruct. We find in his treatise 
nothing more than oratorical rules, and the application 
of these rules to different subjects. The Progymnas¬ 
mata, having been long used in the schools, has gone 
through numerous editions, the best of which are 
that of Scobarius (Escobar), 1597, 8vo, with the fa¬ 
bles added; and that of D. Heinsius, Lugd. Bat., 
1626, 8vo. The treatise has been translated into 
Latin with most ability by Escobar, and the version 
has been also separately printed.^ Another Latin trans¬ 
lation was also made by Rodolph Agricola. The ver¬ 
sion of Escobar was first published at Barcelona, 1611, 
in 8vo, and that of Agricola was given from the Elzevir 
press, at Amsterdam, 1642-1665, in 12mo, with notes 
by Lorichius. ( Biog. Univ., vol. 2, p. 305, seqq.) 

Aphyte, or Aphytis, a city of Thrace, in the pen¬ 
insula of Pallene, on the Sinus Thermaicus. Here was 
a celebrated temple of Bacchus, to which Agesipolis, 
king of Sparta, who commanded the troops before 
Olynthus, desired to be removed shortly before his 
death, and near which he breathed his last. (Xen., 
Hist. Gr., 5, 3, 19.) According to Plutarch, in his 
life of Lysander, there was here an oracle of Jupiter 
Ammon; and it appears that Lysander, when besie¬ 
ging Aphytis, was warned by the god to desist from the 
attempt. Theophrastus (3, 20) speaks of the wine of 
Aphytis. ( Cramer's Anc. Gr., vol. 1, p. 246.) 

Apia, an ancient name of Peloponnesus, which it 
is said to have received from King Apis. The origin 
of the name Apia (’A irty yy), as applied to the Pelo¬ 
ponnesus, was a subject of controversy even among 
the ancient writers. (Compare Wassenberg, ad Par- 
aphr., p. 42.) According to Heyne (ad Horn., II., 1, 
270), it does not appear to have been a geographical, 
but a poetical, appellation ; and the meaning would 
seem to be merely, “ a far-distant land” ('Amy from 
utto), as used by the Greeks at Troy in speaking of 
their native land, far away over the waters. In this, 
however, he is successfully combated by Buttmann 
(Lexil., § 24, s. v.), who shows that this is contrary to 
the express testimony of the geographers and gramma¬ 
rians, and even of JEschylus himself. Poetical names, 
particularly all the oldest ones, are purely and really 
most ancient names, which poetry has preserved to us. 
If any opinion may be formed on this subject, it would 
be, that there were two forms of the same name in use 
among the Greeks : one the appellative dirty, derived 
from diro, and meaning merely 11 distant;" the other a 
geographical name, deduced from that of the mythic 
Apis. It is worthy of notice, that the appellative uirty, 
in Homer, has the initial vowel short, whereas, in the 
geographical name, it is always long. (Compare 
Soph., (Ed. Col., 1303 .—JEsch., Suppl., 275, &c.) 
The former, then, of these will be a Homeric word, the 
latter a term found first in the Tragic writers, and based 
on an old legend alluded to by HCschylus in his Sup¬ 
pliers (v. 275). Those grammarians, therefore, who 
explain ’Amy yaia (II., 1, 270 ; 3, 49) as the old name 
of the Peloponnesus, are in error, for the two passages 
of the Odyssey (7, 25.—16, 18), where the term alone 
occurs, and where nothing is said of the Peloponnesus, 
plainly show, that dir tog is, as above stated, an old ad¬ 
jective, from utto, like dvrtog from dvrt. There are 
many traces to prove, that in the words Apis and Apia 
lie the original name of a most ancient people, who 
inhabited the European coasts of the Mediterranean. 
Vid. remarks under the article Opici. (Buttmann, 
Lexil., 1. c. —p. 154, Fishlake's trans.) 

Apicata, wife of Sejanus, by whom she had three 


' API 

children. She was repudiated by him. Vid. Sejanus. 
(Tacit., Ann., 4, 3.) 

Apicius. There were three patricians of this name 
at Rome, in different eras, all noted for their gluttony, 
to which the second of the three added almost every 
other vice.—I. The first lived in the time of the dic¬ 
tator Sylla. According to Athenseus (4, p. 168, d.), he 
was the cause of Rutilius Rufus being driven into ex¬ 
ile. (Compare Casaubon, ad loc. — Ernesti, Clav. 
Cic. Ind. Hist., s. v. Rutilius.) —II. The second lived 
during the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. Athe¬ 
nseus (1, p. 7, a.) speaks of his having spent immense 
sums on the luxuries of the table, and also of various 
kinds of cake that were called after his name (’A7T4- 
Kta). He passed most of his time, according to the 
same writer, at Minturnse, on account of the excellent 
shellfish found there. He even went a voyage to 
Africa, having learned that the shellfish obtained along 
that coast were superior to all others ; but when, as he 
approached the land, numerous fishermen came off to 
the vessel with what they declared to be their finest 
fish, perceiving these to be inferior to the Italian, he 
ordered the pilot to put about immediately and return 
home, without having so much as landed on the shores 
of Africa. Seneca (Ep., 95— De Vit. Beat., c. 11), 
Juvenal (4, 23), Martial (Ep., 2, 69, and 10, 63), as 
well as other ancient writers, frequently allude to his 
epicurism, of which he formed a kind of school. Fall¬ 
ing, at length, into comparative poverty and merited 
contempt, he is reported to have put an end to his life 
by poison, through fear of ultimate starvation.—III. 
The third lived under Trajan, and was in possession 
of a secret for preserving oysters ; he sent some of 
them perfectly fresh to the Emperor Trajan as far as 
Parthia. (Athen., 1, p. 7, d.) —To which of these 
three we are to ascribe the work which has come 
down to us, on the culinary art (De Re Culinaria), is 
undetermined. Most assign it to the second of the 
name, M. Gavius Apicius, but without any satisfactory 
reason for so doing. It is more than probable that the 
work in question was written by none of the three. 
The compiler of this collection of receipts, wishing to 
give his labours an imposing name, would seem to 
have entitled his book as follows : “ Apicius, sive de 
Re Culinaria, a Ccelio," and not “ Coelius Apicius, 
sive de Re Culinaria .” This Cselius, of course, is 
some unknown person. The work is divided into ten 
books, each of which has a Greek title that indicates, 
in a symbolical manner, the subjects treated of in that 
particular division. These are as follows : 'FirtpeT^r/g, 
“ the careful one." hapKoirryg, “ the carver." Ky- 
rrovpuid, “ things appertaining to gardening." Tlav- 
deuryp, “ the all-recipient." 'Ooirptog, “ appertaining 
to pulse." ’Aepoireryg, “ of flying things." Iio?w- 
rekyg, “ the sumptuous." Terpuirovg, “ the quadru¬ 
ped." Qdlaooa, “ the sea." 'AXtevg, “ the fisher¬ 
man." Our modem gourmands would form no very 
high idea of the state of gastronomic science among 
the Romans from the perusal of this work. The style, 
moreover, is very incorrect, and replete with barba¬ 
risms. The best edition is that of Almeloveen, Amst., 
1709, 12mo. We have also, among others, the edi¬ 
tion of Bcrnhold, Ansbac., 1787 (1800), and that of 
Lister, 1705, Lond., 8vo. (Scholl, Hist. Lit. Rom., 
vol. 3, p. 242. — Bahr, Gesch. Rom. Lit., 522.— 
Funcc. de immin. L. L. senect., 10, 29, seqq.) 

Apidanus, one of the chief rivers of Thessaly, rising 
in Mount Othrys, and, after receiving the Enipeus 
near Pharsalus, falling into the Peneus a little to the 
west of Larissa. It is now the Salampria. (Plin., 
4, 8.— Strab., 297.) 

Apina, a city of Apulia, destroyed with Trica, in its 
neighbourhood, by Diomede on his arrival in this part 
of Italy, after the Trojan war. (Plin., 3,11.) Freret 
supposes that the towns here mentioned were, together 
with the tribes that occupied them (the Monades and 

157 




API 


APIS. 


Bardi), of Illyrian origin. (Mem. de VAcad. des Inscr., 
<fyc., vol. 18, p. 75.) 

Apion, I. a surname of Ptolemy, one of the descend¬ 
ants of Ptolemy Lagus. ( Vid. Ptolemseus XIV.)— 
II. A grammarian and historical writer, born at Oa¬ 
sis Magna in Egypt, during the first century of the 
Christian era. He was surnamed Plistonlces (Il/lficr- 
Tovifajg), from his frequent successes over his literary 
opponents, but called himself the Alexandrean, from his 
having passed a part of his life in the ancient capital 
of the Ptolemies. Apion subsequently travelled into 
Greece, and finally established himself at Rome, where 
he taught grammar, or philological science, during the 
reigns of Tiberius and Claudius. He attained to great 
celebrity. Although unquestionably a man of learning 
and research, he was in many respects an arrogant 
boaster, and in others a mere pretender; and it was 
in allusion, no doubt, to his vanity and noisy assump¬ 
tion of merit, that the Emperor Tiberius gave him in 
derision the name of Cymbalum mundi. He is re¬ 
nowned for much trifling on the subject of Homer, in 
order to trace whose family and country he had recourse 
even to magic, asserting that he had successfully in¬ 
voked the appearance of shades to satisfy his curiosity, 
whose answers he was not allowed to make public. 

( Plin ., 30, 2.—Compare Aulus Gellius, Noct. Att, 
5, 14.) These pretensions, silly as they were, made 
him very popular in Greece, although something might 
be owing to his commentaries on the same great poet, 
which are mentioned by Eustathius and Hesychius. 
Pliny makes particular mention of the ostentatious 
character of this critic, who used to boast that he be¬ 
stowed immortality on those to whom he dedicated his 
works ; whereas it is only by the mention of others that 
these works are now known to have actually existed. 
One of the chief of them was, “ On the Antiquity of 
the Jews,” to which people he opposed himself with 
the hereditary resentment of an Egyptian. The reply 
of Josephus, “ Against Apion,” has survived the at¬ 
tack, the author of which attack showed his enmity to 
the Jewish people by other means besides writing 
against them ; for he was employed by his fellow-citi¬ 
zens of Alexandrea to head a deputation to the Emperor 
Caligula, complaining of the Jews who inhabited that 
city. Apion also wrote an account of the antiquities 
of Egypt, in which work he is supposed to have treated 
largely on the Pyramids, Pliny quoting him as the prin¬ 
cipal authority on the subject. After having ridiculed 
the rite of circumcision, he was compelled by a malady 
to submit to it, and, by a divine punishment, says Jo¬ 
sephus, died soon after from the consequences of the 
operation. It is in allusion to Apion that Bayle ob¬ 
serves, “ how easily the generality of people may be 
deceived by a man of some learning, with a great 
share of vanity and impudence.” Extracts from Apion’s 
commentary on Homer are given in the Etymologicum 
Gudianum, published by Sturz. ( Joseph. contr. Ay. 

■ — Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 5, p. 16, seqq.) 

Apis, I. one of the earliest kings of the Peloponne¬ 
sus, son of Phoroneus and Laodice, and grandson of 
Inachus. He is said to have reigned in Argos, after the 
death of his father, about 1800 B.C. Others make 
him to have been the son of Apollo, and king of Sicyon. 
He chased the Telchines from the Peloponnesus, ac¬ 
cording to a third statement, governed tyrannically, 
and lost his life in consequence. From him some have 
derived the old name, supposed to have been given at 
one time to the Peloponnesus, namely “ Apian land.” 

( Vid . Apia.) Apis, in fact, is one of those mythologi¬ 
cal personages, to whose earlier legend each succeed- 
i n g a S e a< Ids its quota of the marvellous, until the whole 
becomes one mass of hopeless absurdity. Hence we 
find Varro and St. Augustine gravely maintaining, that 
the Grecian monarch Apis led a colony into Egypt, 
gave laws and civilization to that country, was deified 
after death under the form of an ox, and was, of course, 


identical with the Apis of Egyptian worship. (Pau- 
san., 2, 5.— Apollod., 2, 1.— Augustin., Civ. D., 18, 
5.) And yet there is reason to believe, that the name 
Apis is connected with that of a very early people, 
who dwelt along the European shores of the Mediter¬ 
ranean, and of whom the Italian Opici formed a part. 
( Vid. Apia.)—II. The same with Epaphus, the fa¬ 
bled son of Jupiter and Io. Such at least is the state¬ 
ment of Herodotus, 6 di ‘Att ig Kara ryv 'El’Xyvuv 
yltioouv ion "Erratyog (2, 153). Wesseling is in¬ 
clined to regard the passage as spurious ; but consult 
^Elian {Hist. An., 11, 10), where the same thing is 
stated. Jablonski makes Epaphus mean “ giant” ( Voc. 
Mgypt., p. 65). Zoega, on the other hand, gives it 
the force of “ bos pater” (Num. Mgypt ., p. 81), 
and De Rossi, that of “ taurus prcecipuus.” {Etymol. 
Mgypt., p. 15.) It is more than probable, however, 
that the name Epaphus was confounded by the Greeks 
with Apophis, one of the Egyptian appellations for Ty- 
phon, the evil genius, and hence may have arisen the 
legend which made the Grecian Apis a cruel tyrant. 
{Vid. Epaphus.)—III. A sacred bull, worshipped by 
the Egyptians. Its abode was at Memphis, near the 
temple of Phtha, or Vulcan, and it was in this city that 
peculiar honours wore rendered it, an account of which 
is given by Herodotus, Strabo, Pliny, Diodorus Sicu¬ 
lus, Plutarch, and other ancient writers. The Apis 
was distinguished from other animals of the same kind 
by the following characteristics. He was supposed to 
be generated, not in the ordinary course of nature, but 
by a flashing from on high {ce'Xag ek tov ovpavov. — 
Herod., 3, 27), or, according to others, by the contact 
of the moon {ena^y ryg ceXyvyg. — Plut., Sympos., 8, 
p. 718). As, however, this evidence of his divinity was 
rather dubious, several external marks were superad- 
ded, to satisfy his votaries of his claims to adoration. 
His colour was black, in order that the distinctive 
marks might the more clearly appear; these w’ere a 
square white spot on the forehead, the figure of an ea¬ 
gle on the back, a white crescent on the right side, 
the mark of a beetle on the tongue, and double hair 
on the tail. {Herod., 3, 28 .—Strab., 80 6 .— Plin., 8, 
46.— Creuzer, Comment. Herod., p. 132, seqq.) The 
marks in question, which thus stamped his claims to 
divinity, were of course the contrivance of the priests, 
though of this the people were kept profoundly igno¬ 
rant. This animal was regarded with the highest ven¬ 
eration, and more than regal honours were rendered 
him. He was waited upon, also, by numerous attend¬ 
ants, a particular priesthood were set apart for him, 
stalls were provided, furnished with every convenience* 
and his food was presented to him in vessels of gold! 
He was frequently displayed to the view of the people, 
while strangers could also behold him in a species of 
enclosed court, or through a kind of window. {Strab., 

I c.) He also gave oracles, and the mode of giving 
them was as follows. The priests, having led him forth 
from his abode, caused food to be offered him by the 
person who had come for a response. If he received 
what was thus offered, it was a favourable omen ; if 
otherwise, an unfavourable one. So also, after the 
food had been offered him, he was allowed to go into 
one or the other of two stalls, according as he might 
feel inclined. His going into one of these was looked 
upon as a good omen, into the other the reverse. Ger- 
manicus, when in Egypt, consulted in this way the 
sacred Apis ; and as the animal refused the food which 
was offered him by the R oman prince, this circumstance 
was regarded as an omen of evil, that was subsequent¬ 
ly verified by the death of the latter. {Plin., 8, 46. 
—Amm. Mar cell., 22, 14.) The annual festival of 
Apis was celebrated with the utmost splendour. It 
always began with the rising of the Nile, and present¬ 
ed, for seven successive days, a scene of uninterrupted 
rejoicing and festivity. The Greeks called this cele¬ 
bration Theophania, because during its continuance 




API 


APO 


the god Apis was displayed to the view of the people 
arrayed in festal attire, his head surmounted with a 
kind of tiara, and his body adorned with embroidered 
coverings, while a troop of boys accompanied him sin ty¬ 
ing hymns in his praise. These boys, becoming on a 
sudden inspired, predicted future events. During the 
continuance of this festival, the crocodiles in the Nile 
were harmless, but regained their ferocity at its close ! 
{Plin., 1. c.) Sacrifices were seldom offered unto Apis; 
when this, however, was done, red cattle were always 
selected, red being the colour of Typhon, the enemy 
of Osiris. So also, when Apis died, a red steer, and 
two or three other animals that were deemed sacred 
to Typhon, were buried along with him, in order to 
thwart the joy which the evil spirits would otherwise 
have felt at the death of the sacred Apis. When Apis 
died a natural death, the whole of Egypt was plunged, 
in mourning, from the king to the peasant; and this 
mourning continued until a new Apis was found. The 
deceased animal was embalmed in the most costly man¬ 
ner, and the priests after this traversed the whole land 
in quest of his successor. When a calf was found 
with the requisite marks, all sorrow instantly ceased, 
and the most unbounded joy prevailed. Herodotus al¬ 
ludes to one of these scenes in his account of the Per¬ 
sian Cambyses (3, 27). When that monarch returned 
to Memphis, from his unsuccessful expedition against 
the ^Ethiopians, he found the Egyptians giving loose 
to their joy on account of the reappearance of Apis. 
Irritated at this, and fancying that they were rejoicing 
at his ill success, he ordered the sacred animal to be 
brought before him, wounded it in the thigh with his 
dagger (of which wound it afterward died), caused the 
priest to be scourged, and commanded the proper of¬ 
ficers to kill all the Egyptians they should find making 
public demonstrations of joy.—Whenever a new Apis 
was obtained, the priests conducted him first to Nilo- 
polis, where they fed him forty days. He was then 
transported in a magnificent vessel to Memphis. Du¬ 
ring the forty days spent at Nilopolis, women only were 
allowed to see him ; but after this the sight of the god 
was forbidden them. ( Diod. Sic., 1, 85.)—It is wor¬ 
thy of remark, that although so much joy prevailed on 
the finding of a new Apis, and so much sorrow when 
he died a natural death, yet, whenever one of these ani¬ 
mals reached the age of 25 years, the period prescri¬ 
bed by the sacred books, the priests drowned him as a 
matter of course, in a sacred fountain, and there was 
no mourning whatever for his loss.—According to an 
Egyptian legend, the soul of Osiris passed on his death 
into the body of Apis, and as often as the sacred ani¬ 
mal died, it passed into the body of its successor. So 
that, according to this dogma, Apis was the perfect 
image of the soul of Osiris. ( Pint., de Is. et Os., p. 
472, ed. Wyttenb.) It is very easy, however, to see 
in the worship of the sacred Apis the connexion of 
Egyptian mythology with astronomy and the great 
movements of nature. The Egyptians believed that 
the moon, making her total revolution in 309 luna¬ 
tions, and in 9125 days, returned consequently, at the 
end of 25 years, to the same point of Sothis or Siri¬ 
us. Hence the life of Apis was limited to 25 years, 
and hence the cycle known as the period of Apis, with 
reference, no doubt, to the passage of the moon into the 
celestial bull, which it would have to traverse in order 
to arrive at Sothis. In worshipping Apis, therefore, the 
Egyptian priesthood worshipped, in fact, the great fer¬ 
tilizing principle in nature, and hence we see why 
females alone were allowed to view the Apis at Nilo¬ 
polis, that the sight of the sacred animal might bless 
them with a numerous progeny. (Compare Guigni- 
aut, 1,905.— Vollmer, Worterb. der Mythol., p. 279.) 

Apitius Galba, a celebrated buffoon in the time of 
Tiberius. ( Schol. ad Juv., 5, 4.—Compare Spalding, 
ad Quintil., 6, 3, 27.— Wernsdorf, in Poet. Lat. Min., 
vol. 6, p. 418, seq.) I 


Apollinares ludi. Vid. Ludi Apollinares. 

Apollinaris, I. Sidonius, a Christian poet. Vid. 
Sidonius. — II. Sulpitius, a grammarian. Vid. Sul- 
pitius. 

Apollinis Promontorium, was situate on the 
coast of Africa, east of Utica, and north of Carthage. 
It is now Ras-Zebid. {Plin., 5, 4.— Mela, 1, 7.— 
Liv., 30, 24.) 

Apollinopolis Magna, the capital of the 52d 
Egyptian nome, in the southern part of Upper Egypt, 
about twenty-five miles nearly north of the great cata¬ 
racts. It is now Edfou. {Ptol .— Steph. Byz., s. v. 
— Anton. Itin. — JElian, Hist. An., 10, 21.) There 
are two temples at Edfou, in a state of great preserva¬ 
tion. One of them consists of high pyramidal propyla, 
a pronaos, portico, and sekos, the form most generally 
used in Egypt; the other is peripteral, and is, at the' 
same time, distinguished by having on its several col¬ 
umns the appalling figure of Typhon, the emblem of 
the Evil Principle. The pyramidal propylon, which 
forms the principal entrance to the greater temple, is 
one of the most imposing monuments extant of Egyp¬ 
tian architecture. {Russell's Egypt, p. 201.) 

Apollinopolis Parva, a city of Egypt in the Nome 
of Coptos, northwest of Thebes. It was a celebrated 
place of trade, and lay on the commercial road by which 
the products of the east were conveyed to Alexandrea. 
It is now Kous, and displays the ruins of a temple. 
{Ptol. — Steph. Byz. — Strabo, 561.) 

Apollo, the son of Jupiter and Latona. In Ho¬ 
mer he is the god of archery, prophecy, and music. 
His arrows were not merely directed against the ene¬ 
mies of the gods, such as Otus and Ephialtes {Horn., 
Od., 11, 318): all sudden deaths of men were ascribed 
to his darts ; sometimes as a reward {vid. Agamedes), 
at other times as a punishment {vid. Niobe). He was, 
by his shafts, the god of pestilence, and he removed it 
when duly propitiated. At the banquets of the gods 
on Olympus, Apollo played on his lyre (< pop/uyi i), while 
the Muses sang. {Horn., II., 1, 601.) Eminent bards, 
as Demodocus, were held to have derived their skill 
from the teaching of Apollo or the Muses. {Od., 8, 
488.) Prophets in like manner were taught by him. 
At Delphi he himself revealed the future. {Od., 8, 
80.) According to the Homeric hymn to the Delian 
Apollo, the birth of the god took place in this manner: 
Latona, persecuted by Juno, besought all the islands 
of the Aegean Sea to afford her a place of rest; but 
all feared too much the potent queen of heaven to as¬ 
sist her rival. Delos alone consented to become the 
birthplace of the future god, provided Latona would 
pledge herself that he would not contemn her humble 
isle, and would erect there the temple vowed by his 
mother. Latona assented with the oath most binding 
on the gods, namely, by the Styx, and the friendly isle 
received her. {H. in Apoll., 83.) All the goddesses 
save Juno and Lucina (whom the art of Juno kept in 
ignorance of this great event) were assembled in the 
floating isle to attend the delivery of Latona, whose 
labour continued for nine days and nights. Moved 
with compassion for her sufferings, they despatched 
Iris to Olympus, who brought Lucina secretly to De¬ 
los. Here then Apollo sprang to light, Earth smiled 
around, and all the goddesses shouted aloud to cele¬ 
brate his birth. They washed and swathed the infant 
deity, and Themis gave him nectar and ambrosia. As 
soon as he had tasted the divine food, his bands and 
swaddling-clothes no longer retained him : he sprang 
up, and called to the goddesses to give him a lyre and a 
bow, adding that he would thenceforth declare to men 
the will of Jove. He then, to the amazement of the 
assembled goddesses, walked firmly on the ground; 
and Delos, exulting with joy, became covered with 
golden flowers. A somewhat different account of the 
birth of Apollo is given by Callimachus. {Hymn, in 
Apoll.) — In the Homeric hymn to Apollo, the man 

159 



APOLLO. 


APOLLO. 


ner of his first getting possession of Delphi (IT v6u)) is 
thus related: When Apollo resolved to choose the 
site of his first temple, he came down from Olympus 
into Pieria; he sought throughout all Thessaly; thence 
went to Euboea, Attica, and Boeotia; but could find no 
place to his mind. The situation of Tilphussa, near 
Lake Copais, in Boeotia, pleased him , and he was about 
to lay the foundations of his temple here, when the 
nymph of the stream, afraid of having her own fame 
eclipsed by the vicinity of the oracle of Apollo, dis¬ 
suaded him by representing how much his oracle would 
be disturbed by the noise of the horses and mules com¬ 
ing to water at her stream. She recommends to him 
Crissa, beneath Mount Parnassus, as a quiet, seques¬ 
tered spot, where no unseemly sounds would disturb 
the holy silence demanded by an oracle. Arrived 
at Crissa, the solitude and sublimity of the scene 
charm the god. He forthwith sets about erecting a 
temple, which the hands of numerous workmen speed¬ 
ily raise, under the direction of the brothers Tropho- 
nius and Agamedes. Meanwhile Apollo slays with 
his arrows the monstrous serpent which abode there 
and destroyed the people and cattle of the vicinity. 
As it lay expiring, the exulting victor cried, “Now 
rot ( Trvdev) there on the man-feeding earth ; and hence 
the place and oracle received the appellation of Pytho. 
The fane was now erected, but priests were wanting. 
The god, as he stood on the lofty area of the temple, 
cast his eyes over the sea, and beheld far south of Pel¬ 
oponnesus a Cretan ship sailing for Pylos. He plunged 
into the sea, and, in the form of a dolphin, sprang on 
board the ship. The crew sat in terror and amazement; 
a south wind carried the vessel rapidly along ; in vain 
they sought to land at Tcenarus ; the ship would not 
obey the helm. When they came to the bay of Cris¬ 
sa, a west wind sprang up and speedily brought the 
vessel into port; and the god, in the form of a blazing 
star, left the boat and descended into his temple 
Then, quick as thought, he came as a handsome youth, 
with long locks waving on his shoulders, and accosted 
the strangers, inquiring who they were and whence they 
came. To their question in return, of what that place 
was to which they were come, he replies by informing 
them who he is and what his purpose was in bringing 
them thither. He invites them to land, and says that, 
as he had met them in the form of a dolphin (6 sty tv), 
they should worship him as Apollo Delphinius ; and 
hence, according to the fanciful etymology of the earli¬ 
er poetry, Delphi in Phocis derived its name. They 
now disembark : the god, playing on his lyre, precedes 
them, and leads them to his temple, where they become 
his priests and ministers.—A god so beautiful and ac¬ 
complished as Apollo could not well be supposed to 
be free from the influence of the gentler emotions ; yet 
it is observable that he was not remarkably happy in 
his love, either meeting with a repulse, or having his 
amour attended with a fatal termination. ( Vid. Daph¬ 
ne, Coronis, &c.) After the death of JEsculapius his 
son, who fell by the thunderbolt of Jove for having ex¬ 
tended his skill in the healing art so far as to bring 
even the dead to life, Apollo, incensed at the fate of 
his offspring, slew the Cyclopes, the forgers of the thun¬ 
derbolts, and was for this deed exiled from heaven. 
Coming down to earth, he took service as a herdsman 
with Admetus, king of Pherse in Thessaly, and pas¬ 
tured his herds on the banks of the Amphrysus. The 
kindnesses bestowed by him on Admetus have been 
mentioned elsewhere. (Did. Admetus and Alcestis.) 

Apollo, it is said, was taught divination by Pan. 
For his lyre he was indebted to the invention of his 
half-brother Mercury, and the triumph of this instru¬ 
ment over the tones of the reed is recorded in the le¬ 
gend of Marsyas. ( Vid. Marsyas.) The Homeric 
Apollo is a personage entirely distinct from Helius 
("H hog) or the Sun, though, in all likelihood, original¬ 
ly the same. When mysteries and secret doctrines 
160 


were introduced into Greece, these deities were united, 
or, perhaps, we might say, reunited. Apollo, at the 
same period, also usurped the place of Parnn, and be¬ 
came the god of the healing art.—This god was a fa¬ 
vourite object of Grecian worship, and his temples were 
numerous. Of these the most celebrated were, that 
of Delphi in Phocis, of Delos, of Patara in Lycia, 
Claros in Ionia, Grynium in AEolis, and Didymi at 
Miletus ; in all of which his oracles gave revelations of 
the future.—The favourite animals of Apollo w r ere the 
hawk, the swan, the cicada, &c. His tree was the 
bay. He himself was represented in the perfection of 
united manly strength and beauty. His long curling 
hair hangs loose, and is bound behind with the stro- 
phium ; his brows are wreathed with bay ; in his hands 
he bears his bow or lyre. The wonderful Apollo Bel- 
.videre shows at the same time the conception which 
the ancients had of this benign deity, and the high de¬ 
gree of perfection to which they had attained in sculp¬ 
ture.—Few deities had more appellations than the son 
of Latona. He Was called Delian, Delphian, Patarae- 
an, Clarian, &c., from the places of his worship. He 
was also styled : 1. The Loxian god, from the ambigu¬ 
ity of many of his predictions ; 2. Herding , as keeping 
the flocks and herds of Admetus; 3. Silver-bowed; 
4. Far-shootcr; 5. Light-producer; 6. Well-haired ; 

7. Gold-haired; 8. Gold-swordcd, &c. ( Keightley's 

Mythology, p. 87, seqq.) —Proclus assures us that the 
Orphic doctrine recognised the identity of Apollo and 
the Sun. ( Orph., Hymn., 8. — Id., 12. — Id., 34.— 
Fragm., 28, ed. Herm. — AEschyl., in Eratasth. Ca- 
tast., p. 19, ed. Schaub .) The Oriental origin of the 
god is clearly shown even in his very name, for which 
the Greeks so often and so vainly sought an etymolo¬ 
gy in their own language. The Cretan form for Helios 
("H/Uof) was Abelios (’A (jsTaoq), i. e., ’Aehioq, w r ith the 
digamma inserted. (Maitt., Dial., p. 185, ed. Siurz. 
—Compare the Doric ’AneAT^uv for ’Arto'hAor, Mailt., 
p. 206, and the form Apellineni for Apolhnem, cited 
by Festus.) We have here the Asiatic root Bel or 
Hel, an appellation for the sun in the Semitic languages. 

( Creuzefs Symbolik, par Guigmaut, vol. 2, p. 131. 
—Compare Selden, de D. S., 2, 1, p. 144.— Buttmann , 
Mythologus, vol. 1, p. 167.)—A very striking analogy 
exists between the Apollo of the Greeks and the Crish- 
na of the Hindus. Both are inventors of the flute. 
(Compare Asiatic Researches, vol. 8, p. 65.) Crish- 
na is deceived by the nymph Tulasi, as Apollo is 
by Daphne, and the two maidens are each changed 
into trees, of which the tulasi is sacred to Crishna, as 
the bay-tree is to Apollo. The victory of Crishna 
over the serpent Caliya-naga, on the borders of the 
Yamuna, recalls to mind that of Apollo over the ser¬ 
pent Python : and it is worthy of remark, that the van¬ 
quished reptiles respectively participate in the hom¬ 
age that is rendered to the victors. Nor dees the le¬ 
gend of Apollo betray a resemblance merely with the fa¬ 
bles of India. A very strong affinity exists, in this re¬ 
spect, between the religious systems also of Egypt and 
Greece. We find the same animal, the wolf, which, 
by its oblique course, typified the path of the star of 
day, consecrated to the sun, both at Ly^copolis and 
Delphi. This emblem transports into the Greek tra¬ 
ditions the fables relative to the combats of Osiris. 
The Egyptian deity comes to the aid of his son Horus, 
under the figure of a wolf, and Latona disguises her¬ 
self under the form of this same animal, when she quits 
the Hyperborean regions to take refuge in Delos. 
(Compare Pausanias, 2, 10. — Diod. Sic., 1, 88.—. 
Synes., de Provid., 1, 116.— Euseb., Prcep. Ev., 1, 50. 
— Aristot., Hist. An., 6, 35.— JEhan, Hist. An., 4, 
4.) In the festival of the Daphnephoria, which the 
Thebans celebrated every ninth year in honour of 
Apollo, it is impossible to avoid seeing an astro¬ 
nomical character. It took its name from the bay- 
tree, which the fairest youths of the city carried round 





A P O 


APOLLODORUS. 


in solemn procession, anti which was adorned with 
flowers and branches of oiive. To an olive-tree, dec¬ 
orated in its turn with branches of bay and flowers 
intertwined, and covered with a veil of purple, were 
suspended globes of different sizes, types of the sun 
and planets, and ornamented with garlands, the num¬ 
ber of which was a symbol of the year. On the altar, 
too, burned a flame, the agitation, colour, and crack¬ 
ling of which served to reveal the future, a species of 
divination peculiar to the sacerdotal order, and which 
prevailed also at Olympia in Elis, the centre of most 
of the sacerdotal usages of the day.—The god of the 
sun became also the god of music, by a natural allusion 
to the movements of the planets and the mysterious 
harmony of the spheres ; and the hawk, the universal 
type of the divine essence among the Egyptians, is, 
with the Greeks, the sacred bird of Apollo. ( JElian, 
Hist. An ., 10, 14.)—x\s soon, however, as this Apollo, 
whether his origin is to be traced to the banks of the 
Nile or to the plains of India, assumes a marked sta¬ 
tion in the Grecian mythology, the national spirit la¬ 
bours to disengage him of his astronomical attributes. 
Henceforward every mysterious or scientific idea dis¬ 
appears from the Daphnephoria, and they now become 
only commemorative of the passion of the god for a 
young female, who turns a deaf ear to his suit. A 
new deity, Helios ("H/Uof), discharges all the functions 
of the sun. This god, in his quality of son of Uranus 
and Terra, is placed among the cosrnogonical personi¬ 
fications ; he has no part to play in the fables of the 
poets, and he is only twice named in Homer, once as 
the father of Circe, and again as revealing to Vulcan 
the infidelity of his spouse. He has no priests, no 
worship; no solemn festival is celebrated in his praise. 
Thereupon, freed from every attribute of an abstract 
nature, Apollo appears in the halls of Olympus, parti¬ 
cipates in the celestial banquets, interferes in the quar¬ 
rels of earth, becomes the tutelary god of the Trojans, 
the protector of Paris and Aeneas, the slave of Adme- 
tus, and the lover of Daphne. So true is it, that all 
these changes in the character of this divinity were 
effected by the transmuting power of the Grecian spirit, 
that we see Apollo preserve in the mysteries, which 
formed so many deposites of the sacerdotal traditions, 
the astronomical attributes of which the public wor¬ 
ship had deprived him ; and at a later period we find 
the New Platonists endeavouring to restore to him 
these same attributes, when they wished to form an 
allegorical system of religious science and philosophy 
out of the absurdities of polytheism. But, in the popu¬ 
lar religion, instead of being the god from whom ema¬ 
nate fecundity and increase, he is a simple shepherd, 
conducting the herds of another. Instead of dying 
and arising again to life, he is ever young. Instead 
of scorching the earth and its inhabitants with his de¬ 
vouring rays, he darts his fearful arrows from a quiver 
of gold. Instead of announcing the future in the mys¬ 
terious language of the planets, he prophesies in his 
own name. Nor does he any longer direct the harmo¬ 
ny of the spheres by the notes of his mystic lyre ; he 
has now an instrument, invented by Mercury and per¬ 
fected by himself. The dances, too, of the stars cease 
to be conducted by him ; for he now moves at the head 
of the nine Muses (the nine strings of his divine citha- 
ra), the divinities who each preside over one of the lib¬ 
eral arts. ( Constant, de la Religion , vol. 2, p. 93.) 

Apollodorus, I. a native of Phalerum, one of the 
intimate friends of Socrates. {Plat., Phced.) —II. A 
celebrated painter of Athens, who brought the art to a 
high degree of perfection, and handed it in this state 
to his pupil Zeuxis. Two of his celebrated productions 
are noticed by Pliny (35, 9). One of these was a priest 
at the altar; the other an Ajax struck by a thunder¬ 
bolt. These two chefs-d’oeuvre still existed in Pliny’s 
time at Pergamus, and were highly admired. Apollo- 
dorus first discovered the art of softening and degra- 
X 


ding, as it is technically termed, the colours of a paint¬ 
ing, and of imitating the exact effect of shades. Pliny 
speaks of him with enthusiasm. He became at last 
so arrogant as to style himself the prince of painters, 
and never to go forth into public without wearing a 
kind of tiara, after the fashion of the Medes. His fame, 
however, was eventually eclipsed by Zeuxis, who per¬ 
fected all his discoveries. {Plin. i l. c. — Sillig, Diet. 
Art., s. v .)—III. A famous sculptor, whose country is 
uncertain, but who flourished about Olymp. 114. He 
possessed great acuteness of judgment, but exhibited 
also, on many occasions, great violence of temper ; so 
much so as frequently to break to pieces his own works 
when they chanced not to please him. Silanion, an¬ 
other artist, represented him in bronze during one of 
these fits of anger, and the work resembled, according 
to Pliny, not a human being, but choler itself person¬ 
ified. {Plin., 34, 8.)—IV. A comic poet of Athens, 
who flourished about 300 B.C. He was a writer of 
much repute among the poets of the New Comedy. 
Terence copied the Hecyra and Phormio from two of 
his dramas; all his productions, though very numerous, 
are now lost, except the titles of eight, with a few frag¬ 
ments. He was one of the six writers whom the an¬ 
cient critics selected as the models of the New Come¬ 
dy. The other five were Philippides, Philemon, Me¬ 
nander, Diphilus, and Posidippus. {Theatre of the 
Greeks, 2d ed., p. 188.)—V. A comic poet of Carys- 
tus in Euboea. {Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 3, p. 80.) 
—VI. A comic poet of Gela in Sicily, contemporary 
with Menander. {Suidas, s. v. > A^ roAAod.— Clinton’s 
Fasti Hcllenici, 2d ed., p. xlvi.)—VII. A native of 
Athens, and disciple of Aristarchus, Panaetius, and 
Diogenes the Babylonian. He flourished about 146 
B.C., and was celebrated for his numerous productions, 
both in prose and verse. Of the former, we have, 
with the exception of a few fragments, only the work 
entitled B idTuoOyny {Bibliotheca ), being a collection of 
the fables of antiquity, drawn from the poets and other 
writers, and related in a clear and simple style. It has 
not reached us, however, in a perfect state, since it 
breaks off with the history of Theseus; whereas it 
would seem, from citations made from it, that the work 
was originally carried down to the return of the Greeks 
from the Trojan war. Faber (Le Fevre), one of die 
editors of the Bibliotheca, pretends that we merely 
have an extract from the original work of Apollodorus ; 
while another editor, Clavier, maintains that Apollo¬ 
dorus never wrote a work of this kind, but that what 
has come down to us is nothing more than a mere 
abridgment, extracted most probably from several of 
his works, especially that on the gods (7 vepi defiv), 
which consisted of at least 20 books. The best edi¬ 
tion of the Bibliotheca is that of Heyne, Gotting., 2 
vols. 8vo, 1803. The edition of Clavier, Paris, 1805. 
2 vols. 8vo, is also worthy of notice.—-Of the poetical 
works of Apollodorus, the most remarkable was the 
Xpovi/ca, or poetical Chronicle, which is unfortunately 
lost. It was divided into four books, and contained, 
according to Scymnus {v. 16-35, and 45-49), a state¬ 
ment of all the remarkable events, famous sieges, mi¬ 
grations, establishments of colonies, treaties, exploits. 
&c., from the fall of Troy, which Apollodorus fixed at 
1184 B.C., down to 144 B.C. It was written in a brief 
style, in iambic trimeters. We are indebted to this 
work, through the citations of other writers, for the 
knowledge of various important dates, such as the tall 
of Troy, the invasion of the Heraclidae, the Ionian emi¬ 
gration, the first Olympiad, &c. That part of the 
Chronicle which gave the dates when the various great 
men of antiquity lived, served as a basis for the Chron¬ 
icle composed by Cornelius Nepos, but which is also 
lost. Apollodorus composed also a Description of the 
Earth (Typ tt epioSoc;), in iambic verse, which gave 
Scymnus of Chios and Dionysius of Charax the idea 
of their respective Permgeses. {Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr ... 

161 




APO 


A P 0 


vol. 4, p. 57, seqq .— Id., 5, 36. — Clavier, in Biogr. 
Univ., vol. 2, p. 313.) — VIII. An Epicurean philos¬ 
opher, supposed to have been contemporary with Ci¬ 
cero. He governed, as chief, the school of Epicurus, 
and the severity of his administration caused him to 
receive the appellation of Krjnorvpavvog (tyrant of the 
garden). According to Diogenes Laertius, he wrote 
more than 400 works, and among them a life of Epi¬ 
curus. ( Diog. Ladrt., 10, 2 et 25.—Consult Menage, 
ad loc., where Gassendi’s explanation of the term Krj- 
7 rorvpavvog is given.)—IX. A native of Damascus, and 
an architect of great ability in the reigns of Trajan 
and Hadrian, by the former of whom he was employed 
in constructing the famous stone bridge over the Ister 
or Danube, A.D. 104. Various other bold and magnif¬ 
icent works, both at Rome and in the provinces, con¬ 
tributed to his high reputation. The principal of these 
were the Forum of Trajan, in the middle of which 
arose the Trajan Column, an immense library, an ode¬ 
um, the Ulpian basilica, thermae, aqueducts, &c. Fall¬ 
ing into disgrace with Hadrian, he lost his life through 
that emperor’s caprice. The occasion is variously re¬ 
lated ; by some it has been ascribed to an old grudge, 
which originated in the time of Trajan, when Hadrian, 
giving an ignorant opinion, in presence of the then 
emperor, respecting some architectural designs, was 
so seriously mortified by a sarcastic rebuke from Apol- 
lodorus, that he never forgave him. This old offence 
was heightened by another on the part of Apollodorus, 
when Hadrian had ascended the imperial throne. The 
emperor pretended to submit to him, for his opinion, 
the design of a recently-built temple of Venus. The 
plainness of speaking, for which the architect was 
famed, got the better of his policy, and drew from him 
an observation, in allusion to the want of proportion 
between the edifice and the statue it contained, that 
if “ the goddess wished to rise and go out” of her tem¬ 
ple, it would be impossible for her to accomplish her 
intention. The anger of the monarch knew no bounds. 
Apollodorus was banished ; and finally, after having 
been accused of various crimes, was put to death. 
(Xiph., Vit. Hadr.) —X. A name common to several 
medical writers. The most distinguished of these was 
a physician and naturalist, born at Lemnos, about a 
century before the Christian era. He lived under 
Ptolemy Soter and Lagus, to one of whom, accord¬ 
ing to Strabo, he dedicated his works. The scholiast 
to Nicander states that he wrote also on plants. He 
is mentioned by Pliny, who says that he boasted of 
£he juice of cabbage and of horseradish as a remedy 
against poisonous mushrooms. AthenaBUs often cites 
Mm. He wrote also on venomous animals, and there 
is reason to believe that it was from this work that 
' Galen derived his antidote against the bite of vipers. 
■fPlm., 14, 9.— Athen., 15, p. 675, e.) 

Apollonia, I. a festival at Sicyon, in honour of 
Apolk> and Diana. It arose from the following cir¬ 
cumstance. These two deities came to the river 
Syfhas, in the vicinity of Sicyon, which city was then 
called jEgialea, intending to purify themselves from 
the slaughter of the serpent Python. They were 
frightened away, however, and fled to Crete. JEgialea 
being Visited by a pestilence soon after this, the inhab¬ 
itants, by the advice of soothsayers, sent seven boys 
and the same number of girls to the Sythas, to entreat 
the offspring of Latona to return. Their prayer was 
granted, and the two deities came to the citadel. In 
commemoration of this event, a temple was erected on 
the banks <©f the river to the goddess of Persuasion, 
TLeodd), and -every year, on the festival of Apollo, a 
barid of boys conveyed the statues of Apollo and Di¬ 
ana to the temple of Persuasion, and afterward brought 
them back again to the temple of Apollo. ( Pausan., 
2, 7A—II. A celebrated city of Illyricum, near the 
month'of the twer Aous, or Aeas, and the ruins of 
which still retain the name of Pollina. It was found' 
162 


ed by a colony from Corinth and Corcyra, and, ac¬ 
cording to Strabo, was renowned for the wisdom of 
its laws, which appear to have been framed, however, 
rather on the Spartan than the Corinthian model. 
JSlian states, that decrees to the exclusion of foreign¬ 
ers were enforced here as at Lacedaemon ; and Aris¬ 
totle affirms, that none could aspire to the offices of 
the republic but the principal families, and those de¬ 
scended from the first colonists. (JEl., V. H., 13, 6 
— Arist., Polit., 4, 4.) Apollonia was exposed to fre¬ 
quent attacks from the Illyrians, and it was probably 
the dread of these neighbours, and also of the Mace¬ 
donians, that induced the city to place itself under the 
protection of the Romans on the first appearance of 
that people on their coast. (Polyb., 2, 11.) Through¬ 
out the war with Macedon they remained faithful to 
the interest of their new allies. From its proximity 
to Brundisium and Hydruntum in Italy, Apollonia was 
always deemed an important station by the Romans ; 
and among the extravagant projects of Pyrrhus, it is 
said he had contemplated the idea of throwing over a 
bridge to connect it with the last-mentioned place ; a 
distance not less than fifty miles! ( Plin., 3, 11.) 
Augustus spent many years of his early life in Apollo¬ 
nia, which were devoted to the study of literature and 
philosophy. (Suet., Aug., 10.— Cramer's Anc. Gr., 
vol. 1, p. 56, seqq.) —III. A town in the interior of 
Chalcidice, on the Egnatian way. ( Scylax, p. 27.— 
Xen., Hist. Gr., 5, 2.) Mention is made of it in the 
Acts of the Apostles (17, 1), St. Paul having passed 
through it on his way from Philippi to Thessalonica. 
The ruins are called Pollina. (Cramer's Anc. Gr., 
vol. 1, p. 264.)—IV. A city of Thrace, at the mouth 
of the river Nestus. (Mela, 3, 2.— Liv., 38, 41.) It 
was called, in a later age, Sozopolis, and is now Size- 
boli. —V. A city of Assyria, to the northwest of Ctesi- 
phon. (Amm. Marcell., 23, 20.) Hardouin and oth¬ 
ers make it the same with Antiochia Assyria, men¬ 
tioned by Pliny (6, 27).—VI. A city of Palestine, in 
Samaria, on the Mediterranean coast. It lay north¬ 
west of Sichem. (Plin., 5, 13.-— Joseph., Antiq. Jud., 
13, 23.— Id., Bell., 1, 6.)—VII. A city of Phrygia, to 
the southeast of Apamea, on the road to Antioch in 
Pisidia. Its earlier name was Margium. (Strab., 
576. — Steph. Byz.) Colonel Leake is inclined to 
place it at Ketsi Bourlou, not far from the Lake Bou- 
dour. —VIII. A city of Lydia, called also Apollonis, 
about 300 stadia from Pergamus, and the same dis¬ 
tance from Sardis. It was named after the wife of 
Attalus. Cicero often alludes to it. (Cic., Orat. pro 
Flacc., c. 21 et 32.— Ep. ad Quint., 1, 2, &c.) Some 
ruins are visible near a small hamlet called Bullene. — 
IX. A city of Mysia, at the northern extremity of the 
Lake Apolloniatis, and near the point where the Rhyn- 
dacus issues from it. Its site is now occupied by the 
Turkish town of Abulliona. (Strab., 575.)—X. A city 
of Cyrenaica, regarded as the harbour of Cyrene. It 
was the birthplace of the geographer Eratosthenes. 
Under the lower empire this place took the name of 
Sozusa, and it is now called Marza Susa, or Sosush. 
(Mela, 1, 8.— Ptol.) 

Apollonis, wife of Attalus of Pergamus. She was 
a native of Cyzicus, and of obscure family. Apollo¬ 
nis became the mother of Eumenes, Attalus, Phile- 
tserus, and Athenaeus, who were remarkable for fra¬ 
ternal attachment as well as for filial piety. After 
the death of their mother they erected a temple to her 
at Cyzicus, on the columns of which were placed nine¬ 
teen tablets, sculptured in relief, and displaying the 
most touching incidents in history and mythology 
relative to filial attachment. At the bottom of these 
tablets were inscriptions in verse, which have been 
preserved for us in the Vatican manuscript of the 
Greek Anthology. These are given by Jacobs, at the 
end of his edition of the Anthology (Paralipomena ex 
cc lice Vaticano), and were previously published by 



APOLLONIUS. 


APOLLONIUS. 


him in the 2d vol. of a work entitled Exercitation.es 
Criticce in Scriptorcs Vcteres, Lips., 1797, 8vo. 

Apollonius, I. a native of Perga in Pamphylia, 
who flourished principally under Ptolemy Philopator, 
towards the close of the second century before the 
Christian era. He is one of the four writers whom 
we ought to regard as the fathers of mathematical sci¬ 
ence, since it was from their works that the moderns 
first derived an accurate acquaintance with this de¬ 
partment of knowledge. These authors are, to give 
them in chronological order, Euclid, Archimedes, 
Apollonius, and Diophantus. We learn from Pappus, 
that Apollonius studied at Alexandrea under the suc¬ 
cessors of Euclid, and that it was here he acquired the 
superior skill in geometrical science which rendered 
his name so famous. The same author gives no very 
favourable account of his other qualities. He repre¬ 
sents him ( Coll. Math., 1. 7, prcef.) as a vain man, 
jealous of the merit of others, and eagerly seizing every 
occasion to depreciate them. Apollonius was one of 
the most prolific and profound writers in mathematical 
science. His works alone formed a considerable part of 
those which the ancients regarded as the source of the 
true geometrical spirit. His treatise on Conics, how¬ 
ever, is the most remarkable, and the one that con¬ 
tributed most to his celebrity. It had many commen¬ 
tators among the ancients, such as Pappus of Alexan¬ 
drea, Hypatia, daughter of Theon, Eutocius of Asca- 
lon, &c. The West was acquainted, for a long pe¬ 
riod, in modern times, with only the first four books 
of the Conics of Apollonius ; and it was not till about 
the middle of the 17th century that the fifth, sixth, and 
seventh books were recovered from Arabic versions. 
A magnificent edition of the whole eight books was 
ublished by Dr. Halley, at Oxford, in 1710, the eighth 
ook being in a measure restored by him from the in¬ 
dications given by Pappus. ( Montucla, Hist, des 

Math., vol. 1, p. 245, seqq. — Lacroix, in Biogr. Univ., 
vol. 2, p. 316, seqq.) —II. A poet of Alexandrea, gen¬ 
erally called Apollonius of Rhodes, from his having 
lived for some time there. He was a pupil of Callim¬ 
achus, but renouncing the erudite style of his mas¬ 
ter, he endeavoured to follow the track of Homer. It 
appears that Callimachus was offended with this act 
of rebellion against his authority, and that it was the 
cause of the enmity which subsisted between the two 
poets until the death of the former. Apollonius, 
having read at Alexandrea his Homeric poem on the 
expedition of the Argonauts, was hissed by a party 
which had been formed against him by the cabals of 
his master. Mortified at this treatment, he retired to 
Rhodes, where he taught rhetoric, and obtained the 
rights of citizenship. At a subsequent period, under 
Ptolemy V. (Epiphanes), he succeeded as librarian at 
Alexandrea, in the place of Eratosthenes, who had be¬ 
come enfeebled by age. His principal production, the 
poem on the Argonautic expedition, is the only one of 
his works that has come down to us. It is divided 
into four books. The subject of the poem is the de¬ 
parture of Jason and his companions in quest of the 
golden fleece, and the return of these adventurers to 
their native shores after long and perilous wanderings. 
The plan is very simple : it is that of an historian, and 
is not adapted to poetic composition. There is no 
unity of interest in the poem; for Jason is not the 
only hero of the piece, and even if he were, his char¬ 
acter is not sufficiently sustained for such an end. 
The poet places him in scenes where he acts without 
probity and without honour. The characters of Or¬ 
pheus and Hercules are better drawn. That of Medea 
is a complete failure : the passion that sways her 
breast is at variance with both modesty and filial piety. 
In other respects, the poem contains many pleasing 
descriptions. Apollonius also deserves praise for not 
yielding to the spirit of the age, and indulging in those 
learned digressions that were then popular* and for 


which the nature of his subject allowed him so many 
opportunities. The Argonautics of Apollonius are le- 
markable for the purity of the diction, and, with some 
exceptions, the beauty of the versification : they are, 
in this respect, a happy imitation of the Iliad and Odys¬ 
sey. Longinus (de Subl., 33) calls Apollonius uttto- 
roq, an expression that is well elucidated by the re¬ 
marks of Quintilian (10, 1, 54) on the same writer: 
“ Non contemnendum edidit opus, cequali quadam 
mcdiocritate .” He never rises to the sublime, but, at 
the same time, never descends to the vulgar and lowly. 
The Romans appear to have entertained a high opin¬ 
ion of the Argonautics of Apollonius. The poem was 
freely translated by Varro Atacinus, and was imitated 
by Virgil in the fourth book of the JEneid. It has 
been still more followed by Valerius Flaccus, who bor¬ 
rowed from it the fable of his own poem ; but it must 
be confessed that the Roman poet has surpassed his 
model. The best edition of Apollonius is that of 
Wellauer, Lips., 1828, 2 vols. 8vo. Previous to the 
appearance of this, the best edition was that of Brunck, 
Lips., 1810, 2 vols. 8vo, with the additional Greek 
scholia, curd G. H. Schaeffer. Brunck’s first edition 
appeared in 1780, 2 vols. 8vo, from the Strasburg 
press.—III. A sophist, son of the grammarian Archi- 
bius, lived at Alexandrea in the time of Augustus, ac¬ 
cording to the common opinion, and had Apion in the 
number of his disciples. Ruhnken, however {Prcef. 
ad Hesych., vol. 2, p. 5), believes him to have been 
much later, and that Apion lived long before him. He 
is known by his Homeric Lexicon 'O pypiuai), 

containing a list of the principal words used by Ho¬ 
mer, with their explanations. It is a very useful work, 
though much interpolated. Villoison published the 
first edition of this Lexicon in 1773, Paris, 2 vols. 
4to, from a MS., which he supposed to be of the tenth 
century. The commentary and prolegomena of Vil¬ 
loison are full of erudition, and yet he was but twenty- 
one years of age when he appeared as the editor of 
Apollonius. Tollius produced a reprint of Villoison’s 
edition, at Leyden, in 1778, 8vo. This re-impression 
is considered superior to the original, as far as the ex¬ 
cellent notes added by Tollius are concerned. It is 
injured, however, by the retrenchment of Villoison's 
prolegomena.—IV. A grammarian of Alexandrea, sur- 
named Dyscolus (A vano'Xoq), “ Ill-humoured,” or 
“ Morose,” on account of his unpleasant disposition ; 
or else, as some suppose, from the difficult questions 
he was accustomed to propose to the savans of Alex¬ 
andrea. He flourished about the middle of the second 
century of the Christian era, and passed his days in 
the Bruchium, a quarter of the city where many learn¬ 
ed men were supported at the royal expense. ( Vid. 
Alexandrea.) He is the first that reduced the subject 
of grammar to a systematic form. Of his numerous 
writings in this department, we have only four trea¬ 
tises remaining. IJepi ^wra^eioq rfiv rov Xoyov pep- 
tiv, “ Of the Syntax of parts of speech;” in four 
books : nep£ ’A vruvvpiag, “ Of the Pronoun :” nept 
hvvdecT/Liuv, “Of Conjunctions:” and nept ’E mpfiy- 
juuTov, “Of Adverbs.” To him is. also ascribed a 
compilation, entitled ’luropifiv Qavpao'uov (3i6?nov, 
“ A collection of Wonderful Histories,” which has 
only the accidental merit of containing some fragments 
of lost writers. This last-mentioned work is found 
in the editions of Phjegon given by Xylancrer and 
Meursius. Teucher produced a separate edition of 
it in 1792, 8vo, from the Leipsic press. The trea¬ 
tise on Syntax was first printed by the elder Aldus, 
in his Thesaurus Cornucopia?, Venet., 1495, fol. ; 
and was reprinted by Junta, in 1515, 8vo, Florent. 
Both these editions are inaccurate. Sylburg pub¬ 
lished a new edition in 1590, 4to, Francof, with the 
text corrected from MSS. The best, however, is 
that of Bekker, Beroltn., 1817, 8vo. To Bekker we 
also owe editions of three other works of Apollo- 

163 





APOLLONIUS. 


APOLLONIUS. 


nius which had previously remained unedited. The I 
treatise on the Pronoun was first published by him in 
Wolf and Buttmann’s Museum Antiq. Stud.., vol. 2, 
Berol., 1811, and the treatises on Conjunctions and 
Adverbs in the second volume of his Anecdota Graeca. 
(Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 5, p. 27.) — V. A native 
of Alabanda in Cam. He taught rhetoric at Rhodes, 
and his school enjoyed a high reputation. Cicero and 
Julius Caesar were among the number of his pupils. 
He was remarkable for sending away those who he 
was convinced could not become orators, instead of 
letting them waste their time in attending on his in¬ 
structions. His surname was Molo, or, according to 
others, Molonis ( son of Mold). Cicero often alludes 
to him, sometimes under the name of Apollonius, on 
other occasions under that of Molo. ( Cic.,de Orat., 
1 , 28.— Id., Brut., 89.)—VI. A native of Tyana in 
Cappadocia, of an ancient and wealthy family, born 
about the commencement of the Christian era, and fa¬ 
mous in the annals of ancient imposture. Wonderful 
stories were told of the annunciation made to his mother 
during her pregancy, as well as of the circumstances 
under which his birth took place. ( Philostr ., Vit. 

Ay oil., 1 , 4.) His early education was received at 
iEgae, a town of Cilicia, on the Sinus Issicus, where 
he attached himself to the tenets and discipline of the 
Pythagorean philosophy, refraining from animal food, 
living entirely upon fruits and herbs, wearing no article 
of clothing made from any animal substance, going bare¬ 
foot, and suffering his hair to grow to its full length. 
He spent much of his time in the temple of Aesculapius 
at riEgae, a temple rendered famous by the wonderful 
cures which were effected there ; and the priests, find¬ 
ing him possessed of talents and docility, initiated him 
into the mysteries of the healing art. His medical 
knowledge proved subsequently a valuable auxiliary to 
him in imparting force to his moral precepts. After 
having acquired great reputation at HCgae, Apollonius 
determined to qualify himself for the office of a pre¬ 
ceptor in philosophy by passing through the Pythago¬ 
rean discipline of silence. Accordingly, he is said to 
have remained five years without once exercising the 
faculty of speech. During this time he chiefly resided 
in Pamphylia and Cilicia. When his term of silence 
was expired, he visited Antioch, Ephesus, and other 
cities, declining the society of the rude and illiterate, 
and conversing chiefly with the priests. At sunrising 
he performed certain religious rites, which he disclosed 
only to those who passed through the discipline of si¬ 
lence. He spent the morning in instructing his disci¬ 
ples, whom he encouraged to ask whatever questions 
they pleased. At noon he held a public assembly for 
popular discourse. His style was neither turgid nor 
abstruse, but truly Attic, and marked by great force 
and persuasion. Ap°fl° n iu s > that he might still more 
perfectly resemble Pythagoras, determined to travel 
through distant nations. He proposed his design to his 
disciples, who were seven in number, but they refused 
to accompany him. He therefore entered upon his ex¬ 
pedition, attended only by two servants. At Ninus 
he took, as his associate, Damis, an inhabitant of that 
city, to whom he boasted that he was skilled in all 
languages, though he had never learned them., and that 
he even understood the language of beasts and birds. 
The ignorant Assyrian worshipped him a$ a god ; and, 
resigning himself implicitly to his direction, accompa¬ 
nied him wherever he went. At Babylon he con¬ 
versed with the magi, and, by his sage discourses, ob¬ 
tained the favour and admiration of the king, who fur¬ 
nished him with camels and provisions for his journey 
over Caucasus. He was equally patronised by Phra- 
otes, an Indian king, and after four months’ residence 
with the Indian sages, returned to Babylon, and thence 
into Ionia. Various miracles of "his performance in 
the cities of Greece are gravely related. Among 
other feats, he pretended that he had raised the shade 
164 


of Achilles. At Athens he is said to have cast out a 
demon, which at its departure threw’ down a statue \ 
at the Isthmus of Corinth, to have predicted the at¬ 
tempt of Nero to cut through it ; and in the island of 
Crete, during an earthquake, to have exclaimed that 
the sea was bringing forth land at the time that an isl¬ 
and w r as rising out of the sea between Crete and 
Thera. From Crete he repaired to Rome. Just be¬ 
fore this time, however, Nero had ordered all who prac¬ 
tised magic to be driven from the city. The friends 
of Apollonius apprized him of the hazard which was 
likely to attend his purposed visit to Rome ; and the 
alarm was so great, that out of thirty-four persons who 
were his stated companions, only eight chose to ac¬ 
company him thither. He nevertheless persevered in 
his resolution, and, under the protection of the sacred 
habit, obtained admission into the city. The next day 
he was conducted to the consul Telesinus, who was 
inclined to favour philosophers of every class, and ob¬ 
tained permission to visit the temples and converse 
with the priests. From Rome Apollonius travelled 
westward to Spain. Here he made an unsuccessful 
attempt to incite the procurator of the province of Beb- 
tica to a conspiracy against Nero. Alter the death of 
that tyrant he returned to Italy on his w r ay to Greece ; 
whence he proceeded to Egypt, where Vespasian w r as 
making use of every expedient to establish his power. 
That prince early perceived that nothing would give* 
greater credit with the Egyptian populace than to have 
his cause espoused by one who w 7 as esteemed a fa¬ 
voured minister of the gods, and, therefore, did not 
fail to show him every kind of attention and respect. 
The philosopher, in return, adapted his measures to 
the views of the new emperor, and used all his influ¬ 
ence among the people in support of Vespasian’s au¬ 
thority. Upon the accession of Domitian, Apollonius 
was no sooner informed of the tyrannical proceedings 
of that emperor, and particularly of his proscriptions 
of philosophers, than he assisted in raising a sedition 
against him, and in favour of Nerva, among the Egyp¬ 
tians ; so that Domirian thought it necessary to issue 
an order that he should be seized and brought to Rome. 
Apollonius, being informed of the order, set out im¬ 
mediately, of his own accord, for that city. Upon his 
arrival he was brought to trial; but his judge, the 
praetor AAian, who had formerly known him in Egypt, 
was desirous of favouring him, and so conducted the 
process that it terminated in his acquittal. Apollonius 
now passed over into Greece, and visited various parts 
of the country, gaining new followers wherever he went. 
He finally settled at Ephesus in Asia Minor, where he 
established a school and had many disciples. Here 
a story is related of him, which, if true, implies that 
lie was acquainted with the conspiracy against Domi¬ 
tian. At the moment when that tyrant was cut off at 
Rome, Apollonius is said to have made a sudden 
pause in the midst of a public disputation at Ephesus, 
and, changing his tone, to have exclaimed, “ Well 
done, Stephen ! take heart; kill the tyrant; kill him 
and then, after a short pause, to have added ; “ the ty¬ 
rant is dead ; he is killed this very hour.” After this 
w T e hear little of him, except that Nerva wrote to him 
on his accession ; but it is very probable that he died 
at Ephesus during the short reign of that emperor, at 
the very advanced age of ninety-seven. The sources 
of information concerning this extraordinary man are 
very uncertain. His life by Philostratus, from which 
the foregoing sketch is principally selected, was com¬ 
piled two hundred years after his death, by order of 
the Empress Julia, widow of Severus, which prince 
regarded Apollonius as a divinely-inspired personage, 
and is said to have associated his image in a temple 
with those of Orpheus, Abraham, and our Saviour. 
Philostratus, a mere sophist, received as materials the 
journal of Damis, his companion and disciple, w’ho 
was ignorant and credulous, and a short and imperfect 






APOLLONIUS. 


APO 


- memoir by Maxentius of TEg®, now lost. All sorts 
of fables and traditionary tales are mixed up with 
the account of Philostratus, who only merits atten¬ 
tion for a mere outline of the facts upon which he 
must necessarily have formed his marvellous super¬ 
structure. The claim of the whole to notice rests 
chiefly on the disposition of the pagans, when Chris¬ 
tianity began to gain ground, to assimilate the charac¬ 
ter and merits of Apollonius with those of the Divine 
Founder of the rising religion. Something is also due 
to a life so singular as that of Apollonius, whocertainly 
contrived to pass for a divinely-favoured person, not 
only in his own days, but as long as paganism pre¬ 
vailed. The inhabitants of Tyana dedicated a temple 
to his name ; the Ephesians erected a statue to him 
under the name of Hercules Alexicacus, for delivering 
them from the plague ; Hadrian collected his letters ; 
■the Emperor Severus honoured him as already de¬ 
scribed ; Caracalla erected a temple to him ; Aureli- 
an, out of regard to his memory, refrained from sack¬ 
ing Tyana ; lastly, Ammianus Marcellinus ranks him 
among the eminent men, who, like Socrates andNuma, 
were visited by a demon. All these prove nothing of 
the supernatural attributes of Apollonius, but they are 
decisive of the opinion entertained of him. At the 
same time, Dr. Lardner clearly shows that the life of 
Philostratus was composed with a reference to the 
history of Pythagoras rather than to that of our Saviour. 
{Compare the remarks of Mitehell, in the Introduction 
to his edition of the Clouds of Aristophanes , p. viii., 
seqq., Lond., 1838.) On the whole, as his correct 
doctrines appear to have been extremely moral and pure, 
it may be the fairest way to rank him among that less 
obnoxious class of impostors, who pretend to be di¬ 
vinely gifted, with a view to secure attention and obe¬ 
dience to precepts, which, delivered in the usual way, 
would be generally neglected. Of the writings of 
Apollonius, there remain only his Apology to Domitian, 
and eighty-four epistles, the brevity of which is in 
favour of their authenticity. They were edited by 
Comelin in 1601, 8vo, and by Stephens, in his Epistol®, 
1577. His life by Philostratus is found in the wri¬ 
tings of that sophist, the best edition of which is that 
of Olearius, Lips.*, 1709, folio. {Enfield's History of 
Philosophy, vol. 2, p. 39, seqq. — Michaud, Biogr . 
Univ., vol. 2, p, 320, seqq.) —VII. A stoic philosopher, 
born at Chalcis in Euboea, or, according to some, at 
Chalcedon in Bithynia. His high reputation induced 
the Emperor Antoninus Pius to send for him to come 
to Rome in order to take charge of the education of 
Marcus Aurelius. On his arrival at the capital, the 
emperor sent him an eager invitation to repair to the 
palace ; but the philosopher declined to come, observ¬ 
ing that the pupil ought to come to the master, not the 
master to the pupil. The emperor, on receiving this 
answer, observed, with a smile, “ It was then easier, 
it seems, for Apollonius to come from Chalcis to Rome, 
than from his residence in Rome to the palace in the 
same city !” Antoninus, however, hastened to send 
his royal pupil to him, and Aurelius profited in no 
small degree by the lessons of his instructed The 
Meditations of Aurelius contain a eulogium on his 
stoic preceptor. {Biogr. Univ., vol. 2, p. 323.) — 
VIII. A sculptor, distinguished by a statue of Hercu¬ 
les, the extant part of which is preserved in the Vati¬ 
can Museum at Rome, and is known by the name of 
the Belvidere torso. He was a native of Athens, and, 
according to Winekelmann, flourished a short time 
subsequent to Alexander the Great. This opinion is 
founded principally upon the form of the letters com¬ 
posing the Greek inscription sculptured on the marble. 
A conjecture of this kind, however, can at best be only 
approximative. The famous torso of the Belvidere Her¬ 
cules has been the admiration of all artists. Michael 
Angelo sketched it from every possible point of view ; 
and when, in bis old age, he was deprived of sight. 


the enthusiastic painter caused himself to be conduct¬ 
ed to this chef-d’oeuvre of art, and, by passing his 
hands over it, sought in this way to enjoy those feel¬ 
ings of delight which his loss of vision seemed to deny 
him. (La Salle, in Biogr. Univ., vol. 2, p. 325.) — 
IX. A sculptor, who made the head of a young satyr, 
now preserved at Egremont House, Petworth. (Con¬ 
sult 0. Muller, Amalth ., 3, 252.)—X. A sculptor, who, 
in connexion with his brother Tauriscus, constructed a 
celebrated image of a bull, formerly the property of 
Asinius Pollio. This image is generally supposed to 
be that now known as the Farnese Bull, though ar¬ 
tists have observed several things in the latter per¬ 
formance which argue it to be of a later date. {Plin., 
36,5.— Sillig, Did. Art., s. v.) 

Aponiana, an island near Lilybseum. ( Hirt., B. 
Afrie., 2.) Cluverius thinks that one of the TEgus® or 
TEgades is here meant. Others suppose it to be the 
same with Paconia of Ptolemy. In one MS. the name 
is given as Apononia. {Cluv., Sicil., 2, 15.) 

Aponus Fons, a fountain, or, more correctly, warm 
mineral springs about six miles to the south of Patavi- 
um. They were celebrated for their healing proper¬ 
ties, and hence their name, from a, not, and novog, the 
anguish or pain of a malady, as indicating their prop¬ 
erty of lulling or removing the pains of sickness. 
There was also a species of divination connected with 
them, by throwing articles into the fountain. {Lucan, 
Phars., 7, 193. — Suet., Vit. Tib., c. 14, and Crus., ad 
loc.) The Aponus Fons was the principal source of 
what were denominated the Aquce Patavince. The 
name of Bagm d'Abano, by which these waters are at 
present known, has evidently been formed by corrup¬ 
tion from Aponus. {Plin., 2, 103.— Id., 31, 6.) 

ApotheSsis, a ceremony observed by some ancient 
nations, by which they raised their kings, heroes, and 
great men to the rank of deities. Neither the Egyp¬ 
tians nor Persians seem to have adopted this custom. 
The Greeks were the first who admitted it. The 
Romans borrowed it from them. Herodian (4, 2) has 
left us an account of the apotheosis of a Roman em¬ 
peror. After the body of the deceased was burned, a 
waxen image of it was placed upon a tall ivory couch 
in the vestibule of the palace, the couch being decked 
with the most sumptuous coverings. The image rep¬ 
resented the emperor as pale and suffering under sick¬ 
ness. This continued for seven days. The city mean¬ 
while was in sorrow. For the greater part of each 
day the senate sat ranged on the left side of the bed, 
dressed in robes of mourning, the ladies of the first rank 
sitting on the right side in white robes, without any or¬ 
naments. During the seven days the physicians paid 
regular visits to the sick person, and always reported 
that he grew worse, until at length they gave out that 
he was dead. When the death was announced, a band 
consisting of the noblest members of the equestrian or¬ 
der, and the most distinguished youths of senatorian 
rank, carried the couch and image, first to the Forum, 
where hymns and dirges were sung, and then to the 
Campus Martius. In this latter place a large pyramidal 
edifice of wood had been previously constructed, the in¬ 
terior being filled with combustibles of all kinds. The 
couch was placed on this, with abundance of aromatics 
and spices. The equestrian order then moved in sol¬ 
emn array around the pile, imitating by their evolu¬ 
tions the pyrrhic dance ; and chariots were also driven 
around, having the persons standing in them arrayed 
in their prsetextas, and wearing masks which recalled 
the features of the most celebrated Romans of former 
days. The new emperor then applied a torch to the 
pile, and fire was also communicated to it by the rest. 
Meanwhile, an eagle was let fly from the summit of 
the structure, which was to ascend with the flames to 
the heavens, and was supposed to bear with it from 
earth the soul of the deceased emperor. If the deified 
person was a female, a peacock, not an eagle, was 

165 





APP 


APP 


sent from the funeral pile. ( Lydius, dc Re Mil., p. 
93.— Irmisch, ad Hcrodian, l. c .)— Some writers, 
misled by the language of Diodorus Siculus, have as¬ 
cribed the introduction of the apotheosis into Greece 
to Egyptian colonies. Diodorus, however, a partisan 
of the theory of Euthemerus, only saw in the gods of 
every religion mere deified mortals. Leibnitz commits, 
with regard to the Persians, an error similar to that of 
Diodorus, when he sees in the myth of Arimanes no¬ 
thing more than the apotheosis of the chief of a No¬ 
madic tribe. Mosheim also ( Annot. ad Cudworth, p. 
238) pretends that Mithras was only a deified hunter, 
because, upon the monuments that have reached us, he 
is represented as killing a bull, and being followed by 
a dog ! (Consult Constant, de la Religion, vol. 2, p. 
446, in not.) 

Appia via, the most celebrated of the Roman roads, 
both on account of its length, and the difficulties which 
it was necessary to overcome in its construction, 
hence called the “ Queen of the Roman Ways,” Regina 
Viarum. (Stat., Syl., 2, 2.) It was made, as Livy in¬ 
forms us (9, 29), by the censor Appius Csecus, A.U.C. 
442, and in the first instance was only laid down as 
far as Capua, a distance of about a thousand stadia, 
or a hundred and twenty-five miles ; but even this por¬ 
tion of the work, according to the account of Diodorus 
Siculus, was executed in so expensive a manner, that 
it exhausted the public treasury (20, 36). From 
Capua it was subsequently carried on to Beneventum, 
and finally to Brundisium, when this port became the 
great place of resort for those who were desirous of 
crossing over into Greece and Asia Minor. (Strabo, 
283.) This latter part of the Appian Way is supposed 
to have been constructed by the consul Appius Clau¬ 
dius Pulcher, grandson of Ciecus, A.U.C. 504, and to 
have been completed by another consul of the same 
family thirty-six years after. We find frequent men¬ 
tion made of repairs done to this road by the Roman 
emperors, and more particularly by Trajan, both in the 
histories of the time, and also in ancient inscriptions. 
This road seems to have been still in excellent order in 
the time of Procopius, who gives a very good account 
of the manner in which it was constructed. He says, 
“ An expeditious traveller might very well perform the 
journey from Rome to Capua in five days. Its breadth 
is such as to admit of two carriages passing each oth¬ 
er. Above all others, this way is worthy of notice : 
for the stones which were employed on it are of an ex¬ 
tremely hard nature, and were doubtless conveyed by 
Appius from some distant quarry, as the adjoining 
country furnishes none of that kind. These, when 
they had been cut smooth and squared, he fitted to¬ 
gether closely, without using iron or any other sub¬ 
stance ; and they adhere so firmly to each other, that 
they appear to have been thus formed by nature, and 
not cemented by art. And though they have been 
travelled over by so many beasts of burden and car¬ 
riages for ages, yet they do not seem to have been any 
wise moved from their place, or broken, nor to have 
lost any part of their original smoothness.” (Procop., 
Bell. Got., 3.) According to Eustace, such parts of 
the Appian Way as have escaped destruction, as at 
Fondi and Mola, show few traces of wear and decay 
after a duration of two thousand years. (Classical 
Tour, vol. 3, p. 177.) The same writer states the 
average breadth of the Appian Way at from eighteen 
to twenty-two feet. 

Appiades, a name given to the five deities, Venus, 
Pallas, Vesta, Concord, and Peace. A temple was 
erected to them near the Appias Aquae, in the vicinity 
of Julius Caesar’s forum. Such at least is the expla¬ 
nation commonly given to the expression Appiades 
Dece, as occurring in Ovid (A. A., 3, 452). Bur- 
mann, however, thinks that the poet refers merely to 
the nymphs of the adjacent fountain, while Heinsius, 
altering the common lection of Dece to suce under- 
166 


stands females of loose character, remarking as fol¬ 
lows : “ Extra urbcm plcbs submacniana et meretricu - 
Ice habitabant, maxime Via Appia.” (Heins., ad Ov., 
1 . c.) 

Appianus, a native of Alexandrea, who flourished 
at Rome under Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius. 
Here he distinguished himself by his forensic abilities, 
and acquired the post of a procurator of the empire, 
and, according to some authorities, the government of 
the province of Egypt. His Roman History ('P6;- 
fidiKd, or 'IcTopla 'P upa'inr/), in twenty-four books, no 
longer exists entire. It embraced the history of the 
Republic to the time of Augustus, in an order which 
Appian himself explains in his preface. He states, 
that in reading the works which treated of Roman 
History, he was wearied with being compelled to trans¬ 
port his attention every moment from one province to 
another, according as the scene of events changed : to 
pass from Carthage to Spain, from Spain to Sicily, 
trom Sicily to Macedonia, and from this latter coun¬ 
try again to Carthage. To remedy this inconve¬ 
nience, inseparable from synchronism, he collects to¬ 
gether in his history the events that have passed in 
each particular country: it is thus that the several 
books of his history arose, in which the facts are stated, 
not in a chronological order, nor by principal epochs, 
but with reference to the country in which they took 
place. This method, which has been sometimes im¬ 
itated in modern times, and especially by Gibbon, pre¬ 
sents certainly some advantages. It labours under 
the serious objection, however, of turning away the at¬ 
tention of the reader, in too great a degree, from the 
main subject of the narrative. It is difficult, there¬ 
fore, to follow, in Appian, the progressive greatness 
and downfall of the state of which he treats. Still, 
however, his work abounds with valuable information 
respecting the history of those times, and on many 
points of ancient geography. Though evidently a 
compilation, it is not the less important, however, on 
this account, since many of the sources whence he de¬ 
rived his information are completely lost to us, while 
for some epochs of Roman history he is the only au¬ 
thority we possess. The details into which he enters, 
on the events of the wars of which he treats, render his 
work a very interesting one for military readers. Set¬ 
ting aside the defective nature of the plan, Appian’s 
history is, in other respects, wanting neither in critical 
views of the subject, nor in discernment. The gravest 
reproach, however, to which he is exposed, is his par¬ 
tiality for the Romans, which makes it necessary to 
read him with caution. His style is formed on that 
of Polybius, but he is inferior to his model.--Of the 
first five books of Appian s History w T e possess merely 
fragments. The first book, which was entitled 'P«- 
paiKtiv (3aci?uny, contained the history of the seven 
Roman kings : the succeeding four were entitled re¬ 
spectively, ’IraTuiaj, ZapviTiKy, K elrucrt, and line- 
Kai ^TjoiixTLKT], that is, the w : ars of the Romans 
in Italy, with the Samnitcs, with the Gauls, and in 
Sicily and the other isles. We have then the 6th, 
7th, and 8th entire. The sixth book, entitled ’ ICypiKij, 
contains the history of the wars in Spain; the seventh, 
A.vviCaXui'p, that of the wars with Hannibal; the 
eighth, AiCwnr'i, Kapxydovua) Kai ISovpidiKr/, the Punic 
v\ ars ; of the ninth, MaKedoviw ;, which contained the 
wars, with Macedonia, w r e have only fragments re¬ 
maining ; the tenth, V?i?i7)vikt/ Kai I ovtKy, containing 
the wars in Greece and Asia Minor, is entirely lost; 
of the eleventh, Zvpiany Kai UapdiKp, the first part’ 
the history of the wars in Syria, alone remains ; the 
second part, the wars with the Parthians, is lost: this 
lacuna, in truth, is supplied in the MSS. ; the part, 
however, thus supplied, was not written by Appian’ 
but is a mere compilation from Plutarch’s Lives of 
Crassus and Antony. Indeed, there is some reason 
to think that a history of the wars with the Parthians 






APP 


APPIUS. 


was never written by Appian. (Consult Schwcighacu- 
ser, ad Hist. Parth. Appxano tern, tnb., p. 921, vol. 3.) 
The twelfth book, M idpadariKy, contains the history 
of the wars with Mithradates. In the nine succeed¬ 
ing books (from the 13th to the 21st inclusive), Appi¬ 
an gave the history of the civil wars, from the time 
of Marius and Sylla to the battle of Actium and the 
conquest of Egypt. Of these nine, the first five re¬ 
main : they contain, in the form of an introduction, 
the history of all the troubles that disturbed the Roman 
republic from the secession to the Mons Sacer down 
to the defeat of Sextus Pompeius. The twenty-sec-1 
ond book, entitled 'E KaTovraeria, contained the his¬ 
tory of the first hundred years of the dominion of the j 
Caesars. From the account given of its contents, ' 
however, by Appian himself ( Prcef'., 15), as well as 
from other sources (Phot., Cod., 57), it appears to have I 
contained what we should call at the present day a I 
statistical account of the Roman empire : the loss of J 
this is much to be regretted. The twenty-third book, 
’lllvpuaj, or, as Photius calls it, A amuy, contains the 
wars of Illyria: the twenty-fourth book, ’A pabtuq, 
treating of the wars of Arabia, is lost. From this list 
it results, that, regarding the eleventh as complete, we 
have ten books remaining of the History of Appian.— 
The best edition of Appian is that of Schweighaeuser, 
Lips., s 1785, 3 vols. 8vo. ( Michaud, in Biogr. Univ., 
vol. 2, p.329, seqq. — Schweigh., ad App. — Scholl, Hist. 
Lit. Gr., vol. 4, p. 173, seqq.) 

Ami forum, a small place on the Appian Way, 
about sixteen miles from the Tres Tabernse. It is 
mentioned by St. Paul (Acts, 28, 15), and is also well 
known as Horace’s second resting-place in his journey 
to Brundisium. Holstenius (Adnot., p. 210) and Cor- 
radini (Vet. Lat., 11, p. 94) agree in fixing the posi¬ 
tion of Forum Appii at Casarillo di Santa Maria. 
But D’Anville, from an exact computation of distances 
and relative positions, inclines to place it at Borgo 
Lungo, near Treponti, on the present road. (Anal. 
Geogr. de Pltalie, p. 186.) It would appear, that this 
opinion of D’Anville’s is the more correct one, espe¬ 
cially as it is clear from Horace ( Serm., 1, 5), that 
from hence it was usual to embark on a canal, which 
ran parallel to the Appian Way, and which was called 
Decennovium, its length being nineteen miles. (Pro¬ 
cop., Rer. Got., 1, 2.) Vestiges of this canal may still 
be traced a little beyond Borgo Lungo. (Cramer's 
Ancient Italy, vol. 2, p. 93.) As regards the ancient 
name, it may be remarked, that the term Forum was 
applied to places in the country where markets were 
held and courts of justice convened. 

AppiSl^e, a city of Latium, in the territory of Setia 
( Corradini, Vet. Lat., 2, 2), taken and burnt by Tar- 
quinius Priscus. It is said to have furnished from its 
spoils the sums necessary for the construction of the 
Circus Maximus. (Dion. Hal., 3, 49. — Liv., 1, 35. 
— Strabo, 231.) According to Corradini (l. c.), the 
name of Valle Apiole is given in old writings to a tract 
of country situated between Sezza and Piperno. (Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 108.) 

Appius Claudius, I. the founder of the Appian 
family at Rome. He was a Sabine by birth, a native 
of Regillum, and his original name is said to have been 
Attus Glausus. In the year of the city 260, the last 
portion of what Niebuhr considers the mythical age 
of Roman History, Attus is said to have migrated to 
Rome, with the members and clients of his house to 
the number of 5000. This powerful accession of 
strength ensured him, of course, a favourable recep¬ 
tion ; he was classed among the patricians, enrolled in 
the senate, and assumed the more Roman name of 
Appius Claudius, His motive for leaving his native 
country is said to have been a wish to live on friendly 
terms with the Romans, with whom his fellow-citi¬ 
zens, notwithstanding his advice, were bent on making 
war. Lands were assigned to him and his followers 


across the Anio, and the nucleus was thus formed of 
what afterward became the Claudian tribe. Appius 
was a man of harsh and stern character, and frequently 
brought, on this account, into collision with the lower 
orders, especially in the controversies between cred¬ 
itors and debtors. His zeal for the cause of the patri¬ 
cians knew no bounds ; and so much, in fact, was he 
dreaded by the plebeians, that when the latter had re¬ 
fused on one occasion to enrol themselves for the war 
against the Veientes, the mere rumour, spread by the 
nobility, that Appius was about to be appointed dic¬ 
tator, induced the multitude immediately to yield. 
(Liv., 2, 16, seqq.) —II. Sabinus, son of the preceding, 
rendered himself still more odious to the people than 
even his father had been, by his inflexible and despotic 
character. Being elected consul A.U.C. 283, he op¬ 
posed with the utmost violence the passage of the 
Publilian law, which ordained that the plebeian magis¬ 
trates should be chosen at the Comitia Tributa, and 
the prudence of his colleague Quinctius alone prevent¬ 
ed bloodshed. Some time after this he was sent 
against the Volsci; but his soldiers, indignant at his 
haughtiness and severity, refused to fight, when drawn 
up for action, and fled to their camp. The next day, 
on his marching back to the Roman territory, his army 
was attacked by the foe, and disgracefully put to flight. 
After punishing his troops by decimation he returned 
to the city ; but the next year he was cited for trial, 
on account of his disgraceful return from the Volsci, 
and more particularly for his violation of the tribuni- 
tian privileges, and his opposition to the Agrarian law. 
After pleading his cause in person, and daunting his op¬ 
ponents so much that they were compelled to adjourn 
the case, he was carried off by a malady before a second 
hearing could be had. (Liv., 2, 56, seqq. — Flor., 1, 
22.)—III. Crassinus, a member of the patrician fam¬ 
ily of the Claudii. Though cruel and arrogant like his 
ancestors, he was hardly appointed consul, B.C. 401, 
when, to gain the favours of the people, he supported 
the law proposed by the tribune Terentillius or Teren- 
tius, which had for its object a change in the form of 
government. Instead of the usual magistrates, de¬ 
cemvirs were appointed to compose a code of laws for 
Rome, and to possess sovereign power for a year. 
(Vid. Decemviri.) He was himself chosen decemvir ; 
and when, after the first year, this office was prolonged 
for a year more, he was the only one who, by his influ¬ 
ence over the chief men among the people, succeed¬ 
ed in being again chosen. He resolved never again 
to give up his power, and copspired with his col¬ 
leagues for the accomplishment of this plan, but the 
affair of Virginia put an end to their odious tyranny. 
(Vid. Virginia.) The decemviral office was abolished, 
and the previous forms of magistracy immediately re¬ 
stored. Appius was accused and thrown into prison, 
where, according to Livy (3, 68), he died by his own 
hand. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, however, leads us 
to suppose that another account was credited by some, 
which made him to have been put to death in prison by 
the tribunes. (Ant. Rom., 11, 49.) As re^hrds the 
imprisonment of Appius, consult the remarks of Nie¬ 
buhr. (Rom. Hist., vol. 2, p. 369, seqq.) —IV. Caecus, 
a distinguished Roman of the Appian family, who re¬ 
ceived his surname from his blindness. When cen¬ 
sor, he constructed that part of the Appian Way which 
extended from Rome to Capua. (Vid. Appia Via.) 
He built also the first aqueduct at Rome. It was 
through his advice that the Potitian family committed 
the charge of the rites of Hercules to public slaves; 
the consequence of this was, as Livy relates (9, 29), 
that the family in question were all cut off within the 
year, and Appius himself was deprived of sight, whence 
his cognomen of Ccecus, ‘‘the Blind.” He was after¬ 
ward consul, and also interrex, and was very success¬ 
ful in his operations against the Samnites. (Liv., 
10, 31.)—V. Herdonius seized the Capitol, with 4000 

167 




APU 


APULEIUS. 


slaves and exiles, A.U.C. 292, and was soon after 
overthrown. (Liv., 3, 15.— Flor., 3, 19.)—The name 
of Appius was common in Rome, particularly to many 
consuls whose history is not marked by any uncom¬ 
mon event. 

Apries, a king of Egypt, of the 26th dynasty, and 
called, in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, Pharaoh Hophra. He 
ascended the throne after his father Psammis, B.C. 
594. Apries distinguished himself by foreign con¬ 
quest ; he took Sidon, conquered the island of Cyprus, 
and enjoyed for a long period great prosperity. After 
a reign, however, of twenty-six years, his subjects re¬ 
volted in favour of Amasis, by whom he was over¬ 
come and put to death. The immediate cause of the 
revolt was an unsuccessful expedition against the peo¬ 
ple of Cyrene, in which many lives were lost; and 
from this circumstance we may readily infer, that the 
extravagant projects of their kings were but little in 
unison with the feelings and wishes of the Egyptian 
people. ( Herodot ., 2, 161, seq. — Compare Heeren, 
Ideen, vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 404.) 

ApsTnes, a Greek rhetorician of Gadara, in Phoe¬ 
nicia, who flourished during the reign of Maximin, 
about 236 B.C. We have from him a treatise on 
Rhetoric, and also a work on the questions discuss¬ 
ed in the schools of the rhetoricians. They are con¬ 
tained in the Rhetorcs Greed of Aldus, Venice, 1508, 
fol. 

Apsynthii, or Absynthii, a people of Thrace, na¬ 
med by Herodotus (6, 34, and 9, 119) as bordering on 
the Thracian Chersonese, and having overpowered the 
Dolonci. ( Vid. Mithradates.) Dionysius Periegetes 
(577) speaks of the river Apsynthus. 

Apsus, a river of Macedonia, falling into the Ionian 
Sea between Dyrrhachium and Apollonia, and dividing 
their respective territories. It has been rendered 
memorable from the military operations of Caesar and 
Pompey on its banks. The present name of the stream 
is Ergent or Beratino. ( Cces., B. Civ.,4:, 13.— Lucan, 
5,461.) 

Aptera, a Cretan city, to the east of Polyrrhenia, 
and eighty stadia from Cydonia. (Strabo, 479.) Its 
name was supposed to be derived from a contest waged 
by the Sirens and Muses in its vicinity, when the for¬ 
mer, being vanquished in the trial of musical excel¬ 
lence, were so overcome with grief that their wings 
dropped from their shoulders. ( Steph. Byzant., s. v. 
’Anrepa.) Strabo informs us that Kisamus was the 
naval station of Aptera. The vestiges of Aptera were 
Observed by Pococke to the south of Kisamos, and they 
are laid down in Lapie’s map between that place and 
Jerami or Cydonia. (Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 3, 
p. 378.) 

Apulei^e leges, proposed by L. Apuleius Saturni¬ 
sms, A.U.C. 653, tribune of the commons ; about di¬ 
viding the public lands among the veteran soldiers, 
settling colonies, punishing crimes against the state, 
and furnishing corn to the poor at 10-12ths of an as a 
modius. (Cic., pro Balb., 21. — Id., de Leg., 2, 6.— 
Flor., 3, 16.) 

Apuleius, a Platonic philosopher of the second 
.century, was a native of Madaura, an African city on 
the borders of Numidia and Gsetulia. His family was 
respectable, both in station and property, his father be¬ 
ing chief magistrate of Madaura. He received the 
early part of his education at Carthage, where he im- 
ibibed the first knowledge of the Platonic philosophy, 
and thence removed in succession to Athens and Rome. 
Apuleius, who inherited a handsome fortune, began 
life with that contempt for riches which in the ancient 
■world in particular so frequently distinguished aspirants 
after learning and philosophy. He liberally rewarded 
all those who had any share in his instruction, and was 
otherwise so generous and profuse, that, on his return 
home after his travels, he found his patrimony exhaust¬ 
ed ; and, being exceedingly desirous of entering into 


the fraternity of Osiris, was obliged to part with his 
clothes to pay the necessary expenses of the inaugural 
ceremonies. He now began to acquire a more pru¬ 
dent estimate of the value of property, and undertook 
the profession of a pleader, in which he obtained con¬ 
siderable fame and emolument. Not only so, he em¬ 
braced also an opportunity which offered of improving 
his condition by marrying Pudentilla, an elderly widow 
of considerable property, to whom his youth and agree¬ 
able qualities had strongly recommended him. This 
union exceedingly exasperated the relations of the lady; 
and ^Emilianus, the brother of her former husband, in¬ 
stituted a suit against Apuleius, before the proconsul 
of Africa, for employing magical arts to obtain her love. 
The apology which he delivered on this occasion is 
still extant, and it is regarded as a performance of con¬ 
siderable merit. It was, of coarse, successful; for it 
was not very difficult to convince a sensible magistrate, 
that a widow of thirteen years’ standing may be induced 
to marry a handsome, eloquent, and accomplished 
young man, without being moved thereto by filters 
or magic. Of the remainder of the life of Apuleius 
nothing is known, except that several cities honoured 
him with statues for his eloquence, and that he wrote 
much both in prose and verse. Like Apollonius of 
Tyana, miracles have been ascribed to him, which have 
been placed in comparison with those of the Gospel. 
The origin of these reports, which did not circulate 
until after his death, is by no means ascertained ; as, 
with the exception of the foregoing foolish accusation, 
he does not appear to have been charged with the prac¬ 
tice of magic in his lifetime ; although it is not im¬ 
probable that his anxiety, while on his travels, to get 
initiated in the secret mysteries and religious cere¬ 
monies of the different places which he visited, might 
have laid a foundation for the opinion entertained alter 
his death of his supernatural acquirements. Be this 
as it may, Marcellinus, in the fifth century, requested 
of St. Augustin to exert his utmost efforts to refute the 
assertions of those who falsely declared “ that Christ 
did nothing more than what was done by other men, 
and who produced their Apollonius, Apuleius, and 
other masters of the magical art, whose miracles they 
assert to have been greater than his.” Perhaps this 
notion has been grounded on a misapprehension of his 
story of “ The Golden Ass,” in which a Milesian fable, 
invented by Lucius of Patrse, and abridged from him 
by Lucian, is enlarged and embellished. This hu¬ 
morous production was by many believed to be a true 
history, and among the rest St. Augustin entertained 
his doubts, while Bishop Warburton deems it a work 
written in opposition to Christianity, and with a view 
to recommend the Pagan religion “ as a cure for all 
vices.” The same learned author also explains the 
beautiful allegory of Cupid and Psyche, which makes 
a long episode in the “ Golden Ass,” upon the same 
principles. Dr. Lardner is of a different opinion; 
and probably Bayle comes nearest the truth, who re¬ 
gards the eccentric production as a mere satire on the 
frauds of the dealers in magieal delusion, and on the 
tricks of priests, and other crimes, both of a violent 
and deceptive character, which are so frequently com¬ 
mitted with impunity. Apuleius, indeed, appears, 
from the greater part of his writings, to have been 
more of a wit than a philosopher, in the ancient ac¬ 
ceptation of the character ; his productions, with the 
exception of his view of the doctrines of Plato, being 
too florid, oratorical, sportive, and sometimes even 
wanton, for the gravity of philosophy. His style is a 
very peculiar one, abounding in far-fetched, tumid, 
and unusual forms of expression, and by no means re¬ 
markable for purity. We must not, however, sup¬ 
pose, as some have done, that the terms thus employed 
by him are of his own coining, since the greater part 
of them are found in the old grammarians, and he does 
not seem, therefore, to have employed any of them 




APU 


AQU 


without sufficient authority. ( Ruhnkcn, Prcef. ad edit. 
Oudcndorp, p. Ill, seq .) In his apology, however, 
which was intended for the atmosphere of the forum, 
he is free from much of this affectation of manner, and 
what Ruhnken calls his “ tumor Africanus ,” and ex¬ 
presses himself, for the most part, with clearness and 
precision. His printed works have gone through up¬ 
ward of forty-three editions. The first, which was mu¬ 
tilated by the Inquisition, is very rare ; it was print¬ 
ed at Rome, by order of Cardinal Bessarion, 1647. 
Among those which succeeded may be mentioned the 
editions of H. Stephens, 8vo, 1585 ; of Elmenhorst, 
8vo, 1621 ; of Scriverius, 12mo, 1624; that in Usum 
Delphini, 2 vols. 4to, 1688. The best edition, how¬ 
ever, is that of Oudendorp, Lugd. Bat., 1786-1823, 
2 vols. 4to, with prefaces by Ruhnken and Boscha. 
The “ Golden Ass,” or, to give its Latin title, Meta- 
morphosedn, site de Asino Aurco, libri xi., has been 
translated into almost all the modern European lan¬ 
guages ; and of the episode of Psyche there have 
been many separate editions and translations. Mol- 
ler published a dissertation on the life and writings 
of Apuleius, Altdorff, 8vo, 1681. A list of all his 
productions is given in the Biogr. Univ ., vol. 2, p. 
343, seqq. —Compare Bd.hr, Gesch. Rom. Lit., vol. 1, 
p. 582. 

Apulia, a country of Magna Graecia, lying along 
the coast of the Hadriatic. We are led to infer, from 
Strabo’s account of the ancient coast of Italy, that the 
name of Apulia was originally applied to a small tract 
of country situate immediately to the south of the Fren- 
tani. (Strabo, 283.) But whatever may have been 
the narrow confines of the portion of the country oc¬ 
cupied by the Apuli, properly so called, we know that 
in the reign of Augustus the term Apulia was em¬ 
ployed in a far more extended sense, including indeed 
the territories of several people much more celebrated 
in history than the obscure tribe above mentioned, but 
who sunk in proportion as this common name was 
brought into general use. It may be remarked, indeed, 
as a singular circumstance, that whereas, under the 
Romans, all former appellations peculiar to the different 
people who inhabit this part of the peninsula were lost in 
that of Apulia, the Greeks, to whom this name was un¬ 
known, should have given the same extension to that 
of Iapygia, with which the Romans, on the other hand, 
were entirely unacquainted. The term Iapygia appears 
to have been confined at first to that peninsula which 
closes the Gulf of Tarentum to the southeast, and to 
which the name ofMessapia was likewise sometimes ap¬ 
plied ; but we find, at a later period, that Polybius gives 
to Iapygia the same extensions which the Roman histo¬ 
rians and geographers assign to Apulia. The bounda¬ 
ries under which Apulia, in its greatest extent, seems 
to have been comprehended, were as follows : to the 
north this province was separated from the Ager Fren- 
tanus by the River Tifernus ; to the west it may be 
conceived as divided from Samnium by a line drawn 
from that river to the Aufidus, and the chain of Mount 
Vultur; to the south, and on the side of Lucania, it 
was bordered by the river Bradanus. ( Cluver., Ital. 
Ant., 2, p. 1219.) Within these limits then we must 
place, with Polybius, Strabo, and the Latin geogra¬ 
phers, the several portions of country occupied by the 
Daunii, Peucetii, and Messapii. In describing the 
boundaries of Apulia Proper, we must follow the au¬ 
thority of Strabo, as he is the only writer who has 
noticed the existence of a district under this specific 
name. He evidently conceives it to have been con¬ 
tiguous to the Ager Frentanus on the one side, and to 
Daunia on the other. (Strabo, 283.) Pliny likewise 
seems to confirm this arrangement, when he tells us 
(3, 11) that the Apulian Dauni extended from the 
river Tifernus to the Cerbalus; though it must be 
observed, that Strabo appears to limit these Apuli to 
the south by the Lacus Urianus, now Lago Varano. 

y 


At this point, therefore, we may fix the confines of 
the Apuli and Dauni, and trace those of the latter 
and the Peucetii by a line drawn from the mouth of 
the Aufidus to Silvium, now Garagnone, in the Apen¬ 
nines, so as to include Cannae and Canusium within 
the Daunian territory.—Apulia was famous for the 
excellence of its wool, and particularly the district of 
Luceria. (Strabo, 284.— Hor., Od., 3, 15.— Plin., 3, 
11.— Ptol., p. 6.)—The old Latin traditions speak of 
Daunus, a king of the Apulians, who was expelled 
from Illyria, and retired to this part of Italy. Accord¬ 
ing to the tradition which conducts the wandering he¬ 
roes of the Trojan war to Italy, Diomede settled in 
Apulia, was supported by Daunus in a war with the 
Messapians, whom he subdued, and was afterward 
treacherously killed by his ally, who desired to mo¬ 
nopolize the fruits of the victory. Roman history 
informs us of no other Apulian kings, but mentions 
Arpi, Luceria, and Arpinum, as important cities. The 
Aufidus, a river of Apulia, has been celebrated by 
Horace, who was born at Venusia, a city in this terri¬ 
tory. The second Punic war was carried on for a con¬ 
siderable period in Apulia. Puglia, the modern name, 
is only a melancholy relic of the ancient splendour which 
poets and historians have celebrated. It now supports 
more sheep than men. As regards the early settle¬ 
ment of Apulia, compare Niebuhr, Rom. Hist., vol. 1, 
p. 122, seqq., Cambridge transl .— Wachsmuth's Rom. 
Hist., § 61.— Micali, Storia degli Antichi Popoli Ital- 
iani, vol. 1, p. 339.— Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol. 2, 
p. 264, seqq. 

Aqua, a term joined to a large number of proper 
names, and serving to indicate the sources of rivers, 
small streams, water-courses, aqueducts, &c. The 
following are most worthy of mention :—I. Antiqua, 
near the modem village of Altwasser in Silesia. It 
was famed for its chalybeate properties.—II. Belletta, 
now Aiguebellette, or Aiguebelle, in Savoy, on the 
Arco. —III. Claudia, an aqueduct built by the Emper¬ 
or Claudius, A.U.C. 880, and conveying water from the 
Anio to Rome. — IV. Crabra, a small river running 
from Tusculum to Rome, and emptying into the Tiber, 
to the east of the Palatine Hill.—V. Marcia, an aque¬ 
duct commenced by the praetor Marcus Titius, about 
608 A.U.C., and finished by Marcius Rex in 610. It 
passed near Tibur, and through the country of the Pe- 
ligni and Marsi, and supplied Rome with its best water. 
(Plin., 31, 3.)—VI. Tepula, springs near Tusculum, 
ten miles southeast of Rome.. Their water w r as con¬ 
veyed by an aqueduct to the Capitoline Hill, about 
627 A.U.C., and in 719 was united with the Aqua Ju¬ 
lia, a small river near the modern Marino , by Agrippa. 
—-The plural form Aqua, is also frequently joined to 
proper names, to indicate places in the neighbourhood 
of warm springs, &c. Thus we have, I. Aqua? Bade- 
nae, a city in Germany, now Baden, on the Rhine.—II. 
Pannonicse, a city in Pannonia Superior, now Baden 
in Austria, on the river Schwochat, three miles south¬ 
east of Vienna.—III. Allobrogum, a city of the Allo- 
broges in Gallia Narbonensis, now Aix, in the depart¬ 
ment of Mont Blanc, two miles and a half to the north 
of Chambery. —IV. Bilbitanorum, a city of Hispania 
Tarraconensis, to the west of Bilbilis. It is now Al- 
hama, on the Xalon, in Aragon. — V. Calentes, a 
town of the Arverni in Gaul, now Chaudes Aigues .— 
VI. Calidae, a city of the Belgae, in Britain, now Bath 
in Somersetshire.—VII. Flavise, a town in Hispania 
Tarraconensis, supposed to have been situate among 
the Callai’ci Bracarii. It is now the Portuguese Villa 
Chiaves, twelve miles from Braganza. —VIII. Mat- 
tiacae, a town of the Mattiaci in Germany, now Wies¬ 
baden, the chief city of the Duchy of Nassau.—IX. 
Sextiee, a city of the Salyes, in Gallia Narbonensis, to 
the north of Massilia, founded by the consul Sextius 
Calvinius, about A.U.C. 630. It was also called Co- 
lonia Julia, after Julius Caesar, and Colonia Julia Au- 

169 








AQU 


AQU 


gusta, after Augustus. It is now Aix, eight miles 
southeast of Avignon. In its vicinity Marius defeat¬ 
ed the Ambrones and the Teutones. 

Aqu^eductus, an aqueduct. Mention of these is 
frequently made in the Roman writers. Some of them 
brought water to the capital from more than the dis¬ 
tance of sixty miles, through rocks and mountains, and 
over valleys, supported on arches, in some places above 
109 feet high, one row being placed above another. 
The care of them originally belonged to the censors and 
jediles. Afterward certain officers were appointed for 
that purpose by the emperors, called curatorcs aqua- 
rum. , with 720 men paid by the public, to keep them in 
repair. These persons were divided into two bodies ; 
the one called Familia Publica, first instituted by Agrip- 
pa, under Augustus, consisting of 260 men ; the other 
Familia Ccesaris, of 460, instituted by the Emperor 
Claudius. The slaves employed in taking care of the 
waters were called Aquarii. The construction of 
aqueducts is treated of by Vitruvius and Pliny, and 
their description is curious, not only as giving the meth¬ 
ods used by the ancients in those stupendous works, 
but as indicating a knowledge of some hydrodynami- 
cal laws, the discovery of which is usually assigned to 
a much later period. Frontinus, also, a Roman au¬ 
thor, who had the superintendence of the aqueducts in 
the reign of Nerva, has left a treatise on these erections. 
From his enumeration, there were nine aqueducts which 
brought water to Rome in his time. The water of 
these varied in its qualities, that of some being pre¬ 
ferred for drinking, of others for bathing, for irrigating 
the gardens, or cleansing the sewers. The best drink¬ 
ing-water they brought into Rome was the Aqua Mar¬ 
cia, being most highly prized, according to Pliny, for 
its coldness and salubrity. The aqueduct at Nemau- 
sus, the modern Nismes, is probably one of the earliest 
constructed by the Romans out of Italy. Its origin is 
attributed to Agrippa. Aqueducts, however, became 
eventually common throughout the whole Roman em¬ 
pire, and many stupendous remains still exist to attest 
their former magnificence. (Consult Stuart's Diction¬ 
ary of Architecture, vol. 1 , s. v.) 

Aquila, a native of Sinope in Asia Minor. He first 
applied himself to the study of mathematics and archi¬ 
tecture, and the Emperor Hadrian, according to 
Saint Epiphanius, made him a superintendent of pub¬ 
lic buildings, and gave him in charge the restoration 
and enlargement of Jerusalem, under its new name of 
JEha Capitolina. This, commission afforded him an 
opportunity of becoming acquainted with Christianity, 
which he accordingly embraced, and received the rite 
of baptism. Becoming subsequently addicted, how¬ 
ever, to judicial astrology, he was excommunicated, 
and then attached himself to Judaism. Aquila is ren¬ 
dered famous by his Greek version of the Old Testa¬ 
ment, which he published A.D. 138. It is the first 
that was made after the Septuagint translation, and 
appears to have been executed with great care, not¬ 
withstanding what Buxtorf urges against it, who de¬ 
nies to its author, on very feeble grounds, a thorough 
acquaintance with the Hebrew tongue. Aquila’s meth¬ 
od was to translate word for word, and to express, as 
far as this could conveniently be done, even the ety¬ 
mological meaning of terms. Although his version 
was undertaken with the view of opposing and super¬ 
seding that of the Septuagint, of which last the church¬ 
es made use after the example of the apostles, still 
the ancient fathers found it in general so exact, that 
they often, in preference, drew their texts from it. St. 
Jerome, who had at first censured it, afterward praised 
its exactness. The Hellenistic Jews preferred it also 
for the use of their synagogues. Some fragments of 
it are preserved in the Hexapla of Origen. Aquila 
joined to a second edition of his version some Jew¬ 
ish traditions which he had obtained from the Rabbi 
Akiba, his preceptor. This edition was still more fa- 
170 


vourably received by the Hellenistic Jews than the pre- 
vious one had been. The Emperor Justinian, however, 
interdicted the reading of it, because it only made the 
Jews more stubborn in their error. ( Biogr. Univ., vol. 
2, p. 345, seq.) 

Aquileia, I. a celebrated city of Italy, in the terri¬ 
tory of Venetia, between the Alsa and Natiso, and 
about seven miles from the sea. It appears to have 
been first founded by some Transalpine Gauls about 
187 B.C.; but being soon after taken possession of by 
the Romans, it was made a Latin colony five years af¬ 
ter its establishment. ( Liv., 39, 22; 45, 54.— Id., 40, 
54.) The earliest author that mentions Aquileia is 
Polybius, who, in a fragment preserved by Strabo 
(208), speaks of it as having some valuable gold-mines 
in its neighbourhood. Eustathius, in his commentary 
on Dionys. Perieg., asserts that its name was derived 
from the Latin word Aquila, as denoting the legionary 
standard of the Romans, who had been encamped here. 
Aquileia soon became the bulwark of Italy on its north¬ 
eastern frontier. It was already an important military 
post in the time of Caesar (B. Civ., 1, 2), and contin¬ 
ued to increase in prosperity and consequence till the 
fall of the Roman empire. In Strabo’s time it had be¬ 
come the great emporium of all the trade of Italy with 
the nations of Illyria and Pannonia ; these were fur¬ 
nished with wine, oil, and salt provisions, in exchange 
for slaves, cattle, and hides. The passage of Mount 
Ocra, the lowest point of the Julian or Carnic Alps, 
was easy for land-carriage ; and at Nauportus on the 
other side, a navigable stream conveyed vessels to the 
Saave, and from that river into the Danube. ( Strabo, 
214. — Id., 207. — Mela, 2, 4, — Sueton., Aug., 20.— 
Id., Tib., 7. — Id., Vesp., 6.— Tac., Hist., 2, 46, and 
85, &c.) Ausonius assigns to Aquileia the ninth place 
among the great cities of the empire. It withstood 
successfully a severe siege against Maximinus, who, 
being unable to take the place, was slain by his own 
soldiers. (Herodian , 8.) But it could not hold out 
against the fury of Attila; i's resistance served only 
to increase the savage ferocity of the conqueror, who 
caused it to be sacked and razed to the ground. ( Cas- 
siodor., Chron. — Procop., Vand. Rer., 1. — Freculf., 
Chron.) The port of Aquileia was situate at the mouth 
of the Natiso ( Plin., 3, 18), and is now called Porto 
di Grado. The modern Aquileia stands near the ruins 
of the ancient city. ( Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol. 1, 
p. 128.)—II. A town of Etruria, marked in the ancient 
Itineraries as the first stage from Florentia or Florence. 
It is supposed to have been in the immediate vicinity 
of Incisa. ( Cluv., Ital. Ant., 1, 570.— Cramer's An¬ 
cient Italy, vol. 1, p. 214.) 

Aquilius, I. Nepos, Manius, a Roman consul, and 
colleague of Marius, who was intrusted with the war 
against the slaves in Sicily. This war was continued 
during the succeeding year, when Aquilius, as procon¬ 
sul, still held the command. In a conflict with the 
foe, the two commanders, it is said, agreed to decide 
the affair by single combat. Aquilius, being a man of 
great strength, laid his antagonist dead at his feet by a 
single blow ; and the Romans thereupon rushing in, 
gained the victory after a severe conflict. Aquilius was 
honoured with an ovation. After this he was accused 
of extortion, but acquitted on account of his successful 
operations in Sicily. Being subsequently sent into Asia 
against Mithradates, he was defeated by that monarch 
in Bithynia, and, having been afterward treacherously 
delivered into his hands, was put to death with every 
circumstance of ignominy. Mithradates is said to have 
even poured melted gold down his throat in token of, and 
as a punishment for, his cupidity. (Liv., Epit., 'll. 
— Appian, Bell. Mithrad., 26. — Cic., Agrar., 2, 30.) 
—II. Gallus, a Roman lawyer, who flourished about 
65 B.C. He was a pupil of Scaevola’s, and was inti¬ 
mate with Cicero, having been a colleague of his in 
the qusestorship. Cicero represents him as a man of 



A R A 


ARABIA. 


acuteness, and of ready talent in replying to an oppo¬ 
nent. He wrote a treatise, “ de dolo malo which 
Cicero eulogizes very highly; another, “ de postumorum 
institutionsff a third, “ de stipulations,” &c. ( Cic., 

Brut., 42. — Id., de Off., 3, 14, &c.)—III. Sabinus, a 
Roman lawyer, who flourished in the third century of 
our era. His wisdom and acquirements gained for him 
the appellation of Cato. He was elected consul A.U.C. 
214, and again in 216. According to some, he was 
the father or brother of Aquilia Severa, the vestal vir¬ 
gin whom Heliogabalus compelled to become his wife. 
None of his works have reached us. ( Lampnd., Vit. 
Heliogab. — Cassiod., Chron. — Rutil., in Vit. Juris- 
cons.j 

Aquiloxia, I. a city of Samnium, on the Volscian 
frontier, about 20 miles from Cominium, and the same 
distance from Bovianum. Its site is now occupied by 
the little town of Agnonc, near the source of the Trig- 
no. ( Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 229.) —II. An¬ 
other city of Samnium, in the territory of the Hirpini, 
nearly midway between "Beneventum and Yenusia. 
Its site corresponds to that of the modem Lacedogna. 
{Phn., 3, 11.— Biol , p. 67.) 

AquInum, I. a town of Cisalpine Gaul, south ofMu- 
tina, or Modena. {Plin., 3, 15.) It is placed by CIu- 
verius at the modem Acquario. —II. A city of Latium, 
on the Latin Way, a little beyond the place where the 
road crosses the Liris and Melfis. It is now Aquino. 
Both Strabo (237) and Silius Italius (8, 404) describe 
it as a large city. Aquinum was the birthplace of Ju¬ 
venal, as that poet himself informs us. {Sat., 3, 318.) 
Here also was born the Emperor Pescennius Niger, 
and in modern times the celebrated Thomas Aquinas. 
The place was famous for its purple dye. {Horat., 
Ep., 10, 26.) 

Aquitania, a country of Gaul between the Garum- 
na or Garonne, and the Pyrenees. As it was less than 
either of the other two divisions of Gaul, Augustus ex¬ 
tended it to the Ligeris or Loire. {Vid. Gallia.) The 
Aquitani, according to Strabo (190), differed from the 
Gallic race both in physical constitution and in lan¬ 
guage. They resembled, he tells us, the Iberians ra¬ 
ther than the Gauls. According to Csesar, the Aqui¬ 
tani, besides a peculiar idiom of their own, had also 
peculiar institutions. Now, historical facts inform us 
that these institutions bore, for the most part, the Ibe¬ 
rian character ; that the national attire was Iberian ; 
that there were the strongest ties of amity and alliance 
between the Aquitanic and Iberian tribes. We find, 
then, an accordance between historical proofs and those 
deduced from an examination of languages, to warrant 
the belief that the Aquitani were of Iberian extraction. 
(Consult Thierry, Hist, des Gaul., vol. 1, p. xxiii., In- 
trod. — Id., vol. 2, p. 11, seqq.) 

x\ra Lugdunexsis, an altar erected to Augustus, 
at the confluence of the Arar and Rhone, near the city 
of Lugdunum or Lyons, by sixty Gallic communities. 
It was reared after the tumult excited in Gaul by the 
proclaiming of the census had been quelled by Drusus. 
{Liv., Epit., 137. —■ Strab., 192.) The spot became 
famous under Caligula for the literary contests which 
took place there. A crowd of orators and poets flock¬ 
ed to the scene from the remotest quarters of the em¬ 
pire, notwithstanding the severity of the regulations 
which are said to have prevailed here. The vanquish¬ 
ed were compelled to bestow rewards upon the victors, 
and compose pieces in their praise ; while those whose 
productions showed least talent were obliged to efface 
their own writings with a sponge or with the tongue, 
or else, as an alternative, to submit to be scourged, and 
then cast into the neighbouring stream. {Sucton., Ca- 
lig., 20.— Dio Cass., 54, 32.— Juv., Sat., 1, 44.) The 
spot was called by the writers of the middle ages At- 
tanacum, and is now the point of Annai. {Lemaire, 
ad Juv., 1. c.) 

Arabia, a large country of Asia, forming a peninsu¬ 


la between the Arabian and Persian Gulfs. Its length, 
from the Cape of Babelmandcb to the extreme angle 
on the Euphrates, is about 1800 British miles, and its 
mean breadth 800. The Arabians recognise for their 
ancestors Joktan, or Khatan, the son of Eber, and Ish- 
mael, the son of Abraham. Arabia was called by the 
inhabitants of Palestine, the Eastern, and by the Baby¬ 
lonians, the Western, country. Hence the Arabians 
were sometimes denominated Orientals, and some¬ 
times the people of the West. (2 Chron., 9, 14.— 
Jer., 3, 2.) The derivation, moreover, commonly as¬ 
signed to the term Arab is in accordance with this lat¬ 
ter idea, making it signify an inhabitant of the West, as 
Arabia lay to the west of Upper Asia. (Consult, how¬ 
ever, Wahl, Vorder und Mittcl Asien, vol. 1, p. 327, 
in not., where other explanations are given.) — The 
Arabs anciently denominated themselves, and do tu 
this day, by either of these names. Megasthenes and 
Ptolemy divided the country into the Happy, Petraea, 
and the Deserted ; an arrangement unknown, however, 
to the inhabitants of the east. Arabia Felix, or the 
Happy, derived this appellation from its rich produce. 
This tract is a peninsula, which is so bordered by the 
Red Sea (more properly called the Arabian Gulf), by 
the Mare Erythrseum, and by the Persian Gulf, that it 
would be perfectly surrounded, were a line drawn from 
the inland extremity of the Persian Gulf to port Ailan 
or ./Elan, situate near the eastern extremity of the Red 
Sea. Arabia Petrsea was so called, either from its 
stony character {nerpa, “ a rock” or “ stone”), or, 
what is far more probable, from an ancient fortified em¬ 
porium, called Petra. It was bounded on the east 
by Arabia Deserta, on the west by Egypt and the Med¬ 
iterranean, on the south by the Red Sea, which here 
divides and runs north in two branches, and on the 
north by Palestine. Iduinaea, otherwise called Seir, 
is the northeastern part of Arabia Petraea. Arabia 
Deserta is that tract which has Arabia Felix on the 
south, Babylonia and the Euphrates on the east, the 
Euphrates and Syria on the north, and Gilead on the 
west. Instead, however, of the division just given, 
the more natural one is that which distinguishes the 
coast, covered with aloes, manna, myrrh, frankincense, 
indigo, nutmegs, and especially coffee, from the inte¬ 
rior, consisting of a desert of moving sand, with thorns 
and saline herbs. The climate is very various. Re¬ 
gions where it rains half the year alternate with others 
where dew supplies the place of rain for the whole sea¬ 
son. The greatest cold prevails on high places, and 
the most oppressive heat in the plains. Damp winds 
succeed to the dry simoom, which is as dangerous to 
life as the harmattan and khamseen in Africa. The 
soil consists of sandy deserts and the most fruitful 
fields. Wheat, millet, rice, kitchen vegetables, cof¬ 
fee (which grows on trees in Arabia, its home, and on 
bushes in America, the plants being kept low for the 
sake of gathering their fruit more easily), manna, su¬ 
gar-cane, cotton, tropical fruits, senna-leaves, gums, 
aloes, myrrh, tobacco, indigo, odorous woods, balsam, 
&c., are the rich products of Arabia. There are also 
precious stones, iron, and other metals (gold excepted, 
which the ancients, however, seem to have found pure 
in rivers and in the earth). The animals are mules, 
asses, camels, buffaloes, horned cattle, goats, noble 
horses, lions, hyaenas, antelopes, foxes, apes, jerboas; 
birds of all sorts, pelicans, ostriches, &c. ; esculent 
locusts, scorpions, &c.—The Arabians are still, as in 
the most ancient times, Nomades, of patriarchal sim¬ 
plicity. The older Arabian historians understand by 
Arabia only Yemen (Arabia Felix) Hcdsjaz (the 
rocky) they regard as belonging partly to Egypt, part¬ 
ly to Syria; and the rest of the country they call the 
Syrian Desert. The princes {tobbai) of this land were 
anciently entirely of the race of Khatan, to which 
belonged the family of the Homeyrites, who ruled 
over Yemen two thousand years. The Arabians of 

171 





ARA 


ARA 


Yemen and a part of the desert of Arabia lived in 
cities, and practised agriculture : they had commerce 
also with the East Indies, Persia, Syria, and Abys¬ 
sinia. The rest of the population then, as now, led a 
wandering life in the deserts.—The religion of the Ara¬ 
bians, in the time of their ignorance (as they call the 
period before Mohammed), was, in general, adoration 
of the heavenly bodies, or Sabaism ; varying much, 
however, in the different tribes, each of whom select¬ 
ed a different constellation as the highest object of 
worship.—For a thousand years the Arabians manful¬ 
ly defended the freedom, faith, and manners of their 
fathers against all the attacks of the Eastern conquer¬ 
ors, protected by deserts and seas, as well as by their 
own arms. Neither the Babylonian and Assyrian, nor 
the Egyptian and Persian kings, could bring them un¬ 
der their yoke. At last they were overcome by Alex¬ 
ander the Great; but immediately after his death, 
they took advantage of the disunion of his generals and 
successors to recover their independence. At this 
period the northern provinces of the country were bold 
enough to extend their dominion beyond the limits of 
Arabia. The Arabian Nomades, especially in winter, 
made deep inroads into the fertile Irak or Chaldaea. 
They finally conquered a portion of it, which is hence 
still called Irak Araby. Thence the tribe of Hareth 
advanced into Syria, and settled in the country of Gas- 
san, whence they received the appellation of Gassan- 
ides. Three centuries after Alexander, the Romans 
approached these limits. The divided Arabians could 
not resist the Roman arms everywhere successfully ; 
their country, however, was not completely reduced to 
a province ; the northern princes, at least, maintain¬ 
ing a virtual independence of the emperors. The old 
Homeyrites in Yemen, against whom an unsuccessful 
war was carried on in the time of Augustus, preserved 
their liberty. Their chief city, Saba, was destroyed 
by a flood. With the weakness of the Roman gov¬ 
ernment, the struggle for absolute independence in¬ 
creased, which a union of all the Arabian tribes would 
have easily gained ; but, weakened and scattered as 
they were, they spent several centuries in this contest, 
during which the mountainous country of the interior 
(Nedschid) became the theatre of those chivalrous 
deeds so often sung by Arabian poets, till a man of 
extraordinary energy united them by communicating 
to them his own ardour, and union was followed by 
augmented force.—Christianity early found many ad¬ 
herents here, and there were even several bishops who 
acknowledged as their metropolis Bosro in Palestine, 
on the borders of Arabia. Yet the original worship 
of the stars could not be entirely abolished. The for¬ 
mer opposition of the Arabians to the despotism of 
Rome drew to them a multitude of heretics, who had 
been persecuted in the orthodox empire of the East, 
especially the Monophysites and the Nestorians, who 
were scattered through all the East; and the religious 
enthusiasm of those exiles rekindled the flame of op¬ 
position. The Jews also, after the destruction of Je¬ 
rusalem, became very numerous in this country, and 
made many proselytes, particularly in Yemen. The 
last king of the Homeyrites (Hamjarites) was of the 
Jewish faith, and his persecutions of the Christians, 
A.D. 502, involved him in a war with the King of ./Ethi- 
opia, which cost him his life and his throne. To the 
indifference excited by so great a variety of sects is to 
be referred the quick success of Mohammed in es¬ 
tablishing a new religion. He raised the Arabians to 
importance in the history of the world, and with him 
begins a new epoch in the history of this people. 

( Iahn's Bibl. Archaol. , p. 8, Vpham's transl. — Ency- 
clop. Americ,, vol. 1, p. 316, scqq.) 

Arabicus sinus, that part or branch of the Mare 
Erythrseum which interposes itself between Egypt and 
Arabia. It is now called the Red Sea. The meaning 
of this modern appellation must be looked for not in 
172 


any colour of its waters or sands, but in the name of 
Idumea (or the land of Edom), whose coasts this sea 
touches on the north. Edom, in the Hebrew tongue, 
signifies red, and was the name given to Esau for sell¬ 
ing his birthright for a mess of red pottage. This 
country, which his posterity possessed, was called after 
his name, and so was the sea which adjoined it. The 
Greeks, however, not understanding the reason of the 
appellation, translated what is in Hebrew the Sea of 
Edom, by cpvdpu Aukaoaa. Thence comes the Latin 
form Mare rubrum, and the modern name Red Sea. 
It is otherwise called Golfo di Mecca. (Compare 
Well's Sacred Gcogr., No. 160.— Calviet's Diet., vol. 
5, p. 63, Eng. transl. — Bahr, ad Ctes., p. 359.) The 
shores of this gulf consist principally of limestone 
rocks. The bottom is covered with a carpet of green¬ 
ish coral, and, in calm weather, when it comes into 
view, is not unlike a series of verdant submarine for¬ 
ests and meadows. The coral, however, is inferior in 
quality to that of the Mediterranean. ( Phn., 32, 2.) 
The beautiful fuci attracted the admiration of antiquity 
( Artcmid ., ap. Strab., 766), and procured for the Arabi¬ 
an Gulf in Hebrew the name of Bahr Sooph, i. e., “ the 
sea of algce." ( Malte-Brun , 2, 84, Brussels cd.) 

Arabius, Arabis, or Arbis, a river of Gedrosia, 
near its eastern boundary, running into the Indian 
Ocean, now the Araba or 11-Mend. (Arrian , 6, 21.) 

Aracca and Arecca, a city of Susiana, east of the 
Tigris, now Wasit. It has attracted the attention of 
the learned by reason of the affinity of its name with 
that of Ercch, mentioned in the Old Testament among 
the cities constructed by Nimrod. ( Ammian. Mar¬ 
cell., 23, 21. — Bochart, Gcogr. Sacr., col. 236.— Mi- 
chaelis, Spicileg., vol. 1, p. 220, seqq.) 

Arachn^eus Mons, a chain of mountains in Argolis, 
running along the upper coast in a southeastern direc¬ 
tion. In the time of Inachus it was called Sapyselaton. 
(Pausan ., 2, 25. — Compare Siebelis, ad Ice.) Hesy- 
chius reports that it also bore the name of Hysselinus 
( s. v. ’TgocXivov .—Compare Steph. Byz., s. v. ’Apa%- 
valov). Mount Arachnseus is mentioned by vEschylus 
{Agam., 299) as the last station of the telegraphic fire 
by which the news of the capture of Troy was trans¬ 
mitted to Mycense. The modern name is Sophico, 
according to the latest maps. Part of this chain, com¬ 
municating with the mountains ofNemea and Phlius, 
bore the name of Celossa. ( Strabo, 382. — Cramer's 
Ancient Greece, vol. 3, p. 282.) 

Arachne, a Mseonian maiden, who was so proud of 
her skill in weaving and embroidering, in which arts 
Minerva had instructed her, that she ventured to deny 
her obligations to the goddess, and even challenged 
her to a trial of skill. Minerva, assuming the form of 
an old woman, warned her to desist from her boasting ; 
but, when she found that her admonitions were vain, 
she resumed her proper form, and accepted the chal¬ 
lenge. The skill of Arachne was such, and the subjects 
she chose (the love-transformations of the gods) were 
so offensive to Minerva, that she struck her several 
times in the forehead with the shuttle. The high- 
spirited maiden, unable to endure this affront, hung 
herself, and the goddess, relenting, changed her into a 
spider (dpdxvr/).- —The name of this insect, most prob¬ 
ably, gave rise to this fable, though the story itselfwould 
seem to be of Oriental origin, the art of embroidering 
having come into Western Asia from Babylonia and 
the countries adjacent. {Ovid, 6, 1, seqq. — Keight- 
ley's Mythology, p. 122. — Creuzcr, Symbohk, vol. 2, 
p. 749.) 

Arachosia, a province of the Persian empire, lying 
to the west of the river Indus, and north of Gedrosia. 
The Greek writers usually call the inhabitants Ara- 
choti {'Apaxurol ), sometimes Arachotce (’ Apaxtirai , 
Dion., Pcricg., 1096). Arachosia was of consider¬ 
able importance as a frontier province, and had al¬ 
ways, therefore, a satrap or governor of its own, both 



ARJE 


ARATUS. 


before and after the time of Alexander. Through this 
country, moreover, lay the nearest and safest route to 
India. Syburtius, the Greek governor after Alexan¬ 
der’s death, cultivated friendly relations with the Indian 
monarch Sandrocottus, and Megasthenes was often 
sent by him to the court of the latter. ( Arrian , 5, 6.) 
The ancient Arachosia answers to the modern Aro- 
khage. ( Mannert , 5, pt. 2, p. 76.) 

Arachotje and Arachoti, the inhabitants of Ara¬ 
chosia. ( Vid . Arachosia.) They are styled A ivox~ 
A aivoi, from their linen attire. ( Dionys. Perieg., 
1096.—Compare Eustath., ad loc. — Arrian , 3, 23.) 

ArachStus, I. or Arachosia, the chief city of Ara¬ 
chosia, called also Cophe (K cxpij), and said to have 
been built by Semiramis. It did not lie, as some re¬ 
mark, on the river Arachotus, but a considerable dis¬ 
tance east of it, on a road leading in a northern direction 
towards the modern Candahar. ( Mannert , 5, pt. 2, p. 
80.)—II. A river of Arachosia, rising in the hills 
northeast of the modern Gazni, and losing itself in a 
marsh about four miles to the south of Candahar. Its 
modern name, according to Wahl, is Naodah. D’An- 
ville, however, makes it Kare. ( Isid ., Charac. ap. 
Geogr. Gr. Min., vol. 2, p. 8.— Plin., 6, 23.) 

Arachthus, Arjethus, or Arethon, a river of Epi¬ 
rus, flowing from that part of the chain of Pindus which 
belonged to the ancient Tymphsei, and running by 
Ambracia into the Ambracian Gulf. Lycophron ( v. 
409), who calls it Arsethus ('A paidog), speaks of it as 
the boundary of Greece on this side. Ambracia, 
therefore, being always accounted a city of Greece 
Proper, must have stood on its left bank. We cannot, 
therefore, admit, with Pouqueville, that this city occu¬ 
pied the site of Rcgous, since that ruined fortress is 
situated on the right bank of the Luro river, which 
that writer considers to be the Arachthus. That the 
Arachthus is a considerable stream, may be inferred 
from Livy, who relates (43, 21) that Perseus, king of 
Macedon, was detained on its banks by high floods, on 
his way to Acarnania. ( Cramer's Ancient Greece, 
vol. 1, p. 151, seqq.) 

Araoynthus, I. a chain of mountains in HStolia, 
running in a southeasterly direction from the Acheloiis 
to the Evenus. Its present name is Mount Zigos. 
Pliny (4, 1) and other writers, with less propriety, as¬ 
cribe Aracynthus to Acarnania.—II. A mountain of 
Bceotia, sacred to Minerva, whence the goddess re¬ 
ceived the appellation of Aracynthia. ( Rhian., ap 
Steph. Byz., s. v. ’A puxvvdoq.) It was situate not far 
from Thebes. 

Aradus, I. a city on an island of the same name, 
on the coast of Phoenicia. According to Strabo, it 
was founded by a band of exiles from Sidon. The 
island on which it stood was a mere rock, not quite 
seven stadia in circumference ; and hence, as the pop¬ 
ulation of the city increased, they were compelled to 
erect edifices many stories in height, to make amends for 
the limited area of the place. The position of Aradus 
was well adapted for commerce. The modern name 
■of the island is Ruad, according to Pococke (vol. 2, p. 
294 ), and traces still remain of the cisterns anciently 
cut in the rock to hold the rain-water for the use of 
4 he inhabitants. ( Mannert , Geogr., vol 6, pt. 1, p. 
398, seqq.)-*-ll. An island, according to some, on the 
(Coast of Arabia, in the Persian Gulf. It is supposed 
to mark, in part, the original settlements of the Phoe¬ 
nicians previous to their establishing themselves on 
*he coast of the Mediterranean. Much doubt exists, 
however, with regard to the accuracy of this statement; 
and Mannert, among others, thinks that the name Ara¬ 
dus, as designating an island in this quarter, is indebt¬ 
ed for its existence to the love of theory alone. 

( Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 1, p. 154. — Compare, 
however, Michaelis, Spicileg vol. 1, p. 166, seqq., and 
vid. Phoenicia.) 

Ar,e. Vid. ^Egimurus. * 


Ar^e Phil^enorum. Vid. Philseni. 

Arar, a very slow, smooth-running river of Gaul. 
It rises near Mons Vogesus, and, after a southern 
course, falls into the Rhodanus at Lugdunum. ( Cces., 
B. G., 1, 12.— Plin., 3, 4.) Ammianus Marcellinus, 
who flourished towards the close of the fourth century 
of our era, first calls the Arar by the name of Saucona, 
speaking of this latter as a common appellation on the 
part of the inhabitants in that quarter, “ Ararim, quern 
Sauconam appellant ” (15, 11). Gregory of Tours, at 
a later period, styles it Saugona; and from this comes 
the modern French appellation Saone. (Compare Le- 
maire, Index Geogr., ad C<xs. Comm., p. 190.) 

Aratea, a festival celebrated at Sicyon, upon the 
birthday of Aratus, and in memory of that distinguish¬ 
ed patriot. {Pint., Vit. Arat., 53.) 

Aratus, I. a Greek poet, born at Soli (Pompeiopo- 
lis) in Cilicia. Pie flourished about 270 B.C., was 
a favourite of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and a firm friend 
to Antigonus Gonatas, son of Demetrius Poliorcetes. 
He was also a contemporary of Theocritus, who makes 
mention of him in the sixth and seventh Idyls, and 
was on very friendly terms with him. At the instance 
of Antigonus, Aratus composed an astronomical poem, 
entitled Qaivopeva, “ Appearances ,” and treating of 
the heavenly bodies, their names, movements, &c. 
The materials for this production he is said to have 
principally derived from the works of Eudoxus of Cni¬ 
dus, who wrote two treatises on the celestial bodies 
and phenomena, one entitled "Vvorcrpov, or “ the Mir- 
ror ,” and the other <t> aivogeva. ( Buhle, de Arat. 

Script. Comment., p. 466.) What other writers he 
followed besides Eudoxus, cannot now be ascertained. 
Salmasius, indeed, insists that he did not follow Eu 
doxus at all, but Phainus or Meton ( Salm. ad Solin ., 
p. 822); this opinion, however, is refuted by Petavius. 

( Doctr. Temp., 6, 9.) Aratus was the author also of 
another poem, entitled A locrygela, or “ Signs from 
Jove ,” the materials for which he borrowed from He¬ 
siod, the meteorological writings of Aristotle, and The¬ 
ophrastus on the signs of the winds. Some of the an¬ 
cients, and several of the moderns, too, have united 
the Qaivogeva and A loor/geia into one poem, probably 
because, in the latter, he draws his signs indicative of 
changes in the atmosphere from the relative positions 
of the sun, moon, and constellations of the zodiac as 
regards the earth. They are, however, distinct pro¬ 
ductions, and are regarded as such by the best ancient 
and modern authorities. ( Schol. ad Dioscm. init. — 
Schol. ad Anstoph., Pac., 1086. — Vitruv., 9, 7. — 
Buhle, ibid., p. 462.)—In the two poems just refer¬ 
red to, Aratus gives us, in correct and rather elegant 
verse, a general view of what was then known of the 
heavens, with their signs, appearances, &c., although it 
is evident, both from ancient authority as well as from 
the poem itself, that he was not a professed astrono¬ 
mer, or even very accurately acquainted with the prin¬ 
ciples of the science. ( Cic ., de Orat., 1 , 16. — Buhle, 
p. 467.) Ovid passes a high eulogium on Aratus, 

“ cum sole et luna semper Aratus erit" ( Amor , 1, 15); 
but this exaggerated compliment, and the admiration 
of Ovid, were very probably owing to the circumstance 
of no other poet’s having taken the astronomic sphere 
for his theme prior to Aratus. {Buhle, p. 471.) The 
truth is, the subject matter of both poems is far from 
being congenial to poetry, as is well remarked by Quin¬ 
tilian, who adds of Aratus himself, “ sufficit tamen 
operi, cui se parem credidit (10, 1, 55) As one proof 
of the consideration which Aratus enjoyed, we may 
cite the monument which his compatriots erected to 
his memory, and which became famous by reason of a 
physical phenomenon that Mela mentions. (“ Juxta in 
parvo tumulo Arati poetce monumcntum , ideo referen¬ 
dum quia , ignotum quam ob causam, jacta in id saxa 
dissiliantf 1, 13.) Aratus, moreover, is the writer 
to whom St. Paul refers in his speech before the Are- 

173 





ARATUS. 


A R A 


opagus (Acte, 17, 28), a circumstance which entitled 
the poet to great favour among the fathers of the 
church, although it is evident that the Apostle makes 
no allusion to his poetic merit. M. Delambre re¬ 
marks, in speaking of Aratus, that he has “transmitted 
to us almost all that Greece at that time knew of the 
heavens, or, at least, all that could be put into verse. 
The perusal of Autolycus or Euclid gives more infor¬ 
mation on the subject to him who wishes to become 
an astronomer. Their notions are more precise and 
more geometrical. The principal merit of Aratus is 
the description he has left us of the constellations; 
and yet, even with this description to aid us, one 
would be much puzzled to construct a celestial chart 
or globe.” ( Delambre , Histoire de VAstronomie An- 
cienne, vol. l,p. 74.)—The two poems of Aratus were 
thrice translated into Latin verse, first by Cicero, sec¬ 
ondly by Germanicus, of the line of the Csesars, and 
thirdly by Avienus. Cicero’s translation is lost, with 
the exception of some fragments. The translation, or, 
rather, imitation of the Phenomena by Germanicus, 
and his commencement of the Diosemea, as well as 
the version of Avienus, remain to us. Virgil, also, in 
his Georgies, is under many obligations to our poet. 
Although Aratus has been accused of possessing but I 
a slight acquaintance with the subject on which he 
treats, still a number of mathematicians united them¬ 
selves with the grammarians in commenting on his 
work. Many of these commentaries are lost: we still 
have, however, four remaining; one by Hipparchus of i 
Nicaea, another by Achilles Tatius ; the other two are ! 
anonymous, for those are in error who attribute one of 
them to Eratosthenes. Aratus wrote many other 
works, which have not come down to us. They treat¬ 
ed of physical, astronomical, grammatical, critical, 
and poetic themes, and a list of them is given by one 
of his editors, Buhle (vol. 2, p. 455, seqq .)—The best 
editions of this poet are, that of Buhle, Lips., 1793- 
1801, 2 vols. 8vo, and that of Matthi®, Franco/., 
1817-1818. We have also a German version by J. 
H. Voss, Heidelb., 1824, published with the Greek j 
text and illustrations.—II. A celebrated Grecian pa- j 
triot, born at Sicyon, B.C. 273. When he was but 1 
seven years of age, his father Clinias, who held the 
government of Sicyon, was assassinated by Abantidas, 
who succeeded in making himself absolute. Aratus 
took refuge in Argos, where he was concealed by the 
friends of the family, and where he devoted himself 
with great success to physical exercises, gaining 
the prize in the five exercises of the pentathlum. 
After some revolutions and changes of rulers at Sicy¬ 
on, the government came into the hands of Nicocles, 
when Aratus, then hardly twenty years of age, formed 
the project of freeing his country, and, having assem¬ 
bled some exiles, surprised the city of Sicyon. The 
tyrant having fled, Aratus gave liberty to his fellow- 
citizens, and induced them to join the Achaean league, 
still as yet feeble, and only in the twenty-fourth year 
of its existence. The return of the exiles, however, 
occasioned much trouble at Sicyon ; those who had 
purchased their property refused to restore it, and Ara¬ 
tus was compelled to have recourse to Ptolemy Phil- 
adelphus, to whom he had rendered some services, 
and who gave him 150 talents, with which he indem¬ 
nified the new possessors, and restored their property 
to his fellow-exiles. Being chosen, for the second 
time, Praetor of the Achaeans, 244 B.C., he seized by 
surprise on the citadel of Corinth, which Antigonus 
had guarded with great care as one of the keys of the 
Peloponnesus, and prevailed upon the Corinthians to 
join the confederacy Similar success attended his 
efforts in other quarters, and many of the most impor¬ 
tant states and cities of southern Greece became 
through his means members of the league. Some time 
after, the iEtolians, jealous of the prosperity of the 
Achaeans, and reckoning on the aid of Antigonus, the 
174 


1 guardian of Philip, formed an alliance with the Lace¬ 
daemonians, the natural enemies of the Achaean league. 
Aratus marched to the aid of those cities cl Arcadia 
which belonged to the confederacy, and which were 
menaced by Cleomenes, king of Sparta ; but he was 
defeated in three successive engagements, and found 
himself obliged to have recourse to Antigonus. In 
order to induce this prince to lend aid, he surrendered 
to him, on his expressly requiring it, the citadel of Cor¬ 
inth ; and Antigonus, on having come with an army, 
was appointed generalissimo of the Achaean troops. 
Plutarch pretends that Cleomenes had offered peace to 
! the Achaeans, on condition of being appointed com¬ 
mander of their forces, and that Aratus opposed him 
through jealousy ; and he even reproaches him for pre- 
; ferring a barbarian to a descendant of Hercules. But 
the truth was, Aratus could not hesitate between An¬ 
tigonus, a humane prince, and a religious observer of 
his oaths, and Cleomenes, who had now become a 
tyrant over his own country, to which he wished to 
make all the Peloponnesus subject. The aid of An¬ 
tigonus changed entirely the aspect of affairs; and this 
prince having entered eventually into Laconia, com¬ 
pelled Cleomenes, after a defeat at Sellasia, to flee 
from the country, took Sparta, and restored to it the 
laws which Cleomenes had abrogated. Antigonus 
always showed great consideration for Aratus, and 
governed himself by his counsels in what related to the 
affairs of Greece. Philip, his nephew and successor, 
did the same during the early part of his reign ; but in 
process of time a less friendly feeling arose betw een 
the latter and Aratus, as the evil qualities of Philip 
began to display themselves, and the Grecian patriot 
eventually fell a victim to the unprincipled monarch, 
who had caused a slow poison to be given to him. 
Some time before his death, Aratus was observed by 
one of his friends to spit blood, and, when the latter 
expressed his surprise at this, he merely exclaimed, 
“Such, Ccphalon, arc the fruits of royal friendship /” 
He was buried with distinguished honours by his 
countrymen, and a festival, called Aratea, was celebra¬ 
ted every year in memory of him. Aratus wrote Me¬ 
moirs, now lost, which Polybius cites with eulogiums. 
His character may be summed up in a few words. 
He was a pure and ardent patriot, and, in addition to 
this, a statesman of no small degree of merit, but not 
very conspicuous for military abilities. Aratus died 
in the 62d year of his age, B.C. 213. (Plut., Vit. 
Arat .)—III. A son of the preceding, nearly of the 
same age with Philip, king of Macedonia. He was on 
intimate terms with this monarch, a circumstance, how T - 
ever, which did not prevent the latter from adminis¬ 
tering a potion, that threw him into a deplorable state 
of idiocy, so that his friends regarded his death, w hich 
occurred in the flow er of his age, as a blessing rather 
than a misfortune. (Plut., Vit. Arat., nit.) 

Arausio, the chief city of the Cavares, in Gallia 
Narbonensis, to the north of Avenio. It is now r Or¬ 
ange, in the department of Vaucluse. In the vicinity 
are some remains of a triumphal arch, erected in com¬ 
memoration of the victory of Marius over the Cimbri 
and Teutones ( Plm ., 3, 4.) 

Araxes, I a river of Armenia Major, issuing from 
Mons Abus, on the side opposite to that W’hence the 
southern arm of the Euphrates flows. It runs cast 
until it meets the mountains which separate Armenia 
from northern Media, when it turns to the north, and, 
after receiving the Cyrus, falls into the Caspian Sea 
It is now the Arras. (Plm., 6, 9. — Strah., 363 — 
Ptol., 5, 13.) II. Another in Persia, running by Per- 
sepolis, and falling into the Medus, now Bend-Emir . 

Xenophon calls the Chaboras by the name of Araxes 
(vid. Chaboras), and gives the name of Phasis to the 
Armenian Araxes. (Xen., Anab., 1, 4, 19.—Compare 
the IndexJVom. to the edition of Zeune, and the re¬ 
marks of Kruger, ad Xen. r Anab., 4, 6, 4.)_HI. A 










ARC 


ARC 


river cf Upper Asia, mentioned by Herodotus (1, 202), 
and supposed by the most recent inquirers into this 
subject to be the same with the modern Volga. 
(Baehr, ad Herod., 1. c. —Compare the remarks of the 
same editor, in the note to the Index Rerum , vol. 4| 
p. 454, seqq.) — The name Araxes appears to havu 
been originally an appellative term for a river, in the 
earlier language of the East, and hence we find it ap¬ 
plied to several streams in ancient Oriental geography. 
(Compare Heeren, Idecn, vol. 1, p. 55. — Ritter , Erd- 
kunde, vol. 2, p. 658.) 

Arbaces, a Median officer, who conspired with 
Belesis, the most distinguished member of the Chal- 
d$n sacerdotal college, against Sardanapalus, king of 
Assyria. After several reverses, he finally succeeded 
in his object, defeated Sardanapalus near Nineveh, 
took this city, and reigned in it for the space of twen- 
ty-eight years. With him commenced a dynasty of 
eight kings, of whom Aspadas or Astyages was the 
last. The empire which Arbaces founded was a fed¬ 
erative one, composed of several sovereignties which 
had arisen from the ruins of the Assyrian monarchy. 
The kingly power, though hereditary, was not abso¬ 
lute, the monarch not having the power to change any 
of the laws enacted by the confederate princes. Chro- 
nologists are not agreed as to the period of the revolt 
of Arbaces. Most place it under or about the archon- 
ship of Ariphron, the 9th perpetual archon of Athens ; 
but they differ again about the precise period of this 
archonship, some assigning it to 917 B.C., others to 
898 B.C. ( Diod. Sic., 2, 24. — Veil. Paterc., 1,6. — 
Justin, 1, 1.— Petav., Doctr. Temp., 1. 9.) 

Arbela, a city of Assyria, in the province of Adi- 
abene, east of Ninus, near the Zabatus, or Zab. On 
the opposite side of this river, near Isbil, was fought 
the decisive battle of Arbela, between Alexander and 
Darius, October 2, B.C. 331. The field of battle was 
the plain of Gaugamela. The latter, however, being 
an obscure place, this conflict was named after Arbela. 

( Strabo, 399.— Diod. Sic., 17, 53.— Arrian, 3, 6.) 

Arbuscula, an actress on the Roman stage, who, 
being hissed, on one occasion, by the lower orders of 
the people, observed, with great spirit, that she cared 
nothing for the rabble, as long as she pleased the more 
enlightened part of her audience among the equestrian 
ranks. ( Horat., 'Serm., 1, 10, 77.) 

Arcadia, a country in the centre of the Peloponne¬ 
sus, and, next to Laconia, the largest of its six prov¬ 
inces. It was a mountainous region, and contained 
the sources of most of the considerable rivers which 
flow into the seas surrounding the Peloponnesus. 
From its elevated situation, and the broken face of 
the country, intersected by small streams, it had a cold 
and foggy climate during some seasons ; in the plain 
of Argos, only one day’s journey from the centre of 
Arcadia, the sun shines and the violets bloom, while 
snow is on the hills of Arcadia, and in the plain of 
Mantinea and Tegea. The most fertile part was to¬ 
wards the south, where the country sloped off, and 
contained many fruitful vales and numerous streams. 
This account of the land may serve in some degree to 
explain the character which the Arcadians had among 
the ancient Greeks: some of those who now occupy 
this district seem to be as rude as many of the former 
possessors. Their country is better adapted to pas¬ 
turage than cultivation, and the Arcadians, who were 
scarcely a genuine Greek race, continued their pastoral 
habits and retained their rude manners amid their na¬ 
tive mountains. To their pastoral mode of life may 
be ascribed their attachment to music ; and hence also 
the worship of Pan as the tutelary deity of Arcadia. 
Nature, observes a modern writer, has destined this 
country for herdsmen. The pastures and meadows in 
summer are always green and unscorched; for the 
shade and moisture preserve them. The country has 
an appearance similar to that of Switzerland, and the 


Arcadians, in some measure, resemble the inhabitants 
of the Alps. They possessed a love of freedom and a 
love of money ; for wherever there was money, you 
might see Arcadian hirelings. But it is chiefly the 
western part of Arcadia (where Pan invented the 
shepherd’s flute) which deserves the name of a pasto¬ 
ral country. Innumerable brooks, one more delightful 
than the other, sometimes rushing impetuously, and 
sometimes gently murmuring, pour themselves down 
the mountains. Vegetation is rich and magnificent; 
everywhere freshness and coolness are found. One 
flock of sheep here succeeds another, till the wild 
Taygetus is approached, where numerous herds of 
goats are also seen. ( Bartholdy, Bruchstiicke zu 
nahern Kenntniss Griechenlands, p. 239, seqq.) The 
inhabitants of Arcadia, devoted to the pastoral life, 
preferred, therefore, for a long time, to dwell in the 
open country rather than in the cities; and when some 
of these, particularly Tegea and Mantinea, became 
considerable, the contests between them destroyed 
the peace and liberties of the people. The shepherd- 
life among the Greeks, although much ornamented by 
the poets, betrays its origin in this, that it arose among 
a people who did not wander like the Nomades, but 
were in possession of stationary dwellings.—The most 
ancient name of Arcadia was Drymotis (the woody 
region), from dpvq, “ a tree." The Arcadians them¬ 
selves carried their origin very far back, and gave 
their nation the name of Proseleni (before the moon). 
They seem to have derived the first rudiments of civil¬ 
ization, if not their origin itself, from the Pelasgi; and 
hence the tradition that a king, named Pelasgus, 
taught them to build huts, and clothe themselves with 
the skins of animals. Areas, a descendant of this same 
Pelasgus, taught them the art of baking bread, and of 
weaving. From this second benefactor the people 
and their country were respectively called Arcades 
and Arcadia. A republican form of government arose 
subsequently, after the first Messenian war, Aristoc- 
rates II. having been stoned to death by the Arca¬ 
dians for his treachery towards the Messenians. Ar¬ 
cadia eventually attached itself to the Achaean league, 
and fell under the Roman power. — It is commonly 
believed that a colony of Arcadians settled in Italy in 
very early times. This, however, is a mere fable, and 
is contradicted by the inland nature of the country, 
and by the Arcadians never having been a maritime 
people. ( Vid. Pelasgi and Italy, and also Evander.— 
Polyb., 4, 20.— Diod. Sic., 4, 34.— Thucyd.. 7, 57.— 
Plin., 4, 5.— Apollod., 2, 1.— Pausan., 8, 4.) 

Arcadius, eldest son of Theodosius the Great, suc¬ 
ceeded his father A.D. 395, who, at his death, divided 
the empire between his two sons, giving Arcadius the 
eastern, and Honorius the western division. Arcadius 
was only eighteen years of age when he ascended the 
throne, and he only occupied it to become the vile 
slave of the ambitious, who each in turn distracted the 
state by their perfidies, their quarrels, and their con¬ 
nivance with the Goths, Huns, and Vandals, to whom 
they surrendered the provinces and treasures of the 
empire. The history of Arcadius, in fact, is that of 
one, whose weakness and vices made him subservient 
to, and excited the audacity of, a Rufinus, who, char¬ 
ged by Theodosius with the guidance of the young 
monarch, wished to give him his daughter in marriage, 
and become his colleague in the empire, and who, dis¬ 
appointed in his ambitious schemes, invited the Huns 
and Goths into Asia and Greece : a Eutropius, a vile 
eunuch, who attained to the influence of a Rufinus, 
after the tragical death of the latter, and, still more 
unprincipled, succeeded by his violent conduct in de¬ 
grading and discouraging the people : a Gainas, a gen¬ 
eral who ravaged instead of defending the empire, but 
who contributed nevertheless to the ruin of Eutropius : 
and an Empress Eudoxia, at one moment the enemy, at 
another the support of the ambitious, and who perse- 

175 




ARC 


ARCESILAUS. 


cuted the virtuous Chrysostom, patriarch of Constan¬ 
tinople. Arcadius was in succession the tool of all 
these designing individuals. He saw, with equal in¬ 
difference, Alaric ravaging his territories, his subjects 
groaning under oppression, the succours brought him 
by Stilicho, general of Honorius, rendered of no avail 
by the perfidy of his own ministers, the best citizens 
falling by his proscriptions, and, finally, Arianism des¬ 
olating the religion which Chrysostom in vain attempt¬ 
ed to defend. Such was the reign of this prince, 
which lasted for fourteen years. He died A.D. 408, 
at the age of thirty-one. Nature had given him an 
exterior corresponding to his character; a small, ill- 
made, disagreeable person, an air of imbecility, a lazy 
enunciation, everything, in fact, announcing the weak¬ 
est and most cowardly of emperors. He had by his 
wife Eudoxia a son named Theodosius, who succeed¬ 
ed him as the second of that name. ( Socrat., Hist. 
Eccles., 5.— Cassiod., Chron., &c.) 

Arcas, a son of Jupiter and Callisto. ( Vid. Cal- 
listo.) The fabulous legend relative to him and his 
mother is given by the ancient writers with great dif¬ 
ference in the circumstances. According to the most 
common account, Jupiter changed Callisto into a bear, 
to screen her from the jealousy of Juno, and Arcas 
her son was separated from her and reared among 
men. When grown up, he chanced to meet his moth¬ 
er in the woods, in her transformed state, and was on 
the point of slaughtering her, but Jupiter interfered, 
and translated both the parent and son to the skies. 
Arcas, previously to this, had succeeded Nyctimus in 
the government of Arcadia, the land receiving this 
name first from him. He was the friend of Triptole- 
mus, who taught him agriculture, which he introduced 
among his subjects. He also showed them how to 
manufacture wool, an art which he had learned from 
Aristceus. ( Apollod ., 3, 8.— Ov., Met., 2, 401, seqq.) 

Arce, a city of Phoenicia, north of Tripolis, and 
south of Antaradus. It was the birthplace of Alexan¬ 
der Severus, the Roman emperor. ( Lamprid ., Vit. 
Alex., c. 5.— Plin., 5, 18.) The name is sometimes 
given as Arcae. (Socrat., Hist. Eccles., 7, 36.) 

Arcesilaus, I. son of Battus, king of Cyrene, was 
driven from his kingdom in a sedition, and died B.C. 
575. The second of that name died B.C. 550. 
(Polyam., 8, 41.— Herodot., 4, 159.)—II. A philoso¬ 
pher, born at Pitane, in H3olis, and the founder of 
what was termed the Middle Academy. The period 
of his birth is usually given as 316 B.C., while ac¬ 
cording to Apollodorus, as cited by Diogenes Laertius 
(4, 45), he flourished about B.C. 299. If these num¬ 
bers are accurate, he must have had an early reputa¬ 
tion, as he would at the latter date have been only 
seventeen years of age. There is therefore some er¬ 
ror here in the remark of Apollodorus. (Clinton’s 
Fasti Hellcnici, vol. 1, p. 179, and 367, not.) Arces¬ 
ilaus at first applied himself to rhetoric, but subse¬ 
quently passed to the study of philosophy, in which 
he had for teachers, first Theophrastus, then Crantor 
the Academician, and probably also Polemo. (Diog. 
Laert., 4, 24, 29. — Cic., Acad., 1, 9.) The state¬ 
ment of Numenius (ay. Eus., Pr. Ev., 14, 5), that 
Arcesilaus was the disciple of Polemo at the same 
time with Zeno, appears to be ill-grounded, and to in¬ 
volve great chronological difficulties. It is very prob¬ 
ably a mere fiction, designed to suggest some outward 
motive for the controversial relation of the Porch and 
the Academy. Besides the instructers above named, 
.Arcesilaus is also said to have diligently attended the 
lectures of the Eretrian Menedamus, the Megarian 
Diodorus, and the sceptic Pyrrho. His love for the 
philosophemes of these individuals has been referred 
to as the source of his scepticism, and his skill in re¬ 
futing philosophical principles. At the same time, it 
is on all hands admitted that, of philosophers, Plato 
was his favourite. He seems to have been sincerely 
176 J 


of opinion, that his view of things did not differ from 
the true spirit of the Platonic doctrine; nay, more, that 
it was perfectly in agreement with those older philoso¬ 
phemes, from which, according to the opinion of many, 

. Jj^lato had drawn his own doctrines, namely, those 
of Socrates, Parmenides, and Heraclitus.—Upon the 
death of Crantor, the school in the Academy was 
transferred by a certain Socratides to Arcesilaus, who 
here introduced the old Socratic method of teaching 
in dialogues, although it was rather a corruption than 
an imitation of the genuine Socratic mode. Arcesi¬ 
laus does not appear to have committed his opinions 
to writing, at least the ancients were not acquainted 
with any work which could confidently be ascribed to 
him. Now, as his disciple Lacydes also abstained 
from writing, the ancients themselves appear to have 
derived their knowledge of his opinions only from the 
works of his opponents, of whom Chrysippus was the 
most eminent. Such a source must naturally be both 
defective and uncertain, and accordingly we have little 
that we can confidently advance with respect to his 
doctrines. According to these statements, the results 
of his opinions would be a perfect scepticism, expressed 
in the formula that he knew nothing, not even that 
which Socrates had ever maintained that he knew, 
namely, his own ignorance. (Cic., Acad., 1, 12.) 
This expression of his opinion implicitly ascribes to 
Arcesilaus a full consciousness that he differed in a 
most important point from the doctrine of Socrates 
and Plato. But, as the ancients do not appear to have 
ascribed any such conviction to Arcesilaus, it seems 
to be a more probable opinion, which imputes to him 
a desire to restore the genuine Platonic dogma, and 
to purify it from all those precise and positive deter¬ 
minations which his successors had appended to it. 
Indeed, one statement expressly declares, that the sub¬ 
ject of his lecture to his most accomplished scholars 
was the doctrine of Plato (Cic., 1. c .); and he would 
therefore appear to have adopted this formula with a 
view to meet more easily the objections of the dog¬ 
matists. Now if we thus attach Arcesilaus to Plato, 
we must suppose him to have been in the same case 
with many others, and unable to discover in the wri¬ 
tings of Plato any fixed and determinate principles of 
science. The ambiguous manner in which almost 
every view is therein advanced, and the results of one 
investigation admitted only conditionally to other 
inquiries, may perhaps have led him to regard the 
speculations of Plato in the light of mere shrewd and 
intelligent conjectures. Accordingly, we are told, that 
Arcesilaus denied the certainty, not only of intellec¬ 
tual, but also of sensuous knowledge. (Cic., dc Orat ., 
3, 18.) For his attack upon the former, Plato would 
furnish him with weapons enough ; and it is against it 
principally that his attacks were directed, for the Stoics 
were his chief opponents.—The true distinction be¬ 
tween the Sceptics and the members of the Middle 
Academy, at its first formation by Arcesilaus, appears 
to have been this. The former made the end of life to 
be the attainment of a perfect equanimity, and derived 
the difference between good and bad, as presented by 
the phenomena of life, from conversion, and not from 
nature. The Academicians, on the other hand, taught, 
as a general rule, that, in the pursuit of good and the 
avoidance of evil, men must be guided by probabilities. 
They admitted that the sage, without absolutely mor- 
tifying his sensual desires, will live like any other in 
obedience to the general estimate of good and evil, but 
with this simple diflference, that he does not believe 
that he is regulating his life by any certain and stable 
principles of science. It is on this account that we do 
not meet with any statements concerning the strange¬ 
ness of their habits of life, like to those about Pyrrho ; 
on the contrary, Arcesilaus is usually depicted as a 
man who, in the intercourse of life, observed all its 
decencies and proprieties, and was somewhat disposed 





ARC 


ARCHELAUS. 


to that splendour and luxury which the prevailing 
views of morality allowed and sanctioned. His 
doubts, therefore, as to the possibility of arriving at a 
knowledge of the truth, may probably have had no 
higher source than a high idea of science, derived 
perhaps from his study of Plato’s works, and compared 
with which all human thought may have appeared at 
best but a probable conjecture.—Arcesilaus continued 
to flourish as late as the 134th Olympiad, B.C. 244. 
( Clinton's Fasti Hellenici, vol. 1, p. 179. — Ritter's 
History of Philosophy, vol. 3, p. 600, seqq.) — III. A 
painter of Paros, acquainted, according to Pliny, with 
the art of enamelling, some time before Aristides, to 
whom the invention is commonly assigned. He ap¬ 
pears to have been contemporary with Polygnotus. 
(Plin ., 35, 11. — Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.) — IV. A 
painter, subsequent to the preceding, and who appears 
to have flourished about the 128th Olympiad, B.C. 
268. {Plin., 35, 11. — Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.) — V. 
A sculptor of the first century before our era. His 
country is uncertain. {Plin., 35, 12.— Id., 36, 5.) 

Archelaus, I. a king of Sparta, of the line of the 
Agidae, who reigned conjointly with Charilaus. Du¬ 
ring this reign Lycurgus promulgated his code of laws. 
{Pausan., 3, 2.)—II. A king of Macedonia, natural son 
of Perdiccas, who ascended the throne, after making 
away with all the lawful claimants to it, about 413 
B.C. He proved a very able monarch. Under his sway 
Macedonia flourished, literature and the arts were pat¬ 
ronised, and learned men and artists were invited to 
his court. Euripides and Agatho, the two tragic poets, 
spent the latter part of their days there, and the paint¬ 
er Zeuxis received seven talents (about 8000 dollars) 
for adorning with his pencil the royal palace. The cele¬ 
brated philosopher Socrates was also invited to come and 
reside with the monarch, but declined. Archelaus died 
after a reign of about 14 years. Diodorus Siculus 
makes him to have lost his life by an accidental wound 
received in hunting, but Aristotle states that he fell 
by a conspiracy. {Diod. Sic., 13, 49.— Id., 14, 37.— 
Aristot., Polit., 5, 10.—Compare the remarks of Wes- 
seling, ad Diod., 14, 37.)—III. Son of Amyntas, king 
of Macedonia. He was put to death by his half-broth¬ 
er Philip, the father of Alexander the Great. {Justin, 
7 , 4.) — IV. A native of Cappadocia, and one of the 
ablest generals of Mithradates. He disputed with the 
Romans the possession of Greece, but was defeated by 
Sylla at Chseronea, and again at Orchomenus. Arche¬ 
laus, convinced of the superiority of the Romans, pre¬ 
vailed upon Mithradates to make peace with them, and 
arranged the terms of the treaty along with Sylla, whose 
esteem he acquired. Some years after he became an 
object of suspicion to Mithradates, who thought that he 
had favoured too much the interests of the Roman people. 
Well aware of the cruelty of the monarch, Archelaus 
fled to the Romans, who gave him a friendly reception. 
Plutarch thinks that he had been actually unfaithful 
to Mithradates, and that the present which he received 
from Sylla, of ten thousand acres in Euboea, was a 
strong confirmation of this. He informs us, however, 
at the same time, that Sylla, in his commentaries, de¬ 
fended Archelaus from the censures which had been 
cast upon him. {Plut., Vit. Syll., c. 23.) — V. Son 
of the preceding, remained attached to the Romans 
after the death of his father, and was appointed by 
Pompey high-priest at Comana. As the temple at 
Comana had an extensive territory attached to it, and 
a large number of slaves, the high-priest was in fact a 
kind of king. This tranquil office, however, did not 
suit his ambitious spirit; and when Ptolemy Auletes 
had been driven from Egypt, and Berenice his daugh¬ 
ter had ascended the throne, he obtained her hand in 
marriage. Ptolemy, however, was restored by the Ro¬ 
man arms, and Archelaus fell in battle, bravely defend¬ 
ing his new dignity. Marc Antony, who had been on 
friendly terms with him, gave him an honourable fune- 
Z 


ral. ( Dio Cass., 39, 12, seqq. — Id., 39, 55.—j Epit. 
Liv., 105.— Plut., Vit. Anton., c. 3.)—VI. A natural 
son of the preceding by Glaphyre. He is called by Ap- 
pian Sicinnes. {Bell. Civ., 5, 7.—Consult Schweigh., 
ad loc.) After his father’s death, he succeeded to the 
high-priesthood at Comana, but was deposed by Julius 
Caesar. Some years after (B.C. 36), Antony made 
him king of Cappadocia, in place of Ariarathes X., 
whom he deprived of the throne. Archelaus took part 
with Antony at the battle of Actium, but was pardon¬ 
ed by Augustus. The emperor even subsequently 
added Armenia and Cilicia Trachea to his territories, 
because he had aided Tiberius in restoring Tigranes, 
the Armenian king. When Tiberius retired to Rhodes, 
into a kind of exile, Archelaus, fearful of offending 
Augustus, treated the former with neglect. In con¬ 
sequence of this, when Tiberius came to the throne, 
Archelaus was enticed to Rome by a letter from Livia, 
which held out the hope of pardon, but on reaching the 
capital, he was accused of designs against the state. 
Plis age, however, and feeble state of health, together 
with the imbecility of mind which he feigned on the 
occasion, disarmed the anger of the emperor. He died 
at Rome, B.C. 17, having reigned 52 years. After 
his death Cappadocia became a Roman province. {Dio 
Cass., 57, 17. — Tacit., Ann., 2, 42.— Sueton., Tib., 
37.)—VII. A son of Herod the Great. His father in¬ 
tended him for his successor, and named him as such 
in his will; but as Philip Antipas, another son of 
Herod’s, had been designated as successor to the throne 
in a previous will, a dispute arose between the two 
brothers, and they repaired to Rome to have the ques¬ 
tion settled by Augustus. The emperor, after having 
heard both parties, gave to Archelaus, under the ti¬ 
tle of tetrarch, one half of the territories of his father 
Herod, comprising Judsea, properly so called, together 
with Idumsea. On his return home, Archelaus in¬ 
dulged in the hereditary cruelty of his family, and be¬ 
ing complained of to Augustus, was deposed (B.C. 6), 
and sent to Vienna ( Vienne in Dauphine) as an exile. 
This happened in the tenth year of his reign. {Jo¬ 
seph., Ant. Jud., 17, c. 2.— Id. ibid., c. 12, seq. — Id., 
Bell. Jud., 2, 4.— Noldius, de Vita et Gestis Herodum, 
p. 219, seqq .)—VIII. A philosopher, a native of Athens, 
though others, with less probability, make him to have 
been born at Miletus. {Simpl. Phys., fol. 6, b.) He 
was a pupil of Anaxagoras, whom he accompanied in 
exile to Lampsacus, and to whom he succeeded as a 
head of the Ionic sect. After the death of this philos¬ 
opher, he returned to Athens, and is said to have had 
Socrates and also Euripides among his pupils ; but as 
to the former of the two, this is very doubtful. Of his 
life and actions we have very scanty information, as 
also of his doctrines; so that it is extremely difficult 
to arrive at any certain result with respect to his pe¬ 
culiar views. He received the appellation of ^vaiKoq, 
{Physicus, i. e., “ Natural Philosopher”), because, like 
Anaxagoras, he directed his principal attention to phys¬ 
ical inquiries. He is said to have adopted the same 
primal substance as Anaxagoras ; but to have aimed 
at giving an explanation of his own of the mode in 
which the universe was produced, and of some other 
details. {Simpl. Phys., fol. 7, a.) His mode of ac¬ 
counting for the separation of the elements, and of con¬ 
necting therewith the origin of men and animals, indi¬ 
cates in the most remarkable manner the affinity of 
his theory with that of Anaxagoras. First of all, he 
taught, fire and water were separated, and, by the ac¬ 
tion of the fire on the water, the earth was reduced to 
a slimy mass, which was afterward hardened; but 
water, by its motion, gave birth to air, and thus was 
the earth held together by air, and the air by fire. 
While the earth was hardening by the action of heat, 
a certain mixture of warmth with cold and moist par¬ 
ticles was effected, of which animals of various kinds 
were formed, each animal different, but all having the 

177 



ARC 


ARC 


same nourishment, the slime in which they were born. < 
At first they were of very brief duration, and subse¬ 
quently only acquired the faculty of propagating their ' 
species. Men were distinct from the other kinds, and i 
became the ruling race. Mind, however, was inborn j 
in all animals alike, and all have a body for use, only 
som# a more perishable, others a more durable one. 
The fundamental principle of Archelaus in ethics was , 
as follows : “ Good and evil are not by nature, but by 
convention.” ( Diog. Laert ., 2, 16.— Ong. Phil., 9 .— 
Ritter's History of Philosophy, 1, 319, seqq.) 

Archemorus. Vid. Opheltes. 

Archias, I. a Corinthian, leader of the colony that 
founded Syracuse. Vid. Syracuse.—II. A Greek poet, 
a native of Antioch, who came to Rome in the consul¬ 
ship of Marius and Catulus (B.C. 102). He soon be¬ 
came intimate with the most distinguished men in this 
latter city, and accompanied Lucullus to Sicily, and, 
on returning with him to that province, received the 
rights of Roman citizenship at the municipal town of 
Heraclea, in southern Italy. A conflagration, how¬ 
ever, having destroyed the records of this place, a cer¬ 
tain Gratius contested judicially his title to the rights 
and privileges of a Roman citizen. Cicero, his friend 
and former pupil, defended Archias in a brilliant ora¬ 
tion, which has come down to us, and which contains 
not only the praises of his old instructor, but a beauti¬ 
ful eulogium also on the culture of letters. The poet 
gained his cause. Archias before this had composed 
a poem on the war with the Cimbri, and had commen¬ 
ced another on the consulship of Cicero. There re¬ 
main, however, of his productions, only some epigrams 
in the Anthology. It is difficult to reconcile the eu- 
logiums which Cicero heaps on Archias, with the ex¬ 
treme mediocrity of the pieces that have reached us. 

A servile imitator of Leonidas the Tarentine, and of 
Antipater, he handles the same themes which they had 
selected before him, and only produces, after all, un¬ 
faithful copies. Two or three pieces are somewhat 
superior to the rest, but still we must take it for grant¬ 
ed that his poem on the Cimbrian war was a very dif¬ 
ferent production from any of his epigrams, or else 
that Cicero’s vanity got the better of his judgment, and 
that, in praising Archias, he felt he was praising him¬ 
self. ( Cic ., pro Arch.) 

Arciiidamus, I. son of Theopompus, king of Spar¬ 
ta, died before his father.—II. Another king of Sparta, 
son of Anaxidamus, succeeded by Agasicles. He as¬ 
cended the throne about 620 B.C.—III. Son of Zeux- 
idamus, of the line of the Proclidse. He ascended 
the Spartan throne B.C. 476, his father having died 
without becoming king. Laconia was desolated by an 
earthquake about the 12th year of his reign, and after 
this the Messenians revolted. Archidamus displayed 
great coolness and ability amid these events, and finally 
reduced the Messenians to submission, having taken 
the fortress of Ithome after a siege of ten years. He 
opposed the Peloponnesian war, but, his counsel not 
having been followed, he took the command of the 
confederate army, and made many invasions of Attica. 
He died B.C. 428.—IV. Son of Agesilaus, of the line 
of the Proclidse. Before coming to the throne, he had 
the command of the troops which the Laced semonians 
sent to the aid of their countrymen after the battle of 
Leuctra. On his return to the Peloponnesus, he gain¬ 
ed some advantages over the Arcadians, although the 
Thebans had come to their aid. Having ascended the 
throne (B.C. 361), he prevailed upon the Lacedsemo- 
nians to aid the Phocians, and took an active part in 
their behalf, in the Sacred war. He afterward went 
to the aid of the Tarentines, who were at war with 
some of the neighbouring communities, and fell in bat¬ 
tle there, B.C. 338. His body could not be found 
after the action, which some ascribed to the vengeance 
of Apollo, who thus deprived him of the rites of burial 
for the part he had acted in the Sacred war.— V. Son 
178 


of Eudamidas, was king of Sparta when Demetrius 
Poliorcetes came to attack that city, B.C. 293. He 
was defeated by Demetrius, in the very view of Sparta 
itself, and the city would have been taken, had not other 
events called the victor to a different quarter of Greece. 
The rest of his history is unknown. Larcher makes 
his reign to have been one of 46 years, but does not 
give the data on which he founds this opinion, {1 lut., 
Vit. Agid. — Larcher, Hist, d'Herod., 7, 509.) 

Archigenes, a physician, born at Apamea in Syria. 
He lived in the reign of Domitian, Nerva, and Trajan. 
Archigenes enjoyed a high reputation among his con¬ 
temporaries, and for some generations after. He is 
regarded as the founder of the Eclectic school of Med¬ 
icine, and was also one of the pneumatic sect, having 
received the principles of the latter from his preceptor 
Agathinus. He wrote on the pulse (a work on which 
Galen commented), on chronic affections, on pharma¬ 
cy, &c. Galen often cites him with eulogiums, and 
Juvenal, his contemporary, makes frequent mention of 
him in his satires. Only fragments of his writings re¬ 
main. According to Suidas, he died at the age of 63 ; 
but Eudocia makes him to have reached 83 years. 
The latest edition of the fragments of Archigenes is 
that of Harles, Lips., 1816, 4to. {Galen, de diff. puls., 
2, p. 2 9.—Id., de loc. affect., 2, p. 262, &c.— Suidas, 
s. v. — Eudocia, ap. Villoison, Anecd. Grcec., vol. 1, 
p. 65.— Sprengel, Hist, de la Med., vol. 2, p. 75.) 

ArchilSchus, a Greek poet, a native of Paros, who 
flourished 688 B.C. His mother Enipo was a slave, 
but his father Telesicles one of the most distinguished 
citizens of the island. The particulars which the an¬ 
cients have given us respecting the life of Archilochus 
appear to be in a great measure fabulous. It is cer¬ 
tain, however, that, while still young, he accompanied 
his father, who, in obedience to a Delphic oracle, led 
a colony from Paros to Thasos, and that his subse¬ 
quent career was one succession of misfortunes, which, 
appear to have exasperated his character, and given 
to his poetry that severe cast which the ancients ascri¬ 
bed to it. Among the various tales related of Archil¬ 
ochus, the one most commonly mentioned is that con¬ 
cerning Neobule and her parent. ( Vid. Lycambes.) 
This story, however, appears to have been invented 
after the poet’s time ; and one of the scholiasts on 
Horace remarks, that Neobule did not destroy herself 
on account of any injurious verses on the part of Ar¬ 
chilochus, but out of despair at the death of her father. 
{Horat., Epod., 6, 13.) Archilochus states one fact 
relative to himself, in some verses that have come 
down to us, which is, that in a battle between the Tha- 
sians and people of Thrace, he saved himself by flight, 
throwing away at the same time his buckler. This 
act of weakness or cowmrdice was the occasion of a 
galling affront which he afterward received : for, hav¬ 
ing visited Sparta, he was ordered by the magistrate 
to quit the city immediately. Dissatisfied eventually 
with the posture of affairs at Thasos, which the poet 
often represents as desperate, Archilochus must have 
quitted Thasos and returned to Paros, since we are 
informed, by credible waiters, that he lost his life in a 
war between the Parians and the inhabitants of the 
neighbouring island of Naxos. The ancients ascribe 
to Archilochus the invention of a great number of po¬ 
etic measures. (Consult, on this subject, Victorinus, 
lib. 4, p. 2588, ed. Putsch; and, as regards the Epode, 
which he is also said to have invented, compare the 
remarks of Vandenbourg, in his edition of Horace, vol. 
2.) With respect to iambic verse, of which he is, in 
like manner, named as the author {Hor., Ep. ad Pis., 
79 ), some difference of opinion seems to exist; and 
it has been thought that the invention, in this case, 
relates less to the iambic rhythm, which appears so 
natural to the Greek language, than to a particular kind 
of versification. (Compare Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr.,\ ol. 
l 1, p. 199, seqq.) Archilochus was, in general, regard- 






ARC 


ARCHIMEDES. 


ed by the ancients as one of the greatest poets that 
Greece had produced. Cicero classes him with Homer, 
Sophocles, and Pindar {Orat., I); and in an epigram 
in the Anthology (vol. 2, p. 286), the Emperor Ha¬ 
drian remarks that the Muses, fearing for the glory 
of Homer, inspired Archilochus with the idea of com¬ 
posing in iambics. One production of this poet’s, 
in particular, his Hymn in honour of Hercules, was 
the subject of high eulogium ; this piece he himself 
sung at the Olympic games. The anniversary of his 
birth was celebrated, as in the case of Homer ; and 
the rhapsodists recited his verses as they did those of 
the Iliad. Blame, however, attaches itself to the bit¬ 
ter and vindictive spirit that characterized his verses, 
as well to the indecency which pervaded them ; and it 
is probably to this latter cause that we must ascribe 
the loss of his poems, of which we possess only a few 
fragments, preserved as citations in the writings of 
Athenseus, St. Clement of Alexandrea, Stobaeus, the 
scholiasts, &c. If the ancients speak of the Fables 
of Archilochus, it is not because he ever published any 
collections of apologues, but because he was accus¬ 
tomed to give life and movement to his iambics by 
introducing into them occasionally this spieces of com¬ 
position. The fragments of Archilochus were publish¬ 
ed by H. Stephens and Froben in their respective 
collections, and by Brunck in his Analecta. An edi¬ 
tion of them by Liebel, with a critical commentary, 
appeared from the Leipsic press in 1812, and also in 
an enlarged form in 1819, 8vo. 

Archimedes, the most celebrated mathematician 
among the ancients, a native of Syracuse in Sicily, 
and related to King Hiero. He flourished about 250 
B.C. Under what masters he studied, or how much 
of his extraordinary knowledge he acquired from his 
predecessors, is not known. That he travelled into 
Egypt appears certain ; but it is probable that, in his 
scientific acquaintance with that country, he commu¬ 
nicated more than he received, and that he owes the 
great name which he has transmitted to posterity to 
his own vigorous and inventive intellect. He was 
equally skilled in the science of astronomy, geome¬ 
try, mechanics, hydrostatics, and optics, in all of which 
he excelled, and produced many extraordinary inven¬ 
tions. His ingenuity in solving problems had in Ci¬ 
cero’s days become proverbial; and his singular in¬ 
genuity in the invention and construction of warlike 
engines is much dwelt upon by Livy. His knowledge 
of the doctrine of specific gravities is proved by the 
well-known story of his discovery of the mixture of 
silver with gold in King Iiiero’s crown, which fraud he 
detected by comparing the quantity of water displaced 
by equal weights of gold and silver. The thought oc¬ 
curred to him while in the bath, on observing that he 
displaced a bulk of water equal to his own body; when, 
at once, perceiving a train of consequences, he ran 
naked out of the bath into the street, exclaiming, 
JLvprjKa, “ I have found it!” This part of the story, 
however, is regarded by some as a mere exaggeration. 
{Biogr. Univ., vol. 2, p. 379.) To show Hiero the 
wonderful effects of mechanic power, he is said, by 
the help of ropes and pulleys, to have drawn towards 
him, with perfect ease, a galley which lay on the shore, 
manned and loaded. His intimate acquaintance with 
the powers of the lever is evinced by his famous decla¬ 
ration to the same monarch: A bp ttov errw, Kal rov 
Kovpov Kivrjau, “ Give me where I may stand, and I 
will move the world.” But his greatest efforts of me¬ 
chanic skill were displayed during the siege of Syra¬ 
cuse, when he contrived engines of annoyance of the 
most stupendous nature. Among other applications 
of science, he is said to have fired the Roman fleet 
by means of reflecting mirrors, of which story, long 
treated as a fable, Buffon has proved the credibility. 
{Mem. de VAcad. des Sciences, 1747.) There are not 
wanting persons, however, even at the present day, 


who, from the silence of Polybius, Livy, and Plutarch 
on this subject, still view the tale with an eye of un¬ 
belief (Compare Biogr. Univ., vol. 2, p. 381.— For¬ 
eign Review, No. 1, p. 305.) Eminent as this great 
mathematician was for his knowledge of mechanics, 
he was still more so for the rare talent which he 
possessed of investigating abstract truths, and invent¬ 
ing conclusive demonstrations in the higher branches 
of geometry. According to Plutarch {Vit. Mar cell.), 
intellectual speculations of this nature most delighted 
him ; and he did not deem it worth his while to 
leave any account in writing of his mechanical inven¬ 
tions. We have, indeed, no precise indication of 
any works in which they are described, except it be 
with regard to a sphere representing the movements 
of the stars, of which Cicero and Claudian make men¬ 
tion. Archimedes prided himself on the discovery of 
the ratio between the cylinder and the inscribed sphere, 
and requested his friends to place the figures of a 
sphere and cylinder on his tomb, with an inscription 
expressing the proportion between them ; a desire that 
afterward led to its discovery by Cicero. The Roman 
orator, when he was quaestor in Sicily, discovered this 
monument in the shape of a small pillar, and showed 
it to the Syracusans, who did not know that it was in 
being. He says there were some iambic verses in¬ 
scribed upon it, the latter halves of which were almost 
eaten out by time ; and that there were likewise to be 
seen (as those verses asserted) the figures of a cylinder 
and a sphere. From the death of this great mathema¬ 
tician, which happened A.U.C. 542, to the qujestorship 
of Cicero, A.U.C. 678, a hundred and thirty-six years 
had elapsed. This period, though it had not effaced 
the cylinder and the sphere, had put an end to the 
learning of Syracuse, once so respectable in the repub¬ 
lic of letters. {Cic., Tusc. Qucest., 5, 23.) Archime¬ 
des’s sepulchre, which stood near one of the city 
gates, was almost overgrown with thorns and briers, 
and, but for the exertions of Cicero, would most prob¬ 
ably have never been discovered. Various accounts 
are given by Plutarch of the manner of Archimedes’ 
death. The period when it occurred was during the 
capture and storming of Syracuse. According to the 
narrative most. commonly received, Archimedes was 
engaged in study when the city fell; and so intent was 
he upon a geometrical figure which he was tracing in 
the sand, as to be altogether unconscious of the con¬ 
fusion around him. A soldier suddenly entered his 
room, and ordered him to follow him to Marcellus, the 
Roman general having given particular orders to spare 
him. Archimedes refused to go until he had finished 
his demonstration, whereupon the soldier, in a passion, 
drew his sword and killed him. The Roman com¬ 
mander took upon himself the charge of his funeral, 
and protected and honoured his relations.—Several 
valuable remains of this celebrated mathematician are 
preserved. In abstract geometry there are two books 
“ On the Sphere and Cylindera treatise “ On the 
Dimensions of the Circle;” two books “On obtiise 
Conoids and Spheroids a book “ On Spiral Lines 
and another “ On the Quadrature of the Parabola.” 
Besides these geometrical works, he wrote a treatise, 
entitled ^app'm iq {Arenarius), in which he demon¬ 
strates that the sands of the earth might be nunrbered 
by a method somewhat similar to that of logarithms. In 
mechanics he has left a treatise “ On Equiponderants, 
or Centres of Gravity and in hydrostatics, a treatise 
“ On bodies floating in fluids.” Other works of Ar¬ 
chimedes are mentioned by ancient writers, which are 
now lost. Of those that remain various editions have 
appeared, the latest of which was issued in 1792 from 
the Clarendon press in Oxford, with a new Latin trans¬ 
lation, a preface, notes by Torrelli of Verona, purchased 
of his executor Albertini, and with various readings. 
The edition was published under the care of the Rev. 
A. Robertson, of Christ Church, Oxford, and may be 

179 




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regarded as the first truly complete one of the works 
of Archimedes. Translations have also appeared in 
some of the modern languages. That of Peyrard, in 
French (1807, 4to, and 1808, 2 vols. 8vo), is most 
deserving of mention. Delambre has appended to this 
version a memoir on the Arithmetic of the Greeks ; a 
subject of great interest, as we have very scanty data 
left us on this point. A review of this translation is 
given in the London Quarterly, vol. 3, p. 89, seqq. 
(Compare Hutton's Math. Diet. — Aikin's G. Diet. 
—Saxii Onomast. — Biogr. Univ., vol. 2, p. 378, 
seqq.) 

Archippe, a city of the Marsi, destroyed by an ( 
earthquake, and lost in Lake Fucinus. It is thought 
by Holstenius, on the authority of some people of the 
country who had seen vestiges of it, to have stood be¬ 
tween the villages of Transaqua and Ortuccia , on the 
spot which retains the name of Arciprete. (Holst., 
Adnot., p. 154.) 

Archippus, I. a king of Italy, from whom perhaps the 
town of Archippe received its name. He was one of 
the allies of Turnus. ( Virg., JEn., 7, 752.)—II. An 
Athenian comic poet, who gained the prize but once 
(Olymp. 91), according to Suidas. For some of the 
titles of his pieces, consult Fabricius, Bibl. Gr., vol. 

1, p. 747, and Schweighaeuser’s Index Auctorum to 
Athenseus ( Animadv ., vol. 9, p. 47). 

Archontes, the name of the chief magistrates of 
Athens. At first the archons were for life, and on 
their death the office descended to their children. 
This arrangement took place alter the death of Codrus, 
the Athenian state having been previously governed by , 
kings. The first of these perpetual archons was Me- | 
don, son of Codrus, from whom the thirteen following 
and hereditary archons. were named Medontidae, as be¬ 
ing descended from him. In the first year of the sev¬ 
enth Olympiad, the power of the archons was curbed 
by their being allowed to hold the office only for ten 
years. These are what are termed decennial archons. 
Seventy years after this the office was made annual, 
and continued so ever after. These annual archons 
were nine in number, and none were chosen but such 
as were descended from ancestors who had been free 
citizens of the republic for three generations. They 
were also to be without any personal defect, and must 
show that they had been dutiful towards their parents, 
had borne arms in the service of their country, and were 
possessed of a competent estate to support the office 
with dignity. They took a solemn oath that they 
would observe the laws, administer justice with impar¬ 
tiality, and never suffer themselves to be corrupted. 
If they ever received bribes they were compelled by 
the laws to dedicate to the god of Delphi a statue of 
gold, of equal weight with their body. (Plut., Vit. 
Solon, c. 19. — Pollux, 8, 9, 85.) They possessed 
the entire power of punishing malefactors with death. 
The chief among them was called Archon; the year 
took its denomination from him, and hence he was 
also called £7r uvvpog. He determined all causes be¬ 
tween man and wife, and took care of legacies and 
wills ; he provided for orphans, protected the injured, 
and punished drunkenness with uncommon severity. 
If he suffered himself to be intoxicated during the time 
of his office, the misdemeanor was punished with death. 
The second of the archons was called Basileus : it 
was his office to keep good order, and to remove all 
causes of quarrel in the families of those who were 
dedicated to the service of the gods. The profane 
and the impious were brought before his tribunal; and 
he offered public sacrifices for the good of the state. 
He assisted at the celebration of the Eleusinian festi¬ 
vals and other religious ceremonies. His wife was 
to be a citizen of the whole blood of Athens, and of a 
pure and unsullied life. He had a vote among the 
Areopagites, but was obliged to sit among them with¬ 
out his crown. The Polemarch was another archon 
180 


of inferior dignity. He had the care of all foreigners, 
and provided a sufficient maintenance, from the public 
treasury, for the families of those who had lost their 
lives in the defence of their country. Rut because 
these three magistrates were often, by reason of their 
youth, not so well skilled in the laws and customs of 
their country as might have been wished, that they 
might not be left wholly to themselves, they were each 
accustomed to make choice of two persons of age, 
gravity, and reputation, to sit with them on the bench, 
and assist them with their advice. These they called 
TLdpedpoi, or assessors, and obliged them to undergo 
the same probation as the other magistrates. The six 
other archons were indifferently called ThesmothctcB, 
and received complaints against persons accused of 
impiety, bribery, and ill behaviour. Indictments be¬ 
fore the Thesmothetse were in writing ; at the tribunal 
of the Basileus, they were by word of mouth. They 
settled all disputes between the citizens, redressed 
the wrongs of strangers, and forbade any laws to be 
enforced but such as were conducive to the safety of 
the state. After some time, the qualifications which 
were required to be an archon were not strictly ob¬ 
served, and, when the glory of Athens was on the de¬ 
cline, even foreigners, who had been admitted to the 
rights of citizenship, were created archons. Thus 
Hadrian, before he was elected emperor of Rome, 
was made archon at Athens, though a foreigner ; and 
the same honours were conferred upon Plutarch.— 
Many lists of the Athenian archons have been published 
in various works, but all of these were more or less 
inaccurate till the time of Corsini, and on that account 
of little use in illustrating ancient history. A cata¬ 
logue of the archons is given in Stanley’s “Lives of 
the Philosophers ,” p. 938, seqq.; another by Du Fres- 
noy (Tablettcs, vol. 1, p. 66, seqq ), and a third by Dr. 
Hales (Analysis of Chronology, vol. 1, p. 230, seqq.). 
One cause of the incorrectness of these lists has been, 
the not adverting to a peculiarity of the Parian mar¬ 
ble ; that the compiler places the annual archons, who 
preceded the Peloponnesian war, one year higher re¬ 
spectively than the Julian year, with which they were 
in reality connumerary. Hence two archons have been 
often made out of one. Again, those who have used 
this document did not always distinguish between what 
was attested by the marble, and what w r as supplied by 
conjecture where the marble was defaced. Hence 
the marble is often quoted for that which w r as only in¬ 
serted by its editors. Various forms or corruptions of 
the name of an archon have been sometimes admit¬ 
ted as the names of different archons. From these 
causes, the catalogues of archons are not as correct 
and accurate as they might have been rendered. 
(Clinton's Fasti Hellcnici, vol. 1, p. x., Introduction.) 
The most accurate tables, as far as they extend, are 
those given by Clinton, in the work which has just 
been quoted. 

Archytas, a native of Tarentum, and one of the 
Pythagoric preceptors of Plato. He is said to have 
been the eighth in succession from Pythagoras ; and 
this account deserves more credit than the assertion of 
Iamblichus, that he heard Pythagoras in person ; for 
the father of this sect flourished, as we shall see, about 
the 60th Olympiad, B.C. 540 ; but Archytas con¬ 
versed with Plato upon his first visit to Sicily, which 
was in the 96th Olympiad, B.C. 396 ; whence it ap¬ 
pears, that there was an interval of above a century 
between the time of Pythagoras and that of Archytas. 
Such was the celebrity of this philosopher, that many 
illustrious names appear in the train of his disciples, 
particularly Philolaus, Eudoxus, and Plato. To these 
Suidas, and, after him, Erasmus (Chil., p. 550), add 
Empedocles ; but Empedocles certainly flourished 
about the 84th Olympiad, near fifty years before Ar¬ 
chytas.—So high was his character for moral and po¬ 
litical wisdom, and so deservedly did he enjoy the un- 







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limited confidence of his fellow-citizens, that, contrary 
to the usual custom, he was appointed seven different 
times to the responsible office of general, and never 
experienced either check or defeat. ( Diog. Laert., 8, 
79.— Menage , ad, loc. — ^Elian makes it six times. 
Var. Hist., 7, 14.) Archytas was eminently distin¬ 
guished for his self-command and purity of conduct; 
and as uniting with a rare knowledge of mankind such 
a childlike feeling of universal love, and such simple¬ 
ness of manners, that he lived with the inmates of his 
house a real father of a family. Amid all his public 
avocations, however, he still found leisure to devote 
to the most important discoveries in science, and to 
the composition of many works of a very diversified 
character. His discoveries were exclusively in the 
mathematical and kindred sciences. He was occu¬ 
pied not merely with theoretical, but also practical 
mechanics ; and his inventions in this department of 
study imply a considerable advance in their cultivation. 
He also published a musical system, which was re¬ 
ferred to by all succeeding theoretical students of the 
art. ( Ptolern ., Harm., 1, 13. — Boeth., de Mus.) He 
wrote, moreover, a treatise on agriculture. ( Varro, de 
R. R., 1, 1. — Colum., 1, 1.) Of his philosophical doc¬ 
trines many accounts have come down to us; but wher¬ 
ever our information on this head is derived exclusive¬ 
ly from writers of later date, we cannot be too much 
on our guard, lest we should adopt anything which 
rests merely on supposititious writing, since nearly all 
the fragments attributed to him are spurious. These 
fragments have been preserved by Stobaeus and others, 
and edited from him by Gale, in his Opuscula Mytholo- 
gica (Cantabr ., 1671, 12mo), among the TLvOayopeiuv 
urcocnraapdTia. They are given, however, more fully 
and correctly by Orellius, in his Opuscula Grcecorum, 
&c., vol. 2, p. 234, seqq .— Aristotle, who was an in¬ 
dustrious collector from the Pythagoreans, is said to 
have borrowed from Archytas the general arrangements 
which are usually called his “ Ten Categories.”—The 
sum of the moral doctrines of Archytas is, that virtue 
is to be pursued for its own sake in every condition of 
life ; that all excess is inconsistent with virtue ; that 
the mind is more injured by prosperity ; and that there 
is no pestilence so destructive to human happiness as 
pleasure. It is probable that Aristotle was indebted 
to Archytas for many of his moral ideas ; particularly 
for the notion which runs through his ethical pieces, 
that virtue consists in avoiding extremes. Archytas 
perished by shipwreck, and his death is made a sub¬ 
ject of poetical description by Horace, who cele¬ 
brates him as a geometer, mathematician, and astron¬ 
omer. ( Od ., 1, 28. — Ritter, History of the Pythag. 
Philos., p. 67.— Id., Hist. Anc. Phil., vol. 1, p. 350, 
seq.) 

Arcitenens, an epithet applied to Apollo, as bear¬ 
ing a bow (arcus and teneo). The analogous Greek 
expression is rot;o<f>6pop. ( Virg ., JEn., 3, 75, &c.) 

ArctTnus, a cyclic bard, born at Miletus. He was 
confessedly a very ancient poet, nay, he is even termed 
a disciple of Homer. The chronological accounts 
plaee him immediately after the commencement of the 
Olympiad. Arctinus composed a poem consisting of 
9100 verses. ( Hceren, Bihliothck der Alten Lit., &c., 
pt. 4, p. 61.) It opened with the arrival of the Ama¬ 
zons at Troy, which event followed immediately after 
the death of Hector. The action of the epic of Arcti¬ 
nus was connected with the following principal events. 
Achilles kills Penthesilea, and then, in a fit of anger, 
puts to death Thersites, who had ridiculed him for his 
love of her. Upon this, Memnon, the son of Aurora, 
appears with his Ethiopians, and is slain by the son of 
Thetis, after he himself has killed in battle Antilochus, 
the Patroclus of Arctinus. Achilles himself falls by 
the hand of Paris, while pursuing the Trojans into the 
town. Ajax and Ulysses contend for his arms, and 
the defeat of Ajax causes his suicide. ( Schol. Pind., 


Isthm., 3, 58.) Arctinus farther related the story of 
the wooden horse, the careless security of the Trojans, 
and the destruction of Laocoon, which induced AEneas 
to fly for safety to Ida, before the impending destruc¬ 
tion of the city. In this he is quite different from Vir¬ 
gil, who, in other respects, has in the second book of 
the ./Eneid chiefly followed Arctinus. The sack of 
Troy by the Greeks returning from Tenedos, and is¬ 
suing from the Trojan horse, was described so far as 
to display in a conspicuous manner the arrogance and 
mercilessness of the Greeks, and to occasion the res¬ 
olution of Minerva, already known from the Odyssey, 
to punish them in various ways on their return home. 
This last part, when divided from the preceding, was 
called the Destruction of Troy (T/Uou nipcnc) ; the 
former, comprising the events up to the death of Achil¬ 
les, was termed the JEthiopis of Arctinus. {Prod., 
Chrestom. — Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 1, p. 169.— 
Hist. Lit. Gr., p. 65, in the Library of Useful Knowl¬ 
edge.) 

Arctophvlax, a constellation near the Great Bear, 
called also Bootes. The term is derived from dpicroc, 
“ a bear," and (jvXa^, “ a keeper or guard," for the 
position of the constellation on the celestial sphere is 
such, that it appears to watch over the Greater and 
Smaller Bear. Hence Ovid calls it “ Custos Ursce" 
{Tnst., 1, 10, 15), and Vitruvius simply “ Custos" 
(9, 4.—Compare Idelcr, Untersuch., &c., der Sternna- 
men, p. 47.— Cic., de Nat. D., 2, 42). 

Arctos, two celestial constellations near the north 
pole, commonly called Ursa Major and Minor, sup¬ 
posed to be Areas and his mother, who were made 
constellations. Ovid calls them Ferce conjointly : 
“ magna minorque Ferce" {Trist.,4 3, 1). Original¬ 
ly, the Greater Bear alone had the name of Arctos, and 
Homer appears merely to have been acquainted with 
this constellation, not with that of the Smaller Bear. 
{II., 18, 487.— Od., 5, 275.) The discoverer of the 
latter constellation is said to have been Thales, who 
lived at least two centuries after Homer. {Schol. ad 
II., 1. c. — Achill. Tat., Isag. in Arat., Phcen., c. 1.— 
Hygin., Poet. Astron., 2, 2.) The truth is, however, 
that Thales merely brought the knowledge of the 
Smaller Bear from the East into Greece, for the Phoe¬ 
nicians were acquainted with it at a much earlier pe¬ 
riod, and hence the name fyoiviKy, Phoenice, that was 
sometimes given to it. {Eratosth., Cat., c. 2.— Schol. 
ad German., p. 89.) Another name for the Greater 
Bear was "A fiatja, or “ the Wain," an appellation 
known already to Homer {II., 1. c.). Subsequently, 
a distinction was made between the Greater and Small¬ 
er Wain, as between the Greater and Smaller Bears. 
Hence we have, in Latin, the plural form Plaustra 
applied to both constellations of the Wain. {German., 
v. 25.— Avien., v. 103.) The more common Latin 
expression, however, is Septem Triones, “ the seven 
ploughing oxen,” originally applied to the Greater 
Bear, but afterward to both. Hence the Latin Sep- 
temtrio, as indicating the north. ( Varro, L. L., 6, 4.— 
Aul. Gell., 2, 21.— Virg., JEn., 1, 748.) Two other 
names are also found among the ancients for the Bear, 
namely, 'Vkiny {Hclice), and K vvoaovpa {Cynosura). 
The first of these is derived from e/u^, “ curled," and 
has reference to the curved or s-like position of the 
stars composing the Greater Bear, if we regard what 
is commonly called the Square or Quadrangle, merely 
as a semicircle opening towards the north. {Butt- 
mann, as cited by Idelcr, Untersuch. uber die Beobacht. 
der Alt., p. 376.) The term K vvoaovpa, on the other 
hand, which signifies the “ Dog's tail," was applied 
by the ancients to the constellation of the Smaller 
Bear, because this animal is represented on the celes¬ 
tial planisphere with its tail bent upward like that of a 
dog, or, as the scholiast on Homer remarks {II., 18, 
487), 6iu rb d>g kvvuc ex Etv dvaKeK/.aauevyv ovpdv. At 
a later period, however, the etymology of the two terms 

181 




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was forgotten or neglected, and Helice and Cynosura 
appear in fable as two nymphs, the nurses of Jove. 
( Arat., Phan., 30, seqq. — Hygin., Poet. Astron., 2, 2.) 
The name Cynosura is sometimes improperly applied 
by the moderns to the Pole-star. ( Ideler, Sternnamen, 
p. 8.)—The ancient name of the Greater Bear in the 
north is Karlsvagn, the “ Carle’s,” or “ Old Man’s 
Wain.” The Carle, Magnusen says, is Odin or Thor. 
Hence our “ Charles’s Wain.” The Icelanders call 
the Bears “ Stori (great) Yagn,” and “ Litli Vagn.” 
(.Edda Scemundar, 3, 304.) 

Arcturus, a star near the tail of the Great Bear, 
the rising and setting of which was generally supposed 
to portend tempestuous weather. It belongs to the 
constellation Bootes or Arctophylax, and torms its 
brightest star. Originally, according to Erotianus ( Ex¬ 
pos. voc. Hippocr.), the term Arcturus was synony¬ 
mous with Arctophylax, being derived from uparoq, a 
hear, and ovpog, a watch ox guard. Whether Hesiod, 
who twice makes mention of Arcturus (Op. et D., 566. 
— Ibid., 610), means the star or the constellation, is not 
very clear. Even some later writers, such as Martia- 
nus Capella, and the scholiast to Germanicus, employ 
the term as indicating the constellation itself. The 
common derivation of the name, from dpurog, and ov- 
pu, a tail, as referring to the situation of the star near 
the tail of the bear, is condemned by Buttmann. (Ide¬ 
ler, Sternnamen, p. 47, seqq .) Arcturus, observes 
Dr. Halley, in the time of Columella and Pliny rose 
with the sun at Athens, when the sun was in 12^- of 
Virgo ; but at Rome three days sooner, the sun being 
in 9£ of Virgo, the autumnal equinox then falling on 
the 24th or 25th of September. 

Ardalus, a son of Vulcan, said to have been the 
first who invented the pipe. He erected a temple also 
at Troezene, in honour of the Muses, who were hence 
called, from him, Ardalules, or Ardaliotides. (Pau- 
san., 2, 31.— Steph. Byz., s. v.) 

Ardea, the capital of the Rutuli, a very ancient city 
of Italy, founded, as tradition reported, by Danae, the 
mother of Perseus. ( Virg., JEn., 7, 408.) Hence the 
boast of Turnus, that he could number Inachus and 
Acrisius among his ancestors. Pliny (3, 5) and Mela 
(2, 4) have improperly reckoned Ardea among the 
maritime cities of Latium; but Strabo (232) and Ptol¬ 
emy (66) have placed it more correctly at some dis¬ 
tance from the coast. The ruins which yet bear the 
name of Ardea are situated on a hill about three miles 
from the sea. Though the early accounts of this an¬ 
cient city are lost in obscurity, we are led to infer that 
it must have attained to a considerable degree of power 
and prosperity at a remote period, if it be true, as Livy 
(21, 7) asserts, that a body of Ardeatse formed part of 
the Zacynthian colony, which settled Saguntum in 
Spain. The first mention which occurs of this city in 
the history of Rome, is in the reign of Tarquinius 
Superbus. We are told that it was during the siege 
of Ardea, which the king was carrying on, that the 
memorable circumstance occurred which led to his ex¬ 
pulsion from the throne, and the consequent change 
of government at Rome. (Liv., 1, 57.— Dion. Hal., 

4, 64.) The Ardeatse had the honour of affording an 
asylum to Camillus in his exile, and, under the con¬ 
duct of that great man, were enabled to render a signal 
service to the Romans in their utmost distress (if indeed 
we are to give credit to Livy’s account of these trans¬ 
actions) ; first by defeating a large body of Gauls who 
had advanced towards their city in quest of booty (Liv., 

5, 45), and afterward by contributing greatly to the 
decisive victory which freed Rome from her most 
dangerous enemies. (Liv., 5, 49.) In all probability, 
however, this story is merely to be regarded as one of 
the embellishments of the false legends of the Furian 
family. (Compare Arnold's History of Rome, vol. 1, 
p. 393, seqq.) The Ardeatse, however, did not.always 
display the same zeal and constancy in the service of 

182 


the republic. In the second Punic war, and at a time 
when the victories of Hannibal had exhausted the re¬ 
sources of the state, they refused to furnish any farther 
supplies of men and provisions. Their city was there¬ 
fore included in the vote of censure which the Roman 
senate afterward passed on several refractory colonies. 
(Liv., 27, 9.) Another curious circumstance in the 
history of Ardea is recorded by Varro (R. R., 2, 2), 
who states, that the era in which barbers were first 
introduced into Italy from Sicily was noted in the ar¬ 
chives of this city. This epoch Varro makes to coin¬ 
cide with 454 A.U.C. Strabo (22) informs us, that 
the country about Ardea was marshy, and the climate 
consequently very unfavourable ; which is confirmed 
by Seneca (Epist. 105) and Martial (Epigr., 4, 60). 
Some warm springs, strongly impregnated with sul¬ 
phur, noticed by Vitruvius (8, 3) in the vicinity of 
Ardea, still exist under the name of la Solforata, 
near the Terre di S. Lorenzo, in the direction of 
Antium. (Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol. 2, p. 21, 
seqq.) 

Ardericca, I. a small town of Assyria, north of 
Babylon, on the Euphrates. Herodotus informs us 
(1, 185) that Nitocris, queen of Babylon, in order to 
render her territories more secure against the Medes, 
altered the course of the Euphrates, and made it so 
very winding, that it came, in its course, three times 
to Ardericca. (Compare Larchcr, ad loc., where a 
diagram is given, explanatory of the course of the 
stream.) Heeren thinks that this laborious under¬ 
taking had also another object in view, to facilitate, 
namely, the navigation of the vessels in their descent 
from the higher countries. He considers it probable 
that this was effected by a series of sluices and flood¬ 
gates, and that the numerous windings of the canal 
made it a three days’ voyage to pass the village of Ar¬ 
dericca, the canal being cut in a zigzag mariner, to 
diminish the fall occasioned by the steepness of the 
land. The name Ardericca has led to the conjecture, 
that it is the present Akkcrcuf, above Bagdad. Ak- 
kcrcuf, however, lies on the Tigris, not the Euphrates. 
(Heeren, Ideen, vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 138, seqq. — Porter's 
Travels, vol. 2, p. 277.)—II. A village in Cissia, 
about two hundred and ten stadia to the northeast of 
Susa. (Herodotus, 6, 119.—Compare Larchcr and 
Bahr, ad loc.) It was here that the Eretrian captives 
were settled. (Vid. Eretria.) 

Ardiscus, a river of Thrace, falling into theHebrus 
at Adrianopolis. Now the Arda. 

Arduenna, now Ardennes, a forest of Gaul, the 
longest in that country, reaching, according to Caesar, 
from the Rhenus and the territories of the Treveri to 
those of the Nervii, upward of fifty miles in length. 
Others make the extent much larger. If it covered 
the whole of the intervening space between the coun¬ 
tries of the Treveri and Nervii, it would greatly exceed 
fifty miles. The original Gallic name would seem to 
have been Ar-Denn, i. e., “ the profound,” or “ deep” 
(forest). Ar is the article, Den in the Kimric, Don in 
the Bas-Breton, and Domhainn in Gaelic, denote re¬ 
spectively “ profound,” “ thick,” &c. (Thierry, Hist, 
des Gaulois, vol. 2, p. 41, in notis.) The ground is 
now in many places cleared, and cities built upon it. 
It is divided into four districts. Its chief town is 
Mezieres. (Taczt., Ann., 8, 42.— Cces., Bell. Gall., 
6, 29.) 

Ardvs, a son of Gyges, king of Lydia, who reigned 
forty-nine years, took Priene, and made war against 
Miletus. (Herodot., 1 , 16.—Compare Clinton's Fasti 
Hellenici, vol. 2, p. 296.) 

Arelatum (’A pelurov,. Ptol.: ’A pelurai, Strabo: 
Arelate, among the Latin writers ; and sometimes 
Arelas by the poets), a town of the Salyes on the east 
side of the Rhodanus, at the place where it divides into 
three branches, not far from its mouth. Strabo speaks 
of it as a commercial emporium, and, according to 





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Pomponius Mela, it was one of the richest cities in 
Gallia Narbonensis. It was also called Sextanorum 
Colonia, from having been colonized by the soldiers of 
the sixth legion, conducted thither by the father of 
Tiberius. It is now Arles. During the later periods 
of the Roman empire, Arelate was the residence of 
some of the emperors ; and at a subsequent date, on 
account of the frequent inroads of the barbarians, the 
praetorian headquarters were transferred from Treveri 
(Treves ) to this place. ( Gas., Bell. Civ., 1 , 36. — 
Mela , 2, 5.— Suet., Vit. Tib., 4.) 

Aremorica, or Armorica, a Celtic term, applied in 
strictness to all parts of Gaul which lay along the ocean. 
As the Romans, however, before Caesar’s time, knew 
no other part of the coast except that between the 
Pyrenees and the mouth of the Garumna, the name 
with them became restricted to this portion of the 
country. {Mannert, Gcogr., vol. 2, p. 112.) The ap¬ 
pellation is derived from the Gaelic ar, “ upon,” and 
moir, “ sea.” (Compare Thierry, Hist, des Gaulois, 
vol. 1, Introd., p. xxxix., in notis.) 

Arenacum, a fortified place on the Rhine, in the 
territories of the Batavi, not far from where the river 
separates to form the Yahalis. It is now, according 
to D’Anville, Aert or Aerth, but Mannert is in favour of 
Arnheim. {Tacit., Hist., 5, 20.—Compare Mannert, 
Geogr., vol. 2, p. 242.) 

Areopagitue, the judges of the Areopagus, a seat 
of justice on a small eminence at Athens. ( Vid. Are¬ 
opagus.) The time in which this celebrated seat of 
justice was instituted is unknown. Some suppose that 
Cecrops, the founder of Athens, first established it, 
while others give the credit of it to Cranaus, and others 
to Solon. The constitution and form under which it 
appears in history, is certainly not more ancient than 
the time of Solon, though he undoubtedly appears to 
have availed himself of the sanctity already attached 
to the name and place, to ensure to it that influence 
and inviolability which were essential to the attain¬ 
ment of its chief object, the maintenance of the laws. 
Its original right of judging all cases of homicide con¬ 
tinued, though evidently the least important part of its 
duties, since, when Ephialtes had deprived it of all but 
that, the Areopagus was thought to be annihilated. 
{Demosth. adv. Aristocr., p. 642. — Lex. Rhet., ap¬ 
pended to Porson's Photius, p. 585, ed. Lips. — Her¬ 
mann’s Polit. Antiq., p. 215, not. 6.) It was not re¬ 
stored to its dignity of guardian of the laws till the 
fall of the thirty tyrants. Its office as such was, in 
principle, directly opposed to an absolute democracy, 
and must have appeared the more formidable to the 
partisans of that form, from the indefinite and arbitrary 
nature of the merely moral power on which its authority 
was founded, and which rendered it impracticable 
clearly to define the extent of its influence. In later 
times it was found particularly active as a censorship 
of morals, and in several respects may be viewed as a 
superior court of police, taking cognizance of luxury 
and morals, the superintendence of public buildings 
and public health, and, in particular, making it its bu¬ 
siness to direct public attention to men who might en¬ 
danger the state, though its own power to inflict pun¬ 
ishment in such cases was very limited. {Hermann, 
l. c.) The Areopagus, when originally constituted, 
was, as has already been remarked, merely a criminal 
tribunal. Solon, guided by motives which cannot now 
be easily explained, rendered it superior to the Ephetae, 
another court instituted by Draco, and greatly enlarged 
its jurisdiction.—The number of judges composingthis 
august tribunal is not clearly ascertained. It was prob¬ 
ably about ninety. {Tittmann, Griech. Staatsverf., p. 
252.) The court consisted entirely of ex-archons; and 
every archon, on laying down his archonship, became 
a member of it. {Tittmann, l. c. — Pint., Vit. Sol., c. 
19.) It was expressly provided, however, that the 
members of this court should be altogether pure and 


blameless in their lives, and it was even required that 
their whole demeanour should be grave and serious 
beyond what was expected from other men. The 
dignity of a judge of the Areopagus was always for life, 
unless he was expelled for immoral or improper con¬ 
duct. The Areopagites took cognizance of murders, 
impiety, and immoral behaviour, and particularly of 
idleness, which they deemed the cause of all vice. 
They watched over the laws, and they had the manage¬ 
ment of the public treasury ; they had also the liberty 
of rewarding the virtuous, and inflicting severe punish¬ 
ment upon such as blasphemed against the gods, or 
slighted the celebration of the holy mysteries. Hence 
St. Paul was arraigned before this tribunal as “ a setter 
forth of strange gods,” because he preached to the 
Athenians of Jesus and the resurrection. They always 
sat in the open air; because they took cognizance of 
murder, and, by their laws, it was not permitted for 
the murderer and the accuser to be both under the same 
roof. {Vid. Areopagus.) This custom also might 
originate from the persons of the judges being sacred, 
and their being afraid of contracting pollution by con¬ 
versing in the same house with men who had been 
guilty of shedding innocent blood. They always heard 
causes and passed sentence in the night, that they 
might not be prepossessed in favour of the plaintiff or 
defendant by seeing them. Whatever causes were 
pleaded before them were to be divested of all oratory 
and fine speaking, lest eloquence should charm their 
ears and corrupt their judgment. Hence arose the 
most just and most impartial decisions ; and their sen¬ 
tence was deemed sacred and inviolable, and the plain¬ 
tiff and defendant were equally convinced of its justice. 
The Areopagites generally sat on the 27th, 28th, and 
29th day of every month. But if any business hap¬ 
pened which required despatch, they assembled in the 
royal portico, BaaiTii/ip hrod. This institution was 
preserved entire until the time of Pericles, who, as he 
had never filled the office of archon, could not be ad¬ 
mitted a member of the Areopagus, and therefore em¬ 
ployed all his power and influence in undermining an 
authority which was incompatible with his own. The 
earlier strictness too, as regarded the private character 
of the judges, began now to be relaxed, and eventually, 
when the grandeur of Athens was on the decline, men 
of vicious and profligate lives became members of the 
Areopagus. — As regards the form Areopagita and 
Ariopagita, consult the remarks of Bergman {Prcef. 
adlsocr. Areopag. init.). 

Areopagus {Apnoirayog, or "Apeioc; rcuyop, i. e., 
“ the hill of Mars”), a small eminence at Athens, a 
little distance to the northwest of the Acropolis. It 
was so called in consequence, as it was said, of Mars 
having been the first person tried there, for the murder 
of Halirrhothius, son of Neptune. ( Vid. Areopagitse.) 
This celebrated court consisted only of an open space, 
in which was an altar dedicated to Minerva Areia, and 
two rude seats of stone for the defendant and his ac¬ 
cuser. From Vitruvius we learn (2, 1. — Compare 
Poll., 8, 10), that at a later period this space was en¬ 
closed, and roofed with tiles. According to Herodotus 
(8, 52), the Persians were stationed in the Areopagus 
when they made their attack on the western side of the 
Acropolis. (Consult, as regards the form of the name, 
the remarks of Bergman, Prcef. ad Isocr. Areopag. 
init.) 

Arestorides, a patronymic given to the hundred¬ 
eyed Argus, as son of Arestor. {Ovid, Met., 1 , 624.) 

Aret^eus, a Greek physician of Cappadocia, who 
is supposed to have flourished A.D. 80. We have 
two productions of his remaining : nepl A Iritiv teal 
hy/ue'uov o^eav na > xp 0V ' LUV rraddiv, “ On the causes 
and symptoms of acute and chronic maladies and, 
7 zepl Oepaireiag o^euv nal XP OV ' LO)V ^o.Guv, “ On the 
cure of acute and chronic maladies.” The works of 
this most elegant writer, which have come down to us, 

183 



ARE 


A R G 


are so truly valuable as to make us deplore the loss we 
have sustained by the mutilations they have suffered. 
His language is in the highest degree refined, and his 
descriptions are uncommonly graphic and accurate. 
For example, what picture could be truer to life than 
the one which he has drawn of a patient in the last 
stage of consumption 1 and what description was ever 
more poetically elegant than that which he gives us of 
the symptoms attending the collapse in ardent fever 1 
— Considering that most probably he was prior to 
Galen, the correctness of his physical views cannot but 
excite our admiration. Thus, in his account of Paral¬ 
ysis, he alludes to the distinction between the Nerves 
of Sensation and those of Muscular motion, which 
doctrine is treated of at great length by Galen, in his 
work De Usu Partium (tt epl Xpeiaq rd)v kv -dvOpuTcov 
cupari poptuv). He enumerates indigestion among 
the exciting causes of palsy, which seems to be an 
anticipation of a late pretended discovery, that paralysis 
of the limbs is sometimes to be referred to derange¬ 
ment of the stomach and bowels.—In speaking of epi¬ 
lepsy, he makes mention of the use of copper, which 
medicine has been tried of late years in this complaint 
with manifest advantage.—No other ancient writer 
that we are acquainted with gives us so correct an ac¬ 
count of ulcers on the throat and tonsils. His descrip¬ 
tion of the various phenomena of mania is very inter¬ 
esting, and contains the singular case of a joiner, who 
was in his right senses while employed at his profession 
at work, but no sooner left the seat of his employment 
than he became mad. He gives an interesting ac¬ 
count of jaundice, which he attributes, probably with 
correctness, to a variety of causes, but more especially 
to obstruction of the ducts, which convey the bile to 
the intestinal canal. He makes no mention, indeed, 
of gall-stones, nor are they mentioned, as we know, by 
any ancient writer; onlyNonnius recommends Lithon- 
triptics for the cure of the disease, which might seem 
to imply that he was acquainted with the existence of 
these concretions.—Aretaeuswas fond of administering 
hellebore, and concludes his work with a glowing 
eulogy on the properties of this medicine. The best 
editions of Aretseus are, that of Wigan, Oxon. s 1723, 
folio, and that of BoerhaVe, Lugd. Bat.,. 1731, folio. 
This latter one, in fact, is superior to the former, since 
it contains all that is given in Wigan’s edition, together 
with the commentary of Petit, and the notes and em¬ 
endations of Triller. The edition of Aretseus given 
in Kuhn’s collection of the Greek medical writers, has 
not proved very satisfactory in a critical point of view. 
(Pierer, Annal. Aug., p. 1041.— Hoffmann, Lex. Bibl., 
vol. 1, p. 248.) 

Arete, a daughter of the philosopher Aristippus. 
^Elian, however, contrary to the common account, 
makes her his sister. (Hist. An., 3, 40.) Aristippus 
taught her the doctrines of his school, and she in her 
turn became the instructress of her own son, the 
younger Aristippus, who, on this account, received the 
surname of Metrodidactus (M pTpodidaKToc;). Her at¬ 
tainments in philosophy were highly celebrated. (Aris- 
tocles, ap. Euseb., Prcep. Ev., 14, 18.— Diog. Laert., 2, 
86.— Casaub., ad Diog., 1. c.) 

Arethusa, I. a nymph of Elis, daughter of Ocean- 
us, and one of Diana’s attendants. As she returned 
one day from hunting, she came to the clear stream of 
the Alpheus, and, enticed by its beauty, entered into 
its waters to drive away the heat and fatigue. She 
heard a murmur in the stream, and, terrified, sprang 
to land. The river-god rose and pursued her. The 
nymph sped all through Arcadia, till with the approach 
of evening she felt her strength failing, and saw that 
her pursuer was close upon her. She then prayed to 
Diana for relief, and was immediately dissolved into a 
fountain. Alpheus resumed his aqueous form, and 
sought to mingle his waters with hers. She fled on 
Under the earth, however, and through the sea, till she 


rose in the island of Ortygia at Syracuse, still followed 
by the stream of the Alpheus. In proof of the truth 
of this fable, it was asserted that a cup (<j)iuX7j) which 
fell into the Alpheus rose in the fountain of Arethusa, 
whose pellucid waters also became turbid with the 
blood of the victims slain at the Olympic games. 
(Ovid, Met., 5,572, seqq. — Moschus, Idyll., 7. — Keight- 
ley's Mythology, 2 d ed., p. 132.) An explanation of 
the legend will be found under the article Alpheus.— 
II. A lake in Armenia Major, through which the Ti¬ 
gris ran. It was near the sources of that river, and 
exhaled, according to Pliny, nitrous vapours. (Plin., 
6, 27.)—III. A city in the Macedonian district of Am- 
phaxitis. (Plin., 4, 10.)—IV. A city of Syria, on the 
eastern bank of the Orontes. It was either built or 
restored by Seleucus Nicator, and is supposed to have 
been destroyed by the Arabians. (Strab., 518.— Zo- 
sim., 1, 52.— Thcod., Hist. Eccles., 3, 7.)—V. A foun¬ 
tain in Euboea, near Chalcis. (Plin., 4, 12.)—YI. A 
fountain in Boeotia, near Thebes. (Plin., 4, 7.) 

Areus, I. (two syllables) a king of Sparta, preferred 
in the succession to Cleonymus, son of Cleomenes, 
who, on being defeated in his claim upon the throne, 
called in the aid of Pyrrhus. Areus was in Crete 
when the king of Epirus marched against Sparta ; and 
instantly leaving that island, whither he had gone to 
aid the Gortynians, he returned home and repulsed 
Pyrrhus. He afterward went to the aid of Athens, 
w hen attacked by Antigonus Gonatas, and lost his life 
in a battle with this prince in the environs of Corinth, 
B.C. 268. (Pausan., 3, 6.) — II. (Areus, y A peioq) a 
native of Alexandrea, and member of the Pythagorean 
seqjt. According to the common account, he was one 
of the masters of Augustus, and enjoyed so high a de¬ 
gree of favour with this prince, that when, after the 
defeat of Antony and Cleopatra, Augustus appeared 
in the theatre of Alexandrea, he had his old instructer 
on his right hand, and conversed familiarly with him, 
declaring that one of the causes of his sparing the in¬ 
habitants was his friendship for Areus. (Dio Cassms, 
51,16.— Fabric, ad Dion., 1. c. — Pint., Vit. Anton., 80.) 
The eloquence and philosophy of Areus were so per¬ 
suasive, that, according to Seneca, he powerfully con¬ 
tributed to console Livia for the loss of Augustus ! 
(Senec., Consol, ad Mar., 4, 2.) It is thought by some 
that Dioscorides dedicated to him his work on the Ma¬ 
teria Medica, but the point is not clearly ascertained. 
(Biogr. Umv., vol. 2, p. 407.) 

Areva, a river of Hispania Tarraconensis, in the 
territory of the Arevaci. It rose southeast of Sala- 
mantica, and flowed into the Durius. The modern 
name is, according to Harduin, the Arlanzo (ad Plin., 
3, 4), but according to Florez, more correctly, the 
XJcero. (Esp. Sagr., 5, 16, 39.) 

Arevaci, a people of Hispania Tarraconensis, deri¬ 
ving their name, according to Pliny (3, 3), from the 
river Areva. They lay between the Vaccsei to the 
north and the Carpetani to the south, and formed one 
of the most powerful branches of the Celtiberi. Ac¬ 
cording to some authorities, their chief city was Nu- 
mantia. (Strabo, 162. — Mela, 2, 6. — Appian, B. 
Hisp., c. 91.) Pliny, however, assigns this place to 
the Pelendones (3, 4). Their later capital was Sego- 
bia or Segubia, now Segovia. (Itin. Ant., p. 435.— 
Ptol., 2, 6.) 

Argjeus, a mountain of Cappadocia, covered w r itb 
perpetual snow r s, and so lofty that from its summit, 
according to the ancient writers, both the Euxine and 
the Mediterranean Seas might be seen, although, ac¬ 
cording to Strabo (538), there were very few who 
could boast of such a feat. It is now called Argch- 
dag, and at its foot stood Mazaca, the capital of Cap¬ 
padocia, called, in the time of Tiberius, Ca?sarea ad 
Argseum, and now Kaisarieh. Mr. Kinneir observes, 
that Mount Argasus is unquestionably one of prodi¬ 
gious elevation ; but he much questions whether any 





ARG 


A R G 


human being ever reached its summit; and, indeed, 
he was positively informed that this was quite impos¬ 
sible. It was covered for some miles below the peak 
with snow, which was said to be eight or ten feet in 
depth in the month of October, when he was at Caes¬ 
area. ( Journey through Asia Minor, &c., p. 94, note.) 

Argathonius, or Arganthonius, a king of Gades, 
who, according to one account {Herod., 1, 163.— Cic., 
de Senect., 19), lived 120 years, and reigned 80 years 
of this number. Pliny (7, 48) gives 150 years as the 
period of his existence ; and Silius Italicus (3, 398), 
by poetic license, 300 years. 

Arges, a son of Cqelus and Terra, who had only 
one eye in his forehead. {Vid. Cyclopes.) 

Argeus, a son of Perdiccas, king of Macedonia, 
who obtained the kingdom when Amyntas, father of 
Philip, was driven out for a season by the Illyrians 
(from 393 B.C. to 390). On the death of Perdiccas, 
B.C. 360, he endeavoured, but in vain, to remount the 
throne. ( Justin, 7, 1.) 

Argi ( plur. masc.). Vid. Argos. 

Argia, I. daughter of Adrastus, married Polynices, 
whom she loved with uncommon tenderness. When 
he was killed in the Theban war, and Creon had for¬ 
bidden any one to perform his funeral obsequies, Ar¬ 
gia, in conjunction with Antigone, disobeyed the man¬ 
date, and placed the corpse of Polynices on the fune¬ 
ral pile. Antigone was seized by the guards who had 
been stationed near the dead body, but Argia escaped. 
Vid. Antigone. ( Hygin., Fab., 69 and 72.) — II. A 
country of Peloponnesus, called also Argolis, of which 
Argos was the capital.—III. The wife of Inachus, and 
mother of Io. {Hygin., Fab., 145.) « 

Argiletum, a street at Rome, which led from the 
Vicus Tuscus to the Forum Olitorium and Tiber. 
The origin of the name is uncertain. Some accounts 
derived it from Argus, a guest of Evander’s {vid. Ar¬ 
gus V.), who was said to have been interred there ; 
others from the abundance of argilla, or clay, found in 
the vicinity. {Varro, L. L., 4, 32.) This street ap¬ 
pears to have been chiefly tenanted by booksellers 
{Martial, Ep., 1 , 4.— Id., 1 , 118), and also by tailors. 
{Martial, Ep., 2, 17.) Cicero informs us {Ep. ad 
Att., 1, 14), that his brother Quintus had a house in the 
Argiletum. {Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol. 1, p. 545.) 

Argilus, the first town on the coast of Bisaltia in 
Thrace, beyond Bromiscus and the outlet of the Lake 
Bolbe. It was founded by a colony from Andros, ac¬ 
cording to Thucydides (4, 102). Herodotus (7, 115) 
says it was the first town which Xerxes entered after 
crossing the Strymon. The Argilians espoused the 
cause of Brasidas on his arrival in Thrace, and were 
very instrumental in securing his conquest of Am- 
phipolis. {Thucyd., 4, 103.) 

Arginus^e, small islands below Lesbos, and lying 
off the promontory of Cana or Coloni in iEolis. They 
were rendered famous for the victory gained near them 
by the Athenian fleet under Conon, over that of the 
Lacedaemonians, in the 26th year of the Peloponnesian 
war, B.C. 406. Of these three islands, the largest 
had a town called Arginusa. They are formed of a 
white, argillaceous soil, and from that circumstance 
took their names {dpyivoeiq, shining white, feminine 
dpyivoeaaa, contracted dpytvovaa. —Compare the re¬ 
marks of Heusinger, ad Cic., de Off., 1, 24, 9). 

Argiphontes, a surname given to Mercury, be¬ 
cause he killed the hundred-eyed Argus, by order of 
Jupiter. Cowper, in his version of Homer, renders 
the term in question by “Argicide.” (Consult re¬ 
marks under the article Io.) 

Argippsei, a nation among the Sauromatse, born 
bald, with flat noses and long chins. They lived upon 
the fruit of a tree called Ponticus, from which, when 
ripe, they made a thick black liquor called Aschy, 
which they drank clear, or mixed with milk. Of the 
husks they prepared a kind of cake. No man offered 
A A 


violence to this people, for they were accounted sa¬ 
cred, and had no warlike weapon among them. They 
determined the differences between their neighbours, 
and whoever fled to them for refuge was permitted to 
live unmolested. {Hcrodot., 4, 23.) Ritter thinks 
that these Argippsei were one of the early sacerdotal 
colonies from India, which had settled in the wilds of 
Scythia, and whose peaceful and sacred character had 
secured the regard of the neighbouring barbarians. 
Their bald heads he accounts for by the circumstance 
of the priests of Buddha being accustomed to shave 
the head. ( Vorhalle, p. 286.) De Guignes, on the 
other hand, refers the description of Herodotus to the 
Sinae. {Mem. de I'Acad. des Inscr., vol. 35, p. 551.) 
The best opinion, however, is in favour of the Cal- 
mucs, whose peculiar physiognomy coincides with 
that ascribed to the ancient Argippsei. {Malte-Brun, 
Annul, des Voyag., vol. 1, p. 372.) The Calmuc 
priests, moreover, called Ghelongs, are said to shave 
the entire head, and to do this also in the case of in¬ 
fants that are destined for the priesthood. (Compare 
Bd.hr, ad Herod., 1. c. — Rcnnell, Geogr. of Herodotus, 
vol. 1, p. 172, seqq.) 

Argiva, a surname of Juno, as worshipped at Ar¬ 
gos. {Virg., Mn., 3, 547.) 

ArgIvi, the inhabitants of the city of Argos and the 
neighbouring country. The word is also applied by 
Homer, and, in imitation of him, by the later poets, to 
all the inhabitants of Greece. 

Argo, the name of the famous ship which carried 
Jason and his fifty companions to Colchis, when they 
resolved to recover the golden fleece. Jason having 
applied to Argus {vid. Argus III.) to construct a ves¬ 
sel for the expedition, Argus built for him a fifty-oared 
galley, called from himself the Argo. Minerva aided 
the architect in its construction, and set in the prow 
a piece of timber cut from the speaking oak of Dodo- 
na, and which had the power of giving oracles. On 
the termination of the voyage, Jason consecrated the 
vessel to Neptune at the Isthmus of Corinth. Accord¬ 
ing to the more popular account, however, Minerva 
translated the Argo to the skies, and made it a con¬ 
stellation. {Apollod., 1 , 9, 16.— Id., 1 , 9, 24.— Id., 1 , 
9, 27.— Diod. Sic., 4, 53. — Eratosth., 35.— Hygin., 
Fab., 24, &c.) 

Argolicus sinus, a bay on the coast of Argolis, 
between this country and Laconia. It is now the 
Gulf of Napoli. 

Argolis, a country of Peloponnesus, to the east of 
Arcadia. It is properly a neck of land, deriving its 
name from its capital city Argos, and extending in a 
southeasterly direction from Arcadia, fifty-four miles 
into the sea, where it terminates in the promontory of 
Scillaeum. Many and important associations of the 
heroic age are connected with this country. Here 
was Tyrins, from which Hercules departed at the 
commencement of his labours ; here was Mycenae, the 
royal city of Agamemnon, the most powerful and the 
most unhappy of kings ; here was Nemea, celebrated 
for its games instituted in honour of Neptune. But 
the glory of its early history does not seem to have 
animated Argos. No Themistocles, no Agesilaiis 
was ever counted among its citizens ; and though it 
possessed a territory of no inconsiderable extent, it 
never assumed a rank among the first of the Grecian 
states, but was rather the passive object of foreign pol¬ 
icy. {Heeren's Politics of Greece, p. 19, Bancroft's 
transl.) —For a sketch of the history of Argolis, vid. 
Argos. 

Argonauts, a name given to those ancient heroes 
who went with Jason on board the ship Argo to Col¬ 
chis. The expedition arose from the following cir¬ 
cumstance. Athamas, king of Orchomenus in Boeotia, 
married Nephele, by whom he had two children, a son 
and a daughter, named Phrixus and Helle. Having 
subsequently divorced Nephele, he married Ino, daugh- 

185 



ARGONAUTS. 


ARGONAUTS. 


ter of Cadmus, who bore him two sons, Learchus and 
Melicerta. Ino, feeling the usual jealousy of a step¬ 
mother, resolved to destroy the children of Nephele. 
For this purpose she persuaded the women to parch 
the seed-corn unknown to their husbands. They did 
as she desired, and the lands consequently yielded no 
crop. Athamas sent to Delphi to consult the oracle, 
in what way the threatening famine might be averted. 
Ino persuaded the messenger to say that Apollo di¬ 
rected Phrixus to be sacrificed to Jupiter. Com¬ 
pelled by his people, Athamas reluctantly placed his 
son before the altar ; but Nephele snatched away both 
her son and her daughter, and gave them a gold-fleeced 
ram she had obtained from Mercury, which carried 
them through the air over sea and land. They pro¬ 
ceeded safely till they came to the sea between Sigse- 
um and the Chersonese, into which Helle fell, and it 
was named from her Hellespontus ( Helle's Sea). 
Phrixus went on to Colchis to JEetes, the son of He¬ 
lios, who received him kindly, and gave him in mar¬ 
riage his daughter Chalciope. He there sacrificed his 
ram to Jupiter Phyxius, and gave the golden fleece 
to JEetes, who nailed it to an oak in the grove of Mars. 
It is thus that we find this legend related by Apollodo- 
rus (1, 9, 1). There are, however, many variations in 
the tale. Thus it is said that Ino was Athamas’s first 
wife, and that he put her away by the direction of 
Juno, and married Nephele, who left him after she 
had borne two children, on finding that he still retained 
an attachment for Ino. When the response of the 
oracle came to Athamas, he sent for Phrixus out of 
the country, desiring him to come, and to bring the 
finest sheep in the flock for a sacrifice. The ram then 
spoke with a human voice to Phrixus, warning him 
of his danger, and offering to carry him and his sister 
to a place of safety. The ram, it was added, died at 
Colchis. ( Philostephanus , ap. Schol. ad II., 7, 86.— 
Compare, for another account, Hygin., Poet. Astron., 
2, 20.) Other statements again are given by the tragic 
poets, it being well known that they allowed them¬ 
selves great liberties in the treatment of the ancient 
myths. (Compare Hygin., Fab., 4.— Nonnus, 9, 247, 
seqq .) Sometime after this event, when Jason, the son 
ofHJson, demanded of his uncle Pelias the crown which 
he usurped (vid. Pelias, Jason, -iEson), Pelias said that 
he would restore it to him, provided he brought him 
the golden fleece from Colchis. Jason undertook the 
expedition, and when the Argo was ready (vid. Argo), 
consulted the oracle, which directed him to invite the 
greatest heroes of the day to share in the dangers and 
glories of the voyage. The call was immediately re¬ 
sponded to, and numerous sons of gods hastened to 
embark with him. From the Peloponnesus came Her¬ 
cules, Castor and Pollux, sons of Jupiter ; Peleus and 
Telamon, grandsons of that god, also came with The¬ 
seus ; Erginos and Ancaeus, sons of Neptune, Augeas, 
son of Helius, Zetes and Calais, sons of Boreas. There 
were likewise Lynceus, and Idas, and Meleagrus, La¬ 
ertes, Periclymenus, Nauplius, Iphiclus, Iphitus, Ad- 
metus, Acastus, Butes, Polyphemus, Atalanta, and 
many others. Idmon, the seer, the son of Apollo, 
came from Argos ; Mopsus, also a prophet from Thes¬ 
saly, and Orpheus, the son of the muse Calliope. The 
steersman was Tiphys, son of Agnius, from Siphae in 
Boeotia. The entire number was fifty. (Apollod., 1, 
9, 16. — Heyne, ad loc. — Burmann, Prcef. ad Val. 
Flacc., 11, vol. 1, p. clxxiii.) When the heroes were 
all assembled, Mopsus took auguries, and the omens 
being favourable, they embarked. The joyful heroes 
grasped each his oar at the word of the soothsayer; 
and, while Orpheus struck his lyre in concert with his 
voice, their oars kept time to the harmony. At the 
close of the day they had reached the mouth of the bay 
of Pagasae. Here they remained for two days, and 
then rowed along the coast of Magnesia ; and, passing 
the peninsula of Pallene, at length reached the Isle of 
186 


Lemnos, in which there were at that time no men, 
Hypsipylethe daughter of Thoas governing it as queen. 
For the Lemnian women had murdered their husbands, 
being incensed at their neglect. (Vid. Hypsipyle.) 
The Argonauts, being invited to land, all disembarked 
with the exception of Hercules, and gave themselves 
up to joy and festivity, until, on the remonstrances of 
the son of Alcmena, they tore themselves aw^ay from 
the Lemnian fair ones, and once more handled their 
oars. The offspring of this temporary union repeopled, 
say the poets, the Island of Lemnos. After leaving 
Lemnos they came to Samothrace, and thence pur¬ 
sued their voyage through the Hellespont into the Pro¬ 
pontis, where they came to an island with a lofty hill 
in it named the Bears’ Hill, inhabited by giants with 
six arms. The adjacent country was possessed by the 
Delionians, whose king was named Cyzicus. Having 
been hospitably entertained by this prince, and having 
slain the giants who opposed their departure, they set 
sail, but were driven back by adverse wfinds. It was 
in the night that they returned, and the Doiionians, ta¬ 
king them to be their enemies the Pelasgians, attack¬ 
ed them ; and several of the Doiionians, and among 
them Cyzicus, lost their lives. With daylight discern¬ 
ing their error, the Argonauts shore their hair, and, 
shedding many tears, buried Cyzicus with solemn mag¬ 
nificence. They then sailed to Mysia, where they left 
behind them Hercules and Polyphemus ; for Hylas, 
a youth beloved by the former, having gone for water, 
was seized and kept by the nymphs of the spring 
into which he dipped his urn. Polyphemus, hearing 
him call, went with his drawn sword to aid him, sup¬ 
posing him to have fallen into the hands of robbers. 
Meeting Hercules, he told him what had happened, 
and both proceeded in quest of the youth. Meantime 
the Argo put to sea, and left them behind. Polyphe¬ 
mus settled in Mysia, and built the city of Kios : Her¬ 
cules returned to Argos. (Vid. remarks under the ar¬ 
ticle Hylas.) The Argo next touched on the coast of 
Bebrycia, otherwise called Bithynia, where Pollux ac¬ 
cepted the challenge of Amycus, king of the country, 
in the combat of the cestus, and slew him. They were 
driven from Bebrycia, by a storm, to Salmydessa, on 
the coast of Thrace, where they delivered Phineus, 
king of the place, from the persecution of the harpies. 
Phineus directed them how to pursue their course 
through the Cyanean rocks, or the Symplegades (vid. 
Cyaneae), and they safely entered the Euxine Sea. 
They visited the country of the Mariandynians, where 
Lycus reigned. Here died Idmon, the seer, w ounded 
by the tusks of a wuld boar. Tiphys also dying here, 
Ancaeus undertook the steerage of the vessel. They 
now kept along the southern coast of the Euxine till 
they came to the Island of Aretias, which was haunt¬ 
ed by birds that shot feathers sharp as arrow s from 
their wings. These they drove off by clattering on 
their shields. While they remained in this isle, the 
sons of Phrixus, who were on their way to Greece, 
having been sent by TEetes to claim their father’s king¬ 
dom, were cast on the shores of Aretias by a storm. 
These became the guides of the Argonauts to Colchis, 
and conducted them to TEa the capital. Jason explain¬ 
ed the causes of his voyage to TEetes ; but the condi¬ 
tions on which he was to recover the golden fleece 
were so hard, that the Argonauts must have perished 
in the attempt had not Medea, the king’s daughter, 
fallen in love with their leader. She had a conference 
with Jason, and, after mutual oaths of fidelity, Medea 
pledged herself to deliver the Argonauts from her fa¬ 
ther’s hard conditions, if Jason married her, and car¬ 
ried her with him to Greece. He was to tame two 
bulls, the gifts of Vulcan to JEetes, which had brazen 
feet, and breathed flame from their throats. When 
j he had yoked these, he was to plough with them a piece 
of ground, and sow the serpent’s teeth which TEetes 
I possessed; for Minerva had given him one half of those 




ARGONAUTS. 


ARGONAUTS. 


which Cadmus sowed at Thebes. All this was to be 
performed in one day. Medea, who was an enchant¬ 
ress, gave him a salve to rub his body, shield, and 
spear. The virtue of this salve would last an entire 
day, and protect alike against fire and steel. She far¬ 
ther told him that, when he had sown the teeth, a crop 
of armed men would spring up, and prepare to attack 
him. Among these she desired him to fling stones, 
and, while they were fighting with one another about 

them, each imagining that the other had thrown these, 
to fall on and slay them. The hero followed the ad¬ 
vice of the princess : he entered the sacred grove of 
Mars, yoked the bulls, ploughed the land, and slaugh¬ 
tered the armed crop which it produced. But AJetgs 
refused to give the fleece, and meditated burning the 
Argo and slaying her crew. Medea, anticipating him, 
led Jason by night to the golden fleece : with her drugs 
she cast to sleep the serpent which guarded it; and 

then, taking her little brother Absyrtus out of his bed, 
she embarked with him in the Argo, and the vessel set 
sail while it was yet night. ( Phcrecydcs, ap. Schol. 
ad Apoll. Rh., 4, 223.—Another account is given un¬ 
der the article Absyrtus.) Aletes, on discovering the 
treachery and flight of his daughter, got on shipboard 
and pursued the fugitives. Medea, seeing him gain 
on them, cut her brother to pieces, and scattered his 
limbs on the stream; an event that was afterward trans¬ 
ferred to the north side of the Euxine, where the town 
of Tomi (ropoc, cuttings) was said to have derived its 
name from it. ( Apollod ., 1 , 9, 24.— Ovid , Trist., 3, 
9.) While ACetes was engaged in collecting the limbs 
of his son, the Argo escaped. He then despatched a 
number of his subjects in pursuit of the Argo, threat¬ 
ening, if they did not bring back his daughter, to inflict 
on them the punishment designed for her. At length 
the Argo entered the western sea, and came to the 
Island of Circe. The belief for a long time prevailed, 
that there was a communication between the Palus 
Maeotis and the Oceanus or earth-encompassing stream. 
This communication the old poets made to be a narrow 
passage or strait, but later writers the river Tanai's. 
The writer of the Orphic Argonautics makes the Ar¬ 
gonauts pass up the Phasis into the Palus Maeotis, 
thence into the main Oceanus, and thence directing 
their course to the west, to come to the British Isles 
and the Atlantic, and to reach at last the Columns of 
Hercules. Circe performed the usual rites of purifi¬ 
cation to remove the blood-guilt of the death of Ab¬ 
syrtus, and the heroes then departed. Ere long they 
came to the Isle of the Sirens, charmed by whose en¬ 
chanting strains they were about to land on that fatal 
shore, when Orpheus struck his lyre, and with its tones 
overpowered their voices. Wind and wave urged on 
the Argo, and all escaped but Butes, who flung him¬ 
self into the sea to swim to the Flowery Isle. Venus, 
to save him, took him and set him to dwell at Lilybaj- 
um. The Argonauts now passed Scylla and Charyb- 
dis, and also the Wandering Rocks ; over these they 
beheld flame and smoke ascending, but Thetis and her 
sister Nereids guided them through by the command 
of Juno. Passing Thrinakia, the Isle of the Sun, they 
came to the island of the Phseacians. Some of the 
Colchians who were in pursuit of the Argonauts, ar¬ 
riving here, found the Argo, and requested Alcinoiis 
to give Medea up to them. He assented, provided she 
had not been actually married to Jason. His wife 
Arete, hearing this, lost no time in joining the lovers 
in wedlock ; and-the Colchians, then fearing to return, 
settled in the island. Sailing thence, the Argo was 
assailed by a tremendous storm, which drove it to the 
Syrtes, on the coast of Libya. After being detained 
there for some time, they proceeded on their home¬ 
ward voyage, and came to Crete, where the brazen 
man, Talus, prohibited their landing; but Medea, by 
her art, deprived him of life. On leaving Crete, the 
night came on so black and dark that they knew not | 


where they were ; but Apollo, taking his stand on the 
rocks called the Melantian Rocks, shot an arrow into 
the sea: the arrow flashed a vivid light, and they be¬ 
held an island, on which they landed. As this isle had 
appeared (uve<pyvaro) so unexpectedly, they named it 
Anaphe. Here they erected an altar to Apollo JEgle- 
tes (the Lightener), and offered sacrifices. They thence 
proceeded to ACgina, where they watered; and they 
finally arrived at lolcos after an absence of four months. 
—This celebrated voyage formed a theme for several 
ancient poets, and is noticed more or less by many 
other writers. Jason and the Argo are mentioned by 
Homer (II., 7, 469.— lb ., 21, 40.— Od., 12, 69). He¬ 
siod briefly narrates the principal events ( Theog ., 992, 
seqq.) ; it is the subject of one of Pindar’s finest odes 
(Pyth ., 4), and of the epic poem of Apollonius, named 
from it. It is narrated in detail by Apollodorus and 
Diodorus Siculus. Ovid also relates a large part of it, 
and there is an unfinished poem on the subject by the 
Latin poet Valerius Flaccus, which displays genius 
and originality. We have also the Argonautics of the 
pseudo-Orpheus, a poem to which the ablest critics 
assign a date posterior to the commencement of the 
Christian era. To these are to be added the detached 
notices in other writers and in the various scholia. 
Of the dramas composed on this subject, not a single 
one has been preserved, except the Medea of Euripides. 
(Keightley's Mythology, 2d ed., p. 468, seqq .)—The 
Argonautic expedition, observes Thirlwall, when view¬ 
ed in the light in which it has usually been considered, 
is an event which a critical historian, if he feels him¬ 
self compelled to believe it, may think it his duty to 
notice, but which he is glad to pass rapidly over, as a 
perplexing and unprofitable riddle. For even when the 
ancient legend has been pared down into an historical 
form, and its marvellous and poetical features have been 
all effaced, so that nothing is left but what may appear 
to belong to its pith and substance, it becomes, indeed, 
dry and meager enough, but not much more intelligible 
than before. It still relates an adventure, incompre¬ 
hensible in its design, astonishing in its execution, con¬ 
nected with no conceivable cause, and with no sensi¬ 
ble effect. Though the account which we have given 
is evidently an artificial statement, framed to reconcile 
the main incidents of a wonderful story with nature 
and probability, it still contains many points which 
can scarcely be explained or believed. It carries us 
back to a period when navigation was in its infancy 
among the Greeks ; yet their first essay at maritime 
discovery is supposed at once to have reached the ex¬ 
treme limit, which was long after attained by the ad¬ 
venturers who gradually explored the same formidable 
sea, and gained a footing on its coasts. The success 
of the undertaking, however, is not so surprising as 
the project itself; for this implies a previous knowl¬ 
edge of the country to be explored which it is very 
difficult to account for. But the end proposed is still 
more mysterious ; and, indeed, can only be explained 
with the aid of a conjecture. Such an explanation 
was attempted by some of the later writers among the 
ancients, who perceived that the whole story turned 
on the golden fleece, the supposed motive of the voy¬ 
age, and that this feature had not a sufficiently histor¬ 
ical appearance. But the mountain torrents of Colchis 
were said to sweep down particles of gold, which the 
natives used to detain by fleeces dipped in the streams. 
This report suggested a mode of translating the fable 
into historical language. It was conjectured that the 
Argonauts had been attracted by the metallic treasures 
of the country, and that the golden fleece was a poet¬ 
ical description of the process which they had observ¬ 
ed, or perhaps had practised: an interpretation cer¬ 
tainly more ingenious, or, at least, less absurd than 
those by which Diodorus transforms the fire-breathing 
bulls which Jason was said to have yoked, at the bid¬ 
ding of Aretes, into a band of Taurians who guarded 

187 



ARGONAUTS. 


A R G 


the fleece, and the sleepless dragon which watched 
over it, into their commander Draco : but yet not more 
satisfactory; for it explains a casual, immaterial cir¬ 
cumstance, while it leaves the essential point in the 
legend wholly untouched. The epithet golden , to 
which it relates, is merely poetical and ornamental, 
and signified nothing more, as to the nature of the 
fleece, than the epithets white or purple, which were 
also applied to it by early poets. ( Schol. ad Apoll. 
Rh., 4, 177.) According to the original and genuine 
tradition, the fleece was a sacred relic, and its impor¬ 
tance arose out of its connexion with the tragical story 
of Phrixus, the main feature of which is the human 
sacrifice which the gods had required from the house 
of Athamas. This legend was not a mere poetic fic¬ 
tion, but was grounded on a peculiar form of religion, 
which prevailed in that part of Greece from which the 
Argonauts are said to have set out on their expedi¬ 
tion, and which remained in vigour even down to the 
Persian wars. Herodotus informs us, that when 
Xerxes, on his march to Greece, had come to Alus, a 
town of the Thessalian Achaia, situate near the Gulf 
of Pagasse, in a tract sometimes called the Athaman- 
tian plain, his guides described to him the rites be¬ 
longing to the temple of the Laphystian Jupiter, an 
epithet equivalent to that under which Phrixus is said 
to have sacrificed the ram to the same deity, as the 
god who had favoured his escape. (Z eve; $vl;Log .— 
Midler, Orchomenus , p. 164.) The eldest among the 
descendants of Phrixus was forbidden to enter the 
council-house at Alus, though their ancestor Athamas 
was the founder of the city. If the head of the family 
was detected on the forbidden ground, he was led in 
solemn procession, covered with garlands, like an or¬ 
dinary victim, and sacrificed. Many of the devoted 
race were said to have quitted their country to avoid 
this danger, and to have fallen into the snare when 
they returned after a long absence. The origin as¬ 
signed to this rite was, that, after the escape of Phrix¬ 
us, the Achaeans hack-been on the point of sacrificing 
Athamas himself to appease the anger of the gods ; 
but that he was rescued by the timely interference of 
Cytissorus, son of Phrixus, who had returned from the 
Colchian JEa, the land of his father’s exile; hence 
the curse, unfulfilled, was transmitted for ever to the 
posterity of Phrixus. This story, strange as it may 
sound, not only rests on unquestionable authority, but 
might be confirmed by parallel instances of Greek su¬ 
perstition ; and it scarcely leaves room to doubt that 
it was from this religious belief of the people, among 
whom the Argonautic legend sprang up, that it de¬ 
rived its peculiar character; and that the expedition, 
so far as it was the adventure of the golden fleece, 
was equally unconnected with piracy, commerce, and 
discovery. It closely resembled one of the romantic 
enterprises celebrated in the poetry of the middle 
ages, the object of which was imaginary, and the di¬ 
rection uncertain. And so Pindar represents it as un¬ 
dertaken for the purpose of bringing back, with the 
golden fleece, the soul of Phrixus, which could not 
rest in the foreign land to which it had been banished. 
—But the tradition must also have had an historical 
foundation in some real voyages and adventures, with¬ 
out which it would scarcely have arisen at all, or be¬ 
come so generally credited. The voyage of the Argo¬ 
nauts must no doubt be regarded, like the expedition 
of the Tyrian Hercules, as representing a succession 
of enterprises, which may have been the employment 
of several generations. And this is perfectly consis¬ 
tent with the manner in which the adventurers are 
most properly described. They are Minyans, a branch 
of the Greek nation whose attention was very early 
drawn by their situation, not perhaps without some 
influence from the example and intercourse of the 
Phoenicians, to maritime pursuits. The form which 
the legend assumed was probably determined by the 
188 


course of their earliest naval expeditions. They were 
naturally attracted towards the northeast, first by the 
islands that lay before the Hellespont, and then by the 
shores of the Propontis and its two straits. Their 
successive colonies, or spots signalized either by hos¬ 
tilities or peaceful transactions, would become the 
landing-places of the Argonauts.—If, however, it 
should be asked in what light the hero and heroine 
of the legend are to be viewed on this hypothesis, it 
must be answered that both are most probably purely 
ideal personages, connected with the religion of the 
people to whose poetry they belong. Jason was per¬ 
haps no other than the Samothracian god or hero Ja- 
sion, whose name was sometimes written in the same 
manner, the favourite of Ceres, as his namesake was 
of Juno, and the protector of mariners, as the Thes¬ 
salian hero was the chief of the Argonauts. Medea 
seems to have been originally another form of Juno 
herself, and to have descended, by a common transi¬ 
tion, from the rank of a goddess into that of a heroine, 
when an epithet had been mistaken for a distinct 
name. The Corinthian tradition claimed her as be¬ 
longing properly to Corinth, one of the principal seats 
of the Minyan race. The tragical scenes, which ren¬ 
dered her story there so celebrated, were commemo¬ 
rated by religious rites, which continued to be observ¬ 
ed until the city was destroyed by the Romans. Ac¬ 
cording to the local legend, she had not murdered her 
children ; they had been killed by the Corinthians ; 
and the public guilt was expiated by annual sacrifices 
offered to Juno, in whose temple fourteen boys, chosen 
every twelvemonth from noble families, were appoint¬ 
ed to spend a year in all the ceremonies of solemn 
mourning. The historical side of the legend seems to 
exhibit an opening intercourse between the opposite 
shores of the JEgean. If, however, it was begun by 
the northern Greeks, it was probably not long con¬ 
fined to them, but was early shared by th<pse of Pelo¬ 
ponnesus. It would be inconsistent with the piratical 
habits of the early navigators to suppose that this in¬ 
tercourse was always of a friendly nature, and it may 
therefore not have been without a real ground that 
the Argonautic expedition was sometimes represented 
as the occasion of the first conflict between the Greeks 
and the Trojans. (ThirlwalV s History of Greece, vol. 
1, p. 142, seqq. — Muller, Orchomenus, p. 258, seqq. 
—-Id. ibid., p. 302, 357.—Dor other, but far less sat¬ 
isfactory theories on the subject, consult Bryant's 
Mythology, vol. 3, p. 362, seqq.—Ritter, Vorhallc, p. 
420, seqq. — Knight, Inquiry, &c., § 220, Classical 
Journ., No. 53, p. 75.-— Plass, Vor- und Urgeschichte 
der Hellencn, vol. 1 , p. 414, seqq.) Apollonius Rho- 
dius gives another account, equally improbable. He 
says that they sailed from the Euxine up one of the 
mouths of the Danube, and that Absyrtus pursued 
them by entering another mouth of the river. After 
they had continued their voyage for some leagues, the 
waters decreased, and they were obliged to carry the 
ship Argo across the country to the Adriatic, upward 
of 150 miles. Here they met with Absyrtus, who 
had pursued the same measure, and conveyed his ship 
in like manner over the land. Absyrtus was immedi¬ 
ately put to death; and soon after, the beam of Do- 
dona (vid. Argo) gave an oracle, that Jason should 
never return home if he was not previously purified 
of the murder. Upon this they sailed to the island 
of .Ea, where Circe, who was tlie sister of JEetes, ex¬ 
piated him without knowing who he was. There is 
a third tradition, which maintains that they returned 
to Colchis a second time, and visited many places of 
Asia. 

Argos (sing. neut. et Argi, masc. plur.), I. the 
capital of Argolis, situate on the river Inachus, 
and generally regarded as the most ancient city of 
Greece. (Diod. Sic., 1 , 17.) Its early prosperity 
and commercial connexion with the Phoenicians are 



ARGOS. 


ARGOS. 


attested by Herodotus (1, 1). The walls of the city 
were constructed of massive blocks of stone, a mode 
of building which was generally attributed to the 
Cyclopes ( Euripides, Troad, 1087. — Id., Hercules 
Fur., 15), but which evidently shows the Pelasgic 
origin of the place. It was also protected by two 
citadels, situated on towering rocks, and surrounded 
by fortifications equally strong. The principal one 
was named Larissa. ( Strabo, 370. — Livy, 34, 25.) 
In the time of Strabo, Argos was inferior only to 
Sparta in extent and population, and from the de¬ 
scription of Pausanias, it is evident that, when he vis¬ 
ited this celebrated town, it was adorned with many 
sumptuous buildings and noble works of art. Argos 
produced some of the first sculptors of Greece, among 
whom were Ageladas, the master of Phidias, and 
Polycletus, who surpassed all the artists of antiquity 
in correctness of design. Music also was highly cul¬ 
tivated in this city; and, as early as the reign of Da¬ 
rius, the Argives, according to Herodotus, were ac¬ 
counted the first musicians of the age. ( Herodot., 3, 
131.)—Argos, if we follow the common tradition, was 
founded by Inachus, B.C. 1856. On the arrival of 
Danaus, who is said to have come from Egypt, the in¬ 
habitants changed their ancient appellation of Pelasgi 
to that of Danai. ( Eurip., Archel., frag. 2.—Com¬ 
pare Strabo, 371.) At that time the whole of what 
was afterward called Argolis acknowledged the au¬ 
thority of one sovereign ; but, after the lapse of two 
generations, a division took place, by which Argos and 
its territory were allotted to Acrisius, the lineal de¬ 
scendant of Danaus, while Tiryns and the maritime 
country became the inheritance of his brother Proetus. 
A third kingdom was subsequently established by Per¬ 
seus, son of the former, who founded Mycense ; but 
these were all finally reunited in the person of At- 
reus, son of Pelops ; who, having been left regent by 
his nephew Eurystheus, during his expedition against 
the Heraclidae, naturally assumed the sovereign power 
after his death. Atreus thus acquired, in right of the 
houses of Pelops and Perseus, which he represented, 
possession of nearly the whole of Peloponnesus, which 
ample territory he transmitted to his son Agamemnon, 
who is called by Homer sovereign of all Argos and the 
islands. (II., 2, 107. — Compare Thucyd,., 1, 9.— 
Strabo, 372.) After the death of Agamemnon the 
crown descended to Orestes, and subsequently to his 
son Tisamenes, who was forced to evacuate the throne 
by the invasion of the Dorians and Heraclidse eighty 
years after the siege of Troy. (Pausan., 2, 18.) Te- 
menus, the lineal descendant of Hercules, now became 
the founder of a new dynasty ; but the Argives, hav¬ 
ing acquired a taste for liberty, curtailed so much the 
power of their sovereigns as to leave them but the 
name and semblance of kings : at length, having de¬ 
posed Meltas, the last of the Temenic dynasty, they 
changed the constitution into a republican govern¬ 
ment. (Pausan., 2, 19.) As regards the inward or¬ 
ganization of this government, we only know, that in 
Argos, a senate, a college of eighty men, and magis¬ 
trates, stood at the head. In the time of the Achsean 
league the first officer of the state appears to have 
been elected by the people. (Liv., 32, 25.) The 
Argives, after the establishment of their republican 
form of government, were engaged in frequent hostil¬ 
ities with the Spartans, each people claiming the pos¬ 
session of the small district of Cynuria. In the reign 
of Cleomenes, king of Sparta, the Argives met with a 
total defeat, and Argos itself was only saved from the 
enemy by the daring courage of a female, Telesilla, 
who incited the rest of the population, and even those 
of her own sex, to take up arms in defence of their 
city. (Pausan., 2, 20.) Subsequently, however, the 
slaves of Argos, taking advantage of the enfeebled 
state of the country, openly rebelled, and, overturning 
the existing government, retained the sovereign power 


in their own hands, till the sons of their former mas¬ 
ters, arriving at the age of manhood, expelled them 
from the city. It was partly owing to these internal 
commotions, and partly also to the jealousy which sub¬ 
sisted between the Argives and the LacedEemonians, 
that the former took no part in the Persian war. Not 
long after the termination of this war, the Argives, ac¬ 
tuated by motives of envy against the Mycenseans, 
who had distinguished themselves at Thermopylae, 
made war upon that people, and, after taking Myce¬ 
nae, finally destroyed that city, B.C. 468. (Diod. 
Sic., 11, 65.— Pausan., 2, 16.) At a subsequent pe¬ 
riod, we find the Argives uniting with the Athenians, 
Corinthians, and other powers, against the Spartans. 
The judicious measures, however, pursued by King 
Agis and the Spartan allies, frustrated the operations 
of their Argive foes, and had the Lacedaemonian king 
pressed his advantage, the latter must have been to¬ 
tally routed. The following year, the hostile armies 
met in the plains of Mantinea, where a decisive battle 
was fought, which ended in the total defeat of the Ar¬ 
gives and their allies. This event dissolved the con¬ 
federacy against the Lacedaemonians; and the Argives 
not only made peace with that people, but were even 
persuaded by them to convert their hitherto democrat- 
ical constitution into an aristocracy. (Thucyd., 5, 
65, seqq.) Not long after, however, a counter-revo¬ 
lution took place, when the people revolted, and, after 
overpowering the oligarchical party, entered once 
more into an alliance with Athens. Having obtained 
the . assistance of that power, they now erected long 
walls, extending from the city to the sea, which ensured 
to them a constant communication with their allies by 
means of that element. (Thucyd., 5, 82.) The Ar¬ 
gives, induced by gratitude for the interest which Al- 
cibiades had taken in their affairs, joined the Sicilian 
expedition (Thucyd., 6, 29); and, even after the dis¬ 
astrous termination of that enterprise, they continued 
to support the Athenian cause, till the defeat they sus¬ 
tained near Miletus obliged them to recall their forces. 
Argos, adhering to the principle of opposing the ag¬ 
grandizement of Sparta, joined the league which was 
afterward set on foot against that power by the influ¬ 
ence of Persia; and furnished troops for-the battles of 
Nemea, Coronea, and the other engagements which 
took place during what is usually termed the Corinthi¬ 
an war, which was concluded by the peace of Antal- 
cidas. On the renewal of hostilities between the 
Boeotians and LacedEemonians, the Argives again 
joined the former, and fought at the battle of Manti¬ 
nea. (Xen., Hist. Gr., 7, 5.) After this period, no 
event of interest or importance occurs in the history of 
Argos until the unsuccessful attempt made to surprise 
and capture that city by Pyrrhus. This prince, being 
then at war with Antigonus Gonatas, whom he had 
driven from Macedonia, having failed in the enterprise 
he meditated against Sparta, marched rapidly on 
Argos, which he reached during the night, and had 
already penetrated into the town, when succours ar¬ 
rived from Antigonus. Pyrrhus being slain, his troops 
were all destroyed or made prisoners. (Plut., Vit. 
Pyrrh. — Pausanias, 1, 13. — Strabo, 377.) Argos, 
like other Peloponnesian states, became afterward 
subject to the domination of a tyrant; but when, by 
the talents and energy of Aratus, Corinth and Sicy- 
on had been emancipated, Aristomachus, who then 
reigned in Argos, voluntarily abdicated his author¬ 
ity, and persuaded the Argives to join the Achsean 
league. (Polyb., 2, 44.) During the momentary suc¬ 
cess obtained by Cleomenes, Argos fell into the hands 
of that prince, but it was presently recovered by the 
Achseans, and continued to form part of their confed¬ 
eracy till its final dissolution by the Romans. (Po¬ 
lyb., 2, 52, seqq. — Strabo, l. c.) The population of 
Argolis was divided into three classes, consisting of 
citizens, inhabitants of the country, or nepioiKoi, and 

189 



ARGOS. 


ARG 


slaves or vassals, called yvpvyTeq. {AristOt., Rep., 5, 
2, 8.— Pollux , 3, 83.) The number of the first class 
might amount to 16,000, being nearly equal to that of 
the Athenian citizens. ( Lys ., ap. Dion. Hal., p. 531.) 
The free part of the population may therefore be esti¬ 
mated at 65,000 souls, to which, if we add the mpioi- 
koi and slaves, we shall have an aggregate of nearly 
110,000 persons. ( Clinton's Fasti Hdlenici, 2d cd., 
vol. 1, p. 426.— Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 9, p. 
226, scqq.) —II. Pelasgicum, a city of Thessaly, of 
Pelasgic origin, as its name indicates. It is generally 
supposed to have been identical with Larissa on the 
Peneus. Strabo (440) informs us that there was once 
a city named Argos close to Larissa. (Compare 
Heyne, ad II, 6, 457.) — III. Oresticum, a city of 
Macedonia, in the district Orestis and territory of the 
Orestse. Its foundation was ascribed by tradition to 
Orestes, son of Agamemnon. ( Strabo , 326.—Com¬ 
pare Theag. Maced, ap. Steph. Byz., s. v. ’Opeorai, 
et "Appoq.) —IV. A city of Acarnania, situate at the 
southeastern extremity of the Ambracian Gulf, in the 
territory of t^e Amphilochi. It was founded, as Thu¬ 
cydides report^ (2, 68), by Amphilochus, son -of Am- 
phiaraus, on his return from Troy, who named it after 
his native city, the more celebrated Argos of Pelopon¬ 
nesus. Ephorus, however, who is cited by Strabo 
(326), gave a somewhat different account, affirming 
that Argos in Acarnania owed its origin to Alcmaeon, 
by whom it was named Amphilochium, after his brother 
Amphilochus. (Compare Apollod., 3, 7.— Diccearch., 
St at. Grcec., v. 46.) Argos was originally by far the 
largest and most powerful town of the country; but its 
citizens, having experienced many calamities, admit¬ 
ted the Ambraciots, their neighbours, into their socie¬ 
ty, from whom they acquired the knowledge of the 
Grecian language, as it was spoken at that time. 
The Ambraciots, however, at length gaining the as¬ 
cendency, proceeded to expel the original inhabitants, 
■who, too weak to avenge their wrongs, placed them¬ 
selves under the protection of the Acarnanians. 
These, with the aid of the Athenians, commanded by 
Phormio, recovered Argos by force, and reduced to 
slavery all the Ambraciots who fell into their hands. 
The Ambraciots made several attempts to retrieve 
their loss, but without effect. Many years subsequent 
to this we find Argos, together with Ambracia, in the 
possession of the BEtolians ; and, on the surrender of 
the latter town to the Romans, we are informed by 
Livy, that the consul M. Fulvius removed his army to 
Argos, where, being met by the HJtolian deputies, a 
treaty was concluded, subject to the approbation of the 
senate. ( Liv ., 38, 9.— Polyb., Fragm., 22, 13.) Ar¬ 
gos, at a later period, contributed to the formation of 
the colony of Nicopolis, and became itself deserted. 
The ruins of the city have been visited by several 
travellers, but Dr. Holland’s account is perhaps the 
most circumstantial. He describes them as situated 
at the southeastern extremity of the Gulf of Arta, on 
one of the hills which form an insulated ridge running 
back in a southeast direction from the bay. The 
w’alls, forming the principal object in these ruins, skirt 
along nearly the whole extent of the ridge, including 
an oblong irregular area, about a mile in its greatest 
length, but of much smaller breadth. The structure 
of these w T alls is Cyclopian ; they are of great thick¬ 
ness, and on the eastern side, where built with the 
most regularity, are still perfect to the height of more 
than twenty feet. ( Holland's Travels, vol. 2, p. 224. 
Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 2, p. 10, seqq.) 

Argus, I. a son of Arestor, according to one ac¬ 
count ( Asclep. ap. Apollod., 2, 1, 3), and hence called 
by Ovid Arestorides. {Met., 1, 624.) Others, how¬ 
ever. make him a son of Inachus. ( Pherecyd. ap. 
eund.) Acusilaus and fEschylus {Supp., 318. — 
Prom. V., 698) call him Earth-born. He was named 
All-seeing {iravonrys), as having eyes all over his 
190 


body {Apollod., 1. c.). Ovid, however, gives him the 
poetic number of a hundred, of which only two were 
asleep at a time. {Met., 1, 625.) The strength of 
Argus was prodigious : and Arcadia being at the time 
infested with a wild bull, he attacked and slew the ani¬ 
mal, and afterward wore its hide. He also killed a 
satyr, who carried off the cattle of the Arcadians ; and 
watching an opportunity, when he found the Echidna 
(the daughter of Tartarus and Earth) asleep, he de¬ 
prived her of life. When Io had been changed into a 
cow, Juno gave the charge of watching her to Argus. 
He thereupon bound her to an olive-tree in the grove 
of Mycenae, and kept guard over her. Jupiter, pitying 
her condition, sent Mercury to steal her away ; but a 
vulture always gave Argus warning of his projects, and 
the god found it impossible to succeed. Nothing 
then remaining but open force, he killed Argus with a 
stone, and hence obtained the name of Argus-slaycr, 
or Argicide (’A pyeupovry^). Thus far Apollodorus. 
Ovid, however, varies the fable in several particulars, 
and, among other things, makes Mercury to have slain 
Argus with a harpe, or short curved sword. Accord¬ 
ing to the same poet also, Juno transferred the eyes 
of Argus, after death, to the tail of her favourite bird 
the peacock.—An explanation of the whole legend will 
be given under the article Io. {Apollod., 1. c. — Keight- 
ley's Mythology, p. 406, 2d ed.) —II. A son of Jupi¬ 
ter and Niobe daughter of Phoroneus. According to 
one account, he succeeded Phoroneus on the Argive 
throne, and gave the name of Argos to the whole Pel¬ 
oponnesus. Another statement, however, makes him 
to have been the successor of Apis. {Apollod., 2, 1, 

1 . — Heyne, adloc. — Schol. ad Eurip., Orest., 1247.) — 
III. The builder of the Argo. His parentage is dif¬ 
ferently given by different writers, and he is often con¬ 
founded with Argus the son of Phrixus (IV.). Both 
he and this latter were in the number of the Argo¬ 
nauts. (Consult the remarks of Burmann in the list 
of the Argonauts appended to his edition of Valerius 
Flaccus, s. v. Argus.)—IV. Son of Phrixus and Chal- 
ciope daughter of JEetes. He is often confounded 
with the preceding, for example by Apollodorus (1, 
9, 16) and Pherecydes {ap. Schol. ad Apoll. Rh., 1, 
4). He and his brothers were found by the Argo¬ 
nauts on the island of Aretias, in the Euxine, having 
been cast on it by a storm when on their way to 
Greece to claim their father’s kingdom ; and he gui¬ 
ded the Argonauts to Colchis. {Schol. ad Apoll. Rh., 

2, 309, 384.) Valerius Flaccus, on the other hand, 
makes the Argonauts to have found Argus in Colchis, 
at the palace of HCetes (5, 461), and with this the ac¬ 
count of the pseudo-Orpheus substantially agrees {v. 
858, seqq.). Compare the remarks of Burmann, as ci¬ 
ted in the previous paragraph (III.).—V. A guest of 
Evander’s, who conspired against that monarch, and 
was slain in consequence by the followers of the latter 
without his knowledge. The spot where he was in¬ 
terred was called, according to some, Argiletum. ( Vid. 
Argiletum.— Virg., AZn., 8, 345. — Serv., ad loc.) — 
VI. A hound of Ulysses’, that recognised its master 
after an absence on the part of the latter of nearly 
twenty years. {Od., 17, 301.) 

Argyraspides, a name given to the troops of Alex¬ 
ander, from the silver plates added by him to their 
shields when about to invade India. (Compare Quin¬ 
tus Curtins, 8, 5, 4, and Justin, 12, 7.) There is 
some doubt whether the name in question was con¬ 
fined to a particular coi’ps of Alexander's invading ar¬ 
my or to the whole. The latter opinion appears to be 
the more correct one. (Consult on this point the re¬ 
marks of Schmieder, ad Curt., 4, 13, 27, and 8, 5, 4.) 

Argyra, a town of Achaia, a little to the southeast 
of Patrse. The river Selenmus flowed in its vicinity, 
and near it also was the fountain of Argyra. {Pausan., 
7, 23.)—II. A sea-nymph, of whom Selenmus, a young 
shepherd, was enamoured. She eventually slighted 




A III 


A RI 


his love, and he pined away until Venus changed him 
into a river. The Selemnus thereupon, like the Alpheus 
in the case of Arethusa, sought to blend its waters with 
those of the fountain Argyra, over which the incon¬ 
stant nymph presided. According to another legend, 
however, Venus, again moved with pity, exerted her di¬ 
vine power anew, and caused him to forget Argyra. 
The waters of the Selemnus became, in consequence, 
a remedy for love, inducing oblivion on all who bathed 
in them. ( Pausan ., 7, 23 )—III. A name given by the 
ancients to the silver region of the East, and the posi¬ 
tion of which tract of country varied with the progress 
of geographical discovery. At first Argyra was an 
island immediately beyond the mouths of the Indus. 
When, however, under the first Ptolemies, the naviga¬ 
tion of the Greeks extended to the Ganges, the silver- 
island was placed near this latter stream. Afterward 
another change took place, and Argyra, now no longer 
an island, became part of the region occupied in mod¬ 
ern times by the kingdom of Arracan. ( Ptol ., 7, 2.— 
Gosselhn, Recherches, &c., vol. 3, p. 280.) 

Argyripa, the more ancient name of Arpi. {Vid. 
Arpi.) 

Aria, the name given to a country of large extent,' 
answering in some degree to the present Khorasin. 
It comprised several provinces, and was bounded on 
the west by Media, on the north by Hyrcania and Par- 
thia, on the east by Bactria, and on the south by Car- 
mania and Gedrosia. The capital was Artacoana, now 
Herat. From Aria, however, in this acceptation of 
the term, we must carefully distinguish another and 
much earlier use of the name. In this latter sense 
the appellation belongs to a region which formed the 
primitive abode of the Medes and Persians, and very 
probably of our whole race. It appears to indicate a 
country where civilization commenced, and where the 
rites of religion were first instituted. In the Schah- 
nameh it is called Erman (i. e., Ariman), and in the 
Zend books Irman or Iran (i. e., Arian). Its position 
would appear to coincide in some degree with that of 
ancient Bactria, though some writers, Rhode for ex¬ 
ample, make it include a much wider tract of country. 
The name of Arii, given to its early inhabitants, is 
said by Bohlen to be equivalent to the Latin “ vene- 
randi," and reminds us (with the change of the liquid 
into the sibilant) of the far-famed Asi, who play so 
conspicuous a part in the early Asiatic as well as in the 
Scandinavian mythology. From these data we may 
account for the statement of Herodotus (7, 62), that the 
Medes were anciently called Arii ( , Aptoi , or V A petoi). 
The same writer places in the neighbourhood of Sog- 
diana a people whom he calls Arii ("A peiot). Diodo¬ 
rus Siculus (1, 94) makes mention of this same people 
under the name of Anmaspi {’ ApiyaoTvoi), where we 
ought to read Ariaspi (’ Apcaorcoi), or else Ariani 
{’Apeiavoi). He also speaks of their lawgiver Zath- 
raustes, meaning evidently Zoroaster (i. e., Zeretosch- 
tre.)—Consult on this curious subject the following 
authorities: Von Hammer {Wien. Jahrb ., vol. 9, p. 
33 )—Ritter ( Erdkunde , vol. 2, p. 21, seqq. — Vorhalle, 
p. 303) — Anquetil {Mem. de VAcad, des Inscr., vol. 
31, p. 376) — Bohlen {De Orig. ling. Zend., p. 51) — 
Bahr {ad Herod., 7, 62). 

Ariadne, daughter of Minos, king of Crete, by Pasi- 
phae. She fell in love with Theseus, and gave him a 
clew of thread, which enabled him to penetrate the 
windings of the labyrinth till he came to where the 
Minotaur lay, whom he caught by the hair and slew. 
Ariadne thereupon fled with Theseus from Crete. Ac¬ 
cording to Homer {Od., 11, 323), she was slain by Di¬ 
ana when they had reached the island of Dia or Naxos, 
on their way to Athens. (Compare Schol. ad loc. as 
to the reading ear a or eerje.) Another legend, how¬ 
ever, makes her to have been deserted by Theseus on 
the shores of this same island, Minerva having ap¬ 
peared to him as he slept, and having ordered him to 


leave her behind and make sail for Athens. While 
Ariadne was weeping at this abandonment, Venus 
came and consoled her by the assurance that she 
should be the bride of Bacchus. The god then pre¬ 
sented himself, and gave her a golden crown, which 
was afterward placed among the stars. She bore him 
a son named CEnopion. {Pherecyd., ap. Sturz, fr. 
59.— Ovid, A. A., 1, 527, seqq. — Catull., 64, 76, seqq. 
— Keightley’s Mythology, p. 457. — Vollrher, Wur- 
terb. der Mythol., p. 309, seqq.) — Ariadne evidently 
belongs to the mythology of Bacchus, with whom he 
was associated in the Naxian worship. The Atheni¬ 
ans, always ready to enlarge their own narrow cycle 
at the expense of others, seem to have joined her with 
their Theseus, and it was thus perhaps that she be¬ 
came the daughter of Minos. The passage in the 
Odyssey would be decisive on this point, were it not 
that the Athenians were such tamperers with the works 
of the old poets, that we cannot help being suspicious 
of all passages relating to them. The passage of the 
Iliad in which Ariadne is mentioned is justly regard¬ 
ed as a late addition. {II., 18, 591.— Knight, ad loc. 
— Keightlcy, l. c.) Creuzer gives a peculiar version 
to this ancient legend. He sees in Ariadne, as repre¬ 
sented in ancient sculpture, now sunk in mournful 
slumber, and again awakened, joyous, and raised to 
the skies, an emblem of immortality. But Ariadne, 
according to the same beautiful conception of her 
character, is not merely the symbol of consolation in 
death ; the clew in her hand, with which she guided 
Theseus through the mazes of the labyrinth, ranks her 
also among the class of the Parcae. She is Proserpi¬ 
na-Venus. She presides over the death and the birth 
of our species. She guides the soul through the wind¬ 
ing labyrinth of life : she leads it forth again to free¬ 
dom and a new existence. {Creuzer’’s Symbolik, vol. 
4, p. 116, seqq.) 

Ari^eus, an officer in the army of Cyrus the Young¬ 
er, the next in command to that prince over the Asiatic 
portion of his forces. After the battle of Cunaxa, the 
Greeks in the army of Cyrus offered to place him on 
the throne of Persia, but he declined it, and went over 
to Artaxerxes with his troops. {Xen., Anab., 1,8, 3.) 
The Eton MS. has ’Apioraloq (Aristaeus) in place 
of ’Apialog (Ariaeus). The copyist intended, perhaps, 
to write ’Apidaloq (Aridaeus), as Diodorus Siculus 
(14, 22) has it. (Compare Wesseling, ad Diod., 1. c ., 
and Sturz , Lex. Xen., vol. 1, p. 395, s. v. ’A pialoq.) 

Ariantas, a king of Scythia, who, in order to as¬ 
certain the number of the Scythians, commanded each 
of his subjects, on pain of death, to bring him the 
point of an arrow. So great a number was collected, 
that, resolving to leave a monumeut of the act, he 
caused a large bowl of brass to be made out of them, 
and dedicated this in a spot of land between the Bo- 
rysthenes and the Hypanis, called Exampseus. {He- 
rodot., 4, 81.)—Ritter ascribes this work to an early 
Cimmerian, or Buddhist colony, migrating from India 
to the countries of the West. He sees in the name 
Ariantas, moreover, a reference to Aria, the early home 
of our species, and the native country of the Buddhist 
faith. In confirmation of his opinion, he indulges in 
some very learned and curious speculations concerning 
the early usage, among both Greeks and barbarians, 
of consecrating colossal bowls or caldrons to the sun. 
(Vorhalle , p. 345, seqq.) 

Ariarathes, a name common to many kings of 
Cappadocia. They appear to have been originally no¬ 
thing more than satraps of Persia, and, according to 
Diodorus, in a passage preserved by Photius {Cod., 
244, p. 1157), were descended from one of the seven 
conspirators who slew the false Smerdis. This Per¬ 
sian nobleman was named Anaphus, and his grandson 
Datames was the first sovereign of the Cappadocian 
dynasty. After him and his son Ariamnes, we have a 
long list of princes, all bearing the name of Ariarathes 

191 




ARIARATHES. 


ARI 


for several generations. (Compare Clinton's Fasti 
Hcllenici, vol. 2, Appendix, p. 429.) Although, how¬ 
ever, the governors or satraps of Cappadocia held their 
government in hereditary succession, and are dignified 
by Diodorus with the title of kings, yet they could 
have possessed only a precarious and permitted au¬ 
thority till the death of Seleucus, the last of the suc¬ 
cessors of Alexander, in January, B.C. 281, removed 
the power by which the whole of western Asia was 
commanded. ( Clinton, l. c .) — I. The first of the 
name was son of Ariamnes. He had a brother named 
Holophemes, whom he advanced to the highest offi¬ 
ces in the kingdom, and who commanded the auxilia¬ 
ries that were sent from Cappadocia when Ochus made 
his expedition into Egypt, B.C. 350. Holophemes 
acquired great glory in this war, and on his return 
home lived in a private station, leaving two sons at 
his death, Ariarathes and Aruses. Ariarathes, the 
reigning monarch, having no children of his own, 
adopted the former of these, who was also the elder of 
the two. Ariarathes was on the throne when Alex¬ 
ander invaded the Persian dominions, and he probably 
fled with Darius, since we learn from Arrian that the 
Macedonian prince appointed Sabictas governor of 
Cappadocia before the battle of Issus. {Exp. Alex., 
2, 4, 2.) After the death of Alexander, Ariarathes, 
then at the advanced age of eighty-two, attempted to 
recover his dominions, but he w r as defeated by Perdic- 
cas, the Macedonian general, and, being taken, was put 
to a most cruel death. ( Diod. Sic., Exc., 18, 10.— 
Arrian, ap. Phot., Cod., 92, p. 217.)—II. The second 
of the name was the son of Holophemes, and was 
adopted by his uncle Ariarathes I. He recovered 
Cappadocia after the death of Eumenes, and during 
the contest between Antigonus and the other Mace¬ 
donian chiefs. He was aided in the attempt by Ardo- 
atus, king of Armenia, who furnished him with troops. 
This Ariarathes transmitted the crown to his son Ari¬ 
amnes. {Diod. Sic., ap. Phot., 1. c.) — III. The third 
of the name was the son of the preceding Ariamnes, 
and his successor on the throne. Nothing more is re¬ 
corded of him, except that on his death he left a son 
of the same name in his infancy. {Diod. Sic., ap. 
Phot., 1. c .)— IV. The fourth of the name, son of the 
preceding by Stratonice daughter of Antiochus Theos, 
was a child at his accession. He married the daugh¬ 
ter of Antiochus the Great, a union that involved 
him in a political alliance with that sovereign, and 
consequent hostility with the Romans. He was saved 
from dethronement after the battle of Magnesia by a 
timely and submissive embassy to the Consul Man¬ 
lius, and the payment of 600 talents. Soon after we 
find him allied to Eumenes, king of Pergamus, who 
married his daughter ; and by means of this monarch 
he was admitted to the favour and friendship of the 
Romans. {Liv., 38, 39.) He was also the ally of 
Eumenes against Pharnaces, B.C. 183-179. After 
a reign of nearly fifty-eight years he transmitted his 
crown to his son Ariarathes V.—V. The fifth of the 
name, son of the preceding, was surnamed Philopator. 
He was dethroned by Demetrius Soter, king of Syria, 
who brought forward Holophemes, the supposititious 
son of Ariarathes IV. Being driven from his kingdom, 
he took refuge with the Romans, by whom he was re¬ 
stored ; in which restoration Attalus II., of Pergamus, 
assisted. According to Appian {Bell. Syr., 47), the 
Romans appointed Ariarathes and Holophemes to 
reign conjointly. This joint government, however, 
did not last long, since Polybius, about B.C. 154, de¬ 
scribes Ariarathes as sole king. {Polyb., ap. Athen., 
10, p. 440, b. — Id., 33, 12.— Id., fragm. Vat., p. 440.) 
In return for this service he devoted himself to the in¬ 
terests of the Romans, and fell in the war they were 
carrying on against Aristonicus, the pretender to the 
throne of Pergamus. ( Justin, 37, 1.) He left six 
sons, five of whom were murdered by his wife, the 
192 


cruel and ambitious Laodice. {Justin, l. c.) — VI. 
The sixth of the name was the only one of the sons of 
Ariarathes V. that escaped the cruelty of his mother 
Laodice. He married the daughter of the celebrated 
Mithradates, which female also bore the name of Laod¬ 
ice. Mithradates, however, caused him to be assas¬ 
sinated by an illegitimate brother, upon which his 
widow Laodice gave herself and kingdom to Ni- 
comedes, king of Bithynia. Mithradates made war 
against the new king, and raised his nephew to the 
throne. The young king, who was the seventh of the 
name of Ariarathes, made war against the tyrannical 
Mithradates, by whom he was assassinated in the pres¬ 
ence of both armies, and the murderer’s son, a child 
eight years old, was placed on the vacant throne. 
The Cappadocians revolted, and made the late mon¬ 
arch’s brother, Ariarathes VIII., king; but Mithradates 
expelled him, and restored his own son. The exiled 
prince died of a broken heart; and Nicomedes of 
Bithynia brought forward a boy, tutored for the pur¬ 
pose, who he pretended was a third son of Ariarathes 
VI. Laodice aided the deception, and the boy was 
sent to Rome to claim his father’s kingdom. The 
senate, however, caused Ariobarzanes, a man of rank 
in Cappadocia, to be elected king by the people. 
{Justin, 38, 1.) — VII. The ninth of the name was 
brother and successor to Ariobarzanes II. (Clinton 
makes him his son). He was deposed and put to 
death by Antony, in the consulship of Gellius and 
Nerva, B.C. 36, after having reigned about six years. 
Archelaiis, son of Glaphyra, was appointed in his stead. 
{Dio Cass., 49, 32 . — Id., 49, 24 .— Val. Max., 9, 15, 
2, extern.) Archelaus is called Sicinnes by Appian. 
{Bell. Civ., 5, 7 .—Consult Schweigh., ad loc .) 

Aricia, a city of Latium, a little to the west, of 
Lanuvium. According to Strabo (239), Alicia was 
situated on the Appian Way, but its citadel was placed 
on the hill above. The origin of this city, which was 
apparently as ancient as any in Latium, is enveloped 
in too great a mythological obscurity to be now as¬ 
certained. Some have ascribed its foundation to a 
chief of the Siculi {Solmus, c. 13) ; others to Hippoly- 
tus, who, under the name of Virbius, was worshipped 
in common with Diana in the neighbourhood of this 
town. {Virg., JEn., 7, 774.) The name of Aricia of¬ 
ten occurs in the history of Rome, and as early as the 
reign of Tarquinius Superbus. It must have been no 
mean city to merit the splendid character which Cice¬ 
ro gives of it in the third Philippic. What rendered 
this city, however, more particularly celebrated through¬ 
out Italy, was the worship of Diana, whose sacred tem¬ 
ple, grove, and lake lay at no great distance from 
thence. The latter is now knowm by the name of La- 
go di Nemi. Strabo tells us (239) that the worship 
of Diana resembled that w hich was paid to the same 
goddess in the Tauric Chersonese ; and that the priest 
of the temple was obliged to defend himself by force 
of arms against all who aspired to the office ; for 
whosoever could slay him succeeded to the dignity. 
This barbarous custom seems to have afforded a sub¬ 
ject of diversion to Caligula. {Suet., Vit. Calig., 35. 
— Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 31.) 

Aricina, a surname of Diana, from her temple near 
Aricia. (Fzd. Aricia.) 

Ariaeus, I. a commander in the army of Cyrus 
the Younger, otherwise and more correctly called 
Ariaeus. {Vid. Ariaeus.)—II. A natural son of Philip 
of Macedon, and Philinna a female dancer and courte¬ 
san of Larissa. He showed in early life so much 
promise of ability, that Olympias, fearing lest he might 
one day deprive Alexander of the crown, stultified 
him by means of secret potions. After the death of 
Alexander, he was chosen to succeed that monarch, 
with the proviso that, if Roxana, who was then preg¬ 
nant, should be delivered of a son, a portion of the 
kingdom should be given to the latter. As the weak- 




A RI 


A RI 


ness of mind under which Aridreus laboured unfitted 
him for rule, Perdiccas, as protector, exercised the ac¬ 
tual sway. He reigned seven years, under the title 
of Philip Aridreus, and was then put to death with his 
wife Eurydice by Olympias.—The more accurate form 
of the name is Arrhidaeus, from the Greek ’A fifiidaloq. 
The more common one, however, is Aridaeus. (Jus¬ 
tin, 13, 2, 11. — Id., 13, 3, 1. — Id., 14, 5, 10. — 
Quint. Curt., 10, 7, 2. — Diod. Sic., 17* 2. — Id., 18, 
3.— Arrian, ap. Phot., Cod., 92.) 

Arii. Vid. Aria. 

ArIma (td 'Apifua opy, Arimi Montes), a chain of 
mountains, respecting the position of which ancient 
authorities differ. Some place it in Phrygia (Diod. 
Sic., 5, 71. — Compare Wesseling, ad loc.), others in 
Lydia, Mysia, Cilicia, or Syria. They appear to have 
been of volcanic character, from the fable connected 
with them, that they were placed upon Typhoeus or 
Typhon. (Horn., II., 2, 783.) Those who are in fa¬ 
vour of Phrygia, Lydia, or Mysia, refer to the district 
called Catacecaumene (KaraKeuavpevri), as lying 
parched with subterranean fires. Those who decide 
for Cilicia or Syria agree in a manner among them¬ 
selves, if by the Arimi as a people we mean the Aramei 
who had settled in the former of these countries. 
(Compare Heyne, ad Horn., II., 2, 783, and consult 
remarks under the article Inarime.) 

Arimaspi, a people of Scythia, who, according to 
Herodotus (3, 116, and 4, 27), had but one eye, and 
waged a continual contest with the griffons (vid. 
Gryphes) that guarded the gold, which, according to 
the same writer, was found in vast quantities in the 
vicinity of this people. The name is derived by him 
from two Scythian words, Arima, one, and Spu, an 
eye. (Compare AEschyl., Prom. V.., 809, seqq. — 
Mela, 2, 1, 15. — Plin.,4, 26. — Dionys. Perieg., 31. 
— Philostr., Vit. Soph., vol. 2, p. 584, ed. Or ell.) 
Modern opinions, of course, vary with regard to the 
origin of this legend. De Guignes (Mem. de VAcad. 
des Inscr., vol. 35, p. 562) makes the Arimaspi to 
have been the Hiong-nou, of whom the Chinese his¬ 
torians speak, and who were situate to the north of 
them, extending from the river Irtisch, in the country 
of the Calmucs, to the confines of eastern Tartary. 
Reichard (Thes. Top., p. 17) contends, that the name 
of the Arimaspi is still preserved in that of Arimas- 
cheds Kaia, in Asiatic Russia, in the Government of 
Perm. Rennell (Geogr. Herod., vol. 1, p. 178) places 
this people in the region of Mount Altai, a tract of 
country containing much gold, the name Altai itself 
being derived, according to some, from alta, a term 
which signifies gold in the Mongul and Calmuc 
tongues. With this opinion of Rennell’s the specula¬ 
tions of Volker agree. (Myth., Geogr., vol. 1, p. 193, 
seqq.) Wahl also places the Arimaspi in the regions 
of Altai, and speaks of a people there whose heads 
are so enveloped against the cold as to leave but one 
opening for the vision, whence he thinks the fable of a 
one-eyed rafce arose. (Ostind., p. 409.) Ritter trans¬ 
fers the Arimaspi, along with the Issedones and Mas- 
sagetse, to the southern bank of the Oxus, in ancient 
Bactria, making them a noble and warlike tribe of the 
Medes or Cadusii.. ( Vorhalle, p. 282, seqq., 305.) 
Hailing refers the term Arimaspian to the steed-mount¬ 
ed forefathers of the German race before the migrations 
of this people into Europe, and he deduces the name 
from the Persian Arim and esp, the latter of which 
words means “a horse.” (Wien. Jahrh., 69, p. 
190.) Rhode, on the other hand, makes Arimasp a 
Zend term, though his explanation of it, “ a mounted 
native of Aria,” approaches that of Hailing, asp in 
Zend meaning “ a steed.” (Heilige Sage. &c., p. 66, 
seqq.) The etymology assigned by Herodotus to the 
word in question, and which is given at the com¬ 
mencement of this article, is now justly regarded as of 
no value whatever, and decidedly erroneous, unless, | 
B b 


with Gatterer, we consider the words which form the 
derivation in the Greek text to be a mere interpola¬ 
tion. (Comment. Soc. Gott., 14, p. 9.) 

Arimaspas, a river of Scythia with golden sands, 
in the country of the Arimaspi. (Vid. Arimaspi.) 

Arimi, according to some, a people of Syria. ( Vid. 
Arima, towards the close of that article.) 

Ariminum, a city of Umbria in Italy, at the mouth 
of the river Ariminus, on the coast, not far to the 
southeast of the Rubicon. It was founded by the 
Umbri, and afterward inhabited partly by them and 
partly by the Pelasgi. It was taken by the Galli Se- 
nones. The Romans sent a colony to it A.U.C. 485. 
From this time Ariminum was considered as a most 
important place, and the key of Italy on the eastern 
coast; hence we generally find a Roman army sta¬ 
tioned there during the Gallic and Punic wars. 
(Polyb., 2, 23.— Id., 3, 77.) In this place Caesar is 
said to have harangued his troops, after having crossed 
the Rubicon ; and here the tribunes of the commons, 
who were in his interest, met him. It is now called 
Rimini. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 255.) 

Ariminus, a river of Italy, rising in the Apennine 
mountains, and falling into the sea at Ariminum. It 
is now the Marecchia. (Plin., 3, 15.) 

Ariobarzanes, I. a nobleman of Cappadocia, elect¬ 
ed king after the two sons of Ariarathes VI. had died. 
He was expelled by Mithradates, but was restored by 
Sylla, B.C. 92. He was again expelled in B.C. 88, 
and restored at the peace in B.C. 84. His kingdom, 
however, was again occupied by Mithradates in B.C. 
66. He was restored by Pompey, and resigned the 
kingdom to his son. (Cic., pro Leg. Man., c. 2.— 
Id. ibid., c. 5. — Appian, Bell. Mithr., c. 105. — Id., 
Bell. Civ., 1, 103. — Vol. Max., 5, 7, 2, extern.) — II. 
The second of the name, son of the preceding, and 
surnamed Eusebes and also Philorhomaeus. He sup¬ 
ported Pompey against Caesar. (Appian, Bell. Civ., 
2, 71, where he is called by mistake Ariarathes.) The 
latter, however, forgave him, and enlarged his territo¬ 
ries. He was slain, B.C. 42, by Cassius. (Dio 
Cass, 47, 33. — Appian, Bell. Civ., 4, 63. — Clinton, 
Fast. Hell., vol. 2, p. 437.) — III. A name common 
to some kings, or, more correctly speaking, satraps of 
Pontus. Ariobarzanes I. is alluded to by Xenophon 
(Cyrop., 8, 8, 4) as having been betrayed by his son 
Mithradates into the hands of the Persian monarch. 
(Consult Aristot., Polit., 5, 10, and compare Schnei¬ 
der, ad Xen., 1. c.) — IV. The second of the name, 
succeeded the Mithradates mentioned in the preceding 
paragraph, B.C. 363, and reigned twenty-six years. 
In the course of this reign he engaged in rebellion 
against Artaxerxes, B.C. 362. (Diod. Sic., 15, 90.) 
Mention is made of him by Nepos, in his account of 
Datames (c. 2.— lb., c. 5), and he is there called gov¬ 
ernor of Lydia, Ionia, and the whole of Phrygia. 
(Compare Clinton, Fast. Hell., vol. 2, p. 421.) — V. 
The third of the name, succeeded Mithradates III. 
He began to reign B.C. 266. This prince, as we 
learn from Memnon (ap. Phot., p. 720), conquered the 
city of Amastris, and drove from the country, in con¬ 
junction with the Gallo-Graeci, or Galatse, lately ar¬ 
rived in Asia Minor, an Egyptian colony sent by Ptol¬ 
emy. (Apollod., ap. Steph. Byzant., s. v. "Ayuvpa.) 
He was succeeded by his son Mithradates IV., who 
was a minor when his father died. (Clinton, Fast. 
Hell., vol. 2, p. 424.) — VI. A Persian commander, 
who bravely defended against Alexander the pass in 
the mountains of Susiana. (Diod. Sic., 17, 68. — 
Quint. Curt., 5, 3, 17.—Consult Wesseling, ad Diod,, 
loc. cit.) 

ArTon, I. a famous lyric poet and musician of Me- 
thymna, in the island of Lesbos. His age is stated by 
Suidas as Olymp. 38 ; by Eusebius, Olymp. 40 (i. e., 
628 or 620 B.C.). Though by birth a Methymnseati, 
and probably a disciple of Terpander, Arion chiefly 





ARION. 


A RI 


lived and wrote in the Peloponnesus, among Dorian 
nations. It was at Corinth, in the reign of Periander, 
that he first practised a cyclic chorus in the perform¬ 
ance of a dithyramb ; where he probably took advan¬ 
tage of some local accidents and made beginnings, 
which alone could justify Pindar in considering Co¬ 
rinth as the native city of the Dithyramb. ( Herod., 
1, 23. — Compare Hellanic., ap. SchoL ad Aristoph., 
Av., 1403. — Aristot., ap. Prod., Chrestom., p. 382, 
ed. Gaisf. — Pind., Olymp., 13, 18.) —A curious fable 
is related by Herodotus (/. c.) of this same Arion. 
He was accustomed to spend the most of his time 
with Periander, king of Corinth. On a sudden, how¬ 
ever, feeling desirous of visiting Italy and Sicily, he 
sailed to those countries, and amassed there great 
riches. He set sail from Tarentum after this, in or¬ 
der to return to Corinth, but the mariners formed a 
plot against him, when they were at sea, to throw him 
overboard and seize his riches. Arion, having ascer¬ 
tained this, offered them all his treasure, only begging 
that they would spare his life. But the seamen, being 
inflexible, commanded him either to kill himself, that 
he might be buried ashore, or to leap immediately into 
the sea. Arion, reduced to this hard choice, earnestly 
desired them to allow him to dress in his richest appa¬ 
rel, and to sing a measure, standing at the time on the 
poop of the ship. The mariners assented, pleased with 
the idea of their being about to hear the best singer of 
the day, and retired from the stern to the middle of the 
vessel. In the mean time, Arion, having put on all his 
robes, took his harp and performed the Orthian strain, 
as it was termed. At the end of the air he leaped into 
the sea, and the Corinthians continued their voyage 
homeward. A dolphin, however, attracted by the 
music, received Arion on its back, and bore him in 
safety to Taenarus. On reaching this place, his story 
was disbelieved by Periander; but an examination of 
the seamen, when they also arrived, removed all the 
monarch’s suspicions about Arion’s veracity, and the 
mariners were put to death. In commemoration of 
this event, a statue was made of brass, representing a 
man on a dolphin’s back, and was consecrated at Taena- 
rus. Such is the story told by Herodotus. Larcher’s 
explanation is a very tame and improbable one. He 
thinks that Arion threw himself into the sea in or near 
the harbour of Tarentum ; that the Corinthians, with¬ 
out troubling themselves any farther, set sail; that 
Arion gained the shore, met with another vessel ready 
to depart, which had the figure-head of a dolphin, and 
that this vessel outstripped the Corinthian ship, {har¬ 
dier, ad loc.) The solution which Muller gives is far 
more ingenious, though not much in accordance with 
the simplicity of early fable. It is as follows : The 
colony which went to Tarentum under Phalanthus, 
sailed from Taenarus to Italy, with the rites and under 
the protection of Neptune. The mythic mode q£ in¬ 
dicating this was by a statue, representing Taras, the 
son of Neptune, and original founder of the place, 
seated on a dolphin’s back, as if in the act of crossing 
the sea from Taenarus to Tarentum. This was placed 
on the Taenarian promontory. In process of time, 
however, the legend ceased to be applied to Taras, 
and Arion became the hero of the tale, the order of the 
voyage being reversed ; and the love of music, which 
the dolphin was fabled by the ancients to possess, be¬ 
came a means of adding to the wonders of the story. 
{Muller, Dorier, vol. 2, p. 369, not. — Plehn, Lcsbiac., 
p. 166.)— II. A celebrated steed, often mentioned in 
fable, which not only possessed a human voice {Pro- 
pert., 2, 25, 37), but also the power of prophecy. 
{Stat., Theb., 6, 424.) According to one legend, he 
sprang from Ceres and Neptune, the goddess having 
fruitlessly assumed the shape of a mare, in order to 
avoid the addresses of Neptune, who immediately 
transformed himself into a steed. {Pausan., 8, 25.— 
Apollod., 3, 6, 8.) Another account made him the 
194 


offspring of Neptune and Erinnys, who had in like 
manner changed herself into a mare. {Schol. ad 11., 
23, 346.) Others again related, that he was produced 
from the ground by a blow of Neptune’s trident, in the 
contest of that deity with Minerva for the possession 
of Athens. {Serv. ad Virg., Georg., 1, 12.). Eusta¬ 
thius mentions a still different origin for this fabled 
animal, namely, from Neptune and one of the Plarpies. 

( Eustath . ad R, l. c .) Quintus Calaber (4, 570), 
from one of the Harpies and Zephyrus. Arion was 
trained up by Neptune himself, and was often yoked 
to the chariot of his parent, which he drew over the 
seas with amazing swiftness. {Stat., Theb., 6, 303, 
seqq.) Neptune gave him as a present to Copreus, 
king of Haliartus, in Boeotia. Haliartus bestowed 
him on Hercules, who distanced with him Cycnus, in 
the Hippodrome of the Pagasean Apollo, and after¬ 
ward also made use of him in his car when contend¬ 
ing with Cycnus in fight. From Hercules he came to 
Adrastus, who was alone saved by his means from 
the Theban war. {Schol. ad II., 23, 346.-— Hesiod, 
Scut. Here., 120, seqq. —Compare Midler, Dorier, vol. 
2, p. 480.)—The name of this fabled animal manifestly 
relates to his superiority over all other coursers 
(’A peiuv, superior ), and the legend itself is only one 
of the many forms in which the physical fact of earth 
and water being the cause of growth and increase in 
the natural world has been enveloped by the ancient 
mythologists. {Volcker, Myth, der Jap., p. 165. seqq.) 

Ariovistus, a king of the Germans, who invaded 
Gaul, conquered a considerable part of the country, 
and subjected the inhabitants to the most cruel and op¬ 
pressive treatment. Caesar marched against him, 
brought him to an action, and gained so complete 
a victory, that only a few of the army of Ariovistus, 
among whom was the king himself, effected their 
escape. He died soon after in Germany, either of his 
wounds, or through chagrin at his defeat. The name 
is probably derived from the German words Heer, an 
army, and First, a leader or prince. {Cces., Bell. 
Gall., 131, seqq. — Id. ibid., 5, 29.) 

Arisba, I. a town of Lesbos, destroyed by an earth¬ 
quake. {Plin., 5, 39.) Herodotus states that it was 
conquered by the people of Methymna (1, 151.— 
Compare Steph. Byz. s. v. ’Apiodp). — II. A city of 
Troas, southeast of Abydus, and founded by a colony 
of Mytilenaeans, in whose island there was a town of 
the same name. {Vid. No. I.) Various traditions 
respecting the place are to be found in Stephanus of 
Byzantium. Homer makes mention of the place, to¬ 
gether with the river Selleis. {II., 2, 835.) It was 
here, according to Arrian (1, 12), that Alexander sta¬ 
tioned his army immediately after crossing the Helles¬ 
pont at Abydus. When the Gauls passed over into 
Asia, some centuries after, they also occupied Arisba, 
but were totally defeated by King Prusias. {Polyb., 
5, 3.) Its ruins are supposed to be those at Ganger- 
lee. {Walpole's Turkey, vol. 1, p. 92. — Cramer's 
Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 71.) • 

Aristaenetus, a Greek writer, a native of Nicaea. 
He is supposed by some to have been the same with 
that friend of Libanius who perished in the earthquake 
which destroyed the city of Nicomedia, A.D. 358, and 
to whom are addressed many of the letters of this 
sophist that remain to us. If this opinion be correct, 
it must be confessed that the work of Aristaenetus, 
which we at present possess, does not justify the eulo- 
giums which Libanius passes on the talents of his 
friend: the identity of the two individuals, therefore, 
appears at best extremely doubtful. The only histor¬ 
ical fact that occurs in Aristaenetus seems to place 
him towards the close of the fifth century ; it is a 
eulogium on the female dancer Panareta, where it is 
said that she imitated the pantomime Caramallus. 
Now this Caramallus lived in the time of Sidonius 
Apollinaris, who died A D. 484. A third view of the 




ARI 


ARI 


subject would seem to favour the supposition that the 
author of the work in question never bore the name 
of Aristcenetus ; this being the appellation given by 
the writer to the fictitious personage who is supposed 
to have written the first letter in the collection. * And 
it may so have happened, that the copyists mistook 
this name for that of the author himself. This last 
opinion has been adopted by Mercier, Bergler, Pauw, 
and Boissonade.—The work of Aristaenetus is a col¬ 
lection of Erotic Epistles, entitled ^Tuarolal kpon- 
a cat. The greater part of these pieces are only, in 
fact, so far to be regarded as letters, as bearing a su¬ 
perscription which gives them somewhat of an epis¬ 
tolary form ; they are, in truth, a species of tales, or 
exercises on imaginary subjects. In one of them, a 
lover draws the portrait of his mistress ; in another, 
we have a description of the artifices practised by a 
coquet; in a third, a tale after the manner of Boc- 
cacio, &c. These letters are divided into two books, 
of which the first contains twenty-eight pieces; and 
the second, which is not complete, twenty-two. The 
style of Aristaenetus, which is almost uniformly of a 
declamatory character, is frequently wanting in nature 
and taste. It is filled with phrases borrowed from 
the poets. The best editions of this writer are, that 
of Abresch, Zwollce, 3 vols. 12mo, the third volume 
containing the notes and conjectures of various schol¬ 
ars ; and that of Boissonade, Paris , 1822, 8vo. This 
latter edition is, on the whole, the better one of the 
two. On the merits of Abresch’s edition, consult the 
remarks of Bast, in his Specimen ed. nov. Epist. Ar- 
istcen., p. 9, seqq., and on those of Boissonade’s the 
observations of Hoffmann, Lex. Bibl., vol. 1, p. 253. 
(Compare Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 6, p. 248, seqq.) 

Aristaeus, son of Apollo and the nymph Cyrene, 
was born in the part of Libya afterward named from 
his mother, and brought up by the Seasons, who fed 
him on nectar and ambrosia, and thus rendered him 
immortal. According to the prediction of the centaur 
Chiron, as made to Apollo respecting him, he was to 
be called “Jove,” and “ holy Apollo,” and “ Agreus” 
{Hunter), and “ Nomios” ( Herdsman ); and also Aris- 
taeus. (Find., Pyth., 9, 104, seqq.) The invention 
of the culture of the olive, and of the art of managing 
bees, was ascribed to him ; and Aristotle (ap. Schol. 
ad Thsocr., 5, 63) says he was taught them by the 
nymphs who had reared him. Tradition also related, 
that one time, when the isle of Ceos was afflicted by 
a drought, caused by the excessive heat of the dog- 
days, the inhabitants invited Aristaeus thither; and, 
on his erecting an altar to Jupiter Icmaeus ( the Moist- 
ener), the Etesian breezes breathed over the isle, and 
the evil departed. After his death he was deified by 
the people of Ceos. ( Apoll. Rh., 2, 506, seqq. — 
Schol. ad Apoll. Rh., 2, 498.— Serv. ad Virg., Georg., 
1, 14.) Virgil has elegantly related the story of the 
love of Aristaeus for Eurydice the wife of Orpheus, 
his pursuit of her, and her unfortunate death by the 
sting of the serpent; on which the Napaean nymphs 
destroyed all his bees ; and the mode adopted by him, 
on the advice of his mother, to stock once more his 
hives. {Georg., 4, 282, seqq .—Compare Ovid, Fast., 
1, 363, seqq.) Aristaeus married Autonoe, daughter 
of Cadmus, by whom he became the father of Actaeon. 
{Keightley's Mythology, 2d ed., p. 330.) Thus much 
for the legend. Aristaeus would seem in reality to have 
been an early deity of Arcadia, whence the Parrhasii 
carried his worship into the island of Ceos ; of Thes¬ 
saly, whence the same worship was brought to Cyrene; 
and finally of Boeotia, where he was enrolled in the 
Cadmean genealogy. He appears to have been iden¬ 
tical, originally, with Zevq "ApioToc;, and consequently 
with ’AirSTiXuv N ofuog, and to have been the god who 
presided over flocks and herds, over the propagation 
of bees, the rearing of the olive, &c. {Midler, Or- 
chom., p. 348.) 


Aristagoras, I. a writer who composed a history of 
Egypt, and who lived in the third century before our era. 
{Plin., 36,12.)—II. A son-in-law and nephew of His- 
tiaeus, tyrant of Miletus, who revolted from Darius, and 
incited the Athenians and Eretrians against Persia. 
An expedition, planned though not commanded by him, 
burned the city of Sardis. This so exasperated the 
king, that every evening, before supper, he ordered his 
attendants to remind him of punishing Aristagoras. 
He was killed in a battle against the Persians, B.C. 
499. {Herodot., 5, 30.— Id., 5, 101, seqq.) 

Aristander, a statuary, native of the Island of Pa¬ 
ros, flourished about the time of the battle of HCgos 
Potamos, in Olymp. 93, 4. He constructed the bra¬ 
zen tripod, which the Lacedaemonians dedicated at 
Amy else, out of the spoils taken by them. {Pausan., 
3, 18, 5.— Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.) 

Aristarchus, I. a tragic poet, a native of Tegea. 
He was the contemporary of Sophocles and Euripides, 
and lived upward of a hundred years. He exhibited 
seventy tragedies, but was only twice successful. Of 
all these seventy plays only one line is left us. Ac¬ 
cording to Festus, his Achilles was imitated by En¬ 
nius, and also by Plautus in his Panulus. {Theatre 
of the Greeks, 2d ed., p. 151.)—II. A native of Samo- 
thrace, and preceptor to the children of Ptolemy VI. 
(Philometor). He is regarded as the most celebrated 
critic of all antiquity. The number of pupils formed 
by him was so great, that at one time forty distin¬ 
guished professors or grammarians might be counted 
at Alexandrea and Rome, who had been trained up in 
his school. All these disciples vied with each other 
in extolling the superiority and genius of their com¬ 
mon master ; and hence the name of Aristarchus was 
not only perpetuated in the classical tongues, but has 
passed into the modern languages, as indicative of an 
accomplished critic. Aristarchus quitted Egypt when 
Euergetes II., his pupil, ascended the throne and be¬ 
gan to display his true character in driving men of let¬ 
ters from Alexandrea. The grammarian, upon this, 
retired to Cyprus, where he died at the age of seventy- 
two, B.C. 157. In his old age he became dropsical, 
upon which he is said to have starved himself to death. 
Aristarchus was the author of a new recension of Ho¬ 
mer, which, though altered by subsequent gramma¬ 
rians, is nevertheless the basis of our common text at 
the present day. It is this primitive recension of Ar¬ 
istarchus’ which Wolf undertook to restore by the aid 
of the scholia that Villoison published. To Aris¬ 
tarchus is also attributed the division of the Iliad and 
Odyssey into twenty-four cantos or books. He wrote 
likewise commentaries on Archilochus, Alcaeus, Anac¬ 
reon, iEschylus, Sophocles, Ion, Pindar, Aristophanes, 
Aratus, and other poets ; and composed in all, it is 
said, eight hundred different works. Of all the pro¬ 
ductions, however, of this industrious writer, we have 
only remaining at the present day some grammatical 
remarks cited by the scholiasts. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. 
Gr., vol. 3, p. 188, seqq.) — III. An astronomer of 
Samos, who flourished about the middle of the third 
century before Christ. He is well known to have 
maintained the modern opinion with regard to the 
motion of the earth round the sun, and its revolution 
about its own centre or axis. He also taught that the 
annual orbit of the earth is but a point, compared with 
the distance of the fixed stars. He estimated the ap¬ 
parent diameter of the sun at the 720th part of the 
zodiac. He found also that the diameter of the moon 
bears a greater proportion to that of the earth than 
that of 43 to 108, but less than that of 19 to 60; so 
that the diameter of the moon, according to his state¬ 
ment, should be somewhat less than a third part of 
the earth. The only one of his works now extant is a 
treatise on the magnitudes and distances of the sun 
and moon. The best edition is that of Wallis, Oxon., 
16S8, 8vo. The following work may also be consult- 

195 



ARI 


ARISTIDES. 


ed with advantage in relation to this astronomer: 

Histoire d'Aristarque de Samos, suivie de la traduc¬ 
tion de son ouvrage sur les distances du soldi de la 
lane, &c., far M. de F(ortia d' Urban). Paris, 
1810, 8vo. 

Aristeas, I. a poet of Proconnesus, who, as Herod¬ 
otus relates, appeared seven years after his death to 
his countrymen, and composed a poem on the Arimas- 
pians. He then disappeared a second time, and, after 
the lapse of three hundred and forty years, appeared 
in the city of Metapontum in Magna Grsecia, and di¬ 
rected the inhabitants to erect an altar to Apollo, and 
a statue by that altar, which should bear the name of 
Aristeas the Proconnesian. He informed them also 
that he attended this god, and was at such times a 
crow, though now he went under the name of Aristeas. 
Having uttered these words he vanished. (Herod., 
4, 15.—Compare the somewhat dilferent account giv¬ 
en by Pliny, 7, 52.) The poem alluded to above 
was epic in its character, and in three books. The 
subject of it was the wars between Griffons and Ari- 
maspians. Longinus (§ 10) has recorded six of the 
verses of Aristeas, which he justly considers more 
florid than sublime; and Tzetzes ( Chil., 7, 688) has 
preserved six more. (Lurcher, ad Herod., 1. c.) —Rit¬ 
ter has made this singular legend the basis of some 
profound investigations. He sees in Aristeas a priest 
of the Sun (the Koros or Buddha of the early nations 
of India); and he compares with this the remark of 
Porphyry (de Abstinent., 4, p. 399, ed. Lugd. Bat., 
1620), that, among the magi, a crow was the symbol 
of a priest of the sun. He discovers also in the ear¬ 
lier name of that part of Italy where Metapontum was 
situate, namely, Bottiaea, an obscure reference to the 
worship of Buddha. Whatever our opinion of his 
theory may be, the legend of Aristeas certainly in¬ 
volves the doctrines of the metempsychosis. (Ritter, 
Vorhalle, p. 278, seqq.) —II. An officer under Ptole¬ 
my Philadelphus, to whom is ascribed a Greek work 
still extant, entitled, “A History of the Interpreters of 
Scripture,” giving an account of the manner in which 
the Septuagint was written. The best edition is that 
printed at Oxford in 1692, in 8vo. It is found also, 
with a very learned refutation, in a work entitled Ho- 
dii de Bibliorum textibus originalibus libri iv., Oxon., 
1705, fol.; and likewise in the second volume of 
Havercamp’s edition of Josephus ; and at the end of 
Van Dale’s Dissertation, de LXX. Interpretibus super 
Aristeam, Amstelod., 1705, 4to. As to other works 
by Aristeas, consult Schard (Arg., sub jin. — Joseph., 
ed. Hav., vol. 2, p. 102). 

Aristera, an island lying to the southeast of the 
peninsula of Argolis, in the Sinus Hermionicus. (Pau- 
san., 2, 34.) 

Aristides, I. a celebrated Athenian, son of Lysim- 
achus, and a contemporary of Themistocles. He 
entered upon public affairs at a comparatively early 
age, and distinguished himself so much by his integ¬ 
rity, that, although inclined to the aristocracy, he nev¬ 
ertheless received from the people the remarkable ap¬ 
pellation of the Just. His conduct at Marathon did 
no less honour to his military talents than to his dis¬ 
interestedness. Of the ten Athenian generals, he 
was the only one who agreed with Miltiades upon the 
propriety of risking a battle; and, renouncing his day of 
command in favour of this commander, he prevailed 
upon the other generals to do the same. After ser¬ 
vices so important as these, he was, nevertheless, 
finally banished through the intrigues of Themistocles, 
and it was on this occasion that a singular circumstance 
is related to have taken place. While the shells were 
getting inscribed at the assembly that passed upon 
him the sentence of ostracism, a peasant approached 
Aristides, and taking him for a person of ordinary 
stamp, requested him to write upon his shell the name 
of Aristides, he himself being too illiterate to do so. 
196 


Aristides, without betraying who lie was, asked the 
peasant what harm Aristides had done him. “ IS one,' 
replied the man, “ nor do I even know him; but I am 
tired with hearing him called the Just." Aristides 
quitted his native city, praying the gods that nothing 
might occur to induce his countrymen to regret his 
absence ; but this very thing happened during the 
sixth year of his exile, when Xerxes invaded Greece. 
He was then recalled, and was associated with The¬ 
mistocles in the command of the Athenian forces. He 
took part in the battle of Salamis, and also shared 
with Pausanias the glory of the field of Platsea. Al ter 
the total defeat of the Persian forces, he played an im¬ 
portant part in the affairs of Athens and Greece, and 
by his wise counsels and successful negotiations he 
secured to his native city a decided pre-eminence over 
the neighbouring republics. When the Greek con¬ 
federacy were to have the quotas regulated which they 
paid towards a common fund for the purposes of de¬ 
fence, Aristides was chosen to execute this commis¬ 
sion, which he did to the satisfaction of all. Although 
having the control of large sums of money, in the 
management of the public finances, he notwithstand¬ 
ing died so poor, that the people had to pay the ex¬ 
penses of his funeral, and furnish marriage-portions to 
his two daughters. The Athenians, on one occasion, 
rendered a singular homage to the virtues of this dis¬ 
tinguished man. During the representation of one of 
the tragedies of iEschylus, a passage occurred hav¬ 
ing reference to the character of a virtuous and up¬ 
right man, whereupon the whole audience, with one 
common impulse, turned their eyes upon Aristides, 
and applied the passage to him alone of all who w r ere 
present. When he sat as judge in a certain cause, the 
accuser began to make mention of injuries which had 
been done by the accused to Aristides himself. “ Tell 
me," exclaimed the upright Athenian, “ of the wrongs 
which he has done to you; for I sit here to dispense 
justice to you, not unto myself." (Plut., in Vit .— 
Corn. Nep., in Vit .)—II. An historian of Miletus, fre¬ 
quently quoted by Plutarch in his Parallels. (Op., 
ed. Reiske, vol. 7, p. 216, seqq.) He was anterior to 
Sylla, and composed a history of Italy, in forty books, 
and Sicilian and Persian Annals. He was the invent¬ 
or, also, of what were called “Milesian Tales,” in¬ 
genious fictions, but too free in their character, which 
Lucian and Apuleius imitated, the former in his Lu¬ 
cius sive Asinus, and the latter in his Asinus Aureus. 
The Milesian Tales of Aristides were translated into 
Latin in the time of Sylla. (Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., 
vol. 4, p. 157.)—III. A statuary, one of the pupils of 
Polycletus, celebrated on account of the chariots for 
two and for four horses which he constructed. (Plin., 
34, 8.) — IV. A very celebrated painter, rather older 
than Apelles, but contemporary with him. He was 
a native of Thebes. The refinements of the art were 
applied by him to the mind. “ Primus animum 
pinxit," says Pliny, “ et sensus hominum expressit, 
quae vocant Grceci rjOy, item perturbationes" (25, 10). 
The passions which tradition had organized for Timan- 
thes, Aristides caught as they rose from the breast, 
or escaped from the lips of Nature herself. His vol¬ 
ume was man, his scene society: he drew the subtile 
discriminations of mind in every stage of life, the 
whispers, the simple cry of passion, and its most com¬ 
plex accents. Such, as history informs us, was his 
suppliant, whose voice you seemed to hear; such his 
sick man’s half-extinguished eye and labouring breast; 
such, above all, the half-slain mother, shuddering lest 
the eager babe should suck the blood from her palsied 
nipple. This picture was probably at Thebes when 
Alexander sacked that town; what his feelings were 
when he saw it, we may guess from his sending it to 
Pella. (Fuseli, Lectures on Painting, vol. 2, p. 64.) 
Attalus is said to have given a hundred talents for a 
single painting by this artist. (Plin., 1. c .) Some of 




ARI 


ARI 


the ancients assigned to Aristides the invention of 
painting on wax. ( Silhg, Diet. Art., s. v )— IV. A 
Greek orator, born at Hadrianopolis in Bithynia, about 
A.D. 129, according to the common opinion ; but more 
correctly in A.D. 117. After having applied himself, 
with extraordinary ardour, to the study of eloquence, 
he travelled in Asia, Greece, and Egypt, leaving be¬ 
hind him everywhere a high opinion of his talents and 
virtues. Many cities erected statues to him, one of 
which is still preserved in the Vatican. On finishing 
his travels, he took up his residence at Smyrna, where 
he continued to live until his death, holding a station 
in a temple of Aesculapius. Aristides, by a diligent 
perusal of Demosthenes and Plato, was able to avoid 
the errors of the declaimers of his time. His com¬ 
patriots ranked him equal to the Athenian orator ; an 
honour, however, to which he had no just claims. 
His discourses are distinguished for thought and argu¬ 
ment. His style is strong, but often wanting in grace. 
We have fifty-four declamations of Aristides remain¬ 
ing at the present day, most of them celebrating some 
divinity, or else the Emperor Marcus Aurelius and 
other personages. One of these discourses is in the 
form of a letter to the emperor, on the destruction of 
Smyrna by an earthquake, A.D. 178. The monarch 
was so much affected by it, that he immediately gave 
orders for rebuilding the city. There exists, also from 
the pen of this orator, a work on the style that is adapt¬ 
ed to public affairs, and that suited to plain and sim¬ 
ple topics {nepl TTohiTucov nal utyeTiovq Xoyov). Among 
the discourses of Aristides there are five, and the be¬ 
ginning of a sixth, which were regarded by the an¬ 
cients as the fruit of imposture, or of a credulity un¬ 
worthy a man of so much general credit. Some of 
them appear to touch on animal magnetism.—The Abbe 
Mai found, not many years ago, a palimpsest manu¬ 
script of Aristides in the Vatican Library, containing 
some unedited fragments of this orator. The best 
editions of Aristides are that of Jebb, Oxon., 1722-30, 
4to ; and that of Dindorf, Lips., 3 vols. 8vo. The lat¬ 
ter is decidedly the better of the two, the text having 
been more carefully corrected by MSS. Reiske com¬ 
plains heavily of the former, on account of the want of 
care in collating MSS., &c.—V. A Platonic philoso¬ 
pher, born at'Athens. He became a convert to Chris¬ 
tianity, and presented to the Emperor Hadrian an 
“ Apology” for the new religion, which, it is said, in¬ 
duced the monarch to pass his edict, by which no one 
was to be put to death without a regular accusation 
and conviction. This edict was directly favourable 
to the Christians. The Apology is lost, but is highly 
praised by St. Jerome, who had read it.—VI. A Greek 
writer on music. He is supposed to have lived about 
the commencement of the second century of our era. 
His work is in three books, and the best edition of it 
is that contained in the collection of Meibomius, An¬ 
tiques. Musicee Scriptores, Amstel., 1652, 4to. 

Aristippus, I. a philosopher of Cyrene, disciple to 
Socrates, and founder of the Cyrenaic sect, who flour¬ 
ished about 392 B.C. Socrates, however, with whom 
he remained till his execution {Plat., Phced., p. 59), 
does not appear to have cured him of his inclination 
for pleasure. For although there is little consistency 
in the notices we have of his life and conduct, it is 
nevertheless clear, from a variety of anecdotes, that, 
notwithstanding he was able to endure privations and 
sufferings with equanimity and dignity, his serenity of 
mind arose principally from the readiness with which 
he could extract pleasures and gratifications from the 
most difficult situations of life. Hence he never 
avoided the society of the courtesan, or of the tyrant, 
or satrap, in full and calm reliance upon his tact in the 
management of men. Many anecdotes are told of 
him, which would seem to imply that Aristippus en¬ 
deavoured to observe faithfully his own maxim, that a 
man ought to control circumstances, and not be con¬ 


trolled by them. {Horat., Ep., 1, 18.— Diog. Laert., 

4, 66, seqq.) Aristippus was the first disciple of the 
Socratic school who took money for teaching. He 
afterward was compelled to leave Athens, in conse¬ 
quence of the. freedom of his manners, and visited, 
among other parts, the island of Sicily. Here he be¬ 
came one of the flatterers of Dionysius, and gained a 
large share of royal favour. He left Syracuse before 
the expulsion of the tyrant, and appears, in his old 
age, to have returned to Cyrene, where we find his 
family and school. {Diog. Laert., 2, 86.) Aristip¬ 
pus taught, that good is pleasure, and pain is evil; 
but, at the same time, he appears to have maintained, 
that, in true pleasure, the soul must still preserve its 
authority; his true pleasure was, consequently, nothing 
more than the Socratic temperance. He taught also 
that a man ought not to desire more than he already 
possesses ; for all pleasures are similar, and none more 
agreeable than another, and that he ought not to suf¬ 
fer himself to be overcome by sensual enjoyment. 
{Diog. Laert., 2, 87. — Consult Ritter, Hist. Anc. 
Phil., vol. 2, p. 88, seqq., where a luminous account 
is given of the doctrines of the Cyrenaic school.)—II. 
His grandson of the same name, called the Younger, 
was a warm defender of his opinions. He flourished 
about 363 years B.C.—III. A tyrant of Argos, pro¬ 
tected by Antigonus Gonatas, whose life was one con¬ 
tinued series of apprehensions. He was slain by a 
Cretan, in a battle with Aratus, near Mycense, B.C. 
242. 

Aristo. Vid. Ariston. 

Aristobulus, I. a name common to some of the 
high priests and kings of Judea, &c. {Joseph.) —II. 
A brother of Epicurus.—III. A native of Potidsea, one 
of the generals of Alexander, who wrote a history of 
the expedition of that monarch into Asia. His work, 
which has not reached us, was more remarkable for 
adulation than truth.—IV. An Alexandrean Jew, pre¬ 
ceptor of Ptolemy Euergetes, flourished about 145 
B.C. He was an admirer of the Greek philosophy, 
and united the study of the Aristotelian system with 
that of the Mosaic law. He endeavoured to identify, 
in some degree, the traditions of the sacred books 
with those of the Greeks ; to explain the Scripture and 
mythology by the aid of each other ; and in this design 
he even went so far as to forge and interpolate verses 
of Orpheus, Linus, Homer, and Hesiod. ' His wri¬ 
tings have not come down to us. {Clem. Alex., 
Strom., 1, 305. — Enfield's History of Philos., vol. 2, 
p. 154.) 

Aristocles, I. a peripatetic philosopher of Mes- 
sene, who composed a critical examination of the dif¬ 
ferent sects of philosophy, and wrote also on rhetoric 
and morals. He vigorously attacked the scepticism 
of Timon and JEnesidemus, showing that this doc¬ 
trine contradicted itself, and led to the most deplora¬ 
ble results. We have nothing remaining of his works, 
except a single fragment preserved by Eusebius.—II. 
A native of Pergamus, who applied himself first to 
the peripatetic philosophy, and afterward to eloquence, 
which last he studied under Herodes Atticus. He be¬ 
came one of the ablest rhetoricians of the time, though 
he is censured as having been deficient in energy. 
— III. The earlier name of Plato. — IV. A statuary, 
a native of Cydon in Crete, who flourished, according 
to Pausanias (5, 25), before Zancle was termed Mes- 
sana, that is, before Olymp. 71, 3. {Sillig, Diet. Art., 
s. v.) —V. A grandson of the former, also a statuary, 
born at Sicyon. He made a statue of Jupiter with 
Ganymede, which was dedicated at Olympia. {Pirn., 

5, 24.— Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.) 

Aristocrates, I. a king of Arcadia, who ascended 
the throne B.C. 720. He was stoned to death by 
his subjects for offering violence to the priestess of 
Diana. {Pausan., 8, 5.)—II. A grandson of the pre¬ 
ceding. He was stoned to death for taking bribes 

197 




ARI 


ART 


during the second Messenian war, and being the cause 
of the defeat of his Messenian allies, B.C. 682. (Id. 
ibid.) 

Arostodemus, I. son of Aristomachus, of the race 
of the Heraclidse, who, together with his brothers 
Temenus and Cresphontes, conquered the Peloponne¬ 
sus. He was the father of twin sons, Eurysthenes and 
Procles, and was, consequently, the parent-stem of 
the Eurysthenidse and Proclidse, the two royal lines at 
Sparta. Herodotus mentions the traditionary belief 
prevalent among the Lacedsemonians, that this mon¬ 
arch had led their forefathers into Laconia (6, 52), 
whereas the poetic account made him to have died 
by lightning while preparing to invade the Peloponne¬ 
sus. This latter account is followed by Apollodorus 
(2, 8) and Pausanias (3, 1). Compare the remarks 
of Heyne (ad Apollod., 1. c.) and Bdlir (ad Herod., 1. 
c.). — II. A Messenian leader, the successor of Eu- 
phaes on the throne of Messenia. He signalized his 
valour in the war against the Spartans. An account 
of him will be found in the remarks under the article 
Messenia. — III. A painter, born in Caria, and the 
contemporary and host of Philostratus the elder. He 
wrote a treatise on eminent painters, on the cities in 
which the art of painting had been most cultivated, 
and on the kings who had patronised it. (Philostr., 
procem. Icon., p. 4, ed. Jacobs. — Sillig, Diet. Art., 
s. v.) 

Aristogiton, I. the friend of Harmodius, who, to¬ 
gether with the latter, slew Hipparchus, one of the 
sons of Pisistratus. Consult the account given under 
the article Harmodius.—II. A Theban statuary, who, 
in connection with Hypatodorus, made the presents 
dedicated by the Argives at Delphi. (Pausan., 10, 
10.) He is supposed to have exercised his art from 
Olymp. 90 to 102. ( Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.) — III. 

An Athenian orator, surnamed 6 nvuv, the dog, from 
his consummate effrontery. He be the same with the 
Aristogiton against whom Demosthenes and Dinarchus 
both pronounced discourses. (Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr , 
vol. 2, p. 270.) 

Aristomachus, I. son of Cleodasus, grandson of 
Hyllus, and great-grandson of Hercules. He was the 
father of Aristodemus, Temenus, and Cresphontes, 
the three Heraclidse that conquered the Peloponnesus. 
He himself had previously made the same attempt, but 
fell in battle. (Apollod., 2,8.— Pausan., 2, 7 .— Herod., 
6, 52.)—II. A native of Soli in Cilicia, who devoted 
fifty-eight years of his life to studying the habits of 
bees. (Plin., 11, 9.) — III. A tyrant of Argos, suc¬ 
cessor to Aristippus, who resigned the sovereign pow¬ 
er at the instigation of Aratus, and caused Argos to 
join the Achsean league. (Pausan., 2, 8.) 

Aeistomenes, a celebrated Messenian leader, who 
signalized his valour against the Spartans. A full ac¬ 
count of him will be found in the remarks under the 
article Messenia.—II. An Acarnanian, who lived at 
Alexandrea, and was appointed, by the Roman com¬ 
mander ZEmilius, tutor to the young king Ptolemy 
Epiphanes. He executed this task with wisdom and 
talent, but was eventually put to death by his un¬ 
grateful pupil, when the latter had come to the throne, 
B.C. 196. 

Ariston, I. the son of Agasicles, king of Sparta. 
He repudiated two wives in succession on account 
of their sterility, and then married a third, said to 
have been the most beautiful woman in Sparta. She 
bore him a son, Demaratus, whom he at the moment 
disowned, but afterward acknowledged to be his. 
Consult the full account as given by Plerodotus (6,61, 
seqq.). — II. A stoic philosopher, a native of Chios. 
He was one of the immediate pupils of Zeno, but, when 
he became himself an instructer, openly deviated from 
the views of his master, and founded an independent 
school. He rejected all other points of philosophy 
but ethics. He considered physiology to be beyond 


man; dialectics or logic to be ill suited to him. He 
even limited the domain of ethics itself; for he taught 
that its object is not to treat of particular duties, and 
of encouragements to virtue, such being the part of 
nurses and pedagogues ; but it is the province of the 
philosopher to show wherein the supreme good con¬ 
sists, for this knowledge is the source of all useful in¬ 
telligence. In accordance with his view, that phys¬ 
ics transcend human power, Ariston doubted some of 
the most important doctrines of Zeno. It is impossi¬ 
ble, he said, to form a conception of the shape or sense 
of the gods ; it is doubtful whether god is or is not a 
living being. From this last position, it is clear that 
Ariston strongly leaned toward scepticism ; yet he 
was careful not to extend this doubt to the common 
branches of knowledge, which are indispensable to the 
conduct of life. With Ariston, naught is of worth 
but virtue, nothing is evil but vice. (Diog. Laert., 7, 
160.— Stob., Serin., 80, 7. — Sext. Emp. adv. Math., 

7, 12. — Cic., N. D., 1, 14.) Ritter maintains, that 
Tennemann wholly misrepresents the doctrine of 
Ariston, when he calls it a practical science for man¬ 
kind, or a science for life. (Hist. Philos., vol. 3, p. • 
455, seqq.) —III. A peripatetic philosopher, a native 
of Iulis, in the island of Cea, and hence called, for dis¬ 
tinction’ sake, Iulietes. He was the disciple and 
successor of Lycon. (Consult the Bibl. Philol. Got- 
tmg., vol. 2, pt. 1, p. 1, seqq.; pt. 2, p. 1, seqq.; pt. 

6, p. 1, seqq.; and p. 459, seqq., where some very 
learned and acute remarks are given on both philoso¬ 
phers.) 

Aristonaut^e, the harbour of Pellene in Achaia, 
sixty stadia from that town. It was fabled to have 
been so called from the Argonauts having touched 
there in the course of their voyage. (Pausan., 7, 26.) 

Aristonicus, I. son of Eumenes II. by a concu¬ 
bine of Ephesus, 126 B.C. invaded Asia and the king¬ 
dom of Pergamus, which Attalus III. had left by his 
will to the Roman people. He was at first successful, 
and conquered and put to death the consul P. Licinius 
Crassus, B.C. 128. Perpenna, however, having come 
on the scene soon after, defeated Aristonicus, who 
was led to Rome, where he died, or, according to 
some, was strangled in prison. (Justin* 36,4.— Flor., 

2, 20.)—II. A grammarian of Alexandrea, who wrote 
a commentary of Hesiod and Homer, besides a treat¬ 
ise on the Musaeum established at Alexandrea by the 
Ptolemies. (Strab., 38.) 

Aristophanes, I. a celebrated comic poet, with re¬ 
gard to whom antiquity supplies us with few notices, 
and those of doubtful credit. The most likely account 
makes him the son of Philippus, a native of Angina; 
and, therefore, the comedian was an adopted, not a 
natural, citizen of Athens. (Acharn., 651, seqq. — 
Schol. ad Acharn., 1. c.—Athenceus, 6, p. 227.) The 
exact dates of his birth and death are equally unknown; 
the former, however, has been fixed, with some degree 
of probability, at 456 B.C., and the latter at B.C. 380, 
when he would be seventy-six years of age. At a very 
early period of his dramatic career, Aristophanes di¬ 
rected his attention to the political situation and oc¬ 
currences of Athens. His second recorded comedy, 
the Babylonians, was aimed against Cleon; and his 
third, the Acharnians, turns upon the evils of the Pelo¬ 
ponnesian war, then in its sixth year, and the advan¬ 
tages of a speedy peace. His talents and address 
soon gave him amazing influence with his countrymen, 
as Cleon felt to his cost the succeeding year, on the 
representation of the Equites. This piece was exhib¬ 
ited the very year after that in which Cleon had unde¬ 
servedly gained so much glory by the capture of the 
Spartans in Sphacteria. He was then in the height 
of his power and insolence. No actor durst personate 
his character in the comedy, and no artist model a 
mask after his likeness. (Eq., 230-4.) Aristophanes 
himself was compelled to undertake the part, and ap- 




ARISTOPHANES. 


ARISTOPHANES. 


peared for the first time on the stage, his face smear¬ 
ed with wine-lees. His success was complete.—The 
fame of Aristophanes was not confined to his own city. 
Dionysius of Syracuse would gladly have admitted the 
popular dramatist to his court and patronage, but his 
invitations were steadily refused by the independent 
Athenian. In B.C. 423, the Sophists felt the weight 
of his lash, for in that year he produced, though un¬ 
successfully, his Nubes. The vulgar notion that the 
exhibition of Socrates in this play was an intentional 
prelude to his capital accusation in the criminal court, 
and that Aristophanes was the leagued accomplice of 
Melitus, has of late years been frequently and satis¬ 
factorily refuted. (See particularly Mr. Mitchell’s 
elegant and able introduction to his translation of Aris¬ 
tophanes.) The simple consideration that twenty-four 
years intervened between the representation of the 
Nubes and the trial of Socrates, affords a sufficient 
answer to any such charge. In fact, after the per¬ 
formance of this very comedy, we find Socrates and 
Aristophanes become acquainted, and occasionally 
meeting together on the best terms. {Plato, Sympos.) 
An imperfect knowledge of Socrates at the time, his 
reputed doctrines, his face, figure, and manners, so 
well adapted to comic mimicry, were doubtless the 
main reasons for the selection of him as the sophistic 
Coryphseus.—In the Peace and the Lysistrata, Aris¬ 
tophanes again reverts to politics and the Peloponne¬ 
sian war; in the Wasps, the Birds, and the Ecclesi- 
azousa, he takes cognizance of the internal concerns 
of the state ; in the Thesmophoriazousa and the Ranee, 
he attacks Euripides, and discusses the drama ; while 
in the Plutus he presents us with a specimen of the 
middle comedy. Eleven of his comedies are still ex¬ 
tant out of upward of sixty. {Fab., Bibl. Gr., s. v. 
Aristophanes.) Their Greek titles are as follows: 1. 
’A x a P vs -~iq : 2. 'IrmeXq : 3. N ecpeXat : 4. 2 (pyueg : 5. 
Eipyvy : 6. "Opvideg : 7. QecsyodpopLdtjovGai : 8. Au- 
ocGTpdry : 9. B arpaxot.: 10. ’FuKAyGidtjovGaL : 11. 
IlAovrog. — The Acharnians (’A xapvecg) was repre¬ 
sented B.C. 425. In this piece the object which the 
poet proposes to himself is to engage the Athenians to 
become reconciled with the Lacedaemonians, by ma¬ 
king them see, through the aid of an allegory, that 
peace is preferable to war. He feigns that an Achar- 
nian, called Dicseopolis {the just city), had found the 
means of separating his cause from that of his fellow- 
citizens, by making peace, as far as it regarded him¬ 
self, with the enemy ; while the rest of the Acharnians, 
led astray by the suggestions of their generals, are 
suffering all the calamities of war.—The Equites or 
Knights ( f l7T7mc) was represented B.C. 424, a year 
after the Acharnians. The professed object of this 
singular composition is the overthrow of that power¬ 
ful demagogue, the vainglorious and insolent Cleon, 
whom the author had professed in his Acharnians that 
it was his intention, at some future day, to “ cut into 
shoe-leatherand his assistants on the occasion are 
the very persons for whose service the exploit was to 
take place, the rich proprietors, who among the Athe¬ 
nians constituted the class of horsemen or knights. 
For this purpose Athens is here represented as a 
house ; Demus (a personification of the Athenian peo- 
le) is the master of it ; Nicias and Demosthenes are 
is slaves, and Cleon is his confidential servant and 
slave-driver. The levelling disposition of the Athe¬ 
nians could not have been presented with a more 
agreeable picture. If the dramatis persona are few, 
the plot of the piece is still more meagre : it consists 
merely of a series of humiliating pictures of Cleon, 
and a succession of proofs to Demus that his favourite 
servant is wholly unworthy of the trust and confidence 
reposed in him.—The Clouds {NetyeXai, Nubes) was 
twice represented ; at first, B.C. 423, when it failed ; 
and the second time, during the succeeding year. By 
some curious accident, it so happens that the play 


originally condemned has come down to us, with part 
of a parabasis (or address to the audience) evidently 
intended for the second. The author here complains 
very bitterly of the injustice which had been done to 
this most elaborate of all his performances.—In the 
play of the Clouds, Socrates is made the chief subject 
of ridicule. As a person given to abstraction and sol¬ 
itary speculation is proverbially said to have his head 
in the clouds, it was but another step, therefore, in the 
poet’s creative mind, to make the clouds the chorus 
of his piece, just as of the person, whose abstractions 
and reveries seemed to make him most conversant 
with them, he had formed the hero of the piece. The 
effect of this personification in the original theatre was 
no doubt very striking. A solemn invocation calls 
down the clouds from their ethereal abode; their ap¬ 
proach is announced by thunder ; they chant a 
lyric ode as they descend to the earth ; and, after 
wakening attention by a well-managed delay, they 
are brought personally on the stage as a troop of 
females, “ habited,” says Mr. Cumberland, “ no doubt 
in character, and floating cloudlike in the dance.” 
The character of Strepsiades receiving the lessons of 
Socrates, is the original of Moliere’s “ Bourgeois 
gentilhomme.” The WAsps (2 (pyueg, Vespa), repre¬ 
sented B.C. 422, is a satire against the corruption of 
justice and the mania of litigation. It is not a play 
historically political like the Acharnians and the Equi¬ 
tes, nor personal like the Clouds : it is an attack, direct¬ 
ed in the author’s peculiar manner, upon the jurispru¬ 
dence of Athens, and levelled chiefly at that numerous 
class of her citizens,who gained a livelihood by execu¬ 
ting the office of dicast, an office more nearly resem¬ 
bling our juryman than judge. The hero of the piece 
is an Athenian citizen absolutely phrensied with a pas¬ 
sion for litigation. His son endeavours to reclaim him 
to a better mode of life, by flattering his madness, and 
instituting a mock court of justice at his own house. 
The colleagues of the old gentleman are represented 
under the form of wasps, which circumstance has given 
name to the piece.—The Peace (E Iprjvy) was repre¬ 
sented B.C. 419, at the period when the Athenians 
and Lacedemonians, after having concluded what was 
called the peace of Nicias, formed an alliance with the 
view of compelling' the other states of Greece to ac- * 
cede to the pacification. The play turns on this point. 
—The Birds (’'0 pvideg), represented B.C. 414, turns 
upon political affairs : two Athenians, disgusted with 
the divisions that prevail at Athens, transport them¬ 
selves to the country of the birds, who build them a 
city. The design of the poet appears to have been to 
prevent his countrymen from fortifying Decelia, from 
the fear lest this place might become a rallying-point 
for the Lacedaemonians, and also to induce them to re¬ 
call their forces from Sicily, in order to oppose them 
to their enemies at home .—The Females celebrating 
the festival of Ceres {deG/uotpopcd^ovGa) was repre¬ 
sented B.C. 411. The female Athenians take the op¬ 
portunity this festival affords, of deliberating on the 
means of destroying Euripides, the enemy of their sex. 
In order to save himself, Euripides is compelled to 
practise a thousand expedients, and at last obtains par¬ 
don.—The Lysistrata {kvoLGrpury), represented the 
same year with the preceding, has for its object to dis¬ 
pose the people to make peace with the Lacedaemoni¬ 
ans. Lysistrata, the wife of one of the first magistrates 
of Athens, prevails upon all the married females of 
Athens, as well as of all the hostile cities, to separate 
themselves from their husbands until peace is made. 
— The Frogs (B urpaxoi, Rana), represented B.C. 
405, gave Aristophanes the prize, over Phrynichus and 
Plato. The people demanded a second representa¬ 
tion of the piece, which was regarded as an extraordi¬ 
nary distinction. The poet, in this play, ridicules the 
tragic writers, but especially Euripides, who had died 
the year before. The chorus is composed of the frogs 

199 



ARISTOPHANES. 


ARISTOPHANES. 


of the Styx, over which stream Bacchus passes, in or¬ 
der to bring back to earth the poet HCschylus, in prefer¬ 
ence to Euripides.— The Females met in Assembly 
(’EKuTiyaui^ovaai), represented B.C. 392, is directed 
against the demagogues that disturbed the tranquillity 
of the state. It contains also some attacks levelled at 
the republic of Plato, and, above all, at the community 
of goods, of women, and of children, which formed the 
basis of Plato's system. The wife of one of the lead¬ 
ing men in the state forms a plot with her female com¬ 
panions, the object of which is to force the people to 
give the reins of government into their hands. They 
succeed by a stratagem, and pass some absurd laws, 
which are a parody on those in existence at Athens.— 
The Plutus (II/loDrof) appears to have been first rep¬ 
resented B.C. 409. It was re-exhibited twenty years 
after this. It would seem that our present text is made 
up of these two editions of the play. The play has no 
parabasis, and belongs to the Middle Comedy. A cit¬ 
izen of Athens meets with a blind man, and entertains 
him at his house. This blind personage is Plutus, the 
god of riches. Having recovered his sight by sleep¬ 
ing in the temple of JEsculapius, he is made to take 
the place of the ruler of Olympus, which affords the 
poet an opportunity of satirizing the cupidity and cor¬ 
ruption of his countrymen. — “ Never,” observes 
Schlegel, “ did a sovereign power, for such was the 
Athenian people, show greater good-humor in permit¬ 
ting the boldest truths to be spoken of it; nay, more, 
jestingly thrown in its teeth, than in the case of Aris¬ 
tophanes. Even though the abuses of government 
might not be corrected thereby, yet it was a mark of 
magnanimity to permit this unsparing exposure of them. 
Besides, Aristophanes shows himself throughout to be 
a zealous patriot: he attacks the powerful misleaders 
of the people, the same who are represented as so de¬ 
structive by the grave Thucydides ; he advises them 
to conclude that internal war which irreparably de¬ 
stroyed the prosperity of Greece ; he recommends the 
simplicity and rigour of ancient manners.—But I hear 
it asserted that Aristophanes was an immoral buffoon. 
Why, yes ; among other things he was this too ; nor 
do I mean to justify him for sinking so low with all 
his great qualifications, whether he was incited to it 
* hy natural coarseness, or whether he thought it ne¬ 
cessary to gain over the mob, in order to be able to 
tell the people such bold truths. At any rate, he boasts 
of having striven for the laughter of the commonalty, 
by merely sensual jests, much less than any of his com¬ 
petitors, and of having thus contributed to the perfec¬ 
tion of his art. To be reasonable, we must judge him, 
in those things which give us so much offence, from 
the point of view of a contemporary. The ancients 
had, in certain respects, a completely different and much 
freer system of morals than we have. This was de¬ 
rived from their religion, which was really the worship 
of nature, and which had hallowed many public usages 
grossly offensive to decency. Moreover, since, from 
the retired manner in which the women lived, the men 
were almost always by themselves, the language of 
social intercourse had obtained a certain coarseness, 
which always seems to be the case under similar cir¬ 
cumstances. Since the age of chivalry, women have 
given the tone to society in modern Europe, and we 
are indebted to the homage which is paid them for the 
sway of a loftier morality in speech, in the fine arts, 
and in poetry. Lastly, the ancient comic writer, who 
took the world as it was, had a very corrupted state of 
morals before his eyes. The most honourable testi¬ 
mony for Aristophanes is that of the wise Plato, who 
says, in an epigram, that the graces had selected his 
mind as their place of habitation, who read him con¬ 
stantly, and sent the Clouds to the elder Dionysius with 
the information, that from this piece (in which, how¬ 
ever, together with the trifling of the sophists, philoso¬ 
phy itself and his teacher Socrates were attacked) he 
200 


might learn to know the state of Athens. It is not 
likely that he merely meant that the piece was a proof 
of the unbridled democratic freedom which prevailed 
at Athens, but that he confessed the deep knowledge 
of the world displayed by the poet, and his sound 
views of the whole machinery of that government of 
citizens. But, however low and corrupt Aristophanes 
may have been in his personal inclinations, and however 
much he may have offended morals and taste by sev¬ 
eral of his jests, yet, in the general management and 
conduct of his poems, we cannot deny him the praise 
of the diligence and masterly excellence of an accom- 
, plished artist. His language is elegant to the last de¬ 
gree ; it is a specimen of the purest Attic ; and he em¬ 
ploys it with the greatest dexterity in all its shades of 
difference, from the most familiar dialogue to the lofty 
flights of dithyrambic songs. We cannot doubt, that 
he would have succeeded in more serious poetry, when 
we see how he sometimes lavishes it in the mere wan¬ 
tonness of abundance in order immediately to destroy 
its effect. This high degree of elegance is the more 
attractive by contrast; as, on the one hand, he em¬ 
ploys the roughest dialects and provincialisms of the 
common people, and even the broken Greek of foreign¬ 
ers ; and, on the other hand, applies the same caprice, 
to which he subjects all nature, to speech likewise, and 
creates the most astonishing words by composition, by 
allusion to proper names, or by imitating sounds. We 
may boldly assert, that, in spite of all the explanations 
which have come down to us, in spite of all the learn¬ 
ing which has been accumulated on him, half of the 
wit of Aristophanes is lost to us. It was only from 
the incredible quickness of Attic intellect that these 
comedies, which, with all their buffoonery, are con¬ 
nected with the most important relations of life, could 
be regarded as a diversion for the common people. 
We may envy the poet who could come before the 
public with such pre-suppositions ; but it was a dan¬ 
gerous privilege. It was not easy to please spectators 
who understood with so much ease. Aristophanes 
complains of the too fastidious taste of the Athenians, 
with whom the best of his predecessors were no long¬ 
er in favour as soon as the smallest decay in their fac¬ 
ulties was perceptible. On the contrary, he says, the 
rest of the Greeks were out of the question as judges 
of the dramatic art. All persons who had falents in 
this line endeavoured to shine at Athens ; and here 
again their contest was compressed into the short space 
of a few festivals, when the people always desired some¬ 
thing new, and obtained it in abundance. It was set- 
tled, by a single representation, to whom the prize was 
to be given, and every one contended for it, as there 
were no other means of publication.” ( Schlegel, iiber 
Dram. Kunst, &c., vol. 1, p. 286, seqq .—p. 283, Eng. 
trans.—Theatre of the Greeks, 2 d ed., p. 175, seqq.)— 
Among the numerous editions of Aristophanes the fol¬ 
lowing are most worthy of notice ; that of Kuster, 
Amst., 1710, fol. ; that of Brunck, Argent., 1783, 6 
vols. 8vo, which would be more complete did it con¬ 
tain the scholia ; and that of Invernitz, based on the 
readings of the Ravenna MS., and continued by Beck 
and Dindorff, Lips., 11 vols. 8vo, 1794-1826. We 
have also a variorum edition, 5 vols. 8vo, 1829, from 
the London press. Hoffmann censures severely the 
carelessness evinced by the anonymous editor in com¬ 
piling the notes to this edition, and in assigning many 
of them to wrong commentators. (Lex. Bill., vol. 1, 
p. 273.) Of the editions of separate plays, we may par¬ 
ticularize those by Mitchell as displaying very great 
ability. Five of the series have already appeared, 
the Frogs, Acharnians, Wasps, Knights, and Clouds. 

( Lond., 8vo, 1835-1838.)—II. A famous grammarian, 
a native of Byzantium, who flourished about B.C. 240. 
He was keeper of the library of Alexandrea, under 
Ptolemy Eurgetes ; and arranged and commented 
upon the productions of Homer, Hesiod, Alcieus, Pin- 






A RI 


ARISTOTELES. 


dar, and Aristophanes. His edition of Homer, in par¬ 
ticular, enjoyed a high reputation, and was only ob¬ 
scured by the labours of his disciple Aristarchus. It 
is to Aristophanes that the grammarian Arcadius at¬ 
tributes the invention of accents and marks of punctu¬ 
ation. He is regarded also as the first who arranged 
the Canon of writers, to which Aristarchus subsequent¬ 
ly put the finishing hand. ( Vid. Alexandrina Schola.) 
We have nothing remaining of the works of Aristopha¬ 
nes, excepting a small fragment, containing the ex¬ 
planation of some Greek words, which Boissonade 
found in the library of the King of France. It is pub¬ 
lished by this scholar at the end of his edition of the 
’E TU/xepiafioL of Herodian. Lond., 1819, 8vo. ( Scholl, 
Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 3, p. 188.) 

Aristophon,.I- a Greek comic poet, contemporary 
with Alexander.—II. An Athenian orator, whom De¬ 
mosthenes, in his speech against Leptines, ranks 
among the most eloquent men of the republic.—III. 
Another orator of Athens, also distinguished in his 
profession. He was one of the masters of iEschines. 
( Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 2, p. 268.)—IV. A paint¬ 
er, a native of Thasos, and brother of Polygnotus. 
He is supposed to have flourished about Olymp. 80. 
Pliny mentions several of his productions (35, 11.— 
Compare Plut., de aud. Poet., 3, p. 69, vol. 7, ed. Hut- 
ten). 

Aristotelea, annual feasts in honour of Aristotle, 
celebrated by the inhabitants of Stagira, in gratitude 
for his having obtained from Alexander the rebuilding 
and repeopling of that city, which had been demolished 
by King Philip. {Plut., Vit. Alex., 7.— JElian, V. H., 
3, 17.— Diog. Laert., 5, 9.) 

Aristoteles, a celebrated philosopher, born at Sta¬ 
gira, B.C. 384. His father was Nicomachus, who 
is said to have left behind him many works on medicine 
and natural history {Suidas, s. v. N luopaxog), and who 
was the physician and friend of Amyntas, king of Ma¬ 
cedonia. From the place of his birth Aristotle is fre¬ 
quently called the Stagirite. Having lost both his 
parents at a very early age, he received the first rudi¬ 
ments of learning from Proxenus of Atarneus in Mysia, 
of whom he always retained a respectful remembrance. 
In gratitude for the care which he had taken of his 
early education, he afterward honoured his memory 
with a statue, instructed his son Nicanor in the liberal 
sciences, and adopted him as his heir. At the age of 
seventeen Aristotle went to Athens, and devoted him¬ 
self to philosophy in the school of Plato. The uncom¬ 
mon acuteness of his apprehension, and his indefatiga¬ 
ble industry, soon attracted the attention of Plato, and 
obtained his applause. Plato used to call him the 
Mind of the School, and to say, when he was absent, 

“ Intellect is not here.” His acquaintance with books 
was extensive and accurate, as sufficiently appears 
from the concise abridgment of opinions, and the nu¬ 
merous quotations which are found in his works. The 
zeal, in fact, with which he strove to master the treas¬ 
ures not only of the olden philosophy, but of the whole 
literature of Greece, may be inferred from another 
name, “ the Reader ,” which Plato gave him, as well 
as by the remark made by that philosopher, when, on 
comparing him with Xenocrates, he said that the lat¬ 
ter required the spur, but Aristotle the bit. {Diog. 
Laert., 4, 6.) He continued to reside at Athens for 
the space of 20 years, all of which time assuredly he 
did not devote to the instructions of Plato; on the 
contrary, we must assign to this period the preparatory 
labours of the great works of his after life. {Ritter, 
Hist. Phil., vol. 3, p. 2.) It would appear from the 
language of some eminent writers, that, in the last 
years of Plato’s life, the earlier friendship between the 
master and disciple had given place to mutual misunder¬ 
standing, not to say animosity. Aristotle is accused 
of ingratitude towards Plato, and the charge is sought 
to be substantiated, not only by several anecdotes, bu* L 
C c 


by an appeal to the writings of Aristotle himself, who 
takes every occasion, it is alleged, to refute the theory 
of his master. The anecdotes, however, which are ad¬ 
duced in support of this opinion, will be found, on exam¬ 
ination, to be as unworthy of notice as the similar state¬ 
ments which speak of Plato’s ingratitude to Socrates. 
As regards his writings themselves, it is very true that 
Aristotle nowhere prominently exhibits the signal merit 
of Plato in the service of philosophy. This, however, 
may be explained, partly from the scope and design of 
Aristotle’s works, and partly from his scientific charac¬ 
ter. The object of the former was not so much to give 
a due estimate of every philosopher, as, by an exami¬ 
nation of their systems, to prevent his own disciples 
being disheartened or perplexed by erroneous opinions, 
however widely or speciously diffused. The scientific 
character of Aristotle, on the other hand, prevented him 
from reviewing the system of Plato in its spirit; for it 
cannot be denied that the Aristotelian criticism attaches 
itself by preference to single tenets, which it estimates, 
not so much by their philosophical import, and re¬ 
lation to the system to which they belong, as by the 
form of expression. It cannot be denied, however, that 
Aristotle often finds fault with Plato, and never men¬ 
tions him except to refute his doctrines ; nay, that he 
at times evinces something of a bitterness in the zeal 
with which he attacks the system of Plato and the 
Platonists, and usually represents its tendency as fatal to 
science. ( Ritter, p. 5, seqq .)—On the death of Plato he 
left Athens, and some time after was chosen by Philip 
preceptor to his son Alexander, which office he dischar¬ 
ged with the greatest ability during eight years, until 
his pupil’s accession to the throne. The letter which 
Philip wrote to Aristotle when he chose him pre¬ 
ceptor to his son, was couched in the following terms ; 
“ Be informed that I have a son, and that I am thank¬ 
ful to the gods, not so much for his birth as that he 
was born in the same age with you ; for if you will 
undertake the charge of his education, I assure myself 
that he will become worthy of his father, and of the 
kingdom which he will inherit.” After Aristotle had 
left his pupil, he returned to Athens, but the two still 
carried on a friendly correspondence, in which the 
philosopher prevailed upon Alexander to employ his 
power and wealth in the service of philosophy. Alex¬ 
ander accordingly employed several thousand persons 
in different parts of Europe and Asia to collect ani¬ 
mals of various kinds, birds, beasts, and fishes, and 
sent them to Aristotle, who, from the information which 
this collection afforded him, wrote fifty volumes on the 
history of animated nature, only a small portion of 
which is now extant. Upon his return to Athens, 
Aristotle resolved to found a new sect in opposition to 
the Academy. He chose for his school a grove and 
enclosure in the suburbs of Athens, called the Lyceum. 
{Vid. Lyceum.) From his walking about as he dis¬ 
coursed with his pupils, his followers, according to the 
common account, were termed Peripatetics {IlcpnTa- 
TTjTLtiol, and rov TTEpnraTEiv). Others, however, more 
correctly derive the appellation from the public walk 
{rcEp'nraToq ) in the Lyceum which Aristotle and his dis¬ 
ciples were accustomed to frequent. (Comp. Brucker, 
Hist. Crit. Phil., vol. 1, p. 788.) His instructions were 
not confined to philosophy, but comprised every branch 
of inquiry which could profit the youth of an enlighten¬ 
ed age, and especially rhetoric. {Diog. Laert., 5, 3.— 
Cic., de Orat., 3, 35.) His more abstruse discourses 
were delivered in the morning to his select disciples; 
this he called his morning walk. He delivered lectures 
to a more promiscuous auditory in the evening, when 
the Lyceum was open to all young men without dis¬ 
tinction ; this he termed his evening walk. The for¬ 
mer investigations were called acroatic or acroamatic, 
the latter exoterical. Both were much frequented. 
Aristotle continued his school in the Lyceum for 
thirteen years, employed at the same time in the com- 

201 



ARISTOTELES. 


ARISTOTELES. 


position of ihe principal part of his written works. To 
this period also must be assigned his important labours 
in experimental knowledge, especially in the history of 
animals, wherein he was assisted, as we have already 
said, by the munificent liberality of Alexander. Sub¬ 
sequently, however, the philosopher appears to have 
fallen under the displeasure of his royal pupil and pat¬ 
ron, in consequence of having expressed, in rather free 
terms, his disapprobation of the changed habits of the 
king. ( Diog. Laert., 5, 10. — Plut., Vit. Alex., 55.) 
The charge has even been brought against him, that 
he furnished Antipater with the poison by which Alex¬ 
ander was believed to have been taken off. (Plut., 
Vit. Alex., 77.)—At the close of this period, Aristotle 
retired to Chalcis with a few of his disciples, in order, 
it is said, to escape a fate similar to that of Socrates, a 
charge of impiety having been, in like manner, brought 
against him. (Ritter, p. 10. note.) He died at Chal¬ 
cis not long after this, at the age of 63. It is pretend¬ 
ed by some that he took poison, from the fear of being 
pursued by the Athenians ; while others relate a still 
more idle tale of his having thrown himself into the 
waters of the Euripus (vid. Euripus); it is most prob¬ 
able, however, that his death was the effect of prema¬ 
ture decay, in consequence of excessive watchfulness 
and application. His body was interred at Stagira, 
where his memory was honoured with an altar and a 
tomb. Aristotle was twice married. By his second 
wife he had a son named Nicomachus, to whom he 
addressed his “ Greater Morals.” His person was slen¬ 
der ; he had small eyes, and a shrill voice ; and when 
he was young, hesitated in his speech. He endeavour¬ 
ed to supply the defects of his natural form by an at¬ 
tention to dress, and commonly appeared in a costly 
habit, with his beard shaven, his hair cut, and rings 
on his fingers. (Diog'. Laert., 5, 1.— Vit. Aristot. ap. 
Menag., jin.) Concerning his character, nothing can 
be more contradictory than the accounts of different 
writers ; some making him a model of every virtue, 
others the most infamous of human beings. (Athen., 
13, p. 556, e. — Ritter, p. 8, note.) The truth ap¬ 
pears to be, that his virtues w 7 ere neither of that exalt¬ 
ed kind which command admiration, nor his faults so 
highly criminal as not to admit of some apology.—Aris¬ 
totle possessed in a high degree the talents of discrimi¬ 
nation and analysis, added to the most astonishing 
knowledge of books and the works of nature. To 
the latter, more especially, he devoted himself. He 
rejected the doctrine of ideas, maintaining that all our 
impressions and thoughts, and even the highest efforts 
of the understanding, are the fruit of experience. The 
Peripatetic is the great intellectual school of antiquity. 
In Aristotle we see the calm and sober inquirer, who 
does not, like Plato, pursue a lofty ideal, but keeps 
carefully in view the proximately practicable, and is 
not easily misled into any extravagance either of lan¬ 
guage or thought. In Aristotle w r e have the cold in¬ 
quirer,' and little more. Rarely, if ever, does he step 
aside to consider the bond which connects the science 
of the universal and of nature with the human intellect 
and will. Consequently, his works have none of that 
impressiveness which constitutes the principal charm 
of Plato’s writings. True, we only possess a portion 
of his writings, and the very portion which is design¬ 
edly free from all accessory matter and embellishment. 
Nevertheless, the very manner in which this portion is 
treated, sufficiently proves that Aristotle, even if his 
mind were not wholly alien from every poetical ele¬ 
ment, was unable to combine the sober results of sci¬ 
ence with a lively imagination.—The school of Aristotle 
has been termed the intellectual school, with reference 
to his doctrines; the school of experience, as looking 
without; and, in a moral point of view, the school of 
expediency or prudence, as finding the rule of moral 
conduct in the result of actions.—Philosophy, accord¬ 
ing to Aristotle, is science arising out of the love of 
202 


knowledge, or knowledge according to certain princi¬ 
ples. These principles cannot, of themselves, be re¬ 
garded as objects of science, in so far as they are 
known previously to science (Anal. Post., 1, 1.-— 
Eth. Nic., 5, 3); but they must be viewed as certain 
and fixed, and unable to be subjected to any scien¬ 
tific procedure. Accordingly, he assumes an imme¬ 
diate cognition, which he distinguishes from science 
in the strict sense, though he calls it certainty, and 
assigns it to science in a wider sense, or, rather, to 
wisdom and to reason. Aristotle’s mode of deriving 
knowledge is from externals, Plato’s from internals. 
According to the former, we obtain the knowledge of 
particulars immediately through the senses, while we 
acquire the universal (rd sad’ oAov) mediately through 
experience and logic. Plato, on the contrary, began 
with universals, and reasoned downward. In this we 
have the leading difference between the two schools. 
In the system of Aristotle, logic is the opyavov, the 
instrument by which all general knowledge is obtained. 
Hence the importance of logic in the peripatetic school. 
Logic, however, is only the instrument of science or 
philosophy, quoad formam, for it is experience that 
must supply the matter to be worked upon, and wrought 
into general principles. By his works comprehended 
under the title of Organum, Aristotle has rendered 
the greatest service to logic, as the science which 
would establish the formal part of reasoning, and elu¬ 
cidate its theory ; and he ought not to be made respon¬ 
sible for the abuse, which afterward prevailed, of this 
same art among his later followers, the schoolmen. 
The error into which they fell was to make logic ca¬ 
pable of supplying not only the form, but even the mat¬ 
ter, of argumentation ; in other words, to consider it an 
instrument that could of itself discover the truth.— 
Aristotle, more than any other philosopher, enlarged 
the limits of philosophy. He comprised therein all the 
sciences (rational, empirical, or mixed), with the single 
exception of history ; and he appears to have divided 
it, as a whole, into Logic, Physics, and Ethics, or spec¬ 
ulative and practical. Aristotle’s rd Qvolku is not 
equivalent to Physics in the modern acceptation of 
the term, but has a much wider range, comprehending 
the nature of all beings, and not confined to mere ma¬ 
terial ones. Under this head, therefore, the nature of 
Deity comes in for consideration. But, in treating this 
topic, Aristotle fell from the high and lofty teaching 
of his master Plato, and taught the existence of deity 
in a lower sense, without any of those attributes which 
may be said to constitute his very nature. With him, 
Nature is a great machine, the first spring of which is 
Deity. He says nothing of the Supreme Being ; he 
speaks of him merely as a first cause of movements, 
itself unmoved (to Ttpurov kivovv ukIvtjtov). —Aris¬ 
totle has been accused of being an atheist and a neces¬ 
sitarian. The Christian fathers rejected his philoso¬ 
phy on the ground of atheism, because he taught that 
the world was eternal. His doctrine, however, would 
not seem to be in reality an atheistic one. He taught 
that Creation w 7 as not within the limits of time : that 
the essential nature of Deity was cause. Now if the 
cause be eternal, the effect must be eternal, and there 
never would be a time when Creation did not exist. 
It is evident that in this he did not mean to teach 
atheism. He is more justly chargeable with being a 
necessitarian, since all his reasonings on the Deity 
make him the first spring of the great machine of na¬ 
ture.—With regard to man, he likewise taught a less 
lofty doctrine than Plato. He makes the soul distinct 
from the body, but considered as its form (eUoq or 
hrelexda), it is inseparable therefrom. He says lit¬ 
tle with regard to the immortality of the soul, and a fu¬ 
ture state of rewards and punishments ; and has even 
by some been charged with materialism. A perfect 
unity of plan prevails through his Ethics, Politics, and 
Economics. Both the latter have for their end to show 



ARISTOTELES. 


ARM 


now the object of man's existence, defined in the Ethics, 
namely, virtue combined with happiness, may be attain¬ 
ed in the civil and domestic relations, through a good 
constitution of the state and household.—In the history 
of the Aristotelian school, four periods are commonly 
noticed. The Jirst, from the death of Aristotle to the 
time of Cicero, was a period of gradual decline, for 
the philosophy of the Stagirite was deeper than suited 
ordinary intellects, and they could not carry it on. Du¬ 
ring the second period, from Cicero to the seventh cen¬ 
tury of the Christian era, the philosophy of Aristotle 
was quite neglected, and almost unknown. From 
the seventh to the tenth century, the third period, it 
was revived, but in a greatly corrupted state. From 
the tenth to the fifteenth, the fourth period, when it 
was overthrown by Bacon and Descartes, it went by 
the name of the scholastic philosophy, being connect¬ 
ed with polemic theology.—-Aristotle was the most 
voluminous of the ancient philosophers. A large cat¬ 
alogue of his writings is given by Diogenes Laertius, 
and in modern times by Fabricius andothers. Fromthis 
it appears that he wrote many books besides those which 
have been transmitted to our own day. We have all 
his Logical works, five in number, and usually pub¬ 
lished under the general title of Organon. We have 
16 books on Physical Philosophy; 14 on Metaphysics; 
and three works on Morals ; the first entitled Nico- 
machean Ethics , addressed to his son Nicomachus ; 
the second Magna Moralia ; the third a Discourse on 
Virtue and Vice. We have also separate works on 
Economics, Government, the Art of Rhetoric , and the 
Art of Poetry. The works of Aristotle, together with 
his library, passed very early through hazards which 
have rendered it a subject of critical inquiry how far 
the present volumes which bear his name are genuine. 
(Consult remarks under the article Apellicon.)—Be¬ 
fore closing this article it may not be amiss to offer a 
few observations relative to the term Metaphysics, as 
applied to some of the writings of Aristotle. This ap¬ 
pellation is not found either in the works of the Stagi¬ 
rite himself, or in those of any Greek or Roman phi¬ 
losopher anterior to Nicholas of Damascus. It is said 
that Andronicus of Rhodes, wishing to arrange the 
works of Aristotle, distributed them into different 
classes, such as works on logic , on rhetoric, on poe¬ 
try, &c. The last of these sections or divisions com¬ 
prehended the works on Physics. Still, however, 
there remained over a number of writings, which he 
had been unable to assign to any class, because, being 
first essays in a new science, they did not fall under any 
one of the heads under which he had arranged the rest. 
He therefore united these into one class by themselves, 
and assigned them their rank after the _ works on 
Physics (yerd rd tyvcitid), whence arose their peculiar 
name, which had no reference whatever to the subjects 
discussed in them. With a little more attention on 
his part, Andronicus might have found a better title in 
the writings of Aristotle himself; for it appears that 
the books which we have on Metaphysics are the same 
with what the Stagirite calls his A oyoi U 7 % tv ptiryq 
$Lloaofiaq, “ Discourses on the First Philosophy ."— 
The best editions of the entire works of Aristotle are, 
that of DuVal, Pans, 1619,2 vols.fol.; thatofBekker, 
Berol., 1831, 5 vols. 4to ; and the small stereotype one 
published by Tauchnitz, Lips., 16 vols. 18mo, 1832, 
&c.—Of the separate treatises, the following editions 
may be mentioned. The best edition of the Organon 
is that of Geneva, 1605, 4to; of the Ethics, that of 
Cardwell, Oxon., 1828-30, 2 vols. 8vo; to which we 
may add that of Bekker, Berol., 1831, 8vo ; of the Art 
of Poetry, that of Hermann, Lips., 1803,8vo ; to which 
may be added the excellent one of Tyrwhitt, Oxon., 
1794, 4to, and that of Graefenhahn, Lips., 1821, 8vo ; 
of the Art of Rhetoric, that published at Oxford, 
1820, 2 vols. 8vo ; of the History of Animals, that of 
Schneider, Lips., 1811, 4 vols. 8vo; of the Politics, 


that of Gottling, Lips., 1824, 8vo, &c. Among the 
subsidiary works on Aristotle may be mentioned the 
following: Examcn Critique de I'ouvrage d Aristote 
intitule Metaphysique, par Michelet, Pans, 1836, 8vo. 
— Essai sur la Metaphysique d’Aristote, par Ravais- 
son, Paris, 1837, 2 vols. 8vo.— La Logique d’Aristote, 
par Saint-Hilaire, Pans, 1838, 2 vols. 8vo. These 
French works are all prize-essays of the Institute. 
(Ritter's History of Philosophy, vol. 3, p. 1, seqq .— 
Tennemann's Manual, &c., p. 121, seqq. — Enfield's 
Hist. Philos., vol. 1, p. 260, seqq.) 

Aristoxenus, I. a native of Tarentum and disci¬ 
ple of Aristotle, who wrote both on philosophy and mu¬ 
sic. Among the works of a philosophical character 
which he composed, may be enumerated his treatise on 
the Laws respecting Education (7 repl Tvaiducdvvoyuv ); 
his Pythagorean Theses (lit dayopinal uTrotpdoeig), a 
collection of the precepts of morality inculcated by that 
sect; and his Biography of Eminent Philosophers (Brnf 
uvdptiv). In the last of these works he is unjust to¬ 
wards the character of Socrates, as far as we can learn 
from some fragments that have come down to us. 
The cause of this may either have been the little es¬ 
teem in which music was held by Socrates, or a quar¬ 
rel which had occurred between the latter and Spin- 
thares, the father of Aristoxenus, who had been one 
of his disciples. Aristoxenus was celebrated among 
the ancients for applying the Aristotelian doctrine of 
knowledge to the scientific investigation of music. He 
compared the soul to a musical harmony, and thought 
that, as the latter is produced by the different relations 
subsisting between several tones, so, too, the soul is the 
consequence of the relative arrangement of the differ¬ 
ent parts of the body ; for that it is this which produ¬ 
ces the movement of the living body, and the soul is 
to be regarded as nothing more than a certain tension 
of the body. (Cic., Tusc., 1, 10.) As a writer on 
music, Aristoxenus must be regarded as the earliest 
that we possess, His work on Harmony was pub¬ 
lished by Meursius in 1616 (Lugd. Bat., 4to), and 
subsequently, in a much more correct form, by Meibo- 
mius, in his collection of the Writers on Music. The 
fragments on Rhythm were published for the first time 
by Morelli, at the end of the speech of Aristides against 
Leptines (Venet., 1785, 8vo). The remains of the 
philosophical writings of Aristoxenus are principally 
in Stobaeus, but have not as yet been edited by any 
scholar. Compare, with regard to this writer, the re¬ 
marks of Meiners, Gesch. der Wissensch., vol. 1, p. 
213, and Mahne, Diatribe de Aristoxeno, Amst., 1793, 
8vd. — II. A physician, disciple of Alexander Phila- 
lethes, cited by Galen (dijf. puls., 4, p. 47). He rec¬ 
ommended the use of clysters in hydrophobia; and 
boasted much of the efficacy of frictions with oil and 
the plant termed by botanists polygonum convolvulus, 
in cases of quartan fever. He left a work on the 
principles of his school, which has not come down to 
us. (Coel. Aurel., acut., 3, 16, p. 233.— Apoll. Dysc., 
hist, mirab., c. 33, p. 133.— Galen, l. c.) 

Arius, a presbyter of the church of Alexandrea, in 
the 4th century. He denied the divinity and consub- 
stantiality of the Word. After having been persecuted 
for his opinions, he gained the favour of the Emperor 
Constantine, and supplanted St. Athanasius, his adver¬ 
sary, but died suddenly, when just about to enter in 
triumph the cathedral of Constantinople, A.D. 336. 
He gave name to the sect of the Arians. ( Epiphan., 
Hcevcs., 68.— Socrat., Hist. Eccles., &c.) 

Armenia, a large country of Asia, divided into Ar¬ 
menia Major and Minor. The first, which is the mod¬ 
ern Turcomania, and is still sometimes called Armenia, 
lies south of Mount Caucasus, and comprehends the 
Turkish pachalics Erzerum, Kars, and Van, and also 
the Persian province Iran or Envan. It was separa¬ 
ted from Armenia Minor by the river Euphrates. Ar¬ 
menia Minor was, properly speaking, a part of Cappa- 



ARMENIA. 


ARM 


docia. It is now called Aladulia or Pegian , belongs 
to the Turks, and is divided between the pachalics 
Merashe and Sivas. Armenia is a rough, mountain¬ 
ous country, which has Caucasus for its northern 
boundary, and in the centre is traversed by branches 
of Mount Taurus, to which belongs Mount Ararat. 
Here the two great rivers Euphrates and Tigris take 
their rise ; likewise the Cyrus or Kur, and other less 
considerable streams. Herodotus (7, 73) says that 
the Armenians were a Phrygian colony, and used arms 
like those of the Phrygians ; but, as Ritter well re¬ 
marks ( Erdkunde , vol. 2, p. 782), the nations whom 
the father of profane history designates as Phrygians, 
Armenians, Cappadocians, and Syrians, are all de¬ 
scendants of the Aramean stock. Hence we may, with 
some degree of probability, consider the name Armenia 
as derived from Aram, and the Semitic Arameans to 
have been the first inhabitants of the land, who were 
afterward overpowered by barbarian tribes from Upper 
Asia. (Compare Adelung, Mithradates, vol. 1, p. 420.) 
According to another opinion, the Armenian tongue 
may be traced to Xisuthros or Noah, and may boast 
of being antediluvian in its character. ( Recherches 
Curieuses, &c., far Chahan de Cubied et Martin, 
Paris, 1806, 8vo.) Of the ancient history of Arme¬ 
nia but little is known. The native writers make 
Haig to have been the first chieftain or prince that 
ruled over this country, and from him they called them¬ 
selves Haji. He was the son of Taglath, who, ac¬ 
cording to them, was the same with Thogarma, grand¬ 
son of Japhet. Twenty-two centuries before the 
Christian era he left Babylon, his native place, and es¬ 
tablished himself, with all his family, in the mountains 
of southern Armenia, in order to escape from the tyr¬ 
anny of Belus, king of Assyria. The latter attacked 
him in his new settlements, but perished by his hand. 
Aram, the sixth successor of Haig, became so distin¬ 
guished by his exploits, that, from his time, the sur¬ 
rounding nations called the country Armenia, after his 
name. Ara, son of the preceding, fell in defending 
his country against Semiramis, and Armenia became 
thenceforward an Assyrian province until the death of 
Sardanapalus, when a succession of native princes 
again appeared. (Compare Klaproth, Tableaux Hls- 
toriques de VAsie, &c., p. 50, seqq .) After the death 
of Alexander, it became part of the kingdom of Syria, 
and so remained till the overthrow of Antiochus the 
Great, when it fell into the hands of different rulers, 
and was divided into Armenia Major and Minor.—Ar¬ 
menia Major was exposed to many attacks. The 
Romans and Parthians fought a long time for-the 
right of giving a successor to the throne, and it was 
governed at one period by Parthian princes, at anoth¬ 
er by those whom the Romans favoured, until Tra¬ 
jan made it a Roman province. Armenia afterward 
recovered its independence, and was under the rule 
of its own kings. Sapor, king of Persia, attempt¬ 
ed its subjugation in vain, and it remained free until 
650, when it was conquered by the Arabians. After 
this it several times changed its masters, among whom 
were Gengis-Khan and Timour-leng. In 1552, Selim 
II. conquered it from the Persians, and the greater 
part has since remained under the Turkish dominion. 
—Armenia Minor has also had several rulers, among 
whom Mithradates was first distinguished. From 
him Pompey took the kingdom, and gave it to Deiota- 
rus. On the decline of the Roman Empire in the 
east it was conquered by the Persians, and in 950 
fell into the hands of the Arabians, since which time 
it has shared the same fate as Armenia Major, and was 
made, in 1514, a Turkish province by Selim I. — The 
earlier capital of Armenia was Armavir, which, during 
1800 years, was the residence of the kings. After 
Armavir, Artaxata (Artaschad) on the Araxes, built 
in the time of the Seleucidse, became the capital, but 
sank into decay before the end of the 8th century.— 
204 


For some remarks on the Armenian language, consult 
Balbi, Atlas Ethnographique, &c., tabl. 4, and Intro¬ 
duction a VAtlas, p. 45. — As regards the literary 
history of Armenia, it may be remarked, that the litera¬ 
ture of the country begins with the conversion of the 
Armenians to Christianity in the commencement of the 
fourth century. Since that time they*have translated 
from the Greek (there is a Homer in Armenian hex¬ 
ameters), Hebrew, Syriac, and Chaldee, into their 
own dialect, which some assert to be an original lan¬ 
guage, as has already been remarked; while others 
regard it as a mixed dialect, composed of the Syriac, 
Chaldee, Hebrew, and Arabic. Both opinions are cor¬ 
rect. The old Armenian, the language of literature 
and of the church, is, as Vater agrees, an original lan¬ 
guage ; the modern Armenian has been formed, as a 
popular language, by foreign additions during the suc¬ 
cessive changes of their conquerors, and consists of 
four principal dialects. The written language owes 
its cultivation to the translation of the Bible, begun in 
411 by Mesrob, with his disciples (among whom was 
Moses Choronensis), by the desire of the patriarch 
Isaac the Great, and finished in 511. Mesrob first 
added seven vowel-signs to the old Armenian alpha¬ 
bet, which before only contained 27 consonants. At 
the same time schools were established. The most 
flourishing period of Armenian literature was in the 
sixth century, at the time of the separation of the Ar¬ 
menians from the Greek church after the council of 
Chalcedon. It continued to flourish until the tenth 
century, revived in the thirteenth, and maintained a 
respectable character till 1453. In scientific inquiries 
it never rose to any considerable eminence. It is par¬ 
ticularly valuable in what relates to history.—The best 
introduction to Armenian history, geography, and lit¬ 
erature, is that which M. J. Saint-Martin, member of 
the French Institute, has extracted from old Armenian 
writings, inscriptions, and other sources, under the 
title of Memoires Historiques et Geographiques sur 
VArmenie, Paris, 1808, 2 vols. ( Encyc. Amer., 1, 
373.) 

Armilustrium or Armilustrum, a festival at Rome, 
on the 19th of October, during which they sacrificed 
completely armed, and to the sound of trumpets. It 
was intended for the expiation of the armies, and the 
prosperity of the arms of the Roman people. The 
name is also sometimes applied to the place in which 
the sacrifice was performed. ( Varro, L. L., 4, 32.— 
Id. ib., 5, 3 .—Liv., 27, 37.) 

Arminius (the Latin name for Hermann, i. e., lead¬ 
er or general), the deliverer of Germany from the 
Roman yoke. He was a son of a prince of the 
Cherusci, Sigimer (which, in the old German, signifies 
a famous conqueror ), and was born 18 B.C. He w r as 
educated at Rome, admitted into the rank of equites , 
and appointed to an honourable station in the army of 
Augustus. But princely favour and the charms of 
learning were insufficient to make the young barbarian 
forget his early associations. Convinced that the rude 
strength of his savage countrymen would be unequal 
to cope with the disciplined forces of the Romans in 
the open field, he had recourse to stratagem. Having 
fomented the discontent prevailing among the German 
nations, and having produced a wide confederacy for 
revolt, he artfully drew Yarus, the Roman commander 
on the Rhine, into an ambuscade, where three Roman 
legions were cut to pieces. Varus, unable to survive 
his disgrace, slew himself, A.D. 10. Germanicus 
marched with a powerful army to revenge the over¬ 
throw of Varus ; but it required more than one cam¬ 
paign, and several battles, before he obtained any de¬ 
cided advantage ; and at last Arminius fell a sacrifice 
only to the civil feuds in which he was involved with 
his own countrymen and kindred, being assassinated 
by one of his own relations, in the 37th year of his 
age. Tacitus relates, that he drew upon himself the 








ARO 


ARR 


hatred of his countrymen by aiming at the regal au¬ 
thority. A short time before his death, Adgantestes 
or Adgantestrius, prince of the Catti, proposed to the 
Roman senate to despatch Arminius by poison, but 
the senate took no notice of the offer. Arminius was 
26 years old when he destroyed the legions of Varus. 
In the language of Tacitus, “Arminius was doubtless 
the deliverer of Germany. He fought against the 
Romans, not like other kings and generals, when they 
were weak, but when their empire was mighty and 
their renown glorious. Fortune, indeed, sometimes 
deserted him ; but, even when conquered, his noble 
character and his extensive influence commanded the 
veneration of his conquerors. For twelve years he 
presided over the destinies of Germany, to the com¬ 
plete satisfaction of his countrymen; and, after his 
death, they paid him divine honours.” ( Tacit., Ann., 
2, 88.) If we dwell a moment on the results of his 
victory, we will find that it had a decided influence on 
the whole character of Germany, political and liter¬ 
ary ; because it is evident that, had the Romans re¬ 
mained in quiet possession of the country, they would 
have given a tone to all its institutions and its lan¬ 
guage, as was the case with all the other countries of 
Europe conquered by them. The reason, therefore, 
why the language of the Germans remained in a great 
degree unmixed with, and uninfluenced by, the Latin, 
and why their political institutions retained so much 
of their ancient character, is to be found in the victory 
of Arminius. ( Encyclop. Arneric., vol. 1, p. 375, seqq. 
— Bibl. Univ., vol. 2, p. 480. — Menzel, Geschichte der 
Deutschen, p. 58.) 

Armorica. Vid. Aremorica. 

Arna, I. a city of Lycia, called afterward Xanthus. 
{Vid. Xanthus.) — II. A town of Umbria, west of 
Nuceria, and near the Tiber. It is now Civitella 
d'Arno. {Plin ., 3, 14.— Sil. Ital., 8, 458.) 

Arnobius, I. the Elder, called also the African, 
was born at Sicca Venerea in Numidta, in the latter 
part of the third century. He was at first a pagan, and 
taught rhetoric in his native city, where he acquired a 
high reputation; but he subsequently embraced Chris¬ 
tianity, being moved thereto by dreams, according to 
St. Jerome. ( Chron. ad Ann. xx. Const. —Compare de 
vir. ill., 79.) As, however, he had warmly attacked 
Christianity before his conversion, in the course of his 
public lectures, the bishop of Sicca refused to admit 
him within the pale of the church until he had evin¬ 
ced the sincerity of his conversion by some open act. 
In consequence of this, while yet a catechumen, he 
wrote a work entitled Libri vii. adversus gentes, in 
which he refuted the objections of the heathen against 
Christianity with spirit and learning. This work be¬ 
trays, as may be well expected, a defective knowledge 
of the Christian religion, but it is rich in materials for 
the understanding of Greek and Roman mythology: 
hence it is one of the writings of the Latin fathers, 
which, like the works of his disciple Lactantius, are 
particularly valued by philologists. We have given 
above the more correct title of the work of Arnobius. 
It is commonly, but less correctly, called Libri vii. 
disputationum adversus gentes. (Le Nourry, Ap- 
parat. ad Bibl. Patr., 2, p. 285. — Bahr, Christhch- 
Rom. Tkeol., p. 67.) The latest and best edition of 
Arnobius is that of Orellius {Lips., 1816, 8vo).— 
II. The younger, a Gallic divine in the last half of 
the 5th century. We have from him an insignificant 
commentary on the Psalms, which betrays the princi¬ 
ples of the Semi-Pelagians. {Bahr, l. c .) 

Arnus, a river of Etruria, rising in the Umbrian 
Apennines, and falling into the Mediterranean. It 
is now the Arno. On its banks stood Florentia, the 
modern Florence, and near its mouth Pisae, now Pisa. 
The portus Pisanuswas at the very mouth. {Strab., 
222.— Rutil., Itan., 1, 531.) 

Aroe, one of the three towns of Achaia on the site 


of which Patr© was afterward built. The other two 
were Anthea and Messatis. {Pausan., 7, 18.) 

Aromata, or Aromatum Promontorium, the most 
eastern land of the continent of Africa, now Cape 
Guardafui. {Ptol., 1 , 9, p. 11.) 

Arpi, a city of Apulia, in the interior of Daunia, re¬ 
markable for its antiquity. Its first name was Argy- 
rippa, an appellation supposed to be modified from 
V A pyoq "lmriov, the name which it received originally 
from its founder Diomede. When Arpi is first intro¬ 
duced to our notice in the history of Rome, it is rep¬ 
resented as an Apulian city of no great importance, 
and of which the Romans possessed themselves with¬ 
out difficulty. {Liv., 9, 13.) In the second Punic 
war it fell into the hands of Hannibal after the battle 
of Cannse {Polyb., 3, 88 and 118), but was recovered 
by the Romans. Arpi was greatly reduced in the 
time of Strabo (283), but still continued to exist un¬ 
der Constantine as an episcopal see. {Cramer's An¬ 
cient Italy, vol. 2, p. 282.) 

ArpInum, a small town of Latium, southeast of 
Rome, still known by the name of Arpino. It is ren¬ 
dered illustrious in the page of history for having 
given birth to Marius and Cicero. It originally be¬ 
longed to the Volsci, but was taken by the Samnites, 
from whom it was again wrested by the Romans. 
{Liv., 9, 44.) It became a municipal town, and its 
citizens were enrolled in the Cornelian tribe. Of 
course, frequent mention is made of Arpinum in Ci¬ 
cero's letters : he was fond of his native place, and 
dwells with complacency on the rude and primitive 
simplicity of its customs, applying to it those lines of 
the Odyssey (1, 27 , seqq.) in which Ulysses expresses 
his love for Ithaca. {Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol. 2, 
p. 114, seqq.) 

Arria, the wife of Csecina Pretus. Her husband, 
a man of consular rank, having taken part in the un¬ 
successful revolt of Scribonianus, in Illyricum, against 
the Emperor Claudius, was brought to Rome for trial. 
Arria, finding all means of saving him ineffectual, and 
perceiving him, at the same time, destitute of suffi¬ 
cient courage to destroy himself, plunged a dagger 
into her own bosom in the presence of her husband, 
and then drawing it forth, handed the weapon to him, 
calmly remarking at the time, “ it does not pain." 
Martial has made this the subject of an epigram (1, 
14). 

Arrianus, I. a Greek historian, a native of Nico- 
media, who flourished in the second century under 
Hadrian and the Antonines. In his own country he 
was a priest of Ceres and Proserpina ; but, taking up 
his residence at Rome, he became a disciple of Epic¬ 
tetus. He was honoured with the citizenship of 
Rome, and appointed prefect of Cappadocia by the 
Emperor Hadrian, who patronised him on account of 
his learning and talents. In this capacity he distin¬ 
guished himself by his prudence and valour in the 
war against the Massagetae, and was afterward ad¬ 
vanced to the senatorial and even consular dignities. 
Like Xenophon, he united the literary with the mili¬ 
tary character, was conversant with philosophy and 
learning, and intimate with those who cultivated them. 
No less than seven of the epistles of Pliny the young¬ 
er are addressed to Arrian. His historical writings 
were numerous ; but of these, with the exception of 
some fragments in Photius, only two remain. The 
first is composed of seven books on the expedition of 
Alexander, which, being principally compiled from the 
memoirs of Ptolemy Lagus and Aristobulus, who both 
served under that king, are deemed proportionably val¬ 
uable. Arrian, himself a soldier and a politician, pos¬ 
sessed a sounder judgment than Quintus Curtius, and 
indulged less in the marvellous. To this work is add¬ 
ed a book on the affairs of India, which pursues the 
history of Alexander, but is not deemed of equal au¬ 
thority with the former. An epistle from Arrian to 

205 



ARS 


ARS 


Hadrian is also extant, entitled, “ A Periplus of the 
Euxine,” probably written while he was prefect of 
Cappadocia. There are, besides, under the name of 
Arrian, “a treafise on Tactics;” “a Periplus of the 
Erythrean Sea,” of which the authority is doubtful; 
“ a treatise on Hounds and Hunting;” an “ Enchirid¬ 
ion,” or Manual, exhibiting an abstract of the doc¬ 
trines of Epictetus ; and the “ Discourses,” or Dis¬ 
sertations of that philosopher, compiled from notes 
taken during his lectures. The best editions of Ar¬ 
rian’s Expedition of Alexander are, that of Gronovius 
( Lugd. Bat., 1704, fob), and that of Schmieder (Lips., 

1798, 8vo). The edition of Raphelius ( Amst., 1757, 
8vo) is, with the exception of the Greek index, al¬ 
most wholly derived from that of Gronovius. Of the 
Indian history, the best edition is that of Schmieder 
(Halce, 1798, 8vo). Of his Enchiridion, that of Upton 
(Lond ., 1739, 4to), and that of Schweighaeuser (Lips., 

1799, 8vo), forming part of the edition of the Dis¬ 
courses, by the same, which last-mentioned work is in 
5 vols. 8vo, Lips., 1799-1801. Of the rest of his 
works, the best edition is that of Blanchard, Amst., 
1683, 8vo. The edition of his geographical writings, 
by Stuckius, Gcnev., 1577, fob, is also valuable.—II. 
A Roman lawyer, whose era is unknown. A work of 
his, “ De Interdictis,” is mentioned in hb. 2, D V., 3, 
de hcered. petit. —III. A poet who wrote an epic poem 
in 24 books on Alexander; also another poem on At- 
talus, king of Pergamus. He likewise translated Vir¬ 
gil’s Georgies into Greek verse. (Suidas, s. v.) 

Arrius, a noted gourmand, mentioned by Horace. 
The poet alludes to an entertainment such as he 
should direct, which would, of course, be no unexpen- 
sive one. (Serm., 2, 3, 86.) 

Arsaces, I. a man of obscure origin, who incited 
the Parthians to revolt from the power of the Seleu- 
cidse, and was elevated to the throne on account of 
his success. Justin (41, 4) makes this revolt to have 
taken place during the reign of Seleucus Callinicus, 
son of Antiochus Theos, but his account is inconsist¬ 
ent with his date. Arrian (ap. Phot., Cod., 58) seems 
to fix the revolt in the reign of Antiochus ; while Ap- 
pian (Bell. Syr., 65) places it at the death of this 
monarch. Possibly, the establishment of the Parthian 
power was gradual, and was not completed till the 
reign of Seleucus. (Clinton, Fast. Hell., vol. 2, p. 18.) 
Arsaces defeated Seleucus in battle, and when this 
monarch made a second expedition into Parthia, he took 
him prisoner, and kept him long in captivity. (Posi- 
don. ap. Athen., 4, p. 153, a.) Arsaces then laid the 
foundation of the Parthian empire, and his successors 
took from him the name of Arsacidse. According to 
Justin (l. c .), who seems confirmed by Strabo (515), 
he reigned long and died in old age : according to 
Syncellus (p. 284, c .), who quotes from Arrian, he 
reigned only two years. (Clinton, l. c.) — II. The 
second of the name, son of the preceding, succeeded 
his father on the Parthian throne, and was, like him, 
a warlike prince. While Antiochus the Great was en¬ 
gaged in a war with Ptolemy Philopator, of Egypt, 
Arsaces made himself master of Media. Antiochus, 
when the war with Ptolemy was ended, marched 
against the Parthian king, drove him not only from 
Media, but from his own kingdom, and compelled him 
to take refuge in Hyrcania. Having subsequently, 
however, collected a numerous army, Arsaces appeared 
to Antiochus so formidable an antagonist, that the lat¬ 
ter was glad to confirm to him the possession of Hyr¬ 
cania as well as Parthia, on the sole condition of his 
concluding an alliance with him. Arsaces left his 
throne to his son Arsaces Priapatius or Phriapatus. 
(Polyb., 10, 27. — Justin, 41, 5. — Clinton, Fast. 
Hell., vol. 2, p. 315.) — III. The third of the name, 
son of the preceding, surnamed Priapatius or Phria¬ 
patus He reigned 15 years, and left the kingdom to 
his son Phraates. (Justin, 41, 5.) — IV. A king of 


Armenia, who was on the throne when Julian march¬ 
ed against Sapor, and was ordered to furnish auxilia¬ 
ries for the Roman army. When Jovian, after the 
death of Julian, was compelled to sign an ignominious 
treaty of peace, Arsaces, by the very terms of it, was 
left to the mercy of the Persians, and was soon after 
entrapped and slain. (Amm. Marcell., 23, 2, seq .— 
Id., 25, 7, et 12.) 

ARSACiDiE, a name given to some of the monarche 
of Parthia, in descent from Arsaces, the founder of the 
empire. Their power subsisted till the 226th year of 
the Christian era, when the dynasty of the Sassanides 
was founded by Artaxerxes. (Vid. Arsaces I. and 
Artabanus V.) 

Arsamosata, a city of Armenia Major, in the south¬ 
western angle of the district of Sophene, and 70 miles 
from the Euphrates. It is now Sirmat. Another 
form of the ancient name is Armosata. ( Plin., 6, 9. 
— Polyb., Exc. vii., lib. 8, 25, 1.— Tacit., 15, 10.) 

Arsanias, I. a river of Armenia Major, which 
D’Anville and Mannert, but especially the latter, con¬ 
sider as another name for the southern arm of the Eu¬ 
phrates. (Vid. Euphrates.)—II. There was another 
river of the same name lower down, which flowed 
from the northwest through Sophene, and entered the 
Euphrates below Melitene, on which Arsamosata was 
situate. This is now the Arsen. (Pliny, 5, 24. — 
Tacit., 15, 15.) 

Arses, the youngest son of Ochus, whom the eu¬ 
nuch Bagoas raised to the throne of Persia, and de¬ 
stroyed with his children after a reign of three years. 
(Vid. Bagoas.) 

Arsia, a small river between Illyricum and Histria, 
and forming the limit of Italy in that quarter, after 
Histria was added to Italy by Augustus. (Pirn., 3, 
19.— Flor., 2, 5.) 

Arsinoe, I. daughter of Meleager, and mother of 
Ptolemy I., of Egypt, by Philip, father of Alexander. 
During her pregnancy she was married to Lagus.—II. 
Daughter of Ptolemy I., of Egypt, and Berenice. She 
married Lysimachus, king of Thrace, who was already 
advanced in years, by whom she had several children. 
Lysimachus, setting out for Asia, left her in Macedo¬ 
nia, with two sons, Lysimachfls and Philip, a part of the 
fruits of their union. This monarch having been slain 
in an expedition, Ptolemy Ceraunus seized on Macedo¬ 
nia, but could not take the city of Cassandria, where 
Arsinoe had taken refuge with her children. He there¬ 
fore offered her his hand in marriage, and with much 
difficulty obtained her consent. But no sooner had he 
been admitted into the city for the purpose of celebra¬ 
ting the nuptials, than he caused her two sons to be 
slain, and exiled Arsinoe herself to Samothrace. From 
this island she soon took her departure to wed Ptole¬ 
my Philadelphus, her own brother, the first instance 
of this kind of union, and which became afterw ard so 
common in the time of the Ptolemies. Although many 
years older than Ptolemy, she nevertheless inspired him 
with such a passion, that, after her death, he gave her 
name to one of the nomes of Egypt (Arsinoitis), and to 
several cities both in that country and elsewhere. He 
even gave orders to have a temple erected to her, but 
his own death and that of the architect prevented the 
fulfilment of his wishes. It was intended to have had 
the ceiling of loadstone, and the statue of iron, in order 
that the latter might appear to be suspended in the air. 
(Plin., 34, 14.)—III. Daughter of Lysimachus, king of 
Ihrace, and the earlier wife of Ptolemy Philadelphus. 
She became by him the mother of Ptolemy III. (Euer- 
getes), Lysimachus, and Berenice. After Ptolemy’s 
union with Arsinoe, his own sister, she was banished 
to Coptos. The charge brought against her was a 
design to overthrow her rival.—IV. Daughter of Ptol¬ 
emy III., and Berenice, married Ptolemy Philopator, 
her brother. Her husband subsequently having be¬ 
come enamoured of Agathoclea, and being completely 



ART 


ARTABANUS. 


ruled by this female and her brothers, was induced, at 
their instigation, to order Arsinoe to be put to death.— 
V. A daughter of Ptolemy Auletes, proclaimed queen 
by Ganymedes, when Cassar attacked Alexandrea. 
She was conquered, and brought in triumph to Rome ; 
but, as this proved unpleasing to the people, she was 
set at liberty. Subsequently, at the instigation of her 
younger sister Cleopatra, she was put to death by the 
orders of Antony, in the temple of Diana at Miletus. 
(Hirt., Bell. Alex., 4.— Appian, Bell. Civ., 5, 9.)—VI. 
A city of Egypt, the capital of the Arsinoitic nome, 
lying to the west of the Nile, and between Heracleo- 
polis Magna and Lake Moeris. It derived its name 
from Arsinoe, the sister and queen of Ptolemy Phila- 
delphus. The earlier appellation was the “ City of 
Crocodiles,” as the Greeks translated it (Crocodilo- 
polis, K ponodeiXuv noTug, Herod., 2, 148). This last- 
mentioned name arose from the circumstance of the 
crocodile’s being worshipped here ; and a tamed rep¬ 
resentative of this fearful class of creatures was care¬ 
fully nurtured and attended to in an adjacent pond or 
tank. Strabo gives an account, as an eyewitness, of 
this curious custom. The bodies of the sacred croco¬ 
diles were deposited after death in the cells of the 
Labyrinth, which stood near the city. The Egyptians 
honoured the crocodile here, because it was conse¬ 
crated to Typhon, their evil genius, whom they dread¬ 
ed, and sought to appease by worshipping an animal 
which was his symbolical image. The city of Arsinoe 
is now a pile of ruins, which lie not far to the north of 
the modern Medinet el Faioum. Jomard gives an ac¬ 
curate description of them. ( Descript. de VEgypte, 
vol. 4, p. 446.)—VII. A city of Egypt, at the head of 
the Sinus Arabicus, and not far from the spot where 
stands the modern Suez. Philadelphus constructed 
the harbour, and called the place after his sister and 
queen Arsinoe. In its immediate vicinity lay the city 
of Cleopatris, of later erection, and, in consequence of 
their proximity, both places were often called by the 
common name of Cleopatris, though actually distinct 
spots. ( Strab., 805.) Arsinoe was connected with 
the Nile by means of the canal of Ptolemy, and for a 
long period was the very life of the navigation on the 
Sinus Arabicus, forming the connecting link between 
the traffic of Egypt and that of the East. In process 
of time, however, the dangerous navigation of the upper 
part of the gulf induced the Ptolemies to construct 
harbours lower down, and Arsinoe from this time sank 
in importance, and finally disappeared from notice. 
The Peutinger table, in the third century, makes men¬ 
tion of the place, but the Itinerary of Antonine passes 
it over in silence. ( Mannert, vol. 10, pt. 1, p. 517.) 
—VIII. A city of Cilicia Trachea, on the coast, be¬ 
tween Celenderis and the mouth of the Arymagdus. 
{Pliny, 5, 27.) — IX. Another name for Patara, in 
Lycia. ( Vid. Patara.)—X. A town of Cyprus, near 
the promontory of Ammochostus. (Strab., 682.)—XI. 
A harbour of Egypt, on the Sinus Arabicus, below Phi- 
ioterse Portus. ( Plin., 6, 29.)—XII. Another harbour, 
in the regio Troglodytica, in the vicinity of Dirae. 
(Mela, 3, 8.— Artemid. ap. Strab.) 

Arsissa palus, a great lake in the southern part of 
Armenia Major, now the Lake of Van. It was on its 
northern side embellished with cities, which were 
better known to the Byzantine writers than they had 
been before, viz., Chaliat or Athlat, Arzes or Argish, 
and Perkri. This sheet of water is also sometimes 
called, in Armenian geography, the Lake of Besnouikh, 
from the district of that name in which it is situate. 
The name Besnouikh is deduced from that of Basus, 
a grandson of Haig, the first ruler of Armenia. ( Wahl, 
Vorder und Mittel Asien, p. 508.) 

Artabanus, I. son of Hystaspes, was brother to 
Darius the First. He endeavoured to dissuade his 
nephew Xerxes from making war upon the Greeks, but 
to no effect; and, after accompanying the monarch to 


the Asiatic shore of the Hellespont, was sent back by 
him to Susa, to act as viceroy or regent in his absence. 
(Herod., 7, 10, seqq. — Id., 7, 17.— Id., 7, 52.) If the 
story related by Plutarch be true, Artabanus must 
always have possessed great influence with Xerxes, 
since, according to the Greek writer, the monarch 
owed his crown to his uncle, who was appointed by 
the Persians to decide between Xerxes and his elder 
brother Ariamenes. Artabanus adjudged the kingdom 
to the former, as having been born after his father came 
to the throne, and as being the son of Atossa the 
daughter of Cyrus. (Plut.,de frat. am., p. 488, /., p. 
988, Wyttenb. —Compare the account given by He¬ 
rodotus, 7, 1 , seqq.) We have nothing farther of 
Artabanus in history. He is by no means to be con¬ 
founded with the individual of the same name (Arta¬ 
banus II.) who slew Xerxes. (Bdhr, ad Ctes., c. 20, 
p. 151.— Larcher, ad Ctes., vol. 6, p. 287.)—II. An 
Hyrcanian, captain of the guards of Xerxes, and for a 
long time one of his greatest favourites. When the 
monarch, after his return from Greece, gave himself 
up to a life of dissolute pleasure, Artabanus conceived 
this to be a favourable opportunity for seizing on the 
throne, and, having conspired withMithradates, one of 
the eunuchs of the palace, and chamberlain to the king, 
he introduced himself by night into the royal apart¬ 
ment, and slew Xerxes, B.C. 464. After perpetrating 
the deed, he ran to Artaxerxes,the son of the monarch, 
and told him that Darius, his elder brother, had just 
murdered his father. Artaxerxes believed the story, 
and his brother was immediately arrested and put to 
death. After the new monarch had ascended the 
throne, Artabanus conspired against his life, but was 
betrayed by Megabyzus, an accomplice of his, and put 
to death. Such is the account of Ctesias (c. 30), 
which Larcher very justly prefers to the statements of 
Justin (3, 1) and Diodorus Siculus (10, 19), both of 
which appear tinged with absurdity.—III. A monarch 
of Parthia, known as Artabanus II., or Arsaces VIII. 
He succeeded his nephew Phraates II. (Arsaces 
VII.), and was killed in a war with the Thogarii, a 
Scythian nation. (Justin, 42, 2.)—IV. A monarch of 
Parthia, known as Artabanus III., or Arsaces XIX. 
He succeeded Vonones I., whom he drove from the 
throne, having himself previously reigned in Media. 
Faithful to the Romans, his protectors, as long as Ger- 
manicus inspired him with fear, he became, after the 
death of this commander, cruel and oppressive to his 
subjects, and arrogant towards Rome. His people 
complained of him to Tiberius, who named for them 
Phraates as king. This individual, however, dying 
on the route, the emperor nominated Tiridates. Arta¬ 
banus fled into Scythia, but, being encouraged by the 
effeminacy of Tiridates, he took up arms again, and re¬ 
covered his kingdom. The death of Tiberius saved him 
from punishment, and he made his peace with Caligula 
by dint of flatteries. Still, however, he was once more 
driven out by his subjects, and only returned eventu ally 
to die in his kingdom, about 44 A.D. (Tacit., Ann., 
2, 58.— Id. ib., 6, 31.— Id. ib., 6, 43, &c.)—V. A king 
of the Parthians, son of Vologeses IV., ascended the 
throne A.D. 216. His historical name is Artabanus 
IV., or Arsaces XXXI. He had hardly commenced 
his reign when he was menaced by Caracalla. The 
emperor demanded his daughter in marriage, in order 
to have a pretext for war in case he refused. The 
Parthian king, however, assented, and the Roman army 
was allowed to approach the Parthian capital, where 
Artabanus met it with a brilliant cortege. But on a 
given signal, the Roman troops fell upon the followers 
of the monarch, and an indiscriminate massacre ensued, 
from which Artabanus himself with difficulty escaped. 
Caraca llathereupon pillaged the surrounding country, 
and then returned to Mesopotamia. Artabanus, burn¬ 
ing for revenge, assembled the largest army which the 
Parthians had ever as yet raised, crossed the Euphrates, 

207 



ART 


ARTAXERXES. 


laid waste everything with fire and sword, and en¬ 
countered the Roman forces in Syria. Macrinus had 
succeeded Caracalla. A bloody battle ensued, which 
lasted for two days. On the third day, a herald from 
the Romans announced the fact of Caracalla’s being 
dead, and that Macrinus was his successor, and also 
proposed a treaty of peace between the two empires. 
The Romans accordingly restored the prisoners they 
had taken, paid the expenses of the war, and Arta- 
banus returned to his capital. His prosperity, however, 
was of short duration. Ardshir Babegan, or Arta- 
xerxes, excited the Persians to revolt, and Artabanus 
was defeated, taken prisoner, and put to death. With 
him ended the Parthian dynasty of the Arsacidse. The 
family itself, however, was not extinct in the person 
of Artabanus, but continued to reign in Armenia, as 
tributary to the new Persian dynasty, until the time of 
Justinian. ( Biogr. Univ., vol. 2, p. 540.) 

Artabazus, I. son of Pharnaces, commander of the 
Parthians and Chorasmians in the army of Xerxes. 
He escorted this monarch through Europe to Asia, 
after the battle of Salamis, at the head of sixty thousand • 
men, and rejoined Mardonius before the battle of Pla- 
tsea. He endeavoured to dissuade him from engaging in 
this conflict, but to no purpose; and, after the death of 
Mardonius, succeeded in retreating to Asia with the 
residue of his own forces, having obtained a safe pas¬ 
sage through Thessaly by assuring the inhabitants that 
Mardonius had defeated the Greeks. (Herod., 7, 66. 
— Id., 8, 126.— Id., 9, 41.— Id., 9, 89.)—II. A general 
of Artaxerxes Longimanus. He remained faithful to 
this prince as long as he reigned, and did everything 
in his power to conquer Datames, who had revolted 
against the king. He himself subsequently revolted 
against Ochus, but, after fleeing into Macedonia, was 
pardoned by that prince. He fought in the battle of 
Arbela, on the side of Darius, and after the death of 
that prince surrendered himself to Alexander, who 
made him satrap of Bactriana. Pie had a large num¬ 
ber of sons, to whom Alexander assigned governments. 
Plis daughters were married, one to Ptolemy, son of 
Lagus ; another to Eumenes, of Cardia; and a third 
to Seleucus. (Biogr. Univ., vol. 2, p. 542.) 

Artabrum Promontorium, a promontory on the 
northwestern coast of Spain, now Cape Finisterre, in 
Galhcia. It was sometimes called Celticum Promon¬ 
torium (Plin., 4, 22), and also Nenum. (Strab., 106.) 

Artacoana, the capital of Aria, now Herat, situate 
on the river Arius, now the Heri. (Arrian, 3, 25.— 
Strab., 350.) 

Artageras or Artagicerta, a town of Armenia 
Major, northeast of Amida, where Caius Caesar, a 
nephew of Augustus, was dangerously wounded by 
one Addruus. It is now probably Ardis. (Veil. 
Paterc., 2, 103.) 

Artaphernes, I. a brother of Darius, and son of 
Hystaspes, governor of Sardis. (Herodot., 5, 25.)— 
II. A son of the preceding, whom Darius sent into 
Greece with Datis. He was conquered at the battle 
of Marathon by Miltiades. (Vid. Datis.— Herod., 4, 
153.— Id., 5, 55.) 

Artavasdes or Artabazus, king of Armenia, the 
son and successor of Tigranes, began to reign about 
70 B.C. It was principally through his treacherous 
advice, as to the mode of entering Parthia, that Crassus 
failed in his expedition against that coufiTfy. He was 
subsequently taken by Antony, to whom he had also 
acted a treacherous part in his Parthian expedition, 
who led him in triumph at Alexandrea. He was put 
to death, after the battle of Actium, by Cleopatra, who 
wished to obtain succours from the King of Media, and 
therefore sent him the head of Artavasdes, his ene¬ 
my. The prince appears to have been a very well ed¬ 
ucated man. He wrote in Greek two historical works, 
some tragedies, discourses, &c. (Pint., Vit. Anton., 
C. 50, seqq.) 

208 


Artaxata, a strongly fortified town of Upper Ar¬ 
menia, the capital of the empire, built upon a plain 
which Hannibal recommended as a proper site for the 
capital to King Artaxias. Near it ran the Araxes. It 
was burned by Corbulo, and rebuilt by Tiridates, who 
called it Ncronea, in honour of Nero. It is now Ar- 
desh. (Plin., 6, 9.— Flor., 3, 5.— Tacit., Ann., 13, 
39, et 41.— Id. ib., 14, 23.— Id. ib., 15, 15.— Strab., 
363.) 

Artaxerxes, I. a name common to some of the 
kings of Persia, and the meaning of which will be con¬ 
sidered at the close of this article. The first of the 
name succeeded his father Xerxes, who had been as¬ 
sassinated by Artabanus, captain of the royal guards. 
After discovering and punishing the murderer of his 
father, and bringing to a close a war in Bactria, oc¬ 
casioned by the revolt of a satrap, he reduced to obedi¬ 
ence the Egyptians, who had revolted under Inarus, 
and who had been aided by the Athenians. Though 
severe in’the earlier part of his reign, he became con¬ 
spicuous afterward for mildness and moderation. This 
Artaxerxes was called M anpoxcip (Longimanus ), from 
the extraordinary length of his arms, according to 
Strabo, which, on his standing straight, could reach his 
knees ; but, according to Plutarch, because his right 
hand was longer than his left. He reigned thirty years, 
and died B.C. 425. (Ctes., Pers., c. 30, seqq., p. 71, 
seqq., ed. Bohr. — Plut., Vit. Artax., init.) —II. The 
second of the name, was surnamed Mvrifuov (Mnemon ), 
on account of his extraordinary memory. He w as son 
of Darius the Second, by Parysatis, the daughter of 
Artaxerxes Longimanus, and had three brothers, Cyrus, 
Ostanes, and Oxathres. His name was Arsaces, which 
he changed into Artaxerxes when he ascended the 
throne. His brother Cyrus w r as of an ambitious dis¬ 
position, and he resolved to make himself king in op¬ 
position to Artaxerxes. Parysatis alw r ays favoured 
Cyrus ; and when he was accused by Tissaphernes of 
plotting against his brother, she obtained his pardon by 
her influence and entreaties. According to Xenophon 
(Anab., 1, 1), it was irritation against his brother for 
listening to this charge that induced Cyrus to revolt 
and aspire to the throne. Another reason, however, 
still more powerful in the eyes of an ambitious prince, 
would likewise appear to have urged him on to the 
step. Artaxerxes had been born before his father’s 
accession to the empire, whereas Cyrus w r as born the 
son of a king, a distinction somewhat similar to that 
which had given Xerxes the throne. (Vid. Artabanus 
I.) Cyrus had been appointed by his brother satrap 
of Lydia, and had also the command assigned him of 
whatever forces the Dorian cities along the coast of 
Asia Minor might.be required to send as auxiliaries to 
the Persian armies. (Consult Schneider, ad Xen., 
Anab., 1,1.) Taking advantage of this, he assembled 
under various pretexts a numerous army, and at length 
marched against his brother at the head of one hundred 
thousand barbarians, and nearly thirteen thousand 
Greeks. Artaxerxes met him at Cunaxa with an army 
of nine hundred thousand barbarians, and a brief con¬ 
flict ensued, in which Cyrus was killed. He was slain 
in the very moment of victory ; for he had routed with 
his body-guard the guards of the king, while the 
Greeks were in full pursuit of that part of the king’s 
army which had been opposed to them. The loss of 
the battle was owing partly to the rash impetuosity of 
Cyrus in charging the royal guards, and partly to the 
circumstance of the Greeks having pursued too far the 
barbarians opposed to them. Artaxerxes'was wounded 
in the action by Cyrus’s own hand, while Cyrus, on the 
other hand, was slain by Mithradates, a young Persian 
noble, and by a Carian soldier, having been wounded 
in succession by each. So anxious, however, was 
Artaxerxes to have it believed that he himself had slain 
the young prince, that both Mithradates and the Carian 
eventually lost their lives for boasting of the deed. 









ARTAXERXES. 


ART 


After the battle of Cunaxa, the Greeks began their 
celebrated retreat, so graphic an account of which has 
been preserved for us in the pages of Xenophon. ( Vid. 
Xenophon.) Artaxerxes was now peaceable possessor 
of the throne. Being irritated at the Lacedaemonians, 
who had embraced his brother’s cause, he lent aid to 
Conon the Athenian admiral, and succeeded by his 
means in wresting from Sparta the dominion of the 
sea. He then furnished the necessary means for re¬ 
building the walls of Athens, and finally, by employing 
his gold in sowing dissensions among the Grecian 
states, he forced Agesilaus to abandon the extensive 
conquests he had already made in the Persian domin¬ 
ions. The war at length was brought to a close by a 
memorable treaty, by which the Greek cities of Asia 
were abandoned to his sway. Artaxerxes was not 
successful in checking a revolt on the part of the Egyp¬ 
tians, nor was his march in person against the Cadusii, 
in Upper Asia, crowned with any happier result. He 
was governed entirely by his mother Parysatis, who, by 
studying his inclinations, had gained a complete as¬ 
cendency over him. After having put to death Darius, 
his eldest son, for conspiring against him, he died at 
the advanced age of ninety-four years, bowed down by 
sorrow at the loss of two other sons whom Ochus, who 
reigned after him, had managed to cut off. According 
to Diodorus, he was on the throne forty-three years ; 
but according to Eusebius and the Alexandrine Chron¬ 
icle, forty years. Plutarch makes his reign sixty-tw T o 
years, but this is an error of a transcriber. ( Diod . 
Sic., 13, 104. — Clinton's Fast. Hell., vol. 1, p. 316, 
323.) — III. The third of the name, called previously 
Ochus, and known in history as Artaxerxes Ochus, or 
simply Ochus, succeeded his father Mnemon. He 
commenced his reign with the massacre of his brothers, 
and of all who belonged to the royal family. Egypt 
was at this time in full revolt, Artaxerxes Mnemon 
having in vain attempted to reduce it, and Ochus con¬ 
tinued the war by means of his generals. Learning, 
however, that the Egyptians indulged in railleries 
against his person, and, moreover, that Phoenicia and 
Cyprus had also rebelled, he put himself at the head of 
his armies, took Sidon through the treachery of Mentor, 
commander of the Greek mercenaries, and made an 
indiscriminate slaughter of the inhabitants. He then 
marched against Egypt, and reconquered it through 
the military talents of Bagoas. Once master of the 
country, he gave himself up to all manner of cruelty, 
destroyed the temples, insulted the Egyptian deities, 
and, to crown all, caused the sacred Apis to be killed, 
and his flesh served up for a repast. This conduct 
excited the indignation of Bagoas, who, being an Egyp¬ 
tian by birth, was, of course, strongly attached to the 
religion of his country. He concealed his angry feel¬ 
ings, however, until Ochus had returned to Persia, and 
resumed his indolent mode of life, giving up the reins 
of government entirely to Bagoas. The latter there¬ 
upon caused him to be poisoned, gave his body to be 
devoured by cats, and, to indicate his cruelty of dis¬ 
position, had sabre handles made of his bones. Bagoas 
placed on the vacant throne Arses, the youngest son 
of Ochus, and put to death all the rest. Ochus reigned 
eleven years, not eighteen, as Manetho gives it. {IEli- 
an, V. H., 6, 8. — Justin, 10, 3.) — IV. A soldier of 
fortune, founder of the dynasty of the Sassanidse, and 
called by the Greek historians Artaxerxes. His true 
name was Ardechir Babegan, and he was the son or 
grandson of an individual named Sassan, who, though 
in very reduced circumstances, claimed descent from 
Artaxerxes Longimanus. He succeeded in dethroning 
Artabanus, the last of the Arsacidae, and thus laid the 
foundation of the second or later Persian empire. Al¬ 
though a usurper, Artaxerxes appears to have had a 
peaceable reign, as far as the internal affairs of his 
kingdom were concerned. In his external relations he , 
came in contact with the Emperor Severus, who de- 
Dn 


feated him on his invading the Roman territory, and 
forced him to retreat. Artaxerxes w 7 as about to renew 
the war with fresh forces, when he died. To rare 
prudence and heroic courage he united a love of letters, 
and is said to have composed several works. He 
reigned fourteen or fifteen years, and left the throne 
to Sapor I. —V. A brother and successor of Sapor II. 
He died after a reign of four years, A.D. 384.—As 
regards the form Artoxerxes {’Apro^ep^yg), which some¬ 
times occurs in editions, in place of the more common 
Artaxerxes, consult the remarks of Bahr ( ad Ctes., p. 
186, seqq.). The name Artaxerxes is supposed to have 
been Artachshast or Artachshasta in Persian, and to 
have been compounded of the Persian Art or Ard, 
“ strong,” and the Zendic Khshctro,Khshcred, or Khshe- 
trce , “ a warrior.” Hence the appellation Artaxerxes 
will signify “ a strong or mighty warrior.” (Compare 
Herodotus, 6, 98, ’A pra^ep^yg, jueyag upyiog.) Others 
write the Persian name thus, Artahschetz, and make 
it equivalent to “ a great king.” (Consult Bahr, ad 
Ctes., p. 187. — Rosenmuller, Handbuch, &c., vol. 1, 
p. 373, n. 40.— He Sacy, Memoires sur diverse anti- 
quites de la Perse, p. 100.) 

Artaxias, the name of three kings of Armenia.— 
I. The first reigned in the Upper or Greater Armenia, 
with the consent of Antiochus the Great. He gave an 
asylum to Hannibal at one time, and was also taken 
prisoner by Antiochus Epiphanes, but afterward regain¬ 
ed his liberty.—II. The son of Artavasdes. He was 
killed by his own subjects, A.D. 20, and Tigranes 
chosen as his successor. {Tacit., Ann., 2.)—III. Sur- 
named Zeno, son of Polemon. He was proclaimed 
king of Armenia by Germanicus, in the place of Ve- 
nones, who was expelled the throne. He died A.D. 
35. {Tacit., Ann., 6, 31.) 

Artemidorus, I. A philosopher of Cnidus, who, hav¬ 
ing been intrusted by his friend Brutus with the secret of 
the conspiracy set on foot against Caesar, presented to 
the latter a memorial containing an account of the whole 
affair. Caesar received it as he was going to the senate- 
house, and put it with other papers which he held in his 
hand, thinking it to be of no material consequence. Had 
it been read by him, the whole plot would have been 
crushed. {Plut., Vit. Cces .)—II. A geographer of 
Ephesus, who flourished about 104 B.C. After hav¬ 
ing visited the coasts of the greater part of the Medi¬ 
terranean, and having seen Grades and portions of the 
Atlantic shores, as also the Sinus Arabicus or Red 
Sea, he published a geographical work in eleven books, 
entitled Teoypatyovyeva. More than five centuries 
after this, Marcianus of Heraclea made an abridgment 
of it, a part of which is preserved. We have also re¬ 
maining some other fragments of Artemidorus. Athe- 
nseus likewise cites his Ionic Memoirs, ’I uvind, vtto- 
pvypara. He is often referred to by Strabo, Pliny, 
and Stephanus of Byzantium. The remains of Ar¬ 
temidorus are given in the Minor Greek geographers 
by Hoeschel and Hudson, with the exception of one 
fragment, giving a description of the Nile, which was 
published for the first time by Berger in Aretin’s Bey- 
trage zur Gesch. und Lit., vol. 2, 1804 {May), p. 50. 
—III. A native of Ephesus, who lived in the time of 
the Antonines, and who was surnamed, for distinction 
from others, Daldianus, because his mother had been 
born in Daldis, a city of Lydia. He published, under 
the title of ’O veipoKpiTind, a work On the Interpreta¬ 
tion of Dreams, in five books. It contains all that 
the author had been able to collect during his travels 
in Greece, Italy, and Asia, from those persons who, 
in that superstitious age, had turned their attention to 
so futile and illusory a subject. The work, apart 
from its main topic, contains some very interesting 
information respecting ancient customs, and serves 
also to explain many symbols and allegorical objects 
connected with the sculpture of former times. It fur¬ 
nishes, moreover, some important aid in elucidating 

209 




ART 


ARV 


points of mythology. The style is marked by a cer¬ 
tain degree of neatness, if not elegance. The best 
edition is that of ReifF, Leips., 1805, 2 vols. 8vo.— 
IY. A physician in the age of Hadrian. He is charged 
with having mutilated the works of Hippocrates. Not 
content with removing expressions that had fallen into 
disuse, and substituting others that were more intelli¬ 
gible in his own day, he is said also to have interpo¬ 
lated the text, and to have struck out, at the same 
time, whatever appeared to clash with the new matter 
thus brought in by him. ( Vid. Hippocrates.— Galen, 
comm, in lib. de nat. hum., p. 4. — Sprengel, Hist. 
Med., vol. 1, p. 294.)—Y. A painter, whose country 
is uncertain. He flourished towards the end ol the 
first century of our era, and is referred to by Martial 
( Ep., 5, 40), who censures him, because, in painting 
Venus, he did not give that soft gracefulness to her 
person which other artists had done, but rather a de¬ 
gree of the austere dignity of Minerva. ( Sillig, Diet. 
Art., s. v.) 

Artemis ('A prepug), the Greek name of Diana. 
From a curious passage in Clemens Alexandrinus 
(Strom., 1, p. 384, Pott), it would appear, that the 
goddess was called Artemis because of Phrygian origin 
($pvy'tav re ovaav, ueuXycrdat, 'ApreyLv). Hence Ja- 
blonski concludes, that the name itself is a Phrygian 
one, and he compares it with the royal appellation Ar- 
temas, as given in Xenophon to a king of Phrygia. 
(Cyrop., 2, 1, 5.) It is very probable, that the primi¬ 
tive root of the term Artemis is to be traced to the 
Persian tongue (Arta, Arte, Art, Ar, all signifying 
“ great,” or “ excellent”), and thus Artemis or Diana 
becomes identical with the “ great” mother of Nature, 
even as she was worshipped at Ephesus. As a col¬ 
lateral confirmation of this etymology, we may state, 
that the Persians, according to Herodotus (7, 61), ori¬ 
ginally called themselves Artcei (’ Apraloi ), which Hel- 
lanicus makes equivalent to the Greek ypueg, “ heroes,'" 
i. e., great, strong, powerful. ( Hellan ., Fragm., p. 97, 
Sturz. — Id., ap. Steph. Byz., s. v. ’Apraia.) Other 
derivations of the name Artemis are not so satisfactOr 
ry. Sickler, for example, deduces it from the Semitic 
Ar, “ a foe,” and tama, “ impurity,” as indicating the 
foe of what is unchaste, gloomy, or obscure. ( Cadmus, 
p. xc.) Welcker, on the other hand, regards it as an 
epithet of the same nature with Opis and Nemesis, 
and says that it is dpL-Qe/aig. (Schwenck, Etymol. My- 
thol. Andeut., p. 263.) Plato, in his Cratylus, derives 
'Apre/utg from dpreprjg, “ whole,” “ uninjured,” and, 
therefore, “sound” and “pure,” as referring to the 
virgin purity of the goddess. This is about as correct 
as the rest of Plato’s attempts at etymology. ( Cratyl., 
p. 50.— Op., ed. Bekk., vol. 4, p. 248.—Consult Creu- 
zer, Symbohk, vol. 2, p. 190.) 

Artemisia, I. daughter ofLygdamis of Halicarnas¬ 
sus, reigned over Halicarnassus, and also over Cos 
and other adjacent islands. She joined the fleet of 
Xerxes, when he invaded Greece, with five vessels, 
the best equipped of the whole fleet after those of the 
Sidonians ; and she displayed so much valour and skill 
at the battle of Salamis, as to elicit from Xerxes the 
well-known remark, that the men had acted like wom¬ 
en in the fight, and the women like men. The Athe¬ 
nians, indignant that a female should appear in arms 
against them, offered a reward of 10,000 drachmae to 
any one who should take her prisoner. She, however, 
escaped after the action. (Herod., 7, 99.— Id., 8, 88. 
— Id., 8, 93.) If we are to believe Ptolemy Hephaes- 
tion, a writer who mixed up many fables with some 
truth, Artemisia subsequently conceived an attachment 
for a youth of Abydos, named Dardanus ; but, not 
meeting with a return for her passion, she put out his 
eyes while he slept, and then threw herself down from 
the lover’s leap at the Promontory of Leucate. (Ptol. 
Hephcest. ap. Phot., Cod., 190, p. 153, Bekker.) — II. 
Another queen of Caria, not to be confounded with the 
210 


preceding. She was the daughter of Hecatommis, 
king of Caria, and married her brother Mausolus, a 
species of union sanctioned by the customs of the 
country. She lost her husband, who was remarkable 
for personal beauty, B.C. 365, and she became, in con¬ 
sequence, a prey to the deepest affliction. A splendid 
tomb was erected to his memory, called Mausoleum 
(Mavcuhelov, soil, pviyxclov, i. e., “ tomb of Mauso¬ 
lus”), and the most noted writers of the day were in¬ 
vited to attend a literary contest, in which ample re¬ 
wards were to be bestowed on those who should celebrate 
with most ability the praises of the deceased. Among 
the individuals who came together on that occasion 
were, according to Aulus Gellius (10, 18), Theopom- 
pus, Theodectes, Naucrites, and even Isocrates. The 
prize was won by Theopompus. (Aul. Gell., l. c .) 
Valerius Maximus and Aulus Gellius relate a marvel¬ 
lous story concerning the excessive grief of Artemisia. 
They say that she actually mixed the ashes of her hus¬ 
band with water, and drank them off! ( Val. Max., 4, 6.) 
The grief of Artemisia,, poignant though it was, did not 
cause her to neglect the care of her dominions ; she 
conquered the isle of Rhodes, and gained possession 
of some Greek cities on the main land ; and yet it is 
said that she died of grief two years after the loss of 
her husband. (Vitruv., 2, 8. — Strab., 656. — Phn., 
36, 5.) 

Artemisium, a promontory of Euboea, on the north¬ 
western side of the island. It had a temple sacred to 
Artemis (Diana), whence its name. Oft' this coast 
the Greeks obtained their first victory over the fleet 
of Xerxes, on the same day with the action of Ther¬ 
mopylae. (Herod., 7, 175, &c.) 

ArtemTta, I. a city of Assyria, north of Seleucia, 
and southwest of Apollonia. It appears to have been 
the same with Dastagcrda in the middle ages, and 
the Chalasar of more modern times. (Tacit., 6, 41. 
— Plin., 6, 26.— Isid., Charac.) —II. Another in Ar¬ 
menia Major, near its southern boundary, now Actamar 
or Van. It lay at the southeastern extremity of the 
Arsissa Palus, now Lake of Van. 

Artemon, I. a celebrated mechanician, a native of 
Clazomeme, who was with Pericles at the siege of Sa¬ 
mos, where it is said he invented the battering-ram, the 
testudo, and other equally valuable military engines. 
(Plut., Vit. Pericl., c. 27.)—II. A native of Syria, one 
of the lower order, whose features resembled in the 
strongest manner those of Antiochus Theos. The 
queen, after the king’s murder, made use of Artemon 
to represent her husband in a lingering state, that, by 
his seeming to have died a natural death, she might con¬ 
ceal her guilt, and effect her wicked purpose. (Plin., 
7, 10.) 

Artimpasa, a name given to a goddess among the 
Scythians, whose attributes resembled those of the Gre¬ 
cian Venus. (Herod., 4, 59.) Some read, in the text of 
Herodotus, ’Aptrcrraca (Arippasa ); others, with Ori- 
gen (contr. Cels. V., p. 609), prefer ’Apyipnaca. 
Many consider the deity here mentioned to be none 
other than the “ Earth,” the German Hertha, for, ac¬ 
cording to Jamieson, the ancient Goths called Venus' 
Iordem-asa, and Ardem-asa, i. e., “terrse dea.” The 
first part of the name reminds us at once of our English 
term “ earth,” through the German “ erde ,” and the re¬ 
mainder refers to the Asi, or earliest deities of Asiatic and 
Scandinavian mythology. (Hermes Scythicus, p. 120.) 

Arvales or Ambarvales, a name given to twelve 
priests who celebrated the festivals called Ambarvalia. 
This sacerdotal order is said to have been instituted 
by Romulus in honour of his nurse Acca Laurentia, 
who had twelve sons; and when one of them died, 
Romulus, to console her, offered to supply his place, 
and called himself and the rest of her sons Fratres 
Arvales. Their office was for life, and continued even 
in captivity and exile. They wore a crown made of 
the ears of wheat, and a white woollen wreath around 




A SC 


ASC 


their temples. The hymn sung by these priests was 
discovered in 1778, in opening the foundations of the 
sacristy of St. Peter’s, inscribed on a stone. Consult 
Forcellini (Lex. Tot. Lat., s. v. Arvales), where the 
question is considered, whether the Arvales and the 
Ambarvales were distinct priesthoods or not. Refer¬ 
ence is there made to the work of Marinio, “ Degli 
Attiche Monumenti de ’ Fratelli Arvali, scolpiti gia in 
tavole di marmo, ed ora raccolti, diciferatie commentati. 
Roma , 1795, 2 vols. 4to.” 

Arueris, a god of the Egyptians, son of Isis and 
Osiris. (Vid. Horus.) 

Arverni, a powerful people of Gaul, whose terri¬ 
tories lay between the sources of the Elaver or Allier, 
and Duranius or Dordogne , branches of the Liger and 
Garumna. The district is now Auvergne. Their 
capital was Augustunometum, now Clermont. They 
were a powerful nation, and were only conquered after 
great slaughter. Their name is supposed to be derived 
from Ar, or al , “high,” and Verann (fearann ), “coun¬ 
try” or “region.” ( Thierry, Hist, des Gaulois , vol. 2, 
p. 29.) 

Ariusium Promontorium, a promontory of Chios. 
The adjacent country was famous for producing a 
wine (Vinum Ariusium ) that was considered the best 
of all the Greek wines. (Virg., Eclog., 5,71.— Strab., 
955.— Plut ., non posse suav. vivi, &c., c. 17. — Clem. 
Alex., Peed., 2, 2.) 

Aruns Tarquinius, I. a brother of Lucius Tarquin- 
ius, or Tarquin the Proud. He was of a meek and 
gentle spirit, and was married to the younger Tullia. 
His wife, a haughty and ambitious woman, murdered 
him, according to the old legend, and married Tarquin 
the Proud, who had, in like manner, made away with 
his own spouse. ( Liv ., 1, 46.— Arnold’s Rome, vol. 
1, p. 41.)—II. A son of Tarquin the Proud. In the 
first conflict that took place after the expulsion of his 
father, he and Brutus slew each other. (Liv., 2, 6.— 
Arnold's Rome, vol. 1, p. 108.) 

Aruntius, I. a Roman writer, who, with an affecta¬ 
tion of the style of Sallust, composed in the age of 
Augustus a history of the first Punic war. (Voss., de 
Hist. Lat., 1, 18.)—II. A Roman poet, whose full name 
was Aruntius Stella. He is highly praised by Statius, 
who dedicated some of his productions to him, and 
also by Martial. Among the works that he composed 
was a poem on the victory of Domitian over the Sar- 
matse. His writings have not come down to us. (Sta¬ 
tius, Sylv., 1, 2, 17.— Id. ib., 1, 2, 258, &c.— Martial, 
5, 59, 2.— Id., 12, 3, 11, &c.) 

Aruspex. Vid. Haruspex. 

Arxata, a town of Armenia Major, situate on the 
Araxes, east of Artaxata, towards the confines of Me¬ 
dia. (Strab., 528.) It is probably the Naxuana of 
Ptolemy. 

Aryandes, a Persian, appointed governor of Egypt 
by**Cambyses. He was put to death by Darius for is¬ 
suing a silver coinage in his own name. (Herodot., 
4,. 166.) 

Asander, a governor of the Cimmerian Bosporus 
under Pharnaces. He revolted against him B.C. 47; 
and having defeated both him and his successor, obtain¬ 
ed peaceable possession of the government, which was 
afterward confirmed to him by Augustus. He separated 
by a wall the Tauric Chersonese from the continent. 
(Appian, Bell. Mithrad., 120 .—Dio Cassius, 42, 46.) 

Asciburgium, I. a Roman fortified post on the Ger¬ 
man side of the Rhine. Ptolemy places it where the 
Canal of Drusus joined the Yssel.—II. A town of 
Germany, placed by the Tab. Peuting. on the western 
bank of the Rhine, south of the modern Santen. 
(Compare Mannert, Geogr., vol. 3, p. 454.) Ritter 
has some curious speculations upon the name of this 
place, and seeks to trace an analogy between it and 
that of the Aspurgiana, on the Palus Maeotis (Strabo, 
495), as also between both of these and the famed 


As-gard of Scandinavian mythology. (Ritter's Vor- 
halle, p. 296, seqq. —Consult remarks under the arti¬ 
cle Asi.) 

Asbyst^e, a small inland tribe of Africa, situate be¬ 
tween the Gilligamm® on the east, and the Auschisse 
on the west (Herodot., 4, 170), and above Cyrenaica. 
They had no communication with the coast, which was 
occupied by the Cyreneans. According to Herodotus 
(l. c .), they were beyond all the Africans remarkable for 
the use of chariots drawn by four horses. (Rennell, 
Geogr. Herod., vol. 2, p. 265.) 

Ascalaphus, I. a son ofMars and Astyoche, went to 
the Trojan war at the head of the Orchomenians, with 
his brother Ialmenus. He was killed by Dei'phobus. 
(Horn., II., 2, 513.)—II. A son of Acheron by Gorgyra 
or Orphine, stationed by Pluto to watch over Proserpina 
in the Elysian fields. It was he who testified to the 
fact of Proserpina’s having eaten a pomegranate seed 
in the kingdom of Pluto. ( Vid. Proserpina.) He was 
changed into an owl for his mischief-making. (Ovid, 
Met., 5, 549.) Another legend says that Ceres placed 
a large stone on him in Erebus, which Hercules rolled 
away. (Apollod., 1, 5, 3.— Id., 2, 5, 12.) There are 
likewise other variations in the fable, as given by the 
ancient mythologists. According to Antoninus Lib- 
eralis (c. 24), who quotes from Nicander, the name of 
the individual was Ascalabus, son of the nymph Misme 
(Mlafiy). His mother having handed Ceres a drink 
when, the latter was searching for her daughter, and 
the goddess having, through excessive thirst, drained 
the cup at a single draught, Ascalabus, in derision, or¬ 
dered a caldron to be brought; whereupon the offend¬ 
ed deity changed him into a lizard. (Compare Muncker, 
ad Anton. Lib., 1. c., and Creuzcr, Symbolik, vol. 4, p. 
467, seqq.) 

Ascalon, a maritime town of Palestine, 320 fur¬ 
longs from Jerusalem, between Azotus to the north, 
and Gaza to the south. Venus Urania was worship¬ 
ped in this 1 city. Her temple was pillaged, according 
to Herodotus, by the Scythians, B.C. 630. Here also 
was worshipped the goddess Derceto. Ascalon was 
taken from the Assyrians by the Persians, and after¬ 
ward fell successively into the hands of Alexander the 
Great, Ptolemy, and Antiochus I. ; but, during the 
wars between Antiochus Epiphanes and his brother 
Philopator, it became independent, and remained so 
until it fell under the Roman power. It was frequent¬ 
ly taken by the Saracens, and suffered much during 
the crusades. Baldwin, king of Jerusalem, took it, 
after a siege of five or six months, in 1153 or 1154, at 
which time it was erected into an episcopal town : 
but, falling at length into the hands of the Turks, it was 
almost destroyed, and is now an insignificant place, 
which they occupy for the purpose of opposing the in¬ 
roads of the Arabians. Its modern name is Scalona. 
Herod the Great was born at Ascalon, and hence re¬ 
ceived the appellation of Ascalonites. (Plin., 5, 13. 
— Amm. Marcell., 14, 26.— Ptol., 5, 16.— Strabo, 522. 
— Joseph., Ant. Jud., 6, 1.) 

Ascanius, I. son of JEneas by Creiisa. According 
to the old legend (for it is not right to dignify such 
narratives with the name of history), he was saved from 
the flames of Troy by his father, whom he accompa¬ 
nied to Italy, where his name was afterward changed 
to lulus. He behaved with great valour in the war 
which his father carried on against the Latins, and 
succeeded HCneas in the kingdom of Latinus, and built 
Alba, to which he transferred the seat of his empire 
from Lavinium. The fabulous chronology of the Ro¬ 
man writers makes the descendants of Ascanius to 
have reigned in Alba for about 420 years, under four¬ 
teen kings, till the age of Numitor. Ascanius him¬ 
self reigned, according to the same authorities, thirty- 
eight years, of which thirty were passed at Lavinium, 
and the remainder at Alba. He was succeeded by 
Sylvius Posthumus, son of Hhieas by Lavinia. lulus, 

211 





ASC 


ASCLEPIADES. 


the son of Ascanius, disputed the crown with him; 
but the Latins gave it in favour of Sylvius, as he was 
descended from the family of Latinus, and lulus was 
invested wflth the office of high-priest, which remain¬ 
ed a long while in his family. ( Liv., 1, 3.— Serv. ad 
Virg., JEn., 1 , 270.— Dionys. Hal., 1 , 76.— Plut., 
Vit. Rom.) —II. A river of Bithynia, which discharged 
into the Propontis the waters of the Lake Ascanius. 

(Plin ., 5, 32.— Aristot. ay. Schol. Apollon. Rh., 1, 
1177.)—III. A lake in the western part of Bithynia, 
near the head waters of the Sinus Cianus. At its 
eastern extremity stood the city of Nicsea. Aristotle 
observes, that the waters of this lake were so im¬ 
pregnated with nitre, as to cleanse the clothes dipped 
into them. ( Mirab. Auscult., c. 54. — Plin., 31, 10.) 
According to Colonel Leake, the Ascanian Lake is 
about ten miles long and four wide, surrounded on 
three sides by steep woody slopes, behind which rise 
the snowy summits of the range of Olympus. ( Leake's 
Asia Minor, p. 7.— Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 
180.) 

Asclepiea (’ kanTirjmela ), a festival in honour of 
iEsculapius (kGnlpiriog), celebrated in several parts 
of Greece, but nowhere with so much solemnity as at 
Epidaurus. One part of the celebration, as we learn 
from Plato, consisted of contests in poetry and music. 
{Plat., Ion. init. — Jul. Poll., 1, 37. — Pausanias, 2, 
26, 7.) Another form of the name is Asclepea (’Acr- 
K?.r]7r£ia), respecting which, consult the remarks of 
Siebelis {ad Pausan., 1. c.). 

Asclepiades, I. the reputed descendants of iEscu- 
lapius {’AaK?iT]7u6g), consisting of several families 
spread over Greece, and professing to have among 
them certain secrets of the healing art handed down to 
them from their great progenitor. The Asclepiades of 
Epidaurus were among the most famous of the name. 
The Asclepiades compelled all who were initiated 
into the mysteries of their science, to swear by Apol¬ 
lo, JEsculapius, Hygiea, Panacea, and all the other 
gods and goddesses, that they would not profane 
the secrets of the healing art, but would only unfold 
them to the children of their masters, or to those who 
should have bound themselves by the same oath. 
(Consult Hippocr., opnog illustratus a Meibomio, 4to, 
L. B., 1643.) We may, in this point of view, regard 
as a locus classicus a passage of Galen, wherein he 
states that medical knowledge was at first hereditary, 
and that parents imparted it to their offspring as a 
kind of family prerogative or possession. This usage, 
however, became in process of time more relaxed, and 
then medical secrets began to be imparted to stran¬ 
gers who had gone through the forms of initiation 
{tsTielol dvdpeg), and were in this way rendered less 
exclusive in their character. {Galen, Administr. 
Anatom., lib. 2, p. 128.) It is for this reason that 
Aristides, in a later age, remarks, that a knowledge of 
medicine was for a long time regarded as the attribute 
of the family of the Asclepiades. {Orat. Baer., vol. 
1, p. 80.) And hence, too, Lucian makes a physician 
say, “ My sacred and mysterious oath compels me to 
be silent.” {Tragopod., p. 818.) The theurgic phy¬ 
sicians of the Alexandrean school re-established, at a 
subsequent period, this ancient custom, in order to im¬ 
part, by the obligation of religious silence, a greater 
degree of consideration to their superstitious practices. 
(Alex. Trail., lib. 10, p. 593, ed. Guinth. Andernac.) 
The Asclepiades appear to have established, among 
their disciples and in their manner of instructing, 
a distinction which we find existing also in the schools 
of the philosophers. They imparted the ordinary 
branches of medical knowledge to those who were not 
yet initiated, but their profound secrets {ai unofifipTOL 
fiidaana'kiaL) only to those who had been admitted 
into their mysteries. The Asclepiades neglected en¬ 
tirely two essential parts of the healing art, diet and 
anatomy. Plato says that an acquaintance with die- 
212 


tetics was not cultivated before the time of Prodicus 
of Selymbria, and Hippocrates confirms the assertion 
of the philosopher. {Sprengel, Apol., d'Hippocr., pt. 
11, p. 271.) Anatomy, again, could not flourish in 
Greece, through the force of popular prejudice, and 
these prejudices took their rise from the belief, that the 
soul, after being disengaged from its material envelope, 
was obliged to wander on the banks of the Styx until 
the body was consigned to the earth or devoured by 
the flames. {Horn., II., 23, 71. — Sprengel, Hist. 
Med., vol. 1, p. 169, seqq.) — II. A Greek physician, 
a native of Prusa in Bithynia, who lived in the age of 
Cicero, and who was the first that brought the art of 
medicine into reputation at Rome. After having ac¬ 
quired a name in Asia, he came to the capital of Italy, 
B C. 110, rejecting the offers of Mithradates, king of 
Pontus, who wished him to reside at his court. As¬ 
clepiades was one of those ardent spirits destined to 
bring about a revolution in whatever career they 
move, and nature had endowed him with an attractive 
kind of eloquence, which he often abused. At Rome 
he commenced giving lessons in rhetoric, but all of 
a sudden, persuading himself, after a very superficial 
acquaintance with medicine, that he was thoroughly 
master of the art, he began to practice it. Unhappily, 
he brought into this new pursuit all the rash eagerness 
of his independent spirit, and all the philosophical er¬ 
rors of opinion which, as a rhetorician, he had success¬ 
ively adopted. The Romans had given a favourable 
reception to Archagathus before Asclepiades came 
among them, but they soon began to dislike his prac¬ 
tice, from his having recourse frequently to painful 
remedies. Asclepiades, in order to gain a reputation, 
pursued a course directly opposite to this. He made 
it a point to give only such remedies as were agree¬ 
able and easy to bear. He applied, moreover, to the 
medical art all the erroneous philosophic notions of his 
day; and, speaking in this way to the Romans of things 
that entered into the plan of their studies, and alluring 
them also by the charms of his eloquence, he w 7 as en¬ 
abled to gain their confidence the more easily, from 
being himself deceived into the belief that he was near 
the truth. Adopting the corpuscular philosophy of 
Epicurus, he made it the basis of his doctrine. He 
misunderstood that of Hippocrates, the only true one. 
He even criticised openly the method of this great 
physician, namely, the calm observation of nature, and 
called it, in derision, “the study of death” {(tavurov 
liekirpv .— Galen, de vena sect. adv. Erasistr., page 
3). From Pliny’s account of him, Asclepiades would 
appear to have been nothing more than a successful 
charlatan, who flattered the whims of his patients, and 
rejected all the tortures which, under the name of regu¬ 
lar remedies, had been previously in vogue. He admit¬ 
ted only five means of cure ; dieting, occasional absti¬ 
nence from wine, frictions, exercise on foot, and«*4he 
being carried in litters. {Plin., 26, 3.) The appear¬ 
ance, too, for the first time in Italy, of the disorder 
termed elephantiasis, and the alarm which it occasion¬ 
ed, could not fail to add greatly to the reputation of a 
medical man who was skilful in curing it. {Plut., 
Sympos., 8, qu. 9.) Finally, the relations subsisting 
between him and the most distinguished Romans of 
his time, especially Cicero, contributed greatly to his 
celebrity. {De Orat., 1, 14.) A singular circum¬ 
stance also gained him great credit among the lower 
orders. Happening to pass, on one occasion, near a 
funeral train, he perceived that the body which was 
being conveyed to the funeral pile exhibited signs of 
life. He immediately employed the most active meas¬ 
ures for its resuscitation, and succeeded, to the great 
astonishment of the by-standers, who regarded what he 
had done as a restoring from death to life, rather than 
as an act of ordinary healing. Asclepiades used to 
boast that he had never been sick ; and if w r e credit 
Pliny, he did not even die of any malady, but from an 



ASC 


ASC 


accident that befell him. We have some fragments 
of his writings remaining, an edition of which was 
given by Gumpert, with a preface by Griiner, Vimar., 
1794, 8vo. Asclepiades was the founder of a school, 
which enjoyed great celebrity among the ancients. 
Stephanus of Byzantium gives the names of several 
of his pupils ( s. v. Avfifidxiov). A scholar of his, 
not mentioned by the latter, namely, Themisto, was 
the chief of the sect of the Methodists, as they were 
termed. ( Biogr. Umv., vol. 2, p. 564. — Sprengel, 
Hist. Med., 2, p. 3, seqq.) 

Asclepiodorus, I. an Athenian painter, contempora¬ 
ry with Apelles, who praised the former for the symme¬ 
try of his productions, and yielded him the palm in delin¬ 
eating the relative distances of objects. Mnaso, a tyrant 
of antiquity, employed him to paint the twelve deities 
(Dii majores), and paid him 300 minas (over $5277) 
for each. {Pliny, 35, 10.) —— II. A statuary, one of 
those, according to Pliny (34, 8), who excelled in rep¬ 
resenting the philosophers. {Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.) 

Asclepiodotus, a native of Alexandrea, the disci¬ 
ple of Jacobus in medicine and of Proclus in eclectic 
philosophy, in both of which he acquired a distinguish¬ 
ed reputation. Damascius gave a long account of him 
in the Life of Isidorus, of which Suidas and Photius 
have preserved fragments. In medicine he surpassed 
his instructer, and is said to have re-established the 
use of white hellebore, with w r hich he made some very 
successful cures. He was well acquainted also with 
the virtues of plants, and with the history of animals ; 
and made great progress also in the musical art. 
Some wonderful stories are likewise related of him, 
which would seem to place him in a class of Thau- 
maturgists. He wrote a commentary on the Timaeus 
of Plato, which is now lost. {Photius, Cod., 242, vol. 
2, p. 343, seqq.) 

Ascolia, a festival in honour of Bacchus, celebrated 
by the Athenian husbandmen, who generally sacrificed 
a goat to the god, because that animal is a great enemy 
to the vine. They made a bottle or bag with the skin 
of the victim, which they filled with wine, smearing 
at the same time the outer surface with oil. On this 
they endeavoured to leap with one foot, and he that 
first fixed himself was declared victor, and received 
the bottle as a reward. This was called donoTau&iv, 
7r apu, rov ettI tov (Ionov uXkeodai, from leaping upon 
the bottle, whence the name of the festival is derived. 
It was also introduced into Italy under the name of 
Vinalia, on which’ occasion the rustics put on hideous 
masks of bark, and invoked Bacchus in joyful strains. 
They also hung up, at the same time, little images on 
a lofty pine. These images they called Oscilla. 
{Schol. ad Aristoph., Plut., 1129.— Virg., Georg., 2, 
387, seqq.) Spence gives engravings from several 
gems, on which figures are represented, called oscilla 
or a’uvpai. They are found also in the paintings at 
Herculaneum, and in Mercurialis {Art. Gymn., 3, 8, p. 
217). Spence attributes the origin of this rite to the 
popular belief, that when Bacchus turned his face to¬ 
wards the fields, their fertility was assured. Hence 
they exposed these small figures to the winds, that 
they might be free to turn in any direction. Some 
writers think that the oscilla were the same with phal¬ 
lic symbols (compare Serv. ad Virg., 1. c.), but this 
opinion now finds few, if any, supporters. {Turneb., 
Adv., 3, 20. — Rolle, Recherches sur le culte de Bac¬ 
chus, vol. 1, p. 312.) The Athenians had their festi¬ 
val of oscilla, which they termed alupai, and which 
was said to have been instituted in memory of Eri- 
gone; and hence Varro {ap. Serv. ad AEn., 12, 603) 
gives another singular explanation to the custom of 
suspending oscilla. According to him, a rope was 
suspended at either extremity from a beam or tree, 
and in this way a swing was formed, to which a little 
image or oscillum was suspended. The movement of 
this swing to and fro, with the image attached, was re¬ 


garded as a kind of funeral offering to those who had 
committed suicide by hanging.—There is evidently 
some analogy, in both form and meaning, between the 
Latin term oscilla and the Greek donuXia, and the 
common derivations given in either case cannot be 
correct. (Consult the etymology given by Servius, ad 
Virg., 1. c.) 

Asconius Pedianus, a grammarian, born at Pata- 
vium, a little before the commencement of our era 
{Madvig, de Pediam Comment. Disp. Cut., p. 16), 
and who is known to modern times by his commentary 
on the orations of Cicero. The statement of Philar- 
gyrius, that Asconius had heard Virgil in his youth, 
deserves no credit whatever {ad Virg., Eclog ., 3, 
106), since it is contradicted in effect by the remark of 
St. Jerome, who informs us that Asconius, in the 73d 
year of his age, and in the 7th of Vespasian’s reign, 
suffered the loss of his sight, but still lived for twelve 
years after this. {Hieron., in Chronic. Euseb., ad 
Olymp. ccxiii., 3.) Just as little credit is due to the 
supposition of there having been two individuals named 
Asconius, an earlier one, who was the friend of Livy 
and Virgil, and wrote a commentary on Cicero’s ora¬ 
tions, and a later one, who was an historical writer. 
All antiquity knows but one Asconius Pedianus. 
{Jos. Seal., Animadv. ad Euseb., Chron., p. 183, ed. 
1.—p. 200, ed. 2.)—Few particulars have reached us 
relative to Asconius. He composed a work in de¬ 
fence of Virgil, now lost {Donat, in Vit. Virg., 16, 
64), and another on the life of Sallust, which also has 
not reached us. He wrote likewise a commentary on 
the Orations of Cicero, for the use of his own son {ad 
Or at. pro Milon., 6), some portions of which have 
reached our day. The importance of these makes 
us feel the more sensibly the loss of the other parts. 
{Madvig, p. 72, seqq.) We have fragments of the 
commentary on nine orations of Cicero : the Divina- 
tio, three of those against Verres, the oration for Cor¬ 
nelius, the oration in tog. candid., that against Piso, 
and those for Scaurus and for Milo. The character 
of this commentary is in general historical, and As¬ 
conius appears in it as a man well acquainted with the 
history and earlier constitution of Rome. Frequently 
he is our only authority for certain facts, since the 
sources from which he has drawn, in such cases, no 
longer exist. His Latinity is tolerably pure and cor¬ 
rect, and comparatively free from the barbarisms of a 
declining tongue; always excepting the commentaries 
on the Verrine orations, which are thought by the 
learned to have been the work of a later writer, who 
lived shortly after Servius and Donatus, and who prob¬ 
ably derived his materials from some commentary of 
Asconius, now lost. It is to this same later writer, 
and not to Asconius, that Niebuhr assigns the scholia 
found by Mai, in 1841, in the Ambrosian palimpsest. 
{Nieb. ad Front., Op., ed. Berohn., p. xxxiv.— Bahr, 
Gesch. Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. 539, seqq.) 

Ascra, a town of Boeotia, situate on a rocky sum¬ 
mit belonging to Helicon. It could boast of consider-, 
able antiquity, having been founded, as the poet He- 
gesinous, quoted by Pausanias (9, 29), asserts, by 
Ephialtes and Otus, sons of Aloeus. What rendered 
the place, however, most remarkable, was its having 
been the residence of Hesiod. The poet was not a 
native of Cyme, but his father came from Cyme 
to Ascra, his native city, as he himself informs us 
{Op. et D., v. 635, seqq.). He does not give us a very 
favourable idea of the climate of the place. From his 
birthplace Ascra. Hesiod is commonly called the As- 
crean bard. Pausanias reports, that in his day only 
one tower remained to mark the site of Ascra (9, 29). 
Dr. Clark imagined that the village of Zagora repre¬ 
sents Ascra; but Sir W. Gell is inclined to identify 
it with an ancient tower he observed on a lofty, bare, 
conical rock; which agrees with the topography of 
Strabo, who places it to the right of Helicon, and 

213 



A SI 


A S I 


about forty stadia from Thespis. (Cramer's Ancient 
Greece, vol. 2, p. 207, seqq.) 

Asculum, I. Picenum, a city of Picenum, so named 
to distinguish it from the Asculum of Apulia. It was 
situate in the interior, on the river Truentus, and some 
distance to the southwest of Firmum. Strabo de¬ 
scribes it as a place of great strength, surrounded by 
walls and inaccessible heights. It was the first city 
to declare against the Romans when the Social war 
broke out, and its example was followed by the whole 
of Picenum. Asculum sustained, in the course of 
that war, a long and memorable siege against Pompey, 
who finally, however, compelled the place to surren¬ 
der, and caused several of the chiefs of the rebels to be 
beheaded. (Liv., Epit., 76.— Veil. Paterc., 2, 21.— 
Floras, 3, 18.— Appian, Bell. Civ., 1, 38.— Pint., Vit. 
Pomp.) We learn from Pliny (3, 13) that Asculum 
was a Roman colony, and regarded as the chief city 
of the province. It is now Ascoli .— II. Apulum, a 
city of Apulia, to which the epithet Apulum was at¬ 
tached to distinguish it from Asculum in Picenum. 
It was situate in the interior of Daunia, near the con¬ 
fines of Samnium, and is supposed to be represented 
by the modern town of Ascoli, which is about six miles 
to the southwest of Ordona. It was under the walls 
of this place that Pyrrhus encountered a second time 
the Roman army, after having gained a signal victory 
in Lucania. The action was attended with no advan¬ 
tage to either side. ( Floras, 1, 18. — Plut., Vit. 
Pyrrh. — Frontin., Strateg., 1, 3.) Frontinus, who 
classes it among the colonies of Apulia, terms it Aus- 
clum. This is probably the correct orthography, as 
may be seen from coins, the inscription on which is 
AYCAI12N, and AYCKA. ( Cramer's Ancient Italy, 
vol. 2, p. 288.) 

Asdrubal. Vid. Hasdrubal. 

Asi, or Asje (in the old Scandinavian AEsir or Esir, 
the plural form of As), a general appellation given, 
in the mythology of northern Europe, to the deities 
that came in with Odin from the East. Including this 
latter divinity they were twelve in number, according 
to some, thirteen ( Magnusen, Boreal. Mythol. Lex., 
p. 720), and there was the same number of female dei¬ 
ties or Asynice. — While some are inclined to see in 
the Asi merely an Asiatic colony, wandering in from 
the vicinity of the Don, others, with much more propri¬ 
ety, find in the name a curious chain of connexion be¬ 
tween the early religions of the Eastern and European 
w r orlds. The term As, in fact, appears to have been 
an old appellation for deity, and meets us in numerous 
quarters, under various though not very dissimilar 
forms. Thus, in the Coptic, Os is said to signify 
“ Lord” or “ Deity in the old Persian, good deities 
or spirits were called Ized, while by Berosus the gods 
are termed lsi. ( Kanne, System der Ind. Myth., p. 
228.) Again, in Sanscrit we have Isha, “ a lord” 
or “master,” the feminine of which, Iskana, reminds 
us at once of Asynia, a female deity, or Asa. Among 
the ancient Gauls, the supreme Being was denominated 
Esus or Hesus, a name that connects the Druidical 
wmrship with the East; while among many nations of 
Finnish origin, in Asiatic Russia, we have such terms 
for deity as Eis, Ess, Essi, and Oss. ( Magnusen, 
p. 719, note. — Heyd, Etymol. Versuch., Tubingen, 
1824.) It is curious to connect with this the account 
given by the Roman writers, that in the Etrurian lan¬ 
guage AEsar signified “ God.” (Sucton., Aug., 97.— 
Dio Cass., 56, 29. — Hesych., s. v. AIgol .— Muller, 
EtrusJc., vol. 2, p. 81.) We may compare with this 
the old augural doctrine among the Etrurian priesthood, 
that the gods had their home or dwelling in the north, 
by which we see Scandinavia and Etruria brought 
singularly into contact. (Serv. ad AEn., 2, 693.— 
Dion. Hal., 2, 5 .—Plut., Qucest. Rom., IS.—Muller, 
Etrusk., vol. 2, p. 126.)—Again, the traditions in the 
north of Europe are uniform, that the Asi came in 
214 


from the east or rather southeast, and mention is made 
of a country called Asa-land, and its metropolis As- 
gard, in the vicinity, or to the east, of the Tanais, 
from which Odin and the Asae are said to have come 
into Europe. (Saga Olafs Trygg. Ed. Skalh., 2, 
49. — Havn., 2, 183.— Append. Ed. Jun., cd. Rusk., 
p. 354.— Magnusen, p. 287, 293.) We see here, at 
once, the striking analogy between Ascn-land and 
Asia, and may easily suppose that by the former is 
meant merely a part of the latter, and that the name 
Asia itself means nothing more than the “land of 
the Asi,” or “the Holy Land” (“Asa, Asia, solum 
divinum, sacra terra." — Hickes, Thes. Ling. Scp- 
tentr., 1, p. 193). As Odin and Buddha are the same 
deity (vid. Odinus), the worship of the Asi is to be 
referred to the remote East as its native home, and 
Asgard near the Tanais must be regarded as merely 
one of many sacerdotal stations where this worship 
was observed, and whence colonies were sent forth. 
Traces of the root from which these names are derived 
maybe found in several geographical appellations con¬ 
nected with the country around the Tanais. Thus w T e 
have Caucasus (Cauc-asos, i. e., the mountain of the 
Asi), the river Phasis (Ph-asis, i. e., the holy stream), 
the name Amazonius, sometimes applied to the Ta¬ 
nais (Am-azonius, i. e., Am-azon), and we find it re¬ 
tained even in the modern term Az-cph. (Ritter, 
Vorhalle, p. 465.)—Many other curious analogies pre¬ 
sent themselves. Pausanias (3, 2, 45) makes mention 
of an ancient city in Laconia, named Las (L-as), 
which had succeeded a still earlier city of the same 
name, that had stood on Mount Asia (As-ia), and amid 
the ruins of this latter place were the remains of a 
temple of Minerva Asia (As-ia, i. e., Asynia). Pau¬ 
sanias adds that Minerva Asia had also a temple 
among the Colchians. We may compare with this 
the Doric form of the name of the goddess, as appear¬ 
ing in Aristophanes, ’A cava (Asana, i. e., Asa-na or 
Asynia). There was also in Crete a very ancient 
sanctuary of Jupiter Asius. (Stcph. Byzant., p. 181, 
ed. Berk.) The Greek adjective boiog (hos-ios), “sa¬ 
cred,” may be traced to the same source, as well as 
the earlier form of the Latin term ara, “an altar,” 
namely, asa (as-a. — Aul. Gell., 4, 3). We may even 
carry our speculations into the Hebrew tongue, and 
connect with our subject the term Az, “mighty” or 
“ strong,” and the appellation Azazel (Asa-el), given 
to an idol or false deity. (Consult Gesen., Lex. Heir., 
s. v.) —If an etymology be sought for the name Asi, 
we may find it in the Sanscrit verb as, “ to be,” the 
participle of which, namely, sant, is analogous to the 
Greek tbv, and reminds us of Zdv, one of the old Greek 
names for Jupiter or the Supreme Being. The Asi, 
then, are the “ Beings ,” nar' e^o^i/v. 

Asia, I. one of the three parts of the ancient world, 
separated from Europe by the ^Egean, the Euxine, the 
Palus Mseotis, the Tanais or Don, and the Divma; 
from Africa by the Red Sea and Isthmus of Suez. 
Asia is in its extent the largest continent, and in its 
situation the most favoured by nature. Its square 
contents amount to 14,000,000 miles. In compari¬ 
son with other countries it has advantages, and espe¬ 
cially over Africa. These advantages consist in the 
character of its broken shore, the fruitful islands 
which lie around it, its numerous gulfs that enter far 
into the land, its large rivers, and its few deserts in the 
interior. There are two principal chains of mount¬ 
ains extending from west to east. In the north, the 
Altai, which in antiquity was still without a name ; in 
the south, the range of Taurus. Branches of both 
are the Caucasus, between the Black and Caspian 
Seas ; the Imaus, along the golden desert (the desert 
of Cobi) ; the Paropamisus, on the northern side of 
India; the Uralian chain, in antiquity still without a 
name, unless these are the Rhiphacan mountains of 
the ancients. Of the chief rivers, four flow from 







ASIA. 


ASIA. 


north to south ; the Euphrates and Tigris into the 
Persian Gulf, the Indus and Ganges into the Indian 
Sea: two flow from east to west, the Oxus, now Gi- 
hon, and the Iaxartes, now Sirr. Asia may therefore 
be divided into Northern Asia, the country north of 
the Altai range: Middle Asia , the country between 
the ranges of Altai and Taurus : and Southern Asia, 
the country south of Taurus.—Northern Asia lies be¬ 
tween 76° and 50° of latitude ( Asiatic Russia and 
Siberia). This in antiquity was very little known, yet 
not entirely unknown. Dark but true traditions re¬ 
specting it may be found in the father of history, He¬ 
rodotus.—Middle Asia, the country between 50° and 
40° north latitude, comprehending Scythia and Sar- 
matia Asiatica (the Great Tartary and Mongolia ), is 
almost one immeasurable unproductive prairie, with¬ 
out agriculture and forests, and, therefore, a mere pas¬ 
ture-land. The inhabitants leading pastoral lives (No- 
mades), are without cities and fixed places of abode ; 
and therefore, instead of political union, have merely 
the constitution of tribes.—Southern Asia, comprising 
the lands from 40° north latitude to near the equator, 
is entirely different in its character from the countries 
of Middle Asia: it is, both in soil and climate, pos¬ 
sessed of advantages for agriculture, and, in compari¬ 
son with the other countries of the earth, it is rich in 
the costliest and most various products.—The early 
commerce of the world, especially of the east, was 
originally through Asia. The natural places of de¬ 
pot in the interior were on the banks of the large 
rivers ; on the Oxus, in Bactria ; on the Euphrates, 
at Babylon. The natural places of depot on the coast 
were the western coast of Asia Minor and Phoenicia, 
where arose the series of Grecian and Phoenician cit¬ 
ies.—Asia from the first, # as at present, contained in 
its interior empires of immense extent, by which they 
are distinguished from those of cultivated Europe, as 
well as by their constitution. They often underwent 
revolutions, but their form remained the same. For 
this causes must have existed, lying deep and of wide 
influence, and which, notwithstanding these frequent 
revolutions, still continued to operate, and always gave 
to the new empires of Asia the organization of the 
old ones. The great revolutions of Asia (with the 
exception of that of Alexander) were occasioned by 
the numerous and powerful nomadic nations which oc¬ 
cupied a great part of that continent. Compelled by 
accident or necessity, they left their places of abode, 
and founded new empires, while they passed through 
and subjected the fruitful and cultivated countries of 
Southern Asia, until, unnerved by luxury and effemi¬ 
nacy, consequent on the change in their habits of life, 
they in their turn were in like manner subjected. 
From this common origin may be explained in part 
the great extent, in part the rapid rise and the usually 
short continuance of these empires. The develop¬ 
ment of their national form of government must, for 
the same reason, have had great resemblance ; and 
the constant reappearance of despotism in them is to 
be explained partly from the rights of conquerors, and 
partly from their great extent, which rendered a gov¬ 
ernment of satraps necessary. To this we must add, 
that the custom of polygamy, prevailing among all the 
great nati<jns of inner Asia, ruined the mutual rela¬ 
tions and obligations of domestic life, and thus ren¬ 
dered a good constitution impossible. For a domes¬ 
tic tyrant is formed instead of a father of a family, 
and despotism at once gains its foundation in private 
life. ( Heeren's History of the States of Antiquity, 
p. 14, seqq., Bancroft's transl.) — As early as the 
time of Herodotus, we find the name of Asia em¬ 
ployed to designate this vast continent. The Greeks, 
as we learn from that historian, pretended that it was 
derived from Asia, the wife of lapetus. The Lyd¬ 
ians, on the other hand, deduced the name from 
Asius, one of their earliest kings. {Herod., 4, 45.) 


Bochart, in modern days, has traced the appellation to 
Asi, a Phoenician word according to him, signifying 
“a middle part,” or something intermediate, and hence 
he makes Asia mean the continent placed between 
Europe and Africa. ( Geogr. Sacr., 4, 33, p. 298.) 
The true derivation, however, would seem to be that 
given in the preceding article. ( Vid. Asi.)—Homer 
applies the name of Asia to a small district of Maeo- 
nia or Lydia, situated near the Cayster. {II., 2, 461.) 
Euripides, also, evidently restricts the appellation to 
a portion of Lydia, in a passage of the Bacchse {v. 
64. — Compare Dionys. Perieg., 386, and Eustath., 
ad loc.). It would appear, indeed, that the Ionian 
Greeks, on their first arrival on the banks of the Mae- 
ander and Cayster, found the name of Asia attached 
to this part of the continent, and communicated it 
to their European countrymen, who in process of 
time applied it to all the countries situated to the east 
of Greece. It would be wrong, however, to suppose, 
that the name in question originally belonged merely 
to that part of the continent with which the Ionian 
colonists first became acquainted. It would seem, 
on the contrary, to have been given at an early pe¬ 
riod to various spots connected with the worship of 
the Asi, all pointing, however, to some region of the re¬ 
mote East where the name most probably originated.— 
Herodotus employs the division of Upper and Lower 
Asia. The latter of these answers in fact to what we 
now call Asia Minor, while the former denotes the 
vast tract of country situated to the east of the Eu¬ 
phrates. It is not exactly known when the peninsula 
came to be designated by the name of Asia Minor; 
but it does not appear in any author prior to Orosius, 
who employs it (1, 2), as well as Constantine Porphy- 
rogenitus {de Themat., 1 , 8). The term Anadoli , 
used by the Turks to denote this portion of the Otto¬ 
man empire, is a corruption of Anatolia , and this last 
is derived from the Greek uvaro'krj {the rising of the 
sun, i. e., the east), and answers to the Frank word 
Levant. —Few countries present such a diversity of 
soil and climate as the peninsula of Asia Minor. Io¬ 
nia, Lydia, Caria, and, indeed, generally speaking, the 
whole of Western Asia, were remarkable for their ge¬ 
nial temperature and extreme fertility ; while the 
mountainous districts of Lycia, Pysidia, Cilicia, and 
Cappadocia were very thinly inhabited, from the 
coldness of the climate and the unproductiveness of 
the soil. Many parts of Phrygia and Galatia were 
also nearly deserted from the barrenness of the 
ground, which was strongly impregnated with salt, 
and exhibited, besides, many traces of volcanic agen¬ 
cy. The whole country, in fact, appears to have been 
subject at an early period to violent earthquakes, 
which destroyed or damaged many flourishing cities. 
{Strab., 578.) Nevertheless, Asia Minor, taken col¬ 
lectively, was one of the most productive and opulent 
countries of which antiquity has left us any account; 
and we have the authority of Cicero for stating, that 
the Roman treasury derived its largest and surest rev¬ 
enues from this quarter. {Or. pro Leg. Man., 2, 6.) 
Some idea of its various productions will be given 
in the remarks under each particular province. ( Vid. 
Mysia, Bithynia, Phrygia, &c.) Asia Minor was fur¬ 
nished also with numerous excellent harbours along 
its coast. Nor was any country more favoured by na¬ 
ture, or more calculated to become the centre of a 
mighty and perhaps universal empire. But the moral 
character of its population has never kept pace with 
the resources of the country ; and this will probably 
always be the case as long as the softness of the cli¬ 
mate and the fertility of the soil continue to exercise 
an enervating influence over the character of the peo¬ 
ple. {Cramer's Asm Minor, vol. 1 , p. 1 , seqq .)— 
II. Provincia, or Asia Proconsularis, the Roman 
province of Asia, comprising Mysia, Lydia, Caria, 
and Phrygia, with the exception of Lycaonia. This is 

215 




A S I 


ASP 


meant by Asia in the legal sense of the term as em¬ 
ployed by the Romans, and is the same with what the 
Greek writers of the Roman era call Asia Proper, or 
7 ] Idiug Ka?iov/j.£VJ] ’kata (Strab., 626), in which sense 
we find the word Asia used in the New Testament. 
(Acts, 2, 9.) In another passage, however (Acts, 16, 
6), we find a distinction made between Phrygia and 
Asia. So, again, in the Book of Revelations, which 
is addressed to the seven churches of Asia, the name 
appears to be confined to that portion of ancient Lydia 
which contained Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamus, Sardis, 
&c. (Cellarius, de Sept. Eccles. Asia, inter Dis¬ 
sert. Acad., p. 412. — Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, 
p. 3.)—III. One of the Oceanides. She married Iap- 
etus, and became by him the mother of Atlas, Pro¬ 
metheus, Epimetheus, and Menoetius. (Apollod., 1, 
2.— Heyne, ad loc.) 

Asia Palus (the v Acnof 'keiydv of Homer), a marsh 
in Lydia, formed by the river Cayster, near its mouth. 
It was the favourite haunt of swans and other water- 
fowl. (Horn., II., 2, 470.— Virg., Georg., 1, 483.— 
Id., IEn., 7, 699.— Ovid, Met., 5, 386.) Near it was 
another marsh or lake, formed in like manner by the 
river, and called Selinusia Palus. Both belonged to 
the temple of Ephesus, and were a source of consid¬ 
erable revenue. (Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 
361.) 

Asiana, one of the later divisions of Asia Minor. 
Towards the decline of the Roman empire, Asia Minor 
was divided into two dioceses or provinces, called 
Asiana and Pontica, each governed by a lieutenant 
named Vicarius. (Notit. Imper., 1.— Cod. Theod., 5, 
tit. 2.) 

Asiaticus, I. the surname of one of the Scipios 
(Lucius Cornelius), obtained by him for his conquests 
in Asia. (Vid. Scipio V.) — II. A senator, put to 
death by Claudius, on a false charge made at the in¬ 
stigation of Messalina, who was desirous of seizing 
upon the gardens of Lucullus, which were in his pos¬ 
session. (Tac., Ann., 11, 1, seqq.) 

Asinarus, a river of Sicily, running into the sea to 
the north of Heloruni- It is now called Fiume di 
Noti, from the little town of Noto on its northern 
bank. (Mannert, Geogr., vol. 9, pt. 2, p. 240.) 

Asine, I. a town of Argolis, northwest of Her- 
mione, on the Sinus Argolicus, or Gulf of Nauplia. 
— II. Another in Messenia, southwest of Messene, 
founded by the inhabitants of the former place, when 
driven from their city by the Argives. 

Asinius, I. Pollio. (Vid. Pollio.)—II. Gallus, son 
of Asinius Pollio, was consul A.U.C. 748. He mar¬ 
ried Vipsania, the repudiated wife of Tiberius, a step 
which gave rise to a secret enmity on the part of the 
latter towards him. He starved himself to death, ei¬ 
ther voluntarily, or, what is more probable, having 
been ordered by the emperor to destroy himself. 
Asinius published in his lifetime a parallel between 
his father and Cicero, in which he assigned to the for¬ 
mer a marked superiority over the latter. ( Tac., Ann., 
L 76-— Id. ib., 6, 23.— Plin., Ep., 7, 4.)—III. Quad- 
ratus, an historian of the third century of our era, who 
wrote a history of the Greeks, Romans, and Par- 
thians, down to the time of Philip the Arabian, under 
whose reign he lived. — IV. Capito, a grammarian, 
who wrote a book of Epistles. Some read Sinnius 
for Asinius. (Aul. Gell., 5, 20.) 

Asius, I. a son of Dymas, brother of Hecuba. He 
assisted Priam in the Trojan war, and was slain by 
Idomeneus. (Horn., II, 2, 352. — Id. ib , 12, 15.— 
Id. ib., 13, 384.)—II. Son of Imbracus, accompanied 
iEneas to Italy. (Virg., IEn., 10, 122.) —III. A 
name given to a mythic personage in the legends of 
Lydia. Consult remarks under the articles Asi and 
Asia.—IV. A poet of Samos, who wrote about the 
genealogy of ancient heroes and heroines. (Pausan., 
7,4.) 


Asius Campus, a place near the Cayster, and in 
the vicinity of the Asia Palus. (Vid. Asia Palus.) 

Asopiades, a patronymic of JEacus, son of JEgina 
a daughter of Asopus. (Ovid, Met., 7, 484.) 

Asopis, I. a daughter of the Asopus. — II. A 
daughter of Thespius, mother of Mentor. (Apollod., 
2, 7.) 

Asopus, I. a river of Thessaly, rising in Mount 
(Eta, and falling into the Sinus Maliacus. It flows 
through a gorge in the mountain enclosing the Tra- 
chinian plain. (Herod., 7, 199. — Strab., 428.)—II. 
A river of Boeotia, rising in Mount Cithseron near 
Platsea, and flowing into the Euripus. It separated 
the territories of Platsea and Thebes, and also trav¬ 
ersed in its course the whole of Southern Boeotia. 
Though generally a small and sluggish stream, yet 
after heavy rains it could not easily be forded. (Thu- 
cyd., 2, 5.) It was on the banks of the Asopus that 
the battle of Platsea was fought. (Herod., 9, 43.) 
This river still retains the name of Asopo. The plain 
along its northern bank was called Parasopias. 
(Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 2, p. 217.)—III. A 
river of Achaia, rising in the Argolic mountains, on 
the frontiers of Arcadia, near Cyllene, and falling 
into the Corinthian gulf a little below Sicyon. The 
part of the Sicyonian territory which it watered was 
called Asopia. (Strab., 382. — Pausan., 2,5.) On 
its banks were celebrated the games which Adrastus 
instituted in honour of Apollo. (Pind., Nem., 9, 20.) 
The neighbouring people believed that this river was 
none other than the Mseander of Asia Minor, which, 
emptying into the sea near Miletus, passed under the 
waters of the Mediterranean, and re-appeared in 
Achaia as the Asopus. (Pausan., 1. c.) —IV. A son 
of Oceanus, or, according to others, of Neptune, and 
god of the last-mentioned stream. His daughter 
iEgina was curried off by Jupiter, and the father, on 
seeking her, was struck by a thunderbolt, and driven 
back to his watery abode. Hence, say some of the 
ancient mythologists, coals were seen borne along on 
the surface of the Asopus. (Apollod., 3, 12, 5.— 
Heyne, ad loc.) 

Asparagium, a town of Illyricum, on the southern 
bank of the Apsus (or Ergent), about 34 miles south 
of Dyrrachium. (Cces., Bell. Civ., 4, 13.) 

Aspasia, I. a celebrated female, a native of Mile¬ 
tus, which place was early and long renowned as a 
school for the cultivation of female graces. She 
came as an adventurer to Athens, in the time of Per¬ 
icles, and, by the combined charms of her person, 
manners, and conversation, completely won the affec¬ 
tions and esteem of that distinguished statesman. 
Her station had freed her from the restraints which 
custom laid on the education of the Athenian matron ; 
and she had enriched her mind with accomplishments 
which were rare even among men. Her acquaintance 
with Pericles seems to have begun while he was still 
united to a lady of high birth, before the wife of the 
wealthy Hipponicus. We can hardly doubt that it 
was Aspasia who first disturbed this union, although 
it is said to have been dissolved by mutual consent. 
But, after parting from his wife, who had borne him 
two sons, Pericles attached himself to Aspasia by 
the most intimate relation which the law r s permitted 
him to contract with a foreign woman : and she ac¬ 
quired an ascendency over him which soon became 
notorious, and furnished the comic poets with an in¬ 
exhaustible fund of ridicule, and his enemies with a 
ground for serious charges. The Samian war was 
ascribed to her interposition on behalf of her birth¬ 
place ; and rumours were set afloat, which represented 
her as ministering to the vices of Pericles by the 
most odious and degrading of offices. There was 
perhaps as little foundation for this report as for a 
similar one in which Phidias was implicated (Plut., 
Vit. Pericl., c. 13); though among all the imputations 


216 




ASPASIA. 


ASS 


brought against Pericles, this is that which it is the 
most difficult clearly to refute. But we are inclined 
to believe that it may have arisen from the peculiar 
nature of Aspasia’s private circles, which, with a bold 
neglect of established usage, were composed not only 
of the most intelligent and accomplished men to be 
found at Athens, but also of matrons, who, it is said, 
were brought by their husbands to listen to her con¬ 
versation. This must have been highly instructive 
as well as brilliant, since Plato did not hesitate to de¬ 
scribe her as the preceptress of Socrates, and to as¬ 
sert that she both formed the rhetoric of Pericles, and 
composed one of his most admired harangues, the 
celebrated funeral oration. ( Plat., Menex., 4—vol. 6, 
p. 148, ed. Bekk.) The innovation, which drew wom¬ 
en of free birth and good condition into her company 
for such a purpose, must, even where the truth was 
understood, have surprised and offended many; and 
it was liable to the grossest misconstruction. And if 
her female friends were sometimes seen watching the 
progress of the works of Phidias, it was easy, through 
his intimacy with Pericles, to connect this fact with a 
calumny of the same kind. There was another ru¬ 
mour still more dangerous, which grew out of the 
character of the persons who were admitted to the so¬ 
ciety of Pericles and Aspasia. No persons were more 
welcome at the house of Pericles than such as were 
distinguished by philosophical studies, and especially 
by the profession of new philosophical tenets. The 
mere presence of Anaxagoras, Zeno, Protagoras, and 
other celebrated men, who were known to hold doc¬ 
trines very remote from the religious conceptions of 
the vulgar, was sufficient to make a circle in which 
they were familiar pass for a school of impiety. Such 
were the materials out of which the comic poet Her- 
mippus, laying aside the mask, formed a criminal pros¬ 
ecution against Aspasia. His indictment included 
two heads : an offence against religion, and that of 
corrupting Athenian women to gratify the passions 
of Pericles. The danger was averted ; but it seems 
that Pericles, who pleaded her cause, found need of 
his most strenuous exertions to save Aspasia, and 
that he even descended, in her behalf, to tears and en¬ 
treaties, which no similar emergency of his own could 
ever draw from him. ( Athen ., 12, p. 589.)—After the 
death of Pericles, Aspasia attached herself to a young 
man of obscure birth, named Lysicles, who rose 
through her influence in moulding his character to 
some of the highest employments in the republic. 
( Thirlwadis Greece , vol. 3, p. 87, seqq. — Compare 
Plut., Vit. Pencl. — Xen., Mem., 2, 6 — Max. Tyr., 
24, p. 461.— Haryocr., p. 79.— Aristid., 2, p. 131.)— 
II. Daughter of Hermotimus, and a native of Phocaea 
in Asia Minor. She was so remarkable for her beauty, 
that a satrap of Persia carried her off and made her a 
present to Cyrus the Younger. Her modest deport¬ 
ment soon won the affections of the prince, who lived 
with her as with a lawful spouse, and their union be¬ 
came celebrated throughout all Greece. Her name 
at first was Milto (vermilion), which had been given 
her in early life on account of the brilliancy of her 
complexion. Cyrus, however, changed it to Aspasia, 
calling her thus after the female companion of Peri¬ 
cles. {Vid. Aspasia I.) After the death of the prince, 
she fell into the hands of Artaxerxes, who for a long 
time vainly sought to gain her affections. She only 
yielded at last to his suit through absolute necessity. 
When the monarch declared his son Darius his suc¬ 
cessor, the latter, as it was customary in Persia for 
an heir to ask a favour of him who had declared him 
such, requested Aspasia of his father. Aspasia was 
accordingly sent for, and, contrary to the king’s ex¬ 
pectation, made choice of Darius. Artaxerxes there¬ 
fore gave her up, in accordance with established cus¬ 
tom, but soon took her away again, and made her a 
priestess of Diana at Ecbatana, or of the goddess 


whom the Persians called Anaitis. This station re¬ 
quired her to pass the rest of her days in chastity. 
{Plut., Vit. Artax.) Justin, however, says that Ar¬ 
taxerxes made her one of the priestesses of the sun. 
{Just., 10, 1 . — AZlian, V. H., 12,1 . — Plut., Vit. Artax. 
— Xen., Anab., 1 , 10. — Athen., 15, p. 576.) 

Aspendus, a city of Pamphylia, lying for the most 
part on a rocky precipice, on the banks of the river 
Eurymedon. {Arrian, 1, 27.— Zosim., 5, 16.— Scy- 
lax, p. 39.) Strabo makes it to have been well-peo¬ 
pled, and founded by an Argive colony.—On this lat¬ 
ter head, however, Scylax is silent. The city of As¬ 
pendus was a flourishing place even before the expe¬ 
dition of the younger Cyrus. {Xen., Anab., 1, 2, 12.) 
It was here that the Athenian patriot Thrasybulus 
terminated his life. Being off the coast, he levied 
contributions from the Aspendians, who, seizing an 
opportunity when he was on shore, surprised him in 
his tent at night, and slew him. {Xen., Hist. Gr., 
4, 8. — Corn. Nep., Thrasyb., c. 4.) Hierocles (p. 
682) makes mention of Aspendus under the name of 
Trimupolis, where we must read Primupolis. The 
site of Aspendus has not yet been explored, but it 
would easily be discovered by ascending the banks of 
the Eurymedon. {Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 2, p. 
125.) 

Asphaltites Lacus. Vid. Mare Mortuum. 

Aspis, I. a town of the Contestani, in Hispania Tar- 
raconensis, northwest of Ilicis, which lay above Car¬ 
thago Nova on the coast. It is now Aspe, a village 
in Valencia. —II. An island on the coast of Ionia, op¬ 
posite Lebedus. It was called by some Arconnesus. 
{Strab., 643.) The modern name is Carabash. —III. 
A town of Africa Propria. {Vid. Clupea.) 

Aspledon, a town of Boeotia, about twenty stadia 
to the northeast of Orchomenus. It derived its name 
from Aspledon, the son of Neptune, according to Pau- 
sanias (9, 38), and is mentioned by Homer. {II., 2, 
511.) The name, at a later period, was changed to 
Eudielos, from its advantageous situation. {Strabo, 
416.) Pausanias, however, affirms that in his time it 
was deserted on account of the scarcity of water. 
Dodwell is of opinion, that the site of Aspledon is 
marked by a tower, on an insulated hill, about two 
miles and a half to the northeast of Orchomenus, near 
the range of hills which enclose the lake and plain on 
that side. {DodwelVs Tour, vol. 1, p. 233.) 

Ass a, a town of Macedonia, on the Sinus Singiti- 
cus. ( Herodot ., 7, 122.) 

Assaracus, a Trojan prince, son of Tros by Callir- 
hoe. He was father to Capys, the father of Anchises. 
{Homer, II., 20, 239.) 

Assos, a town of Mysia, on the coast, west of Ad- 
ramyttium, founded by a colony from Lesbos. It was 
the birthplace of Cleanthes, the stoic ; and is mention¬ 
ed also in the Acts (20, 13). The modern site is call¬ 
ed Beriam Kalesi. {Leake, p. 128.) 

Assyria, a country originally of small extent, but 
afterward greatly enlarged. It was bounded, accord¬ 
ing to Ptolemy, on the north by part of Armenia and 
Mount Niphates ; on the west by the Tigris ; on the 
south by Susiana; and on the east by part of Media 
and the mountains Choatra and Zagros. The country 
within these limits is called by some of the ancients 
Adiabene, and by others Aturia or Atyria. Assyria 
is now called Kurdistan, from the descendants of the 
ancient Carduchi, who occupied thS northern parts. 
The Assyrian was one of the first and greatest empires 
of Asia. It is generally supposed to have been found¬ 
ed by Ashur or Assur, son of Shem, who went out 
of Shinar, driven out, as it appears, by Nimrod, and 
founded Nineveh, not long after Nimrod had estab¬ 
lished the Chaldean monarchy and fixed his residence 
at Babylon. This is the commonly received account 
of the origin of the Assyrian empire, founded on the 
Mosaic history as given in the text of our Bible ; but 

217 




AST 


AST 


Bochart adopts the marginal translation, which, in¬ 
stead of “ Oat of that land went forth Assur and build- 
ed Nineveh,” reads “ Out of that land he (Nimrod) 
went forth into Assur (or Assyria) and built Nineveh.” 
The opinion of Bochart is espoused by Faber, the con¬ 
verse by Michaelis and Bryant. The decision of the 
point is, indeed, a difficult one ; but, if weight of au¬ 
thority can avail, the question will be speedily deter¬ 
mined in favour of the marginal translation of the Bi¬ 
ble, which represents Nimrod as the founder of Nin¬ 
eveh. This translation is supported by the Targums 
of Onkelos and Jerusalem ; by Theophilus, bishop of 
Antioch, and Jerome, among the ancients ; and, in 
addition to Bochart and Faber, by Hyde, Marsham, 
Wells, the writers of the Universal History, and Hales, 
among the moderns. Admitting, then, the force of 
these united authorities, Nimrod, when driven from 
Babel, still attended by a strong party of military fol¬ 
lowers, founded a new empire at Nineveh ; which, as 
it was seated in a country almost exclusively peopled 
by the descendants of Ashur, was called Assyria. The 
crown of this new universal empire continued in the 
family of Nimrod for many ages, probably till its over¬ 
throw by Arbaces, which introduced a Median dynas¬ 
ty ; while Babel remained in a neglected state until 
the same era, when Nabonassar became its first king. 
Whether there was an uninterrupted line of kings 
from Assur or Nimrod to Sardanapalus, or not, is un¬ 
known.—According to Herodotus, an Assyrian empire 
lasted 520 years, from 1237 to 717. Catalogues of 
the Assyrian kings are found in Syncellus and Euse¬ 
bius. ( Mansford's Scripture Gazetteer , p. 38, seqq .— 
Compare Heeren's History of the States of Antiquity, 
p. 25, seqq., Bancroft's transl.) 

Astaboras, a river of .Ethiopia, falling into the 
Nile. It is now called the Tacazze. (Vid. Nilus.) 

Astacus, a city of Bithynia, on the Sinus Astace- 
nus, founded, according to Strabo (563), by the Mega- 
rians and Athenians. This account is confirmed by 
Memnon ( ap. Phot., p. 722), who says, that the Me- 
garians settled here in the 17th Olympiad, and that, 
some years after this, an Athenian colony joined them. 
Astacus was subsequently seized by Da 3 dalsus, a na¬ 
tive chief, who became the founder of the Bithynian 
monarchy. In the war waged by his successor Xipoe- 
tes with Lysimachus, Astacus was ruined, and the in¬ 
habitants were transferred by Nicomedes to the city 
which he founded and named, after himself, Nicome- 
dia. ( Strab., 1. c. — Steph. Byz., s. v. — Cramer's Asia 
Minor, vol. 1, p. 185.) 

Astapa, a town of Hispania Baetica, east of Hispa- 
lis, famed for its vigorous defence against the Romans, 
A.U.C. 546. It is now Estepa La Vieja. (Liv., 38, 
20 .) 

Astapus, a river of Ethiopia, falling into the Nile. 
It is now the Abawi, or Bahr-el-Azac, andflows through 
Nubia, rising in a place called Coloe Palus, now Bahr 
Dembea. This is the river which Bruce mistook for 
the Nile. {Joseph., Ant., 2, 5.— Strab., 565.) 

Astarte, a powerful divinity of Syria, the daugh¬ 
ter of Coelus and Terra. She had a famous temple at 
Hierapolis in Syria, which was served by 300 priests. 
“Astarte,” observes R. P. Knight, “ was precisely the 
same as the Cybele, or universal mother of the Phry¬ 
gians. She was, as Appian remarks {Bell. Parth.), 

‘ by some called Juno, by others Venus, and by others 
held up to be Nature, or the cause which produced the 
beginnings and seeds of things from Humidityso 
that she comprehended in one personification both 
these goddesses, who were, accordingly, sometimes 
blended in one symbolical figure by the very ancient 
Greek artists. Her statue at Hierapolis was various¬ 
ly composed, so as to signify many attributes, like 
those of the Ephesian Diana, Berecynthian Mother, 
and others of the kind. It was placed in the interior 
part of the temple, accessible only to priests of the 


higher order; and near it was the statue of the cor¬ 
responding male personification, called by the Greek 
writers Jupiter.” {Inquiry into the Symb. Lang., &c., 
<$> 218, seqq. — Class. Journ., No. 53, p. 74.)—(Jreuzer, 
however, thinks it more than probable that the legend 
of Astarte is purely astronomical, and may apply to 
the moon in connexion with the planet Venus. The 
name Astarte would seem also, according to him, to 
signify a star or planet. Compare the Persian astara, 
as suggested by Von Hammer {Fundgr. des Orients, 
vol. 3, p. 275), and the Greek uorpov. {Creuzer's 
Symbolik, par Guigniaut, vol. 2, p. 26.— - Lucian, de 
Dea Syria. — Cic., de Nat. D., 3, 23.) 

Aster, a skilful archer, one of the garrison of Me- 
thone in Macedonia, when that place was besieged by 
Philip. He aimed an arrow at the monarch, and de¬ 
prived him of an eye. On the arrow was inscribed, 
’Atjryp Qilhrmp JavuGipov Tre/airei (3e7,og, an Iambic 
trimeter, meaning, “ Aster sends a deadly shaft for 
Philip." The king shot back an arrow with the fol¬ 
lowing inscription, ’Aorepa ^iltmxoq, yv Aa6y, npepy- 
cerai, another Iambic trimeter, implying, “ Philip will 
suspend Aster" (on the cross) “ if he take him." When 
the place surrendered, Aster was delivered up to the 
conqueror, who kept his word, and crucified him. 
{Suidas, s. v. Kdpavoq. — Plut., Parall., p. 307.— Diod. 
Sic., 16, 34.) Plutarch calls him an Olynthian ; but 
Lucian, a native of Amphipolis. {Lucian, Quomodo 
Hist. sit. conscrib., 38.) These two writers may be 
reconciled by supposing him to have been an Amphi- 
politan, serving in the Olynthian auxiliaries of the 
Methonians. {Palmer, Exercit., p. 557.) 

Asteria, I. a daughter of Cceus (KoZof), one of the 
Titans, and Phcebe, daughter of Uranus and Ge (Cce- 
lus and Terra). She and Latona were sisters. As¬ 
teria married Perses, son of Crius. According to a 
later fable, she fled from the suit of Jove, and, fling¬ 
ing herself down from heaven to the sea, became the 
island afterward named Delos. Callimachus {H. in 
Del., 37), who relates this, makes her to have come 
down like a stay {doTepi iGy), in allusion to her name 
Asteria {Starry). Another legend, however, stated 
that she took the form of a quail {6prvt;.- — Apollod., 1, 
4, 1-— Hygin., 53.— Serv. ad Adn., 3, 73), whence the 
isle was called Ortygia. This identification of Delos 
and Ortygia appears to have been later than the time 
of Pindar, who {Nem., 1, 4) calls them sisters. The 
whole fable seems to owe its origin to the affinity of 
sense between the words Asteria and Delos. {Keight- 
ley's Mythology, p. 81, not .)—II. One of the daugh¬ 
ters of Danaus, who married Chsetus, son ofEgyptus. 
{Apollod., 2, 1, 4.) 

Asterion, I. a rivulet of Argolis, rising on the slope 
of Mount Euboea, near the temple of the Argive Juno, 
and soon after disappearing among the rocks. {Pau- 
san., 2, 17.)—II. (called also Asterius) A king of Crete, 
descended from Deucalion, who married Europa, and 
brought up the children whom she previously had 
from her union with Jupiter. He died without issue, 
and was succeeded by Minos. {Apollod., 1, 2, 2, seqq. 
— Schol. ad II., 12, 397.) According to another ac¬ 
count, he was the son of Minos, and was slain by 
Theseus, having been the most powerful competitor 
with whom that hero ever had to contend. ( Pau - 
san., 2, 31.) Lycophron, again {v. 1301), makes him 
a leader of the forces of Minos. (Compare Heyne, ad 
Apollod., 1. c. — Meurs., Cret., 3, 2.— Hock, Kret., 2, 
48.) 

Asterop^a, daughter of Deion, king of Phocis, or 
more probably Phthiotis. {Apollod., 1, 9, 3.— Heyne, 
ad loc., not. crit.) 

Asterope, daughter of Cebren, and wife of Esa- 
cus. {Apollod., 3, 12, 5.) Some MSS. of Apollodo- 
rus read Sterope ( HrepoTvy ).—For other names, some¬ 
times written Agterope and Asteropes, vid. Sterope 
and Steropes. 




AST 


AST 


Astraea, the goddess of Justice. Her origin is dif¬ 
ferently given. She is either a Titan or a descend¬ 
ant of the Titans ; being in the former case the daugh¬ 
ter of Jove and Themis ( Hesiod, Theog., 135, 191, 
seqq.), or of Astraeus and Hemera, or Astraeus and 
Aurora (Eos). When the Titans took up arms 
against Jupiter, she left her father Astraeus, who, as 
the son of a Titan, fought on their side, and descended 
to earth, and mingled with the human race. This in¬ 
tercourse with mortals continued during the golden 
age, but was interrupted when that of silver ensued, 
for, during this latter age, she came down from the 
mountains, only amid the shades of evening, unseen by, 
and refraining from all communion with, men. When 
the brazen age commenced she fled to the skies, hav¬ 
ing left the earth the last of the immortals. Jove there¬ 
upon made her the constellation Virgo, among the 
signs of the zodiac. ( Arat., Phczn., 102, seqq. — Schol. 
Theon., ad loc. — Hesiod, Op. el D., 254.— Find., 01., 
13, 6. — Orph., H., 61. — Hygin., Astron., 2, 25. — 
Eratoslh., Cat., 9.) As the constellation Virgo, she 
is identical with Erigone, having a place in the zodiac 
between the Scorpion and the Lion. On the old star- 
tables, or celestial planispheres, the Scorpion extended 
over two signs, filling with its claws the space be¬ 
tween itself and Virgo. (Foss, ad Virg., Georg., 1, 
33.— Erastosth., Cat., 7.— Ovid, Met., 2, 197.) Later 
astronomers, as we are told by Theon (ad Arat., 89), 
named the sign occupied by the claws of Scorpio the 
Balance (Libra), and this balance Astraea (Virgo) held 
in her hand as a symbol of justice. Others, however, 
as in the case of the Farnese marble, made it the mark 
of the equality of the day and night at the aequinox. It 
is very probable that this latter explanation was the ear¬ 
lier one of the two, especially as Astraea ranked among 
the Horae, and that the moral idea succeeded the physi¬ 
cal. ( Vollmer, Worterb. der Mythol., p. 354. — Gru¬ 
ber, Worterb. der Altclass. Mythol., vol. 1, p. 666. — 
Ideler, Sternnamen, p. 169.) 

Astraeus, I. a son of the Titan Crius and Eurybia 
the daughter of Pontus. Hyginus, however, makes 
him the offspring of Terra and Tartarus, and brother 
of the giants Enceladus, Pallas, &c. ( Hyg., Prcef, 

p. 3, ed. Munk.) He was the father of Astraea, men¬ 
tioned in the preceding article, and begat also by Eos 
(Aurora) the winds Boreas, Notus, Zephyrus, and the 
stars of heaven. ( Hes., Theog., 378.) Some assign 
him also a son named Argestes, but this is merely an 
epithet of Zephyrus, meaning “ the swift.” Astraeus 
united with the Titans against Jupiter, and was hurl¬ 
ed along with them to Tartarus. (Scrv. ad JEn., 1, 
138.) — II. A river of Macedonia, running by Beroea, 
and falling into the Erigonus, a tributary of the Axius. 
(JElian, Hist. An., 15, 1.) It is now thought to be the 
Vostritza. (Consult, however, as to the course of this 
river, the remarks of Cramer, Ancient Greece, vol. 1, 
p. 222, who makes it fall into the lake Ludias. — 
Compare also Bischojf und Moller, Worterb. der Geogr., 
p. 123.) 

Astura, a small river and village of Latium, near 
the coast, below Antium. In the neighbourhood was 
a villa of Cicero, to which he retired to vent his grief 
for the loss of his beloved daughter, and where he 
thought of raising a monument to her memory. (Ep. 
ad Att., 12, 19.) When proscribed by Antony, he 
withdrew to this same place from Tusculum, and 
sought escape from thence, intending to join Brutus 
in Macedonia. (Plut., Vit. Cic.) Astura seems to 
have been also the residence of Augustus, during an 
illness, with which he was seized towards the close 
of his life (Suet., Aug., 98), and also of Tiberius 
(Suet., Tib., 72). A decisive battle took place on 
the banks of the river Astura, between the Romans 
and some of the Latin states, which led to the com¬ 
plete subjugation of the latter. (Liv., 8, 13. — Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 89.) 


Astures, a people of Hispania Tarraconensis, lying 
west and southwest of the Cantabri. They occupied 
the eastern half of modern Asturias, the greater part 
of the kingdom of Leon, and the northern half of Pa- 
lencia. Their capital was Asturica Augusta, now As- 
torga. (Mannert, Geogr., vol. 1, p. 363.) 

Astyages, son of Cyaxares, was the last king of 
Media. His reign continued from 595 to 560 B.C. 
He married Aryenis, daughter of Alyattes, and sister 
of Croesus, by whom he had Mandane. Fearing, from 
a dream which he had, that he would be dethroned by 
a grandson, he married his daughter to Cambyses, a 
Persian, of a good family, but peaceful disposition, and 
one whom he himself thought inferior to a Mede even of 
moderate condition. A second dream, equally alarm¬ 
ing with the first, induced him to send to Persia for his 
daughter, who was near her delivery, and, when she 
brought forth a son, he gave the infant into the hands 
of an individual named Harpagus, with strict orders 
to put it to death. The latter, however, disobeying 
these injunctions, gave the child to one of the king’s 
herdsmen to expose, and the wife of this man, having 
just been delivered of a dead infant, took the son of 
Mandane in its place, and caused her husband to ex¬ 
pose their own inanimate offspring. When Harpagus 
therefore sent some trusty persons to see whether the 
herdsman had executed his orders, the dead child ofthe 
latter was seen by them lying exposed, and was mis¬ 
taken, of course, for the offspring of Mandane. The 
child thus preserved grew up, and became Cyrus the 
Great, dethroning Astyages according to the import of 
the two dreams. Astyages was in this way deprived 
of his crown after a reign of about 35 years. (Vid. 
Cyrus.) He appears to have been of a cruel and vin¬ 
dictive disposition. (Vid. Harpagus.)—According to 
the account of Xenophon, in his historical romance of 
the Cyropaedia, Astyages and his grandson lived on 
terms of the closest friendship and intimacy, and the 
former left, besides a daughter, a son named Cyaxares, 
who succeeded the father, and, dying without issue, left 
the crown to Cyrus. (Herod., 1, 46, 73, &c.— Xen., 
Cyrop .) Nothing is said in Herodotus of the end of 
Astyages. Ctesias, however, informs us, that, after 
having been treated kindly by Cyrus, he was sent for 
by the latter to come to Persia, but that the eunuch 
charged with this commission led him astray in a desert 
place, where he perished from hunger and thirst. 
(Ctes., Pers., 5.) It is probable this was done by the 
secret orders of Cyrus, although Ctesias states that 
the eunuch was cruelly punished. ( Bahr, ad Ctes., 1. 
c .)—There is great discrepance in the form of this 
name, as given by the ancient writers ; Herodotus, and 
most of the Greeks, following his authority, write ’Ao- 
rvdyyg. Ctesias, on the other hand, gives ’A arviydg, 
while Diodorus, citing Ctesias himself, has ’Aorrudag 
(2, 34). Compare the remarks of Wesseling (ad Diod., 
1. c.), Marsham (Can. Chron., p. 528), Bahr (ad Ctes., 
Assyr., 19), and Beck (Weltgesch., vol. 1, p. 638). 

Astyanax, a son of Hector and Andromache. Hec¬ 
tor had called him Scamandrius, after the river Scaman- 
der, but the Trojans bestowed on him, out of compliment 
to his father, their great defender, the name of Asty¬ 
anax, or “Prince of the city.” (Horn., II., 22, 651.) 
He was very young when the Greeks besieged Troy; 

; and when the city was taken, his mother saved him in 
her arms from the flames. After the capture of the 
city, the young prince excited great uneasiness among 
the Greeks, in consequence of a prediction by Calchas, 
that Astyanax, if permitted to live, would avenge the 
death of Hector, and raise Troy in fresh splendour from 
: its ruins. Andromache, dreading the fury of the vic- 
j torious Greeks, concealed Astyanax in the recesses of 
Hector’s tomb ; but his retreat was soon discovered by 
Ulysses, who, according to some, precipitated the un- 
| happy boy from the battlements of Ilium. This cruelty 
I is by Euripides ascribed to Menelaus, and by Pausanias 

219 





ATA 


ATA 


(10, 25), on the authority of Lesches, to Pyrrhus. 
Racine, in his “ Andromaque,” has indulged in the 
poetic license of making Astyanax survive the fall of 
Troy, and accompany his mother to Epirus. (Con¬ 
sult Racine, Prcf. de VAndrom.) A beautiful lament 
over the corpse of Astyanax; from the lips of Hecuba, 
may be found in the Troades of Euripides (1146-1196), 
and also some fine lines, in the earlier part of the same 
play, where Andromache is taking leave of her son 
(742 781). 

Astydamas, an Athenian tragic writer, son of Mor- 
simus, and grandson of Philocles, the nephew of^Es- 
chylus. He studied under Isocrates, and composed, 
according to Suidas, two hundred and forty tragedies ; 
a rather improbable number. He lived sixty years. 
His first exhibition was B.C. 398. ( Diod. Sic., 14, 

43.— Theatre of the Greeks , 2 d ed., p. 158.) 

AstydamIa, daughter of Amyntor, king of Orcho- 
menos in Baeetia, married Acastus, son of Pelias, who 
was king of Iolcos. She is called by some Hippolyte. 

( Vid. Acastus.) 

Astypal^ea, one of the Cyclades, southeast of the 
island of Cos. It is eighty-eight miles in circuit, and 
distant, as Pliny ( H. N., 4, 12) reports, one hundred 
and twenty-five miles from Cadistus in Crete. Stra¬ 
bo informs us it contained a town of the same name. 
It is said that hares having been introduced into this 
island from Anaphe, it was so overrun with them 
that the inhabitants were under the necessity of con¬ 
sulting the oracle, which advised their hunting them 
with dogs : in one year six thousand are said to have 
been caught. ( Hegesandrius , Delph. ap. Athen., 9, 
63.) According to Cicero, divine honours were ren¬ 
dered here to Achilles. It was called Pyrrha when 
the Carians possessed it, and afterward Pylsea. Its 
name Astypalaea, is said to have been derived from 
that of a sister of Europa. It was also called Oeuv 
Tpdrre^a, or the Table of the Gods, because its soil 
was fertile, and almost enamelled with flowers. It is 
now Stanpalia. (Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 3, p. 
416.)—II. A promontory of Caria, near the city of 
Myndus, now the peninsula of Pasha Liman. (Cra¬ 
mer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 176.) 

Asychis, a king of Egypt, who, according to He¬ 
rodotus (2, 136), during a scarcity of money, enacted 
a law to the following effect: That any man, by giving 
as a pledge the body of his father, might borrow money; 
but that, in case he afterward refused to pay the debt, 
he should neither be buried in the same place with his 
father, nor in any other, nor have the liberty of bury¬ 
ing the dead body of any of his friends. This law 
was based on the popular belief, that those deprived 
of the rites of sepulchre were not permitted to enter 
the peaceful realms of Osiris. Hence it was a statute, 
in fact, of extraordinary severity. (Compare Zoega, 
de Obelise., p. 292.) Herodotus also informs us, that 
this same monarch, desiring to outdo all his predeces¬ 
sors, erected a pyramid of brick for his monument, 
with the following inscription : “ Do not despise me 
in comparison with the pyramids of stone, which I 
excel as much as Jupiter surpasses the other gods ; for, 
dipping down to the bottom of the lake with long poles, 
and then collecting the mire that stuck to them, men 
made bricks and formed me in this manner.” (He¬ 
rod., 2, 136.) The pyramid here referred to is thought 
to be the same with the one seen at the present day 
near El Lahun, not far from the beginning of the ca¬ 
nal that leads to Medinat-el-Fayoum. (Descript, de 
VEgypt, livrais. iii., vol. 2, c. 17, p. 23.) — Diodorus 
Siculus does not agree with Herodotus. He does not 
mention Asychis, or his successor Anysis, but puts in 
their place Bocchoris. Larcher considers him to be 
in error. (Larcher, ad Herod., 1. c .—Compare Beck, 
Anleit. zu Weltgesch., vol. 1, p. 692, 718.) 

Atabulus, a wind which was frequent in Apulia, 
and very destructive to the productions of the earth, 
220 


which it scorched or withered up. It is the same 
with the modern Sirocco. (Horat., Scrm., 1, 5, 78.) 
Both Seneca (Qucest. Nat., 5, 17) and Pliny (17, 36) 
make mention of this wind : the latter remarks con¬ 
cerning it: “ Hie enim, sijlavit circa brumam, frigore 
exurit arefaciens, ut nullis postea solibus recreari pos- 
sint." Etymologists derive the name from dry and 
j3(iXXo. (Nork, Etymol. Handwort., vol. 1, p. 84.) 

Atabyris, or Atabyron, I. a mountain in Rhodes, 
the highest in the island, where Jupiter had a temple, 
whence he was surnamed Atabyrius. Ancient fables 
speak of brazen oxen at this place, which, by their bel- 
lowings, announced approaching calamity. The mean¬ 
ing of the fable is said to have been, that the priests 
of this temple pretended to be possessed of the spirit 
of prophecy. (Pind., 01., 7, 87, ed. Bbckh. — Schol., 
ad loc. — Strab., 655. — Steph. Byz., s. v. ' Arabvpov. 
— Apollod., 3, 2.) The name is connected with the 
early traditions respecting the Telchines, and would 
seem to have come into Rhodes from Phoenicia, being 
in all probability derived from the Oriental Tabor. 
(Vid. Atabyrion.) Ritter indulges in some curious 
and profound speculations on the subject. ( Vorhalle, 
p. 339, seqq.) — II. A mountain in Sicily, the name 
having been transferred to this island from Rhodes. 
(Steph. Byz., s. v. ’Ardbvpov. — Cluver., Sic. Ant., p. 
488. — Meurs., Rhod., 1, 8.— Goller, Syrac., p. 294.) 
—III. A city of Persia. (Steph. Byz.) 

Atabyrion, a fortified town on the summit of a 
mountain in Galilsea Inferior. Both the town and 
mountain answer to the Thabor of Scripture. Polybius 
(5, 70) gives an account of the capture of the place by 
Antiochus the Great. The Septuagint version writes 
the name ’IraSvpiov (Hos., 5, 1), and so also Jose¬ 
phus (Bell. Jud., 4, 1, 8, &c.). Reiske thinks, that 
the initial vowel in the Greek name arises from the 
Hebrew article ; but if this were so, the Greek trans¬ 
lator of Hosea, and Josephus also, being both He¬ 
brews, would have written ’Arabvpiov, not ’I rabvpiov. 
Polybius describes Mount Thabor as a round or 
breast-like hill (2 otyog gaoroeidyg), while Dr. Clarke 
gives it a conical form. According to the latter, it is 
entirely detached from any neighbouring mountain, 
and stands upon one side of the great plain of Esdra- 
elon. (Clarke's Travels, vol. 4, p. 239, Lond. ed., 
1817.) 

AtacIni, a people of Gallia Narbonensis, south and 
southeast of the Volscss Tectosages. They inhabited 
the banks of the Atax, or Aude, whence their name. 
Their capital was Narbo, now Narbonne. (Manncrt, 
Gcogr., vol. 2, p. 63.) 

Atalanta, daughter of Iasos or Iasion, a descend¬ 
ant of Areas and Clymene the daughter of Minyas. 
Her father reigned in Arcadia. He was anxious for 
male offspring, and, on his wdfe’s bringing forth a fe¬ 
male, he exposed the babe in the mountains, where she 
was suckled by a bear, and at last found by some hunt¬ 
ers, who named her Atalanta, and reared her. She 
followed the chase, and was alike distinguished for beau¬ 
ty and courage. The centaurs, Rhcecos and Hylasos, 
attempting her honour, perished by her arrow's. She 
took part in the Argonautic expedition ; was at the Cal- 
ydonian hunt (vid. Meleager); and at the funeral 
games of Pelias she won the prize in wrestling from 
Peleus. (Apollod,, 3, 9, 2. — Callim., 3, 215. — JEli- 
an, V. Hist., 13, 1.) Atalanta w 7 as afterward recog¬ 
nised by her parents. Her father wishing her to mar¬ 
ry, she consented, but only on condition that her suit¬ 
ors should run a race with her in the following man¬ 
ner : They were to run without arms, and she was to 
carry a dart in her hand. Her lovers were to start 
first, and whoever arrived at the goal before her would 
be made her husband; but all those whom she over¬ 
took were to be killed by the dart with which she had 
armed herself. As she was almost invincible in run¬ 
ning, many of her suitors perished in the attempt, and 





ATA 


ATH 


their heads were fixed round the place of contest, 
when Meilanion, her cousin, offered himself as a com¬ 
petitor. Venus had presented him with three golden 
apples from the garden of the Hesperides, or, accord¬ 
ing to others, from an orchard in Cyprus ; and, as 
soon as he had started in the course, he artfully threw 
down the apples at some distance one from the other. 
While Atalanta, charmed at the sight, stopped to 
gather the apples, Meilanion won the race. Atalanta 
became his wife, and they had a son named Partheno- 
pseus. It is added, that while hunting together on 
one occasion, they profaned the temenos, or sacred 
enclosure of Jove, with their love, for which offence 
they were turned into lions. ( Apollod., l. c., where for 
py d-ypevovrag we must read, with Canter, avv6y- 
pevovrag. — Theognis, 1279, seqq. — Hygin., Fab., 185. 

— Ovid, Met., 10, 560, seqq. — Schol ad Thcocr., 3, 
40. — Musceas, 153.) Other authorities, however, 
make the name of the victor Hippomenes, and say, 
that on his neglecting to give thanks to Venus for her 
aid, she inspired him with a sudden passion, which led 
to the profanation of the sanctuary of Jove, and the 
transformation of himself and his bride. {Ovid, l.c. 

— Schol. ad Theocr. 1. c .) According to other ac¬ 
counts, Atalanta was the daughter of Schoenus, son 
of Athamas, and therefore a Boeotian. ( Hesiod, ap. 
Apollod., 1. c. — Ovid, l. c. — Hygin., 1. c.) There is 
no necessity for supposing two of the same name, as 
has usually been done. They are both connected with 
the Minyans, and are only examples of different ap¬ 
propriations of the same legend. {Keightley's My¬ 
thology, p. 427, seq.) 

Atarantes, a people of Africa, ten days’ journey 
from the Garamantes. There was in their country a 
hill of salt, with a fountain issuing out of the summit. 
{Herod., 4, 184.) — All the MSS. have V A r'Xavreg {At- 
lantcs ), which Salmasius {in Solin., p. 292) first alter¬ 
ed to ’A rapavreg, an emendation now almost univer¬ 
sally adopted. Rennell thinks, that the people meant 
here are the same with the Hammanicntes of Pliny 
(5, 5). What Pliny, however, says of the Atlantes 
suits the case better (5, 8). Castiglioni makes the 
Atlantes and Atarantes the same people. {Mem. 
Geogr. et Numism., &c., Paris, 1826.) Heeren, on 
the other hand, places the Atarantes in the vicinity of 
Tegeny, the last city of Fezzan. {Ideen, vol. 2, pt. 
1, p. 239.) Herodotus says, that the Atarantes were 
destitute of names for individuals ; and they cursed 
the sun as he passed'over their heads, because he con¬ 
sumed both the inhabitants and the country with his 
scorching heat. {Herod., 1. c.) 

Atarbechis, a city of Egypt, sacred to Venus, in 
one of the small islands of the Delta, called Prosopitis. 
The name of the city is said to be derived from Atar 
or Athar {Etymol. Mag., s. v. "A6vp), which signified 
“Venus,” and Bek, “a city;” as Balbeck, “the city 
of the Sun,” called by the Greeks Heliopolis. Baki 
is still found in the same sense among the Copts, and 
in their language a is pronounced as e. Strabo and 
Piiny call the city Aphroditespolis. {Herod., 2, 41.— 
Larcher, ad Herodot., 1. c.) 

Atargatis or Atergatis, an Eastern deity, the 
same with the Great Goddess of Syria. She was 
worshipped principally at Mabog or Bambyce (Edessa), 
and at a later period at Hierapolis. Strabo informs us 
that her true name was Athara. (Compare Xanth., 
Lyd. ap. Hesych., s. v. ’A rrayddy. — Creuzer, Fragm. 
hist. Grcec. antiquiss., p. 183.)—Ctesias calls her Der- 
ceto. It is probable that this latter name is only a cor¬ 
ruption of Atargatis or Atergatis, and that these three 
appellations designate one and the same divinity. Lu¬ 
cian, however {de Dea Syria, c. 14. — Op., ed. Bip., 
vol. 9, p. 96), distinguishes expressly between the 
goddess worshipped at Hierapolis and the Phoenician 
Derceto, stating that the latter was represented with 
the lower extremities like those of a fish, and the for¬ 


mer under a figure entirely female. Creuzer seeks to 
reconcile this difficulty by supposing that Atergatis 
and Derceto, though originally the same, were at a 
subsequent period represented under forms that differ¬ 
ed from each other. ( Symbolik, par Guigniaut, vol. 
2, p. 28, seqq.) 

Atarneus, I. a town of Mysia, opposite to Lesbos. 
It was ceded to the Chians by the Persians, in the 
reign of Cyrus, for having delivered into their hands 
the Lydian Pactyas. {Herod., 1, 160.) The land 
around Atarneus wa's rich, and productive in corn. 
{Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 133.) —II. A place 
near Pitane, in Mysia, and called “ Atarneus under 
Pitane,” to distinguish it from the town of the same 
name mentioned in the previous article. It was oppo¬ 
site the island of Elseussa. The bricks made here 
are said to be so light as to float in the water. {Stra.b., 
614.) 

Atax, a river of Gallia Narbonensis, rising in the 
Pyrenean mountains, and falling into the Lacus Ru- 
brensis or Rubresus, at the city of Narbo (now Nar- 
bonne), for which the lake served as a harbour, an out¬ 
let or canal being cut to the Mediterranean. The 
Atax (otherwise called Adax) is now the Aude, and 
the modern name of the lake is Vetang de Sigcan. 
{Plin., 3, 4.— Mela, 2, 5.— Lucan, 1, 403.) 

Ate, the goddess of evil, and daughter of Jupiter. 
When Jupiter had been deceived by Juno into making 
the rash oath that rendered Hercules subject to the 
command of Eurystheus, the monarch of the skies laid 
the whole blame on Ate, and, having seized her by 
the hair, flung her to earth, declaring with an oath that 
she should never return to Olympus. Thenceforward 
she took up her abode among men. Her feet, accord¬ 
ing to Homer, are tender, and she therefore does not 
walk on the ground, but on the heads of mortals (/car’ 
dvdpiov upaara (3aivei). The name is derived from 
aopai (Poetic duopai), to injure, or, to adopt the lan¬ 
guage of Homer, "Ary, y redvrag ddrai. {II., 19, 91, 
seqq.) 

Atella, a town of Campania, to the west of Sues- 
sula, the ruins of which, as Holstenius reports {Adnot., 
p. 260), are still to be seen near the village of St. El- 
pidio or St. Arpino,.& bout two miles from the town 
of Aversa. Atella is known to have been an Oscan 
city, and it has acquired some importance in the histo¬ 
ry of Roman literature, from the circumstance of the 
name and origin of the farces called Fabulce Atellancz 
being derived from thence. We are told that these 
comic representations were so much relished by the 
Roman people, that the actors were allowed privile¬ 
ges not usually extended to that class of persons ; but 
these amusements having at length given rise to va¬ 
rious excesses, were prohibited under the reign of Ti¬ 
berius, and the players banished from Italy. {Liv., 
7, 2.— Strabo, 233.— Tacit., Ann., 4, 14.) Atella, in 
consequence of having joined the Carthaginians after 
the battle of Cannse, was reduced, with several other 
Campanian towns, to the condition of a prefecture on 
the surrender of Capua to the Romans. {Liv., 22, 
61.— Id., 26, 34.) Subsequently, however, it is men¬ 
tioned by Cicero as a municipal town {Ep. ad Fam., 
13, 7), and Frontinus states that it was colonized by 
Augustus. {Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 208.) 

Athamanes, a rude mountaineer race of Epirus, 
whose territory lay between Pindus on the east and 
a parallel chain on the west. They were at first of 
little importance, either from their numbers or territo¬ 
rial extent, but they subsequently acquired great pow¬ 
er and influence by the conquest or extirpation of 
several small Thessalian and Epirotic tribes, and they 
appear in history as valuable allies to the Hiltolians, 
and formidable enemies to the sovereigns of Macedon. 
{Strab., 427. — Liv., 33, 13. — Id., 36, 9.) The rude 
habits of this people may be inferred from the custom 
that prevailed among them, of assigning to their fo- 

221 





ATH 


ATH 




males the active labours of husbandry, while the males 
were chiefly employed in tending their flocks. ( He- 
rad. Pont., Frag. — Cramers Anc. Greece , vol. 2, p. 
95, scqq.) 

Athamas, king of Thebes, in Bceotia, was son of 
riEolus. He married Nephele, and by her had Phrixus 
and Helle. Some time after, having divorced Neph¬ 
ele, he married Ino, the daughter of Cadmus, by 
whom he had two sons, Learchus and Melicerta. Ino 
became jealous of the children of Nephele, because 
they were to ascend their father^ throne in preference 
to her own ; therefore she resolved to destroy them ; 
but they escaped from her fury to Colchis on a golden 
ram. (Vid. Argonautse.) Athamas, through the en¬ 
mity of Juno towards Ino, who had suckled the infant 
Bacchus, was afterward seized with madness. In his 
phrensy he shot his son Learchus with an arrow, or, 
as others say, dashed him against a rock. Ino fled 
with her other son, and, being closely pursued by her 
furious husband, sprang with her child from the cliff 
of Moluris, near Corinth, into the sea. The gods took 
pity on her, and made her a sea-goddess, under the 
name of Leucothea, and Melicerta a sea-god, under 
that of Palemon. Athamas subsequently, in accord¬ 
ance with an oracle, settled in a place where he built 
the town of Athamantia. This was in Thessaly, in the 
Phthiotic district. Here he married Themisto, daugh¬ 
ter of Hypseus, and had by her four children, Leucon, 
Erythroe, Schoeneus, and Ptoos. ( Apollod ., 1, 9.) 
Such is the account of Apollodorus. There are, how- 

tale in different writers, 

( Keightley's Mythology , 

Athamantiades, a patronymic of Melicerta, Phrix¬ 
us, or Helle, children of Athamas. (Ovid, Met., 13, 
319.) 


ever, many variations in the 
especially in the tragic poets, 
p. 333.) 


Athanasius, a celebrated Christian bishop of the 
fourth century. He was a native of Egypt, and a 
deacon of the church of Alexandrea under Alexander 
the bishop, whom he succeeded in his dignity A.D. 
326. Previous to his obtaining this high office he had 
been private secretary to Alexander, and had also led 
for some time an ascetic life with the renowned an¬ 
chorite St. Anthony. Alexander had also taken him 
to the council at Nice, where he gained the highest 
esteem of the fathers by the talent which he dis¬ 
played in the Arian controversy. He had a great 
share in the decrees passed here, and thereby drew 
on himself the hatred of the Arians. On his ad¬ 
vancement to the prelacy he dedicated all his time 
and talents to the defence of the doctrine of the Trini¬ 
ty, and resolutely refused the request of Constantine 
for the restoration of Arius to the Catholic communion. 
In revenge for this refusal, the Arian party brought 
several accusations against him before the emperor. 
Of these he was acquitted in the first instance; 
but, on a new charge of having detained ships at Alex¬ 
andrea, laden with corn for Constantinople, either from 
conviction or policy, he was found guilty and banished 
to Gaul. Here he remained an exile eighteen months, 
or, as some accounts say, upward of two years, his see 
in the mean time being unoccupied. On the death of 
Constantine he was recalled, and restored to his func¬ 
tions by Constantius ; but the Arian party made hew 
complaints against him, and he was condemned by 90 
Arian bishops assembled at Antioch. On the opposite 
side, 100 orthodox bishops, assembled at Alexandrea, 
declared him innocent; and Pope Julius confirmed 
this sentence, in conjunction with more than 300 
bishops assembled at Sardis from the East and West. 
In consequence of this, he returned a second time 
to his diocese. But when Constans, emperor of the 
West, died, and Constantius became master of the 
whole empire, the Arians again ventured to rise up 
against Athanasius. They condemned him in the coun¬ 
cils of Arles and Milan, and, as the worthy patriarch 
222 


refused to listen to anything but an express command 
of the emperor, when he was one day preparing to cele¬ 
brate a festival in the church, a body of soldiers sudden¬ 
ly rushed in to make him prisoner. But the surround¬ 
ing priests and monks placed him in security. Atha¬ 
nasius, displaced for a third time, fled into the deserts 
of Egypt. His enemies pursued him even here, and 
set a price on his head. To relieve the hermits, who 
dwelt in these solitary places, and who wmuld not be¬ 
tray his retreat, from suffering on his account, he went 
into those parts of the desert which were entirely unin¬ 
habited. He w r as followed by a faithful servant, who, 
at the risk of his life, supplied him with the means of 
subsistence. In this undisturbed spot Athanasius com¬ 
posed many writings, full of eloquence, to strengthen 
the faith of the believers or expose the falsehoods of 
his enemies. When Julian the apostate ascended the 
throne, he allowed the orthodox bishops to return to 
their churches. Athanasius, therefore, returned after 
an absence of six years. The mildness which he ex¬ 
ercised towards his enemies was imitated in Gaul, 
Spain, Italy, and Greece, and restored peace to the 
church. But this peace w'as interrupted by the com¬ 
plaints of the heathen, whose temples the zeal of Atha¬ 
nasius kept always empty. They excited the emperor 
against him, and he was obliged to fly to the Thebais 
to save his life. The death of the emperor and the 
accession of Jovian again brought him back ; but, 
Valens becoming emperor eight months after, and the 
Arians recovering their superiority, he was once more 
compelled to fly. He concealed himself in the tomb of 
his father, where he remained four months, until Valens, 
moved by the pressing entreaties and threats of the 
Alexandreans, allowed him to return. From this pe¬ 
riod he remained undisturbed in his office till he died, 
A.D. 373.—Of the 46 years of his official life, he spent 
20 in banishment, and the greater part of the remain¬ 
der in defending the Nicene Creed. Athanasius is one 
of the greatest men of which the church can boast. 
His deep mind, his noble heart, his invincible courage, 
his living faith, his unbounded benevolence, sincere 
humility, lofty eloquence, and strictly virtuous life, 
gained the honour and love of all. His writings are 
on polemical, historical, and moral subjects. The po¬ 
lemical treat chiefly of the mysterious doctrines of the 
Trinity, the incarnation of Christ, and the divinity of 
the Holy Spirit. The historical ones are of the great¬ 
est importance for the history of the church. In all his 
writings, the style is distinguished, considering the age 
in which they were produced, for clearness and mod¬ 
eration. His apology, addressed to the Emperor Con¬ 
stantine, is a master-piece. The Creed which bears 
his name is now generally allowed not to have been 
his. Dr.Waterland supposes it w T as made by Hilary, 
bishop of Arles. It was first printed in Greek in 1540, 
and several times afterward to 1671. It has been 
questioned whether this Creed was ever received by 
the Greek and Oriental churches. In America, the 
episcopal church has rejected it. As to its matter, it 
is given as a summary of the true orthodox faith : un¬ 
happily, however, it has proved a fruitful source of un¬ 
profitable controversy.—The best edition of his works 
is that of Montfaucon, Paris, 1698, 3 vols. fol. As a 
supplement to this may be added the second vol. of 
the Bibliotheca Patrum, from the same editor, 1706. 
(Encycloy. Americ., vol. 1, p. 440, seqq.) 

Athena, the name of Minerva among the Greeks 
(’Adrjvu and ’Adijvy). 

Athene, I. the celebrated capital of Attica, found¬ 
ed, according to the common account, by Cecrops, 
1550 B.C. The town was first erected on the sum¬ 
mit of a high rock, probably as a protection against at¬ 
tacks from the sea. The primitive name of this early 
settlement was Cranae, from Cranaus, as is said, from 
whom the Pelasgi took the name of Cranai, and all 
Attica that of Cranae. At a later period it was called 




ATHENE. 


ATHENE. 


Cecropia, from Cecrops ; and finally Athenae by Er«> 
thonius, from its being under theprotecton of Minerva 
or Athene (’A Oiyvy). A distinction was also made be¬ 
tween the ancient city on the rock and the part subse¬ 
quently added in the plain. The former, the primitive 
Cecropia, was called, from its situation, y uvu 7 xoTug, 
or 'AapoiroXig, “ the upper city,” where afterward 
stood the Parthenon, and other splendid edifices; 
the buildings in the plain, where eventually Athens 
itself stood, were termed 57 kutu u oTug, “ the low¬ 
er city.” (Compare, as regards the various names 

f iven to this city, Steph. Byzant., s. v. Kpavuy .— 
Hin., 7, 56. — Kruse, Hellas, vol. 2, p. 77.) — The 
Acropolis was sixty stadia in circumference. We 
have little or no information respecting the size of 
Athens under its earliest kings ; it is generally sup¬ 
posed, however, that, even as late as the time of The¬ 
seus, the town was almost entirely confined to the 
Acropolis and the adjoining Hill of Mars. Subsequent¬ 
ly to the Trojan war, it appears to have been increased 
considerably, both in population and extent, since Ho¬ 
mer applies to it the epithets of eiiKTipevog and evpv- 
dyviog. The improvements continued, probably, du¬ 
ring the reign of Pisistratus, and, as it was able to 
stand a siege against the Lacedaemonians under his son 
Hippias, it must evidently have possessed walls and 
fortifications of sufficient height and strength to ensure 
its safety. The invasion of Xerxes, and the subse¬ 
quent irruption of Mardonius, effected the entire de¬ 
struction of the ancient city, and reduced it to a heap 
of ruins, with the exception only of such temples and 
buildings as were enabled, from the solidity of materi¬ 
als, to resist the action of fire and the work of demoli¬ 
tion. When, however, the battles of Salamis, Plataea, 
and Mycale had averted all danger of invasion, Athens, 
restored to peace and security, soon rose from its state 
of ruin and desolation ; and, having been furnished by 
the prudent foresight and energetic conduct of The- 
mistocles with the military works requisite for its de¬ 
fence, it attained, under the subsequent administrations 
of Cimon and Pericles, to the highest pitch of beauty, 
magnificence, and strength. The former is known to 
have erected the temple of Theseus, the Dionysiac 
theatre, the Stose or porticoes, and Gymnasium, and 
also to have embellished the Academy, the Agora, and 
other parts of the city at his own expense. (Pint., Vit. 
Cimon.) Pericles completed the fortifications which 
had been left in an unfinished state by Themistocles 
and Cimon ; he likewise built several edifices destroy¬ 
ed by the Persians, and to him his country was in¬ 
debted for the temple of Eleusis, the Parthenon, and 
the Propylaea, the most magnificent buildings, not of 
Attica only, but of the world. It was in the time of 
Pericles that Athens attained the summit of its beauty 
and prosperity, both with respect to the power of the 
republic and the extent and magnificence of the archi¬ 
tectural decorations with which the capital was adorn¬ 
ed. At this period, the whole of Athens, with its three 
ports of Piraeus, Munychia, and Phalerus, connected 
by means of the celebrated long walls, formed one great 
city, enclosed within a vast peribolus of massive forti¬ 
fications. The whole of this circumference, as we col¬ 
lect from Thucydides, was not less than 124 stadia. 
Of these, forty-three must be allotted to the circuit of 
the city itself; the long walls, taken together, supply 
twenty-five, and the remaining fifty-six are furnished 
by the peribolus of the three harbours. Xenophon re¬ 
ports that Athens contained more than 10,000 houses, 
which, at the rate of twelve persons to a house, would 
give 120,000 for the population of the city. ( Xen ., 
Mem., 3, 6, 14.— Id., (Econ., 8, 22. — Compare Clin¬ 
ton's Fasti Hellenici, Append., p. 395.) — From the 
researches of Col. Leake and Mr. Hawkins, it appears 
that the former city considerably exceeded in extent 
the modern Athens ; and though little now remains of 
the ancient works to afford certain evidence of their 



^inference, it is evident from the measurement fur¬ 
nished by Thucydides, that they must have extended 
considerably beyond the present line of wall, especially 
towards the north. Col. Leake is of opinion, that on 
this side the extremity of the city reached to the foot 
i of Mount Anchesmus, and that to the westward its 
I walls followed the same brook which terminates in the 
marshy ground of the Academy, until they met the 
•point where some of the ancient foundations are still 
to be seen near the gate Dipylum ; while to the east¬ 
ward they approached close to the Ilissus, a little be¬ 
low the present church of the Mologitades, or confes¬ 
sors. The same antiquary estimates the states com¬ 
prehended within the walls of Athens, the longomural 
enclosure and the peribolus of the ports, to be more 
than sixteen English miles, without reckoning the sin¬ 
uosities of the coast and the ramparts ; but if these 
are taken into account, it could not have been less 
than nineteen miles. ( Topography of Athens , page 
362, seqq.) We know from ancient writers that the 
extent of Athens was nearly equal to that of Rome 
within the walls of Servius. {Dion. Hal., 4, p. 670.) 
Plutarch ( Vit. Nic.) compares it also with that of Syra¬ 
cuse, which Strabo estimates at 180 stadia, or up¬ 
ward of twenty-two miles. The number of gates be¬ 
longing to ancient Athens is uncertain ; but the ex¬ 
istence of nine has been ascertained by classical wri¬ 
ters. The names of these are Dipylum (also called 
Thriasise, Sacrae, and perhaps Ceramicae), Diomeiae, 
Diocharis, Melitides, Piraicae, Acharnicae, Itoniag, Hip- 
pades, Heriae. {Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 312, 
seqq.) The early history of Athens and its kings is 
blended with more or less of fable. A brief sketch of 
the affairs of Attica, from the first glimpses of tradition 
down to the period when Greece fell beneath the 
Roman arms, will be found under the article Cecrops. 
The Athenians have been admired in all ages for their 
love of liberty, and for the great men that were born 
among them ; but favour there was attended with dan¬ 
ger ; and there are very few instances in the history 
of Athens that can prove that the jealousy and fickle¬ 
ness of the people did not persecute the man who 
had fought their battles and exposed his life in the de¬ 
fence of his country. Perhaps not one single city in 
the world can boast, in the same space of time, of 
so large a number of illustrious citizens, as regarded 
either warlike occupations or the walks of civil life.—- 
The Athenians claimed to be of indigenous origin, or, 
in other words, sprung from the earth itself. Hence 
they called themselves avroxOoveg {Autochthones), 
i. e., Aborigines ; and, as a proof of their indigenous 
origin, the early Athenians are said by Thucydides 
(1, 6) to have worn in the hair of the head golden 
ornaments formed like cicadge, a species of insect be¬ 
lieved to spring from the earth. The custom only 
went entirely out of use a short time previous to the 
age of the historian. The Romans, in the more pol¬ 
ished ages of their republic, sent their youths to finish 
their education at Athens, and respected the learning, 
while they despised the military character, of the inhab¬ 
itants.—Modern Athens, in Livadia, a few years ago 
contained 1300 houses and 12,000 inhabitants, 2000 
of whom were Turks. The Greeks here experienced 
from the Turks a milder government than elsewhere. 
They also retained some remains of their ancient cus¬ 
toms, and annually chose four archons. The Greek 
archbishop residing here had a considerable income. 
In 1822, the Acropolis, after a long siege, fell into the 
hands of the free Greeks. In 1825, a Greek school, 
under the care of the patriot professor, George Gen- 
nadios, was in a flourishing condition. The most 
thorough investigation of the places among the ruins 
of Athens worthy of attention is contained in Leake's 
Topography of Athens (London, 1821, with an atlas 
in folio). The splendid work of Stuart and Revett 
{Antiquities of Athens) must also be consulted. Leake 

223 




ATHENE. 


ATH 


makes it appear probable, that, in the time of Fatfsa? 
nias, many monuments were extant which belonged 
to the period before the Persian war ; because so tran¬ 
sitory a possession as Xerxes had of the city scarcely 
gave him time to finish the destruction of the walls 
and principal public edifices. In the restoration of the 
city to its former state, Themistocles looked more to 
the useful, Cimon to magnificence and splendour; 
and Pericles far surpassed them both in his buildings* 
The great supply of money which he had from the 
tribute of the other states belonged to no succeeding 
ruler. Athens, at length, saw much of her ancient 
splendour restored ; but, unluckily, Attica was not an 
island ; and, after the sources of power, which be¬ 
longed to the fruitful and extensive country of Mace- 
’donia, were developed by an able and enlightened 
prince, the opposing interests of many free states 
could not long withstand the disciplined army of a 
warlike people, led by an active, able, and ambitious 
monarch. When Sylla destroyed the works of the 
Piraeus, the power of Athens by sea was at an end, 
and with that fell the whole city. Flattered by the 
triumvirate, favoured by Hadrian’s love of the arts, 
Athens was at no time so splendid as under the Anto- 
nines, when the magnificent works of from eight to 
ten centuries stood in view, and the edifices of Peri¬ 
cles were in equal preservation with the new build¬ 
ings. Plutarch himself wonders how the structures 
of Ictinus, of Menesicles and Phidias, which were 
built with such surprising rapidity, could retain such a 
perpetual freshness. The most correct criticism on 
the accounts of Greece by Pausanias and Strabo is 
in Leake. Probably Pausanias saw Greece yet un¬ 
plundered. The Romans, from a reverence towards 
a religion approaching so nearly to their own, and 
wishing to conciliate a people more cultivated than 
themselves, were ashamed to rob temples where the 
master-pieces of art were kept as sacred, and were sat¬ 
isfied with a tribute in money, although in Sicily they 
did not abstain from the plunder of the temples, on 
account of the prevalence of the Carthaginian and 
Phoenician influence in the island. Pictures, even in 
the time of Pausanias, may have been left in their 
places. The wholesale robberies of collectors ; the 
removal of great quantities of the works of art to Con¬ 
stantinople, when the creation of new specimens was 
no longer possible ; Christian zeal, and the attacks of 
barbarians, destroyed, after a time, in Athens, what 
the emperors had spared. We have reason to think, 
that the colossal statue of Minerva Promachos was 
standing in the time of Alaric. About 420 A.D. pa¬ 
ganism was totally annihilated at Athens ; and, when 
Justinian closed even the schools of the philosophers, 
the recollections of the mythology were lost. The 
Parthenon was turned into a church of the Virgin 
Mary, and St. George stepped into the place of The¬ 
seus. The manufacture of silk, which had hitherto 
remained, was destroyed by the transportation of a 
colony of weavers, by Roger of Sicily ; and in 1456 
the place fell into the hands of Omar. To complete 
its degradation, the city of Minerva obtained the privi¬ 
lege (an enviable one in the East) of being governed 
by a black eunuch as an appendage to the harem. 
The Parthenon became a mosque, and, at the west 
end ot the Acropolis, those alterations were com¬ 
menced which the new discovery of artillery then 
made necessary. In 1687, at the siege of Athens by 
the Venetians under Morosini, it appears that the tem¬ 
ple of Victory was destroyed, the beautiful remains of 
which are to be seen in the British Museum.’ On the 
28th September of this year, a bomb fired the powder- 
magazine kept by the Turks in the Parthenon, and, 
with this building, destroyed the ever-memorable re¬ 
mains of the genius of Phidias. Probably the Vene¬ 
tians knew not what they destroyed ; they could not 
have intended that their artillery should accomplish 
224 


^such devastation. The city was surrendered to them 
September 29th. They wished to send the chariot of 
Victory, which stood at the west pediment of the 
Parthenon, to Venice, as a trophy of their conquest; 
but, in removing it, it fell and was dashed to pieces. 
In April, 1688, Athens was again surrendered to the 
Turks, in spite of the remonstrances of the inhabitants, 
who, with good reason, feared the revenge of their re¬ 
turning masters. Learned travellers have, since that 
time, often visited Athens ; and we may thank their 
relations and drawings for the knowledge which we 
have of the monuments of the place. How little the 
Greeks of modern times have understood the impor¬ 
tance of these buildings, is proved by Crusius’s Turko- 
Grcecia. From them originated the names Temple of 
the unknown God, Lantern of Demosthenes, &c. It 
is doing injustice to the Turks to attribute to them 
exclusively the crime of destroying these remains of 
antiquity. From these ruins the Greeks have sup¬ 
plied themselves with all their materials for buildings 
for hundreds of years. The ruins in the neighbour¬ 
hood of inhabited places and in the seaport towns 
are particularly exposed, because ease of transportation 
is added to the daily want of materials. In the mean 
time, the most accessible part of Athens has rich 
treasures to reward well-directed searches ; and each 
fragment which comes to light in Athens proves the 
all-pervading art and taste of the ancient race. It is 
fortunate that many of the remains of Grecian art have 
been covered by barbarous structures until a brighter 
day should dawn on Greece. ( Encyclop. Americ., 
vol. 1, p. 445, seqq.) For an accurate and interest¬ 
ing account of the various works that have been pub¬ 
lished in modern times, illustrative of the remains of 
Grecian art, as well as of the numerous travellers that 
have visited these classic regions, consult Kruse's Hel¬ 
las, vol. 1, p. 65-156. In this work also will be found 
an account of Lord Elgin’s operations. For remarks 
on the coinage and commerce of Athens, vid. Mina and 
Pirseus, and for some account of its public structures, 
consult the separate articles throughout the volume, 
such as Parthenon, Erechtheum, &c.—II. A town of 
Euboea, in the northwestern corner of the island, and 
near the promontory of Censeum. It was founded, 
according to Strabo, by an Athenian colony, but, ac¬ 
cording to Ephorus, by Dias, a son of Abas. ( Steph. 
Byz., s. v. ’AOrjvat. — Eustath. ad II., 2, 537.) The 
modern name is Port Calos. —III. An ancient city, 
which, according to tradition, stood at an early period, 
along with another named Eleusis, near the spot 
where the town of Copse was erected at a later day. 
Athense was situate on the river Triton, which, if it is 
the torrent noticed by Pausanias, was near Alalco- 
mense. ( Strab., 407.— Pausan., 9, 24.) Stephanus 
of Byzantium reports that, when Crates drained the 
waters which had overspread the plains, the ruins of 
Athense became visible (s. v. ’A Oyvat). Some wri¬ 
ters asserted that it occupied the site of the ancient 
Orchomenus. (Strab., 1. c. — Steph. Byz., 1. c .) The 
existence of such a city, at so remote a date, might 
form the basis of no uninteresting theory respecting 
the early migrations of the people of Attica from the 
north. (Compare Muller, Orchomenus, p. 58.) 

Athenjea, festivals celebrated at Athens in hon¬ 
our of Minerva. One of them was called Panathencea, 
and the other Chalcea; for an account of which, see 
those words. 

Athenaeum, a building at Athens, sacred to Miner¬ 
va, whence its name (’A drjvalov, from ’A Orjvrj). Here 
poets, philosophers, and literary men in general were 
accustomed to assemble and recite their compositions, 
or engage in the discussion of literary subjects, as the 
Roman poets and others were wont to do in the tem¬ 
ple of Apollo at Rome. The Emperor Hadrian built 
an Athenaeum at Rome in imitation of that at Athens. 
The ancient Athenaea were generally in the form of 





ATHENAEUS. 


ATHENAEUS. 


amphitheatres. ( Lampnd . in Alex. Scv., c 35.— Au- 
rel. Viet., de Coes ., c. 14.— Forcellini', Lex. Tot. Lat., 
s. v.) 

Athenaeus, I. a native of Naucratis in Egypt, and 
the author of a very interesting compilation, entitled 
Deipnosophistee (AenrvoaotyujTai, “ the learned men 
at supper”), from which the moderns have derived a 
large portion of their knowledge respecting the private 
life of the ancient Greeks. He declares himself to 
have been a little later than the poet Oppian ; and, as 
that writer dedicates his Halieutics to the Emperor 
Caracalla, the age of Athenaeus may be fixed at the 
beginning of the third century of the Christian era. 
The professed object of Athenaeus was to detail to his 
contemporaries the convivial antiquities of their an¬ 
cestors, and he has chosen to convey his information 
in the form of a dialogue as the most convenient and 
amusing. The plan of the work is as follows : A con¬ 
siderable number of learned men, among whom we find 
the celebrated Galen, assemble at the table of La- 
rensius, a liberal and wealthy Roman, where they be¬ 
stow as large a portion of erudition on every part of 
their entertainment as the memory or commonplace- 
book of the author could supply. So much of the 
business of human life is connected, mediately or im¬ 
mediately, with eating and drinking, that it does not 
require any great share of ingenuity to introduce into 
a work of so miscellaneous a nature much useful and 
curious information, which, at first sight, does not ap¬ 
pear to be very closely connected with the science 
of cookery. “Accordingly,” says the author of the 
Epitome, “ we find disquisitions on fish of every sort, 
together with potherbs and poultry ; not to mention 
historians, poets, and philosophers ; likewise a great 
variety of musical instruments, witty sayings, and 
drinking vessels ; royal magnificence, ships of prodi¬ 
gious magnitude, and many other articles too tedious 
to mention.” Although this kind of conversation 
bears no very strong resemblance to the dying specu¬ 
lations of Socrates on the immortality of the soul, our 
author has selected the Phsedo of Plato for his proto¬ 
type, and has borrowed the beginning of that dialogue, 
with no alteration, except the substitution of the 
names of Timocrates and Athenaeus for those of Ech- 
ecrates and Phaedo. A strong objection to the dra¬ 
matic form which the work assumes, arises from the 
impossibility of collecting the productions of all the 
different seasons at one banquet. The author seems 
to suppose that an astonished fishmonger might ex¬ 
claim, in the words of Theocritus, ’A/l/la rd pev fiep- 
eoq, tu Se ytyvETCu ev xeigCdvi. The loss of the two 
first books renders us unable to judge how far he was 
able to palliate this palpable absurdity. The most 
valuable part of the work is the large quantity of quo¬ 
tations which it presents from authors whose writings 
no longer exist. The Athenian comic poets af¬ 
forded an ample store of materials, and Athenseus 
seems to have been by no means sparing in the use 
of them. Many of the extracts from their works, 
which he has inserted in his own, are highly inter¬ 
esting ; and the mass is so considerable, as far to 
exceed in bulk all that can be collected from every 
other Greek or Latin writer. The number of theatri¬ 
cal pieces which he appears to have consulted was 
probably not less than two thousand. The middle 
comedy furnished him with eight hundred.—The com¬ 
pilation of Athenseus immediately became the prey of 
other compilers less diligent than himself. TElian, who 
was nearly his contemporary, has made use very lib¬ 
erally of the Deipnosophists in his Various History. In 
a later age we find our author again pillaged by Ma- 
crobius, who seems to have taken from him not only 
many of the materials, but even the form and idea, 
of his Saturnalia. But of all writers, ancient or 
modern, there is none who is so highly indebted to i 
Athenseus as the industrious Eustathius. Although! 

F F 


the Archbishop of Thessalonica appears nevdr to have 
seen the entire work, but to have made use of the Epit¬ 
ome, the stores of his erudition would be miserably 
reduced if he were compelled to make restitution of 
the property of our author which he has converted to 
his own benefit. — By the same fortunate accident 
which has preserved a few of the writings of the an¬ 
cients, a single copy of Athenseus appears to have es¬ 
caped from the ravages of time, ignorance, and fanat¬ 
icism. That MS. still exists. After the death of Car¬ 
dinal Bessarion, who probably brought it from Greece, 
it passed into the library of St. Mark at Venice. In 
this sepulchre of books it would certainly have contin¬ 
ued for many ages, unknown to the learned, if the 
French successes had not caused it to be included in 
the valuable spoils of Italy, which, until lately, enriched 
the national collection of Paris. Many transcripts of 
this manuscript exist in different parts of Europe, 
which were probably made while it was in the posses¬ 
sion of Cardinal Bessarion. All of them betray their 
origin, as, besides their coincidence in orthographical 
errors, the same parts are wanting in all of them. The 
two first books, the beginning of the third, a few leaves 
in the eleventh, and a part of two leaves in the fifteenth, 
are wanting in the Venetian manuscript, and the defi¬ 
ciency appears evidently to have proceeded from acci¬ 
dent. The same lacunae, occur in every other manu¬ 
script, but are exhibited in a manner which shows the 
cause to have existed in the copy from which they 
were transcribed. Fortunately for Athenseus, the in¬ 
tegrity of his work is in some measure preserved by 
an epitome of the whole, which has been transmitted 
to us without defalcation. This abridgment, if it may 
be called so, is nearly as bulky as the original work. 
The age of it is uncertain. It is executed in a careless 
manner; and the copy which the writer had before his 
eyes appears to have suffered so much from time or 
accident, that he frequently breaks off in the middle of 
an extract, and declares his inability to decipher the 
remainder. From these sources our editions are de¬ 
rived ; and it will easily be seen that, where the ori¬ 
ginal copies are so few and so faulty, conjectural 
emendation will find ample scope to display its powers. 
—The best editions of Athenaeus are those of Casau- 
bon, Schweighaeuser, and Dindorff. Of the edition of 
Casaubon there are three different impressions, in the 
years 1597, 1612, and 1664, which do not differ con¬ 
siderably from each other. To these editions is an¬ 
nexed the Latin translation of James Dalechamp of 
Caen, which was first printed by itself in 1583. The 
Greek text is much more perfect and accurate than 
in the preceding editions ; as in the long interval which 
had elapsed between the edition published at Basle 
and the first of Casaubon’s, many new transcripts 
had been discovered, and much labour had been be¬ 
stowed on Athenseus by some of the most celebrated 
scholars of that age. The most valuable part of the 
edition of Casaubon is his celebrated commentary, 
which constitutes a folio of no inconsiderable magni¬ 
tude. The edition of Athenaeus by Schweighaeuser 
was published at Strasburg ( Argentorati ) in 1801- 
1807, and consists of 14 vols. 8vo. The text occupies 
5 vols., and the remaining nine contain the comment¬ 
aries and indexes. This commentary is made up of a 
large portion of the notes of Casaubon, together with 
others by Schweighaeuser himself. The greatest 
advantage which this editor enjoyed was the collation 
of the Venetian manuscript. This was performed by 
his son. The least commendable part of the work is 
the critical observations, in which Schweighaeuser’s 
little acquaintance with Greek metre exposes him to 
many mistakes. The edition, however, is extremely 
valuable. Dindorff’s edition is in 5 vols. 8vo, Lips., 
1827. ( Elmsley , in Edinburgh Review , vol. 3, p. 
181, seqq.) —II. A contemporary of Archimedes. His 
native country is not known. He has left a trea- 

225 




ATH 


ATI 


tise on ( Machines of War (tt epl Myxovy/uunov), ad¬ 
dressed to Marcellus. This Marcellus is generally 
supposed to be the same with the conqueror of Syra¬ 
cuse. Schweighaeuser, however, is of a different opin¬ 
ion (ad Athen., vol. 1, p. 637). His work is con¬ 
tained in the collection of Thevenot. ( Scholl, Hist. 
Lit. Gr., vol. 3, p. 367.)—III. A celebrated physician, 
born at Attalia in Pamphylia, and who flourished at 
Rome 50 A.D. He separated the Materia Medica 
from Therapeutics. He treated also, with great care, 
of Dietetics. Of his numerous writings only a few 
chapters remain in the collection of Oribasius. (Scholl, 
Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 5, p. 343.) 

Athenagoras, a Platonising father of the church, 
the author of an “Apology for Christians,” and of a 
treatise “ On the Resurrection of the Body.” It appears 
from his writings that he was a native of Athens, and 
that he passed his youth among the philosophers of his 
time. He flourished towards the close of the second 
century. After he became a convert to Christianity, 
he still retained the name and habit of a philosopher, 
probably in expectation of gaining greater credit to the 
Christian doctrine among the unconverted heathen. 
In his Apology he judiciously explains the notions of 
the Stoics and Peripatetics concerning God and divine 
things, and exposes with great accuracy and strength 
of reasoning their respective errors. He frequently 
supports his arguments by the authority of Plato, and 
discovers much partiality for his system. In what he 
advances concerning God, and the Logos or Divine 
Reason, he evidently mixes the dogmas of paganism 
with the doctrines of Christianity. His two works are 
contained in the editions of the Greek fathers by 
Oberthur (Wiirceb., 1777, vol. 3) and Gallaud (vol. 
2 , p. 3). There are also separate editions of each, 
and Latin, French, Italian, and English translations, 
to say nothing of numerous works illustrating his wri¬ 
tings. (Consult Hoffmann, Lex. Bibl., vol. 1 , p. 427, 
seqq .)—The romance of Theagenes and Charis is er¬ 
roneously ascribed to him. This romance was the 
production of a Frenchman named Martin Fumee. It 
was published in 1599 and 1612, in French, and pur¬ 
ported to be a translation from a Greek manuscript 
brought from the East. No such manuscript ever ex¬ 
isted. (Fabric., Bibl. Gr., vol. 6, p. 800, seqq.) 

Athenion, I. a peripatetic philosopher, 108 B.C. 
—II. A painter, born at Maronea, and who flourished 
about 300 B.C. Pliny enumerates several of his pro¬ 
ductions, and adds, that, had he not died young, he 
would have stood at the head of his profession (35, 11). 

Athenodorus, I. a philosopher, born at Cana, near 
Tarsus in Cilicia. He lived at Rome, in the reign of 
Augustus, and on account of his learning, wisdom, 
and moderation, was highly esteemed by that emperor. 
His opinion and advice had great weight with the mon¬ 
arch, and are said to have led him into a milder plan 
of government than he had at first adopted. Athenodo¬ 
rus obtained, for the inhabitants of Tarsus, relief from 
a part of the burden of taxes which had been imposed 
upon them, and was on this account honoured with an 
annual festival. He was intrusted by Augustus with 
the education of the young prince Claudius ; and, that 
he might the more successfully execute his charge, his 
illustrious pupil became for a while a resident at his 
house. This philosopher retired in his old age to Tar¬ 
sus, where he died in his 82d year. (Fabric., Bibl. 
Gr., vol. 7, p. 391. — Zosim., 1, Q. — Sueton., Vit. 
Claud., c. 4. Enfield's Hist. Philos., vol. 2, p. 109.) 

II. A stoic philosopher, a native of Pergamus ac¬ 
cording to some, but, more correctly, of Tarsus. He 
was surnamed Cordylion (KopSvTiUjv), and was inti¬ 
mate with Cato the younger (Uticensis). Cato made 
a voyage to Pergamus expressly to see him, and 
brought him back with him to Rome. He died at 
Catos house. (Strabo, 673.)—•III. An Arcadian 
statuary, mentioned by Pliny (34, 8) as one of the 


pupils of Polycletus, and as having made, with great 
success, the statues of some distinguished females. 
(Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v .)— IV. A sculptor, who, 
in connexion with Agesander and Polydorus, made 
the celebrated Laocoon group. (Sillig, Diet. Art., 
s. v.) 

Atherbal. Vid. Adherbal. 

Athesis, a river of Venetia, in Gallia Cisalpina, ri¬ 
sing in the mountains of the Tyrol (Rhaetian Alps), 
and, after a course of nearly two hundred miles, dis¬ 
charging its waters into the Adriatic. It is now the 
Adige, and, next to the Po, must be looked upon as 
the most considerable stream of Italy. (Virg., JEn., 
9, 679, seqq.) 

Athos, a mountain in the district Chalcidice of 
Macedonia. It is situate on a peninsula between the 
Sinus Strymonicus, or Gulf of Contessa, and the Sinus 
Singiticus, or Gulf of Monte Santo. It is so high 
that, according to Plutarch and Pliny, it projected its 
shadow^ at the summer solstice on the market-place of 
Myrina, the capital city of the island of Lemnos, 
though at the distance of 87 miles. On this account 
a brazen cow was erected at the termination of the 
shadow, with this inscription, 

y A8uq ualvuru nTievpu Ay/uviag (3oog. 

Strabo reports that the inhabitants of the mountain 
saw the sun rise three hours before those who lived 
on the shore at its base. (Epit., 7, p. 331.) Pliny, 
however, greatly exaggerates, when he affirms that 
Athos extends into the sea for seventy-five miles, and 
that its base occupies a circumference of one hundred 
and fifty miles (4, 10). Strabo says the circumnaviga¬ 
tion of the whole peninsula was four hundred stadia, 
or fifty miles. (Epit.., 7, p. 331.) When Xerxes in¬ 
vaded Greece, he cut a canal through the peninsula 
of Athos, in order to avoid the danger of doubling the 
promontory, the fleet of Mardonius having previous¬ 
ly sustained a severe loss in passing around it. This 
canal was made in the vicinity of the cities Acanthus 
and Sana. (Vid. Acanthus.) — The architect Dino¬ 
crates offered unto Alexander the Great to cut Mount 
Athos into a statue of the king, holding in its left hand 
a city, and in its right a basin to receive all the waters 
that flowed from the mountain. The monarch, how¬ 
ever, declined the offer, on the ground of there being 
no fields around to furnish supplies, which would have 
to come entirely by sea. (Vitruv., Prcefi, lib. 2.) 

Atia lex, a law enacted A.U.C. 690, by T. Atius 
Labienus, a tribune of the commons. It repealed the 
Cornelian law, and restored the Domitian, w hich gave 
the election of priests to the people, not to the^coL 
leges. (Dio Cass., 37, 37.) 

Atilia lex, I. gave the praetor and a majority of 
the tribunes power of appointing guardians to orphans 
and women. It was enacted A.U.C. 443._II. An¬ 

other, which ordained that sixteen military tribunes 
should be created by the people for four legions ; that 
is, two thirds of the whole number. (Adams, Bern. 
Ant., s. v.) 

Atina, I. one of the most ancient cities of the Vol- 
sci. It was situate to the southeast of Arpinum, and 
near the source of the river Mclfa. If we are to credit 
Virgil (JEn., 7, 629), it was a considerable town as 
early as the Trojan war. We learn from Cicero (pro 
Plane.), that Atina w r as in his time a prsefectura, and 
one of the most populous and distinguished in Italy. 
Frontinus says it was colonized during the reign of 
Nero. The modern name is Atino. —II. A town of 
Lucania, not far from the Tanager. Several inscrip¬ 
tions, and many remains of walls and buildings, prove 
that it w r as no inconsiderable place. (RomaneUi, vol. 
1 , p. 438.) The modern name is Atena. (Cramer's 
Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 378.) 

Atinia lex, was enacted by the tribune Atinius, 
A.U.C. 623. It gave a tribune of the people the priv- 




ATLANTIS. 


ATLANTIS. 


ileges of a senator, and the right of sitting in the sen¬ 
ate. (Aul. Gell., 14, 8.) 

Atlantes, a people of Africa, the more correct 
name of whom was Atarantes. ( Vid. Atarantes.) 

Atlantiades, a patronymic of Mercury, as grand¬ 
son of Atlas. (Ovid, Met., 1, 639.) 

Atlantides, a name given to the daughters of At¬ 
las. They were divided into the Hyades and Plei¬ 
ades. (Vid. Atlas, Hyades, and Pleiades.) 

Atlantis, a celebrated island, supposed to have 
existed at a very early period in the Atlantic Ocean, 
and to have been eventually sunk beneath its waves. 
Plato is the first that gives an account of it, and he 
obtained his information from the priests of Egypt. 
(Plat., Timceus , p. 24, seqq., ed. Bip., vol. 9, p. 296, 
scqq. — Id., Critias, p. 108, seqq., ed. Bip., vol. 10, p. 
39, 43.) The statement which he furnishes is as fol¬ 
lows : In the Atlantic Ocean, over against the Pillars 
of Hercules, lay an island larger than Asia and Africa 
taken together, and in its vicinity were other islands, 
from which there was a passage to a large continent 
lying beyond. The Mediterranean, compared with the 
ocean in which these lands were situated, resembled 
a mere harbour with a narrow entrance. Nine thou¬ 
sand years before the time of Plato, this island of At¬ 
lantis was both thickly settled and very powerful. Its 
sway extended over Africa as far as Egypt, and over 
Europe as far as the Tyrrhenian Sea. The farther 
progress of its conquests, however, was checked by 
the Athenians, who, partly with the other Greeks, 
partly by themselves, succeeded in defeating these 
powerful invaders, the natives of Atlantis. After this 
a violent earthquake, which lasted for the space of a 
day and night, and was accompanied with inundations 
of the sea, caused the islands to sink, and, for a long 
period subsequent to this, the sea in this quarter was 
impassable, by reason of the slime and shoals.—Thus 
much for the narrative of Plato. A dispute arose 
among the ancient philosophers and naturalists, wheth¬ 
er this statement was based upon reality, or was a 
mere creation of fancy. Posidonius thought it wor¬ 
thy of belief. (Strabo, 102.— Epit., 1, p. 11, ed. 
Huds.) Pliny remains undecided (2, 92. — Com¬ 
pare Ammian. Marcell., 17, 7. — Tertull., de Pallio, 
ed. Op., Antverp, 1584, p. 6. — Id., Apolog. adv. 
gentes, p. 82, c. 40.— Philo, quod mund. sit. incor¬ 
rupt., p. 963). From other writers we have short no¬ 
tices, which merely show how many various interpre¬ 
tations were given to the passage in Plato. (Proclus, 
ad Plat., Tim,., p. 24.) A certain Marcellus related 
a similar tradition with that of Plato (ev rolg AWlottc- 
Kolg apud Procl., lib. 1, p. 155). According to this 
writer there were seven islands in the Atlantic Ocean 
sacred to Proserpina; of these, three were of a very 
large size, and the inhabitants had a tradition among 
them that these were originally one large island, which 
had ruled over all the rest.—Nor have modern theo¬ 
rists been inactive on this captivating subject. Rud- 
beck, with great learning, labours to prove that the 
Atlantis of the ancients was Sweden, and that the Ro¬ 
mans, Greeks, English, Danes, and Germans origina¬ 
ted from Sweden. His work, entitled Atlantica (At- 
land eller Manheim), is in Latin and Swedish, and is 
a typographic rarity. The first edition appeared in 
1675-79, at Upsal. Several editions of it followed. 
The last Latin edition is of 1699, and bears a high 
price. Written copies of it are in several European 
libraries.—Bailly, well known by his history of As¬ 
tronomy, places Atlantis and the cradle of the human 
race in the farthest regions of the north, and seeks to 
connect the Atlantides with the far-famed Hyperbo¬ 
reans. (Lettres sur VAtlantide de Platon, &c., p. 
384, seqq. — Compare Lettres sur I'Origine des Sci¬ 
ences, by the same.) — Carli and others find Amer¬ 
ica in the Atlantis of Plato, and adduce many argu¬ 
ments in support of their assertion. (Carli, Lettres 


Americaines, French transl., vol. 2, p. 180, seqq.) 
The advocates of this theory might easily connect with 
the legend of the lost Atlantis the remains of a very re¬ 
mote civilization that are found at the present day in 
Spanish America. We have there the ruins of cities, 
the style of whose architecture carries us back to Pe- 
lasgic times, and the religious symbols and ornaments 
connected with which remind us strongly of the phal¬ 
lic mysteries of antiquity. Even the lotus flower, the 
sacred emblem of India, may be seen in the sculp¬ 
tures. (Compare the plates given by Del Rio, De¬ 
scription of the Ruins of an Ancient City discovered 
near Palenque, in Guatemala, &c., Lond., 1822, 4to.) 
These curious remains of former days are long ante¬ 
rior to Mexican times, nor have they anything what¬ 
ever to do with Phoenician settlements, such settle¬ 
ments on the shores of America being purely imaginary. 
In connexion with the view just taken, we may point 
to the peculiar conformation of our continent, along 
the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, where everything 
indicates the sinking, at a remote period, of a large 
tract of land, the place of which is now occupied by 
the waters of the gulf; a sinking occasioned, in all 
probability, by the sudden rush of a large body of 
water down the present valley of the Mississippi. 
The mountain tops of this sunken land still appear to 
view as the islands of the West Indian group: and 
thus the large continent lying beyond Atlantis and 
the adjacent islands, and to which Plato refers, may 
have been none other than that of America.—We 
proceed a step farther. Admitting that Atlantis was 
situate in the ocean which at present bears its name, 
it would require no great stretch of fancy to suppose 
the the Canaries, Madeira Isles, and Azores once 
formed portions of it, and that it even extended as far 
as Newfoundland. The Cape de Yerd Islands, though 
so much to the south, may also be included. It is cu¬ 
rious to observe what quantities of seaweed (fucus 
natans ) are found floating on the surface of the sea, 
not only near the Cape de Verd Islands, but also more 
to the northeast, almost under the meridian of the isles 
Cuervo and Flores, among the Azores, between the 
parallels of 23° and 35° north latitude. (Humboldt, 
Tableaux de la Nature, vol. 1, p. 39, French transl.) 
The ancients were acquainted with these collections 
of seaweed, resembling somewhat a vast inundated 
meadow. “ Some Phoenician vessels,” observes Aris¬ 
totle, “ impelled by the east winds, reached, after a 
navigation of thirty days, a part of the sea where the 
surface of the water was covered with rushes and sea¬ 
weed (■&pvov sal (pvtcog).” The passage occurs in the 
treatise de Mirabilibus, p. 1157, ed. Duval. Many 
ascribed this abundance of seaweed to some cause 
connected with the submerged Atlantis. (Compare 
Irving's Columbus, vol. 1, p. 133.) The quantities 
of seaweed in the neighbourhood of the Cape de Verd 
Islands are also alluded to by Scyiax (ed. Gronov., p. 
126), if we suppose the conjecture of Ideler to be cor¬ 
rect, that the Cerne of Scylax is the modern Arguin. 
(Humboldt, Tableaux, &c., vol. 1, p. 101.) The ex¬ 
istence of a large island, at a remote period, where 
the waves of the Atlantic now roll, has been regarded 
by modern science as visionary in the extreme. But 
even science herself can be made to contribute data to¬ 
wards this captivating theory. Immediately below the 
chalk and green sand of England, a fluviatile formation, 
called the wealden, occurs, which has been ascertain¬ 
ed to extend from west to east about 200 English 
miles, and from northwest to southeast about 220 
miles, the depth or total thickness of the beds, where 
greatest, being about 2000 feet. (Fitton's Geology of 
Hastings, p. 58.) These phenomena clearly indicate 
that there was a constant supply in that region, for a 
long period, of a considerable body of fresh water, 
such as might be supposed to have drained a conti¬ 
nent or a large island, containing within it a lofty chain 

227 




ATL 


ATLAS. 


of mountains. ( Lyell’s Geology, vol. 4, p. 308, Lond. 
ed.) If Geology can furnish us with such facts as 
these, it may surely be pardonable in us to linger 
with something of fond belief around the legend of 
Atlantis; a legend that could hardly be the mere off¬ 
spring of a poetic imagination, but must have had some 
foundation in truth. Nor will it appear surprising if 
some of the learned, in the ardour of theorizing, have 
actually constructed maps of the position of this isl¬ 
and. Among the number of these we may mention 
De Lisle and Dureau de la Malle, but more particu¬ 
larly Bory de St. Vincent, in his Essai sur les Isles 
Fort, et Vantique Atlantide {Paris, an xi., 4to). Carli 
also, in the second volume of his work, already refer¬ 
red to, gives maps representing what he terms flats and 
shallows ( seches et bas fonds ) between America and 
Africa, in the vicinity of the equator, and also in the 
neighbourhood of the Cape de Verd Islands. (Com¬ 
pare his remarks on this subject, vol. 2, p. 225, seqq.) 
—It has been thought by some, but very erroneously, 
that the account given in Diodorus Siculus may have 
reference to some island, now submerged, of the lost 
Atlantic group. This writer speaks of an island sit¬ 
uate at a distance in the Atlantic Ocean, and remark¬ 
able for its beauty, to which the Carthaginians had re¬ 
solved to transfer the seat of their republic in case of 
any irreparable disaster at home. Aristotle had already, 
before Diodorus, made mention of a similar island, the 
charms of which had attracted many of the Carthagin¬ 
ians to it, until the senate at home forbade any person 
from going to it under pain of death. {Arist. de Mirab., 
c. 85, ed. Beckman.) The reference here, however, is 
probably to one of the Canaries.—Before quitting this 
subject, it may not be amiss to give the description of 
Atlantis, as handed down to us by the ancient writers. 
Though a mere picture of the imagination, it will 
nevertheless serve to show the opinion entertained on 
this subject by the poetic minds of antiquity. Ac¬ 
cording to this account, the isle of Atlantis was one 
of the finest and most productive countries in the uni¬ 
verse. It produced abundance of wine, grain, and the 
most exquisite fruits. Here were seen wide-spread 
forests, extensive pasture-grounds, mines of various 
metals, hot and mineral springs ; in a word, whatever 
could contribute to the necessities or comforts of life. 
Here commerce flourished under a most excellent sys¬ 
tem of government. The island, divided into ten 
kingdoms, was governed by as many kings, all de¬ 
scendants of Neptune, and who lived in perfect har¬ 
mony with each other, though severally independent. 
Atlantis had numerous and splendid cities, together 
with a large number of rich and populous villages. Its 
harbours beheld the produce of almost every country 
wafted to them ; and they were strengthened with for¬ 
tifications, and supplied with arsenals containing every¬ 
thing calculated for the construction and equipment of 
navies. Neptune*was not only the progenitor and le¬ 
gislator, but also the principal divinity of the people 
of Atlantis. He had a temple in this island, a stadium 
in length, and ornamented with gold, silver, orichal- 
chum, and ivory. Among various statues with which 
it was adorned, was seen that of the god himself, which 
was of gold, and so high that it touched the ceiling. 
He was represented as standing in a chariot, and hold¬ 
ing the reins of his winged steed. Such were some 
of the bright visions of former days respecting the lost 
island of Atlantis. {Plato, Cntias, p. 114, seqq .— 
ed. Big., vol. 10, p. 51, seqq.) 

Atlas, I. son of the Titan Iapetus and Clymene 
one of the Oceanides. He was the brother of Menoe- 
tius, Prometheus, and Epimetheus. The name Atlas 
signifies “ the Endurer” (from a, intensive, and rXdu, 
to endure), an epithet that will presently be explained. 
Homer calls him the wise or deep-thinking {oloo- 
eppov), “who knows all the depths of the sea, and keeps 
the long pillars which hold heaven and earth asunder.” 

228 


{Od., 1, 52.) In the Theogony of Hesiod (517, seqq.) 
he is said to support the heaven on his head and hands 
in the extreme West, a task assigned him by Jupiter, 
in punishment, the later writers say, for his share in 
the Titan war. {Hygin., Fab., 150.) Atlas was the 
father of the fair nymph Calypso, who so long detain- 
edUlysses in her island in the distant West. Pleionc, 
an ocean-nypmh, bore him seven daughters named 
Pleiades. {Hes., Op. et D., 383.— Schol. ad II., 18, 
486.) He was also said to be the father of the Hy- 
ades. {Timceus, ap. Schol. ad II., 1. c.) —It is hardly 
necessary to state, that the Atlas of Homer and Hesiod 
is not the personification of a mountain. In process 
of time, however, when the meaning of the earlier le¬ 
gend had become obscured or lost, Atlas, the keeper 
of the pillars that support the heaven, became a 
mountain of Libya. It is remarkable, however, that, 
in all the forms which the fable assumes, it is the god 
or man Atlas who is turned into or gives name to the 
mountain. Thus, according to one mythologist {Ovid, 
Met., 4, 631), Atlas was a king of the remotest West, 
rich in flocks and herds, and master of the trees that 
bore the golden apples. An ancient prophecy, deliv¬ 
ered by Themis, had announced to him that his pre¬ 
cious trees would be plundered by a son of Jupiter. 
When, therefore, Perseus, on his return from slaying 
the Gorgon, arrived in the realms of Atlas, and, seek¬ 
ing hospitality, announced himself to be a son of the 
king of the gods, the western monarch, calling to mind 
the prophecy, attempted to repel him from his doors. 
Perseus, inferior in strength, displayed the head of 
Medusa, and the inhospitable prince was turned into 
the mountain which still bears his name. ( Ovid, l. c. 
— Serv. ad AEn., 4, 246.) According to another ac¬ 
count, Atlas was a man of Libya, devoted to astrono¬ 
my, who, having ascended a lofty mountain to make 
his observations, fell from it into the sea, and both 
sea and mountain were named after him. {Tzetz. ad 
Lycophr., v. 879.) His supporting the heavens was 
usually explained by making him an astronomer and 
the inventor of the sphere. {Diod. Sic., 3, 60.-— Id., 
4, 27.— Serv. ad Virg., JEn., 1 , 741.) — There is also 
another curious legend relating to Atlas, which forms 
part of the fables connected with the adventures of 
Hercules. When this hero, in quest of the apples of 
the Hesperides, had come to the spot where Prome¬ 
theus lay chained, moved by his entreaties, he shot the 
eagle that preyed upon his liver. Prometheus, out of 
gratitude, warned him not to go himself to take the 
golden apples, but to send Atlas for them, and, in the 
mean time, to support the heaven in his stead. The 
hero did as desired, and Atlas, at his request, went 
and obtained three apples from the Hesperides; but 
he said he would take them himself to Eurystheus, 
and that Hercules might continue to support the sky. 
At the suggestion of Prometheus the hero feigned con¬ 
sent, but begged him to take hold of the heavens till 
he had made a pad {nypav) to put on his head. Atlas 
threw down the apples and resumed his burden, and 
Hercules then picked them up and went his way. 
{Pherecyd., ap. Schol. ad Apoll. Rhod., 4, 1396.)— 
Various elucidations of the legend of Atlas have been 
given by modern expounders of mythology. The best 
is that of Volcker. The writer, taking into consider¬ 
ation the meaning of his name, in connexion with the 
position assigned him by Homer and Hesiod, and the 
species of knowledge ascribed to him, and also his 
being the father of two of the constellations, regards 
Atlas as a personfication of navigation, the conquest 
of the sea by human skill, trade, and mercantile profit. 
{Volcker, Myth, der lap., p. 51.) With this view 
Muller agrees. {Proleg. zu einer wissensch. My- 
thol. — Keightley's Mythology, p. 287, seqq.) — II. A 
celebrated range of mountains in Africa. * It is divi¬ 
ded into two leading chains : the Greater Atlas runs 
through the kingdom of Morocco, as far south as the 




ATLAS. 


ATR 


desert of Sahara ; the Lesser Atlas extends from Ma- 
rocco towards the northeast to the northern coast. 
The great height of Mount Atlas is proved by the 
perpetual snows which cover its summits in the east 
part of Marocco, under the latitude of 32°. Accord¬ 
ing to Humboldt’s principles, these summits must be 
12,000 feet above the level of the sea. Leo Afri- 
canus, who travelled here in the month of October, 
narrowly escaped being buried in an avalanche of 
snow. In the state of Algiers, the snow disappears on 
the tops of Jurjura and of Felizia in the month of 
May, and covers them again before the end of Sep¬ 
tember. The Wanashisze, situated in 30° 55and 
forming an intermediate chain between the maritime 
one and that of the interior, is covered with a mantle 
of snow nearly the whole of the year. The fertility 
of the region of Atlas is celebrated by Strabo and 
Pliny. The latter (15, 18) extols its figs, olives, 
corn, and valuable woods. (Id., 17, 12.— Id., 18, 7. 
— Id., 13, 15.) He observes, that the wines had a 
certain sharpness, which was corrected by adding to 
them a little piaster (Id., 14, 9), and says that the 
vineyards had a northern and western exposure. (Id., 
17, 2.) Strabo informs us (369) that the vine-trunks 
were sometimes so thick that two men could scarce¬ 
ly clasp them round, and that the clusters were a cu¬ 
bit in length. A horrible government and a total ab¬ 
sence of civilization have not succeeded in annihila¬ 
ting these bounties of nature. Barbary and Marocco 
still export large quantities of grain. The olive-tree 
is superior here to that of Provence ; and the Moors, 
notwithstanding the hostility to Bacchus, which marks 
their religion, cultivate seven varieties of the vine. 
•The soil of the plains in many places resembles that 
of the rest of Africa, being light and sandy, and con¬ 
taining numerous rocks ; but the valleys of Mount 
Atlas, and those of the rivulets which descend from it 
to the Mediterranean, are covered with a compact, fer¬ 
tile, and well-watered soil. Extensive forests cover 
the sides of the fertile mountains in the northern parts 
of these countries. All the valleys that have a mod¬ 
erate elevation form in April and May so many little 
Elysiums. The shade, the coolness, the bright ver¬ 
dure, the diversity of the flowers, and the mixture of 
agreeable odours, combine to charm the senses of the 
botanist, who, amid such scenes, might forget his na¬ 
tive country, were he not shocked and alarmed by the 
barbarity of the inhabitants.—A question has arisen 
in modern times, whether the chain of mountains here 
described was really the Atlas of the ancients 1 This 
is denied by Ideler, who maintains that the Atlas of 
Homer and Hesiod is the Peak of Tenerife. The At¬ 
las of the Greek and Roman geographers he allows, 
on the other hand, to be the modern Mount Atlas. 
His arguments are given by Humboldt (Tableaux de 
la Nature, vol. 1, p. 144, seqq.), but are more in¬ 
genious than satisfactory. The Atlas of Herodotus 
might be a promontory of the southern chain, rising 
from the plains of the desert, such as Mount Saluban, 
in Biledulgerid, appears to be. It agrees with the dis¬ 
tances assigned by this historian. It is, besides, possi¬ 
ble, that all the contradictions mentioned by Ideler may 
owe their origin to that optical illusion by which a 
chain of mountains, seen in profile, has the appear¬ 
ance of a narrow peak. “ When at sea,” says Hum¬ 
boldt, “ I have often mistaken long chains for isolated 
mountains.” This explanation might be still farther 
simplified, if it were admitted that the name of Atlas 
belonged originally to a promontory remarkable for 
form and its peculiar isolated situation, such as most 
of those on the coast of Marocco. A curious passage 
in Maximus Tyrius seems to countenance this hypoth¬ 
esis : “ The ^Ethiopian Hesperians,” says he (Diss., 
38. —p. 457, seqq., ed. Oxon.), “ worship Mount At¬ 
las, who is both their temple and their idol. The 
Atlas is a mountain of moderate elevation, concave 


and open towards the sea in the form of an amphithe¬ 
atre. Half way from the mountain a great valley ex¬ 
tends, which is remarkably fertile, and adorned with 
richly-laden fruit-trees. The eye plunges into this 
valley as into a deep well, but the precipice is too 
steep for any person to venture to descend, and the 
descent is prohibited by feelings of religious awe. 
The most wonderful thing is to see the waves of the 
ocean at high water overspreading the adjacent plains, 
but stopping short before Mount Atlas, and standing 
up like a wall, without penetrating into the hollow of 
the valley, though not restrained by any earthly bar¬ 
rier. Nothing but the air and the sacred thicket pre¬ 
vent the water from reaching the mountain. Such is 
the temple and the god of the Libyans ; such is the 
object of their worship and the witness of their oaths.” 
In the physical delineations contained in this account, 
we perceive some features of resemblance to the coast 
between Cape Tefelneh and Cape Geer, which re¬ 
sembles an amphitheatre crowned with a series of de¬ 
tached rocks. In the moral description we find traces 
of fetichism ; rocks remarkable for their shape being 
still worshipped by some negro tribes. (Malte-Brun, 
Geogr., vol. 4, p. 155, seqq .)—Before closing this ar¬ 
ticle it may not be amiss to remark, that, according 
to Pliny, the ancient Mauritanians called Atlas Dyris. 
The chain of Atlas, at the present day, bears among 
the Arabs the name of Darah or Daran, the close ap¬ 
proximation of which to the ancient appellation is ea¬ 
sily perceived. Horn, on the contrary, however, rec¬ 
ognises the term Dyris in Aya-Dyrma, the Guanche 
name for the Peak of Tenerife. (Hornius, de Origin- 
ibus Americanorum, p. 185.— Humboldt, Tabl. de Nat., 
vol. 1, p. 151.) 

Atossa, a daughter of Cyrus the Great. She mar¬ 
ried her own brother Cambyses, the first instance of 
the kind that occurred among the Persians, according 
to Herodotus (3, 31). After the death of Camby¬ 
ses she became the wife of the false Smerdis, and sub¬ 
sequently of Darius Hystaspis. (Herod., 3, 88.) She 
possessed great influence over the last of these, in con¬ 
sequence of her royal birth, and her son Xerxes suc¬ 
ceeded him on the throne. She was cured of a can¬ 
cer in the breast by the Greek physician Democedes ; 
and this individual, through a desire of returning to 
his native land, induced Atossa, it is said, to urge Da¬ 
rius to a war with Greece. (Herod., 3, 133, seqq.) — 
According to Creuzer, the name Atossa is in Persian 
Atesh. There was also a city called Atusia in As¬ 
syria, on the river Caprus, whose coins displayed a 
female head, crowned with turrets, and also the in¬ 
scription ATOY2IE£2N. (Creuzer, ad Herod., 3,«68. 
— Gotting. Anzeig., 1811, nr. 78.) 

Atraces, the people of Atrax, an ancient colony 
of the Perrhsebi in Thessaly, ten miles from Larissa, 
higher up the Peneus, and on the right bank of that 
river. It was successfully defended by the Macedoni¬ 
ans against T. Flaminius. (Liv., 32, 15. — Strabo, 
438 and 441.) Dr. Clarke was led to imagine, that 
this city stood at Ampelakia, from the circumstance 
of the green marble, known to the ancients by the 
name of Atracium Marmor, being found there ; but 
this supposition is erroneous, since it is evident from 
Livy that Atrax was to the west of Larissa, and only 
ten miles from that city ; whereas Ampelakia is close 
to Tempe, and distant more than fifteen miles from 
Larissa. (Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 1, p. 386, 
seqq.) 

Atramyttium. Vid. Adramyttium. 

Atrax, I. a son ofTEtolus, or, according to others, 
of the river Peneus. He was king of Thessaly, and 
built a town which he called Atrax. Hence the epi¬ 
thet Atracius is sometimes employed with the same 
meaning as Thessalus or “ Thessalian.” (Propert., 
1 , 8, 25.) Atrax was father to Hippodamia, who 
married Pirithoiis, and whom we must not confound 

229 




ATR 


ATR 


with the wife of Pelops, who bore the same name. 
{Stat., Theb., 1, 106.— Ovid, Met., 12, 209.)— II. An 
ancient city of Thessaly. ( Vid. Atraces.) — III. A 
river of HJtolia, running through the country of the 
Locri Ozolse, and falling into the Sinus Corinthiacus, 
to the west of Naupactus. ( Plin., 4, 2.) 

Atrebates, a people of Belgic Gaul, southeast of 
the Morini. They were a powerful community, and 
promised 15,000 men as their quota for the Nervian 
war against Julius Caesar. ( B. G., 2,4.) After their 
reduction by the Roman commander, Commius, one 
of their own nation, and friendly to Caesar, was placed 
over them as king. Their capital was Nemetacum, 
afterward Atrebates, and now Arras, or, as the Flem¬ 
ings call it, Atrecht. Strabo writes the name of this 
people ’A rpeSaroL, and Ptolemy ’A rpeddnoL. {Plin., j 
4, 17.— Ptol., 2, 9.) 

Atrebatii, a people of Britain, situate on both 
banks of the Tamesis or Thames, and occupying the 
larger part of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, a part 
of Middlesex, and the southern part of Berkshire. , 
Their chief city was Caleva, now Silchester. ( Man - 
nert, Gcogr., vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 193.) 

Atreus, son of Pelops and Hippodamia, and king 
of Mycenae. Having, with his brother Thyestes, killed 
out of jealousy his half-brother Chrysippus, they were 
both banished by their father, who at the same time 
pronounced a curse on them, that they and their pos¬ 
terity should perish by means of one another. They 
retired to Midea, whence, on the death of Pelops, 
Atreus came with an army and took possession of his 
father’s throne. ( Hellanicus, ap. Schol. ad II., 2,105.) 
Thyestes, it is said, afterward seduced Aerope, the 
wife of Atreus, who, for this offence, drove him from 
his kingdom ; and Thyestes, out of revenge, sent At- 
reus’s son Plisthenes, whom he had brought up as his 
own, to murder his father. Atreus, taking the youth 
to be the son of Thyestes, put him to death, and the 
curse of Pelops began thus to be accomplished. {Hy- 
gin., Fab., 88.) Others, however, make Plisthenes to 
have died a natural death, and on friendly terms with his 
father, and Atreus to have married his widow Aerope. 

( Vid . Aerope.)—Another legend thus accounts for the 
enmity between the brothers. Mercury, in order to 
avenge his son Myrtilus, whom Pelops had murdered, 
put a gold-fleeced lamb into the flocks of Atreus, be¬ 
tween whom and Thyestes, according to this version of 
the story, the kingdom was disputed. Atreus, in order 
to prove that the kingdom by right was his, said he 
would produce a gold-fleeced lamb. Thyestes, how¬ 
ever, having corrupted Atreus’s wife Aerope, had got 
the lamb; and, when Atreus could not exhibit it 
as he promised, the people, thinking he had deceived 
them, deprived him of his kingdom. Some time after, 
however, Atreus returned, and said that, to prove his 
right, he would let them see the sun and Pleiades mo¬ 
ving from west to east. This miracle Jove performed 
in his favour, and he thus obtained the kingdom, and 
drove Thyestes into exile. {Schol. ad Eurip., Orest., j 
802, 995.—Compare the somewhat different account 
of Eudocia, Villois., Anecd. Grcec., vol. 1, p. 77.) —■ 
Another legend continues the tale in a more horrible 
and tragic form. Atreus, it is said, invited his brother j 
to return, promising to bury all enmity in oblivion. ' 
Thyestes accepted the proffered reconciliation ; a feast 
was made to celebrate it; but the revengeful Atreus 
killed the two sons of Thyestes, and served the flesh 
up to their father ; and, while Thyestes was eating, he 
caused the heads and hands of his children to be 
brought in and shown to him. The sun, it is said, at 
the sight of this horrible deed, checked his chariot in 
the midst of his course. {Schol. ad Eurip., Orest., 
802. — Hygin., Fab., 88, et 258. — Senec., Thyest.) 
Thyestes fled to Thesprotia, whence he went to Sicy- 
on, where his daughter Pelopia dwelt. He arrived on! 
the very night in which she was to offer a sacrifice to 
230 


Minerva, met her in the dark, and forcibly embraced 
her, without knowing who she was. In the struggle 
she drew his sword from the sheath, and, taking it back 
with her, concealed it in Minerva’s temple. Meantime 
famine and plague had come to punish the crime of 
Atreus ; and the oracle had declared that, to remove 
it, Atreus should bring back his brother. He went to 
Thesprotia in search of him, saw Pelopia by the way, 
and, supposing her to be the daughter of the King of 
Sicyon, demanded her in marriage. He obtained her 
hand. She, however, was already pregnant by her fa¬ 
ther, and, shortly after her marriage, brought forth a son, 
whom Atreus caused to be exposed; but the herdsman, 
taking pity on him, reared him on the dugs of a she- 
goat {ait;, aiyog), whence he derived his name, iEgis- 
thus. Atreus, hearing he was alive, had him sought 
for, and brought him up as his own son. Atreus af¬ 
terward sent Agamemnon and Menelaus in search of 
Thyestes. They went to Delphi, where they met 
him, he having also come to consult the god on the 
nature of the vengeance which he should seek to take 
on his brother. They seized and brought him to 
Atreus, who cast him into prison. Atreus then called 
iEgisthus, and directed him to put the captive to 
death. AEgisthus went to the prison, bearing the sword 
which his mother had given him ; and the moment 
Thyestes beheld it, he knew it to be the one which he 
had lost, and asked the youth how he had come by it. 
He replied that it was the gift of his mother. At the 
desire of Thyestes, Pelopia came, and the whole deed 
of darkness was brought to light. The unfortunate 
daughter of Thyestes, under pretence of examining the 
sword, plunged it into her bosom. iEgisthus drew it 
forth reeking with blood, and brought it to Atreus as 
a proof of having obeyed his commands. Rejoiced at 
the death, as he thought, of his brother, Atreus offered 
a sacrifice of thanksgiving on the seashore ; but, while 
he was engaged in it, he was attacked and slain by 
Thyestes and ^Egisthus. {Hygin., 1. c .)—This is the 
most horrible legend in the Grecian mythology. It is 
evidently post-Homeric, since it is utterly irreconcila¬ 
ble with the account of the Pelopidae, as given in the 
Homeric poems. Of Agamemnon’s sceptre it is there 
said, that Vulcan made it and gave it to Jupiter, who 
gave it to Mercury, by whom it was presented to 
“ horse-lashing” Pelops, who gave it to Atreus, the 
shepherd of the people, who, when dying, left it to 
“ lamb-abounding” Thyestes, who left it to Agamem¬ 
non. {Horn., II., 2, 101, seqq.) Here we have a fam¬ 
ily of princes legitimately transmitting the sceptre from 
one to another, a state of things totally at variance 
with the atrocities that have been related. It was 
probably at the time when the Greeks had become fa¬ 
miliar with Asia and the barbarous regions round the 
Euxine, that the nameless deeds of the line of Pelops 
were invented. The author of the Alcmseonis, who¬ 
ever he was, is said to have related the story of the 
gold-fleeced lamb. {Schol. ad Eurip., Orest., 995.) 
We know not who first told of the horrid banquet, but 
we find it frequently alluded to by iEschylus {Again., 
1104, 1228, seqq. ; 1594, seqq. ; Cho'eph., 1065), 
though he does not appear to have made the deeds of 
Atreus and Thyestes the subject of a drama. Sopho¬ 
cles wrote two Thyestes, and Euripides one ; and we 
have probably their contents in the legends transmitted 
to us by Hyginus. {Keightley's Mythology, p. 447, 
seqq.) 

AtrId^e, a patronymic given by Homer to Aga¬ 
memnon and Menelaus, who were brought up by their 
grandfather Atreus, as if they had been his own sons, 
the term Atridae meaning “ sons of Atreus.” (Con¬ 
sult remarks at the commencement of the article 
Agamemnon.) 

Atropatia or Atropatene, a name given to the 
northwestern part of Media, between Mount Taurus 
and the Caspian Sea. It received this name from 



ATT 


ATT 


Atropates, a satrap of this province, who, after the 
death of Alexander, rendered himself independent, 
and took the title of king, which his successors en¬ 
joyed for many ages. It was a cold, barren, and in¬ 
hospitable country, and on that account allotted by 
Shalmanezar for the residence of many captive Is¬ 
raelites, after the conquest of their kingdom. It is 
now called Aderbigian, from the Persian term Ader, 
signifying.)??^; according to the tradition that Zerdust 
or Zoroaster lighted a pyre, or temple of fire, in a 
city named Urmiah , of this his native country. Its 
metropolis was Gaza, now Tebriz, or, as it is more 
commonly pronounced, Tauns. (Strab ., 360.— Plin., 
6 , 13 .) 

Atropos, one of the Parc®, daughter of Nox and 
Erebus. According to the derivation of her name 
(a priv., and rpsTru, “ to turn” or “ change”), she is 
inexorable and inflexible, and her duty among the 
three sisters is to cut the thread of life without any 
regard to sex, age, or condition. ( Vid. Parcas.) 

Atta, Titus Quintius, a Roman comic writer, who 
died A.U.C. 633, B.C. 121. His productions appear 
to have been extremely popular in the time of Hor¬ 
ace, though, as would seem from the language of the 
latter, not very deserving of it. ( Hor., Ep., 2, 1, 79.) 
He received the surname of Atta from a lameness 
in his feet, which gave him the appearance of a per¬ 
son walking on tiptoe. Thus Festus remarks : “Al¬ 
ta appellantur, qui, propter vitium crurum aut ped¬ 
um. plantis insistunt et attingunt magis terram quam 
ambulant.''’ It is to this personal deformity that Hor¬ 
ace (l. c .) pleasantly alludes, when he supposes the 
plays of Atta to limp over the stage like their lame 
author. Bothe’s assertion that Atta also composed 
tragedies, is contradicted by Schmid. (Ad Hor., 1. c. 
—Compare Crinit., Poet. Lat., c. 23.— Bahr, Gesch. 
Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. Ill, seqq.) 

Attalea, I. a city of Pamphylia, southwest of 
Perga, built by King Attalus II. The site of this 
city is called Palaia Altalia, while the modern city 
of Attalia, or, as it is commonly called, Satalia, an¬ 
swers to the ancient Olbia. (Cramer's Asia Minor, 
vol. 2, p. 275.) — II. A city of Lydia, on the river 
Hermus, and northeast of Sardis. Its earlier name 
was Agroira or Alloira. (Steph. Byz., s. v.) The 
ecclesiastical notices have recorded some of its bish¬ 
ops. The site is occupied by a village called Adala. 
(Keppel's Travels, vol. 2, p. 335. — Cramer's Asia 
Minor, vol. 1, p. 435.) 

Attalicus. Vid. Attalus II. 

Attalus, I. king of Pergamus, succeeded Eume- 
nes I. This prince was first proclaimed king of 
Pergamus after a signal victory obtained by him over 
the Gallo-Graeci, or Galatae, and, for his talents and 
the soundness of his policy, deserves a distinguished 
place among the sovereigns of antiquity. He formed, 
at an early period, an alliance with the Romans, whom 
he vigorously assisted in their two wars against Philip 
of Macedon. In conjunction with the Athenians, he 
invaded Macedonia, and recalled Philip from his en¬ 
terprise undertaken against Athens; on which account 
the Athenians gave his name to one of their tribes. 
His wealth was so great as to become proverbial. 
(Hor., Od., 1, 12.) He had married Apollonias, a 
lady of Cyzicus, of obscure birth, but great merit and 
virtue : by her he had four sons, Eumenes, Attalus, 
Philetaeus, and Athenaeus. He died at an advanced 
age, after a prosperous reign of 43 or 44 years, and 
was succeeded by Eumenes. (Polyb., 18, 24.— Liv., 
33, 21.— Strab., 624.)—II. The 2d of the name suc¬ 
ceeded his brother Eumenes II., B.C. 159. Before 
ascending the throne he had been twice sent to 
Rome, to solicit aid against Antiochus the Great and 
against the Greeks. When he commenced his reign, 
he found two adversaries in Prusias of Bithynia and 
Demetrius Soter, who meditated the conquest of his 


kingdom ; and the Romans appeared little disposed to 
aid him. Prusias in fact gained some advantages over 
him, but Attalus eventually, by his valour and skill, 
freed himself from his foes. The friendship of the Ro¬ 
mans, subsequently conciliated by him, placed him in 
security for the time to come, and he devoted the period 
of repose thus aflforded him to the building of cities, 
and the munificent patronage of learning. He died at 
the age of 82, after a reign of 21 years, having been 
poisoned by his nephew, the son of Eumenes II. 
Attalus was surnamed Pkiladelphus, from the fraternal 
love he displayed towards his brother Eumenes during 
the lifetime of the latter. (Liv., 35, 23.— Id., 37, 43.— 
Id., 38, 12.— Justin, 25, 1.)—III. The third of the name 
was son of Eumenes II., and succeeded to the throne 
after poisoning his uncle Attalus II. He made himself 
extremely odious by the destruction of many of his 
relations and friends. Repenting soon after of his 
cruelties, he assumed all the habiliments of sorrow; 
and subsequently, giving up the cares of government 
to others, he turned his attention to gardening. In 
full accordance, however, with his natural disposition, 
he bestowed particular attention upon the cultivation 
of noxious and poisonous plants, which he intermin¬ 
gled with the fruits and flowers that he sent as pres¬ 
ents to his friends. He afterward turned his atten¬ 
tion to the melting and working of metals. Attalus 
died after a reign of five years, from a stroke of the 
sun, while superintending the erection of a tomb for 
his mother, his affection for whom had procured him 
the surname of Philometor. He died without issue, 
and his will is said to have contained the following 
words: “Populus Romanus bonorum meorum hceres 
esto." The Romans regarded this as conveying to 
them the entire kingdom, and accordingly made it a 
province of their empire. Considering all the cir¬ 
cumstances of the case, and especially the character 
of the testator, the construction which the Romans 
put upon the words in question was fair enough. 
Mithradates, however, in his letter to Arsaces (Sail., 
Hist. Fragm., p. 409, ed. Burnouf), regards it as a 
forced and fraudulent interpretation. ( Justin, 36, 4. 
— Veil. Paterc., 2, 4.— Liv., Ep. et Suppl., 58.) 

Atthis, a daughter of Cranaus the successor of 
Cecrops. She was fabled to have given name to the 
country of Attica. (Apollod., 3, 14, 5.) 

Attica, a country of Greece, without the Pelopon¬ 
nesus, forming a kind of triangular peninsula, and 
bounded on the north by Boeotia and the Euripus ; on 
the west by Megaris ; on the south by the Sinus Sa- 
ronicus ; and on the east by part of the HCgean Sea ; 
extending from northwest to southeast about eighty 
miles, with decreasing breadth, but at an average of 
about forty miles. According to the popular account, 
it received its name from Atthis, the daughter of Cra¬ 
naus. The more correct etymology, however, is from 
uKrij ( acte ), the Greek term for “ shore," the country 
being of a peninsular shape, or, in other words, two 
sides of it being shore. The original name, there¬ 
fore, would seem to have been Acta, which was af¬ 
terward changed to the more euphonious Attica. 
(Plin., 4, 11. — Harpocrat., s. v. durp. — Aul. Gell., 
3, 6. — Eustath. ad Dionys. Perieg., 413.) The 
situation of Attica marked it out in an eminent de¬ 
gree for a commercial country. The base, or north¬ 
ern side of the irregular triangle' which it forms, is 
applied to the continent of Greece ; with its eastern 
face it looks towards Asia ; from its apex on the 
south, it contemplates Egypt; and on the west it di¬ 
rects its view to the Peloponnesus, and to the coun¬ 
tries of Italy and Sicily lying beyond it. By this 
combination of the advantages of inland communica¬ 
tion with those of an extensive and various inter¬ 
course with all the civilized countries of the world, it 
was distinguished from all the other states both of the 
peninsula and continent of Greece. As Greece was 

231 



ATTICA. 


ATT 


the centre of the civilized world of antiquity, so was 
Attica the centre of Greece ; and as the climate and 
temperature of Hellas was considered to be more fa¬ 
vourable than that of any other country of Europe or 
Asia, for the healthy and vigorous development of the 
physical and intellectual faculties of man, so did ev¬ 
ery Hellenic province yield in these respects to the 
superior claims of the Athenian territory. Again : it 
was not merely aided by these natural advantages, 
which arose from its form, its position, and its cli¬ 
mate ; the very defects also under which this country 
laboured, the very difficulties with which it was com¬ 
pelled to struggle, supplied to Attica the inducements, 
and afforded it the means, for availing itself in the 
most effectual manner of those benefits and privileges 
with which nature had so liberally endowed it. One 
of these apparent deficiencies was the barrenness of 
its soil. The geological formation of Attica is prim¬ 
itive limestone : on its northern frontier a long ridge 
of mountains, consisting of such a stratification, 
stretches from east to west: a range of similar char¬ 
acter bounds it on the west, and in the interior of the 
country it is intersected with hills from north to south, 
which belong to the same class. Thus it will appear 
that the geographical dimensions of Attica, limited as 
they are, must be reduced by us within a still narrow¬ 
er range, when we consider it as far as it is available 
for the purposes of cultivation. In this respect, its 
superficial extent cannot be rated at more than one 
half the value which has been assigned to the whole 
country. The mountains of which we have spoken 
are either bare or rugged, or thinly clad with scanty 
vegetation and low shrubs. The mountain pine is 
found on the slopes of Laurium ; the steeps of Parnes 
and Pentelicus are sprinkled over with the dwarf oak, 
the lentisk, the arbutus, and the bay. But the hills 
of this country can boast few timber trees ; they serve 
to afford pasture to numerous flocks of sheep and 
goats, which browse upon their meagre herbage and 
climb among their steep rocks, and to furnish fuel to 
the inhabitants of the plain. While such is the char¬ 
acter of the mountainous districts of the province, its 
plains and lowlands cannot lay a much better claim to 
the merit of fertility. In many parts of them, as in 
the city of Athens itself, the calcareous rock projects 
above the surface, or is scarcely concealed beneath a 
light covering of soil: in no instance do they pos¬ 
sess any considerable deposite of alluvial earth. The 
plains of this country are irrigated by few streams, 
which are rather to be called torrents than rivers, and 
on none of them can it depend for a perennial supplv 
of water. There is no lake within its limits. It is 
unnecessary to suggest the reason where such was 
the nature of the soil, that the olive was the most 
common, and also the most valuable, production of 
Attica. Such, then, were some of the physical defects 
of the land. But these disadvantages were abundant¬ 
ly compensated by the beneficial effects which they 
produced. The sterility of Attica drove its inhabi¬ 
tants from their own country. It carried them abroad. 
It filled them with a spirit of activity, which loved to 
grapple with danger and difficulty : it told them, that, 
if they would maintain themselves in the dignity 
which became them, they must regard the resources 
of their own land as nothing, and those of other coun¬ 
tries as their own. It arose also from the barrenness 
of her soil, that Attica had been always exempt from 
the revolutions which in early times agitated the oth¬ 
er countries of Greece ; and hence Attica, secure in 
her sterility, boasted that her land had never been in¬ 
undated by tides of immigration. The race of her 
inhabitants had been always the same ; nor could she 
tell whence they had sprung; no foreign land had 
sent them ; they had not forced their way within her 
confines by a violent irruption. She traced the stream 
of her population in a backward course, through many 
232 


generations, till at last it hid itself, like one of her own 
brooks, in the recesses of her own soil. This belief 
that her people was indigenous, she expressed in dif¬ 
ferent ways. She intimated it in the figure which 
she assigned to Cecrops, the heroic prince and pro¬ 
genitor of her primeval inhabitants. She represented 
him as combining in his person a double character; 
while the higher parts of his body were those of a man 
and a king, the serpentine folds in which it was termi¬ 
nated declared his extraction from the earth. The 
cicadae of gold, which she braided in the twinings of 
her hair, were intended to denote the same thing; 
they signified that the natives of Attica sprang from 
the soil upon which these cicadas sang, and which was 
believed to feed them with its dew. (Wordsworth's 
Greece , p. 69, seqq.) —The total population of Attica, 
in B.C. 317, may be taken at 527,660. Of these 
the free inhabitants amounted to 90,000 ; the resident 
aliens to 45,000 ; while the slaves made up the resi¬ 
due. Of the free inhabitants of Attica, the citizens , 
or those who had votes in the public assembly, 
amounted to 21,000. About 127 years before they 
had been 19,000, until Pericles reduced their num¬ 
ber. Twenty thousand were computed as the num¬ 
ber in the earliest times, under Cecrops. ( Schol. ad 
Find., 01, 9, 68.) The slaves of Attica, at the cen¬ 
sus made B.C. 309, when Demetrius was archon 
eponymus, were 400,000. Hume, in his Essay on the 
Populousness of Ancient Nations ( Essays , vol. 1, p. 
443), thinks that there is error or corruption in this 
high number, and that for 400,000 we ought to read 
40,000 (namely, tet panicpvpiovq instead of TEGcapd- 
Kovra pvpiddaq). But he forgets that in this enumera¬ 
tion of 400,000 we are not to take the slaves as all 
males of full age. Slaves w 7 ere property, and there¬ 
fore, in enumerating them, it would be necessary to 
compute all the individuals who composed that prop¬ 
erty. The 400,000 therefore express all the slaves, 
of either sex and of every age, and in this number 
the men of full age would be less than 100,000. 

( Clinton , Fast. Hell., vol. 1, p. 387, seqq.) —Some re¬ 
marks on the ancient kings of Attica will be found un¬ 
der the article Cecrops, and on the coinage and com¬ 
merce of the Athenians, under Mina and Piraeus. 

Atticus, I. Titus Pomponius, a Roman knight, 
who, in the most agitated times, preserved the esteem 
of all parties. The Pomponian family, from whom he 
originated, was one of the most distinguished of those 
of equestrian rank, and pretended to derive its origin 
from Numa Pompilius. Atticus lived in the latter pe¬ 
riod of the republic, and acquired great celebrity from 
the splendour of his private character. He inherited 
from his father, and from his uncle Q. Caecilius, great 
wealth. When he attained maturity, the republic 
was disturbed by the factions of Cinna and Sylla. 
His brother Sulpicius, the tribune of the commons, 
being killed, he thought himself not safe in Rome ; 
for which reason he removed with his fortune to Ath¬ 
ens, where he devoted himself to science. His bene¬ 
fits to the city w ere so great, that he gained the affec¬ 
tions of the people in the highest degree. He ac¬ 
quired so thorough a knowledge of Greek, that he 
could not be distinguished from a native Athenian, 
and hence the surname of Atticus bestowed upon him. 
When Rome had acquired some degree of quiet, he 
returned, and inherited from his uncle ten millions of 
sesterces. His sister married the brother of Cicero. 
With this orator, as well as with Hortensius, he lived 
on terms of intimate friendship. It was his principle 
never to mix in politics, and he lived undisturbed 
amid all the successive factions which reigned in 
Rome. Csesar treated him with the greatest regard, 
though he was known as a friend of Pompey’s. After 
the death of Cfesar he lived in friendship with Brutus, 
without, however, offending Antony. When Brutus 
was obliged to flee from Italy, he sent him a million 





ATTICUS. 


ATT 


of sesterces ; and likewise supported Fulvia, the wife 
of Antony, after the battle of Mutina, and therefore 
was spared when fortune again smiled on Antony, 
and the friends of Brutus generally were the victims 
of his vengeance. Even in the bad times of the tri¬ 
umvirate, he caused all the proscribed who fled to Epi¬ 
rus to be liberally relieved from his estates in that 
country, and by his interest recovered the forfeited 
property of several of them. Such was his credit 
with Octavius, that his daughter was preferred to all 
the great matches of Rome as a wife for his friend 
Agrippa. Octavius himself cultivated the closest in¬ 
timacy with Atticus, who, at the same time, maintained 
an equally intimate correspondence with Antony. The 
mode of living pursued by Atticus was that of a man 
of great fortune, whose mind was devotedly attached 
to literary and philosophical pursuits. His domestics 
were not numerous, but choice and well educated; 
his table was elegant, but not costly ; and he delight¬ 
ed in what would now be called literary suppers, where 
an anagnostes always read something aloud, in order 
that the guests might enjoy a mental as well as physi¬ 
cal banquet. He was extremely studious, much at¬ 
tached to inquiries relative to the antiquities of his 
country, its laws, customs, and treaties, and wrote 
several works on these subjects, which appear to have 
been much valued. The conclusion of his life was 
conformable to the principles of Epicurean philosophy, 
by which it had been all along governed. Having 
reached the age of seventy-seven with little assistance 
from medicine, he was seized with a disorder in the 
intestines, which terminated in an ulcer deemed in¬ 
curable. Convinced of the nature of his case, he or¬ 
dered his son-in-law Agrippa, and other friends, to be 
sent for, and declared to them his intention of termi¬ 
nating his life by abstaining from food. When, in 
spite of their affectionate entreaties, he had persisted in 
this resolution for two days, some of the unfavourable 
symptoms of his complaint abated ; but, not thinking it 
worth while to take the chance of a cure, he persevered, 
and the fifth day closed his existence, B.C. 33. — In 
modern times the character of Atticus has been the 
subject of much curious discussion, and his neutrality in 
the midst of civil contentions has, by some politicians, 
been termed selfish and criminal. From the fearless 
generosity which he exhibited to the unfortunate on all 
sides, it may, however, be presumed that, looking on 
the state of the commonwealth without passion, he was 
convinced of the inutility of attempting to stop an in¬ 
evitable career. Certain it is, that as a medium of 
friendship, a reconciler of differences, and a protector 
against the ferocity of party hatred, he was eminently 
serviceable in the calamitous times in which he lived ; 
and possibly, with his cast of temper and talents, could 
scarcely have acted more beneficently for his country 
as well as for himself. His line of conduct has been 
attributed to his Epicurean philosophy ; but native dis¬ 
position and temper must have formed his peculiar 
character much more than speculative principles. The 
correspondence between Cicero and Atticus is highly 
honourable to both parties, especially as the latter was 
also intimate with his rival Hortensius, and a mediator 
between them. According to Cicero, Atticus wrote 
annals of great value, comprising a sort of universal 
history for 700 years. {Corn. Nep. in Vit. — Aikin's 
Gen. Diet., s. v. — Gorton's Biog. Diet., vol. 1, p. 
134, seqq. — Encyclop. Americ., vol. 1, p. 457.) — II. 
Herodes, or Tiberius Claudius Atticus Herodes, an 
Athenian philosopher and statesman of the age of the 
Antonines. His father, Julius Atticus, descended 
from the family of Miltiades, was raised from indi¬ 
gence to wealth by the discovery of a hidden treas¬ 
ure. Herodes received an education suitable to the 
condition to which his father had been advanced by 
this fortunate accession to his property. Scholastic 
rhetoric, or the art of declamation, then esteemed a 
G o 


most fashionable accomplishment, became his princi¬ 
pal study ; and he prosecuted it under the first masters 
of the age with such success as to acquire great repu¬ 
tation as an orator. After travelling abroad, he settled 
at Athens, and gave public lectures on eloquence, which 
were attended by sophists and rhetoricians, whose ad¬ 
miration of his talents was, perhaps, not altogether dis¬ 
interested, as his hospitality and munificence were lav¬ 
ishly extended to his followers. The fame of Herodes 
reached from Athens to Rome, and he was invited by 
the Emperor Antoninus Pius to become rhetorical tu¬ 
tor to Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, the adopted 
sons and destined successors of Antoninus. This pro¬ 
motion led to his being created consul A.D. 143. He 
was also made prefect of the free cities of Asia Minor, 
and president of the Panhellenic and Panathensean 
games, at which he was crowned. He testified his 
sense of this honour by building a marble stadium, or 
course for running matches, one of the grandest works 
ever executed by a private individual. He also erect¬ 
ed a new theatre at Athens, and repaired and embel¬ 
lished the Odeon of Pericles. These and other splen¬ 
did monuments of his wealth and liberality have per¬ 
petuated his name, while his literary productions have 
perished. The latter part of the life of Herodes was 
embittered by the ingratitude of his fellow-citizens, 
who preferred accusations against him in his public ca¬ 
pacity ; but these were quashed by the friendship of 
his pupil Marcus Aurelius, then emperor. He passed 
his latter days at Marathon, his birthplace, where he 
died about A.D. 185, aged seventy-five. His remains 
were interred at Athens with public honours. ( Gor¬ 
ton's Biogr. Diet., vol. 1, p. 134.) 

Attila (in German, Etzel), the son of Mundzuck, 
or, as he is less correctly called, Mandras, a Hun of 
royal descent, who succeeded his uncle Rugilas (A.D. 
433), and shared the supreme authority with his broth¬ 
er Bleda. These two leaders of the barbarians, who 
had settled in Scythia and Hungary, threatened the 
Eastern empire, and twice compelled the weak Theo¬ 
dosius II. to purchase an inglorious peace. Their 
power was feared by all the nations of Europe and 
Asia. The Huns themselves esteemed Attila their 
bravest warrior and most skilful general. Their re¬ 
gard for his person soon amounted to superstitious rev¬ 
erence. He gave out that he had found the sword of 
their tutelar god, the Scythian Mars, the possession of 
which was supposed to convey a title to the whole 
earth ; and, proud of this weapon, which added dignity 
to his power, he designed to extend his rule over the 
world. He caused his brother Bleda to be murdered 
(A.D. 444), and, when he announced that it was done 
by the command of God, this murder was celebrated 
like a victory. Being now sole master of a warlike 
people, his unbounded ambition made him the terror 
of all nations ; and he became, as he called himself, 
the Scourge of God for the chastisement of the human 
race. In a short time he extended his dominion over 
all the people of Germany and Scythia, and the East¬ 
ern and Western emperors paid him tribute. The 
Vandals, the Ostrogoths, the Gepidae, and a part of the 
Franks, united under his banners. Some historians 
assure us that his army amounted to 700,000 men.— 
His portrait, as given by Jornandes, was that of a mod¬ 
ern Calmuc, with a large head, swarthy complexion, 
flat nose, small sunken eyes, and a short, square body. 
His looks were fierce, his gait proud, and his deport¬ 
ment stern and haughty ; yet he was merciful to a 
suppliant foe, and ruled his own people with justice 
and lenity.—When he had heard a rumour of the riches 
and power of Persia, he directed his march thither. 
He was defeated on the plains of Armenia, and fell 
back to satisfy his desire of plunder in the dominions 
of the Emperor of the East. He easily found a pretext 
for war ; he therefore went over to Illyricum, and laid 
waste all the countries from the Euxine to the Adriatic* 

233 







ATT 


ATY 


The Emperor Theodosius collected an army to oppose 
his progress ; but in three bloody battles fortune de¬ 
clared herself for the barbarians, and Constantinople 
was indebted to the strength of its walls, and to the 
ignorance of the enemy in the art of besieging, for its 
preservation. Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece all 
submitted to the savage invader, who destroyed sev¬ 
enty flourishing cities. Theodosius was at the mercy 
of the victor, and was compelled to purchase a peace. 
A scheme was laid in the court of Theodosius to as¬ 
sassinate him under the cover of a solemn embassy, 
which intention he discovered ; and, without violating 
the laws of hospitality in the persons of the ambassa¬ 
dors, wisely preferred a heavy ransom for the principal 
agent in the plot, and a new treaty at the expense of 
fresh payments. On the accession of Marcian, Attila 
demanded tribute, which was refused; and, although 
much exasperated, he resolved first to turn his arms 
against the Western Emperor Valentinian, whose li¬ 
centious sister Honoria, in revenge for being banished 
for an intrigue with her chamberlain, sent an offer of 
herself to Attila. The Hun, perceiving the pretence 
this proposal supplied, preceded his irruptions into 
Gaul by demanding Honoria in marriage, with a share 
of the imperial patrimony. Being of course refused, 
he affected to be satisfied, and pretended he was only 
about to enter Gaul to make war upqn Theodoric, king 
of the Ostrogoths. He accordingly crossed the Rhine, 
A.D. 450, with a prodigious host, and marked his way 
through Gaul with pillage and desolation, until com¬ 
pletely defeated by Theodoric and the famous Aetius, 
in the bloody battle of Chalons. He was, however, 
allowed to retreat, and, having recruited his forces, he 
passed the Alps the next year and invaded Italy, spread¬ 
ing his ravages over all Lombardy. This visitation 
was the origin of the famous republic of Venice, which 
was founded by the fugitives who fled at the terror of 
his name. Valentinian, unable to avert the storm, re¬ 
paired from Ravenna to Rome, whence he sent the 
prelate Leo with a solemn deputation, to avert the 
wrath of Attila, who consented to quit Italy on receiv¬ 
ing a vast sum as the dowry of Honoria, and an annual 
tribute. He did not much longer survive these transac¬ 
tions ; and his death was singular, he being found dead, 
in consequence of suffocation from a broken blood¬ 
vessel, on the night of his marriage with a beautiful 
young virgin named Ildegund. This event took place 
in 453. The news of his death spread sorrow and terror 
in the army. His body was enclosed in three coffins : 
the first was of gold, the second of silver, and the 
third of iron. The captives who had made the grave 
were strangled, in order that the place of interment 
might be kept concealed from his foes. ( Menzel, 
Gcsch. der Deutschen, p. 93, seqq. — Gorton's Biogr. 
Diet., vol. 1, p. 135. — Encyclop. Americ., vol. 1, p. 
457, seqq.) 

Attilius, I. one of the first three military tribunes 
with consular power, chosen by the people, B.C. 444, 
in place of the regular consuls. ( Liv ., 4, 7.)—II. Reg- 
ulus. ( Vid. Regulus). — III. Calatinus, consul B.C. 
258, in which year he took the city of Mylistratus, 
in Sicily. Chosen consul again B.C. 256, he cap¬ 
tured Panormus and many other cities. In B.C. 249 
he was appointed dictator.—IV. A Roman poet, who 
translated into Latin verse the Electra of Sophocles. 
From the allusion made to him by Cicero, he appears 
to have been a very harsh and rugged writer. {Cic., 
de Fin., 1, 2. — Ep. ad Att., 14, 20.) — V. A freed- 
man, who (A.D. 27) exhibited games at Fidense in an 
amphitheatre so badly constructed that it broke down, 
and killed or wounded 50,000 persons. In conse¬ 
quence of this he was banished, and a law was made 
prohibiting any individual from exhibiting games who 
was not possessed of a fortune of 400,000 sesterces, 
and thus enabled to erect a secure edifice. It was or¬ 
dained also that buildings intended for such purposes 
234 


should be erected on a firm foundation. ( Tac., Ann., 
4, 62.) 

Attius, I. (or Accius, as he is sometimes, but im¬ 
properly, called), a Roman tragic writer, born A.U.C. 
584. His style was harsh ; but he was, notwithstand¬ 
ing, held in high estimation by his countrymen for the 
force and eloquence of his productions. Horace, in 
the same line where he celebrates the dramatic skill of 
Pacuvius, alludes to the loftiness of Attius ( Epist ., 2, 
1, 56), by which is meant sublimity both of sentiment 
and expression. Most of the plays of Attius were 
taken from the Greek tragedians ; two of them, how¬ 
ever, the Brutus and the Decius, hinged on B,oman 
subjects, and were both probably written in compli¬ 
ment to the family of his patron Decius Brutus. ( Dun¬ 
lop's Roman Literature, vol. 1 , p. 350, seqq.—Bdlxr , 
Gesch. Rom. Lit., vol. 1 , p. 79, seq.) — II. Tullius, 
the general of the V olsci, to whom Coriolanus fled when 
banished from Rome. ( Vid. Coriolanus.) 

Attus Navius, a Roman augur, of whom a mar¬ 
vellous story is related. Tarquinius Priscus, after his 
victory in the Sabine war, which was owing to his hav¬ 
ing doubled the number of his cavalry, wished to dou¬ 
ble the number of the equestrian centuries, and to 
name the three new ones after himself and his friends. 
His design was opposed by the augur Attus Navius, 
who represented that Romulus had acted under the 
guidance of the auspices in regulating the centuries, 
and that nothing but the consent of the auspices could 
warrant a change in the distribution of the knights. 
Attus was by descent a Sabine ; the gift of observing 
and interpreting auguries was the endowment of his 
countrymen; even when a boy, without instruction, 
he had practised the art, and afterward, on being taught, 
had acquired the greatest insight into it that any priest 
ever attained to. Tarquinius to shame the augurs, 
or for his own conviction, as Croesus tried the veraci¬ 
ty of the oracle, commanded him to divine whether 
what he was at that moment thinking of were possible 
or impossible. When Attus had observed the heav¬ 
ens and declared that the object of the king’s thoughts 
could be effected, Tarquinius held out to him a whet¬ 
stone, and a razor to split it with; the augur did so 
without delay. The whetstone and razor were preserv¬ 
ed in the Comitium under an altar: beside them, on 
the steps of the senate-house, stood the statue of At¬ 
tus, a priest, with his head muffled. {Liv., 1, 36.— 
Dion. Hal., 3, 70, seq. — Cic., de Div., 1, 17, $ 32.— 
Niebuhr's Rom. Hist., vol. 1, p. 307, seqq., 2d ed., 
Cambridge transl.) 

Atyad^e, the descendants of Atys, an ancient king 
of Lydia. ( Vid. Atys I.) 

Atys, I. an ancient king of Lydia. He is men¬ 
tioned by Herodotus, who calls him the son of Manes 
(1, 95). The historian, however, in another part of 
his work, makes the son of Manes to have been Cotys 
(4, 45), a circumstance which has occasioned some 
trouble to the commentators. Wesseling (ad Herod., 
4, 45) thinks it probable that Manes had two sons, 
Atys and Cotys. It seems more natural, however, to 
make Atys and Cotys two names for one and the same 
person, the latter appellation being evidently the same 
as the former, except that it commences with a strong 
aspirated consonant, and has the vowel sound changed. 
Lanzi sees in the name Atys an Etrurian root. (*S 'ag- 
gjo di Ling. Etrusc., vol. 2, p. 223.) The appella¬ 
tion Manes, moreover, is given in the Vatican MS. as 
Ma-snes (Mdovrjc), which last approximates to Masses 
(M aoorjq), a form sometimes given to the name of the 
river god Marsyas. ( Plut., de Mus., p. 1133.— 
Muller, Etrusk., vol. 1, p. 81, not.) Ritter considers 
Manes and Atys as appellations of Oriental origin, 
made euphonious by the Greeks, and connects them 
with the early worship of Buddha. According to this 
writer, Manes ( Man-es) is nothing more than the term 
u man, and to the same family of words belong the 




AY A 


AYE 


Hindu Menu, the Egyptian Menes, the Greek Minos, 
and even the Latin mens. On the other hand, Cotys 
or Khodo is the same as the Boda of the Persians. 
(Vorhalle , p. 365.) — II. A son of Croesus, king of 
Lydia. His father dreamed that Atys was to be killed 
by the point of a spear, and therefore, in order to frus¬ 
trate the prediction, kept his son at home, and care¬ 
fully avoided exposing him to any danger. Meanwhile, 
a large wild boar infested the country around the Mysi- 
an Olympus, and the inhabitants of the adjacent territo¬ 
ry applied to Croesus for assistance against the animal. 
After urgent entreaties on the part of the young prince, 
his father allowed him to accompany the hunters sent 
out from Lydia to the aid of the Mysians, but gave him 
in charge to Adrastus, a Phrygian of royal birth, who 
had slain by accident his own brother, and had been 
purified of the homicide by Croesus. The party en¬ 
countered the boar, and, in making the onset, Atys 
was killed by an accidental blow from the javelin of 
Adrastus, the very one who had been appointed by 
Croesus to guard him from danger. Such is the ac¬ 
count of Herodotus (1, 34, seqq.). Ptolemy, the son 
of Hephsestion, calls the son of Croesus, whom Adras¬ 
tus slew, by the name of Agathon. He also states, 
that the young prince had a dispute with Adrastus 
about a quail, in which he fell by the hand of the 
latter. ( Photius, Bibl., vol. 1, p. 146, ed. Bekker.) 
—III. A Trojan who came to Italy with .Eneas, and 
was fabled to have been the progenitor of the fami¬ 
ly of the Attii at Rome. {Virg., 2En., 5, 568.) — 
IY. A beautiful shepherd of Phrygia, beloved by Cyb- 
ele, and to whom she intrusted the care of her altars 
and the superintendence of her religious ceremonies. 
Having proved unfaithful to the goddess, she inspired 
him with phrensy to such a degree, that, in a paroxysm 
of his malady, he deprived himself of his virility. Ovid, 
however, makes him to have been changed by the god¬ 
dess into a pine-tree. {Met., 10, 104). According to 
Diodorus, on the other hand, who assigns Mseon, king 
of Phrygia, as the mortal father of Cybele, Atys was 
put to death by her parent on discovering the intimacy 
subsisting between the parties. ( Diod. Sic., 3, 58.) 
Another, and wilder legend, of Lydian origin, may be 
found in Pausanias (7, 17.—’Compare Catull., de 
Aty, &c. — Ovid, Fast., 4, 223.— Lucian, de Dea Sy- 
ra). The fable of Atys is astronomical in its origin. 
Atys, deprived of his virility, is a symbol of the sun, 
shorn of its generative powers in the season of winter, 
and moving in the lower hemisphere : the luminary of 
day resumes its energies on ascending into the upper 
hemisphere. Atys, an incarnation of the sun, is him¬ 
self the first of the Galli; and his priests, by a volun¬ 
tary mutilation, celebrate the period of his weakness 
and impotence. But as, in accordance with a decree 
of the gods, not a single member of Atys is to perish, 
every year he returns to the upper world, and cele¬ 
brates anew his union with Cybele. This return, this 
renewal of the productive powers and the fecundity of 
nature, gave rise to all those demonstrations of savage 
joy which are so well described in the verses of Lu¬ 
cretius (2, 618, seqq.). For farther remarks illustra¬ 
tive of this curious portion of ancient mythology, con¬ 
sult Creuzer's Symbolik, par Guigniaut, vol. 2, page 
69, seqq. As regards the different forms of the name, 
Atys, Attis, or Attes, consult the remarks of Hemster- 
huis {ad Lucian, D. D., 12), and of Grsevius {ad Lu¬ 
cian, de Dea Syr a, 15). Diodorus says that Atys was 
subsequently called Papas {lidrzag), which is, no doubt, 
the same with the old Greek word Tniirag or namzag, 
“ father,” other forms of which are drra, drcrza, and 
a.TV(j)a. We see lurking, therefore, in the names Atys, 
Attis, Attes, and Papas, a reference to the sun as the 
great father of life and parent of fertility. (Compare 
the remarks on the origin of the name Apollo, under 
that article.) 

Avaricum, a strongly fortified town of Gaul, the 


capital of the Bituriges, now Bourges. It received 
its former appellation from the river Avara, or Eure, 
one of the southern branches of the Liger. It was 
taken by Caesar during the Gallic wars, and its inhabi¬ 
tants massacred. {Cces., Bell. Gall., 7, 27, seqq.) 

Avella. Vid. Abella. 

AventTnus I. a son of Hercules by Rhea, who as¬ 
sisted Turnus against .Eneas. ( Virg., JEn., 7, 657.) 
—II. A king of Alba, buried upon Mount Aventine. 
{Ovid, Fast., 4, 51.)—III. One of the seven hills of 
Rome, and the largest of the whole number. It was 
divided from the Palatine by the valley of the Circus 
Maximus, and round its northern base flows the Tiber. 
This hill is said to have derived its name from Aven- 
tinus, an ancient king of Alba, who was buried there 
in a laurel grove, which was preserved on this hill to a 
very late period. The Aventine was the place on 
which Remus was fabled to have taken his station 
when watching for an omen in his competition with 
Romulus for the crown ; and here, too, he is said to 
have been buried. Hence some derive the name from 
the Latin arcs, “ omens.” The Aventine, in conse¬ 
quence of what has been said, was considered a place 
of evil omen. The period when it was included with¬ 
in the walls of Rome is differently given. Some 
make this to have been done by Ancus Marcius, others 
not till the time of the Emperor Claudius. No au¬ 
thority, however, can be adduced in support of the 
latter opinion, though advocated by some antiquarians, 
while an irresistible weight of evidence can be brought 
against it. {Liv., 1, 33. — Dion. Hal., lib. 2, 3, 4.— 
Nardini, 1, 5.) In the early ages of Rome, however, 
it is certain that the whole neither of the Esquiline nor 
Aventine hills was inhabited. We read in Livy (2, 
28) of nightly meetings of the disaffected being held 
upon the former, to the great alarm of the senate ; 
and the two armies, that joined in rebellion against 
the tyranny of the decemvirs, encamped upon the lat¬ 
ter. {Liv., 3, 50.) But from the prodigious extent 
of the Aventine, which is computed by Dionysius of 
Halicarnassus to be three miles in circumference, it is 
not surprising that there was abundant room for en¬ 
campments at that early period. The Aventine has 
two distinct summits ; and, indeed, it might almost 
be called two hills, for they are divided by a valley. 
Near the base of the more southern of its heights are 
the gigantic ruins of the baths of Caracalla. {Rome in 
the Nineteenth Century, vol. 1, p. 191, seqq.) — The 
Aventine was likewise called Collis Murcius, from 
Murcia, the goddess of sleep, who had a chapel {sacel- 
lum) on it; Collis Diance , from a temple of Diana 
{Liv., 1, 33.— Dion. Hal., 3,43); and Remonius, from 
Remus. 

Avernus Lacus, a lake in Campania, near Baise and 
Puteoli. It lay within, from the Lucrine lake, and 
was connected with the latter by a narrow passage. 
Strabo describes it as surrounded on almost every 
side, except this outlet, by steep hills. {Strab., 248.) 
These hills were covered with immense forests, so that 
gloom and darkness surrounded the lake, and accumu¬ 
lated effluvia filled the air with contagion. The an¬ 
cients even had a popular belief among them, that 
birds, on attempting to fly over this lake, became stu- 
pified by its exhalations and fell into it. Hence the 
common though erroneous derivation of the name, from 
a priv., and opvcg, “a bird.” {Virg., JEn., 6, 237, 
seqq. — Lucrct., 6, 748.) As little credit is due to the 
account which places here the scene of Ulysses’ de¬ 
scent to the lower world, and his evocation of the 
dead, as described in the Odyssey, together with the 
subterranean abodes of the Cimmerians. {Strab., 
244.) —The forests that covered the hills around Aver¬ 
nus were dedicated to Hecate, and sacrifices were 
frequently offered to that goddess. These forests and 
shades disappeared when Agrippa converted the lake 
into a harbour by opening a communication with the 

235 




AUG 


AUG 


sea and the Lucrine basin. ( Vid. Portus Julius.) 
The mo lern name of the lake is Lago d'Averno. 
Eustace describes Avernus at the present day as a 
circular sheet of water, about a mile and a half in cir¬ 
cumference, and of great depth (in some places 180 
feet). It is surrounded with grounds on one side low, 
on the other high but steep, cultivated all around, but 
not much wooded; a scene, on the whole, light, airy, 
and exhilarating. ( Classical Tour, vol. 2, page 394, 
Lond. ed.) 

Aufidena, a city of Samnium, and the capital of 
the Caraceni, situate on the Sagrus or Sangro. It is 
now Alfidena. (Liv., 10, 12.— Plin., 3, 12.) 

Aufidia lex, was enacted by the tribune Aufidius 
Lurco, A.U.C. 692. It contained this singular clause, 
that if any candidate, in canvassing for an office, 
promised money to a tribe, and failed in the perform¬ 
ance, he should be excused ; but if he actually paid it, 
he should be compelled to pay every tribe a yearly 
fine of 3000 sesterces as long as he lived. ( Cic. ad 
Att., 1, 13.) This law, however, soon became a dead 
letter, as is apparent from what Suetonius states re¬ 
specting the bribery practised by Caesar and Bibulus. 
(Suet., Vit. Jul., 19.—Compare Heinecc., Antiq. Rom., 

р. 807, ed. Haubold.) 

Aufidius, I. Bassus, an historian in the Augustan 
age, and in part of the reign of Tiberius. He wrote 
a history of the Roman civil wars, and another of the 
war in Germany. This latter work was continued by 
the elder Pliny. (Plin., Min. Ep., 3, 5, 6.— Quintil., 
10, 1, 103.) — II. Caesius Bassus, a lyric poet, to 
whom Persius addressed his sixth Satire. He per¬ 
ished during the same eruption of Vesuvius that 
proved fatal to the elder Pliny. (Quintil., 10, 1, 96. 
— Schol. ad Pers., Sat., 6, 1.— Foss, de poet. Lat., 

с. 3 )—III. Saleius Bassus, a poet in the time of Ves¬ 
pasian. He is highly praised by Quintilian (10, 1, 
90), and by the author of the Dialogue “ de caus. cor¬ 
rupt. eloq." (c. 5).—IV. Luscus, a recorder in the town 
of Fundi, ridiculed by Horace. (Serm., 1, 5, 24.) 

Aufidus, a river of Apulia, now the Ofanto. It 
was on the banks of this stream that the battle of Can¬ 
nae was fought. Polybius (3, 110) remarks of the 
Aufidus, that it is the only river which, rising on the 
western side of the Apennines, finds its way through 
that continuous chain into the Adriatic. But it may 
be doubted whether the historian speaks with his usu¬ 
al accuracy. It is certain that the Aufidus cannot be 
said to penetrate entirely through the chain of those 
mountains, since it rises on one side of it, while the 
Silarus flows from the other. The Aufidus was re¬ 
markable for the rapidity of its course. (Horat., Od., 
4, 14. — Id., Od., 30, 3. — Id., Od., 4, 9. — Cramer's 
Anc. Italy , vol. 2, p. 295.) 

Auge, daughter of Aleus, king of Tegea. She be¬ 
came a mother by Hercules, and secretly laid her off- 
spring, a son, in the sacred enclosure ( te/uevo0 of Mi¬ 
nerva. A famine coming on the land, Aleus went to 
the TEfievoq of the goddess ; and, searching about, 
found his daughter’s infant, which he exposed on 
Mount Parthenion. But the babe was protected by 
the care of the gods, for a hind which had just brought 
forth came and suckled him ; and the shepherds, 
finding him thus nursed, named him Telephus from 
that circumstance (ehac^oq, a hind). Aleus gave his 
daughter Auge to Nauplius, the son of Neptune, to 
sell her out of the country ; and he disposed of her to 
Teuthras, king of Teuthrania, on the Cayster, in My- 
sia, who made her his wife. Telephus having, when 
grown up, consulted the oracle respecting his parents, 
came to Mysia, where he was kindly received by Teu¬ 
thras, whom he succeeded in his kingdom. (Pausan., 
8, 4.— Apollod., 3, 9, 1.) This legend is connected 
apparently with the worship of Minerva Alea. The 
true meaning of Telephus is Far-shining (Tyletyaog). 
Auge (A vyv) is bright. (Keightlcy's Mythol., p. 367.) 


Auge^e, I. a town of Laconia, supposed to be the 
same with iEgiae. It stood near the coast, northwest 
of Gythium. (II, 2, 583.— Strabo, 364.)—II. A town 
of the Epicnemidian Locri. (II, 2, 532.) 

Augeas (poetic form Augeas), son of Neptune, ac¬ 
cording to others, of the Sun, while a third class of 
mythologists make him to have been the offspring of 
Phorbas. He was one of the Argonauts, and, after re¬ 
turning from that expedition, ascended the throne of 
Elis. Augeas kept a very large number of herds, and 
the filth and dung of these had been allowed to accu¬ 
mulate for many years, when Eurystheus imposed on 
Hercules, as one of his tasks, the cleansing of the sta¬ 
bles of the Elian monarch. When Hercules came ac¬ 
cordingly to Augeas, he said nothing to him of the 
commands of Eurystheus, but offered for a tenth of 
his herds to clean out his stables in one day. Augeas 
agreed, thinking the thing impossible, and Hercules 
took Phyleus, the son of Augeas, to witness the agree¬ 
ment. He then broke down a part of the wall of the 
court, and turning in the rivers Peneus and Alpheus 
by a canal, let them run out at the other side. Au¬ 
geas, on learning that this was one of the tasks imposed 
by Eurystheus, not only refused to stand by his agree¬ 
ment, but denied that he had promised anything, and 
offered to lay the matter before judges. When the 
cause was tried, Phyleus honestly gave testimony 
against his father, and Augeas, in a rage, even before 
the votes had been taken, ordered both his son and 
Hercules to depart from Elis. The former retired to 
Dulichium, the latter returned to Eurystheus, stopping 
first at Olenus, where he aided Dexamenus against 
the centaur Eurytion. Eurystheus, however, refused 
to count the feat of Hercules, in cleansing the Augean 
stables, among the twelve tasks, saying that he had 
done it for hire. After the termination of all his la¬ 
bours, Hercules came with an army to Elis, slew Au¬ 
geas, and set Phyleus on the throne. For an expla¬ 
nation of this myth, consult the article Hercules. 
(Apollod., 2, 5, 4.— Keightlcy's Mythology, p. 356, 
366.)—To “ cleanse the Augean stables” has become 
a common proverb, and is applied to any undertaking 
where the object in view is to remove a mass of moral 
corruption, the accumulation of which renders the 
task almost impossible. The Latin form of this same 
proverb is “ Augece stabulum rcpurgare the Greek, 
merely Avyetov fdovaracia. (Lucian, Pseudom. — 
Erasmtis, Chil., 2, cent. 3, n. 21.) 

Auguila, now Angela, one of the Oases of the great 
African desert, with a town of the same name. It lay 
west of Ammon and south of Cyrene, and was famed 
for the abundant produce of its date palms. This was 
one of the stations for the caravans which carried on 
the inland trade of Africa. It is at present also a 
caravan station. (Mannert, vol. 10, pt. 2, p. 181.— 
Pacho, Voyage dans la Marmarique, p. 272, scqq.) 

Augures, a name given to a class of sacerdotal offi¬ 
cers among the Romans, whose duty it was to observe 
and interpret omens, and perform other analogous acts 
of religion. The term Augur is commonly but erro¬ 
neously derived from avis, “ a bird," and garrio, “ to 
chirp," on the supposition that this priesthood origi¬ 
nally drew omens merely from the notes of birds. The 
true etymology, however, ought very probably to be 
referred to some Etrurian term, assimilated both in 
form and meaning to the Greek avyrj, “ light" (com¬ 
pare the German auge, “ an eye"), so that the primi¬ 
tive meaning of the term augur will be “a seer." _ 

The duties and powers of the Roman augurs are given 
somewhat in detail by Cicero (de Leg., 2, 8), and may 
be arranged under four heads : 1. The inspecting or 
observing of omens. 2. The declaring the wilf of 
heaven,^ as ascertained by them from these omens. 
3. The inaugurating of magistrates, and the consecra¬ 
ting of places and buildings. 4. The determining 
whether the omens observed by them allowed a thing 




AUGURES. 


AUG 


to be done or not, and also in what way the omens 
themselves were to be taken. (Compare Muller, 
Elrusk., vol. 2, p. 117.)—The whole system of au¬ 
gural science was of Etrurian origin. In this latter 
country it served as a powerful engine of state in the 
hands of the aristocracy, and the same result was for 
a considerable time effected at Rome. Meetings of 
the Comitia Centuriata, for example, could not be held 
at all, if any augur declared the omens unpropitious ; 
or the Comitia were broken off - if a magistrate, virtu¬ 
ally invested with augural powers, declared that he had 
heard thunder or seen lightning. So, again, all the 
business transacted at any comitia, except the Tributa, 
Went for nothing, if, after the assembly had been held, 
an augur declared that there had been some informal¬ 
ity in taking the auspices before the meeting was con¬ 
vened.—The augurs are supposed to have been first 
instituted by Romulus, who appointed three, one for 
each tribe. This, however, was mere popular opin¬ 
ion, and had no foundation in reality. A fourth augur 
was added, it is thought, by Servius Tullius, when he 
increased the number of tribes, and divided the city 
into four tribes. The augurs were at first all patri¬ 
cians, until A.U.C. 454, when five plebeians were ad¬ 
ded. Sylla increased their number to fifteen. The 
chief of the augurs was called Magisier Collegii. The 
augurs enjoyed this singular privilege, that of what¬ 
ever crime they were guilty, they could not be de¬ 
prived of their office ; because, as Plutarch remarks, 
they were intrusted with the secrets of the empire. 
The laws of friendship were anciently observed with 
great care among the augurs, and no one was admitted 
into their college who was known to be inimical to 
any of their number.—The augur made his observa¬ 
tions on the heavens usually in the dead of night, or 
about twilight. He took his station on an elevated 
place, where the view was open on all sides, and, to 
make it so, buildings were sometimes pulled down. 
Having first offered up sacrifices, and uttered a solemn 
prayer, he sat down with his head covered, and with 
his face turned to the east, so that he had the south on 
his right and the north on his left. Then he deter¬ 
mined with his lituus the regions of the heavens from 
east to west, and marked in his mind some object 
straightforward, at as great a distance as his eyes could 
reach, within which boundaries he should make his 
observations. There were generally five things from 
which the augurs drew omens : the first consisted in 
observing the phenomena of the heavens, such as thun¬ 
der, lightning, comets, &c. The second kind of omen 
was drawn from the chirping or flying of birds. The 
third was from the sacred chickens, whose eagerness 
or indifference in eating the food which was thrown 
to' them was looked upon as lucky or unlucky. The 
fourth was from quadrupeds, from their crossing or 
appearing in some unaccustomed place. The fifth 
was from different casualties, which were called Dirce, 
such as spilling salt on the table, or wine upon one’s 
clothes, hearing ill-omened words or strange noises, 
stumbling or sneezing, meeting a wolf, hare, fox, or 
pregnant bitch, &c. These the augur explained, and 
taught how they ought to be expiated.—In whatever 
position the augur stood, omens on the left, among 
the Romans, were reckoned lucky. But sometimes 
omens on the left are called unlucky, in imitation of 
the Greeks, among whom augurs stood with their faces 
to the north, and then the east, which was the lucky 
quarter, was on the right. Thunder on the left was 
a good omen for everything else but holding the Comi¬ 
tia. The croaking of a raven on the right, and of a 
crow on the left, was reckoned fortunate, and vice 
versa. In short, the whole art of augury among the 
Romans was involved in uncertainty, and was, in ef¬ 
fect, a mere system of deception for restraining the 
multitude, and increasing, as has already been remark¬ 
ed, the influence of the leading men over them. ( Cic., 


de Divin., 1 , 7.— Id., 2, 36 .—Aulus Gellius, 5, 8, 
&c.) 

Augusta, I. a name given singly, or in conjunction 
with some epithet, to a large number of cities, either 
founded, embellished, or protected by Roman emper¬ 
ors. The appellation is derived from the name of the 
first emperor of Rome, Augustus. The term Augusta 
sometimes appears under its Greek form, Sebaste (2 c- 
6aGTT)). —II. A title of honour, borne by many Roman 
empresses. 

Augustalia, a festival at Rome, in commemoration 
of the day on which Augustus returned to Rome, 
after he had established peace in the different parts 
of the empire. It was celebrated on the 12th of Oc¬ 
tober. 

Augustinus, one of the most renowned fathers of 
the Christian Church, born at Tagaste, a city of Africa, 
November 13, A.D. 354, during the reign of the Em¬ 
peror Constantine. He has related his own life in the 
work to which he gave the title of Confessiones, and 
it is from this source, together with the Retractationes, 
some of his letters, and the Vita Possidii of the semi- 
Pelagian Gennadius, that we derive our principal in¬ 
formation respecting him. His parents sent him to 
Carthage to complete his education, but he disap¬ 
pointed their expectations by his neglect of serious 
study and his devotion to pleasure. In his sixteenth 
year he became very fond of women. For fifteen 
years he was connected with one, by whom he had a 
son. He left her only when he changed his whole 
course of life. A book of Cicero’s, called Hortensius, 
which has not come down to our times, led him to the 
study of philosophy ; and when he found that this did 
not satisfy his feelings, he went over to the sect of the 
Manichaeans. He was one of their disciples for nine 
years ; but, after having obtained a correct knowledge 
of their doctrines, he left them, and departed from Af¬ 
rica to Rome, and thence to Milan, where he an¬ 
nounced himself as a teacher of rhetoric. Saint Am¬ 
brose was bishop of this city, and his discourses con¬ 
verted Augustine to the orthodox faith. The reading 
of St. Paul’s epistles wrought an entire change in his 
life and character. The Catholic church has a festi¬ 
val (May 3d) in commemoration of this event. He re¬ 
tired into solitude, wrote there many books, and pre¬ 
pared himself for baptism, which he received in the 
33d year of his age, together with his son Adeodatus, 
from the hands of Ambrose. He returned to A frica, 
sold his estate, and gave the proceeds to the poor, re¬ 
taining only enough to support him in a moderate 
manner. As he was once present in the church at 
Hippo, the bishop, who was a very old man, signified 
a desire to consecrate a priest to assist and succeed 
him. At the desire of the people, Augustine entered 
upon the holy office, preached with extraordinary suc¬ 
cess, and, in 395, became bishop of Hippo. He en¬ 
tered into a warm controversy with Pelagius concern¬ 
ing the doctrines of free-will, of grace, and of predes¬ 
tination, and wrote a book concerning them. Augus¬ 
tine maintained that men were justified merely through 
grace, and not through good works. He died August 
28, A.D. 403, while Hippo was besieged by the Van¬ 
dals. There have been fathers of the church more 
learned, masters of a better language and a purer 
taste ; but none have ever more powerfully touched 
the human heart and warmed it towards religion. 
Painters have, therefore, given him for a symbol a 
flaming heart. Augustine is one of the most volumi¬ 
nous of the Christian writers. His works, in the Ben¬ 
edictine edition of Antwerp, 1700-3, fill 12 folio vol¬ 
umes. The first of these contains the works which 
he wrote before he was a priest, and his retractations 
and confessions; the former a critical review of his 
own writings, and the latter a curious and interesting 
picture of his life. The remainder of these volumes 
consist of a treatise “ On the City of God comment- 

237 



AUG. 


AUGUSTUS. 


aries on Scripture ; epistles on a great variety of sub¬ 
jects, doctrinal, moral, and personal; sermons and 
homilies; treatises on various points of discipline ; 
and elaborate arguments against heretics. With the 
exception of those of Aristotle, no writings contributed 
more than Augustine’s to encourage the spirit of subt le 
disputation which distinguished the scholastic ages. 
They exhibit much facility of invention and strength 
of reasoning', with more argument than eloquence, and 
more wit than learning. Erasmus calls Augustine a 
writer of obscure subtlety, who requires in the reader 
acute penetration, close attention, and quick recollec¬ 
tion, and by no means repays him for the application 
of all these requisites. His works are now almost 
wholly neglected. ( Encyclop. Americ., vol. 1, p. 468.) 
—Among the sources of information in modern times 
respecting the life and productions of St. Augustine, 
the following may be mentioned : Ceillier, Hist. Gen¬ 
eral. des Aut. Eccles. (Paris, 1744, 4to), vols. 11 and 
12.— Tillemont, Memoires, &c., vol. 13.— Vit. August. 
Vaillant, et Du Frische: ed. Op. Benedict., vol. 11.— 
Act. Sand. Mens. Aug., vol. 6, p. 213, seqq. — L. Berti, 
de rebus gestis S. August. (Vend., 1746, 4to).— Ros¬ 
ier, Bibl. der Kirchenvat., vol. 9, p. 257.— Fabncius, 
Bibl. Lat., vol. 3, p. 519, seqq. — Schrockh, Kirchcng., 
vol. 15, p. 219, seqq. — Biogr. Univ., vol. 3, p. 54, seqq. 

■ — Wiggers, Versuch. einer pragmat. Darstellung des 
August, und Pelagianismus (Hamburg, 1822, 8vo), 
vol. 1, p. 7, seqq. 

Augustulus (Romulus Momyllus, surnamed Au¬ 
gustus, or, in derision, Augustulus), the last Roman 
emperor of the West. He was the son of Orestes, a 
patrician and commander of the Roman forces in 
Gaul. Augustulus was crowned by his father A.D. 
475 ; but was dethroned the next year by Odoacer, 
king of the Heruli, who put Orestes to death, and ban¬ 
ished the young monarch to Campania, allowing him 
at the same time a revenue for his support. The true 
name of this emperor was Augustus, but the Romans 
of his time gave him, in derision, the appellation of 
Augustulus (The Little Augustus), which has become 
the historical name of this feeble sovereign. His fa¬ 
ther Orestes was the actual emperor, and the son a 
mere puppet in his hands. (Cassiod. et Marcell, in 
Chron. — Jornandes. — Procopius.) 

Augustus (Caius Octavius C^sar Augustus), 
originally called Caius Octavius, was the son of Caius 
Octavius, and of Attia daughter of Julia the sister of 
Julius Caesar. The family of the Octavii were orig¬ 
inally from Velitrae, a city of the Volsci. The branch 
from which Augustus sprung was rich, and of eques¬ 
trian rank. His father was the first of the name that 
obtained the title of senator, but died when his son 
was only four years old. The mother of the young 
Octavius soon after married L. Philippus, under whose 
care he was brought up, until his great uncle Julius 
Caesar, having no children, began to regard him as 
his heir (Veil. Paterc., 2, 85), and when he was be¬ 
tween sixteen and seventeen years of age, bestowed 
upon him some military rewards at the celebration 
of his triumph for his victories in Africa. (Suet., 
Aug., 8.) In the following year he accompanied his 
uncle into Spain, where he is said to have given in¬ 
dications of talent and activity ; and in the winter of 
that same year he was sent to Apollonia in Epirus, 
there to employ himself in completing his education, 
till C$sar should be ready to take him with him on 
his expedition against the Parthians. He was accord¬ 
ingly living quietly at Apollonia when the news of 
his uncle’s death called him forth, though he was 
then hardly more than eighteen years of age, to act a 
principal part in the contentions of the times. On 
'Caesar's death being known, M. Vipsanius Agrippa 
and Q. Sabidienus Rufus, who are here first spoken 
of as his friends (Veil. Paterc ., 2, 85), advised him to 
embrace the offers which many of the centurions and ! 

238 


soldiers made him, of assisting him to revenge his 
uncle’s murder. But, as he was not yet aware of the 
strength of that party which he would find opposed to 
him, he judged it expedient to return to Italy, in the 
first instance, in a private manner. On his arrival at 
Brundisium, he learned the particulars of Caesar's 
death, and was informed also of the contents of his 
will, by which he himself was declared his heir and his 
adopted son. (Dio Cassius, 45, 3.— Veil. Paterc., 2, 
85.) He did not hesitate instantly to accept this 
adoption, and to assume the name of Caesar ; and it is 
said that numerous parties of his uncle’s veterans, who 
had obtained settlements in the districts of Italy 
through which he passed, came from their homes to 
meet him, and to assure him of their support. (Ap- 
pian, Bell. Civ., 3, 12.) At Rome two parties di¬ 
vided the state, that of the republicans, who had made 
away with Caesar, and that of Antony and Lepidus, 
who pretended to avenge his death, but who had, in 
reality, no other intention but to elevate their au¬ 
thority above that of the laws. The latter of these 
two parties was in the ascendant when Octavius vis¬ 
ited the capital, and the consul Antony exercised an 
almost absolute control. He received Octavius with 
great coolness, and declined any co-operation with 
him. It is even said, that, not content with slighting 
him as a political associate, Antony endeavoured to 
obstruct, or, at least, to delay, his adoption into the 
Julian family, since Octavius could not claim the 
possession of his uncle’s inheritance till he had gone 
through the forms by which he became Caesar’s adopt¬ 
ed son. (Florus, 4, 4. — Dio Cassius, 45, 5.) On 
this provocation, Octavius resolved to do himself jus¬ 
tice by the most atrocious means ; and, although he 
w T as only nineteen years of age, he suborned some 
ruffians to assassinate Antony, the consul of the re¬ 
public, in his own house. (Cic., Ep. ad Fam., 12, 23. 
— Senec., de Clem., 1 , 9.) The attempt was discov¬ 
ered in time, but it threw Antony into the utmost per¬ 
plexity and alarm. As it had not succeeded, a large 
portion of the people doubted its reality, and believed 
that the charge had been falsely brought against Oc¬ 
tavius, in order to procure his ruin, that Antony might 
enjoy his property without disturbance. So strong, in 
fact, was the public feeling, and so unpopular w r as An¬ 
tony at this period, that he did not think it advisable 
to bring his intended assassins to trial. But he trem¬ 
bled at the insecurity of his situation, and determined 
to employ a stronger military force than the guard with 
wdiich he had hitherto protected his person, and by 
which he had overawed the senate and the forum. 
With this view Antony endeavoured to gain over the 
veterans of Caesar that w r ere stationed at Brundisium, 
but the more liberal offers of the young Octavius drew 
them over to the side of the latter. At length the 
two competitors for empire had recourse to arms, and 
Cisalpine Gaul became the theatre of warfare. Deci- 
mus Brutus, who held the command of this province, 
threw himself into Mutina, where Antony besieged 
him, but the latter was defeated by Octavius and the 
consuls Hirtius and Pansa, and compelled to retreat 
towards Transalpine Gaul. All the veteran legions 
which had been commanded by the late consuls (these 
leaders had fallen in the battle of Mutina) were now, 
with one exception, under the orders of Octavius, and 
neither they nor their general were inclined to obey 
any longer the authority of the senate. Marching to 
Rome at the head of his forces, Octavius was now 
elected consul by open intimidation of the senate and 
people, and the liberty of the commonwealth was lost 
for ever. Antony and Lepidus, meanwhile, had united 
their forces, and recrossed the Alps ; and Octavius, 
now invested with the title of consul, and command¬ 
ing a numerous army, marched back again towards 
Cisalpine Gaul, and found the two leaders in the 
neighbourhood of Mutina. A friendly correspondence 




AUGUSTUS. 


AUGUSTUS. 


had been carried on between the chiefs of the two 
armies before they were advanced very near to one 
another; and it was determined that all differences 
should finally be settled, and the future measures which 
they were to take in common should be arranged at 
a personal interview. This interview resulted in the 
formation of a Triumvirate, or High Commission of 
three, for settling the affairs of the Commonwealth 
during five years. ( Liv., Epit., lib. 120. — Appian, 
Bell. Civ., 4, 3.) They divided among themselves 
those provinces of the empire which were subject to 
their power, and the triumvirate was cemented by the 
most dreadful scenes of proscription and murder, 
during which fell the celebrated Cicero, a victim to 
the vengeance of Antony, and basely left to his fate 
by the heartless Octavius. After the hopes of the 
republican party had been crushed at Philippi, Anto¬ 
ny, in an evil hour for himself, turned his back upon 
Italy, and left the immediate government of the cap¬ 
ital in the hands of his associate. On returning to 
Rome, Octavius satisfied the cupidity of his soldiers 
by the division of the finest lands in the Italian penin¬ 
sula. This division gave rise to the most violent dis¬ 
turbance. In the midst of the stormy scenes that now 
convulsed Italy, Octavius was obliged to contend with 
Fulvia, whose daughter Clodia he had rejected, and 
with Lucius, the brother-in-law of Antony. After 
several battles, Lucius threw himself into the city of 
Perusia, where he was soon after obliged to surrender. 
The city was given up to be plundered, and 300 sen¬ 
ators were condemned to death, as a propitiatory sac¬ 
rifice to the manes of the deified Caesar. After the 
return of Antony an end was put to the proscriptions, 
and such of the proscribed persons as had escaped 
death by flight, and whom Octavius no longer feared, 
were allowed to return. There were still some dis¬ 
turbances in Gaul, and the naval war with Sextus 
Pompeius continued for several years. After his re¬ 
turn from Gaul, Octavius married the famous Livia, 
the wife of Claudius Nero, whom he compelled to 
resign her, after he himself had divorced his third wife 
Scribonia. Lepidus, who had hitherto retained an ap¬ 
pearance of power, was now deprived of his authority, 
and died as a private man B.C. 13. Antony and Oc¬ 
tavius then divided the empire. But while the for¬ 
mer, in the East, gave himself up to a life of luxury, 
the young Octavius pursued his plan of making him¬ 
self sole master of the Roman world. He especially 
strove to obtain the affections of the people. A 
firm government was established ; the system of auda¬ 
cious robbery, which the distresses of the times had 
long fostered at Rome and throughout Italy, was 
speedily and effectually suppressed. He showed 
mildness and a degree of magnanimity, if it could be 
so called, without the appearance of striving after the 
highest power, and even declared himself ready to lay 
down his power when Antony should return from his 
war against the Parthians. He appeared rather to per¬ 
mit than to wish himself to be appointed perpetual 
tribune, an office which virtually invested him with 
sovereign authority. The more he advanced in the 
affections of the people, the more openly did he de¬ 
clare himself against Antony. Meanwhile the latter 
had excited a strong feeling of disgust not only among 
the Romans at home, but even among his own offi¬ 
cers, by his shameful abandonment to the celebrated 
Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt. His divorcing him¬ 
self from Octavia, the sister of his colleague in the 
triumvirate, seemed like dishonouring a noble Roman 
lady in order to gratify the jealousy of a barbarian 
paramour ; and an act of baseness on the part of Oc¬ 
tavius himself completed the blow. Having got pos¬ 
session of Antony’s will, he broke open the seals, and 
read the contents of it publicly, first to the senate, and 
afterward to the assembly of the people. The clause 
in it which especially induced Octavius to commit 


this act, was one in which Antony desired that his 
body might, after death, be carried to Alexandrea, and 
there buried by the side of Cleopatra. This proof of 
his romantic attachment for a foreigner seemed, in the 
eyes of the Romans, to attest his utter degeneracy, and 
induced the populace, at least, to credit the inventions 
of his enemies, who asserted that it was his intention, 
if victorious in the contest that now appeared inevita¬ 
ble, to give up Rome to the dominion of Cleopatra, 
and transfer the seat of empire from the banks of the 
Tiber to those of the Nile. It is clear, from the lan¬ 
guage of those poets who wrote under the patronage 
of Augustus, that this was the light in which the war 
was industriously represented ; that every effort was 
made to give it the character of a contest with a for¬ 
eign enemy ; and to array on the side of Octavius the 
national pride and jealousy of the people of Rome. 
( Hor., Od., 1, 37, 5, segq. — Virg., JEn., 8, 678, 685, 
698.) Availing himself of this feeling, Octavius de¬ 
clared war against the Queen of Egypt, and led a con¬ 
siderable force by both sea and land to the Ambracian 
Gulf, where Agrippa gained the naval victory of Ac- 
tium, which made Octavius master of the Roman 
world. He pursued his rival to Egypt, and ended the 
war after he had rejected the proposal of Antony to 
decide their differences by a personal combat. Cleo¬ 
patra and Antony killed themselves. Octavius caused 
them to be splendidly buried. A son of Antony and 
Cleopatra was sacrificed to ensure the safety of the 
conqueror ; and Csesarion, a son of Caesar and Cleopa¬ 
tra, shared the same fate. All the other relations of 
Antony remained uninjured, and Octavius, on the 
whole, used his power with moderation. After hav¬ 
ing spent two years in the East, in order to arrange 
the affairs of Egypt, Greece, Syria, Asia Minor, and 
the islands, he celebrated, on his return to Rome, a 
triumph for three days in succession. Freed from his 
rivals and enemies, and master of the world, he was 
undecided concerning the way in which he should ex¬ 
ercise his power for the future. Agrippa, whose vic¬ 
tory had given him universal dominion, counselled him 
to renounce his authority. Maecenas opposed this ; 
and Octavius followed his advice, or, rather, his own 
inclinations. In order to make the people willing to 
look upon him as an unlimited monarch, he abolished 
the laws of the triumvirate, beautified the city, and 
exerted himself in correcting the abuses which had 
prevailed during the civil war. At the end of his 
seventh consulship he entered the senate-house, and 
declared his resolution to lay down his power. The 
senate besought him to retain it; and the farce ended 
by his yielding to their pressing entreaties, and con¬ 
senting to continue to govern through them. He now 
obtained the surname of Augustus, which marked the 
dignity of his person and rank, and by degrees he 
united in himself the offices of imperator, or command- 
er-in-chief by sea and land, with power to make war 
and peace ; of proconsul over all the provinces ; of 
perpetual tribune of the people, which rendered his 
person inviolable, and gave him the power of interrupt¬ 
ing public proceedings ; and, in fine, of censor ( magis - 
ter morum ) and pontifex maximus, or controller of all 
things appertaining to public morals and religion. 
The laws themselves were subject to him, and the ob¬ 
servance of them depended on his will. To these 
dignities we must add the title of “Father of his 
Country” ( Pater Patrice). Great as was the power 
thus given him, he nevertheless exercised it with mod¬ 
eration. It was the spirit of his policy to retain old 
names and forms, and he steadfastly refused to assume 
the title of Dictator, which Sylla and Caesar had ren¬ 
dered odious.—Augustus carried on many wars in 
Africa, Asia, and particularly in Spain, where he tri¬ 
umphed over the Cantabri after a severe struggle. 
His arms subjected Aquitania, Pannonia, Dalmatia, 
and Illyria, and held the Dacians, Numidians, and 

239 



AUGUSTUS. 


AUGUSTUS. 


-Ethiopians in check. He concluded a treaty with the 
Parthians, by which they gave up Armenia, and re¬ 
stored the eagles taken from Crassus and Antony. 
At the foot of the Alps he erected monuments of his 
triumphs over the mountaineers, the proud remains of 
which are yet to be seen at Susa and Aosta. After 
he had established peace throughout the empire, he 
closed (for the third time since the foundation of Rome) 
the temple of Janus (B.C. 10). This universal repose, 
however, was interrupted, A.D. 9, by the defeat of 
Varus, who lost three legions in an engagement with 
the Germans under Arminius, and killed himself in 
despair. The intelligence of this misfortune greatly 
agitated Augustus. He let his beard and hair grow, 
and often cried out, as if in the deepest sorrow, “ Oh 
larus, give me back my legions /” Meanwhile the 
Germans were held in check by Tiberius. During the 
peace, to which we have just referred, Augustus had 
issued many useful decrees, and abolished many abuses 
in the government. He gave a new form to the senate, 
employed himself in improving the manners of the 
people, promoted marriage, suppressed luxury, intro¬ 
duced discipline into the armies, and, in a word, did 
everything in his power to subserve the best interests 
of the state. He adorned Rome in such a manner, 
that it was truly said by him, “ he found it of brick, 
and left it of marble.” (Sueton., Aug., 29.- —Dio 
Cass., 56, 30.) He also made journeys everywhere, 
to increase the blessings of peace ; he went to Sicily 
and Greece, Asia Minor, Sicily, Gaul, and other quar¬ 
ters : in several places he founded cities and established 
colonies. (Veil. Paterc., 2, 92.) The people erected 
altars to him, and by a decree of the senate, the month 
Seztilis was called by the new appellation of Augustus 
(August). Two conspiracies, which threatened his 
life, miscarried. Caepio, Mursena, and Egnatius were 
punished with death : Cinna was more fortunate, re¬ 
ceiving pardon from the emperor. This forbearance 
increased the love of the Romans, and diminished the 
number of the disaffected ; so that the master of Rome 
would have had nothing to wish for, if his family had 
been as obedient as the world. The debauchery of 
his daughter Julia gave him the greatest pain, and he 
showed himself more severe towards those who de¬ 
stroyed the honour of his family than towards those 
who had threatened his life. History says, that in his 
old age he was ruled by Livia, the only person per¬ 
haps whom he truly loved. He had no sons, and lost 
by death his sister’s son Marcellus, and his daughter’s 
sons Caius and Lucius, whom he had appointed his 
successors. Drusus, also, his son-in-law, whom he 
loved, died early; and Tiberius, the brother of the 
latter, whom he hated on account of his bad qualities, 
alone survived. These numerous calamities, together 
with his continually increasing infirmities, gave him a 
strong desire for repose. He undertook a journey to 
Campania, from whose purer air he hoped for relief; 
but disease fixed upon him, and he died at Nola (Au¬ 
gust 19, A.D. 14), in the seventy-sixth year of his age, 
and forty-fifth of his reign.—Augustus was in his stat¬ 
ure something below the middle size, but extremely 
well proportioned. (Sueton., Aug., 79.) His hair 
W’as a little inclined to curl, and of a yellowish brown ; 
his eyes were bright and lively; but the general ex¬ 
pression of his countenance was remarkably calm and 
mild. His health was throughout his life delicate, yet 
the constant attention which he paid to it, and his strict 
temperance in eating and drinking, enabled him to reach 
the full age of man. As a seducer and adulterer, and 
a man of low sensuality, his character was as profligate 
as that of his uncle. (Sueton., Aug., 69, 71.) In his 
literary qualifications, without at all rivalling the at¬ 
tainments of Caesar, he was on a level with most Ro¬ 
mans of distinction of his time; and it is said, that 
both in speaking and writing, his style was eminent for 
its perfect plainness and propriety. (Sueton., Aug., 


68, seqq .) His speeches on any public occasion were 
composed beforehand, and recited from memory ; nay, 
so careful was he not to commit himself by any in¬ 
considerate expression, that, even when discussing any 
important subject with his own wife, he wrote down 
what he had to say, and read it before her. Like his 
uncle, he was strongly tinged with superstition. He 
was very deficient in military talent; but in every spe¬ 
cies of artful policy, in clearly seeing, and steadily and 
dispassionately following his own interest, and in turn¬ 
ing to his own advantage all the weaknesses of others, 
his ability, if so it may be called, has been rarely 
equalled. His deliberate cruelty, his repeated treach¬ 
ery, and his sacrifice of every duty and every feeling to 
the purposes of his ambition, speak for themselves; and 
yet it would be unjust to ascribe to a politic premedi¬ 
tation all the popular actions of his reign. Good is in 
itself so much more delightful than evil, that he was 
doubtless not insensible to the pleasure of kind and 
beneficent actions, and perhaps sincerely rejoiced that 
they were no longer incompatible with his interests.— 
Among the various arts to which Augustus resorted to 
beguile the hearts of his people, and perhaps to render 
them forgetful of their former freedom, one of the most 
remarkable was the encouragement which he extended 
to learning, and the patronage he so liberally bestowed 
on all by whom it was cultivated. To this noble pro¬ 
tection of literature he was prompted not less by taste 
and inclination than sound policy ; and in his patron¬ 
age of the learned, his usual artifice had probably a 
smaller share than in those other parts of his conduct 
by which he acquired the favourable opinion of the 
world. Augustus was, besides, an excellent judge of 
composition, and a true critic in poetry ; so that his 
patronage was never misplaced, or lavished on those 
whose writings might rather have tended to corrupt 
than improve the taste and learning of the age. No 
writer could hope for patronage except by cultivating 
a style both chaste and simple, which, if ornamental, 
was not luxurious, or, if severe, was not rugged or 
antiquated. The court of Augustus thus became a 
school of urbanity, where men of genius acquired that 
delicacy of taste, that elevation of sentiment, and that 
purity of expression, which characterize the writers of 
the age. To Maecenas, the favourite minister of the 
emperor, the honour is due of having most successfully 
followed out the views of his master for promoting the 
interests of literature; but it is wrong to give Maecenas 
the credit, as some have done, of first having turned 
the attention of Augustus to the patronage of literature. 
On the contrary, he appears merely to have acted from 
the orders, or to have followed the example, of his im¬ 
perial master. (Encyclop. Metrop., Div. 3, vol. 2, p. 
294, seqq. — Encyclop. Amer., vol. 1, p. 469.— Biogr. 
Univ., vol. 3, p. 37, seqq. — Dunlop's Rom. Lit., vol. 
3, p. 10, seqq .)—II. A title which descended from Oc¬ 
tavius to his successors. It was purely honorary, and 
carried with it the idea of respect and veneration rather 
than of any authority. The feminine form Augusta 
was often given to the mothers, wives, or sisters of the 
Roman emperors. Under Dioclesian, when the new 
constitution was given to the empire, the title of Au¬ 
gustus became more definite, and then began to be 
applied to the two princes who held sway conjointly, 
while the appellation of Coesar was given to each of 
the presumptive heirs of the empire. The term Au¬ 
gustus is derived, not from augeo, but from augur. 
(Gronov., Thes. Antiq. Gr., vol. 7, p. 462.) Places 
or buildings consecrated by auguries were originally 
called augusta ; and the name was afterward applied 
to other things similarly circumstanced. Thus Ennius, 
as cited by Suetonius (Aug., 7), uses the expression 
11 augusto augurioV (Compare Fest., p. 43. — Ovid, 
Fast., 1, 607, seqq.) Consequently, when the title 
Augustus is applied to a person, it is equivalent in 
meaning to sanctus, sacratus, or sacrosanctus. (Com- 






AUL 


AUR 


pare Dio Cass., 53, 16.) And hence, as Gronovius 
correctly remarks, the term in question contains tielov 
n, “ something of a divine nature.” The Greeks, 
moreover, rendered Augustus into their language by 
’LeBaoroc;, which Dio Cassius (/. c.) explains by oenroq. 
( Creuzer , Rom. Antiq., p. 292, seqq.) 

Avianus, Flavius, a Latin versifier of HSsopic fa¬ 
bles, forty-two in number. The measure adopted by 
him is the elegiac. According to Cannegieter, one of 
his editors, Avianus flourished about 160 A.D. ( Hen - 
nc. Canneg. de estate, &c., Flax. Aviani Dissertatio, 
p. 231, seqq.) This opinion, however, is rendered al¬ 
together untenable by the inferior character of the 
Latinity, which Cannegieter endeavours, though un¬ 
successfully, to defend. Avianus would seem to have 
lived in the reign of Theodosius, long after the date 
assigned by the scholar just mentioned. His work is 
dedicated to a certain Theodosius, supposed to have 
been the grammarian Macrobius Theodosius. The fa¬ 
bles of Avianus are sometimes erroneously ascribed to 
Avienus. The best editions of Avianus are that of 
Cannegieter, Amstelod., 1731, 8vo, and that of Nodell, 
Amstelod., 1787, 8vo. ( Bdhr, Gescli. Rom. Lit., vol. 
1, p. 317.) 

Avienus, Rufus Festus, a Roman poet, whose age 
and country have both been disputed. St. Jerome 
speaks of him as of a recent writer (in Epist. ad Titum , 
v. 12), and we can scarcely, therefore, with Crinitus, 
place him in the reign of Dioclesian. ( Crinit., de poet. 
Lit., c. 80.) The death of Jerome happened A.D. 
420, in his ninety-first year: on the supposition, there¬ 
fore, that Avienus flourished about the middle of that 
father’s protracted life, we may assign him to about 
A.D. 370, or the period of Valentinian, Valens, and 
Gratian. Tradition or conjecture has made him a 
Spaniard by birth ; but this opinion is unsupported by 
written testimony, and even contradicted, if the in¬ 
scription found in the Caesarian Villa refer to this poet, 
which there seems small reason to doubt. From this 
we learn that he was the son of Musonius Avienus, or 
the son of Avienus and descendant of Musonius, ac¬ 
cordingly as we punctuate the first line (“ Festus Mu- 
soni soboles prolesque Avieni ”); that he was born at 
Vulsinii in Etruria ; that he resided at Rome ; that he 
was twice proconsul, and the author of many poetical 
pieces. The same inscription contradicts the notion, 
too precipitately grounded on some vague expressions 
in his writings, that he was a Christian ; for it is no¬ 
thing else than a religious address to the goddess Nor- 
tia, the Fortune of the Etrurians. The extant and ac¬ 
knowledged works of this poet are versions of the 4>cu- 
vo/ueva of Aratus, and the Ilepirjyyaiq of Dionysius ; 
and a portion of a poem “ De Ora Mantima," which 
includes, with some digressions, the coast between 
Cadiz and Marseilles. The other poems generally be¬ 
lieved to be the work of Avienus are, an Epistle to 
Flavianus Myrmecius, an elegiac piece “ de Cantu Si- 
renum," and some verses addressed to the author’s 
friends from the country. A poem “ de urbibus His- 
panice Meditcrraneis ,” is cited by some Spanish wri¬ 
ters as the production of Avienus (Nicolaus Antonius, 
Bibl. Vet. Hisp., 2, 9), but it is generally supposed to 
be the forgery of a Jesuit of Toledo. Servius (ad Virg., 
JEn., 10, 272-388) ascribes to Avienus iambic versions 
of the narrative of Virgil and the history of Livy; 
which observation of the grammarian, together with a 
consideration of the genius and habits of thijj poet, ren¬ 
ders it not altogether improbable that he is the author 
of a very curious and spirited Latin Epitome of the 
Iliad, which has reached us, and which throws some 
light on the poetical history of the time.—The best 
edition of Avienus is that of Wernsdorff, in the Poetce 
Latini Minores, vol. 5, pt. 2, Helmstad., 1791, 12mo. 
(Encyclop. Metropol., Div. 3, vol. 2, p. 575, seq. — Bdhr, 
Gesch. Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. 185, seqq.) 

Aulerci. Under this name are reckoned three na- 

H H 


tions of Gaul. I. The Aulerci Brannovices, contigu¬ 
ous to the JEdui, and subject to them, answering to 
what is now le Bnennois. (Gees., B. G., 7, 75.)— 
II. The Aulerci Cenomani, situate between the Sarta 
or Sarthe, and the Lsedus, two of the northern branch¬ 
es of the Liger. Their country is now the Department 
de la Sarthe. (Cces., B. G , 7, 75.)—III. The Au¬ 
lerci Eburovices, on the left bank of the Sequana or 
Seine, below Lutetia or Paris, answering now to the 
Department de VEure. (Cces., B. G., 3, 17.) 

Auletes, the surname of one of the Ptolemies, 
father of Cleopatra. The appellation is a Greek one, 
meaning “ flute-player” (A vXyryg), and was given him 
on account of his excellence in playing upon the flute, 
or, more correctly speaking, pipe. 

Aulis, a town of Boeotia, on the shores of the Eu- 
ripus, and nearly opposite to Chalcis. It is celebrated 
as being the rendezvous of the Grecian fleet when 
about to sail for Troy, and as the place where they 
were so long detained by adverse winds. ( Vid. Iphi- 
genia.) Strabo (403) remarks, that, as the harbour of 
Aulis could not contain more than fifty ships, the Gre¬ 
cian fleet must have assembled in the neighbouring 
port of Bathys, which was much more extensive. 
From Xenophon we learn, that, when Agesilaus was 
on the point of setting out for Asia Minor, to carry on 
the war against Persia, he had intended to offer up 
sacrifice at Aulis, but was opposed in this design by 
the Boeotarchs, who appeared in the midst of the cere¬ 
mony with an armed force. (Hist. Gr., 3, 4, 4.) Livy 
says the distance between Aulis and Chalcis was three 
miles. (Liv., 45, 27.) Pausanias (9, 19) reports, that 
the temple of Diana still existed when he visited Au¬ 
lis, but that the inhabitants of the place were few, and 
those chiefly potters. (Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 
2, p. 262, seqq.) 

Aulon, I. a fertile ridge and valley near Tarentum, 
in Southern Italy, the wine of which equalled the Fa- 
lerian in the opinion of Horace. (Horat., Od., 2, 6, 
18.)—II. A valley of Palestine, extending along the 
banks of Jordan, called also Magnus Campus.—III. 
Another in Syria, between the ridges of Libanus and 
Antilibanus.—IV. A district and city of Messenia, bor¬ 
dering on Triphylia and part of Arcadia, being sepa¬ 
rated from these two by the Neda. (Strab., 350.— 
Steph. Byz., s. v.) 

Aulus, I. a praenomen common among the Romans. 
—II. Gellius. (Vid. Gellius.) 

Aurelia Lex, was enacted A.U.C. 683, and or¬ 
dained that judices or jurymen should be chosen from 
the Senators, Equites, and Tribuni .dErarii.—Another, 
A.U.C. 678. It abrogated a clause of the Lex Cor¬ 
nelia, and permitted the tribunes to hold other offices 
after the expiration of the tribuneship. 

Aureliani. Vid. Genabum. 

Aurelianus, I. (Lucius Domitius) an emperor of 
Rome, distinguished for his military abilities and stern 
severity of character, was the son of a peasant in the 
territory of Sirmium, in Illyria. His father occupied 
a small farm, the property of Aurelius, a rich senator. 
The son enlisted in the troops as a common soldier, 
successively rose to the rank of centurion, tribune, pre¬ 
fect of a legion, inspector of the camp, general, or, as 
it was then called, duke of a frontier; and at length, 
during the Gothic war, exercised the important oifice 
of commander-in-chief of the cavalry. In every station 
he distinguished himself by matchless valour, rigid dis¬ 
cipline, and successful conduct. Theoclius, as quoted 
in the Augustan history (p. 211), affirms, that in one 
day he killed forty-eight Sarmatians," and in several 
subsequent engagements nine hundred and fifty. This 
heroic valour was admired by the soldiers, and cele¬ 
brated in their rude songs, the burden of which was 
“ Mille, mille, mille, occidit." At length Vaierian II. 
raised him to the consulship, and his good fortune was 
farther favoured by a wealthy and noble marriage. 

241 




AURELIANUS. 


AUR 


His next elevation was to the throne, Claudius II., on 
his deathbed, having recommended Aurelian to the 
troops of Illyricum, who readily acceded to his wishes. 
The reign of this monarch lasted only four years and 
about nine months; but every instant of that short 
period was filled by some memorable achievement. 
He put an end to the Gothic war, chastised the Ger¬ 
mans who invaded Italy, recovered Gaul, Spain, and 
Britain out of the hands of Tetricus, and destroyed the 
proud monarchy which Zenobia had erected in the East 
on the ruins of the addicted empire. Owing to the un¬ 
generous excuse of the queen, that she had waged war 
by the advice of her ministers, her secretary, the cel¬ 
ebrated Longinus, was put to death by the victor ; but, 
after having graced his triumphal entry into Rome, 
Zenobia herself was presented with a villa near Tibur, 
and allowed to spend the remainder of her days as a 
Roman matron. ( Vid. Zenobia, Longinus, Palmyra.) 
Aurelian followed up his victories by the reformation 
of abuses, and the restoration throughout the empire 
of order and regularity, but he tarnished his good in¬ 
tentions by the general severity of his measures, and 
the sacrifice of the senatorian order to his slightest 
suspicions. He had planned a great expedition against 
Persia, and was waiting in Thrace for an opportunity 
to cross the straits, when he lost his life, A.D. 125, by 
assassination, the result of a conspiracy excited by a 
secretary whom he intended to call to account for 
peculation. Aurelian was a wise, able, and active 
prince, and very useful in the declining state of the 
empire ; but the austerity of his character caused him 
to be very little regretted. It is said that he meditated 
a severe persecution on the Christians, when he was 
so suddenly cut off. (Hist. August ., p. 211, seqq .— 
Gibbon, Decline and Fall, c. 11. — Biogr. Univ., vol. 
3, p. 72.— Encyclop. Am., vol. 1, p. 474.)—II. Cselius, 
a native of Sicca, in Numidia, who is supposed to have 
lived between 180 and 240 A.D. He was a member 
of the medical profession, and has left behind him two 
works : the one entitled, “ Libri Quinque tardarum 
give chronicarum passionum ,” and the other, “ Libri 
tres celerum sive acutarum passionum .” Both are 
drawn from Greek authors; from Themison, Thessa- 
lus, and, above all, Soranus. Caslius Aurelianus being 
the only author of the sect called Methodists who has 
come down to us (if we except Octavius Horatianus, 
who lived in the days of the Emperor Valentinian, and 
is little known), his work is particularly valuable, as 
preserving to us an account of many theories and views 
of practice which would otherwise have been lost; but 
even of itself it is deserving of much attention for the 
practical information which it contains. Cselius is re¬ 
markable for learning, understanding, and scrupulous 
accuracy ; but his style is much loaded with technical 
terms, and by no means elegant. He has treated of 
the most important diseases which come under the care 
of the physician in the following manner. In the first 
place, he gives a very circumstantial account of the 
symptoms, which he does, however, more like a syste¬ 
matic writer and a compiler, than as an original ob¬ 
server of nature. Next, he is at great pains to point 
out the distinction between the disease he is treating 
of and those which very nearly resemble it. He after¬ 
ward endeavors to determine the nature and seat of 
the disease ; and this part frequently contains valuable 
references to the works of Erasistratus, the celebrated 
Alexandrean anatomist. Then comes his account of 
the treatment, which is, in general, sensible and sci¬ 
entific, but somewhat too formal, timid, and fettered 
by the rules of the sect. He is ingenuous, however, in 
often delivering a free statement of modes of practice, 
essentially different from his own. His account of 
Hydrophobia is particularly valuable, as being the most 
complete treatise upon that fatal malady which an¬ 
tiquity has furnished us with. He states, that the dis¬ 
ease is occasioned not only by the bite of a dog, but 
242 


likewise by that of wolves, bears, leopards, horses, and 
asses. He also mentions an instance of its being 
brought on by a wound inflicted by the spurs of a cock. 
Nay, he says that he knew a case of the disease being 
brought on by the breath of a dog, without a wound at 
all. Sometimes too, he says, the complaint comes on 
without any apparent cause. His description, if com¬ 
pared with modern descriptions (for example, with 
that given in Hufeland’s Journal for 1816, by Dr. 
Goden), will be found in every respect very complete. 
He considers the affection as a general one, but that 
the nerves of the stomach are more particularly inter¬ 
ested in the disease ; and Dr. Goden likewise is of 
opinion, that the splanchnic nerves are more especially 
affected. In short, his theory is, that the complaint 
consists of an incendium nervorum, or increased heat 
of the nerves. He treats the disease upon much the 
same plan as tetanus, to which he appears to have 
considered it allied, by frictions with tepid oil, oily 
clysters, and other remedies of a relaxing nature. He 
approves of venesection, but not to a great extent. He 
condemns the use of hellebore, which is a mode of 
treatment approved of by every ancient authority ex¬ 
cept himself. Neither, also, does he make mention of 
the application of the actual cautery to the wound, 
which practice is recommended by the best authorities, 
both ancient and modern. ( Sprevgel , Hist, de la Med., 
vol. 2, p. 37, seqq.) 

Aurelius, I. Marcus, a Roman emperor. (Vid. 
Antoninus II.)—II. Victor, a Roman historian. (Vid. 
Victor.) 

Aurinia, a prophetess held in great veneration by 
the Germans. (Tacit., Germ., 8.) Some imagine the 
true form of the name to have been, when Latinized, 
Alurinia; and trace an analogy between it and the 
Alrunce of northern mythology. (Consult Oberlinus, 
ad Tacit., 1. c.) 

Aurora, the goddess of the dawn, daughter of Hy¬ 
perion and Theia. Her Greek name was Ecs (’Hwf). 
Other genealogies represent her as the daughter of 
Titan and Terra, or of Pallas, the son of Crius and 
husband of Styx, whence she is sometimes styled 
Pallantias. In Homer and Hesiod she is simply the 
goddess of the dawn, but in the works of succeeding 
poets she is identified with Hemera, or the Day. 
(JEschyl., Pcrs., 384. — Eurip., Troad., 844. — Bion, 
Idyll., 6, 18. — Quint. Smyrn., 1, 119. — Nonnus, 7, 
286, 294. — Id., 25, 567. — Musceus, 110, &c.) Au¬ 
rora became, by Astrseus, the mother of the winds 
Boreas, Zephyrus, and Notus, and also of the stars of 
heaven. (Hes., Theog., 378.) She Tvas more than 
once, moreover, deeply smitten with the love of mortal 
man. She carried off Orion, and kept him in the isle 
of Ortygia till he w^as slain there by the darts of Diana. 
(Od., 5, 121.) Clitus, the son of Mantius, was for his 
exceeding beauty snatched away by her, “ that he 
might be among the gods.” (Od., 15, 250.) She also 
carried off Cephalus, and had by him a son named 
Phaethon. (Hes., Theog., 986. — Eurip., Hippol., 
457.) But her strongest affection was for Tithonus, 
son of Laomedon, king of Troy. (Vid. Tithonus.) 
The children whom she bore to Tithonus were Mem- 
non and TEmathion.—The most probable derivation of 
the name Eos (’Hwf, Doric ’Aug) seems to be that 
from aw, to blow, regarding it as the cool morning air, 
whose gentle breathing precedes the rising of the sun. 
The Latin term Aurora is similarly related to Aura. 
(Hermann, uber das Wesen, &c., p. 98. — Keightley's 
Mythology, p. 63, seqq.) Aurora is sometimes rep¬ 
resented in a saffron-coloured robe, with a wand or 
torch in her hand, coming out of a golden palace, and 
ascending a chariot of the same metal. Homer de¬ 
scribes her as wearing a flowing veil, which she throws 
back to denote the dispersion of night, and as opening 
with her rosy fingers the gates of day. Others rep¬ 
resent her as a nymph crowned with flowers, with a 



AUS 


AUS 


star above her head, standing in a chariot drawn by 
winged horses, white in one hand she holds a torch, 
and with the other scatters roses, as illustrative of the 
flowers springing from the dew, which the poets de¬ 
scribe as diffused from the eyes of the goddess in liquid 
pearls. (Compare Ihgkirami, Mon. Etrusc., 1, 5.— 
Millin, Vases de Canosa , 5. Vases, 1, 15.— Id. ibid., 

2, 37.— Eckhel, Syll. , 7, 3.— Muller, Archceol. dcr 
Kunst, p. 611.) 

Aurunci, a people of Latium, on the coast towards 
Campania, southeast of the Volsci. They were, in 
fact, identical with the Ausonians. The Italian form 
of the name Ausones can have been no other than 
Aunm, for from this Aurunci is manifestly derived. 
Auruncus is Aurunicus; the termination belongs to 
the number of adjective-forms in which the old Latin 
luxuriated, so as even to form Tuscanicus from Tuscus. 
{Niebuhr's Rom. Hist., vol. 1, p. 56, 2d ed., Cam¬ 
bridge transl.) 

Ausar, a river of Etruria, which formerly joined 
the Arnus, not far from the mouth of the latter. At 
present they both flow into the sea by separate chan¬ 
nels. Some indication of the junction of these rivers 
seems preserved by the name of Osari, attached to a 
little stream or ditch which lies between them. ( Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 174.) 

AuschIs^:, a people of Libya. {Herodot., 4, 171.) 
They extended from above Barca to the neighbourhood 
of the Hesperides. (Compare Rcnncll's Geography of 
Herodotus, vol. 2, p. 266.) 

Ausci, a people of Gallia Aquitania. Their capital 
was Ausci, now Ausch, on the Ger, one of the south¬ 
ern branches of the Garumna or Garonne. Its earlier 
name was Climberris or Climberrum. (Cces., B. G., 

3, 27.— Mela, 3, 2.— Amm. Marc., 15, 28.) 

Auson, a son of jJlysses and Calypso, from whom 
the Ausones, a people of Italy, were fabled to have 
been descended. ( Vid. Ausonia.) 

Ausonia, a name properly applied to the whole 
southern part of Italy, through which the Ausones, 
one of the ancient races of Italy, had spread them¬ 
selves. Its derivation from Auson, son of Ulysses 
and Calypso, is a mere fable. The sea on the south¬ 
east coast was for a long time called from them Mare 
Ausonium. Niebuhr makes the Ausonians a por¬ 
tion of the great Oscan nation. {Rom. Hist., vol. 1, 
p. 56, 2 d ed., Cambridge transl.) 

Auson'ius (Decius, or, more correctly, Decimus, 
Magnus), a Roman poet of the fourth century. The 
most authentic particulars respecting him are to be 
found in his own writings, and more especially in the 
second volume of his Prcefatiunculce, wherein he treats 
the subject professedly. He was born at Burdigala 
{Bourdeaux), where his father, Julius Ausonius, was 
an eminent physician, and also a Roman senator and 
member of the Municipal Council. Had his educa¬ 
tion been solely confided to paternal attentions, it is 
probable that no record of him would have been ne¬ 
cessary among the Latin poets, since the elder Auso¬ 
nius, although well read in Greek, was but indiffer¬ 
ently acquainted with the Latin tongue. By the ex¬ 
ertions, however, of his maternal uncle, JEmilius 
Magnus Arborius, himself a poet, and the reputed au¬ 
thor of an elegy still extant, “ Ad nympham nimis 
cultam," and those of the grammarians Minervius, 
Nepotian, and Staphylus, the disadvantages of our po¬ 
et’s circumstances were abundantly removed. From 
these eminent men he acquired the principles of gram¬ 
mar and rhetoric. His success in the latter of these 
studies induced him to make trial of the bar; but the 
former was his choice, and in A.D. 367 he was ap¬ 
pointed by the Emperor Valentinian tutor to the young 
prince Gratian, whom he accompanied into Germany 
the following year. He became successively Count 
of the empire, quaestor, governor of Gaul, Libya, and 
Latium, and first consul.' The last of these dignities 


he obtained A.D. 379. The question has been often 
started, whether Ausonius was a Christian or not. 
Some have doubted the circumstance on account of 
the extreme licentiousness of certain of his produc¬ 
tions. It is difficult, however, to deny the affirmative 
of this question without attacking the authenticity of 
some of his pieces, such as, for example, his first 
Idyl: besides, how can we imagine that so zealous a 
Christian as Valentinian would have confided to a 
pagan the education of his son 1 As to the licentious 
character of some of his poetry, it may be remarked, 
that, in professing the prevailing religion of the day, he 
omitted, perhaps, to follow its purer precepts, and 
hence indulged in effusions revolting to morality and 
decency. The frequent use which he makes of the 
pagan mythology in his writings does not prove any¬ 
thing against his observance of Christianity, since the 
spirit of the times allowed this absurd mixture of fa¬ 
ble with truth.—The exact time when Ausonius died 
is uncertain; he was alive in 392.—The poetry of 
Ausonius, on the whole, like that of Avienus, is mark¬ 
ed by poverty of argument, profusion of mechanical 
ingenuity, and imitation of, or, rather, compilation from, 
the ancients. It is valuable, however, to the literary 
historian: its variety alone affords us a considerable 
insight into the state of poetry in that age ; and the 
station and pursuits of the author allowed him that 
familiarity with contemporary poets which has impart¬ 
ed to his works the character of poetical memoirs.— 
Of the editions of Ausonius, the best, although a very 
rare one, is that of Tollius, Amst., 1671, 8vo. It con¬ 
tains the learned commentary of Joseph Scaliger, to¬ 
gether with selected notes from Accursius, Barthius, 
Gronovius, Gnevius, and others. The Delphin edi¬ 
tion is also held in considerable estimation. The Bi- 
pont edition, published in 1783, 8vo, is a useful and 
correct one. {Bahr, Gcsch. Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. 304, 
seqq.- — Scholl, Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 3, p. 52.— En- 
cyclop. Metropol., Div. 3, vol. 2, p. 576, seq.) 

AuspIces, a sacerdotal order at Rome, nearly the 
same as the augurs. Auspex (the nom. sing.) deno¬ 
ted a person who observed and interpreted omens, 
especially those connected with the flight, the sounds, 
and the feeding of birds ; and hence the term is said 
to be derived from avis, “ a bird,” and specie, “ to be¬ 
hold” or “ observe,” the earlier form of the word hav¬ 
ing been avispex. In later times, when the custom 
of consulting the auspices on every occasion lost much 
of its strictness, the term auspex acquired a more gen¬ 
eral signification. Before this, the name was particu¬ 
larly applied to the priest who officiated at marriages ; 
but now, those employed to witness the signing of 
the marriage contract, and to see that everything was 
rightly performed, were called auspices nuptiarum , 
otherwise proxenctce, conciliatores, and pronubi, in 
Greek tt apavvpcjuoi. {Valerius Maximus, 2, 1, 1.— 
Cicero, de Dwin., 1, 16. — Suetonius, Claud., 26.— 
Servius, ad JEn., 1, 350, et 4, 45.— Buleng., de Aug. 
et Ausp., 3, 13.) Hence auspex is put for a favourer 
or director; thus, auspex legis, “ one who advocates 
a law;” diis auspicibus, “ under the guidance of the 
gods;” auspice musa, “under the inspiration of the 
muse,” &c. (Consult remarks under the article Au- 

GURES.) 

Auster, the South wind, the same with the Notos 
of the Greeks. Pliny (2, 48) speaks of it as a dry¬ 
ing, withering wind, identifying it, therefore, with the 
Sirocco of modern times. Aristotle ( Probl , 1, 23) 
ascribes to its influence burning fevers. Horace 
{Scrm., 2, 6, 18) calls it “ plumbeus Auster," thus 
characterizing it as unhealthy ; and, on another occa¬ 
sion, he speaks of it in plainer language, as “ nocens 
corporibus." {Od., 2, 14, 15.) Statius describes the 
roses as dying at its first approach, “ Pubcntesve roses 
primos moriuntur ad Austros." {Sylv., 3, 3, 129.— 
Compare Virg., Eclog., 2, 58.) Pliny recommends 

243 



A XI 


BAB 


the husbandman neither to trim his trees nor prune his 
vines when this wind blows (18, 76). On another oc¬ 
casion (16, 46) he states, that the pear and the almond 
trees lose their buds if the heavens be clouded by a 
south wind, though unaccompanied by rain. This re¬ 
mark, however, is not confirmed by modern experience. 
The south wind is also described by the Latin poets 
as bringing rain. ( Tibull. , 1, 1, 47.— Ovid, Met., 13, 
725,,&c.) We must distinguish, therefore, between 
the dry and humid southern blasts, as Pliny does in the 
following passage : “ ( Auster ) humidus aut astuosus 
Italia cst; Africa quidcm incendia cum serenitate 
adfcrt ” (18, 76). 

Autochth5nes, an appellation assumed by the 
Athenians, importing that they sprang from the soil 
which they inhabited. (Consult remarks under the 
article Attica.) 

Autololye, a people of Africa, on the western or 
Atlantic coast of Mauritania Tingitana. ( Plin ., 6, 
31.— Lucan , Pharsal., 4, 677.— Sil. Ital., 2, 63.) 

Autolycus, son of Mercury and Philonis, accord¬ 
ing to the scholiast on Homer ( Od ., 19, 432), but, ac¬ 
cording to PausaniUs (8, 4), the son of Dsedalion, and 
not of Mercury. He dwelt on Parnassus, and was cel¬ 
ebrated as a stealer of cattle, which he carried off in 
such a way as to render it nearly impossible to recog¬ 
nise them, all the marks being defaced. Among 
others, he drove off those of Sisyphus, and he defaced 
the marks as usual; but, when Sisyphus came in quest 
of them, he, to the great surprise of the thief, selected 
his own beasts out of the herd, for he had marked the 
initial letter of his name under their hoofs. (The an¬ 
cient form of the 2 was C, which is of the shape of a 
horse’s hoof.) Autolycus forthwith cultivated the ac¬ 
quaintance of one who had thus proved himself too able 
for him; and Sisyphus, it is said, seduced or violated 
his daughter Anticlea (who afterward married Laertes), 
and thus was the real father of Ulysses. ( Pherecyd ., 
ap. Schol. ad Od., 19, 432.— Schol. ad II., 10, 267. 
— Tzetz. ad Lycophr., 344.— Keightley's Mythology, 
p. 400.) 

Automedon, a son of Dioreus, who went to the 
Trojan war with ten ships. He was the charioteer of 
Achilles, after whose death he served Pyrrhus in the 
same capacity. ( Horn ., II., 9, 16, &c.— Virg., AEn., 
2, 477.) 

Autonoe, a daughter of Cadmus, who married 
Aristseus, by whom she had Actsson, often called Au- 
toneius keros. The death of her son {vid. Actseon) 
was so painful to her, that she retired from Boeotia to 
Megara, where she soon after died. ( Pausan ., 1,44. 

•— ilygin., fab., 179.— Ovid, Met., 3, 720.) 

Autrigones, a people of Hispania Tarraconensis, 
among the Cantabri. They occupied what is now 
the eastern half of La Montana, the western quarter 
of Biscay and Alava, and the northeastern part of 
Burgos. Their capital was Flaviobriga, now Porto 
Gallete, near Bilboa. (Florez, Esp. S., 24, 10.— 
Ukert, Geogr., vol. 2, p. 446.) Mannert, however, 
makes it to be Santander. {Geogr., vol. 1, p. 373.) 

Axenus, the ancient name of the Euxine Sea. The 
word signifies inhospitable, which was highly applica¬ 
ble to the manners of the ancient inhabitants of the 
coast. It took the name of Euxinus after the coast 
was settled by Grecian colonies. ( Vid. Pontus Euxi¬ 
nus.) 

Axius, the largest river in Macedonia, rising in the 
chain of Mount Scardus, and, after a course of eighty 
miles, forming an extensive lake near its mouth. It 
falls into the Sinus Therma'fcus, after receiving the 
waters of the Erigonus, Ludias, and Astrreus. In the 
middle ages this river assumed the name of Bardarus 
( Thcophylact., Epist., 55.— Niccph. Greg., vol. 1, p. 
230), whence has been derived that of Vardari or 
Vardar, which it now bears. ( Cramer's Anc. Greece, 
vol. 1, p. 235.) 

244 


Azan, I. a mountain of Arcadia, sacred to Cybele. 
( Stat., Theb., 4, 292.)—II. A son of Areas, king of 
Arcadia, by Erato, one of the Dryades. He divided 
his father’s kingdom with his brothers Aphidas and 
Elatus, and called his share Azania. There was in 
Azania a fountain called Chtonus, whose waters gave 
a dislike for wine to those who drank them. ( Vitruv., 
8, 3.— Ovid, Met., 15, 322.— Pausanf 8, 4.— Plin., 
21, 2.— Etymol. Mag., s. v. K Airopiov.) — III. A re¬ 
gion on the northeastern coast of Africa, lying south 
of Aromatum Promontorium and north of Barbaria. It 
is now Ajan. (Ptol. — Arrian, Pcripl. Mar. Erythr. 
— Stukius, ad Arrian, l. c., p. 93.) 

AzTris, a place in Libya, surrounded on both sides 
by delightful hills covered with trees, and watered by 
a river, where Battus built a town, previous to found- 
ing Cyrene. {Herod., 4, 157.) Ptolemy calls the 
place Axylis. The harbour of Azaris, mentioned by 
Synesius (c. 4), appears to coincide with this same 
place. Pacho thinks that the Aziris of Herodotus co¬ 
incides with the modern Temmineh. (Voyage, &c., 
p. 50, seqq.) 

Azotus (the Asdod of Scripture), one of the five 
chief cities of the Philistines, and, at the same time, 
one of the oldest and most celebrated cities of the 
land. The god Dagon was worshipped here. It lay 
on the seacoast, and in the division of the country 
among the Israelites, it fell to the tribe of Judah, but 
was not conquered until the reign of Solomon. In the 
time of King Hezekiah it was taken by the Assyrians, 
and subsequently by Psammetichus, king of Egypt, 
after a siege of twenty-nine years. {Herod., 2, 157.) 
At a later period Azotus became the seat of a Chris¬ 
tian bishop. The ruins of the ancient city are near 
a small village called Esdud. {Mannert, Geogr., vol. 
6, pt. 1, p. 261, seq.) 

B. 

Babrius or Babrias (or, as the name is sometimes 
corrupted, Gabrias), a Greek poet, who lived, accord¬ 
ing to Tyrwhitt, either under Augustus or a short time 
before that emperor ; while Coray, on the other hand, 
makes him a contemporary of Bion and Moschus. 
The particulars of his life have not reached us. All 
that we know of him is, that, after the example of Soc¬ 
rates, who, while in prison, amused himself with ver¬ 
sifying the fables of HCsop, Babrius published a col¬ 
lection of fables under the title of pvOoi or pvOiapboi ; 
from which the fables of Phiedrus are closely imitated. 
They were written in choliambics, and comprised in 
ten books, according to Suidas, or two volumes, ac¬ 
cording to Avianus. {Av., Praf. Fab .)—These two 
accounts are not at variance with each other, as the 
books were doubtless divisions made by the author, 
like the books of PhaMrus, perhaps with an appropri¬ 
ate introduction to each; while the “ volumina" of 
Avianus were probably rolls of parchment or papyrus, 
on which the ten books were written. It may bo 
farther observed, that Avianus calls the books of 
Phaedrus libelli, and not volumina. In this man¬ 
ner may be explained the statement of Pliny (8, 16), 
that Aristotle’s writings on Natural History were 
contained in nearly fifty volumina. (Compare Men¬ 
age, ad Diog. Laert., 5, 25.) This collection threw 
all preceding ones into comparative obscurity. It 
appears to have been still in existence as late as the 
twelfth century, in the days of Tzetzes : the copyists, 
however, of succeeding times, little sensible of the 
charms of the versification which Babrius had adopted, 
thought they could not do better than convert it into 
so much prose ; and the fragments of verses, which 
they were unable in this way perfectly to disguise, 
are all that recalls the original lines which they have 
spoiled. The collection of Babrius, thus dishonoured, 
was perpetuated by numerous copies, in which traces 



BAB 


BABYLON. 


of the original became more and more obscured, until 
a single apologue alone, that of the swallow and night¬ 
ingale, bore marks of a versified fable. This piece 
found its way into a collection of fables attributed to 
Ignatius Magister, a priest of Constantinople, who, 
being in possession of a copy of the original fables 
of Babrius, in choliambic verse, as that author had 
written them, resolved to change them into iambic 
tertrastics. With this view he abridged and tortured 
each apologue until he succeeded in reducing them 
individually to four verses. Fifty-three fables were 
thus strangled; but as if Ignatius had wished, by 
means of a comparison, to augment our regrets for 
those which he had altered, he preserved entire and 
unchanged a single fable, the one to which we have al¬ 
luded. At the period when the Greek authors began 
to be printed, the true collection of Babrius no longer 
existed : it was thought, however, that the collection 
of Ignatius was the original one, and hence it was pub¬ 
lished under the name of Babrius, or rather Gabrias, 
the B in the manuscripts being confounded with a T 
The error of the name was only perceived about the 
close of the sixteenth century. Two English scholars, 
the celebrated Bentley, in his dissertation on Alsop, 
and, at a later period, Tyrwhitt, in his dissertation on 
Babrius ( Load ., 1776, 8vo), have avenged the memo¬ 
ry of the poet, and dissipated much of the obscurity 
which hung over this portion of literary history. The 
latter of these two scholars reunited all the fragments 
of Babrius to be found in Suidas, as well as all those 
which were to be met with in other works. In this 
way he succeeded in recomposing four of the fables 
of Babrius, so that their mfinber now amounted in all 
to five. Thirty-three years afterward (1809) De Fu- 
ria published many fables of Ail sop, up to that time in- 
edited. In the number of these were thirty-six, which 
he believed to be written in prose like the rest, and 
which he printed as prose compositions ; they were, 
in reality, however, versified fables, and a few correc¬ 
tions sufficed to restore them to their primitive form. 
This service has been rendered by Coray, in his col¬ 
lection of Alsop’s Fables ; by J. G. Schneider, at the 
end of his edition of dEsop, from the Augustan MS. ; 
by Berger, in an edition of the remains of Babrius, 
published at Munich in 1816 ; by Mr. G. Burges, in 
the Classical Journal (whose collection, however, is 
unfinished); by the present Bishop of London (Dr. 
Blomfield), in the third number of the Museum Criti- 
cum ; and by an anonymous writer in the second num¬ 
ber of the Cambridge Philological Museum. ( Scholl, 
Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 4, p. 61, seq. — Cambridge Philol. 
Mas ., n. 2, p. 282, seq.) 

Babylon, I. a celebrated city, the capital of the 
Babylonian empire, situate on the Euphrates, in 32° 
25' north latitude, and 44° east longitude, as is sup¬ 
posed. Its origin is lost in the obscurity of early 
times. It is remarkable enough that Herodotus should 
have given us ho intimation respecting its founder ; he 
merely informs us that Semiramis and Nitocris, two of 
its queens, strengthened the fortifications, and guard¬ 
ed the city against inundations of the river, as well as 
improved and adorned it. May we not conclude from 
this, asks Rennell ( Geography of Herodotus, vol. 1, 
p. 442), that its antiquity was very great; and as¬ 
cended so high that Herodotus could not satisfy him¬ 
self concerning it! At the same time, adds this in¬ 
telligent writer, the improvements that took place in 
the city in the reign of Semiramis, might occasion the 
original foundation to be ascribed to her ; the like 
having happened in the history of other cities. He¬ 
rodotus informs us (1, 178), that Babylon became the 
capital of Assyria after the destruction of Nineveh. 
Perhaps, then, we ought to date the foundation of 
those works which appear so stupendous in history 
from that period only : for, wonderful as these works 
appear, even when ascribed to the capital of an em¬ 


pire, the wonder increases when ascribed to the capital 
of a province only. If, then, with the ancient authors 
generally, we allow Semiramis to have been the found¬ 
ress of that Babylon described by Herodotus, we can¬ 
not fix the date of the improved foundation beyond the 
eighth century before the Christian era: so that the 
duration of this city, in its improved form, was less 
than 800 years, reckoning to the time of Pliny. ( Ren¬ 
nell, Geography of Herodotus, vol. 1, p. 443, seqq .)— 
The shape of the city of Babylon was that of a square, 
traversed each way by twenty-five principal streets, 
which, of course, intersected each other, dividing the 
city into 625 squares. These streets were terminated 
at each end by gates of brass, of prodigious size and 
strength, with a smaller one opening towards the river. 
Respecting the height and thickness of the walls of 
Babylon, there are great variations among the ancient 
writers. Herodotus makes them 200 royal cubits, or 
337 feet 8 inches high, and 50 royal cubits, or 84 
feet 6 inches broad. Ctesias gives 50 fathoms (op- 
yvlai), or 300 feet, for the height. An anonymous 
writer in Diodorus Siculus makes the height 50 com¬ 
mon cubits, or 75 feet, and this estimate is followed 
by Strabo and Quintus Curtius. Pliny gives 200 
feet, and Orosius 200 common cubits, or 300 feet. 
(Herod., 1, 178. — Ctesias, p. 402, ed. Bachr. — Diod- 
Sic., 2, 7. — Strabo, 738. — Curtius, 5, 1. — Pliny, 
6, 26. — Orosius, 2, 6.1 In this statement, Ctesias 
evidently copies from Herodotus, since fifty fathoms 
make exactly 200 cubits ; only he appears not to have 
perceived that royal cubits were meant by the latter. 
It is also clear, that the anonymous writer mentioned 
by Diodorus Siculus, as well as Strabo and Quintus 
Curtius, had Ctesias respectively in view, but that, 
startled at the number of 50 fathoms, they have re¬ 
duced it to the number of 50 cubits. The number 
200, employed by Pliny, proves that he had consulted 
Herodotus merely ; but that, through inadvertence on 
his part, or through the fault of later copyists, feet are 
substituted for cubits. Orosius follows Herodotus, 
but, forgetting that the latter speaks of royal cubits, 
he contents himself with giving 200 common cubits. 
(Larcher, ad Herodot., 1, 178.) But are we to receive 
the estimate of Herodotus as correct, and entitled to 
full belief? Evidently not: the measurement is in¬ 
credible, and bears on its very front the impress of 
gross exaggeration. A difficulty also presents itself 
with regard to the extent of the walls of Babylon. 
Herodotus makes them 120 stadia each side, or 480 in 
circumference. Pliny and Solinus give the circuit at 
60 Roman miles ; which, reckoning eight stadia to a 
mile, agrees with the account of Herodotus. Strabo 
makes it 385 stadia. Diodorus, from Ctesias, assigns 
360, but from Clitarchus, who accompanied Alexander, 
365. Curtius gives 368. It appears highly probable, 
remarks Rennell (Geography of Herodotus, vol. 1, p. 
447), that 360 or 365 was the true statement of the 
circumference, since one of these numbers was report¬ 
ed by Ctesias, the other (which differs so little) by 
Clitarchus, both of them eyewitnesses. Taking the 
circumference of Babylon at 365 stadia, and these at 
491 feet, each side of the square (which is equal to 
91J stadia) will be 8.485 British miles, or nearly 8£. 
This gives an area of 72 miles and an inconsiderable 
fraction. If the same number of stadia be taken at 
500 feet each, the area will be 74.8. And, finally, 
the 385 stadia of Strabo, at 491 feet, about 80. The 
480 stadia of Herodotus would give about 126 square 
miles, or eight times the area of London ! But that 
even 72 contiguous square miles should have been in 
any degree covered with buildings, is on every account 
too improbable for belief. This famous city, in all 
likelihood, occupied a part only of the vast space en¬ 
closed by its walls. It is a question that no one can 
positively answer, “ what proportion of the space was 
occupied?” It is possible, however, that nearly two 

, 245 





BABYLON. 


BABYLON. 


thirds of it might have been occupied in the mode in 
which the large cities of Asia are built; that is, in the 
style of some of those of India at the present day, hav¬ 
ing gardens, reservoirs of water, and large open places 
within them. Moreover, the houses of the common 
people consist of one floor only ; so that, of course, 
fewer people can be accommodated in the same com¬ 
pass of ground in an Indian than in a European city. 
This accounts at once for the erroneous dimensions 
of some of the Asiatic cities ; and perhaps we cannot 
allow much less than double the space to accommo¬ 
date the same number of Asiatics that Europeans 
would require That the area enclosed by the walls 
of Babylon was only partly built on, is proved by the 
words of Quintus Curtius (5, 4), who says, that “ the 
buildings in Babylon are not contiguous to the walls, 
but some considerable space was left all around.” 
Diodorus, moreover, describes a vast space taken up 
by the palaces and public buildings. The enclosure 
of one of the palaces was a square of 15 stadia, or 
near a mile and a half; the other of five stadia : here 
are more than 2? square miles occupied by the palaces 
alone. Besides these, there were the temple and 
tower of Belus, of vast extent; the hanging gardens, 
&c. From all this, and much more that might be ad¬ 
duced, we may collect most clearly, that much vacant 
space remained within the walls of Babylon : and this 
would seem to do away, in some degree, the great dif¬ 
ficulty respecting the magnitude of the city itself. 
Nor is it stated as the effect of the subsequent decline 
of Babylon, but as the actual state of it, when Alex¬ 
ander first entered the place : for Curtius leaves us 
to understand, that the system of cultivating a large 
proportion of the enclosed space originated with the 
foundation itself; and the history of its two sieges, by 
Cyrus and Darius Hystaspis, seems to show it. {Ren- 
nell's Geography of Herodotus, vol. 1, p. 447.)—The 
walls of Babylon were built of brick baked in the sun, 
cemented with bitumen instead of mortar, and were 
encompassed by a broad and deep ditch, lined with 
the same materials, as were also the banks of the river 
in its course through the city, the inhabitants descend¬ 
ing to the water by steps through the smaller brass 
gates already mentioned. Over the river was a bridge, 
connecting the two halves of the city, which stood, 
the one on its eastern, the other on its western bank ; 
the river running nearly north and south. The bridge 
was five furlongs in length, and thirty feet in breadth, 
and had a palace at each end, with, it is said, a sub¬ 
terranean passage beneath the river from one to the 
other, the work of Semiramis. Within the city was 
the temple of Belus, or Jupiter, which Herodotus de¬ 
scribes as a square of two stadia : in the midst of this 
arose the celebrated tower, to which both the same 
writer and Strabo give an elevation of one stadium, 
and the same measure at its base. The whole was di¬ 
vided into eight separate towers, one above another, 
of decreasing dimensions to the summit; where stood 
a chapel, containing a couch, table, and other things, 
of gold. Here the principal devotions were perform¬ 
ed ; and over this, on the highest platform of all, was 
the observatory, by the help of which the Babylonians 
are said to have attained to great skill in astronomy. 
A winding staircase on the outside formed the ascent 
to this stupendous edifice.—The two palaces, at the 
two ends of the bridge, have already been alluded to. 
The old palace, which stood on the east side of the 
river, was 30 furlongs (or three miles and three quar¬ 
ters) in compass. The new palace, which stood on 
the west side of the river, opposite to the other, was 
60 furlongs (or seven miles and a half) in compass. It 
was surrounded with three walls, one within another, 
with considerable spaces between them. These walls, 
as also those of the other palace, were embellished 
with an infinite variety of sculptures, representing all 
kinds of animals to the life. Among the rest was a 
246 


curious hunting-piece, in which Semiramis on horse, 
back was throwing her javelin at a leopard, and her 
husband Ninus piercing a lion. In this last palace 
were the hanging gardens, so celebrated among the 
Greeks. They contained a square of 400 feet on 
every side, and were carried up in the manner of sev¬ 
eral large terraces, one above another, till the height 
equalled that of the walls of the city. The ascent was 
from terrace to terrace by stairs ten feet wide. The 
whole pile was sustained by vast arches raised upon 
other arches, one above another, and strengthened by 
a wall, surrounding it on every side, of tw ? enty-two 
feet in thickness. On the top of the arches were first 
laid large flat stones, sixteen feet long and four broad ; 
over these was a layer of reeds, mixed with a great 
quantity of bitumen, upon which were two rows of 
bricks closely cemented together. The whole was 
covered with thick sheets of lead, upon which lay the 
mould of the garden. And all this floorage was con¬ 
trived to keep the moisture of the mould from running 
away through the arches. The earth laid thereon was 
so deep that large trees might take root in it; and with 
such the terraces were covered, as well as with all 
other plants and flow r ers that were proper to adorn a 
pleasure-garden. In the upper terrace there was an 
engine, or kind of pump, by w hich water w as draw’n 
up out of the river, and from thence the whole garden 
was watered. In the spaces between the several 
arches upon W'hich this whole structure rested, were 
large and magnificent apartments, that were very light, 
and had the advantage of a beautiful prospect. Amyitis, 
the wdfe of Nebuchadnezzar, having been bred in Me¬ 
dia (for she was the daughter of Astyages, the king of 
that country), desired to have something in imitation 
of her native hills and forests ; and the monarch, in 
order to gratify her, is said to have raised this prodi¬ 
gious structure.—Babylon was probably in the zenith 
of its glory and dominion just before the death of Neb¬ 
uchadnezzar. The spoils of Nineveh, Jerusalem, and 
Egypt had enriched it ; its armies had swept like a 
torrent over the finest countries of the East, and had 
at this time no longer an enemy to contend with ; the 
arts and sciences, driven from Phoenicia and Egypt, 
were centred here ; and hither the philosophers ol the 
West came to imbibe instruction. The fall of Babylon, 
before the victorious arms of Cyrus, occurred B.C. 
538. The height and strength of the walls had long 
baffled every effort of the invader. Having under¬ 
stood at length, that on a certain day, then near ap¬ 
proaching, a great annual festival was to be kept at 
Babylon, when it was customary for the Babylonians 
to spend the night in revelling and drunkenness, he 
thought this a fit opportunity for executing a scheme 
which he had planned. This was no other than to 
surprise the city by turning the course of thd river ; a 
mode of capture of which the Babylonians, who look¬ 
ed upon the river as one of their greatest protections, 
had not the smallest apprehension. Accordingly, on 
the night of the feast, he sent a party of his men to 
the head of the canal, which led to the great lake made 
by Nebuchadnezzar to receive the w aters of the Eu¬ 
phrates while he w T as facing the banks of the river with 
walls of brick and bitumen. This party had directions, 
as soon as it was dark, to commence breaking down 
the great bank or dam which kept the waters of the 
river in their place, and separated them from the canal 
above mentioned ; while Cyrus, in the mean time, di¬ 
viding the rest of bis army, stationed one part at the 
place where the river entered the city, and the other 
where it came out, with orders to enter the channel of 
the river as soon as they should find it fordable. This 
happened by midnight; for, by cutting down the bank 
leading to the great lake, and making besides openings 
into the trenches, which, in the course of the two years’ 
siege, had been dug round the city, the river w as so 
drained of its water that it became nearly dry. When 





BABYLON. 


BABYLON. 


the army of Cyrus entered the channel from their re¬ 
spective stations on each side of the city, they rushed 
onward towards the centre of the place; and finding the 
gates leading towards the river left open, in the drunk¬ 
enness and negligence of the night, they entered them, 
and met by concert at the palace before any alarm had 
been given: here the guards, partaking, no doubt, in 
the negligence and disorder of the night, were sur¬ 
prised and killed. While all this was going on with¬ 
out, a remarkable scene of widely different character 
was transacting within. Daniel was deciphering the 
writing on the wall; and, soon after, the soldiers of 
Cyrus, having killed the guard, and meeting with no re¬ 
sistance, advanced towards the banqueting-hall, where 
they encountered Belshazzar, the ill-fated monarch, 
and slew him, with his armed followers.—Babylon had 
suffered much when carried by the troops of Cyrus ; 
but other sufferings were to come. Cyrus having es¬ 
tablished his court at Susa, Babylon, formerly the seat 
of empire, was thus reduced to the rank of a provin¬ 
cial city ; and the inhabitants, who, grown wealthy 
and proud during their empire over the East, could ill 
brook this change of fortune, resolved to make an ef¬ 
fort towards regaining their former power and gran¬ 
deur. Accordingly, in the fifth year of Darius Hys- 
taspis, and twelve years after the death of Cyrus, hav¬ 
ing for several years covertly laid in great stores of 
provisions, and every necessary, they openly revolted ; 
which, as they might have expected, soon brought 
upon them the armies of Darius. The city a second 
time was taken by stratagem (vid. Zopyrus), and Da¬ 
rius, when he again became possessed of it, gave it 
Up to the plunder of his soldiers. He impaled 3000 
of those who were supposed to have been most active 
in the revolt; took away the gates, and pulled down 
the walls to the height of fifty cubits. During the re¬ 
mainder of the reign of Darius, Babylon continued in 
much the same state in which it was left after the 
siege. But in the succeeding reign another blow was 
struck towards her downfall. Xerxes, in his return 
from his Grecian expedition, partly to indemnify him¬ 
self for his losses, and partly out of zeal for the Ma- 
gian religion, which held every kind of image-worship 
in abhorrence, destroyed the temples and plundered 
them of their vast wealth, which appears to have been 
hitherto spared, and which must have been indeed pro¬ 
digious ; that in the temple of Belus alone amounting, 
according to Diodorus, to above 6000 talents of gold, 
or about 21 millions sterling. From this period, Bab¬ 
ylon, despoiled of her wealth, her strength, and her 
various resources, was in no condition for any more 
revolts ; and it is reasonable to suppose, that, with 
the decay of her power and local advantages, the pop¬ 
ulation also must decline. We hear, in fact, no more 
of Babylon until the coming of Alexander, 150 years 
after ; when the terror of his name, or the weakness 
of the place, was such, that it made not the slightest 
pretensions to resistance. Alexander, after a short 
visit to Babylon, proceeded on his expedition to In¬ 
dia; and, at his return from thence, finding Babylon 
more suitable in its situation and resources for the 
capital of his empire than any other place in the East, 
he resolved to fix his residence there, and to restore 
it to its former strength and magnificence. For this 
purpose, having examined the breach which Cyrus 
had made in the river, and the possibility of bringing 
it back to its former channel through the city, he em¬ 
ployed 10,000 men in the work, and, at the same 
time, an equal number in rebuilding the temple of Be¬ 
lus. An entire stop, however, was put to these great 
undertakings by the death of Alexander, who here 
terminated together his mighty projects and his life. 
After the death of Alexander, Babylon and the East 
fell to the lot of Seleucus, one of the generals who 
divided his empire among them. Seleucus, for sev¬ 
eral years, was too much engaged in contention with 


his rivals to pay much attention to Babylon ; which, 
still labouring under accumulated evils, continued to 
decline. But what completed its downfall was the 
building of Seleucia by Seleucus, about 40 miles dis¬ 
tant, on a spot more favourable for commercial inter¬ 
course ; the restoration of Babylon to its ancient nat¬ 
ural advantages appearing perhaps hopeless. This, 
together with the removal of the court, soon ex¬ 
hausted Babylon of the little that remained of its 
ancient trade and population. It never after revi¬ 
ved, but continued, through each succeeding age, to 
make farther advances in its progress of depopulation 
and decay, until nothing but the ruins of this once 
famous city were to be found. It will be interesting 
to trace the successive accounts of those who have 
made mention of Babylon during this latter period : 
that is, from the building of Seleucia to its entire de¬ 
struction. The first of these is Diodorus Siculus, 
who wrote about 45 years before the Christian era. 
He relates, that Babylon having fallen into the hands 
of the Parthians, the temples were burned ; much of 
the remaining part of the city demolished ; and many 
of the inhabitants sold into slavery. This was about 
130 B.C. : and, in his own time, 85 years after, he 
says, that the public buildings were destroyed or fall¬ 
en to decay ; that a very small part of the city was 
inhabited ; and that the greater part of the space with¬ 
in the walls w r as tilled. Strabo, who wrote about 70 
years after Diodorus, says, that the city was near¬ 
ly deserted ; and that the same might be applied to it 
which was said of Megalopolis in Arcadia, that the 
great city was becoming a great desert. Quintus 
Curtius, the next in order, and who wrote about 60 
A.D., is cited by Dr. Wells to show that Babylon 
“was lessened a fourth part in his time;” who im¬ 
mediately after says, that it was reduced to desolation 
in the time of Pliny. Now, besides that this account 
of Quintus Curtius is perfectly inconsistent with pre¬ 
ceding ones, the city must have undergone a prodi¬ 
gious decline, and that without any assignable cause, 
in the short space of 20 years, which was about the 
time that intervened between Curtius and Pliny. The 
truth is, that Dr. Wells has mistaken the period re¬ 
ferred to by Quintus Curtius, which was that of the 
arrival of Alexander at Babylon, whose history he 
was writing, for that in which the historian himself 
lived. Pliny, who lived, as we have seen, about 20 
years after Quintus Curtius, and 70 after Christ, de¬ 
clares, that Babylon was at that time “ decayed, un¬ 
peopled, and lying waste.” From this time may be 
said to have commenced the ruin of the ruins ; which 
has been so complete, that they are with difficulty 
traced ; and, indeed, their exact position has become a 
matter of learned dispute. Pausanias, about the mid¬ 
dle of the second century, says, that of Babylon, the 
greatest city the sun ever saw, there was remaining 
but the walls. And Lucian, about the end of the 
same century, says, that in a little time it would be 
sought for, and not be found, like Nineveh. Jerome, 
in the fourth century, gives the account of a monk, at 
that time living in Jerusalem, who had been at‘Baby¬ 
lon, and who says that the space occupied by the city 
was converted into a chase for wild beasts, for the 
kings of Persia to hunt in ; the walls having been re¬ 
paired for that purpose. Among more recent travel¬ 
lers, the best accounts of the ruins of Babylon are 
given by Kinneir, Rich, Porter, and Buckingham 
The ancient city is supposed to have been situated in 
what is now the Turkish pachalic of Bagdad, near the 
village of Hill or Hella, on the Euphrates. Ruins of 
various kinds are found for many miles around this 
place. Of these, one of the most interesting is that 
which is thought to be the remains of the tower of 
Belus. Mr. Rich, after refuting the opinion of Ren- 
nell, who places it on the eastern side of the river, 
gives the following account of this stupendous ruin, 

247 



BABYLON. 


BAG 


or, as it is called by the natives, Birs Ncmroud 
(“ The hill of Nimrod”). “ If any building,” says he, 
“ may be supposed to have left any considerable traces, 
it is certainly the pyramid or tower of Belus ; which, 
by its form, dimensions, and the solidity of its con¬ 
struction, was well calculated to resist the ravages of 
time ; and, if human force had not been employed, 
would in all probability have remained to the present 
day in nearly as perfect a state as the pyramids of 
Egypt. Even under the dilapidations which we know 
it to have undergone at a very early period, we might 
reasonably look for traces of it after every other ves¬ 
tige of Babylon had vanished from the face of the 
earth. The whole height of the Birs Nemroud above 
the plain, to the summit of the brick wail on its top, 
is 235 feet. The brick wall itself, which stands on 
the edge of the summit, and was undoubtedly the face 
of another stage, is 37 feet high. In the side of the 
pile, a little below the summit, is very clearly to be 
seen part of another brick wall, precisely resembling 
the fragment which crowns the summit, but which 
still encases and supports its part of the mound. 
This is clearly indicative of another stage, of greater 
extent. The masonry is infinitely superior to anything 
of the kind I have ever seen ; and, leaving out of the 
question any conjecture relative to the original desti¬ 
nation of this ruin, the first impression made by the 
sight of it is, that it was a solid pile, composed in the 
interior of unburned brick, and perhaps earth or rub¬ 
bish ; that it was constructed in preceding stages, 
and faced with fine burned bricks, having inscriptions 
on them, laid in a very thin layer of lime cement; 
and that it was reduced by violence to its present ru¬ 
inous condition. The upper stories have been forcibly 
broken down, and fire has been employed as an in¬ 
strument of destruction, though it is not easy to say 
precisely how or why. The facing of fine bricks has 
partly been removed, and partly covered by the falling 
down of the mass which it supported and kept to¬ 
gether. The Birs Nemroud is in all likelihood at 
present pretty nearly in the state in which Alex¬ 
ander saw it; if we give any credit to the report 
that 10,000 men could only remove the rubbish, pre¬ 
paratory to repairing it, in two months. If indeed it 
required one half of that number to disencumber it, 
the state of dilapidation must have been complete. 
The immense masses of vitrified brick which are 
seen on the top of the mount, appear to have marked 
its summit since the time of its destruction. The 
rubbish about its base was probably in much greater 
quantities, the weather having dissipated much of it 
in the course of so many revolving ages ; and possi¬ 
bly portions of the exterior facing of fine brick may 
have disappeared at different periods.” ( Second Me¬ 
moir on the Rums of Babylon , p. 165, seqq., Lond., 
1839.)—The account of Sir Robert Ker Porter is 
also exceedingly interesting.—As regards the opinion 
generally entertained, that all traces of the walls of 
Babylon had disappeared, it may be remarked, that 
Buckingham considers the hill or mound of A1 Hhei- 
mar to be a portion of the ancient wall. This mound 
is about ten miles east of Hillah. It appears to con¬ 
sist of a solid mass of brickwork, and is of an oval 
form, its length being from north to south. It is 
from 80 to 100 feet thick at the bottom, and from 70 
to 80 high. On the summit is a mass of solid wall, 
about 30 feet in length by 12 to 15 in thickness, 
bearing marks of being broken and incomplete on 
every side.—The bricks obtained from the ruins of 
Babylon are celebrated among antiquaries for the in¬ 
scriptions stamped upon them. These inscriptions 
are in the cuneiform or Babylonian character: some 
four, and even seven lines. Grotefend, Burnouf, and 
Lassen have done much towards deciphering these. 

( Heeren, Idccn, vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 325, seqq. —- Mans- 
ford's Script. Gazetteer, p. 58, seqq .)—II. A city of 
248 


Egypt, north of Memphis, supposed to have been found¬ 
ed by the Persians during the reign of Cambyses. 
A quarter, retaining the name of Baboul or Babilon, 
in the town of Old Cairo, marks its position. ( Ptol ., 
4, 5.— Strab., 555.— Joseph., Ant. Jud., 2, 5.) 

Babylonia, a large province of Upper Asia, of 
which Babylon was the capital. It was bounded on 
the north by Mesopotamia and Assyria; on the west 
by Arabia Deserta ; on the south by the Sinus Persi- 
cus ; and on the east by the Tigris. According to 
Ptolemy (5, 20), it comprised Chaldea, Amordacia, 
and, at the most flourishing period, a part of Mesopo¬ 
tamia and Assyria. The modern name is Irak Ara- 
bi, or Babeli. Babylonia is a dry steppe or table¬ 
land, but enjoys a delightful climate. It was and stiil 
is one of the most fruitful lands in the world. He¬ 
rodotus (1, 193) gives the following account of its fer¬ 
tility. “ All the country about Babylon is, like Egypt, 
divided by frequent canals ; of which the largest is 
navigable, and, beginning at the Euphrates, has a 
southeastern direction, and falls into the river Tigris, 
on which the city of Nineveh formerly stood. No 
part of the known world produces so good wheat ; but 
the vine, the olive, and the fig-tree, they do not even 
attempt to cultivate. Y'et, in recompense, it abounds 
so much in corn, as to yield at all times two hundred 
fold, and even three hundred fold when it is most fruit¬ 
ful. Wheat and barley carry a blade full four digits in 
breadth ; and though I well know to what a surprising 
height millet and sesame grow in those parts, I shall 
be silent in that particular ; because I am well assured 
that what has already been related concerning other 
fruits, is far more credible to those who Have never 
been at Babylon. They use no other oil than such as 
is drawn from sesame. The palm-tree grows over all 
the plain ; and the greater part bears fruit, with which 
they make bread, wine, and honey.” The products 
are nearly the same now as they were in ancient times. 
The southwestern part of Babylonia was called Chal¬ 
dea. In the more extensive sense of the word, Bab¬ 
ylonia was the most important satrapy of the Persian 
empire, and comprised both Assyria and Mesopotamia. 

( Plin. 5, 12.— Id., 6, 26.— Id., 18, 45.— Strab., 358, 
&c.) 

Babyksa, a fortified castle near Artaxata, where 
were kept the treasures of Tigranes and Artabanus. 
(Strab., 364.) 

Bacch^:, the priestesses of Bacchus. (Vid. Bac¬ 
chantes.) 

Bacchanalia, festivals in honour of Bacchus at 
Rome, the same as the Dionysia of the Greeks. ( Vid. 
Dionysia.) 

Bacchantes. The worship of Bacchus prevailed in 
almost all parts of Greece. Men and women joined in 
his festivals dressed in Asiatic robes and bonnets; their 
heads, wreathed with vine and ivy leaves, with fawn- 
skins (ve6piSec) flung over their shoulders, and thyrsi, 
or blunt spears twined with vine-leaves, in their hands, 
they ran through the country, shouting Io Bacche ! 
Euoi ! lacchc ! &c., swinging their thyrsi, beating 
on drums, and sounding various instruments. Inde¬ 
cent emblems were carried in procession, and the cer¬ 
emonies often assumed a most immoral character and 
tendency. The women, who bore a chief part in these 
frantic revels, were called Bacchtz, Mcenades, Thyia- 
dcs, Euades, &c. ( Keightley's Mythology, p. 216.) 

Bacchius and Bithus, two celebrated gladiators of 
equal age and strength, who, after conquering many 
competitors, engaged with each other and died of mu¬ 
tual wounds ; whence the proverb to express equality, 
Bithus contra Bacchium. (Horat., Scrm., 1, 7, 20. 
— Porphyrion, Schol. ad Horat., 1. c.) 

Bacchus, son of Jupiter and Semele daughter of 
Cadmus. Jupiter, enamoured of the beauty of Semele, 
visited her in secret. Juno’s jealousy took the alarm, 
and, under the form of an old woman, she came to 




BACCHUS. 


BACCHUS. 


Semele, and, by exciting doubts of the real character 
of her lover, induced her, when next he came, to ex¬ 
act a promise that he would visit her as he was wont 
to visit Juno An unwary promise was thull drawn 
from the god before he knew what he was required to 
perform ; and he therefore entered the bower of Sem- 
ele, with the lightning and thunder flaming, flashing, 
and roaring around him. Overcome with terror, 
Semele, who was now six months gone with child, 
expired in the flames, and Jupiter, taking the babe, 
thus prematurely born, sewed it up in his thigh In 
due time it came forth, and Jupiter, then naming it 
Bacchus (in Greek Dionysus), gave it to Mercury to 
convey to Ino, the sister of Semele, with directions 
to rear it. Juno, whose revenge was not yet satiated, 
caused Athamas, the husband of Ino, to go mad ; and 
Jupiter, to save Bacchus from the machinations of his 
spouse, changed him into a kid, under which form 
Mercury conveyed him to the Nymphs of Nysa, by 
whom he was reared. When he grew up, he discov¬ 
ered the culture of the vine, and the mode of extract¬ 
ing its precious liquor ; but Juno struck him with mad¬ 
ness, and he roamed through great part of Asia. In 
Phrygia Rhea cured him, and taught him her religious 
rites, which he now resolved to introduce into Greece. 
While passing through Thrace, he was so furiously 
attacked by Lycurgus, a prince of that country, that he 
was obliged to take refuge with Thetis, in the sea. 
But he inflicted on the monarch severe retaliation. 
( Vid. Lycurgus.) When Bacchus reached Thebes, 
the women readily received the new rites, and ran 
wildly through the woods of Cithreron. Pentheus, the 
ruler of Thebes, however, set himself against them ; 
and Bacchus caused him to be torn to pieces by his 
mother and his aunts. He next proceeded to Attica, 
where he taught Icarius the culture of the vine. ( Vid. 
Icarius, Erigone.) At Argos the rites of Bacchus 
were received, as at Thebes, by the women, and op¬ 
posed by Perseus, son of Jupiter and Danae. Jove, 
however, reduced his two sons to amity, and Bacchus 
thence passed over to Naxos, where he met Ariadne. 
On his way to this island he fell into the hands of 
Tyrrhenian pirates, who bound him with cords, in¬ 
tending to sell him as a slave. But the cords fell from 
his limbs, vines with clustering grapes spread over the 
sail, and ivy, laden with berries, ran up the masts and 
sides of the vessel. The god, thereupon assuming the 
form of a lion, seized the captain of the ship, and the 
terrified crew, to escape him, leaped into the sea and 
became dolphins. The pilot alone, who had taken the 
part of Bacchus, remained on board; the god then 
declared to him who he was, and took him under his 
protection. The expedition of Bacchus into the East 
is also celebrated. In the Bacchse of Euripides the 
god describes himself as having gone through Lydia, 
Phrygia, Persia, Bactria, Media, Arabia, and the coast 
of Asia, inhabited by mingled Greeks and barbarians, 
throughout all which he had established his dances and 
religious rites. India, in particular, was the scene ot 
his conquests. He marched at the head of an army 
composed of both men and women, all inspired with 
divine fury, and armed with thyrsi, clashing cymbals, 
and other musical instruments, and uttering the wild¬ 
est cries. His conquests were easy and without 
bloodshed ; the nations readily submitted, and the god 
taught them the use of the vine, the cultivation of the 
earth, and the art of making honey. Bacchus was 
also fabled to have assisted the gods in their wars 
against the giants, having assumed on that occasion 
the form of a lion. He afterward descended to Ere¬ 
bus, whence he brought his mother, whom he now 
named Thyone, and ascended with her to the abode 
of the gods. ( Apollod ., 3, 5, 3.— Diod. Sic., 3, 62. 

Id , 4 , 25 .—Horat., Od., 2, 19, 29.)—Like every other 
portion of the Grecian mythology, the history of the 
vine-god was pragmatised when infidelity became 
I i 


prevalent. Thus, Diodorus gives us, probably from 
the cyclograph Dionysius, the following narrative. 
Ammon, a monarch of Libya, was married to Rhea, a 
daughter of Manus ; but meeting, near the Ceraunian 
mountains, a beautiful maiden named Amalthea, he 
became enamoured of her. He made her mistress of 
the adjacent fruitful country, which, from its resem¬ 
bling a bull’s horn in form, was named the Western 
horn, and then Amalthea’s horn, which last name was 
afterward given to places similar to it in fertility. 
Amalthea here bore him a son, whom, fearing the jeal¬ 
ousy of Rhea, he conveyed to a town named Nysa, 
situated not far from the Horn, in an island formed by 
the river Triton He committed the care of him to 
Nysa, one of the daughters of Aristaeus, while Minerva 
was appointed to keep guard against the assaults of 
Rhea This delicious isle, which was precipitous on 
all sides, with a single entrance, through a narrow glen 
thickly shaded with trees, is described in a similar 
manner with Panchaia and other happy retreats of the 
same nature. It had verdant meads, abundant springs, 
trees of every kind, flowers of all hues, and evermore 
resounded with the melody of birds. (Compare Mil- 
ton, P. L., 4, 275, seqq.) After he grew up, Bac¬ 
chus became a mighty conqueror, according to this 
legend, and a benefactor of mankind, by whom he was 
finally deified.—Though the adventures of Bacchus 
were occasionally the theme of poets, especially of the 
dramatists, they do not appear to have been narrated in 
continuity, like those of Hercules, until after the de¬ 
cline of Grecian poetry. It was in the fifth century 
of the Christian era that Nonnus, a native of Panopo- 
lis, in Egypt, made the history of Bacchus the subject 
of a poem, containing forty-eight books, the wildest 
and strangest that can well be conceived, more re¬ 
sembling the Ramayuna of India than anything to be 
found in ancient or modern occidental literature. It 
forms a vast repertory of Bacchic fable. ( Vid. Non¬ 
nus.)—Bacchus was represented in a variety of modes 
and characters by the ancient artists. The Theban 
Bacchus appears with the delicate lineaments of a 
maiden rather than those of a young man ; his whole 
air and gait are effeminate ; his long, flowing hair is, 
like that of Apollo, collected behind his head, wreath¬ 
ed with ivy or a fillet; he is either naked or wrapped 
in a large cloak, and the nebris, or fawn’s skin, is some¬ 
times flung over his shoulders ; he carries a thyrsus, 
and a panther generally lies at his feet. In some 
monuments Bacchus appears bearded, in others horned 
(the Bacchus-Sebazius), whence in the mysteries he 
was identified with Osiris, and regarded as the Sun. 
For another legend relative to the horns with which he 
is depicted, consult the article Ammon. He is some¬ 
times alone, at other times in company with Ariadne 
or the youth Ampelus. His triumph over the Indians 
is represented in great pomp. The captives are chain¬ 
ed, and placed on wagons or elephants, and among 
them is carried a large crater full of wine. The god 
himself is in a chariot drawn by elephants or panthers, 
leaning on Ampelus, preceded by Pan, and followed 
by Silenus, the satyrs, and Maenades, on foot or on 
horseback, who make the air resound with their cries 
and the clash of their instruments. The Indian Bac¬ 
chus is always bearded.—It is with reason that Sopho¬ 
cles styles Bacchus many named (irolvuvvfxoq, Anlig., 
1115), for in the Orphic hymns alone we meet with 
upward of forty of his appellations. The etymology 
of the most common one, Bacchus, has been variously 
given ; it appears, however, to be only another fonn 
for Iacchus. (Vid. Iacchus.) Some make it the same 
with Bagis, one of the names of the Hindu deity 
Schiva. ( Keightlcif s Mythology, page 212, seqq .)—- 
Modern writers are much divided in opinion respect¬ 
ing the origin of the worship of Bacchus, and many 
arguments have been urged in support of its having 
come from a Grecian source. A dispassionate view 

249 



BACCHUS. 


BAC 


of the subject, however, will lead, we think, to the con¬ 
viction that the religious system of this deity is of In¬ 
dian origin. In order, however, to reach the soil of 
Greece, it had to traverse other countries, Upper Asia, 
Phoenicia, Egypt, and Thrace ; and, in its march, its 
fabulous legends became enlarged and variously mod¬ 
ified. It is impossible to deny the identity of Bac¬ 
chus with Osiris. The birth of Bacchus, drawn living 
from the womb of Semele, after she had perished be¬ 
neath the fires of Jove, and his strange translation to 
the thigh of the monarch of Olympus, bear the impress 
of Oriental imagery. When he escapes from his 
mother’s womb, an ivy-branch springs forth from a 
column to cover him with its shade ( Eurip., Phccn., 
658, seqq ), and the ivy was in Egypt the plant of 
Osiris. (Pint., dc Is. et Os., p. 365.— Op., cd. Reiske, 
vol. 7, p 442.) In like manner, the coffin of the 
Egyptian deity is shaded by the plant erica, which 
springs suddenly from the ground and envelops it. 
(Plut., ibid ) Bacchus and Osiris both float upon the 
waters in a chest or ark. They have both for their 
symbols the head of a bull; and hence Bacchus is 
styled Bougenes by Plutarch.—It is equally impossible 
not to recognise in Bacchus the Schiva of India, as 
well as the Lingam his symbol. (Compare Rhode, 
Religiose Bildung, &c., dcr Hindus, vol. 2, p. 232.) 
If we wish to call etymology to our aid, we shall be 
struck with the resemblance which Dionysus (A ib- 
vvaog), the Greek name of Bacchus, bears to Dionichi 
(Deva-Nicha ), a surname of Schiva. ( Langles, Re- 
cherchcs Asiatiques, vol. 1, p. 278. — Creuzcr's Sym¬ 
bolic, par Guigmaut, vol. 1, p. 148, in notis.) An 
analogy may also be traced between the Greek term 
gripog, “thigh,” and the Indian Mcrou, the mountain of 
the gods. One of the symbols of Bacchus is an equi¬ 
lateral triangle ; this is also one of Schiva s. The two 
systems of worship have the same obscenities, and the 
same emblems of the generative power. ( Asiatic Re¬ 
searches, vol. 8, p. 50.) Schiva is represented, in the 
Hindu mythology, as assuming^ the form of a lion 
during the great battle of the gods. He seizes the 
monster that attacks him, and assails him w r ith his 
teeth and fangs, while Dourga pierces him with his 
lance. The same exploit is attributed, in the Grecian 
mythology, to Bacchus, under the same form, against 
the giant Rhcetus. ( Hor., Carm., 2, 19, 23.)° The 

manner in which the worship of Bacchus came into 
Greece, probably by means of several successive mi¬ 
grations, through regions wildly remote, will ever re¬ 
main an enigma of difficult solution. The Greeks, 
indeed, made Thebes the birthplace of this deity ; but 
this proves nothing for the fact of his Grecian origin. 
Thebes, in Boeotia, was the centre of the Cadmean- 
Asiatic mythology : a god, whose worship came to the 
rest of the Greeks out of Thebes, was for them a deity 
born in Thebes ; and hence arose the legend of the 
Theban origin of Bacchus. ( Buttmann's Mythologus, 
vol. 1, p. 5.) So, when the Greek mythology makes 
Bacchus to have gone on an expedition to Asia, and 
to have conquered India, it merely reverses the order 
of events, and describes, as the victorious progress of 
a Grecian deity, what was in reality the course which 
the religion of an Oriental deity took, from the East 
to the West. ( Kanne, Mythologie dcr Griechcn, § 
31.) In the Anti-Symbolik of Voss (p. 65, seqq.), we 
have an excellent history of the introduction of the 
worship of Bacchus into Greece, and its progress in 
that country from the 20th to the 60th Olympiad. 
We find this worship making its first appearance in 
the mysteries of Samothrace ; furnishing to the Ioni¬ 
an school Phoenician elements ; enriching itself with 
ideas of Asiatic origin by means of the extension of 
commerce ; mingling with the elements of Grecian 
philosophy in their very cradle; presenting Lydian and 
Phrygian additions as a primitive basis ; giving an oc¬ 
cult meaning to the public games at Olvmpia ; carry- 
250 


ing back into Egypt, under the reign of Psammetichus, 
along with Milesian colonies, and enriched with im¬ 
mense developments, what the Egyptian colonies had 
once carried into Greece ; identiiying itself with the 
Orphic doctrine ; but remaining always an object of 
suspicion and aversion, and contemned by the wise in 
the days of Xenophanes and Heraclitus, as it had been 
a long time before proscribed by kings and rejected by 
communities. The fables of which Bacchus is made 
the hero, the rites which these fables elucidated, rites 
bearing at one time the impress of profound sadness, 
at another of frantic joy, and by turns bloody and licen¬ 
tious, mournful and frantic, never became part of the 
Grecian system of religion. Wherever they announ¬ 
ced themselves, they excited only horror and dread. 
The sufferings and the destruction of various dynasties 
attach themselves to their frightful and sudden ap¬ 
pearance. Agave rends in pieces her son Pentheus. 
Ino precipitates herself into the sea, with Melicerta in 
her arms. The daughters of Minyas, becoming furi-* 
ous, commit horrible murder, and undergo a hideous 
metamorphosis. The language of the poets who relate 
to us these fearful traditions, is sombre and mysterious 
in its character, and bears evident marks of a sacerdo¬ 
tal origin. The philosophic Euripides, as well as Ovid, 
who expresses himself with so much lightness in ref¬ 
erence to other legends, appear, in describing the death 
of Pentheus, to partake of the sanguinary joy, the 
ferocious irony, and the fanaticism of the Bacchantes. 
One would feel tempted to say, that the sacerdotal 
spirit had triumphed over these incredulous poets, and 
that, after the lapse often centuries, the phrensy of the 
ancient orgies had affected their senses and troubled 
their reason. In the age of Homer these mournful 
recitals were either unknown or treated with disdain ; 
for he speaks only once of Bacchus, on occasion of the 
victory which he gained over Lycurgus (11., 6, 130.— 
Compare Od., 24, 74), and the scholiasts express their 
surprise, that the poet, after having thus placed Bac¬ 
chus among the divinities of Olympus, makes him take 
no part in the subjects that divide them. The Grecian 
spirit, therefore, renounced, at an early period, every 
attempt to modify this so heterogeneous a conception. 
(Constant, de la Religion, vol. 2, p. 419, seqq.) 

Bacchylides, a lyric poet of Ceos, nephew to Si¬ 
monides. He flourished about 450 B.C., and was re¬ 
garded as one of the most celebrated poets of his day. 
Bacchylides shared with Pindar the favour of King 
Hiero at the court of Syracuse. That his poetry was 
but an imitation of one branch of that of Simonides, 
cultivated with great delicacy and finish, is proved by 
the opinion of ancient critics ; among whom Dionysius 
adduces perfect correctness and uniform elegance as 
the characteristics of Bacchylides. His genius and art 
were chiefly devoted to the pleasures of private life, 
love, and wine ; and, when compared with those of 
Simonides, appear marked by greater sensual grace 
and less moral elevation. Among the kinds of choral 
songs which he employed, besides those of which he 
had examples in Simonides and Pindar, we find erotic 
ones. The elaborate and brilliant execution which 
is peculiar to the school of Simonides, appears also in 
the productions of Bacchylides, especially in the beau¬ 
tiful fragment in praise of peace. The structure of 
Bacchylides’ verses is generally very simple ; nine 
tenths of his odes, to judge from the fragments, con¬ 
sisted of dactylic series and trochaic dipodias, as we 
see in those odes of Pindar, which were written in 
the Doric mode. We find in his poems trochaic verses 
of great elegance ; as, for example, a fragment, pre¬ 
served by Athenams, of a religious poem, in which the 
Dioscuri are invited to a feast. (Athen., 11, p. 500, 
b.) Bacchylides wrote in the Doric dialect. Many 
fragments of his pieces occur in Plutarch, Dionysius 
of Halicarnassus, Athenseus, Glemens of Alexandrea, 
and particularly in Stobseus. The fragments of Bac- 





B A C 


BAG 


chylides are found in the collections of Neander, H. 
Stephens, Orsini, and Brunck. A more complete 
edition of them appeared in 1822, from the Berlin 
press, by C. F. Neue, in 8vo. ( Scholl , Hist. Lit. 
Gr., vol. 1, p. 287.— Mohnike , Lit. der Gr. und 
R , p. 336.— Lit. Anc. Gr., c. 14, t) 13, in Libr. Us. 
Knoiol.) 

Bacenis, a wood in Germany, generally supposed 
to be a part of the Hercynia Silva, and to have been 
situate in the vicinity of the Fulda, or Vol, which flows 
into the Visurgis. It separated the territories of the 
Catti from those of the Cherusci, and appears to be the 
same with the Buchonia of later writers. ( Cces., B. 
G., 6, 10.— Mdnnert , Gcogr., vol. 3, p. 183, 417.) 

Bactra, the capital of Bactria, situate on the river 
Bactrus, a tributary of the Oxus. It is now Balkh, in 
the country of the Usbeclc Tatars. It was likewise 
called Zariaspe and Zariaspa. ( Plin., 6, 16.) This 
place has been a rendezvous of caravans from the 
remotest antiquity, and at this point it is probable 
that commerce united Eastern and Western Asia. 
To this place the natives of Little Thibet, which Herod¬ 
otus and Ctesias call Northern India, brought the valu¬ 
able woollens of their country, and likewise the gold 
which they procured from the great desert of Cobi. The 
tales which they told to the Western Asiatics of these 
wonderful regions might be a little exaggerated, or per¬ 
verted through the medium of an interpreter. ( Long's 
Anc. Gcogr., p. 13.—Compare Heeren, Idecn, vol. 1, 
pt. 3, p. 408, seqq.) —On the origin of the Bactrians 
and their connexion with the great Zend race, consult 
the remarks of Rhode, in his Heilige Sage der Baktrcr, 
&c., p. 60, seqq. 

Bactria and Bactriana, a country of Asia, bound¬ 
ed by Aria on the west, the mountains of Paropamisus 
on the south ; the Emodi Montes bn the east; and 
Sogdiana on the north Bactriana now belongs to the 
kingdom of the Afghans, or Caubulistan. Its proxim¬ 
ity to Northern India, and the possession of a large 
river, the Oxus, with fertile lands, made it, in very 
remote ages, the centre of Asiatic commerce, and the 
point of union for all the natives of this vast continent. 
( Vid. Bactra.) It would seem also, in very early times, 
to have been the seat of a powerful empire long prior 
to that of the Medes or Persians. (Compare Bahr, ad 
Ctcs., p. 93.)—This country became remarkable at a 
later age for the Greek kingdom which was founded in 
it. The Bactrian kingdom arose almost at the same 
time with the Parthian, B.C. 254; yet the mode of its 
origin was not only different (for it was here the Gre¬ 
cian governor himself, who made himself independent, 
and therefore had Grecians for his successors), but also 
the duration, which was much less. Solitary frag¬ 
ments of the history of this kingdom have only been 
preserved, and yet it seems at one time to have ex¬ 
tended to the banks of the Ganges and the borders of 
China. The founder of this kingdom was Diodatus 
or Theodotus I. (B.C. 245), as he broke from the 
Syrian sway in the time of Antiochus II. He appears 
to have been master of Sogdiana as well as Bactria. 
He also threatened Parthia, but after his death (B.C. 
243) his son and successor, Theodotus II., closed a 
peace and alliance with Arsaces II., but was deprived 
of his throne by Euthydemus of Magnesia, about B.C. 
221. The attack of Antiochus the Great, after the 
termination of the Parthian war, was directed against 
him, but ended in a peace, in which Euthydemus, on 
giving up his elephants, retained his crown, and a mar¬ 
riage between his son Demetrius and a daughter of 
Antiochus was agreed upon. Demetrius, although he 
was a great conqueror, appears not to have been king 
of Bactria, but of Northern India and Malabar, of which 
countries the history is now closely connected with 
that of Bactria, although all the accounts are but frag¬ 
mentary. To the throne of Bactria, Menander suc¬ 
ceeded, who extended his conquests to Serica, as De¬ 


metrius established his dominion in India, where, about 
this time (perhaps as a consequence of the expedition 
of Antiochus III., B.C. 205), there appear to have 
been several Greek states. Menander was followed, 
about B.C. 181, by Eucratidas, under whom the Bac¬ 
trian kingdom acquired its greatest extent; for, after 
defeating the Indian king Demetrius, who had attack¬ 
ed him, he, with the assistance of the Parthian con¬ 
queror Mithradates (Arsaces VI.), took India from De¬ 
metrius and annexed it to the Bactrian kingdom, B.C. 
148. Pie was, however, on his return, murdered by his 
son, who is probably the Eucratidas who is aftemard 
named. This latter was the ally and chief adviser of 
the expedition of Demetrius II. of Syria against the 
Parthians, B.C. 142 ; and therefore, on the victorious 
resistance of Arsaces VI., robbed of a part of his ter¬ 
ritory, and soon after overpowered by the nomadic na¬ 
tions of Middle Asia ; upon which the Bactrian king¬ 
dom became, as such, extinct, and Bactria itself, with 
the other countries on this side the Oxus, became a 
booty to the Parthians. (Compare Bayer, Historia 
regni Grcccorum Bactriani, Petr op. 1738, 4to.— Hee¬ 
ren's Anc. History, p. 315, seqq., Bancroft's transl .) 

Bactrus, a river of Bactria, running into the Oxus. 
It flowed by the capital Bactra, and is supposed to be 
the same with the modern Andcrab. {Curt., 7, 4.— 
Poly an., Strat., 7, 11.) 

Bacuntius, a river of Pannonia, in the immediate 
vicinity of Sirmium. It fell into the Savus or Save. 
The modern name is Bossct or Bossut. {Plin., 3, 25.) 

Badia, a town of Hispania Bsetica,- supposed to be 
the present Badajoz. {Mannert, Geogr., vol. 1, p. 
447.— Cellarius, Gcogr. Antiq., vol. 1, p. 67.) 

Baduhenn^e Lucus, a grove in the country of the 
Frisii, where 900 Romans were killed. {Tacit., Ann., 
4, 73.) It is thought to have been situated in modern 
West Friesland. The name is supposed to be derived 
from that of the goddess Pada, and the modern name 
is given by some as Holt Pade. {Alting, Not. Batav. 
ct Fris. Ant., vol. 1, p. 14.) 

BuEbia lex, I. was enacted for the election of six 
praetors and four during alternate years. {Liv., 40, 44.) 
—II. Another law by M. Baebius, a tribune of the peo¬ 
ple, against largesses and bribery. {Non. Mar cell., dc 
propr. Serm., c. 7, n. 19, p. 749.— Liv., 40, 19.) 

B^etica. Vid. Hispania. 

Beetis, a river of Spain, from which a part of the 
country received the name of Bcetica. ( Vid. Hispania.) 
Its sources were surrounded by the chain of Mons Oros- 
peda. At its mouth was the island of Tartessus, the 
name of which was anciently also applied to the river, 
previous to that of Beetis. {Strab., 148.) According 
to Steph. Byz., the natives called this river Perkcs 
(IT epKyc); but according to Livy (28, 22), Ccrtis. 
Bochart derives the name Beetis from the Punic Bitsi, 
“marshy.” So also Perkcs is deduced by him from 
Berea, “ a marsh,” in the same language. In illustra¬ 
tion of these etymologies, he states that the Beetis 
forms marshes three times in its course. The appel¬ 
lation Certis, as found in Livy, he considers a mere 
corruption from Perkcs. {Bochart, Geogr. Sacr., 1, 
34.) Others, however, derive Certis from the Oriental 
Kiriath, “ a town,” from the great number which it 
watered in its course. (Consult Oberhn., ad Vib. Se- 
quest., p. 15. — Tzschucke, ad Mel., 3, 1 , vol. 3, pt. 3, 
p. 15.) The modern name of the Beetis is the Guadal- 
quiver, which is a corruption from the Arabic Wadi- 
al-Kiber, or “ the Great River.” '{Plin., 3, 1.— Lucan, 
Phars., 2, 589.— Stat. Sylv., 7, 34, &c.) 

Bagistanus, a mountain of Media, southwest of 
Ecbatana, and sacred to Jupiter. Here Semiramis 
formed a park or garden of twelve stadia in circumfer¬ 
ence, and cut her image on the face of the rock. 
{Diod. Sic., 2, 13.— Isid., Charac., p. 6.) Alexander 
is said to have visited the spot. {Diod. Sic., 17,110.) 
It will be observed that the first part of the name, Bagis , 

251 



B AI 


B AL 


is an appellation of the Hindoo Schiva, and is also re¬ 
garded by some as the source whence the Greek name 
Bacchus is derived. ( Mannert, Geogr., vol. 5, pt. 2, 
p. 165, seq.) 

Bagoas, I. an Egyptian eunuch at the court of Arta- 
xerxes Ochus, remarkable for his bravery and military 
talents. In concert with Memnon, he brought Egypt, 
which had revolted, under the Persian sway again. 
Ochus, however, having shocked his religious preju¬ 
dices by his conduct towards the deified animals of 
Egypt, Bagoas destroyed him ( vid. Artaxerxes III.), 
and placed Arses, the monarch’s youngest son, on the 
throne. He, however, soon destroyed this young 
prince also. He then called to the throne Darius Co- 
domanus, whom he attempted to poison not long after. 
But Darius, discovering the artifice, made him drink 
tlfe poison himself.—It is believed that this is the same 
Bagoas who, during the reign of Ochus, entered the 
temple of Jerusalem, to avenge the brother of John, 
whom the latter had slain in the temple, as a compet¬ 
itor for the high priesthood. The name Bagoas is 
said to be equivalent to “ eunuch.” ( Biogr. Univ., 
vol. 3, p. 216.)—II. A favourite eunuch of Alexan¬ 
der’s. ( Curt ., 6, 5, 23.— Plut., Vit. Alex ., c. 67.— 
Lemaire, ad Curt., 1. c .) 

Bagradas, a river of Africa, flowing between Uti¬ 
ca and Carthage in former days, though at present 
their situation as regards it is materially altered. It 
makes encroachments on the sea like the Nile, and 
hence its ancient mouth is now circumscribed by mud, 
and become a large navigable pond. ( Vid. Carthage 
and Utica.) The genuine form of the ancient name 
is thought to be found in Polybius, namely, M audpaq, 
M dh'paq, or M duap {Schweigh., ad Polyb., 1, 75, 5) ; 
and with this, in a measure, the Bovudpaq of Strabo 
coincides. The origin of the name is to be traced to 
the Punic Macar, “ Hercules,” so that Macaras will 
mean “the river of Hercules.” Gesenius condemns 
Bochart’s derivation from Barca or Berea, “ a marsh.” 
( Gesen., Monum. Phccn., p. 420.) The modern name 
of the river is the Mcjerda. ( Ptol., 6, 4.) 

Bam2, a city of Campania, on a small bay west of 
Neapolis, and opposite Puteoli. It was originally a 
village, but the numerous advantages of its situation 
soon rendered it much frequented and famous. Its 
foundation is ascribed in mythology to Baius, one of 
the companions of Ulysses. The cause of the rapid 
increase of Baise lay in the fruitfulness of the surround¬ 
ing country, in the beauty of its own situation, in the 
rich supply of shell and other fish which the adjacent 
waters afforded, and, above all, in the hot mineral 
springs which flowed from the neighbouring mountains, 
and formed a chief source of attraction to invalids. 
(Compare Florus, 1, 16.— Plin., 31, 2.— Senec., Ep., 
51.— Josephus, Ant. Jud., 18, 14.— Cassiod., 9, ep. 
6.) Baias was first called Aquae Cumanae. Numer¬ 
ous villas graced the surrounding country, and many 
were likewise built on artificial moles extending a great 
distance into the sea. It is now, owing to earthquakes 
and inundations of the sea, a mere waste compared 
with what it once was. The modern name is Bara. 
Many remains of ancient villas may be seen under the 
water. “ The bay of Baiae,” observes Eustace, “ is 
a semicircular recess, just opposite the harbour of Poz- 
zuolo, and about three miles distant from it. It is 
lined with ruins, the remains of the villas and the baths 
of the Romans ; some advance a considerable way out, 
and, though now under the waves, are easily distin¬ 
guishable in fine weather. The taste for building in 
the waters and encroaching on the sea, to which Horace 
alludes, is exemplified in a very striking manner all 
along this coast.” ( Classical Tour, vol. 2, p. 406.) 
The same traveller, in commenting on the insalubrity 
of Baiae at the present day, remarks as follows : “ The 
present unwholesomeness of Baiae and its bay, if real, 
must be ascribed partly to the streams and sources 
252 


once collected on the hills behind it in aqueducts and 
reservoirs, now spreading and oozing down the decliv¬ 
ities, and settling in the hollows below. In a warm 
climate all stagnant water becomes putrid during the 
hot months. (Vol. 3, p. 14, in notis .) 

Bala, a surname of Alexander, king of Syria. 
{Justin, 35, 1.) 

Balanea, a town of Syria, north of Aradus, now 
Belnias. {Plin., 5, 20.) 

Balbinus, I. a Roman alluded to by Horace, who 
speaks of his singular taste in admiring a female 
named Agna, deformed by a polypus in the nostrils. 
{Horat., Scrm., 1, 3, 40.)—II. Decimus Caelius, a 
Roman, proclaimed emperor by the senate with Pupie- 
nus, on the death of the Gordians, A.D. 237. He 
was murdered by his owm soldiers after a year’s reign. 
{Jul., Capitol, in Gord. — Hcrodian, 7, 10, 6, &c.) 

Baleares, a name applied anciently to the islands 
of Majorca and Minorca, off’ the coast of Spain. The 
name Baleares is of Greek origin, derived from j3d/.- 
Xeiv, “to throw” or “ cast,” and it alludes to the re¬ 
markable skill of the inhabitants in using the sling. 
According to Florus (3, 8), this was their only weapon, 
and they were taught to use it from early boyhood, 
their daily food being withheld from the young until 
they had hit a certain mark pointed out to them. The 
same writer describes them as an uncivilized race, ad¬ 
dicted to piratical habits. The Romans drew from 
these islands their best slingers. Each Balearian 
went to battle supplied with three slings. {Flor., 1. c. 
— Id., 3, 22.— Liv., Epit., 60.) The Greeks also 
called these islands Gymnesiee {Tvpvyoiai), either be¬ 
cause, according to Diodorus, the inhabitants were 
yvpvoL, naked, in summer, or because, according to 
Hesychius, they went to battle armed only with a 
sling, -yvpvyreg being used in Greek to denote light¬ 
armed troops. By many, Ebusus, now Ivica, is rank¬ 
ed with the Baleares, according to the authority of 
Vitruvius. The larger of these islands was called Ba- 
learis Major, hence Majorca, and the smaller Balearis 
Minor, hence Minorca. In the former was Palma, 
which still retains the name. In the latter was Por- 
tus Magonis, so called by the Carthaginians from 
Mago, one of their generals, now slightly corrupted 
into Port Mahon. {Strab., 450.— Diod. Sic., 5, 17. 
— Pliny, 3, 5.) Q. Csecilius Metellus conquered 
these islands for the Romans, and hence obtained the 
surname of Balearicus. They were thereafter con¬ 
sidered as forming part of Hispania Tarraconensis. 
{Flor., 3, 8.) 

Balius, a horse of Achilles. {Horn., II, 16, 146.) 
Vid. Achilles. 

Balnea (baths) were very numerous at Rome, 
private as well as public. It was under Augustus 
that baths first began to assume an air of magnificence, 
and were called Thermae, or “hot baths,” although 
they also contained cold ones. An incredible number 
of these were built throughout the city. Authors 
reckon above 800, many of them built by the emperors 
with the greatest splendour. The chief were those 
of Agrippa, near the Pantheon, of Nero, of Titus, of 
Domitian, of Caracalla, Antoninus, Dioclesian, &c. 
Of these splendid vestiges still remain. The Ro¬ 
mans began their bathing with hot water, and ended 
with cold. The cold bath was in great repute after 
Antonius Musa restored Augustus to health by its 
means, when he was attacked by a dangerous malady ; 
but it fell into discredit after the death of the young 
Marcellus, which was occasioned by the very injudi¬ 
cious application of the same remedy. {Sucton., Aug., 
59- —Id. tb., 81.— Plin., 29, 1 .—Dio Cass., 53, 30.) 
—In the magnificent Thermse erected by the emper¬ 
ors, not only were accommodations provided for hun¬ 
dreds of bathers at once, but spacious porticoes, rooms 
for athletic games and playing at ball, and halls for 
the public lectures of philosophers, for rhetoricians and 







BAR 


BAR 


poets, were added one to another, to an extent which 
has caused them, by a strong figure, to be compared 
to provinces, and at an expense which could only be 
supported by the inexhaustible treasures which Rome 
drew from a conquered world. The general time for 
bathing was from two o’clock in the afternoon until 
the dusk of evening, at which time the baths were 
shut until two o’clock the next afternoon. This prac¬ 
tice, however, occasionally varied. Notice was given 
when the baths were ready by ringing a bell; the peo¬ 
ple then left the exercise of the sphseristerium, and 
hastened to the warm bath, lest the water should cool. 
Hadrian forbade any one but those who were sick to 
enter the public baths before two o’clock. Alexander 
Severus, to gratify the people in their passion for 
bathing, not only suffered the Therm® to be opened 
before break of day, which had never been permitted 
before, but also furnished the lamps with oil for the 
convenience of the people. ( Adams's Rom. Ant., p. 
377, cd. Boyd.) 

Bantia, a town of Apulia, southeast of Yenusia. 
This town derived some interest from the death of the 
brave Marcellus, who fell in its vicinity, a victim to 
the stratagem of his more cool and wily antagonist, 
Hannibal. ( Liv ., 27, 25.— Plut., Vit. Marcell .— 
Cic., Tusc. Disp., 1, 37.) 

Bapt.®, I. the priests of Cotytto, the goddess of 
lewdness. (Vid. Cotytto.) The name is derived from 
pd~T( j, “ to tinge” or “ dye,” from their painting 
their cheeks, and staining the parts around the eye, 
like women. They were notorious for the profligacy 
of their manners. ( Juv., Sat., 2, 9, 2.)—II. A Greek 
comedy, written by Eupolis. ( Vid. Eupolis.) 

Barbari, a name applied by the Greeks to all na¬ 
tions but their own. The term is derived by Damm 
from f3a&iv, but with the p inserted, and the initial 
consonant repeated, in order to express to the ear the 
harsh pronunciation of a foreigner. Others derive it 
from the harsh sound pap (dap. We are informed by 
Drusius, that the Syriac bar means without, extra. 
The word signified, in general, with the Greeks, no 
more than foreigner. The Romans sometimes imi¬ 
tate, in this respect, the Grecian usage. Plautus, who 
introduces Greek characters into his pieces, has Bar- 
bar ia for Italia, Barbarictz nrbcs for Italce, and styles 
Nawius, the Latin poet, po'cta Barbarus. —As regards 
the term Barbarus (B dpbapoq), it may not be amiss to 
remark, that, notwithstanding the etymologies already 
adduced, the true root must very probably be looked 
for in the language of Egypt. The natives of this 
country gave the appellation of Barbar to the rude 
and uncivilized tribes in their vicinity (compare 
Herodotus, 2, 158); and the Greeks would seem to 
have borrowed it from them in a similar sense, and 
with the appendage of a Greek termination. The 
Sinus Barbaricus occurs on the coast of ancient Af¬ 
rica, a little below the mouth of the Sinus Arabicus, 
and in this same quarter, extending as far as the prom¬ 
ontory of Rhapton, we find a tract of country called 
Bxrbaria. (Compare Berkel, ad Steph. Byz., s. v. 
B xpbapog.) So also the root obtained from this quar¬ 
ter was styled Rha Barbaricum (Rhubarb), in contra¬ 
distinction to the Rha Ponticum, obtained by the 
commerce of the Euxine. These names, in so remote 
a part of the ancient world, could never have been 
more generally applied. They must be traced to Me- 
roe and Egypt. Nor should it be omitted, that this 
very point furnishes us with an argument for the early 
communication between the Egyptians and the natives 
of India. In the oldest Hindu works, the appella¬ 
tion of Barbara (in Sanscrit Warwara) is given to a 
race in southern Asia who were subdued by Wiswa- 
mitra. (Compare Ritter, Erdkunde, vol. 1, p. 555, 
2 d ed.) 

Barbaria, the name given in the Periplus of the 
Erythraean Sea to a part of the coast of Africa; now 


Ajan. It was otherwise called Azania. (Vtd re¬ 
marks under the article Barbari.) 

Barbaricus Sinus, a gulf on the coast of Africa, 
below the mouth of the Sinus Arabicus. ( Vid. re¬ 
marks under the article Barbari.) 

Barc^i or BarcIt^, a warlike nation of Africa, in 
the western part of Cyrenai'ca. ( Virg., AEn., 4, 43. 
— Strab., 7, 28.— AEn., Poliorcet., c. 37.) 

Barce, the nurse of Sich®us. ( Virg ., AEn., 4, 
632.) 

Barce or Barca, I. a desert country, containing 
only a few fertile spots, on the northern coast of Af¬ 
rica, from the Syrtis Major as far as Egypt. Its mod¬ 
ern name is still Barca. The country is at present a 
Turkish province, under a sandgiak in the town of 
Barca. The ancient Cyrenai'ca formed, strictly speak¬ 
ing, a part of this region.—II. A city of Cyrenai'ca in 
Africa, erroneously confounded with Ptolemai's by 
many writers, both ancient and modern Mannert, 
Thrige, and others have fully refuted this erroneous 
position ; and the matter is now placed beyond all 
doubt by the ocular testimony of Della Celia and Pa- 
cho. ( Voyage dans la Marmariquc et la Cyrenaiquc , 
par Pacho, p. 175.) According to Herodotus (4, 
160), the city of Barca was founded by the brothers 
of Arcesilaus, the fourth king of Cyrene ; while, on 
the other hand, Stephanus Byzantinus makes it to 
have been built by Perseus, Zacynthus, Aristomedon, 
and Lycus. These two contradictory traditions are 
perhaps only so in reality, since the founders named by 
Stephanus may be none other than the brothers of Ar¬ 
cesilaus to whom Herodotus alludes. St. Jerome af¬ 
firms ( Epist. ad Dardan.), that Barca was the ancient 
capital of a Libyan tribe. From this latter authority 
and some others, the opinion has been formed, and 
perhaps correctly enough, that the Greeks were not 
the founders of Barca, but only enlarged it by a col¬ 
ony, and that the place was of Libyan origin. (Com¬ 
pare Pacho, Voyage, &c., p. 176.) Barca suffered 
severely for the death of Arcesilaus IV., of Cyrene, 
who was slain here, and the cruelties inflicted by 
Pheretima are mentioned by Herodotus (4, 162). 
The Barcsean captives were sent to Egypt, and from 
thence to King Darius, and by his command -were set¬ 
tled in a district of Bactria, which they afterward 
called by the name of their native country. ( Ilcrodot., 
4,' 204.) A more severe blow, however, was struck 
by the Ptolemies in a later age, when they became 
masters of Pentapolis or Cyrenai’ca. They founded a 
new city on the spot where the port of Barca had 
stood, and called it Ptolemai’s. The increase of this 
place caused the city of Barca to decline, and its in¬ 
habitants became at length only noted for their rob¬ 
beries.—III. A district of Bactria, where the Barcsean 
captives were settled by Darius. ( Vid . No. II.) 

Barcha, the surname of a noble family at Carthage, 
to which Annibal and Amilcar belonged. They be¬ 
came, by their influence, the head of a powerful party 
in the state, known as the “ Barcha party.” (Liv., 
21, 2.) The name is derived by Gesenius from the 
Hebrew (Punic) Barak, “ a flash of lightning,” “ a 
thunderbolt.” ( Gesen., Monum. Phcen., p. 403. —• 
Id., Gesch. Hcbr. Spr., p. 229.) 

Bardi, a celebrated poetico-sacerdotal order among 
the ancient Gauls. They roused their countrymen 
to martial fury by their strains, and for this purpose 
were accustomed to follow the camp. ( Diod. Sic., 5, 
31.— Vales., ad Amm. Marcell., 15, 9.) From the 
language of Tacitus (Germ., 3), some have supposed, 
that a similar order existed among the ancient Ger¬ 
mans. The passage in question, however, involves a 
doubtful reading. They who adopt barditus as the 
true lection, make it signify “ a bard’s song.” The 
reading generally adopted, however, is barritus, “ a 
war-cry.” Probability, nevertheless, is strongly in fa¬ 
vour of the Germans having also had their bards, like 

253 




BAS 


BAT 


the Gallic tribes. Festus makes Bardus equivalent to 
cantor, “ a singer.” The German etymologists de¬ 
duce it from baren, “to cry aloud,” “to sing in a 
loud strain.” ( Adelung , Gloss. Med. et Inf. Lat., 
vol. 1, p. 584.) 

Barium, a town of Apulia, on the Adriatic, in the 
district of Peuceti, famed for its fisheries. It is now 
Bari. ( Strab ., 283. — Horat., Serm., 1, 5, 97.) Ac¬ 
cording to Tacitus, it was a municipium. (Ann., 
16, 9.) _ 

Barsine or Barsene, a daughter of Darius Codo- 
manus, who married Alexander the Great, and had by 
him a son named Hercules. She was secretly put to 
death by Cassander, along with her son, when the lat¬ 
ter had reached his fourteenth year. ( Justin , 15, 2.) 
According, however, to Diodorus Siculus (20, 28), he 
was slain by Polysperchon, who had agreed with Cas¬ 
sander that he would commit the deed. Plutarch 
says that Polysperchon promised to slay him for 100 
talents. (Dc vit. pud., p. 530. — Op., ed. Reiske, vol. 
8, p. 102.—Consult Wcsseling, ad Diod., 1. c .) We 
have followed Arrian (7, 1) in making Barsine the 
daughter of Darius. According to Plutarch (vit. Alex., 
et Eum.), she was the daughter of Artabazus ; while 
another authority makes her father to have been na¬ 
med Pharnabazus. (Porph., ap. Euscb.) 

BasilTa, I. an island famous for its amber, in the 
Northern Ocean. It is supposed by Mannert to have 
been the southern extremity of Sweden, mistaken 
by the ancients for an island, on account of their ig¬ 
norance of the country to the north. According to 
Pliny (37, 2), Pytheas gave this island the name of 
Abalus ; and yet, in another place (4, 13), he contra¬ 
dicts himself, and makes it to have been called Basilia 
by the same Pytheas. (Compare the remarks of Man¬ 
nert, Gcogr., vol. 3, p. 301, seqq .)— II. A city on the 
Rhenus, in the territory of the Rauraci, now Basle. 
It appears to have been originally a fortress erected 
by the Emperor Valentinian, and to have increased in 
the course of time to a large city. By the writers of 
the middle ages it is called Basula. (Amm. Mar cell., 
30, 8. — Itin. Anton.) 

Basilius, I. an eminent father of the church, born 
at Caesarea in Cappadocia, A.D. 326. He is called 
the Great , to distinguish him from other patriarchs of 
the same name. His father had him instructed in 
the principles of polite literature, and he seems, in the 
first instance, to have been a professor of rhetoric 
and a pleader. Induced to visit the monasteries in 
the deserts of Egypt, the austerities of these misgui¬ 
ded solitaries so impressed his imagination, thathehim- 
self sought a similar retreat in the province of Pontus. 
He was ordained priest by Eusebius, the bishop of his 
native city, upon whose death he succeeded to the 
same dignity. He is the most distinguished ecclesi¬ 
astic among the Greek patriarchs. His efforts for 
the regulation of clerical discipline, of the divine ser¬ 
vice, and of the standing of the clergy; the number 
of his sermons ; the success of his mild treatment of 
the Arians ; and, above all, his endeavours for the pro¬ 
motion of monastic life, for which he himself prepared 
vows and rules, observed by him, and still remaining in 
force, prove the merits of this holy man. The Greek 
church honours him as one of its most illustrious pa¬ 
tron saints, and celebrates his festival Jan. 1. — In 
point of literary and intellectual qualifications, Basil 
excels most of the fathers, his style being pure, ele¬ 
gant, and dignified ; and, independently of his exten¬ 
sive erudition, he argues with more force and close¬ 
ness, and interprets scripture more naturally, than 
other writers of his class.—The best edition of his 
works is that of the Benedictines, Gamier and Mo- 
rand, Pans, 3 vols. folio, 1721-30. — II. An arch¬ 
bishop of Seleucia, confounded by some with the pre¬ 
ceding. He was elevated to the archiepiscopal dig¬ 
nity about A.D. 440, and assisted at the council of 
254 


Constantinople in 448, and in the year following at 
the council of Ephesus. Here he had the weakness 
to side with the heterodox party, in denying the union 
of the two natures in Christ; a fault for which he af¬ 
terward made full apology to the council ofChalcedon, 
which, in consequence, readmitted him to the com¬ 
munion of the orthodox. History preserves silence re¬ 
specting the rest of his life, which ended in 458 A.D. 
Some few productions remain that are generally as¬ 
cribed to him, though there are not wanting those 
who deny their authenticity. (Biogr. Univ., vol. 3, p. 
478.) 

Bassareus, a surname of Bacchus. The epithet is 
derived by Sainte-Croix (Mysteres du Paganisme, 
vol. 2, p. 93) from the Bessi (Bt/ggoi) mentioned by 
Herodotus (7, 111) as the priests of the oracle of 
Bacchus, among the Satrae, a nation of Thrace. Other 
etymologists deduce the term from BaGGapcq, a par¬ 
ticular kind of garment worn in Asia Minor by the fe¬ 
males who celebrated the rites of this same god. Bo- 
chart makes it come from the Hebrew basar, “ to 
gather the grapes for the vintage;” of which De 
Sacy approves. We are inclined, however, to follow 
Creuzer (Symbolik, vol. 3, p. 363), who states the root 
to be B aGGapot or B aGGapla, a word signifying “ a 
fox,” and found in the Coptic at the present day. 
(Ignat. Rossi, Etymol. JEgypt., page 35.) Creuzer 
thinks, that the garment called BaGGaplq, mentioned 
above, derived its name from its having superseded 
the skins of foxes which the Bacchantes previously 
wore when celebrating the orgies. Compare Suidas : 
BaGGapoq' Kara 'H podorov. Hesychius, 

B aacaplg ’ akinny^, and the author of the Etymol. 
Mag., A eyerai BdoGapoq y uXurryi; vtto K vpyva'uov. 
Consult also Herodotus (4, 192). The epithet Baccape 
occurs twice in the Orphic hymns (44, 3, and 51, 12). 

Bassus Aufidius. Vid. Aufidius. 

Bastarn^:, a people who first inhabited that part 
of European Sarmatia which corresponds with a part 
of Poland and Prussia, and who afterward established 
themselves in the south, to the left and right of the 
Tyras. They are supposed to have been the ancestors 
of the Russians. (Liv., 40, 58.— Ovid, Trist ., 2, 
198.) 

Batavi, an old German nation, which inhabited a 
part of the present Holland, especially the island call¬ 
ed Batavorum Insula, formed by that branch of the 
Rhine which empties into the sea near Leyden (Lug- 
dunum Batavorum), together with the Waal (Vahalis) 
and Meuse (Mosa). Their territories, however, ex¬ 
tend much beyond the Waal. Tacitus commends 
their bravery. According to him, they were original¬ 
ly the same as the Catti, a German tribe, which had 
emigrated from their country on account of domestic 
troubles. This must have happened before the time 
of Caesar. When Germanicus was about to invade 
Germany from the sea, he made their island the ren¬ 
dezvous of his fleet. Beingsubjected by the Romans, 
they served them with such courage and fidelity as to 
obtain the title of friends and brethren. They were 
exempted from tributes and taxes, and permitted to 
choose their leaders among themselves. Their caval¬ 
ry was particularly excellent. During the reign of 
Vespasian they revolted, under the command of Ci- 
vilis, from the Romans, and extorted from them fa¬ 
vourable terms of peace. Trajan and Hadrian sub¬ 
jected them again. At the end of the third century 
the Salian Franks obtained possession of the Insula 
Batavorum. The capital of the nation was Lugdu- 
num Batavorum, now Leyden. (Tacit., Hist., 4, 12. 
—Id. ib., 19, 32 .—Dio Cass., 55, 00 .—Plin., 4, 17. 
— Lucan, Phars., 1, 431, &c.) 

Bathycles, a celebrated artist, supposed to have 
been a native of Magnesia on the Maeander. ( Hcyne, 
Antiq. Aufs., vol. 1, p. 108.) The period when he 
flourished has given rise to much discussion. It was 





/ 

BAT 

probably in the age of Croesus. (Consult Sillig, Diet. 
Art., s. v.) 

Bathyllus, I. a youth of Samos, a favourite of 
Polycrates. He is often alluded to by Anacreon.— 

II. A youth of Alexandrea, a favourite of Maecenas. 
He came to Rome in the age of Augustus, and ob¬ 
tained great celebrity as a dancer in pantomimes.— 

III. A dancer alluded to by Juvenal (6, 63). As this 
was in the time of Domitian, the Bathyllus mention¬ 
ed under No. II. cannot, of course, be meant here. 
Salmasius thinks, that the name had become a gener¬ 
al one for any famous dancer, in consequence of the 
skill which had been displayed by the Bathyllus who 
lived in the time of Augustus. ( Salinas. ad Vopisc. 
Carin., vol. 2, p. 833, ed. Hack.) 

Batrachomyomachia, a serio-comic poem, ascribed 
to Homer, and describing the battle between the frogs 
and mice. It consists of 294 hexameters. Whether 
Homer actually wrote this poem or not is still an un¬ 
settled point among modern critics. The majority, 
however, incline to the opinion that he was not the 
author. The piece would seem to be in reality a par¬ 
ody on the manner and language of Homer, and per¬ 
haps a satire upon one of the feuds that were so com¬ 
mon among the petty republics of Greece. Some 
ascribe it to Pigres of Caria. Knight, in his Prole¬ 
gomena to Homer (ed. Lips., p. 6), remarks, that in 
the third verse mention is made of tablets (de Jroi), on 
which the poet writes : whence he concludes that the 
author of the piece in question was an Athenian, and 
not of Asiatic origin, because in Asia they wrote on 
skins, ev dupdepaiq. In proof of his assertion, he cites 
Herodotus (5, 58). He makes also another ingenious 
observation. At verse 291, the morning cry of a cock 
is alluded to as a thing generally known. This cir¬ 
cumstance proves, according to Knight, that the poem 
under consideration is not as old as the time of Homer, 
for it is not credible, that the ancient poets would 
never have spoken of this instinct on the part of the 
cock if it had been known to them, and it would have 
been known to them if the cock had been found at that 
period in Greece. The fowl is a native of India, and 
does not appear to have been introduced into Greece 
prior to the sixth century B.C. It is then found on 
the money of Samothrace and Himera.—The best edi¬ 
tions of the Batrachomyomachia are that of Ernesti, 
in the works of Homer, 5 vols. 8vo, Lips., 1759, re¬ 
printed at Glasgow, 1814 ; and that of Matthise, Lips., 
1805, 8vo.—There is also the edition of Maittaire, 
8vo, Lond., 1721. 

Battiades, I. a patronymic of Callimachus, from 
his father Battus. (Ovid, lb., 53.)- Some think the 
name was given him from his having been a native of 
Cyrene. (Vid. No. II.)—II. A name given to the 
people of Cyrene from King Battus, the founder of 
the settlement. (Pind., Pyth., 5, 73.— Callim., H. in 
Apoll., 96.— Sil. Ital., 2, 61.) 

Battus, I. a Lacedsemonian, who built the town of 
Cyrene, B.C. 630, with a colony from the island of 
Thera. (Vid. Cyrene.) His proper name was Aris¬ 
totle, according to Callimachus (H. in Apoll., 76. 
— Schol. ad loc. — Schol. ad Pind., Pyth., 4, 10), but 
he was called Battus, according to the tradition of 
the Theraeans and people of Cyrene, from an impedi¬ 
ment in his speech. Herodotus, however (4, 155), 
opposes this explanation, and conjectures that the 
name was obtained from the Libyan tongue, where it 
signified, as he informs us, “a king.” Battus reigned 
forty years, and left the kingdom to his son Arcesi- 
laus. (Herod., 4, 159.—Compare Bahr, ad Herod., 
4, 155 )—II. The second of that name was grandson 
to Battus I., by Arcesilaus. He succeeded his father 
on the throne of Cyrene, and was surnamed Felix, 
and died 554 B.C. (Herod., 4, 159.)—III. A shep¬ 
herd of ELylos, who promised Mercury that he would 
not discover his having stolen the flocks of Admetus, 


BEL 

which Apollo tended. He violated his promise, and 
was turned into a stone. (Ovid, Met.., 2, 702.—Com¬ 
pare the remarks of Gierig, ad loc.) 

Batulum, a town of Campania, alluded to by Vir¬ 
gil (JEn., 7, 739) and Silius Italicus (8, 566). The 
site of this place is fixed, with some diffidence, by 
Romanelli at Paduli, a few miles to the east of Bene - 
vento (vol. 2, p. 463). 

Baucis, an aged woman, who dwelt in a small 
town of Phrygia along with her husband Philemon. 
They were both extremely poor, and inhabited a hum¬ 
ble cottage. Jupiter and Mercury came, on one occa¬ 
sion, in the form of men, to this same town. It was 
evening ; they sought for hospitality, but every door 
was closed against them. At length they approached 
the abode of the aged pair, by whom they were gladly 
received. The quality of the guests was eventually 
revealed by the miracle of the wine-bowl being spon¬ 
taneously replenished as fast as it was drained. They 
told their hosts that it was their intention to destroy 
the godless town, and desired them to leave their 
dwelling and ascend the adjacent hill. The aged 
couple obeyed : ere they reached the summit they 
turned round to look, and beheld a lake where the 
town had stood. Their own house remained, and, 
as they gazed and deplored the fate of their neighbours, 
it became a temple. On being desired by Jupiter to 
express their wishes, they prayed that they might be 
appointed to officiate in that temple, and that they 
might be united in death as in life. Their prayer was 
granted ; and as they were one day standing before the 
temple, they were suddenly changed into an oak and 
a lime tree. (Ovid, Met., 8, 620.)—The reader will 
not fail to be struck with the resemblance between 
a part of this legend and the scripture account of the 
destruction of the cities of the plains. (Kcightley's 
Mythology, p. 83.) 

Bavius and M^evius, two stupid and malevolent 
poets in the age of Augustus, who attacked Virgil, 
Horace, and others of their contemporaries. (Virg., 
Eclog., 3, 90.— Foss, ad loc. — Serv. ad Virg., Georg., 
1, 210.— Horat., Epod., 10, 2.— Weichert, de obtrcct. 
Horatii, p. 12, seqq.) 

Bebryces, the aboriginal inhabitants of Bithynia. 
(Vid. Bithynia.) 

Bebrycia, the primitive name of Bithynia. It was 
so called from the Bebryces, the original inhabitants 
of the land. (Vid. Bithynia.) 

Bedriacum, a small town of Italy, between Man¬ 
tua and Cremona ; according to Cluverius, it is the 
modern Caneto, a large village on the left of the 
Oglio. D’Anville, however, makes it correspond to 
the modern Cividala, on the right side of that river. 
Mannert places it about a mile west of the modern 
town of Bozzolo. This place was famous for two 
battles fought within a month of each other. In the 
first Otho was defeated by the generals of Vitellius ; 
and in the second, Vitellius by Vespasian, A.D. 69. 
Tacitus and Suetonius call the name of this place Be- 
triacum ; and Pliny, Juvenal, and later writers, Bebri- 
acum. (Tacit., Hist., 2, 23, seqq. — Id., Hist., 3, 15. 
— Plut., Vit. Oth. — Plin., 10, 49.— Sueton., Oth., 9. 
— Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 66.) 

Belesis, a priest of Babylon, who conspired with 
Arbaces against Sardanapalus, king of Assyria. Ar- 
baces promised Belesis, in case of success, the gov¬ 
ernment of Babylon, which the latter, after the over¬ 
throw of Sardanapalus, accordingly obtained. ( Vid. 
Arbaces.) 

Belg^e, a warlike people of ancient Gaul, separa¬ 
ted from the Celtse in the time of Csesar by the riv¬ 
ers Matr^na and Sequana. In the new division of 
Gallia made by Augustus, whose object was to render 
the provinces more equal in extent, the countries of 
the Helvetii and Sequani, which till that time were 
included in Gallia Celtica, were added to Gallia Bel- 

255 



BEL 


BEL 


gica. The Bclgse were of German extraction, and, 
according to Caesar, the most warlike of the Gauls. 
The name Beiges, belongs to the Ivymric idiom, in 
which, under the form Belgiaidd, the radical of which 
is Bclg , it signifies “warlike.” (Compare Thierry , 
Histoire des Gaulois, vol. 1, p. xxxvii., Introd.) 

Belgica, one of the four provinces of Gaul near 
the Rhine. ( Vid. Gallia.) 

Belgium, a canton of Gallia Belgica, from which 
it is distinguished by Caesar ( B G , 5, 24), as a part 
from the whole, and to which he assigns the Bellovaci, 
to whom Hirtius adds the Atrebates. As the Ambi- 
ani Were situated between the other two, they must 
also be included. These three tribes were the genu¬ 
ine Belgse. (Cces., B. G., 5, 24 .—Hut., 8, 46.) 

BELiDEs,a surname given to the daughters ofBelus. 

( Ovid , Met., 4, 463.) 

B elides, a name applied to Palamedes, as descend¬ 
ed from Belus. (Virg., AHn., 2, 82.) 

Belisana, a Gallic deity, analogous to the Minerva 
of the Romans. (Compare Mone, Geschichte der 
Heidenthums in Nordlichen Europa , vol. 2, p. 419, in 
notis.) 

Belisarius, one of the greatest generals of his 
time, to whom the Emperor Justinian chiefly owed 
the splendour of his reign. Sprung from an obscure 
family in Thrace, Belisarius first served in the body¬ 
guard of the emperor, but soon obtained the chief 
command of an army of 25,000 men, stationed on the 
Persian frontiers, and, A.D 530, gained a complete 
victory over a Persian army not less than 40,000 
strong. The next year, however, he lost a battle 
against the same enemy, who had forced their way 
into Syria ; the only battle which he lost during his 
whole career. He was recalled from the army, and 
soon became, at home, the support of his master. In 
the year 532, civil commotions, proceeding from two 
rival parties, who called themselves the green and the 
blue, and who caused great disorders in Constantinople, 
brought the life and reign of Justinian in the utmost 
peril, and Hypatius was already chosen emperor, when 
Belisarius, with a small body of faithful adherents, 
restored order. Justinian, with a view of conquering 
the dominions of Gelimer, king of the Vandals, sent 
Belisarius, with an army of 15,000 men to Africa. 
After two victories, he secured the person and the 
treasures of the Vandal king. Gelimer was led in 
triumph tKrough the streets of Constantinople, and 
Justinian ordered a medal to be struck, with the in¬ 
scription Belisarius Gloria Romanorum, which has 
descended to our times. By the dissensions existing 
in the royal family of the Ostrogoths in Italy, Justin¬ 
ian was induced to attempt the reduction of Italy and 
Ptome under his sceptre. Belisarius vanquished Vi- 
tiges, king of the Goths, made him prisoner at Ra¬ 
venna (A.D. 540), and conducted him, together with 
many other Goths, to Constantinople. The war in 
Italy against the Goths continued ; but Belisarius, 
not being sufficiently supplied with money and troops 
by the emperor, demanded his recall (A.D. 548). Pie 
afterward commanded in the war against the Bulga¬ 
rians, whom he conquered in the year 559. Upon his 
return to Constantinople, he was accused of having 
taken part in a conspiracy. But Justinian was con¬ 
vinced of his innocence, and is said to have restored 
to him his property and dignities, of which he had been 
deprived. Belisarius died A.D. 565. His history 
has been much coloured by the poets, and particularly 
by Marmontel, in his otherwise admirable politico-phil¬ 
osophical romance. According to his narrative, the 
emperor caused the eyes of the hero to be struck out, 
and Belisarius was compelled to beg his ifread in the 
streets of Constantinople. Other writers say, that 
Justinian had him thrown into a prison, which is still 
shown under the appellation of the tower of Belisa¬ 
rius. From this tower he is reported to have let 
256 


down a bag fastened to a rope, and to have addressed 
the passengers in these words : “ Give an obolus to 
Belisarius, whom virtue exalted, and envy has op¬ 
pressed.” Of this, however, no contemporary writer 
makes any mention. Tzetzes, a slightly-esteemed 
writer of the 12th century, was the first who related 
this fable. Certain it is, that, through too great in¬ 
dulgence towards his wife Antonia, Belisarius was 
impelled to many acts of injustice, and that he evinced 
a servile submissiveness to the detestable Theodora, 
the wife of Justinian. ( Encyclop. Americ ., vol. 1, p. 
39, seqq. — Biogr. Univ., vol. 4, p. 82, seqq.) 

Bellerophon (Greek form Bellekophontes), son 
of Glaucus and grandson of Sisyphus. His adven¬ 
tures form a pleasing episode in the Iliad (6, 144, 
seqq ), where they are related to Diomede by Glau¬ 
cus the grandson of Bellerophon. The gods had en¬ 
dowed this hero with manly vigour and beauty An- 
tea, the wife of Proetus, king of Argos, fixed her 
love upon him, and sought a corresponding return. 
But the virtuous youth rejecting all her advances, hate 
occupied the place of love in the bosom of the disap¬ 
pointed queen. She accused him to Proetus of an at¬ 
tempt on her honour. The credulous king gave ear 
to her falsehood, but would not incur the reproach of 
putting to death a guest. He therefore sent Bellero¬ 
phon to Lycia, to his father-in-law, the king of that 
country, giving him “deadly characters,” written in a 
sealed package, which he was to present to the king of 
Lycia, and which were to cause his death. Beneath 
the potent guidance of the gods, Bellerophon came 
to Lycia and the flowing Xanthus. Nine days the 
king entertained him, and slew nine oxen ; and on the 
tenth he asked to see the token (cr?///a) which he had 
received from his son-in-law. When he had seen 
this, he resolved to comply with the desire of Proetus ; 
and he first sent his guest to slay the Chimsera, a 
monster, with the upper part a lion, the lower a ser¬ 
pent, the middle a goat (x'lfuupa), and which breathed 
forth flaming fire. Depending on the aid of the gods, 
Bellerophon slew this monster, and then was ordered 
to go and fight the Solymi, and this, he said, was 
the severest combat he ever fought. He lastly slew 
the “ manlike Amazons,” and, as he was returning, 
the king laid an ambush for him, composed of the 
bravest men of Lycia, of whom not one returned 
home, for Bellerophon slew them all. The king, now 
perceiving him to be of the race of the gods, kept him 
in Lycia, giving him his daughter and half the royal 
dignity, and the people bestow r ed upon him an ample 
temenus ( reyevoq ) of arable and plantation land. Fall¬ 
ing at length under the displeasure of all the gods, he 
wandered alone in ,‘the Plain of Wandering” (rcetiicv 
uh'jiov), “ consuming his soul, shunning the path of 
men.”—Later authorities tell us, that Bellerophon was 
at first named Hipponoos ; but, having accidentally 
killed one of his relatives, some say a brother, named 
Bellerus, he thence derived his second name, which 
meant “ Slayer of Bellerus.” He was purified of the 
bloodshed by Proetus, whose wife is also called Sthe- 
nobaea, and the king of Lycia is named Iobates. By 
the aid of the winged steed Pegasus, Bellerophon 
gained the victory over all whom Iobates sent him to 
encounter. Sthenobaea, hearing of his success, hung 
herself. Bellerophon at last attempted, by means of 
Pegasus, to ascend to heaven ; but Jupiter, incensed 
at his boldness, sent an insect to sting the steed, 
which flung its rider to earth, where he wandered in 
solitude and melancholy until his death. ( Apollod., 
2, 3, 1, seqq. — Bind., Isthm., 7, 63, seqq. — Hygin., 
fab., 57.— Id., Poet. Astron., 2, 18.— Schol. ad 11., 
6, 155.— Tzctz. ad Lycophr., 17.)—Though Homer 
makes no mention of Pegasus, this steed forms an 
essential part of the legend of Bellerophon. In the 
Theogony (v. 325) it is said of the Chimaera, that 
she was killed by Pegasus and the “ good” ( 'fadloq), 




BEL 


BEN 


i. e., brave Bellerophon. But though all seem agreed 
in giving the winged steed to the hero, none tell us 
how he obtained him. Here, however, Pindar comes 
to our aid with a very remarkable legend, which con¬ 
nects Bellerophon with Corinth. According to this 
poet (0/., 13, 85, seqq.), Bellerophon, who reigned at 
Corinth, being about to undertake the three adventures 
mentioned above, wished to possess the winged steed 
Pegasus, who used to come to drink at the fountain 
of Pirene on the Acrocorinthus. After many fruitless 
clforts to catch him, he applied for advice to the sooth¬ 
sayer Polyeidus, and was directed by him to go and 
sleep at the altar of Minerva. He obeyed the prophet, 
and, in the dead of the night, the goddess appeared to 
him in a dream, and, giving him a bridle, bade him 
sacrifice a bull to his sire Neptune-Damaeus ( the Ta¬ 
mer) and present the bridle to the steed. On awaking, 
Bellerophon found the bridle lying beside him. He 
obeyed the injunctions of the goddess, and raised an 
altar to herself as Hippeia (Of-the-Horse). Pegasus 
at once yielded his mouth to the magic bit, and the 
hero, mounting him, achieved his adventures.—The 
best explanation that has been given of the myth of 
Bellerophon is that which sees in this individual only 
one of the forms of Neptune, namely, as Hippius 
(Equestris ). This god is his father ( Find., ut supr., 
99), and he is the sire of Pegasus, and in the two 
combined we have a Neptune Hippius, the rider of 
the waves, a symbol of the navigation of the ancient 
Ephyra or Corinth. The adventures of the hero may 
have signified the real or imaginary perils to be en¬ 
countered in voyages to distant countries ; and, when 
the original sense of the myth was lost, the King 
(Proetus, npurog), and his Foe (Antea, dvra), and the 
common love-tale were introduced, to assign a cause 
for the adventure. In this myth, too, we find the 
mysterious connexion between Neptune and Pallas- 
Minerva and the horse more fully revealed than else¬ 
where. ( Keightlcy's Mythology , p. 401, seqq.) 

Bellerus, a brother of Hipponoiis. ( Vid . Bellero¬ 
phon.) 

BellSxa, the goddess of war, daughter of Phor- 
cys and Ceto. ( Apollod ., 2, 4, 2.) According to 
some authorities, however, she was the sister of Mars. 
Others, again, make her his spouse. The earlier form 
of her Latin name, Bellona, was Duellona , from Du- 
ellum , the old form for helium, from which last the 
later appellation of Bellona arose. Her Greek name 
was Enyo (’Evvu). The temple of Bellona at Rome 
was without the city, near the Carmental gate. Au¬ 
dience was given there by the senate to foreign am¬ 
bassadors. Before it stood a pillar, over which a spear 
was thrown on the declaration of war against any peo¬ 
ple. (Ovid, Fast., 6, 199, seqq.) The priests of Bel¬ 
lona used to gash their thighs in a terrific manner, and 
offer to her the blood which flowed from the wounds. 
(Juv., 4, 124.— Varro, L. L., 5.— Virg., JEn., 8, 703. 
—Slat., Theh., 2, 718.— Id. ih., 7, 73.) 

Belloxarii, the priests of Bellona. 

Bellovaci, a numerous and powerful tribe of the 
Belg®, adjoining the Yellocasses, Caleti, Ambiani, 
Veromandui, and Silvanectes. They correspond in 
position to the present people of Beauvais. (Coes., 
Bell., 2, 4.) 

Bellovesus, a king of the Celt®, who, in the reign 
of Tarquinius Priscus, was sent at the head of a colo¬ 
ny to Italy by his uncle Ambigatus. (Liv., 5, 34.) 

Belox, I. a city and river of Hispania B®tica, the 
usual place of embarcation for Tingis in Africa. The 
modern name Baloma marks the spot, though now 
uninhabited. The name is sometimes written B®- 
lon. (Mannert, Geogr ., vol. 1, p. 301.)—II. A small 
stream to the west of the city of Belon just named. 
It answers to that which flows at the present day from 
the Laguna de la landa into the sea. ( Mannert, l. c.) 

Belus, I. a name given to several kings of the East, 

K K 


whose existence appears extremely doubtful. The 
most ancient is Belus, king of Assyria, father of Ni- 
nus, whose epoch it is impossible to determine.—II. 
A son of Libya, and father of HCgyptus, Danaiis, and 
Cepheus. He is fabled to have reigned in Phoenicia, 
1500 B.C.—III. A king of Lydia, father of Ninus. 
(Herod., 1, 7.)—The Belus of Assyria, or the remote 
East, is thought by some to be the same with the Great 
Bali of Hindu mythology (Bartolomeo, Viaggio allc 
Indie Orientali, p. 241), as well as the Baal of Orien¬ 
tal worship. A curious analogy in form is said to exist 
between the temple of Belus, as described by the an¬ 
cient writers (vid. Babylon), and the Mexican Teocal- 
lis or pyramid-temples, especially that of Cholula. 
(Consult, on this interesting subject, the remarks of 
Humboldt, Monumens Americains, vol. 1, page 117, 
seqq.) 

Benacus, a lake of Italy, from which the Mincius 
flows into the Po. Pliny (9, 22) makes this lake to be 
formed by the Mincius. It is stated by Strabo (209), 
on the authority of Polybius, to be 500 stadia long and 
150 broad; that is, 62 miles by 18 : but the real di¬ 
mensions, according to the best maps, do not appear to 
exceed 30 modem Italian miles in length, and 9 in 
breadth ; which, according to the ancient Roman scale, 
would be nearly 35 by 12. The modem name is 
Lago di Garda, and the appellation is derived from 
the small town of Garda on the northeast shore of 
the lake. The Benacus is twice noticed by Virgil. 
(Georg., 2, 158.— JEn., 10, 204.) Its principal prom¬ 
ontory, Sirmium, has been commemorated by Catullus 
as his favourite residence. Virgil speaks of it as sub¬ 
ject to sudden storms. (Georg., 2, 160.) In expla¬ 
nation of this, compare the following remarks of Eu¬ 
stace : “ We left Sirmione (Sirmium), and, lighted by 
the moon, glided smoothly over the lake to Desensa- 
no, four miles distant, where, about eight, we stepped 
from the boat into a very good inn. So far the ap¬ 
pearance of the Benacus was very different from the 
description which Virgil has given of its stormy char¬ 
acter. Before we retired to rest, about midnight, from 
our windows, we observed it still calm and unruffled. 
About three in the morning, I was roused from sleep 
by the door and windows bursting open at once, and 
the wind roaring round the room. I started up, and 
looking out, observed by the light of the moon the 
lake in the most dreadful agitation, and the waves 
dashing against the walls of the inn, and resembling 
the swelling of the ocean more than the petty agitation 
of inland waters. Shortly after, the landlord entered 
with a lantern, closed the outward shutters, expressed 
some apprehensions, but, at the same time, assured me 
that their house was built to resist such sudden tem¬ 
pests, and that I might repose with confidence under 
a roof which had withstood full many a storm as ter¬ 
rible as that which occasioned our present alarm. 
Next morning, the lake, so tranquil and serene the 
evening before, presented a surface covered with foam, 
and swelling into mountain-billows that burst in break¬ 
ers every instant at the very door of the inn, and cov¬ 
ered the whole house with spray. Virgil’s description 
now seemed nature itself.” (Classical Tour, vol. 1, 
p. 203, seqq.) 

Bendis, the name of a Thracian goddess, the same 
with Diana or Artemis. (Compare Ruhnken, ad Tim., 
p. 62.— Fischer, Index in Paloephat., s. v. B evdeia.) 
This name, and the festival of this deity, spread even 
to Attica and Bithynia. Bendis had a temple in the 
Munychium at Athens, and a festival, called B evd't- 
deia, was celebrated in honour of her at the Pir®us. 
(Crcuzcr, Symbolik, vol. 2, p. 129, seqq.) 

Beneventum, a city of Samnium, about ten miles 
beyond Caudium, on the Appian Way. (Strabo, 249.) 
Its more ancient name, as we are informed by several 
writers, was Maleventum. (Liv., 9, 27 — Fhn., 3, 
11.— Fcslus, s. v. Benevent.) The name of Nnlevcn- 

257 



BER 


BERENICE. 


turn is said to have been given it on account of its un¬ 
healthy atmosphere. The more auspicious appellation 
of Bcncventum was substituted when the Romans sent 
a colony thither (A.U.C. 483). Tradition ascribed 
the foundation of this city to Diomede ( Solinus, c. 8. 
— Steph. Byz., s. v.), but other accounts would lead 
us to believe that it was first possessed by the Auso- 
nes. ( Fcstus, s. v. Auson .) It remained in the pos¬ 
session of the Romans during the whole of the second 
Punic war, and obtained the thanks of the senate for 
its firm attachment to the republic M that critical pe¬ 
riod. (Liv ., 27, 10.) We subsequently hear of its 
being a second time colonized by the veteran soldiers of 
Augustus, and also a third time under Nero. {Front, 
dc Col. —Compare Tacitus, Annul., 15, 34.— Ptol., p. 
66.) The account which Horace gives of the fare he 
there met with in his journey to Brundisium, will oc¬ 
cur to every reader. Beneventum was situated near 
the junction of the Sabatus and Calor, now Sabbato 
and Calore. Its position was a very important one, 
since here the main roads intersected each other from 
Latium into Southern Italy, and from Samnium into 
Campania. Under the Lombards Beneventum became 
the capital of a powerful dukedom. It abounds in re¬ 
mains of ancient sculpture above any other town in 
Italy. The most beautiful relic of former days, at 
this place, is the arch of Trajan, which forms one of 
the entrances into the city. Near Beneventum Pyr¬ 
rhus was defeated by Dentatus, A.U.C. 479. It is 
now Bcncvcnto. {Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol. 2, p. 
246.— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 9, pt. 1, p. 791, scqq.) 

Berecyntia, a surname of Cybele, from Mount 
Berecyntus in Phrygia, where she was particularly wor¬ 
shipped. {Stat., Thcb., 4, 782.— Virg., Ain., 9, 82.) 

Berecyntii, a Phrygian tribe, celebrated by the 
poets in connexion with Cybele, so often styled “ Ber¬ 
ecyntia Mater." Pliny places the Berecyntian district 
on the borders of Caria, about the Glaucus and Me¬ 
ander. ( Plin ., 5, 29.) 

Berecyntus, a mountain in Phrygia Major, on the 
banks of the river Sangarius. It was sacred to Cybele, 
who is hence styled Berecyntia Mater, “ The Bere- 
cynthian mother.” {Serv., ad Ain., 9, 82.) 

Berenice (less correctly Beronice, a name com¬ 
mon to several females of antiquity. It is of Greek 
origin, and means “ victory-bringing,” or “ bearer of 
victory,” the initial /3 being written, according to Ma¬ 
cedonian usage, for the letter $, or, in other words, 
B epevhcT] being put for $£psv'uirj, just as the Macedo¬ 
nians said BDumrog for QUamroq. {Maittaire, Dial., 
p. 184, ed. Sturz.) — The most remarkable of this 
name were the following: I. the granddaughter of 
Cassander, brother of Antipater. She married Philip, 
a Macedonian, probably one of the officers of Alexan¬ 
der, and became by him the mother of many children, 
among whom were Magas, king of Cyrene, and Anti¬ 
gone, whom she married to Pyrrhus, king of Epirus. 
She followed into Egypt Eurydice, daughter of Antipa¬ 
ter, who returned to that country to rejoin her husband 
Ptolemy I. Berenice inspired this prince with so 
strong a passion that he put away Eurydice, although 
he had children by her, and married the former. He 
also gave the preference, in the succession to the 
throne, to her son Ptolemy, notwithstanding the better 
claims of his offspring by Eurydiee. Berenice was re¬ 
markable for her beauty, and her portrait often appears 
on the medals of Ptolemy I., along with that of the 
latter.—II. Daughter of Ptolemy Philadelphus and 
Arsinoe. She followed her mother into exile, and re¬ 
tired with her to the court of Magas, at Cyrene, who 
married Arsinoe, and adopted Berenice. This will 
serve to explain why Polybius and Justin make Bere¬ 
nice to have been the daughter of Magas, while Cal¬ 
limachus gives Ptolemy Philadelphus and Arsinoe as 
her parents. After the death of Magas, Arsinoe en¬ 
gaged her daughter in marriage to Demetrius, son of 
258 


Demetrius Poliorcetes ; but, on the young prince’s 
having come from Macedonia to Cyrene, she became 
attached to him herself. Demetrius, conducting him¬ 
self insolently, was slain in a conspiracy, at the head 
of which was Berenice. The latter thereupon mar¬ 
ried her brother Ptolemy (Euergetes) III. A short 
time after the nuptials, Ptolemy was obliged to go on 
an expedition into Syria, and Berenice made a vow 
that she would consecrate her beautiful head of hair 
to Venus if her husband returned safe to Egypt. 
Upon his return she fulfilled her vow in the temple of 
Venus Zephyrites. On the following day, however, 
the hair was not to be found. As both the monarch 
and his queen were greatly disquieted at the loss, 
Conon the Samaritan, an eminent astronomer of the 
day, in order to conciliate the royal favour, declared 
that the locks of Berenice had been removed by divine 
interposition, and translated to the skies in the form 
of a constellation. Hence the cluster of stars near 
the tail of the Lion is called Coma Berenices (“ Ber¬ 
enice’s hair”). Callimachus wrote a piece on this 
subject, now lost, but a translation of which into Latin 
verse by Catullus has reached our time. ( Catull., 
Carm., 66.—Compare Hygin., Poet. Astron., 2, 24. 
— Doering, ad Catull., 1. c. — Heyne, dc genio seeculi 
Ptolcmceorum, Opusc., vol. 1, p. 177.) Berenice was 
put to death B.C. 216, by the orders of Ptolemy Phi- 
lopator, her son.—III. A daughter of Ptolemy §hila- 
delphus, given by him in marriage to Antiochus Theos, 
king of Syria, in order to cement a peace between the 
two countries. After the death of her father, Antio¬ 
chus put her aside and recalled his former wife Laod- 
ice. This last, having taken off Antiochus by poison, 
sought to destroy Berenice also as well as her son. 
This son was surprised and carried off by an emis¬ 
sary of Laodice’s, and shortly after put to death ; and 
Berenice, in searching for him, was entrapped and 
slain, B.C. 246.—IV. Called by some authors Cleo¬ 
patra, was the only legitimate child of Ptolemy Lath- 
urus, and ascended the throne after the death of her 
father, B.C. 81. Sylla, who was at that time dictator, 
compelled her to marry, and share her throne with, her 
cousin, who took the name of Ptolemy Alexander. 
She was poisoned by the latter only nineteen days 
after the marriage.—V. Daughter of Ptolemy Auletes. 
The people of Alexandrea having revolted against this 
prince, B.C. 58, drove him out, and placed upon the 
throne his two daughters, Tryphena and Berenice. The 
former died soon after, and Berenice was given in 
marriage to Seleucus, surnamed Cybiosaclcs. His 
personal deformity, however, and vicious character 
soon rendered him so odious to the queen, that she 
caused him to be strangled. Berenice then married 
Archelaus; but, Ptolemy Auletes having been re¬ 
stored by Gabinius, the Roman commander, she was 
put to death by her own father, B.C. 55.—VI. A na¬ 
tive of Chios, and one of the wives of Mithradates or 
Pontus. On the overthrow of this monarch’s power 
by Lucullus, Berenice, in obedience to an order from 
her husband, took poison along with his other wives, 
but this not proving effectual, she was strangled hy 
the eunuch Bacchus, B.C. 71. — VII. Daughter of 
Agrippa I., king of Judaea, and born A.D. 28. She 
was at first affianced to Marcus, son of Alexander, 
but this young man having died, Agrippa gave her in 
marriage to his brother Herod, king of Chalcis, by 
whom she became the mother of two sons, Berenici- 
anus and Plyrcanus. Having lost her husband when 
she was at the age of twenty, she went to live with 
her brother Agrippa, a circumstance which gave rise 
to reports injurious to her character. To put an end 
to these rumours, she made proposals to Polemo, king 
of Cilicia, and offered to become his wife if he would 
embrace Judaism. Polemo consented, but she soon 
left him, and returned, in all probability, to her brother, 
I for she was with the latter when St. Paul was arrested 




BER 


BES 


at Jerusalem, A.D. 63. The commerce between the 
guilty pair became now so public, that the rumour 
even reached Rome, and we find Juvenal alluding 
to the affair in one of his satires (6, 155). She fol¬ 
lowed Agrippa when he went to join Vespasian, whom 
Nero had charged to reduce the Jews to obedience. 
A new scene now opened for her ; she won the affec¬ 
tions of Titus, and, at a subsequent period, when Ves¬ 
pasian was established on the throne, and Titus re¬ 
turned home after terminating the Jewish war, she 
accompanied him to Rome along with her brother 
Agrippa. At Rome she lived openly with Titus, and 
took up her abode in the imperial palace, as we learn 
from Dio Cassius, who states also that she was then in 
the flower of her age. Titus, it is said, intended even 
to acknowledge her as his wife ; but he was compelled 
by the murmurs of his subjects to abandon this idea, 
and he sent her away from the city soon after his ac¬ 
cession to the throne. Such, at least, is the account 
given by Suetonius ( Tit , 7), who appears more enti¬ 
tled to belief than Dio Cassius, according to whom 
Titus sent Berenice away before his accession to the 
throne, and refused to receive her again, when she 
had returned to Rome a short time after the com¬ 
mencement of his reign. (Dio Cass., 66, 15 et 18.) 
—There is a great difficulty attending the history of 
this Berenice as regards her intimacy with Titus. She 
must, at least, have been forty-two years of age when 
she first became acquainted with the Roman prince, 
and fifty-one years old at the period of the celebrated 
scene which forms the subject of Racine’s tragedy. 
Many are inclined to believe, therefore, that the Bere¬ 
nice to whom Titus was attached was the daughter 
of Mariamne and Archelaus, and, consequently, the 
niece of the Berenice of whom we have been speak¬ 
ing ; she would be twenty-five years old when Titus 
came into Judea. (Clavier, in Biogr. Univ., vol. 4, 
p 241, scqq.) —VIII. A city of Egypt, on the coast of 
the Sinus Arabicus, from which a road was made 
across the intervening desert to Goptos on the Nile, by 
Ptolemy Philadelphus, 258 miles in length. From 
this harbour the vessels of Egypt took their departure 
for Arabia Felix and India. It was through the me¬ 
dium of Berenice also, and the caravan route to Cop- 
tos, that the principal trade of the Romans with India 
was conducted. By this line of communication, it is 
said that a sum not less than what would now be 
.£400,000, was remitted by the Roman traders to their 
correspondents in the East, in payment of merchandise 
which ultimately sold for a hundred times as much. 
(Plin., 6, 23.— Id., 6, 29— Sfrab., 560.— Agathemcr., 

2, 5.) The ruins of the ancient Berenice are found at 
the modern port of Habest. (Murray, Hist. Account, 
&c., vol. 2, p. 187.)—IX. A city of Cyrenai'ea, called 
also Hesperis. In its vicinity the ancients placed the 
gardens of the Hesperides. It is now Bengazi, a 
poor and filthy town. Few traces of the ancient city 
remain above ground, although much might be brought 
to light by excavation. “ When we reflect,” remarks 
Captain Beechey, ‘‘that Berenice flourished under Jus¬ 
tinian, and that its walls underwent a thorough repair 
in the reign of that emperor, it will be thought some¬ 
what singular, that both the town and its walls should 
have disappeared so completely as they have done.” 
Of the latter, scarcely a vestige remains above the sur¬ 
face of the plain. (Modern Traveller, part 49, p. 98.) 

Beroe, I. an old woman of Epidaurus, nurse to 
Semele. Juno assumed her shape when she persua¬ 
ded Semele not to receive the visits of Jupiter if he 
did not appear in the majesty of a god. (Ovid, Met., 

3, 278.)—II. The wife of Doryclus, whose form was 
assumed by Iris, at the instigation of Juno, when she 
advised the Trojan women to burn the fleet of iEneas 
in Sicily. (Virg., ASn., 5, 620.) 

Beroea or Berrhcea, a large and populous city of 
Macedonia, south of Edessa. It was a place of great 


antiquity, and is often mentioned by the early writers. 
Its situation, as is generally agreed, answers to that 
of the present Kara Veria. Some interesting cir¬ 
cumstances respecting Bercea are to be found in the 
Acts of the Apostles (17, 11. — Cramer's Ancient 
Greece , vol. 1, p. 232). 

Berosus, a Babylonian historian, rendered much 
more famous by the mention of others than from any¬ 
thing which is known of his own performances. He was 
priest of the temple of Belus in the time of Alexander, 
and, having learned the Greek language from the Ma¬ 
cedonians, he removed to Greece, and opened a school 
of astronomy and astrology in the island of Cos, where 
his productions acquired him great fame with the Athe¬ 
nians. The ancients mention three books of his, rel¬ 
ative to the history of the Chaldeans, of which Jose¬ 
phus and Eusebius have preserved fragments. As a 
priest of Belus, he possessed every advantage which 
the records of the temple, and the learning and tradi¬ 
tions of the Chaldeans, could afford, and seems to 
have composed his work with a serious regard for 
truth. Annius of Viterbo published a work under the 
name of Berosus, which was soon discovered to be a 
forgery. (Cory's Ancient Fragments, p. viii., Prcef.) 

Bervtus (Berotha, Ezck., 47, 16. — BypCiOq, Jo¬ 
seph.., Ant. Jud., 5, 1. — Berothai, 2 Sam., 8, 8), an 
ancient town of Phoenicia, about twenty-four miles 
south ofByblus, famous in the age of Justinian for the 
study of law, and styled by the emperor “ the mother 
and nurse of the laws.” The civil law was taught 
there in Greek, as it was at Rome in Latin. It had 
also the name of Colonia Felix Julia, from Augustus 
Caesar, who made it a Roman colony, and named it in 
honour of his daughter. (Pirn., 5, 20.) The modern 
appellation is Beirout. The adjacent plain is renowned 
as the place where St. George, the patron saint of 
England, slew the dragon ; in memory of which, a 
small chapel was built upon the spot, dedicated at first 
to that Christian hero, but now changed to a mosque. 
It was frequently captured and recaptured during the 
crusades. It is now the seat of one of the most inter¬ 
esting missionary stations in the world, and possesses 
many important advantages for such a purpose. It is 
situated on the Mediterranean, at the foot of Mount 
Lebanon, within three days of Damascus, two days’ 
sail of Cyprus, two from Tyre, and three from Tripoli. 
Its present population is about 10,000. (For interest¬ 
ing notices of this place, consult Jewett's Researches, 
vols. 1 and 2.— Life of Rev. Pliny Fisk.—Missionary 
Herald, &c.) 

Besippo, a seaport town of Hispania Bsetica, east 
of Junonis Promontorium, where Mela was born. 
Its ruins lie in the neighbourhood of the modern Porto 
Barbato. (Philos. Transact., vol. 30, p. 922.) The 
town of Vcjcr dc la Fi ontcra, which many think rep¬ 
resents the ancient Besippo (Hardouin, ad Plin., 3, 
3), lies too far from the sea. (Ukcrt, Geogr., vol. 2, 
p. 343.) 

Bessi, a people of Thrace, occupying a district 
called Bessica, between Mons Rhodope and the north¬ 
ern part of the Hebrus. The Bessi belonged to the 
powerful nation of the Satrap the only Thracian tribe 
which had never been subjugated. (Herod., 7, 110.) 
According to Strabo (318), they wrnre a very lawless 
and predatory race, and were not conquered finally till 
the reign of Augustus. (Dio Cass., 54.— Flor., 4, 12.) 

Bessus, a governor of Bactriana, who, after the 
battle of Arbela, seized Darius, his sovereign, with 
the intention of carrying him off prisoner to his sa¬ 
trapy ; but, being hotly pursued by the Macedonians, 
he left the monarch wounded and dying in the way, 
and effected his own escape. Bemg subsequently de¬ 
livered into the hands of Alexander, that monarch, ac¬ 
cording to one account (Justin, 12, 5), gave him up 
for punishment to the brother of Darius. (Compare 
Curt., 5, 12, scqq. — Id., 7, 5.) Plutarch, however, 

259 



BIB 


BIS 


states, that Alexander himself punished the offender m 
the following manner : he caused two straight trees to 
he bent, and one of his legs to be made fast to each ; 
then suffering the trees to return to their former pos¬ 
ture, his body was torn asunder by the violence of 
the recoil. ( Pint., Vit. Alex.) Arrian makes Alexan¬ 
der to have caused his nostrils to be slit, the tips of his 
ears to be cut off, and the offender, after this, to have 
been sent to Ecbatana, and put to death in the sight 
of all the inhabitants of the capital of Media. ( Ar¬ 
rian , Exp. Al., 4, 7.) 

Bianor, a son of the river-god Tiber, and of Manto 
daughter of Tiresias. Servius makes him the found¬ 
er of Mantua, and identical with Ocnus. ( Serv. ad 
Vug., Eclog., 9, 60.— Id. ad JEn., 10, 198.) The 
allusion in Virgil’s ninth Eclogue is thought to be to 
this same Bianor ; but consult the remarks of Heyne, 
ad loc. 

Bias, I. son of Amythaon and Idomene, was king of 
Argos, and brother to the famous soothsayer Melam- 
pus. ( Vid. Melampus.)—II. One of the seven wise 
men of Greece. He was son of Teutamus, and was 
born at Priene, in Ionia, about 570 B.C. Bias was 
a practical philosopher, studied the laws of his coun¬ 
try, and employed his knowledge in the service of 
his friends, defending them in the courts of justice, 
settling their disputes. He made a noble use of his 
wealth. . His advice, that the Ionians should fly be¬ 
fore the victorious Cyrus to Sardinia, was not follow¬ 
ed, and the victory of the army of Cyrus confirmed the 
correctness of his opinion. The inhabitants of Priene, 
when besieged by Mazares, resolved to abandon the 
city with their property. On this occasion Bias re¬ 
plied to one of his fellow-citizens, who expressed his 
astonishment that he made no preparations for his de¬ 
parture, “i carry everything with me .” He remained 
in his native country, where he died at a very advanced 
age. His countrymen buried him with splendour, and 
honoured his memory. Some of his apophthegms are 
still preserved. ( Biogr. Umv., vol. 4, p. 455. — En- 
cyclop. Amcric., vol. 2, p. 89, scq.) 

Bibaculus (M. Furius), a Latin poet, born at Cre¬ 
mona about 103 B.C. He appears to have composed 
a turgid poem entitled Mthiopis , on the legend, very 
probably, of the .'Ethiopian Memnon ; and also another 
on the mouths of the Rhine. This last is thought to 
have formed part of an epic poem on Caesar’s wars in 
Gaul. (j Burmann, Anthol. Lat., lib. 2, ep. 238.) 
Both works are lost, and we have only a couple of 
fragments remaining. ( Bahr , Gesch. Rom. Lit., vol. 
1 , p. 124.) Horace ( Serm ., 2, 5, 40) ridicules a 
laughable verse of his, in which Jupiter is represented 
as spitting snovy upon the Alps : “ Jupiter hibernas 
cana mvc conspuet Alpes." This line occurred in the 
beginning of a poem which he had composed on the 
Gallic war. Quintilian (10, 1, 96) enumerates Bi¬ 
baculus among the Roman Iambic poets, and, in an- 
• other part of his work (8, 6,18), gives this same line, 
citing it as an instance of harsh metaphor. It is sur¬ 
prising that the critic did not carry his censure farther 
than this, and therefore Spalding well remarks of the 
omission, “ Debebat autem nos ter sordium quoquc in- 
cusarc hanc metaphoram .” To render his parody 
more severe, Horace substitutes Furius himself for the 
monarch of the skies, and, to prevent all mistake, ap¬ 
plies to the former a laughable species of designation, 
drawn directly from his personal appearance, “ pingui 
tcntus omaso ,” “ distended with his fat paunch.” 
{Horat., 1. c ) 

Bibracte, a largo town of the HJdui in Gaul, upon 
the Arroux, one of the branches of the Ligeris or 
Loire. It was afterw.ard called Augustodunum, and is 
now Autun. {C<zs., H. G., 7, 55, &c.) 

Bibulus, a son of M. Calpurnius Bibulus, by Portia, 
Cato’s daughter. He yvas Csesar’s colleague in the 
consulship, but, finding it impossible to thwart the 
260 


measures of the former, he retired from public affairs 
in a great degree, and during eight months (the pe¬ 
riod that remained for his holding the consulship) con¬ 
tented himself with publishing edicts. 4 his conduct 
placed his colleague in an odious light, and Csesar en¬ 
deavoured, by means ot the populace, whom he ha,d 
excited for this purpose, to force Bibulus to leave his 
dwelling, and come forth and take an active part in 
public affairs. The attempt, however, proved unsuc¬ 
cessful. Bibulus was not very conspicuous for mili¬ 
tary talents. In the war between Caesar and Pompey, 
however, he had the chief command of the fleet of the 
latter. He died at sea in the course of the civil con¬ 
test. {Biogr. Umv., vol. 4, p. 463.) 

Bifrons, a surname of Janus, because he was rep¬ 
resented with two faces. {Vid. Janus.) 

Bilbilis, I. a city of the Celtiberi, in Hispama 
Tarraconensis, southeast of Numantia, and southwest 
of Nertobriga. It lay on the western bank of the riv¬ 
er Bilbilis, and was a Roman municipium. The poet 
Martial was born here. Bilbilis was tamed tor the 
temper of the weapons manufactured in it. The ruins 
of the ancient city lie not far from the modern C ala- 
tayud, at a place called Bambola. {Pirn., 34, 14. 
Mart., 10, 103 .—Id., 4, 55.) — II. A river of His- 
pania Tarraconensis, running by Bilbilis, in the coun¬ 
try of the Celtiberi, and falling into the Iberus. It is 
now the Xalon. Its waters were famous tor temper¬ 
ing iron. {Micron., Raul, de Flum. Misp. Martial , 
10, 103, et ult. — Justin, 44, 8.) 

Bimater, a surname of Bacchus, which signifies 
that he had two mothers, because, when taken trom his 
mother’s womb, he was placed in the thigh of his la¬ 
ther Jupiter. {Ovid, Met., 4, 12.) 

Bingium, a town of Gaul, in Germania Prima, west 
of Moguntiacum. It lay upon the Rhine, and is now 
Bingen. {Tacit., Hist., 4, 70.) 

Bion, I. a native of Borysthenes, of low extraction. 
When young, he was sold as a slave to an orator, who 
afterward gave him his freedom, and left him large 
possessions. Upon this he went to Athens, and ap¬ 
plied himself to the study of philosophy. _ He had sev¬ 
eral preceptors ; but chiefly attached himsell to the 
doctrine of Theodoras, of the Cyrenaic sect, of which 
he was a professed advocate. He flourished about the 
120th Olympiad. {Diog. Laert.,^ 4, 46, seqq.) — II. 
An Athenian tragic poet, a son cl rEschylus.—III. A. 
Greek poet, born near Smyrna, in the district of Phlos- 
sa. He appears to have lived in Sicily, and to have 
died there of poison, as his pupil Moschus informs us 
in an elegy on his death. Some make him contempo¬ 
rary with Theocritus, while others suppose that he 
flourished a century later, about 187 B.C. He is 
ranked, along with Moschus, among the bucolic poets, 
less on account of the subjects of his pieces, which 
are for the most part of a lyric or philosohpical char¬ 
acter, than by reason of the manner in which he treats 
them. He is far inferior to Theocritus in simplicity 
and naivete. His productions are in general too la¬ 
boured ; but in description he succeeds perfectly, and 
his writings are not wanting in elegance, and in cor¬ 
rect and pleasing imagery. There are many good 
editions of this poet’s works, generally printed with 
those of Moschus, the best of which is that of Valcke- 
naer, Lugd. Bat., 1810, 8vo, reprinted at Oxford in 
1816, by Gaisford, in the Poctce Minorcs Grceci. 

Bisaltje, a people of Macedonia, situate between 
the lake Bolbe and the Strymon. They, were of Thra¬ 
cian origin. ( Herodotus, 7,115.) Theopompus, who 
is cited by Steph. Byz. {s. v. B LGalria), affirmed, that 
almost all the hares in the country occupied by this 
people were found to have two livers. {Cramer's 
Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 266.) 

Bisanthe, a town on the Propontis, northwest of 
Perinthus. It was called also Rcedestus, and is now 
Rodosto. {Herod., 7, 137.) 






BIT 


BOE 


Bistonis, a lake of Thrace, near Abdera. It de¬ 
rived its name from the Bistones, who inhabited its 
shores, and held dominion over the surrounding dis¬ 
trict. (Herod., 7, 110.— Scymm., Ch., 673.) 

Bithynia, a country of Asia Minor, bounded by 
the Euxine on the north, on the south by Phrygia and 
Galatia, on the east by Paphlagonia, and on the west 
by the Propontis and Mysia. One of the earlier names 
of this region, more particularly along the shores of the 
Propontis and Euxine, was Bebrycia, derived from 
the Bebryces, who are said to have been the primitive 
settlers in the land. Homer nowhere mentions the 
people of this country by the appellation of Bithynians, 
but invariably designates them as Mysians and Phrygi¬ 
ans. (R, 2, 862.— Ib., 13, 792.—Strab., 565.) Stra¬ 
bo has also proved, that the Mysians not only occupied 
the shores of the Lake Ascanius and the plains of Ni- 
C£ea, but that they extended as far as Chalcedon and 
the Thracian Bosporus. (Strab., 566.) Though we 
cannot precisely fix the period at which the Bithyni 
settled in the fertile district to which they communi¬ 
cated their name, we can have no doubt as to the 
country whence they came, since the testimony of an¬ 
tiquity is unanimous in ascribing to them a Thracian 
origin. Herodotus, in particular, asserts that, accord¬ 
ing to their own traditions, they came from the banks 
of the Strymon, and, having been driven from their 
country by the Teucri and Mysi, crossed over into 
Asia. (Herod., 7, 75.) Thucydides also and Xen¬ 
ophon expressly style them Bithynian Thracians. 
(Thucyd., 4, 75.— Xen., Hist. Gr., 1, 3, 2.— Id. ib., 
3, 2, 2.) Some geographers have noticed a distinction 
to be observed in regard to this people, namely, that 
the appellation of Bithyni was properly applicable to 
the inland population, while that of the coast took the 
name of Thyni. (Apollod. Rhod., 2, 462.— Eustath. 
ad Dionys. Perieg., 793.— Pirn., 5, 32.) But, his¬ 
torically speaking, it is of little value.—The Bithyni¬ 
ans, as Herodotus informs us (1, 28), were first sub¬ 
jected by Croesus On the dissolution of the Lydian 
empire they passed under that of Persia, and their 
country became the seat of a satrapy sometimes known 
in history by the title of Dascylium, sometimes of 
the Hellespont, but more commonly of Bithynia. 
The people lived principally in villages ; the only con¬ 
siderable towns being situate on the coast, and inhab¬ 
ited by Greek colonists. This state of things lasted 
till the death of Alexander, who had taken military 
possession of the country after the defeat and expul¬ 
sion of the Persians from the peninsula. On the de¬ 
cease of the King of Macedon, we find Botirus, the son 
of Dydalsus, a Thracian chief, seizing upon Astacus, 
a Greek town on the seacoast, and, after defeating 
Calantus, the officer who commanded the Grecian 
forces in that country, establishing an independent 
principality, which he transmitted, through his lineal 
descendants Bas and Xipcetes, to Nicomedes, son of 
the latter, who, after the death of Lysimachus, first 
assumed the title of King of Bithynia. He gave his 
name to the city of Astacus, which from henceforth 
was called Nicomedia, and became the capital of the 
new kingdom. (Memn. excerpt, ap. Pliot., p. 720, 
seq. — Pausan., 5, 12.) An account of the succession 
in this family will be found under the articles Nicom¬ 
edes and Prusias.—-Like other Asiatic sovereigns, 
the kings of Bithynia are said to have been sensual 
and effeminate. '( Polyb ., 37, 2.— Cic., Verr., 5, 11.) 
The interior of the country was mountainous and 
woody (Xen., Anab., 6, 15.— Nicet., Chon, p. 128), 
but near the sea it was covered with rich and fertile 
plains, thickly spread with towns and villages. The 
produce consisted in grain of every sort; in wine, 
cheese, figs, and various kinds of wood. (Xen., 
Anab., 6, 4, 4. — Strab., 565. — Plin., 11, 42.) The 
western portion of Bithynia has received from the 
Turks the name of Khodavendkhiar; and that situated 


on the Euxine and around the Bosporus they call Ko- 
djaili. (Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 167, seqq ) 

Biton. Vid. Cleobis. 

Bituricum. Vid. Avaricum. 

Bituriges, a people of Gaul. There were two 
tribes of this name, the Bituriges Cubi and the Bitur- 
; iges Vivisci. The former were in Gallia Celtica, to 
| the west of the JEdui. Their capital was Avaricum, 
i now Bourges. The Vivisci were in Aquitania, on 
the Atlantic coast, below the mouth of the Garumna. 
Their chief city was Burdigala, now Bordeaux. (Cces., 
B G , 8, 5, &c.— Lemaire, Index Gcogr ad Cces., s. v., 
p. 210, seq ) 

Bizya, a city in Thrace, on the shores of the Eux¬ 
ine, above Halmydessus, and northwest of Byzantium. 
It is now Vyzia. The poets fabled that it was shun¬ 
ned by swallows, on account of the crimes of Tereus. 
(Plin., 4, 11 — Solin., c. 10. — Ovid, Met., 6, 424, 
seqq.) 

Blandusia, or, more properly, Bandusia, a fountain 
in the immediate vicinity of Horace’s Sabine farm. It 
is supposed to be the modern Fontc Bello. (Compare 
the remarks of the commentators on Horace, Ode 3, 
13, 1.) 

Blastophcenices, a people of Lusitania. (Appian, 
de reb. Hisp., 6, 56.) Ukert maintains the identity 
of this people with the Bastuli Poeni. (Gcogr., vol. 2, 

р. 309.) 

Blemmyes, a people of ^Ethiopia supra JFfigyptum, 
dwelling, according to Strabo and Ptolemy, to the 
southeast of the Astaboras, towards the Sinus Avalites. 
They were fabled to be without heads, and to have the 
eyes and mouth placed in the breast. This fable is 
supposed to owe its origin to a custom prevailing 
among this people, of depressing their heads between 
their shoulders, which they forced upward, so that 
their necks became very short, and their heads were 
concealed partly by their shoulders, and partly by their 
long and thick hair. (Strab., 563.— Mela, 1, 4, 8.— 
Plin., 5, 8.— Amm. Mai cell., 14, 4.— Vopisc. in Prob., 

с. 17.— Procop., Bell. Pers., c. 19.— Claudian, Carm. 
de Nil., v. 19.— Nonn. Dionys., 17, cxtr.) 

Boadicea. Vid. Boudicea. 

Boagrius, a river of the Locri Epicnemidii, water¬ 
ing the town of Thronium. Strabo asserts that it was 
known likewise by the name of Manes, and was no¬ 
thing more than a torrent, which Avas sometimes en¬ 
tirely dry, though occasionally it was swollen so as 
to be two plethra in breadth, (Compare Lycophron, 
v. 1145.) 

Bocchus, a king of Getulia, in alliance with Rome, 
who perfidiously delivered Jugurtha to Sylla, the 
lieutenant of Marius. Many of the old editions of 
Sallust read Jugurtha film Boccho nupserat (Jug 
Bell., 80), instead of Bocchi, &c., thereby making 
Bocchus to have been Jugurtha's son-in-law. The 
Abbe Brotier, relying upon this reading and some of 
Sylla’s medals, proposes to substitute in Plutarch’s life 
of Marius, where mention is made of Bocchus, the term 
“ son-in-law” for “ father-in-law but M. Vauvilliers 
more judiciously contends, from six MSS. of Sallust, 
and in conformity with Florus (3, 1), for the expression 
“ father-in-law” of Jugurtha. Bocchus obtained, as 
the reward of his treachery, the western part of Nu- 
midia, which was afterward, in the reign of Claudius, 
named Mauritania Csesariensis, now Fez. (Sallust, 
Jug. — Paterc., 2, 12.) 

Boduagnatus, a leader of the Nervii, when Csesar 
made war against them. (Cces., B G , 2, 23 ) 

Boedromia, an Athenian festival, sacred to Apollo 
Patroiis, and instituted in commemoration of the as¬ 
sistance which the people of Athens received in the 
reign of Erechtheus, from Ion, son of Xuthus, when 
their country was invaded by Eumolpus, son of Nep¬ 
tune. It was celebrated in the month Boedromion, 
which took its name from this circumstance. The 

261 




BCE 0 


BCET 


* appellation given to the festival is derived ihrd tov (3oi]~ 
dpofieiv, from coining to help. (Etymol Mag., s. v .— 
Suid.,s. v. — Calhm., H. in Apoll., v 69 — Pint, Thes., 
c. 27.— Wachsmuth, Hcllcn. Alt., vol. 4, p. 143.) 

Boedromion, the name of one of the Attic months. 
It was the third in the order of the Attic year, and 
corresponded nearly to our September. It derived its 
name from the festival called Boedromia being cele¬ 
brated during it. ( Vid. Boedromia.) 

Bceotarch^e, the chief magistrates in Bceotia. They 
presided in the national councils, and commandad the 
forces. They were, in later times at least, elected 
annually, and rigidly restricted to their term of office. 
Their number is supposed to have been originally 
fourteen, the primitive number of the confederate Boeo¬ 
tian states. It was afterward reduced, and underwent 
many variations. Thebes appears to have had the 
privilege of appointing two, one of whom was supe¬ 
rior in authority to the rest, and probably acted as 
president of the board. ( Thucyd ., 2, 2.— Id , 4, 91 — 
Arnold, ad Thucyd., 1. c. — ThirlwalVsHist. Gr., vol. 1, 
p. 434 ■— Liv., 42, 43.) 

Bceotia, a country of Greece Proper, lying to the 
northwest of Attica, and shut in by the chains of Hel¬ 
icon, Cithseron, Parnassus, and, towards the sea, 
Ptous ; which mountains enclosed a large plain, con¬ 
stituting the chief part of the country. Numerous 
rivers, of which the Cephissus was-the most important, 
descending from the heights, had probably stagnated 
for a long time, and formed lakes, of which the Copals 
was the largest These same rivers appear to have 
formed the soil of Bceotia, which is among the most 
fruitful in Greece. Bceotia was also perhaps the most 
thickly settled part of Greece ; for no other could 
show an equal number of important cities. This 
country, as we learn from the concurrent testimony of 
Strabo, Pausanias, and other ancient writers, was first 
occupied by several barbarous clans, under the various 
names of Aones, Ectenes, Temmices, and Hyantes. 

( Strabo, 401.— Pausan., 9, 5.) To these succeeded, 
according to the common account, Cadmus and his 
followers, who, after expelling some of the indigenous 
tribes above mentioned, and conciliating others, found¬ 
ed a city, which became afterward so celebrated under 
the name of Thebes, and to which he gave the name 
of Cadmea. The descendants of Cadmus were com¬ 
pelled, subsequently, to evacuate Boeotia, after the 
capture of Thebes by the Epigoni, and to seek ref¬ 
uge in the country of the Illyrian Enchelees. ( Herod¬ 
otus, 5, 61.— Pausanias, 9, 5.) They regained, how¬ 
ever, possession of their former territory, but were once 
more expelled, as we learn from Strabo, by a numer¬ 
ous horde of Thracians and others. On this occasion, 
having withdrawn into Thessaly, they united them¬ 
selves with the people of Arne, a district of that prov¬ 
ince, and for the first time assumed the name of Boeo¬ 
tians. ( Strabo, 401.) After a lapse of some years, 
they were compelled to abandon Thessaly, when they 
once more succeeded in re-establishing themselves in 
their original abode, to which they now communicated 
the name of Boeotia. This event, according to Thu¬ 
cydides, occurred about sixty years after the capture 
of Troy; but, in order to reconcile this account with 
the statement of Homer, who distinctly names the 
Boeotians among the Grecian forces assembled at that 
memorable siege, the historian admits that a Boeotian 
division {uTrodaopoq) had already settled in this prov¬ 
ince prior to the migration of the great body of the 
nation (1, 12). The government of Boeotia remained 
under the monarchical form till the death of Xanthus, 
who fell in single combat with Melanthus the Messe- 
nian, when it was determined to adopt a republican 
constitution. This, though imperfectly known to us, 
appears to have been a compound of aristocratic and 
democratic principles , the former being apparent in 
the appointment of eleven annual magistrates named 
262 


Boeotarchs, who presided over the military as well as 
civil departments {Thucyd., 2, 2.— Id., 4, 92.— Id., 5, 
37); the latter in the establishment of four councils, 
which were possessed, in fact, of the sovereign au¬ 
thority, since all measures of importance were to be 
submitted to their deliberation. The general assembly 
of the Boeotian republic was held in the temple of the 
Itonian Minerva. {Pausan., 9, 34.) From the extent 
and population of their territory, the Boeotians might 
have placed the first part in Greece, ifthey had not been 
prevented by the bad government of the cities, by the 
jealousy of Thebes, and the consequent want of union. 
And yet the example of Epaminondas and Pelopidas 
afterward showed that the genius of two men could 
outweigh all these defects.—-The Boeotians were re¬ 
garded by their neighbours, the Athenians, as naturally 
a stupid race. Much of this, however, was wilful ex¬ 
aggeration, and must be ascribed to the national enmity, 
which seems to have existed from the earliest times 
between these two nations. Besides, this country 
produced, in fact, many illustrious men, such as He¬ 
siod, Pindar, Plutarch, Epaminondas, Pelopidas, &c. 
In Boeotia, too, Mount Helicon was sacred to the 
Muses, to whom also many of the fountains and rivers 
of the country were consecrated.—The modern name 
of Bceotia is Straniulipa, in Livadia, which last 
comprehends within its limits the ancient Boeotia, as 
one of its component parts.—In Boeotia are several 
celebrated ancient battle-fields, the former glory of 
which has been increased by late events ; namely, 
Plataea (now the village Pokla), where Pausanias and 
Aristides established the liberty of Greece by their 
victory over Mardonius ; Leuctra (now the village 
Parapogia), where Epaminondas triumphed over the 
Spartans ; Coronea, where the Spartan Agesilaus de¬ 
feated the Thebans ; and Chseronea, where Philip 
founded the Macedonian greatness on the ruins of Gre¬ 
cian freedom.—Near Tanagra, the birthplace of Co- 
rinna, the best wine was produced : here also cocks 
were bred, of remarkable size, beauty, and courage, 
with which the Grecian cities, passionately fond of 
cock-fighting, were supplied. — The Boeotians were 
particularly fond of music, and excelled in it. {Cra¬ 
mer's Ancient Greece, vol. 2, p. 189, seqq. — Hecrcn's 
Politics of Anc. Greece, p. 32, Bancroft's transl. — 
Encyclop. Americ., \ol 2, p. 151, seqq.) ’ 

Boethius, Anicius Manlius Torquatus Severinus, a 
man celebrated for his virtues, services, honours, and 
tragical end. He was born about A D. 470, in Rome 
or Milan, ot a rich, ancient, and respectable family ; 
was educated in Rome, in a manner well calculated 
to develop his extraordinary abilities , afterward went 
to Athens, which was still the centre of taste and sci¬ 
ence, and studied philosophy under Proclus and oth¬ 
ers. Returning to Rome, he was graciously received by 
Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, then master of Italy, 
loaded with marks of favour and esteem, and soon 
raised to the first offices of the empire. He exerted 
the best influence on the administration of this mon¬ 
arch, so that the dominion of the Goths promoted the 
welfare and happiness of the people who were subject 
to them. Pie was long the oracle of his sovereign 
and the idol of the people. The highest honours were 
thought inadequate to reward his virtue and his ser- 
\ices. . But Theodoric, as he grew old, became irri¬ 
table, jealous, and distrustful of those around him. 
The Goths now indulged in all sorts of oppression and 
extortion, while Boethius exerted himself in vain to 
lestrain them. He had already made many enemies 
by his strict integrity and vigilant justice. " These at 
last succeeded in prejudicing the king against him, 
and rendering him suspicious of Boethius! The op! 
position of Boethius to their unjust measures was con¬ 
strued into a rebellious temper, and he was even ac¬ 
cused of a treasonable correspondence with the court 
of Constantinople. He was arrested, imprisoned, and 





BOL 


BOO 


executed, A.D. 524 or 526.—While he was at the 
helm of state, he found recreation from his toilsome 
occupation in the construction of mathematical and 
musical instruments, some of which he sent to Clo- 
thaire, king of France. He was also much given to 
the study of the old Greek philosophers and mathema¬ 
ticians, and wrote Latin translations of several of them. 
His most celebrated work is that composed during his 
imprisonment, “ On the consolation afforded by Philos¬ 
ophy.” It is written in prose and verse intermixed. 
The elevation of thought, the nobleness of feeling, the 
ease and distinctness of style which it exhibits, make 
this composition, short as it is, far superior to any of 
the age. The principal edition is that of Basle , 1570, 
fol. A more modern one, of some value, appeared at 
Glasgow , 1751, 4to. {Encyclop. Americ., vol. 2, p. 153, 
scqq.) 

Boethus, I. a Stoic philosopher, referred to by 
Diogenes Laertius and Cicero. ( Diog. L., 7, 143.— 
Cic ., de Div., 1, 8.— Id. ib., 2, 20.) Plis opinions 
differed so far from those of his school, in that he did 
not regard the world as animated, and in his admit¬ 
ting four principles as the basis of judgment; name¬ 
ly, thought, sensation, appetite, and participation. 
( Menag. ad Diog., 1. c.) — II. A peripatetic philoso¬ 
pher, a native of Sidon. He acquired so high a repu¬ 
tation, that Strabo, who had been his fellow-disciple, 
ranks him among the most illustrious philosophers of 
liis time, and Simplicius styles him 1 9-avjuucuoq, “ the 
wondcrful.' n {Menag. ad Diog. Laert., 7, 143.) — 
III. A statuary, and engraver on plate, born at Car¬ 
thage. ( Pausan ., 5, 17.) He appears to have flour¬ 
ished before the destruction of the city by the Romans, 
but we cannot, with any certainty, ascertain the age 
in which he lived. {Silhg, Diet. Art., s. v.) 

Bon, a people of Celtic Gaul, who inhabited the 
country watered by the river Sigmanus, Signatus, or 
Igmanus, now the Sollac. From Gaul they passed 
into Germany, and settled in the present Bohemia 
(Boierheim, i. e., the residence of the Boii), until they 
were expelled by the Marcomanni. Abandoning this 
quarter, they carried their name with them into Boia- 
ria, Bayaria, or Bavaria. The name Boii is thought 
to denote “ the terrible ones,” and to be derived from 
the Celtic Bo, “fear.” ( Thierry, Histoire dcs Gau- 
lois, vol. 1, p. 48.— Cces., B. G., 1, 28 ; 7, 17.) 

Bola, a town of the vEqui in Italy. It is thought 
to correspond with the small town of Poli, situate in 
the mountains between Tivoli and Palcestrina, the an¬ 
cient Tibur and Praeneste. It was a colony of Alba. 
( Virg., JEn., 1, 675.) 

Bolbe, I. a lake of Macedonia, in the territory of 
Mygdonia, and emptying into the sea near Aulon and 
Bormiscus. {Thucyd., 1, 58.) Dr. Clarke, who visited 
the shores of this lake in his travels, observes, “ it is 
now called Beshek; it is about 12 miles in length, 
and 6 or 8 in breadth. We can find no notice that 
has been taken of this magnificent piece of water by 
any modern writer.” (Travels, vol. 8, p. 6.)—II. A 
town near the Lake Bolbe. ( Steph. Byz., s. v. B oMai.) 

Bolbitinum, one of the mouths of the Nile, in the 
vicinity of what is now the town of Rosetta. ( Vid. 
Nilus.) 

Boline, a town of Achaia, between Drepanum and 
Patrse, which no longer existed in the time of Pausa- 
nias (7, 23). Near it ran a river called Bolinaeus. 
{Steph. Byz., s. v.) 

Bolissus, a town in the island of Chios, situate on 
the coast, and the site of which is occupied by the 
modern village of Volisso. The ancient place is no¬ 
ticed by Thucydides (8, 24), and is mentioned also in 
the life of Homer (c. 23.—Compare Steph. Byz., s. v. 

Bo/Uacrof). 

Bollanus, a man whom Horace represents as of 
the most irascible temper, and most inimical to lo¬ 
quacity. {Scrm., 1, 9, 11.) 


Bomilcar, I. a Carthaginian general, son of Hamild 
car. He attempted to seize, by force of arms, upon 
the government, but was overcome and put to death. 
{Diod. Sic., 20,43.)—II A Carthaginian admiral, sent 
to relieve Syracuse when besieged by the Romans. 
He fled, however, before the fleet of Marcellus, and the 
city fell.—III. A native of Numidia, a secret agent of 
Jugurtha’s, by whose means that monarch effected the 
assassination of Massiva at Rome. He afterward, at 
the instigation of Metellus, the Roman commander, 
conspired with Nabdalsa against Jugurtha, but the plot 
was discovered, and he was put to death. {Sallust, 
Jug., 35, 61, 70.) 

BomonIc^:, a name applied to the youths who were 
whipped at the altar of Diana Orthia at Sparta, in hon¬ 
our of that goddess. The festival was called Aiapaa- 
Tiyivmq, and was so named diro too paariyovv, i. e., 
from whipping. These boys were, at first, freeborn 
Spartans, but afterward of meaner birth, being fre¬ 
quently the offspring of slaves. They were called 
Bomonicae (B« yovinai) from the scourging they un¬ 
derwent at the altar, and which was very severe and 
cruel; and, lest the officer should, out of compassion, 
remit any of its rigour, Diana’s priestess stood by 
all the time holding in her hand the goddess’s image, 
which, say the ancients, was light and easy to be 
borne, but if the boys were spared, became so pon¬ 
derous that the priestess was scarcely able tc* support 
its weight The parents of the boys were also pres¬ 
ent, and exhorted their sons to bear their sufferings 
with patience and firmness. Fie who showed the 
most firmness was highly honoured. Some of the 
boys even died under the lash ; these they buried by a 
public funeral, with garlands on their heads, in token 
of joy and victory. The origin of this cruel custom 
is variously accounted for by the ancient writers. 
Some ascribe it to a wish on the part of Lycurgus 
to inure the Lacedaemonian youth to labour and fatigue, 
and to render them insensible to pain or wounds. 
Others maintain that it was a mitigation of an oracle, 
which ordered that human blood should be shed on 
Diana’s altar. Another tradition mentions that Pausa- 
nias, at the battle of Platsea, being disturbed at the 
preparatory sacrifices by a party of Lydians, and his 
attendants having repelled them with staves and stones, 
the only weapons they had at the moment, instituted 
this custom subsequently in commemoration of the 
event. {Pausan., 3, 16 .—Plut., Vit. Lycurg.) 

Bona Dea (“ the Good Goddess'"), a name given by 
the Romans to Ops or Tellus, or, in other words, to the 
goddess Earth. The first of May was the time for 
celebrating her festival, and it was also the anniversa¬ 
ry of the dedication of her temple on the Aventine Hill. 
{Ovid, Fast., 5, 148, seq.) She was worshipped by the 
Roman matrons in the house of the chief pontiff, and 
everything relating to the other sex was carefully ex¬ 
cluded. ( Vid. Clodius.) As the most probable deriva¬ 
tion of the name of the month of May is from Maia, it 
has been inferred that this goddess and Bona Dea were 
the same deities. The Romans had a legend among 
them, that Bona Dea was Fauna or Fatua, the daugh¬ 
ter of Faunus, who, out of modesty, never left her 
bower, or let herself be seen of men ; for which she 
was deified, and no man entered her temple. {Ma- 
crob., 1, 12.) 

Bononia, a city of Pannonia, on the Danube, north 
of Sirmium. Its site corresponds with the modern II- 
lock or Ujlak. {Anton., Itin. — Notit. Imp.) —• II. A 
city of Italy. {Vid. Felsina.)—III. A city of Gaul. 

( Vid. Gesoriacum.) 

Bonus Eventus, a Roman deity, whose worship 
was first introduced by the peasants. He was repre¬ 
sented holding a patera or cup in his right hand, and in 
his left ears of corn. ( Varro, de R. R., 1 , 1 . — Plin., 
34, 8.) _ 

Boosura {bovis cauda), a town of Cyprus, on the 

263 



BOS 


BRA 


southwestern coast. Venus had an ancient temple 
here. 

Bootes, a northern constellation, near the Ursa Ma¬ 
jor. The name is Greek, Bouryq, and means “ the 
Oxen-drivcr ,” Bootes being regarded in this sense as 
the driver of the Wain {"Ayatja), another appellation 
for the “ Greater Bear.” ( Aratus , 91 .—Mamlius, 1, 
313.) The Greeks generally saw in Bootes, Areas 
son of Callisto. Ovid, however, calls him on one oc¬ 
casion Lycaon, after the father of Callisto. {Fast., 6, 
235.) Others regarded him as Icarus, the father of 
Erigone. {Vid. Icarus.) Propertius hence calls the 
seven stars of the Greater Bear, “ loves IcariiT {El., 
2, 24, 24.) 

Boreas, the North wind, regarded in the Grecian 
mythology as a deity. According to the poets, he was 
the son of Astrseus and Aurora, but others make him 
the son of the Strymon. He loved Orithyia, the daugh¬ 
ter of Erechtheus, king of Athens, and carried her off 
to Thrace, where she bore him the winged youths 
Zetes and Calais ; and two daughters, Chione and 
Cleopatra. {Plat., Phcedr., 229.—Apollod., 3, 15, 2. 
— Apoll.Rhod., 1, 211.) The Athenians ascribed the 
destruction* of the fleet of Xerxes by a stonn to the 
partiality of Boreas for the country of Orithyia, and 
built a temple to him after that event. {Herod., 7, 
189.) Boreas is also said by Homer to have turned 
himself #nto a horse, out of love to the mares of Erich- 
thonius, and to have begotten on them twelve foals re¬ 
markable for their fleetness. {II, 20, 223 .-Keight- 
ley's Mythology, p. 255, seqq .) 

Borysthenes, I. a large river of Scythia, falling 
into the Euxine Sea, now called the Dnieper. Herod¬ 
otus considers it the greatest of the Scythian rivers 
after the Ister, and as surpassing all others except the 
Nile. He does -not appear, however, to have known 
much about its course, and seems not to have been 
apprized of the famous cataracts of this river, which 
occur at the height of 200 miles above its mouth, and 
are said to extend 40 miles, being 13 in number. ( Vid. 
Danaparis.)—II. There was a city on the banks of this I 
river called Borysthenis, and also Olbia. {Vid. 01- 
bia.)—III. A favourite steed of the Emperor Hadri¬ 
an’s, to whom he erected a monument after death. 

Bosporus, I. a name applied to a strait of the sea. 
There were two straits known in antiquity by this ap¬ 
pellation, namely, the Thracian and the Cimmerian 
Bosporus ; the former now known by the name of the 
Straits or Channel of Constantinople, the latter the 
Straits of Caff a or Theodosia, or, according to a later 
denomination, the Straits of Zabache. By the Rus¬ 
sians, however, it is commonly called the Bosporus. 
Various reasons have been assigned for the name. 
The best is that which makes the appellation refer to 
the early passage of agricultural knowledge from East 
to West {[Sovq, an ox, and iropoc, a passage ). Nym- 
phius tells us, on the authority of Accarion, that the 
Phrygians, desiring to pass the Thracian strait, built 
a vessel, on whose prow was the figure of an ox, call¬ 
ing the strait over which it carried them, j3odq nopoq, 
Bosporus, or the ox’s passage. Dionysius of Halicar¬ 
nassus, Valerius Flaccus, and others of the ancient 
writers, refer the name to the history of Io, who, when 
transformed into a cow (/ 3ovq ) by Juno, swam across 
this strait to avoid her tormentor. Arrian says that 
the Phrygians were directed by an oracle to follow the 
route which an ox would point out to them, and that 
one being roused by them for this purpose, it swam 
across the strait.—The strait ofthe Thracian Bosporus 
properly extended from the Cyanean rocks to the har¬ 
bour of Byzantium or Constantinople. It is said to be 
16 miles in length, including the windings of its course, 
and its ordinary breadth about li miles. In several 
places, however, it is very narrow ; and the ancients 
relate that a person might hear birds sing on the op¬ 
posite side, and that two persons might converse across 


with one another. Herodotus, Polybius, and Arrian 
make its length 120 stadia, from the Cyanean rocks 
to Byzantium. The new castles of Europe and Asia 
are erected on either coast, on the site of the ancient 
temples of Serapis and Jupiter. The old ones, raised 
by the Greek emperors, command the narrowest part 
of the strait, where it is not more than 500 paces 
across. Here Darius is said to have crossed, on his 
expedition against the Scythians.—For some remarks 
on the kings of Bosporus, as they are styled in history, 
consult Clinton's Fasti Hellenici, p. 281, seqq., 2d ed. 
—II. A city in the Chersonesus Taurica, the same as 
Panticapseum. {Vid. Panticapseum.) 

Bottivea, or Botti^eis, a name anciently given to 
a narrow space of country in Macedonia, situated be¬ 
tween the Haliacmon and Lydias, as Herodotus in¬ 
forms us (7, 127); but in Another passage he extends it 
beyond the Lydias as far as the Axius. The Bottiai 
had been, however, early expelled from this district by 
the Macedonian princes, and had retired to the other 
side of the Axius, about Therme and Olynthus {Hero- 
dot., 8, 127), where they formed a new settlement with 
the Chalcidians, another people of Thracian origin, oc- 
cupying the country of Chalcidice. {Cramer's Anc. 
Greece, vol. 1, p. 220.) 

Boudicea or Boadicea, queen of the Iceni, in Brit¬ 
ain, during the reign of Nero. Having been treated 
in the most ignominious manner by the Romans, she 
headed a general insurrection of the Britons, attacked 
the Roman settlements, reduced London to ashes, and 
put to the sword all strangers to the number of 70,000. 
Suetonius, the Roman general, defeated her in a de¬ 
cisive battle, and Boudicea, rather than fall into the 
hands of her enemies, put an end to her own life by 
poison. {Tacit., Ann., 14, 31.) 

Bovill^e, I. an ancient town of Latium, on the Ap- 
pian Way, between the ninth and tenth mile-stones ; 
and answering, according to the opinion of Holstenius, 
to the situation of the inn called V Osteria delle Frat- 
tochie. It is distinguished from another town of the 
same name in Novum Latium by the title of Suburba¬ 
ns. Bovillse was one of the first towns conquered by 
the Romans, according to Florus (1, 11). We learn 
from Cicero that it was a municipium {Orat. pro.Plan- 
cio ), but he represents it as almost deserted.—II. A 
town of Novum Latium ; its precise situation has not 
been ascertained. Vulpius says, that some vestiges 
of this town may be traced near a place called Bauco, 
not far from Veroh. {Vet. Lat., p. 120.) 

Brachmanes, Indian philosophers. {Vid. Gymno- 
sophist®.) 

Branchiades, a surname of Apollo. {Vid. Bran- 
chid®.) 

Branchid^, I. the inhabitants of a small town in 
Sogdiana, on the river Oxus, put to the sword by Al¬ 
exander. They were descended from the Branchid®, 
a family who held the priesthood ofthe temple of Apol¬ 
lo Didymffius at Didymi near Miletus. The Persians 
under Xerxes plundered and burned the temple, and 
the Branchid®, who had betrayed it into their hands, 
became, on the defeat of Xerxes, the voluntary compan¬ 
ions of his flight, in order to avoid the justice of their 
countrymen. They settled on the Oxus, and grew up 
into a small state. Alexander’s motive in the cruel 
massacre of this people was retaliation for the sacri- 
iege of their ancestors. ( Curt., 7, 5.)—II. The priests 
ol Apollo Didym®us, who gave oracles in Caria. ( Vid 
Didymi.) 

Branchus, a youth of Miletus, beloved by Apollo 
who gave him the power of prophecy. He gave ora¬ 
cles at Didymi. ( Vid. Didymi.) 

Brasidas, son of Tellis, was a celebrated Spartan 
commander during the Peloponnesian war, and gained 
many successes over the Athenians. The principal 
scene of his operations was in the north, in that part of 
Thrace, or, rather, Macedonia, which was so numerous- 





BRE 


BRI 


ly settled by Greek colonies, a large number of which 
he brought under the control of Sparta by his arms or 
personal influence. He lost his life at the taking of 
Amphipolis. {Vid. Amphipolis.) The virtues of his 
private character were worthy of the best days of 
Sparta. ( Thucyd ., 2, 25.— Id,., 4, 11.— Id., 4, 78.— 
Id., 4, 81.— Id., 4, 102, &c .—Id., 5, 10.) 

Brasidea, festivals at Lacedaemon, in honour of 
Brasidas. None but freemen born Spartans were per¬ 
mitted to enter the lists, and such as were absent were 
fined. • • 

Brauron, a town of Attica, celebrated in mytholo¬ 
gy as the place where Iphigenia first landed after her 
escape from Tauris with the statue of Diana. From 
this circumstance, the goddess was here held in pecu¬ 
liar veneration, under the title of Brauronia. ( Pausan ., 
1, 33. — Steph. Byz., s. v. Bpavpdv. — Strabo, 398.) 
The ruins of Brauron are pointed out by modern trav¬ 
ellers near the spot called Palaio Braona. Chandler 
calls the modern site Vronna. (Travels, vol. 2, ch. 
34. — Compare Gcll's Itinerary, p. 77.) — Diana had 
three festivals here, called Brauronia, celebrated once 
every fifth year by ten men who were called leporcoioL 
They sacrificed a goat to the goddess, and it was usual 
to sing one of the books of Homer’s Iliad. The most 
remarkable that attended were young virgins in yellow 
gowns, consecrated to Diana. They were about ten 
) T ears of age, and not under five, and therefore their 
consecration was called deuareveiv, from Sena, decern; 
and sometimes dpureveiv, as the virgins themselves 
bore the name of dpuroi, bears , from this circumstance. 
There was a bear in one of the villages of Attica so 
tame, that he ate with the inhabitants, and played harm¬ 
lessly with them. This familiarity lasted long, till a 
young virgin treated the animal too roughly, and was 
killed* by it. The virgin’s brother killed the bear, and 
the country was soon after visited by a pestilence. 
The oracle was consulted, and the plague removed by 
consecrating virgins to the service of Diana. This 
was so faithfully observed, that no woman in Athens 
was ever married before a previous consecration to 
the goddess. The statue of Diana of Tauris, which 
had been brought into Greece by Iphigenia, was pre¬ 
served in the town of Brauron. Xerxes carried it 
away when he invaded Greece. ( Cramer's Ancient 
Greece, vol. 2, p. 382.) 

Brenni and Breuni, a people of Italy, occupying, 
together with the Genauni, the present Val d'Agno 
and Val Braunia, to the east and northeast of the 
Lacus Verbanus ( Lago Maggiore). They, together 
with the Genauni, were subdued by Drusus, whose 
victory Horace celebrates. Strabo calls them Brenci 
andGenaui; others term the former Breuni. {Horat., 
Od., 4, 14, 16.) 

Brennus, I. a general of the Galli Senones, who 
entered Italy, defeated the Romans at the river Allia, 
and entered their city without opposition. The Ro¬ 
mans fled into the Capitol, and left the whole city in 
the possession of their enemies. The Gauls climbed 
the Tarpeian rock in the night, and the Capitol would 
have been taken, had not the Romans been awakened 
b} r the noise of the sacred geese in the temple of Juno, 
and immediately repelled the enemy. ( Vid. Manlius.) 
Camillus, who was in banishment, marched to the re¬ 
lief of his country, and so totally defeated the Gauls, 
that not one remained to carry home the news of their 
destruction.—The destruction of the Gauls by Camil¬ 
lus is the national account given by the Roman writers, 
and is replete with error and exaggeration. (Consult 
remarks under the article Camillus.)—As regards the 
name Brennus, it may be remarked, that it is nothing 
more than the Cymric word Brenhin, which signifies 
“ king” or “ leader,” converted into a Latin form. 
The Romans mistook it for a proper name. {Thierry, 
Hist, dss Gaul., vol. 1, p. 57. — Arnold's Rome, vol. 
1, p. 524.) Prichard, however, maintains that it is 
L L 


rather the proper name Bran, which occurs in Welsh 
history. {Arnold, l. c .) — II. Another Gallic leader, 
who made an irruption into Greece at the head of an 
army of his countrymen, consisting of 152,000 foot 
and 20,000 horse. After ravaging various parts of 
Northern Greece, they marched against Delphi, and 
endeavoured to plunder the temple. But the army of 
the invaders, according to the Grecian account, were 
seized with a panic terror during the night, and being 
attacked at daybreak by the Delphians and others of 
the Greeks, retreated in the utmost confusion. Large 
numbers perished, the Greeks continually hanging on 
the skirts of the retreating foe ; and Brennus, wound¬ 
ed, and dispirited by his overthrow, killed himself in a 
fit of intoxication, B.C. 278. {Pausan., 10, 19.— Id., 
10, 23.— Justin, 24, 6, &c.) It would appear, that 
besides the Gauls mentioned here, another body of the 
same race were ravaging Thrace ancl Macedonia ; and 
these latter were they who crossed over into Asia, not 
the remains of the army of Brennus. (Consult Sicbe- 
lis, ad Pausan., 10, 23, 8.) 

Briareus, I. a giant famous in early fable. He and 
his two brothers Cottus and Gyes, were the offspring 
of Uranus and Ge (Coelus and Terra), and had each 
a hundred hands. According to Homer, he was call¬ 
ed of men vEgseon, and by the gods alone Briareus. 
When Juno, Neptune, and Minerva conspired to de¬ 
throne Jupiter, Briareus, being brought by Thetis to 
the aid of Jupiter, ascended the heavens, and seated 
himself next to him, and so terrified the conspirators 
by his fierce and threatening looks, that they shrunk 
from their purpose. {Horn., II., 1, 403.) Briareus 
also appears in fable as one of the Cyclopes. ( Vid. 
Cyclopes.) The name B piupeioc appears to be akin to 
jSpuio, (3piapog, /3pfflu, fdpiOvg, all denoting weight 
and strength. {Keightley's Mythology, p. 48.) — II. 
A Cyclop, made judge between Apollo and Neptune, 
in their dispute about the isthmus and-promontory of 
Corinth. He gave the former to Neptune, and the lat¬ 
ter to Apollo. He is probably the same fabulous per¬ 
sonage with the preceding. {Pausan., 2, 1.) 

Brigantes, a people in the northern parts of Britain, 
regarded as the greatest, most powerful, and most 
ancient of the British tribes. They possessed the 
country from sea to sea, comprising the counties of 
York, Durham, Lancaster, Westmoreland, and Cum¬ 
berland. Their capital was Eboracum, York. The 
Brigantes (Briges, Bryges) would seem to have been 
originally of Thracian origin, and to have wandered 
forth from their mountain homes, between Macedonia 
and Thrace, over various parts of Europe, such as 
Gaul, Spain, Britain, &c. They also penetrated into 
Asia Minor, and were there called Phryges (Phrygi¬ 
ans). Consult, as regards the root of the name, the 
remarks under the article Mesembria. 

Brigantinus Lacus, a lake in Vindelicia, separating 
the Helvetii from the Vindelici and other German 
tribes. Another name for it was Bodamicus Lacus. 
It is now the Lake of Constance ( Constanzcr-Sce ), 
as the Germans call it, who have likewise another ap¬ 
pellation for it, resembling one of the ancient names, 
i. e., Boden-See. {Plin., 9, 17.— Meld, 3, 2.— Amm. 
Marcell., 15, 6.) 

Brigantium, I. called also Brigantia, a city of Vin¬ 
delicia, near the southeastern extremity of the Tjacus 
Brigantinus. It was the station of a force in the time 
of the Antonines, for the purpose of watching the 
movements of the Alemanni. The modern name is 
Bregenoz. —II. A city of Hispania Tarraconensis, now 
Corunna. Some erroneously identify Abobriga with 
this place. {Dio Cass., 37, 53.) 

Brilessus, a name given to the range of hills that 
united Mount Pentelicus with Anchesmus. {Strob., 
399.) The modern name is Turko vouni. {GelVs 
Itin., p. 68 and 77.) 

Brimo (from (dpe/uu, 11 to roar,” “ to rage”), a name 

265 



BRI 


BRI 


given to Hecate, and chiefly employed to denote her 
terrific appearance, especially when she came sum¬ 
moned by magic arts. Apollonius describes her as 
having her head surrounded by serpents twining 
through branches of oak, while torches flamed in her 
hands, and the infernal dogs howled around her. 
(Apoll. R., 3, 1214, seqq.) 

Briseis, a patronymic of Hippodamia, or Lymes- 
sei's, daughter of Brises, high-priest of Jupiter at Ped- 
asus in Troas. She was remarkable for her beauty, 
and was the wife of Mines, who was killed in the siege 
carried on by Achilles against Lyrnessus. From Lyr- 
nessus the Grecian warrior brought her away captive. 
She was taken from him by Agamemnon, during the 
quarrel occasioned by the restoration of Chryseis, but 
she was given back to him, when a reconciliation took 
place. (Horn., II., 1, 336, &c.— Ovid , A. A., 3, 2.— 
Propert., 2, 8, 20* &c.) 

Briseus, a surname of Bacchus, said to signify “ the 
discoverer of honey.” Some derive the appellation 
from the nymphs called Brisse, the nurses of the god. 
Cornutus, the interpreter of Persius, deduces it from 
bns , equivalent, as he informs us, to jucundus. Bo- 
chart gives a Syriac derivation, briz doubsa, “ a lake 
of honey.” ( Rolle, Recherchcs, &c., vol. 3, p. 390.) 

Britanni, the inhabitants of Britain. ( Vid . Bri¬ 
tannia.) 

Britannia, called also Albion. ( Vid. Albion.) 
An island in the Atlantic Ocean, and the largest in 
Europe. The Phoenicians appear to have been early 
acquainted with it, and to have carried on here a traffic 
for tin. ( Vid. Cassiterides.) Commercial jealousy, 
however, induced them to keep their discoveries a pro¬ 
found secret. The Carthaginians succeeded to the 
Phoenicians, but were equally mysterious. Avienus, in 
his small poem entitled Ora Maritima , v. 412, makes 
mention of the voyages of a certain Himilco in this 
quarter, and professes to draw his information from the 
long-concealed Punic Annals. Little was known of 
Britain until Caesar's time, who invaded and endeav¬ 
oured, although ineffectually, to conquer the island. 
After a long interval, Ostorius, in the reign of Claudius, 
reduced the southern part of the island, and Agricola, 
subsequently, in the reign of Domitian, extended the 
Roman dominion to the Frith of Forth and the Clyde. 
The whole force of the empire, although exerted to the 
utmost under Severus, could not, however, reduce to 
subjection the hardy natives of the highlands. Britain 
continued a Roman province until A.D. 426, when the 
troops were in a great measure withdrawn, to assist 
Valentinian the Third against the Huns, and never re¬ 
turned. The Britons had become so enervated under 
the Roman yoke as to be unable to repel the incursions 
of the inhabitants of the north. They invoked, there¬ 
fore, the aid of the Saxons, by whom they were them¬ 
selves subjugated, and at length obliged to take ref¬ 
uge in the mountains of Wales.—The name of Britain 
was unknown to the Romans before the time of Cai- 
sar. Bochart derives it from the Phoenician or He¬ 
brew term Baratanac, “ the land of tin.” Others 
deduce the name of Britons from the Gallic Britti, 
“ painted,” in allusion to the custom on the part of the 
inhabitants of painting their bodies ( Adelung, Mith- 
ndates, vol. 2, p. 50.) Britain was famous for the 
Rom’an walls built in it, of which traces remain at the 
present day. The first was built by Agricola, A.D. 
79, nearly in the situation of the rampart of Hadrian, 
and wall of Severus mentioned below. In A.D. 81, 
Agricola built a line of very strong forts from the Frith 
of Forth to the Frith of Clyde. This, however, was 
insufficient to check the barbarians after his departure. 
In A.D. 120, therefore, Hadrian erected a famous wall 
from Boulness on Solway Frith , to a spot a little be¬ 
yond Newcastle upon Tyne. It was sixty-eight Eng¬ 
lish or seventy-four Roman miles long. Twenty years 
after this, Lollius Urbicus, under the Emperor Anto¬ 


ninus, restored the second wall of Agricola, which is 
commonly called the Vallum Antonini. But the great¬ 
est of all was that of Severus, begun A.D. 209, and 
finished the next year, and w r hich was only a few yards 
north of Hadrian’s wall. It was garrisoned by ten 
thousand men. {Cces., B. G , 4, 21, scq.—Id. ib., 5, 
2, &c.— Id. ib., 6, 13.— Phn., 4, 16.— Mela, 3, 6.— 
Veil. Paterc., 2, 46, &c.) 

Britannicus, Cjesar (Tiberius Claudius German- 
icus), son of the .Emperor Claudius and Messalina, 
was born a few days after the accession of his father 
to the throne. After the return of the emperor from 
his expedition to Britain, the surname of Britannicus 
was bestowed on both the father and son. As the 
eldest son of the emperor, Britannicus was the lawful 
heir to the empire ; but Claudius was prevailed upon 
by his second wife, the ambitious Agrirppina, to adopt 
Domitius Nero, her son by a former marriage, who 
was three years older than Britannicus, and to declare 
him his successor. The venal senate gave its consent. 
In the mean time, Agrippina, under the pretext of 
motherly tenderness, strove to keep Britannicus as 
much as possible in a state of imbecility. She re¬ 
moved his servants, and substituted her own creatures. 
Sosibius, his tutor, was murdered by her contrivance. 
She did not permit him to appear beyond the precincts 
of the palace, and even kept him out of his father’s 
sight, under the pretence that he was insane and epi¬ 
leptic. Although the weak emperor slnrwed that he 
penetrated, tfie artifices of Agrippina, yet his death, 
which she effected by poison, prevented him from re¬ 
trieving his error. Nero was proclaimed emperor, 
while Britannicus was kept in close confinement. In 
a dispute with Nero, Agrippina threatened to place 
Britannicus, who was then fourteen years of age, on 
the throne, upon which Nero caused him to be pois¬ 
oned at a banquet. His funeral took place the same 
night. His body was burned, without any pomp, in. 
the Campus Martius, amid a violent storm, which the 
people regarded as announcing the anger of the gods. 
It is said that Nero had caused the face of his vic¬ 
tim, already blackened with the poison, to be painted 
white, but that the heavy rain washed off this arti¬ 
ficial colour, and the gleam of the lightning revealed 
the crime which had been confided to the bosom of 
the night. According to some authorities, Britanni¬ 
cus was naturally characterized by the same feeble¬ 
ness of spirit as his father, and Nero corrupted and 
abused this youth. They also state, that Agrippina 
advised his death. Racine has immortalized the name 
of this young prince by one of his finest tragedies. 
{Tacit., Ann., 11, 11. — Id. ib., 12, 2. — Id. ib., 12, 
25, et 41. — Id. ib., 13, 16. — Encyclop. Amcric., vol. 
2, p. 275, seqq. — Biogr. Unix., vol. 5, p. 627, seqq.) 

Britomartis, a Cretan nymph, daughter of Jupiter 
and 'Charme, and a favourite companion of Diana. 
Minos, falling in love with her, pursued her for the space 
of nine months, the nymph at times concealing herself 
from him amid the trees, at times among the reeds 
and sedge of the marshes. At length, being nearly 
overtaken by him, she sprang from a cliff into the sea, 
where she was saved in the nets (( ViuTva ) of some fish¬ 
ermen. The Cretans afterward worshipped her as a 
goddess, under the name of Dictynna, from the above 
circumstance, which was also assigned as the reason 
for the cliff from which she threw herself being called 
Dictaeon. At the rites sacred to her, wreaths of pine 
or lentisk were used instead of myrtle, as a branch of 
the latter had caught her garments, and impeded her 
flight. Leaving Crete, Britomartis then sailed for 
HSgina in a boat: the boatman attempted to offer her 
violence, but she got to shore and took refuge in a 
grove on that island, where she became invisible (d^a- 
vr/q) : hence she was worshipped in ^Egina under the 
name of Aphsea. ( Callim., H. in Dian., 190, seqq. 
— Diod. Sic., 5, 76. — Anton., lib. 40. — Pausan., 2, 




BRU 


BRU 


30. — Muller , JEginct., p. 164, seqq. — Keightley's 
Mythology , p. 131.) 

Brixellum, a town of Italy, in Gallia Cispadana, 
northeast of Parma, where Otho slew himself when 
defeated. It is now Brcsello. {Tacit., Hist., 2, 33.) 

Brixia, a city of Gallia Cisalpina, to the west of 
the Lacus Benacus, and southeast of Bergomum. It 
was the capital of the Cenomanni, as we learn from 
Livy (32, 30). Brixia is known to have become a 
Roman colony, but we are not informed at what pe¬ 
riod this event took place. ( Plin ., H. N., 3, 19.) 
Strabo speaks of it as inferior in size to Mediolanum 
and Verona. {Cramers Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 63.) 

Bromius, an appellation given to Bacchus, from 
the noise with.which his festivals were celebrated. It 
is derived from fipeyio, “ to roar." 

Brontes, one of the Cyclopes. The name is de¬ 
rived from ftpovrrj, “ thunder." {Virg., IEn., 8, 425.) 

Bructeri, a people of Germany, between the Am- 
isia or Ems, and Lacus Flevus or Zuyder Zee. {Ta¬ 
cit., Ann., 1, 51.) 

Brundisium, or less correctly Brundusium, a cele¬ 
brated city on the coast of Apulia, in the territory of 
the Calabri. By the Greeks it was called B pevreaiov, 
a word which, in the Mcssapian language, signified a 
stag’s head, from the resemblance which its different 
harbours and creeks bore to the antlers of that animal. 
{Strabo, 282.— Fcstus, s. v. Brundisium. — Stephan. 
Byz., s. v. B pevTsaiov.) It is not necessary to re¬ 
peat the various accounts given by different writers 
respecting the foundation of this city ; its antiquity is 
evident from the statement of Strabo, that Brundisium 
was already in existence, and under the government 
of its own princes, when the Lacedaemonian Phalan- 
thus arrived with his colony in this part of Italy. It 
is recorded also to the honour of the Brundisians, that 
although this chief had been instrumental in depriving 
them of a great portion of their territory, they gener¬ 
ously afforded him an asylum when he was exiled from 
Tarentum, and after his death erected a splendid 
monument to his memory. {Strab., 282.— Aristot., 
Poht., 5, 3.— Justin, 3, 4.) The situation of its har¬ 
bour, so advantageous for communicating with the op¬ 
posite coast of Greece, naturally rendered Brundisium 
a place of great resort, from the time that the colonies 
of that country had fixed themselves on the shores of 
Italy. Herodotus speaks of it as a place generally 
well known, when he compares the Tauric Cherso¬ 
nese to the Iapygian peninsula, which might be con¬ 
sidered as included between the harbours of Brundisi¬ 
um and Tarentum (4, 99.) Brundisium soon became 
a formidable rival to Tarentum, which had hitherto 
engrossed all the commerce of this part of Italy 
{Polyb., frag. 11); nor did the facilities which it af¬ 
forded for extending their conquests out of that country, 
escape the penetrating views of the Romans. Under 
the pretence that several towns on this coast had fa¬ 
voured the invasion of Pyrrhus, they declared war 
against them, and soon possessed themselves of Brun¬ 
disium {Zonar., Ann., 3), whither a colony was sent 
A.U.C. 503. {Flor., 1, 20.— Liv., Epit., 19 .— Veil. 
Paterc., 1, 14.) From this period the prosperity of 
this port continued to increase in proportion with the 
greatness of the Roman empire. Large fleets were 
always stationed there for the conveyance of troops 
into Macedonia, Greece, or Asia ; and from the con¬ 
venience of its harbour, and its facility of access from 
every other part of Italy, it became a place of general 
thoroughfare for travellers visiting those countries. 
When the rapid advance of Caesar forced Pompey to 
remove the seat of war into Epirus, he was for some 
time blockaded by his successful adversary in Brun¬ 
disium, before the return of his fleet enabled him to 
evacuate the place, and carry his troops over to the 
opposite coast. Caesar describes accurately the works 
undertaken there by his orders for preventing the es¬ 


cape of his enemy From his account we learn that 
the city possessed two harbours, one called the inner, 
and the other the outer, communicating by a very 
narrow passage. {Cces., Bell. Civ., 1, 25 — Ap- 
pian, B. C., 2, 49. — Cic., Ep. ad Alt., 9, 12, seqq.) 
Strabo considers the harbour of Brundisium as supe¬ 
rior to that of Tarentum, for the latter was not free 
from shoals. {Strab., 282.—Compare Pigonati, Mem. 
del riaprimento del port, di Brindisi, Nap., 4to, 
1781.) It was at Brundisium that a convention was 
held for the purpose of arranging the existing differ¬ 
ences between Augustus and Marc Antony. {Dio 
Cassius, 48.) Among the commissioners appointed 
by the former was Msecenas, who was accompanied on 
the occasion by Horace. It was this journey which 
produced the humorous satire of Horace (1, 5), and 
which terminates with the poet’s arrival at the place 
of his destination. Brundisium is now Brindisi. Here 
the Appian Way ended. {Vid. Appia Via.— Cra¬ 
mers' Ancient Italy, vol. 2, p. 303, seqq.) 

Brutii, a people of Magna Grsecia, in Italy, below 
Lucania. The origin which ancient historians have 
ascribed to the Brutii, or, as they are called by the 
Greeks, B pernoi, is neither remote nor illustrious : 
they are generally looked upon as descended from 
some refugee slaves and shepherds of the Lucanians, 
who, having concealed themselves from pursuit in the 
forests and mountains with which this part of Italy 
abounds, became, in process of time, powerful from 
their numbers and ferocity. Their very name is said 
to indicate that they were revolted slaves ; B perriovg 
yap naAovcu inroaTarag, says Strabo, speaking of the 
Lucanians. This appellation the insurgents are sup¬ 
posed to have accepted as a term of defiance. {Nie¬ 
buhr, Rom. Hist., vol. 1, p. 51, Cambridge transl.) 
This savage race is represented as pouring forth to 
attack their Lucanian masters, and to molest the Gre¬ 
cian settlers on the coast of either sea; and so for¬ 
midable had they at length rendered themselves, that 
the Lucani were compelled to acknowledge their in¬ 
dependence, and to cede to them all the country south 
of the rivers LaUs and Crathis. This advancement 
of the Brutii to the rank of an independent nation is 
supposed by Diodorus Siculus to have taken place 
about 397 years after the foundation of Rome. Dion, 
the Syracusan, was at this time prosecuting his un¬ 
dertaking against the younger Dionysius ; and it is 
conceived that the hostilities of the Brutii were fo¬ 
mented by his means, in order to prevent the tyrant 
from deriving any aid from his Lucanian allies. {Diod. 
Sic., 16, 15.— Strabo, 255.) The enterprising and 
turbulent spirit of this people was next directed 
against the Greek colonies ; and, in proportion as 
these were rapidly declining, from jealousies and inter¬ 
nal dissensions, and still more from luxury and indo¬ 
lence, their antagonists were acquiring a degree of vig¬ 
our and stability which soon enabled them to accom¬ 
plish their downfall. The Greek towns on the western 
coast, from being weaker and more detached from the 
main body of the Italiot confederacy, first fell into the 
hands of the Brutii. The principal cities of which this 
league was composed now became alarmed for their 
own security, and sought the aid of the Molossian 
Alexander against these dangerous enemies, with 
whom the Lucanians also had learned to make common 
cause. This prince, by his talents and valour, for a 
time checked the progress of these barbarians, and 
even succeeded in penetrating into the heart of their 
country ; but after his death they again advanced, like 
a resistless torrent, and soon reduced the whole of the 
peninsula between the Laus and Crathis, with the ex¬ 
ception of Crotona, Locri, and Rhegium. At this pe¬ 
riod, Rome, the universal foe of all, put an end at once 
to their conquests and independence. After sustain¬ 
ing several defeats, both the Lucanians and Brutii are 
said to have finally submitted to L. Papirius Cursor, 

267 




BRU 


BRUTUS. 


A.U.C. 480, which was two years after Pyrrhus had 
withdrawn his troops from Italy. ( Liv., Epit., 14.— 
Polyb ., 1, G.) The arrival of Hannibal once more, 
however, roused the Brutii to exertion ; they flocked 
eagerly to the victorious standard of that general, who 
was by their aid enabled to maintain his ground in this 
corner of Italy, when all hope of final success seettied 
to be extinguished. But the consequences of this 
protracted warfare proved fatal to the country in which 
it was carried on ; many of the Brutian towns being 
totally destroyed, and others so much impoverished as 
to retain scarcely a vestige of their former prosperity. 
To these misfortunes was added the weight of Roman 
vengeance ; for that power, when freed from her for¬ 
midable enemy, too well remembered the support he 
had derived from the Brutii for so many years to allow 
their defection to pass unheeded. A decree was there¬ 
fore passed, reducing this people to a most abject state 
of dependance : they were pronounced incapable of 
being employed in a military capacity, and their ser¬ 
vices were confined to the menial offices of couriers 
and letter-carriers. ( Strabo , 251.— Id., 253.) 

_ Brutium, or Brutiorum Ager, the country occu¬ 
pied by the Brutii. ( Vid. Brutii.) 

Brutus, I. L. Junius, a celebrated Roman, the au¬ 
thor, according to the Roman legends, of the great 
revolution which drove Tarquin the Proud from his 
throne, and which substituted the consular for the re¬ 
gal government. He was the son of Marcus Junius 
and. of Tarquinia the second daughter of Tarquin. 
While yet young in years, he saw his father and broth¬ 
er slain by the order of Tarquin, and having no means 
of avenging them, and fearing the same fate to him¬ 
self, he affected a stupid air, in order not to appear at 
all formidable in the eyes of a suspicious and cruel 
tyrant. This artifice proved successful, and he so far 
deceived Tarquin, and the other members of the royal 
family, that they gave him, in derision, the surname of 
Brutus, as indicative of his supposed mental imbecility. 
At length, when Lucretia had been outraged by Sextus 
larquinius, Brutus, amid the indignation that pervaded 
all orders, threw off the mask, and, snatching the dag¬ 
ger from the bosom of the victim, swore upon it eternal 
exile to the family of Tarquin. Wearied out with the 
tyranny of this monarch, and exasperated by the spec¬ 
tacle of the funeral solemnities of Lucretia, the people 
abolished royalty, and confided the chief authority to 
the senate and two magistrates, named at first prsetors, 
but subsequently consuls. Brutus and the husband 
of Lucretia were first invested with this important of¬ 
fice. They signalized their entrance upon its duties 
by making all the people take a solemn oath never 
again to have a king of Rome. Efforts nevertheless 
were soon made in favor of the Tarquins : an ambas¬ 
sador sent from Etruria, under the pretext of procuring 
a restoration of the property of Tarquin and his family, 
formed a secret plot for the overthrow of the new gov¬ 
ernment, and the sons of Brutus became connected with 
the conspiracy. A discovery having been made, the 
sons of the consul and their accomplices were tried, 
condemned, and executed by the orders of their father, 
although the people were willing that he should par¬ 
don them. From this time Brutus sought only to die 
himself, and some months after, a battle between the 
Romans and the troops of Tarquin enabled him to 
gratify his wish. He encountered, in the fight, Aruns, 
the son of the exiled monarch ; and with so much im¬ 
petuosity did they rush to the attack, that both fell 
dead on the spot, pierced to the heart, each by the 
weapon of the other. The corpse of Brutus was car¬ 
ried to Rome in triumph. The consul Valerius pro¬ 
nounced a funeral eulogy over it, a statue of bronze 
was raised to the memory of the deceased in the Capi¬ 
tol, and the Roman females wore mourning for an en¬ 
tire year. (Liv., 1, 56.— Id., 2, 1, &c.— Dion. Hal., 
4, 15.— Id., 6 , 1, &c . — Virg., JEn., 6 , 822, seqq.)— 
268 


Such is the legend of Brutus. “ That Brutus procu¬ 
red the banishment of the Tarquins, in his capacity of 
Tribune of the Celeres, is demonstrated,” observes 
Niebuhr, “by the Lex tribumcia. (Pomponius, l. 2, 
D. de origine juris.) From this source came the in¬ 
formation that he bore that office : the lay which spoke 
of his feigned idiocy cannot have known anything of 
this, and was incompatible with it; the annalists com¬ 
bined the two. That poetical tale may have been oc¬ 
casioned by his surname ; which yet may have had a 
very different meaning from the one there affixed to 
it. Brutus, in Oscan, meant a runaway slave : now it 
is easy enough to understand, that the partisans of the 
Tarquins may have called him such, and that, on the 
other hand, he and the Romans might not be sorry to 
let the nickname pass into vogue.” (Rom. Hist., vol. 
1, p. 453, Cambridge transl.) —II. D. Junius, master 
of the horse A.U.C. 418, and consul A.U.C. 429. 
(Liv., 8, 12, et 29.)—III. D. Junius, consul A.U.C. 
615, obtained a triumph for his successes in Spain.— 
IV. M. Junius, father of the Brutus w r ho was concerned 
in the assassination of Caesar. He embraced the party 
of Marius, and was overcome by Pompey. After the 
death of Sylla, and the renewal of hostilities, he -was 
besieged by Pompey in Mutina, who compelled him to 
surrender after a long resistance, and caused him to be 
put to death. He was brother-in-law to Cato by his 
wife Servilia. Brutus was an able lawyer, and wrote 
on the Civil Wars. (Cic., Brut., 62.'— Id., Or., 2, 
32.— Id., pro Cluent., 51.)—V. Marcus Junius, son of 
the preceding, was by the mother’s side nephew ofM. 
Cato (Uticensis). He accompanied his uncle to Cy r - 
prus, A.U.C. 695, where the latter was sent by Clodius 
to annex that island to the Roman empire. It appears, 
however, that he did not copy the example of Cato’s 
integrity ; for, having become the creditor of the citi¬ 
zens of Salamis to a large amount, he employed one 
Scaptius, a man of infamous character, to enforce the 
payment of the debt, together with an interest four 
times exceeding the rate allowed by law. (Cic. ad 
Att., 5, 21. — Id. ib., 6, 1 , seqq.) And when Cicero 
governed the province of Cilicia, to which Cyprus 
seems to have been annexed, Brutus wrote to him, 
and was supported by Atticus in his request, entreat¬ 
ing him to give Scaptius a commission as an officer 
of the Roman government, and to allow him to employ 
a military force, to exact from the Salaminians the usu¬ 
rious interest which he illegally demanded. Cicero 
was too upright a magistrate to comply with such re¬ 
quests, but they were so agreeable to the practice of 
the times, that he continued to live on intimate terms 
with the man who could prefer them ; and the literary 
tastes of Brutus were a recommendation which he 
could not resist; so that he appears soon to have for¬ 
gotten the affair of Scaptius, and to have spoken and 
thought of Brutus with great regard. They both, in¬ 
deed, were of the same party in politics, and Brutus 
actively exerted himself in the service of Pompey, 
although his own father had been put to death by the 
orders of that commander. Being taken prisoner in 
the battle of Pharsalia, he received his life from 
the conqueror. Before Csesar set out for Africa to 
carry on war against Scipio and Juba, he conferred on 
Brutus the government of Cisalpine Gaul, and in that 
province Brutus accordingly remained, and was actual¬ 
ly holding an office under Csesar, while his uncle Cato 
was maintaining the contest in Africa, and committed 
suicide rather than fall alive into the hands of the ene¬ 
my. His character, however, seems to have been 
greatly improved since his treatment of the Salamin¬ 
ians, for he is said to have governed Cisalpine Gaul 
with great integrity and humanity. In the year 708 
he returned to Rome, but afterward set out to meet 
Caesar on his return from Spam, and in an interview 
which he had with him, at Nicsea, pleaded the cause 
of Deiotarus, tetrarch of Galatia, with such warmth 






BRUTUS. 


BUC 


and freedom, that Csesar was struck by it, and was re¬ 
minded of what he used frequently to say of Brutus, 
that, what his inclinations might be, made a very great 
ditference ; but that, whatever they were, they would 
be nothing lukewarm. It was about this time also that 
Brutus divorced his first wife, Appia, daughter of Ap- 
pius Claudius, and married the famous Porcia, his 
cousin, the daughter of Cato. Soon after he received 
another mark of Cssar’s favour ( Pint., Vit. Brut., c. 7. 
—Dio Cass., 44, 12), in being appointed PrsetorUrba- 
nus, A.U.C. 709 ; and he was holding that office when 
he resolved to become the assassin of the man whose 
government he had twice acknowledged by consenting 
to act in a public station under it. He was led into 
the conspiracy, it is said, by Cassius, who sought at 
first by writing, and afterward by means of his wife 
Junia, the sister of Brutus, to obtain his consent to be¬ 
come an accomplice ; and Plutarch informs us, that 
when the attack was made on Caesar in the senate- 
house, the latter resisted and endeavoured to escape, 
until he saw the dagger of Brutus pointed against him, 
when he covered his head with his robe and resigned 
himself to his fate. After the assassination of Caesar, 
the conspirators endeavoured to stir up the feelings of 
the people in favour of liberty; but Antony, by reading 
the will of the dictator, excited against them so violent 
a storm of odium, that they were compelled to flee from 
the city. Brutus retired to Athens, and used every 
exertion to raise a party there among the Roman no¬ 
bility. Obtaining possession, at the same time, of a 
large sum of the public money, he was enabled to bring 
to his standard many of the old soldiers of Pompey 
who were scattered about Thessaly. His forces dai¬ 
ly increasing, he soon saw himself surrounded by a 
considerable army, and Hortensius, the governor of 
Macedonia, aiding him, Brutus became master in this 
way of all Greece and Macedonia. He went now to 
Asia and joined Cassius, whose efforts had been equal¬ 
ly successful. In Rome, on the other hand, the trium¬ 
virs were all powerful ; the conspirators had been con¬ 
demned, and the people had taken up arms against 
them. Brutus and Cassius returned to Europe to op¬ 
pose the triumvirs, and Octavius and Antony met them 
on the plains of Philippi. In this memorable conflict 
Brutus commanded the right wing of the republican 
army, and defeated the division of the enemy opposed 
to him, and would in all probability have gained the 
day, if, instead of pursuing the fugitives, he had brought 
succours to his left wing, commanded by Cassius, which 
was hard pressed and eventually beaten by Antony. 
Cassius, upon this, believing everything lost, slew him¬ 
self in despair. Brutus bitterly deplored his fate, sty¬ 
ling him, with tears of the sincerest sorrow, “ the last 
of the Romans.” On the following day, induced by 
the ardour of the soldiers, Brutus again drew up his 
forces in line of battle, but no action took place, and 
he then took possession of an advantageous post, where 
it was difficult for an attack to be made upon him. His 
true policy was to have remained in this state, without 
hazarding an engagement, for his opponents were dis¬ 
tressed for provisions, and the fleet that was bringing 
them supplies had been totally defeated by the vessels 
of Brutus. This state of things, however, was un¬ 
known to the latter, and, after an interval of twenty 
days, he hazarded a second battle. Where he himself 
fought in person, he was still successful; but the rest 
of his army was soon overcome, and the conflict ended 
in a total defeat of the republican army. Escaping 
with only a few friends, he passed the night in a cave, 
and, as he saw his cause irretrievably ruined, ordered 
Strato, one of his attendants, to kill him. Strato re¬ 
fused for a long time to perform the painful office; 
but, seeing Brutus resolved, he turned away his face, 
and held his sword while Brutus fell upon it. He died 
in the forty-third year of his age, B.C. 42.—A great 
deal of false glare has been thrown round the charac¬ 


ter of Brutus. That he was a stern and consistent 
patriot throughout the whole of his career, the sketch 
which we have given of his movements prior to the 
assassination of Caesar most clearly disproves. Why 
hold office under one who was trampling upon the 
liberties of his country 1 Why require so much soli¬ 
citation before engaging in the conspiracy! Was he 
not aware that Caesar was a usurper! — this would 
show a miserable want of penetration. Or did he pre¬ 
fer security to danger!—where was the Roman pa¬ 
triot in this ! The truth is, Brutus, notwithstanding 
all that has been said of him, was but a tardy patriot. 
His motives towards the close of his career were no 
doubt pure enough, but he ought to have had nothing to 
do with Caesar the moment that general began to act 
with treason towards his country.—As a student and 
man of letters, the character of Brutus appears to more 
advantage than as a patriot. He was remarkable for 
literary application, usually rising with this view long 
before day, and it is said that, on the evening previous 
to a battle, while his army was in a state of anxious 
suspense and alarm, he calmly occupied himself in his 
tent with writing an abridgment of the history of Po¬ 
lybius.—One of the most singular circumstances in the 
life of Brutus is that of the so-called apparition, which 
it is said appeared to him, on one occasion, in his tent 
at midnight. “Who art thou!” inquired Brutus. 
“ Thy evil genius,” replied the phantom ; “ we will 
meet again at Philippi.” And so it happened. The 
spirit re-appeared on the eve of the second battle of 
Philippi! We have here either an illusion on the part 
of Brutus, or a trick played off by some partisan of 
Antony’s, in order to discourage and depress the re¬ 
publican commander, or, what is most likely of all, a 
tale utterly untrue. ( Plut., Vit. Brut. — Encyclop. 
Metropl., Div. 3, vol. 2, p. 274, seqq.) 

Bryges, a people of Thracian origin, living at one 
time in Macedonia. They afterward crossed into 
Asia, where their name was changed to Phryges. 
( Vid. Phrygia.) 

Bubasticus Fluvius (BovfjacjTucoc TcoTa/uoq, Ptol.), 
a name sometimes given to the easternmost arm of the 
Nile, from the circumstance of its passing by the city 
ofBubastis. (Vid. Bubastis.) 

Bubastis (or Bubastus), a city of Egypt, in the 
eastern part of the Delta, and the capital of the Bubas- 
titic nome. This city is called in scripture Phi-Beseth, 
which is now altered into Basta. It was situated on 
a canal leading from the Pelusiac mouth of the Nile 
to the canal of Trajan. The Pelusiac branch was 
sometimes called, from this city, the Bubastic. Bu¬ 
bastis was remarkable also as being the place where 
great numbers assembled to celebrate the festival of 
the goddess Bubastis, who had a splendid temple here. 
More than 70,000 persons were accustomed to meet 
here on these occasions. The custom had ceased, 
howaver, in the time of Herodotus. This was the 
place, also, where the sacred cats were interred. Ja- 
blonski ( Panth. JEgypt., 3, 3.— Voc. JEgypt., p. 53) 
explains the name Bubastis to mean, “ she who bares,” 
or “ uncovers ,” or “ she who multiplies her aspects .” 
This appellation suited very well, therefore, the god' 
dess of the new or increasing moon, for such Bubas¬ 
tis, the Egyptian deity, in reality was. Hence, too, 
we see why Herodotus says, that the name “ Bubastis,” 
in the Egyptian tongue, was equivalent to “ Artemis,” 
or Diana, in Greek {y 6b B ovdaong, Kara 'E/lAdde 
■yXficaav, fori 'kprepiq. Herod., 2, 137). 

Bucephala, a city of India, near the Hydaspes, 
built by Alexander in honour of his favourite horse Bu¬ 
cephalus. It is supposed to have been situated some¬ 
where on the road between Attock and Lahaur. 
(Curt., 9, 3.— Justin, 12, 8.) 

Bucephalus, a horse of Alexander’s, so called 
either because his head resembled that of an ox (fiobq 
tce<paXr/), or because he had the mark of an ox’s head 

269 




BUP 


BUR 


impressed upon his flank ; or, according to another 
account, because he had a black mark upon his head 
resembling that of an ox, the rest of his body being 
white. Plutarch gives an account of the mode in 
which Bucephalus came into the hands of Alexander. 
The horse had been offered for sale to Philip, the 
prince’s father, by a Thessalian, but had proved so un¬ 
manageable that the monarch refused to purchase, 
and ordered it to be taken away. Alexander there¬ 
upon expressing his regret that they were losing so 
fine a horse for want of skill and spirit to manage 
it, Philip agreed to pay the price of the steed if his 
son would ride it. The prince accepted the offer, 
and succeeded in the attempt. Bucephalus, after this, 
would allow no one but Alexander to mount him, and 
he accompanied the monarch in all his campaigns. In 
the battle with Poms, he received, according to the 
same authority, several wounds, of which he died not 
long after. A writer, however, quoted by the same 
Plutarch, states that he died of age and fatigue, being 
thirty years old. Arrian also {Exp. Al., 5, 19) ex¬ 
pressly confirms this last account: uTrcOavev avrov, 
ov fiXydelg irpug ovdevog, dXk' (Pro navparog te aal 
y?UKiag • yv yap upcjil ru Tpidaovra err]. Alexander, 
upon this occasion, showed as much regret as if he 
had lost a faithful friend and companion. He built a 
city near the Hydaspes, which he called Bucephala, 
after the name of his steed. {Pint., Vit. Alex., 61.— 
Plin., 6, 20 .—Ptol., 7, l.—Diod. Sic., 17, 95.) 

Bucolicum, one of the mouths of the Nile, situate 
between the Sebennytic and Mendesian mouths. It 
is' the same with the Phatnetic. {Herod., 2, 17.) 

Bulis, I. a town of Phocis, on the shore of the 
Sinus Corinthiacus, southeast of Anticyra. The town 
was situate on a hill, only seven stadia from its port, 
which is doubtless the same as the Mychos of Strabo, 
and the Naulochus of Pliny (4, 3). Pausanias seems 
to assign Bulis to Boeotia (10, 37), but Steph. Byz., 
Pliny, and Ptolemy (p. 87), to Phocis. {Cramer's 
Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 158.)—II. A Lacedaemonian, 
given up to Xerxes, along with his countryman Sper- 
thias, to atone for the conduct of the Spartans in put¬ 
ting the king’s messengers to death. The king, how¬ 
ever, refused to retaliate. {Herod., 7, 134, &c.) 

Bullatius, a friend of Horace’s, who was roaming 
abroad for the purpose of dispelling his cares. The 
poet addressed an epistle to him, in which he instructs 
him that happiness does not depend upon climate or 
place, but upon the state of one’s own mind. {Horat., 
Epist., 1, 11.) 

Bupalus, a sculptor and architect, born in the isl¬ 
and of Chios, and son of Anthemius, or rather Archen- 
nus. {Vid. Anthermus.) He encountered the ani¬ 
mosity of the poet Hipponax {Callim., Fragm. 90, p. 
460, ed. Ernest.), the cause of which is said to have 
been the refusal of Bupalus to give his daughter in 
marriage to Hipponax, while others inform us that it 
was owing to a statue made in derision of the poet by 
Bupalus. {Welcker, Fragm. Hippon., 12.) The satire 
and invective of the bard were so severe, that, accord¬ 
ing to one account, Bupalus hung himself in despair. 
{Horat., Epod,.,' 6, 14.— Acron. ad Horat., 1. c. — Plin., 
36, 5.) As Hipponax flourished in the reign of Da¬ 
rius ( Proclus, ad fin., Hcphast., p. 380, ed. Gaisf.), 
Bupalus must have been living not only in Olymp. 
58, but also very probably in Olymp. 64. His broth¬ 
er’s name was Athenis. In addition to the statue 
which Bupalus made in derision of Hipponax, other 
works are mentioned by Pliny (/. c .) as the joint pro¬ 
ductions of the two brothers. {Sillig, Diet. Art., 
s. v.) 

Buphonia, a festival in honour of Jupiter at Athens. 
The legend connected with this festival is a singular 
one. Among the laws given by Triptolemus to the 
Athenians, three more especially remarkable were : 

“ Reverence your elders—Honour the gods bv offer- 
270 


ings of the first fruits.—Hurt not the labouring beast/ 7 
i. e., the beast employed in agriculture. The first who 
offended against this last command wasaperson named 
Thaulon, who, at the feast of Zevg EoTuevg, observing 
a steer eating the sacred iroivavov on the altar, took up 
an axe and slew the trespasser. The expiation-feast 
(B ov^ovia), instituted for the purpose of atoning for 
this involuntary offence, it was found afterward ex¬ 
pedient to continue. The ceremonies observed in it 
arc not a little amusing. First was brought water by 
females appointed for the office, for the purpose of 
sharpening the axe and knife, with which the slaughter 
was to be committed. One of these females having 
handed the axe to the proper functionary, the latter 
felled the beast and then took to flight. To slay the 
beast outright was the office of a third person. All 
present then partook of the flesh. The meal finished, 
the hide was stuffed, and the beast, apparently restored 
to life, was put to the plough. Now commenced the 
steer-trial. A judicial assembly was held in the Pry- 
taneum,to which all were summoned who had been par¬ 
takers in the above transaction. Each lays the blame 
upon the other. The water-bearers throw the guilt 
upon the sharpener of the axe and knife : the sharpener 
of the knife casts it upon the person delivering it to the 
feller of the beast: the feller of the beast upon the 
actual slaughterer, while this last ascribes the whole 
guilt to the knife itself. The knife, unable to speak, 
is found guilty and thrown into the sea. {Arisloph., 
Nub., 945. — Mitchell, ad Aristoph., 1. c. — Crcuzer, 
Symbolik, vol. 4, p. 123, seq.) 

Buprasium, a city of Elis. It was the first town 
on the Elean side of the Larissus, and is often men¬ 
tioned by Homer as one of the chief cities of the Epe- 
ans. {II, 2, 615.—//., 11, 755.) 

Buea, one of the twelve original Achaean cities, as 
we learn from Herodotus (1, 146), which stood at first 
close to the sea ; but having been destroyed, with the 
neighbouring town of Helice, by a terrible earthquake 
and inundation, the surviving inhabitants rebuilt it af¬ 
terward, about forty stadia from the coast, and near the 
small river Buraicus. {Paus., 7, 25.— Strabo, 386.) 

Buraicus, I. an epithet applied to Hercules, from 
his temple near Bura.—II. A river of Achaia, near the 
towrn of Bura. {Pausan., 7, 25.) 

Burgundi, a German nation, one of the principal 
branches of the Vandals. They can be traced back 
to the country between the Viadrus {Oder) and the 
Vistula, in what is now the New Mark, and the south¬ 
ern part of West Prussia. They were distinguished 
from the other Germans by living together in villages, 
burgen, whence, according to some, they received the 
name of Burgundi. Others, however, derive the name 
from Gunt, “ combat,” as alluding to the warlike char¬ 
acter of the race, and make Burgundi mean “ the lance 
of war.” ( Malte-Brun, Diet. Gcogr., p. xiii., Vocab. 
de mots gencriques.) Their dwelling in villages, and 
not leading, like the rest of the Germans, a wandering 
life, is the reason why they retained possession of their 
country much longer than the neighbouring Goths and 
Vandals, till, at length, they were no longer able to 
withstand the Gepidse, who pressed in upon them from 
the mouths of the Vistula. In consequence of the loss 
of a great battle with the Gepidas, they emigrated to 
Germany, where they advanced to the region of the 
Upper Rhine, and settled near the Alemanni. From 
these they took a considerable tract of country, and 
lived in almost continual war with them. In the 
beginning of the fifth century, with other German na¬ 
tions, they passed over into Gaul. After a long strug¬ 
gle, and many losses, they succeeded in possessing 
themselves of the southeastern part of this country by 
a contract with the Romans. A part of Switzerland 
Savoy, Dauphiny, Lionnais, and Franche-Conte, be¬ 
longed to their new kingdom, which, even in the year 
470, was known by the name of Burgundy. The seat 






BUS 


BUT 


of government seems to have been sometimes Lyons 
(Lugdunum), and sometimes Geneva.—By their old 
constitution, they had kings, called hendvnos , whom 
they chose and deposed at their pleasure. If any great 
calamity befell them, as a failure of the crops, a pesti¬ 
lence, or a defeat, the king was made responsible for 
it, and his throne was given to another, from whom 
they hoped for better times. Before their conversion 
to Christianity (which happened after their settlement 
in Gaul), they had a high-priest called Sinestus, whose 
person was sacred, and whose office was for life. The 
trial by combat even then existed among them, and 
was regarded as an appeal to the judgment of God.— 
Continually endeavouring to extend their limits, they 
became engaged in a war with the Franks, by whom 
they were at last completely subdued, under the son of 
Clovis, after Clovis himself had taken Lyons. They 
still preserved their constitution, laws, and customs for 
a time. But the dignity of king was soon abolished, 
and, under the Carlovingians, the kingdom was divided 
into provinces, which, from time to time, shook off 
their dependance. Their later movements belong to 
modern history. {Claud., Mamert. Paneg. Maxim- 
ian., c. 5.— Hadrian, Vales. Rer. Franc., 1, p. 50.— 
Jornand., de Regnor. Success., p. 54.— Id., de rcb. Get., 

р. 98. — Paul. Warnefr. dc gest. Longob., 3, 3.— 
Encyclop. Americ., vol. 2, p. 329.) 

BusIris, a king of Egypt, son of Neptune and Ly- 
sianassa, daughter of Epaphus, or (as Plutarch states, 
from the Samian Agatho), of Neptune and Anippe, 
daughter of the Nile. ( Plut ., Par all., p. 317.) This 
king, in consequence of an oracle, offered up strangers 
on the altar of Jupiter : for Egypt having been afflicted 
with a dearth for nine years, a native of Cyprus, named 
Thrasius, agreat soothsayer, came thither, andsaid that 
it would cease if they sacrificed a stranger every year 
to Jupiter. Busiris sacrificed the prophet himself first 
of all, and then continued the practice. When Her¬ 
cules, in the course of his wanderings, came into Egypt, 
he was seized and dragged to the altar; but he burst 
his bonds, and slew Busiris, his son Amphidamas, and 
his herald Chalbes. {Apollod., 2, 5, 11.)—Now who 
was this Busiris 1—We have here a question to which 
the ancients themselves gave very different answers. 
Isocrates, in defending the memory of the Egyptian 
monarch, pretends that he lived two centuries before 
Perseus, and, consequently, long anterior to Hercules. 
{Isocr., Busir., c. 15.) Other writers have made 
mention of from three to five kings of Egypt bearing 
this same name. ( Heyne, ad Apollod., 1. c. — Sturz., 
ad Pherecyd., p. 141. — Compare Theon., Progymn ., 

с. 6.— Syncell., Chron., p. 152.— Interpret, ad Diod., 
1, 88.) Herodotus contradicts the common tradition, 
and seeks to free the Egyptians from the reproach of 
having offered up human victims. He may be right as 
regards the times immediately preceding the period 
when he himself flourished, since it is well known that 
King Amasis abolished human sacrifices at Heliopolis, 
and great changes took place also after the Persian 
conquest. Still, however, numerous scenes and ima¬ 
ges delineated in the temples and sepulchres of Egypt, 
speak but too plainly for the existence of this frightful 
custom in earlier times. {Costaz, Descript, de I Eg , 
vol. 1, c. 9, p. 401. — Guigniaut, planche xliv.— 
Compare Manetho, ap. Porphyr. de Abstin., 2, 55.— 
Plut., de Is. et Os., p. 558, ed. Wyttenb. — Plut., de 
Malign. Herod., p. 857.) According to Eratosthenes, 
as cited by Strabo (802), Egypt never had a king 
named Busiris, but the whole superstructure of fable 
erected upon this name has no other origin than the 
odious inhospitality of the inhabitants of the Busiritic 
nome. We have here, without doubt, a glimpse of the 
truth, which is fully revealed to us by Diodorus Siculus. 
According to this writer, or, rather, the tradition col¬ 
lected by him, the kings of Egypt immolated in earlier 
times, on the tomb of Osiris, men of the same colour 


with Typhon, that is, red-haired. {Diod. Sic., 1, 88.) 
They sacrificed also cattle of this same hue, a circum¬ 
stance that reminds us of the red heifer mentioned in 
scripture {Numb., 19, 2.—Compare Spencer, de Le- 
gibus Hebr. ritual., 15, p. 489, ed. Pfaff. — Witsius, 
JEgyptiac., 2, 8). Now, continues Diodorus, these 
red-haired persons were almost always strangers, few 
of the Egyptians being found with hair of that colour ; 
and hence arose the fable of human sacrifices by Bu¬ 
siris. In fact, expressly adds this writer, Busiris is not 
the name of a king, but means, in the -Egyptian lan¬ 
guage, “the tomb of Osiris.” We have here, then, a 
solution of the whole legend. The fettered Hercules 
is the sun in the winter season, enfeebled and in the 
hands of his enemy. He is about to become the prey 
of the tomb (the victim of Busiris); but, on a sudden, 
resumes his strength, breaks his fetters, and triumphs 
over gloom and darkness.—But why sacrifice victims 
of the peculiar colour mentioned above 1 Possibly we 
have here a traditionary allusion to the shepherd race, 
the red-haired, blue-eyed strangers, who once overran 
the land, and whose cruel devastations well entitled 
them to be identified, in a degree, with Typhon, the 
spirit of all evil.—Jablonski {Voc. JEgypt., p. 54) and 
Zoega {de Obelise., p. 288) explain the word Busiris 
through the Coptic Bc-Ousiri, i. e., “the tomb of Osi¬ 
ris,” in accordance with the remark of Diodorus men¬ 
tioned above. Champollion, on the other hand, writes 
the word Pousiri, and sees in it only the name of Osi¬ 
ris, preceded by the article. He condemns, at the same 
time, as altogether absurd, the etymology given by 
many of the Greeks, namely, Bofif and ’'Oaipiq. (Com¬ 
pare Stcph. Byz., s. v.) Agreeing with him on this 
latter point, we must nevertheless regard the expla¬ 
nation of Diodorus, which he also rejects, as entitled 
to great weight. Plutarch, moreover {de Is. et Os., 
c. 21), says expressly, that Bovaipiq is the same as 
T atyocipiq, which he derives, in consequence, from 
rdcjioq, “a tomb," and ’'O atpiq. {Crcuzer, Symbolik, 
vol. 1, p. 353, seqq. — Guigniaut, vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 848, 
seqq .)—II. There were three or four cities of this name 
in ancient Egypt, the most celebrated of which is 
placed by Herodotus in the centre of the Delta. It 
had a magnificent temple of Isis. {Herod., 2, 59.— 
Compare Strab., 802. — Diod. Sic., 1, 85, et 88.—- 
Wcsseling, ad Diod., 1. c. — Champollion, VEgypte 
sous les Pharaons, vol. 1, p. 365 ; vol. 2, p. 42, &c.) 
It is worthy of remark, that these were all sepulchral 
cities. ( Guigniaut, l. c .) 

Butes, I. one of the descendants of Amycus, king 
of the Bebryces, very expert in the combat of the cestus. 
He was one of the Argonauts, and leaped overboard in 
order to swim to the island of the Sirens, but Venus 
caught him up and conveyed him to Lilybseum in Si¬ 
cily. Here she became by him the mother of Eryx. 
{Apoll. R ., 4, 912.— Virg., AEhi., 5, 372.)—II. A son 
of Pandion king of Athens, and brother of Erechtheus. 
The father divided his offices between his two sons, 
giving Erechtheus his kingdom, and Butes the priest¬ 
hood of Minerva and Neptune Erichthonius. Butes 
married Chthonia, the daughter of his brother, and the 
sacerdotal family of the Butadae deduced their lineage 
from him. {Apollod., 3, 15, 1.) — III. An armour- 
bearer to Anchises, and afterward to Ascanius. Apollo 
assumed his shape when he descended from heaven to 
encourage Ascanius to fight. Butes w 7 as killed by 
Turnus. {Vug., Mn., 9, 647 ; 12, 632.) 

Buthrotcjm, a town of Epirus, opposite Corcyra. 
It was originally a small village, but was subsequently 
fortified by the Romans, in order to keep in subjection 
the inhabitants of the interior, and became a place of 
great consequence. Virgil makes Helenus to have 
reigned here. {jEn., 3, 295, seqq.) Stephanus By- 
zantinus derives the name from an ox (/ 3ovq ) having 
broken loose at this place when about being sacrificed. 
{Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 107.) 


271 




B YZ 


BYZANTIUM. 


Butus, a city of Egypt, at the Sebennytic mouth 
of the Nile, or, rather, on the southern shore of the 
Butus Lacus, the outlet from which into the sea is 
formed by the Ostium Sebennyticum. It was famed 
for its temples of Apollo, Diana, and Latona, that is, 
of Egyptian deities supposed to coincide with these. 
The temple of Latona had a celebrated oracle con¬ 
nected with it, and the goddess had also an annual fes¬ 
tival here, which was one of the most numerously at¬ 
tended in Egypt. The shrine of the goddess, accord¬ 
ing to Herodotus, was of one solid stone, having equal 
sides, each side forty cubits long. It was brought 
from a quarry in the isle of Phila3, near the cataracts, 
on rafts, for the distance of200 leagues, to its destined 
station, and seems to have been the heaviest weight 
ever moved by human power. It employed many 
thousand men for three years in its transportation. 
The modern Kom-Kasir is thought to correspond to 
the ancient city. Schlichthorst, however, gives the 
modern name of the ancient site as El-Bueib. {He¬ 
rod., 2, 59, et 63.— Plin., 5, 10.) 

Byblus, a town of Phoenicia, nearly midway be¬ 
tween Tripolis and Berytus. Stephanus of By¬ 
zantium calls it a very ancient city, but this expres¬ 
sion suits better an earlier place, called Palseobyblus. 
The name Byblus itself shows very plainly that the 
founders of the place were Greeks, and merely took 
the inhabitants of Palseobyblus to reside with them. 
The influence of Grecian customs here is also shown 
by the worship of Adonis, to whom a temple was con¬ 
secrated in this city, and the river called after whom 
was in the neighbourhood of this place. Byblus did 
not lie directly on the coast, but on a height at some 
distance from it. The modern name is Esbile , or, ac¬ 
cording to the Frank pronunciation, Dschibile. The 
appellation Zebelet occurs already in Phocas. {Joh. 
Phoc., c. 5.— Mannert, Gcogr., vol. 6, pt. 1, p. 383.) 

Byrsa, the citadel of Carthage. The story com¬ 
monly told about the origin of its name is as follows : 
When Dido came to Africa, she bought of the inhabi¬ 
tants as much land as could be encompassed by a 
bull’s hide. After the agreement, she cut the hide in 
small thongs, and enclosed a large piece of territory, 
on which she built a citadel, which she called Byrsa 
{fivpoa, a hide). This, however, is a mere fable of 
the Greeks. The name is derived from the Punic 
term Basra, “ a fortification,” “ a citadel,” the sibilant 
being transposed. {Gesen., Pham. Mon., p. 420.— 
Compare Heyne, ad Virg., Mn., 1, 367.— Valck., 
Opusc., vol. 1, p. 103.) 

Byzacium, a district of Africa Propria, lying above 
the Syrtis Minor. The Carthaginians were the pos¬ 
sessors of it, and for a long time allowed no Roman 
vessels to navigate the coast below the Hermean 
promontory, fearful lest their enemies might be tempt¬ 
ed to seize what formed the granary of Carthage. 
This district was originally distinct from what was 
termed Emporise, which lay below it. Afterward, 
however, they became united into one, and the terri¬ 
tory of Byzacium was extended upward as far as the 
river Bagradas, thus forming the Byzacena Provincia. 
{Plin., 5, 4 .—Lw., 29, 21 'x—Polyb ., 1 , 82.— Id., 3, 
23.— Id., Excerpt. Leg., 118.)—Gesenius deduces the 
name Byzacium (Bizacium, B vcoanirig, Polyb.) from 
the Punic Byt saki, “ an irrigated region.” {Phan. 
Mon., p. 420.) Hamaker, less correctly, from Beth saki, 
“ the abode of irrigation.” {Miscell. Phan., p. 234.) 

Byzantium, a celebrated city of Thrace, on the shore 
of the Thracian Bosporus, called at a later period Con- 
stantinopolis, and made the capital of the eastern em¬ 
pire of the Romans. It was founded by a Dorian colony 
from Megara, or, rather, by a Megarian colony in con¬ 
junction with a Thracian prince. For Byzas, whom the 
city acknowledged, and celebrated in a festival as its 
founder, was, according to the legend, a son of Neptune 
and Ceroessa the daughter of Io, and ruled over all the 
272 


adjacent country. The meaning of the myth would ap¬ 
pear to be, that a Thracian prince having united himself 
in marriage with a Grecian female, founded the city, 
with the aid of a Greek colony, and gave the place a 
name derived from his own. {Scymn., 715.— Euscb., 
Chron., 01. 30, 2.— Stcph. Byz., s. v. — Eustath. ad 
Dion. Pcneg., 803.— Dionys. Byzant., p. 5.— Gcogr. 
Gr. Min., vol. 3.) The early commerce of Megara 
was directed principally to the shores of the Propontis, 
and this people had founded Chalcedon seventeen 
years before Byzantium, and Selymbria even prior to 
Chalcedon. {Herod., 4, 144.— Scymn., 714.) When, 
however, their trade was extended still farther to the 
north, and had reached the shores of the Euxine, the 
harbour of Chalcedon sank in importance, and a com¬ 
mercial station was required on the opposite side of 
the strait. This station was Byzafftium. The ap¬ 
pellation of “blind men,” given to the Chalcedonians 
by the Persian general Megabyzus {Herod., 4, 144), 
for having overlooked the superior site where Byzan¬ 
tium was afterward founded, does not therefore appear 
to have been well merited. As long as Chalcedon was 
the northernmost point reached by the commerce of 
Megara, its situation was preferable to any offered by 
the opposite side of the Bosporus, because the cur¬ 
rent on this latter side runs down from the north more 
strongly than it does on the side of Chalcedon, and 
the harbour of this city, therefore, is more accessible 
to vessels coming from the south. On the other hand, 
Byzantium was far superior to Chalcedon for the north¬ 
ern trade, since the current that set in strongly from 
the Euxine carried vessels directly into the harbour of 
Byzantium, but prevented their approach to Chalcedon 
in a straight course. {Polyb., 4, 43.) The harbour 
of Byzantium was peculiarly favoured by nature, being 
deep, capacious, and sheltered from every storm. 
The current of the Euxine swept vessels into it with¬ 
out the aid of sail or oars, and it also brought thither 
various kinds offish that afforded a lucrative article of 
commerce. From its shape, and the rich advantages 
thus connected with it, the harbour of Byzantium ob¬ 
tained the name of Chrysoceras, or “the GoldenFlorn,” 
which was also applied to the promontory or neck of 
land that contributed to form it. {Plin., 4, 11.— 
Amm. Marcell., 22, 8.) And yet, notwithstanding ail 
these advantages, Byzantium remained for a long time 
an inconsiderable place. The declining commerce of 
Megara, and the character which Byzantium still sus¬ 
tained of being a half-barbarian place,>may serve to ac¬ 
count for this. At a subsequent period the Milesians 
sent hither a strong colony, and so altered for the bet¬ 
ter the aspect of things, that they are regarded by some 
ancient writers as the founders of the city itself. 
{Veil. Paterc., 2, 15.) When, at a later da} r , the in¬ 
surrection of the Asiatic Greeks had been crushed by 
Darius, and the Persian fleet was reducing to obedi¬ 
ence the Greek cities along the Hellespont and Pro¬ 
pontis, the Byzantines, together with a body of Chal¬ 
cedonians, would not wait for the coming of the Per¬ 
sians, but, leaving their habitations, and fleeing to the 
Euxine, built the city of Mesembria on the upper coast 
of Thrace. {Herod., 6,33.) The Persians destroyed 
the empty city, and no Byzantium for some time there¬ 
after existed. This will explain why Scylax, in his 
Periplus, passed by Byzantium in silence, while he 
mentions all the Grecian settlements in this quarter, 
and among them even Mesembria itself. Byzantium 
re-appeared after the overthrow of Xerxes, some of the 
old inhabitants having probably returned, and here 
Pausanias, the commander of the Grecian forces, took 
up his headquarters. He gave the city a code of 
laws, and a government modelled, in some degree, 
after the Spartan form, and hence he was regarded by 
some as the true founder of the city. {Justin, 9, 1.) 
The Athenians succeeding to the hegemony, Byzanti¬ 
um fell under their control, and received so many im- 




BYZANTIUM. 


BYZ 


portant additions from them, that Ammianus Marcel- 
linus, in a later age, calls it an Attic colony (22, 8). 
The city, however, was a Doric one, in language, 
customs, and laws, and remained so even after the 
Athenians had the control of it. The maintenance of 
this military post became of great importance to the 
Greeks during their warfare with the Persians in sub¬ 
sequent years, and this circumstance, together with 
the advantages of a lucrative and now continually in¬ 
creasing commerce, gave Byzantium a high rank 
among Grecian cities. After Athens and Sparta had 
weakened the power of each other by national rivalry, 
and neither could lay claim to the empire of the sea, 
Byzantium became an independent city, and turned its 
whole attention to commerce. Its strong situation 
enabled it, at a subsequent period, to resist successfully 
the arms of Philip of Macedon ; nor did Alexander, in 
his eagerness to march into Asia, make any attempt 
upon the place. It preserved also a neutral character 
under his successors. The great evil to which the 
city of Byzantium was exposed came from the inland 
country, the Thracian tribes continually making incur¬ 
sions into the fertile territory around the place, and 
carrying off more or less of the products of the fields. 
The city suffered severely also from the Gauls ; being 
compelled to pay a yearly tribute, amounting at least 
to eighty talents. After the departure of the Gauls it 
again became a flourishing place, but its most prosper¬ 
ous period was during the Roman sway. It had 
thrown itself into the arms of the Romans as early as 
the war against the younger Philip of Macedon, and 
enjoyed from this people not only complete protection, 
but also many valuable commercial privileges. It was 
allowed, moreover, to lay a toll on all vessels passing 
through the straits, a thing which had been attempted 
before without success, and this toll it shared with the 
Romans. ( Strabo , 320.— Herodian, 3, 1.) But the 
day of misfortune at length came. In the contest for 
the empire between Severus and Niger, Byzantium 
declared for the latter, and stood a siege in conse¬ 
quence, which continued long after Niger’s overthrow 
and death. After three years of almost incredible ex¬ 
ertions, the place surrendered to Severus. The few 
remaining inhabitants whom famine had spared were 
sold as slaves, the city was razed to the ground, its 
territory given to Perinthus, and a small village took 
the place of the great commercial emporium. Re¬ 
penting soon after of what he had done, Severus re¬ 
built Byzantium, and adorned it with numerous and 
splendid buildings, which in a later age still bore his 
name, but it never recovered its former rank until the 
days of Constantine. ( Herodian , 3, 6.— Dio Cass., 
74, 10.— Spartian., Caracall. , c. 1.— Zosimus, 2, 30. 

-— Saidas, s. v. '2c67/pog. — Treb. Pollio, Gallien., c. 
6.— Claud., c. 9.)—Constantine had no great affection 
for Rome as a city, nor had the inhabitants any great 
regard for him. He felt the necessity, moreover, of 
having the capital of the empire in some more central 
quarter, from which the movements of the German 
tribes on the one hand, and those of the Persians on 
the other, might be observed. He long sought for 
such a locality, and believed at one time that he had 
found it in the neighbourhood of the Sigsean promonto¬ 
ry, on the coast of Troas. He had even commenced 
building here, when the superior advantages of Byzan¬ 
tium as a centre of empire attracted his attention, 
and he finally resolved to make this the capital of the 
Roman world. For a monarchy possessing the west¬ 
ern portion of Asia, and the largest part of Europe, 
together with the whole coast of the Mediterranean 
Sea, nature herself seemed to have destined Byzan¬ 
tium as a capital. Constantine’s plan was carried 
into rapid execution. The ancient city had possessed 
a circuit of forty stadia, and covered merely two hills, 
one close to the water, on which the Seraglio at pres¬ 
ent stands, and another adjoining it, and extending to- 
Mm 


wards the interior to what is now the Bcsestan, or 
great market The new city, called Constantmopolis, 
or “ City of Constantine,” was three times as large, 
and covered four hills, together with part of a fifth, 
having a circuit of Somewhat less than fourteen 
geographical miles. Every effort was made to embel¬ 
lish this new capital of the Roman world ; the most 
splendid edifices were erected, an imperial palace, nu¬ 
merous residences for the chief officers of the court, 
churches, baths, a hippodrome; and inhabitants were 
procured from every quarter. Its rapid increase call¬ 
ed, from time to time, for a corresponding enlargement 
of the city, until, in the reign of Theodosius II., when 
the new walls were erected (the previous ones having 
been thrown down by an earthquake), Constantinople 
attained to the size which it at present has. ( Zonaras, 
13, 23.) Chalcondylas supposes the walls of the city 
to be 111 stadia in circumference ; Gyllius, about 
thirteen Italian miles; but, according to the best 
modern plans of Constantinople, it is not less than 
19,700 yards. The number of gates is twenty-eight; 
fourteen on the side of the port, seven towards the 
land, and as many on the Propontis. The city is 
built on a triangular promontory, and the number of 
hills which it covers is seven. Besides the name of 
Constantinopolis, or Constantinou polls (Kuvoravrl- 
vov 7roiltf), this city had also the more imposing one of 
New Rome (N ea 'P dprj), which, however, gradually fell 
into disuse. At the present day, the peasants in the 
neighbourhood, while they repair to Constantinople, 
say in vulgar Greek that they are going es tan bolin 
(i. e., eg ruv tto?uv), “ to the city,” whence has arisen 
the Turkish name of the place, namely, Stamboul. 
The more polished or less barbarous inhabitants, how¬ 
ever, frequently call it Constantinia. It is easy to 
recognise in the vulgar Greek of the peasantry, as just 
given, the remains of the ancient Doric. ( Mannert, 
Geogr., vol. 7, p. 154, seqq.) For an account of the 
Byzantine empire, consult the succeeding article, at 
the end of which also will be found some remarks on 
the Byzantine historians, as they have been denomina¬ 
ted. — Constantinople was taken by Mohammed II., 
on the 29th May, A.D. 1453. 

ByzantInum impekium. The Byzantine, or East¬ 
ern Roman Empire, comprehended at first, in Asia, 
the country on this side of the Euphrates, the coasts 
of the Black Sea, and Asia Minor; in Africa, Egypt; 
and in Europe, all the countries from the Hellespont 
to the Adriatic and Danube. This survived the West¬ 
ern Empire 1000 years, and was even increased by 
the addition of Italy and the coasts of the Mediterra¬ 
nean. It commenced in 395, when Theodosius divided 
the Roman empire between his two sons, Arcadius and 
Honorius. The Eastern Empire fell to the elder, Arca¬ 
dius, through whose weakness it suffered many misfor¬ 
tunes. During his minority Rufinus was his guardian 
and minister, between whom and Stilicho, the minister 
of the Western Empire, a fierce rivalry existed. The 
Goths laid waste Greece. Eutropius, the successor, 
and Gainas, the murderer, of Rufinus, were ruined by 
their own crimes. The latter lost his life in a civil war 
excited by him (A.D. 400). Arcadius and his em¬ 
pire were now ruled by his proud and covetous wife 
Eudoxia, till her death (A.D. 404). The Isaurians 
and the Huns wasted the provinces of Asia, and the 
country along the Danube. Theodosius, the younger, 
succeeded his father (A.D 408), under the guardian¬ 
ship of his sister Pulcheria. Naturally of an inferior 
mind, his education had made him entirely imbecile, 
and unfit for self-command. Pulcheria, who bore the 
title of Augusta, administered the kingdom ably. Of 
the Western Empire, which had been ceded to Valen- 
tinian, Theodosius retained Western Illyria. The 
Greeks fought with success against the King of the 
Persians, Varanes. The kingdom of Armenia, thrown 
into confusion by internal dissensions, and claimed at 

273 




BYZANTINUM 


IMPERIUM. 


the same time by the Romans and the Persians, be¬ 
came now an apple of contention between the two 
nations (A.D 440). Attila laid waste the dominions 
of Theodosius, and obliged him to pay tribute. After 
the death of her brother, Pulcheriawas acknowledged 
empress (A.D. 450) She was the first female who at¬ 
tained this dignity. She gave her hand to the senator 
Marcian, and raised him to the throne. His wisdom 
and valour averted the attacks of the Huns from the 
frontiers, but he did not support the Western Empire 
in its wars against the Huns and Vandals with suffi¬ 
cient energy He afforded shelter to a part of the 
Germans and Sarmatians, who were driven to the Ro¬ 
man frontiers by the incursions of the Huns. Pulche- 
ria died before him in 453. Leo I. (A.D. 457), a 
prince praised by contemporary authors, was chosen 
successor of Marcian. His expeditions against the 
Vandals (A.D. 467) were unsuccessful. His grand¬ 
son Leo would have succeeded him, but died a minor 
shortly after him, having named his father Zeno his 
colleague (A.D. 474). The government of this weak 
emperor, who was hated by his subjects, was disturbed 
by rebellions and internal disorders of the empire. 
The Goths depopulated their provinces till their king, 
Theodoric, turned his arms against Italy (A.D. 489). 
Ariadne, widow of Zeno, raised the minister Anasta- 
sius, whom she married, to the throne (A.D. 491). 
The nation, once excited to discontents and tumults, 
could not be entirely appeased by the alleviation of 
their burdens and by wise decrees. The forces of the 
empire, being thus weakened, could not offer an ef¬ 
fectual resistance to the Persians and the barbarians 
along the Danube. To prevent their incursions into 
the peninsula of Constantinople, Anastasius built the 
long wall , as it is called. After the death of Anasta¬ 
sius, the soldiers proclaimed Justin emperor (A.D. 
518). Nothwithstanding his low birth, he maintained 
possession of the throne. Religious persecutions, 
which he undertook at the instigation of the clergy, 
and various crimes into which he was seduced by his 
nephew Justinian, disgrace his reign. After his early 
death, in 521, he was succeeded by the same Justin¬ 
ian, to whom, though he deserves not the name of 
the Great, many virtues of a ruler cannot be denied. 
He was renowned as a legislator, and his reign was 
distinguished by the victories of his general Belisa- 
rius ; but how unable he was to revive the strength 
of his empire was proved by its rapid decay after his 
death. Justin II., his successor (A.D. 565), was an 
avaricious, cruel, weak prince, governed by his wife. 
The Lombards tore from him part of Italy (A.D. 
568). His war with Persia, for the possession of Ar¬ 
menia, was unsuccessful; the Avari plundered the 
provinces on the Danube, and the violence of his grief 
at these misfortunes deprived him of reason. Tibe¬ 
rius, his minister, a man of merit, was declared Cje- 
sar, and the general Justinian conducted the war 
against Persia with success. The Greeks now al¬ 
lied themselves, for the first time, with the Turks. 
Against his successor, Tiberius II. (A.D. 578), the 
Empress Sophia and the general Justinian conspired in 
vain. From the Avari the emperor purchased peace ; 
from the Persians it was extorted by his general Mau¬ 
ritius or Maurice (A.D. 582). This commander Ti¬ 
berius declared Csesar in the same year. Mauritius, 
under other circumstances, would have made an ex¬ 
cellent monarch, but for the times he wanted prudence 
and resolution. He was indebted for the tranquillity 
of the eastern frontiers to the gratitude of King Chos- 
roes II., whom, in 591, he restored to the throne 
from which he had been deposed by his subjects. 
Nevertheless, the war against the Avari was unsuc¬ 
cessful, through the errors of Commentiolus. The 
army was discontented, and was irritated, now by un¬ 
timely severity and parsimony, and now by timid in¬ 
dulgence. They finally proclaimed Phocas, one of 
274 


their officers, emperor. Mauritius was taken in hi* 
flight and put to death (A D 602). The vices of Pho¬ 
cas, and his incapacity for government, produced the 
greatest disorders in the empire. Heraclius, son of 
the governor of Africa, took up arms, conquered Con¬ 
stantinople, and caused Phocas to be executed (A.D. 
610). He distinguished himself only in the short pe¬ 
riod of the Persian war. During the first twelve 
years of his reign, the Avari, and other nations of the 
Danube, plundered the European provinces, and the 
Persians conquered the coasts of Syria and Egypt. 
Having finally succeeded in pacifying the Avari, he 
marched against the Persians (A.D. 622), and defeat¬ 
ed them; but, during this time, the Avari, who had 
renewed the war, made an unsuccessful attack on 
Constantinople in 626. Taking advantage of an in¬ 
surrection of the subjects of Chosroes, he penetrated 
into the centre of Persia. By the peace concluded 
with Siroes (A.D. 628), he recovered the lost provinces 
and the holy cross. But the Arabians, who, mean¬ 
while, had become powerful under Mohammed and 
the califs, conquered Phoenicia, the countries on the 
Euphrates, Judea, Syria, and all Egypt (A.D. 631— 

641) . Among his descendants there was not one able 
prince. He w as succeeded by his son Constantine 
III., probably in conjunction with his step-brother 
Heracleonas. The former soon died, and the latter 
lost his crown and was mutilated. After him, Con- 
stans, son of Constantine, obtained the throne (A.D. 

642) . His sanguinary spirit of persecution, and the 
murder of his brother Theodosius, made him odious 
to the nation. The Arabians, pursuing their con¬ 
quests, took from him part of Africa, Cyprus, and 
Rhodes, and defeated him at sea (A.D. 653). Inter¬ 
nal disturbances obliged him to make peace. After 
this he left Constantinople (A.D. 659), and, in the 
following year, carried on an unsuccessful war against 
the Lombards in Italy, in which he lost his life at Syr¬ 
acuse (A.D. 660). Constantine IV., Pogonatus, son 
of Constans, vanquished his Syracusan competitor Me- 
zizius, and, in the beginning of his reign, shared the 
government with his brothers Tiberius and Heraclius. 
The Arabians inundated all Africa and Sicily, pene¬ 
trated through Asia Minor into Thrace, and attacked 
Constantinople for several successive years by sea 
(A.D. 669). Nevertheless, he made peace with them 
on favourable terms. But, on the other hand, the 
Bulgarians obliged him to pay a tribute (A.D. 680). 
Justinian II., his son and successor, weakened the 
power of the Maronites, but fought without success 
against the Bulgarians and Arabians. Leonitius de¬ 
throned this cruel prince, had him mutilated, and sent 
to the Tauric Chersonese (A.D. 695). Leonitius was 
dethroned by Apsimar, or Tiberius III. (A.D. 698), 
who was himself dethroned by Trebelius, king of the 
Bulgarians, who restored Justinian to the throne (A.D. 
705) ; but Philippicus Bardanes rebelled anew against 
him. With Justinian II. the race of Heraclius was 
extinguished. The only care of Philippicus was the 
spreading of Monotheism, while the Arabians wasted 
Asia Minor and Thrace. In opposition to this prince, 
who was universally hated, the different armies pro¬ 
claimed their leaders emperors, among whom Leo 
the Isaurian obtained the superiority (A.D. 713-714). 
Leo repelled the Arabians from Constantinople, which 
they had attacked for almost two years, and suppress¬ 
ed the rebellion excited by Basilius and the former 
emperor Anastasius. From 726 the abolition of the 
worship of images absorbed his attention, and the 
Italian provinces were allowed to become a prey to the 
Lombards, while the Arabians plundered the eastern 
provinces. After his death (A.D. 741) his son Con¬ 
stantine V. ascended the throne, a courageous, active, 
and noble prince. He vanquished his rebellious 
brother-in-law Artabasdus, wrested from the Arabians 

I part of Syria and Armenia, and overcame at last the 




BYZANTINUM 


IMPERIUM. 


Bulgarians, against whom he had been long unsuc¬ 
cessful. He died (A D. 775), and was succeeded by 
his son Leo III., who fought successfully against the 
Arabians ; and this latter, by his son Constantine VI., 
whose imperious mother Irene, his guardian and as¬ 
sociate in the government, raised a powerful party by 
the restoration of the worship of images He en¬ 
deavoured in vain to free himself from dependance on 
her and her favourite Stauratius, and died in 796, after 
having had his eyes put out The war against the Ara¬ 
bians and Bulgarians was long continued ; against the 
former it was unsuccessful The design of the em¬ 
press to marry Charlemagne excited the discontent of 
the patricians, who placed one of their own order, Ni¬ 
cephorus, upon the throne (A.D 802) Irene died in 
a monastery. Nicephorus became tributary to the 
Arabians, and fell in the war against the Bulgarians 
(A.D. 811). Stauratius, his son, was deprived of the 
crown by Michael I., and he in turn by Leo IV (A.D. 
813). Leo was dethroned and put to death by Michael 
II. (A.D 826) During the reign of the latter, the 
Arabians conquered Sicily, Lower Italy, Crete, and 
other countries. Michael prohibited the worship of 
images •, as did also his son Theophilus. Theodora, 
guardian of his son Michael III., put a stop to the dis¬ 
pute about images (A.D. 841). During a cruel per¬ 
secution of the Manichfeans, the Arabians devastated 
the Asiatic provinces. The dissolute and extravagant 
Michael confined his mother in a monastery. The 
government was administered in his name by Bardas, 
his uncle, and after the death of Bardas by Basil, who 
was put to death by Michael (A.D. 867). Basil I., 
who came to the throne in 867, was not altogether a 
contemptible monarch. He died A.D. 886. The 
reign of his learned son. Leo V., was not very happy. 
He died A.D. 911. His son, Constantine VIII., Por- 
phyrogenitus, a minor when he succeeded his father, 
was placed under the guardianship of his colleague 
Alexander, and after Alexander’s death in 912, under 
that of his mother Zoe. Romanus Lakopenus, his 
general, obliged him, in 919, to share the throne with 
him and his children. Constantine subsequently took 
sole possession of it again, and reigned mildly but 
weakly. His son Romanus II. succeeded him in 959, 
and fought successfully against the Arabians. To 
him succeeded, in 963, his general Nicephorus, who 
was put to death by his own general, John Zimisces 
(A.D. 970), who carried on a successful war against 
the Russians. Basil II., son of Romanus, succeeded 
this good prince. He vanquished the Bulgarians and 
the Arabians. His brother, Constantine IX. (A.D. 
1025), was not equal to him. Romanus III. became 
emperor (A.D. 1028) by a marriage with Zoe, daugh¬ 
ter of Constantine. This dissolute but able princess 
caused her husband to be executed, and successively 
raised to the throne Michael IV. (A.D. 1034), Mi¬ 
chael V. (A.D. 1041), and Constantine X. (A.D. 
1042). Russians and Arabians meanwhile devastated 
the empire. Her sister Theodora succeeded her on 
the throne (A.D. 1053). Her successor, Michael VI. 
(A.D. 1056), was dethroned by Isaac Comnenus in 
1057, who became a monk (A.D. 1059). His suc¬ 
cessor, Constantine XI., Ducas, fought successfully 
against the Uzes. Eudocia, his wife, guardian of his 
sons Michael, Andronicus, and Constantine, was in¬ 
trusted with the administration (A.D. 1067), married 
Romanus IV., and brought him the crown. He car¬ 
ried on an unsuccessful war against the Turks, who 
kept him for some time prisoner. Michael VII., son of 
Constantine, deprived him of the throne (A.D. 1071). 
Michael was dethroned by Nicephorus III. (A.D. 1078), 
and the latter by Alexius I., Comnenus (A.D. 1081). 
Under his reign the crusades commenced. His son, 
John II., came to the throne in 1118, and fought with 
great success against the Turks and other barbarians. 
The reign of his son Manuel I., who succeeded him in 


1143, was also not unfortunate. His son, Alexius 
II., succeeded (A D 1180), and was dethroned by his 
guardian Andronicus, as was the latter by Isaac (A D. 
1185) After a reign disturbed from without and 
within, Isaac was dethroned by his brother, Alexius 
III (AD. 1195). The crusaders restored him and 
his son Alexius IV , but the seditious Constantino- 
politans proclaimed Alexius V., Ducas Murzuphlus, 
emperor, who put Alexius IV to death At the same 
time Isaac II died. During the last reigns, the kings 
of Sicily had made many conquests on the coasts of 
the Adriatic. The Latins now forced their way to 
Constantinople (A D 1204), conquered the city, and 
retained it, together with most of the European terri¬ 
tories of the empire. Baldwin, count of Flanders, 
was made emperor ; Boniface, marquis of Montferrat., 
obtained Thessalonica as a kingdom, and the Vene¬ 
tians acquired a large extent of territory. In Rhodes, 
Philadelphia, Corinth, and Epirus, independent sover¬ 
eigns arose Theodore Lascaris seized on the Asiatic 
provinces, bore the title of emperor at Nice, and was, 
at first, more powerful than Baldwin. A descendant 
of the Comneni, named Alexius, established a princi¬ 
pality at Trebisond, in which his great-grandson John 
took the title of emperor. Neither Baldwin nor his 
successors were able to secure the tottering throne. 
He himself- died in captivity among the Bulgarians 
(1206). To him succeeded Plenry, his brother, with 
Peter, brother-in-law of Henry, and his son Robert 
(A.D. 1221). With the exception of Constantinople, 
all the remaining Byzantine territory, including Thes¬ 
salonica, was conquered by John, emperor of Nice. 
Baldwin II., brother of Robert, under the guardianship 
of his colleague, John Brienne, king of Jerusalem, died 
in 1237. Michael Palaeologus, king of Nice, con¬ 
quered Constantinople in 1261, and Baldwin died in 
the West a private person. The sovereigns of Nice, 
up to this period, were Theodore Lascaris (A.D. 
1204); John Ducas Patatzes, a good monarch and 
successful warrior (A.D. 1222); Theodore II., his 
son (A.D. 1259), who was deprived of the crown by 
Michael Palseologus (A.D. 1260). In 1261 Michael 
took Constantinople from the Latins. He laboured to 
unite himself with the Latin church, but his son An¬ 
dronicus renounced the connexion. Internal disturb¬ 
ances and foreign wars, particularly with the Turks, 
threw the exhausted empire into confusion. Andron¬ 
icus III., his grandson, obliged him to divide the 
throne (A D 1322), and, at length, wrested it entirely 
from him. Andronicus died a monk (A.D. 1328). 
Andronicus IV., who ascended the throne in the same 
year, waged war unsuccessfully against the Turks, and 
died A.D. 1341. His son John was obliged to share 
the throne with his guardian, John Cantacuzenus, du¬ 
ring ten years. The son of the latter, Matthew, was 
also made emperor, but John Cantacuzenus resigned 
the crown, and Matthew was compelled to abdicate 
(A.D. 1355). Under the reign of John, the Turks 
first obtained a firm footing in Europe, and conquered 
Gallipolis (A D. 1357). The family of Palreologus, 
from this time, were gradually deprived of their Euro¬ 
pean territories, partly by revolt, and partly by the 
Turks. The Sultan Amurath took Adrianople A.D. 
1361. Bajazet conquered almost all the European 
provinces except Constantinople, and obliged John to 
pay him tribute. The latter was, some time after, 
driven out by his own son Manuel (A.D 1391). 
Bajazet besieged Constantinople, defeated an army of 
western warriors under Sigismund, near Nicopolis, and 
Manuel was obliged to place John, son of Andronicus, 
on his throne. Timour’s invasion of the Turkish 
provinces saved Constantinople for this time (A.D. 
1402). Manuel then recovered his throne, and re¬ 
gained some of the lost provinces from the contending 
sons of Bajazet. To him succeeded his son John 
A.D. 1425), whom Amurath II. striuped of all his 

275 




CAB 


CAB 


territories except Constantinople, and extorted from 
him a tribute (A D 1444) To the emperor John 
succeeded his brother Constantine With the assist¬ 
ance of his general, the Genoese Justinian, he with¬ 
stood the superior forces of the enemy with fruitless 
courage, and fell in the defence of Constantinople, by 
the conquest of which, May 29, A.D. 1453, Moham¬ 
med II. put an end to the Greek or Byzantine empire. 
( Encyclop Amenc , vol 2, p 359, seqq )—The events 
which have just been detailed are recorded by a series 
of Greek authors, known by the general name of By¬ 
zantine historians. Their works relate to the history 
of the lower empire, from the fourth century to the 
conquest of Constantinople by the Turks, and to the 
Turkish history for some period later. They display 
in their writings the faults of a degenerate age, but are 
valuable for the information which they furnish, being 
the principal source from which we obtain the history 
of the decay of the Eastern empire. The most valua¬ 
ble of the number are Zonaras, Nicetas, Nicephorus, 
and Chalcondylas. These four form a continued his¬ 
tory of the Byzantine empire to the year 1470. Of 
the remaining authors, who give us histories of de¬ 
tached portions of this same period, the following de¬ 
serve particular mention, and are given in chronologi¬ 
cal order: 1. Procopius; 2. Agathias; 3 Theophy- 
lactus ,' 4. Nicephorus, patriarch of Constantinople ; 
5. Johannes Scylitzcs; 6 .Anna Comnena; 7. Geor¬ 
gius Acropolita ; 8. Georgius Pachymeres ; 9. Jo¬ 
hannes Cantacuzenus; 10. Georgius Codinus; 11. 
Constantinus Porphyrogenitus; 12. Ducas; 13. An¬ 
sel mus Bandunus ; 14. Petrus Gyllius ; 15. Zos- 
imus ; 16. Georgius Phranza. —Besides editions of 
individual works or of entire authors, we have the 
united works of these writers in what is called the 
Corpus Byzantinum, in 27 (counted sometimes as 23) 
volumes folio. A much more correct edition, how¬ 
ever, is that which was published at Paris, under the 
title of Corpus Scriptorum Histories Byzantinee (from 
the royal press, 23 vols. fob). This was reprinted at 
Venice, with a different arrangement of the wmrks, in 
1729-1733. These collections, however, are rarely to 
be found complete. The best edition will undoubt¬ 
edly be that, now in a course of publication, from the 
press of Weber, at Bonn in Germany. It was com¬ 
menced under the editorial care of the celebrated Nie¬ 
buhr, aided by other eminent scholars, in the year 
1828, and has been continued since his death. It is 
of the octavo form. ( Pierer, Lex. Unix., vol. 4, p. 
582.) 

Byzas, a Thracian prince. (Consult remarks at the 
commencement of the article Byzantium.) 

Byzia. Vid. Bizya. 

C. 

Cabalaca, a town of Albania, on the southeastern 
declivity of Caucasus, near the Caspian Sea (Plin ., 4, 
10). Ptolemy calls it Chabala ( XubaXa). It is 
thought to correspond to the modem Cablasvar, in 
Georgia. (Bischoff und Moller, Worterb. dcr Geogr., 
p. 217.) 

Caballinum, a town of the TEdui, in Gallia Lugdu- 
nensis, southeast of Bibracte, now Chalons-sur-Saone. 
Ptolemy gives Caballinum ( Kabd1?avov ), as here writ¬ 
ten. Caesar ( B. G., 7, 42, et 90) has Cabiilonum ; 
the Itin. Ant., Cabillio ; and Ammianus Marcellinus, 
Cabillo (14, 31). 

CabIra, I. a wife of Vulcan. She was one of the 
Oceanides. Her offspring, according to the Ionian 
school, were the deities called Cabiri. ( Vid. Cabiri.)— 
II. A city ©f Pontus, in Asia Minor, south of Mag- 
nopolis, and at the foot of Mount Paryadres. It 
was at one time the favourite residence of Mithrada- 
tes. His palace, park, and preserves were still in ex- 
276 


istence when Strabo wrote, as well as a water-mill 
(vdpaXeTys) erected by him, probably for the use of 
the mines which were in this vicinity. ( Strab ., 556.) 
It was here that Mithradates posted himself with his 
army, in the campaign which followed the disastrous 
retreat from Cyzicus, in order that he might afford suc¬ 
cours to the neighbouring cities of Amisus and Eupa- 
toria, besieged by Lucuilus ( Appian, Bell. Mithrad , 
c 78.) On his second defeat, however, it fell into the 
hands of that general, with several other cities. Pom- 
pey afterward enlarged the place, and changed its name 
to Diopolis. Pythodorus subsequently made farther 
improvements in this city, and, having finally fixed his 
residence there, bestowed on it the appellation ol Se- 
baste. (Strab., 1. c.) The modern Sirvas appears to 
some to indicate the site of the ancient Sebaste, but 
belongs rather to Sebastia, at least 120 miles from 
Magnopolis, whereas Cabira was only 150 stadia from 
the latter place. We must look rather for the remains 
of the city of Cabira or Sebaste (Sebastopolis) on the 
right bank of the Lycus, between Niksar and Tchen- 
ikch, or Magnopolis. (Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 1* 
p. 311, seqq.) 

Cabiri, certain deities held in the greatest venera¬ 
tion at Thebes and Lemnos, but more particularly in 
the islands of Samothrace and Imbros. Their number 
was not fixed, but was commonly given as four, and 
the names of these four were Axicrus, Axiokersus, 
Axiokcrsa, and Casmillus. Their mysteries were 
celebrated with great solemnity, and, according to 
some, with much impurity. They were supposed, 
among other things, to preside over metals, and were 
represented as small of size, with a hammer on the 
shoulder, and a half eggshell on the head. They were 
still farther deformed by projecting bellies and phallic 
appendages. Creuzer traces the worship of the Cabiri, 
in the first instance, to the Phoenicians, and makes 
these deities identical with the Pataeci, or Patieci, of 
this people.’ (Herodot., 3, 37.) He then proceeds to 
find vestiges of these same Cabiri in Upper Asia, in 
the name of the Pontic city Cabira ; in the Mesopota¬ 
mian Carrse, the medals of which place seem to as¬ 
sociate the worship of the Cabiri with that of the god 
Lunus, and also in the Chaldean river Chobar or Cha- 
boras. He discovers also in Malta, among the remains 
of Punic preserved in the vulgar dialect of the island, 
some traces of the name Cabiri in the word Qbir or 
Kibir, which seems to designate an ancient pagan di¬ 
vinity, and is now taken to denote “ the devil.” 
(Creuzer's Symbolik, par Guigniaul, vol. 2, p. 286. 
— Miinter, Religion der Carthager, cd. 2, p. 87.) 
Other writers believe that they discover traces of the 
Cabiri in Persia, and refer to the Gabarini, or “ strong 
men,” whom the essential ideas of metallurgy and of 
arms would seem naturally to assimilate, either to the 
robust forge-men of Vulcan at Lemnos, or to the armed 
priests of Phrygia, Crete, and different parts of Greece. 
(Foucher, sur la Religion des Perses. — Mem. de V Acad, 
des Inscript., &c., vol. 29.) Others, again, have re¬ 
course to the mythology of India, and find the root of 
the name Cabiri in the Hindu Cuvcra. (Wilford, 
Asiatic Researches, vol. 5, p. 297, seqq. — Policr, My- 
thol. des Indous, vol. 2, p. 312, seqq.) The best ety¬ 
mology, no doubt, is that which makes the appellation 
of these deities a Phoenician one, denoting “ powerful,” 
“ strong;” and hence the titles, Gcoi /aejaTioi, dvva- 
tol, which the Cabiri frequently received among the 
Greeks. With the Cabiri, viewed in this light, may 
be compared the Dh Potes of the augural books of 
the Romans. (Varro, L. L., 4, 10, p. 16, cd. Scalig.) 
Schelling, however (uber die Gotthciten von Samo¬ 
thrace, p. 107, seqq.), gives a new etymology (the 
Hebrew Chabcrim), by which the name Cabiri is made 
to signify “the associate deities,” and he compares 
these deities with the Dii Consentcs or Dii Complices, 
whose worship the Romans borrowed from the Etruri- 



CABIRI. 


CAG 


ans. The same learned writer compares the names 
K dbeipoi, K dbapoi, YLobaTioi (which, according to him, 
are identical), with the German Kobold, “goblin,” and 
finds in them all a common idea. His theory respect¬ 
ing the worship of the Cabiri, which he refers exclu¬ 
sively to Phoenician, Hebrew, and Semitic sources, dif¬ 
fers in several important points from that of Creuzer, 
and has excited a great deal of attention on the conti¬ 
nent of Europe. It is in following the footsteps of 
Schelling that Pictet thinks he has found, in the my¬ 
thology of the ancient Irish, the worship, and even the 
very names, of the Cabiri of Samothrace. (Du Culte 
dcs Cabires chez les anciens Irlandais, Geneve , 1824. 
—Compare Bibliotheque Universelle, vol. 24.) On the 
other hand, C. 0. Muller, in a very remarkable disserta¬ 
tion appended to his work on Orchomenus ( Orchomenos 
und die Minyer, Beilage 2, p. 450, scqq. — Gesch. der 
Hellenischer Stdmme, &c., vol. 1), and Welcker ( Tri - 
logie der Prometheus , Darmstadt, 1824, 8vo), reject 
the Phoenician, or, more properly speaking, Oriental 
origin of the Cabiri. The first of these writers sees 
in them a worship purely Pelasgic, and, up to a certain 
point, the primitive religion of the Greeks entire, with 
a distant relation, at the same time, to the Theogonies 
of India ; the second discovers a mixture of various 
elements, successively amalgamated, and the most an¬ 
cient of which would be the Dardan or Trojan Penates, 
becoming, in process of time, the Dioscuri, or else con¬ 
founded with them, and at an early period transported 
to Rome. — According to Constant (de la Religion , 
vol. 2, p. 430), the Cabiri designated the two grand 
opposing powers in each department of nature, and 
represented by turns the earth and the heavens, moist¬ 
ure and dryness, the body and soul, inert matter and 
vivifying intelligence. Their number was not fixed, 
but varied according to the necessity under which the 
priests found themselves of expressing the cosmogon- 
ical powers. Their figures were at first excessively 
deformed ; they were represented under the guise of 
distorted dwarfs, and under these forms were brought 
to Samothrace. Their worship consisted in orgies 
closely resembling those of the Phrygian Cybele. The 
Grecian mythology at length received them, and the 
poets, in examining their attributes, sought to ascer¬ 
tain which of them were susceptible of the necessary 
transformation. The statues of the Cabiri were placed 
in the port of Samothrace. They presided over the 
winds. Hence, with the Greeks, they became gods 
favourable to navigators and terrible to pirates. (Ni- 
gid. ay. Schol. Germ, in imag. Gemini) They ap¬ 
peared also, according to the Grecian belief, on the 
tops of masts, under the form of brilliant flames, to an¬ 
nounce the end of tempests. (Diod. Sic , 4, 43.) 
Expressing, as they did, among other things, the op¬ 
position between light and darkness, they became with 
the Greeks two deities, one of whom was hidden be¬ 
neath the earth, while the other shone in the skies. 
The Cabiri proceeded from the cosmogonical egg: 
and hence, with the Greeks, the new deities came 
forth from an egg, the fruit of the amour of Jupiter i 
with Leda. In order, however, to nationalize them 
still more, they were made the tutelary heroes of 
Sparta, and to preside over the Olympic games. 
(Pind., Olymp ., 3, 63, seqq.) They became identi¬ 
fied, through Helen, with the family of the Atridae. 
Warlike adventures were ascribed to them. (Pausan., 
3, 13.) Winged coursers were given them by the gods. 

(Stesich. ap. Tertull. in Spcctac., p. 9, seqq.) They 
received the names of Castor and Pollux ; and thus 
the hideous Cabiri became the beauteous Tyndaridae. 
—The whole fable of the Cabiri is singularly obscure. 
In Egypt they were at first five in number, in allusion 
to the five intercalary days necessary for completing 
the year. Under this astronomical point of view they 
had three fathers, the Sun, Hermes, and Saturn. (Plut., 
dc Is. et Os.) In the transition from Egypt to Greece 


they lost this triple origin: three of them remained hid¬ 
den powers, sons of the cosmogonical Jove, and of 
Proserpina, the passive principle of fecundity as well 
as of destruction: the two others took the Greek names 
of Castor and Pollux, and had Leda for a mother, the 
mistress of Olympian Jove. ( Cic ., N. D., 3, 21.) 
For, in Egypt, their mother was not Leda, but Neme¬ 
sis, one of the appellations of Athyr, or the primitive 
night. The amour of Jupiter also has here a fantastic 
character, which is sensibly weakened in the Grecian 
fable. Not only does Jupiter change himself into a 
swan, but he likewise directs Venus to pursue him un¬ 
der the form of an eagle, and he takes refuge in the 
bosom of Nemesis, whom slumber seizes, and who 
offers an easy conquest to her divine lover. Hermes 
thereupon conveys the egg to Sparta, and Leda incu¬ 
bates it. The Greeks, rejecting altogether the cos¬ 
mogonical personage Nemesis, made Leda the real 
mother, and the ancient Cabiri became thus a compo¬ 
nent part of the national mythology. The Ionian 
school, however, faithful to the principles of a sacer¬ 
dotal philosophy, continued to call them the offspring 
of the eternal fire, Vulcan, and of the nymph Cabira, 
one of the Oceanides, which recalls the generation by 
fire and water. When astronomy was introduced into 
the religion of Greece, they became the star of the 
morning and the star of evening. It is possible to see 
an allusion to this idea in Homer. (11. , 3, 243 — Od , 
11, 302.) At a later period they became the Twins. 
(Constant, de la Relig., vol. 2, p. 433, seqq., in notis.) — 
As regards the names of the individual Cabiri, it may 
be remarked that they all appear decidedly Oriental. 
The etymologies given to them are as follows : Axieros 
is said to have signified, in Egyptian, “ the all-power¬ 
ful one,” and he is supposed by some to be identical 
with Phtha or Vulcan. Axiokersus is made to denote 
“ the great fecundator,” and is thought to have been the 
same with Mars, the planet named in Egyptian Ertosi, 
a word which presents the same idea. Axiokersa is 
consequently “ the great fecundatrix,” Aphrodite or 
Venus, the companion of Mars. (Zoega, de Obelise., 
p. 220.—Compare Miinter, Antiquar. Abhandl., p. 190, 
seqq.) As to the fourth personage, Casmillus, the 
name is said to import “the all-wise” by those who 
trace it to the Egyptian. (Zoega, l. c.) Bochart, 
however, with more probability, compares it with the 
Hebrew Cosmiel, whjch signifies “a servant,” “ a min¬ 
ister of the deity.” (Geogr. Sacr., 1, p. 396.) Bo¬ 
chart gives Hebrew derivations also for the other names 
of the Cabiri. Schelling, more recently, proceeding 
on the same principle, arrives at a similar result with 
Bochart, but in quite a different way. (Samothrace 
Gottheiten, p. 16, 17, 63, 67, seqq.) His new ety¬ 
mologies, however, as those of Zoega, are not regard¬ 
ed very favourably by De Sacy, in the note to Sainte- 
Croix’s works, Mysteres du Paganisme, vol. 1, p. 43. 
Munter defends the explanations of Zoega, and main¬ 
tains, in general, with Creuzer, the Egyptian origin of 
the Cabiri. He inclines, however, to consider the 
last of the four, Casmillus, as of Phoenician origin, and 
explains it with Schelling, in a more simple manner 
than Bochart, by the term Cadmiel, “ he who stands 
before the deity,” or “who beholds the face of the dei¬ 
ty.” (Religion der Carthager, 2 d ed., p. 89, seqq.) 
Muller, Welcker, Schwenk, and Volcker have explo¬ 
red the Greek language alone for an elucidation of these 
mysterious names. And yet the first of these learned 
writers, in spite of his purely Hellenic system, cannot 
prevent himself from being struck by the remarkable 
coincidence, as well real as verbal, between Cama, 
the Hindu god of love, and Casmillus. (Creuzer's 
Symbolik, par Guigniaut, vol. 2, p. 293, seqq., in 
notis.) 

Cabiria, I. a surname of Ceres.—II. The festivals 
of the Cabiri. ( Vid. Cabiri.) 

Caca, a goddess among the Romans, sister to Ca- 

277 




CAD 


CADMUS. 


cus, who, according to one version of the fable, be¬ 
came enamoured of Hercules, and showed the hero 
where her brother had concealed his oxen. For this 
she was deified. She had a chapel ( sacellum ) at Rome, 
with a sacred fire continually burning in it, and vestal 
virgins to perform her rites. ( Lactant ., 1, 20, p. 110, 
ed. Gall. — Scrv. ad Virg., JEn., 8, 190.) 

Cacus, a famous robber, son of Vulcan, represented 
in fable as of gigantic size, and vomiting forth smoke 
and fire. He inhabited the gloomy recesses of the 
forest on Mount Aventine, and a deep cave there was 
his dwelling-place, the entrance to which was hung 
around with human heads and limbs. He plundered 
and kept in continual alarm the neighbouring country ; 
and, when Hercules returned from the conquest of 
Geryon, he stole some of his cows, and dragged them 
backward into his cave to prevent discovery. Her¬ 
cules, after having enjoyed the hospitality of Evander, 
was preparing to depart, without being aware of the 
theft; but his oxen, having lowed, were answered by 
the cows in the cave of Cacus, and the hero thus be¬ 
came acquainted with the loss he had sustained. He 
ran to the place, attacked Cacus, and strangled him in 
his arms, though vomiting fire and smoke. Hercules 
erected an altar to Jupiter, in commemoration of his 
victory ; and an annual festival was instituted by the 
inhabitants in honour of the hero who had delivered 
them from such a pest. {Ovid, Fast., 1, 551.— Virg., 
AEn., 8, 194.— Propert., 4, 10.— Juv., 5, 125.— Liv., 
1, 7.— Dionys. Hal., 1, 9.) The allegorical charac¬ 
ter of the fable here related is sufficiently indicated 
by the names of the parties. Thus Evander, who re¬ 
ceived Hercules on his return from the conquest of 
Geryon, and Cacus (in Greek EvavSpoq and Kanog), 
seem to be nothing more than appellations intended 
to characterize the individuals to whom they are ap¬ 
plied : Evander, therefore, the leader of the Pelasgi, 
the head and chief of the division of that great sacer¬ 
dotal caste which passed into Italy, and, consequently, 
to apply a modern term, the high-priest of the order, 
is the Good Man {evavdpog), and Cacus, his opponent, 
is the Bad Man {nanog). Hercules destroys Cacus, 
that is, the solar worship, or some other Oriental sys¬ 
tem of belief professed by the Pelasgi, was made to 
supplant some rude and probably cruel form of wor¬ 
ship ; and as Evander was high-priest of the one, so 
Cacus, whoever he was, may be regarded as the head 
of the other. (Compare Ritter, Vorhalle, p. 343, seqq.) 

Cacuthis, a river in India; according to Mannert, 
the Gumty, which falls into the Ganges, to the north 
of Benares. {Geogr., vol. 5, pt. 1, p. 93.) 

Cadmea, the citadel of Thebes, fabled to have been 
built by Cadmus. It represents very evidently the 
early city, built upon a height, around which the later 
city of Thebes was subsequently erected, and then the 
former answered for a citadel, as in the case of the 
Acropolis of Athens. Of the walls of the Cadmea, a 
few fragments remain, which are regularly constructed. 
These were probably erected by the Athenians, when 
Cassander restored the city of Thebes. {Dodwell's 
Travels, vol. l,p. 264.) 

Cadmeis, an ancient name of Bceotia. 

Cadmus, I. son of Agenor, king of Phoenicia, by 
Telephassa, was sent by his father, along with his 
brothers Phoenix and Cilix, in quest of their sister Eu- 
ropa, who had been carried off by Jupiter, and they 
were ordered not to return until they had found her. 
The brothers were accompanied by their mother, and 
by Thasus, a son of Neptune. Their search was to 
no purpose : they could get no intelligence of their 
sister; and, fearing the indignation of their father, 
they resolved to settle in various countries. Phoenix 
thereupon established himself in Phoenicia, Cilix in 
Cilicia, and Cadmus and his mother went to Thrace, 
where Thasus founded a town also named after him¬ 
self. {Apollod., 3,1,1.)—Compare the somewhat dif- 
278 


ferent genealogy given by Pherecydes. ( Sehol. ad 

Apoll. R., 3, 1179.) After the death of his mother, 
Cadmus went to Delphi, to inquire of the oracle re¬ 
specting Europa. The god desired him to cease from 
troubling himself about her, but to follow a cow as his 
guide, and to build a city where she should lie down. 
On leaving the temple, he went through Phocis, and 
meeting a cow belonging to the herds of Pelagon, he 
followed her. She went through Boeotia till she came 
to where Thebes afterward stood, and there lay down. 
Wishing to sacrifice her to Minerva, Cadmus sent his 
companions to fetch water from the fountain of Mars, 
but the fount was guarded by a serpent, who killed 
the greater part of them. Cadmus then engaged and 
destroyed the serpent. By the direction of Minerva he 
sowed its teeth, and immediately a crop of armed men 
sprang up, who slew each other, either quarrelling or 
through ignorance ; for it is said that when Cadmus 
saw them rising he flung stones at them ; and they, 
thinking it was done by some of themselves, fell upon 
and slew each other. Five only survived, Echion 
{Viper), Udseus ( Groundly), Chthonius {Earthly), Hy- 
perenor {Mighty), and Pelor {Huge.) These were 
called the Sown {oTraprot) ; and they joined with Cad¬ 
mus to build the city. For killing the sacred serpent 
Cadmus was obliged to spend a year in servitude to 
Mars. At the expiration of that period, Minerva her¬ 
self prepared for him a palace, and Jupiter gave him 
Harmonia, the daughter of Mars and Venus, in mar¬ 
riage. All the gods, quitting Olympus, celebrated the 
nuptials in the Cadmea, the palace of Cadmus. The 
bridegroom presented his bride with a magnificent 
robe, and a collar, the work of Vulcan, given to him, it 
is said, by the divine artist himself. Harmonia be¬ 
came the mother of four daughters, Semele, Autonoe, 
Ino, and Agave, and one son, Polydorus. After the 
various misfortunes which befell their children, Cad¬ 
mus and his wife quitted Thebes, now*grown odious to 
them, and migrated to the country of the Enchelians ; 
who, being harassed by the incursions of the Illyrians, 
were told by the oracle that, if they made Cadmus and 
Harmonia their leaders, they should be successful. 
They obeyed the god, and his prediction was verified. 
Cadmus became king of the Illyrians, and had a son 
named Illyrius. Shortly afterward he and Harmonia 
were changed into serpents, and sent by Jupiter to the 
Elysian plain, or, as others said, were conveyed thither 
in a chariot drawn by serpents. {Apollod., 3, 4. — 
Apoll. R., 4, 517. — Ovid, Met., 4, 563, seqq. — Aon- 
nus, 44, 115.)—The myth of Cadmus is, by its relation 
to history, one of considerable importance. It is usually 
regarded as offering a convincing proof of the fact of 
colonies from the East having come to Greece, and hav¬ 
ing introduced civilization and the arts. An examina¬ 
tion, however, of the legend, in this point of view, will 
hardly warrant such an opinion. In the Iliad, though 
the Cadmeans are spoken of more than once, not the 
slightest allusion is made to Cadmus. In the Odyssey, 
the sea-goddess Ino-Leucothia is said to have been 
a mortal, and daughter to Cadmus. {Od., 5, 333.) 
Hesiod says that the goddess Harmonia was married to 
Cadmus in Thebes. {Theog., 937,975.) Pindar fre¬ 
quently speaks of Cadmus; he places him with the Gre¬ 
cian heroes, Peleus and Achilles, in the island of the 
blessed {01, 2, 142); but it is very remarkable that this 
Theban poet never hints even at his Phoenician origin. 
It was an article, however, of general belief in Pindar’s 
time. There is a curious coincidence between the 
name Cadmus and the Semitic term for the east, Ke- 
dem, and this may in reality be the sole foundation for 
the notion of a Phoenician colony at Thebes ; for none 
of the usual evidences of colonization are to be found. 
We do not, for example, meet with the slightest trace 
of Phoenician influence in the language, manners, or 
institutions of Boeotia. It is farther a thing most’in¬ 
credible, that a seafaring, commercial people like the 





CAD 


CJEG 


Phoenicians should have selected, as the site of their 
very earliest foreign settlement, a place situated in a 
rich fertile valley, away from the sea, and only adapted 
for agriculture, without mines, or any of those objects 
of trade which might tempt a people of that character. 
It is also strange that the descendants of these colo¬ 
nists should have so entirely put off the Phoenician 
character, as to become noted in after ages for their 
dislike of trade of any kind. We may, therefore, now 
venture to dismiss this theory, and seek a Grecian 
origin for Cadmus. ( Muller, Orchomenus , p. 113, 
scq .)—Homer and Hesiod call the people of Thebes 
Cadmeans or Cadmeonians, and the country the Cad- 
mean land; the citadel was at all times named the 
Cadmea. Cadmus is therefore apparently (like Pelas- 
gus, Dorus, Ion, Thessalus, and so many others) mere¬ 
ly a personification of the name of the people. Again, 
Cadmilos or Cadmus was a name of Mercury in the 
mysteries of Samothrace, which were instituted by the 
Tyrrhenian Pelasgi, who, at the time of the Dorian 
migration, being driven from Boeotia, settled on the 
islands in the north of the vEgean. The name Cad¬ 
mus, moreover, occurs only at Thebes and Samo¬ 
thrace ; Harmonia also was an object of worship in this 
last place, and the Cabiri were likewise worshipped at 
Thebes. Now, as the word Kddjuoq may be deduced 
from “ to adorn ” or “ order," and answers exactly 
to K oo/xog, the name of the chief magistrate in Crete, 
it has been inferred, that Cadmus-Hermes, i. e., Her¬ 
mes, the Regulator or Disposer , a cosmogonic power, 
gave name to a portion of the Pelasgic race, and that, 
in the usual manner, the god was made a mortal king. 
{Muller, Orchomenus, p. 461, seqq .— Id., Prolegom., 
p. 146, seqq. — Keightlcy's Mythology, p. 325, seqq.) 
—The ancient tradition was, that Cadmus brought six¬ 
teen letters from Phoenicia to Greece, to which Pala- 
medes added subsequently four more, ■&, (j), Xi an d 

Simonides, at a still later period, four others, £, y, 'll), o. 
The traditional alphabet of Cadmus is supposed to 
have been the following: A, B, T, A, E, F, I, K, A, 
M, N, O, n, P, 2, T, and the names were, v A/l (pa, B yra, 
Tdfi/ua, AeXra, Ei, Fob), Twra, Kdinra, Au/a66a, Mi), 
Nu, Ov, Hi, 'Pw, 2 lyya, T av. The explanation which 
has just been given to the myth of Cadmus, and its 
connexion with the Pelasgi, has an important bearing 
on the question relative to the existence of an early 
Pelasgic alphabet in Greece, some remarks on which 
will be found under the article Pelasgi.—II. A native 
of Miletus, who flourished about 520 B.C. Pliny 
(7, 56) calls him the most ancient of the logographi. 
In another passage (5, 29), he makes him to have 
been the first prose writer, though elsewhere he at¬ 
tributes this to Pherecydes. According to a remark 
of Isocrates (in his discourse irepl dvridooeoq), Cad¬ 
mus was the first that bore the title of aocjiioTyq, by 
which appellation was then meant an eloquent man. 
He wrote on the antiquities of his native city. His 
work was abridged by Bion of Proconnesus. ( Scholl, 
Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 2, p. 134.) 

Caduceus, the wand of the god Mercury, with 
which he conducts the souls of the departed to the 
lower world. In the case of the god it is of gold, hence 
called by the poets aurea virga, and was said to have 
been given him by Apollo in exchange for the lyre, 
which the former had invented. Commonly speaking, 
however, it was a wand of laurel or olive, with two 
little wings on the upper end, and with two serpents 
entwined about the same part, having their heads turn¬ 
ed towards each other, the whole serving as a symbol 
of peace. According to the fable, Mercury, when 
travelling in Arcadia, saw two serpents fighting with 
one another, and threw the rod of peace between 
them, whereupon they instantly ceased from the con¬ 
test, and wound themselves around the staff in friendly 
and lasting union. Bottiger, however, gives a much 
more rational explanation. According to this writer, 


the caduceus was of Phoenician origin, and what were 
the serpents in latter days consisted originally of 
nothing more than a mere knot, skilfully formed, and 
used to secure the chests and wares of the Phoenician 
traders. This knot became very probably attached, in 
the course of time, to a bough adorned with green 
leaves at the end, and the whole thus formed a sym¬ 
bol of traffic. Here we see also the origin of the 
wings. The caduceus served Mercury also as a her¬ 
ald’s staff, and hence its Greek name Kyovicciov, 
whence, as some think, the Latin caduceus is cor¬ 
rupted. The term caduceus was also applied some¬ 
times to the white wand or rod, which the ancient her¬ 
alds regarded as the symbol of peace. (Consult Bot- 
tiger, Amallhca, vol. 1, p. 104, seqq.) 

Cadurci, a people of Gallia Celtica, living between 
the Oldus or Oltis (the Oil) and the Duranius (Dor¬ 
dogne), two of the northern brandies of the Garumna. 
Their capital was Divona, afterward called from then- 
own name Cadurci, now Cahors. (Gees., B. G., 7, 4.) 

Cadytis, a town of Syria, mentioned by Herodotus 
(2, 159). It is supposed by Reland to have been the 
same with Gath. D’Anville, Rennell, and many 
others, however, identify it with Jerusalem. This 
latter opinion is undoubtedly the more correct one, 
and the name Cadytis would seem to be only a cor¬ 
ruption of the Hebrew Kcdosha, i. e., “ holy city.” 
With this, too, the present Arabic name El Kad.s, i. e., 
“ the holy,” clearly agrees. (Rennell, Geogr. Herod., 
vol. 1, p. 324.— Rosenmuller, Bibl. Alterthumsk., vol. 
2, pt. 1, p. 487.— Heeren, Ideen, vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 114. 
— Dahlman, Herod., p. 75.— Valckencer, Opusc ., vol. 
1, p. 152. seqq. — Bohr, Excurs., 11, ad Herod., 1. c.) 

CnsA, an island of the JEgean Sea, among the Cyc¬ 
lades, called also- Ceos and Cea. (Vid. Ceos.) 

CnsciAs, a wind blowing from the northeast. (Com¬ 
pare Aulus Gcllms, 2, 22, and Schneider, Lex., s. v. 
Kauciag.) 

CCecilia Caia, or Tanaquil. Vid. Tanaquil. 

Cecilia Lex, I. was proposed A.U.C. 693, by 
Csecilius Metellus Nepos, to exempt the city and Italy 
from taxes. (Cic., Ep. ad Att., 2, 9.— Dio Cass., 
37, 51.)—II. Another, called also Didia, or Didia et 
Ccecilia, A.U.C. 654, by the consuls Q. Csecilius Me¬ 
tellus and T. Didius, that laws should be promul¬ 
gated for three market-days (17 days), and that several 
distinct things should not be included in the same law, 
which practice was called ferre per saturam. —III. 
Another, A.U.C. 701, to restore to the censors their 
original rights and privileges, which had been lessened 
by P. Clodius, the tribune.—IY. Another, called also 
Gabinia, A.U.C. 685, against usury. 

Ccecilia (gens), a distinguished plebeian family of 
Rome, the principal branch of which were the Metelli. 
They pretended to have derived their origin from Cse- 
culus, son of Vulcan. 

Csecilius, I. Metellus. (Vid. Metellus.)—II. Sta¬ 
tius, a comic poet, originally a Gallic slave. (Aul. 
Gell., 4, 20.) His productions were held in high es¬ 
timation by the Romans, and were sometimes ranked 
on an equality with those of Plautus and Terence, at 
other times preferred to them. (Horat., Ep., 2, 1, 59. 
— Cic., de Orat.,2, 10. — Id. ad Attic., 7, 3.— Vulga- 
tius Sedigitus ap. Aul. Gell., 15, 24.) He died one 
year after Ennius. We possess the names and frag¬ 
ments of more than thirty of his comedies, in which 
he appears to have copied the writers of the New 
Comedy among the Greeks, especially Menander. 
(Bahr, Gesch. Rom. Lit., p. 70.) 

CiECiNA, Allienus, a celebrated general, a native 
of Gaul. He commanded at first a legion for Galba, 
in Germany ; then he embraced the party of Vitellius, 
and gained him the crown by the victory of Bedria- 
cum, where Otho was defeated. Soon after this, how¬ 
ever, he abandoned Vitellius and went over to Vespa¬ 
sian. Irritated at not being promoted by the new em- 

'279 




C^E N 


CJER 


peror to the honours at which he aimed, he conspired 
against him, but was slain by order of Titus at a ban¬ 
quet. Some writers have thrown doubts on this con¬ 
spiracy, and have pretended that Titus was actuated 
by a feeling of jealousy in seeing Cajcina regarded 
with attachment by Berenice. ( Tacit., Hist., 1, 61. 
— Id. ib., 3, 13 —Dio Cass., 66, 16.) 

Caecubus Ager, a district in the vicinity of For- 
miee and Caieta in Latium, famous for its wines. 
Pliny (14, 6) informs us, that, before his time, the 
Ccecuban wine, which came from the poplar marshes 
of Amyclse, was most esteemed, but that at the period 
when he wrote, it had lost its repute, through the neg¬ 
ligence of the growers, and partly from the limited 
extent of the vineyards, which had been nearly destroy¬ 
ed by the navigable canal begun by Nero from the 
Lake Avernus to Ostia. Galen ( Athen ., 1, 21) de¬ 
scribes the Csecubaroas a generous and durable wine, 
but apt to affect the head, and ripening only after 
many years. When new it probably belonged to the 
class of rough sweet wines. It was Horace’s favour¬ 
ite, and scarce after the breaking up of the principal 
vineyards. The best, and, at the same time, the oldest 
vintage, was the Opimian. L. Opimius Nepos was 
consul A.U. 633, in which year the excessive heat of 
the summer caused all the productions of the earth to 
attain an uncommon degree of perfection. ( Vid. Fa- 
lernum and Massicus.— Henderson's Hist. Anc. and 
Modern Wines, p. 81, seqq.) 

CmcuLus, a son of Vulcan, conceived, as some say, 
by his mother as she was sitting by the fire, a spark 
having leaped forth into her bosom. After a life spent 
in plundering and rapine, he built Prseneste ; but, being 
unable to find inhabitants, he implored Vulcan to tell 
him whether he really was his father. Upon this a 
flame suddenly shone around a multitude who were as¬ 
sembled to see some spectacle, and they were imme¬ 
diately persuaded to become the subjects of Caeculus. 
Virgil says, that he was found on the hearth, or, as 
some less correctly explain it, in the very fire itself, 
and hence was fabled to have been the son of Vulcan. 
The name Cfeculus refers, it is said, to the small size 
of the pupils of his eyes. ( Virg., JEn., 7, 680.— Serv. 
ad Virg., 1. c.) 

Caeles Vibenna. Vid. Vibenna. 

Caelia Lex, was enacted A.U.C. 630, by C$lius, 
a tribune. It ordained, that in judicial proceedings be¬ 
fore the people, in cases of treason, the votes should 
be given by ballot ; contrary to the exception of the 
Cassian law. ( Heinecc., Antiq. Rom., ed. Haubold , 
p. 250.) 

Caelius, I. a young Roman of considerable tal¬ 
ents and accomplishments, intrusted to the care of 
Cicero on his first introduction to the forum. Having 
imprudently engaged in an intrigue with Clodia, the 
well-known sister of Clodius, and having afterward 
deserted her, she accused him of an attempt to poison 
her, and of having borrowed money from her in order to 
procure the assassination of Dio, the Alexandrean am¬ 
bassador. He was defended by Cicero in an oration 
which is still extant.—II. Aurelianus, a medical wri¬ 
ter. (Vid. Aurelianus.) — III. Sabinus, a writer in the 
age of Vespasian, who composed a treatise on the 
edicts of the curule ediles.—IV. One of the seven 
hills on which Rome was built. Romulus surrounded 
it with a ditch and rampart, and it was enclosed by 
walls by the succeeding kings. It is supposed to 
have received its name from Cseles Vibenna. 

Caene, or C^enepolis, I. a town of Egypt, in the 
Panopolitan nome, supposed to be the present Ghenne 
or Kenne. II. A town near the promontory of Tama¬ 
ras : its previous name was Tsenarum. ( Vid. Tama¬ 
ras.) 

Caeneus. Vid. Camis. 

Caenides, a patronymic of Eetion, as descended 
from Csenus. (Herod., 5, 92.) 

280 


C^enina, a town of Latium, near Rome, placed by 
Cluverius on the banks of the Anio. The inhabi¬ 
tants, called Ccenincnses, made war against the Ro¬ 
mans after the rape of the Sabines. Having been 
conquered by Romulus, Csenina is said to have re¬ 
ceived a colony from the victor, together with Antem- 
nae. (Dion. Hal., 2, 36.) It is thought to have stood 
on the hill of Sant' Angelo, or Monticelli. . (Holsten., 
Adnot.,]). 103.) 

Caenis, a Thessalian son of Elatus, and one of the 
Lapitha). He was, according to the fable, originally 
a female, and obtained from Neptune the privilege 
of changing sex, and of becoming a warrior and in¬ 
vulnerable. In this new sex he became celebrated 
for his valour and his exploits in the war against the 
Centaurs. He offended Jupiter, and was changed into 
a bird. Virgil represents Crenis under a female form 
in the lower world. (JEn., 6, 448.) The name is 
sometimes,but less correctly, given as Cseneus. (Con¬ 
sult Heyne, ad JEn., 1. c.) 

Caenys, a promontory of Italy, in the country of 
the Bruttii, north of Rhegium. It faced the promon¬ 
tory of Pelorus in Sicily, and formed, by its means, 
the narrowest part of the Fretum Siculum. (Strabo, 
256.) According to Pliny (3, 10), these two prom¬ 
ontories were separated by an interval of twelve sta-r 
dia, or a mile and a half:-a statement which accords 
with that of Polybius (1, 42.) Thucydides, on the 
other hand (6, 1), seems to allow two and a half for 
the breadth of the strait, but, at the same time, con¬ 
siders this as the utmost amount of the distance. 
Topographers are divided as to the exact point of the 
Italian coast which answers to Cape Caenys ; the 
Calabrian geographers say, the Punta del Pezzo ’ call¬ 
ed also Coda del Volpe, in which opinion Cluverius 
and D’Anville coincide ; but Holstenius contends for 
the Torre del Cavallo. This perhaps may, in fact, 
be the narrowest point; but it does not apparently an¬ 
swer so well to Strabo’s description of the figure and 
bearing of Cape Caenys. (Cramer's Ancient Italy , 
vol. 2, p. 426, seqq.) * 

Caere, or, as it is always called by the Greek wri¬ 
ters, Agylla, one of the most considerable cities of 
Etruria, and universally acknowledged to have been 
founded by the Tyrrhenian Pelasgi. (Dion. Hal., 1, 
20.— Id., 3, 60.) It was situate near the coast, to the 
west of Veii. Ancient writers seem puzzled to ac¬ 
count for the change of name which this city is allow¬ 
ed to have undergone, the Romans never calling it 
anything but Caere, except Virgil. (JEn., 8, 478.) 
Strabo (220) relates, that the Tyrrheni, on arriving 
before this city, were hailed by the Pelasgi from the 
walls with the word Xalpe, according to the Greek 
mode of salutation ; and that, when they had made 
themselves masters of the place, they changed its 
name to that form of greeting. Other variations of 
this story may be seen in Servius (ad jEn., 8, 597). 
According to one of them, given on the authority of 
llygmus, the Romans, and not the Lydians, changed 
its name from Agylla to Care. All these explana¬ 
tions, however, are very unsatisfactory. It has been 
supposed that Care might be the original name, or 
pei haps that which the Siculi, the ancient possessors, 
gave to the place before the Pelasgic invasion Ker 
is a Celtic word. (Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol 1 p 
205.) According to Muller (Die Etruskcr, vol. l’ p. 
8/), the two names for the place point to two different 
stems or races of inhabitants. This same writer 
makes the genuine Etrurian name to have been Cisra 
(Compare Vcrnys Flaccns, Etrusc. 1, an. Intern. 
f Vn ‘\ 10, 183, Veron.) The earliest record to be 
found ot the history of Agylla is in Herodotus (1, 166) 
That writer informs us, that the Phocaans, havincr 
been driven from their native city on the shores of 
Ionia by the arms of Cyras, formed establishments in 
Corsica, of which the Tyrrhenians and Carthaginians, 





CiES 


CiESAR. 


jealous of their nautical skill and enterprising spirit, 
sought to dispossess them. A severe action accord¬ 
ingly took place in the Sea of Sardinia, between the 
Phocseans and the combined fleet of the latter powers, 
in which the former gained the day; but it was such 
a victory as left them little room for exultation, they 
having lost several of their ships, and the rest being 
nearly all disabled. The Agylleans, who appear to 
have constituted the principal force of the Tyrrhenians, 
on their return home landed their prisoners and barba¬ 
rously stoned them to death ; for which act of cruelty 
they were soon visited by a strange calamity. It was 
observed, that all the living creatures which approach¬ 
ed the spot where the Phocseans had been murdered, 
were immediately seized with convulsive distortions 
and paralytic affections of the limbs. On consulting 
the oracle at Delphi, to learn how they might expiate 
their offence, the Agylleans were commanded to cele¬ 
brate the obsequies of the dead, and to hold games in 
their honour; which order, the historian informs us, 
was punctually attended to up to his time. We learn 
also from Strabo (220), that the Agylleans enjoyed a 
great reputation for justice among the Greeks; for, 
though very powerful, and able to send out large fleets 
and numerous armies, they always abstained from pi¬ 
racy, to which the other Tyrrhenian cities were much 
addicted. According to Dionysius, the Romans were 
first engaged in hostilities with Caere under the reign 
of Tarquin the Elder, and subsequently under Servius 
Tullius, by whom a treaty was concluded between the 
two states (3, 28). Long after, when Rome had 
been taken by the Gauls, the inhabitants of Caere ren¬ 
dered the former city an important service, by receiv¬ 
ing their priests and vestals, and defeating the Gauls 
on their return through the Sabine territory; on which 
occasion they recovered the gold with which Rome 
is said to have purchased its liberation. This is a cu¬ 
rious fact, and not mentioned by any historian; but 
it agrees very well with the account which Polybius 
gives us of the retreat of the Gauls (1, 6). In re¬ 
turn for this assistance, the Romans requited the Cae- 
rites by declaring them the public guests of Rome, and 
admitting them, though not in full, to the rights en¬ 
joyed by her citizens. They were made citizens, but 
without the right of voting; whence the phrases, in 
Caritum tabulas refcrre aliquem, “ to deprive one of 
his right of voting,” and Carite cera digni, “ worth¬ 
less persons,” in reference to citizens of Rome, since 
what would be an honour to the people of Caere would 
be a punishment to a native Roman citizen. ( Cra¬ 
mers Ancient Italy , vol. 1, p. 207.)—“It is a weak 
notion of Strabo,” observes Niebuhr, “ that the Ro¬ 
mans had acted ungratefully in not admitting the Cae- 
rites to a higher franchise. It was not in their power 
to do so, unless the Caerites themselves preferred re¬ 
nouncing the independence of their state, receiving 
their landed property from the republic, according to 
the Roman law, and forming a new tribe ; and this 
they were certainly far from wishing at that time, as 
fortune had been more favourable to them in the Gal¬ 
lic war than to Rome ; if, indeed, the Roman citizen¬ 
ship were really conferred on thg Caerites at this time, 
and not considerably earlier, in the flourishing days 
of the ancient Agylla.” ( Roman History, vol. 1, p. 
403, Walter's transl.) In the first edition of his work 
(vol. 1, p. 193, seqq., innotis ), Niebuhr starts the bold 
hypothesis that Care was the parent city of Rome. 
In the second edition, however ( Cambridge transl.), 
this theory is silently withdrawn. 

Caesar, a surname given to the Julian family at 
Rome, for which various etymologies have been as¬ 
signed. Pliny (7, 9) informs us, that the first who 
bore the name was so called, quod caso mortua matris 
utero natus fuerit. Festus derives it from casanes, 
cum qua e matris ventre prodierit. Others, because the 
first of the name slew an elephant, which was called 
N N 


casa in Punic, as Servus informs us (ad IEn., 1, 290). 
The derivation of Pliny is generally considered the best. 
The nobility of the Julian family was so ancient and 
so illustrious, that, even after it obtained the imperial 
dignity, it needed not the exaggeration of flatterers to 
exalt it. Within thirty years after the commencement 
of the republic, we find the name of C. Julius on the 
list of consuls, and the same person, or a relation of 
the same name, is said to have been one of the De¬ 
cemviri by whom the laws of the twelve tables were 
compiled. It numbered, after this, several other indi¬ 
viduals who attained to the offices of praetor and con¬ 
sul, one of whom, L. Julius Caesar, distinguished him¬ 
self in the Italian war by a great victory over the 
Samnites, and was afterward murdered by order of 
Marius. Another, of the same line, C. Julius Caesar, 
the brother of Lucius, was eminent as a public speaker 
for his wit and pleasantry, and perished together with 
the former when Marius and Cinna first assumed the 
government.—The most illustrious of the name, how¬ 
ever, was C. Julius Caesar, born July ( Quintilis ) 
10th, B.C. 100. His father was C. Julius Caesar, a 
man of praetorian rank, and is recorded by Pliny (7, 
53) as a remarkable instance of sudden death, he 
having expired suddenly one morning at Pisa while 
dressing himself. C. Caesar married Aurelia, of the 
family of Aurelius Cotta, and of these parents was 
born the subject of the present sketch. From his ear¬ 
liest boyhood Caesar discovered extraordinary talents. 
He had a penetrating intellect, a remarkably strong 
memory, and a lively imagination ; was indefatigable 
in business, and able, as we are told by Pliny, to read, 
write, hear, and dictate, at one and the same time, 
from four to seven different letters. When the party 
of Marius had gained the ascendency at Rome, Cinna 
gave his daughter Cornelia in marriage to Caesar. 
The latter was also farther connected with the popular 
party through, the marriage of Julia, his father’s sister, 
with the elder Marius ; yet, although thus doubly ob¬ 
noxious to the victorious side, he refused to comply 
with the commands of Sylla, to divorce his wife ; and 
being exposed, in consequence, to his resentment, he 
fled from Rome, and baffled all attempts upon his life, 
partly by concealing himself, and partly by bribing 
the officers sent to kill him, till Sylla was prevailed 
upon, according to Suetonius, to spare him at the en¬ 
treaty of some common friends. A story was after¬ 
ward common, that Sylla did not pardon without great 
reluctance; and that he told those who sued in his 
behalf, that in Caesar there were many Mariuses. Had 
he indeed thought so, his was not a temper to have 
yielded to any supplications to save him; nor would 
any considerations have induced him to exempt from 
destruction one from whom he had apprehended so 
great a danger. After this, the young Caesar pro¬ 
ceeded to the court of Nicomedes, king of Bithynia, 
and on leaving this monarch, of whose intimacy with 
him a scandalous anecdote is recorded, he went to M. 
Municius Thermus, then praetor in Asia, who intrust¬ 
ed him with the command of the fleet that was to 
blockade Mytilene. In the execution of this trust 
Caesar distinguished himself highly, although but twen¬ 
ty-two years of age. He next visited Rhodes, and 
studied eloquence for some time under Apollonius 
Molo, from whom Cicero, about the same period, was 
also receiving instruction. (Sueton., Jul., c. 4.—Cic., 
de Clar. Or., c. 91.) On the way thither he was 
taken by pirates, and was detained by them till he 
collected from some of the neighbouring cities fifty 
talents for his ransom. No sooner, however, was he 
released, than he procured a small naval force, and 
set out on his own sole authority in pursuit of them. 
He overtook the pirates, and captured some of their 
vessels, which he brought back to the coast of Asia 
with a number of prisoners.^ He then sent word of 
his success to the proconsul of Asia, requesting him 

• 281 






CLESAR. 


CJESAR. 


to order the execution of the captives ; but that officer 
being more inclined to have them sold as slaves, Csesar 
crucified them all without loss of time, before the pro- 
consul’s pleasure was officially known. Such con¬ 
duct was not likely to recommend him to those in au¬ 
thority ; and we are told that on several other occa¬ 
sions, he wished to act for himself {Veil. Paterc ., 2, 
67.— Suelon., Jul., 4), and even to take part in the 
war which was now renewed with Mithradates, with¬ 
out any commission from the government, and without 
submitting himself to any of the regular officers of the 
republic. These early instances of his lawless spirit 
are recorded with admiration by some of his historians, 
as affording proofs of vigour and greatness of mind. 
He now returned to Rome, and became, in succession, 
military tribune, quaestor, and aedile. At the same 
time, he had the address to win the favour of the peo¬ 
ple by affability, by splendid entertainments, and pub¬ 
lic shows ; and, trusting to his popularity, he ven¬ 
tured to erect again the statues of Marius, whose 
memory was hated by the senate and patricians. In 
the conspiracy of Catiline he certainly had a secret 
part; and his speech in the senate, on the question of 
their punishment, was regarded by many as an actual 
proof of this, for he insisted that death, by the Roman 
constitution, was an illegal punishment, and that the 
property merely of the conspirators should be con¬ 
fiscated, and they themselves condemned to perpetual 
imprisonment. Soon after this he was chosen pontifex 
maximus, and was about to go as governor to Farther 
Spain ; but his creditors refusing to let him depart, 
Crassus became his security in the enormous sum of 
eight hundred and thirty talents. It was on his jour¬ 
ney to Spain that the remarkable expression fell from 
his lips, on seeing a miserable village by the way, 
“ that he would rather be first there than second at 
Rome.” When he entered on the government of this 
province, he displayed the same ability, and the same 
unscrupulous waste of human lives for the purposes 
of his ambition, which distinguished his subsequent ca¬ 
reer. In order to retrieve his fortune, to gain a mili¬ 
tary reputation, and to entitle himself to the honour of 
a triumph, he attacked some of the native tribes on the 
most frivolous pretences {Dio Cass., 37, 52), and thus 
enriched himself and his army, and gained the credit 
of a successful general by the plunder and Inassacre 
of these poor barbarians. On his return to Rome he 
paid off' his numerous and heavy debts, and, in order 
to gain the consulship, brought about a reconciliation 
between Pornpey and Crassus, whose enmity had di¬ 
vided Rome into two great parties. He succeeded in 
his design, and that famous coalition was eventually 
formed between Pompey, Crassus, and himself, which 
is known in Roman history by the name of the First 
Triumvirate. {Vid. Triumvir.) Supported by such 
powerful assistants, in addition to his own popularity, 
Csesar was elected consul, with M. Calpurnius Bibu- 
lus, confirmed the measures of Pompey, and procured 
the passage of a law for the distribution of certain 
lands among the poorer class of citizens. This, of 
course, brought him high popularity. With Pompey 
he formed a still more intimate connexion, by giving 
him his daughter Julia in marriage ; and the favour of 
the equestrian order was gained by releasing them 
from a disadvantageous contract for the revenues of 
Asia, a step which the senate had refused to take in 
their behalf; and thus the affections of a powerful 
body of men were alienated from the aristocracy at 
the very time when their assistance was most needful. 
When the year of his consulship had expired, Csesar 
obtained from the people, by the Vatinian law, the gov¬ 
ernment of Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum, for five 
years, with an army of three legions. As the law then 
stood, the disposal of such commands was vested in 
the senate alone ; but that body, wishing, no doubt, to 
increase the weight of Gsesar’s employments abroad, 
282 • 


and to remove him farther from the city, added to hia 
government the province of Transalpine Gaul, and 
voted him another legion. After marrying Calpurnia, 
the daughter of Lucius Calpurnius Piso (his third wife 
had been divorced by him in consequence of the affair 
of Clodius), Csesar repaired to Gaul, in nine years re¬ 
duced the whole country, crossed the Rhine twice, 
passed over twice into Britain, defeated the natives of 
; this island in two battles, and compelled them to give 
hostages. The senate had continued his government 
in Gaul for another period of five years ; while Pom- 
pey was to have the command of Spain, and Crassus 
that of Syria, Egypt, and Macedonia, for five years also. 
The death of Crassus, however, in his unfortunate 
campaign against the Parthians, dissolved the trium¬ 
virate. About this same time, too, occurred the death 
of Julia, and thus the tie which had bound Pompey so 
closely to Caesar was broken, and no private consider¬ 
ations any longer existed to allay the jealousies and 
animosities which political disputes might enkindle 
between them. The power of Pompey, meanwhile, 
kept continually on the increase ; and Caesar, on his 
part, used every exertion to strengthen his own re¬ 
sources, and enlarge the number of his party and 
' friends. Caesar converted Gaul into a Roman prov¬ 
ince, and kept governing it with policy and kindness. 

! Pompey, on his side, elevated Caesar’s enemies to the 
consulship, and prevailed upon the senate to pass a de¬ 
cree requiring Caesar to leave his army, and resign his 
government of Gaul. The latter declared his willing¬ 
ness to obey this mandate, if Pompey also would lay 
aside his own authority, and descend to the ranks of 
a private citizen. The proposition was unheeded, 
and a second decree followed, commanding Caesar to 
resign his offices and military power within a specified 
period, or be declared an enemy to his country, and at 
the same time appointing Pompey commander-in-chief 
of the armies of the republic. An open rupture now 
ensued. The decree of the senate was negatived by 
two of the tribunes, Antony and Cassius {Cces., Bell. 
Civ., 1 , 2, seq.) ; the senate, on the other hand, had 
recourse to the exercise of their highest prerogative, 
and directed the consuls for the time being “ to pro¬ 
vide for the safety of the republic.” This resolution 
was entered on the journals of the senate on the sev¬ 
enth of January ; and no sooner was it passed, than 
Antony and Cassius, together with Curio, professing 
to believe their lives in danger, fled in disguise from 
Rome, and hastened to escape to Csesar, who was 
then at Ravenna, waiting for the result of his proposi¬ 
tion to the senate. {Cic., Ep. ad Fam., 16, 11.— 
Pint., Vit. Cces., c. 31.) It appears, from one of Cice¬ 
ro’s letters {ad Att., 7, 9), written a few days before 
the first of January, that he had calculated on such an 
event as the flight of the tribunes, and on its affording 
Csesar a pretext for commencing his rebellion. When 
it had actually taken place, the senate, well aware of 
the consequences to which it would lead, began to 
make preparations for defence. Italy was divided into 
districts, each of which was to be under the com¬ 
mand of a separate officer; soldiers were ordered to 
be everywhere levied,money was voted from the treas¬ 
ury to be placed at Pompey’s disposal, and the two 
Gauls, which Csesar had just been summoned to re¬ 
sign, were bestowed on L. Domitius and M. Con- 
sidius Nonianus. When Csesar was informed of the 
flight of the tribunes and of the subsequent resolu¬ 
tions of the senate, he assembled his soldiers, expa¬ 
tiated on the violence offered to the tribunitian char¬ 
acter, and on the attempts of his enemies to despoil 
himself of the dignity, by forcing him to resign his 
province before the term of his command was ex¬ 
pired. He found his troops perfectly disposed to fol¬ 
low him, crossed the Rubicon, and, seizing on Arimi- 
num, the first town of importance without the limits 
of his province, thus declared himself in open rebel- 






CAESAR. 


CiESAR. 


lion against the state. At Ariminum he met the fugi¬ 
tive tribunes, introduced them without delay to his 
army, and, working upon the feelings of the latter by 
a powerful harangue, soon made himself master of Ita¬ 
ly without striking a blow, as Pompey, taken by sur¬ 
prise through the suddenness of Caesar’s hostile op¬ 
erations, and destitute of troops to meet him, had left 
the city with the senators, consuls, and other magis¬ 
trates. Levying an army thereupon, with the treas¬ 
ures of the state, Caesar hastened into Spain, which 
he reduced to submission, without coming to a pitched 
battle with Pompey’s generals. He next conquered 
Massilia ( Marseille ), and then, returning to Rome, 
was appointed dictator by the praetor M. iEmilius Lep- 
idus. Meanwhile Pompey had collected an army in 
the East, and his rival hastened to Epirus, with five 
legions, by land. After various operations, which our 
limits prevent us from detailing, the rival commanders 
met in the plain of Pharsalia, and Caesar gained a de¬ 
cided victory. Pompey, fleeing to Egypt, was basely 
murdered there, while his more fortunate antagonist, 
hastening likewise to the East, came just in time to 
give an honourable burial to the body of his opponent. 
After settling the differences between Ptolemy and 
his sister Cleopatra, Caesar marched against Pharna- 
ces, king of Pontus, son of Mithradates the Great, and 
finished the war so rapidly as to have announced the 
result to his friends at home in those well-known 
words, “ veni, vidi, vici ” (“7 have come, I have seen , 
I have conquered' 1 ’’), so descriptive of the celerity of his 
movements. Returning to Rome, after having thus 
composed the affairs of the East, Caesar granted an 
amnesty to all the followers of Pompey, and gained 
by his clemency a strong hold on the good feelings of 
the people. He had been appointed, meanwhile, consul 
for five years, dictator for a year, and tribune for life. 
When his dictatorship had expired, he caused himself 
to be chosen consul again, and, without changing the 
ancient forms of government, ruled with almost un¬ 
limited authority. Then came the campaign in Africa, 
where the friends of the republic had gathered under 
the standard of Cato and other leaders. Crossing 
over against them, Caesar engaged in several conflicts 
against these new antagonists, and at last completely 
defeated them at the battle of Thapsus. Fresh hon¬ 
ours awaited him at Rome. The dictatorship was 
again bestowed on him for the space of ten years, he 
was appointed censor for life, and his statue was placed 
by that of Jupiter in the Capitol.—From the date of 
Caesar’s return from Africa to the period of his assas¬ 
sination, there is an interval of somewhat less than 
two years, and even of this short time nine months 
were engrossed by the renewal of the war in Spain, 
which obliged him to leave Rome once more, and con¬ 
tend for the security of his power against the sons of 
Pompey at the point of the sword. ( Vid. Munda.) 
He enjoyed the sovereignty, therefore, which he had 
so dearly purchased,, during little more than one single 
year; from the end of July, A.U.C. 707, to the mid¬ 
dle of the winter, a period of between seven and eight 
months, owing to the reformation of the calendar 
which he introduced during this interval; and again 
from October, 703, to the Ides of March in the follow¬ 
ing spring. When Csesar again entered Rome after 
conquering the sons of Pompey, he was made per¬ 
petual dictator, and received the title of imperator 
with powers of sovereignty. The appellation also of 
“Father of his Country” was voted him ; the month in 
which he was born, and which had till then been called 
Quintilis, was now named Julius (July), in honour of 
him ; money was stamped with his image, and a guard 
of senators and citizens of equestrian rank was 
appointed for the security of his person. He was 
allowed also to wear, on. all public festivals, the 
dress worn by victorious' generals at their triumphs, 
and at all times to have a crown of laurel on his 


head. He continued, meanwhile, to conciliate his 
enemies, and to heap favours on his friends. Lar¬ 
gesses were also distributed among the populace, 
shows of various kinds were exhibited, and everything, 
in fact, was done to call off their attention from the 
utter prostration of their liberties which had so suc¬ 
cessfully been achieved. The gross and impious flat¬ 
tery of the senate now reached its height. The stat¬ 
ues of Caesar were ordered to be carried, along with 
those of the gods, in the processions of the circus ; 
temples and altars were dedicated to him, and priests 
were appointed to superintend his worship. These 
things he received with a vanity which affords a stri¬ 
king contrast to the contemptuous pride of Sylla. 
Caesar took a pleasure in every token of homage, and 
in contemplating with childish delight the gaudy hon¬ 
ours with which he was invested. It was a part of the 
prize which he had coveted, and which he had commit¬ 
ted so many crimes to gain; nor did the possession of 
real power seem to give him greater delight, than the 
enjoyment of these forced, and, therefore, worthless 
flatteries.—We now come to the closing scene, his 
assassination. Various causes seemed to hurry this 
event. Csesar had given offence to the senate by re¬ 
ceiving them without rising from his seat when they 
waited upon him to communicate the decrees which 
they had passed in honour of him. He had given 
equal offence to numbers in the state by assuming so 
openly not only the patronage of the ordinary offices, 
but the power of bestowing them in an unprecedented 
manner, in order to suit his own policy. On one occa¬ 
sion, too, as he was sitting in the rostra, Marc Antony 
offered him a royal diadem. He refused it, however, 
and his refusal drew shouts of applause from the peo¬ 
ple. The next morning his statues were adorned with 
diadems. The tribunes of the people took them off, 
and imprisoned the persons who had done the act, but 
they were deposed from their office by Csesar. These 
and other acts, that declared but too plainly the ambi¬ 
tious feelings of the man, and his hankering after the 
bauble of royalty, gave rise to a conspiracy, of which 
Caius Cassius was the prime mover. Csesar, having 
no suspicion of the danger which threatened him, was 
forming new projects. Tie resolved to subdue the 
Parthians, and then to conquer all Scythia from the 
Caucasus to Gaul. His friends gave out, that, ac¬ 
cording to the Sibylline books, the Parthians would be 
conquered only by a king, and the plan proposed there¬ 
fore was, that Csesar should retain the title of dictator 
with regard to Italy, but should be saluted with that of 
king in all the conquered countries. For this purpose 
a meeting of the senate was appointed for the 15th 
(the Ides) of March ; and this was the day fixed upon 
by the conspirators for the execution of their plot. 
Csesar, it is said, had been often warned by the augurs 
to beware of the Ides of March (Pint, in Vit., c. 63. 
— Sueton. in Vit., c. 81), and these predictions had 
probably wrought upon the mind of his wife Calpurnia, 
so that, on the night which preceded that dreaded day, 
her rest was broken by feverish dreams, and in the 
morning her impression of fear was so strong that she 
earnestly besought her husband not to stir from the 
house. He himself, we are told, felt a little unwell, 
and being thus more ready to be infected by supersti¬ 
tious fears, was inclined to comply with Calpurnia’s 
wishes. His delay in attending the senate alarmed the 
conspirators ; Decimus Brutus was sent to call on him, 
and, overcome by his persuasions, he proceeded to the 
Capitol. On his way thither, Artemidorus of Cnidus, a 
Greek sophist, who had been admitted into the houses 
of some of the conspirators, and had there become ac¬ 
quainted with some facts that excited his suspicions, ap¬ 
proached him with a written statement of the informa¬ 
tion which he had obtained, and, putting it into his hand, 
begged him to read it instantly, as it was of the last im¬ 
portance. Csesar, it is said, tried to look at it, but was 

283 






OESAR. 


CLESAR. 


prevented by the crowd that pressed around him as he 
passed along, and he still held it in his hand when he en¬ 
tered the senate-house. When Csesar had taken his 
seat, the conspirators gathered more closely around him, 
and L. Tillius Cimber approached him as if to offer some 
petition. Csesar seemed unwilling to grant it, and ap¬ 
peared impatient of further importunity, when Cimber 
took hold of his robe and pulled it down from his 
shoulders. This was the signal for attack. The dag¬ 
ger of Casca took the lead, when Csesar at first at¬ 
tempted to force his way through the circle that sur¬ 
rounded him. But when all the conspirators rushed 
upon him, and were so eager to share in his death that 
they wounded one another in the confusion of the mo¬ 
ment ; and when, moreover, he saw Junius Brutus 
among the number, Csesar drew his robe closely around 
him, and, having covered his face, fell without a struggle 
or a groan. He received three-and-twenty wounds, and 
it was observed that the blood, as it streamed from them, 
bathed the pedestal of Pompey’s statue. No sooner 
was the murder finished than Brutus, raising his gory 
dagger, turned round to the assembled senate, and call¬ 
ing on Cicero by name, congratulated him on the re¬ 
covery of their country’s liberty. But to preserve or¬ 
der was hopeless, and the senators fled in dismay. (For 
an account of the events immediately subsequent, vid. 
Antonius and Brutus.)—Csesar died in the 56th year of 
his age.—In his intellectual character he deserves the 
highest rank among the men of his age ; as a general, 
moreover, it is needless to pronounce his eulogy. 8 * But 
if we turn from his intellectual to his moral physiog¬ 
nomy, the whole range of history can hardly furnish a 
picture of greater deformity. Besides being exces¬ 
sively addicted to gross sensualities, never did any man 
occasion so large an amount of human misery with so 
little provocation. In his campaigns in Gaul he is 
said to have destroyed one million of men in battle 
( Pint., Vit. Cces., c. 15. — Compare Pirn., 7, 25), and 
to have made prisoners a million more, many of whom 
w r ere destined to perish as gladiators, and all were torn 
from their country and reduced to slavery. The 
slaughter which he occasioned in the civil wars cannot 
be computed ; nor can we estimate the degree of suf¬ 
fering caused in every part of the empire by his spoli¬ 
ations and confiscations, and by the various acts of op¬ 
pression which he tolerated in his followers.—Was, 
then, his assassination a lawful act! Certainly not. 
The act of assassination is in itself so hateful, and in¬ 
volves in it so much of dissimulation and treachery, 
that, whatever allowance may be made for the perpe¬ 
trators, when we consider the moral ignorance of the 
times in which they lived, their conduct must never be 
spoken of without open condemnation. ( Encyc. Me- 
tropol., Div. 3, vol. 2, p. 156, scqq. — Encyc. Amer., 
vol. 2, p. 379.) — As an historical writer Csesar has 
been compared to. Xenophon. Simplicity is the char¬ 
acteristic of both, though in Caesar perhaps it borders 
on severity. We have from the pen of the Roman 
commander seven books of commentaries on the Gal¬ 
lic war, and three of the civil contest. His style is re¬ 
markable for clearness and ease, and its most distin¬ 
guishing characteristic is its perfect equality of expres¬ 
sion. It has been affirmed, by some critics, that Cae¬ 
sar did not write the three books of the civil war, and 
even that Suetonius was the author of the seven books 
on the Gallic war. But Vossius has vindicated Cae¬ 
sar’s title to the authorship of the Commentaries as 
they stand in the editions, though he does not vouch 
for his accuracy or veracity on all occasions. The 
opinion that the extant commentaries are not Caesar’s 
may possibly have arisen from a confusion of circum¬ 
stances between two works. It is believed that he 
wrote Ephemerides, containing a journal of his life ; 
but they are lost. Servius quotes them, as does also 
Plutarch. Frontinus likewise seems to refer to them, 
since he relates many of Caesar’s stratagems not men- 
284 


tioned in the commentaries, and must in all probabil¬ 
ity have read them in the journal. ( Malkin's Classical 
Disquisitions, p. 185, scqq.) — The question, when 
Caesar wrote his commentaries, has been frequently 
agitated. Guischard {Mem. Crit., 539} is in favour 
of the common opinion, that they-were written short¬ 
ly after the events themselves, 1. Because Cicero, 
in his Brutus, a work written before the civil war, 
speaks of the commentaries of Caesar. 2. Because, if 
Caesar had written his commentaries after the civil war 
was ended, there would not have been a lacuna after 
the sixth book, to be supplied by Hirtius. 3. Because 
Caesar had little leisure at his disposal after the civil 
war.—Caesar wrote other books, especially one on the 
analogies of the Latin tongue. A few fragments re¬ 
main, which do not impress us with a very high opin¬ 
ion of this performance. It was entitled Dc Analogia, 
and was written, as we are informed by Suetonius, 
while Caesar was crossing the Alps, on his return to 
the army from Hither Gaul, where he had been to at¬ 
tend the assembly of that province. {Suet., Jul., 
56.) In this book, the great principle established by 
him was, that the proper choice of words formed the 
foundation of eloquence {Cicero, Brut., 72) ; and he 
cautioned authors and public speakers to avoid as a 
rock every unusual word or unwonted expression. 
{Aul. Gell., 7, 9.) — There were also several useful and 
important works accomplished under the eye and di¬ 
rection of Csesar, such as the graphic survey of the 
whole Roman empire. Extensive as their conquests 
had been, the Romans hitherto had done almost no¬ 
thing for geography, considered as a science. Their 
knowledge was confined to the countries they had sub¬ 
dued, and these they only regarded in the view of the 
levies they could furnish and the taxations they could 
endure. Csesar was the first who formed more exalted 
views. ^Ethicus, a writer of the fourth century, in¬ 
forms us, in the preface to his Cosmographia, that this 
great man obtained a senatus consultum, by which a 
geometrical survey and measurement of the whole 
Roman empire was committed to three geometers. 
Zenodoxus was charged with the eastern, Polycletus 
with the southern, and Theodotus with the northern 
provinces. Their scientific labour was immediately 
commenced, but was not completed till more than 
thirty years after the death of him with whom the un¬ 
dertaking had originated. The information which 
Csesar had received from the astronomer Sosigenes 
in Egypt, enabled him to alter and amend the Ro¬ 
man calendar. The computation he adopted has 
been explained by Scaliger and Gassendi, and it has 
been since maintained, with little farther alteration than 
that of the style introduced by Pope Gregory. PVhen 
we consider the imperfections of all mathematical in¬ 
struments in the time of Csesar, and the total want of 
telescopes, we cannot but view with admiration, not 
unmixed with astonishment, that comprehensive genius 
which, in the infancy of science, could surmount such 
difficulties, and arrange a system that experienced but 
a trifling derangement in the course of sixteen centu- 
ri es -—Although Csesar wrote with his own hand only 
seven books of the Gallic campaigns, and the history 
of the civil wars till the death of his great rival, it 
seems highly probable that he revised the last or eighth 
book of the Gallic war, and communicated informa¬ 
tion for the history of the Alexandrean and African ex¬ 
peditions, which are now usually published along with 
his own commentaries, and may be considered as their 
supplement or continuation. The author of these 
works, which nearly complete the interesting story of 
the campaigns of Csesar, was Aulus Hirtius, one of his 
most zealous followers and most confidential friends. 
The eighth book of the Gallic war contains the ac¬ 
count of the renewal of the contest by the states of 
Gaul after the surrender of Alesia, and of the different 
ba Res that ensued, at most of which Hirtius was per- 



CMS 


CM S 


sonally present, till the final pacification, when Csesar, 
learning the designs which were forming against him 
at Rome, set out for Italy. Caesar, in the conclusion 
of the third book of the civil war, mentions the com¬ 
mencement of the Alexandrean. Hirtius was not 
personally present at the succeeding events of this 
Egyptian contest, in which Caesar was involved with 
the generals of Ptolemy, nor during his rapid cam¬ 
paigns in Pontus against Pharnaces, and against the 
remains of the Pompeian party in Africa, where they 
had assembled under Scipio, and, being supported by 
Juba, still presented a formidable appearance. He 
collected, however, the leading events from the con¬ 
versation of Csesar, and the officers who were engaged 
in these campaigns. He has obviously imitated the 
style of his master ; and the resemblance which he has 
happily attained, has given an appearance of unity and 
consistence to the whole series of these well-written 
and authentic memoirs. It appears that Hirtius car¬ 
ried down the history even to the death of Csesar : for 
in his preface addressed to Balbus,he says that he had 
brought down what was left imperfect from the trans¬ 
actions at Alexandrea to the end, not of the civil dis¬ 
sensions, to a termination of which there was no pros¬ 
pect, but of the life of Csesar. This latter part, how¬ 
ever, of the Commentaries of Hirtius, has been lost. 
It seems now to be generally acknowledged that he 
was not the author of the book De Bello Hispanico, 
which relates Caesar’s second campaign in Spain, un¬ 
dertaken against young Cneius Pompey, who, having 
assembled, in the ulterior province of that country, 
those of his father’s party who had survived the disas¬ 
ters in Thessaly and Africa, and being joined by some 
of the native states, presented a formidable resistance 
to the power of Caesar, till his hopes were terminated 
by the decisive battle of Munda. Dodwell, indeed, in 
his Dissertation De auctore Belli Gallici, &c., main¬ 
tains, that it was originally written by Hirtius, but was 
interpolated by Julius Celsus, a Constantinopolitan wri¬ 
ter of the sixth or seventh century. Vossius, however, 
whose opinion is the one more commonly received, at¬ 
tributes it to Caius Oppius, who wrote the Lives of 
Illustrious Captains, and also a book to prove that the 
Egyptian Csesarion was not the son of Caesar. ( Dun¬ 
lop's Roman Literature , vol. 2, p. 191, seqq.) The 
best editions of Caesar’s Commentaries are, the mag¬ 
nificent one by Dr. Clarke, fob, Lond., 1712 ; that of 
Cambridge, with a Greek translation, 4to, 1727 ; that 
of Oudendorp, 2 vols. 4to, L. Bat., 1737 ; that of the 
Elzevirs, 8vo, L. Bat., 1635 ; that of Oberlinus, Lips., 
1819, 8vo ; and that of Achaintre and Lemaire, Paris, 
4 vols. 8vo, 1819-22.—II. The name Caesar became a 
title of honour for the Roman emperors, commencing 
with Augustus, and at a later period designated also the 
presumptive heirs to the empire. ( Vid. Augustus.)— 
III. The twelve Caesars, as they are styled in history, 
were Julius Ccesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, 
Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, 
Titus, Domitian. These succeeded each other in the 
order which we have mentioned. The true line of the 
Caesars, however, terminated in Nero. 

C ins a r augusta, a town of Hispania Tarraconensis, 
now Saragossa, so called from its founder, Augustus^ 
Caesar, by whom it was built on the banks of the river 
Iberus, on the site of the ancient city Subduba. It was 
the birthplace of the poet Prudentius. ( Isidor., Hisp. 
Etymol., 15, 1 . — Mannert, Geogr., vol. 1 , p. 428.) 

Caesarea, I. the principal city of Samaria, situate 
on the coast, and anciently called Turris Stratonis, 
“ Strato’s tower.” Who this Strato was is not clearly 
ascertained. In the preface to the Novels it is stated 
that he came from Greece and founded this place ; an 
event which took place probably under the reign of Se- 
leucus, the first king of Syria. The first inhabitants 
were Syrians and Greeks. {Joseph., Ant. Jud., 20, 
6.) It was subsequently made a magnificent city and 


port by Herod, who called it Csesarea in honour of 
Augustus ; and it now began to receive Jews among 
its inhabitants. Frequent contentions hence arose, 
in consequence of the diversity of faiths that prevailed 
within its walls. Here the Roman governor resided, 
and a Roman garrison was continually kept. Vespa¬ 
sian, after the Jewish war, settled a Roman colony in 
it, with the additional title of Coloma pnma Flavia. 
( Ulpian, 1, de cens.) In later times it became the 
capital of Palcestina Prima. This city is frequently 
mentioned in the New Testament. Here King Agrip- 
pa was smitten, for neglecting to give God the praise 
when the people loaded him with flattery. Here Cor¬ 
nelius, the centurion, was baptized; and also Philip, 
the deacon, with his four daughters ; and here Agabus, 
the prophet, foretold to Paul that he would be bound at 
Jerusalem. {Acts, 8, 10.) The modern name of the 
place is Kaisarich. It was the birthplace of Eusebi¬ 
us.—II. The capital of Mauritania Csesariensis, and a 
place of some note in the time of the Roman emper¬ 
ors. It was originally called lol, but was beautified 
at a subsequent period by Juba, who made it his resi¬ 
dence, and changed its name to Csesarea, in honour of 
Augustus. This city was situate on the coast, to the 
west of Saldse, and, according to D’Anville, its re¬ 
mains are to be found at the modern harbour of Vacur. 
{Plin., 5, 2. — Mela, 1, 6. — Strab., 571.) — III. Ad 
Argseum, the capital of Cappadocia, called by this 
name in the reign of Tiberius, previously Mazaca. It 
was situate at the foot of Mount Argseus, as its name 
indicates, and was a place of great antiquity, its found¬ 
ation having even been ascribed by some writers to 
Mesech, the son of Japhet. {Joseph., Ant. Jud., 1, 6.) 
Philostorgius, however, says it was first called Maza, 
from Mosoch, a Cappadocian chief, and afterward Ma¬ 
zaca. {Strab., 530.) The modern name is Kaisa- 
rieh. The city, as Strabo reports, was subject to great 
inconveniences, being ill supplied with water, and des¬ 
titute of fortifications. The surrounding country was 
also unproductive, consisting of a dry, sandy plain, 
with several volcanic pits for the space of many stadia 
around the town. And yet it is worthy of remark, that 
in modem times, travellers are struck with the great 
quantity of vegetables offered for sale in the market of 
Kaisarieh, and it is said that there is no part of Asia 
Minor which surpasses the neighbourhood for the 
quality and variety of its fruits. {Kinneir's Travels, 
p. 103.— Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 118.)—IV. 
Philippi, a town on the northern confines of Palestine, 
in the district of Trachonitis, at the foot of Mount 
Paneus, and near the springs of the Jordan. It was 
also called Leshem, Laish, Dan, and Paneas. The 
name Paneas is supposed to have been given it by the 
Phoenicians. The appellation of Dan was given to it by 
the tribe of that name, because the portion assigned to 
them was “ too little for them,” and they therefore 
“ went up to fight against Leshem (or Laish, Judg., 
18, 29), and took it,” calling it “ Dan, after the name 
of Dan, their father.” {Josh., 19, 47.) Eusebius and 
Jerome distinguish Dan from Paneas as if they were 
different places, though near each other ; but most 
writers consider them as one place, and even Jerome 
himself, on Ezek., 48, says, that Dan or Leshem was 
afterward called Paneas. Philip, the tetrarch, rebuilt 
it, or, at least, embellished and enlarged it, and named 
it Csesarea, in honour of the Emperor Tiberius ; and 
afterward Agrippa, in compliment to Nero, called it 
Neronias. According to Burckhardt, the site is now 
called Banias. {Plin., 5, 15. — Joseph., Ant. Jud., 
18, 3. — Id., Bell. Jud., 1, 16. — Sozom., 3, 21.)—V. 
Insula, now the Isle of Jersey. 

CjEsarion, the reputed son of Julius Csesar and 
Cleopatra. Plutarch calls him the son of Csesar, but 
Dio Cassius (47, 31) throws doubt on his paternity. 
He was put to death by Augustus. ( Sueton ., Vit. 
Jul., c. 52.— Id., Vit. Aug., 17.) 


285 




C AI 


CAL 


Cjesaris ar.®, placed by Ptolemy near the Tanais, 
in what is now called the country of the Don Cossacks. 
They are supposed to have been erected in honour of 
some one of the Roman emperors by some neighbouring 
prince ; perhaps by Polemo, in the reign of Tiberius. 
Near the source of the Tanais Ptolemy places the 
Alcxandri Arcs, which see. ( Strab ., 493. — Tacit., 
Ann., 12, 15.— Dio Cass., 9, 8.— Mannert, Gcogr., 
vol. 4, p. 159.) 

C^esarodunum, now Tours, the capital of the Tu- 
rones. (Amm. Marcell., 15,28. — Greg. Turon., 10, 
19.— Snip. Sever., Dial. 3, 8.) 

C ./esaromag us, I. now Beauvais, the capital of the 
Bellovaci. (Anton., Itin.) —II. A city of the Trino- 
bantes in Britain, answering, as is thought, to what is 
now Chelmsford. It lay 28 miles north of Londinum. 
(Anton., Itin.) The Peutinger Table calls it Baro- 
macus. 

CjEsia sylva, a forest in Germany, in the territory 
of the Istasvones and Sicambri. It is supposed to cor¬ 
respond to the present forest of Heserwald. (Tacit., 
Ann., 1, 50.— Broticr, ad Tacit., 1. c.) 

C^eso or K^eso, a Roman pramomen, peculiar to 
the Fabian family. Thus we have C^eso Fabius in 
Livy (2, 43), and CLeso Quintius in the same writer 
(3, 11). In ancient inscriptions it is more commonly 
written with an initial K.—The latter of the two indi¬ 
viduals just mentioned was the son of L. Quintius 
Cincinnatus, and opposed the tribunes in their passage 
of the Lex Terentilla. He was brought to trial for 
this, and also for the crime of homicide that was alleged 
against him, but escaped death by going into voluntary 
exile. (Livy, 3, 11, seqq.) 

CaicInus, a river of Italy in Brutium, near the 
Epizephyrian Locri, and at one time separating the 
territories of Locri and Rhegium. It is noticed by an¬ 
cient writers for a natural phenomenon which was 
observed to occur on its banks. It was said that the 
cicade on the Locrian side were always chirping and 
musical, while those on the opposite side were as con¬ 
stantly silent. The Caicinus is supposed by Roman- 
elli to correspond to the Amendolca, which falls into 
the sea about ten miles to the west of Cape Sparti- 
vento. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 412.) 

CaIcus, I. a companion of TEneas. (Virg., JEn., 1, 
187.)—II. A river of Mysia, falling into the HCgean 
Sea, opposite Lesbos. On its banks stood the city of 
Pergamus, and at its mouth the port of Elaea. It is 
supposed by some to be the present Girmasti. Ac¬ 
cording to Mannert, however, its modern name is the 
Mandragorai. (Pliny, 5, 30. — Mela, 1, 18.— Virg., 
Georg., 4, 370.— Ovid, Met., 15,277.) 

Caieta, a town and‘harbour of Latium, southeast 
of the promontory of Circeii, which was said to have 
received its name from Caieta, the nurse of iEneas, 
who was buried there. (Virg., IEn., 7, 1.) This, 
however, is a mere fable, since PEneas never was in 
Italy. Equally objectionable is the etymology of Au¬ 
relius Victor, who derives the name from Kaleiv, to 
burn, because the fleet of -Eneas was burned here : as 
if the Trojans spoke Greek ! Strabo (233) furnishes 
the best explanation. It comes, according to him, from 
a Laconian term (ndiuTTa), denoting a hollow or cav¬ 
ity ; in allusion, perhaps, to a receding of the shore. 
It is now Gaeta. The harbour of Caieta was consid¬ 
ered one of the finest and most commodious in Italy. 
Cicero laments on one occasion that so noble a port 
should be subject to the depredations of pirates even in 
the open day. (Proleg. Man. — Compare Florus, 1, 
16.) 

Gaius and Caia, a prsenomen very common at 
Rome to both sexes. In this word, and also in Cneius, 
the C must be pronounced like G. (Quintil., 1, 7.) 
C, in its natural position, denoted the name of the 
male, and when reversed, that of the female : thus, C 
was equivalent to CAIUS ; but 0 to CAIA. Female 
286 


prsenomina, which were marked with an inverted capi¬ 
tal, were, however, early disused among the Romans. 
The custom after this was, in case there was only 
one daughter, to name her after the gens. If there 
were two, to distinguish them by major and minor 
added to their names; if there were more than two, 
they were distinguished by their number, Prima, Se- 
cunda, &c. Thus we have, in the first case, Tulha, the 
daughter of Cicero, Julia, the daughter of Caesar ; and 
in the second, Cornelia Major, Cornelia Minor, &c. 

Calaber. Vid. Quintus II. 

Calabria, the part of Italy occupied by the ancient 
Calabri. It seems to have been that portion of the 
Iapygian peninsula extending from Brundisium to the 
city of Hydruntum, answering nearly to wffiat is now 
called Terra di Lecce. Its name is supposed to have 
been derived from the Oriental “ Kalab" or pitch, on 
account of the resin obtained from the pines of this 
country. It w'as also called Messapia and Iapygia. 
The poet Ennius was born here. The country was 
fertile, and produced a variety of fruits, much cattle, 
and excellent honey. (Virg., G., 3,425. — Horat., 
Od., 1 , 31 ; Epod., 1 , 27, 1.—P/m., 8, 48.) 

Calagurris. There were two cities of this name 
in ancient Spain, both of them in the territory of the 
Vascones. One was called Calagurris Fibularensis, 
the other Calagurris Nascica. The moderns are not 
yet decided which of these two cities answers to the 
present Calahorra and which to Loharre. It is gener¬ 
ally thought that Calagurris Fibularensis is the modern 
Calahorra, but Marca is in favour of Loharre, and 
his opinion appears confirmed by Livy. (Petr, dc 
Marca, 2, 28. — Liv., Fragm., lib. 91, cd. Bruns., p. 
27.) 

Calais and Zetes. Vid. Zetes. 

Calamis, a very celebrated statuary, and engraver 
on silver, respecting whose birthplace, and the city in 
which he exercised his profession, ancient writers have 
given no information. The period wffien he flourished 
appears to have been very near that of Phidias. From 
the account given of his works by the ancient writers, 
he would seem to have been one of the most industri¬ 
ous artists of antiquity, for he executed statues of 
every description, in bronze, marble, and in gold 
blended with ivory. Cicero and Quintilian refer to 
his productions as not sufficiently refined, though su¬ 
perior in this respect to those of his predecessors. 
(Cic., Brut., 18, 70.— Quintil., 12, 10. — Silhg, Diet. 
Art., s. v.) 

Calanus, a celebrated Indian philosopher, one of 
the gymnosophists. He followed Alexander from In¬ 
dia, and, becoming unwell when they had reached Per¬ 
sia, he desired to have his funeral pile erected. Hav¬ 
ing offered up his prayers, poured libations upon him¬ 
self, and cut off part of his hair and thrown it into the 
fire, he ascended the pile, and moved not at the ap¬ 
proach of the flames. Plutarch says, that, in taking 
leave of the Macedonians, he desired them to spend 
the day in merriment and drinking with their king, 
“for I shall see him,” said he, “ in a little while at 
Babylon.” Alexander died in Babylon three months 
after this. Calanus was in his eighty-third year when 
he burned himself on the funeral pile. (Cic., de Div ., 

1, 23. — Arrian, et Plut. in Alex. — JElian, V. H., 2, 
41, 5, 6— Val. Max., 1 , 8.) 

Calaurea, an island in the Sinus Saronicus, oppo¬ 
site the harbour of Troezene in Argolis. It obtained 
its greatest celebrity from the death of Demosthenes. 
Before that event, however, it was a place of great 
note and sanctity. Neptune was said to have re¬ 
ceived it from Apollo in exchange for Delos, agreeably 
to the advice of an oracle. (Ephor. ap. Strab., 374.) 
His temple was held in great veneration, and the 
sanctuary accounted an inviolable asylum. Seven 
confederate cities here held an assembly somewhat 
similar to the Amphictyonic council, and joined in 




CAL 


CAL 


solemn sacrifices to the god. Strabo names Hermi- 
one, Epidaurus, JEgina, Athens, Prasise, Nauplia, and 
the Minyan Orchomenus. Argos subsequently repre¬ 
sented Nauplia, and Sparta succeeded to Prasias. 
(Strab ., 1. c.) In this sanctuary Demosthenes, who 
had rendered himself obnoxious to the Macedonian 
sovereign, took refuge when pursued by his satellites. 
Here he swallowed poison and terminated his exist¬ 
ence. ( Plut., Vit. Demosth.—Pausan ., 2, 33.) A 
monument was raised to this great orator within its 
peribolus, and divine honours were paid to him by the 
Calaureans. According to Strabo, the island of Calau- 
rea was four stadia from the shore, and thirty in cir¬ 
cuit. It is now called Poro, or “ the ford,” as the 
narrow channel by which it is separated from the 
mainland may, in calm weather, be passed on foot. 
The temple of Neptune was situated at some dis¬ 
tance from the sea, on one of the highest summits of 
the island. Dodwell observes (Class. Tour, vol. 2, 
p. 276), that not a single column of this celebrated 
sanctuary is standing, nor is the smallest fragment to 
be seen among the ruins. 

Calchas, a celebrated soothsayer, son of Thestor. 
He had received from Apollo the knowledge of future 
events ; and the Greeks, accordingly, on their de¬ 
parture for the Trojan war, nominated him their high- 
priest and prophet . Among the interpretation of events 
imputed to him, it is said he predicted that Troy could 
not be taken without the aid of Achilles ; and that, 
having observed a serpent, during a solemn sacrifice, 
glide from under an altar, ascend a tree, and devour 
nine young birds with their mother, and afterward be¬ 
come itself changed into stone, he inferred that the 
siege of Troy would last ten years. He also foretold 
that the Grecian fleet, which was at that same time 
detained by contrary winds in the harbour of Aulis, 
would not be able to sail until Agamemnon should 
have sacrificed his own daughter Iphigenia. Calchas 
also advised Agamemnon, during the pestilence by 
which Apollo desolated the Grecian camp, to restore 
Chryseis, as the only means of appeasing the god. He 
was consulted, indeed, on every affair of importance, 
and appears to have often determined, with Agamem¬ 
non and Ulysses, the import of the oracles which he 
expounded. His death is said to have happened as 
follows. After the taking of Troy, he accompanied 
Amphilochus, son of Amphiaraus, to Colophon in Ionia. 
It had been predicted that he should not die until he 
found a prophet more skilful than himself: this he ex¬ 
perienced in the person of Mopus. He was unable 
to tell how many figs were on the branches of a cer¬ 
tain fig-tree ; and when Mopus mentioned the exact 
number, Calchas retired to the wood of Claros, sacred 
to Apollo, where he expired of grief and mortification. 
—Calchas had the patronymic of Thestorides. (Horn., 
II., 1 , 69, &c. — JEsch., Agam. — Eurip., Iphig. — Pau¬ 
san., 1, 43.) 

Caledonia, a country in the north of Britain, now 
called Scotland. The ancient Caledonia compre¬ 
hended all those countries which lay to the north of 
the Forth and Clyde. It was never completely sub¬ 
dued by the Romans, though Agricola penetrated to 
the Tay, and Severus into the very heart of the coun¬ 
try. The Caledonians are supposed to have derived 
their name from the Celtic words Gael Dun, implying 
“the Gael (Gauls) of the mountains,” i. e., “High¬ 
landers.” These Gallic tribes were driven into Scot¬ 
land, from Britain, by the conquests of the Belgic or 
Kimric race. (Compare Adelung's Mithridates, vol. 
2, p. 78.) 

Calentum, a city of Spain, in the country of Baeti- 
ca, supposed to correspond to the modern Cazalla. 
The ancient place was famed for making bricks of 
so much lightness that they floated upon the water. 
(Plin., 35, 49.— Vitruv., 2, 3.) This was also done 
at Massilia ( Marseille ) in Gaul, and at Pitane in 


Asia. (Vitruv., 1. c.) According to a modern author¬ 
ity, the same kind of bricks are made in Italy, “ de 
una singolarissima specie di mattone(Fabrom, 
Dissert., Venezia, 1797, 8vo.) 

Cales, a city of Campania, to the south of Tea- 
num, now Calvi. According to Livy (8, 16), it for¬ 
merly belonged to the Ausones, but was conquered by 
the Romans, and colonized (A.U.C. 421). The Ager 
Calenus was much celebrated for its vineyards. (Vid. 
Falernum.) 

Caletes, a Belgic tribe in Gaul, north of the mouth 
of the Sequana, and inhabiting the peninsula which 
that river makes with the sea. Their territory is now 
le pays de Caux, forming a part of Normandy, in the 
department de la Seine - Infericure. Their capital 
was Juliobona, now Lillcbonne. Strabo calls them 
Ka/leroi, and hence, on D’Anville’s Map of Ancient 
Gaul, they are named Calcti. Ptolemy, on the other 
hand, gives Kalhre^. They appear to have been 
ranked by Caesar among the Armoric states, if in one 
part of his Commentaries (B.G., 7, 75) we read Caletes 
for Cadetcs. They could easily have been connected 
with the Armoric tribes by commercial relations and 
affinity, and yet have belonged, by their position, to the 
Belgic race. ( Lemaire, Ind. Gcogr. ad Cces., p. 220. 
— Op., vol. 4.) 

Caligula, Caius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, son 
of Germanicus and Agrippina, was born A.D. 12, 
in the camp, probably in Germany, and was brought 
up among the legions. (Sueton., Vit. Calig., 8.) 
Here he received from the soldiers the surname of 
Caligula, from his being arrayed, when quite young, 
like a common soldier, and wearing a little pair of 
caligce , a kind of shoe or covering for the feet used 
chiefly by the common soldiers. This was done in 
order to secure towards him the good-will of the 
troops. Caligula himself, however, disliked the ap¬ 
pellation in after days, and preferred that of Caius 
Caesar, which is also his historical name. Upon his 
father’s death he returned from Syria, and lived with 
his mother till her exile, when he removed to the resi¬ 
dence of Livia Augusta, his great grandmother, whose 
funeral oration he delivered in public, while he still 
wore the prcetexta. He afterward remained in the 
family of his grandmother Antonia until his twentieth 
year, when, being invited to Capreae by the emperor, 
he assumed the dress proper to manhood, but with¬ 
out the customary ceremonies. In the court of his 
grandfather, his naturally mean and vicious temper 
appeared in a servile compliance with the caprices of 
those in power, in a wanton love of cruelty towards 
the unfortunate, and in the most abandoned and un¬ 
principled debauchery; so that Tiberius observed 
that he was breeding a second Phaethon for the de¬ 
struction of the world. (Sueton., Cal., c. 10.) Tibe¬ 
rius had, by his testament, appointed his two grand¬ 
sons, Caius Caesar and Tiberius Gemellus, the latter 
the son of Drusus, joint heirs of the empire. The 
first act of Caligula, however, was to assemble the sen¬ 
ate for the purpose of declaring the invalidity of the 
will; and this being readily effected, and Tiberius Ge¬ 
mellus being declared too young to rule, Caius Caesar 
Caligula was immediately proclaimed emperor. This 
appointment was received with the most unbounded 
joy both at Rome and in the provinces, and the con¬ 
duct of the new prince seemed at first to promise one 
of the most auspicious of reigns. But this was all 
dissimulation on his part; a dissimulation which he 
had learned under his wily predecessor; for Caligula 
esteemed it prudent to assume the appearance of mod¬ 
eration, liberality, and justice, till he should be firmly 
seated on the throne, and freed from all apprehension 
lest the claims of the young Tiberius might be revived 
on any offence having been taken by the senate. He 
interred, in the most honourable manner, the remains 
of his mother and of his brother Nero, set free all state 

287 




CALIGULA. 


CAL 


prisoners, recalled the banished, and forbade all prose¬ 
cutions for treason. He conferred on the magistrates 
free and independent power. Although the will of 
Tiberius had been declared, by the senate, to be null 
and void, he fulfilled every article of it, with the ex¬ 
ception only of that above mentioned. When he was 
chosen consul, he took his uncle Claudius as his col¬ 
league. Thus he distinguished the first eight months 
of his reign by many actions dictated by the pro- 
foundest hypocrisy, but which appeared magnanimous 
and noble to the eyes of the world, when he fell, on a 
sudden, dangerously ill, in consequence, as has been 
imagined, of a love-potion given him by his mistress 
Milonia Caesonia (whom he afterward married), with a 
view to secure his unconstant affections. On recov¬ 
ering from this malady, whether weary by this time of 
the restraints of hypocrisy, or actually deranged in his 
intellect by the inflammatory effects of the potion 
which he had taken ( Juv., Sat., 6, 614), the emperor 
threw off all appearance of virtue and moderation, as 
well as all prudential considerations, and acted on every 
occasion with the mischievous violence of unbridled 
passions and wanton power, so that the tyranny of 
Tiberius was forgotten in the enormities of Caligula. 

( Senec ., Consol, ad Helv., 9, c. 779.) The most ex¬ 
quisite tortures served him for enjoyments. During 
his meals he caused criminals, and even innocent per¬ 
sons, to be stretched on the rack and beheaded : the 
most respectable persons were daily executed. In the 
madness of his arrogance he even considered himself 
a god, and caused the honours to be paid to him which 
were paid to Apollo, to Mars, and even to Jupiter. 
He built a temple to his own divinity. At one time 
he wished that the whole Roman people had but one 
head, that he might be able to cut it off at a single 
blow. He frequently repeated the words of an old 
poet, Oderint dam metuant. One of his greatest 
follies was the building of a bridge of vessels between 
Baiie and Puteoli, in imitation of that of Xerxes over 
the Hellespont. He himself consecrated this grand 
structure with great splendour; and, after he had 
passed the night following in a revel with his friends, 
in order to do something extraordinary before his de¬ 
parture, he caused a crowd of persons, without dis¬ 
tinction of age, rank, or character, to be seized, and 
thrown into the sea. On his return he entered Rome 
in triumph, because, as he said, he had conquered na¬ 
ture herself. After this he made preparations for an 
expedit ion against the Germans, passed with more than 
200,000 men over the Rhine, but returned after he had 
travelled a few miles, and that without having seen an 
enemy. Such was his terror, that, when he came to the 
river, and found the bridge obstructed by the crowd 
upon it, he caused himself to be passed over the heads 
of the soldiers. He then went to Gaul, which he plun¬ 
dered with unexampled rapacity. Not content with the 
considerable booty thus obtained, he sold all the prop¬ 
erty of his sisters Agrippina and Livilla, whom he ban¬ 
ished. He also sold the furniture of the old court, the 
clothes of Augustus, Agrippina, &c. Before he left 
Gaul he declared his intention of going to Britain. 
He collected his army on the coast, embarked in a 
magnificent galley, but returned when he had hardly 
left the land, drew up his forces, ordered the signal 
of battle to be sounded, and commanded the soldiers 
to fill their helmets with shells, while he cried out, 
“ This booty, ravished from the sea, is fit for my pal¬ 
ace and the Capitol.” When he returned to Rome he 
was desirous of a triumph on account of his achieve¬ 
ments, but contented himself with an ovation. Dis¬ 
contented with the senate, he resolved to destroy the 
greater part of the members, and the most distinguish¬ 
ed men of Rome. This is proved by two books 
which were found after his death, wherein the names 
of the proscribed were noted down, and of which one 
was entitled Gladius (Sword), and the other Pugillus 
288 


(Dagger). He became reconciled to the senate again 
when he found it worthy of him. He supported pub¬ 
lic brothels and gaming-houses, and received himself 
the entrance-money of the visitors. His horse, named 
Incitatus , was his favourite. This horse he made one 
of his priests, and, by way of insult to the republic, 
declared it also consul. It was kept in an ivory sta¬ 
ble, and fed from a golden manger ; and, when it was 
invited to feast at the emperor’s table, gilt corn was 
served up in a golden basin of exquisite workman¬ 
ship. He had even the intention of destroying the 
poems of Homer, and was on the point of removing 
the works and images of Virgil and Livy from all libra¬ 
ries : those of the former, because, as he said, he was 
destitute of genius ana learning; those of the latter, 
because he was not to be depended upon as an histo¬ 
rian. Caligula’s morals were, from his youth upward, 
abominably corrupt. After he had married and repu¬ 
diated several wives, Csesonia retained a permanent 
hold on his affections. A number of conspirators, at 
the head of whom were Chserea and Cornelius Sabi- 
nus, both tribunes of the prsetorian cohorts, murdered 
him in the 29th year of his age, and the fourth of his 
tyrannical reign, A.D. 41. ( Crevier, Hist, des Em.p. 

Rom., vol. 2, p. 1, seqq. — Encyclop. Americ., vol. 2, 
p. 405, seqq. — Encyclop. Metropol., Div. 3, vol. 2, p. 
434, seqq.) 

Callaici or Call^eci, a people of Spain, in the 
northwestern part of the country. They inhabited 
what is now Gallicia, together with the Portuguese 
provinces of Entre-Douro-y-Minho and Tras-los-Mon- 
tes. (Eutrop., 4, 19. — Sil. Ital., 3, 352.— Plin., 3, 3. 
— Inscript, ap. Gruter.) 

Calle or Cale, a seaport town of the Callaici, at 
the mouth of the Durius. It is now Oporto. From 
Portus Calles comes, by a corruption, the name of 
modern Portugal. (Sil. Ital., 12, 525.— Veil. Paterc., 
1, 14.— Cic., Agrar., 2, 31.) 

Callias, a rich Athenian, who offered to release 
Cimon, son of Miltiades, from prison, into which he 
had been thrown through inability to pay his father’s 
fine, if he would give him the hand of Elpinice, Ci- 
mon’s sister and wife. Cimon consented, but with 
great reluctance. He was afterward charged with 
having violated the terms of his agreement with Cal¬ 
lias, which was looked upon by the Athenians as adul¬ 
tery on his part, Elpinice having become the proper¬ 
ty of another. This custom of marrying sisters at 
Athens extended, according to Philo Judseus, only to 
sisters by the same father, and was forbidden in the 
case of sisters by the same mother. Elpinice was 
taken in marriage by Cimon, because, in consequence 
of his extreme poverty, he was unable to provide a 
suitable match for her. The Lacedsemonians were 
forbidden to marry any of their kindred, whether in the 
direct degree of ascent or descent; but in the case 
of a collateral it was allowed. Several of the barba¬ 
rous nations seem to have been less scrupulous on 
this head ; the Persians especially were remarkable for 
such unnatural unions. (C. Nep. ctPlut. in Cim.) 

Callicol5ne, a hill in the district of Troas, deri¬ 
ving its name (nalr) koImvtj) from the pleasing regu¬ 
larity of its form, and the groves by which it seems 
for ages to have been adorned. It is mentioned by 
Homer in the 20th book of the Iliad (v. 53 and 151). 
Strabo informs us, from Demetrius of Scepsis, that it 
was ten stadia from the village of the Ilians (’l?ucuv 
Kuyy), which would make it forty stadia from Troy it¬ 
self. It was situate to the northwest of this city, 
near the banks of the Simo'is. (Compare Le Cheva¬ 
lier's Map of the Plain of Trey, and the note of Heyne 
to the 262d page of the German translation of Le 
Chevalier’s works on this subject. Consult also 
Clarke's Travels, vol. 3, p. 119, Lond., 8vo ed.) 

Callicrates, I. an Athenian, who caused Dion to 
be assassinated. ( Vid. Dion I.)—II. An officer in- 





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trusted with the care of the treasures of Susa by Alex¬ 
ander. {Curt., 5, 2.)—III. An architect, who, in con¬ 
junction with Ictinus, built the Parthenon at Athens, 
and who undertook also to complete the long walls 
termed ckeXj]. (Plut., Vit. Pencl., c. 13.) He ap¬ 
pears to have flourished about Olymp. 80 or 85. ( Silhg , 
Diet. Art., s. v.) —IV. A sculptor, distinguished prin¬ 
cipally by the minuteness of his performances. He is 
mentioned as a Lacedsemonian, and is associated with 
Myrmecides by ASlian. (F. H ., 1, 17.—Compare 
Galen, Adhort. ad Art., c. 9.) In connexion with 
this artist he is said to have made some chariots which 
could be covered with the wings of a fly, and to have 
inscribed on a grain of the plant sesamum some verses 
of Homer. ( Plin ., 7, 21.) Galen, therefore, well ap¬ 
plies to him the epithet f.laraiorexvoq. Athenseus, 
however, relates that he engraved only large vases 
(11, p. 782). The age in which he lived is uncertain. 
{Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.) 

Callicratidas, a Spartan, who succeeded Lysan- 
der in the command of the fleet. He took Methym- 
na, and routed the Athenian fleet under Conon. He 
was defeated and killed near the Arginusse, in a naval 
battle, B.C. 406. He was one of the last that pre¬ 
served the true Spartan character, which had become 
greatly altered for the worse during the Peloponnesian 
war, by the habit which the Lacedaemonians had con¬ 
tracted of fighting beyond the limits of their country. 
The enervating climate of Ionia had also contributed 
Very much towards producing this result. {Xen., 
Hist. Gr., 1, 6, 1, seqq. — Diod. Sic., 13, 76.— Id. ib., 
13, 99.) 

Callideomus, according to Livy (36, 15), the high¬ 
est summit of Mount (Eta. It was occupied by Cato, 
with a body of troops, in the battle fought at the pass 
of Thermopylae, between the Romans, under Acilius 
Glabrio, and the army of Antiochus ; and, owing to 
this manoeuvre, the latter was entirely routed. (Com¬ 
pare Pliny, II. N., 4, 7.) 

Callimachus, I. a native of Cyrene, descended 
from an illustrious family. He first gave instruction 
in grammar, or belles-lettres, at Alexandrea, and num¬ 
bered among his auditors Apollinus Rhodius, Eratos¬ 
thenes, and Aristophanes of Byzantium. Ptolemy 
Philadelphus subsequently placed him in the Muse¬ 
um, and from this period he turned his principal at¬ 
tention to poetic composition. He lived, loaded with 
honours, at the court of this prince, where his abilities 
were greatly admired. The small number of pieces, 
however, that remain to us, out of eight hundred com¬ 
posed by him, present him to us in the light of a cold 
poet, wanting in energy and enthusiasm, and making 
vain efforts to replace by erudition the genius which 
nature had denied him. These productions compel us 
to subscribe to Ovid’s opinion in relation to him, 
“ Quamvis ingenio non valet, arte valet." {Amor., 1, 
15.) The principal works of Callimachus were as fol¬ 
lows : 1. Elegies. These were regarded as his princi¬ 
pal title to renown. The Romans, especially in the Au¬ 
gustan age, held them in high estimation; they were im¬ 
itated by Ovid and Propertius. Among the Elegies of 
Callimachus two. in particular were celebrated, one on 
the tresses of Berenice, queen of Ptolemy III., which 
Catullus has either translated or imitated ; and the 
other, entitled Cydippe, to which Ovid alludes {Rem. 
Am., 1, 380), and which he has imitated in his 20th He- 
roid. We have only some fragments remaining of the 
elegies. 2. A It tat, “ Causes ,” i. e., a poem, in four 
cantos, on the origin or causes of various fables, cus¬ 
toms, &c. Some fragments remain. 3. 'E/cd/b?, He- 
cale, an heroic poem, the subject of which was the hos¬ 
pitable reception given to Theseus, by an old female, 
w T hen he was proceeding to combat the Marathonian 
bull. Some fragments remain. 4. Ibcq, “theifos,” a 
poem directed against one. of his pupils, accused by 
him of ingratitude, named Apollonius Rhodius. It has 


not reached us. The Ibis is a bird, whose habits taught 
man, it is said, the use of clysters. We know not the 
reason why Callimachus gave this appellation to his en¬ 
emy ; it was done in ridicule, probably, of some per¬ 
sonal deformity, or else from some resemblance which 
Apollonius bore to this bird in the eyes of his irritated 
master. It is in imitation of Callimachus that Ovid 
has given the title of Ibis to one of his poems. 5. 
Hymns. Of these we have six remaining ; five in the 
Ionic dialect, and the sixth in Doric. The subject of 
this last is the bathing of the statue of Minerva. Ac¬ 
cording to the commentators, the Doric dialect was 
preferred for this poem, because Callimachus com¬ 
posed it at Argos, where, during a certain festival, the 
statue of Pallas was bathed in the Inachus. Of the 
six hymns which we have from Callimachus, that ad¬ 
dressed to Ceres is the best. The one in honour of 
Delos is in the epic style, like the hymns of the Ho- 
meridae. 6. Epigrams. Of these we possess seven¬ 
ty-four, which may be regarded among the best of 
antiquity. The grammarian Archibius, the father, or, 
according to others, the son of Apollonius, wrote a 
commentary or exegesis {e^r/yyaiq) on these epigrams ; 
and Marianus, who lived under the Emperor Anasta- 
sius, made a paraphrase of them in iambic verse. 7. 
Iambics and choliambics. Strabo refers to them, and 
some fragments remain.—Such are some of the prin¬ 
cipal poetic works of Callimachus. We have to re¬ 
gret the loss of several prose works, which would, no 
doubt, have thrown great light on various subjects 
connected with the antiquities of Greece. Such are 
his Commentaries, or Memoirs ('TV o/uvr/juaTa) ; his 
work entitled Krlauq vyaov Kal ttoIeuv, “ The set¬ 
tling of islands and founding of cities his “ Won¬ 
ders of the World,” Qavpdaia, or, Qavjudrcov tQv elq 
dreauav ryv yyv Kal Toirovq ovtwv avvayuyy, &c. 
Callimachus did not want detractors, who occasioned 
him that species of torment to which the vanity of au¬ 
thors exposes them, and, at the same time, renders them 
so sensitive. A certain grammarian, named Aristo- 
phon, wrote against one of his productions ; and there 
exists, in the Anthology, a distich against Callima¬ 
chus, by Apollonius the grammarian, which is often 
erroneously ascribed to the author of the Argonautics. 
—Among the editions of Callimachus may be men¬ 
tioned that of Ernesti, Lugd. Bat., 1761, 2 vols. 8vo, 
and that of Blomfield, Lond., 1815, 8vo. Brunck 
gave also a revised text in his Poetse Gnomici. 
{Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 3, p. 107, seqq.) — II. A 
celebrated artist, whose attention was directed not 
only to statuary, but to engraving on gold and to 
painting. {Plin., 34, 8.) On account of the elegant 
finish of his works in marble, he was styled by the 
Athenians KaraTExvoq. {Vitruv., 4, 1, 10. — Com¬ 
pare the remarks of Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.) 

Calliope, one of the Muses, daughter of Jupiter 
and Mnemosyne. She presided over epic poetry and 
eloquence, and was represented holding a close-rolled 
parchment, and sometimes a trumpet. She derived 
her name from her beautiful (silver-toned) voice, and 
ryq Kalr/c orcoq. Calliope bore to CEagrus a son 
named Linus, who was killed by his pupil Hercules. 
{Apollod., 1, 3, 2.) She had also by the same sire the 
celebrated Orpheus. Others, however, made Apollo 
the sire of Linus and Orpheus. Hesiod {Frag., 97) 
says, that Urania was the mother of Linus. ( Vid. Mu- 
sae, and consult Muller, Archceol. der Kunst, p. 594, 
seqq.) 

CallipatIra, daughter of Diagoras, and wife of 
Callianax the athlete. According to the common ac¬ 
count, she went with her son, after the death of her 
husband, to the Olympic games, having disguised 
herself in the attire of a teacher of gymnastics. When 
her son was declared victor, she discovered her sex in 
the joy of the moment, and was immediately arrested, 
as women were not allowed to appear on such oc®a- 

289 




CAL 


CAL 


sions. The punishment to which she was liable was 
to be cast down from a precipitous and rocky height, 
but she was pardoned in consequence of the pecu¬ 
liar circumstances of her case. A law, however, was 
immediately passed, ordaining that the teachers of 
gymnastic exercises should also appear naked at the 
games. ( Pausanias , 5, 6, 5.) — From an examina¬ 
tion of authorities, it would appear that the story just 
told relates rather to Berenice (Qepev'ucTj), the sister 
of Callipatira. (Consult Bayle, Diet., s. v. Berenice, 
and Siebelis, ad Pausan, l. c.) 

Calliphon, a painter, a native of Samos, who 
decorated with pictures the temple of Diana at Ephe¬ 
sus. The subjects of his pieces were taken from the 
Iliad. (Pausan., 5, 19.) 

Callipolis, I. a city of Thrace, about five miles 
from TEgospotamos. Its origin is uncertain : a By¬ 
zantine writer ascribes its foundation and name to 
Callias, an Athenian general (Jo. Cinnamus, 5, 3), 
while another derives its appellation from the beauty 
of the site. (Agathias, 5, p. 155.) It is certain that 
we do not hear of Callipolis before the Macedonian 
war, when Livy mentions its having been taken by 
Philip, the last king of that name (31, 16.—Com¬ 
pare Plin., 4, 11.) From the Itineraries we learn, that 
Callipolis was the point whence it was usual to cross 
the Hellespont to Lampsacus or Abydos. The mod¬ 
ern name is Gallipoli, and it is from this that the 
Chersonese now takes its name as a Turkish province. 
(Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 330.)—’ll. A town 
of Sicily, north of Catana, now Callipoli. —III. A city 
of Calabria, on the Sinus Tarentinus, now Callipoli. 
According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus (17, 4), it 
owed its foundation to Leucippus, a Lacedemonian, 
who erected a town here with the consent of the Ta- 
rentines, who expected to be put in possession of it 
shortly after; but in this hope they were deceived ; 
and on finding that the Spartan colony was already 
strong enough to resist an attack, they suffered Leu¬ 
cippus to prosecute his undertaking without molesta¬ 
tion. (Dion. Hal., Frag., ed. Angelo Maio, Mediol., 
1816.) Mela styles it “ urbs Grain Callipolis''' (2, 
4). The passage in which Pliny names this town is 
corrupt. (Plin., 3, 11.— Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol. 
2, p. 317.) 

Callirhoe, I. a daughter of the Scamander, who 
married Tros, by whom she had Ilus, Ganymede, and 
Assaracus. (II., 20, 231.) — II. A daughter of Ocea- 
nus and Tethys, mother of Geryon, Echidna, Cerbe¬ 
rus, and other monsters, by Chrysaor. (Hesiod, Theog., 
287, seqq.) 

Calliste, an island of the HEgean Sea, called also 
Thera. ( Vid. Thera.) 

Callisteia, Beauty’s rewards ; a festival at Les¬ 
bos, during which all the women presented themselves 
in the temple of Juno, and the prize was assigned to 
the fairest. (Athenceus, 13, p. 610, a.) There was 
also an institution of the same kind among the Par- 
rhasians, made first by Cypselus, whose wife was 
honoured with the first prize. The Eleans had one 
also, in which the fairest man received as a prize a 
complete suit of armour, which he dedicated to Miner¬ 
va. (Athenceus, l. c. — Casaub. et Schweigh., ad loc.) 

Callisthenes, a native of Olynthus, the son of 
Hero, Aristotle’s sister. He was placed by the Sta¬ 
gnate about the person of Alexander, as a kind of in- 
structer, or, rather, companion of his studies, and ac¬ 
companied the monarch into the East. He gave of¬ 
fence, however, by the rudeness of his manners and 
his boldness of speech, and was eventually charged 
with being implicated in a conspiracy against Alexan¬ 
der. According to the common account, he was mu¬ 
tilated, and then carried along with the army in an iron 
cage, until he ended his days by poison. Ptolemy, 
however, wrote in his history of Alexander, that he 
was first tortured and then hanged. Callisthenes does 
290 


not deserve the name of a philosopher, which some 
have bestowed upon him ; he appears, on the contrary, 
to have been little better than a mere sophist. He 
wrote a history of Alexander’s movements which has 
not come down to us, but which, from the remarks of 
ancient writers, does not appear to have possessed 
even the merit of exactness in ordinary details. (Plut., 
Vit. Alex. — Polyb., 12, 23.— Sainte-Croix, Examcn, 
&c., p. 34, seqq. — Id. ib., p. 163, seqq.) 

Callisto and Calisto, called also Helice, was 
daughter of Lycaon, king of Arcadia, and one of Di¬ 
ana’s attendants. Jupiter saw her, and, assuming the 
form of Diana, accompanied the maiden to the chase, 
and surprised her virtue. She long concealed her 
shame ; but at length, as she was one day bathing with 
her divine mistress, the discovery was made, and Di¬ 
ana, in her anger, turned her into a bear. While in 
this form she brought forth her son Areas, who lived 
with her in the woods, till the herdsmen caught both 
her and him, and brought them to Lycaon. ( Vid. Ar¬ 
eas.) Some time afterward she went into the terne- 
nus, or sacred enclosure of the Lycsean Jove, which it 
was unlawful to enter. A number of Arcadians, 
among whom was her own son, followed to kill her, but 
Jove snatched her out of their hands, and placed her as 
a constellation in the sky (Apollod., 3,8.— Ovid, Met. , 
2, 401, seq. — Id., Fast., 2, 155, seq. — Hygin., Fab., 
177.) It was also fabled, that at the request of Juno, 
Tethys forbade the constellation of the bear to descend 
into her waves. This legend is related with great va¬ 
riety in the circumstances. According to one of these 
versions, Areas, having been separated from his mother 
and reared among men, met her one day in the woods, 
and was on the point of slaying her, when Jupiter 
transferred the mother and son to the skies. (Keight- 
ley's Mythology, p. 425, seq.) 

Callistratus, I. a celebrated orator of Athens. 
Demosthenes, having heard him plead on one occa¬ 
sion, was so charmed by his eloquence that he aban¬ 
doned all his other studies, and betook himself to ora¬ 
tory. He was employed on several occasions as an 
ambassador, but eventually met with the common fate 
of popular leaders, and was exiled. Retiring upon 
this to Thrace, he founded Datum in that country. 
(Plut., Vit. Demoslh., c. 3.— Scylax, Penpl., p. 27.)— 
II. A sophist, who lived, as Heyne thinks, a little be¬ 
fore the elder Philostratus, towards the close of the 
second century of our era. We have from him a de¬ 
scription of fourteen statues, written, it is true, in the 
style of a rhetorician, but all containing many details 
of a curious nature as regards the history of ancient 
art. (Heyne, Opusc., vol. 5, p. 196, seqq.) The 
work accompanies the writings of Philostratus, and is 
found in all our editions of the latter.—III. A Roman 
lawyer, who lived during the time of Severus and Car- 
acalla. (Biogr. Univ., vol. 6., p. 555.) 

Calor, a river of Italy, which rose in the mountains 
of the Hirpini, passed Beneventum, and joined the 
Vulturnus. (Liv., 24, 14 ) 

Calpe, a lofty mountain in the most southern parts 
of Spain, opposite to Mount Abyla on the African 
coast. These two mountains were called the Pillars 
of Hercules. Calpe is now called Gibraltar, from the 
Arabic Gibel Tank (i. e., “the mountain of Tarik.” 
This Tarik was a Moorish general, who first led the 
Moors into Spain, A.D. 710.)—For some remarks on 
the etymology of the name Calpe, vid Abyla. 

Calpurnia, I. a daughter of L. Piso, and Julius 
Caesar’s fourth wife. The night previous to her hus¬ 
band’s murder, she dreamed that he had been stabbed 
in her arms. According to others, she dreamed that 
the pinnacle had fallen, which the senate, by way of 
ornament and distinction, had caused to be erected on 
Caesar’s house, (Plut., Vit. Cces., c ) After Caesar’s 
death she intrusted Antony with his private treasure, 
which amounted to four thousand talents, and also with 




CAL 


CAM 


the private papers of the dictator. ( Pint., Vit. Ant., 
c. 15.)—II. Calpurnia Lex, passed A.U.C. 604, against 
extortion, by which law the first qucestio perpetua was 
established. {Cic. in Verr., 4, 25.)—III. Another, 
called also Acilia, concerning bribery, A.U.C. 686. 
( Cic. pro Muran., 23.) 

Calpurnius, I. a writer of mimes, not to be con¬ 
founded with the pastoral poet of the same name. 
( Bci.hr, Gesch. Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. 118.) — II. A 
Christian in the time of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, 
from whom we have fifty-one Declamations remaining. 
{Bd.hr, ib., p. 557.)—III. A Latin poet, a native of Sici¬ 
ly, and contemporary of Nemesianus, lived during the 
third century of our era. In the earliest editions of 
his works, and in all but one of the MSS., eleven 
eclogues pass under his name. Ugoletus, however, at 
a later period, guided by this single MS., undertook to 
assign four of the eleven to Nemesianus. In this he 
is wrong, for the tone and manner of these pieces show 
plainly that they all came from one pen. Such was 
the opinion of Ulitius {Prrzf. ad Ncmesian., Eclog., 
p. 459.— Id. ad Nemesian., Cyneg., v. 1, p. 314), 
with which Burmann agrees {Poet. Lat. Mm., Prcef., 
p.*** 4), and which Wernsdorff at last has fully estab¬ 
lished. {Poet. Lat. Min., vol. 2, p. 15, seqq.) The 
Eclogues of Calpurnius are not without merit, though 
greatly inferior in elegance and simplicity to Virgil’s. 
They are dedicated to Nemesianus, his protector and 
patron, for he himself was very poor. In the time of 
Charlemagne these pieces were placed in the hands of 
young scholars. The best editions are found in the 
Poetce Latini Minores of Burmann, Lugd. Bat., 1731, 
2 vols. 4to, and of Wernsdorff, Altemb., 1780-1799, 10 
vols. 8vo. {Bdhr, Gesch. Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. 301.) 

Calvus Corn. Licinius, a Roman, equally distin¬ 
guished as an orator and a poet. In the former ca¬ 
pacity he is mentioned with praise by Cicero {Brut., 
81. — Ep. ad Fam., 7, 24. — Ibid., 15, 51). He was 
also the friend of Catullus, and two odes of that au¬ 
thor’s are addressed to him, in which he is commemo¬ 
rated as a most delightful companion, from whose so¬ 
ciety he could scarcely refrain. The fragments of his 
epigrams which remain do not enable us to judge for 
ourselves of his poetical merits. He is classed by 
Ovid among the licentious writers. {Horat., Scrm., 

I, 10, 19.— Dunlop's Rom. Lit., vol. l,p. 540.) 

Calycadnus, a large and rapid river of Cilicia Tra¬ 
chea, which rises in the central chain of Taurus, and, 
after receiving some minor tributary streams, falls into 
the sea between the promontories of Zephyrium and 
Sarpedon. It is now the Giuk-sou. {Plin., 5, 27.— 
Lie., 38, 38.—4mm. Marcell., 14, 25.) 

Calydn^e, I. small islands, placed by Strabo (603) 
between Cape Lectum and Tenedos, but not to be 
found in that direction. In Choiseul Gouffier’s map 
they are laid down between Tenedos and Sigseum.— 

II. A group of islands, lying off the coast of Caria, to 
the southeast of Leros. One of the number was call¬ 
ed Calymna. {Horn., II., 2,676.) Herodotus informs 
us (7, 99), that the Calydnians were subject to Arte¬ 
misia, queen of Caria. Calymna, in modern charts, is 
called Calimno, and the surrounding group Kapperi 
and Carabaghlar. {Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 
218.) 

Calydon, a city of ^Etolia, below the river Eve- 
nus, and between that stream and the sea. It was 
famed in Grecian story on account of the boar-hunt 
in its neighbourhood {vid. Meleager), the theme of 
poetry from Homer to Statius. We are told by my- 
thologists that CEneus, the father of Meleager and 
Tydeus, reigned at Calydon, while his brother Agrius 
settled in Pleuron. Frequent wars, however, arose 
between them on the subject of contiguous lands ; a 
circumstance to which Homer alludes. {II., 9, 525, 
seqq.) From the same poet we collect, that Calydon 
was situate on a rocky height, {II., 2, 640; 13, 


217.) Its territory, however, was ample and produc¬ 
tive. {11., 9, 577, seqq.) Some time after the Pelo¬ 
ponnesian war, we find Calydon in the possession of the 
Achaeans. It is probable that the Calydonians them¬ 
selves invited over the Achaeans, to defend them 
against the Acarnanians. {Xen., Hist. Gr., 4, 6, 1.— 
Pausan., 3, 10.) Their city was, in consequence, oc¬ 
cupied by an Achaean garrison, until Epaminondas, 
after the battle of Leuctra, compelled them to evacu¬ 
ate the place. {Diod. Sic., 15, 57.) It was still a 
town of importance during the Social war {Polyb., 4, 
65.— Id., 5, 95), and as late as the time of Caesar. 
{B. Civ., 3, 35.) But Augustus accomplished its 
downfall by removing the inhabitants to Nicopolis. 
According to Dodwell, there are yet to be seen here 
the remains of a city, and its acropolis, composed of 
magnificent walls, constructed nearly in a regular man¬ 
ner. {Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 78, seqq.) 

Calydonis, a name of Deianiri, as living in Caly¬ 
don. {Ovid, Met., 9, 112.) 

Calymna, an island of the 4Egean, southeast of 
Leros. {Vid. Calydnae II.) 

Calypso, a daughter of Atlas, according to Homer. 
{Od., 1 , 52.— Ib., 7, 245.) Hesiod, however, makes 
her an ocean-nymph {Theog., 359), and Apollodorus 
a Nereid (1, 2). Like Circe, she was a human-speak¬ 
ing goddess, and dwelt in solitary state with her attend¬ 
ant nymphs on an island named Ogygia, in the midst 
of the ocean. Her isle presented such a scene of syl¬ 
van beauty as charmed even Mercury, one of the 
dwellers of Olympus. {Od., 5, 72.) Calypso received 
and kindly entertained Ulysses, when, in the course of 
his wanderings, that hero was thrown upon her domains 
after his shipwreck. She detained him there for eight 
years, designing to make him immortal, and to keep 
him with her for ever; but Mercury arriving with a 
command from Jupiter, she was obliged to consent to 
his departure. She gave the hero tools to build a raft 
or light vessel, supplied him with provisions, and re¬ 
luctantly took a final leave of him.—The name of Ca¬ 
lypso means “ the Concealer," the poet, after his usual 
manner, giving her a significant appellation. As re¬ 
gards her island, Homer seems to have conceived 
Ogygia to lie in the northwestern parts of the West sea, 
far remote from all other isles and coasts ; and he thus 
brought his hero into all parts of that sea, and informed 
his auditors of all its wonders. {Keightley's Mythol¬ 
ogy, p. 274 , seq.) 

Camalodunum, the first Roman colony in Britain, 
established under Claudius. Its situation agrees with 
that of the modern Malden, according to Cluver and 
Cellarius. {Tacit., Ann., 12, 32.— Id. ib., 14, 31.) 

Camaracum, a city of the Nervii, in Belgic Gaul, 
east of Nemetacum, now Cambray {Cammerik). 

Camarina, a city of Sicily, near the southern coast, 
on the river Jdipparis. {Schol. ad Pind., Ol., 5, 19.) 
It was originally founded by a colony from Syracuse, 
but, proving subsequently disobedient, it was destroy¬ 
ed by the parent state, and the ground on which it 
stood was sold to Hippocrates, tyrant of Gela, as a 
ransom for some Syracusan captives. Hippocrates re¬ 
built the city ; but his successor, Gelon, after having 
obtained the sovereignty of Syracuse, transferred the 
inhabitants of Camarina to the former city, and thus 
again was Camarina destroyed. {Herodot., 7, 156.) 
Dissensions in Syracuse enabled the Geloans to rebuild 
Camarina ; according to Timaeus, in the 82d Olympiad, 
but according to Diodorus at the end of the 79th. This 
city, however, seemed destined to be still unfortunate. 
It again suffered from the elder Dionysius, and the in¬ 
habitants were once more obliged to become wander¬ 
ers. When Timoleon, after the overthrow of tyranny, 
gave peace to the whole island, Camarina again re¬ 
vived. {Diod. Sic., 16, 82.) It suffered once more, 
however, in the contest between Carthage and Agatho- 
cles ; and finally, in the first Punic war, was severely 

291 




CAM 


CAM 


punished by the Romans for having admitted Cartha¬ 
ginian troops within its walls. From this time it re¬ 
mained an inconsiderable city. In the neighbourhood 
of the place the river formed a low island, covered at 
high water, but when the tide fell converted into a 
marsh. This marsh yielded exhalations which pro¬ 
duced a pestilence, and the inhabitants consulted an 
oracle whether they should drain it. Athough the or¬ 
acle dissuaded them, they drained it, and opened a way 
to their enemies to come and plunder their city. 
Hence arose the proverb, from the words of the oracle, 
j ui) Kivu K ayapivav, “ move not Camarina ,” applied 
to those who, by removing one evil, will bring on a 
greater. Nothing now remains of this city but some 
ruins, and the name Camarana, given by the natives to 
a town and a neighbouring marsh. {Virg., JEn., 3, 
701.— Herod., 7, 154.) 

Cambunii Montes, a chain of mountains forming the 
southern boundary of Macedonia, and separating that 
country from Thessaly. ( Liv ., 42, 53.— Id., 44, 2.) 

Cambyses, I. an early monarch of the line of the 
Acluemenides, the successor of Te’ispes, who was him¬ 
self the successor of Achsemenes. He must not be con¬ 
founded with Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, who was, in 
fact, the second of the name in the line of Persian 
kings. {Herod., 7, 11.—Consult Bahr and Larchcr, 
ad loc .)—II. A Persian of good family, but peaceful 
disposition, to whom Astyages, king of Media, gave 
his daughter Mandane in marriage. {Vid. Astyages.) 
The issue of this union was Cyrus the Great. {He¬ 
rod., 1 , 46.— Id., 1 , 107.)—III. The son and succes¬ 
sor of Cyrus the Great, ascended the throne of Persia 
B.C. 530. Soon after the commencement of his 
reign, he undertook the conquest of Egypt, being ex¬ 
cited to the step, according to the Persian account as 
given in Herodotus (3, 1), by the conduct of Amasis, 
the king of that country. Cambyses, it seems, had de¬ 
manded in marriage the daughter of Amasis ; but the 
latter, knowing that the Persian monarch intended to 
make her, not his wife, but his concubine, endeavour¬ 
ed to deceive him by sending in her stead the daughter 
of his predecessor Apries. The historian gives also 
another account besides this ; but it is more than prob¬ 
able that both are untrue, and that ambitious feelings 
alone on the part of Cambyses prompted him to the 
enterprise. (Compare Dahlmann, Herod., p. 148.— 
Creuzer, ad Herod., 1. c.) Amasis died before Cam¬ 
byses marched against Egypt, and his son Psammeni- 
tus succeeded to the throne. A bloody battle was 
fought near the Pelusiac mouth of the Nile, and the 
Egyptians were put to flight, after which Cambyses 
made himself master of the whole country, and receiv¬ 
ed tokens of submission also from the Cyrenseans and 
the people of Barca. The kingdom of Egypt was thus 
conquered by him in six months. Cambyses now form¬ 
ed new projects. He wished to send a squadron and 
subjugate Carthage, to conquer .Ethiopia, and to make 
himself master of the famous temple of Jupiter Ammon. 
The first of these expeditions, however, did not take 
place, because the Phoenicians, who composed his na¬ 
val force, would not go to attack one of their own col¬ 
onies. The army that was sent against the Ammoni- 
ans perished in the desert; and the troops at whose 
head he himself had set out against the .Ethiopians 
were compelled by hunger to retreat. How far he 
advanced into .Ethiopia cannot be ascertained from 
anything that Herodotus says. Diodorus Siculus, how¬ 
ever (1, 33), makes Cambyses to have penetrated as 
far as the spot where Meroe stood, which city, accord¬ 
ing to this same writer, he founded, and named after 
his mother. His mother, however, was Cassandana. 
Josephus {Ant. Jud., 2, 10, 2) makes the previous 
name to have been merely changed by Cambyses to 
Meroe, in honour of his sister. (Compare Strabo, 790.) 
Both accounts are untrue. {Vid. Meroe.)—After his 
return from .Ethiopia, the Persian king gave himself 
292 


up to the greatest acts of outrage and cruelty. On 
entering Memphis he found the inhabitants engaged in 
celebrating the festival of the re-appearance of Apis, 
and, imagining that these rejoicings were made on ac¬ 
count of his ill success, he caused the sacred bull to 
be brought before him, stabbed him with his dagger, 
of which wound the animal afterward died, and caused 
the priests to be scourged. {Herod., 3, 27, seqq.) 
Cambyses is said to have been subject to epilepsy from 
his earliest years ; and the habit of drinking, in which 
he now indulged to excess, rendered him at times com¬ 
pletely furious. No relation was held sacred by him 
when intoxicated. Having dreamed that his brother 
Smerdis was seated on the royal throne, he sent one 
of his principal confidants to Persia, with orders to put 
him to death, a mandate which was actually accom¬ 
plished. His sister and wife Atossa, who lamented 
the death of Smerdis, he struck w ith a blow of his foot, 
which brought on abortion. {Herod., 3, 30? seqq.) 
These and many other actions, alike indicative of al¬ 
most complete insanity, aroused against him the feel¬ 
ings of his subjects. A member of the sacerdotal or¬ 
der called the Magi availed himself of this discontent, 
and, aided by the strong resemblance which he bore to 
the murdered Smerdis, as well as by the exertions of 
a brother who was also a Magian, seized upon the 
throne of Persia, and sent heralds in every direction, 
commanding all to obey, for the time to come, Smerdis, 
son of Cyrus, and not Cambyses. The news of this 
usurpation reached Cambyses at a place in Syria call¬ 
ed Ecbatana, where he was at that time with his army. 
Resolving to return with all speed to Susa, the mon¬ 
arch was in the act of mounting his horse, when his 
sword fell from its sheath and inflicted a mortal blow 
in his thigh. An oracle, it is said, had been given 
him from Butus, that he would end his life at Ecba¬ 
tana, but he always thought that the Median Ecbatana 
was meant by it. He died of his wound soon after, 
B.C. 522, leaving no children. {Herod., 3, 61, seqq.) 
Ctesias gives a different account. He makes Camby¬ 
ses to have died at Babylon of a wound he had given 
himself on the femoral muscle, while shaving smooth 
a piece of wood with a small knife. {Ctes., Excerpt. 
Pers., § 12.) According to Herodotus (3, 66), Cam¬ 
byses reigned seven years and five months. Ctesias 
says eighteen years ; but there must be some error in 
this. Clemens of Alexandrea gives ten years. {Clem. 
Alex., Strom., 1, p. 395.)—IV. A river of Asia, which 
rises, according to Pomponius Mela (3, 5), at the base 
of Mons Coraxicus, a branch of Caucasus, and in the 
vicinity of the sources of the Cyrus. After flowing 
through Iberia and Hyrcania, it joins the Cyrus, and 
the united streams empty into the Hyrcanian Sea. La 
Martiniere {Diet. Geog.) remarks, that there is no riv¬ 
er in modern times answering to this description of 
the Cambyses. Vossius thinks that Mela intended to 
designate the Araxes, but the sources of this river are 
too far distant. Hardouin, suspecting that Ptolemy 
has spoken of the Cambyses under another name, be¬ 
lieves it to be the same with the Soana of this geogra¬ 
pher : he goes, however, too high towards the north¬ 
ern extremity of Albania. {Hardouin, ad Plin., 6, 13, 
not. 7.) 

CamerInum, a town of Umbria, on the borders of 
Picenum. It was a Roman colony and a city of some 
note, and must not be confounded with the Camerte 
of Strabo, an error into which Cluverius has fallen. 
{Ital. Ant., l,p. 613.) The modern name is Camerino. 
( Cces., Bell. Civ., 1, 15.— Cic. ad Attic., 8, 12.— Ptol., 
p. 62.) Appian calls it Cameria. {Bell. Civ., 5, 50.— 
Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 262.) 

Camerte, a town of Umbria, between Tuder and 
Ameria. {Strab., 227, seq. —Consult the remarks of 
Cramer, Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 274.) 

Camilla, queen of the Volsci, was daughter of Mc- 
tabus and Casmilla. Her father, who reigned at Priver* 






CAM 


CAM 


num, having by his tyranny rendered himself odious to 
his subjects, was by them expelled from his dominions, 
and forced to take refuge from their fury in the lonely 
woods. Here he bred up the infant Camilla, the sole 
companion of his flight; and, having dedicated her to 
the service of Diana, he instructed her in the use of the 
bow and arrow, and accustomed her to the practice of 
martial and sylvan exercises. She was so remarkable 
for her swiftness, that she is described by the poets 
as flying over the corn without bending the stalks, and 
skimming over the surface of the water without wet¬ 
ting her feet. Attended by a train of warriors, she led 
the Volscians to battle against TEneas. Many brave 
chiefs fell by her hand ; but she was at length herself 
killed by a soldier of the name of Aruns, who, from 
a place of concealment, aimed a javelin at her. Diana, 
however, who had foreseen this fatal event, had com¬ 
missioned Opis, one of her nymphs, to avenge the 
death of Camilla, and Aruns was slain in his flight 
from the combat by the arrows of the goddess. ( Virg., 
AS?i., 7, 803, seqq. — Id. ib., 11, 532, seqq. — Id. ib., 
11, 848, seqq.) Tasso has applied this story of Camil¬ 
la to Clorinda ( B. 12, stanza 20, &c.). 

Camillus (L. Furius), a celebrated Roman, called 
a second Romulus, from his services to his country. 
After filling various important stations, and, among 
other achievement^', taking the city of Veii, which had 
for the space of ten years resisted the Roman arms, he 
encountered at last the displeasure of his countrymen, 
and was accused of having embezzled some of the 
plunder of this place. Being well aware how the mat¬ 
ter would terminate, Camillus went into voluntary ex¬ 
ile, although his friends offered to pay the sum demand¬ 
ed of him. During this period of separation from his 
country, Rome, with the exception of the Capitol, was 
taken by the Gauls under Brennus. Camillus, though 
an exile, was invited by the fugitive Romans at Veii 
to take command of them, but refused to act until the 
wishes of the Romans besieged in the Capitol were 
known. These unanimously revoked the sentence of 
banishment, and elected him dictator. The noble- 
minded Roman forgot their previous ingratitude, and 
marched to the relief of his country ; which he deliv¬ 
ered, after it had been for some time in the possession 
of the enemy. The Roman account says, that Camil¬ 
lus, at the head of an army of forty thousand men, 
hastened to Rome, where he found the garrison of the 
Capitol on the point of purchasing peace from the in¬ 
vaders. “ With iron, not with gold,” exclaimed Ca¬ 
millus, “ Rome buys her freedom.” An attack was 
instantly made upon the Gauls, a victory obtained, 
and the foe left their camp by night. On the morrow 
Camillus overtook them, and they met with a total 
overthrow. His triumphal entry into Rome was made 
amid the acclamations of thousands, who greeted him 
with the name of Romulus, father of his country, and 
second founder of the city. After performing another 
equally important service, in prevailing upon his coun¬ 
trymen to rebuild their city and not return to Veii, and 
after gaining victories over the JEqui, Volsci, Etruri¬ 
ans, and Latins, he died in the eighty-ninth year of his 
age, having been five times dictator, once censor, three 
times interrex, twice military tribune, and having ob¬ 
tained four triumphs. ( Plut. in Vit. — Liv., 5, 46, 
seqq. — F/or., 1, 13.— Virg., JEn., 6, 825.)—We have 
touched merely on a few of the events connected with 
the history of Camillus, in consequence of the strong 
suspicion which attaches itself to the greater part of 
the narrative. In no instance, perhaps, have the fam¬ 
ily-memorials of the Roman aristocracy more com¬ 
pletely usurped the place of true history than in the 
case of Camillus. The part relative to the overthrow 
of the Gauls appears to be all a pure fiction. “ For a 
long time past,” observes Niebuhr, “ no one has pe¬ 
rused, with any degree of faith, Livy’s narrative of the 
arrival of the dictator Camillus in the city during the 


payment of the, ransom-money to the Gauls, his break¬ 
ing olf the compact as invalid, his expelling the Gauls 
from the city, and then gaining a victory over them on 
the road to Gabii, from which no messenger escaped to 
carry home the tidings. Polybius, a more ancient wit¬ 
ness, and of much greater validity, who is never partial 
towards the Romans, and could not be so to the Gauls, 
assures us that the conquerors returned home with 
the booty (2, 18). The story, however, was common 
among the Romans, that the gold which had been paid 
was recovered, and it is said to have been kept in the 
Capitol, in the sanctuary of Jupiter ( Phn., 33, 5), until 
the time of Crassus’s sacrilege, and increased to double 
the amount by the addition of plunder. Yet, even ac¬ 
cording to Livy himself (5, 50), this Capitoline gold 
was no proof of it, and was rather collected from the 
treasures of different temples, which it was impossible 
to separate in order to restore them ; and even the du¬ 
plication might prove a replacing, according to custom, 
for the payment of the war-taxes. Livy thought it 
shocking and insufferable that the existence of Rome 
should have been purchased with gold ; hence his nar¬ 
ration, according to which the arrival of Camillus ar¬ 
rested the payment, is poetically consistent. Besides 
the bitter truth of Polybius, there are two other series 
of traditions, which do not deny the departure of the 
Gauls with the gold, but do not allow them to have 
derived any advantage thereby. Of the first class ap¬ 
parently is that of Pliny, already adduced ; it is found 
most distinctly in Diodorus. According to him, Ca¬ 
millus recovered the ransom, and almost all the re¬ 
maining booty, when relieving one of the allied towns 
which was besieged by the Gauls. ( Diod., 14, 117.) 
The other story seems to have deemed it sufficient 
for the honour of Rome if the Gauls did not carry 
home the gains of their victory. It deposes as a wit¬ 
ness to the unpalatable truth revealed by Polybius. 
On its authority Strabo relates of the Cseritians, that 
they defeated the Gauls on their return from Rome, 
and wrested from them the booty which they were car¬ 
rying off. ( Strabo , 220.) Diodorus has also the story 
of a victory gained by this nation over the Gauls that 
were returning from Apulia; he blends the two ac 
counts together.” ( Niebuhr's Rom. Hist., vol. 2, p. 
282, Walter's transl. — Compare the remarks of Ar¬ 
nold, Hist, of Rome, vol. 1, p. 547, seqq.) 

Camirus, a town of the island of Rhodes, on the 
western coast. It derived its name from a son of 
Cercaphus, one of the Heliadie. We learn from Dio¬ 
dorus Siculus (5, 57), that Juno Telchinia was wor¬ 
shipped here. Pisander, the epic poet, was a native 
of Camirus. The place retains the name of Camiro. 

( Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 237.) 

Campania, a district of Italy, below Latium, and 
for some time separated from it by the river Liris. 
All ancient writers who have treated of Italy bear 
witness to the frequent change of inhabitants which 
Campania has more particularly undergone in the 
course of its history. Attracted by the fertility of its 
soil, the beauty of its climate, and the commodious¬ 
ness of its havens, successive invaders poured in and 
dispossessed each other, until the superior ascendency 
of Rome left her the undisputed mistress of this garden 
of Italy. From these repeated contentions arose, as 
Strabo asserts, the fiction of the battle between the 
gods and giants in the Phlegraean plains. The true 
solution of this tradition, however, it may be observed 
in passing, refers itself to some early and tremendous 
volcanic eruption, since it would seem that there is a 
source of volcanic fire, at no great distance from the 
surface, in the whole of Southern Italy. ( Consolations 
in Travel, p. 123, Am. ed.) —It is universally agreed 
that the first settlers in Campania with whom history 
makes us acquainted are the Oscans. ( Antioch. Syrac. 
ap. Strab., 234.— Plin., 3, 5.) Even when the Oscan 
name had disappeared from the rest of Italy, the Oscan 

293 




CAM 


CAN 


language was retained by the inhabitants of Campania, 
though mingled with the dialects of the various tribes 
which successively obtained possession of that much- 
prized country. Of these, the next to be mentioned 
are the Tuscans, who are stated to have extended their 
dominion at an early period both to the north and south 
of that portion of Italy, which is considered as more 
properly belonging to them. When they had effected 
the conquest of Campania, that province became the 
seat of a particular empire, and received the federal 
form of a government, centred in twelve principal cities. 
( Strabo , 242. — Liv., 4, 37.— Polyb., 2, 17.) Wealth 
and luxury, however, soon produced their usual effects 
on the conquerors of Campania, and they in their turn 
fell an easy prey to the attacks of the Samnites, and 
were compelled to admit these hardy warriors to share 
with them the possession and enjoyment of these sunny 
plains. This observation, however, applies more par¬ 
ticularly to Capua and its district, which was surprised 
by a Samnite force, A.U.C. 331. ( Liv ., 4, 44.) It is 

from this period that we must date the origin of the Cam¬ 
panian nation, which appears to have been thus com¬ 
posed of Oscans, Tuscans, Samnites, and Greeks, the 
latter having formed numerous colonies on these shores. 
About eighty years after, the Romans gladly seized the 
opportunity of adding so valuable a portion of Itaiy to 
their dominions, under the pretence of defending the 
Campanians against their former enemies the Samnites. 
From this time Campania may be regarded as subject 
to Rome, if we except that short interval in which the 
brilliant successes of Hannibal withdrew its inhabitants 
from their allegiance; an offence which they were made 
to expiate by a punishment, the severity of which has 
few examples in the history, not of Rome only, but of 
nations. ( Liv., 26, 14, seqq.) — The natural advan¬ 
tages of Campania, its genial climate and fertile soil, 
so rich in various productions, are a favourite theme 
with the Latin writers, and elicit from them many an 
eloquent and animated tribute of admiration. Pliny, 
in particular, styles it, “ Felix ilia Campania .... 
certamen humance voluptatis .” ( Cramer's Anc. Italy, 

vol. 2, p. 143, seqq.) 

Campaspe, a beautiful female whom Alexander be¬ 
stowed upon Apelles. ( Vid. Apelles.) 

Campi, I. CanIni, plains situate in the country of 
the Mesiates, in Cisalpine Gaul, whose territory cor¬ 
responded to the modern Val di Misocco. ( Amm. 
Marccll., 15, 10.)—II. Diomedis, the plains in Apulia 
on which the battle of Cannse was fought. ( Sil. Ital., 
8, 242.— Liv., 25, 11.— Strab., 283.)—III. LaborIni, 
a name applied to the district between Cumse and 
Puteoli, now Terra di Lavoro. The modern name is 
probably derived from the ancient. ( Plin ., 3, 5.) — 
IV. Raudii. (Vid. Raudii Campi.) — V. Taurasini, 
a name given to the territory of Taurasium, in Sam- 
nium. Pyrrhus was defeated here by Dentatus. The 
name is often incorrectly given as Campi Arusini. 

(Flor., 1, 18.— Frontin., Strateg., 4, 1.— Oros., 4, 2.) 

Campus Martius, a large plain at Rome, without 
the walls of the city, where the Roman youths per¬ 
formed their gymnastic exercises. Public assemblies 
were often held here, magistrates chosen, and here, 
too, audience was given to such ambassadors as the 
senate did not choose to admit within the city. The 
bodies of the dead were also burned here. The 
Campus Martius, as we learn from Livy (2, 5), was 
land which belonged formerly to Tarquin, but which, 
being confiscated with the remaining property of that 
king after his expulsion, was dedicated to Mars. But 
Dionysius of Halicarnassus affirms (5, 13) that it had 
been consecrated before, but, having been seized by 
Tarquin, was recovered afterward by the people. And 
this account is more probable, as Festus quotes a law 
of Numa in which mention is made of the Campus 
Martius (s. v. Solilauril.), and Livy himself seems to 
allow the name to be as ancient as the reign of Ser- 
294 


vius Tullius (1, 44). In the Latin poets we generally 
find it designated under the simple name of Campus. 
The Campius Martius is the principal situation of mod¬ 
ern Rome. In the reign of Augustus, when the city 
had extended itself far beyond the lines of Servius 
Tullius, a great part of the Campius Martius was en¬ 
closed and occupied by public buildings, more espe¬ 
cially by the great works of Agrippa. A considerable 
expanse of meadow was left open, however, at that 
time, as we learn from Strabo (237), who has accu¬ 
rately described its situation and appearance. It w as 
here that the Roman youths engaged in martial sports 
and exercises, while the neighbouring waters of the 
Tiber afforded them a salutary refreshment after their 
fatigue. Strabo also informs us, that the Campus 
Martius was surrounded by many porticoes and sump¬ 
tuous buildings. These were principally the struc¬ 
tures erected by Agrippa. In times posterior to the 
age of the geographer, we find that Nero constructed 
baths in this part of the city. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, 
vol. 1, p. 436.) 

Canaria, the largest of the cluster of islands called 
by the ancients Bcatce and Fortunatce Insula, and 
now Canary Islands. Pliny says, that this island de¬ 
rived its name from the number of very large-sized 
dogs which it contained, and that two of these were 
brought over to Africa for King Jflhn. (Plin., 6, 32. 
— Vid. Fortunatse Insulae.) 

Candace, a name given to the queen-mothers in 
Meroe, in .^Ethiopia. Some females of this name ap¬ 
pear in history, but they seem to have been merely 
queen-regents, governing during the minority of their 
sons. Some ancient authors, however, state, that it 
was customary for the ^Ethiopians to be governed by 
queens called each by the name of Candace. (Compare 
Plin., 6, 29, but especially Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., 2, 1 : 
Kara to irurpiov Wop vrco yvvaiKop rov tdvovp eloen 
vvv /3aci7iEvofievov.) Suidas speaks of a Candace who 
was made prisoner by Alexander the Great; but this 
appears to be a mere fable.—A Candace, blind of one 
eye, made an irruption into Egypt during the reign of 
Augustus, B.C. 20. She took and pillaged several 
cities, but Petronius, the prefect of Egypt, pursued 
her, penetrated into her dominions, w'hich he pillaged 
in turn, until she restored the booty which she had 
carried off from Egypt, and sued for peace. (Dio 
Cass., 54, 5. — Plin., 6, 29.) — Mention is also made 
in the sacred writings of a queen of ^Ethiopia named 
Candace. (Acts, 8, 27. — Consult Kuinocl, ad loc.) 
There is a gloss given by Alberti (Gloss. N. T., p. 
213), in which it is said that the ^Ethiopians had no 
particular or individual name for their kings, but styled 
them all “ sons of the Sun,” whereas the queen-mother 
they called Candace, as above. Now in the Lydian 
language Candaules was an appellation for Hercules, 
or the Sun. (Bcihr, ad Herod., 1, 12.) Possibly, 
therefore, the word Candace, in the ancient ^Ethiopi¬ 
an, may be of cognate origin W'ith Candaules in the 
Lydian tongue, the root being apparently the same, 
and may signify “ a daughter of the Sun.” 

Candavia, a district of Macedonia, bounded on the 
east by the Candavian mountains, supposed by some 
to be the same with the Cambunii Montes of Livy, 
and the Canaluvii Montes of Ptolemy. (Strab., 323. 
—Lucan, 6, 331.) 

Candaules, a monarch of Lydia, the last of the 
Heraclidse, dethroned by Gyges at the instigation of 
his own queen. (Consult Herod., 1, 7, seqq.) His 
true name appears to have been Myrsilus , and the ap¬ 
pellation of Candaules to have been assumed by him 
as a title of honour, this latter being, in the Lydian 
language, equivalent to Hercules, i. e., the Sun. 
(Bahr, ad Herod., 1, 12.) 

Canephori (K avytyopoi), a select number of vir¬ 
gins of honourable birth, who formed part of the pro¬ 
cession in the festival called Dionysia, celebrated in 




CAN 


CAN 


honour of Bacchus. They carried small baskets of 
gold, containing fruit and various sacred and mysteri¬ 
ous things. {Clem. Alex , Protr., p. 19.— Anstoph., 
Acharn., 241, seqq.) They wore around their necks a 
collar of dried tigs. (Compare Anstoph., Lysistr ., 
v. 647.— Sa.inte-Croix, Mysteres du Pagamsme, vol. 
2, p. 87, with the note of De Sacy.) 

Caniculares dies, certain days in the summer, 
preceding and ensuing the heliacal rising of Canicula, 
or the dog-star, in the morning. The ancients believed 
that this star, rising with the sun, and joining his in¬ 
fluence to the fire of that luminary, was the cause of 
the extraordinary heat which usually prevailed in that 
season ; and accordingly they gave the name of dog- 
days to about six or eight weeks of the hottest part 
of summer. This idea originated with the Egyptians, 
and was borrowed from them by the Greeks. The 
Romans sacrificed a brown dog every year to Canicula, 
at its rising, to appease its rage. (Consult remarks 
under the article Sirius.) 

Canidia, a reputed sorceress at Rome, ridiculed by 
Horace. ( Epod., 5.) 

Caninefates, a people of Germania Superior, of 
common origin with the Batavi, and inhabiting the 
western part of the Insula Batavorum. The name is 
written differently in different authors. ( Veil. Paterc., 
2, 105.— Plin., 4, 15.— Tacit., Hist., 4, 15.) 

Caninius Rebilus, C. a consul along with Julius 
Caesar. Q. Fabius Maximus, the regular colleague of 
Caesar in the consulship, died on the last day of his 
official year, in the morning, and Caesar caused Ca¬ 
ninius to be elected in his stead, although only a few 
hours remained for enjoying the consulship. Caninius, 
therefore, was chosen consul at one o’clock P.M. on 
the 31st December, and held office until midnight, the 
end of the civil year, and commencement of the kal¬ 
ends of January. As we may suppose that the newly- 
appointed consul would hardly retire to rest before 
midnight, we can understand the jest which Cicero 
uttered on this occasion, that Rome had in Caninius a 
most vigilant consul, since he had never closed his 
eyes during the period of his consulship. This mode 
of conferring office was intended to conciliate friends, 
for the individual thus favoured enjoyed, after his brief 
continuance in office, all the rights and privileges, to¬ 
gether with the honorary title, of a man of consular 
rank. ( Cic., Ep. ad Fam., 7, 30.) 

Cannes, a small village of Apulia, situate about five 
miles from Canusium, towards the sea, and at no great 
distance from the Aufidus. It was celebrated for the 
defeat of the Romans by Hannibal. Polybius tells us 
that, as a town, it was destroyed the year before the 
battle was fought, which took place May 21st, B.C. 
216. The citadel, however, was preserved, and the 
circumstance of its occupation by Hannibal seems to 
have been regarded by the Romans of sufficient im¬ 
portance to cause, them considerable uneasiness and 
annoyance. It commanded, indeed, all the adjacent 
country, and was the principal southern depot of stores 
and provisions on which they had depended for the 
approaching campaign. The Greek writers, especially 
Polybius, use the name in the singular, Kdvva. There 
is an exception to this, however, in the 15th book, c. 
7 and 11, where the plural form is used by the histo¬ 
rian just mentioned.—The decisive victory at Canme 
was owing to three combined causes : the excellent ar¬ 
rangements of Hannibal, the superiority of the Nu- 
midian horse, and the skilful manoeuvre of Hasdrubal 
in opposing only the light-armed cavalry against that 
of the Romans, while he employed the heavy horse, 
divided into small parties, in repeated attacks on dif¬ 
ferent parts of the Roman rear. The Roman army 
contained 80,000 infantry and 6000 cavalry, the Car¬ 
thaginians 40,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry. Han¬ 
nibal drew up his forces in the form of a convex cres¬ 
cent, having his centre thrown forward before the 


wings. He commanded in the centre in person, and 
here he had purposely stationed his worst troops ; the 
best were posted at the extremities of each wing, 
which would enable them to act with decisive advan¬ 
tage as bodies of reserve, they being, in fact, the rear 
of the other forces. Hasdrubal commanded the left 
wing, Hanno the right. On the Roman side, want of 
union between the two consuls, and want of spirit 
among the men, afforded a sure omen of the fortune 
of the day. iEmilius commanded the right, Varro 
the left wing ; the proconsuls Regulus and Servius, 
who had been consuls the preceding year, had charge 
of the centre. What Hannibal foresaw took place. 
The charge of the Romans, and their immense superi¬ 
ority in numbers, at length broke his centre, which, 
giving way inward, his army now assumed the shape 
of a concave crescent. The Romans, in the ardour of 
pursuit, were carried so far as to be completely sur¬ 
rounded. Both flanks were assailed by the veterans 
of Hannibal, who were armed in the Roman manner ; 
at the same time the cavalry of the Carthaginians at¬ 
tacked their rear, and the broken centre rallying, at¬ 
tacked them in front. The consequence was, that they 
were nearly all cut to pieces. The two proconsuls, 
together with ./Emilius the consul, were slain. Varro 
escaped with 70 horse to Venusia. The Romans lost 
on the field of battle 70,000 men ; and 10,000 who 
had not been present in the fight were made prisoners. 
The Carthaginian loss amounted to 5500 infantry and 
200 cavalry. Such is the account of Polybius, whose 
statement of the fight is much clearer and more satis¬ 
factory than that of Livy. Hannibal has been cen¬ 
sured for not marching immediately to Rome after the 
battle, in which city all was consternation. But a de¬ 
fence of his conduct may be found under the article 
Hannibal, which see. ( Polyh ., 3, 113, ct seqq. — Liv., 
22, 44.— Flor., 2, 6.— Plut., Vit. Hannih.) 

Canopicum (or Canobicum) ostium, the western¬ 
most mouth of the Nile, twelve miles from Alexandrea. 
Near its termination is the lake Madie or Maadie (de¬ 
noting, in Arabic, a passage), which is the remains of 
this branch. This lake has no communication with 
the Nile, except at the time of its greatest increase. 
It is merely a salt-water lagoon. The Canopic mouth 
was sometimes also called Naucraticum Ostium and 
Heracleoticum Ostium. {Herod., 2, 17.— Diod. Sic., 
1 , 33.— Plin., 5, 10.— Mela, 1 , 9.) 

Canopus (or Canobus), a city of Egypt, about 
twelve miles northeast of Alexandrea, and a short dis¬ 
tance to the west of the Ostium Canopicum. The 
Greek writers give the name as Canobus (K dvobog ); 
the Latin, Canopus. The form Vavumoe; occurs also 
in Scylax (p. 43), but the reference there is to the isl¬ 
and formed by the mouth of the Nile in this quarter.— 
Canopus was a very ancient city, and most probably 
of Egyptian origin, since we are informed by Diodorus 
Siculus (1, 33) that each mouth of the Nile was de¬ 
fended by a fortified city, and since the Ionian Greeks, 
who came first to this quarter, were only allowed 
originally to enter by this arm of the river. Whence 
the name of the place arose is unknown. It came, 
very likely, from the brilliant star Canobus, which one 
beholds, even in the southern regions of Asia Minor, on 
the edge of the horizon, but which was seen to rise 
in full splendour by a spectator on the coast of Egypt. 
The Greek writers, however, not knowing any better 
derivation for the name, deduced it from that of the 
pilot of Menelaus, who was fabled to have been called 
Canopus, and to have died and been interred here. 
Herodotus makes no mention of this legend, but Scy¬ 
lax speaks of a monument in this quarter which Men¬ 
elaus, as he informs us, erected here in memory of his 
pilot. Previous to. the founding of Alexandria, Cano¬ 
bus must have been a very important place, since it 
formed the chief centre of communication between 
the interior of Egypt and other countries lying to the 

295 



CAN 


CAP 


4 

north. It sunk, however, in importance after Alexan¬ 
dra was built, and merely retained some consequence 
from its temple and oracle of Serapis, which latter was 
consulted during the night, and gave intimations of 
the future to applicants while sleeping within the walls 
of the structure. The festivals, also, that were cele¬ 
brated at this temple, drew large crowds of both sexes 
from the adjacent country, and exercised an injurious 
influence on the morals of all who took part in them. 
Canopus, in fact, was always regarded as a dissolute 
place, and, even after Alexandrea arose, it was much 
frequented by the inhabitants of the capital for purpo¬ 
ses of enjoyment and pleasure, the temperature of the 
air and the situation of the city being spoken of in 
high terms by the ancient writers. ( Amm Marcell ., 
22, 16.) The festivals of Serapis ceased on the intro¬ 
duction of Christianity, and from that period history 
is silent respecting Canopus. The French savans 
found some traces of the ancient city a short distance 
to the west of the modern Aboukir. ( Mannert , Geogr., 
vol. 10, pt. 1, p. 541, seqq.) 

Cantabri, a warlike and ferocious people of Spain, 
who long resisted the Roman power. Their country 
answers to Biscay and part of Asturias. Augustus 
marched in person against them, anticipating an easy 
victory. The desperate resistance of the Cantabrians, 
however, induced him to retire to Tarraco, and leave 
the management of the war to his generals. They 
were finally reduced, but, rebelling soon after, were 
decreed to be sold as slaves. Most of them, however, 
preferred falling by their own hands. The final reduc¬ 
tion of the Cantabri was effected by Agrippa, A.U.C. 
734, after they had resisted the power of the Romans 
in various ways for more than two hundred years. 
(Liv., Epit., 48.— Flor., 4, 12.— Plin., 3, 2.— Horat., 
Od., 3, 8, 22.) 

Cantium, a country in the southeastern extremity 
of Britain, now called Kent. The name is derived 
from the British word cant , signifying an angle or cor¬ 
ner. (Consult Adelung, Gloss. Med. et Inf. La.t.,\ o|. 
2, p. 133, s. v. canto.) 

Canuleia lex, a law proposed by C. Canuleius, 
tribune of the commons, A.U.C. 310, and allowing of 
intermarriages between the patricians and plebeians. 
(Liv., 4, 1.) 

Canusium, a town of Apulia, on the right bank of 
the Aufidus, and about twelve miles from its mouth. 
The origin of Canusium seems to belong to a period 
which reaches far beyond the records of Roman histo¬ 
ry, and of which we possess no memorials but what a 
fabulous tradition has conveyed to us. This tradition 
ascribes its foundation to Diomede, after the close of 
the Trojan war. Perhaps, however, we should see in 
Diomede one of those Pelasgic chiefs, who, in a very 
distant age, formed settlements in various parts of 
Italy. Canusium appears to have been in its earlier 
days a large and flourishing place. It is said by those 
who have traced the circuit of the walls from the re¬ 
maining vestiges, that they must have embraced a cir¬ 
cumference of sixteen miles. ( Pratilli, Via Appia, 4, 
13. — Romanelli, vol. 2, p. 265. — Compare Strabo, 
28.) The splendid remains of antiquity discovered 
among the ruins of Canosa, together with its coins, 
establish the fact of the Grecian origin of this place. 
Antiquaries dwell with rapture on the elegance and 
beauty of the Greek vases of Canosa, which, in point 
of size, numbers, and decorations, far surpass those 
discovered in the tombs of any other ancient city, not 
even excepting Nola. ( Millingcn, Peintures Antiques 
des Vases, See.) —Horace alludes to the mixed dialect 
of Oscan and Greek, in the expression employed by 
him, “ Canusini more bilinguis .” (Sat., 1, 10, 30.) 
—It is stated, that the small remnant of the Roman 
army, which escaped from the slaughter of Cannae, 
took refuge here. Livy records the generous treat¬ 
ment they experienced on that occasion from Busa, a 
296 


wealthy lady of this city (22, 52). Philostratus in¬ 
forms us ( Vit. Sophist..), that Hadrian colonized this 
place, and procured for it a good supply of water, of 
which it stood much in need, as we know from Hor¬ 
ace. (Sat., 1, 5, 90.) The same poet complains 
also of the grittiness of the bread. (Cramer s An¬ 
cient Italy, vol. 2, p. 292.) 

Capaneus, an Argive warrior, son of Hipponoiis. 
He was one of the seven leaders in the wnr against 
Thebes (vid. Adrastus), and is often alluded to by the 
ancient poets as remarkable for his daring and impiety. 
Having boasted that he would take the Theban city, 
in despite even of Jove, this deity struck him with a 
thunderbolt as he was in the act of ascending the 
ramparts. When his body was being consumed on 
the funeral pile, his wife Evadne threw hersell upon 
it and perished amid the flames. JEsculapius was 
fabled to have restored Capaneus to life. (Apollod., 
3, 6, 3. —Id., 3, 6, 7. —Id., 37, 2.— Id., 3, 10, 3.— 
AEsch., Sept. c. Theb., 427, seqq. — Heyne, ad Apollod ., 

3, 6, 3.) 

Capella, I. (Marcianus Mineus Felix), a poet, born, 
according to Cassiodorus, at Madaura in Africa : he 
calls himself, however, at the end of this work, “ the 
foster-child of the city of Elissawhether it be that 
he was born at Carthage, or else received his educa¬ 
tion there, which latter is the more probable opinion 
of the two. The MSS., however, give him the title 
of “ the Carthaginian.” In process of time he at¬ 
tained to proconsular dignity, but whether he was a 
Christian or not -is a matter of uncertainty. About 
the middle of the fifth century of our era he wrote at 
Rome a work bearing the appellation of Satira or 
Satyricon, divided into nine books. It is a species 
of encyclopedia, half prose and half verse, modelled 
after the Varronian satire. The first two books form 
a detached and separate work, entitled He Nuptiis 
Philologice et Mercurii, and treating of the apoth¬ 
eosis of Philology and her marriage with Mercury. 
We find in it, among other things, a description of 
heaven, which shows that the mystic notions of the 
Platonists of that day approximated in a very singular 
manner to the truths of Christianity. In the seven 
following books Capella treats of the seven sciences, 
which formed at that time the circle of human study, 
namely, grammar, logic, rhetoric, geometry, astrology, 
arithmetic, and music, which comprehends poetry. 
This work, written in a barbarous style, was introdu¬ 
ced into the schools of the middle ages : hence it was 
frequently copied, and the text has become extremely 
corrupt. The best edition of Capella is that of Gro- 
tius, Lugd. Bat., 1599, 8vo ; although a good edition, 
in the strict sense of the term, is still a desideratum. 
The work of Grotius is generally regarded as a litera¬ 
ry wonder, since he was only fourteen years old when 
he undertook the task of editing Capella, and published 
his edition at the age of fifteen. He was aided in it 
by his father, as he himself informs us, and very prob¬ 
ably also by Joseph Scaliger, who induced him to at¬ 
tempt the task. (Bahr, Gcsch. Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. 
727, seqq. — Scholl, Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 3, p. 98.— 
Walckenacr, in Biogr. Univ., vol. 7, p. 62.)—II. An 
elegiac poet, mentioned with eulogium by Ovid. (Pont., 

4, 16, 36.) We have no remains of his productions. 

Capena, I. a gate of Rome, now the gate of S. 

Sebastian, in the southeast part of modern Rome. 
(Ovid, Fast., 5, 192.)—II. A city of Etruria, south¬ 
east of Mount Soracte. It is frequently recorded, in 
the early annals of Rome, among those which oppo¬ 
sed, though unsuccessfully, the gradual encroachments 
of its power. Great diversity of opinion has existed 
as to the modern site, but the conjecture of Galetti is 
now generally followed, which makes Capena to have 
stood at a place called Civitucula. (Cramer's Anc. 
Italy, vol. 1, p. 231.) 

Capetus, a king of Alba, who reigned twenty-six 




CAP 


CAP 


years. (Consult, however, the remarks under the ar¬ 
ticle Alba.) 

Caphareus, a lofty mountain and promontory at 
the southeastern extremity of Euboea, where Nau- 
plius, king of the country, to avenge his son Pala- 
medes, put to death through the false accusation 
brought against him by Ulysses, set a burning torch 
in the darkness of night, which caused the Greeks to 
be shipwrecked on the coast. It is now called Cape 
d'Oro, and, in the infancy of navigation, was reckoned 
very dangerous on account of the rocks and whirlpools 
on the coast. ( Eurip., Troad., 88.— Id., Hel., 1136. 
—Virg., Mn., 'll, 260.— Ovid, Met., 14, 481.— Pro- 
pert., 4, 1, 115.) 

Capito, I. the uncle of Paterculus, who joined 
Agrippa against Cassius. (Veil. Paterc., 2, 69.) — 
II. Fonteius, a Roman nobleman sent by Antony to 
settle his disputes with Augustus. ( Horat., Serm., 
1, 5, 32.) 

Capitolinus, I. a surname of Jupiter, from his 
temple on Mount Capitolinus.—II. A surname of M. 
Manlius, who, for his ambition in aspiring to sover¬ 
eign power, was thrown down from the Tarpeian Rock, 
which he had so nobly defended.—III. Mons, one of 
the seven hills on which Rome was built, contain¬ 
ing the citadel and fortress of the Capitol. Three as¬ 
cents led to its summit from below. 1st. By the 100 
steps of the Tarpeian Rock, which was probably on the 
steepest side, where it overhangs the Tiber. (Com¬ 
pare Tacitus, Hist., 3, 71.— Liv., 5, 46.— Pint., Vit. 
Camill.) 2d. The Clivus Gapitolinus, which began 
from the arch of Tiberius and the temple of Saturn, 
near the present hospital of the Consolazione, and led 
to the citadel by a winding path. (Ovid, Fast., 1, 
261.) 3d. The Clivus Asyli, which, being less steep 

than the other two, was on that account the road by 
which the triumphant generals were borne in their 
cars to the Capitol. This ascent began at the arch of 
Septimius Severus, and from thence, winding to the 
left, passed near the ruined pillars of the temple of 
Concord, as it is commonly but improperly called, and 
from thence led to the Intermontium. The Capitoline 
Hill is said to have been previously called Saturnius, 
from the ancient city of Saturnia, of which it was the 
citadel. Afterward it was known by the name of 
Mons Tarpeius, and finally it obtained the appellation 
first mentioned, from the circumstance of a human 
head being discovered on its summit, in making the 
foundations of the temple of Jupiter. (Varro, L. L., 
4, 8.) It was considered as forming two summits, 
which, though considerably depressed, are yet suffi¬ 
ciently apparent. That which looked to the south 
and the Tiber was the Tarpeian Rock or citadel; the 
other, which was properly the Capitol, faced the north 
and the Quirinal. The space which was left between 
these two elevations was known by the name of In¬ 
termontium.—IV. An appellation said to have been 
given to an individual named Petilius, who had been 
governor of the Capitol. (Compare the scholiast on 
Horace, Sat., 1, 4, 94.) It is also related, that he was 
accused of having stolen, during his office, a golden 
crown, consecrated to Jupiter, and that, having pleaded 
his cause in person, he was acquitted by the judges, in 
order to gratify Augustus, with whom he was on friend¬ 
ly terms. One part, at least, of the story is incorrect, 
since the Capitolini were a branch of the Petilian fam¬ 
ily long before this time. (Compare Vaillant, Num. 
fam. Rom., vol. 2, p. 222.) What degree of credit 
is to be attached to the rest of the narrative is uncer¬ 
tain. (Consult Wieland, ad Horat., 1. c.) —V. Ju¬ 
lius, one of those later Roman historians, whose works 
form what has been termed “ the Augustan History.” 
He lived during the reign of Dioclesian and Constan¬ 
tine the Great, and we have from him the lives of An¬ 
toninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, Verus, Pertinax, Albi- 
nus, Macrinus, the two Maximins, the three Gordians, 
Pp 


Maximus, and Balbinus. He wrote other lives also 
which have not reached us. The greater part of hi3 
biographies are dedicated to Dioclesian and Constan¬ 
tine. His works show carelessness and want of prop¬ 
er arrangement. (Bahr, Gesch. Rom. Lit., vol. 1, 
p. 464.— Moller, Dissert, de Julio Capitol., Altdorf, 
1689, 4to.) 

Capitolium, a celebrated temple and citadel at 
Rome, on the Tarpeian Rock. The foundations were 
laid by Tarquinius Priscus, A.U.C. 139, B.C. 615. 
The walls were raised by his successor Servius Tul¬ 
lius, and Tarquinius Superbus finished it, A.U.C. 231, 
B.C. 533. It was not, however, consecrated until 
the third year after the expulsion of the kings. This 
ceremony was performed by the consul Horatius. It 
covered 8 acres, was 200 feet broad, and about 215 
long. It consisted of three parts, a nave sacred to 
Jupiter, and two wings or aisles, the right sacred to Mi¬ 
nerva, and the left to Juno. The ascent to it from the 
forum was by a hundred steps. The magnificence and 
richness of this temple are almost incredible. All the 
consuls successively made donations to the Capitol, 
and Augustus bestowed upon it at one time 2000 
pounds weight of gold. The gilding of the whole 
arch of the temple of Jupiter, which was undertaken 
after the destruction of Carthage, cost, according to 
Plutarch, 21,000 talents. The gates of the temple 
were of brass, covered with large plates of gold. The 
inside of the temple was all of marble, and was adorn¬ 
ed with vessels and shields of solid silver, with gilded 
chariots, &c. The Capitol was burned in the time of 
Sylla, A.U.C. 670, B.C. 84, through the negligence 
of those who kept it, and Sylla rebuilt it, but died be¬ 
fore the dedication, which was performed by Q. Catu- 
lus, A.U.C. 675. It was again destroyed in the 
troubles under Viteliius, 19th December, A.D. 69; 
and Vespasian, who endeavoured to repair it, saw it 
again in ruins at his death. Domitian raised it again 
for the last time, and made it more grand and magnifi¬ 
cent than any of his predecessors had, and spent 12,000 
talents in gilding it.—The ordinary derivation of the 
term Capitolium is deservedly ridiculed by a modern 
tourist: “It was in digging the foundation of the tem¬ 
ple of Jupiter Capitolinus that a human head was found, 
according to Roman legends; and the augurs de¬ 
clared this to be emblematical of future empire. The 
hill, in consequence, which had been originally call¬ 
ed Saturnius, and then Tarpeius, was now denom¬ 
inated Capitolius (Caput Olii), because this head, it 
seems, belonged to somebody called Tolius or Olius, 
though how they knew the man’s name from his scull 
I never could discover.” (Rome in the Nineteenth 
Century, vol. 1, p. 179.) Equally unfortunate is the 
etymology assigned by Nork, who deduces Capitolium 
from caput ( tov ) tctoTieio^, where irro^eug is the old 
form for rroXetog, and which old form, in the process 
of time, dropped the tt instead of the r ! (Etymol. 
Handwort., vol. 1, p. 128.) 

Cappadocia, a country of Asia Minor, bounded on 
the north by Galatia and Pflntus, west by Phrygia, 
east by the Euphrates, and south by Cilicia. Its 
eastern part was called Armenia Minor. The term 
Cappadocia, under the Persians, had a more extended 
meaning than in later geography : it comprised two 
satrapies, Cappadocia the greater and Cappadocia on 
the Pontus Euxinus. The first satrap of the greater 
Cappadocia was a member of the royal family of Per¬ 
sia, and a kind of hereditary succession seems to have 
prevailed, which the great king probably allowed, be¬ 
cause he could not prevent it. The founder of this 
dynasty was named Anaphus, and, according to Dio¬ 
dorus Siculus (ap. Phot., Cod., 244, p 1157), was one 
of the seven conspirators who slew the false Smerdis 
Datames, the grandson of Anaphus, was the first regu¬ 
lar sovereign of this Cappadocian dynasty ; and after 
him and his son Ariamnes, we have a long list of 

297 



CAP 


CAP 


princes, all bearing the name of Ariarathes for sever¬ 
al generations. ( Vid. Ariarathes.)—Cappadocia was 
surrounded on three sides by great ranges of moun¬ 
tains, besides being intersected by others of as great 
elevation as any in the peninsula. Hence its miner¬ 
al productions were various and abundant, and a source 
of wealth to the country. Strabo specifies the rich 
mineral colour called Sinople, from its being exported 
by the merchants of Sinope, but which was really dug 
in the mines of Cappadocia: also, onyx ; crystal ; a 
kind of white agate, employed for ornamental pur¬ 
poses ; and the lapis specularis : this last was found 
in large masses, and was a considerable article of the 
export trade. The champaign country yielded almost 
every kind of fruit and grain, and the wines of some 
districts vied with those of Greece in strength and 
flavour. Cappadocia was also rich in herds and flocks, 
but more particularly celebrated for its breed of horses ; 
and the onager, or wild ass, abounded in the mount¬ 
ains towards Lycaonia. ( Strab., 535, seqq .)—Herod¬ 
otus informs us, that in the days of Croesus and Cy¬ 
rus the people commonly known in history by the 
name of Cappadocians were termed Syrians by the 
Greeks, while the Persians employed the more usual 
appellation. (Herod., 1, 72.— Id., 7, 72.) A portion, 
moreover, of this same nation, who occupied the coast 
of Pontus and Paphlagonia, about Sinope and Amisus, 
long retained the name of Leucosyri, or white Syrians, 
to distinguish them from the more swarthy and south¬ 
ern inhabitants of Syria and Palestine. (Strab., 544.) 
The origin of the Cappadocians, therefore, unlike that 
of most of the other nations of Asia Minor, was of 
Asiatic growth, unmixed with the Thracian hordes 
which had overrun Phrygia and all the western part of 
the peninsula. (Cramer's Asia Minor , vol. 2, p. 105, 
seqq .)—The Cappadocians bore among the ancients 
the character of volatility and faithlessness. They 
were also made the subject of sarcastic remark, for 
having refused freedom when it was offered them by 
the Romans, and for having preferred to live under 
the sway of kings. (Justin, 38, 2.) There was no¬ 
thing, however, very surprising in this refusal, coming, 
as it did, from a people who knew nothing of free¬ 
dom, and who had become habituated to regal sway. 
Their moral character is severely satirized in the well- 
known epigram, which states that a viper bit a Cap¬ 
padocian, but died itself from the 'poisonous and cor¬ 
rupt blood of the latter! — The Greeks and Romans 
found in this country few towns, but a number of 
strong castles on the mountains, and large villages in 
the neighbourhood of celebrated tempies, to which the 
latter served as a kind of protection. Most of these 
villages became cities in the time of the Romans, 
when this people had destroyed the castles and strong¬ 
holds on the mountains. (Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, 
pt. 2, p. 216, seq .) 

Cappadox, a river of Cappadocia, bounding it on the 
side of Galatia, and falling into the Halys. (Plm., 6, 3.) 

Capraria, I. a mountainous island, south of Balearis 
Major or Majorca, and deriving its name from its nu¬ 
merous goats (caper, capra). The modern name is 
Cabrera. (Pliny, 3, 6.)—II. One of the Fortunatae 
Insulae, or Canaries. Some make it the modern 
Palma, but it answers rather to Gomera. (Mannert , 
Geogr., vol. 10, pt. 2, p. 628.) 

Capre^e, an island off the coast of Campania, situ¬ 
ate near the promontory of Minerva. It is now Capri. 
The island is chiefly known in history as the abode of 
Tiberius, and the scene of his infamous debauchery. 
(Sucton., Tib., c. 42, seqq. — Tacit., Ann., 6, 1.— Dio 
Cass., 58, 22.)—Tradition reported that this island 
was first in the possession of the Teleboae, who are 
mentioned as a people of Greece, inhabiting the Echi- 
nades, a group of islands at the mouth of the Acheloiis, 
in Acarnania , but how they came to settle in Caprese 
no one has informed us (Compare Schol. in Apoll. 
298 


Rhod., Argon., 1.) Augustus was the first emperor 
who made Caprese his residence, being struck, as Sue¬ 
tonius relates, by the happy presage of an old decayed 
ilex having, as it was said, revived on his arrival there. 
Not long after, he obtained the island from the Nea¬ 
politans, by giving them in exchange that of Ischia, 
which belonged to him. (Suet., Aug., 92.) Tiberius 
was led to select this spot for his abode, from its diffi¬ 
culty of access, being cut off from all approach, except 
on one side, by lofty and perpendicular cliff's. The 
mildness of the climate and the beauty of the pros¬ 
pect, which extends over the whole bay of Naples, 
might also, as Tacitus remarks, have influenced his 
choice. Here he caused twelve villas to be erected, 
which he is supposed to have named after the twelve 
chief deities. (Tacit., Ann., 4, 67.) The ruins of the 
villa of Jove, which was the most conspicuous, are 
still to be seen on the summit of the ciiflf looking to¬ 
wards Sorrento. It is probably the same with the 
Arx Tiberii of Pliny (3, 6).—The island of Capri, at 
the present day, abounds so much with various birds 
of passage, but especially with quails, that the greatest 
part of the bishop’s income arises from this source. 
Hence it has been called the “ Bishopric of Quails.” 
In bad years the number caught is about 12,000, in 
good years it exceeds 60,000. The island is sur¬ 
rounded by steep rocks, which render the approach to 
it very dangerous. In the centre the mountains recede 
from each other, and a vale intervenes, remarkable for 
its beauty and fertility. The climate of the island is 
a delightful one ; the lofty rocks on the coast keep off 
the cold winds of winter, and the seabreeze tempers 
the heat of summer. (Malte-Brun, Geogr., vol. 4, p. 
240, Brussels ed.) 

Capsa, a town of Libya, in the district of Byzacium, 
north of the Palus Tritonis, surrounded by vast deserts. 
Here Jugurtha kept his treasures. It was surprised 
by Marius ; and was destroyed in the war of Cassar 
and Metellus Scipio. It was afterward rebuilt, and is 
now Cafsa. Sallust (Bell. Jug., 94) ascribes the 
origin of this place to the Libyan Hercules. Diodo¬ 
rus Siculus also (4, 18) speaks of a large city, called 
Hecatonpylos, from its hundred gates, and which was 
founded in a fertile spot in the desert by Hercules, as 
he was proceeding from Libya to Egypt. Hanno is 
said to have taken this city during the first Punic w ar. 
(Diod., 2, 24, exc. 1 . —Compare Polyb., 1,73.) Man¬ 
nert identifies Hecatonpylos with Capsa, and strives to 
elucidate the fable by ascribing to the place an Egyp¬ 
tian origin. (Mannert, Geogr.,\ ol. 10, pt. 2, p. 346.) 
Gesenius derives the name of Capsa from the Punic 
captsa, “ a bolt,” “ bar,” or “ barrier.” (Phoen. Mon., 
p. 421.) 

Capua, a rich and flourishing city, the capital of 
Campania until ruined by the Romans. Its original 
name was Yulturnus, which was changed by the Tyr- 
rheni, after they became masters of the place, to Capua. 
This latter name was derived from that of their leader 
Capys, who, according to Festus, received this appel¬ 
lation from his feet being deformed and turned in¬ 
ward. The name is not of Latin, but Tuscan origin. 
The Latins, however, pretended, notwithstanding, to 
ascribe the foundation of the city to Romulus, who 
named it, as they stated, after one of his ancestors. 
Capua was the chief city of the southern Tyrrheni; 
and even after it fell under the Roman dominion, con¬ 
tinued to be a powerful and flourishing place. Before 
Capua passed into the hands of the Romans, a dread¬ 
ful massacre of its Tyrrhenian inhabitants by the Sam- 
nites put the city into the hands of this latter people. 
Livy appears to have confounded this event with the 
origin of the place, when he makes it to have changed 
its name from Vulturnus to Capua, after the Samnitc 
leader Capys. It is very remarkable that retaliation 
should have followed in a later age from the hands of 
the Romans, themselves in part of Tyrrhenian, that is, 





CAR 


CARACALLA. 


Pelasgian descent. Capua deeply offended them by 
opening its gates to Hannibal after the victory of Can¬ 
nae. The vengeance inflicted by the Romans was of 
a most fearful nature, when, five years after, the city 
again fell under their dominion. Most of the senators 
and principal inhabitants were put to death, the greater 
part of the remaining citizens were sold into slavery, and 
by a decree of the senate the Capuani ceased to exist 
as a people. The city and territory, however, did not 
become thereupon deserted. A few inhabitants were 
allowed to remain in the former, and the latter was in 
a great measure sold by the Romans to the neighbour¬ 
ing communities. Julius Caesar sent a powerful colo¬ 
ny to Capua, and under the emperors it again flourish¬ 
ed. But it suffered greatly from the barbarians in a 
later age ; so much so, in fact, that the Bishop Lan- 
dulfus and the Lombard Count Lando transferred the 
inhabitants to Casilinum, on the Vulturnus, 19 stadia 
distant. This is the site of modern Capua. (Man - 
nert, Geogr., vol. 9, pt. 1, p. 701, 766.) 

Capys, I. a Trojan who came with ./Eneas into Ita¬ 
ly, and, according to the common, but erroneous, ac¬ 
count, founded the city of Capua. (Vid. Capua.)—II. 
A son of Assaracus, by a daughter of the Simo'is. 
He was father of Anchises by Themis. (Ovid, Fast., 
4, 33.) 

Car, I. a son of Phoroneus, king of Megara. ( Pau - 
san., 1, 40.)—II. A son of Manes, and regarded by 
the Carians as the patriarch of their race. (Herod., 1, 
171.— Strab., 659.) 

Caracalla, Antoninus Bassianus, eldest son of the 
Emperor Severus. His name Caracalla was derived 
from a species of Gallic cassock which he was fond of 
wearing ; that of Bassianus from his maternal grand¬ 
father. Caracalla was bom at Lugdunum (Lyons), 
A.D. 188, and appointed by his father his colleague in 
the government at the age of thirteen years. And yet 
he is said, even at this early age, to have attempted his 
father’s life. Severus died A.D. 211, and was suc¬ 
ceeded by his two sons Caracalla and Geta. These 
two brothers bore towards each other, even from infan¬ 
cy, the most inveterate hatred. After a campaign 
against the Caledonians, they concluded a disgraceful 
peace They then wished to divide the empire be¬ 
tween them; but their design was opposed by their 
mother, Julia, and by the principal men in the state, 
and Caracalla now resolved to get rid of his brother, 
by causing him to be assassinated. After many un¬ 
successful attempts, he pretended to desire a recon¬ 
ciliation, and requested his mother to procure him an 
interview with his brother in her own apartment : 
Geta appeared, and was stabbed in his mother’s arms, 
A.D. 212, by several centurions, who had received or¬ 
ders to this effect. The praetorian guards were pre¬ 
vailed upon, by rich donations, to proclaim Caracalla 
sole emperor, and to declare Geta an enemy to the 
state, and the senate confirmed the nomination of the 
soldiers. After this, the whole life of Caracalla was 
only one series of cruelties and acts of extravagant fol¬ 
ly. All who had been in any way connected with Geta 
were put to death, not even their children being spared. 
The historian Dio Cassius makes the whole number 
of victims to have amounted to 20,000. (Dio Cass., 
77, 4.) Among those who fell in this horrid butchery 
was the celebrated lawyer Papinian. And yet, after 
this, by a singular act of contradiction, he not only put 
to death many of those who had been concerned in the 
murder of his brother, but even demanded of the sen¬ 
ate that he should be enrolled among the gods. His 
pattern was Sylla, whose tomb he restored and adorn¬ 
ed. Like this dictator, he enriched his soldiers with 
the most extravagant largesses which extortion enabled 
him to furnish. The augmentation of pay received by 
them is said to have amounted to 280 millions of ses¬ 
terces a year. As cruel as Caligula and Nero, but 
weaker than either, he regarded the senate and people 


I with equal hatred and contempt. From motives of av¬ 
arice, he gave all the freemen of the empire the right 
of citizenship, and was the first who received Egyp¬ 
tians into the senate. Of all his follies, however, the 
greatest was his admiration of Alexander ofMacedon. 
From his infancy he made this monarch his model, and 
copied him in everything which it was easy to imitate. 
He had even a Macedonian phalanx of sixteen thou¬ 
sand men, all born in Macedonia, and commanded by 
officers bearing the same names with those who had 
served under Alexander. Convinced, moreover, that 
Aristotle had participated in the conspiracy against 
the son of Philip, he caused the works of the phi¬ 
losopher to be burned. With equally foolish enthu¬ 
siasm for Achilles, he made him the object of his 
deepest veneration. He went to Ilium to visit the 
grave of Homer’s hero, and poisoned his favourite 
freedman named Festus, to imitate Achilles in his grief 
for Patroclus. His conduct in his campaigns in Gaul, 
where he committed all sorts of cruelties, was still more 
degrading. He crossed over the Rhine into the coun¬ 
tries of the Catti and Alemanni. The Catti defeated 
him, and permitted him to repass the river only on 
condition of paying them a large snm of money. He 
next marched through the land of the Alemanni as an 
ally, and built several fortifications. He then called to¬ 
gether the young men of the tribe, as if he intended to 
take them into his service, and caused his own troops 
to surround them and cut them in pieces. For this 
barbarous exploit he assumed the surname of Alcman- 
meus. In Dacia he gained some advantages over the 
Goths. He signed a treaty of peace at Antioch with 
Artabanus, the Parthian king, who submitted to all his 
demands. He invited Abdares, the king of Edessa, 
an ally of the Romans, to Antioch, loaded him with 
chains, and took possession of his estates. He exer¬ 
cised the same treachery towards Vologeses, king of 
Armenia; but the Armenians flew to arms and re¬ 
pulsed the Romans. After this Caracalla went to 
Alexandrea, to punish the people of that city for ridi¬ 
culing him. While preparations were making for a 
great massacre, he offered hecatombs to Serapis, and 
visited the tomb of Alexander, on which he left his 
imperial ornaments by way of offering. He afterward 
devoted the inhabitants for several days and nights to 
plunder and butchery, and seated himself, in order to 
have a view of the bloody spectacle, on the top of the 
temple of Serapis, where he consecrated the dagger 
which he had drawn, some years before, against his own 
brother. His desire to triumph over the Parthians in¬ 
duced him to violate the peace, under the pretence that 
Artabanus had refused him his daughter in marriage. 
He found the country undefended, ravaged it, marched 
through Media, and approached the capital. The Par¬ 
thians, who had retired beyond the Tigris to the moun¬ 
tains, were preparing to attack the Romans the fol¬ 
lowing year with all their forces. Caracalla returned 
without delay to Mesopotamia, without having even 
seen the Parthians. When the senate received from 
him information of the submission of the East, they de¬ 
creed him a triumph and the surname Parthicus. Be¬ 
ing informed of the warlike preparations of the Parthi¬ 
ans, he prepared to renew the contest; but Macrinus, 
the praetorian prefect, whom he had offended, assassi¬ 
nated him at Edessa, A.D. 217, on his way to the 
temple of Lunus. His reign had lasted more than 
six years. It is remarkable, that this prince, al¬ 
though he did so much to degrade the throne of 
the Caesars, yet raised at Rome some of the most 
splendid structures that graced the capital. Magnifi¬ 
cent thermae bore his name, and among other monu¬ 
ments of lavish expenditure was a triumphal arch, on 
which were represented the victories and achieve¬ 
ments of his father Severus Notwithstanding his 
crimes, Caracalla was deified after death by a decree 
of the senate. (Dio Cass., 122, 1, seqq. — Spartian., 

299 





CAR 


CAR 


Vit. Caracall. — Biogr. Umv., vol. 7, p. 95. — En- 
cyclop. Am., vol 2, p. 506.) 

Caracates, a people of Germania Prima, in Belgic 
Gaul. Their country answers now to the diocese of 
Maxencc. {Tacit., liist., 4, 70.) 

Caractacus, king of the Silures in Britain, a peo- 
* pie occupying what is now South Wales. After with¬ 
standing, for the space of nine years, the Roman arms, 
he was defeated in a pitched battle by Ostorius Scap¬ 
ula, and his forces put to the rout. Taking refuge, 
upon this, with Cartismandua, queen of the Brigantes, 
he was betrayed by her into the hands of the Romans, 
and led to Rome. Great importance was attached to 
his capture. Claudius, who was emperor at the time, 
augmented the territories of Cartismandua, and trium¬ 
phal honours were decreed to Ostorius. This exploit 
was compared to the capture of Syphax by Scipio, and 
that of Perses by Paulus iEmilius. The manly and 
independent bearing, however, of the British prince, 
when brought into the presence of the Roman em¬ 
peror, excited so much admiration, that his fetters 
were removed, and freedom was granted him, together 
with his wife and children, who had shared his captivi¬ 
ty. Some time after Claudius sent him back to his 
native island with rich presents, and he reigned there 
for two years after, remaining during all that period a 
firm friend to the Romans. {Tacit.., Ann., 12, 33, 
seqq. — Biogr. Umv., vol. 7, p. 103.) 

Caralis, or, with less accuracy, Carallis, a city of 
Sardinia, founded by the Carthaginians, and soon made 
the capital of the island. It is supposed to correspond 
to the modern Cagliari, but it reached, in fact, far¬ 
ther to the east than Cagliari, up to the present Capo 
St. Elia. This we learn from Ptolemy, who speaks 
of the city and promontory of Caralis together. Clau- 
dian also alludes to the long extent of the place. 
“ Tcnditur in longum Caralis ,” &c. {Bell. Gild., 
520.) Its harbour, which afforded a good shelter 
against the winds and waves, rendered it always a 
place of importance. {Manncrt, Gcogr., vol. 9, pt. 
2, p. 490.) 

Carambis, I. a promontory of Paphlagonia, now Ka- 
rcmpi, facing Criu-Metopon (Cape Cno), in the Tau- 
ric Chersonese. {Strab., 545.— Plin., 6, 2.)—II. A 
city near the promontory of the same name. {Scylax, 
Peripl., p. 34.— Plin., 6, 2.) 

Caranus, a descendant of Temenus the son of 
Hercules. According to Justin (7, 1), Velleius Pa¬ 
terculus (1, 6), Pausanias (9, 40), and others, he quit¬ 
ted Argos, his native city, at the head of a numerous 
body of colonists, and, arriving in vEmathia, a district 
of Macedonia, then ruled by Midas, obtained posses¬ 
sion of Edessa, the capital, where he established his 
sway, and thus laid the foundation of the Macedonian 
empire. Considerable doubts, however, arise, upon 
looking into the accounts of Herodotus and Thucyd¬ 
ides, as to the authenticity of the adventure ascribed 
to Caranus. (Consult remarks under the article Mace¬ 
donia.) 

Carausius, a native of Gaul, born among the Mena- 
pii. His naval abilities attracted the notice of Max- 
imian, who gave him the command of a squadron 
against the pirates. He proved, however, unfaithful 
to his trust, and too much bent on enriching himself. 
Maximian thereupon gave orders to put him to death ; 
but Carausius, apprized of this in season, retired with 
his fleet to Britain. Here he succeeded in gaining 
over, or else intimidating, the only Roman legion that 
remained in the island, and finally proclaimed himself 
emperor. He forced the emperors Maximian and Dio- 
clesian to acknowledge his authority, which he main¬ 
tained for the space of seven years. He was assassi¬ 
nated by Allectus. {Crevicr, Hist, dcs Emp. Rom., 
vol. 6, p 177, 202.) 

Car bo, the surname of a branch of the Papirian 
family at Rome. Several distinguished men bore this 
300 


name, among whom were, I. Caius, a Roman orator, the 
contemporary and friend of Tiberius Gracchus, was ac¬ 
cused of seditious conduct by L. Crassus, and commit¬ 
ted suicide by swallowing cantharides. {Cic., Brut., 
27 et 43.— Id., Or., 34.— Id., Ep. ad Earn., 9, 21.) He 
was thought to have been concerned in the assassina¬ 
tion of the younger Africanus. ( Cic., Or., 2,40.— Ep. 
ad Fam., 1. c.) —II. Cneius, son of the preceding, was 
three times consul, and at last proconsul in Gaul. 
He was a partisan of Marius’, and was put to death 
by order of Pompey, at Lilybseum, in Sicily. Consult, 
as regards the singular attachment to life which he 
displayed, the account given by Valerius Maximus 
(9, 13). , ' 

Carchedon (Kap^dw^), the Greek name of Car¬ 
thage. 

Cardia, a town in the Thracian Chersonesus, at 
the top of the Sinus Melanis. It was destroyed by 
Lysimachus when he founded Lysimachia a little south 
of it. It derived its name from being built in the form 
of a heart. It was also called Hexamilium, because 
the isthmus is here about six miles across. It was after¬ 
ward rebuilt, and is now Hexamili. {Plin., 4, 11.— 
Mela, 2, 2. — Solin., c. 10. — Ptol., 3, 12. — Herod., 
7, 58 ) 

Carduchi, a warlike nation in Gordyene, a district 
of Armenia Major, inhabiting the Montes Carduchi, 
between the Tigris and Lake Arsissa. Strabo says 
that in his time they were called Gordycei. Pliny (6, 
12) and Quintus Curtius (4, 10) both make mention 
of the Montes Gordycei, but the former writer else¬ 
where (6, 17) iriforms us that the Carduchi were call¬ 
ed in his time Cordueni. The modern Kurds are re¬ 
garded as the descendants of this ancient people. 
{Xen., Anab., 3, 5, 16, &c.—Consult Kruger, ad lee.) 

Caria, a country of Asia Minor, to the south of 
Ionia and Lydia, from which it was separated by the 
course of the Mseander. In extent it was the least 
considerable of the divisions of the peninsula; but, 
from the number of towns and villages assigned to 
it by the ancient geographers, it would seem to have 
been very populous. The corresponding division of 
the Turkish provinces, in modern geography, is called 
Muntesha. Caria was a fruitful country, and produced, 
like the surrounding regions, wheat, oil, wine, &c. 
The Carians were not considered by Herodotus and 
other early Greek historians as the aboriginal inhabi¬ 
tants of the country to which they communicated their 
name. Herodotus, himself a native of Caria, and who 
must therefore be allowed to have been well acquainted 
with its traditions, believed that the people who inhab¬ 
ited it had formerly occupied the islands of the ./Egean, 
under the name of Leleges ; but that, being reduced 
by Minos, king of Crete, they were removed by that 
sovereign to the continent of Asia, where they still, 
however, continued to be his vassals, and to serve him 
more especially in his maritime expeditions. At this 
period, says the historian, the Carians were by far the 
most celebrated of the existing nations ; they excelled 
in the manufacture of arms, and the Greeks ascribed 
to them the invention of crests, and the devices and 
handles of shields. {Herod., 1, 171.—Compare Anacr. 
et Ale. ap. Strab., 661.) The Carians appear to have 
been, at an early period, great pirates, and it was for 
this reason, doubtless, that Minos expelled them from 
the island, while he was glad, at the same time, to 
avail himself of their skill and enterprise for the aggran¬ 
dizement of his own empire. The account which the 
Carians themselves, however, gave of the origin of 
their race, indicates a near degree of affinity with the 
Lydians and Mysians, for they made Lydus and My- 
sus the brothers of Car, the patriarch of their nation. 
{Herod., 1, 171.— Strab., 659.) Hence it is not un¬ 
reasonable to suppose, that as Thrace and Macedonia 
furnished those numerous tribes, which, under the sev¬ 
eral names of Leleges, Caucones, and Pelasgi, spread 




CAR 


CAR 


themselves over the shores of the ^gean and the isl¬ 
ands of that sea, the Carians therefore must have be¬ 
longed to the same great family, since they are con¬ 
founded by the best authorities with the Leleges. It 
is difficult to say what nation inhabited Caria before 
Minos had removed thither the people from whom it 
took its name ; but it is not improbable that the Phoe¬ 
nicians occupied a portion of it. For we know that 
they had colonized Rhodes and other islands off the 
coast, and Athenseus remarks (4, p. 174) that certain 
poets had applied the name Phoenice to Caria. The 
Carians appear to have offered but little resistance to 
the Greek settlers who successively established them¬ 
selves on their coast, and to have been gradually con¬ 
fined to the southern coast chiefly, and to the valleys 
of those streams which are tributary to the Maean- 
der, towards the borders of Phrygia and Pisidia. We 
find them also yielding to the superior ascendency 
of the Lydians, under the dominion of Alyattes and 
Croesus. (Nic., Damasc., p. 243. — Herod., 1 , 28.) 
On the overthrow of the Lydian empire they passed 
under the Persian sway. The policy of the sovereigns 
of Persia was, to establish in each subject or tributary 
state a government apparently independent of them, 
but whose despotic authority at home afforded the 
best guarantee that the people would everywhere be 
brought under the control of the court of Susa. It 
w r as to this system that the dynasty of Carian princes, 
who fixed their residence at Halicarnassus, owed its 
origin. A sketch of their history will be given in the 
account of that city. From the Persian Caria passed 
to the Macedonian sway. At a later period, it appears 
to have been, for a time, annexed to the kingdom of 
Egypt. ( Polyb ., 3, 2.) It next fell under the dominion 
of Antiochus ; but, on his defeat by Scipio, the Ro¬ 
man senate bestowed this part of the conquered mon¬ 
arch’s territory upon the Rhodians. It was afterward 
overrun, and occupied for a short time, by Mithradates, 
but was finally annexed by the Romans to the procon¬ 
sular province of Asia. {Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 
2, p. 163, seqq.) 

Carin^e, a street of Rome, where Cicero, Pompey,' 
and others of the principal Romans dwelt. From the 
epithet lautce, which Virgil applies to the Carinse, we 
may infer, that the houses which stood in this quarter 
of ancient Rome were distinguished by an air of su¬ 
perior elegance and grandeur. {AEn., 8, 361, seqq.) 
The name Carinse is derived, as Nardini not improba¬ 
bly supposes, from the street’s being placed in a hol¬ 
low between the Coelian, Esquiline, and Palatine hills. 
{framer's Ancient Italy, vol. 1, p. 375.) 

CarInus (M. Aurelius), eldest son of the Em¬ 
peror Carus, who gave him the title of Caesar, and 
rank of Augustus, together with the government of 
Italy, Illyricum, Africa, and the West, when he him¬ 
self was setting out with his second son Numerianus, 
to make war against the Persians. Carus, knowing 
the evil qualities of Carinus, gave him this charge 
with great reluctance, but he had no alternative, as 
Numerianus, though superior in every respect to his 
elder brother, was too young to hold so important a 
command. As soon as Carinus entered Gaul, which 
his father had particularly charged him to defend against 
the barbarians, who menaced an irruption, he gave 
himself up to the most degrading excesses, discharged 
the most virtuous men from public employment, and 
substituted the vile companions of his debaucheries 
On hearing of the death of his father he indulged in 
new excesses and new crimes. Still, however, his 
courage and his victories merit praise. He defeated 
the barbarians who had begun to attack the empire, 
among others the Sarmatae, and he afterward over¬ 
threw Sabinus Julianus, who had assumed the purple 
m Venetia. He then marched against Dioclesian, who 
had proclaimed himself emperor after the death of 
Numerian. The two armies met in Moesia, and sev¬ 


eral engagements took place, in which success seem¬ 
ed balanced. At last a decisive battle was fought 
near Margum, and Carinus was on the point of gain¬ 
ing a complete victory, when he was slain by a tribune 
of his own army, who had received an outrage at his 
hands. This event took place A.D. 285, so that the 
reign of Carinus, computing it from his father’s death, 
was a little more than one year. ( Vopisc., Car., 7. 
— Id., Numer., 11.— Id., Cann., 16, scq. — Suid., s. v. 
K aplvoq. — Eutrop., &c.) If historians have decried 
Carinus for his vices, there have not been wanting 
poets to sing his praises. Nemesianus and Calpur- 
nius have followed the example of Virgil; and, as the 
latter has placed, on the lips of shepherds, eulogiums 
on Augustus, so these two bards have sung in their 
eclogues the praises of Carinus and Numerian, and 
have raised them both to the rank of gods ! ( Biogr. 

Univ., vol. 7, p. 137, scq. — Crevier, Hist. Emp. Rem., 
vol. 6, p. 150, seqq.) 

Carmania, a country of Asia, between Persia and 
Gedrosia, now Kerman. Its capital was Carmania or 
Kerman, southeast of Persepolis. ( Plin., 6, 22, seq. 
— Solin., c. 104.— Arrian, Exp. Al., 6, 28.) 

Carmelus, a god of the Syrians, who was worship¬ 
ped on Mount Carmel. He had an altar, but no tem¬ 
ple. According to Tacitus, a priest of this deity pre¬ 
dicted to Vespasian that he would be emperor. (Com¬ 
pare the remarks of Brotier, ad Tacit.., Hist., 2, 78.) 

Carmenta and Carmentis, according to the old 
Italian legend, a prophetess of Arcadia, mother of 
Evander, with whom she was said to have come to 
Italy. Her first name is said to have been Themis, 
and the appellation Carmenta, or Carmentis, to have 
been given her from her delivering oracles in verse 
(Carmina. —Compare Kruse, Hellas, vol. 1, p. 444, 
in notis). —Carmenta seems, in fact, to have been a 
deity similar to the Camense or Muses. That she 
was an ancient Italian deity is clear, for she had a 
flamen and a festival. ( Cic., Brut., 14.) The. Car- 
mentalia were on the 11th and 15th of January. Car¬ 
menta was worshipped by the Roman matrons. They 
prayed, on this occasion, to two deities, named Porri- 
ma and Prosa, or Antivorta and Postvorta, for a safe 
delivery in childbirth. ( Keightley's Mythol., p. 532.) 

Carmentalia, a festival at Rome in honour of Car¬ 
menta, celebrated the 11th and 15th of January. ( Vid. 
Carmenta.— Ovid, Fast., 1,461.) 

Carmentalis Porta, one of the gates of Rome in 
the neighbourhood of the Capitol. It was afterward 
called Scelerata, because the Fabii passed through it 
in going to that fatal expedition where they perished. 
( Virg., AEn., 8, 338.) 

Carneades, a philosopher of Cyrene in Africa 
founder of a sect called the third or New Academy. 
The Athenians sent him with Diogenes the Stoic, and. 
Critolaus the peripatetic, as ambassador to Rome, 
B.C. 155. Carneades excelled in the vehement and 
rapid, Critolaus in the correct and elegant, and Dio¬ 
genes in the simple and modest, kind of eloquence, 
Carneades, in particular, attracted the attention of 
his new auditory by the subtlety of his reasoning and 
the fluency of his language. Before Galba and Cato 
the Censor, he harangued with great variety of thought 
and copiousness of diction in praise of justice. The 
next day, to establish his doctrine of the uncertainty 
of human knowledge, he undertook to refute all his 
former arguments. Many were captivated by his elo¬ 
quence ; but Cato, apprehensive lest the Roman 
youth should lose their military character in the pur¬ 
suit of Grecian learning, persuaded the senate to send 
back these philosophers, without delay, to their own 
schools. Carneades obtained such high reputation at 
home, that other philosophers, when they had dis¬ 
missed their scholars, frequently came to hear him. 
It was the doctrine of the New Academy, that the 
senses, the understanding, and the imagination fre- 

301 





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CAR 


quently deceive us, and therefore cannot be infallible 
judges of truth ; but that, from the impression which 
we perceive to be produced on the mind by means of 
the senses, we infer appearances of truth or probabili¬ 
ties. He maintained, that they do not always corre¬ 
spond to the real nature of things, and that there is no 
infallible method of determining when they are true or 
false, and consequently that they afford no certain cri¬ 
terion of truth. Nevertheless, with respect to the 
conduct of life, Carneades held that probable appear¬ 
ances are a sufficient guide, because it is unreasonable 
that some degree of credit should not be allowed to 
those witnesses who commonly give a true report. 
He maintained, that all the knowledge the human 
mind is capable of attaining is not science, but opin¬ 
ion. ( Enfield's Hist. Phil., vol. 1, p. 254, seq. — Cic. 
ad Att., 12, 23, de Oral ., 1 et 2.— Lactant ., 5, 14.— 
Val. Max., 8, 8.) 

Carnea, a festival observed in many of the Grecian 
cities, but more particularly at Sparta, where it was 
first instituted, in honour of Apollo Carneus. (Vid. 
Carneus.) It commenced at Sparta on the seventh 
day of the month named after it Carneus (K dpvnog), 
which corresponded to the Athenian Metageitnion, or 
a part of our August and September. The celebra¬ 
tion lasted nine days, and, according to some, was an 
imitation of the manner of living, and the discipline 
used, in camps ; for nine anuldeg (tents) were erected ; 
in every one of which nine men, of three different 
tribes, three being chosen out of a tribe, lived for the 
space of nine days, during which time they were obe¬ 
dient to a public crier or herald, and did nothing with¬ 
out express directions from him. Hesychius tells us, 
that the priest, whose office it was to attend at this 
solemnity, was named dyqrrig, and he adds, in another 
place, that out of every tribe five other ministers were 
elected, and called Kapveurai, who were obliged to 
continue in their function four years, during which 
time they led a life of celibacy. At this festival, the 
musical numbers called Kupveioi vo/ioi were sung by 
musicians, who contended for victory. The first prize 
was won by Terpander. ( Athenceus, 14, p. 635, e. — 
Compare Corsini, Fast. Attic., 3, p. 41.— Sturz, ad 
Hellanic., Fragm., p. 83.— Manso, Sparta, vol. 1, pt. 
2, p. 215, scqq.) 

Carneus, an epithet applied to Apollo. According 
to the common account, the name was derived from 
Carnus, an Acarnanian, who was instructed by the 
god in the art of divination, but was afterward slain 
by Hippotes, a descendant of Hercules. Apollo, in 
revenge, sent a plague upon the Dorians, to avert 
which they instituted the festival of the Carnea. Va¬ 
rious other accounts, equally unworthy of reliance, are 
given. The epithet Carneus evidently refers to the 
prophetic powers of the god, and the certain fulfilling 
of his predictions ; and hence it is clearly related to 
the Greek verb updivo, “ to accomplish.” (Compare 
Schol. ad Thcocrit., 5, 83.— Manso, Sparta, vol. 1, pt. 

2, p. 218.) 

Carnutes, a powerful nation of Gallia Celtica, 
known even before the time of Caesar, and mentioned 
by Livy (5, 34) among the tribes that crossed the 
Alps in the time of Tarquinius Priscus. And yet 
they are numbered by Caesar (B. G., 6, 4) among the 
clients or dependants of the Remi. Their country 
was the principal seat of the Druids, and lay to the 
southwest of the Parisii. It answered to the modern 
departments d Furc-et-Loire and da Loiret. Autri- 
cum, now Chartres, was their chief city. ( Lemaire, 
Ind. Geogr. ad Cces., s. v.) 

Carnutum, or Carnuntum, a city of Pannonia Su¬ 
perior, on the Danube, opposite the mouth of the Ma- 
rus. It became a place of importance in the war 
with the Marcomanni, and here the emperor Marcus 
Aurelius took up his residence for some years, and 
made it a central point from which to direct his on- 
302 


orations against the Marcomanni and Quadi. It was 
plundered and destroyed by the barbarians in the 
fourth century ( Ammian. Mar cell., 30, 5), but was 
afterward rebuilt, though it never attained to its pre¬ 
vious flourishing condition. The ruins of this place 
are to be found at the present day between Petronel 
and Altenburg, on the Danube. (Veil. Paterc., 2, 
109. — Plin., 4, 12.— Eutrop., 8, 6.— Spartian., Sev., 
5.— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 3, p. 657.) 

Carpates, a long chain of mountains in the north¬ 
ern parts of Dacia, called also Alpes Bastarnicae, now 
the range of Mount Krapack. ( Ptol., 3, 7.) 

Carpathus, an island in the Mediterranean, be¬ 
tween Rhodes and Crete. The adjacent sea received 
from it the name of Mare Carpathium. Its first 
inhabitants were transplanted here by Minos from 
Crete ; and an Argive colony was afterward added 
to them. (Diod. Sic., 5, 54.) Carpathus was two 
hundred stadia in circumference, and, according to 
Strabo, had four towns. In this he is wrong ; since 
Pliny and Scylax speak merely of three ; and even 
this is a large number for so small an island. The 
chief place was Nisyrus. The Turks call the island 
of Carpathus at the present day Scarpanto, but the mod¬ 
ern Greeks Carpatho. ( Pirn., 4, 12.— Scylax, p. 38.) 

Carrje and Carrh^e, a town of Mesopotamia, near 
which Crassus was killed. It lay to the southeast of 
Edessa, and was a very ancient city. It is supposed 
to be the Charran of Scripture, whence Abraham de¬ 
parted for the land of Canaan. (Compare Well's 
Sacred Geogr., s. v. Charran. — Calmet's Diet., vol. 5, 
p. 323.) According to Kinneir, a modern traveller in 
that quarter, Charran, or, as it is now called, Harran, 
is peopled by a few families of wandering Arabs, who 
have been led thither by a plentiful supply of good 
water from several small streams. It is situated in 
36° 52' north latitude, and 39° 5' east longitude, in 
a flat sandy plain. (Lucan, 1, 104.— Plin., 5, 24.—• 
Eutrop., 6, 18.'— Amm. Marccll., 23, 4.— Jornand., 
de regn. Success., p. 22. — Zosim., 3, 12. — Joseph., 
Ant. Jud., 1, 7, 19.) 

Carseoli, a town of the iEqui, on the Via Valeria. 
It became a Roman colony after the iEqui had been 
finally reduced. (Liv., 10, 3.) It was sometimes se¬ 
lected by the senate as a residence for illustrious state 
captives and hostages. Ovid (Fast., 4, 683) describes 
the adjacent country as cold, and unfit for raising ol¬ 
ives, but good for grain. The ruins of the place still 
retain the name of Car soli. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, 
vol. 1, p. 324.) 

Carteia, a city of Hispania Bastica, the position of 
which has given rise to much dispute. It does not ap¬ 
pear, however, to have been the same with Calpe. 
D’Anville places it at the extremity of a gulf which 
the mountain of Calpe covers on the east; but Man¬ 
nert, more correctly, at the very extremity of the strait 
below Algesiras. (Mannert, Geogr., vol. 1, p. 305.—• 
Compare Ukert, Geogr., vol. 2, p. 345.) 

Carth^ea, a town in the island of Ceos, whence 
the epithet of Cartheius. (Ovid, Met., 7, 368.) It 
was situate on the southeastern side of the island, and 
is now called Poles. (Compare the French Strabo , 
vol. 4, p. 164, not.) 

Carthaginienses, the inhabitants of Carthage. 
(Vid. Carthago.) 

Carthago, a celebrated city of Africa, the rival, 
for a long period, of the Roman power. It was 
founded by a colony from Tyre, according to the 
common account, B.C. 878. Some suppose, how¬ 
ever, that the city was more than once founded, and 
in this way they seek to remove the difficulty pre¬ 
sented by the various accounts respecting the build¬ 
ing of Carthage, by referring them to different epochs. 
(Heyne, Excurs., 1, ad ttn., 4.—Vol. 2, p. 543, ed. 
Lips.) According to this view of the subject, Car¬ 
thage was originally settled by Tzorus and Carchedon. 



CARTHAGO. 


CARTHAGO. 


60 years before the fall of Troy. (Appian, Bell. 
Pun. init. — Hieron. in Euscb. ad Num., 805, p. 91, 
ed. Scalig.) By the computation of Eusebius, how¬ 
ever, it took place 37 years before Troy was destroyed. 
The second founding of Carthage occurred 173 years 
subsequent to the former one ( Chron. Euscb., Hieron. 
ad Num., 971), or, if we follow Syncellus (p. 181, A), 
133 years after the taking of Troy. With this epoch 
the mention of Dido comes in for the first time. Her 
true era, however, appears to be that of the third found¬ 
ing of the city, 190 years later, according to Josephus 
(in Apion., 1, 18, p. 1042).—The Greeks called Car¬ 
thage K apxvfiuv, and the Carthaginians, Kapxqdovioi. 
The name of the place in Punic was Carthada, i. e., 
“ The New City,” in contradistinction to the old or 
parent city of Tyre. (Compare Gesenius, Gesch. 
Hebr. Spr., p. 229.— Id., Phxn. Mon., p. 421.)—Car¬ 
thage was situated on a peninsula, in the recess of a 
spacious bay, formed by the promontory Hernueum 
(Cape Bon) on the east, and that of Apollo (Cape 
Zibib) on the west. The Bagradas flows into the 
bay between Utica and the peninsula, and, being an 
inundating river, has doubtless caused many changes 
in this bay. The adventurers who founded Carthage 
bought a small piece of land, for which they paid a 
yearly tax ; with the increasing wealth and power of 
the city, the respective conditions of the Carthagini¬ 
ans and the natives were changed, and the merchants 
assumed and maintained a dominion over the Libyans 
who dwelt around them. The Carthaginians upheld 
their control over the native tribes by sending out colo¬ 
nies, as the Romans did into the Italic states ; a mixed 
population would thus soon arise. A regular colonizing 
system was part of the Carthaginian policy. ( Aris - 
tot., Poht., 6, 3.) To provide for the poor by grants 
of land, and to avoid popular commotion, which is 
naturally produced by poverty, was the object of their 
colonial establishments. This kind of relief cannot be 
permanent, and we consequently read of more colonies 
of this description in the later periods of Carthage. 
Their settlements in Africa were principally on the 
coast between Carthage and the Syrtis Minor: they ap¬ 
pear to have been under the immediate control of the pa¬ 
rent city. But there is no reason for supposing that 
the genuine Phoenician colonies, those established by 
Tyre, or other cities of the parent country, were in this 
kind of dependance on Carthage.—It was the policy 
of Carthage to encourage the agriculture of the pro¬ 
ductive region of Byzacium : their city was thus sup¬ 
plied with the prime necessaries of life.—The bounda¬ 
ries of the Carthaginian territories in Africa were these: 
on the east the tower of Euphranta was the barrier be¬ 
tween them and the Cyrenreans. From this place, 
which was on the eastern shore of the Syrtis Major, 
or from Charan, which was near to it, the Carthagin¬ 
ians carried on a contraband trade to procure the sil- 
phium. ( Strabo , 836.) The southern boundary was 
determined by natural limits : the sandy desert and its 
wandering inhabitants owned no master. It is more 
difficult to assign a western boundary: they had posts, 
or trading positions, along the northern coast as far as 
the Straits of Gibraltar, but this will not prove that 
they had any territorial possession. The Nomades 
would give themselves little concern about a small isl¬ 
and opposite to the coast, or a barren rock upon it, 
and the Carthaginians might gradually attain some 
small tract besides the spot which was a depot for com¬ 
modities. The Carthaginian possessions which were 
undisputed probably did not extend west of the 26th 
degree of east longitude, and spread some distance into 
the interior. The lake Tritonis may be considered as 
the southern and western limit of the cultivated region. 
Among the foreign possessions of Carthage may be 
enumerated their dependances in Sicily and Spain, as 
well as Sardinia, Corsica, the Baleares, and Malta. 
In Sicily the Carthaginians succeeded to the posses¬ 


sions of the mother-country, Phoenicia. They were 
never able, however, to make themselves masters of 
the whole island : had they succeeded in their design, 
their subsequent history might have been different. 
They probably never had secure possession of more 
than one third of the island. Sicily was the point 
where the interests of the Greeks and Carthaginians 
conflicted. The Greek cities were free states, wffiose 
wealth increased with as much rapidity, according to 
extant documents, as any countries whose history is 
known, except some of the free states of America. 
Had these little commonwealths always united their 
forces, the Carthaginian settlements, which were 
strictly colonies in the modem acceptation of the 
word, must have yielded to the superior energies of 
the Greeks. It is said ( Herodot., 7, 165) that it was 
a concerted plan between Xerxes and the Carthagin¬ 
ians, that Greece and Sicily should be crushed at the 
same time ; one by the united myriads of the east, the 
other by the barbarians of the west, who formed the 
armies of Carthage. But Hamilcar, the Carthaginian 
general, saw his forces vanquished by the Sicilian 
Greeks, and he himself lost his life.—As to Spain, it 
is difficult to distinguish between the Phoenicians and 
their descendants, the Carthaginians, owing to the im¬ 
perfect records we possess of Carthaginian history; 
nor can we with certainty assign the era when the 
colonists succeeded to the foreign possessions of the 
mother-country. The southwestern part of Spain, 
the modern Andalusia, was their favourite region: 
the town of Gades (Cadiz) became a flourishing 
place, and the emporium of Southern Spain. ( Hec - 
ren, Ideen, vol. 2, pt. 1, p. 27, seqq. — Long's Anc. 
Geogr., p. 91, seqq.) 

1. The Carthaginian Polity. 

Our information on this important and interesting 
subject is not so complete as the investigator of an¬ 
cient history desires. Aristotle’s small extant treatise, 
entitled “ Politica,” is our best guide in this obscure 
matter. The city was a commercial town, possessing, 
as we have seen, numerous foreign colonies, besides 
dependent towns in the fertile region of Byzacium. 
Agriculture was encouraged in the African colonies, 
or subject cities, by the demands for the necessaries 
of life which a great capital would create : from the 
fragments of Mago’s book on husbandry, and the tes¬ 
timony of historians, we infer that the cultivation of 
grain, of the olive, and the vine, and the raising of 
cattle, were well understood. Carthage, like most 
of the towns in the Greek states, was the ruling 
city of the district in which it was situated : the 
citizens of the metropolis possessed the sovereign 
power, but the mode in which it was distributed 
among those .of Carthage requires some explanation. 
There was in Carthage, undoubtedly, a body of rich 
citizens, who are sometimes considered as a kind 
of aristocracy, but there is no proof that this was 
an hereditary dignity, or that it was anything more 
than the influence which a rich individual possess¬ 
es and transmits to his children by joining it to a 
large estate. An aristocracy may be formed in this 
way : that of Carthage, as far as we know, possessed 
no hereditary privileges, and no political power but 
from election. *But posts of honour and dignity 
brought with them no emolument, and, consequently, 
were the exclusive property of the rich, who alone 
could afford to sustain the expense which such situa¬ 
tions necessarily require. Bribery is a consequence 
of such an institution, and a small body, whatever 
name it may have, will thus govern a community. 
(Anstot., Polit., 2, 8. — Heeren's Ideen, vol. 2, pt. 1, 
p. 108, seqq.) The Spartan polity was that which Ar¬ 
istotle and Polybius consider the most nearly related 
to the Carthaginian. The power of the people was 
very limited, and was exercised only in their public 

303 



CARTHAGO. 


CARTHAGO. 


meetings. The kings or suffetes, and the generals of 
the republic, were elected by the people in their public 
assemblies ; but bribery was so usual that Aristotle 
considered those high distinctions as saleable at the 
time when he wrote. When the suffetes and the 
senate could not agree about any proposed enactment, 
the people had the right of deciding between them. 
The senate possessed the chief power, both legislative 
and executive ; but we are entirely ignorant of the 
constitution of this body. It is only from the compar¬ 
ison made by Aristotle and Polybius between the con¬ 
stitutions of Carthage and Sparta, and the additional 
resemblance between that of Carthage and Rome in 
the time of Polybius, that we can attain to any proba¬ 
bilities/ We suppose, then, that the senators might 
hold their offices for life ; that their number was con¬ 
siderable, and that they possessed the principal legis¬ 
lative and executive power. The presiding ©fficers 
of the senate and the chief civil magistrates were the 
suffetes : the Greek writers call them kings, and the 
Roman historian, Livy, compares them with the con¬ 
suls. They were elected from the richest and noblest 
families {Aristot., Polity 2, 81); we suppose the num¬ 
ber was two, like that of the kings of Sparta and con¬ 
suls of Rome: any further conjectures about them may 
be ingenious, but they will also be useless. The gen¬ 
erals of the state were elected also from the most dis¬ 
tinguished families. The civil and the military power 
in Carthage were distinct. We may find instances in 
which the kings seem to have had something like mil¬ 
itary command, as in the case of King Hanno, who 
conducted the colonial expedition ; but, in general, we 
can have no doubt that the generals of the republic 
were officers chosen by the people to command the 
armies in foreign expeditions or in domestic dissen¬ 
sion. The judicature of Carthage resembled that of 
Sparta; the judges of the several courts had the full 
and complete cognizance of all civil and criminal cases, 
without the aid of jurymen. {Aristot., Polit., 3, 1.) 
The court of the one hundred was the supreme tribunal 
of Carthage, and the account of its origin, given by 
Justin (18, 7), is rendered more probable by Aristotle’s 
comparing this body with that of the Spartan Ephori. 
Such a tribunal as this could be converted by favoura¬ 
ble circumstances and a few bold leaders into a real 
court of inquisition : it actually became so in the later 
ages of the commonwealth ; and, if we believe Livy 
(33, 46), the lives and property of the citizens were 
disposed of according to its caprice. Any injury, real 
or imaginary, done to one of the body, was an offence 
against the dignity of the whole college. Hannibal 
overturned the throne of the inquisitors, and destroyed 
this tyrannical and dangerous tribunal. This body 
was not chosen by the people, but by courts called 
Pentarchies : we know nothing more of these latter 
courts, except that they had cognizance of very im¬ 
portant cases, and enjoyed the privilege of supplying 
the vacancies that happened in their own body. The 
members of the court of one hundred retained their 
place for a long time, though originally not for life. 
{Aristot., Polit., 2, 8.) Our materials will hardly ad¬ 
mit any farther development of the constitution of 
Carthage. In the decline of the state, we know from 
Aristotle that the influence of a few rich families in 
obtaining possession of places of importance, and the 
union of several distinct offices in one person, con¬ 
tributed materially to hasten the end of the political 
system. {Ileeren's Ideen, vol. 2, pt. 1, p. 118 L seqq. 
— Long's Anc. Gcogr., p. 97.) 

2. Religion of the Carthaginians. 

The religious faith and ceremonies of the Carthagin¬ 
ians appear to have been at bottom the same with 
those of the mother country, Phoenicia. Hence the 
general denominations for their divinities betray a 
strong resemblance between the two nations. Thus 
304 


we have Elim , Alonim, and, in the feminine, Alonoth ; 
Baal and Baalath, Mclech and Maleath-, Don for 
Adon. {Plaut.y Pcenul., 5, 1, 15.—-Compare Bellcr- 
mann, vol. 1, p. 45, and vol. 2, p. 15.) These appel¬ 
lations, given to the deities of Carthage as well as to 
those of Phoenicia, expressed in both countries the 
majesty of those all-powerful beings, and the dominion 
which they exercised over men. It was to the sun, 
however, as the first principle of nature, as the gener¬ 
ative power, that the Carthaginians, after the example 
of the nations of Canaan, offered peculiar adoration. 
They styled him Baal or Moloch , “the lord,” “the 
king,” and also Bclsamen, “ the lord of heaven.” 
This supreme deity they worshipped with a rever¬ 
ence so profound as scarcely ever to dare to pro¬ 
nounce his true name : they contented themselves in 
general with designating him as the “ Ancient One,” 
“the Eternal.” {Augustin., De Consensu Evang., 

1, 36 .—Vol. 3, p. 11, ed. Maur. — Compare the ex¬ 
pression, “ Ancient of Days,” in Daniel, 7, 9, 13.) 
The Greek writers translated Baal by Kpovoq, and the 
Romans by Saturnus, no doubt on account of the com¬ 
mon reference which those divinities had to the idea 
of time. The images, as well as the titles of the Sun- 
God, were the same, to all appearances, both among 
the Phoenicians or Canaanites, and the Carthaginians. 
The description which Diodorus has left us of the 
statue of Cronus (Saturn) at Carthage, coincides in 
general with the account given by the Jewish Rabbins 
of that of Moloch in Canaan. {Diod. Sic., 20, 14.— 
Selden, de Dus Syris, 1, 6.) Both were made of 
metal; both had the arms extended, with a kind of 
furnace, or inner cavity, below, into which children 
were thrown to be destroyed by fire, as an offering to 
this horrid idol. In process of time, when the Car¬ 
thaginians had become more closely connected with 
the Greeks, it is probable that Baal was made in some 
respects to resemble the Apollo of the latter ; his wor¬ 
ship, as well as his figure, would begin to modify 
themselves, and hence the Apollo of Carthage, whose 
colossal statue, entirely gilt, was transported to Rome 
by Scipio. {Polyb., 7, 9. — Appian, Bell. Pun., 79. 
— Plut., Vit. Flamin., c. 1.— Creuzer's Symbolik, 
vol. 2, p. 269.—But consult Guigniaut’s note, vol. 2, 
p. 231, of the French work.) In the Roman Carthage, 
which retained the worship of its ancient deities, while 
it changed, at the same time, their forms and names, , 
the Latin Saturn appeared to take the place of the 
Phoenician Baal; but the human sacrifices, still con¬ 
tinually renewed, notwithstanding the repeated orders 
to the contrary on the part of the Romans, attest the 
permanency of ancient ideas and rites. Baal-Saturn 
maintained his honours even to the extremities of the 
west, even to Gades, where, under the Roman do¬ 
minion, there still existed a temple of this god. (Com¬ 
pare Miinter, Religion dcr Karthager, p. 17, seqq. — 
Id., uber Sardische Idole , p. 8, seqq.) Various ani¬ 
mals were consecrated to Baal, as to all the great di¬ 
vinities of paganism. Oxen were sacrificed to him, and 
he himself bore the attributes ef a bull. A Phoenician 
medal, which has come down to us, displays the image 
of a god, like the Jupiter of the Greeks, seated on a 
throne, and having the head of an ox. The inscrip¬ 
tion is Baal-Thurz. Payne Knight {Inquiry into the 
Symb. Lang., &c., § 31. — Class. Journ., vol. 23, p. 
226) compares the name Thor, given to the bull among 
the Phoenicians, according to Plutarch {Vit. Syll., 
17), with the god Thor of Scandinavian mythology, 
the head of whose image was that of a bull. Horses 
were also dedicated to the Sun, and their blood shed 
at his festivals. {Miinter, Religion der Karthager, 
p. 14, n. 44, who deduces this from a passage in the 
2d (4th) Book of Kings, 23, 11.) It is also very 
probable that the elephant, an animal so renowned 
among the ancients for the species of worship which 
it was said to offer to the sun and moon {JElian, 





CARTHAGO. 


CARTHAGO. 


H. A., 7, 4.— Plin ., 8, 1), was held sacred to Baal. 
One thing at least is certain, that in Africa these pious 
animals were in some degree connected with the wor¬ 
ship of Ammon ; and the coins of Juba, king of Mau¬ 
ritania, display on one side the head of Jupiter Am¬ 
mon, and on the other an elephant. ( Eckhcl, Doctr. 
Num. Vet., vol. 4, p. 154.) — To the Sun-God, as 
monarch of the skies and supreme generator, was 
joined a female divinity, as the great goddess /car’ 
i*oxvv, as the queen of heaven, and the principle of 
fecundated nature. This divinity makes her appear¬ 
ance under various forms and different names in almost 
all the religions of Asia. (Compare Nouveau Journal 
Asiatique, vol. 1 (1828), page 11, seqq. — Creuzer's 
Symbolik, par Guigniaut, vol. 2, p. 232.) At Car¬ 
thage, as in Syria and Phoenicia, she appears to have 
borne the name of Astarte or Astaroth, which corre¬ 
sponds to the idea of sovereign of the heavens and the 
stars. Thus the Greeks called her, in their language, 
Urania , and the Romans the “ Celestial Goddess.” 
This deity was worshipped in numerous temples at 
Carthage, along the coast of Africa, at Malta, and in 
the other isles of the Mediterranean, as also in Spain, 
near Gades ; and her rites were no less voluptuous in 
their character than those of Mylitta at Babylon, of 
Anaitis in Armenia, and of Venus-Urania in Cyprus. 
{Miinter, Rel. der Karthager, p. 89, seqq.) —Immedi¬ 
ately after Baal and Astarte, was placed, among the 
national divinities of Carthage, Melkarth, the “ king 
of the city,” the tutelary deity of the parent city of 
Tyre. ( Miinter, ibid., p. 36, seqq.) Wherever the 
Phoenicians penetrated, the altars that were raised in 
honour of this god, and the various traces of his wor¬ 
ship, testify the high veneration which this people en¬ 
tertained for him. The Tyrian colonies regarded him 
as their common protector ; they adored him as a kind 
of divine mediator ; as a sort of sacred bond, uniting 
them one with another and with their common coun¬ 
try. The symbol of the victorious course of the sun, 
and identical, in this respect, with the Grecian Hercu¬ 
les, he naturally became, for these hardy navigators, 
the celestial guide of their distant expeditions, and, 
consequently, the god of commerce. ( Creuzcr's Sym¬ 
bolik, par Guigniaut, vol. 2, p. 172, n. 4.) In this way 
he was in some measure assimilated to another de¬ 
ity, Sumes, whose Phoenician name recalls the Som 
of Egypt. (Compare Bellermann, iiber Phoenic. 
Miinz., 1, p. 25.) A similar alliance existed at Rome 
between Hercules and Mercury, both deities being 
considered as the gods of riches and abundance. Mel¬ 
karth was, in fact, like the Grecian Hercules, the 
same with the sun. The Tyrians raised, in his temple 
at Gades, an altar to the year ( Eustath. ad Dionys, 
Perieg., p. 453), and it is in a point of view directly 
analogous, that Nonnus calls Hercules the conductor 
of the twelve months. {Dionys., 40, 338.) Every 
year they kindled at Carthage, as at Tyre, and probably 
in all the Phoenician colonies, a large pyre in honour 
of Melkarth, whence an eagle was let loose, as a sym¬ 
bol, like the Egyptian phoenix, of the sun, and of time 
renewing itself from its own ashes. This scene was 
transferred by the Greeks to Mount (Eta, where Her¬ 
cules, in consuming himself on the funeral pile, cele¬ 
brates his apotheosis after the accomplishment of his 
twelve labours. {Dio Chrysostom., Orat., 33.—Vol. 
2, p. 23, ed. Reiske.) The worship of a Hercules, 
distinct from the one of Thebes, was continued, even 
to the last periods of paganism, in Carthage and in all 
the Phoenician cities.—Omitting the mention of other 
and less important divinities of the Carthaginians, we 
will conclude the present head with some general re¬ 
marks on the religion of this people. The character 
of the Carthaginian religion, like that of the nation 
which professed it, was melancholy even to cruelty. 
Terror was the animating principle of this religion ; a 
religion thirsting after blood, and environed with the 
Q Q 


most gloomy and appalling images. When we view 
the abstinence, the voluntary tortures, and, above all, 
the horrid sacrifices which it imposed as a duty on the 
living, we are not astonished that the dead should ap¬ 
pear in some degree actual objects of envy. It 
silenced the most sacred sentiments of human nature ; 
it degraded the minds of its votaries by superstitions in 
turn atrocious and dissolute ; and we are naturally led 
to the inquiry, what moral influence such a religion 
could have exercised over the people who professed it. 
The portrait which antiquity has left us of the Cartha¬ 
ginian character is hence far from being a flattering one. 
By turns imperious and servile, melancholy and cruel, 
inexorable and faithless, egotistical and covetous, it 
would seem as if the spirit of their religion had con¬ 
spired with the jealous aristocracy that weighed so 
heavily upon them, and with their purely commercial 
and industrial habits, to close their hearts to every 
generous emotion and every elevated thought. Their 
system of belief may have contained some noble ideas, 
but their practice of that system served effectually to 
obscure these. A goddess presided over their public 
councils {Appian, Bell. Pun., p. 81, ed. Tollii ); but 
these councils or assemblies were held during the 
night, and history informs us respecting Some of the 
terrible measures that were agitated therein. The god 
of the solar fire was the patron deity of both Carthage 
and Tyre, and gave an example of great enterprises 
and hardy labours; yet his brightness was often stained 
with blood, and every year human victims were immo¬ 
lated at his altars as at those of Baal. Wherever the 
Phoenicians, or the Carthaginians after them, carried 
their commerce and their arms, not only at particular 
periods, but in all critical conjunctures, their high-toned 
fanaticism renewed these sanguinary sacrifices. In 
vain did Gelon of Syracuse, with the authority which 
victory gave him; in vain did the Greeks established 
at Carthage, endeavour, by mild and pacific influence, 
to put an end to these inhuman rites {Timceus, Tau- 
romen. ap. Schol. in Pind., Pyth., 2, 3. — Miinter, 
Rel. der Karth., p. 25); the ancient barbarity con¬ 
stantly reappeared, and maintained itself even in Ro¬ 
man Carthage. At the commencement even of the 
third century of our era, traces of this frightful mode 
of worship were still found to be practised in secret. 
{Tertull., Apol., 9.) From the year of Rome 655, all 
human sacrifices had been prohibited ; but the emper¬ 
ors more than once found themselves under the ne¬ 
cessity of making this prohibition a more binding one. 
Still, however, the evil was not completely eradicated ; 
and we see, even at Rome, the worthless Elagabalus 
immolating children in the course of his magic cere¬ 
monies. {Dio Cass., 79, 12. — Crcuzer's Symbolik, 
par Guigniaut, vol. 2, p. 252.) 

3. Carthaginian Language and Literature. 

An account of the language and literature of Car¬ 
thage will come in more naturally when treating of the 
Phoenicians. To this latter head, therefore, we refer 
the reader. 

4. History of Carthage. 

The first period of the history of Carthage extends 
to the beginning of the war with Syracuse, from B.C. 
878 to 480. Carthage extended its conquests in Af¬ 
rica and Sardinia, carried on a commercial war with 
the people of Marseille (Massilia) and the Etrurians, 
and concluded a commercial peace with Rome, B.C. 
509. The Carthaginians then directed their chief at¬ 
tention to the conquest of Sicily, with which com¬ 
mences their secpnd and most splendid period, extend¬ 
ing to the beginning of their war with the Romans, 
B.C. 265. When Xerxes undertook his campaign 
into Greece, the Carthaginians made a league with 
him, and the object of this arrangement was to crush 
at once both Sicily and Greece. The Carthaginians 

305 





CARTHAGO. 


CARTHAGO. 


however, were defeated at Himera by Gelon, king of 
Syracuse, and obliged to sue for peace, and to abstain 
from offering human sacrifices. In the war with 
Hiero, the next king, the Carthaginians conquered the 
cities Selinus, Himera, and Agrigentum. Dionysius 
the elder obtained a temporary peace. But, after Ti- 
moleon had delivered Syracuse and Sicily from the 
yoke of tyranny, the Carthaginians were peculiarly 
unfortunate. Contagious diseases and frequent muti¬ 
nies reduced the strength of the city. When Sicily 
suffered under the tyranny of Agathocles, Carthage 
engaged in a war with him, and was soon attacked 
and severely pressed by the usurper. After the death 
of Agathocles, Carthage once more took part in the 
commerce of Sicily, when difficulties broke out there 
with their auxiliaries the Mamertines. The Romans 
took advantage of these troubles to expel the Cartha¬ 
ginians from Sicily, although they had previously re¬ 
ceived assistance from them in the war against Pyr¬ 
rhus, king of Epirus, in Sicily and Lower Italy. Here 
begins the third period of Carthaginian history, em¬ 
bracing the thrice-repeated struggle for dominion be¬ 
tween Rome and Carthage, in the interval between 
264 and 146 B.C. The first Punic war continued 23 
years. The fleets and armies of Carthage were van¬ 
quished. By the peace (B.C. 241) the Carthaginians 
lost all their possessions in Sicily. Upon this, the 
mercenary forces, whose wages could not be paid by 
the exhausted treasury of the city, took up arms. 
Hamilcar Barcas conquered them, and restored the 
Carthaginian power in Africa. Notwithstanding the 
peace with Carthage, the Romans took possession of 
Sardinia in 228, where the mercenary troops of Car¬ 
thage had revolted. Hamilcar, who was at the head 
of the democratic party, now undertook the conquest 
of Spain, whose rich mines tempted his countrymen. 
For the success of this enterprise, within 17 years, 
Carthage was indebted to the family of Barcas, which 
could boast of the glorious names of Hamilcar, Has- 
drubal, and Hannibal. To secure the possession of 
this acquisition, Hasdrubal founded New Carthage 
( Carthagena), the most powerful of all the Carthagin¬ 
ian colonies. The second Punic war (from 218 to 
201 B.C.), notwithstanding the abilities of the gen¬ 
eral, ended with the subjugation of Carthage. Han¬ 
nibal, neglected by his countrymen, and weakened by 
a victory that cost him so much blood, was obliged to 
leave Italy, in order to hasten to the assistance of Car¬ 
thage, which was threatened by the Romans. The bat- 
tie of Zama resulted in favour of the Romans. Scipio 
granted the city peace under the severest conditions. 
Carthage ceded Spain, delivered up all her ships ex¬ 
cept ten, paid 10,000 talents (about $10,000,000), 
and promised to engage in no war without the con¬ 
sent of the Romans. Besides this, Masinissa, the 
ally of Rome and implacable enemy of Carthage, was 
placed on the Numidian throne. This king, under the 
protection of Rome, deprived the Carthaginians of the 
best part of their possessions, and destroyed their trade 
in the interior of Africa. The third war with the Ro¬ 
mans was a desperate contest. The disarmed Car¬ 
thaginians were obliged to demolish part of their own 
walls. Then, taking up arms anew, they fought for 
death or life. After three years, the younger Scipio 
ended this war by the destruction of the city, B.C. 
146. Only 5000 persons are said to have been found 
within its walls. It was 23 miles in circumference ; 
and when it was set on fire by the Romans, it burned 
incessantly for 17 days. After the overthrow of Car¬ 
thage, Utica became powerful. Caesar planted a small 
colony on the ruins of Carthage. Augustus sent 
3000 men thither, and built a city at a small distance 
from the spot on which ancient Carthage stood, thus 
avoiding the ill effects of the imprecations which had 
been pronounced by the Romans, according to custom, 
at the time of its destruction, against those who should 
306 


rebuild it. This new city of Carthage was conquered 
from the Romans by the arms of Genseric, A.D. 439, 
and it was for more than a century the seat of the 
Vandal empire in Africa. It was at last destroyed by 
the Saracens, during the califate of Abdel Melek, to¬ 
wards the end of the 7th century, and few traces of it 
now remain except an aqueduct. According to Livy, 
Carthage was twelve miles from Tunetum or Tunis , 
a distance which still subsists between that city and 
a fragment of the western wall of Carthage. ( Heeren , 
Idcen, vol. 2, pt. 1, p. 270, segq. — Encyclop. Amcric., 
vol. 2, p. 543, seqq.) 

5. Circulating Medium and Revenue of Carthage. 

The precious metals were probably early used in 
Carthage, as a medium of exchange as well as an ar¬ 
ticle of luxury ; but whether the state stamped coin 
for the use of the community is a question still unde¬ 
cided. That gold and silver coin was in circulation 
we cannot doubt; the dispute is about the existence 
of real Carthaginian coins. But we read of a substi¬ 
tute that the Carthaginians had for gold and silver, 
which renders it probable that the precious metal in 
circulation w T as often inadequate to the wants of the 
community. It is likely that the conquest of Spain 
materially supplied this deficiency. Several writers 
speak of a leather circulating medium : this was a 
piece of leather with a state-stamp on it, probably de¬ 
noting its value. In this leather a small piece of 
metal was enclosed, the precise nature of which, 
whether it was a compound, or had some peculiar 
mark upon it, we cannot now ascertain. The best 
account of this substitute, which we may presume was 
not used beyond the city, is found in a dialogue on 
w r ealth in iEschines Socraticus (2, 24, p. 78, ed. Fis¬ 
cher. — Compare Aristid., Orat. Plat., 2, p. 241.— 
Salmas., de Us., p. 463.) The revenue of Carthage 
was derived from various sources : that from the agri¬ 
cultural colonies within the African territory of Car¬ 
thage consisted of a tax paid in raw commodities. 
The duties on imported goods, both in the metropolis 
and the colonies, were another abundant source of pub¬ 
lic income. We learn from Aristotle ( Polit., 3, 5), 
that there were treaties between the Carthaginians and 
Etrurians, by which the commodities that might be 
carried by each nation into the ports of the other were 
accurately described : this is an indication of commer¬ 
cial restrictions, mutual jealousies, and high duties. 
The produce of the mines of Spain, which at that time 
were rich in gold, silver, and iron, must be added to 
the public revenues of the state. The richest mines 
were in the neighbourhood of New Carthage. It is 
probable that they were worked by slaves, both native 
and imported, while they were in the possession of the 
Carthaginians, as they were afterward when the Ro¬ 
mans were masters of Spain. In times of difficulty 
Carthage occasionally applied for loans to foreign 
countries. In the Punic war, the impoverished repub¬ 
lic asked as a favour from the rich Ptolemy Philadel- 
phus, king of Egypt, the loan of 2000 talents, which 
the prudent Greek declined. It cannot be considered 
that this was one of the ordinary sources of revenue, 
because the only profit that could arise from it would 
be the use of the money and the non-payment of the 
interest and principal; and this kind of profit would 
necessarily cease, as in the case of some modern 
states, when the character of the borrower was known. 
(Heeren, Ideen, vol. 2, pt. 1, p. 148. — Long's Anc. 
Geogr., p. 98.) 

6. Naval Commerce, and Naval and Military force 
of Carthage. 

The district of Byzacium, in the province called 
Africa Propria by the Romans, and the island of Sar¬ 
dinia, were the graift countries of Carthage : this com¬ 
mercial town derived its supply of bread from remote 



CARTHAGO. 


CARTHAGO. 


parts, like Athens, Corinth, and other large cities of 
Greece. Sicily was much frequented by the Punic 
merchants ; and the rich emporium of Syracuse, in 
times of peace, saw its port crowded with African 
vessels. Oil and wine were imported from Sicily ; 
both of these articles were produced in Africa, but it 
is probable that the supply was insufficient. Strabo 
(836) speaks of a contraband trade carried on by Car¬ 
thage with the Cyremeans, through the port of Charax; 
the Punic merchant brought wine, and received in ex¬ 
change the precious silphium. The treaties with Rome 
preserved in Polybius, and the remarks of Aristotle in 
his Politica, prove the active commerce of the Car¬ 
thaginians and their jealousy of foreign rivals. The 
Etrurians, who had built towns in Campania, were 
probably rather pirates than merchants: they procured 
the wares which they had to exchange for other com¬ 
modities by robbing vessels on the sea, or the towns 
of the coast. The Carthaginians, as has already been 
remarked, had commercial treaties with the Etrurians, 
who, from the nature of their profession, could furnish 
them with most of the articles that the Mediterranean 
produced. In return, their African friends gave them 
slaves, precious stones, ivory, and gold, the produce 
of the vast continent behind their city. Malta, and 
the small adjoining island of Gaulus {Gozo), were Car¬ 
thaginian possessions : cloth for wearing apparel was 
manufactured in Malta, and probably from a native 
cotton. The wax of Corsica was also an article of 
commerce: the natives of the island were prized for 
making excellent servants. ( Diod. Sic., 5, 13.) The 
little island of Hdthalia or Ilva, now Elba, has fur¬ 
nished iron ore from the remotest historical period; the 
foreign trader and the merchant of Carthage purcha¬ 
sed the ore when it was smelted, and deposited it in 
the hands of their countrymen for farther improve¬ 
ment. Majorca and Minorca exchanged mules and 
fruit for wine and female slaves ; the latter article 
these rude islanders were always ready to purchase. 
The precious metals of Spain have been frequently 
alluded to ; some of the mines appear to have been 
public property, while in other cases the merchant pro¬ 
cured gold-dust from the natives by an exchange of 
commodities. There is no impossibility involved in 
supposing that the Phoenicians or the Carthaginians 
visited the northern shores of Europe ; but, as direct 
evidence is wanting, it is not necessary to assume 
that the tin and the amber which they sold to the 
world were brought by their own ships from the Scilly 
islands (Cassiterides) or the coast of the Baltic. The 
trading towns established on the shores of Mauritania 
seem to have been intended to form a commercial 
connexion with central Africa : the carriers of the des¬ 
ert would bring the products of Soudan to the small 
island of Cerne, the most southern of the colonies es¬ 
tablished by Hanno. The Carthaginians supplied 
them from the stores in Cerne with earthen vessels, 
trinkets, and ornaments of various kinds. There was 
also a fishery on this coast, according to the book of 
wonders ascribed to Aristotle (c. 148). The fish was 
salted and carried to Carthage, where it commanded a 
high price. As regards the discovery-voyage of Han¬ 
no, we feel some curiosity to know whether it was use¬ 
ful in establishing a trade on the gold coast of Africa ; 
and our admiration of the extensive knowledge of He¬ 
rodotus is increased, by finding in his history the only 
extant information on this obscure subject. In the 
fourth book (c. 146), he tells us, on the authority of 
some Carthaginians, that merchants from that renown¬ 
ed trading town, after passing through the straits, 
visited a remote place on the Libyan coast, where 
they procured gold from the natives by barter. When 
they landed at the spot which the natives frequented, 
it was their practice to lay their wares on the shore 
and return to their vessel after raising a smoke. The 
inhabitants, seeing this, would come down to the coast, 


place a quantity of gold near the commodities, and re¬ 
tire. The Carthaginians then would leave the ship, 
and examine what the natives had left in exchange : 
if it was sufficient, they would take the gold, leaving 
their own merchandise in its stead; if they were not 
satisfied, they gave the gold-possessors an opportuni¬ 
ty of adding to the deposite of precious metals by re¬ 
tiring again to their ship. This was repeated till the 
bargain was closed, and, it is added, neither party 
ever wronged the other. This story of the Carthagin¬ 
ians must not be considered as a mere fiction: it 
may have received some slight alterations, but the 
outline of it bears the marks of truth. A modern 
traveller (Host), quoted by Heeren ( Ideen, vol. 2, pt. 
1, p. 182), describes in a similar way the mode of ex¬ 
changing commodities between the people of Morocco 
and the negroes on the borders of Negroland. A car¬ 
avan goes once a year from Sus, one of the four di¬ 
visions of the empire of Morocco, across the terrific 
waste of the western Sahara : tobacco, salt, wool, with 
woollen and silken cloths, are the articles which they 
carry. Gold-dust, negroes, and ostrich-feathers are 
given in exchange by the blacks. The Moors do not 
enter the Negroland, but meet the blacks at a place 
on the frontiers, and conclude the bargain without 
speaking a word. The mutual ignorance of each 
other’s language renders this the only mode pf con¬ 
ducting their mercantile transactions.—Carthagfc, in 
time b f war, maintained a large army and navy: nay, 
even when she was not engaged in foreign strug¬ 
gles, her distant colonies required the residence of 
a garrison and the occasional visits of a navy. The 
writers on the Punic wars have left us informa¬ 
tion on the military and naval force of the republic, 
which is in general satisfactory. The principal dock¬ 
yard was in the city of Carthage. ( Appian, Bell. 
Pun., 96.) There were two ports or havens, an out¬ 
er one, intended for merchant ships, and an inner ba¬ 
sin, which was separated from the other by a double 
wall. A small but elevated island in the centre of 
the inner haven commanded a view of the sea. The 
admiral of the navy resided here. Two hundred and 
twenty ships of war were generally laid up in this dock¬ 
yard, with all the necessary stores for fitting them out 
on a short notice. In the wars with Syracuse, the 
ships of Carthage were only triremes {Diod. Sic., 2, 
16), but they afterward built vessels of a much larger 
size, in imitation of the Macedonian Greeks. The 
war-ships of the Romans and the Carthaginians in the 
first Punic war {Polyb., 1, 2) carried nearly five hun¬ 
dred men: each Roman vessel contained one hun¬ 
dred and twenty soldiers and three hundred seamen. 
The Carthaginian ships had about the same number 
of men on board. In one engagement the Carthagin¬ 
ians col^cted a fleet of three hundred and fifty ships, 
manned, according to the computation of Polybius 
himself, by more than one hundred and fifty thousand 
sailors and soldiers. We find extravagant and ap¬ 
parently improbable estimates, of numbers in all the 
Carthaginian wars in Sicily, and in their sea-fights 
with the Romans. The sailors or rowers were slaves, 
purchased by the state for this service : the comple¬ 
ment of a quinquereme was about three hundred slaves 
and one hundred and twenty fighters. In 1 ancient na¬ 
val tactics, to move in any direction with celerity, to 
break through the enemy’s line, and to disable or sink 
his ships, were the evolutions on which victory de¬ 
pended. Sometimes a number of ships were wedged 
together, and the soldiers fought on the decks as if it 
were a land battle, but with this important difference, 
that an escape was not so easy. The slaughter i:\ 
their naval engagements was prodigious, sometimes 
amounting to ten, twenty, or even thirty thousand 
men. The sea-fights described by Thucydides and 
Polybius, particularly in the first book, are minute, 
and, we believe, generally faithful accounts by the 

807 



CARTHAGO. 


CARTHAGO. 


two great historians of antiquity. The command of 
the fleet was»usually separated from that of the land 
force, but we find instances in which a single person 
possessed the direction of both. The military force 
of Carthage consisted principally of hired troops, col¬ 
lected from all the* nations with which the state had 
commercial connexions. Only a small part of the cit¬ 
izens of Carthage could be employed in military ser¬ 
vice. The mercantile occupations of the majority 
would not allow them to neglect their business for 
foreign conquests, or the defence of remote posses¬ 
sions. It was found to be a more economical plan, 
to make a bargain with nations who had nothing to 
dispose of but their bodies, and with this saleable com¬ 
modity to provide for the defence of their colonies or 
to acquire new possessions. But the distinguished 
families of Carthage served in the armies of the state, 
and from this class all the commanders were chosen. 
In times of danger, all the citizens would necessarily 
arm themselves to repel an attack on the metropolis; 
but we are now speaking of the ordinary constitution 
of a Carthaginian army, and this neither admitted nor 
required a large number of Carthaginian citizens. A 
Punic army was like a congregation of nations : the 
half-naked savage of Gaul stood by the side of the wild 
Iberian ; the cunning Ligurian, from the Alpine or Ap- 
enning mountains, met with the Lotophagi of Libya ; 
and* the Nasamones, the explorers and guides in the 
great desert, half-bred Greeks, runaways, and slaves, 
found themselves mingled in this strange assembly. 
Troops of Carthaginian and Liby-Phoenician origin 
were in the centre of the army : on the flank the nu¬ 
merous Nomadic tribes of western Africa wheeled 
about on unsaddled horses guided by a bridle of rush¬ 
es. The Balearic slingers formed the vanguard, and 
the elephants of ^Ethiopia, with their black conductors, 
were the moveable castles that protected the front 
lines. According to Polybius (1, 6), it was consid¬ 
ered politic to form an army of such materials, that 
difference of language might prevent union between 
several nations, and remove all danger of a general 
conspiracy: but there are disadvantages also, which 
arise from the want of a medium of communication, 
and these were developed in the later periods of the 
republic. When Xerxes led the nations of Asia 
against the Greeks of the land of Hellas, a Carthagin¬ 
ian armament was despatched to subjugate the west¬ 
ern colonies in Sicily. The muster-roll of the Asiat¬ 
ic force ( Herodot ., 7, 61, seqq.) contained the names 
of all the nations in his extensive empire, and even 
some* beyond it, who served for money. The Punic 
army was composed of the tribes of the western 
world and of the African desert, and the two armies 
combined would have exhibited specimens of nearly 
all the tribes of men that were then known. We be¬ 
come intimately acquainted with the nature of a Car¬ 
thaginian army from the extant narrative of Polybius. 
In the opinion of this soldier and historian, the caval¬ 
ry of Numidia formed the strongest part of the army, 
and to their quick evolutions, their sudden retreat, and 
their rapid return to the charge, he attributes the suc¬ 
cess of Hannibal in his great victories. ( Polyb ., 3, 
12.) Another cause may be assigned for the losses 
of the Romans, without at all impeaching the opinion 
of Polybius on the Numidian cavalry. The Romans 
frequently had two consuls at the head of their armies, 
and when both happened to be together in the field, 
they commanded alternately, day by day * At the fatal 
battle of Cannae, the ignorance and presumption of 
Varro were associated with the better judgment and 
calm valour of HCmilius ; the single unshackled energy 
of the great Hannibal was more than a match for this 
unfortunate combination. We can readily admit the 
possibility of the large armaments which the rich com¬ 
mercial city of Carthage is said to have equipped, but 
we perhaps shall find it necessary to detract something 
303 


from the numerical estimates of Diodorus, which he 
took from the careless and credulous Ephorus, or from 
Timasus {Polyb., 12, exc. 8), whose authority is not 
much better. To form some idea of the naval and mili¬ 
tary force of Carthage, even in time of peace, we must 
recollect that their foreign trading ports were main¬ 
tained by garrisons, and that, in the short interval of 
peace, it was necessary to support a force sufficient to 
meet the probable danger of war. Three hundred 
elephants were kept in the citadel of Carthage, which 
contained, also, stalls for four thousand horses, with 
accommodations for their riders, and for forty thou¬ 
sand foot-soldiers besides. {Heeren, Ideen, vol. 2, pt. 
1, p. 250, seqq. — Long's Anc. Geogr., p. 98, seqq.) 

6. Inland Commerce of Carthage. 

Writers who have discussed the commercial rela¬ 
tions of Carthage, seem scarcely to have supposed the 
existence of an extensive caravan-trade with central 
Africa and other parts of the continent. But if we 
compare the position of the modern towns of Tripoli, 
Tunis, and Algiers, with that of Carthage, and con¬ 
sider the nature of their commerce at the present day, 
we cannot doubt that similar circumstances would, in 
ancient times, produce corresponding results. This 
probability is increased and strengthened by a few 
passages in the works of Heroflotus. The commod¬ 
ities of Central Africa, of the desert, and of the re¬ 
gion of Biledulgerid, must necessarily create a cara¬ 
van-trade, extending from the shores of the Mediter¬ 
ranean to the banks of the Niger. These commodi¬ 
ties are black slaves, male and female, from the coun¬ 
tries south of the Sahara ; salt from the great saline 
deposites in the desert; and dates from the region 
bordering on the north side of the great sandy waste. 
These three things have in all ages been considered 
articles of necessity by the inhabitants of the Tripoli 
and Tunis coasts, or those connected with them by 
commercial relations. Gold is seldom found in north 
Africa; it is principally procured by washing the 
earths in the neighbourhood of the Kong, or Mount¬ 
ains of the Moon, south of the great river Niger. 
Ivory is also another article of luxury, which the 
central countries furnish to the merchants of the sea- 
coast. The native tribes of the Sahara are the car¬ 
riers of the desert, for which occupation they are pe¬ 
culiarly adapted by their nomadic life, and the posses¬ 
sion of numerous beasts of burden. Many of them 
are merely carriers for the rich merchants settled at 
the different trading ports, while some of them, who 
possess a capital, purchase commodities on their own 
account, and frequently acquire considerable wealth. 
The direction of this traffic across the desert has prob¬ 
ably changed very little : the great emporium of com¬ 
merce on the shores of the Mediterranean and in 
Lower Egypt, are nearly in the same position, and 
the caravan-routes across the Sahara are determined 
by the unchanging physical circumstances of this ex¬ 
tensive sandy waste. The caravans choose those 
times for their route at which springs of water can be 
found to refresh the men and animals, and to furnish 
them with a sufficient supply during their journey from 
one halting-place to the next. It appears from the 
narrative of Herodotus, that the people between the 
two Syrtes were the carriers of the desert. The 
Carthaginians might either directly participate in this 
traffic, or they might meet the caravan near the small¬ 
er Syrtis, and receive from it their slaves, their gold and 
precious stones, in exchange for manufactured arti> 
cles, for wine, oil, or grain. The immense consump¬ 
tion of slaves in this commercial and military republic, 
would render a slave-trade necessary to its existence, 
and from no place could they be produced in such 
number as from the inexhaustible slave-magazines of 
the African continent. When we affirm that the Car¬ 
thaginians were engaged in commerce with the na- 




CAR 


CAS 


lions of Central Africa, we do not mean to say that it 
’(vas a direct commerce, though it is possible it might 
!>e so in some degree. The tribes between the two 
Syrtes travelled to Garama, and, as every great rest- 
ing-place might be a depot for commodities, they could 
procure from this town the products of remote lands 
which the Carthaginians desired to possess. Tfte 
towns on the coast of Byzacium would be the market 
for the caravans of Garama, and places of the greatest 
importance for the commerce of Carthage. It does 
not appear that the wares and products of Central Af¬ 
rica were carried by the caravans any farther than the 
towns near the Syrtes, on the edge of the desert; 
thus the connexion of Carthage with the nations of the 
interior appears to have attracted little attention. 
( Heeren, Ideen., vol. 2, pt. 1 , p. 185, setfq. — Long's Anc. 
Gcogr., p. 104, seqq.) 

Carthago nova, a well-known city of Hispania 
Tarraconensis, situate on the coast, a little distance 
above the boundary line between Tarraconensis and 
Bsetica. It was founded by Hasdrubal, the Carthagin¬ 
ian, who succeeded Barcas, the father of Hannibal, 
B.C. 242. ( Polyb., 2, 2.—Mela, 2, 6 . — Strab., 158.) 

It was taken by Scipio Africanus during the second 
Punic war, and, on falling into the hands of the Ro¬ 
mans, it became a colony, under the title of Colonia 
Victrix Julia Nova Carthago. (Florez, Med. de Esp., 
vol. 1, p. 316.) The situation of this place was very 
favourable for commerce, since it lay almost in the 
middle of the southern coast of Spain, which had 
hardly any good harbours besides this along its whole 
extent. {Polyb., 10, 10. — Id., 3, 39. — Strab., 156.) 
In Strabo’s time it was a very important place, and 
carried on an extensive commerce, and in the mount¬ 
ains not far to the north of it were the richest silver 
mines of all Spain. The governor of the province of 
Tarraconensis spent the winter either in this city or 
Tarraco. (Strab., 167.) The modern Carthagena 
occupies the site of the ancient city. ( Ukert, Geogr., 
vol. 2, p. 400, seqq.) 

Carvilius, I. one of the four kings of Cantium 
(Kent), who, at the command of Cassivelaunus, made 
an attack on Cesar’s naval camp, in which they were 
repulsed, and lost a great number of men. (Cces., 
B. G., 5, 22.)—II. The first Roman who divorced his 
wife during the space of six hundred years. This was 
for barrenness, B.C. 231. (Vol. Max., 2, 1, 4.)—III. A 
grammarian of this name, according to Plutarch (de 
qucest. Rom., n. 54), first introduced the G into the 
Roman alphabet, C having been previously used for it. 
This was nearly 500 years after the building of the city. 
(Compare Quintilian, 1, 7, 23.— Terent. Maud., p. 
2402.— Id., p. 2410.— Mar. Viet., p. 2469.— Diom., p. 
417.— Serv. ad Virg., Georg., 1, 194.— Schneider, L. 
G., vol. 1, p. 233, seqq.) 

Carus, a Roman emperor, who succeeded Probus. 
He was first appointed, by the latter, Prsetorian prefect, 
and after his death was chosen by the army to be his 
successor, A.D. 282. Carus created his two sons, 
Carinus and Numerianus, Caesars, as soon as he was 
elevated to the empire, and, some time after, gave them 
each the title of Augustus. On the news of the death 
of Probus, the barbarians put themselves in motion, 
and Carus, sending his son Carinus into Gaul, depart¬ 
ed with Numerianus for Illyricum, in order to op¬ 
pose the Sarmatae, who threatened Thrace and Ita¬ 
ly. He slew 16,000, and made 20,000 prisoners. 
Proceeding after this against the Persians, he made 
himself master of Mesopotamia, and of the cities of 
Seleucia and Ctesiphon, and took in consequence 
the surnames of Persicus and Parthicus. He died, 
however, in the midst of his successes, A.D. 283. 
(Vid. Aper.) His whole reign was one of not more 
than sixteen or seventeen months. Carus was deified 
after his death. According to Vopiscus, he held a 
middle rank between good and bad princes. ( Vopisc., 


Car. — Id., Prob., c. 24. — Id., Carin., c. 16, seq. — 
Bastie, Mem. de VAcad. des Inscript., &c., vol. 13, p. 
437, seqq.) 

Cary^e, I. a village of Arcadia, near the sources of 
the Aroanius. ( Pausan., 8, 14.) — II. A small town 
of Laconia, to the north of Sellasia. (Pausan., 3, 10.) 
It appears from Pausanias (8, 45), that the Caryatae 
were formerly attached to the territory of Tegaea ; and 
it is clear from Xenophon (Hist. Gr., 6, 5, 25), that 
it was a border town. At the latter of these two 
places a festival was observed in honour of Diana 
Caryatis. (Vid. Caryatae.) 

Caryaths, the inhabitants of Caryae (II.). It is 
said that they joined the Persians upon their invading 
Greece, and that, after the expulsion of the invaders, 
the Greeks made war upon the Caryatae, took their 
city, slew all the males, carried the women into sla¬ 
very, and decreed, by way of ignominy, that their 
images should be used as supporters for public edifices. 
Hence the Caryatides of ancient architecture. No 
trace of this story, however, is to be found in any 
Greek historian, and no small argument against its 
credibility may be deduced from the situation of the 
Caryatae, within the Peloponnesus. A writer in the 
Museum Criticum (vol. 2, p. 402) suggests, that these 
figures were so called from their resembling the statue 
of V A prepis K apvdmg, or else the Laconian virgins, who 
celebrated their annual dance in her temple ; and he 
refers to Pausan., 3, 10. — Lucian, Salt., 10.— Pint., 
Vit. Artax. (Compare Winckelmann, Gesch. der Kunst. 
des Alterthums, vol. 4, part 1, p. 225.— Visconti, 
Mus-Pio-Clement., vol. 2, p. 42. — Bahr, ad Ctes., p. 
239.) 

Carystus, I. a city of Euboea, on the seacoast, at 
the foot of Mount Oche. It is now known by the 
name of Castel-Rosso, and was founded, as we are 
told, by some of the Dryopes, who had been driven 
from their country by Hercules. ( Thucyd., 7, 57.) 
This place was principally celebrated for its marble, 
which was highly esteemed, and much used by the 
Romans in the embellishment of both public and pri¬ 
vate edifices. ( Tibull., 3, 13.—Compare Plin., 4, 12. 
— Id., 36, 7.) We learn from Strabo (446), that the 
spot which furnished this valuable material was named 
Marmarium, and that a temple had been erected there 
to Apollo Marmarius.—II. A town of Laconia, belong¬ 
ing to the territory of ./Egys. Its wine was celebrated 
by the poet Aleman, as we are informed by Strabo (446. 
— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 224). 

Casca, P. Servilius, one of the conspirators against 
Caesar, and the individual who inflicted the first blow. 
He had been attached to the party of Pompey, but had 
submitted, and received a pardon from Caesar. Plu¬ 
tarch states that Casca gave Caesar a stroke upon the 
neck, but that the wound was not dangerous, as he 
was probably in some trepidation at the time. Cae¬ 
sar, turning around, caught hold of his dagger, crying 
out at the same time, “ Villain ! Casca ! what art thou 
doing?” ( Plut., Vit. Cces., c. 66.) 

Cascellius Aulus, a lawyer of great erudition and 
talent in the time of Augustus. ( Horat., Ep. ad Pis., 
371.— Val. Max., 8, 12,1.) 

Casilinum, a city of Campania, on the river Vul- 
turnus and the Appian Way. It is celebrated in his¬ 
tory for the obstinate defence which it made against 
Hannibal after the battle of Cannae. It appears from 
Livy, that the river Vulturnus divided the town into two 
parts, and that the one on the right bank was occupied 
by the Roman garrison, while the other was in posses¬ 
sion of the Carthaginian army, which was thus enabled . 
to cut off all supplies, except such as might be convey¬ 
ed down the stream ; by this means the brave handful 
of soldiers who defended the town were at last forced 
to surrender. (Liv., 23, 17, seqq. — Val. Max., 7, 6.) 
This town appears to have been still in existeifbe in 
the time of Strabo (249); but Pliny, who wrote some 

309 





CAS 


CASPIUM MARE. 


time after, speaks of it as being reduced to the lowest 
state of insignificance. ( Plin ., 3, 5.) It is, however, 
mentioned by Ptolemy (p. 60). The modern Capua 
is generally supposed to occupy the site of Casilinum. 
( Pratilli, Via Appia, 2, 12, p. 257.— Cramer's Anc. 
Italy , vol. 2, p. 199.) 

CasTnum, the last town of Latium on the Latin 
Way, according to Strabo (238). It was a large and 
populous place, and its site is now partly occupied by 
the modern town of San Germano. According to 
Varro, its name was derived from Cascum, an Oscan 
word, answering to the Latin Vetus. The same wri¬ 
ter informs us, that Casinum originally belonged to the 
Samnites, from whom it was conquered by the Ro¬ 
mans. ( Varr., L. L., 6.) 

Casius, I. a mountain on the coast of Africa, near 
the Palus Serbonis ( Herodot., 2, 6), and, according to 
Strabo (758), three hundred stadia from Pelusium. 
The I tin. Antonin., however, makes the distance be¬ 
tween it and the latter place 320 stadia. (Compare 
Larcher, Hist. d'Herodote, Table Geographique, vol. 8, p. 
101.) On this mountain reposed the remains of Pom- 
pey, and here also Jupiter, surnamed Casius, had a tem¬ 
ple. (Compare remarks under the article Asi.) Mount 
Casius forms a promontory called at the present day 
Cap eEl-Cas. —II. Another in Syria, below Antiochia. 
It is a very lofty mountain. Pliny, in a style of ex¬ 
aggeration, asserts, that at the fourth watch (three 
o’clock A.M.), the rising sun could be seen from its 
top, while the base was enveloped in darkness. {Plin., 
5, 22.) The African appears to have been named af¬ 
ter the Syrian mountain. {Mannert, Geogr., vol. 10, 
p. 493.) As regards the etymology of the name Ca¬ 
sius, consult Ritter, Vorhalle, p. 465, and compare re¬ 
marks under the article Asi. 

C aspire Portje or Pyl^e, the Caspian gates or pass, 
a name belonging properly to a defile near Teheran, 
in ancient Media. Morier {Second Journey through 
Persia, &c., chap. 23) names it the pass of Charvar. 
(Compare Sainte-Croix, Examen des Hist. d'Alcx.,p. 
688, seqq., and 862, ed. 2d.) It is vaguely applied by 
Tacitus and some other ancient writers to different 
passes of Mount Caucasus. {Malte-Brun, Geogr., 
vol. 2, p. 13, Brussels ed.) For the Caucasian and Al¬ 
banian gates, vid. Caucasus. 

Caspii, a nation dwelling along the southern borders 
of the Caspian Sea, and giving name to it, according to 
Ritter. {Erdkunde, vol. 2, p. 899, seqq.) They appear 
to have been at one time a powerful commercial peo¬ 
ple, and to have occupied, in the time of the Persian 
dominion, the country answering to Ghilan and Der- 
bend. Their name is supposed to have been derived 
from the term Casp, signifying “ a mountainT {Ritter, 
l. c.) Gatterer is wrong in placing them between the 
Sea of Aral and the northeastern shore of the Caspian, 
from which quarter, according to him, they advanced 
into the country of the Sarmatae, and afterward, in the 
first century of our era, emigrated into Europe. (Con¬ 
sult Bahr, ad Herod., 3, 95, and compare Ptol., 7, 1.— 
Mela , 3, 5.) 

Caspium mare, a celebrated inland sea of Upper 
Asia, deriving its name either from the Caspii along 
its southern shores {vid. Caspii), or from Casp, “a 
mountain,” in allusion to its vicinity to Caucasus. 
According to the latest astronomical observations and 
local measurements, it extends from north to south, in 
a longitudinal direction, nearly all of equal width, ex¬ 
cepting a contraction which occurs at the encroach¬ 
ment made by the peninsula of Apsheron. The nor¬ 
thern end forms a large bay, turning round from the 
north to the northeast, and approaching to the basin 
of the Sea of Aral. The length of the Caspian may 
be estimated at 760 miles, in a line drawn from north 
to south, that is, from the bay of Kolpinskom, on the 
west of the river Ural, to Balfoosh. This line, how¬ 
ever, crosses the peninsula of Karagan. Its smallest 


width is 113, and its greatest width 275 miles. The 
situation of this sea, though now well known, was not 
ascertained a hundred years ago. The ancients la¬ 
boured under a general mistake of its being a gulf of 
the Northern Ocean, and this was not corrected till 
the second century of our era. Ptolemy re-establish- 
e(? the fact, which had been known to Herodotus, and 
perhaps to Aristotle. The Caspian Sea was then re¬ 
stored in the maps to the form of a lake or inland sea, 
separate on all sides from the northern and every other 
ocean. But, instead of having its longest diameter in 
a direction from north to south, it was described as 
longest from east to west. One reason for this view 
of it was, that the Northern Ocean was still thought to 
come much nearer to it than it did, and not to leave 
room in a northerly direction for the dimensions of this 
sea, the total extent of which was pretty well known. 
Besides this, the Sea of Aral, being imperfectly known, 
was considered as a part of the Caspian Sea. This 
notion is shown to have been entertained by the opin¬ 
ion which the ancients had of the mouth of the river 
Oxus. {Vid. Oxus.) — The level of the Caspian Sea 
is much lower than that of the ocean or the Black 
Sea. Olivier makes a difference of 64 feet. Lowitz, 
whose researches seem to have been unknown to that 
learned traveller, makes it only 53. The north and 
south winds, acquiring strength from the elevation of 
the shore, added to the facility of their motion along 
the surface of the water, exercise a powerful influence 
in varying the level of the water at the opposite ex¬ 
tremities. Hence its variations have a range of from 
four to eight feet, and powerful currents are generated 
both with the rising and subsiding of the winds. It 
has also been said to be subject to another variation, 
which observes very distant periods. We are told, 
that since 1556, the waters of the sea have encroached 
on the Russian territory to the north. This is a fact 
which might deserve to be better ascertained. The 
depth of this sea is inconsiderable, except at the 
southern extremity, where bottom has not been found 
at a depth of 2400 feet. {Sainte-Croix, Examen des 
Historiens d'Alexandre, p. 701.) Pallas, and others, 
have indulged in the geological speculation first ad¬ 
vanced by Yarenius, of the former existence of a much 
greater extension of this sea to the northwest, and a 
union of it with the Palus Maeotis, or Sea of Azof, 
along the low grounds, abounding in shells and saline 
plants. But of such an extension not the slightest 
historical trace is to be found in any creditable author. 
The ideas of the ancient geographers respecting a great 
extension of this sea to the east have no relation to 
this supposed strait. The voyage of the Argonauts 
would not be at all explained by such a strait, and re¬ 
quires no such explanation.—But what becomes, itmay 
be asked, of all the water which so many rivers pour 
into the Caspian Sea 1 Do they flow into two sub¬ 
terranean communications, which connect this sea 
with the Persian Gulf, and which some travellers pre¬ 
tend to have seen! {Struy's Travels , p. 126.— Avril, 
Voyages, &c., p. 73.) Tunnels of this kind have at 
all times been considered by the judicious as purely 
imaginary. — {Kaempfer, Amoenitat. Exot., p. 254.) 
The willow-leaves found in the Persian Gulf do not 
require to come from Ghilan, or any other part of the 
Caspian shore, the banks of the Euphrates being suf¬ 
ficient to furnish them. The waters of the Caspian 
Sea, like those of the ocean, give off their superfluity 
by evaporation. This evaporation has been considered 
as established by the extreme humidity of the air in 
Daghistan, Shirwan, Ghilan, and Mazanderan; but 
no such phenomena as these are required for the dem¬ 
onstration.—Round the mouths of the rivers the wa¬ 
ter is fresh, but becomes moderately salt towards the 
middle of the sea, though less so than that of the 
ocean. In addition to the usual ingredients of sea¬ 
water, it contains a considerable quantity of sulphuric 




CAS 


CASSANDER. 


acid, which is obtained from it in union with soda, that 
is, in the state' of Glauber’s salt. ( Gmelin , Voyage , 
vol. 3, p. 267.) The northwest winds are said to di¬ 
minish the saltness, and to increase the bitterness of 
the water. The powerful phosphorescence of the thick, 
muddy waters of the Caspian Sea is remarked by 
Pallas. The black colour which they assume at a 
great distance from the shore is nothing more than 
the effect of the depth, and owing to the same optical 
cause which makes the ocean appear comparatively 
dark and blue instead of light green, in deep places 
where the colour of the bottom does not intermix 
itself with the natural colour of the water. It would 
serve little purpose to enumerate all the names which 
have been given to this sea. The “ Caspian” is one 
of the most ancient. This name is not only common 
to the Greek and Latin languages, but enters into the 
Georgian, the Armenian, and the Syriac. (Wahl, 
Asien, vol. 1, p. 679, s<*qq.) The Jewish Rabbis and 
Peritsol call it the Dead Sea. The Turkish denom¬ 
ination for it, Khoosghoon Denghizi, is variously trans¬ 
lated, but no probable etymology is assigned. The 
Byzantine and Arabian writers call it the sea of Kho- 
zares, after a powerful nation ; and the Russian an- 
’nalists knew it in the tenth century under the name of 
Gualenskoi or Shwalenskoi-More, after the Shawlis a 
Slavonian people, not much known, that lived on the 
Wolga. The name given to this sea in the Zenda- 
Yesta is, however, worthy of remark. That apocry¬ 
phal work, which is full of old traditions, calls this sea 
Tchekaet Daeti, or “the great water of the judgment.” 
Perhaps Noah’s flood, as described in some of the 
Eastern traditions, might have a connection with a 
sinking of the earth, which had destroyed the inhabit¬ 
ants of an extensive country, and converted it into this 
remarkable sea. ( Malte-Brun, Geogr., vol. 2, p. 130, 
Brussels ed.) 

Cassander, son of Antipater. A short time before 
the death of Alexander, he crossed over into Asia for 
the purpose of defending his father against the accusa¬ 
tions of Olympias ; and when, after the decease of the 
Macedonian monarch, Antipater was appointed regent, 
his son received from him the command of the Asiatic 
horse. The ambitious views, however, of the young 
Cassander, induced his parent to bequeath to him no 
share in the government, and Cassander, therefore, 
wishing to annul the arrangements which his father 
had made at his death, gave Nicanor the command of 
the garrison in the Munychia at Athens, by means of 
secret orders, before the news of his father’s death 
could reach that city, and thus secured for himself an 
important stronghold. He then crossed over into 
Asia, in order to secure the co-operation of Ptolemy 
and Antigonus. During his absence, Polysperchon 
sent an army into Attica, and issued a decree for the 
re-establishment of democracy in all the Grecian cities, 
in place of the aristocratic forms of government which 
had been brought in by Alexander. This edict had 
all the effect which Polysperchon intended, and the 
cities of Greece drove out, for the most part, those in¬ 
dividuals who were at the head of their affairs. The 
Athenians, likewise, put many persons to death, in the 
number of whom was the celebrated Phocion, but could 
not dislodge the garrison from the Munychia. Cas¬ 
sander, having returned with troops and vessels, which 
he had obtained from Antigonus, seized upon the Pi¬ 
raeus, and compelled the Athenians to submit once 
more to an aristocratic rule, at the head of which he 
placed Demetrius the Phalerean. He then went into 
Macedonia, where he had many partisans, and con¬ 
ferred the reins of government on Eurydice and her 
husband ; and, after this, returning to the Peloponne¬ 
sus, he drew many of the Grecian cities over to his 
side. While he was occupied with the siege of Tegea 
in Arcadia, Polysperchon, in order to check the influ¬ 
ence of Eurydice, advised the recall of Olympias, the 


mother of Alexander, into Macedon, where it was in¬ 
tended that she should once more enjoy a share of that 
authority in the government, of which, during the re¬ 
gency of Antipater, it had been necessary to deprive 
her. Polysperchon had soon reason, however, to re¬ 
pent of this resolution ; for Olympias, still untaught by 
events, and thirsting for revenge, returned to the Ma¬ 
cedonian capital only to gratify her worst feelings and 
disturb the tranquillity of the state. A powerful rival¬ 
ry soon arose between the two queens, Olympias and 
Eurydice ; and the former, having acquired a moment¬ 
ary ascendency over the affections of the Macedonian 
soldiers, drove out Eurydice and Aridaeus, and after¬ 
ward, on getting possession of their persons, caused 
them both to be despatched by assassins. But the 
rage of the inexorable Olympias was not supported by 
an adequate force. The presence of Cassander in 
Macedonia, who flew thither to avenge the death of 
Eurydice, struck terror into the aged queen, and she 
shut herself up in the city of Pydna. After a long 
resistance, this strongly-fortified place fell before the 
arms of Cassander; Olympias was put to death, and 
the victor married Thessalonica, half-sister of the con¬ 
queror of Asia, who, with other members of the royal 
family, had, by the capture of the place, fallen into his 
hands. The nuptials were celebrated in a style of the 
greatest magnificence, and the active governor chose 
to mark his accession to power by building Cassandrea 
on the Isthmus of Pallene, and by restoring to its an¬ 
cient splendour the city of Thebes. Aspiring now to 
the throne, he found powerful opponents in Antigonus 
and Ptolemy, who, in order to strengthen their side, 
proclaimed liberty for the whole of Greece, and this 
country became, in consequence, the theatre of war, 
which was terminated at last by a treaty, B.C. 311. 
The conditions of this treaty were, that, until Alexan¬ 
der, son of Roxana, should be of age, Cassander was 
to hold the government of Macedon and Greece, Ly- 
simachus that of Thrace, Ptolemy that of Egypt, and 
Antigonus that of Asia. The death of the young 
Alexander was, without doubt, one of the secret con¬ 
ditions of this league, for Cassander caused him to be 
put to death not long after, together with his mother 
Roxana, and no attempt was made by the other con¬ 
tracting parties to punish him for the deed. Polysper¬ 
chon, moreover, influenced by Cassander, put to death 
Hercules, son of Alexander and Barsine. The race 
of Alexander being thus extinct, Antigonus assumed 
the title of king, in which he was imitated by Ptol¬ 
emy, Lysimachus, and Cassander, and these three soon 
found themselves obliged to unite their forces against 
Antigonus and his son Demetrius, who aimed at no¬ 
thing less than reuniting under their sway all the 
countries once ruled over by Alexander. Antigonus 
having lost the battle of Ipsus, B.C. 301, and Deme¬ 
trius being too feeble in point of resources to make any 
effectual opposition, Cassander found himself the tran¬ 
quil possessor of Macedonia. He did not, however, 
long enjoy the fruits of his labours, but died, B.C. 298, 
of a dropsy which ended in the morbus pedicularis. 
He had by Thessalonica three sons, Philip, Antipater, 
and Alexander. It is difficult to form a true opinion 
of the character of this prince. The Greek writers 
have not done justice to him, since they regarded both 
him and his father Antipater as foes to popular free¬ 
dom. We cannot refuse him, however, the praise of 
valour and of considerable talents for government. 
He loved letters, had copied Homer with his own 
hand, and could repeat from memory a large number 
of his verses. Still, however, no excuse can be found 
for his conduct towards the mother and the children of 
Alexander. A grasping ambition alone was the in¬ 
citing cause to these acts of bloodshed.—His son 
Philip succeeded him, but died the same year with his 
father. Antipater, his second son, put to death his 
own mother, for having, after the decease of Cassan- 

311 





CAS 


CAS 


der, favoured, as he thought, the interests of his broth¬ 
er Alexander. The latter, with the aid of Demetrius, 
son of Antigonus, made war upon him for this ; but, 
when about to become reconciled to him, was treach¬ 
erously slain by Demetrius, his own ally ; and Antipa¬ 
ter was afterward put to death by his own father-in- 
law Lysimachus. ( Justin , 13, 4, 18.— Id,., 14, 6, 12. 
— Id., 15, 2, 3. — Id., 16, 2, 1, &c. — Diod. Sic., 18, 
3, seqq. — Id., 18, 54, &c.) 

Cassandra, daughter of Priam and Hecuba. She 
was beloved by Apollo, and promised to listen to his 
addresses, provided he would grant her the knowledge 
of futurity. This knowledge she obtained ; but she 
was regardless of her promise; and Apollo, in re¬ 
venge, determined that no credit should ever be at¬ 
tached to her predictions. Hence her warnings re¬ 
specting the downfall of Troy, and the subsequent 
misfortunes of the race, were disregarded by her coun¬ 
trymen. When Troy was taken, she fled for shelter 
to the temple of Minerva, but was exposed there to the 
brutality of Ajax, the son of O'ileus. In the division 
of the spoils she fell to the share of Agamemnon, and 
was assassinated with him on his return to Mycense. 

( Vid. Agamemnon.) Cassandra was called Priameis 
from her father ; and Alexandra, as the sister of Alex¬ 
ander or Paris.—Lord Bacon considers this fable to 
have been invented to express the inefficacy of unsea¬ 
sonable advice : “For they,” affirms the great philos¬ 
opher, “who are conceited, stubborn, or untractable, 
and listen not to the instructions of Apollo, the god 
of harmony, so as to learn and observe the modula¬ 
tions and measures of affairs, the sharps and flats of 
discourse, the difference between judicious and vulgar 
ears, and the proper times of speech and silence, let 
them be ever so intelligent, and ever so frank of their 
advice, or their counsels ever so good and just, yet all 
their endeavours, either of persuasion or force, are of 
little significance, and rather hasten the ruin of those 
whom they advise. But at last, when the calamitous 
event has made the sufferers feel the effects of their 
neglect, they too late reverence their advisers as deep, 
foreseeing, and faithful prophets.” ( Apollod., 3, 12, 
5-— Virg., Mn., 2, 324.— Bacon, De Sap. Vet., 1.) 

Cassandrea, a city of Macedonia, on the neck of 
the peninsula of Pallene. It was founded by Cassan- 
der, and he transferred to it the inhabitants of several 
neighbouring towns, and, among others, those of Po- 
tidsea, and the remnant of the population of Olynthus. 
Cassandrea is said to have surpassed all the Macedo¬ 
nian cities in opulence and splendour. (Diod. Sic., 
19, 52.) Philip, the son of Demetrius, made use of 
the place as his principal naval arsenal, and at one 
time caused a hundred galleys to be constructed in the 
docks of that port. (Lw., 28, 8.) Pliny speaks of 
Cassandrea as a Roman colony (4, 10). From Pro¬ 
copius we learn that this city at length fell a prey to 
the Huns, who left scarcely a vestige of it remaining. 
(Bell. Pers., 2, 4. — Id., de JEdif., 4, 3. — Niceph. 
Greg., vol. 1 , p. 150.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1 , 
p. 246.) 

Cassia lex was enacted by Cassius Longinus, 
A.U.C. 649. By it no man condemned by the peo¬ 
ple or deprived of military power was permitted to en¬ 
ter the senate-house.—II. Another, that the people 
should vote by ballot.—III. Another, called also fru- 
mentarm, proposed by the consuls C. Cassius and M. 
Terentius, and hence sometimes termed Lex Cassia 
Terentia. It ordained, as is thought, that five modii 
of grain should be given monthly to each of the poorer 
citizens, &c. It was passed A.U.C. 680. (Sail., 
Hist, frag., p. 974, ed. Cort .) 

Cassiodorus, Magnus Aureliqs, an eminent states¬ 
man, orator, historian, and divine, who flourished du¬ 
ring the greater part of the sixth century, under The- 
odoric, Amalasontha and her sons Athalaric, Theo- 
dorus, and Vitiges, by all of whom he was honourably 
312 


employed, and held in high estimation. He was a na¬ 
tive of Scyllacium in Magna Graecia, and descended 
of a noble family, his father having held a considerable 
office under Odoacer. In 514 he was sole consul, 
and afterward commander of the praetorian guard and 
secretary of state. It is in this latter capacity that he 
composed his twelve books of public epistles, or Va- 
riarum (Epistolarum), libri xii., consisting of various 
writings and ordinances prepared by him from time 
to time for the Ostrogothic kings. They are the 
most valuable of his works now extant, and give a 
considerable and curious insight into the history and 
manners of the age in which he lived. The style is 
considered by Gibbon to be quaint and declamatory, 
while Tiraboschi characterizes it as possessing a bar¬ 
barous eloquence. During the whole of his continu¬ 
ance in office, he was the patron of learning and of 
learned men, till the impending dissolution of the 
Gothic kingdom in Italy induced him to retire from 
public life to the enjoyment of a learned leisure in a 
monastery of his own founding near his native place. 
Here he divided his time between the study of the 
Scriptures and other religious writings, and the con¬ 
struction of various mechanical contrivances, such as * 
water-clocks, sundials, curious lamps, &c., and is said 
to have lived in his retirement till 575, when his de¬ 
cease took place in his ninety-sixth year. His writings 
were of various descriptions ; all his orations, highly 
celebrated in their day, are lost; as also is his history 
of the Goths, comprised in twelve books, an abridg¬ 
ment of which by Jornandes is, however, still extant. 
His devotional tracts, consisting of a “ Commentary 
on the Psalms,” “ Institutions of Divine and Human 
Letters,” “ Commentaries on the Epistles of St. Paul,” 

“ On the Acts and Apostolic Epistles, and the Apoc¬ 
alypse/’ &c., w r ere composed by him in his seclusion. 
The editions of his works that we possess are that 
of Gravius, Colon., 1650, 8vo ; that of Garet, Rotom., 
1679, 8vo ; that of Lebrun des Marettes, Paris, 1685, 

2 vols. 4to ; and that of L. A. Muratori, Veron., 1736, 
fol. The last is the best. (Scholl, Hist. Rom. Lit ., 
vol. 3, p. 174 and 328. — Id., vol. 4, p. 114. — Bdhr , 
Gesck. Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. 602.) 

Cassiope and Cassiepea, I. wife of Cepheus, king 
of ^Ethiopia, and mother of Andromeda. Having of¬ 
fended the Nereids by her presumption in setting her¬ 
self before them as regarded beauty, Neptune, sympa¬ 
thizing with the anger of the sea-maidens, laid waste 
the realms of Cepheus by an inundation and a sea- 
monster. (Vid. Andromeda.)—Cassiope was made a 
constellation after death in the southern hemisphere. 

It consists of thirteen stars, and is placed over the 
head of Cepheus. The Arabians compare the stars 
of this constellation to an open hand. (Ideler, Stern- 
namen, p. 81.)—The form Cassiopea, which is some¬ 
times given to the Latin name, is incorrect. It ought 
to be Cassiepea, from the Greek Kaaouneia. (Scah- 
ger, ad Manil., p. 459. — Buttmann in Ideler's Stern- 
namen, p. 308.) — II. A harbour of Epirus, to the 
south of Onchesmus, and probably so called from 
its vicinity to a port and town of the same name 
in the island of Corcyra.—III. A town and harbour 
of Corcyra, to the north of the city of Corcyra, at the 
distance of about 120 stadia. (Cic., Ep. ad Fam., 
16, 9.) It probably derived its name from a temple 
sacred to Jupiter Casius or Cassius. (Plin., 4, 12.— 
Procop. Goth., 4, 22.) Suetonius relates (Vit. Ncr., 
22), that Nero, in a voyage made to this island, sang 
in public at the altar of this god. Ptolemy also no¬ 
tices Cassiope (p. 85), and near it a cape of the same 
name. Its vestiges remain on the spot which is still 
called Santa Maria di Cassopo. The promontory is 
the Cape di Santa Catenna. (Cramer's Anc. Greece, 
vol. 1, p. 162.) 

Cassiterides, islands in the Western Ocean, where 
tin was found, supposed to be the Scilly Islands of the 




CAS 


CAS 


moderns, together with a part of Cornwall. The 
term Cassiterides is derived from the Greek K aaoi- 
repog, tin. The tin was obtained by the islanders 
from the main land, and afterward sold to strangers. 
Solinus (c. 22) mentions these islands under the name 
of Silurum Insula , and Sulpitius Severus (2, c. 51) 
under that of Sylina Insula. {Manncrt, Geogr., vol. 2, 
p. 238.) 

Cassivellaunus, a monarch over part of Britain at 
the time of Caesar’s invasion. His territories were 
separated from the maritime states by the river Ta- 
mesis or Thames. He commanded the confederate 
forces against Caesar. In Dio Cassius the name is 
incorrectly written Hove'kTiav, which Reimar changes 
in the text to K aaoveTiXavov, but, in a note, thinks that 
the true form is KacoveXhav. ( Reim. ad Dion Cass., 
40, 2.) Polyaenus has KaaoXavTiog (8, 23, 5). Bede 
gives Cassabellaunus. Julius Celsus (p. 60) has Cas- 
mellanius, and in another place (p. 61) Casmellaunus. 
Cambden makes Cassivellaunus equivalent to Cassi- 
orum princeps. Caesar makes mention of the Cassi 
(whom Cambden calls Cassii ) in a part of his Com¬ 
mentaries. {Coes., B. G ., 5, 11. — Id. ib., c. 21.— 
Reimar, l. c.) 

Cassius, I., C. or C. Cassius Longinus, one of the 
conspirators against Julius Caesar. Even when a boy 
he is said to have been remarkable for the pride and 
violence of his temper, if we may believe the anec¬ 
dotes recorded of him by Plutarch {Vit. Brut., c. 9) 
and Valerius Maximus (3, 1). He accompanied Cras- 
sus into Parthia as his quaestor, and distinguished him¬ 
self, after the death of his general, by conducting the 
wreck of the Roman army back to Syria in safety. 
At the beginning of the civil war he was one of the 
tribunes of the people. We find him after this com¬ 
manding the Syrian squadron in Pompey’s fleet, and 
infesting the coasts of Sicily. A short time before the 
battle of Pharsalia he had burned the entire fleet of the 
enemy, amounting to thirty-five ships, in the harbour 
of Messaha. The news of Pompey’s defeat, however, 
deterred him from pursuing his advantages, and, re¬ 
signing the contest, he submitted to^Csesar in Asia 
Minor, when the latter was returning from Egypt into 
Italy. Cicero, however, asserts, that at this very time 
Cassius had intended to assassinate the man whose 
clemency he was consenting to solicit, had not an acci¬ 
dent prevented the accomplishment of his purpose. 
{Philipp., 2, 11.) He was not only spared by Caesar, 
but was appointed by him one of his lieutenants, a fa¬ 
vour bestowed by magistrates upon their friends, in 
order to invest them with a public character, and thus 
enable them to reside or to travel in the provinces with 
greater comfort and dignity. Even during the last 
campaign of Caesar in Spain, Cassius wrote to Cicero, 
saying that he was anxious that Caesar should be vic¬ 
torious, for that he preferred an old and merciful mas¬ 
ter to a new and cruel one. {Cic., Ep. ad Fam., 15, 
19.) He also, together with Brutus, was appointed 
one of the praetors for the year 709 {Plut., Vit. 
Brut., c. 7. — Cic., Ep. ad Fam., 11, 2, et 3), at a 
moment in which he was entirely discontented with 
Caesar’s government; and he is said to have been the 
person by whose intrigues the first elements of the 
conspiracy were formed. Cassius had married Junia, 
the sister of Brutus, and it was partly through her 
means that he made his approaches, when seeking to 
gain over her brother and induce him to join in the 
plot. After the assassination of Caesar, Cassius, to¬ 
gether with Brutus, raised an army to maintain his 
country’s freedom. They were met by Octavius and 
Antony at Philippi. The wing which Cassius com¬ 
manded being defeated, he imagined that all was lost, 
and killed himself, B.C. 42. Brutus gave him an 
honourable burial, and called him, with tears, the last 
of the Romans. {Vid. Brutus.) — II. Parmensis, so 
called from his having been born at Parma in Italy, 
R R 


was a Latin poet of considerable talent. He sided 
with Brutus and Cassius in the civil war, and obtain¬ 
ed the office of military tribune. After the defeat of the 
republican forces he retired to Athens, and was put 
to death by Q. Varius, who had been sent for that 
purpose by Octavius. {Schol. ad Horat., Ep., 1, 4, 
3.) He must not be confounded with Cassius the 
Etrurian, who appears to have been a very rapid and 
poor writer. {Horat., Scrm., 1, 10, 61. — Schol., ad 
loc.) Ruhnken inclines to the opinion, that the per¬ 
son sent by Octavius, to put to death Cassius of Par¬ 
ma, was not Varius, but Varus, a commander of his, 
and the same individual to whom Virgil alludes. 
{Ruhnk. ad. Veil. Paterc., 2, 88.) — III. Hemina, an 
early annalist of Rome, who flourished about A.U.C. 
608. {Voss., de Hist. Lat., 1, 7.— Funcc. de Adolcsc., 
L. L., 6, 7. — Maffei, Ver. Illustr., 3, p. 35.)—IV. A 
Roman lawyer, remarkable for his strictness in dis¬ 
pensing justice. Hence severe and rigid magistrates 
were called from him Cassiani Judices. {Cic., pro 
Rose., c. 30.)—V. A Roman orator, distinguished for 
his eloquence, and fond, at the same time, of indul¬ 
ging in satirical composition. He was exiled by Au¬ 
gustus to the island of Seriphus, where he ended his 
days in wretchedness. His full name was T. Cassius 
Severus. {Tacit., Ann., 1, 75.— Id. ib., 4, 21.-— -Lips, 
ad Tacit., 4, 21.) 

Castabala, a city of Cappadocia, northeast of Cy- 
bistra, and near the source of one oftthe branches of 
the-Halys. Col. Leake is inclined to identify it with 
the modern Nigde, but this latter place answers 
rather to Cadyna. Castabala was remarkable for a 
temple sacred to Diana Perasia. It was asserted that 
the priestesses of the goddess could tread with naked 
feet on burning cinders without receiving any injury. 
The statue of Diana was also said to have been the 
identical one brought by Orestes from Tauris, whence 
the name of Perasia, “ from beyond sea” (7 xepa), was 
thought to be derived. {Strab., 538.— Steph. Byz., 
s. v. — Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 132.) 

Castalius fons, or Castalia, I. a celebrated fount¬ 
ain on Mount Parnassus, sacred to the Muses. It 
poured down the cleft or chasm between the two 
summits, being fed by the perpetual snows of the 
mountain. “ The Castalian spring,” says Dodwell, 
“ is clear, and forms an excellent beverage. The 
water, which oozes from the rock, was in ancient 
times introduced into a hollow square, where it was 
retained for the use of the Pythia and the oracular 
priests. The fountain is ornamented with pendent 
ivy, and overshadowed by a large fig-tree. After a 
quick descent to the bottom of the valley, through a 
narrow and rocky glen, it joins the little river Pleis- 
tus.” {Travels, vol. 1, p. 172.)—II. Another in Sy¬ 
ria, near Daphne. The waters of this fountain were 
believed to give a knowledge of futurity to those w ho 
drank them. The oracle at the fountain promised Ha¬ 
drian the supreme power when he was yet in a pri¬ 
vate station. He had the fountain shut up with stones 
when he ascended the throne. {Amm. Mar cell., 22, 
12.— Casaub. ad Spartian., JVit. Hadr., 2. — Id. ad 
Capitol., Vit. Antonin., Philos., c. 8.) 

Castellum, a term of frequent occurrence in an¬ 
cient geography, as indicating some fortified post or 
castle, which in later days became the site of a city. 
The most important of these are, I. Castellum, or, 
as it is sometimes given, Munimentum Trajani, a 
fortified post on the Rhine, strengthened and enlar¬ 
ged by Trajan and Julian. It is now Castel. {Amm. 
Marcell., 17, init.) —II. Castellum Arianorum, now 
Castel-Naudarey in France, in the department of 
Aude. —III. Castellum Baldum, now Castel Baldo, 
on the Adige.—IV. Castellum Hunnorum, now Cas- 
tcllaun in Prussia, on the river Duin. —V. Castel¬ 
lum Menapiorum, now Kesscl , a village on the west¬ 
ern bank of the Maas. —VI. Castellum Morinorum, 

313 




CAS 


CAS 


now Montcassel, northeast of St. Omer in France. — 
VII. Castellum Turentinum, in Picenum, now 
Torre Segura. (Pomp, in Cic., Epist. ad Fam., 8, 
12 .) 

Casthan^a, a town of Thessaly, on the coast of 
Magnesia, northwest of the promontory Sepias. It is 
noticed by Herodotus in his account of the terrible 
storm experienced by the fleet of Xerxes off this coast 
(7, 183. — Compare Strab., 443.'— Plin., 4, 9). The 
name is written by Steph. Byz. Kaoravala (Casta - 
naa), and in the Etymol. Mag. Kaoravia (Castania. 
— Cramer's Anc. Greece , vol. 1, p. 424). 

Castor and Pollux (in Greek K dorup and IIo/l- 
v6evk.t]q), twin brothers, the latter the son of Leda and 
Jupiter, the former of Leda and Tyndarus. (Vid. 
Leda.) The earliest exploit of these twin heroes, 
who were born at Amyclee in Laconia, was the re¬ 
covery of their sister Helen from the hands of Theseus, 
whose mother HEthra they dragged into captivity. 
They took part in all the great undertakings of their 
time, were at the Calydonian hunt, accompanied Her¬ 
cules against the Amazons, sailed in the Argo, and 
aided Peleus to storm Iolcos. Pollux was the most 
distinguished pugilist, Castor the most experienced 
charioteer of his day. Mercury bestowed on them the 
fleet steeds Phlogius and Harpagus, the offspring of 
the harpy Podarge : Juno gave them the swift Xan- 
thus and Cyllarus. The brothers fell into the very 
same offence which they had punished in Theseus. 
Being invited to the wedding-feast by their cousins 
Idas and Lynceus, the sons of Aphareus, who had 
married their cousins Phoebe and Hilaera, the daugh¬ 
ters of Leucippus, they became enamoured of the 
brides, and carried them off. Idas and his brother 
pursued them. In the conflict Castor fell by the spear 
of Idas ; and Pollux, aided by the thunder of Jove, 
slew the two sons of Aphareus. ( Schol. ad 11., 3, 
243.— Schol. ad Pind., Nem., 10, 112.— Hygin., Fab., 
80.) Another account says, that the four heroes 
joined to drive off the herds of the Arcadians. Idas 
was appointed to divide the booty. He killed an ox ; 
and, dividing it into four parts, said that one half of 
the prey should fall to him who had first eaten his 
share, and the remainder to him who next finished. 
He then quickly devoured his own and his brother’s 
part, and drove the whole herd to Messene. The 
Dioscuri (A locKovpoi, Jove's sons), as Castor and his 
brother were called, made war on Messene. Driving 
off all the cattle which they met, they laid themselves 
in ambush in a hollow tree. But Lynceus, whose 
vision could penetrate the trees and the rocks, as¬ 
cended the top of Taygetus, and, looking over on 
the Peloponnesus, saw them there ; whereupon he 
and his brother hastened to attack them. Castor fell 
by the spear of Idas ; Pollux pursued the slayers, and, 
coming up with them at the tomb of their father Apha¬ 
reus, was struck by them in the breast with the pillar 
belonging to it. Unretarded by the blow, he rushed 
on, and killed Lynceus with his spear; and Jupiter, 
at the same moment, struck Idas with a thunderbolt. 
(Schol. ad Pind., Nem., 10, 114.— Tzetz. ad Ly- 
cophr., 511.) Pollux was inconsolable for the loss 
of his brother; and Jupiter, on his prayer, gave him 
his choice of being taken up himself to Olympus, and 
sharing the honours of Mars and Minerva, or of divi¬ 
ding them with his brother, and for them to live day and 
day alternately in heaven and under the earth. Pollux 
chose the latter, and divided his immortality with Cas¬ 
tor. (Pind., Nem., 10, 103, seqq. — Schol. ad Theoc- 
rit., 22, 137, seqq. — Apollod., 3, 11, 2. — Tzetz. ad 
Lycophr., 5, 11 .— Ovid, Fasti, 5, 699, seqq.) — The 
remarkable circumstance of the two brothers living and 
dying alternately, leads at once to a suspicion of their 
being personifications of natural powers and objects. 
This is confirmed by the names in the myth, all of 
Which seem to refer to light or its opposite. Thus, 
314 


Leda differs little from Leto, and may therefore he re¬ 
garded as darkness : she is married to Tyndarus, a 
name which seems to be of a family of words relating 
to light, flame, or heat. (Possibly there may have 
been a Pelasgic word akin to the German ziinden, and 
the Anglo-Saxon tendan, whence the English tinder.) 
The children of Leda by Tyndarus or Jupiter, that is, 
by Jupiter-Tyndarus, “ the bright god," are Helena, 
“ brightness ” (e7ia, light), Castor, “ adorner" (/cdfw, 
“ to adorn" or “ regulate"), and Polydeukes, “ dcwful" 
(devio, Sevnijq). In Helena, therefore, we have only 
another name for Selene, or the moon ; the Adorner 
is a very appropriate name for the day, whose light 
adorns all nature; and nothing can be more apparent 
than the suitableness of Dewful to the night. It is 
rather curious, that, in the legend, Helena is connected 
by birth with Polydeukes rather than with Castor.— 
Another explanation of this myth views the brothers 
as sun and moon, to which their names and the form 
of the legend are equally well adapted. Welcker, 
who adopts this latter opinion, makes Castor the same 
as Astor (Starry), and Polydeukes the same as Poly- 
leukes (Lightful). This latter etymology will remind 
us at once of the Latin form of the name Pol-lux, and 
is much better, as far as we can hazard an opinion, 
than the other derivation, for the name Polydeukes 
given above. (Welcker, Tril., p. 130, 220, 271.) To 
proceed to the other names of the legend, Idas and 
Lynceus, that is, Sight and Light, are the children of 
Aphareus or Phareus, that is, the Shiner ((j)du) ; and 
the two daughters of Leucippus or White-horsed (an 
epithet of the Dioscuri, Eurip., Hel., 639), are Phoebe, 
Brightness, and Hilaera, Joyful (Hapoq), which last 
is an epithet given to the moon by Empedocles. (Plut., 
de Fac. in Orb. Luna, 2.) In the Cypria they were 
called the daughters of Apollo. (Pausan., 3, 16, 1.) 
—That these were original divinities is demonstrated 
by their being objects of worship. The Dioscuri were 
also called Anaces (’Avaneq) or kings, and had their 
temples and statues. They were represented gener¬ 
ally as two youths on horseback, each holding a spear 
in his hand, and their heads surmounted by a circular 
cap, fabled by the poets to be a half egg, in allusion 
to the circumstances of their birth, but referring evi¬ 
dently to the cosmogonical egg, and forming an addi¬ 
tional proof, if one were needed, of the truth of our 
explanation of the legend. The Dioscuri were also 
identified with the Cabiri, and were regarded as the 
protectors of ships in tempests (Eurip., Orest., 1653. 
— Id., Hel., 1663); and the St. Elmo’s fire, as it is 
now termed, was ascribed to them. They were also 
said to be the constellation of the twins. ( Kcightley's 
Mythology, p. 430, seqq.) 

Castra, a term of frequent occurrence in ancient 
geography, and generally indicating the site of some 
Roman or other encampment. From the winter quar¬ 
ters of the Romans, strongly fortified according to es¬ 
tablished custom, and presenting the appearance of cit¬ 
ies in miniature, many towns in Europe are supposed 
to have had their origin; in England particularly those 
the names of which end ip cester or Chester. —The 
principal places indicated by the term castra are as 
follows: I. Castra ad Garumnam, now Castrcs, on 
the Garonne in France.—II. Castra Constantina, 
now Coutances, on the river Soulle in Normandy.— 
III. Castra Cornelia, a city of Africa, in the neigh¬ 
bourhood of Utica, where Scipio pitched his first camp 
in the second Punic war. It is now Gcllah. (Plin., 
5, 4.— Mela, 1, 7.)—IV. Castra Exploratorum, now 
Nctherby, on the borders of Scotland.—V. Castra 
Hannibalis, now Castellcte in Calabria.—VI. Castra 
iNDinoRUM, a place in Lower Egypt, now Jehudieh .— 
VII. Castra Trajana, a place in Dacia, now Ribnik 
in Wallachia. 

Castrum, a term of frequent occurrence in ancient 
geography. The principal places thus designated are 



CAT 


CAT 


as follows: I. Castrum Novum, a town of Etruria, 
south of Centum Cell®, and situate on the coast. It 
is now Santa Marinella. D’Anville, however, makes 
it correspond to the modern Torre Chiarruccia. —II. 
Castrum Inui, a place on the coast of Latium, between 
Antium and Ardea. (Virg.,JEn., 6,775.) Accord¬ 
ing to Livy (1,5), Inuus was the same with Pan.—III. 
Castrum Lucii, now Chains in France, in the de¬ 
partment of Upper Vienne. Here Richard I. of Eng¬ 
land died. — IV. Castrum Sedunum, now Sion in 
Switzerland. It was also called Civitas Sedunorum. 
( Casaub. ad Suet., Vit. Aug., c. 58.) 

Castulo, a town of Hispania B®tica, on the Baetis, 
west of Corduba. Now Cazlona. (Pint., Vit. Sert. 
— Liv., 24, 41.) 

Catabathmus, a great declivity, whence its name, 
K arabadpog, separating Cyrenaica from Egypt. It is 
now called by the Arabs Akabet-assolom. Some an¬ 
cient writers, and in particular Sallust, make this the 
point of separation between Asia and Africa. There 
was another Catabathmus in the Libyan nome, called 
parvus, as this was styled magnus. It lay southeast 
of Paraetonium. (Sallust, Jug., 17 et 19. — Plin., 

5, 5.) 

Catadupa, a name given by the Greek geographers 
to the smaller cataract of the Nile (Cataractes Minor), 
and intended to indicate the loud noise occasioned by 
the fall of the waters (nard and dovno^, a heavy, crash¬ 
ing sound). It was situate in the Thebai's, at Dodeca- 
schcenus, to the south of Elephantina, and near Phi- 
1®. ( Cic., Somn. Scip., c. 5. — Plin., 5, 9. — Senec., 

Qucest. Nat., 4, 2.) The ancients believed that the 
neighbouring inhabitants were deprived of hearing by 
the constant roar of the waters ! (Cic., 1. c.) 

Catana, a city of Sicily, on the eastern coast, at the 
base oLEtna, and a short distance below the river Acis 
and the Cyclopum Scopuli. It was founded by a colony 
from Chalcis in Euboea, five years after the settlement 
of Syracuse. Catana, like all the other colonies of Gre¬ 
cian origin, soon became independent of any foreign 
control, and, in consequence of the fertility of the sur¬ 
rounding country, attained to a considerable degree of 
prosperity. It does not appear, however, to have been 
at any time a populous city ; and hence Hiero of 
Syracuse was enabled without difficulty to transfer 
the inhabitants to Leontini. A new colony of Pel¬ 
oponnesians and Syracusans was established here by 
him, and the place called BStna, from its proximity to 
the mountain. (Diod. Sic., 11, 49.— Pind., Pyth., 1.) 
—After the death of Hiero, the new colonists were 
driven out by the Siculi, and the old inhabitants from 
Leontini then came, and, recovering possession of the 
place, changed its name again to Catana. We find 
Catana after this possessed for a short time by the 
Athenians, and subsequently falling into the hands of 
Dionysius of Syracuse. This tyrant, according to Di¬ 
odorus Siculus (14,15), sold the inhabitants as slaves, 
and gave the city to his mercenary troops, the Cam- 
pani, to dwell in. It is probable, however, that he 
only sold those who were taken with arms in their 
hands, and that many of the old population remained, 
since Dionysius afterward persuaded these same Cam- 
pani to migrate to the city of ..Etna. (Diod. Sic., 14, 
53.) Catana fell into the power of the Romans du¬ 
ring the first Punic war. (Plin., 7, 60.) The mod¬ 
ern name is Catania, and the distance from it to the 
summit of .Etna is reckoned thirty miles. (Mannert, 
Geogr., vol. 9, pt. 2, p. 287.) 

Cataonia, a tract of country in the southern part 
of Cappadocia. The inhabitants were of Cilician ori¬ 
gin. It answers now to the canton of Aladeuli, in the 
pachalic of Adana. (Compare Mannert, Geogr., vol. 

6, pt. 2, p. 222, seqq.) 

Cataractes, I. a river of Pamphylia, falling into 
the sea near Attalia. It derived its ancient name 
from its impetuosity. Now Dodensoui.- —II. A river 


of Asia Minor, the same with the Marsyas. (Compare 
Larcher, Hist. d'Herodote, vol. 8, p. 104. — Table Ge¬ 
ogr aphiquc, and the authorities there cited.) 

Cath^ea, a country of Asia, the precise situation 
of which is doubtful. Mannert places it northeast of 
the Malli, in the vicinity of the Hydraotes. The chief 
town was Sangala. Diodorus Siculus calls the people 
Catheri. Thevenot is supposed to allude to their de¬ 
scendants under the name of Cattry , that is, the Kuttry 
tribe or Rajpoots. (Mannert, Geogr., vol. 5, p. 56.) 

CatilIna, L. Sergius, a Roman of patrician rank, 
and the last of the gens Scrgia. Of his father and 
grandfather little is known : the former would seem 
to have been in indigent circumstances, from the lan¬ 
guage of Quintus Cicero (de Petitione Consulatus, c. 
2), who speaks of Catiline as having been born amid 
the poverty of his father (in patns egestate). The 
great-grandfather, M. Sergius Silus or Silo, distin¬ 
guished himself greatly in the second Punic war, and 
was present in the battles of Ticinus, Trebia, Trasy- 
rnenus, and Cann®. Pliny (7, 29) speaks of his ex¬ 
ploits in a very animated strain.—The cruelty of Cat¬ 
iline’s disposition, his undaunted resolution, and the 
depravity of his morals, fitted him for acting a distin¬ 
guished part in the turbulent and bloody scenes of the 
period in which he lived. He embraced the interest 
of Sylla, in whose army he held the office of qu®stor. 
That monster in his victory had in Catiline an able 
coadjutor, whose heart knew no sympathy and his 
lewdness no bounds. He rejoiced in the carnage and 
plunder of the proscribed, gratifying at one time his 
own private resentments by bringing his enemies to 
punishment, and executing at another the bloody man¬ 
dates of the dictator himself. Many citizens of no¬ 
ble birth are said by Quintus Cicero (de Petit. Cons., 
c. 23) to have fallen by his hand ; and, according to 
Plutarch (Vit. Syll., c. 32.— Vit. Cic., c. 10), he had 
assassinated his own brother during the civil war, and 
now, to screen himself from prosecution, persuaded 
Sylla to put him down among the proscribed as a per¬ 
son still alive. He murdered too, with his own hands, 
his sister’s husband, a Roman knight of a mild and 
peaceable character. (Q. Cic., de Petit. Cons., c. 3.) 
One of the most horrid actions, however, of which he 
was guilty, would seem to have been the killing of 
M. Marius Gratidianus, a near relative of the celebrated 
Marius. Sylla had put the name of this individual on 
the list of the proscribed, whereupon Catiline entered 
the dwelling of the unfortunate man, exhausted upon 
his person all the refinements of cruelty and insult, 
and having at last put an end to his existence, carried 
his bloody head in triumph through the streets of Rome, 
and brought it to Sylla as he sat on his tribunal in the 
forum. When this was done, the murderer washed 
his hands in the lustral water at the door of Apollo’s 
temple, which stood in the immediate vicinity. (Sen¬ 
eca, de Ira, 3, 18.)—Catiline was peculiarly dangerous 
and formidable, as his power of dissimulation enabled 
him to throw a veil over his vices. Such was his 
art, that, while he was poisoning the minds of the Ro¬ 
man youth, he gained the friendship and esteem of the 
severe Catulus. Equally well qualified to deceive the 
good, to intimidate the weak, and to inspire his own 
boldness into his depraved associates, he evaded two 
accusations brought against him by Clodius, for crim¬ 
inal intercourse with a Vestal, and for monstrous ex¬ 
tortions of which he had been guilty while proconsul 
in Africa (A.U.C. 687). He was suspected also of 
having murdered his first wife and his son. A con¬ 
federacy of many young men of high birth and daring 
character, who saw no other means of extricating 
themselves from their enormous debts than by obtain¬ 
ing the highest offices of the state, having been formed, 
Catiline was placed at their head. This eminence he 
owed chiefly to his connexion with the old soldiers of 
Sylla, by means of whom he kept in awe the towns 

315 






CATILINA. 


CATILINA. 


near Rome, and even Rome itself. At the same time 
he numbered among his adherents not only the worst 
and lowest of the riotous populace, but also many of 
the patricians and men of consular rank. Everything 
favoured his audacious scheme. Pompey was pursu¬ 
ing the victories which Lucullus had prepared for him, 
and the latter was but a feeble supporter of the patriots 
in the senate, who wished him, but in vain, to put 
himself at their head. Crassus, who had delivered It¬ 
aly from the gladiators, was now striving with mad 
eagerness after power and riches, and, instead of op¬ 
posing, countenanced the growing influence of Cati¬ 
line, as a means of his own aggrandizement. Caesar, 
who was labouring to revive the party of Marius, spared 
Catiline, and, perhaps, even encouraged him. Only two 
Romans remained determined to uphold their falling 
country—Cato and Cicero ; the latter of whom alone 
possessed the qualifications necessary for the task. 
The conspirators were now planning the elevation of 
Catiline and one of his accomplices to the consulship. 
When this was effected, they hoped to obtain possession 
of the public treasures and the property of the citizens, 
under various pretexts, and especially by means of pro¬ 
scription. It is not probable, however, that Catiline 
had promised them the liberty of burning and plunder¬ 
ing Rome. Cicero had the courage to stand candi¬ 
date for the consulship, in spite of the impending dan¬ 
ger, of the extent of which he was perfectly aware. 
Neither insults nor threats, nor even riots and attempts 
to assassinate him, deterred him from his purpose ; 
and, being supported by the rich citizens, he gained 
his election, B.C. 65. All that the party of Catiline 
could accomplish was the election of Caius Antonius, 
one of their accomplices, as colleague of Cicero. This 
failure, however, did not deprive Catiline of the hope 
of gaining the consulship the following year. For 
this purpose he redoubled the measures of terror, by 
means of which he had laid the foundation of his pow¬ 
er. Meanwhile he had lost some of the most impor¬ 
tant members of his conspiracy. Antony had been 
prevailed upon or compelled by Cicero to remain neu¬ 
tral. Caesar and Crassus had resolved to do the same. 
Piso had been killed in'Spain. Italy, however, was 
destitute of troops. The veterans of Sylla only waited 
the signal to take up arms. This signal was now 
given by Catiline. The centurion Manlius appeared 
among them, and formed a camp in Etruria. Cicero 
was on the watch, and a fortunate accident disclosed 
to him the counsels of the conspirators. One of them, 
Curius, was on intimate terms with a woman of doubt¬ 
ful reputation, Fulvia by name, and had acquainted 
her with their plans. Through this woman Cicero 
learned that two knights had undertaken to assassi¬ 
nate him at his house. On the day which they had 
fixed for the execution of their plan, they found his 
doors barred and guarded. Still Cicero delayed to 
make public the circumstances of a conspiracy, the 
progress and resources of which he wished first to as¬ 
certain. He contented himself with warning his fel¬ 
low-citizens, in general terms, of the impending dan¬ 
ger. But when the insurrection of Manlius was made 
known, he procured the passage of the celebrated de¬ 
cree,“ that the consuls should take care that the re¬ 
public received no detriment.” By a decree of this 
kind, the consuls or other magistrates named therein 
were, in accordance with the custom of the state, 
armed with the supreme civil and military authority. 
It was exceedingly difficult to seize the person of one 
who had soldiers at his command, both in and out of 
Rome; still more difficult would it be to prove his 
guilt before those who were accomplices with him, or, 
at least, were willing to make use of his plans to serve 
their own interests. He had to choose between two 
evils—a revolution within the city, or a civil war: he 
preferred the latter. Catiline had the boldness to take 
his seat in the senate, known as he was to be the ene- 
316 


my of the Roman state. Cicero then rose and deliv¬ 
ered that bold oration against him, which was the 
means of saving Rome by driving Catiline from the 
city. The conspirators who remained, Lentulus, Ce- 
thegus, and other infamous senators, engaged to 
head the insurrection in Rome as soon as Catiline 
appeared at the gates. According to Cicero and Sal¬ 
lust, it was the intention of the conspirators to set 
the city on fire, and massacre the inhabitants. At any* 
rate, these horrid consequences might have easily fol¬ 
lowed from the circumstances of the case, without any 
previous resolution. Lentulus, Cethegus, and the 
other conspirators, in the mean while, were carrying on 
their criminal plots. They applied to the ambassa¬ 
dors of the Allobroges to transfer the war to the fron¬ 
tiers of Italy itself. These, however, revealed the 
plot, and their disclosures led to others still more im¬ 
portant. The correspondence of the conspirators 
with their leader was intercepted. The senate had 
now a notorious crime to punish. As the circum¬ 
stances of the case did not allow of a minute observ¬ 
ance of form in the proceedings against the conspira¬ 
tors, the laws relating thereto were disregarded, as 
had been done in former instances of less pressing 
danger. Caesar spoke against immediate execution, 
but Cicero and Cato prevailed. Five of the conspira¬ 
tors were put to death. Caius Antonius was then ap¬ 
pointed to march against Catiline, but, on the eve of 
battle, under pretence of being disabled by the gout, 
he gave the command to his lieutenant Petreius. The 
battle was fought at Pistoria (now Pistoia ) in Etruria, 
and ended in the complete overthrow of the insurgents. 
Catiline, on finding that all was lost, resolved to die 
sword in hand. His followers imitated his example.— 
The history of Catiline’s conspiracy has been written 
by Sallust. The conspiracy of Catiline, as described 
by this historian and Cicero, is considered by some 
persons to contain many improbabilities. It is incredi¬ 
ble, say they, that a man like Catiline, unconnected 
with the regular popular party, should have seriously 
hoped to effect a revolution ; nor can it be believed 
that any of the nobility would have submitted them¬ 
selves to the guidance of such a leader. Even if he 
had succeeded in setting fire to the city and destroy¬ 
ing the principal senators, the prsetor of the nearest 
province would presently have marched against him, 
and would have crushed him with little difficulty. 
But they who argue thus, forget that Catiline was a 
patrician of noble family; that he had been praetor; 
and that he was considered by Cicero as his most dan¬ 
gerous competitor for the consulship when he was 
candidate for that office. He had been known in Syl- 
la’s proscription as a man who scrupled at nothing; 
and there was a large party in Rome to whom such a 
character was the greatest recommendation, and who 
would gladly follow any one that possessed it. That 
this party was inconsiderable in point ofpolitical power, 
is true ; and they accordingly hoped to effect their de¬ 
sires by fire and assassination rather than by open 
force. But if Catiline could have once made himself 
master of the city, no one can doubt but that he would 
have found a majority in the Comitia ready, either 
from fear or sympathy in his projects, to elect him 
consul or dictator; and, when once invested with the 
title of a legal magistrate, and in possession of the 
seat of government, he would probably have persuaded 
a very great part of the community to remain neu¬ 
tral, while his own active supporters, the profligate 
young nobility, the needy plebeians, the discontented 
Italian allies, and the restless veterans of Sylla’s ar¬ 
mies, would have enabled him to defy the efforts of 
any neighbouring prsetor who might have been dis¬ 
posed to attack him. He might have held the govern¬ 
ment as easily as Cinna had done ; and, although 
Pompey might have imitated successfully the con¬ 
duct of Sylla, in returning from Asia to revenge the 



CAT 


CATO. 


cause of the aristocracy, yet the chance of resisting 
him was not so hopeless as to dismay a set of despe¬ 
rate conspirators, who, in their calculations, would 
have been well contented if the probability of their 
failure was only a little greater than that of their suc¬ 
cess. (Sail., Bell. Cat. — Cic., Or. in Cat., 1 , &c.— 
Id., pro Murcen., c. 25.— Encyclop. Amer., vol. 3, p. 
3, seqq. — Encyclop. Metropol., Div. 3, vol. 2, p. 176, 
not.) 

Catillus or Catilus. Vid. Tibur. 

Catius, M. a fictitious name in Horace ( Serm., 2, 
4), under which the poet alludes to an entire class of 
persons, who abused the genuine doctrines of Epicu¬ 
rus, and made a large portion of human felicity con¬ 
sist in the pleasures of the table. According to Manso 
(Schriften und Abhandlungen, p. 59), Catius appears 
to have had for his prototype one Malius, a Roman 
knight, famed for his acquaintance with the precepts 
of the culinary art. (Consult Heindorf, ad Horat., 1. c.) 
—The scholiast cited by Cruquius makes Catius to 
have been an Epicurean, and to have written on “ the 
Nature of Things,” and “ the Sovereign Good.” With 
this account Acron and Porphyrion agree. Cicero, 
moreover, speaks of the Epicurean Catius, from Insu- 
bria, as of a writer who had died only a short time pre¬ 
vious. (Cic., Ep. ad Fam., 15, 16.—Compare Quin- 
til., 10, 1.) Still, however, the explanation we have 
given suits better the spirit of Horace’s satire ; and, 
besides, Catius had died some time before, and was 
almost entirely forgotten. (Heindorf, l. c.) 

Cato, a surname of the Porcian family, rendered 
illustrious by M. Porcius Cato, a celebrated Roman, 
surnamed Censorius, in allusion to the severity with 
which he discharged the office of a censor, and hence 
commonly styled, at the present day, “ Cato the Cen¬ 
sor.” Other surnames were, Priscus, “ the old,” and 
Major, “ the elder,” both alluding to his having pre¬ 
ceded, in the order of time, the younger Cato, who 
committed suicide at Utica. The subject of the pres¬ 
ent sketch was born 232 B.C., at Tusculum, of ple¬ 
beian parents. His family were in very moderate cir¬ 
cumstances, and little, if anything, was known of it, 
until he himself made the name a conspicuous one. 
His father left him a small farm in the Sabine terri¬ 
tory, and here the first years of his youth were spent. 
The state of public affairs, however, soon compelled 
him to take up arms for the defence of his country. 
The second Punic war had broken out, and Hannibal 
had invaded Italy. Cato, therefore, served his first 
campaign at the age of seventeen, under Fabius Maxi¬ 
mus, when he besieged the city of Capua. Five 
years after this he fought under the same commander 
at the siege ofTarentum, and, after the capture of this 
place, became acquainted with the Pythagorean Near- 
chus, who initiated him into the principles of that 
system of philosophy, with which, in practice, he had 
already become familiar. The war being*ended, Cato 
returned to his farm. Near this there stood a cot¬ 
tage belonging to Manius Curius Dentatus, who had 
repeatedly triumphed over the Sabines and Samnites, 
and had at length driven Pyrrhus from Italy. Cato was 
accustomed frequently to walk over to the humble 
abode of this renowned commander, where he was 
struck with admiration at the frugality of its owner, 
and the skilful management of the farm which was 
attached to it. Hence it became his great object to 
emulate his illustrious neighbour, and adopt him as his 
model. Having made an estimate of his house, lands, 
slaves, and expenses, he applied himself to husbandry 
with new ardour, and retrenched all superfluity. In 
the morning he went to the small towns in the vicinity 
to plead and defend the causes of those who applied 
to him for assistance. Thence he returned to his 
fields ; where, with a plain cloak over his shoulders in 
winter, and almost naked in summer, he laboured with 
his servants till they had concluded their tasks, after 


which he sat down along with them at table, eating 
the same bread and drinking the same wine. Valerius 
Flaccus, a noble and powerful Roman, occupied an 
estate in the neighbourhood of Cato’s residence. A 
witness of the virtues and talents displayed by him, he 
persuaded the young Cato to remove to Rome, and 
promised to assist him by his influence and patronage. 
Cato came accordingly to the capital, with an obscure 
name, and with no other resources but his own talents 
and the aid of the generous Flaccus ; but by the purity 
of his morals, the austere energy of his character, his 
knowledge of the laws, his fluency of elocution, and 
the great ability that marked his early forensic career, 
he soon won for himself a distinguished name. It 
was in the camp, however, rather than at the bar, that 
he strove to raise himself to eminence. At the age of 
thirty he went as military tribune to Sicily. The next 
year he was chosen quaestor, and was attached to the 
army which Scipio Africanus was to carry into Africa, 
at which period there commenced between him and 
that commander a rivalry and hatred which lasted un¬ 
til death. Cato, who had returned to Rome, accused 
Scipio of extravagance ; and, though he failed in sup¬ 
porting his charge, yet his zeal for the public good gain¬ 
ed him great influence over the minds of the people. 
Five years subsequent to this, after having been already 
sedile, he was chosen praetor, and the province of Sar¬ 
dinia fell to him by lot. His austere self-control, his 
integrity and justice, while discharging this office, 
brought him into direct and most favourable contrast 
with those who had preceded him. Here too it was 
that he became acquainted with the poet Ennius, who 
was then serving among the Calabrian levies attached 
to the army. From Ennius he acquired the Greek 
language, and, on his departure from the island, he 
took the bard along with him to Rome. He was final¬ 
ly elected consul, B.C. 193, and his colleague in office 
was Valerius Flaccus, his early friend. While consul 
he strenuously but fruitlessly opposed the abolition of 
the famous Oppian Law (vid. Oppia Lex), and soon after 
this set out for Spain, which had attempted to shake 
off the Roman yoke. With newly-raised troops, which 
he soon converted into an excellent army, he quickly 
reduced that province to submission, and obtained the 
honours of a triumph at Rome, though there is but 
too much reason to believe that he had justly exposed 
himself, in the eyes of a candid historian, if such a 
one could then have been found among his country¬ 
men, to the charge of perfidious conduct and cruelty. 
Hardly had Cato descended from the triumphal char¬ 
iot, when, laying aside the consular robe and assu¬ 
ming the garb of the lieutenant, he accompanied, as 
such, the Roman commander Sempronius into Thrace. 
He afterward placed himself under the orders of Ma¬ 
nius Acilius, the consul, to fight against Antiochus, 
and carry the war into Thessaly. By a bold march 
he seized upon Callidromus, one of the rockiest sum¬ 
mits of Thermopylae, and thus decided the issue of 
the conflict. For this signal service, the consul, in the 
excess of his enthusiasm, embraced him in the presence 
of the whole army, and exclaimed that it was neither 
in his power, nor in that of the Roman people, to 
award him a recompense commensurate with his de¬ 
serts. Acilius immediately after this sent him to Rome 
to communicate the tidings of the victory. Seven years 
subsequently he obtained the office of censor, not¬ 
withstanding the powerful opposition of a large part of 
the nobility, who dreaded to have so severe an in¬ 
spector of public morals, at a time when luxury, the 
result of their Asiatic conquests, had driven out many 
of the earlier virtues of the Roman people. He ful¬ 
filled this trust with inflexible rigour. Some of his 
acts, it is true, would seem to have proceeded from 
that pugnacious bitterness which must be contracted 
by a man engaged in constant strife and inflictions : 
thus, for example, he took away his horse from Lu- 

317 



CATO. 


CATO. 


cius Scipio, and expelled Manilius from the senate for 
saluting his wife at what Cato deemed an improper 
time. Still, however, most of his proceedings when 
censor indicate a man who aimed, by every method, 
at keeping up the true spirit of earlier days. Hence, 
though his measures, while holding this office, caused 
him some obloquy and opposition, they met in the end 
with the highest applause, and, when he resigned the 
censorship, the people erected a statue to him in the 
temple of Health, with an honourable inscription, tes¬ 
tifying his faithful discharge of the duties of his of¬ 
fice. Cato’s attachment to the old Roman morals 
was still more plainly seen in his opposition to Car- 
neades and his colleagues, when he persuaded the sen¬ 
ate to send back these philosophers, without delay, to 
their own schools, through fear lest the Roman youth 
should lose their martial character in the pursuit of 
Grecian learning. The whole political career of Cato 
was one continued warfare. He was continually ac¬ 
cusing others, or made the subject of accusation him¬ 
self. Livy, although full of admiration for his charac¬ 
ter, still does not seek to deny, that Cato was sus¬ 
pected of having excited the accusation brought against 
Scipio Africanus, which compelled that illustrious man 
to retire from the capital. He was also the means of 
the condemnation of Scipio Asiaticus, who would 
have been dragged to prison had not Tiberius Grac¬ 
chus generously interfered. As for Cato himself, 
he was fifty times accused and as often acquitted. 
He was eighty-five years of age when he saw himself 
compelled to answer the last accusation brought against 
him, and the exordium of his speech on that occasion 
was marked by a peculiar and touching simplicity: “ It 
is a hard thing, Romans, to give an account of one’s 
conduct before the men of an age different from that 
in which one has himself lived.”—The last act of Ca¬ 
to’s public life was his embassy to Carthage, to settle 
the dispute between the Carthaginians and King Mas- 
sinissa. This voyage of his is rendered famous in his¬ 
tory, since to it has been attributed the destruction of 
Carthage. In fact, struck by the rapid recovery of 
this city from the loss it had sustained, Cato ever af¬ 
ter ended every speech of his with the well-known 
words, “ Praterea censeo Carthaginem esse delendam ” 
(“ I am also of opinion that Carthage ought to be de¬ 
stroyed”). Whatever we may think of his patriotism 
in this, we certainly cannot admire his political saga- 
city, since the ruin of Carthage, by removing all dread 
of a once powerful rival, only tended to accelerate 
the downfall of Roman freedom itself. Cato died a 
year after his return from this embassy, in the eighty- 
fifth year of his age.—Although frugal of the public 
revenues, he does not appear to have been indifferent 
to riches, nor to have neglected the ordinary means of 
acquiring them ; nay, if Plutarch speaks truly, some 
of the modes to which he had recourse for increasing 
his resources were anything but reputable. Towards 
the end of his life he was fond of indulging in a cheer¬ 
ful glass, and of inviting daily some of his neighbours 
to sup with him at his villa; and the conversation 
on these occasions turned, not, as one might have sup¬ 
posed, chiefly on rural affairs, but on the praises of 
great and excellent men among the Romans. He was 
twice married, and had a son by each of his wives. 
His conduct as a husband and father was equally ex¬ 
emplary. Cato may be taken as a specimen of the 
Sabino-Samnite character. If his life be regarded as 
that of a mere private man, it offers only acerbity and 
rigour: it presents, however, a wholly different as¬ 
pect if one contemplates him as the representative of 
the early Italian popular character. Many features of 
this same character strikingly resemble the modern. 

V\ ho does not, in Cato’s vehement bitterness, retrace 
a leading feature of the modern Italian, so vehement 
and implacable when his feelings are once irritated t 
Who knows not that in Italy is most frequently to 
318 


be found the strange combination of grovelling cupidity 
and boundless indifference towards external goods'? 
As to what regards the first point, we need not, as 
in other cases, betake ourselves to Plutarch’s collec¬ 
tion of anecdotes ; we can judge of it from Cato’s 
own work on husbandry and household economy. 
At the very outset of-the book, he sees nothing to 
find fault with in a respectable man’s endeavouring to 
enrich himself by trade ; for profit and gain appear 
to him an important object of life ; only he looks 
upon the mercantile profession as too hazardous in 
its nature.—While we recognise with pleasure, even 
in Cato’s generation, the old Sabine discipline in the 
simplicity of life, rural employments, and social cheer¬ 
fulness of the Roman country nobleman, yet we per¬ 
ceive with horror that the treatment of slaves, even in 
ancient Italy and according to old Roman manners, 
was still more degrading to humanity than in Greece. 
Cato bought slaves like hounds or foals, when they 
were young, in order to" sell them again when grown 
up ; he treated them exactly like hounds or foals ; 
used them well, because they had a money value, but 
otherwise viewed them merely as live-stock, not as 
persons. This, however, we find less surprising, since, 
even in his warlike undertakings, Cato opposed rigour 
and cruelty, as genuine Roman policy, to Scipio’s 
mildness. His advice, however, to the farmer, as to 
the mode in which old and sickly slaves are to be dis¬ 
posed of, shows an utter want of good feeling. He 
classes them with old and worn-out iron implements , 
and recommends them to he sold: “ Ferr amenta vcte- 
ra, servum scncm, servum morbosum, ct si quid aliud 
super sit vcndat .” ( R. R., 2, p. 12, ed. Bip.)~ Among 

the literary labours of Cato, the first that deserves 
mention is the treatise De Re Rustica (“On Agri¬ 
culture”). It appears to have come down to us in a 
mutilated state, since Pliny and other writers allude 
to subjects as treated of by Cato, and to opinions as 
delivered by him in this book, which are nowhere to be 
found in any part of the work now extant. In its 
present state, it is merely the loose, unconnected jour¬ 
nal of a plain farmer, expressed with rude, sometimes 
with almost oracular, brevity ; and it wants all those 
elegant topics of embellishment and illustration which 
the subject might have so naturally suggested. It 
consists solely of the dryest rules of agriculture, and 
some receipts for making various kinds of cakes and 
wine. Servius says, it is addressed to the author’s 
son, but there is no such address now extant. The 
most remarkable feature in this work of Cato's is its 
total want of arrangement. It is divided, indeed, into 
chapters, but the author apparently had never taken 
the trouble of reducing his precepts to any sort of 
method, or of following any general plan. The hun¬ 
dred and sixty-two chapters, of which this work con¬ 
sists, seem so many rules committed to writing, as the 
daily labours of the field suggested. He gives direc¬ 
tions about the vineyard, then goes to his corn-fields, 
and returns again to the vineyard. His treatise, there- 
fore, was evidently not intended as a regular and well- 
composed book, but merely as a journal of incidental 
observations. That this was its utmost pretension, is 
farther evinced by the brevity of the precepts, and the 
deficiency of all illustrations or embellishment. Of the 
st y ] e, he of course would be little careful, as his Mem- 
oi anda were intended for the use only of his family 
and slaves. It is therefore always simple, and some¬ 
times rude, but it is not ill-adapted to the subject, and 
suits our notions of the severe manners of its author 
and the character of the ancient Romans.—Besides 
this book on agriculture, Cato left behind him various 
works, which have almost entirely perished. He left 
a hundred and fifty orations ( Cicero , Brutus , c. 17), 
which were existing in the time of Cicero, though al¬ 
most entirely neglected, and a book on military disci¬ 
pline ( Vegehus , 1, 8), both of which, if now extant, 




CATO. 


CATO. 


would be highly interesting, as proceeding from one 
who was equally distinguished in the camp and forum. 
A good many of his orations were in dissuasion or 
favour of particular laws and measures of state. By 
his readiness and pertinacity, and his bitterness in 
speaking, he completely wore out his adversaries ( Liv., 
39, 40), and earned the reputation of being, if not the 
most eloquent, at least the most stubborn, speaker 
among the Romans. Both Cicero and Livy have ex¬ 
pressed themselves very fully on the subject of Cato’s 
orations. The former admits that his “ language is 
antiquated, and some of his phrases harsh and inele¬ 
gant : but only change that,” he continues, “ which it 
was not in his power to change—add number and ca¬ 
dence—give an easier turn to his sentences, and regu¬ 
late the structure and connexion of his words, and 
you will find no one who can claim the preference to 
Cato.” Livy principally speaks of the facility, asperi¬ 
ty, and freedom of his tongue.—Of the book on mili¬ 
tary discipline, a good deal has been incorporated into 
the work of -Vegetius ; and Cicero’s orations may con¬ 
sole us for the want of those of Cato. But the loss of 
the seven books, De Originibus , which he commenced 
in his vigorous old age, and finished just before his 
death, must ever be deeply deplored by the historian 
and antiquary. Cato is said to have begun to inquire 
into the history, antiquities, and language of the Ro¬ 
man people, with a view to counteract the influence 
of the Greek taste introduced by the Scipios. The 
first book of the valuable work, De Originibus , as we 
are informed by Cornelius Nepos, in his short life of 
Cato, contained the exploits of the kings of Rome. 
Cato was the first author who attempted to fix the era 
of the foundation of Rome, which he calculated in his 
Origines, and determined to have been in the first year 
of the 7th Olympiad, which is also the estimate fol¬ 
lowed by Dionysius of Halicarnassus. The second 
and third books treated of the origin of the different 
states of Italy, whence the whole work has received 
the name of Origines. The fourth and fifth books 
comprehended the history of the first and second Punic 
wars ; and in the two remaining books, the author dis¬ 
cussed the other wars of the Romans till the time of 
Servius Galba, who overthrew the Lusitanians. The 
whole work exhibited great industry and learning, and, 
had it descended to us, would unquestionably have 
thrown much light upon the early periods of Roman 
history and the antiquities of the different states of Ita¬ 
ly. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, himself a sedulous 
inquirer into antiquities, bears ample.testimony to the 
research and accuracy of that part which treats of the 
origin of the ancient Italian cities. — Cato was the 
first of his countrymen who wrote on the subject of 
medicine. This was done in a work entitled “ Com- 
mentarius quo medetur Filio, Servis, Familiaribus .” 
In this book of domestic medicine, duck, pigeons, 
and hare were the food he chiefly recommended to 
the sick. His remedies were principally extracted 
from herbs ; and colewort or cabbage was his favour¬ 
ite cure. {Pliny, 20, 9.) The recipes, indeed, 
contained in his work on agriculture, show that his 
medical knowledge did not exceed that which usu¬ 
ally exists among a semi-barbarous race, and only ex¬ 
tended to the most ordinary simples which nature af¬ 
fords.— Aulus Gellius (7, 10) mentions Cato’s Libri 
quastionum Epistolicarum; and Cicero his Apoph- 
thcgmata {De OJficiis, 1, 29), the first example, prob¬ 
ably, of that class of works which, under the appella¬ 
tion of Ana, became so fashionable and prevalent in 
France. — The only other work of Cato’s which we 
shall here mention is the Carmen de Moribus. This, 
however, was not written in verse, as might be sup¬ 
posed from the title. Precepts, imprecations, or pray¬ 
ers, or any set formula whatever, were called Carmi- 
na. Misled, however, by the title, some critics have 
erroneously assigned to the censor the Disticha de 


Moribus, now generally attributed to Dionysius Cato, 
who lived, according to Scaliger, in the age of Corn- 
modus and Septimius Severus. {Plutarch, Vit. Cat. 
Maj. — Biogr. Univ., vol. 7, p. 399, seqq. — Dunlop's 
Roman Literature, vol. 2, p. 16, seqq.) — The pretend¬ 
ed fragments of the Origines, published by the Do¬ 
minican, Nanni, better known by the name of Annius 
Viterbiensis, and inserted in his Antiquitates Varia, 
printed at Rome in 1498, are spurious, and the impo¬ 
sition was detected soon after their appearance. The 
few remains first collected by Riccobonus, and pub¬ 
lished at the end of his treatise on History {Basle, 
1759), are believed to be genuine. They have been 
enlarged by Ausonius Popma, and added by him, with 
notes, to the other writings of Cato, published at Ley¬ 
den in 1590.—The best edition of the work on Agri¬ 
culture is contained in Gesner’s Scnptores Rei Rusti- 
ca, 2 vols. 4to., Lips., 1735.—II. Marcus, son of Cato 
the Censor, by his first wife. He distinguished him¬ 
self greatly in the battle of Pydna, against Perses, 
king of Macedonia, and received high eulogiums from 
Paulus yEmilius, the Roman commander on that oc¬ 
casion, whose daughter Tertia he afterward married. 
He died while filling the office of prsetor. {Plut., Vit. 
Cat. Maj., c. 20 et 24.) — III. Salonius, or, as Plu¬ 
tarch calls him, Saloninus {haXovivoc;), son of Cato 
the Censor, by his second wife. This second wife was 
the daughter of one Salonius, who had been Cato’s 
secretary, and was, at the time of the marriage, a mem¬ 
ber of his retinue. Salonius, like his half-brother Mar¬ 
cus, died when prsetor. He left, however, a son na¬ 
med Marcus, who attained to the consulship, and who 
was the father of Cato the younger, commonly called 
Uticensis. {Plut., Vit. Cat. Maj., c. 27.) — IV. Va¬ 
lerius, a celebrated grammarian in the time of Sylla. 
He was deprived of all his patrimony during the ex¬ 
cesses of the civil war, and then directed his attention 
to literary pursuits. He wrote a poem entitled Dira 
in Battarum, “Imprecations on Battarus.” It was 
directed against the individual who had profited by his 
disgrace, to appropriate to himself all the property of 
the former. Suetonius, who has preserved some ac¬ 
count of him, mentions two other poems of his, the 
one entitled Lydia, the other Diana, and also a third 
work, probably in prose, called Indignatio, in which 
he gives an account of his misfortunes. These 
three works are lost. {Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 1, 
p. 152.) — V. Dionysius, a .writer supposed to have 
flourished in the age of Commodus and Septimius Sev¬ 
erus, and who is regarded as the author of the Disti¬ 
cha de Moribus. (Compare Scaliger, Lect. Auson., 
232. — Cannegieter, Rescrip. Boxhorn. de Catone , c. 
18. — Bohr, Gesch. Rom. Litt., vol. 1, p. 154.) — VI. 
Marcus, surnamed Uticensis, from his death at Utica, 
was great-grandson to the censor of the same name, 
and born B.C. 93. A short time after his birth he 
lost both his parents, and was brought up in the,man¬ 
sion of Livius Drusus, his uncle on the mother’s side. 
Even in early life Cato displayed a maturity of judg¬ 
ment and an inflexible firmness of character far above 
his years ; and Sarpedon, his instructor, being accus¬ 
tomed to take him frequently to the residence of Sylla, 
who had been his father’s friend, the young Cato, then 
but fourteen years of age, struck with horror at the 
bloody scenes that were passing around him, asked 
his preceptor for a sword that he might slay the tyrant. 
His affectionate disposition was clearly displayed in 
his strong attachment to Caepio, his brother by the 
mother’s side, as may be seen by a reference to the pa¬ 
ges of Plutarch. Being appointed to the priesthood 
of Apollo, he changed his residence, and took his 
share of his father’s estate ; but, though the fortune 
which he thus received was a considerable one, his 
manner of living was simpler and more frugal than 
ever. He formed a particular connexion with An¬ 
tipater of Tyre, the stoic philosopher, made himself 

319 




CATO. 


CATO. 


well acquainted with the tenets of this school, and ever 
after remained true to its principles, pushing them even 
to the extreme of austerity. His first appearance in 
public was against the tribunes of the people, who 
wished to remove a column of the Porcian Basilica, or 
Hall of Justice, which incommoded their benches. 
This Basilica had been, erected by his great-grandfa¬ 
ther the censor, and the young Cato displayed on the 
occasion that powerful and commanding eloquence 
which afterward rendered him so formidable to all 
his opponents. Plis first campaign was in the war 
against Spartacus, as a simple volunteer, his half- 
brother Ctepio being a military tribune in the same 
army ; and he distinguished himself so highly, that 
Gellius, the praetor, wished to award him a prize of 
honour, which Cato, however, declined. He was 
then sent as military tribune to Macedonia. There 
he learned that Csepio was lying dangerously ill at 
HSnos in Thrace, and instantly embarked for that 
place in a small passage-boat, notwithstanding the 
roughness of the sea and the great peril which at¬ 
tended the attempt, but only arrived at JEnos just 
after Crepio had breathed his last. Stoicism was here 
of no avail, and the young Roman bitterly lamented 
the companion of his early years. According to Plu¬ 
tarch, there were some who condemned him for act¬ 
ing in a way so contradictory to his philosophical prin¬ 
ciples ; but the heavier and more unfeeling charge was 
the one brought against him by Csesar, in his work en¬ 
titled “Anti-Cato.” It was there stated, that, after 
all the lavish expenditure in which Cato had indulged 
in performing the funeral obsequies of Csepio, and 
after having declined repayment from the daughter 
of the latter, he nevertheless passed Csepio’s ashes 
through a sieve in search of the gold which might 
have melted down with them ! When the term of his 
service in Macedonia had expired, he travelled into 
Asia, and brought back with him the stoic Atheno- 
dorus to Rome. He was next made qusestor, and dis¬ 
charged with so much impartiality the duties of this 
difficult office, and displayed so much integrity in its 
various details, that, on the last day of his qusestor- 
ship, he was escorted to his house by the whole assem¬ 
bly of the people. So high, indeed, was the opinion 
entertained by his countrymen of the purity of his 
moral character, that when, at the Floral games given 
by the sedile Messius, Cato happened to be a specta¬ 
tor, the people, out of respect for him, hesitated about 
ordering the dancers to lay aside their vestments, ac¬ 
cording to long-established custom, nor would they 
allow this to be done until he had departed from the 
theatre. ( Val. Max., 2, 10, 8.) When the conspira¬ 
cy of Catiline was discovered, Cato supported by 
every means in his power the acts of Cicero, and was 
the first that gave him publicly the honourable title of 
“Father of his Country.” Opposing after this the 
ambitious movements of the first triumvirate, they 
managed to have him removed to a distance, by send¬ 
ing him out as governor of the island of Cyprus. 
Having executed this trust with ability and success, 
and having deposited in the treasury nearly seven 
thousand talents of silver, he again took part in public 
affairs at Rome, and again continued his opposition 
to the triumvirate. When, however, the rupture took 
place between Pompey and Csesar, he sided with the 
former, and was left behind by him at Dyrrhachium 
to guard the military chest and magazine, while he 
pushed on after Caesar, who had been forced to retire 
from the siege of that city. Cato, therefore, was not 
present at the battle of Pharsalia. On receiving the 
news of this event, he sailed to Corcyra with the 
troops under his orders, and offered the command to 
Cicero, who declined it. He then proceeded to Afri¬ 
ca, where he hoped to meet with Pompey, but on 
reaching Cyrene he heard of his death, and was also 
informed that Pompey’s father-in-law, Scipio, had gone 
320 


to Juba, king of Mauritania, where Varus had col¬ 
lected a considerable force. Cato immediately resolv¬ 
ed to join them, and, in order to effect this, was com¬ 
pelled to make a long and painful march across a des¬ 
ert region, in which his troops suffered severely from 
hunger, thirst, and every hardship, but which priva¬ 
tions his own example enabled them manfully to en¬ 
dure. After seven days of suffering his force reach¬ 
ed Utica, where a junction between the two armies 
took place. The soldiers wished to have him for their 
general, but he yielded to what he conceived to be the 
superior claims of Scipio, who held the office of pro- 
consul ; and this fault on his part, of which he soon 
after had reason to repent, accelerated the ruin of the 
cause in which he had embarked. Scipio having wish¬ 
ed, for Juba’s gratification, to put all the inhabitants 
of Utica to the sword, Cato strenuously opposed this 
cruel plan, and accepted the command of this impor¬ 
tant city, while Scipio and Labienus marched against 
Caesar. Cato had advised them to protract the war; 
but they hazarded an engagement at Thapsus, in which 
they were entirely defeated, and Africa submitted to 
the victor. After vainly endeavouring to prevail upon 
the fragments of the conquered army, as they came 
successively to Utica, to unite in defending that city 
against the conqueror, Cato furnished them with all 
the ships in the harbour to convey them whitherso¬ 
ever they wished to go. When the evening of that 
day came, he retired to his ow T n apartments, and em¬ 
ployed himself for some time in reading the Phsedon 
of Plato, a dialogue that turns upon the immortality of 
the soul. He endeavoured at the same time to lull 
the suspicions of his friends, by seeming to take a 
lively interest in the fate of those who were escaping 
by sea from Utica, and by sending several times to the 
seaside to learn the state of the wind and weather. 
But towards morning, when all was quiet, he stabbed 
himself. He fell from his bed with the blow, and the 
noise of his fall brought his son and servants into the 
room, by whose assistance he was raised from the 
ground, and an attempt was made to bind up the 
wound. Their efforts to save him were in vain; for 
Cato had no sooner recovered his self-possession, than 
he tore open the wound again in so effectual a manner 
that he instantly expired. He died at the age of 48 ; 
and when Csesar heard of his fate, he is said to have 
exclaimed, “ I grudge thee thy death, Gato, since thou 
hast grudged me the saving of thy life.” — Such was 
the end of a man whom a better philosophy, by teach¬ 
ing him to struggle with his predominant faults instead 
of encouraging them, would have rendered truly ami¬ 
able and admirable. He possessed the greatest integ¬ 
rity and firmness ; and, from the beginning of his po¬ 
litical career, was never swayed by fear or interest to 
desert that which he considered the course of liberty 
and justice. He is said to have foreseen Caesar’s de¬ 
signs long before they were generally suspected ; but 
his well-known animosity against him rendered his au¬ 
thority on the subject less weighty ; and his zeal led 
him to miscalculate the strength of the commonwealth, 
when he earnestly advised the senate to adopt those 
measures which gave Caesar a pretence for commen¬ 
cing hostilities. During the civil war he had the rare 
merit of uniting to the sincerest ardour in the cause 
of his party a steady regard for justice and humanity ; 
he would not countenance cruelty or rapine because 
practised by his associates or coloured with pretences 
of public advantages. But philosophical pride over¬ 
shadowed the last scenes of his life, and led him to 
indulge his selfish feelings by suicide, rather than live 
for the happiness of his family and friends, and miti¬ 
gate, as far as lay in his power, the distressed condi¬ 
tion of his country. His character, however, was so 
pure, and, since Pompey’s death, so superior to that of 
all the leaders engaged with him in the same cause, 
that his opponents could not refuse him their respect 




CAT 


CATULLUS. 


and praise; and his name has become a favourite 
theme of panegyric in modern times, as that of the 
most upright and persevering defender of the liberties 
of Rome. ( Plut ., Vit. Cat. Min. — Biogr. Univ., vol. 
7, p. 405, seqq. — Encyclop. Metropol., Div. 3, vol. 2, 
p. 261.)—VII. M. Porcius, son of the preceding, was 
spared by Caesar, but led a somewhat immoral life, 
until he effaced every stain upon his character by a 
glorious death at Philippi. (Pint., Vit. Cat. Min., c 
73.) ' 

Catti or Chatti ( Xdrroi, Strab. — Xuttcu, Ptol. — 
Catti, Tacit. —• Chatti, Plin.), a powerful nation of 
Germany, little known, however, to the Romans, since 
that people, though they made some incursions into 
their country, never had a fixed settlement therein. 
Caesar knew nothing more of them than that they lived 
in the vicinity of the Ubii, and that in the interior a 
wood called Bacenis separated them from the Cherus- 
ci. Tacitus describes them more closely, and assigns 
the Decumates Agri for their southern boundary, and 
the Hercynian forest for their eastern. The country 
ot the Catti would seem to have comprehended the 
territory of Hesse and other adjacent parts. The 
name Catti or Chatti, and the more modern Hassen 
and Hessen , appear to be identical. (Compare Wenk, 
Hessischen Landesgeschichte, vol. 2, p. 22. — Man- 
nert, Geogr., vol. 3, p. 183, seqq.) A fortress of the 
Catti, called Castellum, still bears the name of Cas- 
sel; but their capital Mattium is now Marpurg. 

Catullus, Caius Valerius, a celebrated poet, born 
of respectable parents in the territory of Verona, but 
whether in the town so called, or on the peninsula of 
Sirmio, which projects into the Lake Benacus, has been 
a subject of much controversy. The former opinion 
has been maintained by Maffei ( Verona Illustrata, pt. 
2, c. 1) and Bayle ( Diet. Hist., art. Catullus ), and the 
latter by Gyraldus ( De Poet., dial. 10), Scholl (Hist. 
Lit. Rom., vol. 1, p. 310), Fuhrmann (Handbuch der 
Class., vol. 1, p. 187), and most modern writers. 
The precise period, as well as place, of the birth of 
Catullus, is a topic of debate and uncertainty. Ac¬ 
cording to the Eusebian chronicle, he was born A.U.C. 
666, but according to other authorities in 667 v Saxii 
Onomast., vol. 1, p. 148) or 668. In consequence of an 
invitation from Manlius Torquatus, one of the noblest 
patricians of the state, he proceeded in early youth to 
Rome, where he appears to have kept but indifferent 
company, at least in point of moral character. He im¬ 
paired his fortune so much by his extravagance, that 
he complains he had no one 

“ Fractum qui veteris pedem grabati , 

In collo sibi collocare possit .” 

This, however, must partly have been written in 
jest, as his finances were always sufficient to allow 
him to keep up a delicious villa on the peninsula of 
Sirmio, and an expensive residence at Tibur. With 
a view of improving his pecuniary circumstances, he 
adopted the usual Roman mode of re-establishing a 
diminished fortune, and accompanied Caius Memmi- 
us, the celebrated patron of Lucretius, to Bithynia, 
where he was appointed praetor to that province. His 
situation, however, was but little meliorated by this 
expedition, and, in the course of it, he lost a beloved 
brother who was along with him, and whose death was 
lamented in verses never surpassed in delicacy or pa¬ 
thos. He came back to Rome with a shattered con¬ 
stitution and a lacerated heart. From the period of 
his return to Italy to his decease, his time appears to 
have been chiefly occupied with the prosecution of li¬ 
centious amours in the capital or in the solitudes of 
Sirmio. The Eusebian chronicle places his death in 
A.U.C. 696, and some writers fix it in 705. It is evi¬ 
dent, however, that he must have survived at least till 
708, as Cicero, in his Letters, talks of his verses against 
Ccesar and Mamurra as newly written, and first seen 
S s 


by Caesar in that year. He had satirized the dictator, 
who revenged himself, like a man of the world and a 
man of sense and good temper, by asking the satirist 
to sup with him. The distracted and unhappy state 
of his country, and his disgust at the treatment which 
he had received from Memmius, were perhaps suffi¬ 
cient excuse for shunning political employments ; but 
when we consider his taste and genius, we cannot help 
regretting that he was merely an idler and a debauchee. 
He loved Clodia (supposed to have been the sister of 
the infamous Clodius), a beautiful but shameless wom¬ 
an, whom he has celebrated under the name of Les- 
bia, as comparing her to the Lesbian Sappho. Among 
his friends he ranked not only most men of pleasure 
and fashion in Rome, but many of her eminent litera¬ 
ry and political characters, as Cornelius Nepos, Cice¬ 
ro, and Asinius Pollio. His enemies seem to have 
been as numerous as his loves or friendships, and com¬ 
petitions in poetry or rivalship in gallantry appear al¬ 
ways to have been a sufficient cause for his dislike; 
and where an antipathy was once conceived, he was 
unable to put any restraint on the expression of his 
hostile feelings. His poems are chiefly employed in 
the indulgence and commemoration of these various 
passions. They have been divided into lyric, elegiac, 
and epigrammatic, an arrangement convenient from 
its generality, but to which all cannot with strictness 
be reduced. He seems to have been the earliest 
lyric poet of Latium, notwithstanding the claim of 
Horace to the same honour. Much of his poetry 
appears to have been lost: the pieces that remain to 
us exhibit, in singular contrast, the sensual grossness 
which is imbibed from depraved habits and loose ima¬ 
ginations, together with gleams of sentiment and taste, 
and the polish of intellectual cultivation. Those who 
turn with disgust from the coarse impurities that sul¬ 
ly his pages, may be inclined to wonder that the 
term of delicacy should ever have been coupled with 
the name of Catullus. But to many of his effusions, 
distinguished both by fancy and feeling, this praise is 
justly due. Many of his amatory trifles are quite un¬ 
rivalled in the elegance of their playfulness ; and no 
author has excelled him in the purity and neatness 
of his style, the delightful ease and rare simplicity 
of his manner, and his graceful turns of thought and 
happiness of expression. Some of his pieces, which 
breathe the higher enthusiasm of the art, and are col¬ 
oured with a singular picturesqueness of imagery, 
increase our regret at the manifest mutilation of his 
works. No one of his poetical predecessors was more 
versed in Greek literature than Catullus, and his ex¬ 
tensive knowledge of its beauties procured for him 
the appellation of Doctus: unless we understand by 
the term in question, not “ learned,” but rather know¬ 
ing and accomplished; what the old English writers 
generally signify by “cunning,” as “cunning in mu¬ 
sic and the mathematics.” Catullus translated many 
of the shorter and more delicate pieces of the Greeks, 
an attempt which hitherto had been thought impossi¬ 
ble, though the broad humour of their comedies, the 
vehement pathos of their tragedies, and the romantic 
interest of the Odyssey, had stood the transformation. 
His stay in Bithynia, though little advantageous to 
his fortune, rendered him better acquainted than he 
might otherwise have been with the productions of 
Greece ; and he # was therefore, in a great degree, in¬ 
debted to this expedition (on which he always appears 
to have looked back with mortification and disappoint¬ 
ment) for those felicitous turns of expression, that 
grace, simplicity, and purity which are the characteris¬ 
tics of his poems, and of which hitherto Greece alone 
had afforded models. Indeed, in all his verses, wheth¬ 
er elegiac or heroic, we perceive his imitation of the 
Greeks; and it must be admitted that he has drawn 
from them his choicest stores. His Hellenisms are 
frequent; his images, similes, metaphors, ard address- 

321 






CAU 


CAU 


es to himself are all Greek ; and even in the versifica¬ 
tion of his odes we see visible traces of their origin. 
Nevertheless, he was the inventor of a new species of 
Latin poetry ; and as he was the first who used such 
variety of measures, and perhaps invented some that 
were new, he was amply entitled to call the poetical 
volume which he presented to Cornelius Nepos Lepi- 
dum Novum Libellum. The beautiful expressions, 
too, and idioms of the Greek language, which he has 
so carefully selected, are woven with such art into the 
texture of his composition, and so aptly paint the im¬ 
passioned ideas of his amorous muse, that they have 
all the fresh and untarnished hues of originality.—The 
best editions of Catullus are, that of Vulpius, Patav., 
4to, 1737, and that of Doring, Lips., 8vo, 1788, re¬ 
printed in London, 1820. The works of this poet 
have also been frequently edited in conjunction with 
those of Tibullus and Propertius, of which the best 
edition is perhaps that of Morell, Paris, fob, 1604. 

( Bahr, Gesch. Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. 253, seqq. — 
Scholl, Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 1, p. 236, 310, seqq. — 
Elton's Specimens, vol. 2, p. 31.— Dunlop, Rom. Lit., 
vol. 1, p. 454, seqq.) 

Catulus, Q. Lutatius, I. a Roman naval com¬ 
mander, famous for his victory over the fleet of the 
Carthaginians, consisting of 400 sail, ofif the JEgates 
Insula,; forty of the Carthaginian vessels were sunk, 
seventy taken, and the remainder dispersed. This 
celebrated victory put an end to the first Punic war. 
(Vid. iEgates Insulae.)—II. A celebrated Roman, the 
colleague of Marius in the consulship, and who jointly 
triumphed with him over the Cimbri. He was con¬ 
demned to death by Marius, during the tyrannical sway 
of the latter, and suffocated himself in a newly-plaster¬ 
ed room by the steam of a large fire. ( Plut., Vit. Mar. 
— Veil. Paterc.,-2, 22.) 

Caturiges, a Gallic nation, dwelling among the 
Cottian Alps. ( Plin., 3, 20.) Their capital was Ca- 
turiga, traces of which are found, according to D’An- 
ville, at Chorges, between Gap and Embrun, in the 
department des Hautes-Alpes. (Lemaire, Ind. Geogr. 
ad Gas., p. 228, seq.) 

Caucasus, the name of the highest and most exten¬ 
sive range of mountains in the northern part of Asia, 
and which the ancients erroneously considered as a 
continuation of the chain of Taurus. According to 
Strabo, it extended from the Euxine to the Caspian 
Sea. It divided Albania and Iberia towards the south, 
from the level country of the Sarmatae on the north. 
The inhabitants of these mountains formed, according 
to some, seventy, and according to others, 300 different 
nations, who spoke various languages, and lived in a 
savage state. The breadth of this chain, according to 
the best Russian authorities, is about 400 miles be¬ 
tween the mouth of the Don and Kooma; about 756 
between the straits of Caffa and the peninsula of Ap¬ 
sheron; and about 350 between the mouths of the 
Phasis and the city of Derbend. The etymology of 
the name of Caucasus, so celebrated in history and 
poetry, is not agreed upon ; the most probable opinion 
is that which connects it with the Asi, the early divin¬ 
ities of Asia. (Vid. Asi.) The range of Caucasus 
cannot be compared with the Alps in point of eleva¬ 
tion, though in resemblance it may, as the middle of 
the chain is covered with glaciers, or white with eter¬ 
nal snows. The highest summit is only 5900 feet 
above the level of the Black Sea. The two principal 
passages of Caucasus are mentioned by the ancients 
under the name of the Caucasian and Albanian gates. 
The first is the defile which leads from Mosdok to 
Tijlis. It is the narrow valley of four days’ journey, 
where, according to Strabo, the river Aragon, now 
called Arakui, flows. It is, as Pliny calls it, an 
enormous work of nature, which has cut out a long 
opening among the rocks, that an iron gate would be 
almost sufficient to close. It is by this passage that 
322 


the barbarians of the north threatened both the Roman 
and the Persian empire. It is now called Dariel. 
The Albanian pass of the ancients was, according to 
common opinion, the pass of Derbend along the Cas¬ 
pian Sea. Later and better authorities sanction the 
belief, however, that it was the same with the Sarma- 
tian pass, and coincides with a defile passing through 
the territory of Ooma-khan, along the frontier of Da¬ 
ghestan, and then traversing the district of Kagmam- 
sharie. (Malte-Brun, Geogr., vol. 2, p. 12, Brussels 
ed.) 

Caucones, a people of Paphlagonia, who occupied 
the coast of the Euxine from the Maryandynes as far 
as the river Parthenius. Some pretend that they w r ere 
of Arcadian origin, in common with the Pelasgi, and 
roamed about like this latter people ( Strab ., 345), 
while, according to others, they weTe of Scythian ex¬ 
traction. (Strab., 542.) A portion of these Caucones 
are said to have passed into Greece, and occupied a 
territory in the division of Elis, called Ceole, or “ the 
hollow.” Another part settled in Triphylian Elis. It 
is of the latter that Herodotus speaks (1, 147; 4, 148. 
—Compare Larcher, Hist. d'Hercd., vol. 8, p. 106, 
Table Geographique). 

Caudium, a city of Samnium, the position of which 
is not perfectly agreed upon by antiquaries : most of 
them, indeed, place it, with Holstenius, who examined 
the whole of this tract with great accuracy, at Arpaia. 
But D’Anviile assigns it a situation a few miles farther 
towards Beneventum. In the vicinity of Caudium 
was the famous defile called Furca Caudma, where 
the Roman army was compelled by the Samnites to 
pass under the yoke. The present valley of Arpaia is 
thought to answer to this pass. (Cramer's Ancient 
Italy, vol. 2, p. 243.) 

Caulonia or Caulon, a city of Brutium, in lower 
Italy, on the seacoast, a short distance south of Cocin- 
tum Promontorium, and between that and the Zephyri- 
an Promontory. It was one of the earliest colonies 
founded by the Achseans on these shores (Strab., 261.— 
Scymn., Ch., v. 317), and the name originally, perhaps, 
was Aulon. (Steph. Byz., s. v. Av?mv.) That it 
held a distinguished rank among the republics of Mag¬ 
na Graecia we may collect from Polybius (2, 39), who 
records its alliance with Crotona and Sybaris. It was 
razed to the ground by Dionysius of Syracuse, who re¬ 
moved the inhabitants to his capital (Diod. Sic., 14, 
106), but it must have arisen again from its ruins, 
since, during the war with Pyrrhus, it espoused the 
cause of that prince, and was, in consequence, attacked 
and pillaged by the Mamertini, who were the allies of 
the Romans. (Pausan., 6, 3.) The town was sub¬ 
sequently occupied by the Brutii, who defended it 
against the Romans during the second Punic war. 
The siege was raised by Hannibal. (Liv., 27, 12 et 
15. — Plut., Vit. Fab. Max.) Banio, and the other 
Calabrian topographers, fixed its site at Castro vetere; 
but the opinion of the best-informed antiquaries is in 
favour of Ala.ro. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 402.) 

Caunus, a city of Caria, at the foot of Mount Tarbe- 
lus, west of the Sinus Glaucus. It appears to have 
been the capital of a people, whom Herodotus regarded 
as differing from the Carians in some important par¬ 
ticulars, and possessing more of the character of an in¬ 
digenous nation. (Herod., 1,172.) This city, though 
possessing the advantage s of a good harbour and a very 
fertile territory, was nevertheless reckoned particularly 
unhealthy during the summer by reason of the exces¬ 
sive heat; the abundance of fruit was also prejudicial 
to the health of its inhabitants. Under the Byzantine 
emperors, Caunus formed part of Lycia. (Hierocl., p. 
685.—Compare the Acts of Councils and Notitiae.— 
Geogr. Sacr., p. 248.) The site of Caunus is now 
occupied by a small town and seaport named Kaiguez 
or Kheugez, about four miles to the south of the en¬ 
trance of the Calbis into the sea. (Cramer's Asia 






CEB 


CEC 


Minor, vol. 2, p. 193, seqq.) The figs of this place 
were famous. Cicero ( dc Div., 2, 4) mentions the cry 
of a person who sold Caunian figs at Brundisium, as 
a bad omen against Crassus when setting out, at the 
time, on his Parthian expedition. The cry of the fig- 
vender was Cauneas (supply ficus erne, or vendo ), and 
this to a Roman ear would sound very much like cave 
ne eas , pronounced rapidly, that is, like caw' n' eas, 
the letter v being sounded by the Romans like u. 
( Schneider, L. G., vol. 1, p. 357, seqq.) 

Cayster or Caystrus, a rapid river of Asia, rising 
in Lydia, and, after a meandering course, falling into 
the .Egean Sea near Ephesus. Near its mouth it 
formed a marsh called Asia Palus, or the Asian marsh, 
and the same with the "Aaiog "keipunv of Homer, much 
frequented by swans and other water-fowl. The 
Cayster is now called the Kitchik Minder, or Little 
Maeander, from its winding course. ( Plin ., 5, 29.— 
Strab., 642. — Horn., II., 2, 470. — Virg., Georg., 1, 
383.— Id., IEn., 7, 699.— Ovid, Met., 5, 386.— Mar¬ 
tial, Ep., 1, 54, 6.) 

Cebenna Mons, a range of mountains in Gaul, com¬ 
mencing in the territory of the Volcae Tectosages, run¬ 
ning thence in a northern direction into the country of 
the Ruteni, communicating by a side-chain with the 
mountains of the Arverni to the northwest, while the 
main range pursues its course towards the northeast 
and north, connecting itself, in the former direction 
with Mount Jura, and in the latter with Mount Voge- 
sus ( Vosge ). The modern name of the range is the 
Cevennes, in the departments of VAveyron, la Lozere , 
and VArdeche. ( Cces., B. G., 7, 4 et 56.) Pliny calls 
this range Gehenna (3, 4); Ptolemy, Strabo, and the 
Greeks in general, style it K Eyyevov upog. Avienus 
(Or. Marit., 614) calls the adjacent region Cimenice. 
(Compare Wernsdorff, ad loc. — Lemaire, Index Geogr. 
ad Cces., s. v., p. 229.) 

Cebes, I. a Greek philosopher, and disciple of Soc¬ 
rates, and also one of the interlocutors whom Plato in¬ 
troduces in his dialogue entitled Phaedon. He was 
bom at Thebes, and composed three dialogues, called 
Hebdome ('E 666/uy), Phrynichus (Qpvvixog), and Pi- 
nax, or the Picture (IUva^). The last is the only one 
which has come down to us. It is commonly cited 
by its Latin title Ccbetis Tabula (i. e., picta), and is a 
moral sketch or picture of human life, written in a 
pleasing and simple style. Some critics have raised 
doubts as to the authenticity of this little work. It 
breathes, indeed, a very pure vein of morality, but is 
not composed, as they think, in the true spirit of the 
Socratic school; and they are disposed, therefore, to 
regard it as the work of some stoic, perhaps Cebes of 
Cyzicus (No. II.), who wished to show that happiness 
consisted in the practice of virtue. But it is express¬ 
ly attributed to Cebes by Lucian ( de Mercede Conduct., 
c. 42), and after him by Tertullian (de Procscript. adv. 
Hceret., c. 39), Diogenes Laertius (2, 125), Chalcidius, 
and Suidas. Wolff was the first among the moderns 
who ventured to call in question this testimony of the 
ancients, and he has been followed on the same side 
by the Abbe Sevin (Mem. de VAcad, des Inscr., &c., 
vol. 3, p. 75. — Compare the dissertation of Gamier, in 
the same collection, vol. 49, p. 455). No work of an¬ 
tiquity has met with a wider circulation. It has been 
translated into almost all the modern languages, even 
into the Arabic.—The best editions of Cebes are, that 
of Schweighaeuser, Argent., 12mo, 1806, and that of 
Thieme, Berol., 8vo, 1810, with German notes of great 
merit. (Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 2, 346.) — II. A 
philosopher of Cyzicus, who lived in the time of Mar¬ 
cus Aurelius. (Compare Athenceus , 4, p. 156.— Ed. 
Schweigh., vol. 2, p. 109, and Gamier, Dissert, sur le 
Tableau dc Cebes. — Mem. de I Acad, des Inscr., &c , 
vol. 49, p. 455.) 

Cebrene, a city of Troas, capital of a small district 
named from it Cebrenia. This district was separated 


by the Scamander (the Simois of Homer) from the 
territory of Scepsis, as Strabo informs us, and the 
Cebrenians and the people of Scepsis were almost 
continually at war, until Antigonus removed the in¬ 
habitants of both places to Antigonia, afterward Alex¬ 
andra Troas. (Strab., 597.) According to Ephorus, 
Cebrene had received a colony from the ^Eolian Cyme. 
(Ap. Harpocr., s. v. K edpyva.) Xenophon affirms that 
it was a place of great strength. (Hist. Gr., 3, 1, 14). 
The site is called at the present day Kutchulan-tepe. 
(Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 119.) 

Cebrus, a river of Moesia, flowing into the Danube, 
and separating Upper from Lower Moesia. It is now 
either the Ischa, a small Bulgarian stream, or the Zib- 
riz. (Dio Cass., 51, 25.) 

Cecropia, the original name of Athens, in honour 
of Cecrops, its first founder. (Vid. Cecrops.) 

Cecropid^:, a name given to the Athenians by the 
poets, as the fabled descendants of Cecrops. (Vid. 
Cecrops.) 

Cecrops, according to the Attic legend, an autoch¬ 
thon or indigenous personage, and the earliest monarch 
of the country, after Ogyges. His form was half hu¬ 
man, half that of a serpent. In his days, it is said, the 
gods began to choose favourite spots among the dwell¬ 
ings of men for their own residence, or, as the expres¬ 
sion seems to mean, particular deities were worshipped 
with especial homage in particular cities. It was at 
this time, therefore, that Minerva and Neptune strove 
for the possession of Attica. The question was to be 
determined by the natural principle of priority of occupa¬ 
tion. It was asserted by Neptune, that he had appro¬ 
priated the territory to himself, by planting his trident 
on the rock of the Acropolis at Athens, before the land 
had been claimed by Minerva. He pointed to it there 
standing erect, and to the salt-spring which had then 
issued, and was flowing from the fissure of the cliff, 
that had opened for the reception of the trident. On 
the other hand, Minerva alleged that she had taken 
possession of the country at a still earlier period than 
had been done by the rival deity. She appealed, in 
support of her claim, to the olive, which had sprung at 
her command from the soil, and which was growing 
near the fountain produced by the hand of Neptune 
from the same place. Cecrops was required to attest 
the truth of her assertion. He had been witness of 
the act, and testified accordingly; whereupon the 
twelve gods, according to one version of the fable, 
but, according to another, Cecrops himself, decided in 
favour of Minerva, who then became the tutelary deity 
of Athens. (Apollod., 3, 14, 1.) Cecrops married 
Agraulos, daughter of Actasus, and became the father 
of three daughters, Pandrosos, Herse, and Agraulos. 
After a reign of many years, spent in introducing 
among his subjects the blessings of civilization, he 
died, leaving the kingdom to Cranaus, another au¬ 
tochthon. (Apollod., 1. c .)—Thus much for the fa¬ 
ble, which has become in our histories so much grave 
matter of fact. The truth appears to be, that the 
whole series of Attic kings who are said to have pre¬ 
ceded Theseus, including, perhaps, even Theseus him¬ 
self, are mere fictions, owing their existence to misun¬ 
derstood names and false etymologies, to attempts to 
explain ancient customs and religious rites, and to a 
wish to exalt the antiquity of a nation or a family by 
giving it a founder in a remote age. At the head of 
the list of Attic kings is commonly placed Ogyges. 
The evidence of his historical existence is so slight 
that his name hardly appeal's deserving of remark. 
Whether we make it equivalent, as some do, to dp- 
Xalog, or trace it, with other etymologists, to a rod 
yvyij, meaning night or darkness, in either case the 
name is merely figurative, and is intended to refer, 
not to an individual, but to a period of remote and 
obscure antiquity. — Next in order comes Cecrops. 
whom we ought to regard as being, in genuine Attic 

323 



CECROPS. 


CEL 


fable, the first king of Attica ; the true autochthon 
from whom, according to the popular faith, the Attic 
people had their origin. The story of his being half 
man, half serpent, is only an expression of his autoch¬ 
thonous nature. For in Herodotus (1, 78), the ex¬ 
planation given by the Telmessians of the serpents 
devoured by the horses at Sardis is, ocjuv elvcu yyq 
Tialda, “that the snake is a child of earth.” The 
story of his leading a colony from Sals, in Egypt, to 
Athens, is a comparatively late invention, and entitled 
to no credit. ( Philol. Museum , 5, p. 357.) The very 
name Cecrops (K i/cpoip) itself appears to be nothing 
else than a synonyme of avroxdciv. The tettl tj, or 
cicada, was always regarded by the Athenians as a 
symbol of their autochthonia. As the eggs of this in¬ 
sect fall to the ground from the stalks on which they 
are deposited ( Aristot., Hist. An., 5, 24), and are 
hatched in great numbers in showery weather, it was 
natural that the vulgar should consider the earth as 
producing them. Now one of the names of the ci¬ 
cada is KepuoTp {JElian, Hist. An., 10, 44), the origi¬ 
nal form of which would seem to have been upcuoip, 
referring, as well as tettl%, to the peculiar sound which 
the insect emits. Cecrops, therefore (Ke/cpoi/;, K pe- 
icoip), is in reality nothing more than the cicada itself, 
the emblem of autochthonia, converted into the first 
king of Athens. This is rendered still more probable 
by the names of his daughters. As the ancients sup¬ 
posed the cicada to be produced from the ground, so 
they thought that it was wholly nourished by the dew. 
Hence the names Yluvdpooog (“ All-dewy ”) and "E pop 
(“ Dew"), given to two of the daughters of the fabled 
Cecrops. The third name, "AypavXog (“ Field-piper ”), 
is equally appropriate to the cicada, of whose music 
the ancients thought so highly, that it was doubted 
whether the Ionians did not wear the golden cicada in 
their hair in honour of Apollo. ( Schol. ad Anstoph., 
Nub., 971.)—But what becomes of the legend respect¬ 
ing the part that Cecrops bore in the controversy be¬ 
tween Neptune and Minerva 1 It is not difficult to 
perceive, that in this tradition a record is preserved of 
the rivalry that arose between two classes of the Attic 
population, the one devoted to maritime pursuits, and 
aiming at commercial eminence, the other contented 
with their own domestic resources, and preferring the 
tranquil occupations of agricultural and pastoral life, 
which were typified by the emblematic symbol of 
peace. The victory of Minerva, which it commem¬ 
orates, is a true and significant expression of the con¬ 
dition of this country, and of the liabits of its people, 
from the days of Cecrops to those of Themistocles. 

( Wordsworth's Greece, p. 93.)— Cranaus comes next 
in the list of Attic kings. He was also an autochthon, 
contemporary with the flood of Deucalion. He mar¬ 
ried Pedias, and the issue of their wedlock was At- 
this. What is this but the legend of a union between 
the inhabitants of the hills (K pavay yy, the rocky 
country) with those of the plains of Attica (Iledtdf, 
the plain country)' 1 , and thus Attica ( V A rdig) was 
formed by uniting the rugged district with that be¬ 
longing to the plain. And yet a hundred histories 
have repeated the name of Cranaus as a king of At¬ 
tica !—This state of prosperity, however, does not ap¬ 
pear to have been of long duration ; for Atthis is said 
to have died in early youth; and the flood of Deuca¬ 
lion to have inundated the country during the reign of 
Cranaus, who was himself driven from the throne by 
the king next in succession, named Amphictyon. This 
appellation, indicating, as it does, a collector of neigh¬ 
bouring people into one community, appears to indi¬ 
cate an attempt made in this, the next age, to organize 
afresh the social elements, which had been disturbed 
by the convulsions of the previous generation, and to 
combine them together into one federal body. This 
design seems to have been attended with success, and 
to hax e produced results favourable to the cultivation 
324 


of the arts of civilized life. For the immediate suc¬ 
cessor of Amphictyon, and the representative of the 
state of the Athenian nation, as it existed in that pe¬ 
riod, was Erichthonius. Erichthonius was, in the lan¬ 
guage of mythology, the son of Vulcan and Minerva , 
or, as that tradition may be interpreted, it was in this 
age that the manual labours which enjoyed the espe¬ 
cial patronage of those two deities began to attract the 
attention and assume the importance which afterward 
rendered them the source of affluence and of glory to 
the possessors of the Athenian soil. ( Wordsworths 
Greece, p. 92, seqq.—Philological Museum, 5, p. 345, 
seqq.) 

Cel^en^e or Celene, a city of Phrygia, in the south¬ 
west, at the sources of the Marsyas. This was a small 
river which flows into the Meander, and which, ac¬ 
cording to Xenophon, was named after Marsyas, whom 
Apollo caused to be flayed alive, and whose skin he 
hung in the cave where the river rises. Cyrus the 
Younger had a palace there, with a park filled with 
wild beasts, where he exercised himself in hunting. 
Within the enclosure of this palace rose the Mseander, 
and flowed through the park ; the Marsyas rose in the 
market-place. At the sources of the latter, Xerxes, 
after his return from Greece, built a palace and cita¬ 
del. The inhabitants of Celsense were in after days 
carried off by Antiochus Soter to the city of Apamea, 
founded by hinx a few miles to the southeast, at the 
confluence of the Marsyas and Mseander. ( Liv ., 38, 
13.— Xenoph., Anab., 1.) 

Cel^eno, one of the harpies, daughter of Neptune 
and Terra. ( Virg ., JEn., 3, 245.) 

Celenderis, a city on the coast of Cilicia Trachea, 
to the northeast of the Anemurian promontory. It 
was founded by the Phoenicians, and afterward re¬ 
ceived a Samian colony. Celenderis appears to have 
been a place of great strength, built on a high and 
craggy precipice, surrounded by the sea. {Tacit., 
Ann., 2, 80.) It is now Chelindreh. {Cramer's Asia 
Minor, vol. 2, p. 328.) 

Celeres. Vid. Equites. 

Celeus, a king of Eleusis, father to Triptolemus by 
Metanira. He gave a kind reception to Ceres, who 
taught his son the art of cultivating the earth. {He¬ 
siod, Op. et D., v. 423.— Apollod., 1 , 5, 1 . Pausan., 

1, 14.— Virg., Georg., 1, 165.) 

Celsus, I. Aulus Cornelius, a celebrated physi¬ 
cian. His native city is unknown ; some writers con¬ 
tending for Rome, others for Verona. (Compare Fa- 
bncius, Bibl. Lat., 2, 4, p. 36, seqq.) Even his very 
name is partly involved in doubt, some making it Au¬ 
relius Cornelius Celsus, others Aulus. The time in 
which he lived has also been made a subject of contro¬ 
versy. One class of writers infer, from a passage in 
Columella {R. R., 1, 1, 14 ; compare 3, 17, 4, and 4, 
8, 1), that he was born in the time of Tiberius, and 
lived until the reign of Trajan. {Schilling, Quwst. 
de Corn. Celsi Vita, Lips., 1824, p. 19 and 75.) An¬ 
other class place his birth under the reign of Augus¬ 
tus. (Compare Le Clerc, Hist, de la Med., vol. 1, p. 
517, seqq. — Schulze, Compcnd. Hist. Med., p. 298, 
seqq.) The most probable opinion is, that he lived 
under Augustus and Tiberius, but wrote his works 
under the latter. Celsus composed a large work, on 
the plan, in some measure, of an encyclopedia, in 
which he treated of philosophy, jurisprudence, agri¬ 
culture, and medicine. It was entitled “ De Arti- 
bus." Unhappily, however, only the eight books (from 
the 6th to the 14th) which treat of medicine have 
come down to us. The best editions are that of 
Ruhnken, Lugd. Bat., 1785, and that of Milligan, 
Lond., 1826.—Roman literature, otherwise so barren 
of good medical authorities, can boast of possessing 
in Celsus one, who, for elegance, terseness, learning, 
good sense, and practical information, stands unrival¬ 
led. Every branch of the profession has been treated 




CELSUS. 


CEL 


of by him, and it may be well said of him, Nihil quod 
tetigit non ornavit. So complete a specimen of pro¬ 
fessional knowledge, selected by a sound judgment, 
and adorned with philosophy, is nowhere else to be 
met with. As a Roman historian said of Homer, that 
he who can believe him to have been born blind must 
himself be devoid of every sense, so may we venture to 
affirm respecting Celsus, that he who can suppose him 
to have been a mere compiler, and never to have 
practised the art of medicine, must be totally destitute 
of all professional experience. His preface contains 
an admirable exposition of the principles of the differ¬ 
ent sects which had risen up in medicine before his 
time; and in the remaining part of the 1st book there 
are many pertinent remarks on the best method of 
preserving the health. In the 2d, which treats of the 
general symptoms and phenomena of diseases in gen¬ 
eral, he has copied freely from Hippocrates, having, no 
doubt, discovered that “ to copy nature was to copy 
him.” The last part of this book is devoted to the 
subject of diet and regimen ; and here his views will, 
with a few exceptions, even now be admitted by the 
unprejudiced to be wonderfully correct. Dr. Cullen, 
with all his prejudices against ancient authors, allows 
that, “ in most instances, his judgment, if understood 
well, might be found perhaps to be very good.”—In 
the 3d book he has treated of fevers ; and here his 
distinctions, remarks upon critical days, and treatment, 
will be found to be particularly deserving of attention^. 
Venesection and cold applications to the head are the 
general remedies which he most approves of, and hap¬ 
py would it have been for mankind if the masters of 
the profession had been content to follow this simple 
plan of treatment, instead of being carried away by 
such specious theories as the Cullenian and Brunoni- 
an, which all must now admit have introduced very 
mistaken and fatal views of practice. The other parts 
of his work it is unnecessary to go over minutely ; but 
we would point out, as particularly valuable, his di¬ 
visions and treatment of ulcers. It is remarkable that 
no one has treated of diseases of the “ obsccencz 
;partes ” with the same precision that he has done. 
The different shades of cutaneous diseases, which are 
found so difficult to define, he has marked with a sur¬ 
prising degree of precision. But, of the whole work, 
the most interesting part, perhaps, is the 7th book, 
which treats of the operations of surgery. His ac¬ 
count of those performed upon the eye may be in¬ 
stanced as particularly excellent. The operating for 
couching the cataract is described in much the same 
manner as it is now performed. The ancients were 
not acquainted with the mode of extracting. The op¬ 
eration of lithotomy, as described by him, though not 
exactly the same as that now generally practised, has, 
even at the present day, its admirers, among whom we 
may mention the celebrated Dupuytren, who has re¬ 
vived it at Paris, and considers it to possess the ad¬ 
vantage over the common plan of affording a freer 
passage to the stone. Mr. Charles Bell, of London, 
has also operated much in the same way upon boys, 
to whom, by-the-by, Celsus restricts his practice. 
Celsus has the merit of being the first author who 
makes mention of the application of the ligature to 
arteries for stopping hemorrhage. The ligature is 
also mentioned by Heliodorus in a short tract on am¬ 
putation preserved by Nicetas, by Galen in nearly 
twenty places, by Aetius, Paulus /Egineta, Avicenna, 
Rhazez, Avenzoar, and Albucasis ; so that it cannot 
with any propriety be called a modern invention.—In 
the last book he treats minutely of fractures and dislo¬ 
cations ; and here, of course, he avails himself of the 
correct views previously laid down by Hippocrates. 
One may venture to affirm that, even at the present 
day, he who is thoroughly acquainted with the wri¬ 
tings of Celsus, and has learned to reduce his knowl¬ 
edge to practice, will prove a useful and distinguished 


member of his profession.—II. A Platonic, or, accord¬ 
ing to others, Epicurean philosopher, who lived to¬ 
wards the close of the reign of Hadrian. His name 
is famous as that of one of the bitterest enemies of 
Christianity. From a motive of curiosity, or, perhaps, 
in order to be better able to combat the new religion, 
Celsus caused himself to be initiated into the myste¬ 
ries of Christianity, and to be received into that secret 
society which St. Clement of Rome is supposed to 
have founded. (Compare Kestner, Agape , oder der 
gehcime Wellbunde der Christen, &c., Jena, 1819, 
8vo.) It appears, however, that the sincerity of the 
neophyte was distrusted, and that he was refused ad¬ 
mittance into the higher ceremonies. The discontent 
to which this gave rise in the breast of Celsus, infla¬ 
med his resentment against the Christians, and he wrote 
a work against them, entitled ’AA qdqg koyoq, “ A true 
discourse,” in which he employed all the resources of 
his intellect and eloquence to paint Christianity as a 
ridiculous and contemptible system, and its followers 
as a sect dangerous to the well-being of the state. 
There is no falsehood to which he has not recourse in 
order to represent in an untrue light the Christian 
scheme of morals, to parody and falsify the text of the 
Old and New Testaments, and to calumniate the char¬ 
acter of Jesus Christ and his disciples. He styles 
Christianity a doctrine tending to pervert and corrupt 
the human race (A byoq kv/uaivopevog rov tuv dvdpti)- 
ttcjv (hov), and exhorts the government to extirpate 
the sect, if it wishes to save the empire. The dis¬ 
course itself is lost; but Origen, who refuted it, in a 
work divided into eight books, has given us so com¬ 
plete an extract from it, that, by the aid of this, we can 
follow all the principal reasonings of the author. Cel¬ 
sus wrote also a work against magicians and sorcerers 
(Kara Maywr), which is cited by Origen and Lucian. 
The latter, who was his friend, addressed to him his 
memoir on Alexander, the false prophet, in which he 
extols the wisdom of Celsus, his love for truth, and 
his amiable manners. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 5, 
p. 103, scqq.) —III. Albinovanus, a friend of Horace, 
warned against plagiarism ( Epist. 1,3, 15) and plea¬ 
santly ridiculed (Epist. 1, 8) for his foibles. 

Celt.®, a general name for the whole Gallic race, 
but, in a special sense, an appellation given to the most 
indigenous and extensive of the three great tribes that 
occupied Gaul in the days of Caesar. ( Vid. Gallia.) 

Celtiberi, a people of Spain, brave and powerful, 
who occupied the greater part of the interior of the 
country. According to Diodorus Siculus (5, 33), they 
were composed of two nations, the Celtse and Iberi, 
whence their name, which, perhaps, was used for dis¬ 
tinction’ sake from that of the Celtse beyond the Pyre¬ 
nees in Gaul. Their cavalry were excellent, and fought 
equally well on foot and on horseback. Niebuhr consid¬ 
ers the fact far from proved that the Celts of Iberia w r ere 
strangers from Gaul who had migrated into that coun¬ 
try. No definite tradition of this event is, according 
to him, to be found, not even in Diodorus. This as¬ 
sertion, however, is altogether untenable, and is based 
upon the strange hypothesis that different races of hu¬ 
man beings were originally created, and that mankind 
did not spring from one common parent. (Compare 
Niebuhr, Rom. Hist., vol. 2, p. 256.) The Celtiberi 
were reduced beneath the Roman sway in the Sertori- 
an war, after a long and brave resistance. They were 
divided into six tribes, the Belloncs, Arevaci, Pelen- 
dones, Ditthi, Belli, and Lusones. The country of the 
Celtiberi was sometimes called Celtiberia, and border¬ 
ed, on the east, upon the Edetani and the range of 
Mount Ortospeda ; on the north upon the Iberus ; on 
the west upon the Tagus and the Carpetani; on the 
south upon the Oretani. It comprised, therefore, what 
is now the southwestern part of Aragon, the southern 
part of Navarre, the eastern portion of Old Castile, and 
the northeastern division of New Castile. (Plin., 3, 

325 



CEN 


CEN 


3. — Id. 4, 22.— Lw., Epit., 48. — Eulrop ., 4, 16.— 
Isidor., Hisp. Chron. Goth., p. 173.) 

CeltTci, a people of Lusitania, whose territory lay 
below the mouth of the Tagus, and between that river 
and the Turdetani. They were of Celtic origin, as 
their name imports, and their country answered to 
what is now the southern part of Alontejos. Their j 
chief town was Pax Julia, now Beja. (Plin ., 3, 1.— 
Id., 4, 21.) 

Centum, a promontory of Euboea, which formed the 
extreme point of the island towards the northwest. 
The modern name is Lithada. {Strab ., 444.— Elm., 

4, 12.— Ptol., p. 87.) 

Cenchre^e, I. a harbour of Corinth, on the Saronic 
Gulf, from which this city traded with Asia, the Cyc¬ 
lades, and the Euxine. ( Strabo , 380.) It was about 
seventy stadia from the city itself; and the road thither 
appears, from the account of Pausanias, to have been 
lined with temples and sepulchres. Dr. Clarke ob¬ 
serves, that the remains at Cenchre® faithfully corre¬ 
spond with the description given by Pausanias of the 
spot. Sir W. Gell says the place is still called Ken- 
chres. {Itin. of the Morea, p. 207.)—II. A village of 
Argolis, near the frontiers of Arcadia, southwest of 
Argos. A tumulus was here erected to some Argives 
who had fallen in a battle with the Spartans. ( Strabo, 
376.) 

Cenchreis, a small island off the Spirseum Prom- 
ontorium of Argolis. {Plin., 4, 11.) 

Cenchrius, a river of Ionia near Ephesus and Mount 
Solmissus, where the Curetes, according to some, con¬ 
cealed and protected Latona after her delivery, when 
she was pursued by the power of Juno. {Strab., 639. 
— Tacit., Ann., 3, 61.) 

Cenimagni, a people of Britain, north of the Trino- 
bantes, on the eastern coast, forming part of the great 
nation of the Iceni. {Vid. Iceni. Lipsius, however, 
rejects the term Cenimagni, where it occurs in the 
text of Csesar {B. G., 5, 21), on the ground that this 
race are nowhere else mentioned among the British 
tribes, and he proposes to read in place of it, Iceni, 
Cangi. The author of the Greek paraphrase of Caesar 
has K evipavoi, whence Vossius conjectured the true 
reading to be Cenomani, and supposed this nation to 
have crossed over from Gaul. {Lemaire, Ind. Geogr. 
ad Cces., p. 231, seqq.) 

CenTna. Vid. Caenina. 

Cenomani, a people of Gaul, belonging to the nation 
of the Aulerci. {Vid. Aulerci.) 

Cens5res, two magistrates of great authority at 
Rome, first created A.U.C. 312. The office of the 
censors was chiefly to estimate the fortunes, and to in 
spect the morals of the citizens. For a full account 
of their duties, &c., consult Adams, Rom. Ant. 

CensorInus, I. one of the ephemeral Roman emper¬ 
ors who appeared in so great numbers under the reign 
of Gallienus, and are known in later Roman history 
as “ the thirty tyrants.” {Treb. Pollio, in Hist. Aug. 
Script., vol. 2, p. 254, ed. Hack.) Censorinus had 
been distinguished in camps and in the senate ; he had 
been twice consul, twice prsetorian prefect, three times 
prefect of Rome, and four times proconsul. After 
having passed through this honourable career, he re¬ 
tired to the country, being now advanced in years, and 
lame from a wound he had received in the war against 
the Persians during the reign of Valerian. It was un¬ 
der these circumstances that he was proclaimed em¬ 
peror, A.D. 269, in spite, as it would appear, of his 
own wishes ; and by a species of pleasantry he was 
surnamed, or rather nicknamed, Claudius, in allusion to 
his lameness {claudus, “ lame”). The strict disci¬ 
pline, however, which he wished to introduce, gave of¬ 
fence, and he was slain by the very soldiers who had 
raised him to the throne. {Treb. Poll., Vit. Cens.) — 
II. A grammarian and philosopher, who flourished 
under Maximus and Gordianus, about A.D. 238. He 
326 


wrote a small work entitled “ He die Natali," which was 
so called because composed on occasion of the birth¬ 
day of his friend Cerellius. It treats of the time 
of birth, of the influence of one’s Genius, as well as 
that of the stars, upon the birth-period of an individ¬ 
ual ; and embraces many other topics of a chronolo¬ 
gical, mathematical, and cosmographical character. 
Canio, therefore, who edited the work in 1583, separ¬ 
ated the latter part of this production from the rest, 
and regards it as a fragment of an unknown author, 
“ De naturali institutione." The style of Censorinus 
is good, though not free, of course, from the blemishes 
natural to his time. We have also a fragment, de Me- 
tris, by this same writer. He composed also a work 
on accents, and another on geometry, but these last two 
have not reached us. The best edition of Censorinus 
is that of Havercamp, Lugd. Bat., 1743, 8vo, reprinted 
in 1767. {Bdhr, Gesch. Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. 661.) 
The latest edition is that of Gruber, Nuremb., 1805, 
8vo. 

Centauri, a Thessalian race fabled to have been 
half men, half horses.—The Centaurs and Lapithse are 
two mythic tribes, which are always mentioned to¬ 
gether. The former are spoken of twice in the Iliad, 
under the appellation of wild-creatures {$r/pec), and 
once under their proper name. {II., 1,268.— lb., 2,742. 
— Ib., 11,832.) We also find the name Centaurs in the 
Odyssey (21, 303.) They seem to have been a rude 
mountain-tribe, dwelling on and about Mount Pelion. 
It is very doubtful whether Homer and Hesiod con¬ 
ceived them to be of a mingled form, as they were 
subsequently represented. In the fight of the Cen¬ 
taurs and Lapithse on the shield of Hercules, the lat¬ 
ter appear in panoply fighting with spears, while the 
former wield pine-clubs. {Hesiod, Scut. Here., 178, 
seqq.) Pindar is the earliest poet extant who express¬ 
ly describes them as semi-ferine. According to him 
{Pyth., 2, 78, seqq.), the offspring of Ixion and the 
cloud {vid. Ixion) was a son named Centaurus, who, 
when grown up, wandered about the foot of Mount 
Pelion, where he united with the Magnesian mares, who 
brought forth the Centaurs, a race partaking of the 
form of both parents, their lower parts resembling their 
dams, their upper their sire. The common account 
makes the Centaurs to have been the immediate off¬ 
spring of Ixion and the cloud. By his wife Dia, Ixion 
had a son named Pirithoiis, who married Hippodamia, 
daughter of Adrastus, king of Argos. The chiefs of 
his own tribe, the Lapithse, were all invited to the wed* 
ding, as were also the Centaurs, who dwelt in the 
neighbourhood of Pelion. Theseus, Nestor, and other 
strangers were likewise present. At the feast, Eury- 
tion, one of the Centaurs, becoming intoxicated with 
the wine, attempted to offer violence to the bride ; the 
other Centaurs followed his example, and a dreadful 
conflict arose, in which several of them were slain. 
The Centaurs were finally driven from Pelion, and 
obliged to retire to other regions. {Ovid, Met., 12, 
210, seqq. — Diod. Sic., 4, 70.) — According to the 
earliest version of this legend, Eurytion, the Centaur, 
being invited to the mansion of Pirithoiis, got intoxi¬ 
cated, and behaved so ill, that the heroes rose, and, 
dragging him to the door, cut off his ears and nose, 
which was the occasion of “ strife between the Cen¬ 
taurs and men.” {Od., 21, 295, seqq.) When Her¬ 
cules was on his way to hunt the Erymanthian boar, 
he was entertained by the Centaur Pholus ; and this 
gave rise to a conflict between him and the other Cen¬ 
taurs, which terminated in the total discomfiture of the 
latter. — The most celebrated of the Centaurs was 
Chiron, the son of Saturn by the nymph Philyra. 
( Vid. Chiron.)—It is the opinion of Buttmann {My- 
tliologus, vol. 2, p. 22), that the Centaurs and Lapithse 
are two purely poetic names, used to distinguish two 
opposite races of men ; the former, the rude horse- 
riding tribes, which tradition records to have been 





CEN 


CEP 


spread over the north of Greece ; the latter, the more 
civilized race, which founded towns, and gradually 
drove their wild neighbours back into the mountains. 
He therefore thinks the exposition of Centaurs as Air- 
piercers (from kevteIv rr/v avpav) not an improbable 
one, for that very idea is suggested by the figure of a 
Cossack, leaning forward with his protruded lance as 
he gallops along. He regards, however, the idea of 
KEvravpoQ having been in its origin simply Kevrup as 
much more probable. Lapithae may, he thinks, have 
signified Stone-persuaders (from ?idag tt etdeiv), a po¬ 
etic appellation for the builders of towns. He supposes 
Hippodamia, as her name seems to intimate, to have 
been a Centauress, married to the prince of the Lapi¬ 
thae, and thus accounts for the Centaurs having been 
at the wedding. ( Mythologus, l. c. — Keightley's My¬ 
thology, p. 316, seqq.) —Knight takes a very different 
view of the legend. The horse, as he observes, was 
sacred to Neptune and the Rivers, and was employed 
as a general symbol of the waters. The Centaurs ap¬ 
pear to him to have been the same symbol partly hu¬ 
manized. According to this explanation, the legend 
respecting the Centaurs and Lapithse will have refer¬ 
ence to the draining of some parts of Thessaly by that 
old Pelasgic race. ( Knight's Enquiry, &c., § 111, 
seqq. — Class. Journ., vol. 25, p. 34, seqq ) 

Centritis, a river of Armenia Major, flowing under 
the ramparts of Tigranocerta, and falling into the Eu¬ 
phrates. The Greeks gave it the name of Nicephorius, 
“that brings victory,” probably on account of some 
battle gained in its vicinity during the time of the 
Syrian kings. It separated Armenia from the country 
of the Carduchi, and is now the Billis-Soo. ( Xen., 
Anab., 4, 3.— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 5, p. 236.) 

Centrones, a people of Gaul, among the Alpes 
Graise, who, along with the Graioceli and Caturiges, 
Were defeated by Csesar in several engagements. 
Their chief city was Forum Claudii Centronum, now 
Centron. ( Lemaire, Index Geogr. ad Cces., p. 231.) 

Centum Cell^e, a seaport town of Etruria, north¬ 
east of Caere. It is better known under the name of 
Trajani Portus, that emperor having caused a magnifi¬ 
cent harbour to be constructed there, which Pliny the 
younger has described in one of his epistles (6, 31). 
Two immense piers formed the port, which was semi¬ 
circular, while an island, constructed artificially of im¬ 
mense masses of rock, brought there by vessels and 
sunk in the sea, served as a breakwater in front and 
supported a pharos. The coast being very destitute 
of shelter for vessels of burden, this work of Trajan 
was of great national benefit. Previous to Trajan’s 
improvements the place was very thinly inhabited, and 
received its name from the mean and scanty abodes 
scattered here and there along the shore. Centum 
Cellae having been destroyed by the Saracens, the in¬ 
habitants built another town at some distance inland, 
but afterward they reoccupied the site of the old city, 
which, from that circumstance, obtained its present 
name of Civita Vecchia. ( Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 
L, p. 201, seqq. — Mannert, Geogr., vol. 9, p. 373.) 

Centumviri, the members of a court of justice at 
Rome. There were originally chosen three from each 
of the 35 tribes of the people, and, though 105, they 
were always called Centumvirs. They were after¬ 
ward increased to the number of 180, but still kept 
their original name. They seem to have been first insti¬ 
tuted soon after the creation of the praetor peregrinus. 
The causes that came before them in the time of the 
republic are enumerated by Cicero. They judged 
then chiefly concerning testaments and inheritances. 

( Cic., Or., 1 , 38. — Val. Max., 7, 7. — Quintil., 4, 1 , 
7.) After the time of Augustus, however, they formed 
the council of the praetor, and judged in the most im¬ 
portant causes. When the number of the Centumviri 
reached 180, they were divided into four councils, 
sometimes only into two, and sometimes, in important 


causes, they judged all together. A cause before 
them could not be adjourned. ( Plin., Ep., 1, 18.— 
Id., 4, 24.) Ten men were appointed, five senators 
and five equites, to assemble these councils, and pre¬ 
side in them in the absence of the praetor. ( Sueton ., 
Aug., 36.) Trials before the centumviri were held 
usually in the Basilica Julia, sometimes in the forum. 
(Consult Heineccius, Antiq. Rom., ed. Haubold, 4, 6, 
9, p. 664.) 

Centuripa (rd Kevropirra. — Ptol., KevTovpnrai .— 
Sil. Ital., Centuripe), an ancient city of the Siculi, 
on the eastern shore of Sicily, near Catana. After 
the Roman conquest of the island it became an im¬ 
portant place in the corn-trade to Italy. The modern 
Centorbi appears to mark the ancient site. ( Man¬ 
nert, Geogr., vol. 9, pt. 2, p. 416.) 

Ceos (also called Cea, Plin., 4, 12. — Ovid, Met., 
7, 368, &c.), an island of the Aegean, one of the Cyc¬ 
lades, opposite the promontory of Sunium in Attica. 
It was famed for its fertility and rich pastures. Pliny 
(4, 12) writes, that it had been torn from Euboea, and 
was once 500 stadia in length, but nearly four parts 
were carried away by the sea on the side of Boeotia. 
Herodotus states, that it was an Ionian colony peo¬ 
pled from Africa, and furnished a few ships both at 
Artemisium and Salamis (8, 1). From this island, as 
Varro reports, a greater degree of elegance was intro¬ 
duced in female dress. ( Plin., 1. c.) It once pos¬ 
sessed four towns, named Iulis, Carthsea, Coressia, 
and Poeessa, but in Strabo’s time only th.e two former 
remained, the population of the others having been 
transferred to them. Iulis was the birthplace of Si¬ 
monides, and is probably represented by the modern 
Zea, which gives its name to the island. It is said 
that the laws of this town decreed, that every man, on 
reaching his sixtieth year, should destroy himself by 
poison, in order to leave to others a sufficient main¬ 
tenance. This ordinance is said to have been pro¬ 
mulgated when the town was besieged by the Athe¬ 
nians. ( Strabo, 486.— AElian, V. H., 3, 37. — Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 401, seqq.) 

Cephallenia, an island in the Ionian sea, south¬ 
west of Ithaca, from which it i-s separated by a strait 
of six miles. It is now Cefalonia, and forms one of 
the seven Ionian islands. Strabo (456) asserts, that 
it was about three hundred stadia in circuit, or thir¬ 
ty-eight miles ; Pliny (4, 12), forty-four miles ; but 
both are very far short of the real measurement, which 
is little less than one hundred and twenty miles. The 
more ancient name of this large island was Samos, as 
we learn from Homer. ( Od., 4, 671.) But the poet 
elsewhere speaks of the Cephallenians as the subjects 
of Ulysses. (P., 2, 631.) All the writers of antiqui¬ 
ty agree in deriving the name of Cephallenia from 
Cephalus, who settled here after his expedition against 
the Telebofe, in which he accompanied Amphitry¬ 
on. ( Strabo, l. c.) The Cephallenians did not share 
in the glory of the victory of Salamis, but one of their 
cities sent a few soldiers to Platsea. ( Herodot., 9, 
28.) Prior to the Peloponnesian war, the whole isl¬ 
and was conquered by an Athenian fleet commanded 
by Tolmides. But its subjugation does not appear to 
have been permanent, since Thucydides mentions, 
that, towards the commencement of the war, it was 
brought under the dominion of Athens, without a 
struggle, by a fleet of one hundred triremes (2, 30). 
There were four cities in the island, Palle or Pale, 
Cranii, Same, and Proni. Besides these well-known 
cities, Stephanus Byzantinus assigns to Cephallenia a 
town called Taphos, of which some remains are said 
to exist near the modern village of Taphios, on the 
western coast of the island. ( Dodwell's Tour, vol. 1, 
p. 75.) Strabo reports, that, towards the close of the 
Roman republic, C. Antonius, the colleague of Cicero 
in his consulship, resided in Cephallenia during his 
exile, and acquired such an influence over the inhabi- 

327 





CEP 


CER 


tants that he appeared to have the direction of the 
whole island. He had projected the foundation of a 
new city, but the work was never executed. ( Cra¬ 
mer's Ancient Greece , vol. 2, p. 49, seq.) 

Cephalion, a Greek writer, whose native country 
is unknown. Suidas, it is true, makes him to have 
been born at Gergitha in Troas, but the lexicographer 
evidently confounds him with another writer named 
Cephalon. (Foss., Hist. Gr., 2, 12.) Cephalion is 
said to have lived during the reign of Hadrian, and to 
have been exiled to Sicily for some offence given to 
the emperor. He wrote an Abridgment of Universal 
History {'Evvrofj.og 'loTopmog) from Ninus to the death 
of Alexander. It was in the Ionic dialect, like the 
work of Herodotus, and, like this also, was divided 
into nine books, each named after one of the Muses. 
He composed also rhetorical declamations. His works 
are lost. ( Photius, Cod., 68—vol. 1, p. 34, ed. Bek- 
ker. — Kuster, ad Suid., s. v.) 

Cephalon, a native of Gergitha in Troas, not to be 
confounded with the preceding. Cephalon wrote an 
historical work, entitled Trojan Events (T poind). He 
appears to have been anterior to Alexander the Great, 
and is considered by Dionysius of Halicarnassus 
worthy of reliance as an historical writer. His work 
is lost. {Dion. Hal., Ant. Bom., 1, 49, et 72.) 

Cefhalus, I. the son of Delon, and a grandson of 
yEolus, was married to Procris, the eldest daughter of 
Erechtheus. They dwelt at Thoricos in Attica, and 
lived happily together, till curiosity to try the fidelity 
of his wife entered the mind of Cephalus. Feigning 
a journey of eight years, he disguised himself and 
came to Procris with a splendid jewel, which he offer¬ 
ed to her on dishonourable terms. After much hesita¬ 
tion she yielded, when her husband discovered himself 
and reproached her with her conduct. She fled from 
him in shame, but they were soon after reconciled. 
Cephalus went constantly to the chase ; and Procris 
growing suspicious, as she had failed herself, fancied 
that he was attracted by the charms of some other fair 
one. She questioned the slave who used to accom¬ 
pany him ; and he told her, that his master used fre¬ 
quently to ascend the summit of a hill, and cry out, 
“Come, Nephela, come!” Procris went to the des¬ 
ignated hill, and concealed herself in a thicket; and 
on her husband’s crying, “ Come, Nephela, come!” 
(which was nothing more than an invocation for some 
cloud to interpose itself between him and the scorching 
beams of the sun), she rushed forward towards her 
husband, who, in his astonishment, threw his dart and 
unwittingly killed her. ( Pherecydes, ay. Schol. ad 
Od., 11, 321.) This legend is told with great varia¬ 
tions, which it is not worth while here to enumerate. 
(Consult Hygin., Fab., 189. — Ovid, Met., 7, 661, 
seqq. — Pausan., 9, 19, 1.— Apollod., 3, 15, 1.— An¬ 
ton. Lib., c. 41.) Cephalus, for his involuntary crime, 
was banished. He went to Thebes, which was at 
that time ravaged by a fox, which nothing could over¬ 
take, and he joined Amphitryon in the chase of it. 
His dog Laelaps ran it down; but, just as he was 
catching it, Jupiter turned them both to stone. ( Apol- 
lod., 2,4, 7.) Cephalus then aided Amphitryon against 
the Teleboans, and on their conquest he settled in 
the island named from him Cephallenia. This last- 
mentioned circumstance, however, is a mere coinci¬ 
dence of name. {Keightley's Mythology, p. 381, 
seqq.) —II. An Athenian orator, who flourished to¬ 
wards the end of the Peloponnesian war, and was one 
of those that contributed most to overthrow the rule 
of the thirty tyrants. Although he lived during a 
very stormy period, and although no one ever propo¬ 
sed or caused to be passed more laws than he did, yet 
he never had any accusation brought against him, a 
remarkable fact in the history of Athens. We must 
not confound him with Cephalus, the father of Lysias, 
who came from Syracuse and settled at Athens. Sui- 
328 


das makes Cephalus to have been the first orator that 
made use of an exordium and peroration. {Surd., s. 
v. Kc0a/lof.)—III. The father of Lysias the orator. 
He was a native of Syracuse, but settled at Athens 
as a resident sojourner, or one of the /jletolkol. ( Lys . 
contra Eratosth., 2.— Beiske , ad loc.) 

Cepheis, a name given to Andromeda as daughter 
of Cepheus. {Ovid., A. A., 1, 193.) 

Cephenes, I. an ancient name of the Persians. 
{Vid. Persia.— Hsrodot., 7, 61.)—II. A name of the 
^Ethiopians, from Cepheus, one of their kings. {Ovid, 
Met., 4, 764.— Gieng, ad loc.) 

Cepheus, a king of ^Ethiopia, father of Andromeda, 
by Cassiope. He was one of the Argonauts, and was 
changed into a constellation after his death. {Ovid, 
Met., 4, 669.— Id., 5, 12.— Pausan., 4, 35.) 

CephIsia, a borough of Attica, at the foot of Mount 
Brilessus, and near the source of the Cephissus. It 
was the favourite residence of Herodes Atticus, who 
had a beautiful villa here. The modern name is said 
to be Kissia. Cramer, however, gives Cephissia. 
{Aul. Gell., 18, 10.— Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 
2, p. 400.) 

Cephisodotus, I. a statuary of Athens, flourished 
about B.C. 372. Two works of his are spoken of by 
the ancients, a Mercury nourishing Bacchus when an 
infant, and one of a public speaker in the act of deliv¬ 
ering an oration. {Plin., 34, 8, 19. — Sillig, Diet. 
Art., s. v.) — II. Another statuary, who flourished 
about Olym. 120. {Plin., 34, 8, 19. — Sillig, Did. 
Art., s. v.) 

Cephisus and Cephissus, I. a celebrated river of 
Greece, that rises at the foot of Parnassus, close to 
Lilsea, and, after traversing the plains of Phocis and 
part of the Boeotian territory, empties into the Copa- 
ic Lake in the latter country. Hesiod compared it to 
a serpent, from the many sinuosities of its course. 
{Ap. Strab , 424.) The modern name is Mauro Po- 
tamo. According to the poets, the son of the river- 
god Cephissus introduced the worship of the Graces 
into Bceotia {vid. Orchomenus), and hence the pecu¬ 
liar attachment which they were said to have for the 
waters of this stream. {Vid. Gratise.) — II. A river 
of Attica, generally distinguished by the name of At¬ 
ticus, to prevent its being confounded with the Ce¬ 
phissus which flowed near Eleusis. Strabo (400) af¬ 
firms, that it took its source near the demus of Trine- 
meis, and, after flowing through the Attic plains and 
passing under the long walls, discharged itself into the 
. sea near Phalerum: he adds, that in summer it was 
nearly dry. In the CEdipus Coloneus it is described, 
however, as a perennial stream (v. 685, seqq. — Cra¬ 
mer's Ancient Greece, vol. 2, p. 357.) — III. A river 
running near Eleusis. According to Sir W. Gell ( Itin¬ 
erary, p. 34), it is divided at present into many small 
branches, and often inundates the plain in its vicinity. 
The modern name is said to be the Podhomsta. — 
IV. A river of Argolis, flowing into the Inachus.—V. 
A river in the island of Salamis. {Strabo, 424.) 

CeramIcus, I. now Keramo, a bay of Caria, north 
of the peninsula of Doris, receiving its name from the 
city of Ceramus in its vicinity. {Plin., 5, 29.)—II. 
One of the most considerable and important parts of 
the city of Athens. Its name was derived from the 
hero Ceramus {Pausan., 1, 3), or perhaps from some 
potteries which were formerly situated there. {Herod¬ 
otus, 5, 88. — Suidas, s. v. K epayclq.) It included 
probably the Agora, the Stoa Basileios, and the Poe- 
cile, as well as various other temples and public 
buildings. Antiquaries are not decided as to the gen¬ 
eral extent and direction of this part of the ancient 
city, since scarcely any trace remains of its monu¬ 
ments and edifices; but we may certainly conclude, 
from their researches and observations, that it lay en¬ 
tirely on the south side of the acropolis. {Leake's 
Topography of Athens, p. 101.) In this direction it 





CER 


CER 


must have been limited by the city walls, which, as 
we know, came close to the fountain Callirhoe or En- 
neacrounos. ( Thucyd ., 2, 15.) The breadth of the 
Ceramicus, according to Mr. Hawkins, being thus 
confined on one side by the walls of the city, and on 
the other by the buildings immediately under the acrop¬ 
olis, could not have exceeded one half of its length. 
It was divided into the outer and inner Ceramicus. 
The former was without the walls, and contained the 
tombs of those who had fallen in battle, and were bu¬ 
ried at the public expense. ( Schol ., Aristoph. Equity 
772.— Pint., Vit. Syll. — Hesych., s. v. K epageiKog.) 
From Plutarch it appears, that the communication 
from the one Ceramicus to the other was by the gate 
Dipylum. ( Hawkins's Topogr. of Athens , in Walp. 
Coll., p. 485.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 315, 
seqq.) 

Ceramus, a small town and fortress of Caria, on the 
northern side of the Sinus Ceramicus, and a short dis¬ 
tance to the east of Halicarnassus. The village of 
Keramo, at the present day, indicates the ancient site. 
(Strab ., 611.— Ptol., p. 119.) 

Cerasus ( untis ), a city of Pontus, on the seacoast, 
southwest of Trapezus. It was founded by a colony 
from Sinope in Paphlagonia, to which it paid a yearly 
tribute. It must not be confounded with Pharnacia. 
•( Vid . Pharnacia.) Xenophon and the Creeks rested 
here for ten days on their retreat from Asia. ( Anab ., 
5, 3, 5.) From this place, according to Pliny, Lucul- 
lus first brought cherries into Italy, A.U.C. 680, which 
were introduced 120 years after into Britain. Plence 
the Latin cerasus, “ a cherry-tree,” and ccrasum, “ a 
cherry.” According to Tournefort, the country is hilly 
and the hills covered with forests, in which cherry-trees 
grow naturally. It is now Kerasoun. {Amm. Mar¬ 
cell., 22, 13.— Plin., 15, 25.— Mela, 1, 19.) 

Ceraunii (or Acroceraunii) Montes, a chain of 
mountains stretching along the coast of northern Epi¬ 
rus, and forming part of the boundary between it and 
Illyricum. That portion of the chain which extended 
beyond Oricum, formed a bold promontory, and was 
termed Acroceraunia (’A nponepavvia), from its sum¬ 
mits { dnpa ) being often struck by lightning {nepavvoq). 
The modern name for the Ceraunian range is Monte 
Chimarra , and that of the Acroceraunian promontory 
is Cape Linguetta. The Greek and Latin poets are 
full of allusions to this dangerous shore. {Apollon., 
Arg., 4, 1216.— Lycophr., 1016.— Virg., JSn., 3, 
506.— Hor., Od., 1, 3, 19.) It was much dreaded by 
the mariners of antiquity, from the belief that the 
mountains attracted storms. Augustus narrowly es¬ 
caped shipwreck here when returning from Actium. 
{Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 94.) 

Ceraunus, a surname of one of the Ptolemies. 
{Vid. Ptolemaeus XV.) 

Cerberus, the famous dog of Hades, the fruit of 
Echidna’s union with Typhon. He was stationed at 
the entrance of hell, as a watchful keeper, to prevent 
the living from entering the infernal regions, and the 
dead from escaping from their confinement. Orpheus 
lulled him to sleep with his lyre; and Hercules 
dragged him from hell in the performance of his 
twelfth and last labour. ( Vid. Hercules.) The poets 
differ in their descriptions of this fabled animal. He¬ 
siod {Theog., 312) assigns him fifty heads, calling 
him Kvva nevrynovrandprivov. Sophocles {Trach., 
1114) styles him "A tdov rptupavov Guvhana (“the 
three-headed dog of Pluto”), and in this last account 
the Latin poets generally coincide. Horace, however, 
calls him bellua centiceps {Od., 2, 13, 14), either by 
poetic amplification, or else in accordance with some 
Greek authority. (Compare the remarks of Tzetzes 
in his scholium on Lycophron, v. 678 . 6 Kvuv rov 
"Aitiov, oq cx EL Harov KetyaTxlq .) Champollion traces 
a curious analogy between the Egyptian and Grecian 
mythology as regards the dog of Hades. “ Le voisi- 


nage du sejour du supreme juge de l’Amenthi est 
annonce par un piedestal, sur lequel se repose un 
animal monstrueux, mais dont les formes sont si de- 
terminees qu’on ne peut y meconnaitre un hippopot- 
ame, amphibie redoubtable, dont les cavernes du Nil 
renfermaient un grand nombre. Ici e’est l’hippopot- 
ame femelle, qui, dans les tableaux astronomiques de 
Thebes et d’Esneh, occupe dans le ciel meme la place 
que les Grecs ont donnee a la grand ourse. Cette 
constellation etait nommee le Chien de Typhon par 
les Egyptiens, et sa presence dans \'Amenthi (1’enfer) 
ne laisse pas douter que cet animal ne soit le type du 
chien Cerbere, qui, selon les mythes Grecs gardait 
l’entree du palais d'Adcs." {Champollion le jcime, 

“ Explication de la principale scene peinte dans dcs 
Papyrus funeraircs Egyptiens."—Bulletin des Sci¬ 
ences Historiques, &c., vol. 4, p. 351.) 

Cercasorum, a city of Egypt, in the Memphitic 
nome, on the western bank of the Nile. It lay to the 
north of Memphis, and a short distance south of the 
spot where the Nile branched off into the Pelusiac and 
Canopic mouths. {Herod., 2, 15.— Id., 17, 97.) The 
ancient Cercasorum is thought to answ r er to the mod¬ 
ern Eksas, or Al Achsas. (Compare D'Anville, Mem. 
sur I'Egypte, p. 73.— Edrisii Africa, p. 426.) 

Cercina (Cercinna, Mela, 2, 7.— Strab., 574), a 
small island off the coast of Byzacium, in Africa, at 
the mouth of the Syrtis Minor, towards the northwest. 

It is now Kerkine. {Liv., 33, 48.— Tacit., Ann., 1, 
53 .—Plin., 5, 7.) 

Cercinium, a town of Macedonia, west of Amphip- 
olis. It was situate at the mouth of the river Pon¬ 
tus, on a lake called Ccrcinitis palus. {Liv., 31, 41.) 

Cerc5pes, a predatory race infesting Lydia during 
the reign of Omphale. They were overcome by Her¬ 
cules. {Dwd. Sic., 4, 31.) The legend connected 
with their name will be given, with some remarks 
upon it, under the article Melampyges. 

Cercyon and Cercyones, a king of Eleusis, son 
of Neptune, or, according to others, of Vulcan. He 
obliged all strangers to wrestle with him ; and, as he 
was a dexterous wrestler, they were easily conquered 
and put to death. After many cruel victories of this 
kind, he challenged Theseus in wrestling, and was 
conquered and put to death by his antagonist. {Pint., 
Vit. Thes. — Diod. Sic., 4, 59.— Hygin., 38.) 

Cercyra (K epicvpa), the Greek form of the name 
Corcyra Latinized. {Vid. Corcyra.) 

Cerealia, festivals in honour of Ceres; first in¬ 
stituted at Rome by Memmius the sedile, and cele¬ 
brated on the 9th of April. Persons in mourning 
were not permitted to appear at the celebration; and 
therefore they were not observed in the year after the 
battle of Cannfe. They were analogous to the Gre¬ 
cian Thesmophoria. {Vid. Thesmophoria.) 

Ceres (in Greek Demeter, Ajy/n/r^p), daughter of 
Saturn and Rhea, was the goddess of grain and har¬ 
vests. She is in fact, however, the same as the god¬ 
dess of the earth, Mother-Earth {pfi yr/ryp), whence 
some ancient system married her to Jupiter, the god 
of the heavens, and hence in Hesiod {Theog., 454, 
912) she is said to have become by this deity the 
mother of Proserpina (Persephone). In Homer she 
is but slightly mentioned {II., 5, 500.— Od., 5, 125), 
and she does not appear among the gods on Olympus. 
She seems to have been early distinguished from the 
goddess called Earth, and to have been thenceforth re¬ 
garded as the protectress of the growing corn and of 
agriculture in general. The most celebrated event 
in the history of Ceres is the carrying off of her daugh¬ 
ter Proserpina by Hades or Pluto, and the search of ' 
the goddess after her throughout the whole world. It 
is noticed by Hesiod {Theog., 914); but the Homeric 
hymn in her honour contains perhaps the earliest nar¬ 
rative of this event, which, though apparently unknown 
to Homer himself, became a favourite theme with 

329 




CERES. 


CERES. 


succeeding poets, after whom Ovid has related it (Met., 
5, 341.— Id., Fast., 4, 417, seq.). Claudian also has 
sung it in a poem, of which, unfortunately, a portion is 
lost.—Proserpina, according to the author of the Ho¬ 
meric hymn, was in the Nysian plain with the ocean- 
nymphs gathering flowers. According to some ac¬ 
counts, Venus, Minerva, and Diana were the compan¬ 
ions of their sister on this occasion. ( Hygin., Fab., 
146.— Claudian, Rapt. Pros., 2, 11, seqq. — Stat., 
Achill., 2, 150.) Others gave her the sirens as her 
attendants. (Apoll. Rh., 4, 896.) She plucked the 
rose, the violet, the crocus, the hyacinth, when she 
beheld a narcissus of surprising size and beauty, hav¬ 
ing a hundred flowers growing from a single root. 
Unconscious of danger, the maiden stretched forth 
her hand to seize the wondrous flower, when suddenly 
the wide earth gaped, Pluto arose in his golden char¬ 
iot, and, seizing the terrified goddess, carried her off 
shrieking for aid, but unheard and unseen by gods or 
mortals save by Plecate, the daughter of Perses, who 
heard her as she sat in her cave, and by King Helius 
(the sun), whose eye nothing on earth escapes. So 
long as the goddess beheld the earth and starry heav¬ 
ens, the fishy sea, and the beams of the sun, so long she 
hoped to see her mother and the tribes of the gods ; 
and the tops of the mountains and the depths of the 
sea resounded with her divine voice. At length her 
mother heard, and, frantic with grief, inquired for ti¬ 
dings of her lost daughter ; but neither gods, nor men, 
nor birds, could give her intelligence. Nine days she 
wandered over the earth, with flaming torches in her 
hands ; on the tenth Hecate met her, but could not 
tell who it was that had carried off Proserpina. To¬ 
gether they proceeded to Helius, and the Sun-god 
tells Ceres that the ravisher is Pluto, who, by the per¬ 
mission of her sire, had carried her away to be his 
queen. Incensed at the conduct of Jupiter, Ceres 
thereupon abandoned the society of the gods and 
came down among men. But now she was heedless 
of her person, and no one recognised her. Under the 
guise of an aged female, she came to Eleusis, and 
was employed, as a nurse for her infant son Demo- 
phoon, by Metanira the wife of Celeus, monarch of the 
place. Beneath the care of the goddess the child 
“ throve like a god.” He ate no food, but Ceres 
breathed on him as he lay in her bosom, and anointed 
him with ambrosia, and every night hid him beneath 
the fire, unknown to his parents, who marvelled at his 
growth. It was the design of Ceres to make him 
immortal, but the curiosity and folly of Metanira de¬ 
prived him of the intended gift. She w r atched one 
night, and, seeing what the nurse was doing to her 
child, shrieked with affright and horror. The goddess 
threw the infant on the ground, declaring what he had 
lost by the inconsiderateness of his mother, but an¬ 
nouncing that he would still become a great and hon¬ 
oured man. She then disclosed her real character, 
and directed the people of Eleusis to raise an altar and 
temple to her without the city, on the hill Callichorus. 
The temple was speedily raised, and the mourning 
goddess took up her abode in it, but a dismal year 
came upon mankind ; the earth yielded no produce ; 
in vain the oxen drew the plough in the field ; in vain 
the seed was cast into the ground, for Ceres would 
allow of no increase. Jove at length sent Iris to 
Eleusis to invite Ceres back to Olympus, but she 
would not comply with the call. All the other gods 
were sent on the same errand, but with as little suc¬ 
cess. Finding that there was no other remedy, and 
that the goddess would not allow the earth to bring 
forth until she had seen her daughter, Jupiter sent 
Mercury to Erebus to endeavour to prevail on Pluto 
to suffer Proserpina to return to the light. The mon¬ 
arch of the lower world yielded compliance, and, 
kindly addressing Proserpina, granted her permission 
to return to her mother. The goddess instantly sprang 
330 


up with joy, and heedlessly swallowed a grain of pom¬ 
egranate which he presented to her. Mercury con¬ 
ducted his fair charge safe to Eleusis, and delivered 
her into the hands of Ceres. When their joy had 
a little subsided, Ceres anxiously inquired of her 
daughter if she had tasted anything while below ; for 
if she had not she would be free to spend her whole 
time with her father and mother ; whereas, if but one 
morsel had passed her lips, nothing could save her 
from passing one third of the year with her husband ; 
she should, however, pass the other two with her and 
the gods. Proserpina ingenuously confessed the swal¬ 
lowing of the grain of pomegranate, and then relates 
unto her mother the whole story of her abduction. 
They pass the day in delightful converse. Hecate 
arrives to congratulate Proserpina, and henceforward 
becomes her attendant. Jove sends Rhea to invite 
them back to heaven. Ceres now complies, and fer¬ 
tility once more prevailed over the earth. Ceres there¬ 
upon taught “ Triptolemus, horse-lashing Diodes, the 
mighty Eumolpus, and Celeus, leader of the people,” 
the mode of performing her sacred rites; and the god¬ 
dess, after this, returned to Olympus.—Such is, in all 
probability, the oldest account of this celebrated event. 
In progress of time it underwent various alterations ; 
the scene was, as usual, changed, and circumstances 
also were added or modified. In the beautiful ver¬ 
sions of it given by the Latin poets, the scene is 
transferred to the grove and lake in the neighbour¬ 
hood of Enna in Sicily, the nymph Arethusa gives 
intelligence of the ravisher, the torches of Ceres are 
lighted from dEtna, and Ascalaphus tells of Proser¬ 
pina’s having plucked a pomegranate in the garden 
of Pluto, and having put seven of the seeds in her 
mouth. In this as in other legends, the fancy of po¬ 
ets, and vanity of the inhabitants of different places, 
have taken abundance of liberties with the ancient 
tale.—The meaning of the whole fable is evident 
enough. Proserpina signifies the seed-corn, which, 
when cast into the ground, lies there concealed ; that 
is, she is carried off by the god of the lower world ; it 
reappears ; that is, Proserpina is restored to her moth¬ 
er, and she abides with her two thirds of the year. 
As, however, the seed-corn is not a third part of the 
year in the ground, it is probable that by the space of 
time which Proserpina was to spend with the god in 
the invisible state, was intended to be expressed the 
period between the sowing of the seed and the ap¬ 
pearance of the ear, during which the corn is away ; 
and which space of time in some species of grain, bar¬ 
ley for instance, is about four months. The vanity 
of the people of the hungry soil of Attica made them 
pretend, that corn was first known, and agriculture 
first practised, in their country. They fabled, that 
the goddess gave to Triptolemus ( Tkrice-plougher ), 
who occupies the place of Demophoon in the foregoing 
legend, her chariot drawn by dragons, in which he 
flew through the air, distributing corn to the different 
regions of the earth. ( Callvm., H. in Cer., 22.— Pau- 
sanias, 1, 14, 2.— Ovid, Met., 5, 654.— Hygin., Fab., 
147.)—Ceres, though of a gentle disposition in gen¬ 
eral, partook of the usual revengeful character of the 
gods, as may be seen by the legends of Stellio and 
Erysichthon. ( Vid. Stellio and Erysichthon.)—The 
chief seats of the worship of Ceres and Proserpina were 
Attica, Arcadia (vid. Oncseum), and the fertile isle 
of Sicily, which was given by Jupiter to his daughter 
on her day of unveiling, that is, on her marriage ; as 
was also Thebes, according to the poet Euphorion. 
(Schol. ad Eurip., Phoen., 693.— Muller, Orchom., p. 
217.) The form of Ceres is copied from that of Ju¬ 
no. She has the same majestic stature and matronly 
air, but of a milder character. Her usual symbol are 
poppies, which sometimes compose a garland for her 
head, sometimes are held in her hand. She is fre¬ 
quently represented holding a torch, significant of her 




search after Proserpina. At times she appears in her 
chariot drawn by dragons. ( Keightley's Mythology, 
p. 170, seqq.) — The Latin name Ceres is in reality of 
the same force with the Greek appellation Demeter 
(A ygyryp, i. e., yy gyryp), the Roman C being origi¬ 
nally the same letter, both in figure and power, as the 
Greek T, which was often employed as a mere gut¬ 
tural aspirate, especially in the old TEolic dialect, from 
which the Latin is principally derived. (Compare 
Knight on the Greek Alphabet , p. 4, seqq.) The hiss¬ 
ing termination, too, in the S, belonged to the same : 
wherefore the word, which the Attics and Ionians 
wrote EPA, EPE, or HPH, would naturally be writ¬ 
ten TEPES by the old TEolics ; the Greeks always ac¬ 
commodating their orthography to their pronunciation; 
and not, like the English and French, encumbering 
their words with a number of useless letters. Ceres, 
however, was not a personification of the brute matter 
which composed the earth, but of the passive pro¬ 
ductive principle supposed to pervade it {Ovid, Fast., 
1, 673.— Virg., Georg., 2, 324) ; which, joined to the 
active, was held to be the cause of the organization 
and animation of its substance ; from whence arose 
her other Greek name AH£2, “ the inveatress. 1 ” She 
is mentioned by Virgil ( loc. cit.) as the wife of the 
omnipotent Father, iEther or Jupiter, and therefore 
the same as Juno ; who is usually honoured with that 
title, and whose Greek name HPH signifies, as be¬ 
fore observed, precisely the same. {Plutarch, ap. 
Euseb., Prcep. Evang.,3, 1.) The Latin name Juno 
is derived from the Greek AIS2NH, the female Zei^or 
Aiq ; the Etruscan, through which the Latin received 
much of its orthography, having no D or 0 in its al¬ 
phabet. The ancient Germans worshipped the same 
goddess under the name of Hertha, the form and 
meaning of which still remain in our word Earth. 
The Greek title seems originally to have had a more 
general signification ; for without the aspirate (which 
was anciently added and omitted almost arbitrarily) 
it becomes EPE; and by an abbreviation very com¬ 
mon in the Greek tongue, PE, or PEE ; which, pro¬ 
nounced with the broad termination of some dialects, 
become PEA ; and with the hissing one of others, 
PE2 or RES ; a word retained in the Latin, signify¬ 
ing properly matter, and figuratively every quality and 
modification that can belong to it. The Greek has 
no word of such comprehensive meaning; the old 
general term being in the refinement of their language 
rendered more specific, and appropriated to that prin¬ 
cipal mass of matter which forms the terraqueous 
globe, and which the Latins also expressed by the 
same word united to the Greek article ry epa —TER¬ 
RA. {Knight, Inquiry, &c., <) 35, seqq. — Class. 
Journ., vol. 23, p. 228, and vol. 25, p. 39. — Sainte- 
Croix, My stores du Paganisme, vol. 1, p. 159.) 

Cerinthus, a town of Euboea, in the vicinity of 
Histiasa, and near a small river called Budorus. The 
name of Geronda, attached to a hamlet on the western 
coast, seems to recall that of Cerinthus. {Scymn., 
Ch., 574. — Plut., Qucest. Gr. — Op., ed. Reiske, vol. 
7, p. 187.) 

Cerne, an island without the Pillars of Hercules, 
on the African coast, mentioned by Hanno in his 
Periplus, as it is usually though incorrectly termed. 
Here he established a colony, and it was always the 
depot of the Carthaginians on the Atlantic coast of 
Africa. Hanno says that it was the same distance 
from the Columns of Hercules that Carthage was. 
According to Rennell, the island of Cerne is the mod¬ 
ern Arguin. Gossellin, however, makes this island to 
be the modern Fedala. ( Vid. the account of Han- 
no’s voyage under the article Africa.) 

Ceretani, a people of Hispania Tarraconensis, at 
the foot of the Pyrenees, and to the east of the Vas- 
cones. Pliny divides them into the Ceretani Augus- 
tani (so named from Augustus having enlarged their 


territory), and the Ceretani Juliani, who possessed 
the Jus Latii. Their country answers to the district 
of Cerdagne in Catalonia. {Phn., 3, 3. — Petr, de 
Marca, 1, 12.) 

Cestrine, a district of Epirus, separated from 
Thesprotia by the river Thy amis. It was said to 
have taken its name from Cestrinus, the son of Hele- 
nus, having previously borne the appellation of Cam- 
mania. It is now called Philates. {Pausan, 1, 11.— 
Steph. Byz., s. v. K ayyavia. — Thucyd. 1, 46.) 

Cethegus, I. a Roman consul, A.U.C. 421. He 
was obliged to lay down his office on account of some 
informality in his election. — II. M. Cornelius, a dis¬ 
tinguished Roman orator. Being sent as praetor to 
Sicily, he quelled a sedition of the soldiers in that isl¬ 
and. He was called to the censorship before he had 
been consul, a thing not in accordance with Roman 
usage, and obtained this latter office six years subse- 
qently, B.C. 204. He carried on the war against the 
Carthaginians in Etruria, and defeated Mago, who was 
coming with succours for Hannibal. {Liv., 27, 11.— 
Id., 30, 18.)—III. C. Cornelius, proconsul in Spain, 
A.U.C. 552, defeated a numerous army of the Sede- 
tani. Being elected consul A.U.C. 557, he gained 
a great victory over the Insubres, and on his return to 
Rome obtained the honours of a triumph. The peo¬ 
ple having afterward chosen him censor, he assigned 
distinct places to the senators at the public games. 
{Liv., 31, 49.— Id., 32, 30. — Id., 35, 9.) —IV. C. Cor¬ 
nelius, a Roman rendered powerful by his influence 
with Marius. He himself was wholly governed by a 
female named Prascia, who obtained for Lucullus the 
government of Cilicia. {Plut., Vit. Lucull .)—V. C. 
Cornelius, a Roman of the most corrupt and aban¬ 
doned character, and one of the accomplices of Cati¬ 
line. He was strangled in prison by order of the sen¬ 
ate. {Sail., Bell. Cat.) 

Ceto, a daughter of Pontus and Terra, who mar¬ 
ried Phorcys, by whom she had the three Gorgons, 
the Grsese, Echidna, and the serpent that watched the 
golden apples. {Hesiod., Theog., 270.) 

C^bus, an incorrect form for Cceus or Coios. {Vid. 
Coeus.) 

Ceyx, a king of Trachinia, and husband of Alcy¬ 
one. He was drowned as he went to consult the ora¬ 
cle of Claros ; and his wife, having been apprized of 
his fate in a dream, found his corpse on the shore. 
They were both changed into Halcyons. {Vid. Al¬ 
cyone.) * 

Chaboras, a river of Mesopotamia, springing, ac¬ 
cording to Ptolemy, from Mount Masius, a little to the 
west of Nisibis, but, according to other authorities, a 
little east of Charrse. These last are followed by 
D’Anville. It fell into the Euphrates near the town 
of Circesium. Its modern name is the Khabour. In 
the Anabasis of Xenophon (1,4, 19.—Compare Lid. 
Nom. to the edition of Zeune), it is called the Araxes, 
which appears to be an appellative term, as we find it 
applied to many other rivers in antiquity. The Cha¬ 
boras is called by Strabo (747) the Abborras ; by Zosi- 
mus (3, 13) the Aboras. (Compare Amm. Mar cell., 
14, 1, and 23, 5. — Mannert, Geogr., vol. 5, p. 268, 
seqq.) 

Chabrias, a celebrated Athenian general, at first a 
disciple of Plato’s, who distinguished himself in the 
military movements of Athens during the fourth cen¬ 
tury before our era, after the termination of the Pelo¬ 
ponnesian war. One of his first exploits was the aid¬ 
ing of Evagoras, king of Salamis, in the island of Cy¬ 
prus, against the Persian arms. He was after this 
sent to the aid of the Boeotians, who had been attacked 
by Agesilaus, and he disconcerted the Spartan general 
by a manoeuvre hitherto unknown to the Greeks. His 
army, on this occasion, being hardly pressed by the foe, 
who had already become sure of victory, Chabrias or¬ 
dered his soldiers to plant one knee on the ground, 





ckje 


CHA 


and rest their spears firmly on the other, covering 
their persons at the same time with their shields. 
Agesilaus, not daring to attack them in this po¬ 
sition, drew back his forces into camp. A statue 
was erected to Chabrias in honour of this exploit, 
and he was represented in the posture just described. 
Some of the learned of modern times think that they 
recognise this statue in that of the “ Gladiator.” 
Chabrias afterward defeated near Naxos the fleet of 
the Lacedaemonians, and thus restored to Athens the 
control of the sea, which she had lost since the battle 
of .Egos Potamos. Subsequently to this he was ac¬ 
cused of treason for having allowed Oropus to be sur¬ 
prised by the Theban exiles, but was acquitted not¬ 
withstanding the powerful efforts of his foes, and par¬ 
ticularly of Callistratus. Finding a stay at Athens 
rather unsafe, he accepted the offer of Tachus, king 
of Egypt, who already had Agesilaus in his service, 
and accepted the command of his naval forces. Ta¬ 
chus, however, having been abandoned by Agesilaus, 
who sided with his son Nectanebis, Chabrias returned 
to Athens, and he was then sent into Thrace to take 
charge of the war against Chersobleptes. His ope¬ 
rations, however, were not very successful in this 
quarter, owing to the disorganized state of the Gre¬ 
cian forces, in consequence of the failure of their pay. 
Not long after this, the social war, as it has been 
termed, broke out between the Athenians on the one 
side, and the Byzantines, together with the inhabi¬ 
tants of Chios, Rhodes, and Cos, on the other. The 
Athenians gave the command of their forces to Chares, 
and Chabrias went with him as second in authority, 
having charge of the fleet according to Diodorus Sicu¬ 
lus, but, as Nepos informs us, in the character of a 
simple volunteer. They proceeded to attack Chios; 
and Chares, wishing to make an onset both by sea and 
land, gave the command of his ships to Chabrias. The 
latter succeeded in forcing an entrance into the har¬ 
bour, but, not being followed by the remainder of the 
squadron, he was surrounded by the vessels of the 
enemy, and fell bravely defending his ship, although 
he might have escaped had he felt inclined. Great 
honours were paid to his memory at Athens. Demos¬ 
thenes says, that he took in the course of his life sev¬ 
enteen cities and seventy vessels; that he made 
three thousand prisoners, and brought one hundred 
and ten talents into the public treasury ; that he 
erected also many trophies, but his foes not a single 
one for any victory over him. He adds, that the 
Athenians, during the whole time Chabrias was com¬ 
mander, never lost a single city, a single fortress, a 
single vessel, or even a single soldier. In this, no 
doubt, there is great exaggeration; still, however, he 
appears to have been a very able general, and one that 
would have equalled all who went before him, had he 
lived in more favourable times. Plutarch says, that 
Chabrias, though at other times scarcely anything 
could move him, was in the moment of action im¬ 
petuously vehement, and exposed his person with a 
boldness ungoverned by discretion. We have his life 
b}^ Cornelius Nepos, but it is a very meager one. 
Xenophon, in his Greek history, might have given us 
more details respecting him ; but the partiality of this 
writer for Sparta prevented him from saying much in 
favour of the Athenian commander. (Corn. Nep. in 
Vit.—Perizon. ad Ml., V. H., 5, 1. — Diod. Sic., 15, 
32, seqq. — Xen., Hist. Gr., 5, 1, 10, seqq.-^Dcmosth. 
adv. Leptin., 17, &c.) 

Ch^eremon, I. a tragic poet of Athens, who flour¬ 
ished about 338 B.C. The earliest testimony, per¬ 
haps, in relation to this poet, is the mention made of 
him by the comic writer Eubulus. (Athenceus, 2, p. 
43, c. —- Compare Aristot., Poet., 2, 25. — Id., Rhet., 
2, 23, et 29. — Thcophrast., Hist. Plant., 5, 9, 5. — 

Clinton's Fasti Hcllenici , 2d ed., p. xxxii.)_II. A 

philosopher and historian of Alexandrea. He accom- 
332 


panied ^Elius Gallus in his journey through Egypt, 
and was subsequently appointed librarian to the Sera- 
peum. Being afterward called to Rome to preside 
over the education of Nero, he shared this office with 
Alexander of Mg& the peripatetic. His historical la¬ 
bours embraced the antiquities of Egypt, both sacred 
and profane. He wrote also a work on Hieroglyphics, 
which has unfortunately perished. He is the author, 
also, of one of the two systems relating to the Egyp¬ 
tian religion, which divided the opinions of the ancient 
world. According to him, this religion was nothing 
more than a species of sacred physics, in which the vis¬ 
ible worlds (opupevoi koc/jlol) played a principal part. 
Iamblichus, on the other hand, maintained, that the 
Egyptians acknowledged one supreme and absolute in¬ 
telligence. Perhaps both these philosophers were 
right: they may have spoken of different epochs.— 
(Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 5, p. 177, seqq. — Creu- 
zer, Symholik, vol. 1, p. 383.) 

Ch^ekonea, a city of Bceotia, to the northeast of 
Lebadsea. It was about sixteen English miles from 
Elatea, twenty-seven from Thebes, and sixty-two from 
Athens (Clinton's Fasti Hcllenici , 2d ed., p. 295, in 
notis ), and was remarkable for the important military 
events which occurred in its territory, and also as 
being the birthplace of Plutarch. Pausani&s is in¬ 
clined to look upon this city as the Boeotian Arne men¬ 
tioned by Homer (E., 2, 507.— Pausan., 9, 40). Ac¬ 
cording to some traditions, however, Arne and Mi- 
dea had both been swallowed up by the waters of the 
Copaic Lake; but others considered the town of 
Acrrephium as the Arne of the poet. (Strabo, 413.) 
Pausanias reports, on the authority of Hesiod, that 
the name of Chseronea was derived from Chaeron, the 
son of Apollo. It was memorable for the defeat of 
the Athenians by the Boeotians, B.C. 447, and much 
more for their irretrievable defeat by Philip, B.C. 
338. (Pint., Vit. Dcmosth., c. 24. — Strabo, 414.) — 
Pausanias observes, that no trophy was erected by 
Philip after this signal victory, as it was not the prac¬ 
tice of the Macedonian kings. Several years after 
this place witnessed another bloody engagement, be¬ 
tween the Romans, under the conduct of Sylla, and 
the troops of Mithradates, commanded by Taxiles 
and Archelaus, B.C. 86. Clneronea is now called 
Kaprena, and is still a populous village, with many 
vestiges of the ancient town. (Cramer's Ancient 
Greece, vol. 2, p. 241, seqq. — Dodwell's Tour, vol. 1, 
p. 220.— Gell, Itin., p. 221.) 

Chalcedon, a city of Bithynia, situate at the south¬ 
ern extremity of the Thracian Bosporus, nearly oppo¬ 
site to Byzantium or Constantinople. It was founded 
by a colony from Megara, about seventeen years prior 
to the settling of Byzantium. Chalcedon was called 
by the Persian satrap Megabyzus, in derision, the city 
of the blind, because the inhabitants had overlooked 
the superior position on the opposite side of the 
straits, where Byzantium was subsequently founded. 
(Herodot., 4, 144.) Strabo, however, ascribes this re¬ 
mark to an oracle of Apollo, which was received by 
the founders of Byzantium, and by which they were 
directed to select a spot for a city “ opposite the 
blind” (unEvavTiov rtiv rv<p?itiv. — Strab., 320). But, 
whichever be the true account, one thing is very cer¬ 
tain, that the imputation attempted to be cast upon 
the Chalcedonians was any other than just. When 
Chalcedon was founded, the commerce of Megara had 
not extended to the Euxine, and it would have been 
idle, therefore, to found a city, at that period, on the 
European side of the Bosporus, along which a steady 
current sets down from the Euxine Sea. It was only 
when traffic had spread to the shores of the Euxine 
that the site occupied at present by Constantinople 
became an important one, since the vessels from 
that sea would then be carried down directly by the 
current into the harbour of the last-mentioned city. 



CH A 


CH A 


( Manncrt , Geogr., vol. 7, p, 155.) Chalcedon was 
always a considerable place. It preserved its inde¬ 
pendence until the reign of Darius, to whose arms the 
Chalcedonians were forced to submit. They recover¬ 
ed their freedom, however, after the defeat of Xerxes, 
and became the allies, or, rather, tributaries of the 
Athenians, to whom the ports of the Bosporus were an 
object of the highest commercial and financial impor¬ 
tance. After the battle of ./Egos Potamos, however, 
Chalcedon opened its gates to Lysander, whose first 
object seems to have been to secure the entrance of 
the Bosporus by the possession of this city and By¬ 
zantium. (Xen., Hist. Gr., 2, 2, 1.) Theopompus, 
who is quoted by Athenseus, observes, that the Chal¬ 
cedonians at first possessed good institututions, but, 
having been tainted by the democratic principles of 
their neighbours, the Byzantines, they became luxu¬ 
rious and debauched. ( Athen., 12, p. 526, /.) This 
city is also celebrated in ecclesiastical history for the 
council held there against the Eutychian heresy (A.D. 
451). Hierocles assigns to it the first rank among the 
cities of the province then called Pontica Prima (p. 
690).—It is to be observed, that in writing the name 
of this city, ancient authors have not been uniform, 
some giving K aTixySuv, others XaTuiydiov. The for¬ 
mer mode is, however, much more frequent, and it 
is confirmed by the existing coins, the epigraph of 
which is invariably KAAXAAONI£2N, according to 
the Doric form. ( Eckhel , Doct. Num. Vet., p. 1, vol. 
1, p. 410.)—The site of this ancient city is now oc¬ 
cupied by the Turkish village of Kadikevi, but the 
Greeks still preserve the classical name. (Cramer's 
Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 190.— Manncrt, Geogr., 1. c .— 
Walpole, Memoirs, vol. 2, p. 8, Append., n. 41.) 

Chalcidice, I. a district of Macedonia, between the 
Sinus Thermaicus and Strymonicus. The lower part 
of it formed three peninsulas, Phlegra or Pallene, Si- 
thonia, and Athos. The small town of Chalcis gave 
name to this district.—II. Another in Syria, adjacent 
to the town of Chalcis. (Vtd. Chalcis V.) 

Chalcidicus ( Chalcidian ), an epithet applied to 
Cumae in Italy, as built by a colony from Chalcis in 
Euboea. (Virg., JEn., 6, 17.) 

Chalcioecus, an epithet applied to Minerva at 
Sparta, from her having a brazen temple (xaTiKovg 
okof)- Sir W. Gell, in his account of the Treasury 
at Argos, gives a reasonable explication of this seem¬ 
ingly strange term. He discovered in the interior 
of the Treasury, which still remains in a great de¬ 
gree entire, a number of brass nails placed through¬ 
out at regular intervals on the walls, and these he 
supposes were originally used for securing plates of 
the same metal to the wall; and hence the seeming 
fables of brazen chambers and brazen temples. In a 
similar manner may be explained the account, given 
by the ancients, of the brazen vessel made by Eurys- 
theus, and into which he retired whenever Hercules 
returned from his labors. (Gell's Argolis, p. 33.) 

Chalcis, I. the most celebrated and important city 
of Euboea, situate on the narrowest part of the Euri- 
pus. According to the common account, it was 
founded after the siege of Troy by an Ionian colony 
from Athens, under the conduct of Cothus. (Strabo, 
447.) Other authorities, however, have assigned to 
it a much greater antiquity, and it is certain that Ho¬ 
mer speaks of Chalcis as already existing before the 
event above mentioned. (11., 2, 537.) The flourish¬ 
ing condition of this great Ionian city, at a very early 
period, is attested by its numerous colonies on the 
shores of Italy and Sicily, as well as on the Thracian 
coast around Pallene and Mount Athos. Aristotle, as 
Strabo reports, dated these establishments from the 
period when the government of Chalcis, through the 
influence of the wealthiest inhabitants, named Hippo- 
botae, became a pure aristocracy. From Herodotus 
(5, 77) we learn, that the Chalcidians, having joined 


the Boeotians in their depredations on the coast of 
Attica, soon after the expulsion of the Pisistratidae, 
afforded the Athenians just grounds for reprisals. 
They accordingly crossed over into Euboea with a 
large force, and, after defeating the Chalcidians, occu¬ 
pied the lands of the wealthiest inhabitants, and dis¬ 
tributed among them 4000 of their own citizens. 
These, however, were obliged to evacuate the island 
on the arrival of the Persian fleet under Datis and Ar- 
taphernes. (Herod., 6, 100.) The Chalcidians, after 
the termination of the Persian war, became again de¬ 
pendent on Athens with the rest of Euboea, and did 
not regain their liberty till the close of the Pelopon¬ 
nesian war, when they asserted their freedom, and, 
aided by the Boeotians, fortified the Euripus and es¬ 
tablished a communication with the continent by 
throwing a wooden bridge across the channel. Tow¬ 
ers were placed at each extremity, and room was left 
in the middle for one ship only to pass. This work was 
undertaken, according to Diodorus, 410 B.C. (Diod. 
Sic., 13, 47.) From the advantages of its situation 
and the strength of its works, Chalcis was considered, 
in the latter period of the history of Greece, as one 
of the most important fortresses of that country; 
hence we find it a frequent object of contention be¬ 
tween the Romans and Philip, son of Demetrius, who 
termed it one of the chains of Greece. (Polyb., 17, 
11.— Id., 18, 28.) In the war with Perses, the Chal¬ 
cidians were cruelly oppressed and plundered by the 
Roman prsetors Lucretius and Hortensius. (Livy, 
43, 7.) They were subsequently treated with still 
greater severity by Mummius, the destroyer of Cor¬ 
inth, for having favoured the Achseans in their contest 
with Rome ; and the epitoinist of Livy asserts that 
their town was actually destroyed. (Liv., 52.—Com 
pare Freinsh., Suppl., 19.) Pausanias informs us 
that Chalcis no longer existed in his day (5, 23.— 
Compare Steph. Byz., s. v. XaTudg. — Hierocles, p. 
645). Procopius names it among the towns restored 
by Justinian (4, 3). In the middle ages it assumed 
the name of Euripus (Apospasm., Geogr., vol. 4, p. 
42, Geogr. Min., ed. Hudson), which was in process 
of time corrupted to Negropont, the modern appella¬ 
tion of the whole island, as well as that of its capital. 
(Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 2, p. 134.)—II. A 
town ofvEtolia, at the foot of Mount Chalcis, and on 
the right bank of the Evenus. It was sometimes 
called Iiypochalcis, with reference to its situation at 
the base of the mountain, and is now represented by 
the modern village of Galata. Thucydides (2, 83) 
places it near the mouth of the Evenus. Livy says 
it stood on the road from Naupactus to Lysimachia 
and Stratus (36, 11). Polybius calls it Chalcia, and 
speaks of it as a maritime town (5, 94).—III. A 
small maritime town of the Corinthians, situated to¬ 
wards Sicyon. (Thucyd., 1 , 108.)—IV. A city of 
Macedonia, in the district of Chalcidice, to which it 
gave name. It was founded at an early period by a 
colony from Chalcis in Euboea.—V. A city of Syria, 
capital of the district of Chalcidice, and of Grecian or¬ 
igin, having been settled by the Macedonians. It was 
superseded afterward by Chaleb or Beroea. It is rep¬ 
resented by the modern Kinnesrin or Chinserin. 
(Appian, Bell. Syr., 20.— Joseph., Bell. Jud., 20, 3.) 

Chald/ea, a country of Asia, at the head of the 
Persian Gulf, and south of Babylonia. Some writers, 
however, make Babylonia a part of it. With respect to 
the origin of the Chaldseans, who are called in scripture 
Chasdim, various opinions have been entertained. Mi- 
chaelis considers them as a foreign race in Assyria. 
His chief reason for this opinion is founded on the 
names of Chaldaean and Babylonian kings preserved in 
scripture, and by Ptolemy and Syncellus, which differ 
from the Assyrian names, and bear an apparent re¬ 
semblance to those of some northern nations of Sla¬ 
vonic origin. Thus Nebuchadnezzar would be in Sla- 

333 



CHA 


CHA 


vonic, Nebu-godnoi-tzar, i. e., a prince worthy of heav¬ 
en. Belshazzar would be equivalent to Bolshoi-tzar, 
i e., a great prince ; and so of others It has been 
objected to this, that the word Czar in Slavonic is 
nothing more than a corruption of Ccesar, an opinion 
hardly worth refuting. The orthography of the Rus¬ 
sian term tsar sufficiently disproves such an idea. 
Compare the Hebrew sar; the Arabic sary; the 
Sanscrit shera; the English sire. So also we have 
in the arrow-headed inscriptions of Persepolis, as in¬ 
terpreted by Lassen, the form ksahiah for “king.” 

( Lassen, Altpersischen Keil-Inschriften, &c., p. 141. 
— Compare Michaelis, Spicileg. Geogr., Heb. ext., 
vol. 2, p. 77, seqq.) —The Chaldseans appear to have 
been originally a mountaineer-race from the northern 
parts of Mesopotamia, though not, as Michaelis sup¬ 
poses, of foreign extraction, but in reality a branch of 
the Semitic race. (Compare Adelung, Mithradates, 
vol. 1, p. 517. — Fiirst, Chald. Gram., p. 5, seqq. — 
Compare still farther, in relation to the Chaldee 
tongue, the remarks of Saint-Martin, as cited by Bal- 
bi, Introduction a VAtlas Ethnographique, p. 106, 
and, as regards the pretended antiquity of the Chaldee 
empire, consult Cuvier, on the Revolutions of the Sur¬ 
face of the Globe, p. 127, seqq., Eng. transl., 1829, 
and Drummond’s Origines, vol. 1, p. 13, seqq.) The 
Chaldseans are highly commended in many of the an¬ 
cient writers for their skill in the sciences, especially 
in astronomy. If we are to believe Diodorus, how¬ 
ever, their claims to this high character were very 
slight. They seem to have pursued the study of as¬ 
tronomy no farther than as it might tend to aid their 
astrological researches. They taught that the shape 
of the earth was that of a skiff or small boat, and of 
eclipses of the sun they knew but little, and never 
ventured to predict them, or fix the time of their oc¬ 
curring. So says Diodorus. ( Diod. Sic., 2, 31.— 
Compare, however, in relation to the science of the 
Chaldaeans, the remarks of Sir W. Drummond, Class. 
Journ., vol. 16, p. 145 and 262; vol. 17, p. 19 ; vol. 
18, p. 1 and 298 ; vol. 19, p. 296.) 

Chaldsei, I. the inhabitants of Chaldsea.—II. The 
same with the Chalybes. (Vid. Chalybes.) 

Chalybes, a people of Pontus, in Asia Minor, who 
inhabited the whole coast from the Jasonium Promon- 
torium to the vicinity of the river Thermodon, to¬ 
gether with a portion of the inner country. They 
were celebrated in antiquity for the great iron-mines 
and forges which existed in their country. (Apoll. 
Rh., 2, 1002, seqq. — Id., 2, 374.— Virg., Georg., 1, 
58. — Dionys. Perieg., 768.) We are ignorant of 
the grounds on which the ancients attributed this ac¬ 
tive employment in the manufacture of iron to the 
Chalybes, for it does not appear at present that this 
part of Asia is at all productive of that most useful 
metal; perhaps, however, if the mountainous districts 
were accurately examined, there could be found traces 
of the ancient works. It is plain, however, that they 
had not ceased to furnish a good supply of metallic 
ore in Strabo’s time, for he observes, that the two 
great articles of produce in the land of the Chalybes, 
who were then commonly called Chaldsei or Chaldi, 
were the fisheries of the pelamys and the iron-works ; 
the latter kept in constant employment a great num¬ 
ber of men. Strabo observes, also, that these mines 
formerly produced a quantity of silver ; and this cir¬ 
cumstance, together with some affinity in the names, 
led some commentators of Homer to identify the Aly- 
be of that poet with the Chalybes of Pontus. (II., 2, 
856.) Strabo himself strongly contends for this inter¬ 
pretation, and it is in all probability the true one. 
(Strabo, 549, seqq.) It is remarkable, that Herodotus 
names the Chalybes among the nations of Asia that 
were conquered by Croesus (1, 28), and yet they cer¬ 
tainly are found afterward considerably beyond the 
Halys, which separated his dominion from those of 
334 


Cyrus : either, therefore, they must have shifted their 
position, or Croesus subsequently lost what he had 
gained on the right bank of the Halys. Xenophon, 
who traversed the country of the Chalybes, speaks of 
them as being few in number, and subject to the Mo- 
synoeci; he adds, that their chief employment was 
forging iron. But it is worthy of remark, that he 
places these Chalybes more to the east than other 
writers. (Anab., 5,5,2.) Zeunius, therefore, is of 
opinion, that this people must have lived a wandering 
sort of life, and have often changed their territory. 
(Dissert. Geogr. ad Anab., p. xxvii., ed. Oxon., 1809.) 
Xenophon, however, speaks elsewhere of some other 
Chalybes, who were situated apparently on the borders 
of Armenia, and were much more numerous and war¬ 
like. (Anab., 4, 7, 10.) Strabo reports that the 
Chalybes, in his time, had changed their name to that 
of Chaldsei (Strab., 549), and it is remarked, that Xen¬ 
ophon speaks of an Armenian tribe of Chaldees, who 
encountered the Greeks near the river Centritis (Anab., 
4, 3, 4.—Compare Eustath. ad Dion. Perieg., 768); 
but Menippus, in his Periplus, calls'the Pontic tribe 
Chaldi, and their canton Chaldia. (Ap. Steph. Byz., 
s. v. XaTidia. — Cramer’s Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 273, 
seqq.) . . . . 

Chalybon, a city of Syria, capital of the district 
called Chalybonitis, and the same with the Scripture 
Helbon. (Ezek., 27, 18.) The surrounding country 
was famed for its wine. (Compare Casaub. ad Athcn., 
2, p. 66. — Bochart, Hieroz., pt. 1, lib. 2, c. 45, page 
485. — Schleusner, Lex. V. T., s. v. XeX6uv.) The-, 
venot, Russel, and others make this city correspond to 
the modern Aleppo (Haleb). Pococke, however, is in 
favour of Kennesnn, to the south of Aleppo. (I id. 
Beroea.) 

Chalybs, a river of Hispania Tarraconensis, in the 
country of the Celtiberi, and one of the tributaries of 
the Iberus. Its waters were famed for hardening steel; 
so that the name Chalybs was given to it from this 
circumstance, by either the Romans or the Greeks, 
more probably the former. The modern name is the 
Queiles. (Justin, 44, 3.) 

Chaones, a people of Epirus. (Vid. Chaonia.) 

Chaonia, a region of Epirus. The ancients com¬ 
prehended under the name of Chaonia that northwest¬ 
ern part of Epirus which bordered on the territory of 
Oricum, Amantia, and still more to the east on the 
country of the Atintanes, while it extended along the 
coast of the Ionian Sea from the Acroceraunian prom¬ 
ontory to the harbour of Buthrotum, opposite the isl¬ 
and of Corcyra. The exact limits of Chaonia can¬ 
not now be ascertained, since, even in Strabo's time, 
it was impossible to discern with accuracy what be¬ 
longed to each of the several tribes into which the 
body of the nation had been divided, owing to the great 
political changes which that country had experienced 
since it became subject to the Romans. (Strabo, 
322.) We must observe, however, that in the time 
of Thucydides, the river Thyamis bounded that south¬ 
ern portion of Chaonia which bore the name of Ces- 
trine, on the side of Thesprotia. The Chaones, as we 
learn from Strabo, were once the most powerful and 
warlike people of Epirus, until the Molossi, in their 
turn, acquired a preponderating ascendency over the 
other clans of that country. In tfhe time of the Pel¬ 
oponnesian war the Chaones differed from their neigh¬ 
bours, in being subject to an aristocratical and not a 
monarchical government; their annual magistrates 
being always chosen from a particular family. (Thu- 
cyd., 2, 80.) Tradition ascribed the origin of their 
name to Chaon, the brother of Helenus, who married 
Andromache after the death of Pyrrhus. (Virg., 
JEn., 3, 333.—Compare the commentary of Servius, 
ad loc.) It may be inferred from the name of Pelas- 
gis given to Chaonia by some ancient writers, that it 
was formerly occupied by the Pelasgi. (Steph. Byz., 




CH A 


CH A 


s. v. Xaovia.) Virgil uses the epithet Chaonius for 
Dodonceus (Georg., 1,8) in referring to the acorns of 
Dodona. ( Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 93.) 

Chaos, a heterogeneous mass, containing all the 
seeds of nature. According to Hesiod ( Theog., 116), 
“ Chaos was firstthen came into being “ broad¬ 
breasted Earth, the gloomy Tartarus, and Love.” 
Chaos produced Erebus and Night, and this last bore 
to Erebus Day and JEther. The idea of Chaos and 
Night, divested ofpoetical imagery, is simply that of un¬ 
formed matter, eternally existing as the passive princi¬ 
ple, whence all forms are produced. Whether, besides 
this Chaotic mass, the ancient theogonies suppose an 
infinite, active, intelligent Principle, wh£ from the 
first matter formed the universe, is a question which 
has occasioned much debate. It is evident, upon the 
most cursory review of all the ancient theogonies, that 
God, the great Creator of all things, is not expressly 
introduced, but it is doubted whether the framers of 
these theogonies meant to exclude him from their re¬ 
spective systems, or indirectly to suppose his exist¬ 
ence and the exertion of his power in giving motion to 
matter. When divested of allegory and poetry, the 
sum of the doctrine contained in the ancient theogo¬ 
nies will, it is conceived, be found to be as follows : 
The first matter, containing the seeds of all future 
being, existed from eternity with God. At length 
the Divine energy acting upon matter produced a mo¬ 
tion among its parts, by which those of the same kind 
were brought together, and those of a different kind 
were separated, and by which, according to certain 
wise laws, the various forms of the material world 
were produced. The same energy of emanation gave 
existence to animals and men, and to gods who in¬ 
habit the heavenly bodies, and various other parts of 
nature. Among men, those who possess a larger por¬ 
tion of the Divine nature than others are hereby im¬ 
pelled to great and beneficent actions, and afford illus¬ 
trious proofs of their divine original, on account of 
which they are, after death, raised to a place among 
the gods, and become objects of religious worship. 
(Enfield's Hist, of Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 130, seqq.) 

Charadra, a town of Phocis, about 20 stadia from 
Lilsea. Near it flowed the river Charadrus, which fell 
into the Cephissus. Herodotus (8, 33) names this 
place among the Phocian cities destroyed by the army 
of Xerxes. Dodwell states, that the ruins of Chara¬ 
dra are to be seen near the village of Mariolates, at 
the foot of Parnassus. (Dodwell's Tour, vol. 2, p. 132.) 

Charax, I. a considerable emporium of Bithynia, 
in the later periods of the Byzantine empire. It was 
situate on the bay of Nicomedia, or Sinus Astacenus. 
(Stcph. Byz., s. v. Xdpaij.) —II. Another and earlier 
name for the city of Tralles, in Lydia. (Steph. Byz., 
s. v. T pdXkiq, Xdpag) —III. A town of Phrygia, be¬ 
tween Lampe and Graosgala. (Nicet., Ann., p. 127, 
b.) —IV. A town of Armenia Minor, in the northeast¬ 
ern angle of the country. (Ptol. —Compare Cramer, 
Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 154.) 

Charaxus, a Mytileneari, brother to Sappho. (Vid. 
Sappho, near the commencement of the article.) 

Chares, I. an Athenian general, who succeeded to 
the command after the condemnation and death of 
Leosthenes. He was sent by the Athenians against 
Alexander, tyrant of Pheraj, but, instead of coming to 
action with the foe, he harassed the Athenian allies to 
such a degree by his extortions and oppression, that 
the social war was the result (B.C. 388). Although 
Chares was the principal cause of this war, yet the 
orators of his party shielded him from punishment, and 
succeeded in having him nominated commander-in¬ 
chief. Little, if anything, was effected by him, and 
he was at length recalled for having aided Artabazus, 
who had revolted against the king of Persia. Some 
time after he was sent to aid Byzantium against Philip 
of Macedon, but he only incurred the contempt of his 


foe, and excited the discontent of the allies, so that the 
Athenians finally recalled him, and put Phocion in his 
place. This, however, did not prevent them from choo¬ 
sing him for their general at the battle of Chseronffia, 
where his ignorance and incapacity mainly contributed 
to the loss of the day. He was one of those whom 
Alexander ordered to be delivered up to him after the 
destruction of Thebes, but he succeeded in mollifying 
the conqueror, and was permitted to live at Athens. 
(Diod. Sic., 15, 95. — Athcnceus, 12, p. 532.— Xen., 
Hist. Gr., 7, 2, 18. — Lambin., ad Corn. Nep., Vit. 
Chabr., c. 3.)—II. A Greek statuary, born at Hindus. 
He was the disciple of Lysippus, and was celebrated 
as the maker of the colossus of Rhodes, on which he 
was employed twelve years. (Strab., 652. — Plin., 
34, 7.— Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.) 

Charicles, I. one of the 30 tyrants set over Athens 
by the Lacedsemonians, and possessing great influence 
among his colleagues. (Xen., Mem. Socr., 1, 2, 31. 
— Anstot., Polit., 5, 6. — Schlosser, ad Aristot., 1. c.) 
—II. A celebrated physician in the train of Tiberius. 
Towards the end of that emperor’s life, Charicles, on 
taking leave of him, as if about to journey abroad, man¬ 
aged, in grasping the hand of Tiberius, to feel his 
pulse, and became instantly convinced that the latter 
had not more than two days to live, a secret which he 
soon divulged to Macro. (Tacit., Ann., 6, 50.— 
Gronov., ad loc.) 

# Charila, a festival observed once in nine years by 
the Delphians. It owed its origin to this circumstance: 
in a great famine, the people of Delphi assembled and 
applied to their king to relieve their wants. He ac¬ 
cordingly distributed the little corn he had among the 
better portion of them ; but an orphan girl coming and 
importuning him, he beat her with his sandal. The 
girl, unable to endure the affront, hung herself with 
her girdle. The famine increased ; and the oracle 
told the king that, to relieve his .people, he must atone 
for the murder of Charila. Upon this a festival w as 
instituted with expiatory rites. The king presided 
over this festival, and distributed pulse and corn to 
such as attended. Charila’s image was brought be¬ 
fore the king, w ho struck it with his shoe ; after 
which it was carried to a desolate place, where they 
put a halter round its neck, and burned it where Char¬ 
ila was buried. (Plut., Qiuzst. Gr .■— Op., ed. Iieiske, 
vol. 4, p. 176.) 

Charis, a name applied by Homer (II., 18, 382) to 
the wife of Vulcan. In the Odyssey, on the other 
hand (8, 267), Venus is named as his spouse. It 
amounts to the same thing in the figurative explana¬ 
tion of the myth, since Grace and Beauty were both 
regarded as the characteristics of Vulcan’s labours. 
(Heyne, ad L., 1. c .) 

Charisia, a festival in honour of the Graces, with 
dances which continued all night. A cake w r as given 
to those who remained awake during the whole time. 
(Eustath. ad Od., 18, 194.) 

Charistia, a festival at Rome, on the 8th day be¬ 
fore the Calends of March (February 22). It was 
celebrated among relations by a kind of family ban¬ 
quet, and presents were made. No stranger was al¬ 
lowed to be present. (Val. Max., 2, 1, 8.) 

Charites, the Graces, daughters, according to He¬ 
siod (Theog., 907), of Jupiter and the ocean-nymph 
Eurynome. They were three in number, and their 
names, as the same bard informs us, were Aglaia 
(Splendour ), Euphrosyne (Joy), and Thalia (the Bloom¬ 
ing one). According to Antimachus (Pausan., 9, 
35), the Graces were the daughters of Helius (the 
Sun) and JEgle (Splendour) ; and Hermesianax made 
Peitho (Persuasion) one of their number. In Nonnus 
(Dionys., 24, 263) their names are Pasithea, Peitho, 
and Aglaia. The Graces, like the Muses and other 
sister-goddesses, are spoken of by Homer in the plu¬ 
ral, and with him their number is indefinite. They 

335 



CHA 


CHA 


are graceful and beautiful themselves, and the bestow- j 
ers of all grace and beauty both on persons and things. ! 
They seem to have been particularly attached to the 
train of the goddess of love, although the queen of 
heaven had authority over them (II., 14, 267); and 
she promises Pasithea, one of the youngest of them, 
as a wife to Somnus, in return for his aid in deceiving 
Jupiter : by later writers she is even said to be their 
mother. (Nonnus, 31, 184. — Eudocia, ap. Villois ., 
Anecd. Gr., vol. 1, p. 430.) Orchomenus, in Boeotia, 
was the chief seat of the worship of these goddesses. 
Its introduction was ascribed to Eteocles, the son of 
the river Cephissus. The Lacedaemonians worship¬ 
ped only two Graces, whom they name Cleta (Re - , 
nowned ) and Phaenna (Bright), as we are informed 
by Pausanias (l. c., et 3. 18, 6). The Athenians ori¬ 
ginally adored the same number, under the names of 
Hegemone (Leader) and Auxo (Increaser). The 
Graces were at all times, in the creed of Greece, the 
goddesses presiding over social enjoyments, the ban¬ 
quet, the dance, and all that tended to inspire gayety j 
and cheerfulness. They are represented as three j 
beautiful sisters, either dancing together, or standing 
with their arms around each other. Sometimes they 
are nude, sometimes habited. (Keightlcy's Mythol¬ 
ogy, p. 192, seq.) — The Graces, like the Horae and 
Muses, appear to have had originally a reference to 
the stars and seasons. The Greeks deprived them 
of their astronomical functions, and substituted such 
attributes as were merely of a poetic character. We 
still see, however, on an ancient gem, the Graces dan- j 
cing upon the head of Taurus, while two of them are 
turning towards seven stars, at which they point with 
the hand. (Bononi, Collect. Antiq. Rom., fol. 1736, 
n. 82.— Passerat, Thesaur. gemm. astnfer., 1, tab. 
144.) At a later period, when moral ideas began to 
be more intimately blended with parts of the Grecian 
System, the Graces assumed analogous attributes. 
One of them was supposed to represent a favour con¬ 
ferred, another a favour received, while the third des¬ 
ignated the return made for benefits. (Aristot., Eth., 
5, S. — Senec., de Benef., 1, 3.— Constant, de la Reli¬ 
gion, vol. 2, p. 402. — Winckelmann, Essai sur VAl- 
legorie, c. 2.— Traites sur VAllegone, vol. 1, p. 132.) 

Chariton, of Aphrodisias (a Carian town), the 
name by which we know the author of a Greek ro¬ 
mance, entitled Ttiv nepl Xaipeav aal KaTilufifioyv 
ipcjTiictiv diyyygdTiov \6yoi y : “ The Loves of Chse- 
reas and Callirhoe, in eight books.” The appellation 
is probably an assumed one, as well as the title he 
gives himself of “ Secretary to the rhetorician Athen- 
agoras.” This rhetorician is supposed by some to be 
the same with the one of whom Thucydides makes 
mention (6, 35, scqq.) as enjoying great credit among 
the people of Syracuse. He was opposed to Her- 
mocrates, the general who vanquished the Athenians. 
The daughter of this Hermocrates is the heroine of 
the romance, and it is probable that the writer wished 
to appear to his readers in the light of a contemporary. | 
We have no data by which to fix the period when 
Chariton flourished. Some place him at the end of the 
4th century of our era. As regards the romance it- 
self, it may be observed, that, though by no means 
remarkable for its invention, it is smooth and easy in 
the story. “ Villemain has said no worse about it,” 
observes a writer in the Foreign Quarterly (No. 9, p. 
132), “ than that it is ‘ a work which the learned Lar- 
cher has translated without being able to render it 
amusing and Larcher himself, in his preface, re¬ 
solves, with great good sense, to ‘ say nothing about 
it.’ In fact, it is by no means easy to say anything 
about a book which is too dull for praise and too 
harmless for censure.”—The best edition of Chariton 
is that of D’Orville, with some excellent conjectural 
emendations of Reiske, Amst., 1750, 3 vols. 4to. 

CharmIdes, son of Glaucon, was famed in early 
336 


life for his beauty and his dissipated mode of life. 
After having squandered his patrimony, he became a 
pupil of Socrates, and was advised by that philosopher 
to turn his attention to public affairs. This advice 
proved unfortunate, for Charmides, having joined the 
party of Critias, was made one of the ten tyrants whom 
Lysander established in the Pirseus, to govern con¬ 
jointly with the thirty in the city. He was slain along 
with Critias in the first battle between the exiles un¬ 
der Thrasybulus and the forces of the tyrants. Plato 
has called one of his dialogues after himf Xenophon 
makes mention of him on several occasions, especially 
in his Banquet. (Xen., Mem. Socr., 3, 7,1. Schnei¬ 
der, ad loc. — Xen., Sympos., 4, 31, &c.) II. or 
Charmidas, an academic philosopher, the companion 
of Philo. He was celebrated for the compass and 
fidelity of his memory, and for his moral wisdom. 
(Cicf Tusc. Qiuest., 1, 24.— Davies, ad loc.) 

Charmion, one of Cleopatra’s female attendants, 
who killed herself after the example of her mistress. 
(Pint., Vit. Anton., c. 86.) 

Charmis, a physician of Marseille, in Nero’s age, 
who revived the use of cold baths at Rome in cases 
of sickness, after the practice had been discontinued 
since the time of Antonius Musa. ( Vid. Musa.) He 
was very successful in his professional labours, and 
amassed great riches. (Plin., 29,1.— Sprengcl, Hist, 
de la Med., vol. 2, p. 24.) 

Charon, a deity of the lower world, son of Ere¬ 
bus and Nox, who conducted the souls of the dead in 
a boat over the river Acheron to the infernal regions. 
The sum exacted for this service, from each of the 
shades ferried over by him, was never less than an 
obolus, nor could it exceed three. A piece of money, 
therefore, was generally placed by the ancients under 
the tongue of the deceased, in order to meet this neces¬ 
sary demand. Such as had not been honoured with a 
funeral were not permitted to enter Charon’s boat, 
without previously wandering on the shore for one 
hundred years. If any living person presented him¬ 
self to cross the river of the dead, he could not be 
admitted into the bark before he showed Charon a 
golden bough, obtained from the Cumsean sibyl ; and 
the ferryman was on one occasion imprisoned for an 
entire year, because he had, though against his own 
will, conveyed Hercules across the stream wfithout 
first receiving from him this necessary passport. The 
poets have represented Charon as a robust old man, 
of a severe though animated countenance, with eyes 
glowing like flame, a white and bushy head, vestments 
of a dingy colour, stained with the mire of the stream, 
and with a pole for the direction of his bark, which 
last is of a dark ferruginous hue. (Virg., IEn., 6, 
298, seqq.) — The earliest mention of Charon in Gre¬ 
cian poety seems to be in the ancient poem of the 
Minyas, quoted by Pausanias (10, 28). The fable 
itself is considered by some to be of Egyptian origin, 
and in support of this opinion they refer to the ac¬ 
count of Diodorus Siculus, relative to the statements 
made by the Egyptian priests. (Diod. Sic., 1, 92, et 
96.) The latter asserted, it #eems, that Orpheus and 
Homer had both learned wisdom on the banks of the 
Nile ; and that the Erebus of Greece, and all its 
parts, personages, and usages, were but transcripts of 
the mode of burial in Egypt; and here the corpse 
was, on payment of an obolus, conveyed by a ferry¬ 
man (named Charon in the language of Egypt) over 
the Acherusian lake after it had received its sentence 
j from the judges appointed for that purpose. (Diod., 
1. c.) Lobeck, in his Aglaophamus (vol. 2, p. 811), 
despatches all these fictions of the Egyptian priest- 
! hood in a very plain and summary manner, dignify¬ 
ing them with the appellation of “ portentosa menda- 
cia ,” a title which they fairly deserve. (“ Quin tota 
Orel et locorum inferorum dcscriptio ad Orpheum re - 
fertur auctorem, ah JEgyptns illis, qui, prater reliqua, 








CH A 


CHE 


portentosa. mcndacia a Diodoro relata, Orpheum nar- 
rant Tug nal r<2v dcrtbcjv tv adov ripopiag, k. t. 2 .” 
( Keightley's Mythology, p. 92.)—II. One of the ear¬ 
lier Greek historical writers, a native of Lampsacus, 
supposed to have flourished between the 75th and 78th 
Olympiads. Charon continued the researches of He- 
catseus into eastern ethnography. He wrote (as was 
the custom of the historians of his day) separate works 
upon Persia, Libya, ^Ethiopia, &c. He also subjoined 
the history of his own time, and he preceded Herod¬ 
otus in narrating the events of the Persian war, al¬ 
though Herodotus nowhere mentions him. From the 
fragments of his writings which remain, it is manifest 
that his relation to Herodotus was that of a dry chroni¬ 
cler to an historian, under whose hands everything 
acquires life and character. Charon wrote, besides, a 
chronicle of his own country, as several of the early 
historians did, who were thence called Horographers 
(dpoi , corresponding to the Latin annales , ought not to 
be confounded with opoi, termini, limites. — Schweigh. 
ad Athen., 11, p. 475, h ; 12, p. 520, d). The frag¬ 
ments of Charon have been collected by Creuzer, in 
his Historicorum Grcecorum Antiquissimorum Frag- 
menta, p. 89, seqq. 

Charondas, a celebrated legislator, born at Catana 
in Sicily, where he flourished about 650 B.C. We 
have very few details of his life. Aristotle merely 
informs us that he was of the middling class of citi¬ 
zens, and that he framed laws for the people of Cata¬ 
na as well as for other communities, which, like them, 
were descended from Chalcis in Euboea. iElian adds 
(F H., 3, 17), that he was subsequently driven into 
exile from Catana, and took refuge in Rhegium, where 
he succeeded in introducing his laws. Some authors 
inform us, that he compiled his laws for the Thurians ; 
but he lived, in fact, a long time before the foundation 
of Thurium, since his laws were abrogated in part by 
Anaxlias, tyrant of Rhegium, who died 476 B.C. It 
is not necessary, therefore, to suppose, with Sainte- 
Croix {Mem. de VAcad. des Inscript., vol. 42, p. 317), 
that there were two legislators of the same name, one 
a native of Catana, and the other of Thurium. The 
laws of Charondas were, like those of many of the 
ancient legislators, in verse, and formed part of the in¬ 
struction of the young. Their fame reached even to 
Athens, where they were sung or chanted at repasts. 
The preamble of these laws, as preserved to us by 
Stobseus, is thought, as far, at least, as regards the 
form of expression, not to be genuine ; and Heyne 
supposes it to have been taken from some Pythago¬ 
rean treatise on the laws of Charondas.—The man¬ 
ner of this legislator’s death is deserving of mention. 
He had made a law, that no man should be allowed 
to come armed into the assembly of the people. The 
penalty for infringement was death. He became the 
victim of his own law; for, having returned from pur¬ 
suing some robbers, he entered the city, and presented 
himself before the assembly of the people without re¬ 
flecting that he carried a sword by his side. Some 
one thereupon remarked to him, “You are violating 
your own law.” His reply was, “ On the contrary, I 
am establishing itand he slew himself on the spot. 
This action, however, is ascribed by others to Diodes, 
legislator of the Syracusans : perhaps it is true of 
neither. For farther details respecting Charondas, 
consult the memoir of Sainte-Croix, cited above, and 
Heyne, Opuscula Academica, vol. 2, p. 74, seqq. 

Charybdis, a dangerous whirlpool, mentioned in 
the Odyssey, and placed by Homer somewhere be¬ 
tween his Wandering Rocks and his island of Thri- 
nakia. Directly opposite to it was the fearful Scylla. 
The ancients, who were anxious to localize all the 
wonders of Homer, made the straits of Messina the 
abode of Scylla and Charybdis. A full account of the 
whole fable, with its solution by Spallanzani, will be 
found under the article Scylla. 

Uu 


Chauci, a people of Germany of Suevic race, and 
divided into the Chauci Majores and Minores. The 
former were situate between the Yisurgis {Weser) 
and Albis {Elbe) ; the latter between the Amisia 
( Ems) and Visurgis. Tacitus draws a very flatter¬ 
ing picture of the Chauci. Pie represents them as the 
noblest of the German tribes, as distinguished for a 
love of justice and peace, but able, when attacked, to 
bring a powerful army of horse and foot into the field. 
{Tacit., Germ., 35.) What is very surprising, Pliny 
describes the Chauci as a miserable race, weak in 
numbers and resources, compelled to build their cab¬ 
ins on hills, their country being twice every day inun¬ 
dated by the sea, without cattle or pasturage, or even 
a single tree in their territory. {Plin., 16, 1.) How 
are these two writers to be reconciled 1 Probably in 
the following way. The Chauci, about the fourth 
century of our era, formed part of the confederation of 
the Saxones. This confederation, however, appears to 
have been better known by the name of Chauci than 
that of Saxones. Now Pliny may have meant the 
people termed Chauci, and Tacitus the confederation. 
(Consult Malte-Brun, Geogr., vol. 1, p. 105, Brussels 
ed.) 

Chelidonia, a festival at Rhodes, in which it was 
customary for boys to go asking for presents from 
door to door, and singing a song called Chelidonisma, 
so named because it began with an allusion to the ar¬ 
rival of the swallows, and the consequent approach of 
spring: ’HA 6’, q'kQt k. t. ?l. {Athcnceus, 8, 

p. 360, b, c. — Casaub., ad loc.) 

Chelidoni^e, now Kelidoni, small islands south 
of the Sacrum Promontorium, on the coast of Lycia, 
very dangerous to sailors. The Chelidonian isles were 
two in number, according to Scylax (p. 38), or three 
as Strabo reports : the latter geographer says that 
they were six stadia from the land, and five from 
each other. Captain Beaufort, however, distinctly 
counted five of these islands ; whence he is led, not 
without reason, to think that this increase of number 
has been produced by the shock of an earthquake: 
two are from four to five hundred feet high, the other 
three are small and barren. {Karamania, p. 37, seq.) 
After the victory at the river Eurymedon, it became 
the boast of the Greek nation, that no armed ship of 
Persia was to be seen westward of the Chelidonian 
isles, or of the Cyanean rocks at the entrance of the 
Euxine ; and that no Persian troops dared to show 
themselves within a horseman’s day’s journey of the 
Grecian seas. In after times a report arose, that a 
treaty of peace had been regularly made between the 
Persian monarch and the Greeks, in which it was for¬ 
bidden for any Persian forces to come within the lim¬ 
its just mentioned. As regards this pretended treaty, 
consult the remarks towards the close of the article 
Cimon. {Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 256.) 

Chelidonium Promontorium, the same with the 
Sacrum Promontorium of Lycia, now Cape Kelidonia. 
{Vid. Sacrum Promontorium II.) 

Chelone, a nymph who was the only one of the 
deities that did not attend the nuptials of Jupiter and 
Juno ; nay, she even made the celebration a subject 
of ridicule. Mercury thereupon precipitated her into 
a river on the banks of which her mansion was situa¬ 
ted, and transformed her into a tortoise, under which 
shape she was doomed to perpetual silence, and to the 
necessity of always carrying her dwelling about with 
her. The Greek for a tortoise is x E ^vy, and hence 
the fable arose. {Serv. ad Virg., Min., 1, 509.) 

ChelonItes or Chelonatas, Promontorium, a 
promontory of Elis, forming the extreme point of the 
Peloponnesus towards the northwest. {Strabo, 338. 
— Plin., 4, 5.) It is now called Cape Torncsc. 

Chemmis, I. a city of Egypt, the same as Panopo- 
lis. {Vid. Panopolis.) — II. A city of Egypt, men¬ 
tioned by Herodotus (2, 91), and placed by him in the 

337 



CHE 


CHE 


Thebaic nome, near Neapolis. There was in it, ac¬ 
cording to the historian, a temple dedicated to Per¬ 
seus, the son of Danae. This city is considered by 
many to be the same with Panopolis, but incorrectly, 
as will appear on the least examination of the case. 
Herodotus says not a word of Pan’s being worship¬ 
ped in this place, he only speaks of the hero Perseus. 
He places, moreover, his Chemmis, not in the The- 
baid, but in the Thebaic nome, the distance of which 
from Panopolis forms another strong objection to this 
latter place being the same with Chemmis. Still 
farther, he mentions the city of Neapolis as stand¬ 
ing near his Chemmis, when no traces of this city, 
nor, indeed, of any city at all, are to be found near 
Panopolis. For these reasons Mannert appears to be 
perfectly correct in making the Chemmis of Herodo¬ 
tus identical with Coptos. ( Mannert, Geogr.,\ ol. 10, 
pt. 1, p. 374.) Creuzer and Bahr, on the other hand, 
are in favour of the opposite opinion stated above, but 
adduce very feeble arguments in its support. ( Bahr , 
ad Herod., 2, 91.) —III. An island in Egypt, situate 
in a broad and deep lake, near the temple of Latona, 
in the city of Butus. The Egyptians, according to 
Herodotus (2, 156), affirmed, that it was a floating 
island ; but the historian, with great candour, adds, 
that for his own part he could neither see it float nor 
move. The island contained a spacious temple dedi¬ 
cated to Apollo, and three altars ; with great numbers 
of palms, and other trees, as well of such as produce 
fruit as of those that do not. The Egyptians had 
the following legend respecting the island: they 
stated that Latona, one of the eight primary deities, 
residing in Butus, received Apollo from the hands of 
Isis, and preserved his life by concealing him in this 
island, when Typhon, arriving in these parts, used all 
possible diligence to find out the son of Osiris.—It is 
thought that the Greeks invented from this story their 
fable respecting Delos. (Compare Larcher, ad Herod., 

1. c .) As regards the name Chemmis, consult the re¬ 
marks of Champollion, Systeme Hieroglyph., p. 112. 
Mannert makes the Egyptian legend arise from the 
wish, on the part of the Egyptian priests, to explain 
the Grecian mythology by a reference to their own as 
its parent source. (Compare the remarks at the close 
of the article Charon.— Mannert , Geogr., vol. 10, pt. 
1, p. 559.) 

Cheops, a king of Egypt, the successor, according 
to Herodotus (2, 124), of Rhampsinitus. According 
to Larcher ( Chronol. d'Herod., vol. 7, p. 90), Cheops 
began to reign 1178 B.C. Herodotus makes him to 
have ruled over Egypt for the space of fifty years, 
and to have been a most oppressive monarch. He 
shut up all the temples, forbade public sacrifices, and 
compelled the people to undergo the severest labour. 
Ten years were occupied in constructing a causeway, 
along which to draw the stones intended for a large 
pyramid, and twenty years were then spent in erect¬ 
ing the pyramid itself. On this structure was an in¬ 
scription, in Egyptian characters, stating how much 
had been expended in radishes, onions, and garlic for 
the workmen. The interpreter informed Herodotus 
that this sum amounted to no less than 1600 talents 
of silver. Taking the Attic talent at a valuation of 
$1055,60, the sum expended will be nearly $1,700,000 
of our currency. The mode to which Cheops had re¬ 
course in order to replenish his exhausted treasury, 
although gravely related by Herodotus (2, 126), is ut¬ 
terly incredible, and must have been a falsehood of 
the Egyptian priests. Indeed, the whole account given 
of Cheops bears this same impress of mendacity. He 
was, in all probability, a monarch who broke loose 
from the restraints of the sacerdotal order, and not 
only curbed the power of the latter, but likewise em¬ 
ployed on public works a larger part of the population 
of Egypt, who were living in idleness, and whose mor¬ 
als were becoming more and more corrupted by a fre- 
338 


quent attendance on the dissolute festivals so common 
among the Egyptians.—Diodorus Siculus gives Chem- 
bes (XejuCirjg) as the name of the monarch who suc¬ 
ceeded Rhampsinitus. The true reading, no doubt, is 
Chemmis (Xey/uig), as we find it written in some MSS. 
(Diod. Sic., 1, 63.) 

Chephren, a king of Egypt, brother and successor 
to Cheops. According to Herodotus (2,127), he both 
imitated his brother in other things, and particularly in 
building a pyramid. He reigned fifty-six years. The 
historian adds, that the Egyptians, in consequence of 
the oppressive reigns of these two rnonarchs, Cheops 
and Chephren, would never thereafter mention their 
names, but always attributed their pyramids to “ one 
Philitis, a shepherd, who kept his cattle at that time in 
these same parts.” Who this Philitis was it is im¬ 
possible to say. Zoega (de Obelise., p. 389, not. 20) 
thinks, that Osiris of Phil® is meant (Osiris Philen- 
sis), a deity to whom these abodes of the dead (the 
pyramids namely) were consecrated, and who, as he 
supposes, was called “ a shepherd,” in the same sense 
in which kings are called by Homer “ the shepherds 
of their people” (noipheg Xativ). This opinion, 
however, is utterly erroneous, since the word “ shep¬ 
herd,” as employed on this occasion by the priests of 
Egypt, is indicative of contempt. (Compare Genesis , 
46, 34. — Manetho, ap. Joseph, adv. Apion., 1, 14, p. 
1039.— Heeren, Ideen, vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 148.) Besides, 
neither the genitive fyi’kiriuvog, as employed by He¬ 
rodotus, nor the corrupt reading ^iTilrtog, recalled by 
Zoega, could come from 4>iAai, as the root of their 
nominative : the form in that event would be $i7iutov, 
or 4>t/Urov, from a nominative QihaTrjt or filing;. 
(Compare Steph. Byz., p. 739, ed. Berk.) — We come 
now to another opinion, which makes the pyramids of 
Cheops and Chephren to have been erected by kings 
of the Shepherd-race. It will be sufficient, however, 
in rejecting this supposition, to remark, that the build¬ 
ing of such structures is entirely at variance with the 
known habits of a nomadic people.—Jablonski (Voc. 
JEgypt., p. 346) thinks, that in the word “ Philitis” 
there lurks the form “ Philistaean,” i. e., a native of 
Palestine, which he considered to be equivalent here 
to “ one of the Jewish nation,” and to have reference 
to Moses. — Heeren, however, appears to be nearest 
the truth, when he makes the pyramids of Cheops 
and Chephren to have been the work of ^Ethiopian 
conquerors, and the term “shepherd” to have been, as 
above remarked, merely expressive of the contempt 
and hatred borne by the conquered towards those who 
had subdued them. ( Heeren, Ideen, vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 
118, not. — Bahr, ad Herod., 2, 128.) 

Chersonesus, a Greek geographical term, equiva¬ 
lent in meaning to the Latin “ peninsula .” The ear¬ 
lier form is Cherronesus, the word being derived from 
Xtyfios (later from ^epcrof), “ a continent” or “ main¬ 
land,” and vr/ooc, “ an island,” since a peninsula 
partakes, as it were, of the properties of both continent 
and island.—The most noted Chersonesi in ancient 
times were the following : I. Chersonesus Aurea, 
or Golden Chersonese, a peninsula of Farther India, 
corresponding, according to D’Anville, Rennell, Man¬ 
nert, and others, to the modern Malacca, but, as Gos- 
sellin maintains, to the southern part of Pegu. The 
positive knowledge of the ancient geographers can 
hardly be said to have extended much beyond this, 
their account of the regions farther to the east being 
principally derived from the natives of India. Even 
the position of the Golden Chersonese itself is given 
differently by different writers. (Consult Gosscllin, 
Recherchcs, &c., vol. 3, p. 49. — vol. 2, p. 262, &c.) 
The name given to this region by the ancients has 
reference to the popular belief of its abounding in 
gold ; and here, too, some inquirers into early geogra¬ 
phy have placed the Ophir of Solomon, an opinion 
maintained also by Josephus. (Ant. Jud., 8, 6, 4.)— 




CHI 


CHI 


Chersonesus Gimbrica, a peninsula in the northern 
part of Germany, answering to the modern Jutland, 
Scklesswig , and Holstein. (Ptol. , 2, 11 )—III. Cher¬ 
sonesus Taurida, a peninsula between the Pontus 
Euxinus and Palus Maeotis, answering to the modern 
Crimea.. The name was derived from the Tauri, a 
barbarous race who inhabited it. It was sometimes 
called Ghersonesus Scythica and Chersonesus Magna. 
(Ovid, Trist., 4,4, 63.— Id., Pont., 3, 2, 5.) — IV. 
Chersonesus Thracica, often called simply the Cher¬ 
sonesus, and the most important of all. It was a 
peninsula of Thrace, between the Sinus Melas and 
the Hellespont. The fertility of its soil, and its prox¬ 
imity to the coast of Asia Minor, early attracted an 
influx of Grecian settlers, and its shores soon became 
crowded with flourishing and populous cities. From 
this quarter the Athenians drew their chief supply of 
grain. ( Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 322, seqq.) 

Cherusci, a people of Germany, between the We- 
ser and the Elbe, southeast of the Chauci. Under 
tlie conduct of Arminius, they defeated and slew three 
Roman legions commanded by Varus, A.D. 10, in the 
Saltus Teutobergiensis, or Bishopric of Paderborn. 
They were afterward defeated by Germanicus, and 
never recovered their former eminence. ( Tac ., Ann., 
1, 56 and 59. — Id. ibid., 2, 17, 26, 41, 45, and 64. —- 
Id., Germ., 36.— C<zs., B. G., 6, 10.— Veil. Paterc., 2, 
105.) 

Chilo, a Spartan, ranked, on account of his wis¬ 
dom and experience, among the seven sages of 
Greece. He directed his attention to public affairs, 
and became one of the ephori, B.C. 556. ( Diog. La- 

ert., 1, 68. — Menag., ad loc.) Many of his maxims 
are quoted by the ancient writers, which justify the 
high reputation connected with his name. He died 
of joy at an advanced age, while embracing one of 
his sons who had gained a prize at the Olympic games. 
The story told by Herodotus (1, 59) respecting Chilo 
and the father of Pisistratus cannot be true, since 
Pisistratus usurped the government of Athens B.C. 
561, only five years after Chilo became ephorus, and 
there could not have been any very great difference 
between their respective ages. Chilo appears to have 
travelled much abroad, and it is probable that he vis¬ 
ited Sardis, the capital of CrcEsus, a monarch who had 
sought an alliance with Sparta. (Herod., 1, 69.) It 
was at the court of the Lydian monarch, in all proba¬ 
bility, that he saw ^Esop, since Diogenes Laertius 
speaks of a question put by the philosopher to the 
fabulist. (Diog. Laert., 1, 68, seqq.) 

Chimera, a fabulous monster, the offspring of Ty- 
phon and Echidna ( Hesiod , Theog., 319), which rav¬ 
aged the country of Lycia until slain by Bellerophon. 
It had the head and neck of a lion, the body of a goat 
(Xipcupa), and the tail of a serpent, and vomited forth 
fire. (Horn., II., 6, 181.) Hesiod’s account is some¬ 
what different from that of Homer, since he gives 
the Chimaera three heads, one that of a lion, another 
a goat’s, and a third a serpent’s. (Theog., 321.) 
There is strong reason to believe, however, that this 
passage in Hesiod is an interpolation. ( Heyne, in 
Comment. Soc. Gott., vol. 2, p. 144.) The Latin 
poets, in their description of this monster, have imita¬ 
ted, as usual, their Grecian masters. (Consult Lu- 
cret., 5, 903. — Ovid, Met., 9, 646. — Virgil, JEn., 6, 
288.) The various explanations given to this fabu¬ 
lous legend by the Greeks may be seen in Eustathius 
(ad II., 5, 181, p. 634, 40). Servius, the great com¬ 
mentator on Virgil, gives a curious one: “ This, in 
truth,” says he, speaking of the Chimaera, “ is a 
mountain of Lycia, the top of which is on fire at the 
present day : near it are lions : but the middle region 
is occupied by pastures which abound in goats. The 
lower parts of the mountain swarm with serpents.” 
(Serv. ad, Virg., JEn., 1. c.) — The geographers agree 
in adapting this fable to the mountains on the coast 


of Lycia; but Strabo seems rather to place the site in 
Mount Cragus (Strab., 665), while Pliny, on the au¬ 
thority of Ctesias, whose words have been preserved 
by Photius (Cod., 72), fixes it near Phaselis, beyond 
Olympus. (Plin., 2, 106.) Seneca, in his account 
of this natural phaenomenon, says (Ep., 79). “ In 
Lycia regio notissima est, Hephcestion invoice vocant; 
perforatum plunbus locis solum, quod sine ullo nas- 
centium damno ignis mnoxius circuit. Lceta itaque 
regio et herbula, nil flammis adurentibus, sed tantum 
vi remissa ac languida rcfulgentibus .” From this de¬ 
scription it is plain that the fire in question had little 
of the usual volcanic character, being perfectly harm¬ 
less. Instances of this sort of flame are, however, 
by no means uncommon ; that of Pietra mala, in the 
Apennines, is well known, and there are others in 
Epirus and the Greek islands. We are indebted to 
Capt. Beaufort for an accurate account of the Chimae- 
ra flame, which, after the lapse of so many centuries, 
is still unsubdued. This able navigator and anti¬ 
quary, being at the time to the east of Olympus, 
says : “ We had seen from the ship, the preceding 
night, a small but steady light among the hills ; on 
mentioning the circumstance to the inhabitants, we 
learned that it was a yanar or volcanic flame ; and they 
offered to supply us with horses and guides to exam¬ 
ine it. We rode about two miles through a fertile 
plain, partly cultivated, and then, winding up a rocky 
and thickly-wooded glen, we arrived at the place. In 
the inner corner of a ruined building the wall is under¬ 
mined, so as to leave an aperture of about three feet 
diameter, and shaped like the mouth of an oven ; from 
thence the flame issues, giving out an intense heat, 
yet producing no smoke on the wall; and though from 
the neck of the opening we detached some small 
lumps of caked soot, the walls were hardly discolour¬ 
ed. Trees, brushwood, and weeds grow close around 
this little crater, a small stream trickles down the hill 
hard by, and the ground does not appear to feel the 
effect of the heat beyond the distance of a few yards. 
No volcanic productions whatever were perceived in 
the neighbourhood. The guide declared that, in the 
memory of man, there had been but one hole, and 
that it never had changed its size or appearance. It 
was never accompanied, he said, by earthquakes or 
noises, and it ejected neither stones, smoke, nor nox¬ 
ious vapours ; nothing but a brilliant and perpetual 
flame, which no quantity of water could quench.” 
(Beaufort'sKaramania, p. 47, seqq. —Compare Clarke's 
Travels, vol. 5, p. 427.— Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, 
p. 258, seqq.) 

Chimerium, a promontory on the coast of Epirus, 
opposite the island of Paxos. It is mentioned by 
Thucydides (I, 30) as the place where the Corinthians 
formed a camp to protect their allies against the Cor- 
cyreans. (Compare Strabo, 324.— Pausan., 8,7.) It 
seems to answer to Cape Saracimco, above Parga. 
(Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 1, p. 111.) 

Chion, a native of Heraclea Pontica, and disciple 
of Plato. Animated by the political fanaticism to 
which the young and inexperienced so easily abandon 
themselves, he left Athens, where he had resided for 
the space of five years, attending the instructions of 
Plato, and returned home with the determination of 
freeing his native city from the yoke of tyranny. 
Clearchus, who ruled at Heraclea, was not, it is true, 
a good prince ; but, in slaying him, Chion was the 
cause of this city’s falling under a worse tyrant, Saty- 
rus, the brother of Clearchus. Chion himself perish^ 
ed as the victim of the latter’s elevation to power. 
We have seventeen letters said to have been written 
by this young philosopher. They are principally ad¬ 
dressed to his father Matris; but their authenticity 
has been called in question ; and the real author is 
supposed to have been a Platonist of the fourth cen¬ 
tury. The style is clear, simple, and animated. 

339 



CHI 


CHCE 


The best edition of these letters is that of Hoffmann, 
which is joined to the edition of the fragments of 
Memnon, by Orelli, Lips., 1816.—Consult, in relation 
to Chion, and the authenticity of these letters, the 
prolegomena of Hoffmann, p. 131, seqq. ( Scholl , Hist 
Lit. Gr., vol. 2, p. 281.) 

Chionides, said to have been the earliest writer of 
the old Athenian comedy. (Compare Aristot., Poet., 

3 , 5 .— Suidas, s. v. Xiov.) His representations date 
from Olymp. 73, 2 , or 487 B.C. The names of three 
of his comedies are recorded, "Hpwef, Ilepaai: y ’ko- 
avpioi, and Ilrw^ot. To judge from these titles, we 
should conclude that his comedies had a political ref¬ 
erence, and were full of personal satire ; and from an 
allusion in Vitruvius ( Prcef. m lib., 6 ) we may infer, 
that they were gnomic, like those of Epicharmus. 

(Theatre of the Greeks, p. 99, 4th ed ) 

Chios, now Scio, an island in the HSgean Sea, be¬ 
tween Lesbos and Samos, on the coast ot Asia Minor. 

It is about 900 stadia in circuit, and was probably 
once connected with the main land, from which it is 
separated only by a strait three leagues wide. ( Stra¬ 
bo , 645.) It was known by the names of HUthalia, 
Macris, and Pityusa, but its most prevalent name was 
Chios, derived, according to some, from x^v, snow, 
because its mountains were often covered with it. 
Isidorus, however, deduces the name from a Syriac 
term signifying mastich, with which the island abounds. 
(Compare Dioscoridcs, 1 , 90.— Plin., 12, 16.) It was 
well inhabited, and could once equip a hundred ships ; 
and its chief town, called Chios, had a beautiful har¬ 
bour which could contain eighty ships. ( Herodot ., 6 , 

8 , and 31.— Thucyd., 8 , 15.) The wine of this isl¬ 
and, so much celebrated by the ancients, is still in 
esteem. The Chians are said to have first known the 
art of cultivating the vine, taught them by CEnopion, 
the son of Bacchus, and by them communicated to the 
rest of mankind. The first red wine was made here. 
The marble of Chios was also in repute. It was one 
of the places which contended for the honour of having 
given birth to Homer, and his school was shown in 
the island. Modern Scio, until the dreadful ravages 
of the Turks, contained 115,000 inhabitants, nearly all 
Greeks, and was the best cultivated and most flour¬ 
ishing island in the Archipelago. (Compare Malte- 
Brun, Geogr., vol. 2, p. 86 , Am. ed.) 

Chiron, the most celebrated of the Centaurs (vid. 
Centauri), and son of Saturn and the nymph Philyra. 
Dreading the jealousy of his wife Rhea, the god is said 
to have transformed Philyra into a mare, and himself 
into a steed : the offspring of this union was Chiron, 
half man and half horse. This legend first appeared 
in the poem of the Gigantomachia. ( Schol . ad Apoll. 
Rh., 3 , 554 .) It is also noticed by Pindar. ( Pyth., 
3,1, seqq.) Probably the praise of Chiron, by Homer 
(II, 11, 832), for his love of justice, led to the making 
him the offspring of the god who ruled over the gold¬ 
en race of men; and if, as it would appear, he was 
skilled in music, a more suitable mother could not have 
been assigned him than the nymph “Lyre-loving.” (4i- 
Ivpa , quasi 4>i lilvpa. — Welcker, Nachtrag zur Tnl., 
p. 53, not.) Unto Chiron was intrusted the rearing 
and educating of Jason and his son Medeus, Hercu¬ 
les, ^Esculapius, and Achilles. Besides his knowl¬ 
edge of the musical art, which he imparted to his he¬ 
roic pupils, he was also skilled in surgery, which he 
taught to the two last of the number. In the contest 
between Hercules and the Centaurs, Chiron was acci¬ 
dentally wounded in the knee by one of the arrows of 
the hero. Grieved at this unhappy event, Hercules 
ran up, drew out the arrow, and applied to the wound 
a remedy given by Chiron himself; but in vain ; the 
venom of the hydra was not to be overcome. Chiron 
retired to his cave longing to die, but unable on ac¬ 
count of his immortality, till, on his expressing his 
willingness to die for Prometheus, he was released by 
340 


death from his misery. According to another account, 
he was, on his prayer to Jove for relief, raised to the 
sky and made the constellation of Sagittarius. (Ovid, 
Fast., 5, 379, seqq. — Hygin., Poet. Astron., 2, 38. — 
Keightley's Mythology, p. 69, 317, 356.) 

Chloe, I. a surname of Ceres at Athens. Her year¬ 
ly festival, called Chloeia, was celebrated with much 
mirth and rejoicing on the 6th of the month Thargeli- 
on (a month corresponding to the middle of our May 
and June), and a ram, together with young garden 
plants, was offered to her. She had a temple near the 
citadel. (Pausanias, 1, 22. — Schol. ad Soph., QLd. 
Col., 1600.) The name Chloe (x^oy) embraces the 
double idea of “green” or “verdant,” as referring to 
the young blade of corn coming forth and gradually in¬ 
creasing, and also “ golden-coloured” or “ yellow,” as 
applicable to the ripened harvest. In this latter sense 
it bears a direct relation to the Homeric £ avdy kypy- 
ryp, and the Roman il Flava Ceres." (Consult Creu- 
zer, Symbolik, vol. 4, p. 314, not.) — II. A female 
name of frequent occurrence, and denoting “ the 
blooming one,” “ the fresh in youthful beauty,” &c. 

It comes from x^y, “ the young blade of grass, 
corn,” &c. 

Chloris, I. the goddess of flowers, who married 
Zephyrus. The name is derived from the Greek 
X^opog, “verdant,” and, according to Ovid, she is the 
same as Flora. (Ovid, Fast., 5, 195.)—II. A daugh¬ 
ter of Amphion, son of Jason and Persephone, who 
married Neleus, king of Pylos, by whom she had one 
daughter and twelve sons, who all, except Nestor, 
were killed by Hercules. (Pausan., 2, 21, 9, 36.) 
Chlorus. Vid. Constantius Chlorus. 

Choaspes, I. an Indian river. (Vid. Suastus.)—II. 
A river of Susiana. ( Vid. Eulseus.) 

Chobus, a river of Colchis, falling into the Euxine, 
north of the mouth of the Phasis. (Arrian, Peripl., 
Pont. Eux., p. 122, ed. Blancard.) Mannert supposes 
it to be the same with the modern Schijani. (Geogr., 
vol. 4, p. 394.) 

Chcerades, islands in the Ionian Sea, off the coast 
oflapygia. (Thucyd,, I ,33.) D’Anville follows Clu- 
verius in placing them near the harbour of Tarentum. 
(Compare Haack, ad Thucyd., 1. c.) 

ChceriLe, islands off the coast of Euboea, near Sty- 
ra. They coincide with the Cavalleri of modern maps. 
(Herodot., 6, 101.) 

Chcerilus, I. an Athenian tragic poet, the contem¬ 
porary of Phrynichus, and, like him, the competitor of 
iEschylus. With Pratinas and the last-mentioned 
dramatist he contended Olymp. 70, 2, or B.C. 499, 
the time when ^Eschylus first exhibited. It is stated 
that he contended with Sophocles also, but the differ¬ 
ence in their ages renders this extremely improbable ; 
and the mistake may easily have arisen from the way 
in which Suidas mentions the book on the chorus 
which Sophocles wrote against him and Thespis. 
(Chcerilus, ed. Nake, p. 7.) It would seem that tra¬ 
gedy had not altogether departed from its original form 
in his time, and that the chorus was still satyric. 
Choerilus is said to have written 150 pieces, but no 
fragments have come down to us. The disparaging re¬ 
marks of Hermeas and Proclus do not refer to him, 
but to his Samian namesake (Chcerilus, ed. Nake, p. 
92), and he is mentioned by Alexis in such goodly 
company (Athenceus, 4, p. 164, c.) that we cannot be¬ 
lieve his poetry to have been altogether contemptible. 
One of his plays was called the Alope, and appears to 
have been of a strictly mythical character. (Pausan., 
1,14.) Some improvements in theatrical costume are 
ascribed to him by Suidas and Eudocia. ( Theatre of 
the Greeks, p. 59, 4th ed.)—II. A native of Samos, 
born in a state of slavery, from which condition he 
subsequently found means to extricate himself. Sui¬ 
das, from whom we obtain this fact, makes him to 
have been the pupil and favourite of Herodotus ; but 



CHCERILUS. 


CHO 


in what this same lexicographer adds, that Choerilus 
was a young man when Xerxes invaded Greece, there 
is a contradiction to the previous assertion, since He¬ 
rodotus was at this time but just born. Plutarch 
states, that Lysander of Sparta was very fond of the 
poet’s society: this would fix the period when he 
flourished between the peace of Cimon and the com¬ 
mencement of the Peloponnesian war, or between 460 
and 431 B.C. ( Choerilus, ed. Nake., p. 21, seqq.) In 
his old age Choerilus was invited to the court of Ma¬ 
cedonia by King Archelaus, who allowed him, it is said, 
three min® daily. At the court of this prince he died. 
Choerilus perceived that a poet could no longer please 
by following the footsteps of Homer, since a people 
arrived at the degree of civilization in which the 
Greeks then were, seemed no longer capable of rel¬ 
ishing, in a modern work, the simplicity which pos¬ 
sesses so many charms in the earlier national poetry. 
Choerilus selected, in consequence, an historical sub¬ 
ject, the victory of his countrymen over the arms of 
Xerxes. In this, however, he was unfortunate, since 
so recent an event was incompatible with the employ¬ 
ment of fiction, and fiction is an important part of the 
machinery of every epic poem. According to Sto- 
bffius, he entitled his poem Aepaytg, “the Perseid.” 
We have so few fragments remaining of this poem 
of his, that we are unable to ascertain whether he 
ended it with the battle of Salamis, or carried it on to 
the close of the war with Xerxes. This poem was a 
monument raised to the glory of the Athenians. An 
ancient law of Solon’s relative to Homer, was revived 
in honour of Choerilus, and the people decreed that 
the poem should be publicly read, every year, at 
the festival of the Panathenaea. Suidas, it is true, 
merely states, that “ it was decreed that this poem 
should be read with those of Homer.” But such a 
resolve could only preceed from the Athenians, and 
could only have reference to the great celebration 
just mentioned, which periodically reunited the tribes 
of Attica. Suidas adds, that the author received a 
piece of gold for every verse ; a recompense but little 
in unison with the spirit of a republic, and still less 
probable in the case of a long epic poem. It would 
seem, in fact, that Suidas is here mistaken, and re¬ 
lates of the Samian Choerilus what happened to an¬ 
other poet of the same name, who composed an effu¬ 
sion in honour of Alexander the Great. ( Choerilus, 
ed. Nake , p. 78, seqq.) Whatever the reputation of 
Choerilus may have been, one thing at least is certain, 
that the Alexandrean critics excluded him from their 
canon, in which they assigned the fifth and last place 
to his rival Antimachus. A certain want of elegance 
with which the style of Choerilus was reproached, as 
well as the predilection of Plato for Antimachus, may 
have been the primary causes of this disgraceful ex¬ 
clusion of the Athenian poet.—Among the fragments 
of the Perseid which have come down to us, there are 
some verses that have given rise to a curious discus¬ 
sion. The lines in question are preserved for us 
by Josephus ( contra Apion, 1 , p 454. — vol. 2, ed. 
Havercamp), as the most ancient profane document 
in which mention is made of the Jews. In the enu¬ 
meration of the forces composing the army of Xerxes, 
Chcerilus speaks of the inhabitants of the mountains 
of Solymi, in the vicinity of a large lake. ("Quceov & 
h 'ZoTiv/u.oig optatv, TcTiarey ewl' \tpvy.) Josephus is 
convinced that the poet means Jerusalem, but some 
critics of modern days insist that the Solymi in Lycia 
are meant, because Choerilus speaks of these troops 
as TpoxoKovpddeq , i. e., having the hair cut in a cir¬ 
cular form ; a usage which the Levitical law ( Levit ., 
19, 27) forbade, with the express view of distinguish¬ 
ing the Jews from the neighbouring nations. All 
doubt, however, is removed with regard to the poet’s 
meaning by his adding, that the troops in question 
spoke the Phoenician tongue, of which the Hebrew is 


! only a dialect ( TTiuaaav per fyoiviacsav urro cropdrov 
| atyihreq). It is probable, therefore, that Choerilus 
knew the inhabitants of these countries had in general 
the custom of cutting the hair of the head in this way, 
and that his means of information had not put him in 
possession of the fact, that one community of Syria 
deviated from this custom. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., 
vol. 2, p. 125, seqq.) —III. A poet of Iassus in Asia 
Minor, of whom Horace ( Epist ., 2, 1, 233. — Epist. 
ad Pis., 357), Quintus Curtius (8, 5, 8), and Auso- 
nius ( Ep. 16), as well as Acron and Porphyrion, the 
scholiasts on Horace, make mention. It was to this 
poet that Alexander the Great is said to have prom¬ 
ised a piece of gold for every good verse which he 
should compose in his praise. The commentator, 
known under the name of the scholiast of Cruqui- 
us, informs us, that Choerilus could only produce 
seven lines that were deemed worthy of the price 
offered by the monarch. Porphyrion, however, re¬ 
marks in more general terms, “ Hujus omnino septem 
versus laudabantur .” Now Strabo (672), and also 
Athenseus (8, 356), have preserved for us a transla¬ 
tion, by Choerilus, into seven hexameters, of the As¬ 
syrian inscription on the tomb of Sardanapulus ; and 
hence it has been supposed that these are the seven 
verses to which the scholiasts refer.—It is also stated 
of Choerilus that he consented to receive a blow for 
every verse of his encomiums on Alexander which 
should be rejected by the judges, and that he paid 
dearly, in consequence, for his foolish presumption. It 
is probable that he was the author of the poem on the 
Lamiac war (A apiaicd), which Suidas erroneously as¬ 
cribes to the Samian Choerilus. ( Choerilus, ed. Nake, 
p. 101, seqq. — Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 3, p. 75.) 

Chorasmii, a people of Asia, between Sogdiana 
and the northeastern shore of the Caspian, whose cap¬ 
ital was Gorgo, now Urgheng. Their country is now 
Kharasm. Ritter has some curious speculations on 
the name Khorasan, as indicating a country in which 
the worship of the sun anciently prevailed ( Khor- 
Asan. — Ritter, Vorhalle , p 90). 

Chorcebus. Vid. Coroebus. 

Chosroes, I. (more correctly Khosrou), king of Per¬ 
sia, surnamed the Great, was the twenty-first monarch 
of the line of the Sassanides, and succeeded his father 
Kobad, xA.D. 531. The Orientals, even after the lapse 
of twelve centuries, are accustomed to cite him as a 
model for kings, and the glorious surname of the “ Just” 
is one which he frequently bears in history. Chos¬ 
roes manifested even in early life the germes of those 
virtues which were afterward so brilliantly developed 
by him on coming to the throne. At the period of his 
accession Persia was involved in a war with Justinian, 
but Chosroes succeeded in negotiating a favourable 
peace, by the terms of which the Roman emperor had 
to pay 11,000 pounds of gold, and forego various ad¬ 
vantages. Not long after (A.D. 540), having become 
powerful by reason of various Asiatic conquests, and 
regarding the Romans as usurpers of many of the an¬ 
cient provinces of Persia, he invaded Syria, laid An¬ 
tioch in ashes, and only drew off his forces from the 
territories of the empire on the payment of a consider¬ 
able sum. After several other victorious expeditions, 
he renewed the war with Justin, the successor of Jus¬ 
tinian, whom he compelled to solicit a truce, but was 
soon after driven back across the Euphrates by Tibe¬ 
rius, the new emperor, and the Romans took up their 
winter-quarters in the Persian provinces. Chosroes 
died A.D. 579, after a glorious reign of forty-eight 
years. He encouraged the arts, founded schools, and 
is said to have made considerable proficiency in philos¬ 
ophy himself. ( Saint-Martin, in Biogr. Univ., vol. 
22, p. 380, seqq. — Encycl. Am., vol. 3, p. 162.) — II. 
The second of the name, grandson of the preceding, 
ascended the Persian throne A.D. 590. The earlier 
part of his career was marked by great reverses of for- 

341 







CHR 


CHR 


tune, he having been dethroned and driven from his 
kingdom by a formidable rival, and compelled to take 
refuge with the Emperor Maurice. He owed his res¬ 
toration to the generous aid of the same potentate. 
Not long after, upon the death of Maurice, he carried 
his victorious arms against his former allies, to the 
very walls of Constantinople and Alexandrea; and 
subsequently he beheld the very Romans, whom he 
had so often defeated, penetrating, under Heraclius, 
into the heart of the Persian empire, and pillaging and 
burning his palace itself. He was at last dethroned 
by his own son and cast into prison, where he died 
A.D. 628. (Saint-Mar tin, in Biogr. Umv., vol. 22, p. 
391.) 

Chronium Mare, a name applied by the ancients 
to the Frozen Ocean. The Cimbri, according to 
Pliny (4, 13), called it Morimarusa, i. e., “ the dead 
sea.” In the Welsh tongue, mor is the “ sea,” and 
marv “ dead ;” in the Irish, muir-croinn denotes a 
thick, coagulated, frozen sea. (Compare Classical 
Journal, vol. 6, p. 297.) 

Chrysa, I. a town of Troas, on the coast, near 
the city of Hamaxitus, where lived Chryses, the fa¬ 
ther of the beautiful Chryseis. (Homer, Iliad, 1, 37. 
— Id. ibid., 430, &c.) Strabo (604), however, places 
it in the innermost part of the Adramyttian Gulf, 
and hence some are in favour of making two places 
of this name, an old and a new Chrysa. (Compare 
Heyne's note to the German transl. of Le Chevalier, 
p. 7, scqq.) This place was famous for a temple of 
Apollo Smintheus (vid. Smintheus), whence it was 
also called Sminthium. (Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 
3, p. 463.)—II. A small island in the immediate vi¬ 
cinity of Lemnos, in which Philoctetes took up his 
abode when suffering from the wound inflicted by one 
of the arrows of Hercules. (Pausan., 8, 33.) It 
was afterward submerged by the sea, in accordance 
with an ancient prediction. (Herodot., 7, 6.) Choi- 
seul-Gouffier (Voyage pittoresque de la Greece, vol. 2, 
p. 129) thinks he saw traces of it still remaining. 
That the change here referred to has been occasioned 
by volcanic action, no one can doubt. (Vid. Mosych- 
lus.) The whole island of Lemnos is said to bear 
the strongest marks of the effects of volcanic fire ; the 
rocks in many parts are like the burned and vitrified 
scoria of furnaces. (Hunt's Journal, in Walpole's 
Collection, vol. 2, p. 59.) 

Chrysanthius, an eclectic philosopher of Sardis, 
made highpriest of Lydia by the Emperor Julian, and 
supposed to possess a power of conversing with the 
gods and of predicting future events. (Eunap., p. 
144, scqq. — Enfield's History of Philosophy, vol. 2, 
p. 71.) 

Chrysaor, a son of Medusa by Neptune, born im¬ 
mediately after the decapitation of his mother by Per¬ 
seus. (Apollod., 2, 4, 2. — Heyne, ad loc.) He was 
of gigantic stature, and received his name, according 
to Hesiod (Theog., 283), from his wielding in his hands 
a “ golden sword” (xpvaeiov aop). Chrysaor became 
by Callirhoe, one of the ocean-nymphs, the father of 
Geryon and Echidna. (Hesiod, Theog., 287, seqq. — 
Compare Ctesias, Ephes. ap. Plut. de jlum., p. 1034, 
ed. Wytt .— Tzetz. ad Lycophr., v. 17.) — The legend 
of Chrysaor, like that of Perseus itself, has a blend¬ 
ed religious and astronomical reference. It is based 
on the idea of purification by blood, and also of the 
reappearance of fertility, after the darker period of the 
year, the months of winter, have passed away. (Com¬ 
pare remarks under the article Perseus.) 

Chrysaorius, a surname of Jupiter, from his temple 
at Stratonice in Caria. There was a political union 
of certain Carian states, which held their meetings 
here, under the name of Chrysaorium. These states 
had votes in proportion to the number of towns they 
possessed. (Strab., 660.— Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 
2, p. 204.) 


Chryseis, the patronymic of Astynome, daughter 
of Chryses. (Vid. Chryses.) 

Chryses, a priest of Apollo Smintheus at Chrysa. 
He was the father of Astynome, who was called from 
him Chryseis. In the division of the spoils of Hypo- 
placian Thebe, when that city was taken by the 
Greeks, Chryseis, as one of the captives, fell to the 
share of Agamemnon. Chryses, upon hearing of his 
daughter’s fate, repaired to the Grecian camp, attired 
in his sacerdotal insignia, to solicit her restitution ; 
and when his prayers were fruitless, he implored the 
aid of Apollo, who visited the Greeks with a pesti¬ 
lence, and obliged them to restore Chryseis. (Horn., 
II., 1, 11, seqq. — Id. ib., 366, seqq.) It has been 
asked how Chryseis, a native of Chrysa, could have 
been taken prisoner at Thebe 1 Eustathius solves the 
difficulty, giving us our choice of one of two explana¬ 
tions. According to one account, as he informs us, 
she had been sent to Thebe as to a place of more 
safety than Chrysa, while another made her to ‘have 
gone thither to attend a festival of Diana. (Eustath. 
ad II., 1. 366.) 

Chrysippus, I. a son of Pelops, carried off by 
Laius. (Apollod., 3, 5, 6.) This circumstance be¬ 
came a theme with many ancient writers, and hence 
the story assumed different shapes, according to the 
fancy of those who handled it. The death of Chrysip¬ 
pus was also related in different ways. According to 
the common account, he w r as slain by Atreus, at the 
instigation of his stepmother Hippodamia. (Consult 
Heyne, ad loc.) — II. A stoic philosopher of Soli in 
Cilicia Campestris. He fixed his residence at Athens, 
and became a disciple of Cleanthes, the successor of 
Zeno. He was equally distinguished for natural abil¬ 
ities and industry, seldom suffering a day to elapse 
without writing 500 lines. He wrote several hundred 
volumes, of which three hundred were on logical sub¬ 
jects, but in all he borrowed largely from others. He 
maintained, with the Stoics in general, that the world 
was God, or a universal effusion of his spirit, and 
that the superior part of this spirit, which consisted in 
mind and reason, was the common nature of things, 
containing the whole and every part. Sometimes he 
speaks of God as the power of fate and the necessary 
chain of events ; sometimes he calls him fire ; and 
sometimes he deifies the fluid parts of nature, as water 
and air; and again, the earth, sun, moon, and stars, 
and the universe in which these are comprehended, 
and even those men who have obtained immortality. 
He was very fond of the figure Sorites in arguing, 
which is hence called by Persius the heap of Chrysip¬ 
pus. His discourses abounded more in curious sub¬ 
tleties and nice distinctions than in solid arguments. 
In disputation, in which he spent the greatest part of 
his life, he discovered a degree of promptitude and 
confidence which approached towards audacity. He 
often said to his preceptor, “ Give me doctrines, and I 
will find arguments to support themJ’ It was a sin¬ 
gular proof of his haughty spirit, that when a certain 
person asked him what preceptor he would advise him 
to choose for his son, he said, “ Me ; for if I thought 
any philosopher excelled me, I would myself become 
his pupil.” With so much contempt did he look 
down upon the distinctions of rank, that he would 
never, as other philosophers did, pay his court to 
princes or great men, by dedicating to them any of his 
writings. The vehemence and arrogance with which 
he supported his tenets, created him many adver¬ 
saries, particularly in the Academic and Epicurean 
sects. Even his friends of the Stoic school com¬ 
plained that, in the warmth of dispute, while he was 
attempting to load his adversary with the reproach of 
obscurity and absurdity, his own ingenuity often failed 
him, and he adopted such unusual and illogical modes 
of reasoning, as gave his opponents great advantages 
over him. (Cic., Ac. Qucest., 4, 27.) It was also 




CHR 


CIB 


a common practice with Chrysippus, at different times, 
to take the opposite sides of the same question, and 
thus furnish his antagonists with weapons, which 
might easily be turned, as occasion offered, against 
himself. Carneades, who was one of his most able 
and skilful adversarial, frequently availed himself of 
this circumstance, and refuted Chrysippus,by convict¬ 
ing him of inconsistency. Of his writings nothing 
remains, except a few extracts which are preserved in 
the works of Cicero, Plutarch, Seneca, and Aulus Gel- 
lius. He died in the 143d Olympiad, B.C. 208, at the 
age of eighty-three. A statue was erected to his mem¬ 
ory by Ptolemy. ( Diog. Laert., 7, 189. — Enfield's 
History of Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 358.) 

Chrysoceras, or the horn of gold, a name given to 
the harbour of Byzantium. (Vid. Byzantium.) 

Chrysorolis, a town and harbour opposite Byzan¬ 
tium, on the Asiatic shore. It is often mentioned in 
history. The Athenians established there a toll, to¬ 
wards the close of the Peloponnesian war, to be paid 
by all ships coming from the Euxine. ( Xen ., Hist. 
Gr ., 1, 1, 14. — Polyb., 4, 44, 3.) The ten thousand 
Greeks were encamped there for some days prior to 
crossing over into Thrace. ( Xen ., Anab., 6, 6, 22.) 
It is mentioned by Strabo (563) as a small town, and 
Pliny says, “ Fuit Chrysopolis ” (5, 32). Several his¬ 
torians, however, of a later date, continue to speak of 
it. ( Zosim ., 2, 30. — Socrat., Hist. Eccles., 1, 4. — 
Amm. Mar cell., 22, 12.) Stephanus of Byzantium 
gives various etymological derivations of. the name. 
The modern Scutari is thought to correspond to the 
ancient place. ( Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 191, 
seq.) ' \ 

Chrysorrhoas, or Golden Stream, a river of Syr¬ 
ia, near Damascus. It rises in Mount Libanus, and, 
after leaving its native valley, divides itself into five 
small streams near the village of Dumar. The main 
one of these flows through Damascus, while two others 
water the gardens in the plain of El-Gutha. All the 
streams unite subsequently, and their collected waters 
empty into the sea. The Chrysorrhoas is the same 
with the Bardine or Amana (in Scripture Abana, 2 
Kings, 5, 12), now the Baradi. ( Abulfeda , Tab. Syr. 
— Burckhardt, p. 37. — Von Richter , Wallfahrt, p. 154, 
seqq.) 

Chrysostom (St. John), an eminent father of the 
church, was born of a noble family at Antioch, A.D. 
347. His father’s name was Secundus, and the sur¬ 
name of Chrysostom, or “ golden mouth” ( Xpvoocro - 
poq), obtained by the son, was given to him on account 
of his eloquence. He was bred to the bar, but quitted 
it for an ascetic life : first, with a monk on a mount¬ 
ain near Antioch, and then in a cave by himself. He 
remained in this retirement six years, when he re¬ 
turned to Antioch, and, being ordained, became so 
celebrated for his talents as a preacher, that, on the 
death of Nectarius, patriarch of Constaninople, he 
was chosen to supply his place. On obtaining this 
preferment, which he very unwillingly accepted, he 
acted with great vigour and austerity in the reform of 
abuses, and exhibited all the mistaken notions of the 
day in regard to celibacy and the monastic life. He 
also persecuted the pagans and heretics with great zeal, 
and sought to extend his episcopal power with such 
unremitting ardour, that he involved himself in a quar¬ 
rel with Theophilus, bishop of Alexandrea, who en¬ 
joyed the patronage of the Empress Eudoxia ; which 
quarrel ended in his formal deposition by a synod held 
at Chalcedon A.D. 403. He was, however, so popu¬ 
lar in Constantinople, that a formidable insurrection 
ensued, and the empress herself interfered for his re¬ 
turn. Towards the end of the same year, owing to 
his zeal relative to a statue of Eudoxia, placed near the 
great church, and causing a disturbance of public wor¬ 
ship, all his troubles were renewed. If true, that in 
one of his sermons the empress was compared by him 


to Herodias, who sought the head of John in a char¬ 
ger, the anger of Eudoxia was not altogether unjustifia¬ 
ble. The consequence of her resentment was the as¬ 
sembling of another synod, and in A.D. 404 the pa¬ 
triarch was again deposed and sent into exile. The 
place of his banishment was Cucusus, a lonely town 
among the ridges of Mount Taurus, on the confines of 
Cappadocia and Cilicia. He sustained himself with 
much fortitude ; but having, by means of his great in¬ 
fluence and many adherents, procured the intercession 
of the western emperor, Honorius, with his brother 
Arcadius, he was ordered to be removed still farther 
from the capital, and died on the journey at Comana in 
Pontus, A.D. 407, at the age of sixty. Opinion was 
much divided in regard to his merits for some time 
after his death, but at length his partisans prevailed, 
and, thirty years from his decease, he was removed 
from his place of interment as a saint, and his re¬ 
mains were met in procession by the Emperor Theo¬ 
dosius the younger, on their removal from the place 
of his original interment to Constantinople. Chry¬ 
sostom was a voluminous writer, but more eloquent 
than either learned or acute. Although falling short 
of Attic purity, his style is free, copious, and unaf¬ 
fected, and his diction often glowing and elevated. 
The numerous treatises or sermons by which he chiefly 
gained his reputation, are very curious for the informa¬ 
tion they contain on the customs and manners of the 
times, as elicited by his declamation against prevail¬ 
ing vices and follies. The first entire Greek edition 
of the works of Chrysostom was that of Sir Henry 
Saville, at Eton, in 8 vols. folio, 1613 ; but that of 
Montfaucon, Paris, with annotations and his life, 11 
vols. folio, 1718, is by far the most complete. ( Gor¬ 
ton's Biogr. Diet., vol. 1, p. 485 ) 

Chrysothemis, I. a daughter of Agamemnon and 
Clytemnestra.—II. A Cretan, who first obtained the 
poetical prize at the Pythian games. ( Pausanias, 
10, 7.) 

Cibal^e, a town of Lower Pannonia, situate on the 
Saavus, about fifty miles from Sirmium, and about 
one hundred from the confluence of the Saavus and 
Danube. It was famous for the defeat of Licinius by 
Constantine, A.D. 315, and was also the birthplace of 
Gratian. Its name is preserved in the obscure ruins 
of Savilet. (Eutropius , 10, 4. — Amm. Marcellinus, 
30, 24.) 

Cibyra, I. a flourishing commercial city in the 
southwest angle of Phrygia, between Lycia and Ca- 
ria. It was surnamed the Great for distinction’ sake 
from another city of the same name situate in Pam- 
phylia. Cibyra seems to have been originally a small 
town of the Cabalees, from whom the tract of Cabalia 
or Cabalis took its name. On the accession, however, 
of a Pisidian colony, the site was changed, the town 
considerably enlarged, and the name gradually altered 
from Cabalis, or some analogous form, to that of Cyb- 
yra. The place became very prosperous, and its pros¬ 
perity was chiefly owing to the excellence of its laws, 
though the government was that of an absolute mon¬ 
archy. Under this government were included the 
three old Cabalian towns of Bubon, Balbura, and CEno- 
anda, and these, together with the capital Cibyra, 
constituted a tetrapolis. Each of these towns had one 
vote in the general assembly of the states, except 
Cibyra, which had two, in consideration of its supe¬ 
rior power. This city, as we are told by Strabo, 
could raise no less than 30,000 foot and 2000 horse, 
and its influence and power extended over a part of 
Pisidia, Milyas, and Lycia, as far as Peraea of the 
Rhodians. ( Strab., 631.) After its conquest by the 
Romans, we find Cibyra mentioned as the chief city 
of a considerable forum or conventus, comprising not 
less than twenty-five towns. ( Cic., Ep. ad Att., 5, 21. 
— Plin., 5, 29.) According to Tacitus (Ann., 4, 13), 
Cibyra, having been nearly destroyed by an earth.- 





CICERO. 


CICERO. 


quake, was afterward restored by Tiberius. In later 
writers we find it included within the limits of Caria. 
( Hierocl., 690.) Strabo reports, that there were four 
dialects in use at Cibyra: that of the ancient Solymi, 
the Greek, the Pisidian, and the Lydian ; the latter, 
however, he adds, was quite extinct even in Lydia. 
The Cibyratse excelled in engraving on iron or steel. 
(Strab ., 631.) No trace of the ruins of Cibyra has as 
yet been discovered. They are to be found, however, 
in all probability, not far from Denisli, or Laodicea, 
on a river which is either the Lycus or a branch of it. 
( Cramer's Asia Minor , vol. 2, p. 269, seqq.) — II. A 
town on the coast of Pamphylia, southeast of Aspen- 
dus, called Cibyra Parva, for distinction’ sake from 
the preceding. Ptolemy annexes it to Cilicia Tra¬ 
chea. Its site corresponds to that of the modern Ibu- 
rar. ( Srab ., 667.) 

Cicero, Marcus Tullius, a celebrated Roman ora¬ 
tor, was born at Arpinum, the native place of Marius, 
B.C. 107, the same year which gave birth to Pom- 
pey the Great. His family was ancient, and of eques¬ 
trian rank, but had never taken part in public affairs at 
Rome, though both his father and grandfather were 
persons of consideration in the part of Italy in which 
they resided. (Or. contra Bull., 2, 1.) His father, 
being a man of cultivated mind, determined to educate 
his two sons, Marcus and Quintus, on an enlarged 
and liberal plan, and to fit them for the prospect of 
those public employments which his own weak state 
of health incapacitated him from seeking. Marcus, 
the elder of the two, soon displayed indications of a 
superior mind, and we are told that his schoolfellows 
carried home such accounts of his extraordinary parts, 
that their parents often visited the school for the sake 
of seeing a youth who gave so much promise of future 
eminence. ( Plut. in Vit.) One of his earliest mas¬ 
ters was the poet Archias, whom he defended after¬ 
ward in his consular year; and under his instruction 
he made such proficiency as to compose a poem, 
though yet a boy, on the fable of Glaucus, which had 
formed the subject of one of the tragedies of yEschylus. 
Soon after he assumed the manly gown, he was placed 
under the care of Scsevola, the celebrated lawyer, 
whom he introduces so beautifully into several of his 
philosophical dialogues ; and in no long time he gained 
a thorough knowledge of the laws and political insti¬ 
tutions of his country. (De Clar. Or.,29.) This was 
about the time of the Social War ; and, according to 
the Roman custom, which made it a necessary part 
of education to learn the military art by actual service, 
Cicero took the opportunity of serving a campaign 
under the consul Pompeius Strabo, father of Pompey 
the Great. Returning to pursuits more congenial to 
his natural taste, he commenced the study of philoso¬ 
phy under Philo the Academic. But his chief atten¬ 
tion was reserved for oratory, to which he applied him¬ 
self with the assistance of Molo, the first rhetorician 
of the day ; while Diodotus, the Stoic, exercised him 
in the argumentative subtleties for which the disciples 
of Zeno were so celebrated. At the same time he 
declaimed daily in Greek and Latin with some young 
noblemen, who were competitors in the same race of 
honours with himself.—Cicero was the first Roman 
who found his way to the highest dignities of the state 
with no other recommendation than his powers of elo¬ 
quence and his merits as a civil magistrate. (Or. in 
Cat., 3, 6.— In Pis., 3. —Pro Sull., 30. —Pro Dom., 
37. — De Harusp. Resp., 23.— Ep. ad Fam., 15, 4.) 
The first cause of importance which he undertook 
was the defence of Roscius Amerinus, in which he 
distinguished himself by his courageous defence of his 
client, who had been accused of parricide by Chry- 
sogonus, a favourite of Sylla’s. This obliging him, 
however, according to Plutarch, to leave Rome from 
prudential motives, the power of Sylla being at that 
time paramount, he employed his time in travelling for 
344 


two years under pretence of his health, which he tells 
us was yet unequal to the exertion of pleading. (De 
Clar. Or., 91.) At Athens he met with T. Pompo- 
nius Atticus, whom he had formerly known at school, 
and there renewed with him a friendship which lasted 
through life, in spite of the change of interest and es¬ 
trangement of affection so commonly attendant on 
turbulent times. Here too he attended the lectures 
of Antiochus, who, under the name of an Academic, 
taught the dogmatic doctrines of Plato and the Stoics. 
Though Cicero at first evinced considerable dislike of 
his philosophical views, he seems afterward to have 
adopted the sentiments of the. Old Academy, which 
they much resembled, and not until late in life to have 
relapsed into the skeptical tenets of his earlier in- 
structer Philo. ( Warburton , Div. Leg., lib. 3, sec. 
3.— Vossius, de Nat. Log., c. 8, sec. 22.) After visit¬ 
ing the principal philosophers and rhetoricians of Asia, 
he returned at the age of thirty to Rome, so strength¬ 
ened and improved both in bodily and mental powers, 
that he soon eclipsed in speaking all his competitors 
for public favour. So popular a talent speedily gained 
him the suffrage of the commons ; and being sent to 
Sicily as quaestor, at a time when tne metropolis itself 
was visited with a scarcity of corn, he acquitted him¬ 
self in that delicate situation with so much success as 
to supply the clamorous wants of the people without 
oppressing the province from which the provisions 
were raised. (Or. pro Plane., 26.— In Verr., 5, 14.) 
Returning thence with greater honours than had ever 
before been decreed to a Roman governor, he gain¬ 
ed for himself still farther the esteem of the Sicil¬ 
ians, by undertaking his celebrated prosecution of Ver- 
res; who, though defended by the influence of the 
Metelli and the eloquence of Hortensius, was driven 
in despair into voluntary exile. Five years after his 
qusestorship Cicero was elected aedile. Though pos¬ 
sessed of only a moderate fortune, he nevertheless, 
with the good sense and taste which mark his charac¬ 
ter, was enabled, while holding this expensive office, 
to preserve in his domestic arrangements the dignity 
of a literary and public man, without any of the os¬ 
tentation of magnificence which often distinguished the 
candidate for popular applause. (Or. pro Dom., 58.) 
After the customary interval of two years, he was re¬ 
turned at the head of the list as prsetor (Or. in 
Pis., 1), and now made his first appearance on the 
rostra in support of the Manilian law. About the 
same time, also, he defended Cluentius. At the expi¬ 
ration of his praetorship, he refused to accept a foreign 
province, the usual reward of that magistracy; but, 
having the consulship full in view, and relying on his 
interest with Caesar and Pompey, he allowed nothing 
to divert him from that career of glory for which he 
now believed himself to be destined. Having suc¬ 
ceeded at length in attaining to the high office of 
which he was in quest, he signalized his consulship 
by crushing the conspiracy of Catiline ; and the Ro¬ 
mans hailed him, on the discovery and overthrow of 
this nefarious plot, as the Father and Deliverer of his 
country. His consulate was succeeded by the return 
of Pompey from the East, and the establishment of 
the First 1 riumvirate ; which, disappointing his hopes 
of political greatness, induced him to resume his fo¬ 
rensic and literary occupations. From these he was 
called off, after an interval of four years, by the threat* 
ening measures of Clodius, who at length succeeded 
in driving him into exile. This event, which, consid¬ 
ering the circumstances connected with it, was one of 
the most glorious of his life, filled him with the ut¬ 
most distress and despondency. Its history is as fol¬ 
lows. Clodius, Cicero’s bitter enemy, had caused a 
law to be renewed, declaring every one guilty of trea¬ 
son who ordered the execution of a Roman citizen 
before the people had condemned him. The blow 
was aimed against Cicero, on account of the punish- 






CICERO. 


CICERO. 


ment he had caused to be inflicted, by the authority 
of the senate, upon the accomplices of Catiline. The 
illustrious ex-consul put on mourning, and appeared 
in public, accompanied by the equites and many young 
patricians, demanding the protection of the people. 
Clodius, however, at the head of his armed adherents, 
insulted them repeatedly, and ventured even to be¬ 
siege the senate house. Cicero, upon this, went into 
voluntary exile. His conduct, however, in this re¬ 
verse of forture, showed anything but the firmness of 
a man of true spirit. He wandered about Greece, be¬ 
wailing his miserable condition, refusing the consola¬ 
tions which his friends attempted to administer, and 
shunning the public honours with which the Greek 
cities were eager to load him. ( Ep. ad Att., lib. 3. 
— Ep. ad Fam ., lib. 14. — Or. pro Sext., 22.— Pro 
Dom., 36.) He ultimately took refuge in Thessa- 
lonica with Plancus. Clodius, in the mean time, pro¬ 
cured new decrees, in consequence of which Cicero’s 
country seats were torn down, and a temple of Free¬ 
dom built on the site of his house at Rome. His wife 
and children were also exposed to ill usage from his 
imbittered persecutors. A favourable change, how¬ 
ever, soon took place in the minds of his countrymen. 
The audacity of Clodius became insupportable to all: 
Pornpey encouraged Cicero’s friends to get him re¬ 
called to Rome, and the senate also declared that it 
would not attend to any business until the decree 
which ordered his banishment was revoked. Through 
the zeal of the consul Lentulus, and at the proposition 
of several tribunes, the decree of recall passed the as¬ 
sembly of the people in the following year, in spite 
of a bloody tumult, in which Cicero’s brother Quintus 
was dangerously wounded; and the orator returned 
to his native country, after an absence of ten months, 
and was received with every mark of honour. The 
senate met him at the city gates, and his entry re¬ 
sembled a triumph. The attacks of Clodius, though 
they could now do no harm, were immediately re¬ 
newed, until Cicero was freed from the insults of this 
turbulent demagogue by the hand of Milo, whom he 
afterward, in a public trial for the deed, unsuccess¬ 
fully defended. (Vul. Milo.) Five years after his 
return from exile he received the government of Cili¬ 
cia, in consequence of Pompey’s law, which obliged 
those senators of consular or praetorian rank who had 
never held any foreign command, to divide the vacant 
provinces among them. Cicero conducted a war, 
while in this office, with good success against the 
plundering tribes of the mountain districts of Cilicia, 
and was greeted by his soldiers with the title of Im- 
perator. He resigned his command, and returned to 
Italy, about the close of the year 703, intending to 
prefer his claim to a triumph ; but the troubles which 
were just then commencing between Caesar and Pom- 
pey prevented him from obtaining one. His return 
home was followed by earnest endeavours to recon¬ 
cile Pompey with Caesar, and by very spirited beha¬ 
viour when Caesar required his presence in the senate 
But this independent temper was only transient; and 
at no period of his public life did he display such mis¬ 
erable vacillation as at the opening of the civil war. 
His conduct, in this respect, had been faulty enough 
before, for he then vacillated between the several 
members of the first triumvirate, defending Vatinius 
in order to please Caesar, and his bitter political en- 
emy Gabinius to ingratiate himself with Pompey. 
Now, however, we find him first accepting a com¬ 
mission from the republic; then courting Caesar; next, 
on Pompey’s sailing for Greece, resolving to follow 
him thither; presently determining to stand neuter; 
then bent on retiring to the Pompeians in Sicily ; and 
when, after all, he had joined their camp in Greece, 
discovering such timidity and discontent as to draw 
from Pompey the bitter reproof, “ cupio ad hostes Ci¬ 
cero transeat, ut nos timeat.” ( Macrobius, Sat., 2, 3.) 
X x 


After the battle of Pharsalia and the flight of Pompey, 
he refused to take the command of some troops then 
under the orders of Cato, but returned to Italy, which 
was governed by Antony, the representative of Caesar. 
His return was attended with several unpleasant cir¬ 
cumstances, until the conqueror wrote to him, and soon 
after received him in the most friendly spirit. Cicero 
now devoted himself entirely to literature and philoso¬ 
phy. The state of his private affairs, however, involv¬ 
ed him in great embarrassment. A large sum, which 
he had advanced to Pompey, had impoverished him, and 
he was forced to stand indebted to Atticus for present 
assistance. These difficulties led him to a step which 
it has been customary to regard with great severity ; 
the divorce of his wife Terentia, though he was then 
in his 62d year, and his marriage with his rich ward 
Publilia, who was of an age disproportionate to his 
own. Yet, in reviewing this proceeding, we must 
not adopt the modern standard of propriety, forgetful 
of the character of an age which reconciled actions 
even of moral turpitude with a reputation for honour 
and virtue. Terentia was a woman of a most imperi¬ 
ous and violent temper, and (what is more to the 
purpose) had in no slight degree contributed to his 
present embarrassment by her extravagance in the 
management of his private affairs. By her he had 
two children, a son born the year before his con¬ 
sulship, and a daughter, whose loss he was now fated 
to experience. To Tullia he was tenderly attached, 
not only from the excellence of her disposition, but 
from her love of polite literature ; and her death tore 
from him, as he so pathetically laments to Sulpicius, 
the only comfort which the course of public events 
had left him. (Ep. ad Fam., 4, 14.) His distress 
was increased by the unfeeling conduct of Publilia, 
whom he soon divorced for testifying joy at the death 
of her step-daughter. It was on this occasion that he 
wrote his treatise “ On Consolation,” with a view to 
mitigate the anguish of his sufferings. His friends 
were assiduous in their attentions ; and Csesar, who 
had treated him with the utmost kindness on his re¬ 
turn from Egypt, signified the respect he bore his char¬ 
acter by sending a letter of condolence from Spain, 
where the remains of the Pompeian party still en¬ 
gaged him. But no attentions, however considerate, 
could soften Cicero’s vexation at seeing the country 
he had formerly saved by his exertions, now subjected 
to the tyranny of one master. His speeches, indeed, 
for Marcellus and Ligarius exhibit traces of inconsist¬ 
ency ; but for the most part he retired from public 
business, and gave himself up to the composition of 
those works which, while they mitigated his political 
sorrows, have secured his literary celebrity. The as¬ 
sassination of Csesar, which took place in the follow¬ 
ing year, once more brought him on the stage of pub¬ 
lic affairs. He hoped to regain great political influ¬ 
ence ; but Antony took Caesar’s place, and all that 
was left Cicero to do was to compose those admira¬ 
ble orations against him which are known by the name 
of Philippics, and are equally distinguished for elo¬ 
quence and patriotism. His enmity towards Antony 
induced him to favour the young Octavius, although 
the pretended moderation of the latter by no means 
deceived him. With him originated all the ener¬ 
getic resolutions of the senate in favour of the war 
which the consuls and the young Caesar were con¬ 
ducting against Antony in the name of the republic; 
and for a time the prospect seemed to brighten. At 
last, however, Octavius having possessed himself of 
the consulship, and having formed an alliance with 
Antony and Lepidus, Cicero became convinced that 
liberty was at an end. At Tusculum, whither he had 
retired with his brother and nephew, he learned that 
Octavius had basely deserted him, and that his name, 
at Antony’s demand, had been added to the list of the 
proscribed. He repaired, in a state of indecision, to 

345 





CICERO. 


CICERO. 


the seacoast, and embarked. Contrary winds, how¬ 
ever, drove him back to the shore. At the request of 
his slaves he embarked a second time, but soon re¬ 
turned again to await his fate at his country-seat near 
Formiae. “ I will die,” said he, “ in that country 
which I have so often saved ” Here, then, he was dis¬ 
posed to remain, and to meet his death ; but his slaves, 
who were warmly attached to him, could not bear to 
see him thus sacrificed; and when the party of sol¬ 
diers sent to murder him was advancing towards the 
'villa, they almost forced him to put himself into his 
litter, and to allow them to carry him once more on 
board of the vessel, which was still lying at Caieta. 
But, as they were bearing the litter towards the sea, 
they w r ere overtaken in the walks of his own grounds 
by the soldiers who were in search of him, and who 
were headed by one Herennius, a centurion, and by 
C. Popilius Laenas. Popilius was a native of Pice- 
num, and had, on a former occasion, been success¬ 
fully defended by Cicero, when brought to trial for 
some offence before the courts at Rome. As the as¬ 
sistance of advocates was given gratuitously, the con¬ 
nexion between them and their clients was esteemed 
very differently from what it is among us ; and it was 
therefore an instance of peculiar atrocity, that Popil¬ 
ius offered his services to Antony to murder his pa¬ 
tron, from no other motive than the hope of gaining 
his favour, by showing such readiness to destroy his 
greatest enemy. The slaves of Cicero, undismayed 
at the appearance of the soldiers, prepared to defend 
their master; but he refused to allow any blood to be 
shed on his account, and commanded them to set down 
the litter and await the issue in silence. He was 
obeyed; and when the soldiers came up, he stretched 
out his head with perfect calmness, and submitted his 
neck to the sword of Popilius. He died in his sixty- 
fourth year, B.C. 43. When the murder was accom¬ 
plished, the soldiers cut off his two hands also, as the 
instruments with which he had written his Philippic 
Orations ; and the head and hands were carried to 
Rome, and exposed together at the Rostra. Men 
crowded to see the mournful sight, and testified by 
their tears the compassion and affection which his un¬ 
worthy death, and his pure and amiable character, had 
so justly deserved. On the whole, antiquity may be 
challenged to produce an individual so virtuous, so 
perfectly amiable as Cicero. None interest more in 
their lives, none excite more painful emotions in their 
deaths. Others, it is true, may be found of loftier 
and more heroic character, who awe and subdue the 
mind by the grandeur of their views or the intensity 
of their exertions. But Cicero engages our affections 
by the integrity of his public conduct, the purity of 
his private life, the generosity, placability, and kind¬ 
ness of his heart, the playfulness of his temper, the 
warmth of his domestic attachments. In this respect 
his letters are invaluable. Here we see the man 
without disguise or affectation, especially in his letters 
to Atticus, to whom he unbosomed every thought, and 
talked with the same frankness as to himself. It 
must, however, be confessed, that the publication of 
this same correspondence has laid open the defects of 
his political character. Everything seemed to point 
out Cicero as the fittest person of the day to be a 
mediator between contending factions. And yet, after 
the eventful period of his consulship, we see him re- 
sigmng the high station in the republic which he him¬ 
self might have filled, to the younger Cato, who, with 
only half his abilities, little foresight, and no address, 
possessed that first requisite for a statesman, firmness. 
Cicero, on the contrary, was irresolute, timid, and in¬ 
consistent.. ( Montesquieu, Grand, des Rom.., c. 12.) 
He talked, indeed, largely of preserving a middle course 
(Ep. ad Alt., 1 , 19), but he was continually vacilla¬ 
ting from one to the other extreme ; always too con¬ 
fident or too dejected; incorrigibly vain of success, 
346 


yet meanly panegyrizing the government of a usurper. 
His foresight, sagacity, practical good sense, and sin¬ 
gular tact in directing men’s measures, were lost for 
want of that strength of mind which points them 
steadily to one object. He W'as never decided, never 
(as has sometimes been observed) took an important 
step without afterward repenting of it. Nor can we 
account for the firmness and resolution of his consu¬ 
late, unless we discriminate between the ease of re¬ 
sisting a party and that of balancing contending in¬ 
terests. Boldness in opposition differs widely from 
steadiness in mediation ; the latter implying a cool¬ 
ness of judgment, which a direct attack is so far from 
requiring, that it ever inspires minds naturally timid 
with unusual excitement.—Let us now pass to Cicero 
as a public speaker and waiter. The orations he is 
known to have composed amount in all to about eigh¬ 
ty, of which fifty-nine, either entire or in part, are pre¬ 
served. All those pronounced by him during the five 
years intervening between his election to the quas- 
torship and aedileship have perished, except that for 
M. Tullius, the exordium and narratio of which were 
brought to light by the discoveries of Maio, in the Am¬ 
brosian library at Milan. From the same quarter 
have been obtained many other reliques of the elo¬ 
quence of Cicero, among the most important of which 
are, a large fragment of the oration for Scaurus, and 
detached portions of that delivered against Clodius for 
his profanation of the mysteries of the Bona Dea. Qf 
all the lost orations, the two most regretted are, that in 
defence of Cornelius, and the speech delivered by him 
in the temple of Bellona, in quelling the disturbance 
excited by the law of Otho. This last is said to have 
been one of the most signal victories of eloquence 
over the turbulence of human passions, while to the 
former Cicero himself frequently alludes as among 
the most finished of his compositions. The oration 
for Marcellus is maintained by many to be a spurious 
performance. It would seem, however, after weigh¬ 
ing all the arguments adduced by modern critics, that 
a part is actually genuine, but that much has been 
subsequently interpolated by some rhetorician or de¬ 
claimed Of the rhetorical works of Cicero, the most 
admired and finished is the dialogue JDe Oratore, of 
which Cicero himself highly approved, and which his 
friends were accustomed to regard as one of the hap¬ 
piest of his productions. In the Oratorio. Partiticncs, 
the subject is the art of arranging and distributing the 
parts of an oration so as to adapt them in the best 
manner to their proper end, that of moving and per¬ 
suading an audience. In the dialogue on famous ora¬ 
tors, entitled Brutus , he gives a short character of all 
who had ever flourished in Greece or Rome, w ith any 
considerable reputation for eloquence, down to his 
own time. It was intended as a fourth and supple¬ 
mental book to the treatise Be Oratore. The Ora¬ 
tor, addressed to Brutus, and written at his solicita¬ 
tion, was intended to complete the two wmrks just 
mentioned. It enlarges on the favourite topic of Ci¬ 
cero, which had already been partially discussed in 
the treatise De Oratore, the character of the per¬ 
fect orator, and seeks to confirm his favourite prop¬ 
osition, that perfection in oratory requires an extensive 
acquaintance with every art. It is on the merits of 
this work in particular that Ciceto, in a letter to a 
friend, asserts his perfect willingness that his reputa¬ 
tion should be staked. The Topica are a compend of 
the Topica of Aristotle. The treatise Be optimo gencrc 
Oratorum was originally intended as a preface to a 
translation of the celebrated orations of Demosthenes 
and iEschines Be Corona. The work Be Invcnticne 
was a youthful performance, and that addressed to 
Herennius, according to the best authorities, never 
proceeded from his pen. In all Cicero’s rhetorical 
works, except, perhaps, the Orator, he professes to 
have digested the principles of the Aristotelic and Iso- 





CICERO. 


CICERO. 


cratean schools into one finished system, selecting 
what was best in each, and, as occasion might offer, 
adding remarks and precepts of his own. The subject 
is considered in three distinct lights, with reference to 
the case , the speaker , and the speech. The case, as 
respects its nature, is definite or indefinite ; with ref¬ 
erence to the hearer, it is judicial, deliberative, or de¬ 
scriptive ; as regards the opponent, the division is 
fourfold ; according as the fact, its nature, its quality, 
or its propriety is called in question. The art of the 
speaker is directed to five points ; the discovery of 
persuasives (whether ethical, pathetic, or argumenta¬ 
tive), arrangement, diction, memory, delivery. And 
the speech itself consists of six parts ; introduction (or 
exordium), statement of the case, division of the sub¬ 
ject, proof, refutation, and conclusion or peroration. 
Cicero’s laudatory orations are among his happiest ef¬ 
forts. Nothing can exceed the taste and beauty of 
those for the Manilian Law, for Marcellus, for Ligarius, 
for Archias, and the ninth Philippic, which is princi¬ 
pally in praise of Servius Sulpicius. But it is in ju¬ 
dicial eloquence, particularly on subjects of a lively 
cast, as in his speeches for Cselius and Muraena, and 
against Csecilius, that his talents are displayed to the 
best advantage. To both kinds his amiable and 
pleasant turn of mind imparts inexpressible grace and 
delicacy; historical allusions, philosophical sentiments, 
descriptions full of life and nature, and polite raillery, 
succeed each other in the most agreeable manner, 
without appearance of artifice or effort. Of this nature 
are his pictures of the confusion of the Catilinarian 
conspirators on detection (Or. in Cat., 3, 3); of the 
death of Metellus (Or. pro Ccel., 10); of Sulpicius 
undertaking the embassy to Antony {Philipp., 9, 3) ; 
the character he draws of Catiline (Or. pro Ccel., 6) ; 
and his fine sketch of old Appius frowning on his de¬ 
generate descendant Clodia ( ib., 6). But, by the in¬ 
vention of a style which adapts itself with singular fe¬ 
licity to every class of subjects, whether lofty or famil¬ 
iar, philosophical or forensic, Cicero answers more ex¬ 
actly to his own definition of a perfect orator (Or«f., 
29), than by his plausibility, pathos, and vivacity. 
Among many excellences possessed by Cicero’s ora¬ 
torical diction, the greatest is its suitableness to the 
genius of the Latin tongue ; though the diffuseness 
thence necessarily resulting has exposed it both in 
his own days, and since his time, to the criticisms of 
those who have affected to condemn its Asiatic char¬ 
acter, in comparison with the simplicity of Attic wri¬ 
ters, and the strength of Demosthenes. Greek, how¬ 
ever, is celebrated for copiousness in its vocabulary 
and perspicuity in its phrases, and the consequent fa¬ 
cility of expressing the most novel or abstruse ideas 
with precision and elegance. Hence the Attic style 
of eloquence was plain and simple, because simplicity 
and plainness were not incompatible with clearness, 
energy, and harmony. But it was a singular want of 
judgment, an ignorance of the very principles of com¬ 
position, which induced Brutus, Calvus, Sallust, and 
others, to imitate this terse and severe beauty in their 
own defective language, and even to pronounce the 
opposite kind of diction deficient in taste and purity. 
In Greek, indeed, the words fall, as it were, naturally 
into a distinct and harmonious order ; and, from the 
exuberant richness of the materials, less is left to the 
ingenuity of the artist. But the Latin language is 
comparatively weak, scanty, and unmusical, and re¬ 
quires considerable skill and management to render it 
expressive and graceful. Simplicity in Latin is 
scarcely separable from baldness ; and justly as Ter¬ 
ence is celebrated for chaste and unadorned diction, 
yet even he, compared with Attic writers, is flat and 
heavy. ( Quintil., 10, 1.) Again, the perfection of 
strength is clearness united to brevity, but to this com¬ 
bination Latin is utterly unequal. From the vague¬ 
ness and uncertainty of meaning which characterize 


its separate words, to be perspicuous it must be full. 
What Livy, and much more Tacitus, have gained in 
energy, they have lost in perspicuity and elegance. 
Latin, in short, is not a philosophical language , not a 
language in which a deep thinker is likely to express 
himself with purity or neatness. Now Cicero rather 
made a language than a style, yet not so much by 
the invention as by the combination of words. Some 
terms, indeed, his philosophical subjects compelled 
him to coin ; but his great art lies in the application 
of existing materials, in converting the very disadvan¬ 
tages of the language into beauties, in enriching it 
with circumlocutions and metaphors, in pruning it of 
harsh and uncouth expressions, in systematizing the 
structure of a sentence. This is that copia diccndi 
which gained Cicero the high testimony of Caesar to 
his inventive powers {De Clar. Or., 72), and which, 
we may add, constitutes him the greatest master of 
composition the world has ever seen. If the compar¬ 
ison be not thought fanciful, he may be assimilated to 
a skilful landscape-gardener, who gives depth and rich¬ 
ness to narrow and confined premises, by taste and va¬ 
riety in the disposition of his trees and walks.—We 
come next to Cicero’s philosophical writings, after a 
brief enumeration of which we will offer a few remarks 
on the character of his philosophy itself. The treatise 
De Legtbus has reached us in an imperfect state, only 
three books remaining, and these disfigured by numer¬ 
ous chasms that cannot be supplied. It traces the 
philosophic principles of jurisprudence to their remote st 
sources, sets forth a body of law's conformable to Ci¬ 
cero’s idea of a well-regulated state, and is supposed 
to have treated in the books that are lost of the exec¬ 
utive power of the magistrates and the rights of Ro¬ 
man citizens. The treatise De Fimlus Boncrum et 
Malorum is written after the manner of Aristotle, and 
discusses the chief good and ill of man ; in it Cicero 
explains the several opinions entertained on this sub¬ 
ject by the sages of antiquity. The Academics Quces- 
Uones relate to the Academic Philosophy, whose ten¬ 
ets Cicero himself had embraced. It is an account 
and defence of the doctrines of the Academy. In the 
Tusculance Disputaiiov.es , five books are devoted to 
as many different questions of philosophy, bearing the 
most strongly on the practice of life, and involving 
topics the most essential to human happiness. The 
Paradoxa contain a defence of six paradoxes of the 
Stoics. The work De Natura Deorum embraces a 
full examination of the various theories of heathen an¬ 
tiquity on the nature of the gods, to which the treatise 
De Dimnalione may be regarded as a supplement. 
The essay De Offtciis, on moral duties, has not un¬ 
aptly been styled the heathen Whole Duly of Man, 
nor have the dialogues De Seneetute and De Armcitia 
been incorrectly regarded as among the most highiy 
finished and pleasing performances of which any lan¬ 
guage can boast. We have to lament the loss of the 
treatises De Consolatione (that which we have under 
this title being a patched-up imposture of Sigonius), De 
Gloria, and the one entitled Hortensius, in which last 
Cicero undertook the defence of learning and philoso¬ 
phy, and left to his illustrious competitor the task of 
arraigning them. It was this book which first led St. 
Augustin to the study of Christian philosophy and the 
doctrines of Christianity. The treatise De Rcpublica 
has been in part rescued from the destroying hand 
of time by the labours of Maio. Except the wmrks on 
Invention and De Oratore, this was the earliest of 
Cicero’s literary productions. It was given to the 
world A.U.C. 700, just before its author set out for 
his proconsular government in Cilicia. He was then 
in his fifty-third year. The object and spirit of the 
work were highly patriotic. He wished to bring the 
constitution back to its first principles by an impression 
expositive of its theory ; to inflame his contempora¬ 
ries with the love of virtue, by portraying the character 

347 



CICERO. 


CICERO. 


of their ancestors in its primeval purity and beauty; 
and while he was raising a monument to all future 
ages of what Rome had been, to inculcate upon his 
own times what it ought still to be. We know it to 
have been his original purpose to make it a very volu¬ 
minous work ; for he expressly tells his brother ( Ep. 
ad Q. Frat., 3, 5) that it was to be extended to nine 
books. Ernesti thinks that they were all given to the 
world (Ep. ad Att., 6, 1, in notis), although Cicero, 
in a letter to Atticus, on which that learned and accu¬ 
rate scholar makes this very remark, speaks of them as 
his six pledges or sureties for his good behaviour. 
—Cicero, as a philosopher, belongs, upon the whole, 
to the New Academy. It has been disputed whether 
he was really attached to this system, or had merely 
resorted to it as being the best adapted for furnishing 
him with oratorical arguments suited to all occasions. 
At first its adoption was subsidiary to his other plans. 
But, towards the conclusion of his life, when he no 
longer maintained the place he was wont to hold in 
the Senate or the Forum, and when philosophy formed 
the occupation “ with which,” to quote his own words, 
“ life was just tolerable, and without which it would 
have been intolerable,” he doubtless became convinced 
that the principles of the New Academy, illustrated as 
they had been by Carneades and Philo, formed the 
soundest system which had descended to mankind 
from the schools of Athens. The attachment, howev¬ 
er, of Cicero to the Academic philosophy was free 
from the exclusive spirit of sectarianism, and hence it 
did not prevent his extracting from other systems what 
he found in them conformable to virtue and reason. 
His ethical principles, in particular, appear eclectic, 
having been in a great measure formed from the opin¬ 
ions of the Stoics. Of most of the Greek sects he 
speaks with respect and esteem. For the Epicureans 
alone he seems (notwithstanding his friendship for 
Atticus) to have entertained a decided aversion and 
contempt. The general purpose of Cicero’s philosoph¬ 
ical works was rather to give a history of the ancient 
philosophy, than dogmatically to inculcate opinions of 
his own. It was his great aim to explain to his fel¬ 
low-citizens, in their own language, whatever the 
sages of Greece had taught on the most important 
subjects, in order to enlarge their minds and reform 
their morals. In theoretic investigation, in the devel¬ 
opment of abstract ideas, in the analysis of qualities 
and perceptions, Cicero cannot be regarded as an in¬ 
ventor or profound original thinker, and cannot be 
ranked with Plato and Aristotle. His peculiar merit, 
as a philosophical writer, lay in his luminous and 
popular exposition of the leading principles and dis¬ 
putes of the ancient schools; and no works trans¬ 
mitted from antiquity present so concise and compre¬ 
hensive a view of the opinions of the Greek philoso¬ 
phers. The most obvious peculiarity of Cicero’s phil¬ 
osophical writings is their form of dialogue. The idea 
was borrowed from Plato and Xenophon ; but the na¬ 
ture of Cicero’s dialogue is as different from that of 
the two Athenians, as was his object in writing. 
With them, the Socratic mode of argument could 
hardly be displayed in any other shape ; whereas Ci¬ 
cero’s aim was to excite interest, and he availed him¬ 
self of this mode of composition for the life and varie¬ 
ty* the ease, perspicuity, and vigour which it gave to 
his discussions. Nor does Cicero discover less skill 
in the execution of these dialogues, than address in 
their design. In the dignity of his speakers, their high 
tone of mutual courtesy, the harmony of his groups, 
and the delicate relief of his contrasts, he is inimitable. 
The majesty and splendour of his introductions, the 
eloquence with which both sides of a question are suc¬ 
cessively displayed, the clearness and terseness of his 
statements on abstract points, his exquisite allusions to 
the scene or time of the supposed conversation, his 
digressions in praise of philosophy, and, lastly, the mel- 
348 


ody and fulness of his style, unite to throw a charm 
around these productions which has been felt in every 
age.—Cicero’s Epistles , about 1000 in all, are com¬ 
prised in thirty-six books, sixteen of which are ad¬ 
dressed to Atticus, three to his brother Quintus, one 
to Brutus, and sixteen to his different friends; and 
they form a history of his life from his fortieth year. 
Among those addressed to his friends, some occur 
from Brutus, Metellus, Plancus, Caelius, and others. 
For the preservation of this most valuable department 
of Cicero’s writings, we are indebted to Tyro, the au¬ 
thor’s freedman, though we possess at the present day 
only a part of those originally published. The most 
interesting by far are the letters to Atticus, for they 
not only throw great light on the history of the times, 
but also give us a full insight into the private character 
of Cicero himself, who was accustomed at all times to 
unbosom his thoughts most freely to this friend of his. 
The authenticity of the correspondence with Brutus has 
been much disputed by modern scholars, and the gen¬ 
eral opinion is adverse to these letters being genuine.— 
His poetical and historical works have suffered a heavy 
fate. The latter class, consisting of his commentary 
on his consulship, and his history of his own times, 
are altogether lost. Of the former, which comprised 
the heroic poems Alcyones, Limon, Marius, his own 
consulate, the elegy of Tamelastis, translations of 
Homer and Aratus, Epigrams, &c., but little remains 
except some fragments of the Phsenomena and Diose- 
meia of Aratus. It may, however, be questioned, 
whether literature has suffered much by these losses. 
We are far, indeed, from speaking contemptuously of 
the poetic powers of one who possessed so much 
fancy, so much taste, and so fine an ear. But his 
poems were principally composed in his youth ; and 
afterward, when his powers were more mature, his oc¬ 
cupations did not allow even his active mind the time 
necessary for polishing a language still more rugged 
in metre than it was in prose. His contemporary his¬ 
tory, on the other hand, can hardly have conveyed 
more explicit, and certainly would have contained less 
faithful, information than his private correspondence ; 
while, with all the penetration he assuredly possessed, 
it may be doubted, if his diffuse and graceful style of 
thought and composition was adapted for the depth of 
reflection and condensation of meaning, which are the 
chief excellences of historical composition.—The edi¬ 
tions of the separate works of Cicero are too numerous 
to be mentioned here. The best editions of the entire 
works are : that of Ernesti, Hal., 1774, 8 vols. 8vo ; 
that of Olivet, Paris, 1740, 9 vols. 4to ; that of Schiitz, 
Lips., 1814-20, 19 vols. (in 27) 12mo ; and that of 
Nobbe, Lips., 1827, 1 vol. 4to, or 10 vols. 12mo. 
(Pint, in Vit. — Enc. Metropol., Div. 3, vol. 2, p. 279, 
seqq. — Biog. Univ., vol. 8, p. 530, seqq. — Encyclop. 
Am., vol. 3, p. 190, seqq. — Dunlop, Rom. Lit., vol. 
2, p. 275, seqq. — Bdhr, Gesch. Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. 
487, seqq .)— II. Marcus, only son of the orator, and 
to whom the latter addressed his work De Officiis. 
He took part in the civil contest at an early age, and 
served under both Pompey and Brutus. After the 
battle of Philippi he retired to Sicily and joined the 
younger Pompey. Subsequently, however, he took 
advantage of the act of amnesty that was passed, and 
returned to Italy, where he lived some time in a private 
situation. Augustus, on attaining to sovereign power, 
made him his colleague in the consulship, and it was 
to Marcus Cicero, in his quality of consul, that he 
wrote an account of the victory at Actium and the 
conquest of Egypt. Marcus had the satisfaction of 
executing the decree which ordered all th.e statues and 
monuments that had been erected to Antony to be 
thrown down. After his consulship he was appointed 
governor of Syria, from which period history is silent 
respecting him. He died at an advanced age, and was 
notorious for dissipated and intemperate habits. He 




CIL 


CIM 


appears to have inherited little, if anything, of his fa¬ 
ther’s virtue, patriotism, and talent. ( Cic ., Ep. ad 
Alt.., 1, 2.— Id., Ep. ad Fam., 13, 11. — Plut., Vit. 
Cic. extr. — Id., Vit. Brut., &c.)—III. Quintus, broth¬ 
er of the orator, and brother-in-law of Atticus. After 
having been praetor A.U.C. 692, he obtained the gov¬ 
ernment of Asia. He was subsequently a lieutenant 
of Caesar’s in Britain, and only left that commander to 
accompany his brother Marcus Tullius, as lieutenant, 
into Cilicia. After the battle of Pharsalia, in which 
he took part on the side of Pompey, he was proscribed 
by the triumvirate, and put to death by the emissaries 
of Antony. He had a marked talent for poetry, and 
had planned a poem on the invasion of Britain by Cae¬ 
sar. He also composed several tragedies, imitated or 
else translated from the Greek, but which have not 
reached us. Eighteen lines of his are preserved in 
the Corpus Poetarum of Maittaire. He was the au¬ 
thor of the piece entitled “ de Petitione Consulatus," 
usually printed along with Cicero’s letters to him. It 
is addressed by Quintus to his brother when the latter 
was a candidate for the consulship, and gives advice 
with regard to the measures he should pursue to at¬ 
tain his object, particularly inculcating the best means 
to gain private friends and acquire general popularity. 
( Corrad. Qucest., p. 278, ed. Lips. — Biogr Umv., 
vol. 8, p. 550. — Dunlop, Roman Literature, vol. 2, p. 
495.) 

Cic5nes, a people on the coast of Thrace, near the 
spot where Maronea stood in a later age. Homer has 
placed here the scene of Ulysses’ first disaster. Isma- 
rus was the name of their city, which the poet sup¬ 
poses that chieftain to have taken and plundered ; but 
the natives coming down from the interior in great 
force, he was driven off with severe loss of both men 
and ships. ( Od ., 1,40, seqq.) Ismarus is known to 
later writers only as a mountain celebrated for its 
wine, which indeed Homer himself alludes to in an¬ 
other passage. {Od., 1, 197.) 

Cilicia, a country of Asia Minor, on the seacoast, 
south of Cappadocia and Lycacwiia, and to the east of 
Pisidia and Pamphilia. Herodotus says (7, 91), that 
the people of this country were anciently called Hyp- 
achaei, and that the appellation of Cilicians was sub¬ 
sequently derived from Cilix, son of Agenor, a Phoeni¬ 
cian. This passage seems to point to a Phoenician or 
Syrian origin for the race, a supposition strengthened 
by the fact of the early commercial habits of the people 
of Cilicia. This country, though tributary to the Per¬ 
sian king, was nominally under the government of its 
native princes, with whom Syennesis appears to have 
been a common name. (Consult Herod., 1, 74.— Id., 
5, 118.— Xen., Anab., 1, 2.) Cilicia, more especially 
that part which consisted of plains, was a wealthy 
country ; since we are informed by Herodotus (3, 90) 
that it yielded to Darius a revenue of 500 talents, 
equal to that of Mysia and Lydia together, besides 
360 white horses. Xenophon also {Anab., 1, 2) de¬ 
scribes it as a broad and beautiful plain, well watered, 
and abounding in wine and all kinds of trees, and 
yielding barley, millet, and other grain. In a military 
point of view, the importance of Cilicia was also very 
great, since it was surrounded by lofty mountains, 
presenting only one or two passes, and these easily 
secured by a small force against the largest armies. 
Had the Persians known how to defend these, the 
younger Cyrus would never have reached the Euphra¬ 
tes, nor would Alexander have been able to penetrate 
to the plains of Issus, which witnessed the overthrow 
of Darius. {Arrian, Exp. Al., 2, 4.) At a later pe¬ 
riod we learn from Cicero, during his command there, 
what importance the Romans attached to the province 
of Cilicia, when it became necessary to cover Asia 
against the growing power of the Parthiaris. {Ep. ad 
Att., 5, 20.) As a maritime country, too, Cilicia makes 
a considerable figure in history, since it furnished 


numerous fleets to the Persian monarchs, as well as 
to the Syrian and Egyptian successors of Alexander. 
But it was more especially from the formidable char¬ 
acter of her piratical navy that Cilicia has obtained a 
name in the seafaring annals of antiquity. Some idea 
of the alarm inspired by these daring rovers can be 
formed from the language of Cicero, however exag¬ 
gerated we may suppose it to be for a political purpose. 
{Or. pro Leg. MamL, 11.) The selection, too, which 
the Roman people made of Pompey, and the unusual 
powers confided to him, prove the importance of the 
contest. In less than 50 days, however, Pompey re¬ 
duced the whole province either by force or the terror 
of his arms. More than 20,000 pirates are said to have 
fallen into his hands : these he settled in the interior, 
or reipoved to some distant countries, and thus en¬ 
tirely purged the shores of Asia of these nests of rob¬ 
bers. In the course of this war the Romans are said 
to have captured 378 ships, and burned 1300, conquer¬ 
ed 120 towns and castles, and to have slain 10,000 of 
the enemy.—Cilicia was divided into Campestris and 
Trachea. The former was the larger and more east¬ 
erly portion, and derived its name from its champaign 
character. Trachea, on the other hand, was so called 
from its rugged aspect {rpaxela, “ rough")- It was 
nearly all occupied by the broad ridge of Taurus, which 
leaves scarcely any room for level land towards the 
sea. {Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 315, seqq.) 

Cilix, a son of Agenor, who gave his name to Ci¬ 
licia, according to Herodotus. (Consult remarks under 
the article Cilicia.— Herodot., 7, 91.) 

Cilla, a town of Troas, in the immediate vicinity of 
Adramyttium. {Horn., II., 1, 37.— Strab., 612.) 

Cimber, L. Tillius, one of the conspirators against 
Caesar. He was a man notorious for his drunkenness 
and low violence {Seneca, Ep., 83. — Id., de Ira, 3, 
30), and he had been throughout the civil war a violent 
partisan of Caesar’s, who appointed him a short time 
before his assassination to the province of Bithynia. 
{Appian, Bell. Civ., 3, 2. — Cic., Ep. ad Fam., 12, 
13.) Cimber was the one who gave the signal agreed 
upon with his associates for commencing the attack, 
by taking hold of Caesar’s robe, and pulling it down 
from his shoulders. {Plut., Vit. Cces.) 

Cimbri, a people of Germany, who invaded the 
Roman empire with a large army, and were conquered 
by Marius and Catulus. (For an account of the war, 
consult the article Teutones.) The Cimbri are gener¬ 
ally thought to have had for their original seat the 
Cimbric Chersonese, or modern Jutland. It would 
seem, however, that there is some curious connexion 
between their name and that of the ancient Cimmerii, 
a point which may have some bearing on the question 
respecting the origin of the Germanic race. (Consult 
remarks under the article Cimmerii, and compare 
Mannert, Geschichte der alien Deutschen, p. 11, and 
Pfister, Gesch. der Teutschen, vol. 1, p. 40.) A de¬ 
lung, however, opposes this idea. {Mithradates, vol. 
2, p. 143.) 

Ciminus, I. a range of hills in Etruria, lying to the 
south of Salpinum.—II. A lake at the foot of Mons 
Ciminus, now Lago di Vico, or Ronciglione. {Strabo, 
225.) The Ciminian forest, whose/ almost impene¬ 
trable shades served for a time as a barrier to Etruria 
against the attacks of Rome, is described as covering 
the adjacent country to a considerable extent. {Liv., 
9, 36.— Front., Strat., 1 , 2.— Plin., 2, 96.) 

Cimmerii, a nomadic race of Upper Asia, who ap¬ 
pear to have originally inhabited a part of what is now 
called Tartary. According to Herodotus (1, 15), they 
were driven from their primitive seats by the Scythians 
and moved down, in consequence, upon Asia Minor, 
which they invaded and ravaged during the reign of 
Ardys, king of Lydia, the successor of Gyges. Strabo, 
however, places the incursion of the Cimmerians in 
the time of Homer, or a little before the birth of the 

349 





CIMMERII. 


CIM 


poet. ( Strab ., 20.) Wesseling thinks the authority 
of Strabo inferior to that of Herodotus ; but Larcher 
inclines to the opinion that two different incursions are 
spoken of, an earlier and a later one. He makes the 
former of these even anterior to the time assigned by 
Strabo, and thinks it preceded by a short period the 
siege of Troy. He supposes this, moreover, to be the 
one alluded to by Euripides. {Iph. in Taur., 1115, 
seqq.—Larcher , ad Herod., 1 , 6.) According to this 
view of the subject, Herodotus speaks merely of the 
latter of these two inroads. Volney maintains, in like 
manner, that there were two incursions of the Cim¬ 
merians, but he places the first of these in the reign of 
Ardys (699 B.C.), to which he thinks Herodotus al¬ 
ludes in the fifteenth chapter of his first book ; and the 
second one in the time of Alyattes and Cya^ares, 
which he supposes to be the inroad alluded to by He¬ 
rodotus in the one hundred and third chapter of the 
same book. ( Volney , Suppl. a VHerod., de Larcher , 
p. 75, seqq.) It appears much more reasonable, how¬ 
ever, to refer all to but one invasion on the part of 
the Cimmerian race, commencing in the time of Ar¬ 
dys, and continued until the reign of Alyattes (616, 
B.C.), when these barbarians were expelled from the 
Asiatic peninsula. ( Bahr, ad Herod., 1 , 6.) — The 
account given by Herodotus is, that the Cimmerians, 
when they came into Asia Minor, took Sardis, with 
the exception of the citadel, and that they were finally 
expelled by Alyattes, the contemporary of Cyaxares. 
{Herod., 1, 15, seq.) The same historian makes the 
Cimmerians to have dwelt originally in the neighbour¬ 
hood of the Palus Mfeotis and Cimmerian Bosporus, 
and when driven out “ from Europe,” as he expresses 
himself {en rr/g Evpunyg), by the Scythians, to have 
fled along the upper shore of the Euxine to Colchis, 
and thence to have passed into Asia Minor. {Herod., 
1, 103.) Niebuhr, with very good reason, insists that 
Herodotus has there fallen into an error, and that all 
the wandering races which have ir succession occupied 
the regions of Scythia, have, when driven out by other 
tribes from the east, moved forth in a western direction 
towards the country around the Danube. The Cim¬ 
merians, therefore, must have come into Asia Minor 
from the east. As regards the name of the Cimmerian 
Bosporus, the same acute critic supposes it to have 
arisen from the circumstance of a part of the Cimme¬ 
rian horde having been left in this quarter, and having 
continued to occupy the Tauric Chersonese as late as 
the settlement of the Greek colonies in these parts. 
{Niebuhr, Kleine Schnften, p. 365, seqq.) — The an¬ 
cients differed in opinion as regarded the orthography of 
the name Cimmerii, some being in favour of Kepbepioi, 
others of Xeipepioi. {Hesych., s. v. — Eustath., ad 
Od., 10, 14. — Schol., adloc. — Anstoph., Ran., 189. 
— Etymol. Mag., p. 513.— Voss, Weltk., p. 14.) 
Modern scholars are in like manner divided as to the 
derivation of the term “ Cimmerian” itself. It is main¬ 
tained by some of these that the Greeks obtained their 
first knowledge of this race from the Phoenicians, and 
that hence, in all probability, the stories told of the 
gloom which enshrouded the Cimmerian land, and of 
the other appalling circumstances connected with the 
people, were mere Phoenician inventions to deter the 
Grecian traders from visiting them. In accordance 
with this idea, Bochart derives the word “ Cimmerian” 
from the Phoenician kamar, or kimmer, “tenebrosum.” 
{Gcogr. Sacr., col. 591.—Compare Job, 3, 5.) Hence 
we read of Cimmerians, not only in Lower Asia, but 
also in the remotest west and north. “ The Cimme¬ 
rians,” says Eustathius, “ are a people in the west, on 
the Oceanus : they dwell not far from Hades.” (Com¬ 
pare Tzetz., ad Lycophr., 695, and consult the article 
Avernus.) Another class of etymologists, however, 
deduce the word in question from the Celtic, and make 
the Cimmerii identical with the Kimri, whence the later 
Cimbri. ( Volney, Suppl., &c., page 75.) The Cim- 
350 


merians, therefore, who overran Asia Minor, will be a 
Celtic race. There is something extremely plausible 
in this supposition, and in this way, too, we may, with¬ 
out having recourse to Bochart’s derivation, account for 
the existence of Cimmerii, or Celts, in the remote west. 
{Ukert, Geogr., vol. 1, p. 26, not.) 

Cimmerium, a town in the interior of the Tauric 
Chersonese, northwest of Theodosia. It is now Eski- 
Knm (Old Krim), on the river Tschuruck. {Mela, 1, 
19 ) 

Cimolus, one of the Cyclades, northeast of Melos. 
Its more ancient name was Echinusa, or Viper’s Isl¬ 
and, from the number of vipers which infested it be¬ 
fore it was inhabited. It produced what was called 
the Cimolia terra , a species of earth resembling, in 
some of its properties, fuller’s earth, though not the 
same with it. {Theophrast., de Lapid., 2, 107.— 
Strabo, 484.) The ancients used it for cleaning their 
clothes. It was white, dense, of a loose texture, mixed 
with sand or small pebbles, insipid to the taste, and 
unctuous to the touch. The substance, according to 
Sir John Hill {ad Theophr., 1. c.), which comes nearest 
to the Cimolian earth of antiquity, is the Steatite of the 
Soap-Rock of Cornwall, which is the common matter 
of a great part of the cliff' near the Lizard Point. 
Cimolus is now Kimoli, though more generally known 
by the name of Argenticra. {Cramer's Anc. Greece , 
vol. 3, p. 405.) 

Cimon, I. son of Miltiades, and of Hegesipyle the 
daughter of Olorus, a Thracian prince. His education, 
according to Plutarch, was very much neglected, and 
he himself indulged, at first, in every species of ex¬ 
cess. At his father’s death he seems to have suc¬ 
ceeded to a very scanty fortune, and he would per¬ 
haps have found it difficult to raise the penalty of fifty 
talents, which had been imposed upon his parent, and 
which the son was bound to pay to the public treas¬ 
ury, had not Callias, one of the wealthiest men of 
Athens, struck by the charms of his half-sister Elpi- 
nice, undertaken to discharge the sum as the price of 
her hand. {Vid. Capias, Elpinice.) Cimon, how¬ 
ever, had attracted notice, and gained reputation, by 
the spirit which he displayed on the occasion of leav¬ 
ing the city on the approach of the Persians, w hen he 
was the foremost to hang up a bridle in the Acropolis, 
as a sign that he placed all his hopes in the fleet; and 
also by the valour with which he fought at Salamis. 
Aristides, in particular, saw in him a fit coadjutor 
to himself and antagonist to Themistocles, and ex¬ 
erted himself in his favour ; and the readiness with 
which the allied Greeks, when disgusted by the arro¬ 
gance of Pausanias, united themselves with Athens, 
was owing in a great measure to Cimon’s mild tem¬ 
per, and to his frank and gentle manners. The pop¬ 
ularity of Themistocles was already declining, while 
Cimon, by a series of successful enterprises, w as rap¬ 
idly rising in public favour. He defeated the Per¬ 
sians in Thrace, on the banks of the Strymon, took 
Eion, and made himself master of the whole country. 
He conquered the island of Scyros, the inhabitants of 
which were addicted to piracy ; and brought thence to 
Athens what were deemed the bones of the national 
hero Theseus. He next subdued all the cities on the 
coast of Asia Minor, and went against the Persian 
fleet which lay at the mouth of the Eurymedon. The 
Persians, although superior in number, did not dare to 
abide an engagement, but sailed up the river to place 
themselves under the protection of their land forces. 
Cimon, however, provoked them to a battle, and, hav¬ 
ing defeated and sunk or taken two hundred ships, 
landed his men, flushed with victory, and complete¬ 
ly routed the Persian army. Returning to Athens 
after these two victories thus achieved in a single 
day, he employed the perquisites of his command, and 
the resources which he had acquired from his suc¬ 
cesses over the barbarians, in the embellishment of 



CIMON. 


c r n 


his native city, and in relieving the wants of the indi¬ 
gent. He laid a part of the foundations of the long 
walls with magnificent solidity at his own charge, 
and the southern wall of the citadel was built with the 
treasures which he brought from Asia into the coffers 
of the state. He also set the example of adorning the 
public places of the city with trees, and, by introdu¬ 
cing a stream of water, converted the Academy, a spot 
about two miles north of the city, from an arid waste 
into a delightful grove. (Vid. Academus.) He threw 
down the fences of his fields and orchards, that all who 
wished might enter and partake of their produce : he 
not only gave the usual entertainments expected from 
the rich to the members of his own borough, but kept 
a table constantly open for them. He never appeared 
in public without a number of persons attending him 
in good apparel, who, when they met with any elderly 
citizen scantily clothed, would insist on exchanging 
their warm mantles for his threadbare covering. It 
was the office of the same agents respectfully to ap¬ 
proach any of the poorer citizens of good character, 
whom they might see standing in the market-place, 
and silently to put some small pieces of money into 
their hands. This latter kind of expenditure was cer¬ 
tainly of a mischievous tendency ; and was not the 
less that of a demagogue, because Cimon sought popu¬ 
larity, not merely for his own sake, but for that of his 
order and his party. — About 466 B.C., Cimon was 
sent to the Thracian Chersonese, of which the Per¬ 
sians still kept possession, and having driven them out, 
next reduced the island of Thasus, and took posses¬ 
sion of the Thasian gold mines on the neighbouring 
continent. Scarcely, however, had he returned to At¬ 
tica, when an accusation was preferred against him of 
having been corrupted by the King of Macedonia, be¬ 
cause he had refrained, not, according to the common 
account, from attacking the Macedonians then at 
peace with Athens, but from striking a blow at the 
Thracian tribes on the frontier of that kingdom, who 
had recently cut off the Athenian settlers on the banks 
of the Strymon. (Vid. Amphipolis.) From this ac¬ 
cusation Cimon had a very narrow escape. Having 
been sent, however, after this, with a body of troops to 
aid the Spartans before Ithome, and the latter having, 
after some interval, sent back their Athenian allies, 
whom they suspected of not lending them any effectual 
assistance, the irritation produced by this national in¬ 
sult fell principally upon Cimon, who was known to be 
an admirer of the Spartan character and constitution, 
and he was accordingly driven into exile. Subse¬ 
quent events, however, made the Athenians feel the 
want of this able commander, and he was recalled and 
sent on an expedition against Egypt and Cyprus ; but 
he was carried off by illness, or the consequences of a 
wound, in the harbour of Citium, to which place he 
was laying siege. His spirit, however, still animated 
his countrymen ; for the fleet, when sailing home with 
his remains, gained a naval victory over a large squad¬ 
ron of Phoenician and Cilician galleys near the Cyprian 
Salamis, and followed up this victory by another which 
they gained on shore, either over the troops which had 
landed from the enemy’s ships, or over a land force 
by which they were supported.—Cimon was, beyond 
dispute, the ablest and most successful general of his 
day; and his victories shed a lustre on the arms of 
Athens, which almost dimmed the glories of Marathon 
and Salamis. In after times, Cimon’s military renown 
was enhanced by the report of a peace which his vic¬ 
tories had compelled the Persian king to conclude on 
terms most humiliating to the monarchy. These 
were, that the Persians had agreed to abandon at least 
the military occupation of Asia Minor, to the distance 
of three days’ journey on foot, or one on horseback, 1 
from the coast, and to abstain from passing the mouth 
of the Bosporus and the Chelidonian islands into 
the western sea. This peace, of which Isocrates, De-! 


mosthenes, Diodorus, and Plutarch speak, never took 
place. The silence of Thucydides is conclusive on 
the subject, to say nothing of the vague and contra¬ 
dictory statements of the very authors who do men¬ 
tion it. The fable seems to have sprung up, or to 
have acquired a distinct shape, in the rhetorical school 
of Isocrates, and to have been transmitted through the 
orators to the historians.—( Plut ., Vit. Cim .— Thirl - 
wall's Greece , vol. 3, p. 2, seqq.) 

Cincia lex, was proposed by M. Cincius, a tri¬ 
bune of the people, A.U.C. 549. It enacted, that no 
one should take money or a present for pleading a 
cause. ( Liv ., 34, 4.— Tac., Ann., 11, 5.) 

Cincinnatus, L. Quintius, a Roman patrician, 
whose name belongs to the earlier history of the re¬ 
public, and has a well-known and spirit-stirring legend 
connected with it. His son, Kseso Quintius, had been 
banished on account of his violent language towards 
the tribunes, and the father had retired to his own pat¬ 
rimony, aloof from popular tumults. The successes 
of the ^Equi and Volsci, however, rendered the ap¬ 
pointment of a dictator necessary, and Cincinnatus 
was chosen to that high office. The delegates who 
were sent to announce this unto him, found the Ro¬ 
man noble ploughing his own fields ; and from the 
plough he was transferred to the highest magistracy 
of his native state. The dictator laid aside his rural 
habiliments, assumed the ensigns of absolute power, 
levied a new army, marched all night to bring the ne¬ 
cessary succour to the consul Minucius, who was 
surrounded by the enemy and blockaded in his camp, 
and before morning surrounded the enemy’s army, and 
reduced it to a condition exactly similar to that in 
which the Romans had been placed. The baffled 
iEqui were glad to submit to the victor’s terms ; and 
Cincinnatus, thereupon returning in triumph to Rome, 
laid down his dictatorial power, after having held it 
only fourteen days, and returned to his farm. At aa 
advanced age he was again appointed dictator, to re¬ 
strain the power of Spurius Melius (vid. Melius), and 
again proved himself the deliverer of his country. 
(Val. Max., 4, 4, 7.— Liv., 3, 26.) 

Cineas, a Thessalian, a minister and friend of Pyr¬ 
rhus, and employed by the latter on many embassies. 
He had been a pupil of Demosthenes, and possessed 
considerable talents as an orator. Having been sent 
by Pyrrhus to Rome with proposals of peace, he com¬ 
pared the senate, on his return, to an assembly of 
kings, and a war with the Romans to a contest with 
another Lernaean hydra. (Plut., Vit. Pyrrh.) 

Cingulum, a town of Picenum, southwest of Anco¬ 
na. It surrendered to Caesar, though Labienus, then 
a great partisan of Pompey, had raised and constructed 
its fortifications at his own expense. The modern 
name is Cingolo. (Cccs., Bell. Civ., 1, 15. — Cic., 
Ep. ad Att., 7, 11.— Sil. Ital., 10, 34.) 

Cinna, L. Cornelius, an adherent of Marius, who 
played a conspicuous part in the civil war between 
that leader and Sylla. Having attained to the con¬ 
sulship, after the proscription of Marius by his oppo¬ 
nent, he began to exert himself for the recall of the 
former, and accused Sylla, who was just going as 
proconsul to Asia, of maladministration. That com¬ 
mander, however, took no notice of the complaint. 
After the departure of Sylla, he brought forward once 
more the law of Sulpicius, which admitted the Italians 
into all the thirty-five tribes without distinction. A 
violent riot ensued, numbers were slain, and Cinna, 
with his chief partisans, was driven from the city by 
his colleague Octavius. The Italian towns, regarding 
the cause of Cinna as their own, received him with 
the utmost cordiality. He collected thirty legions, 
called the proscribed to his support, and with Marius, 
Sertorius, and Carbo, marched upon and took posses¬ 
sion of Rome. A scene of bloodshed and lawless 
rapine now ensued, which has perhaps no parallel in 

351 




CIN 


CIR 


ancient or modern times, and has deservedly procured 
for those who were the actors in it the unmitigated ab¬ 
horrence of all posterity. Cinna and Marius, by their 
own authority, now declared themselves consuls for 
the ensuing year ; but Marius dying, after having only 
held that office for seventeen days, Cinna remained in 
effect the absolute master of Rome. During the 
space of three years after this victory of his, he con¬ 
tinued to hold possession of the government at home, 
a period during which, as Cicero remarks ( De Clar. 
Orat., 62), the republic was without laws and without 
dignity. At length, however, Sylla, after terminating 
the war with Mithradates, prepared to march home 
with his army and punish his opponents. Cinna, with 
his colleague Carbo, resolved thereupon to cross the 
Adriatic, and anticipate Sylla by attacking him in 
Greece ; but a mutiny of their troops ensued, in which 
Cinna was slain, B.C. 77. Haughty, violent, always 
eager for vengeance, addicted to debauchery, precipi¬ 
tate in his plans, but always displaying courage in their 
execution, Cinna attained to a power little less absolute 
than that afterward held by Sylla or Caesar: and it is 
somewhat remarkable, that his usurpation should have 
been so little noticed by posterity, and that he himself 
should be so little known, that scarcely a single per¬ 
sonal anecdote of him is to be found on record. ( Ap- 
pian, Bell. Civ., 1, 64.— Veil. Paterc., 2, 43, seqq .— 
Appian, B. C., 1 , 74, seqq. — Pint ., Vit. Syll., 22. — 
Liv., Epit., 83, &c.)— II. One of the conspirators 
against Caesar ( Pint., Vit. Cces.). —III. C. Helvius, a 
Roman poet, intimate with Caesar, and tribune of the 
commons at the time when the latter was assassinated. 
According to Plutarch, he went to attend the obsequies 
of Caesar, but, being mistaken by the populace for Cinna 
the conspirator, was torn in pieces by them. ( Plut., 
Vit. Cces.) Helvius composed a poem entitled Smyr¬ 
na (or Zmyma ), on which he was employed nine or 
ten years. Four fragments of it have reached us. It 
appears to have been characterized by considerable 
obscurity of meaning until the grammarian Crassitius 
wrote an able commentary upon it. ( Sueton., Illustr. 
Gram., 18.) Some other fragments have also reached 
us of other productions of this poet. ( Weichert, de C. 
Helv. Cinn. poet. Comment. — Bahr, Gesch. Rom. Lit., 
vol. 1, p. 164.) 

Cinniana, a town of Lusitania, in the northern or 
northwestern section of the country. Its precise sit¬ 
uation has given rise to much dispute. According to 
some, it corresponds to Sitania, a deserted spot, six 
leagues east of Braga. Others, however, make it the 
same with certain ruins, called at the present day 
Chalcedonia, and lying near Caldas de Gerez, on the 
northern confines of Portugal. {Val. Max., 6, 4, ext. 
1.— Link, Reisen durch Portugall , vol. 2, p. 3, seqq. 
— Ukert, Geogr., vol. 2, p. 399.) 

Cinyps and Cinyphus (Kivvip, Herod. — Kivvcpoq, 
Plot., Strab. — Vivv^iog, Said.), a small river of Africa, 
below Tripolis, falling into the sea southwest of the 
promontory of Cephalae. Herodotus (4, 198) speaks 
of the land around this river as being remarkably fer¬ 
tile, and equal to any other land in the production of 
corn. The water of this stream was conveyed by an 
aqueduct to the city of Leptis Magna. Bochart de¬ 
rives the name of the Cinyps or Cinyphus from the 
Phoenician Kinphod, “ porcupine’s river,” the porcu¬ 
pine being found, according to Herodotus (4, 192), in 
parts of the country watered by this stream. ( Bochart, 
Geogr. Sacr., 1, 24, col. 486.) The modern name of 
the Cinyps is Wadi Quaham, and travellers describe 
the soil in its neighbourhood as being still remarkable 
for its fertility. ( Ritter, Erdkunde, vol. 1, p. 927.— 
Beechey's Travels , p. 71.) 

Cinyras, a king of Cyprus, father, by Myrrha, of 
Adonis. ( Vid. Adonis and Myrrha.) He bears his 
part in the myth of the sun-god, and his name appears 
to come from the Phoenician Kinnor, whence the 
352 


Greek Kivvpa, and also KivvpRo, “ to mourn” or “ la¬ 
ment.” ( Keightley's Mythology, p. 143.) 

Circeii, I. a promontory of Latium, below Antium, 
now Monte Circello. It was the fabled resi ence of 
Circe ; the adjacent country being very low, and giv¬ 
ing this promontory at a distance the appearance of 
an island. It would seem, that Hesiod’s making the 
kings of the Tyrrheni to have been descended from 
Circe and Ulysses, led to the opinion that the island 
of that goddess was to be found on the Italian coast. 
An accidental resemblance in name also may have 
induced many to select this promontory as the place 
of her abode. Homer’s account, however, of the isle 
of Circe does not at all suit this spot. The island 
was a low one, whereas this is a lofty promontory. 
The adjacent sea also is represented by the poet as 
boundless to the view, which is not the case as regards 
Circeii. ( Mannert, Geogr., vol. 9, pt. 1, p. 621.) 
But, in truth, it requires too great a stretch of the 
imagination to believe that Homer, and the other poets 
who have sung of the charms of Circe, were descri¬ 
bing places which had an actual existence. It is more 
than probable, that the fiction relative to the abode of 
Circe received its application to the Italian coast sub¬ 
sequently to the period in which Homer wrote, when, 
from the celebrity of his poems, it became a matter of 
belief. ( Cluver., Ital. Ant., vol. 2, p. 1000.— Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 91.) Niebuhr, however, 
makes the fable indigenous in the neighbourhood of 
the mountain. {Rom. Hist., vol. 1, p. 66, 2 d ed., 
Cambridge transl.) —The promontory of Circeii was 
famed for its oysters in the time of both Horace and 
Juvenal. {Horat., Sat., 2, 4, 33.— Juv., 4, 140.)—II. 
A town of Latium, standing rather inland from the 
promontory just mentioned, probably on the site of the 
village of San Felice, where some ruins are said to be 
visible. ( Corradini, Vet. Lat., 1, 9, p. 98.— Pratilli, 
Via Appia, 1, 16, p. 113.) We first hear of this place 
in the reign of Tarquinius Superbus ; Dionysius in¬ 
forms us that it was colonized by his soldiers, as being 
an important place from its situation near the Pcmeti- 
nus Campus and the sea (4, 63.—Compare Livy, 1, 
56). It is uncertain, however, whether the town ex¬ 
isted before this period. Circeii appears to have been 
still extant in Cicero’s time, for he mentions that Circe 
was worshipped there. {N. D., 3, 19.) It w T as as¬ 
signed to Lepidus as the place of his exile by Augustus. 
{Suet., Aug., 16.) 

Circe, sister ofLEetes king of Colchis, and daughter 
of the Sun and Perse, one of the ocean-nymphs. 
(Homer gives the mother’s name as Perse, but He¬ 
siod, Apollodorus, and others, Perseis.) Circe is cel¬ 
ebrated for her skill in magic arts, and for her knowl¬ 
edge of subtile poisons. According to Homer {Od., 
10, 135, seqq.), she dwelt in an island, attended by 
four nymphs, and all persons who approached her 
dwelling were first feasted, and then, on tasting the 
contents of her magic cup, converted into swine. 
When Ulysses had been thrown on her shores, he 
deputed some of his companions to explore the coun¬ 
try ; these, incautiously partaking of the banquet set 
before them, were, by the effect of the enchanted po¬ 
tion, transformed as above. When Ulysses himself, 
on hearing of their misfortune from Eurylochus, set 
out to release them or share their fate, he was met by 
Hermes, who gave him a plant named Moly (MwZu), 
potent against her magic, and directed him how to 
act. Accordingly, when she reached him the medi¬ 
cated cup, he drank of it freely, and Circe, thinking it 
had produced its usual effect, striking him with her 
wand, bade him go join his comrades in their sty. 
But Ulysses, drawing his sword, threatened to slay 
her ; and the terrified goddess bound herself by a 
solemn oath to do him no injury. She afterward, at 
his desire, restored his companions to their pristine 
form, and they all abode in her dwelling for an entire 




CIR 


CIR 


year. Circe is said to have had by Ulysses a son named 
Telegonus, who afterward unwittingly slew his own fa¬ 
ther. Hesiod, in his Theogony (1011), says Agrius 
and Latinus (not the king of Latium), “ who, afar in 
the recess of the holy isles, ruled over all the renowned 
Tyrsenians.” Later writers took great liberties with 
the narratives of Homer and Hesiod. Thus, for ex¬ 
ample, Dionysius, the cyclographer, makes Circe the 
daughter of ^Eetes by Hecate, the daughter of his 
brother Perses. He goes on to say, that she was 
married to the king of the Sarma'tians, whom she 
poisoned, and seized his kingdom; but, governing 
tyrannically, she was expelled, and then fled to a 
desert isle of the ocean, or, as some said, to the 
headland named from her in Italy. ( Vid. Circeii.) 
The Latin poets thence took occasion to connect Circe 
with their own scanty mythology. It was fabled, for 
example, that she had been married to King Picus, 
whom, by her magic art, she changed into a bird. 
( Diod. Sic., 4, 45.— Eudocia, 261. — Schol. ad Apoll. 
Rh., 3, 200. — Ovid , Met., 14, 320, segq.) Another 
legend made her the mother of Faunus, by the god of 
the sea. (Nonnus, 13, 328.) The herb Moly is said, 
by these late writers, to have sprung from the blood 
of a giant slain by the Sun, in aid of his daughter in 
her island. Its name, we are told, comes from the 
fight {jiuTiog). Its flower is white, as the warrior was 
the Sun. ( Ptol., Hephcest. ap. Phot., Cod., 190, vol. 1, 
p. 149, ed. Bekker. — Kcightley's Mythology, p. 267.) 
Among other supernatural acts ascribed to Circe, was 
her converting Scylla into a hideous sea-monster. 
(Vid. Scylla.) — Various theories have been started 
for explaining the fable of Circe and her transforma¬ 
tion of men into swine. Heyne (Excurs. 1, ad Vug., 
JEn., 7, p. 103) thinks, that Homer merely gave an 
historical aspect, as it were, to an allegory invented 
by some earlier poet, and in which the latter wished 
to show the brutalizing influence of sensual indulgen¬ 
ces. (Compare Wachsmuth, ad Athen., 2, 2, p. 218.) 
Creuzer ( Symbolik, vol. 4, p. 22) sees in the name 
Circe (K ipurf) an allusion to some magic ring, since 
KipKog is the Doric form for upiuoq, “ a ring.” (Greg. 
Corinth., <$> 165. — Koen, ad loc.) J. C. Wolf (Mnl. 
Grace., &c., Fragm., 312) is in favour of another ex¬ 
planation, in support of which he cites Bochart ( Geogr. 
Sacr., 1, 33) and Fabricius (Bibl. Grcec., vol. 13, p. 
120). The historians from whom Diodorus Siculus 
(2, 106) derived his information, represent the knowl¬ 
edge of Circe and Medea as purely natural, and relating 
particularly to the efficacy of poisons and remedies. 
Hence, also, drugs which produced mental stupefac¬ 
tion, without impairing the physical powers, are 
thought by some to have given rise, in this and other 
cases, to the accounts of men being transformed into 
brutes. (Salverte, des Sciences Occultes, &c. — For¬ 
eign Quarterly Review, No. 12, p. 427 and 444.) Por¬ 
phyry thought the meaning of the fable relative to Circe 
vras this, that impure souls passed after death into the 
bodies of brutes, a doctrine taught by the school of 
Pythagoras. (Compare Heeren, ad Stoh., Eel Phys. et 
Eth., 1, 52, vol. 1, p 1047.) 

Circius, aviolent wind blowing in the southern parts 
of Gaul, along the coast of the Mediterranean. Its 
fury was so great, that it carried off the roofs of dwell¬ 
ings, overthrew armed men, riders, and even loaded 
■wagons. (Cato, Orig., lib., 3, ap. Aul. Gell., 2, 22.) 
It blew from the northwest. Its Gallic name was 
Kirk, i e., “ the impetuous” or “ destructive.” In 
Armoric, kirk means impetuosity, and also a hurricane. 
(Compare Adelung , Mithradates , vol 2, p. 53.— Cam¬ 
den's Britannia, p. 19 ) In Gaelic, Ciurrach means 
that which strikes or destroys. (Armstrong's Gaelic 
Diet , s v. — Thierry, Histone des Gaulois, vol 2, p 
b—Compare Fovorin , Galius ap Gell, 2, 22.— Sen¬ 
eca, Quaest Nat, 5, 17.— Plin , 2, 47.) 

Circus, a name given at Rome to a species of ob- 
Y y 


long-circular building, erected for exhibiting shows and 
games. The most ancient and celebrated of these 
structures, of which there were many in the Roman 
capital, was the Circus Maximus. It was built by 
Tarquinius Priscus, and afterward, at different times, 
magnificently adorned. This structure lay between 
the Palatine and Aventine hills. Its length was three 
stadia (2187£ feet), and the breadth a little over one 
stadium, with rows of seats all around, rising one above 
another. The lowest of these seats were of stone, 
and the highest of wood, and separate places were al¬ 
lotted to the senators and equites. It is said to have 
contained at least 150,000 persons, or, according to 
others, above double that number ; according to 1 dr y, 
250,000 ; some moderns say 380,000. Its circ i mle- 
rence was one mile. It was surrounded with a ditch 
or canal, called Euripus, 10 feet broad and 10 feet 
deep, and with porticoes 3 stories high ; both the 
work of Csesar. The canal served to supply it with 
water in naval exhibitions. For some interesting re¬ 
marks on the ancient Cnci in general, consult the 
work of Burgess (Description of the Circus on the 
Via Appia, near Rome, &c., Loud.., 1828, 12mo). 

Cirrha, a town of Phocis, at the head of the Cris- 
saean Gulf. It served as the harbour of Delphi, and 
was situated close to the mouth of the river Pleistus, 
which descends from Parnassus. Pausanias (10,37) 
reckoned sixty stadia from the city of Delphi to Cirrha. 
This writer, however, seems to have confounded the 
town of which we are here speaking with Crissa, a city 
that had ceased to exist in his time, but which former¬ 
ly stood more inland, between Cirrha and Delphi. 
Strabo (418), who clearly distinguishes them, infoims 
us that Cirrha was situate on the sea, and opposite to 
Sicyon ; and that the distance thence to Delphi was 
eighty stadia. The Cirrhean plain and port, says iEs- 
chines (in Ctes., p. 69. — Compare Pausan., 10, 38), 
which are now accursed, were formerly inhabited by 
the Cirrhsei and Acragallidse, a nefarious race, who 
violated the sanctity of the temple of Delphi, and ran¬ 
sacked its treasures. The oracle, on being consulted 
by the Amphictyons, declared that a war of exter¬ 
mination was to be carried on against these offenders, 
and that their land was never thereafter to be placed 
in a state of cultivation. This decree was executed in 
the time of Solon, who took an active part in the ex¬ 
pedition. The port of Cirrha was then demolished, 
and its territory declared accursed, according to the 
form prescribed by the oracle ; but this edict was af¬ 
terward violated by the Amphissians, who tilled the 
land and repaired the port. It is evident that Cirrha 
still existed in the time of Pausanias, as he mentions 
the temples of Apollo, Diana, and Datona, as W'ell as 
several statues worthy of notice. The ruins of Cinha 
are pointed out by Sir William Gell, near the village 
of Xeno Pegadia, on a very gentle eminence on the 
coast, close to the many beds of the Pleistus. (Cra¬ 
mer's Ancient Greece, vol. 2, p. 153, seqq.) 

Cirtha and Cirta, a city of Numidia, about 48 
miles from the sea, on a branch of the river Ampsaga6. 
It was intended as the royal residence, and being, in 
fact, the only city originally in the country and erected 
by Carthaginian workmen, it hence took the Punic 
name of Cartha, or “ the city.” It was the residence 
of Syphax, Masinissa, and the other rulers of the land. 
When Csesar had landed in Africa, and was in great 
danger of being overpowered by Scipio and Juba, a 
certain Sittius, who had fled from Rome into Africa, 
and was roaming along the latter country with a preda¬ 
tory band, having made a sudden attack upon Cirta, 
took it, and compelled Juba to return and defend his 
kingdom. Csesar being thus relieved, when the war 
was over, gave Cirta as a reward to Sittius, with a 
part of the adjacent country The city now changed its 
name to Sittianorum Colonia. In the time of the Em¬ 
peror Constantine, having suffered much on account of 

353 







CIT 


CLA 


its fidelity to that prince, he repaired and re-embellished 
it, giving it the name of Constantina. This name re¬ 
mains, with a slight variation, to the present day, and 
the small city built upon the ruins of the ancient cap¬ 
ital is still called Cosantma. (Appian, Bell. Pun., 7. 
— Id., Bell. Numid., 111. — Id., Bell. Civ., 2, 96.— 
Strabo, 831. — Mela, 1, 7. — Plin., 5, 3. — Mannert, 
Geogr., vol. 10, pt. 2, p. 310, seqq.) 

Cisalpina Gallia. Vid. Gallia. 

Cispadana Gallia. Vid. Gallia. 

Cissa. Vid. Susiana. 

Cisseis, a patronymic given to Hecuba as daughter 
of Cisseus. 

Cisseus, I. a king of Thrace, father to Hecuba. 
( Virg., jEn., 7, 320.) — II. A son of Melampus, killed 
by Hdneas, (Id., 10, 317.) 

Cissia, a country of Asia, having Media to the north, 
Babylonia to the west, the Persian Gulf to the south, 
and Persia to the southeast. Its capital was Susa. 
In Cissia was Ardericca, where Darius settled those 
of the Eretrians whom his naval commanders had 
brought to him as prisoners in obedience to his com¬ 
mand. ( Vid. Ardericca and Eretria.) Susiana is fre¬ 
quently confounded with Cissia. The former was 
merely a part of the latter, and was properly the terri¬ 
tory adjacent to the city of Susa. ( Lurcher, Hist, 
d'Herod. — Table Geographique, vol. 8, p. 133.) 

Cissus, a town ofMacedonia, in the vicinity of Thes- 
salonica, which contributed, as Strabo asserts ( Epit. 
7, p. 330), to the aggrandizement of that city. The 
modern name is said to be Cisme. (French Strabo, 
vol. 3, p. 126.) Xenophon also speaks of a Mount 
Cissus, which was probably in this direction. (Cyneg., 
c. 11, 1.) 

CithyEron, I. a king of Plataea in Boeotia, remarka¬ 
ble for his wisdom. By his advice, Jupiter pretended 
to be contracting a second marriage, when Juno had 
quarrelled with and left him. The scheme succeeded, 
and the goddess became reconciled to her spouse. 
(Pausan., 9, 3.) This monarch is said to have given 
name to the well-known mountain-range in Boeotia. 
(Pausan., 9, 1.) — II. An elevated ridge of mountains, 
dividing Boeotia first from Megaris, and afterward from 
Attica, and finally uniting with Mount Parnes and 
other summits which belong to the northeastern side of 
that province. ( Strabo , 405.) It was dedicated, as 
Pausanias affirms (9, 2), to Jupiter Cithseronius, and 
was celebrated in antiquity as having been the scene 
of many events recorded by poets and other writers. 
Such were the metamorphosis of Actseon, the death of 
Pentheus, and the exposure of CEdipus. Here also 
Bacchus was said to hold his revels and celebrate his 
mystic orgies, accompanied by his usual train of satyrs 
and frantic Bacchantes. (Eurip., Bacchce, 1381. — 
Soph., (Ed. Tyr., 1451. — Id. ibid , 1391.— Eurip., 
Phoen., 809.) We know from Thucydides (2, 75), 
that this mountain was once supplied with forest tim¬ 
ber, as the Peloponnesians are said to have derived 
from thence the supply they required for carrying on 
the siege of Plataea. But Dodwell says, “ it is now 
shrouded by deep gloom and dreary desolation,” and 
elsewhere he remarks, “ it is barren, or covered only 
with dark stunted shrubs ; towards the summit, how¬ 
ever, it is crowned with forests of fir, from which it de¬ 
rives its modern name of Elatea, the modern Greek 
term for the fir-tree being, like the ancient, Ekdry." 
(Travels, vol. 1, p. 281. — Cramer's Ancient Greece, 
vol. 2, p. 218, seqq.) 

Citium, one of the most ancient cities of Cyprus, 
on the southern shores of the island, northeast of Ama- 
•thus. Josephus says it was built by Chittim, the 
son of Javan. (Ant. Jud., 1, 7. — Compare Epiphan., 
H<zr., 1, 30.— Hieron. in Jes., 5, 23.) It was the 
birthplace of the celebrated Zeno ; and Diogenes La¬ 
ertius, in his life of that philosopher, reports, that this 
town had been colonized by the Phoenicians, a circum- 
354 


stance which is confirmed by Cicero (de Fin., 4, 20) 
and Suidas (s. v. Zijvuv). Citium was besieged, at 
the close of the Persian war, by the Athenian forces 
under the command of Cimon. (Thucyd., 1, 112.) 
According to Diodorus Siculus (12, 3), the place sur¬ 
rendered ; but it was the last exploit of that distinguish¬ 
ed general, for he was soon after taken ill, and died 
on board his ship in the harbour. (Plut. et Corn. Nep., 
vit. Cim.) Citium was a bishopric under the Byzan¬ 
tine empire. The place still retains the name of Chi - 
ti. (Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 3, p. 379, seq.) 

Cius, I. a river of Thrace, rising in the northwest¬ 
ern part of the chain of Mount Rhodope, and falling 
into the Ister. It is now the Esher. D’Anville calls 
the river Ceseus.—II. A river and town of Bithynia. 
The town was destroyed by Philip, father of Perses, 
and rebuilt by Prusias, who called it after his own 
name, Prusias. (Vid. Prusias.) 

Civilis, a powerful Batavian, who raised a sedition 
against the Roman power during the controversy for 
empire between Vitellius and Vespasian. Tacitus has 
furnished us with interesting and copious details of 
this long-protracted conflict. (Tacit., Hist., 4, 13.—- 
Id. ib., 5, 14, &c.) 

Clanis, a river of Etruria, now la Chiana, rising 
near Arretium, and falling into the Tiber northeast of 
Vulsinii. It may be seen from Tacitus that a project 
was once agitated for causing its waters, which formed 
large marshes near Clusium, to discharge themselves 
into the Arnus. (Tacit., Ann., 1, 79.)—II. (or Clanius), 
a river of Campania, falling into the sea near Liternum. 
It rises in the Apennines near Nola, and flows at no 
great distance from Acerrse. The modern name is 
Lagno. By some writers the ancient name is given as 
Liternus. (Strabo, 243.— Liv., 32,29.) This stream 
is apt to stagnate near its entrance into the sea, and to 
form marshes, anciently known as the Palus Literna, 
now Lago di Patna. The appellation Clanius is evi¬ 
dently derived from the Etrurian Clanis. (Midler, 
Etrusker, vol. 1, p. 146, in not.) Pliny names them 
both Glanis. (Plin., 3, 9.) 

Claros, a city of Ionia, northeast of Colophon and 
southeast of Lebedus. It was famous for its temple, 
grove, and oracle of Apollo. This celebrated seat of 
divination is supposed to have been discovered soon 
after the siege of Troy, and the poets relate many tales 
wfith regard to a contention in prophetic skill which 
took place here between Calchas and Mopsus, and 
which ended in the defeat and death of the former. 
(Vid. Calchas.) Tacitus gives an account of the visit 
paid by Germanicus to this oracle. (Ann., 2, 54.) 
The priesthood was confined to certain families, prin¬ 
cipally of Miletus. The number and names of those 
who came to consult the oracle were announced to 
the seer, who, having descended into the cave and 
drunk of the spring, revealed in verse to each his most 
secret thoughts. On this occasion it is said that a 
speedy death was announced to Germanicus. The 
oracle continued to flourish in the time of Pliny (5, 29), 
and as late as the reign of Constantine. Considera¬ 
ble vestiges are still to be seen at Zille, which occu¬ 
pies the site of the ancient Claros. (Cramer's Asia 
Minor, vol. 1, p. 359, seq.) 

Clastidium, a town of Liguria, northeast of Der- 
tona, now Chiasteggio. It was celebrated as the spot 
where Claudius Marcellus gained the spolia opima, by 
vanquishing and slaying Viridomarus, king of the Gae- 
satie. (Polybius, 2, 34. — Plut., Vit. Marcell. — Val. 
Max., 1, 1.) Clastidium was betrayed to Hannibal 
after the battle of Ticinum, with considerable maga¬ 
zines which the Romans had laid up there, and it form¬ 
ed the chief depot of the Carthaginian army while en¬ 
camped on the Trebia. (Polyb., 3, 69. —Liv , 21, 48. 
— Cic., Tusc Disp , 4, 22.) It was afterward burn¬ 
ed by the Romans in a war with the Ligurians. ( Liv., 
32, 29, and 31.) 



CLA 


CLA 


Claudia Gens, a celebrated patrician house at 
Rome, from which came many distinguished men in 
the days of the republic. According to Suetonius 
\Vit. Tib., 1), this family could boast of 28 consuls, 5 
dictators, 7 censors, 7 triumphs, and 2 ovations. The 
emperors Tiberius and Claudius were of this same line. 
The Claudian family claimed descent from Appius 
Claudius. There was also a plebeian branch of the 
Claudii, named the Claudii Marcelli. (Consult Glan- 
dorp, 0nomast ., p. 222, seqq .) 

Claudia, I. a vestal virgin, suspected of having vio¬ 
lated her vow. She proved her innocence by drawing 
off from a shoal in the Tiber, with the aid of her girdle 
merely, a vessel which had been stranded there, and 
on board of which was the statue of Cybele, that had 
been brought to Italy from Asia Minor. (Ovid, Fast., 
4, 305, seqq. — Sueton., Vit. Tib., c. 2. — Liv., 29, 14.) 
—II. A sister of Claudius Pulcher, fined by the people 
on account of an offensive remark made by her. It 
seems, that, as her vehicle ( carpentum ) was retarded in 
its progress through the streets of Rome by the press¬ 
ure of the crowd, she exclaimed, in a moment of 
haughty irritation, strikingly characteristic of the Clau¬ 
dian race, “ I wish my brother Pulcher were alive 
again, and would lose another fleet, that there might 
be less crowding and confusion at Rome !” (Sueton., 
Vit. Tib., c. 2.)—III. A vestal virgin, daughter of Ap¬ 
pius Claudius Audax. When the tribunes of the com¬ 
mons endeavoured to pull her father from his chariot, 
in the midst of a triumph (A.U.C. 610), she ascended 
the triumphal car, took her place by her father’s side, 
and rode with him to the Capitol, thus securing him by 
her sacred character from any farther molestation. 
(Val. Max., 5, 4, 6. — Cic., pro Coel., 14.) In Sue¬ 
tonius (Vit. Tib., c. 2), Appius is called her brother 
(fratrem), but this is evidently an error of the copyists 
for patrem. (Pigh., Ann., vol. 2, p. 473.) — IV. Au¬ 
gusta, a daughter of Nero and Poppaea. Her birth ex¬ 
cited great joy in her profligate father, but she died 
at the end of four months. Divine honours were de¬ 
creed unto the royal infant, and a temple and priestess. 
(Tacit., Ann., 15, 23.— Sueton., Vit. Ner., c. 35.)—Y. 
(Via) a Roman road, which branched off from the Via 
Flaminia, at the Pons Mulvius, near Rome, and, pro¬ 
ceeding through the more inland parts of Etruria, joined 
the Via Aurelia at Lucca. It appears to have fallen 
into disuse, when the central parts of Etruria, which it 
crossed, became unfrequented. ( Cramer's Anc. Italy, 
vol. 1, p. 245.)—VI. Antonia, a daughter of the Em¬ 
peror Claudius, married Cn. Pompey, whom Messalina 
caused to be put to death. Her second husband, Syl- 
la Faustus,’by whom she had a son, was killed by 
Nero, and she shared his fate when she refused to 
marry his murderer. (Sueton., Vit. ClaUd., c. 27.— 
Id., Vit. Ner., 35.) 

Claudia Lex, I. proposed by Claudius the consul, 
at the request of the allies, A.U.C. 573, that the allies 
and those of the Latin name should leave Rome, and 
return to their own cities. According to this law, 
the consul made an edict; and a decree of the senate 
was added, that, for the future, no person should 
be manumitted, unless both master and slave swore 
that the latter was not manumitted foi\the sake of 
changing his city. For the allies used to give their 
children as slaves to any Roman citizen, on condition 
of their being manumitted. (Liv., 41, 8, seq. — Cic., 
pro Balb.,23.) —II. Another, by the consul Marcellus, 
A.U.C. 703, that no one should be allowed to stand 
candidate for an office while absent: thus taking from 
Csesar the privilege granted by the Pompeian law; 
also, that the freedom of the city should be taken from 
the colony of Novumcomum, which Csesar had planted. 
(Sueton., Vit. Jul., 28.— Cic., Ep. ad Fam., 13, 35.)— 
HI. Another, de usura, by the Emperor Claudius, 
which forbade people to lend money to minors on con¬ 
dition of payment after the decease of their parents. It 


is supposed to be the same with what was called the 
Senatus-consultum Macedonianum, enforced by Ves¬ 
pasian. (Tacit., Ann., 11, 13.)—IV. Another, passed 
A.U.C. 535, and forbidding any senator or father of 
a senator to have a vessel above a certain burden 
(300 amphorcz). The object it had in view was to 
prevent their engaging in commercial operations. A 
clause is supposed to have been added to this law, pro¬ 
hibiting the qusestors’ clerks from trading. (Liv., 21, 
63.—Compare Crusius, ad Sueton., Vit. Bom., c. 9.) 

Claudi^e aqu^e, the first water brought to Rome 
by means of an aqueduct. This was one of 11 miles, 
erected by the censor Appius Claudius, A.U.C. 441. 
The supply was obtained from the river Anio. (Eu- 
trop., 2, 4.— Liv., 9, 29.) 

Claudianus, Claudius, a Latin poet, born at Alex¬ 
andra in Egypt, probably about 365 A.D., in the first 
year of the reign of Valentinian I. His name indi¬ 
cates that his family was originally from Rome ; but 
at Alexandra Greek was the language of every-day 
intercourse, and it was in this tongue that Claudius 
composed his first works. He received a distinguished 
literary education. It has been supposed, from some 
passages in his works, that in his youth he bore arms, 
and that he assisted, A.D. 394, in the battle between 
Theodosius and Eugenius. t Gesner, however, has 
shown that these passages are susceptible of another 
interpretation. It is more certain, that, after having- 
passed some time at Rome, he followed, A.D. 395, 
Stilicho, the minister and guardian of Honorius, to 
Mediolanum, which was, at this period, the residence 
of the Emperor of the West. The minister, a Vandal 
by nation, and his spouse, the Princess Serena, became 
the patrons of the young poet; and the latter expressed 
his gratitude in verses, which were recompensed by 
honours of the most exaggerated character. Not only 
was Claudian raised to stations of which his talents no 
doubt rendered him worthy, but, on the request of the 
senate, the two emperors of the East and West united 
in having a bronze statue raised to him in the forum, 
the pedestal of which, bearing an inscription in hon¬ 
our of the poet, was discovered at Rome in the 15th 
century. The authenticity of this monument is doubt¬ 
ed by some, but without sufficient reason, since Clau¬ 
dian himself makes mention of the statue in one of his 
poems (25, 7. — Compare Scholl, Hist. Lit. Rom ., 
vol. 3, p. 82, in notis). About A.D. 398, Claudian 
returned to Egypt, armed with a letter from his pro¬ 
tector, demanding for the bard the hand of a rich heir¬ 
ess in this province. The marriage was celebrated at 
Alexandrea, and Claudian conducted his young bride 
to the imperial court. After having enjoyed, for the 
space of more than ten years, the favour of his power¬ 
ful protectors, our poet was involved in one of those 
catastrophes so common at courts. Accused, probably 
without any reason, of a design to raise his own son t: 
the imperial throne, Stilicho was delivered over to 
punishment in 408. Though we know not how fa: 
Claudian was involved in the disgrace of his protectors, 
still we cannot doubt that he lost his official stations, 
and also a part of his fortune. The period of his deatl t 
is unknown.—The question is sometimes put, whether 
Claudian was a Christian or not. There is nothing in 
his works to indicate that he was ; for some Christian 
epigrams that are found among his poems are evi¬ 
dently spurious. It is not a little surprising, indeed 
that one who lived in a court which possessed a grea: 
zeal for Christianity, should have remained faithful t 
the religion of his fathers : the regrets, however, of St 
Augustine and of Orosius, who state that Claudian war 
a pagan, are too positive in their character to admit of 
any doubt on this point. (Augustin., de Civ. Dei, 5, 
26.— Oros., adv. Pagan. Hist., 7, 35.)—Claudian has 
left poems of various kinds: epic, panegyric, satirical, 
and also idyls and epigrams. The panegyrics in verse, 
composed by him, are the earliest with which we are 

355 



CLAUDIAN. 


CLA 


acquainted, and may be regarded in the light of an 
innovation Prose panegyrics had been in use from 
the second century of our era. These eulogiums in 
verse, composed by the poet, are as follows : 1st, A 
Panegyric on the consulship of Probinus and Olybrius, 
which took place in 395 : 2d. Panegyrics on the third, 
fourth, and sixth consulships of Honorius, which took 
place in the years 396, 398, and 404 : 3d. A Pane¬ 
gyric in honour of Mallius Theodorus, A.D. 399 : 
4th A Eulogium on Stilicho, in three parts: 5th. A 
Eulogium on Serena. In reading these productions 
we are at a loss which to wonder at most, the base 
flattery of the poet, or the effrontery of those who re¬ 
ceived his gross adulation without a blush.—In epic 
poetry Claudian has left us a piece in three cantos or 
books, entitled “ De Raptu Proserpina and the 
commencement of a second production, entitled “ Gi- 
gantomachia ,” the war of the Giants. As regards 
the first of these works, critics have considered the 
third book inferior in polish to the other two, and show¬ 
ing less of a finishing hand. The plan of the poem, 
moreover, is a defective one. Instead of hurrying us 
at once into the very midst of the action, as an epic 
bard should do, he recounts his fable from its very 
commencement, as an historian would relate an event. 
All the actors, too, being deities, and, consequently, 
elevated above the level o'f human nature, can only in¬ 
spire a feeble interest. This defect Claudian seeks to 
remedy by a style always elevated, by striking imagery 
and brilliant descriptions : but this tone pervading the 
whole work, and the uniformity of the characters, have 
spread over it a monotony which beqpmes fatiguing in 
the extreme. Notwithstanding all this, however, Clau¬ 
dian is, perhaps, next to Statius, the Latin epic poet 
that has come nearest to Virgil, especially in some of 
his descriptions and comparisons, and his merit will no 
doubt appear in a much more favourable light if w T e take 
into consideration the period when he lived.—Two 
other works of Claudian may be ranked in the class of 
epic poems. One is entitled “ De Bello Gildonico 
the other, “ De Bello Getico, sive Pollentiaco." Gil- 
don, son of a king of Mauritania, had made himself in¬ 
dependent in Africa during the reign of Theodosius 
the Great. The loss of this province, one of the gran¬ 
aries of the empire, was severely felt. Under Hono¬ 
rius, however, Africa was reconquered, and it is this 
exploit that Claudian celebrates in a poem, of which 
we have only the first canto, containing the cause and 
the preparations of the war. The poem “ De Bello 
Getico" turns on the war with the Visigoths, called 
also the war of Pollentia, which occurred A.D. 402, 
when Honorius was consul for the fifth time with his 
brother Arcadius, emperor of the East. Alaric, king 
of this Germanic race, having entered Italy by the way 
of Pannonia, was defeated by Stilicho near Pollentia, 
among the Cottian Alps. This war is the subject of a 
poem by Claudian, in six hundred and forty-seven ver¬ 
ses. Cassiodorus, it is true, and likewise Jornandes, 
say directly the contrary in relation to this affair ; but 
in admitting the fact of the overthrow, as stated by 
Claudian, we do not pretend to prejudge a question of 
history.—Claudian is the author also of some poems, 
which one would be tempted to rank in the class of 
satires, if the manner in which he treats his subject 
was not rather of an epic, or, if we may so speak, of 
a rhetorical character, and if these pieces were not 
composed with the same view as his panegyrics, 
namely, that of pleasing Stilicho. The productions to 
which we refer are his invectives against Rufinus and 
Eutropius, two enemies of the minister’s. These are, 
perhaps, Claudian’s chef-d’ceuvres. Some critics, how¬ 
ever, consider the poem against Eutropius superior to 
that against Rufinus. We have also two Epithalamia 
by Claudian: one on occasion of the marriage of Ho¬ 
norius and Maria, the daughter of Stilicho and Serena; 
the other on the marriage of Palladius and Celerina. 

356 


In both of these pieces Claudian shows imagination 
and talent. The first of these epithalamia is loi ov. ed 
by a poem, to which the copyists have given the title 
of Fescennina. There exist also five poetical epistles 
of Claudian, which may be ranked among the feeblest 
of his productions. Under the name of Idyls, we have, 
moreover, seven didactic or descriptive poems. There 
are likewise some epigrams remaining, but many of 
them appear to have been written, not by Claudian, 
but by a Christian bard. To the works of Claudian 
it has been customary to join a poem in honour of 
Hercules. It is more correctly assigned, however, to 
Olympius Nemesianus. ( Wernsdorff, Poet. Lat. Min., 
vol. 1, p. 275.) The best editions of Claudian are, that 
of Gesner, Lips., 1759, 8vo ; that of Burmann (secun- 
dus), Amst., 1760,4to; and that of Artaud (in Lemaire’s 
collection), Paris, 1824, 2 vols. 8vo. 

Claudiopolis, I. a city of Bithynia, previously 
called Bithynium. It was situate above Tium, in a 
district named Salone, celebrated for its excellent pas¬ 
tures, and a cheese much esteemed at Rome. ( Strab., 
565. — Pliny, 11, 42.) From Pausanias (8, 9), it 
would appear to have been either on the banks of the 
Sangarius, or near them. It obtained the name of 
Claudiopolis in the reign of Tiberius. At a later 
period, as the birthplace of Antinoiis the favourite of 
Hadrian, it received several privileges from that em¬ 
peror. ( Dio Cass., 69, 11.) Under Theodosius it 
was made the capital of the province Honorias. Many 
years after, we learn from Anna Comnena (p. 967) 
and Leo Diaconus (4, 9), who describe it as the most 
wealthy and flourishing city of Galatia, that it was 
almost totally destroyed by an earthquake, attended 
with vast loss of lives. ( Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, 
p. 209.) — II. A city of Cilicia Trachea, but assigned 
by Ammianus and Hierocles to Isauria. ( Ammian. 
Marcell., 14, 25. — Hierocl., p. 709.) It was founded 
by Claudius the Roman emperor, and was situate in a 
plain between two summits of Mount Taurus, and 
probably also on the Calycadnus, or one of its branches. 
( Wesseling, ad Hierocl., 1. c. — Cramer's Asia Minor, 
vol. 2, p. 332.) 

Claudius, I. Appius. ( Vid. Appius.) — II. Pul- 
cher, a Roman consul in the first Punic war. When, 
previous to a naval engagement with the Carthagin¬ 
ians, the person who had charge of the sacred fowls 
told him that they would not eat, which was esteemed 
a bad omen, he ordered them to be thrown into the 
sea, exclaiming, “Then let them drink.” After this, 
joining battle with the foe, he was defeated with the 
loss of his fleet. Having been recalled by the senate, 
he gave another specimen of the haughty temper of the 
Claudian race, for, on being directed to nominate a 
dictator, he purposely named his own viator, an indi¬ 
vidual of the lowest rank. {Liv., Epit., 19. — Cic., 
N. D., 2, 3. — Id., de Div., 1, 16.) — III. Nero, a Ro¬ 
man consul in the second Punic war, who, in con¬ 
junction with his colleague Livius Salinator, defeated 
Hasdrubal in Umbria, on the banks of the Metaurus. 
( Vid . Metaurus and Hasdrubal.)—IV. Tiberius Nero, 
father of the Emperor Tiberius. He was distinguished 
for his naval skill in the Alexandrine war, under Ju¬ 
lius Csesar. At a subsequent period he excited a se¬ 
dition in Campania, by promising to restore the prop¬ 
erty of those who had suffered in the civil wars. This 
tumult, however, was soon quelled by the arrival of 
Octavius ; and Tiberius, together with his wife Livia, 
took refuge in Sicily and Achaia until the establish¬ 
ment of the second triumvirate made it safe for him to 
return to Rome. Livia having after this engaged the 
affections of Octavius, Tiberius transferred to him the 
name and privileges of a husband. {Tacit., Ann., 
5,1.)—V. Tiberius Nero Csesar, the successor of Au¬ 
gustus, and son of the preceding. {Vid. Tiberius.) 
—VI. Tiberius Claudius Drusus Csesar, more com¬ 
monly known by his historical name of Claudius, sue- 



CLAUDIUS. 


CLE 


ceeded to the Roman empire on the death of Caligula. 
He was the second son of Drusus and Antonia, and, 
consequently, grand-nephew to Augustus. When the 
assassination of Caligula was made known, the first 
impulse of the court party and of the foreign guards 
was to massacre all who had participated in the mur¬ 
der. Several persons of distinction, who imprudently 
exposed themselves, became, in consequence, the vic¬ 
tims of their fury. This violence subsided, however, 
upon their discovering Claudius, who had concealed 
himself in an obscure corner of the palace, and, being 
dragged from his hiding-place, threw himself at their 
feet in the utmost terror, and besought them to spare 
his life. The soldiers in the palace immediately sa¬ 
luted him emperor, and Claudius, in return, set the 
first example of paying the army for the imperial dig¬ 
nity by a largess from the public treasury. It is dif¬ 
ficult to assign any other motive for the choice which 
the army made of Claudius than that which they them¬ 
selves professed, “ His relationship to the whole fami¬ 
ly of the Caesars.” Claudius, who was now fifty 
years old, had never done anything to gain popularity, 
or to display those qualities which secure the attach¬ 
ment of the soldiery. He had been a rickety child, 
and the development of his faculties was retarded by 
his bodily infirmities ; and although he outgrew his 
complaints, and became distinguished as a polite schol¬ 
ar and an eloquent writer (Tacit., Ann., 13, 3.— Sue- 
ton., Vit. Claud., c. 41), his spirits never recovered 
from the effects of disease and of severe treatment, 
and he retained much of the timidity and indolence of 
his childhood. ( Sueton., Vit. Claud., c. 2.) During 
the reign of Tiberius he gave himself up to gross sen¬ 
suality, and consoled himself under this degradation 
by the security which it brought with it. Under Ca¬ 
ligula also he found his safety consist in maintaining 
his reputation for incapacity, and he suffered himself 
to become the butt of court parasites, and the subject 
of their practical jokes. (Sueton., Vit. Claud, c. 7.) 
The excitement of novelty, on his first accession to 
the throne, produced efforts of sagacity and prudence, 
of which none who had previously known him believed 
him capable ; and during the whole of his reign, too, 
we find judicious and useful enactments occasionally 
made, which would seem to show that he was not in 
reality “so silly an emperor” as historians have gen¬ 
erally represented him to be. It is most probable, 
therefore, that the fatuity which characterizes some 
parts of his conduct was the result, not of natural im¬ 
becility, but of the early and unlimited indulgence of 
the grossest sensuality. Claudius embellished Rome 
with many magnificent works ; he made Mauritania a 
Roman province; his armies fought successfully against 
the Germans ; and he himself triumphed magnificently 
for victories over the Britons, and obtained, together 
with his infant son, the surname of Britannicus. But 
in other respects he was wholly governed by worthless 
favourites, and especially by his empress, the profligate 
and abandoned Messalina, whose cruelty and rapacity 
were as unbounded as her licentiousness. At her in¬ 
stigation, it was but too common for the emperor to 
put to death, on false charges of conspiracy, some of 
the wealthiest of the nobles, and to confiscate their es¬ 
tates, with the money arising from which she openly 
pampered her numerous paramours. When the ca¬ 
reer of this guilty woman was terminated, Claudius 
was governed for a time by his freedman Narcissus, 
and Pallas, another manumitted slave, until he took to 
wife his own niece, Agrippina, daughter of Germani- 
cus, a woman of strong natural abilities, but of insa¬ 
tiable avarice, extreme ambition, and remorseless cru¬ 
elty. Her influence over the feeble emperor was 
boundless, and was displayed in the most glaring man¬ 
ner. She prevailed on him at last to set aside his own 
son Britannicus, and to adopt her son Domitius Aheno- 
barbus, by her former husband, giving him the name 


by which he is best known, Nero, and constituting 
him heir to the imperial throne. Claudius, having af¬ 
terward shown a disposition to change the succession 
and restore it to Britannicus, fell a victim to the am¬ 
bition of Agrippina, who caused him to be poisoned. 
A dish of mushrooms was prepared for the purpose, a 
kind of food of which the emperor was known to be 
especially fond, and the effects of the poison were 
hastened by the pretended remedies exhibited by Xeno¬ 
phon, the physician of the palace. It was given out 
that Claudius had suffered from indigestion, which his 
habitual gluttony rendered so frequent that it excited 
no surprise : and his death was concealed till Domi¬ 
tius Nero had secured the guards, and had quietly 
taken possession of the imperial authority. Claudius 
died in the sixty-fourth year of his age, and the four¬ 
teenth of his reign, A.D. 54. (Sueton., Vit. Claud .— 
Dio Cass., lib. 60.— Encyclop. Metropol., Div. 3, vol. 
2, p. 443, seqq.) 

Clazomen^e, a city of Ionia, on the coast of the 
iEgean Sea, west of Smyrna. There were two places 
of this name ; the more ancient stood on the conti¬ 
nent, and was strongly fortified by the Ionians to re¬ 
sist the Persians. After the defeat of Croesus, how¬ 
ever, they were terrified, and withdrew to a neighbour¬ 
ing island, where they built the second Clazomenae, so 
often mentioned in Roman history. (Strabo, 645.— 
Compare Pausanias, 7, 3.) Alexander joined it to 
the continent by a causeway 250 paces long; from 
which time it was reckoned among the cities on the 
continent. (Plin., 5,29.) Augustus greatly embellish¬ 
ed it, and was styled, on some medals, its founder, 
through flattery. Anaxagoras was born here. On or 
near its site stands the small town of Dourlak or Vourla. 
There are still some remains of the ancient causeway, 
by which one can reach, with some risk, however, 
from the force of the sea, the island of St. John. (Po- 
cocke, vol. 3, book 2, c. 2.— Chandler, c. 24.— Mannert, 
Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 3, p. 329.) 

Cleanthes, I. a Stoic philosdpher of Assus in Lyd¬ 
ia, disciple of Zeno. After the death of Zeno he pre¬ 
sided over his school. His first appearance was in 
the character of a wrestler. In this capacity he visit¬ 
ed Athens, where the love of philosophy was diffused 
through all ranks of people. He soon caught the gen¬ 
eral spirit, and though he was possessed of no more 
than four drachmce, he determined to put himself under 
the tuition of some eminent philosopher. His first 
master was Crates, the Academic. He afterward be¬ 
came a disciple of Zeno, and a celebrated advocate of 
his doctrines. By night he drew water as a common 
labourer in the public gardens, that he might have 
leisure in the daytime to attend the schools of philos¬ 
ophy. The Athenian citizens observing that, though 
he appeared strong and healthy, he had no visible 
means of subsistence, summoned him before the Are¬ 
opagus, according to the custom of the city, to give an 
account of his manner of living. Upon this^ he pro¬ 
duced the gardener for whom he drew water, and a 
woman for whom he ground meal, as witnesses to 
prove that he subsisted by the labour of his hands, 
and the judges of the court were struck with such ad¬ 
miration of his conduct, that they ordered ten mince to 
be paid him out of the public treasury ; which, how¬ 
ever, Zeno would not suffer him to accept. (Diog. 
Laert. — Vol. Max., 8, 7.— Sen., Ep., 44.) Antigonus 
afterward presented him with three thousand mince. 
From the manner in which this philosopher supported 
himself, he was called typedvrloq, or “ the well-drawer.” 
For many years he was so very poor that he was com¬ 
pelled to write the heads of his master’s lectures on 
shells and bones, for the want of money to buy better 
materials. He remained, however, notwithstanding 
every obstacle, a pupil of Zeno for nineteen years. 
His natural faculties were slow ; but resolution and 
perseverance enabled him to overcome every difficulty ; 

357 





CLE 


CLE 


and at last he became so complete a master of the 
Stoic philosophy as to be perfectly well qualified to 
succeed Zeno. His fellow-disciples often ridiculed 
him for his dulness by calling him an ass ; but his 
answer was, that if he were an ass he was the better 
able to bear the weight of Zeno’s doctrine. He wrote 
much, but none of his writings remain except a most 
beautiful hymn to Jupiter, preserved in the Anthology. 
After his death, the Roman senate erected a statue 
in honour of him at Assus. It is said that he starved 
himself in his 90th year, B.C. 240. ( Enfield's His¬ 

tory of Philosophy , vol. 1, p. 354, seqq .)—II. A Co¬ 
rinthian painter, whom some make to have been the 
inventor of drawing in outline. ( Plin., 35, 3.) Athe- 
nagoras mentions him among the first that practised 
this branch of the art. ( Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.) 

Clearchus, I. a tyrant of Heraclea Pontica, who 
was killed by Chion and Leonidas, Plato’s pupils, du¬ 
ring the celebration of the festival of Bacchus, after 
the enjoyment of the sovereign power for twelve 
years, 353 B.C. (Consult Memnon, Fragm., c. 1, 
and Hoffmann’s Prolegomena in Chionis Epist :— 
Compare also remarks under the article Chion.)— 
II. A Lacedaemonian, one of the Greek command¬ 
ers in the army of Cyrus the younger, and held by 
that prince in the highest estimation of all the Greek 
leaders tha£ were with him. A sketch of his charac¬ 
ter and history is given by Xenophon ( Anab ., 2, 6), 
m which many things appear to be softened down. 
He had been governor previously of Byzantium, under 
the orders of the Spartan Ephori, and had conducted 
himself so tyrannically that the government at home 
sent an armed force against him. Clearchus, antici¬ 
pating the arrival of these troops, left Byzantium and 
seized upon Selymbria, and when the Spartan forces 
came he engaged in battle with them, but was de¬ 
feated. After this he fled to Cyrus. He was entrap¬ 
ped along with the other Greek leaders, after the bat¬ 
tle of Cunaxa, by the satrap Tissaphernes, and put to 
death in common with them. ( Xcn ., Anab., 3, 5, 31, 
seqq.—Id. ib., 2, 6, 1, seqq.—Diod. Sic., 14, 12.) 

Clemens, I. (commonly called Romanics, for distinc¬ 
tion’ sake from Clemens of Alexandrea), one of the 
early Christians, the friend and fellow-traveller of St. 
Paul, and afterward bishop of Rome, to which station 
he was chosen A.D. 67, or, according to some, A.D. 
91. He was the author of an epistleto the church of 
Corinth, printed in the “ Patres Apostolici” of Le 
Clerc, Amst., 1698. Of this work, the only manu¬ 
script of which now extant is in the British Museum, 
Archbishop Wake printed a translation in 1705. The 
best edition of the original is Jacobson’s, 2 vols. 8vo, 
Oxon., 1838. Clemens is supposed to have died at 
Rome about the close of the first century.—II. An 
eminent father of the church, who flourished between 
A.D. 192 and 217, and is commonly called Alexan- 
drinus , to distinguish him from Clemens of Rome 
He is supposed by some to have been a native of 
Athens,* and by others of Alexandrea, but of his real 
origin very little is known. He early devoted himself 
to study in the schools of the latter city, and had many 
preceptors. (Strom., 1, p. 274.— Euseb., Hist. Eccl., 
5, 2.) His Hebrew preceptor, whom he calls “the 
Sicilian bee,” was unquestionably Pantsenus, a Jew 
by birth, but of Sicilian extraction, who united Gre¬ 
cian with sacred learning, and was attached to the 
Stoic philosophy. (Vales, ad Euseb., 5, 10.) Cle¬ 
mens so far adopted the ideas of this preceptor as to 
espouse the moral doctrine of the Stoics. In other 
respects he followed the Eclectic method of philoso¬ 
phizing. While the pagan philosophers pillaged the 
Christian stores to enrich the Eclectic system, this 
Christian father, on the contrary, transferred the Pla¬ 
tonic, Stoic, and Oriental dogmas to the Christian 
creed, as relics of ancient tradition originating in Di- 
delation. (Strom., 1, p. 313.) In hopes of 
358 


recommending Christianity to his catechumens (for, 
after Pantsenus, he had the charge of the Christian 
catechetical school in Alexandrea), Clemens made a 
large collection of ancient wisdom, under the name of 
Stromata , an epithet borrowed from carpet-work, and 
intended to denote the miscellaneous nature of the 
philosophical and religious topics of which the work 
treats. He assigned this reason for the undertaking, 
that much truth is mixed with the dogmas of philoso¬ 
phers, or, rather, covered and concealed in their wri¬ 
tings, like the kernel within its shell. This work is 
of great value, as it contains many quotations, and 
relates many facts, not elsewhere preserved. But, 
though the object of his labours was laudable, it must 
be confessed that his inclination to blend heathen 
tenets with Christian doctrines rendered his writings 
in many respects injurious to the Christian cause. 
His vast reading encumbered his judgment; and his 
injudicious zeal sometimes led him into credulity, if 
not into dishonesty. We frequently find him adopt¬ 
ing Platonic and Stoic tenets as Christian doctrines, 
and thus sowing the seeds of error in the Christian 
church. Besides the Stromata, we have the following 
works of Clemens remaining : 1. Protrepticon, or an 
exhortation to the Pagans ; 2. Pcedagogus, or the in¬ 
structor ; 3. The fragments of a treatise on the use of 
riches, entitled, “What rich man shall be saved 1”— 
In these works he approaches the strict standard of 
orthodoxy; but in one which is lost, and the title of 
which w r as Hypotyposes, or “Institutions,” he is stated 
by Photius (Cod., 109.—vol. 1, p. 89, ed. Bekker) to 
have maintained sentiments which were unscriptural. 
The works of Clemens were first printed in Greek 
only, at Florence, in 1550. Of the various editions 
with Latin versions, the best is that of Archbishop 
Potter, 2 vols. fob, 1715, Oxon. (Enfield’s History of 
Philosophy, vol. 2, p. 274, seqq.) 

Cleobis and Biton, two youths, sons of Cydippe, 
the priestess of Juno at Argos, and remarkable for 
physical prowess, having both carried off prizes in the 
public games. Solon, in his conversation with Croe¬ 
sus on the subject of human felicity, related, according 
to Herodotus (1,31), the following incident respecting 
them. Their mother Cydippe was required by sa¬ 
cred custom to be drawn to the temple of Juno, on 
a certain festival, by a pair of oxen. The animals 
happening not to be brought up from the field in due 
season, and Cydippe being pressed for time, her two 
sons put themselves under the yoke, drew the chariot 
in which their mother sat for the distance of forty-five 
stadia (nearly six miles), and brought her in that man¬ 
ner to the temple. The men of Argos who stood 
around commended the strength of the youths, and the 
women felicitated their mother on having such sons ; 
while Cydippe herself, in a transport of joy, prayed to 
the goddess that Cleobis and Biton might obtain the 
greatest blessing man could receive. When she had 
finished her prayer, and her sons had sacrificed and 
feasted with her, they fell asleep in the temple, and 
awoke no more. The Argives, in commemoration of 
their filial piety, caused statues to be erected to them 
at Delphi. Servius (ad Virg., Georg., 3, 532) says, 
that the want of oxen on this occasion was owing to 
a pestilential malady, which had destroyed all the cat¬ 
tle belonging to Argos.—This touching little story is 
frequently alluded to by the ancient writers. (Compare 
Cic., Tusc. Qucest., 1,47.— Pint., Consol. adA.poll., p. 
108, F. — Id., Vit. Sol., c. 27 .—Stobceus, p. 603, &c.) 

Cleobulus, a native of Lindus, in the island of 
Rhodes, son of Evagoras, monarch of that city, and 
claiming descent from Hercules. He was not less 
remarkable for strength than for beauty of person.' 
After travelling in Egypt for the purpose’of acquiring 
knowledge, he ascended the throne on the death of his 
father. Plutarch says he usurped it. The rest cf his 
life is unknown : we are merely informed that he at- 






CLE 


CLE 


tained to the age of seventy years, and died about the 
55th Olympiad. By some he is ranked among the 
wise men of Greece. His favourite maxim was V A pto- 
tov fierpov, “ moderation is best," i. e., preserve a due 
mean in all things. ( Diog. Laert. in Vit.) 

Cleombrotus, I. a king of Sparta, who succeeded 
his brother Agesipolis I. He was defeated by Epam- 
inondas in the battle of Leuctra, and lost his life on 
that occasion. ( Xen., Hist. Gr., 6, 4, 13.)—II. A 
son-in-law of Leonidas II., king of Sparta, who usurp¬ 
ed the kingdom after the expulsion of that monarch, 
but was soon after expelled in turn and sent into ban¬ 
ishment. {Pint., Vit. Ag. et Cleom.) 

Cleomed-es, a Greek writer, supposed to have been 
the author of the work which has reached us, entitled 
“ Cyclic Theory of Meteors,” i. e., Circular Theory 
of the Stars. He is thought to have lived some years 
before the Christian era. ( Delambre, in Biogr. TJniv., 
vol. 9, p. 54.) 

Cleomenes I., king of Sparta, ascended the throne 
B.C. 519. At the beginning of his reign he under¬ 
took an expedition against the Argives, defeated them, 
and destroyed a large number who had taken ref¬ 
uge in a sacred grove. He afterward drove out the 
Pisistratidse from Athens. This is the same Cleome¬ 
nes whom Aristagoras endeavoured, but in vain, to in¬ 
volve in a war with the Persians. He afterward man¬ 
aged, by undue influence, to procure an oracular re¬ 
sponse from Delphi, pronouncing his colleague Dema- 
ratus illegitimate, and thus obtained his deposition. 
Becoming alarmed, subsequently, lest the fraud should 
be discovered, Cleomenes fled secretly to Thessaly, 
and from thence passing into Arcadia, he began to stir 
up the people of this latter country against Sparta. 
The Lacedaemonians, fearing his intrigues, recalled 
him, but he died soon after his return, in a fit of in¬ 
sanity, by his own hand. {Herod., 5, 64.— Id., 5, 
49, seqq. — Id., 5, 65, &c.)—II. Cleomenes II. suc¬ 
ceeded his brother Agesipolis II. on the throne of 
Sparta, B.C. 371. The power of his country was 
then on the decline, and he possessed not the requisite 
talents to restore it to its former state. He reigned 
sixty years and ten months without having done any¬ 
thing worthy the notice of posterity. {Pans., 3, 6.)— 
III. Cleomenes III., son of Leonidas II., ascended the 
Spartan throne B.C. 230. Dissatisfied at the prevail¬ 
ing manners of Sparta, he resolved to bring about a 
reform, and to restore the institutions of Lycurgfes, 
after the example of Agis, who had lost his life in a 
similar attempt. Thinking that war would furnish 
the best opportunity for the execution of his design, he 
led his forces against the Achseans, who were com¬ 
manded by Aratus, and greatly distinguished himself. 
Returning after this to Sparta, with a portion of his 
army, he put to death the Ephori, made anew division 
of the lands, and introduced again the old Spartan 
system of education. He also took his brother Eucli- 
das as his colleague on the throne, and thus for the 
first and only time the Spartans had two kings of the 
same family. After a long, and in many respects suc¬ 
cessful, series of operations against the Achseans and 
Macedonians, the latter of whom had been called in 
by Aratus as allies, Cleomenes was defeated by Anti- 
gonus in the battle of Sellasia, and immediately after 
fled to Ptolemy Euergetes in Egypt. This monarch 
treated him with some degree of generosity, but his 
successor Ptolemy Philopator, a weak and suspicious 
prince, soon began to look upon him with an evil eye, 
and at last kept him in confinement. The Spartan 
monarch, in a fit of despair, and taking advantage of 
the temporary absence of Ptolemy from his capital, 
broke forth from the place where he had been kept in 
custody, along with thirteen of his friends, and en¬ 
deavoured to arouse the inhabitants in the cause of 
freedom. But, finding their efforts fruitless, they fell 
by their own hands. Cleomenes had been sixteen 


years king of Laconia. With him ended the race of 
the Heraclid®, which had so long sat on the throne of 
that country. Ptolemy ordered his body to be flayed 
and nailed to a cross, and his children to be put to 
death. ( Pint., Vit. Cleom.) * 

Cleon, an Athenian, bred among the lowest of the 
people, the son of a tanner, and said himself to have 
exercised that trade. Of extraordinary impudence and 
little courage, slow in the field, but forward and noisy 
in the assembly, corrupt in practice as in principle, 
but boastful of integrity, and supported by a coarse but 
ready eloquence, he gained such consideration by nat¬ 
tering the lower orders and railing at the higher, that 
he stood in the situation of head of a party. By an 
extraordinary train of circumstances he came off vic¬ 
torious in the affair of Sphacteria, the Athenian popu¬ 
lace having chosen him one of their generals. Elated 
upon this with the idea that he possessed military tal¬ 
ents, he caused himself to be appointed commander of 
an expedition into Thrace. He was slain in a battle 
at Amphipolis against Brasidas, the Spartan general, 
422 B.C. (Consult the remarks of Mitchell, in his 
edition of the Acharnenses of Aristophanes, Appen¬ 
dix, note A, and compare Thucyd., 4, 28, seqq. — Id., 
5, 2.— Id., 5, 8, seqq.) 

Cleonse, I. a town of Argolis, northeast of Nemea. 

According to Strabo, it was 120 stadia.from Argos 

and eighty from Corinth ; he adds, that it was situated 
on a rock, and surrounded by walls, which justified the 
epithet applied to it by Homer {II., 2, 570). Hercules 
was said to have defeated and slain the Elean chief 
called Moliones, near Cleonse. {Pindar, Olymp., 10, 
36.—Compare Apollodorus, 2, 5, 1.) We learn from 
Pindar that games were there solemnized. {Nem., 4, 
26.— Ibid., 10, 78.) Dodwell states, that the ruins 
of Cleonse are to be seen on the site now called Cour- 
tese. They occupy a circular hill, which seems to 
have been completely covered with buildings. On 
the side of the hill are six ancient terrace-walls, rising 
one above another, on which the houses and streets, 
were situated. {Tour, vol. 2, p. 206. — Chandler, 
vol. 2, p. 288.— Cell's Itin. of the Morea, p. 157.)— 
II. A town of Macedonia, in the peninsula of Athos, 
said to have been founded by a colony from Chalcis. 
{Herod., 7, 22.— Thucyd., 4, 109.— Cramer's Ancient 
Greece, vol. 1, p. 260.) 

Cleopatra, I. a daughter of Idas and Marpessa, 
and the wife of Meleager. {Horn., 72., 9, 557.)—II. 
The wife of Philip of Macedon, whom that monarch 
married after he had repudiated Olympias. ( Justin, 
9, 5.) After the death of Philip, Olympias compelled 
her to destroy herself. ( Justin , 9, 7.)—III. A daugh¬ 
ter of Philip and Olympias, and sister to Alexander 
the Great. She married Alexander of Epirus, who 
fell in Italy. ( Justin, 9, 6, 1.) After the death of 
Alexander of Macedon, her hand was sought by Per- 
diccas and others of his generals, but she was put to 
death by Antigonus. {Diod. Sic., 20, 37.—Compare 
Diod. Sic., 18, 23, and Wesseling, ad loc .)—IV. A 
daughter of Mithradates, and the wife of Tigranes. 
{Justin, 38, 3.)—V. A daughter of Antiochus III. of 
Syria. She married Ptolemy V., king of Egypt, and 
was left guardian of her infant son Ptolemy VI., but 
she died soon after her husband, to the great regret of 
her subjects.—VI. A daughter of Ptolemy Philometor, 
was the wife of three kings of Syria, and the mother of 
four; namely, of Antiochus Dionysius, by her first hus¬ 
band Alexander Balas ; of Seleucus V. and Antiochus 

VIII. , by Demetrius Nicator; and, lastly, of Antiochus 

IX. , surnamed Cyzicenus, by Antiochus Euergetes or 
Sidetes. She was compelled by her son, Antiochus 
VIII., to drink the poison which she had prepared 
for him, B.C. 120.—VII. The most famous of the 
name was the daughter of Ptolemy Auletes, and re¬ 
markable for her beauty and personal accomplishments. 
According to the usage of the Alexandrean court, she 

359 


» 




CLEOPATRA. 


CLE 


married her eldest brother Ptolemy XII., and began 
to reign with him in her seventeenth year. Both she 
and her husband, being minors, were placed by the 
will of their father under the guardianship of Rome, 
an office which the Senate transferred to Pompey. An 
insurrection breaking out in the Egyptian capital soon 
after the commencement of this reign, Cleopatra was 
compelled to yield to the tide of popular fury, and to 
flee into Syria, where she sought protection in tempo¬ 
rary exile. The flight of this princess, though mainly 
arising from the tumult just mentioned, was unques¬ 
tionably accelerated by the designs of the young king 
and his ambitious ministers. Their object became 
manifest when Cleopatra, after a few months’ residence 
in Syria, returned towards her native country to resume 
her seat on the throne. Ptolemy prepared to oppose 
her by force of arms, and a civil war would inevitably 
have ensued, had not Caesar at that very juncture 
sailed to the coast of Egypt in pursuit of Pompey. A 
secret interview soon took place between Cleopatra 
and the Roman general. She placed herself on board 
a small skiff, under the protection of Apollodorus, a 
Sicilian Greek, set sail from the coast of Syria, reach¬ 
ed the harbour of Alexandrea in safety, and had herself 
conveyed into the chamber of the Roman commander 
in the form of a large package of goods. The strata¬ 
gem proved completely successful. Cleopatra was 
now in her twentieth year, distinguished by extraordi¬ 
nary personal charms, and surrounded with all the 
graces which give to those charms their greatest pow¬ 
er. Her voice sounded like the sweetest music ; and 
she spoke a variety of languages with propriety and 
ease. She could, it is said, assume all characters at 
will, which all alike became her, and the impression 
that was made by her beauty was confirmed by the fas¬ 
cinating brilliancy of her conversation. The day after 
this singular meeting, Caesar summoned before him the 
king, as well as the citizens of Alexandrea, and made 
arrangements for the restoration of peace, procuring 
Cleopatra, at the same time, her share of the throne. 
Pothinus, however, one of Ptolemy’s ministers, in 
whose intriguing spirit all the dissensions of the court 
had originated, soon stirred up a second revolt, upon 
which the Alexandrean war commenced, in which 
Ptolemy was defeated, and lost his life by drowning. 
Caesar now proclaimed Cleopatra queen of Egypt; but 
she was compelled to take her brother, the younger Ptol¬ 
emy, who was only eleven years old, as her husband and 
colleague on the throne. The Roman general contin¬ 
ued for some time at her court, and she bore him a son, 
called, from the name of his father, Csesarion. Durino- 
the six years which immediately followed these events^ 
the reign of Cleopatra seems not to have been dis¬ 
turbed by insurrection, nor to have been assailed by 
foreign war. When her brother, at the age of fourteen, 
demanded his share in the government, Cleopatra poi¬ 
soned him, and remained sole possessor of the regal 
authority. The dissensions among th& rival leaders 
who divided the power of Caesar, had no doubt nearly 
involved her in a contest with both parties; but the 
decisive issue of the battle of Philippi relieved her 
from the hesitation under which some of her measures 
appear to have been adopted, and determined her in¬ 
clinations, as-well as her interests, in favour of the 
conquerors. To afford her an opportunity of explain¬ 
ing her conduct, Antony summoned her to attend him 
in Cilicia, and the meeting which she gave him on the 
river Cydnus has employed the pen, not only of the 
historian, but of the prince of English dramatists. 

( Shakspcare , Antony and Cleopatra , act 1, scene 1.) 
The artifices of this fascinating princess, now in her 
twenty-fifth year, so far gained upon Antony, as not 
only to divert his thoughts from his original purpose of 
subjecting her kingdom to the payment of tribute, but 
entirely to lull his ambition to sleep, and make him 
sacrifice his great stake as a candidate for the em- 
360 


pire of the world. After a fruitless attack upon the 
territory of Palmyra, he hastened to forget his disgrace 
in the society of the Egyptian queen, passing several 
months at Alexandrea in the most foolish and puerile 
dissipation. The death of his wife, and his subsequent 
marriage with Octavia, delayed for a time the crisis 
which his ungoverned passions were preparing for 
him. But, though he had thus extricated himself from 
the snares of Alexandrea, his inclinations too soon re¬ 
turned to that unhappy city ; for we find that when 
he left Rome to proceed against the Parthians, he de¬ 
spatched in advance his friend Fonteius Capito, to 
conduct Cleopatra into Syria. On his return from 
this disgraceful campaign, he encountered still deeper 
disgrace by once more willingly submitting to that 
bondage which had rendered him contemptible in the 
eyes of most of his followers.—Passing over events 
which have been alluded to elsewhere {vid. Augustus), 
we come to the period that followed the battle of Ac- 
tium. When Octavius advanced against Egypt, and 
Antony had been a second time defeated under the 
walls of Alexandrea, Cleopatra shut herself up with a 
few attendants, and the most valuable part of her 
treasures, in a strong building which appears to have 
been intended for a royal sepulchre. To prevent in¬ 
trusion by friend or enemy, she caused a report to be 
circulated that she had retired into the monument to 
put herself to death. Antony resolved to follow her 
example, and threw himself upon his sword; but being 
informed, before he expired, that Cleopatra w r as still 
living, he caused himself to be carried into her pres¬ 
ence, and breathed his last in her arms. Octavius, 
after this, succeeded in getting Cleopatra into his pow¬ 
er, and the queen at first hoped to subdue him by her 
attractions ; but finding at last that her efforts were 
unavailing, and suspecting that her life was spared 
only that she might grace the conqueror’s triumph, she 
ended her days, if the common account is to be Cred¬ 
ited, by the bite of an asp. A small puncture in the 
arm was the only mark of violence which could be de¬ 
tected on the body of Cleopatra; and it was therefore 
believed that she had procured death either by the 
bite of a venomous reptile, or by the scratch of a poi¬ 
soned bodkin. She was in her thirty-ninth year, hav¬ 
ing reigned twenty-two years from the death of her 
father. Octavius, it is said, though deprived by this 
act of suicide of the greatest ornament of his approach¬ 
ing triumph, gave orders that she should have a mag¬ 
nificent funeral, and that her body, as she desired, 
should be laid by that of Antony.—In the grave of Cle¬ 
opatra was deposited the last of the royal race of the 
Ptolemies, a family which had swayed the sceptre of 
Egypt for two hundred and ninety-four years. Of the 
real character of this celebrated queen herself, it is not 
possible to speak, at this distance of time, w'ith any 
degree of confidence. That she had beauty and tal¬ 
ents of the highest order, is admitted by every histo¬ 
rian who has undertaken to give the annals* of her 
reign ; and that she was accomplished in no ordinary 
degree, is established by the fact of her being a great 
proficient in music, and mistress of nearly all the lan¬ 
guages which were cultivated in her age. She was 
well skilled, for example, in Greek and Latin, and she 
could converse with Ethiopians, Jews, Arabians, Syr¬ 
ians, Medes, and Persians, without an interpreter. If 
tier conduct was not at all times strictly pure, we must 
seek for an apology in the religion and manners of her 
country, and must ascribe the most glaring of her frail¬ 
ties to the absurd institutions which regulated the mat¬ 
rimonial connexions of the Graeco-Egyptian princes, 
and which paid no respect to the age, affections, or 
temper of the parties. (Pint., Vit. Ca>s.—Id., Vit. 
Ant. — Encyclop. Metropol ., Div. 3, vol. 2, p. 345.) 

Cleopatris, a city of Egypt, at the head of the Si¬ 
nus Arabicus, and in the immediate vicinity of Arsiv 
noe. {Vid. Arsinoe YI.) 




CLI 


CLO 


Climax, a narrow passage on the coast of Lycia, 
near Phaselis. ( Vid. Phaselis.) 

Clinias, I. a Pythagorean philosopher and musi¬ 
cian, 520 years before the Christian era. ( JElian, 
V. H., 14, 23.)—II. An Athenian, said by Herodotus 
(8, 17) to have been the bravest of his countrymen 
in the battle fought against the Persian fleet at Ar- 
temisiuin: and the Athenians are said by the same 
writer to have conducted themselves on that occasion 
with the greatest valour of any of the Greeks.—This 
Clinias was the father of the celebrated Alcibiades. 
He married Dinomache, the daughter of Megacles, 
grandson to Agariste, the daughter of Clisthenes, ty¬ 
rant of Sicyon. He fell at the battle of Coronea. 
Consult the learned note of Valckenaer (ad Herodot., 
1. c .) for other particulars respecting this Clinias.— 
III. The father of Aratus, killed by Abantidas, B.C. 
263. (Vid. Aratus II.) 

ClIo, one of the Muses. She presided over histo¬ 
ry, and was generally represented as holding a half- 
opened roll. The invention of the cithara was ascribed 
to her. Having drawn on herself the anger of Venus, 
by taunting her with her passion for Adonis, Clio was 
inspired by the goddess with love for Pierus, the son 
of Magnes, and bore him a son named Hyacinthus. 
(Apollod., 1, 3, 2, seqq.) Her name (O eiu) is de¬ 
rived from /c/letof (Ionic for kXeoc;), glory, renown, 
&c., because she celebrates the glorious actions of the 
good and brave. 

Clitomachus, a native of Carthage. (Diog. La- 
ert., 4, 67, seqq.) In his early years he acquired a 
fondness for learning, which induced him to visit 
Greece for the purpose of attending the schools of the 
philosophers. From the time of his first arrival in 
Athens he attached himself to Carneades, and con¬ 
tinued his disciple until his death, when he became 
his successor in the academic chair. He studied with 
great industry, and made himself master of the systems 
of the other schools ; but professed the doctrine of sus¬ 
pension of assent, as it had been taught by his master. 
Cicero relates, that he wrote four hundred books upon 
philosophical subjects. At an advanced age he was 
seized with a lethargy. Recovering in some measure 
the use of his faculties, he said, “ The love of life 
shall deceive me no longer,” and laid violent hands 
upon himself. He entered, as we have said, upon the 
office of preceptor in the academy immediately after the 
death of Carneades, and held it thirty years. According 
to Cicero, he taught that there is no certain criterion 
by which to judge of the truth of those reports which 
we receive from the senses, and that, therefore, a wise 
man will either wholly suspend his assent, or decline 
giving a peremptory opinion; but that, nevertheless, 
men are strongly impelled by nature to follow proba¬ 
bility. His moral doctrine established a natural alli¬ 
ance between pleasure and virtue. He was a professed 
enemy to rhetoric, and thought that no place should be 
allowed in society to so dangerous an art. (Sext. 
Emp. adv. Rhet ., § 20.— Enfield's History of Philos¬ 
ophy, vol. 1, p. 258.) 

Clitumnus, a river ofUmbria, rising in the vicinity 
of Spoletum, and falling into the Tinia, and both to¬ 
gether into the Tiber. The modern name of the Cli¬ 
tumnus is Clitunno. It was famous, according to 
Virgil, for its milk-white herds, selected as victims in 
the celebration of the triumph. (Virg., Georg., 2, 
146. — Propert., 2, el. 19, 25. — Sil. Ital., 8, 452. — 
Juv., 12, 13. — Claud., 6, Cons. Hon., 506.) The 
beautiful description which the younger Pliny (Ep., 
8, 8) has left us of this sacred river and its little tem¬ 
ple, the ruins of which are still to be seen near the 
posthouse of Le Verre, between Foligno and Spoleto, 
will be read with most pleasure in the original. 
(Compare Venuti, Osservazioni sopra il flume Cli¬ 
tunno, del suo Culto e Tempio, Rom., 1773, 4to. — 
Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol. 1, p. 270.) According 


to Eustace, white herds are still seen wandering over 
the rich plain watered by this river. (Classical Tour, 
vol. 1, p. 322.) 

Clitus, a familiar friend and foster-brother of Al¬ 
exander, who had saved the king’s life in battle. Al¬ 
exander killed him with a javelin in a fit of inebriety, 
because, at a feast, he preferred the actions of Philip 
to those of his son. (Vid. Alexander.) 

CloacTna, a goddess at Rome, who presided over 
the Cloacae. These cloacae were sewers for carrying 
off the filth of the city. The main one was called 
Cloaca Maxima. From what remains of the Cloaca 
Maxima at the present day, we may infer that the 
praise which the ancients bestowed on the Roman 
cloacae generally was not unmerited. The first cloacae 
were constructed by the two Tarquins. Tarquinius 
Priscus drained the low grounds of the city about the 
Forum, and the valleys lying between the hills (the 
Palatine and Capitoline), by cloacae, which were carried 
into the Tiber. (Liv., 1, 38.) But the draining was 
imperfect, and the Cloaca Maxima was in consequence 
built by Tarquinius Superbus. (Liv., 1, 56.) It 
crossed the Roman Forum beneath the level of the 
pavement, and in ancient times it is said that the 
tunnel was so large that a wagon loaded with hay 
could easily pass under it. (Strabo, 235.) Pliny ex¬ 
presses his wonder at the solidity and durability of this 
great undertaking, which, after a lapse of 800 years, 
still remained uninjured and entire (36, 15). At 
the present day, however, all that we see of it is the 
upper part of a gray massy arch of peperin stone, as 
solid as the day it was built, through which the water 
almost imperceptibly flows. Though choked up nearly 
to its top by the artificial elevation of the surface of 
modern Rome, it is curious to see it still serving as 
the common sewer of the city, after the lapse of nearly 
three thousand years. When the Tiber, into which it 
flows, is flooded, the water in the cloaca is driven back 
so as to rise above the keystone of the arch, and hide 
it from view. When the Tiber is low, not only this 
arch, but also the arch through which it discharges its 
sordid flood into the river, may be seen from the 
Ponte R,otto, or still more distinctly from the river 
itself. Dionysius informs us (3, 67), that it cost the 
state the enormous sum of 1000 talents to have the 
cloacae cleaned and repaired. We hear also of other 
sewers being made from time to time on Mount Aven- 
tine and other places, by the censors M. Cato and Va¬ 
lerius Flaccus (Liv., 39, 44), but more especially by 
Agrippa, who, according to Pliny (l. c.), is said to 
have introduced whole rivers into these hollow chan¬ 
nels, on which the city was, as it were, suspended, 
and thus was rendered subterraneously navigable. 
(Compare Strabo, l. c. —• Cassiod., Var. Ep., 3, 30.) 
It would seem, according to the common account, 
that the early cloacas were at first carried through the 
streets ; but that, through want of regularity in rebuild¬ 
ing the city after it was burned by the Gauls, they in 
many places passed under private houses. — Some 
architects, in order to support their improbable theory 
that the construction of the arch was not known even 
in Greece (where the art had reached a perfection it 
will never more attain) till about a hundred years be¬ 
fore the Christian era, have attempted to controvert 
the antiquity of the Cloaca Maxima, and attribute it to 
a much later period. (Compare Hirt, Gesch. der 
Baukunst, vol. 2, p. 123, and Muller, Etrusker, vol. 
1, p. 259.) But if it had really been rebuilt, as a late 
learned antiquary chose to imagine, by Augustus, 
would it have escaped the notice of Suetonius 1 or 
would Livy, that minute and accurate historian, who 
extols its grandeur and antiquity, and carefully chron¬ 
icles the erection of every temple and basilica, have 
failed to record such a work as this, which must 
have been executed before his own eyes, and by the 
very prince in whose court he was living'! On the 

361 




CLO 


CL Y 


contrary, he expressly says, “ that Tarquin made the 
great subterranean cloaca to carry off the filth of the 
city, a work so vast that even the magnificence of the 
present age has not been able to equal it.” ( Liv ., 1, 
56.) Pliny also, who records its repair in the reign 
of Augustus, expressly says, that, after 800 years, this 
opus omnium maximum continued as strong as when 
first built by Tarquin. It may, indeed, seem incredi¬ 
ble, that the. Romans, in that rude age, should have 
been capable of executing so noble a piece of architec¬ 
ture ; but Livy tells us, “ that Tarquin sent for artists 
from every part of Etruria,” for this and his other pub¬ 
lic works. Nothing can be clearer than this evidence 
of the Cloaca Maxima being the work of the Tarquins ; 
and its denial only affords one of the many proofs, that 
antiquaries will pervert or overlook facts when they 
interfere with their favourite theories. This cloaca, 
therefore, is doubly interesting, not only from its ex¬ 
traordinary grandeur and antiquity, but from being, 
perhaps, the sole, and certainly the finest, remains of 
Etruscan architecture that have come down to our 
times. ( Rome in the 19th Century , vol. 1, p. 249, 
not. —Compare Burgess, Antiquities of Rome , vol. 2, 
p. 223.) 

Cloanthus, one of the companions of iEneas, 
from whom the family of the Cluentii at Rome claim¬ 
ed descent. ( Virg., Ahn., 5, 122.) 

Clodia, I. a sister of Clodius the tribune, and a 
female of the most abandoned character. She married 
Q. Metellus Celer, and was suspected of having poi¬ 
soned him.—II. The younger sister of the preceding, 
and equally infamous in character. She married Lu- 
cullus, but was repudiated by him for her scandalous 
conduct. ( Plut ., Vit. Lucull.) 

Clodia Lex, I. de Cypro , was brought forward by 
the tribune Clodius, A.U.C. 695, that Cyprus should 
be taken from Ptolemy and made a Roman province. 
This was done in order to punish that monarch for 
having refused Clodius money to pay his ransom when 
taken by the pirates, and to remove Cato out of the 
way by appointing him to see the law executed.—II. 
Another, de Magistratibus, A.U.C. 695, by the same. 
It forbade the censors to put a stigma or mark of in¬ 
famy upon any person who had not been actually ac¬ 
cused and condemned by both of them. — III. An¬ 
other, A.U.C. 695, which required the same distribu¬ 
tion of corn among the people gratis, as had been given 
them before at six asses and a triens the modius.—IV. 
Another, A.U.C. 695, by the same, de Judiciis. It 
called to an account such as had executed a Roman 
citizen without a judgment of the people, and all the 
formalities of a trial. Cicero was aimed at by this 
law, and soon after, by means of a hired mob, was ac¬ 
tually banished. 

Clodius, Publius, a Roman descended from an il¬ 
lustrious family, but notorious as a bold and reckless 
demagogue, and a man of the most corrupt morals. 
Besides being guilty of the most revolting turpitude in 
the case of his nearest female relatives, he introduced 
himself, in woman’s clothing, into the house of Julius 
Csesar, with improper designs against Pompeia, the 
wife of Caesar, of whom he was enamoured, and 
who was then celebrating the mysteries of the Bona 
Dea, at which no male was allowed to be present. 
He was tried for the sacrilege, but escaped punish¬ 
ment by bribing the judges. In order to be eligible to 
the tribuneship, he relinquished his patriotic rank, and 
had himself adopted into a plebeian family. While 
filling the office of tribune he had numerous laws pass¬ 
ed, favourable to the people and adverse to the patri¬ 
cians. He procured for Cato, whom he detested, the 
government of Cyprus, in order that he might lose his 
reputation in this difficult office, and along with it the 
influence which he enjoyed at Rome. He cherished 
equal hatred towards Cicero, whom he finally succeed¬ 
ed in driving from the city. So troublesome at last 
362 


did he become even to his own party, that, in order to 
keep him in check, Pompey procured the recall of Ci¬ 
cero from exile, which he could not effect, however, 
without the strenuous aid of the tribune Milo ; and 
not long after Clodius was slain in a conflict that took, 
place between his followers and those of Milo. ( Cic., 
Or. pro Mil. — Plut., Vit. Cic.) 

Clielia, a Roman virgin, given as a hostage to Por- 
senna. According to the old Roman legend, when 
Porsenna and the Romans made a peace after the af¬ 
fair of Mucius Scsevola, the latter people gave hostages 
to the king, ten youths and ten maidens, children of 
noble parents, as a pledge that they would truly keep 
the peace which had been made. It happened, as the 
camp of the Etrurians was near the Tiber, that Clcelia, 
one of the maidens, escaped with her companions, and 
fled to the brink of the river; and, as the Etrurians pur¬ 
sued them, they all rushed into the water and swam in 
safety across the stream. But the Romans, jealous of 
their reputation for good faith, sent them all back to 
the camp of Porsenna. Not to be outdone in gener¬ 
osity, the monarch gave her and her female compan¬ 
ions their freedom, and permitted her to take with her 
half of the youths ; whereupon, with the delicacy of a 
Roman maiden, she selected those only who were of 
tender years. The Romans raised an equestrian 
statue in honour of her, on the highest part of the Sa¬ 
cred way. ( Liv ., 2,13.) She was also rewarded with 
a horse and arms. ( Fragm. Dion Cass., 4.— Bekker, 
Anecd., 1, p. 133, 8.) There is another story, that 
Tarquinius fell upon the hostages as they were con¬ 
ducted into the Etrurian camp ; and, with the excep¬ 
tion of Valeria, who fled back to the city, massacred 
them all. ( Plin., 34, 13.) 

Clotho, the youngest of the three Parc®, daughters 
of Jupiter and Themis. ( Vid. Parcae.) She held the 
distaff, and spun the thread of life, whence her name 
{nladuv, to spin). 

CluentiuS, a Roman, who, at his mother's instiga¬ 
tion, was accused of having poisoned his stepfather 
Oppianicus. He was defended with great ability by 
Cicero, in an oration which is still extant. ( Vid. Ci¬ 
cero.) 

Clusium, now Chiusi, a town of Etruria, on the banks 
of the Clanis. Its more ancient name was Camers. 
{Liv., 10, 25. — Compare Muller, Etruskcr, vol. 1, p. 
102, where the name Camers or Camars is regarded 
as a proof of the place’s having been originally pos¬ 
sessed by the Umbrian race of the Camestes. Con¬ 
sult also Cluver, It. Ant., vol. 2, p. 567.) The Gauls 
under Brennus besieged it, but marched to Rome with¬ 
out taking it. It was at Clusium that Porsenna held 
his court; and near this city he erected for himself the 
splendid mausoleum of which Pliny has transmitted to 
us a description on the authority of Varro. {Plin., 36, 
13.) The whole account seems to bear no small ap¬ 
pearance of fiction ; for, had such a stupendous work 
really existed, some traces of it would surely have re¬ 
mained, not merely in Pliny’s day, but even in the 
present age.—Pliny (3, 5) makes a distinction between 
Clusium Vetus and Novum ; and a village, named 
Chiusi, supposed to represent the latter, is pointed out 
at the foot of the Apennines, north of Arezzo, in con¬ 
firmation of this distinction. {Cramer's Anc. Italy, 
vol. 1, p. 219.) 

Clusius, I. or Clesius, a river of Gallia Transpada- 
na, rising among the Euganei, and flowing between the 
Lake Benacus and the river Mela. It is now the Chiese, 
or Chiso, one of the tributaries of the Oglio. —II. The 
surname of Janus, when his temple was shut. {Ovid, 
Fast., 1, 130.) 

Clymene, I. a daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, 
who married Iapetus, by whom she had Atlas, Prome¬ 
theus, Menoetius, and Epimetheus. {Hesiod, Thcog., 
508, seqq .)—II. The mother of Phaethon. {Ovid, Met., 
1, 756.) — III. A female servant of Helen, who ac- 




CNO 


COC 


companied her mistress to Troy when she eloped with 
Paris. {Ovid, Hcroid., 17, 267.— Horn., II., 3, 144.) 

Clymeneides, a patronymic given to Phaethon’s 
sisters, who were daughters of Clymene. 

Clypea (called by the Greek writers Aspis), now 
Aklibia, a town of Africa Propria, 22 miles east of 
Carthage. It was built upon a promontory which was 
shaped like a shield. Agathocles seized upon this 
place when he landed in Africa, fortified it, and gave 
it, from the shape of the promontory, the name of As¬ 
pis (“ a shield” in Greek, same as Clypeus in Latin). 
The natives called the promontory Taphitis. This 
town served as a stronghold to Regulus in the first 
Punic war. {Lucan, 4, 586. — Liv., 27, 29. — Ccbs., 
B. C., 2, 23.) 

Clytemnestra, a daughter of Tyndarus, king of 
Sparta, by Leda. She was born, together with her 
brother Castor, from one of the eggs which her mother 
brought forth after her amour with Jupiter, under the 
form of a swrnn. She married Agamemnon, king of 
Mycenae. When this monarch went to the Trojan war, 
he left his wife and family, and all his affairs, to the care 
of his relation iEgisthus. But the latter proved un¬ 
faithful to his trust, corrupted Clytemnestra, and usurp¬ 
ed the throne. Agamemnon, on his return home, was 
murdered by his guilty wife, who was herself after¬ 
ward slain, along with iEgisthus, by Orestes, son of 
the deceased monarch. (Consult, for a more detailed 
account, the articles Agamemnon and Orestes.) 

Cnidus, a town and promontory of Doris in Caria, 
at the extremity of a promontory called Triopium. 
The founder of the place is said to have been Triopas. 
{Diod., 5, 61.— Pausan., 10, 2.) From him it re¬ 
ceived at first the name of Triopium, which at a later 
period was confined merely to the promontory on which 
it stood. ( Scylax , p. 38.— Herodot., 1, 174.) Venus 
was the chief deity of the place, and had three temples 
erected to her, under the several surnames of Doritis, 
Acrsea, and Euploea. In the last of these stood a cele¬ 
brated statue of the goddess, the work of Praxiteles. 
{Pausan., 1,1.— Plin., 36, 5.— Hor., Od., 3, 28.— Ca- 
tull., 36, 11.) Nicomedes of Bithynia wished to pur¬ 
chase this admirable production of the chisel, and actual¬ 
ly offered to liquidate the debt of Cnidus, which was very 
considerable, if the citizens would cede it to him ; but 
they refused to part with what they esteemed the glory 
of their city. {Plin., 1. c.) A drawing of the Venus 
of Cnidus, from an antique statue found near Rome, 
is given by Flaxman, at the end of his lectures on 
sculpture {pi. 22). The shores of Cnidus furnished in 
ancient times, as they do now, a great abundance of 
fishes. The wines were famous, and Theophrastus 
speaks of the Cnidian onions as of a particular species, 
being very mild, and not occasioning tears. Cnidus 
was the birthplace of the famous mathematician and 
astronomer Eudoxus ; of Agatharchidas, Theopompus, 
and Ctesias. It is now a mere heap of ruins; and 
the modern name of the promontory is Cape Crio. 
( Mannert , Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 3, p. 236.) An account 
of the ruins of Cnidus is given in Clarke's Travels, 
vol. 3, p. 261, from Walpole’s MS. Journal. 

Cnosus (K vococ, more correct than Cnossus, 
Kvoocog, if we follow the language of coins and in¬ 
scriptions), the royal city of Crete, on the northern 
coast, at a small distance from the sea. Its earlier 
name was Casratus, which appellation was given also 
to the inconsiderable stream that flowed beneath its 
walls. {Strab., 476.) It was indebted to Minos for 
all its importance and splendour. That monarch is 
said to have divided the island into three portions, in 
each of which he founded a large city ; and fixing his 
residence at Cnosus, it became the capital of the king¬ 
dom. {Diod. Sic., 5, 78.) It was here that Daeda¬ 
lus cultivated his art, and planned the celebrated lab¬ 
yrinth. . Cnosus long preserved its rank among the 
chief cities of Crete, and, by its alliance with Gortyna, 


obtained the dominion of nearly the whole island. The 
vestiges ot this city are discernible at the present day, 
to the east of the town of Candia, which has commu¬ 
nicated to the island its present name. The precise 
site of the ruins is called Long Candia. {Cramer's 
Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 368, scqq.) The name of this 
city is sometimes written with an initial G, as Gno- 
sus, and the T occurs actually on some coins, but the 
more common initial letter in Greek inscriptions and 
on coins is the K. (Compare Rasche, Lex. Rci Num., 
vol. 2, col. 649, seqq.) 

Cocalus, a king of Sicily, who hospitably received 
Daedalus, when he fled before Minos. When Minos 
arrived in Sicily, the daughters of Cocalus destroyed 
him. {Ovid, Met., 8, 261.) 

Cocceius Nerva. Vid. Nerva I. 

Coccygius, a mountain of Argolis, between Halice 
and Hermione. Its previous name was Thornax ; 
but it received the appellation of Coccygius from the 
circumstance of Jupiter’s having been metamorphosed 
there into the bird called Coccyx (K okkv^) by the 
Greeks. On its summit was a temple sacred to that 
god, and another of Apollo at the base. {Pausanias, 
2, 36.) 

Cocintum Promontorium, a promontory of Bru- 
tium in Lower Italy, below the Sinus Scylacius. The 
modern name is Cape Stilo. It marked the separation 
between the Ionian and Sicilian seas. {Polyb., 2, 14.) 

Cooles, Publius Horatius (or, as Niebuhr gives it, 
Marcus Horatius), a Roman who, alone, opposed the 
whole army of Porsenna at the head of a bridge, while 
his companions behind him were cutting off' the com¬ 
munication with the other shore. When the bridge 
was destroyed, Cedes, after addressing a short prayer 
to the god of the Tiber, leaped into the stream, and 
swam across in safety with his arms. As a mark of 
gratitude, every inhabitant, while famine was raging 
wfithin the city, brought him all the provisions he could 
stint himself of; and the state afterward raised a statue 
to him, and gave him as much land as he could plough 
round in a day. {Liv., 2, 10.— Dion. Hal., 1, 24.) 
Whatever we may think of the other parts of the story, 
that portion of it which relates to the land is evidently 
mere poetic exaggeration. Polybius (6, 53) makes 
Codes to have perished in the river. (Consult, as 
regards the whole legend, the remarks of Niebuhr, 
Rom. Hist., vol. i., p. 476, seqq., Cambr. transl.) — 
The name Codes properly means “ a person blind of 
one eye.” It appears to be the old form odes (from 
oculus ), with a harsh initial aspiration. {Varro, L. 
L., 6, 3.) 

Cocytus, a river of Epirus, which, according to 
Pausanias (1, 17), blended its nauseous waters with 
those of the Acheron. Its fancied etymology (from 
Koucvu, “ to lament," “ to wail"), the unwholesome¬ 
ness of its waters, and, above all, its proximity to the 
Acheron, induced the poets to make it one of the riv¬ 
ers of the lower world. {Virg., Georg., 3, 38. — Id., 
IEn., 6, 297, &c.)—“ Leaving Potamia,” observes an 
intelligent traveller, “ we passed over a marsh or bog 
formed by the overflowing of the river Vava, which 
is probably the Cocytus of antiquity. It flows from 
below the mountains of Margariti, opposite Par ami- 
thia, and, after skirting the opposite side of the plain, 
empties itself into the Acheron, at a small distance 
from its mouth, below the village of Tcheuknides. 
Pausanias, in his description of the Acheron, intimates 
that the Cocytus also flows in the same plain ; and no 
other river except the Acheron, now called the nordyt 
rov 'Zov'Xi, and the Vava, is to be discovered in the 
Phanari. The very appellation Vava {(3abd), which is 
an expression of grief or aversion, seems to strengthen 
the conjecture; and not only this, but the water of 
the Vava exactly coincides with the expression of 
Pausanias, vdop drepneaTarov, for it flows slowly 
over a deep muddy soil, imbibing noxious qualities 

363 



CCEL 


COL 


' 


from innumerable weeds upon its banks, and occasions 
the greatest part of the malaria of the plain.” ( Hughes, 
Travels in Greece, &c., vol. 2, p. 311. — Compare 
Wordsworth's Greece, p. 254, seqq .) 

Codanus sinus, one of the ancient names of the 
Baltic. Mela (3, 3, 6) represents it as full of large 
and small islands, the largest of which he calls Scan¬ 
dinavia ; so also Pliny (4, 13). The name Codanus 
seems to have some reference to that of the Goths in 
sound. The modern term Baltic appears to be de¬ 
rived from the Celtic Balt or Belt , denoting a collection 
of water ; whence also the name of the straits, Great 
and Little Belt. (Malte-Brun, Diet. Geogr., p. viii.) 

Codomannus, a surname of Darius the Third, king 
of Persia. (Fid. Darius III.) 

' Codrus, the last king of Athens. He received the 
sceptre from his father Melanthus, and was now far 
advanced in years, having reigned for a considerable 
time, when some of the Dorian states united their 
forces for the invasion of Attica. The Dorian army 
marched to Athens, and lay encamped under its walls ; 
and the oracle at Delphi had assured them of success, 
provided they spared the life of the Athenian king. 
A friendly Delphian, named Cleomantis, disclosed the 
answer of the oracle to the Athenians, and Codrus re¬ 
solved to devote himself for his country in a manner 
not unlike that which immortalized among the Ro¬ 
mans, at a later date, the name of the Decii. He 
went out at the gate disguised in a woodman’s garb, 
and, falling in with two Dorians, killed one with his 
bill, and was killed by the other. The Athenians 
thereupon sent a herald to claim the body of their king, 
and the Dorian chiefs, deeming the war hopeless, with¬ 
drew their forces from Attica.—This story, which con¬ 
tinued for centuries to warm the patriotism of the 
Athenians, has been regarded by some as altogether 
improbable. It would seem, however, to be confirm¬ 
ed by the fact mentioned by the orator Lycuraus 
{contra Leocr., p. 158), that Cleomantis, and his pos¬ 
terity, were honoured with the privilege of sharing the 
entertainment provided in the Prytaneum at Athens 
for the guests of the state. But we scarcely know 
how the current tradition is to be reconciled with an¬ 
other preserved by Pausanias (7, 25), that a part of 
the Dorian army effected their entrance by night 
within the walls, and, being surrounded by their en¬ 
emies, took refuge at the altars of the Eumenides on 
the Areopagus, and were spared by the piety of the 
Athenians. If, however, either must be rejected as a 
fabrication, this last has certainly the slighter claim to 
credit.—After the death of Codrus, the nobles, taking 
advantage, perhaps, of the opportunity afforded by a 
dispute between his sons, are said to have abolished 
the title of king, and to have substituted for it that of 
archon. This new office was to be held for life, and 
then transmitted to the son of the deceased. The 
first of these hereditary archons was Medon, son of 
Codrus, from whom the thirteen following archons 
were called Medontidas, as being his lineal descend¬ 
ants. ( Vid. Archontes.— ThirlwalVs Hist, of Greece, 
vol. 1, p. 275, vol. 2, p. 15.) 

Coele (K oVkr]), or, the Hollow, I. the northern di¬ 
vision of Elis.—IT. A quarter in the suburbs of 
Athens, appropriated to sepulchres. Cimon and Thu¬ 
cydides were both interred in this place. {Herodot., 
6, 103.— Plut., Vit. Cimon. — Pausan., 1, 23.) Coele 
is classed by Hesychius among the Attic demi or bor¬ 
oughs. Col. Leake places, with great probability, this 
hollow way or gate “ to the south of the acropolis, 
near the gate of Lumbardhari, which answers to the 
Portae Melitenses.” ( Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 
2, p. 336.) 

# Ccelesyria {Kollrj Ivpia), or, the “ Hollow Sy¬ 
ria,” a tract of country between the ranges ofLibanus 
and Antilibanus ; in Syria, and stretching inland from 
the coast as far as the country around Damascus. In 
364 


the time of Dioclesian it received the name of Phoe¬ 
nicia Libanesia. The modern appellation is given by 
some as El-Bokah. {Mela, 1, 11. — Plin., 5, 12.— 
Jornand., de Regn. Success., p. 65, &c.) 

Ccelia Lex, a law passed A.U.C. 630, that in trials 
for treason the people should vote by ballot, which 
had been excepted by the Cassian law. (Consult 
Cic., de Leg., 3, 16.) 

Ccelius, a young Roman of considerable talents 
and acquirements, but of dissolute character, who had 
been intrusted to the care of Cicero on his first intro¬ 
duction to the Forum. Having imprudently engaged 
in an intrigue with Clodia, the well-known sister of 
Clodius, and having afterward deserted her, she ac¬ 
cused him of an attempt to poison her, and of having 
borrowed money from her in order to procure the as¬ 
sassination of Dio, the Alexandrean ambassador. He 
was defended by Cicero in a speech still extant, and 
obtained an acquittal. We find him subsequently at¬ 
taining to the praetorship, and engaging eventually in 
the civil contest, in which he lost his life. In this, as 
in most other prosecutions of the period, a number of 
charges, unconnected with the main one, seem to have 
been accumulated in order to give the chief accusation 
additional force and credibility. Cicero had thus to 
defend his client against the suspicions arising from 
the general libertinism of his conduct. Middleton has 
pronounced this to be the most entertaining of the ora¬ 
tions which Cicero has left us, from the vivacity of 
wit and humour with which he treats the gallantries 
of Clodia, her commerce with Coelius, and, in general, 
the gayeties and licentiousness of youth. This ora¬ 
tion was a particular favourite with the celebrated 
Mr. Fox. {Dunlop's Roman Literature, vol. 2, p. 
309, seqq.—Correspondence of Wakefield and Fox, p. 

Ccelus, one of the earlier deities, and the spouse of 
Terra. He is the same with the Grecian Uranus. 
{Vid. Uranus.) 

Cceus (KoZof)> one of the Titans, son of Coelus and 
Terra, or, to adopt the Grecian phraseology, of Ura¬ 
nus and Ge (Gea). His name indicates his cosmo- 
gonical character, being derived from icalo, “ to burn." 
{Vid. Titanes.) He was the father of Latona by 
Phoebe. {Hesiod, Theog., 404, seqq.) 

Cohors. Vid. Legio. 

Colchi, the inhabitants of Colchis. 

Colchis, a country of Asia, having Iberia on the 
east, the Euxine on the west, Caucasus on the north, 
and Armenia on the south. It is famous in poetic 
legends as having been the land to which the Argo- 
nautic expedition was directed in quest of the golden 
fleece. {Vid. Argonautse.) It corresponds at the 
present day to what is called Mingrelia. Colchis 
abounded, according to Strabo, with fruit of every 
kind, and every material requisite for navigation. Its 
only exceptionable produce was the honey, which had a 
bitter taste. The linen manufactured here was in high 
repute, and was made, according to Herodotus (2,105), 
after the manner of Egypt; the two kinds, however, 
being distinguished from each other by name, since the 
Greeks called the Colchian by the name of Sardonian, 
but that which came from Egypt by the proper name 
of the country. This species of manufacture, together 
with the dark complexion and crisped locks of the na¬ 
tives, were so many arguments with the ancients to 
prove them of Egyptian origin, independently of other 
proofs drawn, according to Herodotus, from their lan¬ 
guage and mode of life. The historian farther informs 
us, that, being struck by the resemblance between the 
Colchians and Egyptians, he inquired, from motives of 
curiosity, of both nations, and discovered that the Col¬ 
chians had more recollection of the Egyptians than 
the Egyptians had of the Colchians. The Egyptians, 
however, told him, that they believed the Colchians to 
have been descended from a part of the army of Se- 



COL 


COL 


sostris, left behind by him in this quarter to guard the 
passes when he was going on his Scythian expedition, 
and who were finally established here as a military colo¬ 
ny. Another argument, in favour of the identity of the 
Colchians and Egyptians, is drawn by Herodotus from 
the singular circumstance of the rite of circumcision 
being common to both. (Compare Micha'elis, Mos. 
Reclit., vol. 4, § 185. — Metners, in Comment. Soc. 
Reg. Gotting., vol. 14, p. 207, seqq., p. 211, seqq.) 
—The account here given by Herodotus of the Col¬ 
chians has elicited a great diversity of opinion among 
modern scholars. Heeren, for example, thinks that 
the Egyptian colony in Colchis owed its existence to 
the Eastern custom of transplanting vanquished na¬ 
tions, either in whole or part, to other and more dis¬ 
tant regions; and he supposes the Colchian settle¬ 
ment to have been the result of some such transplanta¬ 
tion by Nebuchadnezzar, or some other of the Asiatic 
monarchs, who penetrated into Egypt. ( Idcen , vol. 1, 
pt. 1, p. 405, not.) Holstenius makes the Colchians 
to have been a colony of Jews, transported to the 
shores of the Euxine by some Assyrian king. ( Ep. 
ad divers, ed. Boissonad., p. 510.) Michaelis views 
them as of Syrian origin, led out from home after the 
overthrow of the kingdom of Damascus. (Mos. Recht., 
vol. 4, t) 185, p. 18, not.) Ritter maintains a theory 
altogether different from any of the preceding. He 
makes the Colchians of Indian origin, and in this 
way explains their acquaintance with the manufacture 
of linen. According to him they were a mercantile 
colony, established on the shores of the Euxine for the 
purposes of traffic, and the very name of Sardonian, 
as applied to the Colchian linen, he traces, along with 
the term Sindon (Ztvdijv, “fine linen”), to the land 
of Serhind (Sind) or India. ( Ritter, Vorhalle , p. 35, 
seqq.) 

Colias Promontorium, a promontory of Attica, 
about twenty stadia from Phalerum, and still retaining 
its ancient name, though occasionally designated by 
that of Trispyrgoi. Here was a temple consecrated 
to Venus, another to the goddesses named Genetyllides 
(Pausan., 1, 1. — Strab., 398), and also chapels of 
Pan and Ceres. (Meurs., de Pirceo , c. 11, p. 574.) 
Colias was also celebrated for its earthenware. (Pint., 
de Audit. — Op., ed. Reiske, vol. 6, p. 153. — Etym. 
Mag. — Suid.) Ritter indulges in some curious spec¬ 
ulations on the name Colias, and finds in it a connect¬ 
ing link between the religious systems of the eastern 
and western world. (Vorhalle, p. 54, seqq.) 

Collatia, I. a town of Latium, to the north of Ga- 
bii, and colonized from Alba. It was rendered famous 
in Roman history by the self-immolation of the chaste 
Lucretia. (Liv., 1, 58.) In the time of Strabo (229) 
it was little more than a village. The ruins of this 
place are still to be traced on a hill, which from thence 
has obtained the name of Castellacio. (Nibby, Viag- 
gio Antiquario, vol. 1, p. 240.)—II. A town of Apu¬ 
lia, near Mount Garganus, now Collatini. (Plin., 3, 
11.— Front., de Col.) 

Collatinus, L. Tarquinius, grandson of Aruns 
elder brother of Tarquinius Priscus. He derived his 
surname from Collatia, where he resided, and with the 
principality of which he was invested. Collatinus was 
the husband of the celebrated Lucretia; and, after the 
expulsion of the Tarquins, he and Brutus were elected 
the first consuls. His relationship, however, to the 
Tarquin family excited distrust, and when a law was 
passed banishing the whole Tarquinian house, he was 
forced to lay down his office and depart from Rome. 
He ended his days at Lavinium. (Liv., 1, 60. — Id., 
2 , 2 .) 

Collina, I. one of the gates of Rome, on Mount 
Quirinalis, so called, a collibus Quirinali ct Viminali. 
— It was called also Quirinalis. To this gate Hanni¬ 
bal rode up and threw a spear within the city. ( Ovid, 
Fast., 4, 871.)—II. The name of one of the four re¬ 


gions or wards into which Rome was divided by Ser- 
vius Tullius. The other three were Palatina, Subur- 
rana, and Esquilina. (Liv., 5, 41. — Id., 36, 10.— 
Plin., 34, 6.) 

Colons, I. a city of Troas, north of Larissa. It 
is placed on the coast by Scylax and others. Pliny, 
however, assigns it a position inland. Strabo makes it 
the residence of a Thracian prince, who ruled over the 
adjacent country, and also the island of Tenedos. 
(Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 3, p. 465.)—II. A town 
of Mysia, in the territory of Lampsacus. (Arrian, 1, 
13.— Strabo, 589.) 

Colonia Agrippina, a city of Germany, on the 
Rhine. (Fid. Agrippina III.) 

Colonus, a demus of Attica, to the northwest of 
the Academy, near Athens. It was named Hippeios, 
from the altar erected there to the Equestrian Nep¬ 
tune, and is rendered so celebrated by the play of 
Sophocles (CEdipus at Colonus) as the scene of the 
last adventures of CEdipus. It was the native borough 
of the poet, and is beautifully described by him in one 
of the choruses of the same play. From Thucydides 
we learn that Colonus was distant ten stadia from the 
city, and that assemblies of the inhabitants were on 
some occasions convened at the temple of Neptune. 
(Thucyd., 8, 67.) 

Colophon, a city of Ionia, northwest of Ephesus. 
It was founded by Andrsemon, son of Codrus, and was 
situate about two miles from the coast, its harbour, 
called Notium, being connected with the city by means 
of long walls.. Colophon was destroyed by Lysima- 
chus, together with Lebedus, in order to swell the pop¬ 
ulation of the new town he had founded at Ephesus. 
(Pausan., 1 , 9. — Diod. Sic., 20, 107.) The Colo¬ 
phonians are stigmatized by several ancient writers as 
very effeminate and luxurious (Athenceus, 12, p. 526), 
and yet Strabo says, that, at one period, this place 
possessed a flourishing navy, and that its cavalry was 
in such repute, that victory followed wherever they 
were employed. Hence arose the proverb K oXotytiva 
£7 xLTidevai, “ to add a Colophonian,” i. e., to put the 
finishing hand to an affair. The scholiast on Plato, 
however, gives another explanation of the saying, 
which appears somewhat more probable, though its 
authority is not so good. He states, that the Colo¬ 
phonians had the right of a double vote in the.general 
assembly of the Ionians, on account of the service 
they had rendered the confederacy by inducing the city 
of Smyrna to join it. Hence they were frequently 
enabled to decide points left undetermined from a 
parity of suffrages. (Schol. ad Plat., Thecetet., p. 319.) 
It arose from this old saying, that, in the early periods 
of the art of printing, the account which the printer 
gave of the place and date of the edition, being the 
last thing printed at the end of the book, was called 
the Colophon. This city was one of the places which 
contended for the birth of Homer, and was unquestion¬ 
ably the native place of Mimnermus and Hermesianax. 
It was also famed for its resin, whence the name of 
Colophony, otherwise called Spanish wax, and Grecian 
resin. (Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 357, seqq.) 

Colossi, a large and flourishing city of Phrygia 
Pacatiana, in an angle formed by the rivers Lycus and 
Mseander. Strabo speaks of the great profits accruing 
from its wool-trade. One of the first Christian church¬ 
es was established here, and one of St. Paul’s epistles 
was addressed to it. In the tenth year of the reign of 
Nero, or about two years after the epistle of St. Paul 
was sent, this city was nearly destroyed by an earth¬ 
quake. Under the Byzantine emperors, Colosste, be¬ 
ing in a ruinous state, made way for a more modern 
town named Chonae, which was built at a short dis¬ 
tance from it. Some remains of Colossse and its more 
modern successor are to be seen near each other on the 
site called Khonas, or Kanassi, by the Turks. (Arun- 
dell's Sever Churches, p. 92.)—Hierocles writes the 

365 



COL 


COM 


name of this place K olaaaai, a reading given also by 
numerous MSS. of St. Paul’s Epistles. But Herodo¬ 
tus, Xenophon, and Strabo give the more customary 
forms, and they have also on their side the evidence 
of coins, the authority of which is not to be disputed. 

( Cramer's Asia Minor , vol. 2, p. 4-4.) 

Colossus, a celebrated brazen image at Rhodes, 
which passed for one of the seven wonders of the 
world. It was the workmanship of Chares, a pupil of | 
Lysippus, who was employed twelve years in making 
it. Its height was 105 Grecian feet; there were few 
persons who could encompass the thumb with their 
arms, and its fingers were larger than most statues. 
It was hollow, and in its cavities were large stones, 
placed there to counterbalance its weight, and render 
it steady on its pedestal. The cost was 300 talents 
(nearly $317,000), and the money was obtained from 
the sale of the machines and military engines which 
Demetrius Poliorcetes had left behind him when he 
raised the siege of Rhodes. ( Plin ., 34, 18.) The 
Colossus is generally supposed to have stood with dis¬ 
tended legs upon the two moles which formed the 
entrance of the harbour. As the city, however, had 
two harbours, the main one, and a second one much 
smaller, within which their fleets were secured, it 
seems more natural to suppose that this Colossus was 
placed at the entrance of this latter one, inasmuch as 
the space between the legs at the base could not have 
greatly exceeded fifty feet; a space too narrow to be the 
entrance to the main harbour. There was a winding 
staircase to go up to the top of the statue, from whence 
one might discover Syria, and the ships that went to 
Egypt. It was erected B.C. 300, and, after having 
stood about fifty-six years, was broken off below the 
knees, and thrown down by an earthquake. ( Plin., 1. 
c.) Eusebius says that this occurred in the second 
year of the 139th Olympiad; but Polybius seems to 
place it a little later, in the 140th Olympiad (5, 88). 
The same writer adds, that the greater part of the 
walls and docks were thrown down at the same time. 
It remained in ruins for the space of 894 years ; and 
the Rhodians, who had received several large contri¬ 
butions to repair it, divided the money among them¬ 
selves, and frustrated the expectations of the donors, 
by saying that the oracle of Delphi forbade them to 
raise it up again from its ruins. ( Strab., 652.) In 
the year 672 of the Christian era, it was sold, accord¬ 
ing to Cedrenus, by the Saracens, who were masters 
of the island, to a Jewish merchant of Edessa, who 
loaded 900 camels with the brass. Allowing 800 
pounds’ weight for each load, the brass, after the dim¬ 
inution which it had sustained by rust, and probably 
by theft, amounted to about 720,000 pounds’ weight. 
The city of Rhodes had, according to Pliny, 100 
other colossuses, of inferior size, in its different quar¬ 
ters.—Compare the remarks of Ritter in relation to 
the worship of the sun, which prevailed in the ear¬ 
liest periods of Rhodes, and the connexion between 
this and the Colossus. He finds also his accustomed 
root (Col-) in the name of the statue. ( Vorhalle , p. 
104, seqq.) 

Columella (L. Junius Moderatus), an ancient 
writer, born at Gades, in the reign of Augustus or Ti¬ 
berius, and a contemporary, according to his own ac¬ 
count, of Seneca and Celsus. The elder Pliny also 
frequently makes mention of him. His father, Marcus 
Columella, had possessions in the province of Bse- 
tica. The son betook himself at an early period to 
Rome, where he passed his life, with the exception of 
a few journeys to Syria and Cilicia. It is not as¬ 
certained whether he visited these latter countries as 
a simple traveller, or on some mission of govern¬ 
ment, for we know nothing very particularly of the cir¬ 
cumstances of his life. We have two works of his re¬ 
maining : one, entitled “ De Re Rustica,'' in twelve 
books; the other, “De Arbonbus." This last made, 
366 


very probably, part of a work on agriculture, in four 
books, which Columella had published as the first edi¬ 
tion of that which we now have in twelve books. On 
this supposition Cassiodorus was correct in saying 
that Columella had written a work in sixteen books on 
rural economy. This author appears to have been but 
little read. Among the ancients, Servius, Cassiodorus, 
and Isidorus are the only ones that cite him. He 
fell into almost complete neglect after Palladios had 
made an abridgment of his work. (Vul. Palladius 
II.) Hence Vincent de Beauvais and Petrus de 
Crescentiis, the latter of whom Schneider calls “ dili- 
gentissimum veterum rci rusticce scriptorum lectprcrti 
were not acquainted with him. (Compare Script. 
Rei Rust., cd. Schneider , vol. 2, p. 5.) The style of 
Columella is pure and elegant; if any reproach can 
be made against him, it is that of being too studied in 
his language on the subject of which he treats. The 
best edition is that of Schneider, in the Script ores 
Rei Rusticce, Lips., 1794-97, 4 vols. 8vo. That of 
Gesner is also in deservedly high repute, Lips., 1773, 
2 vols. 4to. 

Columns Herculis, “ The Pillars of Hercules,” 
a name often given to Calpe and Abyla, or the heights 
on either side of the Straits of Gibraltar. The tradi¬ 
tion was, that the Mediterranean had no outlet in this 
quarter until Hercules broke through the mountain 
barrier, and thus formed the present straits. The 
rocky height on either side of the opening was fabled 
to have been placed there by him as a memorial of his 
achievement, and as marking the limits of his wander¬ 
ings towards the west. ( Vid. Calpe, Abyla, and Med- 
iterraneum Mare.— Odyss., 4, 351.— Virg., JEn., 11, 
262.) 

Coluthus, a native of Lycopolis in Egypt, sup¬ 
posed to have lived about the beginning of the sixth 
century. He wrote a poem in six cantos, entitled “ Cal- 
ydoniacs ” (KaXvduvuui), as well as other pieces that 
are now lost. He is believed also, though without 
any great degree of certitude, to have been the author 
of a poem, in three hundred and eighty-five verses, 
which bears the title of “ the Rape of Helen” ('E Mvr/g 
dpTrayr/). This most unfortunate imitation of Homer 
commences wdth the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis. 
The poet goes on, without any animation, sentiment, 
or grace whatsoever, to recount the judgment of Paris, 
the voyage of this prince to Sparta, and the abduction 
of Helen, which takes place after the first interview. 
This poem of Coluthus was discovered by Cardinal 
Bessarion along with that of Quintus Smyrnams. The 
best editions are, that of Van Lennep, Leonard, 1747, 
8vo, improved by Shaefler, Lips., 1825, 8vo, and that 
of Bekker, Bcrol., 1816, 8vo. 

Comagene. Vid. Coinmagene. 

Comana (orum), I. a city of Pontus, surnamed Pon- 
tica, to distinguish it from the Cappadocian city of the 
same name. It was situate to the northeast of Zcla, 
and not far from the source of the Iris. (Strabo, 547.) 
This place was celebrated for the worship of the god¬ 
dess Ma, supposed to answer to the Bellona of the 
West. She was likewise revered with equal honours 
in the Cappadocian Comana. The priesthood attach¬ 
ed to the temple was an office of the highest emol¬ 
ument and dignity, and was sought after by kings and 
princes. The city itself was large and populous, and 
kept up a considerable traffic with Armenia. The 
festivals of the goddess, which were held twice a year, 
drew thither an immense concourse from the surround¬ 
ing countries and towns, as well as from more distant 
parts. There were no less than 6000 slaves attached 
to the service of the temple, and most of these were 
courtesans. Hence it was remarked, that the citizens 
were generally addicted to pleasure, and the town 
itself was styled by some the little Corinth. The 
chief produce of the country was wine. When the 
Romans, under Lucullus, invaded Pontus, a report 






COM 


COM 


was spread, probably by Mithradates, that they were 
come for the express purpose of plundering the shrine 
of Comana. ( Cic., Or. pro Leg. Manil., § 9.) Some 
remains, at the present day, not far from Tokat, under 
the name of Komanak, sufficiently indicate the ancient 
site. (Cramer'’s Asia Minor , vol. i., p. 307, seq.) 
—II. A city of Cappadocia, on the river Sarus, and 
the principal place in the district of Cataonia. It was 
celebrated, like its Pontic namesake (No. I.), for the 
worship of Ma, the Cappadocian Bellona. The popu¬ 
lation consisted, in a great degree, of soothsayers, 
priests, and slaves, belonging to the sacred institution ; 
the latter of these amounted, in the time of Strabo, 
to more than 6000 of both sexes. These belonged 
exclusively to the high-priest, who stood next in rank 
to the King of Cappadocia, and was generally chosen 
from the royal family. The territory annexed to the 
temple was very considerable, and furnished a large 
income for the pontiff. (Cic., Ep. ad Fam., 15, 4.) 
It was asserted that the worship of Bellona, like that 
of Diana Tauropolus, had been brought from Tauris 
by Orestes and Iphigenia, and it was even pretended 
that the former had deposited within the temple his 
mourning locks (nopr/v), whence the city was called 
Comana. ( Strab ., 535.) These, of course, are fables 
of Greek invention. The Bellona of Comana was 
probably no other than the Anaitis of the Persians 
and Armenians, and perhaps the Agdistis and Cybele 
of the Phrygians. The Cappadocian Comana was dis¬ 
tinguished from the Pontic by the epithet of Xpvoq. 
The Turkish town of El Bostan is thought to repre¬ 
sent the ancient city. ( Kinnetr's Travels , Append., 
p. 560.— Cramer's Asia Minor , vol. 2, p 138, seqq.) 

Comaria promontorium, a promontory forming the 
southern extremity of India intra Gangem. It is now 
Cape Camorin (or Comari). Al-Edrissi, the Arabian 
geographer, confounds this cape with Comar, or the 
island of Madagascar. (Arrian, Peripl. Mar. Erythr. 
— Vincent's Anc. Commerce, vol. 2, p. 498.) 

Commagene, a district of Syria, in the northeastern 
extremity of that country, bounded on the north by 
Mount Taurus, on the west by Amanus, on the east 
by the Euphrates, and on the south by Cyrrhestica. 
Its chief city was Samosata. This tract of country 
had at one time rulers of its own, but became a Ro¬ 
man province under Domitian. Its modern name is 
Camash or Kamask. (Plin., 5, 12.— Eutrop., 7, 19. 
— Amm. Marcell., 14, 26.) The name often occurs 
as Comagene, but the more correct form is Comma- 
gene. (Consult Rasche, Lex. Rei Num., vol. 2, col. 
723.) 

CommSdus, L. Aurelius Antoninus, son and suc¬ 
cessor of M. Aurelius Antoninus, ascended the im¬ 
perial throne A.D. 180. The reign of this prince is a 
scene of guilt and misery, which the historian con¬ 
templates with disgust, and is glad to dismiss with 
brevhy. He appears, indeed, to have inherited all the 
vices of his mother Faustina ; and his father, in select¬ 
ing him for his successor, allowed the feelings of the 
parent to triumph over the wisdom of the magistrate. 
He had accompanied his father on the expedition 
against the Marcomanni and Quadi, but no sooner was 
Aurelius dead than his degenerate son became anxious 
to proceed to Rome, and soon concluded a hasty and 
disgraceful peace with the very barbarians whom his 
father was on the point of completely subjugating 
when he was cut off by disease. Notwithstanding the 
care which Antoninus had bestowed on his education, 
Commodus was ignorant to an extreme degree, having 
neither abilities nor inclination for profiting by the im- 
erial example and instruction. On his return to Rome 
Q speedily showed the bias of his natural disposition, 
giving himself up to unrestrained indulgence in the 
grossest vices. That he might do so without impedi¬ 
ment, he intrusted all power to Perennis, prsefect of 
the praetorian guard, a man of stern and cruel temper, 


who was at last slain by his soldiers for his severity. 
A conspiracy against the life of Commodus having 
failed, was followed by a long succession of judicial 
murders, to gratify the vengeance of the cowardly and 
vindictive tyrant. He was next threatened by a new 
danger : disaffection had spread over the legions, and 
an attempt of Maternus, a private soldier, who headed 
a band of deserters, and projected the assassination of 
Commodus'during the celebration of the festival of 
Cybele, was so ably conceived, that he must have been 
successful but for the treachery of an accomplice. But 
neither duty nor danger could draw Commodus from 
the sports of gladiators or the pleasures of debauchery. 
Cleander, a Phrygian slave, soon succeeded to the 
place and influence of Perennis, and for three years 
the empire groaned beneath his cruelty and rapacity. 
At length a new insurrection burst forth, which nothing 
could allay, the praetorian cavalry being defeated in the 
streets by the populace, until the head of Cleander 
was, by the emperor’s command, thrown to the insur¬ 
gents. In the mean time, Commodus was indulging 
his base tastes and appetites, not only by gross sensu¬ 
ality, but by attempting to rival the gladiators in their 
sanguinary occupation. Being a very skilful archer, 
and of great personal strength, he delighted in killing 
wild beasts in the amphitheatre, and thus pretending 
to rival the prowess of Hercules. In the gladiatorial 
contests, he publicly engaged so often, that he was 
the conqueror in 735 combats. Though luxurious in 
his dress, frequently resorting to the baths eight times 
in the day, scattering gold dust in his hair, and, from 
the fear of admitting the approach of a razor in the 
hand of another, singing off his beard, he was espe¬ 
cially proud of exhibitions of personal strength, and 
frequently butchered victims with his own hands in the 
garb of a sacrificer. Among the flatteries of the ob¬ 
sequious senate, none pleased him more than the vote 
which styled him the Hercules of Rome, not even that 
which annexed to him the titles of Pius and Felix, 
or which offered to abolish the name of the eternal 
city, and substitute for it Colonia Commodiana !—• 
After thirteen years of unmitigated oppression, his 
favourite Martia ultimately became the instrument by 
which the Roman world was delivered from its odious 
master. She discovered, from some private notes of 
Commodus, that herself, Lsetus the praetorian prsefect, 
and Electrus the chamberlain, were on the list devoted 
to death : a conspiracy was immediately formed, Mar¬ 
tia administered poison to the emperor, and, lest the 
measure should not prove effectual, the deed was com¬ 
pleted by suffocation, A.D. 192. (Lampndius, Vit. 
Com. — Encyclop. Metropol., Div. 3, vol. 2, p. 684.) 

Compsa, a city of Samnium, on the southern con¬ 
fines of the Hirpini. It revolted to Hannibal after the 
battle of Cannse, and it was here that this general left 
all his baggage and part of his army when advancing 
towards Campania. (Liv., 23, 1.) Compsa was re¬ 
taken by the Romans under Fabius two years after¬ 
ward. (Liv., 24, 20.) Velleius Paterculus says that 
Milo, the opponent of Clodius, met his death before 
the walls of Compsa, which he was at that time be¬ 
sieging (Veil. Paterc., 2, 68); but, according to Cse- 
sar and Pliny, this event took place near Cossa in Lu- 
cania. The modern Conza occupies the site of the 
ancient city. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 253.) 

Comum, a city of Gallia Cisalpina, at the southern 
extremity of the Lacus Larius, or Lago di Como. It 
was originally a Gallic settlement, and continued to be 
an inconsiderable place until a Greek colony was es¬ 
tablished here by Pompeius Strabo and Cornelius 
Scipio, and subsequently by Julius Caesar. Comum 
thenceforth took the name of Novum Comum. (Stra¬ 
bo, 212.— Porcacchi Nobilta della Citta di Como, vol. 
1, p. 10.) The enemies of Caesar, among whom were 
the consuls Cl. Marcellus and L. Cornelius Lentulus, 
appear to have taken the lead, and used every endeav- 

367 





CON 


CON 


our to ruin the colony, and even went so far as to pro¬ 
pose a law which should deprive it of its municipal 
rights. (Appian, Bell. Civ., 2, 26.— Plat., Vit. Cces. 
— Suet., Vit. Jul., 28.) If they succeeded in their 
designs, it was only for a short time ; since we may 
collect from the letters of the younger Pliny, who was 
born at Comum, that his native city was in his time in 
a very flourishing state, and in the enjoyment of all 
the privileges which belonged to a Roman corporation, 
independently of the prosperity and afiluence it would 
naturally derive from the peculiar advantages of its 
situation. (P/m., Ep., 3, 6.— Id. ibid., 4, 13.— Id. 
ibid., 4, 24.) Comum is now Como. (Cramer" 1 s Anc. 
Italy , vol. 1, p. 60.) 

Concani, a people of Spain, among the Cantabri. 
According to Horace (Ode, 3, 4, 34), they delighted 
in mingling the blood of horses with their drink. This 
same trait is mentioned by Silius Italicus (3, 360, 
seqq.), who makes them of Scythian origin, tracing 
them up to'the parent stock of the Massagetse. Strabo 
likewise speaks of a resemblance between them and 
the Scythians in certain customs. The Scythian Mas¬ 
sagetse, according to Dionysius Periegetes (v. 743, 
seqq.), drank milk mixed with horse’s blood ; which is 
also ascribed to the Geloni by Virgil (Georg., 3, 463); 
while Pliny states, that the Sarmata3 mixed millet with 
the milk of mares, or with the blood drawn out of their 
legs. Their chief town, Concana, is now called San- 
tilana , or Cangas de Onis. (Virg., G., 3, 463.— Sil. 
Ital., 3, 361.— Horat., Od., 3, 4, 34.) 

Condrusi, a people of Gallia Belgica, to the south 
of the Eburones. Their country answers at the pres¬ 
ent day to the archdeaconry of Condros, forming 
part of the bishopric of Liege. (Cces., B. G., 2, 4.— 
Lemairc, Ind. Geogr. ad Cces., vol. 4, p. 239.) 

Confluentes, a city of the Treviri, at the con¬ 
fluence of the Moselle and Rhine, now Coblentz. 
This town, in the time of the Romans, was the station 
of the first legion; and afterward became the resi¬ 
dence of the successors of Charlemagne. (Anton., 
Itin. — Tab. Peut. — Cces., B. G., 4, 15.— Amm. Mar¬ 
cell., 16, 3.) 

Conimbrica, a town of Lusitania, near the seacoast, 
on the river Munda, now Coimbra in modern Portugal. 
As regards the termination of the ancient nam e(-bnca), 
consult remarks under the article Mesembria. 

Conon, I. a distinguished Athenian commander, 
was one of the generals who succeeded Alcibiades in 
the command of the fleet during the Peloponnesian 
war. Having engaged with Callicratidas, the Spar¬ 
tan admiral, he lost thirty vessels, and was compelled 
to take shelter in the harbor of Mytilene, where he 
was blockaded by his opponent. The victory gained 
by the Athenians at the Arginusse released him at 
length from his situation. Being subsequently ap¬ 
pointed along with five others to the command of a 
powerful fleet, he proceeded to the Hellespont, where 
Lysander had charge of the Lacedsemonian squadron. 
The negligence of his fejflow-commanders, the result 
of overweening confidence in their own strength, led 
to the fatal defeat at iEgos Potamos, and the whole 
Athenian fleet was taken, except nine vessels of Co¬ 
non s division, with eight of which, thinking that the 
war was now desperate, he sailed to Salamis in the 
island of Cyprus. The ninth vessel was sent to 
Athens with the tidings of the defeat. In Cyprus, 
Conon remained at the court of Evagoras, watching 
mr an opportunity to prove of service to his country. 
Such a state of affairs soon presented itself. The 
Lacedaemonians, having no more rivals in Greece, sent 
Agesilaus with an army into Asia, to make war upon 
the Persian king Conon immediately repaired to 

* • • aZUS ’ sa ^ ra P Lydia and Ionia, aided him 

with his counsels, and suggested to him the idea of 
exciting the Thebans and other Grecian communities 
against Sparta, so as to compel that state to recall 


Agesilaus from the East. The plan was approved of 
by the King of Persia, and Conon, at the head of a 
Persian fleet, B.C. 398, attacked the Spartan admiral 
Pisander near Cnidus, and defeated him, with the loss 
of the greater part of his ships. Lacedaemon immedi¬ 
ately lost the empire of the sea, and her power in Asia 
Minor ceased. Conon thereupon, after ravaging the 
coasts of Laconia, returned to Attica, rebuilt the city 
walls as well as those of the Piraeus, with means which 
had been furnished by Pharnabazus, and gave on this 
occasion a public entertainment to all the Athenians. 
The Lacedaemonians, dispirited by the success of Co¬ 
non, and alarmed at the re-establishment of the Athe¬ 
nian fortifications, sent Antalcidas to Tiribazus, one 
of the Persian generals, to negotiate a peace. The 
Athenians, on their part, deputed Conon and some 
others to oppose this attempt; but Tiribazus being 
favourably inclined towards Sparta, and in all proba¬ 
bility jealous of Pharnabazus, imprisoned Conon, un¬ 
der the pretext that he was endeavouring to excite an 
insurrection in Hilolis and Ionia. The Persian king, 
however, disapproved of the conduct of the satrap, and 
Conon was released. The latter thereupon returned 
to the island of Cyprus, where he fell sick and died, 
about B.C. 390. His remains were conveyed to 
Athens. (Corn. Nep., in Vit. — Xen., Hist. Gr., 1, 4, 
10.— Id. ib., 2, 1, 21, &c.— Diod. Sic., 13, 78.— Id., 
14, 39.— Id., 14, 83, &c.)—II. A native of Samos, dis¬ 
tinguished as an astronomer and geometrician. None 
of his works have reached us ; he is mentioned, how¬ 
ever, with eulogiums, by Archimedes, Virgil, Seneca, 
and others. Conon lived between about 300 and 260 
years before our era. Apollonius, in the fourth book 
of his Conic Sections, does not speak as favourably of 
him as Archimedes has done. He thinks that many of 
his demonstrations might be rendered more concise. 
This is nearly all that we know respecting Conon as a 
geometer. He is mentioned as an astronomer by one 
of the commentators on Ptolemy, who speaks of his 
having made observations in Italy. Seneca (Qucest. 
Nat., 7, 3) informs us, that he had made out a list of 
the eclipses of the sun that had been visible in Egypt. 
Lie is mentioned also by Virgil ( Eclog., 3, 40), and 
by Catullus in his translation of the Greek poem of 
Callimachus, on the tresses of Berenice. The Greek 
piece itself, in which he bore a conspicuous part, is 
lost. (Vid. Berenice.) Delambre ..expresses consid¬ 
erable doubt as to the correctness of the story, which 
makes Conon to have named a new constellation after 
the locks of the Egyptian queen. (Delambre, in Bicgr. 
Univ., vol. 9, p. 427.) 

Consentes, the name which the Romans gave to 
the twelve superior deities, or Dii Majorum Gentium. 
The best derivation of the name is that which traces 
it to the participle of the obsolete verb conso, “ to ad¬ 
vise” or “ counsel,’’ the Dii Consentes being they 
who formed the council of the sky. (Foss., Etym., s. 
v.) Ennius has expressed their names in the two fol¬ 
lowing lines: 

“ Juno, Vesta, Ceres, Diana, Minerva, Venus, Mars, 
Mcrcurius, Jovi', Neptunus, Vulcanus, Apollo 

(Ennii, Fragm., ed. Hcsscl., p. 164.—Compare Co- 
lumna, ad loc.) 

Consentia, a town of the Brutii, the capital of that 
people according to Strabo (255), and situated at the 
sources of the river Crathis. It was taken by Han¬ 
nibal after the surrender of Petilia (Liv., 23, 30), but 
again fell into the hands of the Romans towards the 
end of the war. (Liv., 29, 38.) It is now repre¬ 
sented by Cosenza. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p 
434.) 

Constans, a son of Constantine. (Vid. Constan- 
tinus.) 

Constantia, a granddaughter of Constantine, who 
married the Emperor Gratian. 






CON 


CONST ANTINUS. 


Constantina, a princess, wife of the Emperor 
Callus. 

Constantinopolis. Vid. Byzantium. 

Constantinus (Caius Flavius Valerius Aurelius 
Claudius), surnaqped the Great, son of the Emperor 
Constantius Chlorus, was born A.D. 272, or, according 
to some authorities, A.D. 274, at Naisus, a city of Da¬ 
cia Mediterranea. When Constantine’s father was 
associated in the government by Dioclesian, the son 
was retained at court as a kind of hostage, but was 
treated with great kindness at first, and was allowed 
several opportunities of distinguishing himself. After 
the abdication of Dioclesian, Constantius and Gale- 
rius were elevated to the rank of Augusti, while two 
new Cassars, Severus and Maximin, were appoint*! 
to second them. Constantine was not called to the 
succession. Dioclesian, partial to Galerius, his son- 
in-law, had left the nomination of the two new Cae¬ 
sars to the latter; and the son of Constantius, whose 
popularity and talents had excited the jealousy of 
Galerius, and whose departure, although earnestly so¬ 
licited by his father, was delayed from time to time 
under the most frivolous pretences, with difficulty at 
ength obtained permission to join his parent in the 
West, and only escaped the machinations of the em¬ 
peror by travelling with his utmost speed until he 
reached the western coast of Gaul. He came just in 
time to join the Roman legions, which were about to 
sail under his father’s command to Britain, in order to 
make war upon the Caledonians. Having subdued 
the northern barbarians, Constantius returned to York, 
where he died in the month of July, in the year 306. 
Galerius, sure of the support of his two creatures, the 
Caesars, had waited impatiently for the death of his 
colleague, to unite the whole Roman empire under his 
individual sway. But the moderation and justice of 
Constantius had rendered him the more dear to his 
soldiers from the contrast of these qualities with the 
ferocity of his rival. At the moment of his death, the 
legions stationed at York, as a tribute of gratitude and 
affection to his memory, and, according to some, at his 
dying request, saluted his son Constantine with the 
title of Csesar, and decorated him with the purple. 
Whatever resentment Galerius felt at this, he soon 
perceived the danger of engaging in a civil war. As 
the eldest of the emperors, and the representative of 
Dioclesian, he recognised the authority of the col¬ 
league imposed upon him by the legions. He as¬ 
signed unto him the administration of Gaul and Brit¬ 
ain, but gave him only the fourth rank among the 
rulers of the empire, and the title of Caesar. Under 
this official appellation, Constantine administered the 
prefecture of Gaul for six years (A.D. 306-312), 
perhaps the most glorious, and certainly the most vir¬ 
tuous, period of his life.—The title and rank of Augus¬ 
tus, which his soldiers had conferred upon Constan¬ 
tine, but which Galerius had not allowed him to re¬ 
tain, the latter gave to Severus, one of his own Caesars. 
This dignity had been expected by Maxentius, son of 
the abdicated Emperor Maximian, the former colleague 
of Dioclesian. Indignant at his disappointment, Max¬ 
entius caused himself to be proclaimed emperor by his 
army ; and, to colour his usurpation, he induced his 
father to leave his retreat and resume the imperial ti¬ 
tle. A scene of contention followed, scarcely paral¬ 
leled in the annals of Rome. Severus marched against 
the two usurpers; but was abandoned by his own 
troops, yielded, and was slain. Galerius levied a 
great army, and marched into Italy against Max¬ 
imian and Maxentius, who, dreading his power, re¬ 
tired to Gaul, and endeavoured to procure the support 
of Constantine. This politic prince did not consider 
it expedient to provoke a war at that time, and for 
no better cause; and Galerius having withdrawn 
from Italy and returned to the East, Maximian and 
Maxentius returned to Rome. To aid him in the 
A A A 


struggle, Galerius conferred the title of emperor on 
his friend Licinius; and thus there were at once six 
pretenders to the sovereignty of the empire, name¬ 
ly, Galerius and Licinius, Maximian and his son Max¬ 
entius, Maximin, who had been nominated Caesar 
by Galerius, and Constantine, the son and successor 
of Constantius. Among these rivals Constantins 
possessed a decided superiority ir. prudence and accl.* 
ities, both military and political. The harsh tem¬ 
per of Maximian soon led to a quarrel between him 
and his son Maxentius. Quitting Rome, he went to 
Gaul, to Constantine, who had become his son-in-law 
when he and his son were endeavouring to make head 
against Galerius. Here also Maximian found himself 
disappointed of that power which he so greatly longed 
to possess, and, having plotted against Constantine, 
was detected and put to death. Galerius died not 
long after, leaving his power to be divided between 
his Caesars Maximin and Licinius ; and there were 
now four competitors for the empire, Constantine, 
Maxentius, Maximin, and Licinius. Maxentius speed¬ 
ily provoked open hostilities with Constantine, who 
marched at the head of a powerful army towards Rome. 
It was while Constantine was proceeding on this mo¬ 
mentous expedition that he made an open and public 
declaration in favour of Christianity. Before that 
time, the persecuting edicts of Dioclesian had been 
much mitigated by the forbearance and leniency of 
Constantius; and Constantine not only followed his 
father’s example in being merciful to the persecuted 
Christians, but even showed them some marks of pos¬ 
itive favour. Very considerable numbers of them, in 
consequence, flocked to his standard, and swelled the 
ranks of his army. Their peaceful, orderly, and faithful 
conduct, contrasting most favourably with the turbu¬ 
lent and dissolute behaviour of those who formed the 
mass of common armies, won his entire confidence. 
To what extent this led Constantine to form a favour- 
ble opinion of Christianity, or inclined him to view 
with esteem and respect the tenets which had produced 
such results, cannot be ascertained. How far his 
avowed reception of Christianity was influenced by 
the prudence of the politician, how far by the convic¬ 
tion of the convert, it is impossible to determine. The 
accounts of his dream and his vision (vid. Labarum), 
which united to enforce his trust in Christianity, bear 
too much the aspect of fiction, or of having been the 
illusive consequences of mental anxiety, brooding in¬ 
tensely on the possible results of a great religious rev¬ 
olution, to be woven into the narrative of sober history. 
This, at least, is certain: Constantine caused* the cross 
to be employed as the imperial standard, and advanced 
with it to promised victory. After the armies of Max¬ 
entius, led by his generals, had sustained two suc¬ 
cessive defeats, that emperor himself, awakening from 
his sensual and inactive life at Rome, advanced against 
his formidable assailant, and met him near the little 
river Cremera, about nine miles from the city. Max¬ 
entius lost the day, after a bloody conflict, and, in en¬ 
deavouring to enter the city by the Milvian bridge, 
was precipitated into the Tiber, where he perished. 
Constantine was received at Rome with acclamations ; 
Africa acknowledged him, as well as Italy ; and an 
edict of religious toleration, issued at Milan, extended 
the advantages, hitherto enjoyed by Gaul alo’ne, to 
this prefecture also. After a brief stay at Rome, du¬ 
ring which he restored to the senate their authority, 
disbanded the praetorian guard, and destroyed their for¬ 
tified camp, from which they had so long awed the 
city and given rulers to the empire, Constantine pro¬ 
ceeded to Illyricum to meet Licinius, with whom he 
had formed a secret league before marching against 
Maxentius. The two emperors met at Milan, where 
their alliance was.ratified by the marriage of Licinius 
to Constantine’s sister. During this calm interview, 
Constantine prevailed upon Licinius to repeal the per- 

369 



CON 


O O JN 


secutmg edicts of Dioclesian, and to issue a new one, 
by which Christianity was encouraged, its teachers 
were honoured, and its adherents advanced to places 
of trust and influence in the state. After the over¬ 
throw of Maximin by Licinius, and his death at Ni- 
eomedia, Constantine and his brother-in-law were now 
the only two that remained of the six competitors for 
the empire ; and the peace between them, which had 
seemed to be established on so firm a basis, was soon 
interrupted by a strife for sole supremacy. In the 
first war (A.C. 315) Constantine wrested Illyricum 
from his competitor. After an interval of eight years 
the contest was renewed. Licinius was beaten before 
Adrianople, the 3d July, 323, and Constantine the 
Great was recognised as sole master of the Roman 
world.—The seat of empire was now transferred to 
Byzantium, which took from him the name of Con¬ 
stantinople. Several edicts were issued for the sup¬ 
pression of idolatry ; and their churches and property 
restored to the Christians, of which they had been de¬ 
prived during the last persecution. A re-construction 
of the empire was effected upon a plan entirely new, 
and this renovated empire was pervaded by the worship 
and the institutions of Christianity. That much of 
the policy of the statesman was mixed up with this 
patronage of the new religion can easily be imagined. 
But still it would be wrong to make him, as some have 
done, a mere hypocrite and dissembler. The state of 
his religious knowledge, as far as we have any means 
of judging, was certainly very inadequate and imper¬ 
fect ; but he was well aware of the characters of the 
two conflicting religions, Christianity and Paganism, 
and the purity of the former could not but have made 
some impression upon his mind.—The private charac¬ 
ter of Constantine has suffered, in the eyes of posteri¬ 
ty, from the cruel treatment of Crispus,his son by his 
first wife, whom he had made the partner of his empire 
and the commander of his armies. Crispus was at the 
head of the administration in Gaul, where he gained 
the hearts of the people. In the wars against Licinius 
he had displayed singular talents, and had secured vic¬ 
tory to the arms of his father. But, from that moment, 
a shameful and unnatural jealousy stifled every paternal 
feeling in the bosom of the monarch. He detained 
Crispus in his palace, surrounded him with spies and 
informers, and at length, in the month of July, 326, 
ordered him to be arrested in the midst of a grand 
festival, to be carried off to Pola in Istria, and there 
put to death. A cousin of Crispus, the son of Licini¬ 
us and Constantine’s sister, was at the same time sent, 
without trial, without even accusation, to the block. 
His mother implored in vain, and died of grief. Faus- 
ta, the daughter of Maximian, the wife of Constantine, 
and the mother of the three princes who succeeded 
him, was shortly after stifled in the bath by order of 
her husband.—Constantine died at the age of sixty- 
three, at Nicomedia, May 22, 337, after a reign of 
thirty-one years from the death of his father, and of 
fourteen from the conquest of the empire. ( Hether- 
ington , Hist, of Rome , p. 236, seqq. — Sismondi, Fall 
of the Roman Empire, p. 76, seqq. — Encyclop. Me- 
cropol., div. 3, vol. 3, p. 74, seqq.) —Constantine left 
three sons, Constantine, Constans, and Constantius, 
among whom he divided his empire. The first, who 
had Gaul, Spain, and Britain for his portion,'was con¬ 
quered by the armies of his brother Constans, and 
killed in the twenty-fifth year of his age, A.D. 340. 
Magnentius, the governor of the provinces of Rhaetia, 
murdered Constans in his bed, after a reign of thirteen 
years ; and Constantius, the only surviving brother, 
now become the sole emperor, A.D. 353, punished his 
brother s murderer, and gave way to cruelty and op¬ 
pression. He visited Rome, where he displayed a 
triumph, and died in his march against Julian, who had 
been proclaimed emperor by his soldiers. 

Constantius, I. C-hlorus, son of Eutropius, and 


father of Constantine the Great, merited the title of 
Caesar, which he obtained, by his victories in Britain 
and Germany. He became the colleague of Galerius 
on the abdication of Dioclesian ; and, after bearing 
the character of a humane and benevolent prince, he 
died at York, and had his son for his successor, A.D. 
306.—II. The third son of Constantine the Great, 
(Vid. Constantinus.) — III. The father of Julian and 
Gallus, was son of Constantius by Theodora, and died 
A.D. 337. — IV. A Roman general, who married Pla- 
cidia, the sister of Honorius, and was proclaimed em¬ 
peror, an honour he enjoyed only seven months. He 
died universally regretted, 421 A.D., and was succeed¬ 
ed by his son Valentinian in the West. 

#Consualia, the festival of the god Consus. (Vid 
Consus.) 

Consules, two chief magistrates at Rome, chosen 
annually by the people. The office commenced af¬ 
ter the expulsion of the kings, and the first two con 
suls were L. Junius Brutus and L. Tarquinius Col- 
latinus, A.U.C. 244. In the first ages of the republic 
the two consuls were always chosen from patrician 
families ; but the people obtained the piivilege, A.U.C. 
388, of electing one of the consuls lrom their own 
body ; and sometimes both were plebeians. The first 
consul from the plebeians was L. Sextius.—It was 
required that every candidate for the consulship should 
be forty-three years of age. He was always to ap¬ 
pear at the election as a private man, without a reti¬ 
nue ; and it was requisite, before he canvassed for the 
office, to have discharged the inferior functions of 
quaestor, sedile, and praetor. Sometimes, however, 
these qualifications were disregarded. M. Valerius 
Corvus was made a consul in his twenty-third year; 
Scipio Africanus the Elder in his twenty-fourth, and 
the Younger in his thirty-eighth; T. Quinctius Flami- 
ninus when not quite thirty ; Pompey before he was 
full thirty-six.—The consuls were at the head of the 
whole republic ; all the other magistrates were subject 
to them, except the tribunes of the commons. They 
assemble*! the people and senate, laid before them 
what they pleased, and executed their decrees. The 
laws which they proposed and got passed were usually 
called by their name. They received all letters from 
the governors of provinces, and from foreign kings and 
states, and gave audience to ambassadors. The year 
was named after them, as it used to be at Athens from 
one of the archons. Their insignia were the same 
with those of the kings (except the crown), namely, 
the toga praetexta, sella curulis, the sceptre or ivory 
staff, and twelve lictors with the fasces and securis. 
Within the city, the lictors went before only one of 
the consuls, and that commonly for a month alter¬ 
nately. A public servant, called accensus, went be¬ 
fore the other consul, and the lictors followed. He 
who was eldest, or had most children, or who was first 
elected, or had most suffrages, had the fasces first 
When the consuls commanded different armies, each 
of them had the fasces and securis; but when they 
both commanded the same army, they commonly had 
them for a day alternately. Valerius Poplicola took 
away the securis from the fasces, i. e., he took from 
the consuls the power of life and death, and only left 
them the right of scourging;. Out of the city, how¬ 
ever, when invested with military command, they re¬ 
tained the securis, i. e., the right of punishing capi- 
tally. Their provinces used anciently to be decreed 
by the senate after the consuls were elected or had 
entered on their office. But by the Sempronian law, 
passed A.U.C. 631, the senate always decreed two 
provinces to the future consuls before their election, 
which they, after entering upon their office, divided 
by lot or agreement. Sometimes a certain province 
was assigned to some one of the consuls, both by the 
senate and people, and sometimes again the people 
reversed what the senate had decreed respecting the 





COP 


COP 


provinces No one could be consul two following 
years ; an interval of ten years must have elapsed pre¬ 
vious to the second application; yet this regulation 
was sometimes broken, and we find Marius re-elected 
consul, after the expiration of his office, during the 
Cimbrian war. The office of consul became a mere 
matter of form under the emperors ; although, as far 
as appearance went, they who filled the station in¬ 
dulged in much greater pomp than had before been 
customary : they wore the toga picta or palmata, and 
had their fasces wreathed with laurel, which used for¬ 
merly to be done only by those who triumphed. They 
also added the securis or axe to the fasces of their lie- 
tors.—Ca5sar introduced a custom, which became a 
common one after his time, of appointing consuls for 
merely a part of a year. The object was to gratify a 
larger number of political partisans. Those chosen 
on the first day of January, however, gave name to 
the year, and were called ordinarii; the rest were 
termed suffecti. Under Commodus there were no 
less than twenty-five consuls in the course of a single 
year. Constantine renewed the original institution, 
and*permitted the consuls to be a whole year in office. 

Consus, a Roman deity, the god of counsel, as his 
name denotes. His altar was in the Circus Maximus, 
and was always covered, except on his festival-day, 
the 18th August, called Consualia. Horse and chariot 
races were celebrated on this occasion, and the work¬ 
ing-horses, mules, and asses were crowned with flow¬ 
ers, and allowed to rest. {Dion. Hal., 1, 33.— Plat., 
Qucest. Rom., 48.) Hence Consus has probably been 
confounded with Neptunus Equestris. It was at the 
Consualia that the Sabine maidens were carried off by 
the Romans. {Keightley's Mythology , p. 529.) 

Cop^e, a small town of Boeotia, on the northern 
chore of the Lake Copai's, and giving name to that 
piece of water. It was a town of considerable an¬ 
tiquity, being noticed by Homer in the Catalogue of 
the ships. {II., 2, 502.) Pausanias remarks here the 
temples of Bacchus, Ceres, and Serapis (9, 24.— 
Compare Thucyd., 4, 94.— Strab., 406 and 410). Sir 
W. Gell points out, to the north of Kardiiza (the an¬ 
cient Acrsephia), “ a triangular island, on which are 
the walls of the ancient Copae, and more distant, on 
another island, the village of Topolias, which gives the 
present name to the lake.” {GelVs Itin., p. 143.) 
And Dodwell speaks of a low insular tongue of land 
projecting from the foot of Ptous, and covered with 
the ruins of a small ancient city, the walls of which 
are seen encircling it to the water’s edge. {DodweWs 
Tour, vol. 2, p. 56.) 

Copais Lacus, a lake of Boeotia, which, as Strabo 
informs us, received different appellations from the 
different towns situated along its shores. At Haliar- 
tus it was called Haliartius Lacus {Strabo, 410); at 
Orchomenus, Orchomenius. {Plin., 16, 36.) Pindar 
and Homer distinguish it by the name of Cephissus. 
That of Copais, however, finally prevailed, as Copae 
was situate near the deepest part of it. It is by far 
the most considerable lake of Greece, being not less 
than three hundred and eighty stadia, or forty-seven 
miles in circuit, according to Strabo (407). Pau¬ 
sanias states, that it was navigable from the mouth of 
the Cephissus to Copae (9, 24). As this considera¬ 
ble extent of water had no apparent discharge, it 
sometimes threatened to inundate the whole surround¬ 
ing country. Tradition indeed asserted, that near 
Copae there stood, in the time of Cecrops, two ancient 
cities, Eleusis and Athenae, the latter of which was sit¬ 
uated on the river Triton, which, if it is the torrent 
noticed by Pausanias, was near Alalcomenae. {Stra¬ 
bo, 407.— Pausan., 1. c .) Stephanus Byzantinus re¬ 
ports, that when Crates drained the waters which had 
overspread the plains, the latter town became visible 
(a. v. ’A Orjvai). Some writers have asserted, that it 
occupied the site of the ancient Orchomenus. {Stra¬ 


bo, l. c. — Steph. Byz., v. c.) Fortunately for ttie 
Boeotians, nature had supplied several subterranean 
canals, by which the waters of the lake found their 
way into the sea of Euboea. Strabo supposes they 
were caused by earthquakes. Their number is un¬ 
certain ; but Dodwell, who seems to have inquired 
minutely into the subject, was informed by the natives 
that there were as many as fifteen. He himself only 
observed four, one at the foot of Mount Ptous, near 
Acrasphia, which conveys the waters of Copais to the 
Lake Hylica, a distance of about two miles. The other 
katabotlira, as they are called by the modern Greeks, 
are on the northeastern side of the lake. Dodwel 
speaks of these subterranean canals as being in a cal¬ 
careous rock, of a hard though friable quality, and full 
of natural caverns and fissures. ^ Dodwell's Tour, vol. 
1, p. 238.) In consequence of some obstructions in 
these outlets, an attempt was made to cleanse them in 
the time of Alexander, and for this purpose square pits 
were cut in the rock in the supposed direction of this 
underground stream. Mr. Raikes saw some of these 
remaining. {MS. Journal .— Walpole's Memoirs, vol. 
1, p. 304.) According to Dodwell (vol. 1, p. 240), 
“ the general size of these pits is four feet square ; 
the depth varies according to the unevenness of the 
ground under which the water is conducted to its out¬ 
let. It is impossible to penetrate into these deep re¬ 
cesses, which are most of them filled with stones or 
overgrown with bushes; but it would not be difficult to 
ascertain their depth, and their direction might be 
traced by following the shafts, which extend nearly 
to the sea.”—Mr. Raikes gives the following account 
of the outlets where they empty into the sea. “From 
the mouth of the Larmi I rode along its banks, until, 
in about three miles, I came to a spot covered with 
rocks and bushes, in the middle of which the whole 
river burst with impetuosity from holes at the foot 
of a low cliff, and immediately assumed the form of a 
considerable stream. Above this source there is a 
small plain under cultivation, bounded to the west by 
a range of low rocky hills. From these a magnificent 
view of the Copaic Lake and the mountains of Pho- 
cis presents itself to the eye.” The same writer re¬ 
marks, that “ when the undertaking for clearing the 
katabothra, in the time of Alexander, was proposed, 
the rich and flourishing towns of the plain were re¬ 
duced to a state of desolation by the encroachments of 
the lake, and under the despondency occasioned by a 
universal monarchy, sunk into complete decay. At 
present the rising of the waters in winter has turned 
a great portion of the richest soil in the world into a 
morass, and, should any permanent internal obstruction 
occur in the stream, the whole of this fertile plain might 
gradually become included in the limits of the Copaic 
Lake.”—The Copaic Lake was especially famed for 
its eels, which grew to a large size, and were highly 
esteemed by the epicures of antiquity. {Archestr. ap. 
Athen., 7, 53.) We know from Aristophanes that 
they found their way to the Athenian market {Acharn., 
v. 880, seqq. — Lysistr., v. 36); and we are inform¬ 
ed by Dodwell (vol. 1, p. 237), “that they are as 
much celebrated at present as they were in the time 
of the ancients ; and, after being salted and pickled, 
are sent as delicacies to various parts of Greece.” 
Some which were extraordinarily large were offered 
up as sacrifices, and decorated like victims. {Athen., 
7, 50—Compare Pausan., 9, 24.— I. Poll., 6, 63.— 
Cramer's Ancient Greece , vol. 2, p. 256.) 

Cophas, a harbour in Gedrosia, supposed by seme 
to be the modern Gondel. (Compare the remarks of 
Vincent, Commerce of the Ancients, vol. 1, p. 252, 
seqq.) 

Copia, the goddess of plenty among the Romans, 
represented as bearing a horn filled with fruits, &c. 

Coptus, a city of Egypt, in the northern part of the 
Thebsus, acd to the eiwt of the Nile, from which rivet* 

37 






COR 


COR 


it stood some distance back in a plain. Under the 
Pharaohs its true name appears to have been Chem- 
mis, and it would seem to have been at that time 
merely a place connected with the religious traditions 
of the Egyptian nation, Under the Ptolemies, on the 
other hand, not only the appellation for the place as¬ 
sumed more of a Greek form, but the city itself rose 
into commercial importance. The Arabian Gulf be¬ 
ginning to be navigated by the Greeks, and traffic be¬ 
ing pushed from this quarter as far as India, Coptus 
became the centre of communication between this lat¬ 
ter country and Alexandrea, through the harbour of 
Berenice on the Red Sea. It was well situated for 
such a purpose, since the Arabian chain of mountains, 
which elsewhere forms a complete barrier along the 
coast, has here an opening which, after various wind¬ 
ings, conducts to the shore of the Red Sea. Along this 
route the caravans proceeded; and camels were also 
employed between Coptus and the Nile. The road 
from Coptus to Berenice was the work of Ptolemy 
Philadelphus, and 258 miles in length. It was raised 
above the level of the surrounding country.—Coptus 
was destroyed by the Emperor Dioclesian, for having 
sided with his opponent Achilleus. ( Theophan., 
Chronogr., p. 4, ed. Paris. — Euseb ., Chron ., p. 178.) 
Its favourable situation for commerce, however, soon 
caused it again to arise, and Hierocles speaks of Cop¬ 
tus in the sixth century.—The modern name is Keft 
or Kuypt, a name which exhibits, according to some, 
the simple form of that word which the Greeks cor¬ 
rupted or improved into JEgyptus. Plutarch states 
{De Is. et Os., p. 356.— Op., ed. Reiske, vol. 7, p. 
405), that Isis, upon receiving the news of the death 
of Osiris, cut off one of her locks here, and that hence 
the place was called Coptus, this term signifying, in 
the Egyptian language, want or privation. Mannert 
suggests, that Coptus may have denoted in the Egyp¬ 
tian tongue a mixed population, a name well suited 
to the inhabitants of a large commercial city ; and he 
conjectures, that the modern appellation of Kopts, as 
given to the present mingled population, which is sup¬ 
posed to be descended in part from the ancient Egyp¬ 
tians, may have reference to the same idea. {.Man¬ 
nert, Geogr., vol. 10, pt. 1, p. 365.) 

Cora, a town of Latium, southwest of Anagnia. It 
was a place of great antiquity, and has preserved its 
name unchanged to the present day. Virgil ( JEn., 6, 
773) makes it to have been a colony from Alba, while 
Pliny (3, 5) says, it was founded by Dardanus, a Tro¬ 
jan. Cora suffered greatly during the contest with 
Spartacus, being taken and sacked by one of his wan¬ 
dering bands. ( Flor ., 3, 20.) It apparently, how¬ 
ever, recovered from this devastation, as there are 
some fine remains of ancient buildings to be seen 
here, which must have been erected in the reigns of 
Tiberius and Claudius. But Propertius and Lucan 
speak of Cora as the seat of ruin and desolation. 
[Propert., 4, 11.— Lucan, 7, 392.— Nibby, Viag.An- 
tiq., vol. 2, p. 207.— Cramer' 1 s Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 
105.) 

Coracesium, a maritime town of Pamphylia, south¬ 
east of Side. It is described by Strabo as a strong 
and important fortress, situate on a steep rock. Pom- 
pey took Coracesium in the piratical war. It is 
also incidentally noticed by Livy (33, 20.— Com¬ 
pare Scylax, p. 40.— Plin., 5, 27). Hierocles as¬ 
signs Coracesium to Pamphylia, and D’Anville’s map 
agrees with this. Others, however, to Cilicia ; and 
Cramer’s map places it in this latter country, just be¬ 
yond the confines of Pamphylia. The site of Cora¬ 
cesium corresponds with that of Alaya. Capt. Beau¬ 
fort describes it as a promontory rising abruptly from 
a low sandy isthmus. Two of its sides are cliffs 
of great height, and absolutely perpendicular; and 
the eastern side, on which the town is placed, is so 
#teep, that the houses seem to rest on each other It 
372 


forms, according to him, a natural fortress that rnigni 
be rendered impregnable ; and the numerous walls and 
towers prove how anxiously its former possessors la¬ 
boured to make it so. {Beaufort's Karamania, p 
172.— Cramer's Asia Minor , vol. 2, p. 320.) 

Coralli, a savage people of Sarmatia Europea, who 
inhabited the shores of the Euxine, near the me uths 
of the Danube. {Ovid, ex Pont., 4, 2, 37.) 

Coras, a brother of Catillus and Tiburtus (rid. Ti- 
bur), who fought against iEneas. ( Virg.,JEn., 7,672.) 

Corax, a Sicilian, whom the ancients regarded as 
the creator of the rhetorical art. Cicero, following 
Aristotle, says, that when the tyrants were driven out 
of Sicily, and private affairs began again to be taken 
cognizance of by the tribunals of justice, Corax and 
Tisias wrote on the rhetorical art, and penned pre¬ 
cepts of oratory. In this way, according to him, the 
eloquence of the bar arose, the Sicilians being naturally 
an acute race and given to disputation. {Cic., Brut., 
c. 12.—Compare De Orat., 1, 20, and 3, 21.) Corax 
and Tisias must have lived, consequently, about 473 
B.C., since this is the period when the Sicilians re-- 
gained their freedom, of which they had been deprived 
by Gelon and the other tyrants who were contempo¬ 
raneous with him. {Clavier, in Biog. Univ., vol. 9, 
p. 556.) 

Corbulo, Cn. Domitius, a celebrated Roman com 
mander, under Claudius and Nero. He was famed 
for his military talent, his rigid observance of ancient 
discipline, and for the success of his arms, especially 
against the Paj;thians. On account of his great repu 
tation, he became an object of jealousy and suspicion 
to Nero, who recalled him, under pretence of reward¬ 
ing his merit. When Corbulo reached Corinth, he 
met there an order to die. Reflecting on his own want 
of prudence and foresight, he fell upon his sword, ex 
claiming, “ I have well deserved this !” Thus perish¬ 
ed, A.D. 67, the greatest warrior, and one of the most 
virtuous men of his time. Corbulo had written Me¬ 
moirs of the wars carried on by him, after the manner 
of Caesar’s Commentaries ; but they have not reached 
our day. {Tacit., Ann., 11, 18.— Id. ib., 13, 35.— 
Id. ib., 13, 14, &c.) 

Corbulonis Monumentum, a place in the north¬ 
western part of Germany, among the Frisii, near the 
confines of the Chauci. It is supposed to answer to 
the modern Groningen'. {Tacit., Ann., 11, 19.) 

Corcyra, an island in the Ionian Sea, off the coast 
of Epirus, in which Homer places the fabled gardens 
of Alcinoiis. It is said to have been first known un¬ 
der the name of Drepane, perhaps from its similarity 
of shape to a scythe. {Apollon., Argon., 4,982.) To 
this name succeeded that of Scheria, always used by 
Homer, and by which it was probably known in his 
time. From the Odyssey we learn, that this island was 
then inhabited by Phoeacians, a people who, even at 
that early period, had acquired considerable skill in 
nautical affairs, and possessed extensive commercial 
relations, since they traded with the Phoenicians, and 
also with Euboea and other countries.—Corcyra was 
in after days the principal city of the island, and was 
situated precisely where the modern town of Corfu 
stands. Scylax speaks of three harbours, one of which 
is depicted as beautiful. Homer describes the posi 
tion of the city very accurately {Od., 6, 262). In the 
middle ages, the citadel obtained the name of Kopv<jxo, 
from its two conical hills or crests, which appellation 
was, in process of time, applied to the whole town, 
and finally to the island itself. Hence the modern 
name of Corfu, which is but a corruption of the for¬ 
mer. {Wordsworth's Greece, p. 263.) As, however, 
the island is designated in Boccacio by the appella¬ 
tion of Gurfo, and as the modern Greek term is Korfo, 
some have imagined that the name Corfu originated 
in a Romaic corruption of the ancient word for Kolpo 
{koIttoq), “ gulf” or “ bay,” which might well be 





COR 


COK 


applied to the harbour beneath the double summits. 
( Wordsworth , l. c .) Corfu forms at the present day 
one of the Ionian Islands, and is the most important of 
the number. It is 70 miles in length by 30 in breadth, 
and contains a population of 30,000 souls. The olive 
arrives at greater perfection here than in any other part 
of Greece ; but the oil obtained from it is acrid.—Corfu 
was for a long time considered as the stronghold of It¬ 
aly against the attacks of the Mussulmans. The fol¬ 
lowing is a sketch of the history of this island. Its 
earlier periods are enveloped in the mist of uncertainty 
and conjecture. A colony of Colchians is said to have 
settled there about 1349 years before our era. It was 
afterward governed by kings of whom little is known. 
Homer has, indeed, immortalized the* name of Alci- 
noiis. But it is not easy to draw a map of the Ho¬ 
meric Phaeacia, which shall coincide in its details with 
the localities of Corfu ; nor will the topographer find 
it a simple task to discover the natural objects con¬ 
nected in the Odyssey with the city of the Phoeacian 
king. In process of time, Corcyra, enriched and ag¬ 
grandized by its maritime superiority, became one of 
the most powerful nations in Greece. ( Thucyd ., 1, 1.) 
The Corinthians, under Chersicrates, formed a settle¬ 
ment here in 753 B.C., and 415 years afterward it was 
captured by Agathocles of Syracuse, who gave it to 
his daughter Lanessa upon her marriage with Pyrrhus 
of Epirus. It was occupied by the troops of the Il¬ 
lyrian queen Teuta, about fifty-eight years after its 
seizure by Agathocles, but was soon after taken from 
her by the Romans, under the consul Cn. Flavius; 
and, although it had the privileges of a free city, it 
remained under the Romans for many centuries. In 
the time of Strabo it was reduced to extreme misery, 
owing to the vices of its administration and its want of 
moderation in prosperity. Corfu has for several cen¬ 
turies been celebrated for its powerful fortresses, to 
which great additions were made by the French, and 
subsequently by the English, in the hands of which 
latter people it, together with the other Ionian islands, 
at present remains. ( DodwdVs Tour , vol. 1, p. 36, 
seqq .)—II. An island in the Adriatic, on the coast of 
Illyricum, termed Nigra (“Black”), in Greek M ehaiva, 
to distinguish it from the more celebrated island of the 
same name. It is now Curzola. Apollonius accounts 
for the epithet just mentioned from the dark masses of 
wood with which it was crowned. (Argon., 4, 571.) 
Scymnus attributes to this island the honour of hav¬ 
ing received a colony from Cnidus in Asia Minor. 
( Scymn ., v. 426.—Compare Scylax, p. 8.— Strabo, 
315.) 

Corduba, a city of Hispania Baetica, on the right 
bank of the river Baetis, and about 1200 stadia from 
the sea. The river being navigable to this quarter, 
Corduba became, in consequence, a large and opulent 
commercial place. It was the birthplace of both the 
Senecas, and of the poet Lucan, and is now Cordova. 
(Strab., 141.— Plin., 3, 3.— Wernsdorff, Poet. Lat. 
Min., vol. 5, pt. 3, p. 1366.) 

Core I. (Kopy, “ the maiden"), an Attic name for 
Proserpina. Some, not very correctly, derive the term 
from Ketpu, “ to cut,” &c., and make it have reference 
to the “ harvest.” (Journal Royal Institution, No. 
1, p. 59.)—II. A Corinthian female, said to have been 
the inventress of plaster-casts. (Athenag., Leg. pro 
Christ., 14, p. 59.— Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.) 

Corfinium, the capital of the Peligni, in Italy, about 
three miles from the Aternus. During the Social war 
it took the name of.Italica, and had the honour of be- 
mg*styled the capital of Italy. This arrangement, how¬ 
ever, was of short continuance, as Corfinium appears 
to have seceded from the confederacy before the con¬ 
clusion of the war. (Diod. Sic., Fragm., 37.) In la¬ 
ter times we find it still regarded as one of the most 
important cities of this part of Italy, and one which 
Caesar was most anxious to secure in his enterprise 


against the liberties of his country. It surrendered to 
him after a short defence. (Bell. Civ., 1, 16.-—Com 
pare Florus, 4, 2.— Appian, Bell. Civ., 2, 38.) The 
church of £. Pelino, about three miles from the town 
of Popoli, stands on the site of this ancient city, and 
the little hamlet of Pertinia occupies probably the 
place of its citadel. (D’Anville, An. Geogr., vol. 1. 
p. 173.— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 9, pt. 1, p. 500.) 

Corinna, a poetess of Thebes, or, according to 
others, of Tanagra, distinguished for her skill in lyric 
verse, and remarkable for her personal attractions. 
She was the rival of Pindar, while the latter was still 
a young man ; and, according to ./Elian (F. H., 13, 25), 
she gained the victory over him no less than five times. 
Pausanias, in his travels, saw at Tanagra a picture, in 
which Corinna was represented as binding her head with 
a fillet of victory, which she had gained in a contest with 
Pindar. He supposes that she was less indebted fo** 
this victory, to the excellence of her poetry than to he 
Boeotian dialect, which was more familiar to the ears Oi 
the judges at the games, and also to her extraordinary 
beauty. Corinna afterward assisted the young poet 
with her advice ; it is related of her, that she recom¬ 
mended him to ornament his poems with mythical nar¬ 
rations ; but that, when he had composed a hymn, in 
the first six verses of which (still extant) almost the 
whole of the Theban mythology was introduced, she 
smiled and said, “ We should sow with the hand, not 
with the whole sack.” (Pausan., 9, 22.— Plut., de 
Glor. Ath. — Op., ed. Reiske, vol. 7, p. 320.) She 
was surnamed “ the Fly” (Mt7a), as Erinna had been 
styled “the Bee.” This appellation of Meta has de* 
ceived Clement of Alexandrea, who speaks of a poet 
ess named Myia. (Strom., 4, 19.) The poems of 
Corinna were all in the Boeotian or ./Eolic dialect. 
Too little of her poetry, however, has been preserved 
to allow of our forming a safe judgment of her style 
of composition. The extant fragments refer mostly 
to mythological subjects, particularly to heroines of 
the Boeotian legends. These remains were given by 
Ursinus, in his Carmina novem illuslrium feminarum, 
1568 ; by Wolf in his Poetriarum octo fragmenta, 
1734; and by Schneider in his M ovoC)v avdy, Giess., 
1802, 8vo. (Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 1, p. 295.— 
Mohnike, Gesch. Lit. der Gr. und R., p. 317.) 

Corinthi Isthmus, or Isthmus of Corinth , between 
the Saronicus Sinus and Corinthiacus Sinus, and uni¬ 
ting the Peloponnesus to the northern parts of Greece, 
or Groecia Propria. The ancients appear to have 
been divided in their opinions concerning the exact 
breadth of the isthmus. Diodorus (11, 16) and Stra¬ 
bo (335) say it was forty stadia, and Mela (2, 3) five 
miles, with which last Pliny agrees (4, 5). The 
real distance, however, in the narrowest part, cannot 
be less than six miles (or not quite five British miles), 
as the modern name of Hcxamilion sufficiently denotes. 
Ships were drawn, by means of machinery, from one 
sea to the other, near the town of Schoenus, over the 
narrowest part of the isthmus, which was called Diol- 
kos. This could only be accomplished, however, with 
the .vessels usually employed in commerce, or with lem- 
bi, which were light ships of war, chiefly used by the 
Illyrians and Macedonians. The tediousness and ex¬ 
pense attending this process, and still more probably 
the difficulty of circumnavigating the Peloponnesus, 
led to frequent attempts, at various periods, for effect- 
i n g a junction between the two seas ; but all proved 
equally unsuccessful. According to Strabo (54), De¬ 
metrius Poliorcetes abandoned the enterprise, because 
it was found that the two gulfs were not on the same 
level. We read of the attempt having been made be¬ 
fore his time by Periander and Alexander, and, sub¬ 
sequently to Demetrius, by Julius Caesar, Caligula 
Nero, and Herodes Atticus. “ It appears somewhat 
surprising,” remarks Mr. Dodwell, “ that these success¬ 
ive attempts should have failed or been relinquished 

373 



CORINTHI ISTHMUS. 


COR 


The art of perforating rocks was well understood and 
dexterously practised both in Italy and Greece at a 
very early period, and, therefore, no difficulty of this 
kind could have occasioned the abandonment of so 
useful a project, though Pausanias is of a different opin¬ 
ion. It was afterward begun with the greatest energy, 
and abandoned without any plausible motive, as no doubt 
the quantity of rock or earth to be removed, and all 
the associated impediments, must have been the sub¬ 
ject of previous calculation. And if Demetrius was 
really convinced that the level of the Corinthian Gulf 
was higher than that of the Saronic, and that the ad¬ 
jacent shore, with the neighbouring islands, would be 
inundated by the union of the two seas, those who came 
after him would not have persevered in so destructive 
an undertaking. Sesostris, and afterward Darius, 
were in the same manner deterred from finishing a ca¬ 
nal from the Red Sea to the Nile, by an apprehension 
that Egypt would be inundated. ( Slrab., 38.— Id., 804.) 
Dio Cassius tells nearly the same story about digging 
the isthmus as that which is related to travellers at 
this day. He says that blood issued from the ground ; 
that groans and lamentations were heard, and terrible ap¬ 
paritions seen. In order to stimulate the perseverance 
of the people, Nero took a spade and dug himself. ( Dio 
Cass., 63, 16.—Compare Suet., Vit. Ncr., 19.— Lu¬ 
cian, de perfoss. Isthm.) Lucian informs us, that Ne¬ 
ro was said to have been deterred from proceeding, by 
a representation made to him, similar to that which De¬ 
metrius received respecting the unequal levels of the 
two seas. He adds, however, a more probable reason • 
the troubles, namely, that were excited by Vindex in 
Gaul, and which occasioned the emperor’s hasty re¬ 
turn from Greece to Italy. ( Lucian, de perfoss. Isthm. 
— Op., ed. Bip., vol. 9, p. 298.) It is probable, as 
far as the supernatural appearances went, that the 
priests at Delphi had some influence in checking the 
enterprise.” {DodwcWs Tour,v ol. 2, p. 184.) Trav¬ 
ellers inform us, that some remains of the canal under¬ 
taken by the Roman emperor are yet visible, reaching 
from the sea, northeast of Lechaeum, about half a mile 
across the isthmus. It terminates on the southeast 
side, where solid rock occurs, which, as Dr. Clarke 
thinks, must have opposed an insurmountable obsta¬ 
cle. ( Trav., vol. 6, p. 562.) Sir W. Gell remarks, that 
the vestiges of the canal may be traced from the port 
or bay of Schcenus, along a natural hollow at the foot 
of a line of fortifications. There are also several pits, 
probably sunk to ascertain the nature af the soil, through 
which the canal was to be carried. The ground, how¬ 
ever, is so high, that the undertaking would be attend¬ 
ed with enormous expense. (Itin. of the Morea, p. 
208.)—We hear also of various attempts made to raise 
fortifications across the Isthmus for the Peloponnesus 
when threatened with invasion. The first undertaking 
was made before the battle of Salamis, when, as He¬ 
rodotus relates, the Peloponnesian confederates, hav¬ 
ing blocked up the Scironian way, collected together a 
vast multitude, who worked night and day, without in¬ 
termission, on the fortifications. Every kind of mate¬ 
rial, such as stones, bricks, and timber, were employ¬ 
ed, and the insterstices filled up with earth and sand. 
{Herodot., 8, 73.) Many years after, the Lacedaemo¬ 
nians and their allies endeavoured to fortify the isth¬ 
mus from Cenchreae to Lechaeum against Epaminon- 
das ; but this measure was rendered fruitless by the 
conduct and skill of that general, who forced a pas¬ 
sage across the Oneian Mountains. {Xen., Hist. Gr., 
7, 1.) Cleomenes also threw u jl trenches and lines 
from Acrocorinthus to the Oneian Mountains, in order 
to prevent the Macedonians, under Antioonus Doson, 
from penetrating into the peninsula. {Polyb., 2, 52. 

Pint., de Cleom.) The Isthmus of Corinth derived 
great celebrity from the games which were celebrated 
there every five years in honour of Palaemon or Meli- 
oerta, and subsequently of Neptune. ( Pausan . 1, 44 


— Plut., Vit. Thes.) These continued in vogue when 
the other gymnastic exercises of Greece had fallen into 
neglect and disuse; and it was during their solemm 
zation that the independence of Greece was proclaim¬ 
ed, after the victory of Cynoscephalae, by order of the 
Roman senate and people. {Polyb., 18, 29.— Liv., 
33, 32.) After the destruction of Corinth, the super¬ 
intendence of the Isthmian games was committed to 
the Sicyonians by the Romans ; on its restoration, how¬ 
ever. by Julius C®sar, the presidency of the games 
again reverted to the Corinthian settlers. {Pausan., 
2 , 2 .) 

Corinthiacus Sinus, or Gulf of Lepanto, an arm 
of the sea running in between the coast of Achaia and 
Sicyonia to tho south, and that of Phocis, Locris, and 
HCtolia to the north. Its gulf had the general appel¬ 
lation of Corinthian as far as the Isthmus, but it was 
divided into smaller bays, the names of which were 
sometimes poetically used for the entire gulf. Its 
different names were the Crissaean, Cirrhaean, Delphic, 
Calydonian, Rhian, and Haleyonian. Besides being 
now called the Gulf of Lepanto, the Sinus Corinthiacus 
is often known by the name of the Gulf of Nepaktos or 
Salona. The victory of Don John of Austria, in 1571, 
over the Turks, has immortalized the name of the Gulf 
of Lepanto in modern history. {Dodwell's Tour, vol. 

1, p. 111.) 

Corinthus, a famous city of Greece, now Corito or 
Corinth, and situate on the isthmus of the same name. 
Commanding by its position the Ionian and AEgean 
seas, and holding, as it were, the keys of Peloponne¬ 
sus, Corinth, from the pre-eminent advantages of its 
situation, was already the seat of opulence and the 
arts, while the rest of Greece was sunk in compara¬ 
tive obscurity and barbarism. Its origin is, of course, 
lost in the night of time ; but we are assured that it 
already existed under the name of Ephyre long before 
the siege of Troy. According to the assertions of the 
Corinthians themselves, their city received its name 
from Corinthus, the son of Jove; but Pausanias does 
not credit this popular tradition, and cites the poet 
Eumelus to show that the appellation was really de¬ 
rived from Corinthus, the son of Marathon (2. 1). 
Homer certainly employs both names indiscriminately. 
{11., 2, 570 ; 13, 663.) Pausanias reports, that the 
descendants of Sysiphus reigned at Corinth until the 
invasion of their territory by the Dorians and Hera- 
clidre, when Doridas and Hyanthidas, the last princes 
of this race, abdicated the crown in favour of Aletes, 
a descendant of Hercules, whose lineal successors re¬ 
mained in possession of the throne of Corinth during 
five generations, when the crown passed into the family 
of the Bacchiad®, so named from Bacchis, the son of 
Prumnis, who retained it for five other generations. 
After this the sovereign power was transferred to an¬ 
nual magistrates, still chosen, however, from the line 
of the Bacchiad®, with the title of Prytanes. Strabo 
affirms that this form of government lasted 200 years ; 
but Diodorus limits it to ninety years : the former 
writer probably includes within that period both the 
kings and Prytanes of the Bacchiad®, Diodorus only 
the latter. {Strabo, 378.— Diod. Sic., Frag. — Lur¬ 
cher, Chronol. d'Hcrodote, vol. 7, p. 519, 531.) The 
oligarchy so long established by this rich and powerful 
family was at length overthrown, about 629 B.C., by 
Cypselus, who banished many of the Corinthians, ce- 
priving others of their possessions, and putting others 
to death. {Herodot., 5, 92.) Among the?* who fled 
from his persecution was Demaratus, of tlx family of 
the Bacchiad®, who settled at Tarquinii in Etruiia, 
and whose descendants became sovereigns of Rome. 
{Strabo, 378.— Polyb., 6, 2.— Dion. Hal., 3, 46.— 
Liv., 1, 34.) The reign of Cypselus was more pros¬ 
perous than his crimes deserved ; and the system ol 
colonization, which had previously succeeded so well 
in the settlements of Corcyra and Syracuse, was ae 



CORINTHUS- 


COR 


cively purs jed by that prince, who added Ambracia, 
Anactorium, and Leucas to the maritime dependencies 
of the Corinthians. ( Strabo, l. c. — Aristot., Polit., 5, 
9.) Cypselus was succeeded by his son Periander. 
On the death of this latter, after a reign of forty-four 
years, according to Aristotle, his nephew Psammeti- 
chus came to the throne, but lived only three years. At 
his decease Corinth regained its independence, when a 
.moderate aristocracy was established, under which the 
republic enjoyed a state of tranquillity and prosperity 
unequalled by any other city of Greece. We are told 
by Thucydides, that the Corinthians were the first to 
build war-galleys or triremes ; and the earliest naval 
engagement, according to the same historian, was 
fought by their fleet and that of the Corcyreans, who 
had bees alienated from their mother-state by the 
cruelty and impolicy of Periander. ( Thucxjd ., 1, 13.— 
Compare Hcrodot., 3, 48.) The arts of painting and 
sculpture, more especially that of casting in bronze, at¬ 
tained to the highest perfection at Corinth, and rendered 
this city the ornament of Greece, until it was stripped 
by the rapacity of a Roman general. Such was the 
beauty of its vases, that the tombs in which they had 
been deposited were ransacked by the Roman colonists 
whom Julius Cassar had established there after the de¬ 
struction of the city ; these, being transported to Rome, 
were purchased at enormous prices. ( Strabo , 381.) 
An interesting dissertation on these beautiful specimens 
of art will be found in Dodwell’s Tour (vol. 2, p. 196). 
—When the Achaean confederacy, owing to the in¬ 
fatuation of those who presided over its counsels, be¬ 
came involved in a destructive war with the Romans, 
Corinth was the last hold of their tottering republic ; 
and, had its citizens wisely submitted to the offers pro¬ 
posed by the victorious Metellus, it might have been 
preserved ; but the deputation of that general having 
been treated with scorn, and even insult, the city be¬ 
came exposed to all the vengeance of the Romans. 
(Polyb., 40, 4, 1.— Strabo, 381.) L. Mummius, the 
consul, appeared before its walls with a numerous army, 
and, after defeating the Achaeans in a general engage¬ 
ment, entered the town, now left without defence, and 
deserted by the greater part of the inhabitants. It was 
then given up to plunder, and finally set on fire; the 
walls also were razed to the ground, so that scarcely 
a vestige of this once great and noble city remained. 
Polybius, who witnessed its destruction, affirmed, as 
we are informed by Strabo (381), that he had seen the 
finest paintings strewed on the ground, and the Roman 
soldiers using them as boards for dice or draughts. 
Pausanias reports (7, 16), that, all the men were put to 
the sword, the women and children sold, and the most 
valuable statues and paintings removed to Rome. 
(Vid . Mummius.) Strabo observes ( l . c.), that the 
finest works of art which adorned that capital in his 
time had come from Corinth. He likewise states, that 
Corinth remained for many years deserted and in ru¬ 
ins ; as also does the poet Antipater of Sidon, who de¬ 
scribes in verse the scene of desolation. (Anal., vol. 
2, p. 20.) Julius Caesar, however, not long before his 
death, sent a numerous colony thither, by means of 
which Corinth was once more raised from its state of 
ruin. ( Strabo, 381.) It was already a large and pop¬ 
ulous city, and the capital of Achaia, when St. Paul 
preached the gospel there for a year and six months. 
(Acts, 18, 11.) It is also evident that, when visited by 
Pausanias, it was thickly adorned by public buildings, 
and enriched with numerous works of art (Pausan., 2, 
2); and as late as the time of Hierocles, we find it 
styled the metropolis of Greece. ( Synecd ., p. 646.) 
In a later age, the Venetians received the place from 
a Greek emperor; Mohammed II. took it from them 
in 1458 ; the Venetians recovered it in 1687, and for¬ 
tified the Acrocorinthus again ; but the Turks took it 
anew in 1715, and retained it until driven from the 
Peloponnesus.—An important feature in the scenery 


around Corinth, was the Acrocorinthus, an accoum 
of which has been given in a previous article. (Vid 
Acrocorinthus.) On the summit of this hill was 
erected a temple of Venus, to whom the whole of the 
Acrocorinthus, in fact, was sacred. In the times of 
Corinthian opulence and prosperity, it is said that the 
shrine of the goddess was attended by no less than 
one thousand female slaves, dedicated to her service 
as courtesans. These priestesses of Venus contrib¬ 
uted not a little to the wealth and luxury of the city ; 
whence arose the well-known expression, ov ixavrot, 
dvbpoQ eig K opivdov ear’ 6 nhovg, or, as Horace ex 
presses it (Epist., 1 , 17, 36), “ Non cuivis homim 
contingit adire Corinthum ,” in allusion to its expen¬ 
sive pleasures.—Corinth was famed for its three har¬ 
bours, Lechaeum, on the Corinthian Gulf, and Cen- 
chreae and Schoenus on the Saronic. Near this last 
was the Diolcos, where vessels were transported over 
the isthmus by machinery. (Vid. Corinthi Isthmus.) 
The first of these is now choked with sand, as is like¬ 
wise the port of Cenchreae. The shallow harbour of 
Schoenus, where was a quay in ancient times, has now 
almost disappeared. All these harbours are mere mo¬ 
rasses, and corrupt the air of the city.—Before leaving 
this subject, it may not be amiss to say a few words 
in relation to the well-known Corinthian brass of an¬ 
tiquity. The common account is, that when Corinth 
was destroyed by the Romans, all the metals that were 
in the city melted and mixed together during the 
conflagration, and formed that valuable composition, 
known by the name of “ Corinthian brass,” JEs Corin- 
thium. This, however, bears the stamp of improba¬ 
bility on its very face. Klaproth rejects the account. 
He seems to think, and adduces the authority of Pliny 
in his favour, that it was merely a term of art, and 
applied to a metallic mixture in high estimation among 
the Romans, and, though of a superior quality, nearly 
resembling aurichalcum. This last was composed 
either copper and zinc, or .of copper, tin, and lead 
the former of a pale yellow, the latter of a darke 
colour, resembling gold. The mixture by means oi 
calamine was rendered tough and malleable. (Crom- 
bie's Gymnasium, vol. 2, p. 127, not.) 

Coriolanus, Caius Marcius, a distinguished Ro 
man of patrician rank, whose story forms a brillian 
legend in the early history of Rome. His name a 
first was Caius Marcius, but having contributed, mainly 
by his great personal valour, to the capture of Corioli, 
and the defeat of a Volscian army, assembled for its 
aid, on the same day, he received for this gallant ex¬ 
ploit the surname of Coriolanus. Not long after this, 
however, during a scarcity at Rome, he opposed the 
distribution of a supply of provisions, in part sent by 
Gelon, of Sicily, and advised the patricians to make 
this a means of recovering the power which had been 
wrested from them by the commons. For this and 
other conduct of a similar nature, he was tried in the 
Comitia Tributa, and condemned to perpetual banish¬ 
ment. Resolving, upon this, to gratify his vindictive 
spirit, Coriolanus presented himself as a suppliant to 
Tullius Aufidius, the leading man among the Vokci, 
was well received by him and the whole nation, and, 
war being declared, was invested, along with A jfidius, 
with the command of the Volscian forces. By his 
military skill and renown Coriolanus at once defeated 
and appalled the Romans, till, having taken almost all 
their subject cities, he advanced at the head of the 
Volscian army against Rome itself, and encamped only 
five miles from it, at the Fossaa Cluiliae. All was there¬ 
upon terror and confusion in the Roman capital. Em¬ 
bassy after embassy was sent to Coriolanus, to en¬ 
treat him to spare his country, but he remained inex¬ 
orable, and would only grant peace on condition that 
the Romans restored all the cities and lands which 
they had taken from the Volsci, and granted to the 
latter the freedom of Rome, as had been done in the 

375 



COR 


COR 


case of the Latins. After all other means of concilia¬ 
tion had failed, a number of Roman females, headed 
<;y the mother and the wife of Coriolanus, proceeded 
to his tent, where the lofty remonstrances of his parent 
were more poweird than all the arms of Rome had 
proved, and the son, after a brief struggle with his irri¬ 
tated and vindictive feelings, yielded to her request, 
exclaiming at the same time, “ Oh mother, thou hast 
saved Rome, but destroyed thy son !” The Volscian 
forces were then withdrawn, and Rome was thus saved, 
by female influence alone, from certain capture. On 
returning to the Yolsci with his army, Coriolanus, ac¬ 
cording to one account, was summoned to trial for his 
conduct, and was slain in a tumult during the hearing 
of the cause, a faction having been excited against him 
by Tullius Aufidius, who was jealous of his renown. 
(Dion. Hal., Ant. Rom., 8, 59.) According to another 
statement, he lived to an advanced age among the 
Volscian people, often towards the close of his life ex¬ 
claiming, “ How miserable is the state of an old man 
in banishment!” (Pint., in Vit. — Liv., 2, 33, seqq.) 
Niebuhr, who writes the name Cnaeus Marcius, on 
what he considers good authority, indulges in some 
acute speculations on the legend of Coriolanus. He 
thinks that poetical invention has here most thoroughly 
stifled the historical tradition. He regards the name 
Coriolanus as of the same kind merely with such appel¬ 
lations as Camerinus, Collatinus, Mugillanus, Vibula- 
nus, &c., which, when taken from an independent town, 
were assumed by its npogevog, when from a dependant 
one by its patronus. The capture of Corioli belongs 
merely, in his opinion, to a heroic poem. As for Co- 
riolanus himself, he thinks that he merely attended the 
Volscian standard as leader of a band of Roman exiles. 
He admits, however, that a recollection like the one 
which remained of him could not rest on mere fable, 
and that, in all probability, his generosity resigned the 
opportunity afforded him of taking the city, when La- 
tium was almost entirely subdued, and when Rome 
was brought to a very low ebb by pestilence. ( Nie¬ 
buhr, Rom. Hist., vol. 2, p. 234, seqq., Cambr. transl.) 

Corioli, an ancient city of the Volsci, between 
Velitras and Lanuvium, from the capture of which C. 
Marcius obtained the surname of Coriolanus, according 
to the common account. (Vid., however, remarks at 
the end of the article Coriolanus.) We collect from 
Livy that it was situated on the confines of the territory 
of Ardea, Aricia, and Antium. (Liv., 2, 33, and 3, 
71.) Dionysius speaks of Corioli as one of the most 
considerable towns of the Volsci. (Ant. Rom., 6, 92.) 
Pliny (3, 5) enumerates Corioli among the towns of 
Latium of which no vestiges remained. A hill, now 
known by the name of Monte Giove, is thought, with 
some degree of probability, to represent the site of 
Corioli. (Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol. 2, p. 84.) 

Cornelia Lex, I. de Religione, enacted by L. Cor¬ 
nelius Sylla, A.U.C. 677. It restored to the sacerdo¬ 
tal college the privilege of choosing the priests, which, 
by the Domitian law, had been lodged in the hands of 
the people.—II. Another, de Municipiis, by the same ; 
that the free towns which had sided with Marius should 
be deprived of their lands and the right of citizens; 
the last of which Cicero says could not be done. (Pro 
Dom., 30.)—III. Another, de Magistratibus , by the 
same ; which gave the privilege of bearing honours and 
being promoted before the legal age, to those who had 
followed the interest of Sylla, while the sons and par¬ 
tisans of his enemies, who had been proscribed, w r ere 
deprived of the privilege of standing for any office in 
the state. IV. Another, de Magistratibus, by the 
<ame, A.U.C. 673. It ordained, that no person should 
exercise the same office until after an interval of ten 
years, or be invested with two different magistracies 
in one year; and that no one should be prastor before 
being quaestor, nor consul before being praetor.—V. 
Another, de Magistratibus, by the same, A.U.C. 673] 


It ordained, that whoever had been tribune should 
not afterward enjoy any other magistracy ; that there 
should be no appeal to the tribunes ; that they should 
not be allowed to assemble the people and make ha 
rangues to them, nor to propose laws ; but should only 
retain the right of intercession. (Cic., de Leg., 3, 9.) 
—VI. Another, by the same. It allowed an individ¬ 
ual, accused of having taken away the life of anothei 
by weapons, poison, false accusation, &c., the privilege 
of choosing whether he wished the judges to decide his 
case by voice or by ballot.—VII. Another, by the same, 
imposing the punishment of aqua et ignis inter dictie 
on all such as were found guilty of forging testaments 
or any other writings, of debasing or counterfeiting 
the public coin, &c.—VIII. Another, imposing the 
same punishment as the preceding on all who had been 
guilty of extortion, &c., in their provinces. (Consult, 
as regards other “ Cornelian Laws,” Heineccius, Antiq. 
Rom., ed Haubold, p. 650, &c.— Ernesti, Clav. Cic., 
s. v. — Adam's Rom. Antiq., p. 162, ed. Boyd.) 

Cornelia, I. daughter of Cinna. She was Julius 
Caesar’s second wife, and mother of Julia the wife of 
Pompey. She died young. Plutarch says, it had 
been the custom at Rome for the aged women to have 
funeral panegyrics, but not the young. Caesar first 
broke through this custom, by pronouncing one upon 
Cornelia. This, adds the biographer, contributed to 
fix him in the affections of his countrymen : they 
sympathized with him, and considered him a man 
of good feeling, who had the social duties deeply at 
heart. (Plut., Vit. Cas., c. 5.)—II. Daughter of 
Metellus Scipio, married to Pompey after the death of 
her first husband Publius Crassus. She was remark¬ 
able for the variety of her accomplishments and the 
excellence of her private character. Plutarch makes 
her to have been versed, not only in the musical artp 
but in polite literature, in geometry, and in the pre¬ 
cepts of philosophy. (Plut., Vit. Pomp., c. 55.) After 
the battle of Pharsalia, when Pompey joined her at 
Mytilene, Cornelia with tears ascribed all his misfor¬ 
tunes to her union with him, alluding at the same time 
to the unhappy end of her first husband Crassus in his 
expedition against the Parthians. (Compare Lucan, 
8, 88.) She was also a witness, from her galley, of 
the murder of her husband on the shores of Egypt 
(Plut., Vit. Pomp., c. 79.)—III. Daughter of Scipio 
Africanus Major, and mother of Tiberius and Cams 
Gracchus. Cornelia occupies a high rank for the purity 
and excellence of her private character, as well as for 
her masculine tone of mind. She was married, to 
Sempronius Gracchus, and was left on his death with 
a family of twelve children, the care of whom devolved 
entirely upon herself. After the loss of her husband, 
her hand was sought by Ptolemy, king of Egypt, but 
the offer was declined. Plutarch speaks in high terms 
of her conduct during widowhood. Having lost all 
her children but three, one daughter, who was married 
to Scipio Africanus the younger, and two sons, Tibe¬ 
rius and Caius, she devoted her whole time to the 
education of these, and, to borrow the words of Plu¬ 
tarch, she brought up her two sons in particular with 
so much care, that, though they were of the noblest 
origin, and had the happiest dispositions of all the 
Roman youth, yet education was allowed to have con¬ 
tributed still more than nature to the excellence o? 
their characters. Valerius Maximus relates an anec¬ 
dote of Cornelia, which has often been cited. A Cam» 
panian lady, who was at the time on a visit to her, 
having displayed to Cornelia some very beautiful orna¬ 
ments which she possessed, desired the latter, in re¬ 
turn, to exhibit her own. The Roman mother pur¬ 
posely detained her in conversation until her chi dren 
returned from school, when, pointing to them, she ex¬ 
claimed, “These are my ornaments !” (Hac orna- 
menta mea sunt, — Val. Max., 4, init.) Plutarch in¬ 
forms us, that some persons blamed Cornelia for th* 




UOR 


COR 


rash conduct of her sons in after life, she having been 
accustomed to reproach them that she was still called 
the mother-in-law of Scipio, not the mother of the 
Gracchi. (Plut., Vit. T. Gracch., c. 8.) She bore the 
untimely death of her sons with great magnanimity, 
and a statue was afterward erected in honour of her 
by tne Roman people, bearing for an inscription the 
words 6 ‘ Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi .” {Plat ., 
Vit. C. Gracch., c. 4.) 

Cornelius, a name indicating a member of the 
Gens Cornelia. The greater part of the individuals 
who bore it are better known by their surnames of 
Cossus, Dolabella, Lentulus, Scipio, Sylla, &g., which 
see. 

CornicuCum, a Sabine town, which gave its name 
to the Corniculani Colies. It is one of those places 
of which no trace is left, and is only interesting in the 
history of Rome as being the most accredited birth¬ 
place of Servius Tullius. {Liv., 1, 39.— Dion. Hal., 
3, 50.— rPlin., 3, 5.) The Corniculan hills are those of 
Monticclli and Sant ’ Angelo; and Corniculum itself 
may have stood on the site of the latter village, if we 
place Caenina at Monticclli. ■(Cramer's Ancient Italy, 
vol. 1, p. 308.) 

Cornificius, I. Quintus, a contemporary of Ci¬ 
cero’s, distinguished for talents and literary acquire¬ 
ments, who attained to some of the highest offices 
in the state. Catullus and Ovid both speak of his 
poetic abilities, and he appears to have been the friend 
of both. {Catull., 38.— Ovid, Trist., 2, 436.— Bur- 
mann, ad Ov., 1. c.) Cornificius distinguished himself 
as Propraetor in the Illyrian war, and also as governor 
of Syria, and afterward of Africa. In this latter prov¬ 
ince he espoused the cause of the senate after Caesar’s 
death, and received and gave protection to those who 
had been proscribed by the second triumvirate. He 
lost his life, however, while contending in this quarter 
against Sextius, who had been sent against him by 
Octavius. ( Appian, Bell. Civ., 3, 85.— Id. ib., 4, 
36 ; 4, 53 ; 4, 56.—Compare the account given by 
Eusebius, Chron. An. mdcccclxxvi.) Some mod¬ 
ern scholars make this Cornificius to have been the 
author of the Treatise to Herennius, commonly as¬ 
cribed to Cicero. ( Vid. Herennius.) He is said also 
to have been an enemy of Virgil’s, but this suppo¬ 
sition violates chronology, since the poet only became 
eminent subsequent to the period when Cornificius died. 
( Heyne, ad Donat. Vit. Virg., 67, p. clxxii.)—II. 
Lucius, a partisan of Octavius, by whom he was ap¬ 
pointed to accuse Brutus, before the public tribunal 
at Rome, of the assassination of Caesar. {Plut., Vit. 
Brut., c. 27.) He afterward distinguished himself, 
as one of Octavius’s lieutenants, by a masterly retreat 
in Sicily during the war with Sextus Pompeius. 
( Appian, Bell. Civ., 5, 111, seqq.) 

Corniger, a surname of Bacchus. 

Cornutus, L. Annaeus, a Greek philosopher, born 
at Leptis in Africa, who lived and taught at Rome 
during the reign of Nero. The appellation L. Annaeus 
appears to indicate a client or freedman of the Seneca 
family. His tenets were those of the Stoic sect, and 
his name was not without distinction in that school of 
philosophy. He excelled in criticism and poetry ; but 
his principal studies were of a philosophical character. 
His merits as a teacher of the Stoic doctrine suffi¬ 
ciently appears from his having been the preceptor of 
that honest advocate for virtue, the satirist Persius. 
Persius, dying before his master, left him his library, 
with a considerable sum of money ; but Cornutus ac¬ 
cepted only the books, and gave the money to the 
sisters of his pupil. The poet Lucan was also one of 
his pupils. Under Nero, Cornutus was driven into 
exile for his freedom of speech. The emperor having 
written several books in verse on the affairs of Rome, 
and his flatterers advising him to continue the poem, 
the honest Stoic had tl e courage to remark, that he 
B B B 


doubted whether so large a work would be read ; ano 
when it was urged that Chrysippus had written as much, 
he replied, “ His writings were useful to mankind.” 
After so unpardonable an offence against imperial 
vanity, the only wonder was that Cornutus escaped 
with his life. He composed some tragedies, and a 
large number of other works, the only one of which 
that has come down to us is the “ Theory concerning 
the Nature of the Gods ” (Qeupia nepl rf/g ruv d-etiv 
(pvoeog), or, as it is entitled in one of the MSS. 

“ concerning Allegories ” (rrepl ’A/M, yyopiuv). Cor 
nutus, in fact, in this production, seeks to explain the 
Greek mythology on allegorical and physical principles. 
The best edition is that given by Gale in his Opuscula 
{Cantabr., 1670, 12mo).—The name of this philoso¬ 
pher is sometimes, though less correctly, written Phur- 
nutus. (Consult the remarks of Gale, Prcef. ad 
Opusc., p. 2, seqq., and Martini, Disputalio de Cor- 
nuto, Lugd. Bat., 1825, 8vo.— Aul. Gell., 6, 2.— 
Euseb., Eccl. Hist., 6, 19.— Enfield's Hist. Phil., vol 

2, p. 110.) 

Corcebus, I. a foot-racer of Elis, who carried off 
the prize at the Olympic games, B.C. 776. This date 
is remarkable, as being the one from which the Greeks 
began to count their Olympiads. Not that the Olym¬ 
pic games were now for the first time established, but 
the names of the victors were now first inscribed on 
the public registers. Some writers calculate the Greek 
Olympiads from the period of their re-establishment by 
Lycurgus, Iphitus, and Cleosthenes, and hence they 
make the first Olympiad of Corcebus correspond to the 
twenty-eighth of Iphitus. {Pausan., 5, 8.— Siebelis, 
ad loc. — Larcher, Tabl. Chronol., vol. 7, p. 590.— 
Id., Essai de Chronologie, p. 307.) According to 
AthenEeus, Corcebus was by profession a cook! {Athen., 
9, p. 382, b. — Compare Casaubon, ad loc.) The 
Arundel Marbles make the first Olympiad of Coroebus 
coincide with the year 806 of the Athenian era, when 
iEschylus, the twelfth perpetual archon, was in his 
third year of office. {I?Art de Verifier les Dates, 
vol. 3, p. 173, Paris, 1819.) Delalande makes the 
true summer-solstice of the year 776 B.C., under the 
meridian of Pisa in Elis, to have taken place at llh 15' 
33" of the morning. (L’Art de Verifier, &c., vol. 3, 
p. 170.)—II. An architect, who lived in the age of 
Pericles. {Plut., Vit. Pericl., c. 13.)—III. A son of 
Mygdon, king of Thrace, who, from his love for Cas¬ 
sandra, offered his services to Priam, under the hope 
of obtaining the hand of his daughter. The prophetess, 
however, knowing the fate that awaited him, implored 
him to retire from the war ; but he was inflexible, and 
fell by the hand of Peneleus the night that Troy was 
taken. (Virg., JEn., 2, 425.) 

Corone, a city of Messenia, on the western shore 
of the Sinus Messeniacus. It is now Coron, and the 
gulf is called after it, the Gulf of Coron. Its original 
name was ^Epea; but this was changed to Corone 
after the restoration of the Messenians. It was in at¬ 
tempting to take this town, during the war occasioned 
by the secession of Messene from the Achaean league, 
that Philopoemen was made prisoner. (Liv., 39, 49.) 
Strabo reports that this place was regarded by some as 
the Pedasus of Homer. The haven of Corone was 
called the Port of the Achaeans. (Cramer’s Anc. 
Greece, vol. 3, p. 139.) 

Coronea, a city of Boeotia, to the southeast of Chae- 
ronea, on a branch of the Cephissus. It was a place of 
considerable antiquity and importance, and was said to 
have been founded, together with Orchomenus, by the 
descendants of Athamas who came from Thessaly. 
(Pausan., 9, 34.— Strabo, 411.) Several important 
actions took place at different times in its vicinity, 
Tolmides, who commanded a body of Athenian troops, 
was here defeated and slain by the Boeotians, which 
led to the emancipation of the whole province, after 
it had been subject to the Athenians since the victory 

377 



COR 


COR 


tat/ obtained at (Enophytae. (Thucyd., 1,113.) The 
battle of Coronea was gained by Agesilaus and the 
Spartans against the Thebans and their allies in the 
second year of the 96th Olympiad, 394 B.C. ( Xen., 
Hist. Gr., 4, 3, 8, seqq.—Plut., Vit. Agesil., 17.) 
This city was also twice taken by the Phocians under 
Onomarchus, and afterward given up to the Thebans 
by Philip of Macedon. ( Demosth., de Pac., p. 62.— 
Philip., 2, p. 69.) The Coroneans, in the Macedonian 
war, having adhered to the cause of Perses, suffered 
severely from the resentment of the Romans. ( Polyb., 
27, 1, 8, and 5, 2.—Li®., 42, 44, and 67.— Id., 43, 
Suppl., 1, 2.) The ruins of Coronea are observable 
near the village of Korumis, on a remarkable insulated 
hill, where there are “many marbles and inscriptions. 
On the summit or acropolis are remains of a very an¬ 
cient polygonal wall, and also a Roman ruin of brick.” 

( Gell, Itin., p. 150.— Dodwell, vol. 1, p. 247.) 

Coronis, daughter of Phlegyas, and mother of 
TEsculapius by Apollo. She was put to death by the 
god for having proved unfaithful to him, but the off¬ 
spring of her womb was first taken from her and spared. 

( Vid. iEsculapius.) 

Corsi, I. the inhabitants of Corsica.—II. The in¬ 
habitants of part of northern Sardinia, who came origi¬ 
nally from Corsica. ( Mannert, Geogr., vol. 9, pt. 2, 
p. 479.) r 

Corsica, an island of the Mediterranean, called by 
the Greeks K vpvoq. Its inhabitants were styled by 
the same people K vpvioi ; by the Latins, Corsi. In 
later times the island took also the name of Corsis. 
(V Kopolq .—Compare Steph. Byz., s. v. K opoiq.— 
Dionys. Perieg., v. 459, et Eustath., ad loc.) The 
ancient writers represent it as mountainous and woody, 
and only well cultivated along the eastern coast, where 
the Romans had settlements. ( Dionys. Perieg., v. 
460.) Its natural products were resin, honey, and 
wax. ( Diod . Sic., 5, 13.) The honey, however, had 
a bitter taste, in consequence of the bees deriving it 
from the yew-trees with which the island abounded. 

( Virg., Eclog., 9, 30.—Ovid, Am., 1, 12.— Diod. 
Sic., 5, 14.) It was to their feeding abundantly on 
this honey, however, that the longevity of the Corsi¬ 
cans was ascribed. (Compare Eustath. ad Dionys. 
Perieg., v. 458.) The inhabitants were a rude race 
of mountaineers, indebted for their subsistence more 
to the produce of their flocks than to the cultivation of 
the soil. Seneca, who was banished to this quarter in 
the reign of Claudius, draws a very unfavourable pic¬ 
ture of the island and its inhabitants ; describing the 
former as rocky, unproductive, and unhealthy, and the 
latter as the worst of barbarians. He writes, however, 
under the influence of prejudiced feelings, and many 
allowances must be made. ( Senec., de Consol, ad 
Help., c. 6, 8.) The Corsi appear to have derived 
their origin from Ligurian and Iberian (called by Sen¬ 
eca Spanish) tribes. Eustathius says that a Ligurian 
female, named Corsa, having pursued in a small boat 
a bull which had taken to the water, accidentally dis¬ 
covered the island, which her countrymen named after 
her. (Eustath., ad Dionys. Perieg., v. 458.—Com¬ 
pare Isidori Origines, 14, 6.) The Phocaeans, on re¬ 
tiring from Asia, settled here for a time, and founded 
the city Aleria, but were driven out finally by the Tyr¬ 
rhenians and Carthaginians. (Diod. Sic., 5, 13.) 
The Romans took the island from this latter people 
B.C. 231, and subsequently two colonies were sent 
V 5 ° ne Marius, which founded Mariana, and an¬ 
other by Sylla, which settled on the site of Aleria. 
Mantinorum Oppidum, in the same island, is now Bas- 
tia ; and Urcinium, Ajaccio, was the birthplace of Na¬ 
poleon. _ (Mannert Geogr., vol. 9, pt. 2, p. 505, seqq.) 

9 OR .®° TE ’ a clt X Mesopotamia, on the river Masca. 

D Anvilie places it at the confluence of the Masca and 
Euphrates The Masca, according to Xenophon 
Anab., 1, o, 4), flowed around the city in a circular 


course. Mannert supposes it to have been notr.jr^ 
more than a canal cut from the Euphrates. (Vid. 
Masca, where notice is taken of an error in D’Anville’s 
chart.) The site of Corsote appears to correspond, at 
the present day, to a spot where are the ruins of a 
large city, named Erzi or Irsali. (Rennell, Illustra¬ 
tions of the Anabasis, &c., p. 103.) 

Cortona, a town of Etruria, a short distance north¬ 
west of the Lacus Thrasymenus, and fourteen miles 
south of Arretium. Its claims to antiquity were equal¬ 
led by few other places of Italy. It is thought to have 
been built on the ruins of an ancient town called Co- 
rythus, and is known by that appellation in Virgil. 
(AEn., 3, 170.— Id. ibid., 7, 209; 9, 10; 10, 719.— 
Compare Silius Italicus, 5, 123.) From the similar¬ 
ity of names, it was supposed by some to owe its ori¬ 
gin to Corythus, the father of Dardanus. Others de¬ 
duced the name from the circumstance of Dardanus 
having lost his helmet (nopvq) there in fighting. Both, 
however, are pronounced by Heyne to be mere fables. 
(Heyne, Excurs., 6, ad AEn., 3.) Perhaps the opinion 
most entitled to credit is that of Mannert, who makes 
the place to have been of Pelasgic origin. This, in 
fact, is strongly corroborated by the massy remains of 
the ancient walls, evidently of Pelasgic structure. 
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, moreover, who quotes 
from Hellanicus of Lesbos, an author somewhat ante¬ 
rior to Hesiod, states that the Pelasgi, who had land¬ 
ed at Spina on the Po, subsequently advanced into the 
interior of Italy, and occupied Cortona, which they 
fortified, and from thence formed other settlements in 
Tyrrhenia. On this account Cortona is styled the 
metropolis of that province. (Steph. Byz., s. v .— 
Compare Sil. Ital., 7, 174.) Cortona was one of the 
twelve cities of Etruria. (Muller, Etrusker, vol. 1, p. 
345.) The Greek name of the place was Gortyn 
(Toprvv), and the Etrurian one Kortun, from which 
the Romans made Cortona. (Muller, Etrusker, vol 
2, p. 268.) I he city still retains its ancient appella¬ 
tion of Cortona. It was colonized by the Romans 
(Dionys., 1, 26), at what period is uncertain; proba¬ 
bly m the time of Sylla, who colonized several towns 
of Etruria. Cramer thinks, that some confusion of 
names must have given rise to the story of Dardanus 
coming from Italy to Troy, as alluded to by Virgil 
(AEn., 7, 205). It is known that there were several 
towns in antiquity of the name of Gyrton, Gyrtone, 
and Gortyna, in I hessaly, Boeotia, Arcadia, and Crete; 
countries all more or less frequented at one time by 
the Pelasgi. This, he thinks, was the original form 
by which Cortona was first named ; for Polybius calls 
it Cyrtone (3, 82), and it is known that the Etruscans 
and Umbri, who took their letters from the Pelasgi, 
never used the letter O. Now, according to some ac¬ 
counts, Dardanus came from Arcadia, and according 
to others, from Crete. Cramer suspects, however, 
that the Thessalian Gyrton ought to have the prefer¬ 
ence ; for this city, in a passage of Strabo, though it is 
supposed to be mutilated, is entitled the Tyrrhenian 
(Strab., 330), and this might prove the key to the 
Italian origin oi Dardanus, besides confirming the 
identity of the Tyrrheni with the Thessalian Pelasgi 
(Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 215, not.) 

Corvinus, I. or Corvus, a name given to M. Va¬ 
lerius, from his having been assisted by a crow (coj vus ) 
while engaged in combat with a Gaul. ( Vid. Valeri- 
US -)~H. Messala, a distinguished Roman in the Au¬ 
gustan age. (Vid. Messala.) 

Corybantss, the priests of Cybele, called also 
Galli. (Vid. Cybele.) In celebrating the festivals ol 
the goddess, they ran about with loud cries and bowl¬ 
ings, beating on timbrels, clashing cymbals, sounding 
pipes, and cutting their flesh with knives. Some de¬ 
rive the name from their moving along in a kind of 
dance, and tossing the head to and fro (uiro rov Kopmr- 
rovraq paiveiv). According to Strabo (479) anl 


ft 




COR 


COS 


Freret (Mem. de VAcad. dcs. Inscr., &c., vol. 18, p. 
34), the word Corybas is a Phrygian one, and refers to 
the wild dances in which the Corybantes indulged.— 
As regards the assertion commonly made, that the Co¬ 
rybantes were originally from Mount Ida, it may be 
remarked, that more correct authorities make Phrygia 
to have been their native seat. (Compare Rolle, Re- 
therchcs sur le Culte de Bacchus , vol. 1 , p. 246, seqq.) 
—The dance of the Corybantes is thought to have 
been symbolical of the empire exercised by man over 
metals, as also of the movements of the heavenly bodies. 
( Constant, de la Religion, vol. 2, p. 375, seqq .) The 
Corybantes are said to have been the first that turned 
their attention to metallurgy. ( Sainte Croix, Mys- 
teres du Paganisme , vol. 1 , p. 79.) 

Corybas, son of Iasion and Cybele, who introduced 
the rites of the mother of the gods into Phrygia, from 
the island of Samothrace. (Diod. Sic., 5, 49.) 

Corycides, a name applied to the nymphs who 
were supposed to inhabit the Corycian cave on Mount 
Parnassus. They were the daughters of the river-god 
Pleistus. (Ovid, Met., 1, 320.— Ay oil. Rh., 2, 711. 
— Gierig, ad Ovid, l. c.) 

Corycium Antrum, I. a cave or grotto on Mount 
Parnassus, about two hours from Delphi, and higher 
up the mountain. It .is accurately described by Pau- 
sanias, who states, that it surpassed in extent every 
other known cavern, and that it was possible to ad¬ 
vance into the interior without a torch. The roof, 
from which an abundance of water trickles, is elevated 
far above the floor, and vestiges of the dripping water 
(i. e., stalactites) rrre to be seen attached to it, says 
Pausanias, along the whole extent of the cave. The 
inhabitants of Parnassus, he adds, consider it as sa¬ 
cred to the Corycian nymphs and the god Pan. (Pau- 
san., 10,32.—Compare Strabo, 417.) Herodotus re¬ 
lates (8, 36), that on the approach of the Persians, the 
greater part of the population of Delphi ascended the 
mountain, and sought refuge in this capacious recess. 
We are indebted for an account of the present state of 
this remarkable cave to Mr. Raikes, who was the first 
modern traveller that discovered its site. He describes 
the narrow and low entrance as spreading at once into 
ti chamber 330 feet long by nearly 200 wide. The 
stalactites from the top hung in the most graceful 
forms the whole length of the roof, and fell like dra¬ 
pery down the sides. (Raike's Journal, in Walpole's 
Collection, vol. 1, p. 312.)—II. A cave in Cilicia, 
near Corycus. (Vid. Corycus, II.) 

Corycus, I. a promontory of Ionia, southeast of the 
southern extremity of Chios. The high and rugged 
coast in this quarter harboured at one time a wild and 
daring population, greatly addicted to piracy; and 
who, by disguising themselves, and frequenting the 
harbours in their vicinity, obtained private information 
of the course and freight of any merchant vessel, and 
concerted measures for the purpose of intercepting it. 
The secrecy with which their intelligence was pro¬ 
cured gave rise to the proverb, Tot> d’ up’ 6 K upvKaioq 
yrcpou^ero, “ This, then, the Corycian overheard," a 
saying that was used in cases where any carefully- 
guarded secret had been discovered. (Compare Eras¬ 
mus, Chil. 1, cent. 2, col. 76.) The modern name of 
the ridge of Mount Corycus is the Table Mountain, 
but the ancient appellation is still preserved in that of 
Kourko, which belongs to a bold headland forming the 
extreme point of the Erythrean peninsula towards Sa¬ 
mos. Pliny (5, 31) calls it Coryceon Promontorium. 
(Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 351.)—II. A small 
town of Cilicia Trachea, near the confines of Cilicia 
Campestris, on the seacoast, and to the east of Seleu- 
cia Trachea. It appears to have been a fortress of 
great strength, and a mole of vast unhewn rocks is 
carried across the bay for about a hundred yards. It 
served at one time as the harbour of Seleucia, and 
was then a place of considerable importance. The 


modern name is Korghoz. About twenty stadia in¬ 
land was the Corycian cave, celebrated in mythology 
as the fabled abode of the giant Typhceus. (Pind., 
Pyth., 1, 31.— Id. ib., 8, 20.— JEsciiyl., P. v., 350, 
seqq.) In fact, many writers, as Strabo reports, placed 
Anma or Arimi, the scene of Typhoeus’s torments, 
alluded to by Homer, in Cilicia, while others sought it 
in Lydia, and others in Campania. The description 
which Strabo has left us of this remarkable spot leads 
to the idea of its having been once the crater of a vol¬ 
cano. He says it was a deep and broad valley, of a 
circular shape, surrounded on every side by lofty rocks. 
The lower part of this crater was rugged and stony, 
but covered nevertheless with shrubs and evergreens, 
and especially saffron, of which it produced a great 
quantity, regarded as the best of all antiquity. There 
was also a cavity from which gushed a copious stream, 
which, after a short course, was again lost, and re¬ 
appeared near the sea, which it joined. It was called 
the “bitter water.” (Strab., 671.) The account of 
Pomponius Mela is still more minute and elaborate 
(Mela, 1, 13.— Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 336.) 

—III. A naval station, on the coast of Lycia, about 
thirty stadia to the north of Olympus. Strabo makes it 
a tract of shore (K copvuog alyialoq. — Strab., 666). 

Coryphasium, a promontory on the western coast 
of Messenia, north of Methone, now Cape Zonchio. 
There was a town of the same name on it, to which 
the inhabitants of Pylos retired after their town was 
destroyed. (Pausan., 4, 36.) 

Cos, an island of the ffEgean, one of the Sporades, 
west of the promontory of Doris. Its more ancient 
names were Cea, Staphylus, Nymphasa, and Meropis, 
of which the last was the most common. (Thucyd., 

8, 41.) The colonizing of this island must have taken 
place at a very early date, since Homer makes men¬ 
tion of it as a populous settlement. (II., 2, 184, 14. 
255.) The inhabitants were of Dorian origin, aul 
closely connected with the Doric colonies on the main 
land. It is now called Stan-Co. Its chief city was 
Cos, anciently called Astypalaea. Strabo remarks, that 
the city of Cos was not large, but very populous, and 
seen to great advantage by those who came thither by 
sea. Without the walls was a celebrated temple of 
JEsculapius, enriched with many admirable works of 
art, and, among others, two famous paintings of Apel¬ 
les, the Antigonus and Venus Anadyomene. The lat¬ 
ter painting was so much admired that Augustus re¬ 
moved it to Rome, and consecrated it to Julius Cae¬ 
sar ; and in consideration of the loss thus inflicted on 
the Coans, he is said to have remitted a tribute of # 
one hundred talents which had been laid on them. 
Besides the great painter just mentioned, Cos could 
boast of ranking among her sons the first physician of 
antiquity, Hippocrates. The soil of the land was very 
productive, especially in wine, which vied with those 
of Chios and Lesbos. It was also celebrated for its 
purple dye, and for its manufacture of a species of 
transparent silk stuff, against the use of which by the 
Romans Juvenal in particular so strongly inveighs. 
The modern island presents to the view fine planta¬ 
tions of lemon-trees, intermixed with stately maples. 
(For a more particular account of it, consult Turner's 
Tour in the Levant, vol. 3, p. 41, seqq. — Cramer's 
Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 220.) 

Cossa, I. (or Cossa?), a town of Etruria, near the 
coast, on the promontory of Mount Argentarius, north¬ 
west of Centum Cellaa. It was situate at a little dis¬ 
tance from the modern Ansedonia, which is now itself 
in ruins. For a plan of this ancient city, consult Mi- 
cali, L'ltalia, &c., tav. 10, who gives also a repre¬ 
sentation of parts of its walls built of polygonal stones. 
(Compare Micali, Storia degli Antichi Popoli Italiani, 
tav. 4.) According to him, this is the only specimen 
of such construction to be found in Etruria. From 
Pliny (3, 5), we learn that Cossa was founded by the 

379 




r 





COT 


COT 


people of Volci, an Etruscan city, and Virgil has 
named it in the catalogue of the forces sent by Etruria 
to the aid of iEneas. (JEn., 10, 167.) Cossa be¬ 
came a Roman colony A.U.C. 480. (Veil. Paterc., 
l, 14.— Lin., Epit ., 14.— Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 
1, p. 195.)—II. A city of Lucania, in Italy, near the 
sources of the river Cylistamus. ( Steph. Byz., s. v. 
K ocaa.) Caesar, who calls it Cosa, states that Titus 
Annius Milo was slain before its walls when besieging 
the place in Pompey’s cause. (Bell. Civ., 3, 22.) 
Cluverius was nearly correct in his supposition, that 
Cassano might occupy the site of this ancient town 
(Ital. Ant., vol. 2, p. 1205), for more modern topog¬ 
raphers have in fact discovered its ruins at Civitd, a 
village close to the former place. (Anton., Lucan, p. 
3, disc. 1.— Romanelli, vol. 1, p. 240.— Cramer's 
Ancient Italy, vol. 2, p. 354.) 

Cossus, I. a surname of the familia Malugincnsis, 
a branch of the Gens Cornelia. —II. Aulus Cornelius, 
a Roman, and military tribune, who slew in battle 
with hiS own hands Lar Tolumnius, king of the Veien- 
tes, for which he offered up the Spolia Opima to Jupi¬ 
ter Feretrius, being the only one who had done this 
since the time of Romulus. (Liv., 4, 20; where 
consult the discussion into which Livy enters on this 
subject, and also the note of Crevier.) 

Cotes, a promontory of Mauritania, now Cape Es- 
partel. The form in Greek is generally given as plu¬ 
ral, al Kura'f. Ptolemy, however, has the singular, 
Kd)rr/c dicpov. The name is Punic, and signified “ a 
vine and hence the Greeks sometimes translated the 
term by Ampelusia. (Mela, 1, 5 .—Mannert, Geogr., 
vol. 10, pt. 2, p. 465.) 

Cothon, a name given to a small but elevated isl¬ 
and in the inner harbour of Carthage, commanding a 
view of the sea, and on which the Carthaginian admi¬ 
ral resided. Around the whole island numerous ships 
of war were laid up under cover of spacious halls or 
arsenals, with all the necessary stores for fitting them 
out at the shortest notice. (Appian, Pun., 96.—Stra¬ 
bo, 572.) The term appears to indicate a harbour 
made by art and human labour; and hence Festus 
states that artificial harbours were called Cothones. 
(Fest., s. v. Catones, with the emendation of Scali- 
ger.) The word appears to be derived from the Pu¬ 
nic (Hebrew) Keton, with its primary reference to 
cutting, lopping off, &c. (Gesenms, Phoen. Mon., p. 
422.) 

Cotiso, a king of the Daci, whose army invaded 
Pannonia, and was defeated by Corn. Lentulus. the 
lieutenant of Augustus. (Sueton., Aug., 21.— Fio¬ 
nas, 4, 12.— Horat., Od., 3, 8, 18.) 

Cotta, I. Caius Aurelius, a celebrated Roman ora¬ 
tor, of the school of Crassus, and who flourished 
about A.U.C. 661. He failed, observes Cicero, in his 
pursuit of the tribuneship by the envious opposition 
which he encountered. Being accused before the 
people, he spoke with great force against the violent 
and unjust mode in which the equites dispensed jus¬ 
tice, and then went into voluntary exile, without wait¬ 
ing for his condemnation. This happened in the. 
stormy times of Marius and Sylla. He was recalled 
by the latter. When consul in 677, Cotta had a law 
passed, which gave the tribunes of the commons the 
right of holding other offices, of which they had been 
deprived by Sylla.—II. L. Aurelius, flourished at the 
Roman bar when Cicero was yet a young man, and 
the latter states that none kindled in him more emula¬ 
tion than Hortensius and Cotta. The eloquence of 
this individual was calm and flowing, and his diction 
elegant and correct. He was elevated to the con¬ 
sulship in 687 A.U.C., and in the year following to 
the censorship. In the debate respecting the recall 
of Cicero, Cotta,, who was first called upon for his 
opinion, distinguished himself for the manly frank¬ 
ness with which he censured the proceedings against 


Cicero. (Ctc., de Div ., 2, 21.— Ep. ad Alt., 12, 23 
&c.)—III. M. Aurelius, a Roman commander in the 
Mithradatic war, sent by the senate to guard the Pro¬ 
pontis and to protect Bithynia. His eagerness to en¬ 
gage in battle with Mithradates before Lucullus came 
up, led to his defeat by both sea and land, after which 
he was shut up in Chalcedon until relieved by Lucul 
lus. (Plat., Vit. Lucull.) — IV. L. Aurunculeius, « 
lieutenant of Csesar’s in Gaul, cut off along with Titu 
rius by the Eburones. (Cces., B. G., 5, 26, scqq .) 

CottLe Alpes, now Mont St. Genevre, generally 
though erroneously, supposed to be the place where 
Hannibal crossed into Italy. (Vid. Alpes.) They 
took their name from Cottius. ( Vid. Cottius.) 

Cottius, a chieftain, who held a kind of sovereignty 
over several valleys among the Alps. It appears to 
have been hereditary, as we also hear of King Don- 
nus, his father. (Ovid, Ep. Pont., 4, 7.) Cottius 
is represented as lurking in the fastnesses of his Alps, 
and even defying the power of Rome, till Augustus 
thought it worth while to conciliate him with the 
title of prefect. (Dio Cassius, 9, 24.— Amrn. Mar¬ 
cell., 15, 10.) Claudius, however, restored to him 
the title of king. Under Nero, the Cottian Alps be¬ 
came a Roman province. (Suet., Ner., 18.) The 
extent of the territory which Cottius possessed cannot 
now be easily defined; for though all the people 
which composed his dominions are enumerated in the 
inscription of the arch at Suza, many of them remain 
unknown, notwithstanding great pains have been taken 
to identify their situation. (Consult Millen, Voyage 
en Italie, vol. 1, p. 105.) Enough 1 ; however, is known 
of them to make it appear, that the territory of Cottius 
extended much farther on the side of Gaul than of 
Italy. In Gaul, he seems to have held under him aK 
the eastern part of Dauphine, and the northeastern 
portion of Provence. (Compare D'Anvillc, Not. At 
VAnc. Gaule, art. Caturiges, Savincates, Esubiani. 
&c.) 

Cottus, a giant, son of Coelus and Terra, who had 
one hundred hands and fifty heads. (Hesiod, Theog., 
149.) His brothers were Gyes (Tvyg, the form Tvyin 
is less correct: Go tiling, ad loc.) and Briareos. The 
most recent expounders of mythology consider these 
three as mere personifications, relating to the winter 
season. Thus Cottus (K ottoq, from kotttu, “ to 
smite”) is the Smiler, and is an epithet for the hail: 
Gyes (Tvtjc, the part of the plough to which the share 
is fixed), is the Fufrower, or the ram: ancL Briareos 
(Bpuipeoc, akin to (3pidu, (Ipiapoc, /3pWo, fipttivs, all 
denoting weight and strength) is the Presser , the snow 
which lies deep and heavy on the ground. They were 
naturally named Hundred-handed (^aaToy^ELpeg, centi- 
mani), from their acting so extensively at the same 
moment of time. (Hermann, fiber das Wesen, &c., 
p. 84.)—Welcker understands by the Hundred-handed 
the water. (Welch., Tril., 147. — Keightley's My¬ 
thology, p. 46.) 

Goty^eum, a town of Phrygia, south of Dorylfeum, 
on the Thymbris, a branch of the Sangarius. Suidas 
says, that, according to some accounts, it was the 
birthplace of ^Esop the fabulist. Alexander, a gram¬ 
marian of great learning, and a voluminous writer, was 
also a native of Cotyoeum. Late Byzantine writers 
term it the metropolis of Phrygia. (M. Due., p. 7, a.) 
Kutaya or Kutaieh, a Turkish town of about eight 
thousand souls, has succeeded to the ancient Cctiseum. 
The name of this is sometimes given as Coyiseum 
which, judging from ancient coins, is the more correct 
mode of writing it, the legend being always KOTIA- 
E12N. (Sestini, p. 121.— Rasche, Lex Rei. Num ., 
vol. 3, col. 1052.— Cramer's Asia Minor , vol 2 n 
17.) ’ V 

Cotys, a name borne by several kings of Thrace 
and also by some other princes. — I. A king of Thrace' 
contemporary with Philip, father of Alexander. H 






C R A 


ORA 


was a very active and inveterate foe to the Athenians, 
and did them considerable mischief in the Chersonese. 
Cotys was assassinated by Python and Heraclides, 
who received each from the Athenians, as a recom¬ 
pense for the deed, the rights of citizenship and a 
golden crown. ( Dcmosth., contra Aristocr. — Aristot., 
Polit., 5, 10.— Palmer., ad Demosth., contr. Anst., 
.30.)—II. A king pf Thrace, who sent his son Sadales, 
at the head of five hundred horse, to the aid of Pom- 
pey, in his contest with Caesar. ( Cces ., Bell. Civ., 3, 
4.—Compare Lucan, 5, 54, and Cortius, ad loc .)—III. 
A king of Thrace in the time of Augustus, slain by 
his uncle Rhescuporis, B.C. 15. He was a prince of 
a literary turn, and Ovid addressed to him one of his 
epistles from the Euxine (Ep. ex Ponto , 2, 9.— Tacit., 
Ann., 2, 66, &c.)—IV. Son of Manes, succeeded his 
father on the throne of Lydia. (Herod., 4, 45.—Con¬ 
sult Ritter, Vorhalle, p. 365.)—V. A king of the 
Odrysae, in Thrace, who favoured the interests of Per- 
ses against the Romans. ( Liv ., 42, 29.) 

Cotytto, or Cotys, a goddess worshipped by the 
Thracians, and apparently identical with the Phrygian 
Cybele. Her worship was introduced at Athens and 
Corinth, where it was celebrated, in private, with great 
indecency and licentiousness. The priests of the 
goddess were called Baptae. A full account of all that 
the ancients have left us in relation to this deity, may 
be found in Buttmann ( Mythologus, vol. 2, c. 19, p. 
159, seqq., “ Ueber die Kotyttia und die Baptoe") 
and in Lobeck (Aglaophamus, p. 1007, seqq. — Epi- 
metrum xi., ad. c. 8). 

Cragus, I. a chain of mountains running along 
the coast of Lycia. It rises precipitously from the 
sea, and, from the number of detached summits which 
it offers to the spectator in that direction, it has not 
unaptly been called by the Turks Yedi Bouroun, or 
the Seven Capes. Strabo, however, assigns to it eight 
summits. ( Strab., 665.) This same writer also pla¬ 
ces in the range of Cragus the famed Chimaera. (Vid. 
Chimsera.) Scylax calls Cragus, however, a promon¬ 
tory, and makes it the separation of Lycia and Caria 
(p. 39.—Compare Plin., 5, 28).—II. A town of Ly¬ 
cia, in the vicinity of the mountain-ranges of the same 
name. (Strab., 665.) The authority of Strabo is 
confirmed by coins. (Sestini, p. 92.— Cramer's Asia 
Minor, vol. 2, 245, seqq.) 

Cranai, a surname of the Athenians, from their 
King Cranaus. ( Vid. Cranaus.) 

Cranaus, the successor of Cecrops on the throne 
of Attica. He married Pedias, and the offspring of 
their union was Atthis. (Consult remarks under the 
article Cecrops.) 

Cranii, a town of Cephallenia, situate, according 
to Strabo, in the same gulf with Pale. (Strab., 456. 
— Thucyd., 2, 34.— Liv., 38, 28.) The Athenians 
established the Messenians here, upon the abandon¬ 
ment of Pylos by the latter, when that fortress was re¬ 
stored to the Lacedaemonians. (Thucyd., 5,35.) Dr. 
Holland says, “ this city stood on an eminence at the 
upper end of the bay of Argostoli; and its walls may 
yet be traced nearly in their whole circumference,” 
which he conceives to be nearly two miles. The 
structure is that usually called Cyclopian. (Vol. 1, p. 
55.— Dodwell, vol. 1, p. 75.) 

Cranon and Crannon, a city of Thessaly, on the 
river Onchestus, southeast of Pharsalus. Near it was 
a fountain, the water of which warmed wine when 
mixed with it, and the heat remained for two or three 
days. (Athenoeus, 2, 16.) 

Crantor, a philosopher of Soli, among the pupils 
of Plato, B.C. 310. He was the first who wrote com¬ 
mentaries on the works of Plato. Crantor was highly 
celebrated for the purity of his moral doctrine, as may 
be inferred from the praises bestowed by the ancients, 
especially by Cicero, upon his discourse “on grief.” 
Horace also (Ep., 1, 2, 3) alludes to his high reputa¬ 


tion as a moral instructed (Enfield's History of Phi¬ 
losophy, vol. 1, p. 248, seqq.) 

Crassus, I. Lucius Licinius, a Roman orator and 
man of consular rank. In A.U.C. 633, being only 
twenty-one years of age, he made his debut in the 
Forum, in a prosecution against C. Carbo. Cicero 
says, that he was remarkable, even at this early period, 
for his candour and his great love of justice. Crassus 
was but twenty-seven years old when his eloquence 
obtained the acquittal of his relation, the vestal Licinia. 
Being elevated to the consulship in 657, he was the 
author of a law, by which numbers of the allies, who 
passed for Roman citizens, were sent back to their 
respective cities. This law alienated from him the 
affections of the principal Italians, so that he was re¬ 
garded by some as the primary cause of the social war, 
which broke out three years after. Having Hithei 
Gaul for his province, Crassus freed the country from 
the robbers that infested it, and for this service had 
the weakness to claim a triumph. The senate were 
favourable to his application ; but Scsevola, the other 
consul, opposed it, on the ground that he had not con¬ 
quered foes worthy of the Roman people, Crassus 
conducted himself, in other respects, with great wis¬ 
dom in his government, and not only did not remove 
from around him the son of Carbo, who had come as 
a spy on his conduct, but even placed him by his side 
on the tribunal, and did nothing of which the other 
was not a witness. Being appointed censor in 659, 
he caused the school of the Latin rhetoricians to be 
closed, regarding them as dangerous innovators for 
the young. Crassus left hardly any orations behind 
him ; and he died while Cicero was yet in his boy¬ 
hood : but still that author, having collected the opin¬ 
ions of those who had heard him, speaks with a minute, 
and apparently perfect^ intelligence of his style of ora¬ 
tory. He was what may be called the most ornamental 
speaker that had hitherto appeared in the Forum. 
Though not without force, gravity, and dignity, these 
were happily blended with the most insinuating polite¬ 
ness, urbanity, ease, and gayety. He was master of 
the most pure and accurate language, and of perfect 
elegance of expression, without any affectation, or un¬ 
pleasant appearance of previous study. Great clear¬ 
ness of language distinguished all his harangues ; and, 
while descanting on topics of law or equity, he pos¬ 
sessed an inexhaustible fund of argument and illus¬ 
tration. Some persons considered Crassus as only 
equal to Antonius, his great contemporary; others pre¬ 
ferred him as the more perfect and accomplished orator. 
The language of Crassus was indisputably preferable 
to that of Antonius ; but the action and gesture of the 
latter were as incontestably superior to those of Cras¬ 
sus. As a public speaker Crassus was remarkable for 
his diffidence in the opening of a speech, a diffidence 
which never forsook him ; and, after the practice of a 
long life at the bar, he was frequently so much agita¬ 
ted in the exordium of a discourse, as to grow pale and 
tremble in every joint of his frame. The most splen¬ 
did of all the efforts of Crassus was the immediate 
cause of his death, which happened A.U.C. 662, a short 
while before the commencement of the civil wars of 
Marius and Sylla, and a few days after the time in which 
he is supposed to have borne his part in the dialogue 
“ De Oratore." The consul Philippus had declared, 
in one of the assemblies of the people, that some other 
advice must be resorted to, since, with such a senate 
as then existed, he could no longer direct the affairs 
of the government. A full senate being immediately 
summoned, Crassus arraigned, in terms of the most 
glowing eloquence, the conduct of the consul, who, 
instead of acting as the political parent and guar¬ 
dian of the senate, sought to deprive its members 
of their ancient inheritance of respect and dignity. 
Being farther irritated by an attempt, on the part of 
Philippus, to force him into compliance with his do 

381 




CRASSUS. 


CRASSUS. 


signs, he exerted, on this occasion, the utmost effort of 
his genius and strength; but he returned home with a 
pleuritic fever, of which he died seven days after. 
This oration of Crassus, followed, as it was, by his 
almost immediate death, made a deep impression on 
his countrymen ; who, long afterward, were wont to re¬ 
pair to the senate-house for the purpose of viewing the 
spot where he had last stood, and where he fell, as it may 
be said, in defence of the privileges of his order. ( Dun¬ 
lop's Rom. Lit., vol. 2, p. 215, seqq.) —II. Marcus, 
was praetor A.U.C. 648. ( Cic., de Fin., 5, 30.) He 

was surnamed by his friends Agelastus (’Aye/l aaroq), 
because, according to Pliny (7, 19), he never laughed 
during the whole course of his life ; or because, ac¬ 
cording to Lucilius, he laughed but once. (Cic., de 
Fin., 5, 30.)—III. Marcus Licinius, surnamed the 
Rich, grandson of the preceding, and the most opu¬ 
lent Roman of his day, was of a patrician family, and 
the son of a man of consular rank. His father and 
brother perished by the proscriptions of Marius and 
Cinna while he was still quite young, and, to avoid a 
similar fate, he took refuge in Spain until the death of 
Cinna, when he returned to Italy and served under 
Sylla. Crassus proved very serviceable to this com¬ 
mander in the decisive battle that was fought near 
Rome ; but afterward, making the most unjust and ra¬ 
pacious use of Sylla’s proscriptions, that leader, ac¬ 
cording to Plutarch, gave him up, and never employed 
him again in any public affair. The glory which was 
then beginning to attend upon Pompey, though still 
young and only a simple member of the equestrian 
order, excited the jealousy of Crassus, and, despairing 
of rising to an equality with him in warlike operations, 
he betook himself to public affairs at home, and, by 
paying court to the people, defending the impeached, 
lending money, and aiding those who were candidates 
fr/r office, he attained to an influence almost equal 
to that which Pompey nad acquired by his military 
ichievements. It was at the bar, in particular, that 
Craseus rendered himself extremely popular. He 
was not, it would seem, a very eloquent speaker, yet 
»y care and application he eventually exceeded those 
whom nature had more highly favoured. When Pom- 
ey, and Caesar, and Cicero declined speaking in be- 
alf of any individual, he often arose, and advocated 
the cause of the accused. Besides this promptness to 
aid the unfortunate, his courteous and conciliating de¬ 
portment acquired for him many friends, and made him 
very popular with the lower orders. There was not a 
Roman, however humble, whom he did not salute, or 
whose salutation he did not return by name. The 
great defect, however, in the character of Crassus, 
was his inordinate fondness for wealth ; and, although 
he could not strictly be called an avaricious man, since 
he is said to have lent money to his friends without 
demanding interest, yet he allowed the love of riches 
to exercise a paramount sway over his actions, and it 
proved at last the cause of his unhappy end. Plutarch 
informs us, that his estate at first did not exceed three 
hundred talents, but that afterward it amounted to the 
enormous sum of seven thousand one hundred talents 
(nearly $7,500,000). The means by which he at¬ 
tained to this are enumerated by the same writer, and 
some of them are singular enough. Observing, says 
Plutarch, how liable the city was to fires, he made it 
ills business to buy houses that were on fire and others 
that joined upon them ; and he commonly got them at 
a low price, on account of the fear and distress of the 
owners about the result. A band of his slaves there¬ 
upon, regularly organized for the pumose, exerted 
themselves to extinguish the flames, and, after this was 
done, rebuilt what had been destroyed, and in this way 
Crassus gradually became the owner of a large portion 
of Rome. He gained large sums also by educating 
and then selling slaves. Plutarch, in fact, regards 
this as his principal source of revenue. With alt this 
382 


ea ger grasping after wealth, however, Crassus appears 
to have been no mean soldiei, even though he displayed 
so few of the qualities of a commander in his Parthian 
campaign. Created praetor A.U.C. 680, he was sent 
to terminate the war with Spartacus. He accordingly 
met, defeated him in several encounters, and at last 
bringing him to a decisive action, ended the war by a 
single blow, Spartacus and forty thousand of his fol¬ 
lowers being left on the field. Not venturing to de 
mand a triumph for a victory over gladiators and slaves, 
he contented himself with an ovation. In 682 Cras¬ 
sus obtained the consulship, having Pompey for his 
colleague. At a subsequent period we find him im¬ 
plicated by an informer in the conspiracy of Catiline, 
but acquitted by acclamation the moment the charge 
was heard by the senate. We now come to the clo¬ 
sing scene in the career of Crassus. When Caesar, on 
returning from his government to solicit the consul¬ 
ship, found Pornpey and Crassus at variance (which 
had been the case also during almost all the time that 
they were colleagues in the consular office), and per¬ 
ceived, that, for the furtherance of his own ambitious 
views, the aid of these two individuals would be needed 
by him for opposing the influence of the senate, as well 
as that of Cicero, Cato, and Catulus, he managed to 
reconcile them, and soon, in conjunction with both ot 
them, formed the well-known league usually styled the 
First Triumvirate, which prove*! so fatal to the liber¬ 
ties of the Roman people. By the terms of this com¬ 
pact Crassus obtained the government of Syria. In 
the law that was passed relative to this government 
of Crassus, no mention was indeed made of any war 
in its neighbourhood ; still every one knew that he 
had connected with it an immediate invasion of Par- 
thia. Plutarch even states, that he had fixed upon 
neither Syria nor Parthia as the limits of his expected 
good fortune, but intended to penetrate even to Bac- 
tria, India, and the shores of the Eastern Ocean. The 
only motive to this memorable and unfortunate under¬ 
taking was the rapacious love of wealth. It was not, 
however, without considerable opposition from the 
people and the tribunes that Crassus was allowed to 
proceed on this expedition. All the influence of Pom¬ 
pey was necessary to prevent an expression of popular 
wrath, for no good was expected to result from hos¬ 
tilities against a people who had done the Romans no 
injury, and who were, in fact, their allies. When 
Crassus, moreover, had reached the gate of the city, 
the tribune Ateius attempted to stop him by force ; 
but, failing in this, he immediately proceeded to per¬ 
form a religious ceremony of the most appalling na¬ 
ture, by which he devoted the commander himself, 
and all who should follow him on that service, to 
the wrath of the infernal gods and a speedy destruc¬ 
tion. Undismayed, however, by either denunciations 
or omens (vid. Caunus), Crassus, embarking at Brun- 
disium, proceeded into Asia by Macedonia and the 
Hellespont. As the enemy were not prepared for 
this unprovoked invasion, the Romans met with no re¬ 
sistance. At first Crassus overran the greater part ot 
Mesopotamia; and, had he taken advantage of the 
consternation into which his sudden appearance had 
thrown the Parthians, he might, with the greatest ease, 
have extended his conquest to Babylonia itself. But 
the season being far advanced, he did not think it ex 
pedient to proceed. On the contrary, having left in 
the different towns and strongholds a detachment of 
7000 foot and 1000 horse, he returned into Syria, and 
took up his winter-quarters in that province. This 
retrograde movement was a fatal error. His occupa¬ 
tions, too, during the winter were highly censurable, 
having mare of the trader in them than the general. 
Instead of improving the discipline of the soldiers, and 
keeping them in proper exercise, he spent his time in 
making inquiry relative to the revenues of the cities, 
and in weighing the treasures which he found in the 






C R A 


C R A 


.ample of Hieiapolis. In the spring the Roman com- 
nander took the field, on the frontiers of Syria, with 
seven legions, four thousand horse, and an equal num¬ 
ber of light or irregular troops. With this force he 
again passed the Euphrates, when he was joined by 
an Arabian chief, whom Plutarch calls Ariamnes, but 
who is elsewhere named Acbarus or Abgarus ; and in 
this barbarian, owing to his knowledge of the coun- 
. try, and his warm and frequent expressions of attach¬ 
ment to the Romans, Crassus unfortunately placed the 
utmost confidence. The result may easily be fore¬ 
seen. Crassus intended to have followed the course 
of the Euphrates till he should reach the point where 
it approaches nearest to Seleucia and Ctesiphon, the 
capital of the Parthian empire; but, being dissua¬ 
ded from this by his crafty guide, and directing his 
march across the plains, he was led at last into a sandy 
desert, where his army was attacked by the Parthian 
forces under Surena. An unequal conflict ensued. 
The son of Crassus, sent with a detachment of Gallic 
horse to repel the Parthian cavalry, lost his life after 
the most heroic exertions ; and his loss was first made 
known to his father by the barbarians carrying his head 
on a spear. Crassus himself, not long after, being 
compelled by his own troops to meet Surena in a con¬ 
ference, was treacherously slain by the barbarians, and 
his head and right hand sent to the Parthian king, 
Orodes. The whole loss of the Romans in this dis¬ 
astrous campaign was 20,000 killed and 10,000 taken 
prisoners. ( Plut., Vit. Crass.—Dio Cass., 40, 13, 
seqq. — Appian, Bell. Parth.) 

Crater, or Sinus Crater, the ancient name of the 
Gulf of Naples, given to it from its resembling the 
mouth of a large bowl or mixer ( uparrip .) It is about 
twelve miles in diameter. 

Craterus, one of Alexander’s generals, distinguish¬ 
ed for both literary and warlike acquirements. He 
was held in high esteem by Alexander, whose confi¬ 
dence he obtained by the frankness of his character; 
and the monarch used to say, “ Hephasstion loves 
Alexander, but Craterus the king.” After the death 
of Alexander, he was associated with Antipater, in the 
care of the hereditary states. He afterward crossed 
over into Asia along with Antipater, in order to con¬ 
tend against Eumenes, but was defeated by the latter, 
and lost his life in the battle. ( Nep ., Vit. Bum., 2.— 
Justin, 13, 6, &c.) 

Crates, I. a philosopher of Boeotia, son of Ascon- 
dus, and disciple of Diogenes the Cynic, B.C. 324. 
He is considered as the most distinguished philosopher 
of the Cynic sect, after Diogenes. In his natural tem¬ 
per, however, he differed from his master, and, instead 
of being morose and gloomy, was cheerful and face¬ 
tious. Hence he obtained access to many families of 
the most wealthy Athenians, and became so highly es¬ 
teemed, that he frequently acted as an arbiter of dis¬ 
putes and quarrels among relations. He was hon¬ 
ourably descended, and inherited large estates ; but 
when he turned his attention to philosophy, he sold 
them, and distributed the money among the poorer 
citizens. He adopted all the singularities of the Cynic 
sect. His wife Hipparchia, who was rich and of a 
good family, and had many suiters, preferred Crates to 
every other, and, when her parents opposed her incli¬ 
nations, so determined was her passion that she 
threatened to put an end to her life. Crates, at the 
request of her parents, represented to Hipparchia 
every circumstance in his condition and manner of 
living which might induce her to change her mind. 
Still she persisted in her resolution, and not only be¬ 
came the wife of Crates, but adopted all the peculiari¬ 
ties of the Cynic profession. ( Enfield’s History of 
Philosophy , vol. 1, p. 313.)—II. A philosopher of 
Athens, who succeeded in the school of his master Pol- 
emon. Crates and Polemon had long been attached 
to each other from a similarity of dispositions and pur¬ 


suits. While they lived, their friendship continued 
inviolate, and they were both buried in the same 
grave. ( Diog. Laert., 4, 21.)—III. An Athenian, 
originally an actor, and who in that capacity perform¬ 
ed the principal part in the plays of Cratinus. He could 
not, however, have followed this profession very long, 
for we learn from Eusebius that he was well known as 
a comic writer in 450 B.C., which was not long after 
Cratinus began to exhibit. Crates, according to Aris¬ 
totle {Poet., 4, 6), was the first Athenian poet who 
abandoned the iambic or satiric form of comedy, and 
made use of general stories or fables. Perhaps the 
law, passed B.C. 440, restraining the virulence and 
license of comedy, might have some share in giving 
his plays this less offensive turn. His style is said to 
have been gay and facetious ; yet the few fragments 
of his writings which remain are of a serious cast; such 
are, for example, his reflections on poverty, and his 
beautiful lines on old age. From the expressions of 
Aristophanes {Equit., 538), the comedies of Crates 
seem to have been marked by elegance of language 
and ingenious ideas. Yet, with all his endeavours to 
please his fastidious auditors, the poet had, in common 
with his rivals, to endure many contumelies and vexa¬ 
tions. He nevertheless, with unwearied resolution, 
continued to compose and exhibit during a varied ca¬ 
reer of success and reverses. {Theatre of the Greeks, 
2d ed., p. 170.) 

Cratiiis, I. a river of Arcadia, rising in a mountain 
of the same name, and flowing through Achaia into the 
Sinus Corinthiacus, to the west of AEgira. It was from 
this stream that the Italian Crathis, which flowed be¬ 
tween Crotona and Sybaris, derived its appellation. 
{Herodot., 1, 146.— Strabo, 386.)—II. A river of Lu- 
cania, flowing into the Sinus Tarentinus, between Cro¬ 
tona and Sybaris. It is now the Crati. The ancients 
ascribed to this stream the property of turning white 
the hair of those who bathed in its waters, which 
were, however, accounted salutary for various disor 
ders. ( Strabo, 263.) 

Cratinus, an Athenian comic poet, born B.C. 519. 
It was not till late in life that he directed his attention 
to comic compositions. The first piece of his on 
record is the ’ApqyAo^of, which was represented about 
448 B.C., at which time he was in his seventy-first 
year. In this play, according to Plutarch {Vit. Cim.), 
he makes mention of the celebrated Cimon, who had 
died the preceding year, B.C. 449, and from the lan¬ 
guage employed by the poet, it may be inferred that 
he was on terms of close intimacy with the Athenian 
general. Soon after this, comedy became so licen¬ 
tious and virulent in its personalities, that the magis¬ 
tracy were obliged to interfere. {Schol. in Aristopli., 
Acharn., 67.—Compare Clinton's Fasti Hellenici, 
B.C. 440 and 437.) A decree was passed, B.C. 440, 
prohibiting the exhibitions of comedy; which law con¬ 
tinued in force only during that year and the two fol¬ 
lowing, being repealed in the archonship of Euthym- 
enes. Three victories of Cratinus stand recorded 
after the recommencement of comic performances. 
With the Xeipa&fievoi he was second, B.C. 425 
{Argum. Acharn.), when the ’A xapvelg of Aristopha¬ 
nes won the prize, and the third place was adjudged to 
the N ovpyviai of Eupolis. In the succeeding year he 
was again second with the ZaTvpot,, and Aristophane 
again first with the 'Irnrelc. {Argum. Equit.) In a 
parabasis of this play that young rival makes mention 
of Cratinus ; where, having noticed his former suc¬ 
cesses, he insinuates, under the cloak of an equivocal 
piety, that the veteran was becoming doting and su¬ 
perannuated. The old man, now in his ninety-fifth 
year, indignant at this insidious attack, exerted his 
remaining vigour, and composed, against the contests 
of the approaching season, a comedy entitled Tlvrivy, 
or The Flagon, which turned upon the accusations 
brought against him by Aristophanes. The aged 



CRL 


C R E 


dramatist had a complete triumph. ( Argurn. Nub.) 
He was first; while his humbled antagonist was van¬ 
quished also by Ameipsias with the K ovvoe, though the 
play of Aristophanes was his favourite N e<f>6?iai. Not¬ 
withstanding his notorious intemperance, Cratinus lived 
to an extreme old age, dying B.C. 422, in his ninety- 
seventh year. ( Lucian, Macrob., 25.) Aristophanes 
alludes to the exc3ssesof Cratinus in a passage of the 
Equites (v. 526, iegq.). In the Pax (v. 700, seqq.), 
he hum )rously ascribes the jovial old poet’s death to 
a shock on seeing a cask of wine staved and lost. 
Cratinus himself made no scruple of acknowledging 
his failing: ("O tl 6e (piXocvog 6 K parlvog teal avrog 
ev r?j II vtlvtj A syei cracptig. — Schol. in Pac., 703). 
Horace, also, opens one of his epistles (1, 19) with a 
maxim of the comedian’s, in due accordance with his 
practice. The titles of thirty-eight of the comedies 
of Cratinus have been collected by Meursius, Koenig, 
&c. His style was bold and animated ( Persius, 1, 
123), and, like his younger brethren, Eupolis and Aris¬ 
tophanes, he fearlessly and unsparingly directed his 
satire against the iniquitous public officer and the 
profligate of private life. ( Horat ., Sat., 1, 4, 1 ,seqq.) 
Nor yet are we to suppose, that the comedies of Cra¬ 
tinus and his contemporaries contained nothing beyond 
broad jest or coarse invective and lampoon. They 
were, on the contrary, marked by elegance of expres¬ 
sion and purity of language ; elevated sometimes into 
philosophical dignity by the sentiments which they 
declared, and graced with many a passage of beautiful 
idea and high poetry : so that Quintilian deems the 
Old Comedy, after Homer, the most fitting and bene¬ 
ficial object of a young pleader’s study. (Quint., 
10, 1.— Theatre of the Greeks, 2d ed., p. 166, seqq.) 

Cratippus, a peripatetic philosopher of Mytilene, 
who, among others, taught Cicero’s son at Athens. 
He first became acquainted with Cicero at Ephesus, 
whither he had gone for the purpose of paying his re¬ 
spects to him. Afterward, being aided by the orator, 
he obtained from Caesar the rights of Roman citizen¬ 
ship. On coming to Athens, he was requested by the 
Areopagus to settle there, and become an instructer of 
youth in the tenets of philosophy, a request with which 
he complied. He wrote on divination and on the in¬ 
terpretation of dreams. (Cic., Off., 1,1.— Id.,de Div., 
1, 3.— Id., Ep. ad Fam., 12, 16.) 

Cratylus, a Greek philosopher, and disciple of 
Heraclitus. According to Aristotle ( Metaph ., 1 , 6), 
Plato attended his lectures in his youth. Diogenes 
Laertius, however (3. 8), says that this was after the 
death of Socrates. Cratylus is one of the interlocutors 
in the dialogue of Plato called after his name. (Com¬ 
pare Schleiermacher's Introduction to the Cratylus, 
Dobson's transl., p. 245.) 

Crauallid^e, a nation who occupied at one period 
a part of the Cirrhsean plain. They are described by iEs- 
chines (in Ctes., p. 405) as very impious, and as hav¬ 
ing plundered some of the offerings of Delphi. They 
were exterminated by the Amphictyons. The name 
is erroneously given by some as Acragallidse, and they 
are thought by Wolf, who adopts this lection, to have 
Deen a remnant of the army of Brennus. (Consult 
Taylor, ad ASsch., 1. c.) 

Cremera, a small river of Tuscany, running between 
V eii and Rome, and celebrated for the daring but unfor¬ 
tunate enterprise of the gallant Fabii. (Ovid, Fast., 2, 
193, seqq.) I he Cremera is now called la Valca, a 
rivulet which rises in the neighbourhood of Baccano, 
and falls into the Tiber a little below Prima Porta. 
(Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 239.) 

Cremna, I. a strong place in the interior of Pisidia, 
lying, according to Ptolemy, on the declivity of Tau¬ 
rus, nearly six miles north of Selga. According to 
Strabo (569), it had been long looked upon as impreg- 
lable ; but it was at length taken by the tetrarch 
Amyrtas, with some other places, in his wars against 


the Pisidians. This fortress was considered after¬ 
ward by the Romans to be of so much consequence, 
that they established a colony here. (Ptol., p. 124.— 
Hierocl., p. 681.— Zosim., 1, 60.) It is generally 
supposed, that this town is represented by the modern 
fort of Kebrinaz, occupying a commanding situation 
between Isbarteh and the lake Egreder. (Cramer's 
Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 300.)—II. A commercial place 
on the Palus Maeotis. Mannert supposes the name 
to be one of Greek origin, and to have reference to its 
rocky situation. He locates the place at the mouth o) 
the Tanais, near the modern Taganrock. (Mannert, 
Geogr., vol. 4, p. 115.) 

Cremona, a city of Cisalpine Gaul, northeast o f 
Placentia, and a little north of the Po. Cremona am 
Placentia were both settled by Roman colonies, A.U.C 
535. ( Polyb., 3, 40.) After the defeat on the Tre 

bia, we find the consul P. Scipio retiring to Cremo 
na (Liv., 21, 56), and it appears that the Romans re 
tained the place throughout the whole of the secorn 
Punic war, though it suffered so much during its con 
tinuance, and afterward from the attacks of the Gauls, 
that it was found necessary to recruit its population 
by a fresh supply of colonists. (Liv., 37, 46.) The 
colony, being thus renewed, continued to prosper for 
nearly a hundred and fifty years ; when the civil wars, 
which ensued after the death of Caesar,' materially af¬ 
fected its interests. Cremona unfortunately espoused 
the cause of Brutus, and thus incurred the vengeance 
of the victorious party. The loss of its territory, which 
was divided among the veteran soldiers of Augustus, 
is well known from the line of Virgil (Eclog., 9, 28), 
“ Mantua vee miserce nimium vicina Cremonce ,” which 
is nearly repeated by Martial (8, 55), “ Jugera perdide- 
rat miserce vicina Cremonce .” The effect of this ca¬ 
lamity would seem, however, to have been but tempo¬ 
rary : and, in fact, we learn from Strabo (216), that v Cre- 
mona was accounted in his time one of the most con¬ 
siderable towns in the north of Italy. The civil wars, 
which arose during the time of Otho and Vitellius, were 
the source of much severer affliction to this city than 
any former evil, as the fate of the empire was more than 
once decided between large contending armies in its im¬ 
mediate vicinity. After the defeat of Vitellius’s party 
by the troops of Vespasian, it was entered by the latter, 
and exposed to all the horrors that fire, the sword, and 
the ungoverned passions of a licentious soldiery can in¬ 
flict upon a city taken by storm. The conflagration of 
the place lasted four days. The indignation which 
this event excited throughout Italy seems to have 
been such, that Vespasian, afraid of the odium it might 
attach to his party, used every effort to raise Cremona 
from its ruins, by recalling the scattered inhabitants, 
reconstructing the public edifices, and grantino- the 
city fresh privileges. (Tacit., Hist., 3, 33 and 34.— 
I Hn.f 19. Ptol., p. 63.— Cramer's Ancient Italy 
vol. 1, p. 66, seq.) y 

Cremutius Cordus, an historian who wrote an ac¬ 
count of the achievements of Augustus. He gave of¬ 
fence to Tiberius, and his prime minister Sejanus, by 
stating in his history that “ Cassius was the last of 
the Romans." (Tacit., Ann., 4, 34.) Suetonius, 
however, makes him to have called both Cassius and 
Brutus by this title. (Sueton., Vit. Tib., 61.— Die 
Cass., 57, 24.) 

Creon, I. king of Corinth, and father of Creiisa 
or Glauce, the wife of Jason. ( Vid. Creiisa and Me¬ 
dea.)—II. The brother of Jocasta, mother and wife of 
GNlipus. (Vid. (Edipus.) He ascended the throne 
of Thebes after Eteocles and Polynices had fallen in 
mutual combat, and gave orders that the body of the 
latter should be deprived of funeral rites, on which cir¬ 
cumstance is founded the plot of the Antigone of Soph 
ocles. (Vid. Eteocles, Polynices, Antigone, &c.) 

Creophylus, a native of Samos, who composed, 
under the title of O ixaliaq alwcLq, “ The conquest « 



CRE 


CRETA. 


CEchalia/’ an epic poem commemorative of the ex¬ 
ploits of Hercules. According to an ancient tradition, 
Homer himself was the author of this piece, and gave 
•t to Creophylus as a return for the hospitable recep¬ 
tion which he had received under his roof. ( Strabo , 
638.) In an epigram of Callimachus, however, Cre¬ 
ophylus is named as the real author. ( Strab., 1. c .) 
It was among the descendants of Creophylus that Ly- 
.:urgus found, according to Plutarch ( Vit. Lycurg.,\), 
the Iliad and Odyssey. ( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Gr ., vol. 

1, p. 166.) 

Cresphontes, a son of Aristomachus, who, with 
his brothers Temenus and Aristodemus, conquered the 
Peloponnesus. This was the famous conquest achiev¬ 
ed by the Heraclkke. ( Vid. Aristodemus and Heracli- 
dae.) 

Crestone, I. or Creston, a city of Thrace, the cap¬ 
ital probably of the district of Crestonia. Dionysius 
of Halicarnassus, and most of the commentators and 
translators of Herodotus, confound this city with Cor¬ 
tona in Umbria. (Compare Muller , Elrusker , vol. 1, 
p. 95.— Larchcr, Hist. d'Hcrodote. — Table Geogr., 
vol. 8, p. 149.) Herodotus speaks of Crestone as sit¬ 
uate beyond the Tyrrhenians, and inhabited by Pelas- 
gi (1, 67), speaking a different language from their 
neighbours. Kennel thinks that the reading Tyrrhe¬ 
nians is a mistake, and that Thcrmceans should be 
substituted for it, as Therma, afterward Thessalonica, 
agrees with the situation mentioned by the historian. 
(Geography of Herodot., p. 45.) If, however, the text 
be correct as it stands, it shows that there was once 
a nation called Tyrrhenians in Thrace. This is also 
confirmed by Thucydides (4, 109. — Compare the 
elaborate note of Larcher, ad Herodot ., 1. c.) —II. A 
district of Thrace, to the north of Anthermus and 
Bolbe, chiefly occupied by a remnant of Pelasgi. 
{Herodot., 1, 57.) We are informed by Herodotus, 
.hat the river Ethedorus took its rise in this territory ; 
and also that the camels of the Persian army were here 
attacked by lions, which are only to be found in Eu¬ 
rope, as he remarks, between the Nestus, a river of 
Thrace, and the Acheloiis (7, 124, and 127). Thu¬ 
cydides also mentions the Crestonians as a peculiar 
race, part of whom had fixed themselves near Mount 
Athos (4, 109). The district of Crestone is now 
known by the name of Caradagh. ( Cramer's Anc. 
Greece , vol. 1, p. 240.) 

Creta, one of the largest islands of the Mediterra¬ 
nean Sea, at the south of all the Cyclades. Its name 
is derived by some from the Curetes, who are said to 
have been its first inhabitants ; by others, from the 
nymph Crete, daughter of Hesperus ; and by others, 
from Cres, a son of Jupiter, and the nymph Idaea. 
( Sleph. Byz., s. v. K pr/ry.) It is also designated 
among the poets and mythological writers by the sev¬ 
eral appellations of iEria, Doliche, Idaaa, and Telchin- 
ia. {Pliny, 4, 12.— Steph. Byz., s. v. ’A epia.) Ac¬ 
cording to Herodotus, this great island remained in 
the possession of various barbarous nations till the time 
of Minos, son of Europa, who, having expelled his 
brother Sarpedon, became the sole sovereign of the 
country (1, 173.—Compare Hoeck, Kreta, vol. 1, p. 
141). These early inhabitants are generally supposed 
to be the Eteocretes of Homer, who clearly distin¬ 
guishes them from the Grecian colonists subsequently 
settled there. {Od., 19, 172.) Strabo observes that 
the Eteocretes were considered as indigenous; and 
adds, that Staphylus, an ancient writer on the subject 
of Crete, placed them in the southern side of the isl¬ 
and. {Strab., 475.) Other authors, who concur in 
this statement of the geographer, would lead us to es¬ 
tablish a connexion between this primitive Cretan race 
and the Curetes, Dactyli, Telchines, and other ancient 
tribes, so often alluded to with reference to the mystic 
rites of Crete, Samothrace, and Phrygia. {Strab., 
466.) Minos, according to the concurrent testimony 


of antiquity, first gave taws to the Cretans, and, hav¬ 
ing conquered the pirates who infested the JEgean 
Sea, established a powerful navy. {Herodot., 1, 171. 
— Id., 3, 122.— Thucyd., 1, 4, seqq. — Ephor., ap. 
Strab., 476.— Aristot., Polit., 2, 12.) In the Trojan 
war, Idomeneus, sovereign of Crete, led its forces to 
the war in eighty vessels, a number little inferior to 
that commanded by Agamemnon himself. According 
to the traditions which Virgil has followed, Idomeneus 
was afterward driven from his throne by faction, and 
compelled to sail to Iapygia, where he founded the 
town of Salernum. {JEn., 3, 121 and 399.) At this 
period the island appears to have been inhabited by a 
mixed population of Greeks and barbarians. Homer 
enumerates the former under the hames of Achaei, Do¬ 
rians, surnamed Tricha'ices, and Pelasgi. The lat¬ 
ter, who were the most ancient, are said to have come 
from Thessaly, under the conduct of Teutarnus, poste¬ 
rior to the great Pejasgic emigration into Italy. {An- 
dron., ap. Steph. Byz., s. v. Aupiov.) The Dorians 
are reported to have established themselves in Crete, 
under the command of Althamenes of Argos, after 
the death of Codrus and the foundation of Megara. 
( Strabo, 48].— Eustath. ad II., 2, 645.) After the 
Trojan war and the expulsion of Idomeneus, the prin¬ 
cipal cities of Crete formed themselves into several 
republics, for the most part independent, while others 
were connected by federal ties. These, though not 
exempted from the dissensions which so universally 
distracted the Greek republics, maintained for a long 
time a considerable degree of prosperity, owing to the 
good system of laws and education which had been so 
early instituted throughout the island by the decrees of 
Minos. The Cretan code was supposed by many of 
the best-informed writers of antiquity to have furnish¬ 
ed Lycurgus with the model of his most salutary reg¬ 
ulations. It was founded, according to Ephorus, as 
cited by Strabo (480), on the just basis of liberty and 
an equality of rights ; and its great aim was to promote 
social harmony and peace by enforcing temperance and 
frugality. On this principle, the Cretan youths were 
divided into classes called Agelae, and all met at the 
Andreia, or public meals. Like the Spartans, they were 
early trained to the use of arms, and inured to sustain 
the extremes of heat and cold, and undergo the se¬ 
verest exercise ; they were also compelled to learn 
their letters and certain pieces of music. The chief 
magistrates, called Cosmi (K oapoi), were ten in num¬ 
ber, and elected annually. The Gerontes constituted 
the council of the nation, and were selected from those 
who were thought worthy of holding the office of Cos 
mus {Koopoq). There was also an equestrian order, 
who were bound to keep horses at their own expense. 
(Compare Aristot., Polit., 2, 7.— Polyb., 6, 46.) But 
though the Cretan laws resembled the Spartan institu¬ 
tions in so many important points, there were some 
striking features which distinguished the legislative en¬ 
actments of the two countries. One of these was, 
that the Lacedaemonians were subject to a strict agra¬ 
rian law, whereas the Cretans were under no restraint 
as to the accumulation of moneyed or landed property ; 
another, that the Cretan republics were for the most 
part democratical, whereas the Spartan was decidedly 
aristocratical. Herodotus informs us, that the Cretans 
were deterred by the unfavourable response of the 
Pythian oracle from contributing forces to the Grecian 
armament assembled to resist the Persians (7, 169). 
In the Peloponnesian war, incidental mention is made 
of some Cretan cities as allied with Athens or Sparta; 
but the island does not appear to have espoused col¬ 
lectively the cause of either of the belligerant parties. 
{Thucyd., 2, 85.) The Cretan soldiers were held in 
great estimation as light troops and archers, and readi¬ 
ly offered their services for hire to such states, wheth¬ 
er Greek or barbarian, as needed them. {Thucyd., 7, 
57 .—Xcn., Anab., 3, 3, 6.—Polyb., 4,8.— Id., 5> 14 > 

385 



GRETA. 


CRI 


in the time of Polybius the Cretans had much degener¬ 
ated from their ancient character, for he charges them 
repeatedly with the grossest immorality and the most 
hateful vices. ( Polyb., 4, 47.— Id. ibid., 53.— Id., 6, 
46.) We know also with what severity they are re¬ 
proved by St. Paul, in the words of one of their own 
poets, Epimenides ( Ep. Tit., 1, 12), K pyreg del -ipeva- 
Td, naKu Aypia, yaorepeg apyat .—The Romans did 
net. interfere with the affairs of Crete before the war 
with Antiochus, when Q. Fabius Labeo crossed over 
into the island from Asia Minor, under pretence of 
claiming certain Roman captives who were detained 
there. (Liv., 37, 60.) Several years after, the island 
was invaded by a Roman army commanded by M. An- 
tonius, under the pretence that the Cretans had se¬ 
cretly favoured the cause of Mithradates ; but Florus 
more candidly avows, that the desire of conquest was 
the real motive which led to this attack (3, 7.—Com¬ 
pare Liv., Epit., 97). The enterprise, however, having 
failed, the subjugation of the island was not effect¬ 
ed till some years later, by Metellus, who, from his 
success, obtained the agnomen of Creticus. (Liv., 
Epit., 99.— Appian, Excerpt, de Rcb. Cret. — Flor., 3, 
7.) It then became annexed to the Roman empire, 
and formed, together with Cyrenai'ca, one of its nu¬ 
merous provinces, being governed by the same pro- 
consul. ( Dio Cassius, 53, 12. — Strabo, 1198.) — 
Crete forms an irregular parallelogram, of which the 
western side faces Sicily, while the eastern looks to¬ 
wards Egypt; on the north it is washed by the Mare 
Creticum, and on the south by the Libyan Sea, which 
intervenes between the island and the opposite coast 
of Cyrene. The whole circumference of Crete was 
estimated at 4100 stadia by Artemidorus ; but Sosi- 
crates, who wrote a very accurate description of it, did 
not compute the periphery at less than 5000 stadia. 
Hieronymus also, in reckoning the length alone at 2000 
stadia, must have exceeded the number given by Ar- 
temidorus. (Strabo, 474.) According to Pliny, the 
extent of Crete from east to west is about 270 miles, 
and it is nearly 539 in circuit. In breadth it nowhere 
exceeds 50 miles. Strabo observes, that the interior 
is very mountainous and woody, and intersected with 
fertile valleys. Mount Ida, which surpasses all the 
other summits in elevation, rises in the centre of the 
island ; its base occupies a circumference of nearly 
600 stadia. To the west it is connected with another 
chain, called the white mountains (Aevnd oprj), and to 
the east its prolongation forms the ridge anciently 
known by the name of Dicte. (Strabo, 475, 478.) 
The island contains no lakes, and the rivers are mostly 
mountain-torrents, which are dry during the summer 
season.—It has been remarked by several ancient wri¬ 
ters, that Homer in one passage ascribes to Crete 100 
cities II, 2, 649), and in another only 90 (Od., 19, 
174), a variation which has been accounted for on the 
supposition, that ten of the Cretan cities were found¬ 
'd posterior to the siege of Troy ; but, notwithstand¬ 
ing this explanation, which Strabo adopts from Epho- 
rus, it seems rather improbable, that the poet should 
have paid less attention to historical accuracy in the 
Iliad than in the Odyssey, where it was not so much 
required. The difficulty may be solved by assum¬ 
ing, what has every appearance of being true, that 
the Odyssey was not the composition of Homer, but 
the workiof a later age. Others affirmed, that during 
the siege •of Troy the ten deficient cities had been 
destroyed by the enemies of Idomeneus. (Strabo, 
479.—Compare Hoeck, Kreta, vol. 2, p. 437.) The 
modern name of Crete is Candia. Chalk was pro¬ 
duced in great abundance here, and was hence called 
Creta Terra, or simply Creta. The valleys or slo¬ 
ping plains in modern Candia are very fertile. The 
greater portion of the land is not cultivated, but it 
might produce sugarcane, excellent wine, and the best 
kind of fruit; the exports are salt, grain, oil, honey, 
386 


silk, and wool. Crete abounds in wild fowl and dii- 
ferent kinds of game. (Malte-Brun, Ceogr., vol. 6, 
p. 166, Am. ed. — Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 3, p. 
356, seqq.) The best work on the history of ancient 
Crete is that of Hoeck (Kreta, 3 vols. Svo, Gottingen, 
1823-29). 

Crete, I. the wife of Minos. (Apollod., 3, .)— 
II. A daughter of Deucalion. (Id., 3, 3.) 

Cretes, the inhabitants of Crete. ( Virg., AEn., 4, 
146.) 

Creusa, I. a daughter of Creon, king of Corinth, 
and wife of Jason. She received from Medea, as bri¬ 
dal presents, a diadem and robe, both of which had 
been prepared with magic art, and saturated with dead¬ 
ly poisons. On arraying herself in these, flames burst 
forth, and fed upon and destroyed her. Creon, the fa¬ 
ther of the princess, perished in a similar way, having 
thrown himself upon the body of his dying daughter, 
and being afterward unable to extricate himself from 
the embrace of the corpse. (Eurip., Med., 781, seqq. 
— Id. ib., 1156, seqq.) According to the scholiast, 
she was also called Glauce. (Schol. ad Eurip., Med., 
19.)—II. Daughter of Priam and Hecuba, and wife of 
/Eneas. When Troy was surprised by the Greeks, 
she fled in the night with her husband, but they were 
separated during the confusion, nor was her absence 
observed until the other fugitives arrived at the spot 
appointed for assembling. ./Eneas a second time 
braved the perils of the burning city in quest of his 
wife. While he was distractedly seeking for her 
through every quarter of Troy, Creusa appearedtohim 
as a deified personage, and appeased his alarm by in¬ 
forming him, that she had been adopted by Cybele 
among her own attendant nymphs ; and she then ex¬ 
horted him to pursue his course to Italy, with an inti¬ 
mation of the good fortune that awaited him in that 
land. (Virg., AEn., 2, 562, seqq.) v 

Creusis or Creusa (Kpevcug or Kpevoa), a town of 
Boeotia, which Pausanias (9, 32) and Livy (36, 21) 
term the harbour of Thespiss. It was on the confines 
of the Megarean territory, and a difficult and danger 
ous road led along the shore from thence to /Egosthe 
nse, a seaport belonging to the latter. Xenophon, or. 
two occasions, describes the Lacedaemonians as re 
treating from Boeotia by this route, with great hazard 
and labour, before the battle of Leuctra, when under 
the command of Cleombrotus, and again subsequent to 
that bloody conflict. (Hist. Gr., 5, 4, 17.— Ibid., 6, 
4, 25.) Pausanias describes the navigation from the 
coast of the Peloponnesus to Creusa as dangerous, on 
account of the many headlands which it was necessary 
to double, and also from the violence of the winds 
blowing from the mountains (9, 32.—Compare Stra¬ 
bo, 405 and 409.— Ptol., p. 86). The position oi 
Creusa seems to correspond with that of Livadostro, a 
well-frequented port, situated in a bay running inland 
towards the north, to which it gives its name. From 
Livadostro to Psato there is a path which winds around 
the western shore of the bay, at the base of Mount 
Cithaeron, and agrees very well with Xenophon’s de¬ 
scription. (Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 2, p. 202, 
seqq.) 

Crimisus or Crimissus, I. a river of Sicily, in the 
western part of the island, flowing into the Hypsa. 
D’Anville makes the modern name Cattabellotta; but 
Mannert, the San Bartolomceo. The orthography of 
the ancient word is given differently in different edi¬ 
tions of Virgil. The true reading is Crimisus or Cri¬ 
missus. (Consult Heyne , in Var. Led., ad Virg., 
AEn., 5, 38.— Cellarius, Geogr. Ant., vol. 1, p. 794.) 
—II. or Crimisa, a promontory, river, and town oi 
Brutium, north of Crotona. The modern name ot 
the promontory is Capo dell' Alice ; of the river, the 
Fiumenica.; the modern Giro answers to the city. 
This place was said to have been founded by Philoc- 
tetes after the siege of Troy. (Strab., 254.— Steph 






C RI 


C R CE 


By*', s. v. — Lycophr., 911.)—III. The god of the river 
Crimisus in Sicily. He became, by a Trojan female, 
the father of Acestes or HCgestes. ( Vid . HL’gestes, 
and compare Serv ., ad Virg., JEn ., 1 , 550.) 

Crispinus, I. a native of Alexandrea in Egypt, of 
msan, if not servile, origin. According to the scholi¬ 
ast on Juvenal (1, 26), he was at first a paper-vender 
* (x a P T0 ™^7]s), but became afterward a great favourite 
with Domitian, and was raised to equestrian rank. 
He was a man of infamous morals. ( Schol., in cod. 
Schurz., ad Juv., 1. c. — Schott, Ohs., 5, 35.)—II. A 
ridiculous philosopher and poet in the time of Horace, 
and noted for garrulity. According to the scholiast 
( ad Horat., Serm., 1, 1, 120), he wrote some verses 
on the Stoic philosophy, and, on account of his ver¬ 
boseness and loquacity, received the appellation of 
dpETuAoyog. (Compare Doring, ad Horat., 1. c.) 

Crispus, Sallustius. Vid. Sallustius. 

Crissteus Sinus, an arm of the Sinus Corinthiacus, 
on the northern shore. It extends into the country of 
Phocis, and had at its head the town of Crissa, whence 
it took its name. Its modern name is the Gulf of 
Salona, from the modern city of Salona , the ancient 
Amphissa, which was the chief town of the Locri 
Ozolae, and lay to the northeast of Delphi. ( Cramer's 
Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 151.) 

Critheis, the reputed mother of Homer. (Vid. 
Homerus.) 

CritIas, one of the thirty tyrants set over Athens 
by the Spartans. He was of good family, and a man 
of considerable talents, but of dangerous principles. 
He applied himself with great success to the culture 
of eloquence, which he had studied under Gorgias, 
and Cicero cites him among the public speakers of 
that day. (Brut., 7.— De Oral., 2,22.) He appears 
also to have had a talent for poetry, if we may judge 
from some fragments of his which have reached us. 
Critias turned his attention likewise to philosophical 
studies, and was one of the disciples of Socrates, whom, 
however, he quarrelled with and left. (Xen., Mem., 
1, 2.) Being after this banished from Athens for 
some cause that is not known, he retired to Thessaly, 
where he excited an insurrection among the Penestse 
Dr serfs. (Consult Schneider, ad Xen., Hist. Gr., 2, 
3, 36, et ad Xen., Mem., 1, 2, 24.) Subsequently to 
this he visited Sparta, and wrote a treatise on the laws 
and institutions of that republic. Returning to Athens 
along with Lysander, B.C. 404, he was appointed one 
of the thirty, his pride of birth and hatred of dema¬ 
gogues having pointed him out as a fit person for that 
office. After a cruel and oppressive use of the power 
thus conferred upon him, he fell in batttle against Thra- 
sybulus and his followers. Plato, who was a relation 
of his, has made him one of the interlocutors in his Ti- 
m33us and Critias. (Xen., Hist. Gr., 2, 3.— Id., 2, 4.) 

Crito, I. a wealthy Athenian, the intimate friend 
and disciple of Socrates. When that philosopher was 
accused, he became security for him ; and, after his 
condemnation, succeeded in bribing the keeper of the 
prison, so that Socrates, had he felt inclined, might 
easily have escaped. He is introduced, therefore, 
by Plato as an interlocutor in the dialogue called 
Crito, after his name. The remainder of his life is not 
known; but, as he was nearly of the same age with 
Socrates, he could rot have long survived him. Crito 
wrote seventeen dialogues, which are lost. (Plat., 
Crit. — Suid., &:.)—II. A Macedonian historian, who 
wrote an accoun of Pallene, of Persia, of the founda¬ 
tion of Syracuse, of the Getse, &c. (Suid., s. v.) — 
III. An Athenian sculptor, who, with Nicolaus, one 
of his fellow-citizens, made a statue intended as a 
support to a building. This work, belonging to the 
*lass of Caryatides, is still extant, and forms part of 
the collection at the Villa Albani. Winckelmann (vol. 
6, p. 203) thinks he flourished about the time of Cice¬ 
ro (Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.) 


Critolaus, I. a native of Phaselis in Lycia, wno 
came to Athens to study philosophy, and became there, 
after the death of Ariston of Ceos, the head of the 
peripatetic school. He was sent by the Athenians, 
along with Carneades and Diogenes, on an embassy to 
Rome, B.C. 158, and acquired great reputation in that 
city, during his stay there, for his ability in speaking; 
a circumstance, however, which did not prevent his 
declaiming against the rhetorical art, which he consid¬ 
ered prejudicial rather than useful. He lived more 
than eighty years. Critolaus strove to confirm, by 
new arguments, the doctrine of Aristotle respecting 
the eternity of the world. (Plut., de Exil., p. 605.— 
Cic., de Fin., 5, 5.— Stobceus, Eclog. Phys., 1, 1.— 
Philo, Mund. Incorrupt., p. 943.)—II. A general of 
the Achseans, and one of the principal authors of the 
war between the Romans and his countrymen, which 
ended in the subjugation of the latter. (Polyb., 38, 
2.-— Id., 38, 5, &c.) 

Criu-metopon (Kpiov Metutvov, i. e., “ Ram’s 
Front”), I. a promontory of the Tauric Chersonese 
and the most southern point of that peninsula. It i 
now called Karadjebouroun, according to D’Anville 
which signifies, in the Turkish language, Black-nose 
Mannert, however, makes the modern name to be 
Ajadag, or the Holy Mountain. —II. A promontory 
of Crete, forming its southwestern extremity, no\* 
Cape Crio. (Plm., 4, 11.) 

Crobyzi, a people between Mount Hsemus and the 
Danube, in Lower Maesia. Their territory lay in a 
northeastern direction from Philippopolis on the He- 
brus. (Plin., 4, 12.) 

Crocodilopolis, a city of Egypt. (Vid. Arsinoe 

V.) 

Crocus, a youth who, being unable to obtain the 
object of his affections, the nymph Smilax, pined 
away, and was changed into the crocus, or “ saffron.’ 
Smilax herself was metamorphosed into the smilax, o. 
“ Oriental bindweed.” (Ovid, Met., 4, 283.) 

Crcesus, son of Alyattes, king of Lyd'a, and born 
about 591 B.C. He was the fifth and last of the 
Mermnadae, a family which began to reign with Gyges, 
w^lo dethroned Candaules. (Herod., 1, 14.) Ac¬ 
cording to the author just quoted, Croesus was the son 
of Alyattes by a Carian mother, and had a half-brother, 
named Pantaleon, the offspring of an Ionian female. An 
attempt was made by a private foe of Croesus to hinder 
his accession to the throne, and to place the kingdom 
in the hands of Pantaleon; but the plot failed (Herod., 
1, 92), although Stobaeus (Serm., 45) informs us. that 
Croesus, on coming to the throne, divided the kingdom 
with his brother. Plutarch states, that the second 
wife of Alyattes, wishing to remove Croesus, gave a 
female baker in the royal household a dose of poison to 
put into the bread she made for Croesus. The woman 
informed Croesus, and gave the poisoned bread to the 
queen’s children, and the prince, out of gratitude, con¬ 
secrated at Delphi a golden image of this female three 
cubits high. (Plut., de Pylh. Orac. — Op., ed. Reiske, 
vol. 7, p. 580.— Herod., 1, 51.) Croesus ascended the 
throne on the death of his father, B.C. 56-0, and imme¬ 
diately undertook the subjugation of the Greek com¬ 
munities of Asia Minor (the iEolians, Ionians, and 
Dorians), whose disunited state, and almost continual 
wars with one another, rendered his task an easy one. 
He contented himself, however, after reducing them 
beneath his sway, with merely imposing an annual 
tribute, and left their forms of government unaltered. 
When this conquest was effected, he turned his 
thoughts to the construction of a fleet, intending to 
attack the islands, but was dissuaded from his purpose 
by Bias of Priene. (Herod., 1, 27.) Turning his 
arms, upon this, against the nations of Asia Minor, he 
subjected all the country lying west of the river Halys, 
except Cilicia and Lycia ; and then applied himself to 
the arts of peace, and to the patronage of the scieiv' 

387 




CROESUS. 


C R O 


and oi literature. He w»;c«im< famed for his riches 
and munificence. Poets ana philosophers were invited 
to his court, and, among others, Solon, the Athenian, is 
said to have visited his captital, Sardis. Herodotus 
relates the conversation which took place between the 
'atter and Croesus on the subject of human felicity, in 
which the Athenian offended the Lydian monarch by 
he little value which he attached to riches as a means 
of happiness. (Herod., 1, 30.) This anecdote, how¬ 
ever, appeared encumbered with chronological difficul¬ 
ties, even to the ancients (Pint., Vit. Sol., c. 27), and 
has given rise to considerable discussions in modern 
times. (Consult Larcher, Chronol. d'Herod., vol. 7, 
p. 205, seqq. — Clavier, Histoire des 'premiers temps 
de la Grece, vol. 2, p. 324. — Schultz, Apparat. ad 
Annall. Crit. Rer. Grcec., p. 16, seqq. — Bahr , ad 
Herodot., 1, 30.) Not long after this, Croesus had 
the misfortune to lose his son Atys (vid. Atys); but 
the deep affliction into which this loss plunged him 
was dispelled in some degree, after two years of 
mourning, by a feeling of disquiet relative to the move¬ 
ments of Cyrus and the increasing power of the Per¬ 
sians. Wishing to form an alliance with the Greeks 
of Europe against the danger which*threatened him, 
a step which had been recommended by the oracle at 
Delphi (Herod., 1, 53), he addressed himself, for this 
purpose, to the Lacedaemonians, at that time the most 
powerful of the Grecian communities, and having suc¬ 
ceeded in his object, and made magnificent presents to 
the Delphic shrine, he resolved on open hostilities with 
the Persians. The art of the crafty priesthood who 
managed the machinery of the oracle at Delphi is no¬ 
where more clearly shown than in the history of their 
royal dupe, the monarch of Lydia. He had lavished 
upon their temple the most splendid gifts ; so splendid, 
in fact, that we should be tempted to suspect Herodo¬ 
tus of exaggeration if his account were not confirmed 
by other writers. And the recipients of this bounty, in 
their turn, put him off with an answer of the most studied 
ambiguity when he consulted their far-famed oracl(Wn 
the subject of a war with the Persians. The response 
of Apollo was, that if Croesus made war upon this peo¬ 
ple, he would destroy a great, empire; and the answ.ef of 
Amphiaraus (for his oracle, too, was consulted by the 
Lydian king), tended to the same effect. (Herod., 1, 
53.) The verse itself, containing the response of the 
oracle, is given by Diodorus (Excerpt., 7, § 28), and is 
as follows : Kpoiaog, "AXvv 6ia6uq, fieyd'kyv upxvv 
KaraXvcrei, “ Croesus, on having crossed the Halys, 
will destroy a great empire," the river Halys being, as 
already remarked, the boundary of his dominions to 
the east. (Compare Cm., de JDiv., 2, 56.— Aristot ., 
Rhet., 3, 4.) Croesus thought, of course, the kingdom 
thus referred to was that of Cyrus; the issue, however, 
proved it to be his own. Having assembled a numer¬ 
ous army, the Lydian monarch crossed the Halys, in¬ 
vaded the territory of Cyrus, and a battle took place 
in the district of Pteria, but without any decisive re¬ 
sult. Croesus, upon this, thinking his forces not suffi¬ 
ciently numerous, marched back to Sardis, disbanded 
his army, consisting entirely of mercenaries, and sent 
for succour to Amasis of Egypt, and also to the Lacedae¬ 
monians, determining to attack the Persians again in the 
beginning of the next spring. But Cyrus did not allow 
him time to effect this. Having discovered that it was 
the intention of the Lydian king to break up his present 
army, he marched with all speed into Lydia, before a 
new mercenary force could be assembled, defeated 
Croesus (who had no force at his command but his 
Lydian cavalry), in the battle of Thymbra, shut him up 
in Sardis, and took the city itself after a siege of four¬ 
teen days, and in the fourteenth year of the reign of 
the son of Alyattes. With Croesus fell the empire of 
the Lydians. Herodotus relates two incredible stories 
connected with this event; one having reference to 
the dumb son of Croesus, who spoke for the first time 
388 


when he saw a soldier in the act of killing his father 
and, by the exclamation which he uttered, saved his 
parent’s life, the soldier being ignorant of his rank, 
and the other being as follows : Croesus having been 
made prisoner, a pile was erected, on which he was 
placed in order to be burned alive. After keeping si¬ 
lence for a long time, the royal captive heaved a deep 
sigh, and with a groan thrice pronounced the name of 
Solon. Cyrus sent to know the reason of this excla¬ 
mation, and Crossus, after considerable delay, acquaint¬ 
ed him with the conversation between himself and 
Solon, in which the latter had discoursed with so much 
wisdom on the instability of human happiness. The 
Persian monarch, relenting upon this, gave orders for 
Croesus to be released. But the flames had already 
begun to ascend on every side of the pile, and all hu¬ 
man aid proved ineffectual. In this emergency Croesus 
prayed earnestly to Apollo, the god on whom he had 
lavished so many splendid offerings; that deity heard 
his prayer, and a sudden and heavy fall of rain extin¬ 
guished the flames! (Herod., 1, 86, seqq.) This 
story must be decidedly untrue, as it is not possible to 
conceive that the Persians would employ fire, which 
to them was a sacred element, in punishing a criminal, 
Croesus, after this, stood high in the favour of Cyrus, 
who profited by his advice on several important occa¬ 
sions ; and Ctesias says that the Persian monarch as¬ 
signed him for his residence a city near Ecbatana. 
This prince, in his last moments, recommended Croe¬ 
sus to the care of his son and successor Cambyses, 
and entreated the Lydian, on the other hand, to be an 
adviser to his son. Croesus discharged this duty with 
so much fidelity as to give offence to the new monarch, 
who ordered him to be put to death. Happily for him, 
they who were charged with this order hesitated to 
carry it into execution ; and Cambyses, soon after, 
having regretted his precipitation, Croesus was again 
brought into his presence, and restored to v his formei 
favour. The rest of his history is unknown. As he 
was advanced in years, he could not have long sur¬ 
vived Cambyses. (Herod., 3, 36, seqq. —Compare 
Bahr, ad Ctes., p. 102, seqq. — Creuzer, Fragm. Hist., 
p. 207, seqq. — Nic. Damasc., in Excerpt. Vales., p 
457, seqq.) The wealth of Croesus was proverbial in 
the ancient world, and one source of supply was in the 
gold ore washed down by the Pactolus from Mount 
Tmolus in Lydia. (Compare Erasmus, chil. 1, cent. 
6, col. 216.— Strab., 610,625.— Vug., JEn., 10, 141 
— Sencc., Phcen., 604.— Juvenal, Sat., 14, 298.) 

Cromi or Cromni, a town of Arcadia, in the district 
Cromitis, mentioned by Xenophon as a place of some 
strength. It is thought by Sir W. Gell to correspond 
with Crano, two hours and forty-seven minutes from 
Sinano, or Megalopolis. (Itin. of the Morea, p. 99.) 

Crommyon, a small place in Corinthia, on the shore 
of the Saronic Gulf, south of the Megarean frontier. 
It was celebrated in mythology as the haunt of a 
wild boar destroyed by Theseus. (Pint., Vit. Thes ., 
Plat., Each., p. 196.— Strabo, 380.) Pausanias says 
it was named after Crommus, son of Neptune. From 
Thucydides (4, 44) it appears that Crommyon was 
120 stadia from Corinth. The little hamlet of Canet- 
ta or Kinetta is generally thought to occupy the site 
of this ancient town. (Chandler's Travels, vol. 2, 
ch. 43.— GelVs Itin., p. 209.) 

Crophi, a mountain of Egypt, between Elephantina 
and Syene. Between this mountain and another called 
Mophi were the sources of the Nile, according to a 
foolish statement made to Herodotus by an Egyptian 
priest at Sais. (Herodot., 2, 28.) 

Crotona or Croto (K poruv), now Cotixtx , a 
powerful city of Italy, in the Brutiorum ager, on the 
coast of the Sinus Tarentinus. Its foundation is as¬ 
cribed to Myscellus, an A chasan leader, soon after Syb- 
aris had been colonized by a party of the same nation, 
which was about 715 A.C. (Antioch., Syrac., av. 




CROTONA. 


C T L 


SlraL, 262.) According to some traditions, the ori¬ 
gin of Crotona was much more ancient, and it is said to 
derive its name from tne hero Croton. (Ovid, Mctam., 
15, 53.—Compare Hcracl., Pont. Fragm., p. 20.— 
Diod. Sic., 4, 24.) The residence of Pythagoras and 
his most distinguished followers in this city, together 
with the overthrow of Sybaris which it accomplished, 
and the exploits of Milo and of several other Crotoniai 
victors in the Olympic Games, contributed in a high 
degree to raise its fame. Its climate, also, was prover¬ 
bially excellent, and was supposed to be particularly 
calculated for producing in its inhabitants that robust 
frame of body requisite to ensure success in gymnastic 
contests. Hence it was commonly said, that the last 
athlete of Crotona was the first of the other Greeks. 
(Strabo, 262.) This city was also celebrated for its 
school of medicine, and was the birthplace of Demo- 
cedes, who long enjoyed the reputation of being the 
first physician of Greece. (Herodot., 3,131.) How¬ 
ever brilliant an epoch in the history of Crotona its 
triumph over Sybaris may appear, that event must be 
regarded also as the term of her greatness and pros¬ 
perity ; for from this period it is said that luxury and 
the love of pleasure, the usual consequences of great 
opulence, soon obliterated all the good effects which 
had been produced by the wisdom and morality of Py¬ 
thagoras, and conspired to enervate that hardihood and 
vigour for which the Crotoniatse had hitherto been so pe¬ 
culiarly distinguished. (Polyb., Fragm., 7, 1, and 10, 
1.— Tim., ap. Athen., 12, 4.) As a proof of the remark¬ 
able change which took place in the warlike spirit of 
this people, it is said that, on their being subsequently 
engaged in hostilities with the Locrians, an army of 
130,000 Crotoniat* were routed by 10,000 of the en¬ 
emy on the banks of the Sagras. Such was, indeed, 
the loss they experienced in this battle, that, according 
to Strabo, their city henceforth rapidly declined, and 
could no longer maintain the rank it had long held among 
the Italiot republics. (Strabo, 261.) According to 
Justin (20, 2), it is true, a much earlier date ought to 
be assigned to this event; but the accounts which 
Strabo has followed evidently regarded it as subsequent 
to the fall of 'Sybaris, and probability rather favours 
such an arrangement in the order of events. (Con¬ 
sult Heyne, de Civit. Grcec., prolus. 10, in Op. Acad., 
vol. 2, p. 184.) Dionysius the elder, who was then 
aiming at the subversion of all the states of Magna 
Gracia, having surprised the citadel, gained possession 
of the town, which, however, he did not long retain. 
(Liv., 24, 3.) Crotona was finally able to assert its 
independence against his designs, as well as the attacks 
of the Brutii; and when Pyrrhus invaded Italy, it was 
still a considerable city, extending on both banks of 
the jTlsarus, and its walls embracing a circumference 
of twelve miles. But the consequences of the war 
which ensued with that king proved so ruinous to its 
prosperity, that above one half of its extent became 
deserted ; the BEsarus, which flowed through the town, 
now ran at some distance from the inhabited part, 
which was again separated from the fortress by a va¬ 
cant space. Such is the picture which Livy draws of 
the state of this city after the battle of Cannse, at 
which period almost all the Greek colonies abandoned 
the Roman cause. Crotona was then occupied by the 
Brutii, with the exception of the citadel, in which the 
chief inhabitants had taken refuge ; these being unable 
to defend the place against a Carthaginian force, soon 
after surrendered, and were allowed to withdraw to 
Locri. (Liv., 24, 2 and 3.) Crotona eventually fell 
again into the hands of the Romans, A.U.C. 560, and 
a colony was established here. Pliny merely speaks 
of it as an Oppidum, without adding a single remark 
respecting its importance. It became a place of some 
consequence in the time of Belisarius, who made it, 
on account of its position, a chief point in his opera¬ 
tions along the coast. (Procop, B. Goth., 3, 28, et 


4, 26.) Its harbour, however, does not seem to have 
been any of the best, or well calculated to afford pro¬ 
tection against storms and winds. It was rather what 
Polybius calls (10, 1) a summer-harbour. (Cramer's 
Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 391, seqq. — Mannert, Geogr., 
vol. 9, pt. 2, p. 210.) 

Crotoniatse, the inhabitants of Crotona. (Cic., 
de Inv., 2, 1.) 

Crotoniatis (y K poruvidriq ^wpa), a part of Italy, 
of which Crotona was the capital. (Thucyd., 7, 35.) 

CrustumerTum or Crustumium, a town of the 
Sabines, in the vicinity of Fidenae, and, like Fidenae, 
founded by a colony from Alba. (Lion. Hal., 2, 53.) 
Its great antiquity is also attested by Virgil (2En., 7, 
629), and by Silius Italicus (8, 367). From Pliny (3, 
5) we learn that the Crustumini were vanquished by 
Romulus, and that a settlement was formed in their 
territory. The fertility of their lands is extolled by 
more than one writer. Their city, however, was not 
finally conquered till the reign of the elder Tarquin. 
(Liv., 1, 38.) The name of Crustumini Colles ap¬ 
pears to have been given to the ridge of which the 
Mons Sacer formed a part, since Varro, speaking ot 
the secession of the Roman people to that hill, terms 
it Secessio Crustumerina. (L. L., 3, 1.) The tribe 
called Crusiumina evidently derived its name from 
this ancient city. (Liv , 42, 34.) The ruins of Crus- 
tumerium are said to exist in a place now called Mar- 
cigliano Vecchio. (Vulp., Vet. Lat., lib. 18, c. 17.— 
Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol. 1, p. 303, seqq.) 

Ctesias, I. a Greek historian and physician of Cni¬ 
dus, who flourished in the time of Artaxerxes Mnemon. 
(Saidas, s. v. — Xen., Anab., 1, 8, 27.— Diod. Sic., 
1, 32.) He was of the family of the Asclepiades, who 
possessed the art of healing as a patrimony, inherited 
from their great progenitor HUsculapius. (Galen, vol. 

5, p. 652, 1. 51, cd. Basil.) Ctesias assisted at the 
battle of Cunaxa, B.C. 401, but it is not precisely 
known whether he was in the army of Cyrus or in 
that of Artaxerxes. He merely states that he healed 
the wound received by the latter during the conflict. 
In speaking, however, of the death of Clearchus, the 
Grecian commander, which took place a short time 
after the battle, he informs us, that he was then the 
physician of Parysatis, the mother of Artaxerxes, 
which would render it very probable that he was from 
the first in the suite of the king, and not in that of his 
brother. (Compare Bahr, ad Ctes., p. 16, Proleg.) 
He passed, after this, seventeen years at the court ol 
Persia. Ctesias composed a History of Assyria and 
Persia, entitled Tlepmud, in 23 books, written in the 
Ionic dialect. In writing this, he obtained great as 
sistance, as well from the oral communications of the 
Persians as from the archives of the empire, to which 
he states that he had access, and in which appear to 
have been deposited those royal documents which Di¬ 
odorus Siculus calls j3cicu'A.iKai Sitpdipai. These an¬ 
nals contained rather the history of the court and the 
monarchs of Persia than that of the state itself. 
What we possess at present of the history of Ctesias, 
induces the belief, that it was precisely in this circle 
of events that the work of Ctesias just mentioned was 
principally taken up. It is by means of quotations 
given by Athenaeus, and more particularly by Plutarch, 
that we are made acquainted with some fragments of 
the first six books, which turned entirely on the history 
of Assyria. We have an extract, in a somewhat more 
complete order, from the seventeen books that imme¬ 
diately follow : Photius has placed it in his Bibliothe¬ 
ca. Ctesias wrote also a history of India (’I vducu), in 
one book, from which Photius has also copied an ex¬ 
tract.—On many points Ctesias is in contradiction with 
Herodotus, whom he accuses of dealing in fable ; and 
also with Xenophon. ' Pie has been charged, in his 
turn, with being, on many occasions, negligent of the 
truth. What has principally injured the reputation o 




C T E 


CUM 


Ctesias is his system of chronology, which is more dif¬ 
ficult to be reconciled with that of the Scriptures than 
the one adopted by Herodotus. It must be observed, 
however, that, among the ancient writers, Plutarch is 
the only one who shows little respect for Ctesias ; 
whereas Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Diodorus Sicu¬ 
lus, Strabo, Pliny, and even Xenophon himself, his 
contemporary, cite him with praise, or at least without 
contradicting him. It may reasonably be asked, more¬ 
over, which of the two ought to have been better ac¬ 
quainted with the subject of which they treat, Herod¬ 
otus or Ctesias ? Herodotus, who speaks only of the 
affairs of Persia on the testimony of others, and who 
wrote at a period when the Greeks had as yet but lit¬ 
tle intercourse with Persia; or Ctesias, who had 
passed many years at Susa, where he enjoyed so high 
a reputation as to be charged with the management of 
some important negotiations'? ( Gedoyn , Mem. de 

VAcad, des Inscr., &c., vol. 14, p. 247, seqq .)—What 
has just been said, however, refers merely to the work 
of Ctesias on Persia. His history of India is crowded 
with fables. Heeren ( Idccn , vol. 1, p. 323.) seeks to 
•’ustify Ctesias, on the ground that he details merely 
those of the myths of India which were in the mouths 
of the vulgar in Persia. Cuvier also observes, that 
Ctesias has by no means imagined the fantastic ani¬ 
mals of which he speaks, but that he has fallen into 
the mistake of ascribing an actual existence to the 
hieroglyphic figures, which are remarked at the present 
day among the ruins of Persepolis. We there find, 
for example, the martichora, that fabulous animal 
which w'as the symbol or hieroglyphic of royal power. 
Many other fables are to be explained by the ignorance 
of the laws of nature, which was so great among the 
ancients.—The fragments of Ctesias are to be found 
appended to various editions of Herodotus. A separ¬ 
ate edition was given by Lion, in 1825, 8vo, Gotting ., 
and another by Ba.hr, in 1824, 8vo, Francef. This 
last is decidedly the best. The editor has not con¬ 
tented himself with giving an accurate text, corrected 
by the aid of manuscripts, but in his commentary he 
explains the text, with reference to history, geography, 
&c., and seeks also to justify Ctesias against most of 
the charges alleged to his discredit. ( Scholl, Hist. 
Lit. Gr., vol. 2, p. 176, seqq. — Id., vol. 7, p. 436.)— 
II. An Ephesian, who also wrote on Persian affairs 
(Consult Vossius, de Hist. Grace., 3, p. 349.)—III. 
An artist, mentioned by Pliny (34, 29) as having 
flourished, along with other carvers in silver, after the 
time of Myron.—IV. A spendthrift and debauched 
person. Some verses of the comic poets Anaxilas and 
Philetaerus against him are preserved in Athenceus (10, 
p. 416, d.) 

Ctesibius, a native of Ascra, and contemporary of 
Archimedes, who flourished during the reigns of Ptol¬ 
emy II. and Ptolemy IIP, or between 260 and 240 
B.C. He was the son of a barber, and for some time 
exercised at Alexandrea the calling of his parent. 
His mechanical genius, however, soon caused him to 
emerge from obscurity, and he became known as the 
inventor of several very ingenious contrivances for 
raising water, &c. The invention of clepsydrae, or 
water clocks, is also ascribed to him. (Compare Vi¬ 
truvius, 9, 9.) He wrote a work on hydraulic ma¬ 
chines, which is now lost. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., 
vol. 3, p. 363.) 

Ctesiphon, I. an Athenian, who brought forward 
the proposition respecting the crown of gold, which 
the Athenians, on his motion, decreed to Demosthe¬ 
nes for his public services. He was accused and 
brought to trial for this by HUschines, but w r as suc¬ 
cessfully defended by Demosthenes. This contro¬ 
versy gave rise to the two famous and rival orations 
concerning “ the Crown.” (V+d. ^Eschines, Demos¬ 
thenes.)—II. A city of Parthia, situate on the eastern 
bank of the Tigris, opposite to, and distant three miles 
390 


from Seleucia. It was founded by Vardanes, fortified 
by Pacorus, and became the metropolis of the whole 
Parthian empire. Ctesiphon was at first an inconsid¬ 
erable village, but the camp of the Parthian monarchs 
being frequently pitched in its vicinity, caused it grad¬ 
ually to become a large city. In A.D. 165 it was 
taken by the Romans, and again 33 years after by the 
Emperor Severus. ( Dio Cass., 75, 9.— Spartian ., 
Vit. Sev., 16.— Herodian, 3, 30.) Notwithstanding, 
however, its losses, it succeeded to Babylon and Se« 
leucia as one of the great capitals of the East. In the 
time of Julian, Ctesiphon was a great and flourishing 
city ; and Coche, as the only remaining part of Seleu¬ 
cia was called, was merely its suburb. To these two 
have been assigned the modern epithet of “ Al Mo- 
dam,” or “ the cities.” They are now both in ruins. 
Ctesiphon never recovered its sack by the Saracens, 

A. D. 637. Thij^ place was the winter residence of 
the Parthian and Persian monarchs. In summer they 
dwelt at Ecbatana in Media. ( Strabo, 743.— Plin 
6, 26.— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 5, p. 406.) 

Culako, a city of the Allobroges, in Gallia Nar- 
bonensis, on the banks of the Isara. On being rebuilt 
by Gratian, it took the name of Gratianopolis, and is 
now Grenoble. ( Cic., Ep. ad Fam., 10, 23.— Paul 
Warncfr., de Gest. Long oh , 3, 8.) 

Cum.<3d, I. a city of HColis, in Asia Minor. ( Vid. 
Cyme.)—II. A city of Campania in Italy, northwest 
of Neapolis. It was placed on a rocky hill washed by 
the sea ; and the same name is still attached to the 
ruins which lie scattered around its base. Whatever 
doubt may have been thrown on the pretensions of 
many other Italian towns to a Greek origin, those of ( 
Cumae seem to stand on grounds too firm and indis¬ 
putable to be called in question. It is agreed upon by 
all ancient writers who have adverted to this city, that it 
was founded at a very early period by some Greeks ol 
Eubcea, under the conduct of Hippocles of Cumae and 
Megasthenes of Chalcis. ( Strabo, 243.— Thucyd., 6, 

4.— Liv., 8, 22.) The Latin poets, moreover, with 
Virgil at their head, all distinguish Cumae by the title 
of theEuboic city. (JEw., 6, 2.— Ovid, Met., 14, 154. 

— Lucan, 5, 195.— Martial, 9, 30.— Statius, Sylv., 4, 

3.)—The period at which CLumae was founded is stated 
in the chronology of Eusebius to have been about 1050 

B. C., that is, a few years before the great migration 
of the Ionians into Asia Minor. (Compare Scaliger , 
ad Euseb., Chron., and Prideaux, Not. ad Marm. 
Oxon., p. 146.) We have also the authority of Strabo 
(l. c.) for considering it as the most ancient of all the 
Grecian colonies in both Italy and Sicily. The colo¬ 
nization of Cumae at this early period is a remarkable 
event, as showing the progress already made by the 
Greeks in the art of navigation, and proving also that 
they were then well acquainted with Italy. (Compare 
Muller, Etrusker, vol. 1, p. 167.) Hence Blum is of 
opinion, that to an early intercourse between Rome and 
Cumae, by means of commercial operations, is to be 
ascribed the JEolic character which so clearly develops 
itself in the forms of the most ancient Latin. ( Ein - 
leitung in Roms alte Gcschichte , p. 89.) Strabo also 
informs us, that from its commencement the state of 
the colony was most flourishing. The fertility of the 
surrounding country, and the excellent harbours which 
the coast afforded, soon rendered it one of the most 
powerful cities of southern Italy, and enabled it to form 
settlements along the coast, and to send out colonies 
as far as Sicily. When Campania placed itself under 
the protection of Rome, Cumae followed the example 
of that province, and obtained soon after the privileges 
of a municipal city. (Liv., 8, 14, and 23, 31.) In 
the second Punic war it was attacked by Hannibal, but, 
by the exertions of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, 
it was vigorously and successfully defended. (Liv., 

23, 37.) This city became a Roman colony in the 
reign of Augustus but, owing to the superior attractions 





CUR 


CUR 


ol liaise and Neapolis, it did not attain to any degree 
of prosperity, and in Juvenal’s time it appears to have 
been nearly deserted. (Sat., 3, 1.) But Cumse was, 
perhaps, still more indebted for its celebrity to the 
oracular sibyl, who, from the earliest ages, was sup¬ 
posed to have made her abode in the Cumaean cave, 
from which she delivered her prophetic lore. Every 
one is acquainted with the splendid hctions of Virgil 
relative to this sibyl, but it is not so generally known 
that the noble fabric of the poet was raised on a real 
foundation. The temple of Apollo, or, as it was more 
generally called, the cavern of the sibyl, actually ex¬ 
isted ; it consisted of one vast chamber, hewn out of 
the solid rock; but was almost entirely destroyed in a 
siege which the fortress of Cumae, then in the pos¬ 
session of the Goths, maintained against Narses ; that 
general, by undermining the cavern, caused the citadel 
to sink into the hollow, and thus involved the whole in 
one common ruin. ( Agath., Hist. Goth., 1.) There 
is also a description of this cave in Justin Martyr. 
{Orat. Parcen. — Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol. 2, p. 148, 
seqq.) 

Cunaxa, a place in Babylonia, where the battle was 
fought between Cyrus the younger and his brother 
Artaxerxes Mnemon, and in which the former lost his 
life. Plutarch ( Vit. Artax., c. 8) says, it was 500 
stadia distant from Babylon. D’Anville places it 
within the limits of Mesopotamia, near Is, the modern 
Hit. But Mannert, with more propriety, assigns it to 
Babylonia, and fixes its location a few miles south of 
the entrance of the wall of Media. ( Geogr., vol. 5, 
pt. 2, p. 331.) 

Cuneus, I. Ager, a region in the southernmost part 
of Lusitania, between the river Anas and the Sacrum 
Promontorium and Atlantic. It is now Algarve. The 
appellation Cuneus is generally thought to have been 
given it by the Romans from its resemblance to “ a 
wedge” ( cuneus); Ukert, however, thinks that the 
name is to be traced to the Conii (K ovioi), of whom 
Polybius (10, 7) speaks as dwelling to the west of the 
straits, and who were probably inhabitants of the south¬ 
western part of Iberia. Appian ( Reb. Hisp., c. 57) 
calls them Cunei (K ovvsoi), and makes their capital 
to have been Conistorgis. It is very probable that this 
name, in the time of the Roman sway, reminding that 
people of their own term cuneus, gave rise to the idea 
of ascribing a wedgelike form to the country in the 
southern parts of Lusitania. (Ukert, Geogr., vol. 2, 
p. 309.)—II. or Cuneum Promontorium, a promon¬ 
tory of the Cuneus Ager, in Lusitania, to the west of 
the mouth of the Anas, now Cape Santa Maria. It 
is the southernmost point of Portugal. (Plin., 4, 22.) 

Cupido, the god of love. (Vid. Eros.) 

Cures, a town of the Sabines, to the north of Ere- 
tum, celebrated as having given birth to Numa Pom- 
pilius. (Virg., AEn., 6, 811.) Antiquaries are divi¬ 
ded in opinion as to the site occupied by this ancient 
place. Cluverius fixed it at Vescovo di Sabini (Ital. 
Ant., 1, 675), about twenty-five miles from Rome ; 
the Abbe Chaupy at Monte Maggiore, on the Via Sa- 
leria, and twenty miles from that city. (Dec. de la 
Maison d'Hor., vol. 3, p. 576.) The opinion of Hol- 
stenius ought, however, to be preferred ; he places it 
at Corese, a little town on a river of the same name, 
which bears an evident similarity to that of the ancient 
city, and where, according to the same accurate ob¬ 
server, many remains were still visible when he ex¬ 
amined the spot. (Adnot. ad Steph. Byz., p. 106.— 
Compare D'Anville, Geogr. Anc., vol. 1, p. 195.— 
Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol. 1, p. 310.) 

Curetes, an ancient people, who would seem to 
have been a branch of the Leleges, and to have settled 
at an early period in the island of Crete. (Compare 
Euseb., Chron., 1, p. 14.— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 8, p. 
21.) Being piratical in their habits, we find them, in pro¬ 
cess of time, occupying many of the islands of the Archi¬ 


pelago, and establishing themselves also along the coasts 
of Acarnania and yEtolia. It is from them that the lat¬ 
ter country first received the name of Curetis. Strabo 
(465) derives their appellation from K ovpd, tonsu^a, 
from the circumstance of their cutting off the hair in 
front, to prevent the enemy from taking hold. (Com¬ 
pare remarks under the article Abantes.) Others de¬ 
duce their name from the town of Curium in HCtolia, 
in the vicinity of Pleuron. Ritter, however, finds in 
the name Curetes the key-word of his system ( Kor), 
which traces everything to an early worship of the Sun 
and other heavenly bodies ; just as he deduces the 
name Greta from Cor-cta. (Vorhalle, p. 4lO.)-*-The 
name Curetes is also applied, in a religious sense, to 
a class of priests in the island of Crete, who would 
seem, however, to be identical with the'early inhabi¬ 
tants already spoken of. To them was confided by 
Rhea the care of Jupiter’s infancy, and, to prevent his 
being discovered by his father Saturn, they invented a 
species of Pyrrhic dance, and drowned the cries of the 
infant deity by the clashing of their arms and cymbals. 
Some writers among the ancients pretended, that the 
Dactyli were the progenitors of the Curetes, and that 
Phrygia had been the cradle of their race. Others 
maintained, that Minos brought them with him into 
Crete. (Compare Ephorus, ap. Diod. Sic., 5, 64.) 
The president De Brosses, in order to clear up this 
obscure point, advances the opinion, that the Curetes 
were the ancient priesthood of that part of Europe 
which lies in the vicinity of Asia, and resembled the 
Druids among the Celts, and the Salii among the Sa¬ 
bines, as well as the sorcerers and jugglers of Lapland, 
Nigritia, <&c. Hence he infers, that it would be idle 
to seek for their native country, since we find this 
class of priests everywhere existing where popular be¬ 
lief was based on gross superstition. The most cele¬ 
brated college of these jugglers would be in Crete. 
(Hist, de la Republ. Rom. de Salluste retablie, vol. 2, 
p. 564, in notis.) But, whoever they may have been, 
one thing is certain, that the Curetes exerted them¬ 
selves successfully tp civilize the rude inhabitants of 
Crete. (Compare Servius, ad Virg., AEn., 3, 131.— 

“ Curetes primi cultores Cretce esse dicuntur .”) They 
taught them to keep flocks and herds, to raise bees, to 
work metals. They made them acquainted also with 
some of the leading principles of astronomy. (Theon., 
ad Arat., 1 , 35.) To the Curetes, too, must no doubt 
be attributed what is said of Melisseus, the first king 
of Crete, that he was the first to sacrifice to the gods, 
to introduce new rites and sacred processions unknown 
before his time ; and that his daughter Melissa was the 
first priestess of the Mother of the Gods. (Lactant., div. 
Inst., 1, 22, 19.) Melisseus, whose daughters Amal- 
thea and Melissa nourished the infant Jupiter with milk 
and honey, was of necessity contemporaneous with the 
Curetes, and may be regarded without doubt as one 
of them. In a word, so well grounded a reputation 
did the Curetes leave behind them, that, in process of 
time, it became customary in Crete, when an inhabi¬ 
tant of the island had rendered himself conspicuous by 
talent or acquirements, to call him, as is proved by 
the example of Epimenides, a new Curete, or simply a 
Curete. (Pint., Vit. Solon, 84.— Diog. Laert., 1, 
114.) The title of Tr/yevelg, or “children of the 
Earth,” also given to the Curetes (Diod. Sic., 5, 65), 
and likewise that of “ Companions of Rhea” (Strabo, 
465), suffice to prove that they worshipped this divin 
ity. The founders of Cnosus, they raised in that 
city a temple, and consecrated a grove, unto the 
Mother of the Gods. (Diod. Sic., 5, 66.— Syncell., 
Chron , p. 125.)—For other remarks on the Curetes, 
consult Sainte-Croix, Mysteres du Paganisme, vol. 1, 
p. 71, seqq. 

Curetis, I. a nai#e given to Crete, as being the 
residence of the Curetes. (Ovid, Met., 8, 136.)—II 
The earlier name of iEtolia. (Vid. Curetes.) 

391 






CUR 


CUR 


Curia, I. a subdivision of the early Roman tribes, 
each tribe containing ten curiae. This arrangement 
commenced, as is said, with Romulus, at which time 
the number of tribes amounted to three, so that the 
curiae at their very outset were thirty. This number 
of curiae always remained the same, whereas that 
of the tribes was increased subsequently to thirty- 
five. Each curia anciently had a chapel or temple 
for the performance of sacred rites. He who presided 
over one curia was called Curio; he who presided 
over them all, Curio Maximus. —II. A name given to 
a building where the senate assembled. These curiae 
were always consecrated, and, being thus of a reli¬ 
gious character,were supposed to render the debates of 
the senate more solemn and auspicious. The senate 
appear at first to have met in the chapels or temples 
of the curiae, and afterward to have had buildings spe¬ 
cially erected for this purpose. Yarro, therefore, dis¬ 
tinguishes the curiae into two kinds; the one where 
the priests took care of divine matters, and the other 
where the senate took counsel for human affairs. 

( Varro, L. L., 4, 32.— Burgess, Antiquities of Rome, 
vol. 1, p. 360.) 

Curiatii, a family of Alba. The three Cunatii, 
who engaged the Horatii and lost the victory, belonged 
to it. ( Liv., 1, 24.) 

Curio, I. Caius, was praetor A.U.C. 632, but did 
not attain to the consulship. Cicero speaks with 
praise of his oratory, an opinion founded, not on per¬ 
sonal knowledge, but on the speeches he had left. ( Cic., 
Brut., 32.)—II. C. Scribonius, was consul with Cne- 
us Octavius, A.U.C. 677. On returning from the 
province of Macedonia, he triumphed over the Darda- 
ni, as proconsul, A.U.C. 681. ( Sigon., Fast. Cons, 

ad Ann. dcxxci. — Id., Comment, in Fast., p. 454, 
ed. Oxon.) Cicero often mentions him, and in his 
Brutus (c. 49) enumerates him among the Roman 
orators, along with Cotta and others.—III. C. Scri¬ 
bonius, son of the preceding, a turbulent and unprin¬ 
cipled man, and an active partisan of Julius Caesar’s. 
Being deeply involved in debt when tribune of the 
commons, Caesar gained him over by paying for him 
what he owed ( Plut ., Vit. Pomp., c. 58), and Curio 
immediately exerted himself with great vigour in his 
behalf. Caesar, it seems, was under obligations to him 
before this, since Curio is said to have saved his life 
when he was leaving the senate-house after the debate 
about Catiline’s accomplices, his personal safety being 
endangered by the young men who stood in arms 
around the building. {Plut., Vit.. Cces., c. 8.) Plu¬ 
tarch ascribes Antony’s early initiation into licentious 
habits to his acquaintance with Curio. {Vit. Ant., c. 
2.—Compare, Cic., Phil., 2, 2.) Cicero speaks very 
favourably of his natural qualifications as an orator, 
but denies him the praise of application. {Cic., Brut., 
81.) On the breaking out of the civil war, Caesar, 
after having possessed himself of Rome, sent Curio to 
take charge of Sicily. The latter subsequently crossed 
over from this island into Africa, with an armed force, 
against Juba and the followers of Pompey, but was de¬ 
feated and slain. {Appian, Bell. Civ., 2, 41, seqq.) 

Curiosolit^:, a people of Gaul, forming part of the 
Armoric states. Their territory lay to the northeast 
of the Veneti, and answers to what is now the territory 
of St. Malo, between Dinant and Lamballe, in the de¬ 
partment des Cotes-du-Nord. {Lemaire, Ind. Geogr., 
ad Co’s., p. 244.) 

Curium, a city of Cyprus, on the southern coast, 
or rather, according to the ancients, at the commence¬ 
ment of the western shore, at a small distance from, 
which, to the southeast, there is a cape which bears 
the name of Curias. Curium is said to have been 
founded by an Argive colony, and it was one of the 
nine royal cities of Cyprus. {Herbd., 5, 113 ,—Strab., 
683.; The site seems to correspond with what is now 
Episopxa , implying the existence of a bishop’s see, a 


circumstance which applies to Curium in the middle 
ages. {Hierocl., p. .706.) Ancient writers report, 
that the hills around Curium contained rich veins 0* 
copper ore. {Thcophr., de Vent. — Serv., ad Virg 
xEn., 3, 111.— Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 3^6.) 

Curius Dentatus, Manius, a Roman, celebrated 
for his warlike achievements, and also for the primitive 
simplicity of his manners. In his first consulship 
(A.U.C. 463) he triumphed twice, once over the Sam 
nites and then over the Sabines, and in this same year 
also he obtained an ovation for his successes against 
the Lucanians. {Aurel. Viet., c. 33.—Compare the 
remarks of Sigonius, ad Fast. Cons., p. 142, seqq., 
ed. Oxon.) He afterward (.A.U.C. 478), in his third 
consulship, triumphed over Pyrrhus and the Samnites. 
{Sigon., p. 164.) It was on this occasion that the 
Roman people first saw elephants led along in triumph 
{Flor., 1, 18. — Pliny, 8, 6.— Eutropius, 2, 14.— 
Tzschucke, ad Eutrop., 1. c.), and it was this victory 
that drove Pyrrhus from Italy. The simple manners 
of this distinguished man are often referred to by the 
Roman writers. When the ambassadors of the Sam¬ 
nites visited his cottage, they found him, according to 
one account, sitting on a bench by the fireside, and 
supping out of a wooden bowl {Val. Max., 4, 3, 5), 
and, according to another, boiling turnips {Zrpovra yoy- 
yvXiSaq. — Plut., Vit. Cat. Maj., c. 2). On their at¬ 
tempting to bribe him with a large sum of gold, he at 
once rejected their offer, exclaiming, that a man who 
could be content to live as they saw him living, had 
no need whatever of gold ; and that he thought it more 
glorious to conquer the possessors of it than to possess 
it himself.—His scanty farm and humble cottage, more¬ 
over, were in full accordance with the idea which Cu¬ 
rius had formed of private wealth ; for, after so many 
achievements and honours, he declared that citizen a 
pernicious one who did not find seven acres ( jugera) 
sufficient for his subsistence. {Plin., 18, 3.—Com¬ 
pare Schott., ad. Aurel. Viet., c. 33.) Seven acres 
was the number fixed by law on the expulsion of the 
kings. {Plin., 1. c.) —According to Pliny, Dentatus 
was so named because born with teeth {cum dentibus. 
—Plin. 7, 15). 

Curtius, M., a Koman youth, who devoted himself, 
for his country, to the gods Manes, B.C. 359. Ac¬ 
cording to the account given by Livy (7, 6), the ground 
near the middle of the Forum, in consequence, as the 
historian remarks, either of an earthquake or some oth¬ 
er violent cause, sank down to an immense depth, 
forming a vast aperture; nor could the gulf be filled 
up by all the earth which they could throw into it. At 
last the soothsayers declared, that, if they wished the 
Roman commonwealth to be everlasting, they must 
devote to this chasm what constituted the principle 
strength of the Roman people Curtius, on hearing 
the answer, demanded of his countrymen whether they 
possessed anything so valuable as their arms and cour¬ 
age. They yielded a silent assent to the question put 
them by the heroic youth ; whereupon, having arrayed 
himself in full armour and mounted his horse, he 
plunged into the chasm, and the people threw after 
him their offerings, and quantities of the fruits of the 
earth. Valerius Maximus (5, 6, 2) states, that the 
earth closed immediately over him. Livy, however, 
speaks of a lake occupying the spot, called Lacus 
Curtius. In another part of his history (1, 13), he 
mentions this same lake as existing in the time of 
Romulus, and as having derived its name from Mettus 
Curtius, a Sabine in the army of Titus Tatius. In all 
probability it was of volcanic origin, since the early ac¬ 
counts speak of its great depth, and was not produced 
merely by the inundations of the Tiber, as Burgess 
thinks. {Antiquities of Rome, vol. 2, p. 219.) Tar- 
quinius Priscus is said to have filled up this lake, at 
the time that he drained the whole of this district and 
constructed the Cloaca Maxima. Possibly he mav 



CUT 


C Y A 


nave Deen aided in this by a natural tunnel gradually 
tormed through the basin of the lake itself. (Compare 
Arnolds History of Rome, vol. 1, p. 511.)—II. Quin¬ 
tus Rufus, a Latin historian. ( Vid. Quintus I.) 

Curulis Magistrates, the name given to a class 
of magistracies which conferred the privilege of using 
the sella curulis or chair of state. This was anciently 
made of ivory, or, at least, adorned with it. The ma¬ 
gistrates who enjoyed this privilege were the dictator, 
consuls, praetor, censors, and curule aediles. They 
sat on this chair in their tribunals on all solemn occa¬ 
sions. Those commanders who triumphed had it with 
them in their chariot. Persons whose ancestors, or 
themselves, had borne any curule office, were called 
ncbiles , and had the jus imaginum. They who were 
the first of the family that had raised themselves 
to any curule office, were called homines novi, new 
men.—As regards the origin of the term curulis, 
Festus deduces it from currus, “ a chariot,” and says, 
that “ curule magistrates” were so called because 
they were accustomed to be borne along in chariots 
(“ quia curru vchehantur ”). Aulus Gellius (3, 18) 
also remarks, quoting, at the same time, Gabius Bas- 
sus, that those senators who had borne any curule ma¬ 
gistracy were accustomed, as a mark of honour, to be 
conveyed to the senate in chariots, and that the seat in 
the chariot ( sella in curru) was hence denominated 
“curule” ( sella curulis). He may be correct as re¬ 
gards the mere derivation of the term, but he is cer¬ 
tainly wrong in the explanation which he gives, since 
Pliny expressly states (7, 43), that L. Metellus, who 
had enjoyed the highest honours in the state, having 
become deprived of sight, had the privilege allowed 
him of being conveyed to the senate in a chariot, a 
favour granted, to no one before his time. —The com¬ 
mon derivation of the word is from Cures, a town of 
the Sabines, whence this official badge is said by some 
to have been borrowed. Lipsius favours this latter 
etymology. ( De Magistr. Vet. P. R., c. 12.) 

Cuss^ei or Coss^ei, a nation occupying the southern 
declivity of the mountains which separated Susiana 
from Media. The Elymaei possessed the northern de¬ 
clivities. The Cussaei or Cossaei were a brave peo¬ 
ple, and the kings of Persia were frequently compelled 
to purchase a passage over these mountains from them. 
Alexander effected one by taking them by surprise. 
Antigonus lost a large portion of his army in crossing 
over. According to Mannert, this people, together 
with the Carduchi and some other neighbouring tribes, 
were the ancestors of the modern Curds. ( Mannert, 
Gcogr., vol. 5, p. 493.) 

Cusus, a river of Hungary, falling into the Danube; 
now the Vag, according to D’Anville. Mannert, how¬ 
ever, makes it the same with the Granna or Gran. 
{Mannert, Geogr., vol. 3, p. 380, in notis.) 

Cutilue, a town of the Sabines, east of Reate, and 
on the right bank of the Velinus, famed as an aborigi¬ 
nal city of great antiquity {Dion. Hal., 1, 14 and 2, 
49), and celebrated for its lake, now Pozzo Ratignano, 
and the floating island on its surface. {Senec., Nat. 
Queest., 3, 25 .—Plin., 2, 95.) This lake was farther 
distinguished by the appellation of the Umbilicus, or 
“Navel” (i. e., centre) of Italy. {Varro, ay. Plin., 
3, 12.) This statement is found by D’Anville {Anal. 
Geosr., p. 165) to be correct, when referred to the 
breadth of Italy ; the distance from Ostia to Cutiliae, 
the ruins of which are to be seen close to Paterno, a 
village near Civita Ducale, being seventy-six miles, 
and the same from thence to Castrum Truentinum on 
the Adriatic. If Cluverius is right in reading Korvly 
for Koovtt] in Stephanus of Byzantium, who quotes the 
name from the Periegesis of Ctesias, as belonging to a 
city of the Umbri, we may adduce the authority of that 
early historian in proof of the antiquity of this town. 
Cutiliae is also noticed by Strabo (228) for its mineral 
waters, which were accounted salutary for many dis- 
D D D 


orders ; they failed, however, in their effect upon V es 
pasian, who is stated to have died here. {Suet., Vesp., 
24.— Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 317, seqq.) 

Cyane, according to Ovid, a fountain-nymph of 
Sicily, whose stream flowed into the Anapus, near Syr¬ 
acuse. She attempted, but in vain, to stop the car 
of Pluto, when that god was carrying off Proserpina. 
The irritated deity made a passage for himself to the 
lower world through the very waters of the fountain. 
{Ovid, Met., 5, 409, seqq.) —Claudian, on the other 
hand, makes Cyane one of the attendants of Proser¬ 
pina, and to have been gathering flowers with her at 
the time she was carried off. According to this poet, 
she pined away, and dissolved into a fountain after the 
abduction of the goddess. {Claudian, de rapt. Pro- 
serp., 2, 61.— Id. ib., 3, 246, seqq.) Diodorus Sicu¬ 
lus gives a third legend, by which the fountain Cyane 
is made to have come forth from the opening through 
which Pluto descended with Proserpina to the shades. 
{Diod. Sic., 5, 4.)—The modern name of the fountain 
is said to be the Pisma. On the banks of this stream 
grows the papyrus, which is thought by Hoare to have 
been brought hither from Egypt by the orders ofHiero. 
{Hoare's Classical Tour, vol. 2, p. 163.) 

Cyane^e, two small, rugged islands at the en 
trance of the Euxine Sea, and forty stadia from the 
mouth of the Thracian Bosporus. ( Arrian, Peripl. 
Mar. Eux., ad fin., p. 137, ed. Blanc.) According 
to Strabo, one was near the European, the other near 
the Asiatic side, and the space between them was 
about twenty stadia. {Slrab., 319.) There was an 
ancient fable relative to these islands, that they floated 
about, and sometimes united to crush to pieces those 
vessels which chanced at the time to be passing through 
the straits. {Pomp. Mela, 2, 7.) Pliny gives the 
same fable (4, 13), but assigns, at the same time, the 
true cause of the legend. It arose from their appear 
ing, like all other objects, to move towards, or from 
each other, when seen from a vessel in motion itself. 
The Argo, we are told by Apollonius Rhodius (2, 601), 
had a narrow escape in passing through, and lost the 
extremity of her stern {ddfkdcsToio dnpa KopvySa). 
Pindar says, that they were alive, and moved to and 
fro more swiftly than the blasts, until the expedition 
of the Argonauts brought death upon them. {Pyth., 
4, 371, seqq.) On which passage the scholiast re¬ 
marks in explanation, that it was decreed by the fates 
they should become “rooted to the deep” whenever 
a vessel succeeded in passing through them : (E ipapro, 
diaTrXevodciyg veug pi&dijvaL rag rrerpag rip TreXdyei). 
The prediction was accomplished by the Argo. Phin- 
eus {vid. Argonaut®) had directed Jason and his com¬ 
panions to let fly a pigeon when they were near these 
islands, telling them that, if the bird came safely 
through, the Argo might venture to follow her. They 
obeyed the directions of the prophet-prince; the pi¬ 
geon passed through safely with the loss of its tail; 
and then the Argonauts, watching the recession of the 
rocks, and aided by Juno and Minerva, rowed vigor¬ 
ously on, and passed through with the loss of a part of 
the stern-works of their vessel.—The term “ Cyaneae” 
(K vdveai), i. e., “ dark blue” or “ azure,” is referred 
by the scholiasts on Euripides {Med., 2) and Apollo¬ 
nius Rhodius (2, 317), to the colour of these rocks 
In the description of Homer, however, as will be seen 
presently, a more poetic turn is given to the appella¬ 
tion. To the name Cyane® is frequently joined that 
of “ Symplegades" (Zvyrrlyyddeg), i. e., “ the Dash¬ 
ers,” in allusion to their supposed collision when ves¬ 
sels attempted to pass through. (Compare Eurip., 
Med., 2. — Kvaveag hvyrchriyadag.) Juvenal calls 
them “concurrents saxa, Cyaneas ” (15, 19), and 
Ovid {Met., 7, 62) has, “ Qui mediis concurrere in 
undis dicuntur montes." Homer {Od., 12, 61) calls 
them TViaynra'i, “The Wanderers,” and gives the 
following description of them : “ There there are lofty 

393 



CYANEiE. 


CYANE.E. 


rocks ; and near them the vast wave of the dark Am- 
phitrite resounds : the blessed gods call them the 
Wanderers. Here neither birds pass by, nor do fear¬ 
ful doves which carry ambrosia to father Jove; but 
the smooth rock always takes away some one of 
them, while the father supplies another to make up 
their number. From this not yet has any ship of men 
escaped, whichever has come to it, but the waves of 
the sea, and the storms of pernicious fire take away 
planks of ships and bodies of men together. That ship, 
indeed, only, which passes over the sea, has sailed be¬ 
yond, the Argo, a care to all, which sailed from iEta. . . 
But as to the two rocks, the one reaches the wide 
heaven with its sharp top, and a dark cloud surrounds 
it : this, indeed, never goes away, nor does clearness 
ever hold possession of its top, either in summer or in 
autumn ; nor could a mortal man ascend it, or de¬ 
scend, not if he had twenty hands and feet ; for the 
rock is smooth like one polished around.” It is not 
difficult, from the accounts here given, adorned though 
they be with the garb of poetry, to deduce the inference 
thut the Cyanean isles were originally volcanic. The 
“storms of pernicious fire” (Tvvpog ohoolo dvehlai) 
and the dark cloud (xvavey vetyehy) point at once to 
this. Hence, in the discussions which have arisen 
relative to the formation of the Thracian Bosporus, 
and the enlargement of the Mediterranean Sea ( vid. 
Mediterraneum Mare), the agency of volcanoes is gen¬ 
erally asserted by the one party. (Compare Olivier , 
Voyage , &c., vol. 1, p. 62.— Geographie Physique de 
la Mere Noire , par Bureau de la Malle , p. 255, seqq.) 
Their opponents, on the other hand, maintain, that the 
only probable change in the region of the Bosporus 
must have been produced by a gradual sinking of a 
barrier of rocks, and that even this must have occurred 
at a period antecedent to all historical and geographi¬ 
cal records. They add, that the pretended volcanic 
substances brought from the Bosporus have been 
proved to be merely fragments of ordinary rocks. 

( Maltc-Brun , Geogr., vol. 3, p. 397, Brussels ed.) It 
is difficult, however, to reconcile this assertion with 
the strong and decided language of Dr. Clarke, rela¬ 
tive to the structure of the rock of which the Cyanean 
isles consist, as well as to the general appearance of 
the shore along the line of the Bosporus. “ The Cy- 
aneee,” he remarks, “ are each joined to the main land 
by a kind of isthmus, and appear as islands when this 
is inundated ; which always happens in stormy 
weather. But it is not certain that the isthmus, con¬ 
necting either of them with the continent, was for¬ 
merly visible. The disclosure has been probably 
owing to that gradual sinking of the level of the Black 
Sea before noticed. The same cause continuing to 
operate, may hereafter lead posterity to marvel what 
is become of the Cyane® ; and this may also account 
for their multiplied appearance in ages anterior to the 
time of Strabo. For some time before we reached 
the entrance to the Canal, steering close along its Eu¬ 
ropean side, we observed in the cliffs and hills, even 
to their summits, a remarkable aggregate of hetero¬ 
geneous stony substances, rounded by attrition in wa¬ 
ter, imbedded in a hard natural cement, yet differing 
from the usual appearance of breccia rocks ; for, upon 
a nearer examination, the whole mass appears to have 
undergone, first, a violent action of fire ; and, secondly, 
that degree of friction in water to which their forms 
must be ascribed. Breccia rocks do not commonly 
consist of substances so modified. The stratum form¬ 
ed by this singular aggregate, and the parts composing 
it, exhibited, by the circumstances of their position, a 
striking proof of the power of an inundation ; having 
dragged along with it the constituent parts of the 
mixture, over all the heights above the present level 
of the Black Sea, and deposited them in such a man¬ 
ner as to leave no doubt but that a torrent had there 
passed towards the Sea of Marmora. All the strata 
394 


of the mountains, and each individual mass composinj, 
them, lean from the north to the south. At the point 
of the European lighthouse, we found the sea tem¬ 
pestuous, beating against immense rocks of a hard and 
compact lava : these rocks have separated prismati- 
cally, and they exhibit surfaces tinged by the oxide of 
iron. From this point we passed to the Cyanean isle, 
upon the European side of the strait, and there landed. 
The structure of the rock, whereof the island consists 
corresponds with the nature of the strata already de- 
scribed: but the substances composing it were per¬ 
haps never before associated in any mineral aggregate 
They all appear to have been more or less modified by 
fire, and to have been cemented during the boiling of 
a volcano. In the same mass may be observed frag¬ 
ments cf various-coloured lava , of trap, of basalt, and 
of marble. In the fissures appear agate, chalcedony, 
and quartz ; but in friable and thin veins, not half an 
inch in thickness, deposited posterior to the settling of 
the stratum. The agate appeared in a vein of con¬ 
siderable extent, occupying a deep fissure not more 
than an inch wide, and coated by a green earth, re¬ 
sembling some of the lavas of JEtna, which have been 
decomposed by acidiferous vapours. The summit of 
this insular rock is the most favourable situation for 
surveying the mouth of the canal ; thus viewed, it has 
the appearance of a crater, whose broken sides were 
opened towards the Black Sea, and, by a smaller ap¬ 
erture, towards the Bosporus. r I he Asiatic side of 
the strait is distinguished by appearances similar to 
those already described; with this difference, that, 
opposite to the island, a little to the east of the Ana¬ 
tolian lighthouse, a range of basaltic pillars may be 
discerned, standing upon a base inclined towards the 
sea ; and, when examined with a telescope, exhibiting 
very regular prismatic forms. From all the preceding 
observations, and after due consideration of events re¬ 
corded in history, as compared with the phenomena 
of nature, it is, perhaps, more than probable, that the 
bursting of the Thracian Bosporus, the deluge men¬ 
tioned by Diodorus Siculus, and the draining of the 
waters once uniting the Black Sea to the Caspian, 
were all the consequence of an earthquake caused by 
subterranean fires, which were not extinct at the time 
of the passage of the Argonauts, and the effects of 
which are still visible.” ( Clarke's Travels — Russia , 
Tartary , and Turkey —vol. 2, p. 430, seqq.) 

Cyaxares, I. a king of the Medes, grandson of 
Dejoces, son of Phraortes, and father of Astyages. He 
was a prince of violent character ( Herodot ., 1, 73.— 
Compare Larcher , ad loc .), and this trait displayed it¬ 
self in his treatment of the Scythians, a body of whom 
had taken refuge in his territories in consequence of a 
sedition. He received them kindly, allowed them set¬ 
tlements, and even went so far as to intrust some 
children to their care, in order to have them taught 
the Scythian language and the art of bending the bow, 
After some time had elapsed, the Scythians, accus¬ 
tomed to go forth to the chase, and to bring back to 
the king some of the game obtained by the hunt, re¬ 
turned one day with empty hands. Cyaxares gave 
vent to his temper by punishing them severely. The 
Scythians, indignant at this treatment, which they 
knew to be unmerited, resolved to slay one of the chil¬ 
dren confided to their care, and, after preparing the flesh 
like the game they had been accustomed to bring, to 
serve it up before Astyages, and betake themselves im¬ 
mediately unto Alyattes at Sardis. The horrid plan 
succeeded but too well. Cyaxares demanded the fu¬ 
gitives from the Lydian monarch, and on his refusal a 
war ensued. This war lasted for five years : in the 
sixth, an eclipse of the sun, which had been predicted 
by Thales, separated the contending armies. Peace 
was soon restored through the mediation of Labyne- 
tus, king of Babylon, and Syennesis, king of Cilicia. 
(Herodot., 1, 73, seqq.) Herodotus also informs us 




C Y B 


C Y B 


1, 103), that Cyaxares was superior in valour to his 
ancestors ; that he was the first who regularly trained 
the Asiatics to military service ; dividing the troops, 
which had been imbodied promiscuously before his 
time, into distinct companies of lancers, archers, and 
cavalry. The historian then adds parenthetically, 
(“ this was he who waged war with the Lydians; 
when, during a battle, the day became night”). This 
parenthetical remark evidently refers to the foregoing 
account of the eclipse. We are next informed, that, 
having subdued all Asia above the river Halys, he 
marched with all that were under his command against 
Nineveh, resolving to avenge the death of his father 
by the destruction of that city. After he had defeat¬ 
ed the Assyrians, he laid siege to the city; but was 
forced to raise it by a sudden invasion of his territories. 
For a numerous army of Scythians, headed by Ma- 
dyas, made an irruption into Media, defeated him in a 
pitched battle, and reduced him and all Upper Asia, 
under subjection to them, for eight-and-twenty years. 
(Hcrodot ., 1, 103, seqq.) Then, in revenge for their 
galling impositions and exactions, he slew their chief¬ 
tains, when intoxicated, at a banquet to which he had 
invited them, and, expelling the rest, recovered his for¬ 
mer power and possessions. {Herodot., 1,196.) After 
this, the Medes took Nineveh and subdued the Assy¬ 
rian provinces, all except the Babylonians, their con¬ 
federates in the war. Cyaxares died after having 
reigned forty years, including twenty-eight years of 
the Scythian dominion.—Hale fixes the time of the 
eclipse that was predicted by Thales, as above stated, 
on the 18th of May, B.C. 603, at 9 hours and 30 min¬ 
utes in the morning. He makes this eclipse to have 
been a total one, and the moon’s shadow to have trav¬ 
ersed the earth’s disk, near the mouth of the river Ha¬ 
lys, the boundary of the two contending kingdoms at 
a later day. ( Hale's Analysis of Chronology , vol. 4, 
p. 84, 2d ed.) The same learned writer makes Cyax¬ 
ares I. to have been the same with Kai Kobad, whom 
Mirkhond, and other Persian historians give as the 
founder of the second or Kaianian dynasty. He iden¬ 
tifies him also with the Ahasuerus of Scripture. 
{Hale's Analysis, vol. 4, p. 76, 81.) According, how¬ 
ever, to another modern writer, Cyaxares is the same 
with the monarch styled Gustasp., {Holty, Djemschid, 
Feridun, &c., p. 53, seqq., Hanov., 1829.)—II. Son 
of Astyages, succeeded his father at the age of 49 
years. Being naturally of an easy, indolent disposi¬ 
tion, and fond of his amusements, he left the burden 
of military affairs and the care of the government to Cy¬ 
rus, his nephew and son-in-law, who married his only 
daughter, and was, therefore, doubly entitled to suc¬ 
ceed him. Xenophon notices this marriage as taking 
place after the conquest of Babylon. {Cyrop., 8, 28.) 
But to this Sir Isaac Newton justly objects : “This 
daughter, saith Xenophon, was reported to be very 
handsome, and used to play with Cyrus when they 
were both children, and to say that she would marry 
him ; and, therefore, they were much of the same age. 
Xenophon saith, that Cyrus married her after the ta¬ 
king of Babylon ; but she was then an old woman. It is 
more probable that he married her while she was young 
and handsome, and he a young man.” ( Chron., p. 
310.) Newton supposes that Darius the Mede was 
the son of Cyaxares, and cousin of Cyrus ; and that 
Cyrus rebelled against, and dethroned him two years 
after the capture of Babylon. But this is unfounded : 
for Darius the Mede was sixteen years older than Cy¬ 
rus. We may therefore rest assured that he was Cy¬ 
axares himself, and none else. {Hale's Analysis of 
Chronology, vol. 4, p. 88, 2d ed.) 

Cybebe, a name of Cybele, used by the poets when 
a long penult is required. The form Cybelle is some¬ 
times, though with less propriety, employed for a sim¬ 
ilar purpose. (Compare the Greek forms KvbiHy and 
Kv6r/6y, and eonsult Drakenborch, ad Sil. ltal., 17, | 


8.— Heyne, ad Virg., JEn., 3, 111.— Poring, ad Ca 
tail., 63, 9.— Heinsius, ad Prudent., uepi Gre<p. 10, 
196.— Brouckhus., ad Propert., 3, 15, 35.— Forcelli- 
ni, Lex. Tot. Lat., s. 71 . Cybebe.) 

Cybele (for the quantity of the penult, vid. Cybebe), 
a goddess, daughter of Coelus and Terra, and distin¬ 
guished by the appellation of “Mother of the Gods,” 
or “ Great Mother.” The Phrygians and Lydians re¬ 
garded her as the goddess of nature or of the earth. 
Her temples stood on ihe summits of hills or mount¬ 
ains, such as Dindymus, Berecyntus, Sipylus, and 
others. She was particularly worshipped at Pessinus, 
in Galatia, above which place rose Mount Dindymus, 
whence her surname of Dindymene. Her statue in 
this city was nothing more than a large aerolite, which 
was held to be her heavensent image, and which was 
removed to Rome near the close of the second Punic 
war. The legend of Cybele and Atys has already 
been alluded to, in its various forms {vid. Atys), and 
the explanation given on that occasion may here be re¬ 
peated, that Atys was, in fact, an incarnation of the 
sun. The account of Diodorus, as usual, is based upon 
the system of Euhemerus, by which a mortal origin was 
sought to be established for all the heathen divinities. 
According to this writer, Cybele was daughter to King 
Maeon and his queen Dindyme. She was exposed by 
her father on Mount Cybelus, where she was suckled 
by panthers and lionesses, and was afterward reared 
by shepherdesses, who named her Cybele. When 
she grew up, she displayed great skill in the healing 
art, and cured all the diseases of the children and cat¬ 
tle. They thence called her the mountain-mother. 
While dwelling in the woods she formed a strict friend¬ 
ship with Marsyas, and had a love-affair with a youth 
named Atys or Attis. She was afterward acknowl¬ 
edged by her parents ; but her father, on discovering 
her intimacy with Atys, seized that unhappy youth and 
put him to death. Grief deprived Cybele of her rea¬ 
son : with dishevelled locks she roamed to the sound 
of the drums and pipes which she had invented, over 
various regions of the earth, even as far as the coun¬ 
try of the Hyperboreans, teaching mankind agriculture; 
her companion was still the faithful Marsyas. Mean¬ 
time a dreadful famine ravaged Phrygia ; the oracle, 
being consulted, directed that the body of Atys should 
be buried, and divine honours be paid to Cybele. A 
stately temple was accordingly erected to her at Pes¬ 
sinus by King Midas. {Diod. Sic., 3, 58, seq.) It 
is apparent from this account, pragmatized as it is, 
that Cybele, Marsyas, and Atys were all ancient Phry¬ 
gian deities.—Like Asiatic worship in general, that oi 
Cybele was enthusiastic. Pier priests, named Galli 
and Corybantes, ran about with dreadful cries and 
howlings, beating on timbrels, clashing cymbals, sound- 
ing pipes, and cutting their flesh with knives. The 
box-tree and cypress were considered as sacred to her ; 
as from the former she made the pipes, and Atys was 
said to have been changed into the latter. We find from 
Pindar and the dramatists, that the worship and the 
mysteries of the Great Mother were common in Greece, 
particularly at Athens, in their lime. {Pind., Pyth., 
3, 137.— Schol., ad loc. — Eurip., Hippol., 143.— Id., 
Bacch., 78.— Id., Hel., 1321.) The worship of Cyb¬ 
ele, as has already been remarked, was introduced into 
Rome near the close of the second Punic war, A.U.C. 
547, when a solemn embassy was sent to Attains, 
king of Pergamus, to request the image at Pessinus, 
which had fallen from heaven. The monarch readily 
yielded compliance, and the goddess was conveyed to 
the Italian capital, where a stately temple was built to 
receive her, and a solemn festival, named the Megale- 
sia, was celebrated every year in her honour. ( Liv ., 
29, 14.— Ovid, Fast., 4, 179, seqq.) As the Greeks 
had confounded her with Rhea, so the Latins made her 
one with their Ops, the goddess of the earth. {Lu~ 
cret., 2, 598, seqq. — Virg., JEn., 3, 104 ; 6, 785, &c.) 

395 




CYC 


CYC 


—In works of art Cybele exhibits the matronly air and 
composed dignity, which distinguish Juno and Ceres. 
Sometimes she is veiled, and seated on a throne with 
lions at her side ; at other times riding in a chariot 
drawn by. lions. Her head is always crowned with 
towers. She frequently beats on a drum, and bears a 
sceptre in her hand. {Keightley's Mythology , p. 223, 
seqq.) —The name Cybele is derived, by some, from 
the cymbals {KvpCog, Kvpdala) used in the worship of 
the goddess. It is better, however, to suppose her so 
called, because represented usually in her more mys¬ 
terious character, under a globular or else square form: 
{leyerai de Kal Kvbely and rov kv6lkov axypo-rog, 
Kara yeuperpiav, y yy. — Lex. Antiq., Frag, in Herm. 
Gramm. — Knight's Inquiry , <$> 42, Class. Journ., vol. 
23, p. 233.—For an explanation of the myth of Cybele, 
which cannot, of course, be given here, consult Guig- 
niaut, vol. 2, pt. 1, p. 67, seqq.) 

Cybistra, a town of Cappadocia, in the district of 
Cataonia, and at the foot of Mount Taurus. ( Cic ., 
Ep. ad Fam., 15, 2 et 4.— Ep. ad. Alt., 5, 20.) Ci¬ 
cero made it his headquarters during his command in 
Cilicia. Leake is inclined to place Cybistra at Kara- 
hissar, near Mazaca, but this position does not agree 
with Strabo’s account. D’Anville had imagined, from 
a similarity of name, that Cybistra might be represented 
by Bustereh, a small place near the source of one of 
the branches of the Halys ; but it is not said whether 
there are any remains of antiquity at Bustereh, and, 
besides, Leake affirms, that, according to the Arabian 
geographer Hadji Khalfa, the true name of the place 
is Kostere. {Asia Minor , p. 63.) Cybistra is men¬ 
tioned by Hierocles among the Episcopal cities of 
Cappadocia. ( Hierocl ., p. 700.— Mannert, Geogr., 
vol. 6, pt. 2, p. 236, 262.) 

Cyclades, a name applied by the ancient Greeks 
to that cluster {Kvuloq) of islands which encircled 
Delos. Strabo (485) says, that the Cyclades were 
at first only twelve in number, but were afterward in¬ 
creased to fifteen. These, as we learn from Artemi- 
dorus, were Ceos, Cythnos, Seriphos, Melos, Siphnos, 
Cimolos, Prepesinthos, Olearos, Paros, Naxos, Syros, 
Myconos, Tenos, Andros, and Gyaros, which last, how¬ 
ever, Strabo himself was desirous of excluding, from 
its being a mere rock, as also Prepesinthos and Olea¬ 
ros.—It appears from the Greek historians, that the 
Cyclades were first inhabited by the Phoenicians, Cari- 
ans, and Leleges, whose piratical habits rendered them 
formidable to the cities on the continent, till they were 
conquered and finally extirpated by Minos. ( Thucyd ., 
1, 4.— Herodot., 1, 171.) These islands were subse¬ 
quently occupied for a short time'by Polycrates, ty¬ 
rant of Samos, and the Persians. {Herodot., 5, 28.) 
But, after the battle of Mycale, they became dependant 
on the Athenians. {Thucyd., 1, 94.) 

Cyclici poetce, a name given by the ancient gram¬ 
marians to a class of minor bards, who selected, for the 
subjects of their productions, things transacted as well 
during the Trojan war, as before and after ; and who, 
in treating of these subjects, confined themselves with¬ 
in a certain round or cycle of fable {nvulog, circulus). 
In order to understand the subject more fully, we must 
observe, that there was both a Mythic and a Trojan 
cycle. The former of these embr ced the whole se¬ 
ries of fable, from the genealogies of the gods down to 
the time of the Trojan war. The latter comprised the 
fables that had reference to, or were in any way con¬ 
nected with, the Trojan war. Of the first class were 
Theogonies, Cosmogonies, Titanomachies, and the 
like; of the second, the poems of Arctinus, Lesches, 
stasinus, and others. At a later period, the term cyclic 
/as* applied, as a mark of contempt, to two species of 
poems ; one, where the poet confined himself to a trite 
and hackneyed round {nvnloq) of particulars (compare 
Horat., Ep. ad Pis., 132) ; the other, where, from an 
ignorance of the true nature of epic poetry and of the 


art itself, the author, with tedious minutenesss, re¬ 
counted all the attendant circumstances of an event, 
from the earliest beginnings of the same ; as, for ex¬ 
ample, the history of the Trojan war, from the story ol 
Leda and the eggs. (Compare Hcyne, Excurs. 1, ad 
Mn., 2, vol. 2, p. 268, ed. Lips.) 

Cyclopes, a fabled race, of gigantic size, having 
but one eye, large and round, placed in the centre of 
their forehead, whence, according to the common ac¬ 
count, their name was derived, from uvnlog, “a circu¬ 
lar opening, ” and cinp, “ an eye.'' Homer makes 
Ulysses, after having left the country of the Lotus- 
eaters (Lotophagi), to have sailed on westward, and to 
have come to that of the Cyclopes, which could not have 
been very far distant, or the poet would in that case, 
as he always does, have specified the number of days 
occupied in the voyage. The Cyclopes are described 
by him as a rude and lawless race, who neither planted 
nor sowed, but whose land was so fertile as to pro¬ 
duce for them, of itself, wheat, barley, and vines. 
They had no social institutions, neither assemblies nor 
laws, but dwelt separately, each in his cave, on the 
tops of lofty mountains, and each, without regard to 
others, governed his own wife and children. The ad¬ 
venture of Ulysses with Polyphemus, one of this race, 
will be found under the latter article. Nothing is said 
by Homer respecting the size of the Cyclopes in gen¬ 
eral, but every effort is made to give an exaggerated 
idea of that of Polyphemus. Hence some have im¬ 
agined that, according to the Homeric idea, the Cy¬ 
clopes were not in general of such huge dimensions or 
cannibal habits as the bard assigns to Polyphemus him¬ 
self. For the latter does not appear to have been of 
the ordinary Cyclops-race, but the son of Neptune and 
a sea-nymph ; and he is also said to have been the 
strongest of the Cyclopes. {Od., 1,70.) Later poets, 
however, lost no time in supplying whatever the fable 
wanted in this respect, and hence Virgil describes the 
whole race as of gigantic stature, and compares them 
to so many tall forest-trees. {AZn., 3, 680.) It is not 
a little remarkable, that neither in the description of 
the Cyclopes in general, nor of Polyphemus in par¬ 
ticular, is there any notice taken of their being one- 
eyed ; yet, in the account of the blinding of the latter, 
it seems to be assumed as a thing well known. We 
may hence, perhaps, infer, that Homer followed the 
usual derivation of the name.—Thus much for the 
Homeric account of the Cyclopes. In Hesiod, on the 
other hand {Thcog., 139, seqq.), we, have what ap¬ 
pears to be the earlier legend respecting these fabled 
beings, a circumstance which may tend to show that 
the Odyssey was composed by a poet later than He¬ 
siod, and not by the author of the Iliad. In the Theog- 
ony of Hesiod, the Cyclopes are only three in number, 
Brontes, Steropes, and Arges. They are the sons of 
Uranus and Gsea (Coelus and Terra), and their em¬ 
ployment is to fabricate the thunderbolt for Jove. 
They are said to be in every other respect like gods, 
excepting the one, single eye, in the middle of their 
foreheads, a circumstance from which Hesiod also, 
like Homer, deduces their general name : “ Their 
name,” says the poet, “ was Cyclopes, because a sin¬ 
gle, round eye lay in their forehead.” {Theog., 144 
seq.) In the individual names given by Hesiod, wc 
have evidently the germe of the whole fable. The Cy. 
elopes are the energies of the sky, the thunder, the 
lightning, and the rapid march of the latter (Brontes, 
from (dpovry, thunder. —Steropes, from arepony, the 
lightning. —Arges, from apyyq, rapid). In accordance 
with this idea, the term K vrcloip {Cyclops) itself may 
be regarded as a simple, not a compound term, of the 
same class with puluip, KepKux/j, K enpoip, Tleloip ; and 
the word kvkI og being the root, we may make the Cy¬ 
clopes to be the Whirlers, or, to designate them by a 
Latin name, the Volvuli. (Compare Hermann, ' de 
Mythol. Grcec. Anliquiss. — Opusc., vol. 2, p. 176.) 



CYCLOPES. 


C YD 


When the Thunder, the Lightning, and the rapid 
Flame had been converted by poetry into one-eyed 
giants, and localized in the neighbourhood of volca¬ 
noes, it was an easy process to convert them into 
smiths, the assistants of Vulcan. ( Callini. H. in 
Dian., 46, seqq. — Virg., Georg., 4, 173.— 2En,, 8, 
416, seqq.) As they were now artists in one line, it 
gave no surprise to find them engaged in a task adapt¬ 
ed to their huge strength, namely, that of rearing the 
massive walls of Tiryns, for which purpose they were 
Drought by Proetus from Lycia. ( Schol. ad Eurip., 
Orest., 955.— Keightley's Mythology, p. 259, seqq.) 
Hence, too, the name Cyclopian, is applied to this spe¬ 
cies of architecture, respecting which we will give 
some explanation at the close of this article.—This last- 
mentioned circumstance has led some to imagine, that 
the Cyclopes were nothing more than a caste or race of 
miners, or, rather, workers in quarries, who descended 
into, and came forth from, the bowels of the earth, with 
a lamp attached to their foreheads, to light them on 
their way, and which at a distance would appear like a 
large, flaming eye : an explanation more ingenious than 
satisfactory. ( Hirt, Geschichte der Baukunst, vol. 1, 
p. 198.— Agatharch., ap. Phot., Cod., 250.) Another 
solution is that which refers the name Cyclops to the 
circular buildings constructed by the Pelasgi, of which 
we have so remarkable a specimen in what is called 
the Treasury of Atreus, at Mycenae. From the form 
of these buildings, resembling within a hollow cone or 
beehive, and the round opening at the top, the individ¬ 
uals who constructed them are thought to have derived 
their appellation. (Kruse, Hellas, vol. 1, p/440.— 
Compare GelVs Argolis, p. 34.) — As regards the 
country occupied by the Homeric Cyclopes, it may be 
remarked, that this is usually supposed to have been 
the island of Sicily. But it would be very inconsistent 
in the poet to place the Cyclopes, a race contemning 
the gods, in an island sacred to, and in which were 
pastured the herds of, the Sun. The distance, too, 
between the land of the Lotophagi and that of the Cy¬ 
clopes, could not have been very considerable ; since, 
as has already been remarked, it is not given in days 
and nights, a mode of measurement always adopted by 
Homer when the distance mentioned is a great one. 
Everything conspires, therefore, to induce the belief, 
that the Cyclopes of Homer were placed by him on the 
« coast of Africa, a little to the north of the Syrtis Mi¬ 
nor. (Compare Mannert, Geogr., vol. 4, p„ 9, seqq.) 
They who make them to have dwelt in Sicily blend an 
old tradition with one of more recent date. This last 
probably took its rise when HEtna and the Lipari isl¬ 
ands were assigned to Vulcan, by the popular belief 
of the day, as his workshops; which could only have 
happened when JEtna had become better known, and 
Mount Moschylus, in the isle of Lemnos, had ceased 
to be volcanic.—Before we conclude this article, a few 
remarks will be made on the subject of Cyclopian 
architecture. This style of building is frequently al¬ 
luded to by the ancient writers. In fact, every archi¬ 
tectural work of extraordinary magnitude, to the exe¬ 
cution of which human labour appeared inadequate, 
was ascribed to the Cyclopes. (Eurip., Iph. in Auk, 
534.— Id., Here. Fur., 15.— Id., Troad., 108.— Stra¬ 
bo, 373.— Senec., Here. Fur., 996.— Statius, Theb., 
i, 151.— Pausan., 2, 25.) The general character of 
the Cyclopian style is immense blocks of stone, with¬ 
out cement, placed upon each other, sometimes irreg¬ 
ularly, and with smaller stones filling up the interstices, 
sometimes in regular and horizontal rows. The Cy¬ 
clopian style is commonly divided into four eras. The 
first, or oldest, is that employed at Tiryns and Myce- 
n$, consisting of blocks of various sizes, some of them 
very large, the interstices of which are, or were once, 
filled up with small stones. The second era is marked 
by polygonal stones, which nevertheless fit into each 
other with great nicety. Specimens exist at Delphi, 


Iulis, and at Cosa in Etruria. In this style there are 
no courses. The third era appears in the Phocian 
cities, and in some of Boeotia and Argolis. It is dis¬ 
tinguished by the work being made in courses, and the 
stones, though of unequal size, being of the same 
height. The fourth and youngest style presents hori¬ 
zontal courses of masonry, not always of the same 
height, but formed of stones which are all rectangular. 
This style is chiefly confined to Attica. ( Hamilton, 
Archoeolog., 15, 320.) Drawings of Cyclopian walls 
are given in Cell's Argolis, pi. 7.— Micali, Antichi 
Monumenti, tav. 9, 10, 11, 12.— Hirt, Geschichte der 
Baukunst, taf. 7, fig. 5, 6, 8, 9, 10. The most ra¬ 
tional opinion relative to the Cyclopian walls of anti¬ 
quity, is, that which ascribes their erection to the an¬ 
cient Pelasgi. (Dodwell, Tour, vol. 2, p. 219.— Hirt, 
Gesch. der Bauk., vol. 1, p. 199, &c.) 

Cycnus, I. a son of Mars, killed by Hercules. As 
the latter was passing by the temple of Apollo at Pa 
gasse, he was opposed by Cycnus, who was in the 
habit of plundering those who brought the sacrifices 
to the god. Both Cycnus and his parent Mars were 
standing in the same chariot ready for the conflict. 
Hercules engaged, and slew the former; and when 
Mars, who had witnessed the fate of his son, would 
avenge him, he received a wound in the thigh from the 
spear of the hero. The two combats are described in 
the Hesiodean fragment called the “ Shield of Hercu¬ 
les.” ( Vid. Hesiod.)—II. A son of Neptune, whom 
his father had made invulnerable. He fought on the 
side of the Trojans at the landing of the Greeks, and 
had Achilles for an antagonist. When the latter saw 
that his weapons were of no effect, he took advantage 
of a fall on the part of Cycnus, occasioned by a stone 
with which he came in contact, as he was retreating 
before the Grecian hero, and choked him to death by 
means of the strap of his helmet. Neptune immedi¬ 
ately changed the corpse of his son into a swan ( kvic- 
vor, cycnus. — Ovid, Met., 12, 72, seqq.) —III. Son of 
Stheneleus, and king of the Ligurians. He was a re¬ 
lation and friend of Phaethon’s, and was standing on 
the banks of the Po when the sisters of the latter 
were transformed into poplars. While mourning at 
the sight he was himself changed into a swan. (Ovid, 
Met., 2, 367.) 

Cydias, a painter, born in the island of Cythnus, 
one of the Cyclades, and who flourished Olymp. 104. 
Hortensius, the orator, purchased his painting of the 
Argonauts for 144,000 sesterces (nearly $5600). This 
same piece was afterward transferred by Agrippa to the 
portico of Neptune. (Plin., 35, 40.— Dio Cass., 53, 
27.) 

Cydippe. Vid. Acontius. 

Cydnus, a river of Cilicia Campestris, rising in the 
chain of Mount Taurus, and falling into the sea a little 
below Tarsus, which stood on its banks. (Xen., 
Anab., 1, 2.) Its waters were extremely cold, and 
Alexander nearly lost his life by bathing in them when 
overheated and fatigued. The illness of Alexander re¬ 
sulting from this, is connected with the well-known 
story of the physician Philip. (Arrian, Exp. Alex., 
2, 4.— Quint. Curt., 3, 4, 7, seqq.) The river Cyd¬ 
nus expanded about a mile below Tarsus, near the 
sea, and formed a port for the city, called Rhegma, 
or the aperture. (Strabo , 672.) The Geogr. Nub. 
Clima, 4, p. 5, gives the castle of Arlow as the har 
hour of Tarsus. (Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 2, p. 
65.) The Cydnus is now the Tersoos, and, according 
to Captain Beaufort, is at present inaccessible to any 
but the smallest boats ; though within the bar that ob¬ 
structs the entrance, it is deep enough, and about 160 
feet wide. That this river was navigable, however, 
anciently, we learn from Plutarch’s description of Cle¬ 
opatra’s splendid pageant in sailing down its stream; 
a passage so well known to the English reader from 
Shakspeare’s beautiful version. (Pint., Vit. Ant., c 

397 




C Y M 


C Y N 


25.) Capt. Beaufort observes, that the sea must have 
retired considerably from the mouth of the Cydnus ; 
since, in the time of the crusades, it is reported to 
hare been six miles from Tarsus, and now that dis¬ 
tance is more than doubled. ( Karamania , p. 275.— 
Cramer's Asia Minor , vol. 2, p. 344.) 

Cvdonia, the most ancient city in the island of 
Crete. ( Strabo , 476.) It is said to have been found¬ 
ed by the Cydones of Homer ( Od ., 3, 292), whom 
Strabo considered as indigenous. But Herodotus as¬ 
cribes its origin to a party of Samians, who, having 
been exiled by Polycrates, settled in Crete when they 
had expelled the Zacynthians. Six years afterward, 
the Samians were conquered in a naval engagement 
by the JEginetae and Cretans, and reduced to captivi¬ 
ty : the town then probably reverted to its ancient 
possessors the Cydonians. ( Herodot ., 3, 59.) It 
stood on the northern coast of the northwestern part 
of Crete, and was the most powerful and wealthy city 
of the whole island, since, in the civil wars, it with¬ 
stood the united forces of Cnosus and Gortyna after 
they had reduced the greater part of Crete. From 
Cydonia the quince-tree was first brought into Italy, 
and thence the fruit was called malum Cydonium, or 
Cydonian apple. Its inhabitants were the best of the 
Cretan archers. The ruins of this ancient city are to 
be seen on the site of Jerami. ( Cramer's Ancient 
Greece , vol. 3, p. 365, seq .) 

Cydrara, a city of Phrygia. Mannert supposes it 
to have been the same with Laodicea, on the confines 
of three provinces, Caria, Phrygia, and Lydia, and 
situate on the Lycus, which flows into the Mseander. 

( Gcogr ., vol. 6, pt. 3, p. 131.) Herodotus speaks of 
a pillar erected in Cydrara by Croesus, with an inscrip¬ 
tion defining the boundaries of Phrygia and Lydia ; so 
that it must have been on the confines of these two 
sountries at least. {Herodot., 7, 30.) 

C yllarus, a celebrated horse of Castor, according to 
Seneca, Valerius Flaccus, Claudian, and Martial, but, 
according to Virgil, of Pollux. {Virg., G ., 3, 90.) 
The point is gravely discussed by La Cerda and Mar- 
tyn, in their respective commentaries, and the conclu¬ 
sion to which both come is, what might have easily 
been surmised, that the steed in question was the com¬ 
mon property of the two Dioscuri. Statius, in his 
poem on Domitian’s horse, mentions Cyllarus as serv¬ 
ing the two brothers alternately. {Sylv., 1,1,54.) Ste- 
sichorus also, according to Suidas, says that Mercury 
gave Phlogeus, and Harpagus, and Cyllarus to both 
Castor and Pollux. {Suid., s. v. KvX'Iapog.) In the 
Etymol. Mag. it is stated, that Mercury gave them 
Phlogeus and Harpagus, but Juno, Exalithus and Cyl¬ 
larus. {Etymol. Mag., p. 544, 54.) 

Cyllene, I. the port of Elis, the capital of the dis¬ 
trict of Elis in the Peloponnesus. It is supposed to 
be the modern Chiarenza. —II. The loftiest and most 
celebrated mountain of Arcadia, rising between Stym- 
phalus and Pheneos, on the borders of Achaia. It 
was said to take its name from Cyllen, the son of Ela- 
tus, and was, according to the poets, the birthplace 
of Mercury, to whom a temple was dedicated on the 
summit. Hence the epithet Cyllenius applied to him. 
{Pausan., 8, 17.— Horn., Hymn, in Merc., 1.— Pind., 
Olymp., 6, 129.— II., 2, 603.— Virg., JEn., 8, 138.) 
The perpendicular height of this mountain was esti- 
matsd by some ancient geographers at twenty stadia, 
by others at fifteen. {Strabo, 388.) The modern 
name is Zyria. {Gcll's Itin., p. 168.) Pouqueville 
calls it Chelmos. {Voyage de la Grece, vol. 5, p. 339.) 

Cyllenius, an epithet applied to Mercury, from his 
having been born on Mount Cyllene. 

Cyma, the most considerable of the cities of JEolis, 
in Asia Minor, and lying to the northeast of Phoctea. 
This place, sometimes, but less correctly, called Cuma, 
was surnamed Phriconis, because its founders had set¬ 
tled for some time around Mount Phricium in Locris 
398 


previous to crossing over into Asia. On their arrival 
in HDolis, they found that country in the possession 
of the Pelasgi; but the latter, who had sustained 
great losses during the Trojan war, were unable to 
offer any resistance to the invaders, who successively 
founded Neontichos and Cyma, though, according to 
some traditions, there existed already a place of that 
name, so called from Cyme, one of the Amazons. 
{Strabo, 623.— Steph. Byz., s. v. K vprj.) Cyma was 
one among the many cities which laid claim to the 
honour of having given birth to Homer. Hesiod’s fa¬ 
ther was born in this place, the poet himself, how¬ 
ever, in Ascra in Boeotia. Ephorus, also, one of 
the most distinguished historians of Greece, but whose 
works are unfortunately lost, was a native of Cyma. 
And yet this city, notwithstanding the celebrity it de¬ 
rived from the birth of such talented individuals, was 
by no means generally famed for the genius and wit of 
its citizens. On the contrary, they were proverbially 
taxed with stupidity and slowness of apprehension. 

(Strabo, 622.— Suid., "O voq tig K vuaiovg. — Plut., 
Vit. Coes., c. 61.)—In the reign of Tiberius, Cyma 
suffered, in common with the other cities of Asia, 
from the terrible earthquake which desolated that 
province. {Tacit., Ann., 2,47.) Its site is near the 
Turkish village of Sanderly. D’Anville is in favour 
of Nemourt , but this is more probably the ancient 
Myrina. {Manner!s Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 1, p. 390.— 
Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. i., p. 147, seqq.) 

CymothSe, one of the Nereides, represented by 
Virgil as assisting the Trojans, with Triton, after the 
storm with which JSolus, at the request of Juno, had 
afflicted the fleet. (AEn., 1, 148.— Hesiod, Theog ., 
245.) 

Cyn^egirus, an Athenian, celebrated for his extraor¬ 
dinary courage. He was brother to the poet JEschy- 
lus. After the battle of Marathon, he pursued the 
flying Persians to their ships, and seized one of their 
vessels with his right hand, which was immediately 
severed by the enemy. Upon this he seized the ves¬ 
sel with his left hand, and when he had lost that also, 
he still kept his hold with his teeth. Herodotus merely 
relates that he seized one of the Persian vessels by the 
stern, and had his hand cut off with an axe. The more 
detailed account is given by Justin. Phasis, an obscure 
painter, represented Cynsegirus with both his hands, 
which Cornelius Longinus made the subject of a very* 
neat epigram, preserved in the Anthology. {Herodot., 
6, 114.— Justin, 2, 9.— Anthol. Palat., vol 2, p. 660, 
ed. Jacobs ) 

Cyn^eth^e, a town of Arcadia, on the river Crathis, 
near the northern borders, and some distance to the 
northwest of Cyllene. It had been united to the 
Achaean league, but was betrayed to the JEtolians in 
the Social War. This was effected by some exiles, 
who, on their return to their native city, formed a plot 
for admitting the enemy within its walls. The JEto- 
lians, accordingly, having crossed into Achaia with a 
considerable force, advanced to Cynoethae, and easily 
scaled the walls ; they then sacked the town and de¬ 
stroyed many of the inhabitants, not sparing even those 
to whose treachery they were indebted for their suc¬ 
cess. Polybius observes, that the calamity which thus 
overwhelmed the Cynsethians was considered by many 
as a just punishment for their depraved and immoral 
conduct, their city forming a striking exception to th* 1 
estimable character of the Arcadians in general, who 
were esteemed a pious, humane, and social people. 
Polybius accounts for this moral phenomenon, from 
the neglect into which music had fallen among the 
Cynsethians. All the towns of Arcadia, save this single 
one, paid the greatest attention to the science, deem¬ 
ing it a necessary branch of education, on the principle 
that its influence was beneficial in humanizing the 
character and refining the manners of the people 
The historian adds, that such was the abhonenc 



CYN 


C Y N 


produced in Arcadia by the conduct of the Cyn® 
thians, that, after a great massacre which took plase 
among them, many of the towns refused to receive 
their deputies, and the Mantin®ans, who allowed them 
a passage through their city, thought it necessary to 
perform lustral rites and expiatory sacrifices in every 
part of their territory. Cyn®th® was burned by the 
i£tolians on their retreat from Arcadia {Polyb., 4, 19, 
seqq.), but was probably restored, as it still existed in 
the time of Pausanias. ( Cramer's Ancient Greece , 
vol. 3, p. 319.) Cyn®th® is supposed to have stood 
near the modern town of Calabryta, though there are 
no remains of antiquity discernible near that place. 
( Dodwell's Tour, vol. 2, p. 447.— Gell's Itin. of Mo- 
rea , p. 131.) 

Cynesii or Cynetes {Kvvyctoi or KvvrjTeg), ac¬ 
cording to Herodotus (2, 33), the most western in¬ 
habitants of Europe, living beyond the Celt®. Man- 
nert, following the authority of Avienus (Ora Marit., 
v. 200), makes them to have been situate in Spain, on 
both sides of the river Anas, and their western limit to 
have corresponded with the modern Faro in Algarve, 
while their eastern was the bay and islands formed by 
the small rivers Odiel and Tinto. (Compare Lurcher , 
Hist. d'Herodote. — Tab. Geogr., vol. 7, p. 159.— 
Ukert, Geogr., vol. 2, p. 247, 251.— Mannert, Ge¬ 
ogr ., vol. 1, p. 235.) Niebuhr, however, is of a dif¬ 
ferent opinion. “ Still more absurd,” observes he, 
“ than this identification of the Celts of Herodotus 
with the Celtici, is the notion that the Cynetes, who, 
by his account, dwelt still farther west, being the most 
remote people in that part of Europe, were the inhab¬ 
itants of Algarve, merely because this district, on ac¬ 
count of Cape St. Vincent, which projects in the shape 
,of a wedge, was called Cuneus by the Romans, and 
unfortunately may, from its true situation, be consid¬ 
ered the westernmost country in this direction. As 
in historical geography we are not to look for the 
Celts to the west of the Iberi, so the Cynetes are not 
to be sought to the west of the Celts ; yet assuredly 
they are not a fabulous people, but one which dwelt at 
a very great distance beyond the Celts, and, therefore, 
probably in the north ; for, the more distant the object 
was, the farther it naturally diverged from the truth.” 
{Niebuhr's Geography of Herodotus, p. 13.) 

Cynici, a sect of philosophers, so called either from 
Cynosarges, where Antisthenes, the founder of the 
sect, lectured, or from the Greek term nvov, “a dog," 
in allusion to the snarling humour of their master. 
This sect is to be regarded not so much as a school 
of philosophers as an institution of manners. It was 
formed rather for the purpose of providing a remedy 
for the moral disorders qf luxury, ambition, and ava¬ 
rice, than with a view to establish any new theory of 
speculative opinions. The sole end of the Cynic phi¬ 
losophy was to subdue the passions, and produce sim¬ 
plicity of manners. Hence the coarseness of their 
outward attire, their haughty contempt of external 
good, and patient endurance of external ill. The rig¬ 
orous discipline of the first Cynics, however, degen¬ 
erated afterward into the most absurd severity. The 
Cynic renounced every kind of scientific pursuit, in 
order to attend solely to the cultivation of virtuous 
habits. The sect fell gradually into disesteem and 
contempt, and many gross and disgraceful tales were 
propagated respecting them. {Vid. Antisthenes and 
Diogenes.— Enfield's History of Philosophy , vol. 1, 
p. 301, seqq. — Tcnneman, Grundriss der Gesch. der 
Phil., p. 113.) 

Cynisca, a daughter of Archidamus, king of Sparta, 
who was the first female that ever turned her attention 
to the training of steeds, and the first that obtained a 
prize at the Olympic games. ( Pausan ., 3, 8.) 

Cyno, the wife of a herdsman, and the one who 
nurtured and brought up Cyrus the Great, when ex¬ 
posed in infancy. {Herodot., 1, 110.) Her name, in 


the Median language, was Spaco, according to Herod■ 
otus, who makes Cyno the Greek translation of it, 
from Kvov, “ a dog," and adds that it signified, in the 
Median tongue, a female dog. It is not known 
whether the dialect of the Medes and Persians was 
the same. In such remains as w r e have of the Per¬ 
sian language, Burton and Reland have not been able 
to discover any term like this. Nevertheless, Lefevre 
affirmed that the Hyrcanians, a people in subjection 
to the Persians, called, even in his time, a dog by the 
word spac. On what authority he makes this asser¬ 
tion is not known. Foster, in his letter to Michaelis 
upon the origin of the Chaldees, thinks that he detects 
a resemblance between the Median Spaco and the Sla¬ 
vonic Sabaka, which has the same meaning. (Com¬ 
pare Michaelis, Spicilegium, vol. 2, p. 99.) Some of 
the Greek grammarians cite the word ond^ as signi¬ 
fying “ a dog,” among the Persians. {Struve, Spe- 
cim. Qucest., p. 14, not.) 

Cynoscephal.®, eminences in Thessaly, southeast 
of Pharsalus, where the Romans, under T. Quinctius 
Flamininus, gained a victory over Philip, king of Mace- 
don, and put an end to the first Macedonian war. 
(Strabo , 441.— Liv., 33, 6.— Polyb., Fragm., 18, 3, 
10.) They are described by Plutarch as hills of small 
size, with sharp tops ; and the name properly belongs 
to those tops, from their resemblance to the heads of 
dogs {kvvuv KEcjiaXal. — Plut., Vit. Flamin .) Sir W. 
Gell, in describing the route between Larissa and 
Velestino, the ancient Pher®, observes, that Cynos- 
cephal® was in the range of hills which separate the 
plain of Larissa from that of Pharsalia. {Itin., p. 268 
—Compare Pouqueville, vol. 3, p. 390.) 

Cynocephali, a nation of India, who were said to 
have the heads of dogs, whence their name. ( Ctesias, 
Ind., 23.— Aul. Gell., 9, 4.— JElian, Nat. An., 4,46. 
— Diod. Sic., 3, 34.) The writer last quoted speaks 
of them as resembling human beings of deformed 
visage, and as sending forth human mutterings. It 
has been generally supposed, that the Cynocephali ot 
antiquity were nothing more than a species of large 
ape or baboon. Heeren, however {Ideen, 1, 2, p. 
689), thinks, that Ctesias refers, in fact, to the Parias, 
or lowest caste of Hindoos ; and that the appellation 
of Cynocephali is a figurative allusion to their degraded 
state. Malte-Brun also thinks that the narration of 
Ctesias refers to some actual race of human beings 
{Nouvelles Annales, p. 356, seqq. — Bahr, ad Ctes., p. 
321), and supposes that a black race is meant, who 
at a very early period occupied not only the islands of 
the Southern Ocean, but the interior of the peninsula 
of India as far as the mountains, and also the country 
around the sources of the Indus. He calls them 
“ Negres Oceaniques, Haraforas, ou Alphuriens de 
Borneo.” Bahr seems inclined to admit this hypothe¬ 
sis, but maintains that more or less of fable must have 
been blended with it. He refers to the Hindu le¬ 
gends of the war waged by Rama with the nation of 
apes in Ceylon, and to the bridge built by apes, con¬ 
necting that island with the peninsula of India. 
(Compare the plate given in Creuzer's Symbolik, n. 
28, and the remarks of Creuzer himself, vol. 1, p. 606, 
612.) Some inferior race, subdued by a superior one, 
is evidently meant. 

Cynos, a town of Locris, in the territory of the 
Opuntii, and their principal maritime place. Accord¬ 
ing to some ancient traditions, it had long been the 
residence of Deucalion and Pyrrha; the latter w^as 
even said to have been interred here. {Strabo, 425. 
— Apollod., ap. Schol.in Find., Ol., 9, 65.) The ru¬ 
ins of this city are probably those which have been ob • 
served near the small village of Lebanitis, by Sir W. 
Gell and other travellers. 

Cynosarges, a place in the suburbs of Athens, 
where the school of the Cynics was held. It derived 
its name from a white dog {kvuv dpyog), which, when 

399 



C Y P 


C Y P 


Diomus was sacrificing to Hercules, snatched away 
part of the victim. It was adorned with several tem¬ 
ples ; that of Hercules was the most splendid. The 
most remarkable thing in it, however, was the Gym¬ 
nasium, where all strangers, who had but one parent 
an Athenian, had to perform their exercises, because 
Hercules, to whom it was consecrated, had a mortal 
for his mother, and was not properly one of the im¬ 
mortals. Cynosarges is supposed to have been situ¬ 
ated at the foot of Mount Anchesmus, now the hill of 
St. George. ( Potter, Gr. Ant., 1, 8.— Cramer’’s Anc. 
Greece , vol. 2, p. 342.) 

Cynossema ( the dog's tomb), a promontory of the 
Thracian Chersonesus, where Hecuba was changed 
into a dog, and buried. {Ovid, Met., 13, 569.— 
Strabo, 595.— Schol. Lyc., 315, et 1176.) Here the 
Athenian fleet, under the command of Thrasybulus 
and Thrasyllus, gained an important victory over the 
allied squadron of the Peloponnesus, towards the close 
of the war with that country. ( Thucyd ., 8, 103, seqq.) 
The site is said to be now occupied by the Turkish 
fortress of the Dardanelles, called Kelidil-Bahar. 
{Chevalier, Voyage dans la Troade, pt. 1, p. 5.) 

Cynosura, I. a nymph of Ida in Crete, one of the 
nurses of Jove. She was changed into a constellation. 
(Consult remarks under the article Arctos, near its 
close.)—II. A promontory of Attica, formed by the 
range ol Pentelicus. It is now Cape Cavala. {Ptol., 
p. 86.— Said., s. v.) —III. A promontory of Attica, 
facing the northeastern extremity of Salamis. It is 
mentioned in the oracle delivered to the Athenians, 
prior to the battle of Salamis. {Herod., 8, 76.— GelVs 
Jtin., p. 103.) 

Cynthia, I. a female name, occurring in some of 
the ancient poets. {Propert., 2, 33, 1.— Ovid, Rem. 
Am., 764, &c.)—II. A surname of Diana, from Mount 
Cynthus, in the island of Delos, where she was born. 
—III. A name given to the island of Delos itself. 
{Plin., 4, 12.) 

Cynthius, a surname of Apollo, from Mount Cyn¬ 
thus, in the island of Delos, where he was born. {Vid. 
Cynthus.) 

Cynthus, a mountain of Delos, which raises its 
barren summit to a considerable height above the plain. 
At its base was the city of Delos. The modern name 
is Monte Cintio. On this mountain, according to the 
poets, Apollo and Diana were born, and hence the 
epithets of Cynthius and Cynthia, respectively applied 
to them. {Strab., 485.— Plin., 4,12.— Virg., Geogr., 
3, 36.— Ovid, Met., 6, 304.— Id., Fast., 3, 346, &c.) 

Cynurii, a small tribe of the Peloponnesus, on the 
shore of the Sinus Argolicus, and bordering on Laco¬ 
nia, Arcadia, and Argolis properly so called. They 
were an ancient race, accounted indigenous by He¬ 
rodotus (8, 73), who also styles them Ionians. The 
possession of the tract of country which they occupied 
led to frequent disputes and hostilities between the 
Spartans and Argives. {Pausan., 3, 2, 7.— Steph. 
Byz., s. v. Kui >ovpa.) As early as the time of Eches- 
tratus the son of Agis, the first king of Sparta, the 
Cynurians were expelled from their homes by the La¬ 
cedaemonians, under pretence that they committed 
depredations on the Spartan territory. {Pausan., loc. 
cit.) 

Cyparissj® or Cyparissia, I. a town of Messenia, 
near the mouth of the river Cyparissus, and on the 
Sinus Cyparissius. The river and gulf are now called 
Arcadia and Gulf of Arcadia respectively, from the 
modern town which occupies the site of Cyparissia. 
{Strabo, 348 .—Polyb., 5, 92.)—II. A town of Laco¬ 
nia, in the vicinity of the Asopus. The site is now 
occupied by the modern fortress of Rupino or Ram- 
pano, sometimes also called Castel Kyparissi. {Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 194.) 

Cyparissus, a youth, son of Telephus of Cea, be¬ 
loved by Apollo. He slew, by mistake, a favourite 
400 


stag, and, amid the deep sorrow which he felt lor tne 
loss of the animal, was changed into a cypress-tree. 
{Ovid, Met., 10, 121, seqq.) 

Cyprianus (or Thascius Camilius Cyprianus), one 
of the Latin Fathers of the church, born at the be¬ 
ginning of the third century of our era, in Africa, either 
at Carthage, or some place in its vicinity. According 
to Gregory Nazianzen, he belonged to a senatorial 
family of that place. His name previous to his con 
version was Thascius Cyprianus, but he now assumed 
the additional appellation of Caecilius, the name of 
the priest by whom he was converted. Cyprian con¬ 
ducted himself so well after his change of faith, 
that, upon the death of Donatus, bishop of Carthage, 
he was unanimously chosen to succeed him. For 
nearly two years he managed the affairs of his bish¬ 
opric in tranquillity; but in 251, on the commence¬ 
ment of the Decian persecution, the pagans of Car¬ 
thage, enraged at his desertion of them, demanded 
that Cyprian should be thrown to the lions. During 
the storm he thought it prudent to withdraw, on which 
he was proscribed by government and his goods were 
confiscated. In his retirement, which lasted fourteen 
months, he employed himself in writing letters to his 
people and clergy, and to the Christians at Rome, ex¬ 
horting them to remain steadfast in their faith. On 
the death of the Emperor Decius, Cyprian returned to 
Carthage, and held different councils for regulating the 
affairs of the church and a number of points relating 
to ecclesiastical discipline. One subject of much con¬ 
tention was the validity of the baptism of heretics. 
Cyprian maintained, that all baptism out of the Catholic 
Church was null and void, and that all who came over 
from heresies to the church ought to be baptized again 
He was supported by the African bishops, but opposed, 
by Stephen, bishop of Rome. In 257 the persecution 
was renewed by order of the Emperors Valerian and 
Gallienus, and Cyprian was summoned before Aspasius 
Paternus, proconsul of Africa, and, remaining firm in 
his faith, was banished to Curubis, a town twelve 
leagues from Carthage, where he employed himself in 
writing letters to the persecuted Christians, exhorting 
them to cheer their spirits and persevere in their reli¬ 
gion. At the end of eleven months he was recalled tc 
Carthage by Galerius Maximus, a new proconsul. On 
his return, finding that orders were issued to carry him 
before the proconsul, who was then at Utica, ana 
wishing to suffer martyrdom before the eyes of his own 
church, he retired to a place of temporary concealment, 
from which he emerged to give hisjast testimony tc 
the truth of his religion on the return of Galerius tc 
Carthage. Being apprehended, he was desired by the 
magistrate to obey the impeyal edict, and to sacrifice 
to the gods ; and, on his preremptory refusal, he was 
sentenced to be beheaded. This sentence was exe¬ 
cuted at a place called Sexti, near the city of Carthage 
in the year 258, where Cyprian submitted to his fate 
with firmness and cheerfulness. As a bishop, he dis¬ 
charged the duties of his office with prudence, fidelity, 
and affection, and with a degree of modesty and hu¬ 
mility which much endeared him to his flock. As a 
writer, he is correct, pure, and eloquent, with much 
force and argumentative skill. According to Erasmus, 
he is the only African writer who attained to the native 
purity of the Latin tongue. His works consist of 
treatises on various subjects ; some being defences of 
Christianity argainst the Jews and Gentiles, and others 
on Christian morality and the discipline of the church. 
The best editions are, that of Erasmus in 1520 ; of 
Rigaltius, Paris, 1648; of Bishop Fell, at Oxford, 
1662, with the Annales Cyprianici of Bishop Pearson 
prefixed ; and that of Father Maran, a Benedictine 
monk of the congregation of St. Maur at Paris, 1727. 
They were translated into English, with notes, by Mar¬ 
shal, in 1717. {Dupin, vol. 1, p. 149, seqq. — Fabric., 

I Bibl. Lat., vol. 3, p. 377, seqq. — Biogr. Univ., vol 




C Y P 


CYR 


10, p. 397, seqq. — Rettberg, Cyprian dargestellt, &c. 
Getting., 1831, 8vo— Bahr, Christlich-Rom. Theol., 
p. 50, seqq.) 

Cyprus, a large island of the Mediterranean, south 
of Cilicia and west of Syria. Like every other isle in 
the Grecian seas, it appears to have borne several ap¬ 
pellations in remote ages, but many of these are only 
poetical, and rest on dubious and obscure authority. 
Those which occur most commonly are Sphecia, Ce- 
rastis, and Cryptus, for which fanciful etymologies are 
adduced by Stephanus of Byzantium, Eustathius, and 
other authorities compiled by Meursius : that of Cy¬ 
prus, which finally prevailed over every other, is also 
uncertain ; but the notion which derives it from the 
shrub cypress is probably the most correct; and Bo- 
chart, whose Phoenician analogies rest here on safer 
ground, insists strongly on its validity. ( Geogr. Sacr., 
p. 373.) Cyprus is reckoned by Strabo (654), or, 
rather, Timaeus, whom he quotes, as the third in extent 
of the seven Mediterranean isles, which he classes in 
the following order: Sardinia, Sicily, Cyprus, Crete, 
Euboea, Corsica, and Lesbos. According to ancient 
measurements, its circuit amounted to 3420 stadia, 
including the sinuosities of the coast. Its greatest 
length from west to east, between Cape Acamas and 
the little islands called Clides, was reckoned at 1400 
stadia. The interior of Cyprus is mountainous ; a 
ridge being drawn across the entire length of the island, 
from Cape Acamas on the west, to that of Dinaretum 
in the opposite direction ; it attains the highest eleva¬ 
tion near the central region, and was anciently called 
Olympus. This physical conformation precludes the 
existence of any considerable rivers. There are no 
lakes, but some salt marshes on the coast. Cyprus 
yielded to no other island in fertility, since it produced 
excellent wine and oil, and abundance of wheat and 
various fruits. There was also a great supply of timber 
for building ships. (Strabo, 684.) Its mineral pro¬ 
ductions were likewise very rich, especially copper, 
found at Tamasus, and supposed to be alluded to in 
the Odyssey. The first inhabitants of this island are 
generally supposed to have come from Phoenicia ; and 
yet, that the Cyprians spake a language different from 
the Phoenicians and peculiar to themselves, is evident 
from the scattered glosses preserved by the lexicog¬ 
raphers and grammarians. One thing is certain, how¬ 
ever, that the whole of the ceremonies and religious 
rites observed by the Cyprians, with respect to Venus 
and Adonis, were without doubt borrowed from Phoe¬ 
nicia. Venus, in fact, was the principal deity of the 
island, and, as might be expected, the Cyprians were, 
in consequence, a sensual and licentious people. Pros¬ 
titution was sanctioned by the laws (Herod., 1, 199. 
— Athcnceus, 12, p. 516), and hired flatterers and pro¬ 
fessed sycophants attended on the luxurious princes of 
the land. (Clearch., ap. Athen., 6, p. 255.) Never¬ 
theless, literature and the arts flourished here to a con¬ 
siderable extent, even at an early period, as the name 
of the Cypria Carmina, ascribed by some to Homer, 
sufficiently attests. (Herod., 2, 118.— Athenceus, 15, 
p. 682.) The island of Cyprus is still famed for its 
fertility. The most valuable production at present is 
cotton. The French also send thither for turpentine, 
building timber, oranges, and particularly Cyprus wine. 
Hyacinths, anemonies, ranunculuses, and the single 
and double narcissus, grow here without cultivation. 
They deck the mountains, and give the country the 
appearance of an immense flower-garden. But agri¬ 
culture is neglected, and an unwholesome atmosphere 
infects some districts where the method of draining 
the stagnant water is unknown. (Malte-Brun, Geogr., 
vol. 2, p. 88, Am. ed. — Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, 
p. 366, seqq.) 

Cypselus, I. son of Eetion, and a native of Corinth, 
who attained to the sovereign power in that city about 
560 B.C. The Heraclide clan of the Bacchiadae had 
E E E 


previously changed the original constitution of Corinth 
into an oligarchy, by keeping themselves distinct, in 
the manner of a caste, from all other families, and 
alone furnished the city with the annual prytanes or 
chief magistrates. Cypselus, although connected on 
the mother’s side with the Bacchiadae, overcame, with 
the assistance of the lower orders, the oligarchs, now 
become odious through their luxury and insolence 
(JElian, V. H., 1, 19), and, from the inability of the 
people to govern themselves, made himself tyrant of 
Corinth. However violently the Corinthian orator in 
Herodotus (5, 92) accuses this sovereign, the judg¬ 
ment of antiquity in general was widely different. Cyp¬ 
selus was of a peaceful disposition, reigned without a 
body-guard, and never forgot that he rose from being a 
demagogue to the throne. Herodotus informs us (l. 
c.) that an oracle had been given to the parents of 
Cypselus, before the birth of the latter, intimating that 
the offspring of their union would overthrow the ex¬ 
isting authority at Corinth; and that the Bacchiadae, 
happening to hear of this, and comparing it with an¬ 
other response which had been given unto their own 
family, sent certain of. their number to destroy Cypse¬ 
lus shortly after he was born. His mother, however, 
saved his life by hiding him in a coffer or chest (nvip- 
e/L?), from which circumstance he obtained his name 
(KvipeX of). His descendants, the Cypselidas, conse¬ 
crated at Olympia, in the temple of Juno, a richly 
adorned coffer, in commemoration of the escape of 
ttaeir progenitor, an elaborate account of which offer¬ 
ing is given by Pausanias (5, 17, seqq.). This was not, 
however, the coffer in which Cypselus himself had been 
preserved. (Compare Valckenaer, ad Herod., 1. c., 
and consult, on the subject of the coffer of Cypselus, 
Muller, Archceol. der Kunst , p. 37.— Heyne, ilber de?i 
Hasten des Kypselus; eine Vorlesung , 1770,4to.— De- 
scrizione della Cassa di Cipselo, da Seb. Ciampi, Pisa, 
1814.— Quatrcmere-de-Quincy, Jup. Olymp., p. 124. 
— Siebelis, Amallhea, vol. 2, p. 257. — Thiersch, Epo- 
chen, p. 169.) Creuzer and Bahr think, that the his¬ 
tory of Cypselus, if such a person ever reigned at 
Corinth, has received a colouring from the fables rel¬ 
ative to Hercules, Bacchus, and Osiris. ( Creuzer , 
Comment. Herod., p. 62, seqq. — Bahr, ad Herod., 1. c. — 
Compare Muller, Dorians, vol. 1, p. 187, seq.) Cyp¬ 
selus was succeeded by his son Periander.—II. The 
elder son of Periandpr, incapacitated from succeeding 
him by mental alienation.—III. A king of Arcadia, 
who gave his daughter in marriage to Cresphontes, the 
Heraclide, and thus saved his dominions from the sway 
of the Dorians when they invaded the Peloponnesus. 
(Pausan, 8, 5.) 

Cyrenaica, a country of Africa, east of the Syrtis 
Minor, and west of Marmarica. It corresponds with 
the modern Barca. Cyrenaica was considered by the 
Greeks as a sort of terrestrial paradise. This was 
partly owing to the force of contrast, as all the rest of 
the African coast along the Mediterranean, from Car¬ 
thage to the Nile, was a barren, sandy waste, and partly 
to the actual fertility of Cyrenaica itself. It was ex¬ 
tremely well watered, and the inhabitants, according 
to Herodotus (4, 199), employed eight months in col¬ 
lecting the productions of the land : the maritime places 
first yielded their fruits, then the second region, which 
they called the hills, and lastly those of the highest 
part inland. One of the chief natural productions of 
Cyrenaica was an herb called silphium, a kind of laser- 
pitium or assafoetida. It was fattening for cattle, ren¬ 
dering their flesh also tender, and was a useful aperient 
for man. From its juice, too, when kneaded with clay, 
a powerful antiseptic was obtained. The silphium 
formed a great article of trade, and at Rome the com¬ 
position above mentioned sold for its weight in silver. 
It is for this reason that the silphium appeared always 
on the medals of Cyrene. Its culture was neglected * 
however, when the Romans became masters of the 

401 



C Y R 


CYRENE. 


country, and pasturage was more attended to. Cap¬ 
tain Beechy, in the course of his travels through this 
region, noticed a plant about three feet in height, very 
much resembling the hemlock or wild carrot. He was 
told, that it was usually fatal to the camels who ate of 
it, and that its juice was so acrid as to fester the flesh, 
if at all excoriated. He supposes it to be the silphium. 
Della Celia describes, apparently, the same production 
as an umbelliferous plant, with compound, indented 
leaves, fleshy, delicate, and shining, without any involu- 
crum; the fruit being somewhat flattened, surmounted 
by three ribs, and furnished all round with a membrane 
as glossy as silk (p. 128). Captain Smith succeeded 
n bringing over a specimen of the plant, which is said 
to be now thriving in Devonshire. (Beechy, p. 410, 
seqq.) M. Pacho says, that the Arabs call it denas j 
and he proposes to class the plant as a species of la- 
serwort, under the name of laserpitium devias. It 
seems to resemble the laserpitium ferulaceum of Lin¬ 
naeus.—Cyrena'ica was called Pentapolis, from its hav¬ 
ing five cities of note in it, Cyrene, Barce, Ptolemais, 
Berenice, and Tauchira. All of these exist at the 
present day under the form of towns or villages, and, 
what is remarkable, their names are scarcely changed 
from what we may suppose the pronunciation to have 
been among the Greeks. They are now called Ku¬ 
rin, Barca , Tollamata, Bernic, and Taukera. —Some 
farther remarks upon the district of Cyrenafca will be 
found under the head of Cyrene, being blended with 
the history of that city as its capital. For a full ac¬ 
count of the silphium, see the 36th volume of the 
Memoires de VAcadem. dcs Belles Lettres, p. 18, and 
for some valuable observations respecting Cyrena'ica, 
consult the work of M. Pacho, Relation d'un Voy¬ 
age dans la Marmarique, la Cyrenaique, &c., Paris, 
1828, 4to. 

Cyrenaici, a sect of philosophers who followed the 
doctrines of Aristippus, and whose name was derived 
from their founder’s having been a native of Cyrene, 
and from their school’s having been established in this 
place. Aristippus made the summum honum and the 
reXog of man to consist in enjoyment, accompanied by 
good taste and freedom of mind, to nparelv ual pp 
TjTTdaQai ijdovov apiarov, ov to yrj xpvcdai. ( Diog. 
Laert., 2, 75.) Happiness, said the Cyrenaics, con¬ 
sists, not in tranquillity or indolence, but in a pleas¬ 
ing agitation of the mind or inactive enjoyment. 
Pleasure is the ultimate object of human pursuit; it. 
is only in subserviency to this that fame, friendship, 
and even virtue are to be desired. All crimes are 
venial, because never committed but through the im¬ 
mediate impulse of passion. Nothing is just or un¬ 
just by nature, but by custom and law. The business 
of philosophy is to regulate the senses in that manner 
which will render them most productive of pleasure. 
Since, then, pleasure is to be derived, not from the past 
or the future, but the present, a wise man will take care 
to enjoy the present hour, and will be indifferent to life 
or death. Such were the tenets of the Cyrem.ic school. 
The short duration of this sect was owing, in part, to 
the remote distance of Cyrene from Greece, the chief 
seat of learning and philosophy ; in part to the un¬ 
bounded latitude which these philosophers allowed 
themselves in practice as well as opinion ; and in part 
to the rise of the Epicurean sect, which taught the doc¬ 
trine of pleasure in a more philosophical form. ( En¬ 
field's History of Philosophy , vol. 1, p. 197.— Tenne- 
mann's Manual , p. 101, Johnson's transl.) 

Cyrene, I. the daughter of the river Peneus, be¬ 
loved by Apollo. The god carried her in his golden 
chariot over the sea, to that part of Africa called after¬ 
ward 'Cvrenaica, where she bore him a son named Aris- 
fleus. ( Find ., Pyth., 9, 90, seqq. — Hcyne , ad Virg., 
Georg., 4, 321.)—II. A celebrated city of Africa, on 
the Mediterranean coast, the capital of Cyrena'ica, and 
to the west of Egypt. The foundation of this place 
402 


dates as far back as the 37th Olympiad (about B.O. 
628), when, according to Herodotus, a colony of 
Greeks from Thera, under Battus, were conducted by 
the Libyan Nomades to this delightful spot, then call¬ 
ed Irasa. In the neighbourhood was a copious spring 
of excellent water, which the Dorian colonists are said 
to have called the fountain of Apollo, and to have 
named Cyra (Kiipa), having in this, most probably, giv¬ 
en a Greek form to some appellation in use among 
the natives. From K vpa arose the name of the place, 
K vpava, which, substituting the Ionic for the Doric 
form, became K vprjvy, or Cyrene. (Callim. H. in 
Apoll., 88.— Eustath., ad Dionys. Perieg ., 213.— 
Spanheim, ad Callim., 1. c.) The poetic account, 
which makes Aristeus to have been the founder of the 
city, and to have named it after his mother, the nymph 
Cyrene, is, of course, purely fabulous.—After the ar¬ 
rival of Battus in this quarter, other migrations from 
Greece also took place ; and the colonists had become 
strong enough, under their third sovereign, to make 
war upon their Libyan neighbours, and even to defeat 
an army of Egyptian auxiliaries, which Apries (Pha¬ 
raoh Hophra) had sent to their assistance. ( Herodot ., 
4, 160.) The state of Barca was founded by a divi¬ 
sion of the colonists, headed by the brother of the 
king (Arcesilaus III.), who, having abjured his author¬ 
ity, left Cyrene with his followers. A civil war en¬ 
sued, followed by the usual consequences, an appli¬ 
cation to the neighbouring states for foreign aid, the 
eventual ruin of one party, and the loss of independence 
by the other. At first the Barceans appear to have 
had the advantage ; but, in the reign of a fourth Ar¬ 
cesilaus, who had married the daughter of the sovereign 
of Barca, a popular insurrection took place, in which 
both monarchs were assassinated. The mother of the 
Cyrenean king, Queen Pheretime, fled to Egypt, and 
invoked the aid of Aryander, the Persian viceroy un 
der Darius Hystaspes, who readily espoused her cause. 
Barca, after a long siege, fell through treachery, and 
was plundered by the Persians ; while the vengeance 
of the queen was glutted in the massacre of all who 
had been concerned in the insurrection. After this 
we hear no more of Barca as a separate state. In the 
time of Aristotle Cyrene was a republic ; and this ap¬ 
pears to have been the form of government at the era 
of the memorable dispute recorded by Sallust, between 
the Cyreneans and the Carthaginians, relative to their 
respective limits. ( Vid. Philseni.) Cyrene subse¬ 
quently fell under the power of the Carthaginians, 
and was comprised, with Egypt and Libya, in the 
viceroyalty of Ptolemy Lagus, whose brother Magas 
ruled Cyrene for fifty years. It continued to form part 
of the empire of the Ptolemies till it was made over 
by Ptolemy Physcon to his illegitimate son Apion. 
During a reign of twenty-one years, during which 
Egypt was a prey to intestine disturbances, Apion 
maintained peace and tranquillity in his dominions, 
and on his death bequeathed Cyrena'ica to the Ro¬ 
mans. The senate accepted the bequest, but allowed 
the cities to be governed by their own laws, which 
opened the way for fresh discord ; and the anarchy 
was terminated, twenty years after the death of Apion 
(B.C. 76), by the reduction of the whole of Cyrena'ica 
to the condition of a Roman province. In the time 
of Strabo it was united with Crete in one govern¬ 
ment. The most flourishing period of Cyrene was 
probably that of the Ptolemaic dynasty, and of the pie- 
ceding two or three centuries, when Grecian art was 
in the highest perfection ; to yvhich period we may as¬ 
sign the Doric temples and other monuments, which 
are decidedly of an early style. The philosophy and 
literature of Greece were diligently cultivated at Cy¬ 
rene, and this city gave birth to Aristippus, the found¬ 
er of the licentious sect distinguished by the name of 
Cyrenaic. It was the birthplace also of the poet Callim¬ 
achus, of Eratosthenes the historian, and Carneades 







C Y R 


CYRILLUS. 


the sophist. Numbers of Jews appear to have settled 
in Cyrena'ica, even prior to the Christian era. It was 
a Jew of Cyrene whom the Roman soldiers compell¬ 
ed to bear one end of our Saviour’s cross. {Matt., 
27, 32. —Mark , 15, 21.) Cyrenean Jews were pres¬ 
ent at Jerusalem on the day of the Pentecost; some 
of them took part with their Alexandrean brethren in 
disputing against the proto-martyr Stephen ; and Chris¬ 
tian Jews of Cyprus and Cyrene, fleeing from the per¬ 
secution of their intolerant brethren, were the first 
preachers of Christianity to the Greeks of Antioch. 
{Acts, 2, 10 ; 6, 9 ; 11, 20.) That Cyrene continued 
to flourish under the Romans, may be inferred as well 
from some Latin inscriptions as from the style of many 
of the architectural remains. To what circumstance 
its desertion is attributable, does not appear ; but in 
the fifth century it had become a mass of ruin. It is 
so described by Synesius, who lived in the time of 
Theodosius the younger. The wealth and honours of 
Cyrene were transferred to the episcopal city of Ptol- 
ema'is. The final extirpation of the Greek colonies of 
Cyrena'fca dates, however, from the destructive inva¬ 
sion of the Persian Chosroes, who, about 616, overran 
Syria and Egypt, and he advanced as far westward as 
the neighbourhood of Tripoli. The Saracens comple¬ 
ted the work of destruction, and for seven centuries 
this once fertile and populous region has been lost to 
civilization, to commerce, and almost to geographical 
knowledge. For three parts of the year Cyrene is 
untenanted, except by jackals and hyenas, and during 
the fourth, wandering Bedouins, too indolent to as¬ 
cend the higher range of hills, pitch their tents chiefly 
on the low grounds to the southward of the summit on 
which the city is built. The situation of Cyrene is 
described by modern travellers as singularly beautiful. 
It is built on the edge of a range of hills, rising about 
800 feet above a fine sweep of high table-land, form¬ 
ing the summit of a lower chain, to which it descends 
by a series of terraces. The elevation of the lower 
chain may be estimated at 1000 feet; so that Cyrene 
stands about 1800 feet above the level of the sea, of 
which it commands an extensive view over the table¬ 
land, which, extending east and west as far as the eye 
can reach, stretches about, five miles to the northward, 
and then descends abruptly to the coast. The view 
from the brow of the height, extending over the rocks, 
and woods, and distant ocean, is described by Capt. 
Beechy as almost unrivalled in magnificence. Ad¬ 
vantage has been taken of the natural terraces of the 
declivity, to shape the ledges into practicable roads, 
leading along the face of the mountain, and communi¬ 
cating, in some instances, by narrow flights of steps 
cut in the rock. These roads, which may be supposed 
to have been the favourite drives of the citizens of Cy¬ 
rene, are very plainly indented with the marks of char¬ 
iot-wheels, deeply furrowing the smooth, stony sur¬ 
face. The rock, in most instances rising perpendicu¬ 
larly from these galleries, has been excavated into in¬ 
numerable tombs, formed with great labour and taste, 
and generally adorned with architectural fagades. In 
several of the excavated tombs were discovered re¬ 
mains of paintings, representing historical, allegorical, 
and pastoral subjects, executed in the manner of those 
of Herculaneum and Pompeii: some of them by no 
means inferior to the best that have been found in 
those cities. (For some remarks on these paintings, 
consult Beechy, p. 451, seqq.) 

Cyreschata. Vid. Cyropolis. 

Cyrillus, I. bishop of Jerusalem, born in that 
city A.D. 315. He succeeded Maximus in the epis¬ 
copate, about the close of the year 350; and the author 
of the Chronicle of Alexandrea, as well as Socrates 
and other writers, infeuiaa us, that on the 7th of May, 
351, about nine in the rrvtuYifflg, a luminous cross was 
soen in the heavens, extending from Calvary to the 
Mount of Olives, s ■ ,, **^fice of nearly three fourths of 


a league. The Greek church has a festival or the 
7th of May, in commemoration of this phenomenon, 
which marked the promotion of Cyrill to the mitre. 
Cvrill himself has left a description of this celestial 
appearance in a letter to the Emperor Constantius, 
and the subject has afforded much controversy to 
writers of a later age.—Cyrill became involved in a 
controversy with Acacius, archbishop of Caesarea, an 
Arian or Semiarian in his tenets ; and refused to obey 
the citation of his opponent to appear at Caesarea : 
the charge alleged against him was, his having wasted 
the property of the church, when the truth was, that, 
during a great famine in Judea, Cyrill had sold some 
of the sacred ornaments in order to procure suste¬ 
nance for the suffering poor. The council assem¬ 
bled at Caesarea, and composed of Arian bishops, con¬ 
demned him, and, on Cyrill’s appealing from them to a 
higher tribunal, Acacius, construing this appeal into a 
high offence, drove him from Jerusalem. He was re¬ 
stored to his see in 359 by the council of Seleucia, 
which also pronounced the deposition of Acacius and 
many other Arians ; but in the following year Acacius 
and his partisans succeeded in again deposing Cyrill. 
In the year 361 he was again restored to his pontifi¬ 
cate. It was about this time that Julian made his 
memorable attempt to rebuild the Jewish temple : Cyr¬ 
ill was then at Jerusalem, and before the flames is¬ 
sued from the side of the former structure, he confi¬ 
dently predicted the failure of the emperor’s scheme 
He became odious to Juli&n, who resolved, according 
to Orosius, to sacrifice this pontiff to his hatred on his 
return from the Persian war. Julian, however, per¬ 
ished in the expedition. Cyrill was again exiled, in 
367, by the Emperor Yalens, who had embraced Ari- 
anism: his exile lasted for ten years, and he only re¬ 
turned to Jerusalem in 378, when Gratian re-estab¬ 
lished in their sees those bishops who were in com¬ 
munion with Pope Damasus. Cyrill governed his 
church without any farther troubles for the space of 
eight years, under the reign of Theodosius, and assist¬ 
ed in 381 at the general council of Constantinople. 
He subscribed the condemnation of the Arians and 
Macedonians, and died in 386, in the 71st year of his 
age and the 36th of his episcopate. The works of 
Cyrill consist of twenty-three Instructions, known by 
the name of Catechcses, which were composed by 
him at Jerusalem when he filled the station of cate¬ 
chist, previous to his being made a bishop. These 
productions, the style of which is in general simple 
and familiar, are regarded as the most ancient and com¬ 
plete abridgment that we possess of the doctrines of 
the primitive church. The Calvinists have attempted 
to prove them supposititious, but the Protestants of 
England have fully succeeded in establishing their au¬ 
thenticity. We have also a homily of Cyrill’s on th 
paralytic man mentioned in Scripture, and his letter te 
Constantius on the luminous cross which appeared at 
Jerusalem. The best editions of his works are, that 
of Mills, Oxon., 1703, fob, and that of Touttee, Paris , 
1720, fol. This last is decidedly the better one, and 
was published by Maran on the death of Touttee. {Bi- 
ogr. Univ., vol. 10, p. 404, seqq.) —II. Bishop of Al¬ 
exandrea, in the fifth century, succeeded his uncle 
Theophilus in that dignity in the year 412. The 
bishops of Alexandrea had long acquired great au¬ 
thority and power, and Cyrill took every opportunity to 
confirm and increase it. Soon after his elevation, he 
expelled the Novatians from Alexandrea, and stripped 
their bishop, Theopompus, of all his property. In 415 
the Jews committed some insult on the Christians of 
Alexandrea, which so enraged Cyrill, that, instead of 
advising them to apply for redress to the civil magis¬ 
trate, he put himself at the head of his people, and led 
them to the assault and plunder of the synagogues ar. 
houses of that people, and drove them out of the city 
This conduct, howeves displeased Orestes, the gover# 

403 




CYR 


OYR 


or ol Alexandres, who feared that the bishop’s author¬ 
ity, if not checked, might infringe upon that of the 
magistrate. Parties were formed to support the rival 
claims, and battles were fought in the streets of Alex- 
andrea; and Orestes himself was one day suddenly 
surrounded by 500 monks, by whom he would have 
been murdered had not the people interfered. One of 
these assailants, being seized, was put to the torture 
so severely that he died under the operation, on which 
Cyrill had him immediately canonized, and on every 
occasion commended his constancy and zeal. There 
also lived in Alexandrea a learned pagan lady, named 
Hypatia, with whom Orestes was intimate, and who 
was supposed to have encouraged his resistance to the 
claims of the bishop. This accomplished female was 
one day seized by a band of zealots, who dragged her 
through the streets, and concluded by tearing her limb 
from limb, a piece of atrocity attributed to the instiga¬ 
tion of Cyrill, and from which his memory has never 
been absolved. He next engaged in a furious contro¬ 
versy with Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, who 
maintained that the Virgin Mary ought not to be called 
the Mother of God, but the mother of our Lord or of 
Christ, since the Deity can neither be born nor die. 
These homilies, falling into the hands of the Egyptian 
monks, caused a great commotion among them, and 
Cyrill wrote a pastoral letter to them, in which he 
maintained that the Virgin Mary ought to be called 
the Mother of God, and denounced bitter censures 
against all who supported an opposite opinion. A con¬ 
troversial correspondence between the two bishops en¬ 
sued, which ended in an open war of excommunica¬ 
tions and anathemas. To put an end to this contro¬ 
versy, in 431 a council was held at Ephesus by the 
Emperor Theodosius ; and Cyrill, by his precipitation 
and violence, and not waiting for a number of Eastern 
bishops, obtained the condemnation of Nestorius with¬ 
out his being heard in his own defence, and that prelate 
was deprived of his bishopric and banished to the 
Egyptian deserts. When John, bishop of Antioch, 
and the other Eastern bishops, however, appeared, they 
avenged Nestorius, and, deposing Cyrill, put him in 
prison. In a subsequent meeting of the council, he 
was liberated and absolved from the sentence of de¬ 
position, but had the mortification of seeing the doc¬ 
trine which he had condemned spreading rapidly through 
the Roman empire, Assyria, and Persia. He died at 
Alexandrea in the year 444. Cyrill was undoubtedly 
a man of learning, but overbearing, ambitious, cruel, 
and intolerant in the highest degree. He is much ex¬ 
tolled by Catholic writers for his great zeal and piety, 
of which the particulars thus specified are proofs. He 
was the author of a number of works, treatises, &c., 
the best edition of which was published at Paris in 
1638, in 7 vols. fob, under the care of Jean Aubert, 
canon of Laon. ( Biogr. Univ., vol. 10, p. 406.) 

Cyrnos (K vpvog), the Greek name of Corsica. ( Vid. 
Corsica.) 

CyropSlis, a large city of Asia, on the banks of 
the Iaxartes, founded by Cyrus. ( Cellarius , Geogr. 
Ant., vol. 2, p. 715.— Salmas., in Solin., p. 480.) It 
was also called Cyreschata. Both of these names, 
however, are Greek translations of the true Persian 
terms. The termination of the last is the Greek ecr- 
Xarr], expressing, as did the Persian one, the remote 
situation of the place. Alexander destroyed it, and 
built in its stead a city, called by the Roman geogra¬ 
phers Alexandrea Ultima, by the Greeks, however, ’A/l- 
etjavdpria ’Ecr^ar??, of which the Latin is a translation. 
The modern Cogend is supposed by D’Anville to an¬ 
swer to the site of this city. Some writers make 
another city of the name of Cyropolis to have been 
founded by Cyrus in Media. (Compare Cellarius , 
Geogr Ant., vol. 2, p. 666.) 

Cy^rhestica, a country of Syria, northeast of the 
tlty of Antiochia, and north of the district of Chaly- 
404 


bonitis. It as so called from its capital Cynhus 
(Plin ., 5, 23 .—Cic., Ep. ad Alt., 5, 18.) 

Cyrrhus, I. a city of Macedonia, in the vicinity o\ 
Pella. (Compare Thucydides, 2, 100.) I here is a 
PalcBo Castro about sixteen miles northwest of Pella, 
which is very likely to be Cyrrhus. YV esseling thinks 
that Diodorus alludes to the Macedonian Cyrrhus (18, 
4), when he speaks of a temple of Minerva built there 
by order of Alexander {ad Itin. Hieros., p. 608). 
Hence the title of K v^peong, noticed by both Strabc 
and Stephanus. But these writers allude to the Syri 
an Cyrrhus. ( Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 229.) 
—II. A city of Syria, the capital of a district named 
after it Cyrrhestica. It derived its name from the 
Macedonian Cyrrhus. Stephanus Byzantinus, how¬ 
ever, writes Kypfioc. Later writers, and especially 
Christian ones, give the name of this place as Ku- 
pof, Cyrus, being misled, probably, by the fable which 
is found in Procopius {JEdif., 2, 12), that the Jews 
were the founders of the city, and called it after Cyrus 
their liberator. The ruins are still called Corus. 
{Cellarius, Geogr. Ant., vol. 2, p. 359.) 

Cyrus, I. a celebrated conqueror, and the founder of 
the Persian empire. His early history has been given, 
on the authority of Herodotus, under the article Asty- 
ages.—He had not been long seated on the throne, 
when his dominions were invaded by Croesus, king of 
Lydia, the issue of which contest was so fatal to the 
latter. {Vid. Croesus.) The conquest of Lydia es¬ 
tablished the Persian monarchy on a firm foundation, • 
and Cyrus was now called away to the East by vast 
designs, and by the threats of a distant and formidable 
enemy. Babylon still remained an independent city 
in the heart of his empire, and to reduce it was his 
first and most pressing care. On another side he was 
tempted by the wealth and the weakness of Egypt; 
while his northern frontier was disturbed and endan¬ 
gered by the fierce barbarians, who ranged over the 
plains that stretch from the skirts of the Indian Cau¬ 
casus to the Caspian. Until these last should be sub¬ 
dued or humbled, his Eastern provinces could never 
enjoy peace or safety. These objects demanded his 
own presence ; the subjugation of the Asiatic Greeks, 
as a less urgent and less difficult enterprise, he com¬ 
mitted to his lieutenants. While the latter, therefore, 
were executing his commands in the West, he was him¬ 
self enlarging and strengthening his power in the East. 
After completing the subjugation of the nations west of 
the Euphrates, he laid siege to Babylon. The account 
of its capture is given elsewhere {vid. "Babylon), though 
it seems doubtful whether he took the city in the way 
there related, or in any other manner, and did not rath¬ 
er owe his success to some internal revolution, which 
put an end to the dynasty of the Babylonian kings. 
In Xenophon’s romance, Cyrus is made to fix his resi¬ 
dence at Babylon during seven months in the year ; 
perhaps we cannot safely conclude that this was ever 
the practice of any of his successors : but it is highly 
probable, that the reduction of this luxurious city con¬ 
tributed, more than any other of the Persian conquests, 
to change the manners of the court and of the nation. 
Cyrus himself scarcely enjoyed so long an interval of 
repose. The protection which he afforded to the Jews 
was probably connected with his designs upon Egypt; 
but he never found leisure to carry them into effect. 
Soon after the fall of Babylon he undertook an expedition 
against one of the nations on the eastern side of the Cas¬ 
pian. According to Herodotus, it was the Massagetae, 
a nomadic horde, which had driven the Scythians be¬ 
fore them towards the West; and,after gaining a vic¬ 
tory over them by stratagem, he was defeated in a great 
battle and slain. The event is the same in the nar¬ 
rative of Ctesias ; but the people against whom Cyrus 
marched are called the Derbices, and their army is 
strengthened by troops and elephants furnished by Indi- 
I an allies ; while the death of Cyrus is speedily avenged 



CHIUS. 


CYRUS. 


by one of his vassals, Amorges, king of the Sac®, who 
gains a decisive victory over the Derbices, and annex¬ 
es their land to the Persian empire. This account is 
so far confirmed by Herodotus, that we do not hear 
from him of any consequences that followed the suc¬ 
cess of the Massagetae, or that the attention of Carn- 
Dyses, the son and heir of Cyrus, was called away to¬ 
wards the North. The first recorded measure of his 
reign, on the contrary, was the invasion of Egypt. 
(ThirlwalVs Greece , vol. 2, p. 172, seq .)—Thus much 
for the history of Cyrus, according to the generally re¬ 
ceived account. It is more than probable, however, that 
many and conflicting statements respecting his birth, 
parentage, early life, attainment to sovereign power, 
and subsequent career, were circulated throughput the 
East, since we find discrepances between the narra¬ 
tives of Herodotus, Ctesias, and Xenophon in these 
several particulars, that can in no other way be ac¬ 
counted for. It has been customary with most schol¬ 
ars to decry the testimony of Ctesias, and to regard 
him as a writer of but slender pretensions to the char¬ 
acter of veracity. As far, however, as the history of 
Cyrus was concerned, to say nothing of other parts of 
his narrative, this opinion is evidently unjust, and its 
injustice will be placed in the clearest light if we com¬ 
pare together the two rival statements of Ctesias and 
Herodotus. The account of the latter teems with fa¬ 
bles, from which that of the former appears to be entire¬ 
ly free. It is far more consistent with reason, to be¬ 
lieve with Ctesias that there was no affinity whatever 
between Cyrus and Astyages, than with Herodotus, that 
the latter was his maternal grandfather. Neither does 
Ctesias make any mention of that most palpable fable, 
the exposure of the infant; nor of the equally fabulous 
story respecting the cruel punishment of Harpagus. 
(Compare Bahr, ad Ctes., Pers., c. 2, and the words 
of Reineccius, Famil. Reg. Med. et Bactr., Lips., 
1572, p. 35, “ ab Astyage usurpatce in Cyrum et 
Harpagi Jihum crudelitatis decantatam ab Herodoto 
fabulam plane rejicimus .”) Nor need this dissimilar¬ 
ity between the statements of Ctesias and Herodotus 
occasion any surprise. The latter historian confesses, 
very ingenuously, that there were three different tradi-. 
tions in his time relative to the origin of Cyrus, and 
that he selected the one which appeared to him most 
probable (1, 96). How unfortunate this selection was 
we need hardly say. Ctesias, then, chose another tra¬ 
dition for his guide, and Xenophon, perhaps, may have 
partially mingled a third with his narrative. H3schy- 
lus ( Persce , v. 767) appears to have followed a fourth. 
(Compare Stanley , ad JEschyl., 1. c., and Lurcher , ad 
Ctes., Pers., c. 2.) With these several accounts, 
again, what the Armenian writers tell us respecting Cy¬ 
rus is directly at variance. (Compare Recherches Cu- 
rieuses sur VHistoire Ancienne de VAsie, par Cirbied 
et Martin, p. 64, seqq.) Among the modern scholars 
who have espoused the cause of Ctesias, his recent ed¬ 
itor, Bahr, stands most conspicuous. This writer re¬ 
gards the narrative of Herodotus as savouring of the 
Greek love for the marvellous, and thinks it to have 
been in some degree adumbrated from the story of the 
Theban CEdipus and his exposure on Cithaeron ; while, 
on the other hand, Xenophon presents Cyrus to our 
view as a young man, imbued with the precepts of the 
Socratic school, and exhibiting in his life and conduct 
a model for the imitation of others. The same scholar 
gives the following as what appears to him a near ap¬ 
proximation to the true history of Cyrus. He sup¬ 
poses Cyrus not to have been of royal lineage, but to 
have been by birth in the rank of a subject, and gifted 
with rare endowments of mind. He makes him to 
have first seen the light at the time when the Medes 
possessed the empire of Asia. The provinces or di¬ 
visions of this empire he supposes to have been held 
Dy satraps or viceroys, whose power, though derived 
from the monarch, was hereditary among themselves. 


He makes Cambyses, the father, to have been one of> 
these satraps ; and Cyrus, the son, to have succeeded 
him. Their sway was over the Persians, whom they 
ruled with almost regal power. Cyrus at length re¬ 
volted from the king of the Medes, and, by the aid of 
his immediate followers, obtained possession of the 
empire. In order, however, the better to keep in sub¬ 
jection the other nations composing the empire of Asty¬ 
ages, he wished to pass himself off as the son and. law¬ 
ful successor of the dethroned monarch. Hence arose 
the nuptials of Cyrus and Amytis the wife of Astyages. 
(Compare, as regards the Persian custom of intermar 
riage, Creuzer, Fragm. Hist., p. 223.— Freinshem., 
ad Curt., 3, 11,24-, and 8, 2, 19.— Theodoret., Serm ., 
9, p. 614.— Bahr, ad Ctes., p. 91.) Hence, too, we 
may account for the circumstance of Astyages’ not 
having been put to death, but being treated with great 
honour, and made the companion of Cyrus in his 
marches against those nations who would not acknowl¬ 
edge his sway. (Consult Bahr, ad Ctes., p. 86, seqq.) 
—Ctesias makes Cyrus to have reigned thirty years, 
and Herodotus twenty-nine. According to some au¬ 
thorities he died at a very advanced age. (Compare 
Xenophon, Cyrop., 8, 7, 1.) Scaliger, guided by 
Dinon and Ctesias, makes Cyrus to have reached the 
218th year of the era of Nabonassar, i. e., B.C. 528. 
(De Emend. Temp., p. 402.)—The name Cyrus (Ku- 
pog ) is generally thought to have been deduced from a 
Persian word, meaning the Sun. (Pint., Vit. Artax., 
1.) Coray (ad Plat., l. c.) informs us, that the Sun is 
still called Kour by the Persians. (Compare Hesy- 
chius, s. v. K vpog .... a7ro tov rjTiiov rov yap yTuov 
ol II epaat Kvpov )ieyovcuw and Plethon., Schol. in 
Orac. Mag. Zoroastr., d. 68, lin. 3, a fine.) Ritter 
also adduces various authorities to show, that, among 
the ancient Persians, as well as other early Oriental 
nations, Kor and Koros denoted the Sun. ( Vorhalle, 
p. 86, seqq.) Wahl had proved the same before him. 
(Vorder und Mittel-asien, vol. 1, p. 599.) The He¬ 
brew Khoresh (Cyrus) is traced by Gesenius also to 
the Persian. (Heb. Lex., s. v.) The previous name 
of Cyrus appears to have been Agradates (Strabo, 
729), which Rosenmiiller explains by the Persian 
Agah-dar-dad, i. e., “ juris cognitionem habens, , ’ > “ jus 
tenens ac servans .” (Rosenm., Handbuch, vol. 1, p. 
367.— Bahr, ad Ctes., p. 458.)—II. Commonly called 
“the Younger,” to distinguish him from the prece¬ 
ding, was the second of the four sons of Darius Nothus 
and Parysatis. According to the customs of the mon 
archy, his elder brother Artaxerxes was the legitimate 
heir apparent; but Cyrus was the first son born to 
Darius after his accession to the throne; and he w’as 
also his mother’s favourite. She had encouraged him 
to hope, that, as Xerxes, through the influence of Atos- 
sa, had been preferred to his elder brother, who was 
born while their father was yet in a private station, so 
she should be able to persuade Darius to set afeide Ar¬ 
taxerxes, and declare Cyrus his successor. In the 
mean while he was invested with the government of 
the western provinces. This appointment he seems 
from the first to have considered as a step to the throne 
He had, however, sagacity and courage enough to per 
ceive, that, should he be disappointed in his first ex¬ 
pectations, the co-operation of the Greeks might still 
enable him to force his way to the throne. It was 
with this view that he zealously embraced the side of 
Sparta in her struggle with Athens, both as the power 
which he found in the most prosperous condition, and 
as that which was most capable of furthering his de¬ 
signs. According to Plutarch (Vit. Artax., 2), Cyrus 
went to attend his father’s sickbed with sanguine 
hopes that his mother had accomplished her purpose, 
and that he was sent for to receive the crown. On his 
arrival at court, however, he saw himself disappointed 
in his expectations, and found that he had only come 
to witness his father’s death, and his brother’s acces 

405 



CYRUS. 


C YT 


>eion to the throne. He accompanied Artaxerxes, 
whom the Greeks distinguished by the epithet of Mne- 
mon, to Pasargadae, where the Persian kings went 
through certain mystic ceremonies of inauguration, and 
Tissaphernes took this opportunity of charging him 
with a design against his brother’s life. It would seem, 
from Plutarch’s account, that one of the officiating 
priests was suborned to support the charge ; though it 
is by no means certain that it was unfounded. Arta- 
xerxes was convinced of its truth, and determined on 
putting his brother to death ; and Cyrus was only saved 
by the passionate entreaties of Parysatis, in whose arms 
he had sought refuge from the executioner. The char¬ 
acter of Artaxerxes, though weak and timid, seems not 
to have been naturally unamiable. The ascendency 
which his mother, notwithstanding her undissembled 
predilection for her younger son, exercised over him, 
was the source of the greater part of his crimes and 
misfortunes. On this occasion he suffered it to over¬ 
power both the suspicions suggested by Tissaphernes, 
and the jealousy which the temper and situation of Cy¬ 
rus might reasonably have excited. He not only par¬ 
doned his brother, but permitted him to return to his 
government. Cyrus felt himself not obliged, but hum¬ 
bled, by his rival’s clemency ; and the danger he had 
escaped only strengthened his resolution to make him¬ 
self, as soon as possible, independent of the power to 
which he owed his life. Immediately after his return 
to Sardis, he began to make preparations for the exe¬ 
cution of his design. The chief difficulty was to keep 
them concealed from Artaxerxes until they were fully 
matured ; for, though his mother, who was probably 
from the beginning acquainted with his purpose, was 
at court, always ready to put the most favourable con¬ 
struction on his conduct, yet Tissaphernes was at hand 
to watch it with malignant attention, and to send the 
earliest information of any suspicious movement to the 
king. Cyrus, however, devised a variety of pretexts 
to blind Tissaphernes and the court, while he collected 
an army for the expedition which he was meditating. 
His main object was to raise as strong a body of Greek 
troops as he could, for it was only with such aid that 
he could hope to overpower an adversary, who had the 
whole force of the empire at his command : and he 
knew enough of the Greeks to believe, that their su¬ 
periority over his countrymen, in skill and courage, was 
sufficient to compensate for almost any inequality of 
numbers. In the spring of 40] B.C., Cyrus began 
his march from Sardis. His whole Grecian force, a 
part of which joined him on the route, amounted to 
11,000 neavy infantry, and about 2000 targeteers. His 
barbarian troops were 100,000 strong. After directing 
his line of march through the whole extent of Asia Mi¬ 
nor. he entered the Babylonia:, territory ; and it was 
not until ne reacned the plain of Cunaxa, between 
sixty and seventy miles from Babylon, that he became 
certain of his brother’s intention to hazard an engage¬ 
ment. Artaxerxes met him in this spot at the head of 
an army of 900,000 men. If we may believe Plutarch, 
the Persian monarch had continued to waver almost to 
the last, between the alternatives of fighting and re- 
treating, and was only diverted from adopting the lat¬ 
ter course by the energetic remonstrances of Tiriba- 
zus. In the battle which ensued, the Greeks soon 
routed the barbarians opposed to them, but committed 
an error in pursuing them too far, and Cyrus was com¬ 
pelled, in order to avoid being surrounded by the rest 
of the king’s army, to make an attack upon the centre, 
where his brother was in person. He routed the 
royal body-guard, and, being hurried away by the vio¬ 
lence of his feelings the moment he espied the king, he 
engaged with him, but was himself wounded and slain 
by a common soldier. Had Olearchus acted in con¬ 
formity with the directions of Cyrus, and led his divis¬ 
ion against the king’s centre, instead of being drawn 
off into pursuit of the flying enemy, the victory must 
406 


have belonged to Cyrus. According to the Persian 
custom of treating slain rebels, the head and right 
hand of Cyrus were cut oft’ and brought to the king, 
who is said himself to have seized the head by the 
hair, and to have held it up as a proof of his victory 
to the view of the surrounding crowd. T-hus ended 
the expedition of Cyrus. Xenophon, who gives an ac¬ 
count of the whole enterprise, pauses to describe the 
qualities and conduct by which this prince commanded 
love and respect, in a manner which shows how impor¬ 
tant the results of his success might have been for the 
welfare of Persia. The Greeks, after the battle, began 
to negotiate with the king through Tissaphernes, who 
offered to lead them home. He treacherously violated 
his word, however; and having, by an act of perfidy, ob¬ 
tained possession of the persons of the Greek command¬ 
ers, he sent them up to the king at Babylon, where 
they were all put to death. The Greeks were not, 
however, discouraged, though at a great distance from 
their country, and surrounded on every side by a pow¬ 
erful enemy. They immediately chose new command¬ 
ers, in the number of whom was Xenophon, who has 
given so beautiful and interesting an account of their 
celebrated retreat. ( Vid . Xenophon.) According to 
Diodorus and Diogenes Laertius, the expedition was 
undertaken by Cyrus in the 4th year of the 94th 
Olympiad. Larcher, on the contrary, in a dissertation 
inserted in the 17th vol. of the Memoirs of the Acade¬ 
my of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, makes it to have 
been in the third year of that Olympiad, in the end of 
March or beginning of April. He makes the battle of 
Cunaxa to have been fought at the end of October, in 
the 4th year of the same Olympiad, and the time which 
the whole expedition occupied, including the retreat, 
down to the period when the Greeks entered the army 
of Thymbron, to have been two years. (Plut ., Vit. 
Arlax. — Xen., Anab. — Thirlwall's Greece , vol. 4, p. 
281, seqq.) —III. A large river of Asia, rising in Iberia 
and falling into the Caspian ; now the Kur. This river 
waters the great valley of Georgia, and is increased 
by the Aragui , the Iora, probably the Iberus of the 
ancients, and the Alasan, which is their Alazo. When 
it reaches the plains of Shirvan, its waters are mixed 
with those of the Aras or Araxes. These two rivers 
form several branches, sometimes united and some¬ 
times separated, so that it appears uncertain, as it was 
in the time of Strabo and Ptolemy, whether their 
mouths were to be considered as separate, or whether 
the Cyrus received the Araxes. ( Plin., 4, 10.— Id., . 
6, 9.— Id., 10, 13.— Mela, 3, 5.— Strabo, 345.) 

Cyta, a city of Colchis, in the interior of the coun¬ 
try, near the river Phasis, and northeast of Tyndaris. 
It was the birthplace of Medea, and its site corresponds 
at the present day to Kutais, the capital of the Rus¬ 
sian province of Imerethi. The inhabitants, like the 
Colchians generally, were famed for their acquaintance 
with poisonous herbs and magic rites. Scylax calls 
the place Male (Mail??), which Vossius changes to 
Cyta (Kbra). Medea was called Cytccis from this 
her native city. ( Sleph. Byz., s. v. — Cellar., Geog. 
Antiq., vol. 1, p. 303.) 

Cyt^eis, a surname given to Medea by the poets, 
from her having been born at Cyta. ( Pvopert ., 2. 

1, 73.) 

Cythera, now Cerigo, an island on the coast of 
Laconia in Peloponnesus. It was particularly sacred 
to the goddess Venus, who was hence surnamed Cythe- 
rcea, and who rose, as fables tell us, from the sea, near 
its coasts. Stephanus of Byzantium says, that the 
island derived its name Cythera from a Phoenician 
named Cytherus, who settled in it. Before his arrival 
it was called Porphyris or Porphyrissa, according to 
Eustathius ( ad Dion. Perieg ., 500), from the quantity 
of purple fish found on its snores ; but the name of 
Cythera is as ancient as the time of Homer. ( Od., 1, 
80.) The fable respecting Venus’ having arisen from 




C Y Z 


D A C 


tne sea in its vicinity, means nothing more than that 
her worship was introduced into the island by some 
maritime people, probably the Phoenicians. Cythera 
was a place of great importance to the Spartans, since 
an enemy, if in possession of it, would be thereby en¬ 
abled to ravage the southern coast of Laconia. Its 
harbours also sheltered the Spartan fleets, and afforded 
protection to all merchant vessels against the attacks 
of pirates, whose depredations, on the other hancT, 
would have been greatly facilitated by its acquisition. 
(Thucyd ., 4, 53.) Hence the Argives, who originally 
held it, were driven out eventually by the Spartans. 
j A magistrate was sent yearly from Sparta, styled Cy- 
therodices, to administer justice, and to examine into 
the state of the island; and so important a position 
was it, that Demaratus expressly advised Xerxes to 
seize it with a part of his fleet, since by that means he 
would compel the Spartans to withdraw from the con¬ 
federacy, and defend their own territories. Demara¬ 
tus quoted, on this occasian, the opinion of Chilo, the 
Lacedaemonian sage, who had declared it would be a 
great benefit to Sparta if that island were sunk into 
the sea. Cythera ( Cerigo ) is now one of the Ionian 
islands. ( Virg ., JSn., 1, 262; 10, 5.— Pausan., 3, 
33 .—Ovid, Met., 4, 288 ; 15, 386.— Fast., 4, 15.— 
Herodot., 1, 29.) 

Cytheh^ea, a surname of Venus, from her rising out 
of the ocean near the island of Cythera. 

Cythnos, an island between Ceos and Seriphus, in 
the Mare Myrtoum, colonized by the Dryopes. ( Ar- 
tem., ap. Strab., 485.— Diccearch., Ins., 27.) It was 
the birthplace of Cyadias, an eminent painter. The 
cheese of Cythnos, according to Stephanus and Julius 
Pollux, was held in high estimation among the an¬ 
cients. The island is now called Thermia. It was 
also named Ophiussa and Drycpis. ( Cramer's Anc. 
Greece, vol. 3, p. 403.) 

Cytineum, the most considerable of the four cities 
pf Doris in Greece. According to Thucydides (3 ? 
95), it was situate to the west of Parnassus, and on 
he borders of the Locri Ozolae. iEschines observes, 
-hat it sent one deputy to the Amphictyonic council. 
(De Fals. Leg., p. 43.) 

Cytorum, a city of Paphlagonia, on the coast be¬ 
tween the promontory Carambis and Amastris. It 
was a Greek town of great antiquity, since Homer al¬ 
ludes to it (II., 2, 853), and is thought to have been 
founded by a colony of Milesians. According to Stra¬ 
bo (545), it had been a port of the inhabitants of Si- 
jiope. In its vicinity was a mountain, named Cyto- 
rus, which produced a beautifully-veined species of 
box-tree. (Catullus, 4, 13.— Virg., Georg., 2, 437.) 
The ruins of the ancient city are found near a harbour 
called Quitros or Kitros. (Tavernier, Voyage, lib. 3, 
c. 6.) In the vicinity is a high mountain called Ku- 
tros or Kotru. (Abulfeda, tab. 18, p. 309.— Man- 
nert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 3, p. 23.) 

Cyzicus, I. an island off the northern coast of My¬ 
sia, nearly triangular in shape, and about five hundred 
stadia in circuit. Its base was turned towards the 
Propontis, while the vertex advanced so closely to the 
continent that it was easy to connect it by a double 
bridge. This, as Pliny reports, was done by Alexan¬ 
der. Scylax, however, says that it was always a pen¬ 
insula, and his authority is followed by Mannert, who 
is of opinion that the inhabitants may, after the time 
of Scylax, have separated it from the mainland by a 
canal or ditch, for purposes of security. (Plin., 5, 
32.— Mannert , Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 3, p. 527.) It is 
certainly a peninsula at the present day, and there are 
no indications whatever of the bridges mentioned by 
Pliny and others. (Sestini, Viaggio, p. 502.— Cra¬ 
mer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 47.)—II. A celebrated 
city of Mysia, on the island of the same name, situate 
partly in the plain which extended to the bridges con¬ 
necting the island with the continent, and partly on 


the slope of Mount Arcton-oros. Its first foundation 
is ascribed by Conon to a colony of Pelasgi from Thes¬ 
saly, under the conduct of Cyzicus, son of Apollo, and 
Aristides speaks of thq god himself as the founder of 
the city. (Orat. Cyzic., 1, p. 114.) In process of 
time the Pelasgi were expelled by the Tyrrheni, and 
these again made way for the Milesians, who are 
generally looked upon by the Greeks as the real set¬ 
tlers, to whom the foundation of Cyzicus is to be 
attributed. (Conon, Narrat., 41.— Strab., 635.) Cyz¬ 
icus became, in process of time, a flourishing com¬ 
mercial city, and was at the height of its prosperity, 
when, through the means of the kings of Pergamus, it 
secured the favour and protection of Rome. Florus 
speaks in the highest terms of its beauty and opu¬ 
lence ; and Strabo assures us that it equalled in these 
respects, as well as in the wisdom of its political in¬ 
stitutions and the firmness of its government, the 
most renowned cities of Asia. The Cyzicene com¬ 
monwealth resembled those of Rhodes, Marseilles, and 
Carthage. They elected three magistrates, who were 
curators of the public buildings and stores. They 
possessed extensive arsenals and granaries, and care 
was taken to preserve the wheat by mixing it with 
Chalcidic earth. Owing to these wise and salutary 
precautions, they were enabled to sustain an arduous 
and memorable siege against Mithradates, king of Pon- 
tus, by both sea and land, until relieved by Lucullus. 
(Appian, Bell. Mithr., c. 73, seqq. — Pint., Vit. Lu- 
cuU., c. 9, seqq. — Strab., 575.) The Romans, in ac¬ 
knowledgment of the bravery and fidelity displayed by 
the Cyzicenians on this occasion, granted to them 
their independence, and greatly enlarged their terri¬ 
tory. Under the emperors, Cyzicus continued to pros¬ 
per greatly, and in the time of the Byzantine sway 
it was the metropolis of the Hellespontine province. 
(Hierocl., p. 661.) It was nearly destroyed by an 
earthquake, A.D. 943. Cyzicus gave birth to several 
historians, philosophers, and other writers. The coins 
of this place, called Kt ^ucyvol oraTTjpeq, were so beau¬ 
tiful as to be deemed a miracle of art. Proserpina 
was worshipped as the chief deity of the place, and the 
inhabitants had a legend among them, that their city 
was given by Jupiter to this goddess, as a portion of 
her dowry. The ruins of Cyzicus now pass by the 
name of Atraki. (Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 
40, seqq.) —III. A king of the Dolionians, a people 
who are said to have been the first inhabitants of the 
district of Cyzicus in Mysia. He was killed in a 
night encounter by the Argonauts, whom he had mis¬ 
taken for enemies. (Vid. Argonautse.) 

D. 

Da m or Dah^s (called by Herodotus Dai), a peo 
pie who dwelt on the southeastern borders of the Cas¬ 
pian Sea, in the province of Hyrcania. They seem 
to have been a roving nomadic tribe. Virgil (2En., 
728) styles them indomiti; and Servius, in comment¬ 
ing on the passage of the poet where the term occurs, 
states that they extended to the northern part of Per¬ 
sia. He must allude evidently to the incursions they 
were accustomed to make into the countries south of 
Hyrcania. (Compare Plin., 6, 17.— Mela, 1, 2, and 
3, 5.) Their country is supposed by some to answei 
to the modern Pakistan. (Plin., 6, 17.— Curt., 7 , 4 . 
—Herod., 1, 125.) 

Dacia, a large country of Europe, bounded on the 
south by the Danube, which separated it from Moesia, 
on the north by Sarmatia, on the east by the Tyras 
and Pontus Euxinus, and on the west by the Iazy- 
ges Metanastae. It corresponded nearly to Valachia, 
Transylvania, Moldavia, and that part of Hungary 
which lies to the east of the Tibiscus or Teiss, one of 
the northern branches of the Danube. In A.D. 105, 
Trajan added this country to the Roman empire. H« 

407 



JJ JE D 


DiED 


erected a stately bridge over the Danube, 3325 Eng¬ 
lish feet in length. This Aurelian destroyed : his mo¬ 
tive in so doing is said to have been the fear lost the 
barbarians would find it an easy passage to the coun¬ 
tries south of the Danube, for he had by a treaty aban¬ 
doned to the Goths the Dacia of Trajan. ( Vopisc., 
33, 39.) On this occasion he named the province 
fouth of the Danube, to which his forces were with¬ 
drawn, Dacia Aureliani. {Vid. Mcesia.) There were 
afterward distinguished in Dacia, the part bordering 
on the Danube and called Ripensis, and that which 
was sequestered in the interior country under the name 
of Mediterranea. This last was probably the same 
with what was more anciently termed Dardania. The 
Daci of the Romans are the same with the Getse of 
the Greeks. ( Mannert, Geogr.,x ol. 4, p. 188, seqq.) 
From Dacus comes Davus, the common name of 
slaves in Greek and Roman plays. Geta was used 
in the same sense. The Daci were, in process of 
time, successively subdued by the Sarmatae, the Goths, 
and the Huns ; and lastly, the Saxons, driven by the 
conquests of Charlemagne, established themselves in 
Dacia. The Saxons principally concentrated them¬ 
selves in what is now Transylvania, corresponding 
to the ancient Dacia Mediterranea, a fertile region, 
surrounded with forests and metalliferous mountains. 
( Sambuco, Append. Rer. Hung. Bonfin., p. 760.) To 
their coming must be entirely attributed the Origin of 
ks cultivation. All its principal towns were built by 
them : traces of their language still remain ; and it 
is from them that Transylvania received the name of 
Siebenburgen, or the Region of Seven Cities. {Chron. 
Hung., c.2, ap. Rer. Hung. Script., p. 31.— Clarke's 
Travels — Greece, Egypt, Holy Land, &cc., vol. 8, p. 
295, seqq.) 

Dacicus, I. a surname of the Emperor Trajan, from 
his conquest of Dacia. ( Rasche , Lex. Rei Num., xo\. 
3, col. 27.)—II. A surname, supposed, but errone¬ 
ously, to have been assumed by Domitian, on account 
of a pretended victory over the Dacians. The coins 
on which it occurs are Trajan’s. ( Achaintre, ad Juv., 
Sat., 6, 204.) 

Dactyli. Vid. Idaei Dactyli. 

Daedala, I. a town of Caria, near the confines of 
Lycia, and on the northern shore of the Glaucus Sinus. 
It was said to have derived its name from Daedalus, 
who, being stung by a snake on crossing the small 
river Ninus, died and was buried here. ( Steph. Byz., 
s. v. AaldaXa.) —II. A mountain, in the vicinity of 
the city of the same name, and on the confines of 
Lycia. ( Strabo, 664.)—III. Two festivals in Boeo- 
tia. One of these was observed at Alalcomenos by 
the Plataeans, in a large grove, where they exposed, in 
the open air, pieces of boiled flesh, and carefully ob¬ 
served whither the crows that had come to prey upon 
them directed their flight. All the trees upon which 
any of these birds alighted were immediately cut 
down, and with them statues were made, called Deed- 
ala, in honour of Daedalus.—The other festival was 
of a more solemn kind. It was celebrated every sixty 
years by all the cities of Boeotia, as a compensation 
for the intermission of the smaller festival for that 
number of years, during the exile of the Plataeans. 
Fourteen of the statues called Daedala were distribu¬ 
ted by lot among the Plataeans, Lebadaeans, Corone- 
ans, Orchomenians, Thespians, Thebans, Tanagraeans, 
and Chaeroneans, because they had effected a recon¬ 
ciliation among the Plataeans, and caused them to be 
recalled from exile about the time that Thebes was 
restored by Gassander, the son of Antipater. During 
this festival, a woman in the habit of a bridemaid ac¬ 
companied a statue, which was dressed in female gar¬ 
ments along the banks of the Eurotas. This proces¬ 
sion was attended to the t6p of Mount Cithseron by 
many of the Boeotians, who had places assigned them by 
ot. Here an altar of square pieces of wood, cemented 


together like stones, was erected, and upon it wer« 
thrown large quantities of combustible materials. Af¬ 
terward a bull was sacrificed to Jupiter, and an ox oi 
heifer to Juno, by every one of the cities of Boeotia, 
and by the most opulent that attended. The poorest 
citizens offered small cattle; and all these oblations, 
together with the Daedala, were thrown in the com¬ 
mon heap and set on fire, and totally reduced to ashes. 
The festival originated in this : when Juno, after a 
quarrel with Jupiter, had retired to Euboea, and refused 
to return, the god went to consult Cithasron, king oi 
Plataa, to find some effectual measure to subdue her 
obstinacy. Cithseron advised him to dress a statue in 
woman’s apparel, and carry it in a chariot, and pub¬ 
licly to report it was Plataea, the daughter of Asopus, 
whom he was going to marry. The advice was fol¬ 
lowed, and Juno, informed of her husband’s future 
marriage, repaired in haste to meet the chariot, and 
was easily united to him, when she discovered the 
artful measures he made use of to effect a reconcilia¬ 
tion. ( Pausan., 9, 3.) Plutarch composed an entire 
treatise on this festival, some fragments of which have 
been preserved by Eusebius (Prcep . Evang., 3, 1, p. 
83.— Plat., Op. ed. Hutten, vol. 14, p. 287), and 
agree with the account given in Pausanias, except 
that, in the narrative of Eusebius, Cithaeron is called 
Alalcomene, and Plataea, Daedala. ( Siebelis, ad Pau 
san., 1. c.) 

Daedalus, I. the name of a celebrated artist of anti¬ 
quity, said to have been a native of Athens. In treat¬ 
ing of him, it is requisite first to mention, that the 
statements of ancient-writers respecting him cannot be 
understood as exhibiting the true history of an indi 
vidual, but rather as obscurely intimating the origin 
and progress of the arts in Greece; and, in particu¬ 
lar, the information which is afforded respecting the 
place of his birth, and the countries in which he lived, 
seems to reflect light on the districts in which the arts 
were first cultivated. In noticing the accounts which 
have reached us, of the personal history of the artist 
Daedalus, the name itself first claims our attention. 
We learn from Pausanias (9, 3, 2), that all statues 
and images were anciently styled daidaha, and a 3 
this designation was common long before the birth of 
the Athenian artist Dsedalus, it is inferred that the 
name Daedalus was given to him on account of his pro¬ 
ductions. We have many similar instances of names 
given to individuals, to show either the origin of par¬ 
ticular acts, or the talents, ingenuity, and other excel¬ 
lences of artists. Diodorus Siculus (4, 76, seqq.) and. 
Pausanias (7, 4, 5.— Id., 9, 3, 2), together with other 
writers, say that he was born in Attica ; but Auso- 
nius ( Mos., 301) designates him as a Cretan, proba¬ 
bly because a large portion of his time was spent in 
the island of Crete. The name of his father is vari¬ 
ously stated by different authors. Plato {Ion, p. 
363) and Diodorus Siculus (4, 76, seqq.) give the 
name as Metiones. On the other hand, Hyginus 
{fab., 274), Suidas, Servius {ad Virg., ASn., 6, 14), 
and some other authorities, mention Eupalamus as his 
parent. Pausanias (9, 3, 4) calls the latter Palamus; 
and thus we have three names contended for by differ¬ 
ent authors, all of which imply descent from some skil 
ful and ingenious person. Dasdalus was celebrated for 
his skill in architecture and statuary. His nephew 
named Talus or Perdix, showed a great genius for 
mechanics ; having, from the contemplation of a ser¬ 
pent’s teeth, invented the saw, and applied it to the 
cutting up of timber. Dsedalus, jealous of his skill, 
and apprehensive of the rivalry of the young man, cast 
him down from the Acropolis and killed him. For 
this murder he was banished by the court of Areopa¬ 
gus, and he betook himself to Minos, king of Crete, 
for whom he built the Labyrinth. He also devised an 
ingenious species of dance for Ariadne, the daughter 
of that monarch (iZ., 18, 590); but, paving formed 




DAL 


DAM 


the wooden cow for Pasiphae, he incurred the dis¬ 
pleasure cf the king, and was thrown into prison. 
Having, by means of Pasiphae, escaped from confine¬ 
ment, he istermined to flee from Crete; but, being 
suable to get away by sea, he resolved to attempt 
flight through the air. He made, accordingly, wings 
»f feathers united by wax, foi himself and his son Ica¬ 
rus. They mounted into the air ; but Icarus ascend¬ 
ing too high, and approaching too near the sun, its 
ftea; melted the wax, and the youth fell into the sea 
and was drowned. Daedalus arrived in safety in Sici¬ 
ly, where he was kindly received by Cocalus, king 
of that island, who took up arms in his defence against 
Minos, when the latter pursued him thither. ( Apollod., 
3, 15, 9.— Ovid, Met., 8, 103, seqq.—Philisti Fragm., 
1, p. 145, ed. Goller.) Here, too, he was employed 
in erecting several great architectural works, some of 
which were extant even in the time of Diodorus. 
This author states that he died in Sicily, but others 
mention that he went to Egypt, where he left monu¬ 
ments of his ability ( Scylax Peripl.) ; and others, 
again, assert, that he was a member of the colony which 
Aristaeus is said by some to have established in Sar¬ 
dinia.—Thus much for the pretended history of Daeda¬ 
lus. It must be evident, that under the name of this 
artist are concealed facts respecting the origin of Gre¬ 
cian art, which took its rise in Attica, and then spread, 
under different circumstances, into Crete and Sicily. 
Daedalus, therefore {SalbaXoq, “ ingenious,” “ invent¬ 
ive ”), is merely a personification of manual art. He 
was the Eponymus of the class of Daedalids, or statua¬ 
ries, at Athens, and there were various wooden stat¬ 
ues, preserved till late times, and said to be the work 
of his hands. Icarus (from duo, “ to be like,” e’lKibv, 
iKE?L 0 q) was a suitable name for his son, and the re¬ 
semblance between it and the name of the Icarian Sea 
probably gave occasion to the legend of the flight 
through the air. ( Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v. — Keight- 
ley's Mythology, p. 398.) Daedalus is said to have 
introduced several improvements into the forms of an¬ 
cient statues, by separating the legs, which before 
were closed together, and representing his statues in 
the attitude of moving forward ; and also by opening 
the eyes, which were previously shut. Hence arose 
the fabulous statement, invented at a subsequent pe¬ 
riod, that Daedalus communicated motion to statues by 
an infusion of quicksilver. {Plat., Men., p. 97, ed. 
Stalb. — Aristot., Polit., 1, 4.— Suid., s. v. A aidaXov 
noLypara. — Bottiger, Andeutungcn, p. 49.) Daedalus 
is mentioned as the inventor of the axe, plumbline, 
auger, and also of glue ; and likewise as the person who 
first introduced masts and sails into ships. {Plin., 7, 
56.— Varr., Fragm., p. 325, ed. Bip.) —II. A statua¬ 
ry of Sicyon, who flourished in the 95th Olympiad, or 
400-397 B.C. {Plin., 34, 8.— Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.) 
—III. A statuary of Bithynia, author of an admirable 
figure of Zevq Irparioq, which was preserved at Ni- 
comedia. {Arrian, ap. Eustath., ad Dionys. Pcricg., 
796.) Thiersch thinks that he lived after the found¬ 
ing of Nicomedia. He certainly flourished when the 
arts had been brought to a high state of perfection in 
Greece. {Sillig, Did. Art., s. v.) 

Dah^e. Vid. Daaa. 

Dalmatia, a part of Illyricum, between the rivers 
Titius and Drinus, and the ranges of the Bebian 
mountains and Scardus. It derived its name from the 
Dalmates, a barbarous but valiant race, supposed to be 
of Thracian origin, and who were very skilful in nav¬ 
igating the sea along their coast, and extremely bold 
in their piracies. The modern name of the country 
is the same with the ancient. The capital, Daimini- 
um or Delminium, was taken and destroyed by the 
Romans, B.C. 157 ; the country, however, was not 
completely subdued until the time of Augustus, who 
is said by Appian {Bell. III. c. 25) to have concluded 
the war in person before he became emperor. Ac- 
F 


cording to Strabo, the Dalmatians had a peculiar cub 
tom of dividing their lands every eight years, and had 
no coined money. The geographer also informs is, 
that they possessed fifty towns, all of considerable size, 
several of which were burned bv Augustus. Their 
capital he calls Dalmium, and derives from it the name 
of the nation. {Strab., 315.) The Romans, after their 
conquest of this country, divided it into Dalmatia Mar- 
itima and Mediterranea, and made it part of the prov¬ 
ince of Illyricum, forming the lower portion of Illyria 
Barbara. Dalmatia, however, is sometimes made to 
comprehend a much wider tract of country, namelv, 
all Illyria Barbara, or the region between Istria arid 
Dyrrhachium, the Adriatic Sea and the Danube. Dal¬ 
matia was the native land of several of the Roman 
emperors, who exerted themselves, accordingly, to im¬ 
prove its condition. Many cities, therefore, and splen 
did structures arose in various parts of it; and, after 
the new division of the Roman provinces under Con¬ 
stantine and Theodosius, Dalmatia became one of the 
most important parts of the empire. {Flor., 4 12.— 
Sueton., Vit. Tib., c. 9.— Id., Vit. Aug., c. 21.— Jor- 
nand., de Regn. Succ., p. 39, 58.— Id., de Reb. Get., p 
109, 128, 136.) ✓ 

Dalmatius, a nephew of Constantine the Great 
He was invested by this emperor with the title o 
Caesar, and commanded against the Goths in Thrace, 
Macedonia, and Greece. Dalmatius fell in a tumult ol 
his own soldiers, A.D. 338, brought about by the in 
trigues of Constantius, after the death of Constantine. 
{Zosim., 2, 39, seq. —Compare Crevier, Hist, des 
Emp., vol. 6, p. 395.) 

Dalminium, the capital of Dalmatia, and from which 
the Dalmatae are said to have derived their name. It 
was situate to the east of the river Naro, and north¬ 
east of Narona. This place, like many other of the 
Dalmatian towns, was situate on an eminence. Hence 
when it was attacked by the Romans, the usual ma¬ 
chines could not be brought up against it, and the con¬ 
sul Figulus was compelled to dart burning brands from 
his catapultas. As the fortifications of the place were 
of wood, these were soon reduced to ashes, and with 
them a large part of the city itself. Strabo (315) and 
Stephanus of Byzantium write the name Dalmion 
(A ak/aov). The reduction of this city by Figulus took 
place B.C. 119. {Appian, Bell. 111., 11.— Manned, 
Geogr., vol. 7, p. 372.) 

Damascena, or Damascene {y AapaoKyvy ^wpa), 
a name given to the region around Damascus, in Sy¬ 
ria. {Plin., 5, 12.— Strab., 756.) 

Damascius, a philosopher, a native of Damascus. 
He commenced his studies under Ammonius at Alex¬ 
andra, and completed them at Athens under Marinus, 
Isidorus, and Zenodotus. According to some, he was 
the successor of Isidores. It is certain, however, 
that he was the last professor of New-Platonism at 
Athens. He appears to have been a man of excellent 
judgment, and to have had a strong attachment for the 
sciences, particularly mathematics. He wrote a work 
entitled ’Anopiai icai Tivoeic rcepl rtiv npuruv upxtiv, 
“ Doubts and solutions concerning the origin oj 
things .” Of this only two fragments remain, one 
preserved by Photius, which forms a biographica 
sketch of Isidorus of Gaza ; the other treating nepl 
yevvrjTov, “ of what has been procreated.” A Munich 
MS. is said to contain an unedited work of his, en¬ 
titled ’ ArropiaL ual 'X.voeiq eiq tov Jlldruvoq Uappevt- 
dyv, “ Doubts and solutions relative to the Parmeni¬ 
des of Plato.” {Aretin, Beitrage zur Gesch. und 
Lit., vol. 1, p. 24.— Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 7, p. 
117, seq.) 

Damascus (in Hebrew Dammesek), one of the prin¬ 
cipal cities of Syria, in what was called Coele-Syria, 
a few miles to the east of Antilibanus, where the chair* 
begins to turn off to the southeast, under the name of 
Carmel. It was beautifully situated in an extensiv 

409 





DAM 


DAM 


ana pleasant plain, still called Gouleh Demesk, or the 
orchard of Damascus, and watered by a river called 
by the Greeks Bardine or Chrysorrhoas, the golden 
stream , now Baradi. The Syriac name of this stream 
was Pharphar. Damascus is supposed to have been 
founded by Uz, the eldest son of Aram. (Gen., 10, 
23.) However this may be, it subsisted in the time 
of Abraham, and may be reckoned one of the most 
ancient cities of Syria. It was conquered by David 
(2 Sam., 8, 6), but freed itself from the Jewish yoke in 
the time of Solomon (1 Kings, 11, 23, seqq.), and 
became the seat of a new principality, which often 
harassed the kingdoms of both Judah and Israel. It 
afterward fell, in succession, under the power of the 
Assyrians and Persians, and came from the latter into 
the hands of the Seleucidas. Damascus, however, did 
not flourish as much under the Greek dynasty as it 
had while held by the Persians. The Seleucidae neg¬ 
lected the place, and bestowed all their favour on the 
new cities erected by them in the northern parts of 
Syria ; and here, no doubt, lies the reason why the 
later Greek and Roman writers say so little of the city 
itself, though they are all loud in their praises of the 
adjacent country. Damascus was seized by the Ro¬ 
mans in the war of Pompey with Tigranes, B.C. 65, 
but still continued, as under the Greek dynasty, a 
comparatively unimportant place, until the time of 
Dioclesian. This emperor, feeling the necessity of a 
strongly fortified city in this quarter, as a depot for 
munitions of war, and a military post against the fre¬ 
quent inroads of the Saracens, selected Damascus for 
the purpose. Everything was done, accordingly, to 
strengthen the place ; extensive magazines were also 
established, and likewise numerous workshops for the 
preparation of weapons of war. (Malala, Chron., 11, 
p. 132.— Notitia Imperii.) It is not unlikely that the 
high reputation to which Damascus afterward at¬ 
tained, for its manufacture of sword-blades and other 
works in steel, may have had its first foundations laid 
by this arrangement on the part of Dioclesian. The 
city continued from this time a flourishing place. In 
the 7th century it fell into the hands of the Saracens, 
and was for some time after this the seat of the ca¬ 
lifs. Its prosperity, too, remained unimpaired, since 
the route of the principal caravans to Mecca lay through 
it. It is now the capital of a pachalic. The Arabs 
call it El-Sham, and the Oriental name Demesk is 
known only to geographers. It is one of the most 
beautiful and pleasant cities of Asia, and is by the 
Arabs considered the first of the four terrestrial par¬ 
adises. Its population is variously estimated from 
80,000 to 200,000. Volney gives the former number, 
and Ali Bey the latter. The Christian population 
is estimated by Connor at about 20,000, including 
Greeks, Catholics, Latins, Maronites, Armenians, and 
Nestorians, but he says “ this is a rough calculation. 
It is impossible to know the exact number.” (Man- 
nert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 1, p. 409, seq.) 

Damasippus, I. a praetor during the consulship of 
Papirius Carbo and the younger Marius, A.U.C. 671. 
As a follower of the Marian party, he indulged in 
many cruel excesses against the opposite faction, and 
also against such as were suspected of favouring it. 
He was put to death by Sylla. ( Sallust, Cat.,-51 .— 
Veil. Paterc., 2, 26.)—II. A chyacter in Horace, who 
is there represented as having been at first a virtuoso, 
or dealer in antiques, but who, proving unfortunate in 
this branch of business, assumed the name and ap¬ 
pearance of a Stoic philosopher. (Horat., Sat., 2, 3, 
17, seqq.) 

Damnii, one of the ancient nations of Scotland, 
whose country answered to the modern Clydesdale, 
Renfrew, Lennox, and Stirling. (Ptol.—Mannert, 
Geogr. vol. 2, p. 207.) 

Damnonii or Dumnonii, a people of Britain, whose 
country answered to the modern Devonshire and Corn- 

410 


wall. As the several tribes of the Damnonii submit 
ted without much resistance to the Romans, and nevei 
joined in any revolt against them, their conquerors 
were under no necessity of building many forts or 
keeping many garrisons in their country. Hence it 
happens, that few Roman antiquities have been found 
here, and that the name of its people is seldom men¬ 
tioned by the Roman writers. Mannert considers the 
name Dumnonii the more correct of the two. (Geogr., 
vol. 2, p. 195.) 

DamScles, one of the flatterers of Dionysius the 
Elder, of Sicily. Having in the course of conversa¬ 
tion extolled the power and wealth of the tyrant, and 
the abundant means of felicity by which the latter ap¬ 
peared to be surrounded, Dionysius asked him wheth¬ 
er he would like to make trial of this same state, 
which seemed to him so happy a one. Damocles 
eagerly assented, and the tyrant caused him to be 
placed on a purple couch, most beautifully adorned 
with various embroidery. Vessels of gold and silver, 
richly wrought, met his view on every side, and an 
exquisite banquet was served up by slaves of the most 
attractive mien, who were attentive to his every com¬ 
mand. Damocles thought himself at the summit ol 
human felicity ; when, happening to cast his eyes up¬ 
ward towards the richly carved ceiling, he perceived a 
sword, suspended from it by a single horsehair, di¬ 
rectly over his neck as he lay reclined at the banquet. 
All feeling of delight instantly left him ; and he begged 
the tyrant to allow him to depart, since he no longer 
wished to enjoy this kind of felicity. And thus was 
Damocles taught the salutary lesson, that little, if any, 
enjoyment is found in the possession of usurped power, 
when every moment is imbittered by the dread of im¬ 
pending conspiracy and danger. (Cic., Tusc., 5, 22.— 
Compare Philo, ap. Euseb., Prcep. Evang., 8, 14, p 
391.— Macrob., ad Somn. Scip., 1 , 10.— Sidon. Apoll. 
2, 13.— Horat., Od., 3, 1, 17.) 

Damon, a Pythagorean philosopher of Syracuse, 
united by ties of the firmest friendship to Phintias 
(not Pythias, as the name is commonly given), another 
Pythagorean, of the same city. Dionysius the tyrant 
having condemned Phintias to death for conspiring 
against him, the latter begged that leave might be al¬ 
lowed him to go for a short period to a neighbouring 
place, in order to arrange some family affairs, and of¬ 
fered to leave one of his friends in the hands of Dio¬ 
nysius as a pledge for his return by an appointed time, 
and who would be willing, in case Phintias broke his 
word, to die in his stead. Dionysiuk, quite sceptical 
as to the existence of such friendship, and prompted 
by strong curiosity, assented to the arrangement, and 
Damon took the place of Phintias. The day appointed 
for the return of the latter arrived, and public expec¬ 
tation was highly excited as to the probable issue ol 
this singular affair. The day drew to a close, no Phin¬ 
tias came, and Damon was in the act of being led to 
execution, when, on a sudden, the absent friend, who 
had been detained by unforeseen and unavoidable ob¬ 
stacles, presented himself to the eyes of the admiring 
crowd, and saved the life of Damon. Dionysius was 
so much struck by this instance of true attachment, 
that he pardoned Phintias, and entreated the two to 
allow him to share their friendship. (Diod. Sic., fragm ., 
lib. 10, vol. 4, p. 52, seqq.,ed. Bip. — Val. Max., 4, 7, 

1, ext. ed. Hase. — Plut., de amic. mult., p. 93.) 

Damophila, a poetess of Lesbos, intimate with 
Sappho. She composed a hymn on the worship of the 
Pergeean Diana. (Philostrat., Vit. Apollon., 1 , 20.) 

Damoxenus, a boxer of Syracuse, excluded from 
the Nemean games for killing his opponent in a pugi¬ 
listic encounter. The name of the latter was Creu- 
gas, and the two competitors, after having consumed 
the entire day in boxing, agreed each to receive from 
the other a blow without flinching. Creugas first 
struck Damoxenus on the head, and then Damoxenus. 





DAN 


DAN 


with his fingers unfairly stretched out, struck Creugas 
on the side : and such, observes Pausanias, was the 
hardness of his nails and the violence of the blow, 
that his hand pierced his side, seized on his bowels, 
and, drawing them outward, gave instant death to 
Creugas.—A fine piece of sculpture has come down 
to us, with this for its subject. ( Pausan ., 8, 40.) 

Dana, a large town of Cappadocia. D’Anville 
makes it to have been the same with Tyana, an opin¬ 
ion which is ably refuted by Mannert, who maintains 
that it lay more to the southeast, and coincided with 
the Tanadaris of Ptolemy. It is mentioned in Xeno¬ 
phon’s Anabasis as being in the vicinity of the Cili- 
cian Gates (1, 2). The position of Tyana on Man- 
nert’s chart is north of the Cilician pass ; in D’An- 
ville’s it is to the northeast. ( Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, 
pt. 2, p. 239, 263.) 

Danae, I. the daughter of Acrisius, king of Argos, 
by Eurydice, daughter of Lacedaemon. Acrisius in¬ 
quired of the oracle about a son ; and the god replied 
that he would himself have no male issue, but that his 
daughter would bear a son, whose hand would deprive 
him of life. Fearing the accomplishment of this pre¬ 
diction, he framed a brazen subterranean chamber 
(duXa/iov ^dA/ceov vtto -yijv), in which he shut up his 
daughter and her nurse, in order that she might never 
become a mother. (The Latin poets call the place of 
confinement a brazen tower.) But Jupiter had seen 
and loved the maiden ; and, under the form of a gold¬ 
en shower, he poured through the roof into her fiosom. 
Danae became, in consequence, the mother of a son, 
whom she and her nurse reared in secrecy until he 
had attained his fourth year. Acrisius then chanced 
to hear the voice of the child at play. He brought 
out his daughter and her nurse, and, putting the lat¬ 
ter instantly to death, drew Danae privately, with her 
child, to the altar of Hercean Jove, where he made her 
answer on oath whose was her son. She replied that 
he was the offspring of Jove. Her father gave no 
credit to her protestations. Enclosing her and the 
boy m a coffer, he cast them into the sea, to the 
mercy of the winds and waves, a circumstance which 
has afforded a subject for a beautiful piece by the 
poet Simonides. The coffer was carried to the little 
island of Seriphus, where a person named Dictys drew 
it out in his nets {dlarva ); and, freeing Danae and 
Perseus from their confinement, treated them with 
the greatest attention. Polydectes, the brother of 
Dictys, reigned over the island. He fell in love with 
Danae ; but her son Perseus, who was now grown 
up, was an invincible obstacle in his way. He had, 
therefore, recourse to artifice to deliver himself of his 
presence ; and, feigning that he was about to become 
a suitor to Hippodamia, the daughter of CEnomaus, he 
managed to send Perseus, who had bound himself by a 
rash promise, in quest of the head of the Gorgon Medu¬ 
sa, which he pretended that he wished for a bridal gift. 
When Perseus had succeeded, by the aid of Hermes, 
in destroying the Gorgon, he proceeded to Seriphus, 
where he found that his mother and Dictys had been 
obliged to fly to the protection of the altar from the 
violence of Polydectes. He immediately went to the 
royal residence ; and when, at his desire, Polydectes 
had summoned thither all the people, to see the formi¬ 
dable head of the Gorgon, it was displayed, and each 
became a stone of the form and position which he ex¬ 
hibited at- the moment of the transformation. Hav¬ 
ing established Dictys as king of Seriphus, Perseus 
returned with his mother to Argos, and, not finding 
Acrisius there, proceeded to Larissa in Thessaly, 
whither the latter had retired through fear of the ful¬ 
filment of the oracle. Here he inadvertently killed 
Aciisius. ( Vid. Acrisius, Perseus.)—There was a 
egend in Italy, that Ardea, the capital of the Rutu- 
lians, had been founded by Danae. {Virg., JEn., 7, 
372, 410.) It was probably caused by the similarity of 


sound in Danae and Daunia. Dauniis is the father oi 
Turnus.—An explanation of the legend of Danae will 
be found under the article Perseus. ( Apollod 2, 4, 
seqq. — Keightley's Mythology , p. 414, seqq .) 

Danai, a name originally belonging to the Argives, 
as being, according to the common opinion, the sub¬ 
jects of Danaiis. In consequence, however, of the 
warlike character of the race, and the high renown ac¬ 
quired by them, Homer uses the name Danai (A avaot) 
as a general appellation for the Greeks, when that of 
Hellenes was still confined to a narrower range. ( Vid. 
Danaiis.) 

Danaides, the fifty daughters of Danaiis, king of 
Argos. An account of the legend connected with 
their names will be found, together with an explana 
tion of the same, under the article Danaiis. 

Danaperis, another name for the Borysthenes, 
first mentioned in an anonymous Periplus of the Eux- 
ine Sea. It is now the Dnieper. The Dnieper rises 
in the Valdai hills, near the sources of the Dana, and, 
after a winding course of about 800 miles, falls into the 
Black Sea, a little to the east of the Dniester. In the 
lower part of its course the navigation is impeded by 
islands, and at one place, about two hundred miles 
from its mouth, by falls, which continue for nearly 
forty miles. A little above its mouth, the river wi¬ 
dens into a kind of lake or marsh, called Liman, into 
which the Bog, the ancient Hypanis or Bogus, one 
of the principal tributaries of the Dnieper, discharges 
itself. As regards the root of the name Danaperis 
{Dan, Don), consult remarks under the article Tana’rs. 
(Plin., 4, 12.— Mela, 2, 1.— Ammian. Mar cell., 22, 
18.— Jornand., de Reb. Get., p. 5.) 

Danastus, another name of the Tyras or Dniester. 
It is called Danastus by Ammianus Marcellinus (31, 
3), Danastris by Constantine Porphyrogenitus {de ad - 
ministr. Imperio, c. 8), and Danaster by Jornandes 
{de Reb. Get., p. 84). The Dniester rises from a lake 
amid the Carpathian Mountains in Austrian Gallicia, 
and empties into the Black Sea after a course of about 
six hundred miles. The name Tyras (T vpac) occurs 
in Ptolemy, Strabo, Stephanus of Byzantium, and 
Scymnus of Chios. Herodotus gives the Ionic form 
T vprjc- {Herod., 4, 51.) As regards the root of the 
name {Dan, Don), consult remarks under the article 
Tanai’s. 

Danaus, a son of Belus and Anchinoe, and brother 
of HUgyptus. Belus assigned the country of Libya to 
Danaus, while to Tilgyptus he gave Arabia. iEgyp- 
tus conquered the country of the Melampodes, and 
named it from himself. By many wives he became 
the father of fifty sons. Danaus had by several, wives 
an equal number of daughters. Dissension arising be¬ 
tween him and the sons of iEgyptus, they aimed at 
depriving him of his kingdom and, fearing their vio¬ 
lence, he built, with the aid of Minerva, a fifty-oared 
vessel, the first that ever was made, in which he em¬ 
barked with his daughters, and fled over the sea. He 
first landed on the Isle of Rhodes, where he set up 
a statue of the Lindian Minerva; but, not willing to 
abide in that island, he proceeded to Argos, where Gel- 
anor, who at that time ruled over the country, cheer¬ 
fully resigned the government to the stranger who 
brought thither civilization and the arts. The people 
took the name of their new monarch, and were called 
Danai (A avaoi). The country of Argos being at this 
time extremely deficient in pure and wholesome water 
{Vid. Inachus), Danaus sent forth his daughters in 
quest of some. As Amymone, one of them, was en¬ 
gaged in the search, she was rescued by Neptune from 
the intended violence of a satyr, and the god revealed 
to her a fountain called after her name, and the most 
famous among the streams that contributed to form 
the Lermean lake or marsh. The sons of HUgyptus 
came now to Argolis, and entreated their uncle to 
bury past enmity in oblivion, and to give them their 

411 



DAN 


DAP 


cousms in marriage. Danaiis, retaining a perfect 
recollection of the injuries they had done him, and 
distrustful of their promises, consented to bestow upon 
them his daughters, whom he divided among them by 
lot; but, on the wedding-day, he armed the hands of 
the brides with daggers, and enjoined upon them to slay 
in the night their unsuspecting bridegrooms. All but 
Hypermnestra obeyed the cruel orders of their father ; 
and, cutting off the heads of their husbands, they flung 
them into Lerna, and buried their bodies with all 
due rites outside of the town. At the command of 
Jupiter, Mercury and Minerva purified them from the 
guilt of their deed. Hypermnestra had spared Lyn- 
ceus, for the delicate regard which he had shown to 
her modesty. Her father, at first, in his anger at her 
disobedience, put her into close confinement. Re¬ 
lenting, however, after some time, he gave his consent 
to her union with Lynceus, and proclaimed gymnas¬ 
tic games, in which the victors were to receive his 
other daughters as the prizes. It was said, however, 
that the crime of the Dana'ides did not pass without 
due punishment in the lower world, where they were 
condemned to draw water, for ever, with perforated 
vessels. (Apollod., 2,1,4.— Hygin., fab., 168, 169, 
170.— Schol. ad II., 1, 42, el ad 4, 171.— Schol. ad 
Eurip., Hec., 872.)—Thus much for the story of Da- 
naiis. The intimate connexion between this popular 
legend and the peculiar character of the Argive soil, 
which exhibited a striking contrast between the upper 
part of the plain and the low grounds of Lerna, has 
given rise to a bold and ingenious theory. Argos was 
greatly deficient in water (whence Homer calls it 
“ thirsty ,” no'hvSi'^iov), and the word davog signifies 
c ‘ dry.” We have here, then, a simple derivation for 
the name Danai, namely, the people of the thirsty land 
if Argos ; and, in the usual manner, the personifica¬ 
tion of their name is a hero, Danaiis. Again, springs 
ire daughters of the earth, as they are called by the 
Arabs; the nymphs of the springs are therefore 
laughters of Danaiis, that is, of the thirsty land; and 
is a confirmation, in some degree, of this view of the 
subject, we may state, that four of the daughters of 
Danaiis, namely, Amymone, Peirene, Physadea, and 
Asteria, were names of springs. Still farther, a head 
(,Kprjvrj) is a usual name for a spring in many languages ; 
and a legendary mode of accounting for the origin of 
founts is to ascribe them to the welling forth of the 
blood of some person who was slain on the spot where 
the spring emitted its waters. Thus the blood of 
Pentheus and Actaeon gave origin to springs on Cithas- 
ron. ( Philostrat., Icon., 1, 14.—Compare Welcker,' 
Tril., p. 400.) The number fifty, in the case of the 
Dana'ides, is probably an arbitrary one, for we cannot 
discern in it any relation to the weeks of the year, as 
aome endeavour to do. ( Volcker, Myth, der lap., p. 
192, seqq.) It is to be observed, that the founts of the 
Inachus were in Mount Lyrceon or Lynceon (Schol. 
ad Apoll. Rh., 1, 125), and here, perhaps, lies the ori¬ 
gin of Lynceus, who, in one form of the legend, fights 
with and vanquishes Danaiis (Schol. ad Eurip., 1. c .); 
that is, the stream from Mount Lynceon overcomes 
the dry nature of the soil. We see, therefore, that 
the physical legend may have existed long before 
there was any intercourse with Egypt; and, like that 
of Io, may have been subsequently modified so as to 
suit the new theory of an Egyptian colony at Argos. 
(Herod., 2, 91 ; 171 182.— Muller, Orchom., p. 109, 
seqq. — Id. Proleg., p. 184, seqq. — Keightlefs Mythol¬ 
ogy, p. 409, seqq.) 

Danubius, the largest river of Europe except the 
Rha or Volga, and called in German the Donau, by 
us the Danube. Strabo and Pliny make it rise in the 
chain of Mons Abnoba, or the mountains of the Black 
Forest. According to modern accounts, it has its ori¬ 
gin on the heights of the Black Forest, from three 
sources, the Brig-Ach and the Brige, which are both 


more considerable than the third or the Donau, a fee 
ble stream that is enclosed in a stone basin, and lormed 
into a fountain in the court of the castle of Donau-Es 
chingen. It is, therefore, the first two that may be 
considered the source of the Danube. ( Malte-Brun, 
vol. 7, p. 41, Am. ed. — Id., vol. 6, p. 288.) It is one 
of the few rivers which run from west to east, traver¬ 
sing Austria, Hungary, and part of Turkey in Europe, 
and, after a course of about 1620 miles, falls into the 
Black Sea. It is of irregular width, being sometimes 
confined between rocks and mountains, at other times 
so wide that it almost resembles a sea, and again bro¬ 
ken and divided into small streams by numerous isl¬ 
ands. It receives sixty navigable rivers, the largest o. 
which is the CEnus or Inn, and 120 smaller streams. 
It is always yellow with mud, and its sands are every¬ 
where auriferous. At its entrance into the Black Sea 
it is shallow ; its waters are spread over an immense 
surface, and lie stagnating among an infinity of reeds 
and other aquatic plants. The current of the river 
communicates a whitish colour to the sea, and gives 
a freshness to it for nearly nine leagues, and within 
one league renders it fit for use. Pomponius Mela 
says it had as many mouths as the Nile, of which three 
were small and four navigable. Only two now re¬ 
main, which can scarcely be entered by ships of con¬ 
siderable size or burden, the rest being choked up. 
The ancients gave the name of Ister to the eastern 
part o£ this river after its junction with the Savus or 
Saave. The Greeks and Romans were very imper¬ 
fectly acquainted with the whole course of the stream, 
which was for a long period the northern boundary of 
the Roman empire in this quarter. This river was an 
object of worship to the Scythians. The river-god is 
represented on a medal of Trajan; but the finest fig¬ 
ure of him is on the column of that emperor at Rome 
(Mela, 2, 7.— Amm.. Marcell., 22, 19.— Ptol., 3, 10. 
— Plin., 4, 12.— Dionys. Perieg., 301.) As regards 
the root of the name (Dan), consult remarks under the 
article Tanais. 

Daphne, a city of Egypt, about sixteen miles from 
Pelusium, on the route to Memphis. (Anton., Itin., 
p. 162.) There was always a strong garrison in this 
place, to keep in check the Arabians and Syrians. It 
is now Safnas. (Herodot., 2, 30.) 

Daphne, I. a daughter of the Peneus, and the first 
love of Phoebus. This god, according to the poetic 
legend, proud of his victory over the serpent Python, 
beholding Cupid bending his bow, mocked at the ef¬ 
forts of the puny archer. Cupid, incensed, flew to 
Parnassus, and, taking his station there, shot his gold¬ 
en arrow of love into the heart bf the son of Latona, 
and discharged his leaden one of aversion into the 
bosom of the nymph of the Peneus. Daphne loved 
the chace, and it alone, indifferent to all other love. 
Phoebus beheld her, and pursued. Exhausted and 
nearly overtaken, Daphne, on the banks of her father’s 
stream, stretched forth her hands, calling on Peneus 
for protection and change of form. The river-god 
heard; bark and leaves covered his daughter, and 
Daphne became a bay-tree (6d(j)vr/, laurus). The 
god embraced its trunk, and declared that it should be 
afterward his favourite tree. (Ovid, Met., 1, 452, 
seqq. — Hygin., fab., 203-.)—The meaning of this le¬ 
gend is evident enough. It is only one of the many 
tales devised to give marvel to the origin of natural 
productions; and its object is to account for the bay- 
tree being sacred to Apollo. The great majority of 
the authorities place the legend in Arcadia, making 
Daphne the daughter of the Ladon by Earth (the natu¬ 
ral parent of a plant), and add that it was her mother 
who changed her on her prayer. (Pausan., 8, 20.— 
Nonnus, 42, 387.— Schol. ad II., 1, 14.— Stat., Theb ., 
4, 289, &c.-—Keightley's Mythology, p. 118.)—II. A 
beautiful spot about forty stadia to the south of Anti- 
! och, near the Orontes, adorned with fair edifices, and 




D A R 


JJAR 


ontaining a temple sacred to Apollo and Diana. The 
whole was surrounded with a thick grove of cypresses 
and bay-trees (ducpvai), from the latter of which the 
place derived its name. Numerous fountains, too, 
imparted continual freshness to the grove and cool¬ 
ness to the surrounding atmosphere. The luxurious 
citizens of Antioch made this a favourite place of re¬ 
treat, and even the Roman governors often forgot 
amid the enjoyments of Daphne the cares of office. 
Pompey is said to have been so charmed by the place, 
and by the united beauties of nature and art with 
which it was adorned, that he considerably enlarged 
the limits of the grove, by the addition of many of the 
surrounding fields. The modern name of the place 
is Beit-el-Mar, “the house of water.” ( Ammian. 
Marcell ., 19, 2.— Id., 22, 31.— Sozomen, 5, 19.— Eu- 
trop., 6, 11.) 

Daphnephoria, a festival in honour of Apollo, cele¬ 
brated every ninth year by the Boeotians. It was then 
usual to adorn an olive bough with garlands of bay and 
flowers, and place on the top a brazen globe, from which 
were suspended smaller ones. In the middle were a 
number of crowns, and a globe of inferior size ; and the 
bottom was adorned with a saffron-coloured garment. 
The globe on the top represented the Sun or Apollo; 
that in the middle was an emblem of the moon, and 
the others of the stars. The crowns, which were 365 
in number, represented the sun’s annual revolution. 
This bough was carried in solemn procession by a 
beautiful youth of an illustrious family, and whose pa¬ 
rents were both living. ( Pausan ., 9, 10, 4.) 

Daphnis, a celebrated herdsman of Sicily, the son 
of Mercury by a Sicilian fiymph. He was found by 
the shepherds, when an infant, lying among the bay- 
trees ( 6u<pvai ), and from this circumstance obtained his 
name. Pan taught him to sing, and play upon the 
pipe, the nymphs were his foster-parents, and the Muses 
inspired him with the love of song. According to 
Diodorus, he was the inventor of pastoral poetry. He 
also accompanied Diana in the chase, and, when the 
labours of the day were ended, was wont to delight the 
goddess with the sweet notes of his syrinx. Daphnis 
became eventually attached to a Naiad, who forbade 
him holding communion with any other female, under 
pain of loss of sight; and she bound him by an oath 
to that effect. A princess, however, contrived to in¬ 
toxicate him: he broke his vow, and the threatened 
penalty was inflicted. According to Diodorus, how¬ 
ever, the Naiad merely predicted that loss of sight 
would be the consequence of his proving unfaithful to 
her. Theocritus, in his first Idyl, represents him as 
pining away in death, and refusing to be comforted. 

( Serv. ad Virg., Eclog., 5, 20.— Diod. Sic., 4, 84. 
— Schol. ad Theocr., Idyll., 1, 66.— Earthen., Erot., 
29.— JElian, V. H., 10, 18.) Ovid says, that the Nai¬ 
ad turned him into a rock. {Met., 4, 276, seqq. — 
Keightley's Mythology, p. 240.) 

Daphnus (gen. -untis: in Greek, A acpvovg, -ovvrog), 
a town of the Locri Opuntii, situate on the seacoast, at 
the mouth of a river of the same name, near the* frontiers 
of the Epicnemidian Locri. Strabo (424) places it 
twenty stadia from Cnemides. Into the river Daphnus 
the body of Hesiod was thrown after his murder. ( Vid. 
Hesiodus.) 

Daradus v called also Daras, gen. -atis), a river of 
Africa, rising to the northwest of the Palos Nigrites, 
n Mount Mandras, and falling into the Atlantic to 
the north of the promontory Arsinarium. It is sup¬ 
posed to be the same with the Senegal. {Bischoff und 
Moller, Worteb. der Geogr., p. 405.) Gossellin, how¬ 
ever, makes it correspond to the modern Darabin. 
{Recherches, vol. 3, p. 112.) 

Dardania, I. a district of Troas, in the north, call¬ 
ed so from its inhabitants the Dardani. These derived 
their name from Dardanus, who built here the city of 
the same name. {Vid. Dardanus, I., II.) According 


to the Homeric topography, the Dardani, who were 
subject to Anchises, and commanded by his son .Tineas 
during the siege, occupied the small district which lay 
between the territory of Abydus and the Promontory 
of Rhceteum, beyond which point the Trojan land, 
properly so called, and the hereditary dominions of 
Priam commenced. Towards the mainland, Darda¬ 
nia extended to the summit of Ida, and beyond that 
chain to the territory of Zelea, and the plains watered 
by the TIsepus on the north, and as far as the territo¬ 
ries of Assus and Antandrus to the south. {Strab., 
592, 606.) It was more particularly in this inland 
district that the descendants of Tineas are said to have 
maintained themselves as independent sovereigns af¬ 
ter the siege of Troy. {Cramer’s Asia Minor, vol. 

1, p. 80, seq .)—II. A region of Illyria, lying south of 
the territory of the Scordisci. It comprehended the 
upper valleys of the Drilo, and extended to the borders 
of Pasonia and Macedonia. The Dardani, its inhabi¬ 
tants, were often at war with the latter power, more 
particularly under the reign of its last two monarchs. 
Their country answers to the modern districts of Ipeck, 
Pristina, and Jacova, which are situate to the south 
of Servia, and form part of the pachalic of Scutari. 
Strabo describes these Dardani as a savage race, living 
mostly in caves formed out of mud and dirt, and yet pos¬ 
sessing great taste for music, having from the earliest 
period been acquainted with both wind and stringed 
instruments. {Strab., 316.— Cramer’s Anc. Greece, 
vol. 1, p. 47.) 

Dardanis or Dardanium, a promontory of Troas, 
south of Abydus, near which was situate the city of 
Dardanus. It is now called Cape Bcrbieri, or Kepos 
Burun. The Hellespont here begins to contract it¬ 
self. {Strab., 587, 595.) 

Dardanus, I. a celebrated hero, son of Jupiter and 
Electra, who came to Troas, according to some ac¬ 
counts, from Arcadia ; according to others, from Italy. 
All, however, agree in fixing upon Samothrace as the 
spot in which he had formed his first’principality, be¬ 
fore he migrated to the foot of Mount Ida. {Apollod., 
3, 12.— Strab., 331.— Virg., JEn., 7, 207.) We may 
reconcile this variety of opinions respecting the native 
country of Dardanus, by supposing that he was a chief 
of that early race, who, under the name of Pelasgi, were 
so widely diffused, and more especially in those coun¬ 
tries, each of which claimed to be the birthplace of the 
hero. The epoch of the arrival of Dardanus on the 
coast of Asia is too remote to be ascertained at pres¬ 
ent with accuracy. Homer reckons five generations 
between Dardanus and Priam. {II., 20,230.) Plato, 
as we learn from Strabo (592), placed his arrival in the 
second epoch after the universal deluge, when man¬ 
kind began to leave the summits of the mountains to 
which fear had driven them, and where they had led 
a barbarous and savage life, in caves and grots, like 
the Cyclopes of Homer. The Athenian philosopher 
deduced his reasoning from the passage in Homer, 
where the town founded by Dardanus is stated to have 
been built at the foot of Ida. {11, 20, 215, seqq .)— 
The legend respecting Dardanus is as follows : Af¬ 
flicted by the death of his brother Iasion, whom Jove 
had struck with lightning, Dardanus left Samothrace, 
and passed over to the mainland, where Teucer, the 
son of the river Scamandrus and the nymph Idaea then 
reigned over a people called Teucrians. He was well 
received by this prince, who gave him his daughter 
Batieia {II, 2, 813) in marriage, and a part of his ter¬ 
ritory, on which he built a town called Dardanus. He 
had two sons, Ilus and Erichthonius, the former of 
whom died childless : the latter succeeded to the king¬ 
dom, and was remarkable for his wealth. By Asty- 
oche, daughter of the Simo'is, Erichthonius had a son 
named Tros, who succeeded him on the throne. From 
Tros came Ilus, Assaracus, and Ganymedes. The 
house of Priam were descended from Ilus ; that of 

413 





D AR 


BAR 


lEneas from Assaracus. ( Cramer's Asia Minor , vol. 
1, p. 76, seqq. — Keightley's Mythology , p. 483.)— 
n. An ancient city of Troas, founded by Dardanus. 
According to Homer, who calls it Dardania, it was 
situated at the foot of Mount Ida. (11, 20, 215.— 
St.rab., 592.)—III. Another city of Troas, not to be 
confounded with the preceding. By whom it was 
built is uncertain. We know, however, that it existed 
in the time of Herodotus (5, 117), who mentions its 
capture by the Persians, in the reign of Darius. In 
the narrative of Xerxes’s march, he describes it as 
close to the sea, and conterminous with Abydus (7, 43). 
Strabo reports, that the inhabitants were often com¬ 
pelled to change their abode by the successors of Al¬ 
exander : he reports also, that peace was concluded 
here between Syllaand Mithradates. (Strab., 595.— 
Plat., Vit. Syll., c. 24.) The ruins of Dardanus are 
to be found between Kepos Burun and Dervend 
Tchemelx Burun. The name Dardanelles, which was 
in the first instance applied to the Turkish castles erect¬ 
ed to defend the passage of the straits, and next to the 
straits themselves, is confessedly derived from this an¬ 
cient city. (Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 82.) 

Dakes, I. a Trojan priest, mentioned by Homer (II., 
5, 9). It is absurdly pretended, by some of the ancient 
writers, that he wrote an Iliad, or history of the Trojan 
war, in prose ; and JElian (Var. Hist., 11, 2) assures 
us that it still existed in his day, without telling us, 
however, whether he himself had read it or not. There 
can be no doubt that TElian was deceived, and that 
the work which he took for the production of Dares 
was the composition of some sophist of a much later 
age. However this may be, the Iliad of which JElian 
speaks no longer exists; but we have a Latin work 
remaining, written in prose, which was for some time 
regarded as a translation from the Greek original, and 
was ascribed to Cornelius Nepos, though abounding 
with solecisms. The truth is, that this work is the 
production of an* English poet, who flourished at the 
close of the 12th century. His name was Joseph, to 
which was sometimes added Davonius, from his hav¬ 
ing been born at Exeter in Devonshire, and at other 
times Iscanus, from the ancient name of Exeter, Isca. 
This Iliad, thus falsely ascribed to Dares, is not even 
translated from any Greek writer; it is merely the 
plan or prose outline of a Latin poem in six cantos, 
which Joseph Iscanus composed under the title De 
Bello Trojano. —The work just mentioned, as well as 
that of Dictys Cretensis, forms the original source of 
a famous romance of chivalry, which met with ex¬ 
traordinary success during the middle ages, and in the 
centuries immediately subsequent to the invention of 
printing. These works of Dares and Dictys having 
fallen into the hands of a Sicilian named Guido dalle 
Colonne, a native of Messina, and a celebrated lawyer 
and poet of the 13th century, he conceived the idea 
of giving them that romantic air which would harmo¬ 
nize with the spirit of the age, when chivalry had now 
acquired its greatest lustre. He consequently inter¬ 
calated the narratives of the pretended poets of Phry¬ 
gia and Crete with various adventures, suited to the 
(aste of the age, such as tournaments, challenges, sin¬ 
gle combats, &c. His work having met with consid¬ 
erable success, he composed, in Latin prose, a romance 
of the war of Troy, in which he also introduced the 
war of the Seven against Thebes, and the expedition 
of the Argonauts. He confounds together history and 
mythology, Greek and Arabian manners ; his heroes 
are acquainted with alchymy and astronomy, and come 
in contact with dragons, griffons, and other fabulous 
monsters. His romance was translated into almost 
every European language, and excited a general en- 
thus'asm. Hence the desire which at that time seized 
the great families of Europe of claiming descent from 
one of the heroes of Trojan story ; and hence the eager¬ 
ness, on the part of the monks, to compose genealogies 
414 


consisting of Greek and Roman names which had some 
analogy with the names of the sovereign princes of the 
middle ages. (Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 7, p. 3, seqq.) 
This same work of Dares Phrygius was the source 
whence Conrad of Wiirzburgh, in the latter half of the 
13th century, derived the materials of the poem which 
he composed in like manner on the war of Troy. (Ko 
berstein, Grundriss der Deutsch Nationality 46, not. 
3.)—II. One of the companions of iEneas, celebrated 
as a pugilist, though conquered in the funeral games of 
Anchises by the aged Entellus. (Virg., JEn., 5, 369, 
seqq.) This Dares, or a Trojan of the same name, was 
slain by Turnus in Italy. (AEn., 12, 363.) 

Daricus, a Persian coin of the purest gold. Ac¬ 
cording to Harpocration and Suidas, it weighed two 
drachmas, and hence it was equivalent in value to 20 
Attic drachmas of silver. Five Darics were conse¬ 
quently equal to an Attic mina of silver. (Wurm , 
de pond., &c., p. 58.) Reckoning the Attic drachma 
at 17 cents, 5.93 mills, Federal currency, the value 
of the Daric will be 3 dolls., 51 cts., 8.64 mills. The 
Daric was the gold coin best known at Athens ; and 
when w T e consider the great number that are recorded 
to have been employed in presents and bribes alone, 
exclusive of the purposes of traffic, it would seem ex¬ 
traordinary that so few should have reached modern 
times, if we did not know that, upon the conquest of 
Persia, they were melted down, and recoined with the 
type of Alexander. Very few Persian Darics are. now 
to be seen in cabinets. There is one in Lord Pem¬ 
broke’s, which weighs 129 grains ; and there are three 
in the cabinets at the British Museum, weighing about 
128^ grains each. The purity of the gold in the Per¬ 
sian Daric was remarkable. Bathblemy found it to be 
in one, =§£, or 0,9583 (Mem. de VAcad. des Inscr ., 
vol. 21); and yet, if we credit Patin (Hist. Num., c. 
7), this was exceeded by the purity of the gold coins 
of Philip and his son Alexander, which he makes = 
23 carats, 10 grains, or 0.979. (Wurm, l. c.) The 
Daric had on one side the figure of an archer crowned, 
and kneeling upon one knee ; upon the other a sort of 
quadrataincusa,or deep cleft. Knight sees in the fig¬ 
ure upon the Persian Daric, not an archer, but a type 
of Hercules-Mithras, or the sun. (Inquiry, § 131.— 
Class. Journ., vol. 25, p. 49.) Common parlance, 
however, made the figure to be an archer; and hence 
arose the witticism of Agesilaus, who said that he had 
been driven out of Asia by thirty thousand archers, 
meaning so many Darics distributecURmong the Greek 
cities by the Persian king. Who the Darius was 
from whom the coin received its name has never been 
clearly ascertained. According to the scholiast on 
Aristophanes (Eccles , 589), and also Harpocration 
and Suidas, the Daric did not obtain this appellation 
from the son of Hystaspes, but from a more ancient 
king of the name of Darius. Hence some writers are 
led to infer that Darius the Mede, who is mentioned by 
Daniel (5, 31), was the same with the Cyaxares of 
whom Xenophon speaks. (Compare Prideaux, Hist. 
Connect., 2, 538.— Hutchinson, ad Xen., Cyrop., 5, 2, 
3.— Perizon., ad JElian, V. H., 1, 22.) Wesseling, 
however, maintains the contrary, and ascribes the ori¬ 
gin of the coin in question to the son of Hystaspes ; 
1st, because we find no mention made by the Greeks 
of any more ancient Darius than the one just alluded 
to; and, 2d, because, as the lineage of the monarch is 
given by Herodotus, Darius, the son of Hystaspes, ap¬ 
pears to have been the first who bore the name. Zeune 
conjectures (what, in fact, seems more than probable), 
that Darius, the son of Hystaspes, only corrected, and 
gave his name to an ancient coinage already existing. 
Muller also speaks of the Daric as having been coined 
by Darius Hystaspis. (Public Econ. of Athens, vol. 
1, p. 32.)—The silver coins which go by the name o f 
Darics are in truth miscalled The earliest of them, 
if we may credit Herodotus (4, 166), were struck bv 



BAR 


DARIUS 


Aryandes, the Persian governor of Egypt, under Cam- 
byses, in imitation of the Darics. He was put to death 
by Darius for his presumption. The coining of these 
Darics or Aryandics in silver, however, must have been 
continued after the time of the Persian governor. No 
fewer than eight specimens of this description are in 
the cabinets of the British Museum. One, formerly 
Mr. R. P. Knight’s, bears the name of Pythagoras, a 
king or governor of Cyprus, as Mr. Knight conjectured. 
Others, which have the figure of the archer crowned 
on one side, have a mounted horseman on the other. 
They are generally considered as ancient Persian coins, 
and are commonly, though without any assignable rea¬ 
son, except as bearing the impress of an archer, call¬ 
ed Darics. In the silver Daric, a drawing of which is 
given by Landon ( Numismatique du Voyage d'An- 
acharsis, p. 48), a kneeling archer appears on both 
sides of the coin.—Prideaux observes, that in those 
parts of Scripture which were written after the Baby¬ 
lonian captivity (he refers to Chron., 29, 7, and Ezra, 
8, 27), the gold Darics are mentioned by the name of 
Adarkonim; and in the Talmudists by the name of 
Darkonoth ( Buxtorf , Lex. Rabbin ., p. 577), both from 
the Greek A apeiKoq. {Prideaux" 1 s Connexions , vol. 
1. p. 183, ed. 1725.) 

Darius, I. surnamed Hystaspis(or son of Hystaspes), 
a satrap of Persia, belonging to the royal line of the 
Achaemenides, and whose father Hystaspes had been 
governor of the province of Persia. Seven noblemen of 
the highest rank, in the number of whom was Darius, 
conspired to dethrone the Magian Smerdis, who had 
usurped the crown after the death of Cambyses, and, 
having accomplished their object, resolved that one of 
their number should reign in his stead. According to 
Herodotus (3, 84), they agreed to meet at early dawn 
in the suburbs of the capital, and that he of their num¬ 
ber whose horse should first neigh at the rising of the 
sun, should possess the kingdom. If we believe the 
historian, who gives two accounts of the matter, Da¬ 
rius obtained the crown through an artful contrivance 
on the part of his groom. It is more probable, how¬ 
ever, that, in consequence of his relationship to the 
royal line, his election to the throne was the unani¬ 
mous act of the other conspirators. It is certain, in¬ 
deed, that they reserved for themselves privileges 
which tended at least to make them independent of the 
monarch, and even to keep him dependant upon them. 
One of their number is even said to have formally stip¬ 
ulated for absolute exemption from the royal authority, 
as the condition on which he withdrew his claim to the 
crown : and the rest acquired the right of access to 
the king’s person at all seasons, without asking his 
leave, and bound him to select his wives exclusively 
f rom their families. How far the power of Darius, 
though nominally despotic, was really limited by these 
privileges of his grandees, may be seen from an oc¬ 
currence which took place in the early part of his reign, 
in the case of Intaphernes, who had been one of the 
partners in the conspiracy. He revenged himself, it 
is true, for an outrage committed by this individual, 
by putting him to death. But, before he ventured to 
take this step, he thought it necessary to sound the 
rest of the six, and to ascertain whether they would 
make common cause with the offender. He was prob¬ 
ably glad to remove men so formidable to distant gov¬ 
ernments ; and it may easily be conceived, that, if their 
power was so great at court, it was still less restrained 
in the provinces that were subjected to their authority. 
Nevertheless, Darius was the greatest and most power¬ 
ful king that ever filled the throne of Persia, and even 
the disasters he experienced but slightly clouded the 
remembrance of his wisdom and his prosperity. Cyrus 
and Camnyses had conquered nations : Darius was the 
true founder of the Persian state. The dominions 
of his predecessors were a mass of countries only uni¬ 
ted Vy their subjection to the will of a common ruler, 


which expressed itself by arbitrary and irregular exao 
tions : Darius first organized them into an empire, 
where every member felt its place and knew its func¬ 
tions. His realm stretched from the JEge an to the 
Indus, from the steppes of Scythia to the Cataracts of 
the Nile. He divided this vast tract into twenty sa¬ 
trapies or provinces, and appointed the tribute which 
each was to pay to the royal treasury, and the propor¬ 
tion in which they were to supply provisions for the 
army and for the king’s household. A high road on 
which distances were regularly marked, and spacious 
buildings placed to receive all who travelled in the 
king’s name, connected the western coast with the seat 
of government; and along this road, couriers trained 
to extraordinary speed transmitted the king’s mes¬ 
sages.—Compared with the rude government of his 
predecessors, the institutions of Darius were wise and 
vigorous; in themselves, ^owever, unless they are 
considered as foundations laid for a structure that was 
never raised, they were weak and barbarous. The de¬ 
fects of the Persian system, however, belong to another 
head. {Vid. Persia.)—Darius, in the very beginning 
of his reign, meditated an expedition against the 
Scythians, in retaliation, most probably, for the desola¬ 
ting inroads of that barbarous but warlike race, and to 
check their incursions for the time to come by a salu¬ 
tary display of the power and resources of the Persian 
empire. His march, however, was delayed by a re¬ 
bellion which broke out at Babylon. The ancient cap¬ 
ital of Assyria had been secretly preparing for revolt 
during the troubles that followed the fall of the Magian, 
and for nearly two years it defied the power of Dari¬ 
us. At length the treachery of Zopyrus, a noble Per¬ 
sian, who sacrificed his person and his power to the in¬ 
terest of his master, is said to have opened its gates to 
him. When he was freed from this care he set out 
for the Scythian war. The whole military force of the 
empire was put in motion, and the numbers of the army 
are rated at seven or eight hundred thousand men. 
This expedition of Darius into Scythia has given rise 
to considerable discussion. The first point involved 
is to ascertain how far the Persian monarch penetrated 
into the country. According to Herodotus (4, 83), 
he crossed the Thracian Bosporus, marched through 
Thrace, passed the Danube on a bridge of boats, and 
then pursued a Scythian division as far as the Tanai's. 
Having crossed this river, he traversed the territories 
of the Sauromatae as far as the Budini, whose city he 
burned. Beyond the Budinis he entered upon a vast 
desert, and reached the river Oarus, where he re¬ 
mained some considerable time, erecting forts upon its 
banks. Finding that the Scythians had disappeared, 
he left these works only half finished, turned his course 
to the westward, and, advancing by rapid marches, 
entered Scythia, where he fell in with two of the divis¬ 
ions of the enemy. Pursuing these, he traversed the 
territories of the Melanchlaeni, Androphagi, and Neuri, 
without being able to bring them to an engagement. 
Provisions failing, he was eventually compelled to re¬ 
cross the Danube {vid. Histiaeus), glad to have saved 
a small portion of his once numerous army. Accord¬ 
ing to Rennel {Geography of Herodotus , vol. 1, p. 
136), the Persian monarch, in marching against the 
Scythians, crossed the Danube between Ismail and 
the junction of that river with the Pruth, and pene¬ 
trated as far as Saratow on the Wolga. (Compare 
Mannert, Geogr., vol. 3, p. 13, seqq.) It is very 
doubtful, however, whether Darius proceeded as far as 
this, especially when we take into consideration the 
time consumed by a Persian army in making an expe¬ 
dition, the labour of crossing large and rapid rivers, 
and the difficulty of supplying so numerous a force 
with food and forage, especially when wandering in 
the track of the Scythians at a distance from the coast 
According to other accounts {Strabo, 305), Darius only 
came as far as the sandy tract between the Danube and 

415 




DARIUS. 


DARIUS. 


the Tyras, in ihe present Bessarabia , where, in after 
days, Antigonus was taken prisoner by the Scythians, 
with his whole army. ( Ukert , Geogr., vol. 1, p. 59.) 
—To wipe away the disgrace of this unfortunate en¬ 
terprise, we find the Persian monarch shortly after un¬ 
dertaking an expedition against India. In this he was 
more successful, and conquered a part of the Pend jab ; 
not, however, the whole country, as some modern wri¬ 
ters erroneously represent. Some time after this, 
Miletus having revolted, and Aristagoras, its ruler, 
having solicited aid from the Athenians for the purpose 
of enabling it to maintain its independence, they sent 
twenty ships, to which the Eretrians added five more, 
in order to requite a kindness previously received from 
the Milesians. Aristagoras, upon this succour’s arri¬ 
ving, resolved to make an expedition against Sardis, the 
residence of the Persian satrap. Accordingly, landing 
at Ephesus, the confederates marched inland, took Sar¬ 
dis, and drove the governor into the citadel. Most of 
the houses in Sardis were made of reeds, and even 
those which were built of brick were roofed with 
reeds. One of these was set on fire by a soldier, and 
immediately the flames spread from house to house, 
and consumed the whole city. The light of the con¬ 
flagration showing to the Greeks the great numbers of 
their opponents, who were beginning to rally, being 
constrained by necessity to defend themselves, as their 
retreat was cut off by the river Pactolus, the former 
retired through fear, and regained their ships. Upon 
the receipt of this intelligence, Darius, having called 
or a bow, put an arrow into it, and shot it into the 
air, with these words : “ Grant, oh Jupiter, that I may 
oe able to revenge myself upon the Athenians.” After 
he had thus spoken, he commanded one of his attend¬ 
ants thrice every time dinner was set before him, to 
exclaim, “ Master ! remember the Athenians.” Mar- 
donius, the king’s son-in-law, was intrusted with the 
care of the war. After crossing the Hellespont, he 
marched down through Thrace, but, in endeavouring 
to double Mount Athos, he lost 300 vessels, and, it is 
said, more than 20,000 men. After this he was at¬ 
tacked in the night by the Brygi, who killed many of 
his men, and wounded Mardonius himself. He suc¬ 
ceeded, however, in defeating and reducing them un¬ 
der his power, but his army was so weakened by these 
circumstances that he was compelled to return inglo- 
riously to Asia. Darius, only animated by this loss, 
sent a more considerable force, under the command of 
Datis and Artaphernes, with orders to sack the cities 
of Athens and Eretria, and to send to him all the sur¬ 
viving inhabitants in fetters. The Persians took the 
isle of Naxos and the city of Eretria in Eubcea, but 
were defeated with great slaughter by the Athenians 
and Plataeans under the celebrated Miltiades at Mara¬ 
thon. Their fleet was also completely unsuccessful in 
an attempt to surprise Athens after the battle. ( Vid. 
Miltiades and Marathon.) The anger of Darius was 
doubly inflamed against Athens by the event of Mara¬ 
thon ; and he resolved that the insolent people, who 
had invaded his territories, violated the persons of his 
messengers, and driven his generals to a shameful 
flight, should feel the whole weight of his arm. The 
preparations he now set on foot were on a vast scale, 
and demanded a longer time. For three years all Asia 
was kept in.a continual stir: in the fourth, however, 
Darius was distracted by other causes ; by a quarrel 
between his two sons respecting the succession to the 
throne, and by an insurrection in Egypt. In the fol¬ 
lowing year, before he had ended' his preparations 
against Egypt and Attica, he died, and Xerxes mounted 
the throne, B.C. 485. Darius reigned thirty-six years. 
His memory was always held in veneration by the Per¬ 
sians and the other nations comprehended under his 
sway, whom he governed with much wisdom and mod¬ 
eration. As regards the import of the name Darius 
m Persian, Herodotus (6, 98) informs us that it was 
416 


equivalent to ip&yq, “ one who restrains but he is 
at variance with Hesychius, who makes it the same as 
< poovigog , “ prudent." Grotefend makes Darius to 
be a compound word, the first part being an abbrevia¬ 
tion of Dara (“ lord”), and the latter portion coming 
from kshah (“king”), and thinks that the name may 
have been pronounced in Persian Daryeush, or Dary* 
eoesh, whence, by an easy change, we have Daryavesh, 
which reminds us of the A apeialoq of Ctesias ( Pcrs ., 
§ 48). Herodotus appears to have merely translated 
the latter part of the name Darius, by ep^iyg, imitating, 
after the Greek fashion, the sound of the Persian word. 

( Grotefend , in Hceron, Ideen, vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 347.) 
St. Martin reads the name as Dareiousch Vyschtas- 
ponea on the Persepolitan inscriptions, i. e., Darius 
( rov ) Vishlaspo (sc. jilius). (Journal Asiatique , 

Febr., 1823, p. 83.) Lassen, howev er, more correct¬ 
ly, we think, gives Darhawus Vistaspaha, the latter 
word being equivalent to the Gustasp of the modern 
Persian, and meaning “one whose employment is 
about horses.” ( Die Allpersisch. Keil-Inschnftcn, p. 
37, seqq .)—II. The second of the name was surnamed 
Ochus. (Vid. Ochus.)—III. The third of the name, 
and the last king of Persia, was son of Arsames, who 
had for his father Osthames, one of the sons of Darius 
Ochus. His true name was Codomannus, and he had, 
before coming to the throne, acquired some reputation 
for personal courage, chiefly through an exploit which 
he had performed in one of the expeditions against the 
Cadusians, when he accepted a challenge from one of 
their stoutest warriors, and slew him in single combat. 
The eunuch Bagoas raised him to the throne, not scs 
much, however, on this account, as because they had 
previously been friends, and because, perhaps, there 
was no other prince of the blood on whose gratitude 
he could safely rely. (Vid. Bagoas.) Codomannus, 
upon his accession, which took place about the time 
when Philip of Macedon died, assumed the name of 
Darius. He soon discovered that Bagoas, who may 
have intended at length to mount the throne himself, 
designed that he should share the fate of his last two 
predecessors. A cup of poison had been prepared for 
him. But, having detected the plot, he called Bagoas 
into his presence, and compelled him to drink the deadly 
draught.—The reign of Darius Codomannus was early 
disturbed by the invasion of Alexander. The Persian 
monarch, however, did not take the command of his 
forces until after the battle of the Granicus had been 
fought, and Alexander had advanced as far as Cilicia. 
He then proceeded to meet the invader, in all the pomp 
of royalty, but with an army ill fitted to contend 
against such an antagonist. Resolving to hazard an 
encounter, contrary to the advice of his Greek allies, 
Darius engaged in the battle of Issus, but was com¬ 
pelled to flee from the field with so much precipitation 
as to leave behind him his bow, shield, and royal 
mantle. His camp was plundered, and his mother, 
wife, and children fell into the hands of the conqueror 
In vain, after this, did Darius supplicate for an accom¬ 
modation. Alexander went on in the career of victo 
ry ; and in a second pitched battle at Gaugamela, com¬ 
monly called the battle of Arbela (vid. Arbela), Darius 
again fought, and again was compelled to flee. His 
plan was now to advance into Media, lay waste the 
country through which he passed, and seek refuge 
finally on the other side of the Oxus, where he hoped 
that the conqueror would be content to leave him un¬ 
molested. Alexander suffered four months to elapse 
before he again set out in pursuit of Darius. He then 
advanced by forced marches in pursuit of him, and 
learned eventually that the monarch was a prisoner in 
the hands of Bessus, one of his own satraps. ( Vid. 
Bessus.) A still more active pursuit now commenced^ 
and the unhappy king refusing to proceed any farther’ 
was left mortally wounded in a chariot, while Bessus 
and his accomplices took to flight, accomoanied by 



DAT 


D £ C 


600 horse. Darius expired before Alexander saw him. 
The conqueror threw his cloak over the corpse.—Al¬ 
exander ordered his body to be buried in the sepulchre 
of his ancestors with royal magnificence, took charge 
of the education of his children, and married his daugh¬ 
ter. ( Plut ., Vit. Alex. — Arrian, Exp. Al.—ThirlwaWs 
History of Greece , vol. 6, p. 237, seqq.) —IV. Eldest 
son of Artaxerxes Mnemon, put to death for conspi¬ 
ring against his father. ( Plut., Vit. Artax.) 

Dascylium, a city of Bithynia, in the district Olym- 
pena, placed by D’Anville on a lake at the mouth of 
the small river Horisius ; which runs, according to 
him, into the Propontis. Mannert, however, makes it 
to have been situated to the west of the mouth of the 
river Gebes or Gelbes, and gives the Horisius as flow¬ 
ing to the west towards the Rhyndacus. ( Geogr., 
vol. 6, pt. 3, p. 559.) This city is named by Strabo 
and Ptolemy Dascylium, as it is here given, but by 
Mela and Pliny, Dascylos. ( Strabo , 575.— Plin., 5, 
32.— Mela , 1, 19.) During the continuance of the 
Persian empire, it was the residence of the satrap of 
Mysia and Phrygia Minor; hence, immediately after 
the battle of the Granicus, Alexander despatched Par- 
menio to take possession of it. (Arrian, Exp. Alex., 
1, 18.) The modern name, according to D’Anville, is 
Diaskillo. 

- Datames, a satrap of Cappadocia, in the reign of 
Artaxerxes Mnemon. He was a man of extraordinary 
abilities, had served the king with the utmost loyalty, 
and might have proved the firmest bulwark of his 
throne. But the calumnies of some envious courtiers 
had excited the suspicions of Artaxerxes against him, 
and Datames saw himself obliged to revolt, to escape 
disgrace and ruin. He long maintained his independ¬ 
ence, but was at length entrapped and slain by Mith- 
radates, a son of Ariobarzanes, satrap of Phrygia. 
This event took place after the death of Artaxerxes, 
and when Ochus had succeeded to the throne. Nepos 
has written the life of Datames. ( Nep., Vit. Eat .— 
Compare Polyoen., 7, 29, 1.) 

Datis, a general of Darius Hystaspis, sent, in con¬ 
junction with Artaphernes, to punish Eretria and Ath¬ 
ens. Datis was a Mede, and Artaphernes son of the 
satrap of Lydia, and nephew of Darius. He was hence 
superior in rank, but inferior probably to Datis both in 
age and military experience. The latter, therefore, 
would seem to be the real leader of the expedition. 
The whole armament consisted of 600 ships, accord¬ 
ing to Herodotus ; this, on the footing which he fixes 
elsewhere, of 200 men to each trireme, would give 
120,000 men as the strength of the Persian land 
force transported in the fleet. After accomplishing 
one object of the expedition in the capture of Eretria, 
Datis and Artaphernes then invaded Attica, but were 
defeated in the memorable battle of Marathon. Ac¬ 
cording to Ctesias (Pers., c. 18), Datis fell on the 
field of battle ; but Herodotus (6, 119) makes him to 
have returned to Asia. Larcher sides with the latter 
(Hist, d'Herod., vol. 9, p. 272), and Bahr with the 
former (ad Ctes., p. 148). This commander, in the 
exultation which he felt on occasion of his first suc¬ 
cess in reducing Naxos (vid. Darius), exclaimed, <xq 
ydojiac Kal repnopaL nai xalpopaL ! The word x al P°- 
uat is a barbarism, for the Greeks always said jafpw. 
These kinds of barbarisms were afterward called Da- 
tisms. (Compare Aristoph., Pac., v. 290, and the 
remarks of the scholiast on v. 288.) 

Datos, a town of Europe, which, after having belong¬ 
ed to Thrace, was transferred to Macedonia when the 
empire was extended on that side. It was situate not 
far from the coast, to the northeast of Amphipolis, and 
near the southern extremity of the range of Mount 
Pangaeus. It stood on a craggy hill, having a forest 
to the north, and to the south a lake or marsh at a small 
distance from the sea. Proserpina is said to have been 
gathering flowers here when she was carried away by 
G (1 G 


Pluto, whereas the common account places the scene 
of the fable at Enna in Sicily. This place was pic 
verbially rich, on account of the mines of gold in its 
territory. Its territory also was highly fertile, and ir 
possessed excellent docks for the construction of ships; 
hence arose the proverb, A arog dyaO&v, i. e., an abun¬ 
dance of good things. (Strabo, p. 331.—Compare 
Harpocrat., s. v. Ad rog. — Zenob., Prov. Grcec. Cent., 
3, 71.) 

Daulis, I. a city of Phocis, south of the Cephis- 
sus, and about seven stadia from Panopesus. (Pau- 
san., 10, 4.) It was a city of great antiquity, and 
celebrated in mythology as the scene of the tragic 
story of Philomela and Progne. Thucydides (2, 29) 
affirms, that Teres, who had married Progne, the 
daughter of Pandion, sovereign of Athens, was chief 
of Daulis, then occupied, as well as the rest of Phocis, 
by a body of Thracians ; in support of his statement, 
he observes, that the poets frequently alluded to Phil¬ 
omela under the name of the “ Daulian bird.” Strabo 
(423) asserts, that the word “ Daulos,” which signifies 
a thick forest, had been applied to this district from its 
woody character. Daulis, having been destroyed by 
the Persians, was no doubt afterward restored, as we 
find it besieged and taken, during the Macedonian war, 
by T. Flamininus, the consul. Livy represents it as 
situate on a lofty hill difficult to be scaled (32, 18). 
Daulis was the more ancient name ; it was afterward 
changed to Daulia (Strab., 1. c .) and Daulium. (Po- 
lyb., 4, 25.) Pausanias reports, that the Daulians sur¬ 
passed in strength and stature all the other Phocians 
(10, 4). The site of this ancient city retains the name 
of Daulia. (Compare Dodwell, Tour, vol. 1, p. 204 
—GelVs Itinerary, p. 172 and 203.— Cramer’’s Anc. 
Greece, vol. 2, p. 183.) 

Daunia, a country of Italy, forming part of Apulia, 
and situate on the coast to the northwest of Peuce- 
tia. The Daunii appear to have been one of the earli¬ 
est Italian tribes with which the Greeks became ac¬ 
quainted, from the circumstance of their having formed 
colonies, which they established at a remote period on 
the western shores of the Adriatic. This people, ac¬ 
cording to the most received tradition, obtained their 
appellation from Daunus, the father-in-law of Diomede, 
which latter is stated, on his return from Troy, to have 
been compelled, from domestic calamities, to abandon 
his native country, and to have founded another king¬ 
dom in the plains watered by the Aufidus. This tra 
dition, as far as it relates to Diomede, may afford mat¬ 
ter for discussion, but it proves, at least, the great an¬ 
tiquity of the Daunians as an indigenous people of It¬ 
aly. Other accounts, perhaps still more ancient, as¬ 
serted that Daunus was an Illyrian chief, who, driven 
from his country by an adverse faction, formed a set¬ 
tlement in this part of Italy. (Festus, s. v. Daunia. 
— Cramer’s Ancient Italy, vol. 2, p. 266.) 

Daunus, according to one account, an Illyrian chief¬ 
tain, who, on being driven from his native country by 
an adverse faction, formed a settlement in that part of 
Italy which was called Daunia after his name. (Fes¬ 
tus, s. v. Daunia.) Poetic legends, however, make 
him to have been of Italian origin, and a son of Pilum- 
nus, king of Apulia, by Danae, who had fled hither, as 
was fabled, from Greece. Virgil makes Turnus the son 
of Daunus, and grandson of Pilumnus. (JEn., 10, 76.) 

Decapolis, a country of Palestine, lying to the east 
and southeast of the sea of Tiberias. It seems to have 
belonged originally to the possessions of the kingdom 
of Israel, but was afterward reckoned as a part of Syria. 
Pliny (15, 2) and Ptolemy both speak of it as forming 
a part of the latter country. The name is derived 
from the circumstance of ten cities (Sena noXeig) con¬ 
tained in it having formed a confederation, in order to 
oppose the Asmonaean princes, by whom the Jewish 
nation was governed until the time of Herod. After 
his death they passed into the hands of the Romans. 

417 




DEC 


DECEMVIRI 


(Josephus, Ant., 17, 12.— Id., Bell.Jud., 2, 4.) The 
inhabitants were for the most part of Grecian origin. 
These ten cities, according to Ptolemy, were Scy- 
thopolis, Hippos, Gadara, Dion, Pella, Gerasa, Philadel¬ 
phia, Canatha, Capitolias, and Gadora. Pliny, instead 
of the last two, gives Damascus and Raphana ; in the 
rest his account agrees with that of Ptolemy, who 
seems more worthy of reliance in this instance than 
the Roman writer. ( Plin., 6, 18.) 

Decebalus, a warlike and enterprising monarch of 
the Dacians, who prosecuted a successful war against 
Domitian, and drove him to a disgraceful peace. He 
was unable, however, to cope with Trajan, and de¬ 
stroyed himself when all was lost. His head was sent 
by the emperor to Rome, and his treasures were found 
by the Romans, on the information of one of his confi¬ 
dants, in the bed of the river Sargetia (now the Is trig), 
and in various secret caverns. ( Dio Cass., 67,6.— Id., 
68,6, seqq.) Lazius, cited by Fabretti, says, that some 
Wallachian fishermen, in the middle of the sixteenth 
century, found a part of these treasures, which had es¬ 
caped the search of Trajan. (Fabr.,de Col. Traj., c.8.) 

Decelea, a borough and fortress of Attica, about 
125 stadia from Athens, and the same distance from 
the Boeotian frontier. This town was always consid¬ 
ered of great importance, from its situation on the road 
to Euboea, whence the Athenians derived most of their 
supplies; when, therefore, by the advice of Alcibia- 
des, it was seized and garrisoned by a Lacedaemonian 
force, they became exposed to great loss and inconve¬ 
nience. ( Thucyd., 6, 91.— Id., 7, 19.— Strabo, 396.) 
Thucydides reports, that Decelea was visible from Ath¬ 
ens ; and Xenophon observes that the sea and Piraeus 
could be seen from it. (Hist. Gr., 1, 1,25.) Herodo¬ 
tus states, that the lands of the Deceleans were always 
spared by the Peloponnesian army in their invasions of 
Attica, because they had pointed out to the Tyndaridae 
the place were Helen was secreted by Theseus, when 
they came to Attica in search of her. ( Herodot ., 9, 
73.— Alex., ap. Athen., 2, 76.) Sir W. Gell describes 
Decelea as situate on a round detached hill, connected 
by a sort of isthmus with Mount Parnes. From the 
top is an extensive view of the plains of both Athens 
and Eleusis. The fortress is at the mouth of a pass 
through Parnes to Oropus. The nearest place is Va- 
ribobi. (Itin., p. 106.) Mr. Hawkins gives the mod¬ 
ern name of the spot on which the ruins of Decelea 
stand as XupLouTieidia. (Walpole's Collection, vol. 
1, p. 338, in notis. — Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 2, 
p. 403.) 

Decemviri, I. ten commissioners appointed to frame 
a code of laws for the Roman state.—The history of 
this affair is as follows : The intestine feuds between 
the patricians and plebeians were continuing with un¬ 
abated animosity. Occasionally one of the consuls 
favoured the plebeians, and proposed some mitigation 
of the hardships under which they were labouring, or 
some increase of their privileges, but generally with 
little success. The Agrarian law, brought forward by 
Spurius Cassius, continued to be the main demand 
of the commons and their supporters, but its passage 
was, on every occasion, either directly or indirectly 
prevented. At last the commons became convinced, 
that they need hope for no complete redress of griev¬ 
ances, until they should have previously secured the es¬ 
tablishment of some constitutional principle, from which 
equal justice would, of necessity and from its very na¬ 
ture, emanate. Accordingly, Caius Terentillus Harsa, 
one of the tribunes, proposed a law for a complete 
reform of the existing state of things. Its purport was, 
that ten commissioners should be chosen, five by the 
patricians and five by the commons, to draw up a con¬ 
stitution, which should define all points of constitution¬ 
al, civil, and criminal law; and should thus determine, 
on just and fixed principles, all the political, social, and 
•civil relations of all orders of the Roman people. Af¬ 


ter much opposition on the part of the patricians, th* 
law was passed, and three commissioners were at 
length sent to Greece, to collect from the Grecian 
states such notices of their laws and constitutions as 
might be serviceable to the Romans. After the ab¬ 
sence of a year, they returned ; and the commons, 
finding it in vain to insist upon five of their own body 
forming part of the reviewers of the laws, yielded the 
point, and ten of the most distinguished of the patrician 
and senatorial body were chosen to form an entirely 
new and complete code of laws, by which the state 
should be governed. They were named Decemviri 
(“ the ten men”), and during their office they were 
to supersede every other magistrate. Each in his 
turn was to administer the government for a day, or, 
according to others, for several days, till they should 
complete their legislative labours. After the careful 
deliberation of a few months, the result was laid be 
fore the people in the form of ten tables, fully written 
out, and exhibited in a conspicuous place where all 
might read them. Various amendments were pro¬ 
posed, and the ten tables again laid before the senate, 
the curias, and the centuries, and, having received the 
sanction of both orders of the state, were recognised 
as the very fountain of t.he laws, public and private. 
The decemvirs had conducted matters so much to the 
satisfaction of the community, that when, at the ex¬ 
piration of their year, they requested a renewal of their 
office, on the ground that they had still two more tables 
to form in order to complete their task, an election of 
new decemvirs was ordered. The patrician i\ppius 
Claudius, who took the leading part in the whole affair, 
was nominated to preside over this election. He act¬ 
ed in concert with the plebeians, by receiving votes for 
plebeian candidates, and for himself likewise, though 
it had been declared contrary to law that any function¬ 
ary should be re-elected immediately after holding of¬ 
fice. By dint of intrigue, however, Appius was re¬ 
elected, and along with him nine others, half of whom 
were patricians, half plebeians. The new commission 
soon showed itself very different from the first. Each 
of the decemvirs had twelve lictors, whereas the pre¬ 
vious commission had the lictors only by turns, and a 
single accensus or officer preceded each of the rest. 
The lictors, too, now bore amid the fasces the formi 
dable axe, the emblem of judgment on life and death, 
which the consuls, since the time of Valerius Publi- 
cola, had been obliged to lay aside during their con¬ 
tinuance in the city. The Decemviri seemed resolved 
to change the government of Rome into a complete 
oligarchy, consisting of ten, whose power should be 
absolute in everything. They arrogated the right of 
superseding all other magistracies ; and, at the con¬ 
clusion of their second year, they showed no intention 
of resigning their offices or of appointing their succes¬ 
sors. Matters had nearly arrived at a crisis, when a 
war arose, the Sabines and the .dEqui having united 
their forces, and being desirous of availing themselves 
of the distracted state of Rome. The decemvirs as¬ 
sembled the senate, obtained their authority to raise 
an army, at the head of which they placed three of 
their number, and sent it against the Sabines. An¬ 
other was raised and sent against the iEqui, while 
Appius Claudius remained at Rome to provide for the 
safety of the city and for the maintenance of the power 
of the decemvirs. Both armies suffered themselves 
to be defeated, and retired nearer to the city, dissatis¬ 
fied rather than discomfited. Then occurred the af 
fair of Virginia, and the decemviral power was at an 
end. ( Vid. Virginia, Appius.— Liv., 3, 32, seqq .— 
Hetherington's Hist, of Rome, p. 50, seqq .)—The ac¬ 
count of the Decemviri is involved in considerable ob¬ 
scurity. A careful examination of the whole subject 
gives rise to the suspicion, that it was an artful and 
well-concerted scheme on the part of the nobility to 
regain the power of which they had been dispossessed 




DECEMVIRI. 


DEC 


by the gradual encroachments of the commons, and 
was only frustrated by the selfish and inordinate am¬ 
bition of the leading agents. The people had been 
clamorous for a code of laws, a demand which the 
patricians, in whom the whole judiciary power was 
vested, and to whom the knowledge of the few laws 
which then existed was confined, had always very 
strenuously opposed. After violent altercations be¬ 
tween the two orders, the patricians on a sudden yield¬ 
ed to the popular wish, and became apparently as de¬ 
sirous of a code of laws as the people themselves were; 
when, however, it came to the choice of commissioners, 
who should be sent abroad for the purpose of inspecting 
foreign codes, the nobility insisted that all three depu¬ 
ties should be of patrician rank. They gained their 
point, and three of their own order were sent. That 
these deputies actually went to Greece is a point far 
from being well established; indeed, the contrary would 
seem much nearer the truth. We have, it is true, the 
authority of Florus, Orosius, and Aurelius Victor, in 
favour of the Roman laws having been compiled from 
the code of Solon ; but, on the other hand, Diodorus 
Siculus (12, 23), who makes mention of the Decem¬ 
viri, and of the laws compiled by them, says nothing 
of the Romans having sent to Athens for that purpose ; 
and in none of the works of Cicero is any account 
given of this deputation. It must not be denied, 
however, that Dio Cassius (44, 26) makes Cicero 
remark, a little after the death of Csesar, that their 
forefathers had not disdained to borrow some laws 
from Athens ; and Cicero himself, in his treatise De 
Legibus (2, 23), speaking of a funeral law of the 
twelve tables, states that it was nearly all borrowed 
from one of the laws of Solon. In opposition to this, 
however, it may be urged, that a comparison of the 
fragments we possess of the decemviral laws with the 
code of Solon, shows so striking a discrepance in gen¬ 
eral, as to lead at once to the belief that the coinci¬ 
dences mentioned by Cicero are to be explained on 
other and different grounds. Why, it may be asked, 
if the Roman code were borrowed from the Greek, did 
it breathe so little of the spirit of Grecian legislation, 
and contain so many things peculiar to the Romans 
and foreign to the Greeks 1 How came it that Her- 
modorus of Ephesus, who is reported to have inter¬ 
preted and explained the Attic laws to the Roman 
commissioners, used many Latin terms, such as auc- 
toritas, libripcns, assiduus proletarius, and many 
others, for which there were no equivalent expressions 
among the Greeks'!—But the authority of Cicero him¬ 
self is conclusive on this point. He hesitates not to 
rank the laws of the twelve tables far above those of 
Greece. “ It is easy,” he observes, “ to perc.eive how 
much the wisdom and prudence of our forefathers sur¬ 
passed that of other nations, if you compare our laws 
with those of Lycurgus, Draco, and Solon. It is in¬ 
credible how ill digested and almost ridiculous every 
system of civil law is excepting our own. This I 
repeat every day, when in my discourses I prefer the 
wisdom of our Romans to that of other men, and in 
particular of the Greeks.” ( Cic., de Orat., 1, 44.) Is 
this the language of a man who believed that the De¬ 
cemviri had been indebted to the legislators of Greece 
for the code which they promulgated 1—The truth ap¬ 
pears to be, that whatever admixture of Grecian laws 
there was in the Roman code, was derived from Gre¬ 
cian customs and usages prevalent at the time both 
in the vicinity of Rome and in the city itself. To 
these Grecian customs %ere added others peculiar to 
the Romans. These last were, in fact, the old Leges 
Regia, which, as the ancient writers inform us, were 
onserved, after the expulsion of the kings, not as writ¬ 
ten law, but as customs. The patricians might well 
be anxious to give them the sanction of written laws, 
as it is highly probable that, being of regal institution, 
hey breathed more or less of an aristocratical spirit. 


Now the concurrence of the nobility in the views ot 
the people, as regarded a code of laws, appears to have 
been all a preconcerted plan. They wished to de¬ 
stroy the tribunician power, and bring in laws which 
would tend to strengthen their own hands. The short 
time in which the Decemviri were occupied with di¬ 
gesting the code in question, shows that the laws had 
already been compiled and arranged by the patricians, 
and that their object was merely to present them under 
the sanction of some esteemed and respected name, as, 
for example, that of Solon, to the attention of the 
Roman people. The very continuance of the decem¬ 
viral office shows this ; and Dionysius of Halicarnas¬ 
sus expressly states (Ant. Rom., 10, 58), that the want 
of two additional tables was a mere pretext to con¬ 
tinue the office and crush the tribunician power. It 
was no difficult thing for the patricians to impose on 
the lower orders, and give them old Roman laws for 
Athenian ones, especially as the patricians were the 
sole depositaries of the ancient laws. The whole his¬ 
tory of the Decemviri would show that, until a short 
time previous to their abdication, they acted with a 
full understanding on the part of the patricians; and 
that even towards the close of their administration, 
when they wanted levies of troops, the opposition of 
the senate was little better than a mere farce. Had 
Appius not been tempted to play the tyrant, and to en¬ 
deavour to monopolize too large a portion of the de¬ 
cemviral power, the plans of the nobility might have 
had a successful result.—II. There were also military 
decemviri; and, on various emergencies, decemviri 
were created to manage and regulate certain affairs, 
after the same manner as boards of commissioners are 
now appointed. Thus there were decemviri for con¬ 
ducting colonies ; decemviri who officiated as judges in 
litigated matters under the prastor; decemviri for di¬ 
viding the lands among the veteran soldiers ; decem¬ 
viri to prepare and preside at feasts in honour of the 
gods ; decemviri to take care of the sacrifices ; and 
decemviri to guard the Sibylline books. With regard 
to the last of these, however, it must be observed, 
that the number, after having been originally two, and 
then increased to 10, was subsequently still farther in¬ 
creased to 15 and 16. ( Vid. Sibyllae.) 

Decius I. (Publius Decius Mus), a celebrated Ro¬ 
man consul, who, after many glorious exploits, devoted 
himself to the gods Manes for the safety of his coun¬ 
try, in a battle against the Latins, B.C. 337. His son 
Decius imitated his example, and devoted himself in 
like manner in his fourth consulship, when fighting 
against the Gauls and Samnites, B.C. 296. His grand¬ 
son also did the same in the war against Pyrrhus and 
the Tarentines, B.C. 280. (Liv., 7, 21, seqq. — Id., 8, 
10.— Val. Max., 5,6.— Virg., JEn., 6,824.)—II. (Mes- 
sius Quintus Trajanus), a native of Pannonia, sent by 
the Emperor Philip to appease a sedition in Mcesia. 
Instead of obeying his master’s command, he assumed 
the imperial purple. His disaffected troops, it is said, 
forced him to this step. The emperor immediately 
marched against him, and a battle was fought near Ve¬ 
rona, which terminated successfully for Decius, and 
Philip was either slain in the conflict or put to death 
after he fell into the conqueror’s power. This took 
place A.D. 249, and from this period is dated the com¬ 
mencement of the reign of Decius. It was one ot 
short duration, about two years. During this, how¬ 
ever, he proved a very cruel persecutor of the Chris¬ 
tians. He greatly signalized himself against the Per¬ 
sians, but was slain in an action with the Goths, who 
had invaded his dominions. In advancing upon them, 
he was, with the greatest part of his troops, entangled 
in a morass, where, being surrounded by the enemy, 
he perished under a shower of darts, A.D. 251, aged 
50 years. (Casaub., in Hist. Aug. Script., vol. 2, p. 
168.) 

Decumatkb lands in Germany, lying along 

419 



DEI 


DEL 


Sne Danube, in the vicinity of Mons Abnoba, which 
paid the tenth part of their value to the Romans. {Ta¬ 
cit., G., 29.) Much interesting information relative to 
these lands will be found in the work of Leichtlen, en¬ 
titled “ Schwabenuntcr den Romern.” Fribourg, 8vo, 
1825. 

Deianira, a daughter of CEneus, king of Etolia. 
Her beauty procured many admirers, and her father 
promised to give her in marriage to him only who 
proved superior in prowess to all his competitors. Her¬ 
cules obtained her hand, after a contest with the god 
of the Acheloiis. ( Vid. Acheloiis.) On his way to Tra- 
chis, after his union with the daughter of CEneus, 
Hercules came in company with Deianira to the river 
Evenus, where Nessus, the Centaur, had taken his 
abode, and carried over travellers, saying that he had re¬ 
ceived this office from the gods as a reward for his 
uprightness. Hercules went across through the water 
himself, having agreed on the price for the conveyance 
of Deianira. Nessus attempted the honour of his fail- 
freight. She resisted, and Hercules, hearing her cries, 
shot Nessus to the heart as he came on shore. The 
dying Centaur thought on revenge : he called Deianira 
to him, and told her, if she wished to possess a philtre, 
or means of securing the love of Hercules, to keep 
carefully the blood which flowed from his wound ; an 
advice with which she incautiously complied. When 
Hercules, subsequently, had erected an altar to Ju¬ 
piter at the promontory of Censeum in Euboea, and, 
wishing to offer a sacrifice, had sent for a splendid robe 
to wear, Deianira, having heard from the messenger of 
a female captive named Iola, whom Hercules had 
taken, and fearing the effect of her charms on the 
heart of her husband, resolved to try the efficacy of the 
philtre of Nessus, and tinged with it the tunic which 
was sent. Hercules, suspecting nothing, put on the 
fatal garment, and prepared to sacrifice. At first he 
felt no effect from it; but, when it became warm, the 
venom of the hydra, which had been communicated 
by his arrow to the blood of the Centaur, began to 
consume his flesh, and eventually compelled him, in 
order to put an end to his sufferings, to ascend the 
funeral pile at (Eta. {Vid. Hercules.)—Another le¬ 
gend made Deianira to have been the offspring of 
Bacchus and Althaea, queen of CEneus. Apollodorus 
speaks also of her skill in driving the chariot, and her 
acquaintance generally with martial exercises, a state¬ 
ment which he appears to have borrowed from some 
old poet. {Apollod., 1, 8, 1.— Heyne, ad loc. — Apol- 
lod., 2, 7, 5.— Id., 2, 7, 7.— Ovid, Met., 9, 9.— Id. 
ib., 9,137.)—Muller, in his explanation of the myth of 
Hercules, makes the marriage of that hero with De'ia- 
nira a figurative allusion to the league between the 
Dorians and Etolians for the invasion of the Pe¬ 
loponnesus. {Dorians, vol. 1, p. 70, Eng. trans.) 
Creuzer, on the other hand, gives a mystic interpre¬ 
tation to the legend. According to him, Hercules 
represents the power of the sun in drying up and fertil¬ 
izing the wet places. Hence (Eneus (O Ivevg, olvoq), 
the wine- man (or cultivator of the vine), gives his 
offspring in marriage to Hercules (or, in other words, 
gives the vine to the protecting care of that power 
which imparts the principle of production), and Her¬ 
cules rescues her from the Centaur, the type, according 
to Creuzer and others, of the water or morasses. {Sym- 
bolik, vol 2, p. 251.) 

Deidamia, a daughter of Lycomedes, king of Scy- 
ros. She bore a son called Pyrrhus, or Neoptolemus, 
to Achilles, who was disguised at her father’s court in 
women’s clothes, under the name of Pyrrha. {Apol¬ 
lod.,3, 13, 7 .—Propert., 2,9,16.— Ovid, A. A., 1, 682, 
*eqq.) w 

DeiSces, a Median, who, when his countrymen had 
shaken off the Assyrian yoke, succeeded in attaining 
to the sovereign power. His mode of accomplishing 
that object was as follows : Having, by his probity and 


strict exercise of justice, obtained „he office :f judge 
in his own district, he made himself so celebrated by 
the discharge of his official duties that the inhabitants 
of other districts also came to him for redress. Pre¬ 
tending at last that his private affairs were suffering, 
in consequence of the time which he devoted to the 
business of others, he absented himself from the place 
where he used to sit to determine differences. Law¬ 
lessness and iniquity thereupon increased, until an as¬ 
sembly of the Medes being summoned, the partisans of 
Deioces recommended him for king, and he was ac¬ 
cordingly elected. He is said to have founded the 
city of Ecbatana, and to have reigned 43 years, being 
succeeded on his death by his son Phraortes. {Herod., 
1, 96, seqq.) 

Deiotarus was first distinguished as tetrarch of 
Galatia, and, on account of the eminent services which 
he performed in that station, and of the figure which 
he made in the Mithradatic war, was afterward ap¬ 
pointed to the throne of Armenia Minor by Pompey, 
which appointment was confirmed by the senate. In 
the civil wars he sided with Pompey, and on that ac¬ 
count was deprived of his Armenian possessions by 
Caesar, but allowed to retain the title of king and the 
other favours conferred upon him by the Romans. 
Shortly after this he was accused by his grandson, with 
whom he was at open variance, of having made an 
attempt on the life of Caesar when the latter was in 
Asia. Cicero ably and successfully defended him be¬ 
fore Caesar, in whose presence the cause was tried. 
After Caesar’s death, he recovered by bribery his for¬ 
feited territories. He intended also to join Brutus, 
but the general to whom he committed his troops went 
over to Antony, which saved him his kingdom. {Cic., 
pro Rege Deiot. — Id., Phil., 11., 12.— Id.,ep. ad Alt., 5, 
17.— Id.,de Har. Resp., 13.— Id.,de Div., 2,37, &c.) 

Deiphobe, a sibyl of Cumae, daughter of Glaucus. 
Virgil makes her the guide of .Eneas to the lower 
world. {Mn., 6, 236, seqq.) Various names are given 
to her by the ancient writers, in relation to which, con¬ 
sult Gallaeus {Disserlationes de Sibyllis, p. 145). 

DeiphSbus, a son of Priam and Hecuba, who married 
Helen after the death of Paris, and was betrayed by her 
to Menelaus, and ignominiously murdered. (Virg. 
Mn., 6, 495.) According to Virgil’s account, she in 
troduced Menelaus secretly into the bedchamber of 
DeVphobus, who was asleep at the time, and, on awa¬ 
king, was unable to defend himself, his faithless con¬ 
sort having removed his trusty sword from beneath his 
head, and all arms from his palace. He was cruelly 
mutilated before being put to death. {Virg., 1. c.) 
Homer makes De'iphobus to have particularly distin¬ 
guished himself during the Trojan war, in two encoun¬ 
ters with Meriones and Ascalaphus. {II., 13, 156, el 
517, seqq.) 

Delia, I. a festival celebrated every fifth year in the 
island of Delos, in honour of Apollo. It was institu¬ 
ted by the Athenians, after the solemn lustration of 
Delos, in the sixth year of the Peloponnesian war. 
{Vid. Delos.)—II. Another festival, celebrated annu¬ 
ally by a sacred voyage from Athens to Delos. It 
was said to have been instituted by Theseus, who 
when going to Crete, made a vow to Apollo, that, ii 
he and the rest of the youths and maidens should be 
saved, he would send every year a sacred delegation 
to the natal island of the god. The vow was fulfilled, 
and the custom was ever after observed by the Athe¬ 
nians. The persons sent on this annual voyage were 
called Deliastce and Theori, and the ship which con¬ 
veyed them was said to have been the same with the 
one which had carried Theseus to Crete. The begin¬ 
ning of the voyage was computed from the time that 
the priest of Apollo first adorned the stern of the ship 
with garlands, according to Plato, and from that time 
they began to purify the city. During this period, up 
to the time of the vessel’s return, it was held unlawful 




DEL 


DELOS. 


W) put any condemned person to death, which was the 
reason that Socrates was reprieved for thirty days after 
his condemnation, as we learn from Plato and Xen¬ 
ophon. With regard to the sacred vessel itself, 
which was called Oeuplg, it was preserved by the 
Athenians to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, they 
restoring always what was decayed, and changing the 
old rotten planks for others that were new and entire ; 
so that it furnished philosophers with matter of dispute, 
whether, after so many repairs and alterations, it still re¬ 
mained the same identical ship; and it served as an in¬ 
stance to illustrate the opinion of those, who held that 
the body still remained the same numerical substance, 
notwithstanding the continual decay of old parts and the 
acquisition of new ones, through the several stages of 
life. (Plat., PJuzdon., § 2, seqq. — Schol., ad loc. — 
Phti., Vit. Thes., c. 23.— Xen., Mem., 4, 8, 2.— Cal- 
lim., H. in Del., 278, &c.)—III. A surname of Diana, 
from her having been born in the island of Delos. 

Delium, a city of Boeotia, on the seacoast, north of 
the mouth of the Asopus. It was celebrated for its 
temple of Apollo, and also for the battle which took 
place in its vicinity between the Athenians and Boeo¬ 
tians, when the former were totally routed. It was in 
this engagement that Socrates, according to some ac¬ 
counts, saved the life of Xenophon, or, according to 
others, of Alcibiades. ( Strabo , 403.— Diog. Lacrt., 
2, 22.— Thucyd., 4, 96.) Some vestiges of this an¬ 
cient town have been observed by modern travellers 
near the village o { Dramisi, on the Euripus. (GelVs 
Lin., p. 134.— Dodwell's Tour , vol. 2, p. 155.) 

Delius, a surname of Apollo, because born in Delos. 

Delminium, the ancient capital of Dalmatia. (Vid. 
Dalminium.) 

Delos, an island of the iEgean, situate nearly in 
■he centre of the Cyclades. This island was called 
also Asteria, Pelasgia, Chlamydias, Lagia, Pyrpilis, 
Scythias, Mydia, and Ortygia. (Plin., 4, 12.— Steph. 
Byz., s. v. Ay/l og.) It was named Ortygia from opmf, 
a quail, and Lagia from \ayuq, a hare, the island for¬ 
merly abounding with both these creatures. On this 
account, according to Strabo, it was not allowed to 
have dogs at Delos, because they destroyed the quails 
and hares. ( Strabo , 485.) The name Delos is com¬ 
monly derived from manifest , in allusion to the 

island having floated under the surface of the sea until 
made to appear and stand firm by order of Neptune. 
This was done for the purpose of receiving Latona, 
who was on the eve of delivery, and could find no 
asylum on the earth, Juno having bound it by an oath 
not to receive her ; as Delos at the time was floating 
beneath the waters, it was freed from the obligation. 
Once fixed in its place, it continued, according to pop¬ 
ular belief, to remain so firm as even to be unmoved 
by the shocks of an earthquake. This, however, is 
contradicted by Thucydides and Herodotus, who re¬ 
port that a shock was felt there before the Peloponnesian 
war. (Thucyd., 2, 8.— Herodot., 6, 98.—Compare 
Orac., ap. Eustath. ad Dion. Perieg., 525, and Pindar, 
ap. Phil. Jud., 2, p. 511.) Pliny quotes, among oth¬ 
ers, Aristotle, who pretends that its name was given to 
Delos, because the island rose unexpectedly out of 
the sea, and appeared to view. Many other opinions 
have been advanced respecting its origin. According, 
however, to Olivier, it is at the present day everywhere 
schistose or granitical, exhibiting no traces of a volca¬ 
no, and nothing that can explain, by the laws of physics, 
the wonders which the Greeks have transmitted to us 
respecting it.—It appears from Thucydides, that as 
early as the days of Homer, whose hymn to Delos he 
quotes, this island was the great rendezvous of the 
Ionians, who met there to celebrate a national festival 
and public games.—Delos was celebrated as the natal 
island of Apollo and Diana, and the solemnities with 
which the festivals of these deities were observed 
there never failed to attract large crowds from the 


neighbouring islands and the continent. Among the 
seven wonders of the world was an altar at Delos, 
which was made of the horns of animals. Tradition 
reported that it was constructed by Apollo, with the 
horns of deer killed in hunting by his sister Diana. 
Plutarch says he saw it, and he speaks of the wonder¬ 
ful interlacing of the horns of which it was made, no 
cement nor bond of any kind being employed to held 
it together. (Plut., de Solert. An., p. 983.) The 
Athenians were commanded by an oracle, in the time 
of Pisistratus, to purify Delos, which they did by 
causing the dead bodies to be taken up which had 
been buried there, and removed from all places within 
view of the temple. In the sixth year of the Pelopon¬ 
nesian war, they, by the advice of an oracle, purified it 
anew, by carrying all the dead bodies to the neigh¬ 
bouring island of Rhenaea, where they were interred. 
After having done this, in order to prevent its being 
polluted for the time to come, they published an edict, 
that for the future no person should be suffered to die, 
nor any woman to be brought to bed, in the island, but 
that, when death or parturition approached, they should 
be carried over into Rhenaea. In memory of this puri¬ 
fication, it is said, the Athenians instituted a solemn 
quinquennial festival. (Vid. Delia.— Thucyd., 3, 
104.) A ship called Theoris (Qeoplg) likewise sailed 
annually from the Athenian shores on a sacred voyage 
to this same island. (Vid. Delia II.)—When the 
Persian armament, under Datis and Artaphernes, was 
making its way through the Grecian islands, the in¬ 
habitants of Delos left their rich temple, with its treas¬ 
ures, to the protection of its tutelary deities, and fled 
to Tenos. The fame of the sanctuary, however, saved 
it from spoliation. The Persians had heard that Delos 
was the birthplace of two deities, who corresponded 
to those which held the foremost rank in their own re¬ 
ligious system, the sun and moon. This comparison 
was probably suggested to them by some Greek who 
wished to save the temple. Hence, though separately 
neither of the divine twins inspired the barbarians with 
reverence, their common shrine was not only spared, 
but, if we may credit the tradition which was current 
in the days of Herodotus, received the highest honours 
from Datis : he would not suffer his ships to touch the 
sacred shore, but kept them at the island of Rhenaea. 
He also sent a herald to recall the Delians who had 
fled to Tenos ; and offered sacrifice to the god, in 
which 300 talents of frankincense are said to have 
been consumed. (Herodot., 6,97.) After the Persian 
war, the Athenians established at Delos the treasury 
of the Greeks, and ordered that all meetings relative 
to the confederacy should be held there. (Thucyd., 
1, 96.) In the tenth year of the Peloponnesian war, 
not being satisfied with the purifications which the isl¬ 
and had hitherto undergone, they removed its entire 
population to Adramyttium, where they obtained a 
settlement from the Persian satrap Pharnaces. (Thu¬ 
cyd., 5, 1.) Here many of these unfortunate Delians 
were afterward treacherously murdered by order of 
Arsaces, an officer of Tissaphernes. (Thucyd., 8, 108.) 
Finally, however, the Athenians restored those that 
survived to their country after the battle of Amphipo- 
lis, as they considered that their ill success in the 
war proceeded from the anger of the god on account 
of their conduct towards this unfortunate people. 
(Thucyd., 5, 32.) Strabo says that Delos became 
a place of great commercial.importance after the de¬ 
struction of Corinth, as the merchants who had fre¬ 
quented that city then withdrew to this island, which 
afforded great facilities for carrying on trade on ac¬ 
count of the convenience of its port, its advantageous 
situation with respect to the coasts of Greece and 
Asia Minor, as well as from the great concourse of 
people who resorted thither at stated times. (Plin., 4, 
12.— Liv., 36, 43.) The Romans especially favoured 
the interests of the Delians, though they had conceded 

421 



DEL 


DELPHI. 


to the Athenians the sovereignty of the island and 
the administration of the temple. ( Polyb ., 30, 18.) 
But, on the occupation of Athens by the generals of 
Mithradates, they landed troops in Delos, and com¬ 
mitted the greatest devastations there in consequence 
of the inhabitants refusing to espouse their cause. 
After this calamity it remained in an impoverished and 
deserted state. ( Strabo , 436.— Appian, Bell. Mith- 
rad ., c. 28.— Pausan., 3, 23.— Antip ., Thess. Anal., 
vol. 2, p. 118.) The town of Delos was situate in a 
plain watered by the little river Inopus ( Strabo, l. c. 
— Callim., Hymn, in Del., 206), and by a lake, called 
Trochoeides by Herodotus (2, 170), and Theognis 
(v. 7). Callimachus and Euripides also allude to it. 
{Hymn, in Del., 261.— Iph. Taur., 1097.) The isl¬ 
and is now called Delo or Sdille, and is so covered 
with ruins and rubbish as to admit of little or no cul¬ 
ture. {Wheeler-, vol. 1, p. 88.— Spon., vol. 1, p. 176. 
— Tournefort, vol. 1, p. 307. — Choiseul Goujjher, 
Voyage Pittoresque, vol. 1, p. 396, seqq.) 

Delphi, a small but important city of Phocis in 
Greece, situate on the southern side of Mount Par¬ 
nassus, and built in the form of an amphitheatre. 
Justin (24, 6) says it had no walls, but was defended 
by its precipices. Strabo (418) gives it a circuit 
of sixteen stadia; and Pausanias (10, 5) calls it 
■KoTug, which seems to imply that it was walled like 
other cities. In earlier times it was, perhaps, like 
Olympia, defended by the sanctity of its oracle and 
the presence of its god. These being found not to af¬ 
ford sufficient protection against the enterprises of the 
profane, it was probably fortified, and became a regu¬ 
lar city after the predatory incursions of the Phocians. 
The walls may, however, be coeval with the founda¬ 
tion of the city itself; their high antiquity is not dis¬ 
proved by the use of mortar in the construction. 
Some of the Egyptian pyramids are built in a similar 
manner. (Consult Hamilton's Ahgyptiaca. — Dodwell's 
Tour, vol. 1, p. 164.)—The more ancient name of 
Delphi was Pytho, from the serpent Python, as is com¬ 
monly supposed, which was said to have been slain 
by Apollo. {Apollod., Biblioth., 1, 4, 3.) Whence 
the name Delphi itself was derived we are not in¬ 
formed. Some make the city to have received this 
name from Delphus, a son of Apollo. Others deduce 
the appellation from the Greek adeX(jioi, “ brethren ,” 
because Apollo and his brother Bacchus were both 
worshipped there, each having one of the summits of 
Parnassus sacred to him. The author of the Hymn 
to Apollo seems to pun on the word Delphi, in making 
Apollo transform himself into a dolphin {dstytg. —v. 
494). Some supposed, that the name was intended 
to designate Delphi as the centre or navel of the earth. 
Faber makes it Tel Phi, “ the oracle of the Sun” {Ca¬ 
bin, vol. 1, p. 66), and Bryant would tempt us to re¬ 
solve the Nymph who originally presided over the 
sacred precincts of Delphi, into Ain omphe, i. e., “ fons 
oraculi." {Mythology, vol. 1, p. 110 and 345.) Jones 
derives the name of Delphi from the Arabic Telb, “ to 
inquire.” {Greek Lex., s. v.) If, amid these various 
etymological theories, we might venture to adduce one 
of our own, it would be, that Beil <pol, the iEolic form 
for At9i (pol {Maittaire, Dial., p. 139, c.), contains the 
true germe of the name, viz., BeX, or the old term 
(i. e., “ the sun”), with the digamma prefixed in place 
of the aspirate. (Compare the Greek forms yTuog, 
i. e., bX-iog, aeXag, i. e., <cel-ag, and the Latin Sol.) 
Delphi will then be the city of the Sun. (Compare 
with the term Beil the Orientel Baal.) —In speaking 
of this city, the .poets commonly use the appellation 
of Pytho, but Herodotus and historians in general pre¬ 
fer that of Delphi, and are silent as to the other. A 
short sketch of the history of this most celebrated ora¬ 
cle and temple will not, perhaps, be unacceptable to the 
reader. Though not so ancient as Dodona, it is evi¬ 
dent that the fame of the Delphic shrine had been es- 
422 


tablished at a very early period, from the mention mad* 
of it by Homer, and the accounts supplied by Pau¬ 
sanias and Strabo. The Homeric hymn to Apollo in¬ 
forms us (v. 391, seqq.), that, when the Pythian god 
was establishing his oracle at Delphi-, he beheld on the 
sea a merchant-ship from Crete ; this he directs to 
Crissa, and appoints the foreigners the servants of his 
newly-established sanctuary, near which they settled. 
When this story, which we would not affirm to be his¬ 
torically true, is stripped of the language of poetry, it 
can only mean, that a Cretan colony founded the tem¬ 
ple and oracle of Delphi. {Heeren, Ideen , vol. 3, p. 
94.) Strabo reports, that it was at first consulted only 
by the neighbouring states ; but that, after its fame 
became more widely spread, foreign princes and na¬ 
tions eagerly sought responses from the sacred tripod, 
and loaded the altar of the god with rich presents 
and costly offerings (420). Pausanias states that the 
most ancient temple of Apollo at Delphi was formed, 
according to some, out of branches of bay, and that 
these branches were cut from the tree that was at 
Tempe. The form of this temple resembled that of a 
cottage. After mentioning a second and a third tem¬ 
ple, the one raised, as the Delphians said, by bees 
from wax and wings, and sent by Apollo to the Hy¬ 
perboreans, and the other built of brass, he adds, that 
to this succeeded a fourth and more stately edifice of 
stone, erected by two architects named Trophonius 
and Agamedes. {Pausan., 10, 5.) Here were de¬ 
posited the sumptuous presents of Gyges and Midas, 
Alyattes and Crcesus {Herodot., 1, 14; 50,51), as well 
as those of the Sybarites, Spinetse, and Siceliots, each 
prince and nation having their separate chapel or treas¬ 
ury for the reception of these offerings, with an in¬ 
scription attesting the name of the donor and the cause 
of the gift. {Strabo, 420.) This temple having been 
accidentally destroyed by fire in the first year of the 
fifty-eighth Olympiad, or 548 B.C. {Pausan., 1. c.), 
the Amphictyons undertook to build another for the 
sum of three hundred talents, of which the Delphians 
were to pay one fourth. The remainder of the amount 
is said to have been obtained by contributions from 
the different cities and nations. Amasis, king of 
Egypt, furnished a thousand talents of alumina. The 
Alcmasonidse, a wealthy Athenian family, undertook 
the contract, and agreed to construct the edifice of Po- 
rine stone, but afterward liberally substituted Parian 
marble for the front, a circumstance which is said to 
have added considerably to their influence at Delphi. 
{Herodot., 2, 180.— Id., 5, 62.) According to Stra¬ 
bo and Pausanias, the architect was Spintharus, a 
Corinthian. The vast riches accumulated in this tem¬ 
ple, led Xerxes, after having forced the pass of Ther¬ 
mopylae, to detach a portion of his army into Phocis, 
with a view of securing Delphi and its treasures, which, 
as Herodotus affirms, were better known to him than 
the contents of his own palace. The enterprise, how¬ 
ever, failed, owing, as it was reported by the Delphians, 
to the manifest interposition of the deity, who terrified 
the barbarians and hurled destruction on their scat¬ 
tered bands. {Herodot., 8, 37.) Many years subse¬ 
quent to this event, the temple fell into the hands of 
the Phocians, headed by Philomelus, who scrupled not 
to appropriate its riches to the payment of his troops 
in the war he was then waging against Thebes. The 
Phocians are said to have plundered the temple, du¬ 
ring this contest, of gold and silver, to the enormous 
amount of 10,000 talents, or nearly 10,600,000 dol¬ 
lars. (Compare Pausanias, 10, 2. — Strabo, 421.\ 
At a still later period, Delphi became exposed to a 
formidable attack from a large body of Gauls, headed 
by their king Brennus. These barbarians, having 
forced the defiles of Mount CEta, possessed them¬ 
selves of the temple and ransacked its treasures. The 
booty which they obtained on this occasion is stated 
to have been immense ; and this they must have sue 





DELPHI. 


DEM 


seeded m removing to their own country, since we 
are told, that, on the capture of Tolosa, a city of Gaul, 
by the Roman general Caepio, a great part of the Del¬ 
phic spoils was found there. ( Strabo , 188. — Dio 
Cassius , Excerpt., p. 630.) Pausanias, however, 
relates, that the Gauls met with great disasters in 
their attempt on Delphi, and were totally discomfited 
through the miraculous intervention of the god (10, 
23.—Compare Polybius, 1, 6, 5.— Id., 2, 20, 6.— 
Justin, 24, 6). Sylla is also said to have robbed this 
temple, as well as those of Olympia and Epidaurus. 
( Dio Cass., Excerpt., p. 646.— Diod. Sic., Excerpt., 
406.) Strabo assures us, that in his time the temple 
was gre4tly impoverished, all the offerings of any 
value having been successively removed. The Em¬ 
peror Nero carried off, according to Pausanias (10, 7), 
five hundred statues of bronze at one time. Con¬ 
stantine the Great, however, proved a more fatal ene¬ 
my to Delphi than either Sylla or Nero. He removed 
the sacred tripods to adorn the hippodrome of his new 
city, where, together with the Apollo, the statues of 
the Heliconian muses, and a celebrated statue of Pan, 
they were extant when Sozomen wrote his history. 
( Gibbon, Decline and Fall, c. 17.) Among these tri¬ 
pods was the famous one, which the Greeks, after the 
battle of Platea, found in the camp of Mardonius. 
The Brazen Column which supported this tripod is 
still to be seen at Constantinople. ( Clarke's Trav¬ 
els — Greece, Egypt, &c., vol. 3, p. 75, seqq.) —The 
spot whence issued the prophetic vapour, which in¬ 
spired the priestess, was said to be the central point 
of the earth, this having been proved by Jupiter him¬ 
self, who despatched two eagles from opposite quar¬ 
ters of the heavens, which there encountered each 
other. ( Strabo , 419.— Pausan., 10, 16.— Pint., de 
Orac. Def., p. 409.) Strabo reports, that the sacred 
tripod was placed over the mouth of the cave, whence 
proceeded the exhalation, and which was of great 
depth. On this sat the Pythia, who, having caught 
the inspiration, pronounced her oracles in extempore 
prose or verse ; if the former, it was immediately ver¬ 
sified by the poet always employed for that purpose. 
The oracle itself is said to have been discovered by 
accident. Some goats having strayed to the mouth of 
the cavern, were suddenly seized with convulsions : 
those likewise by whom they were found in this situa¬ 
tion having been affected in a similar manner, the 
circumstance was deemed supernatural, and the cave 
pronounced the seat of prophecy. {Pausan., 10, 5. 
— Pint, de Orac. Def., p. 433.— Plin., 2, 93.) The 
priestess could only be consulted on certain days. 
The season of inquiry was the spring, during the 
month Busius. ( Plut., Quoest Grcec., p. 292.) Sac¬ 
rifices and other ceremonies were to be performed by 
those who sought an answer from the oracle, before 
they could be admitted into the sanctuary. ( Herodot., 
7, 140.— Plut., de Orac. Def., p. 435, 437.— Id., de 
Pyth. Orac., p. 397.) The most remarkable of the 
Pythian responses are those which Herodotus records 
as having been delivered to the Athenians, before the 
mvasion of Xerxes (7, 140), to Croesus (1, 46), to Ly- 
curgus (1, 65), to Glaucus the Spartan (6, 86), and 
one relative to Agesilaus, cited by Pausanias (3, 8). 
There was, however, it appears, no difficulty in bri¬ 
bing and otherwise influencing the Pythia herself, as 
history presents us with several instances of this im¬ 
posture. Thus we are told, that the Alcmasonidee sug¬ 
gested on one occasion such answers as accorded with 
their political designs. {Herodot., 5, 62, 90.) Cle- 
omenes, king of Sparta, also prevailed on the priestess 
to aver that his colleague Demaratus was illegitimate. 
On, the discovery, however, of this machination, the 
Pythia was removed from her office. {Herodotus, 
6, 66.) The same charge was brought against Plis- 
tonax, another sovereign of Sparta. {Thucyd., 5, 16. 

•—Compare Plut., Vit. Demoslh., p. 854. — Id., Vit. 


Nic., p. 532.) Delphi derived farther celebrity Irorn 
its being the place where the Amphictyonic council 
held one of their assemblies {Strabo, 420 .—Sainte 
Croix, des Gouvern. Feder. Art., 2, p. 19), and also 
from the institution of the games which that ancient 
and illustrious body had established after the success¬ 
ful termination of the Crisseean war. {Vid. Pythia, 
II., and compare Clinton’’s Fasti Hellenici, Appen¬ 
dix, 1, p. 195.) For an account of the ruins of Del¬ 
phi, on part of the site of which stands the present 
village of Castri, consult Clarke’s Travels — Greece , 
Egypt, &c., vol. 7, p. 225, seqq. — Dodwell’s Tour, 
vol. 1 , p. 174, seqq .—And for some remarks on the 
fable of Apollo and Python, consult the latter article. 
—No traces of the sacred aperture remain at the pres¬ 
ent day. Dr. Clarke, however, inclines to the opin¬ 
ion that it ought to be searched for in the very mid¬ 
dle of the ancient city. He bases his remark on a 
passage of Steph. Byz. (p. 229, ed. Gronov., Amst., 
1678), and on the statement of Strabo, that the navel 
of the earth was in the midst of the temple of Apollo. 
{Clarke’s Travels, l. c.) 

Delphicus, a surname of Apollo, from his sane 
tuary and worship at Delphi. 

Delphus, a son of Apollo and Celaeno, who, ac 
cording to one account, was the founder of Delphi. 
{Pausan., 10, 6.) 

Delta, a part of Egypt, which received that name 
from its resemblance to the form of the fourth letter 
of the Greek alphabet. It lay between the Canopic 
and Pelusiac mouths of the Nile, where the river be¬ 
gins to branch off, and is generally supposed to have 
been formed, in part at least, if not altogether, by the 
deposites of the Nile. (Consult remarks under the ar¬ 
ticle Nilus, and also Lyell’s Geology, vol. 1, p. 355.) 

Demades, an Athenian, of obscure origin, the son 
of a mariner, and at first a mariner himself. He af¬ 
terward, although without any liberal education, came 
forward as a public speaker, and obtained great influ¬ 
ence among his countrymen. Demades is described 
as a witty, acute, and fluent speaker, but an unprin¬ 
cipled and immoral man. Having been taken pris¬ 
oner at Chaeronea, he is said, by a free and well-timed 
rebuke, to have checked the insolent joy displayed 
by Philip, but afterward to have allowed himself to be 
corrupted, and employed as a venal agent by the con 
queror. The first part of this story is hardly credible, 
the latter is fully substantiated. Demades from this 
time was the tool of Macedon. He advocated the in¬ 
terests of Philip, flattered his successor Alexander, 
sided with Antipater, and, in a word, is described by 
Plutarch as the man who, of all the demagogues of the 
day, contributed most to the ruin of his country. ( Vit. 
Phoc. init.) He was at last put to death by Cassan- 
der, having been proved, by means of an intercepted 
letter, to be in secret league with the enemies of the 
former, B.C. 318. Cicero and Quintilian state, that 
no orations of Demades were extant in their time. 
{Cic., Brut., 9.— Quint., 2, 17, et 12.) The old 
rhetorician, however, from whom Tzetzes drew his 
information on the subject, had read speeches of his. 
{Tzetz., Chil., 6, 36, seq.) We have, moreover, re¬ 
maining at the present day a fragment of an oration 
by Demades, entitled vrrep ryq dude/caereac, “ An 
apology for his conduct during the twelve years he had 
been a public orator.” It is to be found in the col¬ 
lections of Aldus, Stephens, and Reiske. {Ruhnken, 
Hist. Crit. Orat. Grcec.* in Opusc., vol. 1, p. 349, 
seqq. — Hauptmann, de Demade Dissert. — Scholl, 
Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 2, p. 265, seq.) 

Demaratus, I. the son and successor of Ariston 
on the throne of Sparta, B.C. 526. He was deposed, 
through the intrigues of Cleomenes, his colleague, on 
the ground of his being illegitimate. After his deposi¬ 
tion, he was chosen and held the office of magistrate \ 
but, being insultingly derided on one occasion by Le 

423 




DEM 


DEM 


otychides, who had been appointed king in his stead, 
he retired, first to the island of Zacynthus, whither he 
was pursued by the Lacedaemonians, and afterward 
crossed over into Asia to Darius, who received him 
honourably, and presented him with lands and cities. 
[Herod., 6 , 65, 70.) He enabled Xerxes subsequently 
to obtain the nomination to the empire, in preference 
to his elder brother Artabazarnes, by suggesting to him 
an argument, the justice of which was acknowledged 
by Darius. {Herod., 7, 3.) We find him after this, 
though an exile from his country, yet sending the first 
intelligence to Sparta of the designs of Xerxes against 
Greece. {Herod., 7, 239.) He accompanied the 
monarch on his expedition, frankly praised to him the 
discipline of the Greeks, and especially that of the 
Spartans ; and, before the battle of Thermopylae, ex¬ 
plained to him some of the warlike customs of the last- 
mentioned people. {Herod., 7, 209.) We learn also, 
that he advised Xerxes to seize, with his fleet, on the 
island of Cythera, off the coast of Laconia, from which 
he might continually infest the shores of that country. 
The monarch did not adopt his suggestion, but still 
always regarded the exile Spartan as a friend, and 
treated him accordingly. The nature of the advice 
relative to Cythera makes it more than probable that 
Demaratus, in sending home information of the threat¬ 
ened expedition of Xerxes, meant in reality to taunt 
and alarm his countrymen. {Herod., 7, 234, seqq .)— 
II. A rich citizen of Corinth, of the family of the Bac- 
chiadse. When Cypselus had usurped the sovereign 
power of Corinth, Demaratus, with all his family, mi¬ 
grated to Italy, and settled at Tarquinii, 658 years be¬ 
fore Christ. Commerce had not been deemed disrep¬ 
utable among the Corinthian nobility; and as a mer¬ 
chant, therefore, Demaratus had formed ties of friend¬ 
ship at this place. He brought great wealth with him. 
The sculptors Eucheir and Eugrammus, and Cleo- 
phantus the painter, were said to have accompanied 
him ; and along with the fine arts of Greece, he taught 
(so the popular account said) alphabetic writing to the 
Etrurians. His son Lucumo migrated afterward to 
Rome, and became monarch there under the name of 
Tarquinius Priscus. {Plin., 35, 5.— Liv., 1 , 34, 
seqq .)—III. A Corinthian, in the time of Philip and 
his son Alexander. Pie had connexions of hospi¬ 
tality with the royal family of Macedon, and, having 
paid a visit to Philip, succeeded in reconciling that 
monarch to his son. After Alexander had overthrown 
the Persian empire, Demaratus, though advanced in 
years, made a voyage to the east in order to see the 
conqueror, and, when he beheld him, exclaimed, “ What 
a pleasure have those Greeks missed, who died without 
seeing Alexander seated on the throne of Darius!” He 
died soon after, and was honoured with a magnificent 
funeral. {Plut., Vit. Alex., c. 37.— Id. ibid., c. 56. 

•— Id., Vit. Ages., c. 15.)—IV. A Corinthian exile at 
the court of Philip, king of Macedonia. {Plut., Alex.) 

Demetria, a festival in honour of Ceres, called by the 
Greeks Demeter {AyprjTiqp). It was then customary 
for the votaries of the goddess to lash themselves with 
whips made with the bark of trees. The Athenians 
instituted for a short time a solemnity of the same 
name, in honour of Demetrius Poliorcetes. 

Demetrias, a city of Thessaly, on the Sinus Pelas- 
gicus or Pagasseus, at the mouth of the river Onches- 
tus. It owed its name and origin to Demetrius Poli¬ 
orcetes, about 290 B.C., and derived, as Strabo re¬ 
ports, its population, in the first instance, from the 
neighbouring towns of Nelia, Pagasae, Ormenium, 
Rhizus, Sepias, Olizon, Boebe, and Iolcos, all of which 
•were finally included within its territory. {Strabo, 
436.— Plut., Vit. Demetr.) It soon became one of 
the most flourishing towns in Thessaly, and, in a mil¬ 
itary point of view, was allowed to rank among the 
principal fortresses of Greece. It was, in fact,"most 
advantageously placed for defending the approaches to 
■424 


the defile of Tempe, as well on the side of the plam» 
as on that of the mountains. Its maritime situation 
also, both from its proximity to the island of Euboea, 
to Attica, the Peloponnesus, the Cyclades, and the op¬ 
posite shores of Asia, rendered it a most important 
acquisition to the sovereigns of Macedonia. Hence 
Philip, the son of Demetrius, is said to have termed it 
one of the chains of Greece. {Polyb., 17, 11 . — Liv., 
32, 37.— Id., 28, 5.) After the battle of Cynosceph- 
alae, it became the principal town of the Magnesian re¬ 
public, and the seat of government. It fell under the 
Roman power after the battle of Pydna. Demetrias 
is generally thought to coincide with the modern Volo, 
but this last occupies the site of the ancient Pagasas. 
{Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 434.) 

Demetrius, I. a son of Antigonus and Stratonice, 
surnamed Poliorcetes {XlolLopxyTrjg), “ besieger of 
cities ,” from his talents as an engineer, and his pecu¬ 
liar skill in conducting sieges, especially by the aid of 
machines and engines either invented or improved by 
himself. At the age of twenty-two he was sent by 
his father against Ptolemy, who had invaded Syria. 
He was defeated near Gaza; but he soon repaired his 
loss by a victory over one of the generals of the ene¬ 
my. He afterward sailed with a fleet of 250 ships to 
Athens, and restored the Athenians to liberty, by free¬ 
ing them from the power of Cassander and Ptolemy, 
and expelling the garrison which was stationed there 
under Demetrius Phalereus. The gratitude of the 
Athenians to their deliverer passed all bounds, or was 
only equalled by their fulsome and impious adulation, 
the details of which are to be found in the pages of 
Plutarch. ( Vit. Demetr., c. 10.) But Demetrius 
was soon summoned by his father to leave the flattery 
of orators and demagogues, in order to resume the 
combined duties of an admiral and an engineer in the 
reduction of Cyprus. After a slight engagement with 
Menelaiis, the brother of Ptolemy, he laid siege to Sal- 
amis, the ancient capital of that island. The occur¬ 
rences of this siege occupy a prominent place in 
history, not so much on account of the dete-min- 
ed resistance opposed to the assailants, and the great 
importance attached to its issue by the heads of the 
belligerent parties, as for a new species of warlike 
engine invented by Demetrius, and first employed by 
him against the city of Salamis. The instrument in 
question was called an Helepolis, or “ Town-taker,” 
and was an immense tower, consisting of nine sto¬ 
ries, gradually diminishing as they uy?se in altitude, 
and affording accommodation for a large number of 
armed men, who discharged all sorts of missiles against 
the ramparts of the enemy. Ptolemy, dreading the 
fall of Salamis, which would pave the way, as he ea¬ 
sily foresaw, for the entire conquest of Cyprus, had 
already made formidable preparations for compelling 
Demetrius to raise the siege. A memorable seafioht 
ensued, in which the ruler of Egypt was completely 
defeated, with the loss of nearly all his fleet, and thirty 
thousand prisoners. An invasion of Egypt, by Anti¬ 
gonus, then took place, but ended disgracefully; and 
Demetrius was sent to reduce the Rhodians, who per¬ 
sisted in remaining allies to Ptolemy. The operations 
of the son of Antigonus before Rhodes, and the reso¬ 
lute defence of the place by the inhabitants, present 
perhaps the most remarkable example of skill and he¬ 
roism that is to be found in the annals of ancient war¬ 
fare. The Helepolis employed on this occasion greatly 
exceeded the one that was used in the siege of Sala¬ 
mis. Its towers were 150 feet high; it was supported 
on eight enormous wheels, and propelled by the labour 
of 3400 men. After a siege of a whole year, however, 
the enterprise was abandoned, a treaty was concluded 
with the Rhodians, and Demetrius, at the request of 
the Athenians, who were now again subjected to the 
Macedonian yoke, proceeded to rescue Greece from 
the power of Cassander. In this he was so success- 





DEMETRIUS. 


DEMETRIUS. 


ful that he ultimately spread the terror of his arms 
over the whole of that country. The object of Anti- 
gpnus and his son was now to effect the final subjuga¬ 
tion of Macedonia, Egypt, and the East. The con¬ 
federacy of Seleucus, Ptolemy, Lysimachus, and Cas- 
sander was therefore renewed, with the view of crush¬ 
ing these ambitious schemes, and in the battle of Ipsus 
they succeeded in effecting their object. Antigonus 
ell in the conflict, and Demetrius, after a precipitate 
light of 200 miles, regained his fleet with only a small 
remnant of his once powerful host. Sailing soon after 
to Athens, he received information from the fickle and 
ungrateful inhabitants that they had resolved to admit 
no king within their city ; upon which, finding that all 
Greece had now submitted to the influence of Cassan- 
der, he made a descent on the coast at Corinth for the 
mere purposes of plunder and revenge, and afterward 
committed similar ravages along the whole coast of 
Thrace. Fortune, however, soon smiled again. Se¬ 
leucus, jealous of the power of Lysimachus, whose ter¬ 
ritories now extended to the Syrian borders, resolved 
to strengthen his own dominions by forming an alli¬ 
ance with the family of Demetrius, which was still 
possessed of considerable claims and interests. He 
therefore made proposals for, and obtained in marriage, 
the accomplished Stratonice, the daughter of his for¬ 
mer rival. The power of Demetrius again became 
formidable, an alliance with Ptolemy, who gave him 
his daughter Ptolemai's in marriage, having also added 
to its increase. Having compelled the Athenians to 
open their gates and receive a garrison, and having 
generously forgiven their previous fickleness, he turned 
his attention to Macedonia, and having embraced an 
opportunity of interfering in the affairs of that country, 
which was afforded by dissensions between the two 
sons of Cassander, he cut off Alexander, one of the 
two princes, and made himself master of the throne. 
His restless ambition now projected new conquests in 
Europe and Asia. Turning his arms against Pyrrhus, 
he drove him from Thessaly, and then marched to 
Thebes, which he took by assault. About the same 
time also he built the city of Demetrias on the Pelas- 
gic gulf; and, in order to increase his naval power, 
formed a matrimonial union with the daughter of Aga- 
thocles, tyrant of Sicily. His fleet at length amounted 
to 500 gallies, many of them having fifteen or sixteen 
banks of oars; while his land forces exceeded consid¬ 
erably 100,000 men, of which more than 12,000 were 
cavalry % This formidable power excited the alarm of 
Lysimachus and Ptolemy ; the latter advanced against 
Greece with his fleet, while the former, with Pyrrhus 
his ally, made a land attack on Macedon in two differ¬ 
ent points at once. Demetrius took the field with his 
usual alacrity, but when he approached the position of 
Pyrrhus, the greater part of his troops deserted him, 
and he was compelled to flee. Leaving Macedon a 
prey to Lysimachus and Pyrrhus, the active Demetrius 
passed over into Asia Minor with a body of his best 
troops, resolved to assail his adversary in the most 
vulnerable quarter. The enterprise was at first at¬ 
tended with the most brilliant success. In a short 
time, however, a check was imposed on his career by 
Agathocles, the son of Lysimachus, and Demetrius 
was compelled to apply for protection to his aged son- 
in-law Seleucus. The latter yielded to his solicita¬ 
tions only so far as to grant him permission to spend 
two months within his territory ; and was subsequently 
induced by his courtiers to rid himself of so dangerous 
a guest, by sending him a prisoner to a strong fortress 
on the Syrian coast, about sixty miles south of Anti¬ 
och. A sufficient revenue was allowed him for his 
support, and he was permitted to indulge in the chace 
and other manly exercises, always, however, under the 
eye of his keepers. At last, however, giving up all 
active pursuits, he closed his checkered life, at the end 
of three years, a victim to chagrin, sloth, and intem- 
H H H 


perance. His remains were delivered up to fits son 
Antigonus, who interred them with great splendour in 
the city of Demetrias. The age of Demetrius at the 
time of his death was fifty-four. His posterity enjoy 
ed the throne of Macedon in continued succession 
down to Perses, when the Roman conquest took place. 
—Demetrius was remarkable for the possession of two 
qualities, which seem to be altogether inconsistent 
with each other, an excessive love of pleasure and an 
ardent passion for glory. His courage in conflicts, his 
profound acquaintance with the military art, and hia 
skill, particularly in the construction of warlike en¬ 
gines, constitute strong claims on the remembrance of 
posterity. His dissolute morals have been justly cen¬ 
sured, but there were many excellent traits of charac¬ 
ter which went far towards counterbalancing his vices. 
He always showed himself a dutiful and affectionate 
son, a mild and generous conqueror, and a liberal pa¬ 
tron of the arts. (Pint., Vit. Demelr.) —II. Son of 
Antigonus Gonatas, and grandson of Demetrius Poli- 
orcetes, succeeded his father, B.C. 243. He made 
war on the JEtolians and Achseans, and was successful 
against both, especially the latter, whom he defeated, 
although under the command of Aratus. He had dis¬ 
tinguished himself, before coming to the throne, by 
driving Alexander of Epirus out of Macedonia, and 
also stripping him of his own dominions. He reigned 
ten years, and was succeeded by his son, Philip III. 
{Justin, 26, 2.— Id. ib., 28, 3.)—III. Son of Philip 
III., of Macedonia. He was an excellent prince, 
greatly beloved by his countrymen, and was sent by 
his father as a hostage to Rome, where he also made 
many friends. He was subsequently liberated, and 
not long after paid a second visit to the capital of Ita 
ly, as an ambassador from Philip, on which occasion 
he obtained, by his modest and candid deportment, 
favourable terms for his parent, when the latter was 
complained of to the Roman senate by the cities of 
Greece. Returning home loaded with marks of dis¬ 
tinction from the Romans, and honoured by the Mace¬ 
donians themselves, who regarded him as the liberator 
of their country, he excited the jealousy of his own fa¬ 
ther, and the envy and hatred of his brother Perses. 
The latter eventually accused him of aspiring to the 
crown, and of carrying on, for this purpose, a secret 
correspondence with the Romany. Philip, lending too ^ 
credulous an ear to the charge, put his son Demetrius 
to death, and only discovered, when too late, the utter 
falsity of the accusation. ( Liv ., 33, 30.— Id., 39, 35, 
seqq. — Id., 40, 5.— Id., 40, 24.— Id., 40, 54, seqq .)— 
IY. Surnamed Sotcr (2 UTrjp), or “ the Preserver,” 
was the son of Seleucus Philopator; and was sent by 
his father, at the age of twenty-three, as a hostage to 
Rome. He was living there in this condition when 
his father died of poison, B.C. 176. His uncle Anti- 
ochus Epiphanes thereupon usurped the throne, and 
was succeeded by Antiochus Eupator. Demetrius, 
meanwhile, having in vain endeavoured to interest the 
senate in his behalf, secretly escaped from Rome, 
through the advice of Polybius the historian, and, find¬ 
ing a party in Syria ready to support his claims, de¬ 
feated and put to death Eupator, and ascended the 
throne. He was subsequently acknowledged as king 
by the Romans. After this he freed the Babylonians 
from the tyranny of Timarchus and Heraclides, and 
was honoured for this service with the title of Soter. 
At a subsequent period he sent his generals Nicanor 
and Bacchides into Judasa, at the solicitation of Alci- 
mus, the high-priest, who had usurped that office with 
the aid of Eupator. These two commanders ravaged 
the country, and Bacchides defeated and slew the cel¬ 
ebrated Judas Maccabseus. Demetrius, at last, be¬ 
came so hated by his own subjects, and an object of so 
much dislike, if not of fear, to the neighbouring princes, 
that they advocated the claims of Alexander Bala, and 
he fell in battle against this competitor for the crown, 

42 *' 




DEMETRIUS. 


DEMETRIUS. 


alter having reigned twelve years (from B.C. 162 to 
B.C. 150). His death was avenged, however, by his 
son and successor Demetrius Nicator. ( Polyb., 31, 
22.— Id., 31, 19.— Id., 32, 4, seqq. — Id., 33, 14, seqq. 
— Justin, 34, 3.— Id., 35, 1.)—V. Son of the prece¬ 
ding, was surnamed Nicator, or “the Conqueror.” 
He drove out Alexander Bala, with the aid of Ptole¬ 
my Philometor, who had given him his daughter Cle¬ 
opatra in marriage, though she was already the wife of 
Bala. He ascended the throne B.C. 146, but soon 
abandoned himself to a life of indolence and debauch¬ 
ery, leaving the reins of government in the hands of 
Lasthenes, his favourite, an unprincipled and violent 
man. The disgust to which his conduct gave rise in¬ 
duced Tryphom'who had been governor of Antioch 
under Bala, to xevolt, and place upon the throne Anti- 
ochus Dionysius, son of Bala and Cleopatra, a child 
only four years of age. A battle ensued, in which De¬ 
metrius was defeated, and Antiochus, now receiving 
the surname of Theos, was conducted by the victors 
to Antioch, and proclaimed king of Syria. He reign¬ 
ed, however, only in name. The actual monarch was 
Tryphon, who put him to death at the end of about 
two years, and caused himself to be proclaimed in his 
stead. Demetrius, meanwhile, held his court at Se- 
leucia. Thinking that the crimes of Tryphon would 
soon make him universally detested, he turned his 
arms in a different direction, and marched against the 
Parthians, in the hope that, if he returned victorious, he 
would be enabled the more easily to rid himself of his 
Syrian antagonist. After some successes, however, 
he was entrapped and made prisoner by the Parthian 
monarch Mithradates, and his army was attacked and 
cut to pieces. His captivity among the Parthians was 
an honourable one, and Mithradates made him espouse 
his daughter Rhodoguna. The intelligence of this 
marriage so exasperated Cleopatra, that she gave her 
hand to Antiochus Sidetes, her brother-in-law, who 
thereupon ascended the throne. Sidetes having been 
slain in a battle with the Parthians after a reign of 
several years, Demetrius escaped from the hands of 
Mithradates and remounted the throne. His subjects, 
however, unable any longer to endure his pride and 
cruelty, requested from Ptolemy Physcon, a king of the 
race of the Seleucidse to govern them. Ptolemy sent 
Alexander Zebina. Demetrius, driven out by the Syr¬ 
ians, came to Ptolemais, where Cleopatra, his first wife, 
then held sway, but the gates were shut against him. 
He then took refuge in Tyre, but was put to death by 
the governor of the city. Zebina recompensed the 
Tyrians for this act, by permitting them to live ac¬ 
cording to their own laws, and from this period com¬ 
mences what is called by chronologists the era of the 
independence of Tyre, which was still subsisting at 
the time of the council of Chalcedon, 574 years after 
this event. {Joseph., Ant. Jud., 1.3, 9.— Id. ib., 13, 
12.— Id. ib., 13, 17.— Justin, 36, 1 . — Id., 39, 1 . — 
L'Art de verifier les Dates, vol. 2, p. 331.)—VI. Sur¬ 
named Euccerus (E vKcupog), “ the Seasonable” or 
“Fortunate,” was the fourth son of Antiochus Gry- 
pus. He was proclaimed king at Damascus, and, in 
conjunction with his brother Philip, to whom a part of 
Syria remained faithful, drove out Antiochus Eusebes 
from that country, compelling him to take refuge 
among the Parthians. The two brothers then divided 
Syria between them, Antioch being the capital of Phil¬ 
ip, and Damascus that of Demetrius. The latter after¬ 
ward marched to the aid of the Jews, who had revolted 
from their king Alexander Janneus. He was recalled, 
however, to his own dominions by the news of an in¬ 
vasion on the part of his own brother Philip. He took 
Antioch, and besieged Philip in Bercea ; but the latter 
Deing succoured by the Parthians and Arabians, De¬ 
metrius was besieged in his own camp, and at length 
taken prisoner. He was brought to the King of Par- 
thia, who treated him with great distinction, and sent 
426 


him into Upper Asia. He reigned a little over six 
years. The Abbe Belley has written a learned disser¬ 
tation on the reign of this monarch, illustrated by med¬ 
als. {Mem. de l'Acad. des. Inscr., vol. 29.)—VII. 
Pepagomenus, a medical writer, who flourished during 
the reign of Michael VIII. (Palseologus). By the or¬ 
der of this monarch, he wrote a work on the Gout 
{irepl II oddypaq). We have two treatises under his 
name ; but it is extremely doubtful whether he was 
indeed their author. The first is on the art of training 
falcons; the second, on the mode of breaking and 
training dogs. {Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 7, p. 265.) 
The best edition of the treatise on the gout is that of 
Bernhard, Amst., 1753, 8vo.—VIII. Phalereus (three 
syllables— ^aXr/pevq), a native of Phalerum in Attica, 
and the last of the more distinguished orators of 
Greece. He was the son of a person who had been 
slave to Timotheus and Conon. (Compare JElian, 
Var. Hist., 12, 43, and the remarks of Perizonius, ad 
loc.) But, though born in this low condition, he soon 
made himself distinguished by his talents, and was al¬ 
ready a conspicuous individual in the public assem¬ 
blies when Antipater became master of Athens ; for 
he was obliged to save himself by flight from the ven¬ 
geance of the Macedonian partv. He was compelled 
to quit the city a second time, when Polysperchon 
took possession of it through his son. Subsequently 
named by Cassander as governor of Athens (B.C. 
312), he so gained the affections of his countrymen, 
that, during the ten years in which he filled this of¬ 
fice,. they are said to have raised to him three hun¬ 
dred and sixty statues. Athenasus, however, on the 
authority of Duris, a Samian writer, reproaches him 
with luxurious and expensive habits, while he prescri¬ 
bed, at the same time, frugality to his fellow-citizens, 
and fixed limits for their expenditures. It is thought, 
however, that Duris, or else Athenasus in copying him, 
erred with respect to the name ; since what the latter 
relates of Demetrius Phalereus, JElian mentions of De¬ 
metrius Poliorcetes. {Var. Hist., 9, 19.) After the 
death of his protector, Demetrius was driven from 
Athens by Antigonus and Demetrius Poliorcetes (B.C. 
306). The people of that city, always fickle, always 
ungrateful, always the sport of the demagogues who 
ruled them, overthrew the numerous statues they had 
erected to him, although he had been their benefactor 
and idol, and even condemned him to death. Deme¬ 
trius, upon this, retired to the court of Alexandrea, 
where he lived upward of twenty years;/ It is gener¬ 
ally supposed that he was the individual who gave 
Ptolemy the advice to found the Museum and famous 
library. This prince consulted him also as to the 
choice of a successor. Demetrius was in favour of 
the monarch’s eldest son, but the king eventually de¬ 
cided for the son whom he had by his second wife 
Berenice. When Ptolemy II., therefore, came to the 
throne, he revenged himself on the unlucky counsel¬ 
lor by exiling him to a distant province in Upper 
Egypt, where Demetrius put an end to his own life 
by the bite of an asp (B.C. 284.—Compare the disser¬ 
tation of Bonamy, on the life of Demetrius Phalereus, 
Mem. de VAcad. des. Inscr. et Belles Lettres, vol. 7, p. 
157, seqq.). Cicero describes Demetrius as a polished, 
sweet, and graceful speaker, but deficient in energy 
and power. {De Orat., 2, 23.-— Brut., 9.) Quintilian 
assigns to him much of talent and fluency. {Inst. 
Or., 10, 1, 80.) Both writers, however, agree that he 
was the first who deviated in a marked degree from 
the character that previously belonged to Attic elo¬ 
quence. We cannot form any opinion of our own re¬ 
specting the merits of this writer, because his histor¬ 
ical, political, and philosophical writings are all lost. 
In the number of these was a treatise “On the Ionians,” 
and another “ On the Laws of Athens, ” two pieces, 
the acquisition of which would prove of great value to 
us. Plutarch cites his treatise “ On Socrates ,” which 




DEM 


DEMOCRITUS. 


appears to have contained also “a Life of Aristides.” 
We have said that the works of Demetrius are lost: 
there exists, it is true, under his name “ A Treatise 
on Elocution” (irepi 'E ppj]veiaq), a work full of in¬ 
genious observations ; but critics agree in making it 
of later origin. It appears that the copyists have con¬ 
founded Demetrius Phalereus with Demetrius of Alex¬ 
andra, who flourished under Marcus Aurelius, and was, 
perhaps, the author of the work in question. Besides 
the treatise on Elocution, there exists a small work On 
the Apophthegms of the Seven Sages , which Stobseus 
has inserted in his third discourse, as being the produc¬ 
tion of Demetrius Phalereus.—The best editions of the 
treatise on Elocution are, that of Gale, Oxon., 1676, 
8vo, re-edited by Fischer, Lips., 1773, 8vo, and that 
of J. G. Schneider, Allen., 1779, 8vo. This last is 
printed with but little care ; yet it is critical, and sup¬ 
plied with an excellent commentary. ( Scholl , Hist. 
Lit. Gr., vol. 3, p. 241, seqq.) —IX. A Cynic philos¬ 
opher, who flourished at Corinth in the first century. 
During the reign of Caligula, he taught philosophy at 
Rome, where he obtained the highest reputation for 
wisdom and virtue. He was banished from Rome in 
the time of Nero, for his free censure of public man¬ 
ners. After the death of this emperor he returned to 
Rome ; but the boldness of his language soon offend¬ 
ed Vespasian, and again subjected him to the punish¬ 
ment of exile. Apollonius, with whom he had con¬ 
tracted a friendship, prevailed on Titus to recall him; 
but under Domitian he shared the common fate of 
philosophers, and withdrew to Puteoli. Seneca, who 
was intimately acquainted with him, speaks in the 
highest terms of his masculine eloquence, sound judg¬ 
ment, intrepid fortitude, and inflexible integrity. ( Sen¬ 
eca■, de Vit. Beat., 25.) 

Democedes, a celebrated physician of Crotona, son 
cf Calliphon, and intimate with Polycrates. He was 
carried as a prisoner from Samos to Darius, king of 
Persia, where he acquired great riches and much repu¬ 
tation by two. cures which he performed, one on the 
king, and the other on Atossa. Always desirous of 
returning to his native country, he pretended to enter 
into the views and interests of the Persians, and pro¬ 
cured himself to be sent with some nobles to explore 
the coast of Greece, and to ascertain in what parts it 
might be attacked with the greatest probability of suc¬ 
cess. Stopping at Tarentum, the Persians were seized 
as spies, and Democedes escaped to Crotona, whither 
the Persians followed him, and demanded, but in vain, 
that he should be restored. He settled there, and 
married the daughter of Milo. ( JElian , V. H., 8, 18. 
— Herodot., 3, 124, &c.) 

Democritus, a celebrated philosopher, born at Ab- 
dera, about 490 or 494 B.C., but according to some, 
460 or 470 B.C. His father was a man of noble fam¬ 
ily and of great wealth, and contributed largely to¬ 
wards the entertainment of the army of Xerxes, on his 
return to Asia. As a reward for this service, the Per¬ 
sian monarch made him and the other Abderites rich 
presents, and left among them several Chaldcean Magi. 
Democritus, according to Diogenes Laertius, was in¬ 
structed by these Eastern sages in astronomy and the¬ 
ology. After the death of his father, he determined 
to travel in search of wisdom ; and devoted to this 
purpose the portion which fell to him, amounting to 
one hundred talents. He is said to have visited Egypt 
and Ethiopia, the Persian Magi, and, according to some, 
even the Gymnosophists of India. Whether, in the 
course of his travels, he visited Athens or attended 
upon Anaxagoras, is uncertain. There can be little 
doubt, however, that, during some part of his life, he 
was instructed in the Pythagorean school, and particu¬ 
larly that he was a disciple of Leucippus. After a 
long course of years thus spent in travelling, Democri¬ 
tus returned to Abdera, richly stored with the treas¬ 
ures of philosophy, but destitute even of the necessary 


means of subsistence. Plis brother Damosis, howev¬ 
er, received him kindly, and liberally supplied all his 
wants. It was a law in Abdera, that whoever should 
waste his patrimony, should be deprived of the rites 
of sepulture. Democritus, desiring to avoid this dis¬ 
grace, gave public lectures to the people, chiefly from 
his larger Diacosmus, the most valuable of his wri¬ 
tings ; in return, he received from his hearers many 
valuable presents, and other testimonies of respect, 
which relieved him from all apprehension of suffering 
public censure as a spendthrift. Democritus, by hia 
learning and wisdom, and especially by his acquaint¬ 
ance with natural phenomena, acquired great fame, and 
excited much admiration among the ignorant Abderites. 
By giving previous notices of unexpected changes in 
the weather, and by other artifices, he laad the address 
to make them believe that he possessed a power ol 
predicting future events, and they not only looked upon 
him as something more than mortal, but even proposed 
to invest him with the direction of their public affairs. 
From inclination and habit, however, he preferred a 
contemplative to an active life, and therefore declined 
these public honours, and passed the remainder of his 
days in solitude. It is said that from this time he 
spent his days and nights in caverns and sepulchres; 
and some even relate, that, in order to be more per¬ 
fectly master of his intellectual faculties, he deprived 
himself, by means of a burning-glass, of the organs ol 
sight. The story, however, is utterly incredible, since 
the writers who mention it affirm that Democritus 
employed his leisure in writing books, and in dissect¬ 
ing the bodies of animals, neither of which could well 
have been effected without eyes. Nor is greater cred¬ 
it due to the tale that Democritus spent his leisure 
hours in chemical researches after the philosopher’s 
stone, the dream of a later age ; or to the story of his 
conversation with Hippocrates, grounded upon letters 
which are said to have passed between the father of 
medicine and the people of Abdera, on the supposed 
madness of Democritus, but which are so evidently 
spurious that it would require the credulity of the Ab¬ 
derites themselves to suppose them genuine. The 
only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn from 
these and other marvellous tales, is, that Democritus 
was, what he is commonly represented to have been, 
a man of lofty genius and penetrating judgment, who, 
by a long course of study and observation, became an 
eminent master of speculative and physical science; 
the natural consequence of which was, that, like Roger 
Bacon in a later period, he astonished and imposed 
upon his ignorant and credulous countrymen. Petro- 
nius relates, that he was perfectly acquainted with the 
virtues of herbs, plants, and stones, and that he spent 
his life in making experiments upon natural bodies.— 
Democritus has been commonly known under the ap¬ 
pellation of “ The Laughing Philosopher and it is 
gravely related by Seneca (De Ira, 2, 10.— De Tranq., 
15), that he never appeared in public without express¬ 
ing his contempt of the follies of mankind by laugh¬ 
ter. But this account is wholly inconsistent with 
what has been related concerning his fondness for a 
life of gloomy solitude and profound contemplation ; 
and with the strength and elevation of mind which his 
philosophical researches must have required, and which 
are ascribed to him by the general voice of antiquity. 
Thus much, however, may be easily admitted on the 
credit of ./Elian (V. H., 4, 20) and Lucian (Vit. Auct., 
vol. 3, p. 112, ed. Bip.), that a man so superior to the 
generality of his contemporaries, and whose lot it was to 
live among a race of men who were stupid to a proverb, 
might frequently treat their follies with ridicule and 
contempt. Accordingly, we find that, among his fel¬ 
low-citizens, he obtained the appellation of yeTuioivoc;, 
or the “ Derider .” Democritus appears to have been 
in his morals chaste and temperate ; and his sobriety 
was repaid by a healthy old age. He lived and en- 

427 



DEM 


DEMOSTHENES. 


/oyed the use of his faculties to the term of a hundred 
years.(some say several years longer), and at last died 
through mere decay.—Democritus expanded the atom¬ 
ic theory of his master Leucippus, to support the truth 
of which he maintained the impossibility of division ad 
infinitum ; and from the difEcutly of assigning a com¬ 
mencement of time, he argued the eternity of existing 
nature, of void space, and of motion. He supposed 
the atoms, originally similar, to be endowed with cer¬ 
tain properties, such as impenetrability, and a density 
proportionate to their volume. He referred every ac¬ 
tive and passive affection to motion, caused by impact, 
limited by the principle he assumed, that like can only 
act on like. He drew a distinction between primary 
motion and secondary ; impulse and reaction ; from a 
combination of which he produced rotatory motion. 
Herein consists the law of necessity, by which all 
things in nature are ruled. From the endless multi¬ 
plicity of atoms have resulted the worlds which we 
behold, with all the properties of immensity, resem¬ 
blance, and dissimilitude which belong to them. The 
soul consists (such is his doctrine) of globular atoms 
of fire, which impart movement to the body. Main¬ 
taining his atomic theory throughout, Democritus in¬ 
troduced the hypothesis of images {elduXa), a species 
of emanation from external objects, which make an im- 
ression on our senses, and from the influence of which 
e deduced sensation (alaOrjcug) and thought ( voyaic,). 
He distinguished between a rude, imperfect, and there¬ 
fore false perception, and a true one. In the same 
manner, consistently with his theory, he accounted for 
the popular notions of the Deity; partly through our 
incapacity to understand fully the phenomena of which 
we are witnesses, and partly from the impressions com¬ 
municated by certain beings {eldu/ia) of enormous 
stature, and resembling the human figure, which in¬ 
habit the air. To these he ascribed dreams, and the 
causes of divination. He carried his theory into prac¬ 
tical philosophy also, laying down that happiness con¬ 
sisted in an equability of temperament ( evOv/iia ), 
whence he deduced his moral principles and pruden¬ 
tial maxims. It was from Democritus that Epicurus 
ocrrowed the principal features of his metaphysics. 
( Enfield's History of Philosophy , vol. 1, p. 423, seqq. 
— Patter, Hist. Phil ., vol. 1, p. 544, seqq .— Tenne- 
mann's Manual , p. 79.) 

Demodocus, I. a musician at the court of Alcinoiis, 
jvho sang in the presence of Ulysses. ( Horn ., Od., 
8, 44.— Pint ., de Mus.) —II. A Trojan chief, who 
came with JEneas into Italy, where he was killed. 

( Virg ., 2En., 10, 413.) 

Demoleon, I. a centaur, killed by Theseus at the 
nuptials of Pirithoiis. {Ovid, Met., 12, 356.)—II. A 
son of Antenor, killed by Achilles. {Horn., II., 20,395.) 

Dem6nax, a Cynic philosopher, of excellent charac¬ 
ter, contemporary with Lucian, who relates his history. 
He was a native of Cyprus, of wealthy parents, and is 
described by Lucian as having been the best philoso¬ 
pher he ever knew. Demonax resided at Athens, at¬ 
tained to the age of nearly 90 years, and was honoured 
at his death with a public funeral. {Lucian, Vit. De- 
monact., vol. 5, p. 231, seqq., ed. Bip.) 

Demophoon or Demophon. Vid. Phyllis. 

Demosthenes, I. a celebrated Athenian orator, a 
native of the borough of Paeania, in the tribe Pandio- 
nis. His father, Demosthenes, was a citizen of rank 
and opulence, and the proprietor of a manufactory of 
arms ; not a common blacksmith, as the language of 
Juvenal (10, 130) would lead us to believe. The son 
was born in the fourth year of the 98th Olympiad, 
B.C. 385, and lost his father at the early age of seven 
years, when he was left to the care of his mother, 
Cleobule. The guardians to whom his father had 
intrusted the administration of a large property pro¬ 
ving faithless to their charge, and wasting a large por¬ 
tion of his patrimony, the orator’s early studies were 
428 


seriously impeded by the want of sufficient means, to 
say nothing of the over-anxious fears of maternal ten¬ 
derness, and the delicate state of his own health. 
When Demosthenes was about sixteen years of age, 
his curiosity was attracted by a trial in which Callis- 
tratus pleaded, and won a cause of considerable im¬ 
portance. The eloquence which procured, and the 
acclamations which followed, his success, so inflamed 
the ambition of the young Athenian, that he deter¬ 
mined to, devote himself thenceforward to the assidu¬ 
ous study of oratory. He chose Isseus as his master 
rather than Isocrates (either because this plan was less 
expensive, or because the style of the latter was not 
sufficiently nervous and energetic): from Plato, also, 
he imbibed much of the richness and the grandeur 
which characterized the writings of that mighty master. 
At the age of seventeen he appeared before the public 
tribunals, and pronounced against his faithless guar¬ 
dians, and against a debtor to his father’s estate, five 
orations, which were crowned with complete success. 
These discourses, in all probability, had received the 
finishing hand from Isseus, under whom Demosthenes 
continued to study for the space of four years after he 
had reached his majority. An opening so brilliantly 
successful imboldened the young orator, as may well 
be supposed, to speak before the people; but, when he 
made the attempt, his feeble and stammering voice, his 
interrupted respiration, his ungraceful gestures, and his 
ill-arranged periods, brought upon him general ridicule. 
Returning home in the utmost distress, he was reani¬ 
mated by the kind aid of the actor Satyrus, who, hav¬ 
ing requested Demosthenes to repeat some passage 
from a dramatic poet, pronounced the same extract 
after him with so much correctness of enunciation, 
and in a manner so true to nature, that it appeared to 
the young orator to be quite a different passage. Con 
vinced, thereupon, how much grace and persuasive pow¬ 
er a proper enunciation and manner add to the best 
oration, he resolved to correct the deficiencies of his 
youth, and accomplished this with a zeal and perse¬ 
verance which have passed into a proverb. How 
deeply he commands our respect and admiration by 
his struggles to overcome his natural infirmities, and 
remove the impressions produced by his first appear¬ 
ance before his assembled countrymen ! He was not 
indebted for the glory he acquired either to the bounty 
of nature or to the favour of circumstances, but to the 
inherent strength of his own unconquerable will. To 
free himself from stammering, he spoke with pebbles 
in his mouth, a story resting on the authority of De¬ 
metrius Phalereus, his contemporary. It also appears 
that he was unable to articulate clearly the letter R ; 
but he vanquished that difficulty most perfectly ; for 
Cicero says, “ exercitatione fecisse ut plenissime dice- 
ret .” He removed the distortion of features, which 
accompanied his utterance, by watching the movements 
of his countenance in a mirror; and a naked sword 
was suspended over his left shoulder while he was 
declaiming in private, to prevent its rising above the 
level of the right. That his enunciation might be 
loud and full of emphasis, he frequently ran up the 
steepest and most uneven walks, an exercise by which 
his voice acquired both force and energy; and on the 
seashore, when the waves were violently agitated, he 
declaimed aloud, to accustom himself to the noise and 
tumult of a public assembly. He constructed a sub¬ 
terranean study, where he would often stay for two or 
three months together, shaving one side of his head, 
that, in case he should wish to go abroad, the shame 
of appearing in that condition might keep him within. 
In this solitary retreat, by the light of his lamp, he 
copied and recopied, ten times at least, the orations 
scattered throughout the history of Thucydides, foi 
the purpose of moulding his own style after so pure e 
model.—Whatever may be the truth of these severa 
stories, Demosthenes got credit for the most ipd® 




DEMOSTHENES. 


DEMOSTHENES. 


fatigable labour in the acquisition of his art. His 
enemies, at a subsequent period of his career, at¬ 
tempted to ridicule this extraordinary industry, by 
remarking that all his arguments “smelt of the lamp,” 
and they eagerly embraced the opportunity of denying 
him the possession of natural talents. A malicious 
opinion like this would easily find credit; and, in fact, 
a similar mistake is very frequently made ; for, since 
it is acknowledged on all hands, that all successful men 
who are naturally dull must be industrious, the con¬ 
verse of the proposition grows into repute, and it is in¬ 
ferred that all men who are industrious must necessarily 
be dull. The accusation against Demosthenes seems 
to have rested chiefly on his known reluctance to speak 
without preparation. The fact is, that, though he could 
exert the talent of extemporaneous speaking, he avoided 
rather than sought such occasions, partly from defer¬ 
ence to his audience, and partly from apprehending 
the possibility of a failure. Plutarch, who mentions 
this reluctance of the orator, speaks at the same time 
of the great merit of his extemporaneous effusions.— 
Demosthenes reappeared in public, after the rigorous 
discipline of private study, at the age of 25 years, 
and pronounced two orations against Leptines, the 
author of a law which imposed on every citizen of 
Athens, except the descendants of Harmodius and 
Aristogiton, the exercise of certain burdensome func¬ 
tions. The second of these discourses, entitled “ Of 
Immunities ,” is regarded as one of his happiest efforts. 
After this he became much engaged with the business 
of the bar, and these professional labours, added to the 
scanty portion of his patrimony which he had recovered 
from his guardians, appear to have formed his only 
means of support. But, whatever may have been the 
distinction and the advantages which Demosthenes 
acquired by his practice at the bar, his principal glory 
is derived from his political discourses. At the pe¬ 
riod when he engaged in public affairs, the state was a 
mere wreck. Public spirit was at the lowest ebb ; the 
laws had lost their authority, the austerity of early man¬ 
ners had yielded to the inroads of luxury, activity to indo¬ 
lence, probity to venality, and the people were far advan¬ 
ced upon the route which conducts a nation to irremedi¬ 
able servitude. Of the virtues of their forefathers there 
remained to the Athenians naught save an attachment, 
carried almost to enthusiasm, for their native soil, for 
that country the possession of which had been con¬ 
tested even by the gods. On the slightest occasion 
this feeling of patriotism was sure to display itself; 
thanks to this sentiment, the people of Athens were 
still capable of making the most strenuous efforts for 
the preservation of their freedom. No one knew bet¬ 
ter than Demosthenes the art of exciting and keeping 
alive this enthusiasm. His penetration enabled him 
easily to divine the ambitious plans of Philip of Mace- 
don, from the very outset of that monarch’s operations, 
and he resolved to counteract them. His whole pub¬ 
lic career, indeed, had but one object in view, and that 
was, war with Philip. For the space of fourteen 
years did this monarch find the Athenian orator con¬ 
tinually in his path, and every attempt proved unavail¬ 
ing to corrupt so formidable an adversary. These 
fourteen years, which immediately preceded the fall 
of Grecian freedom, constitute the brightest period in 
the history of Demosthenes. And yet his courage was 
political rather than military. At Chseronea he fled 
from the field of battle, though in the Athenian assem¬ 
bly no private apprehensions could check his eloquence 
or influence his conduct. But, though overpowered in 
the contest with the enemy of Athenian independence, 
he received after his defeat the most glorious recom- 
peifte, which, in accordance with Grecian customs, 
a grateful country could bestow upon a virtuous son. 
Athens decreed him a crown of gold. The reward was 
opposed by dEschines. The combat of eloquence which 
arose between the two orators, attracted to Athens an 


immense concourse of spectators. Demosthenes tri¬ 
umphed, and his antagonist, not having received the 
fifth part of the votes, was, in conformity with the ex¬ 
isting law, compelled to retire into exile. A short 
time after this splendid victory, Demosthenes was 
condemned for having suffered himself to be bribed 
by Harpalus, a Macedonian governor, who, dreading 
the anger of Alexander, had come to Athens to hide 
there the fruit of his extortion and rapine, and had bar 
gained with the popular leaders of the day for the pro¬ 
tection of the republic. Demosthenes, having escaped 
from imprisonment, fled to yEgina, whence he could 
behold the shores of his beloved country, and earnest¬ 
ly and constantly protested his innocence. After the 
death of Alexander he was restored, and his entry into 
Athens was marked by every demonstration of joy. 
A new league was formed among the Grecian cities 
against the Macedonians, and Demosthenes was the 
soul of it. But the confederacy was broken up by 
Antipater, and the death of the orator was decreed. 
He retired thereupon from Athens to the island of Ca- 
lauria, off the coast of Argolis, and, being still pursued 
by the satellites of Antipater, terminated his life there 
by poison, in the temple of Neptune, at the age of 
above sixty years.—Before the time of Demosthenes 
there existed three distinct styles of eloquence : that 
of Lysias, mild and persuasive, quietly engaged the at¬ 
tention, and won the assent of an audience; that of 
Thucydides, bold and animated, awakened the feelings 
and powerfully forced conviction on the mind; while 
that of Isocrates was, as it were, a combination of the 
two former. Demosthenes can scarcely be said to 
have proposed any individual as a model, although he 
bestowed so much untiring labour on the historian of 
the Peloponnesian war. He rather culled all that was 
valuable from the various styles of his great predeces¬ 
sors, working them up, and blending them into one 
harmonious whole : not, however, that there is such 
a uniformity or mannerism in his works as prevents 
him from applying himself with versatility to a variety 
of subjects ; on the contrary, he seems to have had 
the power of carrying each individual style to perfec¬ 
tion, and of adapting himself with equal excellence to 
each successive topic. In the general structure of 
many of his sentences, he resembles Thucydides ; but 
he is more simple and perspicuous, and better calcula¬ 
ted to be quickly comprehended by an audience. On 
the other hand, his clearness in narration, his elegance 
and purity of diction, and (to borrow a metaphor from 
a sister art) his correct keeping, remind the reader oi 
Lysias. But the argumentative parts of the speeches of 
Lysias are often deficient in vigour; whereas earnest¬ 
ness, power, zeal, rapidity, and passion, all exemplified 
in plain, unornamented language, and a strain of close, 
business-like reasoning, are the distinctive characteris¬ 
tics of Demosthenes. The general tone of his oratory, 
indeed, was admirably adapted to an Athenian audience, 
constituted as it was of those whose habits of Jife were 
mechanical, and of those whom ambition or taste had 
led to the cultivation of literature. The former were 
captivated by sheer sense, urged with masculine force 
and inextinguishable spirit, and by the forcible applica¬ 
tion of plain truths ; and yet there was enough of grace 
and variety to please more learned and fastidious audi¬ 
tors. “ His style,” as Hume well observes, “is rapid 
harmony, exactly adjusted to the sense : it is vehement 
reasoning, without any appearance of art: it is disdain, 
anger, boldness, freedom, involved in a continued 
stream of argument; and, of all human productions, 
the orations of Demosthenes present to us the models 
which approach the nearest to perfection.” Anothei 
very remarkable excellence of Demosthenes is the col¬ 
location of his words. The arrangement of sentences 
in such a manner that their cadences should be har¬ 
monious, and, to a certain degree, rhythmical, was a 
study much in use among the great masters of Gre- 

429 



DEMOSTHENES. 


DEMOSTHENES. 


clan composition. Plato passed the latter years of his 
life in correcting his dialogues ; and that very simplici¬ 
ty remarkable in the structure of the periods of Demos¬ 
thenes is itself the result of art.—The question has often 
been raised as to the secret of the success of Demos¬ 
thenes. How is it that he attained to his astonishing 
pre-eminence 1 How is it that, in a faculty which is 
common to the whole species, that of communicating 
our thoughts and feelings in language, the palm is con¬ 
ceded to him alone by the unanimous and willing con¬ 
sent of all nations and ages 1 And this universal ap¬ 
probation will appear the more extraordinary to a reader 
who for the first time peruses his unrivalled orations. 
They do not exhibit any of that ostentatious decla¬ 
mation, on which loosely hangs the fame of so many 
pretenders to eloquence. There appears no deep re¬ 
flection to indicate a more than ordinary penetration, 
or any philosophical remarks to prove the extent of 
his acquaintance with the great moral writers of his 
country. He affects no learning, and he displays none. 
He aims at no elegance; he seeks no glaring orna¬ 
ments ; he rarely touches the heart with a soft or 
melting appeal, and when he does, it is only with an 
effect in which a third-rate artist would have surpassed 
him. He had no wit, no humour, no vivacity, in our 
acceptance of these terms, qualities which contribute 
so much to the formation of a modern orator. He 
wanted all these undeniable attributes of eloquence, 
and yet who rivals himl—The secret of his power is 
simple ; it lies essentially in this, that his political 
principles were interwoven with his very spirit; they 
were not assumed to serve an interested purpose, to 
be laid aside when he descended from the Bema, and 
resumed when he sought to accomplish an object. 
No; they were deeply seated in his heart, and emanated 
from its profoundest depth. The more his country 
was environed by dangers, the more steady was his 
resolution. Nothing ever impaired the truth and in¬ 
tegrity of his feelings, or weakened his generous con¬ 
viction. It was his undeviating firmness, his disdain 
of all compromise, that made him the first of states¬ 
men and orators ; in this lay the substance of his pow¬ 
er, the primary foundation of his superiority ; the rest 
was merely secondary. The mystery of his mighty 
influence, then, lay in his honesty ; and it is this that 
gave warmth and tone to his feelings, an energy to his 
language, and an impression to his manner, before 
which every imputation of insincerity must have im¬ 
mediately vanished.—We may hence perceive the 
meaning of Demosthenes himself, when, to one who 
asked him what was the first requisite in an orator, he 
merely replied, “ Delivery ” (viroKpLoiq ); and when 
asked what were the second and third requisites, 
gave the same answer as at first. ( Pint ., Vit. X. 
Orat., p. 845.) His idea was this : a lifeless manner 
on the part of a public speaker, shows that his own 
feelings are not enlisted in the cause which he is ad¬ 
vocating, and it is idle for him, therefore, to seek to 
make converts of others, when he has failed in making 
one of himself. On the other hand, when the tone of 
voice, the gesture, the look, the whole manner of the 
orator, display the powerful feelings that agitate him, his 
emotion is communicated to his hearers, and success 
is inevitable. It was not, therefore, mere “ action” 
that Demosthenes required in an orator, an error into 
which some have fallen from a mistranslation of the 
Latin rhetorical term “ actio ” as employed by Cicero 
{Brut., 37) in mentioning this incident; but it was an 
attention to the whole manner of delivery, the look, 
the tone, the every movement, as so many unerring 
indications of internal emotion, and of the honesty and 
sincerity of the speaker. (Compare Quintilian, Inst. 
Or., 11, 3, init.) —A comparison has often been drawn 
between Demosthenes and Cicero ; but by no writer 
has it been done more successfully than by the cele¬ 
brated Longinus. “The sublimity of the one,” he 
430 


remarks, “consists in his abruptness, that of the 
other in his diffuseness. Our countryman (Demos¬ 
thenes), from the force, the fire, the mighty vehemence 
with which he bears down all before him, may be 
compared to a tempest or thunderbolt; while Cicero, 
like a wide-spreading conflagration, devours and rolls 
onward in every direction, ever maintaining its de¬ 
structive energy, and nourished and supported from 
time to time by the fuel of various kinds with which 
it is continually supplied in its progress.” ( Longi¬ 
nus, § 12.) Cicero’s eloquence is like a consular tri¬ 
umph ; he is himself the most conspicuous figure in 
the procession, which is swollen with the grandeur 
and riches of conquered provinces. Demosthenes is 
the terrible sweep of a vast body of cavalry. Cice¬ 
ro’s oratory was local, fitted only to the audience ; 
in Athens it would not have been tolerated. Demos¬ 
thenes was for the whole earth, and at all times. 
In Rome he would have been as resistless as in Ath¬ 
ens ; and his eloquence would be as convincing now 
as it was in the popular assemblies of old. — Of the 
orations of Demosthenes we have sixty-one remaining, 
and sixty-five Introductions, or upooifua dypriyopLKa. 
In confining ourselves to the classification adopted by 
the ancient rhetoricians, we may arrange all these dis¬ 
courses under one of three heads. 1. Deliberative 
discourses ( XoyoL avp.6ovXevTLK.oL), treating of political 
topics, and delivered either before the senate or the 
assembly of the people. 2. Judicial speeches (Xoyoc 
6 lku,vlkol), having for their object accusation or de¬ 
fence. 3. Studied or set speeches (Xoyot emdeiKTi- 
kol ), intended to censure or praise.—Seventeen ol the 
orations of Demosthenes belong to the first of these 
classes, forty-two to the second, and two to the third. 
(Compare Becker, Demosthenes als Staatsmann und 
Redner, Halle, 1815, 2 vols. 8vo.)—Of the seven¬ 
teen discourses which compose the first class, five treat 
of various subjects connected with the republic, and 
twelve of the quarrels between the state and King 
Philip. Our limits, of course, allow an examination 
of only a few of these, that are most important in their 
character. Of the twelve harangues that turn upon 
the quarrels of the republic with King Philip, the first 
was pronounced in the first year of the 107th Olym¬ 
piad, B.C. 352 ; the second, third, and fourth, in the 
fourth year of the same Olympiad, B.C. 349 ; the 
fifth in the second year of the 108th Olympiad, B.C. 
347 ; the sixth in the third of the same Olympiad. 
B.C. 346 ; the seventh in the first year of the 109th 
Olympiad, B.C. 344; the eighth in the second year 
of the same Olympiad, B.C. 343 ; the ninth in the 
third year of the same Olympiad, B.C. 342 ; the 
tenth and eleventh in the fourth year of the same 
Olympiad, B.C. 341 ; and the twelfth in the first 
year of the 110th Olympiad, B.C. 340.—The order 
here given is taken from Dionysius of Halicarnassus ; 
but no manuscript and no editions observe it. The 
manuscripts give the 1st, 2d, 10th, and 11th Philip¬ 
pics of Dionysius by name, and regard his fifth as 
forming the conclusion of the first. They give the 
title of 2d, 3d, and 1st Olynthiacs to his 2d, 3d, and 
4th. The remaining four (6th, 8th, 9th, 12th) have 
the following titles : “ Of Peace,” “ Of Halonesus,” 
“Of the Chersonese,” and “On the letter of Philip.” 
We will now speak of them in chronological order. 
1st and 2d, ITpof ^lXlttttov Xoyog Trpurog, “ First 
Philippic.” Demosthenes here exhorts his fellow- 
citizens to prosecute the war with the greatest vigour 
against Philip. This monarch had, after the defeat of 
the Phocians, assumed a threatening attitude, as if 
wishing to establish himself in their country. The dis¬ 
course we are now considering has been divided into 
two parts, which, according to Dionysius of Halicar 
nassus, were pronounced at different times ; but this 
opinion is contradicted by most critics.—3d, 4th, 5th, 
’O XvvOiauog A. B. T. The three Olynthiacs. Their 



DEMOSTHENES. 


DEMOSTHENES. 


soject is to stimulate the Athenians to succour Olyn- 
thus, and prevent its falling into the hands of Philip. 

—6th. nep2 elpjjvrjg, “ Of the Peace.” Philip 
having obtained a seat in the council of the Amphic- 
tyons, Demosthenes advises his countrymen to pre¬ 
serve the peace with this prince. Libanius thinks 
that this discourse, though written by Demosthenes, 
was never delivered. Leland, Auger, Jacobs, and 
Bekker are, however, of a different opinion.—7th. 
Kara Hoyog B, the Second Philippic, pro¬ 

nounced after the return of Demosthenes from the 
Peloponnesus, where he ha/l negotiated a peace be¬ 
tween Sparta and Messenia.—8th. JUepi rijg 'AAo- 
vrjGov, “ Of Halonesus,” or, rather, of a letter of 
King Philip’s, by which he makes a present to 
the Athenians of the isle of Halonesus, which he 
had taken from the pirates, and demands of the Athe¬ 
nians to share with them the office of protecting the 
seas. Demosthenes strenuously opposes so insulting 
an offer: it is, however, far from certain whether he 
ever pronounced such a discourse as this. Libanius 
says, that the ancient critics ascribed it to Hegesippus, 
the friend of Demosthenes. Suidas and the author of 
the Etymologicon Magnum agree with him. Valcke- 
naer ( Diatr . de fragm. Eurip., p. 253), Larcher 
[Mem. de VAcad. des Inscr., &c., vol. 2, p. 243), and 
Bekker, also adopt this opinion : Jacobs (Demosthenes 
Staatreden, p. 378), after having stated the arguments 
on either side, pronounces no decision: Jacques de 
Tourreil (Preface historique des Philippes de Demos- 
thene , p. 124) and Weiske (Oratio de Haloneso, &c. 
Lubben., 1808, 4to) maintain that the speech is genu¬ 
ine.—9. Ilepi tuv kv XefijbovTjap TTpayparov, ?) 6 rrepl 
\ 107 rd 8 eovg, “ Of the events in the Chersonese, or 
of Diopeithes.” This general, sent at the head of 
a colony into the Chersonesus, had committed hos¬ 
tilities against the city of Cardia ; the only one which 
Philip had reserved for himself in the conditions of 
peace. Diopeithes had even made an inroad into 
Macedonia. Philip insisted on his being punished: 
Demosthenes undertakes in this oration to justify the 
conduct of the Athenian commander.—10th. Kara 
^tlimrov \byog T, the Third Philippic. The prog¬ 
ress which Philip had made in Thrace, where he 
was preparing to lay siege to the cities of Perinthus 
and Byzantium, form the subject of this harangue. 
11. Kara Aoyog A, Fourth Philippic, pro¬ 

nounced at the time when Philip had raised the siege 
of Perinthus, in order to fall upon Byzantium. Valck- 
enaer (Or. de Phil., p. 250), Wolf (ad Lept. Proleg., 
p. lx), and Bekker do not acknowledge this as a pro¬ 
duction of Demosthenes.—12. 'O 7r poq tt]v kruoroTiriv 
^lKlttkov Tioyog, “ On the letter of Philip.” The let¬ 
ter of the king, to which this harangue refers, still ex¬ 
ists. It contains many complaints, but no declaration 
Df war. Taylor, Reiske, Valckenaer, and Bekker, 
consider this letter to be spurious.—We now come to 
the second class of the orations of Demosthenes, 
namely, those of a judicial nature; and here a dis¬ 
tinction must be made between those which refer to 
affairs connected with the state, and those which re¬ 
late to individual interests : in the former case, the 
procedure was called Karriyopia ; in the second, diKij ; 
words which may be translated by “ accusation” and 
“ pleadings.” Of the first species, we have twelve ha¬ 
rangues remaining, the most important one of which is 
that entitled nepi oretyavov, “ Concerning the Crown.” 
Demosthenes had been twice crowned in the theatre 
during the Dionysiac festival; the first- time, after the 
expulsion of the Macedonian garrisons from the island 
of Euboea, and again after the alliance with the The¬ 
bans. In the 2d year of the 110th Olympiad, Ctesi- 
phon, who was then president of the senate, had a 
decree passed by this body, that, if the people ap¬ 
proved, Demosthenes should be crowned at the ap- 
nroaching Dionysiac festival, in the public theatre, as 


a recompense for the disinterested manner in whicn lift 
had filled various offices, and for the services which he 
had never for a moment ceased to render the state. 
This matter had to be confirmed by a psephisma, or 
decree of the people ; but, before it was brought be¬ 
fore them, Hdschines presented himself as the accuser 
of Ctesiphon. He charged him with having violated 
the laws in proposing to crown a public functionary 
before the latter had given an account of the manner 
in which he had discharged his office, and to crown 
him, too, in the theatre, instead of the senate-house or 
the Pnyx, where this could alone be done ; finally, in 
having alleged what was false, for the purpose of 
favouring Demosthenes. He concluded by demanding 
that a fine of fifty talents be imposed upon Ctesiphon. 
The matter remained for some time pending, in con¬ 
sequence of the interruption which public business ot 
all kinds met with during the embarrassments and 
troubles that succeeded the battle of Chseronea. When, 
however, the influence of the Macedonian party had, 
through the exertions of Antipater, gained the ascend¬ 
ancy in Athens, JEschines believed it to be the fa¬ 
vourable moment for the revival of his accusation. It 
was brought forward, therefore, again, in the 3d year of 
the 112th Olympiad, which was eight years since the 
proposition of Ctesiphon had been made. JEschines 
thereupon pronounced his famous harangue, to which 
. Demosthenes replied. This speech of Demosthenes 
is regarded, and justly so, not only as his chef-d’oeuvre, 
but as the most perfect specimen that eloquence has 
ever produced. Such is the opinion of Dionysius of 
Halicarnassus (De Comp. Verb. — Ed. Reiske, Op., 
vol. 5, p. 204), of Cicero (Orat., 1) 133), and of Quin¬ 
tilian (Inst. Or., 11, 1). Modern critics come to the 
same conclusion. It is said that after this discourse, 
Demosthenes no longer appeared as a public speaker, 
Ulpian, in his commentary on the oration respecting 
the crown, relates an anecdote, which has often been 
cited by those scholars who maintain that the Greek 
accents are anterior to the grammarians of Alexandrea. 
Demosthenes is endeavouring to fix the charge of bri¬ 
bery on .dJschines, whom he represents as corrupted 
by Philip and by Alexander, and consequently their 
hireling, and not their friend or guest. Of this asser¬ 
tion he declares his willingness to submit the truth to 
the judgment of the assembly. “ I call thee,” says 
the orator, “ the hireling, first of Philip, and now of 
Alexander ; and all these who are here present agree 
in opinion with me. If thou disbelievest it, ask them 
the question : but no, I will ask them myself.—Athe¬ 
nians, does iEschines appear to you in the light of a 
hireling or a friend of Alexander’s 1 ?”—In putting this 
question, Demosthenes purposely commits a fault of 
accentuation : he places the accent improperly on the 
antepenultima, instead of the last syllable, of picdurog 
—in the words of Ulpian, btcav ebapbdpioev —in order 
to draw the attention of the people from the question 
to the pronunciation. This had the desired effect; 
the accurate ears of the Athenians were struck with 
the mistake ; to correct it, they called out piodorog, 
pioOuTog (“ a hireling ! a hireling !”) from every part 
of the assembly. Affecting to receive the word as the 
expression of their sentiments on the guilt of iEschines, 
he cries out, “ Dost thou hear what they say'?”—The 
simple pleadings (8Uai) relative to matters of private 
interest, constitute the second class of judicial actions. 
Of these we have thirty remaining, which are as fol¬ 
lows : 1. Discourses having relation to the proceed¬ 
ings instituted by Demosthenes against his guardians. 
They are five in number : of these, two are against 
Aphobus, and two against Onitor, his brother.—2. 
A by oi napaypa^LKOL, or, as Cicero (de Invent., 1, 8), 
calls them, constitutionss translaiivce. The Roman 
orator remarks : “ Cum causa ex eo pendet quod non 
aut is agere videtur quern oportet, aut non apud quos, 
quo tempore, qua lege, quo crimine, qua pcena opor- 

431 



DEMOSTHENES. 


D E R 


tet, translativa dicitur constitutio, quia actio transla¬ 
tions et commutationis indigere videtur. Atque harum 
aliquam in omne causae genus incidere necesse est. 
Nam in quam rern non incident, in ea nihil esse po¬ 
test controversise ; quare earn ne causam quidem con- 
venit putari.” We have seven discourses of this class 
from the pen of Demosthenes, viz., against Zenothemis, 
against Apaturius, against Lacritus, against Phormion, 
against Pantasnetus, against Nausimachus, and Xeno- 
pithaea.—3. Discourses relative to the rights of suc¬ 
cession and to questions of dower. These are four 
in number : against Macartatus, against Leochares, 
against Spudias, against Boetus for his mother’s dowry. 
—4. Discourses in matters of commerce and of debt. 
These are three in number : against Calippus, against 
Nicostratus, against Timotheus.—5. Actions for in¬ 
demnity and for damages {fi'kdby, alula ). The dis¬ 
courses under this head are five in number : against 
Bceotus, against Olympiodorus, against Conon, against 
Dionysiodorus, against Callicles.—6. Actions for per¬ 
jury : two discourses against St.ephanus, and one 
against Euergus and Mnesibulus.—7. Three dis¬ 
courses on the subject of the avrldocug, or exchange 
of estates. According to the laws of Athens, if any 
person appointed to undergo any public charge, or 
Xsirovpyla, could find another who was richer than 
himself, and who was free from all duties, the informer 
was excused. But if the person thus substituted de¬ 
nied that he was the richer of the two, they then ex¬ 
changed estates. The discourses under this head are 
the following : against Phoenippus, against Polycles, 
and respecting the crown of the trierarchia.—It would 
be useless to speak of each of these thirty pleadings : 
a few remarks on some of them must suffice. The 
five discourses which Demosthenes pronounced against 
his guardians contain valuable details respecting his 
youth, his fortune, the Athenian laws, &c. Aphobus, 
one of the guardians, was condemned to pay Demos¬ 
thenes the sum of ten talents. It does not appear 
whether he brought the two other guardians to trial or 
not: it is probable that he settled the matter with 
them. These discourses have some resemblance to 
those of Isseus, his master.—The paragraph for Phor- 
mio against Apollodorus has furnished occasion for 
a reproach to the memory of Demosthenes. We are 
told by Plutarch ( Vit. Dem. —vol. 4, p. 717, ed. 
Reiske), that Demosthenes “ wrote an oration for 
Apollodorus, by which he carried bis cause against the 
general Timotheus, in an action for debt to the public 
treasury ; as also those others against Phormio and 
Stephanus, which formed a just exception against his 
character. For he composed likewise the oration 
which Phormio had pronounced against Apollodorus. 
This, therefore, was like furnishing the enemies with 
weapons out of the same shop.”—The discourse against 
Macartatus respecting the succession of Hagnias is in¬ 
teresting from the circumstance of our having the de¬ 
fence of Macartatus by Isseus, and from our being thus 
able to compare the pupil with his former master.—It 
remains to speak of the third class of Demosthenes’ 
orations, the Aoyo*. kmdelKTLKOL , “ studied or set 
speeches.” We have only two remaining, and these, 
very probably, are spurious. The one, z'kitll§iqq Ao- 
yof, is an eloge on the Athenians who had perished at 
Clueronea : the other, kpuriKog Aoyof, is written in 
praise of the beauty of the young Epicrates.—There 
are also six letters of Demosthenes, written by him 
during his exile : five of them are addressed to the 
people of Athens.—The best editions of the entire 
works of Demosthenes are, that of Reiske, in the Cor¬ 
pus Oratorum Grcecorum , and that of Bekker, in the 
Oratores Attici, 10 vols., 8vo, Oxon., 1828. ( Scholl , 

Hist. Lit. G r .,\ ol. 2, p. 224.— Encyclop. Metropol., 
div. 2, vol. 1, p. 699, seqq .— Recollections of an Irish 
Barrister, s. v. Demoslh.)— II. An Athenian general, 
son of Alcisthenes, who obtained considerable reputa- 
432 


tion during a part of the Peloponnesian war. When 
the Spartan monarch Agis made an inroad into At¬ 
tica, Demosthenes, on his part, infested the coasts 
of the Peloponnesus, and seized upon and fortified 
the Messenian Pylos. This led to the affair of 
Sphacteria, in which he had a conspicuous, or, rath¬ 
er, the principal share. He was afterward sent 
with an armament to the relief of Nicias before 
Syracuse ; but, by his precipitate measures there, 
brought defeat upon himself, and the consequent 
ruin of the whole expedition. Demosthenes and Ni¬ 
cias were both put to death while in prison, notwith¬ 
standing the endeavours of the Spartan commander 
Gylippus to save their lives. Another account, allu¬ 
ded to by Plutarch, makes them to have been stoned ti 
death. {Thucyd.,A,3, seqq. — Plut., Vit. Nic .)—III. 
The father of the orator Demosthenes, a rich manu¬ 
facturer of arms. {Plut., Vit. Demosth.) — IV. A 
Greek physician, a disciple of Alexander Philalethes, 
who obtained the same surname as his master, name • 
ly, Philalethes, or “ Lover of Truth.” He flourished 
about the commencement of our era, and turned his at¬ 
tention particularly to diseases of the eye. W r e have 
some fragments remaining of his writings on this sub¬ 
ject, which appear to have formed part of a work 
often cited by Galen, Oribasius, and Aetius. ( Spren - 
gel, Hist, de la Med., vol. 1, p. 458.— Renauldin, in 
Biogr. TJniv., vol. 11, p. 64.) 

Deo {Ayu), a name given to Ceres. According to 
the common account, it means “ the finder” or “ in- 
ventress,” and alludes to the search for, and discovery 
of, her daughter, on the part of the goddess. (Com¬ 
pare Eustath., ad Horn., Od., 11, 115.— Apollon „ 
Lex. Horn., p. 221 ,ed. Toll.) Knight, however, gives 
a different and much superior explanation. “ Ceres, 
he observes, “ was not a personification of the brute 
matter which composed the earth, but of the passive 
productive principle supposed to pervade it; which, 
joined to the active, was held to be the cause of the 
organization and animation of its substance; whence 
arose her other Greek name, AH£2, the inventress.” 
{Enquiry, &c., § 36.)—Some etymologists are in fa¬ 
vour of an Oriental derivation for the name. Thus, 
Sickler {Hymn, ad Cer., p. 112) deduces it from th« 
Hebrew davah, “ to be,feeble” or “afflicted,” in allu 
sion to the sorrow of Ceres for the loss of her daugh 
ter ; or, as he explains it, the condition of the vegeta¬ 
ble kingdom, when the quickening principle does no 
act. Schelling also makes Deo signify “ the one tha< 
has become feeble and dejected with sorrow and fruit¬ 
less search.” {Gotth. der Samcthrak., p. 13 .—Id.ih., 
p- 57.— Creuzer, Symbolik, vol. 4, p. 275, not.) The 
term Ayu occurs in the Homeric hymn to Ceres (v. 
47, 211, 497), but is suspected by Hermann of being 
an interpolation. {Horn., Hymn., ed. Herm. — Epist. 
ed., p. ci., seq.) 

DeoIne (A yotvy), a name given by the Greek poets 
to Proserpina, as the daughter of Deo or Ceres. Vid. 
Deo. {Callim., fragm., 48.— Valck., ad loc.) 

Derbe, a city of Asia Minor, in Lycaonia, near 
Isauria. D’Anville places it in a district of Isauria 
called Antiochiana, agreeing with Ptolemy (p. 124) 
and Stephanus of Byzantium ; but St. Luke {Acts, 
14, 6) and Hierocles (p. 675) assign it to Lycaonia 
Derbe and the adjacent town of Lystra derive consid¬ 
erable interest from what befell St. Paul and Barna 
bas there on leaving Iconium. Stephanus reports, tha* 
this place was called by some Delbia, which, in the 
Lycaonian language, signified “the juniper.” The 
same lexicographer describes it as a fortress and port 
of Isauria ; but we ought, in his account, to substitute 
Mpvy for Xtpyv, which would imply, that the town was 
situated near some one of the numerous lakes that are 
to be found in this part of Asia Minor. Derbe, as we 
learn from Strabo (569), was at one time the residence 
and capital of Antipater, the robber chieftain of Lvca 






DEV 


DEUCALION. 


oma. Its name is supposed to have been derived from 
the word Darb, a gate ; and here, perhaps, was one of 
the passes of Mount Taurus, as the name of Alah-dag 
-s yet given to the spot, signifying the pass of the high 
mountains. Colonel Leake thinks, that the ruins 
now called Binbir-Klissa, or the Thousand and One 
Churches, will perhaps be found to be those of Derbe : 
they ha ^2 never yet, he adds, been visited, or at least 
described, by any modern traveller. ( Walpole's Me¬ 
moirs, vol. 2, p. 233.— Leake's Asia Minor, p. 101. 
— Cramer's Asia Minor , vol. 2, p. 68.) 

Derbices, a nation of Upper Asia, whom Ptolemy 
(6, 10) places in Margiana, where the Oxus, accord¬ 
ing to him, empties into the Caspian ; but Strabo (782) 
in Hyrcania. Larcher seeks to reconcile this discrep¬ 
ance by supposing, that, in Strabo’s time, Margiana did 
not yet extend as far as the Caspian. Others place 
them on the southern and western shores of the Cas¬ 
pian. (Mannert, Geogr., vol. 5, pt. 2, p. 135.) Wahl, 
however, thinks that they occupied a part of what is 
now Chorasan. (Vorder und Mitlel-As., vol. 1, p. 562.) 
The most probable opinion is, that the Derbices dwelt 
not only around the Oxus and the shores of the Cas¬ 
pian, but that their territories extended also to the 
east as far as Bactriana. ( Bahr , ad Ctes., Pers., c. 
6.— Von Hammer, Wien. Jahrb., vol. 7, p. 253.) 

Derceto and Dercetis, a goddess worshipped by 
the Syrians, and the same, in all probability, with 
Atargatis, the name Derceto or Dercetis itself being, 
apparently, a mere corruption from Atargatis. ( Vid. 
Atargatis.)—According to Diodorus Siculus (2, 4) and 
Lucian (de Syria Dea , 14), her statues represented 
her as half woman, half fish, the female part being 
from the head to the loins. The Syrians of Ascalon, 
where Derceto had one of her temples, accounted for 
this peculiarity of form by the following legend. Der¬ 
ceto, it seems, having offended Venus, was inspired 
by the latter with a passion for a young priest, and, 
having become a mother, and being filled with shame 
at her own conduct, she put the young man to death, 
exposed the child in a lonely spot, and, throwing her¬ 
self into the sea, became partially transformed into a 
fish. Hence the Syrians abstained from eating fish, 
and regarded them as something divine. The child 
was the famous Semiramis. ( Diod ., 1. c .) Guigni- 
aut makes the true form of the name Atargatis to have 
been Addirdaga, i. e., “ the excellent” or “ divine 
fish.” The root is dag, “a fish,” which we find in¬ 
verted in Atargatis and Derceto , but plainly appearing 
in the Syrian name Dagon. Dupuis and others make 
the Syrian fish-worship to have had an astronomical 
basis, in which they are very probably correct. ( Ori - 
gine des Cultes, vol. 2, ch. 17.— Guigniaut, vol. 2, 
pt. 1, p. 35, seqq.) 

Dert6na, a city of Liguria, about twenty miles to 
the west of Asta. According to Strabo (217), it was 
a considerable place. It was a Roman colony ( Plin., 
3, 5), surnaraed Iulia, as we learn from ancient in¬ 
scriptions. The modern name is Tortona. {Veil. 
Pat ere., 1, 15.— Cic., Ep. ad Fam., 11, 13.) 

Dertose, now Tortosa, a city of the Ilercaones in 
Spain, situate on the Iberus, a short distance above 
its mouth. Here was a bridge over the river, and 
along this route led the main military road to the 
southern parts of Spain, and the colonies established 
there. ( Ukert , Geog vol. 2, p. 418.— Mannert, 
Geogr., vol. 1, p. 429.) 

Deva, I. a city of the Cornavii in Britain. It lay 
on the river Seteia, or Dee, and was the station of the 
20th legion. Devana is merely an error of the edi¬ 
tions : the Greek form of the name in Ptolemy is 
Ayova. 1 Mannert, Geogr., vol. 2, p. 131.) It is 
now Chester. —II. A river of Britain, in the north, 
now the Dee, from which the cities of Old and New 
Aberdeen, the latter of which lies at its mouth, derive 
‘•keir name. ( Mannert, Geogr., vol. 2, p. 201.)—III. 

J>i 


There was another river named Deva in Britain on 
the northwestern coast, which is also called Dee, and 
flows into Wigtoun Bay, the ancient Jena yEstuarium. 

Deucalion, a prominent personage in the mythical 
traditions from which Greek history sprang. He is 
represented as the son of Prometheus and Clymene 
(Schol. ad Pind., 01., 9, 72), or of Prometheus anu 
Pandora, and is sometimes called the father ( Thucyd., 
1, 3), sometimes the brother of Hellen (Schol. ad 
Apollon. PL, 3, 1086), the reputed founder of thfc 
Greek nation. The seat of his authority was Thes¬ 
saly, from which, according to general tradition, he 
was driven to Parnassus by a great deluge ( Apollod ., 
1, 7, 2), which, however, according to Aristotle (Me¬ 
teor ol., 1, 14), occurred between Dodona and the 
Achelous. The Greek legend respecting this memo¬ 
rable event is as follows : Deucalion was married to 
Pyrrha, the daughter of Epimetheus and Pandora. 
When Jupiter designed to destroy the brazen race of 
men on account of their impiety, Deucalion, by the, 
advice of his father, made himself an ark ( "hdpvana), 
and, putting provisions into it, entered it with his wife 
Pyrrha. Jupiter then poured rain from heaven, and 
inundated the greater part of Greece, so that all the 
people, except a few who escaped to the lofty mount¬ 
ains, perished in the waves. At the same time, the 
mountains of Thessaly were burst through by the flood, 
and all Greece without the isthmus, as well as all the 
Peloponnesus, were overflowed. Deucalion was car¬ 
ried along the sea in his ark for nine days and nights, 
until he reached Mount Parnassus. By this time the 
rain had ceased, and, leaving his ark, he sacrificed to 
Jupiter “ Flight-giving" (4u£i0f), who sent Hermes, 
desiring him to ask what he would. His request was 
to have the earth replenished with men. By the di¬ 
rection of Jupiter, thereupon, he and his wife flung 
stones behind them, and those which Deucalion cast 
became men, those thrown by Pyrrha women; and 
from this circumstance, say the Greeks, came the 
name for people (Aaof from Aaaf, “ a stone." — Apol¬ 
lod., 1, 7, 2).—This narrative, it may easily be seen, 
is of a very narrow and even unpoetic character. It 
restricts the general deluge to Greece Proper, perhaps 
originally to Thessaly (Aristot., 1. c.); and it most 
incongruously represents others as having escaped 
as well as Deucalion; yet, at the same time, it inti¬ 
mates, that he and his wife alone had been preserved 
in the catastrophe. What is said of the brazen age is 
quite at variance with the narrative of Hesiod, and is 
a very clumsy attempt at connecting two perfectly in¬ 
dependent and irreconcilable myths. The circum¬ 
stance of the ark is thought by some to be borrowed 
from the Mosaic account, and to have been learned at 
Alexandrea, for we elsewhere find the dove noticed. 
“The mythologists,” says Plutarch, “inform us, that 
a dove let fly out of the ark, was to Deucalion a sign 
of bad weather if it came in again, of good weather if 
it flew away.” ( Plat., de solert. an. — Op., ed. Reiske, 
vol. 10, p. 37.) The sacrifice and the appearance of 
Hermes also strongly remind us of Noah.—The Latin 
writers take a much nobler view of the deluge. Ac¬ 
cording to them, it overspread the whole earth, and 
all animal life perished except Deucalion and Pyrrha, 
whom Ovid, who gives a very poetical account of this 
great catastrophe, conveys in a small boat to the sum¬ 
mit of Parnassus ; while others make iEtna or Athos 
the mountain which yielded them a refuge. (Olid, 
Met., 1, 253, seqq.—Hygin., fab., 153. — Serv. ad 
Virg., Eclog., 6, 41.) According to Ovid, they con 
suited the ancient oracle of Themis respecting the res¬ 
toration of mankind, and received the following re 
sponse : “ Depart from the fane, veil your heads 
loosen your girded vestments, and cast behind you the 
great bones of your parent.” (Met., 1, 381, seqq.) 
They were at first horror-struck at such an act of im¬ 
piety being enjoined upon them; but at length Dea- 





b I A 


DIANA. 


capon penetrated the sense of the oracle, the stones 
beino-, by a very natural figure, the bones of the earth. 

—Deucalion and Pyrrha are evidently pure beings of 
fiction, personifications of water and fire. 1 he name 
Deucalion comes very probably from Sevo (whence 
devKPs), to wet; while Pyrrha is evidently derived 
from Trvp, fire. The meaning of the legend will then 
be, that when the passage through which the Peneus 
carries off the waters that run into the vale of Thes¬ 
saly, which is on all sides shut in by lofty mountains, 
had been closed by some accident, they overflowed 
the whole of its surface, till the action of subterranean 
fire opened a way for them. According to this view 
of the subject, then, the deluge of Deucalion was 
merely a local one ; and it was not until the time of 
Ptolemy Philadelphus, when the Hebrew Scriptures 
became known to the Greeks, that some features bor¬ 
rowed from the universal deluge of Noah were incor¬ 
porated into the story of the Thessalian flood. ( Welck- 
er, Tril., p. 549, not.—Keightley's Mythology.—Clin¬ 
ton's Fasti Hellenici, vol. 1, p. 43, not.) It is but 
fair to remark, however, that many modern writers re¬ 
gard the deluge of Deucalion as nothing else than a 
tradition of the great cataclysm of Noah, altered in 
some of its features, and placed by the Hellenes in the 
period which they also assigned to Deucalion, because 
he was regarded as the founder of their nation, and 
because his history is confounded with that of all the 
chiefs of the renewed nations. Such, in particular, is 
the opinion of the celebrated Cuvier. ( Theory of the 
Earth , p. 145, seqq., Jameson's transl. — Ovid, ed. 
Lemaire, vol. 3, p. xiii., seqq.) 

Dia, I. another name for the island of Naxos. 

( Plin ., 4, 12.)—II. An island not far from the north¬ 
ern shore of Crete. It is now Standia. 

Diagofas, I. a native of the island of Melos, and fol¬ 
lower of Democritus. Having been sold as a captive 
in his youth, he was redeemed by Democritus, and 
trained up in the study of philosophy. He attached 
himself also to lyric poetry, and was much distinguish¬ 
ed for his success in this branch of the art. His name, 
however, has been transmitted with infamy to posteri¬ 
ty, as that of an avowed advocate for the rejection of 
all religious belief. It is expressly asserted by ancient 
writers, that when, in a particular instance, he saw a 
perjured person escape punishment, he publicly de¬ 
clared his disbelief of Divine Providence, and from 
that time spoke of the gods and all religious ceremo¬ 
nies with ridicule and contempt. He even attempted 
to lay open the sacred mysteries, and to dissuade the 
people from submitting to the rites of initiation. A 
price at last was set upon his head, and he fled to Cor¬ 
inth, where he died. He lived about 416 years before 
Christ. (Cic., N. D., 1, 23.— Id. ib., 3, 37.— Val. 
Max., 1,1, ext. 7.)—II. An athlete of Rhodes, who 
gained the prize in pugilism at the Olympic games, 
B.C. 462, 01. 79. His victory was celebrated by 
Pindar, in an ode which is still extant (Olympiad 7), 
and which is said to have been inscribed in golden let¬ 
ters in the temple of the Lindian Minerva, at Rhodes. 
According to Pindar, he twice obtained the victory in 
the games of Rhodes, four times at the Isthmian, and 
was successful also at the Nemean and other contests. 
Aulus Gellius (3, 15) informs us, that he saw his three 
sons crowned on the same day at the Olympic games, 
and expired through joy. Bayle (Diet., s. v.) censures 
Pindar for prolix digression in the ode above referred 
to, and is censured in turn by Bockh : “ Baylius, Pin- 
dan quidem pessimus judex : nam hoc carmen, quod 
nb digressiones reprehendit, ita pulchre adornatum est, 
ut nihil vituperari queat." (Bockh, ad Find., 01., 7, 
voi. 3, p. 167.) 

Di am asti go sis, a festival at Sparta in honour of Di¬ 
ana Orthia. (Vid. Bomonicae.) 

Diana (called by the Greeks V A preyte, Artemis), 
was the-daughter of Jupiter and Latona, and sister of 
434 


Apollo. She was the goddess of the chase ; she also 
presided over the delivery of females. I he sudden 
deaths of women were ascribed to her darts, as those 
ot men were to the arrows of her brother, o*f whom she 
forms the exact counterpart. Diana was a spotless 
virgin ; her chief joy was to speed like a Dorian maid 
over the hills, followed by a train of nymphs, in pur¬ 
suit of the flying game. Callimachus thus relates the 
early history of the goddess. (Hymn. ad. Diun.) Di¬ 
ana, while yet a child, as she sat on her father s knee, 
besought him to grant her permission to lead a life of 
perpetual virginity, to get a bow and arrows formed by 
the Cyclopes, and to devote herself to the chase. She 
farther asked for sixty Ocean-nymphs as her compan¬ 
ions, and twenty nymphs from Amnisus in Crete as her 
attendants. Of towns and cities she required not more 
than one, satisfied with the mountains, which she ne ver 
would leave, but to aid women in the pains of child 
birth. Her indulgent sire assented with a smile, and 
gave her not one, but thirty towns. She speeds to 
Crete, and thence to Ocean, and selects all her nymphs. 
On her return, she calls at Lipara on Vulcan and the 
Cyclopes, who immediately lay aside all their work to 
execute her orders. She now proceeds to Arcadia, 
where Pan, the chief god of that country, supplies her 
with dogs of an excellent breed. Mount Parrhasius 
then witnessed the first exploit of the huntress-goddess. 
Five deer, larger than bulls, with horns of gold, fed 
on the banks of the dark-pebbled Anaurus, at the foot 
of that hill; of these the goddess, unaided by her dogs, 
caught four, which she reserved to draw her chariot; 
the fifth, destined by Juno for the last labour of Her¬ 
cules, bounded across the Keladon and escaped.— 
The adventures of Diana were not numerous. She 
turned Actseon into a stag for having unconsciously 
beheld her when bathing. Callisto was changed by her 
into a bear lor a breach of maiden purity. Orion per¬ 
ished by tier arrows. Along with her brother she de¬ 
stroyed the children of Niobe ; and, in a fable later 
than Homer, she is said to have detained the Grecian 
fleet at Auiis, in consequence of Agamemnon’s having 
killed a hmd which was sacred to her, and to have re¬ 
quired the sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia. The 
Aloidae, Otus and Ephialtes, sought in marriage Juno 
and Diana ; the latter goddess, changing her form into 
a hind, sprang out between the two brothers, who, 
aiming their darts at the supposed beast, by her art 
pierced each other, and died.—If Diana or Artemis 
were merely one of the names under which the moon, 
was worshipped, it need not surprise us to find her 
identified with Selene, with Hecate, and even with 
Proserpina, the goddess of the. under world, and to be 
thence called me three-formed goddess, ruling as Se¬ 
lene in the sky, as Artemis or Diana on earth, as He¬ 
cate or Proserpina in Erebus. This will also give a 
very simple reasun for her being the aider of women 
in labour. The moon was believed by the ancients to 
have great influence over growth in general (Plin., 
18, 30.— Id., 2, 99.— Id., 10, 54.— Plut., de Is. e . 
Os. , 41.— Eudocia, 11); and as, moreover, a woman’ 
time was reckoned by moons, it was natural to con 
ceive that the moon-goddess presided over the birth o.. 
children. (Vid. Lucina.)—On the other hand, sud¬ 
den deaths were ascribed to the influence of Apollo 
and Diana. In the former case, this will be an a.k- 
sion to the coups de soleil; in the latter, to the wel- 
known unhealthy influence of the moon, in producing 
fevers, &c. Diana was also confounded with the god¬ 
dess worshipped on the Tauric Chersonese, whose al¬ 
tars were stained with the blood of such unhappy 
strangers as were cast on that inhospitable shore. 
(Herod., 4, 103.— Eurip., Iph. in Taur.) She was 
identified, too, with the goddess of nature adored at 
Ephesus, whose symbolical figure, by its multitude ot 
breasts and heads of animals hung around it, denoted 
the fecundity of nature.—Diana is generally repre 






I) I A 


1) I C 


sented as a healthy, strong, active maiden ; handsome, 
but with no gentleness of expression. She wears the 
Cretan hunting-shoes (evdpofudeq), and has her gar¬ 
ment tucked up for speed. On her back she bears a 
quiver, and in her hand a bow or a hunting-spear. She 
■js usually attended by a hound. Walker considers the 
mode in which this goddess is represented as an il¬ 
lustration of what he terms the locomotive system. 
(Analysis of Beauty , p. 220.)—The name Artemis 
seems identical with upTEfirjq, whole, uninjured, and, 
therefore, sound and pure, probably with reference to 
the virginity of the goddess. Welcker, however, re¬ 
gards it as an epithet of the same nature with Opis 
and Nemesis, and says that it is api-Qe/uig. (Schwenk, 
p. 263.) The name Diana comes from Dia or Deiva 
Jana, which became Diajana or Deivjana, and ulti¬ 
mately Diana. She was invoked as Deiva Iana in 
the Salian hymns. Varro makes Iana the same as 
Luna. (R. R., 1, 37, 3.) Nigidius, however (ap. 
Macrob., Sat., 1, 9), makes Diana come from Iana 
with D prefixed; while Lanzi deduces the name from 
the early Greek form TH ANA (i. e., iq uvaooa, “ the 
queen ”), just as Apollo is called aval;. (Saggio di 
Lingua Etrusca, vol. 1, p. 48, not.) —Mythologists 
are divided respecting the original nature of Apollo and 
Diana. The question is, whether they are to be re¬ 
garded as physical or moral beings. Both classes of 
disputants agree that the. latter is their character in 
the Homeric and Hesiodic poetry, where Apollo ap¬ 
pears only as the god of prophecy, music, and ar¬ 
chery, and Diana as his counterpart in this last office. 
Voss, therefore (with whom agree Wolf, Lobeck, Her¬ 
mann, Volcker, Nitzsch, and Muller), maintains such 
to have been the original conception of these deities ; 
while Heyne, Buttmann, Welcker, Creuzer, Guigniaut, 
and others, think that Apollo and Diana were, in their 
primitive character, the same with the sun and moon. 
This latter hypothesis is undoubtedly the more correct 
one of the two. ( Keightley's Mythology, p. 128, seqq.) 
The references, in the discussion just alluded to, are as 
follows : Voss, Mythol. Bricfe, vol. 2, p. 385.— Id. 
ib., vol. 3, p. 53.— Wolf, ad II., 1, 43.— Lobeck, Ag- 
laoph., p. 79.— Hermann, iiber das Wesen, &c., p. 
106, seqq. — Volcker, Myth, der lap., p. 309.— Heyne, 
ad II., 1, 50.— Buttmann, Mytholog.,\ ol. 1, p. 1, seqq. 
— Welcker, Tril., p. 41, 65, 222. 

Dianium Promontorium, a promontory and town 
ef Hispania Tarraconensis, on the Mediterranean coast, 
opposite the Pityuss Insulaa. The modern name of 
the town is Denia, and of the promontory, cape St. 
Martin. It was one of the three towns on this coast 
whose foundation was ascribed to the Massilians. It 
was called by them Artemisium, from the Greek name 
of Diana, who had a temple here which was much 
venerated. Sertorius made this the chief station for 
his fleet, in consequence of its favourable position for 
intercepting the vessels of the foe. Mela names the 
promontory Ferraria, without doubt from iron-works 
in its vicinity. ( Strab ., 159.— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 
1, p. WZ.—Mela, 2, 6.) 

Diasia, a festival in honour of Jupiter at Athens. 
In ancient Attica, the four tribes under the govern¬ 
ment of Erichthonius derived their names from four 
divinities, Jupiter, Minerva, Neptune, and Vulcan. 
They were termed, accordingly, A lag, ’ Kdrjvaitg, IIo- 
oeiduviag, and 'H tyaiCTidg. The deities in question 
were the four great possessors of the Attic soil, and 
Jove was the first among them. At the outgoing of 
the month Anthesterion, all the citizens celebrated his 
festival under the name of Diasia; many, after the 
old fashion, offered him the fruits of their fields, while 
others sacrificed cattle. It was a state family-feast; 
the old idea of house and court not being forgotten in 
it. ( Creuzer, Symbolik, vol. 2, p. 510.— Wachsmuth, 
Alterthumsk., vol. 4, p. 25, et 139. — Mitchell, ad 
Anstovh., Nub., 397.) 


Dibio, a city of Gaul, in the territory of the Linge¬ 
ries, and now Dijon. It was founded, according to 
some authorities, by the Emperor Aurelian, while 
others make him merely to have fortified it anew, 
(Greg. Turon., 3, 19.) 

Dic^ea, a town of Thrace in the territory of the 
Bistones, and to the southeast of the Bistonian marsh. 
(Herod., 7, 109.— Scylax, p. 27.— Strabo, Epit.., 7, p. 
331.) Dr. Clarke, in his travels, mentions the Bis- 
tonis Palus, and some ruins near it, which probably 
are to be identified with those of Dicaea. (Clarke's 
Travels, vol. 8, p. 65.) 

Dic^earchia. Vid. Puteoli. 

Dic^earchus, I. a native of Messana in Sicily. He 
was a scholar of Aristotle’s, and is called a peripatetic 
philosopher by Cicero (Off., 2, 5); but, though he 
wrote some works on philosophical subjects, he seems 
to have devoted his attention principally to geography 
and statistics. His chief philosophical work was two 
dialogues “ on the Soul,” each divided into three books, 
the one dialogue being supposed to have been held at 
Corinth, the other at Mytilene. In these he argued 
against the Platonic doctrines of the soul, and, indeed, 
altogether denied its existence. The greatest perform¬ 
ance, however, of Dicaearchus was a treatise on the ge¬ 
ography, politics, and manners of Greece, which he 
called B log 'E TCAddog, “ The Life of Greece” (a title 
imitated by Varro in his- Vita Populi Romani). —All 
the philosophical writings of Dicaearchus are lost. His 
geographical works have shared the same fate, except 
a few fragments. We have remaining one hundred 
and fifty verses of his ’A vaypatyr] rf/g 'EiM, udog, or 
“ Description of Greece, 1 ' written in iambic trimeters ; 
and also two fragments of the B log 'EA/l ddog, one con¬ 
taining a description of Boeotia and Attica, and anoth¬ 
er an account of Mount Pelion. It has been con¬ 
jectured, with great appearance of truth, that the cita¬ 
tions from Dicaearchus, in which his treatises on “ Mu¬ 
sical Contests,” “ on the Dionysian Contests,” &c., 
are referred to, are drawn from his “ Life of Greece,” 
and that the grammarians have named them by the title 
of the subdivision to which these subjects belonged, in¬ 
stead of the leading title of the book. (Ndke, Rhein. 
Mus. for 1833, p. 47.) Dicaearchus’s maps were ex¬ 
tant in the time of Cicero (Ep. ad Att., 6, 2), but 
his geography was not much to be depended upon. 
(Strab., 104.) Cicero was very fond of the writings 
of Dicaearchus, and speaks of him in terms of warm 
admiration. (Ep. ad Att., 2, 2.) In one of the ex 
tant fragments Dicaearchus quotes Posidippus, and 
must therefore have been alive in 289 B.C.—The re¬ 
mains of this writer are given in the Geographi Grceci 
Minores of Hudson, Gail, and Bernhardy. They were 
printed also (with the exception of the one respecting 
Pelion) in the collection of Stephens, Paris, 1590, and 
in the second volume of Gronovius’s Thesaurus An- 
tiq. Grace. Marx has given a new edition of them in 
Creuzer’s Meletemata, vol. 3, p. 174, seqq. —II. A 
grammarian, a pupil of Aristarchus. (Suid.) 

Dict^eus Mons. Vid. Dicte. 

Dictamnum Promontorium. Vid. Dictynnaeum 
Promontorium. 

Dictator, the highest extraordinary magistrate in 
the Roman republic. Though the name obviously 
contains the element die (from dico), it was doubted 
by the Roman writers, whether the title had reference 
to the mode of his nomination or his power. He was 
also called Praetor Maximus, and Magister Populi, 
and in Greek diovirarog, or “double consul.” After 
the expulsion of the kings, the consulship was estab¬ 
lished. The two consuls possessed the same power 
as the kings in the administration of the state and the 
command of the army, yet their authority was subject 
to some restrictions, and principally to the appeal that 
could be made from their decisions. The two con¬ 
suls, possessing equal authority, often differed in their 

435 



DICTATOR. 


D I C 


views and opinions; a circumstance which necessa¬ 
rily caused jealousy and disunion, particularly in the 
command of the army when on active service. In 
extraordinary emergencies, therefore, the republic re¬ 
quired a single magistrate, in zested with ample au¬ 
thority. Such circumstances led to the establishment 
of the dictatorship. The first dictator was created 
about 253 A.U.C., or 501 B.C. ( Liv ., 2,18.) The 
dictator united in himself the pox'er of the two con¬ 
suls ; and the authority of all the other magistrates, 
except that of the tribunes, ceased as soon as he was 
appointed. He possessed the whole administrative 
power of the state, and the command of the army 
without any restrictions. ( Dio Cass., according to 
Zonaras, 7, 13, where a reference to a lost book of 
Dio is given.— Dion. Hal., 5, 70, seqq.) He had the 
power of life and death, and there was no appeal from 
his decision. This power, however, continued only 
for the space of six months, even although the busi¬ 
ness for which he had been created was not finished, 
and was never prolonged beyond that time except in 
extreme necessity, as in the case of Camillus, for Syl- 
la and Caesar usurped their perpetual dictatorshin in 
contempt of the laws of their country. But the dic¬ 
tator usually resigned his command whenever he had 
effected the business for which he had been created : 
thus, Q. Cincinnatus and Mamercus iEmilius abdica¬ 
ted the dictatorship on the 16th day ; Q. Servilius on 
the 8th day. Another check on the dictator’s power 
was, that he could lay out none of the public money 
without the authority of the senate or the order of the 
people. He could not, moreover, leave Italy ; a law 
which was only once violated, and that on account of 
the most urgent necessity, as, for example, in the first 
Punic war, when a dictator commanded in Sicily. 
(Liv., Epit., 19.) Neither was he allowed to ride on 
horseback without the permission of the people. The 
principal check, however, against a dictator’s abuse of 
power was, that he might be called to an account for 
his conduct when he resigned his office. The dicta¬ 
tor was not created by the suffrages of the people, as 
the other magistrates, but one of the consuls, by order 
of the senate, named as dictator whatever person of 
consular dignity he thought proper ; and this he did, 
after having taken the auspices, usually in the dead of 
night. Sometimes the senate itself appointed the dic¬ 
tator, and in some instances he was elected by the 
comitia. The dictator was preceded by twenty-four 
lictors, with the fasces and securis, or, in other words, 
bv as many as the two consuls together. The wri¬ 
ters on Roman antiquities, and especially Dr. Adam, 
assert, that the dictator was attended by twenty-four 
lictors with the fasces and securis even in the city. 
In this they appear to have erred. Plutarch, indeed, 
tells us, in his life of Fabius, that the dictator was at¬ 
tended by twenty-four lictors ; but, as Justus Lipsius 
observes, this statement is contradicted by higher au¬ 
thority ; for we are told in the epitome of the 89th 
book of Livy, that Sylla, in assuming to himself twen¬ 
ty-four lictors, had done a thing entirely unprecedent¬ 
ed : “ Sylla, dictator factus, quod nemo quidem un- 
quam fecerat, cum fascibus viginti quatuor grocessit.^ 
—At first the dictator was taken only from the patri¬ 
cian order, but afterward (B.C. 356) from the plebeians 
also. After his appointment he nominated the mas¬ 
ter of the horse ( Magister Equit-um), who commanded 
under him. Sometimes, however, a master of the 
horse was pitched upon for the dictator by the senate, 
or by the order of the people. It was only when the 
state was menaced by a sudden danger from within 
or without that a dictator was nominated ; but, in 
the course of time, a dictator was elected to preside 
at the elections in the comitia, when the consuls were 
abroad ; and also on some other public solemnities. 
(Liv., 7, 3.— Id., 8, 18, et 23.) For one hundred and 
twenty years before Sylla, he creation of a dictator was 
43$ 


disused, but in dangerous emergencies the consuls 
were armed with dictatorial power. This office, so re¬ 
spectable and illustrious in the first ages of the repub¬ 
lic, became odious by the usurpations of Sylla and 
Csesar ; and, after the death of the latter, the Roman 
senate, on the motion of the consul Antony, passed a 
decree, which forbade a dictator’s being ever after ap¬ 
pointed at Rome. Augustus declined the office, though 
offered to him by the people (Suet., Aug., 52), and the 
title of dictator was never assumed by the emperors 
of Rome.—These are the received opinions as to the 
Roman dictators; but in Niebuhr’s Roman History 
we find other views of the subject, to which we shall 
briefly advert. According to him, the dictatorship 
was of Latin origin, and was introduced from the Latins 
among the Romans. The object of the Roman dic¬ 
tatorship was to evade the Valerian laws, and to es¬ 
tablish the power of the patricians over the plebeians ; 
for the appeal granted by those laws was from the 
sentence of the consuls, not from that of the dictator 
The later Romans had but an indistinct knowledge of 
the dictatorship of the ancient constitution. Dio Cas 
sius is in error when (without excepting the patri¬ 
cians) he asserts, that in no instance was there a right 
of appeal from the dictator, and that he could con¬ 
demn knights and senators to death without trial. 
Dionysius is also in error when he says that the die 
tator decided on every measure according to his own 
pleasure. It is incorrect to suppose, that the appoint¬ 
ment of the dictator in all cases rested with one of the 
consuls ; for the conferring of kingly power (such as 
that of the dictator was) could never have been in¬ 
trusted to a single person. The pontifical books have 
preserved so much as this, that the dictator was nomi¬ 
nated by the senate, and that the nomination was ap¬ 
proved by the people. As the plebeians increased in 
power, the dictatorship was seldom required, and then 
only for matters of less importance, and in such cases 
the nomination was left to the consuls. For a genera< 
sketch of the dictatorial power, consult Creuzer, Rom. 
Antiq., p. 231, seqq. — Niebuhr, Rom. Hist., vol. 1, p. 
495, seqq., Cambr. transl. 

Dicte, a mountain of the island of Crete, now called 
Scthia, and also Lasthi, next in height to Mount Ida, 
and covered throughout a great part of the year with 
snow ; whence it is denominated by Strabo, Pliny, and 
Ptolemy, “ the White Mountain.” (Strabo, 338.— 
Compare Athenceus, 9, p. 376.) It is commonly sup¬ 
posed to have obtained its name from Dictynna, a 
nymph of Crete, who is supposed first to have invented 
hunting-nets (dinrva), and to have been called Dictyn¬ 
na on that account, having been before named Brito 
martis. (Callim., Hymn, in Dian., v. 197.) Strabo, 
however, censures Callimachus for his false derivation 
of the name. According to another account, she 
plunged into the sea in order to avoid Minos, who 
pursued her, and was caught in a fisherman’s net. 
This mountain was consecrated to Jupiter, and hence 
he was called Dictceus, as well as from a cave which 
was there, in which he had been concealed from Sat¬ 
urn. (Virgil, Georg., 4, 149.) Crete was sometimes 
also styled by the poets Dictcea arva. (Virg., jEn., 
3,171.) 

Dictynna, a nymph of Crete. (Vid. Dicte.) 

Dictynn^eum, or Dictamnum Promontorium, a 
promontory on the northern coast of the isle of Crete, 
towards the northwest. This promontory, answering 
to the Psacum Promontorium of Ptolemy, forms the 
termination of a chain called Tityrus by Strabo (499). 
On its summit was placed a celebrated temple of the 
nymph Britomartis or Dictynna. (Diod. Sic., 5, 76. 
—Mela , 2, 7.) The site of the temple now bears the 
name of Magny. (Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 
365.) 

Dictys, I. a Cretan, said to have accompanied Ido- 
meneus to the Trojan war, and to have written a histo 







D 1 1) 


D I D 


ry of that contest. Tins work, according to the ac¬ 
count that has come down to us, was discovered in the 
reign of Nero, in a tomb near Cnossus, which was laid 
open by an earthquake. It was written in Phoenician, 
and translated into Greek by one Eupraxides or Praxis. 
The Greek translation has not reached our times, but 
we have remaining the Latin version of Q. Septimius, 
who lived in the time of the Emperor Dioclesian, and 
not in that of Constantine. Scioppius ( Paradox. Lit. 
Ep., 5) makes him to have been a contemporary of 
* Cornelius Nepos, an assumption which the style of 
Septimius most clearly disproves. The work of Sep¬ 
timius contains the first five books, with an abridgment 
of the remainder.—The Phoenician part of this story 
has been very ably refuted by Perizonius, in his “ Dis- 
sertatio de Historia Belli Trojani , quae Dictyos Cre- 
tensis nomen prcefert, Grceca .” The real author was 
Eupraxides or Praxis, and the whole affair was got up 
to impose upon Nero, who was at that time on a visit 
tp Achaia. What added to the deception was, that 
an earthquake did actually take place in Crete at this 
same period. ( Perizon., Diss., § 5.) Although this 
work does not merit the confidence which its fabri¬ 
cator wished to produce, it is still not without inter¬ 
est for those who pursue the study of antiquity, since 
it contains many things derived from books which no 
longer exist. The best edition is that of Smids, 
Amst., 1702, in 4to and 8vo, with the preliminary dis¬ 
sertation of Perizonius. {Fabric., Bibl. Lat., 1 , 6, p. 
111. — Bdhr, Gesch. Rom. Lit., vol. 1 , p. 465, seq.) 
—II. A brother of Polydectes, king of Seriphus, made 
monarch of the island, in place of the latter, by Pers¬ 
eus. ( Vid. Daniie.) 

Didia Lex, dc Sumptibus, by Didius, A.U.C. 610. 
It limited the expense of entertainments, and the num¬ 
ber of guests, and ordained that the sumptuary laws 
should be extended to all the Italians, and that not 
only the master of the feast, but also the guests, should 
incur a penalty for their offence. {Macrob., Sat., 
2, 13.) 

Didius, Julianus, of a family originally from Me¬ 
diolanum {Milan), and grandson of Salvius Julianus, a 
celebrated jurist, was born about A.D. 133. He was 
educated by Domitia Lucilla, the mother of Marcus 
Aurelius. Didius soon rose to important offices, was 
successively quaestor, praetor, and governor of Belgic 
Gaul, and, having defeated the Chauci, obtained the 
consulship. He was afterward sent as governor to 
Dalmatia, and next to Germania Inferior. Under 
Commodus he was governor of Bithynia : on his return 
to Rome he lived in luxury and debauchery, being 
enormously rich. After the murder of Pertinax, A.D. 
193, the praetorians having put up the empire at auc* 
tion, Didius proceeded to their camp, and bid against 
Sulpicianus, the father-in-law of Pertinax, who was 
to make his own bargain with the soldiers. Didius 
having bid highest, and having been proclaimed, was 
taken by the soldiers into Rome. The senate, with 
its usual servility, acknowledged him emperor, but the 
people openly showed their dissatisfaction, and loaded 
him with abuse and imprecations in the circus, when 
he assisted at the solemn games which were customary 
on the occasion of a new reign. He is said to have 
borne these insults with patience, and to have behaved 
altogether with great moderation during his short 
reign. Three generals, at the head of their respective 
legions, refused to acknowledge the nomination of the 
prastorians; Pescennius Niger, who commanded in the 
East; Septimius Severus, in Illyricum; and Claudius 
Albinus in Britain. Severus being proclaimed Au¬ 
gustus by his troops, marched upon Rome, and found 
no opposition upon the road, as the towns and garri¬ 
sons all declared for him. The praetorians themselves 
forsook Didius, and the senate readily pronounced his 
abdication and proclaimed Severus emperor. A party 
of soldiers making their way into the palace, and dis¬ 


regarding the entreaties of Didius, who offered to re¬ 
nounce the empire, cut off his head. He had reigned 
only sixty-six days. {Spartianus, Vit. Did. Jul. — Dio 
Cass., Epit. Lib., 73.) 

Dido (called also Elissa), was daughter of Belus 
II., king of Tyre, and sister of Pygmalion. According 
to Justin (18, 5), the Tyrians, on the death of Belus, 
gave the kingdom to Pygmalion, though still quite 
young, and Dido married Acerbas, her maternal uncle, 
who was priest of Hercules, an office next to that of 
king. Acerbas was possessed of great treasures, 
which, dreading Pygmalion’s covetous disposition when 
the latter had attained to manhood, he deemed it pru 
dent to conceal. Pygmalion, in order to obtain this 
wealth, assassinated him while officiating at the altar, 
and Dido, unwilling to remain in a spot which served 
but to renew her grief, quitted her brother’s kingdom. 
The tyrant, to prevent her final escape with the treas¬ 
ures of Acerbas, despatched messengers to solicit hei 
to return to Tyre. Dido apparently assented, but took 
the precaution, when embarking, to place in the ves¬ 
sel, in the presence of those whom Pygmalion had 
sent to her, several bales filled with sand, which she 
told them contained the treasures. When they were 
out at sea, she compelled her attendants to throw these 
bales into the sea ; and then representing to those 
who had come from the monarch, the instant death 
that awaited them if they presented themselves before 
him without the expected treasures, and that a regard 
for their own safety should induce them to become her 
companions in search of some settlement, in which 
they might find shelter from the persecution of Pyg¬ 
malion, she prevailed upon them to follow her fortunes. 
Large numbers of the chief men {senatorum agmina ), 
with whom the time had previously been agreed upon, 
thereupon joined her party. She sailed first to Cyprus, 
where the priest of Jupiter and his whole family, in 
obedience to the will of the gods, added themselves to 
the expedition. Taking these along with her, and also 
eighty Cyprian maidens, whom she carried off from the 
shore of the island, she sailed in quest of new settle¬ 
ments, and landed on the coast of Africa. Not being 
allowed by the inhabitants a more extensive grant of 
land than what could be covered with a bull’s hide. 
Dido evaded this jealous concession, by cutting the 
hide into small slips, and enclosing with them a large 
portion of ground. The space thus enclosed was hence 
called Byrsa, from the Greek B vpoa, “ a hide.” {Vid., 
however, Byrsa.) Here the first settlement was made, 
and as the city gradually increased around, and Car¬ 
thage arose, Byrsa became the citadel of the place. 
When the Phoenician colony had established itself, 
Iarbas, king of Mauritania, sought the hand of Dido 
in marriage, and threatened war in case of refusal. 
Her subjects thereupon importuning her to save them 
from this formidable enemy, she demanded three 
months for consideration. During this interval she 
caused a large pile to be erected, as if for the purpose 
of offering a propitiatory sacrifice to the manes of 
Acerbas, and, having ascended it, there plunged a dag¬ 
ger into her heart. This action procured for her, it is 
said, the name of Dido, or “ heroine,” her previous 
name having been Elissa. (But consult remarks at 
the close of this article.)—From this narrative of Jus¬ 
tin’s we find many deviations in Virgil. The poet as¬ 
signs to Dido indiscriminately the name of Dido and 
Elissa. Acerbas is the Sichasus of Virgil ; and the 
latter states that Pygmalion, after having slain Sichasus 
long concealed the deed from Dido : that it was re¬ 
vealed to her by the shade of Sichasus, who at the 
same time discovered to her the spot where his treas¬ 
ures were concealed, and urged her to seek her own 
safety in flight. Virgil sanctions the story, that the 
Carthaginians, when making a foundation for their city, 
dug up the head of a horse, which was regarded as a 
presage of future greatness ; a story which Bochar? 


437 




DID 


D I N 


considers to have arisen from the word Cacale (one of 
the names of Carthage), signifying also, in Punic, 
“ the head of a horse.” ( Geog. Sacr., col. 471, 588, 
743.) But the point on which the Mantuan poet and 
the historians most essentially differ, is the manner of 
Dido’s death. Virgil attributes this to grief on her be¬ 
ing abandoned by riEneas, whom she had hospitably re¬ 
ceived when wrecked on her coast. Opinions vary 
also relative to the time of Dido’s death ; but it is gen¬ 
erally agreed, that she lived some centuries later than 
the Trojan hero. Her subjects, after her death, paid 
her divine honours.—The whole question relative to 
Dido is discussed by Heyne in the first Excursus to 
the fourth JEneid. He divides the earlier history of 
Carthage into three epochs : the first commences fifty 
years before the taking of Troy ; the second, 173 years 
after the former; and the third, 190 years still later. 
At the commencement of this third epoch he makes 
Dido to have flourished, and to have improved, not, 
however, to have founded, the city, which, in fact, ex¬ 
isted long before.—On the episode of Dido, as intro¬ 
duced by Virgil into his iEneid, Dunlop ( History 
Rom. Lit., vol. 3, p. 167) has the following remarks : 
“Our poet has just so far availed himself of ancient 
traditions as to give probability to his narration, and 
to support it by the prisca Jides facto. He wrote, 
however, at such a distance of time from the events 
which formed the groundwork of his poem, and the 
events^ themselves were so obscure, that he could de¬ 
part from history without violating probability. Thus, 
it appears from chronology, that Dido lived many hun¬ 
dred years after the Trojan war ; but the point was one 
of obscure antiquity, known perhaps to few readers, 
and not very precisely ascertained. Hence, so far was 
the violence offered to chronology from revolting his 
countrymen, that Ovid, who was so knowing in an¬ 
cient histories and fables, wrote an heroic epistle as 
addressed by Dido to JEneas.”—In giving the narra¬ 
tive of Dido, we have given also the etymology of the 
name, as assigned by some of the ancient writers. 
The derivation, however, appears to be an erroneous 
one. Dido neither denotes “ the heroine,” as Servius 
maintains (ad JSn., 4, 36), and as we have already 
given it; nor “ the man-slayer” (avdpotfovog), as Eu¬ 
stathius pretends (compare Boc-hart , col. 746); nor 
“ the wanderer” (?) tt laving), as we find it stated in 
the Etymologicon Magnum. The name Dido means 
nothing more than “ the beloved ,” whether the refer¬ 
ence be to Baal or to her husband : “ amor, dclicice 
cjus, sive Baalis, sive mariti.” (Gesenius, Phcen. 
Mon., p. 406.) The other appellation, Elissa (more 
correctly, perhaps, Elisa), means “ the exulting ” or 
“ joyous one ” (Gesen., 1. c.), and not, as Bochart 
makes it, “ the divine maiden .” (Bochart, Geogr. 
Sacr., col. 472.) 

Dioymaon, an artist, mentioned in Virgil. (JEn., 
5, 359.) The name, of course, is imaginary. 

Didymus, a famous grammarian, the son of a seller 
of fish at Alexandrea, was born in the consulship of 
Antonius and Cicero, B C. 63, and flourished in the 
reign of Augustus. Macrobius calls him the greatest 
grammarian of his own or any other time. (Sat., 5, 
22.) According to Athenaeus (4, p. 139, c.), he pub¬ 
lished 3500 volumes, and had written so much that he 
was called “ the forgetter of books ” (j3ibTuolddaq), for 
he often forgot what he had written himself; and also 
“ the man with brazen bowels ” (xoTuiEvrepoq), from his 
unwearied industry. To judge from the specimens of 
his writings given by Athenaeus, we need not much 
regret the loss of them. His criticisms were, ac¬ 
cording to Suidas, of the Aristarchean school. He 
vvrote, among other things, an explanation of the Aga¬ 
memnon of Ion (Athcn., 11, p. 418, d.) ; and also of 
the plays of Phrynichus (Id., 9, p. 371, /); several 
treatises against Juba, king of Mauretania (Suid., s. v. 
’I btaf) ; a book on the corruption of diction (Athen., 9, 


p. 368, b.), &c. The Scholia Minora on Horner nave 
been attributed to him, but incorrectly, for Didymus 
himself is quoted in these notes. The collection of 
proverbs extant under the name of Zenobius, was partly 
taken from a previous collection made by Didymus ; 
and about sixty fragments of his fifteen books on agri¬ 
culture are preserved in the collection of Cassianu* 
Bassus. 

Diespiter, a name given to Jupiter as “ the Father 
of Light.” ( Vid. Jupiter.) 

Digentia, a small stream, watering the vale of Us- 
tica, near the Tiburtine villa of Horace. It is cele¬ 
brated by the poet for the refreshing coolness of its 
waters, and the beautiful scenery along its banks 
The modern name is La Licenza. (Horat., Epit., 1, 
18, 104.) 

Dinarchus, one of the ten Greek orators, for the 
explanation of whose orations Harpocration compiled 
his lexicon. He was a Corinthian by birth, but set¬ 
tled at Athens, and became intimate with Theophras¬ 
tus and Demetrius Phalereus. Dionysius of Halicar¬ 
nassus fixes his birth at B.C. 361. The time of his 
highest reputation was after the death of Alexander, 
when Demosthenes and other great orators were dead 
or banished. He seems to have got his living by wri¬ 
ting speeches for those who were in want of them, and 
he carried on apparently a profitable business in this 
way. Having always been a friend to the aristocrat- 
ical party, he was involved in a charge of conspiracy 
against the democracy, and withdrew to Chalcis in 
Euboea. He was allowed to return to Athens by De¬ 
metrius Poliorcetes, after an absence of fifteen years. 
On his return, Dinarchus, who had brought all his 
money back with him, lodged with one Proxenus, an 
Athenian, a friend of his, who, however, if the story be 
true, proved to be a knave, and robbed the old man of 
his money, or, at least, colluded with the thieves. Di- 
narchus brought an action against him, and, for the firs 
time in his life, made his appearance in a court of jus¬ 
tice. The charge against Proxenus, which is drawr. 
up with a kind of legal formality, is preserved by Dio¬ 
nysius of Halicarnassus. Of the numerous orations 
of Dinarchus, only three remain, and these are not en¬ 
titled to any very high praise. One of them is against 
Demosthenes, touching the affair of Harpalus. Dio¬ 
nysius passes rather a severe judgment on Dinarchus. 
He considers him merely an imitator of Lysias, Hy- 
perides, and Demosthenes, and though succeeding, 
to a certain extent, in copying the several styles of 
these three great orators, yet failing, as all copiers 
from models must fail, in that natural expression and 
charm which are the characteristics of originality. 
The extant orations of Dinarchus are found in the 
usual collections of the Attic orators. (Dion. Hal., de 
Dinarch. Jud. — Op., ed. Reiske, vol. 5, p. 629, seqq.) 

Dindymus or a ( orum ), I. a mountain of Galatia in 
Asia Minor, placed by Ptolemy southeast of Pessinus, 
while Strabo says that the city lay upon it. The latter 
writer names it Dindymus, which is generally followed 
by subsequent geographers. Mannert, however, con¬ 
siders the true name to have been Didymus, from the 
Greek dibvjiog (twin), and supposes this appellation to 
have been given to it from its double summit. One 
of these summits had the name of Agdistis ; and ;n 
this, according to Pausanius, Atys was buried. Man¬ 
nert makes Dindymus to have been at the northern 
extremity of a chain of mountains known by the name 
of Olympus, not to be confounded, however, with the 
mountain named Olympus near Prusa in Bithynia, not 
with another Olympus in Galatia, on which the Tolis- 
toboii collected their forces to resist the proconsul 
Manlius. The whole march of the Roman army, as 
described by Livy, shows that the last-mentioned 
mountain lay about ten geographical miles northwest 
of Anc.yra. The goddess Cybele was worshipped at 
1 Pessinus and on Mount Dindymus, and hence was 



D i 0 


DIOCLETIAN US. 


Dindymene. (Mannert, Anc. Geogr., vol. 6, 
3, 63.)—II. A mountain in the island of Cyzicus, and 
overhanging the city. It had on its summit a temple, 
said to have been erected by the Argonauts in honour 
of Cybele. ( Strabo , 575.) 

Dinia, a town of Gallia Narbonensis, and the cap¬ 
ital of the Bodiontici. Its name is said to be of Cel¬ 
tic origin, being derived from din , water, and ia, hot, 
so called from the thermal waters at the distance of a 
quarter of a league from it. It is now Eigne. (Com¬ 
pare Mannert, Geogr., vol. 2, p. 106.) 

Dinocrates, a very celebrated Macedonian archi¬ 
tect, who offered to cut Mount Athos into a statue of 
Alexander. (Vid. Athos, at the close of the article.) 
The monarch took him to Egypt, and employed him in 
several works of art. Ptolemy Philadelphus directed 
him to construct a temple for his queen Arsinoe, after 
her death ; and the intention was to have the ceiling of 
loadstone, and the statue of iron, in order that the lat¬ 
ter might appear to be suspended in the air. The 
death of the artist himsfelf frustrated the undertaking. 

Pliny, 34, 14.) 

Dinostrates, a famous mathematician of the Pla¬ 
tonic school, the brother of Menechares, and disciple 
of Plato. Pursuing the steps of his brother, who am¬ 
plified the theory of the conic sections, Dinostrates is 
said to have made many mathematical discoveries ; 
but he is particularly distinguished as the inventor of 
the quadratrix. Montucla, however, observes, that 
there is some reason for ascribing the original inven¬ 
tion of this curve to Hippias of Elea, an ingenious phi¬ 
losopher and geometer contemporary with Socrates. 
( Proclus , Comment, in Eucl., 2, 4.— Pappus, Coll. 
Math., 4, prop. 25.) 

Dioclea, a town of Dalmatia, the birthplace, ac¬ 
cording to some, of the Emperor Dioclesian. Its ruins 
are near the modern Narenza. 

Diocletianopolis, a city of Macedonia, called so 
in honour of Dioclesian, and supposed by Mannert 
(Geogr., vol. 7, p. 479) to have been identical with 
Pella. 

Diocletianus, Caius Valerius .Tovius, a cele¬ 
brated Roman emperor, born of an obscure family in 
Dalmatia, at the town of Dioclea or Doclea, from 
which town he derived his first name, which was 
probably Docles, afterward lengthened to the more 
harmonious Greek form of Diodes, and at length, 
after his accession to the empire, to the Roman form 
of Diocletianus. He likewise, on this occasion, as¬ 
sumed the patrician name of Valerius. Some, how¬ 
ever, make him to have been born at Salona. His 
birth year also is differently given. The common 
account says 245 A.D., but other statements make 
him ten years older. He was first a common soldier, 
and by merit and success gradually rose to rank At 
the commencement of his career, and while he occu¬ 
pied some inferior post, it is said that a Druidess, 
in whose house he lodged, upbraided him with covet¬ 
ousness, to whom he jocosely replied, “ I shall be 
more generous when I am emperor.” “ You are jo¬ 
king,” replied the Druidess ; “but I tell you, in good 
earnest, that you will attain to the empire after you 
have killed a boar.” This circumstance is said to 
have occurred in the city of Tongres, and present bish¬ 
opric of Liege. —Dioclesian served in Gaul, in Mossia, 
under Probus, and was present at the campaign against 
the Persians, when Carus perished in so mysterious a 
manner. He commanded the household or imperial 
body-guard when young Numerianus, the son of Ca¬ 
rus, was secretly put to death by Aper, his father-in- 
law, while travelling in a close litter on account of ill¬ 
ness, on the return of the army from Persia. The 
death of Numerianus being discovered, after several 
days, by the soldiers, near Chalcedon, they arrested 
Aper, and proclaimed Dioclesian emperor, who, ad¬ 
dressing the army from lffs tribunal in the camp, 


protested his innocence of the death ol Numerianus, 
and then, upbraiding Aper for the crime, plunged his 
sword into his body. The new emperor observed to 
a friend that he had now “killed the boar,” punning 
on the word Aper, which means a boar, and alluding 
to the prediction of the Druidess. Dioclesian, in fact, 
self-composed and strong-minded in other respects, 
was all his life an anxious believer in divination, which 
superstition led him probably to inflict summary pun 
ishment upon Aper with his own hands. He made 
his solemn entry into Nicomedia in September, 284 
A.D., and afterward chose this town for his favourite 
residence. Carinus, the other son of Carus, having 
collected a force to oppose Dioclesian, the two armies 
met at Margium in Moesia, where the soldiers of Cari¬ 
nus had the advantage at first, but Carinus himsell 
having been slain by one of his own officers, both ar¬ 
mies joined in acknowledging Dioclesian emperor, 
A.D. 285. Dioclesian was generous after his victory, 
and, contrary to the common practice, there were no 
executions, proscriptions, or confiscations of property , 
he even retained most of the officers of Carinus ir. 
their places. Dioclesian, on assuming the imperial 
power, found the empire assailed in various quarters, 
but his talents and energy soon succeeded in counter¬ 
acting these evils. In the year 286, he chose his old 
friend Maximian, a brave, but rude and uncultivated 
soldier, as his colleague in the empire, and it is to 
the credit of both that the latter continued ever after 
faithful to Dioclesian, and willing to follow his advice. 
Maximian was stationed in Gaul, and on the German 
frontier, to repel invasion ; Dioclesian resided chiefly 
in the East, to watch the Persians, though he appears 
to have visited Rome in the early part of his reign. 
After the lapse of a few years, Dioclesian thought it 
necessary, in consequence of invasions and revolts in 
different parts of the empire, to increase the number 
of his colleagues. On the 1st March, 292, or, accord¬ 
ing to some, 291, he appointed Galerius a Caesar, and 
Maximian, at the same time, adopted, on his part, 
Constantius Chlorus. The two Caesars repudiated 
their respective wives ; Galerius married Valeria, Dio- 
clesian’s daughter, and Constantius married Theodora, 
daughter of Maximian. The two Caesars remained 
subordinate to the two Augusti, though each of the 
four was intrusted with the administration of a part of 
the empire. Dioclesian kept to himself Asia and 
Egypt; Maximian had Italy and Africa ; Galerius, 
Thrace and Ulyricum; and Constantius, Gaul and 
Spain. But it was rather an administrative than a, 
political division. At the head of the edicts of each 
prince were put the names of all four, beginning with 
that of Dioclesian. Dioclesian resorted to this ar¬ 
rangement probably as much for reasons of internal ag 
of external policy. By fixing upon four colleagues,., 
one in each of the great divisions of the empire, each 
having his army, and all mutually checking one an¬ 
other, Dioclesian put a stop to military insolence and 
anarchy. The empire was no longer put up for sale ; 
this immediate and intolerable evil was effectually 
cured, though another danger remained, that of dis¬ 
putes and wars between the various sharers of the im¬ 
perial power; still it was a small danger, and one 
which did not manifest itself sp long as Dioclesian re¬ 
mained at the helm. Writers have been very free of 
their censure upon this emperor, for parcelling, as they 
call it, the empire ; but this was the only chance there 
was of preventing its crumbling to pieces. Italy and 
Rome, in particular, lost by the change : they no long® 
er monopolized the wealth and power of the world; 
but the other provine.es gained by this,—The new 
Caesars justified Dioclesian’s expectations. Success¬ 
ful wars were waged in different quarters of the em¬ 
pire ; and though Galerius at first met with a defeat 
from Narses, king of Persia, yet, in the following 
year, he gave the Persians a terrible overthrow. Nar 

439 




DIOCLETIANUS. 


DIO 


ses srjed for peace, which was granted by Dioclesian, 
on condition of the Persians giving up all the territory 
on the right or western bank of the Tigris. This 
peace was concluded in 297, and lasted forty years. 
At the same time, Dioclesian marched into Egypt 
igainst Achillaeus, whom he besieged in Alexandrea, 
which he took after a siege of eight months, when the 
usurper and his chief adherents were put to death. 
Dioclesian is said to have behaved on this occasion 
with unusual sternness, several towns of Egypt, among 
others Busiris and Coptos, being destroyed. For 
several years after this the empire enjoyed repose, and 
Dioclesian and his colleagues were chiefly employed 
in framing laws and administrative regulations, and in 
constructing forts on the frontiers. Dioclesian kept 
a splendid court at Nicomedia, which town he em¬ 
bellished with numerous structures. He, or rather 
Maximian by his order, caused the magnificent Ther¬ 
ms at Rome to be built, the remains of which still 
bear Dioclesian’s name, and which contained, besides 
the baths, a library, a museum, and other establish¬ 
ments.—In February, 303, Dioclesian issued an edict 
against the Christians, ordering their churches to be 
pulled down, their sacred books to be burned, and all 
Christians to be dismissed from offices civil or military; 
with other penalties, exclusive, however, of death. 
Various causes have been assigned for this measure. 
It is known that Galerius had always been hostile to 
the Christians, while Dioclesian had openly favoured 
them, and had employed them in his armies and about 
his person, and Eusebius speaks of the prosperity, se¬ 
curity, and protection which they enjoyed under his 
reign. They had churches in most towns, and one 
at Nicomedia, in particular, under the eye of the em¬ 
peror. Just before the edict was issued, Galerius had 
repaired to Nicomedia to induce Dioclesian to pro¬ 
scribe the Christians. He filled the emperor’s mind 
with reports of conspiracies and seditions, and, aided 
by the artifices of the heathen priesthood, was at last 
but too successful. The barbarities that followed 
upon the issuing of the edict above referred to are 
utterly inconceivable. Malicious ingenuity was racked 
to the utmost to devise tortures for the persecuted fol¬ 
lowers of Jesus. For the space of ten years did this 
persecution rage with scarcely mitigated horrors ; and 
such multitudes were massacred in all parts of the 
empire, that at last the imperial murderers ventured 
to erect a triumphal column, bearing the barbarously 
boastful, yet false inscription, that they had extin¬ 
guished the Christian name and superstition, and re¬ 
stored the worship of the gods to its former purity and 
splendour. This was the last persecution under the 
Roman empire, and it has been called by the name of 
Dioclesian. But, as the persecution raged with most 
fury in the provinces subject to the rule of Galerius, 
and as he continued it for several years after Dio¬ 
clesian’s abdication, it might with more propriety be 
called the Galerian persecution.—In November, 303, 
Dioclesian repaired to Rome, where he and Maximian 
enjoyed the honour of a triumph, followed by festive 
games. This was the last triumph that Rome saw. 
The populace of that city complained of the economy 
of Dioclesian on that occasion, and so offended him by 
their jibes and sarcasms, that he left Rome abruptly, 
m the month of December, in very cold weather. A 
long illness ensued, which confined him at Nicomedia ; 
and, soon after his recovery, he was visited by Galerius, 
who persuaded and almost forced him to abdicate. 
According to others, however, Dioclesian did it spon¬ 
taneously. Setting off for Salona, in Dalmatia, he 
built himself, near this place, an extensive palace by 
the seashore, in which he lived for the rest of his life, 
respected by the other emperors, without cares and 
without regret. At the same time that Dioclesian ab¬ 
dicated at Nicomedia, Maximian, according to an 
agreement between them,performed a similarceremo- 
440 


ny at Milan. Maximian retired to his seat in Lucama 
but, not being endowed with the firmness of Dioclesian, 
he tried some time after to recover his former power, 
and wrote to his old colleague to induce him to do the 
same. “ Were you but to come to Salona,” answer¬ 
ed Dioclesian, “ and see the vegetables which I raise 
in my garden with my own hands, you would no long¬ 
er talk to me of empire.” Dioclesian died in 313, 
surviving his abdication about nine years.—-He ranks 
among the most distinguished emperors of Rome ; his 
reign of twenty-one years being, upon the whole, pros¬ 
perous for the empire and creditable to the Boman 
name. He was severe, but not wantcnly cruel, and 
we ought to remember that mercy was not a Roman 
virtue. His conduct after his abdication shows that 
his was no common mind. The chief charge against 
him is his haughtiness in introducing the Oriental cer¬ 
emonial of prostration into the Roman court. The 
Christian writers, and especially Lactantius, have spo¬ 
ken unfavourably of him ; but Lactantius cannot be 
implicitly trusted. ( Eutrop ., 9, 19, seqq.—Aurel 
Viet., 39.— Vopisc. Carin., 15.— Paneg. Maxim.— 
Lactant., de mart, persec., 8, et 18.— EusebVit. 
Const., c. 18, &c.) 

Diodorus, I. an historian, surnamed Siculus, be¬ 
cause born at Agyrium in Sicily, and the contempo¬ 
rary of Julius Caesar and Augustus. Our principal 
data for the events of his life are derived from his own 
work. In early life he travelled into Asia, Africa, and 
Europe, and on his return established hirnself at Rome, 
where he published a general history, in forty books, 
under the title of B it'kiodpar] ioTopucq, or Historical 
Library. To this labour he consecrated thirty years 
of his life. The history comprehended a period ot 
1138 years, besides the time preceding the Trojan 
vrar, and was carried down to the end of Caesar’s Gal¬ 
lic war. His work was written after the death of Cae¬ 
sar. The first six books were devoted to the fabulous 
history anterior to the war of Troy, and of these, the 
three former to the antiquities of barbarian states, the 
three latter to the archaeology of the Greeks. But the 
historian, though treating of the fabulous history of the 
barbarians in the first three books, enters into an ac¬ 
count of their manners and usages, and carries down 
the history of these nations to a point of time posterior 
to the Trojan war; thus, in the first book, he gives a 
sketch of Egyptian history from the reign of Menes 
to Amasis. In the eleven following books he detailed 
the different events which happened between the Tro¬ 
jan war and the death of Alexander the Great; and the 
remaining twenty-three books contained the history ot 
the world down to the Gallic war and the conquest 
of Britain. We have only a small part remaining of 
this vast compilation, namely, the first five books, then 
from the 11th to the 20th, both inclusive, and finally 
fragments of the other books from the 6th to the 10th 
inclusive, and also of the last twenty. These rescued 
portions we owe to Eusebius, to John Malala, Syncel- 
lus, and other writers of the lower empire, who have 
cited them in the course of their works ; but, above 
all, to the authors of the “ Extracts respecting Em¬ 
bassies,” and of the “ Extracts respecting Virtues and 
Vices.” We are indebted also for a part of them to 
the patriarch Photius, who has inserted in his Myrio- 
biblon extracts from several of the books, from the 
31st to the 33d, and from the 36th to the 38th and 
40th. Important additions have also recently been 
made from MSS. in the Vatican Library. (As regards 
the sources whence Diodorus drew the materials of 
his work, consult the dissertation of Heyne, “ De font 
ibus hist. Diodori ,” prefixed to the Bipont edition.)—• 
A great advantage possessed by Diodorus over most 
of the ancient historians, is his indicating the order of 
time : though it must be acknowledged, at the same 
time, that his chronology offers occasional difficulties, 
and often needs reducing. Diodorus, who wrote at 





DIODORUS. 


D I U 


Rome, and at a period when the dominion of this 
city extended over the greatest part of the civilized 
world, arranges his narrative in accordance with the 
Roman calendar and consular fasti: he frequently 
adds the names of the Athenian archons that were 
contemporaneous. Nqw ( at the time when he wrote, 
the consuls entered on their office on the first of Jan¬ 
uary, whereas, after the adoption of the cycle of Me- 
ton, B.C. 402, the Athenian archons commenced their 
terms about the middle of the year. Diodorus, how¬ 
ever, limits himself to the mention of those archons 
that entered upon their duties in the course of the con¬ 
sular year, which forms the basis of his chronology : 
thus, the events which took place during the first six 
months of a year, ought to be referred to the archon 
mentioned by him in the preceding year. Nor is this 
all; the duration of the consulship was that of the Ro¬ 
man year, which, from a very early period, was made 
to consist of 365 days; while the duration of the ar- 
chonship remained for a long time subject to the ir¬ 
regularity of the Athenian calendar and years, the lat¬ 
ter being sometimes 354 days, at other times 384. 
Thus, to cite only a single instance, Diodorus places 
the death of Alexander the Great in the 4th year of the 
113th Olympiad, a period with which the names of the 
consuls also indicated by him fully agree ; whereas, by 
the name of the archon, he makes it to be the follow¬ 
ing year, the 1st of the 114th Olympiad. (Compare 
Diod. Sic., 17, 113.— Annales des Lagides, par M. 
Champollion Figeac, vol. 1, p. 264.) We must care¬ 
fully attend to this point in remodelling the chronology 
of Diodorus.—With regard to the historical value of 
the work itself, and the merits of the author, the most 
discrepant opinions have been entertained by modern 
writers. The Spanish scholar Vives called him a 
mere trifler; and Jean Bodin accused him, in no 
sparing terms, of ignorance and carelessness ; while, 
on the other hand, he has been defended and extolled 
by many eminent critics as an accurate and able wri¬ 
ter. The principal fault of Diodorus seems to have 
been the too great extent of his work. It was not 
possible for any man living in the time of Augustus to 
write an unexceptionable universal history. It is not, 
then, a matter of surprise, that Diodorus, who does not 
appear to have been a man of superior abilities, should 
have fallen into a number of particular errors, and 
should have placed too much reliance on authorities 
sometimes far from trustworthy. Wherever he speaks 
from his own observations, he may, perhaps, generally 
be relied upon ; but when he is compiling from the 
writings of others, he has shown little judgment in the 
selection, and has, in many cases, proved himself in¬ 
capable of discriminating between the fabulous and 
the true. We must not blame him for having given 
a Greek colouring to the manners of other nations 
which he describes, for it was the common practice of 
Greek writers to do so, and he has not erred so much 
in this respect as Dionysius of Halicarnassus. We 
are indebted to him, moreover, for many particulars 
which, but for him, we should never have known; and 
we must regret that we have lost the last, and proba- 
nly the most valuable, portion of his works, as even 
by the fragments of them which remain we are enabled, 
in many places, to correct the errors of Livy. The 
style of Diodorus, though not very pure or elegant, is 
sufficiently perspicuous, and presents but few difficul- 
•ies, except where the MSS. are defective, as is fre¬ 
quently the case. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 4, p. 
77, seqq. — Niebuhr, Rom. Gesch., vol. 3, p. 190, note 
297.) The best edition of Diodorus is that of Wes- 
seling, Amst., 2 vols. folio, 1746 ; reprinted at the 
Bipont press in 11 vols. 8vo, 1793, with dissertations 
5y Heyne, and notes and disputations by Eyring.—II. 

native of Caria, and disciple of the Megaric school. 
He was a great adept in that species of verbal com- 
nat which prevailed among the philosophers of his sect. 

K K K 


It is said that a question was proposed to him in the 
presence of Ptolemy Soter, by Stilpo, one of his fra¬ 
ternity, which he required time to answer, and on this 
account he was ridiculed by Ptolemy, and denomina¬ 
ted Chronus (Xpovoe). Mortified at this defeat, he 
wrote a book on the question, but nevertheless died of 
vexation. He is the reputed author of the famous 
sophism against motion. “ If any body be moved, H 
is moved either in the place where it is, or in a placf 
where it is not, for nothing can act or suffer wher* 
it is not, and therefore there is no such thing as mo 
tion.” Diodorus was suitably rewarded for this brill 
iant discovery ; having dislocated his shoulder, tin 
surgeon who was sent for kept him for some time ii 
torture, while he proved from the philosopher’s owr 
mode of reasoning that the bone could not have 
moved out of its place. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 
3, p. 253.)—III. A peripatetic philosopher, with whom 
the uninterrupted succession of the peripatetic school 
terminated. He was a native of Tyre, and a pupil 
of Critolaus. Mention is often made of him in the 
selections of Stobaeus, and also in the works of Cice¬ 
ro. The sovereign good, according to Diodorus, was 
to live in a becoming manner, free from toil and care, 
to dpoxdrjTwt ? Kai kcl/ leaf C,f\v, or, vacare omni molestia 
cumhonestate, as Cicero expresses it. (Acad., 2, 42.) 
—IV. An orator and epigrammatic poet, a native of 
Sardis. He was surnamed Zonas (Zuvdg). He fought 
in Asia, and was contemporaneous with Mithradates 
the Great, against whom he was charged with con¬ 
spiring. He defended himself successfully. Nine of 
his epigrams remain. (Jacobs, Catal. Poet. Epigram, 
in Anthol., vol. 3, p. 883.— Strab., 627.)—V. Another 
native of Sardis, who wrote historical works, odes, and 
epigrams. Strabo speaks of him as subsequent to the 
former, and a contemporary and friend of his own. 
(Strab., 627.) We have one of his epigrams remain¬ 
ing. (Jacobs, l. c.) 

Diogenes, I. a celebrated Cynic philosopher of Si¬ 
nope. His father, who was a banker, was convicted 
of debasing the public coin, and was obliged to leave 
the country, or, according to another account, his fa¬ 
ther and himself were charged with this offence, and 
the former was thrown into prison, while the son es¬ 
caped from the city and came to Athens. Here he 
attached himself, as a disciple, to Antisthenes, who 
was at the head of the Cynics. Antisthenes at first 
refused to admit him into his house, and even struck 
him with a stick. Diogenes calmly bore the rebuke, 
and said, Strike me, Antisthenes, but never shall you 
find a stick sufficiently hard to remove me from your 
presence, while you speak anything worth hearing. 
The philosopher was so much pleased with this reply, 
that he at once admitted him among his scholars. 
Diogenes perfectly adopted the principles and charac¬ 
ter of his master. - Renouncing every other object of 
ambition, he determined to distinguish himself by his 
contempt of riches and honours, and by his indignation 
against luxury. He wore a coarse cloak; carried a 
wallet and a staff; made the porticoes and other pub¬ 
lic places his habitation ; and depended upon casual 
contributions for his daily bread. A friend, whom he 
had desired to procure him a cell, not executing his orde 
so soon as was expected, he took up his abode in a 
tub or large vessel in the Metroum. It is probable, 
however, that this was only a temporarv expression of 
indignation and contempt, and that he did not make a 
tub the settled place of his residence. This famous 
tub is indeed celebrated by Juvenal; it is also ridiculed 
by Lucian, and mentioned by Seneca. But no notice 
is taken of so singular a circumstance by other ancient 
writers who have mentioned this philosopher; not 
even by Epictetus, who discourses at large concerning 
Diogenes, and relates many particulars respecting hia 
manner of life. It may therefore be questioned wheth¬ 
er this whole story is not to be ranked among the nil 

441 




DIOGENES. 


DIOGENES. 


merous tales which have been invented to expose the 
sect of the Cynics to ridicule. It cannot be doubted, 
however, that Diogenes practised the most hardy self- 
control and the most rigid abstinence ; exposing him¬ 
self to the utmost extremes of heat and cold, and liv¬ 
ing upon the simplest diet, casually supplied by the 
hand of charity. In his old age, sailing to iEgina, 
he was taken by pirates and carried to Crete, where 
he was exposed to sale in the public market. When 
the auctioneer asked him what he could do, he said, 
I can govern men; therefore sell me to one who wants 
a master. Xeniades, a wealthy Corinthian, happen¬ 
ing at that instant to pass by, was struck with the 
singularity of his reply, and purchased him. On 
their arrival at Corinth, Xeniades gave him his free¬ 
dom, and committed to him the education of his 
children and the direction of his domestic concerns. 
Diogenes executed this trust with so much judgment 
and fidelity, that Xeniades used to say that the gods 
had sent a good genius to his house. During his resi¬ 
dence at Corinth, the interview between him and Al¬ 
exander is said to have taken place. Plutarch relates, 
that Alexander, when at Corinth, receiving the con¬ 
gratulations of all ranks on being appointed to com¬ 
mand the army of the Greeks against the Persians, 
missed Diogenes among the number, with whose char¬ 
acter he was not acquainted. Curious to see one who 
had given so signal an instance of his haughty inde¬ 
pendence of spirit, Alexander went in search of him, 
and found him sitting in his tub in the sun. “ I am 
Alexander the Great," said the monarch ; “ and I am 
Diogenes the Cynic," replied the philosopher. Alex¬ 
ander then requested that he would inform him what 
service he could render him : “ Stand from between 
me and the sun," said the Cynic. Alexander, struck 
with the reply, said to his friends who were ridiculing 
the whimsical singularity of the philosopher, “ If I 
were not Alexander, I would wish to be Diogenes.” 
This story is too good to be omitted, but there are sev¬ 
eral circumstances which in some degree diminish its 
credibility. It supposes Diogenes to have lived in his 
tub at Corinth, whereas it appears that he lived there 
in the house of Xeniades, and that, if he ever dwelt in 
a tub, he left it behind him at Athens. Alexander, 
moreover, was at this time scarcely 20 years old, and 
could not call himself Alexander the Great, for he did 
not receive this title till his Persian and Indian expe¬ 
dition, after which he never returned to Greece ; yet 
the whole transaction supposes him elated with the 
pride of conquest. Diogenes, probably, was visited 
by Alexander, when the latter held the general assem¬ 
bly of the Greeks at Corinth, and was received by him 
with rudeness and incivility, which may have given 
rise to the whole story. The philosopher at this time 
would be about 70 years of age.—Various accounts 
are given concerning the manner and time of his death. 
It seems most probable that he died at Corinth, of 
mere decay, in the 90th year of his age, and in the 
114th Olympiad. His friends contended for the honour 
of defraying the expenses of his funeral; but the ma¬ 
gistrates settled the dispute by ordering him an inter¬ 
ment at the public expense. A column of Parian 
marble, terminated by the figure of a dog, was raised 
over his tomb. His fellow townsmen of Sinope also 
erected brazen statues in memory of the philosopher. 
Diogenes left behind him no system of philosophy. 
After the example of his master, he was more atten¬ 
tive to practical than theoretical wisdom. The follow¬ 
ing are a few of the particular opinions ascribed to 
him. He thought exercise was indispensable, and 
able to effect anything; that there were two kinds of 
exercise, one of the mind, the other of the body, and 
that one of these was of no value without the other. 
By the cultivation of the mind, he did not mean the 
prosecution of any science, or the acquirement of any 
mental accomplishment; all such things he considered 
442 


useless; but he intended such a cu.Dvation of the 
mind as might serve to bring it into a healthy and vir¬ 
tuous state, and produce upon it an effect analogous to 
that which exercise produces upon the body. He 
adopted Plato’s doctrine, that there should be a com 
munity of wives and children ; and he held, with the 
Dorian lawgivers, that order (u6ap.oq) was the basis 
of civil government.—The freedom of remark in which 
Diogenes indulged, and which spared neither the rich 
and powerful, nor even the religious superstitions of 
the age, gave great offence ; and the consequence 
was, that in his private life he suffered much obloquy, 
and was made the subject of ludicrous and disgrace¬ 
ful calumny. It is wholly incredible, that a man who 
is universally celebrated for his sobriety and contempt 
of pleasure, and who, for his vehement indignation 
against vice, and his bold attempts to reform the age 
in which he lived, ha»s been represented by some of the 
most eminent philosophers as one endued wuh divine 
wisdom, should have been capable of committing the 
grossest indecencies. The tale which is related of 
him and the courtesan Lais is wholly inconsistent with 
chronology, for Lais must have been fourscore years 
old, and Diogenes seventy, when the circumstance is 
related to have taken place. The truth is, we are 
chiefly indebted for these stories to Athenaeus, a writer 
who seems to have ransacked every corner of antiqui¬ 
ty, and of his own invention too, for tales to the dis¬ 
credit of philosophy. ( Diog. Laertius, Vit. Diog .— 
Plutarch, Apopth. — Enfield, Hist. Philos., vol. 1 , p. 
305, seqq .)—II. A native of Apollonia in Crete, was 
a pupil of Anaximenes, and contemporary with Anax 
agoras. Schleiermacher, however, who is followed by 
Schaubach, the editor of the fragments of Anaxago¬ 
ras, affirms, from the internal evidence of the fragments 
of the two philosophers, that Diogenes preceded Anax¬ 
agoras. But Diogenes might have written before An¬ 
axagoras, and yet have been his junior, as we know 
was the case with Empedocles. ( Aristot., Met., 1, 3, 
p. 843, b.) Diogenes followed Anaximander in ma¬ 
king air the primal element of all things ; but he car¬ 
ried his views farther, and regarded the universe as 
issuing from an intelligent principle, by which it was 
at once vivified and ordered, a rational as well as sen¬ 
sitive soul, but still without recognising any distinction 
between matter and mind. Diogenes wrote several 
books on Cosmology (tt epl (jivasug). The fragments 
which remain have been recently collected and edited 
by Panzerbeiter. (Diog. Laert., 9, 9 — Bayle, Hist. 
Diet., s. v. — Schleiermacher, Mem. Berlin. Acad, for 
1815. — Philol. Museum , vol. 1 , p. 92.) — III. Laer 
tius, so called from his native city, Laertes in Cilicia. 
He wrote the lives of the philosophers, in ten books, 
which are still extant. The period when he lived is 
not exactly known, but it is supposed to have been 
during the reigns of Septimius Severus and Caracalla. 
(Compare Ionsius, de Script. Hist. Phil., lib. 3, c. 12, 

§ 5. seqq.) Diogenes is thought to have belonged to 
the Epicurean sect. He divides all the Greek philos¬ 
ophers into two classes; those of the Ionic and those 
of the Italic school. He derives the first from Anaxi¬ 
mander, the second from Pythagoras. After Socrates, 
he divides the Ionian philosophers into three branches ; 
1st. Plato and the Academics, down to Clitomachus ; 
2d. the Cynics down to Chrysippus : 3d. Aristotle and 
Theophrastus. The series of Italic philosophers con¬ 
sists, after Pythagoras, of the following: Telanges, 
Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno of Elea, Leucippus, 
Democritus, and others down to Epicurus. The first 
seven books are devoted to the Ionic philosophers ; the 
last three treat of the Italic school.—The work of 
Dionysius is a crude contribution towards the history of 
philosophy. It contains a brief account of the lives, 
doctrines, and sayings of most persons who have been 
called philosophers ; and though the author is evidently 
a most unfit person for the task which he imposed 





D I 0 


DIO 


upon himsed, ana ha? snown very little judgment and I 
discrimination in the execution of it, yet the book is | 
extremely useful as a collection of facts, which we 
could not have learned from any other quarter, and is 
entertaining as a sort of omniana on the subject. The 
article on Epicurus is valuable, as containing some 
original letters of that philosopher, which comprise a 
pretty satisfactory epitome of the Epicurean doctrines, 
and are very useful to the readers of Lucretius. The 
best editions of Diogenes are, that of Meibomius, Amst., 
1692, 2 vols. 4to, and that of Hubner, Lips., 1828, 2 
vols. 8vo. 

Diomepe^e Insulae. Vid. Diomedis Insulae. 

Diomedes, son of Tydeus and De'iphyle, was king 
of TEtolia, and one of the bravest of the Grecian 
chiefs in the Trojan war, ranking next to Achilles and 
Ajax. Homer represents him as one of the favourites 
of Minerva, and ascribes his many acts of valour to 
her protecting influence. Among his exploits, it is 
recorded of him that he engaged in single combat 
with Hector and .Eneas ; that he wounded Mars, 
^Eneas, and \ enus ; and that, in concert with Ulysses, 
he carried off the horses of Rhesus, and the palladi¬ 
um ; and procured the arrows of Philoctetes. (Soph¬ 
ocles, however, makes Ulysses to have been aided 
in this last-mentioned affair by Pyrrhus, son of Achil¬ 
les.) Diomede was deprived of the affection of his 
wife -Egiale, through the wrath and vengeance of Ve¬ 
nus, by whose influence, during his absence at the war, 
she had become attached to Cyllabarus, the son of 
Sthenelus. (But consult Heyne, ad Apollod., 1,8, 6, 
et ad Horn., 11., 5, 412.) Diomede was so afflicted at 
the enstrangement of .Egiale, that he abandoned 
Greece, and settled at the head of a colony, in Magna 
Groecia, where he founded a city, to which he gave the 
name of Argyripa ; and married a daughter of Dau- 
nus, prince of the country. In the progress of his 
voyage to Italy, Diomede was shipwrecked on that part 
of the Libyan coast which was under the sway of Ly- 
cus, who, as was his usage towards all strangers, seized 
and confined him. He was, however, liberated by 
Callirhoe, the tyrant’s daughter, who became so en¬ 
amoured of him, that, upon his quitting the African 
shores, she put herself to death. Diomede, according 
to one account, died in Italy at a very advanced age ; 
while another legend makes him to have been slain by 
his father-in-law Daunus. ( Tzetz., ad Lycophr., 603, 
seqq .) His companions were so much afflicted by his 
death that they were changed into birds. Virgil, how¬ 
ever, makes this transformation earlier in date, and 
to have taken place during the lifetime of Diomede. 
{xEn., 11, 272.) He seems to have followed the tra¬ 
dition recorded by Ovid {Met., 14, 457), that Agnon, 
one of Diomede’s companions in his voyage from 
Troy, insulted Venus with contemptuous language, 
and that the goddess, in revenge, transformed not only 
Agnon, but many others of Diomede’s followers into 
birds. These birds, according to Ovid, resembled 
swans ; they chiefly frequented some neighbouring 
islands in the Adriatic, and were noted for their fond¬ 
ness for Greeks, and their aversion towards the natives 
of any other country. ( Vid. Diomedis Insulse.—Con¬ 
sult Heyne, Excurs., 1, ad xEn., 11, and Lord Bacon’s 
Fables of ike Ancients, fab. xviii.)—II. A king of the 
Bistones, in Thrace, son of Mars and Cyrene. His 
mares fed on human flesh. Hercules sailed to this 
quarter, having been ordered, as his eighth labour, to 
bring these mares to Mycenae. The hero overcame 
the grooms of Diomede, and led the mares to the sea. 
The Bistones pursued with arms. Hercules, leaving 
the mares in charge of Abderus, one of his compan¬ 
ions, went to engage the foe. Meantime the mares 
tore their keeper to pieces ; and the hero, having de¬ 
feated the Bistones and slain Diomede, built a city by 
the tomb of Abderus, which he called Abdera after 
him. Hercules brought the mares to Eurystheus, 


who turned them loose ; and they strayed on to Mount 
Olympus, where they were destroyed by the wild 
beasts. {Apollod., 2, 5, 8.— Heyne, ad loc.) Another 
account makes Hercules to have given Diomede to be 
devoured by his own mares ; and Eurystheus to have 
consecrated them to Juno. {Diod. Sic., 4, 15.) 

Diomedis Insulae, certain small islands apposite 
the Sinus Urias, and at no great distance from the 
coast of Apulia. They are celebrated in mythology 
as connected with the legend of the transformation of 
Diomede’s companions into birds. {Vid. Diomedes 

I. , towards the close of the article.) {Aristot., de Mi- 
rah. — Lycophr., Alex., v. 599.— Ovid, Met., 14, 457.) 
Ancient writers differ as to their number. Strabo 
(284) recognises two ; whereof one was inhabited, the 
other deserted. This is also the account of Pliny (3, 
26, and 10, 44), who states, that one was called Dio- 
medea, and the other Teutria. Ptolemy, however, 
reckons five, which is said to be the correct number, 
if we include in the group three barren rocks, which 
scarce deserve the name of islands. The island to 
which Pliny gives the name of Diomedea appears to 
have also borne the appellation of Tremitus, as we 
learn from Tacitus {Ann., 4, 71), who informs us that 
it was the spot to which Augustus removed his aban¬ 
doned daughter Julia, and where she terminated a life 
of infamy. Of these islands, the largest is now called 
Isola San Domino, the other S. Nicolo. {Romanelli, 
vol.2, p.296.— Cramer’s Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 275.) 

Dion, I. an illustrious inhabitant of Syracuse, who, 
deriving an ample inheritance from his father Hippa- 
rinus, became a disciple of Plato, invited to the court 
of Syracuse by the elder Dionysius. In consequence 
of the instructions of his master, he escaped being in¬ 
fected with the licentiousness of the capital, and he 
shared with his preceptor, at a subsequent period, in 
the persecutions inflicted by the son and successor 
of the tyrant. He was nearly connected with Diony¬ 
sius by having married his daughter, and by his sis¬ 
ter being one of his wives ; and he was also much 
esteemed by him, so as to be employed on several em¬ 
bassies. At the accession of the younger Dionysius, 
Plato was again, at Dion’s request, invited to Syra 
cuse. In order, however, to counteract his influence, 
the courtiers obtained the recall of Philistus, a man 
notorious for his adherence to arbitrary principles. 
This faction determined to supplant Dion, and availed 
themselves of a real or supposititious letter to fix on 
him the charge of treason. Dion, precluded from de¬ 
fence, was transported to Italy, and from thence pro¬ 
ceeded to Greece, where he was received with great 
honour. Dionysius became jealous of his popularity 
in Greece, especially at Athens, stopped his remit¬ 
tances, confiscated his estates, and compelled his wife, 
who had been left at Syracuse as an hostage, to marry 
another person. Dion, incensed at this treatment, de¬ 
termined to expel the tyrant. Plato resisted his inten¬ 
tions ; but, encouraged by other friends, he assembled 
a body of troops, and with a small force sailed to Si¬ 
cily, took advantage of the absence of Dionysius in 
Italy, and freed the people from his control. Dionysius 
returned, but, after some conflicts, was compelled to 
escape to Italy. The austere and philosophic man¬ 
ners of Dion, however, soon lost him the favour of his 
fickle countrymen, and he was supplanted by Hera- 
clides, a Syracusan exile, and obliged to make his re¬ 
treat to Leontini. He afterward regained the ascend¬ 
ancy, and in a rash moment caused Heraclides to be 
assassinated. This robbed him ever after of his peace 
of mind. An Athenian, an intimate friend, formed a 
conspiracy against his life, and Dion was assassinated 
in the 55th year of his age, B.C. 354. His death was 
universally lamented by the Syracusans, and a monu¬ 
ment was raised to his memory. {Diod. Sic., 16, 6 
seqq. — Pint., Vit. Dion. — Corn. Ncp., Vit. Dion.)— 

II. Cassius Cocceianus, son of Cassius Apronianua 

443 




DION. 


D i o 


a Roman senator, was born A.D. 155, in Bithynia. 
His true name was Cassius, but he assumed the other 
two names, as being descended on the mother’s side 
from Dion Chrysostom. Thus, though he was on his 
mother's side of Greek descent, and though, in his 
writings, he adopted the then prevailing language of 
his native province, namely, the Greek, he must nev¬ 
ertheless be considered as a Roman. Dio Cassius 
passed the greater part of his life in public employ¬ 
ments. He was a senator under Commodus ; governor 
of Smyrna after the death of Septimius Severus ; for he 
had displeased this monarch, and held no office, con¬ 
sequently, during the life of the latter; and afterward 
consul, as also proconsul in Africa and Pannonia. Al¬ 
exander Severus entertained the highest esteem for 
him, and made him consul for the second time, with 
himself, though the praatorian guards, irritated against 
him on account of his severity, had demanded his life. 
When advanced in years, he returned to his native 
country. Dion published a Roman history, in eighty 
books, the fruit of his researches and labours for the 
space of twenty-two years. It embraced a period of 
983 years, extending from the arrival of JEneas in 
Italy, and the subsequent founding of Rome, to A.D. 
229. Down to the time of Julius Caesar, he only 
gives a summary of events ; after this, he enters some¬ 
what more into details; and from the time of Com¬ 
modus he is very circumstantial in relating what passed 
under his own eyes. We have fragments remaining of 
the first 36 books : but there is a considerable portion 
of the 35th book, on the war of Lucullus against Mith- 
radates, and of the 36th, on the war with the pirates, and 
the expedition of Pompey against the King of Pontus. 
The books that follow, to the 54th inclusive, are nearly 
all entire: they comprehend a period from B.C. 65 to 
B.C. 10, or from the eastern campaign of Pompey, and 
the death of Mithradates, to the death of Agrippa. The 
55th book has a considerable gap in it. The 56th to the 
60th, both included, which comprehend the period from 
A.D. 9 to A.D. 54, are complete, and contain the events 
from the defeat of Varus in Germany to the reign of 
Claudius. Of the following 20 books we have only 
fragments, and the meager abridgment of Xiphilinus. 
The 80th or last book comprehends the period from 
A.D. 222 to A.D. 229, in the reign of Alexander 
Severus. The abridgment of Xiphilinus, as now ex¬ 
tant, commences with the 35th, and continues to the 
end of the 80th book. It is a very indifferent per¬ 
formance, and was made by order of the Emperor 
Michael Ducas : the abbreviator, Xiphilinus, was a 
monk of the eleventh century.—The fragments of the 
first 36 books, as now collected, are of three kinds. 
1. Fragmenta Valesiana: such as were dispersed 
throughout various writers, scholiasts, grammarians, 
lexicographers, &c., and were collected by Henri de 
Valo's. 2. Fragmenta Peiresciana: comprising large 
extracts, found in the section entitled “ Of Virtues and 
Vices,” in the great collection or portative library 
compiled by order of Constantine VI., Porphyrogeni- 
tus. The manuscript of this belonged to Peiresc. 
i. The fragments of the first 34 books, preserved in 
the second section of the same work of Constantine’s, 
entitled “ Of Embassies.” T ese are known under 
the name of Fragmenta Ursijtiana, because the man¬ 
uscript containing them was found in Sicily by Fulvio 
Orsini. 4. Excerpla Vaticana, by Mai, which contain 
fragments of books 1-35, and 61-80, and which have 
been published in the second volume of the Script orum 
A ova Collectio, p. 135, seqq. To these are added the 
fragments of an unknown continuator of Dion (p. 
234-24-6), which go down to the time of Constantine. 
Other fragments from Dion belong chiefly to the first 
35 books, also published in the same collection (p. 
527, seqq.), were found by Mai in two Vatican MSS., 
which contain a sylloge or collection made by Maxi¬ 
mus Planudes. The annals of Zonaras also ^contain 
444 


numerous extracts from Dion. Dion has taken Po¬ 
lybius for his model; but the imitator is comparable 
with his original neither as respects arrangement and 
the distribution of materials, nor in soundness of views, 
and just and accurate reasoning. His style is gener¬ 
ally clear, though there are occasionally obscure pas¬ 
sages, where there appears to be no corruption of the 
text. His diligence is unquestionable, and, from his 
opportunities, he was well acquainted with the circum¬ 
stances of the empire during the period for which he 
is a contemporary authority ; and, indeed, we may as¬ 
sign a high value to his history of the whole period 
from the time of Augustus to his own age. Nor is 
his work without value for the earlier periods of Ro¬ 
man history, in which, though he has fallen into errors, 
like all the Greek and Roman writers who have han¬ 
dled the same obscure subject, he still enables us to 
correct some erroneous statements of Livy and Dio¬ 
nysius.—The best edition is that of Fabricius, com 
pleted by Reimar, Hamb., 2 vols. folio, 1751. Not 
withstanding, however, the labours of these editors, a 
new critical edition is much wanted, both from the 
scarcity of the edition just mentioned, and the fac, 
that the manuscripts have not been collated with suf¬ 
ficient care. The small Tauchnitz edition, 4 vols. 
16mo, contains all the fragments. A very useful edi¬ 
tion appeared in 1824-1825, by Sturz, from the Leip- 
sic press, 8 vols. 8vo, which some even prefer to the 
edition of Fabricius and Reimar. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. 
Gr., vol. 4, p.. 180, seqq.—H ffmann, Lex. Bibliog- 
raph., vol. 1. p. 250.)—III. r'urnamed Chrysostomus, 
or the Golden-mouthed, on account of the beauty of 
his style, was a native ot Prusa, in Bithynia, and a 
sophist and stoic. He was in Egypt when Vespasian, 
who had been procla rr ed emperor by his own army, 
came there, and he was consulted by that prince on 
the proper course to be adopted under the circumstan¬ 
ces. Dion had the candour, or, as some may think, 
the want of judgment, to advise him to restore the re¬ 
public. Afterward he resided for years at Rome, till 
one of his friends having engaged in a conspiracy 
against Domitian, Dion, fearing for himself, fled to the 
modern Moldavia, where he remained till the tyrant’s 
death, labouring for his subsistence with his own 
hands, and possessing no books but the Phasdon of 
Plato, and Demosthenes’ nepi Uapa7rp£a6£iaq. Domi¬ 
tian having been assassinated, the legions quartered on 
the Danube were about to revolt, when Dion got upon 
an altar, and harangued them so effectually that they 
submitted to the decision of the senate'. Dion was in 
high favour with Nerva and Trajan, and, when the lat¬ 
ter triumphed after his Dacian victories, the orator sat 
in the emperor’s car in the procession. He returned 
to Bithynia, where he spent the remainder of his life. 
Accusations of peculation and treason were brought 
against him, but rejected as frivolous. He died at an 
advanced age, but it is not known in what year. We 
have eighty orations attributed to him, which are very 
prettily written, but not of much intrinsic value. The 
best edition is that of Reiske, 2 vols. 8vo, Lips., 1784 
( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 4, p. 210, seqq.) 

Dion^ea, a surname of Venus, as the daughter ol 
Dione. 

Di6ne, a nymph, daughter of Nereus and Doris. 
She was mother of Venus by Jupiter, according to 
Homer (II., 5, 370). Dione, according to Knight, is 
the female AI2, or ZEY2, and therefore associated 
with him in the most ancient temple of Greece at Do- 

dona. ( Inquiry into the Symb. Lang., &c., $ 43.__ 

Class. Journ., vol. 23, p. 234.—Compare Buttmann. 
Mythologus, vol. 1, p. 7, and Constant, de la Reli- 
geon, vol. 2, p. 335, in notis.) 

Dionysia, festivals held in honour of the god Dio¬ 
nysus or Bacchus. The most important of these were 
held at Athens and ir. Attica ; and these derive their 
importance from their being the occasion on which th« 




D J () 


DIONYSIUS. 


dramatic exhibitions of the Athenians took place. An 
account of these festivals, which were four in number, 
will be found under the article Theatrum, § 2. 

DionysTas, a town of Egypt, situate at the south¬ 
western extremity of the Lake Mosris. It is now called 
Beled-Rerun, or, according to some, Scobha. ( Ptol.) 

Dionysouolis, I. a town of Lower Moesia, in the 
vicinity of the Euxine Sea. Pliny says that it was 
also called Crunos, but Pomponius Mela (2, 2) makes 
Crunos the port of Dionysopolis. The modern name 
is Dinysipoli. —II. A city of India, supposed by Man- 
nert to be the same with the modern Nagar, or Nugkr, 
on the western bank of the river Cow. Mannert does 
not consider it to have been the same with the ancient 
city of Nyssa, but makes the position of the latter more 
to the north. ( Geogr ., vol. 5, p. 142.) 

Dionysius I., or the Elder, a celebrated tyrant of 
Syracuse, raised to that high rank from the station of 
a simple citizen, was born in this same city 430 B.C. 
He was son-in-law to Hermocrates, who, having been 
banished by an adverse party, attempted to return by 
force of arms, and was killed in the action. Dionysius 
was dangerously wounded, but he recovered, and was 
afterward recalled. In time he procured himself to 
be nominated one of the generals, and, under pretence 
of raising a force sufficient to resist the Carthaginians, 
he obtained a decree for recalling all the exiles, to 
whom he gave arms. Being sent to the relief of Gela, 
then besieged by the Carthaginians, he effected nothing 
against the enemy, pretending that he was not sec¬ 
onded by the other commanders ; and his friends sug¬ 
gested, that, in order to save the state, the supreme 
power ought to be confided to one man, reminding the 
people of the times of Gelon, who had defeated the 
Carthaginian host, and given peace to Sicily. The 
general assembly therefore proclaimed Dionysius su¬ 
preme chief of the republic about 405 B.C., when he 
wns twenty-five years of age. He increased the pay 
of the soldiers, enlisted new ones, and, under pretence 
of a conspiracy against his person, formed a guard of 
mercenaries. He then proceeded to the relief of Gela, 
but failed in the attack on the Carthaginian camp : he 
however penetrated into the town, the inhabitants of 
which he advised to leave it quietly in the night under 
the escort of his troops. On his retreat he persuaded 
those of Camarina to do the same. This raised suspi¬ 
cions among his troops, and a party of horsemen, riding 
on before the rest, raised, on their arrival at Syracuse, 
an insurrection against Dionysius, plundered his house, 
and treated his wife so cruelly that she died in conse¬ 
quence. Dionysius, with a chosen body, followed 
close after, set fire to the gate of Acradina, forced his 
way into the city, put to death the leaders of the re¬ 
volt, and remained undisputed possessor of the su¬ 
preme power. The Carthaginians, being afflicted by 
a pestilence, made proposals of peace, which were ac¬ 
cepted by Dionysius, and he then applied himself to 
fortifying Syracuse, and especially the island of Orty- 
gia, which he made his stronghold, and which he peo¬ 
pled entirely with his trusty partisans and mercenaries, 
by the aid of whom he put down several revolts. Af¬ 
ter reducing beneath his sway the towns of Leontini, 
Catana, and Naxus, he engaged in a new war with 
Carthage, in which he met with the most brilliant suc¬ 
cess, making himself master of numerous towns in Si- 
nly, and becoming eventually feared both in Italy and 
Sicily, to the dominion of both of which countries he 
*eems at one time to have aspired. In order to raise 
money, he allied himself with the Illyrians, and pro¬ 
posed to them the joint plunder of the temple of Del¬ 
phi: the enterprise, however, failed. He then plun¬ 
dered several temples, such as that of Proserpina at 
Locri; and as he sailed back with the plunder, with a 
fair wind, he, who was a humourist in his way, ob¬ 
served to his friends, “ You see how the immortal gods 
favour sacrilege.” Having carried off a golden mantle 


from a statue of Jupiter, consecrated by Gelon out of. 
the spoils of the Carthaginians, he replaced it by a 
woollen garment, saying that this was more suited to 
the vicissitudes of the seasons. He also took away a 
golden beard from ^Esculapius, observing that it was 
not becoming for the son of a beardless father (Apollo) 
to make a display of his own beard. He likewise ap¬ 
propriated to himself the silver tables and golden vases 
and crowns in the temples, saying he would make use 
of the bounty of the gods. (Cic., N. D., 3, 34.— 
an, V. H., 1, 20.) He also made a descent with a fleet 
on the coast of Etruria, and plundered the temple at 
Caere or Agyfla of 1000 talents. With these re¬ 
sources he was preparing himself for a new expedition 
to Italy, when a fresh Carthaginian armament landed 
in Sicily, 383 B.C., and defeated Dionysius, whose 
brother Leptines fell in the battle. A peace followed, oi 
which Carthage dictated the conditions. The boundary 
of the two states was fixed at the river Halycus, and 
Dionysius had to pay 1000 talents for the expenses of 
the war. This peace lasted fourteen years, during which 
Dionysius remained the undisturbed ruler of Syracuse, 
and one half of Sicily, with part of southern Italy. He 
sent colonies to the coasts of the Adriatic, and his 
fleets navigated both seas. Twice he sent assistance 
to his old ally, Sparta; once against the Athenians, 
374 B.C., and again in 369, after the battle of Leuc- 
tra, when the Spartans were hard pressed by Epami- 
nondas. Meantime the court of Dionysius was fre¬ 
quented by many distinguished men, philosophers, and 
poets. Plato is said to have been among the former, 
being invited by Dion, the brother-in-law of Dionys¬ 
ius ; but the philosopher’s declamations against tyr 
anny led to his being sent away from Syracuse. The 
poets fared little better, as Dionysius himself aspired 
to poetical fame, for which, however, he was not so 
well qualified as for political success. Those who did 
not praise his verses were in danger of being led to 
prison. Dionysius twice sent some of his poems to 
be recited at the Olympic games, but they were hissed 
by the assembly. He was more successful at Athens. 
A tragedy of his obtained the prize, and the news of his 
success almost turned his brain. He had just con¬ 
cluded a fresh truce with the Carthaginians, after hav¬ 
ing made an unsuccessful attack on Lilybaeum, at the 
expiration of the fourteen years’ peace ; and he now 
gave himself up to rejoicings and feastings for his po¬ 
etical triumph. In a debauch with his friends, he ate 
and drank so intempera tely that he fell senseless, and 
soon after died (some say he was poisoned by his phy¬ 
sicians, at the instigation of his son), B.C. 367, in the 
63d year of his age, having been tyrant of Syracuse 
thirty-eight years. After the death of his first wife, 
he married two wives at once, namely, Doris of Locri, 
and Aristaeneta, daughter of Hipparinus, of Syracuse : 
by these women he had seven children, of whom Di¬ 
onysius, his elder son by Doris, succeeded him in the 
sovereignty.—Dionysius was a clever statesman, and 
generally successful in his undertakings. He did 
much to strengthen and extend the power of Syracuse, 
and it was probably owing to him that all Sicily did 
not fall into the hands of the Carthaginians. He was 
unscrupulous, rapacious, and vindictive, but several of 
the stories stated of his cruelty and suspicious temper 
appear improbable, or at least exaggerated. The 
works of Philistus, who had written his life, and who 
is praised by Cicero, are lost. Diodorus, who is our 
principal remaining authority concerning Dionysius, 
lived nearly three centuries after, and was not a criti 
cal writer. The government of Dionysius, like that 
of many others who are styled tyrants in ancient histo¬ 
ry, was not a despotism ; it resembled rather that of 
the first Medici, and other leaders of the Italian repub 
lies in the middle ages, or that of the stadtholders in 
Holland. The popular forms still remained, and we find 
Dionysius repeatedly convoking the assembly of th€ 

445 




DIONYSIUS. 


DIONYSIUS). 


people on important occasions, when full freedom of 
speech seems to have been allowed. ( Plut., Vic. Dion. 
— Diod. Sic., 13, 92, seqq. — Id., 14, 7, seqq., &c.) An 
account of the famous prison, or “ Ear of Dionysius,” 
will be found under the article Lautumise.—II. The 
second of that name, surnamed the Younger, was son 
of Dionysius I. by Doris. His father, whom he suc¬ 
ceeded, had left the state in a prosperous condition, 
but young Dionysius had neither his abilities, nor his 
prudence and experience. He followed at first the ad¬ 
vice of Dion, who, although a republican in principle, 
had remained faithful to his father, and who now en¬ 
deavoured to direct the inexperienced son f#r the good 
of his country. For this purpose Dion invited his 
friend Plato to Syracuse about 364 B.C. Dionysius 
received the philosopher with great respect, and, in 
deference to his advice, reformed for a while his loose 
habits and the manners of his court. But a faction, 
headed, by Philistus, who had always been a supporter 
of the tyranny of the elder Dionysius, succeeded in 
prejudicing the son against, both Dion and Plato. 
Dion was exiled, under pretence that he had written 
privately to the senate of Carthage for the purpose of 
concluding a peace. Plato urgently demanded of Di¬ 
onysius the recall of Dion, and, not being able to ob¬ 
tain it, he left Syracuse, after which Dionysius gave 
himself up to debauchery without restraint. Dion, 
meanwhile, was travelling through Greece, where his 
character gained him numerous friends. Dionysius, 
moved by jealousy, confiscated his property, and obliged 
his wife to marry another. Upon this, Dion collected 
a small force at Zacynthus, with which he sailed for 
Sicily, and entered Syracuse without resistance. Di¬ 
onysius retired to the citadel in Ortygia, and, after 
some resistance, in which Philistus, his best support- 
tor, was taken prisoner and put to death, he quitted 
Syracuse by sea and retired to Locri, the country of 
his mother, where he had connexions and friends. 
Dion having been treacherously murdered, several ty¬ 
rants succeeded each other in Syracuse, until Dionys¬ 
ius himself came and retook it about B.C. 346. In¬ 
stead, however, of improving by his ten years’ exile, he 
had grown worse. Having, during the interval of his 
absence from Syracuse, usurped the supreme power 
in Locri, he had committed many atrocities, had put 
to death several citizens, and abused their wives and 
daughters. Upon his return to Syracuse, his cruelty 
and profligacy drove away a great number of people, 
who emigrated to various parts of Italy and Greece, 
while others joined Iketas, tyrant of Leontini, and a 
former friend of Dion. The latter sent messengers 
to Corinth to request assistance against Dionysius. 
The Corinthians appointed Timoleon leader of the 
expedition. This commander landed in Sicily B.C. 
344, notwithstanding the opposition of the Carthagin¬ 
ians, and of Iketas, who acted a perfidious part on 
the occasion.; he entered Syracuse, and soon after 
obliged Dionysius to surrender. Dionysius was sent 
to Corinth, where he spent the remainder of his life in 
the company of actors and low women ; some say, 
that at one time he kept a school. Justin (21,5) states, 
that he purposely affected low habits in order to dis¬ 
arm revenge, in that, being despised, he might no long¬ 
er be feared or hated for his former tyranny. Several 
repartees are related of him in answer to those who 
taunted him upon his altered fortunes, which are not 
destitute of wit or wisdom. (Pint., Vit. Dion.—Diod. 
Sic., 16, 5, seqq.) —III. Halicarnassensis or Halicar- 
nasseus, an historian and critic, was born at Halicar¬ 
nassus in the first century B.C. We know nothing of 
his history beyond what he has told us himself. He 
states, that he came to Italy at the termination of the 
civil war between Augustus and Antony (B.C. 29), 
and that he spent the following two-and-twenty years 
at Rome in learning the Latin language, and ip col- 
'ecting materials for his history. (Ando Rom 7 
446 ' 


seqq. —Compare Phot., Biblioth., cod. 83.) The prin¬ 
cipal work of Dionysius is his Roman Antiquities 
(T u/uaiitq ’Ap^aioHoyia), which commenced with the 
early history of the people of Italy, and terminated 
with the beginning of the first Punic war, B.C. 265. 
It originally consisted of 20 books, of which the first 
ten remain entire. The eleventh breaks off in the 
year 312 B.C., but several fragments of the latter half 
of the history are preserved in the collection of Con¬ 
stantine Porphyrogenitus, and to these a valuable ad 
dition was made in 1816, by Mai, from an old MS 
Besides, the first three books of Appian were founded 
entirely upon Dionysius; and Plutarch’s biography 
of Camillus must also be considered as a compilation 
mostly taken from the Roman Antiquities, so that, 
perhaps, upon the whole, we have not lost much of his 
work. With regard to the trustworthiness and gener¬ 
al value of Dionysius’s history, considerable doubts may 
justly be entertained: for, though he has evidently 
written with much greater care than Livy, and has 
studied Cato and the old annalists more diligently than 
his Roman contemporary, yet he wrote with an object 
which at once invalidates his claim to be considered a 
veracious and impartial historian. Dionysius wrote 
for the Greeks, and his object was to relieve them from 
the mortification which they felt at being conquered 
by a race of barbarians, as they considered the Romans 
to be. And this he endeavoured to effect by twisting 
and forging testimonies, and botching up the old le¬ 
gends, so as to make out a prima facie proof of the 
Greek origin of the city of Rome; and he inserts arbi¬ 
trarily a great number of set speeches, evidently com¬ 
posed for the same purpose. He indulges in a mi¬ 
nuteness of detail, which, though it might be some 
proof of veracity in a contemporaneous history, is a 
palpable indication of want of faith in the case of an 
ancient history so obscure and uncertain as that of 
Rome. With all his study and research, Dionysius was 
so imperfectly acquainted with the Roman constitu 
lion, that he often misrepresents the plainest state¬ 
ments about it. ( Niebuhr, Rom. Hist., vol. 2, p. 13, 
Cambr. transl.) For instance, he thought the original 
constitution of Rome was a monarchical democracy, 
and he calls the curiae the demus {df/pog). He be¬ 
lieved, when he wrote his second book, that the decrees 
of the people were enacted by the curiae and confirmed 
by the senate ( Antiq., 2, 14), and not, as he afterward 
discovered, the converse. {Antiq., 7, 38.) In a word, 
though the critical historian may be able to extract 
much that is of great importance for the early history 
of Rome from the garbled narrative and dull trifling of 
Dionysius, he cannot be regarded as a meritorious wri¬ 
ter, or recommended to the student of ancient history 
as a faithful guide.—Dionysius also wrote a treatise 
on rhetoric ; criticisms on the style of Thucydides, 
Lysias, Isocrates, Isams, Dinarchus, Plato, and Demos¬ 
thenes ; a treatise on the arrangement of words, and 
some other short essays. His critical works are much 
more valuable than his history, and are, indeed, written 
with considerable power. The criticism on Dinarchus 
displays good sense and judgment, and shows the 
great pains which the author took to separate the gen¬ 
uine writings of the Attic orators from tl e fabrications 
which passed under their name. The best editions of 
Dionysius are, that of Hudson, Oxon., 1704. 2 vols. fob 
and that of Reiske, Lips., 1774-1777, 6 vols. Svo 
Mai’s fragments were first published at Milan in 1816 
and reprinted the following year at Frankfort. They 
also appear in the second volume of Mai’s Nova Collec - 
tio, Rome, 1827.—IV. The author of a Greek poem in 
1186 hexameters, entitled T r]q Ohcovpevqc n epcqyjjGLg, 
“A Description of the Habitable World." It is not clear¬ 
ly ascertained where he was born. The probability is, 
however, that he was a native of Charax, in Susiana 
It is uncertain, also, when he flourished ; he belonged, 
however, according to the general opinion to the°lat- 



D I 0 


DIO 


ter part of the third or the beginning to the fourth 
century A.D. He derived from his poem the surname 
of Periegetes. This production of his has little merit 
as a work of imagination, and but feeble interest for the 
geographer. The commentary, however, of Eustathius 
upon it possesses some value from the miscellaneous 
information which is scattered throughout. There are 
two Latin translations of the poem, one by Rufus Fes- 
tus Avienus, and the other by Priscian. The last and 
best edition of the Periegesis is that of Bernhardy, 
Lips., 1828, 8vo, in the first volume of his Geographi 
Grad Minores. ( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Gr.,\ ol. 4, p. 59.)— 
V. A Christian writer, called Areopagita , from his hav¬ 
ing been a member of the court of Areopagus at Athens. 
He was converted to Christianity by St. Paul’s preach¬ 
ing. (Acts, 17, 34.) He is reported to have been 
the first bishop of Athens, being appointed to that office 
by the apostle Paul, and to have suffered martyrdom 
under Domitian. During the night of learning, a great 
number of writings were circulated under his name, 
which were collected together and printed at Cologne 
in 1536, and subsequently at Antwerp in 1634, and at 
Paris in 1646, 2 vols. fol. They have now, for a long 
time, been deemed spurious, although the learned dif¬ 
fer in respect to the times and authors of the fabrica¬ 
tion. The most probable reasoning, however, fixes 
them at the end of the fifth century. {Suid. — Cave, 
Hist. Lit. — Lardncr's Creed, pt. 2.)—VI. Surnamed 
Exiguus, or the Little, on account of the smallness of 
his stature, was a Scythian monk of the sixth century, 
who became an abbot at Rome. Cassiodorus, who 
was his intimate friend, speaks highly of his learning 
and character. At the request of Stephen, bishop of 
Salona, he drew up a body of canons, entitled “ Col- 
lectio, sive Codex Canonum Ecclesiasticorum ,” &c., 
translated from the'Greek, containing the first 50 
apostolical canons, as they are called, with those of the 
councils of Nice, Constantinople, Chalcedon, Sardis, 
and including 138 canons of certain African councils. 
He afterward drew up a collection of the decretals, 
and both are to be found in the Bibliotheca Juris Ca- 
nonici Veteris of Justell. To this Dionysius some 
writers ascribe the mode of computing the time of 
Easter, attributed to Victorious, and of dating from the 
birth of Christ. {Cave's Hist. Lit. — Hutton's Math. 
Diet.) —VII. A Greek poet and musician, the author 
of the words and music of three hymns, addressed 
to Calliope, Apollo, and Nemesis. They were pub¬ 
lished by Vincent Galilei, at Florence, in 1581 ; and 
again by Dr. Fell, at Oxford, in 1672, from a manu¬ 
script found among the papers of Archbishop Usher. 
It appears by these notes, that the music of the hymns 
in question was in the Lydian mode and diatonic ge¬ 
nus. Galilei asserts that he had them from a Floren¬ 
tine gentleman, who copied them from an ancient 
Greek manuscript in the library of Cardinal St. Angelo 
at Rome, which manuscript also contained the treatises 
on music by Aristides, Quintilianus, and Bryennius, 
since published by Meibomius and Dr. Wallis. The 
Florentine and Oxford editions of these hymns exactly 
agree ; and they have since also been printed in the 
fifth volume of the French Memoirs of the Academy 
of Inscriptions, &c. {Burney's History of Music.) 

Diophantus, a mathematician of Alexandrea, who, 
according to the most received opinion, was contem¬ 
porary with the Emperor Julian. This opinion is 
founded upon a passage of Abulpharadge, an Arabian 
author of the thirteenth century : he names, among the 
contemporaries of the Emperor Julian, Diophantes 
(for Diophantus), as the author of a celebrated work 
on algebra and arithmetic ; and he is thought to have 
derived his information from an Arabic commentator 
on Diophantus, Muhammed al Buziani, who flourished 
about '-.he end of the eleventh century. The passage 
of Abulpharadge, in the translation of Pococke, is as 
follows : “ Ex iis ctiam Diophantes, cujus liber A, B, 


quern Algebram vocant, Celebris est .” According to 
Ideler, however (in a communication to Schulz), the 
Arabic text, when rendered into Latin, runs as follows. 
“ Cujus liber Ab-kismet de Algebra ct Almokabala Cele¬ 
bris est." The two words Al-dgebr and Almokabala, 
designate with the Arabians what we call algebra. 
The term Kismet means “ division,” but Ab-Kismet 
is unintelligible : it may, perhaps, be the Greek word 
for arithmetic (’A piOprimer/), in a corrupt and mutila 
ted state. Some critics, who attach no great weight to 
this testimony of the Arabian writer just referred to, 
declare that there is no reason whatever for fixing an) 
precise pei%d between B.C. 200 and A.D. 400. Di 
ophantus is certainly later than the first of these dates 
since he cites Hypatia ; he is anterior to the year 40G 
of our era, since, according to Suidas, the celebrated 
Hypatia, who perished A.D. 415, commented upon 
his writings. The reputation of Diophantus was su 
great among the ancients that they ranked him with 
Pythagoras and Euclid. From his epitaph in the An- 
thologia, which furnishes a kind of arithmetical prob¬ 
lem, the following particulars of his life have been 
collected : viz., that he was married when thirty-three 
years old, and had a son five years after; that his son 
died at the age of forty-two, and that his father did not 
survive him above four years; whence it appears that 
Diophantus was eighty-four years old when he died. 
The problem amounts to this, viz., to find a number 
such that its sixth, twelfth, and seventh parts, with 
five, its half, and four, amount to the whole number ; 
which is evidently eighty-four. Diophantus wrote a 
work entitled Arithmetical Questions, in thirteen books, 
of which only six remain. It would seem that in the 
fifteenth, and even at the beginning of the seventeenth, 
century all the thirteen books still existed. John Mul¬ 
ler, known by the name of Regio-montanus, assures 
us that he saw a complete manuscript of the work; 
and, according to Bachet de Meziriac, Cardinal Per¬ 
ron also once possessed a complete copy. The 
arithmetic of Diophantus is not merely important for 
the study of the history of mathematics, from its ma¬ 
king known the state of the exact sciences in the fourth 
century before the Christain era, but is interesting 
also to the mathematician himself, from its furnishing 
him with luminous methods for the resolution of ana¬ 
lytical problems. We find in it, moreover, the first 
traces of that branch of the exact sciences called alge¬ 
bra. It is scarcely to be conceived, however, that, 
while the cumbrous machinery of common language 
constituted the sole instrument of investigation, the 
very curious conclusions which we find in this work 
could have resulted from the researches of one single 
mind. To suppose that Diophantus was the author of 
the analysis which bears his name is so contrary to all 
analogy with experience and the history of mental 
phenomena, as to be utterly impossible to admit. Still 
if we inquire into the history of this branch of analy 
sis, and ask who were the predecessors to Diophantus, 
or whether they were Greeks or Hindus, no satis¬ 
factory answer can be given. We have also a sec¬ 
ond work of Diophantus on Polygon Numbers {Tlepl 
rcoT^vyovuv dpidptiv). He himself cites a third, un¬ 
der the title of tloplcpara, or Corollaries. The best 
edition of Diophantus is that of Fermat, Tolos., 1670, 
fol. It is a republication of that of Meziriac {Paris, 
1621, fob), with additions. A valuable translation of 
the Arithmetical Questions into German was published 
by Otto Schulz, Berlin, 1822, 8vo, to which is added 
Poselger’s translation of the work on Polygon numbers. 
{Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 7, p. 43, seqq.) 

Diores, a friend of ./Eneas, killed by Turnus. He 
had engaged in the games exhibited by /Eneas on his 
father’s tomb in Sicily. ( Virg.,JEn., 5, 297; 12, 509.) 

Dioscorides, I. a disciple of Isocrates, who wrote, 1. 
A work on the government of Lacedaemon (IIo/Ure/aAa- 
Kedaipoviov) ; 2. Commentaries, or Historic Memoirs 

447 



DIOSCORIDES. 


DIOSCORIDES. 


(T -to/uvr/pcira ); and, 3. A treatise on the manners in 
Homer (O l Trap’ ’Opi]p(p vopoi). Athenaeus, who cites 
the first two of these works, has preserved a long frag¬ 
ment of the last. It treats of the mode in which the 
Homeric heroes subsisted, and is extremely curious. 
( Athenceus, Ep., 1, p. 8.— Ed. Schweigh., vol. 1, p. 
31.)—II. A poet of Alexandrea, some of whose epi¬ 
grams are preserved in the Anthology ( ed. Jacobs , vol. 
1, p. 224, seqq.). —III. A native of Anazarbus in Cili¬ 
cia, who lived, according to some, in the time of An¬ 
tony and Cleopatra, while others place him in the 
reign of Nero. One circumstance in favour of the 
latter supposition is, that Pliny, who faithfully men¬ 
tions the authors whence he borrows, does not once 
mention Dioscorides, although we find in the work of 
the former a great number of passages which appear to 
have been borrowed from the latter. This silence on 
the one hand, and conformity on the other, prove that 
Pliny and Dioscorides wrote nearly at the same period, 
and derived some of their materials from the same 
sources, particularly from the lost work of Sextius 
Niger. Dioscorides himself informs us, that, as a mil¬ 
itary man, he visited many countries. He received the 
surname of Phacas, from his having on his person a 
spot resembling a lentil (Qa/cf/). Dioscorides is the 
most celebrated herbalist of antiquity, and for sixteen 
or seventeen centuries there was nothing known that 
could be regarded as superior to his work Ilepi '"TXrjc 
laTpiKrjg, “ On the Materia Mcdica ,” in five books. 
This is the more surprising, considering the real na¬ 
ture of this famous work. The author introduces no 
order into the arrangement of his matter, unless by 
consulting a similarity of sound in the names he gives 
his plants. Thus, medium was placed with epimedi- 
um , althcea cannabina with cannabis , hippophcestum 
(cnicus stellatus) with hippopkae , and so on. The 
mere separation of aromatic and gum-bearing trees, 
esculents and corn-plants, hardly forms an exception 
to this statement. Of many of his plants no descrip¬ 
tion is given, but they are merely designated by a name. 
In others the descriptions are comparative, contradic¬ 
tory, or unintelligible. He employs the same word in 
different senses, and evidently attached no exactness 
to the terms he made use of. He described the same 
plant twice under the same name or different names; 
he was often notoriously careless, and he appears to 
have been very ready to state too much upon the author¬ 
ity of others. Nevertheless, his writings are extremely 
interesting, as showing the amount of Materia Medica 
knowledge in the author’s day, and his descriptions 
are in many cases far from bad : but we must be care¬ 
ful not to look upon them as evidence of the state of 
botany at the same period ; for Dioscorides has no 
pretensions to be ranked among the botanists of anti¬ 
quity, considering that the writings of Theophrastus, 
four centuries earlier, show that botany had even at 
that time begun to be cultivated as a science distinct 
from the art of the herbalist.—It was only at last, when 
the rapidly increasing number of new plants, and the 
general advance in all branches of physical knowledge, 
compelled the moderns to admit that the vegetable 
Kingdom might contain more things than were dreamed 
of by the Anazarbian philosopher, that the authority of 
Dioscorides ceased to be acknowledged.—Dioscorides, 
in his preface, criticises the authors who had treated of 
this subject before him : Iolas of Bithynia, and Her- 
aclides of Tarentum, had neglected plants and metals ; 
Craterus, the botanist (pi^oropoq), and Andreas the 
physician, who had been regarded as the best writers 
on this subject, had nevertheless omitted many plants 
or roots ; ^the disciples of Asclepiades, namely, Julius 
Bassus, Niceratus, Petronius, Sextius Niger, and Di- 
odotus, had described very exactly what all the world 
knew, but had passed over in silence the sanative vir¬ 
tues of medicaments. He also states, in his preface, 
that his work is divided into five books. Photius how- 
448 


ever, cites as a sixth and seventh book, two small trea¬ 
tises which have come down to us, the one on Alexi- 
pharmacs, and the other on Theriacs. The authenti¬ 
city of these is doubted by critics ; and yet not only 
are these two books found in manuscript, but the whole 
work is often arranged in a very different manner; be¬ 
ing distributed sometimes into five, and at other times 
into seven, eight, or nine books. The text als? hw 
experienced various interpolations, which have in som< 
degree been removed by the diligence and learning ol 
later editors. Among these may be mentioned the 
synonyms for the names of the plants in the several 
chapters, which are taken from the ancient Egyptian, 
Dacian, and Celtic languages. These have been now 
placed at the end of the work, as they are generally 
supposed not to have come from the pen of Dioscorides. 
Many passages, too, have been discovered, which have 
been added to the text, being taken from authors of a 
later period, such as Aetius, Oribasius, Constantinus Af- 
ricanus, or else being translations from Pliny. Many 
transpositions, too, have been made in the text by copy¬ 
ists and possessors of manuscripts, with a view of in¬ 
troducing into the work an alphabetical arrangement. 
Besides the Alexipharmacs and Theriacs, there exists 
another work attributed to Dioscorides, and entitled 
IT spl evTcopicTov drcXtiv re ual gvvBetuv fyappatcuv, 
“ Of Simple and Compound Medicines which are easy 
to be prepared”’ It is divided into two books: the 
authenticity of the treatise, however, is extremely 
doubtful. Finally, we have a work entitled Ilepi 
fyappaieuv epneipiag, “ Of the Knowledge of Medi¬ 
cines.” It is a species of alphabetical repertory of the 
works of Dioscorides and Stephen of Athens.—Dr. 
Alston affirms, that Dioscorides brought the Greek Ma¬ 
teria Medica to perfection ; or, at least, that u was 
never much improved afterward. “ In him I have 
counted,” he says, “ above 90 minerals, 700 plants, 
and 168 animal substances, that is, 958 in all.” 
“ Even Galen,” remarks Dr. Adams, “ who is so par¬ 
simonious of praise, seldom mentions Dioscorides but 
in terms of high eulogy ; and neither Galen nor At- 
tius, Oribasius nor Paulus^Egineta,have made any ma¬ 
terial addition to the list of medical articles described 
by Dioscorides. The only fault with which his work 
is at all chargeable, is his attributing, in some instan¬ 
ces, too many virtues to one and the same substance ; 
and probably some which one cannot always admit to 
have been founded upon actual experience. On this 
ground Dr. Cullen founds a severe charge against the 
accuracy of our author; but, as the mania for exalting 
modern literature at the expense of the ancient was 
then at its height in Edinburgh, the opinion of such a 
critic ought to be received with considerable allow¬ 
ance, more especially as Cullen is constantly betraying 
his ignorance of the works which he depreciates.”— 
The most celebrated MS. of Dioscorides is one at Vi¬ 
enna, illuminated with rude figures. It was sent by 
Busbequius, the Austrian ambassador at Constantino¬ 
ple, to Mathiolus, who quotes it under the name of the 
“ Cantacuzene Codex,” and it is believed to have been 
written in the sixth century. Copies of some of the 
figures were inserted by Dodoeus in his Historia Stir- 
pium, and others were engraved in the reign of the 
Empress Maria Theresa, under the inspection of Ja- 
quin. Two impressions only of these plates have ever 
been taken off, as the work was not continued. One 
of them is now in the library of the Linnaean Society, 
the other with Sibthorp’s collection at Oxford. They 
are of little importance, as the figures are of the rudest 
imaginable description. Another MS., of the ninth 
century, exists at Paris, and was used by Salmasius : 
this also is illustrated with figures, and has both Ara¬ 
bic and Coptic names introduced, on which account it 
is supposed to have been written in Egypt. Besides 
these, there is at Vienna a MS., believed to be still 
more ancient than that first mentioned; and three 






D I O 


D I T 


others are preserved at Leyden. The latest and best 
edition of Dioscorides is that of Sprengel, in the col¬ 
lection of Greek physicians by Kuhn, Lips., 1829, 8vo. 
The folio edition by Saracenus (Sarassin) Franco/., 
1598, is also a very good one. Sprengel’s edition is 
improved by a collation of several MSS.—So far as 
European plants are in question, we may suppose that 
the means of illustrating Dioscorides are now nearly 
exhausted ; but it is far otherwise with his Indian and 
Persian plants. Concerning the latter, it is probable 
that much may be learned from a study of the modern 
Materia Medica of India. When the Nestorians, in 
the fifth century, were driven into exile, they sought 
refuge among the Arabs, with whom they established 
their celebrated school of me<l.cine, the ramifications 
of which extended into Persia and India, and laid the 
foundation of the present medical practice of the na¬ 
tives of those countries. In this way the Greek names 
of Dioscorides, altered, indeed, and adapted to the 
genius of the new countries, became introduced into 
the language of Persia, Arabia, and Hindustan, and 
have been handed down traditionally to the present 
day. Thus Dr. Royle has shown, by an examination 
of this sort of evidence, that the calamos aromatikos 
of Dioscorides is not a Gentian, as has been imagined ; 
that Nardos Indike is unquestionably the ISardosta¬ 
cky s Jatarnansi of De Candolle, and that the Lukion 
Indicon was neither a Rhamnus nor a Lycium, but, as 
Prosper Alpinus long ago asserted, a Berberis. (En- 
cyc. Us. KnowL, vol. 9, p. 5.— Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., 
vol. 5, p. 331, seqq.) 

Dioscorioi Insula (A loanopidov vyaog, Ptol .), or 
Dioscorjda (A locncopcSa, Peripl., p. 17), an island 
situate at the south of the entrance of the Arabic Gulf, 
and now called Socotora. The aloes here produced 
are held in more estimation than those of Hadramaiit. 
The ancient name, observes Vincent ( Periphis of the 
Erythrean Sea, p. 341.— Commerce of the Ancients, 
vol. 2), may have a Greek origin; but it has so near 
a name to Socotra or Zocotora, that it is much more 
likely to be a nautical corruption of an Arabic term, 
than the application of a Greek one. The island is 
near a hundred miles long, and thirty at its greatest 
breadth : it was inhabited only on the northern side in 
the age of Arrian, and the population there was very 
scanty, consisting of a mixture of Arabians, Indians, 
and Greeks, who had resorted hither for the purposes 
of commerce ; while the remainder of the country was 
marshy and deserted. Marco Polo informs us, that in 
his time the inhabitants were Christians ; and A1 
Edrissi confirms this, with the addition, that the Greeks 
were introduced there by Alexander at the request of 
Aristotle, in hopes of obtaining aloes. Cosmas Indi- 
copleustes, on the other hand, says they were Greeks 
from Egypt ( ed. Montfauc., p. 179). 

Dioscuri (A locKovpoi), or sons of Jupiter, a name 
given to Castor and Pollux. 

Dioscurxas, a maritime town of Colchis, at the 
mouth of the small river Charus. It was afterward 
called Sebastopolis, and was, in the earliest ages, the 
port most frequented in Colchis by distant as well as 
neighbouring nations, speaking different languages; 
a circumstance that still distinguishes Iskuriah, which 
name is only a corruption of the ancient one. ( Man- 
nert, Geogr., vol., 4, p. 370.) Arrian makes it to 
have been established by a colony of Milesians. Pom- 
ponius Mela, however, says that it was founded by 
Castor and Pollux, who made a voyage to Colchis, 
along with Jason, in the Argonautic expedition. ( Me¬ 
la, l, 19.) 

DiospSlis I. Magna, a famous city of Egypt. ( Vid. 
Thebae.)—II. Parva, a city of Egypt, wes£ of Ten- 
tyra, and on the western side of the Nile. It was the 
capital of the nome Diospolites. Pococke thought that 
the site of this place was in the vicinity of the village 
Hou, a supposition adopted by D’Anville, and also by 


the sgavans of the French expedition. (Mannert^ 
Geogr., vol. 10, pt. 1, p. 376.)—III. A city of Pales¬ 
tine, called also Lydda. It was situate in an extensive 
plain, and is placed by the Itiner. Hierosol. (p. 60) 
thirty-two miles northwest of Jerusalem. It was de¬ 
stroyed by the Saracens, who at a later period built, 
about two geographical miles to the east of its site, the 
modern city of Ramlat. ( Abulfeda, Tab. Syr., p. 79.) 

Dir.®, another name for the Furies. ( Vid. Furise.) 

Dirce, I. wife of Lycus, king of Thebes. She treat¬ 
ed Antiope with great cruelty, and was put to death by 
Amphion and Zethus, Antiope’s two sons. They tied 
her by the hair to a wild bull, and let the animal drag 
her until she was dead. After death she was changed 
into a fountain of the same name, near the city of 
Thebes. (Vid. Antiope.)—II. A fountain near Thebes, 
in Boeotia, the waters of which emptied into the Isme- 
nus. Near it was the dwelling of Pindar. Sir W. 
Gell noticed a brook to the west of the Cadmea, by 
some Turkish tombs, which he considered to be the an¬ 
cient Dirce. ( Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 230.) 

Dis, a name given to Pluto. (Vid. Pluto.) 

Dire or Dere (Aeipi), called by Ptolemy A yprj), a 
promontory of Africa, over against the coast of Ara¬ 
bia, and at the narrowest part of the Sinus Arabicus, 
or Red Sea. From its appearance as it stretched 
along the coast, it received the appellation of Dire 
(A eipy) or “the neck.” The modern name is said to 
be Bab-el-Mandeb. According to Mannert, however, 
Dire is now Ras-bel, and the opposite promontory of 
Posidium is Bab-el-Mandeb. The city of Dire, or, as 
it was originally called, Berenice epi-Dires, stood upon 
a part of the promontory Dire. (Mannert, vol. 10, pt. 
1, p. 59, seqq.) 

Discordia, a malevolent deity, daughter of Nox, 
and sister to Nemesis, the Parcas, and Death. She 
was driven from heaven by Jupiter, because she sowed 
dissensions among the gods, and was the cause of con¬ 
tinual quarrels. When the nuptials of Peleus and 
Thetis were celebrated, the goddess of discord was 
not invited, and this seeming neglect so irritated her, 
that she threw into the midst of the festal assembly 
an apple all of gold, and having on it the inscription, 
“ Let the fairest take me.” This apple was the cause 
of the ruin of Troy, and of infinite misfortunes to the 
Greeks. (Vid. Paris.) Discord is represented with 
a pale, ghastly look, her garment is torn, her eyes spar¬ 
kle with fire, and in her bosom she has a concealed dag¬ 
ger. (Lucian, Dial. Marin., 5.— Virg., JEn., 8, 702.) 

Dithy rambus, I. a name of Bacchus. (Eurip., 
Bacchoe, 526.) According to the old explanation, now 
deservedly rejected, it stood for diQvpapog, “ double¬ 
doored,” “ he who has passed through two doors,” as 
an allusion to the double birth of Bacchus. The 
quantity of the first syllable is an insuperable objection 
to this interpretation, and Welcker’s answer to it 
(Nachtrag., p. 192), that this deviation from the 
quantity of dig arose from the necessities of the tro¬ 
chaic verse, falls to the ground at once, unless it can 
be shown not only that the metre of the dithyramb itselt 
was trochaic, but also that it was necessary to introduce 
the name of the poem into the poem itself. (Donald¬ 
son, Theatre of the Greeks, p. 17, not., 4th ed.) —II. 
The earliest species of choral poetry connected with 
the worship of Bacchus. The inventor of this species 
of hymn was as little known as the meaning of the 
name. It is attributed by Herodotus to Arion (1, 23); 
by others to Lasus (Schol. ad Aristoph., Vesp., 1450. 
— Suid., s. v. A a,Gog) ; and Archilochus, who lived 
long before either of them, mentions it by name 
(Archil., frag., 38, ed. Liebel.) It was danced by a 
chorus of fifty men or boys around a blazing altar 
(Schol. ad Pmd., Olymp., 13, 26.— Simonia., Epigr., 
76); and hence it was also called the Cyclic chorus. 
The subjects were generally the birth of Bacchus, and 
his misfortunes. Indeed, unless we misunderstand 

449 




DOD 


DODONA. 


Plato’s words {Leg., 3, p. 700, b, A tovvoov yevemg 
.... diQvpaybog Xeyoyevog), the name of the song 
expressed as much. It was originally distinguished 
by a disorderly and enthusiastic wildness of tone, 
which, in the end, degenerated into turgidity and bom¬ 
bast. The music was Phrygian (therefore stirring 
and rapid), and the pipe its original accompaniment. 
From the more solemn festivities and systematic wild¬ 
ness of the dithyramb sprang tragedy ; just as comedy 
came from the Phallic song.—Blomfield supposes an 
etymological connexion between the words lapdog, 
■&piap6og, and 6i0vpap,6og, and thinks they are corrup¬ 
tions of Egyptian terms. ( Mus. Crit ., vol. 2, p. 70.) 
It is more probable, however, that ■&plap6og and 6i6v- 
oapftog came with the worship of Bacchus from In¬ 
dia, and that Dithyrambus was not, as many think, the 
name of the god after it became the name of the song, 
but the reverse. Donaldson, however, opposes this 
last-mentioned supposition, and attempts also to give 
a new derivation to the term itself, but with little, if 
any success. {Theatre of the Greeks , p. 18, not., 
4th ed.) 

Di vitiacu s, a leading nobleman of the JEdui, who 
possessed great influence with Cassar in consequence 
of his fidelity and attachment to the Romans. ( Cces ., 
B. G., 1 , 3.— Id. ib., 1 , 41, &c.) 

Dium, one of the principal cities of Macedonia, and 
not unfrequently the residence of its monarchs. It 
was situate, according to Livy (44, 6 and 7), at the 
foot of Mount Olympus, which leaves but the space of 
one mile from the sea ; and half of this is occupied by 
marshes formed by the mouth of the river Baphyrus. 
Thucydides (4, 78) says it was the first Macedonian 
town which Brasidas entered on his march from Thes¬ 
saly. This place suffered considerably during the So¬ 
cial war from an incursion of the JEtolians under their 
praetor Scopas, who levelled to the ground the walls, 
houses, and gymnasium, destroying the porches around 
the temple of Jupiter, an edifice of great celebrity, 
with the offerings and everything used in the festivals. 
{Polyb., 4, 62.) It is evident, however, from Livy’s 
account, that this damage had been repaired when the 
Romans occupied the town in the reign of Perseus. 
It was here that Philip assembled his army previous 
to the battle of Cynoscephalae. {Liv., 33,3.) Dium, 
at a later period, became a Roman colony. {Ptol., p. 
82.) Pliny terms it Colonia Diensis (4, 10). Some 
similarity in the name of this once flourishing city is 
apparent in that of a spot called Standia, which an¬ 
swers to Livy’s description. Dr. Clarke, however, 
was not disposed to acquiesce in this opinion, and 
thought that it must have stood at Katerina. {Trav¬ 
els — Greece , Egypt , &c., vol. 7, p. 400, seqq.) He 
was most probably mistaken, as Katerina , or Hateri, 
which is the real name of the place, is doubtless the 
Hatera of the Tabula Theodosiana, one stage from 
Dium. {Cramer's Ancient Greece , vol. 1, p. 208.) 

Divodurum, the capital of the Mediomatrici, a peo- 
of Belgic Gaul, who were located along the Mosella or 
Moselle. Its name was afterward changed to that of 
the people itself, and is now Metz. {Tacit., Hist., 1, 
63.— Amm. Marcell., 15, 27.) 

Dod5na, I. a celebrated city and oracle of Epirus, 
situate most probably in the present valley of Joannina, 
but the exact position of which has never been ascer¬ 
tained. We are not assisted here by any accurate an¬ 
cient traveller like Pausanias, nor have we any itine¬ 
raries or faithful measurements of distances to guide 
us ; all is vague and indefinite ; and, even after a most 
careful comparison of all the various passages in which 
the name occurs, very different opinions may be en¬ 
tertained on the subject. Dionysius of Halicarnassus 
places it four days’ journey from Buthrotum, and two 
from Ambracia. {Antiq. Rom., 1, 5.) Colonel Leake 
makes t to have been situate at the southeastern ex¬ 
tremity of the Lake of J oannina, near Kastritza { Trav¬ 


els in Northern Greece, vol. 4, p. 168, seqq.), and 
there are m^ny reasons for believing that the Dodone- 
an territory corresponded to the valley at the south of 
that sheet of water. It is true there is no mention of 
a lake in the neighbourhood of the ancient Dodona, 
but the place is described as surrounded by marshes, 
and it is not unlikely that the Lake cf Joannim viLy 
have been increased in later times from the Kai.avo> 
thras in the country. {Leake, vol. 4, p. 189.) It is 
universally allowed, that the temple of Dodona owed 
its origin to the Pelasgi at a period much anterior to 
the Trojan war; since many writers represent it as 
existing in the time of Deucalion, and even of Inachus. 
{yEsch., Prom. Vinct., v. 679. — Dion. Hal., Ant. 
Rom., 1, 14.) Herodotus distinctly states, that it was 
the most ancient oracle of Greece, and represents the 
Palasgi as consulting it on various occasions (2, 52). 
Hence the title of Pelasgic assigned to Jupiter, to 
whom the temple was dedicated. {Zev ava, Audio 
vale , TleTiaGyme. — Iliad, 16, 233.—Compare Hesiod, 
ap. Strab., 7, 327.) Of the existence, however, of 
another oracle in Thessaly of the same name {vid. 
No. II.), no doubt can be entertained ; and to this the 
prayer of Achilles, in Homer, probably had reference. 
—Setting aside the fables which Herodotus has trans¬ 
mitted to us respecting Dodona and its doves, to which 
he evidently attached no belief, his report of the affin¬ 
ity which existed between the service of this temple 
and that of Thebes in Egypt is deserving of our at¬ 
tention. It appears from this author, that in his time 
the service of the temple was performed by females ; 
and he has recorded the names of the three priestesses 
who officiated when he visited Dodona (2, 55). Stra¬ 
bo, however, asserts, that these duties were originally 
allotted to men, from the circumstance of Homer’s 
mention of the Selli as being attendant upon the gods. 
The term Selli was considered by many ancient writers 
to refer to a people of Pelasgic origin, whom they iden 
tified with the Helli {Soph., Track., v. 1160, seqq.— 
Strabo, 327.— Eustath., ad 11., 16, v. 233 .—Schol 
ad Horn., 1. c. — Aristot., Meteorol., 1, 14.— Hcsych. 
s. v. "E/l Xoi), and also with the Tomuri. {Eustath., 
ad Od., 16, 403.) The origin of the word Dodona 
seems not to have been ascertained, if we judge from 
the contradictory opinions transmitted to us by Steph. 
Byz. {s. v. A uduvrj .—Compare remarks under No. II.) 
Nor are we better informed as to the nature and con¬ 
struction of the temple during the early age of Gre¬ 
cian history. The responses of the oracle were origi¬ 
nally delivered from the sacred oak or beech. {Soph., 
Track., v. 173.— Hesiod, ap. Schol. in Soph., Trach- 
in.) Its reputation was at first confined to the inhab 
itants of Epirus, Acarnania, yEtolia, and the western 
parts of Greece {Pausan., 7, 21), but its fame was af¬ 
terward extended over the whole of that country, and 
even to Asia, as we know that on one occasion the 
oracle was consulted by Croesus. {Herod., 1, 46.) 
The Boeotians were the only people who received the 
prophetic answers from the mouth of men ; to all other 
nations they were always communicated by the priest¬ 
esses of the temple. The reason of this exception is 
stated at length by Strabo (401), on the authority of 
Ephorus. (Compare Prod., Chrestom., ap Phot., 
Bibl., vol. 2, p. 321, ed. Bekker.) Dodona .vas the 
first station in Greece to which the offerings of the 
Hyperboreans were despatched, according to Herodo¬ 
tus ; they arrived there from the Adriatic, and were 
thence passed on to the Maliac Gulf (4, 33). Among 
the several offerings presented to the temple by vari¬ 
ous nations, one dedicated by the Corcyreans is par¬ 
ticularly noticed. It was a brazen figure placed ovei 
a caldron of the same metal; this statue held in its 
hand a whip, the lash of which consisted of three chains, 
each having an astragalus fastened to the end of it; 
these, when agitated by the wind, struck the caldron’ 
and produced so continued a sound that 400 vibrations 




DODONA 


U \j jj 


could be counted before it ceased. Hence arose the 
various proverbs of the Dodonean caldron and the 
Corcyrean lash. ( Strabo, Compend ., 7, p. 329.) Me¬ 
nander, in one of his plays, compared an old nurse’s 
chatter to the endless sound of this kettle. ( Menand., 
Reliq., ed. Meinecke, p. 27.) It was said by others, 
that the walls of the temple were composed of many 
caldrons, contiguous to each other, so chat, striking 
upon one, the sound was conveyed to all the rest. 
But this account is not so much to be depended on 
as the other, which, according to Steph. Byz., rests 
on the authority of Polemo Periegetes, who seems to 
have written a very accurate description of the curi¬ 
osities of the place; as also another person named Aris¬ 
tides.—We hear of the oracle of Dodona at the time 
of the Persian invasion ( Herodot ., 9, 93), and again in 
the reign of Agesilaus, who consulted it previously to 
his expedition into Asia. ( Plut., Apophthegm. Lacon., 
p. 125.) It is stated by Diodorus Siculus (14, 13), 
that Lysander was accused openly of having offered to 
bribe the priestess. The oracle which warned the 
Molossian Alexander of his fate is well known from 
Livy (8, 24). From Demosthenes we learn, that the 
answers delivered from time to time to the Athenians 
were laid up in the public archives ; and he himself ap¬ 
peals to their testimony on more than one occasion. 
At length, during the Social war, Dodona was, ac¬ 
cording to Polybius (4, 67), almost entirely destroyed 
in an irruption of the iEtolians, under their praetor 
Dorimachus, then at war with Epirus. “ They set 
fire,” says the historian, “ to the porches, destroyed 
many of the offerings, and pulled down the sacred edi¬ 
fice.” It is probable that the temple of Dodona nev¬ 
er recovered from this disaster, as in Strabo’s time 
there was scarcely any trace left of the oracle; but the 
town must still have existed, as it is mentioned by 
Hierocles among the cities of Epirus in the seventh 
century ; and we hear of a bishop of Dodona in the 
council of Ephesus. ( Wessel., ad Hierocl., Synecd., 
p. 651.)—All accounts seem to agree that Dodona 
stood either on the declivity or at the foot of an ele¬ 
vated mountain called Tomarus or Tamarus. ( Stra¬ 
bo, 328.) Hence the term Tomuri, supposed to be a 
contraction for Tomaruri (Topapovpoi), or guardians of 
Pomarus, which was given to the priests of the temple. 

{Strabo, l. c.) In Callimachus {Hymn, in Cer., 52) 
we find the name of the mountain written Tmarus 
(Tf,Lapop). This lofty mountain was farther remarka¬ 
ble for the number of streams which burst from its 
sides. (Plin., 4, 1.) If, then, we had the means of 
distinguishing the modern chain which answers to the 
ancient Tomarus, we might easily discover the site of 
Dodona, but the whole of Epirus being covered with 
.ofty mountains, it is not easy to ascertain even this 
point.—(For discussions on this interesting question, 
consult Cramer's Anc. Greece , vol. 1, p. 115, seqq. — 
Wordsworth's Greece, p. 247.— Walpole's Collection , 
vol. 2, p. 473. — Hughes's Travels , vol. 1, p. 511.) — II. 
A city and oracle of Thessaly. It has given rise to 
much controversy whether Homer (11., 2, 749) refers 
to this or the city of Epirus, and the scholiasts and 
commentators are divided in their opinions. Stepha¬ 
nos Byzantinus (5. v. Audcovy) enters fully into the 
discussion, and quotes passages from several writers 
on the antiquities of Thessaly, who all acknowledged 
a city named Dodona or Bodona in that country: 
whence the opinion has been entertained that the ora¬ 
cle of Jupiter was afterward transferred to Epirus. 
Strabo (441) seems to adopt this notion, and affirms, 
in one place, that the Thessalian Dodona was situated 
near the Titaresius. Elsewhere, however, he leads us 
to suppose that it stood near Scotussa, at the foot of 
Mount Ossa (9, p. 441). Ritter has some curious and 
learned speculations on this subject. According to this 
writer, the primitive form of the name was Bodona (B«- 
fiuvn), and he traces the founding of Dodona to a sacer¬ 


dotal colony from India, and establishes, when taken 
in connexion with various other parts of early Grecian 
history, the remarkable fact of the introduction of the 
RttrftZa-worship into Greece along with the germes of 
civilization. The analogy between the root of the name 
B cj6d)vi] (Bod), and that of the Hindu Budda (Bud), 
is sufficiently obvious. Ritter’s work, however ( Vor - 
halle Europdischer Volkergeschichten vor Herodotus , 
urn den Kaukasus und an den Gestaden des Pontus, 
Berlin, 1820, 8vo), ought to be carefully perused in 
order to do justice to his learned and elaborate argu¬ 
ments. His object is to show, that the stream of civ¬ 
ilization and religion flowed into the countries of Eu¬ 
rope from the remote India, by pursuing a route through 
the vast regions of Scythia, and coming down into Eu¬ 
rope by the shores of the Euxine. 

Dodon^eus, a surname of Jupiter from Dodona 
(Consult Homer, 11., 16, 233.— Zev ava, A udovaie, 
IleXaoyiKE. —And compare remarks under the article 
Dodona.) 

Dodonides, the priestesses who gave oracles in the 
temple of Jupiter in Dodona. (Vid. Dodona.) 

Dolabella, P. Cornelius, a Roman who married 
Tullia, the daughter of Cicero. His early profligacies 
and extravagances led him to join Caesar at the begin¬ 
ning of his rebellion, as the natural patron of men of 
broken fortunes. He afterward fought under him ai 
Pharsalia, distinguished himself by his revolutionary 
proceedings when tribune during Caesar’s absence if 
Egypt, and afterward went with him into Africa, anc 
served under him through the whole of that campaign 
On his return to Italy after Caesar’s final victory, he 
appears to have lived in a style of great magnificence 
and the excellence of his entertainments is recorded by 
Cicero, who, through him and one or two other friends 
maintained a friendly intercourse with the dominan/ 
party. He was nominated by Caesar for the consulship 
a short time before the assassination of the latter, and, 
after Caesar’s death, assumed the office of consul him¬ 
self, but went over to the side of the republic, and acted 
vigorously in its behalf. Subsequently, however, An 
tony drew him entirely away from the republican party 
by paying off for him a heavy load of debts. Leaving 
Rome in order to get possession of Syria against Cas 
sius, he surprised Smyrna and put Trebonius to death, 
on which the senate declared him a public enemy. 
Having been pursued and defeated by Cassius, he de¬ 
stroyed himself.—Dolabella was a man of no virtue oi 
principle. Cicero was compelled to have his daugh¬ 
ter Tullia divorced from him. Still, however, the or¬ 
ator always kept up a fair intercourse with him, and 
endeavoured to use him as a check upon the designs 
of Antony, his colleague in the consulship. ( Cic ., 
Phil., 2, 30.— Id., Ep. ad Fam., 9, 16.— Middleton, 
Life of Cicero, vol. 2, p. 206, 224, 290, 343, &c.. 
8vo ed.) 

Doucha, I. a town of Thessaly, in the Perrhsebian 
district, to the southeast of Azorus, Here the consul 
Q. Marcius Phil.ippus received a deputation from the 
Achaean league, at the head of which was Polybius, 
who accompanied the Roman army in their singular 
and perilous march through the defiles of Olympus into 
Pieria. ( Polyh., Excerpt., 28, 11.— Liv., 42, 53.— 
Id., 44, 2.)—II. A town of Syria, situate in the dis¬ 
trict Euphratensis, and northwest of Zeugma. The 
ancient name is preserved in that of Doluc, a castle on 
a chain of mountains, which, detached from Amanus, 
are prolonged towards the Euphrates. ( Abulfeda. 
Tab. Syr., p. 122.— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 1, p 
496.) 

Dolon, a Trojan, the only son of the herald Eu- 
medes, famed for swiftness of foot. When Hectoj 
was anxious to explore by night the Grecian camp 
Dolon, induced by the promised reward of the chari 
and horses of Achilles, undertook the enterprise. O 
his approach to the Grecian tents, he was met t * 

451 




DOM 


1) O M 


cmede and Ulysses, who, on the part of the Greeks, 
had been despatched on a similar expedition. Dolon, 
having betrayed to them the situation and plans of the 
Troians, was put to death by Diomede for his treach- 
■ ery. {Horn., II, 10, 314.— Virg., JEn., 12, 349.) 

JDolonci, a people of Thrace. ( Herodot., 6, 34.— 
Vid. Miltiades.) 

Dolopes, a people of Thessaly, who appear to have 
been early established in that southeastern angle of 
Thessaly formed by the chain of Pindus, or rather 
Tymphrestus, on one side, and Mount Othrys, branch¬ 
ing out of it, on the other. By the latter mountain 
they were separated from the ./Enianes, who were in 
possession of the upper valley of the Sperchius ; while 
to the west they bordered upon Phthiotis, with the in¬ 
habitants of which country they were connected as 
early as the siege of Troy. This we learn from Ho¬ 
mer, who represents Phoenix, the Dolopian leader, as 
accompanying Achilles thither in the double capacity 
of preceptor and ally. {II., 9, 480.— Pind., ap. Strab., 
431.) The Dolopians, according to Pausanias and 
Harpocration, sent deputies to the Amphictyonic coun¬ 
cil. From Herodotus we learn, that they presented 
earth and water to Xerxes, and furnished some troops 
for the expedition undertaken by that monarch into 
Greece (7, 132 and 185). Xenophon, at a later peri¬ 
od, enumerates them as subjects of Jason, tyrant of 
Pherse. {Hist. Gr., 6, 1.) Diodorus Siculus informs 
us that they took part in the Lamiac war (18, 11). We 
afterward find Dolopia a frequent subject of contention 
between the HJtolians, who had extended their domin¬ 
ion to the borders of this district, and the kings of 
Macedonia. Hence the frequent incursions made by 
the former people into this part of Thessaly when at 
war with the latter power. {Liv., 31, 12.— Id., 33, 
34.— Id., 36, 38.) Dolopia was finally conquered by 
Perseus, the last Macedonian monarch. The cantons 
of Thaumako, Grituiano, and part of Agrapha, may 
be supposed to occupy the situation ascribed by an¬ 
cient writers to the country of the Dolopians. {Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 416 ) 

Domitia Lex, de Sacerdotiis, brought forward by 
Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus, tribune of the commons, 
A.IJ.C. 650. It enacted that the pontijxccs, augures, 
and decemviri sacris faciendis should not be chosen by 
the sacerdotal colleges, but by the people. The pon- 
tifcx maximus and curio maximus were always, in the 
first ages of the republic, chosen by the people. {Ctc., 
Hull., 2, 7 .—Liv., 25, 5 .—Id., 27, 8.) 

Domitia Gens, a celebrated plebeian family, divi¬ 
ded into two branches, that of the Calvini and that of 
the Ahenobarbi. The Calvini attained to the consular 
office A.U.C. 422, the Ahenobarbi in 562. The latter, 
at length, in the person of Nero, became invested with 
imperial power; but with this emperor perished the 
male line of the Domitii. Domitian only belonged to 
this family through his mother Domitia. 

Domitia, I. Lepida, aunt of Nero, was accused of ma¬ 
gic and put to death (A.D. 54) through the intrigues 
of Agrippina, who was jealous of her influence over 
Nero. {Tacit., Ann., 12, 64, seq.) —II., or Domitilla, 
wife of Vespasian, by whom he had Titus and Domi¬ 
tian, and a daughter named Domitilla. She had been 
die mistress of a Roman knight, and passed fey a freed 
woman ; but she was declared of free birth on having 
been acknowledged by her father Flavius Liberalis, 
who held the situation of scribe to one of the queestors. 
She died before Vespasian came to the throne. ( Sue- 
ton., Vit. Vespas., 3.)—III. Longina, daughter of the 
famous Corbulo, the general of Nero. She married 
HJlius Lamia, but was seduced by Domitian, and, after 
ihe birth of a daughter, publicly raised to the throne. 
Hardly, however, had the emperor elevated her to the 
station of Augusta, when his jealousy was alarmed by 
certain familiarities to which she admitted the panto¬ 
mime Paris, and he drove her from his bed and palace. 

452 


The ascendency which she had acquired, however, 
over the vicious emperor, was too strong to be thus 
suddenly dissolved, and she was recalled to her former 
station. Domitia was concerned, it is thought, in the 
conspiracy by which the emperor lost his life. She 
died during the reign of Trajan. {Sueton., Vit. Vo¬ 
mit., 3.) 

Domitianus, Titus Flavius, the second son of Ves¬ 
pasian, born at Rome A.D. 51. Vespasian, well aware 
of his natural disposition, reposed no confidence in him 
during his whole reign. Domitian, however, accom¬ 
panied his father and brother Titus in their triumph at 
the close of the Jewish war. Upon the death of Ves¬ 
pasian, he endeavoured to foment troubles in the em¬ 
pire, and share the succession with Titus. The latter, 
however, generously forgave him, treated him with 
great kindness, and made him his colleague in the con¬ 
sulship, always declaring to him that he intended him 
for his successor. Domitian is accused of hastening 
the death of Titus by poison; a charge, however, not 
warranted by the circumstances of Titus’s death. The 
beginning of his reign was marked by moderation and 
a display^f justice bordering upon severity. He af¬ 
fected great zeal for the reformation of public morals, 
and punished with death several persons guilty of adul¬ 
tery, as well as some vestals who had broken their 
vows. He completed several splendid buildings begun 
by Titus; among others, an odeum, or theatre for 
musical performances. The most important event ot 
his reign was the conquest of Britain by Agricola ; but 
Domitian grew jealous of that great commander’s rep¬ 
utation, and recalled him to Rome. His suspicious 
temper and his pusillanimity made him afraid of every 
man who was distinguished either by birth and connex¬ 
ions, or by merit and popularity, and he mercilessly sac¬ 
rificed many to his fears, while his avarice led him to 
put to death a number of wealthy persons for the sake 
of their property. The usual pretext for these mur¬ 
ders was the charge of conspiracy or treason; and thus 
a numerous race of informers was created and main¬ 
tained by this system of spoliation. His cruelty was 
united to a deep dissimulation, and in this particulai 
he resembled Tiberius rather than Caligula or Nero. 
He either put to death or drove away from Rome the 
philosophers and men of letters ; Epictetus was one 
of the exiled. He found, however, some flatterers 
among the poets, such as Martial, Silius Italicus, and 
Statius. The latter dedicated to him his Thebais and 
Achilleis, and commemorated the events of his reign 
in his Sylvee. But, in reality, the reign of Domitian w T as 
any other than favourable to the Roman arms, except 
in Britain. In Moesia and Dacia, in Germany and 
Pannonia, the armies were defeated, and whole prov¬ 
inces lost. {Tacitus, Vit. Agric., 41.) Domitian 
himself went twice into Moesia to oppose the Dacians, 
but, after several defeats, he concluded a disgraceful 
peace with their king Decebalus, whom he acknowl¬ 
edged as sovereign, and to whom he agreed to pay 
tribute, which was afterward discontinued by Trajan. 
And yet Domitian made a pompous report of his vic¬ 
tories to the senate, and assumed the honours of a 
triumph. In the same manner he triumphed over the 
Cotti and Sarmatians, which made Pliny the younger 
say, that the triumphs of Domitian were always evi¬ 
dence of some advantages gained by the enemies of 
Rome. In A.D. 95, Domitian assumed the consul¬ 
ship for the seventeenth time, together with Flavius 
Clemens, who had married Domitilla, a relative of th< 
emperor. In that year a persecution of the Christians 
is recorded in the history of the Church ; but it seems 
that it was not directed particularly against them, but 
against the Jews, with whom the Christians were then 
confounded by the Romans. Suetonius ascribes the 
proscriptions of the Jews, or those who lived after the 
manner of the Jews, and whom he styles “ improfessi ,” 
to the rapacity of Domitian. Flavius Clemens and 





DOM 


DC R 




his wife were among the victims. In the lollowmg 
year, A.D. 96, a conspiracy was formed against Do- 
mitian among the officers of his guards and several of 
his intimate friends, and his wife, the infamous Domi- 
tilla, herself is said to have participated in it. The im¬ 
mediate cause of it was his increasing suspicions, which 
threatened the life of every one around him, and which 
are said to have been stimulated by the predictions of 
astrologers and soothsayers, whom he was very ready 
to consult. He was killed in his apartments by sev¬ 
eral of the conspirators, after struggling with them for 
some time, in his 45th year, and in the fifteenth of his 
reign. On the news of his death, the senate assem¬ 
bled and elected M. Cocceius Nerva emperer.—The 
character of Domitian is represented by all ancient 
Historians in the darkest colours, as being a compound 
of timidity and cruelty, of dissimulation and arrogance, 
of self-indulgence and stern severity towards others. 
He gave himself up to every excess, and plunged into 
the most degrading vices. Conceiving at last the mad 
idea of arrogating divine honours to himself, he as¬ 
sumed the titles of Lord and God, and claimed to be 
a son of Minerva. Soon after he had succeeded to 
the government, he indulged in that love of solitude, 
which pride and fear combined to render in a very 
short time the most confirmed of all his habits. In 
the beginning of his reign, says his biographer, he ac¬ 
customed himself to spend several hours every day in 
the strictest privacy, employed frequently in nothing 
else than in catching flies, and piercing them with a 
sharp instrument. Hence the well-known remark 
made by Vibius Crispus, who, when asked whether 
there was any one with the emperor, replied, “ No, not 
even aftyT Domitian took a delight in inspiring oth¬ 
ers with terror; and Dio Cassius tells of a singular 
banquet, to which he invited the principal metnbers 
of the senate and equestrian order, where everything 
wore the appearance of an intended execution. He 
once even convened the senate to determine in what 
way a large turbot should be cooked, whether whole 
or divided. And yet at one time, before his becoming 
emperor, Domitian had applied himself to literature, 
and he is said to have composed several poems and 
other works.—-The senate, after his death, issued a de¬ 
cree that his name should be struck out of the Roman 
annals, and obliterated from every public monument. 
{Tacit., Hist., 3, 59, seqq .— Id. ib., 4, 2, seqq. — 
Sueton., Vit. Domit.—Dio Cass., 67.— Plin., Epist., 
4, 11.— Id., Paneg., 52, 6, &c.— Juv., Sat., 4, 37, 
seqq.) 

Domitilla. Vid. Domitia II. 

Domitius, I. Ahenobarbus, the first of the Domitian 
family that bore the surname of Ahenobarbus, lived 
about the beginning of the sixth century from the 
foundin’g of the city.—II. Cneius Ahenobarbus, son of 
the preceding, was plebeian sedile A.U.C. 558, B.C. 
196 ; praetor A.U.C. 560 ; and consul A.U.C. 562. 
{Liv., 33,42.— Id., 49, 35, &c.)—III. Cneius Ahen- 
abaibus, was consul B.C. 122. He conquered Bi- 
tuitus, general of the Arverni, slaying 20,000 and ma¬ 
king 3000 prisoners. On his return to Rome he ob¬ 
tained a triumph.— IV. Lucius Ahenobarbus, was 
quaestor B.C. 66, and praetor some years after. In the 
/ear 54 B.C. he attained to the consulship. He and 
Lentulus were the first to oppose Caesar in his inva¬ 
sion of Italy. Betrayed by his own troops into the 
nands of the conqueror at the capture of Corfinium, 
be received his liberty, and again raising a little army 
at his own expense, sustained a siege at Massilia. Es¬ 
caping thence, we find him with Pompey in Macedo¬ 
nia, still the determined enemy of Caesar, and finally 
he fell in the flight after the battle of Pharsalia. ( Cic., 
Ep. ad Fam., 8, 14.— Id. ib., 16, 12.— Id., Ep. ad 
Att., 1, &c.)—V. Cneius Ahenobarbus, son of the pre¬ 
ceding, inherited all his father’s hatred towards Caesar. 
Afler the death of the latter, he ‘oined the party of 


Brutus and Cassius. After the battle of PhiJippi he 
went over to the triumvirs, was pardoned, and, during 
the ensuing year, obtained the consulship, A.U.C. 722. 
Subsequently, however, he attached himself to Octa¬ 
vius against Antony, but died before he could render 
the former any service.—VI. Cneius Ahenobarbus, 
father of Nero, married Agrippina, the daughter of 
Germanicus, B.C. 28. He degraded his high birth by 
the ferocity of his character and the corruption of his 
morals. In early life he killed one of his freedmen, 
who would not drink as much as he wished him to do. 
He tore out also the eye of a Roman knight who dis¬ 
played towards him a freedom of spirit that gave of¬ 
fence. Being accused before Claudius of treason, 
adultery, and other crimes, he only escaped by the 
death of that emperor. He used to say, that from him¬ 
self and his wife there could only spring a monster 
deadly to the human race, a prediction fatally verified 
in Nero. {Tacit., Ann., 4, 75.— Id. ib., 6, 45, &,c.) 

Donatus, ^Elius, I. a celebrated grammarian, born 
in the fourth century of our era, about A.D. 333. 
He was preceptor to St. Jerome, who speaks with 
great approbation of his talents, and of the manner in 
which he explained the comedies of Terence. Inde¬ 
pendent of his commentaries on Virgil and Terence, 
Donatus composed a treatise purely elementary, in 
which he treated of the eight parts of speech individu¬ 
ally. This work was highly esteemed, and Diomedes 
the grammarian entertained so high an opinion of its 
merits, as subsequently to add it to his own work on 
Latin grammar. Some, though without the least au¬ 
thority, maintain that the commentaries of Donatus on 
Virgil and Terence are lost, and that those which at 
the present day bear his name are spurious. That on 
Virgil is very unimportant, it is true, and appears wor¬ 
thy neither of the author commented on, nor of the 
reputation of the grammarian to whom it is ascri¬ 
bed. But the commentary on Terence is extremely 
valuable. Some writers assign the commentary on 
Virgil not to JElius Donatus, but to Claudius Tiberius 
Donatus. (Compare the remarks of Heyne on the 
life of Virgil by Donatus, vol. 1, p. 153, in notis.)—- 
II. A bishop of Numidia, in the fourth century. Ac¬ 
cording to some writers, he was the founder of the 
sect of Donatists, which grew out of a schism produced 
by the election of a bishop of Carthage. He was de¬ 
posed and excommunicated m councils held at Rome 
and at Arles, in the years 313 and 314, but was for 
some time after supported by a party at home. What 
farther happened to him is not known. III. A bishop 
of Carthage, chosen to that office in 316. He contin¬ 
ued and supported the schism produced by his name¬ 
sake, which led to a persecution under the Emperor 
Constans, in which the imperial arms finally prevailed, 
and Donatus died in exile about 355. According to 
St. Augustin, this prelate maintained an inequality of 
persons in the Trinity. {Gorton's Biogr. Diet., vol 
}, p. 653. 

Donysa, an island in the Icarian Sea, one of the 
Sporades. It lay southeast of Icana, and east of Pat- 
mos. The marble obtained from this island was 
green. It is thought to correspond to the modern Ra- 
clia. (Compare, as regards this island, the following 
authorities: Tacit., Ann., 4, 30. -Mela, 2,7. Plin., 
4, 12.— Steph. Byz., s. v. kovovaia.) 

Dokes, the inhabitants of Doris. ( Vid. Doris.) 

Dorias, a river of India extra Gangem. Manner! 
makes it correspond to the small river Pdgu. {Geo¬ 
graph., vol. 5, pt. 1, p. 249 and 264.) Others, how¬ 
ever, are in favour of the modern Zanqan, the mouth 
of which is in the kingdom of Tonquin. 

Dorion, a town of Messenia, where Thamyris the 
musician challenged the Muses to a trial of skill. 
Pausanias (4 33) notices this ancient town, of which 
he saw the ruins near a fountain named Achaia. Stra 
bo, however, asserts that no such place was known t* 

453 



DOR 


DORIS. 


exist m his day, but that some identified it with an ob¬ 
scure town named Oluris, in the Messenian district of 
Aulon (350). This may have been the spot alluded to 
hy Pausanias. Homer {II., 2, 594) assigns Dorium 
to the dominions of Nestor. Hesiod seems to have 
adopted a different tradition from other poets, since he 
removes the scene of the story of Thamyris to Dotium 
in Thessaly {ap. Steph. Byz., s. v. A utlov. — Plin., 
4, 5). 

Doris, a country of Greece, situate to the south of 
Thessaly, and separated from it by the range of Mount 
CEta. On the south it had the Locri Ozolae. On the 
east it was parted from the Locri Epicnemidii by the 
Pindus, a branch of the Cephissus ; and on the west 
from JEtolia by a part of the chain of GEta. Its ter¬ 
ritory was of small size, extending only about 40 miles 
in length. The country, though mountainous, had still 
several beautiful plains, and was very fruitful.—The 
Dorians were the most powerful of the Hellenic tribes, 
and derived their origin, as they pretended, from a 
mythic personage named Dorus, who is generally made 
the son of Hellen, though he is described as the son of 
Xuthus by Euripides {Ion., 1590). Herodotus (1, 52) 
mentions five successive migrations of this race. Their 
first settlement was in Phthiotis, in the time of Deu¬ 
calion ; the next under Dorus, in Hestiseotis, at the 
foot of Ossa and Olympus ; the third on Mount Pin¬ 
dus, after they had been expelled by the Cadmaeans 
from Hestkeotis. In this settlement, says Herodotus, 
they were called the Macedonian people ; and he else¬ 
where (8, 43) attributes to the Dorians a Macedonian 
origin ; but there does not appear to be any real con¬ 
nexion between the Dorians and the Macedonians, 
who were of Illyrian origin {Muller, Dorians, vol. 1, 
p. 2), beyond this vicinity of abode. The fourth set¬ 
tlement of the Dorians, according to Herodotus, was 
in Dryopis (afterward called the Doric Tetrapolis) ; 
and their last migration was to the Peloponnesus. 
Another, and most remarkable expedition, not men¬ 
tioned by Herodotus, was the voyage of a Dorian col¬ 
ony to Crete, which is stated to have taken place 
while they were in their second settlement, at the foot 
of Olympus {Androm., ap. Strab., 475); and Dori¬ 
ans are mentioned among the inhabitants of that isl¬ 
and even by Homer {Od., 19, 174). The eastern coast 
was the first part which they occupied. ( Slaphylus , ap. 
Strab., 475). This early settlement in Crete must 
not be confounded with the two subsequent expeditions 
of the Dorians to that island, which took place after 
they were well settled in the Peloponnesus, the one 
from Laconia, under the guidance of Pollis and Del- 
phus; the other from Argolis, under Althaemenes. The 
migration of the Dorians to the Peloponnesus, which 
is generally called “ the return of the descendants of 
Hercules,” is expressly stated to have occurred 80 
years after the Trojan war, that is, in B.C. 1104. 
{Thucyd., 1, 12.) The origin and nature of the con¬ 
nexion which subsisted between the Heraclidas and 
the Dorians are involved in much obscurity. The 
Dorians were, from very early times, divided into three 
tribes, and the epithet “ thrice divided” {rpL^diKeg) is 
applied to them by Homer in the passages referred 
to above. These three tribes were the Hyllaeans, the 
Dymanes, and the Pamphylians. Now the two latter 
tribes are said to have been descended from Dymas 
and Pamphylus, the two sons of HCgimius, a mythi¬ 
cal Doric king; and the first claimed a descent from 
Hyllus, the son of Hercules. An attempt has been 
made to show that the Hyllasans were of Doric origin, 
as well as the other two tribes. {Muller, Dorians, 1, 
chap. 3, sect, 2.) It is more natural, however, to in¬ 
fer from the traditions, as well as from the duplicate 
divinities of the Dorians, that the genuine Dorians were 
included in the two other tribes, and that the Hera¬ 
ld® were a powerful Achsean family, united with 
them in a similar manner, but by a stronger tie than 
454 


the iEtolians under Oxylus, who are also said to have 
taken part in this expedition. The Heraclidoe, then, 
with their HEtoIian and Dorian allies, crossed the Co¬ 
rinthian Gulf from Naupactus, invaded and subdued 
Elis, which was assigned to the Hffolian chieftain ; and, 
bending their steps southward, conquered successively, 
and with greater or less difficulty, Messenia, Laconia, 
Argolis, Corinth, and Megaris. In Laconia they were 
joined by the Cadmaean clan of the iEgidae, who as- 
sisted them in their tedious war with Amyclse, and af¬ 
terward took part in the colonies to Thera and Cyrene. 
This invasion, which so materially affected the desti¬ 
nies of Greece, was very similar in its character to 
the return of the Israelites to Palestine. The invaders, 
who, like the descendants of Abraham, brought their 
wives and children vflth them, though they, perhaps, did 
not completely abandon their last settlement, which 
was still called ahd considered Dorian {Thucyd., 1, 
107), numbered about 20,000 fighting men, on the high¬ 
est estimate. {Muller, Dorians, 1 , ch. 4, sect. 8.) 
They were therefore very inferior in number to the in¬ 
habitants of the countries which they conquered ; but 
the superiority of their peculiar tactics ensured them 
an easy victory in the field, and they appear to have 
taken all the strong places either by a long blockade, 
or by some lucky surprise ; for they were altogether 
unskilled in the art of taking walled towns. The gov¬ 
ernment which the Dorians established in all the coun¬ 
tries which they thus invaded and conquered, was, as 
might have been expected, very analogous to that which 
the Norman invasion introduced into England, namely, 
an aristocracy of conquest; for while the successful 
invaders remained on a footing of equality among them¬ 
selves, all the old inhabitants of the country were re¬ 
duced to an inferior condition, like the Saxons in Eng¬ 
land. They were called nepioucoi, or “ dwellers 
around,” a name corresponding to the Pfahlbiirger, oi 
“ citizens of the Palisade,” at Augsburg, who dwelt ir 
the city suburbs, without the wall of the city ; to the 
“pale” in Ireland before the time of James I. ; to the 
people of the contado in Italy ; and to the Fauxbour- 
geois in France. {Niebuhr, Roman Hist., vol. 1, p 
398, Cambr. trans. — Arnold's Thucydides, vol. 1, p. 
626.) The usual name for a constitution in a Dorian 
state was “ an order,” or regulative principle {tcoapoq), 
and this name appears to have arisen from the circum¬ 
stance that the attention of the Dorian legislators was 
principally, if not solely, directed to the establishment 
of a system of military discipline, and to the encour¬ 
agement of that strict subordination-which is the result 
of it. The necessity of this was apparent, from the 
peculiar relation subsisting between the Dorians and 
their nreploiicoc. It. was by superior prowess and dis¬ 
cipline that the former had acquired their rank, and il 
was only by a continuance of this superiority that they 
could hope to maintain themselves in the same posi¬ 
tion. The same occasion for strict discipline may also 
account for the extraordinary austerity which prevailed 
in most Dorian communities. The Dorian women en¬ 
joyed a degree of consideration unusual among he 
Greeks. The Syssitia or common tables, which were 
established in most Doric states, were designed to ad 
monish those of the privileged class, that, living as 
they did in the midst of a conquered but numerous 
population, they must not consider themselves to have 
any individual existence, but must live only for the 
sake of their order. (Consult Muller's Dorians, png. 
trans., Oxford, 1830, 2 vols. 8vo.— Hermann, Lehr- 
buch der Griechischen Staatsallerthumcr, Heidelb.. 
1836, translated Oxford, 1836.— Lachmann, Spar - 
tanische Stdatsverfassung, Breslau, 1836.— Encyei 
Us. Knowl, vol. 9, p. 89.)—II. A colony of the Do 
rians in Asia Minor, on the coast of Caria. On the 
arrival of the Dorians in Asia, they formed themselves 
into six independent states or small republics, which 
were confined within the bounds of as many cities 






DOR 


D R E 


These were Lindus, Ialyssus, Camirus, Cos, Cnidus, 
and Halicarnassus. Other cities in the tract, called 
from them Doris, belonged to their confederacy; but 
the inhabitants of these six alone, as true and genuine 
Dorians, were admitted into the temple at Triope, 
where they exhibited solemn games in honour of Apol- 
*o Triopius. The prizes were tripods of brass, which 
the victors were obliged to consecrate to Apollo, and 
leave in the temple. When Agasicles of Halicarnas¬ 
sus won the prize, he transgressed this custom, and 
carried the tripod to his own house, on which account 
the city of Halicarnassus was ever afterward excluded 
from the Dorian confederacy. The Dorians were from 
that time known by the name of the five cities, or 
Pentapolis, and no longer by that of Hexapolis. —III. 
A goddess of the sea, daughter of Oceanus and Tethys. 
She married her brother Nereus, by whom she had 50 
daughters called Nereides. Her name is often used 
to express the sea itself. ( Property 1, 17, 25.— Virg., 
Eel., 10.— Hesiod., Theog.) —IV. A female of Locri, 
in Italy, daughter of Xenetus, whom Dionysius the El¬ 
der, of Sicily, married the same day with Aristomache. 
(Vid. Dionysius.) 

Doriscus, a plain in Thrace, near the mouth of the 
Hebrus, where, according to Herodotus (7, 59), Xerxes 
numbered his land forces, as he was marching upon 
Greece. The mode in which his officers ascertained 
he amount of his troops was this : they drew up in 
cne place a body of 10,000 men; and making these 
stand together as compactly as possible, they traced a 
circle around them. Dismissing these, they enclosed 
the circle with a wall breast high ; into this they intro¬ 
duced the army by bodies of 10,000 men each time. 
( Vid. Xerxes.) 

Dorsennus, or more correctly Dossennus, a Roman 
comic poet, and writer of Atellane fables, who enjoyed 
no mean reputation as a popular dramatist. (Compare 
Vossius, de Poet. Lai. incert. cel., c. 7, p. 84.) Hor¬ 
ace makes mention of him ( Ep ., 1, 2, 173.) He par¬ 
ticularly excelled in drawing the characters of para¬ 
sites ; but, in consequence of the applause which these 
elicited from the lower orders, he would seem, from 
the censure of Horace, to have been tempted to go still 
farther, and push matters to extremes. The same poet 
also pleasantly alludes to his carelessness and negli¬ 
gence as a writer, by saying that he traversed the stage 
with his sock, or comic slipper, loose and untied. 
Seneca makes mention of the inscription on his tomb ; 
from which epitaph some have inferred that he was 
distinguished as a moral writer. It ran as follows : 
“ Hospes resiste, et sophiam Dossenni lege.” ( Senec ., 
Epist., 89, G.—^Fabric., Bill. Lat.,\ ol. 3, p. 238, seqq.) 

Dorso, C. Fabius, a Roman, who, according to the 
old legend, when Rome was in the possession of the 
Gauls, issued from the Capitol, which was then be¬ 
sieged, to go and offer on Mons Quirinalis a stated 
sacrifice enjoined on the Fabian house. In the Ga- 
bine cincture, and bearing the sacred things in his 
hands, he descended from the Capitol and passed 
through the enemy without betraying the least signs 
of fear. When he had finished his sacrifice, he re¬ 
turned to the Capitol unmolested by the foe, who were 
astonished at his boldness, and did not obstruct his 
passage or molest his sacrifice. ( Liv ., 5, 46.) 

Dorus, a son of Hellen. (Vid. Doris.) 

Doryl^eum and Doryl^eus, a city of Phrygia, now 
Eski-shehr, at the junction of the Bathys and Thym- 
bris, two branches of the Sangarius, and on the con¬ 
fines of Bithynia. The plain of Dorylaeum is often 
mentioned by the Byzantine historians as the place of as¬ 
semblage of the armies of the Eastern empire in their 
wars against the Turks ; and it is described by Anna 
Comnena as being the first extensive plain of Phrygia 
after crossing the ridges of Mount Olympus, and after 
passing Leucse. For some remarks on the modern 
Eski-shehr, consult Walpole's Collection , vol. 2, p. 205. 


Doson, a surname of Antigonus III., because ne 
promised and never performed ; duoov, in Greek, i. e., 
about to give; i. e., always promising. (Vid. Antigo¬ 
nus III.) 

Draco, I. a celebrated Athenian legislator, who 
flourished about the 39th Olympiad, B.C. 621. Suidas 
tells us that he brought forward his code of laws in 
this year, and that he was then an old man. Aristotle 
(Polit., 2, sub Jin.) says, that Draco adapted lis laws 
to the existing constitution, and that they contained 
nothing particular beyond the severity of their penal 
ties. The slightest theft was punished capitally, as 
well as the most atrocious murder; and Demades re¬ 
marked of his laws, that they were written with blood, 
and not with ink. (Plut., Vit. Sol., c. 17.) Draco, 
however, deserves credit as the first who introduced 
written laws at Athens, and it is probable that he im¬ 
proved the criminal courts, by his transfer of cases of 
bloodshed from the archon to the ephetas (Jul. Pol¬ 
lux, 8, 124, seq.), since before his time the archons 
had a right of settling all cases arbitrarily, and without 
appeal; a right which they enjoyed in other cases un¬ 
til Solon’s time. (Bekker, Anecd. Grcec., p. 449; 1. 
23.) It appears that there were some offences which 
he did not punish with death ; for instance, loss of civ¬ 
il rights was the punishment of attempting to alter one 
of his laws. (Demosth., c. Aristocr., p. 714, Bekk.) 
Draco was an archon (Pausan., 9, 36, 8), and, conse¬ 
quently, an Eupatrid : it is not, therefore, to be sup¬ 
posed, that his object was to favour the lower orders, 
through his code seems to have tended to abridge 
the power of the nobles. The Athenians, it is said, 
could not endure the rigour of his laws, and the legis¬ 
lator himself was obliged to withdraw to the island of 
TCgina. Here he was actually suffocated in the the¬ 
atre beneath the number of cloaks and garments which 
the people of the island, according to the usual mode 
of expressing approbation among the Greeks, shower¬ 
ed upon him. He was buried in the theatre. On the 
legislation of Draco in general, consult Wachsmuth, 
Hsllenische Alterthumsk, 2, 1, p. 239, seqq. — Encycl. 
Us. Knowl., vol. 9, p. 118. 

Duanc^e. Vid. Zarangsei. 

Dravus, a river of Germany, rising in the Norican 
Alps. (Plin., 3, 25.— Strabo, 314.) It traverses the 
southern parts of Noricum and Pannonia, running from 
west to east, and falls into the Danube near the city of 
Comacum, or Erdent. It is now the Drave. Ptol¬ 
emy calls it the Darus. The Greek copyists frequent¬ 
ly allowed themselves the license of altering names 
and adding remarks, which only tended to show their 
own ignorance. So, in the present instance, they 
state that this river, which Ptolemy calls Darus, is 
the same with that named Daris by the barbarians, oi 
the modern Brin. The truth is, Ptolemy means the 
Dravus, and no other. ( Mannert , Geogr., vol. 3, p. 
561.) 

Drepanum, I. a town of Sicily, north of Lilybaeum, 
and in the vicinity of Mount Eryx. Here .Tineas, ac¬ 
cording to Virgil, lost his father Anchises. The more 
correct form of the name is Drepana (rd Apenavd). 
This place was founded in the beginning of the first 
Punic war by the Carthaginian commander Hamilcar, 
who removed hither the inhabitants of Eryx, and other 
places adjacent. (Diod. Sic., 23, 9.) Drepanum and 
Lilybaeum formed the two most important ir.tar.hme 
cities held by the Carthaginians in Sicily. Off this 
place, near the iEgates Insulae, was fought the fa¬ 
mous naval battle between the Romans commanded 
by Lutatius Catulus, and the Carthaginians under 
Hanno, The Romans gained a decisive victory, which 
put an end to the first Punic war. Drepanum was so 
called from the curvature of the shore in^ its vicinity 
resembling a scythe (dpenavov). It is now Trapani , 
(Mannert, Geogr., vol. 9, pt. 2, p. 384, seqq.) —II. A 
town of Bithynia, on the Sinus Astacenus, called b- 

45 1r 


1 



D R U 


DRUIDS. 


Constantine the Great, Hellenopolis.—III. A prom¬ 
ontory on the Sinus Arabicus, below Arsinoe : it is 
now Ras-Zafra.nl. 

Drilo, a river of Illyricurn, which falls into the 
Adriatic at Lissus. This is the largest of the Illyrian 
streams. Strabo (316) informs us, that it was naviga¬ 
ble as far as the country of the Dardanii, which is a 
considerable distance from the sea, as they inhabited 
the southern part of what is now Servia. This river 
is formed principally by the junction of two others, the 
one distinguished in modern geography by the name 
of the white Drino, which rises in the chain of Mount 
Bertiscus ( Strabon., Chrestom. ap. Geogr. Min., vol. 
2, p. 99); the other flows from the south, out of the 
great lake of Ochrida, the ancient Lychnitis Palus, 
and unites with the former after a course of nearly 
sixty miles : this is commonly termed the Black Drino. 

( Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 1, p. 41.) 

Dromus Achillis, a promontory near the mouth 
of the Borysthenes. (Strabo, 307.— Arrian, Peripl., 
p. 21.— Peripl. Anonym., p. 8.— Mela , 2, 1.— Plin., 
4, 26.) According to the old geographers, Achilles, 
having entered the Euxine with a hostile fleet, after 
ravaging the coast, landed on this promontory, and 
exercised himself and his followers in running and 
other gymnastics sports. (Mannert, Geogr., vol. 4, 
p. 234.) It is a low, sandy, and uninhabited neck of 
land, resembling somewhat a sword in its shape. Stra¬ 
bo evidently exceeds the true measurement, when he 
states it to be one thousand stadia. Pliny only makes 
it eighty miles. Its modern name is said to be Kossa- 
Oscharigatsh. (Vid. Leuce.) 

Druentius and Druentia (6 Apovevmog, Ptol. — 

6 A povevTiag, Strabo ), a river of Gaul, rising among 
the Alpes Cottiae, north of Brigantio or Briangon. 
It falls into the Rhodanus or Rhone, about three miles 
below Avenio or Avignon, after a course of one hun¬ 
dred and eighty miles, and is now called the Durance. 
Is is an extremely rapid river, and below the modern 
town of Sisteron it has been found impracticable to 
throw a bridge over it. Its inundations are frequent 
and very destructive. (Strab., 185.— Mannert, Geogr., 
vol. 2, p. 78.) 

Druids, the ministers of religion among the ancient 
Gauls and Britons. Britain, according to Caesar, was 
the great school of the Druids, and their chief settle¬ 
ment was in the island called Mona by Tacitus, now 
Anglesey. The natives of Gaul and Germany, who 
wished to be thoroughly versed in the mysteries of 
Druidism, resorted to this island to complete their 
studies.—Many opinions have been formed respecting 
the origin of the name. The common derivation is 
from dpvp, an oak, either from their inhabiting and 
teaching in forests, or, as Pliny states, because they 
never sacrificed but under an oak. But it is hard to 
imagine how the Druids should come to speak Greek. 
Some deduce the name from the old British word dru 
or drew, an oak, whence they take dpvg to be derived. 
This last derivation receives considerable support from 
a passage in Diodorus Siculus (5, 31), who, speaking of 
the philosophers and priests of Gaul, the same with the 
Druids, says that they were called hapuvtdat, a term 
which some of the commentators trace to the old Greek 
form aupuvig (idog), a hollow oak. Wesseling, how¬ 
ever, it must be acknowledged, condemns this reading, 
and is in favour of receiving into the text the form 
A povtSai, where others read 2 apovtdai. Among the 
many Oriental derivations which nave been given, a 
favourite one is that from the Sanscrit term Druwidh, 
signifying poor, indigent In historical conformity with 
this derivation, it has been urged that, among the Hin¬ 
dus, we may observe in the Sanniassi the professional 
mendicant,*vhile among the Druids poverty was rather 
a merit than a disgrace.—The arguments in favour of 
the Oriental origin of the Druids are deserving of 
great attention, although too numerous to be here all 
456 


detailed. Diogenes Laertius and Aristotle class r *e 
Druids with the Chaldeans, Persian Magi, and Indi¬ 
ans, in which they are followed by other writers. The 
deities of the Sanscrit school are closely to be traced 
in the names of the Druidical gods. The importance 
which the Druids attached to bulls and axen forms 
another very striking mark of coincidence. The Dru¬ 
idical mysteries also are said by Davies to have been 
nearly parallel to the rites of Bhawanee and Eleusis. 
In the magic rod of the Druids we likewise discern the 
sacred staff of the Brahmins. Both possessed con¬ 
secrated beads ; both made almost endless lustrations ; 
both wore linen tiaras : and Maurice remarks that the 
circle, Brahma’s symbol, and the crescent, that of Siva, 
were both Druidical ornaments. So also there was a 
striking resemblance between the notion entertained 
by the Druids of a Supreme Being, and that found in 
the sacred writings of the Hindus.—The Druids 
formed a distinct caste, possessing the greatest an 
thority, being the learned men and philosophers of the 
nation, and having also very great authority in the 
government of the state. Julius Caesar has left more 
information concerning them than any other writer. 
According to him, they performed all public and pri¬ 
vate sacrifices, explained the doctrines of religion, dis 
tributed all kinds of rewards, administered justice at 
stated times, and determined the punishment which 
should be inflicted on offenders. Whoever opposed 
their decisions was excommunicated by them, and 
was thereby deprived of all share in public worship. 
They could even pronounce this curse against a whole 
people ; and, in fact, their power had hardly any lim 
its. They appointed the highest officers in all the 
cities, and these dared not undertake anything with¬ 
out their advice and direction. They were freed from 
taxes and all public burdens. Instruction in religious 
and all other kinds of knowledge, the art of war alone 
excepted, was intrusted entirely to them. They gave 
oral instruction in the form of verses, which often had 
a hidden meaning, and which, though amounting to 
many thousands, were committed to memory by their 
pupils. According to Csesar, they believed in the im¬ 
mortality of the soul, and its transmigration through 
different bodies. They taught, moreover, the nature 
and motions of the heavenly bodies, the magnitude of 
the universe and the earth, the nature of things, and 
the power of the gods. They also practised astrology, 
magic, and soothsaying. According to Pliny, they 
were not ignorant of natural philosophy and physic. 
They had a wonderful reverence for the mistletoe, 
a parasitical plant, which grows, not from the earth, 
but on other plants, particularly the oak. This they 
looked upon as the holiest object in nature. They 
likewise esteemed the oak sacred. The Druids had 
a common superior, who was elected by a majority of 
votes from their own number, and who enjoyed his 
dignity for life. In their sacrifices, the Druids often 
immolated human victims. ( Cces., B. G., 6, 13, seqq. 
— Plin., 16, 44.) Caesar states that the members of 
the Gallic nobility might alone enter the order of the 
Druids. Porphyry, on the other hand (de Abstin., 4, 
17), makes admission into this priesthood to have been 
open to all who could obtain the consent of their fel¬ 
low-citizens. The severity, however, of a long and 
rigorous novitiate, occupying many years, would oper 
ate as an effectual barrier to the admission of many.— 
As regards the wisdom of which the Druids were the 
depositaries, it may be remarked, that, among all the 
early nations of antiquity, a sacerdotal caste of some 
kind or other appear, by observation of the stars and 
the phenomena of nature, to have formed for them¬ 
selves a species of scientific religion, if it may be so 
termed, which was carefully treasured up by the sacred 
order, and rendered inaccessible to the people at large. 
Hence those oral traditions which were always con¬ 
fined to the limits of the sanctuary, and those sacred 






DRU 


DRY 


books which were closed against the profane crowd. 
Such were, among the Etrurians, the Acherontic and 
ritual books of Tages, containing the precepts of agri¬ 
culture, legislation, medicine, the rules of divination, 
of meteorology, of astrology, and also a system of 
metaphysics : such were, among the Egyptians, the 
books of Hermes Trismegistus ; such are, among the 
Hindus, the Vedas, the Pouranas, the Angas, with 
their innumerable commentaries ; and such was the 
sacred wisdom of the Gallic Druids.—The ablest work 
on the ancient Druids is the splendid and elaborate 
production of Mr. Higgins. ( The Celtic Druids, by 
Godfrey Higgins, Esq., F.S.A., 4 to, Londo?i.) In 
thi s will be found a vast body of most interesting in¬ 
formation respecting this ancient priesthood. “ The 
Druids,’’' observes Mr. Higgins, “ held the same doc¬ 
trine, in effect, with Pythagoras, the worship of one 
Supreme Being, a state of future rewards and punish¬ 
ments, the immortality of the soul, and a metempsy¬ 
chosis. These doctrines, their hatred of images, their 
circular temples open at the top, their worship of fire 
as the emblem of the Sun, their observation of the 
most ancient Tauric festival (when the Sun entered 
Taurus), their seventeen-letter alphabet, and their sys¬ 
tem of oral instruction, mark and characterize the 
Druid in every age and every country of the world, by 
whatever name the priests of the country may have 
been known.” ( Celtic Druids, p. 305.) The Druids 
exercised, as may well be imagined, great influence 
over the minds of their more ignorant countrymen. 
Tacitus (Ann., 14, 30) speaks of the summary pun¬ 
ishment inflicted upon them by Suetonius Paulinus, 
in the reign of Nero. The island of Mona was taken 
by the Roman troops with great slaughter of the foe, 
the sacred groves were cut down, and the Druids driven 
out. On the introduction of Christianity, the Druidi- 
cal order gradually ceased, and the Druids themselves 
were regarded as enchanters by the early Christians. 

Drusilla, I. Livia, a daughter of Germanicus and 
Agrippina, born at Augusta Treverorum ( Treves) 
A.D. 15. She was far from inheriting the excellent 
qualities of her mother. Her own brother Caligula 
seduced her, and then gave her in marriage, at the age 
of seventeen, to Lucius Cassius Longinus, a man of 
consular rank. Subsequently, however, he took her 
away from her husband, and lived with her as his own 
spouse. This unhallowed connexion lasted until the 
death of Drusilla, A.D. 38, and at her decease Calig¬ 
ula abandoned himself to the most extravagant sor¬ 
row. Divine honours were rendered to her memory, 
and medals were struck in honour of her, with the title 
of Augusta. She was 23 years of age at the time of 
her death. (Sueton., Vit. Calig., 24.) Dio Cassius 
calls the name of her husband Marcus Lepidus, dif¬ 
fering in this from Suetonius. He may possibly refer 
to a second husband, who may have been given her, 
for form’s sake, a short time before her death. ( Dio 
Cass., 59, 3.)—II. A daughter of Agrippa, king of 
Judaea, remarkable for her beauty. She was at first 
affianced to Epiphanes, son of Antiochus, king of 
Comagene. But, on his declining to submit to the 
rite of circumcision and to Judaize, the marriage was 
broken off. She was then given to Azizus, king of 
Einesa. Not long after, however, Drusilla renounced 
the religion of her fathers, abandoned her husband, and 
espoused Antonius Felix, a freedman of the Emperor 
Claudius, and brother to Pallas the freedman of Nero. 
This is the Felix who was governor of Judaea, and is 
mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles. Drusilla was 
with Felix at Caesarea when St. Paul appeared before 
the latter. She had a son by her second husband, 
named Agrippa, who perished in the eruption of Ve¬ 
suvius which took place during the reign of Titus. 
(Joseph., Jud. Ant., 19, 9.— Noldius , de Vita et gcstis 
Herod,um, p. 463, seqq.) —Tacitus (Hist., 5, 9) calls 
Drusilla the granddaughter of Cleopatra and Antony, 
M M M 


making her, consequently, the daughter of Juba II., 
king of Mauritania. The Roman historian is in er¬ 
ror, for Drusilla was of Jewish origin. And besides, 
history only assigns to Juba II. a son, named Ptolemy. 
(Tdchon, in Biogr. Univ., vol. 12, p. 46.) 

Drusus, I. Claudius Nero, son of Tiberius Clau¬ 
dius Nero and of Livia, was born B.C. 38, three 
months after his mother’s marriage with Augustus. 
He served early in the army, and was sent, in 17 B.C., 
with his brother Tiberius, against the Rhseti and Vin 
delici, who had made an irruption into Italy. He de 
feated the invaders, pursued them across the Alps, and 
reduced their country. Horace has celebrated this vic¬ 
tory in one of his finest odes (4, 4). Drusus married 
Antonia Minor, daughter of Antony and Octavia, by 
whom he had Germanicus and Claudius, afterward 
emperor, and Livia or Livilla. In 14 B.C., being sent 
to quell an insurrection in Gaul, occasioned by the 
extortions of the Roman tax-gatherers, he succeeded 
by his conciliatory address. In the following year he 
attacked the Germans, and, carrying the war beyond 
the Rhine, he obtained a series of victories over the 
Sicambri, Cherusci, Catti, and Tencteri, and advanced 
as far as the Visurgis or Weser, for which the senate 
bestowed on him and his posterity the surname of 
Germanicus. In 9 B.C., Drusus was made consul, 
with L. Quintius Crispinus. He was soon after sent 
by Augustus against the Germans, crossed the Visur¬ 
gis, and advanced as far as the Albis or Elbe. He im¬ 
posed a moderate tribute on the Frisians, consisting 
of a certain quantity of hides, which, being afterward 
aggravated by the extortion of his successors, caused 
a revolt in the reign of Tiberius. (Tacit., Ann., 4, 
72.) He caused a canal to be cut, for the purpose of 
uniting the Rhine to the Yssel, which was known long 
after by the name of Fossa Drusi; and he also began 
to raise dikes to prevent the inundations of the Rhine, 
which were completed by Paulinus Pompeius, in the 
reign of Nero. Drusus did not cross the Albis, prob 
ably because he thought that he had advanced already 
far enough : he retired towards the Rhine, but, before 
he reached that river, he died, at the age of thirty, in 
consequence, as it was reported, of his horse falling 
upon him, and fracturing his leg. (Liv., Epit., 140.) 
Tiberius, who was sent for in haste, and found his 
brother expiring, accompanied his body to Rome, where 
his funeral was performed with the greatest solemnity. 
Both Augustus and Tiberius delivered orations in his 
praise. Drusus was much regretted by both the army 
and the Romans in general, who had formed great ex 
pectations from his manly and generous sentiments. 
(Tacit., Ann., 1, 3, seqq —Id ib., 2, 4 1 — Id. ib., 4, 
72, &c.— Id. Hist., 5, 19, &c.— Sueton., Vit. Aug., 
94.— Id., Vit. Tib., 7.—Id., Vit. Claud., 1, &c.)—II. 
Caesar, the son of the Emperor Tiberius by Vipsania 
daughter of Agrippa. He served with distinction in 
Pannonia and Illyricum, and was consul with his father, 
A.D. 21. In a quarrel he had with the imperial fa¬ 
vourite Sejanus, he gave the latter a blow in the face. 
Sejanus, in revenge, seduced his wife Livia or Livil¬ 
la, daughter of Drusus the elder and of Antonia ; and 
the guilty pair got rid of Drusus by poison, which was 
administered by the eunuch Lygdus. The crime re¬ 
mained a secret for eight years, when it was discovered 
after the death of Sejanus, and Livia was put to death. 
(Tacit., Ann., 1, 24, &c .—Id. ib., 4, 3, seqq.)—III. 
Caesar, son of Germanicus and Agrippina, and brother 
to Nero Caesar and Caligula. He married ^Emilia 
Lepida, who was induced by Sejanus to betray hei 
husband. Deluded himself by the arts of that evil 
minister, he conspired against the life of his brother, 
Nero Caesar, and was starved to death by order of Ti¬ 
berius. (Tacit., Ann., 4, 60.— Id. ib., 6, 23, seqq .)— 
IV. M. Livius. (Vid. Livius.) 

Dryades, nymphs that, presided over the woods 
The Dryades differed from the Hamadryades, in that 

457 



DU 1 


D UR 


these latter were attached to some particular tree, with 
which they were born, and with which they died ; 
whereas the Dryades were the goddesses of the trees 
and woods in general, and lived at large in the midst 
of them. For though dpvg properly signifies an oak, 
it was aT.so used for a tree in general. Oblations of 
milk, oil, and honey were offered to them, and some¬ 
times the votaries sacrificed a goat. The derivation 
of the name Hamadryades is from upa, “ at the same 
time ,” and dpvg, “a tree ,” for the reason given above. 
It is plain that dpvg and the Germanic tree are the 
same word. A pvg has apparently this signification in 
II, 22, 126.— Od. t 19, 163 .—Herod., 7, 218.— Soph., 
Trach., 768. In Nonnus, dpvg is constantly tree, and 
dovoeig, wooden. 'Keightley’s Mythology, p. 237, not.) 

Drym^ea, a town of Phocis, on the banks of the 
Cephissus, northeast of Elatea. ( Pausan ., 10, 34.) 
It was burned and sacked by the Persians under Xerx¬ 
es, as we are informed by Herodotus (8, 33). Its 
position is uncertain. Some antiquaries place it at 
Dadi, others at Ogulnitza. (Compare DodwelVs Tour, 
vol. 2, p. 135.— GelVs ltin., p. 210.) 

Dryopes, a people of Greece, in the vicinity of 
Mounts CEta and Parnassus. ( Hcrodot ., 1, 56 — Stra¬ 
bo, 434.) Dicaearchus, however (v. 30), extends their 
territory as far as the Ambracian gulf. They were so 
called, it is supposed, from Dryope, the daughter of 
Eurypylus, or, according to the poets, from a nymph 
violated by Apollo. Others derive the name, how¬ 
ever, from dpvg, an oak, and dip, a voice, on account of 
the number of oaks which grew about the mountains, 
and the rustling of their leaves. The inhabitants 
themselves, however, advocated their fabulous origin, 
and claimed to be the descendants of Apollo ; and 
therefore Hercules, having overcome this people, car¬ 
ried them prisoners to Delphi, where he presented them 
to their divine progenitor, who commanded the hero 
to take them with him to the Peloponnesus. Hercules 
obeyed, and gave them a settlement there, near the 
Asinean and Hermionian territories ; hence the Asin- 
eans came to be blended with, and to call themselves, 
Dryopes. According to Herodotus, however, they 
passed into Euboea, and from thence into the Pelo¬ 
ponnesus and Asia Minor (8, 73 ; 1, 146). It is wor¬ 
thy of remark, that Strabo ranks the Dryopes among 
those chiefly of Thracian origin, who had, from the 
earliest period, established themselves in the latter 
country, towards the southern shores of the Euxine. 
(Strab ., 586.) 

Dubis, a river of Gallia, rising at the foot of Mount 
Jura, and, after a course of 50 miles, falling into the 
Arar or Saone, near Cabillonum, the modern Chalons. 
It is now the Doubs or Doux. ( Mannert, Geogr., vol. 
3, pt. 1 , p. 77.) The text of Caesar ( B . G., 1, 38), 
where he makes mention of this river, is very corrupt, 
some MSS. reading Adduabis, others Alduadubis, and 
others again Alduadusius, Adduadubis, and Alduasdu- 
bis. Cellarius, following Valois (Valesius) and Vos- 
sius, gives Dubis as the true lection {Geogr. Ant., vol. 
1, p. 36), and this has been followed in the best edi¬ 
tions. (Compare the remarks of Oberlinus, ad Cces., 
1. c., as to the origin of the corruption.) 

Dubris Portus, a port of Britain, supposed to be 
Dover. It was in the territory of the Cantii, and 14 
miles from Durovernum. At Dubris, according to the 
Notitia Imperii, was a fortress, erected against the 
Saxon pirates. ( Mannert, Geogr., vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 
161.— Cellarius, Geogr. Ant., vol. 1, p. 331.) 

Duillia Lex, I. was brought forward by M. Duil- 
lius, a tribune, A.U.C. 304. It made it a capital 
crime to leave the Roman people without tribunes, 
or to create any new magistrate from whom there was 
no appeal. The punishment was scourging and be¬ 
heading. {lav., 3, 55.)—II. Another, A.U.C. 392, to 
regulate what interest ought to be paid for money lent, 
and fixing it at one per cent. 

458 


Duillius Nepos, C. a Roman consul, the first who 
obtained a victory over the naval>power of Carthage, 
B.C. 260. After his colleague Cn. Corn. Scipio had 
been taken at sea by the Carthaginians in the first Pu 
nic war, Duillius proceeded, with a newly-built Romai 
fleet, to Sicily, in quest of the enemy, whom he met 
near the Lipari Islands ; and, by means of grappling- 
irons, so connected the ships of the Carthaginians with 
his own, that the contest became a sort of land-fight. 
By this unexpected manoeuvre, he took eighty and de¬ 
stroyed thirteen of the Carthaginian fleet, and obtained a 
naval triumph, the first ever enjoyed at Rome. There 
were some medals struck in commemoration of this 
victory, and a column was erected on the occasion 
This column (called Columna Rostrata, because adorn¬ 
ed with beaks of ships) was, as Livy mforms us, struck 
down by lightning during the interval between the sec 
ond and third Punic wars. A new column was erect 
ed by the Emperor Claudius, and the inscription re¬ 
stored, though probably modernized. It was buried 
afterward amid the ruins of Rome, until at length, in 
1565, its base, which contained the inscription, was 
dug up in the vicinity of the Capitol. So much, how¬ 
ever, was defaced, that many of the letters were ille¬ 
gible. This inscription has been restored, on conjee 
ture, by the learning of modern scholars. (Compare 
Lipsius, Auctarium ad Inscript. Smetianas.—Ciac 
conius, Col. Rostr. Inscr. in Grcev. Thes., vol. 4, p 
1811.) 

Dulichium, the principal island in the group of the 
Echinades. Its name occurs more than once in th*. 
Odyssey as being well peopled and extensive. ( Od 
1, 246 ; 16, 247.) Its situation, however, has neve 1 - 
been determined by those who have commented on the 
poet ; nor is it probable that much light can be throwr 
upon the subject at this distant period. Strabo (456), 
who has entered largely on the question, takes mucl 
pains to refute those who confounded it with Cephal 
lenia, or considered it as a town of that island. He 
himself contends, that the Dolicha of his time, situated 
at the mouth of the Achelous, opposite to GCniadas, 
and 100 stadia from Cape Araxus, was the real Dull 
chium. (Compare Steph. Byz., s. v. AovXtxiov .— 
Eustath. ad Horn., Od., 1, 246.) But it is very doubt¬ 
ful whether this place was ever of sufficient conse¬ 
quence to apply to Homer’s description of that island. 
Dodwell, who has made some judicious observations 
on this head, thinks that Dulichium may have been 
swallowed up by an earthquake ; and mentions having 
been assured by some Greek sailors that there was, 
about two miles from Cephallema, an immersed isl¬ 
and, extending out for seven miles. {Classical Tour, 
vol. 1, p. 107, seqq .— Cramer’s Anc. Greece, vol. 2, 
p. 27.) 

Dumnorix, a powerful and ambitious chieftain of 
the JEdui, and brother to Divitiacus. He was disaf¬ 
fected towards Caesar and the Romans, and, when the 
former was on the point of sailing for Britain, and had 
ordered Dumnorix to accompany him, the iEduan, on 
a sudden, marched away with the cavalry of his nation, 
and directed his course homeward. He was pursued 
and put to death. {Cces., B. G., 1 , 3.— Id. ib., 1 , 20. 
— Id. ib., 5, 6, seq.) 

Durius, a river of Spain, rising in the chain of Mons 
Idubeda, near the sources of which are the ruins 
of ancient Numantia. {Strabo, 152.) Ptolemy (2, 
5) calls it the A uplag, and Dio Cassius (37, 52) the 
A (jpiog. It flowed to the west, through the territories 
of the Arevaci and Vaccaei, and formed a dividing line 
between the Lusitani and Vettones on the south, and 
the Callaici on the north. It empties into the Atlan¬ 
tic after a course of nearly 300 miles, but is navigable 
only seventy miles from its mouth, on account of the 
rapid current. Its modern name is the Douro. The 
sands of the Durius are spoken of by the ancients as 
being auriferous. {Sil. Ital., 1 , 234j At the mouth 




EBO 


E C B 


ol this river stood Calle, commonly styled Portus 
Calles, from a corruption of which last comes the 
modern name of Portugal. (Mannert, Geogr., vol. 1, 
p. 340.— Ukert, Geogr., vol. 2, p. 290.) 

Durocasses (called also Drocse and Fanum Druid- 
um), a city of the Eburovices, in Gallia Lugdunensis, 
southwest of Lutetia. In its vicinity was the princi¬ 
pal residence of the Druids in Gaul. The modern 
name is Dreux. (Cces ., B. G., 6, 13.— Thuan., 
Hist., 34, seq.) 

Djbocortorum, the capital of the Remi, on the 
Vesic, one of the branches of the Axona or Aisne. 
It is now Rheims. (Cces., B. G., 6, 44.) 

Dym^e, the last of the Achsean towns to the west, 
situate about forty stadia beyond the mouth of the 
Peyrus or Pirus. Pausanias states (7, 18), that its 
more ancient name was Palea. Strabo is of opinion, 
that the appellation of Dyme had reference to its 
western situation, with regard to the other cities of the 
province (nao&v dvapCKordry, dcf)’ ov nal rovvopa). 
He adds, that it was originally called Stratos. (Stra¬ 
bo, 387.) The epithet of Cauconis, applied to this 
city by the poet Antimachus, would lead to the sup¬ 
position that it was once occupied by the ancient Cau- 
cones. (Ap. Schol. Lycophron, v. 589.) Dymse is 
mentioned as one of the twelve towns of Achaia by 
Herodotus (1, 146). Its territory, from being contig¬ 
uous to Elis and ,-Etolia, was frequently laid waste 
during the Social war by the armies of those countries 
then united. ( Cramer's Anc. Greece , vol. 3, p. 71.) 

Dyras, a river of Thessaly, twenty stadia beyond 
the Sperchius, said to :,J have sprung from the ground in 
order to assist Hercules when burning on Oeta. (He- 
rodot., 7, 199.— Strabo, 428.) 

Dyris, the name given to Mount Atlas by the neigh¬ 
bouring inhabitants. ( v O pop early, orcep oi pev "E/l- 
Tiyveg ’Kr’havra naXovcnv, oi j3up6apoi 6e A vpiv .— 
Strabo, 825.) Mr. Hodgson, in a pamphlet on the af¬ 
finities of the Berber languages, after observing that 
the Atlas chain of mountains was called by the ancient 
geographers, besides their common appellation, Dyris 
or Dyrim, and Adderis or Aderim, indulges in the fol¬ 
lowing etymological remarks (p. 5, seqq ). “ These 

names appear to me to be nothing else than the Berber 
words Athraer, Eahrarin, which mean a mountain or 
mountains, differently corrupted from what they had 
been before they were changed to Atlas. Adrar, Ath¬ 
raer, Edhrarin, Adderis, or Adderim, are evidently 
the same word, with such variations as may naturally 
be expected when proper names pass from one lan¬ 
guage to another. There is surely not more, nor per¬ 
haps so much, difference between them as between 
Antwerpen and Amberes (the Spanish name for An¬ 
twerp), Mechlin and Malines, Lugdunum and Lyons, 
'Odvocevq and Ulysses, K apyj]dd>v and Carthage. And 
if the Romans or the Greeks changed Adhrar and Ed¬ 
hrarin into Adderis, or in the accusative Adderim, 
why from Adderis might they not have made Adras, 
Atras, or Atlas ? The weight of probability, at least, 
seems to be in favour of this supposition.” ( Trans¬ 
actions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 4, 
new series.) 

Dyrrachium, now Durazzo, a city of Illyricum, 
previously called Epidamnus. ( Vid . Epidamnus.) 

E. 

Eanus, a name of Janus among the ancient Latins. 
Cornificius, quoted by Macrobius (Sat., 1, 9), main¬ 
tained that Cicero (IV. D., 2, 27) meant this appellation, 
and not Janus, when he derived the name ab eundo. 

Ebora, I. a city of Lusitania, to the south of the 
Tagus and north of the Anas, called also Liberalitas 
Julia. (Plin., 4, 22.— Mela , 3, 1.) It is now Evora, 
the chief city of the province of Alontejo. —II. A for¬ 
tress in Hispania Buetica, on the eastern bank of the 


Bretis. (Mela, 3, 1.)—III. A city of Hispania 'larra- 
conensis, near the river Tamaris. It is supposed to 
coincide with the modern village of Muros, near the 
mouth of the Tambre. Others, however, are in favour 
of the harbour of Obre, at the mouth of the Tamaro. 
(Bischojf und Moller, Wortcrb. der Geogr., p. 446.) 

Eboracum, a city of Britain, in the territory of the 
Brigantes, now York. Eboracum was, next to lon- 
dmium or London, the most important city in the 
whole island. It formed a convenient post, and place 
of arms, for the Romans during the continual wars* 
waged by them against the northern nations of Britain. 
Septimius Severus died here. The modern city can 
still show many vestiges of Roman power and magni 
licence. (Mannert, Geogr., vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 123.) 

Ebud^e, the western isles of Britain, now Hebrides 
Ptolemy (2, 2) places them to the north of Hibernia, 
and makes them five in number. The name Ebu- 
dse was borrowed by the Romans from the Greek ap¬ 
pellation ’E Sovdai. Two of the five properly bear the 
name of Ebudse ; the remaining three were called Ma- 
leus, Epidium, and Ricina. Pliny (4, 16) calls them 
all Hebrides Insulae. “ Ebudes ,” says Salmasius, 
“ Mela nullas reccnset, et nullas Emodas Ptolemceus. 
Vix sane mihi dubium est, quin Emodce, vel Ernudce, et 
Ebudce ecedem sintP (Salmas, ad Solin., 1, 22.) 

Eburones, I. a nation of Belgic Gaul, to the west 
of the Ubii and the Rhine, and to the south of the 
Menapii. Their territory corresponded to the present 
country of Liege (le pays de Liege). Under the con¬ 
duct of Ambiorix they defeated Sabinus and Cotta, 
the lieutenants of Caesar, having induced them to quit 
their winter-quarters, and then having attacked them 
on the route. Caesar inflicted a terrible retaliation, 
desolating the country, and almost annihilating their 
race. The Tungri afterward took ^possession of the 
vacated seats of the Eburones. The capital of the 
Eburones was Aduatuca. This was rebuilt by the 
Tungri, and is now Tongres. (Cces., B. G., 2, 4, 
seqq. — Id. ib., 5, 26, seqq. — Id. ib., 6, 33.) 

Ebusus ('Edoucrof, Gronov. ad Strab., ed Oxon., p 
216.— Bovaog, Dionys. Perieg.), one of the Pityusoe, 
or Pine-islands, so named by the Greeks from the 
number of pine-trees which grew in them (ttitv<;, 
pinus). The island of Ebusus was the largest of the 
number, and very fertile in the production of vines, 
olives, and large figs, which were exported to Rome 
and elsewhere. (Compare Mela, 2, 7.— Plin., 3, 5. 
— Id., 15, 9.— Fest. Avien., v. 621.) It was famed 
also for its wool: but that no poisonous animal existed 
here is a mere fable of former days. Some of the an¬ 
cient writers call it simply Pityusa. (Diod. Sic., 5, 
16.—Compare Livy, 28, 37, who, however, in another 
place (22, 20), names it Ebusus.) Agathemerus (Ge¬ 
ogr., 1, 5) speaks of the larger Pityusa in contradistinc¬ 
tion to the smaller. It is about forty miles from the 
Mediterranean coast of Spain, and is now named, by a 
slight corruption, Iviqa. It still produces abundance 
of corn, wine, oil, fruit, &c., and a great deal of salt 
is made in it by natural evaporation. Its size is 190 
square miles ; the population about 15,000. Diodorus 
(l. c.) compares this island, in point of size, with Corcy- 
ra. The chief place on the island was Ebusus, which 
had an excellent harbour, and was inhabited in part by 
Phoenicians. (Diod. Sic., 5, 16.— Sil. Ital,, 3, 382.) 

Ecbatana (drum), I. the capital of Media, situate, 
according to Diodorus (2, 3), about twelve stadia from 
Mount Orontes. The genuine orthography of the 
word appears to be Agbatana (’Aybdrava). Stepha- 
nus of Byzantium says that this form ’A ybdrava was 
employed by Ctesias. Bahr, however, the latest edi¬ 
tor of Ctesias, retains ’E nbdrava, not because he thinks 
it the true reading, but from a reluctance to change the 
form of the word in opposition to the MSS. But the 
same editor, in his Herodotus (1, 98), adopts A ySd- 
rava with Wesseling, for here the MSS. favour it 

459 






ECBATANA. 


ECH 


Isidorus Characenus has ’A7T obdrava, a manifest er¬ 
ror. Reland (. Diss. Miscell., pt. 2, p. 107) deduces 
the name from the Persian Ac, “ a lord” or “ master. 
and Abadan, “a cultivated and inhabited place.”—Ec- 
batana, being in a high and mountainous country, was 
a favourite residence of the Persian kings during sum¬ 
mer, when the heat of Susa was almost insupportable. 
The Parthian kings also, at a later period, retired to it 
in the summer to avoid the excessive heat of Ctesi- 
phom. According to Herodotus (1, 98), Ecbatanawas 
built near the close of the eighteenth century B.C. by 
Dejoces, the founder of the Median monarchy. The 
book of Judith (1,2) assigns the building of this city, 
or, rather, the erection of its citadel, to Arphaxad, in the 
twelfth year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, king of 
Assyria. Some writers make Arphaxad the same with 
Dejoces, while others identify him with Phraortes, the 
son of the latter, who might have repaired the city, or 
else made some additions to it.—Herodotus furnishes 
us with no hint whence we may infer the relative po¬ 
sition of Ecbatana on the map of Media. His de¬ 
scription of the fortress or citadel, however, is par¬ 
ticular. “ The Medes,” he remarks, “ in obedience 
to their king’s command, built those spacious and 
massy fortifications now called Ecbatana, circle within 
circle, according to the following plan. Each inner 
circle overtops its outer neighbour by the height of the 
battlements alone. This was effected partly by the 
nature of the ground, a conical hill, and partly by the 
building itself. The number of the circles was seven.; 
within the innermost were built the palace and the 
treasury. The circumference of the outermost wall 
and of the city of Athens may be regarded as nearly 
equal. The battlements of the first circle are white ; 
of the second, black; of the third, scarlet; of the fourth, 
azure ; of the fifth, orange. All these are brilliantly 
coloured with different paints. But the battlements 
of the sixth circle are silvered over, while those of the 
seventh are gilt. ' Dejoces constructed these walls 
around his palace for his own personal safety. But 
he ordered the people to erect their houses in a circle 
around the outward wall.” {Herod., 1 , 98, seq.) — 
The Orientals, however, according to Diodorus Sicu¬ 
lus, claimed a far more ancient origin for Ecbatana. 
They not only described it as the capital of the first 
Median monarchy, founded by Arbaces, but as exist¬ 
ing prior to the era of the famed and fabulous Semira- 
mis, who is said to have visited Ecbatana in the course 
of her royal journeys, and to have built there a magnifi¬ 
cent palace. She also, with immense labour and ex¬ 
pense, introduced abundance of excellent water into 
the city, which before had been badly supplied with it, 
and she effected this object by perforating the adjacent 
Mount Orontes, and forming a tunnel, fifteen feet broad, 
and forty feet high, through which she conveyed a lake- 
stream. {Diod. Sic., 2, 13.) Ecbatana continued a 
splendid city under the Persian sway, the great king 
spending at this place the two hottest months of the 
year. ( dElian, l. c. — Xen., 1. c.) The Macedonian 
conquest did not prove destructive to Ecbatana, as it 
had to the royal palace at Persepolis. Alexander de¬ 
posited in Ecbatana the treasures taken from Persepo- 
lis and Pasargada, and one of the last acts of his life 
was a royal visit to the Median capital. Although not 
equally favoured by the Seleucidse, it still retained the 
traces of its former grandeur ; and Polybius has left on 
record a description of its state under Antiochus the 
Great, which shows that Ecbatana was still a splendid 
city, though it had been despoiled of many of its more 
costly decorations. {Polyb., 10, frag. 4.) When the 
Seleucidse were driven from Upper Asia, Ecbatana be¬ 
came the favourite summer residence of the Arsacidae, 
and we have the authority of Tacitus to show, that, at 
the close of the first century, it still continued to be 
the Parthian capital. {Tacit., Ann., 15,31.) When 
the Persians, under the house of Sassan, A.D. 226, re- 
460 


covered the dominion of Upper Asia, Ecbatana, both 
as an ancient seat of empire and as a place situate 
far from the immediate scene of warfare between thf 
Persians anti the Romans, continued to be a favourite 
and secure place of residence. The natural bulwarks 
of Mount Zagros were never forced by the Roman le¬ 
gions, nor did the matrons of Ecbatana ever behold the 
smoke of a Roman camp. Consequently, we find, from 
Ammianus Marcellinus, that near the close of the fourth 
century, Ecbatana continued to be a great and a forti¬ 
fied city.—The site of Ecbatana has been a matter ol 
dispute among modern scholars. Gibbon and Sir W. 
Jones are in favour of the present Tabriz. The claims, 
however, of this town are now completely set aside. 
Mr. Williams contends for Ispahan. {Geography of 
Anc. Asia, p. 10, seqq.) He is ably refuted, however, 
in the Journal of Education (No. 4, p. 305, seqq.). 
D’Anville, Mannert, and others declare' for Harnme- 
dan, which is undoubtedly the true opinion. The 
route of commerce between the low country, in th6 
neighbourhood of the ancient Seleucia, and the mod 
ern Bagdad and the high table-land of Iran, is deter¬ 
mined by the physical character of the country, and 
has continued the same from the earliest recorded tus- 
tory of those countries to the present day. The places 
marked in the Itinerary of Isidorus Characenus, as 
lying in Seleucia and Ecbatana, are the places indi¬ 
cated by modern travellers as lying on the route be¬ 
tween Bagdad and Hammedan. —Mr. Kinneir describes 
the climate of Hammedan as delightful during eight 
months of the year ; but in winter the cold is exces¬ 
sive, and fuel with difficulty procured. Hammedan 
lies in a low plain at the foot of Mount Elwund, which 
belongs to the mountain-chain that forms the last step 
in the ascent from the lowlands of Irak-Arabi to the 
high table-land of Iran. The summit of Elwund is 
tipped with continual snow. {Kinneir's Persia, p. 
126.)—II. A town of Syria, in Galilsea Inferior, at the 
foot of Mount Carmel, supposed to coincide with the 
modern Caiffa. Here Cambyses gave himself a mor¬ 
tal wound as he was mounting his horse, and thus ful¬ 
filled the oracle which had warned him to beware of 
Ecbatana. {Herod., 3, 64.) 

Echidna, a monster sprung from the union of Chry- 
saor with Callirhoe, the daughter of Oceanus. She is 
represented as a beautiful woman in the upper parts of 
the body, but as a serpent below the waist. {Hesiod, 
Theog., 297.) 

Echinades, islands formerly lying opposite the 
mouth of the Acheloiis, but which, in process of 
time, have for the most part become connected with 
the land by the alluvial deposites of the muddy waters 
of the river. These rocks, as they should rather be 
termed, were known to Homer, who mentions them 
as being inhabited, and as having sent a force to Troy 
under the command of Megas, a distinguished warrioi 
of the Iliad. {II., 2, 625.) They are said by some 
geographers to be now called Curzolari; but this 
name belongs to certain small, pointed isles near them, 
called from their appearance Oxice {'Ogeiai) by the an¬ 
cients. {Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 26.) 

Echinussa. Vid. Cimolus. 

Echion, one of the men who sprang from the drag¬ 
on’s teeth sown by Cadmus. He, along with four 
others, survived the conflict that ensued, and assisted 
Cadmus in building Thebes. The monarch gave him 
his daughter Agave in marriage, by whom he had Pen- 
theus. After the death of Cadmus he reigned in 
Thebes. Hence the epithet “ Echionean,” applied 
by the poets to that city. {Ovid, Met., 3, 311.— Ho- 
rat., Od., 4, 4, 64.) 

Echionides, a patronymic given to Pentheus as de¬ 
scended from Echion. {Ovid, Met., 3, 311.) 

Echionius, an epithet applied to the city of Thebes 
as founded by the aid of Echion. {Ovid, Met., 3, 311 
— Horat., Od., 4, 4, 64.) s 






E D E 


EGN 


Echo, a 'laughter of the Air and Tellus, who chiefly 
resided in the vicinity of the Cephissus. She was once 
one of Juno’s attendants ; but, having offended that 
goddess by her deception, she was deprived, in a great 
measure, by her, of the power of speech. Juno de¬ 
clared, that in future she should have but little use of 
her tongue ; and immediately she lost all power A do- 
ing any more than repeat the sounds which she heard. 
Echo happening to see the beautiful youth Narcissus, 
became deeply enamoured of him. But, her love be¬ 
ing slighted, she pined away till nothing remained of 
her but her voice and bones. The former still exists, 
the latter were converted into stone. {Ovid, Met., 3, 
341, seqq.) 

Ectenes, a people who, according to Pausanias, 
first inhabited the territory of Thebes, in Boeotia. 
Ogyges is said to have been their first king. They 
were exterminated by a plague, and succeeded by the 
Hyantes. (Compare Strabo, 401.— Pausan., 9, 5.— 
Lycophr., v. 433.) 

Edessa, I. a city of Mesopotamia, in the district of 
Osroene, on the banks of a small river called Scirtus. 
It lay northeast of Zeugma, and southeast of Samosa- 
ta, and, according to the Itin. Ant., nine geographical 
miles from the Euphrates and Zeugma ( ed. Wesseling, 
p. 185). Procopius ( Pers ., 2, 12) places it a day’s 
journey from Batnas ; and an Arabian writer cited by 
Wesseling {ad Itin. Ant., 1. c.), about six parasangs or 
four miles. Edessa is said to have been one of those 
numerous cities which were built by Seleucus Nicator, 
and was probably called after the city of the same 
name in Macedonia. It was once a place of great ce¬ 
lebrity, and famous for a temple of the Syrian goddess, 
which was one of the richest in the world. During 
the intestine broils which greatly weakened the king¬ 
dom of Syria, Augurus or Abgarus seized on this city 
and its adjacent territory, which he erected into a 
kingdom, and transmitted the royal title to his poster¬ 
ity. We learn from St. Austin that our Saviour 
promised Abgarus that the city should be impregna¬ 
ble ; and Euagrius {Hist. Eccles., 4, 27) observes, 
that although this circumstance was not mentioned in 
our Lord’s letter, still it was the common belief; which 
was much confirmed when Chosroes, king of Persia, 
after having set down before it, was obliged to raise 
the siege. This is all, however, a pious fable.—Edessa 
was called Callirhoe, from a fountain contained within 
it. {Plin., 5, 24.) The sources of this fountain still 
remain, and the inhabitants have a tradition that this 
is the place where Abraham offered up his prayer pre¬ 
vious to his intended sacrifice of Isaac. (Compare 
Niebuhr, vol. 2, p. 407.— Tavernier, lib. 2, c. 4.) 
In later times it was termed Roha, or, with the article 
of the Arabs, Orrhoa, and by abbreviation Orrha. This 
appellation would seem to have arisen from the cir¬ 
cumstance of Edessa having been the capital of the 
district Osroene, or, as it was more probably called, 
Orrhoene. The modem name is Orrhoa or Orfa. 
{Chron. Edess. in Assemanni Bibl. Orient., vol. 1, p. 
388.) The Arabians revere the spot as the seat of 
learned men and of the purest Arabic. {Abulpharag., 
Hist. Dynast., p. 16, ed. Wesseling, ad loc .)—II. A 
city of Macedonia, called also ZEdessa and iEgas, 
situate on the Via Egnatia, thirty miles west of Pella. 
According to Justin (7, 1) it was the city occupied by 
Caranus on his arrival in the country, and it continued 
apparently to be the capital of Macedonia, until the 
seat of government was transferred to Pella. Even 
after this event it remained the place of sepulture for 
the royal family, since we are told that Philip and 
Eurydice, the king and queen of Macedon, who had 
been put to death by Olympias, were buried here by 
Cassander. {Athen., 4, 41.) Pausanias (1, 6) states, 
that Alexander was to have been interred here; and 
when Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, had taken and plun¬ 
dered the town, he left there a body of Gauls, who 


opened the royal tombs in hopes of finding treasure 
It was here that Philip was assassinated by Pausan 
ias while celebrating the marriage • of his daughter 
Cleopatra with Alexander, king of Epirus. {Diod. 
Sic., 16, 92.) It is uncertain which of the two ap¬ 
pellations is the more ancient, *Egse or Edessa ; the 
latter form is always used by later writers. ( Hierocl ., 
Synecd., p. 638.) It is generally agreed that the towr. 
called Vodina, situate on the river Vistritza, which 
issues from the Lake of Ostrovo, represents tins an¬ 
cient city ; but it may be observed, that the name oi 
Bodena appears to be as old as the Byzantine histo¬ 
rians. {Cedrenus, vol. 2, p. 705.— Glycas, p. 309.) 
Dr. Clarke, in his travels {Greece, Egypt, &c., vol. 7, 
p. 434, seqq.), quotes a letter from Mr. Fiolt of Cam¬ 
bridge, who had visited Vodina, and which leaves no 
doubt as to its identity with Edessa. He says, “ it is 
a delightful spot. There are sepulchres cut in the 
rock, which the superstitious inhabitants have never 
plundered, because th^ are afraid to go near them. 
I went into two, and saw the bodies in perfect repose, 
with some kinds of ornaments, and clothes, and vases. 
There is a beautiful inscription in the town. The fall 
of waters is magnificent.” {Cramer's Ancient Greece, 
vol. 1, p. 226, seqq.) 

Edetani, a people of Spain, south of the Iberus. 
They occupied what corresponds with the northern 
half of Valencia, and the southwestern corner of Ar 
agon. {Mannert, Geogr., vol. 1, p. 426.— Ukert, 
vol. 2, p. 413, seqq.) 

Edoni or Edones, a people of Thrace, on the left 
bank of the Strymon. It appears from Thucydides 
(2, 99), that this Thracian clan once held possession 
of the right bank of the Strymon as far as Mygdonia, 
but that they were ejected by the Macedonians. The 
name of this tribe is often used by the poets to express 
the whole of the nation of which they formed a part. 
{Soph., Ant., 955.— Eur., Hec., 1153.) 

Eetion, the father of Andromache, and king of Hy 
poplacian Thebe in Troas. {Horn., II., 6, 396.)—II 
The commander of the Athenian fleet, conquered b] 
the Macedonians under Clitus, near the Echinades 
{Diod. Sic., 1.8, 15.) 

Egeria, a nymph of Aricia in Italy, the spouse an< 
instructress of Numa. {Vid. Numa.) Some regard 
ed her as one of the Camoenaa. According to the ok 
legend, when Numa died, Egeria melted away in tears 
into a fountain. Niebuhr places the grove of EgerL 
below 5. Balbina, near the baths of Caracalla. {Rt 
man History, vol. 1, p. 202, Cambr. transl.) Wag¬ 
ner, in a dissertation on this subject, is in favour of 
the valley of Caffarella, some few miles from the pres¬ 
ent gate of Saint Sebastian. ( Wagner, commentatio 
de Egeria fonte, et specu ejusque situ. — Marbourg, 
1824.) 

Egesta. Vid. HCgesta. 

Egnatia, a town of Apulia, on the coast, below 
Barium. It communicated its name to the consular 
way that followed the coast from Canusium to Brun- 
disium. ( Strabo, 282.) Its ruins are still apparent 
near the Torre d'Agnazzo and the town of Monopoli. 
{.Pratilli, Via Appia, lib. 4, c. 16.— Romanelli, vol. 2, 
p. 143.) Pliny states (2, 107), that a certain stone 
was shown at Egnatia, which was said to possess the 
property of setting fire to wood that was placed upon 
it. It was this prodigy, seemingly, which afforded sc 
much amusement to Horace {Sat., 1, 5, 98), and from 
the expression limine sacro employed by the poet, the 
stone in question would appear to have been placet 
in the entrance of a temple, serving for an altar. Wha' 
Horace, however, regarded as a mere trick, has beer 
thought to have had more of reality about it than th-e 
poet supposed. Some commentators imagine that tin 
stone was placed over a naphtha spring, with an aper¬ 
ture in it for the flame to pass through ; a simple con¬ 
trivance which the priests would not fail to tura to 

461 



E L A 


ELE 


g^od account. So La Lande found in Italy, on a hill 
near Pietra Mala , not far from Firenzuola, flames 
breaking forth frqm the ground, the vapour from which 
resembled petroleum in smell. ( Voyage (Tun Fran¬ 
cois en Italic, vol. 2, p. 134. —1765.) Compare also 
the remarks of Salmasius on the account given by So- 
v jnus of a volcanic hill near Agrigentum in Sicily. 
Solin., c. 5.— Salmas., ad loc., p. 89, scqq.) 

Eion, a port at the mouth of the Strymon, twenty- 
five stadia from Amphipolis, of which, according to 
Thucydides (4, 102), it formed the harbour. This 
historian affirms it to have been more ancient than 
Amphipolis. It was from Eion that Xerxes sailed to 
Asia, according to Herodotus, after the battle of 
Salamis. ( Herodot., 8, 118.) Boges was left in 
command of the town on the retreat of the Persian ar¬ 
mies, and made a most gallant resistance when be¬ 
sieged by the Grecian forces under Cimon. On the 
total failure of all means of subsistence, he ordered a 
vast pile to be raised in the oentre of the town, and 
having placed on it his wives, children, and domestics, 
he caused them to be slain ; then, scattering every¬ 
thing of value in the Strymon, he threw himself on the 
burning pile and perished in the flames. {Herodot., 
7, 107.— Thucyd., 1, 98.) After the capture of Am¬ 
phipolis, the Spartans endeavoured to gain possession 
of Eion also, but in this design they were frustrated 
by the arrival of Thucydides with a squadron from 
Thasus, who repelled the attack. {Thucyd., 4, 107.) 
Cleon afterward occupied Eion, and thither the remains 
of his army retreated after their defeat before Amphip¬ 
olis. {Thucyd., 5, 10.) This place is mentioned by 
Lycophron (v. 417). In the middle ages a Byzantine 
town was built on the site of Eion, which now bears 
the name of Contessa. {Cramer's Ancient Greece, 
vol. 1, p. 295, seqq.) 

El^ea, the port of the city of Pergamus. Accord¬ 
ing to some traditions, it had been founded after the 
siege of Troy, by the Athenians, under the command 
of Mnestheus. {Strab., 622.) Elsea was distant 12 
stadia from the mouth of the Ca'icus, and 120 from 
Pergamus. {Strab., 615.) The modern name is la- 
lea or Lalea. Smith places the ruins of this city at 
no great distance from Clisiakevi, on the road, from 
Smyrna to Berganat. {Account of the Seven Churches 
of Asia, p. 7.— Liv., 36, 43.— Pausan., 9, 5.) 

Elagabalus, I. the surname of the sun at Emesa. 
—II. The name of a Roman emperor. {Vid. Emesa 
and Heliogabalus.) 

Elaphebolia, a festival in honour of Diana the 
Huntress. In the celebration a cake was made in the 
form of a deer, eXacpoq, and offered to the goddess. It 
owed its institution to the following circumstance. 
When the Phocians had been severely defeated by the 
Thessalians, they resolved, by the persuasion of a cer¬ 
tain De’iphantus, to raise a pile of combustible materi¬ 
als, and burn their wives, children, and effects, rath¬ 
er than submit to the enemy. This resolution was 
unanimously approved of by the women, who decreed 
De'iphantus a crown for his magnanimity. When 
everything was prepared, before they fired the pile, 
they engaged their enemies, and fought with such des¬ 
perate fury, that they totally routed them, and obtain¬ 
ed a complete victory. In commemoration of this 
unexpected success, this festival was instituted, to 
Diana, and observed with the greatest solemnity. 
{Athen., 14, p. 646, e. — Castellanus, de Fest. Grace., 
p. 115.) 

Elatea, the most considerable and important of the 
Phocian cities after Delphi, situate, according to Pau- 
sanias (10, 34), one hundred and eighty stadia from 
Amphicaaa, on a gently rising slope, above the plain 
watered by the Cephissus. It was captured and burn¬ 
ed by the &rmy of Xerxes {Herodot., 8, 33), but, being 
afterward restored, it was occupied by Philip, father of 
Alexander, on his advance into Phocis to overawe the 
462 


Athenians. The alarm and consternation produced at 
Athens by his approach is finely described by Demosthe¬ 
nes in his Oration de Corona (p. 284.—Compare JEs- 
chin. in Ctes., p. 73.—Strab., 424). Some years after, 
Elatea made a successful defenc-e against the arms of 
Cassander. It was, however, reduced by Philip, son 
of Demetrius, who bribed the principal inhabitants. 
{Pausan., 1. c.) During the Macedonian war, thin 
town was besieged by the Roman consul, T. Flami- 
ninus, and taken by assault. {Liv., 32, 18, seqq .— 
Polyb., 5, 26 .— Id., 18, 26.) An attack subsequently 
made on Elatea by Taxilus, general of Mithradates, 
was successfully repelled by the inhabitants ; in con 
sequence of which exploit they were declared free by 
the Roman senate. {Pausan., 1. c.) Strabo speaks 
of its advantageous situation, which commanded the 
entrance into Phocis and Boeotia. Other passages 
relative to this place will be found in Plutarch {Vit. 
Syll.), Appian {Bell. Mithrad.), Theophrastus (Hist. 
Plant., 8", 8, 2), and Scyl.ax (p. 23). Its ruins are tc 
be seen on a site called Elephta, on the left bank of 
the Cephissus, and at the foot of some hills which 
“unite with the chains of Cnemis and (Eta. Sir W. 
Gell, in his Itinerary, notices the remains of the city 
walls, as well as those of the citadel, and the ruins of 
several temples (p. 216.—Compare Dodwell, vol. 2, 
p. 140). At the distance of about twenty stadia to 
the east was the temple of Minerva Cranaaa, described 
by Pausanias : its remains were discovered by Sir W. 
Gell and Mr. Dodwell. {Cramer's Ancient Greece, 
vol. 2, p. 179.) 

Elaver, a river of Gaul, rising in the same quar¬ 
ter with the Liger, and, after pursuing a course almost 
parallel with it, falling into this same stream below 
Nevers. It is now the Allier. {Coes., B. G., 8, 34 
and 53.— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 2, pt. 1, p. 119.) 

Elea, a city of Lucania. {Vid. Velia.) 

Electra, I. one of the Oceanides, wife of Atlas, 
and mother of Dardanus by Jupiter. {Ovid, Fast., 4, 
31.)—II. A daughter of Atlas and Pleione, and one 
of the Pleiades. ( Vid. Pleiades.)—III. One of the 
daughters of Agamemnon. Upon the murder of her 
father, on his return from Troy, Electra rescued her 
brother Orestes, then quite young, from the fury ot 
JEgisthus, by despatching him to the court of her un¬ 
cle Strophius, king of Phocis. There Orestes formed 
the well-known attachment for his cousin Pylades, 
which, in the end, led to the marriage of Electra with 
that prince. According to one account, Electra had 
previously been compelled, by ASgisthus, to become 
the wife of a Mycenean rustic, who, having regarded 
her merely as a sacred deposite confided to him by the 
gods, restored her to Orestes on the return of that 
prince to Mycenaa, and on his accession to the throne 
of his ancestors. Electra became, by Pylades, the 
mother of two sons, Strophius and Medon. Her story 
has formed the basis of two plays, the one by Sopho¬ 
cles, the other by Euripides. {Soph., Electr. — Eurip., 
Electr.) 

Electrides, islands fabled to have been in the 
Adriatic, off the mouths of the Padus or Po, and to 
have abounded with amber ( clectrum ), whence their 
name. {Vid. Eridanus.) 

Electryon, son of Perseus and Andromeia, and 
king of Mycenae. He was the father of Alcmena. 
Electryon undertook an expedition against the Tele- 
boans in order to avenge the death of his sons, whom 
the sons of Taphius, king of the Teleboans, had slain 
in an encounter. Returning victorious, he was met 
by Amphitryon, and killed by an accidental blow. 
{Apollod., 2, 4, 6.— Vid. Alcmena.) 

Elei, the people of Elis in Peloponnesus. ( Vid. 
Elis.) 

Elephantine, an island of Egypt, in the Nile, with 
a city of the same name, about a semi-stadium distant 
from Syene. Plinv (5, 9) calls it Elephantis Insula 



E L E 


ELEUSINIA. 


It is of small size, being, according to the French 
measurement, 700 toises long and 200 broad. The 
island was remarkable for its fertility, and it is there¬ 
fore easy to believe, that, in early ages, when, accord¬ 
ing to Manetho, Egypt was divided into several dynas¬ 
ties, one of these had its capital on this island. The 
cataracts of the Nile are not far distant, and hence El¬ 
ephantine became the depot for all the goods that were 
destined for the countries to the south, and that re¬ 
quired land-carriage in this quarter in order to avoid 
the falls of the river. The Nile has here a very con¬ 
siderable breadth, and it is natural to suppose, that, on 
its entrance into Egypt, the inhabitants were desirous 
of ascertaining the rise of the stream at the period of 
its annual increase. Hence we find a Nilometer here, 
on the banks of the river. ( Strabo , 817.) In the 
time of the Pharaohs, the garrison stationed on the 
frontiers against the -Ethiopians had their head-quar¬ 
ters at Elephantine. In the Roman times, however, 
the frontiers were pushed farther to the south. In the 
fourth century, when all Egypt was strongly guarded, 
the first Cohors Theodosiana was stationed in this isl¬ 
and, according to the Notitia Imperii .—It is surpri¬ 
sing that merely the Greek name for this island has 
come down to us, since Herodotus was here during 
the Persian sway, when Grecian influence could by 
no means have been strong enough to supplant the 
original name by one which is evidently a mere trans¬ 
lator of it. The modern name of Elephantine is 
Gezyret Assuan, “ the Island of Syene.” There are 
some ruins of great beauty remaining, and, in particu¬ 
lar, a superb gate of granite, which formed the entrance 
of one of the porticoes of the temple of Cnepht. 

( Mannert , Geogr., vol. 10, pt. 1, p. 323, seqq.) 

Elephantis, an impure poetess. Consult Martial 
( Ep ., 12, 43, 4), Suetonius ( Vit. Tib., 43), and the 
remarks of the commentators on each of these places. 

ElephantophaGi, a people of .Ethiopia. (Consult 
remarks under the article .Ethiopia, page 72, col. 1.) 

Eleusinia, a great festival observed every fourth 
year by the Celeans, Phliasians, as also by the Pheneatoe, 
Lacedaemonians, Parrhasians, and Cretans ; but more 
part cularly by the people of Athens every fifth year, 
at Eleusis in Attica, where it was said to have been 
introduced by Eumolpus, B.C. 1356. It was the most 
celebrated of all the religious ceremonies of Greece, 
whence it is often called, by way of eminence, yva- 
Trjpia, the mysteries. It was so superstitiously ob¬ 
served, that if any one ever revealed it, it was sup¬ 
posed that he had called divine vengeance upon his 
head, and it was unsafe to live in the same house with 
him. Such a wretch was publicly put to an ignomin¬ 
ious death. This festival was sacred to Ceres and 
Proserpina; everything contained a mystery; and 
Ceres herself was known only by the name of ax~ 
Oda, from the sorrow (d-xOoq) which she suffered for 
the loss of her daughter. This mysterious secrecy 
was solemnly observed, and enjoined on all the vota¬ 
ries of the goddess ; and if any one ever appeared at 
the celebration, either intentionally or through igno¬ 
rance, without proper introduction, he was immediately 
punished with death. Persons of both sexes and all 
ages were initiated at this solemnity, and it was looked 
upon as so heinous a crime to neglect this sacred part 
of religion, that it was one of the heaviest accusations 
which contributed to the condemnation of Socrates. 
The initiated were under the more particular care of 
the deities, and therefore their lives were supposed to 
be attended with more happiness and real security than 
those of other men. This benefit was not only granted 
during life, but it extended beyond the grave, and they 
were honoured with the first places in the Elysian 
fields, while others were left to wallow in perpetual 
filth and ignominy. As the benefits of expiation were 
so extensive, particular care was taken in examining 
the character of those who were presented for initia¬ 


tion. Such as were guilty of murder, though against 
their will, and such as were convicted of impiety 
or any heinous crime, were not admitted ; and the 
Athenians suffered none to be initiated but those 
that were members of their city. This regulation, 
which compelled, according to the popular belief, Her¬ 
cules, Castor, and Pollux to become citizens of Ath¬ 
ens, was strictly observed in the first ages of the insti¬ 
tution, but afterward all persons, barbarians excepted, 
were freely initiated. The festivals were divided into 
the greater and less mysteries. The less were institu¬ 
ted from the following circumstance : Hercules passed 
near Eleusis while the Athenians were celebrating the 
mysteries, and desired to be initiated. As this could 
not be done because he was a stranger, and as Eumol¬ 
pus was unwilling to displease him on account of his 
great power, and the services which he had done to 
the Athenians, another festival was instituted without 
violating the laws. It was called yucpu , and Hercules 
was solemnly admitted to the celebration, and initiated. 
These minor mysteries were observed at Agrse near the 
Uissus. The greater were celebrated at Eleusis, from 
which place Ceres has been called Eleusinia. In later 
times the smaller festivals were preparatory to the 
greater, and no person could be initiated at Eleusis 
without a previous purification at Agrse. This purifi¬ 
cation they performed by keeping themselves pure, 
chaste, and unpolluted during nine days, after which 
they came and offered sacrifices and prayers, wearing 
garlands of flowers, called layepa or lyepa, and hav¬ 
ing under their feet A ibq kuSiov, Jupiter's skin, which 
was the skin of a victim offered to that god. The per¬ 
son who assisted was called vSpavoq, from vdup, wa¬ 
ter, which was used at the purification ; and they them¬ 
selves were called yvorai, the initiated. A year after 
the initiation at the less mysteries they sacrificed a 
sow to Ceres, and were admitted into the greater, ajad 
the secrets of the festivals were solemnly revealed to 
them, from which they were called etyopoi and ettotc- 
rat, inspectors. The institution was performed in the 
following manner ; the candidates, crowned with myr¬ 
tle, were admitted by night into a place called yvorL- 
Koq orjKoq, the mystical temple, a vast and stupendous 
building. As they entered the temple, they purified 
themselves by washing their hands in holy water, and 
received for admonition that they were to come with 
a mind pure and undefiled, without which the cleanli¬ 
ness of the body would be unacceptable. After this 
the holy mysteries were read to them from a large 
book called rcerpuya, because made of two stones, 
nsrpai, fitly cemented together ; and then the priest, 
called iepo(j)dvTT]q, proposed to them certain questions, 
to which they readily answered. After this, strange 
and fearful objects presented themselves to their sight; 
the place often seemed to quake, and to appear sud¬ 
denly resplendent with fire, and immediately covered 
with gloomy darkness and horror. Sometimes flashes 
of lightning appeared on every side. At other times 
thunder, hideous noises, and howlings were heard, and 
the trembling spectators were alarmed by sudden and 
dreadful apparitions. This was called avroijjia, intui 
tion. When these ceremonies were ended, the word 
/coy£ was uttered by the officiating priest, which im¬ 
plied that all was ended, and that those present might 
retire. In the common text of Hesychius, the words / 
Koy £ oyna f are said to have been uttered on this oc¬ 
casion (Kdy£, oyna^' cTuquvyya Terehecryevoiq), and 
various explanations have been attempted to be given. 
Wilford, for example, makes the words in question to 
have been Koyf, 'O y, TLai;, and maintains that they are 
pure Sanscrit, and used this day by the Brahmins, at 
the conclusion of sacred rites ! (Asiatic Researches, 

vol. 5, p. 297.) Miinter, Creuzer, Ouvaroff, and oth¬ 
ers, have adopted the opinion of Wilford. ( Miinter , 
Erkldrung einer gricch. Inschrift., p. 18.— Creuzer, 
Symbd ik, vol. 4, p. 573. — Ouvaroff, Essai sur lei 

463 




ELEUSINIA. 


ELEUSINIA. 


Myst. d'Eleusis, p. 26, seqq. — Schelling, uber die 
Gotthcit. von Samothrak, p. 91.) The speculations of 
all these writers, as well as the opinion of Von Ham¬ 
mer, who derives the word ‘Opirat; from the Persian 
Cambaksch, which denotes, according to him, “ voti 
sui compos ,” have been very unceremoniously put to 
flight by Lobeck. This able and judicious critic has 
emended the text of Hesychius so as to read as fol¬ 
lows : Koy£, opoiug red!;, ETCKpuvypa TETEXeapivoig, 
and thus both uoyt; and 7ra£ are nothing more than 
mere terms of dismission. The former of these is 
borrowed from the language of the Athenian assem¬ 
blies for voting. The pebble or ballot was dropped 
into the urn through a long conical tube ; and as this 
tube was probably of some length, and the urn itself 
of considerable size, in order to enable several hundred 
persons to vote, the stone striking against the metal 
bottom made a sharp, loud noise. This sound the 
Athenians imitated by the monosyllable noyi;. Hence 
the term noyt; came to denote that all was ended, that 
the termination of an affair was reached; and hence 
Hesychius assimilates it to the form nut;, which ap¬ 
pears to have had the same force as the Latin inter¬ 
jection pax. ( Lobeck , Aglaophamus, p. 776, seqq .— 
Philol. Museum, No. 2, p. 425, not.) —But to return to 
^ the mysteries : the garments in which the new-comers 
were initiated were held sacred, and of no less efficacy 
to avert evils than charms and incantations. From 
this circumstance, therefore, they were never left off 
before they were totally unfit for wear, after which they 
were appropriated for children, or dedicated to the god¬ 
dess. The chief person that attended at the initiation 
was called iepo(j)dvTyg, the revealer of sacred things. 
He was a citizen of Athens, and held his office during 
life, though, among the Celeans and Phliasians, it was 
limited to the period of four years. He was obliged 
to devote himself totally to the service of the deities; 
and his life was to be chaste and single. The Hiero¬ 
phant had three attendants ; the first was called dadov- 
Xog, torch-bearer, and was permitted to marry ; the 
second was called arjpva crier; the third adminis¬ 
tered at the altar, and was called o ekl jdupip. There 
were, besides these, other inferior officers, who took 
particular care that everything was performed accord¬ 
ing to custom. The first of these, called fiaoi/\evg, 
was one of the archons ; he offered prayers and sac¬ 
rifices, and took care that there was no indecency or 
irregularity during the celebration. Besides him there 
were four others, called ETapeXyrai, curators, elected 
by the people. One of them was chosen from the sa¬ 
cred family of the Eumolpidae, the other was one of 
the Ceryces, and the rest were from among the citi¬ 
zens. There were also ten persons who assisted at 
this and every other festival, called iepowoioi, because 
they offered sacrifices .—This festival was observed in 
the month Boedromion or September, and continued 
nine days, from the 15th till the 23d. During that 
time it was unlawful to arrest any man, or present any 
petition, on pain of forfeiting a thousand drachmas, or, 
according to others, on pain of death. It was also un¬ 
lawful for those who were initiated to sit upon the 
cover of a well, to eat beans, mullets, or weazels. If 
any woman rode to Eleusis in a chariot, she was obli¬ 
ged, by an edict of Lycurgus, to pay 6000 drachmas. 
The design of this law w r as to destroy all distinction 
between the richer and poorer sort of citizens.—The 
first day of the celebration was called dyvppog, assem¬ 
bly, as it might be said that the worshippers first met 
together. The second day was called dXade pvarai, 
to the sea, you that are initiated, because they were 
commanded to purify themselves by bathing in the sea. 
On the third day sacrifices, and chiefly a mullet, were 
offered ; as also barley from a field of Eleusis. These 
oblations were called Qva, and held so sacred that the 
priests themselves were not, as in other sacrifices, per¬ 
mitted to partake of them. On the fourth day they 


made a solemn procession, in which the nahdBiov, tiovy 
basket of Ceres, was carried about in a consecrated 
aart, while on every side the people shouted, 
Aypyrep, hail, Ceres ! After these followed women, 
called KK7TO(j>6poi, who carried baskets, in which were 
sesamum, carded wool, grains of salt, a serpent, pom¬ 
egranates, reeds, ivy-boughs, certain cakes, &c. The 
fifth was called y ruv hapTzdduv ypepa, the torch-day , 
because on the following night the people ran about 
with torches in their hands. It was usual to dedicate 
torches to Ceres, and contend which should offer the 
largest in commemoration of the travels of the god¬ 
dess, and of her lighting a torch at the flames of Mount 
^Etna. The sixth day was called "lauxog, from Iac- 
chus, the son of Jupiter and Ceres, who accompanied 
his mother in her search after Proserpina, with a torch 
in his hand. From that circumstance his statue had a 
torch in its hand, and was carried in solemn procession 
from the Ceramicus to Eleusis. The statue, with 
those that accompanied it, called ’latcxayoyoi, was 
crowned with myrtle. In the way nothing was heard 
but singing and the noise of brazen kettles, as the vo¬ 
taries danced along. The way through which they 
issued from the city was called iepd oddg, the sacred 
way; the resting-place, iepd ovuy, from a fig-tree 
which grew in the neighbourhood. They also stopped 
on a bridge over the Cephissus, where they derided 
those that passed by. After they had passed this 
bridge, they entered Eleusis by a place called pva- 
riui] eicodog, the mystical entrance. On the seventh 
day were sports, in which the victors were rewarded 
with a measure of barley, as that grain had been 
first sown in Eleusis. The eighth day was called 
’Emdavpiov ypepa, because once ^Esculapius, at his 
return from Epidaurus to Athens, was initiated by 
the repetition of the less mysteries. It became cus¬ 
tomary, therefore, to celebrate them a second time 
upon this, that such as had not hitherto been initia¬ 
ted might be lawfully admitted. The ninth and last 
day of the festival was called ttX ypoxoai, earthen ves¬ 
sels, because it was usual to fill two such vessels with 
wine, one of which being placed towards the east, and 
the other towards the west, which, after the repetition 
of some mystical words, were both thrown down, and 
the wine being spilled on the ground, was offered as a 
libation. The Eleusinian mysteries lasted about eigh¬ 
teen hundred years, and were finally abolished by 
Theodosius the Great.—Various opinions, as may well 
be supposed, have been entertained by modern schol¬ 
ars respecting the nature and end of the Eleusinian 
mysteries. The following are some of the results of 
the inquiries of the learned and judicious Lobeck. 
{Aglaophamus, p. 3, seqq .)—In the very early ages of 
Greece and Italy, and probably of most countries, the 
inhabitants of the ‘various independent districts into 
which they were divided had very little communica¬ 
tion with each other, and a stranger was regarded as 
little better than an enemy. Each state had its favour¬ 
ite deities, under whose especial protection it was held 
to be, and these deities were propitiated by sacrifices 
and ceremonies, which were different in different 
places. It is farther to be recollected, that the Greeks 
believed their gods to be very little superior in moral 
qualities to themselves, and they feared that if prom¬ 
ises of more splendid and abundant sacrifices and offer¬ 
ings were made to them, they might not be able to 
resist the temptation. As the best mode of escaping 
the calamity of being deserted by their patrons, they 
adopted the expedient of concealing their names, and 
of excluding strangers from their worship. Private 
families, in like manner, excluded their fellow-citizens 
from their family-sacrifices ; and in those states where 
ancient aerolites and such like were preserved as na¬ 
tional palladia, the sight of them was restricted to the 
magistrates and principal persons in the state. ( Agla- 
oph.y p. 65, 273, 274.) We are to recollect, that 




.ELEUSINIA. 


E L E 


Eleusis and Athens were long independent of each 
other. ( Aglaoph ., p. 214, 1351.— Muller, Dorians, 

vol. 1 , p. 201.) The worship of Ceres and Proser¬ 
pina was the national and secret religion of the Eleu- 
sinians, from which the Athenians were of course ex¬ 
cluded, as well as all other Greeks. But when Eleusis 
was conquered, and the two states coalesced, the Athe¬ 
nians became participators in the worship of these 
deities ; which, however, remained so long confined to 
them, as to have given rise to a proverb (’A ttikoItu 
’EAeuuma), applied to those who met together in se¬ 
cret for the performance of any matter. {Aglaoph., 
p. 271.) Gradually, with the advance of knowledge, 
and the decline of superstition and national illiberality, 
admission to witness the solemn rites celebrated each 
year at Eleusis was extended to all Greeks of either 
sex and of every rank, provided they came at the prop¬ 
er time, had committed no inexpiable offence, had per¬ 
formed the requisite previous ceremonies, and were 
introduced by an Athenian citizen. {Aglaoph., p. 14, 
28, 31.) These mysteries, as they were termed, were 
performed with a considerable degree of splendour, at 
the charge of the state, and under the superintendence 
of the magistrates ; whence it follows, as a necessary 
consequence, that the rites could, have contained no¬ 
thing that was grossly immoral or indecent. {Agla¬ 
oph., p. 116.) There does not appear to be any valid 
reason for supposing, as many do, that a public dis¬ 
course on the origin of things and that of the gods, 
and on other high and important matters, was de¬ 
livered by the Hierophant, whose name would rather 
seem to be derived from his exhibiting the sacred 
things, ancient statues probably of the goddesses, 
which were kept carefully covered up, and only shown 
on these solemn occasions. The delivery of a public 
discourse would, in fact, have been quite repugnant to 
the usages of the Greeks in their worship of the gods ; 
and the evidence offered in support of this supposition 
.s extremely feeble. But the singing of sacred hymns, 
m honour of the goddess, always formed a part of the 
service. {Aglaoph., p. 63, 193.— Muller, Prolegom., 
p'. 250, seq.) The ancient writers are full of the prais¬ 
es of the Eleusinian mysteries, of the advantage of 
being initiated, i. e., admitted to participate in them, 
and of the favour of the gods in life, and the cheerful 
hopes in death, which were the consequence of it. 
Hence occasion has been taken to assert, that a sys¬ 
tem of religion little inferior to pure Christianity was 
taught in them. But these hopes, and this tranquillity 
of mind and favour of heaven, are easy to be accounted 
for without having recourse to so absurd a supposition. 
Every act performed in obedience to the will of Heaven 
is believed to draw down its favour on the performer. 
The Mussulman makes his pilgrimage to the Kaaba at 
Mecca, the Catholic to Loretto, Compostella, or else¬ 
where; and each is persuaded that, by having done 
so, he has secured the divine favour. {Aglaoph., p. 
70, seq.) So the Greek who was initiated at Eleusis 
(the mysteries of which place, owing to the fame in 
which Athens stood, and the splendour and magnifi¬ 
cence with which they were performed, eclipsed all 
others) retained ever after a lively sense of the hap¬ 
piness which he had enjoyed, when admitted to view 
the interior of the illuminated temple, and the sacred 
relics which it contained, when, to his excited imagi¬ 
nation, the very gods themselves seemed visibly to de¬ 
scend from their Olympian abodes, amid the solemn 
hymns of the officiating priests. Hence there natu¬ 
rally arose a persuasion, that the benign regards of the 
gods were bent upon him through after life ; and, as man 
can never divest himself of the belief of his continued 
existence after death, a vivid hope of enjoying bliss in 
the life to come. It was evidently the principle al¬ 
ready stated, of seeking to discover the causes of re¬ 
markable appearances, which gave origin to most of 
the ideas respecting the recondite sense of the actions 
N N N 


at d ceremonies which took place in the Eleusimav 
mysteries. The stranger, dazzled and awed by his? 
own conception of the sacredness and importance oi 
all he beheld, conceived that nothing there , could be 
without some mysterious meaning. What this might 
be he inquired of the officiating ministers, who, as vari¬ 
ous passages in Herodotus and Pausanias show, were 
seldom without a legend or Sacred Account {tepoc 
Aoyof), as it was called, to explain the dress or cere¬ 
mony, which owed, perhaps, its true origin to the ca 
price or sportive humour of a ruder period. Or if the 
initiated person was himself endowed with inventive 
power, he explained the appearances according, in gen 
eral, to the system of philosophy which he himself had 
embraced. {Aglaoph., p. 180, seq.) It was thus that 
Porphyry conceived the Hierophant to represent the 
Platonic Demiurgus or creator of the world ; the torch- 
bearer {dqdovxog) the sun ; the altar-man (o knl j3upp) 
the moon ; the herald {icypvt;) Hermes; and the other, 
ministers the inferior stars. These,..fancies of priests 
and philosophers have been formed by modern writers 
into a complete system, and Saint-Croix in particular 
describes the Eleusinian mysteries with as much mi¬ 
nuteness as if he had been actually himself initiated. 
(Compare Warburton’s Div. Legation. — Saint-Croix, 
Recherches sur les Mysteres, &c.)—It is to be ob 
served, in conclusion, with respect to the charges of 
impiety and immorality brought against the Eleusinian 
mysteries by some Fathers of the Church, that this 
arose from their confounding them with the Bafcchic, 
Isiac, Mithraic, and other private mysteries, mostly im¬ 
ported from Asia, which were undoubtedly liable to 
that imputation. It must always be remembered, that 
those of Eleusis were public, and celebrated by the 
state. {Aglaoph., p. 116, 197, 202, 1263.— Muller, 
Proleg., p. 248, seq. — Keightley's Mythology, p. 181, 
seqq.) 

Eleusis or Eleusin, I. an ancient city of Boeotia, 
which stood, according to tradition, near Copas and 
the Lake Copais, and was, together with another an¬ 
cient city, named Athenae, inundated by the waters o 
that lake. {Strab., 407.) Stephanus of Byzantium re¬ 
ports, that when Crates drained the waters which had 
overspread the plains, the city of Athenae became visi¬ 
ble {s. v. ’Adyvcu). Compare Muller, Gesch. Hellen- 
isch. Stamme und Stadte, vol. 1, p. 57, seqq. —II. A 
city of Attica, equidistant from Megara and the Pi¬ 
raeus, and famed for the celebration of the mysteries 
of Ceres. According to some writers, it derived its 
name from a hero, whom some affirmed to be the son 
of Mercury, but others of Ogyges. {Pausan., 1, 38.— 
Compare Aristid., Rhet. Eleus., vol. 1, p. 257.) Its 
origin is certainly of the highest antiquity, as it ap¬ 
pears to have already existed in the time of Cecrops 
{Strabo, 387), but we are not informed by whom, or 
at what period, the worship of Ceres was introduced 
there. Eusebius places the building of the first tem¬ 
ple in the reign of Pandion {Chron., 2, p. 66); but, 
according to other authors, it is more ancient. {Clem. 
Alex., Strom., 1, p. 381.— Tatian, ad Grcec., c. 61.) 
Celeus is said to have been king of Eleusis when 
Ceres first arrived there. {Horn., Hymn, in Cer., 96. 
— Id. ibid., 356.— Id. ibid., 474.) Some etymologists 
suppose that Eleusis was so called, because Ceres, 
after traversing the whole world in pursuit of her 
daughter, came here {hlevQu, venio), and ended her 
search. Diodorus Siculus (5, 69) makes the name 
Eleusis to have been given this city, as a monument 
to posterity, that corn and the art of cultivating it were 
brought from abroad into Attica ; or, to use the words 
of the historian, “because the person who brought 
thither the seed of corn came from foreign parts.” A* 
one period Eleusis was powerful enough to contend 
with Athens for the sovereignty of Attica. This was 
in the time of Eumolpus. The controversy was ended 
by a treaty, wherein it was stipulated that Eleus 

465 




E LE 


ELI 


should yield to the control of Athens, but that the sa¬ 
cred rites of Ceres should be celebrated at the former 
city. Ceres and Triptolemus were both worshipped 
here with peculiar solemnity, and here also was shown 
the Rarius Campus , where Ceres was said to have 
first sown corn. ( Pausanias , 1 , 38.) Dodwell ob¬ 
serves, that the soil, though arid, still produces abun¬ 
dant harvests (vol. 1, p. 583). The temple of Eleusis 
was burned by the Persian army, in the invasion of 
Attica (Herod., 9, 65), but was rebuilt, under the ad¬ 
ministration of Pericles, by Ictinus, the architect of 
the Parthenon. ( Strabo, 395.— Plut ., Vit. Periclis.) 
Strabo says, that the mystic cell of this celebrated edi¬ 
fice was capable of containing as many persons as a 
theatre. A portico was afterward added by Deme¬ 
trius Phalereus, who employed for that purpose the 
architect Philo. This magnificent structure was en¬ 
tirely destroyed by Alaric A.D. 396 ( Eunap ., Vit. 
Soph., p. 75), and has ever since remained in ruins. 
Eleusis, though so considerable and important a place, 
was classed among the Attic demi. ( Strabo, l. c.) It 
belonged to the tribe Hippothoontis. ( Steph. Byz., 
s. v. 'VXevalg.) Livy speaks of the citadel as being 
a fortress of some strength, comprised within the sa¬ 
cred precincts of the temple (31, 25.—Compare Scy- 
lax, Periplus, p. 21); and Dodwell observes (vol. 

1, p. 584), that the acropolis was elevated upon a 
rocky ridge, which rises to the north of the temple of 
Ceres.—Eleusis, now called Lessina, is an inconsid¬ 
erable village, inhabited by a few Albanian Christians. 
(Chandler’’s Travels, c 4 42.) The colossal statue of 
the Eleusinian Ceres, the work of Phidias, after hav¬ 
ing suffered many mutilations, was brought over to 
England by Dr. Clarke and Mr. Cripps in 1801, and 
now stands in the vestibule of the University Library 
at Cambridge. The temple itself was subsequently 
cleared by Sir Wm. Gell. (Cramer's Ancient Greece, 
vol. 2, p. 360, seqq.) 

Eleuther^e, a city of Attica, on the road from 
Eleusis to Platasa, which appears to have once belong¬ 
ed to Bceotia, but finally became included within the 
limits of Attica. (Strabo, 412.) Pausanias reports 
(1, 38), that the Eleutherians were not conquered by 
the Athenians, but voluntarily united themselves to 
that people, from their constant enmity to the The¬ 
bans. Bacchus is said to have been born in this town. 
(Diod. Sic., 3, 65.) This ancient site probably cor¬ 
responds with that now called Gypto Castro, where 
modern travellers have noticed the rums of a consid¬ 
erable fortress situated on a steep rock, and apparently 
designed to protect the pass of Cithaeron. (Dodwell's 
Tour, vol. 1, p. 283.— Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 

2, p. 407.) 

Eleutheria, a festival celebrated at Plataea in hon¬ 
our of Jupiter Eleutherius, or the asserter of liberty, 
by delegates from almost all the cities of Greece. Its 
institution originated in this : after the victory ob¬ 
tained by the Grecians under Pausanias over Mardo- 
nius, the Persian general, in the vicinity of Platsa, an 
altar and statue were erected to Jupiter Eleutherius, 
who had freed the Greeks from the tyranny of the bar¬ 
barians. It was farther agreed upon in a general as¬ 
sembly, by the advice of Aristides the Athenian, that 
deputies should be sent every fifth year from the dif¬ 
ferent cities of Greece to celebrate the Eleutheria, or 
festival of liberty. The Plataeans celebrated also an 
anniversary festival in memory of those who had lost 
their lives in that famous battle. The celebration was 
thus : at break of day a procession was made with a 
trumpeter at the head, sounding a signal for battle. 
After him followed chariots loaded with myrrh, gar¬ 
lands, and a black bull, and certain free young men, 
as no signs of servility were to appear during the so¬ 
lemnity, because they in whose honour the festival 
was instituted had died in the defence of their coun¬ 
try. They carried libations of wine and milk in large¬ 


eared vessels, with jars of oil and precious ointments 
Last of all appeared the chief magistrate, who, though 
not permitted at other times to touch iron, or wear 
garments of any colour but white, yet appeared clad in 
purple, and, taking a water-pot out of the city charn 
ber, proceeded through the middle of the town with 
a sword in his hand, towards the sepulchres. There 
he drew water from a neighbouring spring, and washed 
and anointed the monuments ; after which he sacri¬ 
ficed a bull upon a pile of wood, invoking Jupiter and 
Mercury, and inviting to the entertainment the souls 
of those happy heroes who had perished in the defence 
of their country. After this, he filled a bowl with 
wine, saying, “I drink to those who lost their lives in 
the defence of the liberties of Greece.”—There was 
also a festival of the same name observed by the Sa¬ 
mians in honour of the god of Love.—Slaves also, 
when they obtained their liberty, kept a holyday, which 
they called Eleutheria. 

Eleuthero-Cilices, a name given to those of the 
Cilicians who had fled to the mountains when the 
Greek settlers established themselves in that country. 
The appellation, which means “Free Cilicians,” has 
reference to their independent mode of life. The 
Greeks, however, connected a fable with this. Accord¬ 
ing to them, when Myrina, queen of the Amazons, was 
spreading her conquests over Asia Minor, the Cilicians 
were the only people that voluntarily surrendered to 
her, and hence they were allowed to retain their free¬ 
dom. (Diod. Sic., 3, 55.) Xenophon also makes men¬ 
tion of the Cilician mountaineers (Anab., 1, 2), and of 
their having cut to pieces some Gr^ek troops, a part 
of those in the army of Cyrus, who had lost their way. 
Cicero came in contact with them during his govern¬ 
ment in Cilicia, and partially reduced them under the 
Roman sway, but they soon after became as free and 
independent as ever. (Ep. ad Fam ., 15, 4 ; ad Att., 
5, 20.) 

Eleuthero-Lacones, a title conferred by Augustus 
on a considerable part of the Laconian nation, consist¬ 
ing of several maritime towns, for the zeal which the 
inhabitants had early testified in favour of the Romans. 
Enfranchisement and other privileges accompanied the 
title. (Strabo, 336.— Pausan., 3, 21.) 

Eleutheropolis, a city of Palestine, placed by the 
Itin. Ant. 24 miles northeast from Ascalon, and 20 
miles southwest from Jerusalem. It was founded in 
the third century, but by whom is uncertain. (Amm. 
Marcell., 23, 1.) Hence, owing to its late foundation, 
no mention of it occurs in Ptolemy or Josephus. In 
the days of Eusebius and Jerome, however, it was an 
important and flourishing city, and these writers esti¬ 
mate the distances and positions of places from this 
and JElia or Jerusalem. St. Epiphanius was born here. 
(Sozom., 6, 32.—Compare Cellarius, Geogr. Ant., 
vol. 1, p. 490.) 

Eleutho, a surname of Lucina, from her coming, 
when invoked, to the aid of women in labour. (Pind., 
01, 6, 72.) 

Elicius, a surname of Jupiter, worshipped on Mount 
Aventine. The Romans gave him this name, accord¬ 
ing to Ovid (Fast., 3, 328), because they believed that 
they could, by a set form of words, draw him down 
(elicere) from the sky, to inform them how to expi¬ 
ate prodigies, &c. M. Salverte, in his curious and 
learned work on the Occult Sciences of the Ancients 
(Dcs Sciences Occultes, ou Essai sur la Magie, &c., 
Paris, 1829, 2 vols. 8vo), takes up this subject of Ju¬ 
piter Elicius, and seeks to connect it with a knowledge 
of the art of drawing down the electric fluid from the 
clouds. Medals and traditions are the grounds on 
which he rests. “ M. La Boessiere,” he states, “ men¬ 
tions several medals which appear to have a reference 
to this subject. One described by M. Duchoul repre¬ 
sents the temple of Juno, the goddess of the air: the 
roof which covers it is armed with pointed rods. A n 



ELIC1US. 


E L I 


other, described and engraved by Pellerin, bears the 
legend Jupiter Elicius ; the god appears with the light¬ 
ning in his hand ; beneath is a man guiding a winged 
stag: but we must observe, that the authenticity of 
this medal is suspected. Finally, other medals cited 
by Duchoul, in his work on the Religion of the Ro¬ 
mans, present the exergue; XV. Viri Sacris Faci- 
undis ; and bear a fish covered with points placed on 
a globe or on a patera. M. la Boessiere thinks, that 
a fish or a globe, thus armed with points, was the con¬ 
ductor employed by Numa to withdraw from the clouds 
the electric fire. And, comparing the figure of this 
globe with that of a head covered with erect hair, he 
gives an ingenious and plausible explanation of the 
singular dialogue between Numa and Jupiter, related 
by Valerius Antias, and ridiculed by Arnobius (lib. 5.), 
probably without its being understood by either.—The 
history of the physical attainments of Numa deserves 
particular examination. At a period when lightning 
was occasioning continual injury, Numa, instructed by 
the nymph Egeria, sought a method of appeasing the 
lightning (fulmen piare); that is to say, in plain lan¬ 
guage, a way of rendering this meteor less destructive. 
He succeeded in intoxicating Faunus and Picus, whose 
names in this place probably denote only the priests of 
these Etruscan divinities ; he learned from them the 
secret of making, without any danger, the thundering 
Jupiter descend upon earth, and immediately put it in 
execution. Since that period, Jupiter Elicius, or Jupiter 
who is made to descend, was adored in Rome. Here 
the veil of the mystery is transparent: to render the 
lightning less injurious, to make it, without danger, de¬ 
scend from the bosom of the clouds : and the effect 
and the end are common to the beautiful discovery of 
Franklin, and to that religious experiment which Nu¬ 
ma frequently repeated with success. Tullus Hostil- 
ius was less fortunate. ‘ It is related,’ says Livy, 

‘ that this prince, in searching the memoirs left by Nu¬ 
ma, found among them some instructions relative to 
the secret sacrifices offered to Jupiter Elicius. He at¬ 
tempted to repeat them ; but in the preparations or in 
the celebration he deviated from the sacred rite. . . . 
Exposed to the anger of Jupiter, evoked by a defective 
ceremony ( sollicitati prana religione), he was struck 
by the lightning and burned, together with his palace’ 
(1, 31.—Compare Plin., 2, 53.— Id ., 38, 4). An an¬ 
cient annalist quoted by Pliny, expresses himself in a 
more explicit manner, and justifies the liberty we take 
in departing from the sense commonly given to the 
sentences of Livy by his translators. Guided by the 
books of Numa, Tullus undertook to evoke Jupiter by 
the aid of the same ceremonies which his predecessors 
had employed. Having departed from the prescribed 
rite, he was struck by the lightning and perished. {Lu¬ 
cius Piso, ap. Plin., 28, 2.) For the words rites and 
ceremonies , substitute the words physical process , and 
we shall perceive that the fate of Tullus was that of 
Professor Reichmann. In 1753 this learned man was 
killed by the lightning, when repeating too incautiously 
the experiments of Franklin.” ( Salverte , vol. 2, p. 
154.) The art thus veiled under the name of rites of 
Jupiter Elicius, and Zevq KaTaiSdryq, M. Salverte con¬ 
siders as having been employed by the various imita¬ 
tors of thunder. Going back to the age of Prometheus, 
it affords an explanation of the fable of Salmoneus ; 
it was employed by Zoroaster to kindle the sacred fire 
{Dion Chrysost., Or at. Borysth .), and perform, in the 
initiation of his followers, some of the miracles, of 
which a traditionary belief still exists in the East. It 
may be inferred, that in the time of Ctesias the same 
art was known in India, and that the Jews were not un¬ 
acquainted with its effects would appear from some re¬ 
marks of Michaelis cited by M. Salverte. He remarks, 
“ 1. That there is nothing to indicate that the light¬ 
ning ever struck the temple of Jerusalem during the 
lapse of a thousand years. 2. That, according to the 


account of Josephus {Bell. Jud., 5, 14), a forest ot 
spikes with golden or gilt points, and very sharp, cov¬ 
ered the roof of this temple ; a remarkable feature of 
resemblance with the temple of Juno represented on 
the Roman medals. 3. That this roof communicated 
with the caverns in the hill of the temple, by means 
of metallic tubes, placed in connexion with the thick 
gilding that covered the whole exterior of the building, 
The points of the spikes there necessarily produced the 

effect of lightning-rods.How are we to suppose 

that it was only by chance they discharged so impor¬ 
tant a function ; that the advantage received from it had 
not been calculated ; that the spikes were erected in 
such great numbers only to prevent the birds from lodg¬ 
ing upon and defiling the roof of the temple 1 Yet 
this is the sole utility which the historian Josephus at¬ 
tributes to them. His ignorance is an additional proof 
of the facility with which the higher branches of knowl¬ 
edge must be lost, so long as men, instead of forming 
them into an organized system of science, sought only 
an empirical art of operating wonders.” ( Salverte , 
vol. 2, p. 166.— Foreign Quarterly , No. 12, p. 449, 
seqq.) 

Eliaci, a name given to the school of philosophy 
established by Phado of Elis. {Laert., 2, 106.) It 
was instituted after the Socratic model by Phasdo ot 
Elis, and was continued by Plistanus an Elian, and 
afterward by Menedemus of Eretria. {Enfield’s His¬ 
tory of Philosophy , vol. 1, p. 204.) 

Elimea or Elimiotis, a region of Macedonia, to 
the east of Stymphalia. It was at one time independ¬ 
ent, but was afterward conquered by the kings of Ma¬ 
cedonia, and finally included by the Romans in the 
fourth division of that province. {Thucyd., 2, 99.— 
Liv., 45, 30.) Though a mountainous and barren tract, 
Elimea must have been a very important acquisition to 
the kings of Macedonia, from its situation with regard 
to Epirus and Thessaly, there being several passage? 
leading directly into those provinces from Elimea. 
The mountains which separated Elimea from Thessaly 
were the Cambunii Montes of Livy (42, 53), which 
cross nearly at right angles the chain of Pindus to the 
west, and that of Olympus to the east. Ptolemy has 
assigned to the Elimiotae a maritime situation on the 
coast of Illyria, which cannot be correct (p. 81), but 
elsewhere he places them in the interior of Macedonia 
(p. 83), and writes the name Elymiotas. According to 
Stephanus of Byzantium, there was a town named Eli¬ 
mea or Elimeum, which tradition reported to have been 
founded by Elymas, a Tyrrhenian chief {s. v. ’FTupeia). 
Ptolemy calls it Elyma. Livy probably alludes to this 
city in his account of the expedition undertaken by Per¬ 
seus against Stratus, when that prince assembled his 
forces and reviewed them at Elymea (43, 21). This 
capital of Elimiotis stood, perhaps, on the Haliacmon, 
not far from Greuno. {Cramer' 1 s Ancient Greece, vol. 
1, p. 200, seqq.) 

Elis, I. a district of the Peloponnesus, lying west 
of Arcadia. At the period of the Peloponnesian war, 
the name of Elis was applied to the whole of that 
northwestern portion of the peninsula situated between 
the rivers Larissus and Neda, which served to separate 
it from Achaia and Messenia. {Strabo, 336.) But 
in earlier times, this tract of country was divided into 
several districts or principalities, each occupied by a 
separate clan or people. Of these the Caucones were 
probably the most ancient, and also the most widely 
disseminated, since we find them occupying both ex¬ 
tremities of the province, and extending even into 
Achaia. {Strabo, 342.) Strabo affirms, that, accord¬ 
ing to some authors, the whole of Elis once bore the 
name of Cauconia. Next to these were the Epei, who 
are placed by Homer {Od., 15, 296) in the northern 
part of the province, and next to Achaia. Pausanias 
who seems to have regarded them as indigenous, d$ 
rives their name from Epeus, son of Endymion, ov 

467 




ELIS 


ELIS. 


ol the earliest sovereigns of the country ; on his death 
his brother JEtolus succeeded to-his crown; but, as 
he was shortly after forced to fly his country for an in¬ 
voluntary crime, the sovereignty devolved on Eleus, 
descended also from Endymion, who gave his name 
to the Elean people (5, 1). The former appellation, 
however, still continued to predominate, as we may 
infer from the poems of Homer, who mentions Elis as 
a district of the Epei, without ever naming the Elei. 
Strabo also states, that Elis did not become the capi¬ 
tal of the country till after the Persian war, at which 
period it was formed into a city by the union of sev¬ 
eral smaller towns. Prior to the siege of Troy, the 
Epei are said to have been greatly reduced by their 
wars with Hercules, who conquered Augeas their king, 
and the Pylians commanded by Nestor. They sub¬ 
sequently, however, acquired a great accession of 
strength by the influx of a large colony from ^Etolia, 
under the conduct of Oxylus, and their numbers were 
farther increased by a considerable detachment of the 
Dorians and Heraclidse. ( Strabo, 354. Pausan., 5, 

3. ) Iphitus, descended from Oxylus, and a contem¬ 
porary of Lycurgus, re-established the Olympic games, 
which, though instituted, as it was said, by Hercules, 
had been interrupted for several years. (Pausan., 5, 

4. ) The Pisatse having remained masters of Olympia 
from the first celebration of the festival, long disputed 
its possession with the Eleans, but they were finally 
conquered, when the temple and presidency of the 
games fell into the hands of their rivals. The pre¬ 
ponderance obtained by the latter is chiefly attribu¬ 
table to the assistance they derived from Sparta, in 
return for the aid afforded to that power in the Mes- 
senian war. From this period we may date the as¬ 
cendency of Elis over all the other surrounding districts 
hitherto independent. It now comprised not only the 
country of the Epei and Caucones, which might be 
termed Elis Proper, but the territories of Pisa and 
Olympia, forming the ancient kingdom of Pelops, and 
the whole of Triphylia, which, according to Strabo’s 
view of the Homeric geography, constituted the great¬ 
er part of Nestor’s dominions. (Strabo, 355.) The 
Eleans were present in all the engagements fought 
against the Persians, and, in the Peloponnesian war, 
zealously adhered to the Spartan confederacy, until the 
conclusion of the treaty after the battle of Amphipolis, 
when an open rupture took place between this people 
and the Lacedaemonians, in consequence of protection 
and countenance afforded by the latter to the inhabitants 
of Lepraeum, who had revolted from them. (Thucyd., 

5. 31.) Such was the resentment of the Eleans on 
this occasion, that they imposed a heavy fine on the 
Lacedemonians, and prohibited their taking part in the 
Olympic games. They also made war upon Sparta, 
in conjunction with the Mantineans, Argives, and 
Athenians ; and it was not till after the unsuccessful 
battle of Mantinea that this confederacy was dissolved. 
(Thucyd., 5, 81.) The Lacedemonians, on the other 
hand, avenged those injuries by frequent incursions 
into the territory of Elis, the fertility of which present¬ 
ed an alluring prospect of booty to an invading army. 
They were beaten, however, at Olympia under the 
command of Agis (Xen., Hist. Gr., 3, 2, 16.— Pau¬ 
san., 5, 4) ; and again repulsed before the city of Elis, 
whither they had advanced under Pausanias, in the 3d 
year of the 94th Olympiad. (Diod. Sic., 14, 17.) At 
length the Eleans, wearied with the continual incur¬ 
sions to which their country was exposed, since it fur¬ 
nished entire subsistence to the army of the enemy, 
gladly sued for peace, and renewed their ancient alli¬ 
ance with Sparta. (Xen., Hist. Gr., 3, 2.— Pausan., 
1. c.) Not long after, however, we find them again in 
arms, together with the Boeotians and Argives, against 
that power. (Xen., Hist. Gr., 7, 2.) At the battle 
of Mantinea, they once more fought under the Spartan 
Danners, jealousy of the rising ascendency obtained by 

468 ft 


the Thebans having led them to abandon their inter 
ests. (Xen., Hist. Gr., 7, 5, 1.) Pausanias writes, 
that when Philip acquired the dominion of Greece, 
the Eleans, who had suffered much from civil dissen¬ 
sions, joined the Macedonian alliance, but refused to 
fight against the Athenians and I hebans at Chaeronea, 
and on the death of Alexander they united their arms 
with those of the other confederates, who carried on 
the war of Lamia against Antipater and the other com¬ 
manders of the Macedonian forces. Some years after, 
Aristotimus, son of Damaretus, through the assistance 
of Antigonus Gonatas, usurped the sovereignty of Elis; 
but a conspiracy having been formed against him, he 
was slain at the altar of Jupiter Servator, whither he 
had fled for refuge. (Pausan., 5,4,5.) During the So¬ 
cial war, the Eleans were the firmest allies of the yEto- 
lians in the Peloponnesus ; and though they were on 
more than one occasion basely deserted by that people, 
and sustained heavy losses in the field, as well as from 
the devastation of their territory and the capture ol 
their towns, they could not be induced to desert their 
cause and join the Achaean league. (Polyb., 4, 5, seqq. 
— Id., 4, 59, seqq. — Id., 4, 71, seqq. — Id., 5, 17, seqq.) 
These events, described by Polybius, are the last in 
which the Eleans are mentioned as an independent 
people : for though they do not appear to have taken 
any part in the Achaean war, they were included with 
the rest of the Peloponnesus in the general decree, by 
which the whole of Greece was annexed to the Ro¬ 
man empire.—Elis was by far the most fertile and pop¬ 
ulous district of the Peloponnesus, and its inhabitants 
are described as fond of agriculture and rural pursuits. 
(Polyb., 4, 73.) It is remarked by Pausanias (5, 5), 
that Elis was the only part of Greece in which the bys- 
sus was known to grow. Another extraordinary cir¬ 
cumstance relative to this province was, that no mules 
were engendered in it, though they abounded in the 
adjoining countries. This phenomenon had been no¬ 
ticed before by Herodotus (4, 30), who reports that it 
was looked upon as resulting from the curse of Heav¬ 
en.—Elis was divided into three districts, Elis Proper, 
Pisatis, and Triphylia. The first of these occupier 
the northern section of the country, and has alread 
been alluded to : the second, or Pisatis, was that par 
of the Elean territory through which flowed the Alphe 
us after its junction with the Erymanthus. It derive 
its name from the city of Pisa : the third, or Triphylia 
formed the southern division. Some authors have de 
rived the name of this portion of Elis from Triphylus 
an Arcadian prince. (Polyb., 4, 77.) But others as¬ 
cribe it with more probability to the circumstance of 
its inhabitants having sprung from three different na¬ 
tions (rpia tyvla), the Epei, the Minvse or Arcadians, 
and the Eleans. (Strabo, 337.— Cramer's Ancient 
Greece , vol. 3, p. 77, seqq.) —II. The capital of Elis, 
situated, as we learn from Strabo, on the Peneus, at 
the distance of 120 stadia from the sea. It was, like 
many other towns of Greece, at first composed of sev¬ 
eral detached villages, which, being united after the 
Persian war, formed one considerable city. It always, 
however, remained without walls; as it was deemed 
sacred, and under the immediate protection of the god 
whose festival was there solemnized. Hence, in early 
times, according to Ephorus, those troops which were 
obliged to traverse this country delivered up their arms 
on entering it, and received them again upon quitting the 
frontier. (Ap. Strabo, 357. — Compare Xen., Hist. 
Gr., 3, 2, 20.) But this primitive state of things was 
not of long duration : for we subsequently find the 
Elean territory as little respected as any other Grecian 
state by the powers at war with that republic ; still the 
peace and tranquillity thus enjoyed for a time by the 
Eleans, together with the vast concourse of persons 
attracted by the Olympic games, greatly contributed 
to the prosperity and opulence of their city. The re¬ 
mains of Elis are now called Palaopoli, but th^y are 




E M 0 


E M P 


inconsiderable, neither are they interesting from their 
state of preservation. (Compare the remarks of Chan¬ 
dler, Travels , vol. 2, ch. 74.— Dodivell, vol. 2, p. 316. 
— Gell, Itin. of the Morea, p. 32.— Cramer's Ancient 
Greece , vol. 3, p. 88, seqq.) 

Elissa, another name for Dido. (Vid. Dido.) 

Ellopia, a district of Euboea, in the northern part 
of the island, in which Histiaea was situated. Accord¬ 
ing to some, it derived its name from Ellops, a son of 
Ion, who settled here. ( Slrah ., 445.) 

Elpinice, a daughter of Miltiades. ( Vid. Callias 
and Cimon.) 

Elymais, a province of Persia, lying to the south 
of Media, and forming the northern part of the larger 
district of Susiana. It derived its name from theEly- 
maei. These were originally seated in the north (Po- 
lyb ., 5, 44), but in process of time spread themselves 
over all the rest of Susiana, to the shores of the Per¬ 
sian Gulf. ( Strab., Epit., 11, p. 1264, ed. Oxon.) 
Elymais, the metropolis of the province, was famed 
for a rich temple, which Antiochus Epiphanes attempt¬ 
ed to plunder ; he was beaten off, however, by the in¬ 
habitants. The temple was afterward plundered by 
one of the Parthian kings, who found in it, according 
to Strabo, 10,000 talents. ( Mannert , Gcogr., vol. 5, 
pt. 2, p. 158.) 

Elymiotis, a district of Macedonia, in the south¬ 
west, bordering on Thessaly and Epirus. 

Elysii Campi, the abode of the blessed in another 
world, where they enjoyed all manner of the purest 
pleasures. In the Homeric mythology, the Elysian 
fields lay on the western margin of the earth, by the 
stream of Oceanus, and to them the mortal relatives of 
the king of the gods were transported, without tasting 
of death, to enjoy an immortality of bliss. ( Od ., 4, 
563, seqq.) In the time of Hesiod, the Elysian Plains 
had become the Isles of the Blessed, in the Western 
Ocean. (Op. et D., 169.) Pindar, who has left a 
glowing description of Elysium, appears to reduce the 
number of these happy islands to one. (01., 2, 129.) 
At a later day, a change of religious ideas ensued, 
brought about by the increase of geographical knowl¬ 
edge, and Elysium was moved down to the lower 
world, as the place of reward for the good. The po¬ 
etical conceptions respecting Elysium made it a region 
olessed with perpetual spring, clothed with continual 
verdure, enamelled with flowers, shaded by pleasant 
groves, and refreshed by never-failing fountains. Here 
the righteous lived in perfect felicity, communing with 
each other, bathed in a flood of light proceeding from 
their own sun, and the sky at eve being lighted up 
by their own constellations : “ solemque suum, sua 
sidera norunt .” (Virg., AEn., 6, 541.) Their em¬ 
ployments below resembled those on earth, and what¬ 
ever had warmly engaged their attention in the upper 
world, continued to be a source of virtuous enjoyment 
in the world below. (Virg., xEn., 6, 653.) 

Emathia, the more ancient name of Macedonia. 
Polybius (fragm., 24, 8) and Livy (40, 3) expressly 
assert, however, that Emathia was originally called Paa- 
onia, though Homer certainly mentions them as two 
distinct countries. (Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 

1, p. 226.) 

Emerita Augusta, a town of Lusitania, below Nor- 
ba Caesarea, on the northern bank of the Anas. It is 
now r Merida. (Plin., 9, 41.) 

Emesa, an ancient city of Syria, situate near the 
eastern bank of the Orontes, southeast of Epiphania. 
It was the birthplace of the Emperor Keliogabalus, and 
contained a famous temple of the Sun, in which Helio- 
gabalus was priest. It is now called Hems, and is 
merely a large ruinous town, containing about 2000 in¬ 
habitants, though formerly a strong and populous city. 
(Amm. Marcell., 26, 18.) 

Emodi Montes, part of a chain of mountains in 
Asia, Pliny (6, 16) states, that the Fmom Montes, 


and those of Imaus, Paropamisus, and Caucasus wert 
connected together. That part of the chain which Al¬ 
exander crossed in order to invade Bactriana was call¬ 
ed Paropamisus, the more easterly continuation of the 
range was termed Emodi Montes, and its still farther 
continuation, even to the Eastern Ocean, was styled 
Imaus. (Vid. Imaus.) 

Empedocles, a native of Agrigentum in Sicily, who 
flourished about 450 B.C. He was distinguished not 
only as a philosopher, but also for his knowledge of 
natural history and medicine, and as a poet and states¬ 
man. After the death of his father Meto, who was a 
wealthy citizen of Agrigentum, he acquired a great 
weight among his fellow-citizens by espousing the pop 
ular party and favouring democratic measures. His con 
sequence in the state became at length so great, that 
he ventured to assume several of the distinctions of 
royalty, particularly a purple robe, a golden girdle, a 
Delphic crown, and a train of attendants, always re¬ 
taining a grave and commanding aspect. The skill 
which he possessed in medicine and natural philosophy 
enabled him to perform many wonders, which he pass¬ 
ed upon the superstitious and credulous multitude for 
miracles. He pretended to drive away noxious winds 
from his country, and thereby put a stop to epidemic 
diseases. He is said to have checked, by the power 
of music, the madness of a young man who was threat¬ 
ening his enemy with instant death ; to have restored 
a woman to life who had lain breathless thirty days ; 
and to have done many other things, equally astonish¬ 
ing, after the manner of Pythagoras. On account of 
all this, he was an object of universal admiration, so 
that when he came to the Olympic games the. eyes of 
all the people were fixed upon him. Besides medical 
skill, Empedocles possessed poetical talents. The 
fragments of his verses are scattered throughout the 
ancient writers, and Fabricius is of opinion that he 
was the real author of that ancient fragment which 
bears the name of the “ Golden Verses of Pythagoras.” 
Gorgias of Leontini, the well-known orator, was his pu¬ 
pil, whence it may seem reasonable to infer, that Em¬ 
pedocles was also no inconsiderable master of the art 
of eloquence. According to the common account, he 
threw himself into the burning crater of iEtna, in or¬ 
der that, the manner of his death not being known, 
he might afterward pass for a god ; but the secret was 
discovered by means of one of his brazen sandals, 
which was thrown out from the mountain in a subse¬ 
quent eruption of the volcano. This story is rejected, 
however, as fictitious by Strabo and other judicious 
writers. The truth probably was, as Timasus relates, 
that, towards the close of his life, Empedocles went 
into Greece and never returned, whence the exact 
time and manner of his death remain unknown. Ac¬ 
cording to Aristotle, he died at 60 years of age.—His 
masters in philosophy are variously given. By some, 
like the Eleatae generally, he is called a Pythagorean, 
in consequence of a resemblance of doctrine in a few 
unessential points. But the principles of his theory 
evidently show that he belongs to the Eleatic school, 
though the statement which makes him a disciple of 
Parmenides rests apparently upon no better founda¬ 
tion than a comparison of their systems ; as, in like 
manner, the common employment of the mechanical 
physiology has led to an opinion that he was a hearer 
of his contemporary Anaxagoras. Empedocles taught, 
that originally All was one : God eternal and at rest; 
a sphere and a mixture (afyalpoq, ply\ia), without a 
vacuum, in which the elements of things wrnre held to¬ 
gether in undistinguishable confusion by love (0iA/a), 
the primal force which unites the like to like. In a 
portion of this whole, however, or, as he expresses it, 
in the members of the Deity, strife (vehtoq), the force 
which binds like to unlike, prevailed, and gave the ele¬ 
ments a tendency to separate themselves, whereby the 
first become perceptible as such, although the separation 

469 




END 


E NN 


was not so complete but that each contained portions 
of the others. Hence arose the multiplicity of things. 
By the vivifying counteraction of love, organic life was 
produced, not, however, so perfect and so full of design 
as it now appears ; but, at first, single limbs, then ir¬ 
regular combinations, till ultimately they received their 
present adjustments and perfection. But, as the forces 
of love and hate are constantly acting upon each other 
for generation or destruction, the present condition of 
things connot persist for ever, and the world which, 
properly, is not the All, but only the ordered part of it, 
will again be reduced to a chaotic unity, out of which 
a new system will be formed, and so on for ever. 
There is no real destruction of anything, but only a 
change of combinations.—Of the elements (which he 
seems to have been the first to exhibit as four distinct 
species of matter), fire, as the rarest and most power¬ 
ful, he held to be the chief, and, consequently, the soul 
of all sentient and intellectual beings which issue from 
the central fire, or soul of the world. The soul mi¬ 
grates through animal and vegetable bodies in atone¬ 
ment for some guilt committed in its unembodied 
state, when it is a demon; of which he supposed that 
an infinite number existed. The seat of a demon, 
when in a human body, is the blood. Closely connect¬ 
ed with this view of the objects of knowledge was his 
tneory of human knowledge. In the impure separa¬ 
tion of the elements, it is only the predominant one 
that the senses can apprehend ; and, consequently, 
though man can know all the elements of the whole 
singly, he is unable to see them in their perfect unity, 
wherein consists their truth. Empedocles therefore 
rejects the testimony of the senses, and maintains that 
pure intellect alone can arrive at a knowledge of the 
truth. This is the attribute of the Deity; for man 
cannot overlook the work of love in all its extent; and 
the true unity is open only to itself. Hence he was 
/ed to distinguish between the world as presented to 
our senses {noopoq aiodproq), and its type the intel¬ 
lectual world {noapoq voyroq). —The fragments of Em¬ 
pedocles were published, with a commentary, by Sturz, 
Lips., 1805, 8vo, and by Peyron, Lips., 1810, 8vo. 
{Enfield, Hist. Phil., vol. 1 , p. 402. — Encyc. Useful 
Knowl., vol. 9, p. 382.) 

Emporia, a country of Africa Propria, called also 
Byzacium, situate to the north of the Syrtis Minor. 

(Polyb., 3, 23.) In it stood Leptis Minor, below 
Hadrumetum. This city is said to have paid to the 
Carthaginians a talent each day. It was, in fact, a 
very fruitful district; and Polybius says, that almost 
all the hopes of the Carthaginians depended on the 
revenue they drew from it. (Compare Scylax, p. 49.) 
To this were owing the anxiety and state jealousy of 
the Carthaginians, that the Romans should not sail be¬ 
yond the Fair promontory which lay before Carthage, 
and become acquainted with a region which they 
might be tempted to conquer. {Mannert, Geogr., 
vol. 10, pt. 2, p. 160 ) 

Enceladus, one of the giants that warred against 
Jove. Minerva flung upon him, as he fled, the island 
of Sicily, where his motions caused, according to the 
poets, the eruptions of ./Etna. ( Find., Pylh., 8, 15. 
— Id., Nem., 1, 100.— Id. ib., 4, 40.— Eurip., Ion, 
204, seqq. — Apollod., 1, 6, 2.) 

Endymion, the son of Aethlius and Calyce. He 
led a colony of iEolians from Thessaly, and founded 
the city of Elis. Endymion, it is said, gained the love 
of the goddess Selene, or the Moon, and she bore him 
fifty daughters. {Pausan., 5, 1.) Jove, as a favour, 
allowed him to live as long as he pleased ( Schol. ad 
Apoll. Rh., 4, 57); or, as others said, granted him the 
boon of perpetual sleep. The place of his repose was 
a cavern of Mount Latmus in Caria, and thither Se¬ 
lene used to repair to visit him. Some said he was 
made immortal for his righteousness ; others, that, like 
Ixion, when raised to heaven, he aspired to the love of 
470 


Juno, and was hurled to Erebus. {Schol. ad Apoll. 
Rh., 1. c.) —There can be very little doubt that this 
mysterious being was originally an object of worship, 
and that he was converted into a hero in the usual 
manner. The sire assigned to him is nothing more 
than a personification of the Olympic Games. His 
union with the moon, and their fifty daughters, will 
perhaps furnish a key to his true nature. In these 
daughters Bockh sees the fifty lunar months which 
formed the Olympic cycle of four years. In such case, 
Endymion would probably be the sun, who, with the 
moon, is the author of the months ; or, supposing the 
myth anterior to the institution of the Olympic games, 
the daughters may have been the weeks of the year 
(the round number being employed as usual), of which 
the sun and moon are the parents. The conjunction 
of these bodies at the time of new moon is a matter of 
common observation. Endymion is perhaps the set¬ 
ting sun, who goes into ( kvdvei ) the sea, or, possibly, 
in the early myth, into the cavern where he meets the 
moon. {Muller, Proleg., p. 223.— Keightley's My¬ 
thology, p. 439, seqq.) The rationalizers said, that 
Endymion was a hunter, who used to go to the chase 
at night, when the beasts came out to feed, and to 
sleep in a cavern during the day ; and hence he was 
supposed to be always asleep. {Schol. ad Apoll. Rh., 
1. c.) 

Enipeus, I. a river of Macedonia, in the district ot 
Pieria, rising in Mount Olympus, and, though nearly 
dry in summer, becoming a considerable torrent in 
winter from the heavy rains. Its rugged and steep 
banks, which in some places attained a height of 300 
feet, served for a long time as a defence to the Mace¬ 
donian army under Perseus, when encamped on its 
left bank, until Paulus Hdmilius, by sending a consid¬ 
erable detachment round the Perrhaebian mountains, 
threatened the rear of the enemy, and forced him to 
abandon his advantageous situation. {Liv., 44, 8 and 
35.— Plui., Vit. Paul. JEmil.) The modern name of 
this stream, according to Dr. Clarke, is Malathria. 
{Travels — Greece, Egypt , &c., vol. 7, p. 390.)—II. 
A river of Thessaly, flowing into the Apidanus, which 
afterward enters the Peneus. It rose in Mount Othrys 
{Strabo, 256), and flowed from Achaia, or the south¬ 
western part of Phthiotis, as we learn from Thucydi¬ 
des (4, 78), who remarks that Brasidas was arrested 
in his march through Thessaly when about to cross 
the Enipeus. It is now called the river of Goura. 
Near the Enipeus, and not far from its- junction with 
the Apidanus, was situate the city of Pharsalus. 
{Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 1, p. 399.)—III. A 
small river of Elis, flowing near the city of Salmone. 
{Apollod., 1, 9, 8.) In Strabo’s time it was called the 
Barnichius. {Strab., 356.) 

Enna, a city of Sicily, one of the most ancient 
seats of the Siculi, and celebrated over the whole isl¬ 
and, not so much, for its size and opulence, as for its 
being the principal centre of the worship of Ceres. 
The adjacent country was remarkable for its fertility ; 
and in the plains of Enna Proserpina was sporting 
when Pluto carried her away to be mistress of the 
lower world. Here, too, she had Minerva and Diana 
for her youthful companions. {Diod. Sic., 5, 3.) In 
the neighbourhood of the city was a cave, facing the 
north, through which the King of Hades is said to have 
driven his chariot as he was bearing off his prize. 
We have in this, no doubt, some old Siculan legend, 
appropriated by the Greeks to goddesses of their own 
mythology. Enna was regarded as the navel of Sicily 
{b/upahog 2 uceliaq. — Callim., Hymn, in Cer., v. 15 
—Compare Cic. in Verr., 4, 48, seqq.), and here Ce¬ 
res and Proserpina had one of their most sacred tem¬ 
ples. In a political point of view Enna was never of 
any importance. From the hands of the Carthaginians 
it fell into those of the Romans, and subsequently, 
w'hen about to abandon the latter and return to thei. 





E N N 


ENNIUS. 


former masters, the inhabitants met with prompt and 
signal chastisement. ( Liv., 24, 38, seqq.) From this 
period the city gradually declined. The site of the 
ancient place is at present occupied by the modern 
Castro Giovanni, but nearly all traces of the blooming 
meads in its neighbourhood have disappeared. (For 
some account of the modern place and its vicinity, con¬ 
sult Hoare's Classical Tour , vol. 2, p. 247, seqq.) 

Ennea Hodoi, a spot in Thrace, near which the 
city of Amphipolis was founded. It appears to have 
derived its name, which means “ the Nine Ways,” 
from the number of roads which met here from differ¬ 
ent parts of Thrace and Macedon. This supposition 
is confirmed by travellers who have explored the adja¬ 
cent country, and who report, that all the principal 
communications between the coast and plains must 
have led through this pass. It was here, according to 
Herodotus (7, 114), that Xerxes and his army crossed 
the Strymon on bridges, after having offered a sacri¬ 
fice of white horses to that river, and buried alive nine 
youths and maidens. ( Walpole's Collection , p. 510. 
— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 292.) 

Ennius, Quintus, a po#t, who has generally received 
the distinguished appellation of the Father of Roman 
Song. He was born at Rudiae, a town of Calabria, 
and lived from B C. 239 to B.C. 169. {Cic., Brutus, 
c ■ 18-— I(L., de Senect., c. 5.) In his early youth he 
went to Sardinia; and, if Silius Italicus (12, 393) may 
be believed, he served in the Calabrian levies, which, 
in the year 216 B.C., followed Titus Manlius to the 
war which he waged in that island against the favour¬ 
ers of the Carthaginian cause. After the termination 
of the campaign, he continued to live for twelve years 
in Sardinia. Aurelius Victor says he taught Cato 
Greek in Sardinia (“ In prcetura Sardimam subegit, 
ubi ab Ennio Greeds Uteris institutus ”) ; but this is 
inconsistent with what is delivered by Cicero, that Ca¬ 
to did not acquire Greek till his old age. ( De Senect., 
c. 8.) Ennius was at last brought to Rome by Cato 
the Censor, who, in 204 B.C., visited Sardinia, on re¬ 
turning as quaestor from Africa. {Corn. Nep., Vit. 
Cat.) At Rome he fixed his residence on the Aven- 
tine Hill, where he lived in a very frugal manner, hav¬ 
ing only a single maid as an attendant. {Hieron., 
Chron. Euseb., p. 37.) He instructed, however, the 
patrician youth in Greek, and acquired the friendship 
of many of the most illustrious men in the state. Be¬ 
ing distinguished in arms as well as letters, he followed 
M. Fulvius Nobilior during his expedition to HUtolia 
{Cic., pro Archia, c. 10.— Id., Tusc. Disp., 1, 2); 
and, in 185 B.C., he obtained the freedom of the city, 
through the favour of Quintus Fulvius Nobilior, the 
son of his former patron, Marcus. {Cic., Brutus, c. 
20.) He was also protected by the elder Scipio Afri- 
canus, whom he is said to have accompanied in most 
of his campaigns. ( Claudian, de Laud. Stilic., lib. 3, 
preef.) It is not easy, however, to see in what expe¬ 
ditions he could have attended this renowned general. 
Scipio’s Spanish and African wars were concluded be¬ 
fore Ennius was brought from Sardinia to Rome ; and 
the campaign against Antiochus was commenced and 
terminated while he was serving under Fulvius Nobilior 
in ^Etolia. In his old age he obtained the friendship 
of Scipio Nasica ; and the degree of intimacy subsist¬ 
ing between them has been characterized by the well- 
known anecdote of their successively feigning to be 
from home. {Cic., de Oral., 2, 68.) He is said to 
have been intemperate in drinking {Horat., Epist., 1, 
19, 7), which brought on the disease called Morbus 
Articularis, a disorder resembling the gout, of which 
he died at the age of seventy, just after he had exhib¬ 
ited his tragedy of Thyestes. {Ser. Sammonicus, de 
Medicina, c. 37.) The evils, however, of old age and 
indigence were supported by him, as we learn from 
Cicero, with such patience, and even cheerfulness, that 
one would almost have imagined he derived satisfac¬ 


tion from circumstances which are usually regarded as, 
of all others, the most dispiriting and oppressive. {De 
Senect., c. 5.) The honours due to his character and 
talents were, as is frequently the case, reserved till 
after his death, when a bust of him was erected in the 
family tomb of the Scipios. {Cic., pro Arch., c. 9.— 
Val. Max., 8, 15, 1.) In the days of Livy the bust 
still remained near that sepulchre, beyond the Porta 
Capena, along with the statues of Africanus and Scipio 
Asiaticus {Livt 38, 56). The tomb was discovered in 
1780, on a farm situated between the Via Appia and 
Via Latina. The slabs, which have been removed to 
the Vatican, contained several inscriptions, commem¬ 
orating different persons of the Scipian family. There 
were neither statues nor any memorials remaining of 
Africanus himself or Asiaticus {Bankes, Civil History 
of Rome, vol. 1, p. 357.— Hobhousc, Illustrations o 
Childe Harold, p. 167); but a laurelled bust of Pep- 
perino stone, which was found here, and which now 
stands on the sarcophagus of Scipio Barbatus in the 
Vatican, is supposed to be that of Ennius. {Rome in 
the 19 th Century, Letter 36, vol. 2, p. 401, Am. ed. 
There is also still extant an epitaph, reported to have 
been written for himself {Cic., Tusc. Disp., 1 , 15), 
strongly characteristic of that overweening conceit, 
and high estimation of his own talents, which are said 
to have formed a principal defect in his character : 

“ Adspicite, O cives, senis Enni imaginis formam 
Hie vestrum panxit maxima facta patrum. 

Nemo me lacrymis decorei, nec funera fletu 
Faxit—cur ? volito vivus per ora virum .” 

To judge by the fragments of his works which remain. 
Ennius greatly surpassed his predecessors, not only in 
poetical genius, but in the art of versification. By 
his time, indeed, the best models of Greek composi¬ 
tion had begun to be studied at Rome. Ennius par¬ 
ticularly professed to have imitated Homer, and tried 
to persuade his countrymen that the soul and genius 
of that great poet had revived in him, through the me¬ 
dium of a peacock, according to the process of Pytha¬ 
gorean transmigration. From a passage in Lucretius 
(1> 118, seqq.), it would appear, that Ennius somewhere 
in his works had described a descent into hell, through 
which he feigned that the shade of Homer had con¬ 
ducted him in the same manner as Dante afterward 
chose Virgil for his mystagogue. Accordingly, we 
find in the works of Ennius innumerable imitations of 
the Iliad and Odyssey. It is, however, the Greek 
tragic writers whom he has chiefly imitated ; and in¬ 
deed it appears, from the fragments that remain, that 
all his plays were rather translations from the dramas 
of Sophocles and Euripides, on the same subjects 
which he has chosen, than original tragedies. They 
are founded on the old topics of Priam and Paris, Hec¬ 
tor and Hecuba. Nor, although Ennius was the first 
writer who introduced satiric composition into Rome, 
are his pretensions, in this respect, to originality, very 
distinguished. He adapted the ancient satires of the 
Tuscan and Oscan stage to the closet, by refining 
their grossness, softening their asperity, and. introdu¬ 
cing railleries, borrowed from the Greek poets, with 
whom he was familiar. His satires thus appear to 
have been a species of cento, made up from passages 
of various poems, which, by slight alterations, were 
humorously or satirically applied, and chiefly to the 
delineation of character. The fragments which remain 
of those satires are too short and broken to allow us 
even to divine their subject. Quintilian mentions, that 
one of the satires contained a dialogue between Life 
and Death, contending with each other, a mode of 
composition suggested perhaps by the allegory of Pro- 
dicus. We are farther informed by Aulus Gellius 
(2, 29), that he introduced into another satire, with 
great skill and beauty, iEsop’s fable of the Larks, now 
well known through the imitation of Fontaine (liv. 4, 

471 





ENNIUS. 


ENNIUS. 


ch. 22.—“ L'Alouette et ses petits avec le maitre d'un 
champ'' 1 ). It is certainly much to be regretted that we 
possess such scanty fragments of these productions, 
which would have been curious as the first attempts 
at a species of composition, which was carried to such 
perfection by succeeding Latin poets, and which has 
been regarded as almost peculiar to the Romans. 
The great work, however, of Ennius, and of which 
we have still considerable remains, was his Annals, 
or Metrical Chronicles, devoted to the celebration of 
Roman exploits, from the earliest periods to the con¬ 
clusion of the Istrian war. These annals were writ¬ 
ten by our poet in his old age ; at least Aulus Gel- 
bus informs us, on the authority of Varro, that the 
twelfth book was finished by him in his sixty-seventh 
year (17, 21). The annals of Ennius were partly 
founded on those ancient traditions and old heroic bal¬ 
lads, which Cicero, on the authority of Cato’s Ori- 
gines , mentions as having been sung at feasts by 
the guests, many centuries before the age of Cato, 
in praise of the heroes of Rome. Niebuhr has at¬ 
tempted to show, that all the memorable events of 
Roman history had been versified in ballads or metri¬ 
cal chronicles, in the Saturnian measure, before the 
time of Ennius ; who, according to him, merely ex¬ 
pressed in the Greek hexameter what his predecessors 
had delivered in a ruder strain, and then maliciously 
depreciated these ancient compositions, in order that 
he himself might be considered as the founder of Ro¬ 
man poetry. The chief work, according to Niebuhr, 
from which Ennius borrowed, was a romantic epopee, 
or chronicle, made up from these heroic ballads, about 
the end of the fourth century of Rome, commencing 
with the accession of Tarquinius, and ending with the 
battle of Regillus.—Ennius begins his Annals with an 
invocation of the nine Muses, and the account of a 
vision in which Homer had appeared to him, and re¬ 
lated the story of the metamorphosis already mention¬ 
ed. He afterward invokes a great number of the 
gods, and then proceeds to the history of the Al¬ 
ban kings, the dream of the Vestal virgin Ilia, which 
announced her pregnancy by Mars and the foundation 
of Rome. The reigns of the kings, and the contests 
of the republic with the neighbouring states previous 
to the Punic war, occupy the metrical annals to the 
end of the sixth book. It should be observed, in pass¬ 
ing, that the Annals were not separated by Ennius 
himself into books ; but were so divided, long after his 
death, by the grammarian Q. Vargunteius. ( Sueton ., 
dc Illustr. Gramm., c. 2.) Cicero, in his Brutus (c. 
19), says that Ennius did not treat of the first Punic 
war, as Nsevius had previously written on the same 
subject. P. Merula, however, who edited the frag¬ 
ments of Ennius, is of opinion that this passage of Ci¬ 
cero can only mean that he had not entered into much 
detail of- its events, as he finds several lines in the 
seventh book which, he thinks, evidently apply to the 
first Carthaginian war, particularly the description of 
naval operations, and the building of the first fleet with 
which the Carthaginians were attacked by the Ro¬ 
mans. In some of the editions of Ennius, the charac¬ 
ter of the friend and military adviser of Servilius, gen¬ 
erally supposed to be intended as a portrait of the poet 
himself, is ranged under the seventh book. The 
eighth and ninth books of these Annals, which are 
much mutilated, detail the events of the second Car¬ 
thaginian war in Italy and Africa. This was by much 
the most interesting part of the copious subject which 
Ennius had chosen, and a portion of it on which he 
would probably exert all the force of his genius, in order 
the more to honour his friend and patron Scipio Afri- 
catius. The tenth, eleventh, and twelfth books of the 
Annals of Ennius contain the war with Philip of Mace- 
don. In the commencement of the thirteenth, Han¬ 
nibal excites Antiochus to a war against the Romans. 
In the fourteenth book, the consul Scipio, in th prose- 
472 


cution of this contest, arrives at Ilium, which he thus 
apostrophizes: 

“ 0 patria ! 0 divum domus Ilium , et incluta hello 

Pergama /” 

Different Latin writers extol the elegant lines of En¬ 
nius immediately following, in which the Roman sol¬ 
diers, alluding to its magnificent revival in Rome, ex¬ 
claim with enthusiasm, that Ilium could not be de¬ 
stroyed : 

“ Quai neque Dardaneeis campeis potuere perire , 

Nee quom capta capex , nee quom combusla cremarx 

a passage which has been closely imitated in the sev 
enth book of Virgil (v. 294, seqq .),. The fifteenth 
book relates the expedition of Fulvius Nobilior to 
iEtolia, which Ennius himself is said to have accom¬ 
panied. In the two following books he prosecutes the 
Istrian war. The concluding, or eighteenth book, 
seems to have been in a great measure personal to tho 
poet himself. Connected with his annals there is a 
poem of Ennius devoted to the celebration of the ex¬ 
ploits of Scipio, in which occurs a much-admired de¬ 
scription of the calm of evening, where the flow of the 
versification is finely modulated to the still and solemn 
imagery. Horace, in one of his odes (4, 8), strongly 
expresses the glory and honour which the Calabrian 
muse of Ennius had conferred on Scipio by this poem 
devoted to his praise.—The historical poems of Ennius 
appear to have been written without the introduction 
of much machinery or decorative fiction ; and whether 
founded on ancient ballads or framed conformably to 
historical truth, they are obviously deficient in those 
embellishments of imagination which form the distinc¬ 
tion between a poem and a metrical chronicle. In the 
subject which he had chosen, Ennius wanted the poet¬ 
ic advantages of distance in place or time. But though 
not master of a shell round which the passions would 
throng, or at the sound of which a whole people would 
fall prostrate, as at the first breath of Jubal’s lyre, still 
the Annals of Ennius, as a national work, were highlv 
gratifying to a proud, ambitious people, and, in conse¬ 
quence, continued long popular at Rome. They were 
highly relished in the days of Horace and Virgil; and 
as far down as the reign of Marcus Aurelius, they 
were recited in theatres and other public places for the 
amusement of the people. ( Aulus Gellius, 18, 5.) 
The Romans, indeed, were so formed on his style, that 
Seneca called them populus Ennianus, an Ennian race, 
and said that both Cicero and Virgil were obliged, 
contrary to their own judgment, to employ antiquated 
terms, in compliance with the reigning prejudice. 

( Aul. Gell., 12, 2.) From his example, too, added to 
the national character, the historical epic became in 
future times the great poetical resource of the Ro¬ 
mans, who versified almost every important event in 
their history. Besides the Pharsalia of Lucan, and the 
Punica of Silius Italicus, which still survive, there 
were many works of this description which are now 
lost. Varro Attacinus chose as his subject Csesar’s 
war with the Sequani; Varius, the deeds of Augustus 
and Agrippa; Valgius Rufus, the battle of Actium ; 
Albinovanus, the exploits of Germanicus; Cicero, 
those of Marius, and the events of his own consulship. 
—The poem of Ennius, entitled Phagetica, is curious ; 
since one would hardly suppose that, in this early age, 
luxury had made such progress, that the culinary art 
should have been systematically or poetically treated. 
All that we know, however, of the manner in which it 
was prepared or served up, is from the Apologia of 
Apuleius. It was, as its name imports, a didactic 
poem on eatables, particularly fish. It is well known 
that previous to the time of Ennius, this subject had 
been discussed, both in prose and verse, by various 
Greek authors, and was particularly detailed in the 
poem of Archestratus the Epicurean. It appears from 




ENNIUS. 


E P A 


a passage of Apuleius, that the work of Ennius was a 
digest of all the previous books on this subject. The 
eleven lines which remain, and which have been pre¬ 
served by Apuleius, mention the places where differ¬ 
ent sorts of fish are found in greatest perfection and 
abundance. Another poem of Ennius, entitled Epi- 
charmus, was so called because it was translated from 
the Greek work of Epicharmus, the Pythagorean, on 
the Nature of Things, in the same manner as Plato 
gave the name of Timasus to the book which he trans¬ 
lated from Timaeus the Locrian. The fragments of 
th.s work of Ennius are so broken and corrupted, that 
it is impossible to follow the plan of his poem, or the 
system of philosophy which it inculcated. It appears, 
however, to have contained many speculations con¬ 
cerning the elements of which the world was primarily 
composed, and which, according to him, were water, 
earth, air, and fire (Varro, R. -R.pl, 4); as also with 
regard to the preservative powers of nature. Jupiter 
seems merely to have been considered by him as the air, 
the clouds, and the storm.—Ennius, however, whose 
compositions thus appear to have been formed entirely 
on Greek originals, has not availed himself so success¬ 
fully of these writings as Virgil has done of the works of 
Ennius himself. The prince of Latin poets has often 
condescended to imitate long passages, and sometimes 
to copy whole lines, from the Father of Roman Song. 
This has been shown, in a close comparison, by Ma- 
crobius, in his Saturnalia (6, 1, seqq.). Lucretius 
and Ovid have also frequently availed themselves of 
the works of Ennius. His description of the cutting , 
of a forest, in order to fit out a fleet against the Car¬ 
thaginians, in the seventh book, has-been imitated by 
Statius in the tenth book of the Thebais. The pas¬ 
sage in his sixth Satire, in which he has painted the 
happy situation of a parasite, compared with that of 
the master of a feast, is copied in Terence’s Phormio 
(2, 2).— It appears,! then, that Ennius occasionally 
produced verses of considerable harmony and beauty, 
and that his conceptions were frequently expressed 
with energy and spirit. It must be recollected, how¬ 
ever, that the lines imitated by Virgil, and the other 
passages which are usually selected with reference to 
the imitation of the early bard by other poets, are very 
favourable specimens of his taste and genius. Many 
of his verses are harsh and defective in their mechani¬ 
cal construction ; others are frigidly prosaic ; and not 
a few are deformed with the most absurd conceits, not 
so much in the idea, as in a jingle of words and ex¬ 
travagant alliteration.—On the whole, the works of 
Ennius are rather pleasing and interesting, as the early 
blossoms of that poetry which afterward opened to 
such perfection, than estimable from their intrinsic 
beauty. But, whatever may have been the merit of 
the works of Ennius, of which we are now but incom¬ 
petent judges, they were at least sufficiently various. 
Epic, dramatic, satiric, and didactic poetry were all 
successively attempted by him ; and we also learn that 
he sxercised himself in the lighter species of verse, as 
the epigram and acrostic. ( Cic., de Div., 2, 54.) For 
this novelty and exuberance it is not difficult to ac¬ 
count. The fountains of Greek literature, as yet un¬ 
tasted in Latium, were open for his imitation. He 
stood in very different circumstances from those Greek 
bards who drew solely from the resources of their 
own genius ; or from his successors in Latin poetry, 
who wrote after the best productions of Greece had 
become familiar to the Romans. He was thus placed 
in a situation in which he could enjoy all the popularity 
and applause due to originality, without undergoing 
the labour of invention, and might rapidly run with 
success through every mode of the lyre, without pos¬ 
sessing any incredible diversity of genius.—Thus far 
we have spoken of the poetical productions of Ennius : 
bst the most curious point connected with his literary 
.j^tory is his prose translation of the celebrated work of 
O o o 


Euhemerus, entitled 'lepa ’A vaypatyrj. The transia 
tion, as well as the original work, is lost. Some frag¬ 
ments, however, have been saved by St. Augustine 
and Lactantius. It is clear, notwithstanding their ob¬ 
servance of prodigies and religious ceremonies, that 
there prevailed a considerable spirit of free thinking 
among the Romans in the days of Ennius. This is ex¬ 
emplified, not merely by his translation of Euhemerus, 
and the definition of the nature of Jupiter in his Epi¬ 
charmus, but by various passages in dramas adapted 
for public representation, and which deride the super¬ 
stitions of augurs and soothsayers, as well as the false 
ideas entertained of the worshipped divinities. Polyb¬ 
ius, too, who flourished shortly after Ennius, speaks 
of the fear of the gods and the inventions of augury 
merely as an excellent political engine, at the same 
time that he reprehends the rashness and absurdity of 
those who were endeavouring to extirpate such useful 
opinions.—The fragments of Ennius will be found in 
the Fragmenta Veterum Poetarum Latinorum, by 
Robert and Henry Stephens, Paris , 1564; in the 
Fragmenta Veter. Tragic. Latin., by Scriverius, L. 
Bat., 1620 ; in the Opera et Fragmenta Veter. Poet. 
Lat., by Maittaire, Lond., 1713 (vol. 2, p. 1456, seqq.); 
in the Poetce Scenici Latinorum of Bothe, Halberst, 
1823 (vol. 5, pt. 1, Fragment. Tragic.; pt. 2, Fragm. 
Com.); in the Fragmenta Ennii of Columna, Neap., 
1590, improved by Hesselius, Amst., 1707, 4to, &c. 
{Dunlop, Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. 84, seqq. — Scholl, Hist. 
Lit. Rom., vol. 1, p. 114.-—Id. ib., p. 142. — B'ahr, 
Gesch. Rom. Lit., p. 78, seqq.) 

Entella, a city of Sicily, in the western quarter of 
the island, near the river Hypsa and northeast of Seli- 
nus. It was one of the three cities said to have been 
founded by iEgestes, a fable which clearly indicates 
the great antiquity at least of the place, and marks it 
as of Sicanian origin. We find it at one time under 
the power of Carthage, though with a free constitution. 
At a subsequent period it received a body of Campa¬ 
nian troops, which had been disbanded by Dionysius 
the elder, and it met with the same fate that all those 
cities encountered which had received the Campani 
within their walls ; the male inhabitants were slaugh¬ 
tered, and the city became the property of these mer¬ 
cenaries. This change of masters, however, made no 
alteration in the affairs of Entella as far as its standing 
with Carthage was concerned: the Campani sided 
with the last-mentioned power as the former inhabi¬ 
tants had done, and were, in consequence, besieged 
by Dionysius, who finally captured the city. {Diod. 
Sic., 14, 9. — Id., 15, 73. — Id., 16, 67.) We hear 
little of the place in later times. The ruins of the 
ancient city are still called Entella, and are situate to 
the east of Poggio Reale, near the modern river Bali- 
ci. {Mannert , Geogr., vol. 9, pt. 2, p. 444.) 

Entellus, a Sicilian, who, though advanced in 
years, entered the lists against the Trojan Dares, and 
conquered him in a pugilistic encounter. He had 
been, in earlier years, the friend and companion in 
arms of Eryx. (Virg., 2En., 5, 387, seqq.) 

Env alius (’E vvakioq), a surname frequently given 
to Mars in the Iliad, and corresponding with the name 
Enyo (’Evvco) given to Bellona. {Horn., II, 8, 264. 
—Id. ib., 13, 519 .—Id. ib., 17, 259, &c.) 

Enyo {’Ewu), the daughter of Phorcys and Ceto, 
according to Hesiod ( Theog., 273). She was a war- 
goddess, and one of the companions of Mars, and an¬ 
swers to the Bellona of the Romans. Some mytholo- 
gists make her the sister, others the wife, of Mars 
( Vid. Bellona.) 

Eos (’Hc5f), the name of Aurora among the Greeks, 
whence the epithet Eous is applied to all the eastern 
parts of the world. {Ovid, Fast., 3, 406 ; A. A., 3, 
537; 6, 478.— Virg., G., 1, 288; 2, 115.) 

Epaminondas, a Theban statesman and soldier, in 
whose praise, for both talents and virtue, there is a 

473 





EPAMINONDAS. 


E PH 


remarkable concurrence of ancient writers. Nepos 
observes that, before Epaminondas was born, and after 
his death, Thebes was always in subjection to some 
other power: on the contrary, while he directed her 
councils, she was at the head of Greece. His public 
life extends from the restoration of democracy by Pe- 
lopidas and the other exiles, B.C. 379, to the battle 
of Mantinea, B.C. 362. In the conspiracy by which 
that revolution was effected he took no part, refu¬ 
sing to stain his hands with the blood of his country¬ 
men ; but thenceforward he became the prime mover 
of the Theban state. His policy was first directed to 
assert the right, and to secure the power to Thebes 
of controlling the other cities of Boeotia, several of 
which claimed to be independent. In this cause he 
ventured to engage his country, single handed, in war 
with the Spartans, who marched into Boeotia, B.C. 
371, with a force superior to any which could be 
brought against them. The Theban generals were di¬ 
vided in opinion whether a battle should be risked ; 
for to encounter the Lacedsemonians with inferior 
numbers was universally esteemed hopeless. Epami¬ 
nondas prevailed with his colleagues to venture it; and 
devised on this occasion a new method of attack. In¬ 
stead of joining battle along the whole line, he concen¬ 
trated an overwhelming force on one point, directing 
the weaker part of his line to keep back. The Spartan 
right being broken and their king slain, the rest of the 
army found it necessary to abandon the field. This 
memorable battle was fought at Leuctra. The moral 
effect of it was much more important than the mere 
loss inflicted upon Sparta, for it overthrew the pre¬ 
scriptive superiority in arms claimed by that state ever 
since its reformation by Lycurgus. This brilliant suc¬ 
cess led Epaminondas to the second object of his pol¬ 
icy, the overthrow of the supremacy of Sparta, and the 
substitution of Thebes as the leader of Greece in the 
democratic interest. In this hope a Theban army, 
under his command, marched into the Peloponnesus 
early in the winter, B.C. 369, and, in conjunction with 
the Eleans, Arcadians, and Argives, invaded and laid 
waste a large part of Laconia. Numbers of the He¬ 
lots took that opportunity to shake olf a most oppress¬ 
ive slavery ; and Epaminondas struck a deadly blow 
at the power of Sparta, by establishing these descend¬ 
ants of the old Messenians on Mount Ithome in Mes- 
senia, as an independent state, and inviting their coun¬ 
trymen, scattered through Italy and Sicily, to return to 
their ancient patrimony. Numbers obeyed the call. 
This memorable event is known in history as the re¬ 
turn of the Messenians, and two hundred years had 
elapsed since their expulsion. In 368 B.C., Epami¬ 
nondas again led an army into the Peloponnesus ; but, 
not fulfilling the expectations of the people, he was 
disgraced, and, according to Diodorus (15, 71), was 
ordered to serve in the ranks. In that capacity he is 
said to have saved the army in Thessaly, when entan¬ 
gled in dangers which threatened it with destruction ; 
being required by the general voice to assume the com¬ 
mand. He is not again heard of in a public capacity 
till B.C. 366, when he was sent to support the demo¬ 
cratic interest in Achaia, and by his moderation and 
judgment brought that whole confederation over to the 
Theban alliance, without bloodshed or banishment. It 
soon became plain, however, that a mere change of 
masters, Thebes instead of Sparta, would be of no ser¬ 
vice to the Grecian states. Achaia first, then Elis, then 
Mantinea and great part of Arcadia, returned to the La¬ 
cedaemonian alliance. To check this defection, Epam¬ 
inondas led an army into the Peloponnesus for the 
fourth time, B.C. 362. Joined by the Argives, Mes¬ 
senians, and part of the Arcadians, he entered Laco¬ 
nia, and endeavoured to take Sparta by surprise ; but 
the vigilance of Agesilaus just frustrated his scheme. 
Epaminondas then marched against Mantinea, near 
which was fought the celebrated battle in which he fell. 
474 


The disposition of his troops on this occasion was an 
improvement on that bv which he had gained the bat¬ 
tle of Leuctra, and would have had the same decisive 
success, but that, in the critical moment, when the 
Lacedaemonian line was just broken, he received a 
mortal wound. The Theban army was paralyzed by 
this misfortune ; nothing was done to improve a vic¬ 
tory which might have been made certain; and this 
battle, on which the expectation of all Greece waited, 
led to no important result. “ Each party,” says Xen¬ 
ophon, “claimed the victory, and neither gained any ad¬ 
vantage : indecision, trouble, and confusion, more than 
ever before that battle, pervaded Greece.” Whether 
Epaminondas could much longer have upheld Thebes 
in the rank to which he had raised her, is very doubt¬ 
ful : without him she fell at once to her former obscu¬ 
rity. His character is certainly one of the fairest re¬ 
corded in Greek history. His private life was moral 
and refined ; his public conduct uninfluenced by per¬ 
sonal ambition or by personal hatred. He was a sin¬ 
cere lover of his country ; and if, in his schemes for her 
advancement, he was indifferent to the injury done to 
other members of the Grecian family, this is a fault 
from which, perhaps, no Greek statesman except Aris¬ 
tides was free. ( Xen ., Hist. Gr. — Plut., Vit. Pelop. 
— Encycl. Us. Knovol ., vol. 9, p. 466.) 

Epaphus, a son of Jupiter and Io. This mytholo¬ 
gical personage is the instrument by which Grecian 
vanity derived the rulers of more ancient countries 
from its own gods and princes. Epaphus, according 
to the legend, was born in Egypt, and married Mem 
phis, the daughter of the Nile, by whom he had a 
daughter named Libya. The same fable made him the 
founder of Memphis. ( JEschProm. Vinct., 850, 
seqq. — Herod., 2, 153.— Ovid, Met., 1, 699, seqq.) 
Libya bore to Neptune Agenor, the father of Cadmus 
and Europa, and also Belus, who had by another daugh¬ 
ter of the Nile, named Auchinoe, two sons, Danaus 
and TEgyptus. ( Apollod ., 2, 1, 4.) For some re-' 
marks on the name Epaphus, and on the whole legend, 
vid. Io. 

Epei, a people of Elis. . (Vid. Elis I.) 

Epeus, son of Panopeus, was the fabricator of the 
famous wooden horse which proved the ruin of Troy. 
(Virg., JEn., 2, 264.— Justin, 20, 2.— Pausan., 10, 
26.) 

Ephesus, a celebrated city of Ionia, near the mouth 
of the river Cayster, called by Pliny (5, 29), “ Alterum 
lumen Asia.” Mythology assigns, as its founders, 
Ephesus the son of the river Cayster, and Cresus 
(KppGog) a native of the soil. (Pausan., 7, 2.) An¬ 
other account makes it to have been settled by Ephe¬ 
sus, one of the Amazons. (St-eph. Byz ., s. v. — Ety- 
mol. Mag., s. v. — Berkel, ad Steph. Byz., 1. c .) Ac¬ 
cording to a third tradition, the place owed its origin 
to the Amazons, who were permitted to settle here by 
Hercules their conqueror. Hence the name of the 
city, "Etyecoq, from e^eglc;, permission. A fourth le¬ 
gend makes the Amazons, when pursued by Hercu¬ 
les and Theseus, to have fled for refuge to an altar of 
Diana, and supplicated the protection of the goddess, 
which she accordingly granted : (Kara^Evyovoaq eni 
TLva j3updv ’ApTe/uuhg, dclcOai Gurypiag rvxsCv, ttjv 
6e etyelvaL avraZg ryv ourypiav * o6ev "VQegov KXyOfjvai 
to x ,j) p' tov i KaL T V V ‘A-prefuv ’V(j)EGLav. Etym. Mag.) 
It is curious to observe how the name of the Amazons 
mingles in with some of these traditions. (Consult 
remarks under that article.) If we follow the graver 
authority of Strabo (640), we will find a settlement to 
have been first made in this quarter by the Carians and 
Leleges. Androclus, the son of Codrus, came subse¬ 
quently with a body of Ionian colonists. (Pausan., 
7, 2.) He protected the natives who had settled from 
devotion about the temple of Diana, and incorporated 
them with his followers ; but expelled those who in¬ 
habited the towrn above, which the Carians and Lele 




EPHESUS- 


EPHESUS 


g* ' nafl tu : U > • Mom t Prion. ( Pausan1. c .) It 
is ’©cords} tmv Finn hod, in former times, been call¬ 
ed Lepre Ak'( (4».a py ukt?,) ; and a part behind Prion 
wavt still caPe} tin Back of Lepre when Strabo wrote. 
Pliny (5, 29) enumerates other names for the city, 
such as Ortygia, Smyrna, Trachea, &c. — Lysima- 
chus, wishing to protect Ephesus from the inunda¬ 
tions to which it was yearly exposed by the overflow¬ 
ings of the Cayster, built a city up on the mountain, 
and surrounded it with walls. The inhabitants were 
unwilling to remove into this, but a heavy rain falling, 
and Lysimachus stopping the drains and flooding their 
houses, they were glad to exchange. ( Strabo , 640.) 
The port, of Ephesus had originally a wide mouth, but 
foul with mud lodging in it from the Cayster. Attalus 
Philadelphus and his architect were of opinion that, 
if the entrance were contracted, it would become deep¬ 
er, and in time be capable of receiving ships of bur¬ 
den. But the slime, which had before been moved 
by the flux and reflux of the tide, and carried off, be¬ 
ing stopped, the whole basin, quite to the mouth, was 
rendered shallow. This port is a morass, which com¬ 
municates with the Cayster, as might be expected, by a 
narrow mouth ; and at the water’s edge, near the ferry, 
as well as in other places, may be seen the wall in¬ 
tended to embank the stream, and give it force by con¬ 
finement. The masonry is of that kind termed incer- 
tum, in which the stones are of various shapes, but 
nicely joined. The situation was so advantageous as 
to overbalance the inconveniences attending the port. 
The town increased daily, and under the Romans was 
considered the chief emporium of Asia this side of Tau¬ 
rus. In the arrangement of the provinces under the 
Eastern emperors it became the capital of the province 
of Asia. ( Hierocles , p. 658.) Towards the end of the 
eleventh century, Ephesus experienced the same fate as 
Smyrna. A Turkish pirate, named Tangripanea, set¬ 
tled here. But the Greek admiral, John Ducas, de¬ 
feated him in a bloody battle, and pursued the flying 
Turks up the Maeander to Polybotum. In 1306 it was 
among the places which suffered from the exactions of 
the Grand Duke Roger; and, two years after, it surren¬ 
dered to Sultan Saysan, who to prevent future insur¬ 
rections, removed most of the inhabitants to Tyriaeum, 
where they were massacred. In the conflicts which 
desolated Asia Minor at a subsequent period, Ephesus 
was again a sufferer, and the city became at length re¬ 
duced to a heap of ruins. The modern name is Aias- 
aluk , or, more properly, this is the appellation of a 
small village inhabited by a few Turkish families, 
standing chiefly on the south side of the castle hill, 
among bushes and ruins. The name is supposed to 
be a corruption of Agios Theologos, from the circum¬ 
stance of a famous church of St. John the Divine hav¬ 
ing once stood near the spot. When Smith wrote in 
1677, Ephesus was already “ reduced to an inconsid¬ 
erable number of cottages, wholly inhabited by Turks.” 
Rycaut confirms this observation. “ This place, where 
once Christianity so flourished as to be a mother 
church and the see of a metropolitan bishop, cannot 
now show one family of Christians : so hath the secret 
providence of God disposed affairs, too deep and mys¬ 
terious for us to search into.” From Chishull we 
learn that, in 1699, “the miserable remains of the 
church of Ephesus resided, not on the spot, but at a vil¬ 
lage called Kirkingecui .” Tournefort, however, says 
there were thirty or forty Greek families ; but as he 
wrote about the same time as Chishull, this is probably 
a mistake. Pococke, who visited Ephesus about 1740, 
says that there was not at that time a single Christian 
within two leagues round Ephesus. “ I was at Eph¬ 
esus in January, 1824,” says Mr. Arundell; “ the des¬ 
olation was then complete ; a Turk, whose shed we 
occupied, his Arab servant, and a single Greek, com¬ 
posed the entire population, some Turcomans except¬ 
ed, whose black tents were pitched among the ruins. 


The Greek revolution, and the predatory excursions 
of the Samiotes, in great measure accounted for this 
desertion.” In the records of our religion Ephesus is 
ennobled as the burying-place of Timothy, the com¬ 
panion of St. Paul, and the first bishop of Ephesus, 
whose body was afterward translated to Constantino¬ 
ple by the founder of that city, or by his son Constan- 
tius, and placed with Saint Luke and Saint Andrew 
in the church of the apostles. The story of St. John 
the Divine was deformed in an early age with gross 
fiction ; but he also was interred at Ephesus, and, as 
appears from one narration, on Mount Prion.—Ephe¬ 
sus was famed for its splendid temple of Diana. The 
statue of the goddess was regarded with peculiar 
veneration, and was believed by the vulgar to have 
fallen from the skies. It was never changed, though 
the temple had been more than once restored. 4 his 
rude object of primeval worship was a block of wood, 
said by some to be of beech or elm, by others cedar, 
ebony, or vine, and attesting its very great antiqui 
ty by the fashion in which it had been formed. It 
was carved into the similitude of Diana, not as the 
elegant huntress, but an Egyptian hieroglyphic, which 
we call the goddess of nature, with many breasts, 
and the lower parts formed into an Hermsean statue, 
grotesquely ornamented, and discovering the feet be 
neath. It was gorgeously apparelled ; the vest em¬ 
broidered with emblems and symbolical devices ; and, 
to prevent its tottering, a bar of metal, it is likely of 
gold, was placed under each hand. A veil or curtain, 
which was drawn up from the floor to the ceiling, hid 
it from view, except while service was performing in 
the temple. This image was preserved till the later 
ages in a shrine, on the embellishment of which mines 
of wealth were consumed. The priests of Diana suf¬ 
fered emasculation, and virgins were devoted to invi¬ 
olable chastity. They were eligible only from the su¬ 
perior ranks, and enjoyed a great revenue, with priv¬ 
ileges, the eventual abuse of which induced Augustus 
to restrain them. It may be imagined that many stories 
of her power and interposition were current and be¬ 
lieved at Ephesus. A people convinced that the self¬ 
manifestations of their deity were real, could not easily 
be turned to a religion which did not pretend to a sim¬ 
ilar or equal intercourse with its divinity. And this 
is, perhaps, the true reason why, in the e&rly ages of 
Christianity, a belief of supernatural interposition by 
the Panagia, or Virgin Mary, and by saints appearing 
in daily or nightly visions, was encouraged and incul¬ 
cated. It helped by its currency to procure and con¬ 
firm the credulous votary, to prevent or refute the 
cavils of the heathen, to exalt the new religion, and to 
deprive the established of its ideal superiority. I he 
address of the town clerk to the Ephesians : “ Ye 
men of Ephesus, what man is there who knoweth not 
that the city of the Ephesians is a worshipper of the 
great goddess Diana, and of the image that fell down 
from Jupiter 1” is curiously illustrated by an inscription 
found by Chandler near the aqueduct, commencing as 
follows: “ Inasmuch as it is notorious that, not only 
among the Ephesians, but also everywhere among the 
Greek nations, temples are consecrated to her, and 
sacred portions,” &c.—The reputation and the riches 
of their goddess had made the Ephesians desirous of 
providing for her a magnificent temple. The fortunate 
discovery of marble in Mount Prion gave them new 
vigour. The cities of Asia, so general was the esteem 
for the goddess, contributed largely ; and Croesus was 
at the expense of many of the columns. The spot 
chosen for it was a marsh, as most likely to preserve 
the structure free from gaps, and uninjured by earth¬ 
quakes. The foundation was made with charcoal 
rammed, and with fleeces. The souterrain consumed 
immense quantities of marble. The edifice was exalt¬ 
ed on a basement with ten steps. The architects 
were Ctesiphon of Crete and his son Metagenes, 541 

475 




EPHESUS. 


EPHESUS. 


B.C.; and their plan was continued by Demetrius, a 
oriest of Diana ; but the whole was completed by 
Daphnis of Miletus, and a citizen of Ephesus, the 
building having occupied 220 years. It was the first 
specimen of the Ionic style, in which the fluted col¬ 
umn and capital with volutes were introduced. The 
whole length of the temple was 425 feet, and the 
breadth 220 ; with 127 columns of the Ionic order 
and Parian marble, each of a single shaft, and sixty 
feet high. These were donaiions from kings, accord¬ 
ing to Pliny (36, 14), but there is reason to doubt 
the correctness of the text where this assertion is 
made. Of these columns thirty-six were carved ; and 
one of them, perhaps as a model, by Scopas. The 
temple had a double row of columns, fifteen on either 
side ; and Vitruvius has not determined if it had a 
roof; probably over the cell only. The folding doors 
or gates had been continued four years in glue, and 
were made of cypress wood, which had been treasured 
up for four generations, highly polished. These were 
found by Mutianus as fresh and as beautiful 400 years 
after as when new. The ceiling was of cedar ; and 
the steps for ascending the roof (of the cell I) of a 
single stem of a vine, which attested the durable na¬ 
ture of that wood. The dimensions of this great tem¬ 
ple excite ideas of uncommon grandeur from mere 
massiveness ; but the notices we collect of its inter¬ 
nal ornament will increase our admiration. It was 
the repository in which the great artists of antiquity 
dedicated their most perfect works to posterity. Prax¬ 
iteles and his son Cephisodorus adorned the shrine ; 
Scopas contributed a statue of Hecate ; Timarete, the 
daughter of Micon, the first female artist upon record, 
finished a picture of the goddess, the most ancient in 
Ephesus ; and Parrhasius and Apelles employed their 
skill to embellish the walls. The excellence of these 
performances may be supposed to have been propor¬ 
tionate to their price ; and a picture of Alexander 
grasping a thunderbolt, by the latter, was added to the 
superb collection at the expense of twenty talents of 
gold. This description, however, applies chiefly to 
the temple as it was rebuilt, after the earlier temple 
had been partially burned, perhaps the roof of timber 
only, by Herostratus, who chose that method to ensure 
to himself an immortal name, on the very night that 
Alexander the Great was born. Twenty years after, 
that magnificent prince, during his expedition against 
Persia, offered to appropriate his spoils to the restora¬ 
tion of it, if the Ephesians would consent to allow him 
the sole honour, and would place his name on the 
temple. They declined the proposal, however, with 
the flattering remark, that it was not right for one defty 
to erect a temple to another : national vanity was, 
however, the real ground of their refusal. The archi¬ 
tect who superintended the erection of the new edi¬ 
fice was Dinocrates, of whose aid Alexander afterward 
availed himself in building Alexandrea. ( Vitruv ., 2, 
prcef. —Compare Strabo, 640.— Plut., Vit. Alex., 72. 
— Plin., 7, 37.— Solin., 40.) The extreme sanctity 
of the temple inspired ^universal awe and reverence. 
It was for many ages a repository of foreign and do¬ 
mestic treasure. There property, .whether public or 
private, was secure amid all revolutions. The conduct 
of Xerxes was an example to subsequent conquerors, 
and the impiety of sacrilege was not extended to the 
Ephesian goddess. But Nero deviated from this rule. 
He removed many costly offerings and images, and an 
immense quantity of silver and gold. It was again 
plundered by the Goths from beyond the Danube in 
the time of Gallienus ; a party under Raspa crossing 
the Hellespont and ravaging the country until com¬ 
pelled to retreat, when they carried off a prodigious 
booty. ( Treb. Pollio, in Gallien., c. 6.) The de¬ 
struction of so illustrious an edifice deserved to have 
been carefully recorded by contemporary historians. 
We may conjecture that it followed the triumph of 
476 


Christianity. The Ephesian reformers, when author 
ized by the imperial edicts, rejoiced in the opportunity 
of insulting Diana, and deemed it piety to demolish the 
very ruin of her habitation. When, under the auspices 
of Constantine and Theodosius, churches were erect¬ 
ed, the pagan temples \vere despoiled of their orna¬ 
ments, or accommodated to other worship. The im¬ 
mense dome of Santa Sophia now rises from the col¬ 
umns of green jasper which were originally placed in 
the temple of Diana, and were taken down and brought 
to Constantinople by order of Justinian. Two pil¬ 
lars in the great church at Pisa were also transported 
thence. The very site of this stupendous and celebra¬ 
ted edifice is even yet undetermined. T. he following 
are the principal data which may assist in fixing it. The 
distance between the site of the temple and the quar¬ 
ries on Mount Prion did not exceed 8000 feet, and no 
rising intervened, but the whole space was level plain. 
It was distinct from the city, at the distance of nearly a 
stadium ; for Marc Antony allowing the sanctuary to 
reach somewhat more than a stadium from it, a part 
of the city was comprised within those limits. It was 
without the Magnesian gate, which Chandler supposes 
to be that next to Aiasaluc ; and in the second cen¬ 
tury was joined to the city by Damianus, a sophist, 
who continued the way down to it through the Mag¬ 
nesian gate, by erecting a stoa or portico of marble, a 
stadium in length, inscribed with the name of his wife, 
and intended to prevent the absence of ministers when 
it rained. It was near the agora or market-place of 
the first city, besieged by Croesus, though distant seven 
stadia, or a mile wanting half a quarter, from it. The 
monument of Androclus was shown in the second 
century near the road going from the temple of Diana 
by the Olympian towards the Magnesian gate. The 
ancient city was built on Tracheia, and by the Athe- 
nseum and Hypelaeus. The Athenaeum was without 
the new city of Lysimachus, and the fountain Hype- 
lseus was near the sacred port. In the plain of Ephe¬ 
sus were anciently two lakes, formed partly by stagnant 
water from the river Selinus, which ran opposite the 
temple of Diana, probably from Mount Gallesus. Pliny 
says : “ Templum Diana complexi e diver sis regioni- 
bus duo Selinuntes .” It has been supposed, adds 
Chandler, that the souterrain by the morass or city- 
port, with two pieces of ancient wall, of square stone, 
by one of which is the entrance to it, are relics of the 
temple ; but this was nearly in the centre of the city 
of Lysimachus ; and Dallaway says, “ Close upon the 
brink of the present morass, once Ooyered by the sea, 
upon a rising ground, are accumulated walls of brick, 
faced with large slabs of marble, and of sufficient ex¬ 
tent to encourage Tournefort and the English travel 
lers in a conjecture that this structure was the far- 
famed temple of Diana.” Every circumstance of de¬ 
scription, adds Arundell, accords with this spot, except 
the distance from the city wall ; and among the fall¬ 
en masonry are broken shafts of porphyry, twelve feet 
long and four in diameter, more complete and polished 
than others which surround them. Might not this have 
been the church dedicated by Justinian to St. John ? 
The souterrain under the supposed site is said by Ry- 
caut to have a descent of about thirty stairs, and by 
Van Egmont to be a very narrow and difficult passage, 
having spacious caverns, composed of amazingly large 
black stones. But these may as well have been the 
foundations of other ancient buildings as of the temple , 
and evidently Chandler does not agree in the opinion 
that this was the site : for he says, “ the vaulted sub¬ 
structions by the stadium might, it is believed, furnish 
an area corresponding better, and more suited to re¬ 
ceive the mighty fabric ; which, however, it has been 
shown above, was in the plain, and distinct, though 
not remote, from the present city.” Count Caylus, 
(Mcmoires de Literature , vol. 53) says : “ Les fonda- 
tions qui subsistent encore aujourd’hui, ne ressemblent 




E P H 


E PH 


point & la description de Pline,” &c., and he has no 
other mode of accounting for this difference, than by 
supposing it might have been rebuilt after the time of 
Pliny, perhaps in the reign of Gallienus, after it had 
been pillaged and burned by the Goths. Dallaway 
suggests, that the massive walls of, and adjoining to, 
the gymnasium may be those of the temple. The 
grandeur of its plan and dimensions, which are still 
marked by a long nave, finished by an arch of great ex¬ 
panse at either termination, seems to favour the pre¬ 
tensions of this edifice above those of the other. In 
various points of description they correspond, except¬ 
ing that this was beyond the limits of the city walls ; 
for the circumstance of having been washed by the sea 
applies equally to both ruins. But the Turks, from 
whose barbarous corruptions or analogous terms the 
real and more ancient name is in some instances to be 
collected, call this particular ruin “ Kislar Serai,” or 
the palace of virgins. The same name induced Dr. 
Pococke, when investigating Alexandrea Troas, to de¬ 
cide on a building as another temple of Diana. Per¬ 
haps the most probable solution of the difficulty will 
be, that the entire remains of the temple are buried 
under the soil. In the valley above Nolium is a fine 
Ionic column, evidently in its original situation, but of 
which not more than three or four feet are visible ; the 
remainder is buried by the rapid accumulation of soil; 
and Mr. Cockerell calculates, that of the temple at 
Sardis 25 feet remain still covered with earth : the ac¬ 
cumulation from the Cayster must be vastly greater 
and more rapid. The relative position of the temple 
with the Selinusian lakes would be in favour of a con¬ 
jecture that it stood considerably lower down, and more 
towards the northeast than the spot usually assigned to 
it. This would agree better with the distance from 
the city, and its situation without the Magnesian gate, 
which can never be imagined to be that, as Chand¬ 
ler supposes, next to Aiasaluc. ( ArundelVs Seven 
Churches of Asia, p. 38, seqq. — Hirt, Geschichte der 
Baukunst bei den Alten, vol. 2, p. 60, seqq.) 

Ephialtes, a giant, son of Aloeus. ( Vid . Alo'idge.) 

Ephori ( v E tpopoi), a body of magistrates at Sparta, 
who were possessed of great privileges. The institu¬ 
tion of this office is usually ascribed to Theopompus, 
the grandson of Charilaus the Proclid ; but it has been 
inferred, from the existence of an ephoralty in other 
Dorian states before the time of Theopompus, and 
from its being apparently placed among the institu¬ 
tions of Lycurgus by Herodotus (1, 65) and Xeno¬ 
phon (de Rep. L^c., 8, 3), that it was an ancient Do¬ 
rian magistracy. Arnold supposes that the ephori, 
who were five in number, were coeval with the first 
settlement of the Dorians in Sparta, and were merely 
the municipal magistrates of the five hamlets which 
composed the city (Muller, Dorians, vol. 2, p. 550, 
Eng. transl.) ; but that afterward, when the Heracli- 
das began to encroach upon the privileges of the other 
Dorians, and, it would seem, in the reign of Theo¬ 
pompus, who endeavoured to diminish the powers of 
the general assembly of the Spartan aristocracy, the 
Dorians, in the struggle which ensued, gained for the 
ephori an extension of authority, which placed them 
virtually at the head of the state, although the nominal 
sovereignty was still kept in the hands of the Heraclidse. 
(Arnold , ad Thucyd., 1 , 87. — Append., 2, vol. 1 , p. 
646.) Thus the ephori were popular magistrates, as 
far as the Dorians themselves were concerned, and 
were, in fact, the guardians of their rights from the en¬ 
croachments of the kings ; though they were, in rela¬ 
tion to the Perioeci (Tleploucoi), the oppressive instru¬ 
ments of an overbearing aristocracy. (Plato, deLeg., 
4, p. 712, d.) The ephori were chosen in the autumn of 
every year ; the first gave his name to the year. Ev¬ 
ery Spartan was eligible to the office, without any re¬ 
gard to age or wealth. They were empowered to fine 
whom they pleased, and exact immediate payment of 


the fine. They could suspend the functions of any 
other magistrate, and arrest and bring to trial even 
the kings. (Xen., de Rep. Lac., 8, 4.) They presided 
and put the vote in the public assemblies (Thucyd., 1, 
87), and performed all the functions of sovereignty in 
receiving and dismissing embassies (Xen., Hist. Gr., 
2, 13, 19), treating with foreign states (Herod., 9, 8), 
and sending out military expeditions (Xen., Hist. Gr., 
2,4, 29). The king, when he commanded, was always 
attended by two of the ephori, who exercised a con¬ 
trolling power over his movements. (Herod., 9, 76.) 
The ephori were murdered on their seats of justice by 
Cleomenes III., and their office was overthrown (Pint., 
Vit. Cleorn., c. 8), but they were restored by Anti- 
gonus Doson and the Achteans in 222 B.C. (Polyb., 
2, 70.— Pausan., 2, 9, 2); and the office subsisted 
under the Roman dominion. (Bockh, Corp. Inscript., 
1, p. 604, seqq.) Some able remarks on this magis¬ 
tracy may be found in Muller's Dorians, vol. 2, p. 115, 
seqq., and Tittmann's Darstellung der Griech. Staats- 
verfass., p. 104, seqq. (Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 9, 
p. 469.) 

Ephorus, a Greek historian, born at Cyme in -Eo- 
lis, 405 B.C. He survived the passage of Alexander 
into Asia (333 B.C.), which he mentioned in his his¬ 
tory. (Clem. Alex., Strom. 1, p. 337, a.) He studied 
rhetoric under Isocrates, but with so little success, 
that, after he had returned from Athens, his father 
Demophilus sent him back to the rhetorician for fresh 
instruction. (Plut., Vit. Isocr., p. 366, ed. Wyttenb.) 
Isocrates, perceiving his unfitness for public speaking, 
recommended him to turn his attention to historical 
composition (Senec., de Tranq. An., c. 6); but his 
style was low and slovenly even in his histories, and 
Plutarch remarks upon the silliness of the set speeches 
which he introduced. (Polit. Prcecon., p. 803, b.) 
Polybius observes that, though in his account oi 
naval matters he is sometimes happy, he always fails 
in describing battles by land, and was entirely igno¬ 
rant of tactics. (Excerpt. Vatican., p. 391.) Epho¬ 
rus wrote, 1. A History of Greece, in thirty books, be¬ 
ginning with the siege of Troy, and terminating with 
the siege of Perinthus (340 B.C.). Part of the thir¬ 
tieth book was written by his son Demophilus. (Diod. 
Sic., 16, 14.) 2. On Inventions , in two books. 3. 

On Goods and Ills, in twenty-four books. 4. On 
Remarkable Objects in various Countries, in fifteen 
books. 5. The Topography of Cyme. 6. On Dic¬ 
tion .—The fragments of these works have been collect¬ 
ed by Marx, Carlsruhe, 1815. (Encycl. Us. Knowl., 
vol. 9, p. 469,— Scholl ., Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 2, p. 182.) 

Ephyra, I. the ancient name of Corinth, which it 
received from a nymph of the same name, and hence 
Ephyreus is equivalent to “ Corinthius.” (Vid. Co- 
rinthus.)—II. A city of Epirus, at the head of the bay 
or harbour called Glykys Limen. It is mentioned by 
Homer and other writers. Homer, in several pas¬ 
sages of the Iliad and Odyssey, alludes to one or more 
cities of this name. The Ephyra, which was situated 
on the banks of the river Selleis (11., 2, 659), is posi¬ 
tively ascribed by Strabo (338) to Elis in Peloponne¬ 
sus, though he allows that many commentators on the 
poet were of opinion that he there adverted to the 
Thesprotian city of the same name. Eustathius ob¬ 
serves on the verse above cited, that, as there were 
nine towns so called, it was no easy matter to ascer¬ 
tain to which reference was made. It seems proba¬ 
ble, however, that the Ephyra, which is twice noticed 
in the Odyssey (1, 259, and 2, 328) as a land abound- 
ing in poisonous drugs, is the one in question, since 
it was evidently near Ithaca, and the river Selleis is 
not named in either of the passages. This city is also 
spoken of by Pindar (Nem., 7, 53); from which pas¬ 
sage we may infer, with Pausanias, that it was the 
capital of the ancient kings of Thesprotia, and where, 
on the attempt of Theseus and Pirithoiis to ca4ry ofi 

477 



E P T 


E P I 


th e wife of Aidoneus, they were both taken prisoners 
and detained. ( Pausan., 1, 17.—Compare Apollodo- 
rus, 2, 7.— Diod. Sic., 4, 36.) It appears from Stra¬ 
bo (324) and other authorities, that this town after¬ 
ward took the name of Cichyrus, but on what occasion 
we are not informed. Mr. Hughes, who has explored 
with great attention this part of Epirus, reports, “that 
the ruins of Ephyra are to be seen at no great dis¬ 
tance from the Acherusian lake, near a deserted con¬ 
vent dedicated to St. John. Though the walls lie for 
the most part in a confused mass of ruins, they may 
be distinctly traced in a circular figure : those parts 
which remain perfect exhibiting a specimen of masonry 
apparently more rude even than Tiryns itself, though 
the blocks used are not of so large dimensions.” 
{Travels, vol. 2, p. 312.— Cramer's Ancient Greece, 
vol. 1, p. 113, seqq.) 

Epicharmus, the first Greek comic writer of whom 
we have any certain account. He was a Syracusan, 
either by birth or emigration. ( Theocritus, Epig., 17.) 
Some make him a native of Crastus, some of Cos 
( Suidas — Eudocia, p. 166); but all agree that he 
passed his life at Syracuse. It was about B.C. 500, 
Olymp. 70, 1, thirty-five years after Thespis began to 
exhibit, eleven years after the commencement of Phry- 
nichus, and just before the appearance of ^Eschylus as 
a tragedian, that Epicharmus produced the first come¬ 
dy properly so called. Before him this department of 
the drama was, as we have every reason to believe, 
nothing but a series of licentious songs and sarcastic 
episodes, without plot, connexion, or consistency. He 
gave to each exhibition one single and unbroken fable, 
and converted the loose interlocutions into regular dia¬ 
logue. ( Aristot., Poet., 5, 5.) The subjects of his 
comedies, as we may infer from the extant titles of 
thirty-five of them, were partly parodies of mythologi¬ 
cal subjects, and, as such, not very different from the 
dialogue of the satyric drama, and partly political, and 
in this respect may have furnished a model for the 
dialogue of the Athenian comedy. Tragedy had, some 
years before the era of Epicharmus, begun to assume 
its staid and dignified character. The woes of heroes 
and the majesty of the gods had, under Phrynicus, be¬ 
come its favourite theme. The Sicilian poet seems 
to have been struck with the idea of exciting the mirth 
of his audience by the exhibition of some ludicrous 
matter dressed up in all the grave solemnity of the 
newly-invented art. Discarding, therefore, the low drol¬ 
leries and scurrilous invectives of the ancient tao/audia, 
he opened a novel and less invidious source of amuse¬ 
ment, by composing a set of burlesque dramas upon the 
usual tragic subjects. ( Athenceus , 15, p. 698, ed. 
Schweigh., vol. 5, p. 555.) They succeeded, and the 
turn thus given to comedy long continued ; so that 
when it once more returned to personality and satire, 
as it afterward did, tragedy and tragic poets were the 
constant objects of its parody and ridicule. The great 
changes thus effected by Epicharmus justly entitled 
him to be called the Inventor of Comedy ( Theocritus, 
Epig., 17), though it is probable that Phormis or Phor- 
mus preceded him by a few Olympiads. (Aristot,., 
Poet., 3, 5.— Athenceus, 14, p. 652, a.) But his mer¬ 
its rest not here : he was distinguished for elegance 
of composition as well as originality of conception. 
Demetrius Phalereus (compare Vossius, de Poet. Gr., 
6, p. 31) says, that Epicharmus excelled in the choice 
and collocation of epithets : on which account the 
name of ’Etux&p/luoc was given to his kind of style, 
making it proverbial for elegance and beauty. Aris¬ 
totle ( Rhet., 3, 9) lays one fault to his charge as a 
writer, the employment of false antitheses. So many 
were his dramatic excellences, that Plato terms him 
the first of comic writers ( Theaztetus, p. 33), and in a 
later age and foreign country, Plautus chose him as 
•his model. ( Horat., Epist., 2, 2, 58.) The plays of 
Epicharmus, to judge from the fragments still left us, 


abounded in apophthegms, little consistent with V ,W file* 
we might otherwise have entertained of their nature, 
from pur knowledge of the buffooneries whence hi..' 
comedy sprung, and the writings of Aristophanes, hts 
partially extant successor. But Epicharmus was a 
philosopher and a Pythagorean. ( Diog . Laert., 8, 
78.) In the midst of merriment, he failed not to in¬ 
culcate, in pithy gnomse, the otherwise distasteful les¬ 
sons of morality to the gay and thoughtless, and, shel¬ 
tered by comic license, to utter offensive political 
truths, which, promulgated under any other circum¬ 
stances, might have subjected the sage to the ven 
geance of a despotic government We find Epichar 
mus still composing comedies B.C. 485 ( Suidas, s. v. 
'E nix-)', and again during the reign of Hiero, B.C. 
477. (Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, B.C. 477.) He died 
at the age of ninety or ninety-seven years. Epichar¬ 
mus is said by some authorities to have added the 
letters rj, i p, u, to the Greek alphabet. ( Theatre of 
the Greeks, 2d ed., p. 162, seqq.—Matt hive, G. G., 
vol. 1, p. 13, Blomfield's transl. —Compare, however, 
Thiersch's G. G., Sandford's transl., vol. 1, p. 25, 
seqq.) 

Epictetus, an eminent Stoic philosopher, born in 
a servile condition at Hierapolis in Phrygia. The year 
of his birth is not known, nor are we able to make 
any very close approximation to it. He must have 
been born, however, before the end of Nero’s reign, 
68 A.D., else he could not have been more than twen¬ 
ty-one when Domitian published that edict against 
philosophers, in 89 A.D., in consequence of which 
Epictetus retired from Rome. At the age of twenty- 
one he was not likely to have attained sufficient noto¬ 
riety to bring him within the operation of such an 
edict. Epictetus, then, was born most probably during 
one of the last eight years of Nero’s reign. The 
names and condition of his parents are unknown : 
neither do we know how he came to be brought to 
Rome. But in this city he was for some time a slave 
to Epaphroditus, a freedman of Nero’s, who had been 
one of his body-guard. An anecdote related by Ori- 
gen, which illustrates the fortitude of Epictetus, would 
also show, if it were true, that Epaphroditus’ was a 
most cruel master. Epictetus, when his master was 
twisting his leg one day, smiled and quietly said, 
“You will break it;” and when he did break it, only 
observed, “Did I not tell you that you would do sol” 
( Orig. c. Cels., 7, p. 368.) We are not told how or 
when Epictetus managed to effect his freedom; but 
he could not have been still a slave when he left Rome 
in consequence of qn edict against philosophers. This 
event, the only one in his life the date of which we 
can assign, took place, as has been said, in the year 
89 A.D., being the eighth year of Domitian’s reign. 
Epictetus then retired to Nicopolis in Epirus, and it is 
a question whether he ever returned to Rome. The 
chief groumj for believing that he did is a statement 
of Spartian (Vit. Hadr., 16), that Epictetus lived on 
terms of intimacy with the Emperor Hadrian; while 
it is agreed, on the other hand, that there is no good 
evidence of any of his discourses having been delivered 
at Rome, but that they contain frequent mention of 
Nicopolis. This argument, however, is hardly suffi¬ 
cient to overthrow the express testimony of Spartian. 
We do not know when he died. Suidas says that he 
lived till the reign of Marcus Aurelius; but, though some 
support for this opinion is sought to be obtained from 
Themistius (Or., 5, ad Jovian. Imp.), yet the authori¬ 
ty of Aulus Gellius is strong on the other side, who, 
writing during the reign of the first Antonine, speaks 
of Epictetus, in two places, as being dead. ( Noct. 
Att., 2, 18.— lb., 17, 19.) Epictetus led a life of ex¬ 
emplary contentment, simplicity, and virtue, practising 
in all particulars the morality which he taught. He 
lived for a long while in a small hut, with *00 other 
I furniture than a bed and lamp, and without an attend 



EPI 


EPICURUS. 


ant; until he benevolently adopted a child whom a 
friend had been compelled by poverty to expose, and 
hired a nurse for its sake.—Epictetus was a teacher of 
the Stoic philosophy, and the chief of those who lived 
during the period of the Roman empire. His lessons 
were principally, if not solely, directed to practical 
morality. His favourite maxim, and that into which 
he resolved all practical morality, was “ bear and for¬ 
bear” av£x°v nal dnexov. He appears to have dif¬ 
fered from the Stoics on the subject of suicide. (Ar- 
rian, Epict ., 1, 8.) We are told by Arrian, in his 
Preface to the “ Discourses,” that he was a powerful 1 
and exciting lecturer; and, according to Origen (c. 
Cels., 7, ad init.), his style was superior to that of 
Plato. It is a proof of the estimation in which Epic¬ 
tetus was held, that, on his death, his lamp was pur¬ 
chased by some more eager than wise aspirant after 
philosophy for three thousand drachmas, or over five 
hundred dollars of our currency. ( Lucian, adv. In- 
doct. libr. ement., vol. 8, p. 15, ed Bip.) Though it 
is said by Suidas that Epictetus wrote much, there is 
good reason to believe that he himself wrote nothing. 
His Discourses were taken down by his pupil Arrian, 
and published after his death in six books, of which 
four remain. The same Arrian compiled the Enchi¬ 
ridion, and wrote a life of Epictetus, which is lost. 
Some fragments have been preserved, however, by 
Stobseus. Simplicius has also left a commentary on 
his doctrine, in the Eclectic manner. The best edi¬ 
tion of the remains of Epictetus is that of Schweig- 
haeuser, 6 vols. 8vo, Lips., 1799. The same editor 
has published the Enchiridion, together with the Ta¬ 
blet of Cebes, in a separate volume (Lips., 1797, 
8vo). There is an English version of the Enchiridion 
or Manual by Mrs. Carter. (Fabric., Bibl. Grace., ed. 
Harles, vol. 5, p. 64.— Enfield, Hist. Philos., vol. 2, 
p. 121.— Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 9, p. 471.) 

Epicurus, a celebrated philosopher, born in the year 
341 B.C., seven years after the death of Plato. He 
was a native of the Island of Samos, whither his father 
had gone from Athens, in the year 352 B.C., among 
2000 colonists then sent out by the Athenians. (Stra¬ 
bo, 638.) Yet he was an Athenian by right, belong¬ 
ing to the borough Gargettus, and to the tribe .Egeis. 
His father Neocles is said to have been a schoolmas¬ 
ter, and his mother Chseristrata to have practised arts 
of magic, in which it was afterward made a charge 
against Epicurus, that, when he was young, he assist¬ 
ed her. (Diog. Laert., 10, 4.) Having passed his 
early years in Samos and Teos, he went to Athens at 
the age of eighteen. We are told that he had begun 
to study philosophy when only fourteen, having been 
incited thereto by a desire, which the teachers to whom 
he had applied had failed to satisfy, of understanding 
Hesiod’s description of chaos ; and that he began with 
the writings of Democritus. In Samos he is said to 
nave received lessons from Pamphilus, a follower of 
Plato. (Suid. — Cic., N. D., 1 , 26.)—On the occa¬ 
sion of this his first visit to Athens, Epicurus stayed 
there for a very short time. He left it in consequence 
of the measures taken by Perdiccas after the death of 
Alexander the Great, and went to Colophon to join his 
father. In his 32d year, 310 B.C., he went to Myti- 
lene, where he set up a school. Staying only one year 
at this latter place, he next proceeded to Lampsacus, 
wher^ he taught for four years. He returned to Athens 
in the year 306 B.C., and now founded the school, 
which ever after was named from him the Epicurean. 
He purchased a garden for 80 min® (about 1400 dol¬ 
lars), wherein he might live with his disciples and de¬ 
liver his lectures, and henceforth remained in Athens, 
with the exception only of two or three visits to his 
friends in Asia Minor, until his death, B.C. 270. The 
disease which brought him to his death was the stone. 
He was in his seventy-second year when he died, and 
he had then been settled in Athens as a teacher for 36 


years. Epicurus is said by Diogenes Laertius (10, 9; 
to have had so many pupils that even whole cities 
could not contain them. Hearers came to him from 
distant places ; very many from Lampsacus ; and while 
men often deserted other schools to join that of Epi¬ 
curus. there were only two instances, at most, of Epi¬ 
curus being deserted for any other teacher. Epicurus 
and his pupils lived together in the garden of which 
we have spoken, in a state of friendship, which, as it 
is usually represented, could not be surpassed ; ab¬ 
staining from putting their property together and en¬ 
joying it in common, for the quaint yet significant rea¬ 
son that such a plan implied mutual distrust. The 
friendship subsisting between Epicurus and his pupils 
is commemorated by Cicero (de Fin., 1, 20). In this 
garden, too, they lived in the most frugal and virtuous 
manner, though it was the delight of the enemies of Epi¬ 
curus to represent it differently, and though Timocra- 
tes, who had once been his pupil, and had abandoned 
him, spread such stories as that Epicurus used to vom¬ 
it twice a day after a surfeit, and that many immodest 
women were inmates of the garden. ( Vid. Leonti- 
um.) An inscription over the gate of the garden told 
him who might be disposed to enter, that barley-cakea 
and water would be the fare provided for him (Senec., 
Ep., 31); and such was the chastity of Epicurus, that 
one of his principal opponents, Chrysippus, endeavour¬ 
ed to account for it, so as to deny him any merit, by 
saying that he was without passions. (Stob., Serm., 
117.) Epicurus did not marry, in order that he might 
be able to prosecute philosophy without interruption. 
His most attached friends and pupils were Hermachus 
of Mytilene, whom he appointed by will to succeed 
him as master of the school; Metrodorus, who wrote 
several books in defence of his system, and Polyeenus. 
Epicurus’s three, brothers, Neocles, Chasredemus, and 
Aristobulus, also followed his philosophy, as also one 
of his servants, Mys, whom at his death he made free 
Besides the garden in Athens, from which the followers 
of Epicurus, in succeeding time, came to be named 
the philosophers of the garden (Juv., Sat., 13, 122.— 
Id., 14, 319), Epicurus possessed a house in Melite, a 
village near Athens, to which he used often to retire 
with his friends. On his death he left this house, to¬ 
gether with the garden, to Hermachus, as head of the 
school, to be left by him again to whosoever might 
be his successor.—In physics Epicurus trod pretty 
closely in the footsteps of Democritus ; so much so, 
indeed, that he was accused of taking his atomic cos¬ 
mology from that philosopher without acknowledg¬ 
ment. He made very few, and these unimportant, alter¬ 
ations. (Cic., de Fin., 1, 6.) According to Epicurus, 
as also to Democritus and Leucippus before him, the 
universe consists of two parts, matter and space, or vac¬ 
uum in which matter exists and moves ; and all matter, 
of every kind and form, is reducible to certain indivisible 
particles or atoms, which are eternal. These atoms, 
moving, according to a natural tendency, straight down¬ 
ward, and also obliquely, have thereby come to form 
the different bodies which are found in the world, ant 
which differ in kind and shape, according as the atom? 
are differently placed in respect to one another. It is 
clear that, in this system, a creator is dispensed with ; 
and indeed Epicurus, here again following Democritus, 
set about to prove, in an a priori way, that this crea¬ 
tor could not exist, inasmuch as nothing could arise 
out of nothing, any more than it could utterly perish 
and become nothing. The atoms have existed always, 
and always will exist; and all the various physical 
phenomena are brought about, from time to time, by 
their various motions.—It remains to speak of the Epi 
curean system of ethics. Setting out from the two 
facts that man is susceptible of pleasure and pain, and 
that he seeks the one and avoids the other, Epicurus 
propounded, that it is a man’s duty to endeavour to in¬ 
crease to the utmost his pleasures, and diminish tc 

479 





EPICURUS 


E P I 


tne utmost his pains ; choosing that which tends to 
pleasure rather than that which tends to pain, and 
that which tends to a greater pleasure or to a lesser 
pain rather than that which tends respectively to a 
lesser pleasure or a greater pain. He used the terms 
pleasure and pain in the most comprehensive way, as 
including pleasure and pain of both mind and body ; 
and he esteemed the pleasures and pains of the mind 
as incomparably greater than those of the body. Ma¬ 
king, then, good and evil, or virtue and vice, depend 
on a tendency to increase pleasure and diminish pain, 
or the opposite, he arrived, as he easily might do, at 
the several virtues to be inculcated and vices to be 
denounced., And when he got thus far, even his ad¬ 
versaries had nothing to say against him. It is strange 
that they should have continued to revile the principle, 
no matter by what name it might be called, when they 
saw that it was a principle which led to truth.—The 
period in which Epicurus opened his school, was pecu¬ 
liarly favourable. In the room of the simplicity of the 
Socratic doctrine, nothing now remained but the sub¬ 
tlety and affectation of Stoicism, the unnatural severity 
of the Cynics, or the debasing doctrine of indulgence 
taught and practised by the followers of Aristippus. 
The luxurious refinement which now prevailed in 
Athens, while it rendered every rigid scheme of phi¬ 
losophy, as well as all grossness of manners, unpopular, 
inclined the younger citizens to listen to a preceptor 
who smoothed the stern and wrinkled brow of philos¬ 
ophy, and, under the notion of conducting his follow¬ 
ers to enjoyment in the bower of tranquillity, led them 
unawares into the path of moderation and virtue. 
Hence the popularity of his school. It cannot be de¬ 
nied, however, that, from the time when this philosopher 
appeared to the present day, an uninterrupted course 
of censure has fallen upon his memory ; so that the 
name of his sect has almost become a proverbial ex¬ 
pression for everything corrupt in principle and infa¬ 
mous in character. The charges brought against Epi¬ 
curus are, that he superseded all religious principles by 
dismissing the gods from the care of the world ; that 
if he acknowledged their existence, it was only in con¬ 
formity to popular prejudice, since, according to his 
system, nothing exists in nature but material atoms ; 
that he discovered great insolence and vanity in the 
disrespect with which he treated the memory of for¬ 
mer philosophers, and the characters and persons of 
his contemporaries ; and that both he and his disciples 
were addicted to the grossest sensuality. These ac¬ 
cusations, too, have been not only the voice of common 
rumour, but more or less confirmed by men distinguish¬ 
ed for their wisdom and virtue—Zeno, Cicero, Plutarch, 
Galen, and a long train of Christian fathers. With 
respect to the first charge, it certainly admits of no ref¬ 
utation. The doctrine of Epicurus concerning nature 
militated directly against the agency of a Supreme Be¬ 
ing in the formation and government of the world ; and 
his misconceptions with respect to mechanical motion, 
and the nature of divine happiness, led him to divest 
the Deity of some of his primary attributes. It does 
not, however, appear that he entirely denied the exist¬ 
ence of superior powers. Cicero charges him with 
inconsistency in having written books concerning piety 
and the reverence due to the gods, and in maintaining 
that the gods ought to be worshipped, while he assert¬ 
ed that they had no concern in human affairs. That 
there was an inconsistency in this is obvious. But 
Epicurus professed, that the universal prevalence of the 
ideas of gods was sufficient to prove that they exist¬ 
ed ; and, thinking it necessary to derive these ideas, 
like all other ideas, from sensations, he imagined that 
the gods were beings of human form, hovering about 
in the air, and made known to men by the customary 
emanations. He believed that these gods were eternal, 
and supremely happy, living in a state of quiet, and 
meddling not with the affairs of the world He con- 
480 


tended that they were to be worshipped on account of 
the excellence of their nature, not because they could 
do men either good or harm. ( Cic., N. D., 1, 41.— 
Senec., de Benef.,A, 19.)—Our chief sources of informa¬ 
tion respecting the doctrines of Epicurus are, the lOth 
book of Diogenes Laertius, and the poem of Lucretius 
“ De Rerum Natural Information is also furnished 
by the writings of Cicero, especially the “De Fini- 
bus" and the “ De Natura Deorum by those of Sen¬ 
eca, and by the treatise of Plutarch entitled “ Against 
Colotes.” Epicurus, according to Diogenes Laertius, 
was a more voluminous writer than any other philos¬ 
opher, having written as many as 300 volumes, in all 
of which he is said to have studiously avoided making 
quotations. All that now remains of his works are the 
Letters contained in the 10th book of Diogenes Laer¬ 
tius, and parts of two books of his treatise on Nature 
(7r epl tyvoeug), which were discovered at Herculane¬ 
um. The last were published at Leipzig in 1818, be¬ 
ing edited by Orelli. A critical edition of the first 
two letters was given by Schneider, at Leipzig, 1813. 
—The Epicurean school was carried on, after Herma- 
chus, by Polystratus and many others, concerning 
whom nothing is known ; and the doctrines which 
Epicurus had taught underwent few modifications. 
When introduced among the Romans, these doctrines, 
though very much opposed at first, were yet adopted 
by many distinguished men, as Lucretius, Atticus, 
Horace. Under the emperors, Pliny the Younger, and 
Lucian of Samosata, were Epicureans. ( Enfield , Hist. 
Phil., vol. 1, p. 445, seqq. — Encycl. Us. Knowl.,\ ol. 
9, p. 472.— Good's Lucretius, Prolegom. — Id., Book of 
Nature, vol. 1, p. 48, seqq., &c.) 

Epidamnus, a city of Ulyricum, on the coast, north 
of Apollonia. Its foundation is universally ascribed 
to the Corcyreans, who, in compliment to Corinth, 
their metropolis, invited a citizen of that town to head 
their new colony. ( Thucyd ., 1, 24.) But we are not 
informed what circumstances led to the change in its 
name from Epidamnus to that of Dyrrachium, by 
which it is more commonly known to the Latin writers. 
Some have thought that Epidamnus and Dyrrachium 
were two different towns, the latter of which was the 
emporium of the former. Others affirmed, that the 
Romans, considering the word Epidamnus to be of evil 
omen, called it Dyrrachium from the ruggedness of its 
situation. (Appian, B. C., 2, 39.— Pomp. Mel., 2, 3. 
— Plin., H. N., 3, 23.) It is pretty evident, however, 
that the word Avfifiuxiov is of Greek, and not of Latin 
origin, for we find it used by the poet Euphorion of Chal- 
cis in a verse preserved by Stephanus of Byzantium, s. 
v. Avfipuxiov. The fact seems to be, that the founders 
of Epidamnus gave the name of Dyrrachium or Dyr- 
rhachium to the high and craggy peninsula on which 
they built their town. Strabo (316) certainly applies 
this appellation to the Chersonese, as does the poet 
Alexander cited by Stephanus, s. v. Avfifidxtov, and 
this, in time, may have usurped the place of the former 
name. It is probable, also, that the town called Dyr¬ 
rachium did not exactly occupy the site of the ancient 
Epidamnus; indeed,-this is plainly asserted by Pau- 
sanias (5, 10). Eusebius refers the foundation of Epi¬ 
damnus to the second year of the 38th Olympiad, or 
about 625 B.C. Periander was then tyrant of Corinth, 
and nearly at the same period Cyrene was founded by 
Battus. Placed at the entrance of the Hadriatic, in a 
situation most advantageous for commerce, which was 
also favoured by its relations with Corcyra and Corinth, 
Epidamnus early attained to a considerable degree of 
opulence and power. It possessed a treasury at Olym¬ 
pia ( Pausan., 6, 19), and its citizens vied with those 
of the most celebrated states of Greece in wealth and 
accomplishments. ( Herodot., 6, 127.) And though 
the jealousy of the neighbouring barbarians had often 
prompted them to disturb the peace of the risino- colo¬ 
ny, it successfully withstood all their attacks until 






E P I 


EPIDAURUS. 


dissension and faction, that bane of the Grecian states, 
entailed upon the city their attendant evils, and so im¬ 
paired its strength that it was forced to seek from the 
Corcyreans that aid against foreign as well as domes¬ 
tic enemies which its necessities required. The re¬ 
fusal of Corcyra compelled the Epidamnians to apply 
to Corinth, which gladly sought this opportunity of in¬ 
creasing its influence at the expense of that of Corcyra. 
A Corinthian force, together with a fresh supply of col¬ 
onists, was accordingly despatched by land to the aid 
of Epidamnus, and contributed greatly to restore or¬ 
der and tranquillity. The Corcyreans, however, who 
were on no friendly terms with the Corinthians, could 
not brook this interference in the affairs of their colony; 
they also equipped a fleet, which, on its arrival at Epi- 
damnus, summoned that town to receive back those 
citizens who had been banished, and to send away the 
Corinthian reinforcement. On the rejection of this 
proposal by the Epidamnians, the Corcyreans, in con- 
unction with the neighbouring Illyrians, besieged the 
town, and, after some days, compelled it to surrender. 
These are the events which Thucydides has related at 
length, from their intimate connexion with the origin 
of the Peloponnesian war. We know but little of the 
fortunes of Epidamnus from this period to its conquest 
by the Romans. Aristotle, in his Politics (5, 1), no¬ 
tices a change which took place in its constitution, 
from the government of magistrates called phylarchs to 
that of a senate. The character of its inhabitants, 
which was once virtuous and just, was also impaired 
by luxury and vice, if we may credit Plautus, who 
portrays them in his Mer.ajchmi. {Act. 2, Sc. 1.) 
That Venus was particularly worshipped here we learn 
from Catullus (36, 11). — Dyrrachium became the 
scene of the contest between Caesar and Pompey. 
The latter general, having been compelled to withdraw 
from Italy by his enterprising adversary, retired to 
Dyrrachium on the opposite coast of Illyria, and hav¬ 
ing collected all his forces round that city, deter¬ 
mined to make a stand against the enemy. Caesar 
soon followed him thither, having formed the bold de¬ 
sign of blockading his adversary in his intrenched 
camp close to the town. This led to a series of op¬ 
erations, which are detailed at length by Caesar him¬ 
self ; the success of which continued doubtful until 
Pompey at length forced his enemy to retire, and was 
thus enabled to transfer the seat of war into Thessaly. 
( Cces ., j 6. C., 3, 41, seqq. — Appian, B. C., 2, 40.) 
In addition to the strength of its situation, Dyrrachium 
was of importance to the Romans from its vicinity to 
Brundisium. Cicero landed there on his banishment 
from Italy, and speaks of the kindness he experienced 
from the inhabitants. (Ep. ad Fam., 14, 1.) We 
learn, indeed, from iElian ( V. H., 13, 16), that the 
laws of this city were particularly favourable to stran¬ 
gers. Dio Cassius observes, that Dyrrachium sided 
with Antony during the last civil wars of the republic; 
and thence it was that Augustus, after his victory, re¬ 
warded his soldiers with estates in its territory. The 
Byzantine historians speak of it as being still a con¬ 
siderable place in their time. {Ann. Comnen., 1, 41. 
—Cedren., Basil. Imp., p. 703.— Niceph., Callist., 
17, 3.) But it is now scarcely more than a village, 
which is rendered unhealthy by its proximity to some 
marshes. Its modern name is Durazzo. {Cramer's 
Ancient Greece, vol. 1, p. 49, seqq.) 

Epidauria, a festival at Athens in honour of JEs- 
culapius. 

Epidaurus, I. a city of Argolis, on the shores of the 
Saronic Gulf, opposite the island of iEgina. Its ter¬ 
ritory extended along the coast for the space of fifteen 
stadia, while towards the land it was encircled by lofty 
mountains, which contributed to its security. {Stra¬ 
bo, 374.) The more ancient appellation of this city 
was Epicams; its founders having been Carians, as 
Aristotle reported, who were afterward joined by an 
P p p 


Ionian colony from Attica {ap. Strab., 1. c.). On the 
arrival of the Heraclidae and Dorians, Epidaurus sub 
mitted to their arms, and received a colony from Ar¬ 
gos under Deiphontes. {Pausan., 2, 34.) It afterward 
contributed, as Herodotus informs us (1, 146, and 7, 
99), to the foundation of several Dorian cities in Asia 
Minor. The constitution of Epidaurus was originally 
monarchical; in the time of Periander of Corinth, hi* 
father-in-law, Procles, was tyrant of Epidaurus. {He¬ 
rod., 3, 53.) Afterward the government was aristo- 
cratical; the chief magistrates being called Artynas or 
Artyni, as at Argos {Thucyd., 5, 47), and being the 
presidents of a council of one hundred and eighty. 
The common people were termed Konipedes ( K ovl- 
Trodeq) or dusty-feet, in allusion to their agricultural 
pursuits. {Plut., Qucest. Gr., 1.) Epidaurus was the 
mother-city of JSgina and Cos, the former of which 
was once dependant upon it; afterward, however, the 
iEginetae emancipated themselves from this state of 
vassalage, and, by means of their navy, did much in¬ 
jury to the Epidaurian territory. {Herod., 5, 83.) The 
Epidaurians sent ten ships to Salamis, and 800 heavy¬ 
armed soldiers to Plataea. {Herodot., 8, 1, and 9,102.^ 
They were the allies of Sparta during the Peloponne¬ 
sian war {Thucyd., 1, 105, and 2, 56), and successfully 
resisted the Argives, who besieged their city after the 
battle of Amphipolis. {Thucyd., 5, 53, seqq.) Du¬ 
ring the Boeotian war they were still in alliance with 
Lacedaemon {Xen., Hist. Gr., 4, 2, 16.— Id., 7, 2, 2), 
but in the time of Aratus we find them united with 
the Achaean league. {Polyb., 2,5.) Epidaurus was still 
a flourishing city when Paulus JEmilius made the tour 
of Greece {Liv., 45, 28.— Polyb., 30, 15, 1); and Pau- 
sanias informs us, that many of its buildings were in 
good preservation when he visited Argolis, more than 
three centuries later.—Epidaurus was famed for having 
been, in the mythological legends of Greece, the natal 
place of ^Esculapius ; and it derived its greatest ce¬ 
lebrity from a neighbouring temple to that god, which 
was the resort of all who needed his assistance. The 
temple of iEsculapius was situate at the upper end of 
a valley, about five miles from the city. In 293 B.C., 
it was so celebrated that, during a pestilence at Rome, 
a deputation was sent from this city to implore the aid 
of the Epidaurian god. {Liv., 10, 47.) The temple 
was always crowded with invalids, and the priests, who 
were also physicians, contrived to keep up its reputa¬ 
tion, for the walls were covered with tablets describing 
the cures which they had wrought, even in the time of 
Strabo. This sacred edifice had been raised on the 
spot where HDsculapius was supposed to have been 
born and educated. It was once richly decorated with 
offerings, but these had for the most part disappeared, 
either by open theft or secret plunder. The greatest 
depredator was Sylla, who appropriated the wealth de¬ 
posited in this shrine to the purpose of defraying the 
expenses of his army in the war against Mithradates. 
{Plut., Vit. Syll. — Diod. Sic., Excerpt.,^.) —Chan¬ 
dler states, .that the site of this ancient city is now 
called Eptthauro; but the traces are indistinct, and it 
has probably long been deserted. ( Travels, vol. 2, p. 
272.) Dodwell observed “ several masses of ruin at 
the foot of a promontory, which are covered by the 
sea; also some Doric remains and Roman fragments, 
on that side which is towards the plain.” {Class. 
Tour, vol. 2, p. 263.) The ruins of the temple 
iEsculapius are to be seen on the spot now called Ge- 
rao, probably a corruption of Hieron. Near the tern 
pie was a remarkably beautiful theatre, built by Poly 
clitus. {Pausan., 2, 27, 5.) This is now in bettei 
preservation than any other theatre in Greece, except 
that at Trametzus, near Ioannina, and was capable of 
containing 12,000 spectators. {Leake's Morea, vol 
2, p. 423.— Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 3, p. 270.) 
—II. A town of Laconia, surnamed Limera, on the 
eastern coast, about 200 stadia from Epidelium. I: 

481 



E P I 


eti 


rxad been founded by the Argives, to whom, indeed, 
according to Herodotus, the whole of this coast, as far 
as the Malean promontory, once belonged. Apollo- 
dorus (ap. Strab., 368) pretended, that Limera was 
only a contraction for Limenera, by which allusion was 
made to the convenience of the harbour. The town 
was situate on an eminence near the sea, and con¬ 
tained, among other buildings, a celebrated temple of 
^Esculapius. The ruins of Epidaurus Limera are to 
be seen a little to the north of the modern Monem- 
basia. (Itin. of Morea, p. 235.) Its site is now known 
by the name of Palaio Embasia. (Cramer's Ancient 
Greece , vol. 3, p. 201.)—III. A maritime city of Illy¬ 
ria, south of the river Naro. Mannert identifies it with 
the Arbona of Polybius (2, 11.— Mannert, Geogr., 
vol. 7, p. 350). 

EpidIum, I. one of the Ebudas Insulae, supposed by 
Mannert to be the same with the modern Ila. (Geogr., 
vol. 2, p. 231.)—II. A promontory of Caledonia, cor¬ 
responding to the southern extremity of the peninsula 
of Cantyre. ( Mannert, Geogr., vol. 2, p. 204.) 

Epig5ni (’E 7 xlyovoi, descendants), the sons of the 
Grecian heroes who were killed in the first Theban 
war. (Vid. Polynices.) The war of the Epigoni is 
famous in ancient history. It was undertaken ten years 
after the first. The sons of those who had perished 
in the first war resolved to avenge the death of their 
fathers. The god, when consulted, promised them vic¬ 
tory, if led by Alcmaeon, the son of Amphiaraus. Alc- 
maeon accordingly took the command. Another ac¬ 
count, however, given by Pausanias (9, 9, 2), makes 
Thersander, son of Polynices, to have been at the head 
of the expedition. The other leaders were Amphilo- 
chus, brother of Alcmaeon; HSgialeus, son of Adras- 
tus ; Diomedes, of Tydeus; Promachus, of Parthe- 
nopaeus ; Sthenelus, of Capaneus ; and Eurypylus, of 
Mecisteus. The Argives were assisted by the Mes- 
senians, Arcadians, Corinthians, and Megarians. The 
Thebans obtained aid from the neighbouring states. 
The invaders ravaged the villages about Thebes. A 
battle ensued, in which Laodamas, the son of Eteocles, 
slew iEgialeus, and fell himself by the spear of Alc¬ 
maeon. The Thebans then fled ; and, by the advice of 
Tiresias, they secretly left their city, which was en¬ 
tered and plundered by the Argives, and Thersander 
was placed on the throne.—With the exception of the 
events of the Trojan war and the return of the Greeks, 
nothing was so closely connected with the Iliad and 
Odyssey as the war of the Argives against Thebes, 
since many of the principal heroes of Greece, particu¬ 
larly Diomede and Sthenelus, were themselves among 
the conquerors of Thebes, and their fathers before 
them, a bolder and wilder race, had fought on the same 
spot, in a contest which, although unattended with 
victory, was still far from inglorious. Hence, also, re¬ 
puted Homeric poems on the subject of this war were 
extant, which perhaps really bore a great affinity to the 
Homeric time and school. For we do not find, as in 
the other poems of the cycle, the name of one, or 
those of several later poets, placed in connexion with 
these compositions, but they are either attributed to 
Homer, as the earlier Greeks in general appear to have 
done; or if the authorship of Homer is doubted, they 
are usually attributed to no author at all. Thus the 
second part of the Thebais, which related to the ex¬ 
ploits of the Epigoni, was, according to Pausanias (9, 
9, 2), ascribed by some to Homer. The true reading 
in Pausanias, in the passage just referred to, is un¬ 
doubtedly KaXXlvog, and neither K aXaivog (more cor¬ 
rectly KdXaivog), as the common text has it, nor KaX- 
Xi/raxog, as Ruhnken conjectures (ad Callim., vol. 1, 
p. 439, e l. Ernest.). This ancient elegiac poet, there¬ 
fore, about the twentieth Olympiad, quoted the Thebaid 
as Homeric. The Epigoni was still commonly as¬ 
cribed to Homer in the time of Herodotus (4, 32.— 
Muller , Hist. Lit. Gr., p. 70, seq.). 

482 


Epimenides, a Cretan, contemporary with Solorv 
Ixun in the year 659 B.C., at Phsestus, in the island <x 
Cr'He, according to some accounts, or at Consut? 
according to others. Many marvellous tales are re¬ 
lated of him. It is said, that going, by his father'* 
order, in search of a sheep, he laid himself down in a 
cave, where he fell asleep, and slept for fifty years. 
He then made bis appearance among his fellow-citi¬ 
zens with long hair and a flowing beard, and with a 
knowledge of medicine and natural history which then 
appeared more than human. Another idle story told 
of this Cretan is, that he had a power of sending his 
soul out of his body and recalling it at pleasure. It is 
added, that he had familiar intercourse with the gods, 
and possessed the power of prophecy. The event of 
his life for which he is best known, was his visit to 
Athens at the request of the inhabitants, in order to 
pave the way for the legislation of Solon by purifica¬ 
tions and propitiatory sacrifices. These rites were 
calculated, according to the spirit of the age, to allay 
the feuds and party dissensions which prevailed there ; 
and, although what he enjoined was mostly of a reli¬ 
gious nature (for instance, the sacrifice of a human vic¬ 
tim, the consecration of a temple to the Eumenides, 
and of two altars to Hybris and Anaideia, the two evil 
powers which were exerting their influence on the 
Athenians), there can be little doubt but that his object 
was political, and that Solon’s constitution would hardly 
have been accepted, had it not been recommended and 
sanctioned by some person, who, like Epimenides, 
claimed from men little less than the veneration due to 
a superior being. The Athenians wished to reward 
Epimenides with wealth and public honours, but ho 
refused to accept any remuneration, and only demand¬ 
ed a branch of the sacred olive-tree, and a decree o» 
perpetual friendship between Athens and his native 
city.—We probably owe most of the wonderful tales, 
relative to Epimenides, to the Cretans, who were, to 
a proverb, famous for their powers of invention. All 
that is credible concerning him is, that he was a man 
of superior talents, who pretended to have intercourse 
with the gods ; and, to support his pretensions, lived 
in retirement upon the spontaneous productions of the 
earth, and practised various arts of imposture. Per¬ 
haps, in his hours of pretended inspiration, he had the 
art of appearing totally insensible and entranced, which 
would easily be mistaken, by ignorant spectators, for 
a power of dismissing and recalling his spirit. Epi¬ 
menides is said to have lived, after his return to Crete, 
to the age of 157 years. Divine honours were paid 
him afte'r his death by the superstitious Cretans. He 
has no other claims to be mentioned among philoso¬ 
phers, except that he composed a theogony, and other 
poems concerning religious mysteries. He wrote also 
a poem on the Argonautic expedition, and other works, 
which are entirely lost. His treatise on oracles and 
responses, mentioned by St. Jerome, is said to have 
been the work from which St. Paul quotes in the epis¬ 
tle to Titus (1, 12.—Consult Heinrich . Epimenides 

aus Kreta, Leipz., 1801.— Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 
9, p. 476.— Diog. Laert., 1, 109.— Val. Max., 8, 13. 
— Plin., 7, 52.— Aristot., Rhet., 3, 9.— Enfield's His¬ 
tory of Philosophy , vol. 1, p.^132, seqq.) 

Epimetheus, a son of Iapetus and Clymene, one 
of the Oceanides. He inconsiderately married Pan¬ 
dora, by whom he had Pyrrha, the wife of Deucalion. 
The legend connected with his name will be found un¬ 
der the article Pandora. 

Epimethis, a patronymic of Pyrrha, the daughter 
of Epimetheus. (Ovid, Met., 1, 390.) 

Epiphanea, I. a town of Cilicia Campestris, south¬ 
east of Anazarbus, and situate on the small river Car- 
sus, near the range of Mount Amanus. It is now 
Surfendkar. (Plin., 5, 27.)—II. A city of Syria, or. 
the Orontes, below Apamea. Its Oriental and true name 
was Hamath, and it was reckoned by the people of the 




E PI 


E P i 


East one of the most magnificent cities in the world, 
navmg been founded, as they imagined, by Hamath, 
one of the sons of Canaan. Allusion is frequently 
made to Hamath in the Old Testament. (Compare 
Genesis , 10, 18.—2 Samuel, 8, 9.—2 Kings, 48, 34. 
— Jerem., 49, 23.— Amos, 6,2.) Its name was chan¬ 
ged to Epiphanea, in honour of Antiochus Epiphanes. 
It is now Hama, and w r as in modern times the seat of 
an Arabian dynasty, to which the geographer Abulfeda 
belonged. ( Abulfeda, Tab. Syr., p. 108.— Pococke, 
vol. 2, p. 210.— Mannert, vol. 6, pt. 1, p. 461.) 

Epiphanes (illustrious), I. a surname of Antiochus 
IV., King of Syria.—II. A surname of Ptolemy V., 
King of Egypt. 

Epiphanius, a bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, in the 
fourth century. He was born of Jewish parents, at a 
village called Besanducan, near Eleutheropolis, in Pal¬ 
estine, about A.D. 320, and appears to have been edu¬ 
cated in Egypt, where he imbibed the principles of the 
Gnostics. At length he left those heretics, and, be¬ 
coming an ascetic, returned to Palestine and adopted 
the discipline of St. Hilarion, the founder of monachism 
in that country. Epiphanius erected a monastery near 
the place of his birth, over which he presided till he 
was made bishop of Salamis in 367. Here he remain¬ 
ed about 36 years, and composed most of his writings. 
In 391 he commenced a controversy with John, bishop 
of Jerusalem, relative to the Platonic doctrines of the 
learned and laborious Origen, against which he wrote 
and preached with implacable bitterness. John fa¬ 
voured Origen’s views, but Epiphanius found in The- 
ophilus, the violent bishop of Alexandrea, a worthy 
coadjutor, who, in 399, convened a council, and con¬ 
demned all the works of Origen. Epiphanius himself 
then called a council in Cyprus, A.D. 401, and reit¬ 
erated this condemnation, after which he wrote to St. 
Chrysostom, then bishop of Constantinople, requesting 
him to do the same. On finding this prelate disin¬ 
clined to sanction his violent proceedings, he forthwith 
repaired to Constantinople, for the purpose of exciting 
the bishops of that diocese to join in executing the de¬ 
crees which his Cyprian council had issued ; but, hav- 
•ng entered a church in the city in order to repeat his 
inathemas, he was forewarned by Chrysostom of the 
llegality of his conduct, and was obliged to desist. 
Exasperated at this disappointment, he applied to the 
imperial court for assistance, where he soon embroiled 
himself with the Empress Eudoxia ; for, on the occa¬ 
sion of her asking him to pray for the young Theodo¬ 
sius, who was dangerously ill, he replied that her son 
should not die, provided she would not patronise the 
defenders of Origen. To this presumptuous message 
the empress indignantly answered, that her son’s life 
was not in the power of Epiphanius, whose prayers 
were unable to save that of his own archdeacon, who 
had recently died. After thus vainly endeavouring to 
gratify his sectarian animosity, he resolved to return 
to Cyprus ; but he died at sea on the passage, A.D. 
403. The principal works of Epiphanius are, 1. ITa- 
vdpiov, or a Treatise on Heresies, that is, peculiar sects 
(alpecmc). This is the most important of his writings. 
It treats of eighty sects, from the time of Adam to the 
latter part of the 4th century. 2. ’ kvauetyalaMcig, 
or an Epitome of the Panarion. 3. ’A yuvpoTov, or 
a Discourse on the Faith, explaining the doctrine of 
the Trinity, Resurrection, &c. 4. A treatise on the 

ancient weights, measures, and coins of the Jews.— 
Epiphanius was an austere and superstitious ascetic, 
and, as a bitter controversialist, he often resorts to very 
false arguments for the refutation of heretics. That 
his inaccuracy and credulity were equal to his religious 
zeal, is apparent from his numerous mistakes in im¬ 
portant historical facts, and his reliance on any false 
and foolish reports. Jerome, however, admires Epi¬ 
phanius for his skill in the Hebrew, Syriac, Egyptian, 
Greek, and Latin languages, and accordingly styles him 


“ Pentaglottus” (UevTu-yTuoTTog), or the Five-tongue. 
But Scaliger calls him an ignorant man, who commit¬ 
ted the greatest blunders, told the greatest falsehoods, 
and knew next to nothing about either Hebrew or 
Greek. Still his writings are of great value, as con¬ 
taining numerous citations from curious works which 
are no longer extant. The best edition of his works 
is that of Petavius, Paris, 2 vols. fol., 1622, and Cot,., 
1682. (Du Pin, Bill. Keel, vol. 2.— Cave's Lit. 
Hist. — Bayle, Diet., s. v. — Clarke's Succession of Sa¬ 
cred, Literature. — Encyc. Useful Knowledge, vol. 9, p. 
477.) 

Epipol^e, apiece of elevated and broken ground, 
sloping down towards the city of Syracuse, but pre¬ 
cipitous on the other side. It received its name from 
the circumstance of its overlooking Syracuse. Hence 
Thucydides (6, 96) remarks, uvopaarat vtvo ruv 2 vp- 
auovoiuv, dm to kTunohrjg tov uX'kov elvat, ’Ettctto- 
% at. (Consult Goller, de Situ et Origine Syracus- 
arum, p. 53, seqq.) 

Epirus, a country to the west of Thessaly, lying 
along the Hadriatic. The Greek term rjTzetpog, which 
answers to the English word mainland, appears to have 
been applied at a very early period to that northwest¬ 
ern portion of Greece which is situated between the 
chain of Pindus and the Ionian Gulf, and between the 
Ceraunian Mountains and the river Acheloiis ; this 
name being probably used to distinguish it from the 
large, populous, and wealthy island of Corcyra, which 
lay opposite to the coast. It appears that, in very 
ancient times, Acarnania was also included in the term, 
and in that case the name must have been used in 
opposition to all the islands lying along the coast. 
(Strab., 453.— Horn., Od., 14, 100.) The ancient 
geography of Epirus was attended with great difficulties 
even in the time of Strabo. The country had not then 
recovered from the effects of the destruction caused by 
Paulus HCmilius in 167 B.C., who destroyed seventy 
towns, and reduced to slavery 150,000 of the inhabi¬ 
tants. ( Polyb ., ap. Strab., p. 322.— Liv., 45, 34.— 
Plut., Vit. Paul. JEmil., c. 29.) After this the great¬ 
er part of the country remained in a state of absolute 
desolation, and, where there were any inhabitants, they 
had nothing but villages and ruins to dwell in. (Strab., 
327.)—The inhabitants of Epirus were scarcely consid¬ 
ered Hellenic. The population in early times had 
been Pelasgic. (Strab., 221.)—The oracle at Dodona 
was always called Pelasgic, and many names of places 
in Epirus were also borne by the Pelasgic cities of 
the opposite coast of Italy. (Niebuhr, Hist. Rom., 
vol. 1, p. 34.) But irruptions of Illyrians had barba¬ 
rized the whole nation ; and though Herodotus speaks 
of Thesprotia as a part of Hellas, he refers rather to 
its old condition, when it was a celebrated seat of 
the Pelasgians, than to its state at the time when he 
wrote his history. In their mode of cutting the hair, 
in their costume, and in their language, the Epirotes 
resembled the Macedonians, who were an Illyrian 
race. (Strab., 327.) Theopompus (ap. Strab., 323) 
divided the inhabitants of Epirus into fourteen differ¬ 
ent tribes, of which the most renowned were the Cha 
onians and Molossians, who successively maintained 
a preponderance in this country. The Molossians 
claimed descent from Molossus, son of Neoptolemus 
and Andromache. Tradition reported, that the son of 
Achilles, Neoptolemus, or Pyrrhus, as he is also called, 
having crossed from Thessaly into Epirus on his re¬ 
turn from the siege of Troy, was induced, by the ad¬ 
vice of an oracle, to settle in the latter country, where, 
having subjugated a considerable extent of territory, 
he transmitted his newly-formed kingdom to Molossus, 
his son by Andromache, from whom his subjects de¬ 
rived the name of Molossi. (Find., Nem., 7, 56.) 
Scymnus of Chios conceives Pyrrhus to have been the 
son of Neoptolemus (v. 446). The history of Molossia 
is involved in great obscurity until the period of the 

483 



EPIRUS. 


E P o 


Persian invasion, when the name of Admetus, king of 
the Molossi, occu-rs from the circumstance of his hav¬ 
ing generously afforded shelter to Themistocles when 
in exile and pursued by his enemies, although the in¬ 
fluence of that celebrated statesman had previously 
been exerted against him in some negotiations which 
he had carried on at Athens. The details of this in¬ 
teresting anecdote, as they are furnished by Thucyd¬ 
ides, serve to prove the weakness as well as poverty 
of the Molossian chiefs compared with the leading 
powers of Greece at that time. ( Thucyd ., i, 136.) 
Admetus was succeeded by his son Tharypas or Tha- 
rymbas, who appears to have been a minor towards 
the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, when we 
find his subjects assisting the Ambraciots in their in¬ 
vasion of Acarnania. Thucydides, on that occasion, 
reports, that Sabylinthus, prince of Atintania, was 
guardian to Tharybas (2, 80). Tharybas is represent¬ 
ed by Plutarch (Vit. Pyrrh.) as a wise and able mon¬ 
arch, and as encouraging science and literature. His 
successor is not known ; but some years after we hear 
of a prince called Alcetas, who was dethroned by his 
subjects, but restored by Dionysius of Syracuse. 
(Diod. Sic., 15, 13.— Pausan., 1 , 11.) Neoptolemus, 
his son, reigned but for a short time, and left the 
crown to his brother Arybas, together with the care of 
his children. Alexander, the eldest cf these, succeed¬ 
ed his uncle, and was the first sovereign of Epirus 
who raised the character and fame of that country 
among foreign nations by his talents and valour. His 
sister Olympias had been married to Philip of Mace- 
don, before his accession to the throne of Epirus ; and 
the friendship thus cemented between the two mon- 
archs was still farther strengthened by the union of 
Alexander with Cleopatra, the daughter of Philip. 
It was during the celebration of these nuptials at 
Edessa that the King of Macedon was assassinated. 
Alexander of Epirus seems to have been an ambitious 
prince, desirous of conquest and renown; and, though 
we have no certain information of the events which 
occurred during his reign, there is good reason for be¬ 
lieving that he united the Chaonians, Thesprotians, 
and other Epirotic clans, together with the Molossians, 
under his sway; as we find the title of King of Epirus 
first assumed by him. ( Diod . Sic., 16, 72.— Strabo, 
280.) Having been applied to by the Tarentines to 
aid them against the attacks of the Lucani and Brutii, 
he eagerly seized this opportunity of adding to his 
fame and enlarging his dominions. He therefore 
crossed over into Italy with a considerable force, and, 
had he been properly seconded by the Tarentines 
and the other colonies of Magna Graecia, the barba¬ 
rians, aftpr being defeated in several engagements, 
must have been conquered. But Alexander, being left 
to his own resources and exertions, was at length sur¬ 
rounded by the enemy, and slain near the fated walls 
of Pandosia, in the Brutian territory. ( Liv ., 8, 24.— 
Strabo, 255.) On the death of Alexander the crown 
devolved on his cousin HSacides, the son of Arybas 
the former king, of whom little is known, except that, 
having raised an army to assist Olympias against Cas- 
sander, his soldiers mutinied and deposed him ; not 
long after, however, he appears to have been reinstated. 
(Diod. Sic., 19, 36.') His brother Alcetas, who suc¬ 
ceeded him, was .engaged in a war with Cassander, 
which proved unfortunate ; for, being defeated, his do¬ 
minions were overrun by the forces of his victorious en¬ 
emy, and he himself was put (to death by his rebellious 
subjects. (Diod. Sic., 19, 36.) Th^ name of Pyrrhus, 
who now ascended the throne, sheds a lustre on "the an¬ 
nals of Epirus, and gives to its history an importance 
it never would otherwise have possessed. (Vid. Pyr¬ 
rhus.; Alexander, the eldest son of Pyrrhus, succeed¬ 
ed his father, whom he sought to emulate by attempting 
afresh the.conquest of Macedon. On this occasion An- 
Jigonus Gonatas was again vanquished and driven from 
,484 


his dominions. But Demetrius, his son, naving raised 
another army, attacked Alexander, and presently com¬ 
pelled him to evacuate the Macedonian territory. ( Jus- 
tin, 26, 3.— Frontin., Strat., 3.) At the expiration of 
two other insignificant reigns, the royal line of the 
iEackhe becoming extinct, the Epirots determined to 
adopt a republican form of government, which pre¬ 
vailed until the subjugation of Macedon by the Ro¬ 
mans. Having been accused of favouring Perseus in 
the last Macedonian war, they became the objects ol 
the bitterest vengeance of the Romans, who treated 
thr unfortunate nation, as we have already remarked, 
with unexampled and detestable severity. Epirus, 
having lost its independence, was thenceforth annexed 
as a province to the Roman empire.—We may consider 
Epirus as bounded .on the north by Illyria and part of 
Macedonia, from the Acrocerauman mountains to the 
central chain of Pindus. In this direction the rivei 
Aous would be the natural line of separation between 
these two countries. The Peravaei and Tymphsei, 
who occupied the upper valleys of that river, being 
generally looked upon as Epirotic tribes, while the 
Orestae and Elymiotae, contiguous to them on the 
north, were certainly included within the limits ol 
Macedonia. On the side of Thessaly, Pindus formed 
another natural barrier, as far as the source of the river 
Arachthus, which served to part the Cassopaei and oth¬ 
er Molossian clans from the country of the Athamanes. 
But as the republic of Ambracia, which occupied both 
banks of this river near its entrance into the Ambra- 
cian gulf, became a portion of Epirus after it ceased 
to enjoy a separate political existence, we must remove 
the southern boundary of this province to the vicin¬ 
ity of Argos and the territory of the Amphilochians. 
Epirus, though in many respects wild and mountain¬ 
ous, was esteemed a rich and fertile country. Its 
pastures produced the finest oxen, and horses un¬ 
rivalled for their speed. It was also famous for a 
large breed of dogs, thence called Molossi; and mod¬ 
ern travellers have noticed the size and ferocity of 
these dogs at the present day. Epirus corresponds to 
the Lower Albania of modern times. The follow¬ 
ing is the account given of the present aspect of the 
country by Malte-Brun. “ The climate of Lower Al¬ 
bania is colder than that of Greece; the spring does not 
set in before the middle of March, and the heat of sum¬ 
mer is oppressive in July and August: in these months 
many streams and rivers are drained, the grass and 
plants are withered. The vintage begins in Septem¬ 
ber, and the heavy rains during December are suc¬ 
ceeded in January by some days of frosty weather. 
(Pouqueville, vol. 2, p. 263, seqq.) The oak-trees, 
and there is almost every kind of them, arrive at great 
perfection: the plane, the cypress, and manniferous 
ash appear near the seacoast, beside the laurel and 
the lentisk ; but the forests on Pindus consist chiefly 
of cedars, pine, larch, and chestnut-trees. ( Pouqueville , 
vol. 2, p. 186 and 274.— Id., vol. 4, p. 412.) Many 
of the mountains are arid and steril; such as are suf¬ 
ficiently watered are verdant, or covered with the wild 
vine and thick groups of elders; in spring their sides 
are covered with flowers ; the violet, the narcissus, and 
hyacinth appear in the same profusion as in the mild 
districts of Italy. The inhabitants cultivate cotton and 
silk ; but the olive, for want of proper care, does not 
yield an abundant harvest; the Amphilochian peach, the 
Arta nut, and the quince, grow in a wild state in <he 
woods and uncultivated land. Epirus was once fa¬ 
mous for its oxen ; the breed was improved by King 
Pyrrhus (Plin., 7, 44.— Aristot., Hist. An., 3, 16): 
it has now degenerated ; they are small, stunted, and 
ill-shaped. The horses of the same country are still 
excellent.” (Malte-Brun, Geogr., vol. 6, p. 179, 
Am. cd.) 

Eporedorix, I. a leading chieftain among the ^Edui 
in Gaul He commanded the forces of his country- 






E Q U 


EQU 


men in their war with the Sequani, before Caesar’s ar¬ 
rival in Gaul. ( B. G., 7, 67.) He afterward went 
over to the side of Vercingetorix, in the great insur¬ 
rection against the Roman power, but was taken pris¬ 
oner by Caesar. ( B . G., 7, 55.— lb., 63.— lb., 67.) 
—II. Another TEduan leader, mentioned by Caesar. 
(B.G., 7, 76.) 

Epytides, a patronymic given to Periphantes, the 
son of Epytus, and the companion of Ascamus. ( Virg., 
JSn. ; 5, 547.) 

Eguiria, a festival established at Rome by Romu¬ 
lus in honour of Mars, when horse-races and games 
were exhibited in the Campus Martius. It took place 
on ti e 27th of February. ( Varro, de L. L., 5, 3.— 
Ovid, Fast., 2, 859.) 

Equites, the name of an order in the Roman state. 
Their origin, according to the old tradition, was this: 
Romulus, having divided his subjects into three tribes, 
chose from each 100 young men, whom he destined 
to serve on horseback, and act as his body-guard. This 
body of cavalry was called the Celeres, and afterward 
the Equites. {Dion. Hal., 2, 13.) Niebuhr supposes 
{Rom. Hist., vol. 1, p. 325), that whereas Patres and 
Patrick were titles of honour for individuals, Celeres 
was the name of the whole class as distinguished from 
the rest of the nation. The three centuries of the Ce¬ 
leres were called by the same names as the three tribes 
of the patricians, namely, Ramnes, Titles, and Luceres. 
Their tribunes are spoken of as a college of priests 
{Dion. Hal., 2, 64), and it appears that the tribes of 
the patricians had also tribunes. {Dion. Hal., 2, 7.) 
Moreover, when it is said that Tarquinius Priscus made 
three new centuries, which he added to the former three, 
and that the whole went under the name of the Sex 
Suffragia, or the Six Equestrian Centuries, we cannot 
doubt that the alteration which he introduced was a con¬ 
stitutional, and not merely a military one ; that, in fact, 
the centuries which he formed were, like the original 
three, tribes of houses ; that his innovation was nothing 
but an extension of the political division of Rome un¬ 
der Romulus. {Niebuhr, Rom. Hist., vol. 1, p. 391.) 
When Servius Tullius established the comitia of the 
centuries, he received the Sex Suffragia, which in¬ 
cluded all the patricians, into his first class, and to 
them he added twelve other equestrian centuries, made 
up of the richest of the plebeian order. {Niebuhr, 
vol. 1, p. 427.) The ancient writers appear to have 
laboured under some great confusion with regard to 
this arrangement. Livy (1, 43) makes a proper dis¬ 
tinction between the twelve equestrian centuries cre¬ 
ated by Servius, and the six which existed before ; but 
when he states (1, 36) that the cavalry in the reign of 
Tarquinius Priscus amounted to 1800, he appears to 
be antedating the origin of the eighteen equestrian cen¬ 
turies which formed part of the constitution of Servius. 
To the establishment of the Comitia Centuriata. the cre¬ 
ation of a body of Equites, as a distinct order, seems to 
be due. The plan of Servius was, to a certain extent, 
identical with that of Solon. The object of both legis¬ 
lators was to break down the limits to which the old 
aristocracy was confined, and to set up an order of 
wealth by the side of the order of birth ; not, however, 
that when a person could produce his 400,000 ses¬ 
terces, he became ipso facto a knight, as was the case 
in after times. {Hor., Epist., 1, 1, 57.) According 
to the Servian constitution, good birth or the sanction 
of the censors was necessary for gaining a place in the 
equestrian order. {Polyb., 6, 20.— Zonaras, 7, 19.) 
When Cicero says {De Repub., 2, 20) that Tarquinius 
established the equestrian order on the same footing as 
that on which it stood in his time, and also attributes 
to the same king the assigning of money to the equites 
for the purchase and keep of their horses, he is evi¬ 
dently inconsistent. In Tarquin’s time, that is, before 
there was any plebeian order, it was natural enough 
that the poorer patricians, who were obliged to serve 


on horseback (just as the 'hnecZ<; at Athens were 
poorer class than the UEVTaiiocnojucdi/Livoi, Pint., Vit. 
Sol., c. 18), should be furnished with the means for 
doing so. But the case was different with the equites, 
after the establishment of an order of wealth. A mar? 
might then be of equestrian rank, and yet have no 
horse assigned him. Thus, on the one hand, we find, 
at the time of the siege of Yeii, a number of equites 
serving on horseback at their own expense {Liv., 5, 7) ; 
and, on the contrary, L. Tarquitius, who was a patri 
cian, was obliged to serve on foot from his poverty. 
{Liv., 3, 27.) From this it appears probable that a 
certain sum was fixed, which it was not necessary for 
every eques to have, but the possessor of which was 
obliged to serve on horseback at his own expense if 
no horse could be given him by the public ; and that 
those w T hose fortune fell short of this, were obliged to 
serve in the infantry under the same circumstances. 
The lieutenant of the dictator was called “ the chief 
of the equites” {magister equitum) ; and although in 
later times he was appointed to this office by the die 
tator himself, it is probable, as Niebuhr conjectures 
(vol. 1, p. 559), that he was originally elected by the 
12 centuries of plebeian equites, just as the dictator or 
magister populi was chosen by the sex suffragia, or, 
in other words, by the populus or patricians.—With re¬ 
gard to the functions of the equites, besides their mil¬ 
itary duties, they had to act as judices or jurymen un¬ 
der the Sempronian law : under the Servilian law the 
judices were chosen from the senate as well as from 
the equites : by the Glaucian law, the equites alone 
performed the office ; and so on, by alternate changes, 
till the law of Aurelius Cotta, B.C. 70, by which the 
judices were chosen from the senators, equites,, and 
tribuni aerarii.—The equites also farmed the public 
revenues. Those who were engaged in this business 
were called the publicani; and though Cicero, who 
was himself of the equestrian order, speaks of these 
farmers as “ the flower of the Roman equites, the or¬ 
nament of the state, the safeguard of the republic” 
{pro Plane., 9), it appears that they were a set of de¬ 
testable oppressors, who made themselves odious ir. 
all the provinces by their avarice and rapacity.—Thf 
equites, as may be inferred from what has been already 
said, gradually lost the marks of their distinctive origin, 
and became, as they were in the time of Cicero, for in¬ 
stance, an ordo or class of persons, as distinguished 
from the senate and the plebs. They had particular 
seats assigned them in the circus and theatre. The 
insignia of their rank, in addition to the horse, were a 
golden ring, and the angustus clavus, or narrow border 
of purple on their dress, as distinguished from the latus 
clavus, or broad band of the senators. The last two in¬ 
signia seem to have remained after the former ceased 
to possess its original and distinctive character. {En- 
cycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 9, p. 492.) 

Equus Tuticus, a town of Samnium, on the Ap- 
pian Way, distant, according to the Itineraries, twen¬ 
ty-two ancient miles from Cluvia, which is itself ten 
miles northeast of Beneventum. ( Romanelli , vol. 2, 

р. 331.) The term Tuticus is Oscan, equivalent to 
the Latin Magnus. {Lanzi, vol. 3, p. 608 ) Much 
discussion has arisen among geographers as to the pre¬ 
cise situation of this place. Cluverius was of opinion 
that it ought to be placed at Ariano {Ital. Ant., 2, 
12); others near Ascoli {Pratilli, Via Appia, lib. 4, 

с. 10); D’Anville at Castel Franco {Annul. Geogr. 
de Vital., p. 218), which supposition is nearly correct, 
but the exact site, according to the report of local an¬ 
tiquaries, is occupied by the ancient church of St. 
Eleuterio, a martyr who is stated, in old ecclesiastical 
records, to have suffered at yEquum. This place is 
about five miles distant from Ariano, in a northerly di¬ 
rection. The branch of the Appian Way on which 
Equus Tuticus stood, runs nearly parallel with that 
which Horace seems to have followed in his well 

485 




ERA 


ERATOSTHENES. 


Known journey to Brundisium. He informs us, that 
he passed the first night after having left Benpventum 
at a villa close to Trivicum, a place situated among 
the mountains separating Samnium from Apulia. Hor¬ 
ace, in speaking of Equus Tuticus, pleasantly alludes 
to the unmanageable nature of the name in verse : 
“ Mansuri oppidulo, quod versu dicere non est .” (Sat ., 
1, 5, 87.) 

Erasistratus, a physician of Iulis, in the island of 
Ceos, and grandson of Aristotle by a daughter of this 
philosopher’s. ( Strabo , 486.— Steph. Byzan., s. v. 
*lov?ug.) After having frequented the schools of Chry- 
sippus, Metrodorus, and Theophrastus, he passed some 
time at the court of Seleucus Nicator, where he gained 
great reputation by his discovering the secret malady 
which preyed upon the young Antiochus, the son of 
the king, who was in love with his mother-in-law, 
Queen Stratonice. (Appian, Bell. Syr., c. 126.— Lu¬ 
cian, de Dea Syr., c. 17.) It was at Alexandrea, how¬ 
ever, that he principally practised. At last he refused 
altogether to visit the sick, and devoted himself en¬ 
tirely to the study of anatomy. The branches of this 
study which are indebted to him for new discoveries, 
are, among others, the doctrine of the functions of the 
brain, and that of the nervous system. He has im¬ 
mortalized himself by the discovery of the vice, lactece; 
and he would seem to have come very near that of the 
circulation of the blood. Comparative anatomy fur¬ 
nished him with the means of describing the brain 
much better than had ever been done before him. He 
also distinguished and gave names to the auricles of the 
heart. (Galen, de Dogm. Hipp. et Plat., lib. 7, p. 311, 
seqq. — Id., de UsuPart., lib. 8, p. 458.— Id., de Ad- 
ministr. Anat., lib. 7, p. 184.— Id., an Sanguis, &c., 
p. 223.) A singular doctrine of Erasistratus is that 
of the TTvevna (pneuma), or the spiritual substance 
which, according to him, fills the arteries, which we in¬ 
hale in respiration, which from the lungs makes its way 
into the arteries, and then becomes the vital principle 
of the human system. As long as this spirit moves 
about in the arteries, and the blood in the veins, man 
enjoys health : but when, from some cause or other, 
the veins become contracted, the blood then spreads 
into the arteries and becomes the source of maladies: 
it produces fever when it enters into some noble part 
or into the great artery ; and inflammations when it 
is found in the less noble parts or in the extremities of 
the arteries. (Galen, Comm., 1, in lib. de Nat. Hum., 
p. 3.) Erasistratus rejected entirely blood-letting, as 
well as cathartics : he supplied their place with dieting 
tepid bathing, vomiting, and exercise. In general, he 
was attached to simple remedies: he recognised what 
was subsequently termed Idiosyncrasy, or the pecu¬ 
liar constitution of different individuals, which makes 
the same remedy act differently on different persons. 
A few fragments of the writings of Erasistratus have 
been preserved by Galen. (Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., 
vol. 3, p. 406, seqq. — Sprengel, Hist. Med., vol. 1, p. 
439, seqq.) 

Erato, one of the Muses, who presided over lyric, 
tender, and amorous poetry. She is said to have in¬ 
vented also hymns to the gods, and to have presided 
likewise over pantomimic dancing. Hence Ausonius 
says, “ Plectra gerens Erato saltatpede, carmine, vul- 
tu .” (Idyl, ult., v. 6.) She is represented as crown¬ 
ed with roses and myrtle, holding a lyre in her hand. 
She appears with a thoughtful, and sometimes with a 
gay and animated, look. (Compare Muller, Archaol. 
der Kunst, p. 594, seqq.) 

Eratosthenes, a distinguished contemporary of 
Archimedes, born at Cyrene, B.C. 276. He pos¬ 
sessed a variety of talents seldom united in the same 
individual, but not all in the same eminent degree. 
His mathematical, astronomical, and geographical la¬ 
bours are those which have rescued his name from ob¬ 
livion. The Alexandrean school of sciences, which 


flourished under the first Ptolemies, had already pro 
duced Timochares and Aristyllus, whose solstitial ob¬ 
servations, made probably by the shadows of a gnomon, 
and by the armillary circles imitative of those of the 
celestial vault, retained considerable credit for con- 
turies afterward, though, from these methods of obesr- 
vation, they must have been extremely rude and im¬ 
perfect. Eratosthenes had not only the advantages 
arising from the instruments and observations of his 
predecessors, but the great Alexandrean library, which, 
probably contained all the Phoenician, Chaldaic, Egyp¬ 
tian, and Greek learning of the time, was intrusted 
to his superintendence by the third Ptolemy (Euerge- 
tes) who invited him to Alexandrea ; and we have 
proof, in the scattered fragments which remain to us 
of this great man, that these advantages were duly 
cultivated to his own fame and the progress of in¬ 
fant astronomy. The only work attributed to Era¬ 
tosthenes which has come down to us entire, is en 
titled KaraGTepic/uol (Catasterismi), and is merely a 
catalogue of the names of forty-four constellations, 
and the situations in each constellation of the princi¬ 
pal stars, of which he enumerates nearly five hundred, 
but without one reference to astronomical measure¬ 
ment. We find Hipparchus quoted in it, and mention 
made of the motion of the pole, that of the polar star 
having been recognised by Pytheas. These circum¬ 
stances, taken in conjunction with the vagueness of 
the descriptions, render its genuineness extremely 
doubtful; at all events, it is a work of little value. If 
Eratosthenes be really the author of the “ Catasteris¬ 
mi,” it must have been composed merely as a vade 
mecum, for we find him engaged in astronomical re¬ 
searches far more exact and more worthy of his ge¬ 
nius. By his observations he determined, that the 
distance between the tropics, that is, twice the obliqui¬ 
ty of the ecliptic, was °f an entire circumference, or 
47° 42' 39", which makes the ; obliquity to be 23° 51 
19. 5'',nearly the same as that supposed by Hippar¬ 
chus and Ptolemy. As the means of observation were 
at that time very imperfect, the instruments divided 
only to intervals of 10', and corrections for the greater 
refraction at the winter solstice, for the diameter of 
the solar disc, &c., were then unknown, we must re¬ 
gard this conclusion as highly creditable to Eratos¬ 
thenes. His next achievement was to measure the 
circumference of the earth. He knew that at Syene 
(the modern Assouan) the sun was vertical at noon 
in the summer solstice ; while at Alexandrea, at the 
same moment, it was below the Zenith by the fiftieth 
part of a circumference : the two places are nearly on 
the same meridian (error 2°). Neglecting the solar 
parallax, he concluded that the distance from Alexan¬ 
drea to Syene is the fiftieth part of the circumference 
of the earth; this distance he estimated at five thou 
sand stadia, which gives two hundred and fifty thou¬ 
sand stadia for the circumference. Thus Eratosthe¬ 
nes has the merit of pointing out a method for finding 
the circumference of the earth. But his data were not 
sufficiently exact, nor had he the means of measuring 
the distance from Alexandrea to Syene with sufficient 
precision.—Eratosthenes has been called a poet, and 
Scaliger, in his commentary on Manilius, gives some 
fragments of a poem attributed to him, entitled 'E p/uyg 
(Hermes), one of which is a description of the terres¬ 
trial zones. It is not improbable that these are au¬ 
thentic.—That Eratosthenes was an excellent geome¬ 
ter we cannot doubt, from his still extant solution of 
the problem of two mean proportionals, preserved by 
Theon, and a lost treatise quoted by Pappus, “ De 
Locis ad Medietates ,” on which Montucla has offered 

some conjectures. (Hist, des Math., an. 7, p. 280.)_ 

Eratosthenes appears to have been one of the first 
who attempted to form a system of geography His 
work on this subiect. entitled TeoypaQiKa (Geo^ra- 
phica), was divided into three books. The first con- 




ERti 


ERE 


»dined a history of geography, a .critical notice of the 
authorities used by him, and the elements of physical 
geography. The second book treated of mathemati¬ 
cal geography. The third contained the political or 
historical geography of the then known world. The 
whole work was accompanied with a map. The geog¬ 
raphy of Eratosthenes is lost; the fragments which 
remain have been chiefly preserved by Strabo, who 
was doubtless much indebted to them.—Eratosthenes 
also busied himself with chronology. Some remarks 
on his Greek chronology will be found in Clinton’s 
Fasti Hellenici (vol. 1, p. 3.— lb ., p. 408) ; and on 
his list of Theban kings in Rask’s work on the An¬ 
cient Egyptian Chronology ( Altona , 1830).—The prop¬ 
erties of numbers attracted the attention of philoso¬ 
phers from the earliest period, and Eratosthenes also 
distinguished himself in this branch. He wrote a work 
on the “ Duplication of the Cube,” K v6ov dur'kacnao- 
yog, which we only know by a sketch that Eudoxus 
has given of it, in his treatise on the Sphere and Cyl¬ 
inder of Archimedes. Eratosthenes composed, also, 
another work in this department, entitled K ooklvov, or 
“ the Sieve,” the object of which was to separate 
prime from composite numbers, a curious memoir on 
which was published by Horseley, in the “ Philosophi¬ 
cal Transactions,” 1772.—Eratosthenes arrived at the 
age of eighty years, and then, becoming weary of life, 
died by voluntary starvation. ( Suid ., s. v.) Montu- 
cla, with his usual naivete,' says, it would have been 
more philosophical to have awaited death “de pied 
ferme.”—The best editions of the Catasterismi are 
that of Schaubach, with notes by Heyne, Gott., 1795, 
and that of Matthiae, in his Aratus, Francof., 1817, 
8vo. The fragments of Eratosthenes have been col¬ 
lected by Bernhardy, Berol., 1822. ( Montucla , Hist, 

des Math ., p. 239.— Delambre, Hist, de VAstron. Anc ., 
p. 86. — Encycl. Us. Knowl. , vol. 9, p. 497.) 

Erbessus, a strongly-fortified town of Sicily, north¬ 
east of Agrigentum, which the Romans made their 
principal place of arms in the siege of the last-men¬ 
tioned city. It was soon after destroyed. ( Polyb ., 1, 
18.)—When mention is made, in other passages of the 
ancient writers, of Erbessa, we must, no doubt, refer 
it to the city of Herbessa, which lay nearer Syracuse. 
(Mannert, Geogr., vol. 9, pt. 2, p. 441.) 

Erchia, one of the boroughs of Attica, and be¬ 
longing to the tribe iEgeis. Its position has not been 
clearly ascertained. This was the native demus of 
Xenophon and Isocrates. ( Diog. Laert ., 2, 48.) 

Erebus, I. a deity of the lower world, sprung from 
Chaos. From him and his sister Nox (Night) came 
iEther and the Day. ( Hesiod , Theog., 123, seqq.) — 
II. A dark and gloomy region in the lower world, 
where all is dreary and cheerless. According to the 
Homeric notion, Erebus lay between the earth and 
Hades, beneath the latter of which was Tartarus. It 
was therefore not an abode of the departed, but merely 
a passage from the upper to the lower world. (Heyne, 
ad Iliad, 8, 368. — Passow, Lex. Gr., s. v.) This 
mode of explaining is opposed, however, by some, 
though on no sufficient grounds. (Keightley's My¬ 
thology, p. 90.) Oriental scholars derive the name 
Erebus from the Hebrew ereb, evening. 

Erechtheis, the well of salt water in the Acropolis 
at Athens. (Vid. Erechtheus.) 

Erechtheus, one of the early Attic kings, said to 
have been the son of Pandion I., and the sixth in the 
series of monarchs of Attica. He was father of Ce- 
crops II.—We have already given some remarks on 
the fabulous history of the Attic kings, under the arti¬ 
cle Cecrops. It may be added here, that Erechtheus 
in all probability was only a title of Neptune. This 
appears plainly, as far as such a point can be said to 
oe plain, both from the etymology of the name and 
the testimony of ancient writers. Thus we have in 
Hesychius, 'E pex^evg. YloaeiMbv ev ’AOyvatg, and in 


the scholia of Tzetzes to Lycophron (v. 158), Epex 
devg, 6 n oaetdtiv y 6 Zevg (napa to kpexdu, to klvo)). 
Many other writers declare the identity of Neptune 
and Erechtheus. The Erechtheum of the Acropolis 
was contiguous to the temple of Minerva Polias, and 
its principal altar was dedicated to Neptune, “ on 
which,” Pausanias says (1, 26), “ they also sacrificed 
to Erechtheus ;” a very natural variation of the story, 
when it was forgotten that Neptune and Erechtheus 
were the same. ’E pex^evg means “ the shaker ,” and 
is equivalent to kvooixd^v or ovvouiyatog, the most 
frequent epithets of the god of the sea. That Erech¬ 
theus was really Neptune is farther evident from the 
circumstance, that the well of salt water in the Acropo 
lis, which was said to be the memorial of the contest 
of Neptune with Minerva for the honour of being the 
tutelary deity of Athens, was called idkaooa ’E pex 
Qyig. (Philol. Museum, No. 5, p. 360.) 

Erechthides, a name given to the Athenians, from 
their king Erechtheus. (Ovid, Met., 7, 430.) 

Eressus or Eresus (on coins the name is always 
written with one 2), a city of Lesbos, situate on a hill, 
at the distance of twenty-eight stadia from Cape 
Sigrium. It derives celebrity from having given birth 
to Theophrastus. Phanias, another disciple of the 
great Stagirite, was likewise a native of this place. 
(Strab.j 616.— Steph. Byz., s. v. V E peaoog.) Accord¬ 
ing to Archestratus, quoted by Athenaeus, Eressus 
was famous for the excellence of its wheaten flour. 
The site yet preserves the name of Eresso. (Pococke, 
vol. 1, b. 3, c. 4.— Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. l,p. 163.) 

Eretria, I. a town of the island of Euboea, situate 
on the coast of the Euripus, southeast of Chalcis. It 
was said by some to have been founded by a colony 
from Triphylia in Peloponnesus : by others its origin 
was ascribed to a party of Athenians belonging to the 
demus of Eretria. (Strabo, 447.) The latter opin¬ 
ion is far more probable, as this city was doubtless 
of Ionic origin. ( Herodot., 8, 46.) We learn from 
Strabo, that Eretria was formerly called Melaneis and 
Arotria; and that, at an early period, it had attained 
to a considerable degree of prosperity and power. The 
Eretrians had conquered the islands of Ceos, Teos, 
Tenos, and others. And in their festival of Diana, 
which was celebrated with great pomp and splendour, 
three thousand soldiers on foot, with six hundred cav¬ 
alry, and sixty chariots, were often employed to attend 
the procession. ( Strabo , 448. — Compare Livy, 35, 
38.) Eretria, at this period, was frequently engaged 
in war with Chalcis ; and Thucydides reports (1, 15), 
that on one occasion most of the Grecian states took 
part in the contest. The assistance which Eretria 
then received from the Milesians induced that city to 
co-operate with the Athenians in sending a fleet and 
troops to the support of the Ionians, who had revolted 
from Persia at the instigation of Aristagoras (Herodot., 

5, 99); by which measure it became exposed, in con¬ 
junction with Athens, to the vengeance of Darius. 
This monarch accordingly gave orders to his com¬ 
manders, Datis and Artaphernes, to subdue both Ere¬ 
tria and Athens, and bring the inhabitants captive be¬ 
fore him. Eretria was taken after six days’ siege, and 
the captive inhabitants brought to Asia. They are 
said to have been in number only four hundred, among 
whom were ten women. The rest of the Eretrians 
escaped from the Persians among the rocks of the isl¬ 
and. Darius treated the prisoners kindly, and settled 
them at Ardericca, in the district of Cissia. (Herodot., 

6, 119.) According to Philostratus, they occupied 
the same spot at the beginning of the Christian era. 
Eretria recovered from the effects of this disaster, and 
was rebuilt soon after. We find it mentioned by Thu¬ 
cydides, towards the close of his history (8, 94), as 
revolting from Athens on the approach of a Spartan 
fleet under Hegesandridas, and mainly contributing to 
the success obtained by that commander. After the 

487 




ERI 


ERI 


death of Alexander, this city surrendered to Ptolemy, 
a general in the service of Antigonus ( Diod . Sic., 19, 
78); and in the Macedonian war, to the combined 
fleets of the Romans, the Rhodians, and Atalus. ( Liv., 

32, 16.) It was subsequently declared free, by order 
of the Roman senate. ( Polyb ., 18, 28, seqq.) This 
place, as we learn from Athenseus, was noted for the 
excellence of its flour and bread. ( Sopat., Com. ap. 
Athen., 4, 50.) At one time it possessed a distin¬ 
guished school of philosophy and dialectic, as we learn 
from Strabo (444.—Compare Diog. Laert., Vit. Ar- 
ces. — Plm., 4, 12.— Stcph. Byz., s. v. ’Eperpm). The 
ruins of Eretria are still to be observed close to a head¬ 
land which lies opposite to the mouth of the Asopus 
in Boeotia. D’Anville gives the modern name as Gra- 
vilinais. ( Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 136, seqq.) 
—II. A demus of Attica. ( Strabo, 447.) — III. A 
town of Thessaly, near Pharsalus, and between that 
city and Pherae. (Polyb., fragm., 18, 3, 5.— Liv., 

33, 6.) 

Eretum, a town of the Sabines, north of Momen¬ 
tum and northeast of Fidense, and at no great distance 
from the Tiber. Its name frequently occurs in the 
Roman historians. The antiquity of the place is at¬ 
tested by Virgil (7, 711), who enumerates it in his list 
of the Sabine towns which sent aid to Turnus. It 
was subsequently the scene of many a contest between 
the Romans and Sabines, leagued with the Etruscans. 
(Liv., 3, 29.— Dion. Hal., 3, 59.) Hannibal, accord¬ 
ing to Caalius, the historian, when advancing by the 
Via Salaria towards Rome, to make a diversion in fa¬ 
vour of Capua, turned off at Eretum to pillage the 
temple of Feronia. In Strabo’s time Eretum appears 
to have been little more than a village. (Strab., 228.) 
The modern Rimane is supposed to occupy the site of 
the ancient Eretum, and not Monte Ritondo, as was 
generally believed until the Abbe Chaupy pointed out 
the error. (Desc. de la maison d'Horace, vol. 3, p. 
85.— Nibby, delle Vie degli Antichi, p. 89.— Cramer’s 
Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 308.) / 

Erichthonius, one of the early Attic kings, and 
the immediate successor of Amphictyon. He was fa¬ 
bled to have been the offspring of Vulcan and Miner¬ 
va, a legend which we have explained under the arti¬ 
cle Cecrops. ( Vid. remarks at the close of that arti¬ 
cle.) Not inconsistent with this account is the other 
tradition, which ascribes to Erichthonius the honour 
of having been the first to yoke four horses to a car; 
a remarkable circumstance in the barren land of Atti¬ 
ca, where the horse was reared with difficulty, and 
maintained at a considerable expense, and which was 
therefore the most expressive indication that could 
have been adopted, of the greater diffusion of wealth 
consequent on the successful cultivation of those arts 
and manufactures which began to flourish at this pe¬ 
riod. ( Wordsworth's Greece, p. 95.) 

Ericusa, one of the Lipari isles, now Varcusa. 
(Vid. iEoliae.) 

Eridanus, a river of Italy, in Cisalpine Gaul, called 
also Padus, now the Po. D’Anville states, that the 
name Eridanus, though a term for the entire river, was 
specially applied to the Ostium Spineticum, or Spinetic 
mouth, which last received its name from a very an¬ 
cient city in its vicinity, founded by the Greeks, and 
called Spina. Some writers consider the name Erida¬ 
nus as coming, in fact, from a river in the north of 
Europe, the modern Rodaun, which flows into the 
Vistula near Dantzic. Here the Phoenicians and Car¬ 
thaginians traded for amber, and their fear of rivalry 
in this lucrative trade induced them to keep the 
source of their traffic involved in so much obscurity, 
that it became, in time, the subject of poetic embellish¬ 
ment. The Rhodanus, or Rhone, is thought by some 
to have received its ancient name from this circum¬ 
stance, being confounded by the Greeks, in the in¬ 
fancy of their geographical knowledge, with the true 


stream. This probably arose from amber being fount 
among the Gallic nations, to whom it may have corn* 
by an over-land trade. In like manner, amber being 
obtained afterward in large quantities among the Ve- 
neti on the Adriatic, induced the Greeks to remove 
the Eridanus to this quarter, and identify it with the 
Po, off the mouth of which stream they placed then 
imaginary amber-islands, the Electrides. The Veneti 
obtained their amber in a similar way with the Gallic 
nations. Thus the true Eridanus, and the fable of 
Phaethon also, both refer to a northern origin ; and a 
curious subject of discussion arises with regard to the 
earlier climate of the regions bordering on the Baltic, 
for remarks on which, vid. Phaethon. (Cic. in Arat ., 
145.— Claudian, de Cons. Hon., 6, 175.— Ovid, Met., 
2, 3.— Pausan., 1, 3.— Lucan, 2, 409.— Virg., G., 
1, 482.) 

Erigone, daughter of Icarius. Her father having 
been taught by Bacchus the culture of the grape, and 
having made wine, gave of it to some shepherds, who, 
thinking themselves poisoned by the draught, killed 
him. When they came to their senses, they buried 
him; and his daughter Erigone, being guided to the 
spot by her father’s faithful hound Msera, hung herself 
through grief. (Apollod., 3,14,7.— Hygin., fab., 130.) 
Jupiter translated the father and daughter, along with 
the faithful Msera, to the skies : Icarius became Bootes; 
and Erigone, Virgo; while the hound was changed, 
according to Hyginus (Poet. Astron., 2, 4), into Pro- 
cyon ; but, according to the scholiast on Germanicus 
(p. 128), into the Canis Major, which is therefore 
styled by Ovid (Fast., 4, 939), “ Canis Icarius .” 
Propertius (2, 24, 24) calls the stars of the Greater 
Bear, “ Boves Icarii.” (Ideler, Sternnamen, p. 48.) 

Erinna, I. a poetess, and the friend of Sappho. 
She flourished about the year 595 B.C. All that is 
known of her is contained in the following words of 
Eustathius (ad II., 2, p. 327). “ Erinna was born in 

Lesbos, or in Rhodes, or in Teos, or in Telos, the lit¬ 
tle island near Cnidus. She was a poetess, and wrote 
a poem called * the Distaff’ (’H?mkq,t7i) in the ^Solic 
and Doric dialect: it consisted of 300 hexameter lines. 
She was the friend of Sappho, and died unmarried. It 
was thought that her verses rivalled those of Homer. 
She was only 19 years of age when she died.” Chain¬ 
ed by her mother to the spinning-wheel, Erinna had as 
yet known the charm of existence in imagination alone. 
She probably expressed in her poem the restless and 
aspiring thoughts which crowded on her youthful mind, 
as she pursued her monotonous work. We possess at 
the present day no fragments of Erinna. (Muller, 
Hist. Grcec. Lit., p. 180.)—II. A poetess mentioned 
by Eusebius under the year 354 B.C. This appears 
to be the same person who is spoken of by Pliny (34, 
8), as having celebrated Myro in her poems. No frag¬ 
ments of her poetry remain. (Encycl. Us. Knowl., 
vol. 9, p. 508.) 

Erinnys, a name applied to the Furies, so that 
Erinnyes (’E pivvveg) is equivalent to Diree, or Furice. 
Muller makes the Greek term eptvvq indicate “ a feel¬ 
ing of deep offence, of bitter displeasure, at the impi¬ 
ous violation of our sacred rights, by those most bound 
to respect them.” ( Muller, Eumen., p. 186.) This 
perfectly accords with the origin of the Erinnyes in 
the Theogony, and with those passages of the Homeric 
poems in which they are mentioned ; for they are there 
invoked to avenge the breach of filial duty, and are 
named as the punishers of perjury. (Horn., II, 9, 
454, 568.— Id. ib., 19, 258.) Even beggars have their 
Erinnyes, that they may not be insulted with impunity 
(Od., 17, 475); and when a hcrse has spoken, in vio 
lation of the order of nature, the Erinnyes deprive him 
of the power of repeating the act. (II. 19, 418.) 
The Erinnyes, these personified feelings, ma^ there¬ 
fore be regarded as the maintainers of order both in 
the moral and natural world. There is, however, am 





ERO 


ER Y 


ather view taken of these goddesses, in which they are 
only a form of Ceres and Proserpina, the great god¬ 
desses of the earth. For everything in nature hav¬ 
ing injurious as well as beneficial effects, the bounte¬ 
ous earth itself becomes grim, as it were, and displeased 
with mankind, and this is Ceres-Erinnys. In the Ar¬ 
cadian legends of this goddess, and in the concluding 
choruses of the Eumenides of ^Eschylus, may be dis¬ 
cerned ideas of this nature. ( Muller, Eumen., p. 191, 
seqq. — Keightley's Mythology , p. 196, seq.) 

Eriphyle, a sister of Adrastus, king of Argos, who 
married Amphiaraus. She was daughter of Talaus and 
Lvsimache. (For an account of the legend connected 
wi .h her name, consult the article Amphiaraus.) 

Gris, the Greek name for the goddess of Discord. 
'Vid Discordia.) 

Erisichthon, a Thessalian, son of Triops, who de¬ 
rided Ceres, and cut down her sacred grove. This 
impiety irritated the goddess, who afflicted him with 
continual hunger. This infliction gave occasion for 
the exercise of the filial piety and power of self-trans¬ 
formation of the daughter of Erisichthon, who, by her 
assuming various forms, enabled her father to sell her 
over and over again, and thus obtain the means of liv¬ 
ing after all his property was gone. ( Nicander, ap. 
Anton. Lib., 17.) He was driven at last by hunger to 
feed on his own limbs. {Ovid, Met., 8, 738, seqq. — 
Tzetz. ad Lycophr., 1393.—Compare the account of 
Callimachus, H. in Cer., 32, seqq .)—This legend ad¬ 
mits of a very simple explanation. Erisichthon is a 
name akin to Erusibe {epvaibr]) or “ mildew and 
Hellanicus {ap. Athen., 10, p. 416) said that he was 
also called JEthon (A Wuv) or “ burning ,” from his in¬ 
satiate hunger. The destructive mildew is therefore 
the erjemy of Ceres, to whom, under the title of Ery- 
sibia, the Rhodians prayed to avert it. {Muller, Pro- 
legom., 162.— Keightley's Mythology , p. 177.) 

Eros, the god of Love, the same with the Cupido 
Df the Latins. This deity is unnoticed by Homer. In 
the Theogony (v. 120) he is one of the first of beings, 
and produced without parents. In the Orphic hymns 
ne is the son of Kronos. {Schol. ad Apoll. Rhod., 3, 
26.) Sappho made him the offspring of Heaven and 
Earth {Id. ib.), while Simonides assigned him Venus 
and Mars for parents. {Id. ib.) In Olen’s hymn to 
Ilithyia {Pausan., 9, 27, 2), this goddess was termed 
the mother of Love ; and Alcaeus said, that “ well- 
sandaled Iris bore Love to Zephyrus of golden locks” 
{ap. Pint., Amat., 20).—The cosmogonic Eros of 
Hesiod is apparently a personification of the principle 
of attraction, on which the coherence of the material 
world depends. Nothing was more natural than to 
term Venus the mother of Love ; but the reason for so 
calling Ilithyia, the goddess who presides over child¬ 
birth, is not equally apparent: it was possibly meant 
to express the increase of conjugal affection produced 
by the birth of children. The making Love the off¬ 
spring of the Westwind and the Rainbow would seem 
to be only a poetic mode of expressing the well-known 
fact, that the Spring, the season in which they most 
prevail, is also that of Love. {Theognis, 1275.) In 
the bucolic and some of the Latin poets, the Loves 
are spoken of in the plural number, but no distinct 
offices are assigned them. {Theocrit., 7, 96.— Bion, 
1 , passim. — Horat., Od., 1 , 19, 1.)—Thespiae in Boeo- 
iia was the place in which Eros was most worshipped. 
The Thespians used to celebrate games in his honour 
on Mount Helicon. These were called Erotia. Eros 
had also altars at Athens and elsewhere. The god of 
love was usually represented as a plump-cheeked boy, 
rosy and naked, with light hair floating on his shoul¬ 
ders. He is always winged, and armed with a bow and 
arrows. Nonnus (7, 194) seems to represent his ar¬ 
rows as tipped with flowers. The arrows of Cama, the 
Hindu Eros, are thus pointed.—The adventures of 
Eros are not numerous. The most celebrated is that 
Q Q Q 


contained in the legend of Psyche. {Vid. Psycne. — 
Keightley's Mythology, p. 146, seqq.) 

Erostratus. Vid. Herostratus. 

Erycina, a surname of Venus, from Mount Eryx 
in Sicily, where she had a temple. The Erycinian 
Venus appears to have been the same with the Phoe¬ 
nician Astarte, whose worship was brought overby the 
latter people, and a temple erected to her on Mount 
Eryx. In confirmation of this, we learn from Diodo¬ 
rus Siculus, that the Carthaginians revered the Erycin¬ 
ian Venus equally as much as the natives themselves. 
{Diod. Sic., 4, 83.) 

Erymanthus, I. a mountain-chain in tne northwest 
angle of Arcadia, celebrated in fable as the haunt of 
the savage boar destroyed by Hercules. {Apollod., 2, 
5, 3.— Pausan., 8, 24.— Homer, Od., 6, 102.) Apol¬ 
lonius places the Erymanthian monster in the wilds of 
Mount Lampia ; but this mountain, as we learn from 
Pausanias (8, 24), was that part of the chain where 
the river Erymanthus took its rise. The modern name 
of Mount Erymanthus, one of the highest ridges in 
Greece, is Olonos. {Itin. of the Morea, p. 122.)—II. 
A river of Arcadia, descending from the mountain of 
the same name, and flowing near the town of Psophis. 
After receiving another small stream, called the Aro- 
anius K it joins the Alpheus on the borders of Elis. 
The modern name of the Erymanthus is the Dogana. 
{Cramer's Ancient Greece , vol. 3, p. 320.) 

Erythea, an island off the coast of Iberia, in the 
Atlantic. It lay in the Sinus Gaditanus, or Bay of 
Cadiz, and was remarkable for its fertility. It was 
called by the inhabitants Junonis Insula ; and by later 
writers, Aphrodisias. Here Gcryon was said to have 
reigned ; and the fertility of the island seems to have 
given rise to the fable of his oxen. Vid. Hercules 
and Geryon. {Plin, 4, 22.— Mela, 3, 6.) Many com 
mentators havo agreed to identify with Erythea the 
Isla de Leon. (Compare Classical Journal, vol. 3, p. 
140.)—II. A daughter of Geryon. {Pausayiias, 10, 
37.) 

Erythr^e, one of the twelve cities of Ionia, situate 
near the coast., opposite Chios. {Herodot., 1, 142.) 
Its founder was said to have been Erythrus, the son 
of Rhadamanthus, who established himself here with 
a body of Cretans, Carians, and Lycians. At a later 
period came Cleopus, son of Codrus, with an Ionian 
colony. {Scylax, p. 37.) The city did not lie exactly 
on the coast, but some little distance inland : it had a 
harbour on the coast named Kissus. {Liv., 36, 43.) 
Erythras was famous as the residence of one of the 
Sibyls at an early period, and in the time of Alexan¬ 
der we find another making her appearance here, with 
similar claims to prophetic inspiration. ( Strabo , 643.) 
According to Pausanias (10, 12), the name of the elder 
Sibyl was Herophile. The same writer informs us, 
that there was at Erythrae a very ancient temple of 
Hercules (7, 5). Either this city had disappeared at 
the time Hierocles wrote, or else he means it under 
the name of Satrote {larpurr]), which he places near 
Clazomense, and which is mentioned by no other wri¬ 
ter. {Hiirocles, p. 660.) According to Tavernier (vol. 
2, lett. 22), the modern Gesme {Dschesme) occupies 
the site of the ancient city : Chandler, however, found 
the old walls some distance to the north of this, with 
the name of Rythre still remaining. {Mannert, Geogr., 
vol 6, pt. 3, p. 321, seqq.) 

Erythrjeum Mare, a name applied by the Greeks 
to the whole ocean, extending from the coast of Ethi¬ 
opia to the island of Taprobana, when their geograph¬ 
ical knowledge of India was in its infancy. {Vin¬ 
cent's Periplus, p. 4.— Commerce and Navigation of 
the Anacnts, vol. 2.) They derived the name from 
an ancient monarch who reigned along these coasts, 
by the name of Erythras, and believed that his grave 
was to be found in one of the adjacent islands. {Wahl 
Asien, p. 216 and 636.— Agatharchidas, p. 4, Geogi 

489 




ESQ 


E T E 


Minted. Hudson. — Ctesias, ed. B'ahr, p. 359.— Cut- 
tius, 8 ; 9, 14.) Afterward, when the Greeks learned 
the existence of an Indian Ocean, the term Erythraean 
Sea was applied merely to the sea below Arabia, and 
to the Arabian and Persian Gulfs. In this latter sense 
Strabo uses the name. Herodotus follows the old ac¬ 
ceptation of the word, according to the opinion prev¬ 
alent in his age. The appellation was probably de¬ 
rived from Edom (Esau), whose descendants were 
call 3 d Idumseans, and inhabited the northern parts of 
Arabia. (Wahl, Asien, p. 316.) They navigated 
upon the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, and also upon the 
Indian Ocean ; and the Oriental name Idumaean signi¬ 
fying red , the sea of the Idumaeans was called the Red 
Sea and the Erythrasan Sea (’Epvdpd Adkaaca). Vid. 
Arabicus Sinus. ( Curtius , 8, 9.— Plin., 6, 23.— He- 
rodot ., 1, 180, 189 ; 3, 93 ; 4, 37 .—Mela, 3, 8.) 

Eryx, I. a son of Butes and Venus, who, relying 
upon his strength, challenged all strangers to fight with 
him in the combat of the cestus. Hercules accepted 
his challenge after many had yielded to his superior 
dexterity, and Eryx was killed in the combat, and 
buried on the mountain where he had built a temple 
to Venus. ( Virg., 2En., 5, 402.)—II. A mountain 
of Sicily, at the western extremity of the island, and 
near the city of Drepanum. It was fabled to have re¬ 
ceived its name from Eryx, who was buried there. On 
its summit stood a famous temple of Venus Erycina 
{vid. Erycina), and on the western declivity was situ¬ 
ated the town of Eryx, the approach to which from the 
plain was rocky and difficult. At the distance of 30 
stadia stood the harbour of the same name. ( Polyb ., 
1 , 55.— Diod., 24., 1 . — Cic. in Ver., 2, 8.) The 
Phoenicians most probably were the founders of the 
place, and also of the temple ; and the Erycinian Ve¬ 
nus appears to be identified with the Astarte of the 
latter people. (Compare Diod., 4, 83.) The native 
inhabitants in this quarter were called Elymi, and Eryx 
is said by some to have been their king. {Diod., 4, 
83.— Virg., 2En., 5, 759.— Ileyne, Excurs. 2, adJEn., 
5— Apollod., 1 , 9. — Id., 2, 5. — Hygin ., fab., 260.) 
Virgil makes Hilneas to have founded the temple : in 
this, however, he is contradicted by other authorities. 
xEneas, in fact, never was in Sicily, and therefore 
the whole is a mere fable. The town was destroyed 
by the Carthaginians in the time of Pyrrhus, who a 
short time previous had taken it by storm, and the in¬ 
habitants were removed to Drepanum. {Diod., 22, 14. 
— Id., 23, 9.) It soon, however, revived, owing to 
the celebrity of the adjacent temple. In the first Pu¬ 
nic war it fell into the hands of the Romans {Polyb., 
1, 58.— Id., 2, 7), but was surprised by Barcas, the 
Carthaginian commander, and the inhabitants who es¬ 
caped the slaughter were again removed to Drepanum. 
{Diod., 24, 2.) The place never recovered from this 
blow : the sanctity of the temple drew, indeed, new 
inhabitants around, but the city was never rebuilt. 
No traces of the temple remain at the present day. 
On the summit of the mountain, now called St. Giuli- 
ano, is an ancient castle, supposed to have been erect¬ 
ed by the Saracens. {Mannert, Geogr., vol. 9, pt. 2, 
p. 383, seqq.) 

EsquilixE and Esquilinus Mons, one of the seven 
hills of Rome, added to the city by Servius Tullius, 
who enclosed the greater part of it within the circuit 
of his walls, and built his palace upon it, which he 
continued to inhabit till the day of his death. We are 
informed by Varro {L. L., 4, 8), that the Esquiline de¬ 
rived its name from the Latin word excultus; in proof 
of which he mentions, that Servius had planted on its 
summit several sacred groves, such as the Lucus Quer- 
quetulamu, Fagutalis, and Esquilinus. It was the 
most extensive of the seven hills, and was divided into 
two principal heights, which were called CisDius and 
Oppius. The Campus Esquilinus was granted by the 
senate as a burying-place for the poor, and stood with- 
49ft 


out the Esquiline gate. As the vast number of bodies 
here deposited rendered the places adjoining very un¬ 
healthy, Augustus gave part of it to his favourite Mae¬ 
cenas, who built there a magnificent residence, with 
extensive gardens, whence it became one of the most 
healthy situations of Rome. {Horat., Sat., 8, 10, 
seqq. — Id., Epod., 5, 100.) The Esquiline had the 
honour of giving birth to Julius Caesar, who was born 
in that part of the Suburra which was situated on this 
hill. Here also were the residences of Virgil, of the 
younger Pliny ; and here were situate a part of Nero’s 
golden house, and the palace and baths of the Em¬ 
peror Titus. The Esquiline, at the present day, is 
said to be the most covered with ruins, and the most 
deserted of the three eastern hills of Rome. {Rome 
in the 19 th Century, vol. 1, p. 204, Am. ed.) 

Essedones, a people of Sarmatia Asiatica, to the 
east of the Palus Maeotis. Ptolemy, however, places 
them in Serica, and in Scythia extra Imaum ; while 
Herodotus assigns them to the country of the Massa- 
getae, and Pliny to Sarmatia Europasa. {Herod., 1, 
201.— Id., 4, 25.— Plin., 6, 7.) Some writers seek 
to identify them with the Cossacks of the Don. {Vid. 
Issedones, and consult Bischoff und Moller, Worterb. 
der Geograph., p. 485.) 

Esti^otis, according to Strabo (430), that portion 
of Thessaly which lies near Pindus, and between that 
mountain and Upper Macedonia. The same writer 
elsewhere informs us (p. 437), that, according to some 
authorities, this district was originally the country of 
the Dorians, who certainly are stated by Herodotus 
(1, 56) and others to have once occupied the regions 
of Pindus ; but that afterward it took the name of Es- 
tiaeotis, from a district in Euboea, so called, the inhabi¬ 
tants of which were transplanted into Thessaly by the 
Perrhsebi. {Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 352.) 

EteScles, a son of QEdipus and Jocasta. After - 
his father’s death, it was agreed between him and his 
brother Polynices that they should both share the king¬ 
dom, and reign alternately, each a year. Eteocles, by 
right of seniority, first ascended the throne ; but, after 
the first year of his reign was expired, he refused to give 
up the crown to his brother according to their mutual 
agreement. Polynices, resolving to punish so gross a 
violation of a solemn engagement, fled to the court of 
Adrastus, king of Argos, where he married Argia the 
daughter of that monarch ; and, having prevailed upon 
Adrastus to espouse his cause, the latter undertook 
what was denominated the Theban war, twenty-seven 
years, as is said, before the Trojan one. Adrastus 
marched against Thebes with an army, of which he 
took the command, having with him seven celebrated 
chiefs, Tydeus, Amphiaraus, Capaneus, Parthenopasus, 
Hippomedon, Eteoclus son of Iphis, and Polynices. 
The Thebans who espoused the cause of Eteocles 
were, Melanippus and Ismarus, sons of Astacus, Poly- 
phontes, Megareus, Lasthenes, and Hyperbius. All 
the Argive leaders, with the exception of Adrastus, 
fell before Thebes, Eteocles also being slain in single 
combat with Polynices. Ten years after the conclu¬ 
sion of this war arose that of the Epigoni, or the sons 
of the slain chieftains of Argos, who took up arms to 
avenge the death of their sires. {Vid. Epigoni.) 
Lists of the seven Argive commanders are given by 
JEschylus in his “ Seven against Thebes by Eurip¬ 
ides in his Phcenissae and Supplices ; and by Sopho¬ 
cles in his “CEdipus at Colonus.” They all arree, 
except that in the Phoenissae the name of Adrastus is 
substituted for that of Eteoclus. The tragic poets 
vary also in other particulars from each otlTer. Eu¬ 
ripides, whom we have followed as to the age of Ete¬ 
ocles, makes him the elder of the two brothers ; but 
Sophocles, on the contrary, calls him the younger 
(CEd. Col., 1292.) y ^ 

Eteoclus one of the seven chiefs of the army ol 
Adrastus, in his expedition against Thebes He was 





EVA 


EUB 


.idled oy Megareus, the son of Creon, under the walls 
cji Thebes. ( Apollod ., 3, 6.) 

EtesLe (’E Trivial), winds blowing every year {erog) 
at a stated period, over the JEgean Sea. They came 
from the north, and are hence sometimes called ’Er^- 
cuol fiopiat. The Etesian winds prevailed for forty 
days after the setting of the Dog-star. Arrian speaks 
of Etesian winds in the Indian Ocean, blowing from 
the south, by which he evidently means the monsoons. 
{Arrian, Exp. Alex., 6, 21.— Indie., 21.) 

Etruria. Vid. Hetruria. 

Evadne, a daughter of Iphis or Iphicles of Argos, 
who slighted the addresses of Apollo, and married Ca- 
paneus, one of the seven chiefs who went against 
Thebes. When her husband had been struck with 
thunder by Jupiter for his blasphemies and impiety, 
and his ashes had been separated from those of the rest 
of the Argives, she threw herself on his burning pile, 
and perished in the flames. {Virg., Mn., 6, 447.— 
Propert., 1, 15, 21.— Slat., Theb., 12, 800.) 

Evagoras, I. a king of Salamis in the island of Cy¬ 
prus, and a descendant of Teucer son of Telamon, the 
founder of that city. When Evagoras saw the light, 
the throne of Salamis was occupied by a Phoenician 
ruler, who had obtained it by treachery. This Phoeni¬ 
cian was afterward slain by one of the leading chief¬ 
tains of the country, who thereupon usurped the su¬ 
preme power, and endeavoured to seize Evagoras, 
whose right to the throne was an obstacle in the way of 
his ambition. Evagoras fled to Soli in Cilicia, assem¬ 
bled there a small band of followers, returned to Cy¬ 
prus, and, deposing the tyrant, mounted the throne of 
his ancestors. All this took place while the enfeebled 
empire of Persia was scarcely able to withstand the 
attacks of the victorious Greeks prior to the Pelopon¬ 
nesian war, and had therefore no time to attend to the 
affairs of Cyprus. Evagoras showed himself a wise 
and politic prince, and raised the glory of his native 
island to a much higher pitch than it had ever attained 
before. He became the patron also of arts and litera¬ 
ture, and entertained at his court distinguished men of 
all nations. It was in his dominions that Conon, the 
Athenian general, sought refuge after the fatal battle 
of iEgos Potamos, and by his aid was enabled to pre¬ 
pare a fleet, which restored the naval ascendancy of 
his country. {Isocr., Evag., p. 200. — Xen., Hist. 
Gr., 2, 1, 19.— Corn. Nep., Vit. Con. — Diod. Sic., 
14, 39.) Judging from the splendid panegyric passed 
upon his character by Isocrates, Evagoras was cer¬ 
tainly a prince of rare and distinguished virtue and 
merit; and his fortune for a time kept pace with his 
shining qualities. Unfortunately, however, he met with 
reverses towards the close of his reign. Artaxerxes 
Mnemon attacked his power, after the peace of Antal- 
cidas had left the Asiatic Greeks at the mercy of the 
Persian king. Evagoras was aided in his resistance 
to the Persian arms by Amasis of Egypt, and also se¬ 
cretly by the Athenians ; but his efforts were unsuc¬ 
cessful, and he saw himself eventually compelled to 
renounce his authority over the other cities of Cyprus, 
and confine himself to Salamis, paying besides an annual 
tribute to Persia. He was assassinated by a eunuch, 
B.C. 374. His son Nicocles succeeded him. {Diod. 
Sic., 15, 2, seqq.) —II. Grandson of the preceding. 
Being deprived of his possessions by his uncle Prota¬ 
goras, he fled to Artaxerxes Ochus, by whose order he 
was put to death. 

Evander, a son of the prophetess Carmenta, and 
king of Arcadia. An accidental murder obliged him 
to leave his country, and he came to Italy, where he 
drove the aborigines from their ancient possessions, 
and reigned in that part of the country where Rome 
was afterward founded. ( Vid. Italia.) He kindly re¬ 
ceived Hercules when he returned from the conquest 
of Geryon ; and he was the first who raised him altars. 
He gave iEneas assistance against the Rutuli, and dis¬ 


tinguished himself by his hospitality. It is said that 
he first brought the Greek alphabet into Italy, and in¬ 
troduced there the worship of the Greek deities. ( Vid. 
Pelasgi.) He was honoured as a god after death, and 
his subjects raised him an altar on Mount Aventine. 
( Vid. Cacus.— Pausan., 8,43.— Liv., 1, 7.— Sil. Ital., 
7, 18.— Ovid, Fast., 1, 500, 91.— Virg., 2En., 8, 100.) 

Evarchus, a river of Asia Minor, flowing into the 
Euxine, to the southeast of Sinope. The name ap* 
pears to have been changed in process of time to Eve 
chus. It formed the ancient boundary between Paph- 
lagonia and Cappadocia, or the White Syrians, who 
had spread themselves to the west of the Halys. {Man 
nert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 3, p. 11.) 

Eubcea, a large and celebrated island, lying along 
the coast of Locris, Boeotia, and Attica. Its most an 
cient name, as we learn from Strabo (444), was Ma¬ 
oris, which it obtained, as he affirms, from its great 
length in comparison with its breadth. Besides this, 
it was known at different times by the various appel¬ 
lations of Oche, Ellopia, Asopia, and Abantia. {Strab., 
1. c. — Plin., 4, 12.) The latter, which frequently oc¬ 
curs in the poets, was either derived from the Thra¬ 
cians, who had founded Abse in Phocis, and thence 
crossed over into the island, or from a hero named 
Abas. {Aristot., ap. Strab., 1. c.) Homer, as Strabo 
observes, though he designates the island by the name 
of Eubcea, always employs the appellation of Abantes 
to denote the inhabitants. {II., 2, 536.— Ibid., 540.) 
The name of Euboea originated traditionally from the 
passage of Io, who was even said to have given birth 
to Epaphus in this island. {Hesiod, ap. Steph. Byz., 
s. v. ’A 6dvng.) Its inhabitants were among the ear¬ 
liest navigators of Greece, a circumstance which seems 
to confirm the notion preserved by Strabo, of its hav¬ 
ing been occupied, in distant ages, by a Phoenician 
colony. We hear also of the Pelasgi and Dryopes 
being settled there. {Dion. Hal., 1, 25.— Diod. Si:., 
4, 37.) Herodotus affirms (1, 146), that the greatest 
part of the Ionian cities in Asia Minor had been col¬ 
onized by the Abantes of Euboea, who were not other 
wise, however, connected with the Ionians. This 
people also founded settlements, at an early period, in 
Illyria, Sicily, and Campania. {Strabo, 449.— Pau¬ 
san., 5, 22.) Euboea, divided into a number of small 
independent republics, like the other states of Greece, 
presents no features for a common history. In fact, 
where each city requires a separate narrative, it is dif¬ 
ficult to embody what belongs to them collectively in 
one general account. Its fertility and abundant re¬ 
sources appear at an early period to have attracted the 
attention of the Athenian people, and to have inspired 
them with the desire of acquiring a territory situated 
so near their own, and adequate to the supply of all 
their wants. After the expulsion of the Pisistratiday, 
when the energy of the Athenian character had received 
a fresh impulse from the recovery of liberty, Athens 
readily availed itself of the pretence afforded by the 
Chalcidians, who occupied the principal city of the isl¬ 
and, for invading Euboea, these having-assisted the 
Boeotians in the war then carrying on against that pow¬ 
er. The Athenians, after defeating their nearest en¬ 
emy, suddenly crossed the Euripus, and, having routed 
the forces of Chaicis, seized upon their territory, where 
they established four thousand of their own citizens as 
colonists. {Herodot., 5, 77.) They were obliged, 
however, to evacuate this new acquisition, in order to 
defend their own country against a threatened attack 
of the Persian armament commanded by Datis and 
Artaphernes: nevertheless, they did not lose sight of % 
the important advantages attending the possession of 
Euboea. When the alarm created by the Persian in¬ 
vasion had subsided, the maritime states of Greece 
united themselves into a confederacy, of which Ath¬ 
ens took the lead, and thus acquired an ascendency 
which proved so fatal to the liberties of those who 

491 



ETJBCEA. 


E U C 


bad unguardedly cemented that*impolitic union. This 
was Deculiarly the case with the Euboean cities, since 
we learn from Thucydides (1, 114), that the whole isl¬ 
and acknowledged the supremacy and sway of Athens 
prior to the Peloponnesian war; but neither that his¬ 
torian nor Herodotus has informed us precisely when, 
and in what manner, their subjugation was effected. 
On the Athenians being compelled, after their defeat at 
Coronea, to evacuate Boeotia, of which they had been 
for some time masters, the Eubceans took advantage 
of that circumstance to attempt emancipating them¬ 
selves from a foreign yoke. But success did not at¬ 
tend their efforts. As soon as the news of the revolt 
had reached Athens, Pericles was despatched at the 
head of a considerable force to quell the insurrection, 
in which he succeeded so effectually, notwithstanding 
the frequent diversions made by the Peloponnesians in 
favour of the islanders, that they were reduced to a 
more abject state of subjection than ever ( Thucyd., 1, 
114); and it was not till the unfortunate Sicilian ex¬ 
pedition had compelled Athens to fight for existence 
rather than conquest, that the Eubceans ventured once 
more to assert their right to independence ( Thucyd., 
8, 5); but such was the want of zeal and energy dis¬ 
played by the Lacedaemonian government, that they 
obtained no aid from that quarter until nearly the ter¬ 
mination of the twenty-first year of the war, when at 
length Hegesandridas, a Spartan admiral, came to their 
support, and gained a victory over the Athenian fleet; 
the Eretrians then openly revolted, and their example 
being quickly followed by the other towns, the whole 
of Euboea recovered its independence. This island, 
however, derived but little advantage from the change 
which then took place. Each city, being left to its 
own direction, soon became a prey to faction and civil 
broil, which ended in a more complete slavery under 
the dominion of tyrants. Towards the commence 
ment of the war between the Boeotians and Spartans, 
we are told by Diodorus (15, 30), that the Euboeans 
manifested a desire to place themselves once more 
under the protection of Athens. Another party, how¬ 
ever, having declared in favour of the Thebans, a civil 
war ensued, which equally exhausted both factions, 
and forced them to make peace (16, 7). By the abil¬ 
ity and judgment of Timotheus, the Athenian general, 
a preponderance of opinion was decidedly created in 
favour of that state ( Demosth ., de Cor., p. 108.— 
JEsch. contr. Ctes., p. 479. — Milford's Greece, vol. 
7, p. 384), which continued until overthrown by the 
arts and machinations of Philip. Phocion was em¬ 
powered by the Macedonian government to take all 
the requisite measures for restoring tranquillity, and 
he obtained some important successes over the Euboe¬ 
an forces ; but it does not appear that much advan¬ 
tage was ultimately derived from his victory. After 
this period Euboea became attached to the Macedonian 
interests, until it was once more restored to freedom 
by the Romans, who wrested it from Philip, the son of 
Demetrius. ( Liv., 34, 51.)—This island, according 
to Strabo (444), extends from the Maliac Gulf along 
the coast of Locris, Boeotia, and Attica, a distance of 
about one thousand two hundred stadia; its greatest 
breadth nowhere exceeds one hundred and fifty stadia. 
(Compare Scylax, p. 23.) “Torn from the coast of 
Boeotia,” says Pliny, “it is separated by the Euripus, 
the breadth of which is so insignificant as to allow a 
bridge to be thrown across. Of its two southern prom¬ 
ontories, Geraestus looks towards Attica, Caphareus 
towards tne Hellespont; Cenaeuin fronts the north. In 
.breadth this island never exceeds twenty miles, but it 
is nowhere less than two. Reaching from Attica to 
Thessaly, it extends for one hundred and twenty miles 
in length. Its circuit is three hundred and sixty-five. 
On the side of Caphareus it is two hundred and twenty- 
five miles from the Hellespont.”—The abundance and 
fertility of this extensive island in ancient times are 
492 


sufficiently attested by Herodotus, who compares :l 
with Cyprus (5, 31), and also by Thucydides (7, 28, 
and 8, 96). Its opulence is also apparent from the 
designation and value affixed to the talent, so frequent¬ 
ly referred to by classic writers under the name of Eu- 
bo'icum. From Strabo we learn that it was subject to 
frequent earthquakes, which he ascribes to the subter¬ 
ranean cavities with which the whole island abounds 
(447). The modern name of Euboea is Negropont. 
formed, by a series of corruptions, from the word Eu 
ripus, which designated the narrow channel separating 
the island from the Boeotian coast. ( Cramer's An¬ 
cient Greece, vol. 2, p. 121, Scqq.) 

Euboicus, belonging to Euboea. The epithet is also 
applied to Cumae, because that city was built by a col¬ 
ony from Chalcis, a town of Euboea. {Ovid, Fast., 
4, 257 .—Vxrg., Mn., 6, 2 ; 9, 710.) 

Eubulides, a native of Miletus, and successor of 
Euclid in the Megaric school. He was a strong op¬ 
ponent of Aristotle, and seized every opportunity of 
censuring his writings and calumniating his character. 
He introduced new subtleties into the art of disputa¬ 
tion, several of which, though often mentioned as proof 
of great ingenuity, deserve only to be remembered as 
examples of egregious trifling. Of these sophistical 
modes of reasoning, called by Aristotle Eristic syllo¬ 
gisms, a few examples may suffice. 1. Of the soph¬ 
ism, called from the example, The Lying : if, when 
you speak the truth, you say, you lie, you lie: but you 
say you lie when you speak the truth; therefore, in 
speaking the truth, you lie. 2. The Occult. Do you 
know your father! Yes. Do you know this man 
who is veiled ! No. Then you do not know your 
father, for it is your father who is veiled. 3. Electra. 
Electra, the daughter of Agamemnon, knew her brother 
and did not know him: she knew Orestes to be her 
brother, but she did not know that person to be her 
brother who was conversing with her. 4. Sorites. Is 
one grain a heap ! No. Two grains! No. Three 
grains! No. Go on, adding one by one ; and if one 
grain be not a heap, it will be impossible to say what 
number of grains make a heap. 5. The Horned. You 
have what you have not lost; you have not lost horns ; 
therefore you have horns.—In such high repute were 
these silly inventions for perplexing plain truth, that 
Chrysippus wrote six books on the first of these soph¬ 
isms ; and Philetas, a Coan, died of a consumption, 
which he contracted by the close study which he be¬ 
stowed upon it. {Diog. Laert., 7, 196— Enfield's 

History of Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 199). 

Eubulus, a comic poet of Athens, born in the bor 
ough of Atarnea. He exhibited about B.C. 375. Eu¬ 
bulus, from his date, stood on the debateable ground 
between the first and second species of comedy ; and 
to judge from the fragments in Athenaeus, who quotes 
more than fifty of his comedies by name, he must have 
written plays of both sorts. He composed, in all, 104 
comedies. {Theatre of the Greeks, p. 119, 4th ed.) 

Euchir, I. a painter, related, as is said, to Daedalus, 
and who, according to Theophrastus {ap. Plin., 7, 56)' 
introduced painting into Greece. The name, in truth, 
however, is merely a figurative one for a skilful artist 
generally. {Ev X eip, “skilful,” “dexterous.”) —II. A 
modeller, styled also Euchirus {Pausan., 6, 4, 2), and 
one of the most ancient. He and Eugrammus art 
said to have accompanied Demaratus in his flight from 
Corinth to Etruria. {Plin., 35, 12, 43.) Here again 
both names are figurative.—III. An Athenian sculptor. 
He made a statue of Mercury, which was placed at 
Phenea. {Pausanias, 8, 14, 7.) Pliny (34, 8, 19) 
places him among those artists who excelled in form 
ing brazen statues of combatants at the public games, 
armed men, huntsmen, &c. On this account, Thierscl 
correctly infers that he flourished in a later age 
{Epoch. 11, Adnot., p. 33.) 

Euclides, I. a native of Megara, founder of the Mi 



EUCLIDES. 


EUD 


ganc o i Eustic sect. Endowed by nature witn a 
subtle and penetrating genius, he early applied him¬ 
self to the study of philosophy. The writings of Par¬ 
menides first taught him the art of disputation. Hear¬ 
ing of the fame of Socrates, Euclid determined to at¬ 
tend upon his instiTJCtions, and for this purpose remo¬ 
ved from Mega.*afc? Athens. Here he long remained a 
constant hearer and zealous disciple of the moral phi¬ 
losopher. And when, in consequence of the enmity 
which subsisted between the Athenians and Megare- 
ans, a decree was passed by the former, that any inhab¬ 
itant of Megara who should be seen in Athens should 
forfeit his life, he frequently came to Athens by night, 
from the distance of about twenty miles, concealed in 
a long female cloak and veil, to visit his master. ( Aul. 
GelL, 6, 10.) Not finding his natural propensity to 
disputation sufficiently gratified in the tranquil method 
of philosophizing adopted by Socrates, he frequently 
engaged in the business and disputes of the civil 
courts. Socrates, who despised forensic contests, ex¬ 
pressed some dissatisfaction with his pupil for indul¬ 
ging a fondness for controversy. ( Diog. Laert.,2, 30.) 
This circumstance probably proved the occasion of a 
separation between Euclid and his master ; for we find 
him, after this time, at the head of a school in Megara 
(Diog. Laert., 3, 6), in which his chief employment was 
to teach the art of disputation. Debates were con¬ 
ducted with so much vehemence among his pupils, that 
Timon said of Euclid, that he had carried the madness 
of contention from Athens to Megara. {Diog. Laert., 
6, 22.) That he was, however, capable of commanding 
his temper, appears from his reply to his brother, who, 
in a quarrel, had said, “ Let me perish if I be not re¬ 
venged on you“ and let me perish,” returned Euclid, 
“ if I do not subdue your resentment by forbearance, 
and make you love me as much as ever.”—In dispu¬ 
tation, Euclid was averse to the analogical method of 
reasoning, and judged that legitimate argumentation 
consists in deducing fair conclusions from acknowledg¬ 
ed premises. He held that there is one supreme 
good, which he called by the different names of Intel¬ 
ligence, Providence, God; and that evil, considered as 
an opposite principle to the sovereign good, has no ex¬ 
istence. The supreme good, according to Cicero, he 
defined to be, that which is always the same. In this 
doctrine, in which he followed the subtlety of Parmen¬ 
ides rather than the simplicity of Socrates, he seems to 
have considered good abstractedly as residing in the 
Deity ; and to have maintained, that all things which 
exist are good by their participation of the first good, 
and, consequently, that there is, in the nature of things, 
no real evil.—It is said, that when Euclid was asked 
his opinion concerning the gods, he replied, “I know 
nothing more of them than this, that they hate inquis¬ 
itive persons.” If this apophthegm be justly ascribed to 
Euclid, it may serve to prove, either that he had learn¬ 
ed, from the precepts of Socrates, to think soberly and 
respectfully concerning the Divine Nature, or that the 
fate of that good man had taught him caution in de¬ 
claring his opinions. {Enfield's History of Philoso¬ 
phy, vol. 1, p. 198, seqq .)—II. A celebrated mathe¬ 
matician of Alexandrea, considered by some to have 
been a native of that city, though the more received 
opinion makes the place of his birth to have been un¬ 
known. He flourished B.C. 280, in the reign of Ptol¬ 
emy Lagus, and was professor of mathematics in the 
»apital of Egypt. His scholars were numerous, and 
among them was Ptolemy himself. It is related, that 
the monarch having inquired of Euclid if there was 
not some mode of learning mathematics less barbarous, 
and requiring less attention than the ordinary one, Eu¬ 
clid, though otherwise of an amiable character, dryly 
answered, that there was “ no royal road to geometry.” 
It is to this little incident that nearly all our knowl- 
edg j of the particulars of his life is limited. Euclid 
was the first, in fact, who established a mathematical 


school at Alexandrea, and it existed and maintained l* 
reputation till the Mohammedan conquest of Egypt 
Many of the fundamental principles of the pure mathe¬ 
matics had been discovered by Thales, Pythagoras, 
and other predecessors of Euclid; but to him is due th<= 
merit of having given a systematic form to the science, 
especially that part of it which relates to geometry. 
He likewise studied the cognate sciences of Astronomy 
and Optics ; and, according to Proclus, he was the au¬ 
thor of “ Elements,” “ Data,” “ An introduction to 
Harmony,” “ Phenomena,” “ Optics,” “ Catoptrics,” 
a treatise “ On the division of Surfaces,” “ Porisms,” 
&c. His most valuable work, “ The Elements of Ge¬ 
ometry,” has been repeatedly published. All his work? 
extant were published at Oxford, 1703, folio, by the 
Savilian professor of astronomy, David Gregory. The 
edition of Peyrard, however, is entitled to the praise of 
being the best. It appeared at Paris in 1814 and 
some of the following years, in 3 vols. 4to. This edi¬ 
tion is accompanied with a double translation, one in 
Latin and the other in French. M. Peyrard consulted 
a manuscript of the latter part of the ninth century, 
which had belonged to the Vatican library, and was at 
that time in the French capital. By the aid of this he 
was enabled to fill various lacunae, and to re-establish 
various passages which had been altered in all the other 
manuscripts, and in all the editions anterior to his own. 
Hence Peyrard is the only one that has given a com¬ 
plete text of the “Elements” and “Data;” for the 
“ Phenomena,” and the other works of Euclid, are re¬ 
jected by him as spurious.—For some remarks on Eu¬ 
clid, consult Delambre, Hist, de VAstron. Ancien., vol. 
1, p. 49, seqq., and the preface to Peyrard’s edition. 

Ecjdamidas, I. a son of Archidamus IV., brother to 
Agis IV. He succeeded to the Spartan throne, after 
his brother’s death, B.C. 330. {Pausan., 3, 10.)—II. 
A son of Archidamus, king of Sparta, who succeeded 
B.C. 268. 

Eudocia, I. a Roman empress, wife to Theodosius 
the Younger. Her original name was Athenais, and 
she was the daughter of Leontius, an Athenian philos¬ 
opher ; but on her marriage she embraced Christiani¬ 
ty, and received the baptismal name of Eudocia. She 
was a female of beauty and talent. She put into verse 
several books of the Old Testament, and wrote sev¬ 
eral paraphrases on some of the Jewish prophets, but 
became suspected by her husband of conjugal infideli¬ 
ty, and, being degraded, was allowed to seek a refuge 
in the Holy Land. Here she devoted herself to reli¬ 
gious studies, but the jealousy of her suspicious hus¬ 
band still pursued her; and having learned that two 
priests, whom she had chosen as the companions of 
her exile, were accustomed to pay her frequent visits, 
and were loaded by her with presents, Theodosius sent 
Saturninus, one of the officers of his court, to Jerusa¬ 
lem, who put to death the two priests without even the 
formality of a trial. Irritated at this new insult, Eudo- 
cia caused Saturninus to be slain, a deed more likely 
to darken than avenge her innocence. The emperor 
contented himself with depriving her of all the badges 
of her rank, and reducing her to the condition of a pri¬ 
vate individual. She lived twenty years after this 
event, in the bitterest penitence, endeavouring to ei- 
face, by acts of piety, the crime which outraged honour 
had led her to commit. She died at the age of 67 
years. ( Le Beau , Hist, du Bas-Empire, vol. 7, p. 149.) 
The principal work, ascribed by some to Eudccia, is 
Homerocentra {'Opy ponevrpa), or a life of our Saviour, 
in 2443 hexameters, formed from verses and hemis- 
thics selected out of the poems of Homer. Others, 
however, make Pelagius, surnamed Patricius, who 
lived in the fifth century, its author. From a passage 
of Zonaras {Annal., vol. 3, p. 37), a clew may be ob¬ 
tained for solving this difficulty. Pelagius would seem 
to have commenced the work in question, and Eudo¬ 
cia to have finished it. This princess has left, also, a 

493 



EVE 


E U H 


poem on the martyrdom of Cyprian. The best edition 
■of the Homerocentra is that of Teucher, Lips., 1798, 
Svo.—II. The Younger, daughter of the preceding and 
of Theodosius II., married Valentinian III. After the 
assassination of her husband by Petronius Maximus, 
she was obliged to marry the usurper. Eudocia, out 
of indignation and revenge, called in Genseric, king of 
the Vandals, who came to Italy, plundered Rome, and 
carried Eudocia with him to Africa. Some years af¬ 
terward she was sent back to Constantinople, where 
she died, A.D. 462.—III. The widow of Constantine 
Ducas, married Romanus Diogenes, an officer of dis¬ 
tinction, A D. 1068, and associated him with her on 
the throne. Three years after, Michael, her son, by 
means of a revolt, was proclaimed emperor, and caused 
his mother to be shut up in a convent, where she spent 
the rest of her life. She left a treatise on the geneal¬ 
ogies of the gods and heroes, which displays an ex¬ 
tensive acquaintance with the subject. It is printed 
in Villoison’s Anecdota Grceca, Venet., 1781, 2 vols. 
4to. 

Eudoxus, I. a celebrated astronomer and geometri¬ 
cian, born at Cnidus, who flourished about 370 B.C. 
He studied geometry under Archytas, and afterward, 
in the course of his travels, went to Egypt, and was in¬ 
troduced to the notice of Nectanebis II., and by him to 
the Egyptian priests. He is highly celebrated for his 
skill in astronomy by the ancients, though none of his 
writings on this or any other branch of science are ex¬ 
tant. The honour of bringing the celestial sphere and 
the regular astronomy from Egypt to Greece, belongs 
to him. After his return from Egypt, he taught astron¬ 
omy and philosophy with great applause at Cyzicus, 
and afterward removed to Athens, where he opened a 
school, and was in such high repute as to be consulted 
on subjects of policy as well as science by deputies 
from all parts of Greece. Eudoxus is said, in fact, to 
have supported his school with so much reputation as to 
have excited the envy of even Plato himself. Proclus 
informs us, that Euclid very liberally borrowed from 
the elements of geometry composed by Eudoxus. Ci¬ 
cero calls him the greatest astronomer that ever lived ; 
and we learn from Petronius, that he retired to the top 
of a very high mountain, that he might observe the ce¬ 
lestial phenomena with more convenience than he 
could on a plain or in a crowded city. Strabo says, 
that the observatory of Eudoxus was at Cnidus. Vi¬ 
truvius describes a sundial constructed by him. ( Diog. 
Laert., 8, 86, seqq.^—Cic., de Div., 2, 42.— Petron., 
Arb., 88, 4.— Strab., 119.— Vitruv., 9, 9.) He died 
B.C. 352. His works are lost, but they served as ma¬ 
terials to Aratus for the composition of his poem enti¬ 
tled the Phenomena. ( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 3, 
p. 8.)—II. A native of Cyzicus, sent by Ptolemy VII., 
Euergetes, on a voyage to India, and, some years af¬ 
ter, on a second voyage by Cleopatra, widow of that 
prince. It appears that he subsequently attempted the 
circumnavigation of Africa. (For an account of his 
movements, consult remarks under the article Africa, 
page 79, col. 2.) 

Euemerus. Vid. Euhemerus. 

E'-'exus, I. a name common to several epigrammatic 
poets, for some account of whom, consult Jacobs, Ca- 
tod. Poet. Epig. — Anthol. Grace., vol. 13, p. 893.— 
II. A river of iEtolia, rising, as Strabo (451) reports, 
in the country of the Bomienses, who occupied the 
northeast extremity of ^Etolia. Ptolemy says (p. 87) 
that it flowed from Mount Callidromus, meaning the 
chain of QJta; which is sufficiently correct. Dicsear- 
chus, with less truth, affirms that it rises in Mount 
Pindus. (Stat., Grcec., v. 61.) According to Strabo, 
it does not flow at first through the ancient Curetis, 
which is the district of Pleuron, but more to the east, 
by Chalcis and Calydon, after which it turns to the 
west, towards the plains in which the ancient Pleuron 
vas situated; and finally, proceeding in a southerly 
494 


direction, falls into the sea. Its more ancient name 
was Lyconnas. ( Strabo , l. c. —Compare Apollodorus , 
1, 7, 8.) The Evenus is rendered celebrated in fable, 
from the story of Nessus, who was slain here by Her¬ 
cules for offering violence to De’ianira. The modern 
name of the river is the Fidari. Near its mouth stood 
Missolonghi. (Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 75 1 

Euerget^e, a people of Upper Asia, whose true 
name was Ariaspae. The Greeks called them Euer- 
getse, or benefactors, translating the Persian appella¬ 
tion which was added to their name, and which Frein 
shemius suspects, from Herodotus (8, 85), to have 
been Orosangce. This title they are said to have re¬ 
ceived in return for succours afforded to the army o, 
Cyrus, when it was suffering, in these regions, from 
cold and hunger. (Curt., 7, 3.) They dwelt neai 
the river Etymander, the modern Hindmend (Arrian, 
Exp. Alex., 4, 6, 12), between Drangiana and Aracho- 
sia, and in the vicinity of the modern city of Dercasp, 
in whose name traces of the ancient one appear. (Com¬ 
pare Schmieder, ad Curt., 1. c.) 

Euergetes, a surname, signifying benefactor, given 
to Ptolemy III. and IV. of Egypt, as also to some 
kings of Syria, Pontus, &c. 

Euganei, an ancient nation of Italy, said to have 
once occupied all the country to which the Veneti, 
its subsequent possessors, communicated the name 
ofVenetia. (Lin., 1 , 1.) Driven from their ancient 
abodes, they appear to have retired across the Adige 
(Athesis), and to have settled on the shores of the 
lakes Benacus and Isseus, and in the adjacent valleys 
Pliny (5, 20) says, on the authority of Cato, that they 
held at one time thirty-four towns: these were admit¬ 
ted to the rights of Latin cities under Augustus. ( Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 74.) 

Eugenius, I. & general who opposed Dioelesian, 
A.D. 290 ; but was slain the very same day at the 
gates of Antioch, while attempting to make himself 
master of that city. — II. A usurper in the reign of 
Theodosius the Great, of Gallic extraction, A.D. 392. 
He was defeated, taken prisoner, and put to death, 
after having held power for two years. (Zosim., 4, 
54, seqq.) 

Euhemerus, a native of Messene, as is generally 
supposed, though, according to Brucker and others, he 
was of the island of Sicily. Being sent on a voyage 
of discovery by Cassander, king of Macedon, he came, 
as he himself stated, to an island called Panchaja, in 
the capital of which, Panara, he found a temple of the 
Triphylian Jupiter, where stood a column inscribed 
with a register of the births and deaths of many of the 
gods. Among these he specified Uranus, his sons 
Pan and Saturn, and his daughters Rhea and Ceres; 
as also Jupiter, Juno, and Neptune, who were the off 
spring of Saturn. Accordingly, the design of Euhe¬ 
merus was to show, by investigating their actions, and 
recording the places of their births and burials, that 
the mythological deities were mere mortal men, raised 
to the rank of gods on account of the benefits which 
they had conferred upon mankind. Ennius translated 
this celebrated work of Euhemerus, which was entitled 
’lepd ’Avaypacpf The translation, as well as the ori¬ 
ginal work, excepting some fragments, is lost; but 
many particulars concerning Euhemerus, and the ob¬ 
ject of his history, are mentioned in a fragment of 
Diodorus Siculus, preserved by Eusebius. Some frag¬ 
ments have also been saved by St. Augustine ; and 
long quotations have been made by Lactantius, in 
his treatise “ De Falsa Religione." This work was 
a covert attack on the established religion of the 
Greeks. Plutarch, who was associated with the priest¬ 
hood, and all who were interested in the support of the 
popular creed, maintained that the whole work of 
Euhemerus, with the voyage to Panchaia, was an im¬ 
pudent fiction ; and, in particular, it was urged, tha* 
no one except Euhemerus had ever seen or heard m 




EUM 


EUMENES. 


the .and of Panchaia ( De Is. et Os.) : that the Pan¬ 
chaia lellus had been described in a flowery and poet¬ 
ical style, both by Diodorus Siculus and Virgil (Georg., 
2, 139), but not in such a manner as to determine its 
geographical position. The truth of the relation con¬ 
tained in the work of Euhemerus has been vindicated 
by modern writers,* who have attempted to prove that 
Panchaia was an island of the Red Sea, which Eu- 
aemerus had actually visited in the course of his voy¬ 
age. (Mem. de VAcad. des Inscrip., vol. 15.) But 
whether Euhemerus merely recorded what he bad seen, 
or whether the whole book was not rather a device 
and contrivance of his own, it seems highly probable 
that the translation of Ennius gave rise to the belief 
of many Roman philosophers, who maintained or in¬ 
sinuated their conviction of the mortality of the gods, 
and whose writings have been so frequently appealed 
to by Farmer, in his able disquisition on the preva¬ 
lence of the Worship of Human Spirits. (Dunlop's 
Roman Literature, vol. 1, p. 133.) 

Euijtfs, a surname of Bacchus, given him, according 
to the poets, by Jupiter, whom he was aiding in the 
contest with the giants. Jupiter was so delighted 
with his valour, that he called out to him, ei) vie, 
“ Well done, oh son!" Others suppose it to have ori¬ 
ginated from a cry of the Bacchantes, E vol. (Horat., 
Od., 1, 18, 9; 2, 11, 17.) 

Eul^us or Choaspes, a river of Persia, flowing 
near the city of Susa. The kings of Persia, according 
to Herodotus (1, 188), drank of no other; and, wher¬ 
ever they went, they were attended by a number of 
four-wheeled carriages, drawn by mules, in which the 
water of this river, being first boiled, was deposited in 
vessels of silver. .Elian relates (V. H., 12, 40), that 
Xerxes, during his march into Greece, came to a des¬ 
ert place, and was exceedingly thirsty ; his attendants 
with his baggage were at some distance, and procla¬ 
mation was made, that whosoever had any of the water 
of the Choaspes should produce it for the use of the 
king. One person was found who possessed a small 
quantity, but it was quite putrid. Xerxes, however, 
drank it, and considered the person who supplied it as 
his friend and benefactor, since he must otherwise 
have perished with thirst.—Wahl ( Asien , p. 736) de¬ 
rives the name Choaspes from the Persian Khooh asp, 
i. e., “strength of the mountain,” “mountain-power,” 
and considered it as applicable to all mountain-streams. 
The appellation of Eulaeus, in Scripture Ulai (Daniel, 
8, 2), is deduced by the same writer from the Pehlvi 
Av halaeh, i. e., “ clear, pure water.” D’Anville sup¬ 
poses the Choaspes to be the modern Karoon; but it 
is more probably the Abzal, which flows by the ruins 
which both Major Rennel and Mr. Kinneir have deter¬ 
mined to be those of Susa. 

Eum^eus, son of Ct.esius, king of Syros. He was 
carried off when quite young by Phoenician pirates, and 
sold to Laertes, father of Ulysses, who brought him up 
carefully, and found in him a faithful follower and friend. 
Eumseus acted as the steward of Ulysses, and recog¬ 
nised his master, on the return of the latter, though af¬ 
ter an absence of many years. (Od., 14, 5, seqq .) 

Eumelus, I. a son of Admetus, king of Pherae in 
Thessaly, by Alcestis, daughter of Pelias, and who 
married Iphthime the sister of Penelope. He went to 
the Trojan war, and had the fleetest horses in the 
Grecian army. He distinguished himself in the funer¬ 
al games of Patroclus. (II., 2, 714.— Id., 763, seqq.) 
—II. Son of Amphilytus, and one of the Corinthian 
line termed Bacchiadae. He was the author of a his¬ 
tory of Corinth in heroic verse. (Pausan., 2, 1.) 
Eumelus joined Archias when the latter went to found 
Syracuse. (Clem. Alex., Strom., lib. 1, p. 398.) Eu¬ 
sebius makes him to have flourished in the third Olym¬ 
piad. (Larcher, Chron. Herod., vol. 7, p. 448, 515.) 

Eumenes, I. a native of Cardia, a town of the Thra¬ 
cian Chersonese, and, though of humble birth, yet an 


important actor in the troubled times which followed 
the death of Alexander the Great. Being early taken 
into the service of Philip of Macedon, he served him 
for seven, and Alexander for thirteen years, in the con¬ 
fidential office of secretary. He also displayed great 
talent for military affairs through the Persian cam¬ 
paigns, and was one of Alexander’s favourite and most 
esteemed officers. After Alexander’s death, in the 
general division of his conquests, Cappadocia, Paphla- 
gonia, and the coast of the Euxine, as far east as Trape- 
zus, fell to Eumenes’ share. This was an expectancy 
rather than a provision, for the Macedonian army had 
passed south of these countries in the march to Per 
sia, and as yet they were unsubdued. Perdiccas, 
however, took arms to establish Eumenes in his new 
government, and did so at the expense of a single bat¬ 
tle. To Perdiccas as regent, and, after his death, to 
the royal family of Macedon, Eumenes was a faithful 
ally through good and evil; indeed, he is the only one 
of Alexander’s officers in whose conduct any appear¬ 
ance of gratitude or disinterestedness can be traced. 
When war broke out between Ptolemy and Perdiccas, 
B.C. 321, he was appointed by the latter to the chief 
command in Asia Minor, between Mount Taurus and 
the Hellespont (Corn. Nep., Vit. Eum.), to resist the 
expected invasion of Antipater and Craterus. The 
latter he defeated; but the death of Perdiccas in 
Egypt threw the balance of power into Antipater's 
hands, who made a new allotment of the provinces, in 
which Eumenes was omitted, and Cappadocia given to 
another. The task of reducing him was assigned to 
Antigonus, about B.C. 320. The rest of his life was 
spent in open hostility to, or doubtful alliance with, 
Antigonus, by whom he was at last put to death, hav¬ 
ing been delivered up to the latter by a portion of his 
own army. Eumenes was an admirable partisan sol¬ 
dier, brave, full of resources, arkl of unbroken spirit. 
We have his life written by Plutarch and Cornelius 
Nepos. (Consult Droysen, Geschichle der Nachfolger 
Alexanders, Hamb., 1836.) Those parts of Diodorus 
Siculus (lib. 18) which relate to him, and Plutarch’s 
Life, will be read with pleasure by all who are fond of 
military adventure. (Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 10, p 
68.)—II. A king of Pergamus, the first of his name. 
He succeeded his uncle Philetaarus on the throne, 
B.C. 263, and added much to the territory which he 
inherited from the latter, having even gained a victory, 
near Sardis, over Antiochus, son of Seleucus. After 
a reign of twenty-two years, he was succeeded by his 
cousin Attalus, whose father Attalus was the young¬ 
er brother of Philetserus. The death of Eumenes 
was occasioned by his intemperate habits.—III. The 
second of the name, was son of Attalus I. He as¬ 
cended the throne on his father's death, which took 
place at an advanced age, after a prosperous reign of 
43 or 44 years. The new sovereign continuing to 
tread in his father’s steps, and adhering to his policy, 
remained the firm friend of the Romans during all 
their wars against Antigonus and the kings of Mace¬ 
donia, and received from them, in recompense of his 
fidelity and valuable assistance, all the territory con¬ 
quered from Antiochus on this side of Mount Taurus. 
Prior to this period the territory of Pergamus did not 
extend beyond the gulfs of Elaea and Adramyttium. 
Waylaid by the hired assassins of Perses, king of Ma¬ 
cedonia, he had nearly perished at Delphi (Liv., 42, 
14, seqq.), and yet he is represented by the Roman 
historian as subsequently favouring the cause of the 
man who sought to destroy him, and of having thereby 
incurred the ill-will and anger of the Roman people. 
(Liv., 44, 13.— Id., 46, 1 , seqq.) With that arrogant 
nation past services were reckoned as nothing, if they 
were not accompanied by the most abject and slavish 
dependance. The King of Pergamus employed him¬ 
self, during the leisure which a profound peace now 
afforded him, in embellishing his capital, and patroni- 

495 



EUM 


E UP 


sing the arts and sciences. The most fasting monu¬ 
ment of his liberality in this respect was the great li¬ 
brary which he founded, and which yielded only to 
that of Alexandrea in extent and value. ( Strab., 624.) 
It was from their being first used for writing in this li¬ 
brary, that parchment skins were called “ Pcrgamcnee 
Chart a.” ( Varr ., ap. Plin., 13,11.) Plutarch informs 
us, that, this vast collection, which consisted of no less 
than 200,000 volumes, was given by Antony to Cleopa¬ 
tra. ( Vit. Anton., c. 25.) Eumenes reigned 49 years, 
leaving an infant son, under the care of his brother At- 
talus, who administered affairs as regent for 21 years, 
with great success and renown. ( Vid . Pergamus.) 

Eumenia, a city of Phrygia, north of Peltse, which 
probably derived its name from Eumenes, king of Per¬ 
gamus. ( Steph. Byz., s. v. Evjueveta.) ■ 

Eumenides ( the kind goddesses ), a name given to 
the Erinnyes or Furies, goddesses whose business it 
was to avenge murder upon earth. They were also call¬ 
ed Semncz (he/iva'i) or “ venerated goddesses .” The 
name Eumenides is commonly thought to have been 
used through a superstitious motive. (Vid. Furiae.) 

Eumenidia, a festival in honour of the Eumenides 
or Furies. It was observed once a year with sacri¬ 
fices and libations. At Athens none but freeborn citi¬ 
zens were allowed to participate in the solemnity, and 
of these, none but such as were of known virtue and 
integrity. (Vid. Eumenides.) 

Eumolpidze, a sacerdotal family or house, to which 
the priests of Ceres at Eleusis belonged. They claim¬ 
ed descent from the mythic Eumolpus. The Eumol¬ 
pidae had charge of the mysteries by hereditary right, 
and to this same sacerdotal line was expressly in¬ 
trusted the celebration of the Thesmophoria. ( Vid. Eu¬ 
molpus, and consult Creuzer, Symbolik, vol. 4, p. 355, 
442, 482, seqq.) 

Eumolpus, son of *Neptune and Chione, daughter 
of Boreas and Orithyia. Chione, to conceal her weak¬ 
ness, threw the babe into the sea, to the protection of 
his father. Neptune took him to ^Ethiopia, and gave 
him to his daughter Benthesicyme to rear. When 
Eumolpus was grown up, the husband of Benthesicy¬ 
me gave him one of his two daughters in marriage ; 
but Eumolpus, attempting to offer violence to the sis¬ 
ter of his wife, was forced to fly. He came with his 
son Ismarus to Tegyrius, a king of Thrace, who gave 
his daughter in marriage to Ismarus. But Eumolpus, 
being detected plotting against Tegyrius, was once 
more forced to fly, and came to Eleusis. Ismarus 
dying, Tegyrius became reconciled to Eumolpus, who 
returned to Thrace, and succeeded him in his king¬ 
dom. War«i>reaking out between the Athenians and 
Eleusinians, the latter invoked the aid of their former 
guest. A contest ensued, and, according to the ac¬ 
count given by Apollodorus (3, 15, 4), Eumolpus fell 
in battle against Erechtheus. Pausanias, however, 
states (1, 38, 3), that there fell in this conflict, on the 
one side Erechtheus, and on the other Immaradus, son 
of Eumolpus ; and that the war was ended on the fol¬ 
lowing terms : the Eleusinians were to acknowledge 
the power of Athens, but were to retain the rites of 
Ceres and Proserpina, and over these Eumolpus and 
the daughters of Celeus, king of Eleusis, were to pre¬ 
side. Other authorities, however, make the agree¬ 
ment to have been as follows : the descendants of Eu¬ 
molpus were to enjoy the priestly office at Eleusis, 
while the descendants of Erechtheus were to occupy the 
Attic throne. (Schol. mscr. Aristid. ad Panathen., p. 
118.— Creuzer, Symbolik, vol. 4, p. 344, not.) —Here 
we find a physical myth in unison with an historical 
legend. It was a tradition in Attica, that the sacred 
family of the Eumolpidae belonged to the mythic Thra¬ 
cians, whom we find sometimes on Helicon, some- 
imes in Thrace. The present legend, by making 
Eumolpus a son of the sea-god, and grandson of the 
north wind, and giving him a son named Ismarus, plain¬ 


ly intended to deduce the Eumolpidae from Thrace, 
while the name Tegyrius would seem to point to Boeo- 
tia, where there was a town named Tegyra. (Keight 
ley's Mythology, p. 383.) 

Eunapius, a native of Sardis in Lydia. He flour¬ 
ished in the fourth century, and was a kinsman of the 
sophist Chrysanthus, at whose request he wrote the 
lives of the philosophers of his time. The work has 
been characterized by Brucker as a mass of extravagant 
tales, discovering a feeble understanding, and an ima¬ 
gination prone to superstition. Besides being a soph¬ 
ist, he was an historian, and practised physic. He 
wrote a history of the Caesars from Claudius II. to 
Arcadius and Honorius, of which only a fragment re¬ 
mains. The lives of the philosophers was published 
with a Latin version by Junius, Antv., 1568, and by 
Commelinus in 1596. 

Eupator, a surname given to many of the Asiatic 
princes, particularly to Mithradates VII. of Pontus, 
and Antiochus V. of Syria. 

Eupatoria, I. a town of Pontus, at the confluence 
of the Lycus and Iris. It was begun by Mithradates 
under the name Eupatoria, and received from Pom- 
pey, who finished it, the title of Magnopolis. (Strab., 
556.) Its site appears to correspond with that pf the 
modern Tchenikeh. (Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 2, 
p. 471.)—II. A town in the northwestern part of the 
Tauric Chersonese, on the Sinus Carcinites. It was 
founded by one of the generals of Mithradates, and is 
supposed to answer to the modern Koslof or Gosleve. 
(Mannert., Geogr., vol. 4, p. 294.) 

Euphaes, succeeded Androcles on the throne of 
Messenia, and in his reign the first Messenian war be¬ 
gan. He died B.C. 730. (Pausan., 4, 5, 6.) 

Euphorbus, a Trojan, son of Panthous, renowned 
for his valour; he wounded Patroclus, and was killed 
by Menelaus. (11., 17, 60.) Pausanias relates (2, 
17) that in the temple of Juno, near Mycenae, a votive 
shield was shown, said to be that of Euphorbus, sus¬ 
pended there by Menelaus. Pythagoras, who main¬ 
tained the transmigration of souls, affirmed, that, in the 
time of the Trojan war, his soul had animated the 
body of Euphorbus ; and as a proof of the truth of his 
assertion, he is said to have gone into the temple 
where the shield was hanging, and to have recognised 
and taken it down. Maximus Tyrius (28, p. 288, ed. 
Dav.) speaks of an inscription on the shield, which 
proved it to have been offered by Menelaus to Miner¬ 
va. Ovid (Met., 15, 160) lays the scene of the fable 
in the temple of Juno at Argos ; while Tertullian (de 
Anima, p. 215) makes the shield to have been an 
offering at Delphi. Diogenes Laertius, finally, gives 
the temple of Apollo among the Branchidae, near the 
city of Miletus, as the place where the wonder was 
worked (8, 4, seq.) 

Euphorion, I. a tragic poet of Athens, son of iEs- 
chylus. He conquered four times with posthumous 
tragedies of his father’s composition, and also wrote 
several dramas himself. One of his victories is com¬ 
memorated in the argument to the Medea of Euripi¬ 
des, where we are told that Euphorion was first, Soph¬ 
ocles second, and Euripides third with the Medea. 
Olymp. 87, 2, B.C. 431. (Suid. — Theatre of the 
Greeks , p. 95, 4th ed.) — II. An epic and epigram¬ 
matic poet, born at Chalcis in Euboea, B.C. 276, and 
who became librarian to Antiochus the Great. He 
wrote various poems, entitled “ Hesiod,” “ Alexan¬ 
der,” “Arius,” “Apollodorus,” &c. His “Mopsopia” 
or “ Miscellanies” (Moi^o7ria r) araura) was a collec¬ 
tion, in five books, of fables and histories relative to 
Attica, a very learned work, but rivalling in obscurity 
the Cassandra of Lycophron. The fifth book bore the 
title of “ Chiliad" (XiTuag), either because it consisted 
of a thousand verses, or-because it contained the an¬ 
cient oracles that referred to a period of a thousand 
years. Perhaps, however, each of the five books con 




EUP 


EUP 


*ined a thousand verses, for the passage of Suidas re¬ 
specting this writer is somewhat obscure and defective, 
and Eudoxia, in the “ Garden of Violets,” speaks of 
a fifth Chiliad, entitled IIep£ Xpyo/utiv, “ Of Oracles.” 
Quintilian recommends the reading of this poet, and 
Virgil is said to have esteemed his productions very 
highly. A passage in the tenth Eclogue (v. 50, seqq.), 
and a remark made by Servius (ad Eclog., 6, 72), 
have led Heyne to suppose, that C. Cornelius Gallus, 
the friend of Virgil, had translated Euphorion into 
Latin verse. This poet was one of the favourite au¬ 
thors of the Emperor Tiberius, one of those whom he 
imitated, and whose busts he placed in his library. 
The fragments of Euphorion were collected and pub¬ 
lished by Meineke, in his work u De Euphorionis 
Clialc. vita et scriptis,” Gedani, 1823, 8vo. ( Scholl, 
Hist. Lit. Gr.y vol. 3, p. 122.) 

Euphranor, an eminent statuary and painter of Cor¬ 
inth. He flourished about the 104th Olympiad, B.C. 
3G2. Pliny gives an enumeration of his works. (Plin., 
35, 8, 19.---Compare Pausan., 1, 3, 2, and the remarks 
of Fuseli, in his Lecture on Ancient Painting , p. 67.) 

Euphrates, I. a native of Oreus in Euboea, and a 
disciple of Plato. He quitted Athens for the court of 
Perdiccas, king of Macedonia, with whom he became 
a favourite. After the death of this monarch he re¬ 
turned to his country, and headed a party against Phil¬ 
ip, the successor of Perdiccas and father of Alexander. 
Being shut up, however, within the walls of Oreus, 
he put an end to his own life. According to some, 
he was killed by order of Parmenio. — II. A Stoic 
philosopher, and native of Alexandrea, who flourished 
in the second century. He was a friend of the phi¬ 
losopher Apollonius Tyaneus, who introduced him to 
Vespasian. Pliny the younger (Epist., 1, 10) gives a 
very high character of him. When he found his 
strength worn out by disease and old age, he volunta¬ 
rily put a period to his life by drinking hemlock, hav¬ 
ing first, for some unknown reason, obtained permis¬ 
sion from the Emperor Hadrian. ( Enfield, Hist . Phi¬ 
los., vol. 2, p. 119, seqq.) —III. One of the most con¬ 
siderable and best known rivers of Asia. The Eu¬ 
phrates rises near Arze, the modern Erze-Roum. Its 
source is among mountains, which Strabo makes to be 
apart of the most northern branch of.Taurus. At 
first it is a very inconsiderable stream, and flows to 
the west, until, encountering the mountains of Cappa¬ 
docia, it turns to the south, and, after flowing a short 
distance, receives its southern arm, a large river com¬ 
ing from the east, and rising in the southern declivity 
of the range of Mount Ararat. This southern arm of 
the Euphrates is the Arsanias, according to Mannert, 
and is the river D’Anville mentions as the Euphrates 
which the ten thousand crossed in their retreat (Anab., 

4, 5), and of which mention is made by Pliny in ref¬ 
erence to the campaigns of Corbulo. The Euphra¬ 
tes, upon this accession of waters, becoming a very 
considerable stream, descends rapidly, in a bending 
course, nearly W.S.W. to the vicinity of Samosa- 
ta. The range of Amanus here preventing its farther 
progress in this direction, it turns off to the S.E., 
a course which it next pursues, with some little va¬ 
riation, until it reaches Circesium. To the south of 
this place it enters the immense plains of Sennar; 
but, being repelled on the Arabian side by some sandy 
and calcareous heights, it is forced to run again to the 

5. E. and approach the Tigris. In proportion as these 
two rivers now approximate to one another, the inter¬ 
mediate land loses its elevation, and is occupied by 
meadows and morasses. Several artificial communi¬ 
cations, perhaps two or three which are natural, form 
a prelude to the approaching junction of the rivers, 
which finally takes place near Coma. The river 
formed by their junction is called Shat-al-Arab, or the 
river of Arabia. It has three principal mouths, be¬ 
sides a small outlet; these occupy a space of thirtv- 

R R R 


six miles. The southernmost is the deepest, and freesi 
in its current. Bars of sand, casued by the river, and 
which change in their form and situation, render the 
approach dangerous to the mariner. The tide, which 
rises above Bassora, and even beyond Coma, meeting 
with violence the downward course of the stream, 
raises its waters in the form of frothy biLows.—Some 
of the ancients describe the Euphrates afc losing itself 
in the lakes and marshes to the south of Babylon. 
(Arrian, 7, 7. — Mela, 3, 8.— Plin., 5, 26.) Others 
consider the river formed by the union of the two as 
entitled to a continuation of the name of Euphrates. 
(Strab., 2, p. 132 ; 15, p. 1060.) According to some, 
the Euphrates originally entered the sea as a sep¬ 
arate river, the course of which the Arabs stopped up 
by a mound. (Plin., 6, 27.) This last opinion has 
been in some measure revived by Niebuhr, who sup¬ 
poses that the canal of Naar-Sares, proceeding from 
the Euphrates on the north of Babylon, is continued 
without interruption to the sea. But uncertainty 
must always prevail with regard to this and other 
points connected with the Euphrates, both from the 
inundations of the river, which render this flat and 
moveable ground continually liable to chafige, as well 
as from the works of human labour. The whole length 
of the Euphrates, including the Shat-al-Arab, is 1147 
English miles. Its name is the Greek form af the 
original appellation Phrath, which signifies fruitful or 
fertilizing; the prefix eu, being corrupted from the 
Oriental article. The Oriental name is sometimes 
also written Perath, as in Gen., 2, 14, 15, 18, and 
Joshua, 1, 4. By the Arabians the river is called 
For at. The epithet fertilis is applied to it by Lucan, 
Sallust, Solinus, and Cicero. The modern name ol 
the Arsanias is Morad-Siai, or the waters of desire. 
(Malte-Brun, vol. 2, p. 100, seqq., Am. ed.) 

Euphrosyne (Joy), one of the Graces, sister to 
Aglaia and Thalia. (Pausan., 9, 35.) 

Eupolis, a writer of the old comedy, was born at 
Athens about the year 446 B.C. (Clinton, Fast. 
Hell., vol. 1, p. 63.) He was therefore a contempo¬ 
rary of Aristophanes, who, in all probability, was born 
a year or two after. Eupolis is supposed to have ex¬ 
hibited for the first time in B.C. 429. In B.C. 425 he 
was third with his N ovprjvLai, when Cratinus was sec¬ 
ond, and Aristophanes first. In B.C. 421 he brought 
out his M apiKaq and his KoAa/cef ; one at the Dionysia 
kv A yvaloLQ, the other at those kv Hotel ; and in a 
similar way his AvroTivnoq and ’AoTparevToi the fol¬ 
lowing year. (Schol. in Aristoph., Nub., 552, 592.— 
Athen., 5, p. 216.— Schol. in Aristoph., Pac ., 803.) 
The titles of more than twenty of his comedies have 
been collected by Meursius. A few fragments remain. 
Eupolis was a bold and severe satirist on the vices of 
his day and city. Persius (l, 124) terms him “ ira- 
turn .” (Compare Horat., Sat., 1, 4, 1, seqq.) In the 
M apLKag he attacked Hyperbolus. (Aristoph., Nubes, 
551.) In the A vTolvicog he ridiculed the handsome 
pancratiast of that name ; in the ’A orpurevroL, which 
was probably a pasquinade, he lashed the useless arid 
cowardly citizens of Athens, and denounced Melan- 
thus as an epicure. In the Banzai he inveighed 
against the effeminacy of his countrymen. (Schol. in 
Aristoph., Pac., 808.) In his A aKeHaiyovec he assailed 
Cimon, accusing him, among other charges, of an un¬ 
patriotic bias towards everything Spartan. (Compare 
Plutarch, Vit. Cim., c. 16, who says that this play had 
a great influence on the public feeling.) Aristophanes 
seems to have been on bad terms with Eupolis, whom 
he charges with having pillaged the materials for his 
Mapr/caf from the 'lmrrjs (Nube&, 551, seqq.), and with 
making scurrilous jokes on his premature baldness. 
(Schol. ad Nub., 532.) Eupolis appears to have been 
a warm admirer of Pericles as a statesman and as a man 
(Schol. ad Aristoph., Acharn., p. 794, Dindorf), as 
it was reasonable that such a comedian should be, if it 

497 




EUR 


EURIPIDES 


oe true that he owed his unrestrained license of speech 
lo the patronage of that celebrated minister. His death 
was generally ascribed to the vengeance of Alcibiades, 
whom he had lampooned, probably in the Ba7rra;. 
(Cicero, ad Att., G, 1A By his orders, according to 
the common account, Eupolis was thrown overboard 
during the passage of the Athenian armament to Sicily 
(B.C. 415). Cicero, however, calls this story a vul¬ 
gar error; since Eratosthenes, the Alexandrean li¬ 
brarian, had shown that several comedies were com¬ 
posed by Eupolis some time after the date assigned to 
this pseudo-assassination. His tomb, too, according 
to Pausanias, was erected on the banks of the Aso- 
pus by the Sicyonians, which makes it most probable 
that this was the place of his death ( Theatre of the 
Greeks, p. 102, seq., 4 th ed.) 

Euripioes, I. a celebrated Athenian tragic poet, 
son of Mnesarchus and Clito, of the borough Phlya, 
and the tribe Cecropis. ( Diog. Lacrt., 2, 45. Sui- 
das , x. v. Evpnr. —Compare the Life by Thom. Ma- 
gister, and the anonymous Life published by Elmsley.) 
He was born Olymp. 75, 1, B.C. 480, in Salamis, on 
the very day of the Grecian victory near that island. 

( Plut ., Symp., 8, 1.) His mother Clito had been sent 
over to Salamis, with the other Athenian women, when 
Attica was given up to the invading army of Xerxes ; 
and the name of the poet, which is formed like a pa¬ 
tronymic from the Euripus, the scene of the first suc¬ 
cessful resistance to the Persian navy, shows that the 
minds of his parents were full of the stirring events 
of that momentous crisis. Aristophanes repeatedly 
imputes meanness of extraction, by the mother s side, 
to Euripides. ( Thesmoph ., v. 386.— Ibid., v. 455. 
Acharn., v. 478.— Equit., v. 17.— Ranee, v. 840.) He 
asserts that she was an herb-seller; and, according to 
Aulus Gellius (15, 20), Theophrastus confirms the 
comedian’s sarcastic insinuations. Philochorus, on 
the contrary) in a work no longer extant, endeavoured 
to prove that the mother of our poet was a lady of no¬ 
ble ancestry. ( Suidas , s. v. itvpnr.) Moschopulus 
also, in his'life of Euripides, quotes this testimony of 
Philochorus. A presumptive argument in favour of 
the respectability of Euripides, in regard to birth, is 
given in Athenreus (10, p. 424), where he tells us 
Sllvoxbovv re rcapa roig hpxaLotg oi EvyevecrciToi tuu- 
a fact which he instances in the son of Menelaus 
and in Euripides, who, according to Theophrastus, 
officiated, when a boy, as cup-bearer to a chorus com¬ 
posed of the most distinguished Athenians in the festi¬ 
val of the Delian Apollo. Whatever one or both his pa¬ 
rents might originally have been, the costly education 
which the young Euripides received intimates a cer¬ 
tain degree of wealth and consequence as then at least 
possessed by his family. The pupil of Anaxagoras, 
Protagoras, and Prodicus (an instructer so notorious 
for the extravagant terms which he demanded for his 
lessons), could not have been the son of persons at 
that time very mean or poor. It is most probable, 
therefore, that his father was a man of property, and 
made a marriage of disparagement. In early life we 
are told that his father made Euripides direct his at¬ 
tention chiefly to gymnastic exercises, and that, in his 
seventeenth year, he was crowned in the Eleusinian 
and Thesean contests. ( Aid. Gell., 15, 20.) The 
scholiast memoirs of Euripides ascribe this determina¬ 
tion of the father to an oracle, which was given him 
when his wife was pregnant of the future dramatist, 
wherein he was assured that the child 

—eg Kheog eoOhov opovoet, 

K al oteQewv lepCov yXvKeprjv x^P LV afMjuSahelTCU. 

This he interpreted of gymnastic glory and garlands. 
It does not appear, however, that Euripides was ever 
actually a candidate in the Olympic games.—The ge¬ 
nius of the young poet was not dormant while he was oc¬ 
cupied in these mere bodily accomplishments; and even 
498 


at this early age he is said to have attempted dramatic 
composition. (Aul. Gell., 15, 20.) He seems to have 
also cultivated a natural taste for painting. (Thom. 
Mag. in Vit .— Vit. Anonym .— Vit. Moschop.) Some 
of his pictures were long afterward preserved at Me- 
gara. At length, quitting the gymnasium, he applied 
himself to philosophy and literature Under the cele¬ 
brated rhetorician Prodicus, one of the instructers of 
Pericles, he acquired that oratorical skill for which his 
dramas are so remarkably distinguished. It is on this 
account that Aristophanes tauntingly terrns him noit]- 
ttjv 'pypariov bLicaviKc.)v (Pax., 534). He likewise 
repeatedly ridicules him for his avrihoylai, Tioyiayoi, 
and crpofat (Ranee, 775); his rrepncaToi, oofoyata, 
&c. Quintilian, however, in comparing Sophocles 
with Euripides, strongly recommends the latter to the 
young pleader as an excellent instructer. Cicero, too, 
was a great admirer of Euripides, perhaps more par¬ 
ticularly so for the oratorical excellence commended by 
Quintilian. He was no less a favourite with his 
brother Quintus. (Ep. adFam., 16, 8.)—From Anax¬ 
agoras he imbibed those philosophical notions which are 
occasionally brought forward in his works. (Compare 
Valckenaer, Diatnb., 4,5,6 .—Bouterweck, de Philoso- 
phia Euripidca, published in Miscell. Grcec. Dramat., 
p. 163, seqq., Grant, Cambridge.) Here, too, Peri¬ 
cles was his fellow-disciple. \Vith Socrates, who had 
studied under the same master, Euripides was on terms 
of the closest intimacy, and from him he derived those 
moral gnomse so frequently interwoven into his speeches 
and narrations. Indeed, Socrates was even suspected 
of largely assisting the tragedian in the composition 
of his plays.—Euripides began his public career as a 
dramatic writer, Olymp. 81, 2, B.C. 455, in the twen¬ 
ty-fifth year of his age. On this occasion he was the 
third with a play called the Pleiades. In Olymp. 84, 

4, B.C. 441, he won the prize. In Olymp. 87, 2, B.C. 
431, he was third with the Medea, the Philoctetes, the 
Dictys, and the Theristce, a satyric drama. His com¬ 
petitors were Euphorion and Sophocles. He was first 
with the Hippolytus, Olymp. 88, 1, B.C. 428, the year 
of his master’s (Anaxagoras’s) death : second, Olymp. 

91, 2, B.C. 415, with the Alexander (or Paris), the 
Palamedes, the Troades, and the Sisyphus, a satyric 
drama. It was in this contest that Xenocles was first. 
(.Elian., V. H., 2, 8.) Two years after this the Athe¬ 
nians sustained the total loss of their armament before 
Syracuse. In his narration of this disaster, Plutarch 
gives an anecdote (Vit. Nic.), which, if true, bears a 
splendid testimony to the high reputation which Eu¬ 
ripides then enjoyed. Those among the captives, he 
tells us, who could repeat any portion of that poet’s 
works, were treated with kindness, and even set at 
liberty. The same author also informs us, that Eu¬ 
ripides honoured the soldiers who had fallen in that 
siege with a funeral poem, two lines of which he has 
preserved. The Andromeda was exhibited Olvmp. 

92, 1, B.C. 412; the Orestes, Olymp. 93, 1, B.C. 
408. Soon after this time .the poet retired into Mag¬ 
nesia, and from thence into Macedonia, to the courl 
of Archelaiis. As in the case of HSschylus, the mo¬ 
tives for this self-exile are obscure and uncertain. 
We know, indeed, that Athens was by no means th» 
most favourable residence for distinguished lite;ury 
merit. The virulence of rivalry raged unchecked ir 
a licentious democracy, and the caprice of a petulant 
multitude would not afford the most satisfactory pa¬ 
tronage to a high-minded and talented man. Report, 
too, insinuates that Euripides was unhappy in his own 
family. His first wife, Melito, he divoiced for adul¬ 
tery ; and in his second, Chcerila, he was not more 
fortunate on the same score. To the poet’s unhappi¬ 
ness in his matrimonial connexions Aristophanes re¬ 
fers in his Ranee (v. 1045, seqq.). Envy and enmity 
among his fellow-citizens, infidelity and domestic vex¬ 
ations at home, would prove no small ioducesaante to 






EURIPIDES. 


EURIPIDES. 


the {.wet to accept the invitations of Archelaus. Per¬ 
haps, too, a prosecution in which he became involved, 
on a charge of impiety, grounded upon a line in the 
Hippolytus (Aristot., Rhet., 3, 15), might have had 
some share in producing this determination to quit 
Athens; nor ought we to omit, that, in all likelihood, 
his political sentiments may have exposed him to con¬ 
tinual danger. In Macedonia he is said to have writ¬ 
ten a play in honour of Archelaus, and to have in¬ 
scribed it with his patron’s name, who was so much 
pleased with the manners and abilities of his guest as 
to appoint him one of his ministers. He composed in 
this same country also some other dramatic pieces, in 
one of which (the Bacchce) he seems to have been in¬ 
spired by the wild scenery of the land to which he had 
come. No farther particulars are recorded of Euripi¬ 
des, except a few apocryphal anecdotes and apoph¬ 
thegms. His death is said to have been, like that of 
^Eschylus, in its nature extraordinary. Either from 
chance or malice, the aged dramatist was exposed, ac¬ 
cording to the common account, to the attack of some 
ferocious hounds, and by them so dreadfully mangled 
as to expire soon afterward, in his seventy-fifth year. 
This story, however, is clearly a fabrication, for Aris¬ 
tophanes in the Frogs would certainly have alluded to 
the manner of his death, had there been anything re¬ 
markable in it. He died B.C. 406, on the same day on 
which Dionysius assumed the tyranny. ( Clinton, Fast. 
Hellen., vol. 1, p. 81.) The Athenians entreated Ar¬ 
chelaus to send the body to the poet’s native city for 
interment. The request was refused, and, with every 
demonstration of grief and respect, Euripides was 
buried at Pella. A cenotaph, however, was erected to 
his memory at Athens.—“ If we consider Euripides 
by himself,” observes Schlegel (vol. 1, p. 198, seqq.), 
“ without any comparison with his predecessors ; if we 
select many of his best pieces, and some single pas¬ 
sages of others, we must bestow extraordinary praise 
upon him. On the other hand, if we view him in con¬ 
nexion with the history of his art; if in his pieces we 
always regard the whole, and particularly his object, as 
generally displayed in those which have come down to 
us, we cannot forbear blaming him strongly, and on 
many accounts. There are few writers of whom so 
much good and so much ill may be said with truth. 
His mind, to whose ingenuity there were no bounds, 
was exercised in every intellectual art; but this pro¬ 
fusion of brilliant and amiable qualities was not gov¬ 
erned in him by that elevated seriousness of disposi¬ 
tion, or that vigorous and artist-like moderation, which 
we revere in ^Eschylus and Sophocles. He always 
strives to please alone, careless by what means. 
Hence he is so unequal to himself. He sometimes 
has passages overpoweringly beautiful, and at other 
times sinks into real lowness of style. With all his 
faults, he possesses astonishing ease, and a sort of fas¬ 
cinating charm.—We have some cutting sayings of 
Sophocles concerning Euripides, although the former 
was so void of all the jealousy of an artist that he 
mourned over the death of the latter ; and, in a piece 
which he shortly after brought upon the stage, did not 
allow his actors the ornament of a garland. I hold 
myself justified in applying to Euripides particularly, 
those accusations of Plato against the tragic poets, that 
they gave up men too much to the power of the pas¬ 
sions, and made them effeminate by putting immod¬ 
erate lamentations into the mouths of their heroes, be¬ 
cause their groundlessness would be too clear if refer¬ 
red to his predecessors. The jeering attacks of Aris¬ 
tophanes are well known, but have not always been 
properly estimated and understood. Aristotle brings 
forward many important causes for blame ; and when 
he calls Euripides ‘the most tragic of poets’ (Poet., 
13, 10), he by no means ascribes to him the greatest 
perfection in the tragic art generally ; but he means, 
by this phrase, the effect which is produced by unhap¬ 


py catastrophes ; since he immediately subjoins ‘ al 
though he does not arrange the rest well.’ Lastly, tha 
scholiast on Euripides contains many short and solid 
critiques on single plays, among which may possibly 
be preserved the judgments of the Alexandrean critics, 
of whom Aristarchus, by his soundness and acuteness, 
deserved that his name should be proverbially used to 
signify a genuine critic. In Euripides we no longer 
find the essence of ancient tragedy pure and unmixed ; 
its characteristic features are already partly effaced. 
These consist principally in the idea of destiny which 
reigns in them, in ideal representation, and the impor¬ 
tance of the chorus. The idea of destiny had, indeed, 
come down to him from his predecessors as his inher¬ 
itance, and a belief in it is inculcated by him, accord¬ 
ing to the custom of the tragedians ; but still, in Eu¬ 
ripides, destiny is seldom considered as the invisible 
spirit of all poetry, the fundamental thought of the 
tragic world. It will be found that this idea may be 
taken in a severe or mild point of view; and that the 
gloomy fearfulness of destiny, in the course of a whole 
trilogy, clears up, till it indicates a wise and good prov¬ 
idence. Euripides, on the other hand, drew it from 
the regions of infinity, and, in his writings, inevitable 
necessity often degenerates into the caprice of chance. 
Hence he can no longer direct it to its proper aim 
namely, that of elevating, by its contrast, the mora. 
free-will of man. Very few of his pieces depend on a 
constant combat against the dictates of destiny, or an 
equally heroic subjection to them. His men, in gen¬ 
eral, suffer, because they must, and not because they 
are willing. The contrasted subordination of idea] 
loftiness of character and passion, which in Sophocles 
as well as in the graphic art of the Greeks, we find ob¬ 
served in this order, are in him exactly reversed. In 
his plays passion is the most powerful ; his secondary 
care is for character; and if these endeavours leave 
him sufficient room, he seeks now and then to bring in 
greatness and dignity, but more frequently amiability. 
The dramatis personae of a tragedy cannot be all alike 
free from faults, as otherwise hardly any strife could 
take place among them, and consequently there could 
be no complication of plot. But Euripides has, ac¬ 
cording to the doctrine of Aristotle (Poet., 15, 7.— 
Ibid., 26, 31), frequently represented his personages as 
bad without any necessity ; for example, Menelaus in 
the Orestes. Tradition, hallowed by popular belief, 
reported great crimes of many ancient heroes ; but 
Euripides, from his own free choice, falsely imputes to 
them traits at once mean and malicious. More espe¬ 
cially, it is by no means his object to represent the race 
of heroes as pre-eminent above the present one by 
their mighty stature, but he rather takes pains to fill up 
or to arch over the chasm between his contemporaries 
and that wondrous olden time, and secretly to espy the 
gods and heroes of the other side in their undress ; 
against which sort of observation, as the saying goes, 
no man, however great, can be proof. His manner of 
representation, as it were, presumes to be intimate 
with them : it does not draw the supernatural and the 
fabulous into the circle of humanity, but into the lim¬ 
its of an imperfect individual. This is what Sophocles 
meant when he said that he himself represented men as 
they should be, Euripides as they were. Not as if his 
own characters could always be held up as patterns of 
irreproachable behaviour: his saying referred to their 
ideal loftiness of character and manners. It seems to 
be a design of Euripides always to remind his specta¬ 
tors, ‘ See, those beings were men ; they had just such 
weaknesses, and acted from exactly the same motives 
that you do, that the meanest among you does.’ 
Hence he paints with great delight the weak sides and 
moral failings of his personages ; nay, more, he even 
makes them exhibit them in frank self-confessions 
They frequently are not only mean, but boast of it as 
if it must be so.—In his dramas the chorus is generally 

499 



EURIPIDES. 


EURIPIDES. 


an unessential ornament; its songs are often altogether 
episodical, without reference to the action ; more glit¬ 
tering than energetic or really inspired. *lhe cho¬ 
rus,’"says Aristotle (Poet., 18, »1), ‘ must be consid¬ 
ered as one of the actors, and as a part of the whole ; 
t must endeavour to assist the others; not as Eurip¬ 
ides, but as Sophocles, employs it.’ The ancient 
comic writers enjoyed the privilege of sometimes ma¬ 
tting the chorus address the audience in their own 
name ; this was called a Parabasis. Although it by 
no means belongs to tragedy, yet Euripides, according 
to the testimony of Julius Pollux, often employed it, 
and so far forgot himself in it, that, in the piece called 
* The Daughters of Danaus ,’ he made the chorus, 
consisting of women, use grammatical forms which be¬ 
longed to the masculine gender alone. Thus our poet 
took away the internal essence of tragedy, and injured 
the beautiful symmetry of its exterior structure. He 
generally sacrifices the whole to parts, and in these, 
a train, he rather seeks after extraneous attractions than 
genuine poetic beauty. In the musi-c of the accompa¬ 
niments he adopted all the innovations of which Timo- 
theus was the author, and selected those measures 
which are most suitable to the effeminacy of his poe¬ 
try. He acted in a similar way as regarded prosody ; 
the construction of his verses is luxuriant, and ap¬ 
proaches irregularity. This melting and unmanly turn 
would indubitably, on a close examination, show itself 
in the rhythm of his choruses. He everywhere su¬ 
perfluously brings in those merely corporeal charms, 
which Wmckelmann calls a flattery of the coarse out¬ 
ward sense ; everything which is stimulating or stri¬ 
king, or, in a word, which has a lively effect, without 
any 3 real intrinsic value for the mind and the feelings. 
He strives after effect in a degree which cannot be con¬ 
ceded even to a dramatic poet. Thus, for example, 
he seldom lets any opportunity escape of having his 
personages seized with sudden and groundless terror ; 
his old men always complain of the infirmities of old 
age, and are particularly given to mount, with totter¬ 
ing knees, the ascent from the orchestra to the stage, 
which frequently, too, represented the declivity of a 
mountain, while they lament their wretchedness. His 
object throughout is emotion, for the sake of which he 
not only offends against decorum, but sacrifices the 
connexion of his pieces. He is forcible in his deline¬ 
ations of misfortune ; but he often lays claim to our 
pity, not for some internal pain of the soul, a pain too 
retiring in its nature, and borne in a manly manner, but 
for mere corporeal suffering. He likes to reduce his 
heroes to a state of beggary ; makes them suffer hun¬ 
ger and want, and brings them on the stage with all the 
exterior signs of indigence, covered with rags, as Aris¬ 
tophanes so humorously throws in his teeth in the 
Acharnians (v. 410-448).—Euripides had visited the 
schools of the philosophers, and takes a pride in allu¬ 
ding to all sorts of philosophical theories ; in my opin¬ 
ion, in a very imperfect manner, so that one cannot un¬ 
derstand these instructions unless one knows them be¬ 
forehand. He thinks it too vulgar to believe in the 
gods in the simple way of the common people, and 
therefore takes care, on every opportunity, to insinuate 
something of an allegorical meaning, and to give the 
world to understand what an equivocal sort of creed 
he has to boast of. We can distinguish in him a two¬ 
fold personage: the poet, whose productions were 
dedicated to a religious solemnity, who stood under the 
protection of religion, and must therefore honour it on 
that account likewise, and the sophist, with philosoph¬ 
ical pretensions, who, in the midst of the fabulous mir¬ 
acles connected with religion, from which he drew the 
subjects of his pieces, endeavoured to bring out his 
sceptical opinions and doubts. While on the one hand 
he shakes the foundations of religion, on the other hand 
lie plays the part of a moralist; in order to become 
popular, he applxn to the heroic ages what would hold 


good only of the social relations of his contemporaries. 
He strews up and down a multitude of moral maxims, 
in which he contradicts himself, that are generally trite 
and often entirely false. VVith all this ostentation of 
morality, the intention of his pieces, and the impression 
which, on the whole, they produce, is sometimes ex¬ 
tremely immoral. It is related of him, that he made 
Bellerophon come on the stage with a contemptible 
panegyric on riches, in which he preferred them before 
every domestic joy; and said, at last, ‘ If Venus (who 
had the epithet of golden) shone like gold, she would 
indeed deserve the love of men.’ ( Seneca , Epist., 
115.) The audience, enraged at this, raised a great 
tumult, and were proceeding to stone the orator as 
well as the poet. Euripides, on this, rushed forward 
and exclaimed, ‘Wait patiently till the end; he will 
fare accordingly.’ Thus also he is said to have ex¬ 
cused himself against the accusation, that his Ixion 
spoke too abominably and blasphemously, by replying, 
that, in return, he had not concluded the piece without 
making him revolve on the wheel. But this shift of 
poetic justice, to atone for the representation of wick¬ 
edness, does not take place in all his dramas. The 
bad frequently escape ; lies and other knavish tricks 
are openly taken into protection, especially when he 
falsely attributes to them noble motives. He has also 
great command of that treacherous sophistry of the pas¬ 
sions which gives things only one appearance. The 
following verse (Hippol., 608) is notorious for its apol¬ 
ogy for perjury ; indeed, it seems to express what cas¬ 
uists call mental reservation : 

* My tongue took an oath, but my mind is unsworn.’ 

In the connexion in which this verse is spoken, it 
may indeed be justified, as far as regards the reason 
for which Aristophanes ridicules it in so many ways; 
but still the formula is pernicious on account of the 
turn which may be given it. Another sentiment ol 
Euripides (Phoeniss., 534), ‘ It is worth while com¬ 
mitting injustice for the sake of empire, in other things 
it is proper to be just,’ was continually in the mouth 
of Cassar, in order to make a wrong application of it 
( Sueton ., Vit. Ccbs ., 30.—Compare Cic., de Off., 3 
21.)—Seductive enticements to the enjoyment of sen 
sual love were another article of accusation against 
Euripides among the ancients. Thus, for example, it 
must excite our indignation when Hecuba, in order to 
stir up Agamemnon to punish Polymnestor, reminds 
him of the joys Cassandra had afforded him; who, 
having been taken in war, w'as his slave, according to 
the law of the heroic ages : she is willing to purchase 
revenge for a murdered son, by consenting to and rat- 
ifying the degradation of a daughter who is still alive. 
This poet was the first to take for the principal subjec- 
of a drama the wild passion of a Medea, or the un¬ 
natural love of a Phaedra ; as, otherwise, it may be ea¬ 
sily understood, from the manners of the ancients, why 
love, which among them was far less ennobled by del¬ 
icate feelings, played merely a subordinate part m their 
earlier tragedies. Notwithstanding the importance im¬ 
parted to female characters, he is notorious for his ha¬ 
tred of women ; and it cannot be denied, that he brings 
out a great multitude of sayings concerning the weak¬ 
nesses of the female sex, and the superiority of men, 
as well as a great deal drawn from his experience in 
domestic relations, by which he doubtlessly intended 
to pay court to the men, who, although they did not 
compose the whole of the public to which he addressed 
himself, yet formed the most powerful portion of it. A 
cutting saying, as well as an epigram, of Sophocles 
(Athcn., 13, p. 558.— Id. ib., p. 605), have been hand 
ed down to us, in which he explains the pretended ha 
tred of Euripides for women by supposing that he had 
the opportunity of learning their frailty through his own 
unhallowed desires. In the whole of Euripides’ meth¬ 
od of delineating women, we may perceive indeed 









EURIPIDES. 


EURIPIDES. 


great susceptieaity even for the more lofty charms of 
womanly virtue, but no real respect.—That independ¬ 
ent freedom, in the method of treating the story, which 
was one of the privileges of the tragic art, frequent¬ 
ly, in Euripides, degenerates into unbounded caprice. 
It is well known that the fables of Hyginus, which 
differ so much from the relations of other writers, are 
partly extracted from his pieces. As he often over¬ 
turned what had hitherto been well known and gener¬ 
ally received, he was obliged to use prologues, in 
which he announces the situation of affairs according 
to his acceptation, and makes known the course of 
events. (Compare the amusing scene in Aristopha- 
nea, Ranee, 1177, seqq., and Porson’s explanation of 
the employment of such prologues by Euripides, Pree- 
lect. in Eurip., p. 8, seqq.) These prologues make 
the beginnings of the plays of Euripides very uniform; 
it has the appearance of great deficiency of art when 
somebody comes out and says, ‘I am so and so; such 
and such things have already happened, and this is what 
is going to happen.’ This method may be compared 
to the labels coming out of the mouths of the figures in 
old pictures, which can only be excused by the great 
simplicity of their antique style. But then, all the rest 
must harmonize with it, which is by no means the case 
with Euripides, whose personages discourse according 
to the newest fashion of the manners of his time. In 
his prologues, as well as in the denouement of his plots, 
he is very lavish of unmeaning appearances of gods, 
who are elevated above men only by being suspended 
in a machine, and might very easily be spared. He 
pushes to excess the method which the ancient tragic 
writers have of treating the action, by throwing ev¬ 
erything into large masses, with repose and motion 
following at stated intervals. At one time he unrea¬ 
sonably prolongs, with too great fondness for vivacity of 
dialogue, that change of speakers at every verse which 
was usual even with his predecessors, in which ques¬ 
tions and answers, or reproaches and replies, are shot to 
and fro like darts ; and this he sometimes does so arbi¬ 
trarily, that half of the lines might be dispensed with. 
At another time he pours forth long, endless speeches; 
he endeavours to show his skill as an orator in its ut¬ 
most brilliancy, by ingenious syllogisms, or by exciting 
pity. Many of his scenes resemble a suit at law, in 
which two persons, who are the parties opposed to one 
another, or sometimes in the presence of a third per¬ 
son as judge, do not confine themselves to what their 
present situation requires ; but, beginning their story 
at the most remote period, accuse their adversary and 
justify themselves, doing all this with those turns 
which are familiar to pleaders, and frequently with 
those which are usual among sycophants. Thus the 
poet attempted to make his poetry entertaining to the 
Athenians by its resemblance to their daily and favour¬ 
ite pursuit, carrying on and deciding, or at least listen¬ 
ing to, lawsuits. On this account Quintilian particu¬ 
larly recommends him to the young orator, who may 
learn more by studying him than the older tragedians ; 
an opinion marked with his usual accuracy. But it is 
easy to see that such a recommendation conveys no 
high eulogium, since eloquence may indeed find place 
in the drama when it is suitable to the capacity and 
object of the person who is speaking; but when rhet¬ 
oric steps into the place of the immediate expression 
of the soul, it is no longer poetical.—The style of Eu¬ 
ripides is, on the whole, not compressed enough, al¬ 
though it presents us with some very happily-drawn 
pictures and ingenious turns of language ; it has nei¬ 
ther the dignity and energy of iEschylus, nor the chaste 
grace of Sophocles. In his expressions he frequently 
aims at the extraordinary and strange, and, on the oth¬ 
er hand, loses himself in commonplace ; and too of¬ 
ten the tone of his speeches becomes quite every-day, 
and descends from the height of the buskin to level 
ground. For these reasons, as well as on account of 


his almost ludicrous delineation of many characteristic 
peculiarities (such as the clumsy deportment of Pen- 
theus in a female garb, when befooled by Bacchus 
(Bacchee , v. 782, seqq.), or the greediness of Hercules 
(Alcestis, v. 764, seqq.), and his boisterous demands 
on the hospitality of Admetus), Euripides was a fore¬ 
runner of the new comedy ; for which he has an evi¬ 
dent inclination, since, under the names belonging to 
the age of heroes, he frequently paints real personages 
of his own time. Menander also expressed an extra¬ 
ordinary admiration for him, and declared himself to 
be his scholar; and there is a fragment of Philemon, 
full of such extravagant admiration of him that it al¬ 
most seems to be intended as a jest. ‘ If the dead,’ 
he says, or makes one of his personages say, ‘ really 
possessed sensation, as some suppose, I would hang 
myself in order to see Euripides.’ The sentiments 
of the more ancient Aristophanes, his contemporary, 
form a striking contrast to the veneration which the 
later comic writers had for him. Aristophanes re¬ 
proaches or banters him for his lowering the dignity oi 
tragedy, by exhibiting so many heroes as whining and 
tattered beggars (Ranee, v. 841, 1063.— Acharn., 395, 
seqq. — Pax, v. 147); by introducing the vulgar affairs 
of ordinary life (Ranee, v. 9591; by the sonorous un¬ 
meaningness of his choral odes, and the feebleness ef 
his verses (Ranee, v. 1300, seqq. — Pax, v. 532); and 
by the loquacity of all his personages, however low 
their rank or unsuitable their character might be. He 
charges his dramas with an immoral tendency (Ranee, 
v. 850, 1043, 1068.— Nubes, v. 1371), and himself 
with contempt for the gods and fondness for newfan¬ 
gled doctrines. (Ranee, v. 887, seqq.) He laughs at 
his affectation of philosophy and rhetoric. (Ranee, v. 
815, 826, 966, 970, 1073, 1076.) Aristophanes, in¬ 
deed, persecutes him indefatigably and inexorably ; he 
was ordained to be, as it were, his perpetual scourge, 
that none of his vagaries in morals or in art might re¬ 
main uncensured. Although Aristophanes, as a comic 
dramatist, is, by means of his parodies, the foe of the 
tragic poets in general, yet he nowhere attacks Soph¬ 
ocles ; and even in the places in which he fastens on 
the weak side of yEschylus, his reverence for him is 
manifest, and he everywhere opposes his gigantic pro¬ 
portions to the petty ingenuity of Euripides. He has 
laid open, with immense understanding and inexhaust¬ 
ible wit, his sophistical subtlety, his rhetorical and phil¬ 
osophical pretensions, his immorality and seductive ef¬ 
feminacy, and the merely sensual emotions he excites. 
As modern judges of art have for the most part es¬ 
teemed Aristophanes to be nothing better than an 
extravagant and slanderous buffoon, and, moreover, 
have not understood the art of translating the humour¬ 
ous dress he gives subjects into the truths which lie 
at the bottom, they have attached but little importance 
to his opinion.—After all that has gone before, we must 
not lose sight of the fact, that Euripides was yet a 
Greek, and a contemporary, too, of many of the great¬ 
est men that Greece possessed in politics, philosophy, 
history, and the graphic art. If, when compared with 
his predecessors, he stands far below them, when com¬ 
pared with many moderns he is far superior to them. 
He is particularly strong in the representation of a dis¬ 
tempered and erring mind, given up to its passions to 
a degree of plrensy. (Longinus, 15, 3.) He is excel¬ 
lent when the subject leads principally to emotion, and 
has no higher claims ; and still more on occasions 
when even moral beauty demands pathos. Few of his 
pieces are without single passages that are charmingly 
beautiful. Take him altogether, it is by no means my in¬ 
tention to deny that he possesses extraordinary talents; 
I only maintain that they were not united to a dispo¬ 
sition honouring the rigour of moral principles and the 
holiness of religious feelings above everything else.” 
(Theatre of the Greeks, 2 d ed., p. 133, seqq.) —Of the 
1 120 dramas which Euripides is said to have composed 

501 






EURIPIDES. 


EURIPIDES 


we Have remaining at the present day only eighteen 
tragedies and one satyric piece. The following are 
the titles and subjects : 1 . 'E Ko.br], Hecuba. The sac¬ 
rifice of Polyxena, whom the Greeks immolate to the 
manes of Achilles, and the vengeance which Hecuba, 
doubly unfortunate in having been reduced to captivity 
and deprived of her children, takes upon Polymnestor, 
the murderer of her son Polydorus, form the subject of 
thi3 tragedy. The scene is laid in the Grecian camp 
in the Thracian Chersonese. The shade of Polydorus, 
whose body remains without the rites of sepulture, has 
the prologue assigned it. Ennius and L. Accius, and 
in modern times Erasmus of Rotterdam, have trans¬ 
lated this play into Latin verse. Ludovico Dolce has 
given an Italian version of it; several passages have 
been rendered into French by La Harpe ; Racine owes 
to it some fine verses in his Andromache and Iphigenia, 
and Voltaire has imitated some parts in his M^rope.— 
2. ’Opearqc, Orestes. The scene of this play is laid 
at Argos, the seventh day after the murder of Clytem- 
nestra. It is on this day that the people, in full as¬ 
sembly, are to sit in judgment upon Orestes and Elec- 
tra. The only hope of the accused is in Menelaus, 
who has just arrived ; but this prince, who secretly 
aims at the succession, stirs up the people in private 
to pronounce sentence of condemnation against the 
parricides. The sentence is accordingly pronounced, 
but the execution of it is left to the culprits themselves. 
They meditate taking vengeance by slaying Helen ; 
but this princess is saved by the intervention of Apol¬ 
lo, who brings about a double marriage, by uniting 
Orestes with Hermicne, the daughter of Helen, and 
Electra with Pylades. This denouement is unworthy 
of the tragedy. The piece, moreover, is full of comic 
and satiric traits. Some commentators think they rec¬ 
ognise the portrait of Socrates in that of the simple 
and virtuous citizen who, in the assembly of the people, 
undertakes the defence of Orestes. This play is as¬ 
cribed by some to Euripides the younger, nephew of 
the former.—3. ^otvlocrat, Phcenissce. The subject 
of this piece is the death of Eteocles and Polynices. 
The chorus is composed of young Phoenician females, 
sent, according to the custom established by Agenor, 
to the city of Thebes, in order to be consecrated to 
the service of the temple at Delphi. The prologue is 
assigned to Jocasta. Grotius regards the Phoenissre 
as the chef-d’oeuvre of Euripides : a more elevated and 
heroic tone prevails throughout it than is to be found in 
any other of his pieces. The subject of the Phoenis- 
sa3 is that also of the Thebais of Seneca. Statius has 
likewise imitated it in his epic poem, and Rotrou in 
the first two acts of his Antigone.—4. Madera, Medea. 
The vengeance taken by Medea on the ungrateful Ja¬ 
son, to whom she has sacrificed all, and who, on his 
arrival at Corinth, abandons her fo^a royal bride, forms 
the subject of this tragedy. What constitutes the 
principal charm of the piece is the simplicity and clear¬ 
ness of the action, and the force and natural cast of 
the characters. The exposition of the play is made in 
a monologue by the nurse ; the chorus is composed of 
Corinthian females, a circumstance which does not fail 
to give an air of great improbability to this portion of 
the plot. It is said that Euripides gave to the world 
two editions of this tragedy, and that, in the first, the 
children Medea were put to death by the Corinthi¬ 
ans, -^hiJ3 in the second, which has come down to us, it 
is their mother herself who slays them. According to 
this hypothesis, the 1378th verse and those immediate¬ 
ly following, in which Medea says that she will impose 
on Corinth, contemptuously styled by her the land of 
Sisyphus, an expiatory festival for this crime, have 
been retained by mistake in the revision in which they 
should have disappeared. Medea has no expiation to 
demand of the Corinthians, if they are not guilty of 
the murder of her sons. (Compare Bottiger , de 'Me¬ 
dea Euripidea, &c. —Matthias, Misc., vol. 1, p. 1, 
502 


seqq. — Bockh, Grcecce Tragcedice Principum. num co 
qua. supersunt genuina, &c.,p. 165.) ^Elian informs 
us (F. H., 5, 21), that the Corinthians prevailed upon 
Euripides to alter the tradition in question; he makes 
no mention, however, of any change in the piece itself 
According to others, they purchased this compliance 
for the sum of five talents. The subject of the Medea 
was a favourite one with the dramatic writers of for¬ 
mer times, and has proved no less so with the mod 
eras. Among the former may be mentioned Neophron 
of Sicyonia, Ennius, Pacuvius, Accius, Ovid, and Sen¬ 
eca ; among the latter, Ludovico Dolce, Glover, Cor¬ 
neille, &c.—5. ^TnroXvToq oreipavofopoq, Hippoly- 
tus Coronifer, “ Hippolytus wearing a crown.” The 
subject of this tragedy is the same with that which 
Racine has taken for the basis of his Phedre, a subject 
eminently tragical. It presents to our view a female, 
a feeble-minded woman, the victim of the resentment 
of Venus, who has inspired her with a criminal pas¬ 
sion. An object of horror to him whom she loves, 
and not daring to reveal her own shame, she dies, after 
having engaged Theseus, by her misrepresentations, to 
become the destroyer of his own son. The title of 
this tragedy is probably derived from the crown which 
Hippolytus offers to Diana. Euripides at first gave it 
the name of 'lmvoXyToq KalvTcroyevog. He afterward 
retouched it, and, changing the catastrophe and the 
title, reproduced it in the year that Pericles died. It 
gained the prize over the pieces of Iophon and Ion, 
which had competed with it in the contest. It is some¬ 
times cited under the title of the Phaedra, and the cel¬ 
ebrated chef-d’oeuvre of Racine is an imitation of it, 
as well as the tragedy of Seneca, which last, however, 
rather merits the name of a parody. A comparison 
between the Hippolytus of Euripides and the Phedre 
of Racine, is given by Louis Racine, in the Mcmoires 
de VAcademie des Inscrip, ct Belles-Lettres , vol. 8, 
p. 300 ; and by the Abbe Batteux in the same collec¬ 
tion, vol. 42, p. 452. Consult also the work of Aug. 
Wilhelm Schlegel, Paris , 1805, 8vo, “ Comparaison 
entre la Phedre de Racine et celle d' Euripide .”— 
6. '’A.’X.KrjOTig, Alcestis. The subject of this tragedy 
is moral and affecting. It is a wife who dies for the 
sake of prolonging her husband’s existence. Its ob¬ 
ject is to show, that conjugal affection and an observ¬ 
ance of the rites of hospitality are not suffered to go 
without their reward. Hercules, whom Admetus had 
kindly received while unfortunate, having learned that 
Alcestis, the wife of the monarch, had consummated 
her mournful sacrifice, seeks her in the shades, and re¬ 
stores her to her husband. In this piece, as in some 
others of Euripides, the introduction of comic traits 
into a tragic subject is open to just criticism. Al¬ 
though the character of Hercules is interesting and 
well-drawn, and though the play, in general, offers 
many beauties, it is, notwithstanding, regarded as one 
of the most feeble productions of our author.—7. ’Av- 
dpopdxv, Andromache. The death of the son of Achil¬ 
les, whom Orestes slays, after having carried off from 
him Hermione, forms the subject of the piece. The 
scene is laid in Thetidium, a city of Thessaly, near 
Pharsalus. Some have pretended, that the aim of Eu¬ 
ripides in writing this tragedy was to render odious the 
law of the Athenians which permitted bigamy. (Con¬ 
sult Reflexions sur VAndromaque d’Euripide et sur 
VAndromaque de Racine , par Louis Racine, in the 
Mem. de VAcad des Inscrip., &c., vol. 10, p. 211.) 
Racine, in the preface to his Andromaque , holds the 
following language in relation to the mode of treating 
the subject which he has adopted in his own pieceT 
“ Andromaque, dans Euripide, craint pour la vie de 
Molossus, qui est un fils qu’elle a eu de Pyrrhus, et 
qu’Hermione veut faire mourir avec sa mere. Mais 
ici il ne s’agit point de Molossus. Andromaque ne 
connoit pas d’autre mari qu’Hector, ni d’autre fils 
qu’Astyanax. J’ai cru en cela me conformer a 1’idee 





EURIPIDES. 


EURIPIDES. 


que nous avons maintenant de cette princesse. La 
plupart de ceux qui out entendu parler d’Andromaque 
ne la connoissent que pour la veuve d’Hector, et pour 
la mere d’Astyanax. On ne croit pas qu’elle doive 
aimer un autre mari ni un autre fils ; et je doute que 
les larmes d’Andromaque eussent fait sur l’esprit de 
mes spectateurs l’impression qu’elles ont faite, si elles 
avoient coule pour un autre fils que celui qu’elle avoit 
d’Hector.” It is easy to perceive from this how much 
the French poet has ennobled by the change the char¬ 
acter of his heroine.—8. 'I/ceridef, Suppliccs, “ The 
Female Suppliants.” The scene of this tragedy is laid 
in front of the temple of Ceres at Eleusis, whither the 
Argive females, whose husbands have perished before 
Thebes, have followed thdSr king Adrastus, in the hope 
of engaging Theseus to take up arms in their behalf, 
and obtain the rites of sepulture for their dead, whose 
bodies were withheld by the Thebans. Theseus yields 
to their request and promises his assistance. In ex¬ 
hibiting this play the third year of the 90th Olympiad, 
the fourteenth of the Peloponnesian war, Euripides 
wished, it is said, to detach the Argives from the Spar¬ 
tan cause. His attempt, however, failed, and the 
treaty was signed by which Mantinea was sacrificed to 
the ambition of Lacedaemon. The exposition of this 
piece has not the same fault as the rest : it is impo¬ 
sing and splendid, and made without the intervention 
of an actual prologue; for the monologue by which 
HUthra, the mother of Theseus, makes known the sub¬ 
ject of the piece, is a prayer addressed to Ceres, in 
which the recital naturally finds a place.—9. ’IdLykveia 
ij kv AvAtdi, Iphigenia in Aulide, “ Iphigenia at 
Aulis.” The subject of this tragedy is the intended 
sacrifice of Iphigenia, and her rescue by Diana, who 
substitutes another victim. It is the only one of the 
* plays of Euripides that has no prologue, for it is well 
known that the Rhesus, which is also deficient in this 
respect, had one formerly. Hence Musgrave has con¬ 
jectured that the present play had also once a prologue, 
in which the exposition of the piece was made by Di¬ 
ana ; and iE.ian (Hist. An., 7, 39) cites a passage of 
the Iphigenia which we do not now find in it, and 
which could only have been pronounced by Diana ; it 
announces what she intends to do for the purpose of 
saving Iphigenia. Eichstadt, however, and Bockh, 
maintain, that the Iphigenia which we at present have 
could not have been furnished with a prologue, since, 
if it had been, this prologue ought to have contained 
the recital which is put in the mouth of Agamemnon 
at verse 49, seqq. Hence Bockh concludes, that there 
were two tragedies with this name, one written by Eu¬ 
ripides and having a prologue, the other composed by 
Euripides the younger, and which is also the one that 
we now possess. (Eichstadt, de Dram. Grcecorum 
Comico-Sa/yrico, p. 99.— Bockh, Grcecce Tragcedice 
Principum, &c., p. 216.—Consult also Bremi, Philo- 
log. Bey tr age aus der Schweiz, p. 143, and Jacobs, 
Zusatze zu Sulzer, vol. 5, pt. 2, p. 401.) Racine has 
made the story of Iphigenia the subject of one of his 
chefs-d’oeuvre. (Consult the Comparaison de Vlphi- 
genie d'Euripide avec Vlphigenie de Racine, par Louis 
Racine, in the Mem. de VAcad, des Inscrip., &c., vol. 
8, p. 288.) It has also been treated by Ludovico 
Dolce and by Rotrou.—10. ’I (piyeveta y kv T avpoLg, 
Iphigenia in Tauride, “ Iphigenia in Tauris.” The 
daughter of Agamemnon, rescued by Diana from the 
knife of the sacrificer, and transported to Tauris, there 
serves the goddess as a priestess in her temple. Ores¬ 
tes has been cast on the inhospitable shores of this 
country, along with his friend Pylades, and by the laws 
of Tauris they must be sacrificed to Diana. Recog¬ 
nised by his sister at the fatal moment, Orestes con¬ 
ducts her back to their common country. A mono¬ 
logue by Iphigenia occupies the place of a prologue 
and exposition. The scene where Iphigenia and her 
brother became known to each other is of a deep and 


touching interest: nevertheless, Guimond de la Toucnt 
is said, in this respect, to have surpassed his model, 
—11. T pioadeg, Troades, “The Trojan females.” 
The action of this piece is prior to that of the Hecuba. 
The scene is laid in the Grecian camp, under the walls 
of Troy, which has fallen into the hands of the foe. A 
body of female captives have been distributed by lot 
among the victors. Agamemnon has reserved Cas¬ 
sandra for himself; Polyxena has been immolated tc 
the manes of Achilles ; Andromache has fallen to 
Neoptolemus, Hecuba to Ulysses. The object of the 
poet is to show us in Hecuba a mother bowed down 
by misfortune. The Greeks destroy Astyanax, and his 
mangled body is brought in to the mother of Hector, 
his own parent being by this time carried away in the 
train of Neoptolemus. Ilium is then given as a prey 
to the flames. This succession of horrors passes in 
mournful review before the eyes of the spectator ; yet 
there is no unity of action to constitute a subject for 
the piece, and consequently the play has no denoue 
ment. Neptune appears in the prologue. Seneca and 
M. de Chateaubrun have imitated this tragedy.~ 
12. Bai<xai, Bacchce, “The female Bacchanalians.” 
The arrival of Bacchus at Thebes and the death of 
Pentheus, who is torn in pieces by his mother and sis¬ 
ter—such is the subject of this piece, in which Bac¬ 
chus opens the scene and makes himself known to the 
spectators. Brumoy regards this as a satyric drama ; 
in this, however, he is mistaken, as the chorus of satyrs 
can never be dispensed with in such compositions. 
The action of the Bacchpe is very defective : it is a suc¬ 
cession of rich paintings, of tragic situations, of brill¬ 
iant verses, connected together by a very feeble inter¬ 
est. The spectacle which this tragedy presented must 
have been at once imposing and well calculated to keep 
alive curiosity. (Compare the remarks of Prevost, 
Examen de la tragedie des Bacchantes, in the Theatre 
des Grecs, by Raoul-Rochette, vol. 9, p. 378.) There 
is some probability for supposing that we have this 
play in a second edition.—13. 'HpaK?i£idai, Heraclidce. 
The descendants of Hercules, persecuted by Eurys* 
theus, flee for refuge to Athens, and implore the pro¬ 
tection of that city. The Athenians lend aid, and 
Eurystheus becomes the victim of the vengeance he 
was about bringing upon them. Idas, an old compan¬ 
ion of Hercules, explains the subject to the spectators. 
The poet manages to impart an air of great interest to 
the piece.—14. 'EH ivy, Helena. The scene is laid in 
Egypt, where Menelaus, after the destruction of Troy, 
finds Helen, who had been detained there by Proteus, 
king of that country, when Paris wished to convey her 
to Ilium. Euripides follows in this the account of 
Herodotus, to which he adds some particulars of his 
own that border on romance. The action passes at the 
isle of Pharos, where Theoelymenus, the son and suc¬ 
cessor of Proteus, keeps Helen in custody with the 
view of espousing her. She employs a stratagem in 
order to escape from his power. The denouement of 
this piece resembles that of the Iphigenia in Tauris.— 
15. "Iov, Ion. Ion, son of Apollo and Creiisa, daugh¬ 
ter of Erechtheus, king of Athens, has been brought 
up among the priests at Delphi. The design of Apollo 
is to make him pass for the son of Xuthus, who has 
married Creiisa. The interest of the piece consists in 
the double danger which Creiisa and Ion run ; the 
former of being slain by Ion, and the latter of perishing 
by the poison prepared for him by a mother who is ig- 
horant of his being her son. The play, however, is 
somewhat complicated, and has need of a long expo¬ 
sition, which is assigned to Mercury. The scene is 
laid at the entrance of Apollo’s temple in Delphi, a 
place expressly chosen in order to give to the specta¬ 
cle an air of pomp and solemnity. A religious tone, 
full of gravity and softness, pervades the whole piece. 
There is much resemblance between this tragedy and 
the Athalie of Racine. —16. paLvopevoc 

503 



EURIPIDES. 


EURIPIDES. 


Hercules furens. After having killed, in his phrensy, 
his wife and children, Hercules proceeds to submit 
himself to certain expiatory ceremonies, and to seek 
repose at Athens. Amphitryon appears in the pro¬ 
logue : the scene is laid at Thebes. —17. ’HXeKrpa, 
Electra. The subject of this piece has been treated 
also by yEsch'ylus and Sophocles, but by each in his 
peculiar way. Euripides transfers the scene from the 
palace of HDgisthus to the country near Argos: the 
exposition of the play is made by a cultivator, to 
whom Electra has been compelled to give her hand, 
but who has taken no advantage of this, and has re¬ 
spected in her the daughter of a royal line. On com¬ 
paring Euripides with Sophocles, we will find him in¬ 
ferior to the latter in the manner of treating the subject: 
he has succeeded, however, in embellishing it with in¬ 
teresting episodes.—18. 'P yesoq, Rhesus. A subject 
derived from the tenth book of the Iliad. Some able 
critics have proved that this piece was never written by 
Euripides. (Consult Dissertation sur la tragedie de 
Rhesus, par Hardion, in the Mem. de VAcad, des 
Inscr. et Belles-Lettres , vol. 10, p. 323.— Valckenaer, 
Diatribe Euripidea, c. 9, seqq. — Beck's Euripides, 
vol. 3, p. 444, seqq., &c.)—19. QaeOov, Phaethon. 
Of this play we have about eighty verses remaining. 
Clymene, the mother of Phaethon, is the wife of Me- 
rops, king of the Ethiopians, and Phaethon passes for 
the son of this prince. The young man, having con¬ 
ceived some doubts respecting his origin, addresses 
himself to the Sun. The catastrophe, which cost him 
his life, is well known. In the tragedy of Euripides, 
the body of her son is brought to Clymene, at the very 
moment when Merops is occupied with the care of 
procuring for him a bride.—20. A avdy, Danae. Of 
this play we have the commencement alone, unless the 
sixty-five verses, which commonly pass for a part of 
the prologue, are rather to be considered as the produc¬ 
tion of some imitator, who has proceeded no farther in 
his attempt to ape the style of Euripides. This last 
is the hypothesis of Wolf. (Lift. Anal., vol. 2, p. 394.) 
—The ancient writers cite also a poem of Euripides, 
to which we have already alluded, under the title of 
Et unydeiov, “ Funeral hymn,” on the death of Nicias 
and Demosthenes, as well as of the other Athenians 
who perished in the disastrous expedition against Syra¬ 
cuse. We possess also two Epigrams of Euripides, 
each consisting of four verses, one of which has been 
preserved for us in the Anthology, and the other in 
Athenaeus. There have also come down to us five 
letters, ascribed to Euripides, and written with suffi¬ 
cient purity and simplicity of style to warrant the belief 
that they are genuine productions. (Compare the re¬ 
marks of Beck in his edition of the poet—vol. 7, ed. 
Glasg., p. 720.)—Of the numerous fragments of Eurip¬ 
ides that have reached us, it seems unnecessary here 
to speak. The only production worth mentioning, af¬ 
ter those already noticed, is the satyric drama entitled 
Cyclops (K vtchwip). The Greek satyric drama must 
not be confounded with the satire of the Romans, 
from which it was totally distinct. ( Bentley on Phal- 
aris, p. 246, ed. Lond., 1816.) It was a novel and 
mixed kind of play, first exhibited by Pratinas, proba¬ 
bly at a period not long subsequent to Olymp. 70, 2, 
B.C. 499. ( Theatre of the Greeks, fid ed., p. 113.) 
T. he poet, borrowing from tragedy its external form 
and mythological materials, added a chorus of .satyrs, 
•■vith their lively songs, gestures, and movements. This 
species of composition quickly obtained great celebri¬ 
ty. The tragic poets, in compliance with the humour 
of their auditors, deemed it advisable to combine this 
ludicrous exhibition with their graver pieces. One sa¬ 
tyric drama was added to each tragic trilogy, as long 
as the custom of contending with a series of plays 
and not with single pieces, continued, ^schylus^ 
Sophocles, and Euripides were all distinguished satyr¬ 
ic composers ; and m the Cyclops of the latter we pos- 
604 


sess the only extant specimen of this singular exhibi¬ 
tion. Notwithstanding, however, its burlesque ingre¬ 
dients, the tragic character was so far preserved in the 
satyric play, that the subject appears to have been 
always historical, and the action partly serious, though 
with a fortunate catastrophe. No less than tragedy 
and comedy, the satyric drama had its peculiar and ap¬ 
propriate stage decorations, representing woods, caves, 
mountains, and other diversities of the sylvan landscape. 
Satyrs old and young, with Silenus in his various ages, 
were distinguished from one another by the variety of 
their grotesque masks, crowned with long, shaggy goat’s 
hair; while the Satyrs were negligently clad in skins 
of beasts, and the Sileni decorated with garlands of 
flowers skilfully woven. The satyr-parts, too, appear 
to have been sometimes acted by pantomimic perform¬ 
ers, moving on a kind of stilts, to give more completely 
the appearance of goat’s legs. The choral dance, it is 
hardly necessary to remark, was thoroughly rustic, pe¬ 
culiarly lively, and quite opposite in character to the 
solemn and impressive movements which accompanied 
the serious tragedy. (Compare Casaubon, de Sat. 
Poes., 1, 5.) The fable of the Cyclops of Euripides 
is drawn from the Odyssey. The subject is Ulysses 
depriving Polyphemus of his eye, after having intox¬ 
icated him with wine. In order to connect with the 
story a chorus of satyrs, the poet has recourse to the 
following expedient. He supposes that Silenus, and 
his sons, the Satyrs, in seeking over every sea for Bac¬ 
chus, whom pirates have carried away, have been ship¬ 
wrecked on the coast of Sicily, where they have fallen 
into the hands of Polyphemus. The Cyclops has 
made slaves of them, and has compelled them to tend 
his sheep. Ulysses, having been cast on the same 
coast, and having been, in like manner, made captive 
by Polyphemus, finds in these satyrs a willing band of 
accomplices. They league with him against their mas¬ 
ter, but their excessive cowardice renders them very 
useless auxiliaries. They profit, however, by his vic¬ 
tory, and embark along with him.—Among the numer¬ 
ous editions of Euripides which have issued from the 
press, the following are particularly worthy of notice : 
that of Beck, commenced by Morus, Lips., 1778-88, 
3 vols. 4to : that of Musgrave, Oxon., 1778, 4 vols. 
4to : that of Matthiae, Lips., 1813-37, lOvols. 8vo. ; 
and the variorum Glasgow edition, 1820, 9 vols. 8vo. 
—Of the separate plays, the best editions are those of 
Porson, Brunck, Valckenaer, Monk, &c. The Diatribe 
of Valckenaer ( Diatribe in Euripidis perditorum dra- 
matumreliquias, Lugd. Bat., 1767, 4to) is a choice 
piece of criticism, and contains some happy corrections 
of the text of the fragments. It is an excellent work 
for those who wish to be acquainted with the philo¬ 
sophical opinions of Euripides, and with the peculiar 
character of his style, as distinguished from that of 
Sophocles.—II. A nephew of the preceding ( Suid., 
s. v .— Bockh, de Trag. Grace., xiv. and xviii.), com¬ 
monly styled Euripides Junior. He was a dramatic 
poet, like his uncle, and exhibited, besides his own 
compositions, several plays of the latter, then dead ; 
one of these gained the prize. Bockh and others sus¬ 
pect that he reproduced the Iphigenia in Aulis, and 
perhaps the Palamedes. (Vid. preceding article.) To 
this Euripides is ascribed, by Suidas, an edition ol 
Homer. ( Theatre of the Greeks , fid ed:, p. 158.) 

Euripus, a narrow strait, dividing Euboea from the 
main land of Greece, and supposed to have been formed 
by an earthquake, or some other convulsion of nature, 
which tore Eubosa from the Boeotian coast. ( Eurip., 
ap. Strab., 60.) Several of the ancients have reported, 
that the tide in this strait ebbed and flowed seven times 
in the day, and as many times during the night, and 
that the current was so strong as to arrest the progress 
of ships in full sail. (Pomp. Mela, 2, 7.— Strabo , 
55.— Id., 403.— Plin , 2, J00.) According to the pop¬ 
ular account, Aristotle drowned himself here out of 




EURIPIJS. 


EUR 


chagrin, from not being able to account for so unusual 
a motion of the water. The story, however, is devoid 
of foundation. (Vid. Aristoteles.)—From this rapid 
movement of the current, the Euripus derived its an¬ 
cient name (ei, bene, and blnro, jacio). Livy’s ac¬ 
count of this strait appears the most rational. “ A 
more dangerous station for a fleet,” observes this wri¬ 
ter, “ can hardly be found ; besides that the winds rush 
down suddenly and with great fury from the high 
mountainson each side, the strait itself of the Euripus 
does not ebb and flow seven times a day, at stated 
hours, as report says ; but the current changing irreg¬ 
ularly, like the wind, from one point to another, is 
hurried along like a torrent tumbling from a steep 
mountain ; so that, night or day, ships can never lie 
quiet.” (Liv., 28, 6.) The straits are now called, by 
a corruption of the ancient name, the straits of Negro- 
pont. Hobhouse visited the Euripus, and the account 
given by this intelligent traveller of its appearance in 
our own days is deserving of being cited. “ What I 
witnessed of the Euripus was, that the stream flows 
with violence, like a mill-race, under the bridges, and 
that a strong eddy is observable on that side from which 
it is about to run, about a hundred yards above the 
bridges ; the current, however, not being at all appa¬ 
rent at a greater distance, either to the south or north. 
Yet the ebbing and flowing are said to be visible at 
ten or a dozen leagues distance, at each side of the 
strait, by marks shown of the rising and falling of the 
water in several small bays on both coasts. The depth 
of the stream is very inconsiderable, not much more 
than four feet. The account which Wheler copied 
from the Jesuit Babin, respecting the changes of the 
Euripus, and which he collected on the spot, though 
not from his personal experience, he not being long 
enough in the place, was, that it was subject to the 
same laws as the tides of the ocean for eighteen days 
of every moon, and was irregular, having twelve, thir¬ 
teen, or fourteen flowings and ebbings for the other 
eleven days ; that is, that it was regular for the three 
last days of the old moon and the eight first of the 
new, then irregular for five days, regular again for the 
next seven, and irregular for the other six. The water 
seldom rose to two feet, and usually not above one ; 
and, contrary to the ocean, it flowed towards the sea, 
and ebbed towards the main land of Thessaly, north¬ 
ward. On the irregular days it rose for half an hour, 
and fell for three quarters ; but, when regular, was six 
hours in each direction, losing an hour a day. It did 
not appear to be influenced by the wind. A Greek of 
Athens, who had resided three years at Egripo, told 
me that he considered the changes to depend chiefly 
on the wind, which, owing to the high lands in the vi¬ 
cinity of the strait, is particularly variable in this place. 
The two great gulfs, for so they may be called, at the 
north and south of the strait, which present a large 
surface to every storm that blows, and receive the 
whole force of the Archipelago, communicate with 
each other at this narrow shallow channel; so that the 
Euripus may be a sort of barometer, indicative of every 
change, and of whatever rising and falling of the tide, 
not visible in the open expanse of waters there may be 
in these seas. I did not, however, see any marks of 
the water being ever higher at one time than at another. 
The Greek had observed also, that, when the wind was 
north or south, that is, either up or down the strait, the 
alteration took place only four times in the twenty-four 
hours; but that, when it was from the east, and blew 
strongly over the mountains behind Egripo, the refluxes 
took place more frequently, ten or twelve times ; and 
that, in particular, immediately before the full of the 
moon, the turbulence and eddies, as well as the rapid¬ 
ity of the stream, were very much increased. There 
was never, at any season, any certain rule with respect 
either to the period or the number of changes. Those 
of the ancients who inquired into this phenomenon 
S s s 


were aware, that the story of the Euripus changing its 
course always seven times during the day was un¬ 
founded ; and the account given of it by Livy (28, 6) 
corresponds, in some measure, with that of my Athe¬ 
nian informant. The bridge which anciently connect¬ 
ed the main land and the island was considerably long¬ 
er than that which at present serves the same purpose 
We are informed, that the strait was made more nar¬ 
row by a dike, which the inhabitants of Chalcis con¬ 
structed to lessen the passage ; and it is by no means 
improbable, that the whole of the flat on which the 
fortified part of Egripo now stands, and which is sur¬ 
rounded on the land side by a wide marsh, was for¬ 
merly covered by the waters of the Euripus.” (Hob- 
house's Journey, vol. I, Lett. 29, p. 372 ,seqq.,Am. cd.) 

Europa, I. one of the three main divisions of the 
ancient world. With the northern parts of this the 
ancients were very slightly acquainted, viz., what are 
now Prussia, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Russia. 
They applied to this quarter the general name of Scan¬ 
dinavia, and thought it consisted of a number of islands. 
From the Portuguese cape, denominated by mariners 
the Rock of Lisbon, to the Uralian Mountains, the length 
of modern Europe may be reckoned at about 3300 
British miles, and from Cape Nord, in Danish Lapland, 
to Cape Matapan, the southern extremity of the Morea, 
it may be about 2350. As regards the limits of Eu¬ 
rope, it may be remarked, that the chain of the Ural 
Mountains, the river of the same name, the Caspian 
Sea, and the lowest level of the isthmus between it 
and the Sea of Azof (a level indicated by the.course of 
the Manytch and the Kuma), are boundaries between 
Europe and Asia in the part in which they are con¬ 
tiguous. That frontier ends at the Tanai's or Don, 
which for a short space terminates the two continents. 
The remaining limits are more easily determined ; they 
are the Sea of Azof, the Black Sea, the Bosporus, the 
Propontis, and the Hellespont. The line is taken across 
the Archipelago ; Tenedos, Mytilene, Chios, Samos, 
Nicaria, Cos, and Rhodes, belong to Asia ; Naxos, 
Stampalia, and Scarpanto, to Europe. The Mediter¬ 
ranean divides Africa and Europe ; but it is not ascer¬ 
tained whether Malta, Gozo, Comino, Lampedosa, and 
Linosa are African or European islands. The Cana¬ 
ries, Madeira, and the Azores are, in a physical poin 
of view, appendages of Africa, being parts of a sub¬ 
marine continuation -from the chain of Atlas.—With 
respect to the name of Europe, it must be confessed 
that its etymology is altogether uncertain. Bochart de¬ 
rives the word from the Phoenician Ur-appa, which he 
makes equivalent to the Greek Aevno-Kpoauivog, “ of a 
white or fair aspect;” and considers it ae applying not 
only to the sister of Cadmus, but also to the Continent of 
Europe, from the fairer visages and complexions of its 
inhabitants : “ quia Europcei Africanos candore faciei 
multum superant .” ( Geogr. Sacr., 4, 33, col. 298.) 

M. Court de Gebelin, on the other hand, deduces the 
name from the Phoenician Wrab, i. e., “ West,” as indi 
eating the country lying in that direction with refer 
ence to Asia. His explanation, however, of the mode 
in which the same appellation came to be applied 
to the lunar divinity, is far less plausible : “ Ce nom 
ne convint pas moins a la Lune ; car on ne la voit que le 
soir ; et lorsqu’on commence a Papercevoir h la Neo- 
menie, e’est toujours au couchant: d’ailleurs n’est 
elle pas la Reine de la Nuit 1 elle fut done appellee 
avec raison Europe.” (Monde Primitif, vol. 1, p 
250.)—As regards the progress of geographical dis¬ 
covery, it may be remarked, that the earliest notices 
of Europe are in the writings of the Greeks, who in 
habited the southeastern corner of the continent. From 
this country the geographical knowledge of Europe ex¬ 
tended by degrees to the west and north. Homer was 
acqua’nted with the countries round the AUge an Sea 
or Archipelago. He had also a pretty accurate gen¬ 
eral notion respecting those which lie on the south 

505 




EUROPA, 


EUROPA. 


coast of the Black Sea ; but what he says about the 
countries west of Greece, on the shores of the Medi¬ 
terranean, is a mixture of fable and truth, in which 
the fabulous part prevails. It would seem that, in his 
age, these seas were not yet visited by his country¬ 
men, and that he obtained his knowledge from the 
Phoenicians, who had probably for some time sailed to 
these regions, but who, according to the common poli¬ 
cy of trading nations, spread abroad false accounts of 
these unknown countries, in order to deter other na¬ 
tions from following their track, and participating in 
the advantages of this distant commerce. It is proba¬ 
ble, also, that the Phoenicians long excluded the Greeks 
from the navigation of the Mediterranean ; for when 
the latter began to form settlements beyond their na¬ 
tive country, they first occupied the shores of the iEge- 
I'U, and afterward those of the Black Sea. As the 
European shores of this last-mentioned sea are not 
well adapted for agriculture, except a comparatively 
small tract of the peninsula of Crimea, their early set¬ 
tlements were mostly on the Asiatic coasts, and, con¬ 
sequently, little addition was made by these colonies 
to the geographical knowledge of Europe. But the 
navigation of the Phoenicians was checked in the mid¬ 
dle of the sixth century before Christ, apparently by 
their being subjugated by the Persians. About this 
time, also, the Greeks began to form settlements in 
the southern parts of Italy and on the island of Sicily, 
and to navigate the Mediterranean Sea to its full ex¬ 
tent. Accordingly, we find that, in the time of Herodo¬ 
tus (450 B.C.), not only the countries on each side of 
the Mediterranean, and the northern shores of the Black 
Sea, were pretty well known to the Greeks, but that, 
following the track of the Phoenicians, they ventured to 
pass the Columns of Hercules, and to sail as far as the 
Cassiterides, or Tin Islands, by which name the Scil- 
ly Isles and a part of Cornwall must be understood. 
It is even reported, that some of their navigators sailed 
through the English Channel and entered the North 
Sea, and perhaps even the Baltic. It must be ob¬ 
served, however, that Herodotus professes himself to¬ 
tally unacquainted with the islands called Cassiterides 
(3, 115), and Strabo (p. 104, &c.) expresses a very 
unfavourable opinion of the alleged northern voyages 
of Pytheas. Thus a considerable part of the coasts of 
Europe was discovered, while the interior remained 
almost unknown. When the Romans began their con¬ 
quests, this deficiency was partly filled up. The con¬ 
quest of Italy was followed by that of Spain and the 
southern parts of Gaul, and, not long afterward, Sicily, 
Greece, and Macedonia were added. Caesar conquer¬ 
ed Gaul and the countries west of the Rhine, together 
with the districts lying between the different arms by 
which that river enters the sea. His two expeditions 
into Britain made known also, in some measure, the 
nature of that island and the character of its inhabi¬ 
tants. Thus, in the course of little more than two 
hundred years, the interior of all those countries was 
discovered, the shores of which had been previously 
known. In the mean time, nothing was added to the 
knowledge of the coasts, the Greeks having lost their 
spirit of discovery by sea along with their liberty, and 
the Romans not being inclined to naval enterprise. 
After the establishment of imperial power at Rome, 
the conquests of the Romans went on at a much slower 
rate, and the boundaries of the empire soon became 
stationary. This circumstance must be chiefly at¬ 
tributed to the nature of the countries which were con¬ 
tiguous to those boundaries. The regions north of the 
Danube are mostly plains, and at that time were only 
inhabited by wandering nations, who could not be sub¬ 
jected to a regular government. Such, at least, are the 
countries extending between the Carpathian mount¬ 
ains and the Black Sea, and therefore the conquest 
of Dacia by Trajan was of short continuance and 
speedily abandoned. The countries between the Alps 
506 


and the Danube were soon added to the empire; but 
as the nations who inhabited the tracts north of that 
river had not given up a wandering life, they were 
enabled to elude the Roman yoke. The most im¬ 
portant addition to the empire and to geographical 
knowledge was the conquest of England during the 
first century after Christ, to which, in the Mowing 
century, the south of Scotland was added. Nothing 
seems to have been added afterward. The Geogra¬ 
phy of Ptolemy contains a considerable number of 
names of nations, places, and rivers in those coun¬ 
tries which were not subjected to the Romans. Proba¬ 
bly they were obtained from natives and from Roman 
traders, who had ventured to penetrate beyond the 
boundaries of the empire. But these brief notices 
are very vague, and in most cases it is very difficult tc 
determine what places and persons are indicated. 
(Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 10, p. 79.)—II. A daughter 
of Agenor (called by some Phoenix) king of Phoenicia. 
Jupiter, becoming enamoured of her, according to the 
old legend, changed himself into a beautiful white 
bull, and approached her, “ breathing saffron from his 
mouth,” as she was gathering flowers with her com¬ 
panions in a mead near the seashore. Europa, de¬ 
lighted with the tameness and beauty of the animal, 
caressed him, crowned him with flowers, and at length 
ventured to mount on his back. The disguised god 
immediately made off with his lovely burden, plunged 
into the sea, and swam with Europa to the Island of 
Crete, landing not far from Gortyna. Here he re¬ 
sumed his own form, and beneath a plane-tree caress¬ 
ed the trembling maid. The offspring of their union 
were Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Sarpedon. Aste- 
rius, king of Crete, espoused Europa subsequently, and 
reared her sons. ( Apollod ., 3, 1.— Hes., el Bacchyl., 
ap. Schol. ad II, 12, 292.— Mosch., Id., 2.— Ovid , 
Met., 2, 833, seqq. — Id., Fast., 5, 605.— Keightlcy's 
Mythology , p. 455.) The fable of Europa is made by 
the mythological expounders of the old school to rest 
on an historical basis. In this they are decidedly 
wrong. Instead of perceiving that this and other le¬ 
gends of mythology bear only an analogy to the truth, 
that they are false when understood literally, but fre¬ 
quently true when interpreted metaphorically, they 
have taken them as narratives of real facts, embellish¬ 
ed by credulity or a poetical imagination, and, hav 
ing struck out the wonders, they took the caput mor 
tuum which remained for real history. Thus, in the 
present instance, the foundation of the story of Europa 
is said to have been, that a commander of a Cretan 
vessel, either himself named Taurus, or whose vessel 
bore that title, carried off the Phoenician princess Eu¬ 
ropa, daughter of Agenor, from the city of Tyre : 
others again make her to have been borne away by 
some Cretan merchants, whose ship had the emblem 
of a white bull, and who intended her as a prize for 
their king Asterius, who had assumed the name of Ju¬ 
piter! (Consult Banier's Mythology, vol. 3, p. 400, 
seqq.) The truth is, however, that Europa was no¬ 
thing more than the lunar divinity or the moon. In 
order to make this more apparent, let us review the 
whole ground of this singular fable. We find the le¬ 
gend of Jupiter and Europa known already to Homer 
(11., 14, 321) and Hesiod. (Schol. ad II., 12, 397.) 
The old genealogical poet Asius (Pausan., 7, 4), and 
the Logographers Pherecydes (ed. Slurz, p. Ill) and 
Hellanicus (p. 65), found already, in their time, a rich 
fund of materials in this fabulous legend. What Apol- 
lodorus, in particular, gives (3, 1), appears to have 
been taken from these writers. Antimachus and An- 
ticlides are named as having written on this same sub¬ 
ject (Schol. ad Apoll. Rhod., 2, 178), but more espe 
cially Eumelus (Schol. ad. II., 6, 130) and Stesicho 
rus. (Schol. ad Eurip., Phocn., v. 674.—Compare 
Fragm. Stesich., ed. Suchfort, p. 13.) Amid such a 
number of writers, it is no wonder if the topic proved 




EUROPA. 


EUROPA. 


ifficiently attractive to occupy the attention of many 
if the later Greek and Roman authors. Hence we 
Snd it reappearing, after some lapse of time, in Mos- 
chus ( Idyll., 2), Lucian (Dial. Mar. — Opp., vol. 2, 
p. 125, ed. Bip.), and Achilles Tatius ( de Am. Clit. 
et Lcuc., 1 , 1.—Compare also Anacreon, Od., 35. — 
Horat., Od., 3, 27.— Ovid, Met., 2, 833.— Id., Fast., 
5, 605. — Germanici Arat. Phccn., 533.)—The an¬ 
cient writers themselves attempt an explanation of the 
fable, with which the mythological expounders of later 
days are in full accordance, as we have already ob¬ 
served. Thus Palsephatus (p. 72, ed. Fisch.) makes 
the individual who carried off Europa to have been 
called Taurus (compare TZetzes, ad Lycophr., v. 1299, 
and Mcursius, p. 250), and Julius Pollux says (Ono- 
mast., 1, 83) the ship in which she was carried away 
had a bull for its Tvapuoypov. If there be any ancient 
fable which requires, in its explanation, a careful sep¬ 
arating of the earlier and original portions from what 
is of later addition, it is this of Europa. If we follow 
the narrative of Apollodorus, we will find the legend 
dividing itself into two distinct parts ; the carrying off 
of Europa, and the search made for her by Cadmus, 
Cilix, &c. These two portions, however, are not ne¬ 
cessarily connected with each other, as evidently ap¬ 
pears from the former of the two having alone been 
handled by many writers.—What, now, were the ideas 
entertained by the earlier mythologists on the subject 
of this fable 1 Homer, in the well-known passage (II., 
14, 315) where he speaks of the reunion of Jupiter 
and Juno on Mount Ida, merely mentions the daugh¬ 
ter of Phoenix as having been one of the objects of 
Jupiter’s love. This, most probably, was the earliest 
form of the legend ; at least the bearing away of Eu¬ 
ropa by that deity appears to have been a later addition. 
According to Acusilaus (ap. Apollod., 2, 5, 7), it was a 
real bull that brought Europa to Crete ; and, according 
to another authority, the animal was selected by Nep¬ 
tune for this purpose, and was sent to Sidon by Jupiter, 
for the purpose of carrying off the maiden (Nigidius, 
ap. Schol. ad Germ. Arat. Phccn., ed. Buhle, 2, p. 
55), for which service he was afterward placed among 
the stars. (Eurip., Phryx. ap. Eratosth., cat. 14.— 
Theognis, Schol. ad Arat., p. 48, ed. Buhle. — Hygin., 
Poet. Astr., 21.) It is easy to perceive, that this 
my thus loses all its meaning the moment this bull be¬ 
comes the transformed Jupiter. (Compare Gruber's 
Lexicon, 2, p. 9.) We find, it is true, that even as 
early a writer as Hesiod is acquainted with the meta¬ 
morphosis of Jupiter into a bull (Schol. ad Horn., II., 
12, 397, ed. Aid., 1521, p. 215), but this only shows 
at how early a period the addition to which we allude 
was made to the original fable. The germe of that fa¬ 
ble, however, still remained, and was, in effect, simply 
this, Jove indulged his passion with Europa in Crete. 
The elucidation of the mythus mainly depends upon 
the clearing up of another question : what means the 
term Europa primitively, a land or a person 1 The 
former of these interpretations can in no way whatever 
be the true one. Homer and Hesiod, to whom Eu¬ 
ropa is known as the daughter of Phoenix, have no ac¬ 
quaintance with Asia and Europe as parts of the world. 
The Asian meadow or field (*A aiog Xeipiuv) in Homer 
(Iliad, 2, 461), is merely a small tract of land in 
the vicinity of the Cayster. The name of Asia only 
began to be more extensively applied as the interior of 
Lower Asia began to be better known to the Greeks. 
(Compare Hermann, ad Hymn, in Apoll., 250.) Eu¬ 
rope, as a land, is entirely unknown to Homer: the 
first traces of the name are found in the Hymn to 
Apollo (v. 250, seqq., and 290, seqq.), where it is used 
in opposition to the Peloponnesus and the islands, and 
seems to indicate the remaining portion of what was 
subsequently called Hellas. It is more than probable 
that the appellation itself originated in Lower Asia. 

Compare the remarks of Buttmann, “ Ueber die my- 


thische Verbindung von Griechenland mil Asitn, in 
the Memoirs of the Berlin Academy fcr 1818, p. 219, 
seqq.) In Euripides (Iph. in Taur., v. 627), the epi¬ 
thet evpuTToq occurs in the sense of “ dark,” and with 
this the explanation of Hesychius coincides : Fvpurcr], 
X^pa rf/q dvoeoq, y GKoreivy. The name Europe, then, 
will have been given by the Asiatics to the country 
which lay west of them, towards the evening (Ereb) 
sun, or the quarter of darkness. At what period this 
appellation was extended to the whole continent can¬ 
not now be ascertained (Uhcrt's Geogr., vol. 2, p. 
210); as, however, Pherecydes already divided the 
earth into two hemispheres (Schol ad Apoll. Rhod., 4, 
1396), placing Europe in the north, and Asia, in¬ 
cluding Africa, in the south, we may suppose this ar¬ 
rangement to have been generally received about the 
time of the Logographers. Now it is manifest, from 
what has just been stated, that the original mythus of 
Europa had no symbolical reference whatever to the 
continent of that name. Before, however, proceeding 
farther in the examination of this fable, it becomes im¬ 
portant to consider the lineage assigned to the female 
in question. Homer (II., 14, 321) names her as the 
daughter of Phoenix ; so also Hesiod, Bacchylides 
(Schol. Didymi, ed. Aid., 1521, p. 215), Asius (Pau- 
san., 7, 4), and Moschus (Idyll., 2, 40). With the 
Logographers a discrepance presents itself. Some re¬ 
gard her as a daughter of Agenor, others still as the 
offspring of Phoenix (Schol. ad Apoll. Rhod., 3, 1186): 
that the former of these two accounts, however, is the 
more commonly-received one, appears in the extracts 
from the Logographers as made by Apollodorus (3, 1). 
In the original mythus, therefore, Europa is the daugh¬ 
ter of Phoenix, in the later and altered legend she is 
the child of Agenor. Phoenix now, according to the 
custom observed in similar fables, of naming a land 
after its first monarch, becomes the king of Phoenicia, 
and hence the leading idea involved in the legend, 
that Europa came from Phoenicia. Let us now turn 
our attention more immediately to the being and per¬ 
son of Europa. The first passage that arrests our no¬ 
tice is one occurring in the treatise on the “ Syrian 
Goddess,” ascribed to Lucian (Opp., ed. Bip., vol. 
9, p. 87.) “ There is in Phoenicia,” says the writer, 

“ another large temple also, which is in the possession 
of the Sidonians, and which, as they say, is the tem¬ 
ple of Astarte. Astarte I suppose to be the same with 
the moon. As, however, one of the priests told me, 
it was the temple of Europa, the sister of Cadmus. 
This daughter of King Agenor was honoured with a 
temple after her disappearance ; and they have a sa¬ 
cred tradition (Tlojov iepov) respecting her, that, being 
very beautiful, she was beloved by Jupiter, who chan¬ 
ged himself into a bull and carried her away into Crete. 
I heard this also from other Phoenicians; and, moreover, 
the Sidonian money has represented on it Europa sit¬ 
ting upon the back of a bull, that is, of Jupiter. They 
do not all agree, however, in making the temple to be 
that of Europa.” In the case of so early a worship as 
that connected with the Sidonian temple, it is no won 
der if the accounts of later days exhibit some discrep¬ 
ances. According to the more common statement, 
the temple was that of Astarte, whom the writer just 
quoted makes identical with the moon. Creuzer has 
shown with great ability (Symbolik, vol. 2, p. 65), that 
the greater part of the Syro-Phoenician goddesses con¬ 
veyed the idea of the humid, receiving, fruit-yielding 
Earth, and the impregnated and in turn impregnating 
Moon. This last idea shows itself very clearly in the 
attributes of the Phoenician Astarte. Not only is she 
regarded by Lucian and others (Selden, de Diis Syr., 
p. 244) as identical with Selene, but she is even 
styled, on that account, the Queen of Heaven (Jercm., 
7, 17); and the etymology given by Herodian, though 
of no value in itself, yet is of importance to the pres¬ 
ent discussion as showing f he union of idea with re- 

507 




EUROPA. 


EUR 


3 pect to Selene and Astarte. {Qolvucec de ’A arpodp- 
yrjv bvopdCpvoi, Gs’hyvrjv eivai i 9eXovT££. Herodian, 
5, 6, 10.) This goddess had the principal seat of her 
worship in Sidon. (2 Kings, 23, 13.) As lunar god¬ 
dess, Astarte had, among her other symbols, some of 
the attributes of the bull; she wore, says Sanchonia- 
thon ( ap. Euseb., Prcep. Evang., 1, 10), the hide of 
a bull as an ornament for the head when she wandered 
)ver the earth. In all the physico-religious systems 
of Lower Asia there existed a great uniformity in 
the leading principles ( Creuzer, Symbolik, vol. 2, p. 

11, seqq.), and throughout a large portion of this coun¬ 
try the worship of the moon was firmly established. 
Without stopping to discover any traces of this in the 
Phrygian rites, or in those of the goddess of Comana, 
it will be sufficient to refer to Artemis Tauropolos, who 
wculd seem, in many respects, to have been the same 
with the Phoenician Astarte. (Compare Creuzer, Sym¬ 
bolik, vol. 4, p. 199.— Millin, Galerie Myth., vol. 1, 
pi. 34, Nr. 121.) It is curious to observe, moreover, 
that Artemis Tauropolos was worshipped on the shores 
of the Persian Gulf, the primitive seat of the Phoenician 
race. ( Eustath. ad Dionys. Perieg., 609. — Com¬ 

pare Dupuis, Mcmoires de Vinstit. nat., an. XII., 
Litt. et b. arts, vol. 5, p. 11.) Nor should we omit 
to notice, that, from the researches of Creuzer, the 
worship of Diana Luna would appear to have extended 
not only along the Persian Gulf, but also in various parts 
of middle Asia; and that the symbolical mode of rep¬ 
resenting this goddess was a female figure riding on a 
bull, with a crescent-shaped veil over her head. Such 
is the way in which she appears on a medal of the Isl¬ 
and Icaria ( Harduin, de Num. Anliq., p. 217), where 
this worship also prevailed. ( Strab., 638.) It is ex¬ 
tremely probable, that some early statue of Diana Luna, 
represented in precisely the same posture as the figure 
on the Icarian medal, gave rise to the mythus of the car¬ 
rying away of Europa by a bull; and thus Europa be¬ 
longs, as an imaginary personage, to the cycle of the 
lunar worship. To place this in a still clearer light, 
let us turn our attention to the testimony afforded by 
ancient works of art. Achilles Tatius (p. 10.—Com¬ 
pare Plin., 36, 10) saw, in the Sidonian temple of As¬ 
tarte, among the sacred offerings, a painting which 
had for its subject the carrying off of Europa. The 
description of this differs only in some collateral points 
from that of a painting preserved to us in the tomb of 
the Nasonii, of which Belloir makes mention. (Pic¬ 
ture Antiques sepulchri Nasoniorum in via Flaminia. 
— Grcev., Thes. Ant. Rom., vol. 12, p. 1059.) The 
scene is laid on the shore near Sidon : the bull hastens 
with his lovely burden over the waves, and the play¬ 
mates of Europa stand lost in astonishment and grief. 
The bearing away of Europa is the subject also of 
many sculptured stones that have come down to us. 
(Consult Montfaucon, Ant. Expl., vol. 1, pi. 19, Nr. 
4.— Gori, Museum. Florent., vol. 1, tab. 56, Nr. 9.— 
Augustini Gemmae,ed. Gron., tab. 185.— Gemme An- 
tiche, p. 2, tab. 27.— Winckelmann, Catal. de Stosch., 
p. 57. — Thesaurus Brandenb., p. 195.)—Even the 
name Europa itself has reference to this female’s iden¬ 
tity with the moon. It is derived, most probably, from 
evpvuilj, “ broad-visaged,” and alludes to the appear¬ 
ance of the moon when at its full. Her mother’s name, 
moreover, is Ty?iE<j)uiyaa, “ she that enlightens from 
afar.” In Crete she subsequently marries ’A crs.pi.og, 
“ the Starry,” and gives birth to Mines, which con¬ 
nects her name with that of Pasiphae (II acntyaij), 
“ she that enlightens all.”—The conclusion, then, to 
which we would come, is this, that the legend of Eu¬ 
ropa relates to the introduction of the lunar worship, 
by Phoenician colonists, into Crete. ( Hock's Kreta, 
vol. I, p. 83, seyg.)—-The identity of Europa and the 
Moon is also recognised by Knight. {Inquiry into the 
Syrnb. Lang., &c .—Class. Journ., vol. 25,'p. 247.) 
His words are as follows: “ It is in the character of 
508 


the destroying attribute', that Diana is called TAYPO- 
IIOAA, and BOS2N EAATEIA, in allusion to her be¬ 
ing borne or drawn by bulls ; and it is probable thai 
some such symbolical composition gave rise to the 
fable of Jupiter and Europa ; for it appears that, in 
Phoenicia, Europa and Astarte were only different ti¬ 
tles for the same personage, who was the deity of the 
Moon; comprehending both the Diana and Celestial 
Venus of the Greeks.”—III. A district of Macedonia, 
in which was situate the town of Europus. Some ge¬ 
ographers make it to have been a part of Thrace; but 
without any good reason. It was also called Europia. 
{Vid. Europus.) 

Eur6pus, a town of Macedonia, situate, according to 
Pliny (4, 10), on the river Axius, and in the district 
of Emathia. Ptolemy does not ascribe it to this dis¬ 
trict, however, but to one which he calls Matia (p. 84). 
But, according to Pliny, there was another Europus, 
situated on the river Rhoedias (perhaps Ludias), of 
which Strabo also speaks. {Strabo, 327.) 

Eurotas, I. a river of Laconia, and the largest in 
the Peloponnesus. It rises in Arcadia, near Asea, a 
little to the southwest of Tegea, and, after running a 
short distance, disappears under ground. On the op¬ 
posite side of the mountains which separate Arcadia 
from Laconia, it reappears in the latter country, in 
the district of Belmina. It then traverses that prov¬ 
ince, and passes by Sparta to Helos, near which town 
it empties into the sea. {Strabo, 342.— Dionys. Pe¬ 
rieg., v. 411.) The Eurotas flowed to the east of 
Sparta, as we are informed by Polybius ; its stream 
was full and rapid, and could seldom be forded. Eu¬ 
rotas, the third king after Lelex, enlarged and regu¬ 
lated its bed, drew a canal from it, drained the neigh¬ 
bouring country, and, from feelings of gratitude on the 
part of his subjects, had his name given to the stream. 
{Pausan., 3, 1.) The modern name is Basilipolamo 
(pronounced Vasilipotamo), and signifying the royal 
river, in allusion to certain petty princes, dependant 
upon the eastern emperors, who possessed a smal. 
kingdom in this quarter during the middle ages. 
{Mannerl, Geogr., vol. 8, p. 595.) Dodwell, how¬ 
ever, states that the most common appellation for the 
Eurotas at the present day is Iri. {Class. Tour, vol. 

2, p. 409.)—II. A river of Thessaly, called also Ti 
taresius, rising in Mount Titarus, a branch of Olym¬ 
pus, and falling into the Peneus, a little above the vale 
of Tempe. Its modern name is the Saranta Poros. 
Its having been called Eurotas as well as Titaresius 
is stated by various authorities. (Compare Strabo, 
Epit. 7, p. 329, and the author of the Sibylline verses, 

3, p. 227.) Although, however, the Titaresius fell 
into the Peneus, the waters of the two rivers did not 
mingle ; as those of the Peneus were clear and limpid, 
while those of the Titaresius were impregnated with a 
thick unctuous substance, which floated like oil on the 
surface. Hence the fabulous account of its being a 
branch of the infernal Styx. {Strabo, 441.— Horn., 
II, 2, 751.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 369.) 

Eurus, a wind blowing from the southeast. It was 
sometimes called by the Latin writers Vulturnus. 
{Senec., Qucest. Nat., 5, 16.) Those, however, who 
recognised only four winds, made Eurus the East wind, 
and attempted to confirm this opinion by a fictitious 
derivation of the name, making E bpog indicate a7ro 
tt/c bo) pecov, “blowing from the east,” i. e., the poin< 
of the heavens where Aurora first appears. 

Euryalus, a Trojan, son of Opheltius, and one of 
the followers of .Eneas. Virgil has immortalized the 
inseparable friendship between him and Nisus. {Vid 
Nisus.) 

Eurybatf.s, I. a herald of Agamemnon, in the 
Trojan war, who, with Talthybius, took Brise'is away 
from Achilles, under the orders of that monarch. 
{Horn., II, 1, 320.)—II. A herald of Ulysses. {Horn 
II, 2, 184.) 




EUR 


EUR 


Eurybiades, a Spartan, commander of the com¬ 
bined Grecian fleet at the battles of Artemisium and 
Salamis. He was appointed to this office, although 
Sparta sent only ten ships, by the desire of the allies, 
who refused to obey an Athenian. (Herod,., 8, 3.— 
B'dhr, ad loc.) An allusion to the famous scene be¬ 
tween Eurybiades and Themistocles will be found 
under the latter article. (Vid. Themistocles.) 

Eurydice, I. the wife of Amyntas, king of Mace¬ 
donia. She had, by her husband Alexander, Perdiccas 
and Philip, and one daughter called Euryone, who was 
married to Ptolemy Alorites. A criminal partiality 
for her daughter’s husband, to whom she offered her 
hand and the kingdom, made her conspire against 
Amyntas, who must have fallen a victim to her infi¬ 
delity, had not Euryone discovered it. Amyntas for¬ 
gave her. Alexander ascended the throne after his 
father’s death, and perished by the ambition of his 
mother. Perdiccas, who succeeded him, shared his 
fate ; but Philip, who was the next in succession, se¬ 
cured himself against all attempts from his mother, 
and ascended the throne with peace and universal 
satisfaction. Eurydice fled to Iphicrates, the Athe¬ 
nian general, for protection. The manner of her death 
is unknown. (C. Nep., Vit. Iphicl., 3.)—II. A daugh¬ 
ter of Antipater, and the wife of Ptolemy I. of Egypt, 
by whom she had several children. After the death 
of Alexander the Great, she proceeded to Alexandrea 
for the purpose of rejoining her husband, and she 
brought with her Berenice, her niece, who proved the 
source of all her misfortunes. For Berenice inspired 
Ptolemy with so strong a passion, that he took her as 
his second wife, and allowed himself to be controlled 
entirely by her influence. Eurydice and her children 
retired to the court of Seleucus, king of Syria. One 
of her daughters subsequently married Agathocles, son 
of Lysimachus; and another, Demetrius Poliorcetes. 
Ptolemy Ceraunus, the eldest of her sons, seized upon 
the kingdom of Macedonia. Eurydice followed him 
to that country, and contributed to conciliate towards 
him the minds of the Macedonians, through the respect 
which they entertained for ^he memory of her father 
Antipater. Ptolemy Ceraunus having been slain, B.C. 
280, in a battle against the Gauls, Macedonia was de¬ 
livered up to the ravages of these barbarians, and Eu¬ 
rydice fled for protection to the city of Cassandrea. 
In order to attach the inhabitants more strongly to her 
interests, she gave them their freedom; and they, 
through gratitude, established a festival called after 
her Eurydicea. The rest of her history is not known. 
—III. A daughter of Amyntas and Cynane. Her pre¬ 
vious name was Adea, afterward changed to Eurydice. 
(Arrian, ap. Phot., cod., 92—vol. 1, p. 70, ed. Bekker.) 
She married Arideeus, the half-brother of Alexander, 
and for some time, through the aid of Cassander, de¬ 
fended Macedonia against Polysperchon and Olympias. 
Having been forsaken, at length, by her own troops, 
she fell into the hands of Olympias, together with her 
husband. Both were put to death by that queen. 

{Justin , 14, 5.)—IV. Wife of Orpheus. As she fled 
before Aristreus she was bitten by a serpent in the 
grass, and died of the wound. Her disconsolate hus¬ 
band determined to descend to the lower world, to en¬ 
deavour to procure her restoration to life. Pluto and 
Proserpina listened to his prayer; and Eurydice was 
allowed to return, on the express condition that Or¬ 
pheus should not look back upon her till they were ar¬ 
rived in the regions of day. Fearing that she might 
not be following him, the anxious husband looked back, 
and thereby lost her. (Vid. Orpheus.) 

Eurymedon, a river of Pamphylia, in Asia Minor, 
rising in the chain of Mount Taurus, and, after passing 
•he city of Aspendus, falling into the Mediterranean 
oelow that place. ( Scylax, p. 40.— Mela, 1, 14.— 
Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 2, p. 124.) Near it the 
Persians were defeated by the Athenians under Ci- 


mon, B.C. 470, in both a naval and land fight. The 
Persian ships were drawn up at the mouth of the river, 
to the number of 350, or, as some affirm, 600 ; but, on 
the first attack, they fled to the shore and were stranded. 
Cimon then landed his forces, and, after a severe en¬ 
gagement, routed the enemy, and took their camp and 
baggage. (Pint., Vit. Cim.—Thucyd ., 1,100.) This 
signal victory annihilated the Persian navy. The Eu¬ 
rymedon is now the Capri-sou, and appears to have 
undergone considerable changes since ancient times, 
for the bar at the mouth is now so shallow as to be 
impassable to boats that draw more than one foot of 
water. (Cramer's Asia Minor , vol. 2, p. 281.) 

Euryphon, a Cnidian physician, a contemporary ol 
Hippocrates, but probably older in years, since he is 
deemed the author of the Cnidian aphorisms which are 
quoted by Hippocrates. (Galen, Comment, in Hipp 
de victu acut., p. 43.) 

Eurypon, a king of Sparta, son of Sous. Accord¬ 
ing to Pausanias (3, 7), his reign was so glorious a one, 
that his descendants were called from him Euryponii- 
dcB, although the family belonged to the Proclidae. 
Plutarch, however (Vit. Lycurg., c. 2), says that the 
change of name was owing to Eurypon’s having relax¬ 
ed the strictness of kingly government, and inclined to 
the interests of the people. (Consult Valckenacr, ad 
Theocrit. Adoniaz., p. 271.) 

Eurysthenes, a son of Aristodemus, who reigned 
conjointly with his twin-brother Procles at Sparta. It 
was not known which of the two was born first; the 
mother, who wished to see both her sons raised on the 
throne, refused to declare it; and they were both ap¬ 
pointed kings of Sparta by order of the oracle of Del¬ 
phi, B.C. 1102. After the death of the two brothers, 
the Lacedaemonians, who knew not to what family the 
right of seniority and succession belonged, permitted 
two kings to sit on the throne, one of each family. 
The descendants of Eurysthenes were called Eurys- 
thenidcz, and those of Procles, Proclidce. It was in¬ 
consistent with the laws of Sparta for two kings of the 
same family to ascend the throne together, yet that law 
was sometimes violated by oppression and tyranny. 
Eurysthenes had a son called Agis, who succeeded 
him. His descendants were called Agidce. There sat 
on the throne of Sparta 31 kings of the family of Eu¬ 
rysthenes, and only 24 of the Proclidae. The former 
were the more illustrious. (Herodot., 4, 147; 6, 52.- 
Pausan., 3, 1 . — C. Nep., Vit. Ages.) 

Eurysthenidze. Vid. Eurysthenes. 

Eurystheus, a king of Argos and Mycenae, son ol 
Sthenelus and Nicippe the daughter of Pelops. Juno 
hastened his birth by two months, that he might come 
into the world before Hercules, the son of Alcmena, 
as the younger of the two was doomed by order of Ju¬ 
piter to be subservient to the will of the other. (Vid. 
Alcmena.) The right thus obtained was cruelly exer¬ 
cised by Eurystheus, and led to the performance of the 
twelve celebrated labours of Hercules. The success 
of the hero in achieving these so alarmed Eurysth¬ 
eus, that he furnished himself with a brazen vessel, 
where he might secure himselt a safe retreat in case ol 
danger. Apollodorus says that it was a vessel of brass 
(rcidov xahKovv, Apollod., 2, 5, 1), which he construct¬ 
ed secretly under ground. It appears, in fact, to have 
been a subterraneous chamber, covered within wi.b 
plates of brass. The remains of the treasury of Atre js 
at Mycenae indicate a building of a similar description, 
the nails which probably served to fasten plates of this 
metal to the walls still appearing. These nails consist 
of 88 parts of copper and 12 of tin. A similar ex¬ 
planation may be given of the brazen temple of Miner 
va at Sparta. Vid. Chalcioecus. (Gell's Itinerary , 
p. 33.) After Hercules had been translated to the 
skies, Eurystheus persecuted his children, and threat 
ened with war Ceyx, king of Trachis, at whose court 
they had taken shelter. They thereupon fled to Ath 

509 




E U S 


EUSEBIUS. 


ens, and received protection from the inhabitants, who 
refused to deliver them up to Eurystheus. A war en¬ 
sued, in which Eurystheus and his five sons were slain, 
the former by the hand of Hyllus, son of Hercules. 
The head of the monarch was sent to Alcmena, who 
dug out the eyes with a weaving-shuttle. ( Apollod., 
2, 8, 1, where for KEpulcu we are to read Kepiddi.) 
Dther accounts of his end, however, are given by other 
writers. ( Eurip., Heraclid., 928, seqq. — Compare 
Isocr., Paneg., 15.) 

Eurytis ( idos ), a patronymic of Iole, daughter of 
Eurytus. (Ovid, Met., 9, 395.) 

Eurytus, a monarch of CEchalia, who taught Her¬ 
cules the use of the bow. (Apollod., 2, 4, 9.— Heyne, 
ad loc.) He offered his daughter Iole to him who 
should surpass himself and his sons in archery. Her¬ 
cules conquered, but Eurytus refused to give his 
daughter to the hero, who therefore put him and his 
sons to death, and led away Iole captive. (Apollod., 
2, 6, 1 .—Id., 2, 7, 7.) 

Eusebius Pamphili, I. one of the most distinguished 
among the earlier Christian writers, and the friend of 
Constantine, was born in Palestine, probably at Caesa¬ 
rea, about 264 A.D. He pursued his studies at Anti¬ 
och, and is believed to have received holy orders from 
Agapius, bishop of Caesarea. After having been or¬ 
dained presbyter, he set up a school in his native city, 
and formed an intimate acquaintance with Pamphilus, 
bishop of Caesarea, who suffered martyrdom under 
Galerius, A.D. 309, and in memory of whose friendship 
he added to his name the term Pamphili, i. e., “(the 
friend) of Pamphilus.” After the martyrdom of his 
friend he removed to Tyre, and thence to Egypt, where 
he himself was imprisoned. On his return from 
Egypt, he succeeded Agapius in the see of Caesarea, 
A.D. 315. In common with many other bishops of 
Palestine, he at first espoused the cause of Arius ; but 
at the council of Nice, in 325, where the Emperor Con¬ 
stantine assigned to Eusebius the office of opening the 
session of the assembly, the opinions of the heresiarch 
were condemned. He is said, however, to have raised 
some objections to the words “ consubstantial with the 
Father,” as applied to the Son in the Nicene creed. 
His intimacy with his namesake Eusebius, bishop of 
Nicomedia, who openly espoused the cause of Arius, 
led him also to favour the same, and to use his influ¬ 


ence with the emperor for the purpose of reinstating 
Arius in the church, in defiance of the opposition of 
Athanasius. The party to which he attached himself 
were called Eusebians, from their leader Eusebius of 
Nicomedia, and they seem to have acted in a great 
degree through hostility towards Athanasius and his 
supporters, as they did not, as yet, openly advocate the 
objectionable tenets of Arius, who had himself appa¬ 
rently submitted to the decrees of the council of Nice. 
Eusebius afterward, in 330, assisted at the council of 
Antioch, where the Arians triumphed, and he was pres¬ 
ent at the council of Tyre in 335, and joined those 
bishops who censured the proceedings of Athanasius, 
the great champion of orthodoxy. Eusebius was de¬ 
puted by this council to defend before Constantine the 
judgment which they had passed against Athanasius ; 
and he appears to have used his influence with the em¬ 
peror to have Athanasius banished. The part which 
he took in this unfortunate controversy caused him to 
be stigmatized as an Arian, though it appears that he 
fully admitted the divinity of Christ; and all that his 
accusers can prove is, that he believed there was a cer¬ 
tain subordination among the persons of the Trin¬ 
ity. He was much in favour with Constantine, with 
whom he maintained an epistolary correspondence, 
many specimens of which he has inserted in lrs life of 

olfn P n soon a ^ ler h is imperial patron, in 

339 or 340. Eusebius was one of the most learned 
mer of his time. “ It appears from his works,” says 
Tillemont, “that he had read all sorts of Greek au- 

510 


thors, whether philosophers, historians, or divines, of 
Egypt, Phoenicia, Asia, Europe, and Africa.” Though 
his industrious researches render his writings valuable, 
they are defective in judgment and accuracy. All the 
studies of Eusebius were directed towards the religion 
which he professed, and if he cultivated chronology, it 
was with the view of establishing on a solid basis the 
confidence to which the historical books of the Old 
Testament present so fair a claim. He displayed the 
fruits of his researches in a Chronicle, or Universal 
History (JlavTodanT/ iaropia), divided into two books. 
In the first of these, to which he gave the name of 
Chronography (Xpovoypatyla), he relates the origin and 
the history of all nations and empires, from the crea¬ 
tion of the world down to 325 A.D. He pursues an 
ethnographic order, devoting a particular section to 
each people. The duration of the reigns of princes was 
fixed in it, and the author entered into details on certain 
events. In this first portion of the work, Eusebius in¬ 
troduced extracts from various historical writers whose 
productions are lost, such as Alexander Polyhistor, 
Berosus, Amydenus, Manetho, &c. The second part, 
entitled “ Chronical Canon ” (XpoviKoq K avuv), con¬ 
sisted of synchronistic tables, giving, by periods of ten 
years each, the names of sovereigns, and the principal 
events which had taken place, from the call of Abra¬ 
ham (B.C. 2017). In compiling this part of his la¬ 
bours Eusebius availed himself of the Chronography 
of Sextus Julius Africanus, which he inserted almost 
entire in his Canon, completing it by the aid of Mane 
tho, Josephus, and other historians. This he contin¬ 
ued also to his own times. We possess a Latin trans¬ 
lation of this chronicle, made by St. Jerome : it is not, 
after all, however, a simple version, since this father 
continued the dates down to the year 378, and made 
several changes also in the first part of the work. The 
Greek text itself is lost; and though George Syncellus 
has inserted many fragments of it in his Chronicle, and 
Eusebius himself has done the same in his Prcepara- 
tio Evangelica, the remembrance of this original text 
was so far lost, that doubts began to be entertained 
whether that of the first book had ever existed, some 
critics being persuaded that Eusebius had written no 
other chronological work besides his Canon. Joseph 
Scaliger, however, undertook to reconstruct the first 
book of the work, by uniting all the fragments scatter¬ 
ed throughout the writings of the various authors to 
whom allusion has been made. The whole subject 
has at length been cleared up in our own days, and all 
uncertainty on this point has been put completely to 
rest. In 1792, an Armenian of Constantinople, named 
Georgius Johannis, discovered an Armenian translation 
of the entire work. He made a copy of this, and 
transmitted it in 1794 to Dr. Zohrab at Venice. The 
precise date of the manuscript in question is unknown , 
but as the version is mentioned by Moses of Chorene, 
it ought to be as old at least as the fifth century. The 
first book of the Chronicle of Eusebius, with which we 
are made acquainted through the medium of this trans¬ 
lation, is preceded by a preface, in which the author 
gives an account of the plan and difficulty of his un¬ 
dertaking. It is divided into forty-eight chapters, ot 
which the first twenty-two embrace the chronology ol 
the Chaldaeans, Assyrians, Medes, Lydians, Persians, 
Hebrews, and Egyptians, comprehending under the 
latter head the dynasty of the Ptolemies. Almost all 
that these chapters contain existed already in Syncel¬ 
lus and in the Praeparatio Evangelica; and hence we 
have not been very great gainers by the discovery of 
the Armenian version, as far as this portion of it is 
concerned. According to M. Raoul-Rochette (Jour¬ 
nal des Savans, 1819, p. 545), the remaining chapters, 
from the twenty-third to the forty-eighth, are devoted 
to the chronology of the Greeks and Romans, down 
to the time of Julius Caesar, and he has promised to 
communicate to the world whatever he may find there/- 




EUSEBIUS. 

in sufficiently novel in its nature to merit such notice. 
An account of the Armenian version is also given by 
Saint Martin ( Journal des Savans , 1820, p. 106). 
The conclusion to which the last-mentioned writer ar¬ 
rives, is as follows: that the great advantages ex¬ 
pected to have been derived from the version to which 
we are referring, must be graduated much lower than 
they originally were ; and yet, at the same time, that 
this discovery is of sufficient importance to merit hon¬ 
ourable mention, since it gives a great degree of cer¬ 
tainty to many particulars, of which we were before 
put in possession relative to ancient history, and ren¬ 
ders incontestable the authority of the Greek fragments 
published by Scaliger.—Eusebius was also the author 
of an Ecclesiastical History (’ 'EuKTiyaiacTiK?) ioTopia), 
in ten books, from the origin of Christianity down to 
A.D. 324, a year which immediately preceded the 
triumph of the Catholic church over Arianism. This 
work contains no express history of church dogmas. 
The author proposed to himself a different object, 
which he specifies in the first book. It was to make 
known the succession of the apostles, and the individ¬ 
uals wdro, placed at the head of the different churches, 
distinguished themselves by their firmness and apos¬ 
tolic virtues, or who defended the word of God by their 
writings ; to make mention of the persons who had 
endeavoured to propagate false doctrines ; to describe 
the misfortunes and sufferings that had befallen the 
Jewish nation, as a punishment for their rejection of 
the Saviour ; as well as the persecutions to which the 
faithful had been exposed, and the triumph procured 
for Christianity by the Emperor Constantine. A sec¬ 
ondary object which Eusebius had in view, although 
he does not expressly mention it, was to transmit to 
posterity literary notices of those writers who had 
treated before him of detached portions of the sacred 
history. What he proposed to himself, however, was 
less to instruct and edify 'the faithful, than to place in 
the hands of the Gentiles a work which might induce 
them to renounce the errors of their religious systems 
and the prejudices of education. One is tempted, at 
least, to ascribe this intention to him, when we call to 
mind that his work contains a number of things known 
to every Christian reader; such as, for example, all 
that relates to the person of-our Saviour, and the au¬ 
thenticity of the sacred writings ; and also when we 
consider the skill he has displayed in placing in a 
prominent point of view the claims of Christianity, 
without, at the same time, making any direct attack on 
the absurdities of paganism. As Eusebius makes no 
mention of the troubles occasioned in the church by 
the doctrines of Arianism, it has been concluded that 
his history was not continued by him during the last 
sixteen years of his life (for he lived until 340); but 
that, being brought down by him to an epoch anterior 
to the council of Nice, it was concluded in 324. In 
support of this opinion it may be remarked, that Pau- 
linus, the bishop, to whom he addresses himself at the 
commencement of the tenth book, was dead in 325. 
(Consult Haake , dc Byzantinarum rerum scriptoribus 
liber, Lips., 1677, 4to, pt. 1, c. 1, § 222.) In gen¬ 
eral, Eusebius may be called a moderate, impartial, 
and judicious writer. His history was translated into 
Latin by Rufinus, a priest of Aquileia, in the fourth cen¬ 
tury : he has made, however, retrenchments as well as 
additions, and has added a supplement in two books, 
which extends to the death of Theodosius the Great. 
This supplement was, in turn, translated into Greek by 
Gelasius of Cyzicus, about 476. Fabricius ( Bibl. 
Grcec, vol. 8, p. 445) says, that the work of Rufinus 
was translated by St. Cyrill of Jerusalem, and he re¬ 
fers to Photius as his authority for this assertion. The 
patriarch of Constantinople speaks of this translation 
from hearsay, for he never saw it; indeed, it never 
could have existed; since St. Cyrill died in 386, and 
the supplement of Rufinus appeared subsequent to 


EUSEBIUS. 

395. The Latin translation of Rufinus still exists, 
but the Greek version of his supplement is lost. Ni 
cephorus Callistus, a compiler of the fourteenth centu 
ry, has incorporated into his ecclesiastical history the 
greater part of that of Eusebius.—The other works ol 
Eusebius which have relation to the department of ec¬ 
clesiastical history are the following : nept rtiv fa U.a- 
Xatarivy fiaprvpyadvTuv, “ Of those who suffered mar 
tyrdom in Palestine.” The period referred to is the 
persecution of Dioclesian and Maximin, from 303 to 
309. — A oyoq rpLanovraeTypiKog, “Thirty-year dis¬ 
course,” i. e., an Eloge on Constantine, pronounced 
in the thirtieth year of his reign, A.D. 335. — Ilep/' tov 
Kara tieov (dtov tov yatcaplov Kovcravrivov tov B a- 
A life of Constantine, in four books. It is 
rather an eloge than a biographical sketch.— Ttiv ap- 
Xa fav yapTvpuv crvvayoyy, “ A Collection of Ancient 
Martyrs.” This work is lost, but many fragments 
have been preserved by the legendary writers of sub¬ 
sequent ■ ages.—A life of Pamphilus, of which there 
remains a solitary fragment. —Tlepl tuv kclto. diatyop- 
ovg uaipovg fa diatydpoig ttoTieclv dO^ycuvTuv dyiuv 
papTvpiov, “ Of the holy martyrs that have contended 
for the faith at various times and in various places.” 
—We now come to another work of Eusebius, which 
forms the principal one of his theological writings. 
This is his E vayyeluifjc aTrodslfaug TcpoTrapaauevri, 
or “ Praparatio Evangelica .” This work, though its 
subject is one entirely sacred in its nature, yet con¬ 
tains a great number of valuable notices respecting the 
mythology of the pagan nations, and the philosophy of 
the Greeks in particular. We find in it, also, numer¬ 
ous passages taken from more than four hundred pro¬ 
fane writers, and in this list are many whose produc¬ 
tions are lost for us. The Prcparatio Evangelica is 
addressed to Theodotus, bishop of Laodicea, and is 
divided into fifteen books. To prepare his readers for 
a demonstration of evangelical truths by reasons pure¬ 
ly philosophical, and, by collecting together a crowd of 
passages drawn from profane authors, to show how far 
superior Christianity is to all the systems of the pagan 
world—such is the object of Eusebius in the work we 
are considering. In the first six books he proves the 
futility of the heathen doctrines ; the nine following 
ones develop the motives which have induced the 
followers of Christianity to prefer to them the Jewish 
system of theology as contained in the Old Testa¬ 
ment. In the first book Eusebius gives the tradi¬ 
tions of the Greeks respecting the origin of the world. 
He then directs his attention to the Phoenician theol¬ 
ogy, and it is on this occasion that he gives the cel¬ 
ebrated fragment of Sanchoniathon. In the second 
book he examines the religious doctrines of the Egyp¬ 
tians, as given by Manetho ; and those of the Greeks 
after Diodorus Siculus, Euhemerus, and St. Clement 
of Alexandrea. He undertakes to show that the Pla¬ 
tonic was as inconsistent and defective as the popular 
theology, and that even the Romans themselves re¬ 
jected the allegorical interpretations which the Greeks 
gave to their own mythological legends. The third 
book shows how vain and nugatory have been the ef¬ 
forts of those writers who have attempted to exphin 
the Egyptian and Grecian fables on physical and moral 
principles. The fourth and fifth books continue this 
demonstration, and seek to prove that the objects of 
worship and sacrifice among the Greeks were the de¬ 
mons whom our Saviour drove from the world. The 
sixth book refutes the pagan doctrine of destiny, and 
that relative to the influence supposed to be exercised 
by the heavenly bodies on human actions. In the 
seventh the excellence of the religious system of the 
Jews is demonstrated, and the nature of this system 
explained. In the eighth book the sources of this 
religion are pointed out, and in this part of his work 
Eusebius gives, after Aristeas, the history of the Sep- 
tuagint, or Greek version of the Old Testament. In 

511 



E U S 


E U T 


Mie following books, down to the thirteenth inclusive, 
the author undertakes to show, that the Greek writers 
have derived from the Sacred volume whatever they 
have taught of valuable or good in matters of philoso¬ 
phy : such, according to him, is the case especially 
with Plato. The fourteenth and fifteenth books la¬ 
bour to prove, that in the philosophical opinions of the 
Greeks there reign evident contradictions; that the 
rna’ ;rity of these opinions have no better foundation 
than mere hypothesis, and swarm with errors.—We 
must not omit another work of our author’s, entitled, 
II epl rthv TomKUv ’O vopdrov hv ry fiela -ypacprj, “ Of 
the places mentioned in the sacred writings.” It was 
in two books. The second book, which treats of Pal¬ 
estine, has alone reached us ; we have it in Greek, and 
also in a Latin version by St. Jerome. The version 
would be preferable to the original, by reason of the 
corrections which Jerome made in the work, from his 
intimate acquaintance with the country, if it had not 
reached us in a very corrupt state.—The best editions 
of the work on chronology are, that of Scaliger, Lugd. 
Bat., 1659, fol., and that of Mai and Zohrab, Medio- 
lan., 1818, 4to : the best editions of the Ecclesiasti¬ 
cal History are, that of H. Stephens, Paris , 1544, 
fol., reprinted with the Latin version of Christophor- 
son, at Geneva, 1612 ; and that of Heinichen, Lips., 
1827, 1 vol. 8vo. The life of Constantine accom¬ 
panies the first of these.—The best edition of the 
Praeparatio Evangelica is that of Vigier, Paris, 1628, 
fol., reprinted at Leipzig, 1688, fol. — II. A native 
of Emesa, surnamed Pittacus, slain in 554 by order 
of the Emperor Gallus, and to whom Ammianus Mar- 
cellinus (14, 7) gives the title of “ concitatus orator.” 
—III. A native of Myndus, in Caria, a contemporary 
of the preceding. Eunapius makes mention of him in 
the life of Maximus ; and, according to Wyttenbach 
(Eunap., ed. Boissonade, p. 171), he is the same with 
a third Eusebius, of whom Stobaeus has left us two 
fragments. 

Eustathius, I. archbishop of Thessalonica, flour¬ 
ished in the 12th century under the emperors Manuel, 
Alexius, and Andronicus Comnenus. He is celebra¬ 
ted for his erudition as a grammarian, and is especially 
known as a commentator on Homer and Dionysius 
the geographer. It must be confessed, however, that 
m the former of these commentaries he is largely 
indebted to the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus, and 
Schweighaeuser holds the following strong language 
relative to the extent of these obligations (Praf. ad. 
Athen., p. xix.): “ In Eustathii in Homerum Com- 
mentariis Athenceus noster a capite ad calcem (veris- 
sime dixeris) utramque paginam facit: adeoque est 
incredibilis et pane infinitus locorum numerus, quibus 
doctus ille prasul ex uno Athenai fonte hortulos suos 
irrigavit, ut sape etiam notissimorum nobilissimoruni¬ 
que auctorum, quorum ubivis obvia ipsa scripta sunt, 
unius ejusdem Athenai verbis produxerit testimonia; 
utque, nisi de viri doctrina aliunde satis constaret, : 
subinde propemodum videri ille posset e solo Naucrat- i 
ica Deipnosophista sapuisse.” (Compare the note of 1 
the same editor, and Fabricius, Bibl. Grac., vol. 1, i 
p. 316, seqq.) The commentary of Eustathius was < 
united to the edition of Homer which appeared at i 
Rome in 1542, 1548, 1550, in 3 vols. folio : and was i 
reprinted at Bale in 1560, also in 3 vols. folio. The ] 
latest edition is the Leipzig one of 1825-30, 6 vols. 4to; 
for that of Politus, undertaken in 1730, with a Latin < 
version, was never finished. The three volumes of ] 
it which appeared at Florence, 1730-35, in folio, ex- « 
tend only to the end of the fifth book of the Iliad. 1 
Muller and Baumgarten-Crusius have performed a < 
valuable service for the student, in publishing extracts ( 
from Eustathius along with the text of the Iliad and i 
Odyssey. (Compare the Memoir of Andres on the i 
Commentary of Eustathius, and the various transla- I 
tions which have been made of it : Mem. della Reg- i 

RIO ° 


, Academu Ercolanense, vol. 1 , p. 97, Naples, 1822 
3 —Bulletin des Sciences Historiques, vol. 4, p. 337, 
t seqq.) The commentary on Dionysius is less valu- 
• able, from the scanty nature, most probably, of the 
’ materials employed. A commentary on Pindar is 
- lost. .Some unpublished letters of the archbishop’s 
; are to be found in the public libraries of Europe.—II 
: A native of Egypt, called by some Eumathius, and 
i styled in one manuscript UptoTovoCtXioGipoe KaL pcyat, 

' x a P ro< t>v'hal;, “ Protonobilissimus and great archivist.” 

, He was the author of a romance, entitled, To uatf 
; 'T opivpv uai 'Vcpiviav dpdpa, “ Hysmine and Hys 
: minias.” It is a cold, flat, and lifeless performance. 
The work has been twice published ; first at Pans, 
1618, in 8vo, with the version, and under the care, of 
Gaulmin ; and again by Teucher, Lips., 1792. This 
last contains merely the text and the version of Gaul¬ 
min, without either preface or notes.—III. An ancient 
jurist, who has left a work on Prescriptions, entitled, 
nep2 tuv XP 0VU( uv diaoryparuv, “Of intervals of 
time.” It was published by Cujas in the 1st volume 
of his works, Bale, 1561, 8vo; in Greek and Latin, 
by Schard, in the collection of Lowenklau, vol. 2, and 
at Leipzig, in 1791, 8vo, by Teucher. 

Euterpe, one of the Muses. She presided over 
music, and is generally represented as holding two 
flutes. To her was ascribed by the poets the invention 
of the tragic chorus. Ausonius says of her, “ Dulci- 
loquos calamos Euterpe fiatibus urget .” (idyll, nit., 
4.) The name means “ the well-delighting one,” from 
ei>, well, and Tepnu, to delight. (Vid . Musse.) 

Euthycrates, a sculptor of Sicyon, son and pupil 
of Lysippus, flourished in Olymp. 120. He was pecu¬ 
liarly happy in the proportions of his statues. Those 
of Hercules and Alexander were in general esteem, 
and particularly that of Medea, which was borne on a 
chariot by four horses. ( Phn., 34, 8.) As regards 
the last of these subjects, however, consult the remarks 
of Sillig, where a new reading in the text of Pliny is 
suggested. ( Sillig , Diet. Art., s. v.) 

Eutrapelus (“the rallier,” evrpaTre/ioq), an epithet 
given to P. Volumnius, a Roman, on account of his 
wit and pleasantry. ( Horat., Epist ., 1, 18, 31.) Hav¬ 
ing forgotten to put his surname or title of Eutrapelus 
to a letter he wrote to Cicero, the orator tells him he 
fancied it came from Volumnius the senator, but was 
undeceived by the eutrapelia (evrpane'hia), “ the spirt 
and vivacity,” which it displayed. (Compare Ernest>. 
Clav. Cic. Ind. Hist., s. v. Volumnius, and Ina 
Grac., s. v. evrpa-n-eXia, from which it would appear 
that the eoTpanekia of Volumnius was rather a “ mim- 
ica et scurrilis facetia.”) 

Eutropius, I. a Latin historian of the 4th century. 
He bore arms under Julian in his expedition againsi 
the Parthians, as he himself informs us (9, 16), and is 
thought to have risen to senatorian rank. Suidas makes 
him of Italian origin, while some modern writers, on 
the other hand, advance the hypothesis that he was a 
native of Gaul, or, at least, had possessions in the neigh 
bourhood of Auch, and was identical with the Eutropnu 
to whom some of the letters of Symmachus are address- 

ed. (Scholl, Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 3, p. 161, seqq. _ 

Compare the remarks of Tzschucke on the life of Eu¬ 
tropius, prefixed to his edition.) The manuscripts give 
him the title of Vir Cl., which may stand either foi 
Vir Clanssimus or Vir Consularis, but which in 
either sense indicates an advancement to some of the 
highest offices in the state. He wrote several works, 
of which the only one remaining is an abridgment oi 
the Roman History in ten books. It is a brief and 
dry outline, without either elegance or ornament, yet 
containing certain facts which are nowhere else men¬ 
tioned. The work commences with the foundation ol 
the city, and is carried on to the death of Jovian, A D 
364. At the close of this work, Eutropius announces 
his intention of continuing the narrative in a more ele- 


* 








FAB 


FAB 


vated style, inasmuch as he will have to treat of great 
personages still living; “ quia ad inclytos principes 
venerandosque perventum est .” It does not appear 
that he ever carried this plan into execution. The 
best edition is that of Tzschucke, Lips., 1797, 8vo.— 
II. A eunuch and minister of the Emperor Arcadius, 
who rose by base and infamous practices from the vilest 
condition to the highest pitch of opulence and power. 
He was probably a native of Asia, was made chamber¬ 
lain to the emperor in the year 395, and, after the fall of 
Rufinus, succeeded that minister in the confidence of 
his master, and rose to unlimited authority. He even 
was created consul, a disgrace to Rome never before 
equalled. An insult offered to the empress was the 
cause of his overthrow ; and he was sent into perpet¬ 
ual exile to Cyprus. He was soon afterward, however, 
brought back on another charge ; and, after being con¬ 
demned, was beheaded A.D. 399. ( Zosirn ., 5, 10.— 

Id., 5, 18, &c.) 

Euxinus Pontus. Vid. Pontus Euxinus. 

Examp^eus, a fountain which, according to Herod¬ 
otus, flows into the Hypanis, where the river is four 
days’ journey from the sea, and renders its waters bit¬ 
ter, that before were sweet. Herodotus places this 
fountain in the country of the ploughing Scythians, 
and of the Alazones. It takes, he adds, the name of 
the place where it springs, which, in the Scythian 
tongue, is Exampseus, corresponding in Greek to iepai 
o6ot, or “ the sacred ways .” (Herodot ., 4, 52.) 

F. 

Fabaris, now Farfa, a river of Italy, in the terri¬ 
tory of the Sabines, called also Farfaris. ( Virg., ttn., 
7, 715.) 

Fabia Gens, a numerous and powerful patrician 
hetise of ancient Rome, which became subdivided into 
several families or branches, distinguished by their re¬ 
spective cognomina, such as Fabii Maximi, Fabii Am- 
busti, Fabii Vibulani, &c. Pliny says that the name 
of this house arose from the circumstance of its found¬ 
ers having excelled in the culture of the bean ( faba), 
the early Romans having been remarkable for their at¬ 
tachment to agricultural pursuits. (Plin., 18,3.) Ac¬ 
cording to Festus, however, the Fabii traced their ori¬ 
gin to Hercules ( Fest., s. v. Fabii), and their name, 
therefore, is thought to have come rather from the 
Etrurian term Fabu or Fabin, which Passeri makes 
equivalent to “august” or “venerable.” (Tab. Eu- 
gubin, vii., lin. 22.) But this etymology is less prob¬ 
able, since the Fabii are said, by the ordinary author¬ 
ities, to have been of Sabine origin, and to have set¬ 
tled on the Quirinal from the time of the earliest Ro¬ 
man kings. After the expulsion of the Tarquinii, the 
Fabian, as one of the older houses, exercised consider¬ 
able influence in the senate. Cseso Fabius, being 
quaestor with L. Valerius, impeached Spurius Cassius, 
B.C. 486, A.U.C. 268, and had him executed. It has 
been noted as a remarkable fact, that, for seven consec¬ 
utive years from that time, one of the two annual con¬ 
sulships was filled by three brothers Fabii in rotation. 
Niebuhr has particularly investigated this period of 
Roman history, and speculated on the causes of this 
long retention of office by the Fabii, as connected with 
the struggle then pending between the patricians and 
plebeians, and the attempt of the former to monopolize 
the elections. (Rom. Hist., vol. 2, p. 174, seqq.) 
One of the three brothers, Q. Fabius Vibulanus, fell in 
battle against the Veientes in the year of Rome 274. 
In the iollowing year, under the consulship of Caeso 
Fabius and Titus Virginius, the whole house of the 
4 abii proposed to leave Rome, and settle on the bor¬ 
ders of the territory of Veii, in order to take the war 
against the Veientes entirely into their own hands. 
After performing solemn sacrifices, they left Rome in 
a body, mustering 306 patricians, besides their fami¬ 


lies, clients, and freedmen, and encamped on the banks 
of the Cremera in sight of Veii. There they fortified 
themselves, and maintained for nearly two years a 
harassing warfare against the Veientes and other peo 
pie of Etruria. At last, in one of their predatory in¬ 
cursions, they fell into an ambuscade, and, fighting 
desperately, were all exterminated. (Livy, 2, 48, 
seqq.) Dionysius of Halicarnassus gives also another 
account of this disaster, which he considers less cred¬ 
ible. According to this latter form of the legend, the 
306 Fabii set off for Rome, in order to offer up a sac¬ 
rifice in the chapel of their house. As they went to 
perform a pious ceremony, they proceeded without 
arms or warlike array. The Etrurians, however, 
knowing their road, placed troops in ambush, and, fall¬ 
ing on the Fabii, cut them to pieces. (Consult the re¬ 
marks of Dionysius, 9, 19, and of Niebuhr, Rom. 
Hist., vol. 2, p. 200.) It is said that one only of the 
Fabii escaped this massacre, having been left quite 
young at Rome. (Liv., 2, 50.— Dion. Hal., 9, 22.) 
His name was Q. Fabius Vibulanus, and he became 
the parent stock of all the subsequent Fabii. He was 
repeatedly consul, and was afterward one of the de¬ 
cemviri with Appius Claudius for two consecutive 
years, in which office he disgraced himself by his com 
nivance at the oppressions of his colleague, which 
caused the fall of the decemvirate. (Vid. Decemviri.) 

Fabia Lex, I. de ambilu, was to circumscribe the 
number of Sectatores or attendants which were allow¬ 
ed to candidates in canvassing for some high office. 
It was proposed, but did not pass. (Cic. pro Muren., 
34.) The Sectatores, who always attended candidates, 
were distinguished from the Salutalores, who only 
waited on them at their houses in the morning, and 
then went away; and from the Deduclores, who went 
down with them to the Forum and Campus Marcius. 
—II. There was another law of the same name, en¬ 
acted against kidnapping, or stealing away and retain¬ 
ing freemen or slaves. The punishment of this of¬ 
fence, at first, was a fine, but afterward to be sent tc 
the mines ; and for buying or selling a freeborn citizen, 
death. (Cic. pro Rab., 3.— Ep. ad Quint. Fr., 1, 2.) 

Fabia, a vestal virgin, sister to Terentia, Cicero’s 
wife. She was accused of criminal intercourse with 
Catiline, and brought to trial in consequence, but was 
defended by Cicero and acquitted. (Middleton's Life 
of Cicero, vol. 1, p. 139.) 

Fabii. Vid. Fabia Gens. 

Fabius, I. M. Ambustus, was consul A.U.C. 393, 
and again several times after. He fought against the 
Hernici and the Tarquinians, and left several sons.— 
II. Q. Maximus Rullianus, son of the preceding, at¬ 
tacked and defeated the Samnites, A.U.C. 429, in the 
absence and against the orders of his commanding 
officer, the Dictator Papirius, who would have brought 
him to punishment for disobedience, but was prevented 
by the intercession of the soldiers and the people. 
This Fabius was five times consul, and dictator twice. 
He triumphed over the Samnites, Marsi, Gauls, and 
Etrurians. His son, Q. Fabius Gurges, was thrice 
consul, and was grandfather of Q. Fabius Maximus 
Verrucosus, one of the most celebrated generals of 
Rome.—III. Q. Maximus Verrucosus, the celebrated 
opponent of Hannibal. He is said to have been called 
Verrucosus from a wart on his lip, verruca being the 
Latin name for “ a wart.” In his first consulship he 
triumphed over the Ligurians. After the victory of 
Hannibal at the Lake Trasymenus, he was named 
Prodictator by the unanimous voice of the people, and 
was intrusted with the preservation of the republic 
The system which he adopted to check the advance of 
Hannibal is well known. By a succession of skilful 
movements, marches, and countermarches, always 
choosing good defensive positions, he harassed his an¬ 
tagonist, who could never draw him into ground fa¬ 
vourable for his attack, while Fabius watched every op- 

513 





FABIUS. 


FAB 


portunity of availing himself of any error or neglect on 
the part" of the Carthaginians. This mode of warfare, 
which was new to the Romans, acquired for Fabius 
the name of Cunctator or “ delayer,” and was cen¬ 
sured by the young, the rash, and the ignorant; but 
it probably was the means of saving Rome from ruin. 
Minucius, who shared with Fabius the command of the 
army, having imprudently engaged Hannibal, was 
saved from total destruction by the timely assistance 
cf the dictator. In the following year, however, 
A U.C. 536, Fabius being recalled to Rome, the com- 
irtnd of the army was intrusted to the consul Teren- 
tius Yarro, who rushed imprudently to battle, and the 
defeat at Cannre made manifest the wisdom of the dic¬ 
tator’s previous caution. Fabius was chosen consul 
the next year, and was again employed in keeping 
Hannibal in check. In A.U.C. 543, being consul for 
the fifth time, he retook Tarentum by stratagem, after 
which he narrowly escaped being caught himself in a 
snare by Hannibal near Metapontum. ( Liv 27, 15, 
seq.) When, some years after, the question was dis¬ 
cussed in the senate, of sending Scipio with an army 
into Africa, Fabius opposed it, saying that Italy ought 
first to be rid of Hannibal. Fabius died some time 
after at a very advanced age. His son, called likewise 
Quintus Fabius Maximus, who had also been consul, 
died before him. His grandson Quintus Fabius Max¬ 
imus Servilianus, being proconsul, fought against Vir- 
iathus in Spain, and concluded with him an honour¬ 
able peace. (Livy, Epit., 54.) He was afterward 
consul repeatedly, and also censor. He wrote An¬ 
nals, which are quoted by Macrobius. (Sat., 1, 16.) 
His brother by adoption, Quintus Fabius Maximus 
HSmilianus, the son of Paulus Hhnilius (Liv., 45,41), 
was consul A.U.C. 609, and was the father of Fabius, 
called iUlobrogicus, who subdued not only the Allo- 
broges, but also the people of southern Gaul, which he 
reduced into a Roman province, called from that time 
Provincia. Quintus Fabius Maximus, a grandson of 
Fabius Maximus Servilianus, served in Spain under 
Julius Caesar, and was made consul A.U.C. 709. Two 
of his sons or nephews were consuls in succes¬ 
sion under Augustus. There was also a Fabius con¬ 
sul under Tiberius. Panvinius and others have reck¬ 
oned that, during a period of about five centuries, from 
the time of the first Fabius who is mentioned as con¬ 
sul, to the reign of Tiberius, forty-eight consulships, 
seven dictatorships, eight censorships, seven augur- 
ships, besides the offices of master of the horse and 
military tribune with consular power, were filled by 
individuals of the Fabian house. It could also boast 
of thirteen triumphs and two ovations. (Augustinus 
de Familiis Romanorum. — Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 
10, p. 151.)—IY. A loquacious personage alluded to 
by Horace (Sat., 1, 1, 14).—V. Pictor, the first Ro¬ 
man who wrote an historical account of his country. 
This historian, called by Livy scriptorum antiquissi- 
mus, appears to have been wretchedly qualified for the 
labour he had undertaken, either in point of judgment, 
fidelity, or research ; and to his carelessness and inac¬ 
curacy, more than even to the loss of monuments, may 
be attributed the painful uncertainty which to this day 
hangs over the early ages of Roman history. Fabius 
lived in the time of the second Punic war. The fam¬ 
ily received its cognomen from Caius Fabius, w T ho, hav¬ 
ing resided in Etruria, and there acquired sortie knowl¬ 
edge of the fine arts, painted with figures the temple 
of Salus , in the year of the city 450. The historian 
was grandson of the painter. He served in the second 
Punic war, and was present at the battle of Trasy- 
menus. After the defeat at Cannae, he was sent by 
the senate to inquire from the oracle at Delphi what 
would be the issue of the war, and to learn by what 
supplications the wrath of the gods might be appeased. 
His annals commenced with the foundation of the city 
and the antiquities of Italy, and brought down the se- 
514' 


ries of Roman affairs to the author’s own time, that is, 
to the end of the second Punic war. We are inform¬ 
ed by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, that, for the great 
proportion of the events which preceded his own age, 
Fabius Pictor had no better authority than vulgar tra¬ 
dition. He probably found, that, if he had confined 
himself to what was certain in these early times, his 
history would have become dry, insipid, and incom¬ 
plete. This may have induced him to adopt the fa¬ 
bles, which the Greek historians had invented concern¬ 
ing the origin of Rome, and to insert whatever he 
found in family traditions, however contradictory or 
uncertain. Dionysius has also given us ma’ny exam¬ 
ples of his improbable narratives, his inconsistencies, 
his negligence in investigating the truth of what he re¬ 
lates as facts, and his inaccuracy in chronology. In 
particular, as jve are told by Plutarch in his life of 
Romulus, Fabius followed an obscure Greek author, 
Diodes the Peparethian, in his account of the founda¬ 
tion of Rome, and from this tainted source have flowed 
all the stories concerning Mars, the Vestal, the Wolf, 
Romulus, and Remus. He is even guilty of inaccu¬ 
rate and prejudiced statements in relation to the affairs 
of his own time ; and Polybius, who flourished shortly 
after those times, and was at pains to inform himself 
accurately concerning all the events of the second Pu¬ 
nic war, apologizes for quoting Fabius on one occasion 
as an authority, and, at the same time, strongly express¬ 
es his opinion of his violations of truth and his gross 
inconsistencies. The account here given of this writer 
is rather confirmed by the few fragments that remain 
of his work, which are trifling and childish in the ex¬ 
treme. (Dunlop's Hist. Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. 117, seqq.) 

Fabrateria, a town of Latium, on the river Liris, 
and near its junction with the Trerus. The modern 
name is Falvaterra. This town appears at first to 
have belonged to the Volsci, but as early as 424 
A.U.C. it placed itself under the protection of Rome. 
(Liv., 8, 19.) 

Fabricius, Caius, surnamed Luscinus, was consul 
for the first time in the year 471 of Rome, 283 B.C., 
when he triumphed over the Boii and Etrurians. Af¬ 
ter the defeat of the Romans, under the consul Lawi- 
nus, by Pyrrhus (B.C. 281), Fabricius was sent by the 
senate as legate to the king, to treat for the ransom of 
the prisoners, or, according to others, to propose terms 
of peace. Pyrrhus is said to have endeavoured to 
bribe him by large offers, which Fabricius, poor as he 
was, rejected with scorn, to the great admiration of the 
king. Fabricius being again consul, B.C. 279, was 
sent against Pyrrhus, who was then encamped near 
Tarentum. The physician of the king is said to have 
come secretly to the Roman camp, and to have pro¬ 
posed to Fabricius to poison his master for a bribe. 
The consul, indignant at this, had him put in fetters, 
and sent back to Pyrrhus, on whom this instance 
Roman integrity made a strong impression. Pyrrhus 
soon after sailed for Sicily, whither he was called by 
the Syracusans, then hard pressed by the Carthagini¬ 
ans. Fabricius, having defeated the Samnites, Luca- 
nians, and Brutii, who had joined Pyrrhus against 
Rome, triumphed over these nations. Pyrrhus after¬ 
ward returning to Italy, was finally defeated and driven 
away by M. Curius Dentatus, B.C. 276. Two years 
after, Fabricius being consul for the third time, with 
Claudius Cinna for his colleague, ambassadors came 
from King Ptolemy of Egypt to contract an alliance 
with Rome.—Several instances are related of the ex¬ 
treme frugality and simplicity which marked the man¬ 
ners of Fabricius. When censor, he dismissed from 
the senate P. Cornelius Rufinus, who had been twice 
consul, and had also held the dictatorship, because ho 
had in his possession ten pounds’ weight of silver plate. 
Fabricius died poor, and the senate was obliged to 
make provision for his daughters. (Plut., Vit. Pyrrh — 
Liv., Epit., 13cH4.— Enc. Us. Knowl. ,v. 10, p. J5V, 




F AL 


FALERNUS AGER. 


F^suLiE, now Fiesoli, a town of Italy, in Etruria, 
outheast of Pistoria, whence it is said the augurs 
passed to Rome. Catiline made it a place of arms. 
The Goths, when they entered Italy under the consu¬ 
late of Stilicho and Aurelian, A.D. 400, were defeated 
in its vicinity. ( Cic. pro Mur., 24.— Sil. Ital., 8, 478. 
Sallust ; Cat 1 ,., 27.) 

Falctdia Lex, proposed by the tribune Falcidius, 
A.U.C. 713, enacted that the testator should leave at 
Last the fourth part of his fortune to the person whom 
he named his heir. ( Dio Cass., 48, 33.) 

Faleria, a town of Picenum, southwest of Firmum, 
now Fallcroni. (Plin., 3, 13.) 

Falerii (or ium), a city of Etruria, southwest of 
Fescennium, and the capital of the ancient Falisci, 
so well known from their connexion with the early his¬ 
tory of Rome. Much uncertainty seems to have ex¬ 
isted respecting the ancient site of this place ; but it 
is now well ascertained that it occupied the posi¬ 
tion of the present Civita Castellana. Cluver, and 
after him Holstenius (ad Steph. Byz., p. 67), have 
satisfactorily established this point. The doubt seems 
to have originated in the notion that there was a city 
named Faliscum, as well as Falerii. ( Strabo , 226.) 
The situation of the ancient Falerii is made to agree 
with that of Civita Castellana, from the language of 
Plutarch (Vit. Camill.) and Zonaras (Ann., 2), who 
both describe it as placed on a lofty summit; and the 
latter states that the old town was destroyed, and a 
new one built at the foot of the hill. This fact is con¬ 
firmed by the identity of the new Falerii with the 
church of St. Maria Falari, on the track of the Fla- 
minian way, where the Itineraries place that city. 
We learn, too, from Pliny (3, 5), that Falerii became 
a colony under the name of'Falisca, a circumstance 
which sufficiently reconciles the apparent contradic¬ 
tion in the accounts of this city. (Front., de Col., p. 
130.) Falerii, according to Dionysius of Halicarnas¬ 
sus (1, 21), belonged at first to the Siculi ; but these 
were succeeded by the Pelasgi, to whom the Greek 
form of its name is doubtless to be ascribed, as well 
as the temple and rites of the Argive Juno, and other 
indications of a Grecian origin which were observed 
by that historian, and with which Ovid, who had mar¬ 
ried a lady of this city, seems also to have been struck, 
though he has followed the less authentic tradition, 
which ascribed the foundation of Falerii to Halesus, 
son of Agamemnon. (Am., 3, 13. — Fast., 4, 73.) 
The early wars of the Falisci with Rome are chiefly 
detailed in the fifth book of Livy, where the celebra¬ 
ted story of Camillus and the schoolmaster of Falerii 
occurs. When the Roman commander was besie¬ 
ging this place, the schoolmaster of the city (since the 
higher classes of Falerii had a public one for the com¬ 
mon education of their children) committed a most 
disgraceful and treacherous act. Having led his schol¬ 
ars forth, day after day, under pretence of taking ex¬ 
ercise, and each time farther from the city walls, he 
at last suddenly brought them within reach of the Ro¬ 
man outposts, and surrendered them all to Camillus. 
Indignant at the baseness of the deed, the Roman gen¬ 
eral ordered his lictors to strip the delinquent, tie his 
hands behind him, and supply the boys with rods and 
scourges to punish the traitor, and whip him into the 
city. This generous act on the part of Camillus pro¬ 
duced so strong an impression on the minds of the in¬ 
habitants, that they immediately sent ambassadors to 
treat of a surrender (Liv. 5, 27.—Compare Val. Max., 
6, 5.— Front., Strat., 5, 4). It was not, however, till 
the third year after the first Punic war that this people 
was finally reduced. ( Polybius , 1, 65.— Livy, Epit., 
19.— Oros., 4, 11.) The waters of the Faliscan ter¬ 
ritory were supposed, like those of the Clitumnus, to 
have the peculiar property of communicating a white 
colour to cattle. (Plin., 2, 103. — Cramer's Anc. 
Italy, vol. I, p. 226.) 


Falernus Ager, a part of Italy famed for its wine. 
Few portions of the Italian peninsula were unfriendly 
to the vine, but it flourished most in that tract of the 
southwestern coast to which, from its extraordinary 
fertility and delightful climate, the name of Campania 
Felix was given. Some doubt concerning the extent 
of the appellation seems to exist; but Pliny and Strabo 
confine it to the level country reaching from Sinuessa 
to the promontory of Sorrento, and including the 
Campi Laborini, from whence the present name of 
Terra di Lavoro has arisen. In ancient times, in¬ 
deed, the hills by which the surface is diversified seem 
to have been one continued vineyard. Falernus is 
spoken of by Florus as a mountain, and Martial de¬ 
scribes it under the same title ; but Pliny, Polybius, 
and others, denominate it a field or territory (ager); 
and, as the best growths were styled indiscriminately 
Massicum and Falernum (vinum), it is thought that 
Massicus was the proper appellation of the hills which 
arose from the Falernian plain. The truth seems to 
be, that the choicest wines were produced on the 
southern declivities of the range of hills which com¬ 
mence in the neighbourhood of ancient Sinuessa, and 
extend to a considerable distance inland, and which 
may have taken their general name from the town or 
district of Falernus ; but the most conspicuous or the 
best exposed among them may have been the Massic ; 
and as, in process of time, several inferior growths 
were confounded under the common denomination of 
Falernian, correct writers would choose that epithet 
which most accurately denoted the finest vintage. If 
we are to judge, however, by the analogy of modern 
names, the question of locality will be quickly decided, 
as the mountain which is generally allowed to point to 
the site of ancient Sinuessa is still known by the name 
of Monte Massico. Pliny’s account of the wines of 
Campania is the most circumstantial. (Plin., 14, 6.) 
“ Augustus, and most of the leading men of his time,” 
observes this writer, “gave the preference to the Se- 
tine wine that was grown in the vineyards above For¬ 
um Appii, as being of all kinds the least calculated to 
injure the stomach. Formerly the Caecuban wine, 
which came from the poplar marshes of Amyclse, was 
most esteemed, but it has lost its repute through the 
negligence of the growers, and partly from the limited 
extent of the vineyards, which have been nearly de¬ 
stroyed by the navigable canal begun by Nero from 
Avernus to Ostia. The second rank used Jo be as¬ 
signed to the growths of the Falernian territory, and 
among them chiefly to the Faustianum. The territory 
of Falernus begins from the Campanian bridge, on the 
left hand, as you go to Urbana. The Faustian vine¬ 
yards are situate about 4 miles from the village, in the 
vicinity of Cedias, which village is six miles from Sin¬ 
uessa. The wines produced on this soil owe their 
celebrity to the great care and attention bestowed on 
their manufacture ; but latterly they have somewhat 
degenerated, owing to the rapacity of the farmers, who 
are usually more intent upon the quantity than the 
quality of their vintage. They continue, however, in 
the greatest esteem, and are, perhaps, the strongest of 
all wines, as they burn when approached by a flame. 
There are three kinds, the dry, the light, and the 
sweet Falernian. The grapes of which the wine is 
made are unpleasant to the taste.” From this and 
other accounts, it appears that the Falernian wine was 
strong and durable ; so rough in its recent state as not 
to be drunk with pleasure, and requiring to be kept 
many years before it grew mellow. Horace calls it a 
fiery wine ; Persius, indomitum, i. e., possessing very 
heady qualities. According to Galen, the best was 
that from 10 to 20 years ; after this period it became 
bitter. Among the wines of the present day, Xeres 
and Madeira most closely approximate to the Faler 
nian of old, though the difference is still very consid¬ 
erable, since the ancient wines of Italy and Greec- 

515 



F A U 


F A U 


were usually mixed with certain quantities of pitch, 
aromatic herbs, sea-water, &c., which must have com¬ 
municated to them a taste that we, at least, should 
consider very unpalatable. Among the ancient, and 
especially the Greek wines, it was no uncommon 
thing for an age of more than 20 years to leave no¬ 
thing in the vessel but a thick and bitter mixture, ari¬ 
sing, no doubt, from the substances with which the 
wine had been medicated. We have an exception, 
however, to this, in the wine made in Italy during the 
consulship of Opimius, A.U.C. 833, which was to be 
met with in the time of Pliny, nearly 200 years after. 
This may have been owing to the peculiar qualities of 
that vintage, since we are informed that, in conse¬ 
quence of the great warmth of the summer in that 
year, all the productions of the earth attained an ex¬ 
traordinary degree of perfection. Vid. Caecubus Ager. 
( Henderson's History of ancient and modern Wines, p. 
81, seqq.) 

Falisci, a people of Etruria. (Vid. Falerii.) 

Falisous Gratius. Vid. Gratius. 

Fannia Lex, de Sumptibus, enacted A.U.C. 588. 
It limited the expenses of one day, at festivals, to 100 
asses , whence the law is called by Lucilius Ccntussis; 
on ten other days every month to 30, and on all other 
days to 10 asses : also, that no other fowl should be 
served up except one hen, and that not fattened for the 
purpose. (Aid. GclL, 2, 24.— Macrob., Sat., 2, 13.) 

Fannius, an inferior poet, ridiculed by Horace 
(Sat., 1, 4, 21). It seems the legacy-hunters of the 
day carried his writings and bust to the library of the 
Palatine Apollo, a compliment only paid to produc¬ 
tions of merit. The satirist remarks, that this was 
unasked for on the part of Fannius (ultro dclatis cap- 
sis et imagine); an expression of double import, since 
ultro may also contain a sly allusion to the absence of 
all mental exertion on the part of the poet. (Schol. et 
Heindorf, ad Horat., 1. c.) 

Fanum Vacun^e, a temple of Vacuna, in the vicin¬ 
ity of Horace’s Sabine villa. (Hor., Ep., 1, 10, 49.) 
It is supposed to have stood on the summit of Rocca 
Giovane. 

Farfaris. Vid. Fabaris. 

Fauna, a goddess of the Latins. According to the 
old Roman legends, by which all the Italian deities 
were originally mortals, she was the daughter of Picus, 
and the sister and wife of Faunus. One account makes 
her to have never left her bower, or let herself be seen 
of men; and to have been deified for this reason, be¬ 
coming identical with the Bona Dea, and no man be¬ 
ing allowed to enter her temple. (Macrob., 1, 12.) 
According to another tradition, she was not only re¬ 
markable for her modesty, but also for her extensive 
and varied knowledge. Having, however, on one oc¬ 
casion, made free with the contents of a jar of wine, 
she was beaten to death by her husband with myrtle- 
twigs ! Repenting, however, soon after of the deed, he 
bestowed on her divine honours. Hence, in the cele¬ 
bration of her sacred rites, myrtle boughs were care¬ 
fully excluded; nor was any wine allowed to be 
brought, under that name, into her temple ; but it was 
called “ honey,” and the vessel containing it also was 
termed mellarium (scil. vas), i. e., “a honey-jar.” 
(Consult Macrob.. Sat., 1, 12, and Spangenberg, de 
Vet. Lat. Relig. Domest., p. 64, where other versions 
of the story are given.) Fauna is said to have given 
oracles from her temple after death, which circum¬ 
stance, according to some, affords an etymology for 
the name Fatua or Fatuella, which was often borne 
by her (from fari, “to declare”). A different explana¬ 
tion, however, is given in Macrobius (Labeo, ap. Ma¬ 
crob., Sat., 1, 12).—There can be little doubt but that 
Fauna is identical not only with the Bona Dea, but 
with Terra, Tellus, and Ops ; in other words, with the 
Earth personified. (Macrob., 1. c.) The name ap- 
>R> *, o come from (pao, pavo, connected with which 
516 


are tyavano) and (paivu, “ to bring forth into the light,” 
“to cause to appear(Creuzer , Symbolik , vol. 1 , 
p. 51, not. — Spangenberg, l. c.) 

Faunalia, festivals at Rome in honour of Faunus. 
They were celebrated on the 13th of February, or the 
ides of the month. On this same day occurred the 
slaughter of the Fabii. (Ovid, Fast., 2, 193, seqq.) 
There was another festival of the same name, which 
was celebrated on the nones (5th) of December. 
(Horat., Od., 3, 18.) 

Fauni, certain deities of the country, represented 
as having the legs, feet, and ears of goats, and the rest 
of the body human. The peasants offered them a 
lamb or a kid with great solemnity. When the spring 
brought back new life to the fields, the vivid imagina¬ 
tion of the ancient poets saw them animated by the 
presence of these frolic divinities, and hence, no doubt, 
the origin of their name, from the Greek (pdu or (pavio 
(“ to show forth,” “ to display to the view”), the Fauns 
being, if the expression be allowed, the rays of the 
genial spring-light personified. (Creuzer, Symbolik, 
vol. 2, p. 921.)—The Fauns of the Latin mythology 
are somewhat analogous to the Satyrs of the Greeks. 
There are points, however, in which the ancient art¬ 
ists made them differ as to appearance. The Fauns 
are generally represented as young and frolic of mien ; 
their faces are round, expressive of merriment, and 
not without an occasional mixture of mischief. The 
Satyrs, on the contrary, bear strong resemblance to 
different quadrupeds ; their faces and figures partake 
of the ape, the ram, or the goat; they have sometimes 
goats’ legs, but always either goats’ or horses’ tails. 
(Flaxman, Lectures on Sculpture , p. 152.) Accord¬ 
ing to Lanzi, there is, in general, in the low r er limbs 
of the Faun, more of the goat, in those of the Satyi 
more of the horse. ( Vasi, p. 98, seqq. — Compare 
Visconti, Mus. Pio-Clement., vol. 3, p. 54, seq. — 
Virg., G., 1, 10.— Ovid, Met., 6, 392.) 

Faunus, a rural deity of the ancient Latins, resem 
ling the Grecian Pan, to whom he is not very dissimi 
lar in name, and with whom he was often identified 
(Ovid, Fast., 2, 424.— Id. ib., 4, 650. — Horat., Od. 

1, 17, 1.) Indeed, some writers think that his wor 
ship was originally Pelasgic, and was brought by this 
race from Arcadia, the well-known centre of the wor¬ 
ship of Pan. (Compare Creuzer, Symbolik, vol. 3, 
p. 203.) Faunus was held to have the power of tell¬ 
ing the future. (Ovid, l. c. — Virg., Mn., 7, 81, seq.) 
In later times he was mortalized, like all the othei 
Italian' gods, and was said to have been a just and 
brave king, greatly devoted to agriculture, the son ol 
Picus and father of Latinus. (Virg., uEn., 7, 47.— 
Probus, Geor., 1, 10.) Like Pan, too, he was multi¬ 
plied ; and as there were Pans, so we also meet abun¬ 
dant mention of Fauns. (Vid. Fauni.) The poets 
gave to Faunus the same personal attributes as they 
did to the Fauns, making his shape half human, hall 
that of a goat. As Fauna was nothing more than the 
Earth ( Vid. Fauna), so Faunus appears to be the same 
with Tellumo. (Spangenberg, de Vet. Lat. Rel. Dom., 
p. 63.— Heyne, Excurs., 5, ad IE n., 7.— Ruperti, ad 
Juv., 8, 131.— Antias, ap. Arnob. adv. gent., 5, 1, p 
483.— Creuzer's Symbolik, vol. 3, p. 203.) 

Favorinus. Vid. Phavorinus. 

Fausta, I. daughter of Sylla, married Milo thi 
friend of Cicero. She disgraced herself by a crimina 
affair with the historian Sallust. (Horat., Sat., 1, 2 
41.— Schol. Cruq. et Acr., ad loc.) —II. Daughter o 
Maximian, and wife of Constantine the Great . Wher 
her father wished her to join him in a plot for assassi¬ 
nating her husband, she discovered the whole affair to 
the latter. After exercising the most complete ascend¬ 
ancy over the mind of her husband, she was eventually 
put to death by him, on his discovering the falsity of a 
charge which she had made against Crispus, the son 
of Constantine by a previous marriage. (Amm. Mar 





FEL 


F E R 


ltd , 14, 1.— Crcvier, Hist, des Emp. Rom., vol. 6, p. 
356.) 

Faustina, I. Annia Galeria, daughter of Annius 
Yerus, prefect of Rome. She married Antoninus be¬ 
fore his adoption by Hadrian, and died in the third 
year of her husband’s reign, 36 years of age. She was 
notorious for her licentiousness, and yet her husband 
appeared blind to 'her frailties, and after her death even 
accorded unto her divine honours. Her effigy appears 
on a large number of medals. ( Dio Cass., 17, 30.— 
Capitol., Vit. Anton. P., c. 3.)—II. Annia, or the 
Younger, daughter of the preceding, married her cousin 
Marcus Aurelius, and died A.D. 176, in a village of 
Cappadocia, at the foot of Mount Taurus, on her hus¬ 
band’s return from Syria. She is represented by Dio 
Cassius and Capitolinus as even more profligate in her 
conduct than her mother; and yet Marcus, in his Med¬ 
itations (1, 17), extols her obedience, simplicity, and 
affection. Her daughter Lucilla married Lucius Ve¬ 
rus, whom Marcus Aurelius associated with him in the 
empire, and her son Commodus succeeded his father 
as emperor. {Capitol., Vit. Ant. Phil., c. 19.) Mar- 
chand ( Mercure de France, 1745) and Wieland have at¬ 
tempted to clear this princess of the imputations against 
her character. {Encyclop. Use. Knowledge, vol. 10, 
p. 209.) 

Faustitas, a goddess among the Romans, supposed 
to preside over cattle, and the productions of the sea¬ 
sons generally. Faustitas is frequently equivalent to 
the Felicitas Temporum of the Roman medals. {Ho- 
rat., Od., 4, 5, 17.) 

Faustulus, the name of the shepherd who, in the 
old Roman legend, found Romulus and Remus getting 
suckled by the she-wolf. He took both the children 
to his home and brought them up. {Vid. Romulus, 
and Roma.) 

Februalia, a feast at Rome of purification and 
atonement, in the month of February : it continued 
for 12 days. The month of February, which, together 
with January, was added by Numa to the ten months 
constituting the year of Romulus, derived its name 
from this general expiatory festival, the people being 
then purified ( februati) from the sins of the whole year. 
{Ovid, Fast., 2, 19.) Some, however, deduce the 
name Februarius from the old Latin word fiber, men¬ 
tioned by Varro {L. L., 4, 13), and meaning the “ end” 
or “ extremity” of anything, whence comes the term 
fimbria , “ the hem or edge of a garment.” In this 
sense, therefore, February will have been so called from 
its having been the last month in the earlier Roman 
year. {Nor/c, Etymol. Handwort., vol. 1, p. 338.) 

Felix, M. Antonius, I. a Roman governor of Ju- 
dsea, who succeeded in office Cuinanus, after the latter 
had been exiled for malversation. {Josephus, Ant. 
Jud ., 20, 6.) He was the brother of the freedman 
Pallas, the favourite of Claudius. On reaching his 
government, A.D. 53, Felix became enamoured of the 
beautiful Drusilla, daughter of Agrippa, at that time 
married to Azizus, king of Emesa; and by dint of 
magnificent promises, and through the intervention of 
» reputed sorcerer named Simon, he succeeded in de¬ 
taching her from her husband, and in making her his 
jwn wife. Josephus charges this governor {Ant. Jud., 
20, 8) with having caused the assassination of the high- 
priest Jonathas, to whom, in a great measure, he owed 
his place. Felix, it seems, wished to rid himself of one 
who was continually remonstrating with him about the 
oppression of his government. And yet the Roman 
governor proved in one instance of considerable bene¬ 
fit to those under his charge, by delivering them from 
the robbers who had previously infested their country. 
{Joseph., I r.) It was before this Felix that St. Paul 
appeared at Caesarea, on that memorable occasion 
when the startling subjects discussed by the apostle 
made the corrupt Roman tremble on his judgment-seat. 

I Acts, ^4, 25.) Two years after, this Felix was suc¬ 


ceeded by Porcius Festus, and left Paul still in prison, 
in order to please the Jews. The latter, however, sent 
a deputation to Rome to accuse him of various mal¬ 
practices, but he was screened from punishment by the 
influence of his brother Pallas with Nero, who had suc¬ 
ceeded Claudius on the imperial throne. {Joseph., Ant. x 
Jud., 20, 8.)—II. A native of Rome, who succeeded 
Dionysius the Calabrian as bishop of that city, A.D. 
271, and suffered martyrdom in 275. He was sue 
ceeded by Eutychianus, bishop of Luna. There is ex 
tant an epistle of Felix to Maximus, bishop of Alex- 
andrea, against Paul of Samosata.—III. A bishop of 
Rome, the second of the name in the list of Popes, 
though some call him Felix III., on account of an an¬ 
ti-pope who assumed the title of Felix II. in the schism 
against Liberius (A.D. 355-66). He succeeded Sim¬ 
plicius A.D. 483. Felix had a dispute, upon ques¬ 
tions of ecclesiastical supremacy, with Acacius, bishop 
of Constantinople, who was supported by the emperor 
and most of the eastern clergy, in consequence of which 
a schism ensued between the Greek and Latin churches. 
Felix died A.D. 492, and was succeeded by Gelasius 
I. He was canonized by the Romish church. (Con 
suit Moreri, Diet. Hist., vol. 2, p. 503.) 

FelsIna, an Etrurian city in Gallia Cisalpina, after¬ 
ward called Bononia, and now Bologna. Pliny (3, 
15) makes it to have been the principal seat of the 
Tuscans ; but this must be understood to apply only 
with reference to the cities founded by that nation 
north of the Apennines. Bononia received a Roman 
colony 653 A.U.C. {Liv., 37, 57. — Veil. Paterc., 1, 
15.) Frequent mention of this city is made in the 
civil wars. {Cic.,Ep. ad Fam., 11, i3.— Id. ib., 12, 5. 

— Appian, 4, 2.) As it had suffered considerably du¬ 
ring this period, it was restored and aggrandized by 
Augustus after the battle of Actium, and continued to 
rank high among the great cities of Italy. {Tacit., 
Hist., 2, 53.— Strabo, 216.— Pomp. Mel., 2, 4.— Cra¬ 
mer's Ancient Italy, vol. 1, p. 88.) 

Feltria, a town of Italy, now Feltre, in the district 
of Yenetia. It was the capital of the small commu¬ 
nity called Feltrini. 

Fenestella, a Roman historian, who lived in the 
time of Augustus. Pliny and Eusebius place his death 
in the sixth year of the reign of Tiberius, A.D. 21. 
Fenestella wrote an historical work entitled Annates, 
from which Asconius Pedianus has derived many ma¬ 
terials in his Commentaries on Cicero’s Orations. Of 
this work only fragments remain. Another production, 

“ De Sacerdotiis et Magistratibus Romanorum ,” is 
sometimes attributed to him, but incorrectly. It is 
from the pen of Fiocchi ( Floccus ), a native of Flor¬ 
ence, and was written at the commencement of the 
14th century. Fenestella was seventy years old at the 
time of his death. (Foss., de Hist. Lat., 1, 19.— 
Funcc. de Viril. cet. L. L., p. 2, c. 5, 8. — Madvig, 
de Ascon. Pedian., p. 64.) The fragments of Fen- 
estella’s Annals are given, among others, by Haver 
camp, in his edition of Sallust, vol. 2, p. 385. ( Bdhr, 

Gesch. Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. 412.) 

Feralia, a festival at Rome of the Dii Manes, on 
the 21st of February, but, according to Ovid, on the 
17th. Festus derives the word from fero, on account 
of a repast carried to the sepulchres of relations and 
friends on that occasion, or from ferio, on account of 
the victims sacrificed. Vossius observes, that the 
Romans termed death fera, cruel, and that the word 
feralia might arise thence. (Compare, however, the 
remarks of Nork , Etymol., Handwort., vol. 1, p. 341, 
s. v. fcricz.) It continued for 11 days, during which 
time presents were carried to the graves of the de¬ 
ceased, marriages were forbidden, and the temples ol 
the gods were shut. Friends and relations also kept, 
after the celebration, a feast of peace and love, for 
settling differences and quarrels among one another, 
if any such existed. It was universally believed that 

517 




FER 


FES 


ihe manes of departed friends came and hovered over 
their graves, and feasted upon the offerings which the 
hand of piety and affection had prepared for them. 
In the case of the poor these offerings were plain and 
simple, consisting generally ol a few grains of salt, 
flour mixed with wine, scattered violets, &c. The 
wealthy, however, offered up sumptuous banquets. 
{Ovid, Fast., 2, 535, seqq. — Kirchmann, de Funeri- 
bus, p. 560.) 

FerentInum, I. a town of Etruria, southeast of 
Fulsinii, now Ferenti. From Vitruvius, who speaks 
of some valuable stone-quarries in its neighbourhood 
(2, 7), we collect that it was a municipium. The Em¬ 
peror Otho’s family was of this city. (Suet., Vit. Oth., 
1.— Sext., Aur. Viet. — Tacit., Hist., 2, 50.—Compare 
Ann., 15, 33.)—II. A town of Latium, about eight 
miles beyond Anagnia, on the Via Latina, now Feren- 
tino. It appears to have belonged originally to the 
Volsci, but was taken from them by the Romans and 
given to the Hernici. (Liv., 4, 51.) It subsequently 

fell into the hands of the Samnites. (Liv., 10, 34._ 

Compare Steph. Byz., s. v. — Cramer's Anc. Italy, 
vol. 2, p. 80, seqq.) 

Ferentum, or, more properly, Forentum, as Pliny 
(3, 11) writes it, a town of Apulia, about eight miles 
to the southeast of Venusia, and on the other side of 
Mount Vultur. It is now Forenza. (Horat., Od., 
3, 4, 15.— Diod. Sic., 19, 65.) 

Feretrius, an appellation of Jupiter among the 
Romans, who was so called from the feretrum, a 
frame supporting the spolia opima, dedicated to him 
by Romulus, after the defeat of the Casninenses, and 
the death of their king. This derivation, however, is 
opposed by some, who think it better to derive the 
term from the Latin ferire, to smite. This is the opin¬ 
ion of Plutarch, and he adds, that Romulus had prayed 
to Jupiter that he might have power to smite his ad¬ 
versary and kill him. (Liv., 1, 10.— Plut., Vit. Rom.) 

FeRfas Latins, the Latin Holydays. ( Vid. La¬ 
tium.) 

Feronia, a goddess worshipped with great solem¬ 
nity by both the Sabines and Latins, but more espe¬ 
cially the former. She is commonly ranked among 
the rural divinities. Feronia had a temple at the foot 
of Mount Soracte, and in her grove around this tem¬ 
ple great markets used to be held during the time of 
her festival. Her priests at this place used to walk 
unhurt on burning coals. (Dion. Hal., 3, 32 .—Strab., 
226.—Heyne, ad Virg., Mn., 7, 800 .—Fabretti, In¬ 
script., p. 452.) She had also a temple, grove, and 
fount near Anxur, and in this temple manumitted 
slaves went through certain formalities to complete 
their freedom, such as cutting off and consecrating 
the hair of their head, and putting on a pileus or cap. 
(Liv., 32, 1. Serv.ad Virg.,AEn., 7, 564.) Flowers 
and first-fruits were the offerings to her, and the in¬ 
terpretation of her name given in Greek was Flower- 
hearing or Garland-loving, while some rendered it 
Persephone (Proserpina). Thus Dionysius of Hali¬ 
carnassus remarks, ispov sgti ... \ Isuq 4* epovslaq 
bvopa&pevyq, yv ol psraijipd^ovrsq dq ryv 'EXMSa 
■y^aooav ol psv ’A vOytyopov, ol tie ^iloaricpavov, ol 
6s 4> epGE(j)6vyv aaTiovGiv. (Dion. Hal., 3, 32, where 
for $epovdaq we must evidently read fyepuviaq, to 
suit the text in another part of Dionysius, 2, 49, as 
also the quantity given by the Latin poets.) Feronia 
was also said to have been called Juno Virgo (Serv. 
ad ASn., 7, 799); but this, according to Spangenberg, 

>s a mere error, arising from the Sabine form of the 
name (Heronia) being confounded with the Greek ap¬ 
pellation for Juno (Hera). ( Spangenberg , dc Vet. 

Lat. Rel. Dom.., p. 48.) In the vicinity of the tem¬ 
ple of Feronia, at Soracte, was another to the god So- 
/anus, and the worship of these two divinities was 
connected, in a measure, by common ceremonies. 
Hence Muller compares these two divinities with the 
518 


(Muller, Etrusk. 


Mania and Mantus of the Etrurians, 
vol. 2, p. 65.) 

Fescennia (iorum) or Fescennium, a city of Etru 
ria, east of the Ciminian Lake, and near the Tiber 
It seems to have occupied the site of the modern Ga 
lese. Dionysius of Halicarnassus informs us (1, 21) 
that this place was first possessed by the Siculi, who 
were afterward expelled by the Pelasgi; and he adds, 
that some slight indications of the occupation of this 
city by the latter people might still be observed in his 
day. It is on this account, probably, that Solinus (c. 
8) says, it was founded by the Argives. Fescennium 
is quoted in the annals of Latin poetry for the nuptial 
songs, called Carmina Fescennina, to which, accord¬ 
ing to Festus, it gave its name. (Compare Pliny, 
15, 22.) The Fescennine verses, however, derive 
their appellation, according to others, from the obscene 
deity Fascinus, whom it was their object to propi¬ 
tiate. Traces of these gross effusions were to be 
found at Rome even in the latest periods of the em¬ 
pire, more particularly in the couplets which the young 
men sang at the nuptials of their friends, and the soners 
of the soldiers who followed the triumphal car of the 
general. The origin of the Fescennine verses is to be 
traced to the rude hilarity attendant, upon the celebra¬ 
tion of harvest. They were, therefore, in their prim¬ 
itive character, a sort of rustic dialogue spoken ex¬ 
tempore, in which the actors exposed before their au¬ 
dience the failings and vices of their adversaries, and, 
by a satirical humour and merriment, endeavoured to 
raise the laughter of the company. They would seem 
to have speedily run into excess, since one of the laws 
of the Twelve Tables prohibits this license under pain 
of death ; a punishment afterward commuted for beat¬ 
ing with sticks. (Consult Henrichs, Versus ludicri in 
Romanorum Casares priores olim composite Halve 

1810, p. 6.) r ’ 

Festus, I. Sextus Pomponius (or, according to 
others, Pompeius), a grammarian, supposed to have 
lived during the latter half of the third century. He 
made an abridgment, in alphabetical order, of the large 
work of Vernus Flaccus, on the signification of Word? 
( a De Verborum Signification e”). This abridgmen 

has been divided by editors into 20 books, each o 
which contains a letter. Festus has passed over ir 
silence those words which Verrius had declared obso 
lete, and he intended, it would seem, to have treater 
of them in a separate work. Sometimes he does no 
coincide in the opinions of Verrius, and on these oc 
casions he gives his own views of the subject matter 
The abridgment of Festus is one of the most usefu 
books we possess for acquiring an accurate knowledcn 
of the Latin tongue; it has experienced, however,Ir 
some respects, an unhappy lot. It existed entir 
down to the 8th century, when Paul Winifred con 
ceived the idea of making a small and meager extrac 
from it. This compilation henceforward suprlanter 
the original work in the libraries of the day, and the 
latter was so far lost to modern times that but a sin 
gle manuscript was found of it, and this an impel net 
one, commencing with the letter M. ( Dacier Prwf 
ad Fest.) Aldus Manucius, into whose hands the 
manuscript fell, amalgamated its contents with the la 
bours of Paul Winifrid, and made one work of them, 
which he printed in 1513, at the end of the Cornuco¬ 
pia dc Perotto. Another individual, whose name i< 
unknown, made a similar union, but mote complete 
than that of Aldus : the work of this latter Nas nub- 
lished in 1560 by Antonio Agostina, bishop jf Lerida 
who afterward became archbishop of Saragossa Oth 
er fragments of Festus were found in the library ol 
Cardinal Farnese; they were published by Fulvius 
Ursmus at Rome in 1581. The best editions are, 
ha of Dacier (In Usum Delphini), Paris, 4to, 1681 

J °/ T C \ °’ Muller ’ 4t0 > Leips., 1839, and 
that of Lindemann, m the Corpus Grammatical 






F 1 D 


F L a 


Latmnrvm Vellum, vol. 2, 4to, Lips., 1832. — II. 
Porcius, governor of Judaea after Felix, whom the 
Jews solicited to condemn St. Paul or to order him 
up to Jerusalem. The apostle’s appeal to Caesar (the 
JEmperor Nero) frustrated the intentions of both Fes- 
’Hs and the Jews. {Acts, 25, 1, seqq.) 

Fibrenus, a small stream of Latium, running into 
he Liris, and forming before its junction a small isl- 
md. This island belonged to Cicero, and is the spot 
where the scene is laid of his dialogues with Atticus 
and his brother Quintus on legislation. He describes 
it in the opening of the book as the property and resi¬ 
dence of his ancestors, who had lived there for many 
generations ; he himself was born there, A.U.C. 646. 
The Fibrenus, in another passage of the second book, 
is mentioned as remarkable for the coldness of its wa¬ 
ters. The river is now called Fiume della Posta : 
the island has taken the name of S. Domenico Abate. 
{Romanelli, vol. 3, p. 366, seqq. — Cramer's Ancient 
Italy, vol. 2, p. 113.) 

Ficulea or Ficulnea, a town of Latium, beyond 
Mount Sacer, to the north of Rome. Cicero had a villa 
there, and the road that led to the town was called Fi- 
culnensis, afterward Nomentana Via. {Cic., Att., 12, 
34.— Liv., 1, 38; 3, 52.) It is supposed by Nibby 
to have stood at Monte Gentile, about nine miles from 
Rome. {Belle Vie degli Antichi, p. 94.) 

FiDENiE, a. town of the Sabines, between four and 
five miles from Rome. It was at first a colony of Alba 
{Dion. Hal., 2, 54), but fell subsequently into the hands 
of the Etrurians, or more probably the people of Veii. 
Fidense, according to Dionysius (2, 23), was conquered 
by Romulus soon after the death of Tatius ; he repre¬ 
sents it as being at that period a large and populous 
town. It made several attempts to emancipate itself 
from the Roman yoke, sometimes with the aid of the 
Etruscans, at others in conjunction with the Sabines. 
Its last revolt occurred A.U.C. 329, when the dictator 
iEmilius Mamercus, after having vanquished the Fide- 
uates in the field, stormed their city, which was aban¬ 
doned to the licentiousness of his soldiery. {Liv., 4, 
9.) From this time we hear only of Fidense as a de¬ 
serted place, with a few country-seats in its vicinity. 
{Strabo, 226.— Cic., de Leg. Agr., 2, 25.— Herat., 
Epist., 1, 2, 7.) In the reign of Tiberius a terrible 
disaster occurred here by the fall of a wooden amphi¬ 
theatre, during a show of gladiators, by which accident 
50,000 persons, as Tacitus reports {Ann., 4, 62), or 
20,000, according to Suetonius {Tib., 40), were killed 
or wounded. From the passage of Tacitus here cited, 
it appears that Fidense had risen again to the rank of a 
municipal town. (Compare Juvenal, 10, 99.) The 
distance of five miles, which ancient writers reckon 
between Rome and Fidense, and the remains of anti¬ 
quity which are yet to be seen there, fix the site of 
this place near Castel Giubileo. {Nibby, Viaggio An- 
tiq., vol. l,p. 85.— Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol.l, p. 302.) 

Fidius Dius, a Roman deity, whose name often oc¬ 
curs in adjurations. The expression Me dius jidius, 
which is found so frequently in the Roman classics, has 
been variously explained. Festus makes dius Jidius 
to be put for A toq Jilius, the son of Jupiter, i. e., Her¬ 
cules ; he cites, at the same time, other opinions, as 
that it is the same with swearing per divi Jidem ox per 
diurni temporis (i. e., diei) Jidem. All these etymolo¬ 
gies, however, are decidedly erroneous. A passage in 
Plautus {Asin., 1, 1, 8) furnishes a safer guide, which 
is as follows : “ Per dium Jidium queeris ; jurato mihi 
video necesse esse eloqui, quidquid roges." From this 
passage we may fairly infer, that, in the phrase under 
consideration, dius is the same as deus or divus, and 
fidius an adjective formed from Jides. Hence dius Ji¬ 
dius, “ the god of honour,” or “ of good faith,” will be 
the same as the Zei>f moriog of the Greeks ; and, if we 
follow the authority of Varro, identical with the Sabine 
Sancus and Roman Hercules. {Varro, L. L., 4, 10.) 


Firmum, a city ol Picenum, about five miles lrom 
the sea, below the river Tinna. It was called Firmum 
Picenum, and was so termed probably to distinguish 
it from some other city of the same name, now un 
known. {Mich. Catalani, Orig. e Anlich. Fermane, 
pt. 2, p. 32.) It was colonized, as Velleius Patercu¬ 
lus informs us (1, 14), towards the beginning of the 
first Punic war. Ancient inscriptions give it the name 
of Colonia Augusta Firma. The modern town of Fer- 
mo is yet a place of some note in the Marca d'Anco¬ 
na ; and the Porto di Fermo answers to the Castel 
lum Firmanorum of Pliny (3, 13.— Cramer's Ancient 
Italy, vol. 1, p. 283). 

Firmus or Firmius, one of those ephemeral Roman 
emperors known in history by the name of tyrants, be¬ 
cause they were usurpers of empire under legitimate 
sovereigns. He was born in Seleucia in Syria, and 
owned extensive possessions in Egypt. Urged on by 
the impetuosity and love of change peculiar to the 
Egyptian Greeks, he seized upon Alexandrea, and as¬ 
sumed the title of Augustus, one of his objects being 
to aid the cause of Zenobia, who had already been con¬ 
quered by Aurelian, but whose power was still not com¬ 
pletely overthrown. Aurelian marched against Fir¬ 
mus with his usual rapidity, defeated him, took him 
prisoner, and inflicted on him the punishment of the 
cross. Firmus is described as having been of ex¬ 
traordinary stature and strength of body. His aspect 
was so forbidding that he obtained in derision the sur¬ 
name of Cyclops. {Vopisc., Vit. Firm.) 

Fiscellus, that part of the chain of the Apennines 
which separates the Sabines from Picenum. {Plin., 
3, 12.) Mount Fiscellus was reported by Varro to 
be the only spot in Italy in which wild goats were to 
be found. {Varro, R. R., 2, 1.) 

Flaccus, I. a poet. ( Vid. Valerius.)—II. Verrius, a 
grammarian, tutor to the two grandsons of Augustus, 
and author of a work entitled “ De Verborum Signiji- 
catione." {Vid. Festus, I.)—III. One of the names 
of Horace. {Vid. Horatius.) 

Flaminia Via, one of the Roman roads. It was 
constructed by C. Flaminius when censor (A.U.C. 
533, B.C. 221), and was carried, in the first instance, 
from Rome to Narnia ; whence it branched off in two 
directions, toMevaniaand Spoletum, uniting, however, 
again at Fulginia. From this place it continued its 
course to Nuceria, and was there divided a second time, 
one branch striking off through Picenum to Ancona; 
whence it followed the coast to Fanum Fortunae ; here 
it met the other branch, which passed the Apennines 
more to the north, and descended upon the sea by the 
pass of Petra Pertusa and Forum Sempronii. These 
two roads, thus reunited, terminated at Ariminum. 
{Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 292.) 

Flaminius, C. Nepos, was consul A.U.C. 531 and 
537 (B.C. 223 and 217). Having been sent this latter 
year against Hannibal, his impetuous character urged 
him to hazard the battle of the Lake Trasymenus, in 
which conflict he was slain, with the greater part of his 
army. {Liv., 22, 3. — Flor., 2, 6. — Val. Max., 1 , 6.) 

Flamininus, Titus Quintius, was made consul B.C. 
198, before he was thirty years of age, and had the 
province of Macedonia assigned to him, with the charge 
of continuing the war against Philip, which had now 
lasted for two years, without any definite success on 
the part of the Romans. In his first campaign he drove 
Philip from the banks of the Aoiis, and, among other 
important movements, succeeded in detaching the 
Achseans from the Macedonian alliance. In the fol¬ 
lowing year Flamininus, being confirmed by the senate 
in his command as proconsul, before commencing hos¬ 
tilities afresh, held a conference with Philip on the coast 
of the Maliac Gulf, and allowed him to send ambassa¬ 
dors to Rome to negotiate a peace. These negotia 
tions, however, proving fruitless, Flamininus marched 
into Thessaly, where Philip had taken up a position, 

519 



FLAMININUS. 


FLU 


and totally defeated him in the battle of Cynoscepha- 
1®, in a spot broken by small hills, between Pherae and 
Larissa. The Macedonians lost 8000 killed and 5000 
prisoners. After granting peace to the Macedonian 
monarch on severe and humiliating terms, Flamini- 
nus was continued in his command for another year, 
B.C. 196, to see these conditions executed. In that 
year, at the meeting of the Isthmian Games, where 
multitudes had assembled from every part of Greece, 
Flamininus caused a crier to proclaim, “ that the senate 
and people of Rome, and their commander Titus Quin- 
tius, having subdued Philip and the Macedonians, re¬ 
stored the Corinthians, Phocians, Locrians, Eubceans, 
Thessalians, Achaeans, &c., to their freedom and in¬ 
dependence, and to the enjoyment of their own laws.” 
Bursts of acclamation followed this announcement, and 
the crowd pressed forward to express their gratitude 
to Flamininus, whose conduct throughout these mem¬ 
orable transaction" was marked by a wisdom, modera¬ 
tion, and liberality seldom found united in a victorious 
Roman general. He wao thus the means of protract¬ 
ing the independence of the Greek states for half a cen¬ 
tury longer. In the following year, B.C. 195, Flamini¬ 
nus was intrusted with the war against Nabis, tyrant of 
Lacedaemon, who had treacherously seized on the city of 
Argos. The Roman commander marched into Laco¬ 
nia, and laid siege to Sparta, but he met with a brave 
resistance, and at last agreed to grant peace to Nabis, 
on condition that he should give up Algos and all the 
other places which he had usurped, and restore their 
lands to the descendants of the Messenians. His 
motives for granting peace to Nabis were, he said, part¬ 
ly to prevent the destruction of one of the most illus¬ 
trious of the Greek cities, and partly the great prepara¬ 
tions which Antiochus, king of Syria, was then making 
on the coast of Asia. Livy suggests, as another prob¬ 
able reason, that Flamininus wished to terminate the 
war himself, and not to give time to a new consul to 
supersede him and reap the honours of the victory. 
The senate confirmed the peace with Nabis, and in the 
following year, 194 B.C., Flamininus, having settled 
the affairs of Greece, prepared to return to Italy. 
Having repaired to Corinth, where deputations from all 
the Grecian cities had assembled, he took a friendly 
leave of them, withdrew his garrisons from all their 
cities, and left them to the enjoyment of their own 
freedom. On returning to Italy, both he and his sol¬ 
diers were received with great demonstrations of joy, 
and the senate decreed him a triumph for three days! 
Before the car of Flamininus, in the celebration of this 
triumph, appeared, among the hostages, Demetrius son 
of Philip, and Armenes son of Nabis, and in the rear 
followed the Roman prisoners, who had been sold as 
slaves to the Greeks by Hannibal during the second 
Punic war, and whose liberation Flamininus had ob¬ 
tained from the gratitude of the Grecian states. The 
Achaeans alone are said to have liberated 1200, for 
whom they paid 100 talents as compensation-money 
to their masters. Altogether, there was never, per¬ 
haps, a Roman triumph so satisfactory as this to all 
parties, and so little offensive to the feelings of human¬ 
ity. In the year 183 B.C., Flamininus was sent to 
Prusias, king of Bithynia, upon the ungracious mission 
of demanding the person of Hannibal, then in his old 
age, and a refugee at the court of Prusias. The mon¬ 
arch was prevailed upon to violate the claims of hospi¬ 
tality, but the Carthaginian prevented his treachery 
by destroying himself with poison. In the year 168 
B.C., Flamininus was made augur, in the room of C. 
Claudius deceased. (Liv., 45, 44.) After this he is 
no longer mentioned in history. (Plut., Vit. Flamin.) 

—rll. Lucius, brother of the preceding, commanded the 
Roman fleet during the first campaign of Quintius, and 
scoured the coasts of Euboea, Corinth, and other dis¬ 
tricts at that time allied or subject to the King of 
Macedonia. He was afterward expelled from, the sen¬ 


ate by Cato, when censor, for having put to deatn 
Gallic prisoner to gratify a minion of his. (Plut., Vit 
Flamin) 

Flanaticus Sinus, a gulf lying between Istria and 
Liburnia, in the Adriatic. It was also called Polati- 
cus Sinus, from the town of Pola in its vicinity. The 
name Flanaticus was derived from the adjacent town 
of Flano. The modern appellation is the Gulf of 
Quarnaro. (Plin ., 3, 19.) 

Flano, a town on the Illyrian side of the Sinus Fla¬ 
naticus, and giving name to the gulf. ( Steph. Byz., 
s. v.) The modern name is Fiannona. 

Flevus, a canal intersecting the country of the Fri- 
sii, made by Drusus. This in time expanded to such 
a degree as to form a considerable lake or lagune 
whose issue to the sea was fortified by a castle bear¬ 
ing the same name. This lagune, having been, in prog¬ 
ress of time, much increased by the sea, assumed the 
name of Zuyder Zee, or the Southern Sea; and of 
seveira/ channels which afford entrance to the ocean, 
that named Vlie indicates the genuine egress of the 
Flevus. (Tacit., Ann., 2, 6; 4, 72.— Plin., 4, 15.- 
Mela, 3, 2.) 

Flora, the goddess of flowers. She was a very 
ancient Italian deity, being one of those said to have 
been worshipped by Tatius. Her festival was termed 
Floralia, and was celebrated at the end of April and • 
beginning of May. It greatly degenerated, however, 
in the course of time, and became so offensive to 
purity as not to bear the presence of virtuous charac¬ 
ters. The story of Cato the Censor in relation to 
this festival, is well known. (Val. Max, 2, 10.1 
The Romans, who in general displayed very little ele¬ 
gance of imagination in the origins which they invent¬ 
ed for their deities, said that Flora had been a courte¬ 
san, who, having acquired immense wealth (at Rome 
in the early days of the republic !), left it to the Ro¬ 
man people, on condit'on of their always celebrating 
her birthday with feasts. (Plut., Qucest. Pom., 35 
Lactant., 1, 24.) Flora being an ancient, original 
Latin deity, was addressed by the honorific title oi 
Mater, “Mother.” (Cic. in Verr., 5, 14.— Lucret., 

5, 73 S.—Keightley, ad Ov., Fast., 5, 183, seqq.—ld., 
Mythology, p. 540.)—II. A name assumed by a cour 
tesan at Rome. (Plut., Vit. Pomp.) 

F loralia, games in honour of Flora at Rome 
(Vid. Flora.) 

Florentia, a town of Etruria, on the river Arnus, 
now Florence, or, as the Italians call the name, Firenze. 

It has no pretensions to a foundation of great antiqui¬ 
ty, as we find no mention made of it before the time 
of Cassar, by whom Frontinus says it was colonized ; 
unless we think, with Cluverius, that the town called 
Fluentia by Floras (1, 2), and mentioned with many 
other distinguished cities, as having severely suffer¬ 
ed in the civil wars of Svlla and Marius, might be 
identified with it. However that may be, we find 
distinct mention made of Florentia in the reign of Ti- 
ber.us ; when, as Tacitus informs us, the inhabitants 
of that city petitioned that the waters of the Clanis, a 
river which was very injurious from its perpetual in¬ 
undations, might be carried off into the Arnus. ( Tac ., 
Ann.,\, 79.—Compare Plin., 3, 5.) At a later peri' 
od this city was destroyed by Totila, and rebuilt by 
Charlemagne. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 183.) 

Florus, I. L. Annaeus, a Latin historian, born, ac 
cording to the common opinion, in Spain, but, as ethers 
maintain, in Gaul, and who wrote in the reign of Tra¬ 
jan. He was still living in the time of Hadrian, and 
is perhaps the same individual to whom, according to 
Spartianus, this emperor addressed some sportive ver 
ses. By some critics also he is regarded as the au¬ 
thor of the Pervigilium Veneris. A modern philolo¬ 
gist, Titze, has attempted to prove that the historian 
Florus lived in the time of Augustus, and that he i 
identical with the Lucius Tunius Florus to whom Hot 






FOR 


FOR 


ace has addressed two of his epistles. It is true that 
some manuscripts give the historian the name of Julius; 
in order, however, to admit the hypothesis of Titze, 
we must regard as interpolated a passage of the Pro- 
cemium of Florus, where mention is made of Trajan. 
(Consult the work of Titze, “ De Epitome rerum Ro- 
manarum, qua sub nomine Lucii Annai, sive Flori, 
Seneca fertur, atate probabilissima, vero uuctore, 
operis antiqui forma,” Lincii, 1804, 8vo.) Florus 
has left us an abridgment of Roman History, entitled 
“ Epitome de geslxs Romanorum ,” divided into four 
books. It commences with the origin of Rome, and 
extends to A.U.C. 725, when Augustus closed the 
temple of Janus, a ceremony which had not taken place 
for 206 years previous. This work is an extract not 
merely from Livy, but from many other ancient his¬ 
torians, no part of whose works any longer remain. 
It is less a history than an eulogium on the Roman 
people, written with elegance, but, at the same time, in 
an oratorical style, and not without affectation. Of¬ 
tentimes facts are merely hinted at, events are passed 
over with a flourish of rhetoric ; while the declamatory 
(one which everywhere prevails, and the concise and 
sententious phrases in which he is fond of indulging, 
impart an air of coldness to his writings, and render 
(hem monotonous, and sometimes obscure. Florus 
likewise commits many errors of a geographical nature, 
and on many occasions is defective in point of chro¬ 
nology. His text has reached us in a very corrupt state, 
and abounds with interpolations.—Some manuscripts 
give to the author of this work the name of Seneca: 
in fact, a branch of the Annaean family bore the name 
of Seneca; and there is even reason to believe that 
this family took indiscriminately the surname of Sene¬ 
ca or Florus. (Consult Wernsdorff, Poet. Lat. Min., 
vol. 3, p. 452.) From this title, as given by certain 
manuscripts, and from a passage of Lactantius, some 
~ritics have concluded that the Epitome is the work of 
Seneca the philosopher. Lactantius {Inst, divin., 7, 
15) says, that Seneca divided the history of the Ro¬ 
man people into four periods ; that of infancy, youth, 
manhood, and old age. This division occurs also in 
Florus, but in no other writer of antiquity, which would 
tend to strengthen the opinion that Lactantius has ci¬ 
ted Florus under the name of Seneca. To this, how¬ 
ever, it may be objected, that, though Florus adopts 
four periods or divisions in his work, his arrangement 
is not exactly the same with that mentioned by Lactan¬ 
tius ; besides, Florus might have borrowed from Sen¬ 
eca. The best edition of Florus is that of Duker, 
Lugd. Bat., 1722, and 1744, 2 vols. 8vo. The edi¬ 
tion of Fischer is also valuable, Lips., 1760, 8vo. 
{Scholl, Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 2, p. 389, seqq. — B'dhr, 
Gesch. Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. 452, seqq.)— -II. A young 
Roman, the friend of Horace, who accompanied Ti¬ 
berius in his expedition into Dalmatia (A.U.C. 731), 
and subsequently into Armenia (A.U.C. 734). Hor¬ 
ace addresses two epistles to him (1, 3, and 2, 2). 
Some make him the same with Florus the historian. 
(Consult preceding article.) 

Fons Solis. Vid. Ammon. 

Fonteius, Capito, I. an intimate friend of Horace, 
and who, in the conference at Brundisium, acted for 
Antonv, while Maecenas had charge of the interests of 
Octavius. {Hcrrat., Sat., 1 , 5, 32.) — II. A Roman 
who raised commotions in Germany during the reign 
of Galba. He was put to death by the lieutenants 
stationed there, before even orders reached them from 
home. {Tacit., Hist., 1 , 7.) 

Form!.*, a town of Latium, to the northeast of Caie- 
ta. It was a place of great antiquity, and is looked 
upon by the most ancient writers as the abode and 
capital of the Lsestrygones, of which Homer speaks in 
the Odyssey, and where his hero met with so inhospi¬ 
table a reception. The description of the place, how¬ 
ever, ; s so indefinite, though it may agree in the prin 
U u u 


cipal features, that, unless the consenting voice of an¬ 
tiquity had fixed upon this spot as the scene of Ulys¬ 
ses’ disaster, we could have had no clew for discover 
ing in Formiae the seat of these savage cannibals. 
Every one, however, is at liberty to indulge his fancy 
with the supposition that the harbour which Homer 
describes was actually that of Gaeta. (the ancient For¬ 
miae), and he may there recognise in it the towering 
rocks, the prominent shores, and the narrow entrance. 
{Odyss., 10, 80.— Eustace's Classical Tour,\ ol. 2, p. 
367.) According to Strabo (233), Formiae was a La¬ 
conian colony, and its first appellation was Hormiae, in 
allusion to the excellent anchorage which its port af¬ 
forded to vessels. (Compare Plin., 3, 5.) This place, 
however is chiefly interesting from having been long 
a favourite resioer.ee of Cicero, and finally the scene of 
the tragica event which terminated his existence. He 
sometimes talks of his retreat here as his Caietan vil¬ 
la {Ep. ad Att., 1, 2, and 3), but more commonly terms 
it his Formianum. He appears to have resided there 
during the most turbulent part of the civil war between 
Caesar and Pompey ; for, in one of his letters to Atti- 
cus (7, 8), he mentions a long conference he held with 
the latter at this place, and from which he inferred that 
no alternative was left but that of war. In the reign 
of Augustus we find Formiae distinguished as the birth¬ 
place and residence of Mamurra, a Roman senator of 
enormous wealth : hence the appellation bv which Hor¬ 
ace designates it in the narrative of his journey to 
Brundisium, “ In Mamurrarum lassi deinde urbe ma- 
nemus ,” &c. {Sat.., 1, 5, 37.) The retirement and 

ease which this delightful spot afforded is well descri 
bed by Martial {Ep., 10, 30). The Formian hills 
are often extolled for the superior wine which they pro¬ 
duced. {Horat., Od., 1, 20.— Id. ibid., 3, 16.) The 
modern name of Formiae is Mola di Gaeta. {Cramer's 
Ancient Italy , vol. 2, p. 125.) 

Formianum, a villa of Cicero near Formiae, near 
which the orator was assassinated. ( Vid. Formiae.) 

Formio, a small river of Venetia, now the Risano, 
considered before the reign of Augustus as the bound¬ 
ary of Italy towards its northeastern extremity; but, 
when Histria was included in Cisalpine Gaul, this lim¬ 
it was removed to the little river Arsia. {Plin., 3, 18.) 

Fortuna (in Greek Tv^y), the Goddess of Fortune, 
or that unseen power which was believed to exercise 
such arbitrary dominion over human affairs. By Hesi¬ 
od and by one of the Homeridae {Theog., 260.— Horn., 
Hymn, ad Cer., 420) she is classed among the Ocean 
nymphs. Pindar in one place {Ol., 13, 1) calls her 
“the child of Jupiter Eleutherius elsewhere he says 
that she is one of the Destinies. {Frag., Incert., 75.) 
Aleman called her the sister of Law and Persua¬ 
sion, and daughter of Forethought {Tlpo/lydeia. — Ap. 
Plut. de Fort. Rom., 4). In her temple at Thebes 
Fortune held Wealth {TDiovrog) in her arms, whether 
as mother or nurse was uncertain. {Pausan., 9, 16.) 
The image of this goddess made by Bupalus for the 
people of Smyrna had a hemisphere {noTiop) on its head, 
and a horn of Amalthaea in its hand. {Pausan., 4, 30, 
6.—Compare Siebelis, ad Pausan., 2, 10, 4.) The 
Goddess Fortune was, however, of much greater im¬ 
portance in the eyes of the Italians than in those of 
the Greeks. Under the name of Nortia she was adored 
in Etruria. She was also worshipped at Antium, 
where she had a splendid temple, at Prseneste, and else¬ 
where. At Rome there were two temples to her, both 
ascribed to Servius Tullius, the one of Bona or Virgo 
Fortuna, the other of Fors Fortuna. {Ovid, Fast., 6, 
569, seqq. — Keightley, ad loc. — Id., Mythology , p. 202, 
533.) 

Fortunate Insul*:, islands lying off the western 
coast of Africa, and deriving their name from their re¬ 
markable beauty, and the abundance of all things de¬ 
sirable which they were supposed to contain. Theit 
climate was one continual spring, their soil was covered 

521 



FOR 


FRA 


**ith eternal verdure, and bloomed with the richest 
dowers; while the productions of earth were poured 
forth spontaneously in the utmost profusion. The le¬ 
gend of the Island of the Blessed in the Western Ocean 
may possibly have given rise to the tale of the Fortu¬ 
nate Islands. ( Vid. Elysium.)—Many at the present 
day regard the Fortunate Islands of antiquity as geo¬ 
graphical realities. Some make them identical with 
the Canaries, and this opinion is grounded upon the 
situation and tempasrature of those islands, and the de¬ 
licious fruits which they produce. (Plin., 6, 32_ 

Diod. Sic., 5, 19.) 

Forum Roman um, Vetus vel Magnum, a large open 
space between the Capitoline and Palatine Hills, called 
until lately Campo Vaccino, or the Cow-held, or mar¬ 
ket. The Italians, however, have grown ashamed of 
so vulgar a name, and have restored to the place its 
ancient appellation of Forum Romanum. It is now 
a mere open space, strewed for the most part with 
ruins. It is collected from Livy (1, 12) and Dio¬ 
nysius of Halicarnassus (2, 66), that the Forum was 
situate between the Capitoline and Palatine Hills ; and 
from Vitruvius we learn that its shape was that of a 
rectangle, the length of which exceeded the breadth by 
one third. From these data, which agree with other 
incidental circumstances, it is generally thought that 
the four angles of the Roman forum were formed by 
the arch of Severus at the foot of the Capitol; the 
Fabian arch, at the termination of the Via Sacra- 
the church of Si. Theodore, at the foot of the Pala¬ 
tine ; and that of the Consolazione, below the Capi¬ 
tol. Here the assemblies of the people used general¬ 
ly to be held, and here also justice was administered, 
and public business transacted. It was formed by 
Romulus, and surrounded with porticoes, shops, and 

buildings by Tarquinius Priscus. (Liv., 1 , 35. _ Dion. 

i/a/., 3, 67.) Around the Forum were built spacious 
halls, called Basilic®, where courts of justice miaht 
sit, and other public business be transacted. The 
present surface of the Forum is from fifteen to twenty 
feet above its ancient level.—There was only one For¬ 
um under the republic; C®sar added another; Au- 
gustus a third ; a fourth was begun by Domitian, and 
finished by Nerva, after whom it was named. But the 
most splendid was that of Trajan, adorned with the 
spoils he had taken in war. Besides these, there were 
various fora or places where commodities were sold. 

Forum, a name given in Roman geography to many 
places where there was either a public market, or 
where the pr®tor held his court (Forum sire Conven¬ 
es) ; of these the most important were : I. Forum, 
a town of Latium, on the Appian Way, about twenty- 
three miles from Aricia, and sixteen from Tres Ta- 
bern®. It is mentioned by St. Taul in the account of 
his journey to Rome (Acts, 28, 15), and is also well 
known as Horace's second resting-place in his jour¬ 
ney to Brundisium. Holstenius and Corradini agree 
’o fixin S the position of Forum Appii at Casarillo di 
kanta Maria. Bui D’Anville, from an exact compu¬ 
tation of distances and relative positions, inclines to 
place it at Borgo Lungo , near Treponti, on the present 
road (Anal. Geogr. de ritalie, p. 186); and he would 
seem to be correct, especially as it appears clear from 
Horace, that here it was usual to embark on a canal, 
which ran parallel to the Via Appia, and which was 
called Lecennovium, its length being nineteen miles. 
^Procop Rer. Got., 1 , 2.) Vestiges of this canal 
may still be traced a little beyond Borgo Lungo. It 
must be observed, too, that the name of this modern 
place agrees very well with the idea which Horace 
£! V( j s u ®. of Forum Appii. — II. Allieni, a town of 
Gallia Cisalpma, mentfoned by Tacitus (Hist., 3, 6). 

9 U f V ?£ 1US conceives * w dh considerable probability, 
that this ancient town occupied the present site of 
Ferrara , that modern name being evidently a corrup¬ 
tion of Forum Allieni, contracted to Forum Arrii.— 


III. Aurelii, a town of Etruria, now Montalto (Che., 
Cat., 1,9.)—IV. Claudii, another in Etruria, now Orio- 
lo. —V. Cornelii, another, now Imola, in the Pope’s 
dominions. (Pliny, 3, 16. — Cic., Ep. ad Fam., 12 , 
5.)—VI. Domitii, a town of Gaul, now Frontignan, 
in Languedoc.—VII. Flaminii, a town of Umbria, 
now San Giovane. (Plin., 3, 14.) — VIII. Gallorum, 
a town of Gallia Togata, now Castel Franco, in the 
Bolognese.^ (Cic., Ep. ad Fam., 10, 30.)—IX. Julii 
a town of Venetia, called Forajuliensis urbs, now Fri¬ 
uli. X. Julii, a town of Gallia Narbonensis, now 
Frejus, in Provence. (Cic., Ep. ad Fam., 10, 17.) 

Fosi, a people of Germany, lying north of the Che- 
rusci, along the Visurgis or \Veser. They shared the 
fate of the Cherusci when the Langobard: conquered 
the latter people. They are supposed to have been 
a branch of the Cherusci. (Mannert, Geogr., vol. 3, 
p. 175, 208.) 

Fossa, I. the straits of Bonifacio, between Corsica 
and Sardinia, called also Taphros. (Plin., 3, 6.) — II. 
Drusi, a canal eight miles in length, opened by Drusus 
from the Rhine to the Yssel. (Vid. Drusus, I.)—III. 
Philistina, one of the mouths of the Po, now the Po 
grande. It is spoken of as a very considerable canal, 
having seven arms or cuts, called Septem Maria, or 
Fossiones Philistines, these were drawn off from it 
to the sea. 1 he works in question were undertaken 
by the Tuscans, for the purpose of draining the marshy 
grounds about Hadria. Mazocchi sees in the term 
Philistines traces of a reference to Phoenicia. (Ma- 
zocch., Dissert. Corton., vol. 3, diss. 1, diatr. 1, de 
sette Mari.) 

Fossiones Philistine. Vid. Fossa, III. 

Franci, a confederation of Germanic tribes, which 
first appeared on the stage of history in the last quar¬ 
ter of the second century of our era. As the Franks 
are first mentioned during the reign of the philosophic 
and pacific Antonine, Mannert concludes that their 
confederation was not the result of hostile aggression 
from Rome, but of internal wars ; and these wars he 
conceives to have been chiefly of self-defence against 
the Saxon confederation, which, occupying the north 
of Germany, sought to extend itself westward to tire 
Rhine. The Germans lying between the Saxons and 
that river found it necessary to unite in order to re¬ 
sist their northen invaders, and did so successfully 
under their new name of Franks. ( Geschichte der al- 
ten Deutschen, besonders der Franken, p. 79, seqq.) 
Various etymologies have been assigned to this ap¬ 
pellation : some deduce it from the German term 
fiank, meaning “free,” and indicating a race of Free¬ 
men; others from the francisca, a favourite weapon 
ot this people ; but Luden, in his Geschichte des Tcut- 
schen Volkes (Gotha, 1825-30), derives the name from 
the word wrangen, still used in Lower Saxony for 
“to fight” or “brawl” (compare the English “ wran- 
ge ); whence the ejiithet might mean quarrelsome 
or, perhaps, bold warriors. The Franks soon became 
powerful enough to act on the offensive, and, crossing 
the Rhine to meet other foes, they spread their de^ 
vastations from the banks of that river to the foot of 
the Pyrenees : nor were they stopped by these moun- 
tains. Spain, in turn, was overrun; and, when the 
exhausted country no longer supplied a variety of plun¬ 
der, the Franks seized on some vessels and transported 
themselves into Mauritania. They were afterward 
driven out of Gaul by the Roman arms, and from the 
reign of Probus (A.D. 277) to that of Honorius, seem 
to have contented themselves with occasional irrup¬ 
tions. They obtained a permanent footing in Gaul 
during the last years of the reign of Honorius. About 
the year 500 Clovis, or Chlodwig (his proper Teutonic 
name), by reducing the several Frank principalities un¬ 
der his own sceptre, and conquering the last remnant 
of the western Roman empire in Gaul, is held to have 
founded the French monarchy. His Frank kingdom 









F K E 


FRO 


was, nevertheless, by no means commensurate with 
modern France, consisting of merely the northern Ger¬ 
man provinces on probably both banks of the Rhine, 
of the present kingdom of the Netherlands, and of so 
much of France as lies north of the Loire, with the 
exception of Brittany, where large bodies of Britons, 
expelled from their insular home by the Saxons, had 
established themselves, and long maintained their in¬ 
dependence. Of the southern half of France, the lar¬ 
ger part, situated to the west of the Rhone, was in¬ 
cluded in the Visigothic kingdom of Spain ; while the 
provinces to the east of that river were held, together 
with Savoy and Switzerland, by the Burgundians. 
Chlodwig attacked both. Against the Burgundians he 
effected little or nothing, but he was more successful 
against their western neighbours. Assisted by the 
hatred which the Catholic natives entertained towards 
their Arian master, he, before his death, reduced the 
Visigothic dominions in Gaul to the single province 
of Languedoc, incorporating all the rest in his Frank 
realm. His sons and grandsons, in time, not only sub¬ 
dued Burgundy, but brought many German states, as 
the Thuringians, Allemans, and Bavarians, into com¬ 
plete feudal subjection. ( Foreign Quarterly Review, 
No. 13, p. 169, seqq.) 

Fregkll.®, a city of Latium, situate near the Liris, 
and close to the Via Latina, as appears from the men¬ 
tion of a station called Fregellanum in the Itineraries 
which describe that route. Fregellas is stated by Stra¬ 
bo (238) to have been once a place of some conse¬ 
quence, and the capital of a considerable district. It 
was taken by the Romans A.U.C. 427. After suffer¬ 
ing from Pyrrhus, and subsequently from Hannibal, 
this place attained to so considerable a degree of im¬ 
portance and prosperity as to suppose that it could 
compete even with Rome ; its inhabitants revolted, 
and probably under circumstances peculiarly offensive 
to the Romans. L. Opimius was ordered to reduce 
the Fregellani. Their town was immediately besieged, 
and, after a vigorous resistance, was taken through 
the treachery of Numitorius Pullus, one of their own 
citizens, whose name has been handed down to us 
by Cicero. ( De Fin., 5, 22.— Phil., 3, 6.) Fregel- 
lae was on this occasion destroyed, the discontented 
state of the allies of Rome at that period probably ren¬ 
dering such severe measures necessary. ( Liv., Epit., 
60.— Rhet. ad Her., 4, 9. — Veil. Paterc., 2, 6.— 
Val. Max., 2, 8.) In Strabo’s time the condition of 
this city was little better than that of a village, to 
which the neighbouring population resorted at certain 
periods for religious purposes. Its ruins, according to 
Cluverius, are to be seen at Ceperano, a small town 
on the right of the Garigliano. (Ital. Ant.,\ ol. 1, p. 
1036.—Compare Holst, ad Steph. Byz., p. 220, and 
He Chaupy , vol. 3, p. 474.) A more modern writer, 
however, fixes this ancient site at S. Giovanni Incari- 
co, about three miles farther down the river. ( Pas - 
quale Cayro, Citta del Lazio, vol. 1.— Romanelli, \o\. 
3, p. 380.— Cramer's Ancient Italy , vol. 2, p. 111.) 

Frentani, a people of Italy, on the Adriatic coast, 
east of Samnium and northwest of Apulia, who re¬ 
ceived their name from the river Frento, now Fortore, 
which runs through the eastern part of their country, 
and falls into the Adriatic opposite the islands of Dio¬ 
mede. The Frentani appear to have possessed a 
separate political existence, independent of the Sam- 
nitic confederacy, though we are assured that they de¬ 
rived their descent from that warlike and populous 
race. (Strabo, 241.) Their history, in other respects, 
bears a close resemblance to that of the neighbouring 
tribes, the Vestini, Peligni, and Marrucini. Together 
with these, the Frentani, as Livy reports, voluntarily 
submitted to the Romans, and sent deputies to obtain 
a treaty from that power, which was readily granted. 
(Liv., 9, 45.) We find the Frentani also numbered 
with the Marsi, Marrucini, and Vestini, by Polybius, 


as the allies of Rome before the invasion of Hanmbai 
(2, 24). From Plutarch we learn, that they distin 
guished themselves in the war against Pyrrhus (Vit 
Pyrrh. —Compare Florus, 1, 18), and it appears that 
they faithfully adhered to the Roman cause throughout 
the whole of the second Punic war. Appian is the 
only author who has particularly mentioned the Fren¬ 
tani, as having joined the coalition of the petty states 
of central Italy against Rome (Civ. Bell., 1, 39), but 
even without the authority of this writer we could not 
doubt that this people would unite in support of the 
common cause with the surrounding states, to whom 
they were bound by consanguinity and other political 
ties. Whatever may have been their former extent 
of territory, we find it restricted by the geographers of 
the Augustan age to the tract of country lying be¬ 
tween the mouths of the Aternus and Tifernus, which 
separated it from the Marrucini to the north, and from 
Apulia to the south. (Mela, 2, 4.— Plin ., 3,11 ,seqq .— 
Ptol., p. 66.) Though it extended also into the interior 
towards Samnium, and the sources of the rivers just 
mentioned, the few cities of the Frentani with which 
we are acquainted appear to have been situated on 
the coast. (Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol. 2, p. 254, 
seqq.) 

Frisii, a people of Germany, having for their bound 
aries the eastern mouth of the Rhine on the west, the 
ocean on the north, the Amisia or Eras on the east, 
and the Vechta or Vecht on the south They occu¬ 
pied, consequently, what answers at the present day 
to West Friesland , Groningen, and the northern angle 
of Obcr-Yssel, together with the islands which lie 
partly to the north in the ocean, and partly to the east¬ 
ern mouth of the Rhine. Pliny and Tacitus (Ann., 

I, 60.— lb., 4, 72, &c.) name this people Frisii; Ptol¬ 
emy and Dio Cassius, 4> pccaioi and ^pelcuoi (Ptol., 2, 

II. —Dio Cass., 54, 32); but by later writers they are 
styled Qpioooveq (Procop., 4, 20), Frisiones (Chronic. 
Moisiac., 797), Frisones (Paul. Warnefr., de Gest. 
Longob., 6, 37), &c. From a very early period the 
Frisii appear to have been on friendly terms with the 
Romans. Drusus not only marched unimpeded through 
their territory and entered their harbour with his fleet, 
but also received from them the most active assistance, 
not as from a conquered people, but allies. They aided 
also Germanicus. Their enmity to the Cherusci would 
seem to have been the real motive of their friendship 
with the Romans. At a subsequent period, however, 
they discovered the true nature of the alliance which 
the latter had formed with them, and fell an easy prey 
to their conquering arms. (Mannert, Geogr., vol. 3, 
p. 272.) 

Frontinus, Sex. Jul., a Latin writer, born of a 
plebeian family (Poleni, Vit. Front., 1, seqq.), but who 
attained, by his integrity, valour, and intelligence, tc 
some of the highest offices of the state. In A.D. 70 
he was prsetor, but abdicated this office to please Do- 
mitian, who wished to add it to the dignity of consul, 
with which he himself was already invested. (Com¬ 
pare Tacitus, Hist., 4, 39. — Suetonius, Domit., 1.) 
Five years after Frontinus obtained the command of 
Britain, and was intrusted with the subjugation of the 
Silures ; which would seem to indicate that he had 
been consul in A.D. 74, though the Fasti Consularcs, 
which are not, however, very complete as regards the 
consules suffecti, make no mention of him. He ac¬ 
complished the object of his mission, notwithstanding 
the difficulties of the enterprise. Agricola, the father 
in-law of Tacitus, was appointed his successor. Under 
Nerva he received the consulship a second time, A.D. 
97, and was appointed the same year Curator Aqua- 
rum, or general superintendent of the waters and 
aqueducts of the capital, and in this capacity brought 
the waters of the Anio to Rome by means of a splen¬ 
did aqueduct. He died about A.D. 106, and filled, at 
the time of his death, the office of augur, in which 

523 




FRO* 


PUL 


he was succeeded by Pliny. Frontinus wrote a work 
on the Roman aqueducts, and another on military 
stratagems. The former of these, to Which the copy¬ 
ists of the middle ages have given the barbarous title 


is 


of “ De aquaductibus urbis Roma Commentarius ,” __ 
written in an easy style, but without the least elegance. 
It is important, however, for archaeology, since we find 
in it a detailed history of those remarkable monuments, 
the aqueducts of Rome. As regards the title of the 
work, it may be remarked, that the term aquaductus 
does not appear in the treatise itself: and an old edi¬ 
tion gives as the superscription, “ De Aquis, qua in 
Urbem influunt, libellus mirabilis.” The other work, 
entitled “ Stratagematicon libri IV .,” is partly of a 
military and partly of an historical character; it is a 
mere compilation, sometimes written with great neg¬ 
ligence, especially in the historical part. Still, even 
in an historical point of view, the work is not with¬ 
out interest, since it contains some particulars which 
are not to be found in the other historians that have 
come down to us. To Frontinus are ascribed other 
productions, which are, however, of a later age. One 
is entitled “ De Re Agraria ,” or 11 De Agrorum Qual- 
itate the others, “ De Limitibus ” and “ De Colo- 
niisA The last two are merely fragments, and their 
authors lived after the time of the Antonines, who are 
mentioned in them. The bps edition iff Frontinus is 
that of Oudendorp, Lugd. An , 1779, 8vo. ( Bdhr , 
Gesch. Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. (*r\ t seqq.) 

Fronto, I. a Latin writer, oorn at Cirta, in Africa, 
of an Italian family. After studying in his own coun¬ 
try, he came to Rome in-the reign of Hadrian, and ac¬ 
quired great reputation as a rhetorician and gramma¬ 
rian. Antoninus Pius appointed him preceptor to his 
two adopted sons Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, 
whose confidence and affection he gained, as is proved 
by their letters. After being consul, Fronto was ap¬ 
pointed to a government in Asia, which his bad health 
prevented him from filling. His learning and his in¬ 
structive conversation are mentioned with praise by 
Aulus Gellius, the historian Appian, and others of his 
contemporaries. He died in the reign of Marcus Au¬ 
relius, at an advanced age. ( Klugling, Suppl. ad. 
Harles. Notit. Brev., p. 320.— Mai, Comment, prcev., 

$ iv., seqq. — Bdhr, Gesch. Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. 595.) 
—Until of late years we had nothing of Fronto’s works, 
except fragments of his treatise “ De Differentia Ver- 
borum ,” being a vocabulary of the so-called synonyms. 
But in 1815, Angelo Mai having discovered in the 
Ambrosian Library at Milan a palimpsest MS., on 
which had been originally written some letters of 
Fronto to his two pupils, deciphered the text wherever 
the writing was not entirely obliterated, and published 
it with notes. It happened, by singular good fortune, 
that Mai, being some years after appointed librarian 
of the Vatican, discovered in another palimpsest vol¬ 
ume another part of Fronto’s. letters, with the answers 
of Marcus Aurelius and Verus. Both the volumes came 
originally from the monastery of St. Columbanus, at 
Bobbio, the monks having written them over with the 
Acts of the First Council of Chalcedon. It happened, 
that one of the volumes was transferred to Milan, and 
the other to Rome. Mai published the whole in a new 
edition, entitled, “ M. Cornelii Frontonis et M. Au- 
reln imperatoris epistulce; L. Veri et Antonini Pii 
et Appiani epistularum reliquice: Fragmenta Fronto¬ 
nis et Scripta Grammatica, 8vo, Rom., 1823.” These 
letters are very valuable, as throwing additional light 
on the age of the Antonines, confirming what we 
know of the excellent character of Marcus Aurelius, 
and also showing his colleague Verus in a more fa¬ 
vourable light than he had been viewed in before. 
The affectionate manner in which both emperors con¬ 
tinue to address their former preceptor is very touch¬ 
ing- Two or three short epistles of Antoninus Pius 
are also interesting. There are, besides, many letters 
524 


of Fronto to various friends, a few of which are tr 
Greek. ( Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 10, p. 498 )—II 
A native of Etnesa, a rhetorician, who lived at Rome 
in the time of Alexander Severus. He taught elo¬ 
quence also at Athens, and was the rival of the first 
Philostratus. The critic Longinus was his nephew. 
He wrote various works, of which only a few fragments 
remain. {Suid.—Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 7, d 
204.) F 

Frusino, a city of Latium, now Frosinone, situate 
on the river Cosa. ( Strabo , 238.) This place was 
deprived by Rome of its territory for having incited 
the Hernici to war, A.U.C. 450. Frontinus names it 
among the colonies, and Festus among theprasfectur®. 

Fucinus, a lake of Italy, in the country of theMarsi, 
now sometimes called Lago Fucino, but more com¬ 
monly Lcigo di Celano. It is of considerable extent, 
being not less than forty miles in circumference. As 
it was subject to inundation ( Strabo, 241), Julius Cae 
sar, it appears, had intended to find a vent for its wa¬ 
ters {Sueton., Vit. Cces., 44), but this design was not 
carried into execution till the reign of Claudius. After 
a continued labour of three years, during which 30,000 
men were constantly employed, a canal of three miles 
in length was carried through a mountain from the 
lake to the river Liris. On its completion, the splen¬ 
did but sanguinary show of a real naumachia was ex¬ 
hibited on the lake in the presence of Claudius and 
Agrippina, and a numerous retinue, while the sur 
rounding hills were thronged with the population of 
the neighbouring country. The reader will find these 
events fully detailed in Suetonius ( Vit. Claud., 20) 
Tacitus {Annal., 12, 56), and Dio Cassius (60, 11).’ 
Hadrian afterward is said to have repaired this work 
of Claudius. {Ml., Spart., Vit. Hadr.) Considerable 
remains of this undertaking of Claudius are yet to be 
seen between Avezzano and Lugo. (Consult Fa- 
bretli, Dissert, de Emissario Lacus Fucini. — Roma- 
nelli, vol. 3, p. 194.— Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol. 

1, p. 328.) y 

Fulvia Gens, an illustrious family at Rome, the 
branches of which were those of Curvus, Nobilioi, 
Flaccus, Pastinus, Maximus, Centumalus, &c. 

Fulvia, I. a female of good family, but licentious 
principles. She disclosed to Cicero the details of the 
conspiracy of Catiline, which she had learned from 
Quintus Curius. {Sail., Cat., c. 23.)—II. A bold, 
ambitious woman, at first the wife of Clodius the tur¬ 
bulent tribune, and, after his death, of Marcus Anto- 
nius the triumvir. She first came into notice on the 
assassination of Clodius, when, having caused the 
corpse to be brought into the vestibule of her dwelling, 
and having assembled the populace, she caused, by 
her tears and language, a violent sedition. Some 
years after this, on having become the spouse of An¬ 
tony, she took an active part in the proscriptions of 
her husband, and is said to have even sacrificed to her 
own vengeance several individuals who had given her 
offence. After the head of Cicero was brought to 
Antony, she took it on her knees, broke forth into 
cowardly insult of the character of the deceased, and 
then, with fiendish malice, pierced the tongue with 
her golden bodkin. Having been left at Rome by An¬ 
tony during the war against Brutus and Cassius, she 
became all powerful in that city, named the pnetors 
at her own pleasure, sold the government of the prov¬ 
inces, and even decreed a triumph to Lucius, the 
brother of Antony, who had no claim whatever to one. 
When, after the battle of Philippi, Antony had pass¬ 
ed into the East to regulate affairs in that quarter 
Fulvia, irritated by his intercourse with Cleopatra, tri¬ 
ed to induce Octavius to take up arms against him 
Not succeeding in this, she took them up against Oc¬ 
tavius himself, in conjunction with her brother-in-law 
Lucius, who now professed open opposition to the ille¬ 
gal power of the Triumvirate After very bold and 







FUL 


FUR 


jprrited efforts, however, on her part, she was besieged 
with her brother-in-law at Perusia, and compelled to 
surrender to the power of Octavius. Fulvia, after 
this, retired to Greece, and rejoined her husband, but 
was coldly received by him. She died at Sicyon, 

A. U.C. 712, through chagrin and wounded pride, as 
was believed, at her husband’s attachment to Cleo¬ 
patra. (Veil. Paterc., 2, 74.— Pint., Vit. Ant. — Id., 
Vit. Cic.) 

Fulvius, I. L. Curvus, was consul A.U.C. 432, 

B. C. 320, and six years after master of the horse to 
the dictator L. iEmilius. ( Liv ., 8, 38.— Id., 9, 21.) 
—II. M. Curvus Paetinus, wasconsul in place of T. 
Minucius, A.U.C. 449, B.C. 305. He took the city 
of Bovianum, in the country of the Samnites. (Liv., 
9, 44.)—III. Cn. Paetinus, was consul A.U.C. 454, 
B.C. 300. He gained a memorable victory over the 
Samnites near Bovianum, and enjoyed a triumph. 
Three years after he carried on successful operations 
in Etruria in quality of propraetor. (Liv., 9, 44.— Id., 
15, 91.)—IV. S. Paetinus Nobilior, was consul A.U.C. 
199, B.C. 255, along with HEmilius Paulus Lepidus. 
These two commanders sailed for Africa after the 
overthrow of Regulus by the Carthaginians, gained a 
naval victory, compelled the foe to raise the siege of 
Clypea, and carried off an immense booty from the 
Carthaginian territories. They were shipwrecked, 
nowever, on their return to Italy, and of 200 vessels 
only 80 were saved.—V. Q. Flaccus, was consul 
A.U.C. 517, 530, 542, and 545 (B.C. 237, 224, 212, 
and 209.) He defeated Hanno near Bovianum, and 
laid siege to Capua, which surrendered to him after 
the lapse of a year. The conquered were treated with 
great cruelty. (Vid. Capua.) Some time subsequent 
to this, he marched against the Hirpini, Lucanians, 
and other nations of Italy, who, alarmed at the severi¬ 
ties inflicted on Capua, surrendered to him the garri¬ 
sons which had been placed in their cities by Hannibal. 
(Livy, 23, 21.— Id., 24, 29.— Id., 25, 2.)—VI. M. 
Nobilior, was prajtor in Spain A.U.C. 588, B.C. 196, 
and carried the Roman arms to the Tagus, making him¬ 
self master also of Toletum (Toledo), up to that period 
deemed impregnable. Having obtained the consulship, 
A.U.C. 565, he was intrusted with the war in Greece, 
during which he took Ambracia, traversed Epirus as 
conqueror, and reduced to submission the island of 
Cephallenia. Two years after this he was accused 
before the senate of having maltreated the allies of the 
Roman people, but was acquitted of the charge, and 
received the honour of a triumph. In the year 573 
he. was elected censor along with iEmilius Lepidus, 
his bitter foe. Apprehending injury to the state from 
their known enmity, the leading men of the senate ad¬ 
jured both individuals to lay aside their differences for 
the good of their country. A reconciliation accord¬ 
ingly took place, and nothing occurred to disturb these 
friendly feelings during the rest of their joint magis¬ 
tracy. Fulvius raised many public structures, a basil¬ 
ica, a forum, &c. He also constructed a port at the 
mouth of the Tiber. (Liv., 33, 42.— Id., 35, 7.— Id., 
20, 22, &c.)—VII. Q. Flaccus, was praetor A.U.C. 
573, B.C. 181. He took, in this capacity, the city of 
Urbicua in Farther Spain, and defeated the Celtiberi 
in the battle of Ebura, killing in this and in another 
encounter 35,000 men. On his return to Rome he 
received a triumph, and in the same year (575) the 
consulship. In A.U.C. 580 he was elected censor 
along with Posthumius Albinus. These two censors 
were the first that paved the streets of Rome, B.C. 
174. The next year he built a temple to Fortune, 
and, to adorn it, carried off a large portion of the mar¬ 
ble tiles from the temple of the Lacinian Juno in 
Lower Italy. (Vid. Lacinium.) The senate com¬ 
pelled him to restore these. The popular account 
made him to have been deprived of reason for this act 
of sacrilege. (Liv., 39, 56 et 40.— Id., 40, IQ.—Veil. 


Paterc., 1,10.)—VIII. M. Flaccus, was consul A.U.O 
629, B.C. 125. He seconded the projects of Tibe 
rius Gracchus to obtain for the states of Italy the 
rights of citizenship. Being afterward sent against 
the Gauls, he defeated them, and obtained a triumph. 
Four years subsequently he became involved in the 
seditious movements of the Gracchi relative to the 
agrarian law, and perished in an affray which arose. 

( Vid. Gracchus.) 

Fundanus, a lake near Fundi in Italy, which dis 
charges itself into the Mediterranean. (Tacit., Hist., 
3, 69.) According to Pliny, the Lacus Fundanus was 
originally called Amyclanus, from the city of Amyclaa 
in its vicinity. (Plin., 14, 6.) 

Fundi, a town of Latium, on the Appian Way, near 
the Lacus Fundanus, and not far from Caieta. It it 
now Fondi. The first mention of this place in history 
occurs at the end of the Latin war, A.U.C. 417, when, 
with the exception of the right of voting, it obtained 
the privileges of a Roman city, for having allowed a 
free passage to the Roman troops in their march into 
Campania. (Liv., 8, 14.) Not long after, however, 
the Fundani incurred the displeasure of the senate for 
having secretly aided the city of Privernum in a hostile 
incursion into the Roman territory, but, by a timely 
submission, they escaped the threatened vengeance 
Fundi received the right of voting A.U.C. 564, and 
its citizens were enrolled in the iEmilian tribe. (Liv., 
38, 36.) It was subsequently colonized by the veter¬ 
an soldiers of Augustus. Horace’s description of the 
ridiculous importance assumed by the praetor of Fundi 
will be in the recollection of most readers. (Sat., 1, 
5, 34, scqq .— Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 122.) 

Furia Lex, de Tcstamentis, by C. Furius the tn 
bune. It forbade any person to leave as a legacy 
more than a thousand asses, and that he who took 
more should pay fourfold. By the laws of the twelve 
tables, one might leave what legacies he pleased. 
(Cic., Verr., 1, 42.) 

Furl®, the Furies, called also Dirce and Eumeni - 
des. These goddesses are frequently named by Homer, 
but he says nothing of their origin. In the Theogony, 
they spring from the blood of Uranus, when mutilated 
by his son Saturn, whose own children they are ac¬ 
cording to Empedocles; while HEschylus and Sopho¬ 
cles call them the children of Night. (JEsch., Lu¬ 
men., 317, 413.— Soph., CEd. Col., 40, 106.) The 
Orphic Hymns assign them the rulers of Erebus for 
parents. (Hymn., 70.) In the time of the Alexandie- 
an writers, the Furies, like the Fates, were three in 
number, and were named Alecto ( Unceasing ), Megae- 
ra (Envicr or Denier), andTisiphone (Blood-avenger). 
The Furies were worshipped at Athens as the revered 
(aeyvai) goddesses; and at Sicyon as the kind (Eu- 
fievldeq) deities. It is generally thought that both of 
these appellations were propitiatory ones, and meant 
to appease. Muller, however, is of opinion, that the 
term Eumenides, as applied to the Furies, is connect¬ 
ed with old religious ideas, according to which, death 
and ruin, as well as life and welfare, were supposed to 
emanate from one and the same source. (Muller, Eu- 
mcnid., p. 204.)—The external representation of these 
goddesses, in the play of HEschylus called after them, is 
founded entirely'on the fearful aspect of their ideal na¬ 
ture. In their exterior configuration the poet seems to 
have drawn a good deal on his own invention ; for the 
earlier bards had no definite image of these goddesses 
before their eyes ; and though there were in their temple 
at Athens old carved images of the Scmnce, still their 
figure could not be adapted to dramatic purposes. 
From the Gorgons JEschylus borrowed the snaky hair 
of the Furies. He took, no doubt, from these also 
the pendent tongue, red with the lapped gore, and 
the grinning mouth, which regularly characterizes the 
Gorgon head in ancient works of art. The long pen¬ 
dent tongue, moreover, is most likely the main type 

526 



GAB 


GAB 


oy w htch their resemblance to hounds was expressed. 
{Muller, Eumenid., p. 216, scq.) According to the 
more common mode of delineating the Furies, they 
are represented as brandishing each a torch in one 
hand, and a scourge of snakes in the other.—For some 
remarks on the term Erinnyes, consult that article 
( Keightley's Mythology , p. 196.) 

Furii, a family which migrated from Medullia in 
Latium, and came to settle at Rome under Romu¬ 
lus, and was admitted among the patricians. Camil- 
.us was of this family, and it was he who first raised 
it to distinction. {Pint., Vit. Camill.) 

Furina, an early Latin goddess, whose name, in the 
time of Varro, was hardly known to a few. {Varro, 
L. L., 5, 3.) There was a sacred grove of this god¬ 
dess beyond the Tiber (in which Caius Gracchus was 
slain), and this, with the similitude of the name, led 
Cicero and others to identify Furina with the Furies. 
(Czc., iV. D., 3, 18.— Pint., Vit. C. Gracch., c. 17 
— Martian , de Nupt., 2, 40.) The Furinalia were 
p G 540 ate ^ ^ ( Keightley’s Mythology, 

Furius, M. Bibaculus, a Latin poet of Cremona, 
who wrote a'-nnals in Iambic verse. ( Quintil ., 10, 1, 
b.) Horace ridicules him as a turgid and bombastic 
writer. {Sat., 2, 5, 39, seqq.) 

Fuscus, Aristius, a friend of Horace, as conspic¬ 
uous for integrity as for learning and abilities The 
poet addressed to him the 22d Ode of the First Book 
and also the 10th Epistle, 1st Book. 

Fusia Lex, I passed A.U.C. 690, ordained that, 
m the Comma Tnbuta, the different kinds of people 
in each tribe should vote separately, that thus the sen- 
aments of each rank might be known.—II. Caninia 
another enacted A.U.C. 751, to check the manu¬ 
mission of slaves; limiting this manumission to a 
certain number, proportioned to the whole amount 
of slaves which one possessed ; from two to ten, the 
half; ^om ten to thirty, the third; from thirty to a 
hundred, the fourth part; but not above a hundred 
whatever was the number. (Heinecc., Antiq. Rom., 

174 ) S air ’ 071 Sl(lver y amon S the Romans, p 


G. 

Gabje, a city of Persia, in the province of Persis, 
placed by Ptolemy 'southeast of Pasargada, on the 
confines of Carmama. Mannert makes it coincide 
with the modern Darabgherd. {Geogr., vol. 5, pt. 2, 

A n C,ty ° f S °S dlana ’ sou thwest of 
Cyreschata. D Anville supposes it to be the modern 
Aauos; Mannert, on the contrary, is in favour of the 
modern Rabas, on the river Kressel, north of Samar 
cand (Geogr.. vol. 4, p. 460, 489.) Gabs was one 
Ot the first places to which the exploits of Alexander 
gave celebrity in this country. It is the same with 
th eGabaza of Curtius. {Quint,. Curt., 8. 4, 1 ) 

Gabii I. a town of the Sabines, near theVia Salaria 
smd not far from Cures. Its site is now called Grotte di 
Tom, or simply Torn. {Galetti, Gahio, antiea citta di 
Sabina, scoperta ov e ora Torri, ovvero le Grotte di Tor - 
n, Roma, 4to 1757,)_II. An ancient city of Latiom, 

the litSe ri* the "° rth "' est °f T “seulum, and beyond 
the little river Veresis, {Strabo, 239.) which corre¬ 
sponds, as is thought, to the modern I’Osa. Strabo 
mentions that ,t was on theVia Pramestina, and about 

dves theL f m p m d R f 0me ‘ Dion y sius of Halicarnassus 
miZl ! h distance (4, 53); and Appian places it 

23 d ) The Bin 611 R ° me a ? d Pneneste - {Bell. Civ., 5, 

^t is^^ les r k - twelve miies fr ° m R ° me 

hreft Z A These data enabled Holstenius and Fa- 
bretti to fix the position of Gabii with sufficient accura 

J y. at a place called VOsteria del Panto and this 
opinion was satisfactorily confirmed by the discoveries 
made here^l792, under the direction of Gavin Ham¬ 


ilton, on an estate of Prince Borghese, known by the 
name o fPantano dci Gnffi. {Visconti, Monumenti 
Gabini, Roma, 1792 .—Nibby, Viaggio Antiq., vol. 1, 
p. 235.) Gabii is said to have been one of the numer¬ 
ous .colonies founded by Alba {Dion. Hal., 4, 53), and 
an obscure tradition represented it as the place in 
which Romulus and Remus were brought up. {Dion. 
Hal., 1, 84.— Pint ., Vit. Rom.) The artful manner 
in which Tarquinius Superbus obtained possession of 
Gabii, after he had failed in the attempt by force of 
arms, is well known, as recorded by Livy (1, 58 
seqq.—Dion. Hal., 4, 53). The treachery of Sextus 
larquinius did not remain unpunished; for, after the 
expulsion of his family from Rome, he fell at Gabii, 
a victim to his tyranny and oppression. {Liv., 1, 60.) 
According to the same historian, the Gauls received 
ffieir final defeat from Camillus near this city (5, 49). 
Phis place suffered so much during the civil wars, that 
it became entirely ruined and deserted. We learn, 
however, from several monuments discovered in the 
excavations already referred to, that Gabii was raised 
from this state of ruin and desolation under Antoninus 
and Commodus, and that it became a thriving town. 

( Visconti, Monumenti Gabini.) In its more flourish¬ 
ing days, Juno seems to have been held in peculiar 
honour at Gabii, and the remains of her temple are 
said to be still visible on the site of that city. ( Nibby 
ViaggioAntiquario, vol. 1, p . 236.) The inhabi¬ 
tants of Gabii had a peculiar mode of folding or gird¬ 
ing the toga, in order to give more freedom to the 
person when in motion. In this mode of wearing 
the toga, which was called the Cinctus Gabinus, or 
Gabine Cincture,’ 7 the lappet was thrown back over 
the left shoulder, and brought round under the right 
arm to the breast; so that it girded the individual, 
and made the toga shorter and closer. According to 
Servius {ad Virg.,ASn , 7, 612), the inhabitants of Ga- 
bn while engaged in sacrificing, were suddenly attack¬ 
ed by the enemy, whereupon, not having time to array 
themselves in arms, they tucked up their togas in this 
manner, and advanced to meet the foe. Virgil ( JEn. 

7, 612) represents the Roman consul thus arrayed' 
when he opens the gates of the temple of Janus ; and 
m this garb the Decii devoted themselves to death 
{Cramer’s Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 50.) 

Gabina, the name of Juno, worshipped at Gabh 
{Vug., JEn., 7, 682. — Vid. Gabii, II.) 

Gabinia Lex, I. de Comitiis, proposed by A Ga 
bimus, the tribune, A.U.C. 614. \ It required,'that 
m the public assemblies for electing magistrates, the 
votes should be given by ballots, and not viva voce. 

p V 6 ) 7 IL Another ’ brought forward 
by A. Gabimus the tribune, A.U.C. 685. It granted 
Pompey the power of carrying on the war against the 
pirates during three years, and of obliging all kings 
governors, and states to supply him with all the ne' 
cessanes he wanted, over all the Mediterranean Sea. 
and m the maritime provinces as far as 400 stadia 
from the sea. {Cic pro Leg. Man , 17.—Dio Cass., 
de Umra ’ ^ AuL Gabinius 

I n b k ne ’ A ' U j C ; 685- p ordained that no action 
should be granted for the recovery of any money bor¬ 
rowed upon small interest to be lent upon larger. This 
was a usual practice at Rome, which obtained the 
name ofyersuram facere. Compare the remarks of 
leineccius, Rom Ant., 3, 15, 14, p. 548, cd. Haubold. 

Uabinius, I Aulus, the author of what were termed 
rom hun, the Gabinian Laws, attached himself at firs' 
to Sylla, and afterward to Pompey. When tribune 
of the commons, B.C. 69, he proposed a law ffivina 
Pompey almost absolute control over the coasts of 
the Mediterranean, together with the command of the 

nir a a tes e f, T 0 h ^ ? Urpose of . grossing the Cilician 
pirates. The leading men in the state endeavoured 
but in vain, to prevent the passage of this law. Thev 
succeeded, however, in thwarting Gabinius’ wish U 










GAD 


G A [ 


go as one of Pompey’s lieutenants, although the latter 
expressly asked for him as such. Gabinius very prob¬ 
ably was recompensed by Pompey in some other way, 
since, according to Cicero, he was so needy at the 
time, and so corrupt in principle, that, had this law not 
been passed, he would have turned pirate himself. 
Having obtained the consulship, B.C. 58, he took 
part with Clodius against Cicero, and powerfully con¬ 
tributed to the exile of the latter. The next year he 
obtained the government of Syria. Judaea, which 
was comprised in this province, was at that period a 
scene of trouble, owing to the rival claims of Hyrca- 
nus and Aristobulus to the throne. Gabinius defeat¬ 
ed Aristobulus in a great battle near Jerusalem, and 
then wrote home to the senate, and claimed a thanks¬ 
giving for his victory. This was refused him, and he 
was ordered to return. Disobeying the authority of 
the senate, he continued in command, and acted in 
the most arbitrary and oppressive manner. He even 
had the hardihood to march into Egypt, thus violating 
a positive law by making war beyond the boundaries 
of his own province. His object in passing into this 
country was to reinstate Ptolemy, which he success¬ 
fully effected, after two victories over his rebellious 
subjects. The senate, highly incensed at his conduct, 
ordered him at last to return home and defend him¬ 
self. Having obeyed this mandate, he was immedi¬ 
ately accused of high treason. The interest of Cae¬ 
sar and Pompey, however, obtained his acquittal. He 
was immediately after accused of extortion, and was 
less successful, notwithstanding the same powerful 
influence was exerted in his behalf; and even Cicero 
himself, yielding to the solicitations of Pompey, ac¬ 
tually appeared as his advocate. Gabinius was con¬ 
demned to perpetual banishment. After an exile of 
some years he was recalled by Caesar, and remained 
thenceforth attached to the party of the latter. Sub¬ 
sequently to the battle of Pharsalia, he was sent into 
Illyricum with some newly levied-legions, but his army 
was almost destroyed, in several encounters, by the 
barbarians, and he was compelled to shut himself up 
in Salona, where he died of a malady brought on 
by chagrin at his discomfiture. His death happened 
about A.U.C. 707. ( Cic., pro Horn., 9.— Id., pro 

Leg. Man., 17.— Id., Phil., 14, 8.— Plut., Vit. Pomp. 
•—Id., Vit. Cic., &c.)—II. A Roman general under 
Claudius, about A.D. 31, who gained some successes 
over the Germans. 

Gabinus Cinctus. Vid. Gabii. 

Gades ( ium ), Gadis (is), and Gadira, a flourishing 
commercial city of Spain, at the mouth of one of the 
arms of the Baetis, now Cadiz. It was founded by 
a Phoenician colony about 1500 B.C., according to 
some ; others, however, make its foundation coeval 
with that of Utica, and this last to have been 287 
years before Carthage. Its name in Phoenician was 
Gaddir, and signified a hedge or limit, as it was thought 
‘hat here were the western limits of the world. Thus 
Pliny (4, 36) remarks, “ Pceni Gaddir, ita Punica lin¬ 
gua septum significante,” and Solinus(c. 23), “ Quam 
Tyrii, a Ruhroprofecti man, Erythream, Pceni lingua 
sua Gaddir, id est sepcm, nominaruntP —The Greek 
name is Yddupa, and hence we have in Hesychius, 
Yddeipa- ra 'KEpicppaypara, QoivLueq. (Compare the 
Hebrew form Gederah, which Gesenius defines a 
place surrounded with a wall, into which the shep¬ 
herds drove their flocks by night, for security against 
wild animals. Consult also Gesenius, Geschichte der 
Hebraischen Sprache und Schrift, p 227.) It was 
situa-te on a small island of the same name, which 
was separated from the main land by a strait only one 
stadium wide. This island is said to have abounded 
at an early period with wild olive-trees, and to have 
been hence named Cotinusa (K onvovaa), not by the 
early inhabitants of the land, however, as some of the 
ancient writers thought, but by the Greeks ; for the 


appellation is a Grecian ane. Near it lay the sm,ai 
island Erythea, called by the inhabitants Juno’s island. 
( Vid. Erythea.) Gades came into the power of the 
Carthaginians in the first Punic war, and in the sec¬ 
ond surrendered itself .voluntarily to the Romans 
From Julius Caesar it received the name and privi¬ 
leges of a Roman colony; and in a later age it was 
styled Augusta Julia Gaditana. Hercules, gurnamed 
Gaditanus, had here a celebrated temple. ( Plin., 1. 
c. — Flor., 2, 17.— Liv., 28, 37.— Justin., 44, 5.) 

Gaditanus Sinus, now the Bay of Cadiz. 

Gaditanum Fretum, now the Straits of Gibraltar. 
(Vid. Abyla and Calpe.) 

GjEtulia, a country of Africa, south of Numidia, 
and now answering in some degree to Biledulgerid, 
or the region of locusts. Its situation and limits are 
not properly ascertained, and, indeed, do not seem to 
have been always the same. Isidorus (c. 9) gives a 
curious account of the origin of the Gsetuli: “ Gcetuli 
Getce dicuntur fuisse, qui ingenti agmine a locis suis 
navibus conscendentes loca Syrtium in Libya occupav- 
erunt: et, quia ex Getis venerant, derivato nomine 
Gcetuli cognominati suntP This statement is very 
properly refuted by the president Des Brosses ; but 
he himself assigns an etymology just as uncertain, 
namely, from the Phoenician term Geth, “a flock,” on 
the supposition that they were a shepherd-race. (Flor., 
4, 12.— Mela, 1, 4.— Plin., 5, 1.— Id., 21, 13, &c.) 

Gaius (vid. remarks under Caius), one of the Ro¬ 
man classical jurists, whose works entitle him to a 
place among 'the great writers on law, such as Papin- 
ian, Paulus, and Ulpian. Nothing is known of the 
personal history of Gaius beyond the probable fact 
that he wrote under Antoninus Pius and Aurelius. 
His works were largely used in the compilation of 
the “ Digest” or “ Pandects,” which contain extracts 
from his writings under various heads. The “ Insti¬ 
tutions” of Gaius were probably the earliest attempt 
to present a sketch of the Roman law in the form of 
an elementary text-book. This work continued in 
general use till the compilation of the Institutes of 
Justinian, which were not only mainly based on the 
Institutions of Gaius, but, like this earlier work, were 
divided into four books, with the same general distri¬ 
bution of the subject-matter as that adopted by him. 
The Institutions of Gaius appear to have been neg¬ 
lected after the promulgation of Justinian’s compila¬ 
tion, and were finally lost. All that remained was 
the detached pieces collected in the Digest, and what 
could be gathered from the “ Breviarium Alarici- 
anum,” as the code of the Visigoths is sometimes 
called. But in 1816, Niebuhr discovered a manu¬ 
script in the library of the chapter of Verona, which 
he ascertained to be a treatise on the Roman law, and 
which Savigny, founding his opinion on the specimens 
published by Niebuhr, conjectured to be the Institu¬ 
tions of Gaius. This conjecture was soon fully con¬ 
firmed, though the MS. has no author’s name on it. 
Goschen, Bekker, and Hollweg undertook to exam¬ 
ine and copy this MS., an edition of which appear¬ 
ed at Berlin in 1820, by the first of these scholars 
To form some idea of the labour necessary to deci¬ 
pher this MS., and of the patient perseverance of 
those who undertook this formidable task, the reader 
is referred to the report of Goschen to the Acade¬ 
my of Berlin, Nov. 6th, 1817. A second examination 
of this MS. was made by Bluhme, and a new edition 
of the Institutions was published by Goschen, at Ber¬ 
lin, in 1824, which presents us with an exact copy ol 
the MS., with all its deficiencies, and contains a most 
copious list of all the abbreviations used by the copyist 
of Gaius.—The Institutions of Gaius form one of the 
most valuable additions that have been made in mod¬ 
ern times to our knowledge of the Roman law. The 
fourth book is particularly useful for the information 
which it contains on actions and the forms of pro<*^ 

527 



gal 


G A I 


dure The style of Gaius, like that of all the classi¬ 
cal Homan jurists, is perspicuous and yet concise 
Une of the most useful editions is that by Klenze 
and Booking (Berlin, 1829), which contains the Insti¬ 
tutions of Gaius and Justinian, so arranged as to pre¬ 
sent a parallelism, and to furnish a proof, if any vet 
were wanting, that the MS. of Verona is the genuine 
work of Gaius :> (Encycl. Us. Knowl.,\ ol. 11 , p. 34 
-Consult Goschen, or the “Res Quotidianat n of 
Gams m the Zeitschnfc fur Geschichtliche Rechtwis- 

Berhn ^ and Hugo, Lehrbuch der 
ixesch . dcs Rom . Rcclits.) 

Ga la n t hi s a servant-maid of Alcmena, whose sa¬ 
gacity eased the sufferings of her mistress. When 
Juno resolved to retard the birth of Hercules, and 
hasten the labours of the wife of Sthenelus, she soli- 

thl^ th n a ‘ d 0 /A Ucina ’ who imm ediately repaired to 
the d welling of Alcmena, and, in the form of an aired 

female, sat near the door with her feet crossed and 
fingers joined. In this posture she uttered some ma¬ 
gical words, which served to prolong the sufferings 
Alcmena. Alcmena had already passed some days 
in the most excruciating torments, when Galanthis be- 

tW thp S f SP6 f th ® j ealous 'y of Juno; and concluded 
that the female, who continued at the door always in 
the same posture, was the instrument of the anger of 
the goddess. Influenced by these suspicions, Galan- 
th!s ran out of the house, and with a countenance ex¬ 
pressive of joy, she informed the aged stranger that 

worr 18 ™ 8 ? 311 l USt brou g ht fort h- Lucina, ft these 
words, rose from her posture, and that instant Alcme- 

ralld'Vnt Jhl Ver f‘T T - 6 laUgh whlch Galanthis 

raised upon this, made Lucina suspect that she had 
been deceived. She seized Galanthis by the hair 
threw her on the ground, and transformed her into 
a weasel. (Ovid, Met., 9, 306. seqqf )—This whole 
abie is connected with a legend prevalent among the 
Thebans, that, when Alcmena was suffering from the 
pangs of parturition, a weasel (yalrj) ran by and terri 
fied her by its sudden appearance, and that the terror 
mus excited eased her throes and produced a happy 

6 ^ lan \ ^ T - 12, 5.) Hence the weasel 

was highly revered by the Thebans, and was called 

^25^ 6 ) he nUrSe ° f Hercules - ( Clem - Alex., Protr., 

h£f L ™’ inhabitants of GaIati m (Vid. Ga- 
GalatAa and Galath^a, a sea-nymph, daughter 

an u ? 0 u S ' She WaS P assi °nately lovfd by 
the Cyclops Polyphemus, whom she treated 7 with dis- 
da n, while Acis, a shepherd of Sicily enioved ter 
unbounded affection. The union, howevT of fhe 
two lovers was destroyed by the jealousy of Polvpht- 
mus who crushed his rival with a fragment of "rLk 
whicn he rolled on him from an overlfangimr height 
Galatea was inconsolable for the loss of Acis fnd 
as she could not restore him to life, she changed him 

9 103 S ) ream ' ( ° md ’ MeL > 13 ’ 789 .—Virg., JEn., 

Galatia or Gallogrzecia, a country of Asia 
1 inor, lying south of Paphlagonia, west of Pontus 

ana northeast of Phrygia. (Vid. Gallo-Gracia.) 

W1 ftn ' Sergius, an orator anterior to Cicero 
W 1 ile holding the government of Spain, he treacher 
ously murdered 30,000 Lusitanian S P Having been 

yer father' oLhe Sulplllus ’ a celebrated Roman law- 
served with distinct.on “in Germany 1 ^ 

Droronsnl fircf in A A*’ clftGrWcird 

!? ■ . r ’ . . r ca ’ ai td subsequently in His- 

pan.a Tarraconensts, m which office he gained a re™ 
tat,on forest,ce and moderation. Ill was atK 


Spam when Julius Vindex, the proconsul of Celtic 
Gaul, rose against Nero. Galba joined Vindex, and 
Utho, governor of Lusitania, followed his example 
I he assembled multitudes saluted Galba as emperor 
and Augustus ; but he declared that he was only act¬ 
ing as the lieutenant of the senate and people of Home 

Npro der 'r'n P ‘ U an e " d “° th ° dis S ra ccful tyranny ot 
, °j 1 he pratonan guards soon after, having re¬ 
volted against Nero, proclaimed Galba, and the senate 
acknowledged him as emperor. Galba hastened from 
opain to Rome, where he began by calling to account 
those favourites of Nero who had enriched themselves 
by proscriptions and confiscations, and by the senseless 
prodigality of that prince ; but it was found that most 
ot them had already dissipated their ill-gotten wealth 
Galba, or, rather, his confidants who governed him 
then proceeded against the purchasers of their property! 
and confiscations became again the order of the day 
1 he new emperor, at the same time, exercised great 
parsimony m his administration, and endeavoured to 
enforce a strict discipline among the soldiers, who had 

reian llSe R th ® pr ° dlgallt y and ^ense of the previous 
reign. Being past seventy years of age, Galba, on 
this and 0 her accounts, soon became the object of 
popular dislike and ridicule, his favourites werehated 

several'of S FT* ^ ^ ° Ut in various quarters! 
several of which were put down and punished severe- 

: I' T? a ba thou g ht 0^ strengthening himself by adopt- 
‘ Llcl, ; lanus ’ a youog patrician of considerable 

P / , nal . , merit ’ aa C ' assar and his successor; upon 
which Otho, who had expected to be the object ofhis 
choice, formed a conspiracy among the guards, who 
proclaimed him emperor. Galba, unable to walk 
caused himself to be carried in a litter, hoping to sup¬ 
press the mutiny ; but, at the appearance of Othobj 
™ partisans, his followers left him, and even the 

Somenteh^ ^ ° M d ° Wn 3nd ran awa Y- 

borne of the legionaries came up and put Galba to death 

fter a reign of only seven months, counting from the 

time of Nero’s death A.D. 68. Galba was” 72 years 

old when he was taken off. He was succeeded by 

Otho, but only for a short time, as Vitellius superse- 

d him, and Vespasian soon after superseded Vitel- 

llUS n . ^eton Vit. Galb. — Tacit., Hist., 1,4 ,seq q 

Cass., 63, 29.-ld., 64, l, seqq.) ' ’ 

Galenus Claudius, a celebrated physician, born at 
Pe games about 131 A.D. His fatherf an able archi- 

cation nd H°° d mathematlcian > g a ™ him a liberal edu¬ 
cation His anatomical and medical studies were com¬ 
menced under Satyrus, a celebrated anatomist; Stra- 
mcus, a disciple of the Hippocratic school; and iEs- 
cbri ° n> a follower of the Empirics. After the death 
of his father he travelled to Alexandrea, at that time 
the most famous school of medicine in the world. 

thlt hp dl6S Wer u 0 f ealousl y and successfully pursued, 
that he was publicly invited to return to his native 
country. A t the age of 34 he settled himself at Rome 

Mhis h Drate nty S eCame S ° great fr ° m the success 
t his practice, and more especially from his great 

knowledge of anatomy, that he quickly drew upon him- 

Tl th V eaIous y aH the Roman physicians P He bt 

me physician to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius At 

nktelT"’ aIS °,’ ° f 1 Philosophers and men ol 

nk he comm enced a course of lectures on Anatomv • 

discomi 3 n e u a i 0 t U h y ° f h ‘j nVals qU ‘ ckly com PoHod him to 
discontinue them, and eventually to leave Rome en¬ 
tirely Many particulars of his life may be o-athered 
from his own writings ; we are unacquai/ted, however 

hTsVetffi””A ilt retUm 1°™’ »enas°™of 

6 u 'r • 1 . that we can Iearn is merely that he 

was still living in the reign of Septimius sJverus — 

Galen was a most prolific writer. Though a portion 
of his works were lost by the conflagration of his^ well 
rng or have been destroyed by the b la P se of time sti i 

ffi prin? I E pr °, <luctions of hi® surviving and 
pr nt * L E ‘g ht y-^o treatises, the genuineness of 










GALENUS. 


GALENUS. 


which is now well established. 2. Eighteen of rather 
doubtful origin. 3. Nineteen fragments, more or less 
extensive in size. 4. Eighteen commentaries on the 
works of Hippocrates.—To these published works 
must be added thirty or forty treatises or parts of trea¬ 
tises, which still exist in manuscript in the public li¬ 
braries of Europe. The number of works that are lost, 
among which were fifty that treated on medical subjects, 
is supposed to have been one hundred and sixty-eight.— 
The instruction which Galen had received in the princi¬ 
ples of the different sects of medical philosophy, had 
given him an acquaintance with the various errors of 
each, and he speaks of them at all times in the lan¬ 
guage of no measured contempt. The school which was 
founded by himself may justly merit the title of Eclec¬ 
tic, for its doctrines were a mixture of the philosophy 
of Plato, of the physics and logic of Aristotle, and of 
the practical knowledge of Hippocrates. On many oc¬ 
casions he expresses himself strongly on the superiority 
of theory to mere empiricism ; but upon those matters 
which do not admit of being objects of experience, such 
as the nature of the soul, he confesses his ignorance, 
and his inability to give any plausible explanation.— 
Among the productions of Galen that are of a philo¬ 
sophical character, may be enumerated the following: 
A treatise “ On the best Doctrine” against Phavorinus ; 
a dissertation “ On the opinions of Hippocrates and 
Plato “ a commentary on the Timasus of Plato,” 
and several pieces “ On Dialectics.” Galen has been 
frequently censured for impiety; but his Demonstration 
of Divine Wisdom from the structure of the human 
body, in his treatise “ On the uses of the parts of the 
human body,” is a sufficient refutation of this calum¬ 
ny.—The following sketch of the professional charac¬ 
ter of this celebrated physician is given by Dr. Adams. 
“ Galen, to whom medicine, and every science allied 
to it, are under so great obligations, was a man skilled 
in all. philosophy, a profound reasoner, an ardent ad¬ 
mirer of truth, a worthy member of society, and a dis¬ 
tinguished ornament of his profession. Though, ac¬ 
cording to his own account, unambitious of fame, he 
acquired a name which for fourteen centuries was above 
every other name in his profession, and even now 
stands pre-eminently illustrious. We shall give a 
hasty sketch of his merits in the different branches of 
medical science to which he directed his attention. 
Wisely judging that an acquaintance with the minute 
structure of the human body was an indispensable prep¬ 
aration to a knowledge of its derangements, he de¬ 
voted himself ardently to the study of anatomy, in 
which his works evince that he was eminently skilled. 
In his Administrationes Anatomies particularly, almost 
every bone and process of bone, every twig of nerve, 
every ramification of bloodvessel, every viscus, mus¬ 
cle, and gland, with which modern anatomists are ac¬ 
quainted, are described by him with a degree of minute¬ 
ness which will surprise those who entertain a mean 
opinion of the Galenical anatomy. Vesalius, indeed, a 
zealot for human dissection in the days of the Emperor 
Charles the Fifth, strenuously attacks the accuracy of 
his anatomical descriptions ; and as he was constantly 
on the lookout for mistakes, he is no doubt sometimes 
successful in attaining the object of his search; but, 
in other instances, while endeavouring to set Galen 
right, he only goes wrong himself. For example, he 
finds fault with Galen for saying that the fourth ven¬ 
tricle of the brain is lined by a membrane ; but it is 
now well ascertained that here Galen was right, while 
his censurer was wrong. In fact, the justness of Ve- 
salius’ strictures has been too easily acquiesced in, 
although most of them had been previously rebutted 
by the learned Eustachius.—Galen’s treatise ‘ De usu 
Partium' is replete with accurate anatomical descrip¬ 
tions, ingenious physiological theory, and sound theolo¬ 
gy, and in all these respects need not fear a com¬ 
parison with our Paley’s work on natural theology. 

X x x 


Throughout, as the learned Mr. Harris has well re¬ 
marked, he, in imitation of Aristotle, inculcates, with 
irresistible strength of argument, the great doctrine of 
Final Causes, maintaining, in opposition to the Epi¬ 
cureans, that Means do not lead to Ends, but Ends to 
Means. As to his Physiology, it is in general found¬ 
ed upon careful dissection, accurate experiment, and 
philosophical induction; so that, in most instances 
where it has been departed from, subsequent experi¬ 
ence has shown the correctness of its doctrines. Thus 
the distribution of the nerves into nerves of sensation 
and nerves of muscular motion, and the distinction be¬ 
tween the characters of the cerebral and spinal nerves, 
although clearly pointed out by him, and acquiesced in 
by Oribasius, Theophilus, and Nemesius among his 
countrymen, and by Rhazes, Serapion, Avicenna, 
Avenzoar, and Averrhoes among the Arabians ; nay, 
though admitted by his modern rival Vesalius, were 
overlooked or denied by subsequent physiologists, un¬ 
til the doctrine was lately revived by an intelligent lec¬ 
turer on anatomy in London. In the hands of several 
English and French experimentalists, this theory has 
undergone different modifications ; but I will venture 
to predict, that, when time has deprived it of the charm 
of novelty, the additions and alterations which have 
been made by modern hands upon the ancient doc¬ 
trine, will be found to be rather blemishes than im¬ 
provements. With regard to the functions of the ar¬ 
teries and veins, Galen’s views must be admitted to 
be not very distinctly defined ; but has the celebrated 
theory of Harvey removed all the difficulties, and clear 
ed away all the obscurity, which hung over this im¬ 
portant department of physiology 1 Let the following 
declaration, by one of the most distinguished among 
the present physiologists of France, be taken as a test 
of the degree of precision which now prevails upon this 
subject: 4 II n’existe pas deux ouvrages de Physiologie. 
deux traites de Medicine, ou la circulation soit decrite 
et consideree dans le meme maniere.’ ( Magindre , 
Jour, de Phys.) At all events, it is clear that Galen 
had the merit of establishing two important facts re¬ 
garding the function of the arteries ; first, that they 
contain blood, and not vapour or gas, as mentioned by 
Erasistratus ; and, secondly, that it is the expansion or 
diastole of the artery which is the cause of the influx of 
the blood, and not the influx of the blood which is the 
cause of the expansion of the artery. The former of 
these facts Harvey himself does him the justice of allow¬ 
ing that he maintained ; and a late French physiologist, 
Dumas, compliments him for having held the latter opin¬ 
ion, although it is at variance with Harvey’s views re¬ 
specting the circulation. In his work on the Natural 
Faculties he has expressed fully his sentiments upon a 
subject which is still far from being cleared up; but it is 
remarkable, that very lately a theory has been advanced, 
which corresponds, in a great degree, with the doctrine 
advocated by Galen. I allude to Dutrochet’s famous 
theory of the Endosmose and Exosmose, which powers, 
if I mistake not, are but different names for the Attract¬ 
ive and Expulsive Faculties of Galen.—Operative Sur¬ 
gery is the department of his profession which is least 
indebted to him; and yet even here he has left some 
monuments of his boldness and ingenuity. He has 
described minutely an operation performed by him upofl 
the chest of a young man, by which he perforated the 
breast-bone, and laid bare the heart, in order to give 
vent to a collection of matter seated in the thorax. 
The subject of Ulcers is handled by him very scientifi¬ 
cally in his book De Methodo Medendi. It is to be 
remarked, that his definitions and divisions of ulcers 
are the same as those adopted by one of our best Eng¬ 
lish writers on this subject, Mr. Benjamin Bell. His • 
Commentaries bn Hippocrates show his acquaintance 
with Fractures and Dislocations.— Of Hygiene, or the 
Art of Preserving Health, he treated at great length in 
a work consisting of six books.—His treatise De Fac - 

529 



GAL 


GAL 


ultate Alimentorum contains very important observa¬ 
tions on the nature of aliments, and furnishes an ex¬ 
position of his opinion on the subject of Dietetics. It 
need not fear a comparison with the work lately pub¬ 
lished on Diet by Dr. Paris. I do not state this in dis¬ 
paragement of the latter, whom I esteem to be a very 
judicious authority, but to intimate my opinion that we 
have not advanced much in the knowledge of this 
branch since the time of Galen.—Of most diseases 
he has treated either fully or cursorily in some part or 
other of his works, but upon the whole he has given no 
comprehensive treatise upon the practice of physic. 
His most complete treatises are those entitled De Cu- 
ratione, ad Glauconem, and the Ratio Curandi. —The 
Materia Medica and Pharmacy appear to have been the 
objects of his particular study, and both are handled by 
him in several of his works. Though his list of me¬ 
dicinal articles, taken from the vegetable kingdom, be 
less numerous than that of Dioscorides, he has de¬ 
scribed more animal and mineral substances. His 
treatise De Medicinis secundum locos contains a copi¬ 
ous list of pharmaceutical preparations ; and that part 
of it on Compositions for the Eyes might, I am con¬ 
vinced, be consulted with advantage by the oculists of 
the present day.—Of all his works, none was long so 
much studied and commented upon as the one entitled 
Ars Medica, respecting which Kuhn remarks : ‘ Est 
is in Galeni libris, quern grata erga tantum virum pos- 
teritas cestimavit longe maxima quern omncs scholce ex- 
plicabant, quem medici diurna nocturnaque manu ver- 
sabant, quem legisse debebant ecu librum Galeni max- 
ime authenticum omnes, cujusque puncta debebant ex- 
plicare, speciminis causa prius, quam licentiam prax- 
eos medica exercenda consequerenturd Of a treatise 
long so celebrated, and now so little known, it is scarce¬ 
ly safe to express an opinion, lest we should be reduced 
to the alternative of either reproaching antiquity for 
want of sense, or modern times for want of discern¬ 
ment. At all events, however, we may venture to af¬ 
firm, that, if the Doctrine of the Temperaments have 
any foundation in nature, no one had ever studied them 
more attentively, or described them with greater pre¬ 
cision, than Galen has done in this treatise.—-In sev¬ 
eral works he gives an elaborate system of the Arteri¬ 
al Pulses, which, as usual with his doctrines, was ta¬ 
ken up by all subsequent writers ; and abridged ex¬ 
positions of it may be found in Philaretus, Paulus 
A5gineta, Actuarius, Rhazes, and Avicenna. The 
reader may find some candid remarks upon it in Bor¬ 
den’s Physiology, who, although an advocate for a new 
system, gives not an unfair statement of the system of 
Galen.”—The best edition of Galen is that of Kuhn, 
19 vols. 8vo, Lips., 1821-1830. 

Galerius, a Roman emperor. ( Vid. Maximianus.) 

Galesus, I. now Galeso, a river of Calabria, flow¬ 
ing into the bay of Tarentum. The poets have cele¬ 
brated it for the shady groves in its neighbourhood, and 
the fine sheep which fed on its fertile banks, whose 
fleeces were said to be rendered soft by bathing in the 
stream. ( Martial , Ep., 2,43; 4,28.— Virg., G., 4,126. 
— Hornt., Od., 2, 6, 10.)—II. A rich inhabitant of La- 
tium, killed as he attempted to make a reconciliation 
between the Trojans and Rutulians, when Ascanius 
had killed the favourite stag of Tyrrheus, which was 
the prelude of all the enmities between the hostile na¬ 
tions. {Virg., JEn., 7, 535.) 

Galilaea, a celebrated country of Palestine, form¬ 
ing the northern division. Josephus {Bell. Jud., 3, 3) 
divides it into Upper and Lower, and he states that 
the limits of Galilee were, on the south, Samaris and 
Scythopolis to the flood of Jordan. It contained four 
tribes, Issachar, Zebulon, Naphthali, and Asher; a 
part also of Dan, and part of Peraea, or the country 
beyond Jordan. Upper Galilee was mountainous, 
and was called Galilee of the Gentiles, from the hea¬ 
then nations established there who were enabled, by 
530 


the mountainous nature of the country, to maintain 
themselves against all invaders. Strabo enumerates 
among its inhabitants, Egyptians, Arabians, and Phoe 
nicians. {Strab., 760.) Lower Galilee, which con 
tained the tribes of Zebulon and Asher, was adiacen 
to the Sea of Tiberias or Lake of Gennesareth. Gal 
ilee, according to Josephus, was very populous, con¬ 
tained 204 cities and towns, and paid 200 talents in 
tribute. Its principal city was Caesarea Philippi. Th« 
inhabitants of Galilaea were very industrious, and, be¬ 
ing bold and intrepid soldiers, they bravely resisted the 
nations around them. The Jews of Judaea regarded 
them with much contempt. Their language was a 
corrupt and unpolished dialect of Syriac, with a mix¬ 
ture of other languages. It was probably this corrupt 
dialect that led to the detection of Peter as one ol 
Christ’s disciples. {Mark, 14, 70.) Our Saviour 
was called a Galilean {Matt., 26, 69), because he wa3 
brought up at Nazareth, a city of Galilaea ; and as his, 
apostles were mostly, if not all, natives of this prov¬ 
ince, they also are called Galileans and “ men of Gal¬ 
ilee.” (Acts, 1, 11.) This country was most hon¬ 
oured by our Saviour’s presence* To this part Jo¬ 
seph and Mary returned with him from Egypt ; here 
he lived till he was thirty years of age, and was bap¬ 
tized by John ; hither he returned after his baptism 
and temptation ; and in this province was his place of 
residence when he commenced his ministry. The 
population being very great, he had more opportuni¬ 
ties of doing good here than in any other portion ; on 
which account, probably, he made* it his principal 
abode. After his resurrection he directed his apostles 
to come to Galilee to converse with him. {Matt., 
28, 7.—Consult, in relation to this country, the fol¬ 
lowing parts of Scripture : Josh., 20, 7, and 21, 32.— 

1 Kings, 9, 11.—2 Kings, 15, 29.—1 Chron., 6, 76 
— Isaiah, 9, 1.— Matt., 2, 22; 3, 13; 4, 12.— Luke 
4, 14.— John, 7, 41.— Acts, 5, 37, and 10, 37.) . 

Galli, I. a warlike race of antiquity. (Vid. Gal¬ 
lia.)—II. A name borne by the priests of Cybele 
( Vid. Cybele.) 

Gallia, an extensive and populous country of Eu 
rope, bounded on the west by the Atlantic, on the 
north by the Insula Batavorum and part of the Rhe- 
nus or Rhine, on the east by the Rhenus and the Alps, 
and on the south by the Pyrenees. The greatest 
breadth was 600 English miles, but much diminished 
towards each extremity, and its length was from 480 
to 620 miles. It was therefore- more extensive than 
modern France before the Revolution, though inferior 
to the kingdom under Napoleon, which was 650 miles 
long from east to west, and 560 broad from north to 
south. Gaul was originally divided among the three 
great nations of the Belgae, the Celtae, and the Aqui- 
tani. The Romans called the inhabitants of this 
country by one general name, Galli, while the Greeks 
styled them Celtse. The Greeks called the country 
itself Galatia, Celtica (Ke/l Tiny), and Celto-Galatia ; 
the last for distinction’ sake from Galatia in Asia Mi¬ 
nor. Of the three great nations of Gaul, the Celtae 
were the most extensive and indigenous, and the Bel¬ 
gae the bravest. The Celtae extended from the Sequa- 
na or Seine in the north, to the Garumna or Garonne 
in the south. Above the Celtae lay the Belgae, between 
the Seine and Lower Rhine. They were intermixed 
with Germanic tribes. The Aquitani lay between the 
Garonne and Pyrenees, and were intermingled with 
Spanish tribes. These three great divisions, however, 
were subsequently altered by Augustus, B.C. 27, who 
extended Aquitania into Celtica as far as the Liger or 
Loire ; the remainder of Celtica above the Liger was 
called Gallia Lugdunensis, from the colony of Lug- 
dunum, Lyons ; and the rest of Celtica towards the 
Rtiine was added to the Belgae under the title of Bel- 
gica; lastly, the south cf Gaul, which, from having 
been the first provinces possessed by the Romans, had 





GALLIA. 


GALLIA. 


oeen styled Gallia Provincia, was distinguished by the 
name of Narbonensis, from the city of Narbo or Nar- 
bonne. This province was anciently called also Gal¬ 
lia Braccata, from the bracca or under-garments worn 
by the inhabitants ; while Gallia Celtica was styled 
Comata, from the long hair worn by the natives. These 
four great provinces, in later ages, were called the four 
Gauls, and subdivided into 17 others. 

1. General remarks on the Gallic race. 

As far back as we can penetrate into the history of 
the West, we find the race of the Gauls occupying that 
part of the continent comprehended between the Rhine, 
the Alps, the Mediterranean, the Pyrenees, and the 
Ocean, as well as the two great islands situate to the 
northwest, opposite the mouths of the Rhine and 
Seine. Of these two islands, the one nearer the con¬ 
tinent was called Alb-in, “ White Island.” ( Alb sig¬ 
nifies “ high” and “ white inn, contracted from innis, 
means “island.”—Compare the remark of Pliny, 14, 
16, “ Albion insula, sic dicta ab albis rupibus quas 
mare alluit .”) The other island bore the name of 
Er-in, “Isle of the West” (from Eir or Iar, “the 
west”). The continental territory received the spe¬ 
cial appellation of Galllachd, “Land of the Galls.” 
The term Gaeltachd , or, more correctly, Gaidheal- 
tachd, is still applied to the highlands of Scotland. 
From this word the Greeks formed Taharia {Galatia), 
and from this latter the generic name of Tahdrai. 
The Romans proceeded by an inverse method, and 
from the generic term Galli deduced the geographical 
denomination Gallia. The population of Gaul was 
divided into families or tribes, forming among them¬ 
selves many distinct communities or nations. These 
nations generally assumed names deduced from some 
feature of the country in which they dwelt, or from 
some peculiarity in their social state. Oftentimes they 
united together, in their turn, and formed confedera¬ 
tions or leagues. Such were the confederations of 
the Celtse, jEdui, Armorici, Arverni, &c.—The Gaul 
was robust and of tall stature. His complexion was 
fair, his eyes blue, his hair of a blond or chestnut col¬ 
our, to which he endeavoured to give a red or flaming 
hue by certain applications. {Plin., 28, 12.— Martial , 
8, 33.) The hair itself was worn long, at one time 
floating on the shoulders, at another gathered up and 
confined on the top of the head. ( Diod. Sic., 5, 28.) 
The beard was allowed to grow by the people at large; 
the nobles, on the other hand, removed it from the 
face, excepting the upper lip, where they wore thick 
mustaches. (Diod. Sic., 1. c.) The attire common 
to all the tribes consisted of pantaloons or bracca 
(braca, bracca, braga ; brykan in Cymraig ; bragu in 
Armoric). These were of striped materials. (In 
Celtic breac means “ a stripe.”) They wore also a 
short cloak, having sleeves, likewise formed of striped 
materials, and descending to the middle of the thigh. 

( Strabo , 196.) Over this was thrown a short cloak or 
sagum ( sae , Armoric.—Compare Isidor., Origin., 19, 
24), striped like the shirt, or else adorned with flowers 
and other ornamental work, and, among the rich, su¬ 
perbly embroidered with silver and gold. ( Virg ., 

8, 660.— Sil. Ital., 4, 152.— Diod. Sic., 5, 28.) It 
covered the back and shoulders, and was secured under 
the chin by a clasp of metal. The lower classes, how¬ 
ever, wore in place of it the skin of some animal, or 
else a thick and coarse woollen covering, called, in 
the Gallo-Kimric dialects, linn or lenn. (In Armoric 
' en means “ a covering ;” and in Gaelic lein signifies 
“a soldier’s cloak.”—Compare the Latin Icena and 
the Greek halva and yhalva.) —The Gauls possessed 
a strong taste for personal decoration : it was custom¬ 
ary with the rich and powerful to adorn themselves 
with a profusion of collars, bracelets, and rings of gold. 
(Strabo , 196.)—The offensive arms of the nation were, 
at first, hatchets and knives of stone ; arrows pointed 


with flint or shells; clubs; spears hardened in the 
fire, and named gais (in Latin goesum, in Greek yai- 
obv and yaioog) ; and others called cateics, which they 
hurled all on fire against the enemy. (In Gaelic, gath- 
teth, pronounced ga-te, signifies “ a fiery dart.”) For¬ 
eign traffic, however, made them acquainted, in pro¬ 
cess of time, with arms of iron, as well as with the 
art of manufacturing them for themselves from the 
copper and iron of their own mines. Among the arms 
of metai which thenceforward came into use, may be 
mentioned the long sabre of iron or copper, and a pike 
resembling our halberds, the wound inflicted by which 
was considered mortal. For a long time the Transal¬ 
pine, as well as the Cisalpine, warriors of the Gallic 
race had rejected the use of defensive armour as in¬ 
consistent with true courage ; and, for a long period, 
an absurd point of honour had induced them even to 
strip off their vestments, and engage naked with the 
foe. This prejudice, however, the fruit of an osten¬ 
tatious feeling natural to the race, was almost entirely 
effaced in the second century. The numerous rela¬ 
tions formed between the Gauls and the Massiliots, 
Italians, and Carthaginians, had at first spread a taste 
for armour, as a personal decoration, among the Gallic 
tribes ; in a short time the conviction of its utility was 
superadded ; and the military costume of Rome and 
Greece, adopted on the banks of the Loire, the Rhone, 
and the Saone, formed a singular combination with 
the ancient array of the Gaul. To a helmet of metal, 
of greater or less value according to the fortune of the 
warrior, were attached the horns of an elk, buffalo, or 
stag; while for the rich there was a headpiece repre¬ 
senting some bird or savage beast; the whole being 
surmounted by a bunch of plumes, which gave to the 
warrior a gigantic appearance. (Diod. Sic., 5, 28.) 
Similar figures were attached to their bucklers, which 
were long, quadrangular, and painted with the bright¬ 
est colours. These representations served as devices 
for the warriors ; they were emblems by means ol 
which each one sought to characterize himself or strike 
terror into the foe. (Compare Vegctius, 2, 18.— Sil. 
Ital., 4, 148.)—A buckler and casque after this model; 
a cuirass of wrought metal, after the Greek and Ro¬ 
man fashion, or a coat of mail formed of iron rings, 
after the manner of Gaul ( Varro , L. L., 4, 20); an 
enormous sabre hanging on the right thigh, and sus¬ 
pended by chains of iron or brass from a belt glittering 
with gold and silver, and adorned with coral ; a col¬ 
lar, bracelets, rings of gold around the arm and on the 
middle finger (Plin., 33, 1); pantaloons; a sagum 
hanging from the shoulders ; in fine, long red mus¬ 
taches ; such were the martial equipments and such 
the appearance of an Arvernian, iEduan, or Biturigan 
noble.—Hardy, daring, impetuous, born, as it were, 
for martial enterprises, the Gallic race possessed, at 
the same time, an ingenious and active turn of mind. 
They were not slow in equalling their Phoenician and 
Grecian instructors in the art of mining. The same 
superiority to which the Spaniards had attained in tem¬ 
pering steel, the Gauls acquired in the preparation of 
brass. Antiquity assigns to them the honour of vari¬ 
ous useful inventions, which had hitherto escaped the 
earlier civilization of the East and of Italy. . The pro¬ 
cess of tinning was discovered by pate Bituriges ; that 
of veneering by the TSdui. ( Ph,n i. s 34, l7.) The 

dyes, too, of Gaul were not without reputation. (Plin., 
8, 48.) In agriculture, the wheel-plough and boulter 
were Gallic discoveries. (Plin., 18; 18. — Id. ibid., 
18 11.) With the Gauls, too, originated the employ¬ 
ment of marl for enriching the soil. (Plin., 18, 6, 
seqq.) The cheeses of Mount Lozerc, among the Ga- 
bali; those of Nemausus; and two kinds made among 
the Alps, became, in time, much sought after by the 
inhabitants of Italy (Plin., 11, 49); although the Ital 
ians generally ascribed to the Gallic cheeses a savour 
of too acid a nature and somewhat medicinal. (Plin. 

531 






GALLIA. 


GALLIA. 


.. c.) The Gauls also prepared various kinds of fer¬ 
mented drinks ; such as barley-beer, called cerevisia 
(Plin 22, 15.—In old French, Cervoise; in Cym- 
raig, Cwrv.); and likewise another kind of beer, made 
from corn, and in which honey, cumin, and other in¬ 
gredients were mingled. (Position., ap Athen., 4, 13.) 
The froth of beer was employed as a means for leav¬ 
ening bread : it was used also as a cosmetic, and the 
Gallic females frequently applied it to the visage, un¬ 
der the belief that it imparted a freshness to the com¬ 
plexion. ( Plin ., 22, 25.) As regarded wine, it was 
to foreign traders that the Gauls and Ligurians were 
indebted for its use; and it was from the Greeks of 
Massilia that they learned the process of making it, as 
well as the culture of the vine.—The dwellings of the 
Gauls, spacious and of a round form, were construct¬ 
ed of posts and hurdles, and covered with clay both 
within and without; a large roof, composed of oak- 
shingles and stubble, or of straw cut and kneaded with 
clay, covered the whole. (Strabo, 196. — Vitruv., 1 , 1.) 
—Gaul contained both open villages and cities : the 
latter, surrounded by walls, were defended by a system 
of fortification, of which we find no example elsewhere. 
Caesar gives the following description of these ram¬ 
parts (B. G., 7, 23). “Straight beams, placed length¬ 
wise at equal intervals, and two feet distant from each 
other, are laid along the ground. These are mortised 
together on the inside, and covered deep with earth; but 
the intervals are stopped in front with large stones. 
These being fixed and cemented together, another 
range is put over, the same distance being preserved, 
and the beams not touching each other, but intermit¬ 
ting at equal spaces, and each bound close together 
by a single row of stones. In this manner the whole 
work is intermixed till the wall is raised to its full 
height. By this means the work, from its appearance 
and variety, is not displeasing to the eye ; the beams 
and stones being placed alternate, and keeping their 
own places in exact right lines : and besides, it is of 
great advantage in the defence of cities ; for it is se¬ 
cured by the stone from fire, and from the battering- 
ram by the wood, which, consisting of entire beams, 
forty feet long, for the most part mortised on the in¬ 
side, could neither be forced in nor torn asunder.”_ 

Such would seem to have been the fortifications of the 
cities in the civilized and populous part of Gaul. To 
the north and east, among the more savage tribes, 
there were no cities properly so called; the inhabi¬ 
tants resided for the most part in large enclosures, 
formed of trunks of trees, and calculated to repel by 
these rude intrenchments the assaults of a disciplined 
as well as undisciplined foe.—Besides his habitation in 
the city, the rich Gaul generally possessed another in 
the country, amid thick forests and on the banks of 
some river. (Cces., B. G., 6, 30.) Here, during the 
heat of summer, he reposed from the fatigues of war; 
but he brought along with him, at the same time, all 
his equipments and retinue, his arms, his horses, his 
esquires. In the midst of the storms of faction and 
the civil dissensions, which marked the history of 
Gaul in the first and second centuries, these precau¬ 
tions were anything else but superfluous. 


2. G&jtyftttl habits of the Gallic race. 

It was, as weWave already remarked, in war, and 
in the arts applicable to war, that the genius of the 
Gauls displayed; itself to most advantage. This peo¬ 
ple made war a regular profession, while the manage¬ 
ment of arms became their favourite employment. To 
have a fine martial mien, to retain for a long period 
strength and agility of body, was not only a point of 
honour for individuals, but a duty to the state. At 
regular intervals, the young men went to measure 
their size by a girdle deposited with the chief of the 
village, and those whose corpulence exceeded the of¬ 
ficial standard were severely reprimanded as idle and 
532 


intemperate persons, and were, besides, punished witfi 
a heavy fine. (Strabo, 196.)—In preparing for for¬ 
eign expeditions, a chieftain of acknowledged valour 
generally formed a small army around him, consisting, 
for the most part, of adventurers and volunteers who 
had flocked to his standard : these were to share with 
him whatever booty might be obtained. In internal 
wars, however, or defensive ones of any importance, 
levies of men were forcibly made ; and severe pun¬ 
ishments were inflicted on the refractory, such as the 
loss of noses, ears, an eye, or some one of the limbs. 
(Cces., B. G., 7, 4.) If any dangerous conjuncture 
occurred; if the honour or safety of the state were 
about to be compromised, then the supreme chief con¬ 
vened an armed counsel (Cces., B. G., 5, 66). This 
was the proclamation of alarm. All persons able to 
bear arms, from the youth to him advanced in years, 
were compelled to assemble at the place and day indi¬ 
cated, for the purpose of deliberating on the situation 
of the country, of electing a chief, and of discussing 
the plan of the campaign. It was expressly provided 
by law, that the individual who came last to the place of 
rendezvous should be cruelly tortured in the presence 
of the assembled multitude. (Cces., B. G., 5, 66.) 
This form of convocation was of rare occurrence ; it 
was only resorted to in the last extremity, and more 
frequently in the democratic cities than in those where 
the aristocracy had the preponderance. Neither in¬ 
firmities norage freed the Gallic noble from the neces¬ 
sity of accepting or sueing for military commands. 
Oftentimes were seen, at the head of the forces, 
chieftains hoary and almost enfeebled by age, who 
could even scarcely retain their seats on the steed 
which supported them. (Hirt., B. G., 8, 12.) This 
people would have believed that they dishonoured 
their aged warriors by making them die elsewhere 
than on the field of battle.—To the fierce vivacity oi 
the attack and to the violence of the first shock, were 
reduced nearly all the military tactics of the Gauls, 
on level ground and in pitched battle. In the mount¬ 
ainous regions, on the other hand, and especially in 
the vast and thick forests of the north, war had a close 
resemblance to the chase: it was prosecuted in small 
parties, by ambuscades and all sorts of stratagems ; 
and dogs, trained up to pursue men, tracked out, and 
aided in conquering the foe. These dogs, equally 
serviceable for the chase and for war, were obtained 
from Belgic Gaul and from Britain. (Strabo, 196. 
—Sil. Ital. , 10, 77 .—Ovid, Met., 1 , 533 .—Martial, 

3, 47.) A Gallic army generally carried along with 
it a multitude of chariots for the baggage, which em¬ 
barrassed its march. (Hirt., B. G., 8, 14.— Cces B 
G., 1 , 51.) Each warrior bore a bundle of straw, 
put up like a sack, on which he was accustomed to 
sit in the encampment, or even in the line of battle 
while waiting the signal to engage. (Hirt., B G., 

8, 15.)—The Gauls, like other nations, for a long pe¬ 
riod were in the habit of killing their prisoners of'war, 
either by crucifixion, or by tying them to trees as a 
mark for their weapons, or by consigning them to the 
flames amid horrid rites. Long prior, however, to the 
second century of our era, these barbarous practices 
were laid aside, and the captives of transalpine nations 
had nothing to fear but servitude. Another custom, not 
less savage, that of cutting off the heads of their slain 
enemies on the field of battle, was not slower in disap¬ 
pearing. It was long a settled rule ir all wars, that the 
victorious army should possess itself of such trophies as 
these; the common soldiers fixed them on the points 
of their spears, the horsemen wore them suspended 
by the hair from the poitrels of their steeds ; and 
in this way the conquerors returned to their homes 
making the air resound with their triumphal accla¬ 
mations. (Strabo, 197.) Each one then hastened 
to nail up these hideous testimonials of his valour to 
the gate of his dwelling ; and, as the same thing was 





GALLIA. 


GALLIA. 


done with the trophies of the chase, a Gallic village 
bore no faint resemblance to a large charnel-house. 
Carefully embalmed, and saturated with oil of cedar, 
the heads of hostile chieftains and of famous war¬ 
riors were deposited in large coffers, and arranged by 
their possessor according to the date of acquisition. 
(Strabo , 198.) This was the book, in which the 
young Gallic warrior loved to study the exploits of 
his forefathers; and each generation, as it passed on¬ 
ward, strove to add to the contents. To part, for 
money, with the head of a foe, acquired either by 
one’s own exertions or those of his ancestors, was 
regarded as the height of baseness, and would have 
fixed a lasting stain on him who should have been 
guilty of the deed. Many even boasted of having re¬ 
fused, when offered by the relations or countrymen of 
the deceased, an equal weight of gold for a head thus 
obtained. {Diod. Sic., 5, 29.) Sometimes the scull, 
cleansed and set in gold or silver, served as a cup in 
the temples, or circulated in the festivities of the ban¬ 
quet, and the guests drank out of it to the glory of the 
victor and the triumphs of their country. These fierce 
and brutal manners prevailed for a long period over 
the whole of Gaul. Civilization, in its onward march, 
abolished them by degrees, until, at the commence¬ 
ment of the second century, they were confined to the 
savage tribes of the North and West. It was there 
that Posidonius found them still existing in all their 
vigour. The sight of so many human heads, disfig¬ 
ured by outrages, and blackened by the air and the 
rain, at first excited in his bosom the mingled emo¬ 
tions of horror and disgust: “ however,” adds the 
stoic traveller, with great naivete, “ my eyes became 
gradually accustomed to the view.” ( Strabo , 198.)— 
The Gauls affected, as more manly in its character, a 
strong and rough tone of voice {Diod. Sic., 5, 31), to 
which, moreover, their harsh and guttural idioms 
greatly contributed. They conversed but little, and 
by means of short and concise phrases, which the con¬ 
stant use of metaphors and hyperboles rendered ob¬ 
scure and almost unintelligible to strangers. {Diod. 
Sic., 1. c.) But, when once animated by dispute, or 
incited by something that was calculated to interest 
or arouse, at the head of armies or in political assem¬ 
blies, they expressed themselves with surprising co¬ 
piousness and fluency, and the habit in which they in¬ 
dulged, of employing figurative language, furnished 
them, on such occasions, with a thousand lively and 
picturesque images, either for exalting their own 
merit or putting down an opponent.—The Gauls, in 
general, were accused of drinking to excess ; a habit 
which took its rise both in the grossness of their man¬ 
ners and in the wants of a cold and humid climate. 
The Massilian and Italian traders were not slow in fur¬ 
nishing the necessary aliment for the indulgence of this 
baneful vice. Cargoes of wine found their way, by 
means of the navigable rivers, into the very heart of 
the country. The tempting beverage was also con¬ 
veyed over land in wagons {Diod. Sic., 5, 26), and in 
various quarters regular establishments were opened 
for vending the article. To these places the Gauls 
flocked from every part, and gave, in exchange for the 
wines of the south, their metals, peltries, grain, cattle, 
and slaves. So lucrative was this traffic to the ven¬ 
der, that oftentimes a young slave could be procured 
fo:: a jar of the inebriating liquor. {Diod. Sic., 5, 26.) 
About the first century, however, of our era, this vice 
began gradually to disappear from among the higher 
classes, and to be confined to the lower orders, at 
least with the nations of the south and east.—Milk 
and the flesh of animals, especially that of swine, 
formed the principal aliment of the Gauls. A curious 
account of their repasts, traced by one who had often 
sat with them at table, is given by Posidonius {Ap. 
Athen., 4, 13). After an excessive indulgence in the 
pleasures of the banquet, they loved to seize their 


arms and defy each other to the combat. At first it 
was a mere sportive encounter; but, if either party 
chanced to be wounded, passion got so far the better 
of them, that, unless separated by their friends, they 
continued to engage till one or the other of them was 
slain. So far, indeed, did they carry their contempt 
of death and their ostentatious display of courage, 
that they might be seen agreeing, for a certain sum 
of money or for so many measures of wine, to let 
themselves be slain by others ; mounted on some 
elevated place, they distributed the liquor or gold 
among their most intimate friends, and then re¬ 
clining on their bucklers, presented their throats 
to the steel. {Posidonius, ap. Athen., 4, 13.) Oth¬ 
ers made it a point of honour not to retire from 
their dwellings when falling in upon them, nor from 
the flames, nor from the tides of ocean and the in¬ 
undations of rivers ; and it is to these foolish bra¬ 
vadoes that the Gauls owed their fabulous renown of 
being an impious race, who lived in open war with 
nature, who drew the sword against the waves, and 
discharged the arrow at the tempest.—The working of 
mines, and certain monopolies enjoyed by the heads 
of tribes, had placed in the hands of some individuals 
enormous capitals ; hence the reputation for opulence 
which Gaul enjoyed at the period of the Roman inva¬ 
sion, and even still later. It was the Peru of the an¬ 
cient world. The riches of Gaul even passed into a 
proverb. {Cic., Phil., 12.— Josephus, 2, 28.— Plat., 
Vit. Cces. — Suet., Cces., &c.) The sight of the vari¬ 
ous articles in use among the people at large, both 
plated and tinned, whether for domestic use or for war, 
such as utensils for cooking, arms, harness for horses, 
yokes for mules, and even sometimes entire chariots 
{Florus, 3, 2), could not fail to inspire the first travel¬ 
lers into this country with an exaggerated idea of its 
wealth, and contributed, no doubt, to spread a romantic 
colouring over the accounts that were given of it. To 
this was added the lavish prodigality of the Gallic chief¬ 
tains, who freely spent the resources of their families, 
and also those of their dependants, for the purpose of at¬ 
taining to office or securing the favour of the multitude. 
Posidonius makes mention of a certain Luern or Luer 
(A ovspvios, Posidon., ap. Athen., 4, 13.—A ovepioc;, 
Strabo, 191), king of the Arverni, who caused a shower 
of gold and silver to descend upon the crowd as often 
as he appeared in public. He also gave entertainments 
in a rude style of barbarian magnificence ; a large 
space of ground was enclosed for the purpose, and cis¬ 
terns were dug in it, which were filled with wine, 
mead, and beer. {Posidon., 1. c.) —Properly speaking, 
there was no domestic union or family intercourse 
among the Gallic nations; the females were held in 
that dependance and servitude which denotes a very 
imperfect condition of the social state. The husband 
had the power of life and death over his wife as well as 
over his offspring. When a person of high rank sud¬ 
denly died, and the cause of his decease was not 
clearly ascertained, his wife or wives (for polygamy 
was practised among the rich) were seized and put to 
the torture ; if the least suspicion was excited of their 
having been privy to his death, the unfortunate victims 
perished in the midst of the flames, after the most 
frightful punishments. {Gees., B. G., 6, 19.) A cus¬ 
tom, however, which prevailed in this country about 
the commencement of our era, shows that even then 
the condition of females had undergone some degree 
of melioration : this was the community of goods be¬ 
tween husband and wife. Whatever sum the husband 
received with his wife as a dowry, the same amount 
he added to it from his own resources ; a common 
stock was thus formed, the interest or profits resulting 
from which were preserved, and the whole fell to the 
lot of the surviver. The children remained under the 
care of their mother until the age of puberty ; a father 
would have blushed to allow his son to appear publicly 

533 




GALLIA. 


GALLIA. 


m his presence, before the latter could wield a sabre 
and make a figure on the list of warriors. {Coes., B. 
G., 6 , 18 .)— Among some nations of Belgic Gaul, 
where the Rhine was an object of superstitious adora¬ 
tion, a whimsical custom prevailed ; the river was 
made the means of testing the fidelity of the conjugal 
state. When a husband had doubts respecting his pa¬ 
ternity, he took the new-born infant, placed it on a 
board, and exposed it to the current of the stream. If 
the plank and its helpless burden floated safely upon 
the waters, the result was deemed favourable, and all 
the father’s suspicions were dissipated. If, on the 
contrary, the plank began to sink, the infant perished, 
and the parent’s suspicions were confirmed. ( Julian, 
Epist., 15 , ad Maxim, philos. — Id., Orat., 2 , in Con¬ 
stant. imp. — Anlhol. Gr., 1 , 43 , 1 .) 

3 . Civil and Religious Institutions of the Gauls. 

Two privileged orders ruled in Gaul over the rest of 
the population : the priests and nobles. The people 
at large were divided into two classes, the inhabitants 
of the country and the residents of cities. The former 
of these constituted the tribes or clients appertaining 
to noble families. The client cultivated his patron’s 
domains, followed his standard in war, and was bound 
to defend him with his life. To abandon his patron in 
the hour of peril was regarded as the blackest of crimes. 
The residents of cities, on the other hand, found them¬ 
selves beyond the control of this system of clientship, 
and, consequently, enjoyed greater freedom. Below 
the mass of the people were the slaves, who do not 
appear, however, to have been at any time very nu¬ 
merous. The two privileged orders of which we have 
just made mention, imposed eafch in its turn a heavy 
yoke of despotism upon Gaul; and the government of 
this country may be divided into three distinct forms, 
prevailing at three distinct intervals of time ; that of 
the priests, or a theocracy ; that of the chieftains of 
tribes, or a military aristocracy ; and that, finally, of 
the popular constitutions, founded on the principle of 
free choice by a majority of voters.—When we exam¬ 
ine attentively the character of the facts relative to the 
religious belief of Gaul, we are led to acknowledge 
the existence of two classes of ideas, two systems of 
symbols and superstitions entirely distinct from each 
other; in a word, two religions: one, altogether sen¬ 
sible in its character, based on the adoration of nat¬ 
ural phenomena, and recalling by its forms much of 
the polytheism of Greece ; the other, founded on a 
material, metaphysical, mysterious, and sacerdotal 
pantheism, presenting the most astonishing conformity 
with the religions of the East. This latter has re¬ 
ceived the name of Druidism, from the Druids, who 
were its first founders and priests ; the other system 
has been called the Gallic Polytheism. Even if no 
other testimony existed to prove the priority of the lat¬ 
ter, in point of time, to Druidism, the natural and in¬ 
variable progress of religious ideas among all the na¬ 
tions of the globe would tend to establish the fact. 

It is not so, however. The old and valuable traditions 
of the Cymric race attribute to this people, in the most 
formal and exclusive manner, the introduction of the 
Druidical doctrines into Gaul and Britain, as well as 
the organization of sovereign priesthood. According 
to these traditions, it was the chief of the first invasion, 
Hu, Heus, or Hesus, surnamed “ the powerful,” who 
implanted in this territory, which had been conquered 
by his horde, the religious and political system of Dru¬ 
idism. A warrior, a priest, and a legislator during his 
life, Hesus enjoyed, besides this, a privilege common to 
all founders of theocracies: he became a god after death. 

If the question be now put, how Druidism arose among 
the Cymric race, and from what source originated 
those striking points of resemblance between its fun¬ 
damental doctrines and those of the secret religions of 
the East, between many of its ceremonies and those 
534 


practised in Samothrace, in Asia, and in India, we find 
no light thrown upon this subject by history. Neither 
the facts collected by foreign writers, nor any national 
traditions, furnish us with a positive solution of the 
difficulty. It may be reasonably conjectured, however, 
that the Cymri, during their long sojourn either in 
Asia or on the borders of Asia and Europe, were initi¬ 
ated into religious ideas and institutions, which, circu¬ 
lating at that time from one people to another, event¬ 
ually spread themselves over all the eastern quarter of 
the world. Druidism, introduced into Gaul by con 
quest, organized itself in the domains of the conquerors 
with greater energy than it had ever done elsewhere ; 
and after it had converted to its dogmas the whole 
Gallic population, and probably a portion of the Li- 
gures, it continued to have, in the midst of the Cymri, 
in Armorica, and in Britain, its most powerful colleges 
of priests and its most secret mysteries. The empire 
of Druidism, however, did not completely stifle that 
religion of nature which prevailed before its introduc¬ 
tion in Britain and Gaul. Every wise and mysterious 
system of religion tolerates a fetichism more or less 
gross in its character, and calculated to take hold of 
and keep alive the superstition of the multitude ; and 
this fetichism it seeks to hold always stationary. Sta¬ 
tionary it therefore remained in the island of Britain. 
In Gaul, therefore, in the eastern and southern sections 
of the country, where Druidism had not been imposed 
by arms, although it had become the ruling religion, 
the early national form of worship preserved more 
independence, even under the ministry of the Druids 
who had constituted themselves its priests. It con¬ 
tinued, then, to be here cultivated, and, following the 
progressive march of civilization and intelligence, it 
gradually elevated itself from the rudeness of mere 
fetichism to religious conceptions which became more 
and more elevated in character. Thus the immediate 
adoration of brute matter, of natural agents and phe¬ 
nomena, such as stones, trees {Max. Tyr., 38), winds, 
and, in particular, the terrible blast, denominated Kirk 
or Circius {Senec., Qucest. Nat., 5, 17), lakes, rivers 
( Posidon., ap. Strah., 188.— Oros., 4, 16.—Greg. 
Turon., de Glor. confess., c. 5), thunder, the sun, &c., 
gave place, in process of time, to the abstract notion 
of spirits or divinities regulating these phenomena, and 
imprinting a will on these agents. Hence we have, 
in a later age, the god Tarann, the spirit of the thun¬ 
der {Lucan, Pharsal., 1, 466,— Torann in Gaelic, 
and Tarann in Cymraig and Armoric, mean “thun¬ 
der”); the god Pennin, the deity of the Alps {Liv., 
21, 38); the goddess Arduinna, presiding divinity 
over the forest of Ardennes, and numerous others. 
By a still farther effort of abstraction, the general pow¬ 
ers of nature, that of the human soul, and even of civil 
society, were also deified. Tarann became the god 
of the skies, the mover of the universe, the sypreme 
judge who hurled his angry thunder at mortals. The 
sun, under the name of Bel and Bclen {Auson., Carm., 

2, de Profess. Burdigal. — Tertull., Apoll, c. 24.— 
Herodian , 8, 3), became a beneficent deity, causing 
salutary plants to spring up and presiding over meti^ 
cine. Heus or Hesus, notwithstanding his Druidic 
origin, took a station in the polytheism of Gaul, as the 
god of war and conquests ; this was probably an inter 
calation of the Druids. In the Cymric traditions Heus 
has the character of chief deity, the supreme being 
{Davies, Welsh Archaol., p. 110.) The genius of 
commerce also received the adoration of the Gauls 
under the name of Tuetates {Lactant., Div. Inst.., 1 
21.— -Min. Felix, c. 30); he was regarded as the in¬ 
ventor of all arts and the protector of routes. The 
manual arts had also their particular divinities. In 
fine, the symbol of the liberal arts, of eloquence, and 
of poesy, was deified under the form of an old man 
armed like the Grecian Hercules with a club and bow* 
but whom his captives gayly followed, attached by th 









GALLIA. 


GALLIA. 


ear to chains of gold and amber, which proceeded 
from his mouth. He was named Ogmius. ( Lucian, 
Here. — Opp., ed. Bip., vol. 7, p. 312. — Compare 
Ritter, Vorhalle, p. 368, seqq.) —Coincidences of so 
striking a nature with their own mythology could not 
fail to surprise Roman observers, nor was it difficult 
for them to discover, as they thought, all their own 
gods in the polytheism of Gaul. Csesar consequently 
informs us, that they acknowledged among their divin¬ 
ities Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, and Minerva. 
“Mercury,” observes this writer, “is the deity whom 
they chiefly adore: they have many images of him : 
they account him the inventor of arts ; their guide in 
travelling and journeys; and imagine that he has a 
very great influence over trade and merchandise. After 
him they adore Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, and Minerva, 
of whom they have the same opinion with other na¬ 
tions : that Apollo averts diseases ; that Minerva first 
introduced needlework and manufactures ; that Jupiter 
holds the supreme power of the heavens ; that Mars 
presides over war. To him, whenever they have de¬ 
termined on going to battle, they usually devote the 
spoil they have taken.” ( Cces ., B. G., 6, 17.)—This 
resemblance between the two systems of religion 
changed into identity when Gaul, subjected to the do¬ 
minion of Rome, had felt for some years the influence 
of Roman ideas. It was then that the Gallic polythe¬ 
ism, honoured and favoured by the emperors, ended its 
career by becoming totally merged in the polytheism 
of Italy ; while, on the other hand, Druidism, its mys¬ 
teries, its doctrine, and its priesthood, werfe cruelly 
proscribed, and extinguished amid streams of blood. 

4. Origin of the Gauls. 

The question to be considered here is this, whether 
there existed a Gallic family distinct from the other 
families of nations in the West, and whether it was di¬ 
vided into two races. The proofs which we shall ad¬ 
duce in favour of the affirmative are of three kinds : 
1st, philological, deduced from an examination of the 
primitive languages of the west of Europe : 2d, his¬ 
torical, drawn from the Greek and Roman writers : 
3d, likewise historical, deduced from national tradi¬ 
tions among the Gauls. 

I. Proofs drawn from an examination of languages. 

In the countries of Europe, called by the ancients 
Transalpine Gaul and Britain , embracing, at the pres¬ 
ent day, France, Switzerland, the Low Countries, and 
the British Isles, various languages are spoken, which 
all, however, range themselves under two great classes: 
one, that of the languages of the South, draws its ori¬ 
gin from the Latin, and embraces all the dialects of 
the Romans and French ; the other, that of the North¬ 
ern languages, is descended from the ancient Teutonic 
or German, and prevails in a part of Switzerland and 
the Low Countries, in England, and in the lowlands 
of Scotland. Now we know historically that the Latin 
language was introduced into Gaul by the Roman 
arms ; we know, also, that the Teutonic languages, 
spoken in Gaul and in Britain, may be in like manner 
traced to the conquests of the Teutonic or German 
tribes : these two main languages, therefore, intro¬ 
duced from without, are strangers to the primitive 
population, that is to say, to the population which oc¬ 
cupied the countries in question anterior to these con¬ 
quests. But in the midst of so many new-Latin and 
new-Teutonic dialects, we find in some parts of France 
and Britain the remains of primitive languages, com¬ 
pletely distinct from the two great classes of which we 
have just made mention. Of these, France contains 
two, the Basque, spoken in the western Pyrenees, and 
the Bas- Breton, more extensively spread not long ago, 
but at present confined to the extremity of ancient 
Armorica. Britain likewise possesses two, the Welsh, 


spoken in the principality of Wales, and called by 
those who speak it the Cymraig; and the Gaelic, used 
in the highlands of Scotland and in Ireland. History 
gives us no information relative to these original lan¬ 
guages, whether they were introduced into the coun¬ 
tries where they are spoken posterior to the Roman 
and German conquests ; neither does it furnish us 
with any grounds for surmising by whom they might 
have been so introduced : we are led, therefore, to re¬ 
gard them as anterior to these conquests, and, conse¬ 
quently, as belonging to the primitive population. The 
question of antiquity being thus disposed of, two other 
inquiries present themselves. 1. Did these languages 
belong to the same people or to different ones l 2. 
Have we any historical proofs that they were spoken 
anterior to the establishment of the Romans, and, con¬ 
sequently, of the Germans, and in what portions of 
territory 1 We will attempt to solve these two ques¬ 
tions by examining each of these languages in suc¬ 
cession ; and first, w 7 e will remark, that the Bas-Bre- 
ton attaching itself very closely to the Cymraig, the 
original idioms, of which we are speaking, are reduced 
in fact to three. 1. The Basque. 2. The Gaelic or 
Gallic. 3. The Cymraig or Cymric. 

1. Of the Basque Language. 

This language, called Euscara by the people who 
speak it, is used in some cantons in the southeast of 
France and northeast of Spain, on both sides of the 
Pyrenees : the singularity of its radicals and its gram¬ 
matical construction distinguish it no less from the 
Cymric and Gallic tongues, than from the derivatives 
of the Latin and Teutonic. Its antiquity cannot be 
doubted, when we see that it has furnished the oldest 
appellations for the rivers, mountains, cities, and tribes 
of ancient Spain. Its great extension is no less cer¬ 
tain. The learned researches of Humboldt have dis¬ 
covered its imprint in the geographical nomenclature 
of almost the whole of Spain, especially the eastern 
and southern provinces. ( Humboldt , Prufung der 
Untersuchungen iiber die Urbewohner Hispaniens, rer- 
■mittclst der Vaskischen Sprache, Berlin , 1821.) In 
Gaul, the province called Aquitania by the Romans, 
and comprehended between the Pyrenees and the 
course of the Garonne, presents also, in its earliest 
geography, numerous traces of this language. Similar 
traces may be found, more altered and of rarer occur¬ 
rence, it is true, along the Mediterranean, between the 
Oriental Pyrenees and the Arno, in the region called 
by the ancients Liguria, Celto-Liguria, and Ibero-Li- 
guria. A large number of names of men, dignities, 
and institutions, mentioned in history as belonging to 
the Iberians, or else to the Aquitani, are easily ex¬ 
plained by the aid of the Basque language. From all 
this we may deduce the legitimate presumption that 
the Basque is a remnant of the ancient Spanish or Ibe¬ 
rian language, and the population who speak it at the 
present day are a fragment of the Iberian race. 2. 
That this race, in language at least, had nothing in 
common with the nations speaking the Gaelic and 
Cymric. 3. That they occupied, in Gaul, the two 
great cantons of Aquitania and Gallic Liguria. 

2. Of the Gaelic or Gallic tongue. 

The Gaelic or Gallic, according to the mode of 
pronouncing the name, is spoken in the highlands of 
Scotland, in Ireland, the Hebrides, and the Isle of 
Man. There is no trace of any other idiom having 
been in use previously in these quarters, since most 
of the denominations of places, communities, and in¬ 
dividuals belong exclusively to this language. If we 
follow its vestiges by means of geographical and his¬ 
torical nomenclatures, we will find that the Gaelic 
has prevailed in the whole of the lowlands of Scotland 
and in England, whence it appears to have been driven 
out by the Cymric tongue : we may recognise it also 



GALLIA. 


GALLIA. 


in a portion of the south, and in all the east of Gaul, 
in upper Italy, in Illyria, and in central and western 
Spain. It is the eastern and southern provinces, how¬ 
ever, of Gaul that bOar the most evident marks of the 
passage of this tongue. It is only by the aid of a 
Gaelic glossary that we can discover the signification 
of geographical names, dignities, institutions, individu¬ 
als, &c., belonging to the primitive population of this 
country. Still farther, the patois of the east and south 
of France at the present day swarms with words that 
are strangers to the Latin, and which are discovered 
to be taken from the Gaelic tongue. From these 
facts we may deduce the following inferences : 1. that 
the race which spoke Gaelic, in distant ages, occu¬ 
pied the British isles and Gaul, and that from this 
centre the language spread itself over many cantons 
of Italy, Spain, and Illyria. 2. That it preceded in 
Britain the race which spoke the Cymric. 


connected by philologists with the Sanscrit, the an 
cient and sacred idiom of India. 

Haying completed our examination of the languages 
in question, we may deduce from this review of them 
the following historical inferences. 1. An Iberian pop 
ulation, distinct from the Gallic, inhabited several car. 
tons in the south of Gaul, under the names of Aqm- 
tani and Ligures. 2. The Gallic population, properly 
so called, was divided into Galli and Cymri. 3. The 
Galli had preceded the Cymri on the soil of Britain, 
and probably also on that of Gaul. 4. The Galli and 
the Cymri formed two races, belonging to one and the 
same human family. 

II. Proofs drawn from, the Greek and Roman histo¬ 
rians. 

1. Gallic Nations beyond the Alps. 


3. Of the Cymric tongue. 

That part of Britain which is called the country or 
principality of Wales, is inhabited, as is well known, 
by a people who bear in their mother-tongue the name 
of Cymri or Kymri; and from the most distant period 
they have known no other. Authentic literary monu¬ 
ments attest that this language, the Cymraig or Cym¬ 
ric, was cultivated with great eclat about^the sixth 
century of our era, not only within the actual limits of 
the principality of Wales, but along the whole west- 
ern coast of England, while the Anglo-Saxons, a Ger¬ 
manic population, occupied by conquest the centre and 
the east. An examination of the geographical and his¬ 
torical nomenclatures of Britain, anterior to the arrival 
of its German invaders, proves also, that, before this 
epoch, the Cymric prevailed throughout the whole 
southern part of the island, where it had succeeded to 
the Gaelic, which had been banished to the north. We 
have already stated, that the Bas-Breton, or Armoric 
tongue, spoken in a part of Brittany, was a Cymric 
dialent. The intermixture of a great number of Latin 
• and French words has altered, it is true, the aspect 
of this dialect; yet historical monuments bear full tes¬ 
timony to the fact, that, about the fifth century, it was 
almost identically the same with that of the island of 
Britain, since the natives of this island, who fled to 
Armorica to escape from the Anglo-Saxons, found in 
this latter country, it is said, a people who spoke the 
same language with themselves. ( Adclung , Mithra- 
dates, vol. 2, p. 157.) The names, moreover, drawn 
from geography and history, clearly show, that this 
idiom was spoken anterior to the fifth century in the 
whole of the west and north of Gaul. This tract of 
country then, as well as the southern portion of the 
isle of Britain, must have been anciently peopled by 
the race that spoke the Cymric tongue. But what 
is the generic name of this race 1 Is it the Armori- 
ca n l—Is it the Breton 1—Armorican, which signifies 
“ maritime,” is a local, not a generic, appellation ; 
while, on the other hand, Breton appears to have been 
nothing more than the name of a particular tribe. We 
will adopt then, provisorily, as the true name of this 
race, that of Cymri, which from the sixth century has 
served to designate it in the isle of Britain —As re¬ 
gards the two idioms of the Cymric and Gaelic, it may 
#not be amiss to state the following general particulars. 

1 he basis of both is undoubtedly the same, and both 
spring from some common tongue. By the side, how¬ 
ever, of this striking similitude in the roots and in the 
general system of the composition of words, we can¬ 
not fail to observe great discrepances in the gram¬ 
matical structure, discrepances essential in their char¬ 
acter, and which constitute two distinct languages 
two separate tongues though sisters to each other, and 
not two dialects of the same tongue. It should also 
be remarked, that the Gallic and the Cymric belong to 
that great family of languages, the source of which is 
53b 


Usesar acknowledges throughout the whole extent 
of Gaul, with the single exception of the province of 
INarbonne, three nations, “ differing in language, in¬ 
stitutions, and laws : the Aquitani, dwelling between 
the Pyrenees and the Garonne ; the Belgse, occupying 
the northern parts of the country, from the Rhine to 
the Marne and Seine; and the Galli, called also Cel¬ 
ts, established in the central quarter of the land.” 
He gives to these three communities, taken collect¬ 
ively, the general name of Galli, which in this case 
is nothing more than a mere geographical designation. 
Strabo adopts the division of Caesar, but with an im¬ 
portant change. In place of limiting the Belgse, as 
Caesar does, to the course of the Sein , he adds to 
them, under the name of paroceanites, or maritime 
(t rapuiceavLTOv), all the tribes established between the 
mouth of this river and that of the Loire, and known 
ln geography by the appellation of Armoricans , 

which equally signifies “maritime,” and of which the 
term paroceanites appears to be merely a Greek trans¬ 
lation. This arrangement of Strabo’s merits the great¬ 
er attention, not only because that great geographer 
was well acquainted with the Roman authors who 
had written upon Gaul, but also derived much infor¬ 
mation from the travels of Posidonius, and the la 
bours of the learned among the people of Massilia 
or Marseilles. These two opinions, however, relative 
to the Belgae, may be easily reconciled, as we shall see 
in the sequel. The geographers of a later period, Me¬ 
la, Pliny, Ptolemy, &c., either conform to the ethno 
graphic division given by Caesar, or to the one traced 
by Augustus after the reduction of Gaul to a Roman 
province. In all this the Narbonnaise is not compre¬ 
hended : now, we find in the ancient writers that it 
contained, besides the Celt® or Galli, Ligurians, stran¬ 
gers to the Gauls ( hcpoeevtig.—Strab ., 137), and also 
Phocean Greeks, who composed the population of 
Massilia and its dependencies.—There existed then 
in the indigenous population of Gaul, four diffefent 
branches: 1. The Aquitani; 2. The Ligures; 3 
The Galli or Celtce ; 4. The Belga>..~ We will con 
sider each of these in succession. 


1. The Aquitani. 

“ The Aquitani,” observes Strabo (189.— Id. 176) 
“differ essentially from the Gallic race, not only ir 
language, but also in physical conformation : they re¬ 
semble the Iberians more than they do the Gauls.’- 
He adds, that the contrast afforded by two Gallic na, 
tions confined within the limits of Aquitania, made the 
distinctive features of the race we are considering the 
more apparent. According to Caesar, the Aquitani 
had, besides a peculiar dialect, institutions of a pecu¬ 
liar and separate character. Now, historical facts 
show that these institutions bore, for the most part, the 
stamp of the Iberian character; that the national dress 
was Iberian ; that there existed stronger ties of amity 
and alliance between the Aquitanian and Iberian tribes 








GALLIA. 


GALLIA. 


than between the former and the Gauls, who were 
separated from them merely by the Garonne ; in fine, 
that their virtues and their vices were assimilated in 
the closest manner to that standard of good and evil 
qualities which appears to have constituted the moral 
type of the Iberian race. We find, then, a concordance 
between the proofs drawn from history and those de¬ 
duced from an examination of languages : the Aqui- 
tani were, beyond doubt, an Iberian population. 

2 . Ligures. 

The Ligures, whom the Greeks call Ligyes, are des¬ 
ignated by Strabo as strangers to Gaul. Sextus Avi- 
en .is, whose labours were based upon documents which 
had been left by the Carthaginians, and who, conse¬ 
quently, must have been put in possession of much 
valuable matter connected with the ancient history of 
Iberia, places the primitive seats of the Iberi in the 
southwest of Spain, whence, after a long succession 
of conflicts, the invasion of the conquering Celts had 
compelled them to remove. ( Avien ., v. 132, scqq.) 
Stephanus of Byzantium also places in the southwest 
of Spain, near Tartessus, a city of the Ligures, which 
he calls Ligystini (S.vyvoTivr\). Thucydides subse¬ 
quently shows us the Ligures, expelled from the south¬ 
western part of the peninsula, arriving on the eastern 
borders of the Sicoris or Segre , and driving away in 
their turn the nation of the Sicani. (Thucyd ., 6, 2.) 
He does not give this as a simple tradition, but as 
an incontestible fact. Ephorus and Philistus of Syra¬ 
cuse held the same language in their writings, and Stra¬ 
bo believes that the Sicani were originally Iberians. 
The Sicani, driven, from their country, forced their 
way through the eastern passes of the Pyrenees, trav¬ 
ersed the Mediterranean shore of Gaul, and entered 
Italy. The Ligures must have followed them, since 
we find the latter nearly at the same time spread over 
the whole Gallic and Italian coasts, from the Pyrenees 
as far as the Arno. We know, by the unanimous tes¬ 
timony of the ancient writers, that the west and the 
centre of Spain had been conquered by the Celtse or 
Galli ; but we are uninformed as to the period when 
this took place. The movements of the Sicani and 
Ligures show us that the invasion was made by the 
western passes of the Pyrenees, and that the Iberian 
tribes, driven back on the eastern coast, began to move 
onward into Gaul and even Italy. They furnish us 
also with an approximation to the date when this took 
place : the Sicani, expelled from Italy, as they had 
been from Spain, seized upon the island of Sicily about 
the year 1400 B.C. ( Freret , CEuvr. compl., vol. 4, p. 
200), which places the irruption of the Celtse into Ibe¬ 
ria about the sixteenth century before the Christian 
era.—Although, after what has been said, the Iberian 
origin of the Ligures appears to be placed beyond the 
reach of doubt, it must nevertheless be acknowledged, 
that their manners did not bear so strong an Iberian 
stamp as those of the Aquitani: the reason would 
seem to be, that they did not preserve themselves 
from foreign intermixture. History tells us of power¬ 
ful Celtic tribes intermingled with them in Celto-Li- 
guria, between the Alps and the Rhone ; at a still la¬ 
ter period, Ibero-Liguria, between the Rhone and 
Spain, was subjugated almost entirely by a people who 
were total strangers to the Ligures, and who bore the 
name of Volcse. The date of this invasion of the 
Volcae into Ibero-Liguria (now Languedoc) cannot be 
fixed with any precision. The most ancient recitals, 
whether mythological or historical, and the peripluses 
down to that of Scylax, which appears to have been 
written about 350 B.C., make mention only of the 
Ligures, Elesyces, Bebryces, and Sodes, in the whole 
canton ; the Elesyces are even represented as a pow¬ 
erful nation, whose capital Narbo (now Narbonne ) 
flourished in commerce and in arms. About the year 
281, .the Volcae Tectosages, inhabiting what is now 


upper Languedoc, are rendered conspicuous all of a 
sudden, and for the first time, by an expedition which 
they sent into Greece. ( Justin , 24, 4. — Strabo , 
187.) About the year 218, at the time of Hannibal’s 
passage, the Volcae Arecomici, inhabiting lower Lan¬ 
guedoc, are also cited ( Liv ., 21, 26) as a numerous 
people, giving the law throughout all the surrounding 
country. It is, then, between 340 and 281 that we 
must place the arrival of the Volcae and the conquest 
of Ibero-Liguria.—The manuscripts of Caesar, in 
speaking of the Volcae, have indifferently Voices or Vol¬ 
gac. Ausonius ( Clar . Urb. Narb., 9) informs us, that 
the primitive name of the Tectosages was Bolgce ; and 
Cicero ( Pro M. Fonteio. — Dom. Boug., Rec. des Hist., 
&c., p. 656) calls them Belgae. Saint Jerome relates, 
that the idiom of their colonies established in Gala¬ 
tia in Asia Minor, was still in his time the same with 
that of Treves, the capital of the Belgae, and Saint 
Jerome had travelled both in Gaul and the East. 
( Hieron ., 1. 2, Comment. Epist. ad Galat., c. 3.) Af¬ 
ter this, it is hardly permitted us to doubt but that the 
Volcae were Belgae, or, rather, that these two names 
were one and the same ; and the details of their his¬ 
tory, for they played an important part in the affairs ol 
Gaul, furnish numerous proofs in support of their Bel 
gic origin. We must therefore separate this people 
from the Ligurian population, with which they have 
nothing in common.—In conclusion, - we infer, that the 
Ligures were Iberians ; a second accordance of his¬ 
tory with philological inductions.—We have therefore 
remaining only the Galli or Celts, and the Belgse, as 
containing the elements of the Gallic population prop¬ 
erly so called. 

3. Celtce. 

There is no necessity whatever for our demonstra¬ 
ting the identity of the Celtse and Galli ; it is given, 
as fully established, by all the ancient writers. The 
signification, however, of the term Celt is a subject 
open to inquiry. Caesar informs us ( B. G., 1,1), that 
it is drawn from the language of the Gauls : and, in 
fact, it does indeed belong to the present Gallic idiom, 
in which ceilt and ceiltach mean “ an inhabitant of the 
forests.” This signification leads to the presumption 
that the name was a local one, and was applied either 
to a tribe, or to a confederation of tribes, occupying 
certain cantons ; and that it consequently had a special 
and restricted meaning. Indeed, the great Gallic con¬ 
federations were for the most part local. The testi¬ 
mony of Strabo may be cited in support of this hy 
pothesis. The geographer informs us, that the Gauls 
of the province of Narbonne were formerly called 
Celtae ; and that the Greeks, particularly the Massili- 
ots, entering into commercial relations with them be¬ 
fore becoming acquainted with the other nations of 
Gaul, erroneously took their name as the common ap¬ 
pellation for the whole Gallic race. ( Strab ., 189.) 
Some, and Ephorus among the rest, even extended it 
beyond the limits of Gaul, and made of it a geograph¬ 
ical denomination for all the races of the West 
(Strab., 34.) Notwithstanding, however, these erro 
neous ideas, which throw much obscurity over the ac¬ 
counts of the Greek writers, many authors of this na¬ 
tion speak of the Celtae in the special and limited sense 
which accords with the opinion of Strabo. Polybius 
(3, 37) places them ‘‘around Narbo;” Diodorus Sicu¬ 
lus (5,32), “ above Massilia, in the interior of the coun 
try, between the Alps and Pyrenees Aristotle (Gen. 
Anim., 2, 8), “ above Iberia Dionysius Periegetes, 

“ beyond the sources of the Po” (v. 280). Finally, 
Eustathius, in his commentary on the last-mentioned 
writer, revives the vulgar error, which attributes to the 
whole of Gaul the name of a single canton. Vague 
though they are, these designations appear clearly to 
specify the country situate between the Ligurian fron 
tier to the east, the Garonne to the south, the plateau 

537 




GALLIA. 


GALLIA. 


ot the A.vernian Mountains to the west, and the ocean 
to the north : all this tract, and the coast likewise of 
the Mediterranean, so unproductive and arid at the 
present day, were for a long time covered with dense 
forests. ( Liv ., 5, 34.) Plutarch places also between 
the Alps and the Pyrenees, in the earliest ages, a people 
called Celtorii. ■ (Vit. Camill.) This race is thought 
by some to have formed part of the league or confeder¬ 
ation of the Celt©, for tor signifies “ elevated,” and also 
“ a mountain,” and hence Celtor is supposed to desig¬ 
nate an inhabitant of the woody mountains. Thus it 
would seem that the Celtic confederation, in the time 
of its greatest power, was subdivided into Celts of the 
plain and Celts of the mountain. Historians unani¬ 
mously inform us, that it was the Celts who conquered 
the west and the centre of Spain ; and, in fact, we 
find their name attached to great masses of the Gallo- 
Iberian population, such as the Celt-Iberi, a mixture of 
Celts and Iberians, who occupied the centre of the 
peninsula ; and the Celtici, who had seized upon the 
northwest. It is easy to perceive that the invasion 
must have commenced with the Gallic tribes nearest 
the Pyrenees. The Celtic confederation, however, did 
not alone accomplish this conquest; other Gallic tribes 
either accompanied or followed them : witness, for ex¬ 
ample, the people established in what is now Gallicia, 
and was anciently denominated Galloecia, and who, as 
is well known, belonged to the general Gallic race. 
Thus much for Spain.—As for upper Italy, though 
twice inundated by transalpine nations, it presents no 
trace of the name of Celt: no tribe, no territory, no 
river, recalls their peculiar appellation. Everywhere 
and on every occasion we meet merely with the gen¬ 
eral name of Gauls. The word Celt© became known 
to the Romans only at a late period.—As to the asser¬ 
tion of C©sar, that the Gauls were called in their own 
language Celt©, it is possible that the Roman com¬ 
mander, more occupied with combating the Gauls than 
studying their language and institutions, and finding, 
in effect, that the word Celt was Gallic, and recog¬ 
nised by the Gauls for one of their national denomi¬ 
nations, may, without farther investigation, have con¬ 
cluded that the two terms were synonymous. It is 
possible, too, that the Gauls of the eastern and central 
sections may have adopted, in their commercial and 
political relations with the Greeks, a name by which 
the latter were accustomed to designate them ; just as 
we see, in our own days, some of the tribes of Amer¬ 
ica and Africa, accepting, under similar circumstances, 
appellations which are either quite inexact or else totally 
erroneous.—From what has thus far been remarked, it 
would seem to follow, 1. That the name Celt had, 
among the Gauls, a limited and local application. 2. 
That the confederation of the tribes denominated Cel¬ 
tic dwelt in part among the Ligures, in part between 
the Cevennes and the Garonne, and along the Arver- 
nian plateau and the ocean. 3. That the Celtic con¬ 
federation exhausted its strength in the invasion and 
conquest of Spain, and took no share consequently in 
two successive invasions of Italy. 

4. Belgce. 

The Belg© are unanimously acknowledged by the 
ancient writers as forming part of the Gallic race. 
The word Belgae belongs to the Cymric idiom, in which, 
under the form Belgiaidd, the radical of which is Belg, 

-t signifies “ warlike.” It would seem, then, that this 
was not a generic appellation, but a title of some mili¬ 
tary expedition, some armed confederation. It is a 
stranger to the present Gaelic dialect (for bolg, “ a 
sack,” has nothing to do with the present inquiry), but 
not to the national traditions of the Gaelic race, as still 
existing, in which the Bolg or Fir-Bolg play an im¬ 
portant part, as conquerors come from the mouths of 
the Rhine into ancient Ireland. The name of Belg© 
was unknown to the Greek writers : it appears, indeed, 
538 


to have been comparatively recent in Gaul, when con 
trasted with that of the Celt©, Ligures, &c. The 
Belg© had established themselves in Britain on the 
southern coast of the island, in the midst of the Breton 
race, who were not of Gallic origin ; for the Gallic 
race were by this time driven to the north, beyond the 
Frith of Forth. Neither C©sar nor Tacitus has re¬ 
marked any difference of origin or language between 
these Bretons and the Belg©. The names of individ¬ 
uals, moreover, as well as those of a local nature in 
the cantons occupied by the two races, belong to one 
and the same language, the Cymric. In Gaul C©sar 
has given the Seine and Marne as the southern limits 
of the Belg©. Strabo adds to this Belgica another 
which he calls Paroceanite or Maritime , and which 
comprehends the tribes situate to the west, between 
the mouth of the Seine and that of the Loire, that is 
to say, the tribes which C©sar and the other Roman 
writers call Armorican, from a Gaelic term which sig¬ 
nifies 11 maritime.” The testimony of C©sar is un¬ 
doubtedly hard to be contested in what relates to Gaul. 
On the other hand, however, Strabo was acquainted 
with the writings of the Massiliots, he had studied the 
works of Posidonius, that celebrated Greek, who had 
traversed Gaul, in the time of Marius, as a man of 
learning and a philosopher. There must, of necessity, 
have been a great many points of resemblance between 
the Armorican tribes and the Belg© to induce Posido¬ 
nius and Strabo to declare them members of one and 
the same race ; and, on the other hand, there must have 
been some very marked differences which could lead 
Cffisar to make two distinct nations of them. An ex¬ 
amination of historical facts shows us the Armorican 
tribes united in a sort of political and independent con¬ 
federation, but, in the event of wars and general alli¬ 
ances, uniting themselves more willingly to the Belg© 
than to the race of the Gauls. Again, a philological 
investigation proves that the same language was spoken 
in Belgica in the time of 0©sar as in that of Strabo. 
We may hence boldly conclude, that the Armoricans 
and the Belg© were two communities or confederations 
of the same race, which had arrived in Gaul at two 
different periods : we may also infer still farther : 1. 
That the north and west of Gaul, and the south of 
Britain, were peopled by one and the same race, form¬ 
ing the second branch of the Gallic population properly 
so called : 2. That the language of this race was one, 
the fragments of which are preserved in two cantons 
of ancient Armorica and in the island of Britain : 3. 
That the generic name of the race is entirely unknown 
to us, as far as history is concerned ; but that philology 
gives it to us under the form of Cymri. 

2. Gallic Nations of Italy. 

The most credible of the learned Romans who han¬ 
dled the subject of early Italian history, recognised two 
distinct conquests of upper Italy by nations which had 
migrated from ancient Gaul. The first of these in¬ 
roads they carried back to the earliest periods in the 
history of the West; and they designated these first 
transalpine conquerors by the appellation of “ Old 
Gauls,” Veteres Galli, to distinguish them from the 
transalpine invaders who achieved the second conquest. 
This latter conquest, being the more recent of the two, 
is the better known. It commenced in the year 587 
B.C., under the conduct of the Biturigan Bellovesus, 
and it was continued by the successive invasions of 

four other bands, during the space of sixty-six years._ 

First conquest. These Old Gauls, according to the 
ancient writers, were the ancestors of the Umbrians. 
Cornelius Bocchus, the freedman of Sylla, is cited by 
Solinus (c. 8) as having fully established this point. 
This was also the opinion maintained by Gnipho, the 
preceptor of Julius C©sar, and who, born in Cisalpin 
Gaul, had probably directed his careful attention to the 
history of his own nation. Isidorus likewise adopted 






GALLIA. 


GALLIA. 


it ( Orig ., 9, 2); as did also Solinus and Servius. The 
Greek writers also followed in the same train, with 
few exceptions, notwithstanding an etymology very 
popular in Greece, which made the word Umbrian 
(Ombrian) to be derived from '0 pbpoq, “ a shower,” 
“ rain,” because the nation in question had, according 
to some, escaped from a deluge. The Umbrians were 
regarded as one of the most ancient nations of Italy. 
( Plin ., 2, 14. — Florus, 1 , 17.) After long and bloody 
conflicts, they drove the Siculi from the country around 
the Po. Now, as the Siculi passed into Sicily about 
1364 B.C., the Umbrian invasion may have taken 
place in the course of the 15th century. They be¬ 
came a very powerful race, and their sway extended 
from the upper to the lower sea, as far south as the 
mouths of the Tiber and Trento. The Etrurian power 
eventually put an end to their wide-spread dominion. 
The words Umhri, Ombri. and Ombrici, by which the 
Romans and the Greeks designated this people, would 
seem to have been nothing else but the Gaelic Ambra 
or Amhra, which signifies “ valiant,” “ noble and to 
have been appropriated to itself as a military title by 
some invading horde.—The geographical division es¬ 
tablished by the Umbrians is not only in conformity 
with the customs of the Gallic race, but belongs to 
their very language. Umbria was divided into three 
provinces: Oll-Ombria, or “High Umbria,” which 
comprised the mountainous country between the Apen¬ 
nines and the Ionian Sea : Is-Ombria, or “ Low Um¬ 
bria,” which embraced the country around the Po : 
and Vil-Ombria, or “ Umbria along the shore,” which 
last, at a later period, became Etruria. Although the 
Etrurian influence produced a rapid change in the lan¬ 
guage, religion, and social order of the Umbrians, 
there still were preserved among the mountaineers of 
Oll-Ombria some remarkable traces of the character 
and customs of the Gauls : for example, the gaesum or 
gats, a weapon both in its invention and name pointing 
to a Gallic origin, was always the national javelin of 
the Umbrian peasant. ( Liv ., 9, 36.) The Umbrians, 
who had been dispersed by the Etrurian conquerors, 
were received as brothers on the banks of the Saone 
and among the Helvetian tribes, where they perpetu¬ 
ated their name of Insubres (Isombres). “ Insubres ,” 
observes Livy, “ pagus JEduorum ” (5, 23). Others 
found a hospitable reception among the Ligurians of 
the Maritime Alps (Plin ., 3, 17, seqq.), and carried 
thither their name of Ambrones. This alone can ex¬ 
plain a point which has occasioned much perplexity to 
historians, and has given rise to numerous contradic¬ 
tory theories; how, namely, a tribe of Alpine Ligurians, 
and another of Helvetii, warring against each other 
under the respective banners of the Romans and the 
Cimbri, found, to their great astonishment, that they had 
each the same name and the same war-cry. (Pint., 
Vit. Mar.) —From what has been said, it would seem 
to result, that upper Italy was conquered in the 15th 
century before our era by a confederation of Gallic 
tribes bearing the name of Ambra or Ambrones.— Sec¬ 
ond conquest. The first invasion had been made en 
masse , with something of order, and by a single con¬ 
federation ; the second was successive and tumultuous. 
During the space of sixty-six years, Gaul poured her 
population upon Italy by the Maritime, the Graian, and 
the Pennine Alps. If we bear in mind that, about the 
same epoch (B.C. 587), an emigration not less consid¬ 
erable took place from Gaul tc Illyria, under the con¬ 
duct of Sigovesus, we cannot but believe that these 
great movements were the result of causes far more 
serious than those mentioned by Livy (5, 34). Gaul, 
in fact, presents at this period the aspect of a country 
deeply agitated by some violent commotion.—But of 
what elements were these bands composed, which de¬ 
scended from the Alps to seize upon upper Italy 1 Livy 
makes them to have come from Celtica, that is, from 
the domains of the Gauls, the forces conducted by Bel- 


lovesus and Elitovius ; and the enumeration of the 
tribes which formed this expedition, such as they are 
given by Polybius, proves, in fact, that the first wave 
belonged to the Gallic population.—Every one has 
heard of the famous combat between T. Manlius Tor- 
quatus and a Gaul of gigantic stature. True or false, 
the incident was very popular at Rome : it became a 
subject for the painter’s skill; and the head of the Gaul, 
making horrible grimaces, figured as a sign for a bank¬ 
er’s shop in the Roman forum. This sign, rounded 
into the form of a buckler, bore the name of Scutum 
Cimbricum. It existed at Rome in the year of the city 
586, and 168 before our era. (Compare Remesius, p. 
342.) The word Cimbricum is here employed as sy¬ 
nonymous with Gallicum. —At a later period, when the 
invasion of the Cimbri from the north renewed in Italy 
the terror of this name, the victorious commander of 
Rome caused a buckler to be adorned with this ancient 
device. The shield of Marius, according to Cicero (de 
Or., 2, 66), had depicted on it a Gaul, with cheeks 
hanging down, and projecting tongue.—The term Cim¬ 
bri, then, designated one of the branches of the Gallic 
population, and this branch had colonies in Gallia Cis- 
padana : we have ascertained, however, the previous 
existence of Gallic colonies in Gallia Transpadana: 
the Gallic population, then, of Italy was divided into 
two distinct branches, the Galli and the Cimbri or 
Kimbri. 

3. Gauls beyond the Rhine. 

First branch. 

We have spoken of a double series of emigrations, 
commenced B.C. 587, under the conduct of Bellovesus 
and Sigovesus. Livy informs us, that the expedition 
of Sigovesus set out from Celtica, and that its leader 
was a nephew of the Biturigan Ambigatus, who reign¬ 
ed over the whole country ; which means that Sigove¬ 
sus and his followers were Gauls. The same historian 
adds, that they directed their course towards the Her- 
cynian forest (5, 34). This designation is a very vague 
one ; but we know from Trogus Pompeius, who, being 
born in Gaul, drew his information from more exact 
and precise traditions, that these Gauls established 
themselves in Pannonia and Illyria. (Justin, 24, 4.) 
Ancient historians and geographers show us, in fact, 
a multitude of Gallic or Gallo-Illyrian communities 
spread between the Danube, the Adriatic, and the fron¬ 
tiers of Epirus, Macedonia, and Thrace. Among the 
number of these are the Carni, inhabiting the Alpes 
Carnicce, to the east of the great Alpine chain (com¬ 
pare the Celtic Cam, “ a rock”); the Taurisci, a 
purely Gallic race (compare the Celtic Taur or Tor, 
“ elevated,” “ a mountain.”— Strabo, 293); the Iapodes 
(Strabo, 313), a Gallo-Illyrian race occupying the val¬ 
leys of Carinthia and Stiria; the Scordisci, dwelling 
around Mount Scordus, whose power was feared even 
by the Romans. The frequent recurrence of termi¬ 
nations in dunn, mag, dur, &c., the names of mount¬ 
ains, such as Alpius and Albius; the country called 
Albania; in fine, a great number of Gallic words, 
found even at the present day in the Albanian tongue, 
are so many proofs of the Gauls having at one time or 
other taken up their residence in this country. 

Second branch. 

Historical testimonies, remounting to the time cl 
Alexander the Great, attest the existence of a people 
called Cimmerii or Cimbri , on the borders of the Nor¬ 
thern Ocean, in the present peninsula of Jutland In 
the first place, critics acknowledge the identity cf the 
names Cimmerii and Cimbri, conformed as they are, 
the one to the genius of the Greek, the other to that 
of the Latin tongue. (Strabo, 203.) The most an¬ 
cient writer that makes mention of the Cimbri is Phil¬ 
emon ; according to him, they called their ocean Mori- 
Marusa, i. e., “ Dead Sea,” as far as the promontory 

539 



GALLIA. 


GALLIA. 


Kubeas ; beyond this they styled it Cronium. {Plin., 
4, 13.) These two names are easily explained by the 
Cymric language : mar there signifies “ sea marw, 
“ to die marw sis, “ death and crwnn, “ congeal¬ 

ed,” “frozen:” in Gaelic, croin has'the same force: 
Murchroinn is “ the frozen sea.” ( Adelung, alteste 
Gcsch. der Teutschen, p. 48.— Toland's several pieces, 
pt. 1, p. 150.)—Ephorus, who lived about the same 
period, knew the Cirnbri, and gives them the name of 
Celts ; but in his geographical system, this very vague 
denomination designates at the same time a Gaul and 
an inhabitant of Western Europe. (Strabo, 203.) 
When, between the years 113 and 101 before our era, 
a deluge of Cirnbri poured its desolating fury on Gaul, 
Spain, and Italy, the belief was general, that they came 
from the extremities of the West, from the frozen re¬ 
gions bordering on the Northern Ocean, from the Cim- 
bric Chersonese, from the shores of the Cimbric The¬ 
tis. (Flurus, 3, 3. —Poly cm., 8, 10.— Ammian. Mar - 
cell., 31, 5.— Claudian, Bell. Get., v. 638.— Plut., Vit. 
Mar.) In the time of Augustus, the Cirnbri occupied 
a portion of Jutland, and they acknowledged them¬ 
selves to be the descendants of those who, in a pre¬ 
ceding age, had committed so many ravages. Alarmed 
at the conquests of the Romans beyond the Rhine, and 
supposing that their object was to inflict vengeance 
upon them for the inroad of their ancestors, they sent 
an embassy to the emperor to supplicate for pardon. 

( Strabo, 292.) Strabo and Mela (3, 3) place these 
Cirnbri to the north of the Elbe. Tacitus found them 
there in his own time. {Germ., c. 37.) Pliny gives 
a much more extensive signification to this name of 
Cirnbri; he would seem to make it a generic term. 
He not only, for example, recognises the Cirnbri of the 
present Jutland, but he speaks also of the Mediterra¬ 
nean Cirnbri (4, 3) in the vicinity of the Rhine, com¬ 
prehending, under this common appellation, various 
tribes which in other writers bear widely different 
names. These Cirnbri, inhabiting Jutland and the 
countries round about, were generally regarded as 
Gauls, that is to say, as belonging to one of the two 
races which then held possession of Gaul. Cicero, in 
speaking of the great invasion of Cirnbri, says in many 
places that Marius had conquered the Gauls. In like 
manner, Sallust {Bell. Jug., c. 114) makes C®pio, who 
was defeated by the Cirnbri, to have been so by Gauls. 
Most of the subsequent writers hold the same lan¬ 
guage : finally, the Cimbric buckler of Marius bore the 
figure of a Gaul. To this we may add, that Ceso-rix, 
Boio-rix, &c., names of chieftains in the Cimbric ar¬ 
my, are to all appearance Gallic appellations.—When 
we read the details of this terrible invasion, we are 
struck with the promptitude and facility with which 
the Cirnbri and Belg® came to an understanding and 
arranged matters among themselves, while all the ca¬ 
lamities of the inroad appear to have fallen on central 
and southern Gaul. Caesar informs us, that the Belo-ae 
vigorously sustained the first shock of the invaders, and 
arrested the torrent on their frontiers. This may all 
have been so ; but we see them almost immediately 
after entering into an agreement with each other. The 
Belgaa cede to the invaders one of their fortresses, 
Aduaticum, in which to deposite their baggage; and the 
Cirnbri, on their part, leave as a guard for their bag¬ 
gage, which contained all their riches, a body of only 
six thousand men, and continue on their way ; they 
must have been well assured, then, of the fidelity of the 
Belgae. . After the overthrow of the Cirnbri in Italy, 
the garrison of Aduaticum still remain in possession of 
the fortress and its territory, and become a Belgic tribe. 
When the Cirnbri wish to attack the province of Nar- 
bonne, they make an alliance with the Vole* Tecto- 
sages, a Belgic colony, while their proposals are re¬ 
jected by the other Gallic tribes. These facts, and 
many others that might be adduced, prove, that if there 
were a community of origin and language between the 
540 


Cirnbri and one of the races that dwelt in Gaul, it was 
more likely the race of which the Belgae formed a part 
than any of the Gallic ones. A remark of Tacitus 
sheds a new light on the subject. He states, that the 
Hilstii, a community dwelling in the vicinity of the 
Cirnbri, on the shores of the Baltic, and in all proba¬ 
bility belonging to the Cimbric race, spoke a language 
approximating closely to the insular Breton (“ linguae 
Britannicce propior,” Tac., Germ., c. 45). Now we 
have seen that the language of the Bretons was also 
that of the Belg® and of the Armoric tribes.—All the 
I ancient historians attribute to a Gallic army the inva¬ 
sion of Greece, in the years 279 and 280 B.C. Ap 
pian {Bell. Illyr., 4) calls these Gauls Cirnbri.—Again, 
the Gallic nations, whether pure, or intermingled with 
Sarmatian and German tribes, were numerous on the 
northern bank of the lower Danube and in the vicinity : 
the most famous of all, that of the Bastarn® {Tac., 
Germ., c. 46 .—Plin., 4, 12.— Liv., 34, 26.— Id., 30, 
50, seqq. — Polyb., excerpt., leg. 62), intermingled prob¬ 
ably with Sarmatians, dwelt between the Black Sea 
and the Carpathian Mountains. Mithradates, wishing 
to form a powerful league against Rome, addressed 
himself to this powerful nation. “ He sent,” says 
Justin (38, 3), “ ambassadors to the Cirnbri, Sarmat®, 
and Bastarn®.” It is evident, that the Cirnbri of Jut¬ 
land cannot here be meant, separated as they were from 
the King of Pontus by the whole extent of the Conti¬ 
nent of Europe, but those Cirnbri who dwelt in the vi¬ 
cinity of the Bastarn® and Sarmat®, and on whom had 
been reflected the glory gained by their brethren in 
Gaul and in Noricum. The existence of Cimbric na¬ 
tions, extending at various intervals from the lower 
Danube as far as the Elbe, would seem to establish the 
fact, that all the country between the Pontus Euxinus 
and the Ocean, following the courses of the rivers, was 
possessed by the race of the Cirnbri anterior to the in¬ 
crease and development of the Germanic race. 

Proofs drawn from National Traditions. 

There are few persons at the present day vv^io 
have not heard of those curious monuments, as well 
in prose as in verse, which compose the literature 
of the Welsh or Cymri, and which go back, almost 
without interruption, from the 16th to the 6th cen¬ 
tury of our era : a literature not less remarkable for 
the originality of its forms, than for the light which 
it throws upon the early history^of the Cymri. Con¬ 
tested at first with the greatest obstinacy by a spirit 
of criticism alike superficial and contemptuous, the 
authenticity of these ancient records is novv es¬ 
tablished beyond the possibility of doubt. (Consult 
Myvyrian, Archaeology of Wales. — Turner, Authen¬ 
ticity of the ancient British poems, Ac.) From the 
national traditions detailed in these early effusions, the 
following results may be established. 1. The duality 
of the two races is recognised by the Triads: the 
Gwyddelad (Gauls) who inhabit Alben are regarded 
as a stranger and hostile people. {Trioeddynys Pry- 
dain, n. 41.— Archaol. of Wales, vol. 2.)—-'2. The 
identity of the Armorican Belg® with the Cymric Brit¬ 
ons is also recognised ; the Armorican tribes are there 
designated as deriving their origin from the primitive 
race of the Cymri, and holding communication with 
them by the aid of one and the same language. (Tri- 
oed , 5.)—3. The Triads make the race oflhe Cymri 
to have come from that part of the land of Haf (the 
country of summer or of the south) called Deffroba- 
m, and where at present is Constantinople. (These 
words, “and where at present is Constantinople,” ap¬ 
pear to be the addition of some copyist; still they are 
not without value, as being founded on the traditions 
of the country.) “ They arrived at the foggy sea ” 
(the German Ocean), “and proceeded thence to Brit¬ 
ain and the country of Lydau” (Armorica), “ where 
they settled.” {Trioedd., n. 4 ) The bard Taliessir 










GALLIA. 


GALLIA. 


simply says, that the Cymri came from Asia. ( Welsh 
Archceol. , vol. 1, p. 76.) The Triads and Druidic 
bards agree in many particulars respecting the settle¬ 
ment of the Cymri on their arrival in Western Eu¬ 
rope. It was Hu, the powerful, who conducted them: 
a priest, a warrior, a legislator, and, after death, a god, 
he united in himself all the attributes requisite for the 
chief of a theocracy. Now we know that a part of the 
Gallic race was long subject to the theocratic govern¬ 
ment of the Druids. This name of Hu was not un¬ 
known to the Greeks and Romans, who give the ap¬ 
pellation of Heus and Hesus to one of the deities of 
Druidism.—The Irish have also their national tradi¬ 
tions, but so confused and evidently fabulous, that it 
would be improper to employ them on the present 
occasion. They contain, however, one thing which 
ought not to be omitted here, the mention of a people 
termed Bolg (Fir-Bolg), who came from the borders 
of the Rhine and conquered the south of Ireland. It 
is not difficult to recognise in these strangers a colo¬ 
ny of the Belgic Cymri, though nothing probable is 
stated respecting their history or their settlement.— 
Ammianus Marcellinus (15, 9), or rather Timagenes, 
whom he appears to be quoting, gives an ancient tra¬ 
dition of the Gallic Druids concerning the origin of the 
nations of Gaul. This tradition stated, that a part of 
the Gallic population was indigenous, but that another 
part had come from far distant islands and countries be¬ 
yond the Rhine, whence they had been driven by fre¬ 
quent wars and by inundations of the sea.—We find, 
then, in the traditional history of the Gauls, as well as 
in the testimony of foreign writers, and in the charac¬ 
ters of the languages spoken throughout the country, 
the fact well established of the division of the Gallic 
family into two distinct branches or races. 

General Conclusions. 

1. The Aquitani and Ligures, though inhabitants of 
Gaul, were not of Gallic blood, but belonged to the 
Iberian stock. 

2. The nations of Gallic blood were divided into 
two branches, the Galli and the Cymri. The relation¬ 
ship of these two branches to each other is confirmed 
by their idioms, their manners and customs, and their 
national characters in general. It becomes still more 
apparent, however, when we compare with them the 
other communities that dwelt in their vicinity, name¬ 
ly, the Iberians, the Italians, and the Germans. And 
yet there exists a sufficient diversity in their respective 
manners, idioms, and moral characters, to authorize 
us to trace a line of demarcation between these two 
branches, which is warranted also as well by their na¬ 
tional traditions as by the testimony of history. 

3. The origin of the Gallic race belongs to the 
East. Their language, their traditions, their history, 
in fine, point to Asia as the cradle of their nation. 
{Thierry, Histoire des Gaulois, vol. 1 , Introd., p. xii.- 
lxviii.) At what period, however, they left their pa¬ 
rent-home and commenced their migration to the West, 
is beyond the reach of positive history. On this 
point we are left in a great measure to our own con¬ 
jectures, although Linguistic, or the science of com¬ 
parative philology, furnishes us with aids to the prose¬ 
cution of this inquiry, by no means unimportant in 
their character. One thing, at least, is certain, from 
an attentive examination of the Celtic language, that 
the race who spoke this tongue came, first into the 
West., and in all probability was the first too that sep¬ 
arated from the parent stock. This circumstance, 
perhaps, may serve to explain why the Celtic idioms, 
along with the greatest richness in Indo-European 
radicals, display a less complete system of grammati¬ 
cal forms than most other branches of the same great 
family of languages; whether it be that, at the time of 
the Celtic separation from home, these grammatical 
forms had not yet reached their full number and de¬ 


velopment, or, what is more probable, that a longer pe 
riod of separation, than in the case of other races, has 
exercised a more injurious effect. Whichever of the 
two be the correct opinion, it is nevertheless apparent, 
that the analogies between the Celtic and Sanscrit 
carry us back to a period the earliest that we can 
reach by the aid of comparative philology, and furnish 
us hence with most important data for ascertaining, to 
what degree of development the mother-tongue itself 
had attained before the separation in question took 
place. Thus, for example, an examination of the Celtic 
idioms appears conclusively to show, that, at the time 
when this separation took place, the mother-tongue 
possessed already an entire system of euphonic laws, 
which the Sanscrit has preserved the best of any Indo- 
European tongue, and which it has, in fact, preserved 
so well, that certain anomalies of the Celtic still find 
their explanation in the euphonic rules of the sacred 
language of India. ( Pictet, de V Affnite des Langues 
Critiques avec le Sanscrit, p. 172.) 

General History of Gaul. 

The history of Gaul divides itself naturally into four 
periods. The first of these comprises the movements 
of the Gallic tribes while yet in their Nomadic state. 
None of the races of the West ever passed through a 
more agitated or brilliant career. Their course em¬ 
braced Europe, Asia, and Africa; their name is re¬ 
corded with terror in the annals of almost every na 
tion. They burned Rome ; they wrested Macedonia 
from the veteran legions of Alexander; they forced 
Thermopylae and pillaged Delphi; they then proceed¬ 
ed to pitch their tents on the plains of the Troad, in 
the public places of Miletus, on the borders of the 
Sangarius, and those of the Nile ; they besieged Car¬ 
thage, menaced Memphis, and numbered among their 
tributaries the most powerful monarch3 of the East; 
they founded in upper Italy a powerful empire, and in 
the bosom of Phrygia they reared another empire, that 
of Galatia, which for a long time exercised its sway 
over the whole of Lower Asia.—During the second 
period, that of their sedentary state, we see the gradual 
development of social, religious, and political institu¬ 
tions, conformable to their peculiar character as a 
people ; institutions original in their nature ; a civili¬ 
zation full of movement and of life, of which Trans¬ 
alpine Gaul offers the purest and most complete 
model. One might say, in following the animated 
scenes of this picture, that the theocracy of India, the 
feudal system of the middle ages, and the Athenian 
democracy, had met on the same soil for the pur¬ 
pose of contending with each other and reigning by 
turns. Soon this civilization undergoes a change; 
foreign elements are introduced, brought in by com¬ 
merce, by the relations of neighbourhood, by reaction 
from subjugated nations. Hence arose multiplied and 
often whimsical combinations. In Italy it is the Ro¬ 
man influence that exerts itself on the manners and 
institutions of the Gauls ; in the south of Gaul it is 
that of the Massiliots ; while in Phrygia we have a 
most singular compound of Gallic, Grecian, and Phry¬ 
gian civilization.—To this succeeds the third period 
in the history of the Gallic race, that of national strug¬ 
gles and subjugation. By a singular coincidence, it 
is always by the Roman sword that the power of the 
Gallic tribes is destined to fall; in proportion as the 
Roman dominion extends, that of the Gauls recedes 
and declines. It would seem, indeed, that the victors 
and the vanquished, in the battle on the banks of the Al- 
lia, followed each other over the whole earth to decide 
the ancient quarrel of the Capitol. In Italy, the Cis¬ 
alpine Gauls were reduced, but only after two centu¬ 
ries of obstinate resistance. When the rest of Asia 
had submitted to the yoke, the Galatm still defend¬ 
ed against Rome the independence of the East. Gau. 
eventually fell, but through complete exhaustion, after 

541 






GAL 


GAL 


a century of partial conflicts and nine years of general 
war under Caesar. In fine, the names of Caractacus 
and Galgacus shed a splendour on the last and ineffect¬ 
ual efforts of British freedom. It is everywhere an 
unequal conflict between ardent and undisciplined val¬ 
our on the one hand, and cool and steady perseverance 
on the other.—The fourth period comprehends the or¬ 
ganization of Gaul into a Roman province, and the 
gradual assimilation of transalpine manners to the cus¬ 
toms and institutions of Italy ; a work commenced by 
Augustus and completed by Claudius. ( Thierry, 
Histoire des Gaulois, vol. 1, Introd., p. vi., scqq.) 

Gallia Cisalpina, Gaul this side of the Alps, with 
reference to Rome, a name given to the northern part 
of Italy, as occupied by the Gallic tribes which had 
poured over the Alps into this extensive tract of coun¬ 
try. Livy assigns to these migrations of the Gauls as 
early a date as the reign of Tarquinius Priscus, that 
is, about 600 B.C. Having securely established them¬ 
selves in their new possessions, they proceeded to 
make farther inroads into various parts of Italy, and 
thus came into contact with the forces of Rome. 
More than two hundred years had elapsed from the 
time of their first invasion, when they totally defeated 
the Roman army on the banks of the Allia, and became 
masters of Rome itself. The defence of the Capitol 
and the exploits of Camillus (Liv., 5, 47, seqq.), or, ra- 
her, if Polybius be correct (2, 18), the gold of the van¬ 
quished, and the dangers which threatened the Gauls at 
home, preserved the state. From that time, the Gauls, 
though they continued, by frequent incursions, to threat¬ 
en, and even ravage, the territory of Rome, could make 
no impression on that power. Though leagued with 
the Samnites and Etruscans, they were almost always 
unsuccessful. Defeated at Sentium in Umbria, near 
the Lake Vadimonis in Etruria, and in a still more de¬ 
cisive action near the port of Telamo in the same 
province ( Polyb ., 2, 19, seqq.), they soon found them¬ 
selves forced to contend, not for conquest, but for 
existence. The same ill success, however, attended 
their efforts in their own territory. The progress of the 
Roman arms was irresistible ; the Gauls were beaten 
back from the Adriatic to the Po, from the Po to the 
Alps, and soon beheld Roman colonies established and 
flourishing in many of the towns which had so lately 
been theirs. Notwithstanding these successive disas¬ 
ters, their spirit, though curbed, was still unsubdued; 
and when the enterprise of Hannibal afforded them an 
opportunity of retrieving their losses and wreaking their 
vengeance on the foe, they eagerly embraced it. & It is 
to their zealous co-operation that Polybius ascribes in 
a great degree the primary success of that expedition. 
By the efficient aid which they afforded Hannibal, he 
was enabled to commence operations immediately af¬ 
ter he had set foot in Italy, and to follow up his ear¬ 
ly success with promptitude and vigour. ( Polybius , 

3, 66.) As long as that great commander maintained 
his ground and gave employment to all the forces of 
the enemy, the Gauls remained unmolested, and en¬ 
joyed their former freedom, without being much bur¬ 
dened by a war which was waged at a considerable 
distance from their borders. But when the tide of 
success had again changed in favour of Rome, and 
the defeat of Hasdrubal, together with other disasters, 
had paralyzed the efforts of Carthage, they once more 
saw their frontiers menaced; Gaul still offered some 
resistance, even after that humbled power had been 
obliged to sue for peace ; but it was weak and una¬ 
vailing ; and about twelve years after the termination 
of the second Punic war, it was brought under en¬ 
tire subjection, and became a Roman province. ( Car - 
ii, Antichita Italiche, vol. 2, p. 5.) Under this de¬ 
nomination it continued to receive various accessions 
of territory, as the Romans extended their dominions 
towards the Alps, till it comprised the whole of that 
portion of Italy which lies between those mountains 
542 


and the rivers Magra and Rubicon. It was some¬ 
times known by the name of Gallia Togata {Mela, 2, 
4.— Plin., 3, 14), to distinguish it from Transalpine 
Gaul, to which the name of Gallia Comata was applied. 
( Cic ., Phil., 8, 9.) This latter name refers to the 
Gallic custom of wearing the hair long. The epithet 
Togata alludes to the circumstance of the rights of 
citizenship having been conferred on the natives of 
the country. The towns of Cisalpine Gaul obtained 
the privileges of Latin cities, and, consequently, the 
right of wearing the Roman toga , by a law of Pom- 
peius Strabo ( Ascon . com. in Or. in Pison ., p. 490), 
about 665 A.U.C.—According to Polybius, Cisalpine 
Gaul was included in the figure of a triangle, which 
had the Alps and Apennines for two of its sides, and 
the Adriatic, as far as the city of Sena Gallica, for the 
base. This is, however, but a rough sketch, which 
requires a more accurate delineation. The following 
limits will be found sufficiently correct to answer ev¬ 
ery purpose. The river Orgus, Orca, will define the 
frontier of Cisalpine Gaul to the northwest, as far as 
its junction with the Po, which river will then serve 
as a boundary on the side of Liguria, till it receives 
the Tidone on its right bank. Along this small stream 
we may trace the western limit, up to its source in 
the Apennines, and the southern along that chain to 
the river Rubicon. To the north, a line drawn nearly 
parallel with the Alps across the great Italian lakes 
will serve to separate Gaul from Rhsetia and other Al¬ 
pine districts. The Athesis, Adige, from the point 
where it meets that line, and subsequently the Po, 
will distinguish it on the east and south from Venetia, 
and the Adriatic will close the last side of this irregular 
figure. The character which is given us of this por¬ 
tion of Italy by the writers of antiquity is that of the 
most fertile and productive country imaginable. Po¬ 
lybius describes it as abounding in wine, corn, and 
every kind of grain. Innumerable herds of swine, 
both for public and private supply, were bred in its 
forests ; and such was the abundance of provisions 
of every kind, that travellers when at an inn did not 
find it necessary to agree on the price of any article 
which they required, but paid so much for the whole 
amount of what was furnished them ; and this charge, 
at the highest, did not exceed half a Roman as. (Po¬ 
lyb., 2, 15.) As a proof of the richness of this coun¬ 
try, Strabo remarks, that it surpassed all the rest oi 
Italy in the number of large and opulent towns which 
it contained. The wool grown here was of the finest 
and softest quality; and so abundant was the supply 
of wine, that the wooden vessels in which it was com 
monly stowed were of the size of houses. ( Strabo , 
218.) Lastly, Cicero styles it the flower of Italy, the 
support of the empire of the Roman people, the or¬ 
nament of its dignity. (Phil., 3, 5. — Cramer's An - 
dent Italy, vol. 1, p. 40, seqq.) 

Gallienus, Publius Licinius, son of the Emperoi 
Valerian, was made Ccesar, and colleague to his father, 
A.D. 253. He defeated, in a great battle near Mediola¬ 
num (Milan), the Alemanni and other northern tribes, 
which had made an irruption into Upper Italy, and 
gave evidence on that occasion of his personal bravery 
and abilities. He was also well-informed in literature, 
and was both an orator and a poet. When Valerian was 
taken prisoner by the Persians, A.D. 260, Gallienus 
took the reins of government, and was acknowledged 
as Augustus. He appears to have given himself up to 
debauchery and the company of profligate persons, neg¬ 
lecting the interests of the empire, and taking no pains 
to effect the release of his father from his hard captiv¬ 
ity, in which he died. The barbarians attacked the 
empire on every side, revolts broke out in various prov¬ 
inces, where several commanders assumed the title of 
emperor, w'hile Gallienus was loitering at Rome with 
his favourites. Vet now and then he seemed to awa¬ 
ken from his torpor, at the news of the advance of the 






GAL 


GALLOGR^ECIA. 


invaders; and, putting himself at the head of the le¬ 
gions, he defeated Ingenus, who had usurped the im¬ 
perial title in Illyricum. But he disgraced his victory 
by horrible cruelties. Meantime Probus, Aurelianus, 
and other able commanders, were strenuously sup- 
Dorting the honour of the Roman arms in the East, 
where Odenatus, prince of Palmyra, acted as a useful 
ally to the Romans against the Persians. Usurpers 
arose in Egypt, in the Gauls, in Thrace, in almost 
every province of the empire, from which circumstance 
this period has been styled the reign of the thirty ty¬ 
rants. At last Aureolus, a man of obscure birth, some 
say a Dacian shepherd originally, but a brave soldier, 
was proclaimed emperor by the troops in Illyricum, en¬ 
tered Italy, took possession of Mediolanum, and even 
marched against Rome while Gallienus was absent. 
Gallienus returned quickly, repulsed Aureolus, and de¬ 
feated him in a great battle, near the Addua, after 
which the usurper shut himself up in Mediolanum. 
Here he was besieged by Gallienus ; but, during the 
siege, the emperor was murdered by some conspira¬ 
tors. ( Aurel . Viet., c. 33.— Eutrop., 9, 8.-— Zona- 
ras , 12, 24, seqg.) 

Gallinaria Sylva, a wood in Campania, near Li- 
ternum, that furnished timber for the fleet with which 
Sextus Pompeius infested the coasts of the Mediter¬ 
ranean. ( Strabo , 243.) Juvenal mentions the spot 
as a noted haunt of robbers and assassins. (Sat., 3, 
305.) Cicero leads us to suppose that this wood lay 
on the road from Sinuessa to Naples. (Ad Fam., 9, 
23.) It is now called Pineta di Castel Volturno. 
(Pratilli della Via Appia, p. 183.) 

Gallogr^cia or Galatia, an extensive country of 
Asia Minor, occupied by a horde of Gauls. This re¬ 
gion being merely a dismembered portion of ancient 
Phrygia, it will only be necessary here, in inquiring 
into its former history, to account for its being occu¬ 
pied by the Gauls or Gallo-Grseci, from whom its new 
appellations were derived. We collect from Polybius 
and Livy (the latter of whom, however, only copies 
from the former), that this Asiatic colony was, in fact, 
bu-t a detachment of those vast hordes which had wan¬ 
dered from Gaul under the conduct of Brennus, and 
with which that leader had invaded Greece. On their 
irrival in Dardania, a dispute arose between some of 
the chiefs and the principal commander, when the dis¬ 
contented troops, to the number of 20,000, determined 
to abandon the main body, and seek their fortunes else¬ 
where, under the direction of Leonorius and Lutarius. 
They traversed the plains of Thrace, and, encamping 
near Byzantium, were for a time the bane and terror 
of the citizens, by the devastations they committed, 
md the galling tribute they imposed. At length, how- 
wer, tempted by the beautiful aspect of the shores of 
Asia, and the reputed wealth and fertility of that coun¬ 
try, they were easily induced to listen to the offers of 
Nicomedes, king of Bithynia, for entering into his ser¬ 
vice. They accordingly crossed the Bosporus, and 
having joined the troops of Nicomedes, were of great 
assistance to him in his wars with Ziboetes. They 
now obtained a firm footing in Asia Minor; and, though 
not more than 20,000 men, and of these not more than 
one half furnished with arms, they spread alarm and 
consternation throughout the peninsula, and compelled 
whole provinces and even empires to pay them tribute. 
They even proceeded to divide the whole of Asia Mi¬ 
nor among their three tribes, allotting to each a por¬ 
tion on which it was to levy impositions. The Hel¬ 
lespont, was assigned to the Trocmi, iEolis and Ionia 
to the Tolistoboii, and the interior of the peninsula to 
the Tectosages. The settled abode, however, of the 
three tribes was in the country between the Sangarius 
and Halys, which they had seized, without resistance 
or difficulty, from the unwarlike Phrygians. As their 
numbers increased, they became more formidable, and 
also more imperious in their exactions; so that at 


length even the kings of Syria thought it prudent to 
comply with their demands. Attalus, king of Perga 
mus, was the only sovereign who had the resolution 
to refuse at length to submit to this ignominious ex¬ 
tortion. He met the barbarians in the field, and, sec¬ 
onded by the bravery of his troops, obtained a victory 
over these Gallo-Grseci, as they were now called, from 
their intermixture with the Greeks of Phrygia and 
Bithynia. (Liv., 38, 16.) Prusias, king of Bithynia, 
not long after, cut to pieces another body of Gauls, 
and freed the Hellespont from their depredations. 
(Polyb., 5, 111.) These, however, were only partial 
advantages, and the Gauls remained the terror and ty¬ 
rants of Asia Minor, so says, at least, the Roman his¬ 
torian, till the war with Antiochus brought the Roman 
armies into Asia. The victory of Magnesia having 
driven that monarch across the range of Taurus, there 
remained the Gallo-Graeci only between the Romans 
and the entire possession of the peninsula. There 
wanted but a slight pretext to justify an invasion of 
these barbarous hordes in their own fastnesses. It 
was asserted that they had aided Antiochus in the cam¬ 
paign which had just terminated; and on this pretence 
war was declared against them, and the consul Manli¬ 
us was ordered to march into their country, and re¬ 
duce them by force of arms. That general, being 
joined by Attalus, brother of Eumenes, king of Perga- 
mus, with a select body of troops, defeated the Tolis¬ 
toboii and Trocmi with prodigious slaughter, and by a 
victory over the Tectosages, no less decisive than the 
former, terminated the war ; the small remnant of the 
Gauls being content to sue for peace on any condi¬ 
tions. The Roman senate, satisfied with having bro¬ 
ken the power of the Gallo-Grseci, allowed them to re¬ 
tain possession of their country, on condition of giving 
no offence to Eumenes, king of Pergamns, who might 
be considered as their lieutenant in Asia, and forsaking 
their former wandering and marauding habits. Previ¬ 
ously, as Strabo informs us, the whole of Galatia had 
been divided into four parts, each governed by a sep¬ 
arate chief named tetrarch. Each tetrarch had under 
him a judge and military commander, who appointed 
two lieutenants. These collectively had the power ol 
assembling the general council, which met in a spot 
called Drynemetum, and consisted of 300 members. 
This assembly decided only criminal cases : all other 
business was transacted by the tetrarchs and judges. 
Subsequently the number of tetrarchs was reduced to 
three, and finally to one. The latter change was 
made by the Romans in favour of Deiotarus, who had 
rendered their arms essential service in the Mithra- 
datic war (Appian, Bell. Mithr., 114), and who is so 
often mentioned by Cicero in terms' of the greatest 
esteem and friendship. (Vid. Deiotarus.) On his 
death, which took place at an advanced age, part ol 
his principality was annexed to Paphlagonia and Pon- 
tus under Polemo; and part to the dominions of 
Amyntas, chief of Lycaonia. On the demise of the 
latter, the whole of Galatia came into the possession of 
the Romans, and formed one province of their vast em¬ 
pire. (Strab., 566.— Plin., 5, 32.) —Though inter¬ 
mixed with Greeks, the Galatasans retained throughout 
their original tongue, since we are assured by St. Je¬ 
rome that in his day they spoke the same language as 
the Treviri in Gaul. (Prolegom. in Epist. ad Gala-. 
tas.) Neither did they entirely lose their original sim¬ 
plicity of manners ; for Cicero, in his defence of Deio¬ 
tarus (c. 9), praises him as an extensive cultivator and 
breeder of cattle. Less effeminate also and debased 
by superstition than the natives of Phrygia, they were 
more ready to embrace the tidings of salvation brought 
to them by the great Apostle of the Gentiles. The 
ecclesiastical notices assign sixteen bishoprics to Ga¬ 
latia, under two divisions ; one called Galatia Con 
sularis, the other Salutaris. (Hieroc., p. 696.)—No 
ancient geographer has laid down with accuracy the 

543 



GAL 


GALLUS. 


limits of Gallo-Graecia. It is known generally, that to 
the west it bordered upon Phrygia Epictetus, and a 
portion of Bithynia, north of the Sangarius: on the 
north it ranged along the Bithynian and Paphlagonian 
chains, till it met the Halys, which separated it from 
Cappadocia towards the east: on the south it was con¬ 
tiguous to Lycaonia and part of Pisidia, till it met 
again the Phrygian frontier, somewhere between the 
sources of the Sangarius and Alander on the north. 
( Cramer's Asia Minor , vol. 2, p. 79, seqq.) 

Gallus, I. Caius or Cnasus Sulpitius, was consul 
B.C. 166. His name is honourably connected with 
the history of ancient science, since he may be regard¬ 
ed as the first individual among the Romans that turn¬ 
ed his attention to astronomical studies. Livy states, 
that, when a tribune in the army of Paulus HEmilius 
in Macedon, he foretold an eclipse of the moon, first 
to the consul, and then, with his leave, to the Roman 
* army. The eclipse took place on the evening before 
the great battle of Pydna, and the Romans, being pre¬ 
pared for it, were under no alarm, while their oppo¬ 
nents were terrified, and deemed it an omen of the fall 
of their king Perses. (Liv., 44,37.—Compare Cic., 
de Senect., 16.) The date of this eclipse was 168 
B.C. Now as the tables of Hipparchus only began 
with 162 B.C., Gallus must have availed himself of 
some (probably Oriental) mode earlier than that of 
Hipparchus, but which has not come down to us. A 
passage in Pliny (2, 19) would seem to have reference 
to a work composed by Gallus, which may have been a 
treatise on eclipses, and such, indeed, is the opinion of 
Hardouin (Ad Plin., 1. c.). Cicero praises the as¬ 
tronomical knowledge of Gallus (de Senect ,, 16), and 
Livy, Valerius Maximus, and Frontinus have not for¬ 
gotten his name. He is said to have repudiated his 
wife because she appeared on one occasion in public 
without a veil. (Val. Max., 6, 3, 10.)—II. Cornelius, 
a dist .nguished Roman, ranked among the chief of the 
Latin elegiac writers, and compared by Quintilian with 
Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid. He was born of poor 
and ignoble parents, A.U.C. 685. Forum Julii is said 
to have been the place of his birth (Chron. Euseb.), 
but there were two towns of that name within the 
boundaries of the Roman empire. The one, since call¬ 
ed Friuli , lay within the district of that name ; the other 
(now Frejus , in Provence) was situate on the south¬ 
ern coast of the Roman province of Gallia Narbonen- 
sis. Some writers have fixed on the former as the 
birthplace of Gallus (Hist. Lit. Aquileiensis, lib. 1, 8. 
— Liruti, Notiz. dell' Vite ed Of ere de Let. de Friuli, 
vol. 1, p. 2.— Tiraboschi, vol. 1, pt. 1, lib. 3, 1), but a 
greater number have maintained that he was a native of 
Frejus. (Hist. Litt. de la France, far les Benedictins. 
— Fuhrmann, Handbuch , &c., p. 286.— Harles, In- 
trod. in Not. Lit. Rom., vol. 1, p. 333. — Muller, Ein- 
leitung, vol. 2, p. 232.) The Eusebian chronicle is 
the authority which places his birth at Forum Julii; 
but, owing to a corruption in some of the manuscripts 
of that chronicle, Forum Livii being substituted in its 
room, a few writers have supposed that he was born 
at that town, now Forli, in the Romagna. (Flavius 
Blondus, Ital. lllustrdta. — Morgagni, Ogusc. Miscell.) 
From the obscurity of his birth and of his original sit¬ 
uation, little is known concerning the early years of 
Gallus. He is first mentioned in history as accompany¬ 
ing Octavius when he marched to Rome, after the bat¬ 
tle of Modena, to demand the consulship. He had 
soon so far ingratiated himself with this leader, that we 
find him among the number of his advisers after the 
battle of Philippi, and counselling him, along with 
Maecenas, to write in gentle terms to the senate, with 
assurances that he would offer no violence to the city, 
but would regulate all things with clemency and mod¬ 
eration. On the partition of the lands which followed 
the defeat of Brutus, Gallus was appointed to collect, 
from the cantons on the banks of the Po, a tribute 
544 


which had been imposed on the inhabitants in place ol 
depriving them of their lands. When the young tri¬ 
umvir became the undisputed master of the western 
half of the Roman empire, he raised Gallus to the high¬ 
est honours of the state ; and when he meditated the 
appropriation of the eastern half likewise, he invested 
him with an important military command. After the 
battle of Aclium, he was opposed to Antony in person 
on the invasion of Egypt; and while Augustus took 
possession of Pelusium, its eastern key, Gallus was 
employed to make himself master of Parcetonium, 
which was considered its western barrier. Gallus 
proved eminently successful in this enterprise. He 
thwarted all the attempts of Antony to shake the fidel¬ 
ity of the soldiers, many of whom had at one time 
served under that leader; and by a skilful stratagem 
he surprised and destroyed a number of vessels which 
belonged to his adversary. When Augustus, having 
at length encamped near Alexandrea, received intelli¬ 
gence that Antony had laid violent hands on himself, 
he despatched Proculeius to the city, in order, if pos¬ 
sible, to save the treasures and get Cleopatra alive into 
his power. But she refused to confer with this emis¬ 
sary otherwise than from within the monument she 
had constructed, Proculeius standing without the gate, 
which was strongly barred. Having heard her propo¬ 
sals and observed the situation of the place, Proculei¬ 
us returned and made his report to Augustus. It was 
then that Gallus undertook to perform a part still more 
perfidious and despicable. He adduced to the gate 
of the monument, and contrived to lengthen out a con¬ 
ference with the queen, till Proculeius, in the mean 
while, having fixed his scaling-ladders to the walls, en¬ 
tered the tower by one of the windows, and then de¬ 
scended to the gate where Cleopatra was discoursing 
with his coadjutor. She immediately turned round 
from Gallus, and, seeing that she was thus surprised, 
attempted to stab herself, but Proculeius wrested the 
dagger from her hands.—Egypt having been reduced 
to complete submission, its conqueror directed his 
whole attention towards the administration of its in 
ternal affairs. Its importance as the granary from 
which Italy derived the chief supplies of corn, its 
wealth, its population, and the levity of its inhabitants, 
all contributed to render this recent acquisition a sub¬ 
ject of much care and solicitude to Augustus. He 
considered it inexpedient to allow any native assembly 
or council to meet. He even thought it dangerous to 
permit any authority to be exercised over this realm 
by the Roman senate ; and he accordingly took into 
his own hands the whole administration, which, on his 
return to Rome, he determined to devolve on a vice 
roy, supported by a great military force stationed in 
different parts of the kingdom. Gallus was the per¬ 
son whom he first invested with this prefecture ; and 
his long-tried fidelity, his attachment to his master, 
and his talent for conciliation, gave every prospect of 
a government which would be exercised with advan¬ 
tage to the prince who trusted him, and the people 
who were confided to his care ; and so long as he act 
ed under the direction of Augustus, he manifested no 
defect either in capacity or zeal. He opened new 
conduits from the Nile, and caused the old channels 
to be cleared ; he restored the vigour of the laws, pro¬ 
tected commerce, and encouraged arts ; and he found¬ 
ed another Alexandrean library, the former magnificent 
collection of books having been in part destroyed by 
fire in the time of Julius Csesar. By these means 
Egypt f° r a while enjoyed, under the government of 
Gallus, a prosperity and happiness to which she had 
long been a stranger during the sway of the Ptolemies. 
But the termination of the rule of this first prefect of 
Egypt did not correspond with its auspicious' com¬ 
mencement. Elated with power, he soon forgot the 
respect that was due to his benefactor. He ascribed 
everything to his own merit, erecting statues to himselt 






GALLUS. 


GALLUS. 


throughout all Egypt, and engraving a record of his 
exploits on the pyramids. In unguarded hours, and 
when under the influence of the double intoxication of 
prosperity and wine, he applied to his master the most 
opprobrious and insulting expressions. ( Dio Cass., 
53, 23.) Indiscretion and vanity were quickly fol¬ 
lowed by acts of misgovernment and rapine. He 
plundered the ancient city of Thebes, and stripped it 
of its principal ornaments ( Ammianus Marccll., 16, 4), 
and he is even said, though on no very certain au¬ 
thority, to have filled up the measure of his offences 
by conspiring against the life of the emperor. In con¬ 
sequence of his misconduct, and of those unguard¬ 
ed expressions, which were probably conveyed to his 
master, with exaggeration, by some false friend or 
enemy, he was recalled in the fifth year of his gov¬ 
ernment ; and immediately after his return to Rome, 
one of his most intimate friends, called Largus, stood 
forth as his accuser. Augustus, in the mean while, 
forbade him his presence ; and the charges, which now 
multiplied from every quarter, were brought before the 
senate. Though Gallus had many friends among the 
poets, he had few among the senators. No one could 
refuse verses to Gallus, but a fair hearing was proba¬ 
bly denied him. He was sentenced to perpetual exile, 
and his whole property was confiscated. ( Dio Cass., 
53, 23.) Unable to endure the humiliation, which 
presented such a contrast to his former brilliant for¬ 
tune, he terminated his existence by a voluntary death. 
This sad conclusion to his once prosperous career took 
place A.U.C. 727, when he was in the forty-third year 
of his age. Augustus is said to have mourned the 
death which his severity had thus occasioned ; and 
Suetonius, in the life of that emperor (c. 66), has de¬ 
scribed the feelings which he expressed on receiving 
intelligence of his melancholy fate. But his sorrow 
probably was not sincere ; and, if we may believe 
Donatus, he ungenerously carried his resentment so far 
beyond the tomb, as to command Virgil to expunge 
an eulogy on Gallus, which he had introduced near 
the conclusion of the Georgies, and to substitute in its 
place the story of Aristaeus and the bees, which, how¬ 
ever beautiful in itself, does not compensate for the 
loss of the poet’s delineation of an eminent friend, by 
whom he was warmly patronised, and whom, in re¬ 
turn, he warmly loved.—The guilt or the misfortunes 
of Gallus as a statesman have been long since forgot¬ 
ten, and he is now remembered only as a distinguished 
patron of learning, and as an elegant poet. . Gallus 
was the friend of Pollio and Maecenas, and rivalled 
them, through life, as an eminent promoter of the in¬ 
terests of literature. He protected Parthenius Nice- 
nus, a Greek author, who had been brought to Rome 
during the Mithradatic war, and who inscribed to him 
his collection of amorous mythological stories, entitled 
II epl kpuTLKtiv TraOpfiarcov, declaring, in his dedica¬ 
tion, that he addressed the work to Gallus, as likely to 
furnish incidents which might be employed by him in 
the poems he was then writing. But Gallus is best 
known to posterity as the patron of Virgil, whom he 
introduced to the notice of Maecenas, and as also in¬ 
strumental in obtaining for him restitution of his farm, 
after the partition of the lands among the soldiery. 
( Probus, Vit. Virg.) In gratitude for these and other 
favours conferred on him, the Mantuan bard has in¬ 
troduced an elegant compliment to Gallus in the sixth 
eclogue ; and has devoted the tenth to the celebration 
of his passion for Lycoris. The real name of this fe¬ 
male is said to have been Cytheris. ( Servius , ad 
Virg., Eclog., 10.) She^was an actress of Mimes, 
who to exquisite beauty joined all the accomplish¬ 
ments of her profession. Besides having engaged the 
affections of Gallus, she had captivated Antony, and 
is said in her earlier years to have touched the heart 
of Brutus. The passion of Gallus may be supposed 
to have been at its height when Virgil wrote his tenth 
Z z z 


eclogue, A.U.C. 716, at which .period Gallus was 
about thirty years of age. At this time Cytheris had 
forsaken him for a rival, who was then engaged in a 
military expedition on the other side of the Alps, ana 
she had even accompanied her new lover to that in¬ 
hospitable region.—The elegies of Gallus confuted 
of four books, but they have now all perished; (.hey 
were held, however, in high estimation so long ai they 
survived. Ovid speaks of Tibullus as the successor 
of Gallus, and as his companion in the Elysian fields 
(Am., 3, 9) ; and he oftener than once alludes to the 
extensive celebrity which his verses had procured for 
him as well as to his mistress. (Am., 1 , 15.) Quin¬ 
tilian ranks him as an elegiac poet with Tibullus and 
Propertius, though he thinks his style was somewhat 
harsher than that of either. Besides the four books 
of elegies, Gallus translated or imitated from the Greek 
of Euphorion a poem on the Grynean grove, written 
in the manner of Hesiod. He likewise translated from 
the same Euphorion a number of ancient mythological 
fables, such as the stories of Scylla and Philomela. 
Gallus also wrote a number of epigrams.—The four 
elegies, which were first published in the year 1500 
by Pomponius Gauricus, as the work of Cornelius 
Gallus, are generally supposed to have been written 
by Maximianus Gallus, who lived in the reign of An- 
astasius. They are chiefly filled with complaints of 
the miseries and deprivations of extreme old age, a 
theme not likely to be chosen by Gallus, who died at 
the age of forty-two. Aldus Manutius, the son of 
Paullus, published another elegy, under the name of 
Asinius Gallus, the son of Pollio, whom he appears 
to have confounded with Cornelius Gallus. Though 
superior to the others in point of poetical style, it has 
no better claims to authenticity. (Dunlop, Hist. Rom. 
Lit., vol. 3, p. 429, seqq.) The best edition of the 
pieces and fragments attributed to Gallus is that of 
Wernsdorff in the Poetce LatiniMinores. — III. iEli .s, 
the first and the only Roman that ever penetrated w th 
an army into the interior of Arabia. He was of 
equestrian rank, and was appointed by Augustus im¬ 
perial procurator in Egypt. The Arabians of that day 
had accumulated great riches by the trade with India. 
This excited the cupidity of the Romans, and iElius 
Gallus was sent to subdue them. The expedition, 
however, signally failed, in consequence of the treach¬ 
ery of SyllaBUs, the commander of the Arabian auxil¬ 
iaries who formed part of the Roman force. This 
leader, influenced by patriotic motives, guided the ar¬ 
my of the invaders into sandy deserts, from which they 
were glad to retreat with considerable loss. The fleet, 
in like manner, which accompanied the expedition, 
was led into shoals where a large number of vessels 
were lost. Syllaeus paid for his patriotic treachery 
with his life. An account of the whole affair is giver, 
by Strabo, who was the intimate friend of Gallus. 
(Strab., 779, seqq.) Pliny and Dio Cassius also fur¬ 
nish us with information on this subject which is not 
contained in the narrative of Strabo. (Dio Cass., 53, 
29.) Great difficulty arises, however, in attempting 
to adopt the accounts which we thus obtain with the 
state of geographical knowledge at the present day 
(Consult Gossellin, Recherches, vol. 2, p. 116.— D 
Sacy, Mem. de VAcad. dcs Inscr., &c., vol. 48, p. 514. 
— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, p. 116, seqq.) Aalesius 
(Valois), Burmann, and Simson have noticed the errai 
of Casaubon (ad Strab., 1. c.), who confounds this yEli 
us Gallus with Cornelius Gallus the poet.—IV. Fla 
vius Claudius Constantinus, brother of the Emperor 
Julian, and nephew to Constantine the Great. In 
351 A.D., Constantius, the son of Constantine, granted 
him the dignity of Caesar, and sent him to Antioch. 
But the power with which he was invested called fortl 
nothing but vice, and Constantius having recalled him, 
A.D. 354, caused him to be put to death in orison, a 
the age of twenty-nine. 


545 





GAN 


GAR 


G^wgaridyE, a people near the mouths of the Gan¬ 
ges. Ptolemy assigns them a capital, called Ganga 
Regia, on the western side of the Ganges, which 
D’Anville places in latitude 24° 50', and makes the 
site to coincide with that of Raji-mohol. The Gan- 
garidae were allies of the Prasii, who lay nearer the 
Indus towards the northwest. The united forces of 
these two nations awaited the army of Alexander on 
the other side of the Hyphasis ; but report made them 
so formidable for numbers and valour, that the wearied 
and alarmed Macedonians refused to cross the stream, 
in spite of all the efforts and remonstrances of their 
king. (Justin, 12, 8.— Curt., 9, 2.— Virg., 2En„ 3, 
27.) 

Ganges, a famous river of India, which, in the lan¬ 
guage of Hindustan, is called Padda, and is also 
named Burra Gonga, or the Great River, and Gonga, 
or the river, by way of eminence ; and hence the Eu¬ 
ropean name of the stream is derived. The Sanscrit 
name of the Ganges (Padda) signifies foot, because 
the Brahmins, in their fabulous legends, make the 
river to flow from the foot of Beschan, who is the 
same with Vischnou, or the preserving deity. This 
great stream, together with the Burrampooter, whose 
twin-sister it has not unaptly been denominated, has 
its source in the vast mountains of Thibet. It seeks 
the plains of Hindustan by the west, and pursues the 
early part of its course through rugged valleys and de¬ 
files. After wandering about eight hundred miles 
through these mountainous regions, it issues forth a 
deity to the superstitious yet gladdened Hindu. This 
river was unknown to Herodotus, as he does not men¬ 
tion it, though it became famous in a century after¬ 
ward. Its source was for a long period involved in 
obscurity. A survey, however, has been recently made 
by the British-Indian government, and it has been 
found to issue in a small stream, under the name of 
Bhagirathy, from under a mass of perpetual snow, ac¬ 
cumulated on the southern side of the Himmaleh 
Mountains, between 31° and 32° north latitude, and 
78° and 79° east longitude. It is computed to be 
1500 miles in length, and at five hundred miles from 
its mouth is, during the rainy season, four miles broad 
and sixty feet deep. Its principal tributaries are the 
Jumna, the Gogra, and the Burrampooter. The whole 
number of streams which flow into it are eleven. 
About two hundred miles from the sea, the Delta of 
the Ganges commences by the dividing of the river. 
Two branches, the Cossimbazzar and the Iellinghy, 
are given off to the west. These unite to form the 
Hoogley, or Bhagirathy, on which the port of Calcutta 
is situated. It is the ouly branch commonly navi¬ 
gated by ships, and in some years it is not navigable 
for two or three months. The only secondary branch 
which is at all navigable for boats, is the Chandah 
River. That part of the Delta which borders on the sea 
is composed of a labyrinth of creeks and rivers, called 
the Sunderbunds, with numerous islands, covered with 
the profuse and rank vegetation called jungle, afford¬ 
ing haunts to numerous tigers. These branches oc¬ 
cupy an extent of two hundred miles along shore. 
The Ganges rises fifteen feet by the end of June, 
owing to the heavy rains. The remainder of its rise, 
which is in all thirty-two feet, is occasioned by the 
rains which fall in Bengal. By the end of July, all 
the lower parts of the country adjoining the Ganges, 
as well as the Burrampooter, are overflowed for a 
width of one hundred miles, nothing appearing but 
villages, trees, and the sites of some places that 
have been deserted. The line of the Ganges which 
lies between Gangotreq, or the source of the leading 
stream, and Sagor island, below Calcutta, is held 
particularly sacred. The main body, which goes east 
to join the Brahmapootra , is not regarded with equal 
veneiation. Wherever the river happens to run from 
bov th to norti, contrary to its usual direction, it is 
546 


considered peculiarly holy. The places most super 
stitiously revered are the junctions of rivers, called 
Prayags, the principal of which is that of the Jumna 
with the Ganges at Allahabad. In the British courts 
of justice, the water of the Ganges is used for swear¬ 
ing Hindus, as the Koran is for Mohammedans, and 
the Gospel for Christians. (Malte-Brun, Geogr., vol. 
3, p. 18, seqq.) 

Gangeticus Sinus, now the Bay of Bengal, into 
which the Ganges falls. 

Ganymedes, son of Tros and of Callirhoe daughter 
of the Scamander. He was remarkable for his beau¬ 
ty, and on this account, according to the legend, was 
carried off to Olympus by an eagle, to be the cup¬ 
bearer of Jove, who gave Tros, as a compensation, 
some horses of the Olympian breed. (Horn., 11., 5, 
265, seq. — Id. ib., 20, 234, seq. — Horn., Hymn., 4, 
202.) One of the Cyclic poets (ap. Schol. adEurip., 
Orest., 1390) said, that Jupiter gave Laomedon a gold¬ 
en vine for Ganymede. The son of Tros succeeded 
Hebe as cup-bearer of the skies. (Vid. Hebe.) They 
who wish to give an historical aspect to this legend, 
make Ganymedes to have been carried off by Tantalus. 
The truth is, however, that the fable of Ganymedes, 
according to Knight, seems to have arisen from some 
symbolical composition, representing the act of fructi¬ 
fying nature, attended by Power and Wisdom: and 
this composition would appear to have been at first 
misunderstood, and afterward misrepresented in poeti 
cal fiction. For the lines in the Iliad alluding to it 
are, as Knight maintains, spurious ; and, according to 
Pindar, the most orthodox, perhaps, of all the poets, 
Ganymede was not the son of Tros, but a mighty 
genius or deity, who regulated or caused the over¬ 
flowings of the Nile by the motion of his feet. (Sohol. 
in Arat. Phcenom., v. 282.) His being, therefore; 
the cup-bearer of Jupiter, means no more than that he 
was the distributor of the waters between heaven and 
earth, and, consequently, a distinct personification of 
that attribute of Jupiter, which is otherwise signified 
by the epithet Pluvius. Hence he is only another 
modification of the same personification as Attis, Ado¬ 
nis, and Bacchus ; who are all occasionally represented 
holding the patera or cup ; which is also given, with 
the cornucopiae, to their subordinate emanations, the 
local genii: of which many small figures in brass are 
extant. (Inquiry into the Symb. Lang., &c., § 121. 
— Class. Journ., vol. 25, p. 42.) 

Garamantes (sing. Garamas), a people of Africa, 
south of Fazania, deriving their name from the city of 
Garama, now Garmes. They were slightly known to 
the Romans under Augustus, in whose time some 
claim was made to a triumph over them, on which ac¬ 
count they are mentioned by Virgil. (Virg., JEn., 4, 
198 ; 6, 795.— Lucan, 4, 334.—P/m., 5, S.—Sil. Ital, 
1, 142 ; 11, 181.) 


Garamantis, a nymph, mother of Iarbas, by Jupl 
ter. (Virg., 2En., 4, 198.) 

Garganus, a mountain of Apulia, terminating in a 
bold promontory of the same name (Garganum 5 Pro- 
montorium), now Punta di Viesti. Strabo (284) seems 
to have considered the whole of that extensive neck of 
land, lying between the bay of Rodi and that of Man 
fredoma, as the Garganum Promontorium, for he de¬ 
scribes it as running out to sea for the space of 300 
stadia, or 37 miles. Scylax seems to refer to this 
mountain under the name of Arion. (Pcripins, p. 
5.) Frequent allusion is made to this c&lebrated 
ridge and headland by the Latin poets, especially on 
account of its fine groves of oaks. (Ho^at Od 2 
E P ., 2, 1 , 200.-SU. Ital.. 8. 600.-Lulan. 


Gargaphia, a valley near Plata?a, with a fountain 
of the same name, where Actoeon was torn to pieces 
by his dogs. (Ovid, Met., 3, 156.) The fountain of 
[ Gargaphia was situate about a mile and a half distant 




G A Z 


G Jj b 


from Plataea, on Mount Cithasron, towards the Athe¬ 
nian frontier. ( Gell, Itin., p. 112.) 

GargXrus (plur. a, orum), one of the summits of 
Ida, the roots of which formed the promontory of Lec- 
tum. It is generally supposed to have been the high¬ 
est peak of the range, but this honour must be assigned 
to the ancient Cotylus. ( Hobhouse's Travels, Lett. 42.) 
On Gargarus was a town named Gargara. ( Strabo, 
621.) Dr. Hunt gives an interesting account of his 
ascent of Gargarus. He found the summit covered 
with snow, and mentions the following particular rela¬ 
tive to its ancient name. “ I have ventured to record 
a circumstance which proves on how fanciful a founda¬ 
tion etymological reasonings are founded. Our guide, 
when he pointed expressively to the snow on the top 
of the mountain, repeated the words Gar, gar, ‘ Snow, 
snow,’ in which an enthusiastic topographer of the Iliad 
would easily have traced the ancient name of Garga¬ 
rus.” ( Walpole's Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 122. — Com¬ 
pare, in relation to Gargarus, Clarke's Travels, Greece, 
Egypt, &c., vol. 3, p. 166.) 

Gargettus, a demus or borough of the tribe Hbge'is 
in Attica, where Eurystheus is said to have been bu¬ 
ried. ( Steph. Byz., s. v. — Strabo, 377.) It was the 
birthplace of Epicurus. ( Diog . Laert., 10, 1.) The 
modern Krabato is supposed to occupy its site. ( Stu¬ 
art's Ant. of Ath., 3, p. 16. — Spon., vol. 2, p. 104.— 
Gell's Itin., p. 75.) 

Garumna, now the Garonne, a river of Gaul, which 
rises in the valley of Arran, to the south of Bertrand, 
among the Pyrenees, and falls into the Oceanus Can- 
tabricus, or Bay of Biscay. The general course of 
this river, which extends to about 250 miles, is north¬ 
west. After its junction with the Duranius or Dor¬ 
dogne, below Burdegala or Bourdeaux, it assumes the 
name of Gironde. According to Julius Cassar’s divis¬ 
ion of Gallia, the Garumna was the boundary of Aqui- 
*,ania, and separated that district from Gallia Celtica! 
This river is navigable to Tolosa or Toulouse, and 
communicates with the Mediterrfnean by means of the 
canal of Louis XIV., about 180 miles long, made 
through Languedoc. {Mela, 3, 2.— Mannert, Geogr., 
vol. 2, p. 117.) 

Gacgamela, a village of Assyria, in the district of 
Aturia, and about 500 stadia from Arbela. {Arrian, 
8, l.) The battle between Alexander and Darius took 
place near this spot; but, as Arbela was a considera¬ 
ble town, the Greeks chose to distinguish the conflict 
by the name of the latter. Gaugamela is said to have 
signified, in Persian, “ the house of the camel," and to 
have been so called because Darius, the son of Hys- 
taspes, having escaped upon his camel across the des¬ 
erts of Scythia, when retreating from the latter coun¬ 
try, placed the animal here, and appointed the revenue 
of certain villages for its maintenance. {Plut., Vit. 
Alex., c. 31.) 

Gaulus, I. a small island adjacent to Melite or 
Malta, now called Gozo. {Plin., 3, 8.)—II. Another 
below the south shore of Crete, now called Gozo of 
Candia, for distinction’ sake from Gozo of Malta. 

Gaurus, a ridge of mountains bordering on Lake 
\vernus, and now called Monte Barbaro. It was fa¬ 
mous for its wines. {Lucan, 2, 665, seqq. — Sil. Ital., 
&, 534.— Stat. Silv., 3, 5, 99.) 

Gaza, one of the five Philistine satrapies or princi¬ 
palities, situate towards the southern extremity of Ca¬ 
naan, about 16 miles south of Ascalon {Itin. Am., p. 
150;, and a small distance from the Mediterranean. 
Its port was called Gazseorum Portus. As the name 
of the city of Gaza appears in the first book of Moses 
(10, 18), Mela must of course be mistaken, who says 
it is of Persian origin, and states that Cambyses 
made this place his chief magazine in the expedition 
against Egypt. {Mela, 1, 11.) It was, however, an 
important and strongly-fortified place, as being situate 
so near the borders of that country. Alexander took 


and destroyed it, after it had made a powerful resist¬ 
ance for the space of two months. {Arrian, 2, 27.— 
Quintus Curtius, 4, 6.) Antioehus the Great sacked 
it, and it was several times taken from the Syrians by 
the Maccabees. {Polyb., excerpt. Vales.—Maccab 1, 

11, 61.— Josephus, Ant. Jud., 13, 21.) It was after¬ 
ward subjected to new losses, so that St. Luke states 
{Acts, 8, 26) that it was, in his time, a desert place, 
Erasmus Schmid, Beza, and Le Moyne, however, fol¬ 
lowing the Syriac version, refer the word epypog, in the 
original, not to Gaza, but to the way leading towards 
it. They are refuted by Reland. Strabo notices 
“ Gaza, the desert,” which agrees with the Acts. 
The place was called Constantia afterward. It is 
now termed by the Arabs Rassa, with a strong guttu¬ 
ral expression. The ancient name in Hebrew signifies 
strong. (Compare Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 1, p. 
263.) 

Gebenna or Cevenna, now Ccvennes, a chain of 
mountains in Gaul, which separated the Helvii from 
the Arverni, in that part of the Roman province cor¬ 
responding to the modern Languedoc. The Pyrenees 
join the Cevennes, these last the Vosges, which in 
their turn unite with Jura to the south, and form the 
Ardennes to the north. The name Cebenna appears 
to contain the Celtic radical Pen or Ben, “ a summit,” 
so that the name probably meant “ the lofty range.” 
{Malte-Brun, Geogr., vol. 4, p. 389, Brussels ed.) 

Gedrosia, a sandy and barren province of Persia, 
south and southeast of Carmania, and lying along the 
Mare Erythnsum. It is now called Mekran. In pass¬ 
ing through this country, the army of Alexander under¬ 
went very great hardships, from want of water and 
provisions, and from columns of moving sand. Its 
principal city was Pura, now Fohrea. {Strabo, 720. 
— Arrian, 6, 23, seqq.) Wahl compares the name 
Gedrosia with the Persian dshiaaduruscht, “ rough,” 
“ stormy,” “ boisterous,” from the boisterous and 
stormy waves that beat upon its coast. {Vorder und 
Mittel-Asien, p. 585.) 

Gela, I. a river of Sicily, to the east of the Hime- 
ra, and falling into the sea on the southeastern coast, 
near the city of the same name. The appellation Gela 
is said to have been given to it from the icy coldness 
of its waters, the term gela (compare the Latin gela) 
having the meaning of “ice” in the languages of the 
Opici and Siculi. {Steph. Byz., s. v.) Virgil applies 
the epithet immanis to Gela, meaning, according to 
some, the city, or, as others think, the river. The for¬ 
mer opinion is the more correct one. The city was 
termed by the poet “immanis” (“o/ monster-symbol"). 
in allusion to the Minotaur on its coins. Those, how 
ever, who refer the epithet to the river, make it sig 
nify “cruel,” i. e., perilous, and consider it as allu¬ 
ding to the numerous whirlpools in this stream, whence 
Ovid remarks, “ Et te vorticibus non adeunde Gela." 
{Fast., 4, 470.— Virg., Jfin 3, 702.) The modern 
name of the Gela is, according to Cluverius, the Ghi- 
czzo, or “ Icy river.”—II. A city of Sicily, on the 
southeastern coast, a short distance from the sea and 
from the mouth of the river of the same name. {Vid. 
Gela, I.) It was founded by a joint colony from 
Crete and from Lindus in the island of Rhodes, 45 
years after the foundation of Syracuse. {Herod., 7, 
153.— Thucyd., 6, 4.) Gela became one of the most 
powerful of the Grecian colonies in Sicily, and, 108 
years after its own foundation, it colonized Agrigen- 
tum. This state of prosperity continued until the 
time of Gelon, who removed a large part of its in¬ 
habitants to Syracuse. After this it sank in impor¬ 
tance. and never recovered its former power, but re¬ 
ceived another blow at a later period, when Dionysiuf 
the elder, being unable to save the place from tht 
Carthaginians, carried off all the people to his capital 
(Vid. Dionysius I.) The Geloans subsequently re 
turned to their city, but only to encounter new ra 

M7 




fortunes. Agathocles, suspecting -the inhabitants of 
favouring the Carthaginians, suddenly made himself 
master of Cela, put to death 4000 of the wealthiest 
citizens, confiscated their property, and placed a gar¬ 
rison in the city. The final blow was at last received 
from its own colony Agrigentum. Phintias, tyrant of 
this latter place, wishing to perpetuate his name, built 
the small but commodious city of Phintias, called after 
himself, and transferred to it all the inhabitants of Gela. 
From this period, therefore, 404 years after its found¬ 
ation, the city of Gela ceased to exist. On a part of 
the ancient site stands the modern Terra Nova. The 
plains around Gela ( Campi Geloi) were famed for 
their fertility and beauty. ( Diod. Sic., 11, 25.— Id., 
13, 98.— Id., 19, 108. —Id., 20, 31 .—Id., 22, 2.— 
Strabo, 418.— Manned, Geogr., vol. 9, pt. 2, p. 345.) 

Gellius, Aulus (or, as some manuscripts give the 
name, Agellius), a Latin grammarian, born at Rome 
in the early part of the second century, and who died 
at the beginning of the reign of Marcus Aurelius. We 
have but few particulars of his life. We know that he 
studied rhetoric tinder Cornelius Fronto at Rome, and 
philosophy under Phavorinus at Athens, and that, on 
his return to Rome, while still at an early age, he was 
made one of the centumviri or judges in civil causes. 

(. Noct. Att., 14, 2.) Gellius has left behind him one 
work entitled Nodes Attica,, “Attic Nights.” It was 
written, as he informs us in the preface, during the 
winter evenings in Attica, to amuse his children in 
their hours of relaxation. It appears, from his own 
account, that he had been accustomed to keep a com¬ 
monplace book, in which he entered whatever he heard 
in conversation, or met with in his private reading, that 
appeared worthy of remembrance. In composing his 
“ Noctcs Attica ” he seems merely to have copied the 
contents of his commonplace book, with a little altera¬ 
tion in the language, but without any attempt at class¬ 
ification or arrangement. The work contains anec¬ 
dotes and arguments, scraps of history and pieces 
of poetry, aftd dissertations on various points in phi¬ 
losophy, geometry, and grammar. Amid much that 
is trifling and puerile, we obtain information on many 
subjects relating to antiquity, of which we must other¬ 
wise have been ignorant. It is divided into twenty 
books, which are still extant, excepting the eighth and 
the beginning of the seventh. He mentions, in the 
conclusion of his preface, his intention of continuing 
the work, which he probably, however, never carried 
into effect.—The style of Aulus Gellius is in general 
negligent and incorrect. In his eagerness to imitate 
the old writers, he is often carried too far, and intro¬ 
duces too many forms of expression from the earlier 
comic poets, whom he seems most anxious to take for 
his models in this respect. That he invented, how¬ 
ever, any new terms himself seems hardly credible. 
The best editions of Aulus Gellius are, that of Grono- 
vius, Lugd. Bat., 1706, 4to, and that of Lion, Got - 
ting., 1824, 2 vols. 8vo. ( Scholl, Hist.. Lit. Rom., 
vol. 3, p. 310.— B'dhr, Gesch. Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. 
719.) 

Gelon, a native of Gela in Sicily, who. rose from 
the station of a private citizen to be supreme ruler of 
Gela and Syracuse. He was descended from an an¬ 
cient family, which originally came from Telos, an isl¬ 
and off the coast of Caria, and settled at Gela, when 
it was first colonized by the Rhodians. During the 
time that Hippocrates reigned at Gela(B.C. 498-491), 
Gelon was appointed commander of the cavalry, and 
greatly distinguished himself in the various wars which 
Hippocrates carried on against the Grecian cities in 
Sicily. On the death of Hippocrates, who fell in bat¬ 
tle against the Siculi, Gelon seized the supreme power, 
B.C. 491. Soon afterward a more splendid prize fell 
in his way. The nobles and landholders ( ydfxopoi.) of 
Syracuse, who had been driven from the city by an in- 
s irreotion of their slaves, supported by the rest of the 


people, applied to Gelon for assistance. This crafti 
prince, gladly availing himself of the opportunity of ex 
tending his dominions, marched to Syracuse, intt 
which he was admitted by the popular party (B C 
485), who had not the means of resisting so formidable 
an opponent. ( Hcrodot., 7, 154, scq.) Having thur 
become master of Syracuse, he appointed his brothel 
Hiero governor of Gela, and exerted all his endeav 
ours to promote the prosperity of his new acquisition 
In order to increase the population of Syracuse, he de¬ 
stroyed Camarina, and removed all its inhabitants, to 
gether with a great number of the citizens of Gela, U 
his favourite city. By his various conquests and his 
great abilities, he became a very powerful monarch ; 
and therefore, when the Greeks expected the invasion, 
of Xerxes, ambassadors were sent by them to Syra¬ 
cuse, to secure, if possible, his assistance in the war. 
Gelon promised to send to their aid two hundred tri¬ 
remes, twenty thousand heavy-armed troops, two thou¬ 
sand cavalry, and six thousand light-armed troops, pro¬ 
vided the supreme command were given to him. This 
offer being indignantly rejected by the Lacedaemonian 
and Athenian ambassadors, Gelon sent, according to 
Herodotus, an individual named Cadmus to Delphi, 
with great treasures, and with orders to present them 
to Xerxes if he proved victorious in the coming war. 
{Herod., 7, 157-164.) This statement, however, was 
denied by the Syracusans, who said that Gelon would 
have assisted the Greeks, if he had not been prevented 
by an invasion of the Carthaginians, with a force 
amounting to three hundred thousand men, under the 
command of Hamilcar. This great army was entirely 
defeated near Himera by Gelon, and Theron monarch 
of Agrigentum, on the same day, according to Flerod 
otus, on which the battle of Salamis was fought. {He 
rod., 7, 165, seqq.) An account of this expedition v 
also given by Diodorus Siculus (11, 21), who states, 
t'hat the battle between Gelon and the Carthaginians 
was fought on the same day as that at Thermopylae. 
There seems, indeed* to have been a regular under¬ 
standing between Xerxes and the Carthaginians, in ac¬ 
cordance with which the latter were to attack the 
Greeks in Sicily, while the Persian monarch was tc 
move down upon Attica and the Peloponnesus.—Ge 
Ion appears to have used with moderation the powei 
which he had acquired by violence, and to have en¬ 
deared himself to the Syracusans by the equity of hi? 
government, and by the encouragement he gave to 
commerce and the fine arts. We are informed by 
Plutarch, that posterity remembered with gratitude the 
virtues and abilities of Gelon, and that the Syracusans 
would not allow his statues to be destroyed together 
with those of the other tyrants, when Timoleon be¬ 
came master of the city. {Pint., Vit. Timol .) He 
died B.C. 478, and was succeeded by his brother 
Hiero. {Aristot., Polit., 5, 12.— Encycl. Us. Know!., 
vol. 11, p. 108.) 

Geloi, the inhabitants of Gela. ( Virg. My. 3, 
701.) 

Gelones and Geloni, a people of Scythia, included 
by Herodotus (4, 108) among the Budini. The his¬ 
torian speaks of their wooden city called Gelonus, and 
makes them to have been originally a Grecian race, 
who transplanted themselves from the trading porte 
of Greece and settled among the Budini, where they 
used a language partly Scythian and partly Grecian 
This account, however, appears very unsatisfactory 
It is better to refer the Geloni to that curious chair 
which connects the earlier history of Grecian civiliza 
tion with the regions of the remote East, by means of 
sacerdotal colonies scattered throughout the wilds of 
Scythia. (Compare the remarks of Ritter, Vorhalle. 

p. 266.) 

GemonIyE Scalje, steps at Rome, near tne prison 
called Tullianum, down which the bodies of those whc 
had been executed in prison were thrown into the Fo 





GEN 


GEO 


lum, to be exposed to the gaze of the - multitude. ( Val. 
Max., 6, 9.— Liv., 38, 59.) 

Genabum, a town of the Aureliani, on the Ligeris 
or Loire, which ran through it. It was afterward called 
Aureliani*, from the name of the people, and is now 
Orleans. (Coes., B. C., 7, 3.— Lucan, 1, 440.) 

Genauni, a people of Vindelicia. ( Vid . Brenni.) 

Geneva, a city of the Allobroges, at the western 
extremity of the Lacus Lemanus or Lake of Geneva, 
on the south bank of the Rhodanus or Rhone. The 
modern name is the same as the ancient. ( Coes., 
B. G., 1, 6.) 

Genseric (more correctly Gfiserich), king of the 
Vandals, was the illegitimate brother of Gonderic, 
whom he succeeded A.D. 429. In the same year he 
left Spain, which had been partly conquered by the Van¬ 
dals, and crossed over into Africa, at the solicitation 
of Boniface, governor of that province, who had been 
induced, by the arts of his rival Aetius, to rebel against 
Valentinian III., emperor of the West. Boniface soon 
repented of the step he had taken, and advanced to 
meet the invader. But his repentance came too late. 
The Moors joined' the standard of Genseric, and the 
powerful sect of the Donatists, who had been cruelly 
persecuted by the Catholics, assisted him against their 
oppressors. Boniface was defeated, and obliged to re¬ 
tire into Hippo Regius, where he remained till he ob¬ 
tained a fresh supply of troops. Having ventured upon 
a second battle, and being again defeated, he abandon¬ 
ed the province to the barbarians, and sailed aw T av to 
Italy. A peace was concluded between Genseric and 
the Emperor of the West, by which all Africa to the 
west of Carthage was ceded to the Vandals. This, 
however, did not long continue, and the city of Car¬ 
thage was taken by the Vandals, by surprise, A.D. 439. 
The Emperors of the West and East made great prep¬ 
arations for the recovery of the province, but an alli¬ 
ance which Genseric made with Attila, king of the 
Huns, effectually secured him against their attempts. 
Genseric’s next object was the formation of a naval 
power : an immense number of ships were built, and 
his fleets ravaged the shores of Sicily and Italy. In¬ 
vited by the Empress Eudoxia, he sailed up the Tiber, 
A.D. 455, and permitted his soldiers, for the space of 
fourteen days, to pillage Rome. In A.D. 460 he de¬ 
stroyed the fleet which the Emperor Majorian had col¬ 
lected for the invasion of Africa ; and, as his power 
increased, his ravages became more extensive. The 
island of Sardinia was conquered, and Spain, Italy, 
Sicily, Greece, Egypt, and Asia Minor were plunder¬ 
ed every year by the Vandal pirates. Leo, the emper¬ 
or of the East, at last resolved to make a vigorous 
effort for the recovery of Africa. A great army was 
assembled, and the command was given to Basilicus. 
He landed at Bona, and at first met with considerable 
success, but was at length obliged to retire from the 
province. After this victory Genseric met with no 
farther opposition, but remained undisturbed master of 
the sea till his death, which happened A.D. 477. He 
was succeeded by his son Hunneric. Genseric was an 
4rian, and is said to have persecuted the Catholics 
with great cruelty. (Procop., de Bell. Vand. — Gib¬ 
bon, Decline and Fall, c. 33-36.) 

Gentius, king of the Illyrians, sold his services to 
Perses, king of Macedonia, for ten talents, and threw 
into prison the Roman ambassadors. He was addicted 
to intemperance, and hated by his subjects. The prastor 
\nicius conquered him in the space of twenty or thirty 
days, and led Gentius himself, his wife, brother, and 
children in triumph at Rome. (Liv., 43, 19, seqq.) 

Genua, now Genoa, a celebrated town of Liguria. 
In the second Punic war, Genua, then a celebrated 
emporium, took part with the Romans^^nd was, in 
consequence, plundered and burned by Mago the Car¬ 
thaginian. (Liv., 28, 46.) It was afterward rebuilt 
bv the Romans (Liu., 30, 1), and was made a municip- 


ium. A curious fact, illustrative of tne tistory of 
Genua, was brought to light by the discovery of a bra¬ 
zen tablet, in 1506, near the city. This monument 
informs us, that a dispute having arisen between the 
Genuatae and Veituni, on the subject of their respect¬ 
ive boundaries, commissioners were appointed by the 
Roman senate, A-U.C. 636, to settle the limits of the 
two territories ; and the tablet gives the result of their 
labours. In the time of Strabo, Genua seems to have 
been a place of considerable trade, particularly in tim¬ 
ber, which was brought from the mountains, where it 
grew to a great size. Some of it, being richly veined, 
was used for making tables, which were thought 
scarcely inferior to those of cedar-wood. Other com 
modities were cattle, skins, and honey, which the Li¬ 
gurians exchanged for oil and Italian wine, none being 
grown on their coast.—In later times we find the name 
written Janua, from an idea that it was founded by 
Janus, which Cluver justly rejects as absurd, (ltal. 
Ant., vol. 1 , p. 70.— Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol. 1 , 
p. 25, seqq.) 

Genucia Lex, proposed by the tribune Genucius, 
A.U.C. 411, that no one should enjoy the same office 
twice within ten years, nor be invested with two offi¬ 
ces in one year. (Liv., 7, 42.) 

Genusus, a river of Ulyricum. Cellarius places it 
to the south of the Apsus and north of Apollonia ; but 
Kruse and others make it the same with the Panyasus 
of Ptolemy, to the south of Dyrrhachium. The mod¬ 
ern name, if Cellarius be correct, is the Semno or Sio- 
mini. Kruse, however, makes it the Iscumi. ( Bis- 
choff und Moller, Worterb., p. 551.) 

Geoponica (VeoTroviKu), or “ a treatise on Agricul¬ 
ture” (from yea, yfj, “ the earth," and ttovco, “ to be¬ 
stow labour upon ”), the title of a compilation, in Greek, 
of precepts on rural economy, extracted from ancient 
writers. The compiler, in his procemium, shows that 
he was living at Constantinople, and dedicated his work 
to the Emperor Constantine, “ a successor of Constan¬ 
tine, the first Christian emperor,” stating that he wrote 
it in compliance with his desire, and praising him for 
his zeal for science and philosophy, and also for his 
philanthropic disposition. The emperor here meant is 
supposed by some to have been Constantine Porphy- 
rogenitus, and the compilation is generally ascribed to 
Cas # sianus Bassus, a native of Bithynia, who, however, 
is stated by others to have lived some centuries before 
the time of Porphyrogenitus. The question respecting 
the authorship of the Geoponica has excited much dis¬ 
cussion, and Needham, in his edition of the work (Can- 
tab., 1704), has treated the subject at great length. The 
work is divided into twenty books, which are subdi 
vided into short chapters, explaining the various pro 
cesses of cultivation adapted to various soils and crops, 
and the rural labours suited to the different seasons of 
the year; together with directions for sowing the va¬ 
rious kinds of corn and pulse ; for training the vine, 
and the art of wine-making, upon which the author is 
very diffuse. He also treats of olive-plantations and 
oil-making, of orchards and fruit-trees, of evergreens, 
of kitchen-gardens, of the insects and reptiles that are 
injurious to plants, of the economy of the poultry-yard, 
of the horse, the ass, and the camel; of horned cattle, 
sheep, goats, pigs* &c., and the care they require ; of 
the method of salting meat; and, lastly, of the various 
kinds of fishes. Every chapter is inscribed with the 
name of the author from whom it is taken, and the 
compiler gives, at the beginning of the first book, a 
list of the principal authorities. Other authors besides 
these are quoted in the course of the w r ork. Two or 
three chapters are inscribed with the name of Cassi- 
anus, who speaks of himself in them as a native o 
Maratonymus in Bithynia, where he had an estate 
(Geopon., 5, 6, et 36.) The work is curious, as giv¬ 
ing a course of ancient agriculture, collected from the 
most approved authorities then extant. The best edi- 

549 




G E R 


GERMANIA. 


non of the Geoponica is that of Niclas, Lips., 1781, 
4 vols. 8vo. ( Encyci. Us. Knowl. , vol. 11, p. 156.— 
Scholl, Gesch. Griech. Litt., vol. 3, p. 439.) 

Georgica, the title of Virgil’s poem on husbandry. 
{Vid. Virgilius.) 

Ger^estus, a promontory of Euboea, terminating 
the island to the southwest. It is now Cape Mantelo. 
{Homer, Od., 3, 176.— Eurip., Orest. ,v. 992.) There 
was a well-frequented haven near the promontory, 
f Plin., 4, 12.— Slcph. Byz., s. v.) 

Gergis or Gekgitha, a city of Dardania in Troas, 
a settlement of the ancient Teucri, and, consequent¬ 
ly, a town of very great antiquity. {Herod., 5, 122. 
— Id., 7, 43.) Cephalo, an early historian, who is 
cited by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Athenaeus, and 
others as having written a history of Troy, was a na¬ 
tive of this place. {Dion. Hal., A. R., 1, p. 180.— 
Athen., 9, p. 393.— Strab., 589.— Sleph. Byz., s. v. 
Apio6ri , Tpainbe;.) Gergis, according to Xenophon, 
was a place of strength, having an acropolis and very 
lofty walls, and one of the chief towns held by Mania, 
the Dardanian princess. {Xen., Hist. Gr., 3, 1, 12.) 
It had a temple sacred to Apollo Gergithius, and was 
said to have given birth to the sibyl, who is sometimes 
called Erythrasa, from Erythrae, a small place on Mount 
Ida {Dion. Hal., 1, 55), and at others Gergithia. In 
confirmation of this fact, it was observed that the coins 
of this city had the effigy of the prophetess impressed 
upon them. {Phlegon, ap. Steph. Byz., s. v. Tepyig.) 
Some of these coins are still extant, and accord with 
the testimony of Phlogon. They are thus described 
by numismatic writers: “Caput muliebre adversum 
laurealuin cum stola ad collum R. TEP. Sphinx alata 
sedens iE.,3.” {Scstini, Lett. Numism., t. 1, p. 88.) 
It appears from Strabo that Gergitha having been taken 
by Attains, king of Pergamus, he removed the inhab- 
tants to the sources of the Ca'icus, where he founded 
a new town of the same name. {Strab., 616.) The 
Romans, according to Livy, made over the territory of 
the old town to the Ilienses (38, 39). Herodotus, in 
describing Xerxes’ march along the Hellespont, states 
that he had the town of Dardanus on his left, and Ger¬ 
githa on the right; it is evident, therefore, that the 
latter must have been situated inland, and towards 
Mount Ida. {Herod., 7, 43.— Cramer's Asia Minor, 
vol. 1, p. 84, seqq.) 

Gergov'Ia, a strong town and fortress of Gaul, be¬ 
longing to the Arverni. It was situate on a very high 
mountain, and of difficult access on all sides. It is 
now Gergovie. {Cces., B. G., 7, 9.) 

Germania. The word Germania was employed by 
the Romans to designate a country of greater extent 
than modern Germany. They included under this name 
all the nations of Europe east of the Rhine and north 
of the Danube, bounded on the north by the German 
Ocean and the Baltic, including Denmark and the 
neighbouring islands, and on the east by the Sarma- 
tians and Dacians. It is difficult, however, to ascer¬ 
tain how far Germany stretched to the East. Accord¬ 
ing to Strabo (289), Germanic tribes dwelt nearly as far 
as the mouths of the Borysthenes (or Dnieper). The 
northern and northeastern parts of Gaul were also 
known under the name of Germany in the time of the 
Roman emperors, after the province of Belgica had 
been subdivided into Germania Prima and Germania 
Secunda. 

1. Origin of the Germanic nations. 

r i ne origin of the Germanic nations is involved in 
uncertainty. Thts inhabitants of the beautiful re¬ 
gions of Italy, who had never known a rougher coun¬ 
try, could hardly believe that any nation had desert¬ 
ed its native soil to dwell in the forests of Germany, 
where severe cold prevailed for the greater part of the 
year, and where, even in summer, impenetrable for¬ 
ests prevented the genial rays of the sun from reach- 

550 


ing the ground.* They thought that the Germain 
must have lived there from the beginning, and there¬ 
fore called them indigence, or “natives of the soil.” 
{Tacit., de Mor. Germ., 2.) Modern inquiries, how¬ 
ever, have traced the descent of the Germanic race 
from the inhabitants of Asia ; since it is now indisputa¬ 
bly established that the Teutonic dialects belong t<j 
one great family with the Latin, the Greek, the San¬ 
scrit, and the other languages of the Indo-Germanic 
chain. Von Hammer calls the Germans a Bactriano 
Median nation. He makes the name Germani or Ser- 
mani, in its primitive import, to have meant those who 
followed the worship of Buddha, and hence the Ger¬ 
mans, according to him, are that ancient and primitive 
race who came down from the mountains of Upper 
Asia, the cradle of the human species, and, spreading 
themselves over the low country more to the south, 
gave origin to the Persian and other early nations. 
Hence the name Dschermania applied in early times 
to all that tract of country which lay to the north ol 
the Oxus. The land of Erman, therefore, which was 
situate beyond this river, and which corresponds tc 
the modern Chorasin, is made by Von Hammer the 
native home of the Germanic race, and the Germans 
themselves are, as he informs us, called Dschcrmani , 
their primitive name, by the Oriental writers down 
to the fourteenth century. {Von Hammer, Wien. 
Jahrb., vol. 2, p. 319.—Compare vol. 9, p. 39.) An¬ 
other remarkable circumstance is, that, besides the 
name referred to, that of the modern Prussians may be 
found under its primitive form in the Persian tongue. 
We have there the term Pruschan or Pcruschan, in 
the sense of “ a people.” In Meninski (1, p. 533) we 
have j Berussan and Beruschan, in the sense of “com 
munitas ejusdem religionis ," while, in Ferghengi Schu- 
uri, Peruschan or Poruschan more than once occurs. 
(Vol. 1, B. 182, V. 1. Z. and S. 183, e. Z.) Even the 
name Sachsen or Sassen (Saxons) is to be found in the 
Persian tongue, under the form Sassan, as indicating 
not only the last dynasty of the Persian empire (the 
Sassanides), but also those acquainted with the doc¬ 
trines of the Dessatin, the old Persian dialect of which 
is far more nearly related to the Gothic than the mod¬ 
ern Persian to the German. In the Oriental histories, 
moreover, mention is made of the dynasty of the sons 
of Boia, in whom we may easily recognise the pro¬ 
genitors of the Boii; while traces of the name of 
the Catti may be found in that of Kat, in Chorasin. 
{Fergh. Schuuri, B. 231.) The Getae, too, frequently 
appear under the appellation of the Dschctc in the his¬ 
tory of Timour; and finally, the name of the Franks 
has been traced to the Persian Ferheng , “reason” or 
“ understanding.” ( Von Hammer, in Kruse's Archiv. 
der Germanischen Volkerstamme, hft. 2, p. 124, seqq.) 
Even as early as the time of Herodotus, the name of the 
Tepfidviot {Germanii ) appears among the ancient Per 
sian tribes {Herod., 1, 125), while the analogies be 
tween the Persian and German are so striking as to 
have excited the attention of every intelligent scholar. 
Von Hammer has promised to show remarkable affin¬ 
ities between upward of 4000 German and Persian 
words. {Archiv., p. 126, not.) And, besides all this, 
an ancient Georgian MS. of laws, recently brought to 
light, proves conclusively, that the Georgian nation had 
among them ordeals precisely similar to those of the 
early Germans, and also the same judicial forms of 
proceeding, and the same system of satisfactions to be 
paid in cases of homicide, according to the rank of the 
party slain. {Annul, de legislat. et de Jurisprudence, 
Nro. 40, Paris, 1829. — Compare, on the general 
question of German and Persian affinities, Adelung, 
Mithradates, vol. 1 , p. 278, seqq. — Id. ib., vol. 2, p. 

170, seqq. m- Ritter, Erdkunde, vol. 2, p. 674._ Id. 

Vorhalhe, p. 307.— Norberg, de Orig. Germ., p. 591.- 
Link, Urwclt, p. 170. — Pfister, Gesch. der Dcutsch. 
vol. 1, p. 24, seqq., p. 519, seqq.) Now, if these piem 




GERMANIA. 


GERMANIA. 


aes be true, and they are acknowledged to be so by 
every scholar who has examined them, the commonly- 
received derivation of the name Germani falls to the 
ground. The advocates for this etymology maintain, 
that the appellation in question comes from wer, “ war,” 
and rnann, “ a man,” and that “ Germani ” therefore 
means “men of war” or “warriors,” the Roman al¬ 
phabet, in consequence of its not having any w, con¬ 
verting this letter into a soft g. They refer also to 
Tacitus, who states, that the Tungri first assumed this 
name on crossing the Rhine, and that it gradually 
spread over the whole nation. ( De Mor. Germ., 2.) 
Others again assert, that the term is of Celtic origin, 
and was first applied by the Gauls to their German 
conquerors, and they deduce it from the Celtic gerr, 
'* war,” and mann, “ a man.” ( Lemaire , Ind. Geogr., 
ad CcRs.y s. v., p. 269.) The true origin of the name, 
however, as has already been remarked, must be sought 
in the remote East.—There was also another nation¬ 
al name which the Germans applied to themselves, 
and that was Teutones. In this we recognise at once 
the root of the modern term Deutsche or Deutsche ; and 
the appellation would seem to have come from the 
old German word Diet , “ a people,” and to have been 
used as a name for the whole German race, consid¬ 
ered as forming but one people, though divided into 
many independent tribes. ( Klemm , Germ. Alter- 
thumsk., p. 79.) 

2. Geographical acquaintance with Ancient Germany. 

The Greeks and Romans had very little knowledge 
of Germany before the time of Julius Caesar, who met 
with several Germanic tribes in Gaul, and crossed the 
Rhine on two occasions, rather with the view of pre¬ 
venting their incursions into Gaul, than of making 
any permanent conquests. His acquaintance was, 
however, limited to those tribes which dwelt on the 
banks of the Rhine. Under the early Roman emper¬ 
ors many of these tribes were subdued, and the coun¬ 
try west of the Yisurgis (or Weser ) was frequently 
traversed by the Roman armies. But at no period 
had the Romans any accurate knowledge of the coun¬ 
try east of this river; and it is therefore difficult to 
fix with certainty the position of the German tribes, 
particularly as the Germans were a nomade people. 
Some parts of Germany were inhabited by the Gauls, 
who were, according to Coesar ( B. G., 6, 24), the 
more warlike nation in early times. Tacitus, at a later 
day, divides the Germans into three great tribes, 
which were subdivided into many smaller ones: 1. 
the Ingasvones, bordering on the ocean. 2. Hermi- 
ones, inhabiting the central parts. 3. Istsevones, in¬ 
cluding all the others. Pliny (4, 14) makes five divis¬ 
ions : 1. Yindili, including the Burgundiones, Varini, 
Carini, and Gullones. 2. Ingaivones, including the 
Cirnbri, Teutones, and Chauci. 3. Istaevones, near 
the Rhine, including the midland Cirnbri. 4. Her- 
miones, inhabiting the central parts, including the 
Suevi, Hermunduri, Catti, and Cherusci. 5. Peuci- 
ni and Bastarnae, bordering on the Dacians. 

3. Manners and Customs of the Ancient Germans. 

Our principal information on this subject is derived 
from Tacitus, who wrote a separate treatise on the man¬ 
ners and customs of the Germanic tribes, entitled “ De 
Situ, Moribus, et Populis Germanice.'’'’ Occasional 
notices and scattered hints are also found in the works 
of other ancient authors, particularly in the Gallic com¬ 
mentaries of Caesar.—A nation free from any foreign 
intermixture (say the Roman writers), as is proved by 
♦heir peculiar national physiognomy, inhabits the coun¬ 
tries beyond the Rhine, with fierce blue eyes, deep 
yellow hair, a robust frame, and a gigantic height; in¬ 
ured to cold and hunger, but not to thirst and heat, 
warlike, honest, faithful, friendly and unsuspicious 
towards friends, but towards enemies cunning and dis¬ 


sembling ; scorning every restraint, considering inde 
pendence as the most precious of all things, and there¬ 
fore ready to give up life rather than liberty. Unac¬ 
quainted with the arts of civilization, ignorant of agri¬ 
culture and of the use of metals and letters, the Ger¬ 
man lives in his forests and pastures, supported by the 
chase, and the produce of his herds and flocks ; his 
life being divided between inaction, sensual pleasures 
and great hardships. In time of peace, sleep and idle¬ 
ness, by day and night, are the sole pleasure of the in¬ 
dolent, discontented warrior, who longs for war, and 
manly, dangerous adventures. Till these arrive, he 
surrenders himself, with all the passion of unrestrained 
nature, to drinking and gaming. A beverage, prepared 
with little art from wheat and barley, indemnifies him 
for the absence of the juice of the grape, which nature 
has denied him, and exhilarates his noisy feasts. His 
personal liberty is not too precious to be staked on the 
cast of a die ; and, faithful to his word, he suffers him¬ 
self to be fettered, without resistance, by the lucky 
winner, and sold into distant slavery. The form oi 
government, in the greater part of Germany, is demo¬ 
cratic. The German obeys general and positive laws 
less than the casual ascendancy of birth or valour, ot 
eloquence or superstitious reverence. On the shores 
of the Baltic there are several tribes which acknowl¬ 
edge the authority of kings, without, howmver, resign¬ 
ing the natural rights of man. Mutual protection 
forming the tie which unites the Germans, the neces¬ 
sity was early felt of rendering individual opinion sub¬ 
ject to that of the majority; and these few rude out¬ 
lines of political society are sufficient for a nation des 
titute of high ambition. The youth, born of free pa¬ 
rents and ripened to manhood, is conducted into the 
general assembly of his countrymen, furnished with the 
shield and spear, and received as an equal and worthy 
member of their warlike republic. These assemblies, 
consisting of men able to bear arms, and belonging to 
the same tribe, are summoned at fixed periods or on 
sudden emergencies. The free vote of the members 
of these councils decides on public offences, the elec¬ 
tion of magistrates, on war or peace. For though the 
leaders are allowed to discuss all subjects previously, 
yet the right of deciding anti executing is solely with 
the people. Impatient of delay, and obeying the im¬ 
pulse of their passions, without regard to justice or 
policy, the Germans are quick in adopting resolutions. 
Their applause or dissatisfaction is announced by the 
clashing of their arms or by a murmur. In times of 
danger a leader is chosen, to whom several tribes sub¬ 
mit. The most valiant is selected for this purpose, to 
lead his countrymen more by his example than his au¬ 
thority. As soon as the danger is past, his authority, 
reluctantly borne by his free-minded countrymen, 
ceases. In times of peace, no other superior is known 
than the princes, who are chosen in the assemblies to 
distribute justice, or compose differences in their re¬ 
spective districts. Every prince has a guard and a 
council of 100 persons. Although the Romans called 
several German princes kings, yet these rulers had not 
so much as the right of punishing a freeman with death, 
or imprisonment, or blows. A nation to which every 
kind of restraint was thus odious, and which acknowl¬ 
edged no authority, respected no obligations but those 
winch they imposed upon themselves. To leaders of 
approved valour the noblest youths voluntarily devoted 
their arms and services ; and as the former vied with 
each other in assembling the bravest companions 
around them, so the latter contended for the favour of 
their leaders. It was the duty of the leader to be the 
first in courage in the hour of danger, and the duty of 
his companions not to be inferior to hffn. To survive 
his fall was an indelible disgrace to his companions, 
for it was their most sacred duty to defend his person, 
and to heighten his glory by' their own deeds. The 
leader fought for victory, his companions, for their 



GERMANIA. 


GERMANIA. 


leader. Valour was the grace of man, chastity the 
virtue of woman The primitive nations of German 
origin attached something of a sacred character to the 
female sex. Polygamy was only permitted to the 
princes as a means of extending their connexions ; 
divorce was forbidden rather by a sense of propriety 
than by law. Adultery was considered an inexpiable 
crime, and was, therefore, very rare. Seduction was 
not to be excused on any consideration. The religious 
notions of this race could not but be rude and imper¬ 
fect. The sun and moon, fire and earth, were their 
deities, whom they worshipped, with some imaginary 
beings to whom they ascribed the direction of the most 
important circumstances of life, and whose will the 
priests pretended to divine by secret arts. Their tem¬ 
ples were caverns, rendered sacred by the veneration 
of many generations. The ordeals so famous in the 
middle ages were considered by them infallible in all 
dubious cases. Religion afforded the most powerful 
means for inflaming their courage. The sacred stand¬ 
ards, preserved in the dark recesses of consecrated 
caverns, were raised on the field of battle, and their 
enemies were devoted, with dreadful imprecations, to 
the gods of war and thunder. The valiant only en¬ 
joyed the favour of the gods ; a warlike life, and death 
in battle, were considered as the surest means of at¬ 
taining the joys of the other world, where the heroes 
were rejoiced by the relation of their deeds, while sit¬ 
ting around the festal table, and quaffing beer out of 
large horns or the sculls of their enemies. But the 
glory which the priests promised after death was con¬ 
ferred by the bards on earth. They celebrated in the 
battle and at the triumphal feasts the glorious heroes 
of past days, the ancestors of the brave who listened 
to their simple but fiery strains, and were inspired by 
them with contempt of death, and kindled to glorious 
deeds 

4. History of Ancient Germany. 

The Romans first became acquainted with the an- 
Jent Germans in B.C. 113, when they appeared un¬ 
der the name of Teutones and Cimbri, on the confines 
of the Roman dominion, and then moving south, car¬ 
ried the terror of their arm's over Gaul and part of Nor¬ 
thern Italy, until overthrown by Marius and Catulus 
(103 and 101 B.C.). When Julius Cresar had estab¬ 
lished himself in Gaul, he became acquainted with a 
nation then designated by the name of Germans. Ari- 
ovistus, the leader of the nation, which had previously 
inhabited the banks of the Danube, attempted to es¬ 
tablish himself in Gaul, but, being defeated by Cassar, 
he was obliged to flee beyond the Rhine. Of the fu¬ 
gitives who returned over the Rhine, the nation of the 
Marcomanni seems to have been formed. Coesar cross¬ 
ed the Rhine twice ; not with the view of making con¬ 
quests in that wilderness, but- to secure Gaul against 
the destructive irruptions of the barbarians. He even 
enlisted Germans in his army, first against the Gauls, 
then against Pompey. He obtained an accurate knowl¬ 
edge of those tribes only that lived nearest to the 
Rhine, as the Ubii, Sygambri, Usipetes, and Tencteri. 
The rest of Germany, he was told, was inhabited by 
the Suevi, who were divided into 100 districts, each 
of which annually sent 1000 men in quest of booty. 
They lived more by hunting and pasture than by agri¬ 
culture, held their fields in common, and prevented the 
approach of foreign nations by devastating their bor- 
iers. This account is true, if it is applied to the Ger¬ 
mans in general, and if by the 100 districts are under¬ 
stood different tribes.—The civil wars diverted the 
attention of the Romans from Germany. The confed¬ 
eracy of the Sygambri made inroads into Gaul with 
impunity, and Agrippa transferred the Ubii, who were 
hard pressed by them, to the west side of the Rhine. 
But the Sygambri having defeated Lollius, the legate 
of Augustus (A.U C. 739), the emperor himself hast- 
*52 


ened to the Rhine, erected fortifications along the 
banks of this river to oppose the progress of the ene¬ 
my, and gave his stepson Drusus the chief command 
against them. This general was victorious in several 
expeditions, and advanced as far as the Elbe. He died 
A.IJ.C 745. Tiberius, after him, held the chief com¬ 
mand on the Rhine during two years, and exercised 
more cunning than force against the Germane. He in¬ 
duced them to enter the Roman service. The body¬ 
guard of Augustus was composed of Germans, and the 
Cheruscan Arminius was raised to the dignity of 
knight. From 740 to 755, different Roman generals 
commanded in those regions. Tiberius, having re¬ 
ceived the chief command a second time (A.U.C. 
756), advanced to the Elbe ; and the Romans would 
probably have succeeded in making Germany a Roman 
province, but for the imprudence of his successor, 
Quintilius Varus, by which all the advantages which 
had been previously gained were lost. His violent 
measures for changing the manners and customs of the 
Germans produced a general conspiracy, headed by the 
Cheruscan Arminius, who had received his education in 
Rome. Decoyed with three legions into the forest of 
Teutoberg, Varus was attacked and destroyed with his 
army. A few fugitives only were saved by the legate 
Asprenas, who was stationed with three legions in the 
vicinity of Cologne. The consequence of this victory, 
gained by the Germans A.D. 9, was the loss of all the 
Roman possessions beyond the Rhine ; the fortress of 
Aliso, built by Drusus, was destroyed. The Cherusci 
then became the principal nation of Germany. Four 
years after, the Romans, under the command of Ger- 
manicus, made a new expedition against the Germans ; 
but, notwithstanding the valour and military skill of the 
young hero, he did not succeed in re-establishing the 
Roman dominion. The Romans then renounced the 
project of subjugating the Germans, whose invasions 
they easily repelled, and against any serious attacks 
from whom they were secured by the internal dissen¬ 
sions which had arisen in Germany. Maroboduus, who 
had been educated at the court of Augustus, had united, 
partly by persuasion and partly by force, several Su- 
evian tribes into a coalition, which is known under 
the name of the Marcomannic confederacy. At the 
head of this powerful league, he attacked the great 
kingdom of the Boii, in the southern part of Bohemia 
and Franconia, conquered it, and founded a formidable 
state, whose authority extended over the Marcomanni, 
Hermunduri, Quadi, Longobardi, and Semnones, and 
which was able to send 70,000 fighting men into the 
field. Augustus had ordered Tiberius, with twelve 
legions, to attack Maroboduus and destroy his pow¬ 
er ; but a general rebellion in Dalmatia obliged him to 
conclude a disadvantageous peace. The disasters 
which afterward befell the Romans in the west of 
Germany, prevented them from renewing their at¬ 
tempts against the Marcomanni, who ventured to make 
frequent incursions into the southern parts of Germa¬ 
ny. Two powerful nations, therefore, now existed in 
Germany, the Marcomanni and the Cherusci, who, 
however, soon became engaged in disputes. On the 
one hand, the Longobardi and Semnones, disgusted 
with the oppressions of Maroboduus, deserted his con¬ 
federacy and joined the Cherusci ; and, on the other, 
Inguiomerus, the uncle of Arminius, having become 
jealous of his nephew, went over to Maroboduus. Af¬ 
ter the war between the two rivals had been carried on 
for a considerable time, according to the rules of the 
military art, which Arminius and Maroboduus had 
learned in the school of the Romans, the victory at 
last remained with the Cherusci. Tiberius, instead of 
assisting Maroboduus, who had solicited his help, in 
stigated Catualda, king of the Goths, to fall upon him, 
forced him to leave his country, and to seek refuge 
with the Romans. Catualda, however, soon experi¬ 
enced the same fate from the Hermunduri, who novr 




GERMANIA. 


G E R 


appear as the principal tribe among the Marcomanni. 
The Oherusci, after the loss of their gro.it leader, \r- 
minius, A.D. 21, fell from their high rank among the 
German nations. Weakened by internal dissensions, 
they finally received a king from Rome, by the name 
of Italicus, who was the last descendant of Arminius. 
Durirg his reign they quarrelled with their confeder¬ 
ates, .he Lorgobardi, and sunk to an insignificant tribe 
on tie south side of the Hercynian forest. On the 
othei hand, tne Catti, who lived in the western part of 
G crmany, rose into importance. The Frisians rebelled 
on account of a tribute imposed upon them by the 
R omans, and were with difficulty overpowered ; while 
the Catti, on the Upper Rhine, made repeated assaults 
on the Roman fortresses on the opposite bank. Their 
pride, however, was humbled by Galba, who compell¬ 
ed them to abandon the country between the Lahn, the 
Maine, and the Rhine, which was distributed among 
Roman veterans. Eighteen years later a dispute 
arose between the Hermunduri and Catti, on account 
of the salt-springs of the Franconian Saale. Mean¬ 
while the numerous companions of Maroboduus and 
Catualda, having settled on the north of the Danube, 
between the rivers Gran and Morava, had founded un¬ 
der Vannius, whom they had received as king from the 
Romans, a new kingdom, which began to grow op¬ 
pressive to the neighbouring tribes. Although Van¬ 
nius had entered into an alliance with the Sarmatian 
Iazygaa, he was overpowered by the united arms of 
the Hermunduri, Lygii, and western Quadi (A.D. 
50), and was compelled to fly for refuge to the Ro¬ 
mans. His son-in-law, Sido, was now at the head of 
the government. He was a friend of the Romans, and 
rendered important services to Vespasian. In the 
West, the power of the Romans was shaken by the 
Batavi, so that they maintained themselves with the 
greatest difficulty. A war now broke out, that was ter¬ 
minated only with the downfall of Rome. The Suevi, 
being attacked by the Lygii, asked for assistance from 
Domitian, who sent them 100 horsemen. Such pal¬ 
try succours only offended the Suevi. Entering into 
an alliance with the Iazygae, in Dacia, they threatened 
Pannonia. Domitian was defeated. Nerva checked 
them, and Trajan gained a complete victory over them. 
But, from the time of Antoninus the philosopher, the 
flames of war continued to blaze in those regions. 
The Roman empire was perpetually harassed, on two 
sides by the barbarians, on one side by a number of 
small tribes, who, pressed by the Goths, were forced 
to invade Dacia in quest of new habitations. The 
southern regions were assigned to them in order to 
pacify them. But a war of more moment was car¬ 
ried on against Rome on the other side, by the united 
forces of the Marcomanni, Hermunduri, and Quadi, 
which is commonly called the Marcomannic war. 
Marcus Aurelius fought against them to the end of his 
life, and Commodus bought a peace, A.D. 180. Mean¬ 
time the Catti devastated Gaul and Rhaetia, the Ohe¬ 
rusci forced the Longobardi back to the Elbe. A.D. 
220, new barbarians appeared in Dacia, the Visigoths, 
Gepidae, and Heruli, and waged war against the Ro¬ 
mans. At the same time, in the reign of Caracalla, 
a new confederacy appeared in the southern part of 
Germany, the Alemanni, consisting cf Istaevonian 
tribes. Rome, in order to defend its provinces against 
them, erected the famous Vallum Romanorum, the 
ruins of which are still visible from Iaxthausen to 
CEhringen. But the power of the Romans sank more 
and more, partly by the incessant struggle against the 
barbarians, partly by internal agitations. At the time 
when the Roman power had been weakened by civil 
wars, in the frequent military revolutions during the 
government of the emperors, the Franks forced their 
way as far as Spain, and in the reign of the Emperor 
Probus they also conquered the island of the Batavi. 
Thus the Franks and Alemanni were now the most 
4 A 


powerful German nations. Under Julian, the iormei 
lost the island of the Batavi, which was conquered by 
the Saxons, and the latter were humbled by the armies 
of Rome. But this was Rome’s last victory. In the 
beginning of the 5th century barbarians assailed the 
Roman empire on all sides. The Vandals, Suevi, and 
Alans occupied Gaul and 8pain. The Burgundians 
followed them to Gaul, the Visigoths to Italy and 
Spain ; the Burgundians were followed by the Franks, 
the Visigoths by the Ostrogoths, and these by the 
Longobardi. Thus began those migrations of the in¬ 
numerable hosts, that spread themselves from the North 
and East over all Europe, subduing everything in their 
course. This event is called the great migration of 
the nations. (Encyclopedia Americana , vol. 5, p. 452, 
seqq.) 

Germanicus Caesar, the eldest son of Drusus Nero 
Germanicus, and of Antonia the younger, born B.C. 
14. He was the nephew of Tiberius and brother ot 
Claudius, afterward emperor. Augustus, on adopting 
Tiberius, made the latter adopt his nephew Germani¬ 
cus. At the age of twenty Germanicus served with 
distinction in Dalmatia, and afterward in Pannonia, 
and, on his return to Rome, obtained the honours of 
a triumph. He married Agrippina the elder, grand¬ 
daughter of Augustus, by whom he had nine children, 
among others Caligula, and Agrippina the younger, the 
mother of Nero. In A.D. 12, Germanicus was made 
consul, and soon after he was sent by Augustus to 
command the legions on the Rhine. On the news of 
the death of Augustus, some of the legions mutinied, 
while Germanicus was absent collecting the revenue in 
Gaul. He hastened back to the camp, and found it 
one scene of tumult and confusion. The ycfung sol¬ 
diers demanded an increase of pay, the veterans their 
discharge. They had already driven the centurions 
out of the camp. Some offered their assistance to 
raise Germanicus to the supreme power, but he re¬ 
jected their offers with horror, and left his judgment- 
seat, heedless of the clamour and threats of the muti¬ 
neers. Having retired with a few friends to his tent, 
after some consultation on the danger to the empire 
if the hostile Germans should take advantage of the 
confusion caused by this sedition of the troops, he de¬ 
termined upon exhibiting to the soldiers fictitious let¬ 
ters of Tiberius, which granted most of their demands, 
and, the better to appease them, he disbursed to them 
immediately a considerable sum by way of bounty. 
He found still greater difficulty, however, in quelling 
a second mutiny, which broke out on the arrival of 
legates from the senate, who brought to Germanicus 
his promotion to the rank of proconsul. The soldiers 
suspected that they came with orders for their punish¬ 
ment, and the camp became again a scene of confu¬ 
sion. Germanicus ordered his wife Agrippina, with 
her son Caius Caligula, attended by other officers’ 
wives and children, to leave the camp, as being no 
longer a place of safety for them. This sight affected 
and mortified the soldiers, who begged their command¬ 
er to reyoke the order, to punish the guilty, and to 
march against the enemy. They then began to inflict 
summary execution on the ringleaders of the mutiny, 
without waiting for the sanction of their general. A 
similar scene took place in the camp of two other 
legions, which were stationed in another part of the 
country, under the orders of Caecina. Availing him¬ 
self of the state of excitement on the part of the sol¬ 
diers, Germanicus crossed the Rhine, attacked the 
Marsi, the Bructeri, and other German tribes, and rout¬ 
ed them with great slaughter. The following year he 
defeated the Catti, and, after having burned their city 
of Mattium (according to Mannert, Marpirg), he vic¬ 
toriously returned over the Rhine. Here some depu¬ 
ties of Segestes appeared before him, soliciting, in the 
name of their master, his assistance against Arminius, 
the son-in-law of Segestes, by whom the latter was be 

553 



GER 


G E a 


meged. Germanicus hastened to his rescue, delivered 
him, and made Thusnelda, wife of Arminius, prisoner. 
Arminius then prepared for war, and Germanicus col¬ 
lected his forces on the Amisia or Ems. A battle 
ensued. The Roman legions were already receding, 
when Germanicus renewed the attack with fresh troops, 
and thus happily averted the rout that threatened him. 
Arminius retreated, and Germanicus was content to re¬ 
gain the banks of the Ems, and retire with honour 
from a contest which his army could no longer sustain. 
After having lost another part of his troops during his 
retreat, by a violent storm, which wrecked the vessels 
in which they were embarked, he reached the mouths 
of the Rhine with a feeble remnant of his army, and 
employed the winter in making new preparations for 
war against the Germans. He built a fleet of one thou¬ 
sand vessels, in order to avoid the difficult route by land 
through forests and morasses, and landed at the mouth 
of the Ems. Proceeding thence towards the Visurgis 
or Weser , he found the Cherusci assembled on the 
opposite bank, with the intention of contesting the 
passage. Nevertheless, he effected it, and fought a 
battle which began at daybreak, and terminated to the 
advantage of the Romans. On the succeeding day 
the Germans renewed the contest with fury, and car¬ 
ried disorder into the ranks of the Romans, but Ger¬ 
manicus maintained possession of the field. The Ger¬ 
mans returned into their forests. Germanicus re-em¬ 
barked, and, after having experienced a terrible storm, 
by which part of his fleet was dissipated, went into 
winter-quarters, but not until he had made another in¬ 
cursion into the territory of the Marsi. Meantime Ti¬ 
berius wrote repeatedly to his nephew, that he had 
earned fcnough of glory in Germany, and that he ought 
to return to Rome to enjoy the triumph which he had 
merited. Germanicus asked for another year to com¬ 
plete the subjugation of Germany, but Tiberius, who 
felt jealous of the glory of his nephew, and of his pop¬ 
ularity with the troops, remained inflexible, and Ger¬ 
manicus was obliged to return to Rome, where he 
triumphed in the following year, A.D. 17. The year 
after, he was consul for the second time with Tiberius 
himself, and was sent to the East, where serious dis¬ 
turbances had broken out, with most extensive powers. 
But Tiberius took care to have a watch over him, by 
placing in the government of Syria Cnams Piso, a 
violent and ambitious man, who seems to have been 
well qualified for his mission, as he annoyed Germani¬ 
cus in every possible way, and his wife Plancina sec¬ 
onded him in his purpose. The frank and open na¬ 
ture of Germanicus was no match for the wily intrigues 
of his enemies. After making peace with Artabanus, 
king of the Parthians, and calming other disturbances 
in the East, Germanicus fell ill at Antioch, and, after 
lingering for some time, died, plainly expressing to his 
wife and friends around him that he was the victim of 
the wickedness of Piso and Plancina, meaning most 
probably that some slow poison had been administered 
to him. His wife Agrippina, with her son Caius and 
her other children, returned to Rome with the ashes 
of her husband. Germanicus was generally and deep¬ 
ly regretted. Like his father Drusus, he was, while 
living, an object of hope to the Romans. He died 
A.D. 19, in the thirty-fourth year of his age. Ger¬ 
manicus has been praised for his sincerity, his kind 
nature, his disinterestedness, and his love of informa¬ 
tion, which he exhibited in his travels in Greece and 
Egypt. His military talents appear to have been of a 
high order. And yet, in the midst of warlike opera¬ 
tions, ne still found leisure for literary pursuits, and fa¬ 
voured the world with two Greek comedies, some epi¬ 
grams, and a. translation of Aratus into Latin verse. 
The translation has come down to us in part. ( Vid.. 
Aratus I. Tacit., Ann., 1, 31, seqq. — Id., Ann., 2, 
5.—Id. ib., 2, 53, seqq.—Dio Cass., 57, 5, seqq.) 

Germans, one of the ancient tribes of Persia. (He- 
554 


rod., 1, 125.) This circumstance forms an importan 
argument in the question respecting the affinity be¬ 
tween the early Germanic and Persian races. (Con 
suit remarks under the article Germania, § 1.) 

Geronthr^e, a town of Laconia, to the north of 
Helos, founded by the Achaeans long before the inva 
sion of the Dorians and the Heraclidae, and subse¬ 
quently colonized by the latter. When Pausanias vis¬ 
ited Laconia, he found Geronthrie in possession of the 
Eleuthero-Lacones. It contained a temple and grove 
of Mars, and another temple of Apollo. This ancient 
town is supposed to have been situated near the vil¬ 
lage of Hieraki, where there are some vestiges. ( Pau - 
san., 3, 22.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 218.) 

Gerra, I. a city of Arabia Deserta, on the Sinus 
Persicus. It was enriched by commerce, and the 
principal articles of trade were the perfumes brought 
from the Sabsei, sent up the Euphrates to Thapsacus, 
and across the desert to Petra. ( Plin ., 6, 28.— Schol. 
ad Nicand., Alexiph., v. 107.) This city, for the con¬ 
struction of whose houses and ramparts stones of salt 
were used, appears to be represented by that now 
named El-Katif. —II. A city of ^Egyptus Inferior, or 
lower Egypt, in the eastern quarter, about eight miles 
from Pelusium. Now probably Maseli. —IH. A city 
of Syria, in the district of Cyrrhestica, between Be- 
thammaria and Arimara, and near the Euphrates. 
Now Suruk. —IV. According to Ptolemy, a city on 
the Island Meninx, in the -Syrtis Minor, west of the 
city of Meninx. {Bischojf und Moller, Worterb. der 
Geogr., s. v.) 

Gerrhi, a people of Scythia, in whose country the 
Borysthenes rises. The kings of Scythia were buried 
in their territories. ( Herodot ., 4, 71.) 

Gerrhus, a river of Scythia, which, according to 
Herodotus (4, 56), separated from the Borysthenes, 
near the place as far as which that river was first 
known. It flowed towards the sea, dividing the ter¬ 
ritories of the Herdsmen from those of the Royal Scy¬ 
thians, and then fell into the Hypacris. D’Anville 
makes it the same with the modern Molosznijawodi. 
Rennell, however, inclines in favour'of the Tasczenac. 
{Geogr. of Herodotus, p. 71.) 

Geryon, Geryoneus, and Gery5nes, a celebrated 
monster, born from the union of Chrysaor with Calli- 
rhoe. He had the bodies of three men united : they 
cohered above, but below the loins they were divided 
into three. He lived in thev island of Erythea, in 
the Sinus Gaditanus. Geryon was the possessor of 
remarkable oxen. They were of a purple hue, and 
were guarded by a herdsman named Eurytion, and by 
the two-headed dog Orthos, the progeny of Echidna 
and Typhon. The tenth labour of Hercules was to 
bring the oxen of Geryon from the island where they 
were pastured. Having reached Erythea in the golden 
cup of the Sun-god, he passed the night on Mount 
Abas. The dog Orthos, discovering him, flew at him, 
but Hercules struck him with his club, and killed Eu¬ 
rytion who came up to his’ aid. Menoetius, who kept 
in the same place the oxen of Hades, having informed 
Geryon of what had happened, the latter pursued and 
overtook Hercules as he was driving the cattle along 
the river Anthemus. Geryon there attacked him, but 
was slain by his arrows; and Hercules, placing the oxen 
in the cup, brought them over to the Continent. {Vid. 
Hercules, where an explanation is given of the whole 
legend respecting the hero, and consult Apollud., 2, 

5, 10.)—According to some ancient writers, the oxen 
of Geryon were brought, not from the island of Ery. 
thea, but from Acarnania. Consult on this subject the 
remarks of Creuzer {Hist. Grcec. Antiquiss. Fragm 
p. 51, not.). 

Gessoriacum, a town of the Morini, in Gaul ; it 
was afterward named Bononia, or Bolonia, and is now 
Boulogne. It appears to be the same with the Mori- 
norum Portus Britannicus of Pliny (4, extr.). Man 








G 1 (5 


G 1 l.l 


nert make8 it identical with the Porlus Icius or Itius. 
Mela, 3, 2.— Suetdn., Vit. Claud., 17.— Eutrop., 9, 
8.— Zosim., 6, 2.) 

Geta, Antonius, younger son of the Emperor Sep- 
tiinius Severus, was born A.D. 190, and made Caesar 
and colleague with his father and brother, A.D. 208. 
The most remarkable circumstance recorded of him is 
the dissimilarity of his disposition to that of his 
father and brother, who were both cruel, while Geta 
was distinguished by his mildness and affability. He 
is said to have several times reproved his brother Cara- 
calla for his proneness to shed blood, in consequence 
of which he incurred his mortal hatred. When Seve¬ 
rus died at Eboracum (York), A.D. 211, he named his 
two sons as his joint successors in the empire. The 
soldiers, who were much attached to Geta, withstood 
all the insinuations of Caracalla, who wished to reign 
alone, and insisted upon swearing allegiance to both 
emperors together. After a short and unsuccessful 
campaign, the two brothers, with their mother Julia, 
proceeded to Rome, where, after performing the fu¬ 
neral rites of their father, they divided the imperial 
palace between them, and at one time thought of di¬ 
viding the empire likewise. Geta, who was fond of 
tranquillity, proposed to take Asia and Egypt, and to 
reside at Antioch or Alexandrea; but the Empress Ju¬ 
lia with tears deprecated the partition, saying that she 
could not bear to part from either of her sons. After 
repeated attempts of Caracalla to murder Geta, he 
feigned a wish to be reconciled to his brother, and in¬ 
vited him to a conference in their mother’s apartment. 
Geta unsuspectingly went, and was stabbed by some 
centurions whom Caracalla had concealed for the pur¬ 
pose. Kis mother Julia tried to shield him, but they 
murdered him in her arms, and she was stained by his 
blood, and wounded in one of her hands. This hap¬ 
pened A.D. 212. After the murder Caracalla began a 
fearful proscription of all the friends of Geta, and also 
of those who lamented his death on public grounds. 
( Sparlian ., Vit. Oct.—Herodian , 4, 1, seqq. — Dio 
Cass., 77, 2, seqq.) 

Getje, the name of a northern tribe mentioned in 
Roman history, inhabiting the country on both banks 
of the Danube near its aestuary, and along the western 
shores of the Euxine. Those who lived south of the 
Danube were brought into a kind of subjection to 
Rome in the time of Augustus ( Dio Cass., 51) ; and 
their country, called Scythia Parva, and also Pontus, is 
well known, under the latter name, through the poems 
which Ovid, in his exile, wrote from Tomi, the place of 
his residence. He gives in many passages a dismal 
•account of the appearance and manners of the Getas, 
especially in elegies seventh and tenth of the fifth book 
of his Tristia. The maritime parts of the country had 
been in former times colonized by the Greeks, and this 
may account for the partial civilization of the Getse 
south of the Danube, while their brethren north of the 
same river remained in a state of barbarism and inde¬ 
pendence. The Getse are described by Herodotus 
(4, 93) as living in his time south of the Ister (Dan¬ 
ube). He calls them the bravest of the Thracians. 
The Goths are supposed to have had a common ori¬ 
gin with the Get*. ( Plin ., 4, 11.— Mela, 2, 2.— 
lornand., de Regn. Success., p. 50, seq.) 

Gigantes, the sons of Ccelus and Terra, who, ac¬ 
cording to Hesiod, sprang from the blood of the wound 
which Coslus received from his son Saturn ; while Hy- 
ginus calls them sons of Tartarus and Terra. They are 
represented as of uncommon stature, with strength pro¬ 
portioned to their gigantic size. Some of them, as 
C-ottus, Briareus, and Gyes, had fifty heads and one 
hundred arms. The giants are fabled by the poets to 
have made war upon the gods. The scene of the 
conflict is said to have been the peninsula of Pallene ; 
and with the aid of Hercules the gods subdued their 
formidable foes. The principal champions on the side 


of the giants were Porphyrion, Alcyoneus, and Encei 
adus, on the last of whom Minerva flung the island 
of Sicily, where his motions cause the eruptions of 
JEtna. ( Pind., Pyth., 8, 15.— Id., Nem., 1, 100.— 
Apollod., 1, 6.)—It is said that Earth, enraged at the 
destruction of the giants, brought forth the huge Ty 
phon to contend with the gods. The stature of this 
monster reached the sky ; fire flashed from his eyes ; 
he hurled glowing rocks with loud cries and hissing 
against heaven, and flame and storm rushed from his 
mouth. The gods, in dismay, fled to Egypt, and con¬ 
cealed themselves under the forms of various animals. 
Jupiter, however, after a severe conflict, overcame him, 
and placed him beneath iEtna. (Pind., Pyth., 1, 29, 
seqq. — Id., frag. Epinic., 5.— JEsch., Prom. V., 351, 
seqq.) The flight of the gods into Egypt is a bung¬ 
ling attempt at connecting the Greek mythology with 
the animal worship of that country. ( Keightley's My¬ 
thology, p. 262, seq.) The giants appear to have been 
nothing more than the energies of nature personified, 
and the conflict between them and the gods must al¬ 
lude to some tremendous convulsion of nature in very 
early times. ( Vid. Lectonia, and compare Hermann 
und Creuzer, Briefe, &c., p. 164.)—As regards the 
general question, respecting the possible existence in 
former days of a gigantic race, it need only be observed, 
that, if their structure be supposed to have been simi¬ 
lar to that of the rest of our species, they must have 
been mere creatures of poetic imagination ; they could 
not have existed. . It is found that the bones of the 
human body are invariably hollow, and, consequently, 
well calculated to resist external violence. Had they 
been solid, they would have proved too heavy a burden 
for man to bear. But this hollowness, while it is ad¬ 
mirably well fitted for the purpose which has just been 
mentioned, and likewise subserves many other impor¬ 
tant ends in the animal economy, is not by any means 
well adapted for supporting a heavy superincumbent 
weight; on the contrary, it renders the bone weaker, 
in this respect, than if the latter had been solid. The 
inference from all this is very plain. Man never was 
intended by his Maker for a gigantic being, since his 
limbs could not, in that event, have supported him ; 
and, if giants ever did exist, they must necessarily 
have been crushed by their own weight. Or, had their 
bones been made solid, the weight of their limbs would 
have been so enormous, that these lofty beings must 
have remained as immoveable as statues. That many 
of our species have attained a very large size is indis¬ 
putable, but the world has never seen giants ; and in 
all those cases where the bones of giants are said to 
have been dug up from the earth, the remains thus dis¬ 
covered have been found to be merely those of some 
extinct species of the larger kind of animals. A sim¬ 
ple mode of life, abundance of nutritious food, and a 
salubrious atmosphere, give to all organic beings large 
and graceful forms. The term giant, as used in scrip 
ture, originates in an error of translation. In our ver¬ 
sion of holy writ six different Hebrew words are ren¬ 
dered by the same term giants, whereas they merely 
mean, in general, persons of great courage, wicked¬ 
ness, &c., and not men of enormous stature, as is 
commonly supposed. Thus, too, when Nimrod is 
styled in the Greek version a giant before the Lord, 
nothing more is meant than that he was a man of ex¬ 
tensive power. 

Gindes. Vid. Gyndes. 

Gir, a river of Africa, which Ptolemy delineates as 
equal in length to the Niger, the course of each being 
probably about 1000 British miles. It ran from east 
to west, until lost in the same lake, marsh, or desert 
as the Niger. The Arabian geographer Edrisi seems 
to indicate the Ghir when he speaks of the Nile of the 
negroes as running to the west, and being lost in an 
inland sea, in which was the island Ulil. Some have 
supposed the Gir Ptolemy to be the river of Bornoxt, 

555 




G L A 


GL A 


or Wad-al-Gazel, which, joining another considerable i 
river flowing from Kuku, discharges itself into the ' 
Nubia Palus or Kangra , and it is so delineated in 
Renndl’s map ; but others, seemingly with better 
reason, apprehend the Gir of Ptolemy to be the Bahr- 
Kulla of Browne, in his history of Africa. 

Gladiatorii Ludi, combats originally exhibited at 
he grave of deceased persons at Rome. They were 
first introduced there by the Bruti, upon the death of 
their father, A.U.C. 490, and they thus formed ori¬ 
ginally a kind of funeral sacrifice, the shades of the 
dead being supposed to be propitiated with blood. For 
some time after this they were exhibited only on such 
occasions. Subsequently, however, the magistrates, 
to entertain the people, gave shows of gladiators at the 
Saturnalia and the festival of Minerva. Incredible 
numbers of men were destroyed in this manner. Af¬ 
ter the triumph of Trajan over the Dacians, spectacles 
of this kind were exhibited for 123 days, in which 
10,000 gladiators fought. Gladiators were kept and 
maintained in schools by persons called lanistce, who 
purchased and trained them. The whole number un¬ 
der one lanista was called favnilia. Gladiators were at 
first composed of captives and slaves, or of condemned 
malefactors. But afterward also freeborn citizens, in¬ 
duced by hire or by inclination, fought on the arena ; 
some even of noble birth ; and, what is etill more won- 
fe.eiful, women of rank, and dwarfs. When there were 
».o be any shows, handbills were ctrculated to give no¬ 
ice to the people, and to mention the place, dumber, 
‘'me, and every circumstance requisite to be known. 
When they were first brought upon the arena, they 
walked round the place with great pomp and solemnity, 
ind after that they were matched in equal pairs with 
freat nicety. They first had a skirmish with wooden 
Sle?, called rubles or arma lasoria. After this the ef- 
ectne weapons, such as swords, daggers, &c., called 
irma decretona, were given them, and the signal for 
.he engagement was given by the sound of a trumpet. 

As they had all previously bound themelves to contend 
all the last, the fight was bloody and obstinate ; and 
when one signified his submission by surrendering his 
arms, the victor was not permitted to grant him his life 
without the leave and approbation of the multitude. 
This was done by pressing down their thumbs, with 
the hands clenched. On the contrary, if the people 
wished him slain, they turned their thumbs upward. 
The first of these signs was called polliccm premere; 
the second, pollicem vertcre The combats of gladia¬ 
tors were sometimes different, either in weapons or 
dress, whence they were generally distinguished into 
the following orders. The secutores were^armed with 
a sword and buckler, to keep off the net of their antag¬ 
onists, the retiarii. These last endeavoured to throw 
their net over the head of their opponent, and in that 
manner to entangle him, and prevent him from striking. 

If this did not succeed, they betook themselves to flight. 
Their dress was a short coat, with a hat tied under the 
chin with broad riband. They bore a trident in their 
left hand. The Threces, originally Thracians, were 
armed with a falchion and small round shield. The 
myrmillones, called also Galli, from their Gallic dress, 
were much the same as the secutores. They were, 
like them, armed with a sword, and on the top of their 
headpiece they wore the figure of a fish embossed, 

<. nlled uoppvpoc , whence their name. The hoplomachi 
were completely armed from head to foot, as their 
name implies. The Samnites, armed after the man¬ 
ner of the Samnites, wore a large shield, broad at the 
top, and growing more narrow at the bottom, more 
conveniently. to defend the upper parts of the body. 
The essedarii generally fought from the essedum , or 
chariot used by the ancient Gauls and Britons. The 
andabatcz, avaGarae, fought on horseback, with a hel¬ 
met that covered and defended their faces and eyes. 
Hence andabatarum more pugnare is to fight blind- 
556 


folded. The meridiani engaged in the afternoon. 
The postulatitii were men of great skill and experi¬ 
ence, and such as were generally produced by the 
emperors. The jiscalcs were maintained out of the 
emperor’s treasury, Jiscus. The dimachceri fought 
with two swords in their hands, whence their name. 
After these cruel exhibitions had been continued for 
the amusement of the Roman populace, they were 
abolished by Constantine the Great, near 600 years 
from their first institution. They were, however, re¬ 
vived under the reign of Constantius and his two suc¬ 
cessors, but Honorius for ever put an end to these 
cruel barbarities. 

Glauce, I. a daughter of Creon, king of Corinth, 
called also Creiisa, married to Jason after his separa¬ 
tion from Medea.—II. A fountain at Corinth, which 
was said to have received its name from Glauce, who 
threw herself into it in order to be freed from the en¬ 
chantments of Medea. ( Pausan., 2, 3.) 

Glaucus, I. son of Hippolochus, and grandson ol 
Beilerophon. He was, with Sarpedon, leader of the 
Lycian auxiliaries of King Priam. Upon the discov¬ 
ery made on the field of battle by him and Diomede, 
that their grandfathers, Beilerophon, king of Ephyre or 
Corinth, and GCneus, king of HStolia, had been re¬ 
markable for their friendship, they mutually agreed to 
exchange their armour, that of Glaucus being.of gold, 
and that of Diomede of brass. Hence arose the prov¬ 
erb, “It is the exchange of Glaucus and Diomede,” 
to denote inequality in things presented or exchanged 
Glaucus was slain by Ajax. {Horn., II, 6, 119, seqq. 
— Virg., AEn., 6, 483.) — II. A sea deity, probably 
only another form of Poseidon or Neptune, whose son 
he is, according to some accounts. ( Euanthes , ap. 
Athen., 7, p. 296.) Like the marine gods in general, 
he had the gift of prophecy ; and we find him appear¬ 
ing to the Argonauts (Apoll. Rh., 1, 1310, scq.), and 
to Menelaus ( Eurip ., Orest., 356, seqq.), and telling 
them what had happened, or what was to happen. Tn 
later times, sailors were continually making reports of 
his soothsaying. (Pausan., 9, 22.) Some said that 
he dwelt with the Nereides at Delos, where he gave re¬ 
sponses to all who sought them. ( Aristot ., ap. Athen., 

1. c.) According to others, he visited each year all 
the isles and coasts, with a train of monsters of the 
deep ( Krjrea ), and, unseen, foretold in the JEolic dia¬ 
lect all kinds of evil. The fishermen watched for his 
approach, and endeavoured by pastings, prayer, and fu¬ 
migations to avert the ruin with which his prophecy 
menaced the fruits and cattle. At times he was seen 
among the waves, and his body appeared covered with 
muscles, seaweed, and stones. He was heard ever¬ 
more to lament his fate in not being able to die. (Plat. 
Rep., 10, 611.— Schol., ad loc.) —This last circum¬ 
stance refers to the common pragmatic history of 
Glaucus. He was a fisherman, it is said (Pausan., 

1. c.—Ovul, Met., 13, 904, seqq.), of Anthedon, in 
Bceotia. Observing one day the fish which he had 
caught and thrown on the grass to bite it, and then to 
jump into the sea, his curiosity excited him to taste it 
also. Immediately on his doing so he followed their 
example, and thus became a sea-god. Another ac 
count made him to have obtained his immortality by 
tasting the grass, which had revived a hare he had run 
down in JEtolia. (Nicand., ap. Athen., 1. c ) He 
was also said to have built and steered the Argo, and to 
nave been made a god of the sea by Jupiter during 
the voyage. ( Possis, ap. Athen., 1. c.) An account 
of the story of his love for Scylla will be found under 
the latter article. (Kcightlcy's Mythology , p. 248, 
seqq.) —III. A son of Sisyphus, king of Corinth, by 
Merope, the daughter of Atlas, born at Potnise, a’vil¬ 
lage of Bceotia. According to one account, he re¬ 
strained his mares from having intercourse with the 
steeds ; upon which Venus inspired the former with 
such fury, that they tore his body to pieces as he re- 




G O N 


G O R 


tun.ed from the games which Adrastus had celebrated 
in honour oj'his father. Another version of the story 
makes them to have run mad after eating a certain 
plant at Potnise. ( Etymol. Mag., s. v. Uorviadeg. — 
Hygin., fab., 250.— Virgil, Georg., 3, 268.— Heyne, 
ad Virg1. c. — Palceyh., de Incred., c. 26.— Schol. ad 
Enrip., Phoen., 1141.)—IV. A son of Minos and Pas- 
iphae, who, pursuing, when a child, a mouse, fell into 
a vessel of honey and was smothered. His father, 
ignorant of his fate, consulted the oracle to know 
where he was, and received for answer that there was 
a three-coloured cow in his herd, and that he who could 
best tell what she was like, could restore his son to life. 
The soothsayers were all assembled, and Polyidus, 
the son of Coiranus, said that her colour was that of 
the berry of the brier, green, red, and, lastly, black. 
Minos thereupon desired him to find his son ; and 
Polyidus, by his skill in divination, discovered where 
he was. Minos then ordered him to restore him to 
life; and, on his declaring his incapacity so to do, 
shut him up in a chamber with the body of his child. 
While here, the soothsayer saw a serpent approach 
the body, and he struck and killed it. Another im¬ 
mediately appeared, and seeing the first one dead, re¬ 
tired, and came back soon after with a plant in its 
mouth, and laid it on the dead one, which instantly 
came to life. Polyidus, by employing the same herb, 
recovered the child. Minos, before he let him depart, 
insisted on his communicating his art to Glaucus. He 
did so ; but, as he was taking leave, he desired his 
pupil to gpit into his mouth. Glaucus obeyed, and 
lost the memory of all he had learned. ( Apollod., 3, 
3, 1.— Tzetz., ad Lyc., 811.) Hyginus makes him to 
have been restored to life by HSsculapius. ( Hygin., 
Poet. Astron., 2, 14.) 

Glaucus Sinus, a gulf of Lycia, at the head of 
which stood the city of Telmissus or Maori , whence 
in ancient times the gulf was sometimes also called 
Sinus Telmissius, and whence comes likewise its mod¬ 
ern name, Gulf of Maori. 

Glota or Clota, a river of Britain, now the Clyde, 
falling into the Glota iEstuarium, or Frith of Clyde. 

Gnatia, a town of Apulia, the same as Egnatia, 
the name being merely shortened by dropping the ini¬ 
tial vowel. ( Vid. Egnatia.) 

Gnipus. Vid. Cnidus. 

Gnossus. Vid. Cnosus. 

Gobryas, a Persian, one of the seven noblemen 
who conspired against the usurper Smerdis. (Vid. 
Darius.) 

Gomphi, a city of Thessaly, of considerable strength 
and importance, and the key of the country on the side 
of Epirus. It was situate on the borders of thb Atha- 
manes, and was occupied by that people not long be¬ 
fore the battle of Cynoscephalae. When Caesar enter¬ 
ed Thessaly, after his joining Domitius at JSgitium, 
the inhabitants of Gomphi, aware of his failure at Dyr- 
rhachium, closed their gates against him; the walls, 
however, were presently scaled, notwithstanding their 
great height, and the town was given up to plunder. 
In his account of this event, Caesar describes Gomphi 
as a large and opulent city. (Bell. Civ., 3, 80.— 
Compare Appian, B. C., 2, 64.) The Greek geogra¬ 
pher Meletius places it on the modern site of Stagous, 
or Kalabachi as it is called by the Turks (Geogr., p. 
388); but Pouqueville was informed that its ruins 
were to be seen at a place called Cle'isoura, not far 
from Stagous. (Vol. 3, p. 339.) 

Gonatas, one of the Antigoni. ( Vid. Gonni.) 

Gonni, a town of Thessaly, twenty miles from La¬ 
rissa, according to Livy (36, 10), and close to the en¬ 
trance of the gorge of Tempe. It was strongly forti¬ 
fied by Perses in his first campaign against the Ro¬ 
mans, who made no attempt to render themselves 
masters of this key of Macedonia. (Liv., 42, 54.) 
Antigonus, surnamed Gonatas, was probably born here, 


since Stephanus of Byzantium gives it as the ethnic 
derivative of Gonni. The scholiast on Lycophron (v. 
904), in commenting on a passage of the poet where 
this town is alluded to, says it was also called Go- 
nussa. (Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 1, p. 380.) 

Gordi^ei, mountains m Armenia, where the Tigris 
rises. 

Gordianus, I., Marcus Antoninus Africanus, 
born during the reign of the first Antonine, of one of 
the most illustrious and wealthy families of Rome, made 
himself very popular during his qua?,storship by his mu¬ 
nificence, and the large sums which he spent in provi¬ 
ding games and other amusements for the people. He 
also cultivated literature, and wrote several poems, 
among others one in which he celebrated the virtues 
of the two Antonines. Being intrusted with the gov¬ 
ernment of several provinces, he conducted himself in 
such a manner as to gain universal approbation. He 
was proconsul of Africa A.D. 237. When an insur¬ 
rection broke out in that province against Maximinus, 
on account of his exactions, and the insurgents saluted 
Gordianus as emperor, he prayed earnestly to be ex¬ 
cused, on account of his age, being then past eighty, 
and to be allowed to die in peace ; but the insurgents 
threatening to kill him if he refused, he accepted the 
perilous dignity, naming his son Gordianus as his col¬ 
league, and both made their solemn entry into Carthage 
amid universal applause. The senate cheerfully con¬ 
firmed the election, proclaiming the two Gordiani as 
emperors, and declaring Maximinus and his son to be 
enemies to their country. Meantime, however, Capel- 
lianus, governor of Mauritania, collected troops in fa¬ 
vour of Maximinus, and marched against Carthage. 
The younger Gordianus came out to oppose him, but 
was defeated and killed, and his aged father, on learn¬ 
ing the sad tidings, strangled himself. Their reign 
had not lasted two months altogether, yet they were 
greatly regretted, on account of their personal quali¬ 
ties, and the hopes which the people had founded ou 
them. (Capitol., Vit. Gordian. Tr.) —II. M. Anto- 
nius Africanus, son of Gordianus, was instructed by 
Serenus Samonicus, who left him his library, which 
consisted of 62,000 volumes. He was well informed, 
and wrote several works, but was intemperate in his 
pleasures, which latter circumstance seems to have 
recommended him to the favour of the Emperor Heli, 
ogabalus. Alexander Severus advanced him subse¬ 
quently to the consulship. He afterward passed into 
Africa as lieutenant to his father, and, when the latter 
was elevated to the throne, shared that dignity with him. 
But, after a reign of not quite two months, he fell in 
battle at the age of forty-six, against Capellianus, a 
partisan of Maximinus. (Vid. Gordianus, I.— Capi- 
tolinu?, Vit. Gordian. Tr.) —III. Marcus Antoninus 
Pius, grandson, on the mother’s side, of the elder Gor¬ 
dianus, and nephew of Gordianus the younger, was 
twelve years of age when he was proclaimed Ccesar by 
general acclamation of the people of Rome, after the 
news had arrived of the death of the two Gordiani in 
Africa. The senate named him colleague of the two 
new emperors Maximus and Balbinus, but. in the fol¬ 
lowing year (A.D. 238, according to Blair and other 
chronologers) a mutiny of the prsetorian soldiers todk 
place at Rome, Balbinus and Maximus were murdered, 
and the boy Gordianus was proclaimed emperor. His 
disposition was kind and amiable, but at the begin¬ 
ning of his reign he trusted to the insinuations of a 
certain Maurus and other freedmen of the palace, who 
abused his confidence, and committed many acts of 
injustice. In the second year of his reign a revolt 
broke out in Africa, where a certain Sabinianus was 
proclaimed emperor, but the insurrection was soon put 
down by the governor of Mauritania. In the following 
year, Gordianus being consul with Claudius Pompeia 
nus, married Furia Sabina Tranquillina, daughter of 
Misitheus, a man of the greatest personal merit, who 

557 





G 0 R 


G O R 


was then placed at the head of the emperor’s guards. 
Misitheus disclosed to Gordianus the disgraceful con¬ 
duct of Maurus and his friends, who were immediately 
deprived of their offices and driven away from court. 
From that moment Gordianus placed implicit trust in 
his father-in-law, on whom the senate conferred the 
title of “Guardian of the Republic.” In the next 
year, news came to Rome that the Persians under 
Sapor had invaded Mesopotamia, had occupied Nisibis 
ar.d Carrhse, entered Syria, and, according to Capito- 
linus, had taken Antioch. Gordianus, resolving to 
march in person against this formidable enemy, opened 
the temple of Janus, according to an ancient custom 
which had been long disused, and, setting out from 
Rome at the head of a choice army, took his way by 
Illyricum and Mcesia, where he defeated the Goths 
and Sarmatians, and drove them beyond the Danube. 
In the plains of Thrace, however, he encountered an¬ 
other tribe, the Alani, from whom he experienced a 
check ; but they having also retired towards the north, 
Gordianus crossed the Hellespont, and landed in Asia, 
whence he proceeded into Syria, delivered Antioch, 
defeated the Persians in several battles, retook Nisibis 
and Carrhse, and drove Sapor back to his own domin¬ 
ions. The senate voted him a triumph, and also a 
statue to Misitheus, to whose advice much of the suc¬ 
cess of Gordianus was attributed. Unfortunately, 
however, that wise counsellor died the following year, 
not without suspicions of foul play being raised against 
Philippus, an officer of the guards, who succeeded him 
in the command. In the year after, A.D. 244, Gordi¬ 
anus advanced into the Persian territory, and defeated 
Sapor on the banks of the Chaboras ; but while he 
was preparing to pursue him, the traitor Philippus, 
who had contrived to spread discontent among the 
soldiers by attributing their privations to the inexpe¬ 
rience of a boyish emperor, was proclaimed by the 
army his colleague in the empire. Gordianus con¬ 
sented, but soon after was murdered by the ambitious 
Philippus. A monument was raised to him by the 
soldiers, with an inscription, at a place called Zaitha, 
twenty miles east of the town of Circesium, not far 
from the left bank of the Euphrates, which continued 
to be seen until it was destroyed by Licinius, who 
claimed to be a descendant of Philippus. Gordianus 
tvas about twenty years old when he died. His body, 
ccording to Eutropius, was carried to Rome, and he 
was numbered among the gods. His short reign was 
a prosperous one for Rome. {Capitol., Vit. Gord. 
Tert.—Herodian, 7, 10, seqq. — Id., 8, 6, seqq. — Eu- 
trop., 9, 2.) 

Gordium, a city of Galatia in Asia Minor, on the 
river Sangarius, a little to the east of Pessinus. Here 
was preserved the famous Gordian knot which Alex¬ 
ander cut. ( Vid . Gordius.) This place changed its 
name in the reign of Augustus to Juliopolis, which was 
given it by Cleo, a leader of some predatory bands in 
this quarter. After the battle of Actium, he declared 
for Augustus ; and being thus left in safe possession of 
this city, which was his birthplace, changed its name 
out of compliment to the memory of Caesar. {Justin, 
— Liv., 38, 18. — iCurt., 3, 1 . — Manncrt, Geogr., 
vol. 6, pt. 3, p. 72.) 

Gordius, a Phrygian, who, though originally a peas¬ 
ant, was raised to the throne. During a sedition, the 
Phiygians consulted the oracle, and were told that all 
theii troubles would cease as soon as they chose for 
their king the first man they met going to the temple 
of Jupiter mounted on a chariot. Gordius was the 
object of their choice, and he immediately consecrated 
his chariot in the temple of Jupiter. The knot which 
tied the yoke to the draught-tree was made in such an 
artful manner, that the ends of the cord could not be 
perceived. Fiom this circumstance, a report^was soon 
spread that the empire of Asia was promised by the 
oracle to him that could untie the Gordian kno* 
558 


Alexander, in his conquest of Asia, passed by Gordi¬ 
um ; and as he wished to leave nothing undone which 
might inspire his soldiers with courage, and make his 
enemies believe that he was born to conquer Asia, he 
cut the knot with his sword, and from that circum¬ 
stance asserted that the oracle was really fulfilled, and 
that his claims to universal empire were fully justified. 
{Justin, U, 7.—Curt., 3, 1 .) 

Gorgias, a celebrated statesman, orator, and soph¬ 
ist, born at Leontini in Sicily, whence he was sur- 
named Leontinus. He flourished in the fifth century 
before the Christian era, during the most brilliant pe¬ 
riod of the literary activity of Greece, and has been 
immortalized by the dialogue of Plato which bears his 
name. The dates of his birth and death are alike un¬ 
certain, but the number of his years far outran the or¬ 
dinary length of human existence, and, in the different 
statements, ranges between 100 and 109. Whatever 
may have been the speculative errors of Gorgias, his 
long life was remarkable for an undeviating practice of 
virtue and temperance, which secured to his last days 
the full possession of his faculties, and imparted cheer¬ 
fulness and resignation in the hour of death. Accord¬ 
ing to Eusebius, Gorgias flourished in the 86th Olym 
piad, and came to Athens Olymp. 88, 2, or B.C. 427, 
to seek assistance for his native city, the independence 
of which was menaced by its powerful neighbour Syr¬ 
acuse. In this mission he justified the opinion which 
his townsmen had formed of his talents for business 
and political sagacity, and, upon its successful termi¬ 
nation, withdrew from public life and returned to 
Athens, which, as the centre of the mental activity of 
Greece, offered a wide field for the display of his in¬ 
tellectual powers and acquirements. He did not, 
however, take up his residence permanently in that 
city, but divided his time between it and Larissa in 
Thessaly, where he is said to have died shortly before 
or afier the death of bocrates. To the 84th Olympiad 
is assigned the publication of his philosophical work 
entitled “ Of the^ Non-Being , or of Nature ” {nepl rov 
//?/ ovroq, t] 7repi Qvcreoc;), in which, according to the 
extracts from it in the pseudo-Aristotelian work “ De 
Xenophane, Zenone, et Gorgia ,” and in Sextus Em 
piricus, he purposes to show: 1. that absolutely no¬ 
thing exists : 2. that even if anything subsists, it can¬ 
not be known : and, 3. that even if aught subsists and 
can be known, it cannot be expressed and communi¬ 
cated to others. In the arguments, however, by which 
he sought to establish these positions, and, generally 
speaking, in his physical doctrines, Gorgias deferred, 
in some measure, to the testimony of sense, which the 
stricter Eleatics rejected absolutely, as inadequate and 
contradictory. On this account, although the usual 
statement which directly styles him the disciple of 
Empedocles is erroneous, it is probable that he drew 
from the writings of that philosopher his acquaintance 
with the physiology of the Eleatic school. Subse¬ 
quently it would appear that Gorgias devoted himself 
entirely to the practice and teaching of rhetoric, and 
in this career his professional labours seem to have 
been attended with both honour and profit. Accord, 
ing to Cicero {de Orat ., 1 , 22.—JJ., 3, 32), he was the 
first who engaged to deliver impromptu a public dis¬ 
course upon any given subject. These oratorical dis¬ 
plays were characterized by the poetical ornament and 
elegance of the language, and the antithetical structuro 
of the sentences, rather than by the depth and vigour 
of the thought; and the coldness of his eloquence 
soon passed into a proverb among the ancients. Asa 
teacher of rhetoric, Gorgias is said to have first intro¬ 
duced numbers into prose, and to have attached much 
importance to antitheses both in individual words and 
in the members of a sentence. (Consult Hardion , 
Dissert., 11. — Mem. de VAcad. des. Inscr., &c., vol. 

19, p. 204.) It is said, that aiter a display of eloquence 
made by him at the Olympic and Pythian Game* 








G U R 


GOT 


goiden statue was erected to him at Delphi.—Besides 
some fragments, there are still extant two entire ora¬ 
tions ascribed to him, entitled respectively, “ The En¬ 
comium of Helen,” and “ The Apology of Palamedes,” 
two tasteless and insipid compositions, which may, 
however, not be the works of Gorgias. On this point 
consult Foss, “ De Gorgia Leontino Commenlatio ,” 
Hal., 1828, who denies their authenticity, which is 
maintained, on the other hand, by Schonhorn, “ De Au- 
thentia Declamationum qua Gorgia Leontini nomine 
extant ,” Bresl., 1826. (Plat., Hipp. Maj., p.282.— 
Id., Gorg. — Dion. Hal., Jud. de Lys., 3, p.458, ed. 
Reiske. — Diogenes Laert., 8, 58.— Sext., Emp. adv. 
Math., 7, 65.— Clinton, Fast. Hell., vol. 1, p. 377. 

*— Preller, Hist. Philos., p. 134, seqq. — Scholl, Gesch. 
Gr. Litl., vol. 1, p. 363.) 

Gorgo, I. wife of Leonidas, king of Sparta. A fine 
repartee of hers is given by Plutarch. When a stran¬ 
ger female observed to her, “You Spartan women are 
the only ones that rule men,” she replied, “True, for 
we are the only,pnes that give birth to men.” (Plut., 
Lacon. Apophth., p. 227.)—II. The capital of the 
Chorasmii in Bactriana. It is supposed to correspond 
to the modern Urghenz. (Bischoff und Moller, Wor- 
terb. der Geogr., p. 567.) 

Gorgones, three celebrated sisters, daughters of 
Phorcys and Ceto, whose names were Stheno, Euryale, 
and Medusa, and who were all immortal except Me¬ 
dusa. According to the mythologists, their hairs were 
entwined with serpents, they had wings of gold, their 
hands were of brass, their body was covered with im¬ 
penetrable scales, their teeth were as long as the tusks 
of a wild boar, and they turned to stone all those on 
whom they fixed their eyes. ( Apollod., 2, 4, 2.— 
Tzetz., ad Lyc., 838.)—Homer speaks of an object of 
terror which he calls Gorgo, and the Gorgonian head. 
He places the former on the shield of Agamemnon (II., 
11, 36), and, when describing Hector eager for slaugh¬ 
ter, he says that he had the eyes of Gorgo and of 
man-destroying Ares.” (11., 8, 348.) The Gorgeian 
head was on the segis of Jupiter (II., 5, 741), and the 
hero of the Odyssey fears to remain in Erebus, lest Pro¬ 
serpina should send out “ the Gorgeian head of the dire 
monster” against him. (Od., 11, 633.) iEschylus 
calls the Gorgons the “ three sisters of the Graias, 
winged, serpent-fleeced, hateful to man, whom no one 
can look on and retain the breath of existence.” 
(Prom. V., 804, seqq.) The Gorgons and Graise are 
always mentioned together ; and it was while the Graiae 
were handing to one another their single eye ( Vid. 
Phorcydes) that Perseus intercepted it; and, having 
thus blinded the guards, was enabled to come on the 
Gorgons unperceived. (For an account of the legend 
of Perseus and Medusa, consult each of those articles.) 
According to R. P. Knight, the Gorgon, or Medusa, 
in the centre of Minerva’s segis, appears to have been 
a symbol of the Moon (Orph. in Clem. Alex., Strom., 
lib. 5, p. 675); exhibited sometimes with the charac¬ 
ter and expression of the destroying, and sometimes 
with those of the generative or preserving, attribute ; 
the former of which is expressed by the title of Gorgo, 
and the latter by that of Medusa. It is sometimes 
represented with serpents, and sometimes with fish, in 
the hair ; and occasionally with almost every symbol 
of the passive generative or productive power ; it being 
the female personification of the Disk, by which almost 
all the nations of antiquity represented the sun ; and 
this female personification was the symbol of the Moon. 
(Inquiry into the Symb. Lang., &c., <$> 179.— Class. 
Journal, vol. 26, p. 46.)—Hermann, however, with 
more probability, makes both the Graise and Gorgons 
to be merely personifications of the terrors of the sea, 
the former denoting the white-c rested waves that dash 
against the rocks on the coast; the latter, the strong 
billows of the wide open main. (Herm., Opusc., vol. 
2, p. 179, seq.) He therefore makes Stheno equivalent 


to Valeria, “the powerful;” Euryale to Lativocva , 
“ the wide-rolling;” and Medusa to Guberna, “ the 
directress,” from her ruling the course of the billows. 
And he adds, in farther explanation, “ nam et vis un- 
darum semper manet eadem , et fluctualio : cursus au- 
tem mutatur, ventis, annive tempestatibus mulaHs .” 
Hesiod, therefore, who places the Gorgons in Oceanic 
isles (Thcog., 274, seqq.), is more consistent with tne 
early legend than later poets, who almost all assign 
the Gorgons a dwelling-place in some part or other of 
Libya. Hence there is great probability in Volcker’s 
reading of Kvpyvyq for Kicdf/vyc in iEschylus (Prom. 
V., 799.— Keightley's Mythology, p. 252, seqq.) 

Ggrtys or Gortynia, I. a city of Crete, next to 
Cnosus in splendour and importance. Strabo writes, 
that these two cities had in early times entered into a 
league, which enabled them to reduce nearly the whole 
of Crete under their subjection; subsequently, how¬ 
ever, dissensions having arisen between them, they 
were constantly engaged in hostilities. Homer speaks 
of Gortys as a place of great strength (11., 2, 646), 
with a territory extending to the sea. (Od., 3, 293.) 
From other authors we learn that it stood in a plain, 
watered by the river Lethseus, and at a distance of 
ninety stadia from the Libyan Sea, on which were sit¬ 
uate its two havens, Lebena and Metallum. Formerly 
this city was of very considerable size, since Strabo 
reckons its circuit at fifty stadia; but when he wrote 
it was very much diminished. He adds, that Ptolemy 
Philopator had begun to enclose it with fresh walls ; 
but the work was not carried on for more than eight 
stadia. (Strabo, 478.)—According to the Arcadian 
traditions, it had been founded by Gortys, the son of 
Tegeates ; a fact which was, however, denied by the 
Cretans, who affirmed that Gortys was the son of 
Rhadamanthus. (Pausan., 8, 1. — Compare Steph. 
Byz., s. v.) It was most probably a Pelasgic city, 
since, according to Stephanus, it once bore the appel¬ 
lation of Larissa. Apollo was especially revered here, 
whence he is sometimes called Gortynius. (Anton., 
Lib., 25.) Jupiter was also worshipped in this place 
under the title of Hecatombseus. The ruins of this 
ancient city have been visited by Tournefort, Pococke, 
and still more recently by Mr. Cockerell, who observ¬ 
ed the remains of a theatre and other considerable 
vestiges. He likewise explored some remarkable ex¬ 
cavations near the town, consisting of numerous cham¬ 
bers and galleries, which have been supposed to be¬ 
long to the celebrated Cretan labyrinth, though this is 
generally stated to have been situated at Cnosus.— 
As regards the form of the ancient name, consult re¬ 
marks under the article Cortona. (Cramer' 1 s Ancient 
Greece, vol. 3, p. 383.)—II. A town of Arcadia, near the 
river Gortynius, and southeast of Heraea. It was dis¬ 
tinguished for its temple of Pentelic marble dedicated to 
-Tlsculapius. The statue of the god, as well as that 
of Hygieia,were by Scopas. (Pausan., 8, 28.) The 
site of Gortys is now called Atchicolo Castro. 

Gothi, a powerful northern nation, who acted an 
important part in the overthrow of the Roman empire. 
The name « Gotlii,' 1 ' or Goths, appears first in history 
in the third century, and it was then used by the Ro¬ 
man writers as synonymous with the more ancient one 
of Getse, a people who lived on the banks of the lower 
Danube, near the shores of the Euxine. The Greeit 
writers generally considered the Getae or Goths as 
a Scythian tribe. There has been much discussion 
on the question whether the Getae or Goths came ori¬ 
ginally from Scandinavia, or migrated thither from Asia. 
The old Scandinavian tradition in the Edda makes 
their chief, Odin or Woden, to have come from the 
banks of the Dniester to the shores of the Baltic many 
centuries before the Christian era (vid Odinus), and 
it is to Asia, therefore, that we must look as the na 
tive country of the Gothic, or, rather, Teutonic, race. 
(Consult remarks under the article Germania, 1.1 

559 





/ 

G R A 

About the middle of the third century of our era, the 
Goths are recorded to have crossed the Dniester, and 
to have devastated Dacia and Thrace. The Emperor 
Decius lost bis life in opposing them in Moesia (A.D. 
251,, after which his successor Galius induced them 
by money to withdraw again to their old dwellings on 
the Dniester. They then seem to have spread east¬ 
ward, and to have occupied the country about the 
Cimmerian Bosporus, whence they sailed across the 
Euxine, occupied Trebisond, and ravaged Bithynia. 
In the year 269 they landed in Macedonia, but were 
defeated by the Emperor Claudius II. Three years 
after, Aureiian gave up Dacia to a tribe of Goths, who 
are believed to have been the Visigoths or Western 
Goths, while those who ravaged Asia Minor were the 
Ostrogoths or Eastern Goths. This distinction of the 
race into two grand divisions appears about this time. 
Under Constantine I. the Goths from Dacia invaded 
Ulyricum, but were repelled. Constantine II. after¬ 
ward allowed a part of them to settle in Mcesia, who 
seem to have soon after embraced Christianity, as it 
was for them that Ulphilas translated the Scriptures, 
about the middle of the 4th century, into the dialect 
called Masso-Gothic. About the year 375, the Huns, 
coming from the East, fell upon the Ostrogoths, and 
drove them upon the Visigoths, who were living north 
of the Danube. The latter, being hard pressed, im¬ 
plored permission of the Roman commander to be al¬ 
lowed to cross that river, and take shelter on the ter¬ 
ritory of the empire. The Emperor Valens consented, 
and a vast multitude of them were allowed to settle in 
Moesia, but soon afterward they quarrelled with the 
Roman authorities, invaded Thrace, and defeated and 
killed \ alens, who came to oppose them. From that 
time they exercised great influence over the Byzantine 
court, either as allies and mercenaries, or as formida¬ 
ble enemies. Towards the end of the 4th century, 
Adaric, being chosen king of the Visigoths, invaded 
Northern Italy, but was defeated by Stilicho near Ve¬ 
rona. He came again, however, about two years af¬ 
ter, and took and plundered Rome. His successor 
A taulphus made peace with the empire, and repaired 
to the south of Gaul, where the Visigoths founded a 
kingdom, from which they afterward passed into Spain, 
where a Visigothic dynasty reigned for more than two 
centuries till it was conquered by the Moors. Mean¬ 
while the Ostrogoths or Eastern Goths, who had set¬ 
tled in Pannonia, after the destruction of the kingdom 
of the Huns, extended their dominion over Noricum, 
Rhaetia, and Ulyricum, and about the year 489 they in¬ 
vaded Italy, under their king Theodoric, and defeated 
Odoacer, king of the Ileruh, who had assumed the 
title of King of Italy, a title which Theodoric then 
took for himself, with the consent of the Eastern em¬ 
peror. Theodoric was a great prince : his reiem was 
a period of rest for Italy, and his wise administration 
did much towards healing the wounds of that country. 
But his successors degenerated, and the Gothic do¬ 
minion over Italy lasted only till 544, when it was 
overthrown by Narses, the general of Justinian. From 
this time the Goths figure no longer as a power in the 
history of Western Europe, except in Spain. We 
find, however, their name perpetuated long after in 
Scandinavia, where a kingdom of Gothia existed until 
the 12th century, distinct from Sweden Proper, until 
both crowns were united on the head of Charles Swerk- 
erson, A.D. 1161, who assumed the title of King of 
the Swedes and the Goths, which his successors bear 
to this day.-—On the early history of the Goths, con¬ 
sult Jornandes, “ De Getarum sive Gothorum Origine 
et Rebus Gestis Isidorus, “ Chronicon Gothorum;''’ 
and Procopius, “De Bello Gothico .” The first two, 
however, are not to be trusted implicitly when they 
treat of the remote genealogy and origin of the Gothic 
race. ( Encycl . Us. Knowl. , vol. 11, p. 328, seq.) 
Gracchus, I. Tiberius Sempronius, the father of 
560 


GRACCHUS. 

the Gracchi, married Cornelia, daughter of Scipio 
Africanus the Elder. He died while his sons were 
young, having twice filled the office of consul, and, ac¬ 
cording to Plutarch, obtained two triumphs. After 
the death of her husband, Cornelia refused all offers 
of marriage, and devoted herself to the charge and ed- 
fleation ©f her jhildren, who, as Plutarch tells us, 
were less the inheritors of manly virtue by being 
sprung from the noblest .blood in Rome, than they 
were its possessors from the careful nurture of then 
mother Cornelia. ( Plut ., Vit. Gracch.) —II. Tiberius, 
elder son of the preceding, was born B.C. 163. His 
mother was the celebrated Cornelia, daughter of the 
elder Africanus. Tiberius served his first campaign 
in Africa under his uncle Scipio, and having obtained 
the office of consul’s quaestor, we find him next undei 
Mancinus, the unfortunate commander in the Numan 
tine war. His name, which the Numantines respect¬ 
ed from remembering his father’s virtues, is said to 
have procured the terms under which Mancinus ob¬ 
tained safety for his army ; but the senate, on his re¬ 
turn, was so much displeased at the unfavourable na¬ 
ture of these conditions, that they resolved on giving 
up all the principal officers to the Numantines. By 
the good-will, however, of the popular assembly, influ¬ 
enced, as it would seem, by the soldiers and their 
connexions in the lower classes, it was decided to 
send Mancinus as the real criminal, and to spare the 
other officers for the sake of Gracchus. Treatmen 1 - 
of this nature was likely to rouse Gracchus acrains* 
the senate, and make him the friend of the poor; and 
accordingly, in three years afterward, we find him be¬ 
ginning his short career as a political agitator. He 
was elected tribune of the commons B.C. 128, and 
immediately began to attempt the revival of the Licin- 
ian Rogations. ( Vid. Agrariae Leges.) In so doing 
he appears to have had in view- the two grand princi¬ 
ples which that law involved, namely, the employment 
of freemen in cultivating the soil in preference to 
slaves, and especially the more generally recognised 
principle of the equitable division of the public land. 
Three commissioners were appointed to superintend 
the working of the new law, which Gracchus had pro¬ 
posed, if we may trust Plutarch, with the approval of 
some of the most eminent persons of the times, among 
whom were Mucius Scawola and Crassus the orator. 
Such general interest was excited by the question 
that crowds arrived from all parts of the country to 
support either side ; and there appeared no doubt 
which way the matter would go when left to the tribes. 
The aristocracy, however, secured the veto of M. jOc 
tavius, one of the tribunes, and thereby quashed the 
proceedings whenever the law was brought on, which 
violent mode of Opposition led Gracchus to exercise 
his veto on other questions, stop the supplies, and 
throw the government into the most complete help¬ 
lessness. Thus far the contest had been lawful; but 
at this juncture, Gracchus, irritated by continual op¬ 
position, invited Octavius to propose his (Gracchus’) 
ejection from the office of tribune ; and on his refusal, 
pleading the utter uselessness of two men so different 
in sentiment holding the same office, he put the ques¬ 
tion to the tribes that Octavius be ejected. When 
the first seventeen out of the thirty-five tribes had vo¬ 
ted for it, Gracchus again implored him to resign; and 
on his entreaty proving unsuccessful, polled° another 
tribe, constituting a majority, and sent his officers to 
drag Octavius from the tribune’s chair. The Aararian 
law was forthwith passed; and Gracchus himself his 
brother Caius, and his father-in-law Appius Claudius 
were appointed the commissioners. But the senate 5 
to show their opinion of the whole proceeding, with¬ 
held from him the usual allowance of a public officer 
giving only about one shilling a day. While things 
were in this state, the dominions and treasures of At- 
talus, king of Pergamus, were by him bequeathed to 








GRACCHUS. 


GRACCHUS. 


cne Roman people ; and, to enhance his own populari¬ 
ty, Gracchus proposed to divide the treasure among 
the recipients of land under the new law, to enable 
them to stock their farms; and to commit the man¬ 
agement of the kingdom of Pergamus to the popular 
assembly. This brought matters to a greater pitch of 
distrust than ever. Gracchus was accused by one 
senator of aspiring to tyranny, and by another of hav¬ 
ing violated the sanctity of the tribunitian office in de¬ 
posing Octavius. On this point Gracchus strove to 
justify himself before the people, but his opponent 
seemed to have gained an advantage so great as to in¬ 
duce him to postpone the assembly. When at last 
he did make his defence, it rested, if Plutarch is cor¬ 
rect, on false analogies, and on avoiding the question 
of the inviolability of a public officer. At this juncture 
Gracchus seems to have trembled for that popularity 
which alone preserved him from impeachment; and, 
est it should fail, endeavoured to secure his own re- 
election to the office of tribune. The other party had 
demurred as to his eligibility to the office two years 
in succession, and on the day of election this point 
occupied the assembly till nightfall. Next morning, 
accompanied by a crowd of partisans, he went to the 
Capkol; and, on hearing that the senate had deter¬ 
mined to oppose him by force, armed his followers 
with staves, and prepared to clear the Capitol. At 
this juncture, Scipio Nasica, having in vain called on 
the consul to take measures for the safety of the state, 
issued from the temple of Faith, where the senate had 
assembled, followed by the whole nobility of Rome, 
awed the mob into flight, seized their weapons, and at¬ 
tacked all who fell in their way. About three hun¬ 
dred fell, and among the slain was Gracchus, who 
was killed by repeated blows on the head, B.C. 133. 
{T.ut., Vit. Tib. Gracch.) — III. Caius, was nine 
years younger than his brother Tiberius, and at his 
death was left with Appius Claudius as commissioner 
for carrying out the Agrarian law. By the death of 
Appius, and of Tiberius’ successor, Licinius Crassus, 
the commission became composed of Fulvius Flaccus, 
Papirius Carbo, and himself; but he refrained from 
taking any part in public affairs for more than ten 
years after the death of Tiberius. During this time 
the provisions of his brother’s law were being carried 
out by Carbo and Flaccus ; but he does not seem to 
have begun his career as an independent political 
leader until the year 123 B.C., when, on his return 
from Sardinia, where he had been for two years, he 
was elected tribune of the commons. His first act 
was to propose two laws, one of which, directed 
against the degraded tribune Octavius, disqualified all 
who had been thus degraded from holding any magis¬ 
tracy ; and the other, having in view Pompilius, a 
prominent opponent of the popular party, denounced 
the banishment of a Roman citizen without trial as a 
violation of the Roman laws. The first was never 
carried through ; to the latter was added a third, by 
which Pompilius was banished from Italy, or, accord¬ 
ing to technical phraseology, interdicted from fire and 
water These measures of offence were followed by 
others, by which he aimed at establishing his own 
popularity. One of these was a poor-law, by which 
t. monthly distribution of corp was made to the people 
at an almost nominal price. The effect of this law 
was to make the population of Rome paupers, and to 
attract all Italy to partake of the bounty. Next came 
organic changes, as they would now be called; and 
of these the most important was the transference of 
the judicial power from the senators, wholly or in part, 
to the equestrian order. This measure, according to 
Cicero, worked well; but, in taking his opinion, we 
must remember his partiality to the equites, and add to 
this the fact that his eulogiums occur in an advocate’s 
speech. ( In Verr. Act., 1.) Gracchus now pos¬ 
sessed unlimited power with the populace ; and, at 


the end of the year, not more than ten candidates hav 
ing started for the office of tribune, he was again elect¬ 
ed. His second tribuneship was mostly employed in 
passing laws respecting the colonies, in which mat¬ 
ter the aristocratical agent, Livius Drusus, outdid him; 
and, having won the confidence of the people by his 
apparent disinterestedness, ventured (being Limsell 
a tribune) to interpose his veto on one of Gracchus’ 
measures. The appointment of Gracchus, soon after, 
to the office of commissioner for planting a colony near 
Carthage took him away from the scenes of his popu¬ 
larity ; and, soon after his return, a proposal was made 
to repeal the very law which he had been engaged in 
carrying out, relative to the colony in Africa. This 
law was not his own measure, but that of one Rubri- 
us, another of the tribunes, and was one of those enact¬ 
ments which had weaned from Gracchus the favour of 
the people, it having been represented by his oppo¬ 
nents as an impious act to build again the walls of Car¬ 
thage, which Scipio had solemnly devoted to perpetual 
desolation. Gracchus was now a private man, his 
second tribuneship having expired; but yet, as such, he 
opposed the proposition to repeal, and, unfortunately 
for himself, united with M. Fulvius Flaccus, one of 
the commissioners of the agrarian law, and a man 
whose character was respected by no party in the re¬ 
public. The reputation of Gracchus had already suf¬ 
fered from his connexion with Fulvius; and now he 
took part with him in designs which can be considered 
as nothing less than treasonable. Charging the sen¬ 
ate with spreading false reports, in order to alarm the 
religious scruples of the people, the two popular lead¬ 
ers assembled a numerous body of their partisans, 
armed with daggers, and, being thus prepared for vio¬ 
lence, they proceeded to the Capitol, where the people 
were to meet in order to decide on the repeal of the 
law of Rubrius. Here, before the business of the day 
was yet begun, a private citizen, who happened tc be 
engaged in offering a sacrifice, was murdered by the 
partisans of Fulvius and Gracchus, for some words or 
gestures which they regarded as insulting. This out¬ 
rage excited a general alarm; the assembly broke up 
in consternation ; and the popular leaders, after trying 
in vain to gain a hearing from the people, while they 
disclaimed the violence committed by their followers, 
had no other course left than to withdraw to their own 
homes. There they concerted plans of resistance, 
which, however they might believe them to be justi¬ 
fied on the plea of self-defence, were rightly consid¬ 
ered by the bulk of the people as an open rebellion 
against the government of their country. The consul 
Opimius, exaggerating, perhaps, the alarm which he 
felt from the late outrage, hastily summoned the sen¬ 
ate together ; the body of the murdered man was ex¬ 
posed to the view of the people, and the Capitol was 
secured by break of day with an armed force. The 
senate, being informed by Opimius of the state of af¬ 
fairs, proceeded to invest him with absolute power to 
act in defence of the commonwealth, in the usual form 
of a resolution, “ that the consul should provide for the 
safety of the republic.” At the same time Gracchus 
and Fulvius were summoned to appear before the sen¬ 
ate, to answer for the murder laid to their charge. In¬ 
stead of obeying, they occupied the Aventine Hill with 
a body of their partisans inarms, and invited the slaves 
to join them, promising them their freedom. Opimius, 
followed by the senators and the members of the eques¬ 
trian order, who, with their dependants, had armed 
themselves by his directions, and accompanied by a 
body of regular soldiers, advanced against the rebeis, 
who had made two fruitless attempts at negotiation, 
by sending to the consul the son of Fulvius. In the 
mean time the conduct of Caius Gracchus was that of 
a man irresolute in the course which he pursued, and 
with too much regard for his country to engage heart¬ 
ily in the criminal attempt into which he had suffered 

561 




/ 


G R A 


G1U 


ninyiclf to bo drawn. He had left his house, it is said, 
in his ordinary dress ; he had been urgent with Ful- 
vius to propose terms of accommodation to the senate ; 
and now, when the Aventine was attacked, he took 
personally no part in the action. The contest, indeed, 
was soon over; the rebels were presently dispersed ; 
Fulvius was dragged from the place to which he had 
fled for refuge, and was put to death ; while Gracchus, 
finding himself closely pursued, fled across the Tiber, 
and, taking shelter in a grove sacred to the Furies 
more correctly, perhaps, to the goddess Furina), was 
Killed, at his own desire, by a single servant who had 
accompanied his flight. His head, together with that 
of Fulvius, was cut off and carried to the consul, in 
order to obtain the price which had been set upon both 
by a proclamation issued at the beginning of the en¬ 
gagement ; and the bodies, as well as those of all who 
bad perished on the same side, were thrown into the 
river. In addition to this, the houses of Gracchus and 
Fulvius were given up to plunder, their property was 
confiscated, and even the wife of Gracchus was de¬ 
prived of her own jointure. It is said that in this se¬ 
dition there perished altogether of the partisans of the 
popular leaders about 3000, partly in the action, and 
partly by summary executions afterward, under the 
consul’s orders.—The career of the two Gracchi was, 
m many respects, so similar, and the circumstances of 
their death bore so much resemblance to each other, 
that it is not wonderful if historians should have com¬ 
prehended both the brothers under one common judg¬ 
ment, and have pronounced in common their acquittal 
or their condemnation. But the conduct of Caius ad¬ 
mits of far less excuse than that of Tiberius; and his 
death was the deserved punishment of rebellion, while 
that of his brother was an unjustifiable murder. The 
character of Caius is by no means as stainless as his 
brother’s ; he was more of a popular leader, and much 
\ess of a patriot than Tiberius ; the one was injured 
by power, but the other seems from the beginning to 
have aimed at little else. The elder brother was head 
of a party which owed its existence to his principles 
as a politician. The younger took the lead in that 
party when it had been regularly formed, and, in his 
eagerness to obtain that post, he regulated his conduct 
by his wishes. The death of Tiberius may, as we 
have already remarked, be justly called a murder ; that 
of Caius, or that which he would have suffered had 
not the slave prevented it, was nothing more than an 
execution under martial law. ( Pint., Vit. C. Gracch. 
— Encycl. Metropol., div. 3, vol. 2, p. 97, seqq.) —IV. 
Sempronius, a Roman nobleman, banished to Cerci- 
na, an island off the coast of Africa, for his adulterous 
intercourse with Julia, the daughter of Augustus. 
After an exile of 14 years, he was put to death by a 
party of soldiers sent for that purpose by Tiberius. 

( Tacit ., Ann., 1, 53.) 

Gradivus, an appellation for Mars among the Ro¬ 
mans, the etymology of which is quite uncertain. 
The common derivation is from gradior, “ to ad¬ 
vance,” i. e., against the foe. There appears to be 
some analogy in its formation to that of the Sanscrit 
Mahadeva, i. e., “ magnus deus.” (Pott, Etymol. 
Forsch., p. lvii.) 

Gracia, the country of Greece. ( Vid. Hellas.) 

Gr^ecia Magna. Vid. Magna Gracia. 

Grai.®. Vid. Phorcydes. 

Gpampius Mons, a mountain of Caledonia, forming 
one of a large range of mountains extending from east 
to west through almost the whole breadth of modern 
Scotland, from Loch Lomond to Stonehaven. The 
range is now called the Grampian Hills, and the name 
is derived from the Mons Grampius, which is men¬ 
tioned by Tacitus as the spot where Galgacus wait¬ 
ed the approach of Agricola, and where was fought 
the battle so fatal to the brave Caledonians. To the 
Grampian chain belong Ben Lomond, 3262 feet high; 


Ben Ledy, 3009 ; Ben More, 3903 ; Ben Laures, th 
chief summit, 4015, &c. 

Granicus, a river of Mysia, in Asia Minor, which, 
according to Demetrius of Scepsis, had its source in 
Mount Cotylus, belonging to the chain of Ida. (Strab., 
602.) It flowed through the Adrastean plain, and 
emptied into the Propontis, to the west of Cyzicus. 
This stream, or, more correctly speaking, mountain 
torrent, is celebrated in history on account of the sig¬ 
nal victory gained on its banks by Alexander the Great 
over the Persian army, B.C. 334. (Arrian, Exp. Al 
1 , 13. — Plut., Vit. Alex., c. 24.) The Granicus is 
the river of Demotiko mentioned by Chishull (Travels 
in Turkey, p. 60), and not, as some maintain, the 
Ousvola. (Cramer’s Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 35, seq.) 

Gratis, in Greek Charites (Xapireg), are repre¬ 
sented in classical mythology as three young and 
beautiful sisters, the attendants of Venus. Theii 
names were Aglaia ( Splendour ), Euphrosyne (Joy), 
and Thalia (Pleasure). The Lacedaemonians had only 
two, whom they called Kleta or Klyta, and Phaenne, 
and a temple in honour of them existed in the time o! 
Pausanias, between Sparta and Amyclae (3, 18 ; 9, 
35). Some poets name Pasithea as one of the Graces. 
Nonnus gives their names as Pasithea, Peitho, and 
Aglaia. (Dionys., 24, 263.)—The idea of the Graces 
was, according to some, a symbolical personification : 
Aglaia represented the harmony and splendour of the 
creation ; Euphrosyne, cheerfulness and mirth; and 
Thalia, feasts and dances. In short, they were an 
aesthetic conception of all that is beautiful and attract¬ 
ive in the physical as well as in the social world. Ac¬ 
cording to Hesiod (Theog., 907), the Graces were the 
offspring of Jupiter and Eurynome the daughter oI 
Ocean. Antimachus, on the other hand, made them 
the daughters of Helius and TEgle. Some, again, 
called them the children of Bacchus and Venus. Theii 
worship is said to have originated in Boeotia, and Or- 
chomenus, in this country, was its chief seat. The 
introduction of this worship was ascribed to Eteocles, 
the son of the river Cephissus. The Graces were at 
all times, in the creed of Greece, the goddesses presi 
ding over social enjoyment, the banquet, the dance, 
and all that tended to inspire gayety and cheerfulness. 

( Find., Ol., 14, 7, seqq.) They are represented as 
dancing together, or else standing with their arms en¬ 
twined. They were originally depicted as clothed, 
but afterward the artists represented them as nude. 
In the ordinary position of the Graces, two face the 
observer, while the central one has her look averted. 
This some fancifully explain as follows : on receiv¬ 
ing gifts from friends we ought to be thrice thankful; 
first, when the gift is conferred ; secondly, when away 
from the party who has. conferred them ; and, thirdly, 
when returning the favour ! (Millin, Gall. Mythol., 
s. v. — Keightlcy's Mythology, p. 192.) 

Gratianus, I. eldest son of Valentinian I., succeed¬ 
ed, after his father’s death, A.D. 375, to a share of the 
Western Empire, having for his portion Gaul, Spain, 
and Britain. His brother, Valentinian II., then an in¬ 
fant under five years of age, had Italy, Illyricum, and 
Africa, under the guardianship, however, of Gratianus, 
who was therefore, in reality, ruler of all tl e West. 
His uncle Valens had the. empire of the East. Gratia¬ 
nus began his reign by punishing severely various pre¬ 
fects and other officers who hat committed acts of op¬ 
pression and cruelty during his ittnu s reigr.. At the 
same time, through some insi'Ac'-rs dirges, Count 
Theodosius, father of Theodosius the Giet,, s.}*, tr** 
of the most illustrious men of his age, was beheaded 
at Carthage. In the year 378 Valens perished in the 
battle of Adrianople against the Goths, and Gratianus, 
who was hastening to his assistance, was hardly able 
to save Constantinople from falling into the hands of 
the enemy. In consequence of the death of his uncle, 
Gratianus, finding himself ruler of the whole Roman 




G R E 


GREGORIUS. 


empire during the minority of his brother Yalentinian, 
called to him young Theodosius, who had distinguish¬ 
ed himself in the Roman armies, but had retired into 
Spain after his father’s death. Gratianus appointed 
him his colleague, a choice equally creditable to both 
and fortunate for the empire, and gave him the prov¬ 
inces of the East. Gratianus returned to Italy, and 
resided for some time at Mediolanum (Milan), where 
he became intimate with St. Ambrose. He was 
obliged, however, soon after to hasten to Illyricum, 
to the assistance of Theodosius, and he repelled the 
Goths, who were threatening Thrace. Thence he was 
obliged to hasten to the banks of the Rhine, to fight 
the Alemanni and other barbarians. Having returned 
to Mediolanum in the year 381, he had to defend the 
fron.iers of Italy from other tribes, who were advan¬ 
cing on the side of Rh^tia. Gratianus enacted sev¬ 
eral wise laws, by one of which he checked mendicity, 
which had spread to an alarming extent in Italy. He 
also showed himself stern and unyielding towards the 
remains of the heathen worship. At Rome he over¬ 
threw the altar of Victory, which had continued to 
exist; he confiscated the property attached to it, as 
well as all that which belonged to the other priests 
and the vestals. He also refused to assume the title 
and insignia of Pontifex Maximus, a dignity till then 
considered as annexed to that of emperor. These 
measures gave a final blow to the old worship of the 
empire ; and although the senators, who, for the most 
part, were still attached to it, sent him a deputation, 
at the head of which was Symmachus, they could not 
obtain any mitigation of his decrees. In the year 383, 
a certain Maximus revolted in Britain, and was pro¬ 
claimed emperor by the soldiers, to whom he promised 
to re-establish the temples and the old religion of the 
empire. He invaded Gaul, where he found numerous 
partisans. Gratianus, who was then, according to 
some, on the Rhine, advanced to meet him, but was 
forsaken by most of his troops, and obliged to hasten 
towards Italy. Orosius and others, however, state 
that the emperor received the news of the revolt while 
in Italy, and that he hurried across the Alps with a 
small retinue as far as Lugdunum (Lyons). All, how¬ 
ever, agree in saying that he was seized at Lugdunum, 
and put to death by the partisans of Maximus. He 
was little more than 24 years of age, and had reigned 
about eight years. Historians agree in praising him 
for his justice and kindness, and his zeal for the pub¬ 
lic good ; and Ammianus Marcellinus, who is not lia¬ 
ble to the charge of partiality towards the Christians, 
adds, that, had he lived longer, he would have rivalled 
ihe best emperors of ancient Rome. (Le Beau , Bas- 
Empire, vol. 2, p. 492, seqq. — Encycl. Us. Knowl., 
vol. 10, p. 365.) 

Gratius Faliscus, a Latin poet, contemporary with 
Ovid, by whom he is once mentioned (Ep. ex Ponto, 
1, ult. 33). He wrote a poem on hunting, entitled 
Cynegetica, of which we have 540 verses remaining. 
From the silence, however, preserved respecting him 
"by the writers after his time, we may fairly infer that 
his poem remained in great obscurity, and was only 
rarely copied : hence we have but one manuscript of 
it remaining. The production in question is not with¬ 
out merit; still, however, it is somewhat dry. The 
style is, in general, pure. The best edition is that of 
Wernsdorff, in the Poetce Latini Minores. (B'dhr, 
Gesch. Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. 204.) 

Gregorius, I. surnamed Thaumaturgus, or Won - 
ler-workcr, from the miracles which he pretended to 
rerform. Before his conversion to Christianity, he 
was known by the name of Theodoras. He was born 
it Neo-Caesarea, and was a disciple of Origen, from 
whom he imbibed the principles of the Christian faith. 
He was afterward ma.de bishop of his native city, and 
is said to have left only seventeen idolaters in his dio¬ 
cese, where he had found only seventeen Christians. 


Of his works there are extant, a panegvrical oration on 
his master Origen upon leaving his school, a canonical 
epistle, and some other treatises in Greek, the best 
edition of which is that of Paris, fol., 1622.—II. Sur¬ 
named Nazianzenus (of Nazianzus), a celebrated fa¬ 
ther of the church, was born in the early part gf the 
fourth century, at Arianzus, a village near the town of 
Nazianzus in Cappadocia, of which his father was 
bishop. He studied first at Csesarea in Cappadocia, af¬ 
terward at Alexandrea, and lastly at Athens, where he 
became the friend and companion of Basilius, and 
where he also met Julian, afterward emperor. At a 
subsequent period he joined Basilius, who had retired 
to a solitude in Pontus during the reign of Julian. 
When Basilius was made archbishop of Cresarea, he 
appointed his friend bishop of Zazime, a place of which 
Gregory gives a dismal account, and which he soon 
after left to join his father, and assist him in the ad¬ 
ministration of the church of Nazianzus. He there 
made himself known for his eloquence in the orations 
which he addressed to his father’s flock. These com¬ 
positions are remarkable for a certain poetical turn of 
imagery, and for their mild, persuasive tone. Above all 
things, he preaches peace and conciliation ; peace to the 
clergy, agitated by the spirit of controversy ; peace to 
the people of Nazianzus, distracted by sedition .; peace 
to the imperial governor, who had come to chastise 
the town, and whose wrath he endeavours to disarm 
by appealing to the God of mercy. In an age. of sec¬ 
tarian intolerance he showed himself tolerant. He had 
suffered with his brethren from Arian persecution un¬ 
der the reign of Valens ; and after that emperor had 
taken by violence all the churches of Constantinople 
from the orthodox or Nicaeans, the inhabitants, who 
had remained attached to that faith, looking about for 
a man of superior merit and of tried courage to be 
their bishop, applied to Gregory, who had left Nazian 
zus after his father’s death and had retired into Isauria. 
Gregory came to Constantinople and took the direc¬ 
tion of a private chapel, which he named Anastasia, 
and whither his eloquence soon attracted a numerous 
congregation, to the great mortification of the Arians. 
Theodosius having assumed the reins of government 
and triumphed over his enemies, declared himself in 
favour of the orthodox communion, retook the churches 
which the Arians had seized, and came himself with 
soldiers to drive them from Santa Sophia, an act which 
Gregory says looked like the taking of a citadel by 
storm. Gregory being now recognised as metropoli¬ 
tan, did not retaliate upon the Arians for the past per¬ 
secutions, but endeavoured to reclaim them by mild¬ 
ness and persuasion. In the midst of the pomp of the 
imperial court he retained his former habits of simpli¬ 
city and frugality. His conduct soon drew upon him 
the dislike of the courtiers and of the fanatical zealots. 
Theodosius convoked a council of all the bishops of 
the East, to regulate matters concerning the vacant or 
disputed sees, which had been for many years in pos- ' 
session of the Arians. The council at first acknowl¬ 
edged Gregory as archbishop, but soon after factions 
arose in the bosom of the assembly, which disputed 
nis title to the see, and stigmatized his charity towards 
the now persecuted Arians as lukewarmness in the 
faith. Gregory, averse to strife, offered his resigna¬ 
tion, which the emperor readily accepted. Having as¬ 
sembled the people and the fathers of the council, to 
the number of one hundred and fifty, in the church of 
St. Sophia, he delivered his farewell sermon, which is a 
fine specimen of pulpit eloquence. After recapitu 
lating the tenour of his past life, his trials, the proofs 
of attachment he had given to the orthodox faith in ths> 
midst of dangers and persecution, he replies to thv 
charge of not having avenged that persecution, upoi> 
those who were now persecuted in their turn, by ob¬ 
serving, that to forego the opportunity of revenging 
ourselves upon a fallen enemy is the greatest of all tri 

563 




GREGORIUS. 


G R Y 


umphs. He then pleads guilty to the charge of not 
keeping up the splendour of his office by a luxurious 
table and a magnificent retinue, saying that he was not 
aware that the ministers of the sanctuary were to vie 
in pomp with the consuls and commanders of armies. 
After rebuking the ambition and rivalry of his col¬ 
leagues, which he compares to the factions of the cir¬ 
cus, he terminates by taking an affectionate leave of 
all those around him, and of the places dear to his 
memory. This valedictory address is a touching spe¬ 
cimen of the pathetic style, dignified and unmixed with 
querulousness. The orator salutes for the last time 
the splendid temple in which he is speaking, and then 
turns towards his humble but beloved chapel of Anas¬ 
tasia, to the choirs of virgins and matrons, of widows 
and orphans, so often gathered there to hear his voice ; 
and he mentions the short-hand writers who used to 
note down his words. He next bids “ farewell to 
kings and their palaces, and to the courtiers and ser¬ 
vants of kings ; faithful, I trust, to your master, but 
for the most part faithless towards God ; farewell to 
the sovereign city, the friend of Christ, but yet open 
to correction and repentance ; farewell to the Eastern 
and Western world, for whose sake I have striven, and 
for whose sake I am now slighted.” He concludes 
with recommending his flock to the guardian angels of 
peace, in hopes of hearing from the place of his retire¬ 
ment that it is daily growing in wisdom and virtue. 

' S. Gregorii Nazianzeni, Opera, Or at. 32, ed. Billy.) 
This oration was delivered in June, A.D. 381, and a 
few days after Gregory was on his way to his native 
Cappadocia. Arrived at Caesarea, he delivered an im¬ 
pressive funeral oration to the memory of his-friend 
Basilius, who had died there some time before, in 
which he recalls to mind their juvenile studies at 
Athens, their long intimacy, and the events of their 
checkered lives {Oral. 20). After paying this last 
tribute to the memory of his friend, he withdrew to 
his native Arianzus, where he spent the latter years 
of his life, far from the turmoil of courts and councils, 
busy in the cultivation of his garden and in writing 
poetry, a favourite occupation with him from his youth. 
Gregory died A.D. 389. Most of his poems are reli¬ 
gious meditations. Occasionally the poet attempts to 
dive into the mysterious destiny of man, and some¬ 
times appears lost in uncertainty and doubt as to the 
object of human existence ; but he recovers himself to 
do homage to the Almighty wisdom whose secrets will 
become revealed in another sphere. The adept in the 
philosophy of ancient Greece is here seen striving with 
the submissive Christian convert. St. Jerome and 
Suidas say that Gregory wrote no less than thirty thou¬ 
sand lines of poetry. Some of his poems were pub¬ 
lished in the edition of his works by the Abbe de 
Billy, Paris, 1609-11, which contains also his orations 
and epistles ; twenty more poems, under the title of 
Carmina Cygnea,” were afterward published by Tol- 
lius, in his “Insignia Itinerarii Italici,” 4to, Utrecht, 
1696 ; and Muratori discovered, and published in his 
“ Anecdota Grseca,” Padua, 1709, a number of Grego- 
ry’s epigrams. Of his orations some few turn upon 
dogmas, especially on that of the Trinity, but most of 
them are upon morality. He is a soberer writer than 
his successor Chrysostom, and has more of the calm, 
impressive eloquence of conviction. He and his friend 
Basilius brought the oratorical arts of ancient Greece 
into the service of Christian preaching, and one of 
Gregory’s greatest complaints against. Julian is, that 
that emperor had forbidden Christians the study of 
Greek literature. In his two orations against Julian 
he somewhat departs from his usual style, and assumed 
that of a powerful invective in reply to the panegyrics 
of Libanius, Eunapius, and other admirers of that em¬ 
peror. Gregory of Nazianzus has been styled the 
“ Theologian of the Eastern Church he might, with 
vs much truth, be styled its most poetical writer. 
564 


(Suidas, s. v. — Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 2, p. 442 
seqq.) —III. A bishop of Nyssa, in Cappadocia, the 
brother of Basilius. He distinguished himself in the 
Aria.n controversy, and died A.D. 396.—IV. Corin- 
thius, archbishop of Corinth in the twelfth century 
He is chiefly known by his work on dialects (Hep! 
6 ca?isKT 0 )v), the best edition of which is that of Schaf¬ 
fer, Lips., 1811, 8vo. 

Grudii, a people of Gallia Belgica, to the northwest 
of, and tributary to, the Nervii. Traces of their name 
remain, according to D’Anville, in la terre de Grouclc, 
above VEclusc , towards the north, in a part of the 
country called Lat-Sand. Turpin de Crisse is wrong 
in making the country of the Grudii answer to that of 
Bruges. ( Cces., B. G., 5, 39.— Lemaire, Ind. Geogr 
ad Cces., p. 272.) 

Gryllus, a son of Xenophon, who killed Epami- 
nondas, and was himself slaift, at the battle of Manti- 
nea, B.C. 363. His father was offering a sacrifice 
when he received the news of his death, and he threw 
down the garland which was on his head, but replaced 
it when he heard that the enemy’s general had fallen 
by his hands. ( JElian, V. H., 3, 3.)—Such is the 
common account. The variations of tradition, how¬ 
ever, as to the hand by which Epaminondas fell, prove 
the importance which his contemporaries attached to 
that event. Among the claimants, besides the son of 
Xenophon, were a Spartan, and a Locrian of Amphis- 
sa. The Spartan’s descendants became a privileged 
family. The Locrian’s received heroic honours from 
the Phocians. But the Athenians, and the Thebans 
themselves, assigned the deed to Gryllus, and he was 
honoured by the Mantineans with a public funeral and 
statue, and by his fellow-citizens with a conspicuous 
place in a painting of the battle, representing him in 
the act of giving the mortal wound. Yet, as he served 
in the Athenian cavalry, it is difficult to understand 
how he could have encountered Epaminondas, who 
was at the head of the Theban infantry. ( ThirlwalVs 
Greece, vol. 5, p. 151.) 

Gryneum or Grynea, one of the twelve cities ol 
iEolis, situate on the coast of Lydia, near the north¬ 
ern confines, and northwest of Cum® or Cyme. It 
was celebrated for the worship of Apollo, who thence 
derived the surname of Gryneus. ( Virg., Eclog., 6, 
72.—yEm, 4, 345.) The temple of the god was re¬ 
markable for its size, and for the beauty of the whitp 
marble of which it was built. ( Strabo , 622.) Kruse 
makes the site of the ancient place correspond with 
the modern Clisselik. (Bischoff und Moller, Worterb. 
der Geogr., p. 577.) 

Gryphes, more correctly Grypes ( Vpvizeq ), griffons,, 
certain animals which, according to Herodotus (3 e 
116), guarded the gold found in the vicinity of the 
Arimaspians, a Scythian race, from the attempts of 
that people to possess themselves of it. ( Vid. Ari- 
maspi.) Herodotus makes only a passing allusion to 
the contests between the griffons and Arimaspians, 
because probably he attached little, if any, belief to it 
Ctesias, however, is more diffuse. ( Ind., § 12.—Com 
pare JElian, N. A., 4, 27.— Plin., 7, 2.) The ques 
tion respecting the Arimaspians has already been dis 
cussed. (Vid. Arimaspi.) With regard to the grit 
fons, much diversity of opinion prevails among modern 
scholars. Von Veltheim thinks the story refers to the 
washing of gold in the desert of Gobi. He supposes 
this to have been done by slaves for the monarchs of 
northern India, and the spot to have’been carefully 
guarded by armed men and fierce dogs, the most alarm¬ 
ing tales having been at the same time spread concern 
ing these regions, in order to keep off adventurers. 

( Von den goldgrabenden Ameisen und Greifen der Al¬ 
len. — Vermischte Aufs., vol. 2, p. 267, seqq.) Wahl 
takes the griffons to be a nation in the northeascerr 
part of Upper Asia, and identical with the Rhipaff. He 
assigns them for a habitation the range ol Mount Altai 





G V G 


G YN 


and regards them as having practised mining in Up¬ 
per Asia. Hence, according to him, the gold of the 
griffons is nothing more than the gold obtained from 
mines. ( Eraoeschr. von Ost., p. 488, seqq.) Malte- 
Brun remarks, that in the mountains where the Indus 
rises, and where there are gold-mines, eagles and 
vultures of an enormous size are found, which may 
have given rise to the fable respecting the griffons. 
(Nouvdl.y Annul. des Voyag., vol. 2, p. 380, seqq.) 
Rhode seeks to identify the griffons with the Dews, 
or evil genii of Persian mythology ( Heilige Sage , p. 
227, seq.), for which he is justly censured by Von 
Hammer ( Wien. Jahrb., vol. 9, p. 53); and Wilford, 
with as little probability, refers the account of the grif¬ 
fons to that of the fabled bird of Vischnu, named Ga- 
r onda. (Asiat. Researches , vol. 14, p. 373.)—As re¬ 
gards the name ypvip itself, it evidently comes from the 
Persian gereifen, “ to seize” (compare the German 
greifen), the root of which, greif, has a strong analogy 
to ypvip. ( Tychsen , ap. Heeren, Ideen, vol. 1, pt. 2, 
p. 386.— Bdhr, ad Herod., 3, 116, Excars., 5.) 

Gyarus, a small island of the Archipelago, classed 
by Stephanus of Byzantium among the Sporades, but 
belonging rather to the Cyclades. It lay southwest of 
Vndros, off the coast of Attica. So wretched and poor 
was this barren rock, being inhabited only by a few 
fishermen, that they deputed one of their number to 
wait upon Augustus, then at Corinth, after the battle 
of Actium, to petition that their taxes, which amount¬ 
ed to 150 drachmae (about 25 dollars), might be dimin¬ 
ished, as they were unable to raise more than 100. 
(Strab ., 485.) This island became subsequently no¬ 
torious, as the spot to which criminals or suspected 
persons were banished by order of the Roman em¬ 
perors. {Juv., Sat., 1, "3.— Id., Sat., 10, 70.— Tacit., 
3, 68.) The modern name is Ghioura. {Cramer's 
Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 412.) 

Gyas, I. one of the companions of .Tineas, who dis¬ 
tinguished himself at the games exhibited after the 
death of Anchises in Sicily. ( Virg ., JEn., 5, 118.)— 
II. A Rutulian, son of Melampus, killed by Tineas in 
Italy. {Id., 10, 318.) 

Gyges {Tvyrjg), more correctly Gyes (Tvyc), a son 
of Ccelus and Terra, represented as having a hundred 
hands. He, with his brothers, made war against the 
gods, and was afterward punished in Tartarus. {Vid. 
Cottus.) 

Gyges, a Lydian, to whom Candaules, king of the 
country, showed his wife with her person exposed. 
The latter was so incensed, although she concealed 
her anger at the time, that, calling Gyges afterward 
into her presence, she gave him his choice either to 
submit to instant death, or to slay her husband. Gyges 
chose the latter alternative, married the queen, and as¬ 
cended the vacant throne, about 718 years before the 
Christian era. He was the first of the Mermnadae 
who reigned in Lydia. He reigned 38 years, and dis¬ 
tinguished himself by the presents which he made to 
the oracle of Delphi. {Herodot., 1, 8, seqq.) The 
wife of Candaules above mentioned was called Nyssia 
according to Hephaestion.—The story of Rosamund, 
queen of the Lombards, as related by Gibbon, bears an 
exact resemblance to this of Candaules. (Compare 
Schlosser, Weltgeschichte, vol. 2, pt. 1, p. 82.)—Pla¬ 
to relates a curious legend respecting this Gyges, 
which differs essentially from the account given by 
Herodotus. He makes him to have been originally 
one of the shepherds of Candaules, and to have de¬ 
scended into a chasm, formed by heavy rains and an 
earthquake in the quarter where he was pasturing his 
flocks. In this chasm he discovered many wonderful 
things, and particularly a brazen horse having doors in 
it, through which he looked, and saw within a corpse of 
more than mortal size, having a golden ring on its fin¬ 
ger. This ring he took off - and reascended to the sur¬ 
face of the earth. Attending, after this, a meeting of 


his fellow-shepherds, who used to assemDle once a 
month for the purpose of transmitting an account of 
their flocks to the king, he accidentally discovered 
that, when he turned the bezil of the ring inward to¬ 
wards himself, he became invisible, and when he turn¬ 
ed it outward, again visible. Upon this, having caused 
himself to be chosen in the number of those who were 
sent on this occasion to the king, he murdered the mon¬ 
arch, with the aid of the queen, whom he previously 
corrupted, and ascended the throne of Lydia. {Plat, 
de Repub., 2, p. 359, scq. —Compare Cic., de Of, 3, 9.) 

Gylippus, a Lacedaemonian, sent, B.C. 414, by his 
countrymen to assist Syracuse against the Athenians, 
which he effected by the overthrow of Nicias and De 
mosthenes. He afterward joined Lysander off Athens, 
and aided him by his advice in the capture of that city. 
Lysander sent him to Lacedremon with the money and 
spoils which had been taken, the former amounting to 
1500 talents. But Gylippus, unable to resist the 
temptation, unsewed the bottom of the bags, thus 
leaving the seals untouched at the top, and abstracted 
300 talents. His theft, however, was discovered by 
means of the memorandum contained in each bag, and 
to avoid punishment he went into voluntary exile 
{Plat., Vit. Nic. — Diod. Sic., 13, 106.) 

GymnesLe. Vid. Baleares. 

Gymnosophist^e {TvfivoooQicrrai), or “naked wise 
men,” a name given by the Greek writers to a certain 
class of Indian ascetics belonging to the caste of the 
Brahmins, and who, in accordance with the prevalent 
belief, thought that, by subjecting the body to suffer¬ 
ings and privations, and by withdrawing from all inter¬ 
course with mankind, they could effect a reunion of 
the spiritual nature of man with the divine essence. 
Most of these ascetics dispensed almost entirely with 
the use of clothes, and many of them went entirely 
naked. Hence the name applied to them by the 
Greeks. It is expressly commanded in the laws ol 
Manu (6, 2, 3), that a Brahmin, when his children have 
attained maturity, should retire from the world, and 
take refuge in a forest. He is required to spend his 
time in studying the Vedas and in performing pen¬ 
ances, for the purpose of “ uniting his soul with the 
divine spirit.” {Manu, 6, 29.) Many of these her¬ 
mits appear in former times to have studied the ab¬ 
stract sciences with great success ; and they have al¬ 
ways been considered by the orthodox Hindus as the 
wisest and holiest of mankind. (Consult the Bhaga- 
vad Gita, a philosophical poem, forming an episode to 
the Mahabharata, which has been translated into Eng 
lish by Wilkins, Lond., 1787, and into Latin by Schlc- 
gel, who also edited the Sanscrit text, Bonn, 1823.) 
The Gymnosophists often burned themselves alive, as 
Calanus did in the presence of Alexander. {Arrian, 
Exp. Al., 7, 18.— Plut., Vit. Alex., c. 65, seqq. — Diod. 
Sic., 17, 107.) 

Gyndes, now Zeindeh, a river of Assyria, falling 
into the Tigris. When Cyrus marched against Baby¬ 
lon, his army was stopped by this river, in which one 
of the sacred horses was drowned. This so irritated 
the monarch, that he ordered the river to be divided 
into 360 different channels by his army, so that after 
this division it hardly reached the knee. {Herod., 1 , 
189.) This portrait of Cyrus seems a little over¬ 
charged. The hatred which the Greeks bore the Per 
sians is sufficiently known. The motive of Cyrus for 
thus treating the Gyndes could not be such as is de¬ 
scribed by Herodotus. That which happened to the 
sacred horse might make him apprehend a similar fate 
for the rest of his army, and compel him to divert the 
river into a great number of canals in order to render 
it fordable. The Gyndes, at the present day, has reas¬ 
sumed its course to the Tigris, and its entrance into 
that river is called Foum-el-Saleh, or the river of peace 
in Arabic. The name given it by the Turks in th* 
place whence it issues, is Kara-Sou, or the black river. 

565 



HAD 


HADR1ANUS 


Gytheum, the port of Sparta, about 40 stadia from 
Las ( Pausan., 3, 24), and 240 from Sparta itself. 
(Strabo , 363.) Pliny says it was the nearest point to 
embark from for the island of Crete (4, 5). Gytheum 
was taken by the Athenians under Tolmidas, who 
burnt the docks before the Peloponnesian war. (Di¬ 
odorus Sic., 11, 84.) It was also attacked by the 
Thebans in their first invasion of Laconia, for three 
days, but without success. (Xen., Hist. Gr., 6, 5, 32.) 
It was afterward besieged by the Roman army under 
the command of T. Q. Flamininus and his brother Lu¬ 
cius, and compelled to surrender. Livy says it was a 
stiong and populous town, and well provided with the 
means of resistance (34, 29). On the renewal of the 
war, it was, however, retaken by Nabis. ( Liv., 35, 
26. — Compare Polyb., 2, 69.) The Gytheatae pre¬ 
tended that their city had been built by Hercules and 
Apollo, whose statues were placed in the forum. Po¬ 
lybius states (5, 19), that the port, distant 30 stadia 
from the city itself, was both commodious and secure. 
Strabo remarks, that it was an artificial haven. Gy- 
theum stood a little to the north of the present town of 
Marathonisi. The site is now called Palceopoli, but 
no habitation is left upon it. ( Cramer's Anc. Greece, 
vol 3, p. 192, seqq.) 

H. 

Hades (adyq), the place of departed spirits, accord¬ 
ing to the Grecian mythology ; from a, not, and eldo, 
to see, as denoting the lower or invisible world. Its 
divisions were Elysium and Tartarus, the respective 
abodes of the good and bad. In the Homeric times, 
however, this arrangement formed no part of the pop¬ 
ular creed. The prevalent belief was merely as fol¬ 
lows ; that the souls of the departed, with the excep¬ 
tion of those who had personally offended against the 
gods, were occupied in the lower world with the un¬ 
real performance of the same actions that had formed 
their chief objects of pursuit in the regions of dav. 
All the other accompaniments of the fable, the judges, 
the tribunals, the trials of the dead, &c., are merely 
posthomeric additions. ( Constant, de la Religion, 
vol. 3, p. 383.) As regards the analogy between the 
terms hades and our English word hell, it may be re¬ 
marked, that the latter, in its primitive signification, 
perfectly corresponded to the former. For, at first, it 
denoted only what was secret or concealed ; and it is 
found, moreover, with little variation of form, and pre¬ 
cisely with the same meaning, in all the Teutonic dia¬ 
lects. (Compare Junius's Gothic Glossary , subjoined 
to the Codex Argenteus, on the word herlyan; and the 
Diversions of Parley, vol. 2, p. 377, ed. 1829.) With 
regard to the situation of hades, it seems always to 
have been conceived, by both Jews and pagans, as in 
the lower parts of the earth, near its centre, as we 
should term it, or its foundation (according to the no¬ 
tion of the Hebrews, who knew nothing of its spheri¬ 
cal figure), and answering in depth to the visible 
heavens in height. (Compare, on this whole subject, 
Campbell's Gospels, vol. 1, p, 272, seqq., Disc. 6, 
pt. 2.) 

Hadranum, a town of Sicily, near Mount iEtna, 
having in its vicinity a river of the name of Hadranus. 
(Steph. Ryz., s. v.) It was founded by Dionysius. 
(Diod. Sic., 14, 38.—Compare Silius Italicus, 14, 250.) 

Hadrianus (Publius ^Elius), I. a Roman emperor, 
born at Rome A.D: 76. He lost his father when ten 
years of age, and had for his guardians Trajan, who 
was his relation, and Cornelius Tatianus, a Roman 
knight. His parent’s name was iElius Hadrianus 
Afer, and it is conjectured that the surname of Afer 
was given the latter because he had been govern¬ 
or of Africa, and that he is the same with the Hadri¬ 
anus who put the martyr Leontius to death at Tripo¬ 
li^ in the reign of Vespasian. (Bayle, Hist. Diet., s. 


v., vol. 5, p. 670 ) Hadrian’s father was Trajan’s 
first cousin ; for he was the son of Ulpia, the sister ol 
Marcus Ulpius Trajanus, the Emperor Trajan’s father. 
(Compare Tzschucke, ad Eutrop., s. 6.) Hadrian be¬ 
gan very early to serve in the army, and was tribune 
of a legion before Domitian’s death. The forces in 
Lower Moesia chose him to congratulate Trajan upon 
his being adopted by Nerva, and it was he that ac¬ 
quainted Trajan with the first news of Nerva’s death. 
He regained the emperor’s favour, which he had al¬ 
most entirely lost by his extravagant expenses and the 
debts which he had in consequence incurred, and 
married the grand niece of this prince, Sabina, chiefly 
through the aid of Plotina the empress. His subse¬ 
quent rise was rapid, and he was the companion of 
Trajan in most of his expeditions. He particular¬ 
ly distinguished himself in the war against the Da¬ 
cians, and was successively appointed praetor, govern¬ 
or of Pannonia, and consul. The orations he com¬ 
posed for Trajan increased his credit. (Spartian., 
Vit. Had.r.) After the siege of Atra, in Arabia, Tra¬ 
jan left him in command of his army, and when he 
found his death approaching, adopted him, although 
the reality of this adoption is disputed by some an 
thorities, who attribute his elevation to the intrigues 
and good offices of Plotina. (Dio Cass., c. 69, vol. 2, 
p. 1148, ed. Reimar. — Spartian., Vit. Hadr., c. 4, p 
45. — Bayle, Hist. Diet., s. v. Plotina, vol. 8, p. 433. 
On the death of Trajan he assumed the reins of gov 
ernment, with the concurrence of the Syrian army 
and the senate readily ratified the act. The firs; 
care of Hadrian was to make a peace with the Per¬ 
sians, and to restore all the provinces just taken from 
them, making the Euphrates the boundary of the Ro¬ 
man empire. He had then to turn his attention to 
certain revolts and insurrections in Egypt, Libya, and 
Palestine ; and, after quickly concluding a peace with 
the Parthians, returned to Rome, A.D. 118. The 
senate decreed him a triumph, and honoured him with 
the title of Father of his Country; but he refused both, 
and required that Trajan’s image should triumph. Pie 
sought popularity by a repeal of fifteen years accumu¬ 
lation of arrears of public debt, by a vast reduction 
of taxation generally, and by immense largesses to the 
people. He was less generous to certain senators 
accused of a plot against him, four of whom, although 
of consular rank and intimates of Trajan, he caused to 
be put to death. A year after his return to Rome, 
Hadrian marched against the Alani, the ^armatians, 
and the Dacians, but showed a greater desire to make 
peace with these barbarians than to extend the prog¬ 
ress of the Roman arms. This policy has been at¬ 
tributed to envy of the fame of his warlike predeces¬ 
sor ; but a due consideration of the subsequent history 
of the empire will amply justify him against the impu¬ 
tation ; for it had reached an extent which rendered 
all increase to its limits a source of weakness rathei 
than of strength. Hadrian was an active prince and 
a great traveller, visiting every province in the empire, 
not simply to indulge his curiosity, but to inspect the 
administration of government, repress abuses, erec 
and repair public edifices, and exercise all the vigi¬ 
lance of personal examination. In A.D. 120, he 
passed over from Gaul to Britain, where he caused a 
wall to be built from the mouth of the Tyne to Solway 
Frith, in order to secure the Roman provinces from 
the incursions of the Caledonians. (Consult Hutton's 
Roman Wall, Lond., 1802.) Like Trajan, he lived 
familiarly with his friends, but was much more suspi¬ 
cious, and could not repose in them the same confi¬ 
dence. When at Rome he cultivated all kinds of lit¬ 
erature, conversing with learned men, and giving and 
receiving information in their society, but not without 
occasionally displaying an unbecoming jealousy and 
caprice. Hadrian had again- to visit the Elast to re¬ 
press the Parthians, who paid little regard to treaties 






HADRIANUS. 


HAIM 


On his return he passed the winter at Athens, and 
was initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries.- He pub¬ 
lished no edict against the Christians, yet they never¬ 
theless endured considerable persecution, until, upon 
the remonstrance of Quadratus, bishop of Athens, and 
Aristides, an eminent Christian, he ordered the perse¬ 
cution to cease ; but no credit is due to the unauthor¬ 
ized assertion of Lampridius, that he thought of build¬ 
ing a temple to our Saviour. His treatment of the 
Jews, on the other hand, was extremely severe, though 
ample provocation had been given by that turbulent 
nation. They had raised disturbances towards the 
end of Trajan’s reign, which were not completely 
quelled until the second year of Hadrian. But now a 
more formidable insurrection broke out under Barco- 
chebas (“ Son of a Star”), who, though a robber by 
profession, had given himself out for the Messiah. It 
required a war of three years to reduce the revolted 
Jews to complete subjection, and after this was ac¬ 
complished, there was scarcely any indignity that was 
not inflicted on the conquered nation. Jerusalem was 
rebuilt under the new title of JElia Capitolina, uniting 
the family name of the emperor with the Roman sur¬ 
name of Jupiter, and in the execution of his plan Ha¬ 
drian studiously profaned all the places which had 
been most revered by both Jews and Christians, whom 
he seems on this occasion to have purposely con¬ 
founded together. He built a temple in honour of 
Jupiter Capitolinus upon the mountain where had 
stood that of the true God ; he placed a hog of mar¬ 
ble upon the gate of the city which looked towards 
Bethlehem ; he erected in the place where Jesus was 
crucified a statue of Venus; and in that where he 
rose from the dead one of Jupiter; in the grotto of 
Bethlehem, where our Saviour was born, he establish¬ 
ed the worship of Adonis. The Jews were also for¬ 
bidden the very sight of Jerusalem, which they were 
not permitted to enter but on one day in the year, the 
anniversary of the destruction of the city. Ai*ter the 
conclusion of the Jewish war Hadrian returned to Ita¬ 
ly, where a lingering illness put a stop to his unsettled 
mode of life, ai»d eventually terminated his existence. 
Having no children of his own, Hadrian first adopted 
for his successor L. Ceronius Commodus, more gen¬ 
erally known by the name of Verus, to which last he 
prefixed that of iElius after his adoption by the em¬ 
peror. Verus, however, who was remarkable for 
nothing but his excessive effeminacy and debauched 
mode of life, died soon after, and Hadrian made a 
second selection in the person of the virtuous Antoni¬ 
nus. ( Vid. Antoninus Pius.) Hadrian died not long 
after at Baiae, A.D. 136, in the 63d year of his age 
and 22d of his reign. His disorder was the dropsy, 
from which disease his sufferings were so great as ap¬ 
parently to affect his reason. The character of this 
monarch presents a strange mixture of virtues and 
vices. If he cultivated literature and courted the so¬ 
ciety of the learned, he yet occasionally displayed to¬ 
wards them a degree of jealousy and caprice altogeth¬ 
er unworthy of his station and abilities. If he was, in 
general, a just and able ruler, yet there were times 
when he showed himself revengeful, suspicious, and 
cruel. His treatment of his wife Sabina does no hon¬ 
our to his memory, his disgraceful predilection for An- 
tinoiis loads it with infamy; nor does his excessive 
superstition, to which even that favourite fell a victim, 
entitle him to any other than feelings of contempt. 
The better portion of the Romans appear to have 
formed a just estimate of his character long before his 
death, and it was with difficulty that Antoninus could 
obtain from the senate the usual compliment of having 
him ranked among the gods. Their dread of the sol¬ 
diery, by whom Hadrian was greatly beloved, appears 
to have conquered their reluctance. Hadrian wrote 
several works. He was fond of entering the lists 
against the poets, philosophers, and orators of the day, 


and Photius mentions several declamations of tiie em 
peror’s, written for such occasions, as still existing in 
his time, and not devoid of elegance. Hadrian com¬ 
posed a history of his own times, which he published 
under the name of his freedman Phlegon, and Dori- 
theus the grammarian made at a subsequent period a 
collection of his decisions and rescripts. All that we 
have of his productions at the present day are, a frag¬ 
ment of a work on military operations, entitled ’Etu- 
rydevya, and an epigrammatic address to his soul, 
written a short time before his death, and as re¬ 
markable for its elegance as its scepticism. It is as 
follows: 

u Animula, vagula, blandula, 

Hospes comesque corporis , 

Qua nunc abibis in loca, 

Pallidula, rigida, nudula , 

Nec, ut soles, dabis jocos ?” 

( Pausanias , 1, 18.— Id., 8, 9.— Aurel. Viet. — Capi 
tol., Vit. Anton., c. 2.— Euseb., Chron ., p. 281, seqq., 
ed. Maii et Zohrabi. — Id., Hist. Eccles., 4, 6.) — II. 
A philosopher of Tyre, who studied under Herodes, 
and taught eloquence after him at Athens. He was 
also secretary to the Emperor Commodus. (’A vti- 
ypafyevg tu>v eizicToXtiv.) He died at Rome after 
having attained the age of 80 years. We have only 
some fragments remaining of the works of this writer, 
which cause no regret for what are lost. They are 
found in the Excerpta of Allatius, and at the end of 
Orellius’s edition of Philo of Byzantium. ( Scholl , 
Hist. Litt. Grecque, vol. 4, p. 233.) 

Hadriaticum Mare. Vid. Adriaticum. 

HiEMON, a son of Creon king of Thebes. At 
cording to Apollodorus (3, 5, 8), he was devoured by 
the Sphinx. The tragic writers, however, assigned 
him a different fate. {Vid. Antigone.) 

H^emonia, one of the earlier appellations of Thes 
saly, and supposed to be derived from the name of 
an ancient monarch Haemon. {Strabo, 443.) Other 
writers give the name less correctly without the 
initial aspirate. {Steplianus Byz., s. v. — ed. Ber- 
kel, p. 63.) In Brunck’s edition of Apollonius Rho- 
dius, the true form is given in both the text and scholia. 
It is more than probable, that the name Haemonia was 
brought in by the Pelasgi; and to this same race, no 
doubt, must the appellation of Hasmus, given to the 
northern boundary of Thrace, be in strictness attribu¬ 
ted. {Vid. Haemus.) 

Haemus, a dflain of mountains forming the northern 
boundary of Thrace, and separating it from Mcesia. 
The ancients had such an idea of the elevation of this 
chain, that Pomponius Mela (2, 2) affirms that the 
Euxine and Hadriatic could be seen from it at the 
same time. Polybius also makes the same assertion, 
but this Strabo (313) expressly contradicts. The 
historian, however, is doubtless correct in another re¬ 
mark of his, that the chain of Haemus is higher than 
that of the Alps. Livy relates (40, 22), that Philip, 
king of Macedonia, having heard it reported that from 
the summit of Haemus could be seen at once the 
Euxine, the Adriatic, the Danube, and the Alps, de¬ 
termined to ascend the mountain, in order to take a 
view, as it were, of the approaching scene of action 
between himself and the Romans. He was three 
days in reaching the summit, after a difficult and toil¬ 
some march ; the weather, however, proved unfavour¬ 
able for the view. Pliny (4, 2) makes Haemus six miles 
high. It is remarkable that Herodotus should have 
taken no notice of it in his mention of the expedition 
of Darius against the Scythians, though it must have 
presented so formidable a barrier to the army of that 
monarch. He speaks of it, however, on another oc¬ 
casion (4, 49). According to Stephanus of Byzan¬ 
tium (p. 64, ed. Berk.), the mountain derived its name 
from Haemus, oriEmus, a son of Boreas and Orithyia 

567 



HAL 


•ipollodorus, however (6, 3), says the chain was call¬ 
ed Haeinus from aiya, “blood,” because Typhon hav¬ 
ing been chased hither by Jupiter, waged battle in this 
place against the monarch of the skies, and covered 
the mountain with his blood. (Compare the remark of 
Heyne, ad Apollod., 1. c., where this etymology is sta¬ 
ted to be the offspring of later ages.) The true root is 
found in the Sanscrit Hema, which connects togeth¬ 
er the names of Imaus, Himmala, Hcemus, Hymet- 
tus , in ancient geography, and the appellation Himmel, 
given to various mountains in Saxony, Jutland, and 
elsewhere- ( Creuzer, Symbolik, vol. 1, 536.— Creu- 
zer, Symbolik, par Guigniaut , vol. 1, p. 135. — Got- 
ting. Gel. auz., 1815, No. 36, p. 357.) This root 
Hema , otherwise written Himeras, Imos, Jenna, Sec., 
appears to carry with it the idea of height (compare 
the German himmel, “ heaven”), and also that of a 
snowy or wintry elevation. (Compare the Latin hi - 
ems and the Greek xel/ia. — Klaproth, Memoircs rela- 
tifs a VAsie, vol. 1, p. 432.)—The length of the chain 
of Hsemus is not less remarkable than its height, ex¬ 
tending for 500 miles ; one end resting on the Gulf 
of Venice, and the other on the Black Sea. The mod¬ 
ern name is Balcan, which signifies a difficult defile ; 
and it is properly divided into high and low, the latter 
advancing on each side, like outworks before the great 
natural rampart. ( Walsh's Journey from Constanti¬ 
nople to England, p. 104, Am. ed.) The passage of 
the Balcan by the Russian forces, in their conflict 
with the Mussulman power, has excited great interest 
and called forth considerable applause. From the re¬ 
marks, however, of a very recent traveller, it would 
appear that the undertaking was anything but difficult. 
{Keppel's Journey across the Balcan, vol. 1, p. 301.) 

Halesus, I. an Argive, who, after the murder of 
Agamemnon by Clytemnestra and iEgisthus, settled 
in Italy, in the vicinity of Mons Massacus, a mountain 
of Campania. At the head of the Aurunci and Osci, 
he assisted Turnus against iEneas, but fell by the hand 
of Pallas. ( Virg ., JEn., 7, 724.— Id. ib., 10, 532.) 
Halesus is said by Virgil to have been the son of a 
soothsayer, who foretold the fate of his child ; and, in 
order to avert this, if possible, brought him up in the 
woods. The epithet Agamemnonius , therefore, which 
Virgil applies to him {JEn., 7, 724), and which some 
suppose has reference to his being the son of Aga¬ 
memnon, is merely used by the poet to denote the pre¬ 
tended origin of his race. {Heyne, Excurs., 8, ad 
JEn., 7.) —II. or Hales {"APiqe, -evrog)^. river of Asia 
Minor, running near the city of Colophon, and said to 
have the coldest water of all the streams of Asia. 

( PHn., 5, 29.) It took its rise in Mount Gallesus or 
Gallesium, and fell into the Sinus Ephesius. ( Strab., 
642.— Cramer' 1 s Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 359.) 

Haliacmon, a large and rapid stream of Macedonia, 
flowing into the sea a short distance below Pydna. 

It rises in the chain of mountains called Cambunii, or 
by Ptolemy Canalovii, on the northern confines of 
Thessaly. The modern name of this river is Inidge- 
Carason, or Jenicora, according to Dr. Brown, who 
must have crossed it in its course through Elimrea. 
[Travels, p. 46. So also the editors of the French 
Strabo, vol. 3, p. 124.) Dr. Clarke calls itlnje-Mauro. 
The epitomist of Strabo (7, p. 330) seems to place 
the Haliacmon soon after Dium, as does also Ptolemy 
(p. 82). This is, however, an error, which apparently 
misled Dr. Holland, who imagined he had forded this 
stream about two miles beyond Katima ; but what he 
speaks of is probably the Baphyrus of Livy and Pau- 
sanias (vol. 2, p. 31). According to Caesar ( B . C., 

3, 36), it formed the line of demarcation between Ma¬ 
cedonia and Thessaly. ( Cramer's Ancient Greece, 
vol. 1, p. 217.) 

Haliartus, I. a son of Thersander, said to have 
founded the city of Haliartus in Boeotia. He was 
adopted by Athamas, tho igh he did not succeed mm, 
'568 


'HAL 

but gave up the throne willingly to Presbon, grandsoz 
of this prince. ( Pausan., 9, 34.)—II. A city of Boeo- 
tia, situate, according to Strabo, on the low’er shore o< 
the CopaVc lake, and near the mouth of the Permessus, 
which flows from Helicon. The epithet of 7 voir/evra 
is attached to this city by Homer {II., 2, 503.— Hymn, 
in Apoll., 243), from the numerous meadows and 
marshes in its vicinity, on the side of Orchomenus. 
{Strab., 407.) Pausanias affirms that Haliartus wa» 
the only Boeotian city which did not favour the Per¬ 
sians, for which reason its territory was ravaged with 
fire and sword by their army (9, 32). Haliartus, hav 
ing favoured the cause of Perseus, king of Macedonia, 
was besieged by the Romans, under the command of 
the prsetor Lucretius, and, though obstinately defended, 
was taken by assault, sacked, and utterly destroyed, 
the inhabitants being sold and their territory given to 
the Athenians. {Liv., 42, 53.— Polyb., 30, 18.— 
Strab., 411.) The remains of Haliartus, according to 
Dodwell (vol. l,p. 248), are situated about fifteen miles 
from Lebadea, and at nearly an equal distance from 
Thebes. The place is now called Mikrokouza. Sir 
W. Gell says, “The ruins of Haliartus lie just below 
the village of Mazi, on the road from Thebes to Leba¬ 
dea.” {Itinerary, p. 124.) 

Halias, a district of Argolis, so called apparently 
from the fisheries established along the coast, and lying 
between Hermione and Cape Scylloeum. Its territory 
was twice ravaged by the Athenians during the Pelo¬ 
ponnesian war. {Thucyd., 2,56.— Id., 4, 45.) The 
name of Aliki is still attached to a spot situated a little 
to the east of Castri. {Pouqueville, vol. 4, p. 255.) 

Halicarnassus, the principal city of Caria, situate 
on the northern shore of the Sinus Ceramicus. It 
was founded by a Doric colony from Trcezene, in Ar¬ 
golis, according to Strabo (656). These were joined 
afterward by some Argives, headed by Melas and Are- 
nanias.,( Vitruv., 2,8.—Compare Pausan., 2, 30.) He¬ 
rodotus, however, only recognises the former colonists 
(7, 99). This city, on account of its origin, had natu¬ 
rally been included in the Dorian confederation, which 
consisted originally of six states. But Agasicles, a 
citizen of Halicarnassus, having, contrary to prescribed 
custom, carried off the tripod assigned to him in the 
games celebrated in honour of the Triopian Apollo, 
instead of dedicating it to the god, the other five cities, 
in consequence of this offence, determined to exclude 
Halicarnassus from any participation in these festivi¬ 
ties, which amounted, in fact, to an exclusion from the 
Dorian confederacy, which thenceforth was named Pen- 
tapolis. {Herod., 1 , 144.) Not long after this event, 
Halicarnassus may be supposed to have lost its inde¬ 
pendence, Lygdamis, one of the principal citizens, hav¬ 
ing usurped the authority. He was succeeded by his 
daughter Artemisia, of whom Herodotus has made 
such honourable mention in his history. {Vid. Arte¬ 
misia, I.) This princess, in all probability, transmitted 
the sovereign power to her son, named Lygdamis, like 
his natural grandfather; and it was during his reign 
that Herodotus, unwilling to see his native city under 
the denomination of a despot, abandoned it for Samos, 
where he completed his studies. Subsequent to this 
period we have little knowledge of what occurred in 
Halicarnassus ; but from Thucydides (2, 9) we learn 
that Caria and Doris were tributary to Athens, and 
Halicarnassus itself is mentioned, towards the close 
of his history, as being in the hands of her troops (8, 
42). Somewhat later we find it subject to princes 
of Carian extraction. The first of these was He- 
catomnus, who had three sons, Mausolus, Hidrieus 
and Pixodarus; and two daughters, Artemisia and 
Ada, who married the two elder brothers. Mausolus 
succeeded his father on the throne of Caria, and, dying 
without offspring, left the crown to his sister and con 
sort Artemisia. She erected to his memory the splen¬ 
did mausoleum, or tomb called after his name. ( Vid. 





HAL 


HAM 


Mausoleum.} Artemisia, dying of grief for the loss of | 
her husband, was succeeded by Hidrieus, who, having 
no issue, left the crown to his wife Ada. But Pixo- 
darus, the youngest of Hecatomnus’ sons, formed a 
party against her, and, with the assistance of Oronto- 
bates, a Persian satrap, succeeded in expelling her 
from Halicarnassus. Orontobates, having married the 
daughter of Pixodarus, remained, on the death of the 
latter, in possession of Halicarnassus. It was at this 
period that Alexander arrived with his forces in Caria, 
ar.d laid siege to the city. It was a long and severe 
01 e, owing to the natural strength of the place, and 
the number and description of the troops which de¬ 
fended it, under the command of Memnon, the best 
general in the Persian service. Alexander, however, 
eventually took the place, razed it to the ground, and 
restored Ada to the sovereignty of Caria. Halicar¬ 
nassus was afterward rebuilt, and, to compensate for 
its losses, had six towns annexed to it. ( Piin ., 6, 29 ) 
The citadel of this place was named Salmacis, from 
the fountain celebrated in Ovid ( Met., 4, 11). Ac¬ 
cording to Scylax, there were two ports at Halicarnas¬ 
sus, protected by the little island Arconnesus. Hali¬ 
carnassus could boast of having produced Herodotus, 
Dionysius, and Heraclitus the poet. It appears to 
have suffered in the Mithradatic war, and to have been 
restored to a great degree of its former prosperity by 
Cicero’s brother Quintus. ( Ep. ad Q. Fratr., 1, 8.) 
—The ruins of Halicarnassus exist at Boudroun, and 
Captain Beaufort has given a plan of the harbour and 
the Turkish town, with the adjacent coast. ( Beau¬ 
fort's Karamania, p. 95, seqq. — Cramer's Asia Mi¬ 
nor, vol. 2, p. 176, seqq.) Dr. Clarke, quoting from 
Walpole’s MS. journal, remarks, that Budrun is a cor¬ 
ruption, through Petrumi, as the Turks write it, from 
Pietro, referring to the fort or castle of San Pietro 
{castellum Sancti Petri), which corresponds to the an¬ 
cient citadel. ( Travels, vol. 3, p. 256, seqq.) 

Halicyj®, (' POuKvai), a town of Sicily, between 
Entella and Lilybseum. The modern name is Saleme. 

( Steph. Byz., s. v. — Diod. Sic., 14, 55.) 

Haeirrhothius, a son of Neptune and Euryte, who 
committed an outrage on Alcippe, daughter of Mars, 
and was, in consequence, slain by that deity. Nep¬ 
tune summoned Mars to trial for the murder of his 
son. The cause was heard before the twelve gods, 
sitting as judges, on the Areopagus at Athens ; which 
hill derived its name {’Apeiog ndyoq, “ Hill of Mars") 
from this circumstance. The trial ended in the ac¬ 
quittal of the accused deity. ( Apollod., 3, 14.— Schol. 
ad Eurip., Orest., 1665.) Meier considers ”A petoq 
equivalent here to (povticoq. {Rhein. Mus., 2, p. 266.) 

Halmydessus. Vid. Salmvdessus. 

Halonnesus, a small island at the opening of the 
Sinus ThermaYcus, and northeast of Scopelus. It is 
celebrated in history as having been a subject of con¬ 
tention between Philip the son of Amyntas, and the 
Athenians ; on which occasion one of their orators 
composed an harangue, which is to be found in the 
works of Demosthenes, and has been ascribed by some 
to that celebrated orator. ( Or at. 7, Demosth., p. 75. 
— Strab., 435.— Pomp. Mel., 2, 7.) It is now called 
Chelidromi. {Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 451.) 

Halys, a celebrated river of Asia Minor, rising on 
the confines of Pontus and Armenia Minor, and which, 
after flowing westwardly through Cappadocia to the 
borders of Phrygia, turns to the northwest, and enters 
the Euxine some distance to the northwest of Amisus. 
Herodotus (1, 72) and Strabo (546) both speak of its 
rising in the region we have mentioned, and pursuing 
the route described. Pliny (5, 2), however, makes it 
rise in a far different quarter, viz., in the southern part 
of Cataonia, near Tyana, at the foot of the chain of 
Mount Taurus. Larcher {His(. d'Herod., vol. 8, p. 
239. — Table Geogr.) and others seek to reconcile 
these opposite statements, by giving the Halys two 


branches, an eastern and a southern one. This, how¬ 
ever, merely increases the difficulty ; for why should 
Strabo, a native of Amasea, be ignorant of the course 
of a river so near his native city 1 and why does he 
make no mention of the southern Halys, when he de¬ 
scribes the very ground over which it is supposed to 
have flowed h Mannert {Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 2, p. 455) 
thinks, that this southern arm is the river which Ta¬ 
vernier calls the Jekel Ermak, or green river, which 
D’Anville, on the contrary, makes the modern name 
of the ancient Iris. The modern name of the Halys 
is the Kizil Ermak, or red river. According to Stra¬ 
bo (546), the ancient name of the river is owing to its 
passage in its course by some salt-works. This, how¬ 
ever, is a mere arbitrary derivation, and so, in fact, 
Eustathius evinces, who states that the river was called 
Halys by those who derived its name from salt; by 
others, however, Alys. {Eustath.,ad Dion. Pericg., 
v. 784.) This river formed the western boundary of 
the dominions of Croesus, with which was connected 
a famous oracle. ( Vid. Croesus.) 

Hamadryades. Vid. Nymphae. 

Hamilcar (for the orthography and derivation of the 
name, consult remarks at the end of the article), I. a 
Carthaginian general, son of Mago, or, according to 
others, of Hanno, conquered by Gelon, in Sicily, the 
same day that Xerxes was defeated at Salamis. He¬ 
rodotus (7, 165) states, that he was never seen either 
living or dead, after the battle in which his army was 
defeated. According to Polyaenus, however (1 27, 
2), Gelon destroyed him by a stratagem while sacrifi¬ 
cing.—II. Surnamed Rhodanus, a Carthaginian gen¬ 
eral of considerable talent. Perceiving his fellow- 
citizens to be greatly disquieted at the projects of Al¬ 
exander of Macedon, he betook himself to that prince, 
in order, if possible, to penetrate his designs, and give 
his countrymen timely notice of them. After the death 
of that monarch he returned to Carthage, where he 
was put to death, on false pretensions of treason, as 
the recompense of his devotion to his country. ( Jus¬ 
tin, 21, 5.)—III. A Carthaginian general, in the time 
of Agathocles, tyrant of Sicily. He came to the suc¬ 
cour of Syracuse when besieged by this usurper. Be¬ 
ing gained over, however, by the gold of Agathocles, 
he prevailed on the Syracusans to make peace, and 
favoured by his inaction the schemes of the tyrant. 
The Carthaginian senate condemned him to lose his 
head, but he died at Syracuse, B.C. 311, before the 
sentence could be made public. {Justin, 22, 2.)— 
IV. The son of Giscon, a Carthaginian general, sent 
into Sicily about 311 B.C., to oppose the progress of 
Agathocles. On his arrival he gained a victory, which 
opened to him the gates of several large cities. In 
attempting to make himself master of Syracuse, during 
the absence of Agathocles in Africa, he was taken 
prisoner and put to death, B.C. 309.—V. Surnamed 
Barcas, the leader cf the popular party at Carthage, 
was appointed in the eighteenth year of the first Punic 
war (B.C. 247) to the command of the Carthaginian 
forces. We possess no particulars respecting his early 
life or the time of his birth ; but we learn from Nepos 
( Vit. Hamil., c. 1) that he was very young when he 
obtained the command. He ravaged with his fleet 
the coast of the Brutii and the Epizephyrian Locrians, 
and afterward seized upon a strong fortress in Sicily, 
which was situated between Eryx and Panormus. In 
this place he continued for some years, with very little 
support from the Carthaginian government; and, al¬ 
though the Romans were masters of almost the whole 
of the island, they were unable to dislodge him. He 
frequently ravaged the southern coasts of Italy as far 
as Cumse, and defeated the Roman troops in Sicily. 
On one occasion he took Eryx, which he held till the 
conclusion of the war. The Romans at length fitted 
out a fleet to cut off all communication between Ham¬ 
ilcar and Carthage ; the Carthaginian fleet sent to his 

569 





11 A IN 


HANNIBAL. 


assistance was defeated by the Roman consul Lutatius 
Catulus, B.C. 241, and the Carthaginians were obliged 
to sue for peace. This was granted by the Romans ; 
and Harnilcar led his troops from Eryx to Lilybteum, 
whence they were conveyed to Africa. But a new 
danger awaited Carthage. The Carthaginian treasury 
<vas exhausted ; and it was proposed to the troops that 
they should relinquish a part of the pay which was due 
to them. The soldiers rejected the proposal, appointed 
two of their number, Spendius and Matho, command¬ 
ers, and proceeded to enforce their demands. Being 
joined by many of the native tribes of Africa, they 
lefeated Hanno, the Carthaginian general sent against 
them, and brought Carthage to the brink of ruin. In 
these desperate circumstances Harnilcar was appointed 
to the command, and at length succeeded in subduing 
them after the war had lasted three years and four 
months. After the end of this war Harnilcar was sent 
into Spain, B.C. 238. He remained in Spain nearly 
nine years, during which time he extended the do¬ 
minion of Carthage over the southern and eastern 
parts of that country. He fell in a battle against the 
natives, B.C. 229. The abilities of Harnilcar were of 
the highest order; and he directed all the energies of 
his mind to diminish the power of Rome. Polybius 
states his belief {lib. 3), that his administration would 
soon have produced another war with the Romans, if 
he had not been prevented by the disorders in which 
his country was involved through the war of the mer¬ 
cenaries. Harnilcar was succeeded in his command 
in Spain by his son-in-law Hasdrubal, who must not 
be confounded with Hasdrubal the brother of Hanni¬ 
bal. He carried on the conquests of Harnilcar, and 
reduced almost the whole of the country south of the 
Iberus, which river was fixed by a treaty between the 
Carthaginians and the Romans, B.C. 226, as the fron¬ 
tier of the Carthaginian dominions. Hasdrubal was 
murdered in his tent by a Gaul, B.C. 221, after holding 
the command eight years. {Polyb., 1, 2.— Corn. Nep., 
vit. Hamilc., c. 3. — Encycl. Useful Knowl., vol. 12, 
p. 25.)—VI. A Carthaginian general, son of Bomil- 
car, conquered by the Scipios (B.C. 215) when be¬ 
sieging Ilitingis, in Hispania Baetica, along with Has¬ 
drubal and Mago. He is supposed by some to be the 
same with the Harnilcar who, fifteen years after, at 
the head of a body of Gauls, took and sacked Placen¬ 
tia, and was defeated and slain before Cremona. Oth¬ 
ers affirm, that he was taken prisoner three years later 
in a battle fought near the Mincius, and served to 

adorn the victory of the conqueror. (Liv., 23, 49._ 

Id., 31, 10. — Id., 32, 23. — Plin., 3, 1.) —The name 
Harnilcar was equivalent in Punic to “(quern) dona- 
vit Milcar .” The true orthography is with the initial 
aspirate. Consult Heins., ad Sil. Ital., 1 , 39. — Dra- 
kenb., ad Liv., 21, 1. — Gesenius , Pheen. Mon., p. 407. 
— The interpretation given by Hamaker {diatr. 47) to 
the name Harnilcar is rejected by Gesenius {l. c.). 

Hannibal (equivalent in Punic to “ gratia Baalis ”), 
son of Harnilcar Barcas (vid . Harnilcar V.), was born 
B.C. 247. At the age of nine he accompanied his 
father to Spain, who, previous to his departure, took 
his son to the altar, and, placing his hand on the vic¬ 
tim, made him swear that he would never be a friend 
to the Romans. It does not appear how long Hannibal 
remained in Spain, but he was at a very early age as¬ 
sociated with Hasdrubal, who succeeded his father in 
the command of the Carthaginian army in that coun¬ 
try. On the death of Hasdrubal, B.C. 221, he ob¬ 
tained the undivided command of the army, and quickly 
conquered the Olcades, Vaccaeans, Carpesians, and the 
other Spanish tribes that had not been subdued by 
Hasdrubal. The inhabitants of Saguntum, alarmed at 
his success, sent messengers to Rome to inform the 
Romans of their danger. A Roman embassy was ac¬ 
cordingly sent to Hannibal, who was passing the win¬ 
ter at New Carthage, to announce to him that the in- 
570 


dependence of Saguntum was guarantied by a treaty 
between the Carthaginians and Romans (concluded 
B.C. 226), and that they should consider any injury 
done to the Saguntines as a declaration of war against 
themselves. Hannibal, however, paid no regard to 
this remonstrance. More than twenty years had 
elapsed since the termination of the first Punic war, 
during which period the Carthaginians had recovered 
their strength, and had obtained possession of the 
greater part of Spain; and the favourable opportunity 
had arrived for renewing the war with the Romans. 
In B.C. 219, Hannibal took Saguntum, after a siege ol 
eight months, and employed the winter in making 
preparations for the invasion of Italy. He first provi¬ 
ded for the security of Africa and Spain by leaving an 
army of about 16,000 men in each country ; the army 
in Africa consisted principally of Spanish troops, and 
that in Spain of Africans, under the command of his 
brother Hasdrubal. He had already received promise 
of support from the Gauls who inhabited the north of 
Italy, and who were anxious to deliver themselves 
from the Roman dominion. Having thus made every 
necessary preparation, he set out from New Carthage 
late in the spring of B.C. 218, with an army of 80,000 
foot#nd 12,000 horse. In his march from the Iberus 
to the Pyrenees he was opposed by a great number 
of the native tribes, but they were quickly defeated, 
though with loss. Before crossing the Pyrenees, he 
left Hanno to secure his recent conquests with a detach¬ 
ment from his-own army of 11,000 men. He sent back 
the same number of Spanish troops to their own cities, 
and with an army now reduced to 50,000 foot and 
9000 horse, he advanced to the Rhone. Meantime, 
two Reman armies had been levied ; one, commanded 
by the consul P. Cornelius Scipio, was intended to 
oppose Hannibal in Spain ; and a second, under the 
consul T. Sempronius, was designed for the invasion 
of Africa. The departure of Scipio was delayed by a 
revolt of the Boian and Insubrian Gauls, against whom 
the army was sent which had been intended for the in¬ 
vasion of Spain, under the command of one of the 
praetors. Scipio was therefore obliged to remain in 
Rome till a new army could be raised. When the 
forces were ready, he sailed with them to the Rhone, 
and anchored in the eastern mouth of the river ; being 
persuaded that Hannibal must still be at a considerable 
distance from him, as the country through which he 
had to march was difficult, and inhabited by many war¬ 
like tribes. Hannibal, however, quickly surmounted 
all these obstacles, crossed the Rhone, though not 
without some opposition from the Gauls, and continued 
his march up the left bank of the river. Scipio did 
not arrive at the place where the Carthaginians had 
crossed the river till three days afterward ; and, de¬ 
spairing of overtaking them, he sailed back to Italy 
with the intention of meeting Hannibal when he should 
descend from the Alps. Scipio sent his brother Cnaeus 
into Spain, with the greater part of the troops, to op¬ 
pose Hasdrubal. Hannibal continued his march up the 
Rhone till he came to the Isara. Marching along that 
river, he crossed the Alps, descended into the valley 
of the Dora Baltea, and followed the course of the 
river till he arrived in the territories of the Insubrian 
Gauls. (The particular route will be given at the 
close of this article.)—Hannibal completed his march 
from New Carthage to Italy in five months, during 
which he lost a great number of men, especially in his 
passage over the Alps. According to a statement en¬ 
graved by his order on a column at Lacinium, in the 
country of the Brutii, which Polybius saw, his army 
was reduced to 12,000 Africans, 8000 Spaniards, and 
6000 cavalry when he arrived in the territories of the 
Insubrian Gauls. After remaining some time in the 
territories of the Insubrians to recruit his army, he 
marched southward, and encountered P. Cornelius 
Scipio on the right bank of the river Ticinus. In the 




HANNIBAL. 


HANNIBAL. 


battle which ensued the Romans were defeated, and 
Scipio, with the remainder of the army, retreating along 
the left bank of the Po, crossed the river before Han¬ 
nibal could overtake him, and encamped near Placen¬ 
tia. He afterward retreated more to the south, and 
intrenched himself strongly on the right bank of the 
Trebia, where he waited for the arrival of the army 
under the other consul T. Sempronius. Sempronius 
had already crassed over into Sicily with the intention 
of sailing to Africa, when he was recalled to join his 
colleague. After the union of the two armies, Sem¬ 
pronius determined, against the advice of Scipio, to 
risk another battle. The skill and fortune of Hannibal 
again prevailed ; the Romans were entirely defeated, 
and the troops which survived took refuge in the for¬ 
tified cities. In consequence of these victories, the 
whole of Cisalpine Gaul fell into the hands of Hanni¬ 
bal ; and the Gauls, who, on his first arrival, were pre¬ 
vented from joining him by the presence of Scipio’s 
army in their country, now eagerly assisted him with 
men and supplies. In the following year, B.C. 217, 
the Romans made great preparations to oppose their 
formidable enemy. Two new armies were levied ; 
one was posted at Arretium, under the command of 
the consul Flaminius, and the other at Ariminum, 
under the consul Servilius. Hannibal determined to 
attack Flaminius first. In his march southward through 
the swamps of the basin of the Arnus, his army suf¬ 
fered greatly, and he himself lost the sight of one eye. 
After resting his troops for a short time in the neigh¬ 
bourhood of Faesulae, he marched past Arretium, rava¬ 
ging the country as he went, with the view of drawing 
out Flaminius to a battle. Flaminius, who appears to 
have been a rash, headstrong man, hastily followed 
Hannibal; and, being attacked in the basin of the Lake 
Trasimenus, was completely defeated by the Cartha¬ 
ginians, who were posted on the mountains which 
encircled the valley. Three or four days after Hanni¬ 
bal cut off a detachment of Roman cavalry, amounting 
to 4000 men, which had been sent by Servilius to as¬ 
sist his colleague. Hannibal appears to have enter¬ 
tained hopes of overthrowing the Roman dominion, 
and to have expected that the other states of Italy 
wmuld take up arms against Rome, in order to recover 
their independence. To conciliate the affections of 
the Italians, he dismissed without ransom all the 
prisoners whom he took in battle; and, to give them 
an opportunity of joining his army, he marched slowly 
along the eastern side of the peninsula, through Um¬ 
bria and Picenum, into Apulia ; but he did not meet 
with that co-operation which he appears to have ex¬ 
pected. After the defeat of Flaminius, Q. Fabius 
Maximus was appointed dictator, and a defensive sys¬ 
tem of warfare was adopted by the Romans till the 
end of the year. In the following year, B.C. 216, the 
Romans resolved upon another battle. An army of 
80,000 foot and 6000 horse was raised, which was 
commanded by the consuls L. HSmilius Paulus and 
C. Terentius Varro. The Carthaginian army now 
amounted to 40,000 foot and 10,000 horse. The ar¬ 
mies were encamped in the neighbourhood of Cannae 
in Apulia. In the battle w'hich was fought near this 
place, the Romans were defeated with dreadful car¬ 
nage, and with a loss which, as stated by Polybius, is 
quite incredible ; the whole of the infantry engaged in 
battle, amounting to 70,000, ^as destroyed, with the 
exception of 3000 men, who escaped to the neigh¬ 
bouring cities, and' also all the cavalry, with the ex¬ 
ception of 300 belonging to the allies, and 70 that es¬ 
caped with Varro. A detachment of 10,000 foot, 
which had been sent to surprise the Carthaginian 
camp, was obliged to surrender as prisoners. The 
consul L. TEmilius, and the two consuls of the for¬ 
mer year, Servilius and Attilius, were also among the 
slain. Hannibal lost only 4000 Gauls, 1500 Africans 
and Spaniards, and 200 horse. This victory placed 


the whole of Lower Italy in the power of Flannibal, 
but it was not followed by such important results as 
might have been expected. Capua and most of the 
cities of Campania espoused his cause, but the major¬ 
ity of the Italian states continued firm to Rome. The 
defensive system was now strictly adopted by the Ro¬ 
mans, and Hannibal was unable to make any active 
exertions for the farther conquest of Italy till he re¬ 
ceived a reinforcement of troops. He was in hopes 
of obtaining support from Philip of Macedon and from 
the Syracusans, with both of whom he formed an alli¬ 
ance ; but the Romans found means to keep Philip 
employed in Greece, and Syracuse was besieged and 
taken by Marcellus, B.C. 214-12. In addition to 
this, Capua was taken by the Romans, B.C. 211. 
Hannibal was therefore obliged to depend upon the 
Carthaginians for help, and Hasdrubal was accordingly 
ordered to march from Spain to his assistance. Cnasus 
Scipio, as already observed, was left in Spain to op¬ 
pose Hannibal. He was afterward joined by P. Cor¬ 
nelius Scipio, and the war was carried on with various 
success for many years, till at length the Roman 
army was entirely defeated by Hasdrubal, B.C. 212. 
Both the Scipios fell in the battle. Hasdrubal was 
now preparing to join his brother, but was prevented 
by the arrival of young P. Cornelius Scipio in Spain, 
B.C. 210, who quickly recovered what the Romans 
had lost. In B.C. 210 he took New Carthage ; and 
it was not till B.C. 207, when the Carthaginians had 
lost almost all their dominions in Spain, that Hasdrubal 
set out to join his brother in Italy. He crossed the 
'Alps without meeting with any opposition from the 
Gauls, and arrived at Placentia before the Romans 
were aware that he had entered Italy. After besieg¬ 
ing this town without success, he continued his march 
southward ; but, before he could effect a junction with 
Hannibal, he was attacked by the consuls C. Claudius 
Nero and M. Livius, on the banks of the Metaurus in 
Umbria ; his army was cut to pieces, and he himself 
fell in the battle. This misfortune obliged Hannibal 
to act on the defensive ; and from this time till his de¬ 
parture from Italy, B.C. 203, he was confined to Bra- 
tium; but, by his superior military skill, he maintained 
his army in a hostile country without any assistance 
from his government at home. After effecting the 
conquest of Spain, Scipio passed over into Africa to 
carry the war into the enemy’s country, B.C. 204. 
With the assistance of Masinissa, a Numidian prince, 
he gained two victories over the Carthaginians, w'ho 
hastily recalled their great commander from Italy to 
defend his native state. Hannibal landed at Septis, 
and advanced near Zama, five days’ journey from Car 
thage towards the west. Here he was entirely de 
feated by Scipio, B.C. 202 ; 20,000 Carthaginians fel. 
in the battle, and an equal number were taken pris 
oners. The Carthaginians were obliged to sue fo 
peace, and thus ended the second Punic war, B.C 
201. After the conclusion of the war, Hannibal vig¬ 
orously applied himself to correct the abuses which 
existed in the Carthaginian government. He reduced 
the power of the perpetual judges (as Livy, 23, 46, 
calls them), and provided for the proper collection of 
the public revenue, which had been embezzled. He 
was supported by the people in these reforms ; but he 
incurred the enmity of many powerful men, who rep¬ 
resented to the Romans that he was endeavouring to 
persuade his countrymen to join Antiochus, king of 
Syria, in a war against them. A Roman embassy 
was consequently sent to Carthage, to demand the pun¬ 
ishment of Hannibal as a disturber of the public peace; 
but Hannibal, aware that he should not be able to re¬ 
sist his enemies supported by the Roman power, es¬ 
caped from the city and sailed to Tyre. From Tyre 
he went to Ephesus to join Antiochus, B.C. 196, and 
contributed to fix him in his determination to make 
war against the Romans. If Hannibal’s advice as t 

571 



HANNIBAL. 


HANNIBAL. 


fhe conduct of the war had been followed, the result 
of the contest might have been different; but he was 
only employed in a subordinate command, and had no 
opportunity for the exertion of his great military tal¬ 
ents. At the conclusion of this war Hannibal was 
obliged to seek refuge at the court of Prusias, king of 
Bithynia, where he remained about five years, and on 
one occasion obtained a'victory over Eumenes, king of 
Pergamus. But the Romans appear to have been un¬ 
easy as long as their once formidable enemy was alive. 
An embassy was sent to demand him of Prusias, who, 
being afraid of offending the Romans, agreed to give 
him up. To avoid falling into the hands of his ungen¬ 
erous enemies, Hannibal destroyed himself by poison 
at Nicomedia in Bithynia, B.C. 183, in the sixty-fifth 
year of his age. The personal character of Hannibal 
is only known to us from the events of his public life, 
and even these have not been commemorated by any 
historian of his own country ; but we cannot read the 
history of these campaigns, of which we have' here 
presented a mere outline, even in the narrative of his 
enemies, without admiring his great abilities and cour¬ 
age. Polybius remarks {lib. xi.), “ How wonderful 
is it, that in a course of sixteen years, during which 
he maintained the war in Italy, he should never once 
dismiss his army from the field, and yet be able, like a 
good governor, to keep in subjection so great a multi¬ 
tude, and to confine them within the bounds of their 
duty, so that they never mutinied against him nor 
quarrelled among themsevles. Though his army was 
composed of people of various countries, of Africans, 
Spaniards, Gauls, Carthaginians, Italians, and Greeks 
—men who had different laws, different customs, and 
different language, and, in a word, nothing among 
them that was common—yet, so dexterous \yas his 
management, that, notwithstanding this great diversity, 
he forced all of them to acknowledge one authority, 
and to yield obedience to one command. And this, too, 
he effected in the midst of very various fortune. How 
high as well as just an opinion must these things con¬ 
vey to us of his ability in war. It may be affirmed 
with confidence, that if he had first tried his strength 
in the other parts of the world, and had come last to at¬ 
tack the Romans, he could scarcely have failed in any 
part of his design.” ( Polyb ., 3. — lb., 7, 8, 9. — lb., 
14, 16. — Livy , 21-39. — Nepos, Vit. Hannib. — En- 
cycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 12, p. 40, seq.) 

The passage of the Alps by Hannibal has already 
been alluded to in the course of the present article. 
Before concluding the biography of the Carthaginian 
general, it may not be amiss to direct the student’s at¬ 
tention more particularly to this point. “ This won¬ 
derful undertaking,” observes a recent writer, “ would 
naturally have attracted great notice, if considered 
only with reference to its general consequences, and 
to its particular effects on the great contest carried on 
between Rome and Carthage ; for this march, which 
carried the war from a distant province to the very 
gates of the former, totally changed the character of 
the struggle, and compelled the Romans to fight for 
existence instead of territory. These events, however, 
are not the only causes which have thrown so much 
interest on the passage of the Alps by Hannibal; for i 
the doubt and uncertainty which have existed, even 
from very remote times, as to the road by which the < 
passage was effected ; the numerous and distinguished i 
writers who have declared themselves on different sides I 
of the question ; the variation between the two great : 
historians of the transactions of those times, Polybius < 
and Livy; all these things united have involved the i 
subject in difficulties which have increased its impor- ] 
tance, and which have long exercised many able wri- ] 
ters in vain attempts to elucidate them. The relation i 
of Polybius, who lived very soon after the transactions ! 
which he describes, and who had himself examined the 1 
country for the purpose of writing his history, would ■ 
572 J 


; naturally appear the most authentic, on account of ita 
early date, as well as of the internal evidence which 
it bears of the truth. Unfortunately, Polybius was 
writing to Greeks, and was therefore, as he himself 
tells them, not anxious to introduce into his narrative 
names of places and of countries in which they were 
little interested, and which, if inserted, would rather 
have injured than assisted the unity of his story. In 
consequence of this, although he has be'en remarkably 
careful in giving us the distances performed by the 
Carthaginian army in their march from the Pyrenees 
to the plains of Italy, as well as the time in which they 
were completed, he has been generally sparing of his 
proper names, and he has not positively stated in terms 
the name of that passage of the Alps through which 
Hannibal marched. Now, though the distances (which 
are positive), and the general description of the coun 
try, and the names of the nations (when these latter 
are mentioned) which the army passed through, afford 
sufficient data to prove beyond all doubt that Hannibal 
passed by the Alpis Graia, or Little St. Bernard ; yet, 
as this is not expressly stated, Livy, who, without ac¬ 
knowledgment, has borrowed the greater part of his 
own narrative from Polybius, has asserted that he went 
over the Alpis Gotha , or Mont Genevre ; and as Livy 
is much more read than Polybius, his account has ob¬ 
tained much more credit than it deserves, and has been 
considered as almost decisive of the question. It has 
been particularly adopted by almost all the French 
writers upon the subject, and though they differ from 
each other as to the road which the army took to ar¬ 
rive at that passage, and, farther, though the account 
itself is absolutely inconsistent in many parts, yet the 
authority of so great a name has almost set criticism 
at defiance, and his commentators have endeavoured 
to reconcile his contradictions as well as they were 
able. It was evident, however, to those who were in 
the habit of looking a little deeper than the surface, 
that Livy’s account, which, even when taken by itself, 
was far from satisfactory, was, when compared with 
that of Polybius, with which it had been generally sup¬ 
posed to agree, very different in its conclusion ; and 
this variation between them was so decided, that it 
was quite impossible that both could be right. Gib¬ 
bon was so much, struck with this variation, as well 
as with the respective characters of the two authors as 
historians, that he would have given up Livy at once, 
had he not been unable, from his ignorance of the pas¬ 
sage alluded to by Polybius, to decide the question in 
favour of the latter. The opinion of Gibbon appears 
also to have been very much influenced by that of 
D’Anville, an authority to be respected above all oth¬ 
ers for wonderful accuracy and depth of research in 
matters relating to ancient topography. D’Anville, 
however, is guided in his opinion by the idea that the 
guides of Hannibal were Taurini, a mistake which is 
the more extraordinary as Livy himself (21, 29) states 
them to be Boii. Mr. Holdsworth, who had devoted 
much of his time and attention to subjects of this na¬ 
ture (Spence's Anecdotes of Men and Books), appear*- 
to have detected Livy’s inconsistencies as well as Gib¬ 
bon, and to have been of opinion that the army crossed 
the Alps to the north of the Mont Genevre ; but as ho 
was, as well as Gibbon, unacquainted with the passage 
of the Little St. Bernard, he was unable to fix upon 
the exact spot. It is to General Melville that the lit¬ 
erary world has been indebted, in jater times, for the 
suggestion of this latter pass ; and it is by this sug¬ 
gestion that a question so long doubtful has received 
a most satisfactory explanation. This gentleman, on 
his return from the West Indies, where he had held a 
high military command, turned his whole attention to 
the investigation of the military antiquities of the Ro¬ 
mans, and for this purpose spent some years in travel¬ 
ling over France, Italy, and Germany, and examined 
with great attention the countries which had been the 






HANNIBAL. 


HANNIBAL. 


»cenes of the most celebrated battles and events re¬ 
corded in Roman history From his thorough knowl¬ 
edge of Polybius, he was early struck with the great 
authority that his narrative carried with it, and he de¬ 
termined, if possible, to set at rest the much agitated 
question of the passage of the Alps by Hannibal. As 
he perceived that no perusal of the historian, however 
close and attentive, no critical sagacity and discern¬ 
ment, could alone enable him to arrive at the truth, 
unless he verified the observations of his author on the 
same ground, and compared his descriptions with the 
same scenes as those which that author had himself 
visited and examined, the general surveyed attentively 
all the known passages of the Alps, and more particu¬ 
larly those which were best known to the ancients. 
The result of all these observations was a firm convic¬ 
tion that the passage of the Little St. Bernard was 
that by which Hannibal had crossed over into Italy, 
both as being most probable in itself, and also as agree¬ 
ing beyond all comparison more closely than any other 
with the description given by Polybius. The general 
must be looked upon as the first who has solved the 
problem in history. It is not, indeed, meant that he 
was absolutely the first who made the Carthaginian 
army penetrate by that pass into Italy, since the oldest 
authority on this point, that of Coelius Antipater, rep¬ 
resents it as having taken that route ; but it is affirmed 
that he was the first to revive an opinion concerning 
that passage, which, although existing in full force in 
the traditions of the country itself, appears to have 
been long laid aside as forgotten, and to have rested 
that opinion On arguments the most solid and plausi¬ 
ble. General Melville never published any account of 
his observations, and they would most probably have 
been lost to the world, had he not found in M. De Luc, 
of Geneva, nephew of the late distinguished philoso¬ 
pher of that name, a person eminently qualified to un¬ 
dertake the task which he himself declined, and even 
materially to improve upon his labours. The very able 
and learned work which that gentleman published at 
Geneva in 1818, entitled Histoire du Passage des 
Alpes par Annibal, contains a very full and clear re¬ 
port of the observations of General Melville, supported 
by arguments and by evidence entirely original, and 
which must be admitted by every candid and judicious 
inquirer to be clear and conclusive. A second edition 
of this work was published in 1825, considerably aug¬ 
mented.” ( Dissertation on the Passage of Hannibal 
over the Alps , by Wickham and Cramer, pref., p. xi., 
scqq.) In the work here quoted, the route which Han¬ 
nibal is conceived to have taken is stated as follows : 
after crossing the Pyrenees at Bellegarde, he went to 
Nismes, through Perpignan, Narbonne, Beziers, and 
Montpellier, as nearly as possible in the exact track of 
the great Roman road. From Nismes he marched to 
the Rhone, whjph he crossed at Roquemaure, and then 
went up the river to Vienne, or possibly a little higher. 
From thence, marching across the flat country of Dau- 
phiny in order to avoid the angle which the river makes 
at Lyons, he rejoined it at St. Genis d’Aouste. He 
then crossed the Mont du Chat to Chambery, joined 
the Isere at Montureillan, ascended it as far as Scez, 
crossed the Little St. Bernard, and descended upon 
Aosta and Ivrea by the banks of the Doria Baltea. 
After halting for some time at Ivrea, he marched upon 
Turin, which he took, and then prepared himself for 
ulterior operations against the Romans {pref., p. xxii., 
seq.). The Alpis Graia, or Little St. Bernard, forms, 
it should be remembered, the communication between 
the valley of the Isere and that of Aosta. It is situa¬ 
ted a little to the south of Mont Blanc, and is the 
most northerly of the passages of that division of the 
Alps which runs from north to south. In corrobora¬ 
tion of the theory which assigns the Little St. Bernard 
as the route of Hannibal, may be cited a very able ar- 
ti< le on the subject, which appeared in the Edinburgh 


Review tor November, 1825. This theory, however, 
has been attacked in a recent publicat'on {Hannibal's 
Passage of the Alps , by a Member of the University 
of Cambridge ), the author of which contends for the 
passage over Monte Viso, where the Maritime Alps 
terminate. His arguments are far from conclusive. 
The passage by Mont Cenis has also found many ad¬ 
vocates, the most distinguished of whom is Mannert. 
This learned scholar, in the introductory chapter to his 
Geography of Ancient Italy, in which he gives an ac¬ 
count of the Alps and the various passes by which they 
were formerly traversed, expresses his belief that Han¬ 
nibal crossed the great chain by the route of Mont 
Cenis. In forming his opinion, he appears to have 
been solely guided, and no doubt most judiciously, by 
the narrative of Polybius ; and he professes to have 
found the distances, as given in the best modern maps, 
accurately agreeing with the statement of the Greek 
historian. This fact is open to dispute ; for, although 
the route of the Mont Cenis deviates at first very little 
from that on which the theory respecting the Little 
St. Bernard is founded, yet the immediate descent 
upon Turin shortens the total distance very consider¬ 
ably, and it will be impossible to make up 150 miles 
from the first ascent of the Alps to the descent at Su¬ 
sa, without very much overrating the actual distances. 
Moreover, it cannot be conceded to the learned pro¬ 
fessor, that the plains of Italy can be seen from the 
summit of Mont Cenis, and from thence only. It is 
most certain that he has been misinformed on this point, 
though it has also been maintained by others. Even 
De Saussure, who ascended the Roche Michel far 
above the Hospice of the Grande Croix, could not 
perceive the plains from that elevated summit. The 
Roche Melon is the only point in this vicinity from 
which it is possible to have a view of Piedmont; but 
it is not accessible from the Grande Croix, or any 
point in the road of Mont Cenis. {Wickham and 
Cramer, p. 173, seqq., 2d ed.)—It remains to say a 
few words on the opinion of Napoleon on this subject, 
as stated in his “ Notes sur Vouvrage intitule Consid¬ 
erations sur l'Art de la Guerre, ” in the second vol¬ 
ume of his Melanges Historiqucs. In these notes he 
gives a very concise account of the road which he 
conceives Hannibal to have taken, and which is as fol¬ 
lows : he crossed the Rhone a little below Orange, 
and in four days reached either the confluence of the 
Rhone and Isere, or that of the Drac and Isere, set¬ 
tled the affairs of the two brothers, and then, after six 
days’ march, arrived, on the former supposition, at 
Montureillan, and from thence, in nine days, at Susa, 
by the passage of Mont Cenis; or, in the latter case, 
if he arrived at Grenoble at the end of the four days 
he would reach St. Jean de Maurienne in six days, 
and Susa in nine days more ; from Susa he marched 
upon Turin, and, after the capture of the city, he ad¬ 
vanced to Milan. The reasoning by which Napoleon 
supports his hypothesis, is principally founded on what 
the French call “ la raison de la guerre,” that is, Han¬ 
nibal did this because, as a military man, he ought t( 
have done it; and, if we were discussing prospective 
operations, there is no doubt that the opinion of so 
great a general as Napoleon would be almost conclu 
sive ; but, in reasoning upon the past, the elements ol 
the discussion are as open to civil as to military wri¬ 
ters, and the former are quite as capable of conducting 
an argument logically as the latter. Napoleon ha: 
been guilty of several inaccuracies in his statement, 
and his argument is conducted in that decided manner 
which bears down all opposition, and which supposes 
that whatever he says must be right. He asserts 
that both Polybius and Livy state the army to have 
arrived, in the first instance, at Turin, and he loses 
sight altogether of the detailed narration of Polybius. 
The author upon whose work he is commenting adopts 
the passage of the Little St. Bemara, which Napoleon 

573 



HAM 


HANNO. 


refuses o believe, because Hannibal must have been 
early acquainted with the retreat of the Romans to¬ 
wards their fleet, and would not, in that case, have 
marched to the north. The explanation of all this may 
be found in Napoleon’s own words : “ La marche 
d’Annibal depuis Collioure jusqu’a Turin a ete toute 
simple; elle a dte celle d’un voyageur; il a pris la 
route la plus courte.” Hardly so, since the road by 
Mont Genevre was shorter than that by Mont Cenis, 
as he himself allows, a few pages before. In a word, 
if we had no historical details to guide us, Napoleon 
would probably be right; but as we profess to be 
guided by those details, and as, from his omitting to 
notice the greater part of them, he appears either to 
have been ignorant of them, or to have been unable 
to make them agree with his hypothesis, we must 
come to the conclusion, that what he says rests upon 
no proof, and is to be merely considered as the opinion 
of a great general upon an hypothetical case. ( Wick¬ 
ham and Cramer , p. 188, seqq.) 

Hanno (meaning in Punic “ merciful" 1 ' or “ mz7d”), 
I. a commander sent by the Carthaginians on a voyage 
of colonization and discovery along the Atlantic coast 
of Africa. This expedition is generally supposed to 
have taken place about 570 B.C. Gail, however, 
places it between 633 and 530 B.C. ( Geogr. Gr. 
Min,, vol. 1, p. 82.) On his return to Carthage, Han¬ 
no deposited an account of his voyage in the temple of 
Saturn. A translation of this account from the Punic 
into the Greek tongue, has come down to us; and its 
authenticity, attacked by Dodwell, has been defended 
by Bougainville {Mem. Acad, des Inscr., &c., vol. 26, 
26), Falconer, and others. Gail also declares in its 
favour, though he admits that the narrative may, and 
probably does, contain many wilful deviations from the 
truth, in accordance with the jealous policy of the Car¬ 
thaginians in misleading other nations by erroneous 
statements. The title of the Greek work is as follows: 
Avvovog, Kapxrjdoviov (3acu?i6ug, UepcTiXovg rfiv 
virep rag AlpanAtovq crrjTiag Ac6vkuv rijg yfjg pepejv, 
bv nai dvedpaev hv r<3 rov Kpovov repevec. “ The 
Voyage of Hanno, commander of the Carthaginians, 
round the parts of Libya beyond the Pillars of Her¬ 
cules, which he deposited in the temple of Saturn.” 
With regard to the extent of coast actually explored 
by this expedition, some remarks have been offered in 
another article (vid . Africa, col. 2, p. 80); it remains 
but to give an English version of the Periplus itself. 
—“ It was decreed by the Carthaginians,” begins the 
narrative, “ that Hanno should undertake a voyage be¬ 
yond the Pillars of Hercules, and found Libyphoenician 
cities. He sailed accordingly with sixty ships of fifty 
oars each, and a body of men and women to the num¬ 
ber of thirty thousand, and provisions and other neces¬ 
saries. When we had passed the Pillars on our voy¬ 
age, and had sailed beyond them for two days, we 
founded the first city, which we named Thymiaterium. 
Below it lay an extensive plain. Proceeding thence 
towards the west, we came to Soloeis, a promontory 
of Libya, a place thickly covered with trees, where we 
erected a temple to Neptune ; and again proceeded for 
the space of half a day towards the coast, until we ar¬ 
rived at a lake lying not far from the sea, and filled 
with abundance of large reeds. Here elephants, and 
a great number of other wild beasts were feeding. 
Having passed the lake about a day’s sail, we founded 
cities near the sea, called Cariconticos, and Gytte, and 
A era, and Melitta, and Arambys. Thence we came 
to the great river Lixus, which flows from Libya. On 
its banks the Lixitae, a shepherd tribe, were feeding 
flocks, among whom we continued some time on 
friendly terms. Beyond the Lixitae dwell the inhospi¬ 
table Ethiopians, who pasture a wild country intersect¬ 
ed by large mountains, from which they say the river 
Lixus flows. In the neighbourhood of the mountains 
'ived the Troglodytae, men of various appearances, 
574 


whom the L xitae described as swifter in running -tan 
horses. Having procured interpreters from them, we 
coasted along a desert country towards the south iwc 
days. Thence we proceeded towards the east the 
course of a day. Here we found, in a recess of a cer¬ 
tain bay, a small island, containing a circle of five sta 
dia, where we settled a colony, and called it Cerne. 
We judged from our voyage that this place lay in a di¬ 
rect line with Carthage ; for the length of our voyage 
from Carthage to the Pillars was equal to that from 
the Pillars to Cerne. We then came to a lake, which 
we reached by sailing up a large river called Chretes 
This lake had three islands, larger than Cerne ; from 
which, proceeding a day’s sail, we came to the extrem 
ity of the lake, that was overhung by large mount 
ains, inhabited by savage men, clothed in skins of wild 
beasts, who drove us away by throwing stones, and 
hindered us from landing. Sailing thence, we came to 
another river, that was large and broad, and full ol 
crocodiles and river horses ; whence returning back we 
came again to Cerne. Thence we sailed towards the 
south twelve days, coasting the shore, the whole of 
which is inhabited by Ethiopians, who would not wait 
our approach, but fled from us. Their language was 
not intelligible even to the Lixitae who were with us. 
Towards the last day we approached some large mount¬ 
ains covered with trees, the wood of which was sweet- 
scented and variegated. Having sailed by these mount¬ 
ains for two days, we came to an immense opening of 
the sea ; on each side of which, towards the continent, 
was a plain ; from which we saw by night fire arising 
at intervals in all directions, either more or less. Hav¬ 
ing taken in water there, we sailed forward five days 
near the land, until we came to a large bay, which our 
interpreters informed us was called the Western Horn. 
In this was a large island, and in the island a salt-water 
lake, and in this another island, where, when we had 
landed, we could discover nothing in the daytime ex¬ 
cept trees; but in the night we saw many fires burn¬ 
ing, and heard the sound of pipes, cymbals, drums, and 
confused shouts. We were then afraid, and our di¬ 
viners ordered us to abandon the island. Sailing 
quickly away thence, we passed a country burning with 
fires and perfumes, and streams of fire supplied from 
it fell into the sea. The country was impassable on 
account of the heat. We sailed quickly thence, being 
much terrified ; and passing on for four days, we dis¬ 
covered at night a country full of fire. In the middle was 
a lofty fire, larger than the rest, which seemed to touch 
the stars. When day came, we discovered it to be 
a large hill called the Chariot of the Gods. On the 
third day after our departure thence, having sailed by 
those streams of fire, we arrived at a bay called the 
Southern Horn ; at the bottom of which lay an island 
like the former, having a lake, and in this lake another 
island, full of savage people, the greyer part of whom 
were women, whose bodies were hairy, and whom our 
interpreters called Gorillae. Though we pursued the 
men, we could not seize any of them ; but all fled 
from us, escaping over the precipices, and defending 
themselves with stones. Three women were however 
taken ; but they attacked their conductors with their 
teeth and hands, and could not be prevailed upon to 
accompany us. Having killed them, we flayed them, 
and brought their skins with us to Carthage. We did 
not sail farther on, our provisions having failed us.”— 
The streams of fire alluded to by Hanno are con¬ 
jectured to have been nothing more than the burnino 
of the dry herbage ; a practice which takes place, 
more or less, in every country situated in the warm 
climates, and where vegetation is also rank. Its ta¬ 
king the appearance of a river of fire, running into the 
sea, is accounted for from the more abundant herbage 
of the valleys or ravines ; which, as Bruce observes, 
are shaded by their depth, and remain green the long¬ 
est. Consequently, being the last burned, the fir* 



HAP 


H AR 


will, at that period, be confined to the hollow parts of 
the country only ; and, when fired from above, will 
have the appearance of rivers of fire running towards 
the sea. The adventure of the hairy women presents 
much less difficulty than did the others; since it is 
well known that a species of ape or baboon, agreeing 
in description with those of Hanno, is found in the 
quarter referred to, which appears to have been near 
Sierra Leone. Nor did the interpreters call them wom¬ 
en, but gorilla.: meaning no doubt to describe apes, 
and not human creatures possessing the gift of speech. 
(Rennell, Geogr. of Herodotus , p. 720, seqq.) —II. A 
Carthaginian commander, who aspired to the sover¬ 
eignty in his native city. His design was discovered, 
and he thereupon retired to a fortress, with 20,000 
armed slaves, but was taken and put to death, with his 
son and all his relations. ( Justin , 21, 4.)—III. A 
commander of the Carthaginian forces in Sicily along 
with Bomilcar (B.C. 310). He was defeated by Agath- 
ocles, although he had 45,000 men under his orders, 
and his opponent only about 14,000. ( Justin , 22, 6.) 

—IV. A Carthaginian commander, defeated by the 
Romans near the iEgades Insulse (B.C. 242). On his 
return home he was put to death.—V. A leader of the 
faction at Carthage, opposed to the Barca family. He 
voted for surrendering Hannibal to the foe, after the 
ruin of Saguntum, and also for refusing succours to 
that commander after the battle of Cannse. (Liv., 21, 
3 — Id., 23, 12.)—VI. A Carthaginian, who, wishing 
to pass for a god, trained up some birds, who were 
taught by him to repeat the words, “ Hanno is a god.” 
He only succeeded in rendering himself ridiculous. 
(.JElian , Var. Hist., 15, 32.) 

Harmodius, an Athenian, who, together with Aris- 
logiton, became the cause of the overthrow of the 
Pisistratid*. The names of Harmodius and Aristo¬ 
giton have been immortalized by the ignorant or prej¬ 
udiced gratitude of the Athenians : in any other his¬ 
tory they would perhaps have been consigned to ob¬ 
livion, and would certainly never have become the 
themes of panegyric. Aristogiton was a citizen of the 
middle rank ; Harmodius a youth distinguished by the 
comeliness of his person. They were both sprung 
from a house supposed to have been of Phoenician ori¬ 
gin, were perhaps remotely allied to one another by 
blood, and were united by ties of the closest intimacy. 
The youth had received an outrage from Hipparchus, 
which, in a better state of society, would have been 
deemed the grossest that could have been offered him : 
it roused, however, not so much the resentment as the 
fears of his friend, lest Hipparchus should abuse his 
power, to repeat, and aggravate the insult. But Hip¬ 
parchus, whose pride had been wounded by the con¬ 
duct of Harmodius, contented himself with a less di¬ 
rect mode of revenge ; an affront aimed not at his per¬ 
son, but at the honour of his family. By his orders, 
the sister of Harmodius was invited to take part in a 
procession, as bearer of one of the sacred vessels. 
When, however, she presented herself in her festal 
dress, she was publicly rejected, and dismissed as un¬ 
worthy of the honour. This insult stung Harmodius 
to the quick, and kindled the indignation of Aristogi¬ 
ton. They resolved not only to wash it out with the 
blood of the offender, but to engage in the desperate 
enterprise, which had already been suggested by differ¬ 
ent motives to the thoughts of Aristogiton, of over¬ 
throwing the ruling dynasty. They communicated 
their plan to a few friends, who promised their assist¬ 
ance ; but they hoped that, as soon as the first blow 
should be struck, they would be joined by numbers, 
who would joyfully seize the opportunity of recovering 
their freedom. The conspirators fixed on the festival 
of the Panathensea as the most convenient season for 
effecting their purpose. This festival was celebrated 
with a procession, in which the citizens marched armed 
with spears and shields, and was the only occasion on 


which, in time of peace, they could assemble under 
arms without exciting suspicion. It was agreed that 
Harmodius and Aristogiton should give the signal by 
stabbing Hippias, while their friends kept off his guards, 
and that they should trust to the general disposition in 
favour of liberty for the farther success of their under¬ 
taking. When the day came, the conspirators armed 
themselves with daggers, which they concealed in the 
myrtle-boughs that were carried on this occasion. But 
while Hippias, surrounded by his guards, was in the 
suburb called the Ceramicus, directing the order of the 
procession, one of the conspirators was observed to go 
up to him, for he was easy of access to all, and to en¬ 
ter into familiar conversation with him. The two 
friends, on seeing this, concluded that they were be¬ 
trayed, and that they had no hope left but of revenge. 

They instantly rushed into the city, and, meeting Hip¬ 
parchus, killed him before his guards could come up 
to his assistance. They however arrived in time to 
avenge his death on Harmodius : Aristogiton escaped 
for the moment through the crowd, but was afterward 
taken. When the news was brought to Hippias, in¬ 
stead of proceeding to the scene of his brother’s mur¬ 
der, he advanced with a composed countenance towards 
the armed procession, which was yet ignorant of the 
event, and, as if he had some grave discourse to ad¬ 
dress to them, desired them to lay aside their weapons, 
and meet him at an appointed place. He then ordered 
his guards to seize the arms, and to search every one 
for those which he might have concealed upon his per¬ 
son. All who were found with daggers were arrested s 
together with those whom, on any other grounds, he 
suspected of disaffection. The fate of Aristogiton 
may be easily imagined : he was put to death, accord¬ 
ing to some authors, after torture had been applied, to 
wring from him the names of his accomplices. It is 
said that he avenged himself by accusing the truest 
friends of Hippias, and that a girl of low condition, 
named Lesena, whose only crime was to have been the 
object of his affection, underwent the like treatment. 

She was afterward celebrated for the constancy with 
which she endured the most cruel torments. (Herod., 

5, 55.— Id., 7, 123.— Thucyd., 1,20.— Schol., ad loc. 

— Id., 6, 54, seqq.) —After the expulsion-of Hippias, 
the fortunate tyrannicides received almost heroic hon¬ 
ours. Statues were erected to them at the public ex¬ 
pense. Their names never ceased to be repeated with 
affectionate admiration in the convivial songs of Athens, 
which assigned them a place in the islands of the 
Blessed, by the side of Achilles and Tydides (Athe- 
nceus, 15, p. 695); and when an orator wished to sug¬ 
gest the idea of the highest merit and of the noblest 
services to the cause of liberty, he never failed to re- ✓ 
mind his hearers of Harmodius and Aristogiton. No 
slave was ever called by their names. Plutarch has 
preserved a smart reply of Antipho, the orator, to Dio¬ 
nysius the elder, of Syracuse. The latter had put the 
question, which was the finest kind of brass 1 “ That,” 
replied Antipho, “ of which the statues of Harmodius 
and Aristogiton were made.” He lost his life in con¬ 
sequence. (Pint., Vit. X., Orat., p. 833.) It is prob¬ 
able enough, that much of this enthusiasm was spuri¬ 
ous and artificial, as well as misplaced. ( ThirlwaWs 
Greece , vol. 2, p. 67, seqq.) 

Harmonia, a daughter of Mars and Venus, who 
married Cadmus. ( Hesiod, Theog., 937.) The ge¬ 
nealogy of Harmonia has evidently all the appearance 
of a physical myth ; for, from Love and Strife (i. e., at¬ 
traction and repulsion) arises the order or harmony of 
the universe. ( Plut.,de Is. el Os., 48.— Arist., Pol., 

2, 6.— Welcker, Kret. Col., p. 40.) 

Harpacjcjs, a general of Cyrus. He revolted from 
Astyages, who had cruelly caused him, without his 
knowing it, to eat the flesh of his son, because hnhad 
disobeyed his orders in not putting to death the infant 
Cyrus. ( Vid . remarks under the article Cyrus.) 



H A R 


H A R 


Harpalus, I. an early and favoured friend of Alex¬ 
ander the Great. Having been left at Babylon as sa¬ 
trap of the province, and treasurer of a more consider¬ 
able portion of the empire, he abused his trust so gross¬ 
ly, that, on the king’s return, he was compelled to flee 
through fear of punishment. He was accompanied by 
six thousand soldiers, and with these he landed in La¬ 
conia, in the hope, it may be supposed, of engaging 
the Lacedaemonians to renew their opposition to Al¬ 
exander. Failing there of support, he left his army 
and went to Athens as a suppliant, but carrying with 
him money to a large amount. His cause was taken 
up by many eminent orators hostile to Alexander ; and 
Demosthenes himself, who had at first held back, was 
prevailed upon to espouse it. It failed, however ; the 
Athenians adhered to the existing treaties ; and Har- 
palus, being obliged to quit Athens, carried his troops 
into Crete, where he perished by assassination. It 
was said that his gold had been largely distributed 
among his Athenian supporters, and a prosecution was 
instituted against Demosthenes and his associates, as 
having been bribed to miscounsel the people. They 
were convicted before the Areopagus; and Demos¬ 
thenes, being fined in the sum of 50 talents (about 
53,000 dollars), withdrew to ZEgina. ( Vid. Demos¬ 
thenes.— Diod. Sic., 17, 108, scqq.) —II. An astrono¬ 
mer of Greece, who flourished about 400 B.C. He 
corrected the cycle of Cleostratus. This alteration, 
from a revolution of eight to one of nine years, was, 
in the fourth year of the eighty-second Olympiad, again 
improved by Meton, who increased the cycle to a pe¬ 
riod of nineteen years. (Vid. Meton.— L'Art de 
verifier les Dales, vol. 3, p. 133.) 

Harpalyce, the daughter of Harpalycus, king of 
Thrace. Her mother died when she was but a child, 
and her father fed her with the milk of cows and mares, 
and inured her to martial exercises, intending her for 
his successor in the kingdom. When her father’s 
kingdom was invaded by Neoptolemus, the son of 
Achilles, she repelled and defeated the enemy with 
manly courage. The death of her father, which hap¬ 
pened in a sedition, rendered her disconsolate; she 
fled fine society of mankind, and lived in the forests 
upov plunder and rapine. Every attempt to secure 
her \\oved fruitless, till her great swiftness was over¬ 
come' by intercepting her with a net. After her death 
the pi iple of the country disputed their respective right 
to the. possessions she had acquired by rapine, and 
games were subsequently instituted as an expiation 
for her death. ( Hygin., fab., 193.— Virg., jEn., 1, 
321.) 

Harpocrates, an Egyptian divinity, represented as 
holding one finger on the lips, and thence commonly 
denominated the God of Silence. The name Harpoc¬ 
rates is said to designate the infant Horus, and to 
mean “Horus with soft or delicate feet” ( Har-phon - 
krates, Har-phoch-rat , Har-pokrat). The god who 
bore this appellation was confounded, at a later period 
probably, with another earlier and superior deity, 
Phtah-Sokari, the infant Phtah, equally surnamed Po- 
krat. (Compare Jablonski, Panth., 1, p. 245, seqq .— 
Creuzsr’s Symbolik, par Guigniojut, vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 
808.) Porphyry (de antro Nymph.) informs us, that 
the Egyptians worshipped, under the symbol of silence, 
the source of all things, and that hence came the mys¬ 
terious statue of Harpocrates, with the finger on the 
mouth. (Pint., de Is. et Os., p. 378.— Constant, de 
la Religion , vol. 3, p. 78.) 

Harpocration, Valerius, a grammarian of Alexan- 
drea, supposed by some to be the same with the one 
that mstructed L. Verus in Greek; while others take 
him to be identical with the Harpocration of whom 
mention is made in a letter of Libanius to Aristaenetus. 
He was the author of a Lexicon, derived principally 
from the ter. Attic orators, and entitled, on that ac¬ 
count, AtfibKov ruv deica faropov. It is a very useful 
576 


work. Harpocration composed also another work, er> 
titled “A collection of flowers,” or Anthology, ’A vOrj- 
puv ovvayoyr), which has not reached us. The latest 
edition of the Lexicon is that published at Leipsic in 
1824, 2 vols. 8vo, by an anonymous editor. Many 
places in Harpocration are corrected by Toup (Ernen- 
dationes in Suidam, etc., vol. 4, ed. Burgess), and by 
Schleusner (Observ. in Harp. Lex.—Friedemann und 
Seebode's Miscell. Crit., vol. 2, pt. 4, p. 744, seqq ). 

Harpyi^e, winged monsters, who had female faces, 
and the bodies, wings, and claws of birds. They 
were three in number, Aello, Ocypete, and Celceno 
daughters of Neptune and Terra. They were sent by 
Juno to plunder the tables of Phineus, whence they 
were driven to the islands called Strophades by Zethes 
and Calais. (Vid. Phineus.) They emitted a noi¬ 
some stench, and polluted whatever they touched. Vir¬ 
gil introduces them into theiEneid, as plundering the 
table of ^Eneas and his companions, when that hero 
touched at the Strophades ; and makes Celaeno, one 
of their number, predict to the Trojan leader the ca¬ 
lamities that await him. (xEn., 3, 210, seqq.) —The 
Harpies are nothing more, in fact, than personifications 
of the storm-winds, and they appear clearly as such in 
the poems of Homer and Hesiod. The former says 
nothing of their shape or parentage; the latter says 
that they were sisters of Iris, daughters of Thaumas 
and Electra, swift as birds or as the blasts of wind. 
(Theog., 267.) Their names, according to him, are 
Aello and Ocypete. Homer says, that Xanthus and 
Balius, the steeds of Achilles, were the offspring ol 
Zephyrus by the harpy Podarge (Swift-foot). Virgil 
gives Celaeno as the name of the third of these mon¬ 
sters.—To the vivid imagination of the Greeks, the 
terrors of the storm were intimately associated with 
the idea of powerful and active demons directing its 
blasts. Hence the names bestowed on these fabulous 
creations. Thus we have the Harpies or “ Snatchers ,” 
from dpTcu^u, in allusion to the storm-winds seizing a 
vessel and hurrying it away from its course : so also 
the individual appellations of the three, Aello, “ a tem¬ 
pest;” Ocypete, “swift-flyer;” and Celceno, “gloom.” 
The mixed fbrpi commonly assigned them was the ad¬ 
dition of a later age. (On the subject of the Harpies, 
compare Salmas., ad dedic. Stat. Regill., p. 96, 241. 
— Spanheim, de usu et prees., num. 1, p. 260, seqq. — 
Huschke, de Vasculo Locris, invento, p. 17.— Creuzer, 
Comment. Herodot., p. 346, seqq. ) M. Le Clerc has a cu¬ 
rious though unfounded theory respecting the Harpies. 
He supposes them to have been a swarm of locusts, 
which, after they had laid waste Bithynia and Paphlago- 
nia, produced a famine there. According to him, the 
word arba, of which he maintains that’of harpy is form¬ 
ed, signifies a locust; and as the north wind rid the coun¬ 
try of them, having driven them as far as the Ionian 
Sea, where they perished, it was fabled that the sons 
of Boreas had put them to flight. Among many other 
objections to this explanation, it may suffice to urge 
but one here, namely, that the scene of the adventure 
of King Phineus is placed by the poets in Thrace, 
never in Asia. (Vid. Argonautae.) 

Haruspices, called also Extispices, a class of 
priests at Rome, who examined the victims and their 
entrails (exta), and thence derived omens respecting 
the future. They divined also from the flame, smoke, 
and other circumstances attending the sacrifice. II 
the victim came to the altar without resistance, stood 
there quietly, fell by one stroke, bled freely, &c., these 
were favourable signs. If, on the other hand, the 
victim struggled, or broke away from those who were 
leading it; if any part of the entrails were want¬ 
ing, or if they fell from the hand of the officiating 
priest; if the liver were double ; if no heart appeared, 
&c., all these were ominous of evil. It will easily 
be perceived from this how wide a door was left for 
imposition; and hence probably one reason why the 




HAS 


HE B 


karuspices were not esteemed so honourable as the 
augurs. When Julius Caesar admitted one of them, 
Ruspina, into the senate, Cicero represents it as an 
indignity to that order. Their art was called Harus- 
picina, or Haruspicum disciplina, and was derived 
from Etruria, whence karuspices were often sent for to 
Rome during the earlier periods of her history. They 
sometimes also came from the East: thus we have in 
Juvenal, “ Armenius vcl Commagenus haruspex ” (6, 
549). The college of the karuspices was instituted 
dv Romulus, according to the popular belief. Of 
what number it consisted is uncertain.—The ordinary 
derivation of the terms karuspices and extispices makes 
the former come from ara , “ an altar,” and specio, 
“ to examine” or “ observe ;” and the latter from exta, 
“ the entrails” of the victim, and specio. Donatus, 
however {ad Terent., Phorm., 4, 28), gives a different 
etymology for Haruspex , namely, from haruga (the 
name of hostia, a victim) and specio. That the name 
itself is not an Etrurian one, appears very evidently 
from the Inscriplio Bilinguis, found at Pisaurum, in 
which the words haruspex fulguriator are rendered 
into Tuscan by netmfif trutnft phruntac. {Muller, 
Etrusker , vol. 2, p. 13, in notis.) A critic in the Halle 
Alg. Lit. Zeit., 1824 (vol. 3, p. 45), condemns the 
derivation from haruga, and deduces the name harus¬ 
pex from a Tuscan word here , which he makes equiva¬ 
lent to Isacra , or the Greek term tepoy. In inscrip¬ 
tions, arespex and arrespex also occur. (Compare 
Creuzer, Symbolik, par Guigniaut, vol. 2, p. 467, 
seqq.) 

Hasdrubal (meaning in Punic “ (whose) help (is) 
Baal"), I. a Carthaginian general, son of Mago, who 
succeeded to the titles and glory of his father. It was 
under his conduct that the Carthaginians carried the 
war into Sardinia. He received a wound in that island 
which caused his death, B.C. 420. {Justin, 19, 1.) 
—II. Son of the preceding, made war upon the Nu- 
midians, and freed Carthage from the tribute she had 
Deen compelled to pay for being permitted to establish 
herself on the coast of Africa. {Justin, 19, 2.)—III. 
A son of Hanno, sent into Sicily at the head of a pow¬ 
erful army to oppose the Romans. He was defeated 
by Metellus, the Roman proconsul, B.C. 251. Has¬ 
drubal fled to Lilyboeum, but was condemned to death 
by his countrymen at home. {Id. ibid.) —IV. Son-in- 
law of Hamilcar, distinguished himself under the or¬ 
ders of that general in the war with Numidia. On the 
the death of his father-in-law he was appointed com¬ 
mander, and carried on military operations in Spain 
during eight years. He reduced the greater part of 
this country, and governed it with wisdom and pru¬ 
dence. He founded Carthago Nova {Carthagena). 
The Romans, wishing to put a stop to his successes, 
made a treaty with Carthage, by which the latter bound 
herself not*to carry her arms beyond the Iberus. Has¬ 
drubal faithfully observed the terms of this compact. 
He was slain, B.C. 220, by a slave whose master he 
nad put to death. {Liv., 21, 2. — Polyb., 2, 1.— Id., 
3, 12-— Id., 2, 13.— Id., 10, 10.)—V. Son of Hamil¬ 
car, brought from Spain large reinforcements for his 
brother Hannibal. He crossed the barrier of the Alps, 
and arrived in Italy, but the consuls Livius Salinator 
and Claudius Nero, having intercepted the letters which 
he had written to Hannibal, apprizing him of his arrival, 
attacked him near the river Metaurus, and gave him a 
complete defeat, B.C. 208. Hasdrubal fell in the 
battle, with 56,000 of his troops. The Romans lost 
about 8000 men, and made 5400 prisoners. The head 
of Hasdrubal was severed from his body, and was 
thrown a few days after into the camp of Hannibal. 
Before attempting to enter Italy by land. Hasdrubal at¬ 
tempted to cross the sea from Spain, but was defeat¬ 
ed by the Roman governor of Sardinia. {Liv., 21, 23. 

-Polyb., 11, l.)—VI. A Carthaginian commander, 


son of Giscon, who commanded the forces of his coun¬ 
try in Spain during the time of Hannibal. Being sec¬ 
onded by Syphax, he afterward carried on the war 
against the Romans in Africa, but was defeated by 
Scipio. He died B.C. 206. {Liv., 24, 41.— Id., 29. 
35.— Id., 30, 5.)—VII. A Carthaginian, surnamed 
“ Kid” {Lat. Hcedus), an opponent of the Barca fac¬ 
tion. He advised his countrymen to make peace with 
the Romans, and censured the ironical laugh of Han¬ 
nibal in the Carthaginian senate, after the peace was 
concluded.—VIII. A Carthaginian general, who, du¬ 
ring the siege of Carthage by the Romans, command¬ 
ed an army of 20,000 men without the walls, with 
which he kept constantly harassing the besiegers. Be¬ 
ing compelled at last to take refuge with his forces 
within the city, he took command of the place, and 
for a long time bravely withstood the attacks of the 
Romans. After the capture of the city, he retired 
with the Roman deserters, who had no quarters to ex¬ 
pect, into the temple of JEsculapius in the citadel, re¬ 
solved to bury himself under its ruins, taking with him, 
at the same time, his wife and two young sons. At 
length, however, having secretly left the temple, he 
threw himself at the feet of Scipio, and supplicated for 
life. Scipio granted his request, and showed him as 
a suppliant to the deserters in the temple. These 
desperate men, after venting against him a torrent of 
reproaches, set fire to the temple, and perished amid 
the flames. His wife, when the fire was kindling, dis¬ 
played herself on the walls of the building in the rich¬ 
est attire she was at the moment able to assume, and, 
having upbraided her husband for his cowardice, slew 
her two sons, and threw herself, with them, into the 
burning pile. {Appian, Bell. Pun., 131.) 

Hebe, the goddess of Youth ("H by), a daughter of 
Jupiter and Juno. Her parentage is not mentioned 
in the Iliad. Ovfd calls her the step-daughter of Ju¬ 
piter, in allusion to the fable which made Juno to have 
conceived her after eating of lettuce. (Ov ., Met., 9, 
416.) In Olympus she appears as a kind of maid-ser¬ 
vant ; she hands round the nectar at the banquets of 
the gods {II., 4, 2.— Heyne, ad loc.) ; she makes ready 
the chariot of Juno (II., 5, 722), and she bathes and 
dresses Mars, when his wound has been cured. (JZ., 
5, 905.) This last, however, was not a servile office, 
since the daughter of Nestor renders it to Telemachus. 
(Od., 3, 464.) When Hercules was translated to the 
skies, Hebe was given to him in marriage; a beautiful 
fiction, by which the venerated sun-god was united to 
immortal youth. According to the vulgar fable, Hebe 
was dismissed from her office of cup-bearer in the 
skies, and superseded by Ganymedes, because she had 
fallen in an awkward and unbecoming manner while 
handing around, on one occasion, the nectar to the 
gods. Homer, however, merely says that Ganymedes 
was carried off by the gods to be their cup-bearer (II., 
20, 234), while in another part (4, 2) he represents 
Hebe as still ministering to the gods. At Phlius, m 
the Peloponnesus, a goddess was worshipped, whom 
the ancient Phliasians, according to Pausanias, call 
Ganymede (Taw/ar/dy), but in his time she was named 
Hebe. ( Pausan ., 2, 13.) Strabo says, that Hebe 
was worshipped at Phlius and Sicyon under the name 
of Dia. In the arts, Hebe is represented with the 
cup in which she presents the nectar, under the figure 
of a charming young girl, her dress adorned with roses, 
and wearing a wreath of flowers. An eagle often 
stands by her, as at the side of Ganymedes, which she 
is caressing. (Keightley's Mythology , p. 111 . — Mul¬ 
ler, Archceol. der Kunst , p. 625.) 

Hebrus, a large river of Thrace, and one of the 
most considerable in Europe. It rises in the central 
chain that separates the plains of Thrace from the 
great valley of the Danube. Thucydides says (2, 96) 
that it takes its source in Mount Scomius, and Plirr 

577 



H E C 


HECATE1US. 


M, 11) in Mount Rhodope. After receiving several 
tributary streams, it falls into the ./Egean, near the city 
of ./Enus. An estuary, which it forms at its mouth, 
was known to Herodotus by the name of Stentoris 
Palus (hrevropidoc Aipvy —7, 58.—Compare Plin., 
4, 11). The Hebrus is now called the Maritza. Dr. 
Clarke found the Maritza a broad and muddy stream, 
much swollen by rains. ( Travels , vol. 8, p. 94, Lon¬ 
don ed.) Plutarch (de Fluv.) states, that this river 
once bore the name of Rhombus ; and there grew upon 
its banks, perhaps the identical plant now constituting 
a principal part of the commerce of the country ; be¬ 
ing then used, as it is now, for its intoxicating quali¬ 
ties. It is, moreover, related of the Hebrus by Pliny 
(33, 4), that its sands were auriferous ; and Belon has 
confirmed this observation, by stating that the inhabi¬ 
tants annually collected the sand for the gold it con¬ 
tained. ( Observat. en Grece , p. 63, Paris , 1555.) 
According to the ancient mythologists, after Orpheus 
had been torn in pieces by the Thracian Bacchantes, 
his head and lyre were cast into the Hebrus, and, being 
carried down that river to the sea, were borne by the 
waves to Methymna, in the island of Lesbos. The 
Methymneans buried the head of the unfortunate bard, 
and suspended the lyre in the temple of Apollo. {Ovid, 
Met., 11, 55.— Philarg. ad Virg., Georg., 4, 523.— 
Eustath. in Dionys., v. 536.— Hygin., Astron. Poet., 
2, 7.) Servius adds, that the head was at one time 
carried to the bank of the river, and that a serpent 
thereupon sought to devour it, but was changed into 
stone, (ad Virg., Georg., 1. c.) Dr. Clarke thinks, 
that this part of the old legend may have originated in 
an appearance presented by one of those extraneous 
fossils called Serpent-stones or Ammonitce, found near 
this river. {Travels, vol. 8, p. 100, Lond. ed.) At 
the junction of the Hebrus with thp Tonsus and Ar- 
discus, Orestes is said to have purified himself from 
his mother’s blood. {Vid. Orestias.) 

Hecalesia, a festival at Athens, in honour of Jupi¬ 
ter Hecalesius. It was instituted by Theseus, in com¬ 
memoration of the kindness of Hecale towards him, 
when he was going on his enterprise against the Ma¬ 
cedonian bull. This Hecale was an aged female, ac¬ 
cording to the common account, while others referred 
the name to one of the borough towns of the Leon- 
tian tribe in Attica. {Steph. Byz., s. v. — Plut., Vit. 
Thcs. — Castellanus, de Fest. Grave., p. 108.) 

Hecate Fanum, a celebrated temple sacred to Hec¬ 
ate, near Stratonicea in Caria. {Strabo, 660.) 

Hecataeus, I. a native of Miletus. We learn from 
Suidas, s. v. 'E naralog, that his father’s name was 
Hegesander; that he flourished about the sixty-fifth 
Olympiad, during the reign of Darius, who succeeded 
Cambyses ; that he was a scholar of Protagoras, and 
the first who composed a history in prose ; and that 
Herodotus was much indebted to his writings. Under 
the word 'E/l/l<m/coc, Suidas says that Hecatseus flour¬ 
ished during the Persian wars. This account is in 
part confirmed by Herodotus, who tells us that, when 
Aristagoras planned the revolt of the Ionian cities 
from Darius (5, 36), Hecataeus, in the first instance, 
iondemned the enterprise ; and afterward (5, 125), 
when the unfortunate events of the war had demon¬ 
strated the wisdom of his former opinion, he recom¬ 
mended Aristagoras, in case he found himself under 
the necessity of quitting Ionia, to fortify some strong 
position in the island of Leros, and there to remain 
quiet until a favourable opportunity occurred of reoc¬ 
cupying Miletus. We learn also from Herodotus (2, 
143), that Hecataeus had visited Egypt. According 
to Diogenes Laertius, Protagoras flourished in the 
eighty-fourth Olympiad ; consequently Hecataeus could 
not have been his scholar, as Suidas supposes. The 
Abbd Sevin {Mem. de VAcad, des Inscr., vol. 6, p. 
472) has two conjectures on this point; he suggests 
that we should either read Pythagoras instead of Pro- 


| tagoras, or that Suidas has, by mistake, said of the 
Milesian Hecataeus what was true of another Heca¬ 
taeus, a native of Teos. Vossius, from misunderstand¬ 
ing a passage in Diogenes, erroneously conceives our 
Hecataeus to have been a scholar of Heraclitus. {Be 
Hist. Grezc., p. 439.) As regards the assertion of 
Suidas, alluded to above, that Hecataeus was the first 
prose-writer, it may be remarked, that the lexicog¬ 
rapher is not altogether consistent on this point. He 
asserts, in another place, that, in the opinion of some 
persons, Cadmus was the first that wrote in Greek 
prose. Under the word QepEKvdyq, he divides the hon¬ 
our of being the first prose-writer between Cadmus 
and Pherecydes. Pliny (2, 59,) makes Cadmus the 
first who wrote in prose ; but in another passage (7, 
56) we find the following : “ Prosam orationem con- 
dere Pherecydes Syrius instituit, Cyri regis (elate , 
historiam Cadmus Milesius .” Cadmus, after all, ap¬ 
pears best entitled to the honour of having been the 
earliest Grecian prose-writer.—But to return to He¬ 
cataeus ; the references to his works are numerous, 
and show that he was a very voluminous writer. Sui¬ 
das tells us that he wrote a history ; Strabo (17) men¬ 
tions it. It is also referred to by Stephanus under 
the words A ivrj and $a?iavva, and by the scholiast on 
Apollonius Rhodius (1, 5‘51). Hecataeus also wrote 
a genealogical work ; it contained several books, the 
first and second of which are mentioned by Stepha¬ 
nus {s. v. M eTiia. — s. v. 'Aptyavai. — s. v. XadLoria) ; 
the second by Harpocration ( 5 . v. ddeX(pi^etv); the 
third by Athenaeus (2, p. 148); the fourth by Stepha¬ 
nus {s. v. M vytGoi. — s. v. Tpepthr/). We have the 
testimony of Strabo, that Hecatasus was one of the 
earliest writers on geographical subjects. Agatheme- 
rus (p. 2, ed. Huds.) says, that Hecataeus corrected a 
map of the world which had been delineated by Anaxi¬ 
mander. Ammianus Marcellinus also (22, 8) men¬ 
tions him as a writer on geographical subjects. {Mus. 
Crit., vol. 1, p. 88, seqq.) Whether the treatises 
which we find quoted in various writers, under the ti¬ 
tles of Fvptvmp; tv epiodoq, ’Aocag 7repiqyrjoi(;, A(6vrjc 
TrepiriyrjaLe, Aiyvrrrov TrepLrjyrjmq, were distinct works, 
or parts oLhis lalger geographical work, cannot now 
be ascertained. The remark of Suidas has already 
been cited at the commencement of this article, that 
Herodotus was much indebted to the writings of He- 
catseus, and it has been supposed that the very par¬ 
ticular account which the latter gave, in his work on 
Egypt, of the history of Thebes, was the reason that 
Herodotus says comparatively so little on this interest¬ 
ing topic. ( Creuzer, Symbolik, vol. 1, p. 240.) Dio¬ 
nysius of Halicarnassus praises the simplicity and clear¬ 
ness which distinguished the style of Hecataeus. The 
fragments of this writer that have reached our times 
were collected by Creuzer, and published .in his His - 
toricorum Graecorum Antiquiss. Fragmenta, 8vo, Hei- 
delb., 1806. A separate edition of them, to which is 
appended the Periplus of Scylax, was given in 1831, 
8vo, by Klausen, from the Berlin press. ( Hoffmann, 
Lex. Bibliogr., vol. 2, p. 334.)—II. A native of Ab- 
dera, who accompanied Alexander the Great into Asia. 
He was a disciple of Pyrrho, the head of the Sceptic 
school. He wrote a work on the Antiquities of the 
Jews, cited, under the title ITepi 1 ovdaiuv /3t6Xiov, by 
Origen {Contra Cels., 1, p. 13), and under that of 
’lovdatwv LGTopia by Eusebius. {Prcep. Ev., lib. 3, p. 
239, ed. R. Steph.) It is from this work that Photius 
has preserved for us an interesting extract, with which, 
however, he credits Hecatasus of Miletus. Clemens 
Alexandrinus {Strom., 5, p. 717, ed. Potter) speaks 
of a work of Hecataeus’s on Abraham and Egypt, 
which is probably the same with the one just mentioned. 
Scaliger {Epist. 115), Eichhorn {Bibl. der Biblischen- 
Lit., vol. 5, pt. 3, p. 431), and others, have though, 
that this work or these works, of which Josephus and 
I Photius (after Diodorus) have preserved an extract 





HE C 


H E C 


must be referred to the Hellenistic Jews, as a fabri¬ 
cation of theirs. Sainte-Croix, on the other hand, 
undertakes to support their authenticity. ( Examen 
des Historiens d'Alexandrc-le- Grand, p. 558.) It ap¬ 
pears, however, that.Hecatseus of Abdera actually wrote 
a work on Egypt, for Diodorus Siculus (1, 47) and 
Plutarch (De Is. 6 r t Os., p. 143, ed. Wyttcnb .— ed. 
Rciske, vol. 7, p. 392) both cite it. The fragments 
cf Hecatasus of Abdera were published by Zorn, Al- 
iona, 1730, 8vo, and are given in part also by Creuzer, 
in his Hist. Grcec. Antiquiss. Fragm., p. 28, scqq .— 
III. A native of Teos, supposed to have flourished 
about the ninetieth Olympiad. Compare the remarks 
of Creuzer, (Hist. Gr. Ant. Fragm., p. 6, seqq.) —IV. 
A native of Eretria, who wrote ITepi N ootiov, “ On 
the wanderings of the Grecian chieftains returning from 
Troy.” He is mentioned also by Plutarch among the 
historians of Alexander. (Scholl, Hist. Litt. Gr., vol. 
4, p. 133.) 

Hecate ('E nury ), the name of a goddess in the 
Grecian mythology. In the Theogony of Hesiod (v. 
411), this deity is made the daughter of Perses and 
Asteria. Bacchylides speaks of her as the daughter 
of Night, while Musaeus gave her Jupiter as a sire in 
place of Perses. (Schol. ad Apoll. Rh., 3, 467.) 
Others again made her the offspring of the Olympian 
king by Pheraea, the daughter of JEolus (Tzetz., ad 
Lye., 1180), or by Ceres (Schol. ad Theocrit., 2, 12). 
According to Pherecydes, her sire was Aristasus. 
(Schol. ad Apoll. Rh., 1. c .) It is said in the Theog¬ 
ony (412, seqq.), that Hecate was highly honoured by 
Jupiter, who allowed her to exercise extensive power 
over land and sea, and to share in all the honours en¬ 
joyed by the children of Heaven and Earth. She re¬ 
wards sacrifice and prayer to her with prosperity. 
She presides over the deliberations of the popular as¬ 
sembly, over war, and the administration of justice. 
She gives success in wrestling and horse-racing. The 
fisherman prays to her and Neptune ; the herdsman to 
her and Hermes ; for she can increase and diminish 
at her will. Though an only child (in contrast to 
Apollo and Diana, who have similar power), she is hon¬ 
oured with all power among the immortals, and is, by 
the appointment of Jupiter, the rearer of children, 
whom she has brought to see the light of day.—This 
passage, however, is plainly an interpolation in the 
Theogony, with which it is not in harmony. It has 
all the appearance of being an Orphic composition, 
and is, perhaps, the work of the notorious forger Ono- 
macritus. (Gottling, ad loc .— Thiersch, uber Hesio- 
dus, p. 24.— Keightley's Mythology, p. 66.)—Hecate 
is evidently a stranger-divinity in the mythology of 
the Greeks. It would appear that she was one of the 
hurtful class of deities, transported by Hesiod, or his 
interpolator, into the Grecian mythology, and placed 
behind the popular divinities of the day, as a being of 
earlier existence. Hence the remark of the bard, that 
Jupiter respected all the prerogatives which Hecate had 
enjoyed previous to his ascending the throne of his 
father. Indeed, the sphere which the poet assigns her, 
places her out of the reach of all contact with the act¬ 
ing divinities of the day. She is mentioned neither 
in the Iliad nor Odyssey, and the attributes assigned 
her in the more recent poem of the Argonauts are the 
same with those of Proserpina in Homer. (Creuzer, 
Symlolik, vol. 1, p. 158.— Id., 2, 120. — Goerrcs, 
Mytheng., vol. 1, p. 254. — Hermann, Handb. der 
Myth., vol. 2, p. 45.) Jablonski (Panth. JEgypt.) re¬ 
gards Hecate as the same with the Egyptian Tith- 
rambo. Her action upon nature, her diversified attri¬ 
butes, her innumerable functions, are a mixture of 
physical, allegorical, and philosophical traditions re¬ 
specting the fusion of the elements and the generation 
of beings. Hecate was the night, and, by an exten¬ 
sion of this idea, the primitive night, the primary 
tause or parent of all things. She was the moon, and 


hence were connected with her all those accessary 
ideas which are grouped around that of the moon: she 
is the goddess that troubles the reason of men, the 
goddess that presides over nocturnal ceremonies, and, 
consequently, over magic; hence her identity with 
Diana for the Grecian mythology, with Isis for the 
Egyptian ; and hence also all her cosmogonical attri¬ 
butes, assigned to Isis in Egypt. (Constant, de la 
Religion, vol. 4, p. 139, in notis.) —As regards the 
etymology of her name, it may be remarked, that the 
most probable one seems to be that which deduces it 
from the Greek knary, the feminine of enaroc, deno¬ 
ting either “her that operates from afar,” or “her 
that removes or drives off.” (Creuzer, Symbolik, 
vol. 2, p. 124.) Expiatory sacrifices were offered to 
this goddess on the thirtieth of every month, in which 
eggs and young dogs formed the principal objects. 
The remains of these animals and of the other offer¬ 
ings, together with a large quantity of all sorts of co¬ 
mestibles, were exposed in the cross-roads, and called 
the “ Supper of Hecate” ('Fkiittis deinvov). The 
poorer class and the Cynics seized upon these viands 
with an eagerness that passed among the ancients as 
a mark of extreme indigence, or the lowest degree of 
baseness. (Compare the note of Hemsterhuis, ad Lu¬ 
cian. Dial. Mort., 1. — Op., ed. Bip., vol. 2, p. 397, 
seqq.) Her statues were in general dog-headed, and 
were set up at Athens and elsewhere, in the market¬ 
places and at cross-roads. It is probable, indeed, that 
the dog-headed form was the ancient and mystic one ot 
Hecate, and that under which she was worshipped in 
the mysteries of Samothrace, where dogs were immo¬ 
lated in her honour. Hecate had also her mysteries, 
celebrated at HSgina, and the establishment of which 
was ascribed to Orpheus. Another name of this god¬ 
dess was Brimo (from jSpeyo}, “ to roar”). This seems 
to have been chiefly employed to denote her terrific 
appearance, especially when she came summoned by 
magic arts. Apollonius of Rhodes (Arg., 3, 1214, 
seqq.) describes her as having her head surrounded 
by serpents, twining through branches of oak, while 
torches flamed in her hands, and the infernal dogs 
howled around. Lucian’s “ liar of the first magni¬ 
tude,” Eucrates, gives a most terrific description of 
her appearance. (Philopseud., 22, seqq.) In this 
character she was also sometimes called Empusa. 
(Eudocia, 147.) These, however, were evidently late 
ideas and fictions. (Keightley's Mythology, p. 67.) 

Hecatomboia, a festival celebrated in honour of 
Juno by the Argives and people of iEgina. It received 
its name from knarbv and (dovq, being a sacrifice of a 
hundred oxen, which were always offered to the god¬ 
dess, and the flesh distributed among the poorest citi¬ 
zens. There were also public games, first instituted 
by Archinus, a king of Argos, in which the prize was 
a shield of brass with a crown of myrtle.—There was 
also an anniversary sacrifice called by this name in 
Laconia, and offered for the preservation of the 100 
cities which once flourished in that country. 

HecatomphSnia (from bnarov, “ a hundred,” and 
<; povevu, “ to kill”), a solemn sacrifice offered by the 
Messenians to Jupiter when any of them had killed a 
hundred enemies. Aristomenes is said to have offered 
up this sacrifice three times in the course of the Mes 
senian wars against Sparta. (Pausan., 4, 19.) 

Hecatompolis, an epithet given to Crete, from the 
hundred cities which it once contained. (Horn., II., 
2 , 649.) The same epithet was also applied to La¬ 
conia. (Strabo, 362.— Steph. Byz., s. v. ’AyvnXai.) 
The greater part of these, however, were probably, like 
the demi of Attica, not larger than villages. (Vid 
Laconia.) 

Hecatompylos, I. an epithet applied to Thebes in 
Egypt, on account of its hundred gates. ( Vid. remarks 
under the article Theb®, I.)—II. The metropolis of 
Parthia, and royal residence of the Arsacidae, situate 

579 



HE C 


H E G 


in the district of Comisene, and southwest part of the 
province of Parthiene. The name is of Grecian origin, 
probably a translation of the native term, and has a 
figurative allusion to the numerous routes which di¬ 
verge from this place to the adjacent country. D’An- 
ville makes it correspond with the modern Demegan. 
(Plin ., 6, 15.— Curt., 6, 2.— Ammian. Marcell., 23, 
24 .—Polyb., 10, 25.— Diod. Sic., 17, 25.) 

Hecatonnesi, small islands between Lesbos and 
Asia. They derived their names, according to Stra¬ 
bo (13), from tuaToq, an epithet of Apollo, that deity 
being particularly worshipped along the continent of 
Asia, off which they lay. It seems more probable, 
however, that they had their name from EKarov, a hun¬ 
dred, and were called so from their great number, 
which is about forty or over. xAnd Herodotus, in fact, 
writes the name 'E Karov N qaoi (1, 151). The mod¬ 
ern appellation is Musco-Nisi. (Cramer's Asia Mi¬ 
nor, vol. 1, p. 165.) 

Hector, son of Priam and Hecuba, was the most 
valiant of all the Trojan chiefs that fought against the 
Greeks. He married Andromache, daughter of Eetion, 
by whom he became the father of Astyanax. Hector 
was appointed commander of all the Trojan forces, and 
for a long period proved the bulwark of his native city. 
He was not only the braveat and most powerful, but 
also the most amiable, of his countrymen, and particu¬ 
larly distinguished himself in his conflicts with Ajax, 
Diomede, and many other of the most formidable lead¬ 
ers. The fates had decreed that Troy should never 
be destroyed as long as Hector lived. The Greeks, 
therefore, after the death of Patroclus, who had fallen 
by Hector’s hand, made a powerful effort under the 
command of Achilles; and, by the intervention of 
Minerva, who assumed the form of Deiphobus, and 
urged Hector to encounter the Grecian chief, contrary 
to the remonstrances of Priam and Hecuba, their effort 
was crowned with success. Hector fell, and his death 
accomplished the overthrow of his father’s kingdom. 
The dead body of the Trojan warrior was attached to 
the chariot of Achilles, and insultingly dragged away 
to the Grecian fleet; and thrice every day, for the 
space of twelve days, was it also dragged by the victor 
around the tomb of Patroclus. (II., 22, 399, seqq .— 
lb., 24, 14, seqq.) During all this time, the corpse 
of Hector was shielded from dogs and birds, and pre¬ 
served from corruption, by the united care of Venus 
and Apollo. (II., 23, 185, seqq.) The body was at 
last ransomed by Priam, who went in person, for this 
purpose, to the tent of Achilles. Splendid obsequies 
were rendered to the deceased, and with these the-ac¬ 
tion of the Iliad terminates.—Virgil makes Achilles to 
have dragged the corpse of Hector thrice round the 
walls of Troy. (IEn., 1, 483.) Homer, however, is 
silent on this point. According to the latter, Hector 
fled thrice round the city-walls before engaging with 
Achilles ; and, after he was slain, his body was imme¬ 
diately attached to the car of the victor, and dragged 
away to the ships. (77., 22, 399.) The incident, 
therefore, alluded to by Virgil must have been borrowed 
from some one of the Cyclic bards, or some tragic 
poet, for these, it is well known, allowed themselves 
great license in diversifying and altering the features 
of the ancient heroic legends. (Heyne, Excurs., 18, 
ad Virg., IEn., 1.— Wernsdorff, ad Epit. 11. in Poet. 
Lat. Min., vol. 4, p. 742.) 

Hecuba ('E icaSy), daughter of Dymas, a Phrygian 
prince, or, according to others, of Cisseus, a Thracian 
king, while others, again, made her the daughter of the 
river-god Sangarius and Metope, was the second wife 
of Priam, king of Troy. (Apollod., 3, 12, 6.) She 
bore him nineteen children (II, 24, 496), of whom the 
chief were Hector, Paris, Deiphobus, Helenus, Troilus, 
Polites, Polydorus, Cassandra, Creusa, and Polyxena. 
When she was pregnant of Paris, she dreamed that 
she brought into the world a burning torch, which re¬ 


duced her husband’s palace and all Troy tc ashes 
On her telling this droain to Priam, he sent for his son 
iEsacus, by a former wife Arisbe, the daughter of 
Merops, who had been reared and taught to interpret 
dreams by his grandfather. JEsacus declared, that 
the child would be the ruin of his country, and recom¬ 
mended to expose it. As soon as born^ the babe was 
given to a servant to be left on Ida to perish ; but the 
attempt proved a fruitless one, and the prediction of the 
soothsayer was fulfilled. ( Vid. Paris.) Affterthe ruin 
of Troy and the death of Priam, Hecuba fell to the 
lot of Ulysses, and she embarked with the conquerors 
for Greece. The fleet, however, was detained off the 
coast of the Thracian Chersonese by the appearance, 
of the spectre of Achilles on the summit of his tomb, 
demanding to be honoured with a new offering. Po- 
lyxena was, in consequenec, torn from Hecuba and 
immolated by Neoptolemus on the grave of his sire. 
The grief of the mother was increased by the sight of 
the dead body of her son Polydorus, washed upon 
the shore, who had been cruelly slain by Polymestor, 
king of Thrace, to whose care Priam had consigned 
him. Bent on revenge, Hecuba managed, by artifice, 
to get Polymestor and his two children in her power, 
and, by the aid of her fellow-captives, she effected 
the murder of his sons, and then put out the eyes of 
the father. (Vid. Polydorus, Polymestor.) This act 
drew upon her the vengeance of the Thracians : they 
assailed her with darts and showers of stones ; and, in 
the act of biting a stone with impotent rage, she was 
suddenly metamorphosed into a dog. (Ovid, Met., 13, 
429, seqq.) —Hyginus says, that she threw herself into 
the sea (fab. Ill), while Servius states, that she was 
changed into a dog when on the point of casting her¬ 
self into the waters, (ad IEn., 3, 6.—Consult Schol. 
ad Eurip., Hec., 1259. — Tzelz., Chil., Ill, 74.— 
Schol. ad Juv.,' Sat., 10, 271.— Plant., Mencech., 1 — 
Heyne, ad Apollod., 3, 12, 5.) 

Hegemon, a native of Thasos, and author of satyric 
dramas in the age of Alcibiades. This distinguished 
individual was his friend, and managed to get him 
freed from an accusation that had been brought against 
him. A piec^ of this poet, entitled Gigantomachia , 
was getting^rdpresented when the news arrived of the 
defeat of Nicias in Sicily. This Hegemon "bore the 
appellation of Phace ((pa/dj, “a lentil”), conferred on 
him as a nickname. He wrote also a comedy entitled 
Philinna. (Bockh, Staatsh. der Athener, vol. 1, p. 435. 
— Scholl, Gesch. Griech. Lit., vol. 1, p. 269, 290.) 

Hegesianax, a Greek writer, a native of Alexan- 
drea-Troas, and contemporary with Antiochus the 
Great, by whom he was patronised. He was the author 
of an historical work ; and indulged also in poetic corn- 
position, having written a poem entitled ra T poiKcc, 
“ Trojan Affairs .” Some ascribed to him the “ Cyp¬ 
rian Epic.” He was likewise a writer of tragedies ; 
and, according to Athenreus, from whom all these par¬ 
ticulars are obtained, was also a tragic actor, having 
improved and strengthened his voice, which was natu 
rally weak, by abstaining for eighteen years from eat¬ 
ing figs. (Athcn., 3, p. 8-0, d. — Id., 4, p. 155, b. — Id., 
9, p. 393, d.) 

PIegesias, I. a Cyclic poet, born at Salamis, in the 
island of Cyprus, and, according to some, the author 
of the Cyprian Epic. (Vid. Stasinus.)—II. A native 
of Magnesia, who'wrote an historical work on the com¬ 
panions in arms of Alexander the Great. His style 
was loaded with puerile ornaments, and betrayed a to 
tal want of taste. (Dion. Hal., de Struct. Oral., c. 18. 
He wrote also some discourses, which are lost. The 
ancients regarded him as the parent of that species o' 
eloquence denominated the Asiatic, which had taker 
the place of the simple and elegant Attic. (Com 
pare Quintil., List. Or., 12, 10.)—III. A philosopher 
surnamed II sicnduvarog, or “ Advocate of Death.’ 
He pushed the principles of the Cyrenaic sect, tc 



HEL 


HELENA. 


which he belonged, even to absurdity, and, by the force 
of consequences, came to a result directly opposite to 
that of the founder of the school. From the position 
that pleasure is the sovereign good, he deduced the 
inference that man cannot be truly happy, since, as his 
body is exposed to too many evils, of which the soul 
also partakes, he cannot attain to the sovereign good: 
hence it follows that death is more desirable than life. 
Hegesias upheld this doctrine with so much ability 
and success, that many of his auditors, on leaving his 
lectures, put an end to their existence. Ptolemy I. 
judged it necessary to send him into exile. ( Scholl, 
Hist. Lilt. Gr., vol. 3, p 249.) 

Hf.gesippus, I. an historian, mentioned by Diony¬ 
sius of Halicarnassus (Ant. Rom., 1, 49 et 72). He 
wrote on the antiquities of Pallene, a peninsula of 
Thrace, where HSneas was supposed to have taken 
refuge after the capture of Troy. He made the Tro¬ 
jan chief to have ended his days here.—II. A comic 
poet, a native of Tarentum, surnamed Crobylus (Kpca- 
6v2,og), or “Toupee,” from his peculiar manner of 
wearing his hair. His pieces have not reached us : 
we have eight epigrams ascribed to him, which are 
remarkable for their simplicity.—III. An ecclesiastical 
historian, by birth a Jew, and educated in the religion 
of his fathers. He was afterward converted to Chris¬ 
tianity, and became bishop of Rome about the year 177, 
where he died in the reign of the Emperor Commodus, 
about the year 180. He was the author of an eccle¬ 
siastical history, from the period of our Saviour’s death 
down to his own time, which, according to Eusebius, 
contained a faithful relation of the apostolic preaching, 
written in a very simple style. The principal value 
of the existing fragments, which have been preserved 
for us by Eusebius and Photius, arises from the testi¬ 
mony that may be deduced from scriptural passages 
quoted in them in favour of the genuineness of the 
books of the New Testament. There has been as¬ 
cribed to Hegesippus a history of the destruction of 
Jerusalem, written in Latin, under the title of “ De 
Bello Judaico et urbis Hierosolymitance excidio histo¬ 
rian It is not, however, by Hegesippus ; and appears, 
indeed, to be nothing more than a somewhat enlarged 
translation of Josephus. A Milan manuscript ascribes 
it to St. Ambrose, and perhaps correctly, since there 
is a great conformity between its style and that of the 
prelate just mentioned. The fragments of the eccle¬ 
siastical history of Hegisippus were published at Ox¬ 
ford in 1698. in the 2d volume of Grabe’s Spicileg. 
ss. Patrum , p. 205 ; in the 2d volume of Halloix’s 
work “ De Scriptorum Oriental, vitis ,” p. 703 ; and in 
Galland’s Biblioth. Gr. Lat. Vet. Patr., Vend., 1788, 
fob, vol. 2, p. 59. 

Helena, the most beautiful woman of her age. 
There are different accounts of her birth and parentage. 
The common, and probably the most ancient, one is, 
that she was the daughter of Leda by Jupiter, who took 
the form of a white swan. According to the Cyprian 
Epic, she was the offspring of Jupiter and Nemesis, 
who had long fled the pursuit of the god, and, to elude 
him, had taken the form of all kinds of animals. 
(Athen., 8, p. 334.) At length, while she was under 
that of a goose, the god became a swan, and she laid 
an egg, which was found by a shepherd in the woods. 
He brought it to Leda, who laid it up in a coffer, and 
m due time Helena was produced from it. (Apollod., 
3, 10, 4.) Hesiod, on the other hand, calls Helena 
the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys. ( Schol. ad 
Pijid., Nem., 10,150.) In the Iliad, Helena is term¬ 
ed “ begotten of Jupiter” (11., 3, 418); and she calls 
Castor and Pollux “ her own brothers, whom one 
mother bore with her.” (II., 3, 238.) In the Odys¬ 
sey these are expressly called the sons of Tyndarus. 
This, however, does not prove that Helena was held 
to be his daughter.—The beauty of Helena was pro¬ 
verbial. She was so renowned, indeed, for her per¬ 


sonal attractions, even in her infancy, that Theseus, 
in company with his friend Pirithoiis, carried her off, 
when only a child, from a festival at which they saw 
her dancing in the temple of Diana Orthia. It was 
agreed, during their flight, that he who should, by lot, 
become possessor of the prize, should assist in pro¬ 
curing a wife for the other. The lot fell tc Theseus, 
and he accordingly conveyed Helen to Aphidnse, and 
there placed her under the care of his mother HUthra till 
she should have attained to years of maturity. From 
this retreat, however, her brothers, Castor and Pollux, 
recovered her by force of arms, and restored her to her 
family. According to Pausanias, however, she was of 
nubile years when carried off' by Theseus, and became 
by him the mother of a daughter, who was given to 
Clytemnestra to rear. (Pausan., 2, 22.)—Among the 
most celebrated of the young princes of Greece, who, 
from the reputation of her personal charms, subse¬ 
quently became her suiters, were, Ulysses, son of La¬ 
ertes ; Antilochus, son of Nestor; Sthenelus, son of 
Capaneus ; Diomedes, son of Tydeus ; Amphilochus, 
son of Cteatus ; Meges, son of Phileus ; Agapenor, 
son of Ancasus ; Thalpius, son of Eurytus ; Mnesth- 
eus, son of Peteus ; Schedius, son of Epistrophus ; 
Polyxenus, son of Agasthenes : Amphilochus, son of 
Amphiaraus ; Ascalaphus and Ialmus, sons of the god 
Mars ; Ajax, son of O'ileus ; Eumelus, son of Adme- 
tus; Polypcetes, son of Pirithoiis ; Elpenor, son of 
Chalcodon ; Podalirius and Machaon, sons of TEscula- 
pius ; Leontus, son of Coronus ; Philoctetes, son of 
Pasan; Protesilaus, son of Iphiclus; Eurypylus, son 
of Evemon ; Ajax and Teucer, sons of Telamon ; Pa- 
troclus, son of Menoetius ; Menelaus, son of Atreus ; 
Thoas, Idomeneus, and Merion. Tyndarus was rath¬ 
er alarmed than pleased at the sight of so great a 
number of illustrious princes, who eagerly solicited 
each to become his son-in-law. He knew that he 
could not prefer one without displeasing all the rest, 
and from this perplexity he was at last extricated by 
the artifice of Ulysses, who began to be already know* 
in Greece by his prudence and sagacity. This prince, 
who clearly saw that his pretensions to Helen would 
not probably meet with success in opposition to so 
many rivals, proposed to free Tyndarus from all his 
difficulties if he would promise him his niece Penel¬ 
ope in marriage. Tyndarus consented, and Ulysses 
advised the king to bind, by a solemn oath, all the 
suiters, that they would approve of the uninfluenced 
choice which Helen should make of one among them, 
and engage to unite together to defend her person 
and character, if ever any attempts were made to car¬ 
ry her off from her husband. The advice of Ulysses 
was followed, the prihces consented, and Helen fixed 
her choice upon Menelaus, and married him. Her- 
mione was the early fruit of this union, which con¬ 
tinued for three years with mutual happiness. After 
this, Paris, son of Priam, king of Troy, came to Lace¬ 
daemon on pretence of sacrificing to Apollo. He was 
kindly received by Menelaus ; but, taking advantage 
of the temporary absence of the latter in Crete, cor¬ 
rupted the fidelity of Helen, and persuaded her to flee 
with him to Troy. Menelaus, returning from Crete, 
assembled the Grecian princes, and reminded them :.f 
their solemn promises. They resolved to make war 
against the Trojans ; but they previously sent ambas¬ 
sadors to Priam to demand the restitution of Helen. 
The influence of Paris at his father’s court prevented 
her restoration, and the Greeks returned home without 
receiving the satisfaction they required. Soon after 
their return, their combined forces assembled and sail 
ed for the coast of Asia.—When Paris had been slain, 
in the ninth year of the war, Helen married De'ipho- 
bus,son of Priam ; but, on the capture of the city, be¬ 
trayed him into the hands of Menelaus, through a wish 
of ingratiating herself into the favour of her former hus¬ 
band. On her return to Greece, Helen lived mam 

581 




HELENA. 


HELL A a. 


years with Menelaiis, who forgave her infidelity ; but, 
upon his death, she was driven from the Peloponnesus 
by Megapenthes and Nicostratus, the illegitimate sons 
of her husband, and she retired to Rhodes, where at 
that time Polyxo, a native of Argos, reigned over the 
country. Polyxo remembered that her widowhood ori¬ 
ginated in Helen, and that her husband, Tlepolemus, 
had been k'.led in the Trojan war, and she therefore 
resolved upon revenge. While Helen one dav retired 
to bathe in the river, Polyxo disguised her attendants in 
the habits of Furies, and sent them with orders to mur¬ 
der her enemy. Helen was tied to a tree and stran¬ 
gled, and her misfortunes were afterward commemo¬ 
rated, and the crime of Polyxo expiated, by the tem¬ 
ple which the Rhodians raised to Helena Dendritis, or 
Helena “ tied to a tree. '—there is a tradition men¬ 
tioned by Herodotus, which says that Paris was driven, 
as he returned from Sparta, upon the coast of Egypt, 
where Proteus, king ol the country, expelled him from 
his dominions for his ingratitude to Menelaiis, and 
confined Helen. From that circumstance, therefore, 
Priam informed the Grecian ambassadors that nei¬ 
ther Helen nor her possessions were in Troy, but in 
the hands of the King of Egypt. In spite of this as¬ 
sertion, the Greeks besieged the city, and took it after 
ten years’ siege; and Menelaiis, visiting Egypt as he 
returned home, recovered Helen at the court of Pro¬ 
teus, and was convinced that the Trojan war had been 
undertaken upon unjust grounds. Herodotus adds, 
that, in his opinion, Homer was acquainted with these 
circumstances, but did not think them so web calcu¬ 
lated as the popular legend for the basis of an epic 
poem {Herod., 2, 112, 116, seqq.)— It was fabled, 
that, after death, Helen was united in marriage with 
Achilles, in the island of Leuce, in the Euxme, where 
she bore him a son named Euphorion. ( Pausanias , 
3, 19.— Conon, 18 ,—Ptol., Hephcest., 4.) Nothing, 
however, can be more uncertain than the whole history 
of Helen. The account of Herodotus has been al¬ 
ready given in the course of this article. According 
to Euripides ( Helena , 25, seqq.), Juno, piqued at be^ 
holding Venus bear away the prize of beauty, caused 
Meicury to carry away the true Helen from Greece to 
an d gave Paris a phantom in her stead. After 
the destruction of Troy, the phantom bears witness to 
the innocence of Helen, a storm carries Menelaiis to 
the coast of Egypt, and he there regains possession of 
his bride. Others pretend that Helen never married 
Menelaiis ; that she preferred Paris to ali the princes 
that sought her in marriage; and that Menelaiis, irri¬ 
tated at this, raised an army against Troy. Some wri¬ 
ters think they see, in these conflicting and varying 
statements, a confirmation of the opinion entertained by 
many, that the ancient quarrel of Hercules and Laome- 
don, and the violence offered to Hesione, the daughter 
of that monarch, and not the carrying off of Helen, were 
the causes of the Trojan war. Others treat the story 
of the oath exacted from the suiters with very little cer¬ 
emony, and make the Grecian princes to have followed 
Agamemnon to the field as their liege lord, and as stand¬ 
ing at the head of the Achaean race, to whom therefore 
they, as commanding the several divisions and tribes 
of that race, were bound to render service. But the 
more we consider the history of Helen, the greater will 
be the difficulties that arise. It seems strange indeed, 
supposing the common account to be true, that so 
many cities and states should combine to regain her 
when she went away voluntarily with Paris, and that 
not a single hamlet should rise in her favour when she 
was forcibly carried away by Theseus. Again, the 
beauty of Helen is often mentioned by the poet. The 
very elders of Troy, when they saw her pass by, could 
not help expressing their admiration. {II., 3, 158.) 
Agamemnon promises to Achilles the choice of twen¬ 
ty female captives, the fairest after Helen. {11., 9,140.) 
By this he strongly intimates the superiority of her 


charms. But if there were the least truth in tne 
history of this personage and in the chronology of 
the times, she must have been at this period a very 
old woman. For her brothers were in the Argo- 
nautic expedition, and in a state of complete man 
hood. One of them is mentioned as contending in 
fight with Amycus, the Bebrycian, a person of an 
common stature and strength : his opponent, therefore, 
could not have been a stripling. We cannot well al¬ 
low less than twenty-five years for his time of life. 
Now, from the Argonautic expedition to the taking 
of Troy, there were, according to Scaliger {Animadv. 
in Euseb., p. 46), seventy-nine years. If, then, we add 
to these her age at the time of the Argonauts, which 
we have presumed to have been twenty-five years, it 
makes her no less than a hundred and four in the las 
year of the siege. Or if we allovv her to have beet, 
only twenty at the time of the expedition, still she will 
prove sufficiently old to have been Hecuba's mother. 
Hence Seneca says very truly {Epist., 384), when 
he is treating of the priority of Hesiod and Homer, 
“ Utrum major cetate fuerit Homerus an Hcsiodus, non 
magis ad rem perlinet quam scire, an minor Hecuba fu¬ 
erit quam Helena; et quare tarn male tulerit cetatem .” 
Petavius makes the interval between this celebrated 
expedition and the fall of Troy of the same extent 
as Scaliger. {Rationale Temp'., p. 290, seqq.) The 
former he places in the year 3451 of the Julian period, 
and the latter in 3530. The difference in both is 79. 
I o these, if we add 25 for her age at that era, it will 
amount to 104. After the seduction of Helen by Par¬ 
is, the Grecians are said to have been ten years m 
preparing for the war, and ten years in carrying it on. 
This agrees with the account given by Helen of her¬ 
self in the last year of the siege, which was the twen¬ 
tieth from her first arrival from Sparta. {II., 24, 75.) 
If we then add these twenty years to the seventy-nine, 
and likewise twenty-five for her age at the time of the 
Argonautic expedition, it will make her still older than 
she was estimated above, and increase her years to 124. 

I elemachus, the son of Ulysses, is said to have seen 
h^r at Sparta ten years afterward, and she is repre¬ 
sented even then to have been as beautiful as Diana 
( Od ., 4, 1,22), though at that time, if these computa¬ 
tions are true, she must have been 134 years old. 
These things are past all belief. Another difficulty 
will be found in the history of those princes, who, ac¬ 
cording to the common account, formed the grand con¬ 
federacy in order to recover her, if she should at any 
time be stolen away. They are said to have been for 
the most part her suiters, who bound themselves by an 
oath to unite for that purpose whenever they should be 
called upon. At what time of life may we suppose Hel¬ 
en to have been, when these engagements were made 
in her favour, in consequence of her superior beau¬ 
ty 1 \\ e may reasonably conclude she was about her 

twentieth or twenty-fifth year; and her suiters cot\d 
not well be younger. But, at this rate, the principal 
leaders of the Grecians at the siege of Troy must have 
been 100 years old. But the contrary is evinced in 
every part of the poem, wherever these heroes are intro¬ 
duced Still farther ; it has been mentioned, that, be¬ 
fore the seduction of Helen by Paris, she was said to 
have been stolen from her father’s house by Theseus ; 
and we are told by some writers that she was then but 
seven years old. This has been said in order to lower 
the time of her birth, that she may not appear so old 
in the last year of the war. But this is a poor expe¬ 
dient, which in some degree remedies one evil but at 
the same time, creates another. How can it be con¬ 
ceived that a king of Athens should betake himself to 
Sparta, in order to run away with a child seven years 
old 1 and how could she, at that age, have been offici¬ 
ating at the altar of Diana Orthia 1 This leads to an¬ 
other circumstance equally incredible. For if she 
were so young, her brothers must have been precisely 






H E L 


H E L 


ot the same age ; For one, if not both, was hatched 
from the same egg. Yet these children, so little past 
their infant state, are said to have pursued Theseus, 
and to have regained their sister. They must have 
been sturdy urchins, and little short of the sons of 
Aloeus. (Consult, on this whole subject, Bryant, Dis¬ 
sertation on the War of Troy, p. 9, seqq.) —It is more 
than probable, indeed, that the whole legend relative to 
Helen was originally a religious and allegorical myth. 
The remarkable circumstance of her two brothers liv¬ 
ing and dying alternately, leads at once to a suspicion 
of their Deing personifications of natural powers and 
objects. This is confirmed by the names in the myth, 
all of which seem to refer to light or its opposite. 
Thus Leda differs little from Leto, and may therefore 
be regarded as darkness. She is married to Tyndarus, 
a name which seems to belong to a family of words 
relating to light, flame, or heat (Vid . Tyndarus); her 
children by him or Jupiter, that is, by Jupiter-Tynda- 
rus, the bright god, are Helena, Brightness (eka, 
“light") ; Castor, Adorner, (ku£o, “ to adorn") ; and 
Polydeukes, Dewful (6evu, dev/cyc). In Helen, there¬ 
fore, we have only another form of Selene ; the Adorn¬ 
er is a very appropriate term for the day, the light 
of which adorns all nature ; and nothing can be more 
apparent than the suitableness of Devrful to the night. 
(Keightley's Mythology, p. 432.) — II. (commonly 
known in ecclesiastical history by the name of St. 
Helena), the first wife of Constantius Chlorus, was 
born of obscure parents, in a village called Drepanum, 
in Bithynia, which was afterward raised by her son 
Constantine to the rank of a city, under the name of 
Helenopolis. Her husband Constantius, on being 
made Caesar by Dioclesian and Maximian (A.D. 292), 
repudiated Helena, and married Theodora, daughter 
of Maximian. Helena withdrew into retirement until 
her son Constantine, having become emperor, called 
his mother to court, and gave her the title of Augus¬ 
ta. He also supplied her with large sums of money, 
which she employed in building and endowing church¬ 
es, and in relieving the poor. About A.D. 325 she 
set out on a pilgrimage to Palestine, and, having ex¬ 
plored the site of Jerusalem, she thought that she had 
discovered the sepulchre of Jesus, and also the cross 
on which he died. The identity of the cross which 
she found has been, of course, much doubted ; she, 
however, built a church on the spot, supposed to be 
that of the Sepulchre, which has continued to be ven¬ 
erated by that name to the present day. She also built 
a church at Bethlehem, in honour of the nativity of 
our Saviour. From Palestine she rejoined her son at 
Nicomedia, in Bithynia, where she expired, in the year 
327, at a very advanced age. She is numbered by the 
Roman church among the saints. ( Euseb., Vit. Const. 
— Hubner, de Crucis Dominicce per Helenam inven- 
tione, Helmstadt, 1724.)—III. A deserted and rugged 
island in the yEgean, opposite to Thorikos, and ex¬ 
tending from that parallel to Sunium. It received its 
name from the circumstance of Paris’s having landed 
on it, as was said, in company with Helena, when they 
were fleeing from Sparta. ( Plin ., 4, 12.— Mela, 2, 
7.) Strabo, who follows Artemidorus, conceived it 
was the Cranae of Homer. (II., 3, 444.) Pliny calls 
it Macris. The modern name is Macronisi. 

Helenus, an eminent soothsayer, son of Priam and 
Hecuba, and the only one of their sons who survived 
the siege of Troy. He was so chagrined, according 
to some, at having failed to obtain Helen in marriage 
after the death of Paris, that he retired to Mount Ida, 
and was there, by the advice of Calchas, surprised and 
carried away to the Grecian camp by Ulysses. Among 
other predictions, Helenus declared that Troy could 
not be taken unless Philoctetes could be prevailed on 
to quit his retreat and repair to the siege. After the 
destruction of Troy, he, together with Andromache, 
fell to the share of Pyrrhus, whose favour he concili¬ 


ated by deterring him trom sailing with the rest of ttie 
Greeks, who (he foretold) would be exposed to a se¬ 
vere tempest on leaving the Trojan shore. Pyrrhus 
not only manifested his gratitude by giving him An¬ 
dromache in marriage, but nominated him his succes¬ 
sor in the kingdom of Epirus, to the exclusion of his 
son Molossus, who did not ascend the throne until af¬ 
ter the death of Helenus. A son named Cestrinus 
was the offspring of the union of Helenus with An¬ 
dromache. (Virg., AEn., 3, 294, seqq .—Consult the 
authorities quoted by Heyne, Excurs. 10, ad AEn., 3.) 

Heliades, I. the daughters of the Sun and Cly- 
mene. They were three in number, Lampetie, Phae- 
tusa, and Lampethusa ; or seven, according to Hygi- 
nus, Merope, Helie, JEgle, Lampetie, Phoebe, Hdthe 
ria, and Dioxippe. They were so afflicted at the death 
of their brother Phaethon ( Vid. Phaethon), that they 
were changed by the gods into poplars, and their tears 
into amber, on the banks of the river Po. (Ovid, Met., 
2,340.— Hygin.,fab., 154.)—II. Children of the Sun 
and the nymph Rhodus. They were seven in number, 
and were fabled to have been the first inhabitants of 
the island of Rhodes. (Vid. Rhodus.) 

Heliast^e, a name given to the judges of the most 
numerous tribunal at Athens. (Harpocr., p. 138.— 
Bekk., Anecd. Gr., p. 310, 32.) Of all the courts 
which took cognizance of civil affairs, the 'HA taia was 
the most celebrated and frequented. It derived its 
name, uko tov dki&cdai, from the thronging of the 
people ; or, according to others, ano tov rfkiov, from 
the sun, because it was in an open place, and exposed 
to the sun’s rays. (Dorv., ad Charit., p. 242.) The 
judges, or, rather, jurymen of the Heliaea, amounted in 
all to 6000, being citizens of above thirty years of age, 
selected annually by the nine archons and their secre¬ 
tary ; probably 600 from each tribe. The Heliastae, 
however, seldom all met, being formed into ten divis¬ 
ions, the complement of each of which was strictly 
500, although it varied according to circumstances } 
sometimes diminishing to 200 or 400, while on other 
occasions it appears to have been raised to 1000 or 
1500, bv the union of two or three divisions. The 
1000, therefore, to make up the full 6000, must have 
acted as supernumeraries. (Wachsmuth, Hellen. Al- 
terthumsk., vol. 2, pt. 1, p. 314.) Every one to whoso 
lot it fell to serve as juryman, received, after taking the 
oath, a tablet inscribed with his name, and the nurm 
ber of the division to which he was to belong during' 
the year. On the morning of every court day, re¬ 
course was again had to lots, to decide in which court 
the divisions should respectively sit for that day.—Fon 
other particulars, consult Hermann, Polit. Anliq., p. 
265.— Tittmann, Darstell. der Gr. Staatsverf., p. 213;. 
seqq. 

Helice, I. another name for the Ursa Major, or 
“ Greater Bear.” ( Vid. Arctos.)—II. One of the chief 
cities of Achaia, situate on the shore of the Sinus Co 
rinthiacus, near Bura. (Herod., 1, 46.) It was cele* 
brated for the temple and worship of Neptune,, thence 
called Heliconius. Here also the general meeting of 
the Ionians was convened, while yet in the possession 
of ^Egialus, and the festival which then took place is 
supposed to have resembled that of the Panionia, which 
they instituted afterward in Asia Minor. (Pansan., 
7, 2\.—Strab., 384.) A prodigious influx of the sea, 
caused by a violent earthquake, overwhelmed arx 
completely destroyed Helice two years before the bat¬ 
tle of Leuctra, B.C. 373. The details of this catas¬ 
trophe will be found in Pausanias (7, 24) and iElian 
(Hist. Anim., 11, 19). It was said, that some vestL 
ges of the submerged city were to be seen long after 
the terrible event had taken place. (Ovid, Met., 15, 
293.) Eratosthenes, as Strabo reports, beheld the site 
of this ancient city, and he was assured by mariners 
that the bronze statue of Neptune was still visible be¬ 
neath the waters, holding att hippocampc, or sea-hors§ 



HEL 


HELIODORUS. 


m his hand, and that it formed a dangerous shoal for 
their vessels. Heraclides, of Pontus, relates that this 
disaster, which took place in his time, occurred during 
the night; the town, and all that lay between it and 
the sea, a distance of twelve stadia, being inundated 
in an instant. Two thousand workmen were after¬ 
ward sent by the Achaeans to recover the dead bodies, 
but without success. The same writer affirmed, that 
this inundation was commonly attributed to divine 
vengeance, in consequence of the inhabitants of Hel- 
ice having obstinately refused to deliver up the statue 
of Neptune and a model of the Temple to the Ionians 
after they had settled in Asia Minor, (ay. Strab., 385. 
—Compare the remarks of Bcrnhardy, Eratosthenica, p. 
84.— Diod. Sic., 15, 49.— Pausan., 7, 24.— JElian, H. 
A., 11, 19.) Seneca affirms, that Callisthenes the 
philosopher, who was put to death by Alexander the 
Great, wrote a voluminous work on the destruction of 
Helice (9, 23.—Compare Aristot., de Mund., c. 4.— 
Polyb., 2, 41). Pausanias informs us, that there was 
still a small village of the same name close to the 
sea, and forty stadia from HSgiuin. ( Cramer's An¬ 
cient Greece, vol. 3, p. 61.) 

Helicon, a famous mountain in Bosotia, near the 
Gulf of Corinth. It was sacred to Apollo and the 
Muses, who were thence called Heliconiades. This 
mountain was famed for the purity of its air, the abun¬ 
dance of its waters, its fertile valleys, the goodness 
of its shades, and the beauty of the venerable trees 
which clothed its sides. Strabo (409) affirms, that Hel¬ 
icon nearly equals in height Mount Parnassus, and re¬ 
tains its snow during a great part of the year. Pau¬ 
sanias observes (9, 28), that no mountain of Greece 
produces such a variety of plants and shrubs, though 
none of a poisonous nature; on the contrary, several 
have the property of counteracting the effects produced 
by the sting or bite of venomous reptiles. On the 
summit was the grove of the Muses, where these di¬ 
vinities had their statues, and where also were statues 
of Apollo and Mercury, of Bacchus by Lysippus, of 
Orpheus, and of famous poets and musicians. (Pau¬ 
san., 9, 30.) A little below the grove was the fount¬ 
ain of Aganippe. The source Hippocrene was about 
twenty Stadia above the grove ; it is said to have burst 
forth when Pegasus struck his foot into the ground. 
(Pausan., 9, 31.— Strab., 9, 410.) These two springs 
supplied two small rivers named Olmius and Permes- 
sus, which, after uniting their waters, flowed into the 
lake Copais, near Haliartus. Hesiod makes mention 
of these his favourite haunts in the opening of his 
Theogonia. The modern name of Helicon is Palceo- 
vouni or Zagora. The latter is the more general ap¬ 
pellation ; the name of Palaeovouni is more correctly 
applied to that part of the mountain which is near the 
modern village Kakosia, that stands on the site of an¬ 
cient Thisbe. (Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 2, p. 
204.—Compare Dodwell, Tour, vol 1, p. 260.)—II. 
A river of Macedonia, near Dium, the same, according 
to Pausanias (9, 30), with the Baphyrus. The same 
aut’iDr informs us, that, after flowing for a distance 
of seventy-five stadia, it loses itself under ground 
for the space of twenty-two stadia; it is navigable on 
its reappearance, and is then called Baphyrus. Ac¬ 
cording to Dr. Clarke, it is now known as the Mauro 
nero. (Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 209.) 

Heliconiades, a name given to the Muses, from 
their fabled residence on Mount Helicon, which was 
sacred to them. (Lucret., 3, 1050.) 

Heliodorus, I. a Greek poet, sixteen hexameters 
of whose are cited by Stobreus (Serm., 98), containing 
a description of that part of Campania situate between 
the Lucrine Lake and Puteoli, and where Cicero had 
a country residence. The verses in question make 
particular mention of certain mineral waters at the 
foot of Mount Gyarus, reputed to have a salutary effect 
in cases of ophthalmia. Now, as these waters were 
584 


discovered a short time after the death of Ciceio, when 
the villa of the orator had come into the possession of 
Antistius Yetus (Plin., 31, 1), the poet Heliodoru* 
must have been subsequent to Cicero’s time, while, on 
the other hand, the elegance of his description forbids 
his being placed lower than the first or second century 
of our era. Some suppose him to have been the same 
with the rhetorician Heliodorus mentioned by Horace 
(Sat.., 1, 5, 2), as one of the companions of his journey 
to Brundisium. (Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 4, p. 65, 
seqq.) —II. An Athenian physician, of whom Galen 
makes mention (De Antid., 2, p. 77, ed. Aid.), and 
who also wrote a didactic poem, under the title of ’Atto- 
XvTiKa, “justification,” of which Galen cites seven hex¬ 
ameters. The fragment preserved by Stobaeus, and 
alluded to m the preceding article, might have belonged, 
perhaps, to this Heliodorus, and not to the individual 
mentioned under No. I. (Compare Meinekc, Com¬ 
ment. misc. fasc., 1, Halce, 1822, p. 36, and also the 
addenda to that work.)—III. A native of Larissa, who 
has left us a treatise on optics, under the title of Kf cp- 
akaia tu>v ’Oittmuv, which is scarcely anything more 
than an abridgment of the optical work ascribed to Eu¬ 
clid. He cites the optics of Ptolemy. The time 
when he flourished is uncertain ; from the manner, 
however, in which he speaks of Tiberius, it is probable 
that he lived a long time after that emperor. Oriba 
sius has preserved for us a fragment of another work 
of Heliodorus’s, entitled nepi diatyopaq KarapriayCiv. 
This fragment treats of the noxTlaq, a machine for 
drawing water furnished with a screw. Some MSS. 
call this writer Damianus Heliodorus. The best edi¬ 
tion is that of Bartholini, Paris, 1657, 4to. The work 
also appears in the Opuscula Mythologica, Ethica et 
Physica, of Gale, Cantabr., 1670, 12mo. — IV. A 
Greek romance-writer, who was born at Emesa in 
Phoenicia, and flourished under tho Emperors Theodo 
sius and Arcadius at the close of the fourth century. 
He was raised to the dignity of a bishop of Tricca in 
Thessaly (Socrates, Hist. Eccles.), and is supposed to 
have written an Iambic poem on Alchymy, entitled, 
nepi Tfjq tuv (j>i?^oo6(j)(jv pvaTurijc; rexvyc, “ On the 
occult science of the philosophers.” It contains 169 
verses. The authorship of this poem is assigned to 
Heliodorus by Georgius Cedrenus (compare Amyot’s 
remarks in his French translation of the TEthiopica); 
but, notwithstanding the testimony of Cedrenus, this 
point has never been clearly ascertained. Heliodorus 
is better known as the author of a Greek romance, en¬ 
titled, klOioTUna, being the history of Theagenes and 
Chariclea, the latter a daughter of a king of ^Ethiopia. 
It is in ten books. This work was unknown in the 
West until a soldier of Anspach, under the Margrave 
Casimir of Brandenburgh, assisting at the pillage of 
the library of Matthias Corvinus, at Buda, in 1526, 
being attracted by the rich binding of a manuscript, 
carried it off. He sold the prize afterward to Vincent 
Obsopasus, who published it at Basle in 1534. This 
was the celebrated romance of Heliodorus. “Until 
this period,” observes Huet, in his treatise on the ori¬ 
gin of romances, “ nothing had been seen better con¬ 
ceived, or better executed, than these adventures of 
Theagenes and Chariclea. Nothing can be more 
chaste than their loves, in which the author’s own vir¬ 
tuous mind assists the religion of Christianity, which 
he professed, in diffusing over the whole w r ork that air 
of honnetete, in which almost all the earlier romances 
are deficient. The incidents are numerous, novel, 
probable, and skilfully unfolded. The denouement is 
admirable ; it is natural; it grows out of the subject, 
and is in the highest degree touching and pathetic.' 
Scholl (Hist. Litt. Gr., vol. 6, p. 229) remarks, that 
“ the romance of Heliodorus is well conceived, and 
wrought up with great power; the episodes are to the 
purpose, and the characters and manners of the per 
sonages skilfully sustained.” “ No one can doubt, v 




HEL 

reserves Villemain, “that Heliodorus, when he wrote 
the work, was at least initiated in Christian senti¬ 
ments. This is felt by a kind of moral purity which 
contrasts strongly with the habitual license of the 
Greek fables; and the style even, as the learned Coray 
remarks, contains many expressions familiar to the ec¬ 
clesiastical writers. This styie is pure, polished, sym¬ 
metrical ; and the language of love receives a charac¬ 
ter of delicacy and reserve, which is very rare among 
the writers of antiquity.” It must not be disguised, 
however, that Huet, a courtier of Louis XIV., and the 
contemporary and admirer of Mademoiselle de Scu- 
dory, judged after the models of romance which were 
fashionable in his own century. Poetry, battles, cap¬ 
tivities, and recognitions fill up the piece ; there is no 
picture of the mind, no history of the character carried 
on with the development of the action. The incidents 
point to no particular era of society, although the learn¬ 
ed in history may perceive, from the tone of sentiment 
throughout, that the struggle had commenced between 
the pure and lofty spirit of Christianity and the gross- 
. ness of pagan idolatry. Egypt, as Villemain remarks, 
is neither ancient Egypt, nor the Egypt of the Ptole¬ 
mies, nor the Egypt of the Romans. Athens is nei¬ 
ther Athens free nor Athens conquered: in short, 
there is no individuality either in the places or persons; 
and the vague pictures of the French romances of the 
seventeenth century give scarcely a caricatured idea 
of the model from which they were drawn.—It may 
not be amiss to mention here an incident relative to 
the poet Racine and the work of Heliodorus which we 
have been considering. When Racine was at Port 
Royal learning Greek, his imagination almost smoth¬ 
ered to death by the dry erudition of the pious fathers, 
he laid hold instinctively on the romance of Heliodo¬ 
rus, as the only prop by which he might be preserved 
for his high destiny, even then, perhaps, shadowed dim¬ 
ly forth in his youthful mind. A tale of love, how¬ 
ever, surprised in the hands of a Christian boy, filled 
his instructers with horror, and the book was seized 
and thrown into the fire. Another and another copy 
met the same fate ; and poor Racine, thus excluded 
from the benefits of the common typographical art, 
printed the romance on his memory. A first love, woo¬ 
ed by stealth, and won in difficulty and danger, is always 
among the last to loose her hold on the affections; and 
Racine, in riper age, often fondly recurred to his for¬ 
bidden studies at Port Royal. From early youth, his 
son tells us, he had conceived an extraordinary pas¬ 
sion for Heliodorus; he admired both his style and 
the wonderful art with which the fable is conducted. 
—In the ecclesiastical history of Nicephorus Calistus, 
a story is told of Heliodorus, which, if true, would ex¬ 
hibit, on the part of the Thessalian church, somewhat 
of the fanatical spirit which in Scotland expelled Home 
from the administration of the altar. Some young 
persons having fallen into peril through the reading of 
such works, it was ordered by the provincial council, 
that all books whose tendency it might be to incite the 
rising generation to love, should be burned, and their 
authors, if ecclesiastics, deprived of their dignities. 
Heliodorus, rejecting the alternative which was offered 
him of suppressing his romance, lost his bishopric. 
This story, however, is nothing more than a mere ro¬ 
mance itself, as Bayle has shown, by proving that the 
requisition to suppress it could neither have been given 
nor refused at a time when the work was spread over 
all Greece. ( Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 9, p. 
125, seqq.) —Various editions have been published of 
the romance of Heliodorus. The best is that of Coray, 
Paris, 1804, 2 vols. 8vo. The edition of Mitscher- 
lich, Argent, 1798, 2 vols. 8vo, forming part of his 
Erotici Grceci, is not held in much estimation. 

Heliogabalus or Elagabalus, I. a deity among 
the Phoenicians. This deity, according to Capitolinus 
( Vit. Macrin ., c. 9) and Aurelius Victor, was the 
4 E 


HELIOGABALUS 

Sun. Lampridius, however (Vit*. Heitog., c. I), flue 
tuates between the Sun and Jupiter, while Spartianus 
( Vit. Caracall., c. 11) leaves it uncertain. The or¬ 
thography of the name is also disputed, some writing it 
Elagabalus, others Eleagabalus and Alagabalus. Sca- 
liger (ad Euseb., p. 212) makes the name of this di¬ 
vinity equivalent to the Hebrew Elah-GebaL, i. e., 
“Gebalitarum Dens.” (Consult, for other etymologies 
of the term, the remarks of Hamaker , Miscell. Phoe- 
nic., p. 119, seqq.) Herodian gives us an accurate 
description of the form under which this deity was 
worshipped (5, 3, 10, seqq.); he also informs us that 
by this appellation the Sun was meant, and that the 
deity in question was revered not only by the Syr¬ 
ians, but that the native satraps and barbarian kings 
were accustomed to send splendid presents to his 
shrine. According to Herodian, the god Heliogabalus 
was worshipped under the form of a large black stone, 
round below, and terminating above in a point; in 
other words, of a conical shape. This description is 
confirmed by the medals of Emesa, the principal seat 
of his worship, on which the conical stone is repre¬ 
sented. So also, on the medals of Antoninus Pius, 
struck in this same city, an eagle appears perched on 
a cone. (Mionnet., Rec. de Med., vol. 5, p. 227, 
seqq.) The same thing appears on medals of Cara- 
calla {Id., p. 229, n. 608), and on one (n. 607), an eagle 
with expanded wings stands before a conical stone in 
the middle of a hexastyle temple.—II. M. Aurelius 
Antoninus, a R,oman emperor. He was the grandson 
of Msesa, sister to the Empress Julia, the wife of Sep- 
timius Severus. Maesa had two daughters, Soasmis or 
Semiamira, the mother of the subject of this article, 
and Mammsea, mother of Alexander Severus. The 
true name of Heliogabalus was Varius Avitus Bassia- 
nus, and he was reported to have been the illegitimate 
son of Caracalla. He was born at Antioch, A.D. 
204. Massa took care of his infancy, and placed him, 
when five years of age, in the temple of the Sun at 
Emesa, to be educated as a priest; and through her 
influence he was made, while yet a boy, high-priest of 
the Sun. That divinity was called in Syria Helagabal 
or Elagabal, whence the young Varius assumed the 
name of Heliogabalus or Elagabalus. After the death 
of Caracalla and the elevation of Macrinus, the latter 
having incurred by his severity the dislike of the sol¬ 
diers, Ma?sa availed herself of this feeling to induce 
the officers to rise in favour of her grandson, whom 
she presented to them as the son of the murdered Car¬ 
acalla. Heliogabalus, who was then in his fifteenth 
year, was proclaimed emperor by the legion stationed 
at Emesa. Having put himself at their head, he was 
attacked by Macrinus, who at first had the advantage; 
but he and his mother Soaemis, with great spirit, brought 
the soldiers again to the charge, and defeated Macri¬ 
nus, who was overtaken in his flight and put to death, 
A.D. 218. Heliogabalus, having entered Antioch, 
wrote a letter to the senate, professing to take for his 
model Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, a name revered at 
Rome ; and he also assumed that emperor’s name. 
The senate acknowledged him, and he set out for 
Rome, but tarried several months on his way amid 
festivities and amusements, and at last stopped at Ni- 
comedia for the winter. In the following year he ar¬ 
rived at Rome, and began a career of debauchery, ex¬ 
travagance, and cruelty, which lasted the remaining 
three years of his reign, and the disgusting details of 
which are given by Lampridius, Herodian, and Dio 
Cassius. Some critics have imagined, especially from 
the shortness of his reign, that there must be some ex¬ 
aggeration in these accounts, for he could hardly have 
done, in so short a time, all the mischief that is attrib¬ 
uted to him. That he was extremely dissolute, and to¬ 
tally unfit for reigning, is certain ; and this is not to be 
wondered at, from his previous Eastern education, hia 
extreme youth, the corrupt example of his mother, his 

585 



ri E L 


HEL 

/ 

sudden elevation, and the general profligacy of the 
times. He surrounded himself with gladiators, actors, 
and other base favourites, who made an unworthy use 
of their influence. He married several wives, among 
others a Vestal. The imperial palace became a scene 
of debauch and open prostitution. Heliogabalus, being 
attached to the superstitions of the East, raised a tem¬ 
ple on the Palatine Hill to the Syrian god whose name 
he bore, and plundered the temples of the Roman gods 
to enrich his own. He put to death many senators; 
he established a senate of women, under the presidency 
of his mother Soaemis, which body decided all questions 
relative to female dresses, visits, precedences, amuse¬ 
ments, &c. He wore his pontifical vest as high-priest of 
the Sun, with a rich tiara on his head. His grandmother 
Msesa, seeing his folly, thought of conciliating the Ro¬ 
mans by associating with him, as Caesar, his younger 
cousin, Alexander Severus, who soon became a favour¬ 
ite with the people. Heliogabalus, who had consented 
to the association, became afterward jealous of his 
cousin, and wished to deprive him of his honours, but 
he could not obtain the consent of the senate. His 
next measure was to spread the report of Alexander’s 
death, which produced an insurrection among the prae¬ 
torians. And Heliogabalus, having repaired to the 
camp to quell the mutiny, was murdered, together with 
his mother and favourites, and his body was thrown 
into the Tiber, A.D. 222. He was succeeded by 
Alexander Severus. Heliogabalus was eighteen years 
of age at the time of his death, and had reigned three 
years, nine months, and four days. ( Lampridl., Vit. 
Hehogab.—Herodian , 5, 3, seqq.—Dio Cass., 78, 30, 
seqq. — Id., 79, 1, seqq.) 

HeliopSlis, a famous city of Egypt, situate a little 
to the east of the apex of the Delta, not far from mod¬ 
ern Cairo. (Strab ., 805.) In Hebrew it is styled 
On or Aun. ( Well's Sacred Geography, s. v. — Ex- 
curs., 560.—Compare the remarks of Cellarius, Geog. 
Antiq., vol. 1, p. 802.) In the Septuagint it is call¬ 
ed Heliopolis ('HTuoiroTug), or the city of the Sun. 

( Schleusner, Lex. Vet. Test., vof. 2, p. 20, ed. Glasg. 
—In Jeremiah, xliii., 13, “ Beth Shemim ,” i.e., Domus 
Solis.) Herodotus also mentions it by this name, and 
speaks of its inhabitants as being the wisest and most 
ingenious of all the Egyptians (2, 3.—Compare Nic. 
Damascenus, in Euseb., Prcep. Evang., 9, 16). Ac¬ 
cording to Berosus, this was the city of Moses. It 
was, in fact, a place of resort for all the Greeks who 
visited Egypt for instruction. Hither came Herodo¬ 
tus, Plato, Eudoxus, and others, and imbibed much of 
the learning which they afterward disseminated among 
their own countrymen. Plato, in particular, resided 
here three years. The city was built, according to 
Strabo (/. c.), on a long, artificial mound of earth, so 
as to be out of the reach of the inundations of the Nile. 

It had an oracle of Apollo, and a famous temple of 
the Sun. In this temple was fed and adored the sa¬ 
cred ox Mnevis, as Apis was at Memphis. This city 
was laid waste with fire and sword by Cambyses, and 
its college of priests all slaughtered. Strabo saw it 
in a deserted state, and shorn of all its splendour. 
Heliopolis was famed also for its fountain of excellent 
water, which still remains, and gave rise to the sub¬ 
sequent Arabic name of the place, Ain Shems, or the 
fountain of the sun. The modern name is Matarea, 
or cool water. For some valuable remarks on the site 
of the ancient Heliopolis, in opposition to Larcher and 
Bryant, consult Clarke's Travels , vol. 5, prcef., xv., 
seqq., and p. 140, in notis. Larcher erroneously pre¬ 
tends, that Heliopolis was situate within the Delta, and 
that Matarea stands on the site of an insignificant 
town of the same name, which has been confounded 
with the more ancient city. A solitary obelisk is all 
that remains at the present day of this once celebrated 
place. Other monuments, however, exist no doubt 
around this pillar, concealed only by a thin superficies 


of soil. For a description of this obelisk, consult ttis 
work of the learned traveller just mentioned, vol. 5, p. 
143.—II. A celebrated city of Syria, southwest of 
Emesa, on the opposite side of the Orontes. Its Gre¬ 
cian name, Heliopolis ('HAcovnoAif), “ City of the 
Sun,” is merely a translation of the native term Baal- 
beck, which appellation the ruins at the present day 
retain. Heliopolis was famed for its temple of the 
Sun, erected by Antoninus Pius ( Malala, Chron., 11, 
p. 119), and the ruins of this celebrated pile still attest 
its former magnificence. Venus was also revered in 
this city, and its maidens were therefore said to be 
the fairest in the land. ( Expositio Mundi, &c., Ge- 
nev., p. 14.) 

Helium, a name given to the mouth of the Maese 
in Germany. ( Plin ., 4, 15.) 

Helius ("H/liof), the Greek name of the Sun or 
Apollo. 

Hellanicus, a Greek historian, a native of Myti- 
lene, who flourished about 460 B.C. He wrote an ac¬ 
count of various countries, both Grecian and Barba * 
rian, in which he availed himself of the labours of He- 
catseus and Hippys. Various productions of his are 
referred to by the ancient writers, under the titles of 
AiyvTTTiaKa, A loTand, ’Apyohuca, &c. In order tc 
arrange his narratives in chronological order, he made 
use of the catalogue of the priestesses of Juno at Ar¬ 
gos, deposited in the temple at Sicyon. This is tho 
first attempt that we find of the employment of chro¬ 
nology in history.—According to the ordinary deriva¬ 
tion of this name, from 'EA/idf, “ Greece ,” and vi/cy, 

“ victory," the penult ought to be long. As, however, 
Hellanicus was of ^Eolic origin, it is more than proba¬ 
ble, as Sturz remarks, that his name is the HDolic 
form merely of 'E Xkyvinoq, and hence has the penult 
short. Lobeck (ad Phryn., p. 670) opposes this, how¬ 
ever, and derives the name from 'E EXdq and viay, as 
above, citing at the same time Tzetzes (Postham., 

778), with whom it occurs as a fourth Epitrite (- 

— w). And hence Passow (Lex. Gr.) considers the 
penult doubtful. The opinion of Sturz, however, 
seems more deserving of being followed.—The frag¬ 
ments whicljTemain of the writings of Hellanicus were 
published by Sturz in 1787, Lips., 8vo ; and a sec¬ 
ond edition in 1826. They are given also in the Mu¬ 
seum Criticum , vol. 2, p. 90, seqq., Cambr., 1826. 

Hellas, a term first applied to a city and region of 
Thessaly, in the district of Phthiotis, but afterward ex¬ 
tended to all Thessaly, and finally made a general ap¬ 
pellation for the whole of Greece. “ It is universally 
acknowledged,” observes Cramer, “ that the name of 
Hellas, which afterward served to designate the whole 
of what we now call Greece, was originally applied to 
a particular district of Thessaly. At that early period, 
as we are assured by Thucydides, the common de¬ 
nomination of Hellenes had not yet been received in 
that wide acceptation which was afterward attached 
to it, but each separate district enjoyed its distinctive 
appellation, derived mostly from the clan by which it 
was held, or from the chieftain who was regarded as 
the parent of the race. In proof of this assertion, the 
historian appeals to Homer, who, though much later 
than the siege of Troy, never applies a common term 
to the Greeks in general, but calls them Danai, Ar- 
givi, and Achaai. The opinion thus advanced by Thu¬ 
cydides finds support in Apollodorus, who states, tbit 
when Homer mentions the Hellenes, we must under¬ 
stand him as referring to a people who occupied a par 
ticular district in Thessaly. The same writer ob¬ 
serves, that it is only from the time of Hesiod arid 
Archilochus that we hear of the Panhellenes. (Apol- 
lod., ap. Strab., 370.) It is true that the word occurs 
in our present copies of Homer, as in 11, 2, 530, but 
Aristarchus and other critics rejected it as spurious. 
(Schol. ad il., 1. c.) From Strabo, however, we learn 
that this was a disputed point j and he himself seems 






HELLAS. 


HELLAS. 


nclined to imagine that Homer did not assign to the 
word "EAAap so limited a signification as Thucydides 
supposed. But, whatever may be thought of the testi¬ 
mony of Homer in regard to this question, we can 
have no doubt as to the extension which the terms 
’E/U, ag and "PT^yveg acquired in the time of Herodo¬ 
tus, Scylax, and Thucydides. Scylax, whose age is 
disputed, but of whom we may safely affirm that he 
wrote about the time of the Peloponnesian war, in¬ 
cludes under Hellas all the country situated south of 
the Ambracian gulf and the Peneus. ( Peripl ., p. IS, 
et 25.) Herodotus extends its limits still farther north, 
by taking in Thesprotia (2, 56), or, at least, that part 
of it which is south of the river Acheron (8,47). But 
it is more usual to exclude Epirus fromGraecia Pro¬ 
pria, and to place its northwestern extremity at Am- 
bracia, on the Ionian Sea, while Mount Homole, near 
the mouth of the Peneus, was looked upon as forming 
its boundary on the opposite side. This coincides 
with the statement of Scylax, and also with that of 
Dicaearchus in his descriptions of Greece (v. 31, seqq.) 
The name Graecia, whence that of Greece has de¬ 
scended unto us, was given to this country by the 
Romans. It comes from the Graeei, one of the an¬ 
cient tribes of Epirus ( Aristot., Meteor., 1, 14), who 
never became of any historical importance, but whose 
name must at some period have been extensively 
spread on the western coast, since the inhabitants of 
Italy appear to have known the country at first under 
this name. 

1. History, of Greece from the earliest times to the 
Trojan War. 

The people whom we call Greeks (the Hellenes) 
were not the earliest inhabitants of the country. 
Among the names of the many tribes which are said 
to have occupied the land previous to the Hellenes, 
the most celebrated is that of the Pelasgi, who ap¬ 
pear to have been settled in most parts of Greece, and 
from whom a considerable part of the Greek popula-■ 
tion was probably descended. The Caucones, Le- 
leges, and other barbarous tribes, who also inhabited 
Greece, are all regarded by a modern writer (Thirlwall, 
History of Greece, vol. 1, p. 32-61) as parts of the 
Pelasgic nation. He remarks, “ that the name Pelas- 
gians was a general one, like that of Saxons, Franks, 
or Alemanni, and that each of the Pelasgian tribes had 
also one peculiar to itself.” All these tribes, how¬ 
ever, were obliged to submit to the power of the Hel¬ 
lenes, who eventually spread over the greater part of 
Greece. Their original seat was, according to Aris¬ 
totle ( Meteor ., 1, 14), near Dodona, in Epirus, but they 
first appeared in the south of Thessaly about B.C. 
1384, according to the received chronology. In ac¬ 
cordance with the common method of the Greeks, of 
inventing names to account for the origin of nations, 
the Hellenes are represented as descended from Hel- 
len, who had three sons, Dorus, Xuthus, and HEolus. 
Achaeus and Ion are represented as the sons of Xu¬ 
thus ; and from these four, Dorus, iEolus, Achaeus, and 
Ion, the Dorians, JEolians, Achaans, and Ionians were 
descended, who formed the four tribes into which the 
Hellenic nation was for many centuries divided, and who 
were distinguished from each other by many peculiari¬ 
ties in language and institutiqns. At the same time 
that the Hellenic race was spreading itself over the 
whole land, numerous colonies from the East are said to 
have settled in Greece, and to their influence many wri¬ 
ters have attributed the civilization of the inhabitants. 
Thus we read of Egyptian colonies in Argos and At¬ 
tica, of a Phoenician colony at Thebes in Boeotia, 
and of a Mysian colony led by Pelops, from whom the 
southern part of Greece derived its name of Pelopon¬ 
nesus. The very existence of these colonies has been 
doubted by some writers ; but, though the evidence of 
each one individually is perhaps not sufficient to satis¬ 


fy a critical inquirer, yet the uniform tradition of the 
Greeks authorizes us in the belief, that Greece did in 
early times receive colonies from the East; a supposi¬ 
tion which is not in itself improbable, considering the 
proximity of the Asiatic coast. The time which 
elapsed from the appearance of the Hellenes in Thes¬ 
saly to the siege of Troy is usually known by the 
name of the Heroic Age. Whatever opinion we may 
form of the Homeric poems, it can hardly be doubted 
that they present a correct picture of the manners and 
customs of the age in which the poet lived, which, in 
all probability, differed little from the manners and 
customs of the Heroic Age. The state of soc.e. 
described by Komervery much resembled that which 
existed in Europe during the feudal ages. No great 
power had vec alisen in Greece ; it was divided into 
a number of small sWtes, governed by hereditary chiefs, 
whose power wrs limited by a martial aristocracy. 
Piracy was an honourable occupation, and war the de¬ 
light of noble souls. Thucydides informs us (1, 4), 
that the commencement of Gutu.icn civilization is to be 
dated from the reign of Minos of Crete, who acquired 
a naval power and cleared tho JEjean Sea of pirates. 
Among the most celebrated htmeo of this period were 
Bellerophon and Perseus, whoso calentures were laid 
in the East; Theseus, the king of Athens, and Her¬ 
cules. Tradition also preserved the. occount of expe¬ 
ditions undertaken by several chiefs united togethe., 
such as that of the Argonauts, of the Seven agaim * 
Thebes, and of the Siege of Troy, B.C. 1184. 

2. From the Siege of Troy to the Commencement e.' 
the Persian wars, B.C. 500. 

We learn from Thucydides (1, 12), that the popula 
tion of Greece was in a very unsettled state for som.- 
time after the Trojan war. Of the various migration 
which appear to have taken place, the most importan 
in their consequences were those of the Boeotians fron 
Thessaly into the country afterward called Boeotia 
and of the Dorians into Peloponnesus, the former in 
the sixtieth and the latter in the eightieth year after the 
Trojan war. About the same period the western 
coast of Asia Minor was colonized by the Greeks. 
The ancient inhabitants of Boeotia, who had been driven 
out of their homes by the invasion of the Boeotians, 
together with some JEolians, whence it has acquired 
the name of the ^Eolian migration, left Boeotia B.C. 
1124, and settled in Lesbos and the northwestern 
corner of Asia Minor. They were followed by the 
Ionians in B.C. 1040, who, having been driven from 
their abode on the Corinthian Gulf, had taken refuge 
in Attica, whence they emigrated to Asia Minor and 
settled on the Lydian coast. The southwestern part 
of the coast of Asia Minor was also colonized about 
the same period by Dorians. The number of Greek 
colonies, considering the extent of the mother country, 
was very great; and the readiness with which the 
Greeks left their homes to settle in foreign parts forms 
a characteristic feature in their national character. In 
the seventh century before Christ the Greek colonies 
took another direction : Cyrene, in Africa, was found¬ 
ed by the inhabitants of Thera, and the coasts of Sici¬ 
ly and the southern part of Italy became studded with 
so many Greek cities, that it acquired the surname 
of the Great, or Greater, Greece.—The two states of 
Greece which attained the greatest historical celebrity 
were Sparta and Athens. The power, of Athens was 
of later growth ; but Sparta had, from the time of the 
Dorian conquest, taken the lead among the Pelopon¬ 
nesian states, a position which she maintained by the 
conquest of the fertile country of Messenia, B.C. 688. 
Her superiority was probably owing to the nature ol 
her political institutions, which are said to have been 
fixed on a firm basis by her celebrated lawgiver Ly- 
curgus, B.C. 884. At the head of the polity were 
two hereditary chiefs, but their power was greatly lim- 

587 



HELLAS. 


HELLAS. 


ted by a jealous aristocracy. Her territories were 
also increased by the conquest of Tegea in Arcadia. 
Athens only rose to importance in the century prece¬ 
ding the Persian wars ; but even in this period her 
power was not more than a match for the little states 
of Megaris and iEgina. The city was long harassed 
by intestine commotions till the time of Solon, B.C. 
594, who was chosen by his fellow-citizens to frame 
a new constitution and a new code of laws, to which 
mu:h of the future greatness of Athens must be as¬ 
cribed. We have already seen that the kingly form 
of government was prevalent in the Heroic Age. But, 
during the period that elapsed between the Trojan 
war and the Persian invasion, hereditary political pow¬ 
er was abolished in almost all the Greek states, with 
the exception of Sparta, and a republican form of 
government established in its stead. In studying 
the history of the Greeks, we must bear in mind 
that almost every city formed an independent state, 
and that, with the exception of Athens and Sparta, 
which exacted obedience from the other towns of At¬ 
tica and Laconia respectively, there was hardly any 
state which possessed more than a few miles of terri¬ 
tory. Frequent wars between each other were the 
almost unavoidable consequence of the existence of 
so many small states nearly equal in power. The 
evils which arose from this state of things were partly 
remedied by the influence of the Amphictyonic coun¬ 
cil, and by the religious games and festivals which 
were held at stated periods in different parts of Greece, 
and during the celebration of which no wars were car¬ 
ried on. In the sixth century before the Christian 
era Greece rapidly advanced in knowledge and civili¬ 
zation. Literature and the fine arts were already cul¬ 
tivated in Athens under the auspices of Pisistratus 
and his sons ; and the products of remote countries 
were introduced into Greece by the merchants of Cor¬ 
inth and iEgina. 

3. From the Commencement of the Persian Wars to the 
Death of Philip of Macedon, B.C. 336. 

This was the most splendid period of Grecian histo- 
7- The Greeks, in their resistance to the Persians, 
and the part they took in the burning of Sardis, B.C. 
499, drew upon them the vengeance of Darius. After 
the reduction of the Asiatic Greeks, a Persian army 
was sent into Attica, but was entirely defeated at 
Marathon, B.C. 490, by the Athenians under Miltia- 
des. Ten years afterward the whole power of the 
Persian empire was directed against Greece ; an im¬ 
mense army, led in person by Xerxes, advanced as far 
as Attica, and received the submission of almost all 
the Grecian states, with the exception of Athens and 
Sparta. But this expedition also failed ; the Persian 
fleet was destroyed in the battles of Artemisium and 
Salamis ; and the land forces were entirely defeated 
m the following year, B.C. 479, at Platan in Bmotia. 
Sparta had, previous to the Persian invasion, been 
regarded by the other Greeks as the first power in 
Greece, and accordingly she obtained the supreme 
command of the army and fleet in the Persian war. 
But, during the course of this war, the Athenians had 
made greater sacrifices and had shown a greater de¬ 
gree of courage and patriotism. After the battle of 
Platsea a confederacy was formed by the Grecian 
states for carrying on the war against the Persians. 
Sparta was at first placed at the head of it; but the 
allies, disgusted with the tyranny of Pausanias, the 
Spartan commander, gave the supremacy to Athens. 
The allies, who consisted of the inhabitants of the isl¬ 
ands and coasts of the ./Egean Sea, were to furnish con- 
trioutions in money and ships, and the delicate task of 
assessing the amount which each state was to pay was 
assigned to Aristides. The yearly contribution was 
settled at 460 talents, about $485,500, and Delos was 
shosen as the common treasury. The Athenians, un¬ 


der the command of Cimon, carried on the war vig 
orously, defeated the Persian fleets, and plundered 
the maritime provinces of the Persian empire. During 
this period the power of Athens rapidly increased; she 
possessed a succession of distinguished statesmen, 
Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, and Pericles, who al) 
contributed to the advancement of her power, though 
differing in their political views. Her maritime great¬ 
ness was founded by Themistocles, her revenues were 
increased by Pericles, and her general prosperity, in 
connexion with other causes, tended to produce a 
greater degree of refinement than existed in any other 
part of Greece. Literature was cultivated, and the 
arts of architecture and sculpture, which were employ 
ed to ornament the city,were carried to a degree of ex 
cellence that has never since been surpassed. While 
Athens was advancing in power, Sparta had to main¬ 
tain a war against the Messenians, who again revolted, 
and were joined by a great number of the Spanan slaves 
(B.C. 464-455). But, though Sparta made no efforts 
during this period to restrain the Athenian power, i * 
was not because she wanted the will, but the means. 
These, however, were soon furnished by the Atheni¬ 
ans themselves, who began to treat the allied states 
with great tyranny, and to regard them as subjects, 
not as independent states in alliance. The tribute 
was raised from 460 to 600 talents, the treasury was 
removed from Delos to Athens, and the decision 
of all important suits was referred to the Athenian 
courts. When any state withdrew from the alliance, 
its citizens were considered by the Athenians as reb¬ 
els, and immediately reduced to subjection. The 
dependant states, anxious to throw off the Athenian 
dominion, entreated the assistance of Sparta, and 
thus, in conjunction with other causes, arose the wai 
between Sparta and Athens, which lasted for twenty- 
seven years (B. C. 431-404), and is usually known 
as the Peloponnesian war. It terminated by again 
placing Sparta at the head of the Grecian states. 
Soon after the conclusion of this war, Sparta engaged 
in a contest with the Persian empire, which lasted 
from B.C. 400 to 394. The splendid successes which 
x4gesilaus, the v Spartan king, obtained over the Persian 
troops in Asia Minor, and the manifest weakness of the 
Persian empire, which had been already shown by the 
retreat of the ten thousand Greeks from the heart of 
the Persian empire, appear to have induced Agesilaus 
to entertain the design of overthrowing the Persian 
monarchy ; but he was obliged to return to his native 
country to defend it against a powerful confederacy, 
which had been formed by the Corinthians, Thebans, 
Argives, Athenians, and Thessalians, for the purpose 
of throwing off the Spartan dominion. The confeder¬ 
ates were not, however, successful in their attempt; 
and the Spartan supremacy was again secured for a 
brief period by a general peace, made B.C. 387, usu¬ 
ally known by the name of the peace of Antalcidas. 
Ten years afterward the rupture between Thebes and 
Sparta began, which led to a general war in Greece, 
and for a short time placed Thebes at the head of the 
Grecian states. The greatness of Thebes was princi¬ 
pally owing to the wisdom and valour of two of her 
citizens, Pelopidas and Epaminondas. After the 
death of Epaminondas at the battle of Mantinea, B.C. 
362, Thebes again sunk to its former obscurity. The 
Spartan supremacy was however destroyed by this 
war, and her power still more humbled by the restora¬ 
tion of Messenia to independence, B.C. 369. From 
the conclusion of this war to the reign of Philip of 
Macedon Greece remained without any ruling pow¬ 
er. It is only necessary here to mention the part 
which Philip’ took in the sacred war , which last¬ 
ed ten years (B.C. 356-346), in which he appeared 
as the defender of the Amphictyonic council, and 
which terminated by the conquest of the Phocians 
The Athenians, urged on by Demosthenes, made an al 




HEL 


HEi 


fiance with the Thebans for the purpose of resisting 
Philip; but their defeat at Chseronea, B.C. 388, se¬ 
cured for the Macedonian king the supremacy of 
Greece. In the same year a congress of Grecian 
states was held at Corinth, in which Philip was chosen 
generalissimo of the Greeks in a projected war against 
the Persian empire ; but his assassination in B.C. 336 
caused this enterprise to devolve on his son Alexander. 

4. From the Accession of Alexander the Great to the 
Roman Conquest, B.C. 146. 

The conquests of Alexander extended the Grecian 
influence over the greater part of Asia west of the In¬ 
dus. After his death the dominion of the East was 
contested by his generals, and two powerful empires 
were permanently established ; that of the Ptolemies 
in Egypt and the Seleucidse in Syria. The dominions 
of the early Syrian kings embraced the greater part of 
western Asia ; but their empire was soon divided into 
various independent kingdoms, such as that of Bactria, 
Pergamus, &c., in all of which the Greek language 
was spoken, not merely at court, but to a considera¬ 
ble extent in the cities. From the death of Alexander 
to the Roman conquest, Macedon remained the ruling 
power in Greece. The fiEtolian and Achaean leagues 
were formed., the former B.C. 284, the latter B.C. 
281, for the purpose of resisting the Macedonian 
kings. Macedonia was conquered by the Romans 
B.C. 197, and the Greek states declared independent. 
This, however, was merely nominal; they only ex¬ 
changed the rule of the Macedonian kings for that of 
the Roman people; and in B.C. 146, Greece was re¬ 
duced to the form of a Roman province, called Achaia, 
though certain cities, such as Athens, Delphi, &c., 
were allowed to have the rank of free towns. The 
history of Greece, from this period, forms part of the 
Roman empire. It was overrun by the Goths in 
A.D. 267, and again in A.D. 398, under Alaric; and, 
after being occupied by the Crusaders and Venetians, 
at last fell into the hands of the Turks, on the con¬ 
quest of Constantinople ; from whom, with the excep¬ 
tion of Macedonia, Thessaly, and Epirus, it is now 
again liberated. ( Encycl. Us. Know!, vol. 12, p. 426, 
seqq.) 

Helle, a daughter of Athamas and Nephele, sister 
to Phrixus. She and her brother Phrixus, in order 
to avoid the cruel persecution of their stepmother Ino, 
fled from Thessaly on the back of a golden fleeced ram, 
which transported them through the air. They pro¬ 
ceeded safely till they came to the sea between the 
promontory of Sigaeum and the Chersonese, into which 
Helle fell, and it was named from her Hellespontus 
( Helle's Sea). Phrixus proceeded on his way to Col¬ 
chis. ( Vid. Athamas, Argonautae, Phrixus.) The 
tomb of Helle was placed, according to Herodotus, on 
the shores of the Chersonese, near Cardia. {Herod., 
7, 58.) 

Hellen, the fabled son of Deucalion and Pyrrha, 
and progenitor of the Hellenic race. ( Vid. Hellas, <) 
1, History of Greece, from the earliest times to the 
Trojan war.) 

Hellenes ("EA/l yveg), the general name of the Gre¬ 
cian race. It was first borne by the tribes that came 
in from the north, at an early period, and eventually 
spread themselves over the whole of Greece. Their 
original seat was, according to Aristotle {Meteor., 1, 
14), near Dodona, in Epirus ; but they first appeared 
in the south of Thessaly, about B.C. 1384, according 
to the common chronology. ( Vid. Hellas, 1, His¬ 
tory of Greece, from the earliest times to the Trojan 
war.) 

Hellespontus, now the Dardanelles, a narrow strait 
between Asia and Europe, near the Propontis, which re¬ 
ceived its name, it is said, from Helle, who was drown¬ 
ed there in her voyage to Colchis. ( Vid. Helle.) Its 
modern name of Dardanelles is supposed to come from 


the ancient Dardania in its vicinity. Homer’s epithet 
of nhariig, “ broad," applied to so narrow a strait {II., 
7, 86.—Compare II., 17, 432.— Od., 24, 82.— AZs- 
c.hyl., Pers., 880), has given rise to much discussion, 
and is one of those points which have a bearing on the 
long-agitated question respecting the site of Troy. 
Hobhouse undertakes to explain the seeming incon¬ 
sistency of Homer’s term, by showing that the Hel¬ 
lespont should be considered as extending down to 
the promontory of Lectum, the northern boundary of 
fiEolia, and that the whole line of coast to this point 
from Abydus, was considered by Strabo as being the 
shores of the Hellespont, not of the JEgean. {Jour 
ney, Let. 42.—Vol. 2, p. 206, seqq., Am. ed.) The 
same writer observes, with regard to the breadth of 
the Hellespont, that it nowhere seems to be less than 
a mile across ; and yet the ancient measurements give 
only seven stadia, or eight hundred and seventy-five pa¬ 
ces. Walpole, on the other hand, as cited by Clarke 
{Travels, vol. 3, p. 91, in notis, Eng. ed.), assigns to 
the epithet Trharvg the meaning of “ salt,” or “ brack¬ 
ish, ” referring, in support of this conjecture, to Aris¬ 
totle ( Meteorol., 2, 3.— Op., ed. Duval, vol. 1, p. 556, 
D. et E.), who uses it three times in this sense, and to 
Hesychius. (Compare Herod., 2, 108, and Schweigh., 
ad loc.) This, however, is at best a very forced ex¬ 
planation. Homer appears to consider the Hellespont 
rather as a mightyjiver than a winding arm of the sea ; 
and hence rcharvg, “ broad,” becomes no inappropri¬ 
ate term, more especially if we take into the connex¬ 
ion the analogous epithets of dydppoog (“ rapidly-flow- 
ing”), and arcelpov.{“ boundless”), which are else¬ 
where applied by him to the same Hellespont. {II., 
2, 845.— II, 24, 545.) Casaubon, in his commentary 
on Athenasus, adduces the passage quoted above by 
Walpole, together with one or two others, likewise 
from Aristotle, in favour of rrXarvg meaning “salt;” 
and a critic in the Edinburgh Review (vol. 21, p. 136), 
whom Blomfield quaintly designates as “ censor qui- 
dam semidoctus,” seeks to advocate the same opinion. 
It has few if any advocates, however, at the present 
day. (Consult Blomf, Gloss, ad JEsch., Pers., 880. 
—Some scholars suppose, that when Homer speaks of 
the “ broad Hellespont,” he actually means the north¬ 
ern part of the iEgean. Thus, Heyne observes, “ Ho¬ 
mer always places the camp on the Hellespont, in the 
more extensive signification of that term, as meaning 
the northern part of the fiEgean Sea {II, 18, 150 ; 24, 
346.— Od., 24, 82.— II, 7, 86, &c ), and hence should 
be derived the explanation of ^he epithets Tcharvg and 
uTrdpuv.” {Beschreib., der Eb. von Troja, p. 250.; 
—Whether the denomination Hellespont was derived 
from EXXdg, Greece at large {Pind., Pyth., 7, 7.— 
Id. ibid., 10, 29), or from 'E/M, dg, the province or 
city {Strab.,iSl), or from Helle, according to the popu¬ 
lar legend, cannot now be ascertained.—Stephanus of 
Byzantium (p. 232, ed. Berkel) says the earlier name 
of the Hellespont was the Borysthenes {hopvotj^vyg). 
(Compare Ritter, Vorhalle, p. 174.) Perhaps a care¬ 
ful investigation of the subject would lead to the con¬ 
clusion, that Homer gives the name of Hellespont to 
the whole Propontis. {Classical Journal, vol. 16, p. 
64.)—The Hellespont is celebrated for the love and 
death of Leander. {Vid. Hero, and Leander, and the 
remarks under the latter article). It is famed also for 
the bridge of boats which Xerxes built over it when 
he invaded Greece. ( Vid. remarks under the article 
Abydus, I.) 

Hellopia, a district of Eubcea, in which Histiaea 
was situated. {Strab., 445.—Compare Herodot., 8,23.) 

Helorus, I. a river of Sicily, near the southern ex¬ 
tremity of the island, now the Abiso. It is mention¬ 
ed by several of the ancient poets, on account of the 
remarkably fertile country through which it flows. 

( Virg., 2En., 3, 659.— Ovid, Fast., 4, 487, &c.) Sib 
ius Italicus (14, 270) gives it the epithet of clamosus , 

589 





H E L 


HELOTiE. 


referring either to the noise of its waters in the numer¬ 
ous caverns found along its banks, or to the laments 
occasioned by its inundations of the neighbourhood. 
(Mannert, Geogr., vol. 10, pt. 2, p. 340.)—II. A town 
of Sicily, near the mouth of the river Helorus. ( Steph. 
Byz., s. v. "E Xopoq.) Pliny speaks of it, however, as 
a mere castle or fortified post, with a good fishery at¬ 
tached to it. But it was, in truth, a very ancient city, 
and very probably a place of some importance before 
the arrival of the Greeks. The adjacent country was 
very fertile and beautiful. Hence Ovid (l. c.) speaks 
of the “ Helorian Tempe,” and Diodorus Siculus (13, 
19) of the 'EXcipiov Tcedtov, “ Helorian plain.” Com¬ 
pare also Virgil (l. c.), “ Prcepingue solum stagnantis 
Helori .” The remains of this city are called Muri 
Ucci. 

Helos, I. a town of Laconia, on the left bank of the 
Eurotas, and not far from the mouth of that river. It 
was said to have owed its origin to Helius, the son of 
Perseus. The inhabitants of this town, having re¬ 
volted against the Dorians and Heraclidse, were re¬ 
duced to slavery, and called Helots, which name was 
afterward extended to the various people who were 
held in bondage by the Spartans. ( Pausan., 3, 20.) 
Ephorus, as cited by Strabo (364), makes Agis to have 
reduced the Helots to subjection ; but Pausanias (3, 
2) speaks of a much later reduction of the place. To 
reconcile the statements of these two writers, we must 
suppose, that, at the subjugation of Helos by Agis, 
about 200 years before, some of the inhabitants had 
been suffered to remain, and that, at the time mention¬ 
ed by Pausanias, they were finally destroyed or re¬ 
moved. Helos itself remained to the time of Thu¬ 
cydides (4, 54) and of Xenophon (Hist. Gr., 6, 5, 32): 
perhaps a fortress on the coast. ( Clinton , Fasti Hel- 
lenici , 2 d ed., p. 405, note z.) Polybius says (5, 19, 
8 ; 20, 12), that the district of Helos was the most 
extensive and fertile part of Laconia ; but the coast 
was marshy. In Strabo’s time Helos was only a village, 
and some years later Pausanias informs us it was in 
ruins. In Lapie’s map the vestiges of Helos are placed 
at Tsyli, about five miles from the Eurotas, and Sir 
W. Gell observes that the marsh of Helos is to the 
east of the mouth of that river. (Gell's Itin. of the 
Morea, p. 233.— Cramer's Ancient Greece , vol. 3, p. 
193, seqq.) 

Helots (E tXtirat,), and Helotes (Etilwref), the 
Helots or bondsmen of the Spartans. The common 
account, observes Muller (Dorians, vol. 2, p. 30, Eng. 
trans. —Vol. 2, p. 33, German work), of the origin of 
this class is, that the inhabitants of the maritime town 
of Helos were reduced by Sparta to this state of deg¬ 
radation, after an insurrection against the Dorians al¬ 
ready established in power. This explanation, how¬ 
ever, rests merely on an etymology, and that by no 
means probable, since such a Gentile name as EcXug 
(which seems to be the more ancient form) cannot by 
any method of formation have been derived from "EAo<y 
The word ElTiug is probably a derivative from "EAw in 
a passive sense, and consequently means “a prisoner." 
This derivation was known in ancient times. (Com¬ 
pare Schol., Plat., Alcib., 1, p. 78, and Lennep, Ety- 
mol., p. 257.) Perhaps the word signifies those who 
were taken after having resisted to the uttermost. It 
appears to me, however, that they were an aboriginal 
race, which was subdued at a very early period, and 
which immediately passed over as slaves to the Doric 
conquerors. In speaking of the condition of the He¬ 
lots, we will consider their political rights and their 
personal treatment under different heads, though in fact 
the two subjects are very nearly connected. 'The first 
were doubtless exactly defined by law and custom, 
though the expressions made use of by ancient authors 
are frequently vague and ambiguous. “ They were,” 
says Ephorus (ap. Strab ., 365), “ in a certain point of 
view, public slaves. Their possessor could neither 
590 


liberate them, nor sell them beyond the borders.’* 
From this it is evident that they were considered as 
belonging properly to the state, which to a certain de¬ 
gree permitted them to be possessed by, and appor¬ 
tioned them out to, individuals, reserving to itself the 
power of enfranchising them. But to sell them out of 
the country was not in the power even of the state; and, 
to the best of our knowledge, such an event never oc¬ 
curred. It is, upon the whole, most probable, that in¬ 
dividuals had no power to sell them at all, as they '&e- 
longed chiefly to the landed property, and this was un 
alienable. On these lands they had certain fixed dwell¬ 
ings of their own, and particular services and payments 
were prescribed to them. They paid as rent a fixed 
measure of corn; not, however, like the Periceci, to 
the state, but to their masters. As this quantity had 
been definitively settled at a very early period (to raise 
the amount being forbidden under heavy imprecations), 
the Helots were the persons who profited by a good, 
and lost by a bad, harvest, which must have been to 
them an encouragement to industry and good husband¬ 
ry ; a motive which would have been wanting if the 
profit and loss had merely affected the landlords. And 
by this means, as is proved by the accounts respecting 
the Spartan agriculture, a careful management of the 
cultivation of the soil was kept up. By means of the 
rich produce of the lands, and in part by plunder ob¬ 
tained in war, they collected a considerable property, 
to the attainment of which almost every access was 
closed to the Spartans. The cultivation of the land, 
however, was not the only duty of the Helots ; they 
also attended upon their masters at the public meals, 
who, according to the Lacedaemonian principle of a 
community of property, mutually lent them to one an¬ 
other. ( Xen., Rep. Lac., 6, 3.— Aristot ., Pol., 2, 2, 
5.) A large number of them was also employed by 
the state in public works. In the field the Helots nev¬ 
er served as Hoplitae, except in extraordinary cases , 
and then it was the general practice afterward to give 
them their liberty. (Compare Thucyd., 7, 19, and 4, 
80.) On other occasions they attended the regular 
army as light-armed troops (ipiTiol) ; and that their 
numbers were very considerable may be seen from 
the battle of Plataea, in which 5000 Spartans were 
attended by 35,000 Helots. Although they did not 
share the honour of the heavy-armed soldiers, they 
were in turn exposed to a less degree of danger. For, 
while the former, in close rank, received the onset of 
the enemy with spear and shield, the Helots, armed 
only with their sling and javelin, were in a moment 
either before or behind the ranks, as Tyrtaeus accurate¬ 
ly describes the relative duties of the light-armed sol¬ 
dier (yv/avr/q) and the Hoplite. Sparta, in her better 
days, is never recorded to have unnecessarily sacrificed 
the lives of her Helots. A certain number of them 
was allotted to each Spartan ( Herodot., 9, 28.— Thu¬ 
cyd., 3, 8); at the battle of Plataea this number was 
seven. Those who were assigned to a single mas¬ 
ter were probably called dpnriTTapeg. Of these, how¬ 
ever, one in particular was the servant (tispuTrov) of 
his master, as in the story of the blind Spartan, who 
was conducted by his Helot into the thickest of the 
battle of Thermopylae, and, while the latter fled, fell 
with the other heroes. (Herod., 7, 229.) It appears 
that the other Helots were in the field placed more im¬ 
mediately under the command of the king than the rest 
of the army. (Herod., 6, 80 et 81.) In the fleet they 
composed the large mass of the sailors (Xen., Hist. 
Gr., 7, 1, 12), in which service at Athens the inferior 
citizens and slaves were employed. It is a matter of 
much greater difficulty to form a clear notion of the 
treatment of the Helots, and of their manner of life • 
for the rhetorical spirit with which later historians have 
embellished their philanthropic views, joined to our 
own ignorance, has been productive of much confusion 
and misconception. Myron of Priene, in his romance 




HELOTS. 


HELOTS. 


on the Messenian war, drew a very dark picture of 
Sparta, and endeavoured at the end to rouse the feel¬ 
ings of his readers by a description of the fate which 
the conquered underwent. “ The Helots,” says he 
(ap. Athen., 14, p. 657, D.), “perform for the Spartans 
every ignominious service. They are compelled to 
wear a cap of dog’s skin (avvfj), to have" a covering of 
sheep’s skin ( di<j>6epa ), and are severely beaten every 
year without having committed any fault, in order that 
they may never forget they are slaves. In addition to 
this, those among them who, either by their stature 
or their beauty, raise themselves above the condition 
of a slave, are condemned to death, and the masters 
who do not destroy the most manly of them are liable 
to punishment.” The partiality and ignorance of this 
writer are evident from his very first statement. The 
Helots wore the leathern cap with a broad band, and 
the covering of sheep’s skin, simply because it was the 
original dress of the natives, which, moreover, the Ar¬ 
cadians had retained from ancient usage. ( Sophocles , 
Inachus , ap. Schol., Aristoph., av. 1203.— Valck., ad 
Theocrit. Adoniaz ., p. 345.) Laertes, the father of 
(Jlysses, when he assumed the character of a peasant, 
is also represented as wearing a cap of goat’s skin. 

( Od. ., 24, 230.) The truth is, that the ancients made 
a distinction between town and country costume. 
Hence, when the tyrants of Sicyon wished to accustom 
the unemployed people, whose numbers they dreaded, 
to a country life, they forced them to wear the /car- 
uvuK.7], which had underneath a lining of fur. ( Pollux , 
7, 4, 68.) Thus also Theognis describes the country¬ 
men of Megara as clothed with dressed skins, and 
dwelling around the town like frightened deer. The 
diphthera of the Helots, therefore, signified nothing 
more humiliating and degrading than their employment 
in agricultural labour. Now, since Myron purposely 
misrepresented this circumstance, it is very probable 
that his other objections are founded in error ; nor can 
misrepresentations of this political state, which was 
unknown to the later Greeks, and particularly to wri¬ 
ters, have been uncommon. Plutarch, for example, 
relates that the Helots were compelled to intoxicate 
themselves, and to perform indecent dances, as a 
warning to the Spartan youth ; but common sense is 
opposed to so absurd a mode of education. Is it pos¬ 
sible that the Spartans should have so degraded the 
men whom they appointed as tutors over their chil¬ 
dren I Female Helots also discharged the office of 
nurse in the royal palaces, and doubtless obtained all 
the affection with which the attendants of early youth 
were honoured in ancient times. It is, however, cer¬ 
tain that the Doric laws did not bind servants to strict 
temperance; and hence examples of drunkenness 
among them might have served as a means of recom¬ 
mending sobriety. It was also an established regula¬ 
tion, that the national songs and dances of Sparta were 
forbidden to the Helots, who, on the other hand, had 
some extravagant and lascivious dances peculiar to 
themselves, which may have given rise to the above 
report. But are we not labouring in vain to soften the 
bad impression of Myron’s account, since the fearful 
word crypteia is of itself sufficient to show the un¬ 
happy fate of the Helots and the cruelty of their mas¬ 
ters 1 By this word is generally understood a chase 
of the Helots, annually undertaken at a fixed time by 
the youth of Sparta, who either assassinated them by 
night, or massacred them formally in open day, in or¬ 
der to lessen their numbers and weaken their power. 
Isocrates speaks of this institution in a very confused 
manner, and from mere report. Aristotle, however, 
as well as Heraclides of Pontus, attribute it to Lvcur- 
gus, and represent it as a war which the Ephori them¬ 
selves, on entering upon their yearly office, proclaimed 
against the Helots. Thus it was a regularly legalized 
massacre, and the more barbarous as its periodical ar- 
-val could be foreseen by its unhappy victims. And 


yet were not these Helots, who in many districts lived 
entirely alone, united by despair for the sake of com¬ 
mon protection, and did they not every year kindle a 
most bloody and determined war throughout the whole 
of Laconia 1 Such are the inextricable difficulties in 
which we are involved by giving credit to the received 
accounts : the solution of which is, in my opinion, to 
be found in the speech of Megillus the Spartan, in the 
laws of Plato, who is there celebrating the manner ©1 
inuring his countrymen to hardships. “ There is also 
among us,” he says, “ what is called the crypteia 
( KpvnTeLa ), the pain of undergoing which is scarcely 
credible. It consists in going barefoot on stones, in 
enduring the privations of the camp, performing me¬ 
nial offices without a servant, and wandering night and 
day throughout the whole country.” The same is 
more clearly expressed in another passage (6, p. 763, 
B .), where the philosopher settles, that in his state 
sixty agronomi or phylarchs should each choose twelve 
young men from the age of twenty-five to thirty, and 
send them as guards in succession through the several 
districts, in order to inspect the fortresses, roads, and 
public buildings in the country ; for which purpose 
they should have power to make free use of the 
slaves. During this time they were to live sparingly, 
to minister to their own wants, and range through the 
whole country in arms without intermission, both in 
winter and summer. These persons were to be called 
KpvTTToi or ayopavoyoi. Can it be supposed that Pla¬ 
to would have here used the name of crypteia , if it 
signified a secret murder of the Helots, or, rather, if 
there were not an exact agreement in essentials be¬ 
tween the institution which he proposed and that in 
existence at Sparta, although the latter was perhaps 
one of greater hardship and severity 1 The youth of 
Sparta were also sent out under certain officers, partly 
for the purpose of training them to hardships, partly of 
inspecting the territory of Sparta, which was of con¬ 
siderable extent, and who kept, we may suppose, a 
strict watch upon the Helots, who, living by them¬ 
selves, and entirely separated from their masters, must 
have been for that reason more formidable to Sparta. 
We must allow that oppression and severity were not 
sufficiently provided against; only the aim of the cus¬ 
tom was wholly different; though perhaps it was reck¬ 
oned by Thucydides (4, 80) among those institutions 
which, as he says, were established for the purpose of 
keeping a watch over the Helots. It is hardly neces¬ 
sary to remark, that this established institution of the 
crypteia was in no way connected with those measures 
to which Sparta thought herself compelled in hazard¬ 
ous circumstances to resort. Thucydides leaves us 
to guess the fate of the 2000 Helots, who, after hav¬ 
ing been destined for the field, suddenly disappeared. 
It was the curse of this bondage (which Plato terms 
the hardest in Greece), that the slaves abandoned their 
masters when they stood in greatest need of their as¬ 
sistance ; and hence the Spartans were even compelled 
to stipulate in treaties for aid against their own sub¬ 
jects. (Thucyd ., 1,118. —Id ., 5, 14.—Compare Aris- 
tot.,'Pol., 2, 6, 2).—A more favourable side of the 
Spartan system of bondage is, that a legal way to lib¬ 
erty and citizenship stood open to the Helots. The 
many intermediate steps seem to prove the existence 
of a regular mode of transition from the one rank to 
the other. The Helots who were esteemed worthy of 
an especial confidence were called apyetoi ; the astral 
were probably released from all service. The SeaTtoa- 
tovavrai, who served in the fleets, resembled proba¬ 
bly the freedmen of Attica, who were called the out- 
dwellers (ol oIkovvteq). When they received 

their liberty, they also obtained permission to dwell 
where they wished ( Thucyd ., 5, 34.— Id.. 4, 80), and 
probably, at the same time, a portion of land was grant¬ 
ed them without the lot of their former masters. Af 
ter they had been in possession of liberty for som 

591 



/HEP 


HEP 


tune, they appear to have been called Neodamodes 
( Tkueyd ., 7, 58), the number of whom soon came 
near to that of the citizens. ( Pint., Vit. Ages., 6.) 
The Mothones or Mothaces were Helots, who, being 
brought up together with the young Spartans, obtained 
freedom without the rights of citizenship. (. Athenmis, 
6, p. 271 E.)— The number of the Helots may be 
determined with sufficient accuracy from the account 
of the army at Plataea. We find that there were pres¬ 
ent in this battle 5000 Spartans, 35,000 Helots, and 
10,000 Perioeci. The whole number of Spartans that 
bore arms amounted on another occasion to 8000, 
which, according to the same proportion, would give 
56,000 for the number of Helots capable of bearing 
arms, and for the whole population about 224,000. If, 
then, the state of Sparta possessed 9000 lots (iclf/poi), 
there were twenty male Helots to each, and there re¬ 
mained 44,000 for the service of the state and of in¬ 
dividuals. (Muller, Dorians, \o\. 2, p. 30 , seqq., Eng. 
trans. —vol. 2, p. 33, German work.) 

Helvetii, a nation of Gaul, conquered by Caesar. 
Their country is generally supposed to have answered 
to modern Switzerland ; but ancient Helvetia was of 
less extent than modern Switzerland, being bounded 
on the north by the Rhenus and Lacus Brigantinus, 
or Lake of Constance ; on the south by the Rhodanus 
and the Lacus Lemanus, or Lake of Geneva ; and on 
the west by Mons Jura. (Cces., B. G., 1, &c.— Tacit., 
Hist., 1, 67 et 69.) 

Helvii, a people of Gaul, north of the Arecomici, 
on the western bank of the Rhodanus. The mountain 
range of Cebenna ( Cevennes ) separated them from the 
Arverni. Their territory answers to what is now the 
Diocese of Viviers, and some traces of their capital, 
Alba Augusta, exist at the present day in the village 
of Alps. ■ (Cces., B. G., 7, 7, seqq. — Lemaire, Ind. 
Geogr., ad Cces., s. v.) 

Heneti, a people of Paphlagonia, along the coast 
of the Euxine, of whom there was an old tradition 
that they had migrated to the north of Italy, near the 
mouths of the Padus or Po, where they became the 
forefathers of the Veneti. (Scymn., Ch., v. 388, seq. 
— Strab., 543.— Id., 608.) Virgil makes Antenor to 
have led the colony from Asia, after the destruction of 
Troy, and to have settled near the little river Timavus, 
which flows into the head waters of the Adriatic. The 
whole legend, however, is purely fabulous. The He¬ 
neti never came to Italy, and the Veneti in the latter 
country were of northern, perhaps German, descent. 

( Vid . Veneti.) The whole question respecting the 
Heneti is discussed by Heyne. (Excurs., ad JEn., 1, 
242.— Excurs., vii., de Timav. fluv.) 

HeniSchi, a people of Asiatic Sarmatia, near Col¬ 
chis, who were said to have been descended from 
Amphytus and Telchius, the charioteers ( t / vloxoi ) of 
Castor and Pollux. (Mela, 1, 19.— Id., 6, 5.— Strab., 
490.) This account is, of course, a mere fable, ari¬ 
sing out of some accidental resemblance between the 
true name of this people and the Greek term yyloxpi. 
The Heniochi are mentioned by the ancient writers as 
bold and skilful pirates. (Plin., 6, 4.— Mela, l..c. — 
Veil. Patcrc., 2, 40.— Amm. Marcell., 22,15.— Solin., 
c. 15.) 

Heph^estia, I. one of the two principal towns in 
the island of Lemnos, the other being Myrina. (He¬ 
rod., 7, 140.— Steph. Byz., s. v 'H tyacGria). —II. A 
festival at Athens, celebrated annually, in honour of 
Vulcan ("H^xucrrof). On this occasion there was a 
race with torches, called dyov Tragic adovxo^, from the 
altar of Prometheus in the Academia to the city gates. 
The competitors were young men, three in number, 
one of whom being chosen by lot to take his turn first, 
took a lighted torch in his hand and began his course. 
If the torch was extinguished before he arrived at the 
goal, he made way for the second competitor, and gave 
up the torch to him. If the second in like manner 
592 


failed, he made way for the third. If none performed 
the feat, a new race on the part of new competitors 
took place. If any of the contending parties, through 
fear of extinguishing the torch by too violent a motion, 
relaxed his pace, the spectators used to strike him 
with the palms of their hands, in order to urge him on. 
(Pausan., 1, dO.—Schol. ad Aristoph., Ran., 121.) 
There are several beautiful allusions to this torch-race 
in the ancient writers, who usually compare it to the 
changing scenes and vicissitudes of life, the genera¬ 
tions of men succeeding one another, and the passage 
from life to death. The most striking of these occurs 
in Lucretius (2, 75, seqq. —Compare Plato, Leg., 6, 
p. 776). 

Heph^estiades, a name applied to the Lipari Isl¬ 
ands, from the Volcanic character of the group. The 
appellation is a Greek one, and comes from H^aiorof 
(Hephaastus), the Greek name for Vulcan, the god ol 
fire. (Plin., 3, 9 .—Vid. Lipara, Strongyle, and A Eo- 
liae Insulae.) 

Hephsestion, I. a grammarian of Alexandrea, one 
of the preceptors of the Emperor Verus (Capitol., Vit. 
Ver., c. 2), and who consequently flourished about the 
middle of the second century. He has left us a Trea> 
tise on Greek metres, entitled ’EyxnpLdiov itepl per 
puv, containing a large portion of all that we are ac 
quainted with on this subject. The best edition is 
that of Gaisford, Oxon., 1810, 8vo. The English edi 
tor has joined to it the Chrestomathia of Proclus.—II. 
A native of Thebes, whose age is uncertain. He wrote 
on astrological subjects. We have some parts of a 
work of his on the names and powers of the signs of 
the Zodiac (’ knoTeTceoparaai nepl ryq 16' popiuv ovo- 
paoiaq nal dvvapeog). We have also some hexame¬ 
ters by him on the signs under which certain countries 
or certain cities are situated. They are part of a work 
entitled IIep2 ribv Karapxpv. The fragments on the 
signs of the zodiac are given by Camerarius in his as¬ 
trological collection ; the hexameters by Iriarte, Cat 
Cod. MSS. Gr. Bibl. Matrit., vol. 1, p. 244. (Scholl, 
Hist. ExtJGr., vol. 7, p. 47, seqq.)— III. A native of 
Macedonia, and intimate friend of Alexander the 
Great. He accompanied the latter in his eastern ex¬ 
pedition, and held an important command under him. 
Alexander, in speaking of the intimacy that subsisted 
between them, used to say that Craterus was the friend 
of the king, but Hephsestion the friend of Alexander. 
After a long succession of faithful and arduous ser¬ 
vices, Hephsestion was seized with a fever at Ecbata 
na, B.C. 324, and died on the seventh day of his ill¬ 
ness. His malady has been ascribed by some writers 
to excessive drinking ; but the hardships which he had 
undergone only a short time previous, and the con¬ 
tinual change of climate, would be sufficient of them¬ 
selves to break down his strength. Alexander was 
presiding at the games on the seventh day of Hephaes- 
tion’s illness, and the stadium was full of spectators, 
when a messenger brought intelligence that Hephses- 
tion’s malady had assumed a very alarming character. 
The monarch hurried away, but his friend was dead 
before he arrived.—The following passage from Arrian 
affords some curious information on this subject, and 
shows also from what a mass of contradictory matter 
the historian had to select his facts.—“ Various writers 
have given various accounts of Alexander’s sorrow on 
the occasion of Hephsestion’s death. All agree that it 
was excessive ; but his actions are differently descri¬ 
bed, as the writers were biased by affection or hostility 
to Hephsestion, or even to Alexander. Some, who 
have described his conduct as frantic and outrageous, 
regard all his extravagant deeds and words on the loss 
of his dearest friend as honourable to his feelings, 
while others deem them degrading, and unworthy of a 
king and of Alexander. Some write, that for the re¬ 
mainder of that day he lay lamenting upon the body 
of his friend, which he would not quit until he was 




HER 


HERACLEA. 


tom away by his companions ; others, that he remain¬ 
ed there for a day and a night. Others, again, write, 
that he hanged the physician Glaucias ; because, ac¬ 
cording to one statement, he gave him wrong medi¬ 
cine ; according to another, because he stood by, and 
allowed his patient to fill himself with wine. I think 
it probable, that he cut off his hair in memory of the 
dead, both for other reasons, and from emulation of 
Achilles, whom from his childhood he had chosen for 
his model. But those who write that Alexander drove 
the hearse which conveyed the body, state what is in¬ 
credible. Nor are they more entitled to belief who 
say that he destroyed the temple of yEsculapius at 
Ecbatana, Almost all agree, however, that he or¬ 
dered Hephoestion to be honoured with the minor re¬ 
ligious ceremonies due to deified heroes. Some say 
that he consulted Ammon, whether he might not sac¬ 
rifice to Hephaastion as to a god, and that the answer 
forbade him. All agree in the following facts : that for 
three days he tasted no food, nor permitted any atten¬ 
tion to his person, but lay down either lamenting or 
mournfully silent; that he ordered a funeral pile to be 
constructed at an expense of 10,000 talents (some say 
more) ; that all his barbarian subjects were ordered to 
go into mourning ; and that several of the king’s com¬ 
panions, in order to pay their court, dedicated them¬ 
selves and their arms to the deceased.” ( Arrian, Exp. 
AL, 7, 14.— Williams's Life of Alexander, p. 324.) 

Heph.estium, a name given to a region in the ex- 
remity of Lycia, near Phaselis, from which fire issued 
vhen a burning torch was applied to the surface. This 
was owing to the naphtha with which the soil was im¬ 
pregnated. (Seneca, Epist., 79.— Plin., 2, 106.—Com- 
oare Pkotius, Cod., 73, p. 146.— Vid. Chimaera, and re¬ 
marks under that article.) 

Heptapylos, a surname of Thebes in Boeotia, from 
its seven gates. 

Hera ("Hpa), the name of Juno among the Greeks. 
(Vid. Juno.) 

Heraclea, a name given to more than forty towns 
m Europe, Asia, Africa, and the islands of the Medi¬ 
terranean. They are supposed to have derived this 
appellation from the Greek name of Hercules, 'Hpa- 
k?l fjg, and to have either been built in honour of him, or 
placed under his protection. The most famous of 
these places were: 

1. In Greece. 

I. A city of Elis, near the centre of the province, to 
the southeast of Pisa, near the confluence of the Cy- 
therus and Alpheus.—II. A city of Acarnania, on the 
shore of the Ionian Sea, and opposite the island of 
Camus.—III. A city of Epirus, on the confines of 
Athamania and Molossis, and near, the sources of the 
Aras.—IV. Lyncestis, a town of Macedonia, at the 
foot of the Candavian Mountains, on the confines of 
Illyria. Its ruins still retain the name of Erekli. 
( French Strabo, vol. 3, p. 102.) Mention is made 
of this town in Caesar. ( B . Civ., 3, 79.—Compare 
Ptol., p. 83.— Strabo, 322.) — V. Sintica, the prin¬ 
cipal town of the Sinti in Thrace. (Livy, 45, 29.) 
We are informed by Livy (40, 24), that Demetrius, 
the son of Philip, was here imprisoned and murdered. 
Mannert thinks it the stme with the Heraclea built by 
Amyntas, the brother of Philip. The Table Itinerary 
assigns a distance of fifty miles between Philippi and 
Heraclea Sintica: we know also from Hierocles (p. 
639), that it was situated near the Strymon, as he 
terms it Heraclea Strymonis.—VI. Trachinia, a town 
of Thessaly, founded by the Lacedaemonians, and a 
colony from Trachis, about 426 B.C., in the sixth year 
of the Peloponnesian war. (Thucyd., 3, 92.) It was 
distant about sixty stadia from Thermopylae, and twen¬ 
ty from the sea. Jason, tyrant of Pherae, took pos¬ 
session of this city j£. one period, and caused the walls 
to be pulled down" Xen., Hist. Gr., 6,4, 27.) Her¬ 


aclea, however, again arose from its ruins, and became 
a flourishing city under the /Etolians, who sometimes 
held their general "council within its walls. (Liv., 25, 
5.) It was taken by the Roman consul, Acilius Gla- 
brio, after a long and obstinate siege. (Liv., 37, 24. 
—Polyb., 10, 42. — Plin., 4, 7.) Sir W. Gell ob¬ 
served the vestiges of this city on a high flat, on the 
roots of Mount (Eta. (Itin., p. 241.) 

2. In Italy, Gaul, &c. 

VII. A city of Lucania in Italy, and situate betweer 
the Aciris and Siris. It was founded by the Taren- 
tini after the destruction of the ancient city of Siris, 
which stood at the mouth of the latter river (B.C. 428). 
This city is rendered remarkable in history, as having 
been the seat of the general council of the Greek states. 
Antiquaries seem agreed in fixing its site at Policoro. 
(Strabo, 263.— Diod. Sic., 12, 36.)—VIII. A city of 
Campania, more commonly known by the name of 
Herculaneum.—IX. Caccabana, a city on the confines 
of Italy and Gaul, in Narbonensis Secunda. It was 
situate on the coast, to the south of Forum Julii.—X. 
Minoa, a city of Sicily on the southern coast, northeast 
of Agrigentum, at the mouth of the river Camicus. It 
was founded by Minos when he pursued Daedalus hither, 
and was subsequently called Heraclea from Hercules, 
after his victory over Eryx : so at least said the fables 
of the day. Some authorities make the original name 
to have been Macara, and Minos to have been, not the 
founder, but the conqueror of the place. (Mela, 2, 7. 
— Liv., 34, 35.— Cic., de Jar. Sic., c. 50.— Polyb., 
1, 25.— Diod. Sic., 16, 11.) Among the ruins of the 
present day stands a tower called Torre de Capo Bi 
anco, a portion of which fell recently into the sea. 

3. In Asia, Egypt, &c. 

XI. Pontica ('Hpd/cAeta II ovtov, Ptol.), a city or 
the coast of Bithynia, about twelve stadia from the 
river Lycus. It was founded by a colony of Megare 
ans, strengthened by some Tanagreans from Boeotia 
the numbers of the former, however, so predominated, 
that the city was in general considered as Doric. (Ar- 
rian, Peripl., p. 14.— Muller, Dorians, vol. 1, p. 140, 
Eng. transl .) This place was famed for its nava' 

power and its consequence among the Asiatic states, 
and a sketch of its history is presented to us in the 
Fragments of Memnon, collected by Photius. (Cod., 
214.) Memnon composed a history of the tyrants 
who reigned at Heraclea during a space of eighty-four 
years ; but we have only now the abridgment of Pho¬ 
tius, which is confirmed by incidental notices contain¬ 
ed in Aristotle. (Polit., 6, 5.)— Some traces of the 
ancient name are still apparent in the modern Erekli. 
(Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 205.)—XII. A city 
of ~Eolis, at the entrance of the Gulf of Adramyttium, 
opposite Mytilene.—XIII. A city in southern vEolis, 
on the seacoast, near Cum®.—XIV. A city of Caria, 
on the seacoast, near the mouth of the river Latmus, 
between Miletus and Priene. (Ptol., 5, 10.) It was 
called, for distinction’ sake from other places of the 
same name, Heraclea Latini. The site corresponds 
nearly with the village of Oufa Bafi. (Cramer s Asia 
Minor, vol. 1, p. 393.)—XV. A city of Syria, in the 
district of Cyrrhestiea, northwest of Hierapolis, and 
northeast of Bercea, near the confines of Comagene. 

_XVI. A city of Lower Egypt, situate in the Delta, 

to the northeast of the Canopic mouth of the Nile.— 
XVII. or Heracleopolis Magna, a city of Egypt, in 
the Heracleotic nome, of which it was the capita! 
The ichneumon was worshipped here. (Slrab., 812.) 

_XVIII. or Heracleopolis Parva, a city of Egypt, 

southwest of Pelusivrm, within the limits of the Delta. 
The ruins are now called Delbom. (Bxschojj und 
Mbller, Wortcrb. der Geogr., s. v.) 

Herucleum, I. a town of Macedonia, half way be¬ 
tween Dium and Tempe. (Liv., 44, 8.) It corro- 

593 




HER 


HER 


sponds to the modern Litochoi. {Cramer's Ancient 
Greece, vol. 1, p. 206.)—II. A promontory of Pontus, 
now Tscherschembi. There was a harbour near it, 
called also Heracleum. {Arrian, Peripl., p. 16.)— 
III. A place on the coast of Colchis, near the mouth 
of the river Cianesus. ( Plin ., 6, 5.)—IY. A city on 
the northern coast of Crete; north of Cnosus, and 
properly its harbour. The modern Cartero seems to 
correspond to it. {Strabo, 476.— Plin., 4, 12.)—V. 
A city of Pontus, 360 stadia from the mouth of the 
Iris, and forty stadia west of the Thermodon. {Arri¬ 
an, Peripl.) —VI. A city on the eastern coast of the 
Chersonesus Taurica, now Arabat. {Ptolemy.) —VII. 
Promontorium, a promontory of Sarmatia Asiatica, on 
the Pontus Euxinus, near the country of the Hen- 
iochi. 

Heraclid.®, a name given in ancient history to a 
powerful Achaean race or family, the fabled descend¬ 
ants of Hercules. According to the unanimous ac¬ 
count of the ancient writers, the children of Hercules, 
after the death of that hero, being persecuted by Eu- 
rystheus, took refuge in Attica, and there defeated and 
slew the tyrant. When their enemy had fallen, they 
resumed possession of their birthright in the Pelopon¬ 
nesus ; but they had not long enjoyed the fruits of 
their victory, before a pestilence, in which they recog¬ 
nised the finger of Heaven, drove them again into ex¬ 
ile. Attica again afforded them a retreat. When 
their hopes had revived, an ambiguous oracle encour¬ 
aged them to believe, that, after they had reaped their 
third harvest, they should find a prosperous passage 
through the isthmus into the land of their fathers. 
But, at the entrance of the Peloponnesus, they were 
met by the united forces of the Achasans, Ionians, and 
Arcadians. Their leader Hyllus, the eldest son of 
Hercules, proposed to decide the quarrel by single 
combat; and Echemus, king of Tegea, was selected 
Dy the Peloponnesian confederates as their champion. 
Hyllus fell; and the Heraclidae were bound by the 
terms of the agreement to abandon their enterprise for 
a hundred years. Yet both Cleodaeus, son of Hyllus, 
and his grandson Aristomachus, renewed his attempt 
with no better fortune. After Aristomachus had fall¬ 
en in battle, the ambiguous oracle was explained to his 
sons Aristodemus, Temenus, and Cresphontes; and 
they were assured, that the time, the third generation, 
had now come, when they should accomplish their re¬ 
turn ; not, however, as they had expected, over the 
guarded isthmus, but across the mouth of the western 
gulf, where the opposite shores are parted by a channel 
only a few furlongs broad. Thus encouraged, with 
the aid of the Dorians, ^Etolians, and Locrians, they 
crossed the straits, vanquished Tisamenus, son of 
Orestes, and divided the fairest portion of the Pelo¬ 
ponnesus among them. {Vid. Doris.)—The belief that 
the Dorians were led to the conquest of the Pelopon¬ 
nesus by princes of Achasan blood, the rightful heirs 
of its ancient kings, has the authority of all antiquity 
on its side. It had become current so early as the 
days of Hesiod; and it was received not only among 
the Dorians themselves, but among foreign nations. 
The protection afforded by the Athenians to the Her- 
ac'lidse against Eurystheus, continued to the latest 
times to be one of the favourite themes of the At¬ 
tic poets and orators ; and the precise district that 
had been assigned for the abode of the exiles was 
oointed out by tradition. The weak and unsettled 
state of the Dorians, in the earliest periods of their 
history, renders it probable that they were always 
willing to receive foreigners among them, who came 
recommended by illustrious birth, wealth, or merit. 
Nevertheless, possible as this is, the truth of the story 
has been questioned, on grounds that are certainly not 
light or arbitrary, if they do not outweigh all that has 
oeen alleged in its support. What is said to have 
happened might have been invented, and the occasion 
594 


and motives for the fabrication may be conceived still 
more easily than the truth of the fact; for such facts 
in the early history of Greece were undoubtedly much 
less common than such fictions. It is much less prob¬ 
able, that the origin of the Dorian tribes, as of all sim¬ 
ilar political forms which a nation has assumed in the 
earliest period of existence, should have been distinctly 
remembered, than that it should have been forgotten, 
and have been then attributed to imaginary persons. 
{Thirlwall's History of Greece, vol. 1, p. 255, seqq.) 
—The theory of Muller, which is referred to in the 
preceding remarks, makes the Heraclidae to have been 
hereditary princes of the Doric race, descended from 
a Dorian Hercules; and it attempts to show, that the 
story of the Heraclida? being descended from the Ar- 
give Hercules, who performed the commands of Eu¬ 
rystheus, was not invented until after the conquest of 
the Peloponnesus. {Muller's Dorians vol. 1, p. 57, 
Eng. transl. —But consult remarks under the article 
Doris.) 

Heraclides, a name common to numerous individ¬ 
uals : 

1. Magistrates, &c. 

I. A Greek, minister of Seuthes, king of Thrace, 
who promised, and afterward refused, succours to the 
ten thousand during their retreat. {Xen., Anab., 7, 3, 
15.)—II. A governor of Delphi, B.C. 360. The temple 
was pillaged by the Phocians during his magistracy. 
{Pctvsan., 10, 2.)—III. A Syracusan of high birth, who 
united himself to Dion for the purpose of overthrow¬ 
ing the younger Dionysius. He was appointed ad¬ 
miral through the influence of Dion, but abused his 
power in corrupting the people, and in encouraging a 
spirit of mutiny and dissatisfaction. After various in¬ 
stances of lenity and forgiveness on the part of Dion 
towards this individual, the friends of the former, find¬ 
ing that, as long as Heraclides existed, his turbulent 
and factious spirit would produce disorder in the state, 
broke into his house and put him to death. {Pint., 
Vit. Dion.) —IV. An individual who governed Syra¬ 
cuse along with Agathocles and Sosicrates, B.C. 317. 
—V. A son of Agathocles, slain by his father’s sol¬ 
diers. ( Justin , 22, 5.)—VI. The murderer of Cotys, 
I. {Demosth., contr. Arist.) —VII. Commander of the 
garrison sent to Athens bv Demetrius, after his cap¬ 
ture of that city.—VIII. A native of Tarentum, min¬ 
ister of Philip V. of Macedon. He drew down upon 
himself the hatred of the people by his wicked con¬ 
duct, and was finally disgraced.—IX. A young Syracu¬ 
san of high birth, who brought on the naval conflict in 
which the Syracusans were completely victorious over 
the Athenians, B.C. 414. {Plut., Vit. Nic.) 

2. Philosophers, Authors, &c. 

X. Surnamed Ponticus, a native of Heraclea Pon- 
tica, and not, as some maintain, of Sinope, was of rich 
parentage. Having travelled into Greece for the pur¬ 
pose of devoting himself to the study of philosophy, 
he became one of the auditors of Speusippus ; or, ac¬ 
cording to Suidas, of Plato himself. He afterward at¬ 
tached himself to Aristotle, and Diogenes Laertius 
ranks him among the Peripatetics. Following the ex¬ 
ample of this last-mentioned school, he piqued himseU 
on a great variety of knowledge ; he wrote on subjects 
of all kinds, and even composed a tragedy, which n« 
published under the name of Thespis. He was alwayc 
attired with much elegance, which made the Athenian* 
change his name, in sport, from n ovtlkos to n oynitib 
(“ Ostentatious”). Diogenes Laertius informs us. 
that he had reared a domestic serpent in secret, and 
when about to die, besought his friends to conceal his 
body, and let the serpent occupy its place. The arti¬ 
fice, however, was discovered; the serpent, having be¬ 
come alarmed at some noise made in the house" fled 
from it before the philosopher had breathed his last 




HER 


HERACLITUS. 


This story, however, is entitled to little, if any credit, 
as well as another related by the same Suidas, of the 
Pythia’s having been bribed by Heraclides, and having, 
in consequence, directed the people of Heraclea, during 
a period of famine, to present a crown of gold to him, 
and to decree him funeral honours after death. We 
have remaining of this writer some portions of a work 
of his on the constitutions of various states (tt epi ITo- 
?i!,TEiuv ), which Coray thinks is an abridgment of Aris¬ 
totle’s larger work on this subject. These extracts, 
which have several times been appended to editions of 
various history and to other collections, were given 
separately with a Latin translation, another in German, 
and with notes, by Kohler, Halce, 1804, 8vo. The 
best edition, however, is that of Coray, which follows 
JElian in the first volume of the Bibliotheca Grasca, 
Paris, 1805, 8vo. We have also, under the name of 
Heraclides, a treatise on the Allegories of Homer 
(’AA ly-yopinal 'OpypinaV). It is not, however, by the 
individual of whom we have just been speaking ; but 
is merely an extract from the Stoic doctrines on this 
subject. The latest edition of this work is that of 
Schow, Gotting ., 1782, 8vo. A new and more correct 
edition was expected from Hase, based on a MS. more 
complete than any preceding one, and which he had 
discovered in the Royal Library at Paris ; but none has 
ever appeared. ( Biogr . Univ., vol. 20, p. 214.)—XI. 
A native of Tarentum, celebrated for his medical 
knowledge. He wrote on the Materia Medica, on poi¬ 
sons, and on the virtues of plants. His workfare 
lost. (Fabr ., Bibl. Gr ., vol. 13, p. 77. — Compare 
Schweigh., ad Athen. Ind. Auct., vol. 9, p. 121, scqq.) 
He appears to have flourished about the 126th Olym¬ 
piad, or B.C. 276. We have a dissertation on this 
writer by Kuhn ( Opusc. Acad., Lips., 8vo, vol. 2, p. 
150, seqq.). —XII. A native of Cyme in iEolis, whose 
work on the Persians (II epainu) is mentioned in 
Athenaeus (2, p. 48, c.— Id., 4, p. 145, a. —Consult 
Schweigh., ad Athen. Ind. Auct., vol. 9, p. 120.)— 
XIII. Surnamed Ponticus Junior, a writer who flour¬ 
ished during the first century of our era. {Athen., 14, 
p. 649, c. — Schweigh., ad loc .)—XIY. A Macedonian 
painter, who lived at the time of the overthrow of the 
Macedonian empire. He at first painted ships. On 
the defeat and captivity of Perses he retired to Athens, 
according to Pliny, which would be 168 B.C. The 
same writer also states, that he attained to a degree of 
reputation, but was yet entitled to only a cursory men¬ 
tion. ( Plin ., 35, 11.)—XV. An Ephesian sculptor, 
son of Agasias, who made, in conjunction with Harma- 
tius, the statue of Mars now in the Paris Museum. His 
age is uncertain. ( Clarac , Dcscr . des Antiques du 
Musee Royal, nr. 411, p. 173.) 

Heraclitus, a native of Ephesus, was surnamed 
“ the Naturalist ” (o Qvmnof;), and belongs to the dy¬ 
namical school of the Ionian philosophy. He is said 
to have been borfi about 500 B.C., and, according to 
Aristotle, died in the sixtieth year of his age. The 
title he assumed of “ self-taught ” ( avrodidaicrog ), re¬ 
futes at once the claims of the various masters whom 
he is said to have had, and the distinguished position 
that he held in political life attests the wealth and lus¬ 
tre of his descent. The gloomy haughtiness and mel¬ 
ancholy of his temperament led him to despise all hu¬ 
man pursuits, and he expressed unqualified contempt 
as well for the political sagacity of his fellow-citizens 
as for the speculations of all other philosophers, which 
had mere learning, and not wisdom, for their object. 
It is utterly untrue, therefore, though commonly re¬ 
lated of him, that he was continually shedding tears 
on account of the vices and follies of mankind, and 
the story is as little entitled to sober belief as that of 
the perpetually-laughing Democritus. Of the work of 
Heraclitus “ On Nature ” (nepi tyvceog), the difficulty 
of which obtained for him the surname of onoreivog, 
ox “ the obscure ” many fragments are still extant, and 


exhibit a broken and concise style, hinting at rather 
than explaining his opinions, which are often conveyed 
in mythical and halt oracular images. On this ac¬ 
count he well compares himself to the Sibyl, “ who," 
he says, “ speaking with inspired mouth, smileless, in¬ 
ornate, and unperfumed, pierces through centuries by 
the power of the gods.” According to Heraclitus, the 
end of wisdom is to discover the ground and principle 
of all things. This principle, which is an eternal, 
ever-living unity, and pervades and is in all phenom¬ 
ena, he called fore. By this term, however, Heracli¬ 
tus understood, not the elemental fire or flame, which 
he held to be the very excess of fire, but a warm and 
dry vapour; which, therefore, as air, is not distinct 
from the soul or vital energy, and which, as guiding 
and directing the mundane development, is endued 
with wisdom and intelligence. This supreme and per¬ 
fect force of life is obviously without limit to its ac¬ 
tivity ; consequently, nothing that it forms can remain 
fixed ; all is constantly in a process of formation. 
This he has thus figuratively expressed : “ No one 
has ever been twice on the same stream.” Nay, the 
passenger himself is without identity : “ On the same 
stream we do and we do not embark ; for we are and 
we are not.”—The vitality of the rational fire has in it 
a tendency to contraries, whereby it is made to pass 
from gratification to want, and from want to gratifica¬ 
tion, and in fixed periods it alternates between a swiftei 
and a slower flux. Now these opposite tendencies 
meet together in determinate order, and, by the ine¬ 
quality or equality of the forces, occasion the phenom¬ 
ena of life and death. The quietude of death, how¬ 
ever, is a mere semblance, which exists only for the 
senses of man. For man, in his folly, forms a truth 
of his own, whereas it is only the universal reason that 
is really cognizant of the truth. Lastly, the rational 
principle, which governs the whole moral and physical 
world, is also the law of the individual; whatever, 
therefore, is, is the wisest and the best—and “it is not 
for man’s welfare that his wishes should be fulfilled— 
sickness makes health pleasant, as hunger does grati¬ 
fication, and labour rest.”—The physical doctrines of 
Heraclitus form no inconsiderable portion of the eclec¬ 
tic system of the later Stoics ; and, in times still more 
recent, there is much in the theories of Scheliing and 
Hegel that presents a striking though general resem¬ 
blance thereto.—According to the ancient writers, 
neither critics nor philosophers were able to explain 
his productions, on account of their extreme obscurity ; 
and they remained in the temple of Diana at Ephesus, 
where he himself had deposited them, for the use of 
the learned, until they were made public by Crates, or, 
as Tatian relates the matter ( adv. Grcec., p. 143), till 
the poet Euripides, who frequented.the temple of Di¬ 
ana, committing the doctrines and precepts of Hera¬ 
clitus to memory, accurately repeated them. From the 
fragments of this work, as preserved by Sextus Em¬ 
piricus, it appears to have been written in prose, which 
makes Tatian’s account less credible. Heraclitus is 
said to have eventually shunned intercourse with the 
world, and devoted himself to retirement and medita¬ 
tion. His place of residence was a mountainous re¬ 
treat, and his food the produce of the earth. This 
diet and mode of life at length occasioned a dropsy 
for which he could obtain no relief by medical advice. 
It seems that the philosopher, who was always fond 
of enigmatical language, proposed the following ques¬ 
tion to the physicians : “ Is it possible to bring dryness 
out of moisture'?” and upon their answering in the 
negative, in place of stating his case more plainly to 
them, he turned his own physician, and attempted to 
effect a cure by placing himself in the sun, and causing 
a slave to cover his body with the dung of cattle. The 
experiment proved, as may easily be imagined, to 
be anything but a successful one.—The fragments of 
Heraclitus have been collected from Plutarch, Sto* 

595 



HER 


HERCULANEUM. 


earns, Clemens of Alexandrea, and Sextus Empiricus, 
and explained by Schleiermacher, in Wolf and Butt- 
mann’s Museum dcr Alterthumswissenschaft , vol. 1, 
p. 313-533. — Consult also Brandis, Handbuch der 
Geschichtc der Griechisch. und Rom. Philos., Berlin, 
1835.— Ritter's History of Ancient Philosophy, vol. 
1, p. 230, seqq., Eng. transl. — Encycl. Us. Knowl., 
vol. 12, p. 137.) 

Her^ea, I. a city of Arcadia, on the slope of a hill 
rising gently above the right bank of the Alpheus, and 
near the frontiers of Elis, which frequently disputed 
its possession with Arcadia. ( Xen., Hist. Gr., 6, 5, 
22.) Before the Cleomenic war, this town had joined 
the Achtean league, but was then taken by the ffEto- 
lians, and recaptured by Antigonus Doson, who re¬ 
stored it to the Achaeans. ( Polyb ., 2, 54.— Id., 4, 
77.— Liv., 28, 7.) In Strabo’s time Hersea was great¬ 
ly reduced ; but when Pausanias visited Arcadia it ap¬ 
pears to have recovered from this state of decay. 
(Pausan., 8, 26.—Compare Thucyd., 5, 67.) Stepha- 
nus remarks, that this place was also known by the 
name of Sologorgus ( s. v. 'H pain). Its site is now 
occupied by the village of Agiani. ( Gell, ltin., p. 
113.)—II. A festival at Argos in honour of Juno, who 
was the patroness of that city. It was also observed 
by the colonies of the Argives, which had been planted 
at Samos and iEgina. There were always two pro¬ 
cessions to the temple of the goddess without the city 
walls. The first was of the men in armour, the sec¬ 
ond of the women, among whom the priestess, a wom¬ 
an of the first rank, was drawn in a chariot by white 
oxen. The Argives always reckoned their year from 
her priesthood, as the Athenians from their archons, or 
the Romans from their consuls. When they came to 
the temple of the goddess, they offered a hecatomb of 
oxen. Hence the sacrifice is often called SKaropboia, 
and sometimes from Aeyoc, a bed, because 

Juno presided over marriage, births, &c. There was 
a festival of the same name in Elis, celebrated every 
fifth year, at which sixteen matrons wove a garment 
for the goddess. 

Her^eum, I. a temple and grove of Juno, situate 
about forty stadia from Argos, and ten from Mycenae. 
The structure was embellished with a lofty statue of 
Juno, made of ivory and gold ; a golden peacock, en¬ 
riched with precious stones, and other equally splendid 
ornaments.—II. A large and magnificent temple of 
Juno in the island of Samos, built by the architect 
Ilhoecus, who is said to have invented the art of cast¬ 
ing in brass. ( Pausan ., 8, 14.— Herod., 3, 60.— Plin., 
35, 12.) 

Herculaneum, a city of Campania, on the coast, 
and not far from Neapolis. Cicero writes the name 
Herculanum ( ad Att ., 7, 3). The situation of this 
place is no longer doubtful since the discovery of its 
ruins. Cluverius was right in his correction of the 
Tabula Theodosiana, which reckoned twelve miles 
between this place and Neapolis instead of six, though 
he removed it too far from Portici when he assigned 
to it the position of Torre del Greco. Nothing is 
known respecting the origin of Herculaneum, except 
that fabulous accounts ascribed its foundation to Her¬ 
cules on his return from Spain. (Dion. Hal., 1, 44.) 
It may be inferred, however, from a passage in Strabo, 
that this town was of great antiquity. It may be rea¬ 
sonably conjectured, too, that Herculaneum was a 
Greek city, but that its name was altered to suit the 
Latin or Oscan pronunciation. At first it was only a 
fortress, which was successively occupied by the Osci, 
Tyrrheni, Pelasgi, Samnites, and lastly by the Ro¬ 
mans. Being situated close to the sea, on elevated 
ground, it was exposed to the southwest wind, and 
from that circumstance was reckoned particularly 
healthy. (Strabo, 247.) We learn from Velleius Pa¬ 
terculus, that Herculaneum suffered considerably du¬ 
ring the civil wars. (Compare Florus, 1, 16.) This 
596 


place is mentioned also by Mela (2, 4), and by Sisen 
na, a more ancient writer than any of the former; he 
is quoted by Nonius Marcellus (De Indiscr. Gen., v 
Fluvius). Ovid likewise notices it under the name 
of “ Urbem Herculeam.” (Met., 15,711.) Hercula 
neum, according to the common account, was over¬ 
whelmed by an eruption of Vesuvius in the first yeai 
of the reign of Titus’, A.D. 79. Pompeii, which stood 
near, shared the same fate. It is probable, however 
that the subversion of Herculaneum was not sudden,, 
but progressive, since Seneca mentions a partial dem 
olition which it sustained from an earthquake. (Nat 
Quccst., 6, 1.) After being buried for more than six 
teen hundred years, these cities were accidentally dis¬ 
covered : Herculaneum in 1713, by labourers digging 
for a well ; and Pompeii forty years after. It ap¬ 
pears that Herculaneum is in no part less than seventy 
feet, and in some parts one hundred and twelve feet 
below the surface of the ground, while Pompeii is 
buried ten or twelve feet deep, more or less. Sir W. 
Hamilton thinks, that the matter which covers the city 
of Herculaneum is not the produce of a single erup¬ 
tion, but that the matter of six eruptions has taken its 
course, over that with which the town is covered, and 
which was the cause of its destruction. Many valua¬ 
ble remains of antiquity, such as busts, manuscripts, 
&c., have been recovered from the ruins of this an¬ 
cient city, and form the most curious museum in the 
world. They are all preserved at Portici, and the en- 
grawrigs taken from them have been munificently pre¬ 
sented to the different learned bodies of Europe. The 
plan also of many of the public buildings has been laid 
out, and especially that of the theatre. Sir W. Ham¬ 
ilton thinks, that the matter which first issued from 
Vesuvius and covered Herculaneum was in the state 
of liquid mud, and that this has been the means of 
preserving the pictures, busts, and other relics, whiefe 
otherwise must have been either entirely destroyed by 
the red-hot lava, or else have become one solid body 
along with it when cooled. In illustration of this re¬ 
mark, we—may cite the following from a periodical 
work. (Edinburgh Review, vol. 45, p. 304.) “ An 

enormous quantity of aqueous vapour is exhaled in 
every volcanic eruption, which, being condensed by the 
cold in the regions of the atmosphere beyond the reach 
of the volcano’s heat, falls down again in the form of 
rain, and, when it mixes with the clouds of ashes, it 
forms that compound which has been sometimes mis¬ 
taken for an actual eruption of mud from the crater. 
It was such a compound as this that overwhelmed 
Herculaneum, and it is found to consolidate very 
speedily into a hard, compact substance.” Among the 
excavations at Herculaneum, in the remains of a house 
supposed to have belonged to L. Piso, was found a 
great number of volumes of burned papyrus. Many 
of these papyri, as they have since been generally 
termed, were destroyed by the workmen ; but as soon 
as it was known that they were the remnants of an¬ 
cient manuscripts, their development became an ob¬ 
ject of no common interest to the learned world. Fa-. 
ther Piaggi invented a 'machine for unrolling them, 
which has been described by several writers. When 
we reflect on the number of valuable works which have 
been lost since the period when Herculaneum was de¬ 
stroyed, we ought not to be surprised at the sanguine 
expectations which, upon the first discovery of the 
MSS., were entertained, of adding some important ac¬ 
quisitions to the treasures of ancient literature which 
we already possess. The lost books of Livy, and the 
comedies of Menander, presented themselves to the 
imagination of almost every scholar. Each, indeed 
anticipated, according to his taste, the mental pleas¬ 
ures and the literary labours which awaited him. 
These enthusiastic hopes were perhaps too suddenly 
repressed, as they had been too easily excited. The 
first papyrus which was opened contained a treatiso 






HER 


HERCULES. 


upon music, by Philodemus the Epicurean. It was 
in vain that Mazocchi and Rosini wrote their learned 
comments on this dull performance : the sedative was 
ioo strong; and the curiosity which had been so sud¬ 
denly awakened, was as quickly lulled to repose. A 
few men of letters, indeed, lamented that no farther 
search was made for some happier subjects, on which 
learned industry might have been employed ; but the 
time, the difficulty, and the expense which such an 
enterprise required, and the uncertainty of producing 
anything valuable, had apparently discouraged and 
disgusted the academicians of Portici. Things were 
in this state when the Prince of Wales, afterward 
George IV., proposed to the Neapolitan government 
to defray the expenses of unrolling, deciphering, and 
publishing the manuscripts. This offer was accepted 
by the court of Naples ; and it was consequently 
judged necessary by his royal highness to select a 
proper person to superintend the undertaking. The 
reputation of Mr. Hayter as a classical scholar jus¬ 
tified his appointment to the place which the munifi¬ 
cence of the prince, and his taste for literature, had 
created. This gentleman arrived at Naples in the 
beginning of the year 1802, and was nominated one 
of the directors for the development of the manuscripts. 
During a period of several years, the workmen con¬ 
tinued to open a great number of the papyri. Many, 
indeed, of these frail substances were destroyed, and 
had crumbled into dust under the slightest touch of 
the operator. When the French invaded the lftg- 
dom of Naples in the year 1806, Mr. Hayter was 
compelled to retire to Sicily. It is to be deeply re¬ 
gretted that all the papyri were left behind. (Quar¬ 
terly Review , vol. 3, p. 2.) An account of more re- 
rent operations, including the interesting experiments 
of Sir Humphrey Davy, will be found in the latest edi¬ 
tion of the Encyclopedia Britannica, under the article 
Herculaneum. 

Heroui.es, a celebrated hero, son of Jupiter and 
Aicmena, who, after death, was ranked among the 
gods, and received divine honours. His reputed fa¬ 
ther was Amphitryon, son of Alcaeus, who, having ac¬ 
cidentally killed his father-in-law Electryon, was com¬ 
pelled to leave Mycenae and take refuge in Thebes, 
vvhere Hercules was born. While yet a mere infant, 
or, according to others, before he had completed his 
eighth month, the jealousy of Juno, intent upon his de¬ 
struction, sent two snakes to devour him. The child, 
not terrified at the sight of the serpents, boldly seized 
them in both his hands, and squeezed them to death, 
while his brother Iphiclus alarmed the house with his 
shrieks. ( Vid. Iphiclus.) He was early instructed 
in the liberal arts, and Castor, the 6on of Tyndarus, 
taught him the use of arms, Eurytus how to shoot 
with a bow and arrows, Autolycus to drive a chariot, 
Linus to play on the lyre, and Eumolpus to sing. 
Like the rest of his illustrious contemporaries, he soon 
after became the pupil of the centaur Chiron. In the 
18th year of his age, he resolved to deliver the neigh¬ 
bourhood of Mount Cithaeron from a huge lion which 
preyed on the flocks of Amphitryon, his supposed father, 
and which laid waste the adjacent country. After he 
had destroyed the lion, he delivered his country from the 
annua] tribute of a hundred oxen which it paid to Ergi- 
nus. (Vid. Erginus.) Such public services became 
universally known ; and Creon, who then sat on the 
thrrone of Thebes, rewarded the patriotic deeds of Her¬ 
cules by giving him his daughter in marriage, and in¬ 
trusting him with the government of his kingdom. 
As Hercules, by the will of Jupiter, was subjected to 
the power of Eurystheus (vid. Eurystheus), and obliged 
to obey him in every respect, Eurystheus, acquainted 
with his successes and rising power, ordered him to 
appear at Mycenae and perform the labours which, by 
priority of birth, he was empowered to impose upon him. 
Hercules refused; and Juno, to punish his disobedi¬ 


ence, rendered him delirious, so that he killed his owfi 
children by Megara, supposing them to be the offspring 
of Eurystheus. (Vid. Megara.) When he recover¬ 
ed his senses, he was so struck with the misfortunes 
which had proceeded from his insanity, that he con¬ 
cealed himself and retired for some time from the 
society of men. He afterward consulted the oracle oi 
Apollo, and was told that he must be subservient for 
twelve years to the will of Eurystheus, in compliance 
with the commands of Jupiter; and that, after he had 
achieved the most celebrated labours, he should be 
translated to the gods. So plain and expressive an 
answer determined him to go to Mycenae, and to bear 
with fortitude whatever gods or men imposed upon 
him. Eurystheus, seeing the hero totally subjected to 
him, and apprehensive of so powerful an enemy, com¬ 
manded him to achieve a number of enterprises the 
most difficult and arduous ever known, generally called 
the twelve labours of Hercules. The favour of the 
gods had completely armed him when he undertook his 
labours. He had received a sword from Mercury, a 
bow from Apollo, a golden breastplate from Vulcan, 
horses from Neptune, a robe from Minerva. He him¬ 
self cut his club in the Nemean wood. The first la¬ 
bour imposed upon Hercules by Eurystheus was to 
kill the lion of Nemea, which ravaged the country near 
Mycenae. The hero, unable to destroy him with his 
arrows, boldly attacked him with his club, pursued him 
to his den, and, after a close and sharp engagement, 
choked him to death. He carried the dead beast on 
his shoulders to Mycenae, and ever after clothed him¬ 
self with the skin. Eurystheus was so astonished at 
the sight of the beast and at the courage of Hercules, 
that he ordered him never to enter the gates of the city 
when he returned from his expeditions, but to wait for 
his orders without the walls. He even made himselr 
a brazen subterranean apartment, into which he retired 
whenever Hercules returned. (Vid. Chalcioecus and 
Eurystheus.)—The second labour of Hercules was to 
destroy the Lernaean hydra, which abode in the marsh 
of Lerna, whence it used to come out on the land, and 
kill the cattle and ravage the country. This hydra 
had a huge body, with nine heads, eight of them mor¬ 
tal, and one in the middle immortal. Hercules mount¬ 
ed his chariot, which was driven by Iolaus, son of Iphi¬ 
clus, and, on coming to Lerna, he stopped the horses 
and went in quest of the hydra, which he found on a 
rising ground, near the springs of Amymone, where its 
hole was. He shot at the animal with fiery darts til! 
he made it come out; and he then grasped and held 
it, while it twisted itself about his legs. The hero 
crushed its heads with his club, but to no purpose ; for, 
when one was crushed, two sprang up in its stead. A 
huge crab also aided the hydra, and bit the feet of Her 
cules. He killed the crab, and then called upon Iola¬ 
us to come to his assistance. Iolaus immediately set 
fire to the neighbouring wood, and with the flaming 
brands searing the necks of the hydra as the heads were 
cut off, effectually checked their growth. Having thus 
got rid of the mortal heads, Hercules cut off the im¬ 
mortal one and buried it, setting a heavy stone on the 
top of it, in the road leading from Lerna to Eleus. He 
cut the body of the hydra into pieces, and dipped his 
arrows in its gall, which made their wounds incurable. 
Eurystheus, however, denied that this was to be reck¬ 
oned among the twelve labours, since he had not de¬ 
stroyed the hydra alone, but with the assistance of Io¬ 
laus.—He was ordered, in his third labour, to bring, 
alive and unhurt, into the presence of Eurystheus, a 
stag, famous for its incredible swiftness and golden 
horns. This celebrated animal frequented the neigh¬ 
bourhood of GEnoe, and Hercules was employed for a 
whole year continually pursuing it. When at last the 
animal w'as tired with the chase, she took refuge in 
Mount Artemisium, then fled to the river Ladon, and, 
as she was about to cross the stream, Hercules struck 

59"' 




HERCULES. 


HERCULES. 


tier with an arrow, caught her, put her on his shoul¬ 
der, and was going with his burden through An adia, 
when he met Diana and Apollo. The goddess took 
the hind from him, and reproached him for violaiing 
her sacred animal. But the hero excusing himself on 
the plea of necessity, and laying the blame on Eurys- 
theus, Diana was mollified, and allowed him to take 
the hind alive to Mycenae.—The fourth labour was to 
bring alive to Eurystheus a wild boar which ravaged 
the neighbourhood of Erymanthus. In this expedition 
he destroyed the Centaurs ( vid. Centauri and Chiron), 
and then caught the boar by driving him from his lair 
with loud cries, and chasing him into a snow-drift, 
where he seized and bound him, and then took him to 
Mycenae. Eurystheus was so frightened at the sight of 
the boar, that, according to Diodorus, he hid himself in 
his brazen apartment for several days.—In his fifth la¬ 
bour Hercules was ordered to cleanse the stables of 
Augeas, where numerous oxen had been confined for 
many years. (Vid. Augeas.)—For his sixth labour he 
was ordered to kill the carnivorous birds which rav¬ 
aged the country near the Lake Stymphalus in Arcadia. 
While Hercules was deliberating how he should scare 
them, Minerva brought him brazen rattles from Vulcan. 
He took his station on a neighbouring hill, and sound¬ 
ed the rattles : the birds, terrified, rose in the air, and 
he then shot them with his arrows.—In his seventh 
labour he brought alive into Peloponnesus a prodigious 
wild bull, which laid waste the island of Crete.—He 
then let him go, and the bull roved over Sparta and 
Arcadia, and, crossing the isthmus, came to Marathon 
in Attica, where he did infinite mischief to the inhab¬ 
itants.—In his eighth labour he was employed in ob¬ 
taining the mares of Diomedes, the Thracian king, 
which fed on human flesh. (Vid. Diomedes II.)—For 
his ninth labour he was commanded to obtain the gir¬ 
dle of the queen of the Amazons. (Vid. Hippolyta.) 
—In his tenth labour he killed the monster Geryon, 
king of Erythea, and brought his oxen to Eurystheus, 
who sacrificed them to Juno. (Vid. Geryon.)—The 
eleventh labour was to obtain the apples from the gar¬ 
den of the Hesperides. (Vid. Hesperides.)—The 
twelfth, and last, and most dangerous of his labours, 
was to bring upon earth the three-headed dog Cerbe¬ 
rus. When preparing for this expedition, Hercules 
went to Eumolpus at Eleusis, desirous of being initia¬ 
ted ; but he could not be admitted, as he had not been 
purified of the blood of the centaurs. Eumolpus, 
however, purified him. and he then saw the mysteries ; 
after which he proceeded to the Taenarian promontory 
in Laconia, where was the entrance to the lower world, 
and went down to it, accompanied by Mercury and 
Minerva. The moment the shades saw him they fled 
away in terror, all but Meleager and Medusa the Gor¬ 
gon. (Od., 11, 633.) He was drawing his sword on 
the latter, when Mercury reminded him that she was 
a mere phantom. Near the gates of the palace of 
Hades he found Theseus and Pirithoiis, who had at¬ 
tempted to carry off Proserpina, and had, in conse¬ 
quence, been fixed on an enchanted rock by the offend¬ 
ed monarch of Erebus. When they saw Hercules, 
they stretched forth their hands, hoping to be relieved 
by his might. He took Theseus by the hand and 
raised him up ; but when he would do the same for 
Pirithoiis, the earth quaked, and he left him. He then, 
after several other acts of prowess, asked Pluto to give 
him Cerberus ; and the god consented, provided he 
would take him without using'any weapons. He found 
bim at the gates of Acheron ; and protected only by his 
corslet and lion’s skin, he flung his arms about his 
head, and, grasping him by the neck, made him submit, 
though the dragon in his tail bit him severely. He 
brought him through Troezene to Eurystheus, and, 
when he had shown him, took him back to the lower 
world.—Besides these arduous labours, which the jeal¬ 
ousy of Eurystheus imposed upon him- be also achieved 
598 


others of his own accord, equally great and celeorated 
(Vid. Cacus, Antams, Busins, Eryx, &c.), and he had 
also, according to some, accompanied the Argonauts to 
Colchis before he delivered himself up to the King of 
Mycenae. Wishing after this to marry again, having 
given Megara to Iolaus, and hearing that Eurytus, king 
of CEchaha, had declared, that he would give his daugh¬ 
ter Iole to him who should overcome himself and his 
sons in shooting with the bow, he went thither and won 
the victory, but did not obtain the promised prize. Iph- 
itus, the eldest son, was for giving his sister to Hercu 
les, but Eurytus and his other sons refused, lest he 
should destroy her children, if she had any, as he had 
done those of Megara. Shortly afterward, the oxen ot 
Eurytus being stolen by Autolycus, his suspicions fell 
on Hercules. Iphitus, who gave no credit to the charge, 
betook himself to that hero, and besought him to join 
in the search for the lost oxen. Hercules promised to 
do so, and entertained him ; but, falling into madness, 
he precipitated Iphitus from the walls of Tiryns. In 
order to be purified of this murder, he went to Neleus, 
who, being a friend of Eurytus, refused to comply with 
his desire. Hercules then proceeded to Amyclae, 
where he was purified by De'iphobus, the son of Hip 
polytus. But he fell, notwithstanding, into a severe 
malady on account of the murder of Iphitus ; and, go¬ 
ing to Delp’hi to seek relief, he was refused a response 
by the Pythia. In his rage at her denial he went to 
plunder the temple, and, taking the tripod, was about 
establishing an oracle for himself, when A polio came 
to oppose him ; but Jupiter hurled a thunderbolt be¬ 
tween the combatants, and put an end to the contest. 
Hercules now received a response, that his malady 
would be removed if he let himself be sold for three 
years as a slave, and gave the purchase-money to Eu 
rytus as a compensation for the loss of his son. Ac 
cordingly, in obedience to the oracle, he was conduct¬ 
ed by Mercury to Lydia, and there sold to Omph^le, 
the queen of the country. (Vid. Omphale.) The 
purchase-money (three talents, it is said) was offered 
to Eurytus, but he refused to accept it. When the 
term of this servitude had expired, he prepared, being 
now relieved of his disease, to take vengeance on La- 
omedon, for having refused the promised reward for de¬ 
livering Hesione. (Vid. Hippolyta and Laomedon.) 
After succeeding in this enterprise, and slaying La¬ 
omedon, he collected an army and marched against, and 
slew Augeas and his sons. Elis was the scene of this 
warfare, and here, when victory had declared for him, 
he established the Olympic games, raised an altar to 
Pelops, and built altars also to the twelve great deities. 
After the conquest of Elis he marched against Pylos, 
took the city, and killed Neleus and all his sons, ex¬ 
cept Nestor, who was living with the Gerenians. (II., 
11, 689.) He is said also to have wounded Pluto and 
Juno, as they were aiding the Pylians. Some time 
after this, Herd®les went to Oalydon, where he sought 
the hand of Deianira, the daughter of CEneus. He 
had to contend for her with the river-god Achelous, 
who turned himself into a bull, in which form one of 
his horns was broken off by the victorious hero. (Vid. 
Achelous.)—One day, at the table of CEneus, as Eu- 
nomus, son of Architeles, was, according to custom, 
pouring water on the hands of the guests, Hercules 
happening unawares to swing his hand suddenly, struck, 
the boy and killed him. As it was evidently an acci¬ 
dent, the father forgave the death of his son ; but Her¬ 
cules resolved to banish himself, agreeably to the law 
in such cases, and he set out with his wife for Tra- 
chis, the realm of his friend Ceyx. On his journey to 
this quarter the affair of Nessus took place. (Vid. 
Deianira and Nessus ) While residing with Cey A , 
he aided JEgimius, king of the Dorians, against whom 
the Lapithae, under the command of Coronus, had made 
war, on account of a dispute respecting boundaries 
As he was passing, on a subsequent occasion, Dy 




HERCULES. 


HERCULES 


me temple of Apollo at Pagasae, he was opposed by 
Cycnus, the son of Mars, who was in the habit of 
plundering those that brought the sacrifices to Delphi. 
Cycnus fell in the combat; and when Mars, who had 
witnessed the fate of his son, would avenge him, he 
received a wound in the thigh from the spear of the 
hero. Returning to Trachis, Hercules collected an 
army, and made war on Eurytus, king of CEchalia, 
whom he killed, together with his sons, and, plundering 
the town, led away Iole as a captive. At the Euboe- 
au promontory Caenaeum he raised an altar to Jupiter, 
and, wishing to offer a sacrifice, sent to Ceyx for a 
splendid rob^to wear. De'ianira, hearing about lole 
from the messenger, and fearing the effect of her 
charms on the heart of her husband, resolved to try 
the efficacy of the philtre of Nessus ( vid. De'ianira), 
and tinged with it the tunic that was sent. Hercules, 
suspecting nothing, put on the fatal garment, and pre¬ 
pared to offer sacrifice. At first he felt no effect from 
it; but when it warmed, the venom of the hydra began 
to consume his flesh. In his fury, he caught Lichas, 
the ill-fated bearer of the tunic, by the foot, and hurled 
him into the sea. He attempted to tear off the tunic, 
Jaut it adhered closely to his skin, and the flesh came 
away with it. In this wretched state he got on ship¬ 
board, where De'ianira, on hearing the consequences 
of what she had done, hanged herself; and Hercules, 
charging Hyllus, his eldest son by her, to marry Iole 
when he was of sufficient age, had himself carried to 
the summit of Mount (Eta, and there causing a^pyre 
to be erected, ascended it, and directed his followers 
to set it on fire. But no one would venture to obey ; 
till Poeas, happening to arrive there in search of his 
stray cattle, complied with the desire of the hero, and 
received his bow and arrows as his reward. While the 
pyre was blazing, a thunder-cloud conveyed the suf¬ 
ferer to heaven, where he was endowed with immor¬ 
tality ; and, being reconciled to Juno, he espoused her 
daughter Hebe, by whom he had two children, Alexi- 
ares ( Aider-in-war) and Anicetus ( Unsubdued). The 
legend of Hercules is given in full detail by Apollo- 
dorus (2, 4, 8, seqq.). Other authorities on the sub¬ 
ject are as follows ; Diod. Sic., 4, 9, seqq. — Theocrit., 
Idyll., 25.— Pind., 01, 3, 55. — Theocrit., Idyll., 7, 
149.— Pherecydes,ap. Schol. adApoll. Rhod., 2 , 1054. 
— II., 8, 867.— Pherecyd., ap. Schol. ad Od., 21, 23.— 
Hesiod., Scut. Here . — Ovid, Met., 9, 165, et 217.— 
Soph., Trachin. —Homer arms Hercules with a bow 
and arrows. {II., 5, 393.— Od., 8, 224.) Hesiod 
describes him with shield and spear. Pisander and 
Stesichorus were the first who gave him the club and 
lion’s skin. {Athenceus, 12, p. 513.)—The mythology 
of Hercules is of a very mixed character in the form in 
which it has come down to us. There is in it the 
identification of one or more Grecian heroes with Mel- 
carth, the sun-god of the Phoenicians. Hence we find 
Hercules so frequently represented as the sun-god, 
and his twelve labours regarded as the passage of the 
sun through the twelve signs of the zodiac. He is the 
powerful planet which animates and imparts fecundity 
to the universe, whose divinity has been honoured in 
every quarter by temples and altars, and consecrated 
in the religious strains of all nations. From Meroe 
in Ethiopia, and Thebes in Upper Egypt, even to 
Britain, and the icy regions of Scythia ; from the an¬ 
cient Taprobana and Palibothra in India, to Cadiz 
and the shores of the Atlantic-; from the forests of 
Germany to 'the burning sands of Africa ; everywhere, 
in short, where the benefits of the luminary of day are 
experienced, there we find established the name and 
worship of a Hercules. Many ages before the period 
when Alcmena is said to have lived, and the pretended 
Tyrinthian hero to have performed his wonderful ex- 
loits, Egypt and Phoenicia, which certainly did not 
Drrow their divinities from Greece, had raised tem¬ 
ples to the Sun, under a name analogous to that of 


Hercules, and had carried his worship to the ism o 
Thasus and to Gades. Here was consecrated a tern 
pie to the year, and to the months which divided il 
into twelve parts, that is, to the twelve labours or vir 
tories which conducted Hercules to immortality, i! 
is under the name of Hercules Astrochyton (’A orpo- 
x'itov), or the god clothed with a mantle of stars, 
that the poet Nonnus designates the Sun, adored by the 
Tyrians. {Dionys., 40, 415.— Ibid., 375.) “ He is 

the same god,” observes the poet, “ whom different 
nations adore under a multitude of different names ; 
Belus on the banks of the Euphrates, Ammon in Lib¬ 
ya, Apis at Memphis, Saturn in Arabia, Jupiter in As¬ 
syria, Serapis in Egypt, Helios among the Babyloni¬ 
ans, Apollo at Delphi, Esculapius throughout Greece,” 
&c. Martianus Capella, in his hymn to the Sun, as 
also Ausonius {Epigr., 2, 4) and Macrobius {Sat., 1, 
20), confirm the fact of this multiplicity of names given 
to a single star. The Egyptians, according to Plu¬ 
tarch {De Is. et Os., p. 367.— Op., ed. Reiske, vol. 7, 
p. 449), thought that Hercules had his seat in the Sun, 
and that he travelled with it around the moon. The 
author of the hymns ascribed to Orpheus, fixes still 
more strongly the identity of Hercules with the Sun. 
He calls Hercules “ the god who produced time, 
whose forms vary, the father of all things, and de¬ 
stroyer of all. He is the god who brings back by 
turns Aurora and the night, and who, moving onward 
from east to west, runs through the career of his 
twelve labours, the valiant Titan, who chases away 
maladies, and delivers man from the evils which afflict 
him.” {Orph., Hymn., 12.— ed. Herni., p.272, seq .) 
The Phoenicians, it is said, preserved a tradition among 
them, that Hercules was the Sun, and that his twelve 
labours indicated the sun’s passage through the twelve 
signs. Porphyry, who was born in Phoenicia, assures 
us that they there gave the name of Hercules to t \e 
sun, and that the fable of the twelve labours represents 
the sun’s annual path in the heavens {ap. Euseb., Prcep. 
Ev., 3, 11) In like manner the scholiast on Hesiod 
remarks, “ the zodiac, in which the sun performs his 
annual course, is the true career which Hercules trav¬ 
erses in the fable of the twelve labours ; and his mar¬ 
riage with Hebe, the goddess of youth, whom he es¬ 
poused after he had ended his labours, denotes the re¬ 
newal of the year at the end of each solar revolution.” 
{J. Diaconus, Schol. ad Hes., Thcog., p. 165.) Among 
the different epochs at which the year in ancient times 
commenced among different nations, that of the sum¬ 
mer solstice was one of the most remarkable. It was 
at this period that the Greeks fixed the celebration of 
their Olympic game, the establishment of which is at¬ 
tributed to Hercules. ( Corsini , Fast. Alt., vol. 2, p 
235.) It was the origin of the most ancient era of the 
Greeks.—If we fix from this point the departure of the 
sun on his annual career, and compare the progress of 
that luminary through the signs of the zodiac with the 
twelve labours of Hercules, altering somewhat the or¬ 
der ir which they are handed down to us, a very striking 
coincidence is instantly observed. A few examples 
will be adduced. In the first month the sun passes 
into the sign Leo; and in his first labour Hercules 
slew the Nemean lion. Hence, too, the legend, that 
the Nemean lion had fallen from the skies, and that it 
was produced in the regions bordering on the sphere 
of the moon. {Tatian, Contr. Gent., p. 164.) In 
the second month the sun enters the sign Virgo, when 
the constellation of the Hydra sets ; and in his second 
labour Hercules destroyed the Lernaean hydra. It 
should also be remarked, that the head of the celestial 
hydra rises with the constellation Cancer, or the Crab, 
and hence the fable that Hercules was annoyed by a 
crab in his conflict with the hydra. {Cynesins Calv., 
p. 64.) The hydra, moreover, is remarkable among 
the constellations for its great length ; its head rising, 
as has just been remarked, with Cancer; its body be 

599 



HERCULES. 


HERCULES. 


mg extended under the sign Leo, and only ending at 
the later degrees of the sign Virgo. On this is based 
the fable of the continual reappearance of the mon¬ 
ster’s heads ; the constellation being of so great a 
length, that the stars of one part reappear after the 
sun has passed onward to another part, and while the 
stars of this latter part are merged in the solar fires. 
In the third month the sun enters the sign Libra , at 
the beginning of autumn, when the constellation of the 
centaur rises, represented as bearing a wine-skin full 
of liquor, and a thyrsus adorned with vine-leaves and 
grapes. Bayer represents him in his tables with a 
thyrsus in one hand and a flask of wine in the other. 

( Uran ., tabl., 41.) The Alphonsine tables depict him 
with a cup or goblet in his hand. {Tab., Alph., p. 
209.) At this same period, what is termed by some 
astronomers the constellation of the boar rises in the 
evening; and in his third labour Hercules, after be¬ 
ing hospitably entertained by a centaur, encountered 
and slew the other centaurs who fought for a cask 
of wine : he slew also in this labour the Eryman- 
thian boar. In the fourth month the sun enters 
the sign of Scorpio, when Cassiopeia rises, a con¬ 
stellation in which anciently a stag was represented ; 
and in his fourth labour Hercules caught the famous 
stag with golden horns and brazen feet. It is said 
also to have breathed fire from its nostrils. ( Quint. 
Smyrn., 6, 226.) The horns of gold and the breath¬ 
ing of flames are traits that harmonize well with a 
constellation studded with blazing stars, and which, 
in the summer season, unites itself to the solstitial 
fires of the sun, by rising in the evening with its spouse 
Cepheus. In the fifth month the sun enters the sign 
Sagittarius, consecrated to Diana, who had a temple 
at Stymphalus, in which were seen the birds called 
Stymphalides. At this same time rise the three birds; 
namelv, the constellations of the vulture, swan, and 
eagle pierced with the arrows of Hercules ; and in his 
fifth labour Hercules destroyed the birds near Lake 
Stymphalus, which are represented as three in number 
on the medals of Perinthus. {Med. du Cardin. Alban., 
vol. 2, p. 70, n. 1.) In the sixth month the sun passes 
into the sign Capricornus, who was, according to 
some, a grandson of the luminary. At this period the 
stream which flows from Aquarius sets ; its source is 
between the hands of Aristaaus, son of the river Pene- 
us. In his sixth labour Hercules cleansed, by means 
of the Peneus, the stables of Augeas, son of Phcebus. 
Augeas is made by some to have been a son of Nvc- 
teus, a name which bears an evident reference to the 
night {vvf), and which contains, therefore, in the pres¬ 
ent instance, an allusion to the long nights of the win¬ 
ter solstice. In the seventh month the sun passes into 
the sign Aquarius. The constellation of the Lvre, or 
celestial vulture, now sets, which is placed by the side 
of the constellation called Prometheus, and at this 
same period the celestial bull, ealled the bull of Pasi- 
phae, the bull of Marathon, in fine, the bull of Europa, 
passes the meridian. In his seventh labour, Hercules 
brings alive into the Peloponnesus a wild bull, which 
laid waste the island of Crete. He slays also the vul¬ 
ture that preyed upon the liver of Prometheus. It is 
to be remarked that, as the constellation sets at this 
period, Hercules is said to have killed that bird; 
whereas the bull, which crosses the meridian merely, 
is made to have been brought alive into Greece. The 
bull in question was also fabled to have vomited flames 
(Au*. Gell., 1 , 1), an evident allusion to the celestial 
bull which glitters with a thousand fires. It is at the 
close of this seventh labour, and under the same title 
with it, that Hercules is supposed to have arrived in 
Elis, mounted on the steed Arion, and to have estab¬ 
lished there the Olympic games on the banks of the 
Alpheus. Now, when the sun passes into the sign 
Aquarius, he comes into that quarter of the heavens 
which is marked by the full moon from year to year. 

600 


The full moon of the summer-solstice was the period 
for celebrating the Olympic Games ; and hence the 
poets, observing the phenomenon of the full moon du¬ 
ring every year in the sign of Aquarius, ascribed to 
Hercules the institution of these games, of which 
Aquarius, by its union with the full moon, was every 
year the symbol. In the immediate vicinity of Aqua¬ 
rius, moreover, we find the constellation Pegasus iden¬ 
tical with the fabled steed Arion. Hence the fat je of 
Hercules having come on this latter animal to the land 
of Elis. In the eighth month the sun enters into the 
sign Pisces, when the celestial horse rises in the morn¬ 
ing, known by the name of Pegasus and ^.rion, as we 
have just remarked ; and in his eighth labour Hercules 
overcame and carried off the horses of Diomede. 
Eurystheus consecrated these steeds to Juno, to whom, 
in the division of the zodiac among the twelve great 
gods, the sign Aquarius was given as her peculiar 
domain ; and it is worthy of remark, that the Thra¬ 
cian Diomede is fabled to have been the son of Cy- 
rene, who was also the mother of Aristaeus, and that 
this last personage is supposed by many to have been 
the same with Aquarius. In the ninth month the sun 
passes into the sign Aries, sacred to Mars, which all 
the ancient authors who have written on astronomy 
make to be the same with the ram of the golden fleece. 
When the sun enters into this sign, the celestial ship, 
called Argo, rises in the evening. At this same pe¬ 
riod Cassiopeia and Andromeda set. Andromeda is 
remarkable for many beautiful stars, one of which is 
called her girdle. Hyginus makes this girdle consist 
of three stars. Aratus designates it particularly by 
the name of &vr]. Now, in his ninth labour, Hercules, 
according to one version of the legend, embarked on 
board the Argo in quest of the golden fleece ; he con¬ 
tends with the female warriors, and takes from Hippol- 
yta, their queen, the daughter of Mars, a famous girdle. 
He also rescues Hesione from a sea-monster, as Per- 
esus did Andromeda. In the tenth month the sun en¬ 
ters into the sign Taurus. The constellation of Orion, 
who was fable4 to have pursued, through love, the Plei¬ 
ades, or daughters of Atlas, now sets: the herdsman, 
or conductor of the oxen of Icarus, also sets, as does 
likewise the river Eridanus. At this period, too, the 
Pleiades rise, and the she-goat fabled to have been the 
spouse of Faunus. Now, in his tenth labour, Hercu¬ 
les restores to their father the seven Pleiades, whose 
beauty and wisdom had inspired with love Busiris, 
king of Egypt, and who, wishing to become master of 
their persons, had sent pirates to carry them off. He 
slew also Busiris, who is here identical with Orion. In 
this same labour he bore away from Spain the oxen of 
Geryon, and arrived in Italy, where he overcame Ca- 
cus, and was hospitably received by Faunus. In the 
eleventh month the sun passes into the sign of Gemini. 
This period is marked by the setting of Procyon, and 
the cosmical rising of the dog-star. The constellation 
of the Swan also rises in the evening. In his eleventh 
labour, Hercules conquers Cerberus, the dog of Hades. 
He triumphs also over Cycnus (Swan), and at the very 
time, too, according to Hesiod {Scut. Here., 393), 
when the dog-star begins to parch the fields, and the ci¬ 
cada announces the summer by its song. It is to be re¬ 
marked, moreover, that the constellation of the Swan 
gave rise, in a different legend, to the fable of the amour 
of Leda and Jove, and the birth of the ^win-brothers Cas¬ 
tor and Pollux. {Eratosth., c. 25.) In the twelfth 
month the sun enters the sign Cancer, the last of the 
twelve commencing with Leo. The constellations of 
the river and the centaur set, that of Hercules Ingenicu- 
lus also descends towards the western regions, or those 
of Hesperia, followed by the dragon of the ’pole, the 
guardian of the golden apples of the Hesperides, whose 
head he crushes with his foot. In his twelfth labour, 
Hercules travelled to Hesperia in quest of the golden 
fruit, guarded by the dragon. After this he prepares 








HERCULES. 


HERCULES. 


to offer up a solemn sacrifice, and clothes himself in a 
robe dipped in the blood of the Centaur, whom he had 
slain in crossing a river. The robe takes fire, and the 
hero perishes amid the flames, but only to resume his 
youth in the heavens, and become a partaker of immor¬ 
tality. The Centaur thus terminates the mortal career 
of Hercules ; and in like manner the new annual period 
commences with the passage of the sun into Leo, 
marked by a group of stars in the morning, which 
glitter like the flames that issued from the vestment 
of Nessus.—If Hercules be regarded as having actually 
ex isted, nothing can be more monstrous, nothing more 
a: variance with every principle of chronology, nothing 
nore replete with contradictions, than the adventures 
of such an individual as poetry makes him to have 
been. But, considered as the luminary that, gives 
light and life to the world, as the god who impregnates 
all nature with his fertilizing rays, every part of the le¬ 
gend teems with animation and beauty, and is marked 
by a pleasing and perfect harmony. t The sun of the 
summer solstice is here represented with all the attri¬ 
butes of that strength which he has acquired at this 
season of the year. He enters proudly on his course, 
in obedience to the eternal order of nature. It is no 
longer the sign Leo that he traverses ; he combats a 
fearful lion which ravages the plains. The Hydra is 
the second monster that opposes the hero, and the 
constellation in the heavens becomes a fearful animal 
on earth, to which the language of poetry assigns a hun¬ 
dred heads, with the power of reproducing them as 
they are crushed by the weapon of the hero. All the 
obstacles that array themselves against the illustrious 
champion are gifted with some quality or attribute that 
exceeds the bounds of nature : the horses of Diomede 
feed on human fesh ; the females rise above the timid¬ 
ity of their sex, and become formidable heroines ; the 
apples of the Hesperides are of gold ; the stag has 
fcrazen hoofs ; the dog of Hades bristles with serpents; 
everything, even down to the very crab, is formidable; 
for everything is great in nature, and must, therefore, 
be equally so in the various symbols that are used to 
designate her various powers. (Consult, on this whole 
subject, the remarks of Dupuis , Origine de tous les 
Cultes, vol. 2, p. 168, seqq. — Abrege, p. 116, scqq.) 
The conclusion to which we have here arrived, will 
appear still plainer if we take a hasty sketch of the Ori 
ental origin of the fable of Hercules, and its passage from 
the East into the countries of the West. And it will be 
seen that the Greeks, in conformity with their national 
character, appropriated to themselves, and gave a hu¬ 
man form to, an Oriental deity ; and that, metamor¬ 
phosing the stranger-god into a Grecian hero, they 
took delight in making him an ideal type of that heroic 
courage and might which triumphs over every obstacle. 
Hercules, the invincible Hercules, has strong analogies 
with the Persian Mithras, the type of the unconquered 
siMi. ( Creuzer , Symbolik, par Guigniaut, vol. 1, p. 
376, &c.) Mithras, Perseus, and Hercules the de¬ 
scendant of Perseus, connect together the two families 
of Belus, that of Asia and that of Egypt. According 
to the Greek genealogies, the son of Amphitryon and 
Alcmena was of Egyptian blood both on the father’s 
and mother’s side, while he was descended bv Perseus 
from Belus, the solar god. (Consult the tables of ge¬ 
nealogy, X, Xa. and Xb, at the end of Heyne’s Apol- 
lodorus.) But, added the tradition, the figure of Am¬ 
phitryon only served as a mask to the king of gods and 
men when he wished to give birth to Hercules. The 
origin of the latter, then, was mediately and immediately 
divine, and we have a son of Jupiter in the Hellenic 
Hercules, as well as in the Sem-Hercules of Egypt. 
But, in every other respect, what a difference between 
the two. Herodotus, full of the ideas imbibed from 
the national poems on Hercules, the illustrious chief 
of the heroic races of Greece, arrives in Egypt. There 
be finds a Hercules quite different from the one with 
4 G 


which he is familiar. In vain does he endeavour to 
reconcile the mythic legends of Greece with the foreign 
dogmas that he encounters. After a scrupulous ex¬ 
amination, and imploring the favour of the gods of his 
country, he declares that the name Herakles is origi¬ 
nally from Egypt, not from Greece. Hercules with the 
Egyptians was the sun of the spring in all his force, 
an idea to which his very name alluded, which was 
in the Egyptian tongue Sem, Som , or Djom , “ the 
Strong.” Sem-Herakles passed for a god of the sec¬ 
ond class in Egypt. He was the type of the divine 
power, appearing with glory at the period of the spring, 
after having conquered the gloomy winter. He was 
the sun traversing his celestial career, contending 
against the numerous obstacles with which his path is 
supposed to be strewed, and obtaining by his immortal 
vigour a prize worthy of his numerous triumphs. On 
the monuments of Egypt he was seen traversing the 
fields of air in the bark of the star of day ( Plut ., de 
Is. et Os., p. 506, ed Wyttenb.); at other times the 
phoenix was placed in his hand, as a pledge of eternal 
victory, and a symbol of the great year, to which the 
renewal of each solar year was supposed to allude.— 
From the Egyptian let us pass to the Phoenician Her¬ 
cules. Here he was denominated Melkarth, and be¬ 
longed to the line of Bel or Baal, called Cronos by the 
Greeks. ( Creuzer , Symbolik, par Guigniaut, vol. 3, 
p. 15.) Melkarth was the tutelary divinity of the pow¬ 
erful city of Tyre, and the Tyrian navigators spread 
his worship from island to island, and from shore to 
shore, even to the farthest west, even to Gades, where 
a flame burned continually in his temple, as at Olympia 
on the altar of Jupiter. ( Heeren, Ideen, vol. 1, p. 2, 
seqq.) His name signified, according to some, “the 
king of the city according to others, and with greater 
probability, “ the powerful king” ( Bochart, Geogr 
Sacr., 2, 2.— Selden , de D. S., 1, 6), an idea closely 
analogous to that intended to be conveyed by the Egyp¬ 
tian appellation Sem. The King of the City, or the 
powerful King, was a true incantation of the sun. 
He was the sun of spring, growing gradually more and 
more powerful as it mounts to the skies, sending rains 
upon the earth, and causing the seed to shoot forth 
from the ground. Hence the Phoenicians regarded 
him as the god of harvests and of the table, the god 
who brings joy in his train. ( Nonnus , Dionys., 40, 
418.) A mercantile and commercial people, they also 
made him (in a still more special sense, perhaps) the 
protector of commerce and colonies. It is to this idea 
that many seek to refer the etymology of the Greek 
and Latin names Herakles and Hercules. Thus, some 
assign as the root the Phoenician or Hebrew term 
Harkel, “ circuitor,” “ mercator” ( Munter , Relig. der 
Car (hag., p. 41, ed. 2), but which applies equally well 
to the sun moving along in his celestial career {vne- 
plcjv). Others write the name Archies, which recalls 
the old Latin or Etrurian Ercle, Hercole. ( Beller - 
mann, 1, 22.) The perilous and fertilizing course of 
the sun in the heavens may, in fact, have passed for a 
natural type of those adventurous courses by land and 
sea which enriched the hardy navigators of Phoenicia ; 
and beyond a doubt the mythus of Hercules borrowed 
more than one incident from their distant expeditions. 
The ancient nations had a custom of loading with 
chains the statues of their gods, when the state was 
menaced with danger, in order to prevent their flight. 
Among the Phoenicians, the idol Melkarth was almost 
constantly chained. In the same manner, the nations 
of Italy chained their Saturn every year until the tenth 
month, and at his festival in December they gave him 
his freedom. (Macrob., Sat., 1,8.) The fundamen¬ 
tal idea of this symbolical usage was originally the 
same among all these nations, though afterward differ¬ 
ently expressed, and variously modified in various sys¬ 
tems of religion. In the infantine conceptions of the 
earliest times, it was believed that the course of the 

601 



HERCULES. 


HERCULES. 


tun t ould be retarded by chaining his image, and ac¬ 
celerated by removing the fetters. Hence, in this way, 
they wished to represent his strength and his weak- 
aess.—The worship of Hercules prevailed also in 
Phrygia. Hercules, according to Eusebius ( Chron ., 
I, p. 26. — Bochart, Geogr. Sacr., p. 472), here bore 
the name of Diodas, or, as the Latin version gives it, 
Desanaus, which last Vossius makes equivalent to 
,4 strong,” “powerful,” an idea conveyed also by the 
Tyrian appellation of Melkarth. (Tow, de Idolol., 1, 
22.)—As a colony from Tyre had carried the worship 
of Hercules into Boeotia by the way of Thasus, so 
another colony conveyed it to the Ionians of lower 
Asia. At Erythras, on the coast of Ionia, was to be 
seen a statue of Hercules, of an aspect completely 
Egyptian. The worship of the god was here cele¬ 
brated by certain Thracian females, because the females 
of the country were said to have refused to make to the 
god an offering of their locks on his arrival at Erythrae. 

(Pans an ., 7, 5.) The females of Byblos sacrificed to 
Adonis their locks and their chastity at one and the 
same time, and it is probable that the worship of Her¬ 
cules was not more exempt, in various parts of the 
ancient world, from the same dissolute offerings. In 
Lydia, particularly, it seems to have been marked by 
an almost delirious sensuality. Married and unmar¬ 
ried females prostituted themselves at the festival of 
the god. ( Hcrodot ., 1 , 93. — Compare Clearch., ap. 

Athen., 12, p. 416, ed. Schweigh.) The two sexes 
changed their respective characters ; and tradition re¬ 
ported that Hercules himself had given an example of 
this, when, assuming the vestments and occupation 
of a female, he subjected himself to the service of the 
voluptuous Omphale. ( Creuzcr , Fragm. Hist. An- 
tiq., p. 187.) ihe Lydian Hercules was named San- 
don, after the robe dyed with sandyx, in which Om¬ 
phale had arrayed him, and which the females of the 
country imitated in celebrating his licentious worship. 
(/. Laurent. Lydus, de Mag. Rom., 3, 64, p. 268.) 
This Sandon reappears in the Cilician Sandacus, sub¬ 
jected to his male companion Pharnaces, as the Lydian 
Hercules was to Omphale. ( Creuzer , Symbol'll:, par 
Guigniaut, vol. 3, p. 179.) We find here, as in the 
religion of Phoenicia, the same opposition, the same 
alternation of strength and weakness, of voluptuous¬ 
ness and courage. Hercules with Omphale, is the so- 
lar god descended into the omphalos, or “navel” of 
the world, amid the signs of the southern hemisphere ; 
and it was the festival of this powerful star, enervated 
in some degree at the period of the winter solstice, 
which the Lydjan people celebrated by the changing of 

the vestments of the weaker and the stronger sex._ 

The fable of Hercules Melampyges and the Cercopes 
has a similar reference. According to Diodorus Sicu¬ 
lus (4, 31), the Cercopes dwelt in 'the vicinity of 
Ephesus, and ravaged the country far and wide, while 
Hercules led a life of pleasure and servitude in the 
arms of Omphale. In vain had their mother warned 
them to beware of the powerful hero : they contemned 
her exhortations, and Melampyges, in consequence, 
was sent to chastise them. He soon brought them to 
the queen, loaded with chains. A different tradition 
places the Cercopes in the islands that face the coast 
of Campania. Jupiter, says the legend, being in¬ 
volved in war with the Titans, came to these islands 
to demand aid from the people called Arimi. But the 
Arimi, after having promised him assistance, refused to 
fulfil that promise, and trifled with the god. As a 
punishment for this conduct, Jove changed them into 
monkeys, or, according to others, into stones, and from 
this period the isles of Inarime and Prochyta have 
taken the name of Pithccusa, or “Monkey Islands.” 
(UidqKOVGai, from nWytcoe, “ a monkey.”) We have 
here the Cercopes, both in Asia Minor and in the vol¬ 
canic islands of Campania. The meaning of the fable 
evident. The Lydian Hercules is the sun, pale and 
602 y 


feeble at the period of the winter solstice, whicti in 
some sense turns his back upon the earth, and shows 
his obscurer parts. (Compare the literal meaning of 
Ms / idpKV - yoc , and the note of Guigniaut, vol. 3, p. 
182.) As long as the solar god abandons himself to 
an inglorious life, and divides his attention between 
the pleasures and the servile employments of women, 
that is, during the entire winter solstice, the Cercopes, 
who are the divisions of this period of languor, crowd 
around and insult him with impunity. But no sooner 
does the approach of the vernal equinox reinvigorate 
the solar luminary, than Hercules, coming forth from 
degrading repose, attacks and subjugates his revilers. 
Jupiter, placed in opposition to the same creatures, so 
full of artifice and so fair a symbol of it, may equally 
be explained in an astronomical and calendary sense. 
This god was the sun of suns ; the supreme force that 
combats, subdues, and dissipates whatever tends to 
obscure the light and disturb the harmony of the uni¬ 
verse. The Cercopes are here opposed to him in the 
same manner as in other legends the Titans.—It may 
be as well, before leaving this part of the subject, to 
remark, that the monkey, and also various other ani¬ 
mals or natural objects, consecrated in public worship 
both among the Egyptians and elsewhere, were re¬ 
garded as having a direct and permanent relation tc 
the stars, their revolutions, and the periods of the year. 
Apes appear to have been honoured with a species ol 
worship, not only in India and Egypt, but also along 
the northern coast of Africa, perhaps even at Carthage 
itself. ( Guigniaut , vol. 3, p. 183.) — Hercules, ac¬ 
cording to the traditions of Lydia, became the father, 
in this country, by a female slave, perhaps the same 
with Omphale, of the chief of a new dynasty of kin^s. 
The dynasty preceding this had in like manner for its 
founder a chieftain of the name of Atys, homonymous 
with the solar god of Phrygia and Lydia. The sec¬ 
ond royal race was that of the Heraclidae, or rathe; 
of the Candaulidse ; for, according to some, the Lydi 
an Hercules was named Candaules. {Hesych., s. v. 
Kavdavly^:)] This name recalls to mind the last mon¬ 
arch of the race, who, like his divine progenitor, fell 
into the snare laid for him by an artful woman, and, 
still more unfortunate than he, lost at one and the same 
time his throne and his life. (Herodot., 1,12.) With¬ 
out speaking of the marvellous incidents with which 
the later accounts of this work are adorned, such, for 
example, as the magic ring of Gyges, the narrative oi 
Herodotus alone evidently shows a mythic side in the 
whole history of the kings of Lydia : the very fall of 
the monarchy is related with accompanying circum¬ 
stances that bear the imprint of old religious symbols. 

If King Meles, said the legend, had carried the lion, 
which one of his concubines brought forth, all around 
the walls of Sardis, that city never would have fallen 
into the hands of Cyrus. ( Hcrodot ., 1, 84.) We have 
here a royal lion, born of a young female, in the fam¬ 
ily of the Heraclidao ; and the lion was always a sym¬ 
bol of the valiant and victorious Hercules, an em¬ 
blem of the sun in its protecting force. It remained 
the sacred attribute of the monarchs of Lydia. Among 
the rich offerings which Crcesus sent to the temple of 
Apollo at Delphi, the principal one was a golden lion. 
(heiodot., 1, 50.) Even Sardis itself was, as the very 
name denoted, the city of the year, and, under this ap¬ 
pellation, consecrated to the god who directed the 
movements of the year. ( Xanthus, ap. 1. Lyd. de 
Mens., p. 42.) It was the city of Hercules, as the 
Egyptian Thebes was the city of Ammon ; Babylon, 
the city of Belus ; Ecbatana, with its walls of seven 
different colours, the city of the planets.—India had 
also her Hercules, if we credit the ancient writers, 
though their accounts are of a date comparatively re¬ 
cent. He was named Dorsanes or Dosanes ( Hesy - 
chins s. v.Aopc.—Alberti, ad loc.), an appellation 
which recalls the Desanaus of Phrygia. The account 





HERCULES. 


HER 


given by Megasthenes ( ap. Arrian, Ind., c. 8, seqq.), 
is in many respects so very similar to that which has 
already been stated with regard to the Lydian Hercu¬ 
les, as to lead to the belief that the legends of Lower 
Asia had emanated in some degree from the plains of 
the Indian peninsula. The Rama of Hindustan, with 
his warlike apes, reminds us, under various striking 
aspects, of Hercules and the Cercopes.—The religion 
of Hercules, passing from the East like the god whom 
it was intended to commemorate, made its way to the 
farthest limits of the then known West. The Phoeni¬ 
cians, and after them the Carthaginians, extended on 
every side the worship of Melkarth, the divine pro¬ 
tector of their colonies. It was from them that the 
nations of Spain, after those of Africa, learned to re¬ 
vere his name ; and, not content with placing his col¬ 
umns at the entrance of the Atlantic, the Phoenician 
Hercules undertook, on this vast extent of ocean, long 
and perilous expeditions. Pursuing also another di¬ 
rection, he crossed the barriers of the Pyrenees and 
the Alps : he and his descendants founded numerous 
cities, both in Gaul and in the countries adjacent to it. 
He was here styled Deusoniensis, an appellation which 
again recalls that of Desanaus. Indeed, the occiden¬ 
tal mythology seems here to correspond in every par¬ 
ticular with that of the East. The cup of the sun, in 
which Hercules traverses the ocean for the purpose of 
reaching the isle of Erythea, represents the marvellous 
cup of the Persian Dschemschid. Under the empire 
of the latter, no corruption or decay of any kind pre¬ 
vailed ; and the columns of wood in the temple of 
Hercules at Gades were never carious. The Dschem¬ 
schid of Persia and the Sem of Egypt gave health to 
their votaries; the Romans recognised the same power 
in their victorious Hercules. (I. Lyd. de Mens., p. 
92 ) Rome herself counted among her citizens cer¬ 
tain individuals who claimed to be his descendants. 
The heroic family of the Fabii, for example, traced 
their origin to the son of Alcmena. ( Plut., Vit. Fab. 
Max., c. 1.) The Latins, as well as the Lydians, as¬ 
signed various concubines to this powerful deity, 
among whom are mentioned Fauna, and Acca Laren- 
tia, the nurse of Romulus. ( Macer, ap. Macrob., 
Sat., 1, 10.— August., de Civ. Dei, 6, 7.) Thus, then, 
at the same time that we find even in the.West the 
traces of a sensual worship rendered to Hercules, we 
see reproduced that peculiar tendency, so prevalent in 
the East, of making heroes and kings the descendants 
of the divine sun ; the children of that victorious and 
beneficent star, which continually brings us both the 
day and the year as the prizes of his glorious combats. 
And, indeed, what idea can be more natural than this 1 
Is not the sun himself a powerful king, a hero, placed 
in a situation of continual combat with the shades of 
darkness and with the evil spirits to w’hich they give 
birth 1 His numerous adversaries, in the career of the 
zodiac which he traverses, are principally the signs of 
winter. The solemn rites offered to him, such as the 
games celebrated at Chemmis and Olympia; the 
chains with which the statue of the Tyrian Hercules 
w r as loaded ; the circle of female figures surrounding 
his statue at Sardis, were intended to represent the 
alternations of strength and weakness, of victory and 
defeat, which mark the course of this courageous 
wrestler of the year, whose very death is a triumph. 
Hence, among the numerous incarnations of the star 
of day, the warlike spirit of the earlier nations of an¬ 
tiquity would, in order to propose it as an example to 
chiefs and monarchs, give a preference to that one 
which represented the sun under the character that we 
have just been considering. Nor could the heads of 
communities have a nobler model. If their origin was 
regarded as divine, it imposed upon them the obliga¬ 
tion of a continual struggle, in order to render mani¬ 
fest to all eyes the principle of light, of strength, and 
of goodness, which they were supposed to have within 


them. Besides, it was on the solar yea>, and its ser 
eral subdivisions and periods, thaw the ordinances vf 
the earliest social state were based. In maintaining 
this, sacred order, they only imitated the god of the 
year, at once the author of it and of their race. It is 
for these reasons that we find, throughout all antiquity, 
a solar hero at the head of royal dynasties. This so¬ 
lar hero is Hercules, who is everywhere found to be 
the same personage, though under different appella¬ 
tions.—In Greece, the painful and protracted delivery 
of Alcmena, the mother of Hercules, already announces 
the god of light, destined to struggle painfully against 
the powers of darkness. Uithyia herself, the light 
coming forth from the bosom of night, sits with folded 
arms before the door of Amphitryon, and the coura¬ 
geous mother is a prey to cruel pangs until the cause 
of her anguish is removed by the artifice of Galan- 
this. ( Vid. Alcmena.) Long did Juno, according to 
the early traditions, put every obstacle in the way of 
the birth of the hero. (II., 19, 119.) This hostile 
power persecutes the son after the mother, and her ob¬ 
stinate hatred becomes the means that enable him to 
develop in all its splendour the divine power with 
which he is endowed. Thus the oracle gave him the 
name of Herakles (’JrlpaKlyc), because by means ot 
Juno ("Hpa) he was destined to gain immortal glory ' 
(kTieoq), and live in the praises of posterity. ( Diod. 
Sic., 4, 10.— Schol. ad Pind., 01, 6, 115.—Compare 
Macrobius, Sat., 1, 20, who makes Hercules the glory 
of Hera, or the lower air, the native darkness ot 
which is illumined by the sun.) False as this etymol 
ogy undoubtedly is, it still proves that the Greeks 
themselves attached to their Hercules the fundamental 
idea of a hero constantly at variance with a contrary 
power. As regards the name itself, it may be re¬ 
marked, that it is most probably of Oriental origin, 
though various attempts have been made by different 
scholars to trace it to a Grecian source. The Latir, 
Hercules, (Hercole, Ercle ) is, to all appearance, a more 
ancient form than the Greek ’EpauXyg. (Lcnnep, 
Etymol. L. G., p. 245. — Lanzi, Saggio di Ling. 
Etrusca, vol. 2, p. 206, seqq.) Hermann considers 
Hercules as virtue personified, and carrying off glory 
and praise ('Hpa/ciL/c, of r/paro uTieog. Briefe uber 
Homer und Hesiod, p. 20), while Knight gives to the 
fable of the hero a physical basis, borrowed from the 
worship of the sun (“ the glorifier of the earth," from 
spa and /cAeof.— Enquiry into Syrnb. Lang., 130). 
For other theories relative to Hercules, consult Mul¬ 
ler, Dorians, b. 2, c. 11, seq., and Buttmann, Mytho- 
logus, vol. 1, p. 246, seqq. 

Herculeum, I. Promontorium, a promontory in the 
Bruttiorum Ager, forming the most southern angle ot 
Italy to the east, now Capo Spartivento. (Strabo , 
259.— Cluver., Ital. Antiq., 2, p. 1300.— Romanelli, 
vol. 1, p. 140.)—II. Fretum, the strait which forms the 
communication between the Atlantic and Mediterra¬ 
nean. (Vid. Abila, Calpe, and Herculis Columnae.) 

Herculis, I. Columnae, or Columns of Hercules, a 
name given to Calpe and Abila, or Gibraltar on the 
Spanish, and Cape Serra on the African, shore of the 
straits. Hercules was fabled to have placed them there 
as monuments of his progress westward, and beyond 
which no mortal could pass. (Vid. Calpe, Abila, and 
Mediterraneum Mare.)--II. Monaeci Portus, or Arx 
Herculis Monaeci, a town and harbour of Liguria, near 
Nicaea. The surname of Monaecus, given to Hercules, 
who was worshipped here, shows, as Strabo observes, 
the Greek origin of this place. Fabulous accounts at¬ 
tributed its foundation to Hercules himself. (Am. Mar- 
cell., 15.) The harbour is well described by Lucan 
(1, 405). It is now Monaco. —III. Liburni Portus, 
now Livorno or Leghorn, a part of Etruria, below the 
mouth of the Arnus. Cicero calls it Portus Herculis 
Labronis (ad Quint. Fratr., 2, 6).—IY. Portus, a har¬ 
bour of Etruria, now Porto d'Ercole. It was situate 

603 



HER 


HER 


between Arminia and Incitaria, and served as a port to 
the city of Cosa. It was one of the principal stations 
for the Roman fleets on the lower sea. ( Liv., 22, 11 
— Id., 30, 39.) 

Hercynia, a very extensive forest of Germany, the 
breadth of which, according to Caesar, was nine days’ 
journey, while its length exceeded sixty. It extend¬ 
ed from the territories of the Helvetii, Nemetes, and 
Rauraci, along the Danube to the country of the Daci 
and Anartes. Then turning to the north, it spread 
over many large tracts of land, and is said to have con¬ 
tained many animals unknown in other countries, of 
which Caesar describes two or three kinds. Caesar, 
following the Greek geographers (Arist., Meteor., 1, 
13-—Compare Apoll. Rhod., 4, 140), confounds all 
the forests and all the mountains of Central Germany 
under the name of Hercynia Silva. This vague tra¬ 
dition was propagated among the Roman geographi¬ 
cal writers, nor could either Pliny or Tacitus form a 
more exact idea of its extent. ( Plin ., 4, 12.— Tac., 
Germ ., 28 and 30.) Ptolemy had obtained more pos¬ 
itive information on the subject: besides his Mount 
Abnoba, he distinguished the Plartz Forest under the 
name of Melibocus, &c. On the country’s becoming 
more inhabited, the grounds were gradually cleared, 
and but few vestiges of the ancient forest remain in 
modern times. These now go by particular names, as 
the Black Forest, which separates Alsace from Swa¬ 
bia ; the Steyger in Franconia ; the Spissard on the 
Mayn ; the Thuringer in Thuringia ; Hessewald in the 
duchy of Cleves ; the Bohemerwald, which encompass¬ 
es Bohemia, and was in the middle ages called Her¬ 
cynia Silva ; and the Hartz Forest in Lunenburgh. 
Some of the German writers at the present day derive 
the ancient name from the term hart , high; others sup¬ 
pose it to come from hartz, resin, and consider the old 
name as remaining in the present Hartz Forest. 
(Malte-Brun, Precis., &c., vol. 1, p. 108, Brussels ed. 
— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 3, p. 410.) 

Herennius, I. Senecio, a native of Spain, and a 
senator and quaestor at Rome under Domitian. His 
contempt for public honours, his virtuous character, 
and his admiration of Helvidius Priscus, whose life he 
wrote, rendered him odious to the emperor, and caused 
him to be accused of high treason. He was condemn¬ 
ed to death, and his work burned by the public execu¬ 
tioner. ^ (Tac., Vit. Agric., c. 3.— Plin., Ep., 3, 33.) 

H. T. he father of Pontius the Samnite commander, 
who advised his son either to give freedom to the Ro¬ 
mans ensnared at the Caudine Pass, or to exterminate 
them all. (Livy, 9, 1, seqq.) —III. Caius, a Roman, 
to whom the treatise on rhetoric, ascribed by some to 
Cicero, is addressed. The treatise in question is gen¬ 
erally regarded as not having been written by the 
Roman orator, but either by Antonius Gnipho or Q. 
Cornificius. (Consult on this point the remarks of 
Schutz, in his edition of Cicero, vol. 1, p. lv., seqq., 
and those of Le Clerc, in his more recent edition, 
Paris, 1827, vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 1, seqq.) 

Herm^e, statues of Mercury, which the Athenians had 
in the vestibules of their dwellings. They were made 
like terminal figures of stones, of a cubical form, and 
surmounted with a head of Mercury. ( Vid. Mercurius.) 

Herm^a, a festival celebrated at Cydonia, in the 
island of Crete, at which the slaves enjoyed complete 
freedom, and were waited upon by their masters. 
(Ephorus, ap. Athen., 6, p. 263, f .— Carystius, ap. 
mnd., 14, p. 639.— Hock, Kreta, vol. 3, p. 39.) 

Herm^eum, I. Promontorium, or Promontory of 
Mercury ('Eppfjq, Mercurius), on the southern shore 
of Crete, between the Promontory Criu Metopon and 
Phcenix.—II. A promontory of Sardinia, on the west¬ 
ern shore, a little to the north of Bosa, now Capo della 
Caeca.—III. A promontory of Africa, in the district 
Zeugitana, now Cape Bon. (Polyb., 1, 29 .—Plin 
5, 4.— Mela, 1, 7.-Liv., 29, 27.) 


Hermaphroditic, a son of Mercury ('E pfif/g) and 
Venus (’A typodiry), the fable relative to whom and the 
nymph Salmacis may be found in Ovid (Met., 4, 285, 
seqq.). It is evidently copied after some Eastern le¬ 
gend, although the Grecian spirit has moulded it into 
a more pleasing form, perhaps, than was possessed by 
its original. The doctrine of androgynous divinities 
lies at the very foundation of the earliest pagan wor¬ 
ship. The union of the two sexes was regarded by the 
early priesthoods as a symbol of the generation of the 
universe, and hence originated those strange types and 
still stranger ceremonies, which, conceived at first in 
a pure and simple spirit, became eventually the source 
of so much licentiousness and indecency. The early 
believer was taught by his religious instructer, that, 
before the creation, the productive power existed alone 
in the immensity of space. When the process of crea¬ 
tion commenced, this power divided itself into two 
portions, and discharged the functions of an active and 
a passive being, a male and a female. Hence arose 
the beauteous frame of the universe. This is the doc 
trine, in particular, of the Hindu Vedas, and it is ex¬ 
plicitly established in the Manara-Dharma-Sastra, and 
also in the laws of Menou. The Adonis of Syria 
(Creuzer, Symbolik, vol. 2, p. 12); the Adagous of 
Phrygia (Herodotus, 1, 105.— Creuzer, 1, 150); the 
Phtha and Neith of Egypt; the Mithras of Persia 
(Jul. Firmicus, p. 1, seqq.— Goerres, vol. 1, p. 254); ■ 
the Freya of Scandinavia (Goerres, vol. 2, p. 574) ; the 
Cenrezi of Thibet (Wagner, p. 199); the Brama, 
Schiva, Vishnou, and Krishna, of India (Roger, Pa¬ 
gan. In., 2, 2.— Paulin., Syst. Brahman., p. 195.— 
Porphyr., in Stob. Eclog. Phys., 1, 4.— Bagavadam. 
Wagner, p. 167.— Bhagavat Geta, &c.); the Moon 
among various nations of Asia (Spartian., Vit. Cara 
call., c. 7. — Casaubon, ad loc.) ; all these objects of ad 
oration reunited the two sexes, and, by a consequence 
of this symbolical idea, the priests changed their ordi¬ 
nary vestments, and assumed those of the other sex in 
the ceremonies instituted in honour of these gods, for 
the purpose of expressing their double nature. How 
different from all this is the Grecian legend ! and yet 
its origin is one and the same. 

PIermathena, a sort of statue, raised on a square ped¬ 
estal, in which the attributes of Mercury ( r E p/ur/q) and 
Minerva (’A dijvy) were blended. (Consult the remarks 
under the preceding article ; and Creuzer, Symbolik, 
vol. 2, p. 750.) M. Spon gives various figures of Her- 
mathenas. (Recherch. Curieuses de VAntiq., p. 93.) 

Hermes ('E ppyc), I. the name of Mercury among 
the Greeks. (Vid. Mercurius I.)—II. Trismegistus". 
(Vid. Mercurius II.) 

Hermesianax, a poet of Colophon, who flourished 
in the time of Philip and his son Alexander. He com¬ 
posed three books of elegies, and entitled the collec¬ 
tion Leontium (A eovrtov), in honour of his mistress, 
who is the same, perhaps, with the one connected with 
the history of Epicurus and his disciple Metrodorus. 
Athenaeus has preserved for us a fragment of nearly a 
hundred verses of this poet, which makes us regret 
what we have lost. This fragment was published in 
1T82, by Ruhnken, in an appendix to his Epislola 
Critxca, 2, p. 283. It was also edited by Weston, 
Rond., 1784, 8vo, and by Ilgen, in his Opuscula Varia, 
Erfort., 1797, 8vo, vol. 1, p. 248, seqq. The best 
edition, however, is that of Hermann, 1828, 4to, in 
his Program. Acad, in memoriam I. A. Erncsti, Lips 
(Consult ^Hoffmann, Lex. Bibliogr., vol. 2, p. 353.) 

Hermias, a Christian writer towards the close of the 
second century, and a native of Galatia, who has left 
us a short but elegant discourse in ridicule of the pamm 
philosophers, entitled ^aavppbq ruv ifa fiXococLv 
It appears to be an imitation of a discourse of Tatian’s 
but it is an imitation by a man of spirit and ability 
He ridicules the want of harmony that prevails amom* 
the systems of the Greek philosophers, which is th 











HER 


HER 


iause of all their speculations being crowned with no 
positive result. He is accused by some critics of 
putting nothing in the place of the edifice which he 
has destroyed by his sarcasms. Such, however, was 
not the end he had proposed to himself. It was suffi¬ 
cient for him to show that the systems of ancient phi¬ 
losophy were untenable. The one which was to oc¬ 
cupy its place they had only to seek, for, and Hermas 
points it out to them without naming it. This treatise 
was published by Seiber, Basil , 1533, 8vo, and with 
the notes of Wolf in Morell’s Compend. de Orig. Vet. 
Phil., Basil, 1580, 8vo. It is found also in the Auc- 
tar. Biblioth. Patrum, Paris, 1624 ; and in the Oxford 
edition of Tatian, 8vo, 1700. The best edition, how¬ 
ever, is that of Dommerich, Hal., 1774, 8vo. ( Scholl, 
Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 5, p. 213.— Lardrier, Credibility 
of Gospel History, pt. 2, vol. 2, p. 555.) 

Hermione, I. more correctly Harmonia, daughter 
of Mars and Venus, and wife of Cadmus. (Vid. Har¬ 
monia.)—II. Daughter of Menelaiis and Helen. She 
was privately engaged to her cousin Orestes, the son 
of Agamemnon ; but her father, on his return from 
Troy, being ignorant of this, gave her in marriage to 
Pyrrhus, otherwise called Neoptoiemus. After the 
murder of that prince (vid. Pyrrhus), she married Ores¬ 
tes, and received the kingdom of Sparta as her dowry. 
(Virg.. JEn., 3, 327, seqq. — Heyne, Excurs., 12, ad 
Virg., JEn., 3.— Eurip., Androm.) —III. A city of Ar- 
golis, on the southern coast, opposite Hydrea. It was 
founded, according to Herodotus (8, 43), by the Dry- 
opes, whom Hercules and the Melians had expelled 
from the banks of the Sperchius and the valley of GEta. 
Pausanias describes this city as situate on a hill of 
moderate height, and surrounded by walls. It con¬ 
tained, among others, a temple of Ceres, the sanctuary 
of whieh afforded an inviolable refuge to supplicants, 
whence arose the proverb avO’ 'Eppiovyq, “ as safe an 
asylum as that of Hermione.” Not far from this 
structure was a cave, supposed to communicate with 
the infernal regions. It was probably owing to this 
speedy descent to Orcus, that the Hermionians, as 
Strabo informs us, omitted to put a piece of money in 
the mouths of their dead. (Strab., 373.— Callim., ap. 
Etym. Mag., s. v. AavaKyg.) Lasus, an early poet 
of some note, said to have been the instructer of Pin¬ 
dar, was a native of Hermione. We are informed by 
Sir W. Gell, that the ruins of this place are to be seen 
on the promontory below Kastri, a town inhabited by 
Albanians, nearly opposite to the island of Hydra. 
(Itin. of the Morea, p. 199.) Pausanias affirms (2, 
34), that Hermione originally stood at the distance of 
four stadia from the site it occupied in his day, and, 
though the inhabitants had long removed to the new 
city, there yet remained several edifices to mark the 
spot. ( Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 258, seq.) 

Hermiones, one of the three great divisions of the 
Germanic tribes, according to Tacitus (Germ,., c. 2), 
and occupying the central parts of the country. Man- 
nert is of opinion, that a tribe or division of the name 
Hermiones never in fact existed, but that this appella¬ 
tion originated from the early legend of Greece re¬ 
specting the fabulous land Hermionia, remarkable for 
its productions, and placed by the early writers in the 
distant regions of the north. The Romans, borrowing 
this fable from the Greeks, imagined that they had 
found Hermionia in the regions of Germany. (Com¬ 
pare Mela, 3, 3.— Mannert, Geog., vol. 3, p. 146.) 

Hermionicus Sinus, a bay on the coast of Argolis, 
near Hermione. (Strab., 335.) It is now the Gulf 
of Caslri. 

Hermodorus, a philosopher of Ephesus, who is said 
<o have assisted, as interpreter, the Roman decemvirs 
m the composition of the ten tables of laws which 
had been collected in Greece. (Cic., Tusc., 5, 36.) 
1 An ancient tradition mentions,” observes Niebuhr, 
* as an auxiliary to the Decemviri, in this code, Her¬ 


modorus, an Ephesian, the friend of the sage Hera 
clitus, whom his fellow-citizens had banished because 
he filled them with shame, and they desired to be ail 
on an equality in profligacy of conduct. (Menag., ad 
Diog. Laert., 9, c. 2.) It cannot, indeed, be well ex¬ 
plained, how this story could have been invented, foi 
which nothing but a celebrated name could have given 
occasion, while that of Hermodorus appears to have 
been known to the Greeks themselves only by the say¬ 
ing of his friend. On this ground, the naming of the 
statue, which was inscribed as his at Rome, may pass 
for genuine. But if ever he lived there, honoured by, 
and useful to, his contemporaries, the legislators, it 
does not therefore follow, that, by his council, many of 
the Greek laws were transferred to the Twelve Tables, 
which are lost to us. The Romans adhered too tena¬ 
ciously to their own hereditary laws, to exchange them 
for any foreign institution; and the difference be¬ 
tween them and the Grecians was so great, that the 
sage Hermodorus could not have suggested an imita¬ 
tion.” (Niebuhr's Roman History, vol. 2, p. Ill, 
Walter's transl.) 

Hermogenes, a celebrated sophist, a native of Tar¬ 
sus, who flourished under M. Aurelius Antoninus. He 
was remarkable for the precocity of his intellect. At 
the age of fifteen he openly professed his art in the 
presence of the emperor, and excited his astonishment 
by the ability and eloquence which he displayed. This 
rapid growth, however, of the mental powers, was suc¬ 
ceeded by as rapid a decline, and, at the age of twenty- 
five, he lost his memory to such a degree as to be in¬ 
capable of pursuing his usual avocations. In this sad 
condition he lingered to an advanced age. It is said 
that, on opening his body after death, his heart was 
found of an enormous size, and covered with hair. 
He left a work on Rhetoric, which was introduced into 
the Grecian schools, and continued to be a text-book 
in the rhetorical art until the decline of the latter. 
Two editions of the entire work were published, one 
in 1614, 8vo, by Laurentius, Colon. Allobrog.; the 
other in 1799, 4to, by an anonymous editor (2. B. A.). 
There have been several editions of parts of the work, 
for which consult Hoffmann (Lex. Bibliogr., vol. 2, p. 
355, seqq.). —II. A lawyer in the age of Constantine, 
who, together with Gregorius or Gregorianus, made 
a collection of the constitutions or edicts of the em¬ 
peror. Gregorius comprehended in his collection the 
laws published from Hadrian to Constantine; Her¬ 
mogenes compiled a supplement to the work. This 
collection, though made without public authority, was 
yet cited in courts of law. (Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., 
vol. 7, p. 215, seqq.) 

Hermolaus, a young Macedonian nobleman, and 
one of the royal pages of Alexander the Great. In the 
heat of a boar-hunt on one occasion, he forgot his 
duty, and slew the animal, perhaps unfairly (for the 
laws of the chase have in all ages and climes been 
very arbitrary), certainly in such a way as to interfere 
with the royal sport. The page was, in consequence, 
deprived of his horse, and ordered to be flogged. In¬ 
censed at the indignity thus offered him, he resolved 
to efface it in the blood of his sovereign, and for this 
purpose formed a conspiracy with some of his brother- 
pages, as well as other individuals. The plot, how'- 
ever, was discovered, and the culprits were stoned to 
death. Hermolaus, in his defence, insisted that the 
tyranny and drunken revelries of Alexander were more 
than could be tolerated by freemen. (Arrian, Exp. 
Al., 4, 13, seqq.) 

HermopSlis, or the city of Hermes (Mercury), the 
name of two towns of Egypt. The first was in the 
Delta, east of the Canopic branch of the Nile, and 
northeast of Andropolis. For distinction’ sake, the ep¬ 
ithet M Uipa (Parva) was added to its name. Ptolemy 
makes it the chief city of the nome in which Alexan- 
drea was situate. (Mannert, Geog., vol. 10, pt. 1, p 

605 



HER 


r 


HER 


DUS., Its position corresponds with that of the mod¬ 
ern Demenhur. The second was termed M eyaXy 
[Magna), or the great, and was situate in the Heptan- 
omis, on the western bank of the Nile, opposite Anti- 
noopolis. It is spoken of as a large city by Ammianus 
Marcellinus (22, 16). The inhabitants worshipped 
the Cynocephalus, or dog-headed deity Anubis. ( Man- 
nert, Geogr., vol. 10, pt. 2, p. 397.) The name of 
the place is now Ashmuneim. 

Hermunduri, the first of the Hermionic tribes in 
Germany. They were a great and powerful nation, 
und lay to the east and northeast of the Allemanni. 
Tacitus says, that in process of time they became al¬ 
lies to the Romans, who distinguished them above the 
jthcr Germans by peculiar privileges. {Germ., c. 41.) 
Mannert makes them a branch of the great Suevic 
race. {Geogr., vol. 3, p. 201.) 

Hermus, a considerable river of Asia Minor, rising, 
according to Strabo (626), in Mount Dindymus, in 
Phrygia, and flowing through the northern part of 
Lydia until it falls into the ^Egsean. Pliny, however, 
makes its source to have been near Dorylaeum in 
Phrygia. {Plin., 5, 31.) It received in its course 
the rivers Pactolus, Hyllus, called also Phrygius, and 
other less celebrated streams, and discharged itself into 
the sea between Phocaea and Smyrna. {Strab., 1. c .— 
Herod., 1, 80.— Arrian, Exp. Al., 5, 5.) The plains 
which this river watered were termed the plains of 
Hermus, and the gulf into which it discharged itself 
was anciently called the Hermaean Gulf; but when 
Theseus, according to some accounts, a person of dis¬ 
tinction in Thessaly, migrated hither, and founded a 
town on this gulf called Smyrna after his wife ( Vit. 
Horn., c. 2), the gulf was termed Smyrnaeus Sinus, or 
Gulf of Smyrna, a name which it still retains. The 
sands of the Hermus were said to be auriferous, a cir¬ 
cumstance for which it was probably indebted to the 
Pactolus. {Virg., Georg., 2, 136.)—The modern 
name of this fine river is the Sarabat. {Cramer's 
Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 336.) 

Hernici, a people of New Latium, bordering on the 
.Equi and Marsi. {Strabo, 231.) It was maintained 
by some authors, that they derived their name from 
the rocky nature of their country ; herna, in the Sabine 
language, signifying a rock. {Serv., ad JEn., 7, 682.) 
Others were of opinion, that they were so called from 
Hernicus, a .Pelasgic chief; and Macrobius {Sat., 5, 
18) thinks that Virgil alluded to that origin when he de¬ 
scribed this people as going to battle with one leg bare. 
The former etymology, however, is more probable, and 
would also lead us to infer that the Hernici, as well as 
the JEqui and Marsi, were descended from the Sabines, 
or generally from the Oscan race. There is nothing in 
the history of this petty nation which possesses any pe¬ 
culiar interest, or distinguishes them from their equally 
hardy and warlike neighbours. It is merely an account 
of the same ineffectual struggle to resist the systematic 
and overwhelming preponderance of Rome, and of 
the same final submission to her transcendent genius 
and fortune. It may be remarked, that it was upon 
the occasion of a debate on the division of some lands 
conquered from the Hernici, that the celebrated agra¬ 
rian law was first brought forward (A.U.C. 268.— 
Liv., 2, 41.— Dion. Hal., 8, 69). The last effort 
made by this people to assert their independence was 
about the year 447 A.U.C.; but it was neither long- nor 
vigorous, though resolved upon unanimously by a gen¬ 
eral council of all their cities. {Liv., 9, 43.— Cramer's 
Ancient Italy, vol. 2, p. 78, seqq.) 

Hero, I. a beautiful priestess of Venus at Sestus, 
attached to Leander, a yotith of Abydos, who every 
night escaped from the vigilance of his family, and 
swam across the Hellespont, while Hero, in Sestus, di¬ 
rected his course by holding a burning torch on the 
top of a high tower. Leander, however, was at last 
drowned in a tempestuous night, as he attempted his 


usual course, and Hero, in despair, threw herself down 
from her tower and perished in the sea. Musaeus, a 
Greek poet of the fifth century of our era, made this 
story the subject of a pleasing little poem that haa 
come down to us. ( Vid. Musaeus III.) Ovid de¬ 
votes two of his Heroi'des to this same theme. {Her.. 
Ep., 18 et 19.) As regards the feat of Leander in 
swimming across the Hellespont nightly, consult re¬ 
marks under the article Leander.—II. The name of 
two writers on mechanical subjects. {Vid. Heron.) 

Herodes, I. surnamed the Great and Ascalonita, 
second son of Antipater the Idumaean, was born B.C. 
71, at Ascalon, in Judaea. At the age of twenty-five 
he was made by his father governor of Galilee, and 
distinguished himself by the suppression of a band of 
robbers, and the execution of their leader, with sev¬ 
eral of his comrades. He was summoned before the 
Sanhedrim for having done this by his own authority, 
and having put these men to death without a trial; but, 
through the strength of his party and the zeal of his 
friends, he escaped censure. He at first embraced 
the party of Brutus and Cassius ; but, after their death, 
reconciled himself to Antony, who appointed him 
and Phasael tetrarchs of Judaea. In B.C. 40 the Par- 
thians invaded Judaea, and placed Antigonus on the 
throne, making Hyrcanus and Phasael prisoners. Her¬ 
od escaped to Rome, where, by the influence of An¬ 
tony, he was appointed King of the Jews. But the 
Roman generals in Syria assisted him very feebly, 
and it was not till the end of the year 38 B. C. that 
Jerusalem was taken by Sossius. The commence¬ 
ment of Herod’s reign dates from the following year. 
In the year 38 he had married Mariamne, the grand¬ 
daughter of Hyrcanus, hoping to strengthen his power 
by this match with the Asmonsean family, which was 
very popular in Judaea. On ascending the - throne 
Herod appointed Ananel of Babylon high-priest, to the 
exclusion of Aristobulus, the brother of Mariamne- 
But he soon found himself compelled, by the entreaties 
of Mariamne and the artifices of her mother Alex¬ 
andra, to depose Ananel, and appoint Aristobulus 
in his place. Not long after, however, Aristobulus 
was secretly put to death by the command of Herod. 
Alexandra having informed Cleopatra of the murder, 
Herod was summoned to answer the accusation before 
Antony, whom he pacified by liberal bribes. When 
setting out to meet Antony, he had commanded his 
brother Joseph to put Mariamne to death in case he 
should be condemned, that she might not fall into An¬ 
tony’s power. Finding, on his return, that his brother 
had revealed this order to Mariamne, Herod put him 
to death. In the civil war between Octavius and An¬ 
tony, Herod joined the latter, and undertook, at his 
command, a campaign against the Arabians, whom he 
defeated. After the battle of Actium, he went to 
meet Octavius at Rhodes ; having first put to death 
Hyrcanus, who had been released by the Parthians, 
and had placed himself under Herod’s protection some 
years before. He also imprisoned Mariamne and Al¬ 
exandra, commanding their keepers to kill them upon 
receiving intelligence of his death. Octavius, how¬ 
ever, received him kindly, and reinstated him in his 
kingdom. On his return, Mariamne reproached him 
with his intentions towards her, which she had again 
discovered. This led to an estrangement between 
Herod and his queen, which was artfully increased by 
his sister Salorrie ; till, on one occasion, enraged at a 
new affront he had received from Mariamne, Her¬ 
od assembled some of his friends and accused her of 
adultery. She was condemned and executed. After 
her death Herod suffered the deepest remorse, and 
shut himself up in Samaria, where he was seized with 
a sickness which nearly proved fatal. In the year 26 
B.C. he put to death the sons of Babas, the last 
princes*of the Asmonaear family. He now openly dis¬ 
regarded the Jewish law, and introduced Roman cus 






HER 


HERODIANUS. 


toms, a conduct which increased the hatred of the peo¬ 
ple towards him, and he particularly shocked their 
prejudices by erecting a stately theatre and an am¬ 
phitheatre in Jerusalem, in the latter of which he cele¬ 
brated games in honour of Augustus. Ten men con¬ 
spired against his life, but were detected and executed 
with the greatest cruelty. To secure himself against 
rebellion, he fortified Samaria, which he named Se- 
baste (equivalent to the Latin Augusta), and he built 
Caesarea and other cities and fortresses. In the year 
17 B.C. he began to rebuild the temple at Jerusalem. 
The work was completed in eight years, but the deco¬ 
rations were not finished for many years after. {John, 
2, 20.) Herod’s power and territories continued to 
increase, but the latter part of his reign was disturbed 
by the most violent dissensions in his family, of which 
a minute account is given by Josephus. He died in 
March, B.C. 4, in the thirty-fourth year of his reign, 
and the seventieth of his age. Josephus relates, that, 
shortly before his death, he shut up many of the prin¬ 
cipal men of the Jewish nation in the Hippodrome, 
commanding his sister Salome to put them to death as 
soon as he expired, that he might not want mourners. 
They were released, however, by Salome upon Her¬ 
od’s death.—The birth of our Saviour took place in 
the last year of Herod’s reign, four years earlier than 
the era from which the common system of chronology 
dates the years A.D. {Joseph., Ant. Jud., 14, 17, 
seqq. — Id. ih., 15, l, seqq. — Id. ib., 16, 1, seqq. — Id., 
Bell. Jud., 1 , 17, &c.— Noldius , de Vita et Gestis 
Hcrodum, § 7.) It was Herod of whom Augustus 
said, after he had heard of the former’s having put to 
death his own sons, Alexander and Aristobulus, that 
he would rather be Herod’s hog {vv) than his son 
(viov ), punning upon the similarity of the two terms, 
and alluding at the same time to the aversion with 
which the hog was regarded by the Jews. {Macrob., 
Sat., 2, 4.) — II. Antipas, a son of Herod the Great, 
whom his father, in his first will, declared his succes¬ 
sor in the kingdom, but to whom he afterward gave 
merely the office of tetrarch over Galilee and Persea, 
while he appointed his other son Archelaus king of Ju¬ 
daea. Antipas, after being confirmed in these terri¬ 
tories by Augustus, married the daughter of Aretas, 
king of Arabia. He divorced her, however, A.D. 33, 
that he might marry his sister-in-law Herodias, the 
wife of his brother Philip, who was still iiving. John 
the Baptist, exclaiming against this incest, was seized, 
md subsequently beheaded. Afterward, A.D. 39, He¬ 
rodias, being jealous of the prosperity of her brother 
Agrippa, who, from a private person, had become King 
Df Judaea, persuaded her husband Herod Antipas to 
visit Rome, and to desire the same dignity from Tibe¬ 
rius. Agrippa, being apprized of his design, wrote to 
the emperor, accusing Antipas of being implicated in 
She affair of Sejanus, upon which he was banished to 
Lugdunum, in Gaul. This is that Antipas who, be¬ 
ing at Jerusalem at the time of our Saviour’s suffer¬ 
ing, ridiculed Jesus, whom Pilate had sent to him, 
dressed him in mock attire, and sent him back to the 
Roman governor as a king whose ambition gave him 
no umbrage. The year of his death is unknown, 
though it is certain that he and Herodias ended their 
days in exile, according to Josephus, in Spain. {Nol¬ 
dius, de Vita et Gestis Herodum, <$> 37.)—III. Agrip¬ 
pa, I. son of Aristobulus, and grandson of Herod the 
Great. ( Vid. Agrippa V.^—IV. Agrippa, II. son of 
the preceding. ( Vid. Agrippa VI.)—V. Atticus. ( Vid. 
Atticus II.) 

Hekooianus, I. a Greek historian, who flourished 
during the first part of the third century of our era, 
and died about A.D. 240, at the age of seventy years, 
^ew particulars of his life are known, and even his na¬ 
ze place has not been clearly ascertained, though 
generally supposed to have been Alexandrea. He 
filled various honourable stations, both in the service 


of the emperors and « that of the state. (Compare 
b. 1, c. 4 of his history.) The tone of moderation 
which everywhere shows itself in his writings, would 
seem to indicate that his life had been as peaceful as 
his character; and we may conjecture, from a remark 
which he makes at the commencement of his work, 
that it was at an advanced age, and in the bosom of a 
pleasing retreat, that, collecting together the reminis¬ 
cences of a long life, and the valuable fruits of his ex¬ 
perience, he wrote the history of those emperors whose 
reigns he had seen and whose persons he had ap¬ 
proached. This history, divided into eight books, 
commences with the death of Marcus Aurelius, and is 
carried down to the accession of Gordian III., embra¬ 
cing, from A.D. 180 to 238, a period of fifty-eight 
years, under seventeen princes who reigned either 
successively or conjointly. This period, though short, 
was a most eventful one in the annals of the empire, 
on account of the numerous and violent changes in the 
persons who held the sovereign power, and also with 
respect to the domestic and foreign wars, the depravity 
of manners, and the public calamities which character¬ 
ized the age. The series of emperors which the his¬ 
tory of Herodian embraces, comprises Commodus, Per- 
tinax, Julian, Niger and Albinus, Severus, Caracalla 
and Geta, Macrinus, Heliogabalus, Alexander Severus, 
Maximinus, the two Gordiani, and Balbinus. We per¬ 
ceive from this the importance of Herodian’s work, form¬ 
ing, as it does, a grave and almost solitary chronicle of 
this portion of Roman history ; for the writers of the 
Augustan history, who lived long after him, hardly do 
more than copy his narrative, and, when they deviate 
from him, merit, in general, a far less degree of confi¬ 
dence This is a testimony rendered in his favour even 
by Julius Capitolinus himself, who {Vit. Albin.,c. 12)in¬ 
vites his readers, if desirous of more lengthened details, 
to seek for them in Marius Maximus or Herodian, 
who, adds he, are equally distinguished by their accu¬ 
racy and fidelity. And yet it is on the authority of 
the same Capitolinus that many modern critics have 
grounded their charge against Herodian, of having 
been too partial to Maximinus, and too severe on Alex¬ 
ander Severus. {Jul. Cap., Vit. Max., c. 13.) From 
this charge, however, Herodian has been successfully 
defended by Isaac Casaubon and the Abbe de Mon- 
gault.—The style of Herodian is plain and unaffected, 
and his narrative in general seems written in a spirit 
of sincerity, but it has no claims to philosophy or crit¬ 
ical art. The harangues which he has inserted in his 
narrative are elegant, but they want simplicity. His 
greatest fault is having neglected chronology.—Among 
the editions of Herodian may be mentioned that of Ir- 
misch, Lips., 1789, 5 vols. 8vo, and that of Bekker, 
Berol., 1826, 8vo. The former is remarkable for its 
excessive load of commentary ; the latter, which con¬ 
tains merely the text and various readings, presents 
the latest and best text of the historian.—Politian gave 
to the world in 1490 a Latin version of Herodian, re¬ 
markable for its elegance rather than fidelity, and ded¬ 
icated it to Innocent VIII. He was liberally rewarded 
by the pontiff. ( Politian, Epist., 8, 1-5.) It is as¬ 
certained, however, now, that he merely corrected the 
version of Omnibonus Vincentius. (Consult Tiva - 
boschi, vol. 6, pt. 2, p. 339 . — Heeren, Gcsch. der 
Class. Lit. in Mitlelalter., vol. 2, p. 301, seq., Got 
ting., 1822.— Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 4, p. 192 — 
Biogr. Univ., vol. 20, p. 273, seqq.)— II. A gramma 
rian of Alexandrea, often confounded with the histori¬ 
an above mentioned. He was a son of the celebrated 
Apollonius Dyscolus, and flourished in the second 
century of the Christian era. He dedicated to the 
Emperor Marcus Aurelius his general grammar, of 
which we have only some unpublished and abridged 
extracts remaining. We have also some fragments of 
other works ; and Pierson has given in his edition of 
Meeds a treatise of the same writer on the choice of 

607 



* 


HERODOTUS. 


HER 

words, entitled Philetaerus. The treatise published 
bv Valckenaer, at the end of his Ammonias, on barba¬ 
risms and solecisms, and the jiame of the author of 
which that scholar did not know, was discovered by 
Viiloison to have been written by this same Herodian. 
Other minor productions of his are given by the last- 
mentioned scholar, in his Anecdota , and by Hermann 
in his treatise De Emenda7ida ratione G. G. —Consult 
the remarks of Hase, as given by Scholl (Hist. Lit. 
Gr., vol. 5, p. 25). 

HerodStus, I. a celebrated Greek historian, born 
at Halicarnassus, B.C. 484. ( Larcher , Vie d'Herod., 

p. 1 .— Clinton's Fasti Hellcnici , vol. 1, p. 29, 2 d ed.) 
He was of Dorian extraction, and of a distinguished 
family. (Suidas, s. v. 'Hpod.) Panyasis, an eminent 
poet, whom some ranked next to Homer (Suidas, s. 
v. Tlavvdo.), while others place him after Hesiod and 
Antimachus, was his uncle either by the mother’s or 
father’s side. Herodotus is regarded by many as the 
father of profane history, and Cicero (Leg., - 1 , 1) calls 
him “ historire patrem by this, however, nothing 
more must be meant, than that he is the first profane 
historian whose work is distinguished for its finished 
form, and has come down to us entire. Thus Cicero 
himself, on another occasion, speaks of him as the 
first “ qui princeps genus hoc (scribendi) ornavit ” 
(De Orat., 2, 13) ; while Dionysius of Halicarnassus 
has given us a list of many historical writers who pre¬ 
ceded him. (Consult Creuzer, Fragm. Hist. Antiq. 
Heidelb., 1826, 8vo.) The facts of his life are few and 
doubtful, except so far as we can collect them from 
his own works. Not liking the government of Lyg- 
damis, who was tyrant of Halicarnassus, Herodotus 
retired for a season to the island of Satnos, where he 
is said to have cultivated the Ionic dialect of the Greek, 
which was the language there prevalent. Before he 
was thirty years of age he joined in an attempt, which 
proved successful, to expel Lygdamis/ But the ban¬ 
ishment of the tyrant did not give tranquillity to Hali¬ 
carnassus, and Herodotus, who himself had become 
an object of dislike, again left his native country, and 
joined, as it is said, a colony which the Athenians sent 
to Thurium in Southern Italy, B.C. 443. He is said 
to have died in Thurium, and to have been buried in 
the Agora.—Herodotus presents himself to our con¬ 
sideration in two points; as a traveller and observer, 
and as an historian. The extent of his travels may 
be ascertained pretty clearly from his History ; but the 
order in which he visited each place, and the time of 
visiting, cannot be determined. The story of his read¬ 
ing his work at the Olympic games, on which occasion 
he is said to have received universal applause, and to 
have had the names of the nine Muses given to the 
nine books of his History, has been well discussed by 
Dahlmann, and we may perhaps say disproved. (He- 
rodot., aus seinem Buchc, scin Lcben, Altona, 1823.) 
The story is founded upon a small piece by Lucian, 
entitled “ Herodotus or Aetion,” which apparently was 
not intended by the writer himself as an historical 
truth; and, in addition to this, Herodotus was only 
about twrenty-eight years old (Suid., s. v. QovKvdidrjg) 
when he is said to have read to the assembled Greeks 
at Olympia a work which was the result of most ex¬ 
tensive travelling and research, and which bears in 
every part of it evident marks of the hand of a man of 
mature age. The Olympic recitation is not even al¬ 
luded to by Plutarch, in his treatise on the “Malignity 
of Herodotus. ” At a later period Herodotus read his 
History, as we are informed by Plutarch and Eusebius, 
at the Panathenaean festival at Athens, and the Athe¬ 
nians are said to have presented him with the sum of 
ten talents for the manner in which he had spoken of 
the deeds of their nation. The account of this sec¬ 
ond recitation may be true.—With a simplicity which 
characterizes his whole work, Herodotus makes no dis¬ 
play of the great extent of his travels. He frequently 
608 


avoids saying in express terms that he was at a place, 
but he uses words which are as conclusive as any pos¬ 
itive statement. He describes a thing as standing be¬ 
hind the door (2, 182), or on the right hand as you en¬ 
ter a temple (1, 51); or he was told something by a 
person in a particular place (2, 28); or he uses other 
words equally significant. In Africa he visited Egypt, 
from the coast of the Mediterranean to Elephantine, 
the southern extremity of the country (2, 29); and he 
travelled westward as far as Gyrene (2, 32, 181), and 
probably farther. In Asia he visited Tyre, Babylon, 
Ecbatana (1, 98), and probably Susa (5, 52, seqq. ; 6, 
119). He also travelled to various parts of Asia Mi 
nor, and probably went as far as Colchis (2, 104). Ir 
Europe he visited a large part of the country along the 
Black Sea, between the mouths of the Danube and the 
Crimea, and went some distance into the interior. He 
seems to have examined the line of the march of Xerxes 
from the Hellespont to Attica, and certainly had seen 
numerous places on this route. He was well ac¬ 
quainted with Athens 1^1, 98 ; 5, 77), and also with 
Delphi, Dodona, Olympia, Delos, and many other 
places in Greece. That he had visited some parts of 
Southern Italy is clear from his work (4, 99 ; 5, 44). 
The mention of these places is sufficient to show 
that he must have seen many more. So wide and 
varied a field of observation has rarely been present¬ 
ed to a traveller, and still more rarely to any histori¬ 
an, either of ancient or modern times ; and, if we can¬ 
not affirm that the kuthor undertook his travels with 
a view to collect materials for his great work, a sup¬ 
position which is far from improbable, it is certain that, 
without such advantages, he could never have written 
it, and that his travels must have suggested much in 
quiry, and supplied many valuable facts, which after¬ 
ward found a place in his History. The nine books of 
Herodotus contain a great variety of matter, the unity 
of which is not perceived till the whole work has been 
thoroughly examined ; and for this reason, on a first pe¬ 
rusal, the History is seldom well understood. But the 
subject of his History was conceived by the author both 
clearly"and comprehensively His aim was to com¬ 
bine a general history of the Greeks and the barbari¬ 
ans (that is, those not Greeks) with the history of the 
wars between the Greeks and Persians. According¬ 
ly, in the execution of his main task, he traces the 
course of events from the time when the Lydian king¬ 
dom of Crcesus fell before the arms of Cyrus, the found¬ 
er of the Persian monarchy (B.C. 546), to the capture 
of Sestus (B.C. 478), an event which crowned the tri¬ 
umph of the Greeks over the Persians. The great 
subject of his work, which is comprised within the 
space of 68 years, not more than the ordinary term of 
human life, advances, with a regular progress and tru¬ 
ly dramatic development, from the first weak and di¬ 
vided efforts of the Greeks to resist Asiatic numbers, 
to their union as a nation, and their final triumph in 
the memorable battles of Thermopylae, Salamis, and 
Plataea. But with this subject, which has a complete 
unity, well maintained from its commencement to its 
close, the author has interwoven, conformably to his 
general purpose, and by way of occasional digression, 
sketches of the various people and countries which ho 
had visited in his wide-extended travels. The more 
we contemplate the difficulty of thus combining a kind 
of universal history with a substantial and distinct nar¬ 
rative, the more we admire^not the art of the historian 
(for such, in the proper sense of the term, he could nol 
well possess), but that happy power of bringing togeth¬ 
er and arranging his materials, which was the result ol 
the fulness of his information, the distinctness of his 
knowledge, and the clear conception of his subject 
These numerous digressions are among the most valua- 
able parts of his work ; and, if they had been omitted or 
lost, barren indeed would have been our investigation 
into the field of ancient history, over which the labou. 



HERODOTUS 


HER 


of one man now throws a clear and steady light.—The 
style of Herodotus is simple, pleasing, and generally 
perspicuous ; often highly poetical both in expression 
and sentiment. But it bears evident marks of belong¬ 
ing to a period when prose composition had not yet 
become a subject of art. His sentences are often ill- 
constructed and hang loosely together; but his clear 
comprehension of his own meaning, and the sterling 
worth of his matter, have saved him from the reproach 
»f diffuseness and incoherence. His acquirements 
were apparently the result of his own experience. In 
physical knowledge he was certainly behind the sci¬ 
ence of his day. He had, no doubt, reflected on politi¬ 
cal questions; but he seems to have formed his opinions 
mainly from what he himself had observed. To pure 
philosophical speculations he had no inclination, and 
there is not a trace of such in his writings. He had 
a strong religious feeling bordering on ^superstition, 
though even here he could clearly distinguish the gross 
and absurd from that which was decorous. He seems 
to have viewed the mariners and customs of all nations 
in a mo-re truly philosophical way than many so-called 
philosophers, considering them as various forms of 
social existence under which happiness might be 
found. He treats with decent respect the religious 
observances of every nation ; a decisive proof, if any 
were wanting, of his great good sense.—That He¬ 
rodotus was not duly appreciated by all his country¬ 
men, and that in modern times his wonderful stories 
have been the subject of merriment to the half-learn¬ 
ed, who measure his experience by their own io-no- 
rance, we merely notice, without thinking it necessary 
to say more. The incidental confirmations of his ve¬ 
racity, which have been accumulating of late years on 
all sides, and our more exact knowledge of the coun¬ 
tries which he visited, enable us to appreciate him bet¬ 
ter than many of the Greeks themselves could do ; and 
it cannot now be denied, that a sound and comprehen¬ 
sive study of antiquity must be based upon a thorough 
knowledge of the work of Herodotus.—Plutarch ac¬ 
cused Herodotus of partiality, and composed a treatise 
on what he termed the “malignity” of this writer 
(-rrepl rf/g 'H podorov KanojjOsiag), taxing him with in¬ 
justice towards the Thebans, Corinthians, and Greeks 
in general; but the whole affair is a weak and frivo¬ 
lous one. The historian has also found two new an¬ 
tagonists in more recent times. MM. Chahan de Cir- 
bied and F. Martin, authors of a work entitled “ Re- 
cherches Curieuses sur Vhistorie ancicnne de VAsie ,” 
drawn from Oriental manuscripts in the “ Bibliotheque 
du Roi” (Paris, 1806), oppose to him the testimony of 
Mar-Ibas-Cadina, a Syrian, and the secretary of Yala- 
sarces, king of Armenia. This writer pretends to have 
found in the archives of Nineveh a Greek translation, 
made by order of Alexander the Great, of a Chaldean 
work of very remote antiquity. The history of Mar- 
Ibas-Cadina no longer exists, but it was the source 
whence Moses of Chorene in the fifth century, and 
John Catholicos in the tenth, drew the materials for 
their respective works. This attack, however, on the 
credibility of the Greek writer, is undeserving of any 
serious consideration, more especially as the French 
editors themselves, just mentioned, confess that Mar- 
Ibas-Cadina deals largely in fable.—A life of Homer is 
commonly ascribed to Herodotus, and appears in most 
editions of his history; but it is now deemed supposi¬ 
titious. The three best editions of Herodotus are, 
that of Wesseling, Amst., 1763, fol. ; that of Schweig- 
haeuser , Argent, 1816, 6 vols. 8vo; and that of 
Bahr, Lips., 1830-35, 4 vols. 8vo. The edition of 
Schweighaeuser has a “Lexicon Herodoteum,” form¬ 
ing a seventh volume, which is a useful aid to stu¬ 
dents, though far from being complete. Some time 
after the appearance of Schweighaeuser’s Herodotus, 
Gaistord collated anew the Sancroft MS. (one of the 
best manuscripts of the historian), and published an 
4 H 


edition from the Oxford press, in 1824 ; but the resuit 
of the collation has added nothing of anv value tc 
Schweighaeuser’s text. The edition of Bahr is, per¬ 
haps, the most useful of the three. It contains an ex 
cellent body of notes, many of them selected from the 
writings of Creuzer, especially from his “ Commenta- 
tiones Herodoteae,’ and refers constantly to the most 
recent speculations of the German scholars on the dif¬ 
ferent topics discussed by Herodotus. There is also 
a French translation of the history by Larcher, Paris, 
1802, 9 vols. 8vo, of great fidelity, and highly esteem¬ 
ed for its very valuable commentary. Very important 
aid may likewise be obtained by the student from Ren- 
nell’s and Niebuhr’s respective dissertations on the 
geography of Herodotus. A reprint of the former ap¬ 
peared from the London press in 1830, 2 vols. 8vo; 
and a translation of the latter from the German was 
published at Oxford, 1830,8vo. ( Encycl. Us. Knowl., 
vol. 12, p. 163, seqq. — Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 2, 
p. 140, seqq.) —II. The author of an ancient glossary 
on Hippocrates, supposed by some to have been the 
same with Herodotus of Tarsus (No. III.). Others 
think that the glossary in question is merely intended 
as a collection of words found in the history of Herod¬ 
otus of Halicarnassus, and that it has been incorpora¬ 
ted with the works of Hippocrates for no other reason 
than because this physician wrote in the Ionic dialect, 
and many terms occur both in his works and in the 
history of Herodotus. ( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 5. 
p. 6.)—III. A physician of Tarsus, of the empiric 
school, and successor to Menodotus of Nicomedia. A 
work of his, entitled “ The Physician,” is mentioned bv 
Galen (Sect. 2, Comment, in vi. Hpid. Hivvocr. text., 
42). 

Heroes ("Hpwef), the plural of Heros ("H pug), a 
name given fiy the Greeks to a class of persons sup¬ 
posed to be intermediate between gods and men, and 
usually of divine descent on at least one side. Such 
were worshipped with divine honours by those cities 
and races of men which claimed them as their fathers 
or ancestors. This divine origin, however, was not 
essential: thus Philippus of Crotona, who fell in the 
battle against the Phoenicians and Egestseans, A'as 
made a hero for his beauty ; a heroum or shrine was 
built on the spot where he was buried, and sacrifices 
were offered to him. (Herod., 5, 47.) At a later age, 
Aratus and Brasidas were worshipped as heroes at 
Sicyon and Amphipolis respectively ; and the Atheni¬ 
ans slain at Marathon received similar honours. Con¬ 
cerning these last, legends were current, which show 
that a supernatural and mythological character was 
really ascribed to them, and they, probably, were the 
latest of the Greeks to whom such a character was at¬ 
tributed. The Heroic Age, properly so called, appears, 
however, to have terminated with the immediate de¬ 
scendants of the Greeks who returned from Troy, and 
to have extended backward for an uncertain length of 
time, estimated by Thirlwall at six generations, or 
about 200 years. This is the fourth or Heroic Age 
of Hesiod, in which Jupiter “ made the divine brood of 
heroes, better and braver than the third or brazen race.” 
(Op., et D., 157.) These were the princes and war 
riors of mythological history, such as Theseus, Perseus, 
and those who fought at the sieges of Thebes and 
Troy. In Homer, the word Hero occurs frequently, 
but in quite a different sense : it is applied collectively 
to the whole body of fighters, Argeii, Danai, and Achsei, 
without reference to individuals of peculiar merit; and, 
indeed, often appears to be used for little more than an 
expletive, when he, or the man, or the warrior, would 
have done equally well. Indeed, the application of the 
word is not even limited to warriors, but is extended 
to heralds, wise counsellors, kings, &c. It has been 
suggested, with considerable plausibility, that the word 
originally denoted the members of those roving bands 
who in the earliest times overran Greece, issuing from 

60Q 




HER 


HER 


tne south of Thessaly, and giving extension to the 
name, first of Achasans, and afterward of Hellenes, as 
we learn from the legends in Pausanias and Thucydi¬ 
des ; so that in the same sense the Normans who col¬ 
onized Italy, or the Saxons who settled in England, 
might justly be called heroes. The root of the word 
seems to be her , whence come the Latin and German 
forms of hcrus and herr (“ master”); vir, virtus, &c. 
The Sanscrit word sura appears to contain the same 
element as “ keros." —The promiscuous (or Homeric) 
use of the word “ hero ” disappeared in the age suc¬ 
ceeding the Homeric poems. It seems probable that 
the Hellenic invasion, commonly called the return of 
the Heraclidse, put an end to it. The new conquerors 
of Southern Greece do not seem themselves to have 
borne or used the title ; and afterward, when they or 
their descendants looked back to the warlike legends 
of the earlier race who had borne the title, the lays, ex¬ 
ploits, and legends were called heroic ; and from the 
combined effect of poetical exaggeration, reverence for 
antiquity, and traditions of national descent, the more 
modern use of the word arose, carrying with it notions 
of mythical dignity, and of superiority to the later races 
of mankind. The custom of showing respect or af¬ 
fection by making precious offerings, and celebrating 
costly sacrifices at the tombs of the dead; the imagi¬ 
native temper of the Greeks, which, as it loved to as¬ 
cribe a divine genealogy to the great, was equally will¬ 
ing to admit them to a share of the divine nature and 
enjoyments after death; and the love of magnifying 
past ages, common to all nations, will sufficiently ex¬ 
plain the change of earthly leaders into protecting genii 
or daemons, who were believed to be immortal, invisi¬ 
ble, though, frequenting the earth, powerful to bestow 
good or evil, and therefore to be appeased or propitia¬ 
ted like the gods themselves. In the age of Hesiod, 
as is evident from the passage above referred to, the 
day of heroes was past, and they were already invest¬ 
ed with their mythological character, which appears to 
furnish one among other reasons for believing him to 
have lived after the Homeric age. ( Thirlwall's Greece, 
vol. 1, p. 123, seqq. — Philological Museum , No. 4, p. 
72, seqq. — Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 12, p. 160, scq.) 

Heron or Hero, I. a native of Alexandrea, and dis¬ 
ciple of Ctesibius flourished about 217 B.C. He was 
celebrated as a mechanician, and invented the hydrau¬ 
lic clock, and the machine called “ the fountain of 
Hero.” He must have enjoyed a high reputation, 
since he is mentioned by Gregory Nazianzen with 
Euclid and Ptolemy. He is now, however, principally 
known by some fragments of his writings on mechan¬ 
ics, which are to be found in the “ Mathemalici Vete- 
res ,” published at Paris in 1693. His extant writings 
are, 1. “On the Machine called the Chiroballistra ” 
(Xeipo6aX?it(TTpag KaraoKevr/ nal avp/aerpla). This is 
found in the “ Mathematici Veteres” already cited. 
—2. Barulcus (B apovTiKoq), a treatise on the raising of 
heavy weights, which is mentioned by Pappus, and 
was found by Golius in Arabic. A translation of it 
into German, by Burgman, was published in the Com¬ 
ment. Goett., 7, 77.—3. Belopoeica (fSehoiroutid), a 
treatise on the manufacture of darts, published by 
Baldi, with an account of Hero, at Augsburg, in 
1616, and also in the Math. Vet. —4. On Pneumatic 
Machines (II vevpaTuca). In this work is the first and 
only notice among the ancient writers of the applica¬ 
tion of steam as a moving power. ( Stuart's History 
of the Steam-Engine, 4to.) It was published by 
Commandine at Urbino in 1575, and at Amsterdam 
in 1680, and also in the Math. Vet., with the addi¬ 
tions of Aleotti, who had previously published an Ital¬ 
ian version at Bologna in 1542, and at Ferrara in 
1589.—5. On the Construction of Automata ( irepl 
KvToyaTOTroLrjTiKuv), contained in the Math. Vet. —6. 
On Dioptrics, from which Heliodorus, a mathemati¬ 
cian who flourished after the commencement of the 
.610 


Christian era, has left an extract, and of which a MS 
exists in the Strasburg library. Other works of Hero, 
now lost, are mentioned by Pappus, Eutocius, Heli¬ 
odorus, &c. ( Schmidt , Hieronis Alexandrini Vila 

Scripta et qucedam invenla, Hclmstad., 1714, 4to.)—• 
II. Commonly called the Younger, is supposed to 
have flourished during the reign of the Emperor He- 
raclius, which commenced A.D. 610. He also wrote 
on mechanical and mathematical subjects. His native 
country is uncertain. In a work attributed to him 
(On Geodesy), he states, that the precession of the 
equinoxes had produced seven degrees of effect since 
the time of Ptolemy, so that he must have been about 
500 years later than Ptolemy. He is generally placed, 
however, as already remarked, under the reign of He- 
raclius. The writings of Hero the Younger are, 1. 
A book “ On Machines of War" (RoXioptcyriKd), ed¬ 
ited in Latin by Barocius, Venice, 1572, together with, 
2. A book of “ Geodesy," a term then meaning practi¬ 
cal geometry.—3. “ On the Attack and Defence of 
Towns," printed in the Math. Vet:- —4. A book “ On 
Military Tactics," said by Lambecius to exist in MS. 
in the library at Vienna.—5. On the Terms in Geom¬ 
etry, printed at Strasburg, 1571, and also edited by 
Hasenbalg, Slralsund, 1826, 4to, with notes.—6. Ge¬ 
ometrical Extracts, printed by the Benedictines, in the 
first volume of the Analecta Grceca, Paris, 1688, from 
a copious MS. in the royal library at Paris.—7. A ge 
ometrical manuscript, stated by Lambecius to be in 
the library at Vienna.—III. A mathematician, who 
flourished about the middle of the 5th century, and 
was the teacher of Proclus. None of his works have 
reached us. 

Heroopolis, a city of Egypt, about equidistant from 
Pelusium, the apex of the Delta, and the city of Arsi- 
noe, on the extremity of the western branch of the 
Sinus Arabicus. It gave to that branch the name of 
Sinus Herodpolites, now Bahr-Assuez. It was a city 
of comparatively recent origin, founded by the Greeks 
for commercial purposes ; and its very name, which 
Pliny translates by Heroum Oppidum, shows the Gre¬ 
cian origin of the place. Stephanus of Byzantium, 
however, asserts that the previous name of the city 
was Haemos (A ifioq), because Typhon was here wound¬ 
ed by lightning, and his blood gushed forth upon the 
ground. Haemos is a Grecian name as well as Hero- 
opolis, and the Egyptian fable must therefore have 
been invented after the foundation of the place by the 
Greeks. Heroopolis remained a place of importance 
as long as the canal of Ptolemy formed one of the 
channels of communication in this quarter. It be¬ 
longed, however, to no nome, but, like Arsinoe, was 
a separate establishment. It sunk with the canal, and 
the ruins are said to be no longer visible, being buried 
probably beneath the sand.' ( Mannert, Gcogr., vol. 
10, pt. 2, p. 516, seqq.) 

Herophilus, a celebrated physician, a native of 
Chalcedon, of the family of the Asclepiades, and a 
disciple of Praxagoras. Galen, indeed, has called him 
a Carthaginian ; but in the book entitled “ Introduc¬ 
tion,” which, is ascribed to Galen, he is said to be of 
Chalcedon. Herophilus lived under Ptolemy Soter, 
and was contemporary with the philosopher Diodorus, 
and with the celebrated physician Erasistratus, with 
whose name his own is commonly associated in the 
history of anatomical science. As a physician, Ile- 
rophilus is mentioned with praise by both the ancient 
and the early modern writers. Cicero, Plutarch, and 
Pliny, in particular, praise him. Galen says that he 
carried anatomy to the highest degree of perfection. 

( Dc dissec. matric., p. 211.— De dogm. Hipp. et Plat., 
lib. 8, p. 318.) With such zeal, indeed, did Herophi¬ 
lus pursue this science, that he is said tc have dissect¬ 
ed 700 subjects, and it was against him tr.d Erasistra¬ 
tus that the very improbable charge was first made, ol 
having frequently opened living criminals, that they 



HER 


H E S 


night discover the secret springs of life. ( Celsus, 
Prof.) From the peculiar advantages which the 
school of Alexandrea presented by this authorized dis¬ 
section of the human body, it gained, and for many 
centuries preserved, the first reputation for medical 
education, so that Ammianus Marcellinus, who lived 
about 650 years after its establishment, says, that it 
was sufficient to secure credit to any physician if he 
could say that he had studied at Alexandrea. ( Amm. 
Marc., 22, 16.) Herophilus made great discoveries 
in anatomy, and Fallopius calls him the evangelist of 
anatomists. ( Fallop., Observ., p. 395.) He is to be 
regarded as the inventor of pathological anatomy, hav¬ 
ing been the first that thought of opening the bodies 
of men after death, in order to ascertain the nature of 
the malady which had caused their dissolution. His 
principal discoveries have reference to the nervous 
system, which he acknowledged as the seat of the sen¬ 
sations. (Galen, dc loc. affect., lib. 3, p. 282.— Ruf- 
fus, de appellat part. corp. hum., lib. 2, p. 65.) He 
first determined that the nerves are not connected with 
the membranes that cover the brain, but with the bram 
itself, though as yet the distinction of the nerves from 
ihe tendons and other white tissues had not been made 
out The description which Herophilus gave of the 
brain itself was far superior to those of previous au¬ 
thors. He discovered the arachnoid membrane, and 
showed that it lined the ventricles, which he supposed 
were the seat of the soul ; and the chief meeting of 
the sinuses, into which the veins of the brain pour their 
blood, still bears the name of torcular Herophili. He 
noticed the lacteals, though he was not aware of their 
use. He pointed out that the first division of the in¬ 
testinal canal is never more than the breadth of twelve 
fingers in length, and from this fact proposed for it a 
name, the Latin form of which ( duodenum) is still ap¬ 
plied to it. He described with great exactness the 
organ of sight, and gave to its various membranes the 
names which have still, in a great measure, remained 
to them. He operated on the cataract by extracting 
the crystalline humour. The ancient physicians praise 
his descriptions of the os hyo'ides, which he called 
Kapaararyc, °f the liver, and of the parts of genera- 
:ion. ( Ruffus, l. c., p. 37. — Galen, de Administr. 
Anat., lib. 6, p. 172.) Herophilus was the first, also, 
that had just notions respecting the pulse, of which his 
master, Praxagoras, had taught him some of the value, 
as a means of discriminating diseases. (Galen, de diff. 
vuls., lib. 2, p. 24.— Plin., 11, 37 .—Id., 29, 1.) He 
does not appear to have drawn many pathological con¬ 
clusions from his knowledge of the healthy structure. 
It was he, however, who first showed that paralysis is 
the result, not of a vitiated state of the humours, as 
was previously imagined, but of an affection of the 
nervous system. Herophilus seems to have founded 
a school which took its name from him. He is sup¬ 
posed to have been the first that commented on the 
aphorisms of Hippocrates. His commentary exists in 
manuscript in the Ambrosian library at Milan. All 
his other works, among which was one on respiration, 
are lost. (Sprengel, Hist, de la Med., vol. 1, p. 433, 
seqq.) 

Herostratus, less correctly Erostratus, the in¬ 
cendiary who set fire to the famous temple of Diana 
at Ephesus. When put to the torture, he confessed 
that his only object was to gain himself a name among 
posterity. The states-general of Asia endeavoured, 
▼ery foolishly, to prevent this, by ordering that his 
name should never be mentioned ; but the natural 
consequence was, that it is mentioned by all contem¬ 
porary historians, and has reached even our own time, 
in full accordance with the wishes of the man who 
bore it. (Plut., Alex., c. 3. — Cic., N. D., 2, 27.— 
Val. Max.. 8, 14.— Strab., 640.— Vid. Ephesus.) 

Herse, a daughter of Cecrops, king of Athens, be¬ 
loved by Mercury. The god disclosed his love to Ag- 


lauros, Herse’s sister, and entreated her good offices m 
his suit. These she promised on condition of receiv¬ 
ing a large quantity of gold, and drove him out of the 
palace until he should have given it. Minerva, in¬ 
censed at her cupidity, and provoked with her also for 
other causes, sent Envy to fill her bosom with that 
baneful passion. Unable thereupon to endure the 
idea of her sister’s felicity, she sat down at the door, 
determined not to permit the god to enter. Mercury, 
provoked by her obstinacy, changed her into a black 
stone. Herse became the mother of Cephalus. (Ovid, 
Met., 2, 708, seqq. — Apollod., 3, 14.— Vid. Cecrops.) 

Hersilia, one of the Sabine females carried away 
by the Romans at the celebration of the Consualia. 
She was given to Romulus as a spouse, and, after his 
death, became herself a divinity, under the name of 
Hora ( Youth). The common reading, Ora, is wrong • 
(Consult Gicrig, ad Ovid, Met., 14, 851.) 

Hertha, a goddess worshipped by the ancient Ger¬ 
mans, and, according to Tacitus (Germ., c. 40), the 
same with the earth. (“ Hertham, id est, Terramma- 
trem, colunt.”) She was supposed to take part in hu¬ 
man affairs, and even sometimes to come among mor¬ 
tals. She had a sacred grove in an island of the ocean, 
and a chariot, covered with a veil, standing in the 
grove and consecrated to her service. Whenever it 
was known that the goddess had descended into this 
her sanctuary, her car was got ready, cows were yoked 
to it, and the deity was carried around in the covered 
vehicle. Festivity reigned in every place which the 
goddess honoured with her presence : wars ceased, 
arms were laid aside, and peace and harmony prevail¬ 
ed, until the priest declared that the goddess was sated 
with human converse, and once more enclosed hel 
within the temple. (Tacit., ibid.) The very name 
Hertha, and its close resemblance to our English word 
Earth, proves Tacitus to be right in making Hertha 
and the Earth identical. (Compare the Anglo-Saxon 
Hearth, i. e., “Earth.”) The island mentioned by 
Tacitus is supposed by many to have been that of Ru- 
gen, in the Baltic, while others have sought for it in 
the Northern Ocean. Certain traditions in the island 
of Rugen seem to favour the former opinion. (Con¬ 
sult Voyage dans Visle de Rugen, par Zollner, and 
Panckoucke's Germany of Tacitus, p. 204, in notis.) 

PIekuli, a barbarian race, who attacked the Roman 
empire on its decline. Their first appearance was on 
the shores of the Black Sea. They were subsequently 
defeated by the Ostrogoths ; but, after the death oi 
Attila, they founded a powerful empire on the Danube. 
According to Jornandes (De Reh. Get.), they first 
dwelt in Scandinavia, and, being driven thence by the 
Danes, wandered eastward as far as the Palus Mseotis, 
and settled in that neighbourhood. They continued 
making frequent incursions into the empire until the 
reign of Anastasius, when great numbers of them were 
cut off by the Lombards, and the rest migrated to the 
West. They began to invade the empire about A.D. 
526. (Paul. Warnef, de Gest. Longob., 1, 20.— 
Procop., Bell. Goth., 2, 11.) The Heruli made them¬ 
selves masters, at one time, of Rome itself, under their 
king Odoacer, and from this period, A.D. 476, is dated 
the fall of the Western Empire. 

Hesiodus ('Hcr/odoc), a celebrated Grecian poet, 
commonly supposed to have been born at Cumae or 
Cyme, in iEolis, and to have been brought, at an early 
age, to Ascra in Bosotia. (Scholl, Gesch. Griech. 
Lit., vol. 1, p. 130.— Lil. Gyrald., Vit. Hes.) Gbtt- 
ling, however, has shown very clearly, from the poet’s 
own words (Op. et D., 648, seq.), that? he must have 
been born at Ascra. His father, it seems, had migra¬ 
ted from Cyme to Ascra in consequence of his pov 
erty, and resided at the latter place for some time, 
though without obtaining the rights of a citizen. Still, 
however, he left at his death a considerable property to 
his two sons, Hesiod, and a younger brother named Peg- 



HESIODUS. 


HESIODUS. 


*es. The brothers divided the inheritance ; but Per- 
ses, by means of bribes to the judges, contrived to de¬ 
fraud his elder brother. Hesiod thereupon migrated 
to Orchomenus, as Gottling supposes, and the harsh 
epithets which he applies to his native village (Op. et 
D., 637, seq.) were, in all probability, prompted by re¬ 
sentment at the wrong which he had suffered from the 
Ascrean judges, in relation to the division of his patri¬ 
mony. ( Gottling , Prof, ad Hes., p. iv.) From a 
passage in the proem to the Theogony, it has been in¬ 
ferred that Hesiod was literally a shepherd, and tended 
his flocks on the side of Helicon; and this supposition, 
though directly at variance with the statement of Pau- 
sanias, who. makes him a priest of the Muses on Mount 
Helicon, seems decidedly the most rational one. He 
was evidently born in an humble station, and was him¬ 
self engaged in rural pursuits ; and this perfectly accords 
with the subject of the poem which was unanimously 
ascribed to him, namely, the Works and Days, which 
is a collection of reflections and precepts relating to 
husbandry, and the regulation of a rural household. 
The only additional fact that can be gathered from 
Hesiod’s writings is, that he passed into the island of 
Eubosa, on occasion of a poetical contest at Chalcis, 
which formed part of the funeral games instituted in 
honour of Arnphidamas : that he obtained a tripod as 
the prize, and consecrated it to the Muses of Helicon. 
This latter passage, however, is suspected by Guietus 
and Wolf; but it seems to have formed a part of the 
poem from time immemorial; and it may not be un¬ 
reasonable to infer its authenticity from the tradition 
respecting an imaginary contest between Homer and 
Hesiod. That the passage should have been raised 
on the basis of the tradition is impossible, because, in 
that case, it is obvious that the name of Homer would 
have appeared in the verses ; but it is highly probable 
that the tradition was built on the passage. If the 
passage be a forgery, it is a forgery without any os¬ 
tensible purpose ; it is a mere gratuitous imposture 
which tends to nothing; and it seems impossible that 
any person should take the trouble of foisting suppos¬ 
ititious lines into Hesiod’s poem, for the barren object 
of inducing a belief that he had won a poetical prize 
from somebody. This nullity of purpose could not but 
strike those who, being themselves willing to believe 
that Homer was the competitor at Chalcis, were anx¬ 
ious for proofs to convince others : and hence an in¬ 
terpolation of this very passage has been practised ; 
which alone shows that, if a forgery, it was an un¬ 
meaning and useless forgery. For the verse, “ Vic¬ 
tor in song a tripod bore away,’' it has been attempted 
to substitute, “ Victor in song o’er Homer the divine.” 
Connected with the same design of making Homer and 
Hesiod contemporaries, is an imposture on a large 
scale, which professes to be an historical account of 
the contest between Homer and Hesiod, and which 
appears to be erected on the above tradition as related 
by Plutarch ; for it is evident, from a passage in the 
work itself, that it was not composed till the time of 
the Emperor Hadrian. As to the tradition of this im- 
aginary meeting, for which not a shadow of evidence 
appears in Hesiod’s own writings, Robinson offers a 
very probable conjecture: that it originated in a coin¬ 
cidence between this passage of the work and a pas¬ 
sage in one of Homer’s hymns, where the writer sup¬ 
plicates Venus to grant him the victory in some ap¬ 
proaching contest.—The following account is given as 
to the manner of Hesiod’s death. Hesiod is said to 
have consulted the oracle of Delphi as to his future 
destin e?, and\he Pythia directed him, in reply, to shun 
the grove of Nemean Jupiter, since there death await¬ 
ed him. T here were at Argos a temple and a brazen 
statue of Nemean Jove ; and Hesiod, believing this to 
be the fatal spot, directed his course to CEnoe, a town 
of the Locri; but the ambiguity of the oracle had de¬ 
ceived him, for this place also, by obscure report, was 
612 


I sacred to Nemean Jupiter. He was here the guest of 
two brothers. It happened that their sister Ctemene 
was violated in the night time by the person who had 
accompanied Hesiod, and hung herself in consequence 
of the outrage. This man they accordingly slew ; 
and, suspecting the connivance of Hesiod, killed him 
also, and threw his body into the sea. The murder 
is said to have been detected by the sagacity of He¬ 
siod’s dog; by some it is related that his corpse was 
brought to the shore by a company of dolphins, at the 
moment that the people were celebrating the festival 
of Neptune. The body of Hesiod was recognised, the 
houses of the murderers were razed to the founda¬ 
tion, and the murderers themselves cast into the sea. 
Another account states them to have been consumed by 
lightning ; a third, to have been overtaken by a tem¬ 
pest while escaping to Crete in a fishing-boat, a.nd to 
have perished in the wreck. In truth, the summary 
justice which these brothers executed on the man 
whom they honestly supposed to be the accomplice of 
their sister’s dishonour, was not of a nature to call for 
miraculous interference ; but the fable displays the sa¬ 
credness attached by Grecian enthusiasm to the poet’s 
character.—The only works that remain under the name 
of Hesiod are, ,1. 'E pya ical 'H yspai (“ Works and 
Days") ; 2. Qeoyovia (A “ Theogony ”); 3. ’AottIc 
'D pan7i£Ovq( u The Shield of Hercules"). —The “Works 
and Days” (which, according to Pausanias, the Boeo¬ 
tians regarded as the only genuine production of He¬ 
siod), is so entirely occupied with the events of com¬ 
mon life, that the author would not seem to have been 
a poet by profession, as Homer was described by the 
ancients, but some Boeotian husbandman, whose mind 
had been so forcibly moved by peculiar circumstances 
as to give a poetical tone to the whole course of his 
thoughts and feelings. The poem consists of advice 
given by Hesiod to his brother Perses, on subjects re¬ 
lating for the most part to agriculture and the general 
conduct of life. The object of the first portion of the 
poem is to improve the character and habits of Perses, 
to deter him from seeking riches by litigation, and to 
incite, him to a life of labour, as the only source of 
permanent prosperity. Mythical narratives, fables, de¬ 
scriptions, and moral apophthegms, partly of a prover¬ 
bial kind, are ingeniously chosen and combined, so as 
to illustrate and enforce the principal idea.—In the 
second part Hesiod shows Perses the succession in 
which his labours must follow, if he determines to lead 
a life of industry. But as the poet’s object was not to 
describe the charms of a country life, but to teach all 
the means of honest gain which were then open to the 
Ascraean countryman, he next proceeds, after having 
completed the subject of husbandry, to treat with 
equal detail that of navigation. Here we perceive 
how, in the time of Hesiod, the Boeotian farmer him¬ 
self shipped the overplus of his corn and wine, and 
transported it to countries where these products were 
less abundant. All these precepts relating to the 
works of industry interrupt somewhat suddenly the 
succession of economical rules for the management of a 
family. The poet now speaks of the time of life when 
a man should marry, and how he should look out for a 
wife. He then especially recommends to all to bear 
in mind that the immortal gods watch over the actions 
of men ; in all intercourse with others to keep the 
tongue from idle and provoking words, and to preserve 
a certain purity and care in the commonest occurrences 
of every-day life. At the same time, he gives many 
curious precepts, which resemble sacerdotal rules, 
with respect to the decorum to be observed in acts of 
worship, and which, moreover, have much in common 
with the symbolic rules of the Pythagoreans, that as¬ 
cribed a deep and spiritual import to many unimpor¬ 
tant acts of ordinary life. Of a very similar nature is 
the last part of the poem, which treats of the days on 
which it is expedient or inexpedient to do thisf>r that 




I 


HESIODUS. 

business. These precepts, which do not relate to par¬ 
ticular seasons of the year, but to the course of each 
lunar month, are exclusively of a superstitious charac¬ 
ter, and are in great part connected with the different 
worships which were celebrated upon these days : but 
our knowledge is far too insufficient to explain them 
all.—One thing must be very evident to all who read 
the “Works and Days,” that in its present state it 
shows a want of purpose and of unity too great to be 
accounted for otherwise than on the supposition of its 
fragmentary nature. Ulrici considers the moral and 
the agricultural instruction as genuine ; the story of 
Prometheus, and that of the Five Ages, as much al¬ 
tered from their original Hesiodic form; and the de¬ 
scription of Winter as latest of all. ( Ulrici, Geschichte 
der Hellen. Dichlkunst , vol. 1, p. 360.)—The “ The- 
ogony” is perhaps the work which, whether genuine 
or not, most emphatically expresses the feeling which 
is supposed to have given rise to the Hieratic school. 
It consists, as its name expresses, of an account of the 
origin of the world, including the birth of the gods, 
and makes use of numerous personifications. This 
has given rise to a theory, that the old histories of 
creation, from which Hesiod drew without under¬ 
standing them, were in fact philosophical, and not 
mythological, speculations; so that the names wiuon in 
after times were applied to persons, had originally be¬ 
longed only to qualities, attributes, &c., and that the 
inventor had carefully excluded all personal agency 
from his system. Thus much we may safely assert 
respecting the “ Theogony,” that it points out one im¬ 
portant feature in the Greek character, and one which, 
when that character arrived at maturity, produced re¬ 
sults, of which the Theogony is at best but a feeble 

[ iromise ; we mean that speculative tendency which 
ies at the root of Greek philosophy.—Even as early as 
the time of Pausanias (8, 18, and 9, 31), it was doubt¬ 
ed whether Hesiod was actually the author of this 
poem. According to a learned German critic, it is a 
Bpecies of melange , formed by the union of several 
poems on the same subject, and which has been ef¬ 
fected by the same copyists or grammarians. Such is 
the theory of Hermann, who has advanced this hy¬ 
pothesis in a letter addressed to Ilgen, and which the 
latter has placed at the head of his edition of Homer’s 
Hymns. Hermann thinks that he has discovered seven 
different exordia, composed of the following verses : 
the first, of verses 1, 22-24, 26-52 ; the second, of 
verses 1-4, 11-21 ; the third, of verses 1, 2, 5-21, 
75-93; the fourth, of verses 1, 53-64, 68-74; the 
fifth, of verses 1, 53-61, 65, 66 ; in the sixth, the 60th 
and 61st verses were immediately followed by the 67th; 
the seventh, of verses 1, 94-103.—The Theogony is 
interesting as being the most ancient monument that 
we have of the Greek mythology. When we consider 
it as a poem, we find no composition of ancient times 
60 stamped with a rude simplicity of character. It 
is without luminous order of arrangement, abounds 
with dry and insipid details, and only by snatches, as 
it were, rises to any extraordinary elevation of fancy. 
It exhibits that crude irregularity, and that mixture of 
meanness and grandeur, which characterize a strong 
but uncultivated genius. The censure of Quintilian, 
that “ Hesiod rarely rises, and a great part of him is 
occupied in mere names,” is confessedly merited. 
Considered, however, as a general critique, the judg¬ 
ment which Quintilian pronounces on Hesiod is liable 
to objection. The sentence just quoted refers plainly 
to the Theogony alone : while the following seems 
exclusively applicable to the Works and Days : “ yet 
he is distinguished by useful sentences of morality, and 
a commendable sweetness of diction and expression, 
and he deserves the palm in the middle style of wri¬ 
ting.” The Battle of the Gods, however, cannot 
surely be classed among the specimens of the middle 
ityle. This passage, together with the combat of Ju- 


H E S 

piter and Typhoeus, astonishes the reader Dy sudden 
bursts of enthusiasm, for which the prolix and nerve¬ 
less narrative of the general poem had little prepared 
him. Milton has borrowed some images from these 
descriptions : and the arming of the Messiah for battle 
is obviously imitated from the magnificent picture 
of Jupiter summoning all the terrors of his omnip¬ 
otence for the extirpation of the Titans. ( Elton's 
Hesiod, p. 16.)—We have also, under the name of 
Hesiod, a fragment of a poem entitled the Heroogony, 
or the genealogy and history of the demi-gods. To 
this poem some unknown rhapsodist has attached a 
piece on the combat between Hercules and Cycnus, 
containing a description of the hero’s shield It is 
from this part that the fragment in question bears the 
title of the “ Shield of Hercules” (’A<77rif 'Hpa/c/leox'f). 
Modern critics think that to the Heroogony of Hesiod 
belonged two works which are cited by the ancients, 
the one under the title of “ Catalogue jf Women” 
(Karu'koyoQ -yvvauitiv), giving the history of those 
mortal females who had become the mothers of demi¬ 
gods ; and the other under the title of the “ Great 
Eoece ” (M eyd\ai ’HoraD, so named because the his¬ 
tory of each female or heroine mentioned therein com¬ 
menced with the words rj, ohj (or, such as). Any in¬ 
quiry into the character and extent of the Eoece is ren¬ 
dered very difficult by the obscurity which rests upon 
the relation of this poem to the Catalogue of Women. 
For this latter poem is sometimes stated to be the 
same with the Eoese; and, for example, the fragment 
on Alcmena, which, from its beginning, manifestly be¬ 
longs to the Eoeae, is in the scholia to Hesiod placed 
in the fourth book of the Catalogue : sometimes, again, 
the two poems are distinguished, and the statements of 
the Eoese and the Catalogue are opposed to each other. 

( Schol . ad Apoll. Rhod., 2, 181.) We are compelled 
to suppose, therefore, that originally the Eoeae and 
Catalogue were different in plan and subject, only that 
both were especially dedicated to the celebration of 
women of the heroic age, and that this then caused the 
compilation of a version, in which both poems were 
moulded together into one whole.—Hesiod wrote in 
the Ionic dialect, with some HSolisms intermingled. 
We have scholia on his poems by Proclus, John 
Tzetzes, Moschopulus, and John Protospatharius. We 
have to regret the loss of the commentary upon him 
by Aristophanes of Byzantium.—The latest and best 
editions of Hesiod are, that of Dindorf, Lips., 1825, 
8vo, and that of Gottling (in the Bibliotheca Graeca), 
Gotha, et Erford., 1831, 8vo. ( Muller's Hist. Lit. 
Gr. — Libr. Us. Knowl., p. 77, seqq.) 

Hesione, a daughter of Laomedon, king of Troy, by 
Strymno (called also Placia or Leucippe), daughter of 
the river-god Scamander. When Apollo and Neptune, 
after having erected the walls of Troy, had been refu¬ 
sed by Laomedon the stipulated remuneration, Apollo 
wreaked his vengeance by the infliction of a pesti¬ 
lence ; and Neptune sent a sea-monster which ravaged 
the coasts of the country, making its appearance with 
every full tide. The oracle being consulted, declared 
that there would be no deliverance from these calami¬ 
ties, until Laomedon should expose his own daughter 
Hesione as a prey to the monster. The monarch "ac¬ 
cordingly exposed her, having attached her person to 
the rocks on the seashore. Hercules, while returning 
in his vessel from the Euxine, with the girdle of the 
Amazon, saw the princess in this situation, and offered 
to deliver her if Laomedon would give him the mares 
which Jupiter had presented to Tros in exchange for 
his son Ganymedes. Laomedon assented, and Hercu 
les slew the monster and delivered Hesione; but the 
faithless Trojan refused to keep his word, and the hero 
sailed away, threatening to return and make war on 
Troy. Some time after this, when Hercules had ac¬ 
complished all his labours, and had also completed the 
term of his servitude with Omphale, he resolved to 

613 




H E S 


HESPERIDES. 


lane his long-threatened vengeance on Laomedon. 
He accordingly collected a fleet of eighteen fifty-oared 
vessels (Homer, II., 5, 641, says six), manned by a val¬ 
iant band of volunteer warriors, and, sailing to Ilium, 
took the city, having been powerfully aided by his friend 
and follower Telamon. Hercules slew with his arrows 
Laomedon and all his sons except Podarces, who had 
advised his father to give the stipulated reward to the 
hero for the destruction of the monster. He then 
gave Hesione to Telamon as a reward of his valour, 
and allowed her to choose one among the captives to 
be set at liberty. When she had fixed upon her 
brother Podarces, Hercules replied that he must first 
be made a slave, and then she might give something 
for him and redeem him. She took her golden veil off 
her head, and with it bought him, and hence he was after¬ 
ward named Priamus ( Purchased) instead of Podarces 
(Swift-foot). Hesione was taken to Greece by Tela¬ 
mon, where she became the mother of Teucer. ( Apol - 
lod., 2, 5, 9, seqq .— Id., 2, 6, 4 .—Keightley's Mythol- 
ogy, p. 359, 365.) 

Hesperia, a name applied by the poets to Italy, as 
lying to the west of Greece. It is of Greek origin 
('Ecrrcspia), and is derived from konepa, “ evening ,” 
so that Hesperia properly means “the evening-land,” 
i. e., the western region. ( Virg ., Mn., 1, 530.— Id. 
lb., 569.— Ovid, Met., 2, 458.— Lucan, 1, 224.) It 
is also, though less frequently, applied to Spain, as ly¬ 
ing west of Italy. ( Horat ., Od., 1, 36, 4.— Lucan, 
4, 14.) 

Hesperides, or “ the Western Maidens,” three cel¬ 
ebrated nymphs, whose genealogy is differently given 
by various writers. According to Hesiod ( Theog., 
215), they were the daughters of Night, without a fa¬ 
ther. Diodorus, on the other hand, makes them to 
have had for their parents Atlas and Hesperis daugh¬ 
ter of Hesperus ( Diod . Sic., 4, 27), an account which 
is followed by Milton in his Comus (v. 981). Others, 
however, to assimilate them to their neighbours the 
Grains and Gorgons, call the Hesperides the offspring 
of Phorcys and Ceto. ( Schol . ad Apoll. Rh., 4, 1399.) 
Apollonius gives their names as iEgle, Hespera, and 
Erythe'is (4, 1427), while Apollodorus, who increases 
the number to four, calls them TEgle, Erythea, Hestia, 
and Arethusa. ( Apollod ., 2, 5, 11.) Hesiod makes 
them to have dwelt “ beyond the bright ocean,” op¬ 
posite to where Atlas stood supporting the heavens 
(Theog., 518), and when Atlas had been fixed as a 
mountain in the extremity of Libya, the dwelling of 
the Hesperides was usually placed in his vicinity, 
though some set it in the country of the Hyperboreans. 
(Apollod., 1. c.) —According to the legend, when the 
bridal of Jupiter and Juno took place, the different dei¬ 
ties came with nuptial presents for the latter, and 
among them the goddess of Earth, with branches hav¬ 
ing golden apples growing on them (“ Terram venisse 
ferentem aurea mala cum ramis.” Hygin., Poet. 
Astron., 2, 3.) Juno, greatly admiring these, begged 
of Earth to plant them in her gardens, which extended 
as far as Mount Atlas (“ qui errant usque ad Atlantem 
montem." Hygin., 1. c.) The Hesperides, or daugh¬ 
ters of Atlas, were directed to watch these trees ; but, 
as they were somewhat remiss in discharging this duty, 
and frequently plucked off the apples themselves, Ju¬ 
no sent thither a large serpent to guard the precious 
fruit. This monster was the offspring of Typhon and 
Echidna, and had a hundred heads, so that it never 
slept. (Hygin., I c.) According to Pisander, the 
name of the reptile was Ladon. (Schol. ad Apoll. 
Rh., 4, 1396.)—One of the tasks imposed upon Her¬ 
cules by Eurystheus was to bring him some of this 
golden fruit. On his way in quest of it, Hercules 
came to the river Eridanus, and to the nymphs, the 
daughters of Jupiter and Themis, and inquired of 
them where the apples were to be obtained. They 
directed him to Nereus, whom he found asleep ; and, 
614 


in spite of his numerous changes of form, he bound 
and held him fast until he had mentioned where the 
golden apples were. Having obtained this information, 
Hercules went on to Tartessus, and, crossing over to 
Libya, proceeded on his way until he came to Irassa, 
near the lake Tritonis, where Antasus reigned. Af¬ 
ter destroying this opponent (vid. Antaeus) he visited 
Egypt, and slew Busiris, the monarch of that land. 
(Vid. Busiris.1 He then roamed through Arabia, and 
after this over the mountains of Libya, which he cleared 
of savage beasts. Reaching then the eastern course 
of the ocean, he was accommodated, as in the adven¬ 
ture against Geryon, with the radiant cup of the Sun 
god, in which he crossed to the opposite side. He 
now came to where Prometheus lay chained, and, 
moved by his entreaties, shot the bird that preyed 
upon his liver. Prometheus, out of gratitude, warned 
him not to go himself to take the golden apples, but to 
send Atlas for them, and, in the mean time, to support 
the heavens in his stead. The hero did as desired, 
and Atlas, at his request, went and obtained three ap¬ 
ples from the Hesperides ; but he said he would take 
them himself to Eurystheus, and that Hercules might 
continue to support the heavens. At the suggestion 
of Prometheus, the hero feigned assent, but begged 
Atlas to hold the heavens again until he had made a 
pad (cr 7 reipav) to put on his head. Atlas threw down 
the apples and resumed his burden, and Hercules 
picked them up and went his way. ( Pherccyd., ap 
Schol., 1. c. — Apollod.,1. c.) Another account, how¬ 
ever, made Hercules to have killed the serpent, and 
to have taken the apples himself. (Eurip., Here. 
Fur., 394., seqq. — Apollod., 1. c .) The hero brought 
the apples to Eurystheus, who returned them to him, 
and he then gave them to Minerva. The goddess 
carried them back to the garden of the Hesperides. 
(Apollod., 1. c. — Keightley's Mythology, p. 251, 361, 
seqq .)—The explanation given to this fable by some 
of the pragmatisers is dull enough : the Hesperides, 
say they, were the daughters of Hesperus, a Milesian, 
who dwelt in Caria. This Hesperus had sheep with 
very fine fleeces, and so remarkably beautiful in every 
respect that they were called, by a figure of speech, 
“ golden." Hercules, having chanced to espy these 
valuable animals, as they were feeding on one occa¬ 
sion near the shore, under the care of a shepherd 
named Draco (dp&Kuv, “ snake ”), drove them on board 
of his ship, along with their keeper, Hesperus being 
dead at the time, and his daughters inheriting his pos¬ 
sessions. Now, continue these expounders, since the 
same word in Greek (p.fj'Xa) means both “ sheep ” and 
“ apples ,” the fable of the golden fruit eventually took 
its rise ! (Palcephat., c. 19 —Compare Varro, R. R., 
2, 1, 6.— Diod. Sic., 4, 27.)—Dupuis, who makes Her¬ 
cules to have been the Sun, and refers his twelve la¬ 
bours to the passage of that luminary through the signs 
of the zodiac, explains the fable of the Hesperides as 
follows. In the twelfth month, making the first coin¬ 
cide with Leo, ihe sun enters the sign Cancer. At 
this period the constellation of Hercules Ingeniculus 
descends towards the western regions, called Hespe¬ 
ria, followed by the polar dragon, the guardian of the 
apples of the Hesperides. On the celestial sphere 
Hercules tramples the dragon under foot, which falls 
towards him as it sets. Hence the fable. (Compare 
remarks under the article Hercules.)—The gardens of 
the Hesperides are placed by those geographical wri¬ 
ters who seek to convert a fable into reality, in the 
neighbourhood of the ancient Berenice, now Bengazi, 
in Cyrenai'ca, on the Mediterranean coast of Africa. 
A modern traveller, Captain Beechey, has given us 
some curious information on this point. He remarks 
(p. 316, seqq.), that some very singular pits or chasms, 
of natural formation, were discovered by him in the 
neighbourhood of Bengazi. “ They consist of a level 
surface of excellent soil, several hundred feet in ex- 




H E S 


H£S 


lent, enclosed within steep, and, for the most part, per¬ 
pendicular, sides of solid rock, rising sometimes to a 
height of sixty or seventy feet, or more, before they 
reach the level of the plain in which they are situated. 
The soil at the bottom of these chasms appears to 
have been washed down from the plain above by the 
heavy rains, and is frequently cultivated by the Arabs ; 
so that a person, in walking over the country where 
they exist, comes suddenly upon a beautiful orchard 
or garden, blooming in secret, and in the greatest lux¬ 
uriance, at a considerable depth beneath his feet, and 
defended on all sides by walls of solid rock, so as to 
be at first sight apparently inaccessible. The effect 
of these secluded little spots, protected, as it were, from 
the intrusion of mankind, by the steepness and depth 
of the barriers which enclose them, is singular and 
pleasing in the extreme ; they reminded us of some 
of those secluded retreats which we read of in fairy 
legends or tales. It was impossible to walk along the 
edge of these precipices, looking everywhere for some 
part less abrupt than the rest, by which we might de¬ 
scend into the gardens beneath, without calling to 
mind the description given by Scylax of the far-famed 
gardens of the Hesperides.”—It has been supposed by 
many, and among the rest by Gossellin and Pacho, 
that the Hesperian gardens of the ancients were no¬ 
thing more than some of those verdant caves which 
stud the Libyan desert, and which, from their con¬ 
cealed and inaccessible position, their unknown origin, 
and their striking contrast to the surrounding waste, 
might well suggest the idea of a terrestrial paradise, 
and become the types of the still fairer creations of 
poetic fable. Possibly, therefore, supposing the fable 
to rest on a real basis, the first of these Elysian groves 
may have been at the extremity of Cyrena’ica mentioned 
by Beechey, and the original idea of the legend may 
have been taken from a subterranean garden of the 
above description.—The garden of the Hesperides is 
stated by Scylax (p. 46) to have been an enclosed spot 
of ten stadia each way, filled with thickly-planted fruit- 
trees of various kinds, and inaccessible on all sides. 
It was situated at six hundred and twenty stadia (fifty 
geographical miles) from the port of Barce ; and this 
agrees precisely with that of the place described by 
Captain Beechey from Ptolemata. The testimony of 
Pliny (5, 5) is very decided in fixing the site of the 
Hesperides in the neighbourhood of Berenice. “ Not 
far from the city” (Berenice), “ is the river Lethon, 
and the sacred grove where the gardens of the Hes¬ 
perides are said to be situated. We do not mean,” 
remarks Captain B., “ to point out any one of these 
subterranean gardens as that which is described in the 
passage above quoted from Scylax; for we know of 
no one which will correspond, in point of extent, to 
the garden which that author has mentioned. All 
those which we saw were considerably less than the 
fifth of a mile in diameter (the measurement given by 
Scylax); and the places of this nature which would 
best agree with the dimensions, are now filled with 
water sufficiently fresh to be drinkable, and take the 
form of romantic little lakes. Scarcely any two of the 
gardens we met with were, however, of the same depth 
or extent • and we have no reason to conclude that, 
because we saw none which were large enough to be 
fixed upon for the garden of the Hesperides, there is 
therefore no place of the dimensions required ; par¬ 
ticularly as the singular formation alluded to continues 
to the foot of the Cyrenaic chain, which is fourteen 
miles distant in the nearest parts from Berenice.” 
(Compare Edinb. Rev., n. 95, p. 228.) 

Hesperidum Insulae, are generally thought to cor¬ 
respond with the Cape de Verd islands ; but, as these 
are too far from the coast, they possibly may have been 
rather the small islands called Bissigos, lying a little 
above Sierra Leone. In these, some place the gar¬ 
dens of the Hesperides, which others will have to be 


on the Continent. Consult remarks under the pre 
ceding article. 

Hesperis, I. daughter of Hesperus She married 
Atlas, her father’s brother, and became mother of the 
Hesperides, according to one legend. (. Diod. Sic., 4, 
27.)—II. A city of Cyrenaica. (Vid. Berenice IX.) 

Hesperium Cornu ('Eaneotov Keoag), a promontory 
on the western coast of Africa; according to Manr.ert, 
the present Cape Verd. It is mentioned in the peri 
plus of Hanno. Rennell, however, makes the Westerr 
Horn to have been a bay and not a promontory, and 
identifies it with the modern bay or gulf of Bissago. 

( Mannert , Gcogr., vol. 10, pt. 2, p.*531. — Rennell, 
Geogr. of Herod., vol. 2, p. 424.) 

Hesperius Sinus, a bay on the western coast of 
Africa, and now the bay or gulf of Bissago. Consult 
preceding article. 

Hesperus, I. son of Iapetus and Asia, and brother 
of Atlas. He became the father of Hesperis, who 
married her uncle Atlas, from which union, according 
to one account, sprang the Hesperides. Hesperus, 
like Atlas, was fabled by some to have been a great 
astronomer, and when ascending Mount Atlas, on one 
occasion, for the purpose of making his observations, 
was blown aw r ay by a tempest and no more seen. 
Divine honours were accordingly rendered to him, and 
the evening star was called after his name. (Diod. 
Sic., 3, 59.) By some he is termed the son of At¬ 
las, as, for example, by Diodorus in the passage just 
cited ; and yet the same writer, with the contradiction 
that usually marks ancient fables, elsewhere calls him 
the brother of Atlas (4, 27.—Consult Wesseling, ad 
Diod. Sic., 3, 59). — Another version of the story 
makes Hesperus to have been the son of Aurora and 
Cephalus, and so remarkable for beauty as to have 
contested the palm with Venus, from which circum¬ 
stance the beautiful star of eve was called after him, 
and the name of Venus was also given to the same 
planet. (Hygin., Poet. Astron., 2, 42.— Eratosth., Ca- 
tast., c. 44.)—II. A name given to the star of even¬ 
ing. (Consult preceding article.) The same planet, 
when it appeared as the morning star, was called Phos¬ 
phorus (<kcjcr tyopoq) and Lucifer, both appellations 
meaning “the bearer of light.” (Hygin., 1. c. — Ca- 
full., 62, 34, seqq. — Serv., ad V'irg., Georg., 1, 250 — 
Id., ad Virg., xEn.,8, 590.— Muncker, ad Hygin., fab., 
65.— Van Staveren, ad eund. loc.) Pythagoras is said 
to have first pointed out the identity of Hesperus and 
Lucifer. (Menag., ad Diog. Laert., 8, 14.)—Radlofl 
has written a curious work on the planets Hesperus and 
Phaethon, and on their having been respectively shat¬ 
tered by coming in collision with some comet or other 
heavenly body. He makes the present planet Venus 
to be but a portion of the original star, and among 
other learned and curious arguments in support of his 
singular position, refers to the well-known passage of 
Scripture as illustrating the tradition of the great 
event: “How art thou fallen, Lucifer, star of the 
morning!” (Radloff, Zertrummcrung der grossen 
Planeten Hesperus und Phaethon, Berlin, 1823.) 

Hesus, a deity among the Gauls, the same as the 
Mars of the Romans. (Lucan, 1, 445.) Lactantius 
(Div. Inst., 1, 21) writes the name Hcusus. Com¬ 
pare the Hu-Cadarn (“ Hu the powerful”) in the tra¬ 
ditions and ballads of the Welsh. The god Hesu3 or 
Heusus, in the polytheism of Gaul, was probably an 
intercalation of the Druids. (Consult remarks under 
the article Gallia, p. 534, col. 2.) 

Hesychius, I. an Egyptian bishop, mentioned by 
St. Jerome as having published a critical edition of the 
Septuagint in the third century. It was introduced 
into the churches of this country ; and Jerome usually 
cites it under the title of Exemplar Alexandrinum.- — 
I II. A lexicographer of Alexandrea, who lived, accord¬ 
ing to the common opinion, towards the close of the 
I fourth century. The question still remains undecided 

615 



HESYCHIUS. 


H E T 


wnether the glossary which has reached us under the 
name of this writer be really his, or whether it be not 
merely an abridgment of his work. What has inclined 
some to favour the latter opinion is the circumstance 
of the citations being omitted. Others think, and with 
some appearance of reason, that this lexicon was ori¬ 
ginally a small volume, and that the numerous biblical 
glosses which are at present found in it have been in¬ 
tercalated by the copyists, who have taken the remarks 
made in the margin by the possessors of manuscripts 
for portions of the text itself. However this may be, 
the work of Hesychius is very important towards ac¬ 
quiring a full knowledge of the Greek language. It 
has preserved for us a large number of passages from 
poets, orators, historians, and physicians, whose works 
are lost. Hesychius explains, moreover, various words 
that depart from the ordinary usage of the Greek 
tongue, as well as terms used in sacrifices, gymnastic 
encounters, &c. And yet it must be acknowledged 
that his text is in a most corrupt state, and that when 
he is a solitary witness his testimony ought to be re¬ 
ceived with caution. (Mus. Crit., vol. 1, p. 503.) 
The work, in fact, has all the appearance of rough 
notes, put down in the course of reading, rather than 
of a finished production. It was not known until the 
sixteenth century. Only one MS., in the library of 
St. Mark, at Venice, is said to be preserved, and that 
is full of abbreviations, and has many erasures ; which 
accounts for the great corruption of the text, in spite 
of the labours of many able editors. It appears, how¬ 
ever, that in the seventeenth century there existed a 
second manuscript in the Florence library. {Ebert's 
Bibliogr. Lexicon , vol. 1, p. 772.)—The best edition 
of Hesychius is that of Alberti, completed by Ruhn- 
ken, Lugd. Bat., 1746-1776, 2 vols. fol. It is to be 
regretted, however, that Alberti could not avail him¬ 
self of the valuable MS. notes of Bentley on this lexi¬ 
cographer.—The editio princeps of Hesychius was pub¬ 
lished by the elder Aldus, Venice, 1514, fol., under the 
care of Marcus Musurus. The manuscript followed was 
the Venice one. This, however, being, as we have al¬ 
ready remarked, very difficult to decipher, and in other 
respects extremely inaccurate, Musurus took great 
pains to correct and restore it. This is often done 
with intelligence and success ; but often also he de¬ 
ceives himself in his corrections, and in general treats 
his original in too arbitrary a manner. Schow, of Co¬ 
penhagen, being- at Venice, collated the manuscript 
with the edition of Alberti, and took note of all the 
variations. He published this collation at Leipsic, 
1792, 8vo, under the title, “ Hesychii Lexicon ex cod. 
Ms. bibliothecae S. Marci restitutum, et ab omnibus 
Musuri correctionibus repurgatum .” By the help of 
this volume, the possessor of any edition of Hesychius, 
for they are all based upon this manuscript, can make 
the necessary corrections. The glosses, taken from 
the Scriptures, that are found in Hesychius, were col¬ 
lected and published by J. C. G. Ernesti, Lips., 1785, 
8 vo. We may regard as the second volume of this 
production the work published by Ernesti in 1786, 
8 vo, under the title, “ Suida et Phavorini Glossce sa¬ 
cra ,” in which are found two hundred and twenty-nine 
glosses of Hesychius, forgotten in the first volume. 
To this may be joined the work of Schleusner, Ob- 
tervat. in Suid. et Hesych., Wittemb., 1810, 4to. 
Among the subsidiary works that illustrate Hesychius, 
may be mentioned Toup’s Emendations ( ToupiiEmen - 
dationes in Suidam et Hesychium, Oxon., 1790, 4 
vols. 8vo), and the Dissertation of Ranke ( De Lexici 
Hesychiani vera origine et genuina forma commen- 
tatio, Lips., 1831, 8vo).—III. A native of Miletus, 
surnamed, by reason of the office with which he was 
invested, Jllustris (“Illustrious”). He is supposed to 
have lived under the emperors Justin and Justinian, and 
was the author of a chronicle {’laropiKOv tv avvoipei 
KoapiKijc icTopiaq), from Belus king of Assyria to the 
616 


end of the reign of Anastasius I. This work, em¬ 
bracing the history of 1190 years, was divided into six 
sections or epochs (rpr/para), viz., 1. Events ante¬ 
rior to the Trojan war. 2. From this latter period to 
the building of Rome. 3. From the building of Rome 
to the abolition of royalty in that city. 4. From the 
latter period to the death of Julius Coesar. 5. I rom 
the death of Caesar to the reign of Constantine the. 
Great. 6. From the latter period to the death of An¬ 
astasius I. The last section, of which we have a val¬ 
uable fragment remaining, entitled Jlurpta YLuvoravri- 
vovTzS’keu^ (“Of the origin of Constantinople”), served 
as an aid to George Codinus in his description of this 
city. Hesychius also composed Memoirs on the reign 
of Justinian the elder ('E repa j3i61o^, tv y rrepiex^Tai 
rd ’I ovgtlvov Trpaxdevra). This work has entirely per¬ 
ished. The fragment of Hesychius, mentioned above, 
has been published under the name of Codinus by 
Douza, Hcidelb., 1596, 8vo. Hesychius also wrote 
an Onomasticon, or Table of Men distinguished in the 
various branches of knowledge {TUvat; tuv tv naideia 
ovopaortiv), of which Suidas professes to have availed 
himself. We have likewise, under the name of Hesy¬ 
chius, a small work entitled Ilcpt ruv tt aideia dta?,afj.- 
ipavTov oocjxov, “ Of Philosophers celebrated for their 
learning.” It is nothing more than a very careless 
compilation either from Diogenes Laertius, or from the 
lost Onomasticon of the writer whom we are at present 
considering. It. contains, however, some things which 
are not found elsewhere, and this serves to stamp a 
certain value on the work. The. latest and best edi¬ 
tion of these two works is that of Orellius, Lips., 1820, 
8 vo. — IV. A native of Jerusalem, who died about 
428 A.D. He was a priest, and wrote an ecclesiasti¬ 
cal nistory, which is lost.—V. This name was also 
borne by many other ecclesiastics, among whom are 
reckoned several martyrs. (Consult Fabricius, Bibl. 
Grcec., lib. 5, c. 5, and the Prolegomena to Alberti’s 
edition of the Lexicon of Hesychius.) 

Hetruria (more commonly Etruria), a celebra¬ 
ted country of Italy, lying to the west and north of the 
Tiber. Of all the nations of Italy, none appear to 
have such claims on our notice as that of the Etru¬ 
rians. The origin of this nation, however, was in¬ 
volved in a degree of uncertainty at the time when 
the earliest of our ancient historians wrote, which 
was hardly to have been expected, considering their 
extended dominion, their immemorial possession of 
an alphabet, the existence among them of a sacer 
dotal caste, and their acknowledged superiority in 
civilization to all their European contemporaries ex 
cept the Greeks. Their subsequent history is chiefly 
known from their connexion with other nations ; for, 
never having cultivated their language so as to attain 
to the possession of a literature, their writings have 
long since perished ; and what they recorded on brass 
or marble is far less intelligible than the hieroglyphics 
of Egypt. Even in ancient times it was a disputed 
question whether the Etrurians were Pelasgi from 
Greece, or Lydians from Asia, or indigenous in Italy. 
According to Herodotus (1, 94), the Lydians ought to 
be considered as the parent stock of the Etrurian na¬ 
tion. The former had a tradition among them, that a 
great famine arose in Lydia during the reign of Atys, 
one of their earliest kings. When it had lasted for 
several years, it was at length determined that the 
nation should divide itself into two parts, under the 
respective command of Lydus and Tyrrhenus, the two 
sons of Atys, one of which wap. to migrate, and the 
other to remain in Lydia. It fell to the lot of Tyr 
rhenus to abandon Lydia with the people under his 
charge. He accordingly equipped a fleet at Smyrna, 
and set sail in quest of a country to settle in ; when, 
after passing by various countries and nations, he 
finally arrived among the Umbri, in Italy, where he 
founded several cities, which the people, who. from 




IIETRURIA. 


HETRURIA. 


him were called Tyrrhenians, occupied up to the time 
of Herodotus. If we divest the Lydian tradition of 
some marvellous circumstances which are attached to 
it, particularly those that relate to the famine, which 
may he fairly charged to Oriental hyperbole, there still 
remains the record of an important event, which, con¬ 
sidering the character of the historian who has handed 
it down to us, and the geographical information he 
possessed, is certainly entitled to our attention if it 
does not recommend itself to our belief. The great¬ 
est argument, however, in favour of this tradition, 
must be allowed to consist in the weight of testimony 
waich can be collected in support of it from the wri¬ 
ters of antiquity, especially those of Rome, who, with 
fe .v exceptions, seem to concur in admitting the fact 
of the Lydian colony. (Consult Virg., JEn., 8, 479, 
et pass. — Catull ., 31,13. — Horat ., Sat., 1, 6. — Stat. 
Silv., 1, 2.— Id.., 4, 4.— Scnec., ad Helv. — Justin, 20, 
1. — Val. Max., 2,4.— Plut., Vit. Rom. — Pliny, 3, 5.) 
—Strabo, who has entered more fully into the discus¬ 
sion of the Tyrrhenian origin, does not seem to enter¬ 
tain any doubt of the event which we are now con¬ 
sidering, and he quotes Anticlides, an historian of 
some authority, who reports that the first Pelasgi 
settled in the islands of Imbros and Lemnos, and that 
some of them sailed with Tyrrhenus, the son of Atys, 
to Italy. ( Strabo , 219.) In short, the presumption 
would appear so strong in favour of this popular ac¬ 
count of the origin of the Tyrrheni, that we might 
consider the question to be decided, were not our at¬ 
tention called to the opposite side by some weighty ob¬ 
jections, advanced long since by Dionysius of Halicar¬ 
nassus, and farther strongly urged by some modern 
critics of great reputation and learning. Dionysius 
seems to stand alone among the writers of antiquity 
as invalidating the facts recorded by Herodotus ; and 
though his own explanation of the origin of the Tyn- 
rhenians is evidently inconsistent and unsatisfactory, 
etill it must be owned that his arguments tend greatly 
to discredit the colony of the Lydian Tyrrhenus. He 
maintains, in the first place, that it is fabulous, from 
the silence on so important an event of Xanthus the 
historian of Lydia, a writer of great research and au¬ 
thority, and more ancient than Herodotus. Xanthus 
acknowledges no Lydian prince of the name of Tyr¬ 
rhenus ; the sons of Atys, according to him, were Ly- 
dus and Torybus, who both remained in Asia. Again, 
Dionysius asserts that there was no resemblance to 
be discovered either in the religion, customs, or lan¬ 
guage of the Lydians and Tuscans ; and, lastly, from 
the discrepance to be observed in the various state¬ 
ments of the genealogy of Tyrrhenus and the period 
of his migration, he feels justified in rejecting that 
event as a mere fiction. (Ant. Rom., 1, 30.) The 
advocates of Herodotus, however, have not been in¬ 
timidated by these arguments, but have endeavoured 
to prove their insufficiency. Among these may be 
reckoned Ryckius (de primis Italics colonis, c. 6) ; 
Bishop Cumberland ( Connexion of the Greek and. Ro¬ 
man Antiquities. Trast. 7, c. 2); Dempster (Etrur. 
Regal., 1 , 4); Larcher (Hist, d'Herod., vol. 1 , p.) ; 
and Lanzi (Saggio, &c., vol. 2, p. 102). On the 
other hand, the reasons advanced by the Greek histo¬ 
rian have appeared convincing to some eminent critics, 
such as Cluverius (Ital. Antiq., vol. 1, lib. 1, c. 1); 
Freret (Mem. de VAcad., vol. 18, p. 97) ; and Heyne 
(Comment., tf-c., Nov. Soc. Gott., vol. 3, p. 39); who 
have, besides, added other objections to those already 
started. At length, in 1826, the Academy of Sciences 
at Berlin, by proposing the Etruscans as the subject of 
a prize essay, showed their opinion that the time was 
come when the scattered notices of the ancient writers 
should be combined with the discoveries in Etruscan 
antiquities which the last century brought to light, and 
the historical truth separated from the mass of contra¬ 
dictory theories beneatl which successive writers had 
41 


buried it. Professor K. 0. Muller, whose essay oo 
tained the prize, had already distinguished himself by 
his Orchomenus und die Minyer (“ Orchomenus and 
theMinyans”), and Dorier (“The Dorians”), two works 
in which an extraordinary extent of reading in archae¬ 
ology and ancient literature is united to great sagacity 
in reconstructing from its fragments the ruined edifies 
of earJy Greek history. The dissertation on the Etru¬ 
rians forms in every respect a suitable accompaniment 
to these.—We have already remarked, that even in 
ancient times it was a disputed question, whether the 
Etruscans were Pelasgi from Greece, or Lydians from 
Asia, or indigenous in Italy; and that the moderns 
had added more than an equal number to the hypothe¬ 
ses of the ancients. Thus some have supposed that 
the Etrurians might be descended from the Egyptians 
(Bonarotti, ad Monum.) ; others, from the Canaanites 
(Maffei, Ragion. delli Itali primitivi, p. 218, seqq .— 
Mazocchi, Comment, in Tab. Heracl., p. 15, &c.); 
others, from the Phoenicians (Swinton, de Ling. Etru- 
rice rcgalis Vernacula, Oxon., 1738); others again 
contended for their Celtic origin (Pelloutier, Hist, des 
Celtes, lib. 1, p. 178.— Bardetti, deiprimi abit. d'ltal., 
vol. 1). Freret ascribed it to the Raeti (Mem. de 
VAcad., &c., vol. 18); Hervas to the ancient Cantabri 
(Idea del Universo, vol. 17, c. 4) ; while some again 
gave up all hope of arriving at any certain conclusion 
in this puzzling question, and seemed to consider it as 
one of those historical problems which must for ever 
remain without a solution. Muller’s theory appears 
ingenious and plausible. He admits a primitive pop¬ 
ulation of Etruria, whom he calls, after Dionysius, the 
Rascnce, on whose origin he does not decide, but 
thinks there are grounds for assuming, that these were 
mingled with a body of Pelasgian colonists from the 
coast of Lydia. We find in Greece a people bearing 
the name of Pelasgian Tyrrheni, driven from Boeotia 
by the Dorian migration, appearing as fugitives in 
Athens, and thence betaking themselves to Lemnos, 
Imbros, and Samothrace, where, as well as on Mount 
Athos, they remained in the historic times. The 
name Tyrrhenian is applied to the Etrurians in Hesiod 
(Theog., 1015), and, in the Homeric hymn to Bacchus, 
to this people of the ^Egean. That they were not the 
Tyrrhenians of Italy by whom the god was carried off 
is evident; the pirates intended to carry him to Egypt 
or to Cyprus, not to Italy ; and from other sources it 
appears that the mythus was a Naxian legend. Ovid 
(Met., 3, 577, seqq.) relates it at great length, and 
represents the Tyrrhenians as Maeonians. Now, on 
the coast of Masonia or Lydia there was a place named 
Tvpjba, from which Muller deduces the name Tyrrhe¬ 
nian ; in all probability radically the same with Tor- 
rhebian, the name borne by the southern district of 
Lydia. He is inclined, however, to consider the peo¬ 
ple, to whom, from their occupation of T vppa, the 
name Tyrrhenian was given, not as Lydians, but as 
Pelasgians, who settled for a time on this part of the 
coast, and having thence acquired their name, and 
made it notorious by their piracies in the .Egean, 
migrated first to the Malean promontory, and then to 
Etruria. In deriving them, however, immediately 
from the Pelasgians who came from Attica to Lemnos 
and Imbros, and thence to Lydia, he seems to embar¬ 
rass his hypothesis with an unnecessary difficulty. He 
himself makes the worship of the phallic Hermes to be 
characteristic of the Pelasgi in Attica and the islands; 
yet of this he admits that hardly a trace is to be found 
in the Etrurian religion. It is remarkable how late is 
the application of the name Pelasgian to the Tyrrhe¬ 
nians. Herodotus not only never calls them so, but 
even by referring to the Crestonians, who live above 
the Tyrrhenians, for a proof of what the Pelasgic lan¬ 
guage was, he seems to imply that the Tyrrhenians 
themselves were, in his view, not Pelasgians ; else 
why not take them at once for his illustration! No 

617 



HETRURIA. 


HETRURIA. 


ancient author describes the Tyrrhenians of Lydia as 
Pelasgians from Attica and the islands. The gene¬ 
alogy of Herodotus from the Lydian authors makes 
Tyrrhenus a son of Atys, king of Lydia ; in that given 
in Dionysius without the author’s name, Lydus and 
Tyrrhenus are brothers ; in that of Xanthus the broth- 
jrs are called Lydus and Torybus or Torrhubus, i. e., 
according to Muller, Tyrrhenus. Whichever of these 
w3 argue from, it appears very improbable that the 
lineage of a band of Pelasgian pirates, who had settled 
on the coasts of Lydia, should have been carried up 
to the ancient kings or gods of the country ; and that, 
too, not by the Greeks, but by the Lydians themselves. 
We cannot, therefore, avoid the conclusion, that the 
Tyrrhenians were much more intimately connected 
with the Lydian population than Muller’s account of 
hem supposes. Niebuhr makes the Moeonians (the 
Homeric name for the Lydians) to be Pelasgians, ar¬ 
guing from the name of their stronghold, Larissa, 
which is found in all countries occupied by Pelasgians; 
Muller represents them as wholly different, alleging 
that no ancient author calls the Moeonians Pelasgians. 
This is true ; but they make the Tyrrhenians Moeoni¬ 
ans and also Pelasgians, and therefore imply, though 
they do not assert, the identity of the people who bore 
these three names. The whole coast of Asia Minor 
appears to have been occupied by the Pelasgi, or na¬ 
tions differing from them only in name. Menecrates 
( ap. Strab., 571) related, that the Pelasgi had occu¬ 
pied the whole of Ionia, from Mycale northward, and 
the adjacent islands ; the Carians, the Leleges, and 
the Caucones, the Trojans, and Mysians, were of the 
same race, and also allied to the Lydians, as appeals 
from the genealogy given by Herodotus (1, 171). The 
Greeks themselves attribute the Pelasgic population 
of Asia Minor to colonies sent from Greece or from 
the islands ; but their accounts of colonies before the 
Homeric age, being founded on no contemporary au¬ 
thority, must generally be regarded as historical hy¬ 
potheses, chiefly grounded upon similarity of names, 
which may often be more rationally explained from 
other causes. It is, however, by no means probable 
that the Lydians were wholly a Pelasgic people. The 
phenomena of the history of Asia Minor are most 
easily solved by the supposition that a nation of Syr¬ 
ian origin was mingled in its two principal districts, 
Lydia and Phrygia, with another nearly allied to the 
Greeks. The Mosaic genealogy of nations ( Gen ., 10, 
22) assigns a Semitic origin to the Lydians ; while it 
refers most of the tribes of Asia Minor, along with the 
Greeks, to the stock of Japheth. The mythology of 
Lydia, the basis, as usual, of its dynasties of kings, 
betrays its Syrian as well as Grecian affinities. Their 
deities ‘'Arr^f or V A rvg (the same as licmag, Hes.), 
and Ma, father and mother, have probably given their 
name to the Atyades and the Moeonians; and their 
worship is clearly the same with that of the Syrian 
goddess, who was variously denominated Atargatis, 
Derceto, Semiramis, Rhea, Juno, and Venus. The 
chief seat of her worship at Hierapolis, was the resort 
of the people of Asia Minor; and Ascalon, in Phoe¬ 
nicia, appears to have been considered as a colony of 
the Lydians ( Steph. Byz., s. v.) for no other reason 
than that the traditions of the great goddess were in 
a peculiar manner connected with this place. In the 
list of the kings of Troy, whose names are generally 
of Grecian etymology, the Oriental name of Assara- 
cus points to a mixture of Oriental mythology ; and 
this remark is still more applicable to the genealogy 
of the Heraclid kings of Lydia, in which Greek and 
Assyrian personages are so strongly mixed, Hercules, 
Alcaaus, Belus, Ninus, Agron. ( Herod ., 1, 7.) If, 
then, the Lydians were a people partly Asiatic, partly 
allied to the Greeks, there is really no contradiction 
between those historians who call the Tyrrhenians 
Lydians, and those who speak of Tyrrhenian Pelas- 
6 ! 8 


1 gians. The settlement of the Tyrrhenians at Malea, 
on their progress from Lydia to Italy, rests on very 
slight grounds. A passage, namely, in the commen¬ 
tator Lactantius or Lutatius on Statius (Theb., 4, 224), 
who calls the inventor of the Tyrrhenian trumpet Ma- 
leus ; but the resemblance between the Tuscan and 
the Lydian or Phrygian music, really adds considera 
ble weight to the other arguments in favour of the 
Oriental colonization of Etruria. The musical instru 
ment of the Greeks, in the heroic and Homeric age, 
was the lyre ; the flute was unknown, or, at least, not 
in use. It has been long since remarked that Homer 
mentions the avXog only in two passages (II., 10,13; 
18, 495). In the first of these he is describing the 
nightly noise of the Trojan camp, and the Villoison 
scholiast observes, that these instruments were known 
only to the Barbarians. This observation, though 
limited, is not contradicted by the other passage, in 
which youths are represented as dancing at a wedding 
to the sound of lyres and flutes. To say nothing of 
the suspicions which have been entertained, that the 
description of the shield of Achilles, of which this is 
a part, is not of the same age with the rest of the 
Iliad, it is very possible that the Greeks of Ionia may 
have employed the flute-players of Lydia or Phrygia at 
their festivities ; or, should it be supposed that in the 
days of Homer the use of the flute was familiar to 
the Ionians themselves, the entire absence of all men¬ 
tion of it in the Odyssey shows that in Greece itself 
it had not yet been introduced. It came in there 
along with the worship of Bacchus, which, whatever 
may have been its remoter origin, certainly passed 
from Lydia and Phrygia to Thrace, and thence into 
southern Greece, devouring with its stormy music the 
feebler notes of the lyre. The double flute, of which 
the left hand played a treble to the bass of the right 
hand, is mentioned by Herodotus (I, 7) under the 
name of avXog dvdpelog and ywacutiog, as used by 
the Lydians in war. Now the double flute, as we 
know both from ancient authors and from monuments 
( Inghirami , Monumenti Etruschi, pt. 3, pi. 20; pt. 2, 
pi. 96), was in use among the Etrurians ; and the Ro¬ 
mans not only borrowed their flute-music from them, 
but generally employed at sacrifices and festive dances 
a Tuscan flute-player. (Compare Virg., Georg., 2,193. 
—Ovid , A. A., 1 , 111.) It is very improbable that 
such a coincidence between the Etruscan and Asiatic 
customs should be accidental; and no more probable 
explanation of it can be given than that the Tyrrhe¬ 
nians were really a colony of Pelasgi from Lydia. 
They were probably not numerous, compared with 
the Rasenae, whom they found in possession of the 
country ; and hence, though some of their arts were 
communicated to the nation among whom they settled, 
they were soon so completely absorbed in it, that the 
language of Etruria bore no traces either of a Greek 
or a Lydian mixture. The adoption of a story of a 
Lydian origin by no means requires that we should 
reject the accounts of migrations of Pelasgi from Thes¬ 
saly, and from the opposite shore of the Adriatic to 
the mouths of the Po, which we find in other writers 
on Etrurian history. Professor Mfiller thus sums up 
this part of his researches : “It remains, then,that we 
regard the Tuscan nation as an original and peculiar 
people of Italy ; their language is widely different 
from the Greek; the names of their gods are not 
those which we find among the earliest Greeks whorr 
we call Pelasgi, and which passed from them to the 
Hellenes; there is much, too, in the doctrine of theij 
priests entirely foreign to the Greek theology. Bui 
it appears to have been the fate of this nation, whicl 
never displayed any independent civilization, but only 
adopted that of the Greeks, to have been indebted for 
its first impulse towards improvement to a Greek, or, 
at best, half-Greek tribe. The Tuscans themselves, 
in their native legends, referred their polity and civili- 






HETRURIA. 


HETRURIA. 


eation to the maritime town Tarquinii, and the hero 
Tarchon, both probably only variations of the name 
Tyrrheni. Here it was that the much-dreaded Pelas- 
gians of Lydia landed and settled, bringing with them 
the arts they had acquired at home or on their way. 
For the first time the barbarous land saw men covered 
with brass array themselves for battle to the sound of 
the trumpet; here first they heard the loud sound of 
the Lydo-Phrygian flute accompanying the sacrifice, 
and perhaps witnessed for the first time the rapid 
course of the fifty-oared ship. As the legend, in its 
propagation from mouth to mouth, swells beyond all 
bounds, the whole glory of the Tuscan name, even 
that which did not properly belong to the colonists, 
attached itself to the name of Tarchon, the disciple 
of Tages, as the author of a new and better era in the 
history of Etruria. The neighbouring Umbrians and 
Latins named the nation, which from this time began 
to increase and diffuse itself, not from the primitive 
inhabitants, but from these new settlers. For since, 
in the Eugubine tables, Trusce occurs along with 
Tuscom and Tuscer, it is impossible not to conclude, 
that from the root TUR have been formed Trusicus, 
Truscus, Tuscus ; as from the root OP, Opscus and 
Oscus ; so that T vpprjvoi or T vpayvoi, and Tusci, 
are only the Asiatic and Italic forms of one and the 
same name.” ( Etrusker , vol. 1, p. 100.) The time 
of such a colonization can, of course, only be fixed by 
approximation. Muller supposes it to have coincided 
with the Ionic migration, and to have been occasioned 
by it. The Umbrians were powerful in the land of 
which the new colonists took possession, and long 
wars must have been carried on with them before 
they were dispossessed of the three hundred towns 
which Pliny (3, 19) says they once held in the coun¬ 
try afterward called Etruria. To the south the Etru¬ 
rians extended themselves to the banks of the Tiber, 
and even beyond it into Latiurn, as the name of Tus- 
culum proves. According to their own traditions, the 
same Tarchon who founded the twelve cities of Etru¬ 
ria led a colony across the Apennines and founded 
twelve other cities. Of such a tradition, the historian 
can receive no more than the fact, that Etruria, in the 
valley of the Po, was colonized from the southern 
Etruria. Bologna, anciently Felsina, which stands 
where the Apennines descend into the fertile plains 
which border the Po, was probably the first of these 
colonies, as it is galled by Pliny (3, 20), “ princeps 
quondam Etrunce the names of most of the others 
are uncertain. A stone, with an Etruscan inscription, 
has been found ( Lanzi, vol. 2, p. 649) as far to the 
westward as Alessandria. Atria and Spina, near the 
mouth of the Po, were certainly Tuscan cities, and 
very important from their commerce with the Adriatic; 
but the foundation of both was claimed for the Pelas- 
gians of Thessaly or the followers of Diomede. The 
same story of twelve colonies is repeated in reference 
to the settlement of the Etruscans in Campania. Mul¬ 
ler supposes these to be really colonies from Etruria, 
in opposition to the opinion of Niebuhr, who thinks 
they were founded by Pelasgian Tyrrhenians, con¬ 
founded with the Etruscans from identity of name. 
At all events, the amount of Etruscan population in 
Campania cannot have been great, since the Oscan 
language, not the Etruscan, prevailed there ; and not 
a single Etruscan inscription has been found in this 
whole district. This land of luxurious indulgence 
appears to have exerted its usual influence on the 
Etruscans, and they yielded the possession of it with 
little resistance to the Samnites, who poured down 
from the hills on the fertile plains of Campania. In 
their Italian settlement, the Tyrrhenians appear to 
have retained long the practice of piracy, which had 
made their name notorious in the Grecian seas ; in¬ 
deed, it is sometimes difficult to decide whether the 
imputation falls on the Etruscans or the Tyrrhenians of 


the HCgean. Possessing harbours on both seas, die? 
maintained the command of both, and made them¬ 
selves formidable not only to merchant ships by theii 
corsairs, but to the naval powers by their armaments. 
To their predominance in the lower sea, Muller at¬ 
tributes the circumstance, that the Greeks, while they 
had numerous colonies on the eastern and southern 
coasts of Sicily, had only one, Himera, on the north, 
as late as the age of Thucydides. Indeed, the dread 
of the Etruscans long prevented the Greeks from pass¬ 
ing the straits of Rhegium with their ships ; and it 
was not till the rise of the naval power of the Pho- 
cians that either the Adriatic or Tyrrhene seas 'vere 
well explored by them. Rivalry soon followed ; both 
nations endeavoured to possess themselves of Corsica; 
and the Etruscans, being joined by the Carthaginians, 
fought a desperate battle with their Phocian antago¬ 
nists, in which victory ultimately sided with the latter. 
They were equally unfortunate in their naval wars 
with the Dorians of Cnidos and Rhodes, who had 
made a settlement on the island of Lipara. In the 
time of Pausanias, a consecrated offering of the Lipa- 
reans was seen at Delphi, made from the spoils of the 
Tyrrhenians. Another trophy of the victory of the 
Greeks over them has been brought to light in our 
own times. In the year 474 B.C., the people of Cu¬ 
mae, in Campania, being engaged in war with tire Tyr¬ 
rhenians, called in the aid of Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse, 
by whom they were totally defeated ; and Greece, as 
Pindar says ( Pyth ., 1,72), was delivered from slavery. 
In 1817, a brazen helmet was discovered among the 
ruins of Olympia, with an inscription to the following 
effect: “ Hiero, son of Dinomeus, and the Syracusans 
(consecrate) to Jupiter, Tyrrhenian (arms) from Cu¬ 
mae.” Two other helmets without inscriptions, but no 
doubt part of the same votive offering, were found at 
the same time. ( Bocckh , Corp. Inscript1 , 34.— Id. 
ad Pind., vol. 1, p. 224.)—In opposition to the theory 
of Miiller, however, another one has been advocated, 
with his usual ability and learning, by the celebrated 
Niebuhr. He makes the name Tyrseni or Tyrrheni, 
in Italy, to have belonged originally and properly to 
the Pelasgian population, and the Etruscans to have 
come in from the Rhetian Alps, and to have conquer¬ 
ed the previous inhabitants. These new-comers he 
makes to have been the Rasence of Dionysius, where¬ 
as Muller, it will be remembered, considers the Ra- 
senae to have formed the primitive population of the 
land, and to have been conquered by the Tyrrheni. 
In reply to the question that very naturally presents 
itself, why, if the Etruscans were a foreign and distinct 
race, the Greek writers, nevertheless, invariably called 
them Tyrseni , and Etruria Tyrsenia, Niebuhr re¬ 
marks, that the Etruscans had no more title to the 
name of Tyrsenians, than the English to tha* of Brit¬ 
ons, or the Spanish Creoles to that of Mexicans or 
Peruvians: the strange name was acquired in all these 
cases, according to him, in precisely the same way. 
The whole theory is undoubtedly a very plausible 
one ; but the difficulties with which it is encumbered 
are so numerous, that we cannot hesitate to yield an 
assent to the more rational view taken by Muller of 
this interesting but difficult subject. (Consult Nie¬ 
buhr, Rom. Hist., vol. 1, p. 82, seqq., and 89, ed. 2, p. 
38 and 108, ed. 3.— Hist, of Rome, p. 78, Lilr. Us 
Knowl.) 

Domestic Manners , National Character, $c., of the 
Etrurians. 

It is not an easy task to paint the domestic manners 
and national character of a people who have transmit¬ 
ted no living image of themselves to posterity in lite¬ 
rary compositions. The basis of the national prosper¬ 
ity of the Etrurians was agriculture, to which theii 
soil and climate were well adapted, and which has al¬ 
ways flourished in Tuscany, when the beneficence of 

619 



HETRURIA. 


HETRURIA. 


nature has not been counteracted by misgovernment 
and absurd legislation. But Etruria was not, like 
Campania, a land of spontaneous fertility ; the industry 
and ingenuity of man were required to adapt cultivation 
to the various qualities of the land, and to curb the in¬ 
undations of the Po in the provinces on the Adriatic. 
Their primitive manners were simple ; the distaff of 
Tanaquil was long preserved in the temple of Sancus 
at Rome ; and a passage of Juvenal (6, 288) seems to 
imply, that in domestic industry and virtue there was 
a close resemblance between the Tuscan and the Ro¬ 
man nations in early times. Their extensive con¬ 
quests, and bold and skilful navigation, are a sufficient 
proof of the energy of their national character. But 
when commerce and conquests in Southern Italy had 
placed in their reach the means of indulgence, they 
seized upon them with the avidity of a half-barbarous 
people: and luxury, instead of being the handmaid of 
refinement and elegance, ministered to vain splendour 
and -sensual voluptuousness. Diodorus (5, 40) de¬ 
scribes, from Posidonius, their tables loaded twice a 
day (which, to abstemious Greeks, seemed the excess 
of gluttony), their embroidered draperies, their drink¬ 
ing-vessels of gold and silver, and their hosts of slaves. 
Athenaeus gives much darker shades to his picture of 
the corruption of manners produced by wealth expend¬ 
ed. wholly in the gratification of the senses. That the 
epithets of pinguis and obcstis, which the Romans ap¬ 
plied to the Etruscans, were not wholly suggested by 
national malice, is evident from the recumbent figures 
on the covers of the sarcophagi. From the Etruscans 
the Romans borrowed their combats of gladiators. It 
should seem, however, that the horrible practice of in¬ 
troducing them at banquets belonged chiefly to the 
Etrurians of Campania, and especially to Capua; the 
focus of all the vices which spring from luxury, neither 
softened by humanity nor refined by taste. Of the 
Etrurian music we have spoken in mentioning the 
proofs of their Lydian origin. It was almost the only 
branch of art in which invention is attributed to them 
by the ancients ; and even here the invention related 
only to the instrument; we read of no mood ascribed 
to them. Their celebrity, both in this and the plastic 
art, was owing, in a great measure, to their being the 
neighbours of a people whose genius was so decidedly 
averse from both as that of the Romans ; who, till they 
became acquainted with the Greeks, derived all the 
decorative part of their system of public and private 
life from the Etrurians. We have no historical means 
of determining whether the Etrurians borrowed from 
the Greeks their successive improvements in sculpture 
and statuary, or proceeded in an independent track : 
the fact which we shall have to produce respecting 
their alphabet, renders the former supposition more 
probable. If this communication existed, it was only 
to a certain point: the Tuscan style in art always bore 
a resemblance to that of Egypt, and their most perfect 
works had that rigidity, and want of varied and living 
expression, which characterized Grecian sculpture be¬ 
fore Phidias had fired his imagination with Homer’s de¬ 
scription of Jupiter and Minerva, or Praxiteles had 
imbodied in marble his vision of the Queen of Beauty. 
In all that department of art, or the contrary, in which 
mechanism without mind may attain perfection, the 
Etrurians were little inferior to the Greeks themselves. 
An Athenian poet (ap. Athen., 1, 28) celebrated their 
works in metal as the best of their kind ; alluding 
probably to their drinking-vessels and lamps, candelabra 
and tripods. The religion of the Greeks lent a pow¬ 
erful aid in perfecting the plastic art; that of the Etru¬ 
rians, as far as it was peculiar to them, had nothing to 
impregnate the native fancy of the artist, or to exalt 
his conceptions to sublimity. They appear to have 
held an opinion, which we find both in the Northern 
and Hindu theology, that the gods themselves were 
like the system ver which they presided, the effects 
'620 


of a power exerted only at long intervals in the pro¬ 
duction of being, and absorbing into itself all that it 
had produced, to create again. The symbols of this 
power were the Dii involuti of Etrurian theology, 
whose names were unknown, and who were not ob¬ 
jects of popular worship; of them Jupiter himself 
asked counsel: the Dii Consantes , twelve in number, 
six of either sex, presided over the existing order of 
things, and received homage and sacrifice. Their in¬ 
tervention in human affairs was chiefly manifested in 
omens of impending evil, to be averted by gloomy, and 
often cruel expiations. If morality may have gained 
something by the Etrurian religion’s having furnished 
nothing answering to the sportive, but licentious my¬ 
thology of the Greeks, poetry and art undoubtedly suf¬ 
fered. The same want of lively and cheerful imagina¬ 
tion characterized their doctrine of the immortality of 
the soul: their subterranean world was a Tartarus 
without an Elysium. Nowhere was superstition re¬ 
duced so completely to system. The regions of the 
heavens were divided and subdivided according to the 
Etrurian discipline, that every portent might have its 
accurate interpretation ; the phenomena of the atmo¬ 
sphere, especially thunder and lightning, were observed 
and classed with a minuteness which might have fur¬ 
nished the rudiments of a science, had the observers 
been philosophers instead of priests ; but which, in 
fact, only augmented the subservience of the multitude 
to those who claimed the exclusive knowledge of the 
methods by which the gods might be propitiated. It 
is unnecessary to say that philosophy, in the Grecian 
sense of the word, free speculation on man, nature, and 
providence, combining its results into a system, was 
unknown in Etruria. Some practical knowledge ol 
the laws of nature cannot be denied to a people who 
executed such works in architecture and hydraulics 
as the Etruscans ; but we are not aware that the dis¬ 
covery or demonstration of a single scientific truth can 
be claimed for them. The form of the Etrurian 
government, in which the same order were both aris¬ 
tocracy and priesthood, effectually prevented the mind 
of the nation from expending itself in its natural 
growth. To the Lucumones, an hereditary nobility, 
Tages revealed the religious usages which the people 
were to observe ; and they kept to themselves the 
knowledge of this system, with the power of applying 
it as they thought best for perpetuating their own mo¬ 
nopoly. In their civil capacity, the # Lucumones form¬ 
ed the ruling body in all the cities of Etruria. In ear¬ 
lier times we read of kings, not of the whole country, 
but of separate states, whose power, no doubt, was 
greatly narrowed by that of the aristocracy ; but they 
disappear after a time altogether, as from the Grecian 
and Roman history ; while no body corresponding to 
the plebs arose to represent the popular element of 
the constitution. It is difficult to fix the exact rela¬ 
tion of the'great body of the ruling caste. Muller in¬ 
clines to the opinion, that the cultivators of the soil 
were chiefly bondsmen to the land-owners, as the Pe- 
nestre in Thessaly, and the Helots in Sparta. That 
such a class existed in Etruria is certain ; that it in¬ 
cludes so large a proportion of the people is not prob¬ 
able ; and the only argument adduced in support of it 
is the very doubtful assumption that the clients at 
Rome were bondsmen of the patricians. TJnquestion 
ably the Etrurian aristocracy kept the lower orders in 
political subjection, and the nation was thus prevented 
from rising to that eminence to which it might have 
attained ; but its general prosperity is a proof that the 
government was not tyrannically exercised. The 
spirit of democracy appears not even to have stirred 
so as to awaken the fears of the ruling caste, and lead 
them to severity. The insurrections of which we read 
are especially attributed to the slaves. Etruria was 
fertile in corn, especially in spell , the far or adm of 
the Romans; of which the meal furnished the jmis, 




HETRURIA. 


HETRURIA. 


which was the ancient food of the inhabitants of all 
this part of Italy ; and agriculture formed the most 
honourable occupation. The iron-mines of Ilva, now 
Elba, and others on the mainland of Etruria connected 
with them, furnished a richer supply, and of a purer 
quality than any other in the ancient world ; the same 
island produced the copper for their coinage, and for 
their works in brass. 

Works of Art, Antiquities , c \c., of the Etrurians. 

Enough remains of Etruscan art to justify what an¬ 
cient authors have said of the population, wealth, and 
luxury of this people. The walls of their cities rarely 
exhibit that gigantic species of dike-building which has 
been called the Cyclopean architecture, and which is 
found in Asia Miner, in the Peloponnesus, and the re¬ 
mains of the ancient towns of Latium and Samnium. 
Micali considers the walls of Cosa as the only specimen 
in Etruria of the Cyclopean manner; but if the cri¬ 
terion be the use of polygonal masses of stone without 
cement, instead of paralleiopipedal, the plate {pi. 12) 
which he has given of the gate and wall of Signium 
(Segni) shows that it partakes of the character of this 
class. But, in general, they built their walls, as may 
De seen at Volterra, Populonia, and Rusellte, of vast 
blocks of paralleiopipedal form, which their own weight 
retained in their places, without the use of mortar. 
The gate of Segni, before mentioned, show's something 
of the earliest attempt at constructing an arch, by 
the gradual approximation of the stones which form 
the sides. Etruria does not exhibit any specimens 
of the mode of building practised in the treasuries of 
Atreus and Minyas, in which the walls of a circular 
building converge so as to meet at the top in the firm 
of a beehive. A recent traveller, Della Marmora, has 
discovered several of this kind in the island cf Sar¬ 
dinia. We are indebted for by far the most numerous 
of our Etruscan antiquities to the care with which thia 
people provided themselves with durable places cf 
sepulture, and their custom of interring with the body 
various articles of metal and of clay. To the opening 
of the hypogea of Volterra, we owe the revival of this 
branch of antiquarian lore. Some of these repositories 
belonged to ancient towns, whose existence might havo 
been unknown but for the necropolis which marks 
their vicinity. Inghirami has given an interesting ac¬ 
count {Ser. 4) of two of these; one at Castellaccio, 
not far from Viterbo, the other at Orchia, about four¬ 
teen miles to the southwest of that city. Castellaccio 
was the Castellum Axium mentioned by Cicero in his 
oration for Csecina (c. 7), the site of which Cluverius 
declared to be unknown. The traces of the walls 
themselves are very visible in the large oblong blocks 
of peperino joined without cement, and convex out¬ 
ward, in the usual style of the old Etruscan fortifica¬ 
tions. The steep banks of the stream, being composed 
of a tufo easily wrought, have been hewn out for 
nearly a mile into grotto-sepulchres, the face of the 
rock being cut into the representation of a doorway, 
while the real entrance to the hypogeum is below, and 
closed with large stones. Examples of this kind of 
sepulchre are found in Persia, in Palestine, and in 
Asia Minor {Walpole's Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 231 ; 
vol. 2, p. 206, 524); but in these the entrance is by 
the sculptured portal, which in the Etrurian sepul¬ 
chres served only as an ornament. The architecture 
of these tombs is evidently of an age when the Greek 
embellishments had become known in Etruria; but 
the shortness of the pillars, the length of the inter- 
columniation, and the heaviness of the upper parts, 
agree very well with the character which Vitruvius 
(3, 3) gives to the Tuscan buildings, “ Varicce , bari- 
cephalce et humiles et lata .” As time has not spared 
a single public edifice of the Etrurians, it is only by 
means of their sepulchres, or the representations of 
their buildings in paintings and bas-reliefs, that we can 


judge what their architecture really was; and even l eie 
we find very few traces of it. {Muller, Etrusker, 
vol. 2, p. 24.) It is nearly allied to the Doric, and not 
properly a distinct order; whether so allied in conse¬ 
quence of the affinity of the Etrurians and Greeks, oi 
borrowed by the former, and varied to adapt it to edifices 
of wood, as theirs commonly were, appears doubtful. 
Within these sepulchral chambers were disposed cin¬ 
erary urns of stone, sometimes ranged around the sides 
on the ground; sometimes on an amphitheatre of steps; 
and sometimes in niches, like the Roman columbaria. 
Instances of bodies interred without burning are very 
rare. The urns themselves are commonly of tufo or 
alabaster, and of an oblong form, about two feet in 
length, and of the same height, including the cover, on 
which the recumbent figure of the deceased is often 
carved. In the sepulchres of Volterra, urns of baked 
earth are very rare, stone being there abundant; in 
those of Chusium and Montepulciano they are com¬ 
mon. The urns of baked clay were meant to contain 
ashes, and must not be confounded with the fictile 
vases which are very commonly found in the Etrurian 
sepulchres. As they were first discovered in Etruria, 
the name of Etruscan was given to them, and contin¬ 
ued to be used after it was known that they were found 
more abundantly in the sepulchres of Magna Gracia, 
and even in Attica and the islands of the iEgean. 
That the custom of depositing them in sepulchres, for 
whatever purpose, was common to Etruria and to the 
south of Italy, is certain ; but there is no reason to 
suppose that it originated in Etruria, or that those 
which are found in Campanian or Sicilian sepulchres 
are of Etrurian manufacture. On the contrary, it ii 
probable that those found in Etruria are the productior 
of Greek artists ; their subject, their style of painting 
and design, are completely Greek; and though the 
Etruscans have inscribed every other work of art with 
their own characters, no painted vase has yet been 
found with any other than a Greek inscription. The 
single exception found probably at Volterra, and men¬ 
tioned by Inghirami {Ser. 5, Tab. 55, N. 8), is Greek 
both in its style and its words. The ancients fre¬ 
quently celebrate the pottery of the Etrurians, but do 
not attribute to them any particular skill in painting 
them. The vases of Arretium, so frequently men¬ 
tioned in the classics, are of quite a different kind 
from thoso found in sepulchres ; fragments of them 
abound in the neighbourhood of Arezzo, and Inghira¬ 
mi has engraved some of them. They are of very 
fine clay, of a bright red colour, and with figures in 
relief, modelled after Greek patterns probably, but 
with Latin inscriptions. Statues of the gods in clay, 
of Tuscan fabric, were the chief ornaments of the Ro¬ 
man temples in the earliest times. {Juv., 11, 115.) 
Every collection of antiquities contains specimens of 
what are called Etruscan patera, very generally found 
with the urns and vases in the sepulchral chambers. 
They are shallow disks of brass, frequently without 
any concavity, but bordered by a rim slightly raised, 
and having a handle of the same metal. On the disk 
are generally engraved scenes of mythological and he¬ 
roic history, with legends in the heroic character ; a 
circumstance which has rendered them peculiarly im¬ 
portant to the antiquary for comparing the Etruscan 
mythology with the Greek. It seems singular that 
the name of patera should ever have been applied to 
them ; far from being suitable for drinking-vessels, 
they could not even hold the small quantity of wine 
necessary for a libation ; and, wherever a libation is 
represented on ancient monuments, it is performed 
with a vessel, comparatively shallow, indeed, as its 
name implies, but very different from an Etruscan pa¬ 
tera, and always without a handle, except in some un¬ 
skilful restorations. Inghirami, who has published 
two series of these antiquities, contends at great length 
against the common name, and calls them svecchi mis • 

621 




HETRURIA. 


HETRURIA. 


icz. That they were really mirrors we have little 
doubt; Inghirami easily finds a mystical meaning for 
everything belonging to them. The metal of which 
they ere invariably composed, brass, alludes to the fir¬ 
mament, conceived by the ancients to be a ^a/l/codaref 
du, “spread out like a molten mirror” (Job, xxvii., 18); 
their circular form to the perfection of which this fig¬ 
ure is an emblem. If they had happened to be oval, 
he would still have been at no loss, for he explains the 
usually elliptical forms of the fictile vases as alluding 
o that deterioration of its nature which the soul un¬ 
dergoes when it enters into union with the body. As 
many articles of female ornament have been found in 
sepulchres—fibulae, hair-bodkins, collars, bracelets— 
it is an obvious conjecture, that the mirrors were a 
real part of the toilet of the deceased, consigned to the 
same grave with her; on the principle that what was 
most used and valued in life should be the companion 
in death. Yet to this supposition it is an objection, 
that the slight convexity which some of them have is 
on the polished side, a circumstance which, as it would 
interfere with their use as real mirrors, suggests that 
they may have been emblematical of the sacerdotal of¬ 
fice borne by the female with whom they were interred. 

Etrurian Language and Literature. 

The literature of the Etrurians presents the singu¬ 
lar phenomenon of an alphabet perfectly deciphered, 
along with a language completely unintelligible. Such 
a combination is so strange, that we find more than 
one writer alleging that the language is Greek, and ap¬ 
pealing in proof to the alphabet, without suspecting 
the want of connexion between premises and conclu¬ 
sions. When the Eugubine tables were discovered in 
1444, they were supposed to be in the Egyptian char¬ 
acter ; Reinesius suspected them to be Punic ; and, 
though they gradually acquired the name of Etruscan, 
the real force of the letters was not discovered till 
1732, when Bourguet ascertained it by comparing the 
two tables which are in the Latin character with one 
in the Etruscan, which he had happily divined to be 
nearly equivalent in sense. Gori, a few years later, 
published his alphabet, which, in all important points, 
has been confirmed by subsequent inquiries: the great 
improvement made in it by Lanzi was, that he detect¬ 
ed a S in the letter M, which till then had been taken 
for an m. The principles of Greek paleography have 
been lately established, on a more solid basis than be¬ 
fore, by Bockh ; and by the help of these and the la¬ 
bours of his predecessors, Muller has arrived at the 
conclusion, that the Etruscan alphabet has not been 
derived immediately from the Phoenicians, but from 
the Greeks. Very few forms occur in it which are 
not found in the early Greek inscriptions : while, on 
the other hand, it does not contain some of those which 
the Greeks retained a considerable time after they re¬ 
ceived them from the Phoenicians ; and, again, the 
Etruscans have some letters which the Greeks added 
to their Phoenician alphabet. Other Etruscan letters 
have never yet been found in any Greek inscription, 
so that it is impossible to point out any specific age or 
form of the Greek alphabet which the Etruscans may 
be supposed to have adopted once for all. The Phry¬ 
gian inscription from the tomb of Midas ( Walpole , vol. 
2 , p. 207) bears no closer resemblance to the Etruscan 
than other very old Greek inscriptions : in the Carian 
inscription ( lb ., p. 530) there are many letters which 
differ from the Etruscan. The letters B,>T, A do not 
appear to have had any corresponding sounds in the 
Etruscan language, and the first and last never occur, 
r is found in the form C, in which it appears on the 
coins of Magna Grascia. The digamma F occurs both 
n this form and in that of 3 , which is found in Greek 
inscriptions and on coins ; they had also for the same 
sound the character 8 , for which a circular square with 
crossing lines is also used, as in the oldest Greek in- 
622 


scriptions. It is remarkable that the Etruscan F, in 
proper names, always answers to the Latin V, as Fiji 
to Vibius, Felethri to Volaterra, Menarfe to Minerva; 
whence Muller (vol. 2, p. 300) takes occasion to dis¬ 
pute the opinion of Bishop Marsh, that the Latin F rep¬ 
resented the digamma, observing that it is only before 
R that the digamma becomes F. The same charac¬ 
ter was also used for H and Th. So that there seems 
in fact to have been one letter for the labial, dental, 
and guttural aspirate. The vowel 0 appears to have 
been unknown to the Tuscan language ; for Q they 
used chf and cf. Of the Greek forms V and Y, which 
both occur on early monuments, they have chiefly used 
the former, but not exclusively. For X they have the 
form which is frequent in Boeotian inscriptions, resem¬ 
bling an inverted anchor ; for E a double cross ; "P, 
Z, and the long vowels H and 12, are unknown to their 
alphabet. With very few exceptions, their writing is 
from right to left; and as this mode had been depart¬ 
ed from by the Greeks in their earliest extant inscrip¬ 
tions, which may, perhaps, ascend to the fortieth Olym¬ 
piad (620 B.C.), it seems reasonable to admit that the 
introduction of writing into Etruria was something ear¬ 
lier. Demaratus, who is said to have brought both 
painting and letters from Corinth, if really expelled by 
Cypselus, must have lived about the thirtieth Olympiad. 
A more recent character, which is commonly found in 
sepulchral inscriptions, seems to have been introduced 
about the end of the third century after the building of 
Rome ; at which time, according to Muller (vol. 2, p. 
301), the Latin alphabet was also formed ; but from 
the Greek, not from the Etruscan. The Umbrians ap¬ 
pear to have adopted the Etruscan alphabet, though 
their language was essentially different, and more re¬ 
sembling the Oscan than the Latin. The Oscan al¬ 
phabet also appears to have been borrowed from the 
Etruscan, not immediately from the Greek. It is dif¬ 
ficult to say when the Etruscan character fell into en¬ 
tire disuse ; the style of ornament on some of the urns 
on which it is found refers them to the times of the 
Roman empire. The language of Etruria never hav¬ 
ing been polished by the influence of literature (for its 
histories were probably mere chronicles, and its theo¬ 
logical writings, liturgies and manuals of a gloomy su¬ 
perstition), remained harsh to the ear and uncouth to 
the eye. Such combinations of letters as aplc , srancxl , 
thunchulthl (Muller , vol. 2, p. 288), can scarcely have 
been pronounced at all without the intervention of a 
short vowel, after the manner of the Oriental langua¬ 
ges. In regard to the interpretation of the language, 
it must be acknowledged, that all the labour which has 
hitherto been bestowed upon it, though valuable for its 
collateral results, has been nearly fruitless in respect 
to its direct object. When Lanzi, abandoning the for¬ 
mer method of Oriental and Northern etymology, en¬ 
deavoured to explain the Etruscan from the Pelasgic, 
it was natural to expect a more favourable issue : a 
close affinity, if not identity, of the two nations, was 
maintained by many of the ancients, and the alphabets 
were visibly the same. For many years after the ap¬ 
pearance of his Saggio di Lingua Etrusca (3 vols. 
8 vo, 1789), his explanations were generally acquiesced 
in, and made the basis of other etymological specula¬ 
tions. But, when time had been given for examina¬ 
tion, it could not but be perceived that his modes oi 
proceeding were too arbitrary to warrant confidence; 
that he could produce no evidence of the actual exist¬ 
ence of many of the words and forms which he sup¬ 
posed to be Greek, in order to identify them with the 
Etruscan ; and that other monuments, discovered since 
his time, could not be in any way explained by his sys 
tem. Niebuhr, in his Roman history, avers that, among 
all the Etruscan words of which explanations have been 
pretended, only two, avil ril (“ vixit annos ”), seem to 
have been really explained; and of these Miiller as¬ 
sures us (vol. 1, p. 64), and apparently with goad rea 





HIE 


H I E 


non, that avil (“ avum”) signifies, not vixit, but cetatis. 
Muller’s observations on this subject are particularly 
deserving of attention at the present moment, when 
extravagant expectations appear to be entertained of 
the enlargement of our historical knowledge by the 
comparison of languages. “We might give much 
ampler information, if, after Lanzi’s method, we sought 
in the monuments of the Etruscan language for single 
sounds resembling the Greek and Latin ; and, per¬ 
suaded that similar sounds must have a similar mean¬ 
ing, endeavoured to explain all that could not be 
brought to agree by an arbitrary prosthesis, epenthe- 
sis, paragoge, and similar cheap expedients. With¬ 
out blaming the learned Italian, in whose time the 
most eminent literati had very confused ideas of the 
formation of language, we may maintain that his lead¬ 
ing principle, that analogy is the character only of 
cultivated languages, and that the ruder any lan¬ 
guage is, the greater liberty might be taken in the 
use of it, is entirely false. This may justify us for 
having paid so little regard to etymologies, which, as 
they are arbitrary in themselves, suppose an arbitrary 
character in the language to which they are applied. 
If we use only genuine monuments, and require a 
certain evidence for every explanation of a root or a 
grammatical form, our apparent knowledge of the 
Etruscan language shrinks almost to nothing. It is 
not probable that the application of the still existing 
remains of the languages of the north and northwest 
of Europe should have those beneficial results for our 
knowledge of the Etruscan which some appear to an¬ 
ticipate. The Germans and Celts are originally di¬ 
vided from the nations on the Mediterranean by their 
locality in a very marked manner ; they onlv gradually 
approach these and come into collision with them ; 
and, even though the languages of both nations may 
belong to that great family which, from time immemo¬ 
rial, has diffused itself through Europe and Asia, yet 
.hey have distinct peculiarities, which we have no 
.eason to believe are found in those of Italy. The 
fundamental and indelible characteristic of the Celtic 
.anguages seems to be, that they mark grammatical 
forms by aspirations and other changes of the initial 
consonants ; a thing not practised in any other Euro¬ 
pean language, but found in all branches of the Celtic, 
Welsh, Cornish, Gaelic, Irish, and Bas Breton. This 
mutability of the consonants is a circumstance which 
must be perceptible, even in a small number of writ¬ 
ten remains, and which could not well have escaped 
us had the Etruscan been the Celtic. The Iberian 
family, once widely diffused on the shores of the Med¬ 
iterranean, may have dwelt in close vicinity to the 
Etruscans ; but the remains of its language in the 
Basque are completely different from those of the rest 
of Europe, and its grammar shows so little affinity with 
what we know of the Etruscan as to afford very slight 
support to the opinion of the affinity of the two nations. 
What may have been the relation of the Tuscan to the 
extinct Ligurian, or to the language of those Alpine 
tribes whose names alone are preserved in history, is 
a question respecting which we have not even a glim¬ 
mering of knowledge.” ( Muller, Etrusker , voj. 1, p. 
64, seqq.—Edinburgh Review , vol. 50, p. 372-396.) 

Hibernia. Vid. Ierne. 

Hiekapolts, I. a city of Syria near the Euphrates, 
south of Zeugma. It derived its Greek name (Holy 
City ) from the circumstance of the Syrian goddess 
Atergatis being worshipped there. By the Syrians it 
was called Bambyce or Mabog. With the introduc¬ 
tion of Christianity, its reputation and prosperity of 
course declined. Constantine, it is true, made it the 
capital of the newly-erected province of Euphratesia; 
but this proved of little avail. It suffered much du¬ 
ring subsequent reigns from the inroads of the Per¬ 
sians. It is now Mambedsch or Bambig, a deserted 
place, with many parts of the ancient wall standing. 


( Mannert, Geogr., vol. 3, pt. 1, p. 510.)—II. A city 
in the southwestern angle of Phrygia, near the confines 
of Lydia, and northwest of Laodicea. This city was 
celebrated for its warm springs. ( Strabo, 629.— Dio 
Cass., 68, 27.— Pliny , 5, 32.) The waters of Hier- 
apolis were remarkable for their petrifying or stalac- 
tital properties, and Chandler affirms, that a cliff near 
the ancient town was one entire incrustation. ( Trav¬ 
els in Asia Minor, p. 287.) Besides this singular 
property, the waters of this town possessed, in a re¬ 
markable degree, that of serving for the purposes of 
the dyer. ( Strabo, 630.) It is now called by the 
Turks Pambuk-Kalassi, or the Castle of Cotton, be¬ 
cause the neighbouring rocks resemble that substance 
in their whiteness, a colour produced by the stalactital 
incrustations already alluded to. ( Chandler , p. 290. 
— Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 37, seq.) 

Hierichus (gen. -nntis ; in Greek 'lepixovg, gen 
-ovvroq.) Vid. Jericho. 

Hiero, I. succeeded his brother Gelon, as tyrant 
or ruler of Syracuse, B.C. 478. He committed many 
acts of violence, encouraged spies, and kept a merce¬ 
nary guard around his person. He was ambitious of 
extending his dominion, and his attempts proved sue 
cessful. After the death of Theron, prince of Agri- 
gentum, Hiero defeated his son Thrasydseus, who was 
soon after expelled by his countrymen. He took 
Naxus and Catana, and, having driven away the in¬ 
habitants from both towns, he replaced them by Syra¬ 
cusan and Peloponnesian colonists. He changed the 
name of Catana to .Etna, and he himself assumed the 
title of yEtnasus (A Irvalog). Having joined his fleet 

to that of the people of Cumse, he succeeded in clear¬ 
ing the Tyrrhenian Sea of the Etruscan and other pi¬ 
rates who infested it. His chariots repeatedly won 
the prize at the Olympic games, and his success on 
those occasions formed the theme of some of the odea 
of Pindar, who was his guest and friend. ./Eschylus, 
Simonides, Bacchylides, and Epicharmus were also 
well received at the court of Hiero, who was fond ol 
the society of learned men. Hiero died at Catana, 
B.C. 476, and was succeeded by his brother Thrasy- 
bulus, who had all his faults without any of his good 
qualities, and was at last driven away by the Syracu¬ 
sans, who restored the government to the common¬ 
wealth. ( Diod. Sic., 11, 48, seqq.) .Elian gives 
Hiero credit for a much better character than Diodo¬ 
rus ; probably because the latter part of his reign, 
after he had firmly established his authority, was better 
than the commencement. ( JElian, 9, 1.)—II. The 
second of the name, son of Hierocles, a wealty citizen 
of Svracuse, and a descendant of Gelon, distinguish¬ 
ed himself in early life by his brilliant qualities, and 
served with distinction also under Pyrrhus in his Si¬ 
cilian campaigns. After Pyrrhus had suddenly aban¬ 
doned Sicily, the Syracusans found themselves threat¬ 
ened on one side by the Carthaginians, and on the 
other by the Mamertines, a band of Campanian mer¬ 
cenaries, who had treacherously taken possession of 
Messana. The Syracusan troops, being in want of a 
trusty leader, chose Hiero by acclamation, and the 
senate and citizens, after some demur, ratified the 
choice, B.C. 275. After various successful operations 
against the Mamertines, Hiero returned to Syracuse, 
where, through the influence of Leptines, his father-in- 
law, a leading man among the aristocratic party, he 
was proclaimed king, B.C. 270. Shortly after, the 
Mamertines at Messana quarrelled with the Cartha- 
ainians, who had managed to introduce a garrison into 
the citadel, and drove them out, upon which the Cartha¬ 
ginians invited Hiero to join his forces to theirs, in 
order to drive the Mamertines out of Sicily. Hiero 
having assented, encamped under the walls of Messana 
on one side, and the Carthaginians fixed their camp 
on the other, while their squadron guarded the strait. 
The Mamertines, meanwhile, had applied to the Romans 




H I E 


H I E 


tor assistance, claiming a common origin wkh them, 
as being descended from Mars, called Mainers or Ma- 
mertus in the Oscan language ; and Rome eagerly 
seized this opportunity of obtaining a footing in Sicily. 
The consul Appius Claudius marched to Rhegium, 
and, having contrived to pass the strait in the night un¬ 
observed by the Carthaginian cruisers, he surprised 
Hieio’s camp, routed the soldiers, and obliged the 
monarch himself to seek safety in flight. The consul 
next attacked the Carthaginian camp with the same 
success, and this was the beginning of the first Punic 
War, 265 B.C. In the following year the Romans 
took Tauromenium and Catana, and advanced to the 
walls of Syracuse, when Hiero sued for peace, which 
he obtained on condition of paying 100 talents of silver, 
and supplying the Roman army with provisions. He 
punctually fulfilled his engagements, remaining faithful 
to Rome during the whole of the war, and by his sup¬ 
plies was of great service to the Roman armies, espe¬ 
cially during the long sieges of Agrigentum and Lilyboe- 
um. Hiero was included in the peace between Rome 
and Carthage, by which his territories were secured to 
him, and he remained in friendship with both states. 
He even assisted Carthage at a very critical moment, 
by sending her supplies of provisions during the war 
which she had to sustain against ner mercenaries. 
The period of peace which elapsed between the end of 
the first and the beginning of the second Punic wars, 
from 241 to 218 B.C , was most glorious for Hiero, 
and most prosperous for Syracuse. Commerce and 
agriculture flourished, and wealth and population in¬ 
creased to an extraordinary degree. Hiero paid par¬ 
ticular attention to the administration of the finances, 
and made wise regulations for the collection of the 
tithe or tax on land, which remained in force through¬ 
out Sicily long after his time, and are mentioned with 
praise by Cicero as the Lex Hieronica. ( Cic. in 
Verr., 2 et 3.) Hiero introduced the custom of letting 
the tax to farm every year by auction. He embel¬ 
lished and strengthened Syracuse, and built large 
ships, one of which, if we are to trust the account 
given of it by Athenasus (5, p. 206), was of most extra¬ 
ordinary dimensions and magnificence. This ship he 
sent as a present to Ptolemy Philadelphus. Archim¬ 
edes lived under Hiero’s reign. When the second 
Punic war broke out, Hiero continued true to his Ro¬ 
man alliance, and, after the Trjasvmenian defeat, he 
sent a fleet to Ostia with provisions and other gifts, 
and a body of light troops to the assistance of Rome. 
He lived to see the battle of Cannae, after which his 
son Gelon embraced the part of the Carthaginians. 
Gelon, however, died, not without suspicion of vio¬ 
lence, and Hiero himself, being past ninety years of 
age, ended his days soon after (B.C. 216), leaving the 
crown to his grandson Hieronymus. With Hiero the 
prosperity and independence of Syracuse may be said 
to have expired. ( Liv., lib. 22 et 23.— Polyb., lib. 
7.— Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 12, p. 195.) 

HierScles, I. a rhetorician of Alabanda, in Caria, 
who lived in the beginning of the first century before 
the Christian era. He excelled in what Cicero termed 
the Asiatic style of eloquence. (Cic., de Orat., 2, 
23.— Id., Brut., c. 95.)—II. A lawyer, who wrote a 
work on veterinary medicine, addressed to Cassianus 
Bassus, of which three chapters are preserved in the 
sixteenth book of the “ Geoponica.” ( Vid . Geoponi- 
ca.)—III. Surnamed the grammarian, for distinction’ 
sake from the philosopher of the same name, a Greek 
writer supposed to have been contemporary with Jus¬ 
tinian, but of whom one thing at least is certain, that 
he was anterior to the tenth century. He composed, 
under the title of 'Lvveadrjpo^ (“Travelling Compan¬ 
ion”), a description of the sixty-four provinces that 
formed the Byzantine empire, and of the nine hundred 
and thirty-five cities situate in them. The best edi¬ 
tion is that u! Wesseling, in the Itineraria Veterum 
624 


Rom., Amst., 1735, 4to.—IV. A new Platonis , who 
flourished at Alexandrea about the middle of the fifth 
century. He has left us a commintary “ on the Gold¬ 
en Verses of Pythagoras,” and a treatise “on Provi¬ 
dence, Destiny, and Free-will.” The end of Hiero- 
cles is to show the agreement which exists in respect 
of these doctrines between Plato and Aristotle ; to re¬ 
fute the systems of Epicurus and the Stoics; to con¬ 
found those who pretend to read the decrees of destiny 
in the nativities of men, or who believe that the deter¬ 
minations of Providence may be influenced by en¬ 
chantments or mystic ceremonies; those, in fine, 'who 
have the misfortune to deny an existing Providence. 
We have only extracts from this latter work made by 
Photius, and an abridgement by an unknown hand. 
Stobaeus has preserved for uo some fragments of a 
work of Hierocles on tho worship of the gods (Hex; 
roig Geoif xpyc teov), or, rather, a chapter belonging to 
some large work which treated of various points of 
ethics. The same Siobaeus has preserved fragments 
of other productions of Hierocles, “ On Justice,” “On 
the Conduct due towards Parents,” “ On Marrriage,” 
“ On Fraternal Love,” &c. There exists also, un¬ 
der the name of Hierocles, a collection of insipid 
Facetiae (’A arda), containing an account of the ridic¬ 
ulous actions and sayings of book-learned men and 
pedants. In all likelihood, however, it was written by 
some other individual of the same name, and not by 
the philosopher.—The best edition of the Commentary 
on the Golden Verses, and of the Fragments, &c., is 
that of Needham, Land., 1709, 8vo. The editor, 
however, has made some rash emendations, which di¬ 
minish the value of the work. The edition of Pearson, 
Lond., 1654, 8vo, is also a very good one. The best 
separate edition of the Commentary is that of Ashton 
and Warren, Lond., 1742, 8vo, and of the Facetiae, 
that of Schier, Lips., 1750-1768, 8vo.—V. A prefect 
of Bithynia, and afterward of Alexandrea, who is said 
by Lactantius to have been the principal adviser of th« 
persecution of the Christians in the reign of Dioclo- 
sian. ( Lactant ., Inst.. Div„ 5. 2.— Id., de Morte Per- 
-$tc., c. 17.) He also wrote two works against Chris¬ 
tianity, entitled A oyoi <bi?ia?uj6eiQ rcpoQ rovf Xpiona - 
vovg (“ Truth-loving words to the Christians ”), in 
which, according to Lactantius, he endeavoured to 
show that the Scriptures overthrow themselves by the 
contradictions with which they abound, He also re¬ 
viled Paul, and Peter, and the other disciples, as prop¬ 
agators of falsehood. He endeavoured to destroy the 
effect of our Saviour’s miracles, though he did not 
deny the truth of them; and he aimed to show, that 
like things, or even greater, had been done by Apollo¬ 
nius of Tyana. (Lactant., Inst. Liv., 5, 2, seq .) 

Hieronica Lex. Vid. Hiero II. 

Hieronymus, I. grandson of Hiero II., aiouartr. U 
Syracuse, succeeded him on the throne at the age 
of fifteen (B.C. 216 ). He was left by Hiero ni cer 
the guardianship of several individuals, among wfrm 
was Andronorus, his aunt’s husband, who, seconded 
by other courtiers, and with the view of monopolizing 
the confidence of the young king, indulged him in all 
his caprices and follies. The court of Syracuse, 
which, under Hiero, was orderly and respectable, soon 
became as profligate as it had been under the youn¬ 
ger Dionysius. Andronorus persuaded Hieronymus, 
against the dying injunctions of his grandfather, to for 
sake the Roman alliance for that of Carthage, and 
messengers for that purpose were sent to Hannibal in 
Italy, and also to the senate of Carthage, which gladly 
agreed to an alliance with Syracuse, in order to effect 
a diversion against the Romans. War being at length 
declared by Rome, Hieronymus took the field with 
15,000 men ; but a conspiracy broke out among the 
soldiers, and he was murdered after a reign of about 
thirteen months. On the news of this, a popular in¬ 
surrection took place at Syracuse ; the daughters anc’ 





HIERONYMUS. 


HIERONYMUS. 


grand-daughters of Hiero were murdered, and royalty 
was abolished. But the people were distracted by fac¬ 
tions, and by the mercenaries in their pay, and revo¬ 
lution succeeded revolution, until two adventurers of 
Syracusan extraction, but natives of Carthage, who 
had been sent by Hannibal to keep in countenance the 
Carthaginian party in Syracuse, became possessed of 
the chief power, and so provoked the Roman com¬ 
mander Marcellus that he laid siege to and took Syr¬ 
acuse. ( Vid. Syracuse.— Diod. Sic., fragm., lib. 26, 
vol. 9, p. 369, ed. Bip .— Liv ., 24, 4.— Id., 24, 7, 
seqq.) —II. A native of Cardia, in the Thracian Cher¬ 
sonese. He was one of the companions of Alexander 
the Great, and after his death attached himself to Eu- 
menes. Made prisoner in the battle in which that 
chieftain was betrayed by his own followers, he was 
kindly treated by Antigonus, and entered into his ser¬ 
vice. This prince intrusted him with the government 
of Coelesyria and Phoenicia, and charged him with an 
expedition, the object of which was to 3 eize upon the 
country around the Lake Asphaltites. The expedition 
did not succeed, owing to the opposition of the neigh¬ 
bouring Arabs, who supported themselves by vending 
the bitumen obtained from the lake. After the defeat 
of Antigonus at the battle of Ipsus, and his death, 
Hieronymus remained faithful to his son Demetrius. 
At a later period he entered into the service of Pyr¬ 
rhus, king of Epirus, and accompanied him in his Ital¬ 
ian campaign. He survived this prince, and attained 
the age of 104 years. The principal work of Hieron¬ 
ymus, and that on which his reputation was founded, 
was entitled 'IcrropiKu , 'X'iropvripaTa (“ Historic Me¬ 
moirs”). In this production he developed the move¬ 
ments which followed the death of Alexander, the ca¬ 
bals and jealousies of the principal officers, the bloody 
wars to which their ambitious views gave rise, the de¬ 
struction of the royal house of Macedonia, and the 
birth of the new monarchies which dismembered the 
empire of Alexander. The ancients, however, ac¬ 
cused him of having been influenced too much by the 
hatred he bore to Seleucus, Cassander, Ptolemy, but 
above all to Lysimachus, by whose orders Cardia, his 
native city, had been destroyed. They charge him 
also with partiality towards Eumenes, Antigonus, and 
Pyrrhus. A particular worthy of remark, and one 
which makes us regret more earnestly the loss of Hie¬ 
ronymus’s work, is, that he is the first Greek writer 
who entered into any details on the origin and antiqui¬ 
ties of Rome ; the war of Pyrrhus with the republic 
afforded him probably an occasion for this. Diodorus 
Siculus derived considerable aid from the commenta¬ 
ries of Hieronymus, as did Plutarch also in his life of 
Eumenes. (Consult Recherches sur la vie et sur les 
ouvrages de Jerome de Cardie, par VAbbe Sevin .— 
Mem. de VAcad. des Inscr., &c., vol. 18, p. 20.— 
Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 3, p. 204, seqq.) —III. A 
peripatetic philosopher, born in the island of Rhodes, 
towards the close of the third century B.C. Cicero 
praises his ability, but doubts the propriety of his 
being ranked under the peripatetic sect, since he 
placed the summum bonum in freedom from painful 
emotion, a doctrine belonging to the Epicurean school. 

( Cic., de Fin., 5, 5.)—IV. A celebrated father of the 
church, better known by the English form of his name, 
St. Jerome, and accounted the most learned of all the 
Latin fathers. He was born of Christian parents, 
A.D. 331, on the confines of Pannonia and Dalmatia, 
at the town of Stridon or Stridonium. His father, 
who was a man of rank and property, sent him to 
Rome for education, where he was placed under the 
grammarian Donatus, known for his commentaries upon 
Virgil and Terence. He had also masters in rhetoric, 
Hebrew, and divinity, in which be made a great prog¬ 
ress. After travelling through Prance and^ftaly, he 
gave up friends and worldly pursuits to seek retirement 
in the East, and eventually reached Jerusalem, whence 
4 K 


he proceeded to Antioch. Here he endured a severe 
attack of illness, on his recovery from which he wan¬ 
dered through several towns and districts in search of 
a retreat to his mind, which he found in a frightful desert 
of Syria, scarcely inhabited by anything but wild beasts, 
and a few human beings little less ferocious. He 
was in his thirty-first year when he entered on this 
life, in which he spent four years, occupied in an 
intense study of the Scriptures, until his health began 
to be affected by this application and ascetic disci¬ 
pline. He then repaired to Antioch, where he was 
ordained a presbyter in 37Q by Paulinus. He soon 
after visited Constantinople, in order to avail himself 
of the advice and instruction of Gregory Nazianzen ; 
and, on his return, accompanied Paulinus to Rome, 
where his nterit and learning soon made him known to 
Pope Damasus, who appointed him his secretary, and 
also director to the Roman ladies who had devoted 
themselves to a religious life. During his residence 
at Rome he lodged at the house of a matron of the 
name of Paula, a woman of rank and fortune, who af¬ 
terward followed him with her daughters into the East. 
This event exposed him to some scandal from his op¬ 
ponents the Origenists, and to more merited censure 
from the relations and friends of the many weak females 
whom he thus encouraged in their desertion of their 
proper duties, and in the misapplication of their wealth 
to the support of useless or pernicious institutions. On 
the death of Damasus, finding his situation at Rome 
an uneasy one, Sericius, the successor of Damasus, 
not having the same esteem for him that Damasus 
had, he determined to return to the East, and accord¬ 
ingly embarked, in 385, with a great number of monks 
and females whom he had induced to embrace the 
monastic life. He touched at Cyprus, where he vis¬ 
ited Epiphanius, and, arriving at Antioch, proceeded 
thence to Jerusalem, and afterward to Egypt, where, 
to his great grief, he found the tenets of Origen almost 
universally prevalent. He at length settled at Bethle¬ 
hem, where the wealthy and devout Paula founded foui 
monasteries, three for females, and one for males under 
Jerome. Here he pursued his studies with great ardour, 
and wrote many of his best treatises ; and in these occu¬ 
pations he might have peaceably closed his days, but 
for his detestation of the opinions of Origen, which 
involved him in the most acrimonious controversy for 
many years with John, bishop of Jerusalem, his former 
friend Rufinus of Aquileia, and Jovinian an Italian 
monk. In the year 410, when Rome was besieged by 
the Goths, he afforded an asylum to many who fled 
from that city to Jerusalem, but was very careful to 
exclude all whom he deemed tinctured with heresy. 
He died A.D. 422, in the ninety-first year of his age. 
—Many of the writings of Jerome have come down to 
us. Several of them are merely controversial; but there 
are others of a more sterling and lasting value. These 
are, his Treatise on the Lives and Writings of the 
elder Christian Fathers, and his Commentaries on the 
Prophetical Books of the Old Testament, on the Gos¬ 
pel of St. Matthew, and several of St. Paul’s Epistle*. 
But what may be regarded as his greatest work is a 
translation of the Books of both the Old and New 
Testament into Latin, which translation has been al¬ 
ways highly valued in the Latin Church, and is that 
known by the name of the Vulgate. It is a question 
among the learned, how far, and whether at all, he ira- 
bodied an older Italic version in his translation. It was 
the first effort at bringing the Scriptures within the reach 
of the great multitude, who knew no other language 
but the Latin. It was a great and noble work, which 
ought to place its author high among the benefactors 
of mankind. Bishop Warburton says of Jerome, that 
“he is the only Father who can be called a critic on 
the sacred writings, or who followed a just or reason¬ 
able method of criticising.”—The first printed edition 
of the entire works of Jerome, as far as these hav 

625 



HIE 


HIEROSOLYMA. 


reached us, appeared at Basle, from the press of Fro- 
ben, under the care of Erasmus, 1516, 9 vols. fol. 
Many subsequent editions have been published at Ly¬ 
ons, Rome, Paris, and Antwerp, but the best is that 
ofVallarsi, Verona, 1734-1742, 11 vols. fol., and Ve- 
net , 1766, seqqann., 11 vols. 4to. ( B'dhr, Gesck. 
Rom. Lit. — Die Christlich-Rdmische Theologie, p. 
165, seqq.) 

Hierosolyma (neut. plur.) (Jerusalem), a celebrated 
city of Palestine, the capital of Judaea. The history of 
Abraham mentions, that Melchizedek, king of Salem, 
came forth to meet him when he returned from the 
slaughter of the kings (Gen., 14, 18), and it has been 
generally supposed, that this Salem was the original of 
the city which we are now considering. It is more 
certain, however, that, when the Israelite entered Ca¬ 
naan, they found the place in the occupation of the 
Jebusites, a tribe descended from Jebus, a son of Ca¬ 
naan, and the city then bore the name of Jebus or Jebu- 
si. (Josh. 15, 63.— Id., 18, 28.—Consult Reland, Pal- 
<zst ., p. 834.) The lower city was taken and burned 
by the children of Judah (Jud. 1 , 8 ) after the death 
of Joshua; but the Jebusites had so strongly fortified 
themselves in the upper city, on Mount Zion, that they 
maintained themselves in possession of it till the time 
of David. That monarch, after his seven years’ rule 
over Judah in Hebron, became king of all Israel, 
on which he expelled the Jebusites from Mount Zion, 
and established here the metropolis of his kingdom. 
The city now took the name of Jerusalem, a term 
which denotes the abode, or (according to another de¬ 
rivation), the people, of peace. (Consult Reland, p. 
833.— Gesenius, Hebr. Lex., s. v.) The Septuagint 
version gives ’IepovaaXijp. as the form of the name, 
while by the Greek and Roman writers the place is 
called Hierosolyma. At present this city is known 
throughout Western Asia by the Arabic name of El- 
Kads, which signifies “ holiness .” (Vid. Cadytis.)— 
Jerusalem was built on several hills, the largest of 
which was Mount Sion, which formed the southern 
part of the city. A valley towards the north separ¬ 
ated this from Acra, the second or lower city, on the 
east of which was Mount Moriah, the site of the tem¬ 
ple of Solomon. Northeast of Mount Moriah was the 
Mount of Olives, on the south was the valley of Hin- 
nom, and at the north Mount Calvary, the scene .of 
our Lord’s crucifixion. Passing over the history of 
this celebrated city, so fully detailed in the sacred vol¬ 
ume, we come to the .memorable period of its capture 
and destruction by Titus. The date of this event was 
the 8th of September, A.D. 70. During this siege 
and capture 1,100,000 persons are said to have per¬ 
ished, and 97,000 to have been made prisoners, and 
afterward either sold for slaves, or wantonly exposed 
for the sport of their insolent victors to the fury of 
wild beasts. In fact, the population, not of Jerusa¬ 
lem alone, but that of the adjacent districts, many who 
had taken refuge in the city, more who had assembled 
for the feast of unleavened bread, had been shut up by 
the sudden formation of the siege. The ardent zeal 
of the Jewish nation for their holy city and temple soon 
caused both to be again rebuilt; but fresh commotions 
compelled the Emperor Hadrian to interfere, and or¬ 
dain that no Jew should remain in, or even approach 
near Jerusalem, on pain of death. On the ruins of 
their temple the same emperor caused a temple in hon¬ 
our of Jupiter Capitolinus to be erected, and the im¬ 
age of a hog to be cut in stone over the gate leading 
to Bethlehem, as a standing insult to the religious 
feelings of this unfortunate people. The name of the 
city w r as also changed to vElia Capitolina, the first 
part of the name alluding f d the family of the Roman 
emperor. The more peaceful Christians were per¬ 
mitted, however, to establish themselves within the 
walls, and ^Elia became the seat of a flourishing church 
and hishopric. This latter name became afterward 
6^6 


the ordinary name of the city, and Jerusalem became 
nearly obsolete. Upon the ascension to the throne, 
however, of the Christian emperors, the name revived. 
Jerusalem, thus restored, was much less in compass 
than the ancient city, Mount Sion and Bezetha being 
excluded.—The following description of Jerusalem, as 
it appeared just before the siege by Titus, is given by 
Milman. (History of the Jews, vol. 3, p. 17, seqq.) 
“ Jerusalem, at this period, was fortified by three walla, 
in all those parts where it was not surrounded by ab¬ 
rupt and impassable ravines ; there it had but one. 
Not that these walls stood one within the other, each 
in a narrower circle running round the whole city ; 
but each of the inner walls defended one of the several 
quarters into which the city was divided, or, it might 
be almost said, one of the separate cities. Since the 
days in which David had built his capital on the 
rugged heights of Sion, great alterations had taken 
place at Jerusalem. That eminence was still occu¬ 
pied by the upper city ; but, in addition, first the hill 
of Moriah was taken in, on which the temple stood 
then Acra, which was originally, although a part of 
the same ridge, separated by a deep chasm from Mo¬ 
riah. This chasm was almost entirely filled up, and 
the top of Acra levelled by the Asmonean princes, so 
that Acra and Moriah were united, though on the side 
of Acra the temple presented a formidable front, con¬ 
nected by several bridges or causeways with the lower 
city. To the south the height of Sion, the upper 
city, was separated from the lower by a ravine, which 
ran right through Jerusalem, called the Tyropoeon, or 
the valley of the cheesemongers ; at the edge of this 
ravine, on both sides, the streets suddenly broke off, 
though the walls in some places must have crossed it, 
and it was bridged in more than one place. To the 
north extended a considerable suburb called Bezetha, 
or the new city. The first or outer wall encompassed 
Bezetha. Agrippa the First had intended to make this 
wall of extraordinary strength ; but he had desisted 
from the work on the interference of the Romans, who 
seem to have foreseen that this refractory city would 
hereafter force them to take up arms against it. Had 
this wall been built according to the plan of Agrippa, 
the city, in the opinion of Josephus, would have been 
impregnable. This wall began at the tower of Hippi- 
cos, which stood, it seems, on a point at the extreme 
corner of Mount Sion : it must have crossed the west¬ 
ern mouth of the valley of Tyropoeon, and run directly 
north to the tower of Psephina, proved clearly by 
D’Anville to have been what was called during the 
crusades Castel Pisano. The wall then bore towards 
the monument of Helena, ran by the royal caverns to 
the Fuller’s monument, and was carried' into the val¬ 
ley of Kedron or Jehoshaphat, where it joined the old 
or inner wall under the temple. The wall, however it 
fell short of Agrippa’3 design, was of considerable 
strength. The stones were thirty-five feet long, so 
solid as not easily to be shaken by battering engines, 
or undermined. The wall was seventeen and a half 
feet broad. It had only been carried to the same height 
by Agrippa, but it had been hastily run up by the 
Jews to thirty-five feet; on its top stood battlements 
three and a half feet high, and pinnacles five and three 
fourths ; so the whole was nearly forty five feet high. 
The second wall began at a gate in the old or inner 
one, called Gennath, the gate of the gardens; it "ftter- 
sected the lower city, and, having struck nortr.ward 
for some distance, turned to the east and joined the 
northwest corner of the tower of Antonia. The An¬ 
tonia stood at the northwest corner of the temple, and 
was separated from Bezetha by a deep ditch, which 
probably protected the whole northern front of the 
temple as well as of the Antonia. The old or inner 
wall vJSs that of Sion. Starting from the southwestern 
porticoes of the temple to which it was united, it ran 
along the ridge of the Tyropoeon, passed first the Xys 





HIEROSOLYMA. 


HIEROSOLYMA. 


tus, then the council house, and abutted on the tow¬ 
er llippicus, whence the northern wall sprang. The 
old wall then ran southward through Bethso to the 
gate of the Essenes, all along the ridge of the Valley 
of Hinnora, above the pool of. Siloam, then eastward 
again to the Pool of Solomon, so on through Opha, 
probably a deep glen : it then joined the eastern por¬ 
tico of the temple. Thus there were, it might seem, 
four distinct towns, each requiring a separate siege. 
The capture of the first wall only opened Bezetha ; 
the fortifications of the northern part of the temple, 
the Antonia, and the second wall, still defended the 
other quarters. The second wall forced, only a part 
of the lower city was won ; the strong rock-built cita¬ 
del of Antonia and the temple on one hand, and Sion 
on the other, were not the least weakened. The whole 
circuit of these walls was guarded with towers, built 
of the same solid masonry with the rest of the walls. 
They were thirty-five feet broad and thirty-five high ; 
but above this height were lofty chambers, and above 
those again upper rooms, and large tanks to receive 
the rain-water. Broad flights of steps led up to them. 
Ninety of these towers stood in the first wall, fourteen 
in the second, and sixty in the third. The intervals 
between the towers were about three hundred and 
fifty feet. The whole circuit of the city, according to 
Josephus, was thirty-three stadia, rather more than 
four miles. The most magnificent of all these towers 
was that of Psephina, opposite to which Titus en¬ 
camped. It was one hundred and twenty-two and a 
half feet high, and commanded a noble view of the 
whole country of Judaea, to the border of Arabia, and 
to the sea : it was an octagon. Answering to this 
was the tower Hippicus, and following the old wall 
stood those of Phasaelis and Mariamne, built by Herod, 
and named after his wife, and his brother, and friend. 
These were stupendous even as works of Herod. 
Hippicus was square; forty-three and three fourths feet 
each way. The whole height of the tower was one 
hundred and forty feet; the tower itself fifty-two and 
a half, a deep tank or reservoir thirty-five, two stories 
of chambers forty-three and three fourths, battlements 
and pinnacles eight and three fourths. Phasaelis was a 
solid square of seventy feet. It was surrounded by 
a portico seventeen and a half feet high, defended by 
breastworks and bulwarks, and above the portico was 
another tower, divided into lofty chambers and baths. 
It was more richly ornamented than the rest with bat¬ 
tlements and pinnacles, so that its whole height was 
above one hundred and sixty-seven feet. It looked 
from a distance like the tall pharos of Alexandrea. 
Mariamne, though not equal in elevation, was more 
luxuriously fitted up ; it was built of solid wall thirty- 
five feet high, and of the same width : on the whole, 
with the upper chambers, it was about seventy-six and 
three fourths feet high. These lofty towers appeared 
still higher from their situation. They were built on 
the old wall, which ran along the steep brow of Sion. 
The masonry was perfect: they were built of white 
marble, cut in blocks thirty-five feet long, seventeen 
and a half wide, eight and one fourth high, so fitted 
that the towers seemed hewn out of the solid quarry.” 
A description of the fortress Antonia is given under 
that article. “ High above the whole city rose the 
temple, uniting the commanding strength of a citadel 
with the splendour of a sacred edifice. According to 
Josephus, the esplanade on which it stood had been con¬ 
siderably enlarged by the accumulation of fresh soil 
since the days of Solomon, particularly on the north side. 
It now covered a square of a furlong on each side. Sol¬ 
omon had faced the precipitous sides of the rock on the 
east, and perhaps the south, with huge blocks of stone ; 
the other sides likewise had been built up with perpen¬ 
dicular walls to an equal height. These walls in no 
part were lower than three hundred cubits, five hun¬ 
dred and wenty-five feet, but their whole height was 


not seen excepting on the eastern and perhaps tue 
southern sides, as the earth was heaped up to the 
level of the streets of the city. Some of the stones 
employed in this work were seventy feet square. 
On this gigantic foundation ran, on each front, a strong 
and lofty wall without, within a spacious double por¬ 
tico or cloister 52^ feet broad, supported by 162 col¬ 
umns, which upheld a ceiling of cedar, of the most ex¬ 
quisite workmanship. The pillars were entire blocks 
hewn out of solid marble, of dazzling whiteness, 43J 
feet high. On the south side the portico or cloister 
was triple. This quadrangle had but one gate to the 
east, one to the north, two to the south, four to the 
west; one of these led to the palace, one to the city, 
one at the corner to the Antonia, one down towards 
the gardens. The open courts were paved with va¬ 
rious inlaid marbles. Between this outer court of the 
Gentiles and the second court of the Israelites ran 
rails of stone, but of beautiful workmanship, rather 
more than five feet high. Along these, at regular in¬ 
tervals, stood pillars, with inscriptions in Hebrew, 
Greek, and Latin, warning all strangers, and Jews 
who were unclean, from entering into the Holy Court 
beyond. An ascent of fourteen steps led to a terrace 
17^ feet wide, beyond which rose the wall of the inner 
court. This wall appeared on the outside 70 feet, on 
the inside 43|; for, besides the ascent of 14 steps to 
the terrace, there were five more up to the gates. 
The inner court had no gate or opening to the west, 
but four on the north, and four on the south, two to 
the east, one of which was for the women, for whom 
a portion of the inner court was set apart, and beyond 
which they might not advance ; to this they had access 
likewise by one of the northern and one of the south¬ 
ern gates, which were set apart for their use. Around 
this court ran another splendid range of porticoes or 
cloisters; the columns were quite equal in beauty and 
workmanship, though not in size, to those of the outer 
portico. Nine of these gates, or, rather, gateway tow¬ 
ers, were richly adorned with gold and silver, on the 
doors, the door-posts, and the lintels. The doors of 
each of the nine gates were 52-^ feet high, and half 
that breadth. Within, the gateways were 52| feet 
wide and deep, with rooms on each side, so that the 
whole looked like lofty towers : the height from the 
base to the summit was 70 feet. Each gateway had 
two lofty pillars 21 feet in circumference. But what 
excited the greatest admiration was the tenth, usually 
called the beautiful, gate of the temple. It was ol 
Corinthian brass of the finest workmanship. The 
height of the beautiful gate was 87£, its doors 70 feet. 
The father of Tiberius Alexander had sheeted these 
gates with gold and silver; his apostate son was to 
witness their ruin by the plundering hands and fiery 
torches of his Roman friends. Within this quadrangle 
there was a farther separation, a low wall which di¬ 
vided the priests from the Israelites: near this stood 
the great brazen altar. Beyond, the temple itself 
reared its glittering front. The great porch or pro¬ 
pylon, according to the design of the last, or Herod’s 
temple, extended to a much greater width than the 
temple itself: in addition to the former width of 105 
feet, it had two wings of 35 each, making in the whole 
175. The great gate of this last quadrangle, to which 
there was an ascent of twelve steps, was called that 
of Nicanor. The gateway tower was 132^ high, 
43 ^ wide ; it had no doors, but the frontispiece was 
covered with gold, and through its spacious arch was 
seen the golden gate of the temple, glittering with the 
same precious metal, with large plates of which it was 
sheeted all over. Over this gate hung the celebrated 
golden vine. This extraordinary piece of workman¬ 
ship had bunches, according to Josephus, as large as 
a man. The Rabbins add, that, ‘like,a true natural 
vine, it grew greater and greater; men would be offer¬ 
ing; some, gold to make a leaf; some, a grape; some, 

627 



HIEROSOLYMA. 


H I M 


« bunch: and these were hung up upon it; and so it 
was increasing continually.’ The temple itself, ex¬ 
cepting in the extension of the wings of the propylon, 
was probably the same in its dimensions and distribu¬ 
tion with that of Solomon. It contained the same 
holy treasures, if not of equal magnificence, yet, by the 
zeal of successive ages, the frequent plunder to which 
it had been exposed was constantly replaced; and 
within, the golden candlestick spread out its flowering 
branches, the golden table supported the shew-bread, 
and the altar of incense flamed with its costly perfume. 
The roof of the temple had been set all over, on the 
outside, with sharp golden spikes, to prevent the birds 
from settling on and defiling the roof” (vid., however, 
remarks under the article Elicius), “ and the gates 
were still sheeted with plates of the same splendid 
metal. At a distance the whole temple looked liter¬ 
ally like a mount of snow, fretted with golden pinna¬ 
cles.” ( Milman , History of the Jews, vol. 3, p. 22, 
seqq.) —Jerusalem, in more modern times, has not 
ceased to be an object of inviting interest to the trav¬ 
eller. About the year 705 of our era, it was visited 
by Arculfus,- from whose report Adamnam composed 
a narrative, which was received with considerable ap¬ 
probation. Eighty years later, Willibald, a Saxon, 
undertook the same journey. In Jerusalem he saw 
all that Arculfus had seen ; but he previously visited 
the tomb of the seven sleepers, and the cave in which 
St. John wrote the Apocalypse. Bernard proceeded 
to Palestine in the year 878. The crusades, however, 
threw open the holy places to the eyes of all Europe; 
and, accordingly, so long as a Christian king swayed 
the sceptre in the capital of Judaea, the merit of indi¬ 
vidual pilgrimage was greatly diminished. But no 
sooner had the warlike Saracens recovered possession 
of Jerusalem, than the wonted difficulty and danger 
returned. In 1331, William de Bouldesell ventured 
on an expedition into Arabia and Palestine, of which 
some account has been published. A hundred years 
afterward, Bertrandon de la Broquiere sailed from 
Venice to Jaffa. At Jerusalem he found the Chris¬ 
tians reduced to a state of the most cruel thraldom. 
At Damascus they were treated with equal severity. 
The beginning of the 17th century witnessed a higher 
order of travellers, who, from such a mixture of mo¬ 
tives as might actuate either a pilgrim or an antiquary, 
undertook the perilous tour of the Holy Land. Among 
these, one of the most distinguished was George 
Sandys, who commenced his peregrinations in the 
year 1610. He was succeeded by Doubdan, Cheron, 
Thevenot, Gonzales, Morison, Maundrell, and Po- 
cocke. Of the more recent travellers, however, the 
most interesting and intelligent is Dr. Clarke. “ We 
had not been prepared,” remarks this writer, descri¬ 
bing his approach to the ancient capital of Judaea, “for 
the grandeur of the spectacle which the city alone ex¬ 
hibited. Instead of a wretched and ruined town, by 
some described as the desolated remnant of Jerusa¬ 
lem, we beheld, as it were, a flourishing and stately 
metropolis ; presenting a magnificent assemblage of 
domes, towers, palaces, churches, and monasteries ; 
all of which, glittering in the sun’s rays, shone with 
inconceivable splendour.” Dr. Clarke entered, how¬ 
ever, by the Damascus gate. He confesses that there 
is no other point of view in which the city is seen to 
so much advantage, as the one from which he beheld 
it, the summit of a hill at about an hour’s distance. 
In the celebrated prospect from the Mount of Olives, 
the city lies too low, and has too much the character 
of a bird’s-eye view, with the formality of a topograph¬ 
ical plan. Travellers of a still later date consider Dr. 
Clarke’s description as overcharged. But it must be 
remembered that he was fortunate in catching his first 
view of Jerusalem under the illusion of a brilliant 
evening sunshine. Jerusalem is said to be of an ir¬ 
regular shape, approaching to a square; and to be 
628 


surrounded bv a high, embattled wall, built,, for the 
most part, of the common stone of the country, which 
is a compact limestone. The site of the ancient city 
is so unequivocally marked by its natural boundaries 
on the three sides, where there are ravines, that there 
can be no difficulty, except with regard to its extent 
in a northern direction ; and this may be ascertained 
with sufficient accuracy from the minute description 
given by Josephus. {Bell. Jud., 5,4.) 

Hilleviones, a people of Scandinavia. According 
to Pliny (4, 13), they occupied the only known part of 
this country. Among the various names of countries 
and people reported by Jornandes, we still find, ob¬ 
serves D’Anville, Hallin; and that which is contigu¬ 
ous to the province of Skane is still called Holland. 
Some erroneously place the Hilleviones in the country 
answering, at the present day, to Blekingen and Scho- 
nen. (Bischoff und Moller, Worterb. der Geogr ., 
p. 615.) 

Himera, I. a river of Sicily, falling into the upper 
or Tuscan Sea, to the east of Panormus; now, accord¬ 
ing to Mannert, Fiume di S. Leonardo; but, according 
to others, Fiume Grande. The city of Himera stood 
a short distance to the west of its mouth.—II. An¬ 
other river of Sicily, larger than the former. It rises 
in the same quarter with it, but pursues an opposite 
course, to the south, and falls into the Mediterranean 
near Phintia, and to the west of Gela. The modern 
name is Fiume Salso. This river separated, at one 
time, the Carthaginian from the Syracusan dependan- 
cies in Sicily.—III. A city of Sicily, near the mouth 
of a river of the same name, on the northern coast. 
It was founded, according to Thucydides (6, 5) and 
Scymnus of Chios {v. 288, seqq.), by a colony of Chal- 
cidians from Zankle. Strabo, however, ascribes its 
origin to the Zankleans at Mylac. ( Strab ., 272.) In 
this he is wrong, as Mylae was not an independent 
place, but entirely under the control of Zankle as its 
parent city, and therefore not allowed to trade and 
colonize at pleasure. Strabo’s error appears to have 
arisen from a misconception of a passage in Thucydi¬ 
des. That historian informs us (6, 5) that Himera 
had some Dorian inhabitants also from Syracuse, con¬ 
sisting of some of the expelled party of the Myletidae 
(Mull rjrlSai) : Strabo, very probably, mistakes these, 
from their name, for inhabitants of Mylae.—Himera 
came, we know not under what circumstances, into 
the power of Theron of Agrigentum. Subsequently, 
however, it attempted to shake off this yoke, and 
offered to surrender itself to Hiero of Syracuse. This 
latter apprized Theron of the fact, and the enraged 
tyrant caused many of the citizens to be executed. 
To prevent, however, the city’s suffering from this 
loss of the inhabitants, he established in it a number 
of Dorians and other Greeks, and from this time the 
remark of Thucydides applies, who informs us that 
the inhabitants of Himera spoke a middle dialect be¬ 
tween the Dorian and Chalcidian, but that the written 
institutions were in the Chalcidian dialect. Himera 
was destroyed by the Carthaginians, 240 years after 
its founding, and never recovered from the blow. 

( Diod. Sic., 11,48.) The Carthaginians subsequently 
established a number of the old inhabitants in the new 
city of Thermse, in the immediate vicinity of Himera 
This spot was remarkable for its warm baths. The 
ruins of Thermae are now called Termini. ( Manner 
Geogr., vol. 9, p. 403, seqq.) 

Himilco (equivalent in Punic to gratia Milcaris, 
“ the favour of Milcar”), the name of several Cartha¬ 
ginians. I. A Carthaginian commander, who is said 
by Pliny (2, 67) to have been contemporary with Han 
no the navigator. He was sent by his governmen* 
to explore the northwestern coast of Europe. A few 
fragments of this voyage are preserved by Avienus 
(OraMarit ., 1, 90), in which the Hiberni and Albioni 
I are mentioned, and also a promontory, Oestrvmnis, 



H I P 


HIP 


and islands called Oestrymnides, which are usually' 
considered to be Cornwall and the Scilly Islands. 

( Gossellin, Recherches, vol. 4, p. 162, seqq .)—II. A 
Carthaginian, who commanded in the wars with Dio¬ 
nysius I., tyrant of Syracuse, B.C. 405-368. Himil- 
co was an able and successful general. He took Gela, 
Messina, and many other cities in Sicily, and at length 
besieged Syracuse by sea and land, but he was de¬ 
feated by Dionysius, who burned most of the Cartha¬ 
ginian vessels. ( Diod. Sic., lib. 13 et 14.)—III. A 
supporter of the Barca party at Carthage. ( Liv ., 13, 
12 )—He was sent by the Carthaginian government 
to oppose Marcellus in Siciiy. (Lw., 24, 35, seqq. — 
Id., 25, 23, seqq.) 

Hipparchus, I. a son of Pisistratus, who, together 
with his brother Hippias, succeeded his father as ty¬ 
rant of Athens. An account of their government will 
be found under the article Hippias. Hipparchus was 
assassinated by Harmodius and Aristogiton, for an ac¬ 
count of which affair, consult remarks under the arti¬ 
cle Harmodius.—II. The first astronomer on record 
who really made systematic observations, and left be¬ 
hind him a digested body of astronomical science. 
He was a native of Nicaea in Bithynia, and flourished 
between the 154th and 163d Olympiads, or between 
160 and 125 B.C., as appears from his having made 
astronomical observations during that interval. Pie 
resided some time in the island of Rhodes, where he 
continued the astronomical observations which he had 
probably commenced in Bithynia ; and hence he has 
been called by some authors the Bithynian, and by 
others the Rhodian, and some even suppose two as¬ 
tronomers of the same name, which is certainly incor¬ 
rect. Hipparchus is also supposed to have made ob¬ 
servations at Alexandrea; but Delambre, comparing 
together such passages as Ptolemy has preserved on 
the subject, is of opinion that Plipparchus never speaks 
of Alexandrea as of the place in which he resided, and 
this conclusion of the French astronomer is probably 
correct. The period of his death is not known. He 
was the author of a commentary on the Phsenomena of 
Aratus, published by Peter Victorius at Florence, in 
1567; and also by Petavius, with a Latin version and 
notes, in his Uranologia. He also wrote treatises on 
the nature of the fixed stars; on the motion of the 
moon ; and others no longer extant. Hipparchus has 
been highly praised both by the ancients and moderns. 
Pliny the Elder styles him “ the confidant of nature,” 
on account of the importance of his discoveries; and 
M. Bailly has bestowed on him the title of the “ patri¬ 
arch of astronomy.” He treated that science with a 
philosophical spirit, of which there are no traces before 
his time. He considered the, subject in a general 
point of view ; examined the received opinions ; pass¬ 
ed in review the truths previously ascertained, and ex¬ 
hibited the method of reducing them so far into a sys¬ 
tem as to connect, them with each other. He was 
the first who noticed the precession of the equinoxes, 
or that very slow motion of the fixed stars from west 
to east, by which they perform an apparent revolution 
in a great number of years. He observed and calcu¬ 
lated eclipses ; discovered the equation of time, the 
parallax, and the geometrical mensuration of distances; 
and he thus laid the solid foundations of geographical 
and trigonometrical science. The result of his la¬ 
bours in the observation of the fixed stars, has been 
preserved by Ptolemy, who has inserted the catalogue 
of Hipparchus in his Almagest. As regards the gen¬ 
eral merits of Hipparchus, consult the work of Marcoz, 
Astronomie Solaire d'Hipparque, Paris, 1828, 8vo ; 
the account given by Delambre, in the Biographie 
Universelle (vol. 20, p. 398, seqq.), and the preface of 
the same writer to his '‘History of Ancient Astron¬ 
omy,” in which work will be found the most com¬ 
plete account of the labours of Hipparchus. ( Histoire 
de VAstronomic Aicienne, par M. Delambre, Paris, 


1517, 2 tom. 4to.) The bias of Delambrb appears to 
be, to add to Hipparchus some of the fame which has 
been generally considered due to Ptolemy, and in sup¬ 
port of this opinion he advances some forcible argu¬ 
ments.—The titles of the writings attributed to Hip¬ 
parchus, on whom Ptolemy has fixed the epithets of 
(piXonovoq Kal (julalyOyg ( u a lover of labour and of 
truth”), have been collected by Fabricius, and are to 
be found in Weidler, as follows: 1 . tt epl tljv dn'ka- 
vtiv uvaypatya'r, 2. Tcepl peyeduv Kal aTvoarrjpdTuv ; 
3. De XII. signorum asccnsione; 4. tc epl ryq Kara 
7r?i(iToq pyviaiaq rrjq oe?fvrjq Kivyoeoq ; 5. rcepl prjviai- 
ov xpdvov; 6. tt epl kvtavciov peyeOovq-, 7. tt epl vrjq 
peranTonTEioq tuv TpomK&v Kal laypepivuv oygeiiov; 
8. Adversus Eratosthenis Geographiam; 9. Tom’Apd- 
rov Kal Evdogov (paivopcvuv E^yyyaeuv (3i6Xla y '.— 
The only one of these which has come down to us, is 
the last and least important, of which we have already 
spoken. Hipparchus also wrote a work, according to 
Achilles Tatius, on eclipses of the sun; and there is 
also recorded a work with the following title : 'H tCiv 
avvavaro'kCov Tcpayparela. (Encycl. Us. KnowL, vol. 
12, p. 240, seqq. — Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 3, p. 376, 
seqq.) — III. A Pythagorean philosopher, an extract 
from a work of whose on “ Tranquillity of Soul ” (irepl 
evdvpiaq) has been preserved for us by Stoboeus. It 
may be found in the Opuscula Mythologica, Ethica, ct 
Physica, edited by Gale, Cantab., 1670, 12mo. 

Hippasus, a native of Metapontum, and follower of 
the Pythagorean doctrine. He is said to have excelled 
in the application of mathematical principles to music, 
statics, and mensuration. In common with others o,f 
the same sect, he held that fire was the originating 
cause of all things. He taught also that the universe 
is finite, is always changing, and undergoes a periodi 
cal conflagration. (Diog. Laert., 8.) 

Hippias, a son of Pisistratus, who, together with his 
two brothers, Hipparchus and Thessalus, succeeded 
their father, without any opposition, in the government 
of Athens. The authority of Thucydides (6, 54) seems 
sufficient to prove, that Hippias was the eldest, though 
his reasons are not of themselves convincing, and the 
current opinion, in his own day, gave the priority to 
Hipparchus. As the eldest, Hippias would take his 
father’s place at the head of affairs ; but the three 
brothers appear to have lived in great unanimity to¬ 
gether, and to have co-operated with little outward 
distinction in the administration of the state. Their 
characters are described as very different from each 
other. Hippias seems to have possessed the largest 
share of the qualities of a statesman. Hipparchus in¬ 
herited his father’s literary taste ; but he was addicted 
to pleasure, and perhaps to amusements not becoming 
the dignity of his station. ( Athenaus, 12, p. 533.) 
Indeed, Hippias also would seem to have been open 
to the same charge. (Athen., 1. c ) Thessalus, the 
youngest brother, is said to have been a high-spirited 
youth, which is all the information that we possess con¬ 
cerning him. The successors of Pisistratus for some 
years trod in his steps and prosecuted his plans. The} 
seem to have directed their attention to promote the 
internal prosperity of the country, and the cultivation 
of letters and the arts. One of their expedients Jcr the 
latter purpose, the credit of which seems to k&'.e be¬ 
longed principally to Hipparchus, was to erect L num¬ 
ber of Hermae, or stone busts of Mercury, alcng the 
side of the roads leading from the capital, inscribed 
on one side with an account of the distance which it 
marked, on the other with a moral sentence in verse, 
probably the composition of Hipparchus himself, though 
he often received the first poets of the age under his 
roof. To him also is ascribed the establishment of the 
order in which the Homeric poems continued in after 
times to be publicly recited at the Panathenaic festi¬ 
val. The brothers imitated the sage policy of their 
father, in dropping the show of power as much as was 

629 



HI* 


H I P 


fonsistent with a prudent regard to securing the sub¬ 
stance. They kept up a standing force of foreign 
mercenaries, but they made no change in the laws or 
the forms of the constitution, only taking care to fill 
the most important offices with their own friends. 
They even reduced the tax imposed by Pisistratus to 
a twentieth, and, without laying on any fresh burdens, 
provided for the exigences of the state, and continued 
the great works which their father had begun. The 
language of a later writer (the author of the Hippar- 
:hus, p. 229), who speaks of their dominion as hav¬ 
ing recalled the happiness of the golden age, seems 
almost justified by the sober praise of Thucydides, 
when he says that these tyrants most diligently culti¬ 
vated virtue and wisdom. The country was flourish¬ 
ing, the people, if not perfectly contented, were cer¬ 
tainly not impatient of the yoke, and their rule seemed 
likely to last for at least another generation, when an 
event occurred which changed at once the whole as¬ 
pect of the government, and led to its premature over¬ 
throw. This was the affair of Harmodius and Aristo- 
giton, in which Hipparchus lost his life, and the par¬ 
ticulars of which have been given under a different 
article. ( Vid. Harmodius.) Previous to this occur¬ 
rence, Hippias had shown himself a mild, affable, and 
beneficent ruler, but he now became a suspicious, 
stern, and cruel tyrant, who regarded all his subjects 
as secret enemies, and, instead of attempting to con¬ 
ciliate them, aimed only at cowing them by rigour. 
He was now threatened not only by the discontent of 
the people at home, but by the machinations of power¬ 
ful enemies from without. The banished Alcmaeonidaa, 
with the aid of the oracle at Delphi, induced the La¬ 
cedaemonians to espouse their cause, and Hippias was 
compelled to leave Attica in the fourth vear after his 
brother’s death. Having set sail for Asia, he fixed 
his residence for a time in his hereditary principality 
of Sigeum. The Spartans, subsequently repenting of 
what they had done, sent for Hippias, and, on his arri¬ 
val, summoned a congress of deputies from their Pelo- 
pounesian allies, and proposed, as the only means of 
curbing the growing insolence of the Athenian people, 
to unite their forces and compel Athens to receive 
her former ruler. All, however, with one accord, 
loudly exclaimed against the proposition of Sparta, 
and Hippias soon after returned to Sigeum, whence he 
proceeded to the court of Darius Hystaspis. Here he 
remained for many years; and when the expedition of 
Datis and Artaphernes took place, an expedition which 
he himself had strenuously urged, he guided the bar¬ 
barian armament against his country, and the Persian 
fleet, by his advice, came to anchor in the bay of 
Marathon.—The subsequent history of Hippias is in¬ 
volved in uncertainty. Thucydides (6, 59) merely says 
that he was present at the battle of Marathon, without 
informing us whether he lost his life there or not. 
(Compare Herodotus , 6, 107.) Justin (2, 9) states 
that he was killed in the fight, and Cicero ( Ep. ad Att., 
9, 10) confirms this. Suidas, however, informs us, that 
Hippias fled to Lemnos, where, falling sick, he died, 
the blood issuing from his eyes. (Consult Larcher, 
ad Herod., 6, 117.) 

Hippo, I. Regius ('Itckuiv Baui/Uxdf), a city of Af¬ 
rica, in that part of Numidia called the western prov¬ 
ince. It was situate near the sea, on a bay in the vi¬ 
cinity of the promontory of Hippi. It was called Hip¬ 
po Regius, not only in opposition to Hippo Zarytus 
mentioned below, but also from its having been one of 
the royal cities of the Numidian kings. The place was 
of Tyrian origin. Of this city St. Augustine was 
bishop. The ruins are spread at the present day over 
the neck of land that lies between the rivers Boojemah 
and Seibouss Near the ancient site is a town named 
Bona. —II. Zarytus, a town of Africa, on the coast to 
the west of Utica. It was thus termed to distinguish 
it from the one above mentioned, and the name is said 
630 


to have reference to its situation among artificial ca¬ 
nals, which afforded the sea an entrance to a navigable 
lagune adjacent. Some of the Greek writers corrupt¬ 
ed the appellation Zarytus into A lupfovroc;, in which 
the same idea is endeavoured to be expressed. The 
modern name is Beni-Zert , which, according to Shaw, 
signifies “ the son of the canal.” ( Mannert , Geogr., 
vol. 10, pt, 2, p. 298.) 

Hippocentauri ('ImvoKevTavpoi), fabulous animals, 
partly human, partly resembling the horse. They are 
the same with the Centauri. (Vid. Centauri.) 

Hippocrates, a celebrated physician, born in the 
island of Cos. The particulars of his life, as far as 
they have reached us, are few in number. His con¬ 
temporaries have commended him in the highest terms 
for his consummate skill and his profound acquaint¬ 
ance with the medical art; but they have left us little 
information relative to the man himself. Hippocrates, 
too, in those of his writings, the authenticity of which 
no one contests, enters into very few details respect¬ 
ing his long and honourable career. The Greek wri¬ 
ter, who, under the name of Soranus, has transmitted 
to us some biographical information concerning this 
eminent physician, relates, that the father of Hippoc¬ 
rates was named Heraclides, and deduced his descent, 
through a long line of progenitors, from JEsculapius 
himself. On the side of his mother, who was named 
Praxithe, he was fabled to be a descendant ofHercules. 
In other words, he belonged to the race or family of the 
Asclepiades, who, from time immemorial, had devoted 
themselves exclusively to the service of the god of med¬ 
icine and the cultivation of the medical art. It ap 
pears, from the table of Meibomius (Comment. inHipp 
jusjur.), that he was the seventeenth in order of the 
pretended descendants of yEsculapius, his uncle Hip 
pocrates I. being the fifteenth. The birth of Hippoc¬ 
rates II., or the Great, is fixed by Soranus in the firs! 
year of the eighteenth Olympiad, B.C. 460 : conse¬ 
quently, he was contemporary with Socrates and Plato, 
a little younger than the former, and a little older than 
the latter. His name began to be illustrious during 
the Peloponnesian war.—After having received at Cos 
his first professional instruction from his father Hera¬ 
clides, Hippocrates went to study at Athens under 
Herodicus of Selymbria. He had also for one of his 
masters the sophist Gorgias. Some authors pretend 
that he was also a disciple of Democritus ; it is even 
said that he conceived so high an esteem for this phi¬ 
losopher, as to show it by writing his works in the 
Ionic dialect, though he himself was a Dorian. It 
would seem, however, from an examination of his wri¬ 
tings, that Hippocrates preferred the doctrines of He¬ 
raclitus to those of Democritus.—After the death of 
his father he travelled over many countries, according 
to the custom of the physicians and philosophers of his 
time; and finally established himself in Thessaly, 
whence some have called him “ the Thessalian.” 
Soranus informs us, that Hippocrates lived at the 
court of Perdiccas, king of Macedonia, and that he 
cured this prince of a consumption caused by a violent 
passion which he had conceived for his mother-in-law 
Phila. This fact is not, indeed, in contradiction of 
chronology ; but what gives it a suspicious appearance 
is, that a story almost similar is related by the ancient 
writers as haying happened at the court of Seleucua 
Nicator. (Vid. Erasistratus.)* It is possible, how¬ 
ever, that Hippocrates may have passed some time 
with Perdiccas; for he states that he had observed 
many maladies in the cities of Pella, Olynthus. and 
Acanthus, situate in Macedonia. He appears a.^ ) to 
have sojourned for a while in Thrace, for he frequent¬ 
ly mentions, in his accounts of epidemic disorders, the 
Thracian cities of Abdera, Datus, Doriscus, .-Enos, 
Cardia, and the isle of Thasos. It is equally probable 
that he travelled in Scythia and the countries imme¬ 
diately contiguous to the kingdom of Pontus and the 



HIPPOCRATES. 


HIPPOCRATES. 


Palus Maeotis, because the description he gives of the 
manners and mode of life of the Scythians is extreme¬ 
ly exact and faithful. According to Soranus, the cities 
of Athens and Abdera owed to Hippocrates the bene¬ 
fit of having been delivered from a plague which had 
caused great ravages. It is uncertain whether the 
frightful epidemic is here meant which desolated Ath¬ 
ens during the Peloponnesian war, and which Thucyd¬ 
ides has so faithfully described, or some other malady; 
for the historian, who was an eyewitness of the rav¬ 
ages of the disease, makes no mention of Hippocrates. 
However this may be, the Athenians, grateful for the 
services which this distinguished physician had ren¬ 
dered, either in delivering them from a pestilential 
scourge, or in publishing valuable works on the art of 
preserving life, or in refusing the solicitations of the 
enemies of Greece, decreed that he should be initiated 
into the mysteries of Ceres, should be gifted with a 
golden crown, should enjoy the rights of citizenship, 
should be supported all his days at the public expense 
in the Prytaneum, and, finally, that all the children 
born in Cos, the native island of Hippocrates, might 
come and pass their youth at Athens, where they would 
be -reated as if offspring of Athenian citizens. Ac¬ 
cording to Galen, it was by kindling large fires, and 
burning everywhere aromatic substances, that Hippoc¬ 
rates succeeded in arresting the pestilence at Athens. 
The reputation of this eminent physician extended far 
and wide, and Artaxerxe3 Longimanus even sent for 
him to stop the progress of a malady which was com¬ 
mitting great ravages among the forces pf that mon¬ 
arch. Hippocrates declined the offer and the splendid 
presents that accompanied it; and Artaxerxes endeav¬ 
oured to accomplish his object by menacing the inhab¬ 
itants of Cos, but in vain. Though the correspond¬ 
ence which took place on this point between Hippoc¬ 
rates and the satrap Hystanes, and which has reached 
our days, must be regarded as altogether unauthenlic, 
yet it appears that credit was given to the story by an¬ 
cient writers, two of whom, Galen and Plutarch, re¬ 
late the circumstance. Stobseus also makes mention 
of it, but commits, at the same time, an anachronism 
in giving the name of the monarch as Xerxes, and 
not Artaxerxes. Certain Arabian authors affirm, that, 
in the course of his travels, Hippocrates spent some 
time at Damascus ; there is no authority, however, 
for this, and the assertion is altogether destitute of 
probability. An individual named Andreas or An- 
dron, who lived under Ptolemy Philopator, and who 
was a disciple of Herophilus, undertook, nearly three 
centuries after the death of Hippocrates, to assign 
a very disgraceful motive for the travere of this phy¬ 
sician. He says that Hippocrates was compelled to 
flee for having set fire to the library at Cnidus, 
after having copied the best medical works con¬ 
tained in it. Tzetzes, agreeing in this accusation, 
states that it was the library at Cos which became 
a prey to the flames ; and Pliny, without charging 
Hippocrates with the deed, and without speaking of 
any library, reduces the loss to that of a few votive 
tablets, which were consumed together with the tem¬ 
ple of HSsculapius. The discrepance of these state¬ 
ments alone is sufficient to show the falsity of the ac¬ 
cusation. Besides, all contemporaneous history is si¬ 
lent on the subject; nor would Plato have shown so 
much esteem for the physician of Cos, nor Athens and 
Greece, in general, have rendered him so many and so 
high honours, had he been guilty of the disgraceful 
crime alleged against him. The name of Hippocrates 
is still held in veneration by the natives of Cos ( Stan - 
Co), and they show a small building which they pre¬ 
tend was the house that he inhabited. Hippocrates 
passed the latter years of his life in Thessaly, at La¬ 
rissa in particular, as well as at Cranon, Pherae, Tric- 
ca, and Melibcea, as appears from many observations 
made by him relative to the maladies of these-different 


cities. The peiiod of his death is unknown. Soranus 
affirms, that he ended his long and brilliant career in 
his 85th or 90th year, according to some ; in his hun¬ 
dredth year, according to others : and some even give 
109 years as the extent of his existence. The num 
ber of works ascribed to Hippocrates is very consid¬ 
erable ; they are made by some to amount to eighty : 
those, however, about the authenticity of which there 
is no doubt, reduce themselves to a very few. Palla- 
dius, a physician of the 6th century of the present era, 
who wrote scholia on the treatise of Hippocrates re¬ 
specting fractures, points out eleven works of this 
physician as alone authentic. One thousand years 
after, two learned men turned their attention to a crit 
ical review of the works of Hippocrates ; these were 
Hieronymus Mercurialis, a celebrated physician and 
philologist of the 16th century, and a native of Portu¬ 
gal, Louis de Lemos. These two scholars conceived 
the idea, at the same period, of classifying the works 
of Hippocrates. The Paduan professor established 
four categories of them : 1. Works in which the doc¬ 
trine and style of this distinguished physician plainly 
present themselves, and which are therefore mani¬ 
festly authentic. 2. Works written by Hippocrates, 
but published by his sons and disciples. 3. Works 
composed by the sons and disciples of Hippocrates, 
but which are in conformity with his doctrine. 4. 
Works, the very contents of which are not in accord¬ 
ance with his doctrine. ( Censura Operum Hippocra- 
tis, Venet., 1583, 4to.) Lemos, after having criti¬ 
cally examined all the works ascribed to Hippocrates, 
acknowledges only nineteen as authentic. (De Optima 
prccdicandi ratione item judicii operum magni Hippoc 
ratis liber unus, Salamantica , 1585, 12mo.) When, 
in the 18th century, the critical art, long neglected, 
was at last made to rest on sure principles, the works 
of Hippocrates were again subjected to rigorous in¬ 
vestigation. The celebrated Haller, on reprinting a 
Latin translation of these works, discussed their au 
thenticity, and allowed only fifteen treatises to be gen¬ 
uine. Two other German physicians, MM. Gruner 
and Grimm ( Hippokrat.es Wcrke, aus dem Gr. — Cen¬ 
sura librorurn Hippocratensium, Vratislav, 1772, 8vo), 
of distinguished reputaton, employed themselves 
in researches, the object of which was to distinguish 
what was authentic from what was falsely ascribed to 
the father of medicine. In pursuing this examina¬ 
tion, they combined the testimonies of ancient writers 
with the internal characters of the works themselves. 
The result is, that, according to Gruner, there exist 
but ten authentic works of Hippocrates, while Grimm 
makes the number still less. Linck, a professor at 
Berlin, comes to a bolder conclusion. He maintains, 
that the works of Hippocrates, as they are called, are 
a mere collection of pieces by different authors, who 
all lived before the period when the medical art flour¬ 
ished at Alexandrea. A full list of the works of Hip-- 
pocrates is given by Scholl (Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 3, p. 
19, seqq.). The best edition of all the works is that 
of Fcesius, Francof., 1595, fob, reprinted at several 
subsequent periods, and, with the glossaries, at Gene¬ 
va, in 1657, fol. The edition of Kuhn, in the Collec¬ 
tion of the Greek Medical Writers (Lips., 1825-1827, 
3 vols. 8vo), is also a good one. In 1815 M. de Mer¬ 
cy commenced a valuable edition of select works of 
Hippocrates, with a French translation and comment¬ 
ary. The learned Coray also published a translation 
in French of the treatise on Airs, Waters, and Places, 
at Paris, 1801, in 2 vols. 8vo, enriched with critical, 
historical, and medical notes.—“Of all the medical 
authors,” observes Dr. Adams, “of ancient, and, I be¬ 
lieve I may add, of modern times, no one deserves to 
be so frequently in the hands of the student of medi¬ 
cine as Hippocrates ; for his works not only contain 
an invaluable treasure of practical facts, but likewise 
abound in preceDts inculcating propriety of conduct 

631 



H 1 P 


H I P 


and purity of morals. In his Oath, he exacts from 
those who enter on the profession a solemn promise 
never to indulge in libertine practices, nor to degrade 
their art by applying it to any criminal purposes. In 
his other works he is at great pains to inculcate the 
necessity of attention to address and apparel; and 
gives particular directions to assist in forming a cor¬ 
rect prognostic. With regard to his descriptions of 
the phenomena of disease, one may venture to affirm, 
that even at the present day they are perfectly unri¬ 
valled. As a guide to practice, he may be followed 
with great confidence ; for his indications are always 
derived from personal observation, and his principles 
are never founded on vague hypothesis. Indeed, as 
an intelligent American author, Dr. Hosack, remarks, 
his professional researches were conducted according 
to the true principles of the Baconian philosophy ; and 
his late editor, Kuhn, relates, that a zealot for the Bru- 
nonian theory of medicine was convinced of its being 
untenable by an attentive perusal of the works of Hip¬ 
pocrates. His treatment of acute diseases may be 
instanced as being so complete that the experience of 
more than two thousand years has scarcely improved 
upon it. Nay, in some instances, the correctness of 
his views outstripped those of succeeding ages, and 
we now only begin to recognise the propriety of them. 
Thus, in acute attacks of anasarca, he approved of 
bloodletting, which is a mode of practice now ascer¬ 
tained to be highly beneficial in such cases, but against 
which great and unfounded prejudices have existed, 
not only in modern times, but even as far back as the 
days of Galen, who found great difficulty in enforcing 
the treatment recommended by Hippocrates. In his 
work on Airs, Places, and Waters, he has treated of 
the effects of the seasons and of situation on the hu¬ 
man form, with a degree of accuracy which has never 
been equalled. His Epidemics contain circumstantial 
reports of febrile cases highly calculated to illustrate 
the causes, symptoms, and treatments of these dis¬ 
eases. Though he has not treated of the capital op¬ 
erations of Surgery, which, if practised at all in his 
day, most probably did not come within his province, 
he has given an account of Fractures and Dislocations, 
to which little has been added by the experience of 
after ages. He has also left many important remarks 
ipon the treatment of wounds and ulcers, and the 
American author alluded to above ventures to assert, 
that the surgeons of the present day might derive an 
important lesson from him on the use of the Actual 
Cautery. The following aphorism points out the class 
of diseases to which he considered this mode of prac¬ 
tice applicable. ‘ Those complaints which medicines 
will not cure, iron will cure ; what iron will not cure, 
fire will cure ; what fire will not cure are utterly in¬ 
curable.’ In his treatise on the Sacred Disease, he 
has shown himself superior to the superstition of his 
age ; for he maintains that the epilepsy is not occa¬ 
sioned by demoniacal influence, but by actual disease 
of the brain ; and he mentions, what is now well 
known to be-the fact, that when the brains of sheep or 
goats that are affected with this complaint are opened, 
they are found to contain water. Of the anatomical 
treatises attributed to him it is unnecessary to say any¬ 
thing, as it appears highly probable that all, or most of 
them, at least, are not genuine. Dr. Alston counted, 
in his Materia Medica, 36 mineral, 300 vegetable, and 
150 animal substances ; in all 586, and he could not 
pretend to have overlooked none. Hippocrates ap¬ 
pears to have been profoundly skilled in the principles 
of the Ionian philosophy, of which he has left several 
curious samples. He has treated likewise both of an¬ 
imal and vegetable physiology; and Aristotle and The¬ 
ophrastus are said to have profited by his labours in 
this department of natural science.” 

Hippocrene, a fountain of Boeotia, on Mount Heli- 
on, sacred to the Muses. It was fabled to have burst 
632 


forth from the ground when Pegasus struck his hoc 
into the side of the mountain ; and hence tV nam 
applied to it, ' ImroKpyvr] or ' hr'Kovnprjvr] , i. e., “th 
horse's fountain ,” from Innog (genitive Imrov), “< 
horse,” and Kprjvrj, “a fountain .” (Strah., 410. - 
Pausan., 9, 31.) 

Hippodamia, I. a daughter of CEnomaus, king o 
Pisa, in Elis, who married Pelops, son of Tantalus 
(Vid . Pelops, where the full legend is given.)—II. A 
daughter of Adrastus, king of Argos, who married Pi 
rithoiis, king of the Lapithse. The festivity which 
prevailed on the day of her marriage was interrupted 
by the violent conduct of the Centaurs, which led to 
their conflict with the Lapithse. ( Vid. Centauri, Lap- 
ithae.) 

Hippolyte, I. a queen of the Amazons. She was 
mistress of the belt of Mars, as a token of her exceed¬ 
ing all the Amazons in valour. This belt Eurystheus 
coveted for his daughter Admeta, and he ordered Her¬ 
cules to bring it to him. The hero, having drawn to¬ 
gether some volunteers, among whom were Theseus, 
Castor, and Pollux, reached, after some incidental ad¬ 
ventures, the haven of Themiscyra, where Hippolyta 
came to inquire the cause of his arrival; and, on hear¬ 
ing it, promised to give him her girdle. But Juno, 
taking the form of an Amazon, went and persuaded 
the rest that the strangers were carrying off their queen. 
They instantly armed, mounted their horses, and came 
down to the ship. Hercules, thereupon, thinking that 
Hippolyta had acted treacherously, slew her, and, ta¬ 
king her belt, made sail homeward. ( Apollod ., 2, 5, 
9.— Diod. Sic., 4, 16.) Another account made The¬ 
seus to have received Hippolyta in marriage from Her¬ 
cules, and to have become, by her, the father of Hip- 
polytus. (Compare Heyne, ad Apollod., 1. c .)—II. 
The wife of Acastus, who falsely accused Peleus, 
while at her husband’s court, of dishonourable conduct. 
(Vid. Acastus.) 

Hippolytus, I. a son of Theseus and Hippolyte, or, 
^according to others, of Theseus and Antiope. The¬ 
seus, after the death of his first wife, married Phaedra, 
the daughter of Minos, and sister of Ariadne. This 
princess was seized with a violent affection for the son 
of the Amazon, an affection produced by the wrath of 
Venus against Hippolytus, for neglecting her divinity, 
and for devoting himself solely to the service of Diana; 
or else against Phaedra as the daughter of Pasiphae. 
During the absence of Theseus, the queen made ad¬ 
vances to her step-son, which were indignantly re¬ 
jected by the virtuous youth. Filled with fear and 
hate, on the rej^irn of her husband she accused his in¬ 
nocent son of an attempt on her honour. Without 
giving the youth an opportunity of clearing himself, 
the blinded monarch, calling to mind that Neptune had 
promised him the accomplishment of any three wishes 
that he might form, cursed and implored destruction 
on his son from the god. As Hippolytus, leaving Troe- 
zene, was driving his chariot along the seashore, a 
monster, sent by Neptune from the deep, terrified his 
horses ; they burst away in fury, heedless of their dri¬ 
ver, dashed the chariot to pieces, and dragged along 
Hippolytus, entangled in the reins, till life abandoned 
him. Phsedra ended her days by her own hand ; and 
Theseus, when too late, learned the innocence of his 
son. Euripides has founded a tragedy on this subject, 
but the legend assumes a somewhat different shape 
with him. According to the plot of the piece, Phse¬ 
dra hangs herself in despair when she finds that she is 
slighted by her step-son, and Theseus, on his return 
from abroad, finds, when taking down her corpse, a 
writing attached to it, in which Phsedra accused Hip¬ 
polytus of having attempted her honour.—According 
to another legend, JEsculapius restored Hippolytus to 
life, and Diana transported him, under the name of 
Virbius, to Italy, where he was worshipped in the 
grove of Aricia. (Vid. Virbius.— Apollod., 3, 10, 3 



HIP 


ri IR 


— Ileyne, ad loc. — Ovid, Met., 15, 492, seqq .— Virg., 
JE n., 7, 761, seqq. —Consult Buttmann, Mythologies, 
vol. 2, p. 145, seq.) 

Hippomedon, a son of Nisirnachus and Mythidice, 
was one of the seven chiefs that went against Thebes 
He was killed by Ismarus, son of Acastus. ( Apollod., 
3, 6.— Pausan., 2, 36.) 

Hippomenes, son of Megareus, was, according to 
some authorities, the successful suiter of Atalanta. 
(Vid . Atalanta, and consult Heyne, ad Apollod., 3, 9, 
2, and-the authorities there cited.) 

Hippomolgi, or, more correctly, Hippemolgi ^hrirr]- 
uoXyol), a people of Scythia, who, as the name im¬ 
ports, lived on the milk of mares. ( Dionys. Perieg., 
309.— Bcrnhardy, ad loc.) 

Hippona, a goddess who presided over horses. Her 
statues were placed in horses’ stables. ( Juv., 8, 157. 
•—Consult Ruperti, ad loc., who gives Epona as the 
reading demanded by the line.) 

Hipp5nax, a Greek poet, who flourished about the 
60th Olympiad, or 540 B.C. He was born at Ephe¬ 
sus, and was compelled by the tyrants Athenagoras 
and Comas to quit his home, and to establish him¬ 
self in another Ionian city, Clazimenae. This politi¬ 
cal persecution (which affords a presumption of his 
vehement love of liberty) probably laid the foundation 
for some of the bitterness and disgust with which he 
regarded mankind. Precisely the same fierce and in¬ 
dignant scorn, which found an utterance in the iam¬ 
bics of Archilochus, is ascribed to Hipponax. What 
the family of Lycambes was to Archilochus, Bupalus 
(a sculptor belonging to a family of Chios, which had 
produced several generations of artists) was to Hip¬ 
ponax. He had made his small, meager, and ugly 
person the subject of caricature ; an insult which Hip¬ 
ponax avenged in the bitterest and most pungent iam- 
oics, of which some remains are extant. In this in¬ 
stance, also, the satirist is said to have caused his en¬ 
emy to hang himself. The satire of Hipponax, how¬ 
ever, was not concentrated so entirely on certain in¬ 
dividuals. From existing fragments it appears rather 
to have been founded on a general view of life, taken, 
however, on its ridiculous and grotesque side. His 
language is filled with words taken from common life, 
such as the names of articles of food and clothing, and 
of ordinary utensils, current among the working peo¬ 
ple. He evidently strives to make his iambics local 
pictures, full of freshness, nature, and homely truth. 
For this purpose, the change which Hipponax devised 
in the iambic metre was as felicitous a s it wa s bold. 
He crippled, the rapid, agile gait of thdfi|$Pus, by 
transforming the last foot from an iambiWmto a spon¬ 
dee, contrary to the fundamental principle of the whole 
mode of versification. The metre, thus maimed and 
stripped of its beauty and regularity, was a perfectly 
appropriate rhythmical form for the delineation of such 
pictures of intellectual deformity as Hipponax de¬ 
lighted in. Iambics of this kind (called choliambics, 
or trimeter scazons) are still more cumbrous and halt¬ 
ing when the fifth foot is also a spondee ; which, in¬ 
deed, according to the original structure, is not for¬ 
bidden. These were called broken-backed (ischiorrho- 
gic) iambics, and a grammarian ( ap Tyrwhitt, Dissert, 
ie Babrio, p. 17) settles the dispute (which, accord¬ 
ing to ancient testimony, was so hard to decide), how 
far the innovation of this kind of verse ought to be as¬ 
cribed to Hipponax, and how far to another iambogra- 
pher, Ananius, by pronouncing, that Ananius invented 
the ischiorrhogic variety, and Hipponax the common 
ecazon. It appears, however, from the fragments at¬ 
tributed to him, that Hipponax sometimes used the 
spondee in the fifth place. In the same manner, and 
with the same effect, these poets also changed the 
trochaic tetrameter by regularly lengthening the pe¬ 
nultimate short syllable. Some remains of this kind 
are extant. Hipponax likewise composed pure trime- 
4 L 


ters in the style of Archilochus; but ttiete is no con* 
elusive evidence that he mixed them with scazons. 
Ananius has hardly any individual character in literary 
history distinct from that of Hippoitax. In Alexan¬ 
dra their poems seem to have been regarded as form¬ 
ing one collection ; and thas the criterion by which to 
determine whether a particular passage belonged to 
the one or the other, was often lost or never existed. 
Hence, in the uncertainty which is the true author, the 
same verse is occasionally ascribed to both (as in 
Athenaeus, 14, p. 625, c.) The few fragments which 
are attributed with certainty to Ananius are so com¬ 
pletely in the tone of Hipponax, that it would be a 
vain labour to attempt to point out any characteristic 
difference.—The fragments of Hipponax and Ananius 
were edited by Welckcr, Gotting., 1817, 4to. ( Mul¬ 
ler ., Hist. Grcec. Lit., p. 141, seqq. — Philological Mu- 
. scum, vol. 1, p. 281.) 

Hipponium, called also Vibo Valentia, a town of 
Italy, on the western coast of the territory of the Bru- 
tii, southwest from Scylacium. According to Strabo 
(56) it was founded b) the Epizephyrian Locri. We 
learn from Diodorus (14 ’07 ; 15, 24), that not long 
afterward it was destroyed Dy Dionysius the elder, who 
transplanted the inhabitants to Syracuse. It was re¬ 
stored, however, by the Carthaginians, who were then 
at war with that prince. Subsequently it fell into the 
hands of the Brutii, together with all the Greek set¬ 
tlements on the coast. ( Strab.,l.c.) About297 B.C., 
Agathocles, tyrant of Sicily, seized upon the harbour 
of Hipponium, which he fortified, and even succeeded 
in obtaining possession of the town for a short period. 

He was soon, however, compelled by the Brutii to re¬ 
linquish it, together with the port. ( Diod. Sic., Ex¬ 
cerpt., 21, 8.— Strab., 1. c.) This city became a col¬ 
ony of the Romans, A.U.C. 560, and took the name 
of Vibo Valentia. ( Liv ., 35, 40.) Antiquaries and 
topographers are generally of opinion that the modern 
town of Monte Leone represents the ancient Hipponi¬ 
um, and they recognise its haven in the present har¬ 
bour of Bivona. ( Cramer's Anc. Italy , vol. 2, p. 420.) 

Hippopodes, a people of Scythia, who were fabled 
to have horses' feet (hnrov tt 66aq), whence their name. 
The Hippopodes are mentioned by Dionysius Periege- 
tes, Mela, Pliny, and St. Augustine. The truth ap¬ 
pears to be, that they had this appellation given them 
on account of their swiftness of foot. ( Dionys. Pe¬ 
rieg., 310.— Mela, 3, 6, 83.) 

Hira or Alexandria, now Mesjid-ali, or Meham- 
ali, a town of Asia in Babylonia, situate on a lake, a 
short distance from the western bank of the Euphrates. 

It was the residence of a dynasty of princes who aided 
the Persians and Parthians against the Romans. They 
are called in history by the general name of Alamun- 
dari, after the term Al-MorMar, common to many of 
these princes at the fall of their dynasty under the Mo¬ 
hammedan power. The body of Ali was here inter¬ 
red ; and hence, from the sepulchre of the calif, came 
the modern name. ( Bischoff und Moller, Worterb. 
der Gcogr., p. 615.) 

Hirpini, a people of Italy, who formed a part of the 
Samnites, and were situate to the south of Samnium 
Proper. As the term Hirpus. signified in the Sam- 
nite dialect a wolf, they are said to have been thus 
called from their having followed the tracks of these 
animals in migrating to this quarter. Towards the 
end of the second Punic war they began to be distin¬ 
guished from the rest of the Samnites. Their terri¬ 
tory comprehended the towns of Beneventum, Caudi- 
um, Abellinum, and Compsa. ( Cramer's Anc. Italy, 
vol. 2, p. 248.) 

Hirtius Aulus, a Roman of a distinguished family. '/ 
He applied himself in early life to the study of rheto¬ 
ric, and spoke on several occasions with great success. 

He followed Caesar in the war against the Gauls, and 
merited the esteem of that great captain. On his re- 

633 




H 1 6 


HISPANIA. 


turn from thii expedition, he eagerly courted the friend¬ 
ship of Cicero, and accompanied him in his retreat to 
Tusculum. Here he exercised himself in declama¬ 
tion, under the eyes of this illustrious orator, who 
speaks highly of his talents in many of his letters, and 
particularly in that addressed to Volumnius (8, 32). 
Cicero sent Hirtius to Caesar, on the return of the lat¬ 
ter from Africa, with the view of bringing about a rec¬ 
onciliation with the dictator, whom the orator had of¬ 
fended by the freedom of some of his discourses. 
Hirtius. either from affection or gratitude, was always 
attached to the party of Caesar ; but after the death of 
the dictator, he declared against Antony.—Being cre¬ 
ated consul elect along with C. Vibius Pansa, he fell 
sick soon after his election, and Cicero informs us 
(Phil., 37), that the people testified the warmest con¬ 
cern in his recovery. Hirtius was scarcely restored 
to health, when he set out with his colleague to attack 
Antony, who was besieging Brutus in Mutina, now 
Modena. They gained a victory over Antony, near 
the city, B.C. 43; but Hirtius fell in the battle, and 
Pansa died a few days after of his wounds. The re¬ 
port was spread abroad, that Octavius had caused the 
two consuls to be poisoned in order to appropriate 
to himself all the glory of the day. (Sueton., Vit. 
Aug., 11.)—It cannot be affirmed with any degree of 
certainty that Hirtius was the author of the continua¬ 
tion of Caesar’s Commentaries which commonly goes 
by his name. Even as far back as the time of Sueto¬ 
nius, great difference of opinion prevailed on this point; 
some, according to that writer, attributing the contin¬ 
uation in question to Oppius, and others to Hirtius ; 
the latter opinion, however, has, in general, gained the 
ascendancy. This continuation forms the eighth book 
of the Gallic war. The author addresses himself, in a 
letter, to Balbus, in which he apologizes for having 
presumed to terminate a work so perfect in its nature, 
that Csesar seems to have had in view, in composing 
it, not so much the collecting together of materials, as 
the leaving a model of composition to historical wri¬ 
ters. We learn by the same letter, that the book on 
the Alexandrine War, and that on the African War, 
proceeded from the same pen ; and these three works, 
in a style at once simple and elegant, do not appear 
unworthy of the friend of Csesar and Cicero. We 
have also, under the name of Hirtius, a book on the 
Spanish War, so inferior to the preceding that judi¬ 
cious critics regard it as the mere journal of a soldier, 
who was an eyewitness of the events which he relates. 

( Biogr. JJniv., vol. 20, p. 423, seqq. — Bohr, Gesch. 
Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. 360.) 

Hispalis, a famous city of Spain, situate on the 
Bsetis, and corresponding to the modern Seville. 
Mannert thinks that it wap,, the same as the ancient 
Tartessus. ( Geogrj, vol.™, p. 312.) The name is 
supposed to be of Phoenician origin, and/is*eording to 
Isidorus, has reference to the city’s beii%£rfounded on 
piles or slakes of wood, on account of the insecurity 
of the ground where it stood. ( Is'idor., lib. etymol., 
15, 1.) Some ascribe the origin of the place to Her¬ 
cules ; probably, however, it was a Phoenician colony. 
It was a place of great commerce, the Bsetis being 
navigable in ancient times for the largest ships up to 
the city. Now, however, vessels drawing more than 
ten feet of water are compelled to unload eight miles 
below the town, and the largest vessels stop at the 
mouth of the river. When Hispalis became a Roman 
colony, the name was changed to Julia Romulensis. 
( Cces., B. C., 2, 18.— Id., Bell. Hisp., 27, 35, seqq. 
Isidor, Chron. Goth., p. 168.— Id., Chron. Vand., p. 
176. — Id., Hist. Sucv., p. 180.— Plin., 3, 1.) 

Hispania, an extensive country, forming a kind of 
peninsula, in the southwest of Europe. It was bound¬ 
ed on the north by the Pyrenees and Sinus Cantabri- 
cus or Bay of Biscay, on the west by the Atlantic, 
on the south by the Atlantic, Fretum Herculeum or 
634 


Straits of Gibraltar, and the Mediterranean, which 
last bounds it also on the east. Many conjectures have 
been formed concerning the origin of the name Hispa¬ 
nia. Bochart ( Geogr. Sacr.—Phaleg., 3, 7) derives 
its name from the Phoenician (or Hebrew) saphan, “a 
rabbit,” from the vast numbers of those animals which 
the country was found by the early Phoenician colo¬ 
nists to contain. (Compare Catullus, 37, 18. Varro, 
R. R., 3, 12.— Mian, de An., 13, \5.-Phn., 8, 29, 
&c.— Bochart, Geogr. Sacr. Canaan., 1, 35.) Others 
deduce the name in question from the Phoenician span, 
“ concealed,” and consider it as referring to the cir¬ 
cumstance of the country’s being little known at an 
early period to the Phoenician traders. Neither of 
these etymologies is of much value, though the former 
is certainly the better of the two. It would seem to 
have been adopted by the Romans, as appears from a 
medal of Hadrian, on which Spain is represented by 
the figure of a woman with a rabbit at her side. 

( Flores, Mcdalles de Espania, vol. 1, p. 109.) The 
Romans borrowed the name Hispania, appending their 
own termination to it, from the Phoenicians, through 
whom they first became acquainted with the country. 
The Greeks called it •tberia, but attached at different 
periods different ideas to the name. Up to the time 
of the Achaean league and their more intimate ac¬ 
quaintance with the Romans, they understood by this 
name all the seacoast, from the Pillars of Hercules to 
the mouth even of the Rhodanus or Rhone in Gam. 

(Scylax , p. 1, seqq .— Scymnus Chius, v. 198.— Poly¬ 
bius, 3, 37.—Strabo, 116.— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 1, p. 
233.) The coast of Spain on the Atlantic they called 
Tartessis. (Scymnus Chius, v. 164, v. 198.— Herod., 

1, 163.) The interior of the country they termed Cel- 
tice (Ke/l tikt\), a name which they applied, in fact, to 
the whole northwestern part of Europe. (Aristot., de 
Mundo. — Opp., ed. Duval, vol. 1, p. 850.) The 
Greeks in after ages understood by Iberia the whole 
of Spain. The name Iberia is derived from the Iberi, 
of whom the Greeks had heard as one of the most 
powerful nations of the country. The origin of the 
ancient population of Spain is altogether uncertain. 
Some suppose that a colony first settled on the shores 
of this country from the island of Atlantis; an as¬ 
sumption as probable as the opinion supported by sev 
eral Spanish authors, that the first inhabitants were 
descended from Tubal, a son of Noah, who landed in 
Spain twenty-two centuries before the Christian era. 
The Iberi, according to the ancient writers, were di¬ 
vided inti^ix tribes ; the Cynetes, Gletes, Tartessii, 
ElbysinifWBtieni, and Calpiani. (Herodori, fragm. 
ap. Const. fWphyrog. de adm. Imp., 2, 23.—Compare 
Steph. Byz., ed. Bcrkel, p. 408.— Ukert, Geogr., vol. 

2, pt. V,! p. 252.) Diodorus Siculus (5, 31, seqq.) 
mentions/ the invasion of Spain by the Celts. The 
Iberi made war against them for a long time, but, after 
an obstinate resistance on the part of the natives, the two 
people entered into an agreement, according to which 
they were to possess the country in common, bear the 
same name, and remain for ever united ; such, says the 
same, historian, was the origin of the Celtiberi in Spain. 
These warlike people, continues Diodorus, were equally 
formidable as cavalry and infantry ; for, vhen the horee 
had broken the enemy’s ranks, the men dismounted 
and fought on foot. Their dress consisted of a sagum , 
or coarse woollen mantle ; they wore greaves made o. 
hair, an iron helmet adorned with a red feather, a round 
buckler, and a broad two-edged sword, of so fine a tem¬ 
per as to pierce through the enemy’s armour. Although 
they boasted of cleanliness both in their nourishment 
and their dress, it was not unusual for them to wash 
their teeth and bodies with urine, a custom which 
they considered favourable to health. Their habitual 
drink was a sort of hydromel ; wine was brought into 
the country by foreign merchants. The land was 
equally distributed, and the harvests were divided 







HISPANIA. 


HISPANIA 


imcng all the citizens ; the law punished with death 
the person who appropriated more than his just share. 
The\ were hospitable ; nay, they considered it a spe¬ 
cial favour to entertain a stranger, being convinced 
that the presence of a foreigner called down the pro¬ 
tection of the gods on the family that received him. 
They sacrificed human victims to their divinities, and 
the priests pretended to read future events in the pal¬ 
pitating entrails. At every full moon, according to 
Strabo, they celebrated the festival of a god without a 
name ; from this circumstance, their religion has been 
considered a corrupt deism.—The Phoenicians were 
the first people who established colonies on the coast 
of Spain : Tartessus was perhaps the most ancient; 
at a later period they founded Grades, now Cadiz, on 
the isle of Leon. They carried on there a very lucra¬ 
tive trade, inasmuch as it was unknown to other na¬ 
tions ; but, in time, the Rhodians, the Samians, the 
Phocasans, and other Greeks established factories on 
different parts of the coast. Carthage had been found¬ 
ed by the Phoenicians ; but the inhabitants, regardless 
of their connexion with that people, took possession of 
the Phoenician stations, and conquered the whole of 
maritime Spain. The government of these republi¬ 
cans was still less supportable : the Carthaginians were 
unable to form any friendly intercourse w^th the Span¬ 
iards in the interior ; their rapine and cruelty excited 
the indignation of the natives. The ruin of Carthage 
paved the way to new invaders, and Spain was con¬ 
sidered a Roman province two centuries before the 
Christian era. Those who had been the allies became 
masters of the Spaniards, and the manners, customs, 
and even language of the conquerors were introduced 
into the peninsula. But Rome paid dearly for her 
conquest ; the north, or the present Old Castile, Ara¬ 
gon, and Catalonia, were constantly in a state of revolt; 
the mountaineers shook off the yoke, and it was not 
before the reign of Augustus that the country was 
wholly subdued. The peninsula was then divided into 
Hispania Cilerior and Ulterior. Hispania Citerior 
was also called Tarraconensis, from Tarraco, its cap¬ 
ital, and extended from the foot of the Pyrenees to the 
mouth of the Durius or Douro, on the Atlantic shore; 
comprehending all the north of Spain, together with 
the south as far as a line drawn below Carthago Nova 
or Carthagena , and continued in an oblique direction 
to Salamantica or Salamanca, on the Durius. His¬ 
pania Ulterior was divided into two provinces; Ba3tica, 
on the south of Spain, between the Anas or Gaudtana, 
and Citerior, and above it Lusitania, corresponding in 
a great degree, though not entirely, to modern Portu¬ 
gal. In the age of Dioclesian and Constantine, Tar¬ 
raconensis was subdivided into a province towards the 
limits of Baetica, and adjacent to the Mediterranean, 
called Carthaginiensis, from its chief city Carthago 
Nova, and anothei^jiorth of Lusitania, called Gallaecia 
from the Callaici. The province of Lusitania was 
partly peopled by the Cynetes or Cynesii, the earliest 
inhabitants of Algarve. The Celtici possessed the 
land between the Guadiana (Anas) and the Tagus. 
The country round the mountains of Gredos belonged 
to the Vettones, a people that passed from a state 
of inactivity and repose to the vicissitudes and hard¬ 
ships of war. The Lusitani, a nation of freebooters, 
were settled in the middle of Estremadura: they 
were distinguished by their activity and patience of 
fatigue ; their food was flour and sweet acorns ; beer 
was their common beverage. They were swift in 
the race ; they had a martial dance, which the men 
danced while they advanced to battle.—The part of 
Baetica near the Mediterranean was peopled by the 
Bastuli Poeni. The Turduli inhabited the shores of 
the ocean, near the mouth of the Baetis. The Baeturi 
dwelt on the Montes Mariani, and the Turdetani in¬ 
habited the southern declivities of the Sierra d’Aracena. 
The last people, more enlightened than any other in 


Bsetica, were skilled in different kinds of industry long 
before their neighbours. When the Phoenicians ar¬ 
rived on their coasts, silver was so common among 
them that their ordinary utensils were made of it 
What was afterward done by the Spaniards in Amer 
ica was then done by the Phoenicians in Spain ; the} 
exchanged iron and other articles of little value for sil 
ver ; nay, if ancient authors can be credited, they nol 
only loaded their ships with the same metal, but ii 
their anchors at any time gave way, others of silvei 
were used in their places.—The people in Gallsecia, a 
subdivision of Tarraconensis, were, the Artabri, who 
derived their name from the promontory of Artabrurn, 
now Cape Finisterre ; the Bracari, whose chief town 
was Bracara, the present Braga ; and, lastly, the Lu- 
cences, the capital of whose country was Lucus Au- 
gusti, now Lugo. These tribes and some others 
formed the nation of the Callaici or Callseci, who, ac 
cording to the ancients, had no religious notions. The 
Astures, now the Asturians, inhabited the banks of the 
Asturis, or the country on the east of the Gallaecian 
mountains. Their capital was Asturica Augusta, now 
Astorga. The Yaccsei, the least barbarous of the Cel- 
tiberians, cultivated the country on the east of the 
Astures. The fierce Cantabri occupied Biscay and 
part of Asturias: it was customary for two to mount 
on the same horse when they went to battle. The 
Vascones, the ancestors of the present Gascons, were 
settled on the north of the Iberusor Ebro. The Jace- 
tani were scattered over the Pyrensean declivities of 
Aragon. The brave Uergetes resided in the country 
round Lerida. As to the country on the east of these 
tribes, the whole of Catalonia was peopled by the Ce- 
retani, Indigetes, Ausetani, Cosetani, and others. The 
lands on the south of the Ebro were inhabited by the 
Arevaci and Pelendones; the former were so called 
from the river Areva ; they were settled in the neigh¬ 
bourhood of Arevola, and in the province of Segovia : 
the latter possessed the high plains of Soria and Mon - 
cayo. The space between the mountains of Albara- 
cino and the river was peopled by the Edetani, one o. 
the most powerful tribes of Spain. The Uercaones, 
who were not less formidable, inhabited an extensive 
district between the upper Jucar and the lower Ebro. 
The country of the Carpetani, or the space from th© 
Guadiana to the Somo-Sierra, forms at present the 
archiepiscopal see of Toledo. The people on the 
south of the last were the Oretani, between the Gua¬ 
diana and the Montes Mariani; and the Olcades, a 
small tribe near the confluence of the Gabriel and Ju¬ 
car. Carthaginiensis, a subdivision of Tarraconensis, 
was inhabited by two tribes : the Bastitani, in the cen¬ 
tre of Murcia, who often made incursions into Baetica; 
and the Contestant who possessed the two banks of 
the Segura, near the shores of the Mediterranean, from 
Cape Palos to the Jucar.—In time of peace, says Di¬ 
odorus Siculus, the Iberi and Lusitani amused them¬ 
selves in a lively and light dance, which required much 
activity. The ancient writer alludes, perhaps, to the 
fandango, a dance of which the origin is unknown. 
An assembly, composed of old Celtiberians, was held 
every year ; it was part of their duty to examine what 
the women had made with their own hands within the 
twelvemonth, and to her whose work the assembly 
thought the best a reward was given. An ancient au¬ 
thor mentions that singular custom, and adds, that cor¬ 
pulency was considered a reproach by the same peo¬ 
ple ; for, in order to preserve their bodies light and 
active, the men were measured every year by a cinc¬ 
ture of a certain breadth, and some sort of punishment 
was inflicted on those who had become too large. 
(Nic. Damasc., frag. ap. Const. Porphyrog.) The 
age for marriage was fixed by law ; the girls chose 
their husbands from among the young warriors, and the 
best means of obtaining the preference was to present 
the fair one with the head of an enemv slain in battle 

635 



H I S 


H O M 


Strabo enters into some details concerning the dress 
of the ancient Spaniards. The Lusitani covered them¬ 
selves with black mantles, because their sheep were 
mostly of that colour. The Celtiberian women wore 
iron collars, with rods of the same metal rising behind, 
and bent in front; to these rods was attached the veil, 
their usual ornament. Others wore a sort of broad 
turban, and some twisted their hair round a small ring 
about a foot above the head, and from the ring was 
appended a black veil. Lastly, a shining forehead was 
considered a great beauty; on that account they pull¬ 
ed out their hair and rubbed their brows with oil.— 
The different tribes were confounded while the Ro¬ 
mans oppressed the country ; but, in the beginning of 
the fifth century, the Suevi, Vandals, and Visigoths 
invaded the Peninsula, and, mixing with the Celts and 
Iberians, produced the different races which the phys¬ 
iologist still observes in Spain. The first-mentioned 
people, or Suevi, descended the Durius or Duero under 
the conduct of Ermeric, and chose Braga for the cap¬ 
ital of their kingdom. Genseric led his Vandals to 
the centre of the peninsula, and fixed his residence at 
Toletum or Toledo ; but fifteen years had not elapsed 
after the settlement of the barbarous horde, when The- 
odoric, conquered by Clovis, abandoned Tolosa or 
Toulouse, penetrated into Spain, and compelled the 
Vandals to fly into Africa. During the short period 
that the Vandals remained in the country, the ancient 
province of Bsetica was called Vandalousia, and all the 
country, from the Ebro to the Straits of Gibraltar, sub¬ 
mitted to them. The ancient Celtiberians, who had 
so long resisted the Romans, made then no struggle 
for liberty or independence ; they yielded without re¬ 
sistance to their new masters. Powers and privileges 
were the portion of the Gothic race, and the title of 
hijo del Goda , or the son of the Goth, which the Span¬ 
iards changed into hidalgo, became the title of a noble 
or a free and powerful man among a people of slaves. 
A number of petty and almost independent states were 
formed by the chiefs of the conquering tribes ; but the 
barons or freemen acknowledged a liege lord. Spain 
and Portugal were thus divided, and the feudal sys- 
tom was thus established. Among the Visigoths, 
however, the crown was not hereditary, or, at least, 
the law of regular succession was often set at defiance 
by usurpers. The sovereign authority was limited by 
the assemblies of the great vassals, some of whom 
were very powerful ; indeed, the Count Julian, to 
avenge himself on King Roderic for an outrage com¬ 
mitted on his daughter, delivered Spain to the Moham¬ 
medan yoke. ( Malte-Brun, Geog., vol. 8, p. 18, seqq., 
Am. ed.) 

Histi^ea. Vid. Oreus. 

Histi^eotis. Vid. Estiaeotis. 

Histiaeus, a tyrant of Miletus, who, when the 
Scythians had almost persuaded the Ionian princes to 
destroy the bridge over the Ister, in order that the 
Persian army might perish, opposed the plan, and in¬ 
duced them to abandon the design. His argument 
was, that if the Persian army were destroyed, and the 
power of Darius brought to an end, a popular govern¬ 
ment would be established in every Ionian city, and 
the tyrants expelled. He was held in high estimation 
on this account by Darius, and rewarded with a grant 
of land in Thrace. But Megabyzus having convinced 
the king that it was bad policy to permit a Grecian 
settlement in Thrace, Darius induced Histiaeus, who 
was already founding a city there, to come to Susa, 
having allured him by magnificent promises. Here 
he was detained under various pretences, the king be¬ 
ing afraid of his influence and turbulent spirit at home. 
Histiaeus, tired of this restraint, urged, by means of 
secret messengers, his nephew Aristagoras to effect a 
revolt of the Ionians. This was done, and Histiaeus 
was sent by Darius to stop the revolt. Availing him¬ 
self of the earliest opportunity of escape, he passed 


over to the side of the Greeks, and eventually obta'.n 
ed the command of a small squadron of eight triremes 
with which he sailed to Byzantium. But the subju* 
gation of Ionia by the arms of Persia was soon effect 
ed, and Histiaeus himself did not long survive the mis 
ery he had brought upon his countrymen. Having 
made a descent on the Persian territory, for the pur¬ 
pose of reaping the harvest in the vale of the Caicus, 
he was surprised and routed by Harpagus, a Persian 
commander, who happened to be at hand with a con¬ 
siderable force ; and, being taken prisoner, was led to 
Artaphernes, the king’s satrap in that quarter, who or¬ 
dered him to be crucified, and sent his head to Susa. 
(.Herodot ., 4, 137. — Id., 5, 11, seqq. — Thirlwall's 
Greece, vol. 2, p. 222, seq.) 

Homerus, a celebrated Greek poet, whose life is 
involved in great obscurity. The only accounts which 
have been preserved on this subject are a few popular 
traditions, together with conjectures of the grammari¬ 
ans founded on inferences from different passages of 
his poems; yet even these, if examined with patience 
and candour, furnish some materials for arriving at 
probable results. With regard to the native country 
of Homer, the traditions do not differ so much as 
might at first view appear to be the case. Although 
seven cities contended for the honour of having given 
birth to the great poet, the claims of many of them 
were only indirect. Thus the Athenians only laid 
claim to Homer from their having been the founders of 
Smyrna, as is clearly expressed in the epigram on Pis- 
istratus contained in Bekker’s Anecdota (vol. 2, p. 
768), and the opinion of Aristarchus, the Alexandrean 
critic, which admitted their claim, was probably quali¬ 
fied with the same explanation. This opinion is brief¬ 
ly stated by the pseudo-Plutarch (Tit. Horn., 2, 2). 
Even Chios cannot establish its right to be considered 
as the original source of the Homeric poetry, although 
the claims of this Ionic island are supported by the 
high authority of the lyric poet Simonides ( ap. Pseu¬ 
do-Plutarch, 2, 2.) It is true that in Chios lived 
'the race of the Homeridae, who, from the analogy of 
other yivi], or races, are to be considered not as a 
family, but as a society of persons, who followed the 
same art, and therefore worshipped the same gods, and 
placed at their head a hero, from whom they derived 
their name. ( Niebuhr, Rom. Hist., vol. 1, note 747.) 
A member of this house of Homeridae was probably 
“the blind poet,” who, in the Homeric hymn to Apol¬ 
lo, relates of himself, that he dwelt on the rocky Chios, 
whence he crossed to Delos for the festival of the Io¬ 
nians and the contests of the poets, and whom Thu¬ 
cydides (3, 104) took for Homer himself; a supposi¬ 
tion which at least shows that this great historian con¬ 
sidered Chios as the dwelling-place of Homer. But, 
notwithstanding the ascertained existence of this clan 
of Homeridse at Chios ; nay, if we even, with Thucyd¬ 
ides, take the blind man of the hymn for Homer him¬ 
self, it would not follow that Chios was the birthplace 
of Homer ; indeed, the ancient writers have reconciled 
these accounts by representing Homer as having, in 
his wanderings, touched at Chios, and afterwerd fixed 
his residence there. A notion of this kind is evident¬ 
ly implied in Pindar’s statements, who in one place 
called Homer a Smyrnean by origin, in another a Chian 
and Smyrnean. ( Bockh, Find., Fragm. inc., 86.) 

The same idea is also indicated in the passage of an 
orator incidentally cited by Aristotle; which says, 
that the Chians greatly honoured Homer, although he 
was not a citizen. ( Aristot., Rhet., 2, 23.) On the 
other hand, the opinion that Homer was a Smyrnean 
not only appears to have been the prevalent belief in 
the flourishing times of Greece, but is supported by 
the two following considerations: first, the important 
fact that it appears in the form of a popular legend, a 
mythus , the divine poet being called a son of a nymph, 
Critheis, and the Smyrnean river Meles; secondly, 



HOMERIJS. 


HOMERUS. 


5hat, by assuming Smyrna as the central point of Ho¬ 
mer’s life and celebrity, the claims of all the other cities 
ivhich rest on good authority, may be explained and 
reconciled in a simple and natural manner.—If one 
may venture to follow the faint light afforded by the 
dawn'ings of tradition, and by the memorials that have 
come down to us relative to the origin of the bard, the 
following may be considered as the sum of our inqui¬ 
ries. Homer was an Ionian, belonging to one of the 
families which went from Ephesus to Smyrna, at a 
time when yEolians and Achteans composed the chief 
part of the population of the city, and when, more¬ 
over, their hereditary traditions respecting the expedi¬ 
tion of the Greeks against Troy excited the greatest 
interest; whence he reconciles, in his poetical capaci¬ 
ty, the conflict of the contending races, inasmuch as 
he treats an Achaean subject with the elegance and 
geniality of an Ionian. But when Smyrna drove out 
the lonians, it deprived itself of this poetical renown ; 
and the settlement of the Homeridae in Chios was, in 
all probability, a consequence of the expulsion of the 
lonians from Smyrna. It may, moreover, be observed, 
thar, according to this account, founded on the history 
of the colonies of Asia Minor, the time of Homer 
■would fall a few generations after the Ionic migration 
to Asia; and with this determination the best testi¬ 
monies of antiquity agree. Such are the computa¬ 
tions of Herodotus, who places Homer, with Hesiod, 
400 years before his time (Herod., 2, 53), and that 
of the Alexandrean chronologists, who place him 100 
years after the Ionic migration, 60 years before the le¬ 
gislation of Lycurgus (Apollod., Fragm., 1, p. 410, 
ed. Heyne ); although the variety of opinions on this 
subject, which prevailed among the learned writers of 
antiquity, cannot be reduced within these limits.—It 
is said by Tatian ( Fabr ., Bibl. Gr., 2, 1, 3), that 
Theagenes of Rhegium, in the time of Cambyses, 
Stesimbrotus the Thasian, Antimachus the Colopho- 
. uian, Herodotus of Halicarnassus, Dionysius the Olyn- 
thian, Ephorus of Cumae, Philochorus the Athenian, 
Metaclides and Chamaeleon the Peripatetics, and Zen- 
odotus, Aristophanes, Callimachus, Crates, Eratosthe¬ 
nes, Aristarchus, and Apollodorus, the grammarians, 
all wrote concerning the poetry, the birth, and the age 
of Homer. Of the works of all these authors nothing 
now remains, with the nominal exception of a life of 
Homer attributed to Herodotus, but which, as well on 
account of its minute and fabulous details, as of the in¬ 
consistency of a statement in it with the undoubted 
language of Herodotus, is now almost universally con¬ 
sidered as spurious. Such as it is, however, the life 
of Homer is a very ancient compilation, and the text 
from which all subsequent stories have been taken or 
altered. There is a short life of Homer, also, bearing 
the name of Plutarch, but which is, like the former, 
generally condemned as a forgery ; a forgery, however, 
of this unusual nature, that there is reason to believe 
it more ancient than its supposed author. Thus 
Quintilian (10, 1) and Seneca (Ep., 88), both more 
ancient than Plutarch, seem clearly aware of this life 
of Homer. Some account of the common traditions 
about Homer will probably be looked for here, and 
the story will explain the origin of several epithets 
which are frequently applied to him, and the meaning 
of many allusions to be met with in the Greek and 
Latin writers.—There is, then, a general agreement 
that the name of Homer’s mother was Crithe'is; but the 
accounts differ a good deal as to his father. Ephorus 
says (pseud-Plutarch, Vit. Horn.) that there were three 
brothers, natives of Cumae, Atelles, Maeon, and Dius ; 
that Dius, being in debt, migrated to Ascra in Bceotia, 
and there became the father of Hesiod by his wife Py- 
cimede ; that Atelles died in Cumae, having appointed 
his brother Maeon guardian of his daughter Crithe'is; 
that Crithe'is, becoming with child by her uncle, was 
given in marriage to Phemius, a native of Smyrna, 


and a schoolmaster in that city, and that, in due tima 
aferward, while she was in or near the baths on th^ 
river Meles, she gave birth to a child who was called 
Melesigenes from this circumstance. Aristotle relates 
(pseud-Pint., V. H.), that a young woman of the island 
of los, being with child by a daemon or genius, a familiar 
of the Muses, fled to the coast, where she was seized 
by pirates, who presented her as a gift to Maeon, king of 
the Lydians, at that time resident in, and ruler over, 
Smyrna. Mason married her; she, Critheis, gave 
birth to Melesigenes, as before mentioned, and upon 
her death, soon after, Maeon brought up the child as his 
own. Here we have an origin of the two epithets oi 
appellations Melesigenes and Maeonides. Ephorus says 
(pseud-Plut., V. H.) he was called Homer ( r, 0 yr/poq) 
when he became blind, the lonians so styling blind 
men, because they were followers of a guide (oyypev- 
ov). Aristotle’s account is, that the Lydians being 
pressed by the yEolians, and resolved to abandon Smyr¬ 
na, made a proclamation, that whoever wished to fol 
low them should go out of the city, and that thereupon 
Melesigenes said he would follow or accompany them 
(oyypelv) ; upon which he acquired the name of Ho¬ 
mer. Another derivation of the name is from 6 yy 
opcjv , one not seeing; as to which notion of blind¬ 
ness, Paterculus says, that whoever thinks Homer was 
born blind must needs be blind himself in all his 
senses. It was said also that he was so called from 
6 yypog (the thigh), because he had some marks on his 
thigh to denote his illegitimacy. In the life of Homer 
by Proclus, the story is, that the poet was delivered up 
by the people of Smyrna to those of Chios as a pledge 
or hostage (oyypog) on the conclusion of a truce. The 
derivation that favours the theories both of Wolfe and 
Heyne is from oyov elpeiv, “ to speak together, ” or 
from oyypeZv, “ to assemble together."* Ilgen derives 
the name from oyov, “ together," and apu, “ to fitf 
whence comes oyypevuv, synonymous with vrcaelSeiv, 
and hence "O yypog means, according to him, a poet 
who accompanies the lyre with his voice, “ cantor qui 
cithafam pulsans vtvo naTiov ae/det.” The stories 
proceed in general to state that Homer himself became 
a schoolmaster and poet of great celebrity at Smyrna, 
and remained till Mentes, a foreign merchant, induced 
him to travel. That the author or authors of the Iliad 
and Odyssey must have travelled pretty extensively for 
those times, is unquestionable; for, besides the accurate 
knowledge of Greece proper displayed in the Catalogue, 
it is clear that the poet had a familiar acquaintance 
with the islands both in the JEgean and Ionian seas, 
the coast of Asia Minor from the Hellespont indefinitely 
southward, Crete, Cyprus, and Egypt; and possessed 
also distinct information with respect to Libya, Caria, 
and Phrygia. In his travels Plomer visited Ithaca, 
and there became subject to a disease of the eyes, 
which afterward terminated in total blindness. From 
this island he is said to have gone to Italy and even 
to Spain ; but there is no sign in either of the two po¬ 
ems of any knowledge westward of the Ionian Sea. 
Wherever he went, Homer recited his verses, which 
were universally admired except at Smyrna, where he 
was a prophet in his own country. At Phocaea, a 
schoolmaster of the name of Thestorides obtained from 
Homer a copy of his poetry, and then sailed to Chios 
and recited the Plomeric verses as his own. Homer 
followed, was rescued by Glaucus, a goatherd, from 
the attack of his dogs, and brought by him to Bolissus* 
a town in Chios, where he resided a long time in pos¬ 
session of wealth and a splendid reputation. Thestor¬ 
ides left the island upon Homer’s arrival. According 
to Herodotus, he died at los, on his way to Athens, and 
was buried near the seashore. Proclus says he died 
in consequence of falling over a stone. Plutarch tells 
a very different story. He preserves two responses 
of an oracle to Homer, in both of which he was cau¬ 
tioned to beware of the young men’s riddle, ar d re 

637 





HOMERUS. 


HOMERUS. 


iaces that the poet, being on his voyage to Thebes, to 
attend a musical or poetical contest at the feast of Sat¬ 
urn in that city, landed in the island of Io, and, while 
sitting on a rock by the seashore, observed some young 
fishermen in a boat; that Homer asked them if they 
had anything (el ti cxolcv), and that the young wags, 
who, having had no sport, had been diligently catch¬ 
ing, and killing as many as they could catch, of cer¬ 
tain personal companions of a race not even yet ex¬ 
tinct, answered, “ as many as we caught we left; as 
many as we could not catch we carry with us.” The 
catastrophe is, that Homer, being utterly unable to 
guess the meaning of this riddle, broke his heart out 
of pure vexation, and that the inhabitants of the island 
buried him with great magnificence.—There has been 
as much doubt and controversy about the age of Ho¬ 
mer as about himself and his poems. According to 
the argument of Wood ( Essay on the Original Ge¬ 
nius, 3f-c., of Homer), Haller (Heyne, Excurs. 4, ad II., 
24), and Mitford ( History of Greece, c. 1), he lived 
about the middle of the ninth century before Christ; 
which date agrees exactly with the conjecture of He¬ 
rodotus, who wrote B.C. 444, and is founded on the 
assumption that Homer must have lived before the re¬ 
turn of the Heraclidaa into Peloponnesus, an event 
which took place within eighty years after the Trojan 
war. The Newtonian calculation is also adopted, 
which fixes the capture of Troy as low as B.C. 904. 
The argument is based upon the great improbability 
that Homer, so minute as he is in his descriptions of 
Greece, and so full of the histories of the reigning 
dynasties in its various districts, should never notice 
so very remarkable an occurrence as the almost total 
abolition of the kingly government throughout Greece, 
and the substitution of the republican form in its stead. 
Now this national revolution was coincident with, or 
immediately consequent on, the return of the descend¬ 
ants of Hercules. It is said, also, that the poet men¬ 
tions the grandchildren of .Tineas as reigning in Troy, 
in the prophecy of Neptune in the Iliad (20, 308), and 
that, in another speech of Juno’s, he seems to intimate 
the insecure state of the chief existing dynasties of 
the race of Pelops ; and it is inferred from this, that 
he flourished during the third generation, or upward of 
sixty years after the destruction of Troy. Upon this 
argument Heyne remarks (Excurs., ad 11., 24), that, in 
the first place, a poet who was celebrating heroes of 
the Pelopid race had no occasion to notice a revolu¬ 
tion by which their families were expatriated and their 
kingdoms abolished ; *and next, which seems an in¬ 
surmountable objection, that the Ionic migration took 
place sixty years later than the return of the Heracli- 
dae ; yet that Homer was an Ionian, and a resident in, 
or at least perfectly conversant with, Ionian Asia, is 
admitted on all hands, and is indeed incontestable ; 
and as he never notices this migration, though it was 
certainly a very remarkable event, and one which he 
must have known, he may just as well, for other or 
the same reasons, have been silent on the subject of a 
revolution by which that migration was caused. The 
Arundelian marbles place Homer B.C. 907, the Ionian 
migration B.C. 1044, the return of the Heraclidse B.C. 
1104, and the capture of Troy B.C. 1184. Heyne 
approves of this calculation, as, upon the whole, the 
most consistent with all the authorities ; but it is at 
variance with Newton’s Chronology, and is therefore 
• a calculation, of the exactness of which we can never 
feel confident —The vicissitudes to which Homer’s 
reputation and influence have been subject, deserves 
notice. From the first known collection of the Iliad 
and Odyssey in the time of the Pisistratidas to the pro¬ 
mulgation of Christianity, the love and reverence with 
which the name of Homer was regarded went on con¬ 
stantly increasing, till at last public games were insti¬ 
tuted in his honour, statues dedicated, temples erected, 
and sacrifices offered to him as a divinity. There 
638 


were such temples at Smyrna, Chios, and Alexandrea, 
and, according to ./Elian (V. H., 9, 15), the Argives 
sacrificed to, and invoked the names and presence of 
Apollo and Homer together. But about the beginning 
of the second century of the Christian era, when the 
struggle between the old and new religion was warm 
and active, the tide turned. “Heathenism,” says 
Pope (Essay on Homer), “ was then to be destroyed, 
and Homer appeared the father of it, whose fictions 
were at once the belief of the pagan religion, and the 
objections of Christianity against it. He became, 
therefore, deeply involved in the question, and not 
with that honour which hitherto attended him, but as 
a criminal who had drawn the world into folly. He 
was, on the one hand (Just. Mart., admon. ad gentes), 
accused of having formed fables upon the works of 
Moses ; as the rebellion of the Giants from the 
building of Babel, and the casting of Ate out of 
Heaven from the fall of Lucifer. He was exposed, on 
the other hand, for those which he is said to invent, 
as when Arnobius (adv. gentes, lib. 7) cries out, 
‘This is the man who wounded your Venus, impris¬ 
oned your Mars, who freed even your Jupiter by Bri- 
areus, and who finds authority for all your vices,’ &c 
Mankind were derided (Tertull., Apollod., c. 14) for 
whatever he had hitherto made them believe ; and 
Plato (Arnobius, ib. — Euseb., Prcep. Evang., 14, 10), 
who expelled him his commonwealth, has, of all the 
philosophers, found the best quarter from the fathers 
for passing that sentence. His finest beauties began 
to take a new appearance of pernicious qualities ; and 
because they might be considered as allurements to 
fancy, or supports to those errors with which they 
were mingled, they were to be depreciated while the 
contest of faith was in being. It was hence that the 
reading of them was discouraged, that we hear Ru- 
finus accusing St. Jerome of it, and that St. Augustin 
(Confess., 1 , 14) rejects him as the grand master of 
fable ; though indeed the dulcissime vanus which he 
applies to Homer, looks but like a fondling manner of 
parting with him. Those days are past; and, happily 
for us, the obnoxious poems have weathered the storms 
of zeal which might have destroyed them. Homer will 
have no temples, nor games, nor sacrifices in Chris¬ 
tendom ; but his statue is yet to be seen in the palaces 
of kings, and his name will remain in honour among 
the nations to the world’s end. He stands, by pre¬ 
scription, alone and aloof on Parnassus, where it is not 
possible now that any human genius should stand with 
him, the father and the prince of all heroic poets, the 
boast and the glory of his own Greece, and the love and 
the admiration of all mankind.” (Muller, Hist. Greek 
Lit., p. 41, seqq. — Coleridge, Introduction to the Study 
of the Greek Classic Poets, pt. 1, p. 57, seqq.) —This 
Homer, then (of the circumstances of whose life we 
know so little that may be relied upon), was the person 
who gave epic poetry its first great impulse. Before 
his time, in general, only single actions and adventures 
were celebrated in short lays. The heroic mythology 
had prepared the way for the poets by grouping the 
deeds of the principal heroes into large masses, so that 
they had a natural connexion with each other, and re 
ferred to some common fundamental notion. Now, 
as the general features of the more Considerable le¬ 
gendary collections were known, the poet before the 
time of Homer had the advantage of being able to 
narrate any one action of Hercules, or of one of the 
Argive champions against Thebes, or of the Achag&ns 
against Troy; and, at the same time, of being certain 
that the scope and purport of the action (namely, the 
elevation of Hercules to the gods, and the fated de¬ 
struction ol Thebes and Troy) would be present to 
the minds of his hearers, and that the individual ad¬ 
venture would thus be viewed in its proper connexion, 
Thus, doubtless, for a long time, the bards were satis¬ 
fied with illustrating single points of the heroic mvthol 



HOMERUS. 


HOMERUS. 


ogy with briei epic lays ; such as in later times were 
produced by several poets of the school of Hesiod. 
It was also possible, if it were desired, to form from 
them longer series of adventures of the same hero ; 
but they always remained a collection of independent 
poems on the same subject, and never attained to that 
umiy of character and composition which constitutes 
one poem. It was an entirely new phenomenon, 
which could not fail to make the greatest impression, 
when a poet selected a subject of the heroic tradition, 
which (besides its connexion with the other parts of 
the same legendary circle) had in itself the means of 
awakening a lively interest and of satisfying the mind; 
and, at the same time, admitted of such a development, 
that the principal personages could be represented as 
acting each with a peculiar and individual character, 
without obscuring the chief hero and the main action 
of the poem. One legendary subject of this extent 
and interest Homer found in the Anger of Achilles, 
and another in the Return of Ulysses. The former 
of these gave birth to the Iliad, the latter to the 
Odyssey. Of the character of these two poems we 
will treat in separate articles ( vid . Ilias, Odyssea). 
Our attention will now he directed to other parts of 
the main subject. 

Origin and Preservation of the Homeric Poems. 

Whether the Homeric poems were in reality the 
work of a single bard or not, their intrinsic merit, and, 
consequently, their rank in Greek literature, must re¬ 
main the same, and be equally a worthy object of 
studious inquiry. The decision of that question can¬ 
not in the slightest degree affect our estimate of their 
quality. Whether all the poems that are now attrib¬ 
uted to Homer were his production ; whether the Iliad 
and the Odyssey, both, or one of them only, can lay 
claim to such parentage; or whether, lastly, any such 
person as Homer, or, indeed, any individual author of 
the poem ever existed, whichever of these propositions 
be true, it seems to be a matter of little importance to 
those whose object it is not to spell the inscriptions on 
mouldering monuments, but to inhale the breath of an¬ 
cient grandeur and beauty amid the undoubted ruins 
of the great. The Iliad and the Odyssey exist; we 
have them in our hands ; and we should not set them 
the less in honour though we were to doubt the im¬ 
press of any Homer’s hand, any more than we should 
cease to reverence the genius or the ruins of Rome, 
because shepherds or worse may have laid the first 
stone of her walls. It is this very excellence, howev¬ 
er, of the Homeric poetry, and the apparent peculi¬ 
arity of the instance, together with the celebrity of the 
controversy, to which the scepticism of some modern 
scholars has given birth, that compels us to devote a 
portion of this article to a notice of the points in ques¬ 
tion. No trace appears of any doubt having ever been 
entertained of the personal existence of Homer, as the 
author of the Iliad, till the close of the 17th and be¬ 
ginning of the 18th century, when two French writers, 
Hedelin and Perrault, first suggested the outlines of 
a theory respecting the composition of that poem, 
which has since been developed with so much learning 
and talent by Heyne, Wolfe, and others, that its ori¬ 
ginal authors are now almost forgotten. The substance 
of this theory is, that, whether any such person as 
Homer lived or not, the Iliad was not composed en¬ 
tirely by him or by any other individual, but is a com¬ 
pilation, methodized indeed and arranged by success¬ 
ive editors, but still a compilation of minstrelsies, the 
works of various poets in the heroic age, all having 
one common theme and direction, the wars of Troy, 
and the exploits of the several Grecian chiefs engaged 
in them. Wolfe, in particular, believed that the verses 
now constituting the Iliad, were written (we should 
rather sav made or invented) by one Homer, but in 
short rhapsodies, unconnected purposely with each 


other, and that they were put together as after men¬ 
tioned. Much of his argument, however, of the im¬ 
possibility of one man having composed the Iliad in 
form as we now have it, applies to the theory just 
stated. Bentley expressed an opinion similar to Wolfe’s 
on the history and compilation of the Iliad. “ Homer 
wrote a sequel of songs and rhapsodies to be sung by 
himself, for small earnings and good cheer, at festivals 
and other days of merriment: the Iliad he made for the 
men, and the Odyssey for the other sex. These loose 
songs were not collected together in the form of an 
Epic poem till about 500 years after.” ( Letter to N. 
N., by Phileleuth. Lipsiens § 7.) One of the main ar¬ 
guments insisted upon by those who deny the existence 
of a Homer, and the unity, consequently, of the Iliad 
and Odyssey, is the question of writing. It is said that 
the art of writing, and the use of manageable writing 
materials, were entirely, or all but entirely, unknown 
in Greece and the islands at the supposed date of the 
composition of the Iliad ; that, if so, this poem could 
not have been committed to writing during the time of 
such its composition ; that, in a question of compara¬ 
tive probabilities like this, it is a much grosser improb¬ 
ability that even the single Iliad, amounting, after all 
curtailments and expungings, to upward of 15,000 
lines, should have been actually conceived and per¬ 
fected in the brain of one man, with no other help but 
his own or others’ memory, than that it should be, in 
fact, the result of the labours of several distinct authors; 
that, if the Odyssey be counted, the improbability is 
doubled ; that if we add, upon the authority of Thu¬ 
cydides and Aristotle, the Hymns and Margites, not 
to say the Batrachomyomachia, that which was im¬ 
probable becomes absolutely impossible; that all that 
has been so often said as to the fact of as many lines 
or more having been committed to memory, is beside 
the point in question, which is not whether 15,000 or 
30,000 lines may not be learned by heart from a book 
or manuscript, but whether one man can compose a 
poem of that length, which, rightly or n©t, shall be 
thought to be a perfect model of symmetry and con¬ 
sistency of parts, without the aid of writing mate 
rials ; that, admitting the superior probability of sucl. 
a thing in a primitive age, we know nothing analogous 
to such a case, and that it so transcends the common 
limits of intellectual power, as, at the least, to merit, 
with as much justice as the opposite opinion, the char¬ 
acter of improbability.—When it is considered that 
throughout the Homeric Poems, though they appear to 
embrace the whole circle of the knowledge then pos 
sessed by the Greeks, and enter into so many details 
on the arts of life, only one ambiguous allusion occurs 
to any kind of writing (II., 6, 169), it is scarcely pos¬ 
sible to avoid the conclusion, that the art, though 
known, was still in its infancy, and was very rarely 
practised. But the very poems from which this con¬ 
clusion has been drawn would seem to overthrow it, 
if it should be admitted that they were originally com¬ 
mitted to writing; for they would then seem to af¬ 
ford the strongest proof, that, at the time of their com¬ 
position, the art had made very considerable progress, 
and that there was no want, either of materials or of 
skill, to prevent it from coming into common use. 
Hence the original form of these poems becomes a 
question of great historical as well as literary impor¬ 
tance. The Greeks themselves almost universally, 
and the earliest writers the most unanimously, believed 
them both to have been the work of the same author, 
who, though nothing was known of his life, or even 
his birthplace, was commonly held to have been an 
Asiatic Greek. The doubt whether his poems were 
written from the first, seems hardly to have been se¬ 
riously entertained by any of the ancients, and in mod¬ 
ern times it has been grounded chiefly on the difficulty 
of reconciling such a fact with the very low degree in 
which the art of writing is supposed to have been cul 

639 



HOMERUS. 


HUMERUS. 


Civated in the Homeric age. It has likewise been 
urged, that the structure of the Homeric verses fur¬ 
nishes a decisive proof, that the state of the Greek 
language, at the time when these poems were written, 
was different from that in which they must have been 
composed. And by others it has been thought incon¬ 
sistent with the law of continual change, to which all 
languages are subject, that the form in which these 
works now appear should differ so slightly as it does 
from that of the Greek literature, if it really belonged 
to the early period in which they were first recited. 
These difficulties are, it must be owned, in a great 
measure removed by the hypothesis that each poem 
is an aggregate of parts composed by different authors; 
for then the poet’s memory might not be too severely 
taxed in retaining his work during its progress, and 
might be aided by more frequent recitations. But this 
hypothesis has been met by a number of objections, 
some of which are not very easily satisfied. The ori¬ 
ginal unity of each poem is maintained by arguments 
derived partly from the uniformity of the poetical char¬ 
acter, and partly from the apparent singleness of plan 
which each of them exhibits. Even those who do not 
think it necessary to suppose an original unity of de¬ 
sign in the Iliad, still conceive that all its parts are 
stamped with the style of the same author. ( Clinton , 
Fast. Hellen ., vol. 3, p. 375, 379.) But with others, 
from the time of Aristotle to our own day, the plan 
itself has been an object of the warmest admiration ; 
and it is still contended, that the intimate coherence of 
the parts is such as to exclude the hypothesis of a 
multiplicity of authors. ( Vid. Ilias.) If the parts out 
of which the Iliad or the Odyssey was formed are 
supposed to have been at first wholly independent of 
each other, the supposition that they could have been 
so pieced together as to assume their present appear¬ 
ance is involved in almost insurmountable difficulties. 
For how, it may be asked, did the different poets in 
each instance happen to confine themselves to the 
same circle of subjects, as to the battles before Troy, 
and the return of Ulysses'? Must we suppose, with a 
modern critic ( Hermann , Wiener-Jahrbucher, vol. 54), 
that in the Iliad and Odyssey we see the joint labours 
of several bards, who drew their subjects from an ear¬ 
lier Iliad and an earlier Odyssey, which contained no 
more than short narratives of the same events, but yet 
had gained such celebrity for their author, that the 
greatest poets of the succeeding period were forced to 
adopt his name, and to content themselves with filling 
up bis outline ? This would be an expedient only to 
be resorted to in the last emergency. Or must we 
adopt the form which this hypothesis, by giving it a 
different turn, has'been made bv others to assume, that 
the Iliad and Odyssey, after the main event in each 
had formed the subject of a shorter poem, grew un¬ 
der the hands of successive poets, who, guided in 
part by popular tradition, supplied what had been left 
wanting by their predecessors, until in each case the 
curiosity of their hearers had been gratified by a fin¬ 
ished whole? (ThirlwaWs Greece , vol. 1, p. 246.) 
This supposition is involved in still greater difficulty 
than the former, for we have here a race of bards, 
who, though living at different periods, and though 
the language was, during all this time, undergoing 
changes of some kind or other, yet write all of them 
In a manner so similar, and display so few, if any, dis¬ 
crepances, that their various productions, when col¬ 
lected together, wear all the appearance of a poem by 
a single bard.—According to every hypothesis, the 
origin of the Homeric poetry is wrapped in mystery ; 
as must be the case with the beginning of a new pe¬ 
riod, when that which precedes it is very obscure. 
And it would certainly be r.o unparalleled or surprising 
coincidence, if the production of a great work, which 
formed the most momentous epoch in the history of 
Greek literature, should have concurred with either the 
640 


i first introduction, or a new application of the most j'eq 
■ portant of all inventions. Still, however, we are not 
; driven to the necessity of adopting such a view of the 
, subject. It is true, we are perpetually met with diffi- 
i culties in endeavouring to form a notion of the manner 
in which these great epic poems were composed, at a 
time anterior to the use of writing. But these diffi¬ 
culties arise much more from our own ignorance of 
the period, and our own incapability of conceiving a 
creation of the mind without those appliances of which 
the use has become to us a second nature, than in the 
general laws of the human intellect. Who can deter¬ 
mine how many thousand verses a person, thoroughly 
impregnated with his subject, and absorbed in the con¬ 
templation of it, might produce in a year, and confide 
to the faithful memory of disciples, devoted to their 
master and his art? Wherever a creative genius has 
appeared, it has met with persons of congenial taste, 
and has found assistants, by whose means it has com¬ 
pleted astonishing works in a comparatively short pe¬ 
riod of time. Thus the old bard may have been fol¬ 
lowed by a number of younger minstrels, to whom it 
was both a pleasure and a duty to collect and diffuse 
the honey which flowed from his lips. But it is at 
least certain, that it would be unintelligible how these 
great epics were composed, unless there had been oc¬ 
casions on which they actually appeared in their in¬ 
tegrity, and could charm an attentive hearer with the 
full force and effect of a complete poem. Without a 
connected and continuous recitation, they were not 
finished works ; they were mere disjointed fragments, 
which might, by possibility , form a whole. But where 
were there meals or festivals long enough for such 
recitations ? What attention, it has been asked, could 
be sufficiently sustained, in order to follow so many 
thousand verses?—If, however, the Athenians could 
at one festival hear in succession about nine tragedies, 
three satyric dramas, and as many comedies, without 
ever thinking that it might be better to distribute this 
enjoyment over the whole year, why should not the 
Greeks of earlier times have been able to listen to the 
Iliad and Odyssey, and perhaps other poems, at the 
same festival? At a later date, indeed, when thc- 
rhapsodist was rivalled by the player on the lyre, the 
dithyrambic minstrel, and by many other kinds of po¬ 
etry and music, these latter necessarily abridged the 
time allowed to the epic reciter; but, in early times, 
when the epic style reigned without a competitor, it 
would have received an undivided attention. Let us 
beware of measuring, by our loose and desultory read¬ 
ing, the intension of mind with which a people enthu 
siastically devoted to such enjoyments, hung with de¬ 
light on the flowing strains of the minstrel. In short, 
there was a time (and the Iliad and Odyssey are the 
records of it) when the Greek people, not indeed at 
meals, but at festivals, and under the patronage of 
their hereditary princes, heard and enjoyed these and 
other less excellent poems as they were intended to 
be heard and enjoyed, namely, as complete wholes. 
Whether they were at this early period ever recited 
for a prize, and in competition with others, is doubtful, 
though there is nothing improbable in the supposition. 
But when the conflux of rhapsodists to the contests 
became perpetually greater; when, at the same time, 
more weight was laid on the art of the reciter than on 
the beauty of the well-known poem which he recited; 
and when, lastly, in addition to the rhapsodizing, a 
number of other musical and poetical performances 
claimed a place, then the rhapsodists w r ere permitted 
to repeat separate parts of poems, in which they hoped 
to excel; and the Iliad and Odyssey (as they had not 
yet been reduced to writing) existed for a time only 
as scattered and unconnected fragments. ( Wolf's 
Prolegomena , p. cxliii.) And we are still indebted to 
the regulator of the contest of rhapsodists at the Pana- 
thensea (whether it was Solon or Pisistratus) for having 





HOMERUS. 


HUMERUS. 


* 


compelled the rhapsodists to follow one another, ac¬ 
cording to the order of the poem, and for having thus 
restored these great works, which were falling into 
fragments, to their pristine integrity. It is indeed 
true, that some arbitrary additions may have been made 
to them at this period ; which, however, we can only 
hope to be able to distinguish from the rest of the 
poem, by first coming to some general agreement as 
to the original form and subsequent destiny of the Ho¬ 
meric compositions. ( Muller, Hist. Gr. Lit., p. 62, 
seq.) 

Introduction of the Homeric Poems into Greece. 

Two different accounts are given on this head. 1. 
First, it is said that Lycurgus, the Spartan legislator, 
met with the poems of Homer during his travels in 
Asia, and, being charmed with them, carried them 
with him by some means, and in some shape or other, 
back to his native city. The authority for this is a 
passage of a fragment of Heraclides Ponticus, in which 
he says that Lycurgus, “ having procured the poetry 
of Homer from the descendants of Creophylus, first 
introduced it into the Peloponnesus.” iElian (V. H., 
13, 14) repeats this with advantage : “ Lycurgus the 
Spartan first carried the poetry of Homer in a mass 
into Greece.” Plutarch (Vit. Lycurg .) finishes off the 
story in his usual manner. “ There (in Asia) Lycur¬ 
gus first fell in with the poems of Homer, probably in 
the keeping of the descendants of Cleophylus; he 
wrote them out eagerly, and collected them together 
for the purpose of bringing them hither into Greece ; 
for there was already at that time an obscure rumour 
of these verses among the Greeks, but some few only 
possessed some scattered fragments of this poetry, 
which were circulated in a chance manner. Lycurgus 
had the principal hand in making it known.” This 
Creophylus or Cleophylus, a Samian, is said to have 
been Homer’s host in Samos, and a poet himself. 
The nucleus of fact in this story may probably consist 
in this ; that Lycurgus became more acquainted with 
*he Homeric verses among the Ionian rhapsodists, and 
succeeded in introducing, by means of his own or oth¬ 
ers’ memory, some connected portions of them into 
Western Greece. That he wrote them all out is, as 
we may see, so far as the original authority goes, due 
to the ingenious biographer alone. But the better 
founded account of the introduction, or, at least, of 
the formal collection of the Homeric verses, though 
not inconsistent with the other, is, that, after Solon had 
directed that the rhapsodists should, upon public oc¬ 
casions, recite in a certain order of poetical narration, 
and not confusedly, the end before the beginning, as 
had been the previous practice, Pisistratus, with the 
help of a large body of the most celebrated poets of 
his age, made a regular collection of the different rhap¬ 
sodies which passed under Homer’s name, committed 
them all to writing, and arranged them very much in 
the series in which we now possess them. The di¬ 
vision of the rhapsodies into books corresponding with 
the letters of the Greek alphabet, was probably the 
work of the Alexandrean critics many centuries after¬ 
ward. Now the authorities for attributing this primary 
reduction into form to Pisistratus, are numerous and 
express, and a few quotations from them will be the 
most satisfactory way of putting the student in pos¬ 
session of the opinions of the ancients upon this sub¬ 
ject.—“ Who,” says Cicero, “ was more learned in 
that age, or whose eloquence is reported to have been 
more refined by literature than that of Pisistratus, 
who is said first to have disposed the books of Homer, 
which were before confused, in the order in which we 
now have them!” ( Cic ., de Orat., 3, 34.)—“Pisis¬ 
tratus,” observes Pausanias, “ collected the verses of 
Homer, which were dispersed, and retained in different 
places by memory.” ( Pausanias , 7, 26.)—“After¬ 
ward,” remarks iElian, “ Pisistratus, having collected 
4 M 


the verses, set out the Iliad and Odyssey.” (JEhan 
V. H., 13, 14.)—“We praise Pisistratus,” observes 
Libanius, “ for his collection of the verses made by 
Homer.” ( Liban ., Pan. in Iul., vol. 1, p. 170, ed. 
Reiske.) —“The poetry of the Iliad,” says Eustathius, 
“is one continuous body throughout, and well fitted 
together; but they who put it together, under the di¬ 
rection, as is said, of Pisistratus,” &c. ( Wolf, Pro• 

legom., p. cxliii., in not.) —That this collection was 
made with the assistance, and probably by the princi¬ 
pal operation of the contemporary poets, rests also 
upon good authority. Pausanias, in speaking of v. 
573, in the second book of the Iliad, says that Pisis¬ 
tratus, or some one of his associates, had changed the 
name through ignorance. “ Afterward,” remarks Sui- 
das, “ this poetry was put together and set in order 
by many persons, and in particular by Pisistratus.” 
( Suid., s. v. "O yypog.) The great poets with whom 
Pisistratus lived in friendship, and of whose aid he is 
supposed to have availed himself on this occasion, 
were Orpheus of Crotona, said to be the author of the 
Argonautics, Onomacritus the Athenian, Simonides, 
and Anacreon. In the dialogue called Hipparchus, 
attributed to Plato, it is said, indeed, of the younger 
son of Pisistratus of that name, “ that he executed 
many other excellent works, and particularly he brought 
the verses of Homer into this country, and compelled 
the rhapsodists at the Panathenaic festival to go through 
them all in order, one taking up the other, in the same 
manner that they do now.” There seems, however, 
no great inconsistency in these statements. They 
may very reasonably be reconciled, by supposing that 
this great work of collecting and arranging the scat¬ 
tered verses of the Homeric rhapsodists was begun 
in an imperfect manner by Solon, principally executed 
by Pisistratus and his iriends, and finished under 
Hipparchus. This will embrace about eighty years 
from the date of Solon’s law, B.C. 594, to the death 
of Hipparchus, B.C. 513. It must be remembered, 
however, that, although the Homeric rhapsodies were 
undoubtedly committed to writing, and reduced into i 
certain form and order of composition, in the age of 
the Pisistratidae, the ancient and national practice of 
recitation still continued in honour, and for a consid¬ 
erable time afterward was, perhaps, the only mode by 
which those poems were popularly known. But it 
may readily be believed, that, in proportion as written 
copies became multiplied, a power of, and taste for, 
reading generated, and a literature, in the narrow 
sense of the word, created, this practice of publicly re¬ 
citing national poetry, which was as congenial as it 
was indispensable to a primitive and unlettered people, 
would gradually sink in estimation, become degraded 
in character, and finally fall into complete disuse. 
This we find to have been precisely the case from 
about the year B.C. 430, till the age of the Alexan¬ 
drean critics, under the polite and civilized government 
of the Ptolemies. The old manner of reciting was no 
doubt very histrionic ; but after the formation of a reg¬ 
ular theatre, and the composition of formal dramas in 
the time of iEschylus, the heroic verses of the Ho¬ 
meric age must have seemed very unfit vehicles of, or 
accompaniments to, scenic effect of any kind. In 
this interval, therefore, are to be placed a third and 
last race of rhapsodists, now no longer the fellow-pDet* 
and congenial interpreters of their originals, bis in 
general, a low and ignorant sort of men, who weto tc- 
ceptable only to the meanest of the people. Xem*p or. 

( Sympos ., 3) and Plato (Ion, passim ) bear aburxant 
testimony to the contempt with which they were re¬ 
garded, though the object of the latter in the Ion or 
Ionian was probably to sketch a true and exalted pic¬ 
ture of the duty and the character of a genuine rhap 
sodist. There were many editions, or A lopdcooeic, as 
they were called, of the Iliad, after this primary one 
by the Pisistratidas. We read of one by Antimaahus 

641 



HOMERUS. 




HOMERUS. 


a poet of Colophon ; and of another very celebrated 
one by Aristotle, which edition Alexander is said to 
have himself corrected and kept in a very precious 
casket, taken among the spoiis of the camp of Darius. 
This edition was called y ek tov vdpdynog. The edi¬ 
tions by any known individual were called ai /car’ uv- 
dpa, to distinguish them from several editions existing 
in different cities, but not attributed to any particular 
editors. These latter were called ai Kara iroXeiq, or 
ai ek 'ko’Keov. The Massiliotic, Chian, Argive, Sino- 
pic, Cyprian, and Cretan are mentioned. There are 
three other names very conspicuous among the mul¬ 
titude of clitics, and commentators, and editors of 
the Iliad in subsequent times ; these are Zenodotus, 
Aristophanes, the inventor of accents, and Aristarchus. 
This last celebrated man lived in the reign of Ptolemy 
Philometor, B.C. 150, and, after a collation of all the 
copies then existing, he published a new edition, or 
A lopduoiq, of the Iliad, divided into books, the text of 
which, according to the general opinion of critics, has 
finally prevailed as the genuine diction of Homer. 

( Coleridge , Introduction, &c., p. 37-55.) In the 
preface to Gronovius’ Thesaurus (vol. 5), there is a 
particular and curious account of the manner in which 
Pisistratus put together the poems of Homer. It is 
taken from the Commentary of Diomedes Scholasticus 
on the grammar of Dionysius the Thracian, and was 
first published in the original Greek by Bekker, in the 
second vol. of his Anecdota Grceca (p. 767, seqq.). It 
is in substance as follows: The poems of Homer 
were in a fragmentary state, in different hands. One 
man had a hundred verses ; another two hundred; a 
third a thousand, &c. Thereupon Pisistratus, not 
being able to find the poems entire, proclaimed all 
over Greece, that whoever brought to him verses of 
Homer, should receive so much for each line. All 
who brought any received the promised reward, even 
those who brought lines which he had already obtained 
from others. Sometimes people brought him verses 
of their own for those of Homer, now marked with an 
obelus (tov? vvv obeTufryevov c). After having thuA 
made a collection, he employed 72 grammarians to 
put together the verses of Homer in the manner they 
thought best. After each had separately arranged the 
verses, he brought them all together, and made each 
show to the whole his own particular work. Having 
all in a body examined carefully and impartially, they 
with one accord gave the preference to the composi¬ 
tions of Aristarchus and Zenodotus, and determined 
still farther, that the former had made the better one of 
the two. ( Bekker , Ancc. Grcec., 1. c .) 

Iliad and Odyssey. 

For an account of these two poems, and the discus¬ 
sions connected with them, consult the articles Ilias 
and Odyssea. The remainder of our remarks on the 
present occasion will be confined to a brief consider¬ 
ation of a few minor productions that are commonly 
attributed to Homer. 

1. Mar git es. 

This poem, which was a satire upon some strenuous 
blockhead, as the name implies, does not now exist; 
but it was so famous in former times that it seems 
proper to select it for a slight notice from among the 
score of lost works attributed to the hand of Homer.' 
It is said by Harpocration that Callimachus admired 
the Margites, and Dio Chrysostom says (Diss. 53) 
that Zeno the philosopher wrote a commentary on it. 
A genuine verse, taken from this poem, is well known: 

UoU’ T/mararo epya, KaKuq ddyrdaTaro rvavra. 

“ For much he knew, but everything knew ill." 

Two other lines in the same strain are preserved by 
Aristotle, and one less peculiar is found in the scho¬ 
liast to the Birds of Aristophanes (v. 914). By 
642 


others, however, the Margites was attributed to Pi- 
gres ; and Knight is of opinion, from the use of the 
augment in the few lines still preserved, that it was 
the work of an Athenian earlier than the time of 
Xerxes, but long after the lowest time of the compo 
sition of the Iliad. (Coleridge, Introduction, &c., p 
180.) 

2. Batrachomyomachia. 

“ The Battle of the Frogs and Mice” is a shou 
mock-heroic poem of ancient date. The text varies 
in different editions, and is obviously disturbed and 
corrupt to a great degree. It is commonly said to 
have been a juvenile essay of Homer’s genius; but 
others have attributed it to the same Pigres mention¬ 
ed above, whose reputation for humour seems to 
have invited the appropriation of any piece of ancient 
wit, the author of which, was uncertain. So little did 
the Greeks, before the era of the Ptolemies, know or 
care about that department of criticism which is em¬ 
ployed in determining the genuineness of ancient 
writings. As to this little poem being a youthful 
prolusion of Homer’s, it seems sufficient to say, that 
from the beginning to the end it is a plain and palpable 
parody, not only of the general spirit, but of numerous 
passages of the Iliad Itself; and, even if no such in¬ 
tention to parody were discoverable in it, the objection 
would still remain, that, to suppose a work of mere 
burlesque to be the primary effort of poetry in a simple 
age, seems to reverse that order in the development 
of national taste, which the history of every other peo¬ 
ple in Europe and of many in Asia has almost ascer¬ 
tained to be a law of the human mind. It is in a state 
of society much more refined and permanent than that 
described in the Iliad, that any popularity would at¬ 
tend such a ridicule of war and the gods as is com 
tained in this po^m ; and the fact of there having ex 
isted three other poems of the same kind, attributed 
for aught we can see, with as much reason to Homer, 
is a strong inducement to believe that none of then, 
were in reality of the Homeric age. Knight infers 
from the usage of the word d&roq, as a writing tablet, 
instead of dupdepa or a skin, which, according to He¬ 
rodotus (5, 58), was the material employed by the Asi¬ 
atic Greeks for that purpose, that this poem was an¬ 
other offspring of Attic ingenuity; and, generally, 
that the familiar mention of the cock (v. 191) is a 
strong argument against so ancient a date for its com 
position. 

3. Hymns. 

The Homeric Hymns, including the hymn to Ceres 
and-the fragment to Bacchus, which were discovered 
in the last century at Moscow, and edited by Ruhn- 
ken, amount to thirty-three ; but with the exception 
of those to Apollo, Mercury, Venus, and Ceres, they 
are so short as not to consist of more than about three 
hundred and fifty lines in all. Almost all modern 
critics, with the eminent exception of Hermann, deny 
that any of these hymns belong to Homer. Neverthe 
less, it is certain that they are of high antiquity, and 
were commonly attributed by the ancients to Homer 
with almost as much confidence as the Iliad and Odys¬ 
sey. Thucydides (3, 104) quotes a passage from the 
Hymn to Apollo, and alleges the authority of Homer, 
whom he expressly takes to be the writer, to prove an 
historical remark ; and Diodorus Siculus (3, 66 ; 4,2), 
Pausanias (2, 4), and many other ancient authors, cite 
different verses from these hymns, and a.ways treat 
them as genuine Homeric remains. On the other 
hand, in the Life under the name of Plutarch, nothing 
is allowed to be genuine but the Iliad and Odyssey ; 
Athenaeus (1, 19) suspects one of the Homeridse or 
Homeric rhapsodists to be the author of the Hymn to 
Apollo ; and the scholiast to Pindar (Nem. 2) testifies, 
that one Cynsethus, a Chian rhapsodist, who flourished 




H 0 M 


HON 


ill great reputation at Syracuse about 500 B.C., was 
supposed by many to be the real Homer of this par¬ 
ticular poem. One thing, however, is certain, that 
these hymns are extremely ancient, and it is probable 
that some of them only yield to the Iliad and Odyssey 
in remoteness of date. They vary in character and 
poetical merit; but there is scarcely one among them 
that has not something to interest us, and they have 
all of them, in a greater or less degree, that simple 
Homeric liveliness which never fails to charm us 
wherever we meet with it. 

4. Epigrams. 

Under the title of Epigrams are classed a few verses 
on different subjects, chiefly addresses to cities or 
private individuals. There is one short hymn to Nep¬ 
tune which seems out of its place here. In the fourth 
epigram, Homer is represented as speaking of his 
blindness and his itinerant life. As regards the gen¬ 
eral character of the Greek Epigram, it mav here be 
remarked, that u is so far from being the same with, 
or even like to, the Epigram of modern times, that 
sometimes it is completely the reverse. In general, 
the songs in Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Waller, and, 
where he writes with simplicity, in Moore, give a better 
notion of the Greek Epigrams than any other species 
of modern composition. 

5. Fragments. 

The Fragments, as they are called, consist of a few 
scattered lines which are said to have been formerly 
found in the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the other sup¬ 
posed works of Homer, end to have been omitted as 
spurious or dropped by chance from their ostensible 
context. Besides these, there are some passages from 
the Little Iliad, and a string of verses taken from Ho¬ 
mer’s answers in the old work, called the Contests of 
Homer and Hesiod. ( Coleridge, Introduction , &c., 
p. 235.) 

Qonclusion. 

Since the Homeric question was first agitated by 
Wolf and Heyne, it has been placed on a very differ¬ 
ent footing by the labours of more recent scholars. 
The student may consult with advantage the following 
works : Nitzsch, de Historia Homeri Meletemata. — 
Kreuser, Vorfragen uber Homeros. — Id., Homerische 
Rhapsoden .— Muller, Homerische Vorschule. — Hei- 
necke, Homer und Lycurg. — Knight, Prolegomena ad 
Homerum. — London Quarterly Review, No. 87. — 
Muller's Review of Nitzsch’s work, in the Gottingen, 
Gel. Anzeigen, for Febr., 1831.—Hermann’s remarks 
in the Wiener Jahrbiicher, vol. 54.— Hug, Erjindung 
der Buchstabenschrift. —An argument which confines 
itself to the writings of Wolf and Heyne, can now add 
but little to our means of forming a judgment on the 
Homeric question, and must keep some of its most 
important elements out of sight. ( Thirlwall's Greece, 
vol. 1, p. 248, in notis.) —The best edition of the Iliad 
is that of Heyne, Lips., 1802-1822,9 vols. 8vo. The 
most popular edition of the entire works is that of 
Clarke, improved by Ernesti, Lips., 1759, 1824, 
Glasg., 1814, 5 vols. 8vo. The most critical one, 
however, is that of Wolf, Lips., 1804-1807, 4 vols. 
12mo. A good edition of the Odyssey is still needed, 
though the want jnay in a great measure be supplied 
by the excellent commentary of Nitzsch, Hannov., 
1826-1831, 2 vols. 8vo.—II. A poet, surnamed, for 
distinction’ sake, the Younger. He was a native of 
Hierapolis in Caria, and flourished under Ptolemy 
Philadelphus. Homer the Younger formed one of the 
Tragic Pleiades. ( Scholl, Gesch. Gr. Lit.-, vol. 2, 
P- 41.) 

HomonIda, a strong fortress of Cilicia Trachea, on 
the confines of Isauria. This place Mannert makes 
to belong to Pisidia. (Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 2, p. 166.) 


The Hoinonadenses were a wild and plundering peo¬ 
ple, and greatly infested the neighbouring country. 
They were subdued, however, by the Roman com 
mander Quirinus, who blocked up the passages of the 
mountains, and reduced them by famine. D’Anville 
was of opinion, that Uomonada was represented by 
the fortress of Ermenak, situate near the sources ol 
the Giuk-sou; and this locality has been adopted by 
Gossellin and others. (French Strabo, vol. 4, pt. 2, 
p. 100.) But Col. Leake, in his map, supposes Er¬ 
menak to be Philadelphia. ( Cramer's Asia Minor, 
vol. 2, p. 333.) 

Honorius, son of Theodosius the Great, and young¬ 
er brother of Arcadius, was born at Constantinople 
A.D. 384. After the death of his father in 395, Ho¬ 
norius had for his share the Empire of the West, under 
the guardianship of Stilicho, a distinguished general 
of the imperial armies, and fixed his residence at Mi¬ 
lan. For several years after, Stilicho was the real 
sovereign of the West; and he also endeavoured to 
extend his sway over the territories of Arcadius in the 
East, under the pretence of defending them against 
the Goths. He gave his daughter Maria in marriage 
to Honorius, and recovered the province of Africa, 
which had revolted. About A.D. 400, the Goths and 
the Huns, under Alaric and Radagaisus, invaded Italy, 
but were repelled by Stilicho. In the year 402, Alaric 
came again into Italy, and spread alarm as far as Rome, 
when Stilicho hastily collected an army, with which he 
met Alaric at Pollentia, on the banks of the Tanarus, 
completely defeated him, and compelled him to re¬ 
cross the Noric Alps. After this victory Honorius 
repaired to Rome with Stilicho, where they were both 
received with great applause. On that occasion Ho¬ 
norius abolished by a decree the fights of gladiators, 
and he also forbade, under penalty of death, all sacri¬ 
fices and offerings to the pagan gods, and ordered 
their statues to be destroyed. In the year 404 Ho¬ 
norius left Rome for Ravenna, where he established 
his court, making it the seat of his empire, like another 
Rome, in consequence of which, the province in which 
Ravenna is situated assumed the name of Romania, 
Romaniola, and afterward Romagna, which last it re¬ 
tains to this day. In the following year Radagaisus 
again invaded Italy with a large force of barbarians, 
but was completely defeated, and put to death by Stil¬ 
icho, in the mountains near Fsesulse in Etruria. In 
the next year, the Vandals, the Alani, the Alemanni. 
and other barbarians, crossed the Rhine and invaded 
Gaul. A soldier, named Constantine, revolted in Brit¬ 
ain, usurped the imperial power, and, having passed 
over into Gaul, established his dominion over part of 
it, and was acknowledged by Honorius as his col¬ 
league, with the title of Augustus. Stilicho now 
began to be suspected of having an understanding 
with the barbarians, and especially with Alaric, to 
whom he advised the emperor to pay a tribute of 4000 
pounds’ weight of gold. Honorius. in consequence, 
gave an order for his death, which was executed at 
Ravenna, in August of the year 408. Historians are 
divided concerning the fact of Stilicho’s treason. Zos- 
imus and the poet Claudian consider it a calumny. 
His death, however, was fatal to the empire, of which 
he was the only remaining support. Alaric again in¬ 
vaded Italy, besieged Rome, and at last took it, and 
proclaimed the prefect Attalus emperor. Honorius 
meantime remained inactive, and shut up within Ra¬ 
venna. The continued indecision and bad faith of 
Honorius, or, rather, of his favourites, brought Alaric 
again before Rome, which was this time plundered by 
the invader (A.D. 410). After Alaric’s death, his 
son Ataulphus married Placidia, sister of Honorius, 
and took possession of Spain. The rest of the reign 
of Honorius was a succession of calamities. The 
Empire of the West was now falling to pieces on ev¬ 
ery side; and in the midst of the universal ruin,Hono* 

643 




HO R 


HOR aIIUS. 


nus died of the dropsy at Ravenna, in August, 423, 
leaving no issue. ( Gibbon , Decline and Fall , c. 29, 
seqq. — Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 12, p. 281.) 

Horapollo, or Horus Apollo, a grammarian of 
Alexandrea, according to Suidas, in the time of the 
Roman emperor Theodosius. He taught, first in his 
native city, and afterward in Constantinople, and 
wrote, under the title of T eyeviKa, a work on conse¬ 
crated places. Several other writers of this name are 
mentioned by Suidas, by Stephanus of Byzantium 
( s . v. ^eveOyOiq), by Photins (p. 536, ed. Bekker), and 
by Eustathius ( ad Od. 4). It is doubtful to which one 
of the whole number a treatise which has come down 
to us on Egyptian Hieroglyphics is to be ascribed. 
According to the inscription that is found in most 
MSS., the work was originally written in Egyptian, 
and translated into Greek by a person named Philip. 
But, whatever opinion we may form respecting the 
author, it is evident that the work could not have been 
written before the Christian era, since it contains allu¬ 
sions to the philosophical tenets of the Gnostics. Its 
merits are differently estimated. The object of the 
writer appears to have been, not to furnish a key to 
the Hieroglyphic system, but to explain the emblems 
and attributes of the gods. Champollion, and Lee- 
mans in his edition of the work, are disposed to at¬ 
tribute greater importance to it than former critics had 
been willing to allow. The best edition is that of Lee- 
mar.s, Amst., 1834, 8vo. Previous to the appearance 
of this, the best edition was that of De Pauw, Traj. ad 
Rhen., 1727, 4to. 

Hor^e (’'Qpat,), the Seasons or Hours, who had 
charge of the gates of Heaven. Hesiod says that they 
were the daughters of Jupiter and Themis ; and he 
names them Eunomia {Order), Dike {Justice), and 
Eirene {Peace). “They watch,” adds the poet, “over 
the works of mortal man” {spy’ dpaiovoc KaTaOvyroiGi 
(IpoTolm .— Theog., 903). By an unknown poet {ap. 
Stobceum. — Lobeck, Aglaoph., p. 600), the Horse are 
called the daughters of Time ; and by late poets they 
were named the children of the year, and their num¬ 
ber was increased to twelve. {Nonnus, 11,486.— Id., 
12, 17.) Some made them seven or ten in number. 
{Hygin., fab., 183.)—The Horae seem to have been 
originally regarded as presiding over the three seasons 
into which the ancient Greeks divided the year. 
{Welcker, Tril., p. 500, not.) As the day was simi¬ 
larly divided {II, 21, 111), they came to be regarded 
us presiding over its parts also ; and when it was far¬ 
ther subdivided into hours, these minor parts were 
placed under their charge, and were named from them. 
[Quint., Smyrn., 2, 595.— Nonnus, l. c.) Order and 
regularity being their prevailing attributes, the transi¬ 
tion was easy from the natural to the moral world ; 
and the guardian goddesses of the seasons were re¬ 
garded as presiding over law, justice, and peace, the 
great producers of order and harmony among men. 

(Keightley's Mythology, p. 190, seq.) 

Horatia, the sister of the Horatii, killed by her 
surviving brother for deploring the death of her be¬ 
trothed, one of the Curiatii, and for reproaching him 
with the deed by which she had lost her lover. ( Vid. 
Horatius II.) 

Horatius, I. Quintus Flaccus, a celebrated Ro¬ 
man poet, born at Venusia or Venusium, December 
8th, B.C. 65, during the consulship of L. Aurelius 
Cotta and L. Manlius Torquatus. {Od., 3, 21, 1.— 
Epod., 13, 6.) His father, who was a freedman of 
the Horatian family, had gained considerable property 
as a coactor, a name applied to the servant of the mon¬ 
ey-brokers, who attended at sales at auction, and col¬ 
lected the money from the purchasers. {Serm., 1, 6, 
6.) With these gains he purchased a farm in the 
neighbourhood of Venusia, on the banks of the Aufi- 
dus. In this place Horace appears to have lived until 
cis eleventh or twelfth year, when his father, dissatis- 
644 


fied with the country school of Flavius {Serm., 1 5 6, 
72), removed with his son to Rome, where he was 
placed under the care of a celebrated teacher, Orbilius 
Pupillus, of Beneventum, whose life has been written 
by Suetonius. {De Illustr. Gramm., c. 9.) After 
studying the ancient Latin poets {Epist., 2, 1, 70, seq.), 
Horace acquired the Greek language. {Epist., 2, 2, 
41, seq.) He also enjoyed, during the course of his 
education, the advice and assistance of his father, who 
appears to have been a sensible man, and who is men¬ 
tioned by his son with the greatest esteem and respect. 
{Serm., 1, 4, 105, seqq.; 1, 6, 76, seqq.) It is prob¬ 
able that, soon after he had assumed the toga virilis, 
at the age of seventeen, he went to Athens to pursue 
his studies {Epist., 2, 2, 43), where he appears to have 
remained till the breaking out of the civil war during 
the second triumvirate. In this contest he joined the 
army of Brutus, was promoted to the rank of military 
tribune {Serm., 1, 6, 48), and was present at the bat¬ 
tle of Philippi, his flight from which he compares to 
a similar act on the part of the Greek poet Alcaeus. 
{Od., 2, 7, 9.) Though the life of Horace was spared, 
his paternal property at Venusia was confiscated {Epist., 
2, 2, 49), and he repaired to Rome, with the hope of 
obtaining a living by his literary exertions. Some of 
his poems attracted the notice of Virgil and Varius, 
who introduced him to Maecenas, and the liberality of 
the minister quickly relieved the poet from all pecuni 
ary difficulties. From this eventful epoch for our bard, 
the current of his life flowed on in smooth and gentle 
course. Satisfied with the competency which the kind¬ 
ness of his patron had bestowed, Horace declined the 
offers made him by Augustus, to take him into his ser¬ 
vice as private secretary, and steadily resisted the 
temptation thus held out of rising to opulence and 
political consideration ; advantages which, to one of 
his philosophical temperament, would have been dearly 
purchased by the sacrifice of his independence. For 
that he was independent in the noblest sense of the 
word, in freedom of thought and action, is evidenced 
by that beautiful epistle to Maecenas, in which he states, 
that if the favour of his patron is to be secured by a 
slavish renunciation of his own habits and feelings, he 
will at once say, Farewell to fortune, and welcome pov¬ 
erty ! {Epist., 1, 7.)—Not long after his introduc¬ 
tion to Maecenas the journey to Brundisium took 
place, and the gift of his Sabine estate soon followed. 
Rendered independent by the bounty of Maecenas, high 
in the favour of Augustus, courted by the proudest pa¬ 
tricians of Rome, and blessed in the friendship of his 
brother poets, Virgil, Tibullus, and Varius, it is diffi¬ 
cult to conceive a state of more perfect temporal feli¬ 
city than Horace must have enjoyed. This happinesa 
was first sensibly interrupted by the death of Virgil, 
which was shortly succeeded by that of Tibullus. 
These losses must have sunk deeply into his mind. 
The solemn thoughts and grave studies which, in the 
first epistle of his first book, he declares shall hence¬ 
forward occupy his time, were, if we may judge from 
the second epistle of the second book, addressed to 
Julius Florus, confirmed by those sad warnings of the 
frail tenure of existence. The severest blow, however, 
which Horace had to encounter, was inflicted by the 
dissolution of his early friend and best patron Msece¬ 
nas. He had declared that he could never survive the 
loss of one who was “ part of his soul” {Od., 2, 17, 5), 
and his prediction was verified. The death of the 
poet occurred only a few weeks after that of his friend, 
on the 27th of November, B.C. 8, when he had nearly 
completed his 58th year, and his remains were de¬ 
posited next to those of Maecenas, at the extremity of 
the Esquiline Hill.—When at Rome, Horace resided 
in a small and plainly-furnished mansion on the Esqui¬ 
line. When he left the capital, he either betook him¬ 
self to his Sabine farm or his villa at Tibur, the mod¬ 
ern Tivoli. When in the country, as the whim seized 




JIORATIUS. 


HUR 


mm, tie would either study hard or be luxuriously idle. 
The country was the place where his heart abode, and 
here he displayed all the kindness of his disposition. 
At times reclining under the shade of a spreading tree, 
by the side of some “ bubbling runnel,” he would tem¬ 
per his Massic with the cooling lymph; at others he 
would handle the spade and mattock, and delight in 
the good-humoured jokes of his country neighbours 
when they laughed at him, with his little punchy fig¬ 
ure, puffing and blowing at the unwonted work. But 
his suppers here were the chief scene of his enjoy¬ 
ment. He would then collect around him the patri¬ 
archs of the neighbourhood, listen to their homely but 
practical wisdom, and participate in the merriment of 
his slaves seated around the blazing fire. Well and 
truly might he exclaim, “ Nodes cuenceque Deum /”— 
The character of Horace is as clearly developed in his 
writings, as the manner in which he passed his time, 
or the locality of his favourite haunts. Good sense 
was the distinguishing characteristic of his intellect; 
tenderness that of his heart. He acknowledged no 
master in philosophy, and his boast was not a vain one. 
Although leaning to the tenets of Epicurus, the “ sum- 
mum ionum ” of Horace soared far above selfishness. 
His happiness centred not in self, but was reflected 
from that of others. Culling what was best from each 
sect, he ridiculed unsparingly the vague theories of all; 
and, notwithstanding his shafts were chiefly directed 
against the Stoics, he assented to the loftier and better 
part of their doctrine, the superintendence of the di¬ 
vinity over the ways of man. Like those of every 
other mortal, the sterling qualities of Horace were 
mixed with baser alloy. His philosophy could not pre¬ 
serve- him, even at the age of fifty, from the weak¬ 
nesses of a boy, and he did not escape unsullied by the. 
vices of the time. These frailties apart, we recognise 
in Horace all the amenities, and most of the virtues, 
which adorn humanity.—The productions of Horace 
are divided into Odes , Epodes, Satires, and Epistles. 
The Odes, which for the most part are little more 
than translations or imitations of the Greek poets, are 
generally written in a very artificial manner, and sel¬ 
dom depict the stronger and more powerful feelings of 
human nature. The best are those in which the poet 
describes the pleasures of a country life, or touches on 
the beauties of nature, for which he had the most lively 
perception and the most exquisite relish : nor yet, at 
the same time, are his lyrical productions altogether 
without those touches which excite our warmer sym¬ 
pathies. But if wo were to name those qualities in 
which Horace most excels, we should mention his 
strong good sense, his clear judgment, and the pu¬ 
rity of his taste.—The best edition of Horace is that 
of Doring, Lips., 1S03, 1815,’ 1828, 2 vols. 8vo, 
reprinted at the London press, and also at Oxford, 
1838, in one volume 8vo.—Many critics have main¬ 
tained that each ode, each satire, dec., was published 
separately by the poet. But Bentley, in the preface to 
his edition of the poet’s works, argues, from the words 
of Suetonius, the practice of other Latin poets, and 
the expressions of Horace himself, that his works were 
originally published in books, in the order in which 
they now appear. Consult on this subject the “ Ho- 
ratius Restitutus ” of Tate, Cambr., 1832 ; 2d ed., 
1837. ( B'ahr, Gesch. Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. 220, seqq. 

—Quarterly Review, No. 124.— Encycl. Us. Knowl., 
vol. 12, p. 290.)—II. The name of three brave Ro¬ 
man twin-brothers, who fought, according to the old 
Roman legends, against the Curiatii, three Alban twin- 
brothers, about 667 years before the commencement 
of our era. Mutual acts of violence committed by the 
citizens of Rome and Alba had given rise to a war. 
The armies were drawn up against each other at the 
Fossa Cluilia, where it was agreed to avert a battle by 
a combat of three brothers on either side, namely, the 
Horatii and Curiatii, whose mothers were sisters. Ev¬ 


ery one will perceive that we have here types of the two 
nations regarded as sisters, and of the three tribes in 
each. In the first onset, two of the Horatii were slain 
by their opponents; but the third brother, by joining ad¬ 
dress to valour, obtained a victory over all his antago¬ 
nists. Pretending to fly from the field of battle, he sep¬ 
arated the three Curiatii, and then, attacking them one 
by one, slew them successively. As he ret urned tri¬ 
umphant to the city, his sister Horatia, who had been 
betrothed to one of the Curiatii, met and reproached her 
brother bitterly for having slain her intended husband. 
Horatius, incensed at this, stabbed his sister to the 
heart. He was tried and acquitted. ( Liv., 1, 26.) 

Horesti, a people of Scotland, mentioned by Ta 
citus. In Agricola's time, they seem to have been 
the inhabitants of what is now Angus. They were 
probably incorporated with, or subdued by, the Vaco- 
magi, before Ptolemy wrote his geography. Mannert 
places them near the Frith of Tay. {Tacit., Vit 
Agric., 38.) 

Hortensia, daughter of the orator Hortensius, and 
who would seem to have inherited a portion of her fa¬ 
ther’s eloquence. When the members of the second 
triumvirate had imposed a heavy tax upon the Roman 
matrons, and no one of the other sex dared to espouse 
their cause, Hortensia appeared as their advocate, and 
made so able a speech that a large portion of the bur¬ 
den was removed. (Val. Max., 8, 3, 3.) This ha¬ 
rangue was extant in Quintilian’s time, who speaks of 
it with encomiums. Freinshemius has adumbrated it 
from Appian in his Supplement to Livy. ( Quintil., 1, 
1, 6 — Freinsh., Suppl. Liv., 122, 44, seq.) 

Hortensius, Quintus, a celebrated orator, who 
began to distinguish himself by his eloquence in the 
Roman forum at the age of nineteen. He was born 
of a plebeian family, A.U.C. 640, eight years beforr 
Cicero. He served at first as a common soldier, and 
afterward as military tribune, in the Social war. In the 
contest between Marius and Sy 11a he remained neuter, 
and was one of the twenty qusestors established by 
Sylla, A.U.C. 674. He afterward obtained in succes¬ 
sion the offices of aedile, praetor, and consul, the last 
of these A.U.C. 685. As an orator he for a long time 
balanced the reputation of Cicero ; but, as his orations 
are lost, we can only judge of him by the account 
which his rival gives of his abilities. “ Nature had 
given him,” says Cicero, in his Brutus (c. 88), “ so 
happy a memory, that he never had need of commit¬ 
ting to writing any discourse which he had meditated, 
while, after his opponent had finished speaking, he could 
recall, word by word, not only what the other had said, 
but also the authorities which had been cited against 
himself. His industry was indefatigable. He never 
let a day pass without speaking in the forum, or pre¬ 
paring himself to appear on the morrow; oftentimes he 
did both. He excelled particularly in the art of divi¬ 
ding his subject, and in then reuniting it in a luminous 
manner, calling in, at the same time, even some of the 
arguments which had been urged against him. His 
diction was noble, elegant, and rich ; his voice strong 
and pleasing; his gestures carefully studied.” The 
eloquence of Hortensius would seem, in fact, to have 
been of that showy species called Asiatic, which flour¬ 
ished in the Greek colonies of Asia Minor, and was 
infinitely more florid and ornamental than the oratory 
of Athens, or even of Rhodes, being full of brilliant 
thoughts and of sparkling expressions. This glowing 
style of rhetoric, though deficient in solidity and weight, 
was not unsuitable in a young man ; and, being farther 
recommended by a beautiful cadence of periods, met 
with the utmost applause. But Hortensius, as he ad¬ 
vanced in life, did not correct this exuberance, nor 
adopt a chaster eloquence ; and this luxury and glit¬ 
ter of phraseology, which, even in his earliest years, 
I had occasionally excited ridicule or disgust among the 
oraver fathers of the senatorial order, being totally in 
1 b 645 



RORTENSIUS. 


HOR 


consistent with his advanced age and consular digni¬ 
ty, which required something more serious and com¬ 
posed, his reputation in consequence diminished with 
increase of years. Besides, from his declining health 
and strength, which greatly failed in his latter years, he 
may not have been able to give full effect to that showy 
species of rhetoric in which he indulged. A constant 
toothache and swelling in the jaws greatly impaired 
his powers of elocution and utterance, and became at 
length so severe as to accelerate his end. A few 
months, however, before his death, which happened in 
703, he pleaded for his nephew Messala, who was ac¬ 
cused if illegal canvassing, and who was acquitted 
more in consequence of the astonishing exertions of his 
advocate than the justice of his cause. So unfavoura¬ 
ble, indeed, was his case esteemed, that, however much 
the speech of Hortensius had been admired, he was re¬ 
ceived, on entering the theatre of Curio on the follow¬ 
ing day, with loud clamours and hisses, which were the 
more remarked as he had never met with similar treat¬ 
ment in the whole course of his forensic career. ( Cic., 
Ep. ad Fam., 8, 2.) The speech, however, revived all 
the ancient admiration of the public for his oratorical 
talents, and convinced them that, had he possessed 
the same perseverance as Cicero, he would not have 
ranked second to that orator. The speeches of Ilor- 
tensius, as has already been mentioned, lost part of 
their effect by the orator’s advance in years, but they 
suffered still more by being transferred to writing. As 
his chief excellence consisted in action and delivery, 
his writings were much inferior to what was expected 
from the high fame which he had enjoyed ; and ac¬ 
cordingly, after death, he retained little of that esteem 
which he had so abundantly possessed during life. 
{Quint., Inst. Orat., 11, 3.) It appears from Macro- 
bius, that he was much ridiculed by his contempora¬ 
ries on account of his affected gestures. In pleading, 
his hands were constantly in motion, whence he was 
often attacked by his adversaries in the forum for re¬ 
sembling an actor; and on one occasion he received 
from his opponent the appellation of Dionysia , which 
was the name of a celebrated dancing girl. {Aulus 
Gcllius , 1,8.) HCsopus and Roscius frequently attend¬ 
ed his pleadings to catch his gestures and imitate them 
on the stage. (Val. Max., 8, 10.) Such, indeed, was 
his exertion in action, that it was commonly said that 
it could not be determined whether people went to hear 
or to see him. Tike Demosthenes, he chose and put 
on his dress with the most studied care and neatness. 
He is said not only to have prepared his gestures, but 
also to have adjusted the plaits of his gown before a 
mirror when about to issue forth to the forum ; and to 
have taken no less care in arranging them than in 
moulding the periods of his discourse. He so tucked 
up his gown that the folds did not fall by chance, but 
were formed with great care by help of a knot care¬ 
fully tied, and concealed by the plies of his robe, which 
apparently flowed carelessly around him. {Macrobi- 
us, Sat., 3, 13.) Macrobius also records a story of his 
instituting an action of damages against a person who 
had jostled him while walking in this elaborate dress, 
and had ruffled his toga when he was about to appear 
in public with his drapery adjusted according to the 
happiest arrangement; an anecdote which, whether 
true or false, shows by its currency the opinion enter¬ 
tained of his finical attention to everything that con¬ 
cerned the elegance of his attire, or the gracefulness 
of his figure and attitudes. This appears to have been 
the only blemish in his oratorical character; and the 
only stain on his moral conduct was his practice of 
corrupting the judges of the causes in which he was 
employed, a practice which must be in a great measure 
imputed to the defects of the judicial system at Rome; 
for, whatever might be the excellence of the Roman 
aws, nothing could be worse than the procedure under 
which they were administered.—Hortensius was, from 
646 


A.U.C. 666 till 679, a space of thirteen years, at the 
head of the Roman bar; and being, in consequence, 
engaged during that long period on one side or other 
in every cause of importance, he soon amassed a pro¬ 
digious fortune. He lived, too, with a magnificence 
corresponding to his wealth. His house at Rome, 
which was splendidly furnished, formed the centre o 4 
the chief imperial palace, which increased from the 
time of Augustus to that of Nero, till it nearly covered 
the whole Palatine Mount, and branched over other 
hills. Besides his mansion in the capital, he possess¬ 
ed sumptuous villas at Tusculum, Bauli, and Lauren- 
tum, where he was accustomed to give the most ele¬ 
gant and expensive entertainments. His olive plan¬ 
tations he is said to have regularly moistened and be¬ 
dewed with wine; and, on one occasion, during the 
hearing of an important cause in which he was en¬ 
gaged along with Cicero, he begged the latter to change 
with him the previously arranged-order of pleading, as 
he was obliged to go to the country to pour wine on a 
favourite platanus, which grew near his Tusculan villa 
{Macrob., Sat., 3, 13.) Notwithstanding this profu 
sion, his heir found not less than 10,000 casks of wine 
in his cellar after his death. {Plin., 14, 14.) Besides 
his taste for wine and fondness for plantations, he in¬ 
dulged in a passion for pictures and fish-ponds. At his 
Tusculan villa he built a hall for the reception of a 
painting of the expedition of the Argonauts, by the 
painter Cydias, which cost the enormous sum of 
144,000 sesterces. A this country seat near Bauli, on 
the seashore, he vied with Lucullus and Philippus in 
the extent of his fish-ponds, which were constructed 
at immense cost, and so formed that the tide flowed 
into them. ( Varro, R. R., 3, 3 ) Yet such was his 
luxury, and reluctance to diminish his supply, that, 
when he gave entertainments at Bauli, he generally 
sent to the neighbouring town of Puteoli to buy fish 
for supper. {Id., 3, 17.) He had a vast number of 
fishermen in his service, and paid so much attention 
to the feeding of his fish, that he had always ready a 
large stock of small fish to be devoured by the great 
ones. It was with the utmost difficulty he could be 
prevailed upon to part with any of them ; and Varro 
declares that a friend could more easily get his chariot- 
mules out of his stable than a mullet from his ponds. 
He was more anxious about the welfare of his fish 
than the health of his slaves, and less solicitous that 
a sick servant might not take what was unfit for him, 
than that his fish might not drink water which was 
unwholesome. It is even said {Plin., 9, 55) that he 
was so passionately fond of a particular lamprey as to 
shed tears for its untimely death. At his Laurentan 
villa Hortensius had a wooded park of fifty acres, en¬ 
compassed with a warll. This enclosure he called a 
nursery of wild beasts, all of which came for their 
provender at a certain hour on the blowing of a horn : 
an exhibition with which he was accustomed to amuse 
the guests who visited him here. Varro mentions an 
entertainment where those invited supped on an emi¬ 
nence, called a Triclinium, in this sylvan park. Du¬ 
ring the repast, Hortensius summoned his Orpheus, 
who, having come with his musical instruments, and 
being ordered to display his talents, blew a trumpet, 
when such a multitude of deer, boars, and other quad¬ 
rupeds rushed to the spot from all quarters, that the 
sight appeared to the delighted spectators as beautiful 
as the courses with wild animals in the great circus ol 
the^Ediles. ( Dunlop . Hist. Rom. Lit., vol. 2, p. 222, 
seqq.) 

Horus, a son of Isis and v^sins, and one of the dei 
ties of Egypt. Horus is the sun at the summer sol¬ 
stice. From the month of April until this season of the 
year, Typhon was said to bear sway, with his attendant 
band of heats and maladies: the earth was parched 
gloomy, and desolate. Horus thereupon recalls his la¬ 
ther Osiris from the lower world, he revives the parent 





a u N 


HUNNI 


*.n the son, he avenges him on Typhon: the solstitial 
sun brings back the Nile from the bottom of Egypt, 
where it had appeared to be sleeping the # sleep of 
death; the waters spread themselves over the land, 
everything receives new life; contagious maladies, 
hurtful reptiles, parching heats which had engendered 
them, all disappear before the conqueror of Typhon ; 
through him nature revives, and Egypt resumes her 
fertility.—Horus was the deity of Apollinopolis Magna 
(Edfou ), where he had a magnificent temple. The 
Greeks compared him to their Apollo. He is the con¬ 
queror of Typhon, as Apollo is of Python, and Crishna 
of the serpent Caliya. ( Creuzer, Symbolik , vol. 2, p. 
276.— Creuzer , par Guigniaut, vol. 1, p. 400.—Com¬ 
pare the remarks of Jomard, in the “ Description de 
L'Egypte — Antiq.," vol. 1, p. 26, seqq.) 

Hostilia, a village on the Padus, or Po, now Os- 
nglia, in the vicinity of Cremona. ( Tacit ., Ann., 2, 
40.) 

Hostius, a Roman poet, contemporary with Lucil- 
ius the satirist. He wrote a poem on the Istrian war, 
which took place 576 A.U.C., or B.C. 178. Some 
fragments of this have reached our time. Hostius 
wrote also metrical annals, after the manner of En¬ 
nius. ( Weichert, de Hostio poeta, ejusque carm. reli- 
quiis, Commentatio, p. 1-18.) Some make him to 
have been the father, others the grandfather, of the 
Cynthia of Propertius. (Consult Brouckhus., ad Pro- 
pert., Elcg., 3, 18, 8.) 

Hunni, one of the barbarian nations that invaded 
the Roman empire. The first ancient author who 
makes mention of the Huns is Dionysius Periegetes. 
This geographer, who wrote probably about 30 years 
before our era, names four nations, which, in the order 
of his narrative, followed from north to south along 
the western shores of the Caspian Sea, viz., the Scy¬ 
thians, the Huns (Ovvvoi), the Caspians, and the Al¬ 
banians. Eratosthenes, cited by Strabo, places these 
nations in the same order ; but, in place of Huns, he 
calls the second O vltlol, Huitii, who were probably 
the Hunnic tribe farthest to the west. Ptolemy, who 
lived about the middle of the third century, placed the 
Huns ( Xovvoi ) between the Bastarnae and Roxolani, 
consequently on the two banks of the Borysthenes. 
The Armenian historians know this people under the 
denomination of Hounk, and place them to the north 
of Caucasus, between the Wolga and the Don. Hence 
they call the defile-of Derbend the “Rampart of the 
Hu ns.” In the geographical work falsely attributed 
to Moses of Chorene, the following passage occurs : 
“ The Massagetae dwell as far as the Caspian Sea, 
where is the branch of Mount Caucasus that contains 
the rampart of Tarpant (Derbend) and a wonderful 
tower built in the sea: to the north are the Huns 
within the city of Varkatchan, and others besides.” 
Moses of Chorene relates, in his Armenian history, 
the wars which Tiridates the Great, who reigned from 
259 to 312, sustained against certain northern nations 
that had made an irruption into Armenia. This prince 
attacked and dgfeated them, slew their king, and pur¬ 
sued them into the country of the Hounk (Huns). 
Zonaras states, that, according to some, the Emperor 
Carus was slain (A.D. 283) in an expedition against 
the Huns. From all that has been stated, we see 
clearly that this people were already known before 
their invasion of Europe, and that, when Ammianus 
Marcellinus speaks of them as a nation “ little known 
to the ancients,” he is not to be considered as mean¬ 
ing that there was no knowledge of them prior to A.D. 
376. “ They live,” remarks the same writer, “ be¬ 

yond the Palus Mseotis, on the borders of the Icy Sea. 
They are marked by extreme ferocity of manners. As 
soon as a child is born, they cut deep incisions into 
.ts cheeks, in order that the scars thus formed may 
prevent, at a later period, the first growth of the beard 
from appearing. They reach an advanced age without 


having any beard, and they are as deformed as eu 
nuchs. They are of squat figures, and have strong 
limbs and large heads. Their figure is a remarkable 
one; they are bent to such a degree that one woula 
almost fancy them to be brute beasts moving on two 
legs, or those rudely carved pillars which are used to 
support bridges, and which are cut into some resem¬ 
blance to a human form.” Zosimus, who wrote about 
a century after the first inroad of the Huns into Eu¬ 
rope, supposes them to be identical with the royal 
Scythians of Herodotus. Jornandes gives a fabulous 
account of their origin from some sorceresses who 
had united themselves with the impure spirits of the 
desert. He describes them as a race which showed 
no other resemblance to the human species than what 
the use of the faculty of speech afforded. The por¬ 
trait of these barbarians will be complete, if we add 
to it the description given by Sidonius Apollinaris, 
in 472 (2, 245, seqq.). The terror which these bar¬ 
barians occasioned, contributed, no doubt, in a very 
great degree, to heighten the picture which the ancient 
writers just mentioned have given us of their personal 
deformity. We must also take into consideration the 
following circumstance : The various hordes of bar¬ 
barians, such as the Lombards, Goths, Vandals, and 
others, which made inroads into the Roman empire 
before the invasion of the Huns, were of the Tndo- 
Gerfnanic race ; their physiognomy, therefore, did not 
differ much from that of the European nations already 
known to the Greeks and Romans. On a sudden the 
Huns presented themselves, belonging clearly to a 
different race, and whose figures and personal ap¬ 
pearance generally, in themselves far from pleasing, 
were rendered still more disagreeable to the ey'e by 
artificial means. The sudden presence of such a 
race could not but produce an alarming impression ; 
and hence the writers of that day can hardly find 
expressions strong enough to depict, amid the ter¬ 
ror by which they were surrounded, the repulsive de¬ 
formity of this new swarm of conquerors; they en¬ 
deavour to improve, the one upon the other, in placing 
before their readers the most frightful traits of savage 
portraiture.—As regards the origin of the Hunnic race, 
it must be confessed that great uncertainty has for a 
long time prevailed. Some have seen in them the 
progenitors of the Mogul and Calmuc Tartars of the 
present day, without having any better foundation for 
this opinion than vague descriptions of the forms of 
the Huns. These writers ought to have reflected that 
the descriptions in question would apply equally well 
to a large number of the races of northern Asia, to the 
Vogoules, the Samoiedes, the Toungouses, and oth¬ 
ers. De Guignes, on the other hand, traces up the 
Huns to a nomadic and powerful race which infested 
the borders of China, and who are called by the his¬ 
torians of this country Hioung nou. The simple re 
semblance of names has caused this theory to wear a 
plausible appearance, but Klaproth fully establishes its 
fallacy. This writer, in following as his guides the 
Byzantine historians, makes the Huns to have been 
of the same origin with the Avares, and to have been 
a branch of the Oriental Finns, and the progenitors of 
the present Vougoules. ( Klaproth, Tableaux Histo- 
riques de VAsie, p. 246.)—The history of the Huns, 
in its more important features, is as follows : In 374 
they quitted their settlements on the Wolga and Palus 
Maeotis, under the conduct of their monarch Balamir, 
and subjected the Akatsires, who, according to the 
statement of Priscus, had a common origin with them. 
Reunited to this people, they attacked the Alani, 
called TanaVtae from their dwelling on the banks of the 
Tanais or Don. The Alani, being conquered, made 
common cause with the Huns, and in 376 the united 
hordes invaded the country of the Ostrogoths. Her- 
mannrich, the king of this latter people, met with a 
total defeat, and killed himself in despair. His sue 

647 





H Y A 


H Y A 


jessor Vithimir endeavoured in vain to make head 
against the victors ; he was slain in battle, and the 
Ostrogoths were dispersed. The Visigoths, to the 
number of 200,000 combatants, retreated before them, 
and obtained permission of the Emperor Valens to 
cross tire Danube and retire into Thrace. In 380 
Balamir or Balamber desolated the Roman provinces 
and destroyed numerous cities. Their farther ravages, 
however, were bought off by an annual tribute until 
442, when, under Attila and Bleda, sons of Mound- 
zoukh, they ravaged Thrace and Illyria, and Theodo¬ 
sius II. was compelled to fly for refuge into Asia, and 
to conclude from that country a shameful peace with 
the invaders. In 444 Attila became sole monarch, 
and in 447 entered at the head of an immense army 
into the countries subject to the Eastern empire, and 
advanced to the very gates of Constantinople. The 
armies of Theodosius II. were everywhere defeated, 
and a fresh tribute alone saved the capital of the East. 
The death of Theodosius, which happened in 450, ap¬ 
peared to Attila to offer a new opportunity for farther 
exactions ; but Marcian, the new emperor, refused to 
listen to his demands ; and Attila, finding menaces in¬ 
effectual, began to seek various pretexts for carrying 
the war into the West. He penetrated into Gaul and 
ravaged various parts of the country, but was defeated 
in the battle of Chalons-sur-Marne. Notwithstanding, 
however, this overthrow, he soon made an irruption 
into Italy, ravaged Cisalpine Gaul, took Aquileia, and 
pillaged Milan and Pavia. He died this same year 
(453), on the night of his nuptials. The power of the 
Huns fell with Attila, and the nation was soon after 
dispersed. A portion of them settled in the country 
which from them was called Hungary. Some authors 
state, that the race of the ancient Huns were all cut 
off in the long war waged against them by Charle- 
mague, and that the country was afterward peopled 
by the neighbouring nations, to whom the present 
Hungarians owe their origin. But other and more ac¬ 
curate authors make the Hungarians of the present 
day to be descended from the ancient Huns mingled 
with other races. The personal appearance of the 
Huns does not, it is true, favour this idea; but the Fin¬ 
nic tribe, which formed the germe of the Hungarian 
nation, becoming intermingled in the course of time 
with Turkish, Slavonic, and Germanic races, may be 
said to have almost totally changed its external char¬ 
acteristics. The language of the present Hungarians, 
too, is composed of Finnic, Turkish, Slavonic, and 
German elements. ( Klaproth, Tableaux Historiques, 
&c., p. 247, seqq.) 

Hyacinthia, a festival, celebrated for three days in 
the summer of each year, at Amyclae, in honour of 
Apollo and his unhappy favourite Hyacinthus. ( Vid. 
Hyacinthus.) Muller gives strong reasons for suppo¬ 
sing that the Hyacinthia were originally a festival of 
Ceres. ( Dorians , vol. 1, p. 373.) 

Hyacinthus, a beautiful youth of Amyclas, beloved i 
by Apollo. He was playing one day at discus-throw- , 
mg with the god, when the latter made a great cast, ; 
and Hyacinthus running too eagerly to take up the 
discus, it rebounded and struck him in the face. The 
god, unable to save his life, changed him into the flow¬ 
er which was named from him, and on whose petals 
Grecian fancy saw traced al, at, the notes of grief. 
(Ovid, Met., 10, 162, seqq. — Apollod., 1, 3, 3.— Id., 3, i 
10, 3.— Eurip., Hel., 1489, seq .)—Other versions of 
the legend say that Zephyrus (the West Wind), en¬ 
raged at Hyacinthus’ having preferred Apollo to him- ; 
self, blew the discus, when flung by Apollo, against 
the head of the youth, and so killed him. (Eudocia, 
408.— Nonnus, 10, 253, seq. — Id., 29, 95, seq. — Lu¬ 
cian, D. D., 14.— Keightley's Mythology, p. 120.) 

Hyades, according to some, the daughters of Atlas 
and sisters of the Pleiades. The best accounts, how¬ 
ever, make them to have been the nymphs of Dodona, 
648 


d | unto whom Jupiter confided the nurture of Bacchus, 
e (Consult Guigniaut, vol. 3, p. 68.) Pherecydes give9 
e their narjjes as Ambrosia, Coronis, Eudora, Dione, 
, BSsula, and Polyxo. (Pherecyd., ap. Schoi., II, 18, 
o 486.) Hesiod, on the other hand, calls them Phaesula, 
) Coronis, Cleea, Phaeo, and Eudora. (Ap. Schoi. aa 
s Arat., Phoen., 172.) The Hyades went about with 
, their divine charge, communicating his discovery to 
1 mankind, until, being chased with him into the sea by 

- Lycurgus, Jupiter, in compassion, raised them to the 

- skies and transformed them into stars. (Pherecyd., 
I l. c.) According to the more common legend, hovv- 
l ever, the Hyades, having lost their brother Hyas, who 
, was killed by a bear or lion, or, as Timseus says, by an 
r asp, were so disconsolate at his death, that they pined 
1 away and died; and after death they were changed into 
; stars. (Hygin., fab., 192.— Muncker, ad loc.) —The 
, stars called Hyades ('Tadef) derived their name from 
. vu, “ to make wet," “ to rain," because their setting, at 

■ both the evening and morning twilight, was for the 

■ Greeks and Romans a sure presage of wet and stormy 
i weather, these two periods falling respectively in the 

latter half of April and November. (Ideler, Sternna- 

■ men, p. 139.) On this basis, therefore, both the above 
legends respecting the Hyades were erected by the po¬ 
ets. In the case of the nymphs of Dodona, the Hy¬ 
ades become the type of the humid principle, the nur- 
turer of vegetation ; while in the later fable, the rain¬ 
drops that accompany the setting of the Hyades are the 
tears of the dying daughters of Atlas. Hence Horace, 
with a double allusion to both fable and physical phe¬ 
nomena, calls the stars in question “ tristes Hyadas .” 
(Od., 1 , 3, 14.) — The Roman writers sometimes call 
these stars by the name of Suculce, “ little swine,” 
for which singularly inelegant epithet Pliny assigns as 
singular a derivation. According to this writer, the 
Roman farmers mistook the etymology of the Greek 
name Hyades, and deduced it, not from veiv, u tc 
rain," but from %, gen. voe, “ a sow." (Plin., 18, 26.) 
The reason for this amusing derivation appears to ha vs 
been, because the continual rains at the setting of the 
Hyades made the roads so miry, that these stars 
seemed to delight in dirt like swine ! Isidorus derives 
the term Suculce from succus, in the sense of “ moist¬ 
ure” or “wet” (“a succo et pluviis.” — Isid., Orig., 
3, 70), an etymology which has found its way into 
many modern works. Some grammarians, again, 
sought to derive the name Hyades from the Greek T 
(upsilon), in consequence of the resemblance which 
the cluster of stars bears to that letter. (Schoi. ad 
II., 1. c.) —The Hyades, in the celestial sphere, are at 
the head of the Bull (knl tov (dovupavov). The num¬ 
ber of the stars composing the constellation are vari¬ 
ously given. Thales comprehended under this name 
only the two stars a and e ; Euripides, in his Phaethon, 
made the number to be three ; Achseus gave four; 
Hesiod five ; and Pherecydes, who must have inclu¬ 
ded the horns of the Bull, numbered seven. (Schoi. 
ad Arat., 1. c.) The scholiast on the Iliad, however, 
gives only the names of six Hyades,*when quoting 
from the same Pherecydes, the name of one having 
probably been dropped by him; for the Atlantides 
were commonly reckoned as amounting to fourteen, 
namely, seven Pleiades and seven Hyades.—The 
names of the Hyades, as given by Hyginus, are evi¬ 
dently in some degree corrupted, and in emending th«» 
text we ought to employ the scholia on Homer 3 (//., 
18, 486), especially those from the Venetian MS., to¬ 
gether with the remarks of Valckenaer (ad Amnion., 
p. 207, seqq. — Buttmann, Bemerk. zu Ideler, p. 315.) 

Hyampeia, one of the two lofty rocks which rose 
perpendicularly from behind Delphi, and obtained for 
Parnassus the epithet of dLKopvtyog, or the two-headed. 
(Eurip., Phoen., 234 .—Herodot., 8, 39.) The other 
was called Naupleia. It was from these elevated 
crags that culprits and sacrilegious criminals were 





H Y D 


HYti 


nurled by the Delphians, and in this manner the un¬ 
fortunate HCsop was barbarously murdered. ( Plut., 
de Ser. Num. Vind. — Diod. Sic., 16, 523.— Cramer's 
Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 170.) 

Hyampolis, a town in the northern extremity of 
Phocis, and one of the most ancient places in that ter¬ 
ritory. It was said to have been founded by the Hy¬ 
antes, one of the earliest tribes of Greece. (Strabo, 
423 ) Herodotus places Hyampolis near a defile lead¬ 
ing towards Thermopylas, where, as he reports, the 
Pherians gained a victory over the Thessalians, who 
had invaded their territory. (Herod., 8, 28.) He in¬ 
form*". us elsewhere that it was afterward taken and de¬ 
stroyed by the Persians. (Herodot., 8, 33.) Diodo¬ 
rus states, that the Boeotians defeated the Phocians on 
one occasion near Hyampolis, and Xenophon affirms 
that its citadel was taken by Jason of Pheras. (Diod. 
Sic., 6, 4.) Tl\e whole town was afterward destroyed 
by Philip and the Amphictyons. (Pausan., 10, 37.) 
Both Pliny (4, 7) and Ptolemy (p. 87) erroneously as¬ 
cribe this ancient city to Boeotia. The ruins of Hy¬ 
ampolis may be seen near the village of Bogdana, 
upon a little eminence at the junction of three valleys. 
(Gell's Itin., p. 223.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 2, 
p. 184, seqq.) 

Hyantes, the name of an ancient people of Bceotia, 
who succeeded the Ectenes in the possession of that 
country when the latter were exterminated by a plague. 
(Strabo, 401.— Pausan., 9, 5.) Ovid applies the epi¬ 
thet Hyantius to Actaeon, as equivalent to Boeotus. 
(Met., 3, 147.) 

Hyantis, an ancient name of Boeotia, from the Hy¬ 
antes. (Vid. Hyantes.) 

Hyas, the son of Atlas, and brother of the Atlanti- 
des. He was extremely fond of hunting, and lost his 
life in an encounter with a bear or lion, or, as Timaeus 
relates, from the bite of an asp. (Hygin., fab., 192.— 
Munch., ad loc. — Vid. Hyades.) 

Hybla, I. the name of three towns in Sicily ; Hybla 
Major, Minor, and Parva. The first was situate near 
the south of Mount HCtna, on a hill of the same name 
with the city; near it ran the river Simaethus. This 
was the Hybla so famous in antiquity for its honey and 
bees. (Steph. Byz., s. v .— Pausan., 5, 23.)—II. The 
second place was called also Herana ; it was situate in 
the southern part of Sicily, and is placed in the itinerary 
of Antonine on the route from Agrigentum to Syra¬ 
cuse. On D’Anville’s map it is north of Camarina. 
This is now Calata Girone. (Liv., 24, 30.— Steph. 
Byz., s. t?.)—III. The last place was a maritime one 
on the eastern coast of Sicily, above Syracuse. It 
was also denominated Galaotis, but more frequently 
Megara, whence the gulf to the south of it was called 
Megarensis Sinus. (Plin., 3, 8.— Diod. Sic., 4, 80.) 

Hydaspes, a river of India, and one of the tributa¬ 
ries of the Indus. D’Anville makes it to be the mod¬ 
ern Shantrou; Mannert is in favour of the Behut. The 
true modern name, however, is the Ilhum or Ihylum. 
As regards the variety of appellations given to this 
stream in both ancient and modern writers (no less 
than twelve in number), consult Vincent, Voyage of 
Nearchus, p. 91, seq. — Ancient Commerce, vol. 1, p. 
91. 

Hydra, a celebrated monster, which infested the 
Lernean marsh and its vicinity. It was destroyed by 
Hercules in his second labour. (Vid. Hercules, where 
h full account is given.) 

Hydraotes, a tributary to the Indus, now the Ra- 
vee. Strabo and Quintus Curtius call it the Hyarotes, 
while Ptolemy styles it the Rhuadis. The Sanscrit 
name is Irawutti. (Consult Vincent, Voyage of Ne¬ 
archus, p. 98.— Ancient Commerce, vol. l,p. 98.) 

Hydrophoria, a festival observed at Athens, so call¬ 
ed envo tov (popeiv vSop, from carrying water. It was 
celebrated in commemoration of those who perished 
in the deluge. (Plut.,Vit Syll — Suid.,s.v. — Theo- 
4 N 


pomp., ap. Schol. ad Arist., Acharn., 1075.) There 
was also another festival of the same name, which ia 
said to have originated in the island of iEgina, when 
the Argonauts landed there for water. A friendly 
contest took place between the crews of the different 
vessels, as to who should display the most speed in 
carrying water to the ships. ( Apollod ., 1, 9, 26.— 
Apoll. Rh., 4, 1766.— Muller, Mginetica, p. 24, n. v.) 

Hydruntum and Hydrus ('Y dpovq, gen. 'Y dpovv- 
roq), I. a port and city of Calabria, 50 miles south ol 
Brundisium. It was a place of some note as early as 
the time of Scylax, who names it in his Periplus 
(p. 5). It was deemed the nearest point of Italy to 
Greece, the distance being only 50 miles, and the 
passage might be effected in five hours. (Cic., Ep. 
ad Att., 15, 21.) This circumstance led Pyrrhus, as 
it is said, to form the project of uniting the two coasts 
by a bridge thrown across from Hydruntum to Apol- 
lonia. (Plin., 3, 11.) In Strabo’s time, Hydruntum 
was only a small town, though its harbour was still 
frequented. (Strabo, 281.) Stephanus Byzantinus 
records a tradition, from which it would appear that 
Hydruntum was founded by some Cretans. The 
modern name is Otranto. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 
2, p. 309.)—II. A small river running close to Hy¬ 
druntum. It is now the Idro. (Lucan, 5, 374.) 

Hygeia, the goddess of health, daughter of JEscu- 
lapius, held in great veneration among the ancients. 
She was commonly worshipped in the same temple 
with yEsculapius. Her statue, moreover, was often 
placed by the side of that of Apollo, who then derived 
from her a surname. So also, on the Acropolis at 
Athens, her statue stood near that of Minerva, who 
was hence called Minerva-Hygeia. (Pausan., 1, 23.) 
—Hygeia was usually represented holding a cup in one 
hand, and a serpent in the other, which twines round 
her arm and drinks from the cup. The long robe in 
which she is attired, as well as the serpent which she 
holds, sufficiently distinguish her from Hebe, who is 
also represented holding a cup. (Vollmer, Wortcrb. 
der Mythol., p. 899.) 

HygInus Caius Julius (written also Higinus, Hy- 
genus, Yginus, or Iginus), a celebrated grammarian. 
He is mentioned by Suetonius as a native of Spain, 
though some have supposed him an Alexandrean, and 
to have been brought to Rome after the capture of 
that city by Ccssar. Hyginus was a freedman of Au¬ 
gustus Caesar’s, and was placed by that emperor over 
the library on the Palatine Hill. He also gave in¬ 
struction to numerous pupils. Hyginus was inti¬ 
mately acquainted with Ovid and other literary char¬ 
acters of the day, and was said to be the imitator of 
Cornelius Alexander, a Greek grammarian. Some 
suppose him to have been the faithless friend of whom 
Ovid complains in his Ibis. His works, which were 
numerous, are frequently quoted by the ancients with 
great respect. The principal ones appear to have 
been: 1. De Urbibus Italicis: 2. De Trojams Fam- 
iliis : 3. De Claris Viris : 4. De Proprietatibus Deo- 
rum : 5. De Diis Penatibus : 6. A Commentary on 
Virgil: 7. A Treatise on Agriculture.—These works 
are all lost. Those which are extant, and are ascribed 
to Hyginus, were probably written by another individ¬ 
ual of the same name. These are : 1. Fabularum 
Liber, a collection of 277 fables, taken for the most 
part from Grecian sources, and embracing all the most 
important legends of antiquity. It is written in a 
very inferior style, but is still of great importance for 
the mythologist. 2. Poeticon Astronomicon. This, 
like the previous work, is in prose, and consists of four 
books, being partly astronomical and mathematical, 
partly mythological and philosophical in its character, 
since it gives the origin of the Catasterisms according 
to the legends of the poets. The proem of the work 
is addressed to a certain Quintus Fabius, in whom 
some, without any sufficient reason whatsoever, pre 

649 



H Y L 


HYP 


tend to recognise Q. Fabius Quintilianus. This work 
also is written in a careless and inferior manner, and 
yet is very important for obtaining a knowledge of an¬ 
cient astronomy, and for a correct understanding of 
the poets. The principal source, whence the writer 
obtained his materials, was, according to Salmasius 
(de Ann. Climact., p. 594), the Greek Sphaera (2 (paipa) 
of Nigidius ; but, according to Scaliger (Jos. Seal, ad 
Manil., 1, p. 33.— Id., ad Euseb., p. 10), he drew them 
from Eratosthenes and others.—An examination of the 
style and character of these two works will leave no 
doubt on our mind that the author of them was not the 
celebrated grammarian of the Augustan age ; but that 
these were written at a later period. Many regard the 
Fables as a selection made from several earlier works, 
by a grammarian of a later day, probably Avianus, whose 
name Barth thought he had discovered in one of the 
MSS. (Barth, Advers., 10,12.— Id., 10, 20.) Schef¬ 
fer places the writer, about whose name, Hyginus, 
there cannot well be any doubt, in the age of the An- 
tonines. (De Hygini Script, fabul. estate atque sty¬ 
lo.) Muncker thinks that many parts are taken from 
the earlier Hyginus, and that the rest is the produc¬ 
tion of a very inferior writer. (Munch., Preef. ad Hy- 
gin., tftf, seqq.) N. Heinsius makes the compiler 
of the work to have lived under Theodosius the young¬ 
er ; and Van Staveren regards the collection as hav¬ 
ing been made at a late period, with the name of an 
ancient grammarian prefixed to it. (Preef. ad Auct. 
Mythogr., sub fin.) Niebuhr, finally, thinks that a 
mythological fragment found by him (Fragmenlum de 
rebus Thebanis mythologicis) formed part of the work 
out of which, by the aid of numerous additions, the 
two productions that now go by the name of Hyginus 
appear to have originated. (Cic., Oral, pro Rabir., 
&c., Fragm., p. 105, seqq., Rom., 1820, 8vo.) The 
best editions of Hyginus are : that of Muncker, Amst., 
1681, 2 vols. 8vo, and that of Van Staveren, Lugd. 
Bat., et Amst., 1742, 4to. (Bahr, Gesch. Rom. Lit n, 
vol. 1, p. 712, seqq.) 

Hylactor, one of Actaeon’s dogs, named from his 
barking (vHa/crti, “ to baric"). 

Hylas, I. a son of Theodamas, king of Mysia, and 
of Menodice, who accompanied Hercules in the Argo. 
On the coast of Mysia the Argonauts stopped to ob¬ 
tain a supply of water, and Hylas having gone for 
some, was seized and kept by the nymphs of the 
stream into which he dipped his urn. Hercules went 
in quest of him, and in the midst of his unavailing 
search was left behind by the Argo. (Apollod., 1, 9, 
19-— Apoll. Rh., 1, 1207, seq. — Munch., ad Anton. 
Lib., 26.— Sturz, ad Hellanic. firagm., p. 111.)—It was 
an ancient custom of the Bithynians to lament in the 
burning days of midsummer, and call out of the well, 
into which they fabled he had fallen, a god named 
Hylas. The Maryandinians lamented and sought Bor- 
rnos, and the Phrygians Lityorses, with dirges, in a 
similar manner. This usage of the Bithynians was 
adopted into their mythology by the Greek inhabitants 
of Cius, near which the scene of the fable was laid, 
and it was connected in the manner just narrated with 
the Argonautic expeditions, and the history of Hercu¬ 
les. (Muller, Orchom., p. 293.— Id., Dorians, vol. 1, 
p. 367, 457.)—II. A river of Bithynia, flowing into 
the Sinus Cianus, near the town of Cius, and to the 
southwest of the lake Ascanius and the city of Nicaea. 
The inhabitants of Cius celebrated yearly a festival in 
honour of Hylas, who was carried off by the nymphs, as 
is above mentioned, in the neighbourhood of this river. 
The river was named after him. At this celebration it 
was usual to call with loud cries upon Hylas. (Plin., 
5, 32.) Consult remarks under the article Hylas, I. 

Hyllus, I. a son of Hercules and Dejanira, who, 
after his father’s death, married Iole. According to 
the common legend, he was persecuted, as his father 
had been, by Eurystheus, and obliged to fly from the 
650 


Peloponnesus. The Athenians gave a kind reception 
to Hyllus and the rest of the Heraclidae, and marched 
against Eurystheus. Hyllus obtained a victory over 
his enemies, killed with his own hand Eurystheus, and 
sent his head to Alcmena, his grandmother. Some 
time after he attempted to recover the Peloponnesus 
with the other Heraclidse, but was killed in single com¬ 
bat by Echemus, king of Arcadia. (Vid. Heraclidse, 
Hercules.— Herodot., 7, 204, &c.— Ovid, Met., 9, 279, 
—II. A river of Lydia, which falls into the Hermus. It 
is mentioned by Homer (II., 20, 392). Strabo states 
that it was named in his time the Phrygius. Pliny, 
however, distinguishes between the Hyllus and the 
Phryx or Phrygius (5, 29); and, if he is correct, it is 
probable that, in his opinion, the Hyllus was the river 
of Thyatira; but the Phrygius, the larger branch, 
which comes from the northeast, and rises in the hills 
of the ancient Phrygia Epictetus. (Cramer's Asia 
Minor, vol. 1, p. 428.) 

Hymen^eus and Hymen, the god of marriage, was 
said to be the offspring of the muse Urania, but the 
name of his sire was unknown. (Catullus, 61, 2.— 
Nonnus, 33, 67.) Those wh'o take a less sublime 
view of the sanctity of marriage, give him Bacchus 
and Venus for parents. (Servius, ad JEn., 4, 127.) 
He was invoked at marriage festivals. (Eurip., Tro- 
ad., 310.— Catull., 1. c.) By the Latin poets he is 
presented to us arrayed in a yellow robe, his temples 
wreathed with the fragrant plant amaracus, his locks 
dropping perfume, and the nuptial torch in his hand. 
(Catull., 1. c.—Ovid, Her., 20, 157, seqq.—Id., Met., 
10, l, seq.) 

Hymettus, a mountain of Attica, southeast of 
Athens, and celebrated for its excellent honey. Ac¬ 
cording to Hobhouse, Hymettus approaches to within 
three miles of Athens, and is divided into two ranges , 
the first running from east-northeast to southwest, 
and the second forming an obtuse angle with the first, 
and having a direction from west-northwest to east- 
southeast. One of these summits was named Hy¬ 
mettus, the other Anydros, or the dry Hymettus. 
(Theophr., de Sign. PL, p. 419, Heins.) The first is 
now called Trelo Vouni, the second Lambra Vouni. 
The modern name of Hymettus (Trelo Vouni) means 
“ the Mad Mountain.” This singular appellation is ac¬ 
counted for, from the circumstance of its having been 
translated from the Italian Monte Matto, which is no¬ 
thing else than an unmeaning corruption of Mons Hy¬ 
mettus. The same writer states, that Hymettus is 
neither a high nor a picturesque mountain, but a flat 
ridge of bare rocks. The sides about half way up are 
covered with brown shrubs and heath, whose flowers 
scent the air with delicious perfume. The honey of 
Hymettus is still held in high repute at Athens, being 
distinguished by a superior flavour and a peculiar aro¬ 
matic odour, which plants in this vicinity also possess. 
(Hobhouse's Journey, vol. 1, p. 320.) Herodotus af¬ 
firms that the Pelasgi, who, in the course of their 
wanderings, had settled in Attica, occupied a district 
situated under Mount Hymettus : from this, however, 
they were expelled in consequence, as Hecataaus af¬ 
firmed, of the jealousy entertained by the Athenians 
of the superior skill exhibited by these strangers in 
the culture of land (6, 137). Some ruins, indicative 
of the site of an ancient town near the monastery of 
Syriani, at the foot of Trelo Vouni, have been thought 
to correspond with this old settlement of the Pelasgi, 

apparently called Larissa. (Strabo, p. 440._ GelVi 

Itinerary, p. 94. — Kruse, Hellas, vol. 1, p. 294. 
Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 391.) 

Hypanis, I. a river of European Scythia, now called 
Bog, which falls into the Borysthenes, after a south¬ 
east course of about 400 miles, and with it into the 
Euxine. (Herod., 4,52.)—II. A river of Asia, rising 
in Mount Caucasus, and falling into the Palus Ma>o? 
tis. (Vid. Vardanus.) 





HYP 


HYP 


Hypata, the principal town of the ^Enianes, in 
Thessaly, on the river Sperchius. Livy mentions it 
as being in the possession of the HStolians, and as a 
place where their national council was frequently 
convened (36, 14). Its women were celebrated for 
their skill in magic. (Apul., Met., 1, p. 104.— Thc- 
ophr., Hist. Plant., 9, 2.) Hypata was still a city of 
note in the time of Hierocles (p. 642). Its ruins 
are to be seen on the site called Castritza, near the 
modern Patragick, which represents probably the 
NesePatraeof the Byzantine historians. ( Nicephorus 
Gregor., 4, p. 67.— Cramer's Ancient Greece , vol. 1, 
p. 447.) 

Hypatia, a female mathematician of Alexandrea, 
0 daughter of Theon, and still more celebrated than her 
father. She was born about the end of the fourth cen¬ 
tury. Endowed with a rare penetration of mind, she 
joined to this so great a degree of ardour in the path 
of self-instruction, as to consecrate to study her entire 
days and a large portion of the night. She applied 
herself in particular to the philosophy of Plato, whose 
sentiments she preferred to those of Aristotle. Fol¬ 
lowing the example of .these great men, she resolved 
to add to her information by travelling; and, having 
reached Athens, attended there the lectures of the 
ablest instructors. On her return to her native city, 
she was invited by the magistrates to give lessons in 
philosophy, and Alexandrea beheld a female succeed 
to that long line of illustrious teachers which had ren¬ 
dered its school one of the most celebrated in the 
world. She was an Eclectic; but the exact sciences 
formed the basis of all her instructions, and she ap¬ 
plied their demonstrations to the principles of the 
speculative sciences. Hence she was the first who 
introduced a rigorous method into the teaching of phi¬ 
losophy. She numbered among her disciples many 
celebrated men, among others Synesius, afterward 
bishop of Ptolema'is, who preserved during his whole 
life the most friendly feelings towards her, although 
she constantly refused to become a convert to Chris¬ 
tianity. Hypatia united to the endowments of mind 
many of the attractions and all the virtues of her sex. 
Her dress was remarkable for its extreme simplicity ; 
her conduct was always above suspicion ; and she 
knew well how to restrain within the bounds of re¬ 
spect those of her auditors who felt the influence of 
her personal charms. All idea of marriage was con¬ 
stantly rejected by her as threatening to interfere with 
her devotion to her favourite studies. Merit so rare, 
and qualities of so high an order, could not fail to ex¬ 
cite jealousy. Orestes, governor of Alexandrea, ad¬ 
mired the talents of Hypatia, and frequently had re¬ 
course to her for advice. He was desirous of repress¬ 
ing the too ardent zeal of St. Cyrill, who saw in Hy¬ 
patia one of the principal supports of paganism. The 
partisans of the bishop, on their side, beheld in the 
measures of the governor the result of the counsels of 
Hypatia; the most seditious of their number, having 
at their head an ecclesiastic named Peter, seized upon 
Hypatia as she was proceeding to her school, forced 
her to descend from her chariot, and dragged her into 
a neighbouring church, where, stripped of her vest¬ 
ments, she was put to death by her brutal foes. Her 
body was then torn to pieces, and the palpitating 
members were dragged through the streets and finally 
consigned to the flames. This deplorable event look 
place in the month of March, A.D. 415.—The works 
of Hypatia were lost in the burning of the Alexandrean 
library. In the number of these were, a Commentary 
on Diophantus, an Astronomical Canon, and a Com¬ 
mentary on the Conics of Apollonius of Perga. The 
very names of her other productions are lost. The 
letter published by Lupus, in his Collect. Var. Epist., 
is evidently supposititious, since it contains mention of 
the condemnation of Nestorius, which was posterior 
to the death of Hypatia. In the works of Synesius, 


published by Petavius (1633, fol.), are found seven of 
the letters written by that prelate to Hypatia ; but we 
have to regret the loss of her answers, which would 
have thrown much light on the subject matter of the 
epistles in question. The Greek Anthology contains 
an epigram in praise of Hypatia, attributed to Paulus 
Silentiarius. For farther information relative to this 
celebrated female, consult Menage, Hist. Multer. Phi 
losophor., p. 52, seqq.; a Dissertation of Desvignoles, 
in the Bibl. German., vol. 3 ; and a Letter of the Ab¬ 
be Goujet, in the fifth and sixth volumes of the Con¬ 
tinuation des Memoires de Literature , by Desmolets. 
Socrates Scholasticus also gives us some account of 
her method of instruction. (Hist. Eccles., 7, 15.) 

Hyperborei, a name given by the ancient writers 
to a nation supposed to dwell in a remote quarter of 
the world, beyond the wind Boreas, or the region where, 
in the popular belief, this wind was supposed to begin 
to blow. Hence they were thought to live in a de¬ 
lightful climate, and in the enjoyment of every bless¬ 
ing, and to attain also to an incredible age, even to a 
thousand years. ( Pind., 01., 3, 55.— Pherenicus, ap. 
Schol. ad Pind., 1. c.) —The term Hyperborean has 
given rise to various opinions. Pelloutier makes the 
people in question to have been the Celtic tribes near 
the Alps and Danube. Pliny places them beyond the 
Rhipean mountains and the northeast wind, “ ultra 
aquilonis initia." Mention is made of them in sev¬ 
eral passages of Pindar ; and the scholiast on the 8th 
Olympiad, v. b3, observes, elg 'Tk epbopiovg, evOa 'lcr- 
rpog rag Tryydg exel, to the Hyperboreans, where the Is- 
ter has its rise. Protarchus, who is quoted by Siepha- 
nus of Byzantium under the word 'Y7r epSopeot, states, 
that the Alps and Rhipean Mountains were the same, 
and that all the nations dwelling at the foot of this 
chain were called Hyperboreans. It would appear 
from these and other authorities (an enumeration cf 
most of which is made by Spanheim, ad Callim., 
Hymn, in Del., v. 281), that the term Hyperborean 
was applied by the ancient writers to every nation sit¬ 
uated much to the north. But whence arise the highly 
coloured descriptions which the ancients have left us 
of these same Hyperboreans'? It surely could not be, 
that rude and barbarous tribes gave occasion to those 
beautiful pictures of human felicity on which the poets 
of former days delighted to dwell. “ On sweet and 
fragrant herbs they feed, amid verdant and grassy pas¬ 
tures, and drink ambrosial dew, divine potation.; all 
resplendent alike in coeval youth, a placid serenity for 
ever smiles on their brows, and lightens in their eyes ; 
the consequence of a just temperament of mind and 
disposition, both in the parents and in the sons, dispo¬ 
sing them to do what is just and to speak what is wise. 
Neither diseases nor wasting old age infest this holy 
people ; but, without labour, without war, they con¬ 
tinue to live happily, and to escape the vengeance of 
the cruel Nemesis.” Thus sang Orpheus and Pindar. 
If an opinion might be ventured, it would be this, that 
all the traditions respecting the Hyperborean race 
which are found scattered among the works of the an¬ 
cient writers, point to an early and central seat of civ¬ 
ilization, whence learning and the arts of social life di¬ 
verged over the world. Shall we place this seat of 
primitive refinement in the north 1 But, it may be re¬ 
plied, the earliest historical accounts which we have of 
those regions represent them as plunged in the deep¬ 
est barbarism. The answer is an easy one. Ages of 
refinement may have rolled away, and been succeeded 
by ages of ignorance. Who will venture to say, that 
the northern regions of Europe must not, at an early pe¬ 
riod, have enjoyed a milder climate, when the vast quan¬ 
tities of amber found in the environs of the Baltic clear¬ 
ly show that the forests, now imbedded in the earth, in 
which amber is produced, could not have yielded this 
substance if a very elevated temperature had not pre¬ 
vailed there. We will abandon, however, this argu- 

651 



HYP 


HYP 


inent, strong as it is, and pursue the inquiry on other 
and clearer grounds. The term Hyperborean means 
a nation or people who dwell beyond the wind Boreas. 
The name Boreas is properly applied by the Greeks to 
the wind which blows from the north-northeast (Pas- 
sow, Lex., s. v.), and is the same with the Aquilo of 
the Latins. Of this latter wind Pliny remarks, “ flat 
inter Septentrionem ct Ortum solstitialem and For- 
cellini (Lex. Tot. Lat.) observes, that it is often con¬ 
founded with, and mistaken for, the north. The term 
Hyperborei, then, if we consider its true meaning, re¬ 
fers to a people dwelling far to the northeast of the 
Greeks, and will lead us at once to the plains of cen¬ 
tral Asia, the cradle of our race. Here it was that 
man existed in primeval virtue and happiness, and here 
were enjoved those blessings of existence, the remem¬ 
brance of which was carried, by the various tribes that 
successively migrated from this common home, into 
every quarter of the earth. Hence it is that, even 
among the Oriental nations, so many traces are found 
of their origin being derived from some country to the 
north. Adelung has adopted the opinion which as¬ 
signs central Asia as the original seat of the human 
species, and has mentioned a variety of considerations 
in support of it. He observes, that the central plains 
of Asia being the highest region in the globe, must 
have been the first to emerge from the universal ocean, 
and, therefore, first became capable of affording a habit¬ 
able dwelling to terrestrial animals and to the human 
species : hence, as the subsiding waters gradually gave 
up the lower regions to be the abode of life, they may 
have descended, and spread themselves successively 
over their new acquisitions. The desert of Kobi, 
which is the summit of the central steppe, is the most 
elevated ridge in the globe. From its vicinity the 
great rivers of Asia take their rise, and flow towards 
the four cardinal points. The Selinga, the Ob, the 
Irtish, the Lena, and the Jenisei, send their water to 
the Frozen Ocean: the Iaik flows towards the setting 
sun ; the Amu and Hoang-ho, and the Indus, Ganges, 
and Burrampooter, towards the east and south. On the 
declivities of these high lands are the plains of Thibet, 
lower than the frozen region of Kobi, where many fer¬ 
tile tracts are well fitted to become the early seat of 
animated nature. Here are found not only the vine, 
the olive, rice, the legumina, and other plants, on 
which man has in all ages depended, in a great meas¬ 
ure, for his sustenance, but all those animals run wild 
upon these mountains, which he has tamed and led 
with him over the whole earth; as the ox, the horse, 
the ass, the sheep, the goat, the camel, the hog, the 
dog, the cat, and even the gentle reindeer, which ac¬ 
companies him to the icy polar tracts. In Cashmere, 
plants, animals, and men exist in the greatest phvsical 
perfection. A number of arguments are suggested in 
favour of this opinion. Badly has referred the origin 
of the arts and sciences, of astronomy and of the old 
lunar zodiac, as well as of the discovery of the planets, 
to the most northerly tract of Asia. His attachment 
to BufFon’s hypothesis of the central fire, and the grad¬ 
ual refrigeration of the earth, has driven him, indeed, 
to the banks of the Frozen Ocean ; but his arguments 
apply more naturally to the centre of Asia. In our 
Scriptures, moreover, the second origin of mankind is 
referred to a mountainous region eastward of Shinar, 
and the ancient books of the Hindoos fix the cradle of 
our race in the same quarter. The Hindu paradise 
is on Mount Meru, which is on the confines of Cash- 
mere and Thibet. (Muller, Univ. Hist., vol. 4, p. 19, 
not.) 

Hyperea, a fountain of Thessaly, placed by some 
in the vicinity of Argos Pelasgicum, while others think 
that it was near Pheraa. (Strabo, 432. — Heyne, ad 
Horn., II., 6, 457.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 
395.) 

Hyperesia, the more ancient name of yEgira in 
652 


xAciiaia. Pausanias (7, 26) relates a story which ac 
counts for the subsequent change of name. The Io- 
nians, vvho had colonized the city, being attacked by a 
superior number of Sicyonians, collected a great many 
goats, and, having tied fagots to their horns, set them 
on fire, when the enemy, conceiving the besieged to 
have received re-enforcements, hastily withdrew. From 
these goats, airo t&v alycjv, Hyperesia took the name 
of HCgira, though its former appellation, as Pausanias 
remarks, never fell into total disuse. (Pausan., 1. c. 

— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 57, seq.) 

Hyferides, a celebrated Athenian orator, contem¬ 
porary with Demosthenes. After having completed 
his education, he employed himself in writing orations 
and pleadings for others, until he was of an age that “ 
qualified him for the practice of the bar. In entering 
on his political career, he attached himself, like De¬ 
mosthenes, to the party opposed to Philip, king of 
Macedonia, and was sent, along with Ephialtes, on a 
secret mission to the court of Persia, the territories of 
which were equally threatened by Philip, to procure 
aid against that ambitious and powerful prince. When 
Euboea was in fear of an invasion by Philip, and while 
the Athenians were wasting their time in idle delibera¬ 
tions, Hyperides prevailed upon the richer citizens to 
unite with him in immediately equipping forty vessels, 
two of which were armed at his own expense. He 
was engaged also in the expedition which the Athe¬ 
nians sent to the aid of Byzantium, under the orders 
of Phocion. When news reached Athens of the dis¬ 
astrous battle of Chasronea, Hyperides mounted the 
tribune, and proposed that their wives, children, and 
gods should be placed for safe keeping in the Piraeus ; 
that the exiles should be recalled ; that their rights 
should be restored to those cil’zens who had been de¬ 
prived of them ; that the sojourners should be admit¬ 
ted to the rank of citizens ; that liberty should be 
granted to the slaves ; and that all classes should take 
up arms in defence of their country. These measures 
were adopted, and to them the republic owed the hon¬ 
ourable peace which it subsequently obtained. When 
this danger was passed, Hyperides was attacked by 
Aristogiton, who accused him of having violated, by 
the decree just mentioned, all the fundamental laws ot 
the republic. Hyperides defended himself in a cele¬ 
brated speech, in which he declared, that, dazzled by 
the Macedonian arms, he was unable to see the laws ; 
and he gained his cause. He was one of the two ora¬ 
tors whom Alexander wished to have delivered into 
his hands after the destruction of Thebes ; but the 
anger of the monarch was appeased by Demades, and 
Hyperides remained in his country. He was one of 
the small number whom the gold of Harpalus could 
not gain over; and hence it is that he became the ac¬ 
cuser of Demosthenes, who had suffered himself to be 
corrupted. We find Hyperides subsequently pronoun¬ 
cing the funeral oration over Leosthenes, who fell in 
the Lamiac war, and which the ancients considered 
one of the best of its kind. After the defeat of his 
countrymen he was exiled from Athens. He retired 
first to Hilgina, where he became reconciled to Demos¬ 
thenes. Pursued, however, by the Macedonians, he 
took refuge in the temple of Neptune at Hermione. 
From this asylum he was torn by Archias, who was 
charged with the infamous mission of delivering up to 
Antipater the Athenian orators by whom his schemes 
had been opposed. Antipater caused his tongue to be 
cut out, and put him to death, B.C. 322. His body, 
which had been left without burial, was carried off by 
his relatives, and interred in Attica.—Hyperides is re¬ 
garded as the third in order of the Athenian orators, or 
the first after Demosthenes and HCschines. Cicero 
however, places him immediately after Demosthenes* 
and almost on the same level. Dionysius of Halicar¬ 
nassus praises the strength, the simplicity, the order, 
and the method of his orations (ed. Rciske, vol. 2, p. 





HYP 


HYR 


643). Dio Chrysostom appears to have given him the 
preference over all orators with the exception of /Es- 
chines. (Or., 18, ed. Rciske, p. 372.) Unfortunately, 
there exists no oration which we can with certainty as¬ 
cribe to Hyperides, and by which we might be enabled 
to form for ourselves some idea of his merits and style. 
Libanius believes him to have been the author of a 
harangue which is found among those of Demosthenes, 
and entitled llepl rfiv rrpdg ’AXs^avdpov cwd/jutov, 
“ On the conventions with Alexander.” Reiske is in¬ 
correct in assigning to him one of the two orations 
against Aristogiton, found among the works of Demos¬ 
thenes. ( Scholl. Histoire de la Litterature Gr ., vol. 

2, p. 220.) 

Hyperion, a son of Coelus and Terra, who married 
Thea, by whom he had Aurora, the sun and moon. 
( Theog., 371, scq.) In Homer, Hyperion is identical 
with the Sun. (II., 19, 398.—Compare, however, II., 
6, 513.) It is very probable that 'Tt repiuv is the con¬ 
traction of 'Ttt epLovluv. ( Passow , Lex.,s. v. — Vblck- 
er, Horn. Geogr., p. 26.) The interpretation given 
by the ancients to the name, as denoting “ him that 
moves above,” seems liable to little objection. Her¬ 
mann renders it Tollo, as a substantive: “ Post hos 
vidcmus , 'T irepiova et 'laTverov, Tollinem et Mersl¬ 
um." (Opusc., vol. 2, p. 175.— Keightleifs Mytholo¬ 
gy, p. 52, seq.) 

Hypermnestra, one of the fifty daughters of Danaus, 
who married Lynceus, son of ^Egyptus. She disobey¬ 
ed her father’s bloody commands, who had ordered her 
to murder her husband the first night of her nuptials, 
and suffered Lynceus to escape unhurt. Her father, 
at first, in his anger at her disobedience, put her into 
close confinement. Relenting, however, after some 
time, he gave his consent to her union with Lynceus. 
(Vtd. Danaides.) 

Hyphasis, a tributary of the Indus, now the Beypa- 
sha, or, as it is more commonly written, Bcyah. The 
ancient name is variously given. In Arrian it is "Ttt- 
aoYf and'T^acrtf ; in Diodorus (17, 93) and in Strabo, 
'"YTravic; (Hypanis). Pliny (6, 17) gives the form Hyp- 
asis. This river was the limit of Alexander’s con¬ 
quests, and he erected altars on its banks in memory 
of his expedition. Some writers erroneously give the 
modern name of the Hyphasis as the Setledje. ( Vin¬ 
cent's Voyage of Nearchus , p. 101.) 

Hypsa, now Belici, a river of Sicily falling into the 
Crinisus. (Sil. Ital ., 14, 228.) 

PIypsicles, an astronomer of Alexandrea, who 
flourished under Ptolemy Physcon, about 146 B.C. 
He is considered by some to have been the author of 
the 14th and 15th books which are appended to Eu¬ 
clid’s Elements ; though others strenuously deny 
this. No one, however, disputes his claim to a small 
work entitled ’ AvatyopLKT], in which he gives a method, 
far from exact, of calculating the risings of each sign 
or portion of the ecliptic. Hypsicles was nearly con¬ 
temporary with Hipparchus, who was the first that gave 
an exact solution to this problem. He may have been 
ignorant of the discoveries of Plipparchus, and this may 
serve to excuse him ; but it is hard to conceive why 
his treatise called Anaphorice, to which we have just 
alluded, should have been included in the collection 
entitled the “ Little Astronomer,” which formed a 
text-book in the Alexandrean schools preparatory to 
the reading of the astronomy of Ptolemy. It was idle 
to show the pupil a very vicious solution of an easy 
problem, which they would oubsequently find solved in 
the work itself of Ptolemy. ( Biographie Univ., vol. 
21, p. 137.) 

Hypsipyle, daughter of Thoas and queen of Lem¬ 
nos. The Lemnian women, it is said, having offend¬ 
ed Venus, the goddess, in revenge, caused them to be¬ 
come personally disagreeable to their husbands, so that 
the latter preferred the society of their female captives. 
Incensed at this neglect, the Lemnian wives murdered 


their husbands. Hypsipyle alone saved her fattier,, 
whom she kept concealed. About a twelvemonth af¬ 
ter this event, the Argonauts touched at Lemnos. The 
women, taking them for their enemies the Thracians, 
came down in arms to oppose their landing; but, on 
ascertaining who they were, they retired and held a 
council, in which, on the advice of Hypsipyle’s nurse, 
it was decided that they should invite them to land, 
and take this occasion of having offspring. The Ar¬ 
gonauts accepted the invitation, Hercules alone refu¬ 
sing to quit the vessel. They gave themselves up to 
joy and festivity, till, on the remonstrance of that hero, 
they tore themselves away from the Lemnian fair ones, 
and once more handled their oars. When her coun¬ 
trywomen subsequently found that Hypsipyle had saved 
the life of her father, they sold her into slavery, and 
she fell into the hands of Lycurgus, king of Nemea, 
who made her nurse to his infant son Opheltes. As 
the army of Adrastus was on its march against Thebes, 
it came to Nemea, and, being in want of water, Hyp¬ 
sipyle undertook to guide them to a spring. She left 
the child Opheltes lying on the grass, where a serpent 
found and killed him. Amphiaraus augured ill-luck 
from this event, and called the child Archemorus (Fate- 
Beginner), as indicative of the evils which were to be¬ 
fall the chiefs. They then celebrated funeral games 
in his honour. lycurgus endeavoured to avenge the 
death of his child ; but Hypsipyle was screened from 
his resentment by Adrastus and the other chieftains. 
(Apollod., 1 , 9, 17.— Id., 3, 6, 4.— Hygin., fab., 15, 
74, &c.) 

Hyrcania, a large country of Asia, situate to the 
south of the eastern part of the Caspian Sea. This 
country was mountainous, covered with forests, and 
inaccessible to cavalry. Under Alexander’s success¬ 
ors, Hyrcania was restricted to narrow limits; Nisosa 
and Margiana, which were previously portions of it, 
being converted into a separate province ; during the 
Parthian rule, these two became an appendage to Par- 
thiene ; for, under the feeble Seleuco-Syrian kings, the 
northern nomades, called the Parthians, had pressed on¬ 
ward and founded a large kingdom. Hyrcania, now 
restricted, contained the north of Comis, the east of 
Masanderan, the country now called Corcan or Jor- 
jan (Dshiordshian), and the west of the province of 
Chorasan. The name Hyrcania is said to denote a 
waste and uncultivated country. (Wahl, Vorder und 
Mittel Asien, p. 551.) 

Hyrcanum Mare, the southeastern part of the Cas¬ 
pian, lying along the shores of Hyrcania. (Vid. Cas- 
pium Mare.) 

Hyrcanus, I. John, high-priest and prince of the 
Jewish nation, succeeded his father Simon Maccabse- 
us, who had been treacherously slain by the orders of 
Ptolemaeus, his son-in-law. Hyrcanus commenced 
his reign by punishing the assassin, whereupon Ptole¬ 
maeus applied for aid to Antiochus, king of Syria, who 
laid siege to Jerusalem and compelled Hyrcanus to pay 
him tribute. At the death if Antiochus, however, he 
profited by the troubles of Syria to effect the deliver¬ 
ance of his country from this foreign yoke. He took 
several cities in Judaea, subjugated the Idumseans, de¬ 
molished the temple at Gerazim, and made himself 
master of Samaria. He died not long after, B.C. 106 
—II. The eldest son of Alexander I., succeeded his 
father in the high-priesthood, B.C. 78. Aristobulus, 
his brother, disputed the crown with him, on the death 
of Alexandra, their mother, and proved victorious, B.C. 
66. Hyrcanus, reduced to the simple office (if the 
priesthood, had recourse to Aretas, king of Arabia, 
who besieged Aristobulus in the temple. Scaurus, 
the lieutenant of Pompey, however, whom Aristobulus 
had engaged in his interests, compelled Aretas to raise 
the siege, and Hyrcanus was forced to content him¬ 
self with the office of high-priest. He was put to death 
by Herod, at the age of 80 years, B.C. 30, on his at 

653 




1 A C 


I A to 


tempting to take refuge once more among the Arabians. 
yJahri's Hist. Hebrew Com., p. 307 and 345.) 

Hvreium, a town of Apulia, also called Uria. ( Vid. 
Uria.) 

Hyria, I. a city of Apulia, in the more northern 
part of the lapygian peninsula, between Brundisium 
and Tarenlum. It is now Oria, and would seem to 
have been a place of great antiquity, since its found¬ 
ation is ascribed by Herodotus to some Cretans, that 
formed part of an expedition to avenge the death of 
Minos, who had perished in Sicily, whither he went 
in pursuit of Dasdalus. {Herod., 7, 171.) Strabo, in 
his description of Iapygia, does not fail to cite this 
passage of Herodotus, but he seems undetermined 
whether to recognise the town founded by the Cretans 
in that of Thyrsi or in that of Veretum. By the first, 
which he mentions as placed in the centre of the isth¬ 
mus, and formerly the capital of the country, he seems 
to designate Oria (Slrab ., 282). It is probable the 
word Thyrsi is corrupt; for elsewhere Strabo calls it 
Uria, and describes it as standing on the Appian Way, 
between Brundisium and Tarentum, as above remark¬ 
ed. {Cramer's Ancient Italy , vol. 2, p. 310.)—II. A 
town of Boeotia, in the vicinity of Aulis. {Horn., II., 
2, 496.— Strab., 404.) 

Hyrieus, I. an Arcadian monarch, for whom Aga- 
medes and Trophonius constructed a treasury. {Vid. 
Agamedes.)—II. A peasant of Hyria in Boeotia, whose 
name is connected with the legend of the birth of Ori¬ 
on. {Vid. Orion.) 

Hyrtacus, a Trojan, father to Nisus, one of the com¬ 
panions of HSneas. {Virg.,Mn., 9,177,406.) Hence 
the patronymic of Hyrtacides applied to Nisus. {Mn., 
9, 176.—Compare Horn ., II, 2, 837, seq .)—The same 
patronymic form is applied by Virgil to Hippocoon. 
{AEn., 5, 492.) 

Hysia, I. a town of Boeotia, at the foot of Cithaeron, 
and to the east of Plataea. It was in ruins in the time 
of Pausanias (9, 2). The vestiges of this place should 
be looked for near the village of Platonia, said to be 
one mile from Plataea, according to Sir W. Gell. 

* Itin., p. 112.)—II. A small town of Argolis, not far 
from the village of Cenchreae, and on the road from 
Argos to Tegea in Arcadia. It was destroyed by the 
Lacedaemonians in the Peloponnesian war. {Thucyd., 
5, S3.) 

Hystaspes, a noble Persian, of the family of the 
Achaemenides. His son Darius reigned in Persia af¬ 
ter the murder of the usurper Smerdis.—As regards 
the meaning of the name Hystaspes, consult remarks 
under the article Darius, page 416, col. 2, line 20. 

I. 

Iacchus, a surname of Dionysus or the Grecian 
Bacchus, as indicative -of his being the son of Ceres, 
and not, according to the common legend, of Semele. 
In accordance with this idea, Bochart makes it of Phoe¬ 
nician origin, and signifying an infant at the breast. 

( Geogr. Sacr., 1, 18.) A similar definition is found in 
Suidas {s. v. T anxog). Sophocles represents the young 
god on the breast of the Eleusinian Ceres. {Antig., 
132.) Lucretius (4, 1162) gives Ceres the epithet of 
Mamm.osa. Orpheus, cited by Clemens Alexandri- 
nus {Admon. ad Gent. — Op., ed. Morell., p 13), also 
speaks of Iacchus as a child at the breast of Ceres. 
According to the Athenian traditions, Ceres was nur¬ 
sing Bacchus when she came to Attica in search of 
Proserpina. A great number of ancient monuments 
represent Ceres with Iacchus or Bacchus at her breast. 

( Winckelmann, Mon. Ined., vol. 1, p. 28, 68, 71.) 
Iacchus was also called uovpoq, a name which the 
Greeks gave to infant deities. {Salmas., ad Inscr. 
Her. Attic, et Reg. de Ann. climact., p. 556, seqq. — 
Sainte-Croix, Mysteres du Paganisme,x ol. 1, p. 199.) 
Demetrius (A yy.yTptog) was also a surname of Bacchus. 
654 


{Sainte-Croix, ib. p. 200.) Ceres was called icoipo • 
Tpotyoq, “ nourisher of the young.” She has been rep¬ 
resented with two children, one at each breast, and 
holding a horn of plenty. Bochart cites the mystic 
van of Iacchus as a proof of the correctness of this in¬ 
terpretation. This van is called in Greek A Uvoq, a 
word which not only denotes a van, but also the swad¬ 
dling clothes of children. According to Hesychius(s. 
v. A LKvlryq), the epithet Liknites, given to Bacchus, 
comes from Xiuvoq in the sense of swaddling clothes. 
In the hymn to Jupiter by Callimachus (v. 48), Adras- 
tea envelops him in swaddling clothes of gold aftei 
his birth, and to denote this the word Tiiuvoq is em¬ 
ployed. An old glossary renders Xucvoq by incunabu- 
lum. It would seem also that there is a close analogy 
between the name Iacchus and the Oriental Iao, the 
great appellation for the deity ; from which both Je- 
hova and Jovis would appear to have sprung. Iacchus, 
moreover, is the parent form of the Greek Bacchus , 
the difference being merely a variation in dialect. 
Moor, in his Hindoo Pantheon (4to, Lond., 1810), as¬ 
signs the name Iaccheo to the Hindu Iswara or Bac¬ 
chus, and makes it equivalent to “ lord of the Iacchi,”or 
followers of that god. {Edinb. Rev., vol. 17, p. 317.) 

Ialysus, a town of the island of Rhodes, 80 stadia 
from the city of Rhodes. Its vicinity to the capital 
proved so injurious to its growth, that it became re¬ 
duced in Strabo’s time to a mere village. ( Strabo, 
655.— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 3, p. 227.) 

Iambe, a servant-maid of Metanira, wife of Celeus, 
king of Eleusis, who succeeded by her tricks in making 
Ceres smile when the goddess was full of distress at 
the loss of her daughter. {Apollod., 1, 5, 1.) 

Iamblichus, I. an ancient philosopher, a native of 
Syria, and educated at Babylon. Upon Trajan’s con¬ 
quest of Assyria he was reduced to slavery, but, re¬ 
covering his liberty, he afterward flourished under the 
Emperor Antoninus. He had learned the Greek lan¬ 
guage, and wrote it with facility. He composed a ro¬ 
mance in this language, entitled 'IcTopiai B abvlu- 
viaual, and turning on the loves of Rhodane and Si- 
nonis. (Compare Chardon de la Rochette, Melanges, ■ 
vol. 1, p. 18.) It consisted of sixteen books, from 
which Photius has left us an extract. Some have 
pretended, that a manuscript of this work, which had 
belonged to Meibomius, passed in 1752 into the libra¬ 
ry of the younger Burmann. Its existence, however, 
is very uncertain. A fragment was preserved by Leo 
Allatius, accompanied with his own Latin version, in 
his selections from the MSS. of Greek rhetoricians 
and sophists, Rome, 1641, in 8vo.—II. A native ol 
Chalcis in Syria, who flourished about the beginning o. 
the fourth century. He was a disciple of Porphyry’s 
and, pursuing the route traced by Porphyry and Ploti¬ 
nus, he carried the doctrines of the new-Platonics to 
the last degree of absurdity. Inferior to these two 
philosophers in talents and erudition, without having 
made any important discovery, or thrown any more 
light upon the new-Platonic school, he nevertheless at¬ 
tained to great celebrity. The air of superior sanctity 
which he knew so well-how to Assume, the fame of his 
pretended miracles, his zealous efforts for the preser¬ 
vation of paganism, the use which he made for this 
end of the new-Platonic doctrines, and perhaps the 
lucky coincidence of his having lived at the very period 
when a new religion was supplanting the old; in fine, 
the admiration conceived for him by the Emperor 
Julian, and which that emperor expressed by the most 
exaggerated praise ; all these circumstances combined 
were the cause of this individual’s arriving, in spite of 
his moderate abilities, to a degree of reputation far su 
perior to that of any of his predecessors. Plotinus 
and Porphyry were enthusiasts; Iamblichus, however, 
was a mere impostor; and we want no better proof of 
this than the recital which has been handed m to us 
of those pretended miracles that acquired fo> him th* 






IAMBLICHUS. 


JAN 


name of a performer of miracles and a divine per¬ 
sonage. His merit as a writer is entitled to little if 
any notice. He compiled, he copied, he mingled the 
ideas of others with his own conceptions ; nor was he 
always capable of imparting clearness or method to his 
compositions. But he declared himself the protector 
of mythology and paganism; he strove to preserve 
them by working miracles in their behalf; he over¬ 
threw the barrier which enlightened philosophy had 
placed between religion and superstition ; he amalga¬ 
mated into one system all that various nations had 
imagined, in popular belief, of demons, angels, and 
spirits; and, in order to give this work of folly a phil¬ 
osophic appearance, he attached it to the doctrine of 
Plato. The intuitive 'perception of the divine nature, 
by means of ecstasy , had appeared to Plotinus and Por¬ 
phyry the most sublime point to which the mind of 
man could elevate itself; this, however, was not suf¬ 
ficient for Iamblichus ; he must have a theurgy , or 
that species of direct communication with gods and 
spirits, which takes place, not from man’s raising him¬ 
self to the level of these supernatural intelligences, 
but because, yielding to the power of certain formulae 
and ceremonies, they are compelled to descend unto 
mortals and execute their commands.—We have no 
edition of the entire works of Iamblichus, and must 
therefore consider his productions separately. 1. Life 
of Pythagoras. (Uepi rov Hvdayoptnov (Uov, or, as 
it is named in some manuscripts, A oyoq np&roq, rrepl 
rrjq UvdayopiKyq aiptacoq. Book First: Of the Pyth¬ 
agorean Sect.) It was, in fact, the commencement of 
a work in ten books. Although a most wretched com¬ 
pilation, and most clumsily put together, it is never¬ 
theless instructive, from the information it affords re¬ 
specting the opinions of Pythagoras, and because the 
sources whence Iamblichus and Porphyry drew no 
longer exist for us. The best edition of this work, in¬ 
cluding the life of Pythagoras by Porphyry, and that 
preserved by Plotinus, is Kiessling’s, Lips., 1815, 2 
vols. 8vo—2. Second Book, Of Pythagorean expla¬ 
nations, including an exhortation to Philosophy. (lTu- 
dayopeluv vnopvrjpdTuv ~Aoyoq Sevrepoq, ireptexov 
rovq TcpoTperTTiKovg Xoyovq elq (julocrocltlav.) This 
work formed a continuation of the preceding, and is 
the second book of the great compilation treating of 
Pythagoras. In it we find many passages from Plato; 
•or, rather, one third of the work is made up of extracts 
taken from the dialogues of that writer; and Iambli- 
chiife has reunited them with so little skill and with so 
much negligence, that he often forgets to make the 
necessary changes in the tenses of verbs, in order to 
adapt one passage to another. Sometimes traces of 
the Platonic dialogue are even allowed to remain. 
The most interesting part is the last chapter, which 
gives an explanation of thirty-nine symbols of Pythag¬ 
oras. This work is also contained in Kiessling’s edi¬ 
tion of the life.—3. Of common Mathematical Sci¬ 
ence (Ilept Koivfjq /uaOrjpaTiKTjQ emorr/gyc), or, third 
book of the great work on the philosophy of Pythago¬ 
ras. It is important, by reason of the fragments from 
the ancient Pythagoreans, such as Philolaus and Ar- 
chytas, which it contains. These fragments are writ¬ 
ten in the Doric dialect, which furnishes an argument 
in favour of their authenticity. This work, of which 
fragments were only known at an early period, was 
published entire for the first time by Villoison, in his 
Anecdota Grceca, vol. 2, p. 188, seqq., and reprinted 
by Friis, with a translation, at Copenhagen, 1790, 4to. 
A future editor will find various readings, from a man¬ 
uscript of Zeitz, as given by Kiessling in his edition of 
the life of Pythagoras.—4. On the Introduction to the 
Arithmetic of Nicomachus. (Be pi ryq N ucopuxov 
upiOpyrucyg elcrayoyyq.) We have only one edition 
of this work, that of Tennulius, Davenl., 1667-8, 2 
rols. 4to. Kiessling’s life of Pythagoras contains 
manuscript readings for this work also.—5. Theology 


of Numbers. (Td Oeohoyovgeva ryq dpid/xynKyq.) 
On the different speculations in which the ancient the¬ 
ological and philosophical writers indulged relative to 
the force of numbers. This work does not bear the 
name of Iamblichus in the manuscripts, but Gale (ad 
Iambi, de Myst. Mgypt., p. 201) and Fabricius (Bibl. 
G~., vol. 5, p. 639, ed. Harles.) agree in ascribing it 
t j him. It is certain that Iamblichus wrote a work 
under this title, which made the sixth book of his great 
compilation respecting Pythagoras. This work has 
only been twice printed, once at Paris, 1543, 4to, 
and again by Wechel, at Leipzig, 1817, 8vo, with the 
notes of Ast.—6. Porphyry had addressed a letter to 
an Egyptian named Anebo, full of questions relative 
to the nature of gods and demons. We have an an¬ 
swer to th*is epistle, written by Abammon Magister 
(’A Sdppov A iddoKaTioq) ; and, according to a scholium 
found in many manuscripts, Proclus declared that it 
was Iamblichus who disguised himself under this name. 
The title of the work is as follows : ’A tdppovoq A i- 
daGKakov npoq ryv Tloptyvp'cov Ttpoq ’A ve6d> ETUGToXyv 
drcoKpiaiq, real rtiv hv avry diropygdruv ’hvceiq, i. e., 
“ Answer of Abammon the Master to the letter of 
Porphyry addressed to Anebo, and the solution of the 
questions which it contained.” It is often, however, 
cited under the shorter title of “ Mysteries of the Egyp¬ 
tians.” The work is full of theurgic and extravagant 
ideas, and Egyptian theology. Meiners thinks that 
this work was not written by Iamblichus ; but his rea¬ 
sons for this opinion, drawn from the inequality of the 
style and the contradictions contained in the work, have 
been refuted by Tennemann. ( Comment. Soc. Scient. 
Gotting., vol. 4, p. 59. — Tennemann , Gesch. der 
Phil., vol. 6, p. 248.) There is only one complete 
edition of this work, by Gale, Oxon., 1678, fol.—lam 
blichus wrote also a work on idols or statues (7r epl 
’ kyalgdrov), to prove that idols were filled with the 
presence of the divinities whom they represented. 
We only know it through the refutation of John Philop- 
onus, and what we do know of it is very limited. Iam¬ 
blichus composed also a treatise on the soul (nepl ipv- 
Xyq), of which Stobseus has preserved very copious 
extracts. These are the more valuable, as Iambli¬ 
chus gives in them the opinions of various philosophers, 
without troubling us with his own. The same com¬ 
piler has preserved several fragments of the letters of 
Iamblichus. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. G?*.,vol. 5, p. 14:4:,seqq.) 

Iamidje, certain prophets among the Greeks, de¬ 
scended from Iamus, a son of Apollo, who received 
the gift of prophecy from his father, and which remain 
ed among his posterity. ( Pausan ., 6, 2.) 

Jantculum, a hill of Rome, across the Tiber, and 
connected with the city by means of the Sublician 
bridge. It was the most favourable place for taking a 
view of the Roman capital; and from its sparkling 
sands it obtained the name of Mons Aureus, now by 
corruption Montorio. There was an ancient tradition, 
that Janus, king of the Aborigines, contemporary with 
Saturn, who then inhabited the Capitoline Hill, found¬ 
ed a city opposite to the residence of Saturn, and, 
dying, left his name to the hill on which he had built. 
(Virg., Mn., 8, 355, seqq.—Serv., ad loc.) The Jani- 
culum therefore comprised the site of the church ol 
S. Pietro in Montorio , and the present Corsini gar¬ 
dens. As Ancus Marciusjoined it to the Aventine by 
a bridge and a wall, lest an enemy should make it a 
citadel for attack, it is natural to conclude that the first 
wall would enclose the bridge, and run up to the sum¬ 
mit, which it was desirable to preserve from the pos¬ 
session of an enemy ; on the other hand, since nothing 
more was to be effected than the defence of the city, 
it is also deducible, that his walls would only enclose 
a narrow space of territory, extending from near the 
Pons Sublicius, or Ponte Orazio , to the Montorio, and 
descending again to the river at the Ponte Rotto; for 
the island did not exist in those days. (Dion. Hal., 

655 




JAN 


JANUS. 


3, 45.) Such a circuit of wall would at once defend 
the passage of the Tiber, and cover the three impor¬ 
tant hills of the city.—The summit of the Janiculum 
was seen from the Oomitia, and also from the place of 
popular assemblies in the Campus Martius. At the 
earliest period of the republic, when the Romans were 
surrounded by foes, and feared lest, while they held 
these assemblies, the enemy might come upon them 
unawares, they placed’some of their citizens upon the 
Janiculum to guard the spot, and to watch for the safe¬ 
ty of the state ; a standard was erected upon the top 
of the hill, and the removal thereof was a signal for 
the assembly immediately to dissolve, for that the en¬ 
emy was near. ( Dio Cassius, 37, 28.) This act, 
which had its origin in utility to the commonwealth, 
afterward dwindled into a mere ceremony ; it was, 
however, made subservient to the designs of factious 
citizens in those times when there was no danger 
to the city but from its intestine discords ; and the 
taking down of the standard on the Janiculum more 
than once put a stop to public proceedings at the Co¬ 
mitia. ( Burgess, Topography and Antiquities of 
Rome, vol. 1, p. 67, seqq.) 

Janus, an ancient Italian deity, usually represented 
with two faces, one before and one behind, and hence 
called Bifrons and Biceps. Sometimes he is repre¬ 
sented with four faces, and is thence denominated 
Quadnfrons. Janus was invoked at the commence¬ 
ment of most actions ; even in the worship of the other 
gods, the votary began by offering wine and incense 
to him. (Ovid, Fast., 1, 171.) The first month in 
the year was named after him ; and under the title of 
Matutinus he was regarded as the opener of the day. 
(Horat., Berm., 2, 6, 20, seq .) Hence he had charge 
of the gates of heaven, and hence, too, all gates 
( januce,) on earth were called after him, and supposed 
to be under his care. In this way some explain his 
double visage, because every door looks two ways ; 
and thus he, the heavenly porter, can watch the east 
and west without turning. (Ovid, Fast., 1, 140.) Hi« 
Dur visages, on the other hand, when he is so repre¬ 
sented, indicate the four seasons of the year.— 
His temples at Rome were numerous. In war time, 
the gates of the principal one, that of Janus Quirinus, 
were always open ; in peace they were closed, to re¬ 
tain wars within (Ovid, Fast., 1, 124); but they 
were shut only once between the reign of Numa and 
that of Augustus, namely, at the close of the first Punic 
war. Augustus closed them after he had given repose 
to the Roman world. The temples of Janus Quadri- 
frons were built with four equal sides, each side con¬ 
taining a door and three windows. The four doors 
were emblematic of the four seasons of the year, while 
the three windows on a side represented the three 
months in each season. Janus was usually represent¬ 
ed as holding a key in his left hand and a staff in the 
other. He was called by different names, such as 
Consivius (from consero ), because he presided over 
generation and production ; Quirinus, because presi¬ 
ding over war; and Clusius and Patulcius (from 
cludo and pateo ), or the “ shutter” and “ opener,” 
with reference to his having charge of gates.—After 
Ennius had introduced Euhemerism into Rome, Janus 
shared the fate of the other deities, and became a 
mortal king, famed for his uprightness, and dwelling 
an the Janiculum. He was said to have received 
Saturn when the latter fled to Italy ; and he also mar¬ 
ried his own sister Camesa or Camasane. (Macrob., 
Sat., 1 , 7. — Lydus, de Mens., 4, 1 .— Athenceus, 15, 
p. 692.)—The following remarks, though in part anti¬ 
cipated, may serve to throw some light upon the my¬ 
thological history of Janus. Janus occupies a place 
among the first class of Etrurian divinities, and is in 
many respects identified with the Tina of that nation. 
(Varro, ap. Augustin, de Civ. Dei, 7, 10.— Proclus, 
Hymn, in Hec. et Janum.) His origin is to be traced 
656 


back to the mythology of India. Janus, with his wile 
and sister Camasane, half fish and half human being, 
as sometimes represented, can only be explained by a 
comparison with the avatars, the descents or incarna¬ 
tions of the Hindu deities. (Compare the incarnation 
of Vishnou in a fish, and the legend of the Babylonian 
Oannes and Syrian Atergatis.)—Viewed in another 
way, the name Janus or Djanus assimilates itself 
very closely to that of Diana. These two appellations 
resolve themselves into the simple form Dia, or the 
goddess by way of excellence ; and this Dia belongs 
in common to the religions of Samothrace and Attica. 
She is the Pelasgic Ceres, frequently found under this 
denomination in the songs of the Fratres Arvales. 
(Marini, Atti, &c., p. 23, seqq. — Creuzer, ad Cic. de 
N. D., 3, 22.)—While the Jupiter of Dodona was pen¬ 
etrating into Italy and Lat.ium, with his spouse Dione 
(the same as Juno), Dia-Diana and Janus arrived, by 
another route, in Etruria, from the borders of Pontus 
and the isle of Samothrace. From this view of the 
subject it would appear, that Jupiter and Janus were 
originally distinct from each other, but subsequently 
more or less amalgamated. The system of Dodona 
and that of Samothrace, the Latin system and that of 
the Etrurians, based on ideas mutually analogous, 
united, but did not become completely blended, with 
each other.—On the soil of Italy Janus appears at 
one time as a king of ancient days, at another as a 
hero who had rendered his name conspicuous by great 
labours and by religious institutions (Arnob., adv. 
Gen., 3, p. 147.— Lyd., de Mens., p. 57, ed. Schow \ 
at another, again, as a god of nature. At first he is 
called the Heavens, according to the Etrurian doctrine. 
(Lyd., ibid., p. 146, ed. Roeth.) He is the year per¬ 
sonified, and his symbols contain an allusion either to 
the number of the months or to that of the days of the 
year. The month, called after him January, formed 
from the time of Numa the commencement of the re¬ 
ligious year of the Romans. On the first clay of this 
month was presented to Janus what was called the 
Janual, an offering consisting of wine and fruits. On 
this same day the image of the god was crowned with 
laurel, the consul ascended in solemn procession to 
the Capitol, and small presents were made to one an¬ 
other by friends. By virtue of his title of god of na¬ 
ture, Janus is represented as holding a key : he holds 
this as the god who presides over gates and openings. 
He opens the course of the year in the heavens; and 
every gate upon earth, even to those of private dwell¬ 
ings, is under his superintending care. (Spanheim, 
ad Calhm., Hymn, in Cer., 45.— Lydus, de Mens., p. 
55, 144.) This attribute, indeed, is given him in a 
sense of a more or less elevated nature. It designates 
him at one time as the genius who presides over the 
goods of the year, and who dispenses them to mortals; 
who holds the key of fertilizing sources, of refreshino 
streams : at another time it typifies him as the mas° 
ter and sovereign of nature in general, the guardian 
of the whole universe, of the heaven, the earth, and 
the sea. (Ov., Fast., 1 , 117.) As holder of the key, 
Janus took the name of Clusius ; as charged with the 
care of the world, he is styled Curiatius. (Lyd., de 
Mens., p. 55, 144.) Jhus, under these and similai 
points of view, Janus reveals himself to us as exactly 
similar to the gods of the year in the Egyptian, Per¬ 
sian, and Phoenician mythologies. Like Osiris, Sem* 
Heracles, Dschemschid, and others, he represents the 
year personified in its development through the twelve 
signs of the zodiac, with its exaltation and its fall, and 
with all the plenitude of its gifts. And as the career 
of the year is also that of the souls which traverse in 
their migrations the constellations of the zodiac, Janus 
as well as the other great gods of nature, becomes the 
guide of souls. Similar in every respect to Osiris. 
Serapis, he is called, like him, the Sun; and the gate o'* 
the east, as well as that of the west, becomes at once 





JANUS. 


I AP 


uis peculiar care. (Lutat ., ap. Lyd., p. 57. Identi¬ 
fying Janus with the Sun, we ought not to be sur¬ 
prised at finding the Moon called Jana in Varro. ( R . 
R., 1, 37, 3, ed. Schneid. —Compare Scaliger, de vet. 
ann. Rom. in GrcBv. Thes 8, p. 311.) In like man¬ 
ner, as the lunar goddess is styled Deiva Jana (Deina, 
Diana), so the Salian hymns invoke the solar god 
under the name of Deivrs Janos, contracted into Di¬ 
anus or Djanus. Nigulius (ap. Macrob., Sat., 1, 
9) says expressly, “ Apolanem Janum esse, Dianam- 
que Janam, apposita d litera." Buttmann, regarding 
Janus and Jana as the solar and lunar deities re¬ 
spectively, discovers in these ancient Italian appella¬ 
tions the Zdv arid Z avd) of the Greeks, or, rather, the 
ancient and originally Oriental name of the Divinity, 
Jah, Jao, Java, Jovis, whence Jom or Yum, “ the 
day.” ( Mythologus, vol. 2, p. 73.) — Janus also as¬ 
similates himself to the Persian Mithras, and becomes 
the mediator between mortals and immortals. He 
bears the prayers of men to the feet of the great dei¬ 
ties. ( Cams Bassus, ap. Lyd., p. 57, 146.) It is 
in reference to this that some explain his double vis¬ 
age, turned at one and the same time towards both 
heaven and earth. Others, however, give to the rep¬ 
resentation of Janus with two faces an explanation 
purely historical, tmd consider it as alluding either to 
the emigration of Saturn or Janus, come by sea from 
Greece into Italy ; or to the settling of the latter 
among the barbarous nations of Italy, and the estab¬ 
lishment of agriculture. (Pint., Qucest. Rom., 22, p. 
269, vol. 2, p. 100, ed. Wytt. — Serv., ad Virg., Alin., 

1, 294 ; 7, 607; 8, 357.— Ov., Fast., 1, 299.) The 
national tradition of the Romans referred it to the al¬ 
liance between Romulus and Tatius and the blending 
of the two nations. (Compare Lanzi, Saggio, vol. 

2, p. 94.— Eckhel, Doctr. Vet. Num., vol. 5, p. 14, 
seqq.) —Similar figures with a double face are found 
on medals of Etruria, Syracuse, and Athens: Cecrops, 
for example, was so represented. It is certainly most 
rational to suppose, that this mode of representing was 
purely allegorical in every case. It recalls to mind 
the figures, not less strange and significant, of the 
Hindoo divinities: Janus, with four faces ( Quadri - 
frons. — Serv., ad Virg., Ain., 8, 607 — Augustin, de 
Civ. Dei, 7, 4), is identical in appearance with the 
Brahma of India.—As the gods who preside over na¬ 
ture and the year, in the Oriental systems, raise them¬ 
selves to the higher office of gods of time, eternity, 
and infinity, so also it seems to have happened with 
the western Janus. He is called the inspector of 
time, and then Time itself; in a cosmogonical sense 
he passes for Chaos. (Lyd., de Mens., p. 57.) Un¬ 
der these two points of view he is distinct from Jupi¬ 
ter, the supreme ruler and the universal regulator of 
things, in that Janus had specially under his control 
the beginning and the end. ( Cic., de N. D., 2, 27.) 
In the higher doctrine, however, all distinction between 
the two disappears. As Clusius or bearer of the key, 
Janus was the monarch of the universe, and Greece 
had no divinity that could be at all compared with him. 
(Ov., Fast., 1, 90.) In the solemn ceremonies and 
religious songs of the old Romans, he figured as in- 
augurator, and even bore the name. (Initiator. — Au¬ 
gustin. de Civ. Dei, 4, 11.) At the festivals of the 
great gods he had the first sacrifice offered to him. 
(Cic., de N. D., 2, 27.) He was called the Father 
(Brisson, de Formal., 1, p. 45.— Marini, Atti, 2, p. 
365), and the Salii invoked him in their hymns as the 
god of gods. (“ Deorum Deus .”— Macrob., Sat., 1, 
9. —Compare Gutberleth, de Saliis, c. 20.) This god 
of gods they named also Janes or Eanus, while they 
themselves assumed the name of Janes or Eani, in 
accordance with the ancient usage which so often as¬ 
similated the priests to their divinities. (Vossius, 
Inst. Orat., 4, 1, 7.) These appellations, Janes and 
Eanus, remind us of Cicero’s derivation from eundo, i. 

4 O 


e., from the old Greek and Latin verb io. (N. D., 2 
27.) The Romans also invoked Janus when the) 
made a lustration or consecration of their fields. 
(Cato, R. R., p. 92, ed. Schneider.) —But why multi¬ 
ply proofs to show that the Etrurian priesthood con¬ 
ceived and taught its dogmas in the true spirit, and 
under the very forms of Oriental mythology! Ia 
Etruria, as in the East, a series of gods spring from 
a supreme being, and are reflected in their turn in a 
dynasty of kings or chiefs, their children, their heirs, 
and the imitators of their actions. Janus, the first 
monarch, founds cities, rears ramparts, erects gates ; 
become a hero, he consecrates sanctuaries, institutes 
religious worship, fixes the sacred year, and arranges 
all civil ordinances. This son of the gods is no less 
the Sun moving through his annual career, opening 
with his powerful key the reservoirs of the empire of 
waters, giving drink to men and animals, drying up 
the earth, and ripening the fruit by his vivifying-rays, 
presiding at once over the rising and setting, and 
guarding the two gates of heaven as the chief of the 
army of the stars.—He $as invoked also in war; and 
when the gate of his temple on earth was opened, it 
was the signal for battles ; when closed, it became the 
pledge of peace. For Janus is the god that opens the 
new year in the spring, the period when warlike move¬ 
ments and campaigns begin : it is he that opens at 
this season the career of combats, to which he sum¬ 
mons warriors, and to whom he becomes a guide and 
an example. Hence his names of Patulcius and Clu¬ 
sius. Pie is the defender, the combatant by way of 
excellence, the great Quirinus (a name derived from 
the Sabine word curis, “ a spear”), and the senate 
could find no appellation more glorious to bestow on 
the valiant Romulus after he had disappeared from 
the earth. (Creuzer, Symbohk, par Guigniaut, vol. 
3, p. 430, seqq.) —II. In the Roman forum, by the 
side of the temple of Janus, there were three arches 
or arcades dedicated to Janus, standing at some dis¬ 
tance apart, and forming by their line of direction a 
kind of street (for, strictly speaking, there were in 
streets in the forum). The central one of these arches 
was the usual rendezvous of brokers and money-lend¬ 
ers, and was termed medius Janus, while the other 
two were denominated, from their respective positions, 
summus Janus, and infimus or imus Janus. (Horat., 
Scrm., 2, 3, 18.) 

Iapetus, a son of Coelus and Terra, and one of the 
Titans. According to the Theogony (v. 507, seq.), he 
married Clymene, a daughter of Oceanus, by whom 
he became the father of four sons, Atlas, Menoeuus, „ 
Prometheus, and Epimetheus. Some authorities made 
him to have espoused iEthra (Timceus, ap. Schol. ad 
II., 18, 486), others Asia, others again Libya: these 
last two refer to the abodes of Prometheus and Atlas. 
—We find Iapetus frequently joined with Kronus, 
apart, as it were, from the other Titans; and it is 
worthy of notice, that, in the Theogony, the account 
of Iapetus and his progeny immediately succeeds that 
of Saturn and the gods sprung from him. These cir¬ 
cumstances, combined with the plain meaning of the 
names of his children, lead to the conclusion of Iape 
tus being intended to represent the origin of the human 
race. Buttmann, however, sees in Iapetus and Japhet, 
not a son of Noah, but the Supreme Being himaelf (Ja, 
Jao, and pet, petos, petor, the Sanscrit piter, i. e., pa¬ 
ter, “ father”), and identical with the Zevc; naryp, or 
Jupiter , of the western nations. (Mythologus v 0 l. 1, 
p. 224.) 

Iapydes or Iapodes, a people of Ulyricum, Io the 
south of Istria, whose territory would appear, from 
Virgil (Georg., 3, 474), to have reached at one time 
to the banks of the river Timavus. They occupied an 
extent of coast of more than one thousand stadia, from 
the river Arsia, which separated them from the Istri, 
to the neighbourhood of Zara, a district which forms 

657 



I AP 


J A S 


par; ot the present Morlachia. In the interior, their 
territory was spread along Mount Albius, which forms 
the extremity of the great Alpine chain, and rises to a 
considerable elevation. On the other side of this 
mountain it stretched towards the Danube, on the con¬ 
fines of Pannonia. The Iapydes were a people of war¬ 
like spirit, and were not reduced until the time of Au¬ 
gustus. (Strab., 315.— App., Illyr., 18.) Their prin¬ 
cipal town was Metulum, which was taken by that em¬ 
peror after an obstinate defence. ( App., lllyr., 19.) 
Its site remains at present unknown. ( Cramer’s Anc. 
Greece, vol. 1, p. 33.) 

Iapygia, a division of Italy, forming what is called 
the heel. It was called also Messapia, and contained 
two nations, the Calabri on the northeast, and the Sa- 
lentini on the southwest side. The name of Iapygia 
was not known to the Romans, except as an appella¬ 
tion borrowed from the Greeks, to whom it was famil¬ 
iar. Among the many traditions current with the lat¬ 
ter people may be reckoned their derivation of this 
name from Iapyx, the son of Daedalus. (Strab., 279. 
— Plin., 3, 11.) This story, however, belongs rather 
to fable than to history. We have no positive evidence 
regarding the origin of the Iapyges, but their existence 
on these shores prior to the arrival of any Grecian col¬ 
ony is recognised by the earliest writers of that nation, 
such as Herodotus (7, 170) and Hellanicus of Lesbos 
(ap. Dion. Hal., 1, 22). Thucydides evidently con¬ 
sidered them as barbarians (7, 33), as well as Scylax, 
m his Periplus (p. 5), and Pausanias (10, 1) ; and 
this, in fact, is the idea which we must form of this 
people, whether we look upon them as descended from 
an Umbrian, Oscan, or Illyrian race, or from an inter¬ 
mixture of these earliest Italian tribes.—Very little is 
known of the language of this people ; but, from a cu¬ 
rious old inscription found near Otranto, and first pub¬ 
lished by Galateo, in his history of Iapygia, it appears 
to have been a mixture of Greek and Oscan. (Lanzi, 
vol. 3, p. 620. — Romanelli, vol. 2, p. 51.) It may 
also be noticed, that the name of the Iapyges appears 
m one of the Eugubian tables under the form lapus 
com , which might lead us to suppose that some con¬ 
nexion once existed between this people and the Um- 
bri. (Lanzi, vol. 3, p. 663.— Cramer's Anc. Italy, 
vol. 2, p. 302.) 

Iapygium, or Sallentinum, Promontorium (Sal¬ 
lust, ap. Serv. ad JEn., 3, 400), a famous promontory of 
Italy, at the southern extremity of Iapygia, now Capo 
di Leuca. When the art of navigation was yet in its 
infancy, this great headland presented a conspicuous 
landmark to mariners bound from the ports of Greece 
to Sicily, of which they always availed themselves. 
The fleets of Athens, after having circumnavigated the 
Peloponnesus, are represented on this passage as usu¬ 
ally making for Corcyra, whence they steered straight 
across to the promontory, and then coasted aloncr the 
south of Italy for the remainder of their voyage. 
(Thucyd., 6, 30.) There seems, indeed, to have been 
a sort of haven here, capable of affording shelter to ves¬ 
sels in tempestuous weather. (Thucyd.,6, 44.) Stra¬ 
bo describes this promontory as defining, together with 
the Ceraunian Mountains, the line of separation be¬ 
tween the Adriatic and Ionian Seas, while it formed, 
with the opposite Cape of Lacinium, the entrance to 
the Tarentine Gulf; the distance in both cases beino- 
700 stadia. (Strab., 281.— Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 
2, p. 315.) 

Iapygum Tria Peomontoria, three capes on the 
coast of Magna Graecia; to the south of the Lacinian 
promontory. They are now called Capo delle Gas¬ 
tello, Capo Rizzuto, and Capo della Nave. ( Cramer's 
Anc. Italy , vol. 2, p. 397.) 

Iapyx, I. a son of Daedaltfs, who was fabled to have 
given name to Iapygia in Lower Italy. (Consult re¬ 
marks under the article Iapygia.)—II. A name given 
to the west-northwest wind. It was so called from 
658 


Iapygia, in Lower Italy, which country lay partly ii 
the line of its direction. It is the same with the 'Ap- 
yeoryt; of the Greeks, and was the most favourable 
wind for sailing from Brundisium towards the southern 
parts of Greece. (Hor., Od., 1, 3, 4.) 

Iarbas, a son of Jupiter and Garamantis, king of 
Gaetulia. (Vid. Dido.) 

Iasides, a patronymic given to Palinurus, as de¬ 
scended from a person of the naroe cf Iasius. (Virg., 
JEn., 5, 843.) 

Iasion or Iasus, a son of Jupiter and Electra, or.e 
of the Atlantides (Hellanicus, ap. Schol. ad Od., 5, 
125), while others made him a son of Minqs or Kratos 
and the nymph Phronia. (Schol. ad Od., 1. c .— Schol. 
ad Theocrit., Id., 3, 50.) He is said to have had by 
Ceres a son named Plutus ( Wealth), whereupon Ju¬ 
piter, offended at the connexion, struck the mortal 
lover with his thunder. (Horn., Od., 5, 125.) He¬ 
siod makes Crete the scene of this event. (Theog., 
969.) Iasion is also named as the father of the swift¬ 
footed Atalanta ( Vid. Atalanta.)—We have here an 
agricultural legend. Iasion is made the offspring ot 
Force and Prudence. (K paroc; and Qpovia. — Creu- 
zer, Symbolik, par Guigniaut, vol. 3, p. 325.) In 
other words, strength, or courage in enduring labour, 
and prudence, or skill in the application of that strength, 
excite the instinctive powers of the earth, causing fam¬ 
ine to disappear, nourishing the human race, and ren¬ 
dering them healthy and vigorous. Hence the name 
of Iasion, “ he that saves ” ( ido/iai ) from evil. (Com¬ 
pare remarks under the article Trophonius.) 

Iasis, a name given to Atalanta, daughter of Ia¬ 
sus. 

Jason, I. a celebrated hero, son of Alcirrtede, daugh¬ 
ter of Phylacus, by JEson, the son of Cretheus, and 
Tyro, the daughter of Salmoneus. Tyro, before her 
union with Cretheus, the son of uEolus, had two sons, 
Pelias and Neleus, by Neptune. JEson was king of 
Iolcos, but was dethroned by Pelias. The latter also 
sought the life of Jason; and, to save him, his pa¬ 
rents gave out that he was dead, and, meantime, 
conveyed him by night to the cave of the centaur 
Chiron, to whose care they committed him. (Apol- 
lod., 1 , 9, 16.— Apoll. Rh., 1 , 10.— Hygin., fab., 12, 
13.) An oracle had told Pelias to beware of the “ one- 
sandalcd man," but during many years none such ap¬ 
peared to disturb his repose. At length, when Ja¬ 
son had attained the age of twenty, he proceeded, 
unknown to Chiron, to Iolcos, in order to claim the 
rights of his family. He bore, says the Theban po 
et, two spears; he wore the close-fitting Magnesian 
dress, and a pard skin to throw off the rain, and his 
long unshorn locks waved on his back. In his jour¬ 
ney he was stopped by the inundation of the river 
Evenus or Enipeus, over which he was carried by Ju¬ 
no, who had changed herself into an old woman. In 
crossing the stream he lost one of his sandals, and 
on his arrival at Iolcos, the singularity of his dress and 
the fairness of his complexion atfracted the notice of 
the people, and drew a crowd around him in the mar¬ 
ket-place. Pelias came to see him with the rest, and 
as he had been warned by the oracle to beware of a 
man who should appear at Iolcos with one foot bare 
and the other shod, the appearance of Jason, who had 
lost one of his sandals, alarmed him. He asked him 
who he was, and Jason mildly answered his question, 
telling him he was come to demand the kingdom of 
his fathers. He then went into the house of his parent 
JEson, by whom he was joyfully recognised. On th$ 
intelligence of the arrival of Jason, his uncles Pheres 
and Amythaon, with their sons Admetus and Melam- 
pus, hastened to Iolcos. Five days they feasted and 
enjoyed themselves ; on the sixth Jason disclosed to 
them his wishes, and went, accompanied by them, to 
the dwelling of Pelias, who at once proposed to resign 
the kingdom, retaining the herds and pastures, at the 




JASON. 


I AX 


same time stimulating Jason to the expedition of the 
golden fleece. ( Pind ., Pyth., 4, 193, seqq.) —Another 
account is, that Pelias, being about to offer a sacrifice 
on the seashore to his father Neptune, invited all his 
subjects. Jason, who was ploughing on the other side 
of the Anaurus, crossed that stream to come to it, and 
in so doing lost one of his sandals. It is said that Ju¬ 
no, out of enmity to Pelias, who had neglected to sac¬ 
rifice to her, took the form of an old woman, and asked 
Jason to carry her over, which caused him to leave 
one of his sandals in the mud. Her object was to 
give occasion for Medea’s coming to Iolcos and de¬ 
stroying Pelias. When Pelias perceived Jason with 
but one sandal, he saw the accomplishment of the or¬ 
acle, and, sending for him next day, asked him what 
he would do, if he had the power, had it been predict¬ 
ed to him that he should be slain by one of his citizens. 
Jason replied, that he would order him to go and fetch 
the golden fleece. Pelias took him at his word, and im¬ 
posed the task upon Jason himself. ( Pherecydes, ap. 
Schol. ad Pind., Pyth., 4, 133.)—An account of the 
celebrated expedition which Jason in consequence un¬ 
dertook, will be found under a different article. ( Vid. 
Argonauts.)—During the absence of Jason, Pelias had 
driven the father and mother of the hero to self-de¬ 
struction, and had put to death their remaining child. 
Desirous of revenge, Jason, after he had delivered the 
fleece to Pelias, entreated Medea to exercise her art 
in his behalf. He sailed with his companions to the 
Isthmus of Corinth, and there dedicated the Argo to 
Neptune ; and Medea, shortly afterward, ingratiated 
herself with the daughters of Pelias, and, by vaunting 
her art of restoring youth, and proving it by cutting up 
an old ram, and putting the pieces into a pot, whence 
issued a bleating lamb, she persuaded them to treat 
their father in the same manner, and then refused to 
restore him to youth. Acastus, son of Pelias, there¬ 
upon drove Jason and Medea from Iolcos, and they re¬ 
tired to Corinth, where they lived happily for ten years, 
till Jason, wishing to marry Glauce or Creiisa, the 
daughter of Creon, king of that place, put away Me¬ 
dea. The Colchian princess, enraged at the ingrati¬ 
tude of her husband, sent a poisoned robe and crown 
as gifts to the bride, by which tlfe latter, together with 
her father Creon, miserably perished. Medea then 
killed her own children, mounted a chariot drawn by 
winged serpents, and fled to Athens, where she mar¬ 
ried King iEgeus, by whom she had a son named Mo¬ 
dus. But, being detected in an attempt to destroy 
Theseus, she fled from Athens with her son. Medus 
conquered several barbarous tribes, and also the coun¬ 
try which he named Media after himself, and finally 
fell in battle against the Indians. Medea, returning 
unknown to Colchis, found that her father A3etes had 
been robbed of his throne by her brother Perses. She 
restored him, and deprived the usurper of life.—The 
narrative here given is taken from Apollodorus, who 
seems to have adhered closely to the versions of the 
legend found in the Attic tragedians. The accounts 
of others will now be stated. In the Theogony, Me¬ 
dea is classed with the goddesses who honoured mortal 
men with their love. Jason made her his spouse, and 
she bore to “ the shepherd of the people” a son named 
Medus, whom Chiron reared in the mountains, and 
“the will of great Jove was accomplished.” ( Theog ., 
992, seqq.) It is evident, therefore, that this poet 
supposed Jason to have reigned at Iolcos after his re¬ 
turn from his great adventure.—According to the poem 
pf the Nostoi, Medea restored iEson to youth ( Argum. 
Eurip., Medea. — Ovid, Met., 7, 159, seqq.), while Si¬ 
monides and Pherecydes say that she effected this 
change in Jason himself ( Arg. Eur., Med.)] and yEs- 
chylus, that she thus renewed the Hyades, the nurses 
of Bacchus, and their husbands. (Arg. Eur., Med. — 
Ovid, Met., 7, 294, seqq.) —Jason is said to have put 
an end to his life after the tragic fate of his children ; 


or, as another account has it, when the Argo was fall¬ 
ing to pieces with time, Medea persuaded him to sleep 
under the prow, and it fell on him and killed him. 
(Arg. Eurip., Med.) Medea herself, we are told, be¬ 
came the bride of Achilles in the Elysian fields. ( lb - 
ycus et Simonides, ap. Schol. ad Apoll. Rh., 4, 815. 
— Keightley's Mythology, p. 307, seqq. —For remarks 
on the whole Argonautic legend, consult the article 
Argonaut®.)—II. A tyrant of Thessaly, born at Phe¬ 
ne, and descended from one of the richest and most 
distinguished families of that city. He usurped the 
supreme power in his native place while still quite 
young, about 375 B.C. ; reduced nearly all Thessaly 
under his sway ; and caused himself to be invested 
with the title of generalissimo, which soon became, in 
his hands, only another name for monarch of the coun¬ 
try. The success which attended his other expedi¬ 
tions also, against the Dolopes, the Phocians, &c. ; 
his alliances with Athens, Macedon, and Thebes; in 
fine, his rare military talents, imboldened him to think 
of undertaking some enterprise against Persia ; but, 
before he could put these schemes into operation, he 
was assassinated while celebrating some public games 
at Pherse, in the third year of his reign. Jason was a 
popular tyrant among his immediate subjects. He cul¬ 
tivated letters and the oratorical art, and was intimate 
with Isocrates, and Gorgias of Leontini. He had 
contracted a friendship also with Timotheus, the son 
of Conon, and went himself to Athens to save him 
from a capital accusation.—III. A native of Cyrene, 
an abridgment of a work of whose, on the exploits of 
the Maccabees, is given in the second section of the 
book of Maccabees. St. Augustine speaks of this 
abridgment as of a work which the Church had placed 
in the Canon, by reason of the histories of the martyrs 
which it contains. St. Jerome, however, says the 
contrary. The councils of Carthage in 397, and of 
Trent, have declared it canonical. (Scholl, Hist. Lit. 
Gr ., vol. 3, p. 431.)—IV. A native of Argos, who 
flourished during the second century. He wrote a 
work on Greece, in four books, comprehending the 
earlier times of the nation, the wars against the Per¬ 
sians, the exploits of Alexander, the actions of Antip¬ 
ater, and ending with the capture of Athens. He com¬ 
posed also a treatise on the Temples (or, as others ren¬ 
der it, Sacrifices) of Alexander, Ilep?. tuv ’ Xkei-dvdpov 
lepuv. (Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 4, p. 172.— Voss., 
Hist. Gr., 1, 10, p. 62.— Athcnai Op., ed. Schweigh., 
vol. 9, p. 136, Ind. Auct.) —V. A Rhodian, grandson 
of Posidonius, who succeeded his grandfather in the 
Stoic school of his native island. His works have not 
reached us. 

Iasonium Promontorium, a promontory of Pontus, 
northeast of Polemonium. It was so called from the 
ship Argo having anchored in its vicinity. (Xen., 
Anah., 6, 2, 1.) It is also mentioned by Strabo (548), 
and it preserves evident vestiges of the ancient appel¬ 
lation in that of lasoun. (Cramer's Asia Minor, 
vol. 1, p. 273.) 

Iassicus Sinus, a gulf of Caria, deriving its name 
from the city of Iassus, situate at its head. It is now 
called Assem-Kalessi. (Thucyd., 8, 26.) 

Iassus, a city of Asia Minor, situate on a small 
island very near the coast of Caria, and giving to the 
adjacent bay the name of Sinus Iassicus. It was a 
rich and flourishing city, and the inhabitants were 
chiefly occupied with fisheries along the adjacent 
coasts. It is flow in ruins, though many vestiges re¬ 
main of it. The name of the place is Assem. (Plin., 
5, 28 .—Liv., 32, 33 ; 37, 17.) 

Iaxartes, a large river of Asia, rising in the chain 
of Mons Imaus, and flowing into the Sea of Aral, after 
a course of 1682 English miles. It is now, the Sir, or 
Sir Darjah. Ptolemy makes it flow into the Caspian, 
as he was unacquainted with the existence of the Sea 
of Aral. Herodotus, long before, had called the lax- 

659 



IAZ 


IBY 


artes by the name of Araxes, and confounded it with 
the Oxus (1, 204, seqq.). Rennell, after quoting the 
passage just referred to, remarks as follows : “ In 
this description the Iaxartes and Oxus appear to be 
confounded together (Herodotus had perhaps heard 
certain particulars of both rivers, but might refer them 
to one only), for there are circumstances that may be 
applied to each respectively, although most of them 
are applicable only to the former. It may be observed, 
that Herodotus mentions only one large river in this 
part of the empire of Cyrus ; that is, the river which 
separates it from the Massagetse, and which was un¬ 
doubtedly the Iaxartes ; for there is no question that 
Sogdia was included in the empire of Cyrus, and it lay 
between the Oxus and Iaxartes. The Oxus, there¬ 
fore, has no distinct place in the geography of our 
author, although a river of much greatei bulk and im¬ 
portance than the Iaxartes. But that the Oxus was in¬ 
tended, when he says that the larger stream continued 
its even course to the Caspian, appears probable; al¬ 
though the numerous branches that formed the large 
islands, and were afterward lost in bogs and marshes, 
agrees rather with the description of the Aral lake, 
and lower part of the Sir” (Geography of Herod¬ 
otus, vol. 1, p. 270, seqq., ed. 1830.) — With regard to 
the tribe of the Iaxartse, and the origin of the name 
Iaxartes, the same writer observes as follows: “ Ptol¬ 
emy mentions the Iaxartae : placing them along the 
northern bank of the Iaxartes, throughout the lower 
half of its course. These, consequently, occupy the 
place of the Massagetse of Herodotus and Arrian, and 
of the Sacae of Strabo. Ptolemy may possibly have 
named them arbitrarily ; but as there is a remnant of 
a tribe named Sartes, now existing between the Oxus 
and Iaxartes, and which are reported to be the re¬ 
mains of the ancient inhabitants of the country, it is 
possible that this was one of the tribes of the Massa¬ 
getse or Sacse ; while Iaxartse may have been the true 
name in the country itself, and very probably gave 
name to the river Iaxartes at that period; of which 
&i7 and Sirt, which are in use at present, may be the 
remains. Ammianus speaks of the Iaxartse as a tribe, 
and of good account, in lib. xxiii.” ( Geogr. of He¬ 
rod, vol. 2, p. 295, seqq.) —It is generally supposed 
that the Greeks in the time of Alexander were guilty 
of an error in confounding this river with the Tana'is 
Klaproth, however, shows that the name Tana'is was 
common to both the Iaxartes and the modern Don, a 
people of the same race occupying at that time the 
banks of both streams, and using for both an appella- 
tion, the root of which (dan, tan, or don) has a gener- 
al reference to water. (Consult remarks under the 
article Tana'is. Klaproth, Tableaux Historiques de 
VAsie, p. 181.) 1 

Iazyges, a people of Scythia. Of these there were 
the Iazyges Maeotse, who occupied the northern coast 
of the Palus Mseotis ; the Iazyges Metanastse (Ptol., 
—Compare Ccllarius, Geogr.', \ ol. 2, p. 83), who in¬ 
habited the angular territory formed by the Tibiscus, 
the Danube, and Dacia; they lived in the vicinity of 
Dacia, and are called by Pliny Sarmates. The Iazy¬ 
ges Basilii, or Royal (Ovid, Ep. ex. Pont., 1, 2, 79._ 

Id., Trist., 2, 191), were a people of Sarmatia, joined 
by Strabo to the Iazyges on the coast of the Euxine, 
between the Tyras and the Borysthenes. Ptolemy 
speaks only of the Metanastse, who wete probably the 
most considerable of the three. The territory of this 
latter people was, towards the decline of the empire, 
occupied by the Vandals, and afterward became a 
part of the empire of the Goths. About the year 350 
they were expelled by the Huns. It has since formed 
a part of Hungary, and of the Bannat of Temeswar. 
According to some writers, the Iazyges were the an- 
cestors of the Iatwinges, whom the Polish authors 
•all also Pollexiani. (Balbi, Introduction a VAtlas 
bthnogr., &c., vol. 1, p. 188 ) 

660 


Iberia, I. a country of Asia, bounded on the west 
by Colchis, on the north by Mount Caucasus, on the 
east by Albania, and on the south by Armenia. I 
answers now to Imerili, Georgia, the country of the 
Gurians, &c. The name of Imeriti is an evident der¬ 
ivation from the ancient one. The Cyrus, or Kur, 
flowed through Iberia. Ptolemy enumerates severa» 
towns of this country, such as Agiuna, Vasaeda, Va 
rica, &c. The Iberians were allies of Mithradates, 
and were therefore attacked by Pompey, who de¬ 
feated them in a great battle, and took many pris¬ 
oners. Plutarch makes the number of slain to have 
been not less than nine thousand, and that of the 
prisoners ten thousand. (Vit. Pomp.) The same 
writer states, that the Iberians had never been subject 
to the Medes or to the Persians ; they had escaped 
even the Macedonian yoke, because Alexander was 
obliged to quit Hyrcania in haste. (Plin., 6, 4.— Id., 
10, 3.— Strab., 499.— Ptol., 5, 11 . — Socrat., Hist., 1 , 
26.— Sozom., 2, 7.)—II. One of the ancient names of 
Spain, derived from the river Iberus. Consult re 
marks under the article Hispania. 

Iberi, a powerful nation of Spain, situate along the 
Iberus, and who, mingling with Celtic tribes, took the 
name of Celtiberi. (Consult remarks under the article 
Hispania.) 

Iberus, I. one of the largest rivers in Spain. It 
rises in what was once the country of the Cantabri. 
from the ancient Fons Iberus, in the valley of Reynosa, 
near the town of Juliobriga, and flows with a south¬ 
eastern course into the Mediterranean Sea, a little 
distance above the Tenebrium Promontorium, pass¬ 
ing, not far from its mouth, the city of Dertosa, now 
Tortosa. The chain of Mons Idubeda, by which it 
runs for a great part of its course, prevents it from 
taking a western course along with the other rivers o. 
Spain. It is now the Ebro, and is in general ven 
rapid and unfit for navigation, being full of rocks and 
shoals, and hence the Spanish government have beer 
compelled to cut a canal parallel to the river from Tu • 
dela to Sastaga. The deposites which the river carries 
to the Mediterranean have formed a considerable delta 
at its embouchure, and it has been necessary to cut a 
canal, in order that vessels may ascend to the small 
town of Amposta, below Tortosa. (Malte-Brun, vol. 
8, p. 10, Am. ed.) This river was made the boundary 
between the Carthaginian and Roman possessions in 
Spain after the close of the first Punic war. (Lu¬ 
can, 4, 335.— Plin., 3, 3.— Mela, 2, 6 .—Liv., 21, 5.) 
—II. A river of Iberia in Asia, flowing from Mount 
Caucasus into the Cyrus, probably the modern Iora. 

Ibis, a lost poem of the poet Callimachus, in which 
he bitterly satirizes the ingratitude of his pupil the poet 
Apollonius. (Vid. Callimachus.) Ovid also wrote a 
poem under the same title, in imitation of Callimachus. 
This latter has come down to us, and is thought to be 
directed against Hyginus, a false friend of the poet’s 
( Vid. O vidius.) 

Ibycus, a lyric poet, a native of Rhegium, who 
flourished about B.C. 528. Rhegium was peopled 
partly by Ionians from Chalcis, partly by Dorians from 
the Peloponnesus, the latter of whom were a superioi 
class.. The peculiar dialect formed in Rhegium had 
some influence on the poems of Ibycus, although these 
were in general written in an epic dialect with a Doric 
tinge, like the poems of Stesichorus. Ibycus was a 
wandering poet, as is intimated by the story cf his 
death, which will be given below; but his travels were 
not, like those of Stesichorus, confined to Sicily. He 
passed a part of his time in Samos with Polycrates, 
whence the flourishing period of this bard may be 
fixed as we have already given it. In consequence 
of the peculiar style of poetry which was admired at 
the court of Polycrates, Ibycus could not here compost 
solemn hymns to the gods, but had to accommodate 
his Doran cithara, as he was best able, to the strain* 





I 13 A 


ICH 


»f Anacreon. Accordingly, it is probable that the 
poetry of Ibycus was first turned mainly to erotic sub¬ 
jects during his residence in the court of the tyrant of 
Samos ; and that his glowing love-songs, which formed 
his chief title to fame in antiquity, were composed at 
this period. But that the poetical style of Ibycus re¬ 
sembled that of Stesichorus, is proved by the fact, that 
the ancient critics often doubted to which of the two 
a particular idea or expression belonged. (Compare 
Athenaus, 4, p. 172, d. — Schol. Ven. ad II. , 24, 259. 
— Hesych., s. v. ppyahinrai. — Schol. ad Aristoph. 
Av., 1302.— Schol. Vratislav. ad Pind., 01. 9, 128. 
— Etymol. Gud., s. v. arepirvog, p. 98, 31.) The 
metres of Ibycus also resemble those of Stesichorus, 
being in general dactylic series, connected together 
into verses of different lengths, but sometimes so long 
that they are to be called systems rather than verses. 
Besides these, Ibycus frequently used logacedic verses 
of a soft or languid character ; and, in general, his 
rhythms are less stately and dignified, and more suited 
to the expression of passion, than those of Stesicho¬ 
rus. Hence the effeminate poet Agathon is repre¬ 
sented by Aristophanes as appealing to Ibycus with 
Anacreon and Alcaeus, who had made music more 
sweet, and had worn many-coloured fillets (in the Ori¬ 
ental fashion), and led the Ionic dance. The subjects 
of the poems of Ibycus appear also to have had a 
strong affinity with those of Stesichorus ; and so many 
particular accounts of mythological stories, especially 
relating to the heroic period, are cited from his poems, 
that it seems as if he too had written long poems on 
the Trojan war, the expedition of the Argonauts, and 
other similar subjects. The erotic poetry, however, 
of Ibycus is most celebrated, and those productions 
breathed a fervour of passion far exceeding that ex¬ 
pressed in any similar pieces throughout the whole 
range of Grecian literature. The death of the poet 
is said to have been as follows: he was assailed and 
murdered by robbers, and at the moment of his death, 
he implored some cranes that were flying over head 
to avenge his fate. Some time after, as the murder¬ 
ers were in the market-place, one of them observed 
some cranes in the air, and remarked to his com¬ 
panions, a'i ’I 6vkov Enducoi 'jzdpELGLv ! “ Here are 
the avengers of Ibycus V These words and the re¬ 
cent murder of Ibycus excited suspicion ; the assas¬ 
sins were seized, and, being put to the torture, con¬ 
fessed their guilt. ( Muller, Hist. Gr. Lit ., p. 205, 
seqq.) 

Icaria., an island of the dEgean, near Samos, and, 
according to Strabo, eighty stadia due west from Am- 
pelos, the western promontory of the latter. Pliny 
(4, 12) makes the distance greater, but he probably 
measures from the harbour at the western extremity. 
Mythology deduced the name of this island from Ica¬ 
rus, son of Daedalus, whose body was washed upon its 
shores after the unfortunate termination of his flight. 
Bochart, however, inclines towards a Phoenician der¬ 
ivation, and assigns, as the etymology of the name, 
1-caure , i. e., “insula piscium,” the island of fish. In 
support of this explanation, he refers to Athenasus 
(1, 24), Stephanus Byzantinus, and others, according 
to whom one of the early Greek names of the island 
was Ichthyoessa (’I^flvde/xcra), i. e., “abounding in 
flsh.” ( Gcogr. Sacr., 1, 8, sub fin.) —Icaria was of 
small extent, being long but narrow. In Strabo’s 
time it was thinly inhabited, and the Samians used it 
principally for the pasturage of their cattle. The mod¬ 
ern name is Nicaria. The island at the present day 
is said to abound in timber, but to be otherwise steril; 
and to be inhabited by a few Greeks, very poor, and 
very proud of their pretended descent from the impe¬ 
rial line of Constantine. ( Georgirenes , Dcscrip. dc 
Samos, Nicaria, &c., p. 304.) 

Icaris and Icariotis, a name given to Penelope, 
as daughter of Icarius. 


Icarium Mare, a part of the ^Egean Sea near the 
islands of Myconus and Gyarus. The ancient my* 
thologists deduce the name from Icarus, who fell into 
it and was drowned. But compare remarks under the 
article Icaria. 

Icarius, I. an Athenian, father of Erigone. Hav¬ 
ing been taught hy Bacchus the culture of the vine, 
he gave some of the juice of the grape to certain shep¬ 
herds, who, thinking themselves poisoned, killed him. 
When they came to their senses they buried him; and 
his daughter Erigone, being shown the spot by his 
faithful dog Msera, hung herself through grief. 'Apol- 
lod., 3, 14, 7.— Hy gin., fab., 130.) Icarius was fa¬ 
bled to have been changed after death into the con¬ 
stellation Bootes, Erigone into Virgo, while Maera be¬ 
came the star Canis. ( Vid. Erigone.)—II. A son of 
CEbalus of Lacedaemon. He gave his daughter Pe¬ 
nelope in marriage to Ulysses, king of Ithaca, but he 
was so tenderly attached to her that he wished her 
husband to settle at Lacedaemon. Ulysses refused; 
and when he saw the earnest petitions of Icarius, he 
told Penelope, as they were going to embark, that she 
might choose freely either to follow him to Ithaca or 
to remain with her father. Penelope blushed in si¬ 
lence, and covered her head with her veil. Icarius, 
upon this, permitted his daughter to go to Ithaca, and 
immediately erected a temple to the goddess of mod¬ 
esty, on the spot where Penelope had covered het 
blushes with her veil. 

Icarus, a son of Daedalus, who, with his father, fled 
with wings from Crete to escape the resentment of 
Minos. His flight being too high proved fatal to him ; 
for the sun melted the wax which cemented his wings, 
and he fell into that part of the iEgean Sea which was 
called after his name. ( Vid. Icarium Mare ; and con¬ 
sult also remarks under the article Daedalus.) 

Iceni, a people of Britain, north of the Trinobantes. 
They inhabited what answers now to the counties of 
Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridge, and Huntingdon. This 
nation is called by several different names, as Simeni 
by Ptolemy, Cenimagni by Caesar, &c. They at first 
submitted to the Roman power, but afterward revolt¬ 
ing in the reign of Claudius, were defeated in a great 
battle by Ostorius Scapula, the second Roman govern¬ 
or of Britain, A.D. 50, and reduced to a state of sub¬ 
jection. They again revolted under the command of 
the famous Boadicea, but were entirely defeated with 
great slaughter by Suetonius Paulinus, A.D. 61, and 
totally subjugated. Their capital was Venta Icenorum, 
now Caister, about three miles from Norioich. (Ta * 
cit. , 12, 31.— Cces., B. G., 5, 21. — Cellarii, Gcogr. 
Ant., vol. 2, p. 339.) 

Ichn^e, I. a town of Macedonia, placed by Herodo¬ 
tus in Botisea, and situated probably at the mouth of 
the Ludias. {Herod., 7, 123.—Compare Mela , 2, 3. 
— Plin., 4, 10.) From other authors, cited by Ste¬ 
phanus, it appears that the name was sometimes writ¬ 
ten Achne.—II. A city of Thessaly, near Phyllus, and 
in the district of Phthiotis. The goddess Themis was 
especially revered here. ( Strab., 435.— Horn., Hymn, 
in Apoll., 94.) 

Ichnusa, an ancient name of Sardinia, which it re¬ 
ceived from its likeness to a human foot. ’I xvovca, 
from lx v °q, vestigium. {Pausan., 10, 17.— Plin., 3, 
7 .— Sil. Ital., 12, 881.) It was alsd called Sandalio- 
tis, from its resemblance to a sandal {cavddTaov). Rit¬ 
ter, however, indulges in some very learned and curi¬ 
ous speculations to prove that the name Ichnusa refers, 
not to the shape of the island, but to the establishment 
in it, at an early period, of the religion of the Sun. 
And, in support of this position, he avails himself very 
skilfully of the various accounts of the prints of human 
footsteps as found in different parts of the ancient 
world. {Vorhalle, p. 351, seqq.) 

Ichthyophagi, a name given by the Greek geogra¬ 
phers to several tribes of barbarians in different parts 

661 



l c o 


IDA 


r)f the ancient world, and which indicates a people 
“ living on fish.” I. A people of Gedrosia, on the 
coast of the Mare Erythraeum. ( Plin., 6, 23.— Arrian, 
6, 28.— Id., Ind., 26.)—II. A people in the northeast¬ 
ern part of Arabia Felix, along the coast of the Sinus 
Persicus.—III. A people of Trogloditica, according to 
Strabo, southwest of the island Tapozos ; probably 
near the straits of Dirae, or Bab-el-Mandeb. Accord¬ 
ing to the Peutinger Table, they dwelt between Albus 
Portus and Berenice. 

Ichthyopiiagorum Sinus, a bay on the northeast¬ 
ern coast of Arabia Felix.- 

Iconium, a very* ancient city of Asia Minor, and 
during the Persian dominion the easternmost city of 
Phrygia. ( XenAnab., 1, 2.) At a later period it 
became and continued the capital of Lycaonia. It was 
never a very important place : Strabo (568) calls it a 
ttoXlxvlov, “ small city.” Pliny, it is true, gives it 
the appellation of urbs celeberrima, but this merely re¬ 
fers to its being the head of a tetrarchy of fourteen 
cities. (Plin., 5, 27.) Strabo praises the activity of 
the inhabitants and the fruitfulness of the surrounding 
country. The Greeks, according to their wonted cus¬ 
tom, brought their own mythology to bear on the name 
of this place, without at all caring for the fact that the 
city was called Iconium long before any of their nation 
had penetrated into inner Asia. They deduced the 
appellation from elkovlov (“a small image”), and then 
no difficulty presented itself as to the mode of explain¬ 
ing it. According to some, Prometheus and Minerva 
were ordered by Jupiter, in order to replenish the earth 
after the deluge of Deucalion, to make human forms 
of clay, and to inspire them with the breath of life by 
calling in the aid of the winds. The scene of this was 
the vicinity of Iconium, whence the place received its 
name. ( Steph. Byz., s. v. ’Ikovlov.) This etymolo¬ 
gy, however, had but few supporters ; another and a 
more popular one prevailed, though of later date than 
the former, since Strabo and his contemporaries knew 
nothing of it. According to this last, Perseus here 
raised a column with an image of Medusa upon it, and 
hence the name of the place. ( EusLath., Schol. in 
Dionys. Perieg., v. 856.) When Constantine the 
Great found statues of Perseus and Andromeda at 
Iconium, and caused them to be transported to Con¬ 
stantinople, this discovery only served to confirm the 
previous tradition in the minds, not only of the neigh¬ 
bouring communities, but also of the Byzantines them¬ 
selves. (Antiq. Constant., 1. 2 et 6.— Bandurii, Imp. 
Orient., vol. 1, p. 24, 106.) It created no difficulty 
Whatever that the name of Iconium commenced, not 
with the diphthong E i, but the single I. Stephanus 
(l. c .) asserts, that the name ought to be written with 
the initial diphthong, and it is, in fact, so written by 
Eustathius and the Byzantine historians. (E Ikovlov 
— Chron. Alexandrin., Cedrenus.) Eckhel also cites 
medals on which this orthography is given ; but other 
and earlier ones have the true form, and the gramma¬ 
rian Choeroboscus observes, that the first syllable of 
the name was pronounced short by Menander. (Cod. 
Bai •occ., 50, f. 134.) — The most interesting circum¬ 
stances connected with the history of Iconium, are 
those which relate to St. Paul’s preaching there, to¬ 
wards the commencement of his apostolical mission to 
the Gentiles. (Acts, 13, 51, seqq.) —Under the By¬ 
zantine emperors frequent mention is made of this city; 
but it had been wrested from them, first by the Sara¬ 
cens, and afterward by the 'Wirks, who made it the 
capital of an empire, the sovereigns of which took the 
title of Sultans of Iconium. They were constantly en¬ 
gaged in hostilities with the Greek emperors and the 
crusaders, with various success ; and they must be 
considered as having laid the foundation of the Otto¬ 
man power in Asia Minor, which commenced under 
Osman Oglou and his descendants, on the termination 
of the Iconian dynasty, towards the beginning of the 


fourteenth century.—This place has been included 
the domains of the Grand Seignior, under the name of 
Konia , ever since the time of Bajazet, who finally ex¬ 
tirpated the Ameers of Caramania. It is the residence 
of a pacha. Col. Leake gives the following account 
of its present state : “ The circumference of the walls 
of Konia is between two and three miles, beyond which 
are suburbs not much less populous than the town it¬ 
self. The walls, strong and lofty, and flanked with 
Square towers, which at the gates are built close to¬ 
gether, are of the time of the Seljukian kings, who 
seem to have taken considerable pains to exhibit the 
Greek inscriptions, and the remains of architecture and 
sculpture belonging to the ancient Iconium, which they 
made use of in building the walls. The town, suburbs, 
and gardens around are plentifully supplied with water 
from streams which flow from some hills to the west¬ 
ward, and which to the northeast join a lake varying 
in size according to the season of the year. In the 
town carpets are manufactured, and they tan and dye 
blue and yellow leather. Cotton, wool, hides, and a 
few of the other raw materials, which enrich the su¬ 
perior industry and skill of the manufacturers of Eu¬ 
rope, are sent to Smyrna by the caravans.” (Journal 
of a Tour in Asia Minor, p. 48.) Col. Leake trav¬ 
elled in this country in 1800. Mr. Browne, who pass¬ 
ed through in 1802, says, that “ the scanty population 
and shapeless mud-hovels of Konia, the abode of pov¬ 
erty and wretchedness, are strongly contrasted with 
what still remains of the spacious and lofty walls of 
the Greek city.” (Walpole's Memoirs, &c., vol. 2, p. 
121.) “The modern city,” says Capt. Kinneir, “has 
an imposing appearance, from the number and size of 
the mosques, colleges, and other public buildings ; but 
these stately edifices are crumbling into ruins, while 
the houses of the inhabitants consist of a mixture of 
small huts built of sun-dried brick, and wretched hov¬ 
els thatched with reeds.” The same traveller also 
gives an interesting description of the antiquities of the 
place. He makes the present number of inhabitants 
'qbout 80,000, principally Turks, with only a small pro¬ 
portion of Christians. 

Ida, I. a chain of mountains in Troas, or, more 
correctly speaking, a mountainous region, extending 
in its greatest length from the promontory of Lectum 
to Zelea, and in breadth from the Hellespont to the 
neighbourhood of Adramyttium ; so that it occupied 
by its ridges and ramifications the whole of the tract 
anciently called Phrygia Minor. Among a number of 
ridges or ranges and irregular masses of mountains of 
which it is composed, there are three ridges that are 
superior in point of elevation to the rest, and one of 
them eminently so. From their relative positions to 
each other, they may be compared collectively, in point 
of form, to the Greek Delta ; the head or northeastern 
angle of which approaches the Hellespont, near the site 
of the ancient Dardanus ; and the two lower angles 
approach the promontory of Lectum on the one hand, 
and Adramyttium on the other. The loftiest of these 
ridges is that which forms the right or eastern side of 
the A; extending southeastward between the Helles¬ 
pont and the head of the gulf of Adramyttium, and ter¬ 
minating in the lofty summit of Gargarus, which over¬ 
tops, in every distant view, the great body of Ida, like 
a dome over the body of a. temple. The second ridge, 
forming the left of the A, runs parallel to the coast of 
the iEgean Sea, from north to south, at the distance 
of six or seven miles. Its commencement in the north 
is, like that of Ida, near the Hellespont, and it extends 
far on towards the promontory of Lectum. In a gen¬ 
eral view from the west it appears to extend to the 
promontory itself; although, in reality, it is separated 
from it by a wide valley, through which flows the 
Touzla or Salt River. The third ridge, forming the 
basis of the A, extends along the southern coast of the 
Lesser Phrygia, from the summit of Mount Gargarus 




I D A 


I D A 


to the promontory of Lectum, diminishing in altitude 
as it proceeds towards the latter. Mr. Hawkins says 
that this ridge is not inferior in height to that which 
faces the plain of Troy. Herodotus, Xenophon, and 
Strabo evidently design by Ida the ridge towards 
Troy ; or at least they exclude Gargarus. The for¬ 
mer, in describing the march of Xerxes northward 
from Pergamus, Thebes, and Antandros, to Ilium, 
makes the Persian monarch leave Ida “ on his left 
hand” (7, 42), that is, to the west. Now the summit 
of Gargarus being little short of an English mile in al¬ 
titude, what should have induced Xerxes to lead his 
army over such a ridge, when he might have gone a 
straighter and smoother road by avoiding it, and when, 
after all, he must of necessity have crossed the west¬ 
ern ridge also in order to arrive at Ilium 1—Again, 
Xenophon says ( Anab., 7), that in his way (southward) 
from Ilium through Antandros to Adramyttium, he 
crossed Mount Ida. Of course it must have been the 
western and southern ranges, as is done at present by 
those who travel from the Dardanelles to Adramyt or 
Adramyttium. Strabo unquestionably refers the ideas 
of Demetrius respecting the mountains of Cotylus 
(i. e., Gargarus) and its views to the Trojan Ida; nev¬ 
er supposing that the lofty mountain over Antandros 
and Gargara was Cotylus, the highest point of Ida, 
whence Demetrius derives the fountains of the Sca- 
mander, the iEsepus, and the Granicus. Strabo con¬ 
cluded that all these rivers sprang from that chain of 
Ida bordering on the Trojan plain which he had in 
view from the seacoast; and which, it appears, was 
the only Ida known to him. ( Rcnnell's Observations 
on the Topography of Troy, p. 17, seqq.) — Ida was 
remarkable for its thick forests and excellent timber.' 
Its name is thought to De derived from the circum¬ 
stance of its being covered with woods, I8yin uarype- 
pys, as Herodotus says of a part of Media (1, 110). It 
was the source of many streams {Horn., II., 12, 19), 
and on Ida also Paris adjudged to Venus the prize of 
beauty.—II. The highest and most celebrated mount¬ 
ain of Crete, rising nearly in the centre of the island. 
According to Strabo, it was 600 stadia in circuit, and 
around its base were many large and flourishing cities. 

(Strab., 475. — Compare Dionys. Perieg., v. 501.) 
The summit, named Panacra, was especially sacred to 
Jove. ( Callim ., Hymn, in Jov., 50.) Here Jove was 
fabled to have been educated by the Corybantes, who 
on that account were called Idaei. The modern name 
of the mountain is Psiloriti. (Cramer’s Anc. Greece, 
vol. 3, p. 381.) 

Id^ea, the surname of Cybele, because she was 
worshipped on Mount Ida. ( Lucr., 2, 611.) 

Id^ei Dactyli, priests of Cybele, who, according 
to Ephorus (ap. Diod. Sic., 5, 64. — Fragm., ed. 
Marx, p. 176), were so called from Ida, the mountain 
of Phrygia, where they had their abode. The poets 
and mythologists vary much in their accounts of this 
class of individuals. Some make them to have been 
the sons of Jupiter and the nymph Ida; others con¬ 
found them with the Curetes or Corybantes ; while 
others, again, make the Curetes their offspring. The 
same diversity of opinion exists as to their number. 
Some make them to have been only five ( Pausan., 5, 
7), and hence they suppose them to have been called 
Dactyli, from the analogy between their number and that 
of the fingers (ddurv'KoL) on each hand. Others make 
the number much larger. Pherecydes, one of the early 
Grecian historians, spoke of 20 Idaei Dactyli placed 
on the right, and of 32 on the left, all children of Ida, 
all workers in iron, and, moreover, expert in sorcery. 

( Schol. ad Apoll. Rh., 1, 1129.— Pherecyd., fragm., 
ed Sturz., p. 146.) Hellanicus pretended that the 
Dactyli on the right were occupied with breaking the 
charm formed by those on the left. In one thing all 
the ancient authorities agree, namely, that the Idaei 
Dactyli first taught mankind the art of working iron 


and copper. (Clem. Alex., Strom., 1, p. 420.) The 
Chronicle of Paros places the date of this discovery 
under the reign of Pandion, king of Athens, that is to 
say, 1432 years before the Christian era. (Marm. s 
Oxon. Epoch., 11.) Strabo informs us, that, accord¬ 
ing to some ancient writers, the Curetes and the Cory¬ 
bantes were the offspring of the Idaei Dactyli; that 100 
men, the first inhabitants of Crete, were called by this 
latter name ; that these begat nine Curetes, and that 
each one of these nine begat in his turn ten sons, 
named Idaei Dactyli like their grandfathers. ( Strabo , 
473, seqq.) Strabo remarks on this occasion, with 
great good sense, that early antiquity was accustomed 
to throw the garb of fable around many notions based 
in reality on the nature of things. An ingenious an¬ 
tiquary of modern times, struck by the truth of this 
remark, first calls our attention to the metrical sense 
of SaHTvloq (finger), and then adds, with every ap¬ 
pearance of reason, that the numbers 100, 9, and 10 
applied to the Dactyli and the Curetes, belong proba¬ 
bly to some arithmetical or physical theory. As to 
the name Dactyli itself, whether we must seek its ety¬ 
mology in the number of fingers on each hand, or else 
in the idea of measure, and, consequently, of cadence, 
equally derived from the movement of the fingers, and 
identical, besides, with the idea of number, still it is 
thought that, in forging iron by the aid of their hands 
and fingers, the Dactyli observed at first a species of 
dactylic rhythm, and that these forgers were the first 
that applied the dance to this same rhythm ; from all 
which arose their peculiar name. (Jomard, sur le Sys- 
teme Metrique des anciens Egypliens. — Descript, de 
VEgypte, Antiquites, Memoires, vol. 1, p. 744, seqq.) 

Idalium, a height and grove of Cyprus, near the 
promontory of Pedalium. It was the favourite abode 
of Venus, hence called Idalia, and here, too, Adonis 
was killed by the tooth of the boar. Virgil speaks of 
this hill or mountain under the name of Idalium (An. 
1, 681), and shortly after makes mention of the groves 
of Idalia (1, 693). By this last is meant the entire 
region (’ISoMa x^P a -— Heyne, ad Virg., 1. c.). Or 
another occasion (An., 10, 86), he speaks of a city- 
named Idalium. (Compare Theocritus, 15, 101. 
To/lycjf re Kal ’Idd/Uov.— Steph. Byz., s. v.) The city 
or town of Idalium is passed over in silence by the an 
cient geographical writers. It is first referred to by 
the later scholiasts. (Serv., ad Virg., An., 1, 681 
Schol. ad Theocrit., 15, 101.) It no doubt existec 
from an early period, but was too insignificant to ex¬ 
cite attention. D’Anville is inclined to make the 
modern Dalin correspond to the ancient grove and 
city. Idalium is said to signify literally, “ the place 
of the goddess,” in the Phoenician tongue. ( Bochart , 
Geogr. Sacr., lib. 1, c. 3, p. 356.—Compare Gale's 
Court of the Gentiles, as cited by Clarke, Travels . 
vol. 4, p. 36, Lond. ed., 1817.) 

Idas, a son of Aphareus, famous for his valour. 
He was among the Argonauts, and married Marpes- 
sa, the daughter of Evenus, king of ^Etolia. Mar 
pessa was carried away by Apollo, and Idas pursued 
him, and obliged him to restore her. (Vid. Mar- 
pessa.) According to Apollodorus, Idas, with his 
brother Lynceus, associated with Pollux and Castor 
to carry away some flocks; but, when they had ob¬ 
tained a sufficient quantity of plunder, they refused 
to divide it into equal shares. This provoked the 
sons of Leda; Lynceus was killed by Castor, and 
Idas, to revenge his brother’s death, immediately slew 
Castor, and in his turn perished by the hand of Pol¬ 
lux. According to Pausanias, the quarrel between 
the sons of Leda and those of Aphareus arose from a 
different cause. Idas and Lynceus, as they say, were 
going to celebrate their nuptials with Phoebe and Hilae. 
ra, the two daughters of Leucippus ; but Castor and 
Pollux, who had been invited to partake the common 
festivity, carried off the brides, and Idas and Lynceus 



IDU 


JER 


fell in the attempt to recover their wives. ( Hygin., 
fab., 14, 100, &c.— Ovid, Fast., 5, 700.— Pausan., 
4, 2 ; 5, 18.— Apollod., 3, 11, 2.) 

Idistavisus, a plain of Germany, where Germanicus 
defeated Arminius. The name appears to have some 
affinity to the German word wir.se, signifying “ a mead¬ 
ow.” Mannert supposes the field of battle to have 
been on the east of the Weser, south of the city of 
Minden. (Mannert , Anc. Geogr., vol. 3, p. 85.— 
Tacit., Ann., 2, 16.) 

Idmon, I. son of Apollo and Asteria, was the prophet 
of the Argonauts. He was killed in hunting a wild 
boar in Bithynia, and received a magnificent funeral. 
He had predicted the time and manner of his death. 
(Apollod., 1, 9.—II. A dyer of Colophon, father to 
Arachne. (Ovid, Met., 6, 8.) 

Idomeneus (four syllables), I. succeeded his father 
Deucalion on the throne of Crete, and accompanied 
the Greeks to the Trojan war with a fleet of 90 ships. 
During this celebrated contest he rendered himself con¬ 
spicuous by his valour. At his return he made a vow 
to Neptune, in a dangerous tempest, that if he escaped 
from the fury of the seas and storms, he would offer 
to the god whatever living creature first presented it¬ 
self to his eye on the Cretan shore. This was no 
other than his own son, who came to congratulate his 
father upon his safe return. Idomeneus performed his 
promise to the god, but the inhumanity and rashness of 
his sacrifice rendered him so odious in the eyes of his 
subjects, that he left Crete, and went abroad in quest of 
a settlement. He came to Italy, and founded a city on 
the coast of Calabria, which he called Sallentia. ( Vid. 
Sallentini.) He died at an advanced age, after he had 
the satisfaction of seeing his new kingdom flourish 
and his subjects happy. According to the Greek 
scholiast on Lycophron (v. 1218), Idomeneus, during 
his absence in the Trojan war, intrusted the manage¬ 
ment of his kingdom to Leucos, to whom he promised 
his daughter Clisithere in marriage at his return. Leu¬ 
cos at first governed with moderation ; but he was per-" 
suaded by Nauplius, king of Euboea, to put to death 
Meda, the wife of his master, with her daughter Cli- 
Bithere, and to seize the kingdom. After these violent 
measures, he strengthened himself on the throne of 
Crete ; and Idomeneus, at his return, found it, impossi¬ 
ble to expel the usurper. (Ovid, Met., 13, 358.— 
Hygin., fad)., 92.— Horn., II, 11, &c.— Pausan., 5, 
25. Virg., jE n., 3, 122.)—II. A Greek historian of 
Lampsacus, in the age of Epicurus. He wrote a his¬ 
tory of Samothrace. 

Idothea, a daughter of Proetus, king of Argos. 
She was cured of insanity, along with her sisters, by 
Melampus. (Vid. Proetides.) 

Idubeda, a range of mounta-ins in Spain, commen¬ 
cing among the Cantabri, and extending nearly in a 
southeastern direction through Spain until it termi¬ 
nates on the Mediterranean coast, near Saguntum, 
which lay at its foot. Such, at least, is its extent, ac¬ 
cording to Strabo. Ptolemy, however, gives merely 
a part of it, from Caesar Augusta, or Saragossa, to 
Saguntum. (Strab., 161.— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 1, 
p. 406.) 

Idumea, a country, of Asia, on the confines of Pal¬ 
estine and Arabia, or, rather, comprehending parts of 
each, having Egypt on the west, and Arabia Petraea 
on the south and east. Its extent varied at differ¬ 
ent periods of time. Esau or Edom, from whom it 
derived its name, and his descendants, settled along 
the mountains of Sein, on the east and south of the 
Dead Sea, whence they spread themselves by degrees 
through the western part of Arabia Petraea, and quite 
to the Mediterranean. In the time of Moses, Joshua, 
and even of the Jewish kings, they were hemmed in 
by the Dead Sea on one side, and the Sinus H^lanitis 
on the other. But the Idumaea of the New Testament 
applies only to a small part adjoining Judtea on the 


south, and including even a portion of that country 
which was taken possession of by the Edomites or Idu- 
maeans, while the land lay unoccupied during the Baby¬ 
lonian captivity. The capital of this country was He¬ 
bron, which had formerly been the metropolis of the 
tribe of Judah. These Idumaeans were so reduced by 
the Maccabees, that, in order to retain their possess¬ 
ions, they consented to embrace Judaism, and their 
territory became incorporated with Judaea; although, 
in the time of our Saviour, it still retained its former 
name of Idumaea. Strabo divides it into Eastern and 
Southern Idumaea, with reference to its situation from 
Palestine. The capital of the former was Bozra or 
Bossra, and of the latter, Petra or Jacktael. Idumaea 
was famous for its palm-trees. ( Virg., Geogr., 3, 12.) 
The country in general was hot, dry, mountainous, 
and in some parts barren. It is now inhabited by 
some tribes of wild Arabs. (Plin., 5, 13.— Juv., Sat., 
8, 160.— Stat., Sylv., 5, 2.— Mart., 10, 50.— Joseph., 
Ant. Jud., 2, 1.— Id., Bell. Jud., 4, 30.) 

Ienysus, a city of Syria, not far from Gaza. The 
modern village of Kan-Jones marks the ancient site. 
(Herod., 3, 5.— Pennell, Geogr. Herod., vol. 1, p. 342, 
ed. 1830.) 

Jericho (in Greek 'lepixovg, gen. -ovvrog), a city 
of Judaea, in the tribe of Benjamin, about seven leagues 
to the northeast of Jerusalem, and two from the river 
Jordan. Jericho was the first city of Canaan taken by 
Joshua, who destroyed it. A new city was afterward 
built by Hiel of Bethel, but it would seem that before 
the time of Hiel there was another Jericho built neai 
the site of the old. The situation of this city is said 
(2 Kings, 2, 19) to have been very pleasant, but 
“ the water naught and the ground barren when 
Elisha, at the entreaty of the inhabitants, “healed the- 
water,” and rendered it wholesome and abundant. It 
is probable that, before this miracle of Elisha, the 
only water which supplied the city and adjoining plain 
was both scanty and bad ; so that the inhabitants were 
Restitute of this essential and fertilizing element, and 
the soil was consequently parched and barren. The 
place which is by nearly all authorities considered to 
be the same with Jericho, is a mean and miserable vil¬ 
lage called Rieha or Rihha, situated in a plain about 
three leagues wide, surrounded by barren mountains, 
and about three miles from the Jordan. But the true 
site of ancient Jericho may be proved to have been 
about four miles higher up the valley, on the west of 
Rihha, and not far from its commencement on this 
side, at the foot of the mountains. Here Mr. Buck¬ 
ingham found a large square area, enclosed by long 
and regular mounds, uniform in their height, breadth, 
and angle of slope, which seemed to mark the place 
of enclosing walls, now worn into mounds. Besides 
which, the foundations of other walls in detached 
pieces, portions of ruined buildings of an indefinable 
nature, shafts of columns, &c., were seen scattered 
about over the widely-extended heaps of this ruined 
city, which seemed to cover a surface of square miles. 
These remains, nothing of which kind is to be found 
at Rihha, may be considered as sufficient to determine 
the position of ancient Jericho ; besides which, to re¬ 
move all doubt upon the subject, they agree exactly 
with the required distance from Jerusalem on one side, 
and the Jordan on the other, as given by Josephus, whe 
makes it 150 furlongs from the former, and 60 from the 
latter. The plain of Jericho extends eastward to the 
Jordan, and is nearly enclosed on all sides by barren 
and rugged mountains. This circumstance, with the 
lowness of its level, renders it extremely hot ; so 
much so as to enable the palm-tree to flourish, which 
is not the case in any other part of Judaea. Jericho 
itself was indeed always celebrated for the abundant 
growth of this tree, which obtained for it the name of 
“the city of palm-trees.” (Deut., 34, 3. —Judges, 

1, 16 ; 3, 13.) Josephus says, that in his time^the 




IER 


IGN 


neignbouring country abounded in thick groves of 
these trees, together with the tree which afforded the 
balm or balsam of Gilead. At present, however, there 
is not a tree of any kind, either palm or balsam, and 
scarcely any verdure or bushes, to be seen about the 
site of this deserted city. But the desolation with 
which Ps ruins are surrounded is rather to be ascribed, 
accor ting to Mr. Buckingham, to the cessation of the 
■usual agricultural labours on the soil, and the want of 
a distribution of water over it by the aqueducts, the 
remains of which evince that they were constructed 
chiefly for that purpose, than to any change in the cli¬ 
mate or the soil; an observation which may be ex¬ 
tended to many parts of the Holy Land. ( Mansford's 
Scripture Gazetteer, p. 208, seqq.) 

Ierne, one of the ancient names of Ireland. Pyth- 
eas, who, to his own personal acquaintance with this 
quarter of the globe, added much information respect¬ 
ing it, which he had obtained from the early inhabitants 
of Gades in Spain, is the first who calls Ireland by the 
name of Ierne {tj ’I epvy). From Aristotle, a contempo¬ 
rary of his, we learn that what are now England and 
Ireland were then denominated B peraviKal vqaot. 
{De Mundo , c. 3.) In Caesar’s commentaries a change 
of appellation appears. England is there styled Bri¬ 
tannia, and Ireland, Hibernia. ( B. G., 5, 12, &c.) 
The idea very naturally suggests itself, that Caesar 
may have given this name to the latter island of his 
own accord, for the purpose of denoting the severity 
of its climate, and that the meaning of the term is 
nothing more than Winter-land. Such a supposition, 
however, although it may wear a plausible appearance, 
seems to have no foundation whatever in fact. It is 
more than probable that Caesar gives the name as he 
heard it from others, without associating with it any 
idea of cold. He merely places the island to the west 
of Britain. It was Strabo who made it lie far to the 
north, and, in consequence of this error, first gave rise 
to the opinion, if any such were ever in reality enter¬ 
tained, that the climate of Ireland was cold and rig¬ 
orous. But a question here presents itself, whether 
Ierne or Hibernia be the true appellation of this island. 
The latter, we believe, will, on examination, appear en¬ 
titled to the preference. It is more than probable that 
Pytheas received the name Ierne from the mouths of 
the neighbouring nations, contracted from Hibernia. 
This supposition would approach to certainty, if we 
possessed any means of substantiating as a fact, that 
the appellation Hiberni, which is given to the inhabi¬ 
tants of the island, was used in the old accounts re¬ 
specting it, and not first introduced by so late a writer 
as Avienus. A strong argument may be deduced, 
however, from what appears to have been the ancient 
pronunciation of the word Hibernia. The consonant 
b may have been softened down so as to resemble ou 
in sound, a change far from uncommon ; and hence 
Hibernia would be pronounced as if written ’lovep- 
vea, whence Ierne may very easily have been formed. 
(Consult remarks under the article Iuverna.) The 
modern name Erin, which is sometimes applied to 
Ireland, is an evident derivation from Ierne, if not 
itself the ancient Erse root of that term. Ireland 
was known at a very early period to the ancient mar¬ 
iners of southern Europe, by the appellation of the 
Holy Island. This remarkable title leads to the sus¬ 
picion that the primitive seat of the Druidical sys- 
.em of worship may have been in Ireland. Caesar, 
it is true, found Druids in Gaul, but he states, at the 
same time, that they were always sent to complete 
their religious education in Britain ; and we shall per¬ 
ceive, if we compaie later authorities, that the sanc¬ 
tuary of the Druids was not in Britain itself, but in the 
island of Anglesea , between which and the adjacent 
coast of Ireland the distance across is only 85 miles. 
Had the Romans extended their inquiries on this sub¬ 
ject to Ireland itself, we should evidently have received 
4P 


such accounts from them as would have substantiated 
what has just been advanced. As regards the early 
population of this island, it may, we believe, be safely 
assumed as a fact, that the northern half of the coun¬ 
try was peopled by the Scoti; not only because in 
later years we find Scoti in this quarter as well as on 
the Isle of Man, but because even at the present day 
the Erse language is not completely obliterated in 
some of the northern provinces. The southern half of 
the island seems to have had a Celtic population. It 
is a very curious fact, however, that the names of 
many places in ancient Ireland, as given by Ptolemy, 
bear no resemblance whatever either to Scottish or 
Celtic appellations. This has given rise to various 
theories, and, in particular, to one which favours the 
idea of migrations from the Spanish peninsula. Taci¬ 
tus considers the Silures in Britain as of Spanish ori¬ 
gin ; but this supposition is merely grounded on an 
accidental resemblance in some national customs. In¬ 
quiries have been made in modern days into the Basque 
language, which is supposed to contain traces of the 
ancient Iberian, but no analogy has been discovered 
between it and the modern Irish. The Roman arms 
never reached Ireland, although merchants of that na¬ 
tion often visited its coasts. From the accounts of 
the latter, Ptolemy obtained materials for his map of 
this island. It is worthy^of remark, that this geogra¬ 
pher does not name a single place in northern Scotland, * 
whereas, in the same quarter of the sister island, he 
mentions as many as 10 cities, one of them of consid¬ 
erable size, and three others of the number situate on 
the coast. Is not this a proof that Ireland, at this 
early period, had attained a considerable degree ot 
civilization I A barbarous people never found cities 
on the coast. In addition to what has thus far been re¬ 
marked, it may be stated that Herodotus was equally 
ignorant of Ireland and Britain. Eratosthenes gives a 
general and rude outline of the latter, but knew nothing 
of the former. Strabo had some knowledge, though 
very imperfect, of both. Pliny’s information, with re¬ 
gard to both Britain and Ireland, greatly surpasses 
that of his predecessors. Diodorus Siculus calls the 
latter Iris or Irin, and copies a foolish story of the na¬ 
tives being cannibals. ( Mannert , Geogr., vol. 2, pt. 

2, p. 33, seqq.) 

Jerusalem, the capital of Judaea. ( Vid. Hierosol- 
yma.) 

Igilgilis, a town of Mauretania Caesariensis, west 
of the mouth of the river Ampsagas, and north of Cirta. 

It is now Gigeri ox Jig cl. {Pliny, 5, 2.— Amm. Mar¬ 
cell., 29, 5.) 

Igilium, now Giglio, an island of Italy, near the 
coast of Etruria, off the promontory of Argentarius. 
The thick woods of this island served as a place of 
refuge for a great number of Romans, who fled from 
the sack of Rome by Attila. {Mela, 2, 7.— Rutilius, 
It. I., 325.) 

Ignatius, a martyr who suffered at Rome during 
the third persecution of the Christians. He was a 
Syrian by birth, and an immediate disciple of St. John 
the Evangelist, who, in the 67th year of the Christian 
era, committed the church at Antioch to his pastoral 
superintendence, as successor to Euodius. Over this 
bishopric he presided for upward of 40 years, when the 
Emperor Trajan, after his triumph over the Dacians, en¬ 
tering the city, exercised many severities towards thcke 
who professed the Christian faith, and summoned the 
prelate himself before him, on which occasion Ignatius 
conducted himself with such boldness in the imperial 
presence, that he was forthwith sent to Rome, and or 
dered to be exposed in the amphitheatre to the fury of 
wild beasts. This dreadful death he underwent with 
great fortitude, having availed himself of the interval be¬ 
tween his sentence and its execution to strengthen, by 
his exhortations, the faith of the Roman converts. Af¬ 
ter his decease, which took place A.D. 107, or, accord 




t L E 


r l i 


fng to some accounts, A.D. 110, his-remains v\^re carried 
to Antioch for interment.—If, as some suppose, Ignati¬ 
us was not one of the little children whom Jesus took up 
in his arms and blessed, it is certain that he conversed 
familiarly with the apostles, and was perfectly acquaint¬ 
ed with their doctrine. Of his works there remain 
seven epistles, edited in 1645 by Archbishop Usher, 
republished by Cotelerius in 1672, in his collection of 
he writings of the apostolical fathers ; and again print¬ 
ed in 1697 at Amsterdam, with notes, and the com¬ 
mentaries of Usher and Pearson. An English transla¬ 
tion of them, from the pen of Arch! ishop Wake, is to 
be found among the works of that prelate. There are 
some other letters of minor importance, which, though 
the question of their authenticity has met with sup¬ 
porters, are generally considered to have been attribu¬ 
ted to him on insufficient authority.—II. A patriarch 
of Constantinople, about the middle of the ninth cen¬ 
tury. He was son to the Emperor Michael Curopala- 
ta, and on the deposition of his father assumed the 
ecclesiastical habit. The uncompromising firmness 
which he displayed after his elevation to the patriar¬ 
chal chair in 847, in subjecting Bardas, a court-favour¬ 
ite, to the censures of the church, on account of an in¬ 
cestuous connexion, caused him to undergo a tempo¬ 
rary deprivation of office. Under Basil, however, he 
was restored to his former dignity, and presided in his 
. capacity of patriarch at th% eighth general council. 
His death took place about the year 878. ( Gorton's 

Biogr. Diet., vol. 2, p. 162.) 

Iguvium, a city of Umbria, on the Via Flaminia, to 
the south of Tifernum, and at the foot of the main 
chain of the Apennines. It is now Eugubbio, or, as 
it is more commonly called, Gubbio. Iguvium was a 
municipal town; and, as it would seem from the im¬ 
portance attached to its possession by Csesar when he 
invaded Italy, a place of some consequence. ( Cces., 
Bell. Civ., 1, 2.—Compare Cic. ad Att., 7, 13.— Plin., 
3, 14.) This city has acquired great celebrity in mod¬ 
em times, from the discovery of some interesting 
monuments in its vicinity, in the year 1440. These 
consist of several bronze tablets covered with inscrip¬ 
tions, some of which are in Umbrian, others in Latin 
characters. They have been made the subject of 
many a learned dissertation by modern literati. The 
most recent work on the subject is by Grotefend, en¬ 
titled Budimenta Lingua Umbricce, 4to, Hannov., 
1835-39. 

Ilba or Ilva, an island of the Tyrrhene Sea, off the 
coast of Etruria, and about ten miles from the prom¬ 
ontory of Populonium. It was early celebrated for its 
rich iron mines; but by whom they were first discov¬ 
ered and worked is uncertain, as they are said to ex¬ 
hibit the marks of labours carried on for an incalculable 
time. ( Pini, Osserv. Mineral, sulla miniera diferro 
di Rio, &c., 1777, 8vo.— Lettre sur Vhistoire naturelle 
de I'sle d'Elbe, par Koestlin , Vienne, 1780, 8vo.) It 
even seems to have been a popular belief among the 
ancients^ that the metallic substance was constantly 
renewed. ( Aristot ., de Mir., p. 1158.— Strab., 223. 
— Plin., 34, 14.) It is probable that the Phoenicians 
were the first to make known the mineral riches of 
this island, and that it was from them the Tyrrheni 
learned to estimate its value, which may have held 
out to them no small inducement for settling on a coast 
Hherwise deficient in natural advantages. It is to 
ffie latter people that we ought to trace the name of 
^Ethalia, given to this island by the Greeks, and which 
„he latter derived from aldu ( to burn), in allusion to the 
number of forges on the island. According to Polybi¬ 
us ( ap. Steph. Byz.), the same appellation was given 
to Lemnos, a Tyrrhenian settlement in early times. 
Ilva is now Elba. ( Cramer's Anc. Italy, t \o\. 1, p. 
210 .) 

Ilercaones, a Spanish tribe, east of the Edetani, 
on both sides of the Iberus, near its mouth. Dertosa 

666 


(now Tortosa) and Tarraco (now Tarragona ) were two 
of their towns. ( Ukcrt, Geogr., vol. 2, p. 418.) 

Ilerda, the capital city of the Uergetes in Spain, 
situate on the Sicoris or Segre , a tributary of the Ibe¬ 
rus. ( Strabo , 161.) The situation of this place, near 
the foot of the Pyrenees, exposed it incessantly to 
the. horrors of war, from the time that the Romans be¬ 
gan to penerate into Spain. It was celebrated for the 
resistance it made against Caesar, under the lieutenants 
of Pompey, Afranius and Petreius, who were, how¬ 
ever, finally defeated. ( Cces., B. Civ., 1, 61.— Flor., 
4, 12.— Appian, B. Civ., 2, 42.) In the reign of 
Gallienus it was almost entirely destroyed by the bar¬ 
barians, who, migrating from Germany, ravaged the 
western parts of the empire. It is now Lerida in 
Catalonia. ( Auson ., Epist. ad Paullvn., 26, 59.— Id., 
Profess., 23, 4.— Ukert, Geogr-, vol. 2, p. 451.) 

Ilergetes. Vid. Ilerda. 

Ilia, otherwise called Rhea Silvia, daughter of Nu 
mitor, king of Alba, was appointed one of the vestal 
virgins by Amulius, after the latter had wrested from 
his brother Numitor the kingdom of Alba. Amulius 
made his niece a vestal to prevent her having any off¬ 
spring, the vestals being bound to perpetual chastity. 
Mars, however, according to the old legend, overpow¬ 
ered the timid maiden in the sacred grove, whither 
she had gone to draw water from a spring for the ser¬ 
vice of the temple. She became the mother of Rom¬ 
ulus and Remus, and, according to one account, was 
buried alive on the banks of the Tiber. Ennius, how¬ 
ever, as cited by Porphyrion {ad Hor., Od., 1, 2, 17), 
makes her to have been cast into the Tiber, previous to 
which she had become the bride of the Anio. Horace, 
on the contrary, speaks of her as having married the 
god of the Tiber. Servius {ad JEn., 1, 274) alludes 
to this version of the fable as adopted by Horace and 
others. Acron also, in his scholia on the passage in 
Horace just cited, speaks of Ilia as having married the 
god of the Tiber. According to the account which 
he gives, Ilia was buried on the bank of the Anio, and 
the river, having overflowed its borders, carried her 
remains down to the Tiber; hence she was said to 
have espoused the deity of the last-mentioned stream. 

Ilias, a celebrated poem composed by Homer, upon 
the Trojan war, which delineates the wrath of Achilles, 
and all the calamities which befell the Greeks, from the 
refusal of that hero to appear in the field of battle. 
It finishes with the funeral rites of Hector, whom Achil 
les had sacrificed to the shade of his friend Patroclus, 
and is divided into twenty-four books.—Modern crit¬ 
ics differ very much in opinion with regard to the 
proper termination of the Iliad. Wolf and Heyne, 
with others, think that there is an excess of two books, 
and that the death of Hector is the true end of the 
poem. The 23d and 24th books, therefore, they con¬ 
sider as the work of another author. Granville Penn, 
however, has undertaken to show {Primary Argument 
of the Iliad, Bond., 1821), that the poem is to be taken 
as a whole, and that its primary and governing argu¬ 
ment is the sure and irresistible power of the divine 
will over the most resolute and determined will of 
man, exemplified in the death and burial of Hector, by 
the instrumentality of Achilles, as the immediate pre¬ 
liminary to the destruction of Troy.—The following 
observations on the unity and general character of the 
Iliad, taken from an able critique in the Quarterly Re¬ 
view (No. 87, p. 147, seqq .), may be read with advan¬ 
tage by the student. “Does the Iliad appear to have 
been cast, whole and perfect, in one mould, by the 
vivifying energy of its original creator, or does it bear 
undeniable marks of its being an assemblage of uncon¬ 
nected parts, blended together, or fused into one mass 
by a different and more recent compiler 1—We cannot 
but think the universal admiration of its unity by the 
better, the poetic age of GredCe, almost conclusive tes¬ 
timony to its original uniform composition. It wai 



ILIAS. 


ILIAS. 


sot till the age of the grammarians that its primitive in* 
togrity was called in question ; nor is it injustice to 
assert, that the minute and analytical spirit of a gram¬ 
marian is not the best qualification, for the profound 
feeling, the comprehensive conception of an harmoni¬ 
ous whole. The most exquisite anatomist may be no 
judge of the symmetry of the human frame, and we 
would take the opinion of Chantrey or Westmacott 
on the proportions and general beauty of a form rather 
than that of Mr. Brodie or Sir Astley Cooper.—There 
is some truth, though some malicious exaggeration, in 
the lines of Pope : 

‘ The critic eye, that microscope of wit, 

Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit: 

How parts relate to parts, or they to whole ; 

The body's harmony, the beaming soul; 

Are things which Kuster, Burman, Wasse, shall see, 

When man's whole frame is obvious to a flea.' 

—We would not comprehend, under this sweeping 
denunciation, men of genius as well as critical saga¬ 
city, such as Heyne and Wolf, still less those of the 
highest poetic feeling, who, both in this and other 
countries, are converts to their system. Yet there is 
a sort of contagion in literary as well as religious scep¬ 
ticism ; we like, in scholarship, to be on the stronger 
side, and the very names of Bentley* Wolf. and Heyne 
would sweep a host of followers into their train. In 
the authors of a paradox, criticism, like jealousy, fur¬ 
nishes the food which it grows on ; and it is astonish¬ 
ing, when once possessed with a favourite opinion, 
how it draws ‘ from trifles confirmation strong,’ and 
overlooks the most glaring objections ; while, if the 
new doctrine once forces its way into general notice, 
ardent proselytes crowd in from all quarters, until that 
which was at first a timid and doubtful heresy, be¬ 
comes a standard article of the scholar’s creed, from 
which it requires courage to dissent. Such to us ap¬ 
pears to have been the fate of the hypotheses before us. 
—For, in the first place, it seems that many of the ob¬ 
jections to the original unity of the poem apply with 
equal force to the Pisistratid compilation. It is, for 
instance, quite as likely, that in the heat of composi¬ 
tion the bard should have forgotten something; that, 
for example, owing to his obliviousness, the Pylcem- 
enes, whom he had slain outright in the fifth book, 
should revive, gallantly fighting, in the thirteenth; 
and thus, in a different way from the warrior of the 
Italian poet: 

‘ Andare combattendo, ed esser morto.' 

The slow and cautious compiler is even less likely to 
have made such an oversight than the rapid and inven¬ 
tive poet; and, by-the-way, Sancho Panza’s wife’s 
name is changed, through Cervantes’ forgetfulness of 
such trifles, in the second part of Don Quixote ; but 
no such lapsus can be alleged against the spurious 
continuator of the romance, Avellenada. Nor, sec¬ 
ondly, will any critical reader of Homer pretend that 
we possess the Homeric poems entire and uninterpo¬ 
lated. That they were, at one period of their history, 
recited in broken fragments ; that the wandering rhap- 
sodists would not scruple to insert occasionally verses 
of their own ; that certain long and irrelevant passages 
of coarser texture may have thus been interwoven into 
the rich tissue of the work—all these points will read¬ 
ily be conceded : but while these admissions explain 
almost every discrepance of composition and anomaly 
of language and versification, they leave the main ques¬ 
tion, the unity of the original design, entirely un¬ 
touched.—We will hazard one more observation be¬ 
fore we venture to throw down our glove in defence 
of the suspected unity of the Iliad. If, on Heyne’s 
supposition (for the objection does not strictly apply 
to that of Wolf), the Iliad was compiled from scat¬ 
tered fragments of ancient poetry hi the age of the 


Pisistratidse, it is surely unaccountable that, consider 
ing the whole of the Trojan war must have been a fa¬ 
vourite subject with these wandering bards, all the 
more valuable part of this poetry should easily com¬ 
bine into a plan, embracing only so short a period of 
these ten years of splendid Grecian enterprise. Had 
not one of these numerous Homers touched with Ho¬ 
meric life and truth any of the other great poetical 
events which preceded, or the still more striking inch' 
dents which followed the wrath of Achilles and the 
death of Hector—the destruction of the city, for in¬ 
stance—the midnight devastation of ancient Ilium ! 
We are far from asserting that many passages of the 
Iliad—as the adventures of Diomed, the night enter¬ 
prise of Dimmed and Ulysses, with the death of Rhe 
sus—necessarily belong to that period of the war ; it 
is possible that they may have been inlaid into the 
work by a later and a foreign hand ; but it is some¬ 
what incredible that the compilers should have been 
able to condense the whole of the nobler Homeric 
poetry into the plan of the Iliad and Odyssey ; and if 
they rejected any passages of equal merit, what be¬ 
came of them ! Did they form the poems of Arctinus, 
Stasinus, and Lesches! were they left to be moulded 
up in the Cyclic poems'! But how immeasurably in¬ 
ferior, by the general consent of Greece, was all the 
rest of their epic poetry to the Iliad and Odyssey ! It 
is probable that the better passages in the poem of 
Quintus Calaber are borrowed, or but slightly mod¬ 
ified, from the Cyclic poets; but how rarely do we 
recognise the clear, the free, the Homeric life and en- 
ergy of the two great poems ! But we must go far¬ 
ther. To us, we boldly confess, the fable of the Iliad 
is, if not its greatest, among its greatest perfections ; 
the more we study it, like a vast and various yet still 
uniform building, the more it assumes a distinct rela¬ 
tion of parts, a more admirable consonance in its gen¬ 
eral effect: it is not the simple unity of the single 
figure, as in the Odyssey, but it is the’ more daring 
complexity of the historical design, the grouping of a 
multitude of figures, subordinate to the principal, which 
appears the more lofty from the comparative height 
of those around him. The greatness of Achilles in 
the Iliad is not that of Teneriffe, rising alone from th6 
level surface of the ocean, but rather that of Atlas, the 
loftiest peak of a gradually ascending chain ; he is sur¬ 
rounded by giants, yet still collo supereminet omnes. 
Much of the difficulty has arisen from seeking in the 
Iliad a kind of technical unity, foreign to the charac¬ 
ter and at variance with the object of the primitive 
epopee : it is a unity, as a French critic, La Motte, 
long ago remarked, of interest. Mr. Coleridge has 
sensibly observed, ‘ it may well, indeed, be doubted 
whether the alleged difficulty is not entirely the crit¬ 
ic’s own creation ; whether the presumption of the 
necessity for a pre-arranged plan, exactly commensu¬ 
rate with the extent of the poem, is not founded on a 
misconception of the history and character of early 
heroic poetry.’ The question is not, whether the 
whole fable is strictly comprised within the brief prop¬ 
osition of the subject, in the simple exordium, but 
whether the hearer’s mind is carried on with constant 
and unfailing excitement; whether, if the bard had 
stopped short of the termination of his poem, he would 
not have left a feeling of dissatisfaction on the mind; 
at least, whether every event, even to the lamentations 
over the body of Hector, does not flow so naturally 
from the main design, and seem so completely to carry 
us on in an unbroken state of suspense and intense 
curiosity, that even to the last verse we are almost in¬ 
clined to regret that the strain breaks off too soon : 

“ The angel ended, and in Adam's ear 
So charming left his voice, that he a while 
Thought him still speaking." 

It is much to be desired, that, as the xopiCovrec, me 

667 



ILIAS. 


ILIAS 


dividers of the Iliad, have zealously sought out every 
apparent discrepance and contradiction in the several 
parts of the poem, some diligent student, on the other 
side, would examine into all the fine and delicate al¬ 
lusions between the most remote parts—the prepara¬ 
tions in one book for events which are developed in 
another—the slight prophetic anticipations of what is 
to come, and the equally evanescent references to the 
past—those inartificial and undesigned touches which 
indisputably indicate that the same mind has been 
perpetually at work in a subtler manner than is con¬ 
ceivable in a more recent compiler. This has been 
done in a few instances by M. Lange, in his fervent 
vindication of the unity of the Iliad, addressed to the 
celebrated Goethe ; in more by Mr. Knight, who has 
applied himself to obviating the objections of Heyne, 
but still not so fully or so perfectly as, we are per¬ 
suaded, might be done. It is obviously impossible 
for us, in our limited space, to attempt an investiga¬ 
tion at once so minute and so extensive, nor can we 
find room for more than a brief and rapid outline of 
that unity of interest which appears to us to combine 
the several books of the Iliad, if not into one precon¬ 
ceived and predistributed whole, yet into one con¬ 
tinuous story ; in which, however the main object be 
at times suspended, and apparently almost lost sight 
of, it rises again before us, and asserts its predominant 
importance, while all the other parts of the design, 
however prominent and in bold relief, recede and ac¬ 
knowledge their due subordination to that which is 
the centra], the great leading figure of the majestic 
group. The general design of the Iliad, then, was to 
celebrate the glory of the Grecian chieftains at the 
most eventful period of the war before Troy; the es¬ 
pecial object, the pre-eminent glory of the great Thes¬ 
salian chieftain, during this at the same time the most 
important crisis of his life. The first book shows us 
at once who is to be what is vulgarly called the hero of 
the poem : Achilles stands forth as the assertor of the 
ower of the gods—the avenger of the injured priest- 
ood—taking the lead with the acknowledged superior¬ 
ity due to his valour, bearding the sovereign of men, 
the great monarch, who commands the expedition. 
Wronged by Agamemnon, so as to enlist the generous 
sympathies on his side, yet without any disparagement 
to the dignity of his character, he recedes into inaction, 
but it is an inaction which more forcibly enthrals our 
interest. In another respect, nothing shows the good 
fortune, or, rather, the excellent judgment of the poet, 
so much as this dignified secession through so large a 
part of this poem. Had Achilles been brought more 
frequently forward, he must have been successfully re¬ 
sisted, and thus his pre-eminent valour have been dis¬ 
paraged ; or the poet must have constantly raised up 
antagonists more and more valiant and formidable, in 
the same manner as the romancers are obliged, in or¬ 
der to keep up the fame of their Amadis or Esplandian, 
to go on creating more tall, and monstrous, and many¬ 
headed giants, till they have exhausted all imaginable 
dimensions, and all calculable multiplication of heads 
and arms. The endless diversity of his adventures 
permits Ulysses, in the Odyssey, to be constantly on 
the scene. His character rises with the dangers to 
which he is exposed, for he contends with the elements 
and the gods. Achilles could scarcely be in danger, 
for his antagonists must almost always be men. It is 
surprising how much the sameness of war is varied in 
the Iliad, but this chiefly arises from its fluctuations, 
which could scarcely have taken place in the presence 
of Achilles, without lowering his transcendent powers. 
Yet, though he recedes, Achilles is not lost to our 
sight; like the image of Brutus in the Roman proces¬ 
sion, his absence, particularly as on every opportunity 
some allusion is made to his superior valour, power, 
or even beauty and swiftness, rivets our attention. In 
the mean time, the occasion is seized for displaying 
668 


the prowess of the other great chieftains ; they arc led 
forth in succession, exhibiting splendid valour and en¬ 
terprise, but still are found wanting in the hour ol 
trial; the gallantry of Diomed, the spirit of Menelaiis, 
the heavy brute force of Ajax, the obstinate courage of 
Idomeneus—even the power and craft of the deities, 
are employed in vain to arrest the still advancing, still 
conquering forces of Hector and the Trojans, till at 
last they are thundering before the outworks of the 
camp, and forcing their way into its precincts. Not 
that the progress of Trojan success is rapid and con¬ 
tinuous ; the war fluctuates with the utmost variety oi 
fortune ; the hope and fear of the hearer is in a con¬ 
stant state of excitement, lest Hector should fall by a 
meaner hand, and, notwithstanding the proud seces¬ 
sion of Achilles, Greece maintain her uninterrupted 
superiority. Still, on the whole, Jove is inexorable ; 
the tide of Trojan success swells onward to its height; 
Patroclus, in the arms of Achilles, arrests it for a time, 
but in vain; it recoils with redoubled fury ; up to the 
instant, the turning point of the poem, the tremendous 
crisis for which the whole Iliad has hitherto been, as it 
were, a skilful prelude; when, unarmed and naked, 
Achilles, with his voice alone, and by the majesty of 
his appearance, blazing with the manifest terrors of the 
deitv, arrests at owce and throws back the tide of vic¬ 
tory ; and from that moment the safety, the triumph 
of Greece, are secure, the fate of Hector and of Troy 
sealed for ever. This passage, as expressive of human 
energy, mingled with the mysterious awe attendant on 
a being environed by the gods, is the most sublime in 
the whole range of poetry. (II., 18, 245.) The only 
parallel to this unrivalled passage is the crisis or turn¬ 
ing point in the fortunes of the Odyssey, when Ulysses 
throws off at once his base disguise, leaps on the thresh¬ 
old, and rains his terrible arrows among the cowering 
suiters. There is the same mingling of the supernatu¬ 
ral as Ulysses tries his bow.—These two passages we 
have never read and compared, without feeling, how¬ 
ever from all other reasons sceptics as to the single au¬ 
thorship of the two great poems, an inward and almost 
irresistible conviction of the identity of mind from which 
they sprang—this convergence, as it were, of the whole 
interest to a single point, and that point—that TrepiTCET- 
eia, as the Greek critics would call it—brought out 
with such intense and transcendent energy, the whole 
power of the leading character condensed, and bursting 
forth in one unrivalled effort. Each seems too original 
to be an imitation, and though apparently of the same 
master, of that master by no means servilely copying 
himself.—On no part of the Iliad has so much been 
written as on the armour framed by Vulcan, more es¬ 
pecially on the shield of Achilles. We would only 
point out the singular felicity of its position, as a quiet 
relief and resting-place between the first sudden break¬ 
ing forth of the unarmed Achilles, and his more pre¬ 
pared and final going out to battle ; two passages 
which, if they had followed too close upon each other, 
would have injured the distinctness and completeness 
of each. Of the final going forth of Achilles to battle, 
his irresistible prowess, his conflict with the River 
God, and his immediate superiority over the appalled 
and flying Hector, nothing need be said, but that it 
fully equals the high-wrought expectations excited by 
the whole previous preparation. That single trumpet- 
sound, which preluded with its terrific blast, grows 
into the most awful din of martial sound that ever was 
awakened by the animating power of poet.—Even the 
last two books, if we suppose the main object of the 
poet to be the glory of the great Thessalian hero, with 
only such regard to the unity of his fable as that it 
should never cease to interest, are by no means su¬ 
perfluous. The religious influence which funeral rites 
held over the minds of the Greeks, and the opportunity 
of displaying Achilles in the interchange of free and 
noble courtesy, as liberal as he was valiant, might well 




ILIAS. 


I L 1 


tempt the poet, assured of his hearer’s profound sym¬ 
pathy, to prolong the strain. The last book, unneces¬ 
sary as it seems to the development of the wrath of 
Achilles, yet has always appeared to us still more re¬ 
markably conducive to the real though remote design 
of the Iliad. We have before observed, that the pre¬ 
mature and preadvanced mind of the poet seems to 
have delighted in relieving the savage conflict with 
traits of milder manners ; and the generous conduct of 
Achilles, and his touching respect for the aged Priam, 
might almost seem as a prophetic apology to a gentler 
age for the barbarity with which the poet might think 
it necessary to satisfy the implacable spirit of vengeance 
which prevailed among his own warlike compeers. 
Hector dragged at the car of his insulting conqueror 
was for the fierce and martial vulgar, for the carousing 
chieftain, scarcely less savage than the Northman, de¬ 
lighted only by his dark Sagas ; Hector’s body, pre¬ 
served by the care of the gods, restored with honour 
vj> Priam, lamented by the desolate women, for the 
heart of the poet himself, and for the few congenial 
spirits which could enter into his own more chastened 
tone of feeling.—Still, in all this there is nothing of* 
the elaborate art of a later age ; it is not a skilful com¬ 
piler, arranging his materials so as to produce the most 
striking effect: the design and the filling up appear to 
us to be evidently of the same hand ; there is the most 
perfect harmony in the plan, the expression, the versi¬ 
fication ; and we cannot, by any effort, bring ourselves 
to suppose that the separate passages, which form the 
main interest of the poem, the splendid bursts, or more 
pathetic episodes, were originally composed without 
any view to their ganeral effect; in short, that a whole 
race of Homers struck out, as it were by accident, all 
these glorious living fragments, which lay in a kind of 
unformed chaos, till a later and almost mightier Homer 
commanded them to take form, and combine themselves 
into a connected and harmonious whole.—There is an¬ 
other very curious fact, on which we do not think, 
though it was perceived by both Wolf and Heyne, that 
sufficient stress has been laid—the perfect consistency 
of the characters in the separate parts of the poem. It 
is quite conceivable that there should have been a sort 
of conventional character assigned to different heroes 
by the minstrels of elder Greece. To take Mr. Cole¬ 
ridge’s illustration of the ballads on Robin Hood ; in 
all of these bold Robin is still the same frank, careless, 
daring, generous, half-comic adventurer: so Achilles 
may have been by prescription, 

Impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer; 

Ajax heavy and obstinate, Ulysses light and subtle ; 
but can we thus account for the finer and more deli¬ 
cate touches of character, the sort of natural consist¬ 
encies which perpetually identify the hero, or even the 
female of one book, with the same person in another 1 
—Take, for instance, that of Helen, perhaps the most 
difficult to draw, certainly drawn with the most ad¬ 
mirable success. She is, observes Mr. Coleridge, 

‘ a genuine lady, graceful in motion and speech, no¬ 
ble in her associations, full of remorse for a fault, for 
which higher powers seem responsible, yet graceful 
and affectionate towards those with whom that fault 
had connected her.’ Helen first appears in the third 
book, in which it is difficult to admire too much the 
admiration of her beauty extorted from the old men, 
who are sitting TETTL'yec civ' ho motes 

Ov repeals, Tpuag nal hvKvrjfudas ’Axaiovs 

T oir/d’ uptyl yvvaud no?.vv xpbvov aXyea ndaxciv 

Aivus ddavaryai \9eys eomev. 

(II, 3, 156, seqq.) 

No wonder such celestial charms 

For nine long years have set the world in arms. 

What winning graces ! what majestic mien ! 

She moves a goddess and she looks a queen. 


Nothing can equal this, except the modesty with which 
she alludes to her own shame ; the courteous respect 
with which she is treated by Priam and Antenor; the 
touching remembrance of her home and of her broth¬ 
ers ; and the tender emotions excited by the reminis¬ 
cences which flow from the history of almost each suc¬ 
cessive warrior as she describes them to Priam.—In 
the same book, we find her soon after reproaching the 
recreant Paris ; yet, under the irresistible influence ol 
the goddess, yielding to his embraces in that well, 
known passage, over which Pope has thrown a volup. 
tuous colouring foreign to the chaster simplicity of thf 
original.—The companion to the first lovely picture is 
the interview between Hector and Helen, in book vi., 
1. 343, when she addresses her brother.—We turn to 
the close of the poem, and find the lamentation of 
Helen over the body of Hector, which we concur wit^ 
Mr. Coleridge in considering almost the sweetest pas¬ 
sage of the poem. But beautiful as it is in itself as an 
insulated fragment, how much does it gain in pathetic 
tenderness, when we detect its manifest allusions to 
the two earlier scenes to which we have referred above! 
—Compare all these, and then consider whether it is 
possible to suppose that the Helen of the Iliad sprung 
from different minds, or even from the same mind, not 
full of the preconcerted design of one great poem. 
Could even Simonides, if Simonides assisted in the 
work of compilation, have imagined, or so dexterously 
inserted, these natural allusions'?” — For some very 
able remarks on this same subject, consult Muller , 
History of Grecian Literature, p. 48, seqq. 

Ilienses, a people of Sardinia, fabled to have been 
descended from some Trojans who came to that island 
after the fall of Troy. They were driven into the 
mountains by Libyan colonies, and here, according to 
Pausanias (10, 17), the name ’YAiels existed even in his 
time. ( Mannert, Geogr., vol. 9, pt. 2, p. 475.) 

Ilione, the eldest daughter of Priam, who married 
Polymnestor, king of Thrace. ( Virg ., JEn ., 1, 657. 
—Consult Heyne, Excurs., ad loc .) 

Ilissus, a small stream rising to the northeast of 
Athens, and from which that city was principally sup¬ 
plied with water. It loses itself, after a course of a 
few miles, in the marshes to the south of the place. 
From the beautiful passage in which Plato alludes to 
it ( Phcedrus, p. 229), it appears to have been at that 
period a perennial stream, whereas now it is almost 
always dry, its waters being either drawn off to irri¬ 
gate the neighbouring gardens, or to supply the arti¬ 
ficial fountains of Athens. The modern name is Ilisse 
(Leake’s Topogr., p. 49.) 

Ilithyia, a goddess who presided over childbirth, 
and who was the same in the Greek mythology with 
the Juno Lucina of the Romans. In the Iliad (11, 
270) mention is made of Ilithyiae in the plural, and 
they are called the daughters of Juno. In two other 
parts, however, of the same poem (16, 187, and 19, 
103), the term Ilithyia occurs in the singular. In the 
Odyssey (19, 188) and in Hesiod (Theog., 922) the 
number is reduced to one. We also meet with but 
one Ilithyia in Pindar (Ol., 6, 72.— Nem., 7, 1), and 
the subsequent poets in general.—It is not by any 
means an improbable supposition, that Ilithyia was 
originally a moon-goddess, and that the name signifies 
“ light wanderer ,” from lly, “ light,” and -&vu, “ to 
move rapidly.” (Welcker, Kret. Kol., p. 11, 19.) 
The moon was believed by the ancients to have great 
influence over growth in general ; and as, moreover, 
a woman’s time was reckoned by moons, it was nat¬ 
ural to conceive that the moon-goddess presided over 
the birth of children. (Keightley's Mythology, p. 193, 
seq .) 

Ilium or Ilion, I. another name for the city of 
Troy, or, more properly, the true one, since Troja~, the 
appellation given to the place by the Roman writers, 
was, strictly speaking, the name of the district. (Vid. 

669 



ILIUM. 


ILL 


|' r0 |a \_II. Novum, a city of the Troad, the site of 

whicn is not to be confounded with that of Troy. 
Whatever traces might remain of the ruins of the city 
of Priam, after it had been sacked and burned by the 
Greeks, these soon disappeared, as Strabo assures us, 
by their being employed in the construction of Sigae- 
um, and other towns founded by the ^Eolians, who 
came from Lesbos, and occupied nearly the whole of 
Troas. The first attempt made to irestore the town 
of Troy was by some Astypalaeans, who, having first 
settled at Rhoeteum, built, near the Simo'is, a town 
which they called Polium, but which subsisted only a 
short time ; the spot, however, still retained the name 
of Polisma when Strabo wrote. Some time after, 
a more advantageous site was selected in the neigh¬ 
bourhood, and a town, consisting at first of a few hab¬ 
itations and a temple, was built under the protection 
of the kings of Lydia, the then sovereigns of the 
country. This became a rising place; and, in order 
to ensure the prosperity of the colony, and to enhance 
its celebrity, the inhabitants boldly affirmed that their 
town actually stood on the site of ancient Troy, that 
city having never been actually destroyed by the 
Greeks. There were not wanting writers who propa¬ 
gated this falsehood, in order to flatter the vanity of 
the citizens ( Strabo, 601); and when Xerxes passed 
through Troas on his way to the Hellespont, the pre¬ 
tensions of New Ilium were so firmly established, that 
the Persian monarch, when he visited their acropolis, 
and offered there an immense sacrifice to Minerva, ac¬ 
tually thought that he had seen and honoured the far- 
famed city of Priam. (Herod., 7, 42.) In the treaty 
made with the successor- of Xerxes, Ilium was recog¬ 
nised as a Greek city, and its independence was se¬ 
cured ; but the peace of Antalcidas restored it again to 
Persia. On the arrival of Alexander in Asia Minor 
(Arrian, Exp. Al., 1, 11, 12), or, as some say, after 
the battle of the Granicus (Strab., 593), that prince 
visited Ilium, and, after offering a sacrifice to Minerva 
in the citadel, deposited his arms there, and received 
others, said to have been preserved in the temple from 
the time of the siege of Troy. He farther granted 
several rights and privileges to the Uienses, and prom¬ 
ised to erect a more splendid edifice, and to institute 
games in honour of Minerva; but his death prevented 
the execution of these designs. (Arrian, l. c. — Strab., 

1. c.) Lysimachus, however, to whose share Troas 
fell on the division of Alexander’s empire, undertook 
to execute what had been planned by the deceased 
monarch. He enclosed the city within a wall, which 
was forty stadia in circumference; he also increased 
the population by removing thither the inhabitants of 
several neighbouring towns. (Strabo, 593.) At a 
subsequent period Ilium farther experienced the favour 
and protection of the kings of Pergamus; and the 
Romans, on achieving the conquest of Asia Minor, 
sought to extend their popularity, by securing the in¬ 
dependence of a city from which they pretended to de¬ 
rive their origin, and added to its territory the towns 
of Rhoeteum and Gergitha. (Livy, 37, 37.— Id., 38, 
29.) And yet it would appear, that at that time Ilium 
was far from being a flourishing city, since Demetrius 
of Scepsis, who visited it about the same period, af¬ 
firmed that it was in a ruinous state, many of the 
houses having fallen into decay for want of tiling (av 
Strab., 1. c.). During the civil wars between oylla 
and Cinna, Ilium was besieged and taken by assault 
by Fimbria, a partisan of the latter. This general 
gave it up to plunder, butchered the inhabitants, and 
finally destroyed it by fire. Not long after, however, 
S-ylla arrived in Asia, defeated Fimbria, who fell by 
his own hand, restored Ilium to the surviving inhab¬ 
itants, reinstated them in their possessions, and re¬ 
stored the walls and public edifices. (Appian, Bell. 
Mithr., c. 53.— Pint., Vit. Syll. — Strab., 594.) After 
the batde of Pharsalia, Ilium was visited by Julius 
670 


Csesar, who explored, if we may believe Lucan, afl 
the monuments and localities which claimed any inter¬ 
est from their connexiofi with the poem of Homer. 
(Pkars., 9, 961.) Cassar, in consequence of his visit, 
and his pretended descent from lulus, conceded fresh 
grants to the Ilienses ; he also instituted those games 
to which Virgil has alluded in the HDneid, and which 
the Romans called “ Ludi Trojani .” (JEn., 5, 602. 
— Suet., Vit. Cces., c. 39.— Dio Cass., 43,23.) We 
trace the history of this place also during the times 
of the emperors. It preserved its privileges and free¬ 
dom under Trajan, as we learn from Pliny, who styles 
it, “ Ilium immune, unde omnis claritas ” (5, 30). It 
subsisted under Dioclesian, and it is even said that Con¬ 
stantine had entertained, at one time, serious thoughts 
of transferring thither the seat of empire. (Sozom., 
Hist. Eccles., 2, 3.— Zosim., 2, 34.) The last rec¬ 
ords we have of its existence are derived from Hiero- 
cles (Synecd., p. 663), the Itineraries, and the notices 
of Greek bishops under the Byzantine empire. It be¬ 
came afterward exposed to the ravages of the Sara- 
oens and other barbarians, who depopulated the Hel¬ 
lespont and Troad ; it sunk beneath their repeated at¬ 
tacks, and became a heap of ruins. The surrounding 
villages are yet filled with inscriptions, and fragments 
of buildings and monuments, which attest its former 
splendour; and magnificence. According to the ac¬ 
count of a modern traveller, who has minutely explored 
the whole of Troas, New Ilium occupied a gently ri¬ 
sing hill about seventy feet high, above the adjacent 
plain, in which the waters of the Tumbrek-tchai and 
Kamar-sou form some marshes. The Turks call the 
site of New Ilium Hissardjick, or Eski Kalafatli. 
(Choiseul Gouffier, vol. 2, pt. 3, p. 381.— Barker 
Webb, Osservazioni intorno I Argo Trojano, Bibl. 
Ital. , No. 67, Luglio, 1821.) New Ilium was twen¬ 
ty-one miles form Abydus, and about eleven miles 
from Dardanus. (Strab., 591.— Itin., Anton., p. 334.) 
—We must be careful, as has already been remark¬ 
ed, not to confound the site of New Ilium with that 
of the city of Priam, an error into which many care¬ 
less travellers have fallen. (Cramer's Asia Minor, 
vol. 1, p. 104, seqq.) 

Illiberis or Elibert, a city of Gallia Narbonensis, 
south of Ruscino, and in the territory of the Sardones, 
the same probably with the Volcse Tectosages. It 
was a flourishing place when Hannibal passed through 
on his march into Italy, and here he established a gar¬ 
rison. It sunk in importance afterward, until Con¬ 
stantine almost rebuilt it, and called it, in memory of his 
mother Helena, Helenensis civitas. In this place 
Magnentius slew Constans, and here Constantine died 
in a castle built by himself. It is now Elne. (Mela, 

2, 5.) 

Illicis, a city of the Contestani in Spain, northeast 
of Carthago Nova. Now Elche. (Mela, 2, 6.— Plin., 

3, 3.) 

Illicitanus Sinus, a bay on the southeast coast of 
Spain, extending from Carthago Nova to the Dianium 
Promontorium. It is now the bay of Alicante. (Mela, 
2 , 6 .) 

Illiturgis, Iliturgis, or Iliturgi, a city of Spain, 
not far from Castulo and Mentesa, and five days’ 
march from Carthago Nova. It was situate near the 
Psetis, on a steep and rugged rock, and was called in 
Roman times Forum Iulium. Appian calls it Ilurgia 
(Bell. Hisp., c. 32), and it is the same also, no doubt, 
with the Ilurgis of Ptolemy (2, 4), and the Uurgea of 
Stepharius of Byzantium. The place was destroyed 
by Scipio B.C. 210 (Liv., 28, 19), but was soon af¬ 
terward repeopled. The site of the ancient place is 
near the modern Andujar, where the church of St 
Potenciana stands. (Ukert, Geogr ., vol. 2, p. 380.) 

Illyricum, Illyris, and Illyria, a country bor 
dering on the Adriatic Sea, opposite Italy. The name 
of Illyrians, however, appears to have been commor 



1LLYRICUM. 


IMA 


to the numerous tribes which were anciently in pos¬ 
session of the countries situated to the west of Mace¬ 
donia, and which extended along the coast of the Adri¬ 
atic from the confines of Italy and Istria to the borders 
of Epirus. Still farther north, and more inland, we 
find them occupying the great valleys of the Saave 
and Brave, which were only terminated by the junc¬ 
tion of those streams with the Danube. This large 
tract of country, under the Roman emperors, constitu¬ 
ted the provinces of Illyricum and Pannonia.—Anti¬ 
quity has thrown but little light on the origin of the 
Illyrians ; nor are we acquainted with the language and 
customs of the barbarous hordes of which the great body 
of the nation was composed. Their warlike habits, 
however,and the peculiar practice of puncturing their 
bodies, which is mentioned by Strabo as being also in 
use among the Thracians, might lead us to connect 
them with that widely-extended people. (Strabo, 315.) 
It appears evident, that they were a totally different 
race from the Celts, as Strabo carefully distinguishes 
them from the Gallic tribes which were incorporated 
with them. (Strabo, 313.) Appian, indeed, seems 
to ascribe a common origin to the Illyrians and Celts, 
for he states that Illyrius and Celtus were two broth¬ 
ers, sons of Polyphemus and Galatea, who migrated 
from Sicily, and became the progenitors of the two na¬ 
tions which bore their names (Bell. Illyr., 2); but 
this account is evidently loo fabulous to be relied on. 
It is not unlikely that the Illyrians contributed to the 
early population of Italy. The Liburni, who were un¬ 
doubtedly a part of this nation, had formed settlements 
on the Italian shore of the Adriatic at a very remote 
period. The Veneti, moreover, were, according to 
the most probable account, Illyrians. But, though so 
widely dispersed, this great nation is but little noticed 
in history until the Romans made war upon it, in con¬ 
sequence of some acts of piracy committed on their tra¬ 
ders. Previous to that time, we hear occasionally of the 
Illyrians as connected with the affairs of Macedonia ; 
for instance, in the expedition undertaken by Perdiccas, 
in conjunction with Brasidas, against the Lyncestae, 
which failed principally from the support afforded to 
the latter by a powerful body of Illyrian troops. (77m- 
cyd., 4, 125.) They were frequently engaged in hos¬ 
tilities with the princes of Macedonia, to whom their 
warlike spirit rendered them formidable neighbours. 
This was the case more especially while under the 
government of Bardylis, who is known to have been a 
powerful and renowned chief, though we are not pos¬ 
itively acquainted with the extent of his dominions, 
nor over what tribes he presided. Philip at length 
gained a decisive victory over this king, who lost his 
life in the action, and thus a check was given to the 
rising power of the Illyrians. Alexander was likewise 
successful in a war he waged against Clytus, the son 
of Bardylis, and Glaucias, king of the Taulantii. The 
Illyrians, however, still asserted their independence 
against the kings of Macedon, and were not subdued 
till they were involved in the common fate of nations 
by the victorious arms of the Romans. The conquest 
of Illyria led the way to the first interference of Rome 
in the affairs of Greece ; and Polybius, from that cir¬ 
cumstance, has entered at some length into the ac¬ 
count of the events which then took place. He in¬ 
forms us, that about this period, 520 A.U.C., the Il¬ 
lyrians on the coast had become formidable from their 
maritime power and the extent of their depredations. 
They were governed by Agron, son of Pleurastus, 
whose forces had obtained several victories over the 
.Etolians, Epirots, and Achaeans. On his death, the 
empire devolved upon his queen Teuta, a woman of 
an active and daring mind, who openly sanctioned, and 
even encouraged the acts of violence committed by 
her subjects. Among those who suffered by these 
’awless pirates were some traders of Italy, on whose 
amount satisfaction was demanded by the Roman sen¬ 


ate. So far, however, from making any concessions, 
Teuta proceeded to a still greater outrage, by causing 
one of the Roman deputies to be put to death. The 
senate was not slow in avenging these injuries; a pow¬ 
erful armament was fitted out, under the command of 
two consuls, who speedily reduced the principal for¬ 
tress held by Teuta, and compelled that haughty queen 
to sue for peace. (Polyb., 2, 12.— Appian, Bell. 
Illyr., 7.) At a still later period, the Illyrians, under 
their king Gentius, were again engaged in a war with 
the Romans, if the act of taking possession of an un¬ 
resisting country may be so called. Gentius had been 
accused of favouring the cause of Perseus of Macedon, 
and of being secretly in league with him. His terri¬ 
tory was therefore invaded by the praetor Anicius, and 
in thirty days it was subjugated by the Roman army. 
Gentius himself, with all his family, fell into the hands 
of the enemy, and was sent to Rome to grace the 
praetor’s triumph. (Liv., 44, 31.— Appian, Bell. Il¬ 
lyr., 9.) Illyria then became a Roman province, and 
was divided into three portions ; but it received after¬ 
ward a considerable accession of territory on the re¬ 
duction of the Dalmatians, Iapydes, and other petty 
nations by Augustus, these being included from that 
period w-ithin its boundaries. So widely, indeed, were 
the frontiers of Illyricum extended under the Roman 
emperors, that they Were made to comprise the great 
districts of Noricum, Pannonia, and Moesia. ( Appian, 
Bell. Illyr., 6 .— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1 , p. 29.) 

Ilus, the fourth king of Troy, was the son of Tros 
and of Callirhoe, the daughter of the Scamander. He 
married Eurydice, the daughter of Adrastus, king of 
Argos, and became by her the father of Themis (the 
grandmother of Eneas) and of Laomedon, the prede¬ 
cessor of Priam. Ilus embellished Troy, which had 
been so called from his father Tros, and gave to it 
the name of Ilium. According to tradition, it was he 
who received from Jupiter the Palladium, and who, in 
the wars which had been excited by the animosity of 
Tantalus and Tros, made an attempt to rescue this 
statue from the flames, in which the temple of Minerva 
was wrapped, although he was aware that the city 
would be impregnable as long as it remained within 
the walls. For this misplaced zeal, he was, at the 
moment, struck with blindness by the goddess, but 
was subsequently restored to sight. ( Apollod ., 3, 
12, 3.) 

Imaus, the name of a large chain of mountains, 
which in a part of its course divided, according to 
the ancients, the vast region of Scythia into Scy¬ 
thia intra Imaum and Scythia extra Imaum. It is, 
in fa'ct, merely a continuation of the great Tauric 
range. That part of the range over which Alexander 
crossed, and whence the Indus springs, was called Pa- 
ropamisus. Farther on were the Emodi Montes, giv¬ 
ing rise to the Ganges ; and still farther to the east 
the range of Imaus, extending to the Eastern Ocean. 
Imaus is generally thought to answer to the Himalaya 
Mountains of Thibet; strictly speaking, however, this 
name belongs to the Emodi Montes; and Imaus, in 
the early part of its course, is the modern Mustag, or 
the chain which branches off to the northwest from the 
centre of the Himalaya range. The word Himalaya 
is Sanscrit, and is compounded of him a, “ snow,” and 
alaya, “an abode.” (Wilson's Sanscrit Diet.) The 
former of these Sanscrit roots gives rise also to the name 
Imaus and Emodus among the ancients, and it also 
brings to mind the Hcemus of Thrace, the Hymettus 
of Attica, the Mons Imaus of Italy, and the different 
mountains called Himmel in Saxony, Jutland, and 
other countries. It is the radix, also, of the German 
word himmel, denoting heaven.—As the chain of 
Imaus proceeds on to the east, it ceases to be charac 
terized as snowy, and, in separating the region of 
Scythia into its two divisions, answers to the modern 
range of Altai. It is only of late that the height of 




IN A 


INACHUS. 


the Himalaya Mountains on the north of India has 
been appreciated. In 1802, Col. Crawford made some 
measurements, which gave a much greater altitude to 
these mountains than had ever before been suspected ; 
and Col. Colebrook, from the plains of Rhohilcund, 
made a series of observations which gave a height of 
22,000 feet. Lieut. Webb, in his journey to the source 
of the Ganges, executed measurements on the peak 
of Iamunavatari, which gave upward of 25,000 feet. 
The same officer, in a subsequent journey, confirmed 
his former observations. This conclusion was object¬ 
ed to, on account of a difference of opinion respecting 
the allowance which ought to be made, for the deviation 
of the light from a straight direction, on which all con¬ 
clusions drawn from the measurement of angles must 
depend. In a subsequent journey, however, this same 
officer confirmed his conclusions by additional measure¬ 
ments, and by observing the fall of the mercury in the 
barometer at those heights which he himself visited. It 
was found by these last observations that the line of 
oerpetual snow does not begin till at least 17,000 feet 
above the level of the sea, and that the banks of the 
Setledge , at an elevation of nearly 15,000 feet, afford¬ 
ed pasturage for cattle, and yielded excellent crops of 
mountain-wheat. This mild temperature, however, at 
so great a height, is confined to the northern side of 
the chain. This probably depends on the greater 
height of the whole territory on the northern side, in 
consequence of which, the heat which the earth re¬ 
ceives from the solar rays, and which warms the air 
immediately superincumbent, is not so much expand¬ 
ed by the time the ascending air reaches these greater 
elevations, as in that which has ascended from a much 
lower country. Mr. Frazer, in a later journey, inferred 
that the loftiest peaks of the Himalaya range varied 
from 18,000 to 23,000 feet; but he had no instruments 
for measuring altitudes, and no barometer, and he 
probably did not make the due allowance for the ex¬ 
traordinary height of the snow-line. The point, how¬ 
ever, is now at last settled. The Himalaya Mount¬ 
ains far exceed the Andes in elevation ; Chimborazo, 
the highest of the latter, being only 21,470 feet above 
the level of the sea, while Ghosa Cole, in the Dhaw- 
alaghiri range, attains to an elevation of 28,000 feet, 
and is the highest known land on the surface of the 
globe. 

ImbrAC iLf&s, a patronymic given to Asius, as son 
of Imbraaui. (Virg., AEn,, : 10, 123.) 

ImbraGees, a patronymic given to Glaucus and 
Lades, as sons of Imbrasus. ( Virg., Mn., 12, 343.) 

Imbros, an island of the TCgean, 22 miles east of 
Lemnos, according to Pliny (4, 12), and now called 
Imbro Like Lemnos, it was at an early period the 
seat of the Pelasgi, who worshipped the Cabiri and 
Mercury by the name of Imbramus. ( Stcph. Byz., 
s. v. 'I yfjpoQ.) Imbros is generally mentioned by Ho¬ 
mer in conjunction with Lemnos. {Hymn, in Apoll., 
36._ lb., 13. 32.) It was first conquered by the Per¬ 

sians {Herod., 5, 27), and afterward by the Athenians, 
who derived from thence excellent darters and target- 
eers. {Thucyd., 4, 28.) There was a town probably 
of the same name with the island, the ruins of which 
are to be seen at a place called Castro. {Cramer's 
Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p 342.) 

Inachid/e, the name of the first eight successors of 
Inachus on the throne of Argos. 

Inachides, a patronymic of Epaphus, as grandson 
of Inachus. {Ovid, Met.., 1,704.) 

Inachis, a patronymic of Io, as daughter of Inachus. 
{Ovid, Fast., 1, 454.) 

Inachus, I. a son of Oceanus and Tethys, father 
of Io. He was said to have founded the kingdom of 
Argos, and was succeeded by his son Phoroneus, B.C. 
1807. Inachus is said, in the old legend, to have 
given his name to the principal river of Argolis. 
Hence probably he was described as the son of Oce- 
672 


anus, the common parent of all rivers. They whn 
make Inachus to have come into Greece from beyond 
the sea, regard his name as a Greek form for the Ori¬ 
ental term Enak, denoting “great” or “powerful,” 
and this last as the root of the Greek avct%, “ a king. 
The foreign origin of Inachus, however, or, rather, his 
actual existence, is very problematical. According 
to the mythological writers, Inachus became the father 
of Io by his sister, the ocean-nymph Melia. (Apollod 
2,1, l.—Hcyne, ad loc.)— II. A river of Argolis, flow¬ 
ing at the foot of the Acropolis of Argos, and empty¬ 
ing into the bay of Nauplia. Its real source was in 
Mount Lyrceius, on the confines of Arcadia ; but the 
poets, who delighted in fiction, imagined it to be a 
branch of the Inachus of Amphilochia, which, after 
mingling with the Achelous, passed under ground, and 
reappeared in Argolis. {Strabo, 271. Id. ,370.) Ac¬ 
cording to Dodwell (vol. 2, p. 223), the bed of this 
river is a short way to the northeast of Argos. It is 
usually dry, but supplied with casual floods after hard 
rains, and the melting of snow on the surrounding 
mountains. It rises about ten miles from Argos, at a 
place called Mushi, in the way to Tripolitza in Arca¬ 
dia. In the winter it sometimes descends from the 
mountains in a rolling mass, when it does considerable 
damage to the town. It is now called Xeria, which 
means dry. {Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 245.) 
—III. A river of the Amphilochian district in Acarna- 
nia. There were phenomena connected with the de¬ 
scription given by ancient geographers of its course, 
which have led to a doubt of its real existence. It is 
from Strabo more especially that we collect this in¬ 
formation. Speaking of the submarine passage of the 
Alpheus, and its pretended junction with the waters 
of Arethusa, he says a similar fable was related of the 
Inachus, which, flowing from Mount Lacmon, in the 
chain of Pindus, united its waters with the Achelous, 
and, passing under the sea, finally reached Argos, ia 
the Peloponnesus. Such was the account of Sopho. 
cles, as appears from the passage quoted by the geog¬ 
rapher, probably from the play of Inachus. (Compare 
Oxford Strabo, vol. 1, p. 391, in notis.) Strabo, how¬ 
ever, regards this as an invention of the poets, and 
says that Hecatseus was better informed on the sub¬ 
ject, when he affirmed that the Inachus of the Amphi- 
lochians was a different river from that of the Pelo¬ 
ponnesian Argos. According to this ancient geo¬ 
graphical writer, the former stream flowed from Mount 
Lacmus ; whence also the ^Eas, or Aoiis, derived its 
source, and fell into the Achelous, having, like the 
Amphilochian Argos, received its appellation from 
Amphilochus. {Stiab., 271.) This account is suffi¬ 
ciently intelligible : and, in order to identify the Inach¬ 
us of Hecataeus with the modern river which cor¬ 
responds with it, we have only to search in modem 
maps for a stream which rises close to the Aoiis or 
Voioussa, and, flowing south, joins the Achelous in 
the territory of the ancient Amphilochi. Now this de¬ 
scription answers precisely to that of a river which is 
commonly looked upon as the Achelous itself, but 
which would seem, in fact, to be the Inachus, since it 
agrees so well with the account given by Hecataans; 
and it should be observed, that Thucydides places the 
source of the Achelous in that part of Pindus which 
belonged to the Dolopes, a Thessalian people, who 
occupied the southeastern portion of the chain. {Thu¬ 
cyd., 3, 102.) Modern maps, indeed, point out a riv¬ 
er coming from this direction, and uniting with the 
Inachus, which, though a more considerable stream, 
was not regarded as the main branch of the river. 
Strabo elsewhere repeats what he has said of the 
junction of the Inachus and Achelous. {Strab , 327.) 
But in another passage he quotes a writer whose re¬ 
port of the Inachus differed materially, since he rep 
resented it as traversing the district of Amphilochia, 
and falling into the gulf. This was the statement 








IN D 


INDIA. 


madeby Ephorus ( ap . Slrab., 326), and it has led some 
modern geographers and critics, in order to reconcile 
these two contradictory accounts, to suppose that there 
was a stream which, branching off from the Achelous, 
fell into the Ambracian Gulf near Argos. This is 
more particularly the hypothesis of D’Anville ; but 
modern travellers assure us that there is no such river 
near the ruins of Argos ( Holland's Travels , vol. 2, p. 
225); and, in fact, it is impossible that any stream 
should there separate from the Achelous, on account 
of the Amphilochian Mountains, which divide the val¬ 
ley of that river from the Gulf of Arta. Mannert con¬ 
siders the small river Krikeli to be the representative 
of the Inachus (Geogr., vol. 8, p. 65), but this is a mere 
orrent, which descends from the mountains above the 
gulf, and can have no connexion with Mount Lacmus 
or the Achelous. All ancient anthorities agree in de¬ 
riving the Inachus from the chain of Pindus. ( Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Greece , vol. 2, p. 40, seqq .) 

Inarime, an island off the coast of Campania, oth¬ 
erwise called iEnaria and Pithecusa. Under an ex¬ 
tinguished volcano, in the middle of this island, Jupiter 
vyas fabled to have confined the giantTyphceus. (Con¬ 
sult remarks under the articles HEnaria and Arima.) 
Heyne thinks that some one of the early Latin poets, 
in translating the Iliad into the Roman tongue, mis¬ 
understood Homer’s elv 'Apipaif, and rendered it by 
Inarime or Inarima ; and that the fable of Typhceus, 
travelling westward, was assigned to JEnaria or Pith¬ 
ecusa as a volcanic situation. ( Heyne , Excurs. ad 
Virg., ASn., 9, 715.) 

Inarus, a son of Psammeticus ( Thucyd ., 1, 104), 
king of that part of Libya which borders upon Egypt. 
Sallying forth from Marea, he drew over the greater 
♦ part of Egypt to revolt from Artaxerxes, the Persian 
emperor, and, becoming himself their ruler, called in 
the Athenians to his assistance, who happened to be 
engaged in an expedition against Cyprus, with two 
hundred ships of their own and their allies. The en¬ 
terprise at first was eminently successful, and the 
whole of Egypt fell under the power of the invaders 
and their ally. Eventually, however, the Persian 
arms triumphed, and Inarus, being taken by treachery, 
was crucified. (Thucyd., 1, 109; 1, 110.) Herod¬ 
otus and Ctesias say he was crucified, hu rpLcl orav- 
polq, which might more properly be termed impale¬ 
ment. Bloomfield (ad Thucyd ., 1. c.) thinks that he 
was of the ancient royal family of Egypt, and descend¬ 
ed from the Psammeticus who died B.C. 617. It is 
not improbable, he adds, that, on Apries being put. to 
death by his chief minister Amasis, his son, or some 
near relation, established himself among the Libyans 
bordering on Egypt, from whom descended this Psam¬ 
meticus. 

India, an extensive country of Asia, divided by 
Ptolemy and the ancient geographers into India intra 
Gangem and India extra Gangem, or India on this 
side, and India beyond, the Ganges. The first divis¬ 
ion answers to the modern Hindustan ; the latter to 
the Birman Empire , and the dominions of Pegu, Siam, 
Laos, Cambodia , Cochin China , Tonquin, and Ma¬ 
lacca .—Commerce between India and the western na¬ 
tions of Asia appears to have been carried on from 
the earliest historical times. The spicery, which the 
company of Ishmaelites mentioned in Genesis (37, 25) 
were carrying into Egypt, must in all probability have 
been the produce of India; and in the 30th chapter 
of Exodus, where an enumeration is made of various 
spices and perfumes, cinnamon and cassia are express¬ 
ly mentioned, which must have come from India, or 
the islands in the Indian Archipelago. It has been 
thought by many, that the Egyptians must have used 
Indian spices in embalming their dead; and Diodorus 
Siculus says (1, 91), that cinnamon was actually em¬ 
ployed by this people for that purpose. The spice 
trade appears to have been carried on by means of the 

4Q 


Arabs, who brought the produce of India from the 
modern Sinde, or the Malabar coast, to Hadramur.t in 
the southwestern part of Arabia, or to Gerra on Uie 
Persian Gulf, from which place it was carried by means 
of caravans to Petra, where it was purchased by Phoe¬ 
nician merchants. A great quantity of Indian articles 
was also brought Tom the Persian Gulf up the Eu¬ 
phrates as far as Circesium or Thapsacus, and thence 
carried across the Syrian desert into Phoenicia. Eu¬ 
rope was thus supplied with the produce of India by 
means of the Phoenicians ; but we cannot assent to 
the opinion of Robertson (Historical Disquisition on 
India), that Phoenician ships sailed to India; for there 
is no reason for believing that the Phoenicians had any 
harbours at the head of the Red Sea, as Robertson 
supposes, but, on the contrary, the Idumseans remain¬ 
ed independent till the time of David and Solomon; 
and in the 27th chapter of Ezekiel, which contains a 
list of the nations that traded with Tyre, we can dis¬ 
cover none of an HUian origin ; but the names of the 
Arabian tribes are specified which supplied the Phoe¬ 
nicians with the products of India (v. 19, 22). The 
conquest of Idumaea by David gave the Jews posses¬ 
sion of the harbour of Ezion-geber on the Red Sea, 
from which ships sailed to Ophir, bringing “gold and 
silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks.” (1 Kings, 2, 28.— 
lb., 10, 11, 22.) Considerable variety of opinion pre¬ 
vails respecting Ophir ; but it is most probable that 
it was an emporium of the African and Indian trade 
in Arabia. The Arabian merchants procured the gold 
from Africa, and the ivory, apes, and peacocks from 
India. The Hebrew words in this passage appear to 
be derived from the Sanscrit. In the troubles which 
followed the death of Solomon, the trade with Ophii 
was probably neglected ; and till the foundation of A1 
exandrea the trade with India was carried on by the 
Arabians in the way already mentioned. The produce 
of India was also imported into Greece by the Phoeni¬ 
cians in very early times. Many of the Greek names 
of the Indian articles are evidently derived from the 
Sanscrit. Thus, the Greek word for pepper (nennepi, 
pepperi ) comes from the Sanscrit pippali : the Greek 
word for emerald is Gpapaydoq or pdpaydoq ( smarag - 
dos, maragdos ), from the Sanscrit marakata: the 
(dvooivy oivSii>v (byssine sindon), “fine linen” or 
“muslin,” mentioned by Herodotus (2, 86 ; 7, 181), 
seems to be derived from Sindhu, the Sanscrit name 
of the river Indus: the produce of the cotton-plant, 
called in Greek K&pnaGoq (karpasos), comes from the 
Sanscrit karpasa, a word which we also find in the 
Hebrew (karpas. — Esther, 1, 6), and it was probably 
introduced into Greece, together with the commodity, 
by the Phoenician traders. That this was the case 
with the word cinnamon, Herodotus (3, 111) informs 
us. The term cinnamon (in Greek Kivvdpupov or 
KLvvapov, cinnamomum, cinnamon; in Hebrew kinna- 
mon) is not found in Sanscrit; the Sanscrit term for 
this article is gudhatvach, “ sweet bark.” The word 
cinnamon appears to be derived from the Cingalese 
kakyn nama, “ sweet wood,” of which the Sanscrit is 
probably a translation. We are not, however, sur¬ 
prised at missing the Sanscrit word for this article, 
since the languages in Southern India have no affinity 
with the Sanscrit. Tin also appears to have been from 
early times an article of exportation from India. The 
Greek term for tin, KaGGirepoq (kassiteros ), which oc¬ 
curs even in Homer, is evidently the same as th? £'in- 
scrit kastira. It is usually considered that the Gteeks 
obtained their tin, by means of the Phoenicians, from 
the Scilly Islands or Cornwall; but there is no di¬ 
rect proof of this; and it appears probable, from the 
Sanscrit derivation of the word, that the Greeks ori¬ 
ginally obtained their tin from India.—The westen 
nations of Asia appear to have had no connexion wit* 
India, except in the way of commerce, till the time of 
Darius Hystaspis, 521 B.C. The tales which Diodo 





INDIA. 


INDIA. 


As relates respecting the invasion of India by Sesostris 
and Semiramis, cannot be estimated as historical facts. 
T^e same remark may perhaps apply to the alliance 
which, according to Xenophon, in his Cyropsedia (6, 2, 
1), Cyrus made with a king of India. But, in the 
reign of Darius Hystaspis, Herodotus informs us (4, 
44), that Scylax of Caryanda was sent by the Persians 
to explore the course of the Indus ; that he set out for 
the city Caspatyrus, and the Pactyican country (Pa- 
krXi ?) in the northern part of India ; that he sailed 
down the Indus until he arrived at its mouth, and 
thence across the Indian Sea to the Arabian Gulf, and 
that this voyage occupied 30 months. Darius also, it 
is said, subdued the Indians and formed them into a 
satrapy, the tribute of which amounted to 360 talents 
of gold. (Herod,., 3, 94.) The extent of the Persian 
empire in India cannot be ascertained with any degree 
of certainty. The Persians appear to have included 
under the "name of Indians many tribes dwelling to 
the west of the Indus ; it seems d(W)tful whether they 
ever had any dominion east of the Indus ; and it is 
nearly certain that their authority did not extend be¬ 
yond the Penjab. —The knowledge which the Greeks 
possessed respecting India, previous to the time of Al¬ 
exander, was derived from the Persians. We do not 
find the name of Indian or Hindu in ancient Sanscrit 
works ; but the country east of the Indus has been 
known under this name by the western nations of 
Asia from the earliest times. In the Zend and Pehlvi 
languages it is called Heando, and in the Hebrew 
Hoddu (Esther, 1, I), which is evidently the same as 
the Hend of the Persian and Arabic geographers. 
The first mention of the Indians in a Greek author is 
in the “ Supplices” of JEschylus (v. 287); but no 
Greek writer gives us any information concerning them 
till the time of Herodotus. We may collect from the 
account of this historian a description of three distinct 
tribes of Indians : one dwelling in the north, near the 
city Caspartyrus, and the Pactyican country, resem¬ 
bling the Bactrians in their customs and mode of life. 
The second tribe or tribes evidently did not live un¬ 
der Brahminical laws ; some of them dwelt in the 
marshes formed by the Indus, and subsisted by fish¬ 
ing ; others, called Padsei, with whom we may proba¬ 
bly class the Calantiaa or Calati^, were wild and bar¬ 
barous tribes, such as exist at present in the mountains 
of the Deccan. The third class, who are described as 
subsisting on the spontaneous produce of the earth, 
and never killing any living thing, are more likely to 
have been genuine Hindus. (Herod., 3, 98, seqq .) 
Herodotus had heard of some of the natural produc¬ 
tions of Hindustan, such as the cotton-plant and the 
bamboo ; but his knowledge was very limited.—Cte- 
sias, who lived at the court of Artaxerxes Mnemon for 
many years, has given us a fuller account than Herod¬ 
otus of the manners and customs of the Indians, and 
of the natural productions of the country. He Had 
heard of the war-elephants, and describes the parrot, 
the monkey, cochineal, &c.—The expedition of Alex¬ 
ander into India, B.C. 326, first gave the Greeks a 
correct idea of the western parts of this country. Al¬ 
exander did not advance farther east than the Hypha- 
sis; but he followed the course- of the Indus to the 
ocean, and afterward sent Nearchus to explore the 
coast of the Indian Ocean as far as the Persian Gulf. 
The Penjab was inhabited, at the time of Alexander’s 
invasion, by many independent nations, who were as 
distinguished for their courage as their lescendants 
the Rajpoots. Though the Macedonians did not pen¬ 
etrate farther east than the Hyphasis, report reached 
them of the Prasii, a powerful people on the banks of 
the Ganges, whose king was prepared to resist Alex¬ 
ander with an immense army. After the death of Al¬ 
exander, Seleucus made war against Sandrocottus, 
king of the Prasii, and was the first Greek who ad¬ 
vanced as far as the Ganges. This Sandrocottus, 
674 


called Sandracoptus by Athenaeus (Epit., 1, 32), tg 
probably the same as the Chandragupta of the Hindus 
(Consult Sir W. Jones, in Astatic Researches , vol. 4 5 
p. ii.— Wilson's Theatre of the Hindus, vol. 2, p. 
127, seqq., 2 d ed. — Schlegel, Indische Biblicthek, vol. 
1, p. 246.) Sandrocottus is represented as king of 
the Gangarid® and Prasii, who are probably one and 
the same people, Gangaridae being the name given to 
them by the Greeks, and signifying merely the people 
in the neighbourhood of the Ganges, and PisjsiI being 
the Hindu name, the same as the Prachi (i. e., ‘ east¬ 
ern country”) of the Sanscrit writers. Seleucus re¬ 
mained only a short time in the country of the Prasii, 
but his expedition was the means of giving the Greeks 
a more correct knowledge of the eastern part of India 
than they had hitherto possessed ; since Megasthenes, 
and afterward Daimachus, resided for many years as 
ambassadors of the Syrian monarchs at Palibothra 
(in Sanscrit, Pataliputra), the capital of the Prasii 
From the work which Megasthenes wrote on India, 
later writers, .even in the time of the Roman emperors, 
such as Strabo and Arrian, appear to have derived their 
principal knowledge of the country. The Seleucid® 
probably lost all influence at Palibothra after the death 
of Seleucus Nicator, B.C. 281 ; though we have a 
brief notice in Polybius (11, 34) of an expedition which 
Antiochus the Great made into India, and of a treaty 
which he concluded with a king Sophagasenus (in San¬ 
scrit, probably, Subhagasena, i. e., “the leader of a 
fortunate army”), whereby the Indian king was bound 
to supply him with a certain number of war elephants. 
The Greek kingdom of Bactria, which was founded 
by Theodotus or Diodotus, a lieutenant of the Syrian 
monarchs, and which lasted about 120 years, appears 
to have comprised a considerable portion of northern 
India.—After the foundation of Alexandrea, the In¬ 
dian trade was almost entirely carried on by the mer 
chants of that city ; few ships, however, appear to 
have sailed from Alexandrea till the discovery of the 
monsoons by Hippalus ; and the Arabians supplied 
Alexandrea, as they had previously done the Phoeni¬ 
cians, with the produce of India. The monsoons 
must have become known to European navigators 
about the middle of the first century of our era, since 
they are not mentioned by Strabo, but were .well 
known in the time of Pliny. Pliny has given us (6, 
23) an interesting account of the trade between In¬ 
dia and Alexandrea, as it existed in his own time. 
We learn from him that the ships of the Alexandrean 
merchants set sail from Berenice, a port of the Red 
Sea, and arrived, in about 30 days, at Ocelis or Carre, 
in Arabia. Thence they sailed by the wind Hippalus 
(the southwest monsoon), in 40 days, toMuziris (Man¬ 
galore), the first emporium in India, which was not 
muc-h frequented, on account of the pirates in the 
neighbourhood. The port at which the ships usually 
stayed was that of Barace (at the mouth, probably, of 
the Nelisuram river). After remaining in India till 
the beginning of December or January, they sailed 
back to the Red Sea, met with the wind Africus or 
Auster (south or southwest wind), and thus arrived at 
Berenice in less than a twelvemonth from the time 
they set out. The same author informs us, that the 
Indian articles were carried from Berenice to Coptos, 
a distance of 258 Roman miles, on camels ; and that 
the different halting-places were determined by the 
wells. From Coptos, which was united to the Nile 
by a canal, the goods were conveyed down the rivei 
to Alexandrea.—We have another account of the In 
dian trade, written by Arrian, who lived, in all proba¬ 
bility, in the first century of the Christian era, and 
certainly not later than the second. Arrian had been 
in India himself, and describes in a small Greek trea¬ 
tise, entitled “ the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea,” the 
coast from the Red Sea to the western parts of India; 
and also gives a list of the most important exports anrf 




INDIA. 


INDIA. 


imports. According to this account, the two princi¬ 
pal ports in India were Barygaza on the northwestern, 
and Barace or Nelcynda on the southwestern coast. 
To Barygaza (the modern Baroach, on the river Ner- 
budda ) goods were brought from Ozene ( Oujein ), 
Plithana ( Pultaneh ), and Tagara ( Deoghur ). But Ba¬ 
race or Nelcynda seems, from the account of Pliny 
and Arrian, to have been the principal emporium of 
the Indian trade. The Roman ships appear to have 
seldom sailed beyond this point; and the produce of 
countries farther east was brought to Barace by the 
native merchants. The knowledge which the Romans 
possessed of India beyond Cape Comorin was exceed- 
ingly vague and defective. Strabo describes the Gan¬ 
ges as flowing into the sea by one mouth ; and though 
Pliny gives a long list of Indian nations, which had not 
been previously mentioned by any Greek or Roman 
writers, we have no satisfactory account of any part 
of India, except the description of the western coast 
by Arrian. Ptolemy, who lived about 100 years later 
than Pliny, appears to have derived his information 
from the Alexandrean merchants, who only sailed to 
the Malabar coast, and could not, therefore, have any 
accurate knowledge of the eastern parts of India, and 
still less of the countries beyond the Ganges ; still, 
however, he is the earliest writer who attempts to de¬ 
scribe the countries to the east of this stream. There 
is great difficulty in determining the position of any 
of the places enumerated by him, in consequence of 
the great error he made in the form of the peninsula, 
which he has made to stretch in its length from west 
to east instead of from north to south; a mistake 
the more extraordinary, since all preceding writers 
on India with whom we are acquainted had given 
the general shape of the peninsula with tolerable accu¬ 
racy.—The Romans never extended their conquests 
as far as India, nor visited the country except for 
the purposes of commerce. But the increase of the 
trade between Alexandrea and India seems to have 
produced in the Indian princes a desire to obtain 
some farther information concerning the western na¬ 
tions. We read of embassies to Augustus Caesar, sent 
by Pandion and Porus, and also of an embassy from 
the isle of Ceylon to the Emperor Claudius. Bohlen, 
in his work on the Indians (vol. 1, p. 70), doubts 
whether these embassies were sent; but as they are 
both mentioned by contemporary writers, the former 
by Strabo and the latter by Pliny, we can hardly 
question the truth of their statements. We may form 
some idea of the magnitude of the Indian trade under 
the emperors by the account of Pliny (6, 23), who in¬ 
forms us, that the Roman world was drained every 
year of at least 50 millions of sesterces (upward of 
1,900,000 dollars) for the purchase of Indian commodi¬ 
ties. The profit upon this trade must have been im¬ 
mense, if we are to believe the statements of Pliny, 
that Indian articles were sold at Rome at 100 per 
cent, above their cost price. The articles imported 
by the Alexandrean merchants were chiefly precious 
stones, spices, perfumes, and silk. It has usually been 
considered, that the last article was imported into In¬ 
dia from China; but there are strong reasons for be¬ 
lieving that the silkworm has been reared in India 
from very early times. Mr. Colebrooke, in his “ Essay 
on Hindu Classes” ( Miscellaneous Essays, vol. 2, p. 
185), informs us, that the class of silk-twisters and 
feeders of silkworms is mentioned in an ancient San¬ 
scrit work ; in addition to which, it may be remarked, 
that silk is known throughout the Archipelago by its 
Sanscrit name sutra. (Marsden’s Malay Dictionary, 
s. v. sutra.) Those who wish for farther information 
on the articles of commerce, both imported and ex¬ 
ported by the Alexandrean merchants, may consult 
with advantage the Appendix to Dr. Vincent’s “ Peri- 
plus of the Erythrean Sea,” in which he has given an 
alphabetical list, accompanied with many explanations, 


of the exports and imports of the Indian trade, whicn 
are‘enumerated in the Digest, and in Arrian’s “ Peri- 
pius of the Erythrean Sea.”—We have no farther ac 
count of the trade between Alexandrea and India till 
the time of the Emperor Justinian, during whose reign 
an Alexandrean merchant of the name of Cosmas, who 
had made several voyages to India, but who afterward 
turned monk, published a work, still extant, entitled 
“ Christian Topography,” in which he gives us sever¬ 
al particulars respecting the Indian trade. But his 
knowledge of India is not more extensive than that of 
Arrian, for the Alexandrean merchants continued to 
visit merely the Malabar coast, to which the produce 
of the country farther east was brought by native mer¬ 
chants, as in the time of Arrian. Alexandrea con¬ 
tinued to supply the nations of Europe with Indian ar¬ 
ticles till the discovery of the passage round the Cape 
of Good Hope by Vasco de Gama in 1498. But the 
western nations of Asia were principally supplied by 
the merchants of Basora, which was founded by the 
Calif Omar near the mouth of the Euphrates, and which 
soon became one of the most flourishing commercial 
cities of the East. In addition to which it must be 
recollected, that a land-trade, conducted by means of 
caravans, which passed through the central countries 
of Asia, existed from very early times between India 
and the western nations of Asia. ( Encycl. Useful 
Knowl., vol. 12, p. 222, seqq.) 

History of India from the earliest times to the Mo¬ 
hammedan Conquest. 

The materials for the history of this period are 
very few and unsatisfactory. The only ancient his¬ 
tory written in the Sanscrit language which the re¬ 
searches of modern scholars have been able to ob¬ 
tain, is a chronicle of the kings of Cashmere, entitled 
“ Raja Taringini,” of which an abstract was given 
by Abulfazl in the “ Ayin-i-Akbery.” The original 
Sanscrit was obtained for the first time by English 
scholars in the present century, and was published 
at Calcutta in the year 1835. An interesting ac¬ 
count of the work is given by Professor Wilson, in 
the 15th volume of the “Asiatic Researches.” But, 
though this volume throws considerable light upon the 
early history of Cashmere, it gives us little information 
respecting the early history of Hindustan. The exist¬ 
ence of this chronicle, however, is sufficient to dis¬ 
prove the assertion^ which some persons have made, 
that the Hindus possessed no native history prior to 
the Mohammedan conquest; and it may be hoped that 
similar works may be obtained by the researches of 
modern scholars. We may also expect to obtain far¬ 
ther information by a more diligent examination of the * 
various inscriptions which exist on public buildings in 
all parts of Hindustan, though the majority of such in¬ 
scriptions relate to a period subsequent to the Moham¬ 
medan conquest. The Brahmins profess to give a his¬ 
tory of the ancient kingdoms of Hindustan, with the 
names of the monarchs who successively reigned over 
them, and the principal events of their reigns. But 
their accounts are derived from the legendary tales of 
the Puranas, a class of compositions very similar to 
the Greek Theogonies ; and although these, and es¬ 
pecially the two great epic poems, the “ Ramayana” , 
and “ Mahabharata,” are exceedingly valuable for the 
information they give us respecting the religion, civil¬ 
ization, and customs of the ancient Hindus, they can¬ 
not be regarded as authorities for historical events.— 
The invariable tradition of the Hindus points to the 
northern parts of Hindustan as the original abode of 
their race, and of the Brahminical faith and laws. It 
appears probable, both from the tradition of the Hindus 
and from the similarity of the Sanscrit to the Zend, 
Greek, and Latin languages, that the nation from which 
the genuine Hindus are descended must at some pe¬ 
riod have inhabited the plains of Central Asia, from 

675 






INDIA 


IND 


which they emigrated into the northern part of Hindu-1 
stan. Heer-en and other writers have supposed, that 
the Brahmins, and perhaps the Kshatriyas and Vaisyas, 
were a race of northern conquerors, who subdued the 
Sudras, the original inhabitants of the country. But, 
whatever opinion may be entertained respecting the 
origin of this people, it is evident that the Hindus 
themselves never regarded the southern part of the 
peninsula as forming part of Aryavarta, or “ the holy 
land,” the name of the country inhabited by genuine 
Hindus. Aryavarta was bounded on the north by the 
Himalaya, and on the south by the Vindhya Mount¬ 
ains ( Manu , 6, 21-24); the boundaries on the east 
and west cannot be so easily ascertained. In this 
country, and especially in the eastern part, there ex¬ 
isted great and powerful empires, at least a thousand 
years before the Christian era (the probable date of the 
Ramayana. and Mahabharata), which had made great 
progress in knowledge, civilization, and the fine arts, 
and of which the ancient literature of the Sanscrit lan¬ 
guages is an imperishable memorial. According to 
Hindu tradition, two empires only existed in the most 
ancient times, of which the capitals were Ayodhya or 
Oude, and Pratishthana or Vitora. The kings of 
these cities, who are respectively denominated chil¬ 
dren of the Sun and of the Moon, are supposed to 
have been the lineal descendants of Satyavrata, the 
seventh Manu, during whose life all living creatures, 
with the exception of himself and his family, were de¬ 
stroyed by a general deluge. Another kingdom was 
afterward established at Magadha or Bahar, by Jaras- 
audha, appointed governor of the province by a sover¬ 
eign of the Lunar race. A list of these kings is giv¬ 
en by Sir William Jones, in his “ Essay on the Chro¬ 
nology of the Hindus.” {Asiat. Research ., vol. 2, p. 
Ill, seq., 8vo ed.)—The kings of Ayodhya appear to 
have conquered the Deccan, and to have introduced 
the Brahminical faith and laws into the southern part 
of the peninsula. Such, at least, appears to be the 
meaning of the Ramayana, according to which, Rama, 
an incarnation of Vishnu, and the son of the king of 
Ayodhya, penetrates to the extremity of the peninsula, 
and conquers the giants of Lauka {Ceylon). This is 
in accordance with all the traditions of the peninsula, 
which recognise a period when the inhabitants were 
not Hindus. We have no means of ascertaining 
whether these conquests by the monarchs of Ayodhya 
were permanent; but we know that, in the time of Ar¬ 
rian and Pliny, the Brahminical faith prevailed in the 
southern part of the peninsula, since all the principal 
places mentioned by these writers have Sanscrit names. 
We learn from tradition, and from historical records 
extant in the Tamul language (Wilson's Descriptive 
Catalogue of the Oriental MSS. collected by the late 
Lieutenant-col. Mackenzie. — Taylor’s Oriental His¬ 
torical MSS. in the Tamul language , 2 vols. 4to, 
Madras , 1835), that three kingdoms acquired, in early 
times, great political importance in the southern part 
<tf the Deccan. These were named Pandya, Chola, 
and Chera, and are all said to have been founded by 
natives of Ayodhya, who colonized the Deccan with 
Hindus from the north. Pandya was the most pow¬ 
erful of these kingdoms : it was bounded on the north 
• by the river Velar , on the west by the Ghauts , though 
in early times it extended as far as the Malabar coast, 
and on the south and east by the sea. Its principal 
town was Madura. The antiquity of this kingdom 
is confirmed by Pliny, Arrian, and Ptolemy, who all 
mention Pandion as a king who reigned in the south 
of the peninsula. The Brahminical colonists appear 
to have settled principally in the southern parts of the 
Deccan: the native traditions represent the northern 
parts as inhabited by savage races till a much later 
period. This is in accordance with the accounts of 
the Greek writers. The names of the places on the 
jppex part of the eastern and western coasts are not 
676 


Sanscrit. The modern Concan is described by botfl 
Arrian and Pliny as the pirate coast; and the coast 
of the modern Orissa is said by Arrian to have been 
inhabited by a savage race called Kirrhadns, who ap¬ 
pear to be identical with the Kiratas of the Sanscrit 
writers, and who are represented to have been a race 
of savage foresters.—The accounts of the Greeks who 
accompanied Alexander, and more particularly that of 
Megasthenes, give us, as we have already shown, some 
information respecting the northern part of Hindustan 
in the third and fourth centuries before the Christian 
era. But hardly anything is known of the history of 
Hindustan from this period to the time of the Moham¬ 
medan conquest. There are only a very few historical 
events of which we can speak with any degree of cer 
tainty. After the overthrow of the Greek kingdom of 
Bactria by the Tartars, B.C. 126, the Tartars (called 
by the Greeks Scythians, and by the Hindus Sakas) 
overran the greater part of the northwestern provinces 
of Hindustan, which remained in their possession till 
the reign of Vicramaditya I., B.C. 56, who, after add¬ 
ing numerous provinces to his empire, drove the Tar¬ 
tars beyond the Indus. This sovereign, whose date is 
pretty well ascertained, since the years of the Samvat 
era are counted from his reign, resided at Ayodhya 
and Canoj, and had dominion over almost the whole 
of northern Hindustan, from Cashmere to the Ganges. 
He gave great encouragement to learning and the fine 
arts, and his name is still cherished by the Hindus as 
one of their greatest and wisest princes. He fell in a 
battle against Salivahana, raja of the Deccan. We 
also read of two other sovereigns of the same name : 
Vicramaditya II., A.D. 191, and Vicramaditya III., 
A.D. 441. The most interesting event in this period 
of Hindu history is the persecution of the Buddhists, 
and their final expulsion from Hindustan. It is diffi¬ 
cult to conceive the reasons that induced the Hindu 
sovereigns, after so long a period of toleration, to aid 
the Brahmins in this persecution ; mvyre especially as 
the Jains, a sect strikingly resembling the Buddhists, 
were tolerated in all parts of Hindustan.—Christianity 
is said to have been introduced into Hindustan in the 
first century ; according to some accounts, by the 
apostle Thomas; and, according to others, by the 
apostle Bartholomew. But there is very little depend- 
ance to be placed upon these statements. The first 
Christians who were settled in any number in Hindu¬ 
stan appear to have been Nestorians, who settled on 
the Malabar coast for the purposes of commerce. Nes- 
torius lived in the middle of the fifth century ; and in 
the sixth century we learn from Cosmas that Christian 
churches were established in the most important cities 
on the Malabar coast, and that the priests were ordain¬ 
ed by the Archbishop of Seleucia, and were subject to 
his jurisdiction. When Vasco de Gama arrived at 
Cochin, on the Malabar coast, he was surprised to find 
a great number of Christians, who inhabited the inte¬ 
rior of Travancore and Malabar, and who had more 
than a hundred churches. But these Christians ap¬ 
pear to have been the descendants of those Nestori¬ 
ans who emigrated to Hindustan in the §fth and sixth 
centuries, since there is no reason for believing that 
any Hindus were converted by their means to the 
Christian religion. {Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 12, p 
224, seqq.) 

Indus, a celebrated river of India, falling, after a 
course of 1300 miles, into the Indian Ocean. The 
sources of this river have not yet been fully exp.ored. 
Its commencement is fixed, by the most probable con¬ 
jecture, in the northern declivity of the Calias branch 
of the Himalaya Mountains, about lat. 31° 20' N., 
and long. 80° 30' E., within a few miles of the source 
of the Setledge, and in a territory under the dominion 
of China. Its name in Sanscrit is Sindh or Hindh , an 
appellation which it receives from its blue colour. 
Under the name Sindus it was known even to the Ro- 




1 N T 


10 


mans, besides its more common appellation of Indus. 
In lat. 28° 28', the Indus is joined by five rivers, the 
ancient names of which, as given by the Greek writers, 
are, the Hydaspes, Acesines, Hydraotes, Hyphasis, 
and Xeradrus. These five rivers obtained for the 
province which they watered the Greek name of Pen- 
tapotamia, analogous to which is the modern appella¬ 
tion of Pendjab, given* to the same region, and signi¬ 
fying in Persian “ the country of the five rivers.” 
(Consult Lassen, Comment, de Pentapot. Indica, 4to, 
Bonnce, 1827.— Beck , Allgcmeines Repertorium, vol. 
1, pt. 2, p. 112.) The Xeradrus, now the Setledge, 
is the longest of the five rivers just mentioned, and the 
longest stream also within the Himalaya range, be¬ 
tween the Indus and the Burrampooter. The union 
of all the five rivers into one, before they reach the 
Indus, was a point in geography maintained by Ptole¬ 
my ; but, owing to the obscurity of modern accounts, 
promoted by the splittings of the Indus, and the fre¬ 
quent approximation of streams running in parallel 
courses, we had been taught to regard this as a speci¬ 
men of that author’s deficiency of information, till very 
recent and more minute inquiries have re-established 
that questioned point, and, along with it, the merited 
credit of the ancient geographer. The five rivers form 
one great stream, called by the natives in this quarter 
the Cherraub ; but in the other countries of India it is 
known by the name of Punjund. The united stream 
then flows on between 40 and 50 miles, until it joins 
the Indus at Mitlun Cote. The mouths of the Indus 
Ptolemy makes seven in number ; Mannert gives them 
as follows, commencing on the west: Sagapa, now 
the river Pitty; Sinthos, now the Parraway; Aureum 
Ostium, now the Ritchel; Chariphus, now the Fetty; 
Sapara, Sabala, and Lonibare, of which last three he 
professes to know nothing with certainty. According, 
however, to other and more recent authorities, the In¬ 
dus enters the sea in one volume, the lateral streams 
being absorbed by the sand without reaching the ocean. 
It gives off an easterly branch called the Fullalee, but 
this returns its waters to the Indus at a lower point, 
forming in its circuit the island on which Hyderabad 
siands. (Malle-Brun, Geogr., vol. 3, p. 13, Am. ed.) 

Into, daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia. (Vid. 
Athamas.) 

Inopus, a river of Delos, watering the plain in which 
the town of Delos stood. (Strab., 485.— Callim., H. 
in Del., 206.) 

Inous, a patronymic given to the god Palsemon, as 
eonoflno. ( Virg ., JEn., 5, 823.) 

Insubres (in Greek T aopbpoc), the most numerous 
as well as the most powerful tribe of the Cisalpine 
Gauls, according to Polybius (2, 17). It would ap¬ 
pear indeed from Ptolemy (p. 64) that their dominion 
extended at one time over the Libicii, another power¬ 
ful Gallic tribe in their vicinity; but their territory, 
properly speaking, seems to have been defined by the 
rivers Ticinus and Addua. The Insubres took a very 
active part in the Gallic wars against the Romans, and 
zealously co-operated with Hannibal in his invasion of 
Italy. ( Polyb., 2, 40.) They are stated by Livy (5, 
34) to have founded their capital Mediolanum (now 
Milan) on their first arrival in Italy, and to have giv¬ 
en it that name from a place so called in the territory 
of the JEdui in Gaul. ( Plin ., 3, 17.— Ptol., p. 63.— 
Consult remarks under the article Gallia, page 531, 
col. 1.) 

Insula Sacra, an island formed at the mouth of 
the Tiber, by the separation of the two branches of 
that river. ( Procopius , Rer. Got., 1. — Rntil. Itin., 
1, 169.) 

Intemelium or Albium Intemelium, the capital of 
the Intemelii. (Vid. Albium II.) 

Interamna, I. a city of Uinbria, so called from its be¬ 
ing situated between two branches (inter amnes) of the 
river Nar. ( Varro , L. L., 4, 5.) Hence also the in¬ 


habitants of the place were known as the Interamnate# 
Nartes, to distinguish them from those of Interamna 
on the Liris. (Plin., 3, 14.) If an ancient inscrip¬ 
tion cited by Cluverius (Ilal. Ant., vol. 1, p. 635) be 
genuine, Interamna, now represented by the well- 
known town of Terni, was founded in the reign of 
Numa, or about 80 years after Rome. It is noted af¬ 
terward as one of the most distinguished cities of mu¬ 
nicipal rank in Italy. This circumstance, however, did 
not save it from the calamities of civil war during the 
disastrous struggle between Sylla and Marius. ( Floras, 
3, 21.) The plains around Interamna, which were 
watered by the Nar, are represented as the most pro¬ 
ductive in Italy (Tacit., Ann., 1, 69); and Pliny as¬ 
sures us (18, 28), that the meadows were cut four 
times in the year. Interamna is commonly supposed 
to have been the birthplace of the historian Tacitus, 
and also of the emperor of the same name. (Cramer's 
Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 276.)—II. A city of Picenum, in 
the territory of the Pra?tutii; hence called, for distinc¬ 
tion’ sake, Praetutiana. (Ptol., p. 62.) It is now Tera- 
mo , situate between the small rivers Viziola and Tur- 
dino. (Romanelh, Antica Topografia, &c., pt. 3, p. 
298, seqq.) —III. A city of New Latiurn, situate on 
the Liris, and between that river and the small stream 
now called Sogne, but the ancient name of which 
Strabo, who states the fact, has not mentioned. It 
was usually called Interamna ad Lirim, for distinction’ 
sake from the other cities of the same name. Accord¬ 
ing to Livy (9, 28) it was colonized A.U.C. 440, and 
defended itself successfully against the Samnites, who 
made an attack upon it soon after. (Liv., 10, 36.) 
Interamna is mentioned again by the same historian 
(26, 9) when describing Hannibal’s march from Capua 
to Rome. We find its name subsequently among 
those of the refractory colonies of that war. (Liv., 
27, 9.) Pliny informs us that the Interamnates were 
surnamed Lirinates and Succasini. (Plin., 3, 5.) 
Cluverius imagined that Ponte Corvo occupied the site 
of Interamna; but its situation agrees more nearly 
with that of a place called Terame Castrume, in old 
records, and the name of which is evidently a corrup¬ 
tion of Interamna. (Cramer's Anc. It., vol. 2, p. 117.) 

Inui Castrum. Vul. Castrum II. 

Io, daughter of Iasus, or, as the dramatic writers 
said, of Inachus, was priestess of Juno at Argos, and, 
unhappily for her, was beloved by Jupiter. When 
this god found that his conduct had exposed him to 
the suspicions of Juno, he changed Io into a white 
cow, and declared with an oath to his spouse that he 
had been guilty of no infidelity. The goddess, affect¬ 
ing to believe him, asked the cow of him as a'present; 
and, on obtaining her, set the “ all-seeing Argus” to 
watch her. (Vid. Argus.) Pie accordingly bound her 
to an olive-tree in the grove of Mycenae, and there kept 
guard over her. Jupiter, pitying her situation, directed 
Mercury to steal her away. The god of ingenious de¬ 
vices made the attempt; but, as a vulture alw-ays gave 
Argus warning of his projects, he found it impossible 
to succeed. Nothing then remaining but open force, 
Mercury killed Argus with a stone, and hence obtained 
the appellation of Argus-slayer (’Apyeupovryg). The 
vengeance of Juno was, however, not yet satiated ; and 
she sent a gad-fly to torment Io, who fled over the 
whole world from its pursuits. She swam through the 
Ionian Sea, which was fabled to have hence derived 
its name from her. She then roamed over the plains 
of Illyria, ascended Mount Hasmus, and crossed the 
Thracian strait, thence named the Bosporus (vid. Bos 
porus), she rambled on through Scythia and the country 
of the Cimmerians, and, after wandering over various 
regions of Europe and Asia, arrived at last on the banks 
of the Nile, where she assumed her original form, and 
bore to Jupiter a son named Epaphus. ( Vid. Epa- 
phus.)—The legend of Io would not appear to have 
attracted so much of the attention of the earlier poets 

677 



io. 


I O JN 


as mignt have been expected. Homel never alludes to 
it, unless his employment of the term ’ Apyenpovng; ( Ar - 
geiphontes) is to be regarded as intimating a knowl¬ 
edge of Io. It is also doubtful whether she was one 
of the heroines of the Eoese. Her story, however, was 
noticed in the ^Egimius, where it was said that her fa¬ 
ther’s name was Peiren, that her keeper Argus had 
four eyes, and that the island of Euboea derived its 
name from her. ( Apollod., 2, 1, 3. — Schol. ad Eu- 
rip., Phcen., 1132. — Sleph. Byz., s. v. ’A Savrig.) 
Pherecydes said that Juno placed an eye in the back 
of Argus’s neck, and deprived him of sleep, and then 
set him as a guard over Io. (Ap. Schol. ad Eurip., 
1. c.) ^Eschylus introduces Io into his “ Prometheus 
Bound,” and he also relates her story in his “ Suppli¬ 
ants.”—When the Greeks first settled in Egypt, and 
saw the statues of Isis with cow’s horns, they, in their 
usual manner, inferred that she was their own Io, with 
whose name hers had a slight similarity. At Memphis 
they afterward beheld the worship of the holy bull 
Apis, and naturally supposing the bull-god to be the son 
of the cow-goddess, they formed from him a son for 
their Io, whose name was the occasion of a new legend 
relative to the mode by which she was restored to her 
pristine form. ( Muller , Proleg ., p. 183, seq. — Keight- 
ley's Mythology , p. 406, seqq.) —The whole story of 
Io is an agricultural legend, and admits of an easy ex¬ 
planation. Io, whether considered as the offspring of 
lasus (the favourite of Ceres) or of Peiren (the “ex¬ 
perimenter” or “tryer”), is a type of early agriculture, 
progressing gradually by the aid of slow and painful 
experience. Jupiter represents the firmament, the ge¬ 
nial source of light and life ; Juno, on the other hand, 
is the type of the atmosphere, with its stormy and ca¬ 
pricious changes. Early agriculture suffers from these 
changes, which impede more or less the fostering in¬ 
fluence of the pure firmament that lies beyond, and 
hence man has to watch with incessant and sleepless 
care over the labours of primitive husbandry. This 
ever-watchful superintendence is typified by Argus 
with his countless eyes, save that in the legend he be¬ 
comes an instrument of punishment in the hands of 
Juno. If we turn to the version of the fable as given 
in the .ZEgimius, the meaning of the whole story be¬ 
comes still plainer, for here the four eyes of Argus 
are types of the four seasons, while the name Eubcea 
contains a direct reference to success in agriculture. 
Argus, continues the legend, was slain by Mercury, 
and Io was then left free to wander over the whole 
earth. Now, as Mercury was the god of language 
and the inventor of letters, what is this but saying, that 
when rules and precepts of agriculture were intro¬ 
duced, first orally and then in writing, mankind were 
released from that ever-watching care which early hus¬ 
bandry had required from them, and agriculture, now 
reduced to a regular system, went forth in freedom 
and spread itself among the nations 1 —Again, in Egypt 
Io finds at last a resting-place; here she assumes her 
original form, and here brings forth Epaphus as the off¬ 
spring of Jove. What is this but saying that agricul¬ 
ture was carried to perfection in the fertile land of the 
Nile, and that here it was touched (kid and atyau) by the 
true generative influence from on high, and brought 
forth in the richest abundance!—Still farther, the eyes 
of Argus, we are told, were transferred by Juno to the 
plumage of her favourite bird; and the peacock, it is 
well known, gives sure indications, by its cry, of 
changes about to take place in the atmosphere, and is 
in this respect, therefore, intimately connected with 
the operations of husbandry. We see, too, from this, 
why, since Juno is the type of the atmosphere, the 
peacock was considered as sacred to the goddess. 

( Vid. Juno.)—From what has been said, it would seem 
that the name Io is to be deduced from I£2 (dpi), 11 to 
go ,” as indicative of vegetation going farth from the 
bosom of the earth. 

678 


Iobates, a king of Lycia, father A Sthenobasa, the 
wife of Proetus, king of Argos. (Vid. Belieropnon.) 

Jocasta, a daughter of Menoeceus, who married 
Laius, king of Thebes, by whom she had (Edipus. 
She was afterward united to her son CEdipus without 
knowing who he was, and had by him Eteocles, Poly- 
nices, Ismene, and Antigone. She hung herself on 
discovering that CEdipus was her own offspring. ( Vid. 
Laius, and CEdipus.) 

Iolaus, a son of Iphiclus, king of Thessaly, who 
assisted Hercules in conquering the Hydra. (Vid. 
Hydra, and Hercules.) 

Iolcos, a town of Thessaly, in the district of Mag¬ 
nesia, at the head of the Pelasgicus Sinus, and north¬ 
east of Demetrias. It was celebrated in the heroic 
age as the birthplace of Jason and his ancestors. lol- 
cos was situated at the foot of Mount Pelion, accord¬ 
ing to Pindar ( Nem ., 4, 87), and near the small river 
Anaurus, in which Jason is said to have lost his san¬ 
dal. (Apoll. Rhod., 1, 48.) Strabo affirms that civil 
dissensions and tyrannical government hastened the 
downfall of this place, which was once a powerful city; 
but its ruin was finally completed by the foundation of 
Demetrias in its immediate vicinity. In his time the 
town no longer existed, but the neighbouring shore 
still retained the name of Iolcos. (Strab., 436.—Com¬ 
pare Liv., 43, 12.— Scylax . p. 25.— Sleph. Byz., s. v. 
’Iw/l/cof.— Plin., 4, 9.) The poets make the ship Ar¬ 
go to have set sail from Iolcos ; this, however, must 
either be understood as referring the fact to Aphetae, 
or else by Iolcos they mean the adjacent coast. (Cra¬ 
mers Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 428.) 

Iole, a daughter of Eurytus, king of (Echalia. 
(Vid. Hercules, page 598, col. 2.) 

Ion, I. the fabled son of Xuthus, and reputed pro 
genitor of the Ionian race. (Vid. Iones.)—II. A tra¬ 
gic poet, a native of Chios, and surnamed Xuthus. 
He began to exhibit 01. 82, 2, B.C. 451. The num¬ 
ber of his dramas is variously estimated at from twelve 
to forty. Bentley has collected the names of eleven. 
(Epist. ad Mill. Chron. I. Malal. subj.) The same 
great critic has also shown that this Ion was a person 
of birth and fortune, distinct from Ion Ephesius, a mere 
begging rhapsodist. Besides tragedies, Ion composed 
dithyrambs, elegies, &c. His elegies are quoted by 
Athenaeus (10, p. 436), as also his ’EmSypiai, a work 
giving an account of all the visits paid by celebrated 
men to Chios. ( Athenaeus, 3, p. 93.) Ion also com¬ 
posed several works in prose, some of them on philo¬ 
sophical subjects. Though he did not exhibit till after 
Euripides had commenced his dramatic career, and 
though he was, like that poet, a friend of Socrates 
(Diog. Laert.. 2, 23), we should be inclined to infer, 
from his having written dithyrambs, that he belonged 
to an earlier age of the dramatic art, and that his plays 
were free from the corruptions which Euripides had 
introduced into Greek tragedy : it is, indeed, likely 
that a foreigner would copy rather from the old mod¬ 
els than from modern innovations. Ion was so de¬ 
lighted with being decreed victor on one occasion, that 
he presented each citizen with a vase of Chian pottery. 
(Athen., 1, p. 4 ) We gather from a joke of Aris¬ 
tophanes, on a word taken from one of his dithyrambs, 
that Ion died before the exhibition of the Pax, B.C. 
419. (Pax, v. 833. — Theatre of the Greeks, p. 92 
4th ed.) 

Iones, one of the main original races of Greece 
The origin of the Ionians is involved in great obscuri¬ 
ty. The name occurs in the Iliad but once, and in the 
form “ Iaones” (II., 13, 685); but not many years 
after the war of Troy, the Ionians appear as settled in 
Attica, and also in the northern part of the Peloponne 
sus, along the coast of the Corinthian Gulf. Herodo 
tus (8, 44) says, that the Athenians were originally 
Pelasgi, but that after Ion, the son of Xuthus, became 
the leader of the forces of the Athenians, the people 




1 0 N 


IONiA. 


received the name of Ionians. It appears probable that . 
the Ionians, like the jEolians, were a conquering tribe 
from the mountains of Thessaly, and that at an un¬ 
known period they migrated southward, and settled in 
Attica and part of the Peloponnesus, probably mixing 
with the native Pelasgi. The genealogy oi Ion, the 
reputed son of Xuthus, seems to be a legend under 
which is veiled the early history of the Ionian occupa¬ 
tion of Attica. Euripides, in order to flatter the Athe¬ 
nians, makes Ion the son of Apollo. Whatever may 
be the historical origin of the Ionian name, Athenians 
and Ionians came to be considered as one and the same 
people. In the Peloponnesus the Ionians occupied the 
northern coast of the peninsula, which was then called 
Ionia, and also iEgialasan Ionia, and the sea which 
separates the Peloponnesus from Southern Italy as¬ 
sumed the name of Ionian Sea, a circumstance which 
would seem to indicate the extent and prevalence of 
the Ionian name. This appellation of Ionian Sea was 
retained among the later Greeks and the Romans, and 
is perpetuated to the present day among the Italians. 
When the Dorians invaded the Peloponnesus, about 
1100 years B.C., the Achaei, being driven thence, gath¬ 
ered towards the north, and took possession of Ionia, 
which thenceforth was known by the name of Achaia. 
The Ionians of the Peloponnesus, in consequence of 
this, migrated to Attica, whence, being straitened for 
space, and perhaps, also, harassed by the Dorians, they 
resolved to seek their fortune beyond the sea, under 
the guidance of Neleus and Androclus, the two young¬ 
er sons of Codrus, the last king of Athens. This was 
the great Ionic migration, as it is called. The emi¬ 
grants consisted of natives of Attica, as well as of Io¬ 
nian fugitives from the Peloponnesus, and a motley 
band from other parts of Greece. (Herod., 1, 146.) 
But this migration can, perhaps, hardly be considered 
as one single event : there seem to have been many 
and various migrations of Ionians, some of which were 
probably anterior to the Dorian conquest. ( Encycl . 
Us. Knowl. , vol. 13, p. 13, seq.)— For the history of 
the Ionic colonies in Asia Minor, consult the article 
Ionia.—We have already remarked, that the origin of 
the name Ionian is altogether uncertain. It is gener¬ 
ally thought to come from the Hebrew lav an ox (if 
pronounced with the quiescent vau) Ion ; and in like 
manner the Hellenes are thought to be the same with 
Elisa , in the .sacred writings, more especially their 
country Hellas. Hence Bochart makes lavan, the son 
of Iaphet, the ancestor of the Iones. The Persians, 
moreover, would seem to have called the Greeks by a 
similar appellation. Thus, in Aristophanes ( Acharn ., 
v. 104), a Persian, who speaks broken Greek, is in¬ 
troduced, expressing himself as fellows : ov Xf/ipi XP^~ 
co xavvoTTpcoKT 1 ’laovav, and the scholiast remarks, with 
reference to the last word, ’laovav dvrl rov kdrjvale 

. Txdvraq rovg "EUA ijvag oi (3ap6apoi ena- 

Xovv. In the Coptic, also, the Greeks are styled, by a 
name quite analogous, 08EININ, as at the end of the 
Rosetta inscription. ( Akerblad, sur V inscrip. Egypt, 
de Rosette. — Kruse, Hellas, vol. 1, p, 2, in notis.) 
They, however, who favour such etymologies, should 
first determine whether the Hebrew is to be regarded 
as the primitive language or not; since, if the latter 
be the case, the names that are given in Hebrew scrip¬ 
ture to the early rulers and leaders in the family of 
Noah, are mere translations from the primitive tongue, 
and certainly can form no sure basis for the erection 
even of the slightest superstructure of etymology. 

Ionia, a district of Asia Minor, where Ionians from 
Attica settled, about 1050 B.C. This beautiful and 
fertile country extended from the river Hermus, along 
the shore of the HCgean Sea, to Miletus, and the tem¬ 
ple of the Branchidae, on the promontory of Posideum. 
Its southern limit, however, probably varied at differ- 
4^snt times, since some made Ionia reach to the Sinus 
lassius. Strabo makes the circuit of Ionia 3430 sta¬ 


dia. (Strab., 632.-—Compare Tzschucke, ad uc.j 
The breadth is nowhere given. Nothing, indeed, 
could be more irregular in point of form ; it consist¬ 
ing, as it would appear, of small districts around tne 
different cities and towns, save only the great penin¬ 
sula of Erythrae, &c., and the islands of Samos and 
Chios.—Ionia, or the Ionian league, originally consist¬ 
ed of twelve cities of considerable note, with many- 
other towns of minor importance; besides a thirteenth 
city, Smyrna, afterward wrested from the Hiolians. 
The names of the cities, beginning from the north, are 
Phocaea, Smyrna, Clazomense, Erythrae, Chios, Teos, 
Lebedus, Colophon, Ephesus, Priene, Samos, Myus, 
and Miletus. Others of less note were Temnus, Leu- 
ce, Metropolis, Myonnesus, and Latmus. T. he Ionian 
confederation appears to have been mainly united by 
a common religious, worship, and by the celebration 
of a periodic festival; and it seems that the deputies 
of the several cities only met in times of great diffi¬ 
culty. The place of assembly was the Panionium, at 
the foot of Mount Mycale, where a temple, built on 
neutral ground, was dedicated to Neptune. In the 
old Ionia (afterward called Achaia) Neptune was also 
the national deity, and his temple continued at Helice 
till that city was submerged. That the settlers in Asia 
should retain their national worship is a circumstance 
perfectly in accordance with the history of colonization, 
and confirmatory, if confirmation were needed, of the 
European origin of the Ionians of Asia. We have no 
materials for a history of these cities of Ionia as a 
political community, and no reason for supposing that 
their political union came near the exact notion of a 
federation, as some have conjectured.—In almost ev¬ 
ery one of the Ionian cities there were two parties, 
aristocratic and democratic, and the Persian kings or 
their satraps generally favoured the former; and thus 
it happened that most of the <*reek cities in Asia came 
to be ruled by tyrants, or individuals who possessed 
the sovereign power.—The Ionian cities remained in¬ 
dependent of a foreign yoke, however, until the time 
of Croesus, by whom they were finally subdued. From 
the Lydian they passed to the Persian sway, their con¬ 
querors, however, in both instances leaving them their 
own forms of government, and merely subjecting them 
to the payment of tribute. To the Persian succeeded 
the Macedonian dominion, and to this last the Roman 
yoke. Sylla reduced them beneath the Roman pow¬ 
er, and treated them, together with other Asiatic cities, 
with o-reat severity, on account of the murder of so 
many°thousand Romans, whom they had inhumanly 
put to death in compliance with the orders ot Mithra- 
dates. Ephesus was treated with the greatest rigour, 
Sylla having suffered his soldiers to live there at dis¬ 
cretion, and obliged the inhabitants to pay every offi¬ 
cer fifty drachmae, and every soldier sixteen denarii a 
day. The whole sum which the revolted cities of Asia 
paid Sylla was 20,000 talents, near four millions ster¬ 
ling. This was a most fatal blow, from which they 
never recovered. Ionia, at a later period, was totally 
devastated by the Saracens, so that few vestiges of an¬ 
cient civilization remain. Its inhabitants were con¬ 
sidered effeminate and voluptuous, but, at the same 
time, highly amiable. Their dialect partook of their 
character. The arts and sciences flourished in this 
happy country, particularly those which contribute te 
embellish life. The Asiatic Greeks became the teach¬ 
ers and examples of the European Greeks. Homer 
the poet, and Parrhasius the painter, were Ionians. 
The Ionic column proves the delicacy of their taste. 
(Encyclop. Amcric., vol. 7, p. 53.) A notice of the 
principal sites on the coast is given by Leake (Jour¬ 
nal, p. 260, seqq .—Compare Rennell, Geography of 
Western Asia, vol. 2, p. 1, seqq.).— II. An ancient 
name given to Hellas or Achaia, because it was for 
some time the residence of the Ionians. (Consult re 
marks under the article Iones ) 


679 







J 0 P 


J O R. 


Ionium Mare, a name given to that part of the' 
Mediterranean which separates the Peloponnesus from 
Southern Italy. It was fabled to have received its 
appellation from the wanderings of Io in this quarter. 
(Vid. Io.) The more correct explanation, however, 
deduces the name from that of the great Ionic race. 
[Vid. Iones.) The statements of the ancient writers re¬ 
specting the situation and extent of the Ionian Sea are 
very fluctuating and uncertain. Scylax (p. 11) makes 
it the same with the Adriatic ; and he may be correct 
in so doing, since, according to Herodotus, the true 
and ancient name of the Adriatic was the Ionian Gulf 
(6, 127). Both the Adriatic and Ionian gulfs end, 
according to Scylax, at the straits near Hydruntum (p. 
5). Of the Ionian Sea he says nothing ; Herodotus, 
however, makes it extend as far south as the Pelopon¬ 
nesus. Thucydides keeps up the distinction just al¬ 
luded to, calling the Adriatic by the name of the Io¬ 
nian Gulf (beincf probably as ignorant as Herodotus of 
any other appellation for this arm of the sea), and 
styling the rest, as far as the western coast of Greece, 
the Ionian Sea (1, 24). In later times a change of 
appellation took place. The limits of the Adriatic 
were extended as far as the southern coast of Italy and 
the western shores of Greece, and the Ionian Gulf was 
considered to be now only a part of it. Eustathius 
asserts (ad Dioyiys. Perieg., v. 92), that the more 
accurate writers of his day maintained this distinction. 
Hence the remark of Ptolemy is rendered intelligible, 
who makes the Adriatic Sea extend along the whole 
western coast of Greece down to the southernmost 
extremity of the Peloponnesus. ( Mannert, Geogr., 
vol. 9, p. 12.) 

Iophon, the son of Sophocles, is described by Aris¬ 
tophanes (Ran., 73, seqq.) as a man whose powers 
were, at the time of his father’s death, not yet suffi¬ 
ciently proved to enable* a critic to determine his lit¬ 
erary rank. He appears, however, to have been a 
creditable dramatist, and gained the second prize in 
428 B.G., when Euripides was first and Ion third. 
(Arg. ad Eurip., Hippol—Theatre of the Greeks , p. 
94, seq., 4th ed.) 

Joppa, an ancient city of Palestine, situate on the 
coast, to the northwest of Jerusalem, and to the south 
of Caesarea. In the Old Tesi ament it is called Japho 
(Joshua, 19, 46.—2 Chron , 2, 16.— Jonah , 1, 3). 
It was the only harbour possessed by the Jews, and 
the wood for the temple, which was cut cm Mount 
Lebanon, was brought in floats to Joppa, thence to be 
sent to Jerusalem. It subsequently became a Phoeni¬ 
cian city, and fell under the power of the kings of 
Syria, until the Maccabees conquered it, and restored 
it to their nation. The Jews, not being a commercial 
people, made no use of Joppa as a place of trade; 
and hence it became a retreat for pirates. (Strabo, 
759.) Under the Roman power the pirates were 
made to disappear. In the middle ages Joppa changed 
its name to Jaffa or Yaffa. (Abulfed., Tab. Syr., p. 
80.)—Joppa was made by the ancient mythologists the 
scene of the fable of Andromeda, and here Cepheus 
was said to have reigned. (Strabo, l. c .) Pliny (9, 5) 
even gravely informs us, that M. Scaurus brought 
away from this place to Rome the bones of the sea- 
monster to which the princess had been exposed, and 
which were of a remarkable sze. They were probably 
the remains of a large whale. The Jews saw in them 
the bones of the whale that had swallowed Jonah ; the 
Greeks, on the other hand, connected them with one of 
the legends of their fanciful mythology.—Joppa was the 
place of landing for the western pilgrims, and here the 
promised pardons commenced. It possesses still, in 
times of peace, a considerable commerce with the 
places in its vicinity, and is well inhabited, chiefly by 
Arabs. Mr. Wilson says the harbour is rocky and 
dangerous, and difficult of access; in which state it 
has been since the time of Joseph"*, who says that a 
680 


more dangerous situation for vessels cannot be ima¬ 
gined. The same traveller estimates the present pop¬ 
ulation at 5000. The place is distinguished for its 
fruits, and the watermelons that grow here are said to 
be superior to those of any other country. Mr. Buck¬ 
ingham says, “that Jaffa, as it is now seen, is seated, 
on a promontory jutting out into the sea, and rising to 
the height of about 150 feet above its level.” (Man¬ 
nert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 1, p. 256.) 

Jordanes, a famous river of Palestine, which, ac¬ 
cording to Josephus, had its source in the lake of 
Phiala, about ten miles north ^ Caesarea Philippi. 
This origin of the river was ascertained by Philip the 
tetrarch, who made the experiment of throwing some 
chaff or straw into the lake, which came out where 
the river emerges from the ground, after having run 
about 120 furlongs beneath the surface of the earth. 
Mannert deems this story fabulous, and makes the 
river rise in Mount Paneas. The Talmudists say 
that the Jordan rises out of the cave of Paneas. They 
assert, moreover, that Leshem is Paneas. Leshera 
was subdued by the Danites, and Jeroboam placed one 
of his golden calves in Dan, which is at the springs of 
Jordan. Josephus says that the springs of Jordan rise 
from under the temple of the golden calf. Possibly this 
temple might stand on a hill, so convenient and proper 
for such an edifice, that the temple of Augustus was af¬ 
terward built upon it. Burckhardt, however, says that 
it rises about four miles northeast from Csesarea Philip¬ 
pi, in the plain, near a hill called Tel-el-kadi. There 
are, he says, two springs near each other, one smaller 
than the other, whose waters unite immediately below. 
Both sources are on level ground, among rocks of 
what Burckhardt calls tufwacke. The larger source 
immediately forms a river 12 or 15 yards wide, which 
rushes rapidly over a stony bed into the lower plain. 

It is soon after joined by the river of Paneas, or Cass- 
area Philippi, which was on the northeast of the city. 
Over the source of this river is a perpendicular rock, 
in which several niches have been cut to receive stat¬ 
ues, the largest of which is above a spacious cavern, 
beneath which the river rises. This niche, the editor 
of Burckhardt conjectures, contained a statue of Pan, 
whence the name of Paneas given to the city, and of 
TlaveZov to the cavern. Seetzen differs from Burck¬ 
hardt in making the spring of the river Hasbeia, which 
rises half a league to the west of Hasbeia, and which, 
he says, forms the branch of the Jordan, to be the 
proper head of that river. A few miles below their 
junction, the united rivers, now a considerable stream, 
enter the small lake of Houle, the ancient Samochoni- 
tis or Merom, into which several other streams from 
the mountains discharge themselves ; some of them, 
perhaps, having equal claims to the honour of forming 
the Jordan with those above mentioned. So that, in 
truth, the Lake of Houle may best be considered as the 
real source of the river. After quitting this small 
lake, the river runs a course of about 12 miles to the 
Lake Tabaria, the ancient Sea of Tiberias or Galilee, 
maintaining, as some travellers report, a distinct cur¬ 
rent in the centre, through its whole length, without 
mingling its waters with those of the lake. But when 
it is recollected that this is 15 miles in length, and in 
some parts nine in breadth, such a fact is scarcely 
credible. From this lake the river flows about 70 
miles more, through the Ghor, or valley of Jordan, the 
ancient Aulon, until it is finally lost in the Dead Sea. 
Its whole course is about 100 miles in a straight line 
by the map ; perhaps 150, computing by the windings 
of its channel. The Jordan, it appears, anciently over¬ 
flowed (as it probably does sometimes now) in the first 
month, which answers to our March: as it was at this 
time that the armies enumerated in 1 Chron., 12, 
passed the Jordan to David at Ziklag, “ when it had 
overflowed all its banks.” This was, in fact, the time#' 
when the frequent rains and the melting of the snows 




J o^.s 


JOSEPHUS. 


on the mountains at its source would be most likely to 
occasion such an inundation. Travellers have given 
different accounts of this celebrated stream. Maun- 
drell assigns it a breadth of 20 yards ; but represents 
it as deep, and so rapid that a man could not swim 
against the current. Yolney calls it from 60 to 80 
feet between the two principal lakes, and 10 or 12 
feet deep ; but makes it 60 paces at its embouchure ; 
Chateaubriand, about the same point, 50 paces, and 
six or seven feet deep close to the shore. Dr. Shaw 
computed its breadth at 30 yards, and its depth at nine 
feet; arid that it daily discharges 6,090,000 tons of 
water into the Dead Sea. Burckhardt, who crossed 
it higher up, calls it 80 paces broad, and three feet 
deep ; but this was in the middle of summer. Mr. 
Buckingham, who visited it in the month of January, 
1816, states it to be little more at the part where he 
crossed it, which was a short distance above the par¬ 
allel of Jericho, than 25 yards in breadth, and so shal¬ 
low as to be easily forded by the horses. At another 
point, higher up in its course, he describes it as 120 
feet broad. From a mean of these and other accounts, 
its average width may be computed at 30 yards. It 
rolls so powerful a volume of water into the Dead Sea, 
that the strongest and most expert swimmer would be 
foiled in any attempt to swim across it at its point of 
entrance : he must inevitably be hurried down by the 
stream into the lake. The banks of the Jordan are in 
many places covered with bushes, reeds, tamarisks, 
willows, oleanders, &c., which form an asylum for vari¬ 
ous wild animals, who here concealed themselves till the 
swelling of the river drove them from their coverts. 
To this Jeremiah alludes (49, 19). Previously to the 
destruction of the four cities of the plain, it is probable 
that the Jordan flowed to the Red Sea, through the 
valley of Ghor or Arabia. — The etymology of its 
name has been variously assigned. It is thought by 
some to come from the Hebrew jarclen , a descent, 
from its rapid descent through that country. Another 
class of etymologists deduce its name from the He¬ 
brew and Syriac, importing the caldron of judgment. 
Others make it come from Jor, a spring, and Dan, a 
small town near its source; and a third class deduce 
it from Jor and Dan, two rivulets. It most probably 
derives its name from Yar-Dan, “ the river of Dan,” 
near which city it takes its rise. The Arabs call it 
Arden or Harden, the Persians Aerdun, and the Ara¬ 
bian geographer Edrisi, Zacchar, or swelling. {Mans- 
ford's Scripture Gazetteer, p. 251.) 

Jornandes or (as he is called in the Analecta of 
Mabillon) Jordanes, a Goth by birth, secretary to 
one of the kings of the Alans, and, as some believe, af¬ 
terward bishop of Ravenna. In the year 552 of our 
era he wrote a history of the Goths ( Re Rebus Ge- 
ticis )■ This is merely an abridgment of the history of 
Cassiodorus, and is written without judgment and 
with great partiality. He composed also a work enti¬ 
tled De regnorum et temporum successions, or a Ro¬ 
man history from Romulus to Augustus. It is only 
a copy of the history of Florus, but with such altera¬ 
tions and additions, however, as to enable us some¬ 
times to correct by means of it the text of the Roman 
historian. ( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Lat., vol. 3, p. 177.) 

Ios, an island in the JEgean Sea, to the north of 
Thera. Here, according to some accounts, Homer 
was interred. ( Strab ., 484.— Plin., 4, 12.) It was 
also said, that the poet’s mother was a native of this 
isUnd. ( Steph. Byz., s. v. Tof.) The modern name 

A ho, fo? which Bondelmonti assigns a totally false 
derivation, since it merely comes from a Romaic cor¬ 
ruption. Bondelm., Ins. Archipel., p. 99, ed. De 
Sinner.) 

Josephus, Flavius, a celebrated Jew, son of Ma¬ 
thias, a priest, born in Jerusalem. The date of his 
birth is A.D. 37. He was a man of illustrious race, 
lineallv descended from a priestly family, the first of 
4 R 


the twenty-four courses, an eminent distinction. By 
his mother’s side he traced his genealogy up to the A«- 
monean princes. He grew up with a high reputation for 
early intelligence and memory. At fourteen years old 
(he is his own biographer) he was so fond of letters, that 
the chief priests used to meet at his father’s house to put 
to him difficult questions of the law.- At sixteen he 
determined to acquaint himself with the three prevail¬ 
ing sects, those of the Pharisees, Sadducees, ard Es- 
senes For though he had led for some time a hardy, 
diligent, and studious life, he did not consider himself 
yet sufficiently acquainted with the character of each 
sect to decide which he should follow. Having heard 
that a certain Essene named Banus was leading in the 
desert the life of a hermit, making his raiment from 
the trees and his food from the fruits of the earth, 
practising cold ablutions at all seasons, and, in short, 
using every means of mortification to increase his 
sanctity, Josephus, ambitious of emulating the fame 
of such an example of holy seclusion, joined him in 
his cell. But three years of this ascetic life tamed 
his zealous ambition ; he grew weary of the desert, 
abandoned his great example of painful devotion, and 
returned to the city at the age of nineteen. There 
he joined the sect of the Pharisees. In his twenty- 
sixth year he undertook a voyage to Rome, in order 
to make interest in favour of certain priests, who had 
been sent there to answer some unimportant charge 
by Felix. On his voyage he was shipwrecked and in 
great danger. His ship foundered in the Adriatic, six 
hundred of the crew and passengers were cast into 
the sea, eighty contrived to swim, and were taken up 
by a ship from Cyrene. They arrived at Puteoli, the 
usual landing-place, and Josephus, making acquaint¬ 
ance with one Aliturus, an actor, a Jew by birth, and 
from his profession in high credit with the Empress 
Poppaea, he obtained the release of the prisoners, as 
well as valuable presents from Poppaea, and returned 
home. During all this time he had studied diligently 
and made himself master of the Greek language, which 
few of his countrymen could write, still fewer speak 
with a correct pronunciation. On his return home he 
found the Jews on the point of revolting against the 
power of Rome. After vainly endeavouring to oppose 
this rash determination, he at last joined their cause, 
and held various commands in the Jewish army. At 
Jotapata, in Galilee, he signalized his military abilities 
in supporting a siege of forty-seven days against Ves¬ 
pasian and Titus, in a small town of Judea. During 
the siege and capture, 40,000 men fell on the side of 
the Jews ; none were spared but women and children ; 
and the number of captives amounted only to 1200, 
so faithfully had the Roman soldiery executed their 
orders of destruction. Josephus saved his life by fly¬ 
ing into a cave, where forty of his countrymen had 
also taken refuge. He dissuaded them from com¬ 
mitting suicide, and, when they had all drawn lots to 
kill one another, Josephus, with one other, remained 
the last, and surrendered themselves to Vespasian. 
He gained the conqueror’s esteem by foretelling that 
he would become one day the master of the Roman 
empire. ( Joseph. Vit., $ 75.— Milman's History oj 
the Jews., vol. 2, p. 253, seqq.)— Vossius {Hist. Gr., 
2, 8) thinks that Josephus, who, like all the rest of 
his nation, expected at this period the coming of the 
Messiah, applied to Vespasian the prophecies which 
announced the advent of our Saviour. He remarks 
that Josephus might have been the more sincere in sa 
doing, as Jerusalem was not besieged. His prophecy 
having been accomplished two years afterward, he 
obtained his freedom and took the praenomen of Fla¬ 
vius, to indicate that he regarded himself as the freed- 
man of the emperor. Josephus was present during 
the whole siege of Jerusalem, endeavouring to per¬ 
suade his countrymen to capitulate. Whether he se¬ 
riously considered resistance impossible, or, as he 

681 



JOSEPHUS. 


JOSEPHUS. 


pretends, recognising the hand of God and the accom¬ 
plishment of the prophecies in the ruin of his country, 
he esteemed it impious as well as vain ; whether he 
was actuated by the baser motive of self-interest, or 
the more generous desire of being of service to his 
miserable countrymen, he was by no means held in 
the same estimation by the Roman army as by Titus. 
They thought a traitor to his country might be a trai¬ 
tor to them ; and they were apt to lay all their losses 
*o his charge, as if he kept up secret intelligence 
vith the besieged. On the capture of the city, Titus 
offered him any boon he would request. He chose 
the sacred books, and the lives of his brother and fifty 
friends. He was afterward permitted to select 190 
of his friends and relatives from the multitude who 
were shut up in the Temple to be sold for slaves. 
The estate of Josephus lying within the Roman en¬ 
campment, Titus assigned him other lands in lieu of 
t. Vespasian also conferred on him a considerable 
property in land. Josephus lived afterward at Rome, 
in high favour with Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian. 
The latter punished certain Jews and a eunuch, the 
tutor of his son, who had falsely accused him ; ex¬ 
empted his estate from tribute, and advanced him 
to high honour. He was a great favourite with the 
Empress Domitia. The time of his death is uncer¬ 
tain ; he was certainly alive at the end of the first cen¬ 
tury, and probably at the beginning of the second. 
After his surrender he had married a captive in Caesa¬ 
rea, but, in obedience, it may be presumed, to the law 
which prohibited such marriages to a man of priestly 
fine, he discarded her, and married again in Alexan¬ 
dra. By his Alexandrean wife Josephus had three 
sons ; one only, Hyrcanus, lived to maturity. Dissat¬ 
isfied with this wife’s conduct, he divorced her also, 
and married a Cretan woman, from a Jewish family, 
of the first rank and opulence in the island, and, of 
admirable virtue.—At Rome Josephus first wrote the 
History of the Jewish War (’I ovdainy iaropia nepl 
uhuaeug), in the Syro-Chaldaic tongue, for the use 
of his own countrymen in the East, particularly those 
beyond the Euphrates. He afterward translated the 
work into Greek, for the benefit of the Western Jews 
and the Romans. Both King Agrippa and Titus bore 
testimony to its accuracy. The latter ordered it to 
be placed in the public library, and signed it with his 
own hands as an authentic memorial of the times. 
This work was translated into Latin in the fifth cen¬ 
tury by Rufinus of Aquileia, or rather by Cassiodorus. 
(Muratori, Antiq. Ital., vol. 3, p. 920.) Many years 
afterward, about A.D. 93, Josephus published his great 
work on the Antiquities of the Jews (’I ovdainrj ’A p- 
Xaiohoyia'), in twenty books. It forms a history of the 
chosen people from the creation to the reign of the 
Emperor Nero. Josephus did not write this work for 
the use of his countrymen, nor even for the Hellenistic 
Jews : his object was to make his nation better known 
to the Greeks and Romans, and to remove the con¬ 
tempt in which it was accustomed to be held. The 
books of the Old Testament, and, where these failed 
traditions and other historical monuments, were the 
sources whence he drew the materials for his work ; 
but, in making use of these, he allowed himself an 
unpardonable license, in removing from his narrative 
all that the religion of the Jews regarded as most 
worthy of veneration, in order not to shock the preju¬ 
dices of the nations to whom he wrote. He not only 
treats the books of the Old Testament as if they were 
mere human compositions, in explaining, enlarging, 
and commenting upon them, and thus destroying the 
native and noble simplicity and pathos which renders 
the perusal of the sacred volume so full of attraction ; 
but he allows himself the liberty of often adding to 
the lecital of an event circumstances which change 
its entire nature. In every part of the work in ques¬ 
tion, he represents his countrymen in a point of view 
682 r 


calculated to conciliate the esteem of the masters o # 
the world. Notwithstanding all this, however, the 
Antiquities of Josephus are extremely interesting, as 
affording us a faithful picture of Jewish manners in 
the time of the historian, and as filling up a void ir 
ancient history of four centuries between the last 
books of the Old Testament and those of the New. 
With a view similar to that which dictated the work 
just mentioned, Josephus wrote an answer to Apion, 
a celebrated grammarian of Egypt (vid. Apion, No. II.), 
who had given currency to many of the ancient fictions 
°f Egyptian tradition concerning the Jews. He like¬ 
wise published his own life, in answer to the statements 
of his old antagonist, Justus of Tiberias, who had sent 
forth a history of the war, written in Greek with con 
siderable elegance. At what time he died is uncer¬ 
tain ; history loses sight of him in his fifty-sixth or 
fifty-seventh year. A work entitled Eif M annabaiovi, 
}J>yoq, 7] Tcepc avTOupdropog Tioytopov, has been erro¬ 
neously ascribed to Josephus. In some editions of 
the Scriptures it appears under the appellation of the 
Fourth Book of Maccabees. A fragment also, on the 
Cause of the Universe (ixepi rov navroc), preserved 
by John Philoponus, a Christian writer of the seventh 
century, has been incorrectly attributed to Josephus. 
—Before leaving the biography of this writer, we must 
say a few words relative to a famous passage in the 
Jewish Antiquities concerning our Saviour. It occurs 
in the third chapter of the eighteenth book (Jos., Op., 
ed. Hav., vol. 1 , p. 161), and is as follows ; “At this 
time there exists Jesus, a wise man, if it be allowed 
us to call him a man ; for he performed wonderful 
works, and instructed those who receive the truth with 
joy. He thus drew to him many Jews and many of 
the Greeks. He was the Christ. Pilate having pun¬ 
ished him with crucifixion on the accusation of our 
leading men, those who had loved him before sSil. 
rdinained faithful to him. For on the third day he 
appeared unto them, living anew, just as the prophets 
of God had announced, who had predicted of*him ten 
thousand other miraculous things. The nation of 
Christians, named after him, continues even to the 
present day.” This passage, placed in the middle of 
a work written by a zealous Jew, has all the appear¬ 
ance of a marginal gloss which has found its way into 
the text: it is too long and too short to have formed 
a part of the original text. It is too long to have 
come from the pen of an infidel, and it is too short to 
have been written by a Christian. St. Justin, Tertul- 
lian, and St. Chrysostom have made no use of it in 
then disputes with the Jews ; and neither Origen nor 
Photius make any mention of it. Eusebiifs, who 
lived before some of the writers just named, is the 
first who adduces it. These circumstances have suf¬ 
ficed to attach suspicion to it in the eyes of some 
critics, and especially of Richard Simon (under the 
name of Sainjore, in the Bibliotheque ou Recucil de 
diverses pieces critiques, Amst., 1708, 8vo, vol. 2, 
ch. 2) and the historian Gibbon. On the other hand^ 
Henri de Valois (ad Euseb., p. 16, 20), Huet, bishop 
of Avranches (Bemonstr. Evang., p. 27), Isaac Vos- 
sius (Be LXX. Interpr., p. 161), and others, have de¬ 
fended its authenticity. Lambecius (Billioth. Vin- 
doh., vol. 8, p. 5), who advocates the same side, haa 
pretended that the words of Josephus ought to be con¬ 
sidered as expressing contempt for our Saviour, al¬ 
though, in order not to offend either party, the histo¬ 
rian has concealed his real meaning in equivocal terms. 
However paradoxical this last opinion may seem, it 
has assumed an air of considerable probability, in con¬ 
sequence of a slight correction in the text and punc¬ 
tuation which has been proposed by Knittel, a German 
scholar. (Neue kntikcn uber das weltberukmte Zeug - 
mss des alien Juden Flavius Josephus von Jesu Chris 
to, Braunschw., 1799, 4to.) A celebrated Protestant 
divine, Godfrey Less, after having carefully and crit 








JQ V 


1 P H 


ically examined both sides of the question, has pro¬ 
nounced the passage to be supposititious, and adds, 
that the silence of the historian respecting our Saviour 
and the miracles which he wrought, affords a far more 
eloquent testimony in favour of the truth of our Re¬ 
deemer’s mission than the most laboured statement 
could have yielded, especially when we consider that 
the father of Josephus, one of the priests of Jerusalem, 
could not but have known our Saviour, and since Jo¬ 
sephus himself lived in the midst of the apostles. 
Had the latter been able, he would have refuted the 
whole history of our Saviour’s mission and works. 
His silence is conclusive in their favour. The efforts 
of deistical writers, therefore, to invalidate the authen¬ 
ticity of this remarkable passage, have literally recoiled 
upon themselves, and Christianity has achieved a tri¬ 
umph with the very arms of infidelity. ( Disputatio 
super Josephi de Christo Testimon., Gott., 1781, 4t^. 
—Compare Olshausen, Histories, Eccles. Vet. prcecip. 
monumenta , Berol. , 1820, 8vo, and Paulus, in the 
Heidelb. Jahrb., 1820, p. 733, as also Byhmcrt , Ueber 
des Flav. Joseph. Zeugniss von Christo, Leipz., 1823, 
8vo.)—The best editions of the works of Josephus are 
Hudson’s, 2 vols. fob, Oxon., 1720, and Havercamp’s, 
2 vols. fob, Amst ., 1726. A new edition, however, is 
much wanted. Oberthiir commenced one, of which 
three volumes appeared, embracing the text of Haver- 
camp with the Latin version, in the 8vo form. The 
editor had promised a commentary, in which was to be 
contained the result of his own researches, and of those 
of others made at his request in the principal libraries 
of Europe. The edition was to be accompanied also 
by a Lexicon of Josephus, in which the language of 
this writer would be compared with that of Philo, of 
the Alexandrean school, and of the writers of the 
New Testament. His death prevented the comple¬ 
ting of his design, and the edition still remains imper¬ 
fect. In 1825-1827, a 12mo edition, in 6 vols., ap¬ 
peared from the Leipsic press, under the editorial care 
of Richter. The text, however, is merely a reprint of 
that of Hudson and Havercamp. ( Hoffmann , Lex. 
Bibliogr., vol. 2, p. 588.— Scholl, Gesch. der Griech. 
Lit., vol. 2, p. 383,56^.) 

Jovianus, Flavius Claudius, born A.D. 331, was- 
the son of Veronianus, of an illustrious family of Moe- 
sia, who had filled important offices under Constan¬ 
tine. Jovianus served in the army of Julian, in his 
unlucky expedition against the Persians; and when 
that emperor was killed, A.D. 363, the soldiers pro¬ 
claimed him his successor. His first task was to save 
the army, which was surrounded by the Persians, and 
in great distress for provisions. After repelling re¬ 
peated attacks of the enemy, he willingly listened to 
proposals for peace, which were, that the Romans 
should give up the conquests of former emperors west¬ 
ward of the Tigris, and as far as the city of Nisibis, 
which was still in their hands, but was included in the 
territory to be given up to Persia, and that, moreover, 
they should render no assistance to the king of Arme¬ 
nia, then at war with the Persians. These conditions, 
however offensive to Roman pride, Jovian was obliged 
to submit to, as his soldiers were in the utmost desti¬ 
tution. It is a remarkable instance of the Roman no¬ 
tions of political honesty, that Eutropius reproaches 
Jovian, not so much with having given up the territory 
of the empire, as with having observed so humiliating 
a treaty after he had come out of his ^dangerous posi¬ 
tion, instead cf renewing the war, as the Romans had 
constantly done on former occasion’s. Jovian delivered 
Nisibis to the Persians, the inhabitants withdrawing 
to Amida, which became, after this, the chief Roman 
town in Mesopotamia. On his arrival at Antioch, Jo¬ 
vian, who was of the Christian faith, revoked the edicts 
}f Julian against the Christians. He also supported 
the orthodox or Nicene creed against the Arians, and 
he showed his favour to the bishops who had previ¬ 


ously suffered from the Arians, and especially to Atna 
nasius, who visited him at Antioch. Having been 
acknowledged over the whole empire, Jovian, after 
staying some months at Antioch, set off during tb* 
winter to Constantinople, and, on his way, paid fu¬ 
neral honours to Julian’s remains at Tarsus. He con¬ 
tinued his journey in very severe cold, of which sev¬ 
eral of his attendants died. At Ancyra he assumed 
the consular dignity ; but, a few days after, being at a 
place called Dadastana, in Galatia, he was found dead 
in his bed, having been suffocated, as some say, by 
the vapour of charcoal burning in his room ; according 
to others, by the steam of the plaster with which it 
had been newly laid; while others, again, suspected him * 
of having been poisoned or killed by some of his 
guards. He died on the 16th of February, A.D. 364, 
being 33 years of age, after a reign of only seven 
months. The army proclaimed Valentinianus as his 
successor. (Amm. Marcell., 25, 5, seqq.—Le Beau , 
Hist, du Bas-Ernpire, vol. 2, p. 186, seqq.) 

J ovinus, born of an illustrious family of Gaul, as¬ 
sumed the imperial title under the weak reign of Ho- 
norius, and, placing himself at the head of a mixed ar¬ 
my of Burgundians, Alemanni, Alani, &c., took pos¬ 
session of part of Gaul, A.D. 411. Ataulphus, king 
of the Visigoths, offered to join Jovinus, and share 
Gaul between them ; but the latter having declined his 
alliance, Ataulphus made peace with Honorius, at¬ 
tacked and defeated Jovinus, and, having taken him 
prisoner, delivered him to Darda^us, prefect of Gaul, 
who had him put to death at Narbo ( Narbonne ), A.D. 
412. ( Jornandde Reb. Get., c. 32, seqq. — Olym- 

piod.—Idac. fast. Chron. — Greg. Tur., 2,9.— Tillem ., 
Honor., art. 48.) 

Iphicles, a son of Amphitryon and Alcmena, born 
at the same birth with Hercules. The children were 
but eight months old, when Juno sent two huge ser¬ 
pents into the chamber to devour them. Iphicles 
alarmed the house by his cries, but Hercules raised 
himself up on his feet, caught the two monsters by the 
throat, and strangled them. {Find., Hem., 1, 49, seq. 

— Theocr., Idyll., 24.— Apollod , 2, 4.) Iphicles, on 
attaining to manhood, was slain in battle during the 
expedition against the sons of Hippocoon, who had 
beaten to death CEonus, the son of Licymnius. {Pau- 
san., 3, 15, 4 ) 

Iphiclus, a king of Phylace in Phthiotis, whose 
name is connected with one of the legends relative to 
Melampus. {Vid. Melampus.) 

Iphicrates, an Athenian general, of low origin, but 
distinguished abilities. He was most remarkable for 
a happy innovation upon the ancient routine of Greek 
tactics, which he introduced in the course of that gen¬ 
eral war which was ended B.C. 387, by the peace of 
Antalcidas. This, like most improvements upon the 
earlier mode of warfare, consisted in looking, for each 
individual soldier, rather to the means of offence than 
protection. Iphicrates laid aside the very weighty 
panoply which the regular infantry, composed of Greek 
citizens, had always worn, and substituted a light tar¬ 
get for the large buckler, and a quilted jacket for the 
coat of mail; at the same time he doubled the length 
of the sword, usually worn thick and short, and in¬ 
creased in the same, or, by some accounts, in a greater 
proportion, the length of the spear. It appears that 
the troops whom he thus armed and disciplined (not 
Athenian citizens, who would hardly have submitted 
to the necessary discipline, but mercenaries following 
his standard, like the Free Companions of the middle 
ages) also carried missile javelins ; and that their fa¬ 
vourite mode of attack was to venture within throw of 
the heavy column, the weight of whose charge they 
could not have resisted, trusting in their individual 
agility to baffle pursuit. When once the close order 
of the column was broken, its individual soldiers were 
overmatched by the longer weapons and unencum- 

6S3 




IPH 


IRE 


bered movements ol the lighter infantry. In this way 
Iphicrates and his targeteers (peltastse), as they were 
called, gained so many successes, that the Pelopon¬ 
nesian infantry dared not encounter them, except the 
Lacedaemonians, who said, in scoff, that their allies 
feared the targeteers as children fear hobgoblins 
They were themselves, however, taught the value of 
this new force, B.C. 392, when Iphicrates waylaid and 
eut off nearly the whole of a Lacedemonian battalion. 
The loss in men was of no great amount; but that 
heavy-armed Lacedaemonians should be defeated by 
light-armed mercenaries was a marvel to Greece, and 
a severe blow to the national reputation and vanity of 
Sparta. Accordingly, this action raised the credit of 
Iphicrates extremely high. He commanded afterward 
in the Hellespont, B.C. 389 ; in Egypt, at the request 
of the Persians, B.C. 374 ; relieved Corcyra in 373, 
and served with reputation on other less important oc¬ 
casions. We have a life of this commander by Cor¬ 
nelius Nepos. ( Xen ., Hist. Gr., 4, 5, 13.— Id. ib., 4, 
8, 34, seqq. — Id. ib ., 6, 2, 13.— Diod. Sic., 15, 41. — 
Id., 15, 44.— Id., 16, 85. — Corn. Nep., Vit. Iphicr.) 

Iphigenia, a daughter of Agamemnon and Clytem- 
nestra. The Grecian fleet against Troy had assem¬ 
bled at Aulis ; but Agamemnon, having killed a deer 
in the chase, boasted that he was superior in skill to 
Diana, and the offended goddess sent adverse winds to 
detain the fleet. According to another account, the 
stag itself had been a favourite one of Diana’s. Cal- 
chas thereupon announced, that the wrath of the god¬ 
dess could only be appeased by the sacrifice of Iphige¬ 
nia, the daughter of the offender, and the father, 
though most reluctant, was compelled to obey. The 
maiden was accordingly obtained from her mother Cly- 
temnestra, under the pretence of being wanted for a 
union with Achilles ; and, having reached the Grecian 
camp, was on the point of being sacrificed, when Di¬ 
ana, moved with pity, snatched her away, leaving ah' 
hind in her place. The goddess carried her to Tauris, 
where she became a priestess in her temple. It was 
the custom at Tauris to sacrifice all strangers to Di¬ 
ana ; and many had been thus immolated under the 
ministration of Iphigenia, when Orestes and his friend 
Pylades chanced to come thither, in obedience to the 
oracle at Delphi, which had enjoined upon the son of 
Agamemnon to convey to Argos the statue of the 
Tauric Diana. WTen Orestes and Pylades were 
brought as victims to the altar, Iphigenia, perceiving 
them to be Greeks, offered to spare the life of one of 
them, provided he would convey a letter for her to 
Greece. This occasioned a contest between them, 
which should sacrifice himself for the other, and it was 
ended in Pylades’ yielding to Orestes, and agreeing to 
be the bearer of the letter : a discovery was the con¬ 
sequence , and Iphigenia accordingly contrived to carry 
off the statue of Diana, and to accompany her brother 
and Pylades into Greece.—The story of Iphigenia has 
been made by Euripides the subject of two plays, in 
which, of course, several variations from the common 
legend are introduced.—The name and story of Iphi¬ 
genia are unnoticed by Homer. Iphigenia is probably 
a mere epithet of Diana. She is the same with the 
Diana-Orthia of Sparta, at whose altars the boys were 
scourged. It was probably this rite that caused Iphi¬ 
genia to be identified with'the “ Virgin,” to whom hu¬ 
man victims were offered by the Tauri. {Herod., 4, 
103.) The story of Iphigenia would seem to have 
been then invented to account for the similarity. Mul¬ 
ler thinks that Lemnos was the original mythic Tau¬ 
ris, whence the name was transferred to the Euxine. 
{Dorians, vol. 1, p. 397, seqq.) The Homeric name 
of Iphigenia is Iphianassa. {Horn., II, 9, 144, seq. — 
Heyne, ad loc. — Compare Lucretius, 1 , 86.) 

Ii’HiTUS, I. a son of Eurytus, king of (Echalia. 
{Vid. Hercules, p. 598, col. 2.)—II. A king of Elis, 
»on of Praxonides, in the age of Lycurgus. He re¬ 


established the Olympic games 470 years after their 
first institution, or B.C. 884. It was not, however, 
until 108 years after this (B.C. 776) that the custom 
was introduced of inscribing in the gymnasium at 
Olympia the names of those who had borne off the 
prize in the stadium. The first whose name was thus 
inscribed^was Corcebus. {UArtde verifier les Dates, 
vol. 3, p. 167. — Picot, Tall. Chronol., vol. 1, p. 322.) 

Ipsus, a city of Phrygia, near Synnada, in the plains 
adjacent to which was fought the great battle between 
Antigonus and his son Demetrius on the one side, 
and the combined forces of Cassander, Lysimachus, 
Ptolemy, and Seleucus, on the other. We have no 
detailed account of this decisive conflict, in which 
Antigonus lost all his conquests and his life. The 
reader may consult Plutarch in his life of Pyrrhus, 
Appian in his history of Syria, and the mutilated nar¬ 
rative of Diodorus, as the best authorities to be pro¬ 
cured. Little, however, is to be gained from them 
respecting the position of Ipsus. Hierocles (p. 677) 
and the Acts of Councils afford evidence of its having 
been the see of a Christian bishop in the seventh and 
eighth centuries.—“ The site of Ipsus,” observes Ren- 
nell, “is unknown. It is said to have been near Syn¬ 
nada, and there are certainly the remains of several 
ancient towns and cities on the great road leading 
from Synnada towards the Bosporus, and one of them 
within a few miles of Synnada, to the N.W. ; but it 
may be doubted whether Ipsus lay on that side of 
Synnada. The contending armies approached each 
other along the great road that led from Syria and Cili¬ 
cia, through the centre of Asia Minor, towards Synna¬ 
da ; but whether they met to the north or south of that 
city is riot, known. A town named Sakli, and also 
Seleukter (probably from its ancient name of Seleucia), 
is situated on the continuation of the great road, at 
about 25 miles from Synnada, to the southward, and 
precisely at the point of separation of the roads leading 
to Ephesus and to Byzantium, in coming from Syria. 
If Seleucus founded any city on occasion of his vic¬ 
tory, one might suspect that the field of battle wa6 
near, or at, Sakli, from the above circumstance. No 
point was more likely for the opposing army from the 
west to have taken post at, than at the meeting of 
these roads, by which they commanded the passage 
through a plentiful valley, shut up by ridges of hills 
on both sides ; the line of communication as well in 
modern as in ancient times.” {Geography of Western 
Asia, vol. 2, p. 145, seqq.) 

Ira, I. a city of Messenia, in the north, towards the 
confines of Elis, and near the river Cyparissus, com¬ 
monly supposed by some to have been one of the 
cities promised by Agamemnon to Achilles, if the lat¬ 
ter would become reconciled to him. This is incor¬ 
rect, as Homer names the place to which Agamemnon 
alludes "Ipy, and not E Ipa. Agamemnon promised 
Achilles seven cities of Messenia, of which Ire (not 
Ira) was one, and the poet describes all seven as lying 
near the sea, whereas Ira was inland. {Horn., II., 9, 
150.) This place is famous in history as having sup¬ 
ported a siege of eleven years against the Lacedaemo¬ 
nians. Its capture, B.C. 671, put an end to the sec¬ 
ond Messenianwar. {Strab., 360. — Steph. Byz., s. v. 
"Ipy.) We are informed by Sir W. Gell, that “there 
are some ruins near a village called Kakoletri, on the 
left bank of the Neda, which some think those of Ira, 
the capital of Messenia, in the time of Aristomenes.” 
(Itin , p. 84.)—II. A city of Messenia, on the eastern 
shore of the Messenian Gulf, supposed to be the same 
withAbia. {Vid. Abia.) 

Iren^eus, a native of Greece, disciple of Polycarp 
and bishop of Lyons, in France. The time of his 
birth, and the precise place of his nativity, cannot be 
satisfactorily ascertained. Dodwell refers his birth to 
the reign of Nerva, A.D. 97, and thinks that he did 
not outlive the year 190. Grabe dates his birth ahou 





1 RI 


i S A. 


the year 108. Dupin says that he was born a little 
before the year 140, and died a martyr in 202. On the 
martyrdom of Photinus, his predecessor in the see of 
Lyons, Irenaeus, who had been a distinguished mem¬ 
ber of the church in that quarter, was appointed his 
successor in the diocese, A.D. 174, and presided in 
that capacity at two councils held at Lyons, in one of 
which the Gnostic heresy was condemned, and in 
another the Quartodecimani. He also went to Rome, 
and disputed there publicly with Valentinus, Florinus, 
and Blastus, against whose opinions he afterward 
wrote with much zeal and ability. He wrote on dif¬ 
ferent subjects ; but, as what remains is in Latin, 
some supposed he composed in that language, and 
not in Greek. Fragments of his works in Greek are, 
however, preserved, which prove that his style was 
simple, though clear and often animated. His opinions 
concerning the soul are curious. Ho suffered martyr¬ 
dom about A.D. 202. From the silence of Tertul- 
lian, Eusebius, and others, concerning the manner of 
his death, Cave, Basnage, and Dodwell have inferred 
that he did not die by martyrdom, but in the ordinary 
course of nature. With these Lardner coincides. 
The best edition of*his works is that of Grabe, Oxon., 
fol., 1702. Dodwell published a series of six essays 
on the writings of this father of the church, which he 
llustrates by many historical references and remarks. 

Iresus, a beautiful country in Libya, not far from 
Cyrene. When Battus, in obedience to the oracle, 
was seeking a place for a settlement, the Libyans, who 
were his guides, managed so as to lead him through it 
by night. Milton calls the name Irassa, for which he 
has the authority of Pindar. ( Find , Pyth., 9, 185.— 
Herod. ,4, 158, seqq.) 

Iris, I. the goddess of the rainbow. Homer gives 
not the slightest hint of who her parents were ; He¬ 
siod, however, makes her the daughter of Thaumas 
(Wonder), by the ocean-nymph Electra ( Brightness), 
no unapt parentage for the brilliant and wonder-exci¬ 
ting bow of the skies. ( Theog ., 265.) The office of 
Iris in the Iliad is to act as the messenger of the king 
and queen of Olympus ; a duty which Mercury per¬ 
forms in the Odyssey, in which poem there is not any 
mention made of Iris. There is little mention, also, 
o f the goddess in the subsequent Greek poets ; but, 
whenever she is spoken of, she appears quite distinct 
from the celestial phenomenon of the same name. In 
Callimachus (H. in Del., 216, seq.) and the Latin 
poets, Iris is appropriated to the service of Juno ; and 
by these last she is invariably (and we may even say 
clumsily) confounded with the rainbow. According 
to the lyric poet Alcaeus, who is followed by Nonnus, 
Iris was by Zephyrus the mother of Love. ( Alcceus, 
ap. Pint., Amator., 20.— Nonnus, 31, 110, seq.) Ho¬ 
mer styles Iris 11 gold-winged” (II., 8, 398. — lb., 9, 
185), the only line in the poet which makes against 
Voss’s theory, that none of Homer’s gods were winged. 
(Mythqlog. Briefe, vol. 1, Br. 12, seqq.) The name 
Iris ( v Iptf) is usually derived from dpu, epu>, “to say” 
an etymology which suits the office of the goddess, 
and which accords with the view taken of the rainbow 
in the Book of Genesis. Hermann, however, renders 
Iris by the Latin term Sertia , from elpu, “to unite” 
the rainbow being formed of seven united or blended 
colours : “"Ipiq, Sertia, quod ex septem coloribus con- 
lerta est .” (Opusc., vol. 2, p. 179. — Keightley's 
Mythology, p. 200.)—II. A river of Pontus, rising on 
the confines of Armenia Minor, and flowing into the 
sea southeast of Amisus. It receives many tributa¬ 
ries, and near the end of its course passes through the 
district of Phanaroea. The Turks call it the Tokatlu, 
and near its mouth it is more usually styled Jckil-Er- 
mak, or the Green River. “It has been a prevalent 
opinion among geographers, both ancient and modern,” 
observes Rennell (Geography of Western Asia, vol. 
1, p. 269), “that the Iris made a course to the east¬ 


ward of north, from Amasea to the Sinus Amisenus 
Ptolemy allows N. 20° E. and .64 miles in distance 
Dr. Howell allpws northeast-by-north in his map; 
D’Anville north exactly.” The same writer has th« 
following ingenious conjecture respecting the origin oi 
its ancient name. “M. D’Anville says that its name 
is Jekil-Ermak, or the Green River. Tournefort tells 
us that the Carmili River (the same with the Lycus, 
the larger branch) was of a deep red colour, from that 
of the soil. May it not be, that, if the river was red at 
some seasons, and green (or fancied to be so) at oth¬ 
ers, this may have occasioned the name of Iris, from 
the Greeks'?” (Geography of Western Asia, vol. 1, 
p. 356.) 

Irus, a beggar of Ithaca, remarkable for his large 
stature and his excessive gluttony. His original name 
was Arnaeus, but he received that of Irus, as being the 
messenger of the suiters of Penelope. ( T Ipoc, Kara rov 
noiyryv, uapd to eipu, to heyo nal d7rayye/lAw. 
Eustath. ad Od., 18, 6.) Irus attempted to obstruct 
the entrance of Ulysses into the palace, under the mean 
disguise assumed by the latter on his return home, and 
in presence of the whole court challenged him to fight. 
Ulysses immediately brought him to the ground with a 
single blow. (Od., 18, 1 , seqq.) 

Is, a city about eight days’ journey from Babylon, 
according to Herodotus, near which flows a river ot 
the same name, which empties into the Euphrates 
With the current of this river, adds the historian, par 
tides of bitumen descended towards Babylon, by means 
of which its walls were constructed. There are some 
curious fountains, says Rennell, near Hit, a town on 
the Euphrates, about 128 miles above Hillah, reckon¬ 
ing the distance along the banks of the Euphrates. 
This distance answers to eight ordinary journeys of a 
caravan of 16 miles direct. There can be no doubt 
that this Hit is the Is of Herodotus, which should have 
been written It. (Rennell, Geography of Herodotus, 
vol. 1, p. 461, ed. 1830.) 

Isadas, a young Spartan, who, when Epaminondas 
and the Thebans had attacked Lacedaemon, and the 
city was in danger of falling into their hands, rushed 
forth from his dwelling in a state of nudity, and newly 
anointed with oil, having nothing but a spear in one 
hand and a sword in the other, and in this condition 
contended valiantly against the foe. The Ephori hon¬ 
oured him with a chaplet for his gallant achievement, 
but, at the same time, fined him 1000 drachmas for hav¬ 
ing dared to appear without his armour. (Plut., Vit. 
Ages.) This story is introduced by Bludgell, in hia 
paper upon “ The mixture of virtue and vice in the 
human character.” (Spectator, No. 564.) 

IsiEUs, an orator of Chalcis, in Euboea, who came 
to Athens, and became there the pupil of Lysias, and 
soon after the master of Demosthenes. ( Clinton, Fasti 
Hellenici, 2d ed., p. 117.) Dionysius of Halicarnassus 
could not ascertain the time of his birth or death. So 
much as this, however, appears certain, that the vig¬ 
our of his talent belonged to the period after the Pelo¬ 
ponnesian war, and that he lived to see the time of 
King Philip. His style bears a great resemblance to 
that of Lysias. He is elegant and vigorous ; but Dio¬ 
nysius of Halicarnassus does not find in him the sim¬ 
plicity of the other. He understands better than Lys¬ 
ias the art of arranging the several parts of a discourse, 
but he is less natural. When we read the exposition 
of a speech of Lysias, nothing appears artificial therein; 
on the contrary, everything is studied in the orations 
of Isseus. “ One would’ believe Lysias,” adds Dionys¬ 
ius, “ though he were stating what was false ; one 
cannot, without some feeling of distrut-t, assent to Isae- 
us, even when he speaks the truth.” Again: “ Lysiaa 
seems to aim at truth, but Isseus to follow art: the 
one strives to please, the other to produce effect.” 
Dionysius farther remarks, that, in his opinion, with 
Isseus originated that vigour and energy of style (Sn 




I S A 


IS I 


porrjg) which his pupil Demosthenes carried to perfec¬ 
tion. { 'Dion. Hal., de. Is <20 judicium. — Op., ed Reiske, 
vol. 5, p. 613, seqq.) —So far as the extant SDecimens 
of Isaeus enable us to form an opinion, this judgment 
appears to be just. The perspicuity and artless sim¬ 
plicity of the style of Lysias are admirable ; but, on 
reading Isasus, we feel that we have to do with a subtle 
disputant and a close reasoner, whose arguments are 
strong and pointed, but have too much the appearance 
of studied effect, and for that reason often fail to con¬ 
vince.—The author of the life of Isaeus, attributed to 
Plutarch, mentions sixty-four orations of his, fifty of 
which were allowed to be genuine. At present there 
are only eleven extant, all of which are of the forensic 
class, and all treat of matters relating to wills, and the 
succession to the property of testators or persons in¬ 
testate, or to disputes originating in such matters. 
These orations are valuable for the insight they give 
us into the laws of Athens as to the disposition of 
property by will and in cases of intestacy, and also as 
to many of the forms of procedure.—The best edition 
of the text of Isaeus is by Bekker, forming part of the 
Oratores Atiici (1822-1823, 8vo, Berol. — Orat. Alt., 
vol. 3.) The most useful edition, however, is that of 
Schomann, Gryphisw., 1831, 8vo. Sir W. Jones has 
given a valuable translation of Isaeus. It appeared in 
1779. His version, however, extends only to ten of 
the orations, the eleventh having been discovered since. 

( Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 2, p. 215.)— II. A native of 
Assyria, likewise an orator, who came to Rome A.D. 
17. He is greatly commended by Pliny the younger, 
who observes that he always spoke extempore, and 
that his language was marked by elegance, unlaboured 
ease, and great correctness. {Plin., Ep., 2, 3.) 

Isapis, a river of Umbria. Its ordinary name was 
the Sapis. {Strab., 216.— Ptol., p. 64.) Its modern 
appellation is the Savio. It rose not far from Sarsina, 
and fell into the Adriatic to the northwest of the Ru¬ 
bicon. {Lucan, 2, 406.) 

Isar and Isara, I. now the Isere, a river of Gaul, 
where Fabius routed the Allobroges. It rose in the 
Graian Alps, and fell into the Rhodanus near Valentia, 
the modern Valence .—II. Another, called the Oise, 
which falls into the Seine below Paris. The Celtic 
name of Briva Isara, a place on this river, has been 
translated into Pont-Oise. 

Is aura (ce or orum ), the capital of Isauria, near the 
confines of Phrygia.' Strabo and Stephanus of Byzan¬ 
tium use the term as a plural one {rd y Icravpa ) ; Am- 
mianus Marcellinus, however, makes it of the first de¬ 
clension (14, 8). It was a strong and rich place, and 
its inhabitants appear to have acquired their wealth, in 
a great degree, by plundering the neighbouring regions. 
The city was attacked by the Macedonians under Per- 
diccas, the inhabitants having put to death the govern¬ 
or set over the province by Alexander. After a brave 
resistance, the Isaurians destroyed themselves and their 
city by fire. The conquerors are said to have obtain¬ 
ed much gold and silver from the ruins of the place. 
{Diod. Sic., 18, 22.) During the contentions between 
Alexander’s successors, the neighbouring mountain¬ 
eers rebuilt the capital, and commenced plundering 
anew until they were reduced by Servilius, hence sty¬ 
led Isauricus, and the city was again destroyed. A 
new Isaura was afterward built by Amyntas, king of 
Galatia, in the vicinity of the old city, and the stones 
of this last were employed in its construction. {Strab., 
591.) This new Isaura appears to have existed until 
the third century, when Trebellianus made it his res¬ 
idence, and raised here the standard of revolt. He was 
slain, and Isaura was probably again destroyed, since, 
according to Ammianus, its remains were in his time 
scarcely perceptible. {Amm. Marcell., 1. c. — Treb. 
Polho, 30 Tyranni. c. 25.) D’Anville places the old 
capital near a lake, about whose existence, however, 
he ancients are silent; the modern name he makes 
686 


Bei-Shehn. New Isaura he places on another laite 
southeast of the former, and terms it Sidi-Shehri. 
Mannert opposes this position of the last, and is in fa¬ 
vour of Seri-Serail, a small village east-northeast ol 
Iconium. {Mannert, Anc. Geogr., vol. 6, part 2, p 
188.) 

Isauria, a country of Asia Minor, north of, and ad¬ 
jacent to, Pisidia. The inhabitants were a wild race, 
remarkable for the violence and rapine which they ex¬ 
ercised against their neighbours. P. Servilius derived 
from his reduction of this people the surname of Isau¬ 
ricus. A conformity in the aspect of the country, 
which was rough and mountainous, caused Cilicia 
Trachea, in a subsequent age, to have the name of 
Isauria extended to it, and it is thus denominated in 
the notices of the eastern empire. “ With respect to 
Isauria,” observes Rennell, “ Strabo is not so explicit 
as might have been wished; but the subject, perhaps, 
was not well known to him. He no doubt regards 
Isauria as a province or a part of Pisidia at large: and 
mentions its two capitals, the old and the new. -But 
then he speaks of the expedition of Servilius, which 
was sent to one of those cities, as a transaction con¬ 
nected with the modern or maritirne Isauria ; that is, 
Cilicia Trachea. This may, perhaps, be explained by 
the circumstance of Servilius being at the time pro- 
consul of Cilicia, and the expedition being prepared 
and sent forth from Caycus, in that country, as a con¬ 
venient point of outset. But Strabo describes Cilicia 
Trachea under its proper name, and fixes its boundary 
westward at Coracesium, on the seacoast; and there¬ 
fore seems to have had no idea of any other Isauria 
than that which lay inland. The Isauria of Pliny in¬ 
cludes both the original province of that name, lying 
north of Taurus, and also Cilicia Trachea, which had 
been added to the other; possibly from the date of 
the above-mentioned expedition of Servilius. About 
a century and a half had elapsed between the time of 
Servilius and Pliny ; and great changes had probably 
taken place in the arrangement of boundaries of coun¬ 
tries so lately acquired. In later times, the name of 
Isauria seems to have become appropriate to Cilicia 
Trachea. Ammianus Marcellinus wrote at so much 
later a period, that one can hardly allow his descrip¬ 
tion to apply to ancient geography. He describes 
Isauria as a maritime country absolutely ; and per 
haps the original Isauria was not known by that name, 
but merged into the larger province of Pisidia.” {Ge 
ography of Western Asia, vol. 2, p. 73, seqq.) 

Isauricus, a surname of P. Servilius, from his con 
quests over the Isaurians. {Ovid, Fast., 1, 594.— 
Cic., Att., 5, 21.— Vid. Isaura and Isauria.) 

Isidorus, I. a native of Charax, near the mouth of 
the Tigris, who published in the reign of Caligula a 
“ Description of Parthia.” ( Tiapdiaq nepcy/yTiKov.) 
It no longer exists ; but we have a work remaining, 
which appears to be an extract from it, and is entitled 
hTadyoi IlapdiKoi, “ Parthian Halting-places This 
work gives a list of the eighteen provinces into which 
the Parthian empire was divided, with the principal 
places in each province, and the distances between 
each town. The list was probably taken from official 
records, such as appear, from the list of provinces, 
&c., in Herodotus, to have been kept in the ancient 
Persian empire. The production just referred to has 
been printed in the second volume of Hudson’s “ Ge¬ 
ographic veteris Scriptores Greed Minoresf with a 
dissertation by Dodwell. There is also a memoir on 
Isidorus by Sainte-Croix, in the 50th volume of the 
Mem. de I Acad, des Inscr., &c.—II. A native of 
iEgae, an epigrammatic poet, some of whose produc¬ 
tions are preserved in the Anthology. ( Jacobs, An- 
thol. Gr., vol. 3, p. 177; vol. 10, p. 329.)—HI. 4n 
epigrammatic poet, a native of Bolbitine in Egypt. 
{Jacobs, Anthol. Gr., vol. 10, p. 332.)—IV. A native 
of Miletus, a Greek architect of the sixth century, 





ISIDORUS. 


I S I 


who, .ogether, with Anthemius, was employed by 
Justinian, emperor of the east, to erect the church of 
St. Sophia at Constantinople. Anthemius merely laid 
the foundation of the edifice, and was then arrested by 
the hand of death, A.D. 534. Isidorus was charged 
with the completion of this structure. This church is 
a square building, with a hemispherical cupola in the 
centre, and its summit 400 feet from the pavement 
below. This edifice, which was considered the most 
magnificent monument of the age, was scarcely fin¬ 
ished before the cupola was thrown down by an earth¬ 
quake. But Justinian had it immediately rebuilt. 
On the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, the 
church of St. Sophia was appropriated to the worship 
of the Mohammedan conquerors.—V. A New Plato- 
nist, a native of Gaza, who succeeded Hegias in the 
chair of Athens, in the. fifth century, or, rather, at the 
beginning of the sixth. He was a zealous follower of 
Proclus, but deficient in talent and erudition, and, 
consequently, soon made way for Zenodotus as his 
successor. ( Scholl, Hist, Lit. Gr., vol. 7, p. 116.) 
—VI. A native of Pelusium, a saint, in the Roman 
Catholic calendar, and one of the most celebrated of 
the disciples of Chrysostom. He lived in the fifth 
century, professed the monastic life, from his youth, 
and composed some thousand epistles, of which two 
thousand and twelve remain, in five books, and are 
deemed valuable, especially for the information which 
they contain in relation to points of discipline and for 
practical rules. The best edition is that of Schottus, 
Paris , 1638, fol. In 1738, Heumann attacked the au¬ 
thenticity of a part of these epistles, in a tract entitled 
“ Epistolce Isidori Pelusiotce maximum partem con- 
fecta ,” &c.—VII. Another saint in the Roman Cath¬ 
olic calendar, and a distinguished Spanish prelate to¬ 
wards the beginning of the seventh century, when he 
succeeded his brother Leander in the see of Seville. 
Hence he is commonly called Isidorus Hispalensis , 
“ Isidore of Seville.” He was, however, a native of 
Carthago Nova ( Cartkagena ), of which his father 
Severianus was governor. He presided in a council 
held in that city, A.D. 619 ; and at the fourth national 
council, A.D. 633, in which numerous regulations 
were by his influence adopted, in order to reform ec¬ 
clesiastical discipline in Spain. He was well acquaint¬ 
ed with Greek and Hebrew, and was considered by 
the council of Toledo as the most learned man of his 
age. The style of his works, however, is not very 
clear, and his judgment appears to have been very de¬ 
fective. He died A.D. 636.—Isidorus was the au¬ 
thor of many works, chiefly, however, compilations. 
His principal production is entitled “Twenty Books 
of Origins and Etymologies” ( Originum sive Ety- 
mologiarum Libri XX.). Death prevented him from 
finishing this, and it was completed by his friend 
Braulio, bishop of Saragossa. It contains far more 
than the title would seem to promise, and is, in fact, 
a species of encyclopaedia, or a summary of all the 
sciences cultivated at that period. The first book is 
divided into forty-three chapters, of which the first 
thirty-eight explain terms connected with grammar. 
The remaining five have reference to matters connected 
with history. The second book is devoted principally 
to rhetorical subjects; it contains also an introduction 
to philosophy, and a system of Dialectics after Porphy¬ 
ry, Aristotle, and Victorious. The third book treats 
of arithmetic, music, and astronomy. The fourth 
hook is devoted to medicine. The fifth book con¬ 
tains jurisprudence and chronology; together with a, 
species of historical summary, terminating at the sixth 
year of the reign of Heraclius. In the sixth book, 
the author occupies himself with the Bible, with li¬ 
braries and manuscripts ; he speaks of canons, of 
gospels, and councils ; he then explains the paschal 
cycle, the calendar, and the festivals of the church. 
The seventh and eighth books treat of God, of angels 


and men, of faith, of heresies, of pagan philosopher^ 
of sibyls, of magicians, and of the gods of the heathen. 
The ninth book has for its subjects the different lan¬ 
guages spoken among men, names of communities, 
official dignities, relationships, affinities, marriages. 
The last ten books explain and define a large r.umbei 
of words, the origin of which is not generally known. 
In these etymologies the author has no doubt commit¬ 
ted a number of errors, neither has he displayed much 
critical acumen in many of his remarks ; yet, notwith¬ 
standing these defects, his work is valuable on account 
of the extracts from lost works which it contains, and 
because it serves to show to what state of advance¬ 
ment each of the sciences of which it treats had at¬ 
tained among the ancients. Isidorus was also the au¬ 
thor of a work entitled “ De Differentiis sive proprie- 
tate verborumf in three books. The first of these is 
taken from Agroetius and other ancient grammarians ; 
the second treats “ de diffcrentiis spirilualibus .” The 
third, more complete than the first, is arranged in al¬ 
phabetical order. We have also various glossaries 
ascribed to Isidorus, of which has been formed a 
liber glossarum. A small glossary, containing gram¬ 
matical terms in Greek and Latin, was published for 
the first time by Heusinger, in his second edition of 
Mallius Tfieodorus.—We have to mention also a 
Chronicle by Isidorus, from the beginning of the world 
to the fifth year of the reign of Heraclius, A.D. 615. 
It is derived from ancient chronicles, and contains 
likewise some new details respecting the period in 
which it was composed. It is sometimes cited under 
the following titles : “ De Temporibus ;” “ Abbrevia- 
tor Temporum; “ De Sex mundi cetatibus “ Imago 
Mundi.'' 1 Isidorus wrote also two abridged histories 
of the Germanic tribes that settled in Spain during the 
fifth century ; one entitled “ De historia, sive Chron- 
icon Gothorum and the other, “ Chronicon breve 
regum Visigothorum .” The first is followed by an 
appendix on the Vandals and Suevi. Other works of 
Isidorus are as follows: “A Treatise on Ecclesiasti¬ 
cal Writers “ Sentences ;” “ Commentaries on the 
Historical Books of the Old Testament;” “ Scriptural 
Allegories ;” “ A Book of Poems, or Prolegomena to 
the Scriptures ;” “ A Treatise on Ecclesiastical Dis¬ 
cipline,” in which he mentions seven prayers of the 
sacrifice still to be found in the Mosarabic mass, which 
is the ancient Spanish liturgy, of which Isidorus yvas 
the principal author. A collection of canons, attribu¬ 
ted to this Isidorus, were by a later priest of the same 
name, Isidore of Seville, who is more admired by later 
churchmen for learning than discrimination, and is 
frequently ranked among musical writers, much being 
said by him on the introduction of music into the 
church, in his divine offices. The best edition of the 
works of Isidorus is that of Arevali, Romse, 1797- 
1803, 2 vols. fol. The best edition of the Origines 
is that of Otto, forming the third volume of Linde- 
mann’s Corpus Grammaticorum Latinorum, Lips., 
1833, 4to. ( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 3, p. 180, 
seqq. — Id. ib., vol. 3, p. 333.) 

Isis, one of the chief deities of the Egyptians, and 
the sister and spouse of Osiris. She was said to have 
first taught men the art of cultivating corn, and was 
regarded as the goddess of fecundity. Hence the 
cow was sacred to her. The annual festival of Isis in 
Egypt lasted eight days, during which a general puri¬ 
fication took place. The priests of the goddess were 
bound to observe perpetual chastity ; their heads were 
shaved, and they went barefoot. This deity was often 
represented as a woman with the horns of a cow. She 
also appears with the lotus on her head and the sis- 
trum in her hand : and in some instances her head ia 
seen covered with a hood. Heads of Isis are frequent 
ornaments of Egyptian capitals on the pillap of the 
temples.—As the worship of Isis passed into foreign 
lands, it assumed a foreign character and many foreigr 

687 ' 




ISIS. 


ISIS. 


attrioulis, as we see from the Greek and Roman wri¬ 
ters. Sometimes she is represented like Diana of 
Ephesus, the universal mother, with a number of 
breasts. The mysterious rites of Isis were probably 
in their origin symbolical: on one of her statues was 
this inscription, “ I am all that has been or that shall 
be; no mortal has hitherto taken off my veil.”—But 
the Isiac rites, transplanted to Italy, became a cloak 
for licentiousness, and they were repeatedly forbidden 
at Rome. Tiberius caused the images of Isis to be 
thrown into the Tiber ; but the worship subsequently 
revived, and Juvenal speaks of it in an indignant strain. 
—The Isiac Table in the Turin Museum, which is 
supposed to represent the mysteries of Isis, has been 
judged by Champollion to be the work of an uninitiated 
artist, little acquainted with the true worship of the 
goddess, and probably of the age of Hadrian. (Con¬ 
sult Plutarch's treatise on Isis and Osiris, cd. Wyt- 
tenb., vol. 2, p. 441.— Herod., 2, 41, seqq. — Pausan., 
2, 13, 7.— Id., 10, 32, 13 )—The legend of Isis and 
Osiris may be found in full detail in Creuzer ( Sym- 
bolik, vol. 1, p. 258 ,seqq.). On comparing the differ¬ 
ent explanations given by Plutarch and other ancient 
writers, it will appear that Osiris is the type of the ac¬ 
tive, generating, and beneficent force of nature and the 
elements ; Isis, on the contrary, is the passive force, 
the power of conceiving and bringing forth into life in 
the sublunary world. Osiris was particularly adored 
in the sun, whose rays vivify and impart new warmth 
to the earth, and who, on his annual return in the 
spring, appears to create anew all organic bodies. He 
was adored also in the Nile, the cause of Egyptian fer¬ 
tility. Isis was the earth, or sublunary nature in gen¬ 
eral ; or, in a more confined sense, the soil of Egypt 
inundated by the Nile, the principle of all fecundity, 
the goddess of generation and production. United to 
one another, Osiris and Isis typify the universal Being, 
the soul of nature, the Pantheus of the Orphic verses. 

( Symbolik, par Guigniaut, vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 806.)—In 
accordance with this general view of the subject are 
the remarks of Knight: “ Isis was the same with the 
goddess of generation, except that by the later Egyp¬ 
tians the personification was still more generalized, so 
as to comprehend universal nature ; whence Apuleius 
invokes her by the names of Eleusinian Ceres, Celestial 
Venus, and Proserpina ; and she answers him by a 
general explanation of these titles. ‘ I am/ says she, 

‘ Nature, the parent of things, the sovereign of the ele¬ 
ments, the primary progeny of time, the most exalted 
of the deities, the first of the heavenly gods and god¬ 
desses, the queen of the shades, the uniform counte¬ 
nance ; who dispose with my rod the numerous lights 
of heaven, the salubrious breezes of the sea, and°the 
mournful silence of the dead ; whose single deity the 
whole world venerates in many forms, with various 
rites and many names. The Egyptians, skilled in an¬ 
cient lore, worship me with proper ceremonies, and 
call me by my true name, Queen Isis.’ ” ( Apul., Met., 

11, p. 257.) This universal character of the goddess 
appears, however, to have been subsequent to the 
Macedonian conquest, when a new modification of the 
ancient systems of religion and philosophy took place 
at Alexandrea, and spread itself gradually over the 
world. The statues of this Isis are of a composition 
and form quite different from those of the ancient 
Egyptian goddess ; and all that we have seen are of 
Greek or Roman sculpture. The original Egyptian 
figure of Isis is merely the animal symbol of the cow 
humanized, with the addition of the serpent disc, or 
some other accessory emblem: but the Greek and 
Roman figures of her are infinitely varied, to sig¬ 
nify by various symbols the various attributes of uni¬ 
versal nature. In this character she is confounded 
with thg personifications of Fortune and Victory, 
which are, in reality, no other than those of Provi¬ 
dence, and, therefore, occasionally decked with all the 


attributes of universal power. The allegorical tales 
of the loves and misfortunes of Isis and Osiris are an 
exact counterpart of thoseofVenus and Adonis (Suid., 
s. v. diayvupov), which signify the alternate exertion 
of the generative and destructive attributes. ( Enqui¬ 
ry into the Symb. Lang., &c., § 118, 119.) TheDisa 
or Isa of the north was represented by a conic figure 
enveloped in a net, similar to the cortina of Apollo on 
the medals of Cos, Chersonesus in Crete, Neapolis in 
Italy, and the Syrian kings ; but, instead of having the 
serpent coiled round it as in the first, or some symbol 
or figure of Apollo placed upon it as in the rest, it is 
terminated by a human head. (01. RudbecJc, Atlant., 
vol. 2, c. 5, p. 219.) This goddess is unquestionably 
the Isis whom the ancient Suevi, according to Taci¬ 
tus, worshipped (Germ., c. 9); for the initial letter of 
the first name appears to be an article or prefix joined 
to it; and the Egyptian Isis was occasionally repre¬ 
sented enveloped in a net, exactly as the Scandinavian 
goddess was at Upsal. (Isiac Table, and 01. Rad - 
beck, Atlant., p. 209.) This goddess is delineated on 
the sacred drums of the Laplanders, accompanied by 
a child, similar to the Horus of the Egyptians, who so 
often appears in the lap of Isis on the religious mon 
uments of that people. The ancient Muscovites also 
worshipped a sacred group, composed of an old woman 
with one male child in her lap, and another standing 
by her, which probably represented Isis and her off¬ 
spring. They had likewise another idol, called the 
golden heifer, which seems to have been the animal- 
symbol of the same personage. (01. Rudbeck, At¬ 
lant., p. 512, seqq. — lb., p. 280.— Knight, Enquiry 
into the Symb. Lang., 195.) For some specula¬ 
tions on the name of Isis, Jablonski may be consulted. 
(Panth. jEgypt., 2, 29.— Id. Opusc.,1, s. v.) Isis 
received, as is well known, the names of “ Lady,” 
“ Mistress,” “Mother,” “ Nurse,” &c., common to 
many other Egyptian deities. Her favourite name, 
however, is “ Myrionyma,” or “ She that has ten thou¬ 
sand names.” Creuzer finds an analogy between the 
Egyptian Osiris and Isis, and the Hindu Isa and Isuni 
or Isi; and this analogy displays itself not only in 
their respective attributes and offices, but also in the 
meaning of their names ; they are the “ Lord” and 
“ Lady,” two titles of almost all great popular divini¬ 
ties among the pagan nations both of ancient and moa- 
ern times. The different forms of the Egyptian year, 
and the successive efforts made to correct the calen¬ 
dar, could not fail to produce considerable variations 
in the legend of Isis and Osiris, which had itself been 
founded originally on a normal period. In this way, 
perhaps, we may explain the double death of Osiris, 
and regard it as typifying those variations that were 
the necessary result of the vague state of the year. 
The principal festivals of Egypt, moreover, established, 
like those of most other nations, after the natural 
epochs of the year, found at once in the popular my¬ 
thology their commentary and their sanction. The 
most solemn one of these, called the festival (the lam¬ 
entations) of Isis, or the disappearance (death) oj 
Osiris, commenced on the 17th of the month Athyr, 
or the 13th of November, according to Plutarch: it 
was a festival of mourning and tears. (Pint., de Is. 
et Os., c. 39, 69, p. 501, 549, ed. Wyttenb. — Creu¬ 
zer, Comment. Herod., p. 120, seqq.) Towards the 
winter solstice was celebrated the finding of Osiris ; 
and on the seventh of Tybi, or the second of January, 
the arrival of Isis from Phoenicia. A few days after, 
the festival of Osiris found (a second time) united the 
cries of gladness on the part of all Egypt to the pure 
joy experienced by Isis herself. The festival of grain¬ 
sowing and that of the burial of Osiris; the festival 
of his resurrection, at the period when the young 
blade of grain began to show itself out of the ground; 
the pregnancy of Isis, the birth of Harpocrates, to 
whom were offered the first fruits of the approaching 





i s o 


ISOCRATES. 


harvest; the festival of the Pamylia ; all these fell in 
a great period embracing the one half of the year, from 
the autumnal equinox to that of the spring, at the 
commencement of which latter season was celebrated 
the feast of the purification of Isis. A little before 
this the Egyptians solemnized, at the new moon of 
Phamenoth (March), the entrance of Osiris into the 
Moon, which planet he was believed to fecundate, 
that it might, in its turn, fecundate the earth. ( Plut ., 
Ib.) Finally, on the 30th of Epiphi (24th of July), 
the festival of the birth of Horus took place (of Horus 
the representative of Osiris, the conqueror of Typhon), 
in the second great period, extending from the month 
Pharmuthi (27th of March) to Thoth (29th of August), 
when the year recommenced. ( Creuzer , Symbolik, 
note 3, Guigniaut, vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 801.) 

Ismarus (Ismara, plur.), a mountain of Thrace near 
the mouth of the Hebrus, covered with vineyards. 
This part of Thrace was famous for its wines. Ulys¬ 
ses, in the Odyssey, is made to speak in commenda¬ 
tion of some wine given him by Maron, the priest of 
Apollo. Ismarus was situated in the territory of the 
Cicones, whose capital was also called by the same 
name. Homer ( Od., 1, 40) makes Ulysses to have 
taken and plundered this city ; but the natives coming 
down from the interior in great force, he was driven 
off with severe loss both of men and ships. Ismarus 
is only known to later writers as a mountain celebrated 
for its wine, which indeed Homer himself alludes to 
in another passage. (Od., 1, 197.— Virg., Georg., 2, 
37.) 

Ismene, I. a daughter of CEdipus and Jocasta, who, 
when her sister Antigone had been condemned to be 
buried alive by Creon for giving burial to her brother 
Polynices, against the tyrant’s positive orders, declared 
herself as guilty as her sister, and insisted upon being 
punished along with her. (Soph., Antig. — Apollod., 
3, 5.)—II. A daughter of the river Asopus, who mar¬ 
ried the hundred-eyed Argus, by whom she had Iasus. 
(Apollod., 2, 1.) 

Ismenias, I. a celebrated musician of Thebes. 
When he was taken prisoner by the Scythians, Athe- 
as, the king of the country, observed, that he liked the 
neighing of his horse better than all the music of Is- 
menias. (Plut. in Apophth.) —II. A Theban gener¬ 
al, sent to Persia on an embassy by his countrymen. 
As none were admitted into the king’s presence with¬ 
out prostrating themselves at his feet, Ismenias had 
recourse to artifice to avoid performing an act which 
would render him degraded in the eyes of his country¬ 
men, and yet, at the same time, not to offend against the 
customs of Persia. When he was introduced he 
dropped his ring, and the motion he made to recover 
it from the ground being mistaken for the required 
homage, Ismenias had a satisfactory audience of the 
monarch. (JElian, V. H., 1, 21.) 

Ismenus, I. a son of Apollo and Melia, one of the 
Nereides, who gave his name to a river of Boeotia, 
near Thebes.—II. A river of Boeotia, in the immediate 
vicinity of Thebes, at the foot of a hill. It was sacred 
to Apollo, hence called Ismenius, who had a temple 
here. (Find., Pyth., 11, 6.— Soph., (Ed. Tyr., 19.) 
The Ismenus is more frequently alluded to in conjunc¬ 
tion with the celebrated fountain of Dirce. (Eurip., 
liacch., 5. — Id., Phcen., 830.— Here., Fur., 572.— Ib., 
781.— Pind., Isthm.,6, 108.) Dodwell observes, that 
the Ismenus has less pretensions to the title of a river 
than the Athenian Ilissus, for it has no water except 
a f ter heavy rains, when it becomes a torrent, and rush¬ 
es into the Lake of Hylika, about four miles west of 
Thebes. (Tour, vol. 2, p. 268.) Sir. W. Gell states 
that it is usually dry, from its being made to furnish 
water to several fountains. (Cramer's Anc. Greece, 
vol. 2, p. 229, seqq .) 

Isocrates, a distinguished orator, or, rather, orator¬ 
ical writer, bom at Athens, B.C. 436. His principal 
4 S 


teachers were Gorgias, Prodicus and Tisias. On ac¬ 
count of his weak voice and natural timidity, he was 
reluctant to speak in public ; but he applied himself 
with the greatest ardour to instruction in the^art ol 
eloquence and preparing orations for others. His suc¬ 
cess as a rhetorical instructor was most brilliant. He 
taught at both Chios and Athens, and some of the 
greatest orators of Greece, such as Isams, Lycurgu3, 
Hyperides, and, according to some accounts, Demos¬ 
thenes, formed themselves in his school. Hence Ci¬ 
cero compares this school of his to the wooden horse 
at Troy : since the latter contained the most famous 
chieftains of the Greeks, the former the leaders in elo¬ 
quence. (DeOrat., 2,22.) Although he never filled 
any public station, yet he rendered himself useful to 
his country by the discourses which he published on 
various topics of a political character. He is said to 
have charged one thousand drachmae (nearly 180 
dollars) for a complete course of oratorical instruction, 
and to have said to some one who found fault with 
the largeness of the amount, that he would willingly 
give ten thousand drachmae to any one who should im¬ 
part to him the self-confidence and the command of 
voice requisite in a public orator. The orations of 
Isocrates were either sent to the persons to whom 
they were addressed, for their private perusal, or they 
were intrusted to others to deliver in public. He is said 
to have delivered only one himself. Isocrates treated 
of great moral and political questions, and his views 
are distinguished by a regard for virtue, and an aver¬ 
sion to all meanness and injustice. In his childhood 
Isocrates was the companion of Plato, and they re¬ 
mained friends during their whole lives. He had a 
great veneration for Socrates. After the death of that, 
distinguished philosopher, which filled his scholars 
with fear and horror, he alone had the courage to ap¬ 
pear in mourning. He gave another proof of his cour- 
age by publicly defending Theramenes, who had been 
proscribed by the thirty tyrants. Isocrates was par¬ 
ticularly distinguished for a'polished style and an har¬ 
monious construction of his sentences. In Cicero’s 
opinion, it was he who first gave to prose writing its 
due rhythm. The art of Isocrates is always apparent, 
a circumstance which, of itself, diminishes in some 
degree the effect of his writings, and is almost incon¬ 
sistent with vigour and force. The address to De- 
monicus, for example, is an almost uninterrupted se¬ 
ries of antitheses. Though he falls far below the 
great orator of Athens, Isocrates is still a perfect mas¬ 
ter in the style which he has adopted, and has well 
merited the high encomiums of Dionysius of Halicar¬ 
nassus for the noble spirit and the rectitude of purpose 
which pervade all his writings. The composition, re 
r.sion, and repeated polishing of his speeches occu¬ 
pied si? much time that he published little. His cele¬ 
brated “ Panegyrical Oration,” for example, is said to 
have occupied him ten whole years.—The politics of 
Isocrates were conciliatory. He was a friend of peace : 
he repeatedly exhorted the Greeks to concord among 
themselves, and to turn their arms against their com¬ 
mon enemies, the Persians. He addressed Philip of 
Macedon in a similar strain, after his peace with Ath¬ 
ens (B.C. 346), exhorting him to reconcile the states 
of Greece, and to unite their forces against Persia. 
He kept up a correspondence with Philip, and two of 
his epistles to that prince are still extant, as well as 
one which he wrote to the then youthful Alexander, 
congratulating him on his proficiency in his studies. 
Though no violent partisan, he proved, however, a 
warm-hearted patriot; for, on receiving the news of 
the battle of Chasronea, he refused to take food for 
several days, and thus closed his long and honourable 
career at the age of ninety-eight, B.C. 338.—In Plu. 
tarch’s time sixty orations went under his name, not 
half of which were, however, deemed genuine. Twen 
ty-one now remain. Of these, the most remarkab e 

609 



ISOCRATES. 


ISOCRATES. 


is the discourse entitled UavrjyvpiKop, Panegyricus, 
or “ Panegyrical Oration,” i. e., a discourse pronounced 
before the assembled people. The Panegyric of Isoc¬ 
rates was delivered at the Olympic games, and was 
written in the time of the Lacedaemonian ascendancy. 
He exhorts the Lacedaemonians and Athenians to vie 
with each other in a noble emulation, and to unite 
their forces in an expedition against Asia ; and he de¬ 
scants eloquently on the merits and glories of the 
x\thenian commonwealth, on the services it had ren¬ 
dered to Greece, and on its high intellectual cultiva¬ 
tion ; while he defends it from the charges, urged by 
its enemies, of tyranny by sea, and of oppression to¬ 
wards its colonies. Among the other twenty dis¬ 
courses of Isocrates, there are three of the parenetic 
or moral kind : 1. Ilpof A rjpoviKov, “ Discourse ad¬ 
dressed to Demonicus ,” the son of Hipponicus, who, 
with his brother Callias, belonged to the highest class 
of Athenian citizens. It consists of moral precepts 
for the conduct of life and the regulation of the de¬ 
portment of the young. Many critics have thought 
that this piece, abounding with excellent morality, and 
resembling an epistle rather than a discourse, is not 
the work of the Athenian Isocrates, but of one of two 
other orators of the same name, of whom mention is 
made by the ancient writers, namely, Isocrates of Apol- 
lonia, or Heraclea in Pontus, who was a disciple of 
the Athenian philosopher; and Isocrates the friend of 
Dionysius of Halicarnassus. One thing is certain, 
that Harpocration cites a discourse of the Apollonian 
Isocrates, under the title of liapaiveGig npbc Arjyov- 
ikov, and it is not probable that the master and his 
disciple would have written exhortations addressed to 
the same individual. As regards the third Isocrates 
just mentioned, it is very doubtful whether he ever 
existed.—2. ITpof N moK'hea, Discourse addressed to 
Nicocles II., son of Evagoras, and prince of Salamis 
in Cyprus, on the art of reigning.—3. ’NikokXt/c, Hic- 
ocles, a discourse composed for this prince, to be pro¬ 
nounced by him, and treating of the duties of subjects 
towards their sovereigns. Nicocles is said to have 
presented Isocrates, in return, with twenty talents. 
This piece is sometimes cited under the name of the 
Cyprian Discourse, K vupiog Xoyog. Five other dis¬ 
courses of Isocrates are of the deliberative kind. 1. 
The Panegyric, of which we have already spoken.— 
2. fy'iTamrog, or Ilpdf biTumrov, “Discourse address¬ 
ed to Philip of Maccdon ,” to induce him to act as me¬ 
diator between the Greek cities, and to make war 
against Persia.—3. ’A px'ibapog, Archidamus. Under 
the name of this prince, who afterward ascended the 
throne of Sparta, the orator endeavours to persuade 
the Lacedaemonians, after the battle of Mantinea, not 
to relinquish Messenia.—4. ’ ApeionayiTUidg, Areopa- 
giticus. One of the best discourses of Isocrates. In 
it he counsels the Athenians to re-establish the con¬ 
stitution of Solon, as modified by Clisthenes.—5. Ilepi 
dprjvrig, rj Gvypaxiuog, “ Of Peace," or, “ Respecting 
the Allies In this discourse, pronounced after the 
commencement of the social war, Isocrates advises 
the Athenians to make peace with the inhabitants of 
Chios, Rhodes, and Byzantium. We have also four 
discourses by this writer that fall under the head of 
iloges (eyicopiaoTiKoi ): viz., 1. Evayopag, Evagoras. > 
A funeral oration on Evagoras, king of Cyprus, and 
father of Nicocles, who had been assassinated, 01. 
101, 3.—2. 'E/l evrjg kyKiofuov, Eloge on Helen, a 
piece full of pleasing digressions.—3. B ovaipig, Bu- 
siris. The Grecian mythology speaks of this son of 
Neptune and Lysianassa, who reigned in Egypt, and 
introduced into, that country human sacrifices. Her¬ 
cules delivered the earth from this monster. The 
sophist Polycrates had written on Busiris ; Isocrates, 
who hated him because he had published an accusa¬ 
tion of Socrates, wished, in treating of the same sub- 
690 


ject, to mortify the sophist and make his work a fail 
ure.—4. TlavadyvaiKog, Panathenaicus. An dloge on 
the Athenians ; one of the best pieces of Isocrates, 
but which has reached us in a defective state.—We 
have likewise from the pen of Isocrates eight discour¬ 
ses of a legal nature, or loyoi duiaviuoi .— 1. TlXara 
iuog, Complaint of the inhabitants of Platcea against 
the Thebans.—2. Ilepi rf/g avndoGsug, “ Of the ex¬ 
changing of property with another .” According to 
the Athenian laws, the three hundred richest citizens 
were obliged to equip triremes, furnish the common¬ 
wealth with necessary supplies of money, &c. If any 
person appointed to undergo one of these duties could 
find another citizen of better substance than himself 
who was not on the list, then the informer was excused 
and the other put in his place. If the person named, 
however, denied that he was the richer of the two, 
then they exchanged estates. Isocrates, having ac¬ 
quired great riches, had twice to undergo this species 
of prosecution. The first time he was defended by 
his adopted son Alphareus, and gained his cause ; the 
second time he was attacked by a certain Lysimachus, 
was unsuccessful in his defence, and compelled to 
equip a trireme. The present discourse was delivered 
by Isocrates on this latter occasion. It has reached 
us in an imperfect state, but has been completed in 
our own days by the discoveries of a modern scholar, 
Moustoxydes.—3. Dept rov f evyovg. A pleading re¬ 
specting a team of horses, pronounced for the son of 
Alcibiades.—4. TpaTrefynuog, a pleading against the 
banker Pasion, pronounced by the son of Sopaaus, who 
had confided a sum of money to his care. Pasion had 
denied the deposite.—5. TLapaypacpiKoc nrpdg Ka/l/uja- 
axov. An 11 actio translativa” against Callimachus.— 
6. A iyiviprucog, a pleading pronounced at yEgina in a 
matter of succession.—7. Kara tov Aox'tov, a plead- 
ing against Lochites for personal violence against a cer¬ 
tain individual whose name is not given. We have 
only the second part of this discourse.—8. ’A/udpTvpog, 
or Upor E vdvvovv vtt ep N iklov, “ Pleading for Nicias 
against Euthynus .” The latter was a faithless de¬ 
positary, who reckoned on the impossibility of proving 
a certain deposite through want of witnesses to the 
transaction.—We have finally a discourse of Isocrates 
against the Sophists (/card tuv go^cgtCiv), which 
must be placed in a class by itself. There was also a 
work on Rhetoric composed by him, more commonly 
called a Texvr/, “ Theory .” Cicero states that he was 
unable to procure this work (De Invent., 2, 2): it is 
cited, however, by Quintilian (Inst. Or., 3, 1, et 14.) 
—The best edition of the Greek text is that of Bek- 
ker, forming part of his Oratores Attici. ( Berol ., 

1822-1823, 8vo.— Orat. Att., vol. 2.) The two most 
useful editions are, that of Lange, Hal., 1803, 8vo, 
and that of Coray, Paris, 1807, 8vo, forming the sec¬ 
ond volume of the B ibhodriKT] 'E Xhrjvinr]. This last 
is based upon a MS. brought from Italy to France, 
which is the earliest one extant of our author. Co¬ 
ray’s edition is accompanied with very learned notes, 
and may, upon the whole, be regarded as the edi- 
tio optima. The editions of Battie, Cantab., 1729, 
2 vols. 8vo, and of Auger, Paris, 1782, 3 vols. 8vo, 
are not remarkable, especially the latter, for a very ac¬ 
curate text. Auger’s work abounds with typographi 
cal errors, and he is also charged with a careless col¬ 
lating of MSS. The best edition of the Panegyricus 
is that of Morus and Spohn, with the notes and addi¬ 
tions of Baiter, Lips., 1831, 8vo. In the preface of 
this edition (p. xxxi), there are some very just remarks 
on the Greek text of Bekker.—We have already al¬ 
luded to the completing of the oration Tlepl dvridoGsog, 
by Moustoxydes. This scholar found a perfect MS. of 
the discourse in question in the Ambrosian Library at 
Milan, and published an edition of the entire piece in 
1812 at Milan. It is, however, very inaccurately 



I s s 


I S T 


printed A more correct edition was published bv 
Orellius, in 1814, 8vo, with a double commentary, 
critical and philological, in German ; and also a small¬ 
er edition, containing merely the Greek text with va¬ 
rious readings. These two editions are more accu¬ 
rate than that of Milan. ( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 
2, p. 208, seqq. — Hoffmann, Lex. Bibliograph., vol. 

2, p. 620.) 

Issa, one of the smallest of the Dalmatian islands, 
but the best known in history. It is mentioned by 
Scylax as a Greek colony (p. 8), which, according to 
Scymnus of Chios, was sent from Syracuse (v. 412). 
Issa is often alluded to by Polybius in his account of 
the Illyrian war. It was attacked by Teuta ; but the 
siege was raised on the appearance of the Roman fleet, 
and the inhabitants immediately placed themselves 
under the protection of that power. ( Appian, Illyr., 
7. — Polyb., 2, 11.) It became afterward a constant 
station for the Roman galleys in their wars with the 
kings of Macedon. {Liv., 43, 9.) In Caesar’s time 
the town appears to have been very flourishing, for it 
is styled “ nobilissimum earum regionum oppidum ” 
( B. Alex., 47), and Pliny informs us that the inhabi¬ 
tants were Roman citizens. ( Plin., 3, 21.) Athe- 
naeus states that the wine of this island was much es¬ 
teemed (1, 22). Its present name is Lissa. ( Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Greece , vol. 1, p. 44.) 

Issedones, the principal nation in Serica, whose 
metropolis was Sera, now Kant-schu, in the Chinese 
province of Shen-Si, without the great wall. This 
city has been erroneously confounded with Pekin, the 
capital of China, which is 300 leagues distant. They 
had also two towns, both called Issedon, but distin¬ 
guished by the epithets of Serica and Scythica. ( Ptol. 
— Bischoff und Muller, Worterb. der Geogr., p. 649.) 

Issus, a town of Cilicia Campestris, at the foot of 
the main chain of Amanus, and nearly at the centre 
of the head of the gulf to which it gave its name (Issi- 
cus Sinus). Xenophon describes Issus ('Iacrot, in the 
plural) as a considerable town in his time. Cyrus 
remained here three days, and was joined by his fleet 
from the Peloponnesus. These ships anchored close 
to the shore, where Cyrus had his quarters. (Ana.b., 
1, 4.—Compare Arrian, Exp. Alex., 2, 7. — Diod. 
Sic., 17, 32.) Issus was famous for the victory gained 
here by Alexander over Darius. The error on the 
part of the Persian monarch was in selecting so con¬ 
tracted a spot for a pitched battle. The breadth of 
the plain of Issus, between the sea and the mountains, 
appears from Callisthenes, quoted by Polybius, not to 
exceed fourteen stadia, less than two miles, a space 
very inadequate for the manoeuvres of so large an ar¬ 
my as that of Darfus. The ground was, besides, bro¬ 
ken, and intersected by many ravines and torrents 
which descended from the mountains. The principal 
one of these, and which is frequently mentioned in the 
narrative of this momentous battle, is the Pinarus. 
The two armies were at first drawn up on opposite 
banks of this stream ; Darius on the side of Issus, Al¬ 
exander towards Syria. A clear notion of the whole 
affair may be obtained from the narratives of Arrian, 
Curtius, and Plutarch, and from the critical remarks 
of Polybius on the statement of Callisthenes. The 
town of Issus, in Strabo’s time, was only a small place 
with a port. ( Strab., 676.) Stephanus says it was 
called Nicopolis, in consequence of the victory gained 
by Alexander ( s. v. v lc(jog). Strabo, however, speaks 
of Nicopolis as a distinct place from Issus. Cicero 
reports that, during his expedition against the mount¬ 
aineers of Amanus, he occupied Issus for some days. 
{Ep. ad Att., 5, 20.) Issus was also remarkable, at a 
later day, for the defeat of Niger by Severus. The 
modern Aiasse appears to correspond to the site of the 
ancient town. ( Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 359, 
seqq. —Compare Rennell, Geography of Western Asia, 
vol. 2, p. 94.) 


Ister, I. a native of Cyrene, who flourished under 
Ptolemy III. of Egypt. Suidas makes him to have 
been a disciple of Callimachus. Besides his ’Attiku, 
in sixteen books, he left a number of other works, on 
Egypt, Argolis, Elis, &c. A few fragments only re¬ 
main, which were collected and published with those 
of Demon, another historian, by Siebelis and Lenz, 
Lips., 1812, 8vo.—II. The name of the eastern part 
of the Danube, after its junction with the Savus or 
Saave. The term is evidently of Teutonic or Ger¬ 
man origin ( Osten, “ east”). 

Isthmia, sacred games among the Greeks, which 
received their name from the Isthmus of Corinth, where 
they were observed. They were instituted in honour 
of Melicertes, who was changed into a sea-deity when 
his mother Ino had thrown herself into the sea with 
him in her arms. After they had been celebrated for 
some time with great regularity, an interruption took 
place, at the expiration of which they were re-estab¬ 
lished by Theseus in honour of Neptune. These games 
were celebrated every five years. {Alex, ab Alex., 
Gen. D., 5, 8.) When Corinth was destroyed by 
Mummius, the Roman general, they were still observed 
with the usual solemnity, and the Sicyonians were in¬ 
trusted with the superintendence, which had been be¬ 
fore one of the privileges of the ruined Corinthians. 
Combats of every kind were exhibited, and the victors 
were rewarded with garlands of pine leaves. Some 
time after the custom was changed, and the victor re¬ 
ceived a crown of dry and withered parsley. At a sub¬ 
sequent period, however, the pine again was adopted. 
(Consult, for the reason of these changes, the remarks 
of Plutarch, Sympos., 5, 3.— Op., ed. Reiske, vol. 8. 
p. 687, seqq.) 

Isthmus, a small neck of land which joins a country 
to another, and prevents the sea from making them 
separate, such as that of Corinth, called often the Isth¬ 
mus by way of eminence, which joins Peloponnesus 
to Greece.' {Vid. Corinthi Isthmus.) 

Istria or Histria, a peninsula lying to the west 
of Liburnia, and bounded on the south and west by 
the Adriatic. It was anciently a part of Illyricum. 
Its circuit and shape are accurately described and de¬ 
fined by Strabo (314) and Pliny (3, 19). Little is 
known respecting the origin of the people : but an old 
geographer describes them as a nation of Thracian 
race {Scymn. Ch., Perieg., 390), and this opinion 
seems at least to have probability in its favour. There 
is little to interest in the account of the wars waged 
by the Romans against this insignificant people ; it is 
to be found in Livy (41, 1, seqq.) : they were com¬ 
pletely subjugated A.U.C. 575. Augustus included 
Istria in Cisalpine Gaul, or rather Italy, removing the 
limit of the latter country from the river Formio {Ri- 
sano) to the little river Arsia. {Plin., 3, 18.) The 
Greeks, in their fanciful mythology, derived the name 
of Istria from that of the Ister or Danube ; they con¬ 
veyed the Argonauts from the Euxine into the Ister, 
and then, by an unheard-of communication between 
this river and the Adriatic, launched their heroes into 
the waters of the latter. ( Scylax, Peripl., p. 6.— Stra¬ 
bo, 46.— Aristot., Hist. Anim., 8, 13.) Not satisfied, 
however, with these wonders, they affirmed that a band 
of Colchians, sent in pursuit of Jason and Medea, fol¬ 
lowed the same course, and, wearied by a fruitless 
search, rested in Istria, and finally settled on its shores. 
{Pomp. Mel., 2, 3.) This strange error no longer 
prevailed in the time of Strabo, when Istria had be¬ 
come known to the Romans, and formed part of their 
vast empire. {Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol. 1, p. 134, 
seqq.) . * 

Istropolis, a city of Thrace, situate on the coast of 
the Euxine, below the mouth of the Ister, where a la- 
gune or salt lake, called Halmyris, formed by an arm 
of the Danube, has its issue into the sea. It appears 
to be succeeded at the present day by a place called 

691 




I T A 


ITALIA 


Kara-Kermon, or “the black fortress.” Istropolis is 
said to have been founded by a Milesian colony. 
(Plin , 4, 11.) 

Itabyrius, a mountain of Galilsea Inferior, near the 
southern limits of the tribe of Zebulon, and southeast 
from Carmel. According to Josephus (Bell. Jud., 4, 6), 
it was 30 stadia high, and had on its summit a plain 
of 26 stadia in extent. Its modern name is Thabor. 
This mountain is supposed by some to have been the 
scene of our Saviour’s transfiguration. Jerome, Cy- 
rill, and other writers, are in favour of the position, 
but it is opposed by Reland ( Palccstin ., p. 247). The 
name Thabor or Tabor, which was also the ancient 
one among the natives, appears to be derived from the 
Hebrew t.abbor, “a height” or “summit.” ( Reland , 
l. c.) The Greek writers call it Qa6ap and ’A rafiv- 
piov (or ’I rabvptov) opoq. (Compare the Jupiter Ata- 
byrius of Rhodes and Agrigentum, and the remarks 
of Ritter, Vorhallc, p. 339.) On the summit of this 
mountain was situate a fortified town called Atabyrion. 
(Polyb ., 5, 70.— Vid. Atabyrion.) Mount Thabor is 
situate two leagues southeast of Nazareth, rising out 
of the great plain of Esdraelon, at its eastern side. Its 
figure is that of a truncated cone, and its elevation, 
according to Buckingham, about 1000 feet; but, from 
the circumstance mentioned by Burckhardt, of thick 
clouds resting on it in the morning in summer, and his 
being an hour in ascending it, it may perhaps be con¬ 
sidered as higher than Buckingham supposed, though, 
from the same time occupied in the ascent, not more 
than 400 or 500 feet, or from 1400 to 1500 in all. It 
is represented as entirely calcareous. Dr. Richardson 
describes it as a dark-looking, insulated conical mount¬ 
ain, rising like a tower to a considerable height above 
those around it. On the summit is a plain about a 
mile in circumference, which shows the remains of 
the ancient fortress mentioned above. The view 
from this spot is said to be one of the finest in the 
country. 

Italia, a celebrated country of Europe, bounded on 
the north by the Alps, on the south by the Ionian Sea, 
on the northeast by the Adriatic or Mare Superum, 
and on the southwest by the Mare Tyrrhenum or In- 
ferum. It was called Hesperia by the Greeks, from 
its western situation in relation to Greece (Virg., 
ttn., 1, 530), and received also from the Latin poets 
the appellation of Ausonia (Virg., 2En., 7, 54), Sa- 
turnia (Virg., Georg., 2, 173), and CEnotria. The 
name Italia some writers deduce from Italus, a chief 
of the CEnotri or Siculi (Antioch. Syrac., ap. Dion. 
Hal., 1 , 2.— Thucyd., 6, 2). Others sought the origin 
of the term in the Greek word ira'Xoc;, or the Latin 
vitulus, which corresponds to it (Varro, R. R., 2, 5. 
— Dion. Hal., 1 , 35); and others again make the 
name to have belonged originally to a small canton in 
Calabria, and to have become gradually common to 
the whole country. The ancients differed from us in 
their application of names to countries. They re¬ 
garded the name as belonging to the people, not to 
the land itself; and in this they were more correct 
than we are, who call nations after the countries they 
inhabit. Asia Minor, for example, was an appellation 
unknown to the earlier classic writers, and only began 
to come into use after the country had fallen into the 
hands of the Romans. Previous to this, the different 
nations whiph peopled that peninsula had their re¬ 
spective names, and were known by these. In the 
same way, a general name for what we now term Italy 
was not originally thought of. When the Greeks be¬ 
came first acquainted with this country, they observed 
it to be peopled with several distinct nations, as they 
thought; and hence we find it divided by them about 
the time of Aristotle into six countries or regions, 
Ausonia or Opica, Tyrrhenia, Iapygia, Ombria, Ligu¬ 
ria, and Henetia. Thucyi *.es, for instance, in speak¬ 
ing of Cumst says that '• '3 situate in Opica; and 


Aristotle, cited by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, t?, 
Latiurn a part of this same Opica. As regard.*; 'JU 
origin of the name Italia, the truth appears to be <hie 
the appellation was first given by the early Grteks to 
what is now denominated Calabria ulterior, or to tha. 
southern extremity of the boot which is confined be 
tween the Sinus Terinaeus (Gulf of St. Euphemia) and 
the Sinus Scyllacius (Gulf o-f Squillace). Such, at 
least, is the account of Aristotle (Polit., 7, 10) and 
Strabo (254). This was not done because the name 
was in strictness confined to that section of the coun 
try, but because the Greeks knew at that early period 
very little, comparatively speaking, of the interior, and 
were as yet ignorant of the fact, that most of the nu¬ 
merous nations which peopled the Italian peninsulr 
were the descendants of one common race, the Itali 
who originally were spread over the whole land, ever 
to the foot of the Alps. The nations in the south of 
Italy, with whom the Greeks first became acquainted, 
were found by them to be descended from the Itali, 
or, rather, they found this name in general use among 
them: hence they called their section of the country 
by the name of Italia. As their knowledge of the in¬ 
terior became more enlarged, other branches of the 
same great race were successively discovered, and 
the name Italia thus gradually progressed in its appli¬ 
cation until it reached the southern limits of Cisalpine 
Gaul. To this latter country the name of Gallia Cis- 
alpina was originally given, because it was peopled 
principally by Gauls, who had settled in these parts, 
and dislodged the ancient inhabitants. In confirmation 
of what has just been advanced, we find that, in the 
time of Antiochus, a son of Xenophanes, who lived 
about the 320th year of Rome, and a little anterior to 
Thucydides, the appellation Italia was given to a part 
of Italy which lay south of a line drawn from the small 
river Laus to Metapontum. (Dion. Hal., 1 , p. 59.) 
Towards the end of the fifth century of Rome, it des¬ 
ignated all the countries south of the Tiber and iEsis. 
At length, in the pages of Polybius, who wrote about 
the 600th year of Rome, we find the name in question 
given to all Italy up to the foot of the Alps. The in¬ 
cluding of Cisalpine Gaul under this appellation was 
an act of policy on the part of the second triumvirate, 
who were afraid lest, if it remained a province, some 
future proconsul might imitate Caesar, and overthrow 
with his legions the authority of the republic. At a 
still later period, Augustus divided Italy into eleven 
regions, and extended its limits on the northeast as far 
as Pola, thus comprehending Istria. It is somewhat 
remarkable, that the name Italia, after having gradually 
extended to the Alps, should at a subsequent epoch be 
limited in its application to the northern parts alone. 
When the Emperor Maximian, towards the close of the 
thircPcentury of the Christian era, transferred his resi¬ 
dence to Milan, the usage prevailed in the West of 
giving the name of Italy exclusively to the five prov¬ 
inces of Emilia, Liguria, Flaminia, Venetia, and Is¬ 
tria. It was in this sense that the kings of the Lom¬ 
bards were styled monarchs of Italy.—As regards the 
other names sometimes applied to Italy, it may be ob¬ 
served, that they are, in strictness, names only of par¬ 
ticular parts, extended by poetic usage to the whole 
country. Thus CEnotria properly applies to a part of 
the southeastern coast, and was given by the Greeks 
to this portion of the country, from the numerous vines 
which grew there, the name importing “ wine-land.” 
Thus, too, Saturnia in fact belongs to one of the hills 
of Rome, &c.—Italy may be divided into three parts, 
the northern, or Gallia Cisalpina; the middle, or Italia 
Propria; and the southern, or Magna Grtecia. Its 
principal states were Gallia Cisalpina, Etruria, Um- 
biia, Picenum, Latium, Campania, Samnium and Hir- 
pim, Apulia, Calabria, Lucama, and Brutiorum Ager. 
Originally the whole of Italy appears to have been 
peopled by one common race, the Itali, who were 



ITALIA. 


ITALIA. 


spread from the Alps to the southernmost extremity 
of the land. This position receives very strong sup¬ 
port from the fact that the name Italus w as in gen¬ 
eral use among the various nations of the Italian 
peninsula. In the language oi fable it was the appel¬ 
lation of an ancient monarch. We find mention made 
°f a King Italus among the Ausones and Opici, and 
likewise among the Morgetes, Siculi, and Sabini. 
W e find, moreover, all these early tribes using one 
tommon dialect, the Oscan. Now, that such ageing 
is Italus ever existed, appears extremely improbable ; 
md still more so the assertion that Italy was named 
after this ancient king. Daily experience proves that 
eccntrias are called after the nations who inhabit 
them; and few, if any, examples can be adduced of 
nations taking an appellation from their rulers. In the 
present case it appears scarcely credible. We know 
>f no period when the different Italian tribes were 
ander the control of a single ruler, and yet each have 
heir Italus. Was there a monarch of this name in 
*very district of Italy? and, still more, did each sep- 
irate commurn'ty form the resolution of deriving from 
their respective monarch a name for themselves and 
.he region they inhabited, so that, finally, the common 
name for the whole land became Italia ? Either sup¬ 
position is absurd.—The name Italus, then, was the 
generic name of the whole race, and the land was 
called after it, each community being known .at the 
same time by a specific and peculiar appellation, as 
Latini, Umbri, <!fcc. The fact of the universal preva¬ 
lence ol the Oscan tongue is strongly corroborative of 
what has just been advanced. But, it may be con¬ 
tended, no proof exists that any king named Italus was 
acknowledged by the traditions of the Tuscior Umbri. 
The answer is an easy one. Antiquity makes mention 
of these as the piogenitors of the Latini, among whom 
a King Italus appears ; and Scymnus records an old 
authority, which .makes the Umbri to have been de¬ 
scended from Latinus, the son of Ulysses and Circe. 
That these two nations, moreover, spoke a language 
based on the old Italic or Oscan form of speech, was 
discovered by the Romans in the case of the Rhasti, a 
branch of the former, who had retired to the Alps 
upon the invasion of the Gauls. The original popula¬ 
tion of Italy then was composed of the Itali. To 
these came various nations, which we shall now enu¬ 
merate in the order of history. The earliest of these 
new-comers appear to have been the Illyrian tribes, 
and, in particular, the Liburni, who may, with truth, be 
regarded as the earl iest of European navigators. They 
extended themselves along the coast of the Adriatic as 
far as Iapygia. Next in the order of lime were the 
Veneti, a branch <5l the great Sclavonic race (vid. Ve- 
neti), who settled between the mouths of the Po and 
the Illyrian Alps. Were they the earliest possessors 
of this part of Italy, or did they expel the Tuscan Eu- 
ganei ? All is unce 'tainty. Of the origin of the great 
Etrurian nation, we have already spoken under the ar¬ 
ticle Hetruria. The Siculi, who appear to have been 
the original inhabitants of Latium, and who were sub¬ 
sequently driven out and retired to Sicily (vid. Siculi), 
are falsely considered by some to have been of Iberian 
origin. A fourth people, however, who actually came 
into Italy, were the Greeks. Before the time of the 
Trojan war there are no traces of any such emigration; 
but after the termination of that contest, accident 
threw many of the returning bands upon the Italian 
coast. We find them in Apulia, on the Sinus Taren- 
finu? in (Enotria, at Pisas, and in Latium as the chief 
part of the population of Alba Longa. Their language, 
the Eolic Greek, for they were principally Achcei, op¬ 
erating upon the old Italic or Oscan longue, then prev¬ 
alent in Latium, and becoming blended, at the same 
time, with many peculiarities and forms of Pelasgic 
origin, gave rise to the Latin tongue. Trojan female 
captives were brought along with them by the Greeks, 


but. no Trojan men, nor any prince named .Eneas ever 
set foot in the Italian peninsula. The last ancient 
people who formed settlements at any early period in 
Italy were the Gauls. They entered during the reign 
of Tarquinius Priscus. and successive hordes made 
their appearance under the following kings. They 
seized upon what was called, from them, Cisalpine 
Gaul, and one division of them, the Senones, even 
penetrated far into the centre of Italy. They were 
finally subdued by the Romans, more tnrough the want 
of union than of valour —On the subject, however, of 
the origin of the Latin tongue, a very plausible theory 
was started by Jakel, which assigns it to the German 
{Dei' Germanische Ur sprung der Lateinischen Sprache, 
&c., Brcslaw, 1831.) He makes the Latin to be 
mainly and essentially the dialect of a Teutonic race, 
that migrated from Germany into Italy by the way of 
the Tyrol, at a period vastly more remote than that 
to which Roman history reaches. The germe of this 
theory, however, is found in Funccius ( De Origine et 
Pueritia , L. L., p. 64, c. 5. De Matre Lingua Lat¬ 
ina Germanica.) — Ancient geographers appear to 
have entertained different ideas of the figure of Italy. 
Polybius considered it, in its general form, as being 
like a triangle, of which the two seas meeting at the 
promontory of Cocinthus {Capo di Stilo) as the vor¬ 
tex, formed the sides, and the Alps the base. ( Polyi ., 
2, 14.) But Strabo is more exact in his delineation, 
and observes, that its shape bears more resemblance 
to a quadrilateral than a triangular figure, with its out¬ 
line rather irregular than rectilineal. ( Strabo , 5, 210.) 
Pliny describes it in shape as similar to an elongated 
oak-ieaf, and terminating in a crescent, the horns of 
which would be the promontories of Leucopetra ( Capo 
delle Armi} and Lacinium ( Capo delle Colonne). Ac¬ 
cording to Pliny (3, 5), the length of Italy, from Au¬ 
gusta Pretoria (Aosta), at the foot of the Alps, to 
Rhegium, the other extremity, was 1020 miles ; but 
this distance was to be estimated, not in a direct line, 
but by the great road which passed through Rome and 
Capua. The real geographical distance, according to 
the best maps, would scarcely furnish 600 modern 
Italian miles of 60 to the degree, which are equal to 
about 700 ancient Roman miles. The same writer 
estimates its breadth from the Varus to the Arsia at 
410 miles ; between the mouths of the Tiber and 
Aternus at 136 miles ; in the narrowest part, between 
the Sinus Scyllacius and Sinus Terinteus, at 20 miles. 
The little lake of Cutilise, near Reate ( Rieti) in the 
Sabine country, was considered as the umbilicus or 
centre of Italy. ( Plin ., 3, 12.)—It might be expected 
that the classical authors of Rome would dwell with 
fondness on the peculiar advantages enjoyed by their 
favoured country. Accordingly, we find a variety of 
passages, which Oluverius has collected in his fifth 
chapter (De Natura calx solique Iialici ac laudibus 
ejus ), where the happy qualities of its soil and climate, 
the variety and abundance of its productions, the re¬ 
sources of every kind which it possesses, are proudly 
and eloquently displayed. Those that seem princi¬ 
pally deserving of notice are the following : Plin., 36, 
13.— Virgf, Georg., 2, 136, seqq. — Dion. Hal., Ant 
Rom., 1, 36. 

Climate of Ancient Italy. 

It has been thought by several modern writers that 
the climate and temperature of Italy have undergone 
some change during the lapse of ages, and that it was 
anciently colder in winter than it is at the present day. 
(Du Bos , Reflex., vol. 2, p. 298.— L'Abbe Longuerue, 
cited by Gibbon, Misc. Works, vol. 3, p. 245.) In the 
examination of this question, it is impossible not to 
consider the somewhat analogous condition of America 
at this day. Boston is in the same latitude with Rome, 
but the severity of its winter far exceeds not that of 
Rome onlv, but of Paris and London. Allowing that 

693 



ITALIA. 


ITALIA. 


tne peninsular form of Italy must at all times have had 
an effect in softening the climate, still the woods and 
marshes of Cisalpine Gaul, and the perpetual snows of 
the Alps, far more extensive than at present, owing to 
the then uncultivated and uncleared state of Switzer¬ 
land and Germany, could not but have been felt even 
in the neighbourhood of Rome. Besides, even on the 
Apennines, and in Etruria and Latium, the forests oc¬ 
cupied a far greater space than in modern times ; this 
would increase the quantity of rain, and, consequently, 
the volume of water in the rivers ; the floods would 
be greater and more numerous, and, before man’s do¬ 
minion had completely subdued the whole country, 
there would be large accumulations of water in the low 
grounds, which would still farther increase the coldness 
of the atmosphere. The language of ancient writers, 
on the whole, favours the same conclusion, that the 
Roman winter, in their days, was more severe than it 
is at present. It is by no means easy to know what 
weight is to be given to the language of the poets, nor 
how far particular descriptions or expressions may have 
been occasioned by peculiar local circumstances. The 
statement of the younger Pliny (Epist ., 2, 17), that the 
bay-tree would rarely live through the winter without 
shelter, either at Rome or at his own villa at Lanuvium, 
if taken absolutely, would prove too much; for, although 
the bay is less hardy than some other evergreens, yet 
how can it be conceived that a climate in which the 
olive would flourish could be too severe for the bay 1 
There must either have been some local peculiarity of 
winds or soil which the tree did not like, or else the fact, 
as is sometimes the case, must have been too hastily 
assumed ; and men were afraid, from long custom, to 
leave the bay unprotected in the winter, although, in 
fact, they might have done it with safety. Yet the 
elder Pliny (17, 2) speaks of long snows being useful 
to the corn, which shows that he is not speaking of 
the mountains ; and a long snow lying in the valleys 
of central or southern Italy would surely be a very un¬ 
heard-of phenomenon now. Again : the freezing of 
the rivers, as spoken of by Virgil and Horace, is an 
image of winter which could not, we think, naturally 
suggest itself to Italian poets of the present day, at 
any point to the south of the Apennines. Other ar¬ 
guments to the same effect may be seen in a paper by 
Dames Barrington, in the 58th volume of the Philo¬ 
sophical Transactions. Gibbon, too, after stating the 
arguments on both sides of the question, comes to the 
same conclusion. (Misc. Works , l. c .) He quotes, 
however, the Abbe de Longuerue as saying that the 
Tiber was frozen in the bitter winter of 1709.—Again: 
the olive, which cannot bear a continuance of severe 
cold, was not introduced into Italy till long after the 
vine : Fenestella asserted, that its cultivation was un¬ 
known as late as the reign of Tarquinius Priscus 
( Plin ., 15, 1); and such was the notion entertained 
of the cold of all inland countries, that Theophrastus 
(Plin., 15, 1) held it impossible to cultivate the olive 
at the distance of more than 400 stadia from the sea. 
But the cold of winter is perfectly consistent with great 
heat in the summer. The vine is cultivated with suc¬ 
cess on the Rhine, in the latitude of Deltonshire and 
Cornwall, although the winter at Coblentz and Bonn 
is far more severe than it is in Westmoreland ; and 
evergreens will flourish through the winter in the 
Westmoreland valleys far better than on the Rhine or 
in the heart of France. The summer heat of Italy 
was probably much the same in ancient times as it is 
at present, except that there were a greater number of 
spots where shade and verdure might be found, and 
where its violence, therefore, was more endurable. But 
the difference between the temperature of summer and 
winter may be safely assumed to have been much 
greater than it is now, notwithstanding the arguments 
of Eustace and several other travellers. (Arnold, His¬ 
tory of Rome, vol. 1, p. 499, seqq.) 


The Malaria in Ancient and Modern Times. 

It now becomes a question, whether the greater cole 
of the winter, and the greater extent of wood and of 
undrained waters which existed in the time of the Ro¬ 
mans, may not have had a favourable influence in mit¬ 
igating that malaria which is at the present day the 
curse of so many parts of Italy, and particularly of the 
immediate neighbourhood of Rome. One thing is 
certain, that the Campagna of Rome, which is now al¬ 
most a desert, must, at a remote period, have been 
full of independent cities ; and although the greater 
part of these had perished long before the fourth cen¬ 
tury of Rome, yet even then there existed Ostia, Lau¬ 
ren turn, Ardea, and Antium on one side, and Veii and 
Csere on the other, in situations which are now regard¬ 
ed as uninhabitable during the summer months ; and 
all the lands of the Romans on which they, like the 
old Athenians, for the most part resided regularly, lie 
within the present range of the malaria. Some have 
supposed, that, although the climate was the same as 
it is now, yet the Romans were enabled to escape 
from its influence, and their safety has been ascribed 
to their practice of wearing woollen next to the skin 
instead of linen or cotton. But, not to notice other 
objections to this notion, it is enough to say that the 
Romans regarded unhealthy situations with the same 
apprehension as their modern descendants. (Cato, R. 
R , 2.— Varro, R. R., 1 , 4.— Id., 5, 3, 5.— Id., 5, 3, 
12.)—On the other hand, Cicero (de Repub., 2, 6) and 
Livy (7, 38) both speak of the immediate neighbour¬ 
hood of Rome as unhealthy ; but, at the same time, 
they extol the positive healthiness of the city itself • 
ascribing it to the hills, which are at once airy them 
selves, and offer a screen to the low grounds from the 
heat of the sun. It is true, that one of the most un¬ 
healthy parts of modern Rome, the Piazza di Spagna 
and the slope of the Pincian Hill above it, was not 
within the limits of the ancient city, yet the praise of 
the healthiness of Rome must be understood rather 
comparatively with that of the immediate neighbour¬ 
hood than positively. Rome, in the summer months, 
cannot be called healthy, even as compared with the 
other great cities of Italy, much less if the standard be 
taken from Berlin or from London. Again: the neigh¬ 
bourhood of Rome is characterized by Livy as “a pes¬ 
tilential and parched soil.” The latter epithet is wor¬ 
thy of notice, because the favourite opinion has been, 
that the malaria is connected with marshes and moist¬ 
ure. But it is precisely here that we may find the ex¬ 
planation of the spread of the malaria in modern times. 
Even in spring nothing can less resemble a marsh than 
I he present aspect of the Campagna. It is far more 
like the down country of Dorsetshire, and, as the sum¬ 
mer advances, it may well be called a dry and parched 
district. But this is exactly the character of the plains 
of Estremadura, where the British forces suffered so 
grievously from malaria fever in the autumn of 1809 
In short, abundant experience has proved, that when 
the surface of the ground is wet, the malaria poison is 
far less noxious than when all appearance of moisture 
on the surface is gone, and the damp makes its way 
into the atmosphere from a considerable depth under 
ground. If, then, more rain fell in the Campagna for¬ 
merly than now ; if the streams were fuller of water, 
and their course more rapid ; above all, if, owing to 
the uncleared state of central Europe, and the greater 
abundance of wood in Italy itself, the summer heats 
set in later, and were less intense, and more often re¬ 
lieved by violent storms of rain, there is every reason 
to believe that the Campagna must have been fav 
healthier than at present; and that precisely in pro¬ 
portion to the clearing and cultivation of central Eu¬ 
rope, to the felling of the woods in Italy itself, the 
consequent decrease in the quantity of rain, the shrink- 
ing of the streams, and the disappearance of the wa- 





I T H 


JUB 


iet from the surface, has been the increased unhealthi¬ 
ness of the country, and the more extended range of 
the malaria. ( Arnold's History of Rome, vol. 1, p. 
501, seqq.) 

Italica, I. the capital of the Peligni in Italy. ( Vid. 
Corfinium.)—II. A city of Spain, north of Hispalis, 
and situate on the western side of the river Baetis. 

( Strabo, 141.— Oros., 5, 23.) It was founded by Pub¬ 
lius Scipio in the second Punic war, who placed here 
the old soldiers whom age had incapacitated from the 
performance of military service. ( Appian , B. Hisp., 
c. 38.— C(BS., B. Civ., 2, 20.) It was the birthplace 
of the Emperor Trajan, and is supposed to correspond 
with Sevilla la Vieja, about a league distant from the 
city of Seville. {Surita, ad It. Ant., p. 413, 432.— 
Florez, Esp. S. F., 12, p. 227.— Ukert, Geogr., vol. 
2, p. 372.) 

Italicus, a poet. ( Vid. Silius Italicus.) 

Italus, a fabled monarch of early Italy. (Consult 
remarks under the article Italia, page 693, col. 1.) 

Ithaca, a celebrated island in the Ionian Sea, north¬ 
east of Cephallenia. It lies directly south of Leuca- 
dia, from which it is distant about six miles. The ex¬ 
tent of this celebrated island, as given by ancient au¬ 
thorities, does not correspond with modern computa¬ 
tion. Diccearchus describes it as narrow, and meas¬ 
uring eighty stadia, meaning probably in length ( Grcec. 
Stat ., v. 51), but Strabo (455) affirms, in circumfer¬ 
ence, which is very wide of the truth, since it is not 
less than thirty miles in circuit, or, according to Pliny 
(4, 12), twenty-five. Its length is nearly seventeen 
miles, but its breadth not more than four. Ithaca is 
well known as the native island of Ulysses. Eusta¬ 
thius asserts {ad 11., 2, 632) that it derived its name 
from the hero Ithacus, who is mentioned by Homer 
{Od., 17, 207). That it was throughout rugged and 
mountainous we learn from more than one passage of 
the Odyssey, but especially from the fourth book, v. 
605, seqq. —It is evident, from several passages of the 
same poem, that there was also a city named Ithaca, 
probably the capital of the island, and the residence of 
Ulysses (3, 80). Its ruins are generally identified with 
those crowning the summit of the hill of Aito. {Bod- 
well, vol. 1, p. 66.) “The Venetian geographers,” 
observes Sir William Gell, “ have in a great degree 
contributed to raise doubts concerning the identity of 
the modern with the ancient Ithaca, by giving in their 
charts the name of Val di Compare to this island. 
That name, however, is totally unknown in the coun¬ 
try, where the isle is invariably called Ithaca by the 
upper ranks, and Theaki by the vulgar. It has been 
asserted in the north of Europe, that Ithaca is too in¬ 
considerable a rock to have produced any contingent of 
ships which could entitle its king to so much consider¬ 
ation among the neighbouring isles ; yet the unrivalled 
excellence ot its port has in modern times created a 
fleet of 50 vessels of all denominations, which trade to 
every part of the Mediterranean, and from which four 
might be selected capable of transporting the whole 
army of Ulysses to the shores of Asia. The same 
writer makes the population of the island 8000. It is 
said to contain sixty-six square miles. {Gell's Geog¬ 
raphy and Antiquities of Ithaca, p. 30.) 

Ithacesi^s, I. three islands opposite Vibo, on the 
coast of Bruttium. They are thought to answer to 
the modern Braces, Praca, and Torricella. {Bischojf 
und Moller, Worterb. dcr Geogr., p. 651.)—II. Baiae 
is called by Silius Italicus u sedes Ithacesia Baii,” be¬ 
cause founded by Baius, the pilot of Ulysses, accord¬ 
ing to the poetic legends of antiquity. {Sil. Ital., 8, 
539.—Compare Lycophron, Cassand., 694.— Tzetzes, 
ad loc.) 

Ithome, I. a town of Thessaly, in the vicinity of 
Metropolis. It is conceived by some modern travel¬ 
lers to have been situated on one ol the summits now 
jccupied by the singular convents of Meteora. {Hol¬ 


land’s Travels, vol. 1, 349. — Pouqueville, vol. 3, p 
334.) Cramer, however, thinks it ought to be looked 
for to the north of the Peneus, near Ardam and Pet- 
chouri. —II. A fortress of Messenia, on a mountain of 
the same name. It was celebrated for the long and 
obstinate defence (ten years) which the Messenians 
there made against the Spartans in their last revolt. 
The mountain was said to have derived its name from 
Ithome, one of the nymphs that nourished Jupiter. On 
the summit was the temple of Jupiter Lhomatas, to 
whom the mountain was especially dedicated. Strabo 
compares the Messenian Acropolis to Acrocorinthus, 
being situated, like that citadel, on a lofty and steep 
mountain, enclosed by fortified lines which connected it 
with the town. Hence they were justly deemed the two 
strongest places in the Peloponnesus. When Philip, 
the son of Demetrius, was planning the conquest of 
tne peninsula with Demetrius of Pharos, the latter ad¬ 
vised him to seize first the horns of the heifer, which 
would secure to him possession of the animal. By 
these enigmatical expressions he designated the Pelo¬ 
ponnesus, and the two bulwarks above mentioned 
{Strab., 361. — Polyb., 7, 11.) Scylax says Itnome 
was eighty stadia from the sea. ( Peripl ., p. 16.) 

Itius Portus, a harbour of Gaul, whence Caesar 
set sail for Britain. Ca?sar describes it no farther than 
by saying, that from it there was the most convenient 
passage to Britain, the distance being about 30 miles. 
{B. G., 5, 2.) Calais, Boulogne, and Etaples have 
each their respective advocates for the honour of being 
the Itius Portus of antiquity. The weight of authority, 
however, is in favour of Witsand or Vissan; and with 
this opinion D’Anville coincides. Caesar landed at 
Portus Lemanis or Lymne, a little below Dover. For 
a long time this was the principal crossing-place. In 
a later age, however, the preference was given to Ges- 
soriacum or Boulogne in Gaul, and Rutupiae or Rich- 
borough in Britain. Lemaire, however, is in favour of 
making the Itius Portus identical with Gessoriacum, 
as others had been before him. {Ind. Geogr. ad Cces., 
B. G., p. 291.) 

Itun.®, HUstuarium, now Solway Firth, in Scot 
land. 

Iturjea, a country of Palestine, so called from Itur 
or Jetur, one of the sons of Ishmael, who settled in it; 
but whose posterity were either driven out or subdued 
by the Amorites, when it is supposed to have formed 
part of the kingdom of Bashan, and subsequently of 
the half tribe of Manasseh east of Jordan ; but;, as it 
was situated beyond the southern border of Mount 
Hertnon, called the Djebel Heish , this is doubtful. It 
lay on the northeastern side of the land of Israel, be¬ 
tween it and the territory of Damascus or Syria ; and 
is supposed to have been the same country at present 
known by the name of Bjedour , on the east of the 
Bjebel Heish , between Damascus and the Lake of Ti¬ 
berias. The Itureans being subdued by Aristobulus, 
the high-priest and governor of the Jews, B.C. 106, 
were forced by him to embrace the Jewish religion, 
and were at the same time incorporated into the state. 
Philip, one of the sons of Herod the Great, was te- 
trarch or governor of this country when John the Bap¬ 
tist commenced his ministry. {Plin., 5, 23. Joseph 
Ant. Jud., 13, 19 .—Epiphan., Hares., 19 . — .Luke, 
3,1.) 

Itys, son of Tereus, king of Thrace, by Procne, 
daughter of Pandion, king of Athens. He was killed 
by his mother when he was about six years old, and 
served up before his father. He was changed, accord¬ 
ing to one account, into a pheasant, his mother into a 
swallow, and his father into an owl. {Vid. Philomela. 
— Ovid, Met., 6, 620.-— Amor., 2, 14, 29.— Horut ., 
Od., 4, 12.) 

Juba, I. a son of Hiempsal, king of Numidia, suc¬ 
ceeded his father about 50 B.C. He was a warm 
supporter of the senatorial party and Pompey, being 



JU D 


JUDiEA. 


moved, it is said, to this course by a gross insult which, 
in his youth, he had received from Caesar. He gained, 
B.C. 49, a great victory over Curio, Caesar’s lieuten¬ 
ant in Africa. After the battle of Pharsalia and the 
death of Pompey, he continued steady to his cause; 
and when Caesar invaded Africa, B.C. 46, he support¬ 
ed Scipio and Cato with all his power, and in the first 
instance reduced the dictator to much difficulty. The 
battle of Thapsus, however, turned the scale in Cae¬ 
sar’s favour. Juba fled, and, finding that his subjects 
would not receive him, put an end to his life in de¬ 
spair, along with Petreius. ( Vid. Petreius.) His con¬ 
nexion with Cato has suggested the underplot of Ad¬ 
dison’s tragedy. ( Pint ., Vit. Pomp. — Id., Vit. Cccs. 
— Flor., 4, 12. — Sueton., Vit. Jul., 35.— Lucan, 4, 
690.— Paterc., 2, 54.)—II. The second of the name, 
was son of the preceding. He was carried to Rome 
by Caesar, kindly treated, and well and learnedly ed¬ 
ucated. He gained the friendship, and fought in the 
cause, of Augustus, who gave him the kingdom of 
Mauritania, his paternal kingdom of Numidia having 
been erected into a Roman province. ' Juba cultivated 
diligently the arts of peace, was beloved by his sub¬ 
jects, and had a high reputation for learning. He 
wrote, in Greek, of Arabia, with observations on its 
natural history ; of Assyria ; of Rome ; of painting 
and painters; of theatres; of the qualities of animals; 
on the source of the Nile, &c., all which are now lost. 
Juba married Cleopatra, the daughter of Antony and 
Cleopatra, queen of Egypt. Strabo, in his sixth book, 
speaks of Juba as living, and in his seventeenth and 
last book as then just dead. This would probably fix 
his death about A.D. 17. ( Clinton, Fast. Hellen., 
vol. 2, p. 551, in notis. — Phot., Cod., 161.— Athence- 
us, 8, p. 343, e. — Pint., Mor., p. 269, c., &c.— 
Consult the dissertation of the Abbe Sevin, Sur la Vie 
et les Ouvrages de Juba, in the Mem. de I Acad, des 
lnscr., &c., vol. 4, p. 457, seqq.) 

JuDiEA, a province of Palestine, forming the southern 
division. It did not assume the name of Judaaa until 
after the return of the Jews from the Babylonian cap- 
ivity ; though it had been denominated, long before, 
he kingdom of Judsea, in opposition to that of Israel. 
After the return, the tribe of Judah settled first at Je¬ 
rusalem; but afterward, spreading gradually over the 
whole country, they gave it the name of Judasa. Ju¬ 
daea, being the seat of religion and government, claimed 
many privileges. It was not lawful to intercalate the 
year out of Judaea, while they might do it in that coun¬ 
try. Nor was the sheaf of first-fruits of the barley to 
be brought from any other district than Judaea, and as 
near as possible to Jerusalem. The extent of this re¬ 
markable country has varied at different times, accord¬ 
ing to the nature of the government which it has en¬ 
joyed or been compelled to acknowledge. When it 
was first occupied by the Israelites, the land of Ca¬ 
naan, properly so called, was confined between the 
shores of the Mediterranean and the western bank of 
the Jordan; the breadth at no part exceeding fifty 
miles, while the length hardly amounted to three times 
that space. At a later period, the arms of David and 
of his immediate successor carried the boundaries of 
the kingdom to the Euphrates and Orontes on the one 
hand, and, in an opposite direction to the remotest con¬ 
fines of Edom and Moab. The population, as might 
be expected, has undergone a similar variation. It is 
true, that no particular in ancient history is liable to a 
better founded suspicion, than the numerical statements 
which respect nations and armies ; for pride and fear 
have in their turn contributed not a little to exagger¬ 
ate in rival countries the amount of persons capable 
of taking a share in the field of battle. Proceeding on 
the usual grounds of calculation, we must infer, from 
the number of warriors whom Moses conducted through 
the desert, that the Hebrew people, when they crossed 
the Jordan, did not fall short of two millions ; while, 
696 


from the facts recorded in the book of Samuel, we 
may conclude with greater confidence that the enrol 
ment made under the direction of Joab must have re¬ 
turned a gross population of five millions and a half. 
The present aspect of Palestine, under an administra¬ 
tion where everything decays and nothing is renewed, 
can afford no just criterion of the accuracy of such 
statements. Hasty observers have indeed pronounced, 
that a hilly country, destitute of great rivers, could not, 
even under the most skilful management, supply food 
for so many mouths But this precipitate conclusion 
has been vigorously combated by the most competent 
judges, who have taken pains to estimate the produce 
of a soil, under the fertilizing influence of a sun which 
may be regarded as almost tropical, and of a well- 
regulated irrigation, which the Syrians knew how to 
practise with the greatest success. Canaan, it must 
be admitted, could not be compared to Egypt in re¬ 
spect to corn. There is no Nile to scatter the riches 
of an inexhaustible fecundity over its valleys and plains. 
Still it was not without reason that Moses described 
it as “ a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fount¬ 
ains, and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; 
a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig-trees, 
and pomegranates ; a land of oil-olive and honey ; a 
land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness; 
thou shalt not lack anything in it; a land whose 
stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayestdig 
brass.” ( Deutcron., 8, 7, scqq .) The reports of the 
latest travellers confirm the accuracy of the picture 
drawn by this divine legislator. Near Jericho the 
wild olives continue to bear berries of a large size, 
which give the finest oil. In places subjected to irri¬ 
gation, the same field, after a crop of wheat in May, 
produces pulse in autumn. Several of the trees are 
continually bearing flowers and fruit at the same time, 
in all their stages. The mulberry, planted in straight 
rows in the open field, is festooned by the tendrils 
of the vine. If this vegetation seems to languish or 
become extinct during the extreme heats—if in the 
mountains it is at all seasons detached and interrup¬ 
ted—such exceptions to the general luxuriance are not 
to be ascribed simply to the general character of all hot 
climates, but also to the state of barbarism in which 
the great mass of the present population is immersed. 
Even in our day, some remains are to be found of the 
walls which the ancient cultivators built to support the 
soil on the declivities of the mountains ; the form of 
the cisterns in which they collected the rain-water; 
and traces of the canals by which this water was dis¬ 
tributed over the fields. These labours necessarily 
created a prodigious fertility under an ardent sun, 
where a little moisture was the only requisite to re¬ 
vive the vegetable world. The accounts given by 
native writers respecting the productive qualities of 
Judaea are not in any degree opposed even by the 
present aspect of the country. The case is exactly 
the same with some islands in the Archipelago; a 
tract from which a hundred individuals can hardly 
draw a scanty subsistence, formerly maintained thou¬ 
sands in affluence. Moses might justly say that Ca 
naan abounded in milk and honey. The flocks of the 
Arabs still find in it a luxuriant pasture, while th< 
bees deposite in the holes of the rocks their delicious 
stores, which are sometimes seen flowing down the 
surface. The opinions just stated in regard to the 
fertility of ancient Palestine, receive an ample confir¬ 
mation from the Roman historians, to whom, as a part 
of their extensive empire, it was intimately known. 
Tacitus especially ( H ; st ., 5, 6), in language which 
he appears to have formed for his own use, describes 
its natural qualities with the utmost precision, and, as 
is his manner, suggests rather than specifies a cata¬ 
logue of productions, the accuracy of which is verified 
by the latest observations. The soil is rich, and the 
atmosphere dry ; the country yields all the fruits 





JUDAEA. 


JUDAEA. 


wm:n are known in Italy, besides balm and dates. 
But it has never been denied that there is a remarka¬ 
ble difference between the two sides of the ridge which 
forms the central chain of Judoea. On the western 
accdivity, the soil rises from the sea towards the ele¬ 
vated ground in four distinct terraces, which are cov¬ 
ered with an unfading verdure. The shore is lined 
with mastic-trees, palms, and prickly pears. Higher 
up, the vines, the olives, and the sycamores amply re¬ 
pay the labour of the cultivator ; natural groves arise, 
consisting of evergreen oaks, cypresses, andrachnes, 
a: d turpentines. The face of the earth is embellished 
with the rosemary, the cytisus, and the hyacinth. In 
a word, the vegetation of these mountains has been 
compared to that of Crete. European visiters have 
dined under the shade of a lemon-tree as large as 
one of our strongest oaks, and have seen sycamores, 
the foliage of which was sufficient to cover thirty per¬ 
sons, along with their horses and camels. On the 
eastern side, however, the scanty coating of mould 
yields a less magnificent crop. From the summit of 
the hills a desert stretches along to the Lake Asphal- 
tites, presenting nothing but stones and ashes, and a 
few thorny shrubs. The sides of the mountains en¬ 
large, and assume an aspect at once more grand and 
more barren. By little and little, the scanty vegeta¬ 
tion languishes and dies ; even mosses disappear, and 
a red, burning hue succeeds to the whiteness of the 
rocks. In the centre of this amphitheatre there is an 
arid basin, enclosed on all sides with summits scat¬ 
tered over with a yellow-coloured pebble, and afford¬ 
ing a single aperture to the east, through which the 
surface of the Dead Sea and the distant hills of Ara¬ 
bia present themselves to the eye. In the midst of 
this country of stones, encircled by a wall, we perceive 
extensive ruins, stunted cypresses, bushes of the aloe 
and prickly pear, while some huts of the meanest or¬ 
der, resembling whitewashed sepulchres, are spread 
over the desolated mass. This spot is Jerusalem. 
(Bclon , Observations , &c.,p. 140 .—Hasselquist, Trav¬ 
els , p. 56.— Shultze’s Travels , vol. 2, p. 86.)—This 
melancholy delineation, which was suggested by the 
state of the Jewish metropolis in the third century, is 
not quite inapplicable at. the present hour. The scen¬ 
ery of external nature is the same, and the general as¬ 
pect of the venerable city is very little changed. But 
as beauty is strictly a relative term, and is everywhere 
greatly affected by association, we must not be sur¬ 
prised when we read in the works of Eastern authors 
the high encomiums which are lavished upon the vi¬ 
cinity of the holy capital. Abulfeda, for example, 
maintains, not only that Palestine is the most fertile 
part of Syria, but also that the neighbourhood of Jeru¬ 
salem is one of the most fertile districts of Palestine. 
In his eye, the vines, the fig-trees, and the olive- 
groves, with which the limestone cliffs of Judasa were 
once covered, identified themselves with the richest 
returns of agricultural wealth, and more than com¬ 
pensated for the absence of those spreading fields, 
waving with corn, which are necessary to convey to 
the mind of a European the ideas of fruitfulness, com¬ 
fort, and abundance.—Following the enlightened nar¬ 
rative of Malte-Brun, the reader will find that south¬ 
ward of Damascus, the point where the modern Pal¬ 
estine may be said to begin, are the countries called 
3y the Romans Auranitis and Gaulonitis, consisting 
of one extensive and noble plain, bounded on the north 
by Hermon or Djibel-el-Sheik, on the southwest by 
Djibel-Edjlan, and on the east by Haouran. In all 
these countries there is not a single stream which re¬ 
tains its water in summer. The most of the villages 
have their pond or reservoir, which they fill from one 
of the wadi or brooks during the rainy season. Of 
all these districts, Haouran is the most celebrated for 
the culture of wheat. Nothing can exceed in gran¬ 
deur the extensive undulations of their fields, moving 
4 T 


like the waves of the ocean in the wind. Bothin, or 
Batanea, on the other hand, contains nothing except 
calcareous mountains, where there are vast caverns, 
in which the Arabian shepherds live like the ancient 
Troglodytes. Here a modern traveller, Dr. Seetzen, 
discovered, in the year 1816, the magnificent ruins of 
Gerasa, now called Djerash, where three temples, two 
superb amphitheatres of marble, and hundreds of col¬ 
umns still remain, among other monuments of Roman 
power. But by far the finest thing that he saw was 
a long street, bordered on each side with a splendid 
colonnade of Corinthian architecture, and terminating 
in an open space of a semicircular form, surrounded 
with sixty Ionic pillars. In the same neighbourhood, 
the ancient Gilead is distinguished by a forest of 
stately oaks, which supply wealth and employment to 
the inhabitants. Peraea presents on its numerous ter¬ 
races a mixture of vines, olives, and pomegranates. 
Karak-Moab, the capital of a district corresponding to 
that of the primitive Moabites, still meets the eye, but 
is not to be confounded with another town of a similar 
name in the Stony Arabia. ( Seetzen.—Annales des 
Voyages, vol. 1, p. 398— Correspondence de M. Zach . 
p. 425.)—The countries now described lie on the east¬ 
ern side of the river Jordan. But the same stream, in 
the upper part of its course, forms the boundary be¬ 
tween Gaulonitis and the fertile Galilee, which is iden¬ 
tical with the modern district of Szaffad. This town, 
which is remarkable for the beauty of its situation 
amid groves of myrtle, is supposed to be the ancient 
Bethulia, which was besieged by Holofernes. Taba- 
ria, an insignificant place, occupies the site of Tibe¬ 
rias, which gave its name to the lake more generally 
known by that of Genesareth, or the Sea of Galilee ; 
but industry has now deserted its borders, and the 
fisherman with his skiff and, his nets no longer ani¬ 
mates the surface of its waters. Nazareth still re¬ 
tains some portion of its former consequence. Six 
miles farther south stands the hill of Thabor, some¬ 
times denominated Itabyrius, presenting a pyramid 
of verdure crowned with olives and sycamores. From 
the top of this mountain, the reputed scene of the 
transfiguration, we look down on the river Jordan, 
the Lake of Genesareth, and the Mediterranean Sea, 
(Maundrell, p. 60.) — Galilee, says Chateaubriand 
(Itin ., 2, 132), would be a paradise were it inhabit¬ 
ed by an industrious people under an enlightened gov¬ 
ernment. Vine-stocks are to be seen here a foot and 
a half in diameter, forming, by their twining branch¬ 
es, vast arches and extensive ceilings of verdure. A 
cluster of grapes, two or three feet in length, will give 
an abundant supper to a whole family. The plains 
of Esdraelon are occupied by Arab tribes, around 
whose brown tents the sheep and lambs gambol to the 
sound of the reed, which at nightfall calls them home. 
—Proceeding from Galilee towards the metropolis, we 
enter the land of Samaria, comprehending the modern 
districts of Areta and Nablous. In the former we find 
the remains of Cesarea; and on the Gulf of St. Jean 
d’Acre stands the town of Caypha, where there is a 
good anchorage for ships. On the southwest of this 
gulf extends a chain of mountains, which terminates 
in the promontory of Carmel, a name famous in the 
annals of our religion. There Elijah proved by mira¬ 
cles the divinity of his mission ; and there, in the 
middle ages of the church, resided thousands of Chris¬ 
tian devotees, who sought a refuge for their piety in 
the caves of the rocks. Then the mountain was 
wholly covered with chapels and gardens, whereas at 
the present day nothing is to be seen but scattered 
ruins amid forests of oak and olives, the bright ver¬ 
dure being only relieved by the whiteness of the cal¬ 
careous cliffs over which they are suspended. The 
heights of Carmel, it has been frequently remarked, 
enjoy a pure and enlivening atmosphere, while the 
lower grounds of Samaria and Galilee are obscured 

697 



JUDiEA. 


JU G 


tty the densest fogs.—The Shechem of the Scriptures, 
successively known by the names of Neapolis and Nab- 
lous, still contains a considerable population, although 
its dwellings are mean and its inhabitants poor. The 
ruins of Samaria itself are now covered with orchards ; 
and the people of the district, who have forgotten their 
native dialect, as well, perhaps, as their angry disputes 
with the Jews, continue to worship the Deity on the 
verdant slopes of Gerizim.—Palestine, agreeably to 
the modern acceptation of the term, embraces the 
country of the ancient Philistines, the most formida¬ 
ble enemies of the Hebrew tribes prior to the reign 
of David. Besides Gaza, the chief town, we recog¬ 
nise the celebrated port of Jaffa or Yaffa, correspond¬ 
ing to the Joppa mentioned in the sacred writings. 
Repeatedly fortified and dismantled, this famous har¬ 
bour has presented such a variety of appearances, that 
the description given of it in one age has hardly ever 
been found to apply to its condition in the very next. 
Bethlehem, where the divine Messias was born, is a 
large village inhabited promiscuously by Christians and 
Mussulmans, who agree in nothing but their detestation 
of the tyranny by which they are both unmercifully 
oppressed. The locality of the sacred manger is oc¬ 
cupied by an elegant church, ornamented by the pious 
offerings of all the nations of Europe. It is not our 
intention to enter into a more minute discussion of 
those old traditions, by which the particular places 
rendered sacred by the Redeemer’s presence are still 
marked out for the veneration of the faithful. They 
present much vagueness, mingled with no small por¬ 
tion of unquestionable truth. At all events, we must 
not regard them in the same light in which we are 
compelled to view the story that claims for Hebron 
the possession of Abraham’s tomb, and attracts on this 
account the veneration both of Nazarenes and Mos¬ 
lems.—To the northeast of Jerusalem, in the large and 
fertile valley called El-Gaur, and watered by the Jor¬ 
dan, we find the village of Rieka, near the ancient Jeri¬ 
cho, denominated by Moses the City of Palms. This 
is a name to which it is still entitled ; but the groves 
of opobalsamum, or balm of Mecca, have long disap- 
oeared ; nor is the neighbourhood any longer adorned 
with those singular flowers known among the Crusa¬ 
ders by the familiar appellation of Jericho roses. A 
little farther south two rough and barren chains of 
hills encompass with their dark steeps a long basin 
formed in a clay soil mixed with bitumen and rock- 
salt. The water contained in this hollow is impreg¬ 
nated with a solution of different saline substances, 
having lime, magnesia, and soda for their base, par¬ 
tially neutralized with muriatic and sulphuric acid. 
The salt which it yields by evaporation is about one 
fourth of its weight. The bituminous matter rises 
from time to time from the bottom of the lake, floats 
on the surface, and is thrown out on the shores, where 
it is gathered for various purposes. ( Vid. Mare 
Mortuum.)—This brief outline of the geographical 
limits and physical character of the Holy Land must 
suffice here. Details much more ample are to be 
found in numerous works, whose authors, fascinated 
by the interesting recollections which almost every 
object in Palestine is fitted to suggest, have endeav¬ 
oured to transfer to the minds of their readers the 
profound impressions which they themselves experi¬ 
enced from a personal review of ancient scenes and 
monuments. But we purposely refrain from the mi¬ 
nute description to which the subject so naturally in¬ 
vites us, because, by pursuing such a course as this, 
we would be unavoidably led into a train of local par¬ 
ticularities, while setting forth the actual condition of 
the country and of its venerable remains. However, 
we supply, in the following table, the means of com¬ 
paring the division or distribution of Canaan among 
the twelve tribes, with that which was afterward adopt¬ 
ed by the Romans. 

698 


Ancient 
Canaanitish Division. 



Jebusites, ^ 

Amorites, 
Hittites, 


. \ 


Philistines 

( 

Moabites, j 

Ammonites, 

Gilead, 

Kingdom of 
Bashan, 


Israelitiaii Division. Roman Di via km. 

Tribe of Asher (in 
Libanus) 

Naphtali (northwest V Upper Galilee 
of the Lake of Ge- j 
nesareth) J 

Zebulun (west of that> 
lake) I 

Issachar (Yalley of > Lower Galilee. 
Esdraelon, Mount 
Tabor) J 

Half tribe of Manas-' 
seh (Dora and Ces- 
area) > Samaria. 

Ephraim (Shechem, 

Samaria) 

Benjamin (Jericho, 

Jerusalem) 

Judah (Hebron, Ju¬ 
daea proper) )-Jud&a. 

Simeon (southwest 
of Judah) Dan 
(Joppa) 

Reuben (Heshbon, \ 

Peresa) 

Gad (Decapolis, Am- 

monitis) )*Persea. 

Half tribe of Manas- 
seh (Gaulonitis, 

Batanea) 


In a pastoral country, such as that beyond the river 
Jordan especially, where the desert in most parts bor¬ 
dered upon the cultivated soil, the limits of the sev¬ 
eral possessions could not at all times be distinctly 
marked. It is well known, besides, that the native in¬ 
habitants were never entirely expelled by the victo¬ 
rious Hebrews, but that they retained, in some in¬ 
stances by force, and in others by treaty, a considera¬ 
ble portion of land within the borders of all the tribes : 
a fact which is connected with many of the defec¬ 
tions and troubles into which the Israelites subsequent¬ 
ly fell. ( Russell's Palestine, p. 26, seqq.) 

Jugurtha, the illegitimate son of Manastabal, by 
a concubine, and grandson of Masinissa. He was 
brought up under the care of his uncle Micipsa, king 
of Numidia, who educated him along with his two sons. 
As, however, Jugurtha was of an ambitious and aspi¬ 
ring disposition, Micipsa sent him, when grown up, 
with a body of troops, to join Scipio iEmilianus in his 
war against Numantia in Spain, hoping to lose, by the 
chances of war, a youth who might otherwise, at soma 
subsequent period, threaten the tranquillity of his chil¬ 
dren. His hopes, however, were frustrated. Jugurtha 
so distinguished himself as to become a great favour¬ 
ite with Scipio, who, at the conclusion of the war, sent 
him back to Africa with strong recommendations to 
Micipsa. Micipsa then adopted him, and declared him 
joint heir with his own two sons Adherbal and Hiemp- 
sal. After Micipsa’s death (B.C. 118), Jugurtha, as¬ 
piring to the undivided possession of the kingdom, 
effected the murder of Hiempsal, and obliged Adher¬ 
bal to escape to Rome, where he appealed to the sen¬ 
ate. Jugurtha, however, found means to bribe many 
of the senators, and a commission was sent to Af¬ 
rica, in order to divide Numidia between the two 
princes. The commission gave the best portion to 
Jugurtha, who, not long after their departure, invaded 
the territory of his cousin, defeated him, besieged him 
in Cirta, and, having obliged him to surrender, put 
him to a cruel death and this almost under the eyes 
of Scaurus and others, whom the Roman senate had 
sent as umpires between the two rivals (B.C. 112). 
This news caused great irritation at Rome, ana war 
was declared against Jugurtha. After some fighting, 










J LT L 


JUL 


however, he obtained from the consul Calpurnius, 
under the most favourable conditions, the quiet pos¬ 
session of the usurped kingdom. But this treaty was 
not ratified at Rome ; Calpurnius was recalled, and 
the new consul Posthumius Albinus was appointed to 
the command in Africa. Meanwhile Jugurtha, being 
summoned, appeared at Rome ; but as he then suc¬ 
ceeded in bribing several of the senators, and also 
Baebius, a tribune of the people, no judgment was giv¬ 
en. Iinboldened by this success, he thereupon caus¬ 
ed Massiva, son of his uncle Gulussa, whom he sus¬ 
pected of aiming at the kingdom, to be assassinated 
in the Roman capital. The crime was fixed upon 
him ; but as he was under the public guarantee, the 
senate, instead of bringing him to trial, ordered him 
to leave Rome immediately. It was while departing 
from the city on this occasion that he is said to have 
uttered those memorable words against the corrup¬ 
tion of the Roman capital which are recorded in the 
pages of Sallust: “Ah, venal city, and destined quick¬ 
ly to perish, if it could but find a purchaser !” Pos¬ 
thumius was now sent to his province in Africa, to 
prosecute the war ; but he soon returned to Rome 
without having effected anything, leaving the army 
under the command of his brother Aulus Posthumius, 
who allowed himself to be surprised in his camp by 
Jugurtha, to whom he surrendered ; and his troops, 
having passed under the yoke, evacuated Numidia. 
The new consul Metellus, arriving soon after with 
fresh troops, carried on the war with great vigour, 
and, being himself above temptation, reduced Jugur¬ 
tha to the last extremity. Caius Marius was serving 
as lieutenant to Metellus, and in the year B.C. 107, 
supplanted him in the command. Jugurtha, mean¬ 
time, having allied himself with Bocchus, king of 
Mauritania, gave full employment to the Romans. 
Marius took the town of Capsa, and in a hard-contest¬ 
ed battle defeated the two kings. Bocchus now made 
offers of peace, and Marius sent to him his quaestor 
Sylla, who, after much negotiation, induced the Mau¬ 
ritanian king to give up Jugurtha into the hands of 
the Romans, as the price of his own peace and secu¬ 
rity. Jugurtha followed in chains with his two sons, 
the triumph of Marius, after which he was thrown into 
a subterraneous dungeon, where he was starved to 
death, or, according to others, was strangled. His 
sons were sent to Venusia, where they lived in ob¬ 
scurity. The war against Jugurtha lasted five years ; 
it ended B.C. 106, and has been immortalized by the 
pen of Sallust. (Sail., Bell. Jug. — Plut., Vit. Mar.) 
“It is said,” observes Plutarch, “ that when Jugurtha 
was led before the car of the conqueror, he lost his 
senses. After the triumph he was thrown into prison, 
where, in their haste to strip him, some tore his robe 
off his back, and others, catching eagerly at his pen¬ 
dants, pulled off the tips of his ears along with them. 
When he was thrust down naked into the dungeon, all 
confused, he said, with a frantic smile, ‘Heavens! how 
cold is this bath of yours !’ There, having struggled 
for six days with extreme hunger, and to the last hour 
labouring for the preservation of life, he came to such 
an end as his crimes deserved.” (Plut., Vit. Mar.) 

Julia Lex, I. Agraria, proposed by Julius Caesar 
in his first consulship, A.U.C. 694. Its object was to 
distribute the lands of Campania and Stella to 20,000 
poor citizens, who had three children or more. (Cic., 
Ep. ad Att., 2, 16.— Veil. Paterc., 2, 44.)—II. An¬ 
other by the same, entitled de Publicams, about re¬ 
mitting to the farmers-general a third part of what 
they had stipulated to pay. (Cic., pro Plane., 16.— 
Suet., Vit. Jul., 20.)—III. Another by the same, for 
the ratification of all Pompey’s acts in Asia. (Suet., 
1. c.)—-IV. Another by the same, de Provinciis ordi - 
nandis. This was an improvement on the Cornelian 
law about the provinces, and ordained that those who 
had been praetors should not command a province 


above one year, and those who had been consuls not 
above two years. It also ordained that Achaia, Thes¬ 
saly^ Athens, and, in fact, all Greece, should be free, 
and should Use their own laws. (Cic., Phil., 1, 8.— 
Id. in Pis., 16.— Dio Cass., 43, 25.)—V. Another 
by the same, deJudicibus, ordering the Judices to be 
chosen from the senators and equites, and not from 
the tribuni cerarii. (Sueton., Vit. Jul., 41.— Cic., 
Phil., 1, 9.)—VI. Another by the same, de Rep- 
etundis, very severe against extortion. It is said 
to have contained above 100 heads. (Cic., Ep. ad 
Fam., 8, 7.— Suet., Vit. Jul., 43.)—VII. Another by 
the same, de liberis proscriptorum, that the children 
of those proscribed by Sylla should be admitted to 
enjoy preferments. (Sueton., Vit. Jul., 41.)—VIII. 
Another by the same. This was a sumptuary law. 
It allowed an expenditure of 200 sesterces on the dies 
profesli, 300 on the Calends, nones, ides, and some 
other festivals ; 1000 at marriage feasts, and similar 
extraordinary entertainments. Gellius ascribes this 
law to Augustus, but it seems to have been enacted in 
succession by both Csesar and him. By an edict of 
Augustus or Tiberius, the allowance for an entertain¬ 
ment was raised, in proportion to its solemnity, from 
300 to 2000 sesterces. (Aulus Gellius, 2, 24.— Dio 
Cass., 54, 2.)—IX. Another by Augustus, concerning 
marriage, entitled de Maritandis Ordinibus. (Vid. 
Papia-Poppaea Lex.)—X. Another by the same, de 
adulteriis, punishing adultery.—XI. Another, de tu- 
toribus, by the same. It enacted that guardians 
should be appointed for orphans in the provinces, as at 
Rome, by the Atilian Law. (Just., Inst. Atil. Tut.) 

Julia, I. a daughter of Julius Caesar by Cornelia, 
celebrated for her beauty and the virtues of her char¬ 
acter. She had been affianced to Servilius Caepio, 
and was on the point of being given to him in mar¬ 
riage, when her father bestowed her upon Pompey. 
(Pint., Vit. Pomp., 47.— Appian, Bel. Civ., 1, 14.) 
Julia possessed great influence both over her father and 
husband, and, as long as she lived, prevented any out¬ 
break between them. Her sudden death, however, in 
childbed, severed the tie that had in some degree 
bound Pompey to his father-in-law, and no private 
considerations any longer existed to allay the jealousies 
and animosities which political disputes might enkin- 
ble between them. The amiable character of Julia, 
and her constant affection for her husband, gained for 
her the general regard of the people ; and this they 
testified by insisting on celebrating her funeral in the 
Campus Martius, a compliment scarcely ever paid tc 
any woman before. It is said that Pompey had al 
ways loved her tenddrly, and the purity and happiness 
of his domestic life is one of the most delightful points 
in his character. (Sueton., Vit. Jul., 21.— Id. ib., 
26.— Id. ib., 84.)—II. The sister of Julius Cajsar. 
She married M. Attius Balbus, and became by him 
the mother of Octavia Minor and Augustus. (Sue¬ 
ton., Vit. Jul., 74.— Id., Vit. Aug., 4.— Id. ib., 8.) 
—III. The aunt of Julius Csesar. At her decease, 
her nephew pronounced an eulogy over her remains 
from the rostra. (Sueton., Vit. Jul., 6.)—IV. The 
daughter of Augustus by his first wife Scribonia. As 
he had no children by Livia, whom he had subsequent¬ 
ly espoused, Julia remained sole heiress of the emper¬ 
or, and the choice of her husband became a matter of 
great importance. She was first married to her cousin 
Claudius Marcellus, the nephew of Augustus by his 
sister Octavia {Tacit., Ann., 1, 3.— Sueton., Vit. Aug., 
63), and the individual celebrated by Virgil in those 
famous lines of the sixth JEneid, for which Octavia so 
largely rewarded him. But Marcellus dying young 
and without children, Augustus selected for the second 
husband of his daughter his oldest friend and most 
useful adherent, M. Vipsanius Agrippa. This mar¬ 
riage seemed to answer all the wishes of Augustus, for 
Julia became the mother of five children, Caius, Lu- 

699 



JULIA. 


J U L 


cius, Julia, Agrippina, and Agrippa Postumus. Agrip- 
padied A.U C. 741, and Julia was married, for the third 
time, to Tiberius Claudius Nero, the son of Livia, and 
afterward emperor. Tiberius subsequently, for whatev¬ 
er reasons, thought proper to withdraw from Rome to 
the island of Rhodes, where he lived in the greatest 
retirement. During his absence, his wife Julia was 
guilty of such gross infidelities towards him, that Au¬ 
gustus himself divorced her in the name of his son-in- 
lavs and banished her to the island of Pandataria, off 
the Campanian coast, where she was closely confined 
for some time, and treated with the greatest rigour; 
nor would Augustus ever forgive her, or receive her 
again into his presence, although he afterward removed 
her from Pandataria to Rhegium, and somewhat soft¬ 
ened the severity of her treatment. When her hus¬ 
band Tiberius ascended the throne, she was again se¬ 
verely dealt with, and finally died of ill-treatment and 
starvation {vtto icaiiovxiaq nai Xi/aov. — Zonaras, p. 
548.— Sueton., Vit. Aug., 63 .~ld., Vit. Aug., 65.— 
Id., Vit. Tib., 7. — Id. ib., 50.— Tacit., Ann., 1, 53.) 
—Y. The grand-daughter of Augustus, and daughter 
of Agrippa and Julia (IV). She was married to L. 
Paulus, but, imitating the licentious conduct of her 
mother, she was banished by Augustus for her adul¬ 
terous practices to the island of Tremitus, off the 
coast of Apulia, where she continued to live for the 
space of 20 years, and where at last she terminated 
her existence. {Tacit., Ann., 4, 71.)—VI. A daugh¬ 
ter of Drusus Caesar, the son of Tiberius, by Livia or 
Livilla, the daughter of Nero Claudius Drusus. She 
was married first to Nero Caesar, son of Germanicus 
and Agrippina, and afterward to Rubellius Blandus. 
She was cut off by the intrigues of Messalina, A.U.C. 
796. {Tacit., Ann., 3, 29.— Id. ib., 6, 27.— Id. ib., 
13, 19.)—VII. Daughter of Caligula and Milonia Cae- 
sonia. Her frantic father carried her to the temples 
of all the goddesses, and dedicated her to Minerva, 
as to the patroness of her education. She discovered 
in her infancy strong indications of the cruelty that 
branded both her parents. She suffered death with 
her mother after the assassination of Caligula. {Suc- 
ton., Vit. Calig., 25.— Id. ib., 59.)—VIII. A Syrian 
female, daughter of Bassianus, priest of the Sun. 
She became the wife of Severus before his advance¬ 
ment to the throne, and after the death of his first 
consort. The superstitious Roman was determined, 
it seems, in his choice, by hearing that Julia had been 
born with a royal nativity ; in other words, that she 
was destined to be the wife of a sovereign prince. 
{Spartian., Vit. Sev., 3, seqq.) Her full name was 
Julia Domna {Salmas., ad Spart., Vit. Sev., 20), the 
latter part of it not being contracted, as some sup¬ 
pose, from Domina, but being the actual surname of 
a family. {Tristan, Comment. Hist., vol. 2, p. 119, 
seqq — Menag., Amczn. Jur., c. 25,) Julia is said 
to have been a female of cultivated mind and con¬ 
siderable literary attainments. She applied herself 
also to the study of philosophy, and employed a large 
portion of her time in listening to, and taking part in, 
the disputations of philosophers and sophists. Hence 
Philostratus calls her (piXocrotyoq 'lovXia: {Vit. Soph¬ 
ist. — Philisc. — Op., ed. Morell, p. 617.) She dis¬ 
graced herself, however, by her adulterous practices, 
and is even said to have conspired on one occasion 
against the life of her own husband. {Spart., Vit. 
Sev., 18.) Julia became by Severus the mother 
of Caracalla and Geta, the latter of whom was slain 
in her arms by the orders of his brother, in which 
struggle she herself was wounded. To increase, if 
possible, the anguish she must naturally have felt on 
this occasion, the brutal Caracalla ordered her to sup¬ 
press every token of grief. {Spart., Vit. Ge 1 , 5.) 
After the death of Caracalla and the accession of 
Mactinus, she put an end to her existence by starva¬ 
tion, her death being hastened by a cancer on the 
700 


bosom, which she had purposely irritated by a blow 
{Bio Cass., 78, 23.) On the nature of her death, as 
well as on the question of her incestuous union with 
Caracalla, consult the remarks of Bayle, Hist. Diet., 
vol. 6, p. 448, seqq., in notis. 

Julianus, Flavius Claudius, son of Julius Con- 
stantius, brother of Constantine the Great, was born 
A.D. 331. After Constantine’s death, the soldiers 
massacred the brothers, nephews, and other relatives 
of that prince, in order that the empire should pass 
undisputed to his sons. {Vid. Constantius.) Two 
only escaped from this butchery, Julian, then six years 
old, and his half-brother Gallus, then thirteen years of 
age. Marcus, bishop of Arethusa, is said to have 
concealed them in a church. After a time, Constan¬ 
tius exiled Gallus into Ionia, and intrusted Julian to 
the care of Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia. Julian 
was instructed in Greek literature by Mardonius, a 
learned eunuch, who had been teacher to his mother 
Basilina. At the age of fourteen or fifteen he was 
sent to join his brother Gallus at Macellum, a castle 
in Cappadocia, where they were treated as princes, 
but closely watched. The youths were taught the 
Scriptures, and were even ordained lecturers, and in 
that capacity publicly read the Bible in the church of 
Nicomedia. It appears that Constantius had the in¬ 
tention of making a priest of Julian, who had no in¬ 
clination for that profession, and who is supposed to 
have already secretly abandoned the belief in the 
Christian doctrines. The death of Constans and Con¬ 
stantine having left Constantius the sole master of the 
Roman world, that emperor, who was childless, sent 
for Gallus in March, A.D. 351, and created him Cassar, 
and he allowed Julian to return to Constantinople to 
finish his studies. There Julian met with the sophist 
Libanius, who afterward became his friend and favour¬ 
ite. Constantius soon after again banished Julian to 
Nicomedia, where he became acquainted with some 
Platonic philosophers, who initiated him into their 
doctrines. He afterward obtained leave to proceed 
to Athens, where he devoted himself entirely to study. 
After the tragical death of Gallus in 355, Julian, who 
had again, for a time, awakened the jealous suspicions 
of his cousin, was recalled to court by the influence 
of the Empress Eusebia, his constant patroness, when 
Constantius named him Caesar, and gave him the gov¬ 
ernment of Gaul (which was then devastated by the 
German tribes), together with his sister Helena to wife. 
Julian made four campaigns against the Germans, in 
which he displayed great skill and valour, and freed 
Gaul from the barbarians, whom he pursued across the 
Rhine. He spent the winters at Lutetia {Paris), and 
became as much esteemed for his equitable and wise 
administration as for his military success. Constan¬ 
tius, always suspicious, ordered Julian to send him 
back some of the best legions in Gaul, to be employed 
against the Persians. When the time for marching 
came (A.D. 360), Julian assembled the legions at Lu¬ 
tetia, and there bade them an affectionate farewell, 
when an insurrection broke out among the soldiers, 
who saluted him as Augustus. Julian immediately 
sent messengers to Constantius to deprecate his wrath, 
but the death of the emperor happening at the time, 
left the throne open for him, A.D. 361. He proceed¬ 
ed to Constantinople, where, being proclaimed emper¬ 
or in December of the same year, he reformed the 
pomp and prodigality of the household, issued several 
wise edicts, corrected many abuses, and established a 
court at Chalcedon, to investigate the conduct of those 
who had abused their influence under the, preceding 
reign. Unfortunately, some innocent men were con¬ 
founded with the guilty, among others Ursulus, whose 
condemnation Ammianus deplores (22, 3). On assu¬ 
ming the purple, Julian had openly professed the old 
religion of Rome, and had sacrificed as high-priest to 
the gods; and though, at the same time, he had issued 




JU LI ANUS. 


JULIAN US. 


an edict of universal toleration, he soon showed a 
marked hostility to the Christians : he tpok the reve- 
nueS from the churches, and ordered that those who 
had assisted in pulling down the heathen temples 
should rebuild them. This was the signal for a fearful 
reaction and persecution against the Christians in the 
provinces, where many were imprisoned, tormented, 
and even put to death. Julian restrained or punished 
some of these disorders, but with no very zealous hand. 
There was evidently a determined struggle throughout 
the empire between the old and the new religion, and 
Julian wished for the triumph of the former. He for¬ 
bade the Christians to read, or teach others, the works 
of the ancient classic writers, saying that, as they re¬ 
jected the gods, they ought not to avail themselves 
of the learning and genius of those who believed in 
them. ( Juliani Op., Epist., 42, ed. Spanh.) He also 
forbade their filling any office, civil* or military, and 
subjected them to other disabilities and humiliations. 
Julian has been called “ the Apostate but it seems 
very doubtful whether, at any period of his life after 
his boyhood, he had been a Christian in heart. The 
bad example of the court of Constantius, and the 
schisms and persecutions that broke out in the bosom 
of the church, may have turned him against religion 
itself, while his vanity, of which he had a considerable 
share, and which was stimulated by the praises of the 
sophists, made him probably consider himself as des¬ 
tined to revive both the old religion and the glories of 
the empire. That he was no believer in the vulgar 
mythological fables is evident from his writings, es¬ 
pecially the piece called “ the Cassarsand yet he 
possessed great zeal for the heathen divinities, and he 
wrote orations in praise of the mother of the gods and 
the sun. Making every allowance for the difficulties 
of his position and the effect of early impressions, he 
may be fairly charged with a want of candour and of 
justice, and with much affectation bordering upon 
hypocrisy. If we choose to discard the invectives 
of Gregory of Nazianzus, of Cyril, and of Jerome, 
we may be allowed, at least, to judge him by the 
narrative of Ammianus, and by his own works, and the 
result is not favourable to his moral rectitude or his 
sobriety of judgment. A very learned and very tem- 
oerate modern writer, Cardinal Gerdil, in his “ Con¬ 
siderations sur Julien in the 10th volume of his 
works, has so judged him; he has founded his opin¬ 
ion, not on the fathers, but on the accounts of Julian’s 
panegyrists, Libanius and other heathen writers.—Ju¬ 
lian, having resolved on carrying on the war against 
the Persians, repaired to Antioch, where he resided 
for several months. His neglected attire, his un¬ 
combed beard, and the philosophical austerity of his 
habits, drew upon him the sarcasms of the corrupt pop¬ 
ulation of that city. The emperor revenged himself 
by writing a satire against them, called Mtaonwycdv 
(Misopogon ), and, what was worse, by giving them a 
rapacious governor.—It was during his residence at 
Antioch that Julian undertook to aim what he thought 
would prove a deadly blow to Christianity. An order 
was issued for rebuilding the temple of Jerusalem ; 
the Jews were invited from all the provinces of the 
empire, to assemble on the holy mountain of their fa¬ 
thers, and a bold attempt was thus made to falsify the 
language of ancient prophecy, and annul, if we may 
venture so to speak, the decree which had been pro¬ 
nounced by the Almighty against his once chosen, but 
now rejected, people. The accomplishment of this da¬ 
ring and impious scheme was intrusted to Alypius, 
who had been governor of Britain, and every effort was 
made to ensure its success, as well omthe part of the 
“ imperial sophist” as on that of the Jews themselves. 
But the attempt was an unavailing one, and was sig¬ 
nally and miraculously interrupted. Few historical 
facts, indeed, rest on graver and more abundant testi¬ 
mony. The narratives of Gregory of Nazianzus and 


of Rufinus are confirmed in the fullest manner by Am¬ 
mianus Marcellinus, himself a heathen writer: “When 
Alypius,” observes Ammianus, “ was plying the work 
vigorously, and the governor of the province was lend¬ 
ing his aid, fearful globes of fire, bursting forth repeat¬ 
edly from the earth close to the foundations, scorched 
the workmen, and rendered the place, after frequent 
trials on their part, quite inaccessible.” (,4mm. Mar 
cellinus , 23, 1.—Compare Rufin ., 10, 37.— Cassiod., 6, 
43.— Greg. Nazianz., Orat., 4.— Chrysostom, Homil., 3, 
adv. Jud.-—Socrates , 3, 20.— Sozomen, 5, 22.— Theodo 
retus, 3, 15.) The Jewish rabbis, in their annals, attest 
the same fact; and even Basnage, though a determined 
enemy to such miracles, is nevertheless compelled, 
when speaking of this Jewish testimony, to remark, 
“ Cet aveu des Rabins est d'autant plus considerable 
qu’il est injurieux a la nation , et que ces messieurs ne 
sont pas accoutumes a copier les ouvrages des Chretiens.” 
(Hist, des Juifs, liv. 6.) “ This specious and splendid 
miracle,” as Gibbon sneeringly terms it, has given 
rise to much diversity of opinion in modern times. 
Warburton strenuously advocates its authenticity, and 
most of the sounder theologians agree with him in 
this opinion. Lardner, however, doubts its truth. 
(Jewish and Heathen Testimonies, vol. 4, p. 47, seqq .) 
More sceptical writers speak of inflammable air, which 
had long been pent up in the vault under the temple- 
mountain, igniting and bursting forth on a sudden. 
(Consult Michaelis, Getting. Mag., 1783, page 772.) 
Salverte promptly settles the whole affair by suppo 
sing that it was merely the explosion of a mine, which 
had been prepared by the Christians ! (Des Sciences 
Occultes, vol. 2, p. 224.)—Let us now return to Julian- 
Having set off at length from Antioch on his Persian 
expedition, with a brilliant army reckoned at sixty 
five thousand men, he crossed the Euphrates, took 
several fortified towns of Mesopotamia, then crossed 
the Tigris, and made himself master of Ctesphon 
Here his progress ended. The close Roman legions 
were harassed on all sides by the light cavalry ol 
the Persians, and reduced to great distress for want 
of provisions. Still they presented a formidable front 
to the enemy, and Sapor, the Persian king, was in 
dined to come to terms, when, in the course of an 
attack made upon the Roman army while on its march 
Julian, whom the heat of the weather had induced 
to lay aside his cuirass, received a mortal wound in 
his side from a javelin. Being carried to his tent, 
he expired the following night (June 26th, A.D. 363). 
He died with perfect calmness and composure, sur¬ 
rounded by his friends, conversing on philosophical 
subjects, and expressing his satisfaction at his own 
past conduct since he had been at the head of the em¬ 
pire. His remains were carried to Tarsus in Cilicia, 
according to his directions, and his successor Jovian 
erected a monument to his memory. Such was the 
end of Julian, in the 32d year of his age, after a reign 
of one year and about eight months from the death ol 
Constantius. (Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 13, p. 144, 
seq. — Gibbon, Decline and Fall, c. 21, seqq.) —It is 
still a very common tradition, that when Julian felt 
himself wounded, he caught in the hollow of his hand 
some of the blood that issued from his side, and, fling¬ 
ing it in the air, exclaimed, “ Take thy fill, Gallic in; 
thou hast conquered me, but still do I renounce thee V' 
and that, after having thus blasphemed against our Sa¬ 
viour, he indulged in a thousand'imprecations against 
his own gods, by whom he saw himself abandoned. 
(Compare Sozom., 6, 2.) The whole is a mere fable. 
Equally undeserving of credit is another account, that 
Julian, having been placed, after receiving his wound, 
on the banks of a river, wished to precipitate himself 
into its waters, that he might pass away from the eyes 
of men, and be regarded as an immortal.—Julian had 
many brilliant, and some amiable qualities; his mor¬ 
als were pure, and even austere; his faults were chieflv 

701 



JTULIANUS. 


JULIANUS 


tnose of judgment, probably influenced by the impres¬ 
sions of early youth, an ardent and somewhat mystic 
imagination, and the flattery of those around him. Of 
all the writers of antiquity who have depicted the 
character of Julian, Ammianus Marcellinus appears to 
be the one who has done it with the most truth. This 
historian renders justice to the eminent qualities of Ju¬ 
lian, without, at the same time, concealing his defects. 
The perfect impartiality, the candour and frankness of 
this soldier, merit equal confidence both when he 
praises and condemns. As a writer, Julian deserves 
praise for the purity and eloquence of his style. It is 
apparent from his works that he had read all the clas¬ 
sical authors, for thev are filled with allusions to pas¬ 
sages of these authors, to their opinions, and to images 
and expressions employed by them. These allusions 
give sometimes to the writings of Julian a certain ob¬ 
scurity, because many of the productions to which he 
refers no longer exist. To most extensive reading he 
united much talent and much vigour of imagination. 
Morals, metaphysics, and theology, the last of which 
is with him nothing more than a species of allegorical 
metaphysics, were the subjects of which he treated in 
preference.—The works left by Julian are of three 
classes. 1 . Harangues. 2. Satires. 3. Letters .— 
With the exception merely of the fragments preserv¬ 
ed by St. Cyrill and Socrates, we have lost the work 
Against the Christians and against their creed. The 
Emperor Julian adopted every means by which, with¬ 
out openly persecuting Christianity, he might degrade 
it, and cause its followers to fall into contempt. A 
philosopher himself, he believed that there existed no 
surer mode of restoring paganism, at the expense of 
the new religion, than by attacking the latter through 
the means of a work full of strong arguments, and in 
which satire also should not be spared. A man of let¬ 
ters, he wanted not a large portion of self-complacency; 
and conceit ; and it appeared to him, that no one was 
more proper to be the author of such a work, than he 
who had studied the spirit of the two contending sys¬ 
tems of religion, and who had publicly declared him¬ 
self the patron of a form of worship fast sinking into 
oblivion, and the enemy of a religion, to the triumph 
of which he should have reflected that the safety of 
his own family was intimately attached. Such, no 
doubt, were the reasons which induced Julian to enter 
the lists against Christianity. He wrote his work du¬ 
ring the winter evenings which he spent at Antioch, 
in the last year of his life. Surrounded by pagan phi¬ 
losophers, who expected from this prince the complete 
re-establishment of the religion of their fathers, with 
which, in their blindness, they connected the renova¬ 
tion of the splendour and power of the Roman empire, 
the imperial author was encouraged by their suffrages, 
and no doubt aided by their abilities. Apollinarius of 
Laodicea repelled the attack of Julian by the arms of 
reason alone; exposing, in a treatise which he wrote 
“ on Truth,” the dogmas of the heathen philosophers 
respecting Deity, and that, too, without at all calling 
in the Holy Scriptures to the aid of hi3 argument. 
This work of Apollinarius must have been composed 
in a very short time after the appearance of the emper¬ 
or’s treatise, since Julian appears to have read it before 
he quitted Antioch, March 5th, A.D. 363. Julian pre¬ 
tended to contemn his opponent, and wrote to certain 
bishops of the church this paltry jeu de mots: ’Av- 
kyv cjv, eyvov, Kareyvov, “I have read, comprehended, 
condemned it.” To this one of them, probably St. 
Basil, replied, ’Aveyvug, aXh' ovk eyvog- el yap eyvcog, 
ova av Kareyvog, “ Thou hast read, but not com¬ 
prehended it; for if thou hadst comprehended it thou 
wouldst not have condemned it.” Fifty years, how¬ 
ever, elapsed before the work of Julian was completely 
refuted by productions carefully composed, and which 
entered into a detail of the sophisms which had been 
advanced against Christianity and the character of its 
702 


Divine founder. Either the subject was considered, m 
the interval, as completely exhausted, or else the dread¬ 
ful catastrophe which terminated the life of Julian, and 
which was viewed as a punishment inflicted by Divine 
vengeance, had caused his writings to fall into neglect. 
After the period of time above alluded to, Philip of 
Side, St. Cyrill of Alexandrea, and Theodoret, under¬ 
took the task of completely prostrating the arguments 
of the “apostate emperor,” and it is to the work of St. 
Cyrill that we owe our knowledge of a part of that ot 
Julian. From this refutation, which bears the follow¬ 
ing title, 'Ttt ep rfjg rtiv XpurrLavtiv evayovg ■d-prja 
Keiag, upog ra rov hv ddioig ’lovhcavov, “ Of the holy 
religion of the Christians , in reply to the writings of 
the impious Julian ,” we learn that it was divided into 
seven books, each of small extent ; and that the first 
three bore this title : ’AvaorpocpTj ruv ’Evayyshluv, 
“ The Overthrow of the Gospels.’ 1 ' 1 These are the 
only ones which St. Cyrill has taken the trouble to 
refute. It is not difficult to perceive that an adroit 
sophist, such as Julian was, could easily give to his 
work a specious appearance, calculated to impose on 
weak and shallow minds, especially when the author 
himself was surrounded by all the adventitious circum¬ 
stances of rank and power. The mode adopted by 
Julian, of appearing to draw his arguments against 
Christianity from the Scriptures themselves, gives an 
air of candour and credibility to a work ; but it re¬ 
quires no great acumen to show, that Julian either did 
not understand, or else affected to misunderstand, the 
doctrines which he combated ; and that he has pervert¬ 
ed facts and denied indubitable truths. The success 
which his work would no doubt have had if his life had 
been prolonged, would only have been due to the tal¬ 
ent which he possessed in wielding the arms of ridi¬ 
cule ; arms the more dangerous, because the wounds 
which they inflict never cicatrize, and because malevo¬ 
lence, taking pleasure in believing what is false, closes 
its eyes against the truth when the latter undertakes 
to destroy that falsity. It was by the aid of the refu¬ 
tation of St Cyrill, mentioned above, that the Marquis 
d’Argens undertook in the 18th century to restore the 
lost work of Julian. It was published in Greek and 
French, at Berlin , 1764, in 8vo, and reprinted in the 
same city in 1767. Had the object of this individual 
been to manifest to the world the errors of the Ro¬ 
man infidel, and to teach the pretended philosophers 
of the day how little philosophy has to advance that is 
worthy of reliance when religion is the theme, his un¬ 
dertaking would have been a laudable one. But such 
was not the end which the Marquis d’Argens had in 
view. If he did not dare to declare openly for Julian, 
he yet could find a thousand reasons for excusing his 
conduct. The consequence has been, that the produc 
tion of D’Argens has been attacked by two German 
scholars, and the latter of the two has combated with 
so much success the sophisms and falsities in question, 
that, after having read the two works, every unpreju 
diced mind will acknowledge that the production of 
the French philosopher has been completely refuted. 
The first of the German writers just alluded to, G. F. 
Meier , published his work in 1764, at Halle, in 8vo, 
under the following title: “ Beurtheilung der Betrach - 
tungen des herrn Marquis v. Argens, iiber den Kaiser 
Julian;” the other, W. Crichton, who was subse¬ 
quently a clergyman at Konigsberg, entitled his pro¬ 
duction, “ Betrachtungen ubcr des Kaiser Julian Ab- 
fall von der Christlichen Religion , und Vertheidigung 
des Heidenthums, ’ JIalle , 1 /65, 8vo.—"We will now 
pass to an enumeration of the works of Julian that have 
come down to our own times. 1. ’E yKUfuov irpog 
rov A vToupdropa K uvaravnov, “ Eloge on the Em¬ 
peror Constantins.” 2. nepi ruv avroKparopog npu.%- 
euv, r) Tvepl (dacileLag, “ Of the actimis of an em¬ 
peror, or of government.” 3. ‘E yuupiov E vcebtag 
rijg B acthidog, “ Eloge on the Empress Eusebio. ” 





JULIANUS. 


JULIANUS. 


These thro 3 productions were composed by Julian in 
his youth, when he was striving to conciliate the fa¬ 
vour of Constantius, on whom his fortunes depended. 
They contain some fine thoughts, and are written with 
more simplicity than one would expect in composi¬ 
tions at this period. In the first of these harangues, 
Julian had to pronounce a eulogy on one who had been 
the murderer of his father, of his brother, in a word, 
as he himself says on another occasion, the execution¬ 
er of his family, and his personal enemy. It was a 
theme worthy the pliant and fertile genius of the art¬ 
ful Julian, but just decorated with the title of Csesar 
by that very Constantius who had on other occasions 
sought for pretexts to destroy him. To dissemble, 
then, the faults of this prince, and to exaggerate his 
good qualities, in such a panegyric, would be the aim 
proposed to himself by the writer; and yet, it must in 
justice be remarked, that, with some exceptions, the 
character of Constantius, as drawn by Julian, coincides 
in its general features with that delineated by the his¬ 
torians of the time. In the second harangue, written 
probably after he had resided some years in Gaul, Ju¬ 
lian but ill conceals his inclination towards paganism. 
He openly professes in this piece the doctrine of Plato 
and the heathen philosophers, and constantly affects to 
substitute the plural form “ gods” for the singular 
“ God.” The third of these discourses, addressed to 
the princess to whom Julian owed his life and his dig¬ 
nity of Csesar, is too profusely adorned, and burdened, 
as it were, with erudition.—4. E ig tov BaotXea "H 7u- 
ov, “In honour of the Sun, the monarch .” A dis¬ 
course addressed to the prefect --Sallustius.—5. E ig 
ttjv pirepa i9 eC:v, “ In Honour of the Mother of the 
Gods.” These two productions are full of enthusi¬ 
asm, and are written in a species of poetical prose. 
They contain many allegorical allusions, which to us 
can only appear frigid and ridiculous. In the system 
of Julian, the world existed from all eternity ; but 
there existed at the same time a succession of causes, 
the principal one of which was the Being who subsist¬ 
ed cf himself, the Being supremely good, the primary 
sun : the other causes or principles, namely, the intel¬ 
ligent world without any sun, and the visible sun, 
were produced from the primary cause, but necessarily 
and from all eternity : Cybele, or the mother of the 
gods, belongs to the third generative principle, and ap¬ 
pears to identify herself with it; Attis or Gallus is an 
attribute of this principle, and consequently of Cybele; 
and seems, moreover, to make part of the fifth body, 
which is the soul of the sun and the soul of the uni¬ 
verse. Such was the ridiculous jargon which the 
“wise” and “philosophic” Julian preferred to the rev¬ 
elations of Christianity ! According to the account of 
Libanius, Julian employed only a single night in the 
composition of each of these two discourses : both 
were written A.D. 362 ; the second at Pessinus in 
Phrygia, whither Julian had gone to re-establish the 
worship of Cybele.—6. E Ig rove; dircudevTOVc Kvvap, 
“ Against the ignorant Cynics.” —7. n pog 'Hpuichei- 

OV KWLK.OV, TTEpl TOV 7 TWf KVVLGTEOV, Kai EL TTpETZEL TO) 

kvvl pvdovc 7T/1 6.TTELV, “ Unto the Cynic Heraclius ; 
how one ought to be a Cynic , and whether it is becom¬ 
ing in a Cynic to compose fables.” In these two dis¬ 
courses or memoirs Julian defines the idea which, ac¬ 
cording to him, ought to be entertained of the philos¬ 
ophy of Diogenes. He blames the false cynics of his 
time for openly divulging things of a sacred nature. 
The second discourse contains some very curious ma¬ 
terials for history. Under pretence of showing to 
Heraclius how one may introduce a fable into a dis¬ 
course of a serious nature, the writer has inserted an 
allegorical narrative, which is, in fact, the history of 
Constantine, of his sons, and his nephew.—8. ’E7r£ ry 
££66(0 tov dyaOoT&Tov SaXXovcTtov TtapayvOyriKog, 
“ Consolation on the departure of the excellent Sallus- 
tius.” This prefect of Gaul, the friend and adviser of 


Julian, had been recalled by Constantius, who wished 
to deprive his cousin of the aid that was to be derived 
from his great information and experience, and to 
which the jealousy of the emperor attributed the suc¬ 
cesses of the young prince. The farewell which Ju¬ 
lian takes of his friend is interesting and affecting, and 
does honour to his feelings: he puts it in the mouth of 
Pericles compelled to part from Anaxagoras.—9. “Me¬ 
moir addressed to the philosopher Themistius.” This 
morceau, to which the philosopher has given the form 
of a letter, has no title : the editors of Julian, how¬ 
ever, have separated it, on account of its length, from 
the other letters of this prince. Themistius had felici¬ 
tated Julian on his nomination as Csesar ; and foresee¬ 
ing, no doubt, that the young prince would succeed to 
the empire, had traced for him the line of his duty, and 
laid before him what the world expected at his hands. 
Julian replies to this letter with the greatest ability and 
moderation.—10. Manifesto against the Emperor Con¬ 
stantius, in the form of a letter to the senate and peo¬ 
ple of Athens. Julian addresses, as he says, his justi¬ 
fication for taking up arms against Constantius, to the 
people of Athens, on account of the love of justice 
exhibited by them in ancient times. It is a piece ex¬ 
tremely important in an historical point of view, since 
Julian, no longer caring for his cousin, exposes the 
crimes and weaknesses of this emperor. The letter 
appears to have been written a short time previous to 
the death of Constantius.— 11. Along fragment of a 
letter to a pagan pontiff, containing instructions rela¬ 
tive to the duties to be performed towards the minis¬ 
ters of paganism, of whom Julian, by virtue of his im¬ 
perial station, was sovereign pontiff. This letter ap¬ 
pears to have been written during his stay at Antioch. 
Setting aside the slanders which this piece contains 
against the Christians, it may be regarded as well de¬ 
serving a perusal.—12. K aioapep, 1/ hv/airomov, “ The 
Cccsars , or the Banquet.” This is one of the most 
talented productions of Julian, and, if we throw out of 
consideration the impious allusions which it contains, 
one of the most agreeable effusions of antiquity. It 
is a faithful and true picture of the virtues and vices of 
the predecessors of Julian. The plan of the work is 
as follows. He relates to a friend a story in the form 
of a dialogue, after the manner of Lucian. Romulus, 
named Quirinus after his apotheosis, gives a feast at 
the Saturnalia, and invites all the gods to it. Wish¬ 
ing, at the same time, to regale the Caesars, he causes 
a separate table to be set for them below the moon, in 
the upper region of the air. The tyrants, who would 
have disgraced the society of gods and men, are thrown 
headlong, by the inexorable Nemesis, into the Tarta¬ 
rean abyss. The rest of the Caesars advance to their 
seats, and, as they pass, they undergo the scrutiny and 
remarks of Silenus. A controversy arises about the 
first place, which all the gods adjudge to Marcus Au¬ 
relius. This recital affords Julian an opportunity of 
painting the character of his uncle, the Emperor Con¬ 
stantine, whom he represents as an effeminate man 
and a debauchee.—13. ’A vTioxtuoq, fj MiooTrtbyov, 
“ The inhabitant of Antioch, or the Beard-hater.” In 
this satire, filled with pleasantries of a forced charac¬ 
ter, Julian avenges himself on the people of Antioch, 
who had amused themselves with the philosophic cos¬ 
tume which he affected. He draws, in a pleasant man¬ 
ner, his own portrait, describing his own figure, his 
beard, and his unpolished manners ; and while he 
makes an ironical confession of his own faults, he in¬ 
dulges in a severe satire on the licentious and effem¬ 
inate manners of Antioch. The work betrays marks 
of the precipitation with which it was composed ; for 
it is full of repetitions.—We have also ninety letters 
of Julian: these are not treatises of a philosophical or 
moral nature, to which the epistolary form has been 
given ; they are genuine letters, written in the course 
of correspondence with others ; though occasionally 

703 



a rescript or decision given by Julian as sovereign is 
found among them. These letters are interesting from 
the light which they shed on the character of the prince, 
and on some of the events of the day. The 43d is an 
ordinance by which public instruction is forbidden to 
the Christians. Among the correspondents of Julian, 
they to whom the greater number of letters is address¬ 
ed are the sophist Libanius, and the New-Platonist 
*amblichus, for whom Julian professed a great venera¬ 
tion.—The best edition of the Casars of Julian is that 
of Heusinger, Gotha., 1736, 8vo. It contains the text 
corrected by MSS., a Latin and a French translation, 
and a selection of notes from previous commentators. 
The edition of Harless, Erlang., 1785, 8vo, is also 
held in estimation. The best edition of the entire 
works is that of Spanheim, Lips., 1696, fol. None of 
the editions of the works of Julian contain, however, 
all his letters. To those in the edition of Spanheim, 
we must add the letters given by Muratori, in his An- 
ecdota Graeca, Palavii, 1709, 4to. Fabricius inserted 
these in his Bibliotheca Grczca, vol. 7, p. 84 (vol. 6, 
p. 734 of the new edition). This scholar also made 
known eleven other letters, in his Lux salutaris Evan- 
gehi, Hamb., 1731. These form altogether a collec¬ 
tion of seventeen epistles, which may be found in the 
third volume of the works of Julian, translated by 
Tourlet, Paris, 1831, 8vo. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., 
vol. 6, p. 188, seqq.) 

Julii or Julia Gens, a celebrated Roman family, 
which pretended to trace its origin to the mythic lu¬ 
lus, son of HSneas. Its principal branch was that of 
the Libos, which, about the close of the fifth century 
of Rome, took the name of Caesar. ( Vid. Caesar.) 

Juliomagus, a city of Gaul, the capital of the An- 
decavi, situate on a tributary of the Liger or Loire , 
near its junction with that river, and to the northeast 
of Narnnetes or Nantz. It was afterward called An- 
decavi, from the name of the people, and is now An¬ 
gers. {Vid. Andecavi.) 

Juliopolis, a city of Galatia. {Vid. Gordium.) 

Iulis, the chief town of the island of Ceos, situate 
on a hill about 25 stadia from the sea, and which is 
probably represented by the modern Zea, which gives 
its name to the island. (Note to the French Strabo, 
vol. 4, p. 164, from a MS. tour of Villoison.) It was 
the birthplace of two of the greatest lyric poets of 
Greece, Simonides and his nephew Bacchylides ; also 
of Erasistratus the physician, and Ariston the Peripa¬ 
tetic philosopher. ( Strabo, 486.) It is said that the 
laws of this town decreed that every man, on reaching 
his sixtieth year, should destroy himself by poison, in 
order to leave to others a sufficient maintenance. 
This ordinance is said to have been first promulgated 
when the town was besieged by the Athenians. {Stra¬ 
bo, l. c. — Heracl., Pont. Polit. fragm., 9. — JElian., V. 
H., 3, 37.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 402.) 

Julius, I. Caesar. ( Vid. Caesar.)—II. Agricola, a 
governor of Britain. {Vid. Agricola.) — III. Obse- 
quens. ( Vid. Obsequens.) — IV. Solinus, a writer. 
{Vid. Solinus.)—V. Titianus, a writer. ( Vid. Titia- 
nus.)—VI. Africanus, a chronologer. {Vid. Africa- 
nus I.) — VII. Pollux, a grammarian of Naucratis, in 
Egypt. {Vid. Pollux.) 

Iulus, I. the name of Ascanius, the son of TEneas. 
{Vid. Ascanius.)—II. A son of Ascanius, born in La- 
vinium. In the succession to the kingdom of Alba, 
iEneas Sylvius, the son of JEneas and Lavinia, was 
preferred to him. He was, however, made chief priest. 
{Dion. Hal., 1, 70.)—III. A son of Antony the tri¬ 
umvir, andFulvia. ( Vid. Antonius VII.) 

Junia Lex, I. a law proposed by M. Junius Pen- 
nus, a tribune, and passed A.U.C. 627, about expell¬ 
ing foreigners from the city.—II. Another, by M. Ju¬ 
nius Silanus, the consul, A.U.C. 644, about diminish¬ 
ing the number of campaigns which soldiers should 
serve.—III. Licinia, or Junia et Licinia , enforcing 
704 


the Didian law about expenditure by severer penal* 
ties.—IV. Norbana, by L. Junius Norbanus, the con¬ 
sul, A.U.C. 771, that slaves who had been manu¬ 
mitted in any of the less solemn ways should not ob¬ 
tain the full rights of Roman citizens, but only those 
of the Latins who were transplanted into colonies. 
{Plin., Ep., 10, 105.) 

Juno, a Roman divinity, identical with the Grecian 
Hera, and to be considered, therefore, in one and the 
same article with the latter. In Homer, this goddess 
is one of the children of Saturn and Rhea, and the sis 
ter and wife of Jupiter. When the latter placed his 
sire in Tartarus, Rhea committed Juno to the care of 
Oceanus and Tethys, by whom she was nurtured in 
their grotto-palace. {II., 14, 202, seq.) Hesiod, who 
gives her the same parents, says that she was the last 
spouse of Jove, {Theog., 921.) According to the 
Argive legend, Jupiter effected his union with Juno by 
assuming first the form of a cuckoo. {Schol. ad Tlie- 
ocr., 15, 64.— Pausan., 2, 17.) In the Uia.d (for she 
does not appear in the Odyssey), Juno, as the queen 
of Jupiter, shares in his honours. The god is repre¬ 
sented as a little in awe of her tongue, yet daunting 
her by his menaces. On one occasion he reminds her, 
how once, when she had raised a storm, which drove 
his son Hercules out of his course at sea, he tied her 
hands together, and suspended her with anvils at her 
feet between heaven and earth {11., 15, 18, seqq.) ; and 
when her son Vulcan would aid her, he flung him down 
from Olympus. {II., 1, 590, seqq. —Compare II., 15, 
22.) In this poem the goddess appears dwelling in 
peace and harmony with Latona, Dione, Themis, and 
their children : later poets speak much, however, of 
the persecution which Latona underwent from the en 
mity of Juno, who also visited with severe inflictions 
Io, Semele, Alcmena, and other favourites of Jove. 
The children of Jupiter and Juno were Mars, Hebe, 
and the Ilithyiae, to whom some add the Graces. 
{Coluth., Rapt. Hel., 88, 173.) Vulcan was the pro¬ 
geny of Juno without a sire ; she was also said by 
some to have given origin to the monster Typhon. 
{Horn., Hymn., 2, 127, seqq.) In the mythic cycles 
of Bacchus and Hercules, Juno acts a prominent part 
as the persecutor of those heroes, on account of their 
being the offspring of Jupiter by mortal mothers. In 
like manner, as the goddess of Argos, she is active in 
the cause of the Achasi in the war of Troy. In the 
Argonautic cycle she is the protecting deity of the ad¬ 
venturous Jason. There is, in fact, no one of the 
Olympian deities more decidedly Grecian in feeling 
and character than Juno.—The chief seats of her wor¬ 
ship were Argos, Samos, and Plataea. She was also 
honoured at Sparta, Corinth, Corcyra, and other places. 
The victims offered to her were kine, ewe-lambs, and 
sows. The willow, the pomegranate, the dittany, the 
lily, were her sacred plants. Among birds, the cuc¬ 
koo, and afterward the peacock, were appropriated to 
the Olympian queen. {Vid. Argus, and consult re¬ 
marks under the article Io.) The peacock is an Indian 
bird, and, according to Theophrastus, was introduced 
into Greece from the East. Its Persian name at the 
present day is Taous. (Compare the Greek raejf.) 
Peafowl were first introduced into Samos; and being 
birds that gave indications, by their cry, of a change 
of weather, they were consecrated to Juno, and the le¬ 
gend was gradually spread, that Samos was their na¬ 
tive place.—The marriage of Jupiter and Juno was 
viewed as the pattern of those of mankind, and the 
goddess was held to preside over the nuptial league. 
Hence she was surnamed the Yoker {Zvyla), the 
Consecrator (T eAeia), the Marriage-Goddess (Ta- 
liykia. — Pronuba.) —Juno was represented by Poly- 
cletus as seated on a throne, holding in one hand a 
pomegranate, the emblem of fecundity, in the other a 
sceptre, with a cuckoo on its top. Her air is dignified 
and matronly, her forehead broad, her eyes large, and 




JUP 


JUPITER. 


ner arms finely formed. She is attired in a tunic and 
mantle.—The term r/ H pa is evidently the feminine of 
'Hpwf, anciently r Hpoq, and thus they answer to each 
other as the Latin Herus and Hera, and the German 
Herr and Herrin, and therefore signified master and 
mistress. —The name JUNO, on the other hand, is 
evidently derived from the Greek AIS2NH, the female 
AIS or ZETS.—The quarrels of Jupiter and Juno in 
the Homeric mythology are evidently mere physical 
allegories, Jupiter denoting the aether or upper regions 
of air, and Juno the lower strata, or our atmosphere. 
Hence the discord and strife that so often prevail be¬ 
tween the king and queen of Olympus, the master and 
mistress of the universe, are merely so many types of 
the storms that disturb our atmosphere, and the ever- 
varying changes that characterize the latter are plainly 
indicated by the capricious and quick-changing tem¬ 
per of the spouse of Jove. At a later period, how¬ 
ever, a new element appears to have entered into the 
mythology of Juno. The Earth, as the recipient of 
fertilizing showers from the atmosphere, became in a 
manner identified with the spouse of Father JEther; 
and we find Juno, now resembling in many of her at¬ 
tributes both Cybele and Ceres, appearing at one time 
as Earth, at another as the passive productive princi¬ 
ple. Hence the consecration of the cow to Juno, 
just as, in the religion of the ancient Germans, the 
cow was assigned to the service of the goddess Her- 
tha or Earth. At Argos, the chariot in which the 
priestess of Juno rode was drawn by oxen. {Herod., 
1, 31.) Cows were also sacred to the Egyptian Isis, 
the goddess of fertility, and who resembles in some 
of her attributes the Grecian Ceres. ( Knight, En¬ 
quiry into the Symb. Lang., &c., § 36.— Classical 
Journ., vol. 23, p. 227.— Keightley's Mythology, p. 
96, seqq. — Constant, de la Religion, vol. 1, p. 198.) 

Junonia, one of the Canary islands, or Insulas For¬ 
tunate. It is now Palma. ( Plin., 6, 32.) 

Junonis Promontorium, a promontory of Spain, on 
.he Atlantic side of the Straits of Gibraltar. It is now 
Cape Trafalgar. {Mela, 2, 6.) 

Jupiter, the supreme Roman deity, identical with 
the Grecian Zevq {Zeus). —Jupiter was the eldest son 
of Saturn and Rhea. He and his brothers, Neptune 
and Pluto, divided the world by lot between them, 
and the portion which fell to him was the “ extensive 
heaven in air and clouds.” {II., 13, 355.) All the 
aerial phenomena, such as thunder and lightning, wind, 
clouds, snow, and rainbows, are therefore ascribed to 
him, and he sends them either as signs and warnings, 
or to punish the transgressions of man, especially the 
perversions of law and justice, of which he is the 
fountain. {II., 1, 238, seqq.) Jupiter is called the 
“father of men and gods;” his power over both is 
represented as supreme, and his will is fate. Earthly 
monarchs obtain their authority from him {II., 2, 197, 
205); they are but his vicegerents, and are distin¬ 
guished by epithets derived from his name ; such as 
Jove-sprung {ALoyevr/q), Jove-reared {Acorpecj)^), Jove- 
beloved {Aiocpihog). In his palace on Olympus, Jove 
lives like a Grecian prince in the midst of his family; 
altercations and quarrels occur between him and his 
queen, Juno; and though, in general, kind and affec¬ 
tionate to his children, he occasionally menaces or 
treats them with rigour.—In the Odyssey, the char¬ 
acter of this god is, agreeably to the more moral 
tone of that poem, of a higher and more dignified or¬ 
der. No indecent altercations occur ; both gods and 
men submit to his power without a murmur, yet he 
is anxious to show the equity of his decrees and 
to “justify his ways.” {Od., 1 , 32.) — The Theog¬ 
ony of Hesiod represents Jupiter as the last-born 
child of Saturn and Rhea, and, according to it, the 
supreme power was freely conferred on him by his 
brothers, and he thus became the acknowledged head 
of the Olympian gods, the objects of Grecian wor¬ 


ship. (For his warfare with the Titans and Giants 
vid. Titanes and Gigantes.)—Though Homer name 
the parents of nearly all the gods who appear in hi 
poems, and it follows thence that they must hav 
been born in some definite places, he never indicate 
any spot of earth as the natal place of any of his de 
ities. A very ancient tradition, however (for it oc 
curs in Hesiod), made the isle of Crete the birthplac 
of the monarch of Olympus. According to this tradi 
tion, Rhea, when about to be delivered of Jupiter, re 
tired to a cavern near Lyctus or Cnosus in Crete 
She there brought forth her babe, whom the Melian 
nymphs received in their arms. Adrastea rocked him 
in a golden cradle; he was fed with honey and the milk 
of the goat Amalthea, while the Curetes danced abou 
him, clashing their arms, to prevent his cries from 
reaching the ears of Saturn. {Callim., Hymn, in Jov 
— Vid. Rhea, and Saturnus.) According to another 
account, the infant deity was fed on ambrosia, brough 
by pigeons from the streams of Ocean, and on nectar, 
which an eagle drew each day with his beak from a 
rock. {Atheneeus, 11, p. 490.) This legend was 
gradually pragmatized ; Jupiter became a mortal king 
of Crete; and not merely the cave in which he was 
reared, but the tomb which contained his remains, was 
shown by the “ lying Cretans.” (K pfjTeq del ipevarac. 
Callim , H. in Jov., v. 8.—Compare St. Paul, Ep. ad 
Tit., 1, 12.)—The Arcadians, on the other hand, as¬ 
serted that Jupiter first saw the light among their 
•mountains, and made Rhea to have brought him forth 
amid the thickets of Parrhasion. — All, therefore, that 
we can collect with safety from these accounts is, 
that the worship of the Dictsean Jupiter in Crete, and 
of the Lycsean Jupiter in Arcadia (for he was reared, 
said the Arcadians, in a cavern of Mount Lycaius), 
was of the most remote antiquity, and that thence, 
when the Euhemeristic principle began to creep in 
among the Greeks, each people supposed the deity to 
have been born among themselves. The Cretan le¬ 
gend must, however, be regarded as the most ancient, 
for the Arcadians evidently attempted to transfer the 
names of places in it to their own country.—In the 
Theogony, the celestial progeny of Jove are enumera¬ 
ted in the following order. {Theog., 886, seq.) Ju¬ 
piter first espoused Metis {Prudence), who exceeded 
gods and men in knowledge. But Heaven and Earth 
having told him that her first child, a maid, would 
equal him in strength and counsel, and her second, a 
son, would be king of gods and men, he cajoled her 
when she was pregnant, and swallowed her ; and, after 
a time, the goddess Minerva sprang from his head. 
He then married Themis, who bore him the Seasons 
and Fates. The ocean-nymph Eurynome next pro¬ 
duced him the Graces. Ceres then became by him 
the mother of Proserpina; Mnemosyne of the Muses ; 
and Latona of Apollo and Diana. His last spouse 
was Juno, who bore him Mars, Hebe, and Ilithyia.— 
According to Homer {11., 5, 370, seq.), Venus was 
the daughter of Jupiter and Dione. The Theogony 
farther says, that Maia, the daughter of Atlas, bore 
him Hermes {Theog., 938). A later fable stated 
that Asteria, the sister of Latona, flying the love of 
Jupiter, flung herself from heaven down to the sea, 
and became the island afterward known by the name 
of Delos.—Mortal women also bore a numerous pro¬ 
geny to the monarch of the sky, and every species of 
transmutation and disguise was employed by him to 
further his views. ( Vid. Alcmena, Antiope, Callisto, 
Danae, Europa, Leda, &c.) The various fables of 
which the monarch of the gods thus became the sub¬ 
ject, and which, while they derogate from his charac¬ 
ter of sovereign deity, have little, if anything, to recom¬ 
mend them on the score of moral purity, lose all their 
grossness if we regard them merely as so many alle- 
.gories, which typify the great generative power of the 
universe displaying itself in a variety of ways, and un 

705 



JUPITER. 


JUPITER. 


der the greatest diversity of forms.—It was the habit 
of the Greeks to appropriate particular plants and an¬ 
imals to the service of their deities. There was gen¬ 
erally some reason for this, founded on physical or 
moral grounds, or on both. Nothing could be more 
natural than to assign the oak {tyrjybg, quercus cescu- 
lus ), the monarch of trees, to the celestial king, whose 
ancient oracle, moreover, was in the oak-woods of Do- 
dona. In like manner, the eagle was evidently the 
bird best suited to his service. The celebrated iEgis, 
the shield which sent forth thunder, lightning, and dark¬ 
ness, and struck terror into mortal hearts, was formed 
for Jupiter by Vulcan. In Homer we see it sometimes 
borne by Apollo (E., 15, 508) and sometimes by Mi¬ 
nerva (I/., 5, 738.— Od., 22, 297).—The most famous 
temple of Jupiter was at Olympia in Elis, where, every 
fourth year, the Olympic Games were celebrated in 
his honour; he had also a splendid fane in the island 
of HSgina. But, though there were few deities less 
honoured with temples and statues, all the inhabitants 
of Hellas conspired in the duty of doing homage to the 
sovereign of the gods. His great oracle was at Dodo- 
na, where, even in the Pelasgian period, the Selli an¬ 
nounced his will and the secrets of futurity. (II., 16, 
233.)—Jupiter was represented by artists as the model 
of dignity and majesty of mien ; his countenance grave 
but mild. He is seated on a throne, and grasping his 
sceptre and thunder. The eagle is standing beside 
the throne.—An inquiry, of which the object should be 
to select and unite all the parts of the Greek mythol¬ 
ogy that have reference to natural phenomena and 
the changes of the seasons, although it has never been 
regularly undertaken, would doubtless show, that the 
earliest religion of the Greeks was founded on the 
same notions as the chief part of the religions of the 
East, particularly of that part of the East which was 
nearest to Greece, namely, Asia Minor. The Greek 
mind, however, even in this the earliest of its produc¬ 
tions, appears richer and more various in its forms, 
and, at the same time, to take a loftier and wider range, 
than is the case in the religion of the Oriental neigh¬ 
bours of the Greeks, the Phrygians, Lydians, and Syr¬ 
ians. In the religion of these nations, the combina¬ 
tion and contrast of two beings (Baal and Astarte), the 
one male, representing the productive, and the other 
female, representing the passive and nutritive powers 
of Nature ; and the alternation of two states, namely, 
the strength and vigour, and the weakness and death, 
of the male personification of Nature, the first of which 
was celebrated with vehement joy, the latter with ex- 
sirSsive lamentation, recur in a perpetual cycle, that 
must have wearied and stupified the mind. The Gre¬ 
cian worship of Nature, on the other hand, in all the 
various forms which it assumed in different quarters, 
places one Deity, as the highest of all, at the head of the 
entire system, the God of heaven and light , the Father 
JEther of the Latin poets. That this is the true mean¬ 
ing of the name Zeus (Jupiter) is shown by the occur¬ 
rence of the same root (DIU), with the same significa¬ 
tion, even in the Sanscrit, and by the preservation of 
several of its derivatives, which remained in common 
use both in Greek and Latin, all containing the no¬ 
tion of Heaven and Day. The root DIU is most clearly 
seen in the oblique cases of Zeus, AtFof, AdFt, in which 
the U has passed into the consonant form F (Digam¬ 
ma) ; whereas in Zevg, as in other Greek words, the 
sound DI has passed into Z, and the vowel has been 
lengthened. In the Latin Jovis ( Iuve in Umbrian) the 
D has been lost before I, which, however, is preserved 
in many other derivatives of the same root, as, dies, 
dium. —With this god of the heavens, who dwells in 
the pure expanse of ether, is associated, though not as 
a being of the same rank, a goddess worshipped under 
the name of Hera or Juno. The marriage of Zeus 
with this divinity was regarded as a sacred solemnity^ 
and typified the union d heaven and earth in the fer- 
706 


tilizing rains. Besides this goddess, other beings are 
associated on one side with the Supreme God, who 
are personifications of certain of his energies ; power¬ 
ful deities, who carry the influence of light over the 
earth, and destroy the opposing powers of darkness 
and confusion : such as Minerva, born from the head 
of her father, in the height of the heavens ; and Apollo, 
the pure and shining god of a worship belonging to 
other races, but who, even in his original form, was a 
god of light. On the other side are deities allied 
with the earth, and dwelling in her dark recesses ; 
and as all life appears not only to spring from the earth, 
but to return to that whence it sprung, these deities 
are, for the most part, also connected with death ; as 
Hermes or Mercury, who brings up the treasures of 
fruitfulness from the depth of the earth, and the child, 
now lost and now recovered by her mother Ceres, 
Proserpina (Cora) the goddess both of flourishing and 
of decaying nature. It was natural to expect that 
the element of water (Neptune or Poseidon) should 
also be introduced into this assemblage of the per¬ 
sonified powers of Nature, and should be peculiarly 
combined with the goddess of the Earth : and that 
fire (Vulcan or Hephasstus) should be represented as a 
powerful principle, derived from heaven and having 
dominion on the earth, and be closely allied with the 
goddess who sprang from the head of the god of the 
heavens. Other deities are less important and neces¬ 
sary parts of this same system, as Venus (Aphrodite), 
whose worship was evidently, for the most part, prop¬ 
agated over Greece from Cyprus and Cythera, by the 
influence of Syrophoenician tribes. As a singular be¬ 
ing, however, in the assembly of the Greek divinities, 
stands the changeable god of flourishing, decaying, 
and renovated Nature, Bacchus or Dionysus, whose 
alternate joys and sufferings, and marvellous adven¬ 
tures, show a strong resemblance to the form which 
religious notions assumed in Asia Minor. Introduced 
by the Thracians (a tribe which spread from the north 
of Greece into the interior of the country), and not, 
like the gods of Olympus, recognised by all the races 
of the Greeks, Bacchus always remained to a certain 
degree estranged from the rest of the gods, although 
his attributes had evidently most affinity with those of 
Ceres and Proserpina. But in this isolated position 
Bacchus exercises an important influence on the spirit 
of the Greek nation, and both in sculpture and poetry 
gave rise to a class of feelings, which agree in dis¬ 
playing more powerful emotions of the mind, a bolder 
flight of the imagination, and more acute sensations 
of pain and pleasure, than were exhibited on occasions 
where this influence did not operate. Tn like manner, 
the Homeric Poems (which instruct us not merely by 
their direct statements, but also by their indirect allu¬ 
sions ; not only by what they say, but also by what 
they do not say), w r hen attentively considered, clearly 
show how this ancient religion of nature sank into the 
shade as compared with the salient and conspicuous 
forms of the deities of the heroic age. The gods who 
dwell on Olympus scarcely appear at all in connexion 
with natural phenomena. Zeus chiefly exercises his 
power as a ruler and king; although he is still desig¬ 
nated (by epithets doubtless of high antiquity) as the 
god of the ether and the storms; as in much later 
times the old picturesque expression was used, “ What 
is Zeus doing 1” for “What kind of weather is it!” 
In the Homeric conception of Minerva and Apollo, 
there is no trace of any reference of these deities to 
their earlier attributes. Vulcan also has passed, from 
the powerful god of fire in heaven and on earth, into a 
laborious smith and worker of metals, who performs 
his duty by making armour and weapons for the other 
gods and their favourite heroes. As to Mercury, there 
are some stories in which he is represented as giving 
fruitfulness to cattle, in his capacity of the rural god 
of Arcadia; from which, by means of various meta- 






JUS 


JUS 


murphoses, he is transmuted, into the messenger of 
Zeus and the servant of the gods. ( Muller , Hist. 
Gr. Lit., p. 13, seqq.) 

Jura, a chain of mountains, which, extending from 
the Rhodanus or Rhone to the Rhenus or Rhine, 
separated Helvetia from the territory of the Sequani. 
The name is said to be in Celtic, Jou-rag, and to sig¬ 
nify the domain of God or Jupiter. The most ele¬ 
vated parts of the chain are the Dole , 5083 feet above 
the level of the sea; the Mont Tendre, 5170; and the 
Reculet (the summit of the Thoiry ), 5196. ( Plin ., 3, 
4 .—Coes., B. C., 1, 3.— Ptol., 3, 9.) 

Justinian us, Flavius, bom near Sardica in Mcesia, 
A.D. 483 or 483, of obscure parents, was nephew by 
his mother’s side to Justinus, afterward emperor. The 
elevation of his uncle to the imperial throne, A.D. 518, 
decided the fortune of Justinian, who, having been 
educated at Constantinople, had given proofs of con¬ 
siderable capacity and application. Justinus was igno¬ 
rant and old, and the advice and exertions of his neph¬ 
ew were of great service to him during the nine years 
of his reign. He adopted Justinian as his colleague, 
and at length, a few months before his death, feeling 
that his end was approaching, he crowned him in pres¬ 
ence of the patriarch and senators, and made over the 
imperial authority to him, in April, 537. Justinian was 
then in his 45th year, and he reigned above 38 years, 
till November, 565, when he died. His long reign 
forms a remarkable epoch in the history of the world. 
Although himself unwarlike, yet, by means of his 
able generals, Belisarius and Narses, he completely 
defeated the Vandals and the Goths, and reunited 
Italy and Africa to the empire. Justinian was the last 
emperor of Constantinople, who, by his dominion over 
the whole of Italy, reunited in some measure the two 
principal portions of the ancient empire of the Cassars. 
On the side of the East, his arms repelled the inroads 
of Chosroes, and conquered Colchis ; and the Negus, 
or king of Abyssinia, entered into an alliance with 
nim. On the Danubian frontier, the Gepidae, Lango- 
bardi, Bulgarians, and other hordes, were either kept 
in check or repulsed. The wars of his reign are re¬ 
lated by Procopius and Agathias.—Justinian must be 
viewed also as an administrator and legislator of his 
vast empire. In the first capacity he did some good 
and much harm. He was both profuse and penurious; 
personally inclined to justice, he often overlooked, 
through weakness, the injustice of subalterns ; he es¬ 
tablished monopolies of certain branches of industry 
and commerce, and increased the taxes. But he in¬ 
troduced the rearing of silkworms into Europe, and 
the numerous edifices which he raised ( vid. Isidorus 
IV.), and the towns which he repaired or fortified, at¬ 
test his love for the arts, and his anxiety for the secu¬ 
rity and welfare of his dominions. Procopius (“De 
cedificiis Domini Justinian i”) gives a notice of the 
towns, churches (St. Sophia among the rest), convents, 
bridges, roads, walls, and fortifications constructed or 
repaired during his reign. The same Procopius, how¬ 
ever, wrote a secret history (’A vekSoto) of the court 
and reign of Justinian, and his wife Theodora, both 
of whom he paints in the darkest colours. Theodora, 
indeed, was an unprincipled woman, with some abili¬ 
ties, who exercised, till her death in 548, a great influ¬ 
ence over the mind of Justinian, and many acts of op¬ 
pression and cruelty were committed by her orders. 
But yet the Anecdota of Procopius cannot be impli¬ 
citly trusted, as many of his charges are evidently 
misrepresentations or malignant exaggerations.—Jus¬ 
tinian was easy of access, patient of hearing, courte¬ 
ous and affable in discourse, and perfect master of his 
temper. In the conspiracies against his authority and 
person, he often showed both justice and clemency. 
He excelled in the private virtues of chastity and 
temperance ; his meals were short and frugal; on sol¬ 
emn fast he contented himself with water and vege¬ 


tables, and he frequently passed two days and as many 
nights without tasting any food. He allowed himself 
little time for sleep, and was always up before the 
morning light. His restless application to business 
and to study, as well as the extent of his learning, have 
been attested even by his enemies ('Ave/cdora, c. 8, 
13). He was, or professed to be, a poet and philoso¬ 
pher, a lawyer and theologian, a musician and archi¬ 
tect ; but the brightest ornament of his reign is the 
compilation of Roman law, which has immortalized his 
name, and an accouut of which will be found under 
the article Tribonianus. Unfortunately, his love of 
theological controversy led him to interfere with the 
consciences of his subjects, and his penal enactments 
against Jews and heretics display a spirit of mischiev¬ 
ous intolerance which has ever since afforded a dan¬ 
gerous authority for religious persecution.—Justinian 
died at 83 years of age, on the 14th of November, 565, 
leaving no children. He was succeeded by his neph¬ 
ew Justinus IV. ( Ludewig , Vita Justiniani Magni. 
— Gibbon, Decline and Fall, c. 40, seqq.) — II. The 
second of the name, was son of Constantine III., and 
lineal descendant of the Emperor Heraclius. He suc¬ 
ceeded his father on the throne of Constantinople, 
A.D. 685, but his reign, which lasted ten years, was 
marked chiefly by wars with the Saracens, and by the 
exactions and oppressions of his ministers. At last, 
his general Leontius drove him from the throne, and, 
having caused his nose to be cut off, banished him to 
the Crimea, A.D. 695. Leontius, however, was soon 
after deposed himself, and banished by Tiberius Apsi- 
merus, who reigned for seven years. Meantime Jus¬ 
tinian had escaped from the Crimea and married the 
daughter of the Kakan, or King of the Gazari, a tribe 
of Turks ; and he afterward, with the assistance of the 
Bulgarians, entered Constantinople, and put to a cruel 
death both Leontius and Tiberius, along with many 
others. He ordered, also, many of the principal people 
of Ravenna to be put to death. At last Justinian was 
dethroned and killed by PhilippusBardanes, A.D. 711. 
( Encycl . Us. Knowl., vol. 13, p. 166.) 

Justinus, I. M. Junianus, or, as he is named in 
some manuscripts, M. Justinus Frontinus, a Latin his¬ 
torian, generally supposed to have flourished in the age 
of the Antonines. The chief reason for assigning him 
to this period is the dedication of his work, addressed 
to Marcus Aurelius. Many critics, however, regard 
the line in the manuscripts which expresses this ded¬ 
ication as an addition by some ignorant copyist, who 
had confounded this writer with Justinus the Martyr. 
Nothing is known of the particulars of Justin’s life 
He made an epitome of, or, rather, a selection of ex¬ 
tracts from, the historical work of Trogus Pompeius. 
This epitome is entitled, “ HistoriarumPhilippicarum 
et totius mundi originum, et terree situs, ex Trogo 
Pompeio excerptarum libri XLIV. a Nino ad Ccesar- 
em Augustum .” In making his extracts, Justin gave 
the preference to those facts and those passages which 
he considered peculiarly interesting. (Compare his 
own words : “ Omissis his qua. nee * cognoscendi 

voluptate jucunda , nee exemplo erant necessaria .” 
Other events are only mentioned briefly, and by way 
of transition. Chronology is entirely neglected in the 
work of Justin, as in the greater part of the ancient 
writers. Justin is deficient in judgment and sagacity. 
His style is correct, simple, and elegant, but une¬ 
qual ; it is far preferable, however, to that of Floras. 
The best editions are, that of Gronovius, L. Bat., 
1719, 8vo; of Hearne, Oxon., 1705, 8vo; of Fischer 
Lips., 1757, 8vo; and of Wetzel, Leign., 1817, 8vo. 
—The value of Justin’s history chiefly depends on the 
circumstance of Trogus’s work having been compiled 
from some of the best of the ancient historical writers, 
such as Theopompus, Herodotus, Ctesias, Hierony¬ 
mus of Cardia, Timaeus, Phylarchus, Polybius, Posi¬ 
donius, &c. (Compare Gatterer, vom Plan des Tr» 

707 



JUSTINUS. 


JUSTINUS. 


gus, <Scc.— Hist. Bibl., vol. 3, p. 118.— Borhek, Mag- 
azin fur Erklarung , d. Gr u. R., vol. 1, p. 180.— 
Koch , Proleg. ad Theopomp. Chium., Lips., 1804, p. 
13.— Heyne, de Trogi Pompeii ejusque epitomatoris 
Justini fonlibus , &c., Comment. Soc. Reg. Gotting., 
vol. 15, p. 183, seqq.) In order that the student may 
be better enabled to appreciate the extent of Trogus’s 
labours, we will now proceed to sketch an outline of 
his work, as far as it has been determined by the re¬ 
searches of modern scholars. Book 1. History of the 
Ass)Tian, Median, and Persian empires, down to the 
reign of Darius, son of Hystaspes. Book 2. Digression 
respecting the Scythians, Amazons, and Athenians ; 
the kings of Athens, the legislation of Solon, the tyr¬ 
anny of the Pisistratid®, the expulsion of this family, 
and the war with Persia which ensued, the battle of 
Marathon, the history of Xerxes and of his contests 
with the Greeks. Book 3. The accession of Artaxerx- 
es. Digression respecting the Lacedaemonians, the 
legislation of Lycurgus, and the first Messenian war. 
Commencement of the Peloponnesian war. Book 4. 
Continuation of the Peloponnesian war, expedition to 
Sicily. Digression respecting Sicily. Book 5. Close 
of the Peloponnesian war. The thirty tyrants, and 
their expulsion by Thrasybulus. The expedition of 
the younger Cyrus, and the retreat of the Ten Thou¬ 
sand. Book 6. The expeditions of Dercyllidas and 
Agesilaus into Asia. The Theban war. The peace 
of Antalcidas. The exploits of Epaminondas. Philip 
of Macedon begins to interfere in the affairs of Greece. 
—In these first six books, which are to be regarded as 
a kind of introduction to the history of the Macedo¬ 
nian Empire, the true object of Trogus, his principal 
guide was Theopompus. He has also occasionally 
availed himself of the aid of Herodotus and Ctesias, 
and even of that of the mythographers.— Book 7. Di¬ 
gression respecting the condition of Macedonia ante¬ 
rior to the reign of Philip. Book 8. History of Philip 
and of the Sacred War. Book 9. End of the history 
of Philip. Book 10. Continuation and end of the Per¬ 
sian history, under Artaxerxes Mnemon, Ochus, and 
Darius Codomanus.—In these four books Trogus ap¬ 
pears to have merely translated Theopompus.— Book 
11. History of Alexander the Great, from his acces¬ 
sion to the throne until the death of Darius. Book 12. 
Occurrences in Greece during the absence of Alexan¬ 
der : expeditions of this prince into Hyrcania and In¬ 
dia. His death.—In these two books, no fact would 
appear to have been stated that is not also contained 
in other works which have reached us.— Books 13, 
14, 15. History of the wars between the generals of 
Alexander the Great, down to the death of Cassander. 
Book 16. Continuation of the history of Macedonia to 
the accession of Lysimachus.—This part of Justin’s 
history is so imperfect, that we find it impossible to 
divine the sources whence Trogus derived his mate¬ 
rials. It has been supposed, however, that the digres¬ 
sions on Gyrene (13, 7) and Heraclea (16, 4) are ob¬ 
tained from Theopompus, and that the episode on In¬ 
dia (15, 4) is from Megasthenes. Book 17. History 
of Lysimachus. Digression respecting Epirus before 
the time of Pyrrhus.—As Justin shows himself, in 
this book, very partial towards Seleucus, and the re¬ 
verse towards Lysimachus, it has been conjectured 
that Hieronymus of Cardia was the guide of Trogus 
in this part of the original work.— Book 18. Wars of 
Pyrrhus in Italy and Sicily. Digression respecting 
the ancient history of Carthage. Book 19. Wars of 
the Carthaginians in Sicily. Book 20. Dionysius of 
Syracuse transfers the theatre of the war to Magna 
Gracia. Digression respecting Metapontum. Book 
21. History of Dionysius the younger. Books 22 and 
23. History of Agathocles.—These six books of Jus¬ 
tin are very important; they embrace nearly all that 
we know respecting the Carthaginians before their 
lollision with the Romans. The parts that relate to 
70S 


Syracuse and Magna Graecia, Trogus appears to nave 
taken from Theopompus, and, by way of supplement, 
from Timseus : this latter, for example, seems to have 
furnished the materials for the history of Agathocles. 
—Book 24. Continuation of the history of Macedonia. 
Invasion of the Gauls under Brennus. Book 25. An- 
tigonus Gonatas, king of Macedonia. Establishment 
of the Gauls in Bithynia. Book 26. Continuation ot 
the history of Macedonia. Book 27. Seleucus, king 
of Syria. Book 28. Continuation of the history of 
Macedonia to the accession of Philip. Book 29. War 
of Philip with the Romans.—In these six books Phy- 
larchus has been the principal authority of Trogus.—• 
Book 30. Continuation of the Macedonian war. Al¬ 
liance of the^Etolians with Antiochus the Great. Book 
31. Hannibal prevails on Antiochus to make war 
against the Romans. War in Syria. Book 32. Death 
of Philopoemen. War of the Romans with Perseus. 
Death of Hannibal. Book'tt. Fall of the Macedonian 
empire. Book 34. Achaean war. Continuation of the 
history of Syria. Book 35. Demetrius I. and II., 
kings of Syria.—These six books are taken from Po¬ 
lybius. Book 36. Continuation of the history of the 
kings of Syria. Digression respecting the Jews. The 
kingdom of Pergamus becomes a Roman province. 
Book 37. History of Mithradates the Great. Book 38. 
Continuation of the history of Mithradates. Ptolemy 
Physcon, king of Egypt. Continuation of the history 
of Demetrius, king of Syria. Book 39. Continuation 
of the history of Syria and Egypt. Book 40. End of 
the kingdom of Syria. Book 41. History of the Par- 
thians. Book 42. Continuation of the history of the 
Parthians. History of Armenia.—On comparing the 
contents of these six books with the fragments of Pos¬ 
idonius of Rhodes that have been preserved by Ath- 
enreus, it would appear that this historian has here 
been the guide of Trogus. Posidonius, who was a 
friend of Trogus’s, had published a history of the period 
that had intervened between the destruction of Cor¬ 
inth and the fall of the kingdom of Syria. It was a 
large work in fifty-two books. The digression re¬ 
specting the Jews is full of confusion : it is well 
known what erroneous ideas were prevalent concern¬ 
ing this people in the time of Augustus, and even at 
the period when Tacitus wrote ; but one is surprised 
to find that Justin was not able to rectify the mistakes 
of his original.— Book 43. Earlier history of Rome and 
Massilia. In the latter part of this book Diodes the 
Peparethian furnished the materials. Book 44. His¬ 
tory of Spain, derived most probably from Posidonius, 
—Such appear to have been, in general, the authorities 
followed by Trogus, and, consequently, by his abbre-* 
viator Justin. {Scholl, Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 3, p. 139, 
seqq. — Bahr, Gesch. der Rom. Lit., p. 299, seqq .)— 
II. Surnamed the Martyr, one of the earliest and most 
learned writers of the Christian church. He was the 
son of Priscus, a Greek by nation, and was born at 
Flavia Neapolis, anciently called Sichem, a city of Sa¬ 
maria in Palestine, towards the close of the first cen¬ 
tury. He was educated in the pagan religion, and, 
after studying in Egypt, became a Platonist, until, in 
the year 132, he was led, by the instructions of a 
zealous and able Christian, to embrace the religion of 
the Gospel. He subsequently went to Rome in the 
beginning of the reign of Antoninus Pius, and drew up 
his first apology for Christianity at a time when the 
Christians were suffering rather from popular fury 
than from the bearing upon them of the regular au 
thority of the state, and it prevailed so far as to obtain 
for them some favourable concessions from the emper¬ 
or. He was also equally zealous in opposing alleged 
heretics, and particularly Marcion, against whom he 
wrote and published a book. He not long after visited 
the East, and at Ephesus had a conference with Try 
phon, a learned Jew, to prove that Jesus was the Mes¬ 
siah, an account of which conference he gives us in 




JUST1NUS. 


JU V 


his “ Dialogue with Tryphon.” On his return to Rome 
he had frequent disputes with Crescens, a Cyn¬ 
ic philosopher, in consequence of whose calumnies 
he published his second apology, which seems to have 
been presented to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, A.D. 
162. It produced so little effect, that when Crescens 
preferred against him a formal charge of impiety for 
neglecting the pagan rites, he was condemned to be 
scourged and then beheaded, which sentence was put 
into execution A.D. 164, in the seventy-fourth or sev¬ 
enty-fifth year of his age. It was eminently as a mar¬ 
tyr or witness that Justin suffered ; for he might have 
saved his life had he consented to join in a sacrifice 
to the heathen deities. Hence with his name has de- | 
scended the addition of “The Martyr,” a distinction ! 
which, in a later age, was given to Peter, one of the 
Protestant sufferers for the truth. Justin Martyr is 
spoken of in high terms of praise by the ancient Chris¬ 
tian writers, and was certainly a zealous and able ad¬ 
vocate of Christianity, but mixed up its doctrines with 
too much of his early Platonism. He was the first j 
father of the church who, regarding philosophy and 
revealed religion as having emanated from the same 
source, wished to establish between them an intimate 
union. Justin was of opinion that Plato had derived 
his doctrine, if not from the Sacred Writings of the 
Jews, at least from the works of others who were ac¬ 
quainted with these writings, and hence he concluded 
that the system and the tenets of Plato could be easily 
brought back to, and united with, the principles of 
Christianity. All other systems of philosophy, how¬ 
ever, except the Platonic, he utterly rejected, and 
more particularly that of the Cynics. Even in the 
Platonic scheme he combated one point, which is in 
direct opposition to revelation, the doctrine of the 
eternal duration of the world. There are several 
valuable editions of his works, the best of which are, 
that of Maran, Paris, 1742, fob, and that of Oberthiir, 
Wurtzburgh , 1777, 3 vols. 8vo. ( Scholl , Hist. Lit. j 
Gr., vol. 5, p. 212.)—III. The first, also called the J 
“ Elder,” an emperor of the East, born A D. 450, of 
Thracian origin. He abandoned the employment of 
a shepherd for the profession of arms, and, passing j 
through the several military gradations, attained even- J 
tually to the highest dignities of the empire. On the j 
death of Anastasius (A D. 516) he held the command 
of the imperial guards, and was commissioned by 
Amantius to distribute a sum of money among the 
soldiers, in order to secure the elevation of one of the 
creatures of the former. Justin did this, but in his 
own name, and was in consequence himself proclaim¬ 
ed emperor. Justin was sixty-eight years of age 
when he ascended the throne. Being himself unin¬ 
formed in civil affairs, he relied for the despatch of 
the business of the state on the quaestor Proclus, a 
faithful servant, and on his own nephew Justinian, 
who had acquired a great ascendancy over his uncle. 
By Justinian’s advice, a reconciliation was effected 
between the Greek and the Roman churches, A.D. ! 
520. The murder of Vitalianus, who had been raised 
to the consulship, but was stabbed at a banquet, casts 
a dark shade upon the character of both Justin and 
Justinian. In other respects Justin is represented by 1 
historians as honest and equitable, though rude and 
distrustful. After a reign of nine years, being afflict¬ 
ed by an incurable wound, and having become weak 
in mind and body, Justin abdicated in favour of his 
nephew, and died soon after, in A.D. 527.—IV. The 
second, surnamed the “ Younger,” an emperor of the 
East, succeeded his uncle Justinian, A.D. 565. His 
reign was an unfortunate one. The Langobardi, un¬ 
der their king Alboin, who is supposed to have been 
invited by Narses, invaded Italy by the Julian Alps, 
A.D. 568, and in a few years all Northern Italy was 
lost to the Byzantine emperor. The provinces of 
Asia were likewise overrun by the Persians. Internal 


discontent, moreover, prevailed in the capital and prov¬ 
inces, owing to the malversations of the governors and 
magistrates, and, Justin himself, deprived by infirmity 
of the use of his feet, and confined to the palace, was 
not able to repress abuses and infuse vigour into the 
administration. Feeling at last his impotence, he 
chose Tiberius, the captain of the guards, as his suc¬ 
cessor, A.D. 578. The choice was a good one, and 
the conduct of Tiberius fully justified Justin’s discern¬ 
ment. Justin lived four years after his abdication, in 
quiet retirement, and died in the year 578. ( Encycl. 

Us. Knowl., vol. 13, p. 166.) 

Jutes, an old Teutonic or Scandinavian tribe, which, 
in the fifth century of our era, appear to have been set¬ 
tled in the northern part of the Chersonesus Cimbrica, 
which is still called, after their name, Jutland. Man- 
nert thinks that they were a colony from the opposite 
coast of Scandinavia, of the same race as the Guthi 
or Gutae mentioned by Ptolemy. The first Germanic 
invaders of Britain, after the departure of the Romans, 
were Jutes, who, under their leaders Hengist and Hor- 
sa (A.D. 445), landed in the isle ofiThanet, and settled 
in Kent. The Saxons, under Ella, came A.D. 477 ; 
and the Angles did not come until the following cen¬ 
tury. {Mannert, Geogr., vol. 3, p. 288.) 

Juturna, a water-nymph in the Italian mythology. 
Her fountain was near the Numicius, and its waters, 
owing to her name (from juvo, “ to assist' l, ), were held 
to be very salubrious: the sick drank them ( Varro, 
L■ L., 4, p. 21), and the Romans used them in their 
sacrifices. A temple was built to Juturna in the 
Campus Martius, and there was a festival named the 
Juturnalia. ( Serv. ad Virg., 12, 139. — Ovid, Fast., 
1, 464.) Virgil, as usual, Euhemerizing the old Ital¬ 
ian deities, makes Juturna the sister of Turnus. She 
was, he says, violated by Jupiter, and made by him, 
in recompense, a goddess of the lakes and streams: 
{JEn., 12, 139.— Keightley's Mythology, p. 542.) 

Juvenalis, Decius Junius (or, according to some, 
Decimus Junius), was a celebrated Roman satirist. 
His birthplace, on no very sure grounds, is said to 
have been Aquinum, and he is supposed to have been 
born somewhere about A.D. 40, under Caligula, and 
to have died turned of 80, under the Emperor Hadrian 
But few particulars of his life are known, and for these 
we are indebted to a short biographical sketch ascribed 
to Suetonius. This notice, however, is found in so 
corrupt a state in the MSS. as to have given rise to 
interpretations directly at variance with each other. 
Without stopping to inquire into the discussions which 
have thus been excited, we will proceed to lay before 
the student the results at which the best and most re¬ 
cent critics have arrived. Juvenal’s birth was far from 
elevated. The author of his life doubts whether he 
was the son or merely the foster-son of a rich freedman. 
From the period of his birth till he had attained the 
age of forty, nothing more is known of him than that 
he continued to perfect himself in the study of elo¬ 
quence by declaiming, according to the practice ot 
those days : yet more for his own amusement than 
from any intention to prepare himself either for the 
schools or the courts of law. About this time he 
seems to have discovered his true bent, and betaken 
himself to poetry. Domitian was now at the head oi 
the government, and showed symptoms of reviving that 
system of favouritism which had nearly ruined the 
empire under Claudius, by his unbounded partiality 
for a young pantomime dancer of the name of Paris. 
Against this minion Juvenal seems to have directed 
the first shafts of that satire which was destined to 
make the most powerful vices tremble, and shake the 
masters of the world on their thrones. He composed 
a satire on the influence of Paris with considerable 
success, but dared not publish it, though it was se¬ 
cretly handed about among his friends. Hence Quin¬ 
tilian, who wrote A.D. 92, makes no mention of Ju- 

7W9 









JUVENALIS. 


IXI 


venai among the Latin satirists ; although it has been 
supposed that he had him in view in the passage where 
he remarks, “ we possess at the present day some dis¬ 
tinguished ones, whom we will name hereafter/’ (Inst. 
Or., 10, 1.) It was under Trajan that Juvenal wrote 
the greater part of his satires : the thirteenth and fif¬ 
teenth were composed under Hadrian, when the au¬ 
thor was in his 79th year. Then for the first time he 
recited his works in public, and met with the most 
unbounded admiration. The seventh satire, however, 
involved him in trouble. It was the one he had first 
composed, and in it the poet had lashed the pantomime 
Paris, the favourite of Domitian. Hadrian, who had 
suffered a comedian of the day to acquire a great as¬ 
cendancy over him, believed that the poet meant to 
reflect upon this weakness of his, and resolved to have 
revenge. Under pretext, therefore, of honouring the 
old man, he named him prefect of a legion stationed 
at Syene, in Egypt; according to others, at Pentapo- 
lis, in Libya; or, according to others again, he was 
sent to one of the Oases, an ordinary abode of exiles. 
He died a few years after, in this honourable exile.— 
We have sixteen satires from the pen of Juvenal. In 
some editions they are divided into five books, of which 
the first contains five satires ; the second one ; the 
third three ; the fourth three ; and the fifth four. If 
we may judge of the character of a writer from his 
works, Juvenal was a man of rigid probity, and wor¬ 
thy of living in a better and purer age. His satires 
everywhere breathe a love of virtue and abhorrence 
of vice. Differing widely in this respect from Per- 
sius, he does not give himself up to the principles of 
one particular school of philosophy ; he paints, on the 
contrary, in strong and glowing colours, the hypocrisy 
and the vices of the pretended philosophers of his time, 
and especially of the Stoic sect, to whose failings Per- 
sius had shut his eyes. He differs, moreover, from 
this last-mentioned satirist in not borrowing from the 
schools of philosophy the arms with which he attacked 
their failings : he found these abundantly supplied by 
the resources of his own genius, by the experience 
which a long acquaintance with the world had gained 
'or him, and by the indignation which warmed his bo¬ 
som on contemplating the gross corruption of the times. 
His genius in some respect resembled that of Horace, 
out a long-established habit of familiarity with rhetor- 
ileal subjects produced an influence on his general man¬ 
ner, which is infinitely graver than that of the friend of 
Maecenas. Horace laughs at the follies of his age ; 
Juvenal glows with indignation at the vices of his own. 
The former passes rapidly from one topic to another, 
and seems, as it were, led onward by his subject; Ju¬ 
venal, on the contrary, follows a regular and method¬ 
ical plan ; he treats his subject according to the rules 
of the oratorical art, and is careful never to lose the 
thread of his discourse. The distinctive character of 
Juvenal’s satire is a passionate hatred of, and an inex¬ 
orable severity towards vice, and on this theme he 
never indulges in pleasantry ; neither does any digres¬ 
sion ever lead him off from the object which he has in 
view. It is this manner that gives to the satires of 
Juvenal a certain appearance of dryness, which form a 
direct contrast to the agreeable variety that pervades 
the satires of Horace. A circumstance extremely fa¬ 
vourable to the literary reputation of Juvenal is to be 
found in the fact, of his not having dared to publish his 
satires until an advanced period of life. Hence he 
was enabled to revise and retouch them, to purify his 
taste, and to calm the fiery spirit which animated hi^ 
earlier efforts by the sober judgment of maturer years. 
Juvenal is said to have spent much time in attendance 
on the schools of the rhetoricians, and the effect of this, 
in an age not remarkable for purity of taste, may be 
observed, perhaps, in a tendency to hyperbolica 1 infla¬ 
tion of both thought and style, which would so m be¬ 
tray a writer of less power into the ridiculous. From 
710 


this his wit, commas! *f language, and force and ful¬ 
ness of thought, completely preserve him: still, per¬ 
haps, he would produce more effect if the effort to do 
his utmost were less apparent.—The writings of Ju¬ 
venal are addressed to the encouragement of virtue no 
less than to the chastisement of vice; and parts of 
them have been recommended by Christian divines as 
admirable storehouses of moral precepts. Still they 
lie open to the objection of descending so minutely 
into the details of vice, as to minister food as well as 
physic to the depraved mind. To the scholar they are 
invaluable for the information which they supply con¬ 
cerning private life among the Romans. The best 
editions of Juvenal are, that of Ruperti, Lips., 1819, 
2 vols. 8vo, and that of Lemaire, Paris, 1823, 3 vols. 
8vo. The latter, indeed, may be regarded as the 
Editio Optima. An enumeration of the previous edi¬ 
tions will be found in the Prolegomena appended to 
the last volume of Lemaire’s work. 

Juventas, a goddess at Rome, who presided over 
youth and vigour. She is the same as the Hebe of 
the Greeks. The altar of Juventas stood in the ves¬ 
tibule of the temple of Minerva. (Dion. Hal., 3, 69.) 
There was a temple of this goddess in which a regis¬ 
try was kept of the names of the young men who were 
of the military age. (Dion. Hal., 4, 15.) 

Juvernia (’I ovepvia), a name for Ireland, found 
among the Greek writers, (Agathem., 2, 4.— Plol., 
2, 2.) In the various names of Ireland, as known to 
the classic writers, namely, Iris, Iernis, Juvernis, Ju¬ 
vernia, Hibernia, &c.. the radical Ir or Eri, by which 
it is still known to its own natives, is plainly traceable. 
It is customary among the Irish to indicate a country 
by the prefix Hy or Hua , sometimes written O, as in 
the case of proper names, signifying, literally, “ the 
(dwelling of the) sons or family of,” such as Hy-Ma- 
nia, Hy-Tuirtre , Hy-Brazil, &c. In adding this pre¬ 
fix to names beginning with a vowel, it is optional to 
insert a consonant to prevent the concurrence of open 
sounds; thus, Hy-v-Each means the country of the 
descendants of Each or /Eacus. Again, this prefix 
requires the gefiitive, which in Eri is Erin, and thus 
all variations of the name, from the Iris of Diodorus 
Siculus, and the Ireland or Ire-land of modern times, 
to the Iernis (Hy-Ernis) of the Orphic poems, and the 
Hibernia ( Hy-b-Ernia) of the Latin writers, would 
seem to be accounted for. ( Vid. Hibernia.) 

Ixion, the son of Antion or Peision, or, according 
to some, of Phlegyas. Others, again, gave him the 
god Mars for a sire. He obtained the hand of Dia, 
the daughter of De'ioneus, having, according to the 
usage of the heroic ages, promised his father-in-law 
large nuptial gifts ; but he did not keep his engage¬ 
ment, and De'ioneus seized his horses and detained 
them as a pledge. Ixion then sent to say that the 
gifts were ready if he would come to fetch them. 
De'ioneus accordingly came, but his treacherous son- 
in-law had prepared in his house a pit filled with fire, 
and covered over with bits of wood and with dust, into 
which the unsuspecting prince fell and perished. After 
this deed Ixion became deranged, and the atrocity of 
the crime was such that neither gods nor men would 
absolve him, till at length Jupiter took pity on him and 
purified him, and admitted him to his residence and 
table on Olympus. But, incapable of good, Ixion cast 
an eye of desire on the wife of his benefactor. Juno 
thereupon, in concert with her lord, formed a cloud in 
the likeness of herself, which Ixion embraced. He 
boasted of his good fortune, and Jupiter precipitated 
him into Erebus, where Mercury fixed him with brazen 
bands to an ever-revolving fiery wheel. (Pind., Pyth ., 
2, 39, seqq .— Schol. ad Pind., Pyth., 2, 39 .—Hygin 
fab., 62.)—This myth is probably of great antiquity, 
as the customs on which it is founded only prevailed 
in the heroic age. Its chief object seems to have beer, 
to inspire horror for the violation of the duties of hos 




LAB 


LAB 


pitanty on the part of those who, having committed 
homicide, were admitted to the house and table of the 
prince, who consented to perform the rites by which 
the guilt of the offender was supposed to be removed. 
The extremest case is given, by making Ixion, that is, 
the Suppliant, and the first shedder of kindred blood, 
as he is expressly called (the Cain of Greece), act with 
such base ingratitude towards the king of the gods him¬ 
self, who, according to the simple earnestness of early 
mythology, is represented, like an earthly prince, re¬ 
ceiving his suppliant into his house or at his board. 
The punishment inflicted was suited to the offence, 
and calculated to strike with awe the minds of the 
hearers.—( Keightley's Mythology, p. 314, seq.) 

L. 

Labarum, the sacred banner or standard, borne be¬ 
fore the Roman emperors in war from the time of 
Constantine. It is described as a long pike intersect¬ 
ed by a transverse beam. A silken veil, of a purple 
colour, hung down from the beam, and was adorned 
with precious stones,, and curiously inwrought with 
the images of the reigning monarch and his children. 
The summit of the pike supported a crown of gold, 
which enclosed the mysterious monogram at once ex¬ 
pressive of the figure of the cross, and the two initial 
letters (X and P) of the name of Christ. ( Lipsius, de 
Cruce, lib. 3, c. 15.) The safety of the Labarum was 
intrusted to fifty guards of approved valour and fideli¬ 
ty. Their station was marked by honours and emol¬ 
uments ; and some fortunate accidents soon intro¬ 
duced an opinion, that, as long as the guard of the La- 
jarum were engaged in the execution of the office, 
they were secure and invulnerable among the darts of 
the enemy. In the second civil war Licinius felt and 
dreaded the power of this consecrated banner, the 
sight of which, in the distress of battle, animated the 
soldiers of Constantine with an invincible enthusiasm, 
and scattered terror and dismay through the adverse 
legions. Eusebius ( Vit. Const., 1. 2, c. 7, seqq.) in¬ 
troduces the Labarum before the Italian expedition of 
Constantine ; but his narrative seems to indicate that 
it was never shown at the head of an army till Con¬ 
stantine, above ten years afterward, declared himself 
the enemy of Licinius and the deliverer of the church. 
The Christian emperors, who respected the example 
of Constantine, displayed in all their military expedi¬ 
tions the standard of the cross; but when the degen¬ 
erate successors of Theodosius had ceased to appear 
in person at the head of their armies, the Labarum 
was deposited as a venerable but useless relic in the 
palace of Constantinople. Its honours are still pre¬ 
served on the medals of the Flavian family. Their 
grateful devotion has placed the monogram of Christ 
in the midst of the ensigns of Rome. The solemn 
epithets of “safety of the republic,” “glory of the 
army,” “ restoration of public happiness,” are equally 
applicable to the religious and military trophies ; and 
there is still extant a medal of the Emperor Constan- 
tius, where the standard of the Labarum is accom¬ 
panied with these memorable words, “ By this sign 
thou shalt conquer .” — The history of this standard 
is a remarkable one. A contemporary writer (Caecil- 
ius) affirms, that in the night which preceded the 
last battle against Maxentius, Constantine was ad¬ 
monished in a dream to inscribe the shields of his sol¬ 
diers with the celestial s-ign of God, the sacred mono¬ 
gram of the name of Christ; that he executed the 
commands of Heaven, and that his valour and obedi¬ 
ence were rewarded by a decisive victory at the Mil- 
vian bridge. The dream of Constantine may be nat¬ 
urally explained either by the enthusiasm or the policy 
of the emperor. While his anxiety for the approach¬ 
ing day, which must decide the fate of the empire, 
was suspended by a short and interrupted slumber, 


the revered form of our Saviour and the well-knowr 
symbol of his religion might forcibly offer themselves 
to the active fancy of a prince who reverenced the 
name, and had, perhaps, secretly implored the power, of 
the God of the Christians. As readily, on the other 
hand, might a consummate statesman indulge himself 
in the use of one of those military stratagems, one of 
those pious frauds, which Philip and Sertorius had 
employed with such art and effect. The account 
given by Eusebius, however, is different from this. 
According to his statement, Constantine is reported 
to have seen with his own eyes the luminous trophy 
of the cross placed above the meridian sun, and in¬ 
scribed with the following words in Greek, “ By this, 
conquer .” This appearance in the sky astonished the 
whole army, as well as the emperor himself, who was 
yet undetermined in the choice of a religion ; but his 
astonishment was converted into faith by the vision of 
the ensuing night. Our Saviour appeared before his 
eyes, and displayed the same celestial sign of the 
cross, directing Constantine to frame a similar stand¬ 
ard, and to march, with an assurance of victory, 
against Maxentius and all his enemies. ( Gibbon, De¬ 
cline and Fall, ch. 20, vol. 3, p. 256, seqq.) —The 
form of the Labarum and monogram may be seen, as 
we have already said, on the medals of the Flavian 
family. The etymology of the term itself has given 
rise to many conflicting opinions. Some derive the 
name from labor; others, from evXddeia, “reverence;” 
others, from Xaydaveiv, “to take;” and others, again, 
from 7iu<j>vpa, “ spoils.” A writer in the Classical 
Journal assigns the following derivation ; he makes 
Labarum to be, like S. P. Q. R., only a notatio, or 
combination of initials to represent an equal number of 
terms; and thus, L. A. B. A. R. V. M. will stand for 
“ Legionum aquila Byzantium antiqua Roma urbe 
muta.vit." (Class. Journ., vol. 4, p. 233.) 

Labdacides, a name given to CEdipus as descend¬ 
ed from Labdacus. 

Labdacus, a son of Polydorus by Nycteis, the 
daughter of Nycteus, king of Thebes. His father and 
mother died during his childhood, and he was left to 
the care of Nycteus, who, at his death, left his king¬ 
dom in the hands of Lycus, with orders to restore it 
to Labdacus as soon as of age. On succeeding to the 
throne, Labdacus, like Pentheus, opposed himself tc 
the religion of Bacchus, and underwent a similar fate 
He was father to La’ius, and his descendants were 
called Labdacidae. (Vid. La'ius.) 

Labdalon, a hill near Syracuse, forming part of 
Epipolae. It was fortified by the Athenians in their 
contest with Syracuse. (Thucyd., 6, 97.—Compare 
Goller, de Situ et Origine Syracusarum, p. 53, seqq.) 

Labeates, a people of Dalmatia, in the lower part, 
whose territory constituted the principal portion of the 
dominions of Gent'us. His capital was Scodra. In 
the country of the Labeates was the Labeatus Palus, 
now the Lake of Scutari. (Liv ., 43, 19.— Id., 44. 
31.— Plin., 3, 22.) 

Labeo, a surname common to several distinguished 
Roman fan ilies, such as the Asconii, Antistii, Atinii, 
Cethegi, &c. It is derived from labium, and denotes 
literally one who is thick-lipped. ( Charis ., 1, p. 79.— 
Putsch., ex Verr. Flacc.) Among the individuals who 
bore this name, the following were the most noted. 
I. Antistius. (Vid. Antistius Labeo.) — II. Q. Fa- 
bius, was distinguished as a commander, but was re¬ 
garded as devoid of generosity and good faith towards 
the vanquished. He obtained a naval victory over 
the Cretans, and enjoyed the honours of a triumph. 
In the year 183 B.C. he was created consul along 
with Cl. Marcellus, and commanded the army sta¬ 
tioned in Liguria. Cicero relates a curious anecdote 
of his want of principle, when chosen umpire between 
the inhabitants of Neapolis and Nola, on the subject 
of their respective boundaries. (Off., 1, 10.) It is 

711 




LAB 


LAB 


aid also that Labeo, having gained a victory over An- 
tiocnus, compelled him to consent to cede unto the 
Romans the one half of his fleet, and that, taking ad¬ 
vantage of the equivocal meaning of the words ip thr 
treaty, he caused all the vessels to be sawed in two 
(Val. Max., 7, 3.) Labeo is said to have been of a 
literary turn, and to have aided Terence in the com¬ 
position of his comedies. ( Vid. Terentius.)—III. 
Attius, a wretched poet in the time of Perseus. He 
is ridiculed by the latter on account of a wretched ver¬ 
sion which he had made of the Iliad, but which, never¬ 
theless, had found favour with Nero and his courtiers. 
(Pers., Sat., 1, 50.— Schol.,ad loc.) 

Laberius, Decimus, a Roman knight of respectable 
character and family, who was famed for his talent in 
writing mimes, in the composition of which fanciful pro¬ 
ductions he occasionally amused himself. He was at 
length requested by Julius Caesar to appear on the stage, 
and act the mimes which he had sketched or written. 

( Macrob., Sat., 2, 7.) Laberius was sixty years of 
age when this occurrence took place. .Aware that 
the entreaties of a perpetual dictator are nearly equiv¬ 
alent to commands, he reluctantly complied ; but, in 
the prologue to the first piece which he acted, he com¬ 
plained bitterly to the audience of the degradation to 
which he had been subjected. The whole prologue, 
consisting of twenty-nine lines, which have been pre¬ 
served by Macrobius, is written in a fine vein of poe¬ 
try, and with all the high spirit of a Roman citizen. 
It breathes in every verse the most bitter and indig¬ 
nant feelings of wounded pride, and highly exalts our 
opinion of the man, who, yielding to an irresistible 
power, preserves his dignity while performing a part 
which he despised. It is difficult to conceive how, in 
this frame of mind, he could assume the jocund and 
unrestrained gayety of a mime, or how the Roman 
people could relish so painful a spectacle. He is said, 
however, to have represented the feigned character 
with inimitable grace and spirit. But in the course 
of his performance he could not refrain from express¬ 
ing strong sentiments of freedom and detestation of 
tyranny. In one of the scenes he personated a Syrian 
slave ; and, while escaping from the lash of his mas¬ 
ter, he exclaimed, 

“Porro, Quirites, libertatem perdidimus 
and shortly after he added, 

“ Necesse est multos timeat quern multi timent ,” 

Dn which the whole audience turned their eyes to¬ 
wards Caesar, who was present in the theatre. ( Ma- 
trob., 1. c .) It was not merely to entertain the people, 
who would have been as well amused with the repre¬ 
sentation of any other actor ; nor to wound the private 
feeling of Laberius, that Caesar forced him on the 
stage. His sole object was to degrade the Roman 
knighthood, to subdue their spirit of independence and 
honour, and to strike the people with a sense of his un¬ 
limited sway. This policy formed part of the same sys¬ 
tem which afterward led him to persuade a senator to 
combat among the ranks of gladiators. Though Labe¬ 
rius complied with the wishes of Caesar in exhibiting 
himself on the stage, and acquitted himself with ability 
as a mimetic actor, it would appear that the dictator ; 
had been hurt and offended by the freedoms which he ( 
used in the course of the representation, and, either on 
this or some subsequent occasion, bestowed the dra¬ 
matic crown on Publius Syrus in preference to the ' 
Roman knight. Laberius submitted with good grace i 
to this fresh humiliation; he pretended to regard it ; 
merely as the ordinary chance of theatric competition, i 
He did not long survive, however, this double mortifi- i 
cation, but retired from Rome, and died at Puteoli i 
about ten months after the assassination of Caesar, i 
(Chion. Euseb., ad Olymp. 184.) The titles and a 
few fragments of forty-three of the Mimes of Laberius 
are still extant; but, excepting the prologue already i 


■ referred to, these remains are too inconsiderable an 

! detached to enable us to judge of their subject o- 
merits. It would appear that he occasionally drama 

■ tized the passing follies or absurd occurrences of th< 
d<*y ; for Cicero, writing to the lawyer Trebonius 
who expected to accompany Caesar from Gaul to Brit¬ 
ain. tells him he had better return to Rome quickly, 
as s. longer pursuit to no purpose would be so ridicu¬ 
lous a cnrumotance, that it would hardly escape the 
drollery of that arch fellow Laberius. {Ep. ad Fam ., 
7, 11.) According to Adus Gellius (16, 7), Laberius 
had taken too much license in inventing words ; and 
that author also gives various examples of his use of 
obsolete expressions, or such as are only employed by 
the lowest dregs of the people. {Dunlop's Roman 
Literature, vol. 1, p. 552, seqq.) 

Labicum, a town of Italy, abouv fifinet mibs from 
Rome, between the Via Praenestina and ‘he. Via La¬ 
tina. ( Strabo, 237.) A great difference of opirioL. 
however, exists as to its actual site. Cluve^ius erre 
neously supposes it to coincide with the modern Zags 
rolo. Holstenius, after a careful examination of th 
subject, decides in favour of the height on which tht 
modern town of Colonna stands ( ad Steph. Byz., p 
194), and his opinion is strengthened by the discover] 
of several inscriptions near Colonna, in which mentior 
is made ofLabicum. ( Cramer, Anc. It., vol. 2, p. 75.’ 

Labienus, I. one of Caesar’s lieutenants in the Gal¬ 
lic war. In the beginning of the civil war he left 
Caesar for Pompey ( B. Civ., 3, 13), escaped from tht 
battle of Pharsalia, and was killed in that at Munda 
(B. Hisp., c. 31.) Labienus appears to have parted 
with almost all his former success on abandoning tht 
side of his old commander. A detailed biography ol 
this officer is given in the Biographie Universelle (vol 
23, p. 22, seqq.) —II. A son of the preceding, who in 
herited all his father’s hatred to the party of Caesar 
After the defeat of Brutus and Cassius, he refused tt» 
submit to the triumvirs, and retired to Parthia, where 
he was invested with a military command, and proved 
very serviceable to his new allies in their contests 
with the Romans. He was made prisoner in Cilicia, 
and probably put to death. Labienus caused medals 
to be struck, having on the obverse his head, with this 
legend, Q. Labienus Parthicus Imper., and, on the re¬ 
verse, a horse caparisoned after the Parthian manner. 
(Rasche, Lex. Rei Numism., vol. 4, col. 1402.) 

Labradeus, a surname of Jupiter in Caria. The 
name was derived, according to Plutarch, from M6pvp, 
the Lydian term for a hatchet, which the statue of 
Jove held in its hand, and which had been offered up 
by Arselis of Mylassa from the spoils of Candaules, 
king of Lydia. ( Plut., Quast. Gr., p. 301.—On., ed. 
Reiske, vol. 7, p. 205.) 

Labr5nis Portus, or Portus Herculis Liburni, a 
harbour of Etruria, below the mouth of the Arnus. It 
is now Livorno, or, as we pronounce the name, Leg¬ 
horn. Cicero calls it Portus Labronis {ad Q. frat., 
2, 6. — Compare Zos., Ann., 5), but the other is the 
more usual appellation. 

Labynetus, a king of Babylon, mentioned by He¬ 
rodotus (1, 74). He is supposed to have been the 
same with Nebuchodonosor. {Wesseling et Bdhr 
ad Herod., 1. c.) 

Labyrinthus, a name given to a species of struc 
ture, full of intricate passages and windings, so that,, 
when once entered, it is next to impossible for an in 
dividual to extricate himself without the assistance ol 
a guide. The origin of the term will be considered 
at the close of the article. There were four very fa¬ 
mous labyrinths among the ancients, one in Egypt, 
near the Lake Moeris, another in Crete, a third at Lem¬ 
nos, and a fourth near Clusium in Italy.—I. The 
Egyptian. This was situate in Lower Egypt’ near 
Lake Moeris, and in the vicinity of Arsinoe or Croco- 
dilopolis. The accounts which the ancient writers 







LABYRINTHUS. 


LAC 


give of it are very different from each other. Herod¬ 
otus, who saw the structure itself, assigns to it twelve 
courts. ( Herod., 2, 148.) Pliny, whose description 
is much more highly coloured and marvellous than the 
former’s, makes the number sixteen (P/m., 36, 19); 
while Strabo, who, like Herodotus, beheld the very 
structure, gives the number of courts as twenty-seven. 
(Strab., 810.) The following imperfect sketch, drawn 
from these different sources, may give some idea of 
the magnitude and nature of this singular structure. 
A large edifice, divided, most probably, into twelve 
separate palaces, stretched along with a succession of 
splendid apartments, spacious halls, &c., the whole 
aoorned with columns, gigantic statues, richly carved 
hi* roglyphics, and every other appendage of Egyptian 
art. With the north side of the structure were con¬ 
nected six courts, and the same number with the 
southern. These were open places surrounded by 
lofty walls, and paved with large slabs of stone. 
Around these courts ran a vast number of the most in¬ 
tricate passages, lower than the corresponding parts of 
the main building ; and around all these again was 
thrown a large wall, affording only one entrance into 
the labyrinth; while at the other end, where the laby¬ 
rinth terminated, was a pyramid forty fathoms high, 
with large figures carved on it, and a subterraneous 
way leading within. According to Herodotus, the 
whole structure contained 3000 chambers, 1500 above 
ground, and as many below. The historian informs 
us, that he went through all the rooms above the sur¬ 
face of the earth, but that he was not allowed by the 
Egyptians who kept the place to examine the subter¬ 
raneous apartments, because in these were the bodies 
of tf\e sacred crocodiles, and of the kings who had 
built the labyrinth. “ The upper part, however,” re¬ 
marks the historian, “ which I carefully viewed, seems 
to surpass the art of men ; for the passages through 
the buildings, and the variety of windings, afforded 
me a thousand occasions of wonder, as I passed from 
a hall to a chamber, and from the chamber to other 
buildings, and from chambers into halls. All the roofs 
and walls within are of stone, but the walls are farther 
adorned with figures of sculpture. The halls are sur¬ 
rounded with pillars of white stone, very closely fitted.” 
—According to Herodotus, the labyrinth was built by 
twelve kings, who at one time reigned over Egypt, 
and it was intended as a public monument of their 
common reign. {Herod., 2, 148.) Others make it 
to have been constructed by Psammeticus alone, who 
was one of the twelve ; others, again, by Ismandes or 
Petosuchis. Mannert assigns it to Memnon. Opin¬ 
ions are also divided as to the object of this singular 
structure. Some regard it as a burial-place for the 
kings and sacred crocodiles, an opinion very prevalent 
among the ancients. Others view it as a kind of 
Egyptian Pantheon. Others, again, make it to have 
been a place of assembly for the deputies sent by each 
of the twelve nomes of Egypt (consult article Egyp- 
tus, p. 37, col. 1); while another class think that the 
Egyptian mysteries were celebrated here. All these 
opinions, however, yield in ingenuity and acumen to 
that of Gatterer. {Weltgesch., vol. 1, p. 50, seqq.) 
According to this writer, the labyrinth was an archi¬ 
tectural-symbolical representation of the zodiac, and 
:he course of the sun through the same. The twelve 
palaces are the twelve zodiacal signs ; the one half of 
the building above ground, and the other below, is a 
symbol of the course of the sun above and below the 
horizon; while the 3000 chambers in the whole struc¬ 
ture have a symbolical reference to the precession of 
the equinoxes. The Egyptians reckoned, not by trop¬ 
ical or solar, but by sidereal, years. The difference 
between the two, which depends on the precession of 
the equinoxes, the Egyptian astronomers made too 
small; since they reckoned the precession at one de¬ 
gree in every ’00 years, which is at the rate of only 
4 X 


46" per year. Hence in 3000 years it amounts to 
30 degrees, or exactly one celestial sign; so that the 
3000 chambers of the labyrinth indicated symbolically 
the precession of the equinoxes for each sign of the zo¬ 
diac, or, in astrological phraseology, the change of 
dwelling on the part of the gods, and their advance to 
a new palace or abode. Still farther, as the full period 
of the wandering of the soul from the body amounted to 
exactly 3000 years, the 3000 chambers of the labyrinth 
had also a symbolical reference to this particular article 
of Egyptian faith.—(For other views on this interest¬ 
ing subject, consult Zoega, de Obelise., p. 418, not. 10. 
— Beck, Anleit. zu Weltgesch., vol. 1, p. 721.— Lur¬ 
cher, ad Herod., 1. c. — B'dhr, ad Herod., 1. c. — Id., 
Excurs. X., ad Herod., vol. 1, p. 918, seqq. — De¬ 
script. de VEgypte Anc.,\o\. 2, ch. 17, sect. 3, p. 32, 
seqq. — Mannert, Geogr., vol. 10, pt. 1, p. 430.— Lc- 
tronne, in Nouv. Ann. des Voyages, par Eyrie et 
Malte-Brun, vol. 6, p. 133, seqq.) —As regards the 
name Labyrinth itself, much diversity of opinion ex¬ 
ists. They who make it a term of Grecian origin, 
derive it utto tov pfi Xafisiv tivpav, from its diffi¬ 
culty of egress ; or from Xd6u, “ to seize ” or “ con¬ 
fine ,” with reference to the Cretan labyrinth. Others, 
finding in Manetho that an Egyptian king, named La- 
chares or Labaris, had erected the structure in ques¬ 
tion, make the term labyrinth equivalent to “ the abode 
of Labaris. {Beck, l. c. — Jablonsk., Voc. JEgypt.,\>. 
123.— Te Water, ad loc., p. 125, not. r.) Jablonski 
himself, adopting the opinion that the labyrinth was 
the work of many kings in succession, makes the 
name signify “ the work of many,” or “ of a great mul¬ 
titude ,” and thinks that the labourers employed on it 
were Israelites. The latest etymology is that of Sickler, 
who makes the name labyrinth equivalent to the Hebrew 
Lavah-Biranith, i. e., “ cohcesit arx .” for cohoerens arx, 
“the connected fortress or palace!” {Handbuch, der 
Alt. Geogr., p. 797.)—The position of the Egyptian 
labyrinth is clearly indicated by the words of Herodo¬ 
tus, oXiyov VTtEp Trjq Xipvyq rf/g M olpiop, “ a little above 
the Lake Mceris ,” so that D’Anville is evidently in 
error when he speaks of two labyrinths in Egypt. 
Zoega thinks that Paul Lucas discovered in 1714 the 
remains of the ancient labyrinth at Kesr-Caron {de 
Obelise., p. 418, not. 10.— Paul. Luc., Voyage en 
1714, vol. 2, p. 262). This, however, is erroneous. 
The ruins at Kesr-Caron are merely those of some 
temples. {Descrip, de VEgypte An., 1. c.) It is 
more probable that the remains of the labyrinth must 
be sought for near the village of Haoudrah , where a 
canal joins the Lake Mceris, and where a pyramid is 
still to be seen. Vast piles of rubbish are here to be 
seen, and the destruction is supposed to be owing to 
the Arabs, who may have thought that treasures were 
concealed under ground here. {Ritter, Erdkunde, vol. 
1, p. 810, seqq. — Revue Francaise, 1829, Janv., p. 
70.— Von Hammer, Wien. Jahrb., vol. 45 (1829), p. 
31.)—II. For an account of the Cretan, Etrurian, and 
Lemnian labyrinths, consult the articles Minotaurus, 
Porsenna, and Lemnos respectively. 

Lacedaemon, I. a son of Jupiter and Taygeta the 
daughter of Atlas, who married Sparta, the daughter 
of Eurotas, by whom he had Amyclas and Eurydice, 
the wife of Acrisius. He was the first who introduced 
the worship of the Graces into Laconia, and who built 
them a temple. From Lacedaemon and his wife the 
capital of Laconia was called Lacedoamon and Sparta. 
{Apollod., 3, 10.— Hygin., fab., 155.)—II. A city of 
Peloponnesus, the capital of Laconia, called also 
Sparta. {Vid. Sparta.) 

LacedaEmonii and LacedaEmones, the inhabitants 
of Lacedaemon. ( Vid. Lacedasmon and Sparta.) 

Lachesis, one of the Parcse. {Vid. Parcae.) 

Lacinia, a surname of Juno, from her temple at La 
cinium in Italy. 

Lacinium Promontorium, a celebrated promontory 

713 



LAC 


LAC 


of Magna Grtecia, in the territory of the Brutn, a few 
miles to the south of Crotona, which runs out for some 
distance into the sea, and with the opposite Iapygian 
promontory encloses the Gulf of Tarentum. ( Strabo, 
261.— Scylax, Peripl ., p. 4.) Its modern names are 
Capo delle Colonne (Cape of the Columns), and Capo 
Nao (Cape of the Temple), from the remains of the 
temple of Juno Lacinia, which are still visible on its 
summit. ( Romanelli , vol. 1, p- 195.) This cele¬ 
brated edifice, remarkable for its great antiquity, 
the magnificence of its decorations, and the venera¬ 
tion with which it was regarded, was surrounded by a 
thick grove of trees, in the midst of which were spa¬ 
cious meadows, where numerous herds and flocks were 
pastured in perfect security, as they were accounted 
sacred. From the profits accruing out of the sale of 
these cattle, which were destined for sacrifices, it was 
said that a column of solid gold was erected and con¬ 
secrated to the goddess. ( Liv ., 24, 3. Cic. de Div., 

1, 24.) On the festival of Juno, which was celebrated 
annually, an immense concourse of the inhabitants of 
all the Italian Greek cities assembled here, and a 
grand display of the most rare and precious productions 
of art and nature was exhibited. ( Aristot., de Mirab. 
— Athenceus, 12, 10.) Among other splendid pictures 
with which this temple was adorned, the famous Helen 
of Zeuxis was more particularly admired.—History has 
not acquainted us with the founders of this consecrated 
pile. According to Diodorus Siculus (4, 24), some 
ascribed its origin to Hercules. This sanctuary was 
respected by Pyrrhus, as well as by Hannibal; the 
latter caused an inscription in Greek and Punic char¬ 
acters to be deposited there, recording the number of 
his troops, and their several victories and achieve¬ 
ments. ( Polyb ., 3, 33 and 36.) But several years 
afterward it sustained great injury from Fulvius Flac- 
cuss, a censor, who caused a great portion of the roof, 
which was covered with marble, to be removed, for 
the purpose of adorning a temple of Fortune construct¬ 
ed by him at Rome. Such an outcry was raised 
against this act of impiety, that orders were issued by 
the senate that everything should be restored to its 
former state ; but this could not be effected, no archi¬ 
tect being found of sufficient skill to replace the mar¬ 
ble tiles according to their original position. (Liv., 42, 
3.— Val. Max., 1, 1.)—From the ruins of this cele¬ 
brated edifice, it is evident that it was of the early Do¬ 
ric style, with fluted pillars, broader at the base than 
at the capital. It measured about 132 yards in length 
and 66 in breadth; and, as it faced the east, its prin¬ 
cipal entrance opened to the west. ( Swinburne's 
Travels, v ol. 1, p. 32.— Voyage de Reidesel, p. 151.) 
It is to be regretted that no excavations have been 
hitherto made on this spot, as it is very probable they 
would be attended with satisfactory results. ( Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 395, seqq.) 

Lacobriga, I. a town of Spain, near the Sacrum 
Promontorium, now Lagoa. (Mela, 3, 1.— Ukert, 
Geogr., vol. 2, p. 387.)—II. A town of Spain, among 
the Vaccsei, now Lobera. (Plin., 3, 4.) 

Laconica, called by the Roman writers Laconia, 
a country of Peloponnesus, situate at its southern ex¬ 
tremity, having Messenia on the west, and Arcadia 
and Argolis on the north. The extent of Laconia 
from east to west, where it reached farthest, was 1° 
45', but it became narrower towards the north, and its 
extent from north to south was about 50 miles. As 
the southern parts were encompassed by the sea, and 
the east and northeast parts by the Sinus Argolicus, 
it had a great number of promontories, the chief of 
which were those of Malea and Tsenarus, now Gapes 
Malio and Matapan. The seacoast of Laconia was 
furnished with a considerable number of seaports, 
towns, and commodious harbours, the chief of which 
were Trinassus, Acria, Gythium, and Epidaurus. The 
Laconian coasts were famous for yielding a shellfish, 
714 


whence was obtained a beautiful purple dye, inferior 
only to that which was brought from the Red Sea and 
Phoenicia. The mountains of Laconia were numerous: 
the most famous was Taygetus. Its principal rivei 
was the Eurotas, on which stood the capital, Sparta oi 
Lacedaemon. The soil was very rich, especially in 
the low grounds, and, being well watered, was excel¬ 
lent for pasture ; but the number of its mountains and 
hills prevented its being tilled so well as it might oth¬ 
erwise have been. Among the animals of the country 
may be enumerated wild and tame goats, wild boars t 
deer, and excellent hounds. A blackish green marble 
(probably basalt) was obtained at Taenarus. (For an 
outline of Spartan history, consult remarks under the 
article Sparta.) _ _ 

Lactantius, I. Lucius Ccelius (or Cascilius Firmi- 
anus), an eminent father of the church, according to 
some a native of Africa, while others make him to 
have been born at Firmium in Italy. The former is 
most likely, as he studied rhetoric at Sicca, a city of 
Africa, under Arnobius, and attained so high a reputa¬ 
tion by a production called Symposium, or “ the Ban¬ 
quet,” that, when Dioclesian entertained a design to 
render Nicomedia a rival to Rome, he appointed Lac¬ 
tantius to teach rhetoric in that city. It is by soma 
supposed that he was originally a pagan, and convert¬ 
ed, when young, to the Christian faith ; but Lardner 
thinks otherwise ; and that he was a Christian during 
the persecution of Dioclesian is unquestionable. L 
appears that, owing to the unprofitableness of his pro 
fession, or other causes, he lived in very narrow cir 
cumstances, which it is, however, reasonable to con¬ 
clude were amended when appointed by the Emperor 
Constantine Latin preceptor to his son Crispus, after 
whose untimely death he appears to have been again 
neglected. Little more is known of his personal his¬ 
tory, except that he lived to an advanced age, but the 
exact time of his death is not recorded. As a Chris¬ 
tian writer, Lactantius is thought to treat divinity too 
philosophically ; but, at the same time, he is deemed 
the most eloquent of all the early ecclesiastical authors, 
and his Latinity has acquired him the title of the Chris¬ 
tian Cicero. His principal object was to expose the 
errors and contradictions of pagan writers on the sub¬ 
jects of theology and morals, and thereby to establish 
the credit and authority of the Christian religion, and 
his works are written with much purity and elegance 
of style, and discover great erudition. The testimony, 
indeed, to his learning, eloquence, and piety, is most 
abundant. Le Clerc calls him the most eloquent of 
the Latin fathers ; and Du Pin places his style almost 
on a level with Cicero's. Many writers, however, 
value his rhetoric more than his theology. He has 
been charged, among other errors, with Manichaeism, 
from which Lardner takes great pains to defend him. 
Middleton has shown, in his “Free Enquiry,” that 
Lactantius was not free from the credulity with which 
many of the early Christian writers are chargeable. 
Several material defects, moreover, must be remarked 
in this writer. He frequently quotes and commends 
spurious writings as if they were genuine, and makes 
use of sophistical and puerile reasonings. Examples 
of this may be seen in what he has advanced concern¬ 
ing the pre-existence of souls, the millennium, the com¬ 
ing of Elias, and many other topics in theology. Upon 
the subject of morals Lactantius has occasionally said 
excellent things ; but they are mixed with others, in¬ 
judicious, trifling, or extravagant. He maintains that 
war is in all cases unlawful, because it is a violation 
of the commandment, “ Thou shalt not kill.” He 
censures navigation and foreign merchandise, con¬ 
demns all kinds of usury, and falls into other absurdi¬ 
ties on moral topics. We must not, however, omit 
to remark, to the credit of Lactantius, his acknowl¬ 
edgment, that when Pythagoras and Plato visited bar¬ 
barous nations ir order to inform themselves concern- 





LAC 


LJEL 


mg their sacred doctrines and rites, they did not be¬ 
come acquainted with the Hebrews ; an observation 
which, had it been earlier admitted, might have pre¬ 
vented many mistakes in the history of philosophy. 
As a proof, moreover, that Lactantius, notwithstand¬ 
ing all his defects, was capable of thinking justly and 
liberally, we may refer to an excellent passage in which 
he strenuously asserts the right of private judgment in 
religion, and calls upon all men to employ their under¬ 
standings in a free inquiry after the truth. ( Instit. 
Div., 2, 7.) We have five prose works remaining of 
this father of the church : 1. De Ojjicio Dei, an apol¬ 
ogy for Divine Providence against the Epicureans, 
drawn principally from the miraculous construction of 
the human frame.—2. De morte Persecutor urn, a his¬ 
tory of the persecutors of Christianity from Nero to 
Dioclesian. The object of the writer is to show, by 
the violent deaths which all the persecutors of Chris¬ 
tianity experienced, that God punished their crimes. 
This work has been preserved to us in a single manu¬ 
script, from which it was published by Baluze. Nour- 
ry has maintained that it is not a work of Lactantius, 
but of a certain Lucius Caecilius, an imaginary being, 
who owes his existence merely to the mutilated title 
of a manuscript.—3. The principal work of Lactantius 
is entitled Divince Institutiones, and is divided into 
seven books. It was written in reply to two heathens, 
who wrote against Christianity at the beginning of Di- 
oclesian’s persecution. The date of the composition 
of the work cannot be exactly fixed. Basnage, Du 
Pin, and others, place it about A.D. 320 ; Cave and 
Lardner about A.D. 306. Lardner states the argu¬ 
ments on both sides ; and, on the whole, the latter 
opinion seems the more probable. Of this treatise he 
published an abridgment,—4, entitled Epitome lnstitu- 
tionum. A great portion of this was already lost in 
the days of St. Jerome ; PfofF, a professor of Tubin¬ 
gen, discovered the entire abridgment in a very ancient 
manuscript of the Turin library.—5. De ira Dei. In 
this work Lactantius examines the question, whether 
we can attribute anger to the Deity, and decides in 
ihe affirmative. The “ Banquet” of Lactantius has 
not reached us. Some ancient manuscripts assign to 
this father the authorship of a poem, entitled, “ De 
Phcenice ,” but many of the ablest modern critics re¬ 
gard it as a spurious production. It consists of 170 
verses, and turns upon the well-known fable of the 
Phoenix, which the early Christians regarded as an 
emblem of the resurrection. The editors of Lactan¬ 
tius have also joined to his works two other poems, 
one on the passover, “ De Pascha ,” and the other on 
our Saviour’s passion, “ De Passione Domini .” These 
poems, however, were written by Verrantius Fortuna- 
tus, a poet of the sixteenth century. A collection also 
of enigmas, in verse, has been assigned by some to 
Lactantius, but incorrectly. Complete editions of the 
works of Lactantius were published by Heumann, at 
Gottingen, in 1736 (the preface to this contains a cat¬ 
alogue of former editions), and by the Abbe Langlet, 
Paris, 2 vols. 4to, 1748. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. Rom., 

vol. 4, p. 26, seqq. — Id., vol. 3, p. 54.— Bdhr, Gesch. 
Rom. Lit., p. 124, 128, 248, 416, 484.)—II. Placidus, 
a grammarian, who flourished about 550 A.D. (Sax. 
Onomast., vol. 2, p. 45.) He was the author of Ar- 
gumenta Metamorphoseon Ovidii, in prose. ( Muller, 
V. S., p. 139.— Muncker, Praf. ad Fulgent, in My- 
thogr. Lat.) 

Lacydes, a philosopher of Cyrene, who filled the 
chair of the Platonic school at Athens after the death 
of Arceailaus. He assumed this office in the 4th year 
of the 134th Olympiad. He is said to have been the 
founder of a new school, not because he introduced 
any new doctrines, but because he changed the place 
of instruction, and held his school in the garden of 
Attalus, still, however, within the limits of the Aca¬ 
demic grove. He died of a palsy, occasioned by ex¬ 


cessive drinking, in the second year of the 141st Olym¬ 
piad. (Diog. Laert., 4, 59, seqq. — JElian, V. H., 2, 
41. — Athenceus, 10, 50.) 

Ladon, I. a small stream of Elis, flowing into the 
Peneus, and passing by Pylos. (Pausan., 6, 22.) In 
modern maps it is called the Derviche or Tcheliber .— 
II. A river of Arcadia, rising near the village of Lycu- 
ria, between the Peneus and Clitor. It was accounted 
the most beautiful stream in Greece. It is now call¬ 
ed, according to Dodwell (vol. 2, p. 442), Kephalo- 
Brusi, a general name in Romaic for any abundant 
source of water. He describes it as gurgling in con¬ 
tinual eruptions from the ground, and immediately 
forming a fine, rapid river. (Pausan., 8, 20.— Dionys. 
Perieg., v. 417.— Ovid, Met., 1, 702.— Id., Fast., 5, 
89.— Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 3, p. 317, seqq.) 

L^lius, I. C., surnamed Nejpos, an eminent Ro¬ 
man commander, accompanied the elder Africanus into 
Spain, and had the command of the fleet assigned him, 
which was to co-operate with the land forces. He 
contributed to the reduction of Carthago Nova, and 
was highly honoured by Scipio, both for his services 
on this occasion, and also for his judicious conduct in 
appeasing a commotion produced by the rivalry that 
prevailed between the land and naval forces of the Ro¬ 
mans. (Liv., 25, 48.) He was afterward sent to 
Rome to give an account of the successes which had 
attended the arms of the republic. After the close of 
the Spanish war, Lselius was despatched by Scipio to 
the court of Syphax, to sound that prince, and engage 
him to form an alliance with the Romans. The fol¬ 
lowing year (A.U.C. 548, B.C. 206), Asdrubal, the 
son of Giscon, having renewed the war in Spain, Lse¬ 
lius was despatched to oppose him, and nearly succeed¬ 
ed in making himself master of Gades. In A.U.C. 
549, B.C. 205, he was directed by Scipio to make a 
descent on the coast of Africa, which he effected, and 
obtained an immense booty. In the course of this 
war he surprised the camp of Syphax during the night, 
in conjunction with Masinissa, set fire to it, pursued 
and overtook the prince himself, and made him pris¬ 
oner. He conducted Syphax to Rome, and then has¬ 
tened to rejoin Scipio, and share his glory and his dan¬ 
gers. Lselius was elected praetor A.U.C. 557, B.C. 
197, and obtained the government of Sicily. He af¬ 
terward stood candidate for the consulship, but was 
defeated by private intrigues, and did not attain to that 
office until A.U.C. 564, B.C. 190. After his election 
to the consulship, Lselius had some difficulties with 
his colleague, L. Cornelius Scipio, respecting the di¬ 
vision of the provinces. They both desired the gov¬ 
ernment of Greece; but the senate, to whom the ques¬ 
tion was left, decided in favour of Scipio, and Lselius 
was obliged to be satisfied with a government in Italy. 
In discharging the duties of this, he repeopled Cremo¬ 
na and Placentia, which had been ruined by wars and 
contagious disorders. History, after this, makes no 
farther mention of him. It was from the narratives of 
Lselius that Polybius wrote his account of the cam¬ 
paigns of Scipio in Spain and Africa. (Polyb., 10, 11. 
— Liv., 26, 42, seqq. —Id., 27, 7, seqq. —Id., 29, 1, 
seqq.) —II. Surnamed Sapiens, was son of the prece¬ 
ding. He studied philosophy in early life under Dio¬ 
genes the Stoic and Pansetius, and learned, from these 
two eminent philosophers, to contemn the allurements 
of pleasure, and to cherish an ardent love for wisdom 
and virtue. Turning his attention after this to the 
profession of the bar, he took a high rank among the 
orators of his time. His eloquence is described by 
Cicero as mild and persuasive, although he was neg¬ 
ligent in point of style, and too fond of employing an¬ 
tiquated terms. (Cic., Brut., 21, seqq.) Lselius ac¬ 
companied his friend, the younger Africanus, to the 
siege of Carthage, where he signalized his valour. 
After the destruction of this celebrated city, he waa 
sent as praetor into Spain, and there broke the powei 

715 



LM S 


LJEV 


of the ihieftain Viriathus. {Cic., Off., 2, 11.) He 
was afterward elected into the college of augurs, B.C. 
1.18, and defeated before the comitia the proposition 
of L. Crassus, to deprive the senate of the power of 
electing the members of the augural college, and to 
transfer this right to the people. Cicero {N. D., 3, 
43) calls the speech which he delivered on this oc- 
'asion “ oratiuncula aureola,” Bribery and intrigue 
frustrated for some time his applications for the con¬ 
sulship, notwithstanding the efforts of Scipio in his be- 
nalf, until B.C. 140, when his merit triumphed over 
Every obstacle. He was consul with C Servilius 
Ca?pio, and conducted himself in this high office with 
a moderation well calculated to conciliate all minds. 
Still, however, he could not obtain a re-election, a cir- 
tumstance to which Cicero alludes, who blames the 
people for depriving themselves of the services of so 
wise a magistrate. ( Cic ., Tusc., 5, 19.) Laelius liv¬ 
ed a country life, and, when there, divided his time be¬ 
tween study and agriculture. He appears to have 
been of a cheerful and equable temper, and to have 
looked with philosophic calmness on both the favours 
and the frowns of fortune. Hence Horace ( Serm ., 2, 
1, 72) alludes to the “ mitis sapientia Lain .” He 
numbered among his friends Pacuvius and Terence, 
and it was thought that, in conjunction with Scipio, 
he aided Terence in the composition of his dramas. 
(But consult the article Terentius.) The friendship 
that subsisted between Laelius and Scipio was cele¬ 
brated throughout Rome, and it was this which in¬ 
duced Cicero to place the name of the former at the 
head of his beautiful dialogue “ De Amicitia ,” the in¬ 
terlocutors in which are Laelius and his two sons-in- 
law, C. Fannius and Q. Mutius Scaevola. Quintilian 
mentions a daughter of Laelius who was celebrated for 
her eloquence? {Quint., 1 , 1 , 6.) 

Laertes, I. king of Ithaca and father of Ulysses. 
He was one of the Argonauts. He ceded the crown 
to his son and retired to the country, where he spent 
his time in the cultivation of the earth. Ulysses found 
him thus employed on his return, enfeebled by age and 
sorrow. {Vid. Ulysses.)—II. A town and harbour of 
Cilicia, on the confines of Pamphylia, and west of 
Selinus. Strabo makes it to have been a fortified post 
on a hill, with a harbour below (669). It was the birth¬ 
place of Diogenes Laertius. ( Vid. Diogenes III.) 

Laertius, Diogenes, a Greek writer. {Vid. Di¬ 
ogenes III.) 

Laestrygones, a gigantic and androphagous race, 
meritioned by Homer in his description of the wander¬ 
ings of Ulysses. The country of the Laestrygones, 
according to the poet, lay very far to the west, since 
Ulysses, when driven from the island of JEolus, sailed 
on farther for six days and nights, at the end of which 
time he reached the land of the Laestrygonians. Many 
expounders of mythology, therefore, place the Laes- 
trygones in Sicily. But for this there is no good rea¬ 
son whatever, since Homer makes this race and that 
of the Cyclopes to dwell at a wide distance from each 
other. Equally fabulous is the account given by some 
of the ancient writers, that a colony of Laestrygones 
passed over into Italy with Lamus at their head, and 
built the city of Formiae. When once the respective 
situations of Circe’s island and that of ^Eolus were 
thought to have been ascertained, it became no very 
difficult matter to advance a step farther, and, as the 
Laestrygones lay, according to Homer, between these 
two islands, to make Formiae on the Italian coast a 
city of that people. Formiae was, however, in truth, 
of Pelasgic origin, and seems to have owed a large 
portion of its prosperity to a Spartan colony. The 
name appears to come from the Greek '0 ppia'i, and to 
have denoted a good harbour. {Mannert, Geogr., vol. 

4, p. 11, seqq .)—Unlike the Cyclopes, the Laestrygo¬ 
nes lived in the social state. Their king was named 
Antiphates, their town was called Laestrygonia or Te- 
716 


lepylus (it is uncertain which), and a fountain near it 
Artakia. Such was the state of things, according to 
Homer, when Ulysses came to this quarter in the 
course of his wanderings. There was a port at a lit¬ 
tle distance from the city, which all the ships of Ulys 
ses, but the one in which he himself was, entered. A 
herald, with two other persons, was then sent to the 
city. They met the daughter of Antiphates at the 
fountain Artakia, and were by her directed to her fa¬ 
ther’s house. On entering it they were terrified at the 
sight of his wife, who was “ as large as the top of a 
mountain.” She instantly called her husband from 
the market-place, who seized one of them, and killed 
and dressed him for dinner. The other two made 
their escape, pursued by the Laestrygones, who with 
huge rocks destroyed all the ships and their crews 
which were within the harbour, the vessel of Ulysses, 
which had not entered, alone escaping. {Horn., Od., 
10, 81, seqq.) 

L^etoria Lex, I. ordered that the plebeian magis¬ 
trates should be •elected at the Comitia Tributa: pass¬ 
ed A.U-C. 292.—II. Another, passed A.U.C. 497, 
against the defrauding of minors. By this law the 
years of minority were limited to twenty-five, and no 
one below that age could make a legal bargain 
{Heinecc., Ant. Rom.., ed. Haubold, p. 197, seq.) 

LaEvinus, I. P. Valerius, was consul A.U.C. 472, 
B.C. 280, and was charged with the conduct of the 
war against Pyrrhus and the Tarentines. The rapid¬ 
ity of his advance into Southern Italy induced Pyr¬ 
rhus to offer him terms of accommodation, and to pro¬ 
pose himself as an umpire between the Tarentines and 
Romans. Laevinus made answer to the monarch’s 
envoy, that the Romans neither wished his master for 
an arbitrator, nor feared him as an enemy. A bloody 
battle ensued near Heraclea, which Pyrrhus eventually 
gained by means of his elephants, these monstrous an¬ 
imals having never before been encountered by the 
Romans. This was the action after which Pyrrhus 
exclaimed, that another such victory would prove his 
ruin. Laevinus, not disheartened by his ill success, 
sent to Rome for fresh levies, and, having received 
two legions, set out in pursuit of Pyrrhus, who was 
advancing against Rome, and by a forced march 
saved Capua from falling into his hands. {Vid. Pyr¬ 
rhus.)—II. M. Valerius, of a consular family, obtained 
the prsetorship A.U.C. 540, B.C. 214, and command¬ 
ed a fleet stationed near Brundisium, in the Ionian 
Sea. Having heard of some warlike movement on 
the part of Philip, king of Macedonia, he advanced 
against that prince, gained various successes over him, 
and, detaching the iEtolians from his side, concluded 
a treaty with them, which gave the Romans their first 
firm foothold in Greece. In A.U.C. 544, B.C. 210, 
he was elected consul, though absent, and obtained 
the government of Italy, which he exchanged with his 
colleague M. Marcellus, at the instance of the senate, 
for that of Sicily. Before setting out for his govern¬ 
ment, he distinguished himself at Rome by his patri¬ 
otic conduct. There being a scarcity of money in the 
public treasury, and a supply of rowers being required 
for the fleet, it was proposed that private persons should, 
as on former occasions, in proportion to their fortunes 
and stations, supply rowers with pay and subsistence 
for thirty days. This measure exciting much mur¬ 
muring and ill will among the people, and a sedition 
being apprehended, Laevinus recommended to the sen¬ 
ate that the rich should first set an example, and con¬ 
tribute to the common fund all their superfluous 
wealth. The scheme was received with the warmest 
approbation; and so great was the ardour on the part 
of the rich to bring in their gold and silver to the treas¬ 
ury, that the commissioners were not able to receive 
nor the clerks to enter, the contributions. {Livy, 26, 
36.) As soon as Laevinus reached Sicily he began 
the siege of Agrigentum, the only important city which 





L A I 


LAM 


♦till held out for the Carthaginians. Its reduction 
orought with it the submission of the whole of Sicily 
„o the Roman arms. Having been continued in com¬ 
mand for another year, he collected all his naval forces, 
made a descent on the coast of Africa, and, encoun¬ 
tering on his return the Carthaginian fleet, gained a 
splendid naval victory. He was afterward deputed to 
vis:; the court of Attalus, king of Pergamus, and ob¬ 
tain the statue of Cybele. ( Vid. Cybele.) In A.U.C. 
553, B.O. 201, Laevinus was sent as propraetor to Ma¬ 
cedonia, against King Philip ; but he died the follow¬ 
ing year. His sons Publius and Marcus celebrated 
funeral games in honour of their father, which were 
continued for the space of four days. ( Liv., 24, 10, 
seqq. — Id., 24, 40, seqq. — Id., 26, 40, seqq. — Id., 29, 
11.— Id., 31, 3.— Id., 31, 50.)—III. P. Valerius, a 
descendant of the preceding, despised at Rome for his 
vices. ( Horat., Serm., 1, S, lZ.-~Schol., ad loc.) 

Lagus, a Macedonian, father of Ptolemy I., of 
Egypt (Consult remarks at the beginning of the ar¬ 
ticle Ptolemasus I.) 

Lagusa, I. an island in the Sinus Glaucus, near the 
northern coast of Lycia, now Panagia di Cordialissa, 
*r, according to some, Christiana. —II. or Lagussae, 
m island, or, more properly, a cluster of islands off 
ihe coast of Troas, to the north of Tonedos, now Tao- 
:han Adasi. (Plin., 5, 31.— Bischof nnd Moller, 
Worterb. der Geogr., p. 676.) 

Laiadbs, a patronymic of CEdipus, sor of Laius. 
Ovid, Met., 6, fab. 18.) 

Lais, I. the most celebrated hetaerist of Greece. 
She was born at Hyccara in Sicily, and was made 
captive when her native city was taken by the Athe¬ 
nians, in the course of the expedition against Syracuse, 
and was conveyed to Athens. She was at this time 
»even years of age, and the property of a common sol¬ 
dier. Having been subsequently sold by her first 
«wner, she was conveyed by her purchaser to Corinth, 
at that period the most dissolute city of Greece, 
where, after the lapse of a few years, she became one 
of those females who consecrated themselves in that 
city to the service of Venus. (Vid. Corinthus, to¬ 
wards the close of the article.) The fame of her ex¬ 
traordinary beauty drew together strangers from every 
part of Greece, while the extravagance of her demands 
gave rise to the well-known proverb, that “ it was not 
for every one to go to Corinth.” (On navrog uvdpog 
kg K opivdov kod’ 6 Tc^iovg. Erasrn., Chil., col. 131. 
—“Non cuivis homini contingit adire Corinthum.' 1 ' 
Horat., Epist., 1, 17, 36.) Pausanias speaks of a 
tomb of Lais at Corinth, near the temple of Venus 
Melaenis, on which was placed a stone lioness, holding 
a ram with her front paws, an evident allusion to the 
unprincipled rapacity of the hetserist. The same wri¬ 
ter makes mention also of a tomb of Lais in Thessaly, 
whither, according to one account, she had gone, 
through attachment for a youth named Hippostratus ; 
and the females of which country, dreading her evil 
influence, had assassinated her in the temple of Venus. 
—Numismatical writers refer to certain coins of an¬ 
cient Corinth, which have on one side a lioness hold¬ 
ing down a ram, and on the other a female head ; and 
they think that these were struck in honour of Lais, 
the female head being intended as her portrait. (Con¬ 
sult Visconti, Iconogr. Gr., vol. 1, p. 411.) A full 
account of Lais is given by Bayle (Diet. Hist., s. v.). 
—II. Another hetserist, often confounded with the for¬ 
mer, but who lived fifty or sixty years later. She was 
the daughter of a Corinthian hetserist attached to Alci- 
biades. It is to this latter Lais that we must refer the 
anecdote related of Demosthenes. (Consult VHistoire 
de Lais, par B. Le Gouz de Gerland, Paris, 1756, 
12mo. Some writers, refuted by Bayle, make this 
Lais to have been a daughter of Alcibiades. Others, 
misled by an equivocal expression of Paulmier de 
Grantemesnil (Palmerius— Exercitat., p. 268), have 


taken her for the daughtei of the first .La,is , an error 
into which Brunck has also fallen (ad Aristoph. Pint.. 
179). 

Laius, a son of Labdacus, who succeeded to the 
throne of Thebes, which his grandfather Nycteus had 
left to the care of his brother Lycus, till his grandson 
came of age. He was driven from his kingdom by Ara- 
phion and Zethus, who were incensed against Lycus 
for the cruelties which Antiope had suffered. (Vid. 
Antiope.) On the death of Amphion, Laius succeeded 
to the throne of Thebes, and married the daughter of 
Menceceus, called by Homer Epicasta, by others Jo- 
casta. An oracle, however, warned him against hav¬ 
ing children, declaring that he would meet his death 
from the hands of a son, and Laius, in consequence, 
long refrained from becoming a father. At length, 
having indulged too freely in wine on a festal occasion- 
he forgot his previous resolution, and Jocasta brought 
forth a son. The child, as soon as born, was delivered 
by the father to his herdsman, to expose on Mourn 
Cithasron. The herdsman, moved by compassion, 
gave the babe, according to one account (Soph., (Ed 
T., 1038), to a neatherd belonging to Polybus, king 
of Corinth; or, as others say (Eurip., Phoen., 28), 
the grooms of Polybus found the infant after it had 
been exposed, and brought it to the wife of Polybus. 
who, being childless, reared it as her own, and named 
it CEdipus, on account of its swollen feet (from oldsu, 
to swell, and rrovg, a foot), for Laius, previous to the 
exposure of the child, had pierced its ancles with a 
thong. Many years afterward, Laius, being on his 
way to Delphi, to learn tidings respecting the child 
which he had caused to be exposed, whether it had 
perished or not, and being accompanied only by his 
herald Polyphontes, met in a narrow road in Phocis a 
young man also travelling in the direction of the ora¬ 
cle. This was CEdipus, who was anxious to ascertain 
his true parentage from the god. When the chariot 
of Laius overtook CEdipus, who was on foot, the 
driver ordered the young man to retire from the path, 
and make way for one of royal blood. On his refusal 
a contest ensued, in which CEdipus slew the herald 
and his own father, both the latter and his son being 
ignorant of each other. The body of Laius was found 
and honourably buried by Damasistratus, king of Pla- 
tsea ; and Creon, the son of Menceceus, ascended the 
throne of Thebes. The account here given, which is 
from Euripides, differs in some respects from other 
versions of the legend. Sophocles makes CEdipus to 
have met his father after having consulted the oracle. 
(Soph., (Ed. T., 780, seqq. —Compare Apollod., o, 5 { 
7.— Diod. Sic., 4, 64.— Eudoc., 3, 12.) 

Lalage, I. a young female beloved by Horace, 
(Od., 1, 22, 23.)—II. A slave of Cynthia’s. (Pro- 
pert., 4, 7, 45.) 

Lamachus, a son of Xenophanes, sent into Sicily 
with Nicias. He was killed B.C. 414, before Syra¬ 
cuse. Lamachus is alluded to by Aristophanes in his 
play of the Acharnenses, and with some degree of rid¬ 
icule. That he was a man of high courage, the com¬ 
pliments directly and indirectly paid to him by the 
same poet (Thesm., 841.— Acharn., 1073, et Foss, ad 
loc.), sufficiently indicate. From an important trust, 
also, that was reposed in him by Pericles (Pint., Vit. 
Pericl., c. 20), it should seem, that he was considered 
by that great statesman a man of talent as well as cf 
courage. If the outward merits of Lamachus had 
imposed upon the penetration of Pericles, they had 
not on that of Aristophanes : he saw more froth than 
substance, more of show than solid worth, in the young 
soldier; a disposition for the distinctions and emolu¬ 
ments which are to be derived from soldiership, but 
no evidence of those high talents which constitute a 
really great captain. That the dramatist had formed 
a more correct estimate of the powers of Lamachus 
than the contemporary statesman, the comparatively 

717 



LAM 


LAM 


8ma t . figure which he afterward made in history suffi¬ 
ciently proves. ( Mitchell , ad Aristoph., Acharn., 510.) 

Lambrus or Lamber, a river of Cisalpine Gaul, is¬ 
suing from the Eupilis Lacus, and falling into the 
Olona, one of the tributaries of the Po. It is now 
the Lambro or Lambrone. (Plin., 3, 19.) 

Lamia, a city of Thessaly situate inland from the 
head waters of the Sinus Maliacus, and, according to 
Strabo (433), about thirty stadia from the Sperchius. 
It is celebrated in history as the principal scene of the 
war which was carried on between the Macedonians 
under Antipater, and the Athenians, with other con¬ 
federate Greeks, commanded by Leosthenes ; from 
which circumstance it is generally known by the name 
of the Lamiac war. Antipater, having been defeated 
in the first instance, retired to Lamia, where he was 
besieged by the allies ; but he afterward contrived to 
escape from this place, and retire to the north of 
Thessaly. Soon after, with the assistance of the army 
of Craterus, brought for that purpose from Asia, he 
gave battle to and defeated his opponents at Cranon, 
and compelled them to sue for peace. This was 
granted them on severe terms. The Athenians were 
required to pay the same tribute as before, to receive 
a Macedonian garrison, defray the expenses of the 
war, and deliver up their orators, whose appeals to the 
feelings of the Athenian people had always occasioned 
so much difficulty for the Macedonians. Demosthenes 
and Hyperides were particularly aimed at. ( Vid. De¬ 
mosthenes and Hyperides.)—Livy reports (27, 30) 
that Philip, the son of Demetrius, twice defeated the 
-Etolians, supported by Attalus and some Roman 
troops, near this place. Antiochus was afterward 
received there with acclamations. (Livy, 35, 43.) 
The place was subsequently retaken by the Romans. 
(Liv ., 37, 5.— Polyb., Excerpt., 20, 11, seqq. — Pliny, 
4, 7.) According to Dr. Holland (vol. 2, p. 107), 
there is very little doubt that the site of Zeitoun 
corresponds with that of the ancient Lamia. — II. 
JElius, a Roman of distinguished family, claiming de¬ 
scent from Lamus, the most ancient monarch of the 
Lsestrygones. He signalized himself in the war with 
the Cantabri as one of the lieutenants of Augustus. 
(Horat., Od., 3, 17.)—HI. The mistress of Deme¬ 
trius Poliorcetes, who rendered herself celebrated by 
her extravagances, her intrigues, and her ascendancy 
over that prince. ( Pint., Vit. Demetr. — JElian, V. 
H., 1, 13.) 

LamLe, fabulous monsters, commonly represented 
with the head and breast of a female, and the body of 
a serpent. According to some, they changed their 
forms at pleasure, and, when about to ensnare their 
prey, assumed such appearances as were most seduc¬ 
tive and calculated to please. The blood of young 
persons was believed to possess peculiar attractions 
for them, and for the purpose of quaffing this they 
were wont to take the form of a beautiful female. 
The Lamiae possessed also another means of accom¬ 
plishing their object. This was a species of hissing 
sound emitted by them, so soothing and attractive in 
its nature, that persons found themselves irresistibly 
allured by it. When not in disguise, and when they 
had sated their horrid appetites, their form was hide¬ 
ous, their visages glowed like fire, their bodies were 
besmeared with blood, and their feet appeared of iron 
or of lead. Sometimes they showed themselves com¬ 
pletely blind, at other times they had a single eye, 
either in the forehead or on one side of the visage. 
The popular belief made the^i frequent Africa and 
Thessaly / in both of which countries they watched along 
the main roads, and seized upon unwary travellers.— 
The fable of Queen Lamia has some analogy to this 
fiction, and both, in all probability, owe their origin to 
one and the same source. Lamia, according to Di¬ 
odorus Siculus and other ancient authorities, was a 
queen of Africa remarkable for beauty, who, on ac- 
718 


count of her cruel disposition, was eventually trans¬ 
formed into a wild beast. Having lost, it seems, her 
own children by the hand of death, she sought to con¬ 
sole her sorrow by seizing the children of her subjects 
from their mothers’ arms, and causing them to be 
slain. Hence the transformation inflicted upon her 
by the gods. ( Diod. Sic., 20, 41.—Compare Schol. 
ad Aristoph., Pac., 757. — Casaub., ad Strab., 36.— 
Wesseling, ad Diod., 1. c .) The Lamiae figured ex¬ 
tensively in the nursery-legends of antiquity, and their 
names and attributes were standing objects of terror 
to the young. (Diod., 1. c. — Compare Horat., Ep. ad 
Pis., 340.— Vid. Lemures.) 

Lampedo, I. a Lacedaemonian female, wife of Ar- 
chidamus II., king of Sparta, and mother of Agis. 
She was celebrated as being the daughter, wife, sister, 
and mother of a king.—II. A queen of the Amazons. 
(Justin, 2, 4.) 

Lampetia, I. a daughter of Helios (the Sun-god) 
and Neaera. She, with her sister Phaethusa, took 
care of the flocks and herds of her father, in the island 
of Thrinakia. There were seven flocks of sheep and 
as many herds of oxen, fifty animals in each flock and 
herd. They neither bred nor died. Ulysses, in To 
course of his wanderings, came to this island, which 
both Tiresias and Circe had strictly charged him to 
shun. On discovering that it was Thrinakia, the hero 
was desirous of obeying the injunctions he had re¬ 
ceived ; but as it was evening when he arrived, his 
companions forced him to consent to their landing, 
and passing the night there. They promised to de¬ 
part in the morning, and took an oath to abstain from 
the cattle of the sun. During the night a violent 
storm came on, and for an entire month afterward a 
strong southeast wind blew, which confined them to 
the island. When their provisions were exhausted, 
they lived on such birds and fish as they could catch. 
At length, while Ulysses was sleeping, Eurylochus 
prevailed on the rest to slaughter some of the sacred 
oxen in sacrifice to the gods, and to vow, by way of 
amends, a temple to Helios. Ulysses, on awakening, 
was filled with horror at what they had done ; and the 
disjfleasure of the gods was soon manifested by prodi¬ 
gies; for the hides crept along the ground, and the 
flesh lowed on the spits. Still they fed for six days 
on the sacred cattle ; on the seventh the storm lulled, 
and they left the island ; but, as soon as they had lost 
sight of land, a terrible west wind, accompanied by 
thunder, lightning, and pitchy darkness, came on. 
Jupiter struck the ship with a thunderbolt: it went to 
pieces, and all were drowned except Ulysses. (Od., 
12, 260, seqq.) —II. or Lampetie, one of the Helia- 
des, or sisters of Phaethon. (Ovid, Met., 2, 349.) 

Lampridius, ^Elius, a Latin historian, who flour¬ 
ished in the early part of the fourth century, under 
Dioclesian and Constantine the Great. Of his works 
there are extant the lives of the emperors Antoninus, 
Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Yerus, Pertinax, Albinus, 
Macrinus, &c. The life of Alexander Severus, which, 
according to the Palatine manuscript, is the work of 
Spartianus, has been by some authorities ascribed to 
him. The lives are to be found in the collection of 
the “Historic Augusta Scriptores ,” 2 vols. 8vo, 1671 
Some critics consider Lampridius as identical with 
Spartianus. (Consult Foss., de Hist. Lat., 2, 7.— 
Fabric., Bill. Lat., 3, p. 93, note a. — Saxii Ono- 
mast., vol. 1, p. 38.) The style and management of 
Lampridius will not allow him a place among histori¬ 
ans of a superior class, yet he is valuable for his facts. 
(Bahr, Gesch. Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. 341.) 

Lampsacus, a city of Mysia in Asia Minor, situate 
on the Hellespont, where it begins to open into the 
Propontis, and northeast of Abydos. The early name 
of the spot where Lampsacus stood was Pityusa, 
from the number of pine-trees which grew there (Trtrvq, 
a pine-tree). A Phocaean colony is said to have found- 




LAN 


LAO 


ed this city and given it its name, being directed by 
the oracle to settle wherever they saw lightning first. 
This took place in the district Pityusa, and hence the 
name of the city, from ’kdpno, to shine forth. (Mela, 
1, 19.— Etym. Mag. — Holsten., ad Steph. Byz., p. 
508.) Strabo calls Lampsacus a Milesian colony: 
very probably it was only enlarged by a colony from 
Miletus. ( Strab., 588.— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 
3, p. 518.) Another account, however, makes the 
city to have existed prior to the arrival of the Pho- 
caeans, and merely the name to have been changed by 
them. They aided, according to this version of the 
story, a king of the Bebryces, named Mandro, against 
the neighbouring barbarians, and were persuaded by 
him to occupy a part of his territory. Their successes 
in war, however, and the spoils they had obtained, ex¬ 
cited the envy of the Bebrycians, and the Phocaaans 
would have been secretly destroyed, had not Lamp- 
sace % the king’s daughter, apprized them of the plot. 
Out of gratitude to her, they called the city Lampsa¬ 
cus, having destroyed the former inhabitants. ( Pol - 
ycen ., 8, 37. — Steph. Byz., s. v.) The neighbouring 
country was termed Abarnis or Abarnus, because Ve¬ 
nus, who here was delivered of Priapus, was so disgust¬ 
ed with his appearance, that she disowned him (anyp- 
velto) for her offspring. (Steph. Byz., s. v. 'A bapvog. 
— Holstenius, ad Steph. Byz., 1. c.) Priapus was the 
chief deity of the place. His temple there was the 
asylum of lewdness and debauchery ; and hence the 
epithet Lampsacius is used to express immodesty and 
wantonness. Alexander resolved to destroy the city 
on account of the vices of its inhabitants, or more 
probably for its firm adherence to the interest of Per¬ 
sia. It was, however, saved from ruin by the artifice 
of Anaximenes. (Vid. Anaximenes.) The name of 
Lamsaki is still attached to a small town, near which 
Lampsacus probably stood, as Lamsaki itself contains 
no remains or vestiges of antiquity. A modern trav¬ 
eller assures us besides, that “ its wine, once so cele¬ 
brated, is now among the worst that is made in this 
part of Anatolia.” (Sibthorpe, in Walpole’s Collec¬ 
tion, vol. 1, p. 91.) 

Lamus, I. a fabled king of the Laestrygones, said to 
have founded Formise. (Vid. Lasstrygones.) The La- 
mian family at Rome pretended to claim descent from 
him. (Horat., Od., 3, 17.)—II. A son of Hercules 
and Omphale, fabled to have succeeded his mother on 
the throne of Lydia.—III. A river in the western part 
of Cilicia Campestris, now the Lamas. It gave to 
the adjacent district the name of Lamotis. (Cramer's 
Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 338.) 

Lancia, the name of two towns in Lusitania, dis¬ 
tinguished by the appellations of Oppidana and Trans- 
cudana. The first was on the frontiers of the Lusi- 
tani, near the sources of the river Munda or Mondego. 
It is now La Guarda. The latter lay to the east of 
the former, and is now Ciudad Rodrigo. It was called 
Transcudana, because it lay beyond the Cuda. (Bis- 
choff und Moller, Worterb. der Geogr., p. 679.) 

Langobardi, a people of Germany, located by most 
writers on the Albis or Elbe, and the Viadrus or Oder , 
in part of what is now called Brandenburg. Accord¬ 
ing to the account, however, of Paulus Diaconus, him¬ 
self one of this nation, they originally came from Scan¬ 
dinavia, under the name of Wiiini, and were called by 
the German nations Long Beards , from their appear¬ 
ance. (Paul Diac., sive Warnefrid, de Gest. Lon- 
gob., 1, 9.) The German term Lang Baerdt, Latin¬ 
ized, became Langobardi. They seem to have settled 
on the Elbe, probably in the eastern part of the duchy 
of Lunenburg. They are the same with the Lombards 
who overran Italy in a later age. (Mannert, Anc. 
Geogr., vol. 3, p. 179.— Leo, Entwickelung der Verf. 
der Lombardischen Stadtc, Hamburg, 1824, 8vo.) 

Lanuvium, a town of Latium, about sixteen miles 
from Rome, situate, according to Strabo, to the right 


of the Appian Way, and on a hill commanding an ex¬ 
tensive prospect towards Antium and the sea. There 
is no very early mention of Lanuvium in Roman his¬ 
tory ; but the title of “ urbs fidelissima," given to it 
by Livy (6, 21), indicates that it very soon sought the 
protection of the rising city. It is noticed, however, 
previous to this period, as the place to which M. Yol- 
scius Fictor, whose false testimony had caused the 
banishment of Cseso Quinctius, retired into exile. 
(Liv., 3, 29.) Lanuvium did not always remain at¬ 
tached to Rome, but took part in the Latin wars with 
the neighbouring cities against that power. The con¬ 
federates were, however, routed near the river Astura, 
not far from Antium (Liv., 8, 13); and this defeat 
was soon followed by the subjugation of the whole of 
Latium. Lanuvium seems to have been treated with 
more moderation than the other Latin towns ; for, in¬ 
stead of being punished, the inhabitants were, made 
Roman citizens, and their privileges and sacred rights 
were preserved, on condition that the temple and wor¬ 
ship of Juno Sospita, which were held in great ven¬ 
eration in their city, should be common to the Romans 
also. (Liv., 8, 14.) It then became a municipium ; 
and it remained ever after faithful to the Romans, par¬ 
ticularly in the second Punic war, as we learn from 
Livy (26, 8) and Silius Italicus (8, 361 ; 13, 364).— 
Lanuvium and its district had the honour of giving 
birth to several distinguished characters in the annals 
of Rome. Milo, the antagonist of Clodius, was a na¬ 
tive of this place, and was on his way thither to create 
a priest, probably of Juno, in virtue of his office of dic¬ 
tator of the city, when he met Clodius on the Appian 
Way, and the rencounter took place which ended in 
the death of the latter. (Cic.,pro Mil., c. 10.) The 
famous comedian Roscius was likewise born near La¬ 
nuvium. (Cic., de Div., 1, 36. — Id., N. D., 1 , 28.) 
We learn also from Jul. Capitolinus and iEl. Lampri- 
dius, that the three Antonines were born here.—Tht 
ruins of Lanuvium still bear the name of Civita Lavi 
nia, or Citta della Vigna. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol 
2, p. 27, seqq.) 

Laocoon, a son of Priam and Hecuba, or, accord 
ing to others, of Antenor, and a priest of Apollo du¬ 
ring the Trojan war. While offering, in the exer¬ 
cise of his sarcedotal functions, a bullock to rendei 
Neptune propitious to the Trojans, two enormous ser¬ 
pents issued from the sea, and, having first destroyed 
his two sons, whom he vainly endeavoured to save, 
attacked Laocoon himself, and, winding themselves 
round his body, crushed him to death in their folds. 
This dreadful punishment was inflicted by the goddess 
Minerva, for the part Laocoon had taken in endeav¬ 
ouring to dissuade "the Trojans from admitting into C 
Troy the famous, and, as it afterward proved to them, 
fatal wooden hofse, which the crafty Greeks had con 
secrated to Minerva. (Virgil, JEneid, 2, 40, seqq.) 
Virgil, in speaking of Laocoon, employs the words 
“ ductus Neptuno sorte sarcedos" (jEn., 2, 201). This 
merely means, as above stated, that, although a priest 
of Apollo, he had been chosen by lot to propitiate 
Neptune with a sacrifice. (Heyne, ad loc.) —An en¬ 
during celebrity has been gained for the story of Lao¬ 
coon, from its forming the subject of one of the most 
remarkable groups in sculpture which time has spared 
to us. It represents the agonized father and his 
youthful sons, one on each side of him, writhing and 
expiring in the complicated folds of the serpents. The 
figures are naked, the drapery that is introduced being 
only used to support and fill up the composition. 
This superb work of art, which Pliny describes inac¬ 
curately as consisting of only a single block of marble 
(for, in spite of this mistake, there seems to be no 
doubt, in the opinion of the learned, that this is the 
identical group alluded to by that writer), originally 
decorated the baths of Titus, among the ruins of which 
it was found in the year 1506. The names of thf 

719 



LAOCOOIN. 


LAC 


sculptors who executed it are also recorded. They 
are Agesander, Polydorus, and Athenodorus, natives 
of Rhodes. Pliny (36, 5) says, “ Laocoon, which is in 
the palace ( domo ) of the Emperor Titus, is a work to 
be preferred to all others either in painting or sculp¬ 
ture. Those great artists, Agesander, and Polydorus, 
and Athenodorus, Rhodians, executed the principal 
figure ( eum ), and the sons, and the wonderful folds of 
the .serpents, out of one block of marble.”—There 
has been much difference of opinion among antiqua¬ 
ries on several points connected with this group : 
first, as to the date of the artists; Winckelmann con¬ 
tending that they are of a good period of Grecian art, 
and as early as Lysippus. A considerably later date, 
however, is now attributed to them. The next ques¬ 
tion discussed has been, whether the sculptor was in¬ 
debted for the subject to Virgil’s fine description (JEn., 
2, 200, seqq.), or whether the poet was indebted to 
the artist. With respect to date, the most careful 
consideration seems to fix these sculptors as late as 
the early emperors; and Lessing, whose work on the 
Laocoon deserves the attention of all who take an in¬ 
terest in the philosophy and capabilities of art, believes 
they lived in the reign of Titus. With regard to the 
subject, it is most probable that the story, being well 
known, offered advantages for illustration to the sculp¬ 
tor, as it did for description to the poet. As Virgil’s 
priest was habited in his robes during the exercise of 
his priestly functions, and the group under considera¬ 
tion is entirely naked, the argument is additionally 
strengthened against the assumption that the artist 
borrowed from the poet? It is more natural to believe 
that each drew from a common source, and treated 
the subject in the way best adapted to the different 
arts they exercised ; the sculptor’s object being con¬ 
centration of effect, the poet’s amplification and brill¬ 
iant description.—This group is justly considered, by 
all competent judges, to be a master-piece of art. It 
combines, in its class, all that sculpture requires, and, 
we may say, admits of, and may truly be studied as a 
canon. The subject is of the most affecting and in¬ 
teresting kind ; and the expression in every part cf 
the figures reaches, but does not exceed, the limits of 
propriety. Intense mental suffering is portrayed in 
the countenances, while the physical strength of all 
the three figures is evidently sinking under the irresist¬ 
ible power of the huge reptiles wreathed around their 
exhausted limbs. One son, in whose side a serpent 
has fixed his deadly fangs, seems to be fainting; the 
other, not yet bitten, tries (and the futility of the at¬ 
tempt is faithfully shown) to disengage one foot from 
the serpent’s embrace. ' The father, Laocoon, himself, 
is mighty in his sufferings : every muscle is in extreme 
action, and his hands and feet are convulsed with pain¬ 
ful energy. Yet there is nothing frightful, disgusting, 
or contrary to beauty in the countenance. Suffering 
is faithfully and strongly depicted there, but it is rather 
the exhibition of mental anguish than of the repul¬ 
sive and undignified contortions of mere physical pain. 
The whole of this figure displays the most intimate 
knowledge of anatomy and of outward form ; the lat- ; 
ter selected with care, and freed from any vulgarity i 
of common individual nature : indeed, the single figure 
of Laocoon may be fairly referred to, as one of the ; 
finest specimens existing of that combination of truth i 
and beauty, which is so essential to the production of 
perfect sculpture, and which can alone ensure for it ; 
lasting admiration. The youths are of a smaller i 
standard than the proportion of the father; a liberty : 
hardly justifiable, but taken, probably, with the view of i 
heightening the effect of the principal figure. The i 
right arm of Laocoon is a restoration, but so ably i 
done, though only in plaster, that the deficiency is i 
said to be scarcely a blemish. It is not certain what i 
modern artist has the merit of this restoration, though 
it is thought that the arm it now bears was the plas- ] 
720 v 


y ter-model of Michael Angelo, who was charged wit! 
s the task of adding a marble arm, but left the on* 
ti which he had destined for this object unfinished, in a fi 
a of despair. Some antiquarians have thought that the 

- original action of the arm was not extended, but that 
, this limb was bent back towards the head ; and they 
1 have supported their hypothesis by the fact of there 
f being a rough and broken surface where they think the 
3 hand, or perhaps a fold of the serpent, may have come 

- in contact with the hair. ( Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol 
: 13, p. 323, seq. — Heyne, Antiq. Auff., vol. 2, p. 34, 

- seqq. — Winckelmann , Werke ., vol. 6, p. 101, seqq. — 

, Id., vol. 5, p. 105.— Id., vol. 7, p. 189. — Id., vol. 5, 

, p. 250.— Lessing, Laocoon, 5, p. 76, &c.) 

Laodamia, I. a daughter of Acastus and Astyda- 
• mia, and wife of Protesilaus. (Vid. Protesilaus.) 

, When she received intelligence of the death of her 
> husband in the Trojan war, she caused an image of 
l him to be formed, which she would never allow to be 
! out of her sight. Her father ordered the image to be 
: burned, that her thoughts might be diverted from her 
■ loss ; but Laodamia threw herself into the flames, and 
i perished along with it. Thence probably the tradition 
! adopted by some poets, that the gods restored life to 
l Protesilaus for three hours, and that this hero, finding 
the decree irreversible, by which he was to return 
i to the shades below, prevailed on Laodamia to ac¬ 
company him thither. She was also called Phylacea. 
(Virg., AEn., 6, 447.— Ovid, Her., 13. — Hygin., fab., 
104.)—II. A daughter of Bellerophon by Achemone, 
the daughter of King Iobates. She had a son by Ju¬ 
piter, called Sarpedon. ( Vid. Sarpedon.) 

Laodice, I. a daughter of Priam and Hecuba, be¬ 
came enamoured of Acamas, son of Theseus, when he 
came with Diomedes from the Greeks to Troy with 
an embassy to demand the restoration of Helen, and 
had by him a son named Munitus. She afterward 
married Telephus, and, on his desertion of her at the 
time he abandoned the Trojan cause, she became the 
wife of Helicaon, the son of Antenor. The rest of 
her story is variously related. Some make her, after 
the capture of Troy, to have thown herself from the 
summit of a rocky ravine when pursued by the Greeks; 
others, to have been swallowed up by the earth in 
accordance with her own prayer ; and others again, 
to have been recognised by Acamas, when Troy 
was taken, and to have returned with him to Greece. 

( Tzetz., ad Lycophr., 314,495.)—II. One of the three 
daughters of Agamemnon, called also Electra. (Vid. 
Electra.)—III. The wife of Antiochus, one of Philip’s 
officers, and mother of Seleucus Nicator (Consult 
Justin, 15, 4.)—IV. The sister and wife of Antio¬ 
chus Theos, by whom she became the mother of Se¬ 
leucus Callinicus and Antiochus Hierax. ( Justin, 
27, 9.)—V. A daughter of Mithradates, king of Pon- 
tus. She married Antiochus the Great, king of Syria. 
—VI. The sister and wife of Mithradates Eupator. 
(Consult Justin , 37, 8.)—VII. Wife of Ariarathes V. 
king of Cappadocia. ( Vid. Ariarathes V.) 

Laodicea, I. a city of Phrygia, in the southwestern 
angle of the country. It was situate on the river Ly- 
cus (hence called A aodlueta enl Au/ccj, Laodicea ad 
Lycum ), and stood on the borders of Phrygia, Caria, 
and Lydia. Its situation coincides exactly with that 
of Cydrara mentioned by Herodotus (7, 30 .— Vid 
Cydrara). Pliny, however (5, 29), makes its early 
name to have been Diospolis, changed subsequently 
to Rhoas. It contained three boundary stones, as be¬ 
ing on the borders of three provinces, and hence is 
commonly called by the ecclesiastical writers Trime- 
taria. Its name of Laodicea was given to it by Anti¬ 
ochus Theos, in honour of his wife Laodice. He re¬ 
established it. (Steph. Byz., s. v.) Under the Ro¬ 
mans it became a very flourishing commercial city. 

It is supposed to have been destroyed during the in¬ 
road of Timur Leng, A.D. 1402. (Lhicas, p. 42, 







LAO 


L A R 


seqq. — Chalcond., p. 85.) The ruins of Laodicea are 
now called by the Turks Eski Htssar. ( Mannert , 
Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 3, p. 131. — Leake’s Journal, p. 
154, seqq.) —II. Scabiosa, a city of Syria, southwest 
of Emesa and of the Orontes. It is sometimes, though 
erroneously, styled Cabiosa. The epithet Scabiosa 
must have reference to the leprosy, or some cutaneous 
complaint, very prevalent here in the time of the Ro¬ 
man power. Its previous name under the Greeks was 
AaodiKeca y irpog Ai6avo>, Laodicea ad Libanum 
(Strabo , 753.— Plin., 5, 23;, and it must have been sit¬ 
uate, therefore, near the northeastern part of the chain 
of Libanus, in the plain Marsyas, which Pococke (2, 
p. 204) mentions, though he is silent respecting its 
ancient name. Its site must be looked for to the 
west of the modern Hasseiah, a day’s journey to the 
southwest of the modern Hems, the ancient Emesa. 
{Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 1, p. 428.)—III. A mar¬ 
itime city of Syria, on an eminence near the coast, 
called, for distinction’ sake, A aodineia krd rrj Ja’J&T- 
ry, Laodicea ad Mare. (Strab., 751.— Plin., 21, 5.) 
It was built by Seleucus Nicator, and named in hon¬ 
our of his mother; and Strabo ranks it among the 
four principal cities of the country. (Compare Ap- 
pian, B. Syr., c. 27.) The fruitfulness of the adja¬ 
cent country, and the quantity of good wine made in 
this quarter, which furnished a great article of trade 
with Alexandrea, were the chief reasons that induced 
Seleucus to found this city. Laodicea may, in fact, 
be regarded as the harbour of Antiochia. The an¬ 
cient writers praise its excellent port, and it would 
seem, even at the present day, to show traces of the 
works constructed to give security and convenience 
to the harbour. {Pococke, 2, p. 287.— Walpole’s Me¬ 
moirs, vol. 2, p. 138.) In the civil war after Caesar’s 
death, Dolabella stood a long siege in this place; it 
was finally taken, and suffered severely. {Dio Cass., 
47, 30. — Appian, B. Civ., 4, 62.) Hence Antony 
declared it independent, and freed it from all tribute. 
{Appian, B. Civ., 5, 7.) It again suffered from Pes- 
cennius Niger ( Malala, Chron., 11, p. 125), and there¬ 
fore his more successful competitor Severus did all in 
his power to restore it to its former condition. Among 
other favours shown it, he made the place a colony 
with the Jus Italicum.. {Ulpian, 1. 50, Digest. Tit., 
15, de censibus.) The modern name is Ladikie. 
The modern city suffered severely from an earthquake 
in 1797, the greater part of the buildings having been 
thrown down. These have been rebuilt, though less 
substantially than before. Scarcely any wine is now 
made here, and few vines are planted. {Walpole's 
Memoirs, vol. 2, p. 138.— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, 
pt. 1, p. 450.)—IV. Combusta {y K aTanenavyevr)), a 
city of Asia Minor or Lycaonia, northwest of Iconium. 
Its name is supposed to be owing to the frequent 
breaking forth of subterranean fires in the vicinity. 
Strabo mentions this as peculiarly the case in the parts 
of Phrygia to the west of Laodicea, which were hence 
termed Catacecaumene {KaraKeKav/aevr]. — Strabo, 
579). The place itself was unimportant, and would 
only seem to have been mentioned by Strabo and 
Pliny from the circumstance of its having been situ¬ 
ated on the great road from the western coast through 
Melitene to the Euphrates. Leake {Journal, p. 25) 
gives the modern name as Yorgan Ladik, and speaks 
of numerous fragments of ancient architecture found 
there.—V. A city of Media, on the confines of Persia. 
{Pliny, 6, 26.) — VI. A city of Mesopotamia, near 
Seleucia. {Pliny, 4, 26.) 

Laomedon, son of Ilus, king of Troy, married Stry- 
mo, the daughter of the Scamander, by whom he had 
Tithonus, Lampus, Clitius, Hicetaon, Podarces (after¬ 
ward called Priam), and Hesione, together with two 
other daughters. He had also, by the nymph Calybe, 
a son named Bucolion. {II., 6, 23.) The two dei¬ 
ties Apollo and Neptune, having been condemned by 


Jupiter to be subservient for one year to the will of 
Laomedon, contracted to build a wall around Troy 
for a stipulated sum. When, however, this labour 
was accomplished, Laomedon refused to pay the 
amount agreed on, and dismissed the two deities, 
threatening to cut off their ears. He even menaced 
to tie Apollo hand and foot, and transport him to the 
distant islands. {11., 21,441.) To punish him. Apol¬ 
lo sent a pestilence, and Neptune a flood bearing a 
huge sea-monster, which carried off all the people to 
be found in the plain.—For the rest of his story, con 
suit the article Hesione. 

Laomedonteus, an epithet applied to the Trojans 
from their king Laomedon. {Virg., JEn., 4, 542; 
7, 105; 8, 18.) 

Laomedontiad^e, a patronymic given to the Tro¬ 
jans, from Laomedon their king. ( Virg., JEn., 3,248.) 

Laphystium, a mountain in Basotia, about twenty sta¬ 
dia to the north of Coronea, on which Jupiter had a tem¬ 
ple, whence he was called Laphystius. It was here 
that Athamas prepared to immolate Phrixus and Hclle, 
whom Jupiter saved by sending them a golden ram. 
{Pausan., 9, 34.) 

Lapith^e, a tribe or people of Thessaly, whose con 
test with the Centaurs forms a conspicuous legend in 
classical mythology. {Vid. Centauri, where a full ac¬ 
count is given.) 

Lara or Larunda, one of the Naiads, daughtei 
of the river Almon in Latium, famous for her beauty 
and her loquacity, which her parents long endeavour 
ed to correct, but in vain. She revealed to Juno the 
amours of her husband Jupiter with Juturna, for which 
the god cut off her tongue, and ordered Mercury to 
conduct her to the infernal regions. The god violated 
her by the way, and she became the mother of the 
Lares. {Vid. Lares.— Ovid, Fast., 2, 585, seqq.) 

Lares, gods of inferior power at Rome, of human 
origin, who presided over houses and families. There 
were various classes of them, such as Lares Urbani, t« 
preside over the cities; Familiares, over houses; Rus- 
tici, over the country ; Compitales, over crossways ; 
Marini, over the sea ; Viales, over the roads, &c. If 
we closely examine into the nature of the Penates and 
that of the Lares, we will readily perceive why the for¬ 
mer have a higher rank assigned them in the hierarchy 
of the Genii than the latter. In fact, the Penates were 
originally gods; they were the powers of nature per¬ 
sonified ; powers, the wonderful and mysterious action 
of which produces and upholds whatever is necessary 
to life, to the common good, to the prosperity of indi 
viduals and families; whatever, in fine, the humar 
species cannot bestow upon itself. The case is quit# 
different with the Lares. These were originally hu¬ 
man beings themselves ; men like unto us in every 
respect, who lived upon the earth, and who, becoming 
pure spirits after death, loved still to hover round the 
dwelling which they once inhabited, to watch over its 
safety, and to guard it with as much care as the faith¬ 
ful dog does the possessions of its master. Having 
once partaken of our mortal condition, they know the 
better from what quarter danger is wont to menace, 
and what assistance to render to those whose situa¬ 
tion was once in every respect their own. They keep 
off, therefore, danger from without, while the Penates, 
residing in the interior of the dwelling, pour forth 
benefits upon its inmates with bountiful hands. The 
fundamental idea on which rests the doctrine of the 
Lares, is intimately connected with all the psychology 
and pneumatology of the ancient Italians. According 
to Apuleius {De Genio Socrat., vol. 2, p. 237, ed. 
Bip.), the demons which once had inhabited, as souls, 
human bodies, were called Lemwes: this name there¬ 
fore designated, in general, the spirit separated from 
the body. Such a spirit, if it adopted its posterity ; if 
it took possession, with favourable power, of the 
abode of its children, was called Lar familiaris. If, 

721 




LARES. 


LARES. 


on the contrary, by reason of the faults committed in 
life, it found in the grave no resting-place, it appeared 
to men as a phantom ; inoffensive to the good, but 
terrible to the wicked. Its name was in that case Lar¬ 
va. {Festus , p. 200, ed. Dacier. — Bulenger, de Pro¬ 
dig., 4, 20. — Grcev., Thes. Antiq. Rom., 5, p. 480, 
seqq.) As, however, there was no way of precisely 
ascertaining what had been the lot of a deceased per¬ 
son, whether he had become, for example, a Lar or a 
Larva, it was customary to give to the dead the gen¬ 
eral appellation of Manes. ( Deus Manis.) Yarro, 
in a more extended sense, if we credit Arnobius, re¬ 
garded the Lares, at one time, as identical with the 
Manes, the tutelary genii of the living and the dead; 
at another time, as gods and heroes roaming in the air; 
and at another, again, as spirits or souls separated from 
bodies, as Lemures or Larvae. The mother of the 
Lares was called Lara or Larunda. ( Arnobius , adv. 
Gent.,2, 41.— Macrob., Sat., 1, 7.— Marini,gli Atti., 
2, p. 373.) This conception of the Lares, as the souls 
of fathers and of forefathers, protectors of their chil¬ 
dren, and watching over the safety of their descend¬ 
ants, necessarily gave rise to the custom of burying 
the dead within the dwelling. ( Scrv., ad Virg., AEn.,. t 
5,64.— Id., adAZn.,6, 152.— Isidor., Orig., 15, 11. 
— Zoega, de Obelise., p. 269.) Men wished to have 
near them these tutelary genii, in order to be certain 
of their assistance and support. In process of time, 
however, this custom was prohibited at Rome by the 
laws of the Twelve Tables. ( Cic., de Leg., 2, 23.) 
It was general in early Greece, and among the prim¬ 
itive population of Italy. {Plat., Min., p. 254, ed. 
Bekker.) —The meaning attached to the word Lar 
being of itself extremely general, had among the an¬ 
cients different acceptations. (Compare Muller, de 
Diis Romanorurn Laribus et Penatibus, p. 60.) Anal¬ 
ogous to the demons (or genii) and heroes of the 
Greeks, the Lares, pure spirits, invisible masters and 
protectors, and everywhere present, limited, as little 
as the Penates, their domain to the domestic hearth. 
The Etrurians, and the Romans after them, had their 
Lares publici and Lares privati. ( Hempel., de Diis 
Laribus, p. xxiv., seqq.) The Lares were supposed to 
assist at all gatherings together of men, at all public 
assemblies or reunions, in all transactions of men, in 
all the most important affairs of the state as well as of 
individuals. Born in the house, in the bosom of the 
family, the notion of Lares went forth by little and lit¬ 
tle; extended itself to the streets, to the public ways; 
above all, to the cross-roads, where the peril was great¬ 
er for passengers, and where assistance was more im¬ 
mediately necessary. From this it extended itself to 
communities, to entire cities, and even to whole coun¬ 
tries. Hence the numerous classes of the Lares and 
their various denominations, such as viales, ruales, 
compitales, grundiles, hostiles, &c. If each individ¬ 
ual had his Lar, his genius, his guardian spirit, even 
the infant at the breast; so entire families, and whole 
races and nations, were equally under the protection 
of one of these tutelar deities. Here the Lares be¬ 
came in some degree confounded with the Heroes, 
that is, with the spirits of those who, having deserved 
well of their country while on earth, continued to 
watch over and protect it from that mansion in the 
skies to which their merits had exalted them. It 
would seem, too, that at times, the worship of these 
public Lares, like that of the public Penates, was not 
without some striking resemblance to that rendered 
to the great national divinities. The proof that the 
Lares were not always clearly distinguished from the 
gods, or, at least, were closely assimilated to the de¬ 
mons and heroes, is found in an ancient inscription: 
“The Lares, powerful in heaven” {Lares Coilo po- 
tentes ), that is, most probably, inhabiting the region of 
the air, where they exercised their power. {Grcev., 
Thes., 5, p. 686, seqq. — Spanheim, de Vesta, &, c.)— 
122 


All that the house contained was confided to the super* 
intending care of these vigilant genii: they were set 
as a watch over all things large and small, and hence 
the name of Prcestites, which is sometimes given 
them. {Ovid, Fast., 5, 128, 133.) Hence the dog 
was the natural symbol of the Lares; an image of this 
animal was placed by the side of their statues, or else 
these were covered with the skin of a dog. ( Creuzer, 
Comment. Herod., 1, p. 239.)—The ordinary altar on 
which sacrifices were offered to the Lares was the 
domestic hearth. The victims consisted of a hog 
{Horat., Od., 3, 23) or a fowl; sometimes, with the 
rich, of a young steer; to them were also presented 
the first of all the fruits of the season, and libations of 
wine were poured out. In all the family repasts, the 
first thing done was to cast a portion of all the viands 
into the fire that burned on the hearth, in honour of the 
Lares. In the form of marriage, called coemtio, the 
bride always threw a piece of money on the hearth to 
the Lares of her family, and deposited another in the 
neighbouring cross-road, in order to obtain admission, 
as it were, into the dwelling of her husband'. {Non. 
Marc, de propr. Serm., c. 12, p. 784, ed. Gothofred.) 
Young persons, after their fifteenth year, consecrated 
to the Lares the bulla which they had worn from in¬ 
fancy. {Pers., Sat-, 5, 31.) Soldiers, when their 
time of service was once ended, dedicated to these 
powerful genii the arms with which they had fought 
the battles of their country. {Ovid, Trist., 4, 8, 21.) 
Captives and slaves restored to freedom consecrated 
to the Lares the fetters from which they had just been 
freed. {Horat., Sat., 1, 5.) Before undertaking a 
journey, or after a successful return, homage was paid 
to these deities, their protection was implored, or 
thanks were rendered for their guardian care. {Ovid, 
Trist., 1,3, 33.— Muller, de Diis Rom. Lar. et Penal., 
p. 70.— Ev. Otto, de Diis vialibus, c. 9.) The new- 
master of a house crowned the Lares, in order to ren¬ 
der them propitious ; a custom which was of the 
most universal nature, and which was perpetuated to 
the latest times. {Plant., Trinum., 1 , 2, 1. — Creuzei, 
Comment. Herod., 1, p. 235.) The proper place for 
worshipping the Lares, and where their images stood, 
was called Lararium , a sort of domestic chapel in 
the Atrium, where were also to be .seen the images 
and busts of the family ancestors. The rich had often 
two Lararia, one large and the other small ; they had 
also “ Masters of the Lares,” and “ Decurios of the 
Lares,” namely, slaves specially charged with the care 
of these domestic chapels and the images of their di¬ 
vinities. As to the poor, their Lares had to be con¬ 
tent with the simple hearth, where honours not less 
simple were paid to them. (For farther details re¬ 
specting the Lararia, consult Guther., de Veteri jure 
Pontificio, 3, 10.— Grcev., Thes., 5, p. 139.)—Certain 
public festivals were also celebrated in honour of the 
Lares, called Lararia and Compitalia. The period 
for their celebration fell in the month of December, 
a little after that of the Saturnalia. On this occasion 
the Lares were worshipped as propitious deities : 
hence these festivals were marked by a gay and joyful 
character, and thus formed a direct contrast to the 
gloomy Lemuria. The Compitalia, dedicated to the 
Lares Compitales, were celebrated in the open air, in 
the cross-roads {ubi vice competunt, in compitis. — Dio. 
Hal., 4, 14.— Aul. Gell., N. A., 10, 24.— Siccama in 
F'astos Calend. Rom .— Grcev., Thes., 8, p. 69, &c.); 
the day of their celebration was not fixed. They 
were introduced at Rome by Servius Tullius, who left 
to the senate the care of determining the period when 
they should be held. In early times, children were 
immolated to the goddess Mania, the mother, accord¬ 
ing to some, of the Lares, to propitiate her favour for 
the protection of the family. This barbarous rite was 
subsequently abolished, and little balls of wool were 
hung up in the stead of human offerings at the gates 




LAR 


L A R 


et dwellings. Macrobius {Sat., 1 , 7) informs ns, that 
it was Junius Brutus who, after the expulsion of the 
Tarquins, introduced a new form of sacrifice, by vir¬ 
tue of which, heads of garlic and poppies were offered 
up in place of human heads, ut, pro capitibus, capit- 
ibus supplicaretur , in accordance with the oracle of 
Apollo. Every family, during these festivals, brought 
a cake for an offering ; slaves enjoyed a perfect equal¬ 
ity with their masters, as on the Saturnalia ; and it 
was slaves, not free men, that assisted the priests in 
the sacrifices offered up on this occasion to the tute¬ 
lary genii of the ways. {Dion. Hal., 4 — Cic., adAtt., 
7, 7.— Horat., Od., 3, 17, 14, and Mitscherlich, ad 
Horat., 1. c .) In case of death in a family, a sacrifice 
of sheep was offered up to the family Lares. {Cic., de 
Leg., 2, 22, 55, where we must read, with Gorenz, 
vervecibus. — Marini, Atti, &c., 1 , p. 373.) — As re¬ 
gards the forms under which the Lares were repre¬ 
sented, it may be observed, that it differed often but 
little from that of the Penates. Thus, on the coins 
of the Caesian family, they are represented as two 
young men, seated, their heads covered with helmets, 
and holding spears in their hands, while a dog watch¬ 
es at their feet. Sometimes, as we have already re¬ 
marked, the heads of the Lares are represented as 
covered with, or their mantle as formed of, the skin 
of a dog. At other times we find the Lares resem¬ 
bling naked children, with the bulla hanging from the 
neck, and always accompanied by the attribute of the 
dog. {Creuzer, Symbolik, par Guigniaut, vol. 2, pt. 
1, p. 416, seqq.) 

Larinum, a town of Apulia, which appears to have 
belonged once to the Frentani, from the name of Lari- 
nates Frentani attached to its inhabitants by Pliny (3, 
12). It was situate on the road which led from Pice- 
num into Apulia. {Liv., 22, 18.) Its ruins, which 
are said to be considerable, occupy the site called La¬ 
rina. Vecchio. {Romanelli, vol. 3, p. 20.) 

Larissa, I. a town of Syria, on the western side of 
the Orontes, southeast of Apamea. It was either 
founded or else re-established by Seleucus Nicator. 
{Appian, B. Syr., c. 57.) Pliny calls the inhabitants 
Larissaei (5, 23). The city appears to have made no 
figure in history. Its true Oriental name would seem 
to have been Sizara, or something closely resembling 
it. Stephanus Byzantinus {s. v.) gives Sizara (2 it^apa) 
as the Syriac name of the place, and Abulfeda {Tab. 
Syr., p. 110) and other Arabian writers speak of a 
fortress in this quarter named Schaizar or Sjaizar. 
(Compare Schultens, Index ad Vitarn Saladini, s. v. 
Siajzaritm.) —II. A town of Lydia, in the Caystrian 
field, and territory of Ephesus. It had a famous tem¬ 
ple of Apollo. Larissa was situate near Mount Tmo- 
lus, 180 stadia from Ephesus, and 30 stadia from Tral¬ 
les, on the northern side of the Messogis. The adja¬ 
cent country produced very good wine. {Strabo, 620.) 
—III. A town on the coast of Troas, north of Colonas 
and Alexandrea Troas. Whether it is the same with 
the place assigned by Homer to the Pelasgi {II, 2, 
841) is uncertain. Strabo, however, decides in favour 
of the Larissa below Cumaa. {Mannert, Geogr., vol. 

6, pt. 3, p. 465.)—IV. A town of cEolis, in Asia Mi¬ 
nor, to the southeast of Cyme, and on the northern 
bank of the Hermus. {Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 3, 
p. 394.) It is supposed by Strabo to have been the 
game with the Larissa mentioned by Homer {11., 2, 
841), and was called by the cEolians, after it was ta¬ 
ken by them from the Pelasgi, Phriconis, for distinc¬ 
tion’ sake from the other Larissas. Cyme was also 
named Phriconis. {Strabo, 621.) Another appella¬ 
tion given to the place was Larissa JEgyptiaca, be¬ 
cause it was said to have been one of the towns which 
Cyrus the elder gave to the Egyptians who had come 
over to him from the army of Croesus. {Xen., Cyrop., 

7, 1, 45.—Compare Hist. Gr., 3, 1, 7.) In Strabo’s 
time the place was uninhabited.—V. A city of Assy¬ 


ria, on the banks of the Tigris. The ten thousand 
found it deserted and in ruins. Xenophon states that 
it had been once inhabited by the Medes. {Anab., 3, 
4, 7.) Bochart {Geogr. Sacr., 4, 23) considers it 
identical with the city mentioned in Genesis (10, 12) 
under the name of Resen; but Michaelis opposes this. 
{Spicileg. Geogr. Hebr., vol. l,p. 247 )—VI. An an¬ 
cient and flourishing city of Thessaly, on the river 
Peneus, to the northeast of Pharsalus. It is not men¬ 
tioned by Homer, unless, indeed, the Argos Pelasgi- 
cum of the poet is to be identified with it {II ., 2, 681), 
and this notion would not be entirely groundless if, as 
Strabo (440) informs us, there was once a city named 
Argos close to Larissa. The same geographer has 
enumerated all the ancient towns of the latter name, 
and we may collect from his researches that it was pe¬ 
culiar to the Pelasgi, since all the countries in which 
it was found had at different periods been occupied by 
that people. (Compare Dion. Hal., 1, 21.) This city 
was placed in that most fertile part of the province 
which had been occupied by the Perrhasbi, who were 
partly expelled by Larissseans, while the rest were 
kept in close subjection, and rendered tributary. Ac¬ 
cording to Aristotle, the constitution of this city was 
democratical. Its magistrates were elected by the 
people, and considered themselves as dependant on 
their favour. {Aristot., de Rep., 5, 6.) This fact 
will account for the support which the Athenians de¬ 
rived from the republic of Larissa during the Pelopon¬ 
nesian war. {Thucyd., 2, 32.) The Aleuadse, men¬ 
tioned by Herodotus as princes of Thessaly at the time 
of the Persian invasion, were natives of this city. 
{Herod., 9, 58.) Diodorus Siculus (16, 61) informs 
us, that the citadel of Larissa was a place of great 
strength. Though the territory of this city was rich 
and fertile, it was subject to great losses, caused by 
the inundations of the Peneus. ( Strabo , 440.— Plin., 
4, 8.— Hierocl., Synecdem., p. 642.) Dr. Clarke states 
that he^could discover no ruins at Larissa, which still 
retains the ancient name ; but that the inhabitants gave 
the name of Old Larissa to a Palaeo Castro, which is 
situated upon some very high rocks, at four hours’ dis¬ 
tance towards the east (vol. 7, p. 339). Dr. Holland 
and Mr. Dodwell are, however, of opinion, that the 
modern Larissa stands upon the remains of the ancient 
city. {Holland's Travels, p. 390.— Dodwell's Tour, 
vol. 2, p. 100.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 385, 
seqq.) —VII. Cremaste, so called from the steepness 
of its situation, a city of Thessaly in the district Phthi- 
otis, and south of Phthiotic Thebe. It lay in the do¬ 
mains of Achilles, and it is probably from that circum¬ 
stance that Virgil gives him the title of Larissceus, 
unless this epithet is a general orue for Thessalicus. 
Dodwell thought he discovered the ruins of this place 
at about three quarters of an hour’s distance from the 
village of Gradista (vol. 2, p. 81.—Compare Gell's 
Itinerary of Greece, p. 252.)—VIII. An old town of 
the Pelasgi in Attica, near Mount Hymettus. Some 
ruins, indicative of the site of an ancient town near the 
monastery of Syriani, at the foot of Mount Trelo Vou - 
m, have been thought to correspond with this ancient 
Pelasgic settlement. {Strabo, 440.)—IX. A town on 
the confines of Elis and Achaia. {Xen., Hist. Gr., 
3, 2 , 17.)—X. The acropolis of Argos, deriving its 
nanaey as was said, from Larissa, daughter of Pelas- 
cus. It was also called Aspis. {Plut., Vit. Cleom 
— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 244.) 

Larissceus, an epithet applied by Virgil {Mn., 2, 
197; 11, 404) to Achilles, either with reference to 
the town of Larissa Cremaste, which lay within his 
dominions {vid. Larissa VII.), or as equivalent gen¬ 
erally to Thessalicus. Heyne prefers the latter inter¬ 
pretation {ad JEn., 2, 197). 

Larissus, a river of Achaia, forming the line of sep¬ 
aration between that country and Elis. {Pausan., 7, 
17.— Plin., 4, 5.) Strabo informs us that it flowed 

723 



L AT 


L AT 


from Mount Scollis, which Homer (11., 11, 757) des¬ 
ignates by the name of “ Olenian rock.” (Strabo, 
387.) The modern name of this river is Risso or 
Mana. (Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 73.) 

Larius, Lacus, a lake of Cisalpine Gaul, north of 
che Padus, and east of the Lacus Verbanus. The 
name Larius is supposed to have been of Etrurian ori¬ 
gin. Whatever truth, however, there may have been 
in this conjecture, there is no mention of the name 
prior to the time of Polybius, who, as Strabo (209) re¬ 
ports, estimated its length at 300 stadia and its breadth 
at 30, or 38 miles by 4. Servius says that Cato reck¬ 
oned 60 miles from one extremity to the other, and the 
real distance, including the Lake of Chiavenna, is not 
short of that measurement; so that Virgil (Georg., 2, 
159) seems justified in saying, “ Anne lacus tantosl 
te Lari maxime —” The younger Pliny had two vil¬ 
las on this lake, which he describes (Epist., 9, 7). 
The one which he calls his Tvugedy stood probably 
at Bellagio , as from thence the view extends over 
both arms of the lake The intermitting fountain, of 
which he gives an account (4, 20), still exists under 
the name of Pliniana. This lake receives the Addua 
or Adda, which again emerges from it, and pursues its 
course to the Po. The modern name is Lago di Co¬ 
mo, from the modern Como, the ancient Comum. The 
surrounding country is highly picturesque, being cov¬ 
ered with vineyards, interspersed with beautiful villas, 
and skirted by lofty mountains. A headland, run¬ 
ning boldly into the lake at its southern end, causes it 
to branch off into two arms, at the extremity of the 
western one of which the town of Como is situate. 

Lars or Lartes Tolumnius, a king of the Veien- 
tes, slain in battle by Cornelius Cossus. (Vid. Spo- 
lia Opima.— Liv., 4, 17.— Id., 4, 19.) 

Lartius Florus, I. T., a consul, who appeased a 
sedition raised by the poorer citizens, and was the first 
dictator ever chosen at Rome, B.C, 498. (Liv., 2, 
18.)—II. Spurius, one of the three Romans who with¬ 
stood the fury of Porsenna’s army at the. head of a 
bridge while the communication was cutting down be¬ 
hind them. His companions were Cedes and Her- 
minius. (Vid. Codes.— Liv., 2, 10, 18.— Dionys. H. 
— Val. Max., 3, 2.) 

Larvae, a name given to the wicked spirits and ap¬ 
paritions which, according to the notions of the Ro¬ 
mans, issued from their graves in the night, and came 
to terrify the world. (Consult remarks under the ar¬ 
ticle Lares.) 

Lasus, a celebrated dithyrambic poet, born at Her- 
mione in Argolis, and, according to some authorities, 
the instructer of Pindar. (Thom. Mag., Vit. Pind.) 
He was contemporary with Simonides (Aristoph., 
Vesp., 1401.— Schol., Vesp., 1402), and flourished in 
the reign of Hipparchus at Athens (Herod., 7, 6), and 
in the reign of Darius. (Schol., Vesp., 1401.) He 
was the first that introduced the dithyrambic measure 
into the celebrations at the Olympic games. The 
poet Archilochus, however, who was much older than 
Lasus, uses the word Dithyrambus in two verses cited 
by Athenaeus (p. 628), so that Lasus could not have 
been the inventor of this species of measure. (Bent¬ 
ley, Diss. on Phalaris, p. 254, ed. 1816.) 

Latins Ferine, or Latin Holydays, a festival 
among the Romans. It was originally the solemn 
meeting of the cantons of Latium, and afterward, on 
the overthrow of the Latin republic, was converted 
into a Roman celebration. At first the Romans took 
part in it, as members of the Latin confederacy, into 
which they had entered by virtue of an old treaty, 
tiade A.U C. 261, which placed the thirty cities of La- 
ium on a perfect equality with the Romans. The place 
'br holding the festival was the Alban Mount; and, so 
)ng as Latium had a dictator, none but he could offer 
fc sacrifice there, and preside at the holydays. He sac- 
s'i’lced on behalf of the Romans likewise, as they did 
724 


in the temple of Diana on the Avcntine, for themselvea 
and the Latins. Tarquinius Priscus assumed the pres¬ 
idency on the Alban Mount, as it was subsequently 
exercised by the chief magistrates of Rome, after the 
dissolution of the Latin state ; but the opinion that 
Tarquinius instituted the festival is quite erroneous, 
as its antiquity is proved to have been far higher. 
Like the Greek festivals, this Latin one ensured a sa¬ 
cred truce. It lasted four days. The consuls always 
celebrated the Latin Holydays before they set out to 
their provinces; and if they had not been rightly per¬ 
formed, or if anything had been omitted, it was neces¬ 
sary that they should be repeated. (Consult on this 
whole subject Niebuhr, Rom. Hist., vol. 2, p. 16, 
seqq., Eng. transl.) 

Latini, the inhabitants of Latium. (Vid. Latium.) 

Latinos, I. a son of Faunus by Marica, king of the 
Aborigines in Italy, who from him were called Latini. 
He married Amata,.by whom he had a son and a daugh¬ 
ter. The son died in his infancy, and the daughter, 
called Lavinia, was secretly promised in marriage by 
her mother to Turnus, king of the Rutuli, one of her 
most powerful admirers. The gods opposed this union, 
and the oracles declared that Lavinia must become the 
wife of a foreign prince. The arrival of JEneas in It¬ 
aly seemed favourable to the realization of this predic¬ 
tion, and Latinus was prompted to become the friend 
and ally of the Trojan prince, and to offer him his 
daughter in marriage. Turnus, upon this, declared 
war against the king and HCneas, but lost his life in 
battle by the hand of the latter, who thereupon receiv¬ 
ed Lavinia as his spouse. Latinus died soon after, and 
HCneas succeeded him on the throne of Latium. So 
says the fabulous legend. ( Vid. ^Eneas.— Virg., JEn. 
9, &c.— Ovid, Met., 13, &c. ; Fast., 2, &c.— Dion. 
Hal., 1, 13.-— Liv., 1, 1, &c. — Justin, 43, 1.) — II. 
A son of Sylvius HSneas, surnamed also Sylvius. He 
was the fifth king of the Latins, and succeeded his fa 
ther. (Dion. Hal., 1, 15.) 

Latium, a country of Italy, lying south of Etruria 
from which it was separated by the Tiber.—The ear¬ 
liest records of Italian history, as we are assured by 
Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1, 9), represented the 
plains of Latium as first inhabited by the Siculi, a 
people of obscure origin, but who would be entitled to 
our notice from the circumstance above mentioned, 
even had they not acquired additional historical im¬ 
portance from their subsequent migration to the cele¬ 
brated island from them named Sicily. (Vid. Siculi.) 
Ancient writers do not seem agreed as to the name ot 
the people who compelled the Siculi to abandon La¬ 
tium. Dionysius informs us, that Philistus ascribed 
their expulsion to the Umbri and Pelasgi. Thucydi¬ 
des refers the same event to the Opici; while Anti- 
ochus of Syracuse, a still more ancient writer, repre¬ 
sents the Siculi as flying from the CEnotri. Notwith¬ 
standing this apparent discrepance, it is pretty evident, 
that under these different names of Umbri, Opici, and 
CEnotri, the same people are designated whom Dionys¬ 
ius and the Roman historians usually term Aborigi¬ 
nes. (Ant. Rom., 1, 10.) The Aborigines, inter¬ 
mixing with several Pelasgic colonies, occupied La¬ 
tium, and soon formed themselves into the several 
communities of Latini, Rutuli, Hernici, and Volsci, 
even prior to the Trojan war and the supposed arrival 
of HSneas.—The name of Prisci Latini was first given 
to certain cities of Latium, supposed to have been col¬ 
onized by Latinus Sylvius, one of the kings of Alba, 
but most of which were afterward conquered and de¬ 
stroyed by Ancus Marcius and Tarquinius Priscus. 
(Liv., 1, 3.) In the reign of Tarquinius Superbus 
we find the Latin nation united under the form o! a 
confederate republic, and acknowledging that ambi¬ 
tious prince as the protector of their league. (Liv., 1, 
50.) After the expulsion of the tyrant from Rome! 
we are told that the Latins, who favoured his cause, 




L AT 


L AT 


experienced a total defeat near the Lake Regillus, and 
were obliged to sue for peace. {Dion. Hal., 6, 18.) 
According to this historian, the Latins received the 
thanks of the Roman senate, some years afterward, 
for having taken no advantage of the disturbances at 
Rome, which finally led to the secession of the people 
to Mons Sacer, and for having, on the contrary, offered 
every assistance in their power on that occasion ; he 
adds also that a perpetual league was formed at that time 
between the Romans and the Latins. However, about 
143 years afterward, we find the latter openly rebell¬ 
ing, and refusing to supply the usual quota of troops 
which they had agreed to furnish as allies of Rome. 
Their bold demand, which was urged through L. An- 
nius Setmus, in the Roman senate, that one of the 
consuls at least should be chosen out of their nation, 
led to an open rupture. A war followed, which was 
tendered remarkable from the circumstances of the 
execution of the young Manlius by order of his father, 
and the devotion of Deeius. After having been de¬ 
feated in several encounters, the Latins were reduced 
to subjection, with the exception of a few towns, 
which experienced greater lenity, and Latium thence¬ 
forth ceased to be an independent state. {L%v., 8, 
14.— Plin., 34, 5.) At that time the rights of Roman 
citizens had been granted to a few only of the Latin 
cities ; but at a later period the Gracchi sought to 
level all such distinctions between the Latins and the 
Romans. This measure, however, was not carried. 
The Social war followed ; and though the confederates 
were finally conquered, after a long and desperate 
contest, the senate thought it advisable to decree, 
that all the Latin cities which had not taken part with 
the allies should enjoy the rights of Roman citizens. 
Many of these towns were, however, deprived of their 
privileges by Sylla; and it was not till the close of the 
republic that the Latins were admitted generally to par¬ 
ticipate in all the rights and immunities enjoyed by the 
Quirites. ( Stiet ., Vit. Jul.,8. — Ascon., Ped. in Pis., 
p. 490.—On the Jus Latii and Jus Italicum, consult 
Lipsius, ad Tacit., Ann., 11, 24. — Panvin., Comm. 
Reip. Rom., 3, p. 329. — Spanheim, Orb. Rom., 1, 

16. )—The name of Latium was at first given to that 
portion of Italy only which extends from the mouth of 
the Tiber to the Circaean promontory, a distance of 
about 50 miles along the coast; but subsequently this 
latter boundary was removed to the river Liris, whence 
arose the distinction of Latium Antiquum and Novum. 
(Strabo, 231. — Plin., 3, 5.) At a still later period, 
the southern boundary of Latium was extended from 
the Liris to the mouth of the river Vulturnus and the 
Massic hills. {Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 1, seqq.) 

Latmus, a mountain of Caria, near Miletus. It was 
famous as having been the scene of the fable of En- 
dymion. ( Vid. Endymion.) In the vicinity of this 
mountain stood the city of Heraclea, commonly termed 
'Hpu/c/leta r] vtzo Aarpov, “ Heraclea below, or at the 
foot of, Latmus.” The mountain gave to the adja¬ 
cent bay the name of Latmicus Sinus. {Mela, 1, 

17. — Plin., 5, 29.) 

Latobrigi, a people of Belgic Gaul, in the vicinity 
of the Tulingi, Rauraci, and Helvetii, whose country 
lay on the banks of the Rhine, about 90 miles to the 
west of the Lacus Brigantinus, or Lake of Constance. 
If they are the nation called by Ptolemy Latobici, they 
must have changed their settlements before that geog¬ 
rapher wrote, as he includes their territories in Pan- 
nonia near Noricum. {Cces., B. G., 1, 2. — Id. ib., 
3, l.) 

Latomue. Vid. Lautumiae. 

Latona (in Greek Leto), was the daughter of the 
Titans Coeus and Phoebe. In Homer she appears as 
one of the wives of Jupiter, and there occur no traces 
of enmity between her and Juno. {II., 21, 499.) 
Later poets, however, fable much about the persecu¬ 
tion she underwent from that goddess, an account of 


which will be found near the commencement of the 
article Apollo. Her children by Jupiter were Apollo 
and Diana. — While wandering from place to place 
with her offspring, Latona, says a legend most pretti¬ 
ly told by Ovid {Metamorph., 6, 313, seqq.), arrived in 
Lycia. The sun was shining fiercely, and the god¬ 
dess was parched with thirst. She saw a pool and 
knelt down at it to drink. Some clowns, who were 
there cutting sedge and rushes, refused to allow her 
to slake her thirst. In vain the goddess entreated, 
representing that water was common to all, and ap¬ 
pealing to their compassion for her babes. The brutes 
were insensible: they not only mocked at her distress, 
but jumped into and muddied the water. The god¬ 
dess, though the most gentle of her race, was roused 
to indignation : she raised her hand to heaven, and 
cried, “May you live for ever in that pool!” Her 
wish was instantly accomplished, and the churls were 
turned into frogs.—Niobe, the daughter of Tantalus 
and wife of Atnphion, proud of her numerous offspring, 
ventured to set herself before Latona; the offended 
goddess called upon her children, Apollo and Diana, 
and soon Niobe was, by the arrows of those deities 
made a childless mother, and became stiffened into 
stone with grief. ( Vid. Niobe.)—Tityus, the son ol 
Earth, or of Jupiter and Elara, happened to see Lato 
na one time as she was going to Delphi (Pytho) 
Inflamed with love, he attempted to offer her violence. 
The goddess called her children to her aid, and he 
soon lay slain by their arrows. His punishment did 
not cease with life, but vultures preyed upon his liver 
in Erebus. ( Vid. Tityus.)—The Greeks personified 
night under the title of AHTf2 or Latona, and BATBS2 ; 
the one signifying oblivion, and the other sleep or 
quietude {Plutarch, ap. Euseb., Prccp. Evang., 3, 1. 
— Hesych., s. v. Bau6«) ; both of which were meant 
to express the unmoved tranquillity prevailing through 
the infinite variety of unknown darkness that preceded 
the creation or first emanation of light. Hence she 
was said to have been the first wife of Jupiter {Odyss., 
11, 579), the mother of Apollo and Diana, or the sun 
and moon, and the nurse of the earth and the stars. 
The Egyptians differed a little from the Greeks, and 
supposed her to be the nurse and grandmother of Ho- 
rus and Bubastis, tReir Apollo and Diana {Herod., 2, 
156), in which they agree more exactly with the an¬ 
cient naturalists, who held that heat was nourished by 
the humidity of night. {Macrob., Sat., 1, 23.) Her 
symbol was the Mygale or Mus Araneus, anciently 
supposed to be blind ( Plut., Sympos., 4, p. 670.— 
Anton., Liberal. Fab., 28); but she is usually repre¬ 
sented upon the monuments of ancient art under the 
form of a large and comely woman, with a veil upon 
her head. This veil, in painting, was always black ; 
and in gems the artists generally availed themselves of a 
dark-coloured vein in the stone to express it; it being 
the same as that which was usually thrown over the 
symbol of the generative attribute to signify the nutri¬ 
tive power of night fostering the productive power of 
the pervading spirit ; whence Priapus is called in the 
poets black-cloaked. {Mosch., Epitaph. Bion., 27.) 

The veil is often stellated. {Knight, Inquiry into the 
Symb. Lang., &c., § 87.— Class. Journ., vol. 24 p. 
214.) 

Latopolis, a city of Egypt in the Thebaid, between 
Thebes and Apollinopolis Magna. It derived its Greek 
name from the fish Latos worshipped there, which 
was regarded as the largest of all the fishes of the Nile. 
{Athenceus, 7, 17.— Strabo, 816.) The later writers 
drop the term troTug (polis), and call the place merely 
Laton (A druv, Hierocles), and therefore, in the Itin. 
Anton, and Notitia Imperii, the ablative form Lato 
occurs. The modern Esne occupies the site of Latop¬ 
olis, and is an important place in the caravan trade 
from Darfur and the more southern regions. {Man 
ncrt, Geogr., vol. 10, pt. 1, p. 331.) 


725 



L AU 


L A U 


Laverna, a Roma? divinity, the patron-goddess of 
thieves, who were anciently called Laverniones (Fes - 
lus, s. v.) t and of all, in general, who practised artifice 
and fraud. ( Horat., Epist., 1, 16, 60.) At Rome 
she had an altar by the temple of Tellus, near the gate 
which was called from her the gate of Laverna. 
( Varro, L. L., 4, p. 45.) There was also a temple 
of this goddess near Famias. (Cic., Ep. ad Atl., 7, 
8.) Her name is probably derived from lateo, signifi- 
catory of darkness or obscurity. (Compare the change 
of t and v in riXPuo and vello; deXo and volo; K?xrvg 
and clivus , &c. — Keightley's Mythology , p. 529.— 
Consult Mem. Acad, des Inscript., &cc., vol. 7, p. 77, 
u De la Deesse Laverne .”) 

Lavernium, a temple of Laverna, near Foriniae 
(Cic., Att., 7, 8.) 

Lavinia, a daughter of King Latinus and Amata, 
promised by her mother in marriage to Turnus, but 
given eventually to HCneas. ( Vid. Latinus.) At her 
husband’s death she was left pregnant, and being fear¬ 
ful of Ascanius, her step-son, she fled into the woods, 
where she brought forth a son called .Eneas Sylvius. 
(Virg., AEn., 6, 7.— Ovid, Met., 14, 507.— Liv., 1, 1.) 

Lavinium, a city of Latium, situate on the river 
Numicius, near the coast, and to the west of Ardea. 
It was said to have been founded by .Eneas, on his 
marriage with the daughter of Latinus (Dion. Hal., 1, 
45- Liv., 1, 1); this story, however, would go but 
little towards proving the existence of such a town, if 
it were not actually enumerated among the cities of 
Latium by Strabo and other authors, as well as by 
the Itineraries. Plutarch notices it as the place in 
which Tatius, the colleague of Romulus, was assas¬ 
sinated. (Vil. Rom.) Strabo mentions that Lavini¬ 
um had a temple consecrated to Venus, which was 
common to all the Latins. (Strabo , 232.) The in¬ 
habitants are styled by Pliny (3, 5) Laviniates Uisn- 
enses. Lavinium and Laurentum were latterly united 
under the name of Lauro-Lavinium. (Front, de Col 
— Symmachus , 1, 65.— Vulp., Vet. LaL, 10, 6.) 
Various opinions have been entertained by antiquaries 
relative to the site which ought to be assigned to La¬ 
vinium'. Cluverius placed it near the church of St. 
Petronella (Ital. Ant., 2, p. 894); Holstenius on the 
hill called Monte di Livano (ad Skcph. Byz., p. 175); 
but more recent topographers concur in fixing it at a 
place called Practica , about three miles from the coast. 
(Vulp., Vet. Lat., 10, 1.— Nibby, Viaggio Antiquario, 
vol. 2, p. 265.— Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. ]9.) 

Laureacum, a fortified town of Noricum Ripense 
the station of a Roman fleet on the Danube, and the 
headquarters of the second legion. (Notit., Imp 
Occident.) It lay to the east of the junction’of the 
(Enus and Danube. The modern village of Lohr 
stands near the site of this place, a short distance to 
the north of the present city of Ens. (Mannert 
Geog r ., vol. 3, p. 637.) 

Laurentes Agri, the country in the neighbourhood 
of Laurentum. (Tibull., 2, 5, 41.) 

Laurentia. Vid. Acca. 

Laurentum, the capital of Latium, about sixteen 
miles below Ostia, following the coast, and near the 
spot now called Paterno. (Vulp., Vet. Lat., 10, l.-_ 
Nibby, Viaggio Antiq., vol. 2, p. 313.) Cluverius 
and Holstenius are both wrong in assigning to Lau¬ 
rentum the position of San Lorenzo. Of the existence 
of this city, whatever may be thought of Eneas and 
the Trojan colony, there can be no doubt: without 
going so far back as to Saturn and Picus, it may be 
asserted, that the origin of Laurentum was most an¬ 
cient, since it is mentioned among the maritime cities 
of Latium, in the first treaties between Rome and 
Carthage, recorded by Polybius (3, 22). Though 
Laurentum joined the Latin league in behalf of Tar- 
quin, and shared in the defeat at the Lake Regil- 
lus (Dion. Hal., 5, 61), it seems afterward to have 


been firmly attached to the Roman interests. (Livy, 
8, 9.) Of its subsequent history we know but little ; 
Lucan represents it as having fallen into ruins and be 
come deserted, in consequence of the civil wars (7, 
394). At a later period, however, Laurentum appears 
to have been restored under the name of Lauro-Lavin- 
ium: a new city having been formed, as it is sup¬ 
posed, by the union of Laurentum and Lavinium 
(Front., de Col. — Symmachus, t, 65.— Vulp., Vet. 
Lat., 10, 6.) The district of Laurentum must have 
been of a very woody and marshy nature. The Silva 
Laurentina is noticed by Julius Obsequens (de Prod.), 
and by Herodian (1, 12), the latter of whom reports, 
that the Emperor Commodus was ordered to this part 
of the country by his physicians, on account of the 
laurel-groves which grew there, the shade of which 
was considered as particularly salutary. It is from 
this tree that Laurentum is supposed to have derived 
its name. The marshes of Laurentum were famous 
for the number and size of the wild boars which they 
bred in their reedy pastures. (Virg., AEn., 7, 59.— 
Id. ibid., 10, 707.— Hor., Sat., 2, 4.— Martial, 9, 
49.) However unfavourable, as a place of residence, 
Laurentum may be thought at the present day, on ac¬ 
count of the malaria which prevails there, it appears 
to have been considered as far from unhealthy by the 
Romans. We are told that Scipio and Laelius, when 
released from the cares of business, often resorted to 
this neighbourhood, and amused themselves by gath¬ 
ering shells on the shore. (Val. Max., 8, 8.— Cic., 
de Oral., 2,22.) Pliny the Younger says Laurentum 
was much frequented by the Roman nobles in winter; 
and so numerous were their villas, that they presented 
more the appearance of a city than detached dwellings. 
Every lover of antiquity is acquainted with the elegant 
and minute description he gives of his own retreat. 
(Ep., 2, 17.) Hortensius, the celebrated orator, and the 
rival of Cicero, had also a villa in this neighbourhood. 
(Varro, R. R., 3, 13.— Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, 
p. 16, seqq.) 

Laurion, a range of hills, extending from that part 
of the Attic coast which lay near Azenia, below the 
Astypalsea Promontorium, to the promontory of Su- 
nium, and from thence to the neighbourhood of Prasise 
on the eastern coast. This tract was celebrated for 
its silver mines. Herodotus informs us, that the pro¬ 
duce of these mines was shared among the Athenians, 
each of whom received ten drachmae ; but we are not 
informed whether this division took place annually 
Themistocles, however, during the war with Egina, 
advised them to apply this money to the construction 
of 200 galleys; a measure which contributed, in a 
great degree, to the naval ascendancy of the Atheni 
ans. (Herod., 7, 144.) Thucydides reports, that the 
Lacedaemonian army, in their second invasion of At¬ 
tica, advanced in this direction as far as Laurium (2, 
55). The produce of the mines had already much di¬ 
minished in the time of Xenophon. (Mem., 3, 6, 5.) 
We collect from his account that they then were 
farmed by private persons, who paid a certain sum to 
the republic in proportion to the quantity of ore thev 
extracted ; but he strongly urged the government t© 
take the works into their own hands, conceiving that 
they would bring a great accession of revenue to the 
state. (De Prov., p. 293, ed. Steph.) These private 
establishments were called epyaarr/pia bv tou? apyv- 
peioig. (AEschin. in Timarch., p. 14.) Nicias is 
said to have employed at one time 1000 slaves in the 
mines. (Xen., 1. c.—Plut., Vit. Nic.—Andocid., de 
Myst. Diod. Sic., 5, 37.) Strabo informs us, that 
the metallic veins were nearly exhausted when he 
wrote: a considerable quantity of silver, however 
was extracted from the old scori®, as the ancient miner* 
were not much skilled in the art of smelting the ore 
(Strabo, 399.) —The mines themselves were called 
Laureia or Lauria; and the district Lauriotice. JIok> 






LAURION. 


L AU 


house ( Travels, vol. 1, p. 417, Lond. ed.) describes 
Laurium as a high and abrupt hill, covered with pine- 
trees and abounding with marble. Stewart also rec¬ 
ognised in Legrina and Lagriona., near Sunium, the 
name Laurion, which has also evidently been preserved 
in the names Lauronoris, Mauronoris, Mauronorise 
(Aavptov opof). According to his statement, it is an 
uneven range of hills full of exhausted mines and sco- 
ifle. ( Antiq. of Attica,\ ol. 3, p. 13.) Mr. Hawkins, 
in his survey of this part of the Attic coast, discovered 
many veins of the argentiferous lead ore, with which 
the country seems to abound ; he observed traces of 
the silver-mines not far beyond Keratia. The site of 
the smelting furnaces may be traced to the southward 
of Thorico for some miles, immense quantities of sco- 
riaa occurring there. These were probably placed near 
the seacoast for the convenience of fuel, which it soon 
became necessary to import. (Walpole's Memoirs, 
vol. 1, p. 430. — Gcll's Itinerary , p. 79. — Dodwell's 
Tour, vol. 1, p. 358.)—The mines at Laurium were 
worked either by shafts (< ppeara, putei) or adits ( virov- 
opoi, cunei); and by neither of these two modes of 
working did they, in the time of Xenophon, arrive at the 
termination of the ore ( Xen., de Vectig., 24, 6). For 
the chambering of the mines timber was probably im¬ 
ported by sea ( Demosth. in Mid., p. 568,17), which, ac¬ 
cording to Pliny (33, 21), was the case also in Spain. 
Hobhouse mentions ( l . c .) that one or two shafts have 
been discovered in a small shrubby plain not far from 
the sea, on the eastern coast; and he states also that 
a specimen of ore, lately found, was shown to him at 
Athens. If the hole which Chandler ( Travels, c. 30) 
saw upon Mount Hymettus was really, as he conjec¬ 
tures, a shaft, it follows that some, at least, had a con¬ 
siderable width, for the circular opening was of more 
than forty feet in diameter; at the bottom of the hole 
two narrow passages led into the hill in opposite di¬ 
rections. It was also the practice, according to Vi¬ 
truvius, to make large hollows in the silver mines (7, 
7). The pillars which were left standing for the sup¬ 
port of the overlying mountain were called oppoi, and 
more commonly peaoKpivei p (Pint., Vit. X., Orat. — 
Op., vol. 6, p. 256, ed. Hutt. — Pollux, 3, 87.— Id., 
7, 98), as they, at the same time, served for the di¬ 
visions between the different compartments, or, as 
they were called, workshops. As these pillars con¬ 
tained ore, the proprietors were tempted by their ava¬ 
rice to remove them, although by law they were strictly 
prohibited from doing so ; in the time of the orator 
Lycurgus, the wealthy Diphilus was condemned to 
death for this offence. (Vit. X., Orat., 1. c.) The 
opening of new mines was called uaivoropia, and on 
account of the great risk and expense, no one would 
willingly undertake it. If the speculator was suc¬ 
cessful, he was amply remunerated for his undertaking; 
if unsuccessful, he lost all his trouble and expense ; 
on which account Xenophon proposed to form compa¬ 
nies for this purpose. The ancients speak in general 
terms of the unwholesome evaporations from silver- 
mines (Casaub., ad Strab., 101), and the noxious at¬ 
mosphere of those in Attica is particularly mentioned 
(Xen., Mem., 3, 6, 12.—■ Plut., Comp. Nic. et Crass, 
init.), although the Greeks as well as the Romans 
were acquainted with the use of shafts for ventilation, 
which the former called ipvxayuyLa. (Lex. Seg., p. 
317.) In what manner the water was withdrawn from 
the mines we are not informed ; it is, however, prob¬ 
able that the Greeks made use of the same artificial 
means as the Romans. (Consult Reitemeier, Art of 
Mining, &c., among the Ancients, p. 114, of the Ger¬ 
man work.) The removal of the one appears to have 
been performed partly by machinery and partly by 
men, as was the case in Egypt and Spain, in which 
latter country the younger slaves brought the ore 
through the adits to the surface of the soil; whether, 
however, the miners in Attica used leather bags for 


this purpose, and were on that acco mt called bag-car 
riers (&vhatco(j)6pot), is, to say the least, uncertain; for, 
according to the grammarians, these bags contained 
their food. (Pollux, 7, 100.— Id., 10, 149.— Hesych., 
s. v.) The stamping of the ore at the founderies, in 
order to facilitate its separation from the useless parts 
of the stone, was generally performed in stone mortars 
with iron pestles. In this manner the Egyptians re¬ 
duced the gold ore to the size of a vetch, then ground 
it in handmills and washed it on separate planks, after 
water had been poured over it; which is the account 
given by a Hippocratean writer of the treatment of 
gold ore. (Diod. Sic., 13, 12.— Agatharch., ap. Phot., 
p. 1342.— Hippocrates, de victus rat., 1, 4.) In Spain 
it was bruised in the same manner, and then, if Pliny 
does not invert the proper order, first washed, and af¬ 
terward calcined and pounded. Even the quicksilver 
ore, from which cinnabar was prepared, was similarly 
treated ; that is, first burned off, in which operation a 
part of the quicksilver flowed off, and then pounded 
with iron pestles, ground, and washed. (Plin., 33, 21.) 
In Greece, the labourers in the founderies made use 
of a sieve for washing the comminuted ore, and it is 
mentioned among the implements of the miners by the 
appropriate name caXat;. (Poll., 7, 97.) This method 
of treating ore was not only in use in ancient times, 
but it was the only one employed either during the 
middle ages or in more recent times, until the dis¬ 
covery of stamp works. (Beckman's History of In¬ 
ventions, vol. 1, pt. 5, num. 3.— Reitemeier, p. 121 
seqq .) Of the art of smelting in the founderies ol 
Laurium, nothing definite is known. That the Athe¬ 
nians made use of the bellows and charcoal is not im¬ 
probable ; the latter, indeed, may be fairly inferred, 
from the account of the charcoal-sellers, or, rather, 
charcoal-burners, from which business a large portion 
of the Acharnians in particular derived their livelihood 
The art of smelting among the ancients was so imper¬ 
fect, that even in the time of Strabo, when it had re¬ 
ceived considerable improvements, there was still no 
profit to be gained by extracting silver from lead ore, 
in which it was present in small proportions; and the 
early Athenians had, in comparison with their suc¬ 
cessors (who were themselves not the most perfect 
masters of chymistry), so slight a knowledge of the 
management of ore, that, according to the same writer, 
not only was that which had been thrown away as 
stone subsequently used, but the old scoriae were 
again employed for the purpose of extracting silver. 
(Strab., 399.) According to Pliny (33, 31), the an¬ 
cients could not smelt any silver without some mix¬ 
ture of lead (plumbum nigrum) or gray lead (ga¬ 
lena, molybdcena); he appears, however, only to mean 
ores in which the silver was combined with some 
metal to which it has a less powerful affinity than to 
lead. At Laurium it was not necessary, at least in 
many places, to add any lead, it being already present 
in the ores. Pliny states in general terms the manner 
in which argentiferous lead ores were treated (34, 47), 
and there can be no doubt that this was the method 
adopted in Attica. According to his account, the 
ore was first melted down to stannum, a composition 
of pure silver and lead ; then this material was brought 
to the refining oven, where the silver was separated, 
and the lead appeared half glazed in the form of lith¬ 
arge, which, as well as gray lead, the ancients call ga¬ 
lena and molybdena : this last substance was afterward 
cooled, and the lead (plumbum nigrum, pblvbdog, to 
distinguish it from tin, plumbum, album , or candidum, 
Kaoalrepoq) was produced. (Boeckh's Dissertation 
on the Mines of Laurium, Comment. Acad. Berol., 
an. 1814 et 1815, p. 89.— Boeckh's Public Economy 
of Athens, vol. 2, p. 415, seqq.) 

Lauron, a town of Spain, towards the eastern lim¬ 
its of Bagtica, and not far from the sea, probably among 
the Bastitani. It has been supposed by some to be 

727 



LEA 


L E C 


.he modern Liria, five leagues from Valentia. It 
was this city of which Sertorius made himself master 
in the face of Pompey’s army ; and in its vicinity, at 
a subsequent period, Cneius Pompeius, son of Pom- 
pey the Great, was slain after the battle of Munda. 
(Plut., Vit. Sert. — Oros., 5, 23.— Florus, 4, 2.— Coes., 
Bell. Hisp., c. 37.) 

Laus, I. a river of Lucania, now Lao, running into 
the Sinus Laus, or Gulf of Policastro, at the southern 
extremity of the province. At its mouth stood the 
city of Laiis.—II. A city at the southern extremity 
of Lucania, at the mouth of the river Laiis, and on the 
gulf of the same name. It was a colony of Sybarites 
{Herod., 6, 20.— Strab., 253), but beyond this fact 
we are very little acquainted with its history. Strabo 
reports, that the allied Greeks met with a signal de¬ 
feat in the neighbourhood of this place from the Lu- 
canians. These were probably the Posidoniatce, and 
the other colonists on this coast, and we may conjec¬ 
ture that this disaster led to the downfall of their sev¬ 
eral towns. In Pliny’s time Laiis no longer existed. 

(Plin ., 3, 5.— Ptol., p. 67.) Cluverius identified its 
site with the present Laino ( Ital. Ant., 2, p. 1262); 
but later topographers have justly observed, that this 
town is fourteen miles from the sea, whereas the Ta¬ 
ble Itinerary evidently marks the position of Laiis near 
the coast. It is more probable, therefore, that Scalea 
represents this ancient city. ( Romanelli, vol. 1, p. 
383.) 

Laus Pompeia, a town of Cisalpine Gaul, next in 
importance to Mediolanum, and situate to the south¬ 
east of that place, near the river Lambrus. It was 
founded, as Pliny reports, by the Boii (3, 17), and 
afterward probably colonized by Pompeius Strabo, 
father of the great Pompey. In a letter of Cicero to 
his brother, it is simply called Laus (2, 15). Its po¬ 
sition answers to that of Lodi Vecchio, which, having 
been destroyed by the Milanese, the Emperor Barba- 
rossa caused the new town of Lodi to be built at the 
distance of three miles from the ancient site. {Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 53.) 

LautumLe or LatomLe, a name properly denoting 
a quarry, and derived from the Greek Idas, “ a stone," 
and reyvu, “ to cut" or “ quarry." This appellation 
was particularly applied to certain quarries near Syra¬ 
cuse, one of which still bears the name of “ The Ear 
of Dionysius,” because it is said to have been used 
by that tyrant for a prison, and to have been so con¬ 
structed that all the sounds uttered in it converged 
to and united in one particular point, termed, in con¬ 
sequence, the tympanum. This point communicated 
with an apartment, where Dionysius placed himself, 
and thus overheard all that was said by his unsuspect¬ 
ing captives. Such is the popular opinion respecting 
this place, an opinion which has no other support save 
the narratives of travellers and the accounts of some 
modern historians, who have been equally misled by 
vulgar tradition. There is no doubt, however, but 
that these quarries actually served as places of impris¬ 
onment, and Cicero reproaches Verres with having 
employed them for this purpose in the case of Roman 
citizens. {Cic. in Verr., 5, 27.) iElian informs us, 
that some of the workmen in the quarries near Syra¬ 
cuse remained so long there as to marry and rear fam¬ 
ilies in them, and that some of their children, having 
never before seen a city, were terrified on their com¬ 
ing to Syracuse, and beholding for the first time horses 
and oxen. {JElian, V. H., 12, 44.) 

Leander, a youth of Abydos, beloved by Hero. 
The story of his fate will be found under the latter 
article. (Vid. Hero.)—The following remarks relate 
to his alleged feat of swimming across the Hellespont 
and returning the same night. “It was the custom,” 
observes Hobhouse, “for those who would cross from 
Abydos to Sestos to incline a mile out of the direct 
line, and those making the contrary voyage were obli- 
728 


ged to have recourse to a similar plan, in order to take 
advantage of the current. Leander, therefore, had a 
perilous adventure to perform, who swam at least four 
miles to meet Hero, and returned the same distance 
the same night. It is very possible, however, to swim 
across the Hellespont without being the rival or hav¬ 
ing the motive of Leander. My fellow-traveller (Lord 
Byron) was determined to attempt it.” {Hobhouse's 
Journey, vol. 2, p. 218, Am. ed.) It appears, from 
what follows, that Lord Byron failed in his first at¬ 
tempt, owing to the strength of the current, after he 
and the friend who accompanied him had been in the 
water an hour, and found themselves in the middle of 
the strait, about a mile and a half below the castles. 
A second attempt was more successful ; Lord Byron 
was in the water one hour and ten minutes, his com¬ 
panion, Mr. Ekenhead, five minutes less. Lord Byron 
represents the current as very strong and the water 
cold ; he states, however, that they were not fatigued, 
though a little chilled, and performed the feat with lit¬ 
tle difficulty. The strait between the castles Mr. 
Hobhouse makes a mile and a quarter, and yet it took 
four boatmen five minutes to pull them from point to 
point. All this tends to throw a great deal of doubt 
upon the feat of Leander, who could hardly have been 
a more expert swimmer than Lord Byron, and who, 
besides, had a longer course to pursue. Consult Lord 
Byron’s own account {Moore's Life of Byron, vol. 2, 
p. 308, seqq.), and Mr. Turner’s remarks appended to 
the volume just cited, p. 560. 

Lebadea, a city of Boeotia, west of Coronea, built 
on a plain adjacent to the small river Hercyne. It 
derived its name from Lebadus, an Athenian, having 
previously been called Midea. This city was celebra¬ 
ted in antiquity for the oracle of Trophonius, situated 
in a cave above the town, into which those who con¬ 
sulted the Fates were obliged to descend, after per¬ 
forming various ceremonies, which are accurately de¬ 
tailed by Pausanias, who also gives a minute descrip¬ 
tion of the sacred cavern (9, 39). The oracle was 
already in considerable repute in the time of Crcesus, 
who consulted it {Herod., 1, 46), as did also Mardoni- 
us. {Id., 8, 134.) The victory of Leuctra was said 
to have been predicted by Trophonius, and a solemn 
assembly was in consequence held at Lebadea, after 
the action, to return thanks. This was known, how¬ 
ever, to have been an artifice of Epaminondas. {Diod. 
Sic., 15, 53.) Strabo calls the presiding deity Jupiter 
Trophonius {Strab., 413), and so does Livy (45, 28), 
who says the shrine was visited by Paulus iEmilius 
after his victory over Perseus. The geographer Di- 
caearchus, as we are informed by Athenseus (13, p. 
594, e), wrote a full account of the oracle. The 
modern town of Libadea stands near the site of the 
ancient city: the castle occupies the site of the Acrop¬ 
olis. {Dodwell, vol. 1, p. fin.-Gell's Itin., p. 178. 
— Clarke's Travels, vol. 7, p. 168, Lond. ed .— Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 240.) 

Lebedus (A etedog), one of the twelve cities of Io 
nia, northwest of Colophon, on the coast. It was at 
first a flourishing city, but upon the removal of a large 
portion of its inhabitants to Ephesus by Lysimachus, 
it sank greatly in importance. {Pausan., 1, 9.— Stra¬ 
bo, 632.) In the time of Horace it was deserted and 
in ruins. It would seem to have been subsequently 
restored, as Hierocles, in the seventh century, speaks 
of it as a place then in existence. {Mannert, Geogr 
vol. 6, pt. 3, p. 316.) 

Lech^eum, that part of Corinth which was situated 
on the Sinus Corinthiacus, being distant from the city 
about 12 stadia, and connected with it by means of 
two long walls. ( Strabo, 380.— Xen., Hist. Gr.. 4, 

5, 11.) It was the great emporium of Corinthian traf¬ 
fic with the western parts of Greece, as well as with 
Italy and Sicily. (Strab., 1. c .—Polyb., 5, 24 —Id. 

5, 24, 12.— Liv., 32, 23.) Recording to Sir W. Gell, 





LEC 


LEL 


“ Lechaeum is thirty-five minutes distant from Corinth, 
and consists of about six houses, magazines, and a 
custom-house. East of it, the remains of the port are 
yet visible at a place where the sea runs up a channel 
into the f*lds. Near it are the remains of a modern 
Venetian fort.” ( Itin . of the Morea, p. 205.) 

Lectcnia. Ancient traditions, as well as physical 
observations, point out the former existence of the land 
of Lectonia, which would seem to have occupied a 
part of the space now filled by the Grecian Sea. An 
earthquake probably broke down its foundations, and 
tine whole was finally submerged under the waves. 
Perhaps this event happened when the sea, which was 
formerly extended over the Scythian plains, forced its 
way through the Bosporus, and precipitated itself into 
the basin of the Mediterranean. (Compare remarks 
under the articles Cyanece and Mediterraneum Mare.) 
The numerous islands of the Archipelago appear to be 
the remains of Lectonia, and this tract of land proba¬ 
bly facilitated the passage of the first colonists out of 
Asia into our part of the world. It was the opinion of 
Pallas that the Euxine and Caspian Seas, as well as 
the Lake Aral and several others, are the remains of 
an extensive sea, which covered a great part of the 
north of Asia. This conjecture of Pallas, which was 
drawn from his observations in Siberia, has been con¬ 
firmed by Klaproth’s survey of the country northward 
of Mount Caucasus. Lastly, M. de Choiseul Gouffier 
adds, that a great part of Moldavia, Wailachia, and 
Besarabia bears evident traces of having been form¬ 
ed by the sea. It has often been conjectured that the 
opening of the Bosporus was the occasion of the drain¬ 
ing of this ocean in the rnidst of Europe and Asia. 
The memory of this disruption of the two continents 
was preserved in the traditions of Greece. Strabo 
(49), Pliny (2, 90), and Diodorus Siculus (5, 47), have 
collected the ancient memorials which existed of so 
striking a catastrophe. The truth of the story, how¬ 
ever, has been placed on more secure grounds by 
physical observations on the districts in the vicinity of 
the Bosporus. (Consult Dr. Clarke’s Travels, and 
particularly a Mdmoire by M. de Choiseul Gouffier in 
the Mcms. de VInstitut. Royal de France , 1815, in 
which the author has collected much curious informa¬ 
tion on this subject.) It appears that the catastrophe 
was produced by the operation of volcanoes, the fires 
of which were still burning in the era of the Argonau- 
tic voyage, and enter into the poetical descriptions of 
Apollonius and Valerius Flaccus. According to the 
false Orpheus, Neptune, being angry with Jupiter, 
struck the land of Lectonia with his golden trident, 
and submerged it in the sea, forming islands of many 
of its scattered fragments. There seems to be some 
resemblance between the name Lectonia and Lycao- 
nia, but then we must refer the latter term, not to a 
portion of Asia Minor, but to the northern regions of 
the globe. Thus we have in Ovid (Fast., 3, 793) the 
expression “ Lycaonia Arctos,” in the same poet 
(Trist. , 32, 2) “ Lycaonia sub axe,” and in Claudian 
(Cons. Mall. Theod., 299) “ Lycaonia astra.” By 
the northern regions of the globe, however, Italy and 
Greece can easily be meant, since they were both re¬ 
ferred by the ancients to the countries of the North. 

( Muller's Univer. History , vol. 1, p. 32, in notis .— 
Ukert, Geographic der Griechen und Romer, vol. 1, 
p. 346.— Hermann in Orph., Arg., 1274.) 

Lectum, a promontory of Troas, below the island 
of Tenedos, now Cape Baba. It formed the northern 
limit, in the time of the eastern empire, of the prov¬ 
ince of Asia, as it was termed, which commenced near 
the Maeander, and extended along the coast upward to 
Lectum. Dr. Clarke speaks of this promontory as 
follows : “ Thence we sailed to the promontory of 
Lectum, now Cape Baba, at the mouth of the Adra- 
myttian Gulf: the southwestern extremity of that chain 
of mountains of which Gargarus is the summit. This 
4 Z 


cape presents a high and bold cliff, on whose steep 
acclivity the little town of Baba appears, as though 
stuck within a nook. It is famous for the manufae 
ture of knives and poniards: their blades are distin 
guished in Turkey by the name of Baba Leeks.” 
(Travels, vol. 3, p. 224, seqq., Land, ed.) A very 
accurate view of the promontory is given in Gell's To 
pography of Troy, p. 21. The place was called Baba 
from a dervish (Baba) buried there, who always gave 
the Turks intelligence when any rovers were in the 
neighbouring seas. (Clarke, l. c., in notis.—Egmont 
and Heymands Travels, vol. 1, p. 162.) 

Leda, a daughter of King Thestius and Eurythe- 
mis, who married Tyndarus, king of Sparta. Accord¬ 
ing to the common account, she became, by Jupiter 
(who assumed for that purpose the form of a swan), 
the mother of Pollux and Helen, and by her own 
husband, the parent of Castor and Clytemnestra. Two 
eggs, it seems, were brought forth by her, from which, 
respectively, came the children just named, Pollux and 
Helen being in one, and Castor and Clytemnestra in the 
other. Other versions, however, are given of the le¬ 
gend, for which consult the articles Castor and Helena. 

Led^ea, an epithet given to Hermione, &c., as re¬ 
lated to Leda. (Virg., JEn., 3, 328.) 

Ledus, now Lez, a river of Gaul, near the modern 
Montpelier. (Mela, 2, 5.) 

Legio septima gemina, a Roman military colony in 
Spain among the Astures, northeast of Asturica. It 
is now Leon. (Itin. Ant., p. 395.— Ptolemy, 2, 6.) 
Ptolemy calls it Legio Septima Germanorum. ( Ukert, 
Geogr., vol. 2, p. 441.) 

Lelaps or LiELAPS, I. a dog that never failed to 
seize and conquer whatever animal it was ordered to 
pursue. It was given to Procris by Diana, and Pro- 
cris reconciled herself to her husband by presenting 
him with this valuable animal. According to some, 
Procris had received it from Minos, as a reward for 
the dangerous wounds of which she had cured him. 
(Hygin., fab., 28.— Ovid, Met., 7, 771.)—II. One of 
Actason’s dogs. 

Lelegeis, a name applied to Miletus, because once 
possessed by the Leleges. (Plin., 5, 29.) 

Leleges, an ancient race, whose history is involved 
in great obscurity, in consequence of the various and 
almost contradictory traditions which exist concern¬ 
ing them; according to which, they are on the one 
hand represented as among the earliest inhabitants 
of Greece, while on the other they are said to be 
the same people as the Carians. Herodotus states 
(1, 171) that the Carians, who originally inhabited the 
islands of the JEgean Sea, were known by the name 
of Leleges before they emigrated to Asia Minor; and 
according to Pausanias (7, 2, 4), the Leleges formed 
only a part of the Carian nation. The Leleges ap¬ 
pear, from numerous traditions, to have inhabited the 
islands of the yEgean Sea and the western coasts of 
Asia Minor from a very early period. In Homer they 
are represented as the allies of the Trojans ; and their 
king Altes is said to have been the father-in-law of 
Priam. (II., 20, 96. — lb., 21, 86.) They are said 
to have founded the temple of Juno in Samos (Athe- 
nceus, 15, p. 672), and Strabo informs us that they 
once inhabited, together with the Carians, the whole 
of Ionia. (Strab., 331.)—On the other hand, in the 
numerous traditions respecting them in the north of 
Greece, we find no connexion between them and the 
Carians. According to Aristotle (quoted by Strabo, 
332), they inhabited parts of Acarnania, ^Etolia, Opun- 
tian Locris, Leucas, and Boeotia. In the south of 
Greece we again meet with the same confusion in the 
traditions of Megara respecting the Leleges and the Ca¬ 
rians. Car is said to have been one of the most an¬ 
cient kings of Megara, and to have been succeeded in 
the royal power, after the lapse of twelve generations, by 
Lelex, a foreigner from Egypt. (Pausan., l,39,4,sej. 





LEM 


LEM 


Pylus, the grandson of this Lelex, is said to have led 
a colony of Megarian Leleges into Messenia, where 
he founded the city of Pylus. {Pansan., 4, 36, 1.) 
The Lacedaemonian traditions, on the contrary, repre¬ 
sent the Leleges as the original inhabitants of Laco¬ 
nia. ( Pausan., 3, 1, 1.)—It can scarcely be doubted, 
from the numerous traditions on the subject, that the 
Leleges were in some manner closely connected with 
the Carians. ( Vid. Caria.) The most probable sup¬ 
position is, that the Leleges were a people of Pelas- 
gian race, a portion of whom emigrated at a very ear¬ 
ly period from the continent of Greece to the islands 
of the^Egean Sea, where they became connected with 
the Carians (who were a portion, probably, of the same 
great family), and subsequently joined them in their 
descent upon Asia Minor. {ThirlwaW s History of 
Greece, vol. 1, p. 44.— Philological Museum, No. 1, 
s. v. Ancaaus.— Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 13, p. 417.) 

Lelex, an Egyptian, said to have come with a col¬ 
ony to Megara, and to have attained to kingly power 
there. {Pausan., 1, 39, 4. — Vid. Leleges.) 

Lemanis Portus, or Lymne, a harbour of Britain, 
a little below Dover, where Cassar is thought to have 
landed on his first expedition to that island, having set 
out from the Portus Itius in Gaul, a little south of 
Calais. {Vid. Itius Portus.) 

Lemannus Lacus, a lake of Gaul, in the southwest 
angle of the territory of the Helvetii, and separating 
them in this quarter from the Allobroges. It is now 
the Lake of Geneva. This is a most beautiful expanse 
of water in the form of a crescent, the concave side 
of which is upward of 45 miles long. Its greatest 
breadth is about 12 miles. It never wholly freezes 
over in the severest winters, and it rises about ten 
feet in summer, by the melting of the snows on the 
Alps. Besides the Rhone, which traverses its whole 
length, it receives the waters of forty other streams. 
{Lucan, 1 , 396.— Mela, 2, 5.— Coes., B. G., 1 , 2. — Id. 
ib., 1, 8. — Id. ib., 3, 1.) 

Lemnos, an island in the iEgean Sea, between 
Tenedos, Imbros, and Samothrace. According to 
Pliny (4, 12) it was 87 miles from Mount Athos ; but 
there must be an error in the MSS. of that author, 
for the distance is not forty miles from the extreme 
point of the Acrothoan Cape to the nearest headland 
of Lemnos. (Compare remarks under the article 
Athos.) Lemnos is known in ancient mythology as 
the spot on which Vulcan fell, after being hurled 
down from heaven, and where he established his for¬ 
ges. A volcano, which once was burning on the 
island, may have afforded ground for the fable. A 
story is also recorded by Herodotus and other ancient 
writers of the women of Lemnos having murdered all 
the men. {Vid. Hypsipyle.) Homer states that the 
earliest inhabitants of this island were the Sintians, 
a Thracian tribe {II, 1, 593. — Strabo, Exc., 7, p. 331), 
whence Apollonius Rhodius terms it hivryida kryivov 
(1, 608. — Compare Schol. Thucyd., 2, 98. — Steph. 
Byz., s. v. A yyvog.) To these succeeded the Tyr¬ 
rhenian Pelasgi, who had been driven out of Attica. 
They are said to have afterward stolen some Athenian 
women from Brauron, and carried them to Lemnos ; 
and it is also said, that the children of these women 
having despised their half-brethren, born of Pelasgian 
women, the Pelasgi took the resolution of murdering 
both the Athenian women and their offspring. In con¬ 
sequence of these atrocities, Lemnos had a bad name 
among the ancient Greeks. (Consult Erasm., Chil. 
col., 297, s. v. Arjpviov Kanov.) Lemnos was still in 
the possession of these Pelasgi when it was invaded 
Rnd conquered by Otanes, a Persian general. {Herod., 

5, 26.) But on his death it is probable that the island 
again recovered its independence ; for we know that, 
subsequent to this event, Miltiades conquered it for 
Athens, and expelled those Pelasgi who refused to 
submit to his authority. {Herod., 6, 140.) During 


the Peloponnesian war Lemnos remained in the pos¬ 
session of Athens, and furnished that state with its 
best light-armed troops. {Thucyd., 4,28.— Id., 7,57.) 
Pliny speaks of a remarkable labyrinth which existed 
in this island, and of which some vestiges were still 
to be seen in his time. He says it had massive gates, 
so well poised that a child could throw them open, 
and one hundred and fifty columns, and was adorned 
with numerous statues, being even more extensive 
and splendid than those of Crete or Egypt (36, 13). 
Modern travellers have in vain attempted to discover 
any trace of this great work. Dr. Hunt says (1, p 
61), “ we could only hear a confused account of a 
subterranean staircase in an uninhabited part of the 
island called Pouniah.” This spot the Dr. visited ; 
but he was of opinion that those ruins have no rela¬ 
tion to the labyrinth mentioned by Pliny. He con¬ 
ceives them rather to belong to Hephsestia.—Lemnos 
contained a remarkable volcano, called Mosychlus, 
from which fire was seen to blaze forth, according to 
a fragment of the poet Antimachus, preserved by the 
scholiast on Nicander {ad. Ther., 472). This vol¬ 
canic appearance will account for the ancient n&me of 
.dSthalia, which Lemnos is said to have borne in dis¬ 
tant ages. {Polyb., ap. Steph. Byz., s. v. Aidu/.y.) 
“ The whole island,” says Dr. Hunt, u bears the strong- 
estf marks of the appearance of volcanic fire ; the rocks 
in many parts are like burned and vitrified scoriae of fur¬ 
naces.” {Walpole's Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 59.— Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 338.) Sonnini, also, 
before this, remarked respecting this island, that in¬ 
ternal fires were very probably still burning there, for 
he met with a spring of hot water which had been 
brought to supply baths, and with another of alumin¬ 
ous water. The priests of Lemnos were reckoned 
famous for the cure of wounds, and the efficacy of 
their skill depended, it is said, upon the quality of a 
species of red earth found in the island, called Lcm- 
nian earth. This the ancients thought a sovereign 
remedy against poisons and the bites of serpents, but 
it is now held in little or no esteem in Europe, al¬ 
though the Greeks and Turks still believe it to possess 
wonderful medicinal properties. It is dug out of a 
hill in the island with great ceremony and at partic¬ 
ular times, in presence of the Turkish sandjack or 
governor, and of the Greek clergy, and is shaped into 
little balls and stamped with the governor’s seal, 
whence it has derived the name of terra sigillata 
(“ sealed earth”). The governor makes a traffic of 
it, and sends it to Constantinople and other places. 

It is also used for tanning leather. The modern name 
of Lemnos is Stalimene. {Cramer's Anc. Greece, 
vol. 1, p. 338.) 

LemovIces, I. a people of Celtic Gaul, subse¬ 
quently incorporated into Aquitania. They were sit¬ 
uated to the south of the Bituriges Cubi and to the 
west of the Arverni. Their capital was Augustori 
turn, afterward called Lemovices, now Limoges, in the 
department de la Haute-Vienne. {Coes., B. G., 7, 4.) 
—II. A people of Gaul, forming part of the Armoric 
nations, and lying to the east and northeast of the 
Osismii. {Coes., B. G., 7, 75.) Some scholars, how 
ever, with great probability, suppose that the text of 
Caesar, where mention is made of them, requires cor¬ 
rection, and that for Lemovices we ought to read Leo- 
nices. (Consult Lemaire, Ind. Geogr., ad Cces., p 
295.) 

Lemures, a name given by the Romans to the 
spirits of the departed, also called Manes. If be¬ 
neficent, they were termed Lares ; if hurtful, Lar¬ 
va. {Vid. Lares, p. 721, col. 2, near the end.) — 
Solemn rites were celebrated in honour of the Le¬ 
mures, called Lemuria. They began on the night of 
the 9th May, and were continued for three nights, not 
successively, but alternately during six days. Mid¬ 
night was the time for their celebration. The mastei 








LEN 


LEO 


•f the house then arose, and went barefoot* through 
the darkness, to a fountain, where he washed his 
hands. He proceeded to it in silence, making mere¬ 
ly a slight noise with his fingers, to drive away the 
shades that might be gathering around. After he had 
washed his hands three times, he returned, casting 
behind him at the same time some black figs which 
he carried in his mouth, and uttering in a low tone 
the following words: “With these figs do I ransom 
myself and my family.” He repeated these same 
words nine times, with the same formalities, and with¬ 
out looking behind. Then, after a short interval of 
silence, he exclaimed with a loud voice, striking at the 
same time on a brazen vessel, “ Paternal Manes, Le- 
mures, deities of the lower world, depart from this 
abode.” Fires were immediately kindled in every 
part of the mansion, and the ceremony ended. Du¬ 
ring the time for celebrating these rites the temples 
were closed, and no one could be united in marriage. 
(Ovid, Fast., 5, 421, seqq. — Pers., Sat., 5, 185.,— 
Horat., Epist., 2, 2, 209.) 

Len^eus, a surname of Bacchus, from Xrjvoq, a 
wine-press. (Vid. Bacchus, and also Theatrum, § 2, 
Dramatic Contests.) 

Lentulus, a family name of one of the most an¬ 
cient and distinguished branches of the Gens Cornelia. 
The appellation is said to have been derived from the 
circumstance of one of the line having been born with 
a wart on his visage, shaped like a lentil (lens, gen. 
lentis). It is more probable, however, that the appel¬ 
lation arose from some peculiar skill displayed by the 
founder of the family in the culture of the lentil.—The 
most eminent or best known of the Lcntuli were the 
following : I. L. Cornelius, was consul A.U.C. 427, 
B.C. 327, and cleared Umbria of the brigands that in¬ 
fested it. He was present, six years afterward, at the 
disastrous affair of the Furcae Caudinse, and was one 
of those who exhorted the Roman consuls to submit 
to the humiliating conditions offered by the Samnites, 
in order to save the whole army. (Liv., 8, 22, seqq. 
— Id., 9, 4.)—II. P. Cornelius, surnamed Sura, a Ro¬ 
man nobleman, grandson of P. Cornelius Lentulus, 
who had been Princeps Senatus. He married Julia, 
sister of L. Julius Caesar, after the death of her first 
husband, M. Antonius Creticus, to whom she had 
borne M. Antonius the triumvir. Lentulus was a man 
of talents, but extremely corrupt in his private charac¬ 
ter. The interest of his family and the affability of 
his manners, proceeding from a love of popularity, 
raised him through the usual gradations of public hon¬ 
ours to the office of consul, which he obtained B.C. 
73, in conjunction with Cn. Aufidius Orestis. Ex¬ 
pelled subsequently from the senate on account of his 
immoral conduct, he had procured the prastorship, the 
usual step for being restored to that body, when Cati¬ 
line formed his design of subverting the government. 
Poverty, the natural consequence of excessive dissipa¬ 
tion, added to immoderate vanity and extravagant am¬ 
bition, induced him to join in the conspiracy. The 
soothsayers easily persuaded him that he was the third 
member of the Cornelian house, destined by the Fates 
to enjoy the supreme power at Rome, Cinna and Sylla 
having both attained to that elevation. His schemes, 
however, all proved abortive: he was arrested, along 
with others of the conspirators, by the orders of Cice¬ 
ro, who was then in the consulship, and having been 
brought before a full senate, was condemned to death, 
and strangled in prison. Plutarch informs us that he 
received the name of Sura from the following cir¬ 
cumstance. He had wasted a large sum of money in 
his quaestorship under Sylla, and the latter, enraged 
at his conduct, demanded a statement of his accounts 
in the senate. Lentulus thereupon, with the utmost 
indifference, declared he had no accounts to produce, 
and contemptuously presented the calf (sura) of his 
Ug. Among the Romans, and particularly among 


the boys, the player at tennis who missed his stroke 
presented the calf of his leg, to receive as a punish¬ 
ment a certain number of blows upon it. Lentulus, 
in allusion to that game, acted in this manner, which 
accounts for the surname, or, rather, nickname of Sura. 
(Sail., Bell. Cat. — Pint., Vit. Cic.) — III. P. Corne¬ 
lius, surnamed Spinther, held the office of curule 
aedile B.C. 65, when Cicero and Antonius were 
consuls. His great wealth enabled him to display a 
magnificence in the celebration of the games which 
surpassed what had ever before been seen at Rome. 
In the year 59 B.C. he was propraetor of Hispania Ci- 
terior. He was elected consul with Q. Csecilius Me- 
tellus Nepos, and procured, with others, the recall of 
Cicero from banishment. In the civil war he attached 
himself to the side of Pornpey, and, having been taken 
prisoner, was brought before Caesar at Co.rfi.nium, and 
set at liberty. He fought in the battle of Pharsalia, 
and fled to Rhodes ; but the Rhodians refused him pro¬ 
tection. Nothing farther is known respecting him. 
According to Valerius Maximus, he received the sur¬ 
name of Spinther from his resemblance to a comedian 
of that name. (Val. Max., 9, 14, 4. — Cic., Off., 2, 
16. — Id., ad Quir. post. Red., 5. — Id., Ep. ad Fam., 
13, 48, &c.) — IV. Cn. Gaetulicus, was consul A.D. 
26, and was put to death by Caligula on a charge of 
conspiracy. (Dto Cass., 59,22.— Sueton., Vit. Claud. ., 
9.) He was distinguished as an historical and a po¬ 
etical writer. (Foss., Hist. Lai., 1, 25. — Crus, ad 
Sueton., Vit. Calig., 8 .) 

Leo, I. a philosopher or astronomer of Constantino¬ 
ple, in the first half of the ninth century. He is spo¬ 
ken of in high terms by the Byzantine writers. One 
of his numerous pupils having been taken prisoner by 
the Arabians and conducted to Bagdad, astonished, it 
is said, the Caliph Al-Mamoun by the extent of his 
astronomical knowledge. The surprise of the Mus¬ 
sulman prince was, however, greatly increased when 
he learned that his captive was merely a scholar; but 
it reached its height when he was informed that the 
preceptor from whom he imbibed his learning was liv¬ 
ing in obscurity at Constantinople. The caliph im¬ 
mediately invited Leo to leave a country where his 
merits found no reward, and come to a court where 
the sciences were honoured. Leo dared not, however,, 
leave the capital of the East for such a purpose, with¬ 
out first obtaining the permission of the reigning em¬ 
peror. The monarch, who was Theophilus, refused to 
give his assent, but bestowed many appointments on 
the hitherto neglected astronomer, and gave him the 
use of a church for his public lectures, which had be¬ 
fore been delivered in a mere hut. The caliph then 
addressed a remarkable letter to Theophilus, request¬ 
ing him to allow Leo to spend only a short time with 
him, and promising him, in return, a large sum of mon¬ 
ey, and a lasting peace and alliance. Theophilus per¬ 
sisted in his refusal, but opened, at the same time, a 
public school for Leo in one of the imperial palaces, 
assigned to him the instruction of the youth of the cap¬ 
ital, and loaded him with honours and privileges. He 
was subsequently appointed to the archbishopric of 
Thessalonica ; but, being a decided enemy to images, 
was compelled to abandon his see when the heresy of 
the Iconoclasts was condemned, A.D. 849. He re¬ 
turned upon this to Constantinople, ?.nd resumed his 
former station of professor of astronomy. As he has 
left no work behind him. we can form no opinion of 
his scientific merits ; for the reputation which his pu¬ 
pil gained at the court of Bagdad, and the eulogiums 
bestowed on Leo himself by the Byzantine writers, 
ought not to carry any very great weight with them. 
It should be remarked, however, that Caesar Bardas, 
wishing to revive the sciences at Constantinople, al¬ 
lowed himself to be directed in this enterprise by the 
advice of Leo. (Le Beau, Histoire du Bas-Empire■ 
vol. 7 , p. 69, seqq. —Vol. 7 , p. 136.— Scholl, Hist* 

731 



LEO 


LEO. 


Lit. Gr ., vol. 7 , p. 58.)—II. An historical writer, sur 
named the Carian, who published a continuation of 
Theophanes. His work, which extends from A.D. 
813 to 949, is entitled XpovoypaQia rd tuv veuv /3a- 
ct?L£uv 7V£pLex ovaa i “ Chronicle of the late emperors .” 
We have an edition of this work by Combefis, Paris , 
1655, fol. — III. Surnamed the Deacon (A iduovoq), 
born about A.D. 950, at Coelae, a village of Ionia at 
the foot of Mount Tmolus. He was attached, by vir¬ 
tue of his office of A tanovog, to the court of the Greek 
emperors, which is nearly all that we know of h'.s per¬ 
sonal history. He wrote, in ten books, a history of 
the emperors Romanus II. the younger, Nicephorus 
Phocas, and John Zirnisces, that is, of the years in¬ 
cluded between 959 and 975. His object in compo¬ 
sing this work was to give a histoire raisonnee of the 
events which took place under his own eyes. Such an 
undertaking, however, was beyond his strength. His 
style is neither elegant nor clear, and we are often 
startled at the introduction of Latin words in a Greek 
garb. His work abounds with specimens of false elo¬ 
quence and bad taste : occasionally, however, we meet 
with agreeable and pleasing details. The best edi¬ 
tion at present is that of Hase, Paris, 1819, folio. 
The work will form a part, however, of the new edi¬ 
tion of Byzantine writers now in a course of publica¬ 
tion.—IV. Magentenus or Magentinus, a metropolitan 
of Mytilene, flourished about 1340 A.D. He wrote 
commentaries on the works of Aristotle “On Inter¬ 
pretation,” and the “ first Analytics.” The first of 
these commentaries is given in the Aldine collection 
of the Peripatetic writers, 1503 ; the second at the 
end of the Venice edition (1536) of John Philoponus. 
—V. The First, surnamed the Great, an emperor of 
the East, born in Thrace of an obscure family, and who 
owed his advancement through the various gradations 
of the Roman army to the powerful favour of Aspar, 
a Gothic chief who commanded the auxiliaries, and 
his son Ardaburius. Leo was in comir’itnd of a body 
of troops encamped at Selymbria, whan hie ambi¬ 
tious protectors made him ascend the throne left va¬ 
cant by the death of the virtuous Marcian. The 
senate confirmed this choice ; and Leo vras acknowl¬ 
edged as emperor at the head of the forces, Feb. 
7, A.D. 457, and crowned by Anatolius, patriarch 
of Constantinople. It is belied to have been the 
first example given of this sacred sanction in the ele¬ 
vation of a monarch to the throne. Aspar soon per¬ 
ceived that Leo would not long support the yoke im¬ 
posed upon him. A quarrel arose between them rel¬ 
ative to the party of the Eutychians who had massa¬ 
cred their bishop and appointed another in his stead. 
Aspar espoused the cause of the latter, but Leo drove 
*iim from his see, and nominated an orthodox prelate 
to the vacant place. Leo had already before this ob¬ 
tained some signal successes over the barbarians, and 
had restored peace to the empire of the East. He 
wished also to put an end to the troubles of the West¬ 
ern Empire, torn by the ambition and fury of Ricimer, 
desolated by Genseric, and governed by mere phan¬ 
toms of emperors. Genseric braved the menaces of 
Leo. The latter, whose armies had just repelled the 
Huns, and slain one of the sons of Attila, united all 
his forces, and sent them into Africa against the Van¬ 
dal prince ; but the inexperience, or, according to 
Procopius, the trsachery of Basiliscus saved Genseric, 
and the Roman army returned ingloriously home. 
Aspar and his son were suspected of having contribu¬ 
ted by their intrigues to bring about these reverses, 
and Leo, wearied out with their audacity, determined 
to put an end to it. Afraid, however, of their power, 
he spread a snare for them unworthy of a monarch; 
he flattered Aspar with the hope of a union between 
Patricola, a son of the latter, and Ariadne, daughter 
of the emperor. A report of this intended match, pur¬ 
posely circulated abroad, excited the indignation of the 
732 


populace,«who hated the family of Aspar on account 
of their Arian orinciples. A sedition ensued. Aspar 
and his sons were compelled to fly for refuge to the 
church of St. Euphemia, and were only induced to 
quit this asylum on the urgent invitations of Leo, 
confirmed by oaths, for them to come to the royal pal¬ 
ace. The moment they arrived there, Aspar and Ar¬ 
daburius were beheaded. The Arians, enraged at 
the loss of their protector, incited Ricimer to trouble 
anew the repose of the West, and prevailed upon the 
Goths to attack Constantinople. The environs of the 
capital were in consequence laid waste for the spate' w 
of two years by these barbarian invaders, until Leo 
succeeded in driving them off and concluding a peace. 

He died A.D. 474, leaving the empire to the young 
Leo, the son of his daughter Ariadne and of Zeno, an 
Isaurian, whom he had made a patrician and captain 
of his guards, in order to balance the power of Aspar. 

He had first vainly endeavoured to fix the succession 
upon Zeno himself. Leo has preserved the reputation 
of an active, enlightened, and vigilant monarch, who 
neglected nothing that had a tendency to promote the 
welfare of his subjects. He promulgated wise laws, 
and gave the example of moderation and economy 
which had been so long needed in the state. He is 
not exempt, however, from the charge of avarice, and 
of weakness also, in allowing the ambition of Aspar 
to go so long unpunished. ( Biogr. Univ., vol. 24, 
p. 135.) — VI. The second, called also the Youn¬ 
ger, grandson of Leo I., and son of Ariadne and 
Zeno, tie was declared Augustus at the moment 
of his grandfather’s death. Although scarcely four 
years oid at the period of his elevation, this choice 
was, notwithstanding, very agreeable to the people, 
who detested Zeno on account of his Arian tenets and 
his Isaurian origin. Verina, however, the widow of 
the deceased emperor, and Ariadne, the wife of Zeno, 
neglected neither intrigues nor seductive arts to con¬ 
ciliate for Zeno the favour of the populace. When 
all difficulties were believed to be removed, Ariadne 
conducted the young Leo to the hippodrome, and 
placed him on an elevated throne. There the child, a 
feeble tool in the hands of two ambitious females, 
called Zeno to him, and, placing the crown on the 
head of the latter, named him his colleague in the em¬ 
pire. Leo died soon after, having been poisoned, as 
was supposed, by Zeno, his own father, after a reign 
of about ten months. {Biogr. Univ., vol. 24, p. 136.) 

—VII. The third, surnamed the Isaurian, born in Isau- 
ria of a mean family, and originally a dealer in cattle. 

His true name was Conon. A prediction made to 
him by some Jews, who declared that his fortune 
would be a brilliant one if he changed his name and 
took up the profession of arms, induced him to enter 
on a new career. He served at first as a private sol¬ 
dier in the army of Justinian II. Here his zeal, and 
some services which he had rendered, attracted the 
notice of the emperor, who received him into his 
guards, and raised him rapidly to the highest stations. 
Justinian having at length begun to entertain fears of 
his ambition, sent him on a dangerous expedition 
against the tribes of Caucasus. After having signal¬ 
ized his valour and military skill in the execution of 
this order, Leo returned to Constantinople, and Anas, 
tasius, who was now on the throne, appointed him to 
the command of the troops in Asia. On receiving in¬ 
telligence of the deposition of Anastasius, Leo refused 
to acknowledge Theodosius III., whom the revolted 
fleet had proclaimed emperor. The Saracens, who 
were then ravaging the empire, excited Leo to seize 
upon the sceptre, having promised to aid him with all 
their forces. He had great need of prudence and ad¬ 
dress for managing these dangerous allies. Obliged 
alternately to deceive and to intimidate them, he 
found at last a fit moment for marching on Constanti¬ 
nople, where Theodosius yielded up the throne to him 






LEU. 


LEO 


With scarcely any resistance. Leo was .rowned 
emperor March 25, A.D. 717. The Saracens, whom 
he had amused by false pretences, now advanced to 
the capital, and besieged it by sea and land. In this 
extremity Leo redoubled his exertions and courage, 
and. after long and obstinate conflicts, he succeeded in 
repelling his dangerous assailants. In 719, an attempt 
or. the part of Anastasius to regain the throne failed 
through the activity of Leo, and the unsuccessful aspi¬ 
rant lost his head. He sustained also, with varied 
success, the repeated attacks of the Saracens in Sicily, 
Italy, and Sardinia. So many services rendered to 
the empire would have placed Leo in the rank of 
great monarchs, had not his fondness for # theological 
quarrels, too common in those ages of ignorance, in¬ 
volved him in long and dangerous collisions. He es¬ 
poused the cause of the Iconoclasts, and his severity 
drove many of the inhabitants into open rebellion. 
After a stormy conflict, marked by the most cruel per¬ 
secutions, Leo died, A.D. 741, leaving the throne to 
his son Constantine Coprpnymus. ( Biogr . Univ., 

vol. 24, p. 136, seqq.) —VIII. The fourth, an emperor 
of the east, the son of Constantine Copronymus. He 
ascended the throne A.D. 775, and died A.D. 780, 
after an unimportant reign.—IX. The fifth, surnamed 
the Armenian, an emperor of the East, who rose from 
an obscure station to the throne. He succeeded the 
emperor Michael Rhangabe, whom the soldiers re¬ 
jected in a mutiny secretly fomented by the ambi¬ 
tious Leo. His reign continued for seven years and 
a half, and was remarkable for the rigid military disci¬ 
pline introduced by him into the civil government. 
He was an Iconoclast, but his religious inconstancy 
obtained for him, in fact, the name of Chameleon. He 
was slain by a band of conspirators at the very foot 
Df the altar, during the morning celebration of the 
festival of Christmas. ( Gibbon, Decline and Fall, c. 
48 .) —X. The sixth, surnamed the Philosopher, an 
emperor of the East. He was the son of Eudoxia, 
wife of Basil I. The irregularities of his mother have 
left some doubt relative to his legitimacy ; he was ac¬ 
knowledged, however, by Basil, as his son and suc¬ 
cessor. Already at the age of 19 years, the young 
prince had made himself beloved by all the empire. 
Santabaren, however, the favourite of Basil, an artful 
and dangerous man, irritated at the contempt and ha¬ 
tred which Leo testified for him, sought every means 
to destroy him, and at last succeeded in having him 
cast into prison on suspicion of plotting against his 
father’s life. A cruel punishment at first threatened 
him ; but the parent relented, and his son, being al¬ 
lowed to justify his conduct, was restored to all his 
former honours. A little while after, the death of 
Basil left Leo master of the Eastern empire. He as¬ 
cended the throne with his brother Alexander in 886 ; 
but the latter, given up to his pleasures, abandoned to 
Leo the whole care of the government. Perhaps the 
effeminacy and licentiousness of Alexander obtained 
for Leo, by the mere force of flattering comparison, 
the title of Philosopher, which his life in no degree 
lustified. Scarcely had he ascended the throne when 
he deposed Photius, the celebrated patriarch, who was 
secretly connected with Santabaren in the plot for his 
destruction. Santabaren himself underwent a cruel 
ounishment, and was then driven into exile. Leo 
"eigned weakly, and the ill success of his generals 
igainst the Bulgarians obliged him to submit to such 
terms of peace as those barbarians pleased to pro¬ 
pose. A total defeat of his fleet by the Saracens 
also took place a short time before his death, which 
happened A.D. 911, after a reign of 25 years. “ The 
name of Leo VI. has been dignified,” observes Gib¬ 
bon, “ with the title of Philosopher, and the union of 
the prince and the sage, of the active and the specula¬ 
tive virtues, would indeed constitute the perfection of 
human nature But the claims of Leo are far short 


of this ideal excellence. Did he reduce his passion* 
and appetites under the dominion of reason 1 His life 
was spent in the pomp of the palace, in the society of 
his wives and concubines : and even the clemency 
which Ee showed, and the peace which he strove to 
preserve, must be imputed to the softness and indo¬ 
lence of his character. Did he subdue his prejudices 
and those of his subjects 1 His mind was tinged 
with the most puerile superstition; the influence of 
the clergy, and the errors of the people, were conse¬ 
crated by his laws, and the oracles of Leo, which re¬ 
veal, in prophetic style, the fates of the empire, are 
founded on the arts of astrology and divination. If 
we still inquire the reason of his sage appellation, it 
can only be replied, that the son of Basil was less ig 
norant than the greater part of his contemporaries in 
church and state ; that his education had been direct¬ 
ed by the learned Photius ; and that several books of 
profane and ecclesiastical science were composed by 
the pen or in the name of the imperial philosopher. 
But the reputation of his philosophy and religion was 
overthrown by a domestic vice, the repetition of his 
nuptials.” ( Decline and Fall, c. 48.) He was four 
times married, and had a son by each of these unions, 
but he lost three of his children successively at an 
early age. He left the empire to Constantine, his son 
by Zoe, his fourth wife.—We have remaining seven¬ 
teen predictions or oracles of this pretended prophet, 
written in iambic verse. Rutgersius published the 
first sixteen, to which Leunclavius added the seven¬ 
teenth, up to that time unedited. Leo also retouch¬ 
ed and reduced to a better form the body of law com¬ 
menced by Basil, and which took the name of BacnX- 
ikoI Siard^eic, “ Imperial Constitutions ” or “ Basil - 
icce .” He also promulgated various new ordinances, 
’EiTavopdioTiKal naOdpaeip, in which he corrected and 
modified the Justinian code. Of these 113 remain. 
We owe to his orders, likewise, the composition of an 
’E/c/toy^, or abridgment of Roman law, promulgated 
in his name and that of Constantine his son, who 
was then associated with him in the empire. Leo’s 
principal work is that on Military Tactics, contain¬ 
ing the elements of this branch of the military art: 
T Cov kv TzoXtyoiq raKTUitiv ovvTopog rcapddomi;, or 
II olepactiv TtapacKEvCov didra^tg. It is a compilation 
from the works of Arrian, HDlian, and especially One- 
sander, and contains some curious illustrations of the 
state of military knowledge in his day. The best edi¬ 
tion is that of Meursius, Lugd. Bat., 1612, 4to. It 
was translated into French by Maizeroi, Paris, 1771, 
2 vols. 8vo. The libraries of Florence and of the 
Vatican are thought to contain many other military, 
and likewise some religious works, of this same em¬ 
peror. ( Biographie Universelle, vol. 24, p. 141, 
seqq.) 

LEOCHAREs,an Athenian statuary and sculptor, men¬ 
tioned by Pliny (34, 8, 19) as having flourished in the 
102d Olympiad. He built the Mausoleum, in connex¬ 
ion with Scopas, Bryaxes, and Timotheus, to whom 
some add Praxiteles. ( Plin., 36, 5, 4.— Vitruv., VII., 
Prcef., s. 13.) A list of his works is given by Sillig, 
from ancient authorities. {Diet. Art., s. v.) 

Leonatus, one of the generals of Alexander. On 
the death of that monarch he was appointed to the 
charge of Phrygia Minor, which lay along the Hel¬ 
lespont. Not long after, on being directed by Per- 
diccas to establish Eumenes in the kingdom of Cap¬ 
padocia, he communicated to the latter a plan which 
he had in view of seizing upon Macedonia. Eume¬ 
nes immediately divulged this to Perdiccas. The 
plan thus formed by Leonatus was ba$ed upon his as¬ 
sisting Antipater in the Lamian war. Accordingly, 
though both Eumenes and Perdiccas knew his real in¬ 
structions, he crossed over with a body of forces into 
Europe, and brought succour to Antipater against the 
confederate Greeks ; but his ambitious designs were 

733 



LEO 


L JS P 


frustrated b? nis being slain in battle. ( Pint., Vit. 
Alex. — Id., Vit. Phoc. — Id., Vit. Eum.) 

LeonJdas, I. a celebrated king of Lacedaemon, of 
the family of the Eurysthenidae, sent by his countrymen 
to maintain the pass of Thermopylae against the inva¬ 
ding army of Xerxes, B.C. 480. A full narrative of 
the whole affair, together with an examination of the 
ancient statements on this subject, will be found under 
the article Thermopylae.—II. Son of Cleonymus, of the 
line of the Agidae, succeeded Areus II. on the throne 
of Sparta, B.C. 257. Agis, his colleague in the 
sovereignty, having resolved to restore the institutions 
of Lycurgus to their former vigour, Leonidas opposed 
his views, and became the main support of those who 
were inclined to a relaxation of ancient strictness. 
He was convicted, however, of having transgressed 
the laws, and was obliged to yield the supreme power 
to Cleombrotus, his son-in-law. Not long after he 
was re-established on the Spartan throne, and avenged 
the affront which he had received at the hands of Agis, 
by impeaching him and effecting his condemnation. 

( Pausan., 2, 9.— Id., 3, 6.)—III. A native of Alexan¬ 
dra, who flourished at Rome as a grammarian to¬ 
wards the close of the first century of the Christian 
era. He wrote, among other things, epigrams denom¬ 
inated lao-tpricjia, arranged in such a manner, that the 
numerical value of all the letters composing any one 
distich is equal to that of the letters of any other. He 
was very probably the inventor of this learned species of 
trifling. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit., vol. 4, p. 50.—Compare 
Jacobs, Catal. Poet. Epigramm., s. v.) —IV. A na¬ 
tive of Tarentum, who flourished about 275 B.C. He 
has left behind a hundred epigrams in the Doric dialect, 
and which belong to the best of those that have been 
preserved for us. ( Jacobs, Catal. Poet. Epigramm., 
s. v.) 

Leontini, a town of Sicily, situate about five miles 
from the seashore, on the south of Catana, between two 
small streams, the Lissus and Terias. The place is 
sometimes called by modern writers Leontium ; this, 
however, is not only a deviation from Thucydides, who 
always uses the form A eovtlvol, but, in fact, is employ¬ 
ed by no ancient author except Ptolemy; and Cluve- 
rius there suspec4s the reading to be a corruption for 
AeovtIvov. {Bloomfield, ad Thucyd., 6, 3.) It was 
founded by a colony of Chalcideans from Euboea, who 
had come to the island but six years before, and had 
then settled Naxos, near Mount Taurus, where Tauro- 
menium was afterward founded. That they should have 
settled Leontini only six years after their own coloniza¬ 
tion rnay indeed seem strange; but it may be accounted 
for from the superior fertility of the plain of Leontini, 
which has ever been accounted the richest tract in Si¬ 
cily ; for the very same reason they soon afterward 
settled Catana. {Thucyd., 1. c. — Bloomf., ad loc .) 
The Siculi were in possession of the territory where 
Leontini was founded prior to the arrival of the col¬ 
ony, and were driven out by force of arms. Leontini 
for a time continued flourishing and powerful, but 
eventually sank under the superior power and prosper¬ 
ity of Syracuse. Its quarrel with this last-mentioned 
city led to the unfortunate expedition of the Athenians, 
whose aid Leontini had solicited. The city ultimate¬ 
ly fell under the Syracusan power. The celebrated 
Gorgias was a native of this place. {Mannert, Geogr., 
vol. 9, pt. 2, p. 301, seqq.) 

Leontium, an Athenian female, originally an hetaerist, 
although afterward, as Gassendi maintains, the wife 
of Metrodorus, the most eminent friend and disciple 
of Epicurus. Many slanders were circulated respect¬ 
ing her intercourse with the philosopher and his fol¬ 
lowers. She herself composed works on philosophy. 
{Diog. Laert., 10, 7. — Pint., non posse suav. v. Sec. 
Epic., 4, 16. — Cic., N. D., 1, 33.) A detailed biog¬ 
raphy of Leontium may be found in the Biographic 
TJniversdle (vol. 24, p. 170. — Compare Ritter, Hist. 

734 


Philos., vol. 3, p. 402). Of the other hetaerists wnc 
frequented the garden of Epicurus, it may be supposed 
that they were only brought to the common meals in 
accordance with the custom of the day. {Ritter, l. c.) 

Leosthenes, I. one of the last successful generals 
of Athens. He was of the party of Demosthenes, and 
the violence of his harangues in favour of democracy 
drew the well-known reproof from Phocion: “Young 
man, thy words are like the cypress, tall and large, 
but they bear no fruit.” He had, however, gained 
reputation enough to be chosen leader of a large body 
of mercenary soldiers, returned from Asia shortly be¬ 
fore the death of Alexander, who, on that event being 
known, were taken openly into the pay of the republic. 
His first exploit was the defeat of the Boeotians near 
Platsea. After this he took post at Pylse, to prevent 
the entrance of Antipater into Greece, defeated him, 
and shut him up in Lamia, a town of Thessaly, to 
which he laid siege ; and from that siege the Lamian 
war has its name. -Leosthenes, however, was killed 
in the course of it; and after his death success de¬ 
serted the Athenian arms. He left a high reputation: 
and his picture, painted by Arcesilaus, is mentioned by 
Pausanias (1, 1) as one of the objects in the Piraeus 
worthy of notice. {Diod. Sic., 18, 9. — Id., 18, 11, 
seqq.) —II. An Athenian commander, condemned to 
death, B.C. 361, for being defeated by Alexander of 
Pherae. {Diod. Sic., 15, 95.) 

Leotychides, I. a king of Sparta, son of Menares, 
of the line of the Proclidae. He ascended the throne 
B.C. 491, a few years before the invasion of Greece 
by the Persians, and succeeded to Demaratus. Hav¬ 
ing been appointed, along with Xanthippus the Athe¬ 
nian, to the command of the Grecian fleet, he gained, 
in conjunction with his colleague, the celebrated vic¬ 
tory of Mycale. He afterward sailed along the coast 
of Asia Minor, causing the inhabitants to revolt, and 
received into alliance with the Greeks the Ionians 
and Samians, who, in the battle of Mycale, had been 
the first to declare in favour of their ancient allies. 
Some years after this, Leotychides having been sent 
into Thessaly against the Aleuadae, suffered himself to 
be influenced by their presents, and retired without 
having gained any advantage. He was accused on 
his return, and, not deeming himself safe at Lacedee- 
mon, he took refuge at Tegea, in the temple of Mi¬ 
nerva Alea (499 B.C.). Zeuxidamus, his son, being 
dead, Archidamus, his grandson, was placed on the 
throne. Leotychides died at Tegea 467 B.C. {He¬ 
rod., 6, 65.— Id., 8, 131.— Id., 9, 197.)—II. Son of 
Agis, king of Sparta. He passed, however, most 
commonly for the son of Alcibiades, whom Agis had 
received into his abode when exiled from Athens. 
Although Agis had formally recognised his legitimacy, 
it was nevertheless disputed, and Lysander eventually 
succeeded in having Agesilaus his brother appointed 
king in his place. {Corn. Nep., Vit. Ages. — Pau¬ 
san., 3, 8.) 

Lepida, I. ^Em-ilia, daughter of Manius Lepidus, 
and wife of Drusus Csesar. She was engaged in an 
adulterous intercourse with Sejanus, and was s Aorn 
ed by that ambitious and profligate minister to become 
the accuser of her own husband to Tiberius. Not¬ 
withstanding her crimes, she was protected during her 
father’s life, but, being afterward made a subject of 
attack by the informers of the day, she put an end to 
her own existence. {Tacit., Ann., 4,20.— Id., 6, 40.) 
—II. A Roman female, who reckoned among her an¬ 
cestors Pompey and Sylla. She was accused by her 
husband Sulpicius of adultery, poisoning, and treason¬ 
able conduct, and was condemned to exile, notwith¬ 
standing the interest which the people testified in her 
behalf. {Tacit., Ann., 3, 22.)—III. Domitia, daugh¬ 
ter of Drusus and Antonia. She was grand-niece°of 
Augustus, and aunt of Nero, who destroyed her by 
poison. {Tacit Ann., 13,19.)—IY. Domitia, daugb 





LEP 


LEP 


ter of Antonia the younger, by Lucius Domitius JEno- 
barbus. She was the wife of Valerius Messala, and 
mother of Messalina, and is described as having been 
a woman of debauched and profligate manners, and of 
a violent and impetuous spirit. In point of beauty 
and vice, she was the rival of Agrippina, Nero’s moth¬ 
er. She was condemned to death through the influ¬ 
ence of the same Agrippina. (Tacit., Ann., 11, 37. 
— Id., Ann., 12, 64.— Sueton., Vit. Claud., 26.— Id., 
Vit. Ner., 7.) 

Lepidi, the name of one of the most distinguished 
families of the patrician gens, or house, of the ^Emilii. 
The individuals most worthy of notice in this family 
are the following: I. M. .Emilius Lepidus, was sent 
as an ambassador to Ptolemy, king of Egypt, at the 
close of the second Punic war, B.C. 201. (Polyb., 
16, 34.— Liv., 31,2.—Compare Tacitus, Ann., 2, 67.) 
He obtained the consulship B.C. 187 (Liv., 39, 5. 
— Polyb., 23, 1), and again in B.C. 175. In B.C. 
179 he was elected Pontifex Maximus and Censor. 
(Liv., 40, 42.— Aul. Gell., 12, 8.) He was also Prin- 
eeps Senatus six times. (Liv., Epit., 48.) He died 
B.C. 150.—II. M. Emilius Lepidus, was praetor 
B.C. 81 ; after which he obtained the province of 
Sicily. ( Cic. in Verr., 3, 91.) In his consulship, 
B.C. 78, he endeavoured to rescind the measures of 
Sylla, but was driven out of Italy by his colleague 
Quintus Catulus and by Pompey, and retired to Sar¬ 
dinia, where he died the following year, while making 
preparations for a renewal of the war. (Appian, Bell. 
Civ., 1, 105.— Liv., Epit., 90.— Pint., Vit. Pomp., 
16.)—III. M. Emilius Lepidus, the triumvir, son 
of the preceding, was sedile B.C. 52, and praetor B.C. 
49, in which year Caesar came to an open rupture 
with the senatorian party. Lepidus, from his first 
entrance into public life, opposed the party of the 
senate ; and though he does not appear to have pos¬ 
sessed any of the talent and energy of character by 
which Antony was distinguished, yet his great riches 
and extensive family connexions made him an im¬ 
portant accession to the popular cause. On the first 
expedition of Caesar into Spain, Lepidus was left in 
charge of the city, though the military command of 
Italy was intrusted to Antony. During Caesar’s ab¬ 
sence, Lepidus proposed the law by which the former 
was created dictator. In the following year, B.C. 
48, he obtained the province of Hispania Citerior, with 
the title of proconsul; and in B.C. 46 was made 
consul along with Caesar, and at the same time his 
master of the horse, an appointment which again gave 
him the chief power in Rome during the absence of 
the dictator in the African war. In B.C. 44 he was 
again made master of the horse, and appointed to the 
provinces of Gallia Narbonensis and Hispania Citerior; 
but he did not immediately leave Rome, and was prob¬ 
ably in the senate house when Caesar was assassinated. 
After the death of Caesar, Lepidus was courted by 
both parties ; and the senate, on the motion of Cice¬ 
ro, decreed that an equestrian statue should be erect¬ 
ed to him, in any part of the city he might fix upon. 
Lepidus promised to assist the senate; but, at the 
same time, carried on a secret negotiation with Antony. 
On his arrival in his province, being ordered by the 
senate to join Decimus Brutus, he at length found 
it necessary to throw off the mask; and, instead of 
obeying their commands, united his forces with those 
of Antony. In the autumn of this year, B.C. 43, 
the celebrated triumvirate was established between 
Antony, Lepidus, and Octavius (Augustus); and in 
the division of the provinces, Lepidus received the 
whole of Spain and Gallia Narbonensis. The conduct 
of the war against Brutus and Cassius was assigned 
to Antony and Augustus ; while the charge of the 
city was intrusted to Lepidus, who was again elected 
consul (B.C. 43). After the defeat of Brutus and 
Cassius, Antony and Augustus found themselves suf¬ 


ficiently powerful to act contrary to the advice and 
wishes of Lepidus; and, in the new division of the 
provinces which was made after the battle of Philip¬ 
pi, Spain and Gallia Narbonensis were taken from 
Lepidus, and Africa was given to him in their stead. 
Lepidus had now lost all real authority in the manage¬ 
ment of public affairs ; but he was again included in 
the triumvirate, when it was renewed B.C. 37. In 
the following year he was summoned from Africa to 
assist Augustus in Sicily against Sextus Pompeius; 
and he landed with a large army, by means of which 
he endeavoured to regain his lost-power, and make 
himself independent of Augustus. But in this at¬ 
tempt he completely failed. Being deserted by his 
own troops, he was obliged to implore the mercy of 
Augustus, who spared his life, and allowed him to 
retain his private property and the dignity of Pontifex 
Maximus, which he had obtained on the death of Ju 
lius Csesar, but deprived him of his province and tri¬ 
umvirate, and banished him, according to Suetonius, 
to Circeii. (Sueton., Vit. Aug., 16.) After the bat¬ 
tle of Actium, his son formed a conspiracy for the as¬ 
sassination of Augustus on his return from the East, 
which was discovered by Maecenas; and Lepidus, 
having incurred the suspicion of his former colleague, 
repaired to Rome, where he was treated, according 
to Dio Cassius, with studied insult and contempt. 
(Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 13, p. 43S.)—IV. A com¬ 
panion of Caligula in his career of debauchery. The 
prince made him marry his sister Drusilla, and gave 
him hopes of being named as successor to the empire. 
Lepidus, however, who would seem to have reckoned 
but little, after all, on the promises of the emperor, 
conspired against him. The conspiracy was detected, 
and cost its author his life. He is supposed by some 
to have been the son of Julia, grand-daughter of Au¬ 
gustus, and consequently cousin-german to Caligula. 
(Tacit., Ann., 14, 2.)—V. A poet of an uncertain 
period, a poem of whose, entitled Philodexios, was 
published by Aldus Manutius at Lucca, 1588. 

Lepontii, a people of the Alps, near the source of 
the Rhone, on the south of that river. The Lepon- 
tine Alps separated Italy from the Helvetii. The Le¬ 
pontii are known to have inhabited that part of the 
Alps which lies between the Great St. Bernard and 
St. Gothard. (Cces., B. Gall., 4, 10.— Plin., 3, 20. 
— Strabo, 204.) 

Leptines, I. a son of Hermocrates, and brother of 
Dionysius the Elder. He was sent against Mago, 
general of the Carthaginians, with the whole fleet of 
the tyrant, B.C. 396. At first he gained some ad¬ 
vantages, but having separated himself too much from 
the main body of the fleet, he was surrounded by the 
enemy, and lost a large number of his vessels. After 
having remained for some time in a state of disgrace, 
he recovered the favour of the tyrant, and married his 
daughter. He commanded the left wing at the bat¬ 
tle of Cronium (B.C. 383), where he fell fighting val¬ 
iantly. His fall occasioned the defeat of the army. 
(Diod. Sic., 14, 48.— Id., 14, 60 .—Id., 15, 17.)—II. 
A Syracusan, who, in conjunction with Callipus, took 
the city of Rhegium, occupied by the troops of Dionys¬ 
ius the Younger (351 B.C.). He was subsequent¬ 
ly in the number of those who massacred this same 
Callipus, to avenge the death of Dion. (Diod. Sic., 
16, 45.)—III. A tyrant of Apollonia and other cities 
of Sicily, taken by Timoleon (B.C. 342), and exiled to 
Corinth. (Diod. Sic., 16, 72.)—IV. An Athenian or¬ 
ator, who proposed that certain immunities from the 
burdensome offices of choragus, gymnasiarch, and hes- 
tiator, which used to be allowed to meritorious citi¬ 
zens, should be taken away. A law was passed in 
accordance with this. Demosthenes attacked it and 
procured its abrogation.—V. A Syrian, general of De¬ 
metrius, who put to death at Laodicea, Octavius, a 
commissioner whom the Romans had sent into the 

735 




L E S 


LESBOS. 


East to arrange the affairs of Syria. He was sent to 
Rome, to he delivered up along with Isocrates, who 
was also a party to the murder, but tho senate refused 
to receive him. ( Diod. Sic.,fragm., lib. 31.— Op., ed. 
Bip., voi. 10, p. 29, seqq.) 

Leptis, the name of two cities in Africa, distin¬ 
guished by the epithets of M«yd/l77 {Magna) and 
M iKpd {Parva or Minor). —I. The first was situate 
towards the great Syrtis, at the southeast extremity of 
the district of Tripolis. Leptis Magna was founded 
by the Phoenicians, and ranked next to Carthage and 
Utica among their maritime cities. Under the Ro¬ 
mans it was signalized, as Sallust informs us, by its 
fidelity and obedience. On the occupation of Africa 
by the Vandals, its fortifications appear to have been 
destroyed ; but they were probably restored under 
Justinian, when the city became the residence of the 
prefect Sergius. It was finally demolished by the 
Saracens ; after which it appears to have been wholly 
abandoned, and its remains, according to Leo Afri- 
canus, were employed in the construction of the mod¬ 
ern Tripoli. The modern name is Lebida. An ac¬ 
count of the remains of the ancient city will be found 
in Beechy's Travels, p. 74, seqq., and in the Modern 
Traveller , pt. 49, p. 61. C'apt. Beechy describes the 
country around Lebida as beautiful and highly pro¬ 
ductive. {Mela, 1,7.— Plin., 5, 4.— Strab., 574.)— 
II. The latter was in the district of Byzacium or Em- 
porise, about 18 miles below Hadrumetum, on the 
coast. It is now Lempta. It paid a talent a day to 
the Carthaginians as tribute. ( Vid. Emporiae.) The 
Phoenicians, according to Sallust, were its founders. 
{Lucan, 2, 251.— Plin., 5, 19.— Sallust, Jug., 77.— 
Mela , l, 8.) 

Lerina or Planasia, a small island in the Med¬ 
iterranean, on the coast of Gallia Narbonensis, south 
of Niceaea. It is now St. Marguerite. Strabo gives 
it the name of Planasia, from its shape. {Tacit., Ann., 
L 3.) 

Lerna, a small lake in Argolis, near the western 
i oast of the Sinus Argolicus, rendered celebrated by 
the fable of the many-headed hydra slain by Hercules, 
and connected also with the legend of the Danaides, 
who flung into its waters the heads of their murdered 
husbands. {Vid. Hercules, Hydra, and Danaides.) 
The Lernaean Lake was formed by several sources, 
which discharged themselves into its basin. Minerva 
is said to have purified the daughters of Danaus by 
means of its waters ; which circumstance subsequent¬ 
ly gave rise to certain mystic rites called Lernsea, in¬ 
stituted, as Pausanias affirms, by Philammon, son of 
Apollo and father of Thamyris, in honour of Ceres. 
{Pausan., 2, 37.— Strab., 371.— Cramer's Ancient 
Greece, vol. 3, p. 237.) 

Leros, a small island off the coast of Caria, and 
forming one of the cluster called Sporades. {Plin., 
5, 31.) It was peopled from Miletus, and very prob¬ 
ably-belonged to that city. Strabo gives its inhabi¬ 
tants a character for dishonesty. {Strab., 635.) 

Lesbos, now Metelin, an island of the iEgean, ly¬ 
ing off the coast of Mysia, at the entrance of the Gulf 
of Adramyttium. It was first settled , by a body of 
Pelasgi, who, under the conduct of Xanthus their king, 
having been driven from Argos, passed from Lycia 
into this island, then called Issa, and named by them 
Pelasgia, Seven generations after this, and a short 
time subsequent to the deluge of Deucalion, Macareus 
passed from Attica, then denominated Ionia, with a 
colony to this island. From him it received the name 
of Macarea. Lesbus, an JEolian, joined himself to 
this colony, married the daughter of Macareus, who 
was called Methymne, and gave his own name to the 
island after the death of his father-in-law. The elder 
daughter of Macareus was named My tilene ; her name 
was given to the capital of the whole island. This is 
said to have taken place two generations before the 
736 


Trojan war. Homer speaks of the island under t.ie 
name of Lesbos, as being well inhabited. Other, and 
perhaps more accurate accounts, make the eEolians 
to have led colonies into the island for the first time, 
130 years after the Trojan war. Herodotus makes 
five iEolian cities in Lesbos. Pliny mentions other 
names besides those already given, which seem, how¬ 
ever, to have been merely general appellations, deno¬ 
ting some circumstance or feature in the island, as Hi - 
merte, the wished-for, Lasia, the woody, &c. The 
island contained forests of beech, cypress, and fir 
trees. It yielded marble of a common quality, and 
the plains abounded in grain. Warm springs were 
also found; agates and precious stones. {Pococke, 
vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 20.) The most profitable production 
was wine, which was preferred in many countries to 
all the other Greek wines. To the present day, the 
oil and figs of Lesbos are accounted the best in the 
Archipelago. The island anciently contained nine 
cities, for the most part in a flourishing condition ; 
among them Mytilene, Pyrrha, Methymna, Arisba, 
Eressus, and Antissa: at present 120 villages are 
enumerated. From an insignificant monarchy, Les¬ 
bos first became a powerful democracy. The Lesbi¬ 
ans then made great conquests on the Continent, and 
in the former territory of Troy, and even resisted the 
Athenians themselves. Lesbos was next disturbed 
by the Samians, and afterward by the Persians, to 
whom it was finally obliged to submit. After the 
battle of Mycale, it shook off the Persian yoke, and 
became the ally of Athens. During the Peloponne¬ 
sian war, it separated more than once from Athens, 
but was always reduced to obedience. A distinguish¬ 
ed citizen of Mytilene, exasperated that several rich 
inhabitants had refused his sons their daughters in 
marriage, publicly accused the city of an intention to 
conclude a league with the Lacedaemonians, by which 
false accusation he induced the Athenians to send a 
fleet against Lesbos. {Aristot., de Rep., 5, 4.) The 
nearest cities, Methymna excepted, armed in defence 
of their capital, but were overpowered, the walls of 
Mytilene were demolished, and a thousand of the 
richest inhabitants put to death. The territory of 
Methymna alone was spared. The island itself was 
divided into 3000 parts, of which 300 were devoted 
to the service of the gods, and the rest divided among 
the Athenians, by whom they were rented to the an¬ 
cient proprietors. {Thucyd., 3, 50.) The cities of 
Lesbos, nevertheless, soon rebelled again.—The Les¬ 
bians were notorious for their dissolute manners, and 
the whole island was regarded as the abode of pleasure 
and licentiousness. At the same time they had the 
reputation of the highest refinement, and of the most 
distinguished intellectual cultivation. Poetry and mu¬ 
sic made great progress here. The Lesbian school 
of music was highly celebrated, and is fabled to have 
had the following origin : When Orpheus was torn to 
pieces by the Bacchantes, his head and lyre were 
thrown into the Thracian river Hebrus, and both were 
cast by the waves on the shores of Lesbos, near Me¬ 
thymna. Meanwhile harmonious sounds were emit¬ 
ted by the mouth of Orpheus, accompanied by the 
lyre, the strings of the latter being moved by the 
breath of the wind. The Methymneans, therefore, 
buried the head, and suspended the lyre in the temple 
of Apollo ; and, as a recompense for this, the god be¬ 
stowed upon them a talent for music, and the success¬ 
ful culture of this and the sister art of poetry. {Hy~ 
gin., Poet. Astron., 2, 7.) In reality, Lesbos produced 
musicians superior to all .the other musicians of Greece. 
Among these the most distinguished were Arion and 
Terpander. Alcaeus and Sappho, moreover, were 
esteemed among the first in lyric poetry. Pittacus, 
Theophrastus, Theophanes, Hellanicus, Myrtilus, &c., 
were also natives of this island.—A variety of hills, 
clad with vines and olive-trees, rise round the numer 



LEU 


LEU 


©us hays of this island. The mountains of the inte¬ 
rior are covered with mastic, turpentine-trees, pines 
of Aleppo, and the cistus. Rivulets flow under the 
shades of the plane-tree. The island contains at pres¬ 
ent about 25,000 inhabitants. ( Mannert , Geogr., 
vol. 6, pt. 3, p. 433. — Barthelemy, Voyage d'Ana- 
harsis, vol. 2, p. 59, seqq, 12mo ed. — Encyclop. 
Americ ., vol. 7, p. 516.— Malte-Brun, vol. 2, p. 85, 
seqq.) 

Lesbus or Lesbos, a son of Lapithus, grandson 
of TEolus, who married Methymna, daughter of Ma- 
careus. He succeeded his father-in-law, and gave his 
name to the island over which he reigned. ( Vid. 
Lesbos.) 

Lesches, a Cyclic bard, a native of Mytilene, or 
Pyrrha, in the island of Lesbos, and considerably later 
than Arctinus. The best authorities concur in pla¬ 
cing him in the time of Archilochus, or about the 18th 
Olympiad (B.C. 708*-704). Hence the account which 
we find in ancient authors, of a contest between Arc¬ 
tinus and Lesches, can only mean that the latter com¬ 
peted with the earlier poet in treating the same sub¬ 
jects. His poem, which was attributed by many to 
Homer, and, besides, to very different authors, was 
called the Little Iliad (’I/Udf M mpa), and was clearly 
intended as a supplement to the great Iliad. We 
learn from Aristotle ( Poet ., c. 23, ad fin.,ed. Bckk. — 
c. 38, ed. Tyrwh.) that it comprised the events before 
the fall of Troy, the fate of Ajax, the exploits of 
Philoctetes, Neoptolemus, and Ulysses, which led to 
the taking of the city, as well as the account of the 
destruction of Troy itself; which statement is con¬ 
firmed by numerous fragments. The last part of this 
(like the first part of the poem of Arctinus) was call¬ 
ed the Destruction of Troy: from which Pausanias 
makes several quotations, with reference to the sack¬ 
ing of Troy, and the partition and carrying away of 
the prisoners. It is evident, from his citations, that 
Lesches, in many important events (for example, the 
death of Priam, the end of Astyanax, and the fate of 
iEneas, whom he represents Neoptolemus as taking 
to Pharsalus), followed quite different traditions from 
those of Arctinus. The connexion of the several 
events was necessarily loose and superficial, and with¬ 
out any unity of subject. Hence, according to Aris¬ 
totle, while the Iliad and Odyssey only furnished ma¬ 
terials for one tragedy each, more than eight might 
be formed out of the Little Iliad, (if. 0. Muller, 
Hist. Gr. Lit., p. 66. — C. G. Muller, de Lesche Po- 
eta.) 

Lethe, I. one of the rivers of the lower world, 
the waters of which possessed the property of causing 
a total forgetfulness of the past. Hence the name, 
from the Greek "kTjOrj {lethe ), signifying “ forgetful¬ 
ness" or “oblivion.” The shades of the dead drank 
a draught of the waters of Lethe, when entering on 
the joys of Elysium, and ceased to remember the 
troubles and sorrows of life.—II. A river of Spain. 
Its true name, however, was the Limius, according to 
Ptolemy, or, according to Pliny (4, 34), the Limia. 
Strabo styles it the Relion. It was in the territory 
of the Calliaci, a little below the Minius. Its name, 
Lethe (or, as it should be rather termed, 6 ryq hrjOrjq, 
the river of forgetfulness), was given to it from the 
circumstance of the Celtae and Turduli, who had gone 
on an expedition with united forces, losing here their 
common commander, becoming disunited, forgetting 
the object of their expedition, and returning to their 
respective homes. There was so much superstitious 
dread attached to this stream, that Brutus, in his ex¬ 
pedition against the Calliaci, could with great difficul¬ 
ty induce his soldiers to cross. ( Ukert, Geogr., vol. 
2, p. 297.) 

Leuca, a town of Italy, in Messapia, near the Iapy- 
gian promontory. It was in the country of the Salen- 
tini. The ancient name remains in the modern appel- 
5 A 


lati«n of the Iapygian promontory, and also m th* 
name of a church dedicated to the Virgin, under the 
title of S. Maria di Leuca. {D'Anville, Anal. Geogr., 
de Vltalie, p. 233.) 

Leuc^e, a town of Ionia, west of the mouth of the 
Hermus, at the entrance of the Smyrnaeus Sinus. It 
was situate on a promontory, which, according tc 
Pliny (5, 29), was anciently an island. Near this 
place, Andronicus, the pretender to the crown of 
Pergamus, was defeated by the Roman consul Cras- 
sus. {Mela, I, 17.— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 3 
p. 338.) 

Leucas or Leucadia, an island in the Ionian Sea, 
off the coast of Acarnania. It once formed part of 
the continent, but was afterward separated from the 
mainland by a narrow cut, and became an island. 
The modern name is Santa Maura. In Homer’s 
time it was still joined to the mainland, since he calls 
it ’Aktt/v 'HTceipoLo, in opposition to Ithaca and Ceph- 
allenia. (Od , 24, 377.— Compare Strabo, 451.)— 
Scylax also affirms “ that it had been connected for 
merly with the continent of Acarnania.” It was first 
called Epileucadii, and extends towards the Leuca- 
dian promontory. The Acarnanians being in a state 
of faction, received a thousand colonists from Co¬ 
rinth. These occupied the country which is now an 
island, the isthmus having been dug through. {Per- 
ipl., p. 13.—Compare Scymnus, Ch., v. 464.— Pint., 
Vit. Themist.) Strabo informs us, that this Corin¬ 
thian colony came from the settlements of Ambracia 
and Anactorium; and he ascribes to it the cutting oi 
the channel of Dioryctus, as it is commonly called 
{l. c.). This work, however, must have been poste¬ 
rior to the time of Thucydides, for he describes the 
Peloponnesian fleet as having been conveyed across 
the isthmus on more than one occasion (3, 80 ; 4, 8). 
Livy, speaking of Leucas, says, that in his time it was 
an island, but in the Macedonian war it had been a 
peninsula (33, 17). Pliny reports, that it was once a 
peninsula called Neritos; and, after it had been divided 
from the mainland, was reunited to it by means of the 
sand which accumulated in the passage. The cut it¬ 
self, three stadia in length, was, as we have already said, 
called Dioryctus (4, 2.— Polyb., 5, 5). Strabo says 
that in his time it was crossed by a bridge. {Strab., 
452.) Dodwell states (vol. 1, p. 50), that the canal 
of Santa Maura is fordable at the present day in still 
weather. The remains of a bridge are seen, which 
joined it to the continent, and which was built by the 
Turks when they had possession of the island.—The 
capital of the island was Leucas. Livy (33, 17) de¬ 
scribes it as situated on the strait itself. It rested, 
according to him, on a hill looking towards Acarnania 
and the east. Thucydides (3, 94) likewise states, that 
the town was situate within the isthmus, as also Strabo 
{l. c.), who adds, that the Corinthians removed it to 
its situation on the strait from Nericum. Dr. Hol¬ 
land (vol. 2, p. 91) speaks of the ruins of an ancient 
city about two miles to the south of the modern town. 
—The island was famous for a promontory at its 
southwestern extremity, called Leucate. It was cel¬ 
ebrated in antiquity for being the lover’s leap, and is 
said by Strabo to have derived its name from the 
white colour of the rock. Sappho is said to have 
been the first to try the remedy of the leap, when 
enamoured of Phaon. {Menand., ap. Strab., l. c. — 
Ovid, Her., 15, 165.) Artemisia, queen of Caria, so 
celebrated by Herodotus, perished, according to some 
accounts, in this fatal trial. {Ptol., Hephcest., ap. 
Phot., p. 491.—Consult Hardion, Diss. sur le saut 
de Leucade. Mem. de VAcad. des Inscr., vol. 7, p. 
254.) Virgil represents this cape as dangerous to 
mariners. (JEn., 3,274; 8, "76.) Sir W. Gell de¬ 
scribes it as a white and perpendicular cliff of consid¬ 
erable elevation, and has given a beautiful represen¬ 
tation of it in one of the plates appended to his work 

737 




LEU 


LEU 


on the Geography and Antiquities of Ithaca. On 
the summit of the promontory was a temple of Apol- ; 
lo. Strabo states a curious custom which prevailed, 
of casting down a criminal from this precipice ev¬ 
ery year, on the festival of the god; and adds, that, 
in order to break his fall, they attached to him birds 
of all kinds. If he reached the water alive, he was 
picked up by boats stationed there, and allowed to 
depart from the territories of Leucadia. ( Strab., 
452.— Cic., Tusc. Q., 4, 18.— Cramer's Anc. Greece , 
vol. 2, p. 13, seqq.) 

Leucate, a promontory at the southwestern extrem¬ 
ity of Leucas. (Vid. Leucas.) 

Leuce, an island in the Euxine Sea, near the mouth 
of the Borysthenes. It is probable that it was the 
same with the westernmost extremity of the Dromos 
Achillis, which was formed into an island by a small 
arm of the sea, and lay facing the mouth of the Borys¬ 
thenes ; now named Tentra. It derived its name 
from its white sandy shores. ( Mannert, Geogr., vol. 
4, p. 235.) According to the poets, the souls of the 
ancient heroes were placed here as in the Elysian 
fields, and enjoyed perpetual felicity. Here, too, the 
shade of Achilles is fabled to have been united to that 
of Helen. (Vid. Helena I.) 

Leuci, I. a people in the southeastern quarter of 
Gallia Belgica, and to the south of the Mediomatrici. 
Lucan speaks of them, in conjunction with the Remi, 
as very expert with the sling (1, 424). Their territory 
extended from the Matrona to the Mosella, and cor¬ 
responds to the northeastern part of the department of 
the Upper Marne , and to the southern part of the de¬ 
partment of the Meuse and Meurthe, or, in other words, 
io the country around Tout. (Cces ., B. G., 2, 14.— 
Tacit., Hist., 1, 64. — Plin., 4, 17.)—II. Montes 
(Aevud opy), mountains in the western part of the isl¬ 
and of Crete, to the south of Cydonia ; now Alprovo- 
ana. (Strabo, 475.) 

Leucippus, I. a celebrated philosopher, of whose 
native country and preceptor little is known with cer¬ 
tainty. Diogenes Laertius (9, 30) makes him to have 
been a native of Elea, and a disciple of Zeno, the Ele- 
atic philosopher: he refers, however, at the same time, 
to other opinions, which assigned, respectively, Abdera 
and Miletus as his birthplace. (Compare Tennemann, 
Gesch. der Phil., vol. 1, p. 257.) He wrote a treatise 
concerning nature, now lost (Pseud. Orig. Phil., c. 
12, p. 88. — Fair., Bibl. Gr., vol. 1, p. >78), from 
which the ancients probably collected what they relate 
concerning his tenets. Dissatisfied with the meta¬ 
physical subtleties by which the former philosophers 
of the Eleatic school had confounded all evidence from 
the senses, Leucippus and his follower Democritus 
determined, if possible, to discover a r /stem more 
consonant to nature and reason. Leaving behind them 
the whole train of fanciful conceptions, numbers, ideas, 
proportions, qualities, and elementary forms, in which 
philosophers had hitherto taken refuge, as the asylum 
of ignorance, they resolved to examine the real consti¬ 
tutions of the material world, and to inquire into the 
mechanical properties of bodies, that from these they 
might, if possible, deduce some certain knowledge of 
natural causes, and hence be able to account for nat¬ 
ural appearances. Their great object was, to restore 
the alliance between reason and the senses, which 
metaphysical subtleties had dissolved. For this pur¬ 
pose they introduced the doctrine of indivisible atoms, 
possessing within themselves a principle of motion. 
Several other philosophers before this time had indeed 
considered matter as divisible into indefinitely small 
particles, particularly Anaxagoras, Empedocles, and 
Heraclitus ; but Leucippus and Democritus were the 
first who taught, that these particles were originally 
destitute of all qualities except figure and motion, and 
therefore may justly be reckoned the authors of the 
atomic philosophy The following summary of the doc- 
738 


trine of Leucippus will exhibit the intan state of this 
system, and, at the same time, sufficiently expose its 
absurdities. The universe, which is infinite, is in part 
a plenum and in part a vacuum. The plenum contains 
innumerable corpuscles or atoms, of various figures, 
which, falling into the vacuum, struck against each 
other; and hence arose a variety of curvilinear mo¬ 
tions, which continued till at length atoms of similar 
forms met together, and bodies were produced. The 
primary atoms being specifically of equal weight, and 
not being able, on account of their multitude, to move 
in circles, the smaller rose to the exterior parts of the 
vacuum, while the larger, entangling themselves, form¬ 
ed a spherical shell, which revolved about its centre, 
and which included within itself all kinds of bodies. 
This central mass was gradually increased by a per¬ 
petual accession of particles from the surrounding 
shell, till at last the earth was formed. (Diog. Laert., 
1. c. — Theodoret, Serm., 4.— Cic., N. D., 1, 42.— 
Plut., de Plac. Phil, 2, 7.— Id. ibid., 3, 12.) In the 
mean time, the spherical shell was continually sup¬ 
plied with new bodies, which, in its revolution, it 
gathered up from without. Of the particles thus col¬ 
lected in the spherical shell, some in their combination 
formed humid masses, which, by their circular motion, 
gradually became dry, and were at length ignited and 
became stars. The sun was formed in the same man¬ 
ner, in the exterior surface of the shell; and the moon 
in its interior surface. In this manner the world was 
formed, and, by an inversion of the process, it will at 
length be dissolved. (Diog. Laert., 1. c. — Pseud. 
Orig. Phil., I c. — Enfield's History of Philosophy , 
vol. 1 , p. 421, seqq. — Tennemann, Gesch. der Phil., 
vol. 1, p. 258, seqq.) — II. A brother of Tyndarus, 
king of Sparta, who married Philodice, daughter of In- 
achus, by whom he had two daughters, Hilaira and 
Phoebe, known by the patronymic of Leucippides. 
They were carried away by their cousins, Castor and 
Pollux, as they were going to celebrate their nuptials 
with Lynceus and Idas. (Ovid, Fast., 5, 701.— Apol- 
lod., 3, 10, &c.— Pausan., 3, 17.) 

Leucopetra, a cape of Italy, in the territory of the 
Brutii, and regarded by all ancient writers on the ge¬ 
ography of that country as the termination of the Ap¬ 
ennines. Strabo (259) asserts that it was distant fifty 
stadia from Rhegium; bat this computation ill accords 
with that of Pliny (3, 10), who removes it twelve miles 
thence. (Compare Cic., Phil., 1, 3.— Mela, 2, 4.) 
The error probably lies in the text of the Greek ge¬ 
ographer, as there is no cape which corresponds with 
the distance he specifies. Topographers are not agreed 
as to the modern point of land which answers to Leu¬ 
copetra ; some fixing it at Capo Pittaro (D'Anville, 
Anal. Geogr. de Vital, p. 261), others at the Punta 
della Saetta (Grimaldi, Annal. del Regn. di Nap.,, 
vol. 1 , Introd., c. 28.— Romanelli, vol. 1 , p. 97), and 
others at the Capo dell' Armi. The latter opinion 
seems more compatible with the statement of Pliny 
and is also the most generally credited. ( Cluverius, 
Ital. Antiq., vol. 2, p. 1299.— Holsten., ad Steph. 
Byz., p. 302. — Cellar., Geogr. Ant., 1. 2, c. 9.— ; 
Notes to the French Strabo, 1 c. — Cramer's Ancient 
Italy, vol. 2, p. 433.) 

Leucophrys, an ancient name of Tenedos, givec 
to it probably from the appearance made by the sum¬ 
mits of its chalk-hills. (Pausan., 10, 14.— Mannert, 
Geogr., vol. 6, pi. 3, p. 510.) 

Leucosia, a small island in the Sinus Paestanus. 
It was said to have derived its name from one of the 
Sirens. (Lycophron, v. 722, seqq. — Strabo, 252.) 
Dionysius (1, 53) calls it Leucasia. It is now known 
by the name of Licosa (Cluv., Ital Antiq., vol. 2, p. 
1259), and sometimes by that of Isola piana. (Vid. 
Zannoni's Map of the Kingdom of Naples.) It was 
once probably inhabited, as several vestiges of build¬ 
ings were discovered there in 1696. (Antonin., della 





LEU 


LIB 


Lucan., p. 2, disc. 8.— Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, 
p. 369.) 

Leucosyrii, the Greek form of a name applied by 
the Persians to the Cappadocians, and signifying White 
Syrians. {Herod., 1, 72.— Id.., 5, 45.— Id., 7, 72.— 
Strabo, 543.) The Persians called the Cappadocians 
by this appellation, because they considered them to 
be a branch of the great Syrian nation, from the re¬ 
semblance of their language, customs, and religion, 
and because they found that they possessed a fairer 
complexion than their swarthy brethren of the south. 
The Greek colonies on the coast of Pontus received 
this name from the Persians, and expressed it by the 
forms of their own language, but, in its application, re¬ 
stricted it to the inhabitants of the mountainous coun¬ 
try lying along the coast, from the Promontorium Ja- 
sonium in the east, to the mouth of the Halys in the 
west, while they called the people in the interior of the 
country by the name of Cappadocians. The Leuco¬ 
syrii became in time blended into one people with the 
Paphlagonians. ( Marmert, Geogr., vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 
329, seqq.) 

Leucothea, I. the name given to Ino after she 
had been transformed into a sea-goddess. Both she 
and her son Palaemon were held powerful to save from 
shipwreck, and were invoked by mariners. The name 
Leucothea is supposed to be derived from the white 
waves running rapidly on (/Uu/cof, white, and to 
run). —II. A daughter of Orchamus, dishonoured by 
Apollo, and buried alive by her incensed father. The 
od caused the frankincense shrub to spring up from 
er grave. {Ovid, Met., 4, 196, seqq.) 

Leuctra, a small town of Bceotia, southeast of 
Thespiae, and west of Plataea, famous for the victory 
which Epaminondas, the Theban general, obtained 
over the superior force of Cleombrotus, king of Sparta, 
on the 8th of July, B.C. 371. {Pausan., 9, 13.) In 
this famous battle 4000 Spartans were killed, with 
their king Cleombrotus, and no more than 300 The¬ 
bans. From that time the Spartans lost the empire 
of Greece, which they had held for so many years. 
The Theban army consisted at most of 6000 men, 
whereas that of the enemy was at least thrice that 
number, including the allies. But Epaminondas trust¬ 
ed most to his cavalry, in which he had much ad¬ 
vantage both as to quality and good management; the 
wealthy Lacedaemonians alone keeping horses at that 
time, which made their cavalry most wretched, both 
as to ill-fed, undisciplined steeds and unskilful riders. 
Other deficiencies he endeavoured to supply by the 
disposition of his men, who were drawn up fifty deep, 
while the Spartans were but twelve. When the The¬ 
bans had gained the victory and killed Cleombro¬ 
tus, the Spartans renewed the fight to recover their 
king’s body, and in this object the Theban general 
wisely chose to gratify them rather than hazard the 
success of another onset.—According to Strabo (414), 
Leuctra was situate on the road from Thespis to Pla¬ 
ts®, and, according to Xenophon {Hist. Gr., 6, 4), in 
the territory of the former. An oracle had predicted 
that the Spartans would sustain a severe loss in this 
place, because some of their youths had violated two 
maidens of Leuctra, who afterward destroyed them¬ 
selves. {Pausan., 9,13, seqq. — Plutarch, Vit. Epam. 
— Xen., Hist. Gr., 1. c.) The spot still retains in some 
degree its ancient name, Leuca, pronounced Lefka. 
Dr. Clarke noticed here several tombs and the remains 
of an ancient fortress .upon a lofty conical hill. The 
ground in the plain is for a considerable space cov¬ 
ered with immense fragments of marble and stone. 
{Clarke's Travels, vol. 7, p. 110, Lond. ed. —Com¬ 
pare Dodwell,\o\. 1, p. 261. — Cramer's Anc. Greece, 
vol. 2, p. 212.) 

Leuctrum, I. a town of Messenia, on the coast, 
sixty stadia from Cardamyle. {Pausan., 4, 26.) In 
i^nfiequenc* or its frontier situation, it became a source 


of dispute between the Messenians and Laconian^. 
Philip, the son of Amyntas, who acted as umpire, 
awarded the place to the Messenians. {Strab., 361.) 
It is called Leuctra by Thucydides (5, 54) and Xeno¬ 
phon. The latter informs us it was situated above 
the promontory of Malea. {Hist. Gr., 6, 5.) It was 
said to have been founded by Pelops. {Strab., 360.) 
The ancient site is still distinguished by the name of 
Leutro. — II. A small town of Achaia, on the Sinus 
Corinthiacus, above iEgium, and in the vicinity of 
Rhypse, on which latter place it was dependant. {Pau¬ 
san., 7, 24.)—III. A town of Arcadia, below Mega¬ 
lopolis. {Pausan., 8, 27.) It is perhaps Leontari, 
near which Sir W. Gell remarked the site of a small 
ancient city. {Itin. of the Morea, p. 138.) 

Lexovii, a people of Gaul in Lugdunensis Secunda, 
near the mouth of the Sequana, and on its left banks. 
Their capital was Noviomagus, now Lisieux. {Cces., 
B. G., 3, 9.— Itin. Ant., 385.) 

Libanius, a celebrated sophist of Antioch, in the 
age of the Emperor Julian, born A.D. 314, of a good 
family. At the age of fifteen he frequented a school 
of certain sophists, of whom he speaks with great 
contempt in his Biography, calling them elduXa oo0- 
lgtuv. Brought back to the true path of learning by 
a more intelligent preceptor, he studied with ardour 
the finest models of antiquity. He continued his 
studies during four months at Athens, and afterward 
at Constantinople, where the grammarian Nicocles, 
one of the instructers of Julian, and the sophist Be- 
marchius, were his teachers. Having failed in hi3 
expectation of obtaining a chair at Athens, he began 
to profess eloquence, or the sophistic art, at Constan¬ 
tinople. His success was brilliant, but excited th3 
envy of his contemporaries. Bernarchius, in particu¬ 
lar, having been worsted by him in an oratorical con¬ 
test, to which he had challenged his former pupil, had 
recourse to a vile calumny for the purpose of effect¬ 
ing his destruction. He charged him with sorcery, 
and represented him as a man covered with vices 
The prefect of the city lent a favourable ear to tht; 
charge, and Libanius was in consequence compelled 
to leave Constantinople (A.D. 346). He retired ti: 
Nicaea, and from this place he went to Nicomedia ; 
where he obtained great celebrity as an instructer. He 
calls the five years which he spent there in the society 
of his friend Aristaenetus, the spring time of his life. 
Recalled at length to Constantinople, he found a new 
prefect there, who became the protector of his ene¬ 
mies and the persecutor of himself. Disgusted at this 
state of things, and not daring to accept a chair at 
Athens, which had been offered him, he obtained per¬ 
mission from Caesar Gallus to return for four months 
to his native city. This prince having been slain in 
354, Libanius passed the rest of his days at Antioch, 
where he had numerous disciples. The Emperor Ju¬ 
lian, who, before his expedition into Persia, knew him 
only by his writings, was his constant admirer. He 
named him quaestor, and addressed many letters to 
him, the last of which, written during his expedition 
against the Persians, has come down to us. The 
death of Julian was a double loss for Libanius; it took 
away a protector, who had shielded him from the at¬ 
tacks of calumny; and it caused to vanish the hopes 
which he had entertained of witnessing the re-estab¬ 
lishment of paganism. Under the reign of Valens, 
Libanius was exposed anew to the persecution of his 
enemies, and was charged with being engaged in a 
plot against the tranquillity of the state. He succeed¬ 
ed, however, in establishing his innocence. He would 
even appear to have gained the good-will of the mon¬ 
arch, for he composed a panegyric upon him, and ad¬ 
dressed to him an harangue, in which he requested a 
confirmation of the law that awarded to natural chil¬ 
dren a share of the father’s property at his death. This 
law interested him personally, from the circumstanra 

739 



LIBANIUS. 


L I B 


of his having natural children of his own. If it be 
true that he lived to the time of Arcadius, he must 
have attained to more than 90 years of age.—Besides 
his Pi jgymnasmata, Libanius has left harangues, dec¬ 
lamations, M tkirai (discourses on imaginary sub¬ 
jects), stories, and letters on various points of morali¬ 
ty, politics, and literature. All these pieces are well 
written, and though the style of Libanius is open to 
the charge of too much study and elaborate care, we 
may notwithstanding pronounce him the greatest ora¬ 
tor that Constantinople ever produced. Gibbon, there¬ 
fore, would seem to have judged him altogether too 
harshly, when he characterizes his writings as, for the 
most part, “ the vain and idle compositions of an ora¬ 
tor who cultivated the science of words; and the pro¬ 
ductions of a recluse student, whose mind, regardless 
of his contemporaries, was incessantly fixed on the 
Trojan war and the Athenian commonwealth.” ( De¬ 
cline and Fall, c. 24.) It is no little glory for this 
sophist to have been the preceptor of St. Basil and St. 
Chrysostom, and of having been connected in intimate 
friendship, notwithstanding the opposition of their re¬ 
ligious sentiments, with these two pillars of the church. 
—Libanius, as we have already remarked, was a pa¬ 
gan, and attached to the religion of his fathers. His 
tolerance forms a singular contrast with the persecu¬ 
ting zeai of the Christians of his time ; and a remark¬ 
able proof of this may be seen in one of his epistles. 
(Ep ., 730, p. 349. ed. Wolf.) — Among the writings 
of Libanius may be mentioned his Progymnasmata 
(Prceexercitationes ), or Examples of Rhetorical Exer¬ 
cises (Upoyv/j,vao/ndro)v Ttapadelypara), divided into 
thirteen sections, and each one containing a model of 
one particular kind. Among the Discourses or Ha¬ 
rangues of Libanius are many which were never pro¬ 
nounced, and which were not even intended to be de¬ 
livered in public: they partake less of the nature of 
discourses than of memoirs, or, rather, moral disserta¬ 
tions. One of them is a biographical sketch of Liba- 
aius, written by himself, at the age of 60 years, unless 
there be some mistake in the number, and retouched 
by him wl:er anou’ /0 years. It forms the most in¬ 
teresting production o' his pen. Another of these 
pieces is entitled lAovpdid, and is a Lament on the 
death of Julian. Libanius does not pretend to con¬ 
ceal, in this discourse, that one ground of his deplo¬ 
ring the death of the monarch, is the triumph of Chris¬ 
tianity which would result therefrom. A third is a 
discourse addressed to Theodosius on the preservation 
of the temples and idols of paganism. A fragment of 
this discourse was discovered by Mai, in 1823, in 
some of the Vatican MSS. A fourth is entitled 'Ttt ep 
tCjv ’lepcbv, “ Respecting the Temples .” In this dis¬ 
course, pronounced or written about A.D. 390, Liba¬ 
nius entreats the Emperor Theodosius to set bounds 
to the fanaticism of the monks, who were destroying 
'he temples of paganism, especially those in the coun- 
ry, and to order the bishops not to connive at these 
excesses.—The Declamations , or exercises on imagin- 
iry subjects, exceed forty in number. Some idea 
may be formed of their nature by the titles of a few : 
“ Discourse of Menelaus, addressed to the Trojans, 
and demanding back his spouse.” “Discourse of 
Achilles, in answer to Ulysses, when the latter was 
sent by Agamemnon to propose a reconciliation.” 
“Discourse' of a parasite who deplores the loss of a 
dinner,” &c.—A very interesting part of the works of 
Libanius is his epistolary correspondence. There are 
more than 2000 letters written by him, and the num¬ 
ber of persons to whom they are addressed exceeds 
550. There are among these some illustrious names, 
such as the Emperor Julian, and his uncle, who bore 
the same name, governors of provinces, generals, 
literary men, &c. There are also among his corre¬ 
spondents some fathers of the church, such as St. 
Athanasius, St Tasil, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. John 


Chrysostom, &c. As to the subjects of these letter* 
there are many, it must be confessed, of a very unin 
teresting nature, containing, for example, mere com 
pliments, recommendations, or the recital of domestic 
affairs. A large number, however, have claims on 
our attention by the beauty of the ideas and senten¬ 
ces, the importance of the subject matter, and the 
historical illustrations which they have preserved for 
us. — We have also from his pen Arguments to the 
Speeches of Demosthenes .— There is no complete edi¬ 
tion of the works of Libanius. The best edition of 
the Discourses and Declamations is that of Reiske, 
published by his widow (“prczfata est Ernestina 
Christina Reiske ”), Lips., 1791-1797, 4 vols. 8vo. 
A quarto edition, put forth by Reiske himself in 1784, 
was interrupted by his death, after only the first vol¬ 
ume had appeared. Still, however, a good edition is 
much wanted, as Reiske’s has neither historical intro¬ 
ductions, commentary, nor even tables, and is, more¬ 
over, burdened with the inaccurate version of Morell. 
The most numerous collection of the Letters will be 
found in the edition of J. C. Wolf, Amst., 1738, fol. 
( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 6, p. 159, seqq.) 

Libanus, a chain of mountains in Syria, deriving 
their name from their white colour ( Relandi , Palcestina, 
p. 311), the eastern part in particular being covered with 
continual snow. ( Jer ., 18,14.) Some make the range 
commence from Mons Amanus, on the confines of Ci¬ 
licia, and give the general name of Libanus to the en¬ 
tire chain of mountains running thence to the south; 
it is more accurate, however, to make it begin near 
Aradus in Phoenicia, and, after forming the northern 
boundary of that country, run to the south, and end 
near Sidon. There are, however, several parallel 
chains, four of which, towards the west, have the gen¬ 
eral name of Libanus applied to them, while another 
parallel chain to the east was called by the Greeks 
Antilibanus. Between Libanus and Antilibanus is a 
long valley called Coele Syria, or the hollow Syria. Lib¬ 
anus, then, is composed of four chains or enclosures of 
mountains, which rise one upon the other; the first is 
very rich in grain and fruits; the second is barren; 
the third, though higher than this, enjoys perpetual 
spring, the trees being always green, and the orchards 
full of fruit. It is so beautiful that some have called 
it a terrestrial paradise. The fourth is very high, so 
that it is almost always covered with snow, and is un¬ 
inhabitable by reason of the great cold. Volney states 
that the snow remains on Libanus all the year round 
towards the northeast, where it is sheltered from the 
sea-winds and the rays of the sun. Maundrell found 
that part of the mountain-range which he crossed, and 
which, in all probability, was by no means the highest, 
covered with deep snow in the month of May. Dr. 
Clarke, in the month of July, saw some of the eastern 
summits of Lebanon, or Antilibanus, near Damascus, 
covered with snow, not lying in patches, as is com¬ 
mon in the summer season with mountains which bor¬ 
der on the line of perpetual congelation, but do not 
quite reach it, but with “that perfect, white, smooth, 
and velvet-like appearance which snow only exhibits 
when it is very deep ; a striking spectacle in such a 
climate, where the beholder, seeking protection from 
a burning sun, almost considers the firmament to be 
on fire.” At the time this observation was made, 
the thermometer, in an elevated situation near the Sea 
of Tiberias, stood at 102^- in the shade. Sir Frederic 
Henniker passed over snow in July ; and Ali Bey de¬ 
scribes the same eastern ridge as covered with snow 
in September. We know little of the absolute height, 
and less of the mineralogy, of these mountains. Burck- 
hardt describes Lebanon as composed of primitive 
limestone ; but, as he found fossil-shells on the sum¬ 
mit, it more probably consists either of transition or 
mountain limestone. If so, it must be considered as 
one of the highest points at which either of these sub- 




LIB 


LIB 


stances is found.—Of the noble cedars which once 
adorned the upper part of this mountain, but few now 
remain, and those much decayed. Burckhardt, who 
crossed Mount Libanus in 1810, counted about 36 
large ones, 50 of middle size, and about 300 smaller 
and young ones ; but more might exist in other parts 
of the mountain. The wine, especially that made 
about the convent of Canobin, still preserves its an¬ 
cient celebrity ; and is reported by travellers, more 
particularly by Rouwolff, Le Bruyn, and De la Roque, 
to be of the most exquisite kind for flavour and fra¬ 
grance.—The rains which fall in the lower regions of 
Lebanon, and the melting of the snows in the upper 
ones, furnish an abundance of perennial streams, 
which are alluded to by Solomon. (Song, 4, 15.) 
On the declivities of the mountain grew the vines that 
furnished the rich and fragrant wines which Hosea 
(14, 7) celebrated, and which may still be obtained by 
proper culture. The snow of Lebanon was probably 
transported to a distance, for the purpose of cooling 
wine and other liquors. Solomon speaks of the cold 
of snow in the time of harvest (Prov., 25, 13), which 
could be obtained nowhere in Judaea nearer than 
Lebanon. ( Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 1, p. 341.— 
Mansford's Scripture Gazetteer, p. 314, seqq.) 

Liber, the name of an ancient Italian deity, /uenti- 
fied with the Grecian Dionysus or Bacchus. His 
festival, named Liberalia, was celebrated on the 17th 
March, when the young men assumed the toga virilis 
or libera. (Varro, L. L., 5, p. 55. — Ovid, Fast., 3, 
713, seqq.) When the worship of Ceres and Proser¬ 
pina was introduced at Rome, Proserpina was named 
Libera, and the conjoined deities were honoured as 
“'eres, Liber, and Libera. The name Liber is com¬ 
monly derived from liber, “free,” and is referred to 
the influence of wine in freeing from care. Others, 
however, prefer deducing it from libo, “ to pour forth,” 
and make Liber to be the god of productiveness ef¬ 
fected by moisture. ( Keighley's Mythology, p. 517.) 

Libera, a name given to Proserpina among the Ro¬ 
mans. (Vid. Liber.) 

Liberalia, a festival celebrated annually in honour 
of Liber, the Roman Bacchus. It took place on the 
17th of March. (Vid. Liber.) 

Libertas, the Goddess of Freedom, the same with 
the Eleutherja of the Greeks. Hyginus makes her 
the daughter of Jupiter and Juno. (Prcpf., p. 10, ed. 
Munch.) Tiberius Gracchus is said to have erected 
the first temple to her at Rome, on the Aventine Hill, 
and it was here that the archives of the state were de¬ 
posited. The goddess was represented as a Roman 
matron, arrayed in white, holding in one hand a broken 
sceptre, and in the other a pike surmounted by a pileus 
• or cap: at her feet lay a cat, an animal that is an en¬ 
emy to all restraint. The cap alluded to the Roman 
custom of putting one on the heads of slaves when 
manumitted. (Liv., 24, 16.— Id., 25, 7. — Ovid, 
Trist., 3, 1, 72.— Plut., Vit. Gracch.) 

Libethra, I. a city of Macedonia, situate, accord¬ 
ing to Pausanias (9, 30), on the declivity of Olympus, 
and not far from the tomb of Orpheus. An oracle de¬ 
clared, that when the sun beheld the bones of the poet, 
the city should be destroyed by a boar (vizo avoc). 
The inhabitants of Libethra ridiculed the prophecy as a 
thing impossible ; but the column of Orpheus’s monu¬ 
ment having been accidentally broken, a gap was made 
by which light broke in upon the tomb, when the same 
night the torrent named Sus, being prodigiously swol¬ 
len, rushed down with violence from Mount Olympus 
upon Libethra, overthrowing the walls and all the pub¬ 
lic and private edifices, and every living creature in its 
furious course. Whether Libethra recovered from the 
devastation occasioned by this inundation is not stated 
in any writer, but its name occurs in Livy as a town 
in the vicinity of Dium before the battle of Pydna (44, 
5). Strabo also alludes to J-ib«thra when speaking of 


Mount Helicon, and remarks, that several places around 
that mountain attested the former existence of the 
Thracians of Pieria in the Boeotian districts. (Scrab., 
409.— Id., 471.) From these passages it would seent 
that the name of Libethrius was given to the summit 
of Olympus which stood above the town. Hence the 
muses were surnamed Libethrides as well as Pierides. 
(Virg., Eclog., 7, 21.— Cramer's Anc. Greece , vol. 
1, p. 210.)—II. A fountain of Thessaly, on Mount 
Homole, in the district of Magnesia, at the northern 
extremity. (Plin., 4, 9.— Mela, 2, 3.) 

Libethrides, a name given to the Muses. (Con¬ 
sult remarks under Libethra, I., towards the end of 
the article. Vid. also Libethrius.) 

Libethrius, I. a mountain of Breotia, forty stadia 
to the south of Coronea, and forming one of the sum¬ 
mits of Helicon. It was dedicated to the Muses, and 
the nymphs called Libethrides. (Pausan., 9, 34.— 
Strabo , 409.)—II. A fountain on Mount Libethrius. 

Libitina, a goddess at Rome presiding over funer¬ 
als. In her temple were sold all things requisite for 
them. By an institution ascribed to Servius Tullius, 
a piece of money was paid her for every one who died, 
and the name of the deceased entered in a book called 
Libitina ratio. (Dion. Hal., 4, 15.— Sueton., Vit. 
Ner., 39.) The object of this custom was to ascertain 
the number of deaths annually. Libitina and Venus 
were regarded as one and the same deity, because, 
says Plutarch, the same goddess superintends birth 
and death. It would be more correct, however, to 
say that we have here a union of the power which 
creates with that which destroys. (Plut., Qucest. 
Rom., 23.) 

Libgn, an architect of Elis, who built the temple ol 
Olympian Jove, in the sacred grove Altis, out of the 
proceeds of the spoil taken from the Pisasans and some 
other people (Pausan., 5, 10, 2.) This temple was 
built in the Doric style ; and it must have been erect¬ 
ed about Olymp. 84 (B.C. 444-440), since in Olymp. 
85, 4, Phidias commenced his statue of the Olympian 
Jupiter, and it can scarcely be maintained that the 
temple was built long before the statue was underta¬ 
ken. (Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.) 

Libophcenices, the inhabitants of the district Byza- 
cium, in Africa Propria. Their name indicates that 
they were a mixture of Libyans and Phoenicians. 
The Libophoenices are a proof of the policy pursued by 
the Phoenician and Carthaginian settlers, in admitting 
the natives to a participation in some of the rights of 
citizenship. Carthage itself was in this sense a Li- 
bophoenician city Polybius often speaks of the Li¬ 
bophoenices. Diodorus Siculus, however, gives a 
more particular account of them, as well as the infor¬ 
mation that the cities on the coast were alone strictly 
included in this denomination. (Diod. Sic., 20, 55.) 
Pliny limits the appellation to the cities on the coast 
of Byzacium (5, 4). It ought to be extended, howev¬ 
er, to other parts also of the African coast. 

Liburnia, a province of Illyricum, along the Adri¬ 
atic, over against Italy, having Dalmatia on the south, 
and Istria on the north. Zara, anciently Iadera, and 
afterward Diodora, was once its capital. The ruins 
of Burnum, the Liburnia of Strabo, are to be seen on 
the right hand of the Titius or KerJca, in the desert of 
Bukoviza. The Liburnians were an Illyrian tribe, 
and their country now answers to part of Croatia. 
They appear to have been a maritime people from the 
earliest times; and the Greeks, who colonized Corcyra, 
are said, on their arrival in that island, to have found it 
in their possession. (Strabo, 270.) Scylax seems 
to distinguish the Libumi from the Illyrians, restrict¬ 
ing probably the latter appellation to that part of the 
nation which was situate more to the south, and was 
better known to the Greeks. The same writer alludes 
to the sovereignty of the Libumi as not excluding fe¬ 
males ; a fact which appears to have reference to the 

741 





L I C 


LIU 


Inijtory of Teuta, and might serve to prove that this 
geographical compilation is not so ancient as many 
have supposed. ( Scylax, p. 7.) Strabo asserts, that 
the Liburni extended along the coast for upward of 
1500 stadia. ( Strab ., 315.) According to Pliny (3, 
13), they once occupied a considerable extent of terri¬ 
tory on the coast of Picenum, and he speaks of Tru- 
entum as the only remaining establishment of theirs, in 
his day, in this quarter of Italy. It is chiefly on this 
information of Pliny that Freret has grounded his sys¬ 
tem of the Illyrian colonies in Italy. He conceives 
that these Liburni, as well as all the others, came 
by land. But it would be more natural to suppose 
that the Liburni, as a maritime people, had crossed 
over from the opposite coast of Dalmatia. ( Mtm. de 
PAcad. des Inscr., &c., vol. 18, p. 75. — Cramer's 
Anc. Italy , vol. 1, p. 285.) The galleys of the Li- 
burnians were remarkable for their light construction 
and swiftness, and it was to ships of this kind that 
Augustus was in a great measure indebted for his vic¬ 
tory over Antony at Actium. ( Dio Cass., 29, 32.) 
Hence, after that time, the name of naves Liburncs 
was given to all quick-sailing vessels, and few ships 
were built but of that construction. ( Veget ., 4, 33.) 
The Liburnians were a stout, able-bodied race, and 
were much employed at Rome as porters, and sedan 
or litter-carriers. Hence Martial, in describing the 
pleasures of a country-life (1, 50), exclaims, “ procul 
horridus Liburnus." Compare Juvenal, 3, 240.— 
Boettiger, Sabina, oder Morgenscenen, &c., Sc. 8, p. 
193. 

Liburnides, islands off the coast of Liburnia, said 
to amount to the number of forty. The name origi¬ 
nated with the Greek geographers. (Strab., 315.) 

Liburnus, a chain of mountains near Apulia, cross¬ 
ed by Hannibal in his march from Samnium and the 
Peligni into Apulia. It is stated that, before he ar¬ 
rived in the latter province, he crossed this chain ; 
which probably answers to the branch of the Apen¬ 
nines bordering on the valley of the Tifernus to the 
north, and known by the name of Monte della Serra. 
(Polyb., 3, 101.— Romanelli,x ol. 3, p. 20.— Cramer's 
Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 270.) 

Libya, I. a daughter of Epaphus and Cassiopeia, 
who became mother of Agenor and Belus by Neptune. 
(Apollod., 2, 1 ; 3, 1. — Pausan., 1, 44.) — II. The 
name given by the Greek and Roman poets to what 
was otherwise called Africa. In a more restrict¬ 
ed sense, the name has been applied to that part of 
Africa which contained the two countries of Cyrena'i- 
ca and Marmarica, together with a very extensive 
region in the interior, of which little, if anything, was 
known, and which was generally styled Libya Interior. 
(Vid. Africa.) 

Libycum Mare, that part of the Mediterranean 
which lies along the coast of Libya, extending east¬ 
ward as far as the island of Crete. (Mela, 1, 4.— 
Strab., 247.) 

Libyssa, a small village of Bithynia, west of Nico- 
media, and near the shores of the Sinus Astacenus. 
It is rendered memorable for containing the tomb of 
Hannibal, whence, no doubt, its name. (Pint., Vit. 
Flamin. — Ammian. Marcell., 22, 9.— Eutrop., 4, 11. 
— Plin., 5, 32.) It is thought to answer to the mod¬ 
ern Gebisse or Dschebize. If, however, Pococke be 
correct (vol. 3, 1. 2, c. 18) in making Gebisse 24 Eng¬ 
lish miles from Pontichium or Pantik, we ought rather 
to decide in favour of the Diacibe or Diacibiza of the 
middle ages (Sozom., Hist. Eccles., 6, 14), which lies 
on the same coast, nearer Pontichium. (Mannert, 
Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 3, p. 585, seqq.) 

Licates, a people of Vindelicia, on the eastern 
bank of the Licus, in the modern Oberdonaukreis, to 
the northeast of Fussen. (Plin., 3, 20 .—Bischoff 
und Moller, Worterb. der Geogr., p. 698.) 

Lichades, small islands near Cseneum, a promon- 
742 


tory of Euboea, called so from Lichas. (Vid. Lichas. j 
They were three in number, Caresa, Phocaria, and 
Scarphia. They are thought to answer to the modern 
Ponticonesi. (Ovid, Met., 9, 165, 217.) 

Lichas, the ill-fated bearer of the poisoned tunic from 
Deianira to Hercules. In the paroxysm of fury oc¬ 
casioned by the venom of the hydra, the hero caught 
Lichas by the foot and hurled him into the sea from 
the summit of CEta. (Ovid, Met., 9, 165, 217.— 
Compare Milton, P. L., 2, 545.) He was changed 
by the compassion of the gods into one of a group of 
small islands, which hence derived their name. ( Vid. 
Lichades.) 

Licinia Lex. (Consult remarks under the article 
Licinius I.) 

Licinia, I. daughter of P. Licinius Crassus, and 
wife of Caius Gracchus. (Pint., Vit. Gracch.) — II. 
The wife of Maecenas. She was sister to Proculeius, 
and bore also the name of Terentia. She is thought 
to be alluded to by Horace (Od., 2, 12, 13) under the 
name of Licymnia. (Bentley, ad Horat., l. c. —Com 
pare remarks under the article Maecenas.) 

Licinius, I. G. Licinius Stolo, of a distinguished 
plebeian family at Rome, was made tribune of the 
commons, together with his friend L. Sextius Latera- 
nus, in the year 375 B.C. These tribunes brought 
forward three “ rogations,” that is to say, bills or pro¬ 
jects of laws, for the comitia or assembly of the tribes 
to decide upon : 1. That in future no more military 
tribunes should be appointed, but two annual consuls, 
as formerly, and that one of the two should always be 
a plebeian. The occasional appointment of military 
tribunes, part of whom might be chosen from the ple¬ 
beians, was a device of the senate to prevent the ple¬ 
beians from obtaining access to the consulship.—2. To 
deduct from the capital of all existing debts, from one 
citizen to another, the sums which had been paid by 
the debtor as interest, and the remaining principal to 
be discharged in three years by three equal payments. 
This seems, according to our modern notions of money- 
transactions, a very summary, and not very honest, 
way of settling standing engagements; but if we carry 
ourselves back to that remote period of Roman society, 
and take into consideration the enormous rate of inter¬ 
est demanded, the necessities of the poorer citizens, 
who were called from their homes and fields to fight 
the battles of their country, and had no means of sup¬ 
porting their families during the interval except the 
ruinous one of borrowing money from the wealthy, who 
were mostly patricians, and also the fearful power which 
the law gave to the creditor over the debtor, and the 
atrocious manner in which that power was used, or 
abused, in many instances, such as those reported by 
Livy (2, 23 ; 6, 14 ; 8, 28), we shall judge more dis¬ 
passionately of the proposition of Licinius.—3. The 
third rogation has been a subject of much perplexity 
to modern inquirers. Its object, as briefly expressed 
by Livy, was, that no one should possess ( possideret ) 
more than 500 jugera (about 333 acres) of land ; and 
until lately it has been literally understood, by most 
readers of Roman history, as fixing a maximum to pri¬ 
vate property. But Beaufort, and more lately Heyne, 
Niebuhr, and Savigny, have shown, that the limitation 
referred to the holding of land belonging to the ager 
publicus , or public domain of the state. It appears 
that most of the large estates possessed by the patri¬ 
cians must have been portions of this public domain, 
which consisted of lands conquered at various times 
from the surrounding nations. This land the patricians 
had occupied, cultivated, and held as tenants ai will, 
they and their descendants paying to the state a tenth 
of all grain, a fifth on the produce of plantations and 
vineyards, and a certain tax per head of cattle grazing 
on the public pasture. This was the kind of possession 
which the Licinian rogation proposed to limit and reg¬ 
ulate. Licinius proposed, that all who had more than 





L I G 


L I G 


t>00 jugera should be made to give up the surplus, 
which was to be distributed among those who had no 
property, and that in future every citizen was to be 
entitled to a share of newly-conquered land, with the 
same restriction, and subject to the same duties. This 
might be considered as a bill for the better distribution 
of plunder among those engaged in a plundering expe¬ 
dition, for the land thus acquired and distributed can¬ 
not be compared to real property as held throughout 
Europe in our own day; and this reflection may perhaps 
serve to moderate somewhat the warmth of our sympa¬ 
thy in reading of the complaints of the Roman plebe¬ 
ians concerning the unequal distribution of land, which 
had been, in fact, taken by violence from a third party, 
the other nations of Italy, who were the real sufferers. 
—The patricians, who had, till then, the best share of 
the common plunder, opposed to the utmost the pas¬ 
sage of these three laws. The contest lasted during ten 
whole years, during which the republic at one time fell 
into a kind of anarchy. Camillus also, at one period, 
was appointed dictator, as a last expedient on the part 
of the nobility, and in that capacity stopped the voting 
at the Comitia Tributa, by threatening to summon the 
people to the Campus Martius, and to enlist and march 
them into the field. At last, however, the three roga¬ 
tions passed into law. Sextius Lateranus, the col¬ 
league of Licinius, the first plebeian consul, was cho¬ 
sen for the next year, 365 B.C., together with a pa¬ 
trician, L. iEmilius Mamercinus. The senate, how¬ 
ever, refused to confirm the election of Sextius, and, 
the plebeians were preparing for a new secession and 
other fearful threatenings of a civil war, when Camil¬ 
lus interposed, and an arrangement was made, that, 
while the patricians conceded the consulship to the 
plebeians, the latter should leave to the patricians the 
prsetorship, which was then for the first time separated 
from the consulship. Thus was peace restored. Li¬ 
cinius, the great mover of this change in the Roman 
constitution, was raised to the consulship 363 B.C., 
but nothing remarkable is recorded of him while in 
that office. In the year 356 B.C., under the consul¬ 
ship of C. Marcius Rutilus and C. Manlius Imperiosus, 
we find Licinius charged and convicted before the 
praetor of a breach of his own agrarian law, and fined 
10,000 asses. It seems that he possessed 1000 jugera, 
one half of which he held in the name of his son, whom 
he had emancipated for the purpose. After this we 
hear no more of C. Licinius Stolo. ( Encycl. Us. 
Knowl., vol. 13, p. 464, seq. — Liv., lib. 6 et 7.— Nie¬ 
buhr , Rom. Gesch., vol. 3, p. 1, seqq. — Val. Max ., 8, 6. 
— Savigny, Das Recht des Besitzes, p. 175.)—II. Mu¬ 
raena. ( Vid . Muraena.)—III. Varro Muraena, a broth¬ 
er of Proculeius, who conspired against Augustus with 
Fannius Caepio, and suffered for his crime. Horace 
addressed to him his 10th ode, book 2.—IV. C. Fla¬ 
vius Valerius, a Roman emperor. A sketch of his 
history will be found incorporated with that of Con¬ 
stantine. (Vid. Constantinus.) 

Licinus, a Roman barber, made a senator by Julius 
Caesar merely because he bitterly hated Pompey. 
Compare the language of the scholiast (ad Horat ., Ep. 
ad Pis., 301): “ Quod odissel Pompeium, a Ceesare 
senator factus dicitur .” 

Ligarius, Q., was at first a lieutenant of C. Con- 
sidius, proconsul of Africa, and afterward succeeded 
him in that province. He sided with the republican 
party against Caesar, and was condemned to exile. 
His brothers at Rome solicited his recall, but their ap¬ 
plication was opposed by Tubero, who openly accused 
Ligarius before the dictator. Cicero appeared as the 
advocate for Ligarius, and his speech on the occasion 
has come down to us. This oration was pronounced 
after Caesar, having vanquished Pompey in Thessaly, 
and destroyed the remains of the republican party in 
Africa, assumed the supreme administration of affairs 
at Rome. Merciful as the conqueror appeared, he 


was understood to be much exasperated against tliose 
who, after the rout at Pharsalia, had renewed the war 
in Africa. Ligarius, when on the point of obtaining 
his pardon, was formally accused by his old enemy* 
Tubero of having borne arms in*that contest. The 
dictator himself presided at the trial of this cause, 
much prejudiced against Ligarius, as was known from 
his having previously declared that his resolution was 
fixed, and was not to be altered by the charms of elo¬ 
quence. Cicero, however, overcame his preposses¬ 
sions, and extorted from him a pardon. The counte¬ 
nance of Caesar, it is said, changed as Cicero proceed¬ 
ed in his speech ; but when he touched on the battle 
of Pharsalia, and described Tubero as seeking his life 
annd the ranks of the army, he was so agitated that 
his body trembled, and the papers which he held drop¬ 
ped from his hand. The oration of Tubero against 
Ligarius was extant in Quintilian’s time, and probably 
explained the circumstances which induced a man who 
had fought so keenly against Caesar at Pharsalia to 
undertake the prosecution of Ligarius. (Plut., Vit 
Cic. — Dunlop's Roman Lit.., vol. 2, p. 317, Lond. ed.) 

Liger or Ligeris, now the Loire, the largest river 
of Gaul ; it rises in Mons Ce.benna or Cevennes, and 
for the first half of its course runs directly north, then 
turns to the west, and falls into the Atlantic between 
the territories of the Pictones and Namnetes. (Cces., 
B. G., 3, 9.— Id. ibid., 7, 5. — Auson., Mosell., v. 461. 
— Lucan, 1, 439.) 

Ligures, the inhabitants of Liguria. (Vid. Liguria.) 

Liguria, a country of Cisalpine Gaul, lying along 
the shores of the Sinus Ligusticus or Gulf of Genoa, 
having the Varus on the west, and the Macra on* the 
southeast, and bounded on the north by the Alps. The 
Ligures, termed A iyvpeg and Aiyvarlvoi by the Greeks 
(Strabo, 203.— Polyb., 2, 16), appear to have been a 
numerous and powerful people, extending, in the days 
of their greatest strength, along the shores of the Med¬ 
iterranean, from the mouth of the Rhodanus to the river 
Arnus, reaching also into the interior of Gaul and the 
valleys of the Maritime Alps. According to some ac¬ 
counts, they had penetrated to the west as far as the 
borders of Spain. (Thucyd., 6, 2.— Scyl., Peripl., p. 
4.) Of the origin of this people we have no positive 
information ; but there is good reason for supposing 
that they were Celts, though Strabo (128) distinguishes 
them from the Gauls. The story which is told by 
Plutarch of the Ligurians in the army of Marius, ac¬ 
knowledging the Ambrones as belonging to the same 
stock with themselves ; the affinity of the term Ligur 
to the Celtic Lly-gour or Lly-gor, together with other 
words, evidently belonging to the same root, which 
Cluverius has collected (Ital. Ant., vol. 1, p. 50), may 
be considered as plausible grounds at least for the sup¬ 
port of such an opinion. Though the period of their 
settlement in Italy cannot be determined, we may 
safely affirm that it was very remote, since the Tyr- 
rheni, themselves a very ancient people, on their arri¬ 
val in Italy, found them occupying a portion of what 
was afterward called Etruria, and, after a long strug¬ 
gle, succeeded in expelling them. (Lycophr., v. 1354.) 
The Greeks, who were unacquainted with the real sit¬ 
uation of Liguria, made that country the scene of some 
of their earliest and most poetical fictions. The pas¬ 
sage of Hercules (JEsch., Prom., Sol. ap. Strab., 183) 
and the story of Cycnus were identified with it. ( Virg., 
JEn., 10, 185.) And it is not improbable, that the fa¬ 
ble of Phaethon’s sisters shedding tears of amber, a 
substance which the Greeks called Lingurium (Strabo, 
202), had its origin in the country which produced that 
substance, and gave it its name. (Millin, Voyage en 
Ilalie, vol. 2, p. 336.) Herodotus was better acquaint¬ 
ed with the Ligurians (5, 9), and mentions them as 
forming part of the mercenary forces of Carthage, in 
its wars against the Greeks of Sicily (7, 165). The 
conquest of Liguria by the Romans was not effected 

743 



L I L 


LIN 


. fill long after the second Punic war. The Ligurians 
had joined Hannibal with a considerable* force soon 
. after his arrival ( Polyb., 3, 60), a circumstance of it¬ 
self sufficient to provoke hostilities on the part of the 
conquerors ; but thefe was another reason which ren¬ 
dered the subjugation of Liguria extremely desirable. 
It afforded the easiest communication with Gaul and 
Spain over the Maritime Alps, an object in itself of 
the.greatest importance. The Ligurians long and ob- 
. .stinately resisted their invaders, when the rest of Italy 
had been subjugated for many years. The Romans 
co'uld only obtain a free passage, along their shore of 
twelve stadia from the coast ( Strabo , 180); nor was 
, it till the -Ligurians, after a war of eighty years’ dura¬ 
tion, had. been driven from every hold in their mount¬ 
ains,’ and whole tribes had even been carried out of the 
country, that they could be said to be finally conquered. 
( Liv ., 40, 38.— rid,., 41, 12.)—The Ligurian character 
. does not appear to have been held in much esteem by 
antiquity; while it allows them all the hardihood and 
courage usual with mountaineers ( Cic., Agr., 2, 35.— 
Virg., Georg., 2, 168), qualities which were even 
shared in an uncommon degree by the weaker sex 
( Diod. Sic., 5, 39), it taxes them too plainly with 
craft and deceit to be misunderstood. [Virg., Abn., 
11, 700.— Servius, adloc. — Claudian , Idyl., 12.) Ac¬ 
cording to the statement of Polybius (2, 16), the bound¬ 
aries of the Ligurians in Italy seem to have been the 
Maritime Alps to the northwest, to the south the river 
Arnus ; but in the time of Augustus this latter bound¬ 
ary was removed northward to the river Macra. ( Plin ., 
3, 5.) To the north and northeast, the Ligurians ran¬ 
ged along the Alps as far as the river Orgus ( Orca. ), 
which separated the Taurini, the last of their nation on 
that side, from the Cisalpine Gauls : south of the Po 
they bordered on the Anamanni and Boii, also belong¬ 
ing to this last-mentioned people. ( Cramer's Ancient 
Italy, vol. 1, p. 19, seqq.) 

Ligusticus Sinus, a gulf forming the upper part of 
the Mare Tyrrhenum. , It is now the Gulf of Genoa. 

(Flor ., 3, 6.) It is also called Ligusticum Mare. 
(Colum., 8, 2.— Plin., 3, 6, 20.) 

Ligyes, a people of Asia, mentioned by Herodotus 
(7, 72). The historian informs us, that the Ligyes, 
the Matieni, the Mariandyni, and the Cappadocians 
had the same kind of arms, and that the Ligyes, Ma¬ 
riandyni, and Cappadocians, as forming part of the 
army of Xerxes, were under the same commander. 
Larcher infers from all this, that the nations here 
mentioned were contiguous to each other, and that the 
Ligyes were to the east of the Mariandyni and Cappa¬ 
docians, and to the northeast of the Matieni. The 
Ligyes were reduced in point of numbers in the time 
of Herodotus, but had been at an earlier period a pow¬ 
erful tribe ; and we are even informed by Eustathius 
(ad Dionys. Perieg., 76), that, according to Lyco- 
phron, a portion of the Ligyes had once inhabited a 
part of Colchis, and that Cytaaa was a Ligyan city. 
(Larcher, Hist. d'Herod., vol. 8, p. 301, seqq.. Table 
Geogr.) On the subject of the Ligyes generally, as a 
very early people, consult the remarks of Bernhardy 
(ad Dion. Perieg., 1. c. — Geogr. Gr. Min., vol. 1, p. 
543.) 

Lilybaeum, I. a city of Sicily on the western coast, 
south of Drepanum, and near a famous cape called 
also Lilybaeum, now Cape Boeo. (Diod. Sic., 13, 54.) 
It was the principal fortress of the Carthaginians in 
Sicily, and was founded by them about the 106th 
Olympiad (Diod. Sic., 22, 14), as a stronghold in this 
< quarter against Dionysius of Syracuse. It received 
as a part of its population the remaining inhabitants 
of Motya, which place had been taken by Dionysius. 
The strength of its fortifications was evinced in the 
war with Pyrrhus. All the other Carthaginian cities 
in Sicily had yielded to his arms ; Lilybaeum alone 
made a successful resistance, and, after three months 
744 


* • 

# 

of close investment, he was compelled to raise the 
siege. ($iod., 1. c .) In the course of the first Pmnic 
war, Carthage felt more than once that the pres¬ 
ervation of her power in Sicily depended upon Lily¬ 
baeum, since she could always send with the greatest 
ease to this quarter the necessary supplies by sea, and 
could always find in it an easy entrance into the very 
heart of the island. If the Romans, too, became mas¬ 
ters of Lilybaeum, they would have, what they wanted 
throughout the whole war, a safe harbour on the west 
ern and southern coasts of the island, whence they 
could easily threaten Carthage herself. (Polyb., 1, 
41.) The moment, therefore, the Carthaginians per¬ 
ceived that the Romans were about to attack this 
place, they made every possible exertion to render it 
secure. The number of the inhabitants was increased 
by accessions from Selinus, and a strong body of 
troops was added to the garrison. (Polyb., 1, 42, 
seqq.) The resistance made by the place was effectual, 
and the Romans only obtained possession of Lilybaeum 
by the conditions of the peace which brought the 
whole of Sicily under their power. From this time 
the Romans watched with the greatest care so impor¬ 
tant a city, repelled all the subsequent attacks of the 
Carthaginians, who made the greatest exertions to re¬ 
possess themselves of the place, and used it as the har¬ 
bour whence their fleets sailed for the reduction of 
Carthage. In a later age, Cicero calls it “ splendidissi 
ma cimtas ” (in Verr., 5). The modern town of Mar 
sala occupies the southern half of the ancient city. 
(Mannert, Geogr., vol. 9, pt. 2, p. 3^6, seqq.) —II. 
The western one of the three famous capes of Sicily, 
now Cape Boeo. The earlier Greeks were not ac¬ 
quainted with this headland, as they rarely navigated 
along this part of the Sicilian coast; neither did they 
make any settlements near it. The name first oc¬ 
curs in the false Orpheus (Argon., v. 1248). In s 
later age it was mentioned by every geographer, not 
so much from anything remarkable in its appearance, 
as from its forming the westernmost extremity of Sicily. 
It is not a mountain-promontory, but a low, flat point 
of land, rendered dangerous to vessels by its sand¬ 
banks and concealed rocks. Lilybaeum was the near¬ 
est point to Carthage, and the ancient writers inform 
us, that vessels could be seen from it sailing out d 
the harbour of that city. (Strabo, 267.— Plin., 7, 21 
— ASlian, Var. Hist., 11, 13.) The distance, 30 geo¬ 
graphical miles, shows the story to be false. Polybius 
gives the cape a northwest direction: this is true, 
however, only as regards the harbour of Lilybaeum. 
The cape itself stretches directly to the west. (Man¬ 
nert, Geogr., vol. 9, pt. 2, p. 375, seqq.) 

Limonum, a town of Gallia Aquitanica, in the terri 
tory of the Pictones. It was subsequently called Pic- 
tavi, and is now Poitiers. (Cces., B. G., 8, 26.) 

Lindum, a town of Britain, the capital of the Cori- 
tani, and on the main road from Londinium to Ebora- 
cum. (Cellar., Geogr. Ant., vol. 2, p. 341.) It is 
now Lincoln. Mannert supposes it to have been a 
Roman colony, and deduces the modern name from 
Lindi Colonia. (Geography, vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 149.) 
Bede writes the name Lindi-collina. (Hist. Eccles., 
2, 16.) 

Lindus, a city in the island of Rhodes, near the 
middle of the eastern coast. It was the old capital of 
the island before Rhodes was built, and is said to have 
been founded by the Heliades. Others made Tlepol- 
emus its first settler (Strabo, 654), and others, again, 
assigned its foundation to Danaus. (Strab., 1. c. — Diod. 
Sic., 5, 58.) Lindus is one of the three cities alluded 
to by Homer (II, 2, 668). Notice of it also occurs 
in the Parian Chronicle. It contained a very ancient 
and famous temple of Minerva, hence called the Lin- 
dian, built, according to a tradition, by the Dana'ides. 
(Strab., 1. c.) The statue of the goddess was a shape¬ 
less stone. (Callim., ap. Euseb., Proep. Ev., 3, 8.1 



LIN 


LINUS. 


Pindar’s Seventh Olympic Ode, in honour of Diagoras 
the Rhodian, was consecrated in this temple, being in¬ 
scribed in letters of gold. ( Schol. ad Find., 01., 7, 
mit.) Here also was a temple of Hercules, the wor¬ 
ship connected with which consisted, according to 
Lactantius (1, Sr), in revilings and execration (“ mal- 
edictis et exsecratione celebrantur, eaque pro violalis 
habent, si quando inter solemnes ritus vel imprudenti 
alicui exciderit lonum verbum"). This temple con¬ 
tained a painting of the god by Parrhasius. ( Athence- 
us, 12, p. 543.) There were several other pictures by 
the same celebrated master at Lind us, inscribed with 
his name. ( Athcn ., 15, p. 687.) This place was also 
fa,nous for having produced Cleobulus, one of the Sev¬ 
en Sages of Greece; and also Chares (or Cares) and 
Laches, the artists who designed and completed the 
Colossus. A mistake, highly characteristic of his ig¬ 
norance in classical matters, was committed by Vol¬ 
taire, respecting this famous statue : it is mentioned 
by Mentelle, in a note to the article Lindus, Encyclo¬ 
pedic Methodique. Voltaire, having read Indian for 
Lindian, relates that the Colossus was cast bv an In¬ 
dian !—Lindus was the port resorted to by the fleets 
of Egypt and Tyre before the founding of Rhodes.— 
A small town, with a citadel, retaining the name of 
Lindo, still occupies the site of the ancient city. Sa- 
vary says (Letters on Greece, p. 96, Eng. transl.) that 
the ruins of the temple of Minerva are still visible on 
an eminence near the sea. The ruins at Lindo are 
said to be very numerous. ( Clarke's Travels, vol. 3, 
p. 281, Lond. ed. — Tavernier, Voyage, vol. 1, c. 74.) 

Lingones, I. a people of Gaul, whose territories 
included Vogesus, Vosges, and, consequently, the 
sources of the rivers Mosa or Meuse and Matrona or 
Marne. Their chief city was Andomadunum, after¬ 
ward Lingones, now Langres , and their territory cor¬ 
responded to the modern department de la Haute- 
Marne. {Cces ., B. G., 1, 26.)—II. A Gallic tribe in 
Gallia Cisalpina, occupying the extreme northeastern 
portion of Gallia Cispadana. They were a branch of 
the Transalpine Lingones. Polybius is the only au¬ 
thor who has pointed out the district occupied by this 
people in Italy (2, 17). Appian characterizes the 
Lingones generally as the fiercest and wildest of the 
Gauls. {Bell. Gall., frogm.) 

Linus, said to have been a native of Chalcis, a son of 
Apollo and Terpsichore ; according to others, the off¬ 
spring of Amphimarus and Urania ; and according to 
others, again, of Mercury and Urania. {Said., s. v. A t- 
voq. — Hes., fragm. ap. Eustath., p. 1163.— Conon., c. 
19.— Heyne, ad Apollod., 1, 3, 1.) Apollodorus makes 
him a brother of Orpheus (1, 3, 2; 2, 4, 9). He was 
fabled to have been the instructer of Hercules in music, 
and to have been killed by the latter in a fit of passion, 
being struck on the head with a lyre. His tragical 
death was the subject of a solemn festival at Thebes. 
(Consult Hauptmann, Prolus. de Lino, Gera , 1760, 
and the notes of Burette on Plutarch's Dialogue on 
Music, Mem. de VAcad. des Inscriptions, &e., vol. 
10, p. 195.) Stobaeus has preserved twelve pretend¬ 
ed verse-s of this poet: they have reference to the fa¬ 
mous proposition of the Eleatic sch'ool, adopted subse¬ 
quently by the New-Platonists and New-Pythagore¬ 
ans : ’E k Tcavroq de ra ndvra, teal e/c ndvruv miv egtl 
— “ The whole has been engendered by the whole.' 1 
These verses, however, were fabricated in a later age. 
Id the Discourses of Stobaeus ( Eclog., 1, 11) there 
are two other verses on the divine power. According 
to Archbishop Usher, Linus flourished about 1280 
B.C.. and he is mentioned by Eusebius among the 
poets who wrote before the time of Moses. Diodorus 
Siculus tells us, from Dionysius of Mytilene, the his¬ 
torian, who was contemporary with Cicero, that Linus 
was the first among the Greeks that invented verse 
and music, as Cadmus first taught them the use of 
tetters (3, 66). The same writer likewise attributes 
5 B 


to him an account of the exploits of the first Baccvnus, 
and a treatise upon the Greek mythology, written in 
Pelasgian characters, which were also those used by 
Orpheus, and by Pronapides, the preceptor of Homer. 
Diodorus says likewise, that he added the string licha- 
nos to the Mercurian lyre, and assigns to him the inven¬ 
tion of rhythm and melody, which Suidas, who regards 
him as the most ancient of poets, confirms. He is 
said by many ancient writers to have had several dis¬ 
ciples of great renown, among whom were Hercules, 
Thamyris, and Orpheus.—Thus much for the ordinary 
learning connected with the name of Linus. The 
following remarks, however, will be found, we think, 
to contain a far more correct view of the subject. 
Among the plaintive songs of the early Greek hus¬ 
bandmen is to be numbered the one called Linus, 
mentioned by Homer {II., 18, 569), the melancholy 
character of which is shown by its fuller names, Alh- 
voc and O Irolivoq (literally, “ Alas, Linus!" and 
“ Death of Linus"). It was frequently sung in Greece, 
according to Homer, at the grape-picking. According 
to a fragment of Hesiod {ap. Eustath., p. 1163— 
fragm. 1, ed. Gaisf.), all singers and players on the 
cithara lament at feasts and dances Linus, the beloved 
son of Urania, and call on Linus at the beginning and 
the end, which probably means that the song of lam¬ 
entation began and ended with the exclamation A l 
A ive. Linus was originally the subject of the song, 
the person whose fate was bewailed in it ; and there 
were many districts in Greece (for example, Thebes, 
Chalcis, and Argos) in which tombs of Linus were 
shown. This Linus evidently belongs to a class of 
deities or demigods, of which many instances occur in 
the religions of Greece and Asia Minor; boys of ex¬ 
traordinary beauty, and in the flower of youth, who 
are supposed to have been drowned, or devoured by 
raging dogs, or destroyed by wild beasts, and whose 
death is lamented in the harvest or other periods of 
the hot season. It is obvious that these cannot have 
been the real persons whose death excited so general 
a sympathy, although the fables which were offered in 
explanation of these customs often speak of youths of 
royal blood, who were carried off in the prime of their 
life. The real object of lamentation was the tender 
beauty of spring destroyed by the summer heat, and 
other phenomena of the same kind, which the imagi¬ 
nation of these early times invested with a personal 
form, and represented as gods, or beings of a divine 
nature. According to the very remarkable and explicit 
tradition of the Argives, Linus was a youth, who, hav¬ 
ing sprung from a divine origin, grew up with the 
shepherds among the lambs, and was torn in pieces by 
wild dogs ; whence arose the festival of the lambs, at 
which many dogs were slain. Doubtless this festival 
was celebrated during the greatest heat, at the time 
of the constellation Sirius, the emblem of which, 
among the Greeks, was, from the earliest times, a ra¬ 
ging dog. It was a natural confusion of the tradition, 
that Linus should afterward become a minstrel, one 
of the earliest bards of Greece, who begins a contest 
with Apollo himself, and overcomes Hercules in play¬ 
ing on the cithara; even, however, in this character 
Linus meets his death, and we must probably assume 
that his fate was mentioned in the ancient song. In 
Homer the Linus is represented as sung by a boy, 
who plays at the same time on the harp, an accom¬ 
paniment usually mentioned with this song; the young 
men and women who bear the grapes from the vine¬ 
yard follow him, moving onward with a measured 
step, and uttering a shrill cry, in which probably the 
chief stress was laid on the exclamation al live. That 
this shrill cry (called by Homer lvyp.bg) was not ne¬ 
cessarily a joyful strain, will be admitted by any one 
who has heard the Ivypoq of the Swiss peasants, with 
its sad and plaintive notes resounding from hill to hill 
{Muller, Gr. Lit., p. 17, sepq.) 


745 



L I S 


1, I V 


Li para, the largest and most important island in 
the group of the jEolia Insula or Lipari Islands. 
Its original name was Mehgunis (Me/Uyoimf.— Cal - 
lim., H. in Dian., 49), and it was uninhabited until 
Liparus, son of King Auson, having been driven out 
by his brethren, came hither with a body of followers, 
colonized the island, and founded a city. Both the 
island and city then took the name of Lipara. He 
colonized also some other islands of the group. ( Stra¬ 
bo , 275.— Diod. Sic., 5, 7.) The original inhabitants, 
therefore, according to this tradition, were natives of 
Italy. The Greeks, however, contributed their part 
also to the ancient legend, and made AEolus come to 
this same quarter with a body of companions, and re¬ 
ceive in marriage Cyane, the daughter of Liparus. 
Aeolus now assumed the government, and established 
his aged father-in-law once more on the soil of Italy, 
in the territory of Surrentum, where the latter contin¬ 
ued to reign until his death.—Leaving mythic, we 
now come to real, history. In the 50th Olympiad 
(B.C. 577-574), a colony of Cnidians, along with 
many Rhodians and Carians, settled in Lipara. They 
had previously established themselves on the western 
coast of Sicily, but had been driven out by the ElymaBi 
and Phoenicians. From this period Lipara was re¬ 
garded as a Doric colony ( Scymn ., Ch., 261.) The 
inhabitants began to be powerful at sea, having been 
compelled to defend their commerce against the Tyr¬ 
rhenian pirates, whom they worsted in several encoun¬ 
ters. Eventually, however, they followed the bad ex¬ 
ample set them by their maritime neighbours, and be¬ 
came pirates themselves. ( Liv ., 5, 28.) When the 
Carthaginians were striving for the possession of Si¬ 
cily, they perceived the importance of Lipara as a 
naval station, and accordingly made it their own. 
During the first Punic war it fell into the hands of 
the Romans.—The Lipari isles obtain their modern 
name from the ancient Lipara. They were anciently 
called JEolia Insula, from having been fabled to be 
ruled over by iEolus, god of the winds; and they 
were also styled Vulcanice Insula , from their volcanic 
nature, on which was based the fable of Vulcan’s hav¬ 
ing forges in Strongyle, one of the group, besides his 
smithy in AEtna. The ancients knew them to be vol¬ 
canic, but did not narrowly examine them; this has 
been reserved for modern philosophers. The Lipari 
isles are commonly reckoned seven in number, and 
Lipari is the largest of these, being 19Jr Italian miles 
in circuit. This island is peculiarly valuable to the 
naturalist, from the number and beauty of its volcanic 
products. According to Diodorus, all the TEolian isles 
were subject to great irruptions of fire, and their craters 
were visible in his time. ( Vid . Strongyle.— Plin., 3, 

9. — Mela , 2, 7.— Jornand., de Regn. Succ., p. 29.— 
Mannert, Geogr., vol. 9, pt. 2, p. 459, seqq.) 

Liris, now Garigliano, a river of Campania, which 
it separated from Latium, after the southern boundary 
of the latter had been removed from the Circsean prom¬ 
ontory. (Vid. Latium.) It falls into the sea neai 
Minturnae. According to Strabo, its more ancient 
name was VXdvcq: according to Pliny, Glanis. ( Stra¬ 
bo, 233.— Pliny, 3, 5.) Its source is in the country 
of the Marsi, west of the Lacus Fucinus. This river 
is particularly noticed by the poets for the sluggishness 
of its stream. (Horat., Od., 1, 31. — Sil. Ital., 4, 
848.) In the vicinity of Minturnae the Pontine marsh- 
«?nded, in which Marius hid himself, and whence 
was dragged with a rope round his neck to the 
prison of Minturnae. (Vid. Marius.) 

Lissus, a city of Illyria, near the mouth of theDri- 

10. According to Diodorus Siculus (15, 13), it was 
colonized by some Syracusans in the time of Dionys¬ 
ius the Elder. It fell subsequently, however, into 
the hands of the Illyrians, who retained it with the 
consent of the Romans, after they had concluded a 
peace with Teuta. ( Polyb., 2, 12.) Not many years 


intervened before Philip of Macedon, having surprised 
the Acrolissus, its citadel, compelled the town to sur¬ 
render. An interesting account of this expedition is 
to be found in the Fragments of Polybius (8, 15). 
We are not informed by what means the Illyrians re¬ 
covered possession of Lissus, but Livy speaks of it 
as belonging to Gentius (44, 30). Caesar, who ha? 
frequent occasion to mention this city during the prog 
ress of the civil war carried on by him in Illyria, in¬ 
forms us, that he had previously stationed there i 
considerable body of Roman citizens, who readily de 
livered up the town on the appearance of his forces 
(B. Civ., 3, 29.) The situation of the ancient Lis 
sus can hardly be identified with the modern Alessio 
which is more inland, and may rather answer to Aero 
lissus. (Cramer's Anc. Greece , vol. 1, p. 43.) 

Lista, the old capital of the Aborigines, in the 
country afterward settled by the Sabines. It was 24 
stadia from Tiora, that is, three miles lower down ir 
the valley of the Salto. The town was surprised by 
the Sabines in an expedition by night, and the inhab¬ 
itants were driven out. (Dioti. Hal., 1 , 14.) 

Liternum, a town of Italy, in Campania, west ol 
Atella, and north of Cumse. Its situation has beer, 
disputed ; but antiquaries seem now agreed in fixing 
the site of the town at a place called Torre di Patria. 
The difficulty arose chiefly from the mention of a riv¬ 
er of the same name by some of the ancient writers. 
(Strabo. 243.— Liv., 32, 29.) This river can be no 
other than that which rises in the Apennines above 
Nola, and, flowing at no great distance from Acerrae, 
discharges its waters into the sea near Liternum. 
This stream is apt to stagnate near its entrance intc 
the sea, and to form marshes anciently known as the 
Palus Literna, now Lago di Patria. Liternum be* 
came a Roman colony in the same year with Vultur- 
num. (Liv., 34, 45.) Jt was recolonized by Augus¬ 
tus, and ranked among the praefecturae. (Front., dr 
Col. — Festus.) That Scipio Africanus retired here 
in disgust at the injustice of his countrym^i, seems t 
fact too well attested to be called into question ; bu 
whether he really closed his existence here, as far a? 
we can collect from Livy’s account, may be deeme* 3 
uncertain : his tomb and statue were to be seen boti 
at Liternum, and in the family vault of the Scipio?., 
which was discovered some years ago outside th' 
Porta Capena. (Liv., 38, 51.) Strabo (243) certain¬ 
ly seems to imply that he spent the remainder of his 
life at Liternum, and also makes mention of his tomb 
there. According to Valerius Maximus (5, 3, 2), 
Scipio himself had caused to be engraved on it this 
inscription, 

INGRATA. PATRIA. NE. OSSA. QVIDEM. 
MEA. HABES., 

which would be decisive of the question. It is not 
improbable that the little hamlet of Patria, which is 
supposed to stand on the site of Scipio’s villa, is in¬ 
debted for its name to this circumstance. Seneca 
gives an interesting description of a visit he made to 
the remains of the villa, and of the reflections to 
which it gave rise, in a letter to one of his friends.. 
(Ep., 86.) Pliny asserts that there were to be seen 
in his day, near Liternum, some olive-trees and myr¬ 
tles said to have been planted by the illustrious exile. 
(Plin., 16, 44.— CramePs Anc. Italy., vol. 2, p. 145, 
seqq.) ^ 

Livia, I. Drusilla (Livia Drusilla Augusta, oi 
Livia Augusta), a celebrated Roman female of the 
Claudian line, and daughter of Livius Drusillus Clau- 
dianus, was born B.C. 59. She married Tiberius Clau¬ 
dius Nero, and when her husband was compelled to 
flee from Italy in consequence of the troubles connect¬ 
ed with the civil war (vid. Claudius II.), she accom¬ 
panied him, first to Sicily, and afterward to Greece. 
In this latter country they were kindly received by the 




LIVIA. 


LI V 


Lacedemonians, whom she subsequently recompensed 
for the asylum they had afforded her. To rare per¬ 
sonal attractions Livia added the charms of a cultiva¬ 
ted intellect; and when it was again safe for her hus¬ 
band and herself to return to Rome, she soon drew 
upon her the notice of Augustus, who demanded her 
from her husband. Tiberius dared not refuse; and 
Augustus, having repudiated his own wife Scribonia, 
made Livia his spouse. She had already borne two 
sons to her first husband, namely, Tiberius, who was 
afterward emperor, and Drusus Germanicus; but what 
rendered the affair most disreputable, was the circum¬ 
stance of her being six months gone in pregnancy at 
the tune of her union with Augustus. This child, the 
only one she had after her marriage with the emper¬ 
or, died almost at the moment of its birth. Livia was 
twenty years of age when she was thus called to share 
the empire of the world ; and, availing herself skilfully 
of the influence which she soon acquired over the mind 
of Augustus, she began to concert her plans for secu¬ 
ring the succession to her own son Tiberius. With 
this view, she was suspected of having caused the 
death of the young Marcellus, who might have proved 
an obstacle to her ambitious views, though it must 
be confessed that there is no positive testimony which 
would seem to justify the suspicion. She soon lost 
her own son Drusus Germanicus; but she did not 
imitate Octavia, who had actually wearied out Au¬ 
gustus by the excess of her sorrow : on the contrary, 
she lent an ear to the consolations of the philosopher 
Areus, and testified her gratitude to Augustus for the 
honours he had decreed to the memory of her son. 
In all this, no doubt, there was much of dissimulation, 
even if we make the fullest allowance for the feelings 
of a parent. After the premature death of the two sons 
of Julia, Livia hastened to call her own son Tiberius 
from his retirement in the island of Rhodes, and pre¬ 
vailed upon Augustus to adopt him, along with Agrip- 
pa Posthumus, the last of the family of the Caesars. 
Her next care was to exclude this samaAgrippa from 
the succession, an object which she easily effected by 
means of secret calumnies ; and when now the path 
to the throne stood open for Tiberius, she is said by 
some to have hastened the end of Augustus himself, 
by means of poisoned figs which she had given him 
to eat, and which brought on an attack of dysentery. 
Be this, however, as it may, it is at least certain that 
she had the entire control of his last moments. Ev¬ 
erything that passed within the walls of the dwelling 
where he lay was concealed by her with the utmost 
care. Hasty messengers were sent after Tiberius to 
recall him instantly to the death-bed of the emperor; 
and with so much secrecy was the whole affair shroud¬ 
ed, that, although it was given out that Tiberius 
found his adopted father still alive ( Sueton ., Vit. Aug., 
97, seqq .), and had a long and affectionate interview 
with him, yet Tacitus informs us, that it was never 
clearly ascertained whether these stories were not 
mere fabrications; and whether Augustus was not, in 
reality, already dead when Tiberius arrived at Nola. 
By a singular clause in his will, Augustus adopted 
Livia herself, directing her to take the name of Julia 
Augusta, and made her joint sharer in the inheritance 
with her son. The latter, however, showed but little 
gratitude to his parent, to whom he was in every 
sense indebted for his elevation. When the senate 
wished to decree new honours to her, he opposed the 
step ; he never consulted her about public affairs, a 
thing which Augustus was always accustomed to do ; 
and yet, at the same time, he took care to conceal his 
ingratitude under the most studied respect. At length, 
however, an open rupture ensued, which continued 
until the period of her death. Livia died at Rome, at 
the age of 8G years. Her funeral was celebrated with¬ 
out any kind of display, and her great-grandson Ca¬ 
ligula pronounced her funeral culogium, which was 


almost the only honour then rendered to her memory 
Her will was never executed; and it was not until 
Claudius, whom she had never liked, ascended the 
throne, that divine honours were caused by him to be 
decreed unto her. Livia appears to have been a wom¬ 
an of strong mind, ’and she is said to have been al¬ 
ways consulted by Augustus on public affairs, and 
often to have given him the most judicious advice. 
That she was an ambitious woman is most evident; 
and possibly, in the furtherance of her views, she may 
have been a guilty one. The conduct of Tiberius, 
indeed, towards her, might be explained in this way, 
since, by one of those strange contradictions that some¬ 
times present themselves even in the character of the 
most vicious, he may have been aware of all her secret 
arts for his own advancement, and, though so largely 
benefited thereby, may have cherished a secret de¬ 
testation for the very individual to whom he owed his 
elevation. (Sueton., Vit. Aug.—Id , Vit. Tib .— Ta¬ 
cit., Ann., 5, 1.— Veil. Paterc., 2, 75.) — II. or Li- 
villa, daughter of Nero Claudius Drusus, by his wife 
Antonia the Younger, was sister to Germanicus, and 
grand-daughter of the Empress Livia. Her first hus¬ 
band was Caius, the son of Agrippa ; after his death, 
when still quite young, she married Drusus the son of 
Tiberius. Sejanus seduced her affections from the 
latter. Engaged in a career of adultery with that fla¬ 
gitious minister, she hoped to rise with her paramour 
to the imperial dignity, and with this view conspired 
against her husband. Her guilt being afterward fully 
detected, she was put to death by order of Tiberius. 
(Sueton., Vit. Tib., 62.— Tacit., Ann., 4, 3, et 40.— 
Id. ib., 6, 2.)—III. Orestilla, called by Dio Cassius 
(59, 8) Cornelia Orestina. She was on the point of 
marrying C. Calpurnius Piso, when Caligula, enam¬ 
oured of her beauty, carried her off from the very 
midst of the nuptial ceremonies, and in a few days 
after repudiated her. She was subsequently con¬ 
demned by him to exile. (Sueton., Vit. Calig., 25. 
—Dio Cass., 1. c.) 

Livije Leges, proposed by M. Livius Drusus, a 
tribune, A.U.C. 662, about transplanting colonies to 
different parts of Italy and Sicily, and granting corn 
to poor citizens at a low price ; also, that the judices 
should be chosen indiscriminately from the senators 
and equites, and that the allied states of Italy should 
be admitted to the freedom of the city. Drusus was 
a man of great eloquence and of the most upright in¬ 
tentions ; but, endeavouring to reconcile those whose 
inter%srs were diametrically opposite, he was crushed 
in the attempt, being murdered by an unknown as¬ 
sassin in his own house, upon his return from the fo¬ 
rum, amid a number of clients and friends. No in¬ 
quiry was made about his death. The states of Italy 
considered this event as the signal of a revolt, and en¬ 
deavoured to extort by force what they could not ob¬ 
tain voluntarily. Above 300,000 men fell in the con¬ 
test in the space of two years. At last the Romans, 
although upon the whole they had the advantage, were 
obliged to grant the freedom of the city, first to the 
allies, and afterward to all the states of Italy. (Veil. 
Paterc., 2, 13, seqq. — Flor., 3, 18.) 

Livius, I. Andronicus, a dramatic poet who flour 
ished at Rome about 240 years before the Christian 
era. He was a native of Magna Grsecia, and, when 
his country was finally subdued by the Romans, was 
made captive and brought to Rome (B.C. 267). It 
is generally believed that he there became the slave, 
and afterward the freedman, of Livius Salinator, from 
whom he derived one of his names ; but these facts 
do not seem to rest on any authority more ancient than 
the Eusebian Chronicle. (Hieron. in Euseb., Chron., 
p. 37. — Scaligei, Thes. Temp., ed. Amslel., 1658.) 
The precise period of his death is uncertain ; but in 
Cicero’s dialogue de Senectute, Cato is introduced 
saying that he had seen old Livius while he was him 

?47 




LIVIUS. 


LIYIUS. 


selt a youth (c. 14). Now Cato was born B.C. 235, 
and since the period of youth among the Romans was 
considered as commencing at fifteen, it may be pre¬ 
sumed that the existence of Livius was at least pro¬ 
tracted till B.C. 220. It has been frequently said 
that he lived till the year B.C. 208, A.U.C. 546, be¬ 
cause Livy* (27, 37) mentions, that a hymn composed 
by this ancient poet was publicly sung in that year, to 
avert the disasters threatened by an alarming prodi¬ 
gy ; but the historian does not declare that it was 
written for the occasion, or even recently before. Fes- 
tus, however, informs us ( s. v. Scribas), that the Ro¬ 
mans paid distinguished honour to Livius, in conse¬ 
quence of the success which attended their arms in 
the second Punic war, after the public recitation of a 
hymn which he had composed.—Livius wrote both 
tragedies and comedies. The earliest play of his was 
represented B.C. 240, A.U.C. 514, about a year after 
the termination of the first Punic war. Like Thes¬ 
pis, and most other dramatists in the commencement 
of the theatrical art, Livius was an actor, and for a con¬ 
siderable time the sole performer of his own pieces. 
Afterward, however, his voice failing, in consequence 
of the audience insisting on a repetition of favourite 
passages, he introduced a boy, who relieved him by 
declaiming the recitative part in concert with the flute, 
while he himself executed the corresponding gesticu¬ 
lations in the monologues, and, in parts where high 
exertion was required, only employing his own voice 
in the conversational and less elevated scenes.— 
“ Hence,” observes Livy (7, 2), “ the practice arose 
of dividing the representation between two actors, and 
of reciting, as it were, to the gesture and action of the 
comedian. Thenceforth the custom so far prevailed, 
that the comedians never uttered anything except the 
verses of the dialogue.” And this system, apparent¬ 
ly so well calculated to destroy all theatrical illusion, 
continued, under certain modifications, to subsist on 
the Roman stage during the most refined periods of 
taste and literature. The popularity of Livius in¬ 
creasing from these performances, as well as from a 
propitiatory hymn he had composed, and which had 
been followed by great public success, a building was 
assigned to him on the Aventine Hill. This edifice 
was partly converted into a theatre, and was also in¬ 
habited by a troop of players, for whom Livius wrote 
his pieces, and frequently acted along with them. 

( Festus , s. v. Scribas.) It has been disputed whether 
the first drama represented by Livius Andronicus at 
Rome was a tragedy or comedy. ( Osann ., Analect. 
Crit., c. 13.) However this may be, it appears from 
the names which have been preserved of his plays, 
that he wrote, as we have already said, both tragedies 
and comedies. These titles, which have been col¬ 
lected by Fabricius and other writers, are Achilles, 
Adonis, JEgisthus, Ajax, Andromeda , Antiopa, Cen- 
tauri, Equus Trojanus, Helena, Hermione, Ino, Lyd¬ 
ias, Protesilaodamia, Serenus, Tereus, Teucer, Vir¬ 
go. ( Bibl. Lat., vol. 3,1. 4, c. 1.) Such names also 
evince, that most of his dramas were translated or 
imitated from the works of his countrymen of Magna 
Graecia, or from the great tragedians of Greece. Thus, 
TEschylus wrote a tragedy on the subject of JEgis¬ 
thus : there is still a play of Sophocles extant by the 
name of Ajax, and he is known to have written an 
Andromeda: Stobaeus mentions the Antiopa of Eu¬ 
ripides : four Greek dramatists, Sophocles, Euripides, 
Anaxandrides, and Philaetus, composed tragedies on 
the subject of Tereus ; and Epicharmus, as well as 
others, chose for their comedies the story of the Si¬ 
rens.—Little, however except the titles, remain to us 
of the dramas of Livius. The longest passage we 
possess, in connexion, is four lines from the tragedy 
of Ino, forming part of a hymn to Diana, recited by 
r.he chorus, and containing a poetical and animated 
exhortation to a person about to proceed to the chase. 
748 


This passage testifies the vast improvement effect¬ 
ed by Livius on the Latin tongue; and, indeed, the 
polish of the language, and metrical correctness of 
these hexameter lines, have led to a suspicion that 
they are not the production of a period so ancient as 
the age of Livius, or, at least, that they have been 
modernized by some later hand. (Jos. Scahger, Lecl. 
Auson. — Osann., Analect. Crit., p. 36.) Some ver¬ 
ses in the Carmen de Arte Metrica of Terentianus 
Maurus are the chief authority for these hexameters 
being by Liviu:?. As the verses in the chorus of the 
Ino are the only passage among the fragments of Liv¬ 
ius from which a connected meaning can be elicited, 
we must take our opinion of his poetical merits from 
those who judged of them while his writings were yet 
wholly extant. Cicero has pronounced an unfavoura¬ 
ble decision, declaring that they were scarcely worthy 
a second perusal. ( Brutus , c. 18.) They long, how¬ 
ever, continued popular in Rome, and were read by the 
youth in schools even during the Augustan age of po¬ 
etry. It is evident, indeed, that at that period of Ro¬ 
man literature there was a good deal of what corre¬ 
sponds with modern black-letter taste, and which led to 
the inordinate admiration of the works of Livius, and 
the bitter complaints of Horace, that they should be ex¬ 
tolled as perfect, or held up by old pedants to the irnita 
tion of youth, in an age when so much better models ex¬ 
isted. (Hor., Epist., 2,1.) But, although Livius may 
have been too much read in the schools, and too much 
admired in an age which could boast of models so great¬ 
ly superior, he is at least entitled to praise as the first 
inventor among the Romans of a species of poetry 
which was afterward carried by them to much higher 
perfection. By .translating the Odyssey, too, into 
Latin verse, he adopted the means, which, of all oth¬ 
ers, was most likely to foster the infant literature of 
his country, as he thus presented it with an image of 
the most pure and perfect taste, and, at the same time, 
with those wild and romantic adventures, which are 
best suited to -attract the sympathy and interest of a 
half-civilized nation. This happy influence could not 
be prevented even by the use of the rugged Saturnian 
verses, which led Cicero to compare the translation of 
Livius to the ancient statues that might be attributed 
to Daedalus. (Brutus, c. 18.— Dunlop's Rom. Lit., 
vol. 1, p. 66, seqq., Lond. ed.) —II. M. Salinator, ob¬ 
tained the consulship B.C. 219, and again in 207. 
During his first term of office he carried on a success¬ 
ful war in Illyricum ; during the second he had for 
his colleague Claudius Nero. Livius and Nero were 
personal enemies, but the interests of their common 
country reunited them for a time in the bonds of 
friendship. They marched together against Hasdru- 
bal, and gained the victory at the Metaurus in Umbria. 
Livius received the honours of a triumph for this ex¬ 
ploit, and his colleague only an ovation, although the 
former insisted that his colleague was entitled to the 
same distinctions with himself. Three years after he 
was censor with the same Nero, and caused an un¬ 
popular tax to be levied on salt, whence he obtained 
the soubriquet of Salinator (from salince, “ salt-works”). 
The old enmity between Livius and Nero broke out 
afresh in their censorship, as Livy (29, 37) informs 
us. (Liv., 27, 34. — Id., 28, 9, seqq. —Id., 29, 5, 
&c.)—III. Drusus, a tribune. (Vid. Liviae Leges.) 
—IV. Titus, a celebrated historian. He was born 
at Patavium, the modern Padua, of a consular fam¬ 
ily, in the year of Rome 695, B.C. 59. Titus Liv¬ 
ius Optimus was the first of the Livian family that 
came to Rome; and from him was descended Caius 
Livius, the father of the historian. (Zarabella, Storia 
della gente Livia.) Livy seems to have received his 
early instruction in his native city. But, though his 
education was provincial, he was taught all the useful 
learning of his age ; and it has been conjectured, from 
several passages of his history, and the general colour 





LIVIUS 


LIVIUS. 


ol his styie, that he had acquired some superfluous ac¬ 
complishments in a school of declamation. ( Monbod- 
do, Origin and Progress of Language, vol. 5, b. 1, c. 
1.) It would appear, that he remained at Patavium 
during the whole period of the civil dissensions, pro¬ 
scriptions, and violations of property which followed 
the assassination of Csesar. It has been e*ven main¬ 
tained by some writers, that he commenced his great 
work at Patavium ere he visited the capital. (Kruse, 
de Fide Livii, Lips., 1811.) But through the whole 
of the flrst Decade, which is the part they suppose he 
had written before coming to Rome, he speaks con¬ 
cerning the localities of the city, its customs, judicial 
forms, and religious ceremonies, as one who was ac¬ 
tually on the spot, and had ocular proof of all he re¬ 
lates. At whatever time he came to Rome, it is evi¬ 
dent that he commenced his history between the years 
725 and 730 A.U.C., or B.C. 29 and 24; for in the first 
book (c. 19) he mentions, that, at the period when he 
wrote, the temple of Janus had been twice shut since 
the reign of Numa, once after the first Punic war, and 
again in his own time by Augustus. Now this tem¬ 
ple never had been closed by Augustus till 725, so 
/hat the passage could not have been written prior to 
that year; and it could not have been written subse¬ 
quently to 730, because in that year Augustus again 
shut the temple, and Livy, of course, must have then 
said that it had been three times, and not twice, closed 
since the age of Numa. Soon after his arrival at 
Rome, he composed some dialogues on philosoph¬ 
ical and political questions ( Seneca, Epist., 100), 
which he addressed to Augustus. These dialogues, 
which are now lost, procured for him the favour of the 
emperor, who gave him free access to all those ar¬ 
chives and records of the state which might be ser¬ 
viceable in the prosecution of the historical researches 
in which he was employed. He allotted him apart¬ 
ments in his own palace, and sometimes even conde¬ 
scended to afford explanations, that facilitated the 
right understanding of documents which were impor¬ 
tant to his investigations. Livy appears, indeed, to 
have been on intimate terms with Augustus, who 
used, according to Tacitus (Ann., 4, 34), to call him 
a “Pompeian,” on account of the praises which he 
bestowed on Pompey’s party. It appears that Livy 
availed himself of the good graces of the emperor 
only for the purpose of facilitating the historical re¬ 
searches in which he was engaged. We do not hear 
that he accepted any pecuniary favours, or even held 
any public employment. It has been conjectured by 
some writers, from a passage in Suetonius (Vit. Claud., 
41), that he had for a short time superintended the edu¬ 
cation of Claudius, who afterward succeeded to the 
empire. (Gibbon's Misc. Works, vol. 4, p.425.) But, 
though the expressions scarcely authorize this infer¬ 
ence, they prove that, at Livy’s suggestion, Claudius 
undertook in his youth to write a history of Rome 
from the death of Julius Caesar, and thus acquired the 
habits of historical composition, which he continued 
after his accession; being better qualified, as Gibbon 
remarks, to record great actions than to perform them. 
—Livy continued for nearly 20 years to be closely oc¬ 
cupied in the composition of his history. During this 
long period his chief residence was at Rome, or in its 
immediate vicinity; but he occasionally retired to 
Naples, that he might there arrange with leisure and 
tranquillity the materials he had amassed in the capi¬ 
tal. (Funccius, de Virili JEtate Ling. Lat., pars 2, 
c. 4.) He also paid frequent visits to his native city, 
where he was invariably received with distinguished 
honours. Though Livy’s great work was not finish¬ 
ed till the year 745 A.U.C., B.C. 9, he had pre¬ 
viously published parts of it, from time to time, by 
which means he early acquired a high reputation with 
his countrymen, who considered him as holding the 
game rank among their historians that Virgil occu¬ 


pied among their poets, and Cicero among then* ora¬ 
tors. His fame reached even the remotest extremi¬ 
ties of the Roman empire. An inhabitant of Gades 
was so struck with his illustrious character, that he 
travelled all the way from that city to Rome on pur¬ 
pose to see him, and, having gratified his curiosity, 
straightway returned home. (Plin.,Ep., 2,3.) Livy 
continued to reside at Rome till the death of Augus¬ 
tus. On the accession of Tiberius he returned to Pa¬ 
tavium, where he survived five years longer, and at 
length died at the place of his birth, in A.U.C. 770, 
A.D. 17, and in the 76th year of his age.—Livy is 
supposed to have been twice married. By one of his 
wives he left several daughters and a son, to whom he 
addressed an epistle or short treatise on the subject of 
rhetoric, in which, while delivering his opinion con¬ 
cerning the authors most proper to be read by youth, 
he says, that they ought first to study Demosthenes 
and Cicero, and next such writers as most closely re¬ 
sembled these excellent orators. (Quint., Inst. Or., 
10, 1.) After his death, statues were erected to Livy 
at Rome ; for we learn from Suetonius that the mad 
Caligula had nearly ordered that all his images, as 
well as those of Virgil, should be removed from the 
public libraries. His more rational subjects, never¬ 
theless, regarded Livy as the only historian that had 
yet appeared, whose dignity of sentiment and majesty 
of expression rendered him worthy to record the story of 
the Roman republic.—The work of Livy comprehended 
the whole history of Rome, from its foundation to the 
death of Drusus, the brother of Tiberius, which hap¬ 
pened in the year B.C. 9. It consisted of 142 books; 
but of these, as is well known, only 35, with some 
fragments of others, are now extant. The first ten 
books, which are still remaining, and which have been 
termed the first Decade, bring down the history from 
the arrival of JEneas in Italy to B.C. 293, or to within 
a few years of the commencement of the war with 
Pyrrhus. An hiatus of the following ten books, or 
second Decade, deprives us of the interesting expedi¬ 
tion of Pyrrhus, who landed in Italy in order to suc¬ 
cour the Tarentines, the discomfiture at length sus¬ 
tained by that enterprising monarch, the final subjuga¬ 
tion of Magna Graecia, and the first Punic war. The 
narrative recommences at the twenty-first book, with 
the second Carthaginian contest, B.C. 218, in which 
Hannibal invaded Italy, and it continues with little in¬ 
terruption till the end of the forty-fifth book, or the 
period when the Romans resolved on the destruction 
of Carthage, and began the third war which they 
waged against that ill-fated city ; thus comprehending 
in one unbroken narration the complete history of the 
great struggle in which Hannibal and Scipio were the 
chief antagonists, the campaigns in Macedon against 
Philip, those against his successor Perseus, and the 
contest with Antiochus, king of Syria. Still, how¬ 
ever, it must be admitted, that the most valuable por¬ 
tion of Livy’s history has perished. The commence¬ 
ment of those dissensions which ended in the subver¬ 
sion of the liberties of Rome, and the motives by 
which the actors on the great political stage were in¬ 
fluenced, would have given scope for more interesting 
reflection and more philosophic deduction than de¬ 
tails of the wars with the Sabines and Samnites, or 
even of those with the Carthaginians and Greeks. 
Stronger reliance might also have been placed on this 
portion of the history than on that by which it was 
preceded. The author’s account of the civil wars of 
Marius and Sylla, of Pompey and Caesar, may have 
been derived from those who were eye-witnesses of 
these destructive contests, and he himself was living 
an impartial and intelligent observer of all the subse¬ 
quent events which history recorded. Both Lord 
Bolingbroke and Gibbon have declared that they would 
willingly give up what we now possess of Livy on the 
terms of recovering what we have lost. (Gibbon's 

749 




LIVIUS. 


Livrus. 


Misc. Works, vol. 4, p. 427.)—In addition, then, to the 
first ten books of Livy’s history, we have from the 
21st to the 45th books, both inclusive; though from 
the 40th to the 45th they are full of lacunae. We 
possess also some fragments, and among them one of 
the 91st book, disco%red in 1772, in a palimpsest 
manuscript in the Vatican library. This last-men¬ 
tioned fragment was first published by Bruns ( Ham¬ 
burg. , 1773), and afterward by Kreyssig ( Chemnitz , 
1807). There also exist brief epitomes of the lost 
books, as well as of those which have come down to us. 
They have been frequently supposed, though without 
sufficient reason, to have been compiled by Florus. 
We have, however, only epitomes of 140 books ; but 
it has been satisfactorily shown by Sigonius and Dra- 
kenborch {ad Liv., Epit., 136), that the epitomes of the 
136th and 137th books have been lost, and that the 
epitome of the 136th book, as it is called, is in reality 
the epitome of the 138th.—With the aid of this col¬ 
lection of epitomes, and that of other ancient writers, 
both Greek and Latin, Freinshemius, a learned Ger¬ 
man scholar of the 17th century, composed a collec¬ 
tion of supplements to replace the books that are lost. 
He has imitated admirably the style and general man¬ 
ner of Livy, and has displayed great care and accuracy 
in citing his authorities.—Many hopes have been en¬ 
tertained, at various periods, of recovering the lost 
books of Livy’s work, but they appear at last to have 
been put to rest. Erpenius and others stated once 
that there was a translation of them in Arabic, but 
none such has ever been discovered.—Tacitus {Ann., 
4, 34) and Seneca {Suasor., 7), among the later Ro¬ 
man writers, speak in the highest terms of the beauty 
of Livy’s style, and of the fidelity of his history ; 
praises which have been constantly repeated by mod¬ 
ern writers. But, while most will be ready to admit 
that his style is eloquent, his narrative clear, and his 
powers of description great and striking, it can scarce¬ 
ly be denied that he was deficient in the first and 
most important requisites of a faithful historian, a love 
of truth, diligence and care in consulting authorities, 
and a patient and pains-taking examination of con¬ 
flicting testimonies. Livy made very little use even 
of such inscriptions and public documents as were 
within his reach. He appeals, indeed, to the treaty 
of Spurius Cassius with the Latins, engraven on a 
column of brass (2, 33); but in the notable instance 
of the inscription on the Spolia Opima of Cornelius 
Cossus, preserved in the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, 
which was at variance with the received Fasti (or 
register of magistrates) and the common accounts 
of historians, he does not appear to have had the 
curiosity to examine the monument itself, but is 
content with repeating the report of Augustus C$- 
sar (4, 20). This is one of the few passages in 
which he descends to a critical comparison of evi¬ 
dence and authorities; and it will serve as a proof 
how little expert he was in that art of an historian, 
and how little he valued its results : for, though in 
his digression he professes to believe in the superior 
authority of the inscription, in the main course of his 
narrative he follows the beaten track of writers who 
had gone before him. He makes no mention of other 
monuments which we know to have existed ; the 
brazen column in the temple of the Aventine Diana, 
on which was engraven the treaty of Servius Tullius 
with the Latins, with the names of the tribes who 
were members of the league {Dion. Hal., 4, 26); 
the treaty of Tarquinius Superbus with Gabii, writ¬ 
ten on a bull’s hide, and preserved in the temple of 
Dius Fidius {Dion. Hal., 4, 59); a treaty with the 
Sabines, in the time of the kings {Hor., Epist., 2, 1, 
25) ; the treaty with Carthage in the first year of the 
republic {Polyb., 3,22) (and here his negligence is 
without excuse ; for, even though the document itself 
might have perished before his time, hv could have 
750 


found the translation of it in Polybius, if he had con¬ 
sulted him before he began to narrate the Punic wars) ; 
and, finally, the treaty with Porsenna, which was 
known to Pliny (34, 14). He does not, therefore, 
found his narrative upon contemporary records, but 
avowedly draws his materials from the works of ear¬ 
lier annalists, such as Fabius Pictor, Calpurnius Piso, 
Valerius Antias, Licinius Macer, iElius Tubero, and 
reposes upon their authority. As long as his guides 
agree in the main points of their story, he follows 
them without fear or doubt. When they openly con¬ 
tradict each other, especially on questions of names 
or dates, then he sometimes honestly confesses the 
difficulty, and acknowledges in general terms the un¬ 
certainty of the history of the first centuries of the 
city. But very many discrepances less flagrant, and 
even some as important as those which he has speci¬ 
fied, he passes over without notice ; and yet we know 
with certainty that they existed, because they appear 
in the narrative of Dionysius, who drew from the 
same authorities as Livy. But, though the course of 
his narrative is sometimes checked by the conflict of 
external testimony, he is never induced to pause, or 
doubt, by any internal difficulty, any inconsistency or 
contradiction, or perplexity in the received story. 
Nothing less than a miracle is too strange for his ac¬ 
quiescence. It is evident that he has bestowed no la¬ 
bour upon examining the probability of the events 
which he relates, or investigating their connexion as 
causes and effects.—There are also sufficient proofs 
that he wrote hastily and even carelessly. He some¬ 
times mentions incidentally, in a subsequent part of 
his history, circumstances which he has omitted in 
their proper place. Thus it is only by his remarks 
on the proposal for communicating the dignities of 
pontiff and augur to the plebeians (10, 6) that we learn 
from him that Ramnes, Tatienses, and Luceres were 
names of the ancient tribes. He sometimes repeats 
(35, 21 and 39), sometimes contradicts himself (30, 
22, and 34, 44). It is an instance and proof of botn 
his carelessness and his want of familiarity with the 
antiquities of his country, that, though he expressly 
informs us that till a very short time before the cap¬ 
ture of the city, the Roman way of fighting was in 
close phalanx, with long spears, yet in no description 
of a battle does he allude to such tactics, but com¬ 
monly uses of the older times the terms which relate 
to the more modern structure of the Roman army. 
We cannot, therefore, feel assured that he always ren- 
resented accurately the statements of the older annal¬ 
ists from whom he takes his materials.—Any errors, 
however, which might arise from these causes, would 
be single and detached, could bear but a very small 
ratio to the bulk of the history, and would not affect 
its general spirit. But the very tone and manner of 
Livy’s work, however great rnay be his powers of de¬ 
scription, however lucid his style of narrative, how¬ 
ever much he may dazzle the imagination or interest 
the feelings of his readers, are a warning against im¬ 
plicit belief. He excelled in narration and in the el¬ 
oquent expression of excited feelings, and he obvious¬ 
ly delighted in the exercise of his genius. In report¬ 
ing the traditions of the early ages of Rome, he seems 
less desirous to ascertain the truth than to array the 
popular story in the most attractive garb. He is not 
so much an historian as a poet. As the history ad¬ 
vances and the truth of facts is better ascertained, 
he is of course compelled to record them with great¬ 
er fidelity ; but still his whole work is a tiiumphal 
celebration of the heroic spirit and military glory of 
Rome. Here, then, is a disturbing force which has 
borne him away from the strict line of historical truth. 
To this desire of exalting the glory of his country (and, 
no doubt, to a similar impulse actuating those from 
whom he copied) we must ascribe the singular phe¬ 
nomena which appear on the face of the history, that. 





LIVIUS. 


LOC 


in perpetual wars with the surrounding states, the Ro¬ 
mans were never defeated in the open field (9, 19); 
that when they were distressed, it was always by pes¬ 
tilence, or famine, or sedition; and that, at such sea¬ 
sons, their enemies abstained from attacking them ; 
that they gained victory after victory without subduing 
their opponents; that taken cities reappear in the 
power of their original possessors ; that consuls and 
dictators triumph in succession over nations that are 
still able to supply subjects for new triumphs to new 
consuls and new dictators ; that slaughters, which 
must have exhausted any state of ancient Italy, dimin¬ 
ished not the number of their perpetually-renovated 
adversaries. To this passion for extolling the military 
reputation of Rome we owe the comparative neglect 
of the less popular and less ostentatious subjects of 
domestic history. Every war and triumph of which 
any memorial, true or false, existed, is scrupulously 
registered ; but the original constitution of the state, 
the division of its citizens, the several rights, the con¬ 
tests between the orders, the constitution of the gen¬ 
eral or partial assemblies of the people, the powers of 
the magistrates; the laws, the jurisprudence, their 
progressive melioration; these are subjects on which 
our information is vague, scanty, and ill-connected. 
It is evident, that to the mind of Livy they possessed 
comparatively little interest; and that on these mat¬ 
ters, to say the least, he did not exert himself to cor¬ 
rect the errors or supply the defects of the writers who 
preceded him. He was satisfied if from a popular 
commotion he could extract the materials of an elo¬ 
quent speech. It is a sufficient proof that on this 
most important portion of Roman history he was re¬ 
ally ignorant, that, with all his powers of language, he 
does not convey clear and vivid ideas to the minds of 
is readers. Who has risen from the perusal of the 
®rly books of Livy with the distinct notion of a client 
Or of an agrarian law 1 (Malden , History of Rome , 

p. 39, seqq.) —Inexperienced, too, in military affairs, 
numerous blunders have been attributed to him in re¬ 
lation to encampments, circumvallations, sieges, and 
warlike operations of all kinds. ( Casaubon , Praf. ad 
Polyb. — Folard, Comment. — Niebuhr , Rom. Gcsch., 
vol. 2, p. 499, 514.) He did not, like Polybius, visit 
the regions which had been the theatre of the great 
events which he commemorates, and hence arise many 
mistakes in geography, and much confusion with re¬ 
gard to the situation of cities and the boundaries of 
districts. ( Lachmann , de Fontibus Hist. Liv ., p. 

106.) “ Considered in this point of view,” says Gib¬ 

bon, “ Livy appears merely as a man of letters, little 
acquainted with the art of war, and careless in point 
of geography.” ( Misc. Works, vol. 5, p. 371.)—We 
have already spoken of the style of Livy. One point, 
however, connected with this part of the subject re¬ 
mains to be noticed. That fastidious critic and envi¬ 
ous detractor of his literary contemporaries, Asinius 
Pollio, had said that there was a certain Patavinily in 
the style of Livy ; by which he meant to convey an 
idea that there was something in his expressions which 
bespoke a citizen of Patavium, and which would not 
have appeared in the style of a native of Rome. 
(Quint., Inst. Or., 8, 1.) It is evident, from the pas¬ 
sage of Quintilian just referred to, where this criticism 
of Pollio’s is recorded, that it applied entirely to pro¬ 
vincial words or phrases, not altogether consonant to 
the refined urbanity of Rome, which could not so 
easily be communicated to strangers as the freedom of 
the city. The opinion of Beni, who supposed that, 
because the Patavians were all staunch republicans, 
the Patavinity of Livy must have consisted in his po¬ 
litical partiality to the faction of Pompey, appears to 
be entirely erroneous ; for such principles would not 
have been blamed by Pollio, who rather affected old 
republican sentiments, and extolled the Pompeians. 
(Tactt., Annal ., 4, 34.) The notion adopted by Bu- 


daeus (De Philosophia, fol. 22), who thinks that Livy’s 
Patavinity lay in his enmity to the Gauls, who were 
the natural foes of the Patavians, and often ravaged 
their territories, is equally without foundation. Nor 
is the conjecture of Barthius and Le Yayer, that it 
consisted in an undue partiality for his native district, 
much more successful. Morhof, which was no diffi¬ 
cult task, has refuted all these theories (De Patavini- 
tate Liviana liber ) ; and, justly believing that the Pa¬ 
tavinity of which Livy was accused was solely exhibit¬ 
ed in style, he has entered into an elaborate discussion 
concerning what defect or blemish was implied in the 
word Patavinity. Some, as he informs us, have thought, 
with Laurentius Pignorius (Origine Paduane , c. 17), 
that it appeared in a certain orthography peculiar to 
the Patavians, as sibe for sibi, quase for quasi. Ptol- 
emaeus Flavius thinks that it lay in the diffuseness of 
style to which, this author says, the Patavians, both 
ancient and modern, have been addicted in all their 
compositions. (Centuria Conjectaneorum, c. 45.) 
This is the opinion which seems, on the whole, to be 
adopted by Morhof himself, and by Funccius ; and it 
is founded on Pollio’s having affected an admiration of 
that succinct and jejune mode of composition, which 
was erroneously considered as approaching the Attic 
taste, and which Brutus and Calvus employed in ora¬ 
tory, in opposition to the more copious style of elo¬ 
quence exercised by Cicero and Hortensius. Pollio 
himself would probably have been puzzled to define 
his precise notion of Patavinity : but it is most prob¬ 
able that it applied to some peculiarities of expression 
which were the remains of the ancient dialect of Italy. 
It appears, though this is a subject of controversy, that 
there was a refined and vulgar idiom at Rome, and the 
difference would be still wider between the urban and 
provincial tongues. The boast of the former was to 
be free from everything rustic or foreign, and to pos¬ 
sess a certain undefinable purity, simplicity, and grace. 
It was either in a want of this charm, or in some pro¬ 
vincial expressions, that Patavinity must have consist¬ 
ed, if, indeed, its existence in the work of Livy was 
not altogether imaginary on the part of Pollio. But 
neither Erasmus, who has repeated the censure, nor 
any other writer, has pointed out an example of Pata¬ 
vinity. Few of the great Latin authors were Romans 
by birth. The only names of which the capital can 
boast are those of Lucretius, Caesar, and Varro. Were 
all the other poets, orators, and historians free from 
provincial idioms ; and did Livy alone retain Patavin¬ 
ity 1 He was older, indeed, when he first visited the 
capital, than Horace or Ovid, but he was not so far 
advanced in life as Virgil or Catullus when they first 
found their way to Rome from Mantua and Verona. 
(Dunlop's Roman Literature , vol. 3, p. 469, seqq .)— 
The best editions of Livy are, that of Crevier, Paris, 
1735-41, 4to, 6 vols. ; Drakenborch, Amst., 1738-46, 
4to, 7 vols. ; Ruddimann, Edin., 1751, 12mo, 4 vols.; 
Ernesti, Lips., 1769-1804, 8vo, 4 vols. ; Stroth, im¬ 
proved by Doering, Gotha., 1796-1813, 12mo, 7 vols. ; 
Ruperti, Gotting., 1807-1809, 6 vols. 8vo ; and that 
of Lemaire, Paris, 1822-1825, 12 vols. 8vo. 

Locri, I. a people of Greece. The Greeks com¬ 
prehended under the name of Locri three tribes of the 
same people, which, though distinct from each other in 
territory as well as in nominal designation, were doubt 
less derived from a common stock. These were the 
Locri Ozolae, the Epicnemidii, and Opuntii. A colony 
of the last named tribe, who at an early period had set¬ 
tled on the shores of Magna Graecia, were distinguished 
by the name of Epizephyrii, or Western Locri. The 
Epicnemidian and Opuntian Locri alone appear to have 
been known to Homer, as he makes no mention of the 
Ozolae ; whence we might conclude that they were 
not so ancient as the rest of the nation. The earliest 
and most authentic accounts concur in ascribing the 
origin of this people to the Leleges. (Aristot., ap 





L0CR1. 


LOt 


Shab ., 32 J .— Hesiod., ap. eund. — Seym., Ck., 590.— 
Dicaarch., v. 71.) The Locri Ozoloe occupied a nar¬ 
row tract of country, situated on the northern shore of 
the Corinthian Gulf, commencing at the HCtolian Rhi- 
um, and terminating near Crissa. To the west and 
north they adjoined the HStolians, and partly also, in 
the latter direction, the Dorians, while to the east they 
bordered on the district of Delphi, belonging to Pho- 
cis. They are said to have been a colony from the 
more celebrated Locrians of the east ( Strabo , 427.— 
Eustath., ad II., 2, 531), and their name, according to 
fabulous accounts, was derived from some fetid springs 
(o£w, oleo ) near the hill of Taphius or Taphiassus, 
situated on their coast, and beneath which it was re¬ 
ported that the centaur Nessus had been entombed. 
( Strab ., 426.— Pint., Qucest. Grcec., 15. — Myrsil., 
Lesb., ap. Antigon. Paradox., 129.) Other explana¬ 
tions of the name are given under the article Ozolae.— 
Thucydides represents them as a wild, uncivilized 
race, and addicted from the earliest period to theft 
and rapine (1, 5). In the Peloponnesian war they ap¬ 
pear to have sided with the Athenians, as the latter 
held possession of Naupactus, their principal town 
and harbour, probably from enmity to the iEtolians, 
who had espoused the cause of the Peloponnesians. 
( Thucyd ., 3, 95.) — The Epicnemidian Locri, whom 
we must next describe, occupied a small district im¬ 
mediately adjoining Thermopylas, and confined be¬ 
tween Mount Cnemis, a branch of CEta, whence they 
derived their name, and the sea of Euboea. ( Strabo, 
416, 425.— Eustath., ad Dionys. Perieg., v. 426.) 
Homer classes them with the Opuntii, under the gen¬ 
eral name of Locri. (II., 2, 535.) They derived their 
name of Epicnemidii from their situation in the vicin¬ 
ity of Mount Cnemis.—The Opuntian Locri follow 
after the Epicnemidii: they occupied a line of coast of 
about fifteen miles, beginning a little south of Cne- 
mides, and extending to the town of Halse, on the 
frontiers of Bceotia. Inland their territory reached to 
the Phocian towns of Hyampolis and Abae. This peo¬ 
ple derived their name from the city of Opus, their 
metropolis. ( Strabo, 425.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, 
vol. 2, p. 104.)—II. A people of Magna Gracia, ori¬ 
ginally a colony of the Locri Opuntii from Greece. 
They first settled near the promontory of Zephyrium, 
at the lower extremity of Bruttium, on the Ionian Sea, 
and hence obtained the appellation of Epizephyrii, by 
which they were distinguished from the Locri of 
Greece. Here they built the city of Locri. They 
removed, however, from this position three or four 
years afterward, and built another city on a height 
named Mount Esopis. Strabo, however, makes the 
Locri who settled in Bruttium to have keen a division 
of the Ozolae from the Crisssean Gulf, and remarks, that 
Ephorus was incorrect in ascribing the settlement to 
the Locri Opuntii; but it is certain that this opinion 
of Ephorus seems to be supported by the testimony of 
many other writers, and therefore is generally preferred 
by modern critics. ( Mazzoch. in Tab. Heracl. diatr., 
1, c. 5.— Heyne . Opusc. Acad., vol. 2, p. 46.— Id., ad 
Virg., JEn., 3, 399.) We derive some curious infor¬ 
mation relative to the origin of the Epizephyrian Locri 
from Polybius, who acquaints us, that, from his having 
been the means of obtaining for this city a remission 
of heavy contributions on more than one occasion, he 
had contracted a feeling of kindness and partiality to¬ 
wards its inhabitants, which they, on the other hand, re¬ 
paid by every mark of gratitude and attention. His 
frequent residence among them enabled him, as he 
states, to inquire minutely into their laws and institu¬ 
tions, so much admired by antiquity as the work of 
the celebrated lawgiver Zaleucus ; and also into the 
early history, as well as origin, of their city. To the 
latter point he had paid the greater attention, from the 
obloquy and calumny which Timseus, the Sicilian his¬ 
torian, had heaped upon Aristotle, in his endeavour to 
752 


refute what he deemed his false representation of that 
event. The great philosopher, in his work on the Ital¬ 
ian republics, stated, that the colony which founded 
•the Epizephyrian city was formed principally by slaves, 
who, during the absence of their masters, had carried 
olf their wives. This assertion, which called forth the 
invective of Timseus, was, however, supported by Po¬ 
lybius on the authority of the Locri themselves; from 
whom he learned, that all their nobility was to be re¬ 
ferred to the female part of their community, who had 
accompanied their ancestors from Greece, and were 
descended from the most illustrious families of theii 
metropolis ; and that, so far from having derived theii 
polity and customs from that quarter, as the Sicilian 
historian pretended, they had borrowed many of the 
rites and usages of the Siculi, who were in possession 
of the country at the time of their arrival, and whom 
they afterward expelled. ( Polyb.,fragm., 12, 5.)—But 
it was to the institutions of their great legislator Za¬ 
leucus that this city was mainly indebted for its pros¬ 
perity and fame. His laws, which, according to the 
assertion of Demosthenes, continued in full force for 
the space of 200 years (Orat. in Timocr.), are said to 
have been a judicious selection from the Cretan, Lace¬ 
daemonian, and Areopagitic codes, to which were, how¬ 
ever, added several original enactments ; among these, 
that is noticed as particularly deserving of commenda¬ 
tion by which every offence had its peculiar penalty 
attached to it ; whereas, in other systems of egisla 
tion, punishment was awarded according to the arbi¬ 
trary decision of the judge. The Thurians, who after¬ 
ward adopted the code of Zaleucus, injured its sim¬ 
plicity by their additions, in which too much atten¬ 
tion was paid to minute points and matters of detail. 
(Ephor., ap. Strab., 260.—Compare Plat., de Leg., 1, 
p. 638. — Diod. Sic., 12, 20.— Alhen., 10, 7. — Cic., 
de Leg., 2, 6.) The situation of the ancient city of 
Locri has not been hitherto determined with accuracy, 
though the most judicious antiquarians and travellers 
agree in fixing it in the vicinity of Gerace. (Barr., 1. 
3, 9.— Cluver., It. Ant., vol. 2, p. 1301.— Romanelli, 
vol. 1, p. 151.) This modern town stands on a hill, 
which is probably the Mons Esopis of Strabo, and 
where the citadel was doubtless placed. But the 
name of Pagliapoli, which is attached to some con¬ 
siderable ruins below Gerace, naturally leads to the 
supposition that this was the site of the Epizephyrian 
Locri. (Reidcsel, Voyage dans la Grande Grece, p. 
140.— Swinburne's Travels, p. 340.) D’Anville re¬ 
moved it too far to the south when he supposed it to 
accord with the Mott a di Brurrano. (Cramer, l. c .) 
Niebuhr states the curious fact, that there is still re 
maining at the present day, in the district of ancient 
Locri, a population that speaks Greek, and he cites in 
support of this assertion the testimony of Count Zur- 
lo, an Italian noble. (Roman History, vol. 1, p. 51, 
in notis. — Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol. 2, p. 404, 
seqq.) 

Locusta, a notorious female poisoner at Rome du¬ 
ring the first century of our era. She poisoned Clau¬ 
dius by order of Agrippina, and Britannicus by order 
of Nero. The latter loaded her with presents after the 
perpetration of the deed, and actually placed learners 
under her, in order that her art might be perpetuated. 
She was put to death by Galba. (Tacit., Ann. 12, 
66.— Id. ib., 13, 15.— Sueton., Vit. Ner., 33.— Juv 
Sat., 1, 71.) 

Locutius. Vid. Aius. 

Lollia Paullina, grand-daughter of Lollius Paul- 
linus, who made himself so infamous by his rapacity 
in the provinces. She married C. Memmius, a man 
of consular rank, but was taken from him by Caligula, 
who made her his own wife, but soon after repudiated 
her. (Sueton., Vit. Calig., 25.~Dio Cass., 59, 12.) 
She afterward, on the death of Messalina, aspired tfl 
a union with Claudius, but was put to death through 




LON 


LON 


£he influence of Agr.j pina. ( Sueton., Vit. Claud., 26. 
- -Tacit., Ann., 12, 22.) 

Loluus, I. M. Lollius Palicanus, a Roman noble¬ 
man in the time of Augustus, who gave him (A.U.C. 
728, B.C. 26) the government of Galatia, with the 
title of propraetor. He acquitted himself so well in 
this office, that the emperor, in order to recompense 
his services, named him consul, in 732, with L. Aure¬ 
lius Lepidus. Being sent in 737 to engage the Ger¬ 
mans, who had made an irruption into Gaul, he had 
the misfortune, after some successes, to experience a 
defeat, known in history by the appellation of clades 
Lolliana, and in which he lost the eagle of the fifth le¬ 
gion. It appears, however, that he was able to repair 
the disaster, and regain the confidence of Augustus, 
for this monarch chose him, about A.U.C, 751, B.C. 

3, to accompany his grandson Caius Caesar (afterward 
the Emperor Caligula) into the East, as a kind of di¬ 
rector of his youth (“ veluti moderator juventce .” Veil. 
Patcrc., 2, 102). In the course of this mission, he 
became guilty of the greatest depredations, and formed 
secret plots, which were disclosed to Caius Caesar by 
the kingof the Parthians. Lollius died suddenly a few 
days after this, leaving behind him immense riches, 
but a most odious memory. {Pliny, 9, 35, 57.) 
Whether his end was voluntary or otherwise, Velleius 
Paterculus {l. c .) declares himself unable to decide. 
Horace addressed to him one of his odes (the ninth of 
the fourth book) in the year of his consulship with Lep¬ 
idus, but died seven or eight years before Lollius had 
disgraced himself by his conduct in the East, (Com¬ 
pare Sanadon, ad Horat., 1. c.) —II. A son of the pre¬ 
ceding, to whom Horace addressed two of his epistles 
(the second and eighteenth of the first book). He was 
the eldest son of M. Lollius Palicanus, and is therefore 
styled by Horace Maxime {soil. natu). Several mod¬ 
ern scholars, such as Torrentius, Baxter, Dacier, Glan- 
dorp ( Onomast ., p. 547), and Moreri {Diet. Hist., vol. 

4, p. 192), make Horace, in the epistle just referred to, 
address Lollius the father, not the son. This, how¬ 
ever, violates chronology, since it appears from Epist. 
2, that the person to whom it is inscribed was quite a 
young man. The other side of the question is advo¬ 
cated by Noris {ad Cenotaph. Pis , 2, 14, p. 255), 
Bayle {Diet. Hist., s. v.) t Masson ( Vit. Hor., p. 265), 
and among the editors of Horace by Sanadon, Ges- 
ner, Doring, &c. The epithet maxime, as employed 
by Horace, has also given rise to considerable discus¬ 
sion. Torrentius, Dacier, and many other commenta¬ 
tors, refer :t to the mental qualities of the individual; 
while Scaliger, Marcilius, Meibomius, Vanderbourg, 
and others, consider Maxime a family or proper name. 
The authority, however, which has been cited from 
Gruter (638, 2), to substantiate this last opinion, is 
fully opposed by chronological arguments. (Consult 
Obbarius, ad Horat., 1. c.) Besides, the distinctive 
family name of the Lollii was Palicanus, or, as it is 
written on coins, Palikanus. (Compare Burmann, 
ad Quintil., 4, 2.— Erncsti, Clav. Cic., s. v. Palika¬ 
nus .— Val. Max., 3,8, 3. — Ellendt, ad Cic., Brut., 
p. 162.— Rasche, Lex. Rei Num., vol. 4, col. 1815.) 

Londinium {Ptol. A ovSlvlov .—Less correctly Lon- 
dinum), a citv of the Trinobantes, in Britain, now Lon¬ 
don. The place appears to have had a very remote 
antiquity, and already existed in the time of Caesar, 
though, in consequence of his march being in a differ¬ 
ent direction, it remained unknown to him. Tacitus 
{Ann., 14, 33) speaks of it as a place of great com¬ 
merce, and, indeed, its favourable situation for trade 
must have given the place a very early origin. Its 
later name was Augusta Trinobantum, in honour, prob¬ 
ably, of some Roman empress. (Compare Ammianus 
Marcellinus, 27, 8. “ Lundinium, vetus oppidum, 

quod Augustam posleritas appcllavit .”) Bede styles 
it Lundonia, and also Civitas Lundonia (2, 4, 7 ; 2, 
3) Ancient Londinium is generally thought to have 
5 C 


occupied that part of the modern city w.'iich lies on 
the north of the Thames, near the tower of London. 
As, however, Ptolemy assigns Londinium to the Can- 
tii, many have been led to decide in favour of the bo¬ 
rough of Southwark , on the south side of the river, or, 
rather, to the part immediately west of this, especially 
as here many remains of antiquity have been found. 
It is most probable, however, that the ancient city 
lay on both sides of the stream, so that Ptolemy might 
assign it as well to the Trinobantes and Atrebatii as 
to the Cantii. ( Mannert, Geogr., vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 146.) 

Longimanus, a surname of Artaxerxes I., in Greek 
I daKpoxeip. Plutarch states that this appellation was 
given him because his right hand was longer than his 
left; but Strabo says that he was so called from the 
extraordinary length of his arms, which, on his stand¬ 
ing upright, could reach his knees. {Strab., 735.) 
He makes him to have been, in other respects, one of 
the handsomest of men {ko,?,?u<7tov dvOpdmov .— Vid. 
Artaxerxes I.) 

Longinus, a celebrated Greek critic and rhetorical 
writer, who flourished during the reigns of Flavius 
Claudius and Aurelian. {Photius, Cod. 265, p. 1470. 
— Georg. Syncell., Chron., p. 384.) The place of 
his birth is uncertain. Some make him to have been 
a native of Palmyra {Seller., Ant. Palrnyr., p. 288), 
others of Emesa in Syria {Gabr., de Petra. — Holsten., 
Vit. Porphyr., c. 5), and others, again, as for example 
Langbaen, of Pamphylia, confounding him with Dio¬ 
nysius of Phaselis. The most probable opinion is 
that which regards him as an Athenian. {Jons., Hist. 
Phil., 3, 14.— Ruhnken, Vit. Long., 3.) It is of 
Longinus that Eunapius first made the remark which 
has been so often repeated in similar cases ; he called 
him a living library and a walking study. (BtfiAio- 
OrjKT] tlq e/j,ipv% 0 (; uai Treptnarovv M ovaelov. — Eunap., 
in Vit. Porph ., p. 7, ed. Boissonade.) Longinus himseli 
informs us, in the preface to his work nept rc/lovf, pre¬ 
served by Porphyry in the life of Plotinus, p. 127, that, 
from an early age, he travelled much in company with 
his parents, surveyed many regions, and made himself 
acquainted with all the individuals, distinguished in 
philosophy, whom his various journeyings thus threw 
in his way. He became the pupil of Ammonius Sac- 
cas at Aiexandrea, and also of Origen, a disciple of 
Ammonius, not to be confounded, however, with Ori¬ 
gen, the famous Christian writer. He was a genuine 
Platonist, as appears not only from his works, or, rather, 
the fragments of his works, that have come down to us, 
but also from the commentaries on Plato composed by 
him, and of which Olympiodorus and Proclus make 
mention. {Ruhnken, Vit. Long., § 6.) The loss of 
these commentaries is the more to be regretted by us, 
as it would appear that Longinus directed his attention 
to the style as well as the doctrines of Plato. After 
having completed his course of study and preparation, 
Longinus opened a school at Athens, giving instruction 
not merely in the oratorical art, but in criticism and 
also in philosophy. ( Ruhnken, Vit. Long.; t) 9.) 
Here he numbered the celebrated Porphyry among his 
disciples, whose Syrian name Malech he changed into 
Porphyrius of synonymous import. {Eunap., in Vit. 
Porph., p. 13.) After having spent a large portion of 
his life at Athens in the instruction of youth and the 
composition of numerous works, Longinus visited the 
East, either to transact some business at Emesa, or 
to spend a short time with certain relations of his who 
dwelt there. It was on this occasion that he became 
known to Zenobia, the celebrated Queen of Palmyra, 
who engaged his services as her preceptor in Greek. 
{Vopiscus, Vit. Aurel., 30.) He was subsequently 
appointed her minister, and aided her with his coun¬ 
sels. Longinus is said, in his new capacity, to have 
induced Zenobia to shake off the Roman yoke, and to 
have dictated the proud and spirited letter which she 
sent to the Emperor Aurelian (c. 30). This letter so 





LON 


LONGINUS. 

\ . .< 

irritated the Roman empero^that, having shortly after 
made himself master of Paln%a>,. he caused Longinus 
to be put to death (A.D. 27ff]fe^Zenobia, overcome 
by the terrors of impending destruction, became from 
a heroine a mere woman, and sought to propitiate the 
forgiveness of her conqueror by imputing the whole 
blame of the war to the counsels of Longinus. ( Zos- 
imus, 1, 56.) The spirit of the minister, however, 
rose in proportion to the danger, and he met his fate 
with all the calmness of a true philosopher.—The 
principal work of Longinus is his treatise IIep£ r 'Y fiovg 
(“ On the Sublime ,” or, more accurately, perhaps, “On 
elevation of thought and language”). This is one of 
the most celebrated productions of antiquity, and is 
probably the fragment of a much larger work. There 

is, however, some doubt whether this treatise was in 
reality written by him. Modern editors have given 
the name of the author of the work as “ Dionysius 
Longinus,” but in the best manuscripts it is said to 
be written “ by Dionysius or Longinus” (Aiovvaiov rj 
A oyytvov), and in the Florence manuscript by an 
anonymous author. Suidas says, that the name of 
the counsellor of Zenobia was Longinus Cassius. 
Some critics have conjectured that this treatise was 
written by Dionysius of Halicarnassus or by Dionysius 
of Pergamum, who is mentioned by Strabo (625) as a 
distinguished teacher of rhetoric ; but the difference 
of style between this work and the acknowledged 
works of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, renders this con¬ 
jecture very improbable ; and as to the other Dionys¬ 
ius, the conjecture has no foundation. (Consult Re¬ 
marks on the supposed Dionysius Longinus , &c., 
London , 1826, 8vo.) The author of the treatise on 
the Sublime, whoever he may have been, develops in 

it, with a truly philosophical spirit, the nature of sub¬ 
limity in thought and expression. He establishes the 
laws for its use, and illustrates these by examples, 
which constitute, at the same time, an ingenious cri¬ 
tique upon the highest productions of antiquity. The 
style of the work is animated and correct; though 
critics think that they discover in it forms of express¬ 
ion which could not have been employed prior to the 
third century, and which stand in direct opposition to 
the theory of Amati, this scholar making the work to 
have been composed in the age of Augustus. Ruhn- 
ken thought he discovered, in reading Apsines, a 
Greek rhetorician, all the lost work of Longinus on 
Rhetoric excepting the first chapter. He found it in¬ 
termingled with the work of the former, and recog¬ 
nised it by its style. He pronounces it not inferior to 
the treatise on the Sublime. A communication on 
this subject was transmitted by him to the editor of a 
French periodical, “ Bibliotheque des Sciences et des 
Beaux-Arts," and appeared in 1765 (vol. 24, pt. 1, p. 
273). The accuracy of Ruhnken’s opinion, however, 
in assigning the fragment in question to the critic 
Longinus, is far from being generally acceded to. 
Weiske gives a portion of the fragment, with a Latin 
version, in his edition of Longinus, but can find no 
similarity between it and the general style and manner 
of Longinus. His decision is evidently a correct one. 

( Weiske , Vroef. ad ed. Long., p. xxiv.) The best edi¬ 
tion of the treatise II epl "Y ipovg is that of Weiske, 
Lips., 1809, 8vo, reprinted at London, 1820.—An 
enumeration of the works of Longinus, as far they can 
be ascertained, is given by Ruhnken, in his disserta¬ 
tion on the Life and Writings of Longinus, published 
under the fictitious name of Schardam, and reprinted 
in Weiske’s edition (p. LXIX., seqq.) The list is 
as follows: 1. Or QiXoXoyoi, or, more correctly, per¬ 
haps, ^ikoXoyot oplkiai. ( Weiske, ad Ruhnk., Vit. 
Long., p. LVI., in notis .) It was a work in more than 
twenty books, and was devoted to a critical examina¬ 
tion of the writers of antiquity.—2. Ile/w rod Kara 
'MeiStov (“ On the Oration of Demos f henes against 
Midias"). —3. ’Arropr/para 'OpppiKa (' Homeric Difjfi- 

754 


cutties , l. e., an examination of difficult points relative 
to the writings of Homer).—4. E i (juXboocbog "0 pypog 
(“ Whether Homer was a Philosopher ").—5. IlpodXr/- 
para 'Oprjpov Kal Xvoeig (“Homeric Problems, and 
their Solutions"). —6. T tv a rcapu rug laroptag ol ypap- 
par ikoi tig icropiKa k^rjyovvrai (“ What things com 
trary to history grammarians state as if they were in 
accordance with it ").—7. nepr rtiv nap’ 'Oprjpcp 7ro?tXa 
oypa tvov a Cm Xeljeov (“ On words in Homer that have 
various significations ").—8. ’Arrintiv Xetjeov tndoocic 
/3' (“ A Lexicon of Attic forms of expression"). —9. 
A Djeig ’Avripaxov , Kal 'HpaKXeuvog (“ Peculiar forms 
of expression in Antimachus and Heracleon"). The 
grammarians called by the name of A e^eig those words 
which were remarkable for any peculiarity of form or 
signification. Antimachus and Heracleon were two 
poets.—10. nepi tdviKdv (“ On names of Nations." 
Gentile nouns).—11. XxoXia elg ro rov '4 fyaioriuvog 
eyxeipidiou (“ Scholia on the Manual of Hephceslion"). 
—12. mpi ovvdeoeog Xoyuv (“On the Arrangement of 
Words ").—13. Tex’vr] (ngropiKp (“ Art of Rhetoric ").— 
14. E lg rrjv prjropiKyv 'H ppoyevovg (“ On the Rhetoric 
of Hermogenes"). —15. ILpi "Yi povg. —16. Ilepi ap- 
Xtiv (“ On the Beginning of Things") —17. He pi re- 
Xovg (“ De finibus bonorum et malorum ").—18. nepe 
bpprjg (“ On Instinct"). —19. ’EmaroXy npog rov ’Ape- 
Xiov (“ Letter to Amelius ").—20. Depi rfjg Kara TlXa- 
rova diKaioqvvyg (“ On the Platonic definition of just 
Conduct)". —21. Ilejoi rtiv Ibetiv (“On Ideas"). There 
appear to have been two treatises with this title, one 
against Plotinus, and the other against Porphyry.—22. 
Ilepi fivxvg (“ On the Soul"). —23. 'O baivadog (“Ocfiz- 
nathus." An eloge on Odsenathus, the deceased 
husband of Zenobia).—24. Commentaries on Plato. 
(Compare the remarks of Toup, ad fragm., VIII.— 
Long., p. 545, ed. Weiske, p. 367, ed. Toup.) —II. C. 
Cassius Longinus, a friend of Antony the orator, and 
distinguished for his acquaintance with historical, legal, 
and antiquarian topics. ( Cic ., Or., 1, 60.— Ernesti, 
Clav. Cic., s. v.) 

Longobardi. Vid. Langobardi. 

Longus, a Greek writer, author of a prose romance 
entitled HoipeviKa, rd Kara A dtpviv Kal XXoyv (“ Pas¬ 
torals relative to Daphnis and Chloe"), but more com¬ 
monly cited as the TloipeviKa (“ Pastorals") of Longus, 
or the A dcjrvig Kal XXoy (“ Daphnis and Chloe"). The 
period when he lived is uncertain, and he is neither 
named by Suidas nor any ancient writer. Perhaps an 
author of this name never existed ; nor is the matter 
rendered at all clearer by the circumstance of Longus 
being a Latin, not a Greek, word. Harless, in fact, 
supposes that the name originated in a mistake. The 
celebrated Florence manuscript has no author’s name 
whatever. The title runs simply A ecrbiantiv epuriKtiv 
Xoyoi 6', the last word of which may have been taken 
by a copyist for the name of the romancer. All wri¬ 
ters agree in assigning to the “Daphnis and Chloe” a 
date subsequent to the Ethiopics of Heliodorus, but 
some misapprehension has existed among the superfi¬ 
cially learned with regard to the evidence of the style 
The French version of Amyot, deformed as a transla¬ 
tion, but beautiful as an original composition by its 
naivete, had given the general reader an idea that the 
simplicity of the subject was reflected in the language 
of the original. The fact, however, is precisely the 
reverse. The diction 4 f Longus, as-Villemain remarks, 
“ is curiously elegant, ingeniously concise, and richly 
symmetrical.” The art of composition was never 
more laboriously or more skilfully applied ; every word 
is placed in its proper position with the most delicate 
care ; the adaptation of terms, the relation even of 
sounds, are all so skilfully adjusted, as to make the 
same writer observe, that the effect of the whole is rather 
coquettish than graceful. A his very care, however, this 
laborious elegance, instead of identifying the author, as 
on a hasty glance it would seem to do, with the classic 




LONGUS, 


LOT 


ages of antiquity, proclaims the sophis .1 The singular 
circumstance is, that neither Suidas nor Photius so 
much as allude to the work or name the author, 
which, unaccountable as it may appear, would almost 
induce us to imagine, in spite of the thing being pro¬ 
nounced “impossible” by Villemain, that the romance 
really was produced in the midst of the bad taste and 
wearisome scholastics of the eighth century. The 
imitations mentioned by Courier rather tend to strength¬ 
en this suspicion than otherwise; for if the work were 
really pillaged by Achilles Tatius, Xenophon of Ephe¬ 
sus, Nicetas Eugenianus, Eumathius, and the whole 
host of scribblers from the second century downward, 
this would prove incontestably that it was intimately 
and popularly known : and why all the writers and 
critics of so vast a space of time should have conspired 
to preserve an inviolable silence on the subject, to 
conceal the author’s name, to refrain from the slightest 
allusion to his piece, is utterly beyond comprehension. 
We must confess, that it does require some stretch of 
faith to believe that a Longus was produced in the 
eighth century, a period which affords no name better 
known than that of the chronicle-maker Syncellus. 
But, if this were granted, it would be easy to imagine 
that such a man would be acquainted with the literature 
of his language from the earliest times, and more es¬ 
pecially with those productions of romantic fiction 
which he was destined to imitate and surpass. More¬ 
over, without a particle of invention himself, and gift¬ 
ed rather with an ingenious' industry directed by an 
acquired and fastidious taste, than with natural grace 
and power, he would be thrown upon these for his re¬ 
sources : he would gather even from the weeds of the 
garden of literature those minute events which would 
become visible to the eye only when collected and ar¬ 
ranged in his cell; and the future examiner, by a nat¬ 
ural mistake, would trace the theft to the poor rather 
than to the rich, just as we may say of the pulpy end 
of the grass-flower, it tastes or smells of honey, and 
not of the fragrant stores of the bee, they taste or 
smell of the grass-flower. — “Daphnis and Chloe” 
is the romance, par excellence, of physical love. It 
is a history of the senses rather than of the mind, a 
picture of the development of the instincts rather 
than of the sentiments. In this point of view it is 
absolutely original; and the subject, pleasing, indeed, 
in its nature, but dangerous and seductive to the 
youthful imagination, becomes, when treated by the 
masterly and seldom indelicate pen of Longus, philo¬ 
sophically interesting. Unlike the sensual vulgari¬ 
ties of modern Europe, which can only betray the 
heart by brutalizing the mind, there is a charm about 
its freedom, a purity in its very ignorance of virtue. 
Vice is advocated by no sophistry, palliated by no se¬ 
ductions of circumstances, and punished by no suffer¬ 
ings. Vice, in fact, does not exist, unless ignorance 
be a crime and love an impurity. Daphnis and 
Chloe have been brought up together, free denizens 
of the fields, and groves, and streams of the Lesbian 
paradise ; their eyes have rested from infancy on the 
same objects ; their ideas have been formed by the 
same train of circumstances ; their tastes, feelings, 
habits, all have sprung from the same root, and grown 
under the same influence. Their hearts understand 
each other; the poetry of nature has entered their 
souls, and is reflected in their eyes ; but poor, at least 
in the wealth of the world and its acquirements, hum¬ 
ble in station, solitary, and ignorant, sentiment finds 
no passage into language, and no voice but the voice 
of nature is heard in their hearts. “ Paul and Vir¬ 
ginia” is nothing more than “Daphnis and Chloe,” 
delineated by a refined and cultivated mind, and spirit¬ 
ualized and purified by the influence of Christianity. 
Taking the difference of time, climate, knowledge, 
and faith into account, the parallel is complete. If 
St. I 'ierre had made his lovers shepherds in the isl¬ 


and of Lesbos, under a pagan regime, his work, in¬ 
stead of being one of the most exquisite and delight¬ 
ful of all modern productions, would have been a tis¬ 
sue of metaphysical mechanism and absurdity. Even 
in the faults of the two works there is a striking anal 
ogy. The infidelity committed by Daphnis carrie° 
his ignorance to a pitch of exaggeration which is abso¬ 
lutely repulsive ; while the ill-timed and extravagant 
prudery of Virginia in the catastrophe, in the hands oi 
any other writer than St. Pierre, would have sur¬ 
prised the reader into a smile. “ The expressions ri> 
Longus,” says Huet, “ are full of fire and vivacity , 
he produces with spirit; his pictures are agreeable, 
and his images arranged with skill. The characters 
are carefully sustained; the episodes grow out of the 
story ; and the passions and sentiments are depicted 
with a delicacy sufficiently in keeping with pastoral 
simplicity, but not always with the rules of romance 
Probability is almost never violated, except in the 
machinery which is employed without discretion, and 
which injures the denouement of the piece, in other 
respects good and agreeable.” ( Foreign Quarterly, 
No. 9, p. 133, seqq.) —'The best editions of Longus 
are, that of Boden, Lips., 1777, 8vo; Villoison, Paris, 
1778, 2 vols. 8vo ; Schsefer, Lips., 1803, 12mo; and 
that of Courier, re-edited by De Sinner, Paris , 1829, 
8vo. Courier’s text contains the fragment which fills 
up the hiatus in p. 13, ed. Villoison , and p. 15, ed. 
Schaffer. It was copied from a Florentine manu¬ 
script, and first published at Rome in 1810, by Cou¬ 
rier, then an artillery officer in the French service. 
The fragment first appeared separately, but was soon 
after inserted into an edition of the whole romance by 
the same scholar. The manuscript is the same from 
which Chariton, Xenophon Ephesius, and De Furia’s 
JEsopean Fables have been published ; and it con 
tains also Longus, four books of Achilles Tatius, and 
several Opuscula enumerated, by De Furia, p. xxxii 
xxxvii., ed. Lips., 1810. 

Lotis, a nymph, daughter of Neptune, pursued by 
Priapus, and who escaped from him by being changed 
into the aquatic lotus. (Ovid, Met., 9, 348.) 

Lotophagi, a people on the coast of Africa, neat 
the Syrtes. They received this name from their liv¬ 
ing upon the lotus. Ulysses visited their country at 
his return from the Trojan war. (Horn., Od., 9, 94.) 
Homer says, that whoever ate of the lotus lost all wish 
of returning home, and became desirous of remaining 
in the land that produced it. Compare Herodotus 
(4, 177). According to Rennell, the location of the 
Lotophagi merely on the coast of Africa arose from 
the want of a more extended knowledge of the coun¬ 
tries bordering on the desert, on the part of the an¬ 
cient writers. He states that the tribes who inhabit 
these countri^and whose manners are in any degree 
known to us, eat universally of this fruit. The shrub 
or tree that bears the lotus fruit is disseminated over 
the edge of the Great Desert, from the coast of Cy- 
rene, round by Tripolis and Africa Propria, to the bor¬ 
ders of the Atlantic, the Senegal, and the Niger. (Ge¬ 
ography of Herodotus, vol. 2, p. 289, seqq., ed. 1830.) 
It is well known, remarks this same writer, that a great 
difference of opinion has prevailed among the mod¬ 
erns concerning what the ancients intended by the 
lotus: for the history of it, as it has come down to us, 
is mixed with fable, from having previously passed 
through the hands of the poets. But of the existence 
of a fruit, which, although growing spontaneous!- 
furnished the popular food of tribes or nations, the* 
is no kind of doubt, as it is mentioned by various au¬ 
thors of credit, and among the rest by Polybius, who 
appears to have seen it in the proper country of the 
Lotophagi. There appear, however, to have been two 
distinct species of lotus designated by the term, be¬ 
cause Herodotus and Pliny, in particular, describe a 
marked difference between them; the one being an 

755 



L U C 


LUC 


aquatic plant whose root and seeds were eaten m 
Egypt; the other the fruit of a shrub or small tree, 
on the sandy coast of Libya. Herodotus, in speak¬ 
ing of the Libyan lotus (4, 177), says, that the fruit of 
the lotus is of the size of the mastic, and sweet like 
the date, and that of it a kind of wine is made. Pliny 
(13, 17) describes two different kinds of lotus, the 
one found near the Syrtes, the other in Egypt. The 
former he describes from Cornelius Nepos as the fruit 
of a tree ; in size ordinarily as big as a bean, and of 
a yellow colour, sweet and pleasant to the taste. The 
fruit was bruised, and made into a kind of paste or 
dough, and then stored up for food. Moreover, a kind 
of wine was made from it, resembling mead, but which 
would not keep many days. Pliny adds, that “armies, 
in marching through that part of Africa, have subsist¬ 
ed on the lotus.” Perhaps this may refer to the army 
of Balbus, which the same writer informs us (5, 5) 
had penetrated to Gadamis and Fezzan. Polybius, 
who had himself seen the lotus on the coast of Libya, 
says, that it is the fruit of a shrub, which is rough and 
armed with prickles, and in foliage resembles the 
rhamnus. That when ripe it is of the size of a round 
olive ; has a purple tinge, and contains a hard but 
small stone ; that it is bruised or pounded, and laid 
by for use, and that its flavour approaches to that of 
figs or dates. And, finally, that a kind of wine is 
made from it, by expression, and diluted with water; 
that it affords a good beverage, but will not keep more 
than ten days. ( Polybapud Athen., 14, p. 65.) The 
lotus has also been described by several modern trav¬ 
ellers, such as Shaw, Desfontaines, Park, and Beechy. 
Shaw says (vol. 1, p. 263) that the lotus is the seedra 
of the Arabs; that it is a species of ziziphus or jujeb; 
and that the fruit tastes somewhat like gingerbread. 
When fresh, it is of a bright yellow. Park’s descrip¬ 
tion, however, is the most perfect of all. “ They are 
small farinaceous berries, of a yellow colour and deli¬ 
cious taste. The natives convert them into a sort of 
bread, by exposing them some days to the sun, and 
afterward pounding them gently in a wooden mortar, 
until the farinaceous part of the berry is separated 
from the stone. This meal is then mixed with a little 
water, and formed into cakes, which, when dried in 
the sun, resemble in colour and flavour the sweetest 
gingerbread. The stones are afterward put into a 
vessel of water and shaken about, so as to separate 
the meal which may still adhere to them : this com¬ 
municates a sweet and agreeable taste to the water, 
and, with the addition of a little pounded millet, forms 
a pleasant gruel called fondi, which is the common 
breakfast in many parts of Ladamar during the months 
of February and March. The fruit is collected by 
spreading a cloth upon the ground and beating the 
branches with a stick” (p. 99). * 

Luca, a city of Etruria, northeast of Pisse, on the 
river Auser or Serchio. It still preserves its situation 
and name. It is mentioned for the first time by Livy, 
as the place to which Tiberius Gracchus retired after 
the unfortunate campaign on the Tre'oia (21, 59). The 
same writer states it to have been colonized A.U.C. 
575 (41, 13.— Veil. Paierc., 1, 15). Csesar frequent¬ 
ly made Luca his headquarters during his command 
in the two Gauls. ( Cic ., Ep. ad Fam., 1, 9.— Suel., 
Cce.s., 24.) It is also mentioned by Strabo (217.— 
Compare Plin. , 3, 5.— Ptol., p. 61). 

Lucan i, the inhabitants of Lucania. ( Vid. Lucania.) 

Lucania, a country of Magna Grsecia, below Apulia. 
It was occupied, in common with the other provinces 
of southern Italy, by numerous Greek colonies. The 
native race of the Lucani were numerous and warlike, 
and said to be of Samnitic origin. These, as their 
numbers increased, gradually advanced from the inte¬ 
rior to the coast, and were soon engaged in hostilities 
with the Greeks, who, unable to make good their de¬ 
fence, giadually retreated; thus allowing their hardy 


an! restless foes to obtain possession of all the settle¬ 
ments on the western coast. These aggressions of 
the Lucani were for a season checked by the valour 
and ability of Alexander, king of Epirus ; but upon 
his death they renewed their inroads with increased 
confidence and success, making themselves masters 
of Thurii, Metapontum, Heraclea, with several other 
towns, and finally reducing the Grecian league to an 
empty name, with only the shadow of its former brill 
iancy and power. Such was the state of things when 
the Romans appeared on the scene. The Lucani 
unable to make any effectual resistance after Pyrrhus 
had withdrawn his forces from Italy, submitted to the 
victors. The war. with Hannibal, carried on for sc 
many years in this extremity of Italy, completed its 
desolation and ruin ; for, with the exception of a few 
towns restored and colonized by the Romans, this 
once flourishing tract of country became a dreary 
waste, retaining only the ruins of deserted cities, as 
mournful relics of the late abodes of wisdom and ge 
nius.—Lucania, considered as a Roman province, was 
separated from Apulia by the Bradanus, and a line 
drawn from that river to the Silarus; which latter 
stream served also for a boundary on the side of Cam 
pania. To the southwest the river Laos divided the 
Lucani from the Bruttii, as did also the Crathis to the 
southeast. ( Strabo , 255.— Cramer's Anc. Italy , vol. 
2, p. 347.) 

Lucanus, M. Ann^us, a Latin poet, bbrn A.D 
38, at Corduba, in Spain, where his family, originally 
from Italy, had been settled for several generations, 
and where some of its members had filled public of¬ 
fices. (Suet., Vil. Lucan. — Fabr., Bib. Lai., vol. 2, 
p. 141.) His father, Annaeus Mela, was a Roman 
knight, and enjoyed great consideration in the prov¬ 
ince. Lucan was named after Annaeus Lucanus, his 
maternal grandfather, who was distinguished for hie 
eloquence. His father was also the youngest brothe? 
of Seneca the philosopher. At a very early age Lu 
can was sent to Rome, where he received his educa 
tion. Rhemnius Palaemon and Flavius Virginius wer» 
his teachers in grammar and eloquence. The princi 
pies of the Stoic philosophy were taught him by An 
naeus Cornutus, a Greek philosopher, who instructed 
at Rome until Nero, offended at his opinions and lan 
guage, banished him to an island. Lucan’s talent fo; 
poetry developed itself at an early period ; he was ac 
customed to declaim in Greek and Latin verse wher 
only fourteen years of age. Having completed hit 
education at Athens, he was placed by Seneca, his pa 
ternal uncle, who had cha/ge at that time of the youth 
of Nero, around the person of the young prince. Nerc 
soon became attached to Lucan; and raised him to the 
dignity of an augur and qua?stor before he had reached 
the proper age for either of these offices. During his 
magistracy Lucan exhibited to the populace a magnif¬ 
icent show of gladiators. The folly of Nero, who pre¬ 
tended to be a great poet, and the vanity of Lucan, 
who would not yield the palm to any competitor, soon 
embroiled the two friends. Nero offended the young 
and presumptuous aspirant by abruptly quitting, on 
one occasion, an assembly in which the latter was re¬ 
citing one of his poetical productions. Lucan sought tc 
avenge this affront by presenting himself in another as-, 
sembly as a competitor against the prince. We hardlj 
know which to admire the more, the boldness of Lucan 
who believed the poetical art about to be degraded, ij 
a bad piece, though composed by a prince, should 
receive the crown ; or the courage of the judges, who 
decreed the prize to a subject who had darecAo com¬ 
pete with his master. The vengeance of Nero was 
not slow in overtaking the imprudent poet: it wound¬ 
ed him in the most sensible part, for he was command¬ 
ed to abstain in future from declaiming in public. 
Without being unjust towards the memory of Lucan* 
we utav attribute to hatred which from ibis time 






LUCANUS 


LUC 


he conceived against Nero, the part that he suose- 
quently took in the conspiracy of Piso : but it were 
to be wished that he could in any way be defended 
from a reproach which Tacitus makes against him, 
and which has affixed an indelible stigma to his name. 
It is said that, deceived by a promise of pardon in 
case he should discover his accomplices, and wishing 
to propitiate the favour of Nero, who had destroyed 
his own mother, by incurring in like mariner, in his 
turn, the guilt of parricide, he declared that his mother 
Anicia was a party in the conspiracy. The admirers 
of Lucan have suggested, that this tale was invented 
by Nero or his flatterers, to heap odium on the char¬ 
acter of a poet from a contest with whom he had 
brought away nothing but disgrace. Unfortunately, 
however, for the correctness of this assertion, it may 
be alleged in reply, that Tacitus, a close scrutinizer 
into the artifices of tyranny, relates the charge with¬ 
out expressing the least doubt as to its truth. ( Ann., 
15, 56 ) But, however this may be, the cowardly 
complaisance of the poet, if he were really guilty of 
the conduct ascribed to him, could not prove of any 
avail; he was merely permitted to choose the manner 
of his death. He caused his veins to be opened, and 
died with a degree of courage that formed a strange 
contrast to the pusillanimity in which, but a moment 
before, he had indulged. It is even said, that, feel¬ 
ing himself enfeebled by the loss of blood, he recited 
four verses which, in his Pharsalia (3, 639-42), he 
had put into the mouth of a dying soldier. He per¬ 
ished A.D. 65, at the age of 27 years. Although ac¬ 
cused of being an accomplice, his mother was not in¬ 
volved in his disgrace. Lucan left a young widow, 
whose character and merits are praised by both Mar¬ 
tial and Statius. She was named Polla Argentaria, 
and is reckoned by Sidonius Apollinaris (2, 10) among 
the number of those celebrated females whose coun¬ 
sels and taste have been of great use to their hus¬ 
bands in the composition of their works. The various 
poems of Lucan, his “ Combat of Hector and Achil¬ 
les,” which he composed at the age of tw’elve years ; 
his “ Description of the burning of Rome his “ Sat¬ 
urnalia;” his tragedy of “ Medea,” left, unfinished by 
him, have all perished. We have remaining only one 
poem, the “ Pharsalia ,” or the war between Csesar 
and Pompey. It is comprised in ten books ; but, 
since the tenth breaks off abruptly in the middle of a 
narrative, it is probable that some part has been lost, 
or that the poet had not finished the work at the time 
of his death. The first book opens with the most ex¬ 
travagant adulation of Nero, in which the poet even 
exceeds the base subserviency of the poets of the age 
of Augustus. The Pharsalia contains many vigorous 
and animated descriptions, and the speeches are char¬ 
acterized by considerable rhetorical merit, but the lan¬ 
guage is often inflated, and the expressions are ex¬ 
tremely laboured and artificial. The poem is also de¬ 
ficient in that truth to nature, and in those appeals to 
the feelings and the imagination, which excite the 
sympathy of every class of readers. Still, great al¬ 
lowance must be made for the youth of the author, 
who, if he had lived longer, would probably have cured 
himself of those faults and defects which are now so 
conspicuous in his poem.—The Pharsalia cannot be 
regarded as an epic poem, since both poetic invention 
and machinery, which form the very soul of the epo¬ 
pee, are altogether wanting in it. The event on 
which the action is based was not sufficiently far re¬ 
moved from Lucan’s own times to permit him to in¬ 
dulge his imagination in adorning it with fictions. 
The poem should rather be called an historical one. 
—The principal defect in the Pharsalia, admitting 
that it is nothing more than an historic poem, is the 
want of unity of action. One cannot perceive, on 
reading the work, what is the object which the poet 
had in view, what i Q the point to which everything 


- ought to tend. Is it the momentary triumph of free* 

2 dom, in the fall of Caesar, which Lucan has wished ta 
1 celebrate I Or was it his intention to paint in vivid 
, colours the disastrous consequences of civil discord ? 
. Or did he wish to dilate on some moral or political 
r virtue 1 Great uncertainty accompanies all these 
* questions. It is true, the poem being probably left 
1 unfinished, it becomes proportionably more difficult to 

3 pronounce upon its object; but, at the same time, 
r this object ought to be so clearly indicated in every 
3 part of the poem, as to form, as it were, its very soul, 
l and to be the pivot around which everything should 

- turn. Faithful to the laws of history, far different in 
1 their character from those of the epopee, Lucan does 
, not, in the commencement of his poem, transport us 
r at once into the midst of affairs ; he goes back to the 
: origin of the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, 

- and follows events in chronological order. His prin- 
, cipal heroes are Pompey, Caesar, Cato, and Brutus. 

But we may charge the poet with not having fully 
f succeeded in the delineation of their characters, and 
with producing sometimes a different impression upon 
■ his readers from that which he intended to effect. 

. The character of Pompey is exalted, even at the ex¬ 
pense of historical truth ; that of Caesar is treated with 
. injustice ; and yet, notwithstanding all this, Lucan 
has failed in making the former interesting, and Cae¬ 
sar, in spite of the poet, is the true hero of the Phar¬ 
salia; he is the centre of action, the soul of events : 
we have him constantly before our eyes, while we 
only see and hear of Pompey in the exaggerated eu- 
logiums lavished upon him by the poet. But it is 
principally in his digressions, in the numerous descrip¬ 
tions with which he adorns his narrative, some of 
which, at the same time, afford proofs of distinguished 
talent, that Lucan betrays a want of judgment and of 
good taste, the immediate results of his youth, and of 
his imitation of models selected from the school of 
Alexandrea. Erudition often supplies the place of va¬ 
riety ; and the brilliant conceits brought into vogue 
by his uncle Seneca, together with the maxims of the 
Porch, to which he was attached, are made to stand 
in lieu of that enthusiasm and dignity which form two 
of the principal features of epic composition. His 
versification, too, wants the elegance and the melody 
of Virgil’s.—Besides the Pharsalia, several critics, 
among whom are Joseph Scaliger and Vossius, have 
ascribed to Lucan a poem in 261 verses, which has 
come down to us, and which contains a eulogium on 
Calpurnius Piso, the same who conspired against Ne¬ 
ro. Barthius thinks that this production formed one 
of a collection of fugitive pieces published by Lucan 
under the title of Silva; but other critics, among 
whom may be cited Fabricius and Wernsdorff, have 
clearly shown that Lucan cannot be regarded as the 
author of the poem. The expressions employed by 
its author to indicate the lowness of his origin and 
the scantiness of his fortune, do not apply with any 
correctness to Lucan, descended as he was from a 
good family, and rich as well in his own as in the 
property brought him by his wife. It is assigned with 
more propriety to Saleius Bassus, a friend of Lucan’s. 
—The best editions of Lucan are, that of Cortius, 
Lips., 1726, 8vo, re-edited and completed by Weber, 
Lips., 1828, 2 vols. 8vo; Oudendorp, Lugd. Bat., 
1728, 2 vols; Burmann, Lugd. Bat., 1740, 4to; Le- 
maire, Paris, 1830-1832, 3 vols. 8vo, and that of 
Weise, Quedlinb., 1835, 8vo. The edition published 
at Glasgow (1816, 8vo), with the notes of Bentley and 
Grotius, is also a good one. ( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Rom., 
vol. 2, p. 286, seqq. — B'akr, Gesch. Rom. Lit., p. 94, 
seqq.) — II. Ocellus, a Lucanian philosopher. (Vid 
Ocellus.) 

Luceria, a city of Apulia, about twelve miles to 
the west of Arpi. It was a place of great antiquity, 
and was said to have been founded by Diomede 

757 






LUC 


i lVIanus, 


wnose offerings to Minerva were still to be seen in 
the temple of that goddess in the time of Strabo (294). 
Luceria was the first Apulian city which the Romans 
appear to have been solicitous to possess; and though 
it was long an object of contention with the Samnites, 
they finally secured their conquest and sent a colony 
there, A.U.C. 440. ( Liv ., 9, 2.— Diod. Sic., 18.— 
Veil. Paterc., 1, 14.) We find Luceria afterward 
enumerated among those cities which remained most 
firm in their allegiance to Rome during the invasion 
of Hannibal. ( Liv ., 27, 10.— Polyb., 3, 88.) In the 
civil wars of Pompey and Caesar, Luceria is mention¬ 
ed by Cicero as a place which the former was anxious 
to retain, and where he invited Cicero to join him. 
( Ep. ad All., 8, 1. — Cces., Bell. Civ., 1, 24.) It 
seems to have been noted for the excellence of its 
wool, a property, indeed, which,, according to Strabo 
(284), was common to the whole of Apulia. This 
place still retains its ancient site under the modern 
name of Lucera. ( Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 
2S5, seqq.) 

Luce res, the third of the three original tribes at 
Rome. These three original tribes were the Ram- 
nenses or Ramnes, the Tatienses or Titienses, and 
the Luceres. ( Vid. Roma.) 

Lucian us, a celebrated Greek writer, born at Sa- 
mosata in Syria. The period when he flourished is 
uncertain. Suidas, who is the only ancient writer that 
makes mention of him, informs us that he lived in the 
time of Trajan, and also before that prince (Aeyercf de 
yeviaOai km tov K alcrapoc T paiavov, nal Eire/cava). 
This, however, Yossius denies to be correct. (Hist. 
Gr., 2, 15.) The same Suidas also states, that, after 
having followed the profession of an advocate at An¬ 
tioch with little success, he turned his attention to lit¬ 
erary composition ; and that he was finally torn to 
pieces by dogs, which this writer considers a well- 
merited punishment for his impiety in attacking the 
Christian religion. Lucian himself, however ( Reviv ., 
§ 29), assigns as the reason for his quitting the pro¬ 
fession of an advocate, his disgust at the fraud and 
chicanery of the lawyers of the day ; and as for the 
story of his death, we may safely pronounce it a pious 
falsehood. In a dissertation on Isidores of Charax, 
Dodwell endeavours to prove that Lucian was born 
A.D. 135 ; which will coincide, in some degree, with 
the opinion of Hemsterhuys, who (Prcef. ad Jul. Poll.) 
places him under the Antonines and Commodus. Vos- 
sius also (1. c.) makes him a contemporary of Athenae- 
us, who lived under Marcus Aurelius, and Isonius 
( Script. Hist. Phil., 3, 10, p. 60) inclines to the same 
opinion, considering him as contemporary with Demo- 
nax, who flourished under Antoninus Pius and his 
successor. Reitz (De JEtate, &c., Luciani, p. 63.— 
Op., ed. Hemst., vol. 1 ), agreeing in opinion with Hem¬ 
sterhuys, places him under the Antonines and Com¬ 
modus, and makes him to have lived from 120 B.C. 
until 200.—Destined at first, by his father, who was 
in humble circumstances, to the profession of a sculp¬ 
tor, he was placed with that view under the instruc¬ 
tion of his uncle. But, becoming soon disgusted with 
the employment, he turned his attention to literature, 
and travelled into Asia Minor and Greece, in the latter 
of which countries he was present, according to the 
computation of Dodwell, at the celebration of the 233d, 
234th, and 235th Olympiads (A.D. 157, 161, 165), an¬ 
swering to the 22d, 26th, and 30th years of his age. 
In his 29th year he appears to have heard historical 
lectures in Ionia. His principal place of residence 
while in this country was the city of Ephesus. Wheth¬ 
er Lucian entered upon the profession of an advocate 
before or after this period is not clearly ascertained : 
the latter is perhaps the more correct opinion. Anti¬ 
och was the scene of his labours in this new vocation ; 
but he soon became disgusted with forensic pursuits, 
and turned his attention to others of a more purely 
758 


rhetorical nature. Eloquence applied to sophistic dec¬ 
lamations and impi-ovisaziones, if we may be allowed 
the expression, opened at this time the surest path to 
fortune and fame. The sophists were constantly en 
gaged in travelling to and fro among the great cities 
they announced a discourse as an itinerant musician 
at the present day would announce a concert ; and 
people flocked from all quarters to hear and see them, 
and to pay liberally for the harmonious and polished 
periods with which their ears were gratified. Lucian 
yielded to the fashion of the day, and abandoned the 
bar for the tribune. He again directed his thoughts 
to travel, and visited Asia, Greece, and particularly 
Gaul, in which last-mentioned country he settled for a 
time as a teacher of rhetoric, and soon obtained great 
celebrity and a numerous school. He appears to have 
remained in Gaul till he was about forty, when he 
gave up the profession of rhetoric, after having acqui 
red considerable wealth. On his return from Gaul he 
visited Italy, and paints in vivid colours, in his “ Ni- 
grinus,” the corruption of t.he capital. During the re¬ 
mainder of his life we find him travelling about from 
place to place, and visiting successively Macedonia, 
Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, and Bithynia. The greater 
part of his time, however, was passed in Athens, where 
he lived on terms of the greatest intimacy with Demo- 
nax, a philosopher of great celebrity.' Having here 
made the study of man his particular object, we find 
him embracing no one of the systems then in vogue, 
but following, as far as he could bo said to have fol 
lowed any sect, the tenets of the school of Epicurus. 
In his old age he obtained from Marcus Aurelius an 
honourable employment in Egypt. Some make him 
to have been placed over a part of this province ; but 
it appears more probable that he was appointed regis¬ 
ter to one of the higher tribunals. He died at a very 
advanced ase.—What distinguishes Lucian as a writer 
is a genius eminently satirical, a brilliancy of thought, 
and a larger share of humour than any other author ol 
antiquity, with the exception, perhaps, of Aristophanes 
and Horace. His irony spares no folly and no preju 
dice on the part of his contemporaries, but wages 
against their failings a continual warfare. The wri 
tings of Lucian very rarely betray any marks of the 
decline of taste which characterized the period in which 
he is said to have lived. His style, formed by the 
study of the best models, and especially of Aristopha¬ 
nes, would never lead us to suspect that he was a na¬ 
tive of the distant province of northern Syria : it is as 
pure, as elegant, and as Attic as if he had flourished 
in the classic periods of Grecian literature, and the 
defects of the age in which he lived merely show them¬ 
selves in the desire to coin new expressions, and to 
divert others from their more ancient and legitimate 
meaning; faults from which he has not been able to 
save himself, although he ridicules them in one of his 
own productions, the “ Lexipbanes.” Neither has he 
been always able to resist the inclination of adorning 
his style with the tinsel of quotations and phrases bor¬ 
rowed from the ancient poets and historians, and fre 
quently misplaced. The greater part of his produc¬ 
tions have the dialogue form ; but they are not, like 
the dialogues of Plato, dissertations put into the mouth 
of interlocutors, merely to destroy the monotonous 
uniformity of a continued discourse. The dialogues 
of Lucian are true conversations ; they are in every 
sense dramatic. He says himself (Atf Karyy., c. 33) 
that he has restored dialogue to earth, after it had been 
lost in the regions of the clouds ; and that, despoiling 
it of its tragic garb, he has brought it in contact with 
pleasantry and the comic muse. — The subjects on 
which he treats are various and interesting: history, 
philosophy, and all the sciences furnish him with ma¬ 
terials. Lucian may, in fact, be regarded as the Aris¬ 
tophanes of his age, and, like the great comic poet, hs 
had recourse to raillery and satire to accomplish the 




LUCIANUS. 


LUC 


great object he had in view. This object was, to ex¬ 
pose all kinds of delusion, fanaticism, and imposture ; 
the quackery and imposition of the priests, the folly 
and absurdity of the superstitious, and especially the 
solemn nonsense, the prating insolence, and the im- 
ti.ora' lives of the philosophical charlatans of his age. 
His study was human nature in all its varieties, and 
the age in which he lived furnished ample materials 
for his observation. Many of his pictures, though 
drawn from the circumstances of his own times, are 
true for every age and country. If he sometimes dis¬ 
closes the follies and vices of mankind too freely, and 
occasionally uses expressions which are revolting to 
our ideas of morality, it should be recollected that ev¬ 
ery author ought to be judged by the age in which he 
lived, and not by a standard of religion and morality 
which was unknown to the writer. The character of 
Lucian’s mind was decidedly practical : he was not 
disposed to believe anything without sufficient evidence 
of its truth ; and nothing that was ridiculous or absurd 
escaped his raillery and sarcasm. The tales of the 
poets respecting the attributes and exploits of the gods, 
which were still firmly believed by the common peo¬ 
ple of his age, were especially the objects of his satire 
and ridicule in his dialogues between the gods, and in 
many other of his works ; and that he should have at¬ 
tacked the Christians in common with the false sys¬ 
tems of the pagan religion, will not appear surprising 
to any one who considers that Lucian probably never 
took the trouble to inquire into the doctrines of a re¬ 
ligion which was almost universally despised in his 
time by the higher orders of society.—The greater 
part, if not all, of the dialogues of Lucian appear to 
have been written after his return from Gaul and 
while he was residing at Athens ; but most of his oth¬ 
er pieces were probably written during the time that he 
taught rhetoric in the former country.—Our limits, of 
course, will not allow an examination of the numerous 
writings of Lucian. We will content ourselves with 
noticing merely one piece, partly on account of its pe¬ 
culiar character, which has made it a subject of fre¬ 
quent reference, and partly because the general opin¬ 
ion of scholars at the present day is adverse to its 
being regarded as one of the productions of Lucian. 
It is the ^iXoTrarpcg, y didaoKopevog (“ The lover of 
his country , or the student"). The author of this 
piece, whoever he was, ridicules, after the manner of 
Lucian, the absurdities of the Greek mythology ; but 
his satire has, in fact, no other end than to serve as an 
introduction to an unsparing attack on the Christians : 
they are represented as wicked men, continually offer- 
ing up prayers for the evil of the state. The authen¬ 
ticity of this piece has been much disputed. Mention 
is made in it of events, w’hich some place under Nero 
or even under Claudius, others under Trajan or Mar¬ 
cus Aurelius, and some under Julian. The first of 
these, as, for example, Theodore Marcilius, think, in 
consequence, that the author of the piece lived during 
the first century. What appears to favour this opinion 
is a passage in which the writer alludes, without na¬ 
ming him, to St. Paul, or even, according to the So- 
cinian Crell, to our Saviour himself. Some orthodox 
theologians have shown themselves favourably inclined 
to this system, because in a passage of the dialogue 
the question of the Trinity is openly stated, and they 
have taken this as a proof that this doctrine was taught 
prior to the council of Nice. Marcilius, however, is 
mistaken. Artemidorus, author of the Oneirocritica, 
is cited in the Philopatris : it is true, critics are not 
agreed as to the period when this writer flourished, but 
in any event he cannot be placed lower than Hadrian. 
In the dialogue under consideration, so strong a re¬ 
semblance to the other works of Lucian is perceptible, 
there occur so many phrases and forms of expression 
which are familiar to him, that, if it be not the work of 
Lucian himself, it could only have been composed by 


some writer that came after him. Huet and Gesnei 
have found in it a much more accurate acquaintance 
with Christianity than we can suppose Lucian to have 
possessed, after having read his Peregrinus. Schol], 
following the side espoused by Gesner, takes the Phil¬ 
opatris to have been the work of a man who, after hav¬ 
ing been initiated into the mysteries of Christianity, 
had renounced the gospel, not to return to paganism, 
but to throw himself into the arms of incredulity. The 
tone which pervades it betrays the bitterness of an 
apostate.—We have remaining, besides his other 
works, fifty Epigrams ascribed to Lucian. The great¬ 
er part are of that hyperbolic cast which was so much 
in vogue during the first centuries of the Christian era. 
Lucian, however, has not carried this kind of poetry to 
that point of extravagance to which later writers push¬ 
ed it. ( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 4, p. 243, seqq.) 
The best editions of Lucian are, that of Hemsterhuys, 
completed by Reitz, Amst., 1730-36, 4 vols. 4to, ed¬ 
ited in a more complete manner by Gesner, Amst., 
1743, 3 vols. 4to, and to which must be added, al 
though of inferior value, the Lexicon Luciancum of C 
R. Reitz, brother to the former, Ultraj., 1746, 4to ; 
that of the Bipont editors, in 10 vols. 8vo, a reprint ot 
the preceding, but containing, besides, the various read¬ 
ings of six manuscripts in the library of the king ol 
France, collected by M. Bclin de Ballu ; and that of 
Lehmann, Lips., 1822-1831,8vo, of which 9 volumes 
have thus far appeared. This last edition, however, 
is much disfigured by typographical errors. ( Hof¬ 
mann , Lex. Bibliograph., vol. 3, p. 32.) 

Lucifer, the name of the planet Venus, or morn 
ing star. It is called Lucifer when appearing in the 
morning before the sun ; but when it follows it, and 
appears some time after its setting, it is called Hcspe 
rus. (Vid. Hesperus.) 

Lucilius, I. C., a Roman knight, born at Suessa, 
a town in the Auruncian territory, A.U.C. 605, B.C. 
149. He was descended of a good family, and was 
grand-uncle, by the mother’s side, to Pompey the 
Great. In early youth he served at the siege of Nu- 
mantia, in the same camp with Marius and Jugurtha, 
under the younger Africanus, whose friendship and pro¬ 
tection he had thus the good fortune to acquire. ( Veil. 
Paterc., 2, 9.) On his return to Rome from his Span¬ 
ish campaign, he dwelt in the house which had been 
built at the public expense, and had been inhabited by 
Seleucus Philopator, prince of Syria, while he resided 
in his youth as an hostage at Rome. ( Ascon. Pedian., 
in Cic., conlr. L. Pis.) Lucilius continued to live 
on terms of the closest intimacy with the brave Scip- 
io and the wise LaHius. (Herat., Serm., 2, 1, 71.) 
These powerful protectors enabled him to satirize the 
vicious without restraint or fear of punishment. In 
his writings he drew a genuine picture of himself, ac¬ 
knowledged his faults, made a frank confession of his 
inclinations, gave an account of his adventures, and, 
in short, exhibited a true and spirited representation 
of his whole life. Fresh from business or pleasure, he 
seized his pen while his fancy was yet warm and his 
passions w T ere still awake, as elated with success or 
depressed with disappointment. All these feelings or 
incidents he faithfully related, and made his remarks 
on them with the utmost freedom. ( Horat., Serm., 
2, 1, 30.) Unfortunately, however, his writings are 
so mutilated, that few particulars of his life and man¬ 
ners can be gleaned from them. Little farther is 
known concerning him than that he died at Naples, but 
at what age has been much disputed. Eusebius and 
most other writers have fixed it at 45, which, as he was 
born in A.U.C. 605, would be in the 651st year of the 
city. But Dacier and Bayle assert that he must have 
been much older, as he speaks in his Satires of the 
Licinian law against exorbitant expenditure at enter¬ 
tainments, which was not promulgated till B.C. 97 or 9f 
(A.U.C. 657 or 658). The expression, moreover, ap 

759 







LUCILIUS. 


LUCILIUS. 


plied by Horace to Lucilius (Serm., 2, 1, 34), namely, 
senex or “old,” seems to imply, as Clinton has remark¬ 
ed (Fast. Hell., vol, 2, p. 135), that he lived to a later 
date.—The period at which Lucilius wrote was favour¬ 
able to satiric composition. There was a struggle exist¬ 
ing between the old and new manners, and the free¬ 
dom of speaking and writing, though restrained, had not 
yet been totally checked by law. Lucilius lived with a 
people among whom luxury and corruption were advan¬ 
cing with fearful rapidity, but among whom some virtu¬ 
ous citizens were anxious to stem the tide which threat¬ 
ened to overwhelm their countrymen. His satires, 
therefore, were adapted to please those stanch “ lauda - 
tores temporis acti" who stood up for ancient manners 
and discipline. The freedom with which he attacked 
the vices of his contemporaries, without sparing individ¬ 
uals, the strength of colouring with which his pictures 
were charged, the weight and asperity of the reproaches 
with which he loaded those who had exposed them¬ 
selves to his ridicule or indignation, had nothing re¬ 
volting in an age when no consideration compelled to 
those forbearances necessary under different forms of 
society or government. By the time, too, in which he 
began to write, the Romans, though yet far from the 
polish of the Augustan age, had become familiar with 
the delicate and cutting irony of the Greek comedies, 
of which the more ancient Roman satirists had no con¬ 
ception. Lucilius chiefly applied himself to the imi¬ 
tation of these dramatic productions, and caught, it is 
said, much of their fire and spirit. The Roman lan¬ 
guage likewise had grown more refined in his age, and 
was thus more capable of receiving the Grecian beau¬ 
ties of style. Nor did Lucilius, like his predecessors, 
rnix iambic with trochaic verses. Twenty books of 
his satires, from the commencement, were in hexam¬ 
eter verse, and the rest, with the exception of the thir¬ 
tieth, in iambics or trochaics. His object, too, seems 
to have been bolder and more extensive than that of 
b;s predecessors, and was not so much to excite laugh¬ 
ter or ridicule as to correct and chastise vice. Lu- 
rilius thus bestowed on satiric composition such ad¬ 
ditional grace and regularity that he is declared by 
Horace to have been the first among the Romans who 
wrote satire in verse. But, although he may have 
greatly improved this sort of writing, it does not fol¬ 
low that his satires are to be considered as a different 
species from those of Ennius, a light in which they 
have been regarded by Casaubon and Ruperti ; “ for,” 
as Dryden has remarked, “ it would thence follow that 
the satires of Horace are wholly different from those 
of Lucilius, because Horace has not less surpassed 
Lucilius in the elegance of his writing, than Lucilius 
surpassed Ennius in the turn and ornament of his.” 
The satires of Lucilius extended to not fewer than 
thirty books, but whether they were so divided by the 
poet himself, or by some grammarian who lived short¬ 
ly after him, is uncertain. He was reputed, however, 
to be a voluminous author, and has been satirized by 
Horace for his hurried copiousness and facility. Of 
the thirty books there are only fragments extant; but 
these are so numerous, that, though they do not capa¬ 
citate us for catching the full spirit of the poet, we 
perceive something of his manner. His merits, too, 
have been so much canvassed by ancient writers, who 
judged of them while his works were yet entire, that 
their discussion enables us in some measure to appre¬ 
ciate his poetical claims. It would appear that he had 
great vivacity and humour, uncommon command of 
language, intimate knowledge of life and manners, and 
considerable acquaintance with the Grecian masters. 
Virtue appeared in his draughts in native dignity, and 
he exhibited his distinguished friends, Scipio and Lce- 
lius, in the most amiable light. At the same time, it 
was impossible to portray anything more powerful 
than the sketches of his vicious characters. His rogue, 
glutton, and courtesan are drawn in strong, not to say 


coarse, colours. He had, however, much of the old 
Roman humour, that celebrated but undefined urhan- 
itas, which indeed he possessed in so eminent a degree, 
that Pliny says it began with Lucilius in composition 
(Free/. Hist. Nat.), while Gicero declares that he car¬ 
ried it to the highest perfection, and that it almost ex 
pired with him. But the chief characteristic of Lu¬ 
cilius was his vehement and cutting satire. Macro- 
bius (Sat., 3, 16) calls him “ Acer el violentus poeta ,” 
and the well-known lines of Juvenal, who relates how 
he made the guilty tremble with his pen, as much as 
if he had pursued them sword in hand, have fixed his 
character as a determined and inexorable persecutor 
of vice. His Latin is admitted on all hands to have 
been sufficiently pure (Aul. Gell. , 18, 5.— Horat., Sat., 
1, 10), but his versification was rugged and prosaic. 
Horace, while he allows that he was more polished 
than his contemporaries, calls his muse “ pedestris," 
talks repeatedly of the looseness of his measures, “ in- 
composilo pede currere versus ,” and compares his 
whole poetry to a muddy and troubled stream. Quin¬ 
tilian does not entirely coincide with this opinion of 
Horace ; for, while blaming those who considered hint 
as the greatest of poets, which some persons still did 
in the age of Domitian, he says, “ Ego quantum ab 
illis, tantum ab Horatio dissentio, qui Lucilium fluere 
lutulentum, et esse aliquid quod tollere possis, putat .” 
(Inst. Or., 10, 1.) The author of the books Rhetori- 
corum, addressed to Herennius, and which were at one 
time ascribed to Cicero, mentions, as a singular awk¬ 
wardness in the construction of his lines, the disjunc¬ 
tion of words, which, according to proper and natural 
arrangement, ought to have been placed together, as, 

“ Has res ad te scriptas Luci misimus AeliJ 

Nay, what is still worse, it would appear from As<cui¬ 
us that he had sometimes barbarously separated the 
syllables of a word, 

“ Villa Lucani —mox potieris aco.” 

As to the learning of Lucilius, the opinions of antiqui¬ 
ty are different; and even those of the same author of¬ 
ten appear somewhat contradictory on this point. Quin¬ 
tilian says that there is “ Eruditio in eo mira .” Cice¬ 
ro, in his treatise De Finibus, calls his learning “ Me - 
diocris ;” though afterward, in the person of Crassus, 
in his treatise De Oratore, he twice terms him “ doc- 
tus ” (1, 16; 2, 6). Dacier suspects that Quintilian 
was led to consider Lucilius as learned, from the pedan¬ 
tic intermixture of Greek words in his compositions, a 
practice which seems to have excited the applause of 
his contemporaries, and also of his numerous admirers 
in the Augustan age, for which they have been severe¬ 
ly ridiculed by Horace, who always warmly opposed 
himself to the excessive popularity of Lucilius during 
that golden period of literature. It is not unlikely that 
there may have been something of political spleen in 
the admiration expressed for Lucilius during the age 
of Augustus, and something of courtly complaisance 
in the attempts of Horace to counteract it. Augustus 
had extended the law of the twelve tables respecting 
libels, and the people who found themselves thus abridg° 
ed of the liberty of satirizing the great by name, might 
not improbably seek to avenge themselves by an over¬ 
strained attachment to the works of a poet, who, living 
as they would insinuate, in better times, practised with¬ 
out fear what he enjoyed without restraint. (Gifford's 
Juvenal, Prcef., p. 43.) Some motive of this sort 
doubtless weighed with the Romans of the age of Au¬ 
gustus, since much of the satire of Lucilius must have 
been unintelligible, or, at least, uninteresting to them 
Great part of his compositions appear to have been 
rather a series of libels than legitimate satire, beino- oc¬ 
cupied with virulent attacks on contemporary citizens 
of Rome, Douza, who has collected and edited alS 
that remains of the satires of Lucilius, mentions the 






LUC 


LUC 


names of not less than sixteen individuals who are at¬ 
tacked by name in the course even of these fragments, 
among whom are Quintus Opimius, the conqueror of 
Liguria, Cascilius Metellus, whose victories acquired 
for him the surname of Macedonicus, and Cornelius 
Lupus, at that time Princeps Senatvs. Luciiius was 
equally severe on contemporary and preceding authors: 
Ennius, Pacnvius, and Accius having been alternately 
satirized by him. ( Aul. Gell., 17, 21.) In all this he 
indulged with impunity ( Horat ., Sat., 2, 1) ; but he 
did not escape so well from a player whom he had ven- 
ti red to censure, and who took his revenge by expo¬ 
sing Luciiius on the stage. The poet prosecuted the ac¬ 
tor, and the cause was carried on with much warmth on 
both sides before the praetor, who finally acquitted the 
play 2 r ( Rhet., ad Herren., 2, 13).—Luciiius, however, 
did not confine himself to attacking vicious mortals. In 
the first book of his satires he appears to have decla¬ 
red war on the false gods of Olympus, whose plurality 
he denied, and ridiculed the simplicity of the people, 
who bestowed on an infinity of gods the venerable 
name of father, which should be reserved for one.— 
Of many books of the Satires such small fragments re¬ 
main, that it is impossible to conjecture their subjects. 
Even in those books of which there are a greater num¬ 
ber of fragments extant, they are so disjointed that it 
is as difficult to put them legibly together as the scat¬ 
tered leaves of the Sibyl; and the labour of Douza, 
who has been the most successful in arranging the bro¬ 
ken lines, is by many considered as but a conjectural 
and philological sport. Those few passages, however, 
which are in any degree entire, show great force of sa¬ 
tire.—Besides satirizing the wicked, under which cate¬ 
gory he probably classed all his enemies, Luciiius also 
employed his pen in praise of the brave and virtuous. 
He wrote, as we learn from Horace, a panegyric on 
Scipio Africanus; but whether the elder or younger, is 
not certain. Luciiius was also author of a comedy 
entitled Nummularia, of which only one line remains ; 
but we are informed by Porphyrion, the scholiast on 
Horace, that the plot turned on Pythias, a female slave, 
tricking her master Simo out of a sum of money, with 
which to portion his daughter. (Dunlop's Roman Lit¬ 
erature, vol. 1, p. 393, seqq.) Douza’s edition of the 
fragments of Luciiius was published in 1593, Lugd. 
Bat., 4to: a later but inferior edition, cura fratrum 
Vulpiorum, appeared in 1713, Patav. Lemaire has 
subjoined a reprint of Douza’s Luciiius to the third 
volume of his edition of Juvenal and Persius, Paris, 
1830.—II. An epigrammatic poet in the age of Nero. 
We have more than one hundred of his epigrams re¬ 
maining. Wernsdorff assigns to him the poem entitled 
/Etna, commonly supposed to have been written by 
Cornelius Severus. (Poet. Lat. Min., vol. 4, pt. 2, 
p. 3, seqq.) 

Lucilla, daughter of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius 
and of Faustina, was born A.D. 146. At the age of 
seventeen she was given in marriage to Lucius Verus, 
at that time commanding the Roman armies in Syria. 
Verus came as far as Ephesus to meet her, and the 
union was celebrated in this city ; but, habituated to 
debauchery, Verus soon relapsed into his former mode 
of life; and Lucilla, finding herself neglected, took a 
woman’s revenge, and entered on a career of similar 
profligacy. Returning subsequently with her hus¬ 
band to Rome, she caused him to be poisoned there ; 
and afterward, in accordance with her father’s direc¬ 
tions, contracted a second union with Claudius Pom- 
peianus, an aged senator, of great merit and probity. 
Her licentious conduct, however, underwent no change, 
and she was banished to the island of Caprese by her 
brother Commodus, against whom she had formed a 
conspiracy. Not long after, Commodus sent a centu¬ 
rion to her place of exile, who put her to death, in the 
3Sth year of her age, A.D. 184. She had by her mar¬ 
riage with her second husband a son named Lsetus 
5 D 


Pompeianus, put to death by order of Caracaila, and a 
daughter. (Dio Cass., 71, 1.— Id. ,72,4.— Jul. Cap¬ 
itol., Vit. Aurel., 7.— Id., Vit. Vcr.) 

Lucina, a surname of Juno, as the goddess who pre¬ 
sided over the delivery of females. She was proba¬ 
bly so called from bringing children into the light. 
(Lucina, from lux, lucis, “ light.''' — V-id. Juno.) 

Lucretia, a celebrated Roman female, daughter 
of Lucretius, and wife of Collatinus. Her name is 
connected in the old legend with the overthrow of 
kingly power at Rome, and the story is related as fol¬ 
lows : Tarquinius Superbus waged war against Ardea, 
the capital of the Rutuli, a people on the coast of La- 
tium. The city was very strong by both nature and 
art, and made a protracted resistance. The Roman 
army lay encamped around the walls, in order to re¬ 
duce it by hunger, since they could not by direct force 
While lying half idle here, the princes of the Tarquin 
family, and their kinsmen Brutus and Collatinus, hap¬ 
pening to feast together, began, in their gayely, to 
boast each of the beauty and virtue of his wife. Col¬ 
latinus extolled his spouse Lucretia as beyond all ri¬ 
valry. On a sudden they resolved to ride to Rome, 
and decide the dispute by ascertaining which of the re¬ 
spective ladies was spending her time in the most be¬ 
coming and laudable manner. They found the wives 
of the king’s sons entertaining other ladies with a cost¬ 
ly banquet. They then rode on to Collatia; and, 
though it was near midnight, they found Lucretia, with 
her handmaids around her, working at the loom. It 
was admitted that Lucretia was the most worthy lady ; 
and they returned to the camp at Ardea. But the 
beauty and virtue of Lucretia had excited in the base 
heart of Sextus Tarquinius the fire of lawless passion. 
After a few days he returned to Collatia, where he was 
hospitably entertained by Lucretia as a kinsman of her 
husband. At midnight, however, he secretly entered 
her chamber ; and, when persuasion was ineffectual, 
he threatened to kill her and one of her male slaves, and, 
laying the body by her side, to declare to Collatinus 
that he had slain her in the act of adultery. The dread 
of a disgrace to her memory, from which there could 
be no possible mode of effacing the stain, produced a 
result which the fear of death could not have done ; a 
result not unnatural in a heathen, who might dread the 
disgrace of a crime more than its commission, but which 
shows the conventional morality and virtue of the times, 
how ill-founded and almost weakly sentimental in even 
that boasted instance of female virtue.—Having ac¬ 
complished his wicked purpose, Sextus returned to the 
camp. Immediately after his departure, Lucretia sent 
for her husband and father. Collatinus came from the 
camp accompanied by Brutus, and her father Lucretius 
from the city, along with Publius Valerius. They 
found Lucretia sitting on her bed, weeping and incon¬ 
solable. In brief terms she told what had befallen 
her, required of them the pledge of their right hands, 
that they wmuld avenge her injuries, and then, drawing 
a knife from under her robe, stabbed herself to the 
heart and died. Her husband and father burst into a 
loud cry of agony ; bu.t Brutus, snatching the weapon 
from the wound, held it up, and swore, by the chaste 
and noble blood which stained it, that he would pursue 
to the uttermost Tarquinius and all his accursed race, 
and thenceforward suffer no man to be king at Rome. 
He then gave the bloody knife to her husband, her fa¬ 
ther, and Valerius, and called on them to take the same 
oath. Brutus thus became at once the leader of tha 
enterprise. They boro the body of Lucretia to the 
market-place. There Brutus addressed the people 
and aroused them to vengeance. Part remained to 
guard the town, and part proceeded with Brutus to 
Rome. Their coming raised a tumult, and drew to¬ 
gether great numbers of the citizens. Brutus, availing 
himself of his rank and authority as tribune of the Ce- 
leres or captain of the knights, summoned the people 

761 



LUC 


LUCRETIUS. 


to the Forum, and proceeded to relate the bloody deed 
which the villany of Sextus Tarquinius had caused. 
Nor did he content himself with that, but set before 
them, in the most animated manner, the cruelty, tyran¬ 
ny, and oppression of Tarquinius himself; the guilty 
manner in which he obtained the kingdom, the violent 
means he had used to retain it, and the unjust repeal 
of all the laws of Servius Tullius, by which he had 
robbed them of their liberties. By this means he 
’wrought so effectually upon the feelings of the people, 
that They passed a decree abolishing the kingly power 
itself, and banishing for ever Lucius Tarquinius Superb¬ 
us, and his wife and children. ( Liv ., 1, 57, seqq .— 
Dion. Hal., 4, 15.) The story of Lucretia is very in¬ 
geniously discussed by Verri, and the conclusion at 
which he apparently arrives is rather unfavourable than 
otherwise to her character. ( Notti Romane , vol. 1, p. 
171, seqq. —Compare Augustin., Civ. D., 1, 19, p. 68, 
as cited by Bayle, Diet. Hist., s. v.) In all likelihood, 
however, the whole story is false, and was merely in¬ 
vented in a later age, to account for the overthrow of 
kingly power at Rome. 

Lucretius, a mountain range in the country of the 
Sabines, amid the windings of which lay the farm of 
Horace. It is now Monte Libretti. {Hot at., Od., 1, 
17, 1.—Compare the description given by Eustace, 
Classical Tour, vol. 2, p. 247, seq.) 

Lucretius, I. Titus Lucretius Carus, a celebrated 
Roman writer. Of his life very little is known, and 
even the year of his birth is uncertain. According to 
the chronicle of Eusebius, he was born A.U.C. 658, 
B.C. 96, being thus nine years younger than Cicero, 
and two or three years younger than Caesar. To 
judge from his style, he would be supposed older than 
either; but this, as appears from the example of Sal¬ 
lust, is no certain test, as his archaisms may have 
arisen from the imitation of ancient writers, and \Ve 
know that he was a fond admirer of Ennius. A taste 
for Greek philosophy had been excited at Rome to a 
considerable extent some time previous to this era, 
and Lucretius was sent, with other young Romans of 
rank, to study at Athens. The different schools of 
philosophy in that city seem, about this period, to have 
been frequented according as they received a tempo¬ 
rary fashion from the comparative abilities of the pro¬ 
fessors who presided over them. Cicero, for example, 
who had attended the Epicurean school at Athens, 
and who became himself an academic, intrusted his 
son to the care of Cratippus, a peripatetic philosopher. 
After the death of its great founder, the school of Ep¬ 
icurus had for some time declined in Greece ; but, at 
the period when Lucretius was sent to Athens, it had 
again revived under the patronage of L. Memmius, 
whose son was a fellow-student of Lucretius, as were 
also Cicero, his brother Quintus, Cassius, and Pom- 
ponius Atticus. At the time when frequented by 
these illustrious youths, the gardens of Epicurus were 
superintended by Zeno and Phsedrus, both of whom, 
but particularly the latter, have been honoured with 
the panegyric of Cicero. One of the dearest, perhaps 
the dearest friend of Lucretius, was this Memmius, 
who had been his schoolfellow, and whom, it is sup¬ 
posed, he accompanied to Bithynia, when appointed 
to the government of that province. ( Good's Lucre¬ 
tius, Prcp.f., p. xxxvi.) The poem De Rerum Natura, if 
not undertaken at the request of Memmius, was doubt¬ 
less much encouraged by him ; and Lucretius, in a 
dedication expressed in terms of manly and eloquent 
courtesy, very different from the servile adulation of 
some of his great successors, tells him that the hoped- 
for pleasure of his sweet friendship was what enabled 
him to endure any toils or vigils. The life of the poet 
was short, but happily was sufficiently prolonged to 
enable him to complete his poem, though perhaps not 
to give some portions of it their last polish. Accord¬ 
ing to Eusebius, he died in the 44th year of his age, 


by his own hands, in a paroxysm of insanity produced 
by a philtre, which Lucretia, his wife or mistress, had 
given him, with no design of depriving him ol life or 
reason, but to renew or increase his passion. Others 
suppose that his mental alienation proceeded from 
melancholy, on account of the calamities of his country 
and the exile of Memmius, circumstances which were 
calculated deeply to affect his mind. There seems no 
reason to doubt the melancholy fact that he perished 
by his own hand. The poem of Lucretius, De Reruir. 
Natura, which he composed during the lucid intervals 
of his malady, is, as the name imports, philosophic and 
didactic, in the strictest acceptation of these terms, 
and contains a full exposition of the theological, phys¬ 
ical, and moral system of Epicurus. It has beer 
remarked by an able writer, “ that all the religious 
systems of the ancient pagan world were naturally 
perishable, from the quantity of false opinions, and vi¬ 
cious habits and ceremonies that were attached to 
them.” ( Turner, Hist, of the Anglo-Saxons, vol. 3, 
p. 311.) He observes even of the barbarous Anglo- 
Saxons, that, “ as the nation advanced in its active 
intellect, it began to be dissatisfied with its my thology. 
Many indications exist of this spreading alienation, 
which prepared the northern mind for the reception of 
the nobler truths of Christianity {ibid., p. 356). A 
secret incredulity of this sort seems to have been long 
nourished in Greece, and appears to have been import¬ 
ed into Rome with its philosophy and literature. The 
more pure and simple religion of early Rome was 
quickly corrupted, and the multitude of ideal and het¬ 
erogeneous beings which superstition introduced into 
the Roman worship led to its rejection. {Pliny, 2, 
7.) This infidelity is very obvious in the writings of 
Ennius, who translated Euhemerus’ work on the Dei¬ 
fication of human spirits, while Plautus dramatized 
the vices of the father of the gods and tutelary deity 
of Rome. The doctrine of materialism was introduced 
at Rome during the age of Scipio and Laglius {Cic., 
de Am., 4), and perhaps no stronger proof of its 
rapid progress and prevalence can be given, than that 
Caesar, though a priest, and ultimately Pontifex Maxi¬ 
mus, boldly declared in the senate that death is the 
end of all things, and that beyond it there is neither 
hope nor joy. ( Sallust, Cat., 51.) This state of the 
public mind was calculated to give a fashion to the 
system of Epicurus. According to this distinguished 
philosopher, the chief good of man is pleasure, of 
which the elements consist in having a body free from 
pain, and a mind tranquil and exempt from perturba¬ 
tion. Of this tranquillity there are, according to Ep¬ 
icurus, as expounded by Lucretius, two chief enemies, 
superstition or slavish fear of the gods, and the dread 
of death (2, 43, seqq.). In order to oppose these two 
foes to happiness, he endeavours, in the first place, to 
show that the world was formed by a fortuitous con¬ 
course of atoms, and that the gods, who, according to 
the popular mythology, were constantly, interposing, 
take no concern whatever in human affairs. We do 
injustice to Epicurus when we estimate his tenets by 
the refined and exalted ideas of a philosophy purified 
by faith, without considering the superstitious and pol¬ 
luted notions prevalent in his time. With respect to 
the other great leading tenet of Lucretius and hie 
master, the mortality of the soul, still greater injustice 
is done to the philosopher and the poet. It is affirm¬ 
ed, and justly, by a great apostle, that “ life and im¬ 
mortality have been brought to light by the gospel ;’ s 
and yet an author, who lived before this dawn, is re¬ 
viled because he asserts that the natural arguments foi 
the immortality of the soul, afforded by the analogies 
of nature or principle of moral retribution, are weak 
and inconclusive. In fact, however, it is not by the 
truth of the system or general philosophical views in 
a poem (for which no one consults it) that its value 
is to be estimated; since a poetical work may be 






LUCRETIUS. 


LUCRETIUS. 


fiignly mor»J on account of its details, even when its 
systematic'scope is erroneous or apparently dangerous. 
Notwithstanding passages which seem to echo Spino- 
zism, and almost justify crime, the Essay on Man is 
rightly considered as the most moral production of 
the most moral among the English poets. In like 
manner, where shall we find exhortations more elo¬ 
quent than those of Lucretius against ambition and 
cruelty, and luxury and lust; against all the dishonest 
pleasures of the body, and all the turbulent pleasures 
of the mind 1 —In versifying the philosophical system 
of Epicurus, Lucretius appears to have taken Emped¬ 
ocles as a model. All the old Grecian bards of whom 
we have any account prior to Homer, as Orpheus, 
Linus, and Musseus, are said to have written poems 
on the dryest and most difficult philosophical questions, 
as cosmogony or the generation of the world. The 
ancients evidently considered philosophic poetry as 
of the highest kind, and its themes are invariably 
placed in the mouths of their divinest songsters. 
Whether Lucretius may have been indebted to any 
such ancient poems, still extant in his age, or to the 
subsequent productions of Palaaphatus the Athenian, 
Antiochus, or Eratosthenes, who, as Suidas informs 
us, wrote poems on the structure of the world, it 
is impossible now to determine; but he seems to 
have availed himself considerably of the work of Em¬ 
pedocles. The poem of that philosopher, entitled 
Tzepl (jivaeug, and inscribed to his pupil Pausanias, 
was chiefly illustrative of the Pythagorean philosophy, 
in which he had been initiated. Aristotle speaks on 
the subject of the merits of Empedocles in a manner 
which does not seem to be perfectly consistent ( ap. 
Eichstidt, Lucret., p. lxxxvii., ci., cii., ed. Lips., 
1801), but we know that his poem was sufficiently 
■celebrated to be publicly recited at the Olympic games 
along with the works of Homer. His philosophical 
system was different from that of Lucretius ; but he 
had discussed almost all the subjects on which the 
Roman bard afterward expatiated. In particular, Lu¬ 
cretius appears to have derived from his predecessor 
his notion of the original generation of man from the 
teeming earth ; the production, at the beginning of the 
world, of a variety of defective monsters, which were 
not allowed to multiply their kinds ; the distribution 
of ammals according to the prevalence of one or other 
of the four elements over the rest in their composition ; 
the vicissitudes of matter between life and inanimate 
substance; and the leading doctrine, “ mortem nihil 
ad nos pertincre ,” because absolute insensibility is the 
consequence of dissolution. If Lucretius has in any 
way benefited by the works of Empedocles, he has, in 
return, been most lavish and eloquent in his commend¬ 
ations. One of the most delightful features in the 
character of the Latin poet, is the glow of admiration 
with which he writes of his illustrious predecessors. 
His eulogium of the Sicilian philosopher, which he 
has so happily combined with that of the country 
which gave him birth, affords a beautiful example of 
his manner of infusing into everything poetic sweet¬ 
ness. Ennius had translated into, Latin verse the 
Greek poem of Epicharmus, which, from the fragments 
preserved, appears to have contained many specula¬ 
tions with regard to the productive elements of which 
the world is composed, as also concerning the preserv¬ 
ative powers of nature. To the works of Ennius 
our poet seems to have been indebted, partly as a 
model for enriching the still scanty Latin language 
with new terms, and partly as a treasury or store¬ 
house of words already provided. Him too he cel¬ 
ebrates with the most ardent and unfeigned enthu¬ 
siasm. These writers, Empedocles and Ennius, were 
probably Lucretius’ chief guides; and, though the 
most original of the Latin poets, many of his finest 
passages may be traced to the Greeks. The beautiful 
lamentation, 


“ Nam jam non domus accipiet te lala, neque uxor, 
Optuma , nec dulceis occurrent oscula nali 
Procripere, et tacita pectus d-ulcedine tangunt 

is said to be translated from a dirge chanted at Athe¬ 
nian funerals; and the passage where he represents the 
feigned tortures of hell as but the workings of a guilty 
and unquiet spirit, is versified from an oration of ^Es- 
chines against Timarchus. Notwithstanding, indeed, 
the nature of the subject, which gave the poet little op¬ 
portunity for those descriptions of the passions and 
feelings which generally form the chief charm in poe¬ 
try, Lucretius has succeeded in imparting to his di¬ 
dactic and philosophical work much of the real spirit 
of poetry; and if he had chosen a subject which would 
have afforded him greater scope for the exercise of his 
powers, he might have been ranked among the first of 
poets. Even in the work which has come down to 
us, we find many passages which are not equalled by 
the best lines of any Latin poet, and which, for vigour 
of conception and splendour of diction, will bear a 
comparison with the best efforts of the poets of any 
age or country. In no writer does the Latin language 
display its, majesty and stately grandeur so effectively 
as in Lucretius. There is a power and an energy in 
his descriptions that we rarely meet with in the Latin 
poets; and no one who has read his invocation to Venus, 
at the beginning of the poem, or his delineation of the 
Demon of Superstition and of the sacrifice of Iphi- 
genia, that come after; or his beautiful picture of the 
busy pursuits of men, at the commencement of the 
second book, or the progress of the arts and sciences 
in the fifth, or his description of the plague which 
desolated Athens during the Peloponnesian war, at 
the close of the sixth, can refuse to allow Lucre¬ 
tius a high rank among the poets of antiquity. Ir; 
the first and second books he chiefly expounds the 
cosmogony, or physical part of his system ; a sys¬ 
tem which had originally been founded by Leuoippus 
and from his time had been successively improved by 
Democritus and Epicurus. He establishes in these 
books his two great principles, that nothimg can be 
made from nothing, and that nothing can ever be an¬ 
nihilated or return to nothing; and that there is in the 
universe a void or space in which atoms interact. 
These atoms he believes to be the original component 
parts of all matter, as well as of animal life ; and the 
modification or arrangement of such corpuscles oc¬ 
casions, according to him, the whole difference in sub¬ 
stances. It cannot be denied, that in these two books 
particularly (but the observation is in some degree 
applicable to the whole poem), there are many barren 
tracts, many physiological, meteorological, and geo¬ 
logical details, which are at once too incorrect for the 
philosophical, and too dry and abstract for the general 
reader. It is wonderful, however, how he contrives, 
by the beauty of his images, to give a picturesque col¬ 
ouring and illustration to the most unpromising top¬ 
ics. In spite, however, of the power of Lucretius, it 
was impossible, from the very nature of his subject, but 
that some portions would prove altogether unsuscep¬ 
tible of poetic embellishment. Yet it may be doubt¬ 
ed whether these intractable passages, by the charms 
of contrast, do not add, like deserts to oases in their 
bosom,- an additional deliciousness in proportion to 
their own sterility. The philosophical analysis, too, 
employed by Lucretius, impresses the mind with the 
conviction that the poet is a profound thinker, and 
adds great force to his moral reflections. It is his 
bold and fearless manner, however, that most of all 
produces a povverful effect. While in other writers 
the eulogy of virtue seems in some sort to partake ol 
the nature of a sermon, to be a conventional language, 
and words of course, we listen to Lucretius as to one 
who will fearlessly speak out; who has shut his ears 
to the murmurs of Acheron; and who, if he eulogizes 

763 



LUCRETIUS. 


LUC 


virtue, extols her because her charms are real.—One 
thing very remarkable in this great poet is the admi¬ 
rable clearness and closeness of his reasoning. He 
repeatedly values himself not a little on the circum¬ 
stance that, with an intractable subject, and a language 
not vet accommodated tc philosophical subjects, and 
scanty in terms of physical as well as metaphysical 
science, he was able to give so much clearness to his 
arguments ; and this object it is generally admitted 
that he has accomplished, with little or no sacrifice 
of pure Latinity.—The two leading tenets of Epicu¬ 
rus, concerning the formation of the world and the 
mortality of the soul, are established by Lucretius in 
the first three books. A great portion of the fourth 
book may be considered as episodical. Having ex¬ 
plained the nature of primordial atoms, and of the 
soul, which is formed from the finest of them, he an¬ 
nounces that there are certain images (rerum simula¬ 
cra) or effluvia which are constantly thrown off from 
the surface of whatever exists. On this hypothesis 
he accounts for all our external senses ; and he ap¬ 
plies it also to the theory of dreams, in which what¬ 
ever images have occupied the senses during day 
most readily recur. The principal subject of the fifth 
book, a composition unrivalled in energy and richness 
of language, in full and genuine sublimity, is the ori¬ 
gin and laws of the visible world, with those of its 
inhabitants. The poet presents us with a grand rep¬ 
resentation of Chaos, and the most magnificent account 
of the creation that ever flowed from mortal pen. In 
consequence of their ignorance and superstitions, the 
Roman people were rendered perpetual slaves of the 
most idle and unfounded terrors. In order to coun¬ 
teract these popular prejudices, and to heal the con¬ 
stant disquietudes that accompanied them, Lucretius 
proceeds, in the sixth book, to account for a variety 
of extraordinary phenomena, both in the heavens and 
on the earth, which at first view seemed to deviate 
from the usual laws of nature. Having discussed the 
various theories formed to account for electricity, 
water-spouts, hurricanes, the rainbow, and volcanoes, 
he lastly considers the origin of pestilential and en¬ 
demic disorders. This introduces the celebrated ac¬ 
count. of the plague, which ravaged Athens during the 
Peloponnesian war, with which Lucretius concludes 
this book and his magnificent poem. “ In this narra¬ 
tive,” says a late translator of Lucretius, “ the true 
genius of poetry is perhaps more powerfully and tri¬ 
umphantly exhibited than in any other poem that was 
ever written. Lucretius has ventured on one of the 
most uncouth and repressing subjects to the muses 
that can possibly be brought forward, the history and 
symptoms of a disease, and this disease accompanied 
with circumstances naturally the most nauseous and 
indelicate. It was a subject altogether new to nu¬ 
merical composition ; and he had to strive with all 
the pedantry of technical terms, and all the abstruse¬ 
ness of a science in which he does not appear to have 
been professionally initiated. He strove, however, 
and he conquered. In language the most captivating 
and nervous, and with ideas the most precise and ap¬ 
propriate, he has given us the entire history of this 
tremendous pestilence. The description of the symp¬ 
toms, and also the various circumstances of horror 
and distress attending this dreadful scourge, have 
been derived from Thucydides, who furnished the 
facts with great accuracy, having been himself a spec¬ 
tator and a sufferer under this calamity. His narra¬ 
tive is esteemed an elaborate and complete perform¬ 
ance ; and to the faithful yet elegant detail of the 
Greek historian, the Roman bard has added all that 
was necessary to convert the description into poetry.” 
—In the whole history of Roman taste and criticism, 
nothing appears so extraordinary as the slight mention 
that is made of Lucretius by succeeding Latin au¬ 
thors ; and, when mentioned, the coldness with which 
764 


he is spoken of by all Roman critics and poets, witn 
the exception of Ovid. Perhaps the spirit of free 
thinking which pervaded his writings rendered it un 
safe to extol even his poetical talents ; or perhaps, 
and this is the more probable supposition, the nature 
of his subject, and the little taste which the Romans 
in general manifested for speculations like those of 
Lucretius, may account for his poetry being es- 
timated below its real merits. — The doctrines of 
Lucretius, particularly that which impugns the super¬ 
intending care of Providence, were first formally op¬ 
posed by the Stoic Manilius, in his Astronomic poem, 
In modern times, his whole philosophical system has 
been refuted in the long and elaborate poem of the 
Cardinal Polignac, entitled (i Anti-Lucretius, sivc de 
Deo et Natura This enormous work, though in¬ 
complete, consists of nine books, of about 1300 lines 
each, and the whole is addressed to Quintius, an athe¬ 
ist, who corresponds to the Lorenzo of the Night 
Thoughts. Descartes is the Epicurus of the poem, 
and the subject of many heavy panegyrics. In the 
philosophical part of his subject, the cardinal has 
sometimes refuted at too great length propositions 
which were manifestly absurd ; at others, he has im¬ 
pugned demonstrated truths, and the moral system of 
Lucretius he throughout has grossly misunderstood. 
But he has rendered ample justice to his poetical 
merit; and, in giving a compendium of the subject of 
his great antagonist’s poem, he has caught some share 
of the poetical spirit with which his predecessor was 
inspired. ( Dunlop's Roman Literature, vol. 1, p. 416, 
seqq .)—The work of Lucretius, like that of Virgil, 
had not received the finishing hand of its author al 
the period of his death. The tradition that Cicero re¬ 
vised it and gave it to the public, does not rest on 
any authority more ancient than that of Eusebius ; 
and, had the story been true, it would probably have 
been mentioned in some part of Cicero’s voluminous 
writings, or those of the early critics. Eichstadt, 
while he denies the revisal by Cicero, is of opinion 
that it had been corrected by some critic or gramma¬ 
rian ; and that thus two manuscripts, differing in many 
respects from each other, had descended to posterity, 
the one as it came from the hand of the poet, and the 
other as amended by the reviser. The opinion, how 
ever, though advocated with much learning and in¬ 
genuity, is an untenable one.—The best editions of 
Lucretius are, that of Lambinus, Paris , 1564, 1570, 
4to, with a very useful commentary; Creech, Oxon., 
1695, 8vo, often reprinted ; Havercamp, Lugd. Bat., 
1725, 2 vols. 4to; Wakefield, Lo?id., 1796, 4to, 3 
vols., and Glasg., 1813, 8vo, 4 vols. ; and that of For- 
biger Lips., 1828 12mo. A good edition, however, is 
still much wanted, as Wakefield’s is at best an un¬ 
satisfactory performance, and Eichstadt’s has never 
been completed.—II. Spurius Lucretius Tricipitinus, 
the father of Lucretia, was chosen as colleague in 
the consulship to Poplicola, to supply the place of 
Brutus, who had fallen in battle. He died, however, 
soon after his election, and M. Horatius was appoint¬ 
ed to finish the year. ( Liv ., 1, 58.— Id., 2, 8.) 

Lucrinus, a lake in Italy, near Cumae, on the coast 
of Campania. According to Dio Cassius (48, 50), 
there were three lakes in this quarter lying one be¬ 
hind the other. The outermost was called Tyrrhenus, 
the middle one Lucrinus, and the innermost Avernus 
The Lucrine was shut in from the outermost lake oj 
bay by a dike raised across the narrow inlet. This 
work, according to Strabo, was eight stadia in length, 
and of a chariot’s breadth: tradition ascribed it to 
Hercules. ( Strab., 245.) Agrippa cut a communi¬ 
cation between these lakes and the sea, and built at 
the opening, but between and uniting the Lucrine 
and Avernian lakes, the famous Julian Harbour. The 
object in doing this chiefly was to procure a place 
along the coast fit for exercising and training a bodv 




LUC 


LUG 


of seamen previous to the contest with Sextus Pom- 
peius. ( Sueton., Vit. Aug., 16. — Veil. Paterc., 2, 
79 . —Compare Virgil, Georg., 2, 161.— Horat., Ep. 
ad Pis., 63.) The woods, also, which surrounded 
Avernus in particular, were cut down, and, the stag¬ 
nant vapour being thus dissipated, the vicinity was 
rendered healthy. By this operation much land was 
reclaimed, which before had been covered by these 
lakes, an outlet being afforded to their waters into the 
sea. The shores of the Lucrine lake were famous 
tor oysters. In the year 1538, an earthquake formed 
a hill, called Monie Nuovo, near two miles in circum¬ 
ference, and 200 feet high, consisting of lava, burn¬ 
ed stones, scoria, &c., which left no appearance of a 
a lake, but a morass, filled with grass and rushes. 
( Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 159.) 

Lucullus, Lucius Licinius, descended from a 
distinguished Roman family, was born about B.C. 
115, and served under Sylla in the Marsian war. 
Sylla had a very high opinion of the talents and integ¬ 
rity of Lucullus, and employed him, though he was 
very young, in many important enterprises. While 
the former was besieging Athens (B.C. 87), Lucullus 
was sent into Egypt and Africa to collect a fleet; and, 
after the conclusion of the war with Mithradates, he 
was left in Asia to collect the money which Sylla had 
imposed upon the conquered states. So great, in¬ 
deed, was the regard which Sylla had for him, that he 
dedicated his commentaries to him, and, in his last 
will, made him guardian to his son. In B.C. 74 Lu¬ 
cullus was elected consul, and was appointed to the 
command of the war against Mithradates. During 
the following eight years he was entirely engaged in 
conducting this war; and, in a series of brilliant cam¬ 
paigns, completely defeated Mithradates, and his pow¬ 
erful son-in-law Tigranes. In B.C. 73 he overcame 
Mithradates at Cyzicus, on the Propontis : and in the 
following year again conquered him at Cabiri, on the 
borders of Pontus and Armenia. In B.C. 69 he 
marched into Armenia against Tigranes, who had es¬ 
poused the cause of his father-in-law, and completely 
defeated his forces near Tigranocerta. He followed 
up his victory by the capture of this place, and in 
the following year took also Nisibis, in the northern 
part of Mesopotamia; but he was not able to derive 
all the advantage he might have done from his victor¬ 
ies, in consequence of the mutinous disposition of his 
soldiers. Lucullus never appears to have been a fa¬ 
vourite with his troops ; and their disaffection was 
increased by the acts of Clodius, whose sister Lucul¬ 
lus had married. The popular party at home were 
not slow in attacking a general who had been the per¬ 
sonal friend of Sylla, and who was known to be a 
powerful supporter of the patrician party. They ac¬ 
cused him of protracting the war, on account of the 
facilities it afforded him. of acquiring wealth ; and 
eventually carried a measure by which he was re¬ 
moved from the command, and succeeded by Pompey, 
B.C. 66. — The senate, according to Plutarch, had 
looked forward to Lucullus as likely to prove a most 
powerful supporter of the patrician order : but in this 
they were disappointed ; for, on his return to Rome, 
he took no part in public affairs, but passed the re¬ 
mainder of his life in retirement. The immense for¬ 
tune which he had amassed during his command in 
Asia he employed in the erection of most magnificent 
villas near Naples and Tusculum : and he lived in a 
style of magnificence and luxury which appears to 
have astonished even the most wealthy of his contem¬ 
poraries. Lucullus was a man of refined taste and 
liberal education: he wrote in his youth the history 
of the Marsian war in Greek ( Plut., Vit. Lucull., 
c. 1.—Compare Cic., Ep. ad Att., 1, 12), and was a 
warm supporter of learning and the arts. His houses 
were decorated with the most costly paintings and 
ftatues, and his library, which he had collected at an 


immense expense, was open to all learned men. lit 
lived on intimate terms with Cicero, who has hignh 
praised his learning, and has inscribed one of his 
books with the name of his friend, namely, the 4th 
book of his “ Academic Questions,” in which he makes 
Lucullus define the philosophical opinions of the Old 
Academy.—It is said that, during the latter years of 
his life, Lucullus lost his senses, and that his brother 
had the care of his estate. He died in his 67th or 
68th year. We have a life of him by Plutarch. 
(Plut., Vit. Lucull. — Appian, Bell. Mithrad. — Encyci. 
Us. Knowl., vol. 14, p. 192.) 

Lucumo, the title applied to the hereditary chiefs 
who ruled over each of the twelve independent tribes 
of the Etrurian nation. It would seem also to have 
been given to the eldest sons of noble families, who, 
by their right of primogeniture, would have a fairer 
claim to public offices and the honours of the state. 
(Muller , Etrusker, vol. 1 , p. 356.) The original 
Etrurian term was Lauchme, and hence among the 
Latin writers we sometimes meet with the form Luc- 
mo, as in Propertius (4, 1, 29). Niebuhr thinks that 
the words Lucumo and Luceres may be both referred 
in etymology to Luger, the old German for “ a seer, v 
and may have had reference originally to divining by 
auspices, a privilege reserved for the rulers of the state 
and the heads of houses. (Rom. Hist., vol. 1, p. 242, 
Walter's transl.) 

Ludi, I. Apollinares, games in honour of Apollo, 
celebrated annually at Rome on the fifth of July, and 
for several days thereafter. They were instituted du¬ 
ring the second Punic war, for the purpose of propiti¬ 
ating success, and at first had no fixed time of cele¬ 
bration, until this was determined by a law which P. 
Licinius Varus, the city prretor, had passed. After 
this they were held, as above mentioned, in July. 
(Liv., 25, 12.— Id., 27, 23.— Manut., ad Cic., Ep. 
ad Att., 1, 16.)—II. Cereales, called also simply Ce- 
realia, a festival in honour of Ceres, accompanied with 
public games in the circus, at which the people sat 
arrayed in white, and during and immediately before 
which the greatest abstemiousness wa3 enjoined. 
The injunction was removed at nightfall. The cele¬ 
bration took place on the 9th of April. (Aul. Gell., 
18, 2, seqq. — Plaut., Aulul., 2, 6, 5.)—III. Magni 
or Romani, celebrated in honour of Jupiter, Juno, and 
Minerva. They were the most famous of the Roman 
games. (Cic. in Verr., 7, 14.) — IV. Megalenses, 
called also simply Mcgalesia, celebrated in honour of 
Cybele, or the great mother of the gods. Hence the 
name from peyuXr/ (fern, of piyag), “ great," an epithet 
applied to Cybele (peydi\rj prtrrjp, “ great mother"). 
They were instituted towards the end of the second 
Punic war, when the statue of the goddess was brought 
from Pessirvus to Rome. (Liv., 29, 14.) Ovid makes 
the time of celebration the 4th of April, (Fast., 4, 
179); but Livy mentions the 12th of the same month. 
(Liv., 29, 14.) The statement of Ovid is generally 
considered the more correct. 

Lugdunensis Gallia, a part of Gaul, which re¬ 
ceived its name from Lugdunum, the capital city of 
the province. (Consult the aC'cle Gallia, p. 530, coL, 
2, near the end.) 

Lugdunum, I. a city of Gaul, situate near tne con¬ 
fluence of the Rhodanus or Rhone, and the Arar or 
Saone. (PHn., 4, 18.) It was one of the places 
conquered by Caesar, and, a short time after his death, 
Munatius Plancus received orders from tfie Roman 
senate to re-assemble at Lugdunum the inhabitants of 
Vienna or Vienne, who had been driven out of their 
city by the Allobroges. (Dio Cass., 46, 50.) In a 
little while it became very powerful, so that Strabo 
(192) says, it was not inferior to Narbo or Narbonne 
with respect to the number of inhabitants. The an¬ 
cient city did not occupy exactly the same spot as the 
n odem one, but lay on the west side of the Rhone 

765 




LUP 


LUS 


and Saone, while the chief part of modern Lyons is on 
the e ast side, at the very confluence of the two streams. 
At the extremity of the point of land formed by the two 
streams, and, of course, precisely corresponding with 
the southern extremity of the modern city, stood the 
famous altar erected by sixty Gallic nations in honour 
of Augustus. ( Liv., Epit., 137.— Strabo , l. c.) At 
Lugdunum was established the gold and silver coinage 
of the province, and from this city, as a centre, the 
main roads diverged to all parts of Gaul. ( Strab., 1. 
f.) In the third century it declined in importance, 
on account of the vicinity and rapid growth of Are- 
late and Narbo. Lugdunum is said by Strabo to have 
been situate at the foot of a hill. In Celtic, dun sig¬ 
nifies “ a hill,” and from this comes the Latin termi¬ 
nation dunum. The earlier name is said by Dio Cas¬ 
sius ( l. c.) to have been Lugudunum {Aovyovdovvov). 
Plutarch ( de Fluviis, p. 1151.— Op., ed. Reiske, vol. 
10, p. 732) derives the name from A ovyoq, the Cel¬ 
tic, according to him, for “a raven,” and dovvoq, “a 
hill,” and explains this etymology by the tradition of 
a flock of ravens having appeared to the first settlers 
Momorus and Atepomarus, when building on a hill in 
obedience to an oracle. (Compare Reimar, ad Dion. 
Cass., 1. c. — Reiske, adPlut., 1. c. — For other ety¬ 
mologies of the name of this city, consult Merula, 
Cosmogr., p. 2, 1. 3, c. 24.— Vossius, Hist. Grace., p. 
346.)—II. A city of the Batavi, in Germania Inferior, 
now Leyden. The modern name is said to be de¬ 
rived from that of Leithis, which it took in the middle 
ages. ( Mannert, Geogr., vol. 2, p. 241.) 

Luna, I. ( the Moon). Vid. Selene.—II. A city of 
Etruria, in the northwestern angle of the country, sit¬ 
uate on the coast, and remarkable for its beautiful and 
capacious harbour. The modern name of this harbour 
is Golfo di Spazzia. Before the new division under 
Augustus, Luna had formed part of Liguria ; and its 
/ harbour, situate on the north side of the Macra, cer¬ 
tainly was in that province. Cluverius contends that 
this ancient city occupied the site of the modern Leri- 
ci; especially as Strabo (222) and Mela (2, 4) seem 
to place it on that bank of the Macra; but the ruins 
which now bear the name of Luni, a little below Sar- 
zana, and the denomination of Lunigiana applied to 
the adjacent district, together with the authority of 
Ptolemy (p. 61) and Pliny (3, 5), leave no doubt as 
to the true position of Luna. The harbour of Luna 
was chiefly resorted to by the Romans as a rendezvous 
r or the fleets which they sent to Spain. {Liv., 34, 8. 
— Id., 39, 21.) Strabo says it contained, in fact, sev¬ 
eral ports, and was worthy of a nation which so long 
ruled the sea. The town itself was deserted in the 
time of Lucan (1, 586). Luna was very famous for 
its white marbles, which now take their name from the 
neighbouring town of Carrara. {Strab., 1. c. — Plin., 
36, 5.) Pliny speaks^ of the wine and cheese made 
in the neighbourhood of Luna (14, 16); the latter were 
sometimes so large as to weigh one thousand pounds. 
{Id., 11, 42.— Martial, Epigr., 13, 27.) Inscriptions 
give Luna the title of a Roman municipium. {Cra¬ 
mer's Italy, vol. 1, p. 171, seqq.) 

Lupa {a she-wolf), an animal held in great venera¬ 
tion at Rome, because Romulus and Remus were fa¬ 
bled to have been suckled by one. {Vid. Romulus.) 

Lupercal, a cave at the foot of the Palatine Hill, 
consecrated by Evander to the god Pan, who was 
surnamed Lupercus by the Latins, as protecting the 
flocks from wolves {lupos arcens). Such at least is 
the common derivation of the name. {Arnob., 4, 3.— 
Serv., ad AEn., 8, 343. — Justin, 43, 1.) Others, 
however, deduced the term, according to Quintilian, 
from luo and capra, by a transposition of letters in the 
case of the latter word, because they sacrificed in the 
cave above mentioned a goat {caprum luebant ), and 
purified the city with the skin of the animal cut into 
thongs. {Quint., 1,. 5, sub Jin. — Vid. Lupercalia.) 

766 


Lupercalia, a yearly festival, observed at Rome 
the 15th of February, in honour of the god Pan, and 
said to have been instituted by Evander. {Vid. Lu 
perci.) 

Luperci, the priests of Pan. ( Fh^Lupercal.) On 
the festival of this god, which was termed Lupercalia, 
a goat was sacrificed, and the skin of the victim was 
cut up into thongs. Thereupon the Luperci, in a state 
of nudity, except having a girdle of goat’s skin around 
their loins, and holding these thongs in their hands, 
ran up and down the city, striking with the thongs all 
whom they met, particularly married women, who 
were thence supposed to be rendered prolific. {Serv., 
ad Virg., JEn., 8, 343.— Ovid, Fast., 2, 427.— Id. ib., 
5, 101.) There were three companies of Luperci ; 
two of ancient date, called Fabiani and Quintiliani, 
from Fabius and Quintilius, who had been at one time 
at their head ; and a third order called Julii, instituted 
in honour of Julius Ciesar, at the head of which was 
Antony ; and therefore, as the leader of this, he went, 
on the festival of the Lupercalia, although consul, al¬ 
most naked into the Forum Juhum, attended by his 
lictors, and having made a harangue before the peo¬ 
ple, he, according to concert, as it is believed, pre¬ 
sented a royal diadem to Cassar, who was sitting there 
arrayed in his triumphal robes. A murmur ran through¬ 
out the multitude, but it was instantly changed into 
loud applause when Caesar rejected the proffered or¬ 
nament, and persisted in his refusal, although Anton) 
threw himself at his feet, imploring him, in the name 
of the Roman people, to accept it. {Cic., Phil., 2, 31, 
43.— Dio Cass., 45, 31.— Id., 46, 5.— Sueton., Vit 
Jul, 79.— Plut., Vit. Coes.) 

Lupercus, or Sulpicius Lupercus Servastus Junior 
a poet, who appears to have lived during the lattei 
periods of the western empire. He has left an eleg) 
“ on Cupidity," and a sapphic ode “ on Old Age.' 
{Wernsdorff, Poet. Lat. Min., vol. 3, p. 235.) He i. 
supposed by some to have been also the author of a 
small poem “ on the Advantages of a Private Life ’ 
found in the Anthology of Burmann (vol. 1, p. 508). 

Lupia or Lippia, I. a small river in Germany, fall 
ing into the Rhine, now the Lippe. It is in modern 
Westphalia. {Mela, 3, 3. — Veil. Paterc., 2, 105.)— 
II. A town of Italy, southwest of Brundisium, now 
Lecce, the modern capital of the territory of Otranto. 
{Plin., 3, 11.— Mela, 2, 4.) 

Lupus, I. a native of Messana in Sicily, who wrote 
a poem on the return of Menelaus and Helen to Spar¬ 
ta. He is mentioned by Ovid {ex Pont., 4, 16.— 
Compare Mongitor., Bibl. Sicul., 1, p. 24). — II. P. 
Rutilius Lupus, a powerful but unprincipled Roman 
nobleman, lashed by Lucilius in his satires. {Pers., 
Sat., 1, 115.—Compare Liv., Epit, 73.— Jul., Obse- 
quens, 115.) 

Lusitania, a part of ancient Hispania, on the At¬ 
lantic coast. The name must be taken in two senses. 
All the old writers, whom Strabo also follows, under¬ 
stood by the term merely the territories of the Lusitani, 
and these were comprehended between the Durius and 
the Tagus, and extended in breadth from the ocean tc 
the most eastern limits of the modern kingdom of Por¬ 
tugal. {Strabo, 152.) The Lusitani in time intermin¬ 
gled with the Spanish tribes in their vicinity, as, for ex¬ 
ample, with the Vettones, Calliaci, &c., on which ac¬ 
count the name of Lusitania was extended to the terri¬ 
tories of these tribes, and, finally, under this name be¬ 
came also included some tracts of country south ol 
the Tagus. This is the first sense in which the term 
Lusitania must be taken, comprising, namely, the ter¬ 
ritories of the Lusitani, the Calliaci, the Vettones, and 
some lands south of the Tagus. The Romans, after 
the conquest of the country, made a new arrangement 
of the several tribes. The territories of the Calliaci, 
lying north of the Durius, they included in Hispania 
Tarraconensis, but, as equivalent, they added to Lu- 





L Y C 


L Y C 


sitama all the country south of the Tagus, and west 
of the lower part of the Anas, as far as the sea. Ac¬ 
cording to this arrangement, Lusitania was bounded 
:n the south by a part, erf the Atlantic, from the mouth 
cf the Anas to. the Sacrum Promontorium or Cape 
St. Vincent; on the west by the Atlantic; on the 
north by the Durius ; and on the east by a line drawn 
from the latter river, a little west of the modern city 
of Toro, in a southeastern direction to the Anas, 
touching it about eight miles west of Merida, the an¬ 
cient Emerita Augusta. The modern kingdom of 
Portugal, therefore, is in length larger than ancient 
Lusitania, since it comprehends two provinces beyond 
the Durius, Entre Douro y Minho and Tras los Mon¬ 
tes, and since it has the Minius or Minho for its north¬ 
ern boundary, but from west to east it is much smaller 
than Lusitania. The latter embraced also Salaman¬ 
ca, the greater part of Estremadura, and the west¬ 
ern extremity of Toledo. The most southern part of 
Lusitania was called Cuneus, or the wedge ( vid. 
Cuneus), and is now termed Algarve, from the Ara¬ 
bic Al-garb, or the west. Its extreme promontory 
was called Sacrum. {Vid. Sacrum Promontorium.— 
Mannert, Geogr., vol. 1, p. 327.) 

Lutetia, a town of Belgic Gaul, on an island in 
the Sequana or Seine, and the capital of the Pa¬ 
rish. Hence it is often called Lutetia Parisiorum. 
{Cces., B. G., 7, 7.) It was at first a place of little 
consequence, but under the emperors it became a city 
of importance, and the Notitia Imperii (c. 65) speaks 
of it as the gathering-place for the seamen on the riv¬ 
er. In this passage, too, the name Parisii, as applied 
to the city itself, first appears. At Lutetia, Julian the 
Apostate was saluted emperor by his soldiers. He 
had here his usual winter-quarters. The city began 
to increase in importance under the first French 
kings, and was extended to the two banks of the river, 
‘he island being connected with them by bridges. It 
.s now Paris, the capital of France.-—The ancient 
name of the place is variously written. Thus we 
have Lotitia Parisiorum {Ann. Prudent.. Tree., ann. 
842), and Loticia Parisiorum {Ann. 1, ann. 845), 
&lc. {Mannert, Geogr., vol. 2, p. 168.) 

Ly^eus, a surname of Bacchus, as loosing from care 
{Analog, from Uvu, “ to loosen" or “free." — Vid. 
Liber). 

Lycabettus, a mountain near Athens. Plato says 
{in Crit.) that it was opposite the Pnyx; and Anti- 
gonus Carystius relates a fabulous story, which would 
lead us to imagine that it was close to the Acropolis. 
{Hist. Mirab., 12.) Statius alludes to its olive plan¬ 
tations. {Thcb., 631.— Leake's Topogr., p. 70.— 
Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 335.) 

Lycyea, I. festivals in Arcadia in honour of Pan, 
or the Lycaean Jove. They were the same in origin 
as the Lupercalia of the Romans.—II. A festival at 
Argos in honour of Apollo Lycaeus, who delivered the 
Argives from wolves. 

Lycaeus, a mountain in the southwestern angle of 
Arcadia, deriving great celebrity from the worship of 
Jupiter, who, as the Arcadians contended, was born 
on its summit. Here an altar had been erected to the 
god, and sacrifices were performed in the open air. 
The temenus was inaccessible to living creatures, 
since, if any entered within its precincts, they died with¬ 
in the space of a year. It was also said, that within 
this hallowed spot no shadows were projected from the 
bodies of animals. Pausanias affirms, that nearly the 
whole of Peloponnesus might be seen from this eleva¬ 
ted point. {Pausan., 8, 28.—Compare Strab., 388.) 
Mount Lycaeus was also sacred to Pan, whose temple 
was surrounded by a thick grove. Contiguous to this 
were the stadium and hippodrome in which the Lycse- 
an games were performed. {Pausan., 1. c. — Thcocr., 
Idyl., 1, 123.— Virgil, Georg., 1,16.) Mr. Dodwell, 
who gi v es an animated description of the view he be¬ 


held from Mount Lycaeus, states that the modern na.na 
is Tetragi. The remains of the altar of Jupiter are 
yet visible on the summit. {Classwal Tour, vol. 2, 
p. 392.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 336.) 

Lycambes, the father of Neobule. He promised 
his daughter in marriage to the poet Archilochus, but 
afterward refused to fulfil his engagement when she 
had been courted t>y a man whose opulence had more 
influence than tne fortune of the poet. This irritated 
Archilochus ; he wrote a bitter invective against Ly¬ 
cambes and his daughter, who hung themselves in de¬ 
spair. {Horat., Epod., 6,13. — Ovid,ib., 52.) Such 
is the common account. The story, however, appears 
to have been invented after the days of Archilochus ; 
and one of the scholiasts on Horace remarks, that 
Neobule did not destroy herself on account of any in¬ 
jurious verses on the part of Archilochus, but out. of 
despair at the death of her father. {Scholl, Hist. Lit. 
Gr., vol. 1, p. 201.) 

Lycaon, an early king of Arcadia, son of Pelasgus. 
He built Lycosura, on Mount L) . ieus, and established 
the Lycaean festival in honour of Jove. Pausanias 
makes him contemporary with Cecrops (8, 2). His 
whole history, however, appears to be mythic, as will 
presently appear. According to the legend given by 
Apollodorus (3, 8, 1), Lycaon became, by different 
wives, the father of fifty sons ; and, according to an¬ 
other account, mentioned by the same writer, the pa¬ 
rent of one daughter, Callisto. Both Lycaon and his 
sons were notorious for their cruel and impious con¬ 
duct, and Jupiter, in order to satisfy himself of the 
truth of the reports that reached him, disguised 
himself as a poor man and sought their hospitality. 
To entertain the stranger they slaughtered a boy, 
and, mingling his flesh with that of the victims, set it 
before their guest. The god, in indignation and hor¬ 
ror at the barbarous act, overturned the table (whence 
the place derived its future name of Trapezus), and 
struck with lightning the godless father and sons, with 
the exception of Nyctimus, whom Earth, raising her 
hands and grasping the right hand of Jupiter, saved 
from the wrath of the avenging deity. According to 
another account, Jupiter destroyed the dwelling of Ly¬ 
caon with lightning, and turned its master into a wolf 
The deluge of Deucalion, which shortly afterward oc¬ 
curred, is ascribed to the impiety of the sons of Ly¬ 
caon. {Apollod., 1. c. — Ovid, Met., 1, 216, seqq.- - 
Hygin., Poet. Astron., 2, 4.— Id., Fab., 176.— Tzclz., 
ad Lycophr., 481.)—It has been conjectured, that Ju¬ 
piter Lycaeus was in Arcadia what Apollo Lycius 
was elsewhere ; and that the true root in both cases 
was ATKH {lux), “light.” The similarity of sound 
most probably gave occasion to the legends of wolves, 
of which animal there were many in Arcadia. In this 
case Lycaon would be only another name for Jupiter, 
to whom he raised an altar, and he could not therefore 
have been described as impious in the primitive le¬ 
gend. The opposition between his name and that of 
Nyctimus strongly confirms this hypothesis. It may 
indeed be said, that Jupiter derived his appellation 
from the mountain ; but against this it is to be ob¬ 
served, that there was an eminence in the territory of 
Cyrene or Barce, in Libya, dedicated to Jupiter Ly- 
cseus. {Herod., 4, 205. — Keightley's Mythology, p. 
424, seq.—Schwenck, Andeutung, p. 40.) 

Lycaonia, a district of Asia Minor, forming the 
southeastern quarter of Phrygia. The origin of its 
name and of its inhabitants, the Lycaones, is lost in 
obscurity. The Greeks asserted that Lycaon of Ar¬ 
cadia, in obedience to the commands of an oracle, 
founded a city here, and gave his name to the nation 
and country ; this, however, is mere fable. Accord¬ 
ing to others, it derived its name from 1 vnog, a wolf, 
the country abounding with these animals. Our first 
acquaintance with this region is in the relation of the 
expedition of the younger Cyrus. “ The ridges lying 



L YC 


L Y C 


to tne northward of Konia (Iconium) and Erkle (Archal- 
la),” observes Leake, “ form the district described by 
Strabo as the cold and naked downs of Lycaonia, 
which furnished pasture to numerous sheep and wild 
asses, and where was no water except in very deep 
wells. As the limits of Lycaonia are defined by Stra¬ 
bo (568) and by Arternidorus, whom he quotes, to 
have been between Philomeliurn and Tyri*um on the 
west, and Coropassus and Garsabora on the east 
(which last place was 960 stadia from Tyriaeum, 120 
from Coropassus, and 680 from Mazaca), we have the 
exact extent of the .Lycaonian hills intended by the 
geographer. Branching from the great range of Tau¬ 
rus, near Philomeliurn, and separating the plain of 
Laodicea from that of Iconium, they skirted the great 
valley which lies to the southeastward of the latter 
city, as far as Archalla (Erkle), comprehending a part 
of the mountains of Hassan Daghi. It would seem 
that the depopulation of this country, which rapidly 
followed the decline of the Roman power and the ir¬ 
ruption of the Eastern barbarians, had left some re¬ 
mains of the vast flocks of Amyntas, mentioned by 
Strabo, in undisturbed possession of the Lycaonian 
hills to a very late period : for Hadji Khalfa, who de¬ 
scribes the want of wood and water on these hills, 
adds that there was a breed of wild sheep on the 
mountain of Fudul Baba, above Ismil, and a tomb of 
the saint from whom the mountain receives its name ; 
and that sacrifices were offered at the tomb by all 
those who hunted the wild sheep, and who were 
taught to believe that they should be visited with the 
displeasure of heaven if they dared to kill more than 
two of these animals at a time. Hadji Khalfa lived in 
the middle of the 17th century.” ( Leake's Journal, 
p. 67, seqq.) With respect to its physical geography, 
Lycaonia was, like Isauria, included in a vast basin, 
formed by Taurus and its branches. ( Rennell, Geog¬ 
raphy of Western Asia, vol. 2, p. 99.) Towards the 
cast, the Lycaonians bordered on Cappadocia, from 
which they were separated by the Halys ; while to¬ 
wards the south they extended themselves from the 
frontiers of Cilicia to the country of the Pisidians. 
Between them and the latter people there seems to 
have been considerable affinity of character, and prob¬ 
ably of blood ; both nations, perhaps, being originally 
sprung from the ancient Solymi. Subsequently, how¬ 
ever, they would appear to have become distinguished 
from one another by the various increments which 
each received from the nations in their immediate vi¬ 
cinity. Thus, while the Pisidians were intermixed 
with the Carians, Lycians, and Phrygians, the Ly¬ 
caonians received colonists probably from Cappado¬ 
cia, Cilicia, Pamphylia, Phrygia, and Galatia; at the 
same time, both, in common with all the nations of 
Asia Minor, had no small proportion of Greek settlers 
in their principal towns. It is a curious fact, which 
we derive from the New Testament (Acts, 14, 11), that 
the Lycaonians had a peculiar dialect, which therefore 
must have differed from the Pisidian language ; but 
even that, as we know from Strabo (631), was a dis¬ 
tinct tongue from that of the ancient Solymi. It is, 
however, vqry probable, that the Lycaonian idiom was 
only a mixture of these and the Phrygian language. 
(Jablonski, de Ling. Lycaon., Opusc., vol. 3, p. 8.— 
Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 63.) 

Lycastus, an ancient town of Crete, in the vicinity 
of Gnossus, by the inhabitants of which place it was 
destroyed. Strabo, who mentions this fact, states 
that in his time it had entirely disappeared. (Strab., 
479.) Polybius informs us (23, 15), that the Lycas- 
tian district was afterward wrested from the Cnosi- 
ans by the Gortynians, who gave it to the neighbour¬ 
ing town of Rhaucus. (Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, 
p. 370.) 

Lyceum (A vueiov), a sacred enclosure at Athens, 
dedicated to Apollo, where the polemarch originally 
768 


; kept his court. It was decorated with fountains, plan- 
! tations, and buildings, by Pisistratus, Pericles, arid 
i Lycurgus, and became the usual place of exercise for 
| the Athenian youths who devoted themselves to mili¬ 
tary pursuits. (Pausan., 1, 19.— Xm., Hipparch .— 
Harpocrat. et Suid., s. v.) Nor was it less frequent¬ 
ed by philosophers, and those addicted to retirement 
and study. We know that it was more especially the 
favourite walk of Aristotle and his followers, who 
thence obtained the name of Peripatetics. (Cic., 
Acad. Qucest., 1, 4.) Here was the fountain of the 
hero Panops (Plat., Lys ., p. 203), and a plane-tree of 
great size and beauty, mentioned by Theophrastus. 
(Hist. PL, 1, 11. —Compare Plat., Phcedr., p. 229.) 
The position commonly assigned to the Lyceum is on 
the right bank of the Ilissus, and nearly opposite to 
the church of Petros Stauromenos, which is supposed 
to correspond with the temple of Diana Agrotera, on 
the other side of the river. (Cramer's Anc. Greece, 
vol. 2, p. 340.) 

Lychnidus, a city of Illyricum, situate in the inte¬ 
rior, on a lake from which the Drino rises. Its found¬ 
ation is ascribed by a writer in the Greek Anthology to 
Cadmus. (Chnstod., epigr. 3.) We hear of its be¬ 
ing constantly in the occupation of the Romans during 
the war with Perseus, king of Macedon (Liv., 43, 9), 
and from its position on the frontier it must have al¬ 
ways been a place of importance. This was more 
especially the case after the construction of the great 
Egnatian Way, which passed through it. ( Poiyb., ap. 
Strab., 327.) It appears to have been still a large 
and populous town under the Greek emperors. Pro¬ 
copius relates, that it was nearly destroyed by an 
earthquake, which overthrew Corinth and several oth¬ 
er cities in the reign of Justinian. (Hist. Arch., 18. 
— Compare Mulch., Sophist. Excerpt., p. 64.) It is 
the opinion of Palmerius, who has treated most fully 
of the history of Lychnidus in his description of an¬ 
cient Greece, that this town was replaced by Achrida, 
once the capital of the Bulgarians ; and, according to 
some writers of the Byzantine empire, also the na¬ 
tive place of Justinian, and erected by him into an 
archbishopric, under the name of Justiniana Prim a. 
This opinion of the learned critic has been adopted by 
the generality of writers on comparative geography. 
(Grace. Ant. Dcscript., p. 498.— Wesscling, ad Itin., 
p. 652.— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 7, p. 415.) Cramer, 
however, shows very conclusively that the modern 
Ochrida (as it is now called) does not coincide with 
the ancient Lychnidus, but that the ruins of the latter 
place are still apparent near the monastery of St. 
Naum (Pouqueville, vol. 3, p. 49), on the eastern 
shore of the lake, and about fourteen miles south oi 
Ochrida. (Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 71, seqq.) 

LychnItis Palus, a lake of Illyria, on which Lych¬ 
nidus was situate. It was formed principally by the 
waters of what is now the black Drino, and was a con¬ 
siderable expanse of water, about 20 miles in length and 
8 in breadth. Diodorus informs us, that Philip, son of 
Amyntas, extended his conquests in Illyria, as far as 
this lake (16, 8). Strabo says it abounded in fish, 
which were salted for the use of the inhabitants. (Stra¬ 
bo, 327.) Lie also mentions several other lakes in the 
vicinity which were equally productive. (Cramer's 
Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 74.) 

Lycia, a country of Asia Minor, in the south, bounded 
on the northeast by Pamphylia, on the west and north¬ 
west by the Carians, and on the north by Phrygia and 
Pisidia. The country was first named Milyas, and its 
earliest inhabitants seem to have been the Solymi. Sar- 
pedon, however, being driven from Crete by his brother 
Minos, came hither with a colony, and drove the Soly¬ 
mi into the interior, with whom, however, they had still 
to wage a continual warfare. (Horn., II., 6, 180.— Id. 
ibid., 10, 430.— Id. ibid., 12, 30.) The new-comer9 
took the name of Termilse, as Herodotus writes it (1 



LYCIA. 


L YC 


173), or Trenail®, as others give it. (Steph. Byz ., s. 
v. Tpefitycu.) Afterward, Lycus, driven from Athens 
by his brother .dEgeus, retired to the Termil®, where 
he was well received by Sarpedon, and gave, it is said, 
the appellation of Lycia 10 the country, and Lycii to the 
people, from his own name. In the Homeric poems 
the country is always called Lycia, and the Solymi are 
mentioned as a warlike people, against whom Beller- 
ophon is sent to fight by the King of Lycia. (II ., 6, 
184.) The Solymi, however, disappeared from history 
after Homer’s time, and the name Milyas remained for 
ever afterward applied to the region commencing in 
the north of Lycia, and extending into Phrygia and Pi- 
sidia. into this region the Solymi had been driven, 
and here they remained under the appellation of Milyae, 
though the name Solymi still continued in Mount Sol- 
yma, on the northeastern coast. This mountain, call¬ 
ed at present Takhatlu, rises to the height of 7800 feet. 
From this time, in fact, they were reckoned as occu- 
pying a part of Pisidia, and having nothing more to do 
with Lycia. On D’Anville’s map, however, they re¬ 
tain the name of Solymi. According to the ancients, 
Rycia was the last maritime country within Taurus. 
It did not extend eastward to the inner part of the 
Gulf of Pamphylia, but was separated from that coun¬ 
try and its gulf by the southern arm of Taurus, whose 
bold and steep descent to the shore caused it to re¬ 
ceive the name of Climax. This southern arm of 
Taurus is so lofty as to be generally covered with 
snow, and by its course, presenting itself across the 
line of the navigation along shore, forms a conspicu¬ 
ous landmark, particularly from the eastward. From 
its general fertility, the natural strength of the country, 
and the goodness of its harbours, Lycia was one of the 
richest and most populous countries of Asia in propor¬ 
tion to its extent. The products were wine, wheat, 
cedar-wood, beautiful plane-trees, a sort of delicate 
sponge, and fine officinal chalk. It is recorded, to the 
honour of the inhabitants, that they never committed 
acts ol piracy like those of Cilicia and. other quarters. 
The Lycians appear to have possessed considerable 
power in early times ; and were almost the only people 
west of the Halys who were not subdued by Croesus. 
(Herod., 1 , 28.) They made also an obstinate resist¬ 
ance to Harpagus, the general of Cyrus, but were event¬ 
ually conquered. (Herod., 1 , 176.) They supplied 
Xerxes with fifty ships in his expedition against Greece. 
(Herod., 7, 92.) After the downfall of the Persian em¬ 
pire, they continued subject to the Seleucidae till the 
overthrow of Antiochus by the Romans, when their 
country, as well as Caria, was granted by the conquer¬ 
ors to the Rhodians ; but their freedom was afterward 
again secured to them by the Romans (Polyb., 30, 5), 
who allowed them to retain their own laws and their 
political constitution, which is highly praised by Stra¬ 
bo (665), and, in his opinion, prevented them from fall¬ 
ing into the piratical practices of their neighbours, the 
Pamphylians and Cilicians. According to this ac¬ 
count, the government was a kind of federation, con¬ 
sisting of 23 cities, which sent deputies to an assembly, 
in which a governor was chosen for the whole of Ly¬ 
cia, as well as judges and other inferior magistrates. 
All matters relating to the government of the country 
were discussed in this assembly. The six principal 
cities, Xanthus, Patara, Pinara, Olympus, Myra, and 
Tlos, had three votes each, other cities two votes each, 
and the least important places only one each. In con¬ 
sequence of dissensions among the different cities, this 
constitution was abolished by the Emperor Claudius 
{Sueton., Vit. Claud., 25.—Compare Vit. Vesp.), and 
the country united to the province of Pamphylia. (Dio 
Cass., 60, 17.— Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 14, p. 210.— 
Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 242, seq.) The inte¬ 
rior of Lycia was entirely unknown to Europeans un¬ 
til the visit of Mr. Fellows in 1838, who travelled over 
i large portion of it. According to this individual, the 
5 E 


country is erroneously represented in all the maps, and 
there are no mountains of any importance in the inte¬ 
rior. The coast, however, is surrounded by lofty 
mountains, which rise in many places to a great height. 
(Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 14, p. 210.)—It was at Pa¬ 
tara in Lycia that Apollo had a famous temple and 
oracle, and there he was fabled to pass the winter 
months, and the summer at Delos, whence the epithet 
hiberna applied to Lycia by Virgil (JEn., 4, 143.— 
Heyne, ad loc.). 

Lycimnia, a female alluded to by Horace, and 
thought by Bentley to be the same with Terentia, the 
wife of Maecenas. (Horae., Od., 2, 12, 13.— Bentley , 
ad loc.) 

Lycius, a surname of Apollo, given to that deity as 
the god of light, and derived from the old form ATKH, 
“ light," to which we may also trace the Latin lux. 
(Compare remarks under the article Lycaon.) Ac¬ 
cording to the common l»ut erroneous opinion, Apol¬ 
lo was called “ Lycius” because worshipped with pe¬ 
culiar honours at Patara in Lycia. (Vid. Patara.) 

Lycomedes, a king of Scyros, an island in the 
HEgean Sea, son of Apollo and Parthenope. He was 
secretly intrusted with the care of young Achilles, 
whom his mother Thetis had disguised in female at¬ 
tire to prevent his going to the Trojan war, where she 
knew he must perish. (Vid. Achilles.) Lycomedes 
rendered himself infamous for his treachery to Thes¬ 
eus, who had implored his protection when driven from 
the throne of Athens by the usurper Mnestheus. Ly¬ 
comedes, as it is reported, either envious of the fame 
of his illustrious guest, or bribed by the emissaries of 
Mnestheus, led Theseus to an elevated place on pre¬ 
tence of showing him the extent of his dominions, and 
perfidiously threw him down a precipice, where he was 
killed. According to another account, however, his 
fall was accidental. (Plut., Vit. Thes. — Pausan., 1, 
17; 7 , 4.— Apollod., 3, 13.) 

Lycon, an Athenian, who flourished about 405 B.C., 
and who, together with Anytus and Meiitus, was con¬ 
cerned in the prosecution instituted against Socrates. 
(Vid. Socrates.)—II. A Peripatetic philosopher, a na¬ 
tive of Troas, and the pupil ahd successor of Strato 
of Lampsacus. He flourished about 270 B.C., and 
was for forty years the head of the Peripatetic school 
at Athens. He succeeded Strato at the date just men¬ 
tioned ; and enjoyed also the friendship of Attabus and 
Eumenes. (Diog. Laert., 5, 66.— Athenceus, 12, p. 
546.) Lycon appears to have been the author of a 
treatise on the sovereign good. His eloquence in¬ 
duced his friends to change his name from Lycon to 
Glykon (ylvKvg, sweet). Cicero calls him “ oratione 
locupletem, rebus ipis jejuniorem" (De Fin., 5, 5). 

LycSphron, I. a son of Periander, king of Corinth. 
The murder of his mother Melissa by his father had 
such an effect upon him, that he resolved never to 
speak to a man who had been so wantonly cruel to 
his own family. This resolution was strengthened by 
the advice of Procles, his maternal uncle, and Perian¬ 
der at last banished to Corcyra a son whose disobe¬ 
dience and obstinacy had rendered him odious. Cyp- 
selus, the eldest son of Periander, being incapable ol 
reigning, Lycophron was the only surviving child who 
had any claim to the crown of Corinth. But, when 
the infirmities of Periander obliged him to look for a 
successor, Lycophron refused to come to Corinth while 
his father was there, and he was induced to leave Cor¬ 
cyra only on promise that Periander would come and 
dwell there while he remained the master of Corinth. 
This exchange, however, was prevented. The Cor- 
cyreans, who were apprehensive of the tyranny of Pe¬ 
riander, murdered Lycophron before he left that island. 
(Herod., 3, 51.)—II. A native of Chalcis, in Euboea, 
the son of Socles, and adopted by the historian Lycus 
of Rhegium, was a poet and grammarian at the court 
of Ptolemv Philadelphus from B.C. 280 to B.C. 250 

769 






L YC 


LYC 


where he formed one of the seven poets known by the 
name of the Tragic Pleiades. ( Vid. Alexandria 
Schola, towards the end of that article.) He is said 
by Ovid to have been killed by an arrow. (Ibis, 531.) 
Lycophron wrote a large number of tragedies, the titles 
of many of which are preserved by Suidas. Only one 
production of his, however, has come down to us, a 
poem classed by the ancients under the head of tragic , 
but more correctly by the moderns under that of Lyr¬ 
ic ve'se. This poem of Lycophron’s is called the 
Alexa idra or Cassandra. It is a monologue, in 1474 
verse?-, in which the Trojan princess Cassandra predicts 
to Priam the overthrow of Ilium, and the misfortunes 
that await the actors in the Trojan war. The work 
is written in Iambic verse, and has no pretensions to 
any poetical merit; but, at the same time, it forms an 
inexhaustible mine of grammatical, historical, and my¬ 
thological erudition. Cassandra, in the course of her 
predictions, goes back to the earliest times, and de¬ 
scends afterward to the reign of Alexander of Macedon. 
There are many digressions, but all contain valuable 
facts, drawn from the history and mythology of other 
nations. The poet has purposely enveloped his poem 
with the deepest obscurity, so much so that it has 
been styled to gkotuvov noLyya, “ the dark poem .” 
There is no artifice to which he does not resort to pre¬ 
vent his being clearly understood. He never calls any 
one by his true name, but designates him by some cir¬ 
cumstances or event in his history. He abounds with 
unusual constructions, separates words which should 
be united, uses strange terms (as, for example, Kelop, 
Ivig, ayvayog, and (pirvya, in place of idog ); forms the 
most singular compounds (such as ddeauo'keKTpog, ai- 
vo6aKX£VTog), and indulges also in some of the boldest 
metaphors. The Alexandrean grammarians amassed 
a vast collection of materials for the elucidation of 
what must have appeared to them an admirable pro¬ 
duction. Tzetzes has made a compilation from their 
commentaries, and has thus preserved for us a part at 
least of those illustrations, without which the poem, 
after the lapse of more than 2000 years, would oe un¬ 
intelligible. He has xefuted also the opinion that Ly¬ 
cophron was not the author of the poem. The loss of 
Lycophron’s dramatic pieces is hardly to be regretted, 
if we can form any opinion of his poetic merits from 
the production to which we have just referred. A 
work, however, which he wrote on Comedy (tt ep'i K«- 
I lupdcag), and which must have been of considerable ex¬ 
tent, since Athenasus quotes from the 9th book of it, 
would have proved, no doubt, a valuable accession to 
our list of ancient productions, since on this subject 
the learning of Lycophron must have had full scope 
allowed it. The best editions of Lycophron are, that 
printed at Basle, 1546, fol., enriched with the Greek 
commentary of Tzetzes ; that of Canter, 8vo, apud 
Commelin., 1596 ; that of Potter, fol., Oxon., 1702, 
and that of Bachmann, Lips., 1828, 2 vols. 8vo. The 
last will be found to be most complete and useful, since 
it contains, among other subsidia, the Greek paraphrase. 
Bachmann also published, in 1828, in the second vol¬ 
ume of his Anecdota Grceca, a Lexicon Lycophroneum, 
previously unedited, containing a very ancient collec¬ 
tion of scholia. ( Scholl, Gesch. Gr. Lit.,% oh 2, p. 47, 
seqq.) 

Lycopolis (A vkuv tc ohig), or the “city of wolves,” 
a city of Upper Egypt, on the western side of the Nile, 
northwest of Antaeopolis. It derived its name from 
the circumstance of extraordinary worship being paid 
here to wolves, which, according to Diodorus Siculus, 
drove back the Ethiopians when they invaded Egypt, 
and pursued them to Elephantina. ( Diod. Sic., 1, 
88.) Pliny merely writes the name Lycon as that of 
the city (5, 9), and Hierocles Alkov. D’Anville, and, 
after him, the French savavs who accompanied Bona¬ 
parte to Egypt, place the site of ancient Lycopolis near 
the modern Syut. Mannert, however, decides in fa- 
770 


vcur of the vicinity of Manfaluth, coinciding in thi9 
with Pocccke. ( Geogr vol. 10, pt. 1, p. 387.) 

Lycorea, I. one of the earliest names of Parnassus. 
The modern name of the mountain is Liakov.ra. (Dod- 
well, Tour, vol. 1, p. 189.)—II. A small town on one 
of the highest summits of Parnassus. ( Strabo , 423.— 
Pausan., 10, 6.) It appears to have been a place ol 
the highest antiquity since it is stated by the Arun- 
delian marbles to have been once the residence of Deu¬ 
calion. Strabo also affirms that it was more ancient 
than Delphi. ( Strab., 418.—Compare Pausan., I c. 
— Steph. Byz., s. v. — Etym.. Mag., s. v. — Schol. ad 
Apollon., Arg., 1, 1490.— Schol. ad Pind., Ol., 9, 68.) 
Among other etymologies, Pausanias states, that the 
neighbouring people fled to it during the deluge of 
Deucalion, being led thither by the howling of wolves 
(Tivkov). Dodwell was informed that there was a vil¬ 
lage called Liakoura about three hours from Castn 
(Delphi), which was deserted in winter on account of 
the snow, the inhabitants then descending to the 
neighbouring villages. Some of the peasants of Lia¬ 
koura informed him that their village possessed cop 
siderable remains of antiquity. ( Dodwell, l. c. — Cra¬ 
mer' 1 s Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 161.) 

Lycoris, a female to whom Gallus, the friend ot 
Yirgil, was attached. (Consult remarks on page 545, 
col. 1, near the end.) 

Lycormas, the more ancient name of the Evenus. 
(Strab., 451.) 

Lycosura, a town of Arcadia, on the slope of Mount 
Lycaeus, regarded by Pausanias (8, 38) as the most 
ancient city in the world : it still contained some few 
inhabitants when he made the tour of Arcadia. Dod 
well is inclined to identify its position with that o. 
Agios Giorgios, near the village of Stala, where there 
are walls and other remains which manifest signs of 
the remotest antiquity. (Tour, vol. 2, p. 395.) Gell, 
in his Itinerary of the Morea (p. 101), after having 
spoken of Belli Hassan in the road from Sinano to 
Karitena, adds as follows : “ We descend again to¬ 
wards the Alpheus. This is the road which Pausanias 
seems to have taken to Lycorma, which must have 
been either on the remarkable peak called Sourias to 
Castro , or almost on the summit of Diaphorle (Ly¬ 
caeus), near the hippodrome, where are the ruins of a 
fortification.” The same writer remarks (Narrative 
of a Journey in the Morea , p. 124), “ the peaked 
summit, called Sourias to Castro, is probably the an¬ 
cient Lycorma.” (Siebelis, ad Pausan., 8, 38.— Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 336.) 

Lyctus, one of the most considerable cities of Crete, 
situate apparently to the northeast of Praesus, and at 
no great distance from the sea, since Strabo assigns 
to it the haven of Chersonesus. It was already an 
important city in the days of Homer and Hesiod ; and 
Idomeneus, who was a native of the place, obtains 
from it, in Virgil (AEn., 3, 401), the epithet of Lyc- 
tius. (Compare Homer, II., 2, 647 ; 17, 610.) Ac¬ 
cording to Hesiod (Thcog., 477), Jupiter was brought 
up in Mount JEgneus, near Lyctus. We are informed 
by Aristotle (Polit., 2, 8) that Lyctus subsequently 
received a Lacedemonian colony (compare Polyb., 4, 
54), and we learn from Diodorus Siculus that it was 
indebted to the same people for assistance against the 
mercenary troops which Phalecus, the Phocian gen¬ 
eral, had led into Crete after the termination of the 
Sacred war (16, 62). The Lyctians, at a still latej 
period, were engaged in frequent hostilities with the 
republic of Gnossus, and succeeded in creating a for 
midable party in the island against that city. But the 
Gnossians, having taken advantage of their absence 
on a distant expedition, surprised Lyctus and utterly 
destroyed it. The Lyctians, on their return, were so 
disheartened by this unexpected calamity, that they 
abandoned at once their ancient abodes, and withdrew 
to U:e city of Lampe, where they were kindly and hos* 




L YC 


LYCURGUS. 


pnaoly received. According to Polybius, they after¬ 
ward recovered their city, with the aid of the Gortyn- 
ians, who gave them a place named Diatonium, which 
they had taken from the Cnosians (23, 15 ; 24, 53). 
Strabo also speaks of Lyctus as existing in his time 
(Strab ., 479), and elsewhere he states that it was 
eighty stadia from the Libyan Sea. (Strab., 476.) 
The ruins of Lyctus were placed by D’Anville at 
Lassiti; but the exact site, according to the latest 
maps, lies to the northwest of that place, and is called 
Panagia Cardiotissa. ( Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 
3, p. 388, seqq.) 

Lycurgus, I. a king of Thrace, who, when Bac¬ 
chus was passing through his country, assailed him so 
furiously that the god was obliged to take refuge with 
Thetis. Bacchus avenged himself by driving Lycur¬ 
gus mad, and the latter thereupon killed his own son 
Dryas with a blow of an axe, taking him for a vine- 
branch. The land became, in consequence, steril; 
and his subjects, having been informed by an oracle 
>hat it would not regain its fertility until the monarch 
was put to death, bound Lycurgus, and left him on 
Mount Pangaeus, where he was destroyed by wild 
horses. ( Apollod., 3, 5, 1.)—II. An Athenian orator, 
was one of the warmest supporters of the democratical 
party in the contest with Philip of Macechon. The 
time of his birth is uncertain, but he was older than 
Demosthenes ( Liban ., Arg. Aristogit.) ; and if his fa¬ 
ther was put to death by order of the thirty tyrants 
( Vit. X. Orat., p. 841, B), he must have been born 
previous to B.C. 404. But the words of the biogra¬ 
pher are, as Clinton has justly remarked, ambiguous 
'Fast. Hell., vol. 2, p. 151), and may imply that it 
was his grandfather who was put to death by the 
thirty. Lycurgus is said to have derived instruction 
from Plato and Isocrates. He took an active part in 
the management of public affairs, and was one of the 
Athenian ambassadors who succeeded (B.C. 343) in 
counteracting the designs of Philip against Ambracia 
and the Peloponnesus. ( Derhosth., Phil., 3, p. 129, 
:i. Reiske.) He filled the office of treasurer of the 
public revenue for three periods of five years, that is, 
according to the ancient idiom, twelve years (Diod. 
Sic., 16, 88) ; and was noted for the integrity and 
ability with which he discharged the duties of his 
office. Bockh ( Public Econ. of Athens, vol. 2, p. 183, 
Eng. trans.) considers that Lycurgus was the only 
statesman of antiquity who had a real knowledge of the 
management of finance. He raised the revenue to 
twelve hundred talents, and also erected, during his 
administration, many public buildings, and completed 
the docks, the armory, the theatre of Bacchus, and 
the Panathenaic course. So great confidence was 
placed in the honesty of Lycurgus, that many citizens 
confided to his custody large sums ; and, shortly be¬ 
fore his death, he had the accounts of his public ad¬ 
ministration engraved on stone, and set up in a part of 
the w'restling-school. An inscription, preserved to the 
present day, containing some accounts of a manager of 
the public revenue, is supposed by Bockh to be a part of 
the accounts of Lycurgus. ( Publ . Econ. of Ath., vol. 1 , 
p. 264. — Corp. Inscript. Grcec.,\ ol. 1 , p. 250, No. 157.) 
After the battle of Chaeronea (B.C. 388), Lycurgus con¬ 
ducted the accusation against the Athenian general Lys- 
icles. He was one of the orators demanded by Alex¬ 
ander after the destruction of Thebes (B.C. 335). He 
died about B.C. 323, and was buried in the Academia. 
(Pansan., 1,29,15.) Fifteen years after his death, 
upon the ascendancy of the democratical party, a de¬ 
cree was passed by the Athenian people that public 
honours should be paid to Lycurgus ; a brazen statue 
of him was erected in the Ceramicus, which was seen 
by Pausanias (1, 8, 3), and the representative of his 
family was allowed the privilege of dining in the Pry- 
taneum. This decree, which was proposed by Strat- 
ocles, has come down to us at the end of the “ Lives 


of the Ten Orators.” Lycurgus is said to have pub¬ 
lished fifteen orations (Vit. X. Orat., p. 843, C .— 
Phot., Cod., 268), of which only one has come down 
to us. This oration, which was delivered B.C. 330, 
is an accusation of Leocrates (Kara A euKpdrovq), an 
Athenian citizen, for abandoning Athens after the bat¬ 
tle of Chaeronea, and settling in another Grecian state 
The eloquence of Lycurgus is greatly praised by Di¬ 
odorus Siculus (16, 88), but is justly characterized by 
Dionysius of Halicarnassus as deficient in ease and 
elegance (vol. 5, p # 433, ed. Reiske). The best edi¬ 
tions of Lycurgus are, by Taylor, who published it 
with the oration of Demosthenes against Midias, Can- 
tab., 1743, 8vo; Osann, Jen., 1821, 8vo ; Pmzger, 
Lips., 1824, 8vo ; and Blume, Sund., 1828, 8vo.— 
The best text, however, is that of Bekker, in his “ Or- 
atores Attici.” The oration of Lycurgus is also found 
in the collections of Reiske and Dobson. (Encycl. 
Us. Knowl., vol. 14, p. 212.— Hoffmann, Lex. Biblio - 
i graph., vol. 3, p. 68, scq.) — III. A celebrated Spar¬ 
tan lawgiver, generally supposed to have been the son 
of King Eunomus. The poet Simonides, however, 
following a different genealogy, called him the son of 
Prytanis, who is commonly believed to have been the 
father of Eunomus. The chronological discrepances 
in the accounts of Lycurgus, which struck Plutarch 
as singularly great, do not, on closer inspection, ap¬ 
pear very considerable. Xenophon, indeed, in a pas¬ 
sage where it is his object to magnify the antiquity of 
the laws of Sparta, mentions a tradition or opinion, 
that Lycurgus was a contemporary of the Heraclidaa. 
(Rep. Lac., 10, 8.) This, however, ought not, perhaps, 
to be interpreted more literally than the language of 
Aristotle in one of his extant works, where he might 
seem to suppose that the lawgiver lived after the close 
of the Messenian wars. ( Polit ., 2, 9.) The great 
mass of evidence, including that of Aristotle and Thu¬ 
cydides, fixes his legislation in the ninth century be¬ 
fore our era; and the variations within this period, if 
not merely apparent, are unimportant.— But to return 
to the immediate history of Lycurgus. Eunomus, his 
father, is said to have been killed in a fray which he 
was endeavouring to quell, and was succeeded by his 
eldest son Polydectes, who, shortly after, dying child¬ 
less, left his brother Lycurgus apparently entitled to the 
crown. But, as his brother’s widow was soon discov¬ 
ered to be pregnant, he declared his purpose of resign¬ 
ing his dignity if she should give birth to an heir. The 
ambitious queen, however, if we may believe a piece 
of court-scandal reported by Plutarch, put his virtue to 
a severe test. She secretly sent proposals to him, of 
securing him on the throne, on condition of sharing it 
with him, by destroying the embryo hopes of Sparta. 
Stifling his indignation, he affected to embrace her 
offer ; but, as if tender of her health, bade her do no 
violence to the course of nature : “ The infant, when 
born, might be easily despatched.” As the time drew 
near, he placed trusty attendants around her person, 
with orders, if she should be delivered of a son, to 
bring the child immediately to him. He happened to 
be sitting at table with the magistrates when his ser¬ 
vants came in with the newborn prince. Taking the 
infant from their arms, he placed it on the royal seat, 
and, in the presence of the company, proclaimed it King 
of Sparta, and named it Charilaus, to express the joy 
which the event diffused among the people. Though 
proof against so strong a temptation as that which has 
just been described, Lycurgus nevertheless had the 
weakness, it seems, to shrink from a vile suspicion. 
Alarmed lest the calumnies propagated by the incen¬ 
sed queen-mother and her kinsmen, who charged him 
with a design against the life of his nephew, might 
chance to be seemingly confirmed by the untimely death 
of Charilaus, he determined, instead of staying to exer 
cise his authority for the benefit of the young king and 
of the state, to withdraw beyond the reach of £ .ferndef 

771 




LYCURGUS. 


L Y D 


till the maturity of his ward and the birth of an heir 
should have removed every pretext for such imputa¬ 
tions. Thus the prime of his life, notwithstanding the 
regret, and the repeated invitations of his countrymen, 
was spent in voluntary exile, which, however, he em¬ 
ployed in maturing a plan, already conceived, for rem¬ 
edying the evils under which Sparta had long laboured, 
by a great change in its constitution and laws. With 
this view he visited many foreign lands, observed their 
institutions and manners, and conversed with their sa¬ 
ges. Crete and the laws of Minos are said to have 
been the main object of his study, and a Cretan poet 
one of his instructers in the art of legislation. But the 
Egyptian priests likewise claimed him as their disciple ; 
and reports were not wanting among the later Spartans, 
that he had penetrated as far as India, and had sat at 
the feet of the Bramins. On his return he found the 
disorders of the state aggravated, and the need of a re¬ 
form more generally felt. Having strengthened his au¬ 
thority with the sanction of the Delphic oracle, which 
declared his wisdom to transcend the common level of 
humanity, and having secured the aid of a numerous 
party among the leading men, who took up arms to 
support him, he successively procured the enactment 
of a series of solemn ordinances or compacts ( Rhetras ), 
by which the civil and military constitution of the com¬ 
monwealth, the distribution of property, the education 
of the citizens, the rules of their daily intercourse and 
of their domestic life, were to be fixed on a hallow¬ 
ed and immutable basis. Many of these regulations 
roused a violent opposition, which even threatened the 
life of Lycurgus ; but his fortitude and patience finally 
triumphed over all obstacles, and he lived to see his 
great idea, unfolded in all its beauty, begin its steady 
course, bearing on its front the marks of immortal vig¬ 
our. His last action was to sacrifice himself to the 
perpetuity of his work. He set out on a journey to 
Delphi, after having bound his countrymen by an 
oath to make no change in the laws before his re¬ 
turn. When the last seal had been set to his institu¬ 
tions by the oracle, which foretold that Sparta should 
flourish as long as she adhered to them, having trans¬ 
mitted this prediction to his fellow-citizens, he resolved, 
in order that they might never be discharged from 
their oath, to die in a foreign land. The place and 
manner of his death are veiled in an obscurity befit¬ 
ting the character of the hero : the sacred soils of Del¬ 
phi, of Crete, and of Elis, all claimed his tomb : the 
Spartans honoured him, to the latest times, with a 
temple and yearly sacrifices, as a god.—Such are the 
outlines of a story, which is too familiar to be cast 
away as an empty fiction, even if it should be admitted 
that no part of it can bear the scrutiny of a rigorous 
riticism. But the mam question is, whether the view 
which it presents of the character of Lycurgus as a 
tatesman is substantially correct: and in this respect 
ve should certainly be led to regard him in a very dif¬ 
ferent light, if it should appear that the institutions 
which he is supposed to have collected with so much 
labour, and to have founded with so much difficulty, 
were in existence long before his birth ; and not only 
in Crete, but in Sparta; nor in Sparta only, but in other 
Grecian states. And this we believe to have been the 
case with every important part of these institutions. 
As to most of those, indeed, which were common to 
Crete and Sparta, it seems scarcely to admit a doubt, 
and is equally evident, whether we acknowledge or 
deny that some settlements of the Dorians in Crete 
preceded the conquest of Peloponnesus. It was at 
Lyctus, a Laconian tfolony, as Aristotle informs us, 
that the institutions which Lycurgus was supposed to 
have taken for his model flourished longest in their 
original purity: and hence some 0 / the ancients con¬ 
tended that they were transferred from Laconia to 
Crete ; an argument which Ephorus thought to con¬ 
fute, by remarking, that Lycurgus lived five gen- 
772 


erations later than Athaemcnes, who founded cna 
of the Dorian colonies in the island But, unless 
we imagine that each of these colonies produced its 
Minos or its Lycurgus, we must conclude that they 
merely retained what they brought with them from 
the mother country. Whether they found the sam« 
system established already in Crete, depends on the 
question whether a part of its population was alrea¬ 
dy Dorian. On any other view, the general adoption 
of the laws of Minos in the Dorian cities of Crete, and 
the tenacity with which Lyctus adhered to them, are 
facts unexplained and difficult to understand. The 
contemplation of the Spartan institutions themselves 
seems to justify the conclusion, that they were not so 
much a work of human art and forethought as a form 
of society, originally congenial to the character of 
the Dorian people, and to the situation in which they 
were placed by their new conquests ; and in its lead¬ 
ing features not even peculiar to this, or to any sin¬ 
gle branch of the Hellenic nation. This view of the 
subject may seem scarcely to leave room for the in¬ 
tervention of Lycurgus, and to throw some doubt 
on his individual existence : so that Hellanicus, who 
made no mention of him, and referred his institutions 
to Eurysthenes and Procles, would appear to have been 
much more correctly informed, or to have had a much 
clearer insight into the truth than the later historians, 
who ascribed everything Spartan to the more cele¬ 
brated lawgiver. But, remarkable as this variation is, 
it cannot be allowed to outweigh the concurrent testi¬ 
mony of the other ancient writers ; from which we at 
least conclude, that Lycurgus was not an imaginary 
or symbolical person, but one whose name marks an 
important epoch in the history of his country. Through 
all the conflicting accounts of his life, we may distin¬ 
guish one fact, which is unanimously attested, and 
seems independent of all minuter discrepances—that 
by him Sparta was delivered from the evils of anarchy 
or misrule, and that from this date she began a long 
period of tranquillity and order. (ThirlwalVs Hislon 
of Greece, vol. 1, p. 293, seqq.) — For an account of 
the legislation of Lycurgus, consult the article Sparta. 

Lyous, a king of Bceotia, successor to his brother 
Nycteus, who left no male issue. He was intrusted 
with the government during the minority of Labdacus, 
the son of the daughter of Nycteus. ( Vid. Antiope.) 

Lydia, a country of Asia Minor, situate between 
the waters of the Hermus and Maeander, to the north 
and south, while to the east it was conterminous with 
the greater Phrygia. Within these limits was inclu¬ 
ded the kingdom of the Lydian monarchs, before the 
conquests of Croesus and of his ancestors had spread 
that name and dominion from the coast of Caria to the 
Euxine, and from the Maeander to the Halys. The 
celebrity of Croesus, and his wealth and power, have 
certainly conferred on this part of Asia Minor a greater 
interest than any other portion of that extensive coun¬ 
try possesses, Troas perhaps excepted ; and we be¬ 
come naturally anxious to ascend from this state of 
opulence and dominion to the primitive and ruder pe¬ 
riod from which it drew its existence. In this inqui- 
ry, however, we are unfortunately little likely to suc¬ 
ceed ; the clew which real history affords us for tracino 
the fortunes of Lydia through the several dynasties 
soon fails, and w T e are left to the false and perplexing 
directions which fable and legendary stories supply. 
The sum of what we have is this: that Lydia, or that 
portion of Asia Minor already specified, appears to 
have been governed, for a much greater space of time 
than any other part of that country, by a line of sover¬ 
eigns, broken, it is true, into several dynasties, but con¬ 
tinuing without interruption, it seems, for several cen¬ 
turies, and thus affording evidence of the higher civil¬ 
ization and prosperity of their empire.—Our sources 
of information respecting the history of Lydia are al¬ 
most entirely derived from Herodotus, and the high 




LYDIA. 


L YD 


came which he bears doubtless attaches great respect¬ 
ability to his testimony ; but as we have no opportu¬ 
nity of weighing his authenticity on this particular sub¬ 
ject, from being unacquainted with the sources whence 
he drew his information, and also from having no par¬ 
allel historian with whom to compare his account, it is 
evident we cannot place such dependance on his Lydi¬ 
an history as on that of Egypt, Babylon, and Persia. 
Our suspicions, of course, will be increased, if we find 
that the circumstances he relates are incredible in 
themselves, and at variance also with other authorities. 
Time has unfortunately deprived us of the Lydian an¬ 
nals of Xanthus, a native of the country, somewhat an¬ 
terior to Herodotus, and whose accounts were held in 
great estimation for accuracy and fidelity by sound 
judges (Dion. Hal., Rom. Ant., 1 , 30. — Strab., 579, 
628, 680, &c.); but from incidental fragments pre¬ 
served by later writers we are led to infer, that he 
had frequently adopted traditions materially differing 
from those which Herodotus followed, and that his 
history also, as might be expected, contained several 
important facts unknown to the latter, or which it did 
not enter into the plan of his work to insert.—The 
general account which we gather from Herodotus re¬ 
specting the origin of the Lydian nation, is this : he 
states that the country known in his time, by the name 
df Lydia, was previously called Maeonia, and the peo¬ 
ple Maeones. ( Herodotus , 1, 7.— Id., 7, 74.) This 
teems confirmed by Homer, who nowhere mentions 
the Lydians, but numbers the Maeonian forces among 
'.he allies of Priam, and assigns to them a country 
which is plainly the Lydia of subsequent writers. (II., 

2, 864 ,'seqq.) Herodotus further states, that the name 
of the Lydians was derived from Lydus, a son of Atys, 
one of the earliest sovereigns of the country, and in 
this particular he closely agrees with Dionysius of Hali¬ 
carnassus, however he may differ from him in other 
considerable points. But the period to be assigned to 
this Lydus is a subject likely to baffle for ever the re¬ 
searches of the ablest chronologist. Herodotus in¬ 
forms us, that, after a number of generations, which 
he does not pretend to reckon, the crown passed from 
the line of Lydus, son of Atys, to that of Hercules. 
This hero, it is said, had a son by a slave of Iardanus, 
who was then apparently sovereign of Lydia ; and 
this son, succeeding to the throne by the command of 
an oracle, became the author of a new dynasty, which 
reigned through two-and-twenty generations, and du¬ 
ring the space of 505 years. (Herod., 1 , 7.) The 
introduction of the name of Hercules indicates at once 
that we have shifted our ground from history to my¬ 
thology and fiction. The doubts and suspicions which 
now arise are rather increased than lessened on in¬ 
specting the list of the lineal descendants of Hercules 
who reigned at Sardis. Well might Scaliger exclaim 
with astonishment when he saw the names of Ninus 
and Belus following almost immediately after that of 
Hercules their ancestor. (Seal., Can. Isagog., lib. 

3, p. 327.) It has been supposed that these names 
imply some distant connexion between the Lydian 
dynasty of the Heraclidse and the Assyrian empire ; 
and there are some curious traditions preserved, ap¬ 
parently by Xanthus, in his history of Lydia, which 
go some wav towards supporting this hypothesis. It 
is probable that the original population of Lydia came 
from Syria and Palestine, and the Scriptural name 
of Lud or Ludim may have some connexion with 
this. In such a case we shall be no longer surprised 
to find Ninus and Belus among the sovereigns of the 
country. But whatever connexion may have existed 
between the Lydians and the nations to the east of 
the Euphrates, and from whatever quarter the origi¬ 
nal population may have come, it is evident that the 
Lydians in the time of Herodotus were no longer 
the earlier inhabitants of the ancient Maeonia. They 
had coine from Thrace and Macedon with the Phrvg'- 


ans, Carians, and Mysians, and were much inter¬ 
mingled with the Pelasgi. Leleges, Caucones. and 
other primitive tribes.—We now come to a period 
when the records of Lydia are more sure and faithful. 
Candaules, whom the Greeks named Myrsilus, was 
the last sovereign of the Heraclid dynasty. He was 
assassinated, as Herodotus relates, by his queen and 
Gyges. The latter succeeded to the vacant throne, 
and became the founder of a new line of kings. Un¬ 
der his reign it is probable that the mines of Tmolus 
and other parts of Lydia were first brought into ac¬ 
tivity. This would account for the fabulous stories 
which are related respecting him and his extraordinary 
wealth. (Cic., Off., 3, 9.) Under this sovereign, the 
Lydian empire had already made considerable progress 
in several districts of Asia Minor. Its sway extended 
over a great part of Mysia, Troas, and the shores of 
the Hellespont (Strabo, 590), and before his death 
Gyges had succeeded in annexing to his dominions 
the cities of Colophon and Magnesia. (Herod., 1, 14. 
—Nic. Damasc., Excerpt.) After Gyges came, in 
succession, Ardys, Sadyattes, Alyattes, and Croesus. 
With Croesus ended the line of the Mermnadas, and 
Lydia became, on his dethronement, annexed by Cy¬ 
rus to the Persian empire. ( Vid. Croesus.) The Lyd¬ 
ians had previously been a warlike people, but from 
this time they degenerated totally, and became the 
most voluptuous and effeminate of men. (Herod., 1, 
79.— Id., 1, 155, seqq. — Athenccus, 2, p. 515, seq.) 
They were celebrated for their skill in music and other 
arts, and are said to have invented games, and to have 
been the first to coin money. ( Athenceus, 14, p. 617, 
634.— Id., 10, p. 432. — Herod., 1 , 94.) The con¬ 
quest of Lydia, so far from really increasing the powei 
of the Persians, tended rather to weaken it, by soften 
ing their manners, and rendering them as effeminate 
as the subjects of Croesus ; a contagion from which 
the Ionians had already suffered. The great wealth 
and fertility of the country have always caused it to be 
considered the most valuable portion of Asia Minor, 
and its government was probably the highest mark of 
distinction and trust which the King of Persia could 
bestow upon a subject. In the division of the empire 
made by Darius, the Lydians and some small tribes, 
apparently of Maeonian origin, together with the Mysi¬ 
ans, formed the second satrapy, and paid into the royal 
treasury the yearly sum of 500 talents. (Herod., 3, 
90.) Sardis was the residence of the satrap, who ap¬ 
pears rather to have been the king’s lieutenant in 
lower Asia, and superior to the other governors. .Lyd¬ 
ia, somewhat later, became the principal seat of the 
power usurped by the younger Cyrus, and, after his 
overthrow, was committed to the government of his 
enemy Tissaphernes. (Xen., Anal., 1, 1 Id., Hist. 
Gr., 1, 5 —Id. ib., 3, 1.) After the death of Alexan¬ 
der we find it subject for a time to Antigonus; then 
to Achaeus, who caused himself to be declared king at 
Sardis, but was subsequently conquered and put to 
death by Antiochus. (Polyb., 5, 57, 4.) Lydia, after 
the defeat of the latter sovereign by the Romans at 
Magnesia, was annexed by them to the dominions of 
Eumenes. (Liv., 38, 39.) At a later period it formed 
a principal part of the pro-consular province of Asia 
(Plin., 5, 29), and still retained its name through all 
the vicissitudes of the Byzantine empire, when it 
finally passed under the dominion of the Turks, who 
now call its northern portion Saroukhan, and the south¬ 
ern Aidin. (Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 413, 
se qq _)— As regards the question respecting the Lydian 
origin of the Etrurian civilization, consult the article 
Hetruria. 

Lydus, I. a son of Atys, from whom Lydia is said 
by Herodotus to have derived its name. (Vid. Lydia.) 
—II. Johannes Laurentius, a native of Philadelphia in 
Lydia (whence his name Lydus), was born A.D. 490. 
He filled various civil offices in the palace of the Greek 

773 




L YN 


L YS 




imperors at Constantinople, and under Justinian he 
attained to the rank of Cornicularius. He was re¬ 
garded as a man of erudition, and a good writer both 
in prose and verse. Among other productions, he com¬ 
posed a work on the Roman Magistrates , Ilepi upx^v 
Trje 'Piojuaiuv noTurslag. This work, important for the 
light which it throws on Roman antiquities, was re¬ 
garded as lost, until Ohoiseul-Gouffier, French ambas¬ 
sador at Constantinople, and the celebrated Villoison, 
discovered, in 1784, a manuscript of it in the library of 
Prince Constantine Morusi. This manuscript, which 
is of the 10th century, belongs to the King of France, 
Morusi having presented it to Choiseul-Gouffier, who, 
after the death of Villoison, directed Fuss and Hase 
to edit it. Their edition appeared in 1812, with a 
learned commentary on the life and writings of Lydus 
by Hase. To this must be added the critical epistle 
of Fuss to Hase, Bonne, 1821. Niebuhr calls the 
work of Lydus a new and rich source of Roman his¬ 
tory. Another work of Lydus’s was entitled nept dio- 
ffTj/iei&v , “ On Prodigies.” In this he has collected 
together all that was known in the days of Justinian of 
the science of augury, as practised by the Tuscans and 
Romans. The work is only known by an abridgment 
in Latin, made by the “Venerable Bede,” and by two 
fragments in Greek, published, the one under the title 
of ’Eepf/pepog jdpovToaaonia , “ Thunder for each day,” 
and the other under that of Hepl aeioytiv, “ Concern¬ 
ing Earthquakes.” The first of these is merely a trans¬ 
lation of a passage extracted from the work of P. Ni- 
gidius Figulus, the contemporary of Cicero. The 
treatisa on prodigies itself, however, is not lost, but 
exists, though in a mutilated state, in the same manu¬ 
script of Choiseul-Gouffier from which the work on 
magistrates was made known to the learned world. 
We have also a third fragment, a species of Calendar, 
but only in a Latin translation.—The fragment ’E (pr/ye- 
pog (dpovTOGKOTtia was published among the Varies. 
Lectiones of Rutgersius, Lugd. Bat,., 1618, 4to, p. 
247, and that IIep2 ueioyuv by Schow, in his edition of 
Lydus’s work Hepl yyvtiv. The Calendar is given 
in the Uranologium of Petavius, Paris, 1630, fob, p. 
94. In 1823, Hase published the work itself on Prod¬ 
igies, from the manuscript just mentioned. Lastly, 
we have a work by Lydus, “ On the Months ,” Hep?. 
yyvtiv. The main work itself is lost, but there exist 
two abridgments, one by an unknown hand, the other 
by Maximus Planudes. It contains many particulars 
relative to the mythology and antiquities of the Greeks 
and Romans. It was originally published by Schow, 
Lips., 1794, and has since been edited by Roether, 
Lips., 1827. The best edition of Lydus is by Bekker, 
Bonn, 1837, and forms part of the “ Corpus Scrip- 
torum Histories Byzantines.” 

Lygdamis or Lygdamus, I. a Naxian, who aided 
Pisistratus in recovering his authority at Athens, and 
received as a recompense the government of his native 
island. {Herod., 1, 61, 64.)—II. The father of Ar¬ 
temisia, the celebrated Queen of Halicarnassus. (He- 
rod., 7, 99.)—III. A tyrant of Caria, son of Pisinde- 
lis, who reigned in the time of Herodotus at Halicar¬ 
nassus. He put to death the poet Panyasis. Herod¬ 
otus fled from his native city in order to avoid his tyr¬ 
anny, and afterward aided in deposing him. (Vid. 
Herodotus.) 

Lyg yes. Vid. Liguria. 

Lynceus, I. (two syllables), son of Aphareus, was 
among the hunters of the Caledonian boar, and was also 
one of the Argonauts. According to the old legend, 
he was so sharp-sighted as to have been able to see 
through the earth, and also to distinguish objects at 
the distance of many miles. He was slain by Pollux. 
(Vid. Castor.)—Palasphatus (de Incred., c. 10) has ex¬ 
plained the fable of Lynceus’ seeing objects beneath the 
earth, by supposing him to have been the first who car¬ 
ried on the operation of mining, and that, descending 
774 


with a lamp, he thus saw things under the ground. 
Pliny assigns the following reason for Lynceus being 
fabled to be so keen-sighted. “ Novissimamvcropri- 
mamquc (Lunam ) cadem die vcl node, nuilo alio in 
signo quam Ariclc, conspici; id quuque paucis mor- 
lalium contigit. Ef vide farna ccrnendi Lynceo.” 
(Plin., 2, 17.)—II. One of the fifty sons of JEgyptus. 
He obtained Hypermnestra for his bride, and was the 
only one of the fifty whose life was spared by his spouse. 
{Vid. Danaus and Hypermnestra.) 

Lyrnessus, I. a city of Troas, mentioned by Ho¬ 
mer, and situate to the south of Adramyttium. It dis¬ 
appeared along with Thebe, and left no trace of its ex¬ 
istence beyond the celebrity which the Iliad has con¬ 
ferred upon it. Pliny asserts, that it stood on the 
banks of the little river Evenus, whence, as we learn 
from Strabo (614), the Adramytteni derived their sup¬ 
ply of water. (Compare Plin., 5, 32.) In Strabo’s 
time, the vestiges of both Thebe and Lyrnessus were 
still pointed out to travellers ; the one at a distance 
of sixty stadia to the north, the other eighty stadia to 
the south of Adramyttium. ( Strab., 6\2.-~ Cramer's 
Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 129.)—II. A town of Pam- 
phylia, between Phaselis and Attalea, on the coast. 
It was founded, as Callisthenes affirmed, by the Cili- 
cians of Troas, who quitted their country and settled 
on the Pamphylian coast. (Strab., 667.) The Sta- 
diasmus has a place in the same interval, named Lyr- 
nas, which is probably the Lyrnessus of Strabo. It is 
said to retain the name of Ernatia. (Cramer's Asia 
Minor, vol. 2, p. 278.) 

Lysander, I. a Spartan, who rose to eminence to¬ 
wards the end of the Peloponnesian war, and was 
placed in command of the Lacedaemonian troops, on 
the coast of Asia Minor, B.C. 407. Having about 
him little of the old Spartan severity, and being ready 
to sacrifice that personal and national pride and inflex¬ 
ibility, which were the peculiar characteristics of the 
Spartan institutions, to personal or national interests, 
he gained in an unusual degree the regard and confi¬ 
dence of his Persian allies. This he used to the best 
advantage, by seizing a favourable moment to obtain 
from the younger Cyrus, the Persian viceroy in Asia 
Minor, in place of any personal advantage, the addition 
of an obolus daily (somewhat more than two cents ol 
our money) to every seaman in the Peloponnesian 
fleet During his year’s command he defeated the 
Athenian fleet commanded by Antiochus, as lieuten¬ 
ant of Alcibiades, at Notium. In September, B.C. 
406, he was superseded by Callicratidas, who was de¬ 
feated and slain in the memorable battle of Arginusre. 
The allies then petitioned that Lysander might be re¬ 
appointed. It was contrary to Spartan law to intrust 
a fleet twice to the same person ; but this difficulty 
was evaded, by nominating another individual as com¬ 
mander-in-chief, and sending Lysander as lieutenant 
with the command in Asia. He soon justified the 
preference by gaining the decisive victory of JEgos- 
potamos, in the Hellespont, where 170 Athenian ships 
were taken. This, in effect, finished the war. Re¬ 
ceiving, as he went, the submission of her allies, Ly¬ 
sander proceeded leisurely to Athens, and blockaded 
her ports, while the Spartan kings marched into Atti¬ 
ca and invested the city, which, unassaulted, was re¬ 
duced by the sure process of famine, rr he capitulation 
being settled, B.C. 404, Lysander had tne proud satis¬ 
faction of entering as victor the Piraeus otr harbour ol 
Athens, which had been unviolated by the presence of 
an enemy since the Persian invasion. His services 
and reputation gained for him corresponding weight at 
Sparta ; and, on occasion of the contested succession, 
his influence was powerful in raising Agesilaus to the 
throne. He accompanied that eminent statesman and 
soldier during his first campaign in Asia, where his pop¬ 
ularity and renown threw his superior into the shade; 
and an estrangement resulted, in which Lysander con’ 



LYS 


LYS 


nucted himself with temper and wisdom. About B.C. 
396 he returned to Sparta. In the following year, on 
occasion of a quarrel with Thebes, he was sent into Pho- 
cis to collect contingents from the northern allies, a task 
for which his name and popularity rendered him pecu¬ 
liarly fit. Having done this, and being on his way to 
join the Lacedaemonian army, he was surprised and slain 
by the Thebans at Haliartus in Boeotia. The force 
which he had collected was dispersed, and the war at 
once came to an end, with no credit to the Lacedaemo¬ 
nians, B.C. 395.—It is said that, urged by ambitious 
nopes, he meditated a scheme for abolishing the hered¬ 
itary right of the descendants of Hercules, and render¬ 
ing the Spartan throne elective, and that he had tamper¬ 
ed largely with different oracles to promote his scheme. 
Xenophon, however, a contemporary historian, makes 
no mention of this rumour. The subject has been 
discussed by Thirlwail, in an Appendix to the fourth 
volume of his History of Greece. This writer thinks 
that Lysander actually formed such a project; and that 
the same motive which induced the Spartan government 
to hush up the affair, would certainly have led Xeno¬ 
phon carefully to avoid all allusion to it. (Hist, of Gr., 
vol. 4, p. 461.)—We have a Life of Lysander from Plu¬ 
tarch, and another from Nepos. (Plut., Vit. Lys .— 
Nep., Vit. Lys. — Xen., Hist. Gr. — Enc. Us. Knowl., 
vol. 14, p. 227.)—II. One of the ephori in the reign of 
Agis.—III. A grandson of Lysander. (Pausan., 3, 6.) 

Lysias, one of the ten Athenian orators, was born at 
Athens B.C. 458. His father Cephalus was a native 
of Syracuse, who settled at Athens during the time 
of Pericles. Cephalus was a person of considerable 
wealth, and lived on intimate terms with Pericles and 
Socrates; and his house is the supposed scene of 
the celebrated dialogues relative to Plato’s Republic. 
Lysias, at the age of fifteen, went to Thurii in Italy, 
with his brother Polemarchus, at the first foundation 
of the colony. Here he remained for thirty-two years ; 
but, in consequence of his supporting the Athenian in¬ 
terests, he was obliged to leave Italy after the failure 
of the Athenian expedition to Sicily He returned to 
Athens B.C. 411, and carried on, in partnership with 
his brother Polemarchus, an extensive manufactory of 
shields, in which they employed as many as 120 slaves. 
Their wealth excited the cupidity of the thirty tyrants ; 
their house was attacked one evening by an armed 
force while Lysias was entertaining a few friends at 
supper ; their property was seized, and Polemarchus 
was taken to prison, where he was shortly after execu¬ 
ted (B.C. 404). Lysias, by bribing some of the sol¬ 
diers, escaped to the Pirseus, and sailed thence to Me- 
gara. He has given us a graphic account of his es¬ 
cape m his oration against Eratosthenes, who had been 
one of the thirty tyrants. Lysias actively assisted 
Thrasybulus in his enterprise against the Thirty ; he 
supplied him with a large sum of money from his own 
resources and those of his friends, and hired a consid¬ 
erable body of soldiers at his own expense. In return 
for these services Thrasybulus proposed a decree, by 
which the rights of citizenship should be conferred 
upon Lysias ; but, in consequence of some informality, 
t*his decree was never carried into effect. He was, 
however, allowed the peculiar privileges which were 
sometimes granted to resident aliens (namely, lao- 
reXeca). Lysias appears to have died about B.C. 
378.—The author of the Life of Lysias attributed to 
Plutarch mentions 425 orations of his, 230 of which 
were allowed to be genuine. There remain only 34, 
which are all forensic, and remarkable for the method 
which reigns in them. The purity, the perspicuity, 
the grace and simplicity which characterize the orations 
of Lysias, would have raised him to the highest rank 
in the art turd they been coupled with the force and 
energy of Demosthenes. His style is elegant without 
being overloaded with ornament, and always preserves 
its tone. In the art of narration, Dionysius of Hali¬ 


carnassus considers him superior to all orators in tie 
ing distinct, probable, and persuasive ; but, at the same 
time, admits that his composition is better adapted to 
private litigation than to important causes. The text 
of his harangues, as we now have it, is extremely cor¬ 
rupt. His masterpiece is the funeral oration in hon¬ 
our of those Athenians, who, having been sent to the 
aid of the Corinthians under the command of Iphicra- 
tes, perished in battle. Lysias is said to have deliver¬ 
ed only one of the orations which he wrote. Accord¬ 
ing to Suidas and other ancient writers, he also wrote 
some treatises on the art of Oratory, which art he is 
said by Cicero (Brut., 12) to have taught, and also 
discourses on love. There is still extant a treatise on 
love which bears the name of Lysias, and which has 
been edited by Haenish, Lips., 1827 ; but this work 
evidently belongs to a much later period in Greek lit¬ 
erature. The best edition of Lysias, for the text, is 
that of Bekker, in his Oratores Atlici. Useful editions 
have also been published by Taylor, 8vo, Cantab., 
1740; Auger, 2 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1783; Reiske, in 
the Corpus Oratorum Gracorum , Lips., 1772, 2 vols. 
8vo ; and Dobson, in the Oratores Attici, Lond., 1828, 
2 vols. 8vo. (Encycl. Us. Know!,., vol. 14, p. 228.— 
Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 2, p. 207.) 

Lysimachia, I. a city in the Thracian Chersonese, 
founded by Lysimachus, near the site of Cardia, then 
fast declining in prosperity, and the inhabitants of 
which latter place were transferred hither by him. 
(Diod. Sic., 20, 29 .—Scymn., CL, 702.) 'On his 
death Lysimachia fell successively into the hands ol 
Seleucus, and Ptolemy, and Philip of Macedon. (Po- 
lyb., 18, 34.) It afterward suffered considerably from 
the attacks of the Thracians, and was nearly in ruins 
when it was restored by Antiochus, king of Syria. 
(Liv., 33, 38.— Polyb., 23, 34.) On the defeat of that 
monarch by the Romans, it was bestowed by them on 
Eumenes, king of Pergamus. (Polyb., 22, 5.) Lysi¬ 
machia continued to exist in the time of Pliny (4, 11), 
and still later, in the time of Justinian. (Amm. Mar¬ 
cell., 22, 8.— Procop., de cedi/., 4, 10.) But in the 
middle ages the name was lost in that of Hexamilion, 
a fortress constructed probably out of its ruins, and so 
called, doubtless, from the width of the isthmus on 
which Lysimachia had stood. (Mannert, Geogr., vol. 
7, 202.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p 326.)—II. 
A town of JEtolia, near a lake named Hydra, and be¬ 
tween Arsinoe and Pleuron. (Strabo, 460.) 

Lysimachus, one of the officers of Alexander the 
Great, was born of an illustrious Macedonian family. 
(Justin, 15, 3.) In the general distribution of the 
provinces or satrapies among the chief Macedonian of¬ 
ficers after the death of Alexander, Lysimachus re¬ 
ceived Thrace and the neighbouring countries. It was 
not, however, without difficulty that he obtained pos¬ 
session of the province which had been assigned him : 
he was vigorously opposed by Seuthes, king of Thrace, 
and other native princes, and it was some time before 
his power was firmly established in that country. In 
B.C. 314 he joined Cassander, Ptolemy, and Seleucus, 
in their endeavour to check the power of Antigonus ; 
but he does not appear to have been able to take an ac¬ 
tive part against Antigonus, in consequence of the revolt 
of many Thracian tribes, who had been excited by the 
latter to make war upon him. The peace which was 
made between the contending parties, B.C. 311, last¬ 
ed only for a short time ; and the war was continued, 
with various succets, till the conquests of Demetrius, 
the son of Antigonus, in Greece, roused the confeder¬ 
ates to make more vigorous exertions ; and Lysima¬ 
chus accordingly marched into Asia Minor, where he 
took several places, and acquired immense plunder. 
Antigonus hastened to meet him, but could not force 
him to a battle. In the following year, Lvsimachus, 
having formed a junction with the forces of Seleucus 
and the other confederates, met Antigonus at Ipsus, ic 

775 





L Y S 


L Y S 


Phrygia, where a bloody battle was fought, in which 
Antigonus was slain and his army totally defeated. 
The dominions of Antigonus were divided among the 
conquerors, and Lysimachus obtained the northwestern 
part of Asia Minor. He shortly after married Arsinoe, 
the sister of Ptolemy, king of Egypt, although his el¬ 
dest son Agathocles had already married Lysandra, the 
half sister of Arsinoe. In B.C. 286 he obtained pos¬ 
session of the throne of Macedon, and obliged Pyrrhus, 
king of Epirus, who had laid claims to that country, 
to retire to his native dominions. Hitherto the ca¬ 
reer of Lysimachus appears to have been a fortunate 
one, but the latter part of his life was imbittered by 
family dissensions vnd intestine commotions. Arsinoe, 
fearful lest her children should be exposed, after the 
death of her husband, to the violence of Agathocles, 
persuaded Lysimachus to put him to death. Agathocles 
had been an able and successful general; he was also 
a great favourite with the people, who deeply resent¬ 
ed his death ; and Lysimachus found himself involved 
in almost open war with his own subjects. Lysandra, 
the widow of Agathocles, fled to Babylon, and entreated 
Seleucus to make war against Lysimachus. The Sy¬ 
rian king was willing enough to take advantage of the 
troubled state of his rival’s kingdom ; but Lysimachus, 
anticipating his intentions, marched into Asia, and fell 
in a battle with the forces of Seleucus, in the seventi¬ 
eth year of his age according to Appian {Bell. Syr., 
c. 64), or in his seventy-fourth according to Justin 
(17,1.—Compare Plut., Vit. Demetr. — Justin. — Pau- 
san., 1, 9, seq.). The town of Lysimachia was found¬ 
ed by this monarch. ( Vid. Lysimachia.— Encycl. Us. 
Knowi., vol. 14, p. 228.) 

Lysippus, I. a celebrated sculptor and statuary, born 
at Sicyon, and placed by Pliny in the 114th Olympiad, 
B.C. 324. He was contemporary, therefore, with Al¬ 
exander the Great. Lysippus was at first a worker in 
brass, and then applied himself to the art of painting, 
until his talent and inclinations led him to fix upon the 
profession of a sculptor. He was particularly distin¬ 
guished for his statues in bronze, which are said to 
have been superior to all other works of a similar kind. 
He introduced great improvements into his art, by ma¬ 
king the head smaller, and giving the body a more 
easy and natural position, than was usual in the works 
of his predecessors. Pliny informs us, that his statues 
were admired, among other things, for the beautiful 
manner in which the hair was always executed. ( Plin., 
34, 8.) Lysippus is said to have been self-taught, and 
to have attained his excellence by studying nature 
alone. His talents were appreciated by his contem¬ 
poraries ; the different cities of Greece were anxious 
to obtain his works ; and Alexander is reported to have 
said, that no one should paint him but Apelles, and no 
one represent him in bronze except Lysippus. {Plin., 
7, 37.— Cic., Ep. ad Fam., 5, 12.) His reputation 
survived his death ; many of his most valuable works 
were brought to Rome, in which city they were held 
in so much esteem, that Tiberius is said to have al¬ 
most excited an insurrection by removing a statue of 
Lysippus, called Apoxyomenos, from the warm baths 
of Agrippa to his own palace.—Lysippus is said to 
have executed 610 statues, all of the greatest merit 
{Plin., 34, 7), many of which were colossal figures. 
Pliny, Pausanias, Strabo, and Vitruvius have preserved 
long lists of his works ; of which the most celebrated 
appear to have been, various statues of Alexander, ex¬ 
ecuted at different periods of his life ; a group of eques¬ 
trian statues of those Greeks who fell at the battle of 
the Granicus ; the Sun drawn in a chariot by four 
horses, at. Rhodes ; a colossal statue at Tarentum ; a 
statue of Hercules, at Alyzia in Acarnania, which was 
afterward removed to Rome ; and a statue of Oppor¬ 
tunity {naipog), represented as a youth, with wings on 
his ankles, on the point of flying from the earth.— 
Among the numerous pupils of Lysippus, the most 
776 


celebrated was Chares, who executed the Colossus at 
Rhodes. (Junius, de Piet. Vet. Catal., p. 109, seqq. 
— Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v. — Encycl. Us. Knowl. , vol. 
14, p. 228, seq.) —II. A painter, whose country is un¬ 
certain, but who appears to have been acquainted with 
the art of enamelling ; for on one of his pictures kept 
at ^Egina, there was inscribed the word kvinaev. 
{Plin., 35, 11.— Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.) 

Lysis, a native of Tarentum, and member of the 
Pythagorean sect. He and Philolaus were the only 
two disciples of Pythagoras who escaped the destruc¬ 
tion of the school of Crotona. Lysis upon this re¬ 
tired to Thebes, where he ended his days, and where 
he is said to have had the illustrious Epaminondas for 
a pupil. It is difficult, however, to reconcile this fact 
with the established chronology, although it is vouched 
for by the best writers. Epaminondas was born 412 
B.C. ; and, supposing that Lysis was only 20 years 
old at the death of Pythagoras, he must have been 120 
years of age when Epaminondas was first old enough 
to profit by his instruction. In making this calcula¬ 
tion we suppose that Pythagoras died B.C. 496. The 
anachronism, however, becomes still more glaring, if, 
with Nauze and Freret, we fix the birth of Pythagoras 
at B.C. 460. Supposing, on the other hand, that this 
philosopher was born B.C. 576, which is the other ex¬ 
treme, Lysis must still have been 105 years old when 
Epaminondas was 16. It is better, therefore, to sup¬ 
pose that there were two Pythagoreans named Lysis, 
who have been confounded by the ancient writers.— 
To Lysis are ascribed by some the “Golden Verses” 
of Pythagoras. {Burette, Mem. de VAcad. des Inscr., 
cfec., vol. 13, p. 226.) He wrote a commentary on 
the doctrine of his master, and also a letter to Hippar¬ 
chus of Tarentum, reproaching him for his indiscretion 
in having divulged the secrets of their common mas¬ 
ter. This latter production has come down to us, and 
may-die found among the Greek epistles collected by 
Aldus, and also among the Pythagorean fragments ir.s 
Casaubon’s edition of Diogenes Laertius. ( Scholl, 
Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 2, p. 304.) Many of the MSS. 
and early editions of Nepos {Vit. Epam., c. 2), give 
the reading Lysiam instead of Lysim, on which varia¬ 
tion consult the notes of Bos and Fischer. 

Lysistratus, a statuary of Sicyon, who flourished 
in the 114th Olympiad. He was the brother of the 
celebrated Lysippus. {Plin., 35, 12, 44.) He is said 
to have been the first artist that made use of gypsum 
moulds for wax casts. {Plin., 1. c.) 

Lystra, a city of Asia Minor, placed by Ptolemy 
in Isauria ; but, according to Pliny, Hierocles, and 
the Acts of the Apostles, it belonged to Lycaonia. It 
was in the vicinity of Derbe. Leake has the following 
remarks relative to its site, which go to confirm the 
opinion of Ptolemy : “ Lystra appears to have been 
nearer than Derbe to Iconium ; for St. Paul, leaving 
that city, proceeds first to Lystra and thence to Derbe. 
and in like manner returns to Lystra, to Iconium, and 
to Antiochia of Pisidia. And this seems to agree with 
the arrangement of Ptolemy, who places Lystra in 
Isauria, and near Isaura, which seems evidently to 
have occupied some part of the valley of 'Sidy Shehr 
or Bey-Shehr. Under the Greek empire, Homonada, 
Isaura, and Lystra, as well as Derbe and Laranda, 
were all included in the consular province of Lyca¬ 
onia, and were bishoprics of the metropolitan see of 
Iconium. The similarity of names induced me first 
to believe that Lystra was situated at the modern Illi- 
sera; but we find, as well in the civil arrangement 
of the cities in Hierocles, as in two ecclesiastical lists 
in the Notitia Episcopatuum, that Lystra and Ilistra 
were distinct places. I am inclined to think that the 
vestiges of Lystra may be sought for, witl? the greatest 
probability of success, at or near Wiran Khatoun oi 
Khatoun Serai, about 30 miles to the southward of 
Iconium.” {Journal, p. 102.) 




MAC 


MACEDONIA. 


M. 

Mac.e, I. a people of Africa who occupiea the coast 
to the northwest oi and near the Greater Syrtis. They 
are thought to have been the same with those named 
Syrtites by Pliny. Herodotus states that they had a 
curious custom of leaving only a tuft of hair in the 
centre of their head, carefully shaving the rest, and 
that, when they went to war, they used the skins of 
or'riches instead of shields (4, 175). The river Cinyps 
flowed through their territory. (Compare Diod. Sic., 
3, 48.) — II. A people of Arabia Deserta, on a pro¬ 
jection of land where the Sinus Persicus is narrowest. 
Ptolemy calls the promontory Assabo : its modern 
name, however, Cape Mussendon, bears some faint 
resemblance to that of the Macae. ( Bischoff und Mol- 
ler, Worterb. der Gcogr., s. v.) 

Macaris, an ancient name of Crete. 

Macedonia, a country of Europe, lying to the west 
of Thrace, and north and northeast of Thessaly. The 
boundaries of this country varied at different times. 
When Strabo wrote, Macedonia included a considera¬ 
ble part of Illyria and Thrace; but Macedonia Proper 
may be considered as separated from Thessaly, on the 
south, by the Cambunian Mountains ; from Illyria, on 
the west, by the great mountain chain called Scardus 
and Bernus, and which, under the name of Pindus, 
also separates Thessaly from Epirus ; from Moesia, on 
the north, by the mountains called Orbelus and Sco- 
mius, which run at right angles to Scardus ; and from 
Thrace, on the east, by the river Strymon. The Ma¬ 
cedonia of Herodotus, however, was still more limited, 
as is afterward mentioned. Macedonia Proper, as 
defined above, is watered by three rivers of considera¬ 
ble size, the Axius, Lydias, and Haliacmon, all which 
flow into the Sinus Therma'icus, the modern Gulf of 
Saloniki. The whole of the district on the seacoast, 
and to a considerable distance into the interior, be¬ 
tween the Axius and the Haliacmon, is very low and 
marshy.—The origin and early"history of the Macedo¬ 
nians are involved in much obscurity. Some moderns 
have attempted, against all probability, to derive the 
name from the Kittim mentioned in the old Testa¬ 
ment {Gen. 10, 4.— Numb. 24, 24.— Jer. 2, 10.— 
EzeJc. 27, 6.— Dan. 11, 30). This opinion appears 
to have arisen, in part, from the description of the 
country inhabited by the Kittim, which is supposed to 
answer to Macedonia ; but still more from the fact, 
that, in the book of Maccabees, Alexander the Great 
is said to have come from the land of Cheittieim (sk 
rrjg yrjz XetTTietfi, 1 Mace. 1, 1), and Perses is called 
king of the Kittians (K ittleuv, 1 Macc. 8, 5).— In in¬ 
quiring into the early history of the Macedonians, two 
questions, which are frequently confounded, ought to 
be carefully kept distinct, namely, the origin of the 
Macedonian people, and that of the Macedonian mon¬ 
archy under the Temenidae ; for, while there is abun¬ 
dant reason for believing that the Macedonian princes 
were descended from an Hellenic race, it appears prob¬ 
able that the Macedonians themselves were an Illyrian 
Deopie, though the country must also have been in¬ 
habited in very early times by many Hellenic tribes. 
The Greeks themselves always regarded the Macedo¬ 
nians as barbarians, that is, as a people not of Hellenic 
origin ; and the similarity of the manners and customs, 
as well as the languages, as far as they are known, of 
the early Macedonians and Illyrians, appear to estab¬ 
lish the identity of the two nations. In the time of 
Herodotus, the name of Macedonis comprehended only 
the country to the south and west of the Lydias., for 
he observes that Macedonis was separated from Bot- 
tiaeis by the united mouth of the Lydias and Haliac¬ 
mon (Herod., 7, 127). How far inland Herodotus 
conceived that Macedonia extended, does not appear 
5 F 


from his narrative.—According to many ancient wri¬ 
ters, Macedonia was anciently called Emathia ( Plin .> 
4, 17. — Justin, 7, 1.— Aul. Geli, 14, 6); but we also 
find traces of the name Macedonians, from the earli¬ 
est times, under the ancient forms of Macetae (Ma/re- 
rai), and Macedni (M anedvoi). They appear to have 
dwelt originally in the southwestern part of Macedo¬ 
nia, near Mount Pindus. Herodotus says that the Do¬ 
rians dwelling under Pindus were called Macedonians 
(1, 56.—Compare 8, 43) ; and, although it may for 
many reasons be doubted whether the Macedonians 
had any particular connexion with the Dorians, it may 
be inferred, from the statement of Herodotus, that the 
Macedonians once dwelt at the foot of Pindus, whence 
they emigrated in a northeasterly direction.—The ori¬ 
gin of the Macedonian dynasty is a subject of some 
intricacy and dispute. There is one point, however, 
on which all the ancient authorities agree ; namely, 
that the royal family of that country was of the race 
of the Temenidae of Argos. The difference of opin¬ 
ion principally regards the individual of that family to 
whom the honour of founding this monarchy is to be 
ascribed. The account of Herodotus seems most 
worthy of being received. According to this writer, 
three brothers named Gavanes, Aeropus, and Perdic- 
cas, descended from Temenus, left Argos, their native 
place, in quest of fortune, and, arriving in Illyria, pass¬ 
ed thence into Upper Macedonia, where, after experi¬ 
encing some singular adventures, which Herodotus de¬ 
tails, they at length succeeded in acquiring possession 
of a principality, which devolved on Perdiccas, the 
youngest of the brothers, who is therefore considered, 
both by Herodotus (8, 137) and Thucydides (2, 99), 
as the founder of the Macedonian dynasty. These 
writers have also recorded the names of the succes¬ 
sors of this prince, though there is little to interest 
the reader in their history.—Before the time of Philip, 
father of Alexander, all the country beyond the riv¬ 
er Strymon, and even the Macedonian peninsula from 
Amphipolis to Thessalonica, belonged to Thrace, and 
Paeonia likewise on the north. Philip conquered this 
peninsula, and all the country to the river Nessus arid 
Mount Rhodope ; as also Pseonia and Illyria beyo:ad 
Lake Lychnitis. Thus the widest limits of Macedo¬ 
nia were from the HCgean Sea to the Ionian, where 
the Drino formed its boundary. The provinces of 
Macedonia in the time of Philip amounted to nineteen. 
Macedonia first became powerful under this monarch, 
who, taking advantage of the strength of the country 
and the warlike disposition of the inhabitants, reduced 
Greece, which was distracted by intestine broils, in 
the battle of Chseronea. His son Alexander sub¬ 
dued Asia, and by an uninterrupted series of victories 
for ten successive years, made Macedonia, in a short 
time, the mistress of half the world. After his death, 
this immense empire was divided. Macedonia re¬ 
ceived anew its ancient limits, and, after several bat¬ 
tles, lost its dominion over Greece. The alliance of 
Philip II. with Carthage, during the secopd Punic war, 
gave occasion to this catastrophe. The Romans de¬ 
layed their revenge for a season ; but, Philip having 
laid siege to Athens, the Athenians called the Romans 
to their aid; the latter declared war against Macedo¬ 
nia ; Philip was compelled to sue for peace, to surren¬ 
der his vessels, to reduce his army to 500 men, and 
defray the expenses of the war. Perseus, the succes¬ 
sor of Philip, having taken up arms against Rome, 
was totally defeated at Pydna by Paulus ^Emilius, and 
the Romans took possession of the country. Indig¬ 
nant at their oppression, the Macedonian nobility and 
the whole nation rebelled under Andriscus ; but, after 
a long struggle, they were overcome by Quintus Csecil- 
ius, surnamed, from his conquest, Macedonicus; the 
nobility were exiled, and the country became a Roman 
province B.C. 148. It is very difficult, however, tc 
determine the boundaries of this Roman province of 

777 






MAC 


MAC 


Macedonia. According to the “ Epitomizer’ of Stra¬ 
bo (lib. 7), it was bounded by the Adriatic on the west; 
on the north by the mountains of Scardus, Orbelus, 
Rhodope, and Haemus ; on the south by the Via Eg- 
natia ; while on the east it extended as far as Cypsela 
and the mouth of the Hebrus. But this statement 
with respect to the southern boundary of Macedonia 
cannot be correct, since we know that the province of 
Macedonia was bounded on the south by that of Ach- 
aia ; and although it is extremely difficult, if not im¬ 
possible, to fix the precise boundaries of these provin¬ 
ces, yet it does not appear that Achaia extended far¬ 
ther north than the south of Thessaly.—Macedonia 
now forms part of Turkey in Europe, under the name 
of Macedonia or Filiba Vilajeti, and contains about 
700,000 inhabitants, consisting of Walachians, Turks, 
Greeks, and Albanians. The southeastern part is un¬ 
der the pacha of Saloniki; the northern under beys or 
agas, or forms free communities. The capital Salon¬ 
iki, the ancient Thessalonica, is a commercial town, 
and contains 70,000 inhabitants.—Ancient Macedonia 
was a mountainous and woody region, the riches of 
which consisted chiefly in mines of gold and silver ; 
the coasts, however, produced corn, wine, oil, and fruits. 
Modern Macedonia is said to possess a soil more fruit¬ 
ful than the richest plains of Sicily, and there are few 
districts in the world so fertile as the coast of Athos 
or the ancient Chalcidice. The land in the valleys of 
Panomi and Cassandria, when grazed by the lightest 
plough, yields, it is said, a more abundant harvest than 
the finest fields in the department between the Eure 
and the Loire, or the granary of France ; if the wheat 
in its green state be not browsed by sheep or cut with 
the scythe, it perishes by too much luxuriance. Mace¬ 
donia is also famous for its cotton and tobacco, and its 
wines are some of them equal to those of Burgundy. 

' Malte-Brun, Geogr, vol. 6, p. 156, seqq., Eng. transl. 
— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 164, seqq. — En- 
cycl. Us. Knowl. , vol. 14, p. 241.)—For a list of the 
ancient kings of Macedonia, with remarks on their 
reign, consult Clinton's Fasti Hellenici, p. 221, seqq., 
2d ed. 

Macer, I. a Latin poet., a native of Verona. He 
was the author of a poem on birds, entitled Omi/ho- 
gonia, and of another on snakes, under the title of 
Theriaca. This last was an imitation, in some de¬ 
gree, of the Theriaca of Nicander. {Quint., Inst. Or., 
10, 1, 56.— Spalding, ad Quint., Inst. Or., 6, 3, 96.) 
We have no remains of either of these works. The 
poem De Herbarum virtutibus, commonly ascribed to 
him, is now regarded as a production of the middle 
ages. {Gyrald., Dial., 4, p. 217, seqq. — Broukhus., 
ad. Tibull., p. 274.— Veescnmyer , Bibliogr. Analekt., 
p. 84.)—II. A friend of Ovid’s, who wrote a continu¬ 
ation of the Iliad, and also an Antehomenca. He has 
been frequently confounded with the preceding, but 
flourished, in truth, at a later period. The former 
died in Asia, B.C. 17. (Compare the remarks of 
Wcrnsdorff, Poet. Lat. Min., vol. 4, p. 579, seqq.) 

Machanidas, a powerful tyrant of Sparta, whose 
views at one time extended to the subjugation of all 
Peloponnesus. He was defeated and slain by Philo- 
pcemen in battle near Mantinea. ( Plut., Vit. Philop.) 

Machaon, a celebrated physician, son of BEscula- 
pius, and brother to Podalirius. He went to the Tro¬ 
jan war, where his skill in surgery and the healing art 
proved of great service to his countrymen. Machaon 
was one of those shut up in the wooden horse, and is 
by some supposed to have fallen on the night that 
Trov was taken. He received divine honours after 
death, and had a temple erected to him. {Horn., II., 
2, 731. — Virg., AEn., 2, 263.) — Schwenck derives 
the name from the old verb /royca, the root of pr/xavr/, 
and makes it denote one who is skilful with the hand. 
{Andeut., p. 206 ) “ Machaon,” observes the Pres¬ 

ident Goguet {Origin of Laws, &c., vol. 2, p. 267, 


Eng. transl), “was himself a verv able phys/cian. 
He was a soldier as well as a physician. He was 
wounded dangerously in the shoulder in a sally which 
the Trojans had made. Nestor immediately brought 
him back to his tent. Scarce are they entered there, 
before Machaon took a drink mixed with wine, in 
which they had put the scrapings of cheese and bar¬ 
ley-flour. {II, 11, 506, seqq.) What ill effects must 
not this mixture produce, since wine alone is very op¬ 
posite to the healing of wounds ! The meats which 
Machaon afterward used {II, 11, 629) do not appear 
in any way proper for the state in which he found him¬ 
self. In another part of the Iliad (4, 218) Menelaus 
is wounded with an arrow : they make Machaon im¬ 
mediately come to heal him. The son of HSsculapius, 
after having considered the wound, sucks the blood, 
and puts on it a dressing to appease the pain. Homer 
does not specify what entered into that dressing. It 
was only composed, according to all appearances, of 
some bitter roots. This conjecture is founded on the 
following circumstance : in the description which the 
poet gives of the healing of such a wound, he says ex¬ 
pressly that they applied to the wound the juice of a 
bitter herb bruised (11, 845). It appears that this was 
the only remedy which they knew. The virtue of 
these plants is to be styptic.” To what is here said 
may be added the remarks of an eminent physician of 
our own country. “ It appears that the practice of 
Machaon afid Podalirius was very much confined to 
the removal of the darts and arrows with which wounds 
had been inflicted, and afterward to the application of 
fomentations and styptics to the wounded parts ; for, 
when the heroes recorded by Homer were in other re¬ 
spects severely injured, as in the case of HCneas, whose 
thigh-bone was broken by a stone thrown by Diomede, 
he makes no mention of any other than supernatural 
means employed for their relief.” {Hosack's Medica, 
Essays, vol. 1, p. 38.) 

Macra, a river flowing from the Apennines, and di¬ 
viding Liguria from Etruria, now the Magra. {Lu¬ 
can, 2, 426.— Liv., 39, 32.) The Arnus formed the 
southern boundary of Liguria until the reign of Au¬ 
gustus. {Plin., 3, 5.) 

Macrianus, Titus Fulvius Julius, a Roman, who, 
from a private soldier, rose to the highest command in 
the army, and proclaimed himself emperor when Va¬ 
lerian had been made prisoner by the Persians, A.D. 
260. He is one of the so-called “ thirty tyrants” of 
later Roman history, but appears to have been, as far 
as we can judge from his brief period of authority, an 
able prince. Macrianus was proclaimed emperor along 
with his two sons Macrianus (Junior) and Quietus. 
When he had supported his dignity for a year in the 
eastern parts of the world, Macrianus marched to¬ 
wards Rome to crush Gallienus, who had been pro¬ 
claimed emperor. He was defeated in Illyricum by 
the lieutenant of Gallienus, and put to death with his 
elder son, A.D. 262. {Treb. Poll., Vit. Macrian.) 

MacrInus, I. M. Opilius Severus, a native of Mau¬ 
ritania, was prastorian prefect under Caracalla, whom 
he accompanied in his expedition against the Tarthi- 
ans, and caused to be murdered on the march. Ma- 
crinus was immediately proclaimed emperor by the 
army, A.D. 217, and his son Diadumenianus, who was 
at Antioch, was made C-sesar; both elections were 
confirmed by the senate. Macrinus, after a battle with 
the Parthians near Nisibis, concluded peace with them. 
On hfs return to Antioch he reformed many abuses 
introduced by Caracalla. But his excessive severity 
displeased the soldiers, and an insurrection, excited 
by Moesa, the aunt of Caracalla, broke out against 
Macrinus, who, being defeated near Antioch, fled as 
far as Chalcedon, where he was arrested and put to 
death, A.D. 218, after a reign of about 14 months. 
His son Diadumenianus shared his fate. He was suc¬ 
ceeded by Heliogabalus. {Jul. Capitol, Vit. Macrin. 




MAC 


MAC 


— Hcrodian, 4, 12, 2, seqq.) —II. A friend of the poet 
Persius, to whom his second satire is inscribed. They 
had been fellow-students under Servilius Numanus. 
( Lemaire, ad Pers ., Sat., 2, 1.) 

Macrobii, a people of ^Ethiopia, highly celebrated 
m antiquity, and whom Herodotus has copiously de¬ 
scribed. An expedition was undertaken against them 
by Cambyses, and in this way they have obtained a 
name in history. A rumour of the vast quantity of 
gold which they possessed determined Cambyses to 
march against them. He sent, however, beforehand 
some spies into their country, from the nation of the 
Ichthyophagi, as they understood their language. The 
accounts, which the neighbouring people gave, repre¬ 
sented the Macrobii as a tall and beautiful race, who 
had their own laws and institutions, and elected the 
tallest among them to the dignity of king. The Ich¬ 
thyophagi, on asking the monarch of the Macrobians, 
to whom they brought presents as if ambassadors from 
Cambyses, for what length of time his subjects lived, 
were told for the space of 120 years, and sometimes 
longer. Hence the name given them by the Greek 
writers of Macrobii (M aupobtot, “ long-lived ”). Gold 
was the metal in commonest use among them, even 
for the fetters of their prisoners. Herodotus adds, 
that Cambyses, on the return of his spies, immediately 
marched against the Macrobii, but was compelled to re¬ 
turn, from want of provisions, before he had proceeded 
a fifth part of the way. {Herod., 3, 17, seqq.) —Bruce 
takes the Macrobii for a tribe of the Shangallas, dwell¬ 
ing in the lower part of the gold countries, Cuba and 
Nuba, on both sides of the Nile, to the north of Fazuk- 
la. {Travels , vol. 2, p. 554, seqq.) Heeren, how¬ 
ever, more correctly thinks, that the people in question 
are to be sought for farther south, in another region. 
None of the Shangallas, that we know of, live in cit¬ 
ies, or have reached that degree of civilization imputed 
to the Macrobii. He thinks it probable, therefore, that 
the Macrobii of Herodotus should be sought for on the 
coast, or in one of the ports of Adel, and in the vicinity 
of Cape Guardcfui. This would place them in the 
country of the Somaulies , who are, perhaps, their de¬ 
scendants. ( Heeren, Idcen , vol. 2, pt. 1, p. 333, seqq.) 

Macrobius, I. a Latin writer, who flourished in the 
first half of the fifth century, under Theodosius the 
Younger. His full name is x\urelius Macrobius Am¬ 
broses Theodosius. ( Funcc., de vegct. L. L. scnect., 
4, 27. — Fabric., Bib. Lat., vol. 3, p. 180.) As he 
was not a Roman by birth, and seeks in this an ex¬ 
cuse for his Latin style {Sat., 1, 1), he has been re¬ 
garded by some critics as a native of Greece. {Fa¬ 
bric., 1. c., in notis.) In the manuscripts he bears the 
title of Vir Consularis et illustris; and from this 
some have concluded, that he is the same with the 
Macrobius mentioned in a law of the Theodosian code 
(lib. 6, tit. 8) as Preefectus sacri cubiculi, or chamber¬ 
lain of the royal bedchamber. Other critics have re¬ 
marked, however, that this office was commonly given 
to eunuchs, and that Macrobius the writer had a son. 
It is also uncertain whether Macrobius was a Chris¬ 
tian or not. The supposition that he held the office 
of chamberlain under a Christian emperor has been the 
chief, or, perhaps, the only ground for imagining him 
to have been a Christian, since the language of his 
writings and the interlocutors in the dialogues are en¬ 
tirely heathen. (Consult Mahul, Dissertation sur la 
Vie, &lc., de Macrobe. — Class. Journ., vol. 20, p. 
110.)—The works of Macrobius are three in number: 
1. Commentariorum in Somnium Scipionis libri duo. 
This work is addressed to his son Eustathius. Be¬ 
sides an explanatory view of the Somnium Scipionis 
of Cicero, it contains much information respecting the 
opinions of the later Platonists on the laws which gov¬ 
ern the earth and the other parts of the universe. 
There is a Greek version by Maxumus Planudes, 
which was first published, from the MS in the King’s 


Library at Paris, by Hess, Hal., 1833, 8vo. Sorm 
critics have thought that the commentary we havt 
just been considering ought to be regarded as a part 
of the second work of this writer, of which we are go 
ing to speak, and from which it has been detached 
through the carelessness of the early editors. There 
seems no good reason for this opinion.—2. Salurna- 
Hum convtviorum libri septem. Likewise addressed 
to his son. This is a compilation after the manner o 
the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius : it has, however 
the dialogue form, and is supposed to be the transcript 
of a conversation which took place at table during the 
celebration of the Saturnalia. The principal interlo¬ 
cutors are a certain Yectius Praetextatus, Q. Aurelius 
Symmachus and his brother Flavianus, Caacinna De 
cius Albinus, Avienus, a physician, a grammarian, &c. 
It contains discussions of a great variety of historical 
and mythological topics, explanations of many pas 
sages of ancient authors, remarks on the manners and 
customs of the Romans, &c. An idea of the general 
nature of the work may be formed from the titles of 
some of the chapters : Of the origin of some Roman 
ivords.—Of the origin of the Saturnalia .— Of the Ro¬ 
man year and its divisions.—Proof that all the gods 
of fable were originally symbols of the sun.—Of Ci¬ 
cero's bons mots.—Of Augustus.—Of Julia.—Details 
on the luxury of the Romans.—Observations on the 
JEneid, and a comparison between Virgil and Homer 
— Why those who turn round are attacked with verti 
goes .— Why women have softer voices than men.—Why 
shame makes one blu^h .— Why bodies plunged in wa¬ 
ter appear larger than they really are, &c. Many 
things in Macrobius are drawn from Aulus Gellius, 
and some from Plutarch.—3. The. third work of Ma¬ 
crobius treated of the difference between the Greek 
and Latin languages, and also of their analogy : De 
differentiis et societatibus Creed Latinique Verbi. We 
have only an extract from this, made by one Joannes, 
supposed to be the same with the celebrated Joannes 
Scotus, who lived in the time of Charles the Bald. 
{Scholl, Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 3, p. 322, seqq. — Bdhr, 
Gcsch. Rom. Lit., p. 724, seqq.) The best edition 
of Macrobius is that of Gronovius, Lugd. Bat., 1670, 
8vo. The edition of Zeune, Lips., 1774, 8vo, has a 
very faulty text, but very useful and extensive notes. 
The text is a careless reprint of that of Gronovius. 
The Bipont edition, 1788, 2 vols. 8vo, has no notes, 
but a very correct text. The Notitia Literaria prefix¬ 
ed is also very useful.—II. An ecclesiastical writer, 
who lived in the sixth century. He was at first a 
priest of the Catholic church in Africa, but afterward 
made common cause with the Donatists. We have a 
fragment remaining of a letter of his to the people of 
Carthage, but nothing exists of a treatise which he 
wrote while yet belonging to the orthodox persuasion, 
entitled “ Ad confessores et virgenes .” 

Macrones, a nation of Asia, occupying the north¬ 
ern parts of Armenia, probably between the town of 
Arze and the coast of the Euxine. They are mention¬ 
ed in the Anabasis as one of the nations through whose 
territories the Greeks marched. The Macrones are 
called Macrocephali by Scylax (p. 33), but Pliny seems 
to distinguish them as two different people (6, 4). 
Herodotus informs us that the Macrones used circum¬ 
cision, having, as they themselves reported, derived 
the practice from the Colchians. {Herod., 2, 104.) 
The natural inference to be drawn from this passage 
is, that the Macrones were of Colchian origin. Stra¬ 
bo affirms, that this people were in his time no long¬ 
er called by their ancient appellation, but were named 
Sanni {Strab., 548); and Eustathius, who confirms 
this statement, writes the word Tzani, according to 
the more modern Greek orthography {ad Dionys. Pe * 
rieg., 766). Cramer thinks, that the modern name of 
Djanik is a corruption Sannice. {Asia Minor , vol, 
1, p. 286.) 


779 




MiE A 


MiEC 


Madaura, a city of Numidia, near Tagaste, and 
northwest of Sicca. It appears to have been a place 
«f some importance, and, in the Notilia Numidia, Pru- 
dentius Metaurensis is named as its bishop. It is com¬ 
monly regarded as the birthplace of Apuleius, though 
Mannert is in favour of the Roman colony Ad Mcdera ., 
No traces of Madaura remain. In an inscription of 
Gruter’s (p. 600, n. 10), the name of the city is given 
as Medaura. ( Mannert , Geogr., vol. 10, pt. 2, p. 
321.) 

Meander, a river of Asia Minor, rising near Celse- 
nse in Phrygia, and, after forming the common bound¬ 
ary between Lydia and Caria, falling into the /Egean 
below the promontory of Mycale. It was remarkable 
for the winding nature of its course ( ouoAiog uv eg 
vnep&oTirjv.—Strabo, 577), and hence all obliquities 
or windings took the name of Maeander. ( Strab ., 1. c.) 
It received the waters of various streams, the Marsyas, 
Orgas, «fec., but was not remarkable for i-ts size as far 
as regarded breadth, though a deep river, and fordable 
only in a few places in the early part of its course. 
According to Xenophon (Anab., 1, 2), the Meander 
rose in the palace of Cyrus, flowing from thence 
through his park and the city of Celoense. In the vi¬ 
cinity rose the Marsyas, which formed a junction with 
the Maeander in the suburb of Celaenae, where after¬ 
ward stood the city of Apamea. (Compare the re¬ 
marks of Leake, Tour , p. 158, seqq.) According to 
Strabo (663), the common boundary of Caria and 
• Phrygia, on the Maeander, was at Carura. After the 
river had reached Lydia and C^ria, it widened, and 
entered upon what the ancients denominated the plain 
of the Maeander, which extended from the borders 
of Phrygia to the sea, nearly 100 miles. This plain 
varied in breadth from 5 to 10 miles, and was orna¬ 
mented with a number of fine cities and towns. Great 
changes have taken place on the coast, at the mouth of 
the Maeander, by the great deposition of mud and earth 
in the course of ages : changes that have so com¬ 
pletely altered the face of things as described by the 
ancients, that the first of modern geographers was to¬ 
tally misled in his estimate of the ancient geography, 
by attempting to reconcile it with the modern, on the 
ground of the imperfect descriptions of it in the ancient 
books. D’Anville had no conception that the Gulf of 
Latmus received the Maeander, but supposed a con¬ 
siderable space to exist between them. Nor was he 
aware that the gulf itself no longer existed ; that its 
wide opening to the sea was closed up by alluvions ; 
and that the island of Lade, so often mentioned as a 
rendezvous in the history of the naval warfare of an¬ 
cient times, had become a part of the main land, rising, 
like the rock of Dumbarton, from the marshy soil; 
and, moreover, that the inner part of the gulf was 
transformed into a fresh-water lake. The mud of the 
Maeander, having been deposited across the southeast 
arm of the gulf, formed its upper part into a lake ; 
which soon became fresh, when the access of the sea¬ 
water was barred out, as it receives a great quantity 
of land waters from the surrounding mountains. It is 
named the Lake of Baji, from a town at the southeast 
corner: it is about 12 miles in length, and from 3 to 
5 in breadth. Chandler represents the water as in¬ 
sipid and not drinkable. The modern name of the 
Maeander is Minder. (Rennell , Geogr. of Western 
Asia, vol. 2, p. 30, seqq.) Mr. Turner describes the 
Maeander in a part of its course as about seventy feet 
wide, and having a current towards the sea of about a 
mile an hour : he observes, however, that this must 
be much more rapid, when the streams, formed by 
rain and melted snow, pour into it from the mountains. 
He describes the water as very thick and muddy ; and 
,he mud in particular at the bank as extremely deep. 

Tour in the Levant , vol. 3, p. 96.) 

M-*at^e, a people in the north of Britain, near the 

allum Seven or wall of Severus, comprising the Ota- 
780 


deni, Gadeni, Selgovse, Novantae, and Damnii. (Dio 
Cass., 76, 12.) 

Maecenas, Caius Cilnius, was descended, it is 
said, from Elbius Volterrenus, one of the Lucumoncs 
of Etruria, who fell in the battle at the lake Vadimo- 
nis, A.U.C. 445, which finally brought his country 
under total subjection to the Romans. His imme¬ 
diate ancestors were Roman knights, who, having been 
at length incorporated into the state, held high com¬ 
mands in the army ( Horat ., Sat., 1, 6, 3), and Maece¬ 
nas would never consent to leave their class to be en¬ 
rolled among the senators: but he was proud (as may 
be conjectured from its frequent mention by the poets) 
of his supposed descent from the old Etrurian princes. 
It is not known in what year he was born, or in what 
manner he spent his youth; but Meibomius (Maecenas, 
L. Bat., 1653, 4to) conjectures that he was educated 
at Apollonia, along with Augustus and Agrippa ; and 
that this formed the commencement of their memora¬ 
ble friendship. He is not mentioned in the history of 
his country till we hear of his accompanying Augustus 
to Rome after the battle of Mutina. He was also with 
him at Philippi, and attended him during the whole 
course of the naval wars against Sextus Pompey, ex¬ 
cept when he was sent at intervals to Rome, in order 
by his presence to quell those disturbances, which, 
during this period, frequently broke out in the capital. 
In the battle of Actium he commanded the light Li- 
burnian galleys, which so greatly contributed to gain 
the victory for Augustus, and he gave chase with them 
to Antony when he fled after the galley of Cleopatra. 
During the absence of Augustus in Egypt, Maecenas, 
in virtue of his office of prefect, was intrusted with the 
chief administrationpof affairs in Italy, and particularly 
with the civil government of the capital. (Bedo Alti¬ 
nov., Epiced. Mcecen.) After Augustus had returned 
from Egypt without a rival, and the affairs of the empire 
proceeded in a regular course, Maecenas shared with 
Agrippa the favour and confidence of his sovereign. 
While Agrippa was intrusted with affairs requiring ac¬ 
tivity, gravity, and force, those which were to be accom¬ 
plished by persuasion and address were committed to 
Maecenas. The advice which he gave to Augustus 
in the celebrated consultation with regard to his pro¬ 
posed resignation of the empire, was preferred to that 
of Agrippa : Maecenas having justly represented that 
it would not be for the advantage of Rome to be left 
without a head to the government, as the vast em¬ 
pire now required a single chief to maintain peace 
and order ; that Augustus had already advanced too 
far to recede with safety ; and that, if divested of ab¬ 
solute power, he would speedily fall a victim to the 
resentment of the friends or relatives of those whom 
he had formerly sacrificed to his own security. (Dio 
Cassius, 52, 14, seqq.) Having agreed to retain the 
government, Augustus asked and obtained from Mre- 
cenas a general plan for its administration. His min¬ 
ister laid down for him rules regarding the. reformation 
of the senate, the nomination of magistrates, the col¬ 
lection of taxes, the establishment of schools, the gov¬ 
ernment of provinces, the levy of troops, the equaliza¬ 
tion of weights and measures, the suppression of tu¬ 
multuous assemblies, and the support of religious 
observances. His measures on all these points, as 
detailed by Dio Cassius, show consummate political 
wisdom, and knowledge in the science of govern¬ 
ment. Maecenas had often mediated between Antony 
and Augustus, and healed the mutual wounds which 
their ambition inflicted. But when his master had at 
length triumphed in the contest, the great object of 
his attention was to secure the permanence of the 
government. For this purpose he had spies in ail ror- 
ners, to pry into every assembly, and to watch the 
motions of the people. By these means the impru¬ 
dent plots of Lepidus (Veil. Paterc., 2, 88) and Mu- 
raena were discovered and suppressed without danger 






MAECENAS. 


MAECENAS. 


or disturbance ; and at length no conspiracies were 
formed. At the same time, and with a similar object, 
he did all in his power to render the administration 
of Augustus moderate and just: and, as he perfectly- 
understood all the weaknesses and virtues of his char¬ 
acter, he easily bent his disposition to the side of mer¬ 
cy. While he himself, as prefect of the city, had re¬ 
tained the capital in admirable order and subjection, 
he was yet remarkable for the mildness with which he 
exercised this important office, to which belonged the 
management of all civil affairs in the absence of the 
emperor, the regulation of buildings, provisions, and 
commerce, and the cognizance of all crimes committed 
within a hundred miles of the capital. Seneca, who 
is by no means favourable, in other respects, to the 
character of Maecenas, allows him a full tribute of 
praise for his clemency and mildness. ( Epist ., 114.) 
So sensible was Augustus of the benefits which his 
government derived from the counsels and wise ad¬ 
ministration of Maecenas, and such was his high opin¬ 
ion of his sagacity, fidelity, and secrecy, that every¬ 
thing which concerned him, whether political or do¬ 
mestic, was confided to this minister. Such, too, 
were the terms of intimacy on which they lived, that 
the emperor, when he fell sick, always made himself 
be carried to the house of Maecenas ; so difficult was 
it to find repose in the habitation of a prince ! During 
the most important and arduous periods of his admin¬ 
istration, and while exercising an almost unremitting 
assiduity, Maecenas had still the appearance of being 
sunk in sloth and luxury. Though he could exert 
himself with the utmost activity and vigilance when 
these were required, yet in his hours of freedom he 
indulged himself in as much ease and softness as the 
most delicate lady in Rome. {Veil. Paterc., 2, 88.) 
He was moderate in his desires of wealth or honours ; 
he was probably indolent and voluptuous by nature 
ar.d inclination ; and he rather wished to exhibit than 
conceal his faults. The air of effeminate ease which 
he ever assumed, was perhaps good policy in ref¬ 
erence both to the prince and people. Neither could 
be jealous of a minister who was apparently so care¬ 
less and indifferent, and who seemed occupied chiefly 
with his magnificent villas and costly furniture. He 
usually came abroad with a negligent gait and in a 
loose garb. When he went to the theatre, forum, or 
senate, his ungirt robe trailed on the ground, and he 
wore a little cloak, with a hood like a fugitive slave in 
a pantomime. Instead of being followed by lictors or 
tribunes, he appeared in all public places attended by 
two eunuchs. {Senec., Epist., 114.) He possessed 
a magnificent and spacious villa on the Esquiline Hill, 
to which a tower adjoined remarkable for its height. 
The gardens of Maecenas, which surrounded the villa, 
were among the most delightful in Rome or its vicin¬ 
ity. Here, seated in the cool shade of his green 
spreading trees, whence the most musical birds con¬ 
stantly warbled their harmonious notes, he was accus¬ 
tomed to linger, and pay at idle hours his court to the 
muses. Being fond of change and singularity, the 
style of Maecenas’s entertainments varied. They were 
sometimes profuse and magnificent, at others elegant 
and private ; but they were always inimitable in point 
of taste and fancy. He was the first person who in¬ 
troduced at Rome the luxury of young mule’s flesh; 
hio table was served with the most delicious wines, 
among which was one of Italian growth and most ex¬ 
quisite flavour, called from his name Mcecenatianum 
( Plin ., 8, 43) ; and hence, too, the luxurious Trimal- 
chio, who is the Magister Convivii in the Satyricon 
of Petronius Arbiter, is called Macenatianus, from 
his imitating the style of Maecenas’s entertainments. 
{Plin., 14, 6.) His sumptuous board was thronged 
with parasites, whom he also frequently carried about 
to sup with his friends, and his house was filled by 
musicians, buffoons, and actors of mimes or panto¬ 


mimes, with Bathyllus at their head. These were 
strangely intermingled in his palace with tribunes, 
clerks, and lictors. But there, too, were Horace, and 
Varius, and Valgius, and Virgil! Of these distin¬ 
guished poets, and of many other literary men, Mae¬ 
cenas was, during his whole life, the patron, protector, 
and friend. Desert in learning never failed, in course 
of time, to obtain from him its due reward ; and his 
friendship, when once procured, continued steady to 
the last. Among the distinguished men who frequent¬ 
ed the house of Maecenas, a constant harmony seems 
to have subsisted. They never occasioned uneasi¬ 
ness to each other; they were neither jealous nor 
envious of the favour and felicity which their rivals 
enjoyed. The noblest and most affluent of the num¬ 
ber were without insolence, and the most learned 
without presumption. Merit, in whatever shape it 
appeared, occupied an honourable and unmolested 
station. Maecenas is better known to posterity as a 
patron of literature than as an author ; but, living 
in a poetical court, and surrounded with poets, it was 
almost impossible that he should have avoided the 
contagion of versification. He wrote a tragedy called 
Octavia, a poem entitled De Cultu, and some Pha- 
laecian and Galliambic verses. All these have perish¬ 
ed except a few fragments cited by Seneca and the 
ancient grammarians. To judge from these extracts, 
their loss is not much to be regretted; and it is a cu¬ 
rious problem in the literary history of Rome, that 
one who read with delight the works of Virgil and 
Horace, should himself have written in a style so ob¬ 
scure and affected. The effeminacy of his manners 
appears to have tainted his language ; though his 
ideas were sometimes happy, his style was loose, flor¬ 
id, and luxuriant {Senec., Epist., 19) : and he always 
aimed at winding up his periods with some turn of 
thought or expression which he considered elegant 
or striking. - These conceits were called by Augustus 
his calamistri: and in one of that emperor’s letters, 
which is preserved in Macrobius, he parodies the lux¬ 
uriant and sparkling style affected by his minister. 
Maecenas continued to govern the state, to patronise 
good poets, and write bad verses, for a period of 
twenty years. During this long space of time, the 
only interruption to his felicity was the conduct of 
his wife Terentia. This beautiful but capricious 
woman was the sister of Proculeius, so eminent for 
his fraternal love {Horat., Od., 2, 2, 5), as also of Li- 
cinius Muraena, who conspired against Augustus. 
The extravagance and bad temper of this fantastical 
yet lovely female, were sources of perpetual chagrin 
and uneasiness to her husband. Though his exist¬ 
ence was imbittered by her folly and caprice, he con¬ 
tinued, during his whole life, to be the dupe of the 
passion which he entertained for her. He could nei¬ 
ther live with nor without her ; he quarrelled with her 
and was reconciled almost every day, and put her 
away one moment to take her back the next; which 
has led Seneca to remark, that he was married a 
thousand times, yet never had but one wife. Teren 
tia vied in personal charms with the Empress Livia, 
and is said to have gained the affections of Augustus. 
The umbrage Maecenas took at the attentions paid by 
his master to Terentia, is assigned by Dio Cassius as 
the chief cause of that decline of imperial favour which 
Maecenas experienced about four years previous to 
his death. For, although he was still treated exter¬ 
nally with the highest consideration, though he re 
tained all the outward show of grandeur and interest, 
and still continued to make a yearly present to the 
emperor on the anniversary of his birthday, ho was 
no longer consulted in stale affairs as a favomite or 
confidant. Others have supposed that it was not the 
intrigue of Augustus with Terentia which diminished 
his influence, but a discovery made by the emperor, 
that he had revealed to his wife some circumstances 

78 




M M D 


M IE O 


concerning the conspiracy in which her brother Mu- 
raena had°been engaged. Suetonius informs us, that 
he had felt some displeasure on that account; but Mu- 
rsena’s plot was discovered in the year 732, and the 
decline of Maecenas’s political power cannot be placed 
earlier than 738. The disgust conceived by masters 
when they have given all, and by favourites who have 
nothing more to receive, or are satiated with honours, 
may partly account for the coldness which arose be¬ 
tween Augustus and his minister. But the declining 
health of Maecenas, and his natural indolence, increas¬ 
ing by the advance of years, afforded of themselves 
sufficient cause for his gradual retirement from public 
affairs. His constitution, which was naturally weak, 
had been impaired by effeminacy and luxurious living. 
He had laboured from his youth under a perpetual 
fever (P/m., 7, 51); and for many years before his 
death he suffered much from wakefulness, which was 
greatly aggravated by his domestic chagrins. Maece¬ 
nas was fond of life and enjoyment; and of life even 
without enjoyment. Hence he anxiously resorted to 
different remedies for the cure or relief of this distress¬ 
ing malady. Wine, soft music sounding at a dis¬ 
tance, and" various other contrivances, were tried in 
vain. At length, Antonius Musa, the imperial physi¬ 
cian, who had saved the life of Augustus, but accel¬ 
erated the death of Marcellus, obtained for him some 
alleviation of his complaint by mean” of the distant 
murmurings of falling water. The sound was artifi¬ 
cially procured at his villa on the Esquiline Hill. Du¬ 
ring this stage of his complaint, however, Maecenas 
resided principally in his villa at Tibur, situated on 
the banks of the Anio, and near its celebrated cas¬ 
cades. This was indeed a spot to which Morpheus 
might have sent his kindest dreams ; and the pure air 
of Tibur, with the streams tumbling into the valley 
through the arches of the villa, did bestow on the 
worn-out and sleepless courtier some few moments of 
repose. But all these resources at length failed. 
The rervous and feverish disorder with which Ma3- 
cenas was afflicted increased so dreadfully, that for 
three years before his death he never closed his eyes. 
In his last will, he recommended Horace, in the most 
affectionate terms, to the protection of the emperor : 
“ Horatii Flacci, ut mei , memor esto .” He died in 
745, in the same year with Horace, and was buried in 
his own gardens on the Esquiline Hill. He left no 
child, and in Maecenas terminated the line of the an¬ 
cient Etrurian princes. But he bequeathed to pos¬ 
terity a name, immortal as the arts of which he had 
been through life the generous protector, and which 
is deeply inscribed on monuments that can only be 
destroyed by some calamity fatal to civilization. Mae¬ 
cenas had nominated Augustus as his heir, and the 
emperor thus became possessed of the Tiburtine villa, 
which had formed the principal residence of the min¬ 
ister during the close of his life, and in which the 
monarch passed a great part of the concluding years 
of his reign. The death of his old favourite revived 
all the esteem which Augustus had once entertained 
for him ; and, many years afterward, when stung with 
regret at having divulged the shame of his daughter 
Julia and punished her offence, he acknowledged his 
irreparable loss by exclaiming, that he would have 
been prevented from acting such a part had Mascenas 
been still alive. So difficult was it to repair the loss 
of one man, though he had millions of subjects under 
his obedience. “ His legions,” says Seneca, “ being 
cut to pieces, he recruited his troops—his fleets, de¬ 
stroyed by storms, were soon refitted—public edifices, 
consumed by the flames, were rebuilt with greater 
magnificence ; but he could find no one capable of 
discharging the offices which had been held by Mse- 
cenas with equal integrity and ability.” ( Dunlop's 
Roman Literature , vol. 3, p. 26, seqq, Lond. ed.) 

M-iEDi, a people of Thrace, above the Palus Bisto- 
782 


nis, noticed by Thucydides in his narrative of tne ex¬ 
pedition of Sitalces into Macedonia, but of whom He¬ 
rodotus seems to have had no knowledge. - ( Thucyd ., 
2, 98.) 

Maelius, a Roman, slain by Ahala, misier of the 
horse to the dictator Cincinnatu?, for aspiring to su¬ 
preme power. ( Liv., 4, 13, seqq.) 

Menades (Maivadep), a name applied to the Bac¬ 
chantes or priestesses of Bacchus, and alluding to their 
phrensied movements. It is derived from fj.aivofj.aL, 
“ to rave." 

Maenalus ( plur . Mamala), I. a mountain in the 
south-southeastern part of Arcadia, sacred to the god 
Pan, and considered, on account of its excellent pas¬ 
tures, to be one of the favourite haunts of that rural 
deity. (Theocr., Idyl., 1, 123.— Virg., Georg., 1, 17. 
— Ovid, Met., 1, 216.) The modern name is Roino. 
Dodwell says that its height is considerable, and that, 
like the other Peloponnesian mountains of the first or¬ 
der, it is characterized by intersecting glens and val¬ 
leys, watered by numerous rivulets, and cultivated with 
sylvan scenery. It is not, however, as he remarks, to 
be compared with Taygetus either for grandeur or beau¬ 
ty. Mamalus extends far to the northeast, bounding 
the western side of the plains of Mantinea and Orcho- 
menus, and occupying a tract of country anciently call¬ 
ed Mainalia ( Pausan ., 8, 9), to which the Delphic ora¬ 
cle gives the epithet of “ cold” (dvaxeigepoq. — Pau¬ 
san., 1. c.—Dodwell, vol. 2, p. 418).—II. A town of 
Arcadia, in the vicinity of Mount Maenalus, which took 
its name, according to Pausanias (8, 3), from one of 
the sons of Lycaon, its founder. It was in ruins in 
the time of Pausanias, and its situation has not been 
clearly investigated by modern travellers. ( DodwelU 
vol. 2, p. 418.) 

Menus or Mcenus, a river of Germany, falling into 
the Rhine at Moguntiacum ( Mayence or Mainz), and 
now the Main. The Romans first became acquainted 
with it on getting possession of Moguntiacum. Ptole¬ 
my makes no mention of this river, but would seem to 
have been acquainted with its sources. It is worthy 
of remark, that the inhabitants on the Main, in the vi¬ 
cinity of Wurlzburg, still call the river, after the Ro¬ 
man fashion, the Mon. The name Msenus is a later 
form than the other. (Lumen., Paneg. Const.., c. 13. 
— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 3, p. 423.) 

Meonia. Vid. Lydia.—The Etrurians, supposed 
to have derived their civilization, or, according to 
others, to have sprung, from a Lydian colony, are often 
called Mceonidce (Virg., JEn., 11, 759), and the Lake 
Trasymenus in their country is styled by Silius Itali- 
cus Mceonius Lacus. (Sil. Ital ., 15, 35.) 

Meonides, a surname of Homer, in allusion to his 
supposed Lydian or Mseonian origin. ( Vid. Homerus.) 

MeSnis, I. an epithet applied to Omphale as queen 
of Lydia or Maeonia. (Ovid, Fast., 2, 310, 352.)—II. 
The same epithet is also applied to Arachne as a na 
tive of Lydia. (Id., Met., 6, 103.) 

Meote, a general name for the tribes* dwelling 
along the Palus Maeotis. (Plin , 4, 12.— Strab., 495.) 
Mela (1, 2) uses the epithet Mceotici, and Vopiscus 
calls them Mceotidce. 

Meotis Palus, or Sea of Azof, a large marshy 
lake between Europe and Asia, northeast of the Eux- 
ine, and connected with it by the Cimmerian Bospo¬ 
rus, or Straits of Jenicali. It is formed by the Tanais 
( Don) and other rivers. Its waters are brackish ; they 
are well stored with fish, but are shallow to a great 
distance from the banks. No rock has been observed 
in any part of it. The surface is about twelve inches 
higher in spring than in the rest of the year. (Maltt 
Brun, vol. 6, p. 405, Am. ed.) —The Palus Maeotis is 
said by Herodotus to have been also called Mceetis (h 
M aiririq re KaXesTai. —4, 86, 45), and the Mother of 
the Pontus Euxinus (rj M^r^p tov TLovtov. —4, 86). 
This name, Mceetis, is the earlier and general form. 




MAG 


MAGI. 


(Compare Wesseling, ad. Herod., 4, 45.)—We have 
here a curious link in the chain connecting the early 
religion of India with that of the countries to the west. 
The leading idea appears to be one of a cosmogoni- 
cal nature, and to refer to the action of the humid 
principle as the generating cause of all things. Hence 
the Aphrodite of the Greeks, rising from the bosom of 
the waters (uvadvopevy .—’A (ppodiry Tcovroycvyg. Or¬ 
pheus, H., 54, ed. Herm.), or, in other words, the 
great Mother of all (Myryp). She is the M ovd (Terra 
Mater) of the Egyptians, the same with their Isis. 
( Creuzer, Symbol., vol. 1, p. 354): the Mcjt (Mot) 
of Sanchoniathon ( limus, aut aquosce mixtionis putre- 
do. — Bochart, Geogr. Sacr., 2, 2, p. 705); the Xdog 
of Hesiod ( Theog ., 123) ; the M yryq, to whom a tem¬ 
ple was erected in the vicinity of the Hypanis and Bo- 
rysthenes (Herod., 4, 53.— Wess., ad loc.); the yy 
pyryp, the primitive slime (Creuzer, Symbol., vol. 4, 
p. 329); the M yryp, y TTpeo6vTury rraoa (Hesych ., ed. 
Alberti, p. 597) ; the M yng of Hesiod and of the Or¬ 
phic poets (Orpheus, Argon., ed. Herm. Aposp., 6, 
19, n., p. 461); and the Mata of the Doric dialect 
(Iambi., Vit. Pythag., ed. Kiessling, p. 114, 56).— 
The root of this word is to be found in the Sanscrit. 
(Compare Hesychius, Mai, psya. ’lvdot.) Mana- 
Mai (Magna Mater) is worshipped at the present day 
by the Buddhists in Nepaul. (Kirkpatrick, Account of 
Nepaul, &c., p. 114.)—The worship of the great moth¬ 
er (xOoviy pyryp faaileia .— Orpheus, Hymn., 49, 4, 
ed. Herm., p. 313); the mother of gods and nurse of 
all things (Activ pyryp, rpotyoq ndvruv. — Orpheus , 
Hymn., 26 et 27, ed. Herm., p. 286, seqq.) ; the Metis 
whom Jove espoused as his first consort, after the con¬ 
flict with the Titans (Hesiod, Theog., 886), appears 
to have spread from east to west, and one of the early 
seats of this worship to have been in the vicinity of the 
Palus Masotis, whose slimy waters were regarded as a 
type of that primitive slime from whose teeming bosom 
the world was supposed to have been formed. (Rit¬ 
ter's Vorhalle, p. 57.— Id. ibid., p. 161, seqq.) 

M^sia Sylva, a forest in Etruria, southwest from 
Veii. It originally belonged to this city, but was ta¬ 
ken by Ancus Marcius. (Liv , 1, 33.) Pliny reports 
that it abounded with dormice. (Plin., 8, 58.) 

M^evius, a miserable poet of the Augustan age, 
who, along with Bavius, frequently attacked the pro¬ 
ductions of Virgil, Horace, and other distinguished 
writers of the day. They are both held up to ridicule 
in turn by Virgil and Horace, and owe the preserva¬ 
tion of their names to this circumstance alone. ( Virg., 
Eclog., 3, 90. — Voss, ad loc. — Servius, ad Virg., 
Georg., 1, 210. — Horat., Epod., 10, 2.— Weichert, 
de obtrect. Horat., p. 12.— Bdhr, Gesch. Rom. Lit., 
vol. 1, p. 125 ) 

Magetobria, a city of Gaul, the situation of which 
has given rise to much discussion. Some place it 
near Binga, below Moguntia; and they found this 
opinion on the opening lines in the poem of Ausonius 
upon the Mosella. D’Anville, however, and subse¬ 
quent writers, discover traces of the ancient name in 
the spot called at the present day la Moigte de Broie, 
at the confluence of the Arar and Ogno, near a village 
named Pontaillcr, which belonged formerly to Burgun¬ 
dy. This opinion is confirmed by an inscription found 
in this quarter on the fragment of an urn, dug up, along 
with other articles, in 1802. The inscription is MA- 
GETOB. (Cces., B. G., 1, 31.— Lemaire , Ind. Ge¬ 
ogr., ad Cces., s. v.) 

Magi, the name of the priests among the Medes and 
Persians, and whose order is said to have been found¬ 
ed by Zoroaster. The Magi formed one of the six 
tribes into which the Medes were originally divided 
(Herod., 1, 101); but, on the downfall of the Median 
empire, they continued to retain at the court of their 
conquerors a great degree of power and authority. It 
would appear, however, that they did not witness with 


indifference the sovereignty pass from the Medes to 
the Persians; and it was probably owing to the in¬ 
trigues of the whole order, that a conspiracy was form¬ 
ed to deprive Cambyses of the throne, by representing 
one of their number as Smerdis, the son of Cyrus, who 
had been previously put to death by his brother. He¬ 
rodotus, who has given the history of this conspiracy 
at length, evidently regarded it as a plot, on the part 
of the Magi, to restore the sovereignty to the Medes, 
since he represents Cambyses on his deathbed, as 
conjuring the Persians to prevent the Medes from again 
obtaining the supremacy. (Herod., 3, 65.) And the 
Persians themselves must have looked upon it in the 
same light, since, after the discovery of the conspiracy, 
and the murder of the pretended Smerdis by Darius 
Hystaspis and his companions, a general massacre of 
the Magi ensued, the memory of which event was an¬ 
nually preserved by a festival called “ the Slaughter of 
the Magi” (Mayorovta), during which none of the Magi 
were allowed to appear in public. (Herod., 3, 79.— 
Ctes., Pers., c. 15.) This event, however, does not 
appear to have impaired their influence and authority ; 
for they are represented by Herodotus, in his account 
of the Persian religion, as the only recognised minis¬ 
ters of the national worship (1, 132).—The learning of 
the Magi was connected with astrology and enchant¬ 
ment, in which they were so celebrated that their name ‘ 
was applied to all orders of magicians and enchanters. 
Thus, the Septuagint translates the Chaldee Ashap by 
the word Magus (M ayoq. — Dan., 1, 20.— Id., 2, 2, 27. 
—Compare Acts, 13, 6, 8). The word was also applied 
to designate any men celebrated for wisdom ; whence 
the wise men of the East, who came to see the infant 
Saviour, are called simply Magi. (Matth. 2, 1.) It 
would appear from a passage in Jeremiah (39, 3), that 
the Babylonian priests were also called Magi; if at 
least the interpretation of Rab-Mag, “ chief of the 
Magi,” be correct. ( Gesenius , Hebr. Lex., s.v. Mag.) 
The etymology of the word is doubtful. In Per¬ 
sian the name of priest is mugh ; and it is not improb¬ 
able, as Gesenius has conjectured, that the term may 
be connected with the root meaning “great,” which 
we have in the Greek pey-ag; the Latin mag-is and 
rnag-nus; the Persian mih ; and the Sanscrit mah-at. 
It is a curious fact, that the Hindu grammarians de¬ 
rive mah-a.t from a verb mah, signifying “ to worship.” 
(Wilson's Sanscrit Diet., s. v. Mah-at. — Encycl. Us. 
Knowl., vol. 14, p. 280, seq.) —The Magi were divided 
into three classes : the first consisted of the inferior 
priests, who conducted the ordinary ceremonies of re¬ 
ligion ; the second presided over the sacred fire ; the 
third was the Archimagus or high-priest, who possess¬ 
ed supreme authority over the whole order. They 
had three kinds of temples; first, common oratories, 
in which the people performed their devotions, and 
where the sacred fire was kept only in lamps ; next, 
public temples, with altars, on which the fire was kep* 
continually burning, where the higher order of Magi 
directed the public devotions, and the people assem¬ 
bled ; and, lastly, the grand seat of the Archimagus, 
which was visited by the people at certain seasons with 
peculiar solemnity, and to which it was deemed an in¬ 
dispensable duty for every one to repair, at least once in 
his life. This principal temple was erected, it is said, 
by Zoroaster, in the city of Bactra (the modern Balk), 
and remained till the seventh century, when the follow 
ers of Zoroaster, being driven by the Moham:r.<&Ga?iS 
into Carmania, another building of the same kina was 
raised, to which those who still adhered to the old 
Magian religion resorted. They were divided intr 
several sects ; but this division probably rather re 
spected the mode of conducting the offices of religion 
than religious tenets. No images or statues were 
permitted in the Magian worship. Hence, when Xerx¬ 
es found idols in the Grecian temples, he, by the ad¬ 
vice of the Magi, set them on fire, saying that the 

783 



MAGI. 


MAG 


^ods, to whom all things are open, are not to be con¬ 
fined within the walls of a temple. The account which 
Diogenes Laertius gives of the Magi is this (1, 6, 
seqq.) : “ They are employed in worshipping the gods 
by prayers and sacrifices, as if their worship alone 
would be accepted ; they teach their doctrine concern¬ 
ing the nature and origin of the gods, whom they think 
to be fire, earth, and water ; they reject the use of 
pictures and images, and reprobate the opinion that the 
gods are male and female ; they discourse to the peo¬ 
ple concerning justice; they think it impious to con¬ 
sume dead bodies with fire ; they allow of marriage 
between mother and son ; they practise divination and 
prophecy, pretending that the gods appear to them ; 
they forbid the use of ornaments' in dress ; they clothe 
themselves in a white robe ; they make use of the 
ground as their bed, of herbs, cheese, and bread for 
food, and of a reed for their staff.” And Strabo re¬ 
lates, that there were in Cappadocia a great number 
of Magi, who were called Pyrethi, or worshippers of 
fire, and many temples of the Persian gods, in the 
midst of which were altars, attended by priests, who 
daily renewed the sacred fire, accompanying the cere¬ 
mony with music. The religious system of the Magi 
was materially improved by Zoroaster. Plutarch, 
speaking of his doctrine (Is. et Os., p. 369.— Op., ed. 
Reiske, vol. 7, p. 468), says : “ Some maintain, that 
neither is the world governed by blind chance without 
intelligence, nor is there one mind alone at the head of 
the universe ; but since good and evil are blended, and 
nature produces nothing unmixed, we are to conceive, 
not that there is one storekeeper, who, after the manner 
of a host, dispenses adulterated liquors to his guests, but 
that there are in nature two opposite powers, counter¬ 
acting each other’s operations, the one accomplishing 
good designs, the other evil. To the better power 
Zoroaster gave the name of Oromasdes, to.the worse 
that of Arimanius; and affirmed that, of sensible ob¬ 
jects, the former most resembled light, the latter dark¬ 
ness. He also taught that Mithras was a divinity, 
w ro acted as a moderator between them, whence he 
wis called by the Persians the Mediator.” After re¬ 
lating several fabulous tales concerning the contests 
between the good and evil demon, Plutarch, still re¬ 
citing the doctrines of Zoroaster, proceeds : “ The 
fated time is approaching in which Arimanius himself 
shall be utterly destroyed ; in which the surface of the 
earth shall become a perfect plain, and all men shall 
speak one language, and live happily together in one 
society.” He adds, on the authority of Theopompus, 
“ It is the opinion of the Magi, that each of these gods 
shall subdue and be subdued by turns, for six thousand 
years, but that, at last, the evil principle shall perish, 
and men shall live in happiness, neither needing food 
nor yielding a shadow ; the God who directs these 
things taking his repose for a time, which, though it 
may seem long to man, is but short.” Diogenes Laer¬ 
tius ( l . c.), after Hecataeus, gives it as the doctrine of 
Zoroaster, that the gods (meaning, doubtless, those of 
whom he last speaks, Oromasdes and Arimanius) were 
derived beings.—It will appear probable, from a com¬ 
parison of these with other authorities, that Zoroaster, 
adopting the principle commonly held by the ancients, 
tha-t from nothing, nothing can be produced, conceived 
light, or those spiritual substances which partake of the 
active nature of fire and darkness, or the impenetrable, 
opaque, and passive mass of matter, to be emanations 
from one eternal source ; that to derived substances 
he gave the names, already applied by the Magi to the 
causes of good and evil, Oromasdes and Arimanius ; 
and that the first fountain of being, or the supreme di¬ 
vinity, he called Mithras. These active and passive 
principles he conceived to be perpetually at variance ; 
the former tending to produce good, the latter evil; 
but that, through the mediation or intervention of the 
Supreme Being, the contest would at last terminate in 
784 


favour of the good principle. ( Enfield's History of 
Philosophy , vol. 1 , p. 63, seqq.) 

Magna Gracia or Major Gr^ecia (Liv., 31, 7.— 
Justin, 20, 2), an appellation used to designate the 
southern part of Italy, in consequence of the numerous 
and flourishing colonies which were founded by the 
Greeks in that part of the country. There is some 
difficulty in determining how far this name extended, 
but it does not appear to have been applied to the 
country beyond Cumae and Neapolis ; and some geog¬ 
raphers have even thought, though without sufficient 
reasons, that it was confined to the colonies on the 
Gulf of Tarentum. Pliny apparently considers Magna 
Graecia to begin at the Locri Epizephyrii (3, 15); but 
Strabo (175) even includes the Grecian towns of Sicily 
under this name. The time when the name of Magna 
Graecia (MeydXy 'E/Lldf) was first applied to the 
south of Italy is uncertain. It does not occur, as far 
as we are aware, in the early Greek writers, such as 
Herodotus, Thucydides, &c., but it is used by Po¬ 
lybius (2, 39), and succeeding Greek and Roman wri¬ 
ters. Taking the name in the widest signification 
which is given to it by Strabo, Magna Graecia may be 
justly considered as an appropriate name ; since it 
contained many cities far superior in size and popula¬ 
tion to any in Greece itself. The most important of 
these were, Tarentum, founded by the Lacedaemoni¬ 
ans ; Sybaris, Crotona, and Metapontum, by the Achae- 
ans ; Locri Epizephyrii, by the Locrians ; and Rhe- 
gium, by the Chalcidians; and in Sicily, Syracuse, 
founded by the Corinthians ; Gela, by the Cretans and 
Rhodians; and Agrigentum, by the inhabitants of 
Gela. ( Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 14, p. 283.—Com¬ 
pare Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 339.) 

Magna Mater, a name given to Cybele. (Vid 
Cybele, Pessirms, and Ludi Megalesii.) 

Magnentius, a German by birth, who, from being 
a private soldier, rose to the head of the Roman em¬ 
pire in the West. He was at first a prisoner of war, 
but, to free himself from chains, he joined the Roman 
troops, and became distinguished for valour. He was 
commander of the Jovian and Herculean bands, sta¬ 
tioned to guard the banks of the Rhine at the time 
when Constans I. had incurred the contempt of the ar¬ 
my by his indolence and voluptuousness, and having 
revolted against that prince, and caused him to be 
killed near the Pyrenees, A.D. 350, he proclaimed 
himself Emperor of the West. At Rome he acted with 
gKeat tyranny, and by his extortions was enabled to 
keep in pay a large army to support his usurped au¬ 
thority. So formidable, indeed, did he appear, that 
Constantius, emperor of the East, and brother of the 
deceased Constans, offered him peace, with the posses¬ 
sion of Gaul, Spain, and Britain, but his offer was re¬ 
jected. A war ensued, and Magnentius was totally 
defeated. He fled to Aquileia, and afterward obtained 
a victory over the van of the pursuing army at Tici- 
num. Another defeat, however, soon followed, and 
Magnentius took refuge in Lugdunum {Lyons). Here 
his own soldiers, who had accompanied him in his 
flight, surrounded the house in which he was, and 
sought to get possession of his person and deliver him 
up to the conqueror ; but he prevented this by de¬ 
spatching himself with his own sword, after having slain 
several of his relations and friends who were around 
him. {he Beau , Hist, du Bas-Empire, vol. 1, p. 354 
seq.) 

Magnesia, I. a city of Lydia, described by Strab< 
(14, 647) as situate in a plain, at the foot of a mount 
ain called Thorax, and not far from the Maeander. 
Hence, for distinction’ sake from Magnesia near Mount 
Sipylus, it was usually styled “ Magnesia at the Mce 
under ” (Mayvyaia ettI M aidvdpu). In its immedi¬ 
ate neighbourhood flowed the small stream Lethaeus, 
which issued from Mount Pactyas lying to the north, 
and joined the Maeander not far from "this olace. Man- 




M Abr 


MAGO. 


nesia, according to Pliny (5, 29), was fifteen miles, 
according to Artemidorus ( ap. Strab., 663), 120 sta¬ 
dia, from Ephesus. Strabo makes it a city of ^Eolian 
origin, which is not contradicted by another statement 
of the same writer, when he makes the Magnetes to 
have been descended from the Delphians who occu¬ 
pied the Montes Didymi of Thessaly.—Magnesia was 
sacked by the Cimmerians during their inroads into 
Asia Minor. It was afterward held by the Milesians, 
and was one of the cities assigned, for his support, to 
Themistocles, by the King of Persia. The modern 
Ghiuzel-hissar (Beautiful Castle) had been generally 
thought to occupy the site of the ancient Magnesia. 
M. Barbie du Bocage, however, in the notes to his 
t/anslation of Chandler, gave convincing reasons for 
hinking that Ghiuzel-hissar occupied the position of 
Tralles ; but it was not until Mr. Hamilton explored 
he ruins of Magnesia at lnekbazar, and discovered 
the remains of the celebrated temple of Diana Leuco- 
phryene, that the question could be considered as sat¬ 
isfactorily determined in favour of the latter place. 
{Leake's Journal , p. 242, seqq.) —II. A city in the 
northern part of Lydia, southeast of Cum®, and in the 
immediate vicinity of the Hermus. It lay close to the 
foot of Mount Sipylus, and hence, for distinction’ sake 
from the other Magnesia, was called “ Magnesia near 
Sipylus" (M ayvijaia irpog ’ZiTcvhcp). Its founder is 
not known, nor its earlier history. It was first brought 
into notice by the battle fought in its neighbourhood 
between Antiochus and the Romans (187 B.C.). It 
was not a place of much importance under the Roman 
dominion, as the main road from Pergamus to Sardis 
passed on one side of it. At the close of the Mithradatic 
war the Romans gave it its freedom. It was frequent¬ 
ly injured by earthquakes, and was one of the twelve 
cities destroyed by the earthquake in the reign of Ti¬ 
berius, which that emperor, however, quickly rebuilt. 
{Tacit., Ann., 2, 47.— Plin ., 2, 84.) It became af¬ 
terward the seat of a bishopric. The modern name is 
Ma gnisa. {Tavernier , 1, 7.— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 
6, pt. 3, p. 373.)—III. A district of Thessaly. The 
Greeks gave the name of Magnesia to that narrow 
portion of Thessaly which is confined between the 
Pe neus and Pagasssan Bay to the north and south, and 
aetween the chain of Ossa and the sea on the west and 
east ( Strabo , 441,— Scyl., Peripl ., p. 24.— Pliny, 
4, 9.) The people of this district were called Mag¬ 
netes, and appear to have been in possession of it from 
he remotest period. ( Horn., II., 2, 756. — Pind., 
Pyth., 4, 140 -Id., Nem., 5, 50.) They are also 
universally allowed to have formed part of the Amphic- 
.yonic body. ( JEschin., de fals. leg., p. 122.— Pav- 
jan., 10. w — Harpocrat., s. v. ’A ptyucrvovec;.) The 
Magnesia^-*- submitted to Xerxes, giving earth and 
Water in token of subjection. {Herod., 7, 132.) Thu¬ 
cydides leads us to suppose they .were in his time 
dependant on the Thessalians (2, 10). They passed 
with the rest of that nation under the dominion of the 
kings of Macedon who succeeded Alexander, and 
tvere declared free by the Romans after the battle of 
Cynoscephal®. ( Polyb ., Excerpt., 18, 29, 5.— Livy , 
33, 32.) Their government was then republican, af¬ 
fairs being directed by a general council, and a chief 
magistrate called Magnetarch. {Liv., 34, 31.— Strab., 
9, 442.— Xen., Anab., 6, 1.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, 
vol. 1, p. 419, seqq.) —IV. A city of Magnesia, on the 
coast, opposite the island of Sciathus. It was con¬ 
quered by Philip, son of Amyntas. {Cramer's Anc. 
Greece, vol. 1, p. 427.) 

Mago, I. a Carthaginian admiral, who gained a naval 
victory over Leptines, the commander of Dionysius the 
elder, off Catana, in which the latter lost 100 vessels, 
and more than 20,000 men. ( Diod. Sic., 14, 90.) 
Some years after this we find him at the head of a 
land force, endeavouring to make head against Dio¬ 
nysius in person; but, being defeated, he was com- 
5 G 


pc lied to take shelter in the neighbouring town of 
Abacaenum. (Diod. Sic., 14, 90.) Being subse¬ 
quently placed at the head of another expedition into 
Sicily, he met with equal ill success. {Diod. Sic., 14, 
95.) He fell at last in battle against Dionysius, B.C. 
383. {Diod. Sic., 15, 15.)—II. Son of the prece 
ding, succeeded him »Jn the command of the Cartha¬ 
ginian fleet B.C. 383. He defeated Dionysius in a 
great battle, in which the latter lost more than 14,000 
men, and compelled him to sue for peace and pay 
1000 talents to the Carthaginians. A considerable 
time after this, he came, at the head of 150 vessels, 
with 60,000 men, to take possession of Syracuse, 
which was, according to agreement, delivered up to 
him by Icetes, excepting the citadel, which was held 
by the forces of Timoleon. No final advantage, how¬ 
ever, accrued to Carthage; for Mago, suspecting 
treachery on the part of his new ally, and having long 
wished for a pretence to depart, weighed anchor on a 
sudden and sailed back to Africa, “ shamefully and 
unaccountably,” says Plutarch, “ suffering Sicily to slip 
out of his hands.” {Pint., Vit. Timol.) —III. Grand¬ 
father of the great Hannibal. He succeeded Mago in 
the command of the Carthaginian fleet, and made 
himself conspicuous for the rigid discipline which he 
introduced. The Carthaginian senate, fearing lest 
Pyrrhus might quit Italy in order to seize upon Sicily, 
sent Mago, at the head of 120 vessels, to offer aid to 
the Romans, in order that the King of Epirus might 
find sufficient employment for his arms in Italy. The 
offer, however, was declined. Mago was succeeded 
by his two sons Hasdrubal and Hamilear. {Justin, 
18, 2, seqq. — Id., 19, 1.)—IV. Son of Hamilear and 
brother of Hannibal. He commanded an ambuscade 
at the battle of Trebia {Liv., 21, 54), and was also 
present at the battle of Cann®, B.C. 216. Having 
been sent to Carthage to carry the news of the latter 
victory, he is said to have poured out in the vestibule 
of the senate-house the golden rings obtained from 
the fingers of the Roman knights who had fallen ir 
the battle. These, when measured, filled, according 
to the common account, three modii and a half; 
though Livy, with true national feeling, states that 
there was another and more correct tradition, which 
made the rings to have filled not much more than a 
single modius. {Liv., 23,12.) The modius contain¬ 
ed a little over one gallon, three quarts dry measure. 
Mago was subsequently sent into Spain, where he was 
defeated by the Scipios at Iliturgis {Liv., 23, 49), 
but he afterward joined his forces with those of Asdru- 
bal the son of Gisgo, and defeated and slew Publius 
Scipio. At a later period, he was himself again de¬ 
feated along with Hanno, Asdrubal's successor, by Si- 
lanus, the lieutenant of Scipio. {Livy, 28, 2.) On 
fleeing to Gades, he was ordered by the Carthaginian 
senate to cross over with a fleet to Sicily, and carry 
succours to Hannibal. He conceived thereupon the 
bold design of seizing upon Carthago Nova as he 
sailed along. Failing, however, in this, he was obliged 
to stop at the Balearic Islands in order to procure new 
levies. Here he made himself master of the smaller 
island of the two (the modern Minorca), and fortified 
and gave his name to the harbour. ( Vid. Magonis 
Portus.) The following summer Mago landed on the 
coast of Liguria, with 12,000 foot and 200 horse, took 
Genua by surprise, and made himself master also of 
the harbour and town of Savo, and was soon at the 
head of a numerous army, by the junction of a power¬ 
ful body of Gauls and Ligurians with his forces. Held, 
however, in check by the consul Cethegus, who prevent¬ 
ed him from uniting with Hannibal, he turned his arms ip 
a different direction, and penetrated into Insubria, bul 
he was severely wounded in battle with the Romans. 
He reached, however, Liguria by an able retreat, and 
there met an order from the senate at home, requiring 
aim to return immediately to Carthage, then menaced 

785 



M A L 


MAM 


by Scipio. He embarked his troops and set sail, but 
died of his wound at the island of Sardinia, B.C. 203. 
(Liv., 30, 18.) Cornelius Nepos differs from other 
writers as to the manner of his death, and says that he 
either perished by shipwreck or was murdered by his 
servants. ( Nep ., Vit. Hannib., c. 8.)—V. A Cartha¬ 
ginian who wrote a work on agriculture in the Punic 
tongue, which was translated into Latin by order of 
the R:man senate. It was in twenty-eight books ac- 
sording to Varro. The latter informs us also, that it 
was translated into Greek by Cassius Dionysius of 
Utica, who made twenty books of it; and that it was 
still farther condensed by Diophanes of Bithynia, who 
brought it down to six books. (Varro, De R. R ., 1, 1.) 

Magon, a river of India falling into the Ganges. 
According to Mannert, the modern name is the Ram- 
gonga. (Geogr., vol. 5, pt. 1, p. 92.) 

Maharbal, a Carthaginian officer in the army of 
Hannibal, appointed to carry on the siege of Sagun- 
tum when Hannibal marched against the Cretani and 
Carpetani. (Liv., 21, 12.) After the battle of the 
Lake Trasymenus in Italy, he was sent in pursuit of 
the flying Romans. (Liv., 22, 6.) At the battle of 
Cannaa he commanded the cavalry, and strenuously 
advised Hannibal, after the latter had gained his deci¬ 
sive victory, to march at once upon Rome. (Liv., 22, 
51.— Id., 23, 18.) 

Maia, daughter of Atlas and Pleione, and the moth¬ 
er of Mercury by Jupiter. She was one of the Plei¬ 
ades ; and the brightest of the number, according to 
some authorities: -others, however, more correctly 
make Halcyone the most luminous. (Vid. Pleiades, 
and consult Ideler, Sternnamen, p. 146.) 

Majorianus, Julius Valerius, grandson of the Ma- 
jorianus who was master of the horse in Illyria during 
the reign of Theodosius. He distinguished himself 
early as a brave commander under Aetius, and at the 
death of the latter he rose to such distinction that he 
was elected Emperor of the West in the room of Avi- 
tus, whom he compelled to resign the imperial dignity 
in 457. He was assassinated by Ricimer, one of his 
generals, after a reign of four years and a half, at Der- 
tona in Liguria. (Pierer, Lex . Univ., vol. 13, p. 98.) 

Malea, I. a promontory in the southeastern part of 
the island of Lesbos, now Cape St. Marie. —II. A 
celebrated promontory of the Peloponnesus, forming 
the extreme point to the southeast, and separating the 
Laconic from the Argolic Gulf. Strabo reckons 670 
stadia from thence to Tsenarus, including the sinuosi¬ 
ties of the coast. Cape Malea was considered by the 
ancients the most dangerous point in the circumnavi¬ 
gation of the peninsula, even as early as the days of 
Homer. (Od., 1, 80; 3, 286.) Hence arose the pro¬ 
verbial expression, “ After doubling Cape Malea forget 
your country.” (Strab., 378.— Eustath., ad Od., p. 
1468.—Compare Herod., 4. 179.— Thucyd., 4, 53.— 
ScajI, p. 17.) It is now usually called Cape St. An¬ 
gelo, but sometimes Cape Malio. (Cramer's Ancient 
Greece, vol. 3, p. 196.)—III. A city of Phthiotis. 
(Vid. Malia.) 

Maleventum, the ancient name of Beneventum. 
(Liv., 9, 27.) 

Malia, the chief city of the Malienses, in the dis¬ 
trict of Phthiotis in Thessaly, from which they proba¬ 
bly derived their name. (Steph. Byz., s. v. Mailing.) 

It was near the head-waters of the Sinus Maliacus, 
now the Gulf of Zeitoun. 

Maliacus Sinus, a gulf of Thessaly, running up in 
a northwest direction from the northern shore of Eu¬ 
boea, and on one side of which is the Pass of Ther¬ 
mopylae. It is noticed by several writers of antiquity, 
such as Herodotus (4, 33), Thucydides (3, 96), and 
Strabo (432). It now takes its name from the neigh¬ 
bouring city of Zeitoun. It should be observed that 
Livy, who often terms it the Maliacus Sinus (27, 39 ; 
HI, 46), elsewhere uses the appellation of Elnianum 


Sinus (38, 5), which he has borrowed from Polybiu* 
(10, 42.— Steph. Byz., s. v. Aivia .— Cramer's Anc. 
Greece, vol. 1, p. 435). 

Malienses or Malii, the most southern tribe of 
Thessaly. They are called by the Attic writers My- 
/Ufif, Melians, but in their own Doric dialect Mahetc;. 
Scylax, indeed, seems to make a distinction between 
the My?ileiq and Ma/Ueif, which is to be found in no oth¬ 
er author. Palmerius (ad Scyl., p. 32) considers the 
whole passage to be corrupt. The Malians occupied 
principally the shores of the gulf to which they com¬ 
municated their name, extending as far as the narrow¬ 
est part of the Straits of Thermopylae, and to the val¬ 
ley of the Sperchius, a little above its entrance into 
the sea. (Herod., 7, 198.) They are admitted by 
HUschines, Pausanias, and Harpocration, in their lists 
of the Amphictyonic states ; which was naturally to 
be expected, as this celebrated assembly had always 
been held in their country. The Melians offered earth 
and water to Xerxes in token of submission. (Herod., 
7, 132.) According to Herodotus, their country was 
chiefly flat: in some parts the plains were extensive, 
in others narrow, being confined on one side by the 
Maliac Gulf, and towards the land by the lofty and in¬ 
accessible mountains of Trachinia. (Cramer's Anc 
Greece, vol. 1, p. 435.) 

Malli, a people in the southwestern part of India 
intra Gangem, along the banks of the Hydraotes. 
(Strabo, 699.) It was in attacking a fortress of the 
Malli that Alexander was severely wounded. (Plut., 
Vit. Alex.) The territory of this people would seem 
in some degree to correspond to the modern province 
or soobah of Moultan. (Vincent's Voyage of Near- 
chus, p. 130.) 

Mallos, a town of Cilicia Campestris, eastward 
from the river Pyramus ; now a small village called 
Malo. (Mela, 1, 13.— Curt., 3, 7 .—Lucan°3, 225.) 

Malthinus, a name occurring in Horace (Serm., 
1, 2, 27). It was thought very effeminate among the 
Romans to appear in public with the tunic carelessly 
or loosely girded. For this Maecenas was blamed ; and 
the question arises, whether Horace means, under the 
character of Malthinus, to portray his patron, or wheth¬ 
er the reference is merely one of a general nature. 
Opinions, of course, are divided on this subject. At 
first view, it appears hardly probable that the poet 
would embrace such an opportunity, or adopt such a 
mode, of censuring his friend and benefactor, one to 
whom he owed so large a share of his own elevation. 
And yet, when we take into consideration all the cir¬ 
cumstances of the case, the respective characters of 
the bard and his patron, as well as the sincere and 
manly nature of the intimacy which existed between 
them, it would seem as if this very way of attacking 
the foibles of Maecenas was the result of a genuine 
friendship, the applying a desperate remedy to a dis¬ 
graceful failing. But, it will be asked, does not the 
presence of stulti in the text militate against this 
idea s We answer, by no means, if the term be taken 
in a softened sense. Bothe regards it here as equiv¬ 
alent merely to “ quicunque imprudenter aut ineptc 
agunt," and this explanation derives support from the 
following line of Afranius (ap. Isidor., 10, litt. S.): 

“ Ego stvltum met exislumo, fatuum esse non opt- 
nor." In addition to what is here stated, we may ob* 
serve, that the very name of Malthinus, as indicating 
an effeminate person, may contain a covert allusion to 
Maecenas, whose general habits in this respect were 
known to all. The word is derived either from the 
Greek fldXduv, or from the old Latin term maltha , 
equivalent to mollis, and used, according to Nonius, 
by Lucilius. 

Mamertina, a name of Messana in Sicily. (Vid 
Mamertini.— Martial, 13, cp. 117.— Strab. 7.) 

Mamertini, a band of Campanian mercenaries, ori¬ 
ginally employed in Sicily by Agathocles. After having 






MAM 


MAN 


been established for some time at Syracuse, a tumult 
arose between them and the citizens, in consequence 
of their being deprived of the right of voting at the 
election of magistrates, which they had previously en¬ 
joyed. The sedition was at last quelled by the inter¬ 
ference of some of the elderly and most influential cit¬ 
izens, and the Mamertines agreed to leave Syracuse 
and return to Italy. Having reached the Sicilian 
straits, they were hospitably received by the inhabi¬ 
tants of Messana; but, repaying this kindness by the 
basest ingratitude, they rose upon the Messanians by 
night, slew the males, took the females to wife, and 
called the city Mamertina. ( Diod. Sic., fragm., lib. 
21.) This conduct on the part of the Mamertines led 
eventually to the first Punic War. ( Vid . Punicum 
Bellum.)—The origin of the name Mamertini is said 
to have been as follows. It was customary with the 
Oscan nations of Italy, in time of famine or any other 
misfortune, to seek to propitiate the favour of the 
gods by consecrating to them not only all the produc¬ 
tions of the earth during a certain year, but also all the 
male children born during that same space of time. 
Mamers or Mars being their tutelary deity, they called 
these children after him when they had attained ma¬ 
turity, and, under the general and customary name of 
Mamertini, sent them away to seek new abodes. ( Vid. 
Mamertium.) 

Mamertium, a town of the Bruttii, northeast ofRhe- 
gium. It appears to have been originally founded by 
a band of Campanian mercenaries, who derived their 
name from Mamers, the Oscan Mars, and are known 
to have afterward served under Agathocles and other 
princes of Sicily. {Vid. Mamertini.) Barrio and oth¬ 
er native antiquaries have identified this ancient town 
with the site of Martorana; but this place, which is 
situated between Nicastro and Cosenza , seems too 
distant from Locri and Rhegium to accord with Stra¬ 
bo’s description. {Strab., 261.) The majority of 
modern topographers, with Cluverius at their head, 
place it at Oppido, an episcopal see, situate above 
Reggio and Gerace, and where old coins appertaining 
to the Mamertini are said to have been discovered. 
{Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 438.) 

Mamilia Lex, de limitibus, ordained that there 
should be an uncultivated space of five feet broad left 
between farms, and if any dispute happened about this 
matter, that a single arbiter should be appointed by the 
praetor to determine it. The law of the twelve tables 
required three arbiters.—This law was proposed by C. 
Mamilius Tuninus, A.U.C. 642, who had been consul 
in 514 A.U.C. (Consult Ernesti, Index Leg. ad 
Cic., s. v. Mamilia .— Goerenz , ad Cic., de Leg., 1, 
21 .) 

Mamurius Veturius, an artificer in the reign of 
Numa. When the Ancile or sacred shield fell from 
heaven, the monarch showed it to all the Roman ar¬ 
tists, and ordered them to exert all their skill, and 
make eleven other shields exactly resembling it. All 
declined the attempt, however, except Mamurius, who 
was so successful in the imitation, and made the other 
eleven so like unto it, that not even Numa himself 
could distinguish the copies from the original. {Vid. 
Ancile and Salii.) Mamurius asked for no other re¬ 
ward but that his name might be mentioned in the 
hymn of the Salii, as they bore along these sacred 
shields in procession. {Plut., Vit. Nam. — Ovid, Fast., 
3, 392.) 

Mamurra, a native of Formias, of obscure origin. 
He served under Julius Caesar in Gaul, as Prcefectus 
fabrorum, and rose so high in favour with him, that 
Caesar permitted him to enrich himself at the expense 
of the Gauls in any way he was able. Mamurra, in 
consequence, became possessed of enormous wealth, 
and returned to Rome with his ill-gotten riches. Here 
he displayed so little modesty and reserve in the em¬ 
ployment of his fortune, as to ha ve been the first Ro¬ 


man that incrustedhis entire house with marble. This 
structure was situate on the Coelian Hill. We have 
two epigrams of Catullus against him, in which he it 
severely handled. Horace also alludea to him with 
sly ridicule in one of his satires (1, 5, 87.) He calls 
Formiffi “ Mamurrarum urbs ,” the city of the La- 
mian line being here named after a race of whom no¬ 
thing was known. {Vid. Formiae.) 

MancLnus, C. Hostilius, a Roman consul, who, 
though at the head of 30,000 men, was defeated and 
stripped of his camp by only 4000 Numantines. {Liv., 
Epit., 55.) The remnant of the Roman army was al¬ 
lowed to retire, upon their making a treaty of peace 
with the Numantians, but the senate refused to ratify 
the treaty, and ordered Mancinus to be delivered up to 
the enemy ; but they refused to receive him. Manci 
nus thereupon returned to Rome, and was reinstated 
in his rights of a citizen, contrary to the opinion of the 
tribune P. Rutilius, who asserted that he could not 
enjoy the right of returning to his country, called by 
the Romans jus postliminii. {Cic., de Orat. —Com¬ 
pare Cic., de Off., 3, ,50.— Flor., 2, 18.— Id., 3, 14.— 
Veil. Paterc., 2, 1.— Duker, ad Flor., 1. c.) 

Mandane, a daughter of King Astyages, and moth 
er of Cyrus the elder. {Vid. Astyages.) 

Mandela, a village in the country of the Sabines, 
near Horace’s farm. The poet alludes to its cold 
mountain atmosphere. It is now perhaps Bardela. 
{Horat., Ep., 1, 18, 105.) 

Mandubii, a people of Celtic Gaul, clients of the 
yEdui, whose chief city was Alesia, now Alise. Their 
territory answered to what is now the department de 
la Cote d'or. {Lemaire, Ind. Geogr., ad Cces., s. v.) 

Manduria, a city of Apulia, nearly half way be¬ 
tween Brundisium and Tarentum. It still retains its 
ancient name. This otherwise obscure town has ac¬ 
quired some interest in history from having witnessed 
the death of Archidamus, king of Sparta, the son t" 
Agesilaus. He had been summoned by the Taren 
tines to aid them against the Messapians and Lucani- 
ans, but even his bravery was insufficient to subdue 
their foes. He fell in the conflict, and his body, aM 
Plutarch relates, remained in possession of the enemy, 
notwithstanding the large offers made by the Taren- 
tines to recover it. This is said to have been the 
only instance in which a Spartan king was debarred 
the rites of burial. {Plut., Vit. Agid. — Athen., 12, 

9. — Strabo, 280.) Manduria was taken by the Ro¬ 
mans in the second Punic war. {Liv., 27, 15.) A 
curious well is described by Pliny as existing near 
this town. According to his account, its water always 
maintained the same level, whatever quantity was 
added to or taken from it. {Plin., 2, 103.) This phe¬ 
nomenon may still be observed at the present day. 
{Swinburne's Travels, vol. 1, p. 222.) 

Manetho (M aveOog, M averti, M avaiOuv, MaveOuv), 
a celebrated Egyptian writer, a native of Diospolis, 
who is said to have lived in the time of Ptolemy Phil- 
adelphus, at Mende or Heliopolis, and to have been a 
man of great learning and wisdom. ( JElian, de An., 

10, 16.) He belonged to the priest-caste, and was 
himself a priest, and interpreter or recorder of religious 
usages, a*nd of the sacred, and probably, also, historical 
writings, with the title of 'lepoypa/apaTe tip. It appears 
probable, however, that there were more than one in¬ 
dividual of this name; and it is therefore doubtful 
whether all the works which were attributed by an¬ 
cient writers to Manetho, were in reality written by 
the Manetho who lived in the reign of Ptolemy Phila- 
delphus. Manetho wrote a history of Egypt {klyvTrn- 
c/ca) in three books, in which he gave an account of 
this country from the earliest times to the death of 
Darius Codomanus, the last king of Persia. There is 
every reason for supposing that this was written by 
the Manetho who lived under Philadelphus. Consid¬ 
erate fragments are preserved in the treatise of Jose* 

78’ 7 






MANETHO. 


M A TV 


phus against Apion ; but still greater portions in the 
u Chronicles” of George Syncellus, a monk of the ninth 
century. The “ Chronicles” of Syncellus were prin¬ 
cipally compiled from the “ Chronicles” of Julius Af- 
ricanus and from Eusebius, both of whom made great 
use of Manetho’s “ History.” The work of Africanus 
is lost; and we only possess a Latin version of that of 
Eusebius, which was translated out of the Armenian 
version of the Greek text preserved at Constantinople. 
Manetho indicates as his principal sources of informa¬ 
tion certain ancient Egyptian chronicles, and also, if 
Syncellus has rightly comprehended his meaning, the in¬ 
scriptions which Thoth, or the first Hermes, had traced, 
according to him, in the sacred language, on columns. 
We say, if Syncellus has rightly comprehended him, 
because it appears that the passage, in which Manetho 
speaks of the columns of Egypt, has not been taken 
from his history of Egypt, but from another work of a 
mystic character, entitled Sothis. The inscriptions 
just referred to, as having been written in the sacred 
dialect, Agathodaamon, son of the second Hermes, and 
father of Taut, had translated into the vulgar dialect, 
and placed among the writings deposited in the sanc¬ 
tuary of a temple. Manetho gives the list of thirty 
dynasties or successions of kings who reigned in the 
same city ; for thus are we to understand the word 
dynasty , "which, in Manetho, is not synonymous with 
reigning family. Hence some of his dynasties are 
composed of several families. The thirty-one lists of 
Manetho contain the names of 113 kings, who, ac¬ 
cording to them, reigned in Egypt during the space of 
4465 years. As we cannot reconcile this long dura¬ 
tion of the Egyptian monarchy with the chronology of 
the Scriptures, some writers have hence taken occasion 
to throw discredit on Manetho, and have placed him 
in the class of fabulous historians. (Compare, in par¬ 
ticular, Petav., Doctr. Temp ., lib. 9, c. 15.) A circum¬ 
stance, however, which would seem to claim for this his¬ 
torian some degree of confidence is, that the succession 
of kings, as given by him, does not by any means corre¬ 
spond to the pretensions of the more ancient priests of 
Egypt, who enumerated to Herodotus a list of monarchs 
which would make the duration of the kingdom of Egypt 
exceed 30,000 years ! We know also, from Josephus, 
that Manetho corrected many things in Herodotus 
which betrayed a want of exactness. Larcher accuses 
Manetho of having been a mere flatterer of the Ptol¬ 
emies. (Hist, d'Herod., vol. 7, p. 323.) But the lat¬ 
ter has found a defender in M. Dubois-Ayme. (De¬ 
scription de VEgypte , vol. 1, p. 301.) Other and 
more equitable critics, such as Calvisius, Usher, and 
Capellus, have endeavoured to reconcile the chronol¬ 
ogy of Manetho with that of the Scriptures, by reject¬ 
ing as fabulous merely the first fourteen, fifteen, or 
sixteen dynasties. Marsham, however, was the first 
to accomplish this end, and that, too, without re¬ 
trenching any part of Manetho’s catalogue. ( Chron - 
icus Canon JEgyptiacus , Hebraicus , Groecus , Lond., 
1672, fol.) He has made it appear, that the first sev¬ 
enteen dynasties of Manetho might have reigned si¬ 
multaneously in different parts of Egypt, and that thus 
the interval of time between Menes (whom Marsham 
believes to have been Ham, the son of Noah), and the 
end of the reign of Amasis, is only 1819 years. Two 
great men of the 17th century, Newton and Bossuet, 
have approved of the system of Marsham : and yet it 
would certainly seem to be faulty, in placing, contra¬ 
ry to all probability, the commencement of the Egyp¬ 
tian monarchy immediately after the deluge, and in 
limiting to 1400 years the period that elapsed between 
Menes and Sesostris. To remove these inconvenien¬ 
ces, Pezron, giving the preference to the chronology 
of the Septuagint, modified the system of Manetho, 
by reckoning 2619 years from Menes to Nectanebus, 
••he last king of the 30th dynasty of Manetho. He 
places Menes 648 years after the deluge, at the epoch 
788 


of Debora. Whichever of these systems may be tne 
true one, it would seem that even though the chro- 
nology of Manetho presents some difficulties, we ought 
not for that reason io refuse him all confidence as an 
historian. As Cambyses had destroyed, or transport¬ 
ed into Persia, the ancient documents of Egyptian 
history, it is more than probable that the priests of 
Egypt replaced them by new chronicles, in which 
they must necessarily have committed, without in¬ 
tending it, some very great errors. It is from these 
erroneous sources that Manetho would appear to have 
drawn, in good faith, his means of information. It 
is no easy matter, however, after all, to ascertain the 
real value of Manetho’s “ History,” in the form in 
which it has come down to us. The reader may 
judge of the use that has been made of it for Egyp¬ 
tian chronology, by referring to Rask’s Alte JEgyptis- 
che Zeitrechnung (Altona, 1830) ; to the works of 
Champollion, Wilkinson’s Topography of Thebes, and 
the other authorities which will be indicated by a ref¬ 
erence to these works. (Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 14 
p. 379.)—Besides this work, Manetho wrote somf 
others, which are lost. These were, 1. 'lepu B iPkot, 
(“ Sacred Book ”), treating of Egyptian theology.—2. 
B iUhoq rrjq Seafood (“ Book of Sothis'' 1 ), an astronom¬ 
ical, or, rather, astrological work, addressed to Ptolemy 
Philadelphus.— 3. Qvgikuv EKiropi) (“ Epitome o) 
Physics"). —4. A poem, in six cantos, which has 
come down to us under the title of ’A.TzoTE'keofJ.aTLKa, 
and treats of the influence of the stars. It is evident¬ 
ly the production of a much later age, as Holstensius 
thought, and as Tyrwhitt has demonstrated. (Com¬ 
pare Heyne, Opusc. Acad., vol. 1, p. 95.) Among 
the works published by the credulous Nanni, of Vi¬ 
terbo, there is a Latin one ascribed to Manetho, and 
entitled “ De Regibus JEgypti." —The fragments el 
Manetho have been collected by Joseph Scaliger, an* 
published in his treatise “ De Emendatione Tempo/ 
rum." (Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 3, p. 215, seqq.' 
The ’At TOTeleo/xarucd were first edited by Gronovius, 
Lugd. Bat., 1608, 4to. There is a later edition, bj 
Axtius and Rigler, Colon., 1832, 8vo. In Ruperti’s 
and Schlichthorst’s “ Neues Magazin fur Schullehr - 
er" Gotting., 1793 (vol. 2, pt. 1, p. 90, seqq.), there 
is a dissertation of Ziegler’s on the ’ ATcoTeTieojuariKd, 
in which he undertakes to show that this poem was 
written after the time of Augustus. (Hoffmann, Lex. 
Bibliogr., vol. 3, p. 76.) 

Manilia Lex, I. by Manilius the tribune, A.U.C. 
687, for conferring on Pompey the charge of the war 
against Mithradates. Its passage was supported by 
Cicero, who was then prsetor, and also by Julius Cae¬ 
sar, but from different views. (Vid. Pompeius.)—II. 
Another, by the same, that freedmen might vote in all 
the tribes, whereas formerlv they voted in some one of 
the four city tribes onlv This law, however, did not 
pass. (Cic., pro Murcen., 23. — Ernesti, Ind. Lex., 
s. v.) 

Manilius, I. Marcus or Caius, a Latin poet, known 
only by his poem entitled Astronomica, in five books. 
The manuscripts do not agree about the name of this 
poet; some of them calling him Manlius, others Mal- 
lius. Bentley believed him to have been born in Asia. 
Two reasons led him to entertain this opinion ; the 
strange construction which appears in some of the 
verses of Manilius, and the improbability that, at the 
period when this poet appeared, the Romans paid any 
great attention to the phenomena of the heavens and 
the lessons of astrology. It is true, the fourth book 
of the poem contains two verses (the 41st and 776th) 
in which Manilius speaks of Rome as his city; but 
these two lines are boldly declared by the great Eng¬ 
lish critic to be interpolated. He endeavours to make 
it appear that the author of the Astronomica is neither 
the astrologer Manilius of whom Pliny speaks (35,17), 
nor the mathematician of the same name, of whom, on 

\ 





MAN 


MAN 


another occasion, he makes mention (36, 10). Bent¬ 
ley believes that the poet is to be placed in the age of 
Augustus ; but he has no other ground for this belief 
than the observation which he has made, that Manilius 
nevei uses the genitive termination ii ( auxilii, ingenii, 
imperii, &c.), but the contracted form in i (auxili , 
ingeni ), which marks a writer of the Augustan age. 
Propertius among the poets first used the form in ii. 
— The poem of Manilius is unfinished. The five 
books which are extant treat principally of the fixed 
stars ; but the poet promises, in many parts of his work, 
to give an account of the planets. The language is 
in many instances marked by great purity, many po¬ 
etic beauties appear, and the whole betrays no incon¬ 
siderable degree of talent in managing a subject of 
so dry and forbidding a nature. It appears from many 
parts of the work that Manilius was a stanch adherent 
of the Stoic philosophy. The best editions are, that 
of Bentley, Lond., 1739, 4to, and that of Stoeber, 
Argent., 1767, 8vo. ( Scholl, Lit. Romaine, vol. 1, 
p. 276.)—II. An epigrammatic poet, one of whose 
epigrams is cited by Varro. ( Anth. Lat., vol. 1, p. 
673.)—III. Manius, a Roman consul, A.U.C. 605. 
He left a work Qn the Civil Law, and another entitled 
Manilii Monumenta. ( Scholl, Lit. Rom., vol. 1, p. 
182.) 

Manlius, the name of one of the most illustrious 
patrician gentes of Rome. Those most worthy of 
notice are : I. Marcus Manlius Capitolinus, who was 
consul B.C. 390 ( Liv ., 5, 31), and was the means of 
preserving the Capitol when it was nearly taken by 
the Gauls (Liv., 5, 47), from which exploit he re¬ 
ceived the surname of Capitolinus. He afterward be¬ 
came a warm supporter of the popular party against 
his own order, and particularly distinguished himself 
by the liberality with which he assisted those who 
were in debt. He publicly sold one of his most val¬ 
uable estates, and declared that, as long as he had a 
single pound, he would not allow any Roman to be 
carried into bondage for debt. In consequence of 
his opposition to the patrician order, he was accused 
of aiming at kingly power. The circumstances at¬ 
tending his trial and death are involved in much ob¬ 
scurity. It would appear that he was accused before 
the centuries and acquitted ; and that afterward, see¬ 
ing that the patrician order were bent on his destruc¬ 
tion, he seized upon the Capitol and prepared to de¬ 
fend it by arms. In consequence of this, Camillus, 
his personal enemy, was appointed dictator, and the 
curiae (i. e., the patrician assembly) condemned him 
to death. According to Livy, who implies that Man¬ 
lius did not take up arms, he was thrown down from 
the Tarpeian rock by the tribunes ; but Niebuhr sup¬ 
poses, from a fragment of Dio Cassius (lib. 31), com¬ 
pared with the narrative of Zonaras (7, 24), that he 
was treacherously pushed down from the rock by a 
slave, who had been hired for that purpose by the pa¬ 
trician party. (Rom. Hist., vol. 2, p. 610, seq., Eng. 
transl.) The house which Manlius had occupied was 
razed to the ground ; and the Manlian gens resolved 
that none of its patrician members should again bear 
the name of Marcus. Manlius was put to death B.C. 
381.—II. Titus Manlius Capitolinus Torquatus, was 
sou of L. Manlius surnamed Imperiosus, who was dic¬ 
tator B.C. 361. When his father Lucius was accused 
by the tribune Pomponius, on account of his cruelty 
towards the soldiers under his command, and also for 
keeping his son Titus among his slaves in the coun¬ 
try, Titus is said to have obtained admittance to the 
house of Pomponius shortly before the trial, and to 
have compelled him, under fear of death, to swear that 
he would drop the prosecution against his father. 
This instance of filial affection is said to have opera¬ 
ted so strongly in his favour, that he was appointed in 
the same year, B.C. 359, one of the military tribunes. 

7, 4, seq. — Cic., de Off., 3, 31.) In the fol¬ 


lowing year Manlius distinguished himself by slaying, 
in single combat, a Gaul of gigantic size, on the banks 
of the Anio. In consequence of his taking a chain 
(torques) from the dead body of his opponent, he re¬ 
ceived the surname of Torquatus. (Liv., 7, 10.) 
Manlius filled the office of dictator twice, and in both 
instances before he had been elected consul: once in 
order to conduct the war against the Caerites, B.C. 
351 ; and the second time in order to preside s.t the 
comitia for the election of consuls, B.C. 346. (Liv., 
7, 19, seqq.) Manlius was consul at least three times. 
(Cic., de Off., 3, 31.) In his third consulship he de¬ 
feated the Latins, who had formed a powerful con¬ 
federacy against the Romans. In this same campaign 
he put his own son to death for having engaged in 
single combat with one of the enemy contrary to his 
orders. (Liv., 8, 5, seqq.) —III. Titus Manlius Tor¬ 
quatus, was consul B.C. 235, and obtained a triumph 
on account of his conquests in Sardinia. (Veil. Pa- 
terc., 2, 38.— Eutrop., 3, 3.) In his second consul¬ 
ship, B;C. 224, he conquered the Gauls. (Polyb., 
2, 31.) He opposed the ransom of the prisoners who 
had been taken at the battle of Cannae. (Liv., 22, 60.) 
In B.C. 215 he defeated the Carthaginians in Satdin- 
ia (Liv., 23, 34, seqq.), and in 212 was an unsuc¬ 
cessful candidate for the office of Pontifex Maximus. 
(Liv.,‘Zb, 5.) In 211 he was again elected consul, 
but declined the honour on account of the weakness 
of his eyes. (Liv., 26, 22.) In 208 he was appointed 
dictator in order to hold the comitia. (Liv., 27, 33.) 
The temple of Janus was closed during the first con 
sulship of Manlius. (Liv., 1, 19.— Veil. Paterc., 2, 
38.)—IV. Cneius Manlius Vulso, was consul B.C. 189, 
and appointed to the command of the war against the 
Gauls in Galatia, whom he entirely subdued. An 
account of this war is given by Livy (38, 12, seqq.) 
and Polybius (22, 16, seqq.). After remaining in Asia 
the following year as proconsul, he led his army home 
through Thrace, where he was attacked by the inhab¬ 
itants in a narrow defile, and plundered of part of his 
booty. He obtained a triumph B.C. 186, though not 
without some difficulty. (Liv., 39, 6.— Encycl. Us. 
Knowl., vol. 14, p. 385, seq.) 

Mannus, the son of the German god Tuiston, of 
whom that nation believed themselves descendants. 
(Tacit., G., 2.) The god Tuiston evidently marks 
the stem-name of the Germans (Tuistones, Teutones, 
Deutschen), and from him comes forth the Man of the 
race, i. e., the Teutonic race itself. (Compare Man- 
nert, Geschichle der alien Deutschen, p. 2.) 

Mantinea, one of the most ancient and celebrated 
cities of Arcadia, said to have been founded by Man- 
tineus, son of Lycaon. It was situate near the centre 
of the eastern frontier, at the foot of Mount Artemisi- 
us, on the banks of the little river Ophis (Pausan., 8, 
8), and was at first composed of four or five hamlets ; 
but these were afterward collected into one city ( Xen., 
Hist. Gr., 5, 2, 6, seqq. — Strab., 337}, which became 
the largest and most populous in Arcadia previous to 
the founding of Megalopolis. (Polyb., 2, 56.) The 
Mantineans had early acquired celebrity for the wisdom 
of their political institutions (Polyb., 6, 43, 1), and 
when the Cyreneans were distracted by tactions, they 
were advised by an oracle to apply to that people for 
an arbiter to settle their differences. Their request 
was granted, and accordingly Demonax, one of the 
principal citizens of Mantinea, was sent to remodel their 
government. (Herod., 4, 161.) The Mantineans 
fought at Thermopylae but arrived too late to share in 
the victory of Plataea, a circumstance which, according 
to Herodotus (9, 77), produced so much vexation, that 
upon their return home they banished their command¬ 
ers. In the Peloponnesian war they espoused the 
Lacedsemonian cause ; but having taken offence at the 
conclusion of the treaty between that people and the 
Athenians after the battle of Amphipolis, they were in- 

789 




MAN 


M A R 


ttuced to form an alliance with Argos and Elis, with 
which confederates they finally made war against Spar¬ 
ta. ( Thucyd., 5, 29, seqq.) In the battle which was 
fought on their territory, they obtained at first a deci¬ 
ded advantage against the Lacedaemonian troops op¬ 
posed to them; but the left wing of the allied army 
having been routed, they were in their turn vigorously 
attacked, and forced to give way with heavy loss. 
{Thucyd., 5, 66.) This ill success led to the dissolu¬ 
tion of the confederacy, and induced the Mantineans, 
not long after, to renew their former alliance with Spar¬ 
ta {Thucyd., 5, 78), to which they adhered until the 
peace of Antalcidas. At this period the Lacedaemo¬ 
nians, bent on strengthening their power in the penin¬ 
sula to the utmost, peremptorily ordered the Mantineans 
to pull down their walls, or to prepare for war, as the 
thirty years’ truce agreed upon between the two states 
had now expired. On their refusal to comply with this 
unjust and arbitrary demand, a Spartan army enter¬ 
ed the Mantinean territory, and laid siege to the city. 
The inhabitants defended themselves with vigour, and 
might have held out successfully, had not Agesipolis 
caused the waters of the river Ophis to be diverted 
from their channel, and directed against the walls of 
the town, which, being of brick, were easily demolish¬ 
ed. By this Mantinea fell into the hands of the Spar¬ 
tans, who destroyed the fortifications, and compelled 
the inhabitants to change their constitution from a de¬ 
mocracy to an oligarchy, and to separate, as formerly, 
into four townships. {Xen., Hist. Gr., 5, 2, 7.-Pau- 
san., 8, 8 .—Polyb., 4, 27.) After the battle of Leuc- 
tra, however, the Mantineans, under the protection of 
Thebes, again united their population and refortified 
their city, notwithstanding the opposition of the Lace¬ 
daemonians. {Xen., Hist. Gr., 5, 5.) Mantinea ac¬ 
quired additional celebrity from the great but undeci¬ 
sive battle fought in its plains between the Boeotians 
ai-1 Spartans, in which Epaminondas terminated his 
glorious career (B.C. 362); and it continued to be one 
of the leading cities of Arcadia till it joined the Achaean 
league, when it fell for a short time into the hands of 
the HCtolians and Cleomenes, but was recovered by 
Aratus four years before the battle of Sellasia. {Po¬ 
lybius, 4, 8, 4.) The Mantineans having, however, 
again joined the enemies of the Achasans, they treach¬ 
erously put the garrison of the latter to the sword. 
{Polyb., 2, 58, 4.) This perfidious conduct drew down 
upon them the vengeance of Antigonus Boson and the 
Achaeans, who, making themselves masters of the city, 
gave it up to plunder, and sold all the free population 
as slaves; a chastisement which Polybius considered 
as scarcely equal to their offence, though its cruelty 
had been set forth in strong colours by the historian 
Phylarchus. The name of the city was now changed 
to Antigonea, in compliment to Antigonus Doson. We 
learn also from Pausanias, that the Mantineans had 
merited the protection of Augustus from having es¬ 
poused his cause against Marc Antony. Their town 
still continued to flourish as late as the time of Hadri¬ 
an, who abolished the name of Antigonea and restored 
its ancient appellation.—The site of the famous battle ol 
Mantinea was about thirty stadia from the city, on the 
road to Pallantium, near a wood named Pelagus. The 
tomb of Epaminondas had been erected on the spot 
where he breathed his last: it consisted originally of one 
pillar only, surmounted by a shield and a Boeotian inscrip¬ 
tion ; but another pillar was afterward added by the 
Emperor Hadrian. {Pausan., 8, 11.)—The ruins of 
Mantinea are pointed out to modern travellers on the 
site now called Palaopoli. {GeWs Itin. of the Morea, 
p. 141.— Dodwell, vol. 2, p. 422.— Cramer's Ancient 
Greece, vol. 3, p. 300, seqq.) 

Mantinorum Oppidum, a town of Corsica, placed 
by Ptolemy directly east of the mouth of the river Vo- 
® ri p.' where was a bay which now answers to that of 
S. Fiorev.zo. Hence the modern Bastia will corre- 
790 


spond to the ancient town, for it lies direcfiy east of 
the bay just mentioned. {Mannert, Geogr., vol. 9, 
pt. 2, p. 519.) 

Manto, a daughter of the prophet Tiresias, endow¬ 
ed with the gift of prophecy. She was made prisoner 
by the Argives when the city of Thebes fell into their 
hands ; and as she was the worthiest part of the booty, 
the conquerors sent her to Apollo, the god of Delphi, 
as the most valuable present they could make. Man¬ 
to, often called Daphne, remained for some time at 
Delphi, where she gave oracles. From Delphi, in 
obedience to the oracle, she came to Claros in Ionia, 
where she established an oracle of Apollo. Here she 
married Rhakius, the sovereign of the country, by 
whom she had a son called Mopsus. Manto afterward 
visited Italy, where she married Tiberinus, the king of 
Alba, or, as the poets mention, the god of the river 
Tiber. From this marriage sprang Ocnus, who built 
a town in the neighbourhood, which, in honour of his 
mother, he called Mantua. ( Schol. ad Apoll. Rhod., 
1, 308.— Pausan., 7, 3.— Tzetz., ad Lycophr., 980. 
— Virg., AEn., 10, 199, seqq. — Hcyne, Excurs., 1, ad 
AEn., 10. — Muller, Etrusk., vol. 1, p. 138.) The 
Italian legend about Mantua evidently owed its origin 
to similarity of name. {Keightley, MythoL, p. 345, 
in not.) 

Mantua, a city of Gallia Cisalpina, situate on an 
island in the Mincius, southeast of Brixia, and south 
of the lake Benacus. It is supposed to date its found 
ation long before the arrival of the Gauls in Italy. 
Virgil tells us it was of Tuscan origin, and derived its 
name from the prophetess Manto, the daughter of Ti¬ 
resias. {AEn., 10, 199, seqq. —Compare the remarks 
of Muller on this passage, Etrusker, vol. 1, p. 138, in 
not.) Whatever of poetical invention there may have 
been in the origin thus ascribed to Mantua, there can 
be no doubt of its having been a town of considerable 
note among the Etrurians, when they were in posses¬ 
sion of that part of Italy where it was situated. The 
position of the ancient place was not different from 
that which the modern Mantua at present occupies. 
That it was not a place of any great size in Virgil’s time 
may be collected from what the poet himself says of it. 

( Eclog., 1, 20.) Strabo (213) classes it with Brixia, 
Bergomum, and Comum, but Martial attaches to it 
the epithet of “ parva" (14, 193). Its vicinity to Cre¬ 
mona was an unhappy circumstance to Mantua ; for, 
as the territory of the former city was not found suf¬ 
ficient to contain the veteran soldiers of Augustus, 
among whom it had been divided, the deficiency was 
supplied from the neighbouring lands of the latter; a 
loss most feelingly deplored by Virgil, though he was 
fortunate enough to escape from the effects of this op¬ 
pressive measure. {Georg., 2, 198.— Eclog., 9, 27; 
1, 47.) We are informed by the grammarian Dona- 
tus, in his Life of Virgil, that this great poet was born 
at Andes, a village near Mantua. {Cramer's Anc. Ita¬ 
ly, vol. 1, p. 67, seqq.) 

Marathon, a town of Attica, northeast of Athens, 
and not far from the coast. It was said to have been 
named from the hero Marathos {Plut., Vit. Thcs. — 
Surd., s. v. M apaduv), and was already a place of note 
in the days of Homer. {Od., 7, 81.) From the scho¬ 
liast of Sophocles {(Ed. Col., 1047), who quotes Phi- 
lochorus on the Tetrapolis, we learn that it possessed 
a temple consecrated to the Pythian Apollo. Demos¬ 
thenes reports that the sacred galley was kept on this 
coast, and that on one occasion it was captured by 
Philip. {Phil., 1, p. 49.) Eurystheus was said to 
have been defeated here by Iolaus and the Heraclid® 
{Strab., 3?7), and Theseus to have here destroyed a bull 
by which the country was infested. {Plut., Vit. Thes. 

Strab., 399.) Marathon, however, is most famous 
for the victory obtained by the Greeks over the Per¬ 
sians in the plain in its immediate vicinity. The Per¬ 
sian army was commanded by Datis and Artaphernes 




MARATHON. 


M A K 


wnile the Athenians, who had eleven generals inclu¬ 
ding the polemarch, were for the day under the orders 
of Miltiades. According to Cornelius Nepos ( Vit. 
Miltiad.), the Persians were a hundred thousand effect¬ 
ive foot and ten thousand horse ; yet Plato, mean¬ 
ing probably to include the seamen and the various 
multitude of attendants upon Asiatic troops, calls the 
whole armament five hundred thousand; and Trogus 
Pompeius, according to his epitomizer Justin (2, 9), 
did not scruple to add a hundred thousand more. 
These writers, however, did not perceive that, by en¬ 
cumbering the Persians with such useless and un¬ 
manageable crowds, they were not heightening, but 
diminishing, the glory of the conquerors. The Athe¬ 
nians numbered six-and-forty different nations in the 
barbarian host; and the Ethiopian arrows, remains of 
which are still found at Marathon, seem to attest the 
fact that Darius drew troops from the remotest provin¬ 
ces of the empire. Yet our calculations must be kept 
down by the remark, that the whole invading army 
was transported over the sea, according to Herodotus, 
:n 600 ships. This, on the footing which he fixes else¬ 
where, of 200 men to each trireme, would give 120,000 : 
and we ought probably to consider this as the utmost 
-imit to which the numbers of the invaders can reason¬ 
ably be carried. Those of the Athenians, including the 
Plataeans, are uniformly rated at about 10,000. It is 
possible that the number of the tribes had some share in 
grounding this tradition : it probably falls short of the 
truth, and certainly does not take the slaves into ac¬ 
count, who served most likely as light-armed troops. 
When all these allowances are made, the numerical 
inequality will be reduced to a proportion of five to one. 

•—It is remarkable, that, though Herodotus represents 
the Persians as induced to land at Marathon with a 
view to the operations of their calvary, he does not 
say a word either of its movements in the battle, or of 
any cause that prevented them. It seems not to have 
come into action ; but perhaps he could not learn by 
what means it was kept motionless. Yet there was 
a tradition on the subject, probably of some antiquity, 
which appears to have assumed various forms, one of 
which was adopted by Nepos, who relates, that Miltia¬ 
des protected his flanks from the enemy’s cavalry by 
an abattis : a fact which it may be thought Herodotus 
could scarcely have passed over in silence if it had 
been known to him, but which might have been the 
foundation of a very obscure account of the matter, 
which is given by another author. In the explanation 
of the proverb, x u P L G iKireiq ( Suidas. — Cent., 14, 73, 
Schott), we read, that when Datis invaded Attica, the 
Ionians got upon the trees (1), and made signals to the 
Athenians that the cavalry had gone away (d>f dev 
X<Jpk ol imreXq), and that Miltiades, on learning its re¬ 
treat, joined battle and gained the victory ; which was 
the origin of the proverb, em rtiv ttjv tu^iv diahvov- 
tuv. (ThirlwaWs Greece, vol. 2, p. 241, seq.) —The 
Persians lost in all six thousand four hundred men. 
Of the Athenians only one hundred and ninety-two 
fell; but among them were the polemarch Callima¬ 
chus ; Stesibius, one of the ten generals ; Cynaegirus, 
brother of the poet iEschylus, and other men of rank, 
who had been earnest to set an example of valour on 
this trying occasion. Cornelius Nepos observes that 
Marathon was ten miles from Athens ; but as, in fact, 
it is nearly double that distance, it is probable that we 
ought to read twenty instead of ten. Pausanias affirms 
it was half way from Athens to Carystus in Euboea. 
In the plain was erected the tumulus of those Atheni¬ 
ans who fell in the battle, their names being inscribed 
on sepulchral pillars. Another tumulus was raised 
for the Plataeans and the slaves.—Still, however, after 
the defeat at Marathon, the Persian armament was 
very formidable; nor was Athens immediately, by its 
glorious victory, delivered from the danger of that 
subversion with which it had been threatened. The 


Persian commanders, doubling the promontory ol 
nium, coasted along the southern shore of Attica, not 
without hope of carrying that city by a sudden assault. 
But Miltiades made a rapid march with a large part ol 
his forces ; and when the Persians arrived off the port 
of Phalerus, they saw an Athenian army encamped, on 
the hill of Cynosarges which overlooks it. They 
cast anchor, but, without attempting anything, weigh¬ 
ed again and steered for Asia.—Marathon, which still 
preserves its ancient name, is situated, according to a 
modern traveller, “ at the northwestern extremity of a 
valley, which opens towards the southeast into the 
great plain in which the battle was fought. This ex¬ 
tends along the coast from the northeast to the south¬ 
west. At the extremity and near the sea is seen the 
conspicuous tomb raised over the bodies of the Athe¬ 
nians who fell in the battle ; and close to the coast 
upon the right is a marsh, wherein the remains of 
trophies and marble monuments are yet visible.” 
( Clarke's Travels, vol. 7, p. 23, Lond. ed.) From a 
memoir of Col. Squire, inserted in Walpole's Memoirs 
(vol. 1, p. 328), we farther learn, that “the land bor¬ 
dering on the Bav of Marathon is an uninterrupted 
plain about two miles and a half in width, and bounded 
by rocky, difficult heights, which enclose it at either 
extremity. About the centre of the bay a small stream, 
which flows from the upper part of the valley of Mara¬ 
thon, discharges itself into the sea by three shallow 
channels. A narrow rocky point, projecting from the 
shore, forms the northeast part of the bay, close to 
which is a salt stream connected with a shallow lake, 
and a great extent of marsh land. The village of 
Marathon is rather more than three miles from the sea. 
Towards the middle of the plain may be seen a large 
tumulus of earth, twenty-five feet in height, resembling 
those on the plain of Troy.” ( Cramer's Anc. Greece, 
vol. 2, p. 385, seqq.) 

Marcella, I. daughter of Claudius Marcellus by 
his wife Octavia, and sister to Marcus Marcellus. 
She was first married to Apuleius, and afterward tc 
Valerius Messala. ( Sueton., Vit. Aug., 53.) — Ii. 
The younger, daughter of Claudius Marcellus by his 
wife Octavia, and sister of the preceding. She was 
first married to M. Vipsanius Agrippa, and afterward 
to M. Julius Antonius. (Sueton., Vit. Aug., 63.) 

Marcellinus, Ammtanus, the last Latin writer that 
merits the title of an historian. He was born at An¬ 
tioch, and lived under Justinian and his successors 
down to the reign of Valentinian II. A large portion 
of his life was spent in military service in the Roman 
armies. He performed campaigns in Gaul, Germany, 
and Mesopotamia, and accompanied Juhan on his ex¬ 
pedition against the Persians. The modesty of Am- 
mianus, which gives us but little information relative 
to himself, prevents us from determining what rank he 
held in the army, or what employment he pursued 
after quitting the profession of arms It appears that 
he was invested with the dignity of Comes rei pri¬ 
vate: we find, in fact, in the Theodosian Code (1. xli., 
de appellat.), a rescript of the emperors Gratian, Va¬ 
lentinian, and Theodosius, addressed to a certain Am- 
mianus, who is decorated with this title. He died at 
Rome subsequent to A.D. 390. It was probably in this 
city that, at the age of fifty years, he composed his his¬ 
tory of the Roman emperors, which he entitled “ Re¬ 
rum gestarum libri xxxi.” It commenced with the 
accession of Nerva, A.D. 96, and consequently at the 
period where the history of Tacitus terminated. It is 
not known whether Ammianus pretended to write a 
continuation of that history, or if any other motive 
induced him to select the time when this historian 
brought his work to a close. It is very probable that 
he had no intention whatever of continuing Tacitus, 
as he not only does not mention him, although he cites 
Sallust and other Roman writers, but also as his work 
shows no imitation whatever of \he peculiar mannei 

791 



MARCELLINUS. 


MAR 


of Tacitus. The history of Ammianus proceeds as 
far as 378 A.D. It embraced, consequently, a period 
of 282 years ; but the first thirteen books, which con¬ 
tained a sketch of the history of 256 years (from 96 
to 352), are lost, and we have only the last eighteen. 
These eighteen, however, form the most important 
part of the labours of Ammianus. In the first thir¬ 
teen books he merely arranged materials from writers 
who had gone before him ; although it must be ac¬ 
knowledged, that even this part would have been in¬ 
teresting for us, as many of the works from which he 
selected are now lost. In the eighteen books, how¬ 
ever, that remain to us, and which it is more than 
probable the copyists transcribed separately from the 
rest, Ammianus relates the events which occurred du¬ 
ring his own time. As he often took an active part in 
these, or, at least, was an eyewitness of most of them, 
he relates them in the first person : when he details 
what did not pass under his immediate inspection, he 
is careful to obtain the requisite information from those 
who are acquainted with the subject, and who took 
part in the matter that is related: he does not pretend, 
however, to give a complete history of his time, and 
he passes in silence over events respecting which he 
has neither accurate information nor positive docu¬ 
ments. This part of his work, therefore, is less a his¬ 
tory than what we would call at tho present day me¬ 
moirs of his time. Ammianus Marcellinus was a well- 
informed man, and possessed of great good sense and 
excellent judgment. No writer was ever more entitled 
to praise for candour and impartiality. He understood 
well the art of clearly showing the connexion of events, 
and of painting in striking colours the characters of 
those individuals whom he introduces into his narra¬ 
tive. In a word, he would in all probability have 
been an accomplished historian had his lot been 
cast in a more favourable age. Had he lived in the 
golden period of Roman literature, the study of good 
models and the society of enlightened men would 
have perfected his historic talent, and have formed 
his style in a purer mould. The latter would not, 
as is too often the case in Ammianus, have been 
destitute of that simplicity which constitutes one of 
the great beauties of historical narrative, nor over- 
oaded with ornaments and disfigured by turgid and 
oarbarous forms of expression. These faults,‘how¬ 
ever, in the style of Ammianus, find an excuse in 
the circumstances of his case. He was a stranger, 
and wrote in a language not his own , neither did the 
busy life which he had led in camps permit him to cul¬ 
tivate the talent for writing which nature had bestowed 
upon him His good qualities are his own ; his de¬ 
fects are those of the times ; and, in spite of these de¬ 
fects, his style is conspicuous among all the writers 
who were contemporary with him for a purity to which 
they could not attain.—Ammianus Marcellinus is the 
last pagan historian ; for, notwithstanding all that some 
maintain to the contrary, we have no certain proof of 
his having been a Christian. A public man, enriched 
with the experience acquired amid the scenes of an 
active life, he relates the events connected with the 
new religion introduced by Constantine with sang-froid 
and impartiality, and perhaps with the indifference of 
a man who knew how to raise himself to a point of 
view where he could perceive naught but masses and 
results. He blames with equal frankness the anti- 
christian mysticism of Julian, and the religious intol¬ 
erance of Constantius and his bishops. He speaks 
with respect both of the doctrines of Christianity and 
the ceremonies of paganism. A remarkable passage 
occurs in the sixteenth chapter of the twenty-first book. 
After having painted the bitterness of character and the 
cruelties of Constantius, the historian adds : “ Chris¬ 
tian am religioncm absolutam et simplicem anili super¬ 
stitions confundens; in qua scrutanda perplexius, quam 
componcnda gravius, excitavit disci iia plurima ; qua 


progressa fusius aluit concertatione verborum: ut ca 
lervis antistitum jumentis publicis ultro citroque dis- 
currentibus, per synodos, quas appellant ., darn ritum 
omnem ad suum trahere eonanlur arbitrium , rei vehicu- 
larice succideret nervos .” On another occasion (22, 
11), blaming the conduct of a bishop, he remarks* 
“ Professionis sure oblitus, qua nihil nisi justum sua 
det et lene, ad delatorum ausa feralia desciscebatd' 
—The narrative of Ammianus is often interrupted by 
geographical and physical digressions. The latter 
show, as might be expected, a very slight acquaint¬ 
ance with principles ; but the descriptions of coun¬ 
tries which he had himself seen are extremely valu¬ 
able. He is one of the principal sources that we have 
for the geography and history of ancient Germany, a 
country in which he passed a great number of years. 
We find in him also some excellent observations on 
the luxury and courts of the Roman emperors, on the 
vices which prevailed there, and on the manners in 
general of the great. Gibbon (c. 26) candidly avows 
his obligations to this writer ; and from the period 
when he can no longer derive materials from Ammia¬ 
nus, the work of the English historian loses a great 
portion of its previous interest. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. 
Rom,., vol. 3, p. 164, seqq. — Fuhrman, Handbuch del 
Class. Lit., vol. 2, p. 880, seqq.) — The best edition 
of Ammianus Marcellinus is that of Gronovius, Lugd. 
Bat., 1693, 4to. The edition of Wagner, completed 
by Erfurdt, Lips., 1808, 3 vols. 8vo, is also valuable. 

Marcellus, I. Marcus Claudius, born of a Ro¬ 
man consular family, after passing through the offices 
of asdile and quaestor, was made consul B.C. 224 
The Transpadane Gauls having declared war against 
Rome, Marcellus marched against them, defeatec 
them near Acerras, on the Addua, killed their kiri£ 
Viridomarus, and bore off his arms, the “ spolia opi 
ma,” which were exhibited in his triumph. At th 
beginning of the second Punic war, Marcellus wa 
sent into Sicily as praetor, to administer the Roman 
part of the island, and had also the task of keeping the 
Syracusans firm in their alliance with Rome. After 
the battle of Cannae, he was recalled to Italy to oppose 
Hannibal. Having taken the command of the relics 
of the Roman forces in Apulia, he kept Hannibal ir 
check and defended Nola. In the year 214 B.C., 
being again consul, he took Casilinum by surprise. 
He was next sent to Sicily, where Syracuse had de¬ 
clared against Rome. After a siege of nearly three 
years, the city was taken 212 B.C., and Marcellus re¬ 
turned to Rome with the rich spoils. It was on occa¬ 
sion of the taking of Syracuse that the celebrated Ar¬ 
chimedes lost his life. Marcellus did not, however, 
obtain a triumph, but only an ovation, as the war in 
Sicily was not entirely terminated. In the year 210 
he was again chosen consul, and had the direction of 
the war against Hannibal in Apulia, when he took the 
town of Salapia,' and fought several partial engage¬ 
ments with the Carthagmians, without any definite re¬ 
sult. In the following year he continued in command 
of ihe army, and foughr a battle against Hannibal at 
Oanusium, in which the Romans were defeated and 
fled. On the following day Marcellus renewed the 
fight and defeated the Carthaginians, upon which 
Hannibal withdrew to the mountains of the Bruttii. 

In the next year, B.C. 208, Marcellus was elected 
consul for the fifth time with T. Quintus Crispinus. 
He continued to carry on the war against Hannibal, 
when, being encamped near Venusia, he rashly ven 
tured out, fell into an ambuscade of advanced posts, 
and was slain, in the 60th year of his age. Hannibal', 
according to some authorities, caused his body to be 
burned with military honours, and sent the ashes in a 
silver urn to his son. According to others, however, 
he did not even bestow upon the corpse the ordinary 
rites of burial. (Plul., Vit. Mar cell.) Marcellus was 
one of the most distinguished Roman commanders 






MAR 


MAR 


during cne second Punic war, and was accustomed to 
be called the sword of the Romans, as Fabius was 
denominated (heir shield. We have a life of him by 
Plutarch.—II Marcus Claudius, held the consulship 
with Servius Sulpicius, B.C. 51. He was remarkable 
for his attachment to republican principles, and his 
uncompromising hostility towards Caesar; and it was 
he who proposed to the senate to recall that command¬ 
er from his province? in Gaul. After the battle of 
Pharsalia, Marcellus went into voluntary exile, and 
was not pardoned by Caesar until some considerable 
interval had elapsed, and then only at the earnest in¬ 
tercession of the senate. It was on this occasion that 
‘Cicero delivered his speech of thanks to Cassar. 
Marcellus, however, did not long survive to enjoy the 
pardon thus obtained, having been assassinated by an 
adherent of his, P. Magius Cilo. He was then on his 
return to Italy. The cause that prompted Cilo to the 
act is not known. Cicero conjectures that the latter, 
oppressed with debts, and apprehending some trouble 
on that score in case of his return, had been urging 
Marcellus, who was surety for some part of them, to 
furnish him with money to pay the whole, and that, on 
receiving a denial, he was provoked to the madness of 
killing his patron. ( Cic., Ep. ad Att., 13, 10.—Com¬ 
pare Ep. ad Fam., 4, 13.) According to others, 
however, he was prompted to the deed by seeing other 
friends more highly favoured by Marcellus than him¬ 
self. ( Val. Max., 9, 11.) After stabbing his patron, 
Cilo slew himself.—III. Marcus Claudius, commonly 
known as the “Young Marcellus,” was the son of 
Octavia the sister of Augustus, and consequently the 
nephew of the latter. Augustus gave him his daugh¬ 
ter Julia in marriage, and intended him for his suc¬ 
cessor ; but he died at the early age of 18, universally 
regretted on account of the excellence of his private 
character. Yirgil has immortalized his memory by the 
beautiful lines at the close of the sixth book of the 
iEneid, and which are said to have drawn from Octa¬ 
via so munificent a recompense. ( Vid. Yirgilius.) 
Livia was suspected, though without reason, it would 
seem, of having made away with Marcellus, who was 
an obstacle to the advancement of her son Tiberius. 
The more ostensible cause of his death was the inju¬ 
dicious application of the cold bath by the physician 
Antonius Musa. (Vid. Musa.) 

Marciana, a sister of the Emperor Trajan, who, 
on account of her public and private virtues and her 
amiable disposition, was declared Augusta and empress 
by her brother. She died A.D. 113. 

Marcianopolis, a city of Moesia Inferior, to the 
west of Odessus, founded by Trajan, and named in 
honour of his sister Marciana. (Amm. Marcell ., 27, 
4. — Jornand., Get., c. 16.) It soon became an im¬ 
portant place in consequence of its lying on the mam 
road from Constantinople to the Ister, and of its being 
the place where preparations were made for all the 
expeditions against the barbarians in this quarter. 
When the Bulgarians formed a kingdom out of what 
was previously Moesia, Marcianopolis became the cap¬ 
ital, under the name of Pnsthlaba (HpiadXdda. —• 
Anna Gomn., p. 194) or Preslaw. It still retains this 
name, and also that of Eski Stamboul with the Turks: 
the modern Greek inhabitants, however, call it Mar- 
cenopoli.' According to the Itin. Ant. (p. 228.—Com¬ 
pare Thcopylact., 7, 2), Marcianopolis was 18 miles 
to the west of Odessus. (Mannert, Geogr., vol. 7, 
p. 138.) 

Marcianos, I. a native of Thrace, born of obscure 
parents, towards the end of the fourth century. He 
enteied the army, and rose gradually by his merit 
to high rank, and was made a senator by Theodosius 
II. When Theodosius died (A.D. 450), his sister 
Pulcheria, then 52 years old, offered her hand to Mar¬ 
cianus, who was near 60, because she thought him 
capable of bearing the crown with dignity, and with 


advantage to the state. Marcianus married her, and 
was proclaimed emperor. His reign, which lasted 
little more than six years, was peaceful, and his ad¬ 
ministration was equitable and firm. He refused to 
pay to Attila the tribute to which Theodosius had 
submitted. In the year 455, Marcianus acknowledged 
Avitus as Emperor of the West. Marcianus died in 
457 ; his wife Pulcheria had died before him. He 
was succeeded by Leo I. (Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 
14, p. 412.)—II. Capella. (Via. Capella.) 

Marcomanni, a nation of Germany, in the south¬ 
eastern part of the country. According to some au¬ 
thorities, their original seats were in Moravia, whence, 
on being hard pressed by the Romans, they retired 
into what is now Bohemia. (Veil. Paterc., 2, 108. 
— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 3, p. 110.) Other writers, 
however, such as Cluver, Adelung, Mascov, &c., 
make them to have lived between the Maine and 
Neckar, previous to their departure for Bohemia.— 
They were subdued by the emperors Trajan and An¬ 
toninus. Their name denotes “ border men," i. e., 
men of the marches. (Mannert, Geogr., vol. 3, p. 
382, seqq.) 

Marcus, a praanomen common to many of the Ro¬ 
mans. (Vid. iEmilius, Lepidus, &c.) 

Mardi, I. a people of Asia, near the northern fron¬ 
tiers of Media, or rather of Matiene, which,, formed part 
of Media. (Strabo, 524.— Tzschucke, ad Strab., 1. c., 
vol. 4, p. 550.— Quint. Curt., 5, 5.)—II. A tribe of 
the Persians, according to Herodotus (1, 125), but, 
according to other writers, a distinct race in their 
immediate neighbourhood. ( Arrian , Hist. Ind., 40.) 
They are represented as a plundering race. (Arrian, 
l. c.) —III. A nation dwelling to the south of Bactri- 
ana, and to the north of the chain of Paropamisus. 
Pliny (6, 16) says they extended from Caucasus to 
Bactriana, in which he evidently followed the histo¬ 
rians of Alexander, who, out of flattery to that prince, 
called the Paropamisus by the name of Caucasus. 
As regards these three nations, consult the remarks 
of Larcher (Hist, d’Herod .— Table Geogr., vol. 8. 
p. 317, seqq.). 

Mardonius, a general of Xerxes, who, after the 
defeat of his master at Thermopylae and Salamis, was 
left in Greece with an army of 300,000 chosen men, 
to subdue the country, and reduce it under the power 
of Persia. His operations were rendered useless by 
the courage and vigilance of the Greeks ; and in a 
battle at Plataea, Mardonius was defeated and left 
among the slain, B.C. 479. He had been commander 
of the armies of Darius in Europe, and it was chiefly 
by his advice that Xorxes invaded Greece. He was 
son-in-law of Darius. ( Vid. Darius I., where some 
other particulars are gwen respecting him.) 

Mare Mortuum, an extensive and most interest¬ 
ing piece of water, in Judaea, about 70 miles long and 
20 broad. It was anciently called the “ Sea of the 
Plain ” (Deut. 3, 17; 4, 19), from its situation in 
the great hollow or plain of the Jordan; the “ Sait 
Sea" (Deut. 3, 17.— Josh. 15, 5), from the extreme 
saltness of its waters ; and the “ East Sea" (Ezek. 
47, 18.— Joel 2, 20), from its situation relative to 
Juda?a, and in contradistinction to the West Sea, oi 
Mediterranean. It is likewise called by Josephus, 
and by the Greek and Latin writers generally, Lacus 
Asphaltites, from the bitumen (acr^a/lrof) found m it; 
and the “ Dead Sea," its more frequent modern ap¬ 
pellation, from the belief that no living creature can 
exist in its saline and sulphureous waters. It is at 
present known in Syria by the names of Almotanah 
and Bahar Loth ; and occupies what may be consid¬ 
ered as the southern extremity of the vale of Jordan. 
This sea, so important and so often mentioned in 
sacred history, still bears the most unequivocal marks 
of the catastrophe of which it has been the site. I; 
differs, indeed, so essential^ in situation and proper- 

793 



MARE MORTULM. 


MARE MORTUUM. 


ties Irom every other piece of water in the known 
world, that it is a wonder it has not been the subject 
of more frequent and extensive observation. Its 
depth seems to be altogether unknown ; and it is 
only of late that a boat has navigated its surface. 
Towards its southern extremity, however, in a con¬ 
tracted part of the lake, is a ford, about six miles 
over, made use of by the Arabs: in the middle of 
which they report the water to be warm, indicating 
the presence of warm springs beneath. In general, 
towards the shore it is shallow ; and it rises and falls 
with the seasons, and with the quantity of water car¬ 
ried into it by se/en streams, which fall into this their 
common receptacle, the chief of which is the Jordan. 

• It also appears either to be on the increase, or to be 
lower in some years than in others, whence those 
travellers are to be credited who assert that they have 
beheld the ruins of the cities either exposed or in¬ 
gulfed beneath the waters. Troilo and D’Arvieux 
attest that they observed fragments of wall, &c. Jo¬ 
sephus remarks, that one might still see there “ the 
shadows of the five cities” (7r evte pev koXeuv OKcdp), 
leaving it somewhat uncertain what he means by this 
figurative language. {Bell. Jud., 4, 8, 4.) Strabo 
gives a circumference of 60 stadia to the ruins of Sod¬ 
om, according to the traditions of the neighbouring 
communities {uote ‘kloteveiv rotg {kpoXXovgevoLg vi to 
rtiv kyxupluv, wf dpa ukovvto nore rpujKatdeica noX- 
el£ evravda, cjv pTjrpoTroXiu^, 2 odopuv, odfyiro 
kvkXoc E^rjKovrd ttov oradluv. — Strab., 764). Two 
aged and respectable inhabitants of Jerusalem told 
Maundrell that they had once been able to see some 
part of these ruins ; that they were near the shore, and 
the water so shallow at the time, that they, together 
with some Frenchmen, went into it, and found several 
pillars and other fragments of buildings. These sever¬ 
al authorities are too weighty to be despised ; and we 
may collect from them some support to the opinion, 
that, at the destruction of the guilty cities, they were 
not entirely overwhelmed with the waters, but remain¬ 
ed more or less exposed to view, as monuments of the 
judgments of God ; and that, from the slow increase 
of the waters through a period of nearly 4000 years, 
they have gradually receded from our sight, and are 
now only to be seen through the water, if seen at all, 
after seasons of long-continued drought. The water 
now covering these ruins occupies what was formerly 
the Vale of Siddim ; a rich and fruitful valley, in which 
stood the five cities, called the cities of the plain, 
namely, Sodom, Gomorrah, Adrnah, Zeboim, and Bela 
or Zoar. The first four of these were destroyed, while 
the latter, being “a little city,” was preserved at the 
intercession of Lot; to which he lied for refuge from 
the impending catastrophe, and where he remained in 
safety during its accomplishment. Naturalists have in¬ 
dulged themselves in many speculations as to the man¬ 
ner in which this destruction took place, and the im¬ 
mediate causes engaged in effecting it; as if this were 
necessary for our faith. It is probable, however, that 
in this instance, as in most others, the Almighty called 
in the aid of second causes for the accomplishment of 
his purpose. The most reasonable explanation of such 
causes is founded on what is said in Gen., 14, 10, of 
the soil of the Vale of Siddim, that it was “ full of slime 
pits,” or, more properly, pits of bitumen, for thus the 
word is rendered in the Septuagint. Now it is prob¬ 
able that in this instance, as in that, of the flood, the 
inhabitants of the offending cities were involved in 
destruction, which met them on all sides, from above 
and below ; that the earth opened its fountains of lava 
or pitch ignited by subterraneous combustion, while a 
fiery shower from above expedited and ensured their 
utter destruction. Whatever the means employed 
might have been, they were evidently confined in a re¬ 
markable manner to the devoted district; as Lot found 
•afety in Zoar, although only a few miles distant, and 
794 


within the precincts of the plain itself. This ciieuin- 
stance seems to show sufficiently that the country was 
not destroyed by an earthquake, as supposed by some, 
which would scarcely have been so partial in its ef¬ 
fects. There ts also a passage {Gen., 19, 28) which 
favours very much the above opinion respecting the 
combustion of the soil; where it. is said that Abraham 
got up early in the morning, and “ looked towards Sod¬ 
om and Gomorrah, and towards all the land of the 
plain, and behold, and lo, the smoke of the country 
went up as the smoke of a furnace.” The character 
of this catastrophe approaches nearest to that of a 
volcanic eruption : an opinion which is supported by 
the physical structure of the soil of the neighbour¬ 
hood both before and since; the bituminous nature of 
the soil as described in Genesis (14, 10); the occa¬ 
sional eruptions of flame and smoke so late as the first 
century, as attested by Josephus ; and the hot springs 
and volcanic substances, consisting of lava, sulphur, 
pumice, and basalt, still found in the vicinity of the 
lake, as described by Volney, Burckhardt, Bucking¬ 
ham, and other travellers. We know not the charac¬ 
ter of the soil beneath the surface ; the figure, material, 
and stratification of the mountains: whether a crater 
or craters are to be found on them, and, if so, whether 
they have emitted any streams of lava, and what was 
their direction. All this, and much more in this in¬ 
teresting neighbourhood, remains to be explored by the 
experienced eye of a geologist. In the absence, how 
ever, of such information, it may be surmised that the 
cities could not have been buried beneath a shower of 
ashes from a mountain-crater, after the manner of Her¬ 
culaneum and Pompeii, as this would be incompatible 
with the testimony of those who have witnessed the ex¬ 
posed remains of the cities, as well as with the account 
which represents the plain itself as burning, not the 
neighbouring mountains. Nor could they have been 
overwhelmed by a torrent of lava : for besides that this 
mode is liable to the objection already urged of totally 
obliterating the cities, the ordinary progress of a lava 
would not have been equal to the design, as it is never 
so rapid as not to give ample time for escape. The 
catastrophe might still, however, have been of a vol¬ 
canic character, but the vale itself, or some part of it, 
must have been a crater; which, vomiting forth, not a 
vitreous and sluggish lava, but a far more liquid and 
diffusive stream from the bituminous stores beneath, 
involved the miserable inhabitants on all side, from the 
earth and from the air, in a deluge of fire. Before this 
event, the vale of Siddim was a rich and fertile valley ; 
a continuation of that of the Jordan ; through which 
the river took its course southward. Here we are as¬ 
sisted by the investigations of Burckhardt, who, al¬ 
though he had not an opportunity of personally examin¬ 
ing the spot, obtained very satisfactory information, 
that, at the southern extremity of the lake, there is an 
opening leading into the Valley of El Ghor; which, 
with its southern continuation, termed El Araba, both 
inspected by Burckhardt himself, descends uninter 
ruptedly to the JElanitic Gulf of the Red Sea; which it 
joins at Akaba, the site of the ancient Ezion-geber. 
This Burckhardt supposes to be the prolongation cf 
the ancient channel of the Jordan, which discharged 
itself into the sea before its absorption in the expanded 
Lake of Sodom. This is extremely probable : and 
there cannot be a more interesting country in the world 
than this, to be made the subject of an intelligent and 
accurate geological survey. We may, however, from 
what we know, infer thus much : that before the face 
of the country was changed by the judgment which fell 
upon it, the ground now covered by the waters of the 
Dead Sea was an extensive valley, called the Vale ol 
Siddim, on which stood the five cities, and through 
which the Jordan flowed in its course to the sea. That 
it flowed through the vale may be inferred from the 
great fertility of the latter ; that it passed beyond it, is 






MARE MORTUUM. 


MARE MORTUUM. 


equally to be inferred from the want of space over 
which the water could expand itself to be exhausted by 
evaporation. But the discovery of the opening on the 
southern border of the lake, and the inclined valley 
leading thence to the sea, have rendered these infer¬ 
ences almost conclusive. We may then, and must in 
fact, refer the origin of the lake to the epoch in ques¬ 
tion, when the combustion of the soil, or of its sub¬ 
strata, occasioned a subsidence of the level of the val¬ 
ley, by which the river was arrested in its course, and 
a basin formed to receive its waters. These gradually 
spread themselves over its surface, and would no doubt 
soon have filled it, and resumed the ancient channel to 
the southward, had not their increase been retarded by 
the process of evaporation, which advanced in an in¬ 
creasing ratio as the expanse of water grew wider and 
wider. The newly-formed lake would thus continue 
to extend itself, until the supply of water from the 
streams, and the consumption by evaporation, arrived 
at a balance. When this took place, or whether it has 
even yet taken place, cannot be known ; at least with¬ 
out such observations as have not yet been made. 
That it has not long been the case may be inferred 
from the disappearance of the ruins which were visible 
two centuries ago.—The water of this sea is far more 
salt than that of the ocean ; containing one fourth part 
of its weight of saline contents in a state of perfect 
desiccation, and forty-one parts in a hundred in a state 
of simple crystallization : that is to say, a hundred 
pounds by weight of w T ater will yield forty-one pounds 
of salts ; while the proportion of saline contents in the 
water of the Atlantic is not more than l-27th part in 
a state of dryness, and about six pounds of salts in a 
hundred of the water. The specific gravity of the 
water is 1.211 ; that of common water being 1000. A 
vial of it having been brought to England by Mr. 
Gordon of Clunie, at the request of Sir Joseph Banks, 
was analyzed by Dr. Marcet, who gives the following 
results : “ This water is perfectly transparent, and 
does not deposite any crystals on standing in close 
vessels. Its taste is peculiarly bitter, saline, and pun¬ 
gent. Solutions of silver produce from it a very copi¬ 
ous precipitate, showing the presence of marine acid. 
Oxalic acid instantly discovers lime in the water. 
The lime being separated, both caustic and carbona¬ 
ted alkalies readily throw down a magnesian precipi¬ 
tate. Solutions of barytes produce a cloud, showing 
the existence of sulphuric acid. No alumine can be 
discovered in the water by the delicate test of succin¬ 
ic acid combined with ammonia. A small quantity 
of pulverized sea salt being added to a few drops of 
the water, cold and undiluted, the salt was readily 
dissolved with the assistance of a gentle trituration, 
showing that the Dead Sea is not saturated with com¬ 
mon salt. None of the coloured infusions common¬ 
ly used to ascertain the prevalence of an acid or an 
alkali, such as litmus, violet, and turmeric, were in the 
least altered by the water.” The result of Dr. Mar¬ 
cel’s analysis gives the following contents in 100 grains 
of the water: 


Muriate of Lime 
Muriate of Magnesia 
Muriate of Soda 
Sulphate of Lime . 


. 3.920 grains. 
. 10.246 “ 

. 10.360 “ 

. 0.054 “ 


24.580 

Dr. Madden, a recent traveller, brought home with him 
a bottle of the same water, which, on being analyzed, 
was found to contain the following substances : 

Chloride of Soda, with a trace of Bromine . . . 9.55 

Chloride of Magnesium.5.28 

Chloride of Calcium.3.05 

Sulphate of Lime . 1.34 

19.22 

The traveller last mentioned gives us the following 
account of a visit which he paid to the Dead Sea. 


“ About six in the morning I reached the shore, and. 
much against the advice of my excellent guides, I re¬ 
solved on having a bathe. I was desirous of ascer¬ 
taining the truth of the assertion, that ‘ nothing sinks 
in the Dead Sea.’ I swam a considerable distance 
from the shore, and about four yards from the beach I 
was beyond my depth. The water was the cddest I 
ever felt, and the taste of it the most detestable ; it 
was that of a solution of nitre, mixed with an infusion 
of quassia. Its buoyancy I found to be far greater 
than that of any sea I ever swam in, not excepting the 
Euxine, which is extremely salt. I could lie like a 
log of wood on the surface, without stirring hand or 
foot, as long as I chose; but, with a good deal of ex¬ 
ertion, I could just dive sufficiently deep to cover all 
my body, when I was again thrown on the surface, in 
spite of my endeavours to descend lower. On com¬ 
ing out, the wounds on my feet, which had been pre¬ 
viously made, pained me excessively ; the poisonous 
quality of the waters irritated the abraded skin, and ul¬ 
timately made an ulcer of every wound, which con¬ 
fined me fifteen days in Jerusalem, and became so trou 
blesome in Alexandrea, that my medical attendant 
was apprehensive of gangrene.” Dr. Madden is con¬ 
vinced that no living creature can be found in the 
Dead Sea; and, to try whether there were any fish 
in it, he spent two hours in fishing. The surface 
of the sea, according to him, is covered with a thin 
pellicle of asphaltum, which issues from the fissure 
of the rock adjoining it. On coming out of the 
water he found his body covered with it, and like 
wise with an incrustation of salt, almost the thick¬ 
ness of a sixpence. The rugged aspect of the mount¬ 
ains, the deep ravines, and the jagged rocks, all 
prove that the surrounding country has once been the 
scene of some terrible convulsion of nature. “ I have 
no hesitation,” says Dr. Madden, “ in stating my be¬ 
lief, that the sea which occupies the site of Sodom 
and Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim, and Segor, covers 
the crater of a volcano.” We have said that this trav¬ 
eller was convinced that no living creature could be 
found in the Dead Sea: Chateaubriand, however, 
states that, hearing a noise on the lake at midnight, 
he was told by the Bethlemists that it proceeded from 
legions of small fish, which come and leap about near 
the shore. Maundrell also observed, among the peb¬ 
bles on the bank, shells which had once contained fish. 
The traveller last mentioned also saw birds flying 
about and over the sea with impunity, which contra¬ 
dicts the common belief that birds fell dead in flying 
over it. The Dead Sea is situate between two ridges 
of mountains; of which those on the eastern or Ara¬ 
bian side are the highest and most rocky, and have 
much the appearance of a black perpendicular wall, 
throwing a dark and lengthened shadow over the water 
of the sea. (Hansford's Scripture Gazetteer, p. 123, 
seqq.) We shall close the present article with the 
following remarks of Dr. Clarke, which have been al¬ 
ready in some degree anticipated. “ The atmosphere 
was remarkably clear and serene; but we saw none 
of those clouds of smoke which, by some writers, are 
said to exhale from the surface of the lake. Every¬ 
thing about it was in the highest degree grand and 
awful. Its desolate, although majestic features, are 
well suited to the tales related concerning it by the in¬ 
habitants of the country, who all speak of it with ter¬ 
ror, seeming to shrink from the narrative of its de¬ 
ceitful allurements and deadly influence. * Beautiful 
fruit,’ say they, ‘grows upon its shores, which is no 
sooner touched than it becomes dust and ashef In 
addition to its physical horrors, the region arc nd is 
said to be more perilous, owing to the ferocious tribes 
wandering upon the shores of the lake, tnan any other 
part of the Holy Land. A passion for the marvellous 
has thus affixed, for ages, false characteristics to the 
sublimest associations of natural scenery in tie whole 

795 



MAR 


MAH 


world ; for, although it be now known that the waters 
of this lake, instead of proving destructive of animal 
life, swarm with myriads of fishes ( Chateaubriand , 
*ol. 1, p. 411, Lond., 1811); that, instead of falling 
victims to its exhalations, certain birds make it their 
peculiar resort ( Maundrell , p. 84, Oxf., 1721); that 
shells abound upon its shores; that the pretended 
fruit containing ashes is as natural and admirable a 
production of nature as the rest of the vegetable king¬ 
dom, being the fruit of the Solanum Melangena, tire 
inside of which, when the fruit is attacked by an in¬ 
sect ( Tcnthredo ), turns to dust, while the skin remains 
entire and of a beautiful colour ; notwithstanding all 
these and other facts are well established, yet even 
the latest authors by whom it is mentioned continue 
to fill their descriptions with imaginary horrors.—Re¬ 
land, in his account of the Lacus Asphaltites (Palcest., 
vol. 1, p. 238), after inserting copious extracts from 
Galen concerning the properties and quality of the 
water, and its natural history, proceeds to account for 
the strange fables that have prevailed with regard to 
its deadly influence, by showing that certain of the an¬ 
cients confounded this lake with another, bearing the 
same appellation of Asphaltites, near Babylon ; and 
that they attributed to it qualities which properly be¬ 
longed to the Babylonian waters. An account of the 
properties of the Babylonian lake occurs in the wri¬ 
tings of Vitruvius (8, 3), of Pliny (35, 15), of Athe- 
naeus (2, 5), and of Xiphilinus (p. 252). From their 
various testimony it is evident, that all the phenomena 
supposed to belong to the Lake Asphaltites near Baby¬ 
lon, were, from the similarity of their names, ulti¬ 
mately considered as the natural characteristics of the 
Judean lake, the two Asphaltites being confounded.” 
f Clarke's Travels, vol. 4, p. 399, Lond. ed.) 

M areotis, a lake of Egypt, in the immediate vicin¬ 
ity of Alexandrea. Its earlier name was Marea (?) 
M apda TiLfivrj ); the later Greeks gave it the appella¬ 
tion of Mareotis (M apeuriq). The first writer that 
makes mention of it is Scylax (p. 44). “ Pharos,” 

eays he, “ is an uninhabited island, with a good har¬ 
bour, but destitute of water. This last is obtained 
from the neighbouring lake Maria (ek. ryg Mapia$ 
ll/j-vrjc v^pevovraL.”) The same writer informs us, 
that in very early times canals were cut. connecting this 
lake with the Nile, and thus furnishing it with a" con¬ 
stant supply of fresh water. The Lake Mareotis first 
rose into importance after the founding of Alexandrea. 
From this period it is mentioned by all the geographi¬ 
cal writers, but the most particular description is ^iven 
by Strabo (799). “ The Lake Marea,” says Strabo, 

“is more than 150 stadia in breadth, and not quite 
300 in length. It extends on the west as far as the 
fortress called Chersonesus, which is 70 stadia from 
Alexandrea. It contains eight islands, and all the 
country around is well inhabited.” In another part 
(p. 793) he informs us, that many canals connected 
this lake with the Nile, and that thus, in the summer 
season, when the lake would otherwise have been low, 
the inundation of the Nile afforded it an abundant 
supply of water, and rendered the neighbouring coun¬ 
try, and Alexandrea in particular, extremely healthy ; 
since, otherwise, had the waters of the lake been di¬ 
minished by the summer heats, the sun would have 
acted on the mud left uncovered along the banks, and 
would have produced pestilence. Of these canals 
he remarks, on another occasion (p. 803), that many 
of them struck the Nile between GvnEecopolis and 
Momemphis. Along the canals connecting the river 
with the lake was the merchandise transported to Al¬ 
exandrea, to be conveyed thence into the Mediterra¬ 
nean Sea.—The country around the lake was remark¬ 
able for its fertility. The principal product was wine. 
It was a light, sweetish white wine, with a delicate per¬ 
fume, of easy digestion, and not apt to affect the head ; 
though the allusion in Horace (Od., 1, 37, 14) to its 
796 


influence on the mind of Cleopatra, unless it be mere 
poetic exaggeration, would seem to imply that it had 
not always preserved its innocuous quality. It has 
been suggested by some critics, that the Mareotic 
wine did not come from the vicinity of the Lake Ma¬ 
reotis, but from a canton of this name in Epirus. This 
opinion rests for support on a passage in Herodotus 
(2, 77), where it is stated that there were no vines in 
Egypt, and that the people drank a kind of beer in its 
stead ( olvo) d’e/c Kpiddov TCETroiyfiEvy dtaxpeovrar o? 
yap a<pi elgl ev ry x^PV tfyi7re/lo£). Malte-Brun suc¬ 
cessfully combats this assertion, and shows, by very 
clear proofs, that, under the Greeks and Romans, 
Egypt produced various kinds of wine. As regards 
the culture of the vine previous to the dominion ot 
these foreign powers, it appears very manifest, from 
the paintings in the tombs throughout the Thebaid, 
and other parts of the country, that it was far from be¬ 
ing unknown. Some of these paintings represent the 
whole process of the vintage. In the Sacred writings 
also (Numb. 20, 5) there is a very plain allusion to 
the vines of Egypt. We must either, therefore, con¬ 
sider the remark of HerodoM»» incorrect, or refer it to 
a part of the country merely. Perhaps, as the vines 
were planted on the edge of the desert, above the level 
of the inundation, and not in Egypt properly so called, 
the veracity of the historian may in this way be saved. 
Unless this latter mode of explaning the difficulty be 
adopted, he will be found to contradict himself, since 
it is stated in the 168th chapter of the same book, that 
the caste of warriors in Egypt received individually 
four measures of wine, olvov reooapaq apvGrypaq. 
(Compare Bulletin des Sciences Historiques, &c., vol. 
4, p 77, seqq.) —The modern name of Lake Mareotis 
is Mairout. For many ages after the Greek and Ro¬ 
man dominion in Egypt, it was dried up ; for, though 
the bed is lower than the surface of the ocean, there 
is not sufficient rain to keep up any lake in the coun¬ 
try in opposition to the force of perpetual evaporation. 
But in 1801, the English, in order to circumscribe 
more effectually the communications which the French 
army in the city of Alexandrea maintained with the 
surrounding country, cut across the walls of the old 
canal which had formed a dike, separating this low 
ground from Lake Maadie, or the Lake of Aboukir, on 
the east. In consequence of this easy operation, the 
water had a sudden fall of six feet, and the Lake Ma¬ 
reotis which had so long disappeared, and the site of 
which had been occupied partly by salt marshes, partly 
by cultivated lands, and even villages, resumed its an¬ 
cient extent. The inhabitants of the villages were 
obliged to fly, and bewail from a distance the annihila¬ 
tion of their gardens and dwellings. This modern in¬ 
undation of the sea is indeed much more extensive 
than the ancient Lake Mareotis, occupying probably 
four times its extent. ( Malte-Brun, Geogr., vol. 4, p. 
32, Am. ed.) 

Margiana, a country of Asia, lying along the river 
Margus, from which it derived its name. According 
to Ptolemy, it was bounded on the west by Parthiene, 
on the north by the Oxus, on the east by Bactriana, 
and on the south by Asia and the Sariphian mountains. 
It now answers to the northern part of Chorasan. 
(Compare Plin., 6, 16— Strabo , 515.) Strabo speaks 
in strong terms of the fertility of Margiana, and states 
that it took two men to clasp the lower part of the 
stem of the vines with their arms. ( Strab ., 73.) 

Margites, the title of one of the minor poems as¬ 
cribed to Homer. ( Vid. Homerus, p. 642, col. 1.) 

Margus, I. a river in Mcesia Superior, rising from 
Mount Orbelus, and falling into the Danube to the 
west of Viminacium. It is now the Morawa. —II. A 
river of Margiana, falling into the Oxus northwest of 
Nisea. It is now the Mariab. (Plin., 6, 16.) 

Mariaba, I. a city of the Calingii, in the south¬ 
eastern part of Arabia Felix, 13 miles northeast of 



MAR 


MARIUS. 




Muza ; now Mareb. —II. A city of the Sabaei, m Ara¬ 
bia Felix. ( Plin., 6, 28.) 

Maria Lex, I. by C. Marius, when tribune, A.U.C. 
634. It ordained that the passages, called pontes , by 
which, the people passed to give their votes at the 
comilia, should be narrower, in order that there might 
be no crowding there, and that no persons might take 
their stand, there to impede or disturb the voters. 
( Cic ., Leg., 3, 17.)—II. Maria Porcia, so called be¬ 
cause proposed by two tribunes, Marius and Porcius. 
It was passed’A.U.C.691, and ordained that those com¬ 
manders should be punished who, in order to obtain 
a triumph, wrote to the senate a false account of the 
number of the enemy slain in battle, or of the citizens 
tha-, were missing; and that, when commanders re¬ 
turned to the city, they should swear before the city 
quEestors to the truth of the account which they had 
sent. ( Val. Max., 2, 8, 1.) 

Mariana Fossa, a canal cut by Marius from the 
river Rhone, through the Campus Lapideus, into the 
Lake Mastramela. It was probably near the modern 
Martigues. {Mela, 2, 5.— Plin., 3, 4.) 

Mariandyni, a people of Bithynia, to the east of 
the river Sangarius. They were of'uncertain origin ; 
but, since they differed neither in language nor in cus¬ 
toms materially from the Bithynians, they might justly 
be considered as part of the same great Thracian stock. 
{Strab., 542.) That they were barbarous is allowed 
t y all; and Theopompus, whose authority is referred to 
by Strabo, reported, that when the Megarians founded 
Heraclea in their territory, they easily subjected the 
Mariandyni, and reduced them to a state of abject sla¬ 
very, similar to that of the Mnotte in Crete, and the 
Penestae in Thessaly. {Strab., 1. c. — Posidon., ap. 
Aiken., 6, p. 263.— Athcn., 14, p. 620.) 

Marica, I. a nymph of the river Liris, who had a 
grove near Minturnse, into which, if anything was 
brought, it was not lawful to take it out again. {Pint., 
Vit. Marii, 39.) According to some authorities, she 
was the same with Circe. {Lactant., de Fals. Pel., 
1, 21.) Virgil, however, makes her the wife of Fau- 
nus, and mother of Latinus. {JEn., 7, 47.— Serv., ad 
loc.) 

Marinus, a native of Tyre, who flourished in the 
second century of the Christian era, a short time be¬ 
fore Ptolemy. An account of his work on Mathemati¬ 
cal Geography will be given under the article Ptole- 
masus. 

Marisus, a river of Dacia which falls into the Ti- 
biscus ; now the Marosch. {Strabo. — Jornand., de 
Reb. Get., p. 102.) 

Marius, Caius, a celebrated Roman, was born of 
humble parents, at or in the neighbourhood of Arpi- 
num, about B.C. 157. He served at the siege of Nu- 
mantia, B.C. 134, under Scipio Africanus, together 
with Jugurtha, where he highly distinguished himself. 
He received great marks of honour from Scipio, who 
used frequently to invite him to his table ; and when, 
one evening at supper, Scipio was asked where they 
should find so great a general when he was gone, he 
is said to have replied, placing his hand upon the 
shoulder of Marius, “ Here, perhaps.” In B.C. 119 
he was elected tribune of the commons, through the 
influence of Csecilius Metellus, according to Plutarch, 
but more probably in consequence of the fame he had 
acquired in the Numantine war. In this office he 
showed himself, as he did throughout the whole course 
of his life, a most determined enemy of the patrician 
order, and one who was not easily to be put down by 
the threats and opposition of his enemies. Having 
proposed a law to prevent illegal voting at elections, 
the senate passed a decree that the law should not be 
put to the vote in the popular assembly, and summon¬ 
ed Marius before them to answer for his conduct. 
Marius not only appeared, but threatened to commit 
the consuls to prison if they did not repeal the de¬ 


cree ; and when Metellus continued to support it, he 
commanded him to be led away to prison. Marius 
obtained the prsetorship with great difficulty, in conse¬ 
quence of the violent opposition of the patrician order, 
who accused him of having obtained the office by 
means of bribery. At the expiration of his praetor- 
ship the province of Spain was assigned to him, which 
he cleared of robbers. On his return to Rome he 
was anxious to obtain the consulship ; but he did not 
venture to become a candidate for many years after. 
He continued, however, to rise in public opinion, and 
appears about this time to have married Julia, one oi 
the Julian family, who was aunt to the celebrated Ju¬ 
lius Osesar. In B.C. 109 he accompanied Metellus 
into Africa, in the capacity of legatus; and by his 
prudence and courage in the war with Jugurtha, he 
added greatly to his military reputation. His friends 
took advantage of his increasing popularity at Rome 
to persuade the people that the war with Jugurtha 
would never be concluded until the command was 
given to Marius. This led to an open rupture be 
tween him and Metellus; and it was with the great 
est difficulty that the latter allowed his lieutenant 
Marius leave of absence to go to Rome in order to 
stand for the consulship. Marius was, however, suc¬ 
cessful ; he obtained the consulship B.C. 107, and 
the command of the Jugurthinc war. On his arrival 
in Africa he prosecuted the war with the greatest 
vigour; and in the following year (B.C. 106) ob¬ 
tained possession of the person of Jugurtha, who was 
treacherously given up by Bocchus to his quaestor 
Sylla. Marius remained in Africa during the next 
year (B.C. 105), in which the consul Manlius and 
the proconsul Caipio were defeated by the Teutones 
and Cimbri, with the prodigious loss, according to 
Livy {Epit., 67), of 80,000 soldiers, besides 40,000 
camp followers. The news of their defeat caused the 
greatest consternation at Rome, especially as the Teu¬ 
tones and Cimbri threatened the immediate invasion 
of Italy ; and Marius was accordingly elected consul 
in his absence, without any opposition even from the 
patrician party, as the only man in the state who was 
able to save it from impending ruin. He entered 
upon his second consulship B.C. 104, and enjoyed a 
triumph for his victories over Jugurtha ; but, in con¬ 
sequence of the threatened invasion of Italy having 
b6en deferred by an irruption of the Cimbri into 
Spain, he was again chosen consul in the two fol¬ 
lowing years (B.C. 103, 102). In the fourth consul¬ 
ship of Marius (B.C. 102), the Cimbri, having been 
defeated by the Celtiberi in Spain, returned to Gaul, 
and resolved to invade Italy in two divisions ; the 
one consisting of the Teutones and Ambrones (a Gal¬ 
lic people), through Gallia Narbonensis ; and the oth¬ 
er, comprising the Cimbri, by way of Noricum. Ma¬ 
rius defeated the Teutones and Ambrones near Aquas 
Sextiae (now Aix) in Gaul; but Catulus, who was 
stationed at the foot of the Alps to oppose the pas¬ 
sage of the Cimbri, retreated first to the other side of 
the Athesis (now the Adige), and afterward quitted 
this position also, without waiting for the enemy’s at¬ 
tack. In the following year (B.C. 101), Marius, who 
was again elected consul for the fifth time, joined his 
forces with those of Catulus, and entirely defeated 
the Cimbri in the plain of Vercellae (now Vcrcelli), 
situate to the north of the Po, near the Sessitss. In 
these two battles the Teutones and Ambrones *re sai<J 
to have lost the incredible number of 290,000 mer 
(200,000 slain, and 90,000 taken prisoners); and th« 
Cimbri 200,000 men (140,000 slain, and 60,000 taker 
prisoners). {Liv., Epit., 68.) Marius again becam* 
candidate for the consulship for the following year, 
but, now that the fear of the Gallic invasion was re¬ 
moved, he was opposed by the whole strength of thf. 
patrician party. He nevertheless obtained the con 
sulship, in great part owing to the exertions of Satur 




MARIUS. 


MARIUS. 


ninus, the tribune, who is described as a man that 
scrupled at the commission of no crime to accom¬ 
plish his object. The events of the sixth consulship 
of Marius, which are some of the most important in 
this period of Roman history, are imperfectly narrated 
by historians. It appears that an agrarian law, pro¬ 
posed by Saturninus, and supported by Marius and 
one of the orators named Glaucia, was carried, not¬ 
withstanding the most violent opposition of the patri¬ 
cian party; and that Metellus Numidicus was driven 
into exile, in consequence of refusing to take the oath 
of conforming to the law. When the election of con¬ 
suls for the ensuing year came on, Memmius, who 
opposed Glaucia as a candidate for the office, was 
murdered by order of Saturninus ; and the senate, 
perceiving the city to be in a state of anarchy, passed 
the usual decree, “ that the consuls should take care 
that the republic received no injury,” by which almost 
absolute power was vested in those magistrates. Ma¬ 
rius, unable or unwilling to protect his old friends, be¬ 
sieged Saturninus and Glaucia, who had seized upon 
the Capitol. They surrendered to Marius on the prom¬ 
ise that their lives should be spared, but they were 
all immediately put to death. It appears probable 
that Marius, after the blow which had been given to 
the popular party by the surrender of Saturninus and 
Glaucia, would not have been able to save their lives, 
even if he had made the attempt. At the expiration 
of his consulship, Marius left Rome, to avoid witness¬ 
ing the triumph of the patrician party in the return 
of his old enemy Metellus, whose sentence of ban¬ 
ishment was repealed after the death of Saturninus. 
According to Plutarch, he went to Cappadocia and 
Galatia, under the pretence of offering a sacrifice 
which he had vowed to Cybele, but with the real 
object of exciting Mithradates to war, in order that 
he might be again employed in military affairs, since 
he did not obtain much distinction in peace. In B.C. 
90 the Marsian or Social war broke out, in which 
both Marius and Sylla were employed as legati to the 
two consuls. Marius gained several victories over 
the enemy, but he no longer possessed that activity 
and energy which had distinguished him in his earlier 
years ; and disgusted, it is said, with the increasing 
reputation of Sylla, he resigned his command before 
the conclusion of the war. The Marsian war had 
scarcely been brought to an end, before the civil war 
broke out between Marius and Sylla. The command 
of the Mithradatic war had been assigned to the latter, 
who was now consul (B.C. 88); but Marius used ev¬ 
ery effort to wrest it from him, and is said by Plu¬ 
tarch to have gone every day to the Campus Martius, 
and to have performed his exercises with the young 
men, although he was now in his 70th year, and very 
corpulent, in order to show that he was not incapaci¬ 
tated by age. He was warmly supported by P. Sul- 
picius, the tribune, who possessed great property and 
influence ; and a law was eventually passed, that the 
command should be taken from Sylla and given to 
Marius. Sylla was with the army at the time, besie¬ 
ging Nola; but, as soon as he heard of the law which 
had been passed, he marched to Rome, and Marius 
and his adherents were obliged to flee from the city. 
After wandering through many parts of Italy, Marius 
escaped with the greatest difficulty to Africa ; but he 
had no sooner landed at Carthage than Sextilius, the 
governor of the province, sent word to him, that, unless 
he quitted Africa, he should treat him as a public ene- 
my. “ Go and tell him,” replied the wanderer, “that 
you have seen the exile Marius sitting on the ruins of 
Carthage. But, in the following year (B.C. 87), du¬ 
ring the absence of Sylla, who had gone to Greece 
to oppose Archelaus, Marius returned to Italy in or¬ 
der to join the consul Cinna, who, in his attempt to 
abrogate the laws of Sylla, had been driven from 
Rome by^his colleague Octavius, supported by the 


patrician party. Shortly afterward, Manus and Cm- 
na entered the city at the head of a large army, and 

a general massacre of the opposite party ensued._ 

Marius always appears to have been of a fierce and 
unrelenting temper; and the sufferings he had lately 
undergone, which at his time of life must have great¬ 
ly impaired his health, tended to exasperate him more 
than ever against the party which had opposed and 
thwarted him during the whole of his life. All the 
leaders of the patrician party who were unable to es¬ 
cape from Rome, were put to death. Lutatius Catu- 
lus, who had been the colleague of Marius in the war 
with the Cimbri, destroyed himself to avoid assas¬ 
sination ; and among the numerous illustrious patri 
cians that fell were C. and L. Julius Csssar, and the 
celebrated orator M. Antonius, who is so frequently 
praised by Cicero, and is one of the principal speak¬ 
ers in the dialogue “ De Oratore.” Marius and Cinna 
declared themselves consuls for the ensuing year 
(B.C. 86), without even holding the comitia; but 
Marius died of a fever in the beginning of the year, 
on the 17th day of his consulship according to Plu¬ 
tarch ( Vit. Mar., c. 46), or the 13th according to 
Livy {Epit. 80).—The character o j Marius is chiefly 
known to us from his life by Plutarch, who appears 
to have taken his account from the “ Memoirs of Syl¬ 
la,” the inveterate enemy of Marius. It cannot be 
denied, that, after his return from exile, Marius was 
guilty of the greatest cruelties ; but even these were 
surpassed by the atrocities of Sylla; ‘and we should 
not be doing justice to Marius if we ascribed to him 
during the whole of his life the character which he 
displayed in his seventh consulship. “ I have seen,” 
says Plutarch, “ the statue of Marius at Ravenna, in 
Gaul, which expresses in a remarkable manner his 
sternness and severity. Since he was naturally ro 
bust and warlike, and more acquainted with the arts 
of war than those of peace, he was fierce and haughty 
when in authority. It is said that he never learned 
Greek, and that he would not make use of that lan¬ 
guage on any serious occasion ; as if it were ridicu¬ 
lous to learn the language of a people who were sub¬ 
ject to others. If he could have been persuaded to 
pay his court to the Grecian Muses and Graces, he 
would not, after bearing so many honourable offices, 
and performing so many glorious exploits, have crown¬ 
ed the whole by a most savage and infamous old age, 
in consequence of his yielding to anger, ill-timed am¬ 
bition, and insatiable avarice.” (Pint., Vit. Mar. _ 

Sail., Bell. Jug. — Encxjcl. Us. Knowl., vol. 14, p. 420, 
seq.)— II. Son of the preceding, resembled his father 
in private character, and was equally fierce and vin¬ 
dictive. He seized upon the consulship at the age 
of 27, and put to death numbers of his political oppo¬ 
nents. Defeated subsequently by Sylla, he fled to 
Praeneste, where he slew himself. (Plat., Vit. Mar.) 
—III. Mercator, an ecclesiastical writer, the antag¬ 
onist of Celestius and Nestorius, who flourished be¬ 
tween 425 and 450 A.D. His country is not exactly 
known : some believe him to have been a native of 
Apulia ; others, of some other province of Lower Ita¬ 
ly ; and others, again, of Africa. It appears that he 
was not a priest. He has left behind him a number 
of works, or, rather, translations from the Greek, con¬ 
sisting of pieces relative to the heresies of Pelagius 
and Nestorius, of extracts from the works of the^lat- 
ter, refutations of his doctrine, errors of Theodorus 
and Mopsuestus, acts of synods held against heretics, 
&c. Marius Mercator was the disciple and friend of 
St. Augustine. His works were edited by Garner, 
Paris, 1673, 2 vols. fol., and by Baluze, Paris, 1684. 
—IV. Marcus Aurelius Marius Augustus, was ori¬ 
ginally an armourer or blacksmith in Gaul. He af¬ 
terward turned his attention to a military life, and 
soon raised himself, by his merit, to the highest sta¬ 
tions. After the death of Victorious the younger, the 








MAR 


MAR 


army elected Marius emperor. It is generally sup¬ 
posed that the Empress Victorina contributed to his 
elevation, with the hope of preserving her own au¬ 
thority ; but this is denied by some modern writers, 
who maintain that she took part in the conspiracy 
which deprived Marius of his crown and life. (De 
Boze, Dissertation sur un medallion de Tetricus .— 
Mem. de VAcad. des laser., vol. 26.) He reigned 
only three days, and was slain by a soldier to whom 
he had refused some favour, and who, in stabbing 
him. exclaimed, “ Take it—it was thou thyself that 
forged it.” Marius was remarkable for personal 
strength, of which historians give some accounts that 
are evidently fabulous. ( Treb . Polho, Trigint. Ty- 
rann .— Vit. Marii.) 

Marmarica, a country of Africa, to the east of Cy- 
renai'ea, lying along the Mediterranean shore. It 
forms at present a part of the district of Barca. The 
inhabitants were a roving race, and remarkable for 
their skill in taming serpents. ( Sil. Ital., 3, 300.) 
The ancient Marmarica was a region much less high¬ 
ly favoured by nature than Cyrena'ica. According to 
Della Celia (p. 182, seqq.), the general features of the 
country, however, are similar to those of the region 
last mentioned. “ We wound our way,” says this 
traveller, “among wild and rugged mountains, fre¬ 
quently enlivened by groups of evergreens ; among 
which the cypress, arbutus, Phoenician juniper, gigan¬ 
tic myrtle, carob, and laurel, were most abundant; 
and as they form no long and uniform woods, but are 
scattered about in a variety of forms and groups 
among the rocks, they are very picturesque ornaments 
of the scenery. The ground is throughout broken 
and irregular, and does not slope down into pastures, 
as in Cyrena'ica ; but the privation of that agreeable 
feature has its compensation, for the want of grass¬ 
lands secures this district from the incursions of the 
vagabond hordes in its neighbourhood. The woody 
and elevated nature of this country affords frequent 
and copious springs of clear and most delicious wa¬ 
ter.—This tract of border country is, as in former 
times, the resort of all the thieves, miscreants, and 
malcontents of the two governments of Tripoli and 
Egypt. Pitching their tents in the neighbourhood of 
the Bay of Bomba, they make incursions into the ad¬ 
jacent districts, and pillage all who have the misfor¬ 
tune to fall in their way. They are ever on the watch 
for the caravans and pilgrims who traverse this coun¬ 
try on their way to Mecca ; and this is the only 
route used by the people of Morocco, above all oth¬ 
ers the most fervently devoted to their prophet.”— 
M. Pacho speaks of the general aspect of Marmarica 
in still less favourable terms. The soil, he says, is 
rocky, of a yellowish-gray colour, and depends for its 
fertility solely on the copious rains. The country 
presents none of those verdant groves of laurel and 
myrtle which crown the mountains and overshadow 
the valleys of the Pentapolis. The singing-birds, vain¬ 
ly seeking foliage and shelter, flee from this naked re¬ 
gion ; only birds of prey, the eagle, the hawk, and 
the vulture, appear in numerous flights, their sinister 
screams rendering the solitude more frightful. The 
jackal, the hyena, the jerboa, the hare, and the gazelle, 
are the wild animals which chiefly abound; and the 
existence of man is indicated merely by the bleating 
of distant flocks, and the dark tent of the Arab. Yet 
this country also exhibits traces of having once been 
occupied by a civilized and even numerous popula¬ 
tion, and there are.marks of the extraordinary exer¬ 
tions which were made to supply the deficiency of 
water. Canals of irrigation cross the plain in every 
direction, and even wind up the sides of the hills. 
The ancient cisterns are numerous ; they are fre¬ 
quently divided into several chambers, adorned with 
pillars, and coated with a cement harder than stone. 
But the monuments of Marmarica possess none of 


the elegant and classic character of those of Cyrene, 
being ruder, and more in the Egyptian style. ( Pa¬ 
cho, Voyage dans la Marmarique, p. 63, seqq.) The 
inhabitants of this region are entirely Bedouins, chief¬ 
ly of the great tribe of Welled Ali, and are supposed 
by M. Pacho not to exceed 38,000. ( Modern Trav¬ 

eller, pt. 50, p. 182, seqq.) 

Marmarid.t,, the inhabitants of Marmarica. 

Marmarium, a place in the immediate vicinity ot 
Carystus, in Euboea, which furnished the valuable 
marble for which Carystus was famed. A temple was 
erected here to Apollo Marmarus. Marmarium was 
exactly opposite to Halae Araphenides in Attica. (Stra¬ 
bo, 446.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 142.) 

Maro. Vid. Virgilius. 

Maron, I. a priest of Apollo in Thrace, near Ma- 
ronea. (Horn., Od., 9,197.)—II. A follower of Osi¬ 
ris, well acquainted with the art of rearing the vine. 
(Diod. Sic., 1, 18.) Athenseus (1, 25) makes him a 
follower of Bacchus. He was fabled to have been 
the founder of Maronea in Thrace. (Consult Wes- 
seling's note, ad Diod., 1. c.) 

Maronea, a town of Thrace, southeast of the Bis- 
tonis Palus, on the coast. It was a place of some 
note, and is mentioned by Herodotus (7, 109), Scylax 
(p. 27), Strabo ( Epil ., 7, p. 331), and several other 
writers. Diodorus Siculus (1, 18) reports that it was 
founded by Maron, a follower of Osiris (vid. Maron), 
but Scymnus affirms (v. 675) that it was a colony 
of Chios. Pliny states that the more ancient name 
was Ortagurea (4, 11). The same writer extols the 
excellence of its wine (14, 4), whence a comic writer, 
quoted by Athenseus (8, 44), styled it a tavern. Ma¬ 
ronea, taken in the first Macedonian war by Philip, 
king of Macedon (Liv., 31, 16), and his retaining pos¬ 
session of it, was subsequently made a cause of com¬ 
plaint against him at Rome (39, 24). According to 
Mela, it was situated near a small river named Schoe- 
nus. Its ruins are still called Marogna. (Cramer's 
Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 313.) 

Marpessa, daughter of Evenus, was beloved by 
Apollo, whose suit was favoured by her father. Idas, 
another applicant for her hand, having obtained a wing¬ 
ed chariot from Neptune, carried off the apparently not 
reluctant maid. Her father pursued the fugitives, but, 
coming to the river Lycormas, and finding his progress 
stopped by it, he slew his horses and cast himself into 
the stream, which from him derived its name Evenus. 
Meantime Apollo met and took the fair prize from 
Idas. The matter being referred to Jupiter, he al¬ 
lowed the maiden to choose for herself; whereupon, 
fearing that when she grew old Apollo would desert 
her, she wisely chose to match with her equal, and 
gave her hand to her mortal lover. (Apollod., 1, 1, 
7.— Schol. ad 11., 9, 557.— Keightley's Mythology, p. 
119, seq.) 

Marpesus, I. a town of Troas, to the north of the 
Scamander, and to the west of Troja Vetus. ( TibulL, 
2, 5, 67.)—II. or Marpessa (MapTrijoua), a mountain 
in the island of Paros, containing the quarries whence 
the famous Parian marble was obtained. Hence the 
expresssion of Virgil, Marpesia cautes (JEn., 6,471.— 
Compare Plin., 36, 4 .-^Jornand., de Reb. Get., p. 88) 
This mountain was situate to the west of the harboul 
of Marmora. Dr. Clarke gives Capresso as the mod 
ern name. (Travels, vol. 6, p. 134, Load, ed.) 

Marrucini, a people of Italy, occupying a narrow 
slip of territory on the right bank of the river Aternu3, 
between the Vestini to the north and the Frentani t<5 
the south, and between the Peligni and the sea towards 
the east and west. Cato derived their origin from tha 
Marsi (ap. Priscian., c. 8). Like that people, they 
were accounted a hardy and warlike race, and with 
them they made common cause against the tyranny of 
Rome. An idea may be formed of the population and 
force of the several petty nations in this quarter of 

799 




M A R 


MAR 


Italy, from a statement of Polybius (2, 24), where 
that historian, in enumerating the different contingents 
which the allies of the Romans were able to furnish 
about the time of the second Punic war, estimates that 
of the Marsi, Marrucini, Vestini, and Frentani, at 
20,000 foot and 4000 horse. The only city of note 
which we find ascribed to the Marrucini, is Teate, 
now Chieti, on the right bank of the Aternus. (Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Italy , vol. 1, p. 339.) 

Marruvium, I. a town of the Sabines, answering to 
thi? modern Morro Vecchio. —II. The capital of the 
Marsi, situate on the eastern shore of the Lacus Fuci- 
nus, and corresponding to the modern San Bene¬ 
detto. (Strabo, 241.— Plin., 3, 12.— Cramer's Anc. 
Italy, vol. 1, p. 328.) 

Mars (in Greek 'A pyq), the god of war, about 
whose parentage different accounts are given. Homer 
(II, 5, 892, seqq.) and Hesiod ( Theog ., 922) make 
him to have been the offspring of Jupiter and Juno. 
Others say that he was the son of Enyo or Bellona. 
(Schol. ad II., 1. c .) Ovid, however, gives a different 
version of the fable. According to this poet, Juno 
wished to become a mother by herself, just as Jupiter 
had become a father in the case of Minerva. On ap¬ 
plying to Flora for aid in the accomplishment of her 
design, the latter directed her to pluck a certain flower 
which grew near the city of Olenus, the touch of which 
would make her instantly a mother. Juno obeyed, 
and straightway conceived the god Mars. (Ovid, 
Fast., 5, 227, seqq.) —The delight of Mars was in war 
and strife ; yet his wild fury was always forced to 
yield to the skill and prudence of Minerva, guided by 
whom Diomede, in the Iliad, wounds and drives him 
from the battle (II., 5, 855); and in the conflict of the 
gods (II, 21, 391), this goddess strikes him to the 
earth with a stone. To give an idea of his huge size 
and strength, the poet says, in the former case, that 
he roared as loud as nine or ten thousand men ; and 
in the latter, that he covered seven plethra of ground. 
Terror and Fear (A etgoq and <bo6oq), the sons of 
Mars, and Strife ("E pig), his sister, accompany him to 
the field when he seeks the battle. (II., 4, 440.) 
Another of his companions is Enyo (’Eww), the daugh¬ 
ter of Phorcys and Ceto, according to Hesiod (Theog., 
273), a war-goddess answering to the Bellona of the 
Romans. The name Enyalius, which is frequently 
given to him in the Iliad, corresponds with hers.— 
The figurative language, which expresses origin and 
resemblance by terms of paternity, gave a mortal 
progeny to Mars. As a person who came by sea was 
figuratively called a son of Neptune, so a valiant war¬ 
rior was termed a son, or, as it is sometimes expressed 
by Homer, a branch or shoot of Mars (o£oq “A pyoq). 
But the only tale of his amours related at any length 
by the poets, is that in the case of Venus. (Horn., 
Od., 8, 266, seqq. — Ovid, A. A., 2, 561.) This tale 
is an evident interpolation in the Odyssey, where it oc¬ 
curs. Its date is uncertain ; though the language, the 
ideas, and the state of society which it supposes, might 
almost lead us to assign its origin to a comparatively 
late period. It is generally supposed to be a physical 
myth, or, rather, a combination of two such myths ; 
for beauty might naturally have been made the spouse 
of the god, from whose workshop proceeded so many 
elegant productions of art; and, as we are about to 
show, another physical view might have led to the 
union >f Mars and Venus. Hesiod, for example, says 
(Theog., 937) that Harmonia (Order) was the daughter 
of Mars and Venus. This has evidently all the ap¬ 
pearance of a physical myth, for from Love and Strife 
(i. e., attraction and repulsion), arises the order or 
harmony of the universe. (Pint., de Is. et Os., 48.— 
Aristot., Pol, 2, 6 .—Welcker, Kret. Kol., 40.) Ter¬ 
ror and Fear are also said by Hesiod (Theog., 934) to 
have been the offspring of Mars and Venus, of whose 
union with Vulcan (to whom he gives a different 
800 


spouse) he seems to have known nothing. In the Iliad 
we may observe that Mars and Venus are spoken of as 
brother and sister, much in the same manner as Apollo 
and Diana. (II, 5, 359, seq. — lb., 21, 416, seqq.)— 
The best known of the children of this god by mortal 
women were Ascalaphus and Ialmenus, CEnomaus, 
king of Pisa, Diomedes of Thrace, Cycnus, Phlegyas, 
Dryas, Parthenopeeus, and Tereus. He was also said 
to be the sire of Meleager and other hero-princes of 
iEtolia. The temples and images of Mars were not 
numerous. He was represented as a warrior, of a se¬ 
vere and menacing air, dressed in the heroic style, 
with a cuirass on, and a round Argive shield on his 
arm. His arms are sometimes borne by his attendant' 1 
(Keightley's Mythology, p. 104, seqq.) 

Marsaci, a people of Gallia Belgica, of German 
origin, and belonging to the great tribe of the Istae- 
vones. According to Wilhelm (Germanien und seine 
Bewohner, Weimar, 1823), they occupied the islands 
between the mouths of the Mcese and Scheld. W T er- 
sebe, however (iiber die Volher des Alten Teutsch- 
lands , Hannover, 1826), makes their territory corre¬ 
spond to the modern province of Utrecht. They are 
mentioned by Tacitus (Hist., 4, 56) and Pliny (4, 29). 

Marsi, I. a people in the northwestern part of Ger¬ 
many, belonging to the great tribe of the Istaevones. 
They appear to have been originally settled on both 
banks of the Lippe, whence they spread south to the 
Tenchtheri. Weakened by the Roman arms, they re¬ 
tired into the interior of Germany, and from this period 
disappeared from history. (Mannert, Geogr., vol. 3, 
p. 168.)—II. A nation of Italy, whose territory lay to 
the northeast of Latium, and southeast of the counts 
of the Sabines. Though inconsiderable as a peopk 
they are yet entitled to honourable notice in the page 
of history, for their hardihood and warlike spirit. Their 
origin, like that of many other Italian tribes, is envel¬ 
oped in obscurity and fiction. A certain Phrygian, 
named Marsyas, is said to have been the founder of 
their race (Solin., 8); by others Marsus, the son of 
Circe (Plin., 7, 2), and hence they are represented as 
enchanters, whose potent spells deprived the viper of 
its venom, or cured the hurt which it might have 
caused. (Virg., JEn., 7, 750.— Sil. Ital., 8, 497.)— 
We do not find the Marsi engaged in war with Rome 
before A.U.C. 445, when they were defeated and 
forced to sue for peace. (Livy, 9, 41.) Six years 
after they again assumed a hostile character, but with 
as little success ; they were beaten in the field, and 
lost several of their fortresses. (Liv., 10, 3.) From 
that time we find them the firm and stanch allies of 
Rome, and contributing by their valour to her triumphs, 
till her haughty and domineering spirit compelled them 
and most of the other neighbouring people to seek, by 
force of arms, for that redress of their wrongs, and 
that concession of privileges and immunities, to which 
they were justly entitled, but which was not to be 
granted to their entreaties. In the war which ensued, 
and which, from that circumstance, is called the Marsic 
as well as Social War, the Marsi were the first to take 
the field under their leader Silus Pompsedius, A.U.C. 
661. Though often defeated, the perseverance of the 
allies was at last crowned with success, by the grant 
of those immunities which they may be said to have 
extorted from the Roman senate, A.U.C. 665. (Stra¬ 
bo, 241.— Veil. Paterc., 2, 16.— Appian, Bell. Civ., 1, 
39.— Liv., Epit-, 72.) The valour of the Marsi is 
sufficiently indicated by the proverbial saying which 
Appian records (Bell. Civ., 1, 46), “that there was 
no triumph to be obtained either over the Marsi or 
without fcieir aid ; ovre Kara M dpauv, ovre avsv M ap- 
ouv, yeveoQai ■dpiagbov." (Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 
1, p. 325, seqq.) 

Marsyas, I. a satyr of Phrygia, son of r^ympus, 
who, having found the pipe which Minerva, for fear of 
injuring her beauty, had thrown away, contended with 




MARSYAS. 


MiR 


Apollo for the palm in musical skill. The Muses were 
the umpires, and it was agreed that the victor might 
do what he pleased with the vanquished. Marsyas 
lost,, and Apollo flayed him alive for his temerity. The 
tears of the nymphs and rural deities for the fate of 
their companion gave origin, it was fabled, to the stream 
which bore his name ; and his skin was said to have 
been hung up in the cave whence the waters of the riv¬ 
er flowed. ( Apollod., 1, 4, 2.— Pausan., 2, 7, 9.— 
Pint., de Fluv., 10.— Hygin., fab., 165.— Ovid, Met., 
6, 382, seqq. — Xen., Anab., 1, 2, 8.)—It seems, ac¬ 
cording to the ancient mythological writers, that, in 
the contest above alluded to, Apollo played at first a 
simple air on his instrument; but Marsyas, taking up 
his pipe, struck the audience so much with the novel¬ 
ty of its tone and the art of his performance, that he 
seemed to be heard with more pleasure than his rival. 
Having agreed upon a second trial of skill, it is said 
that the performance of Apollo, by his accompanying 
the lyre with his voice, was allowed greatly to excel 
that of Marsyas upon the pipe alone. Marsyas with in¬ 
dignation protested against the decision of his judges, 
urging that he had not been fairly vanquished accord¬ 
ing to the rules stipulated, because the dispute was 
concerning the excellence of their respective instru¬ 
ments, not their voices ; and that it was unjust to em¬ 
ploy two arts against one. Apollo denied that he had 
taken any unfair advantage, since Marsyas had used 
both his mouth and fingers in playing on his instrument, 
so that if he was denied the use of his voice, he would 
be still more disqualified for the contention. On a 
third trial Marsyas was again vanquished, and met 
with the fate already mentioned. ( Diod. Sic., 3, 58.) 
—The whole fable, however, admits of a very rational 
explanation. The pipe as cast away by Minerva, and 
Marsyas as punished by Apollo, are intended merely 
to denote the preference given, at some particular pe¬ 
riod, by some particular Grecian race, with whom the 
myth originated, to the music of the lyre over that of 
the pipe, or, in other words, to the Citharocdic over 
the Auletic art. The double pipe was a Phrygian or 
Asiatic invention, and ascribed to a certain Marsyas. 

(Diod. Sic., 3, 58.) The music of this instrument 
was generally used in celebrating the wild and enthu¬ 
siastic rites of Cybele. Hence we may explain the re¬ 
mark of Diodorus, that Marsyas was a companion and 
follower of Cybele {enovokog airy irapaKo’Kovdelv nal 
ovju.Tc?iavacdcu, 3, 58). Subsequently, the wildness 
of the Bacchanalian celebrations became intermingled 
with the phrensied delirium that characterized the pro¬ 
cession and the rites of Cybele. The double pipe 
came now to be employed in the orgies of Bacchus. 
The worship of this god spread over Greece, and with 
it was disseminated the knowledge of this instrument. 
To the new species of music thus introduced was op¬ 
posed the old and national melody of the lyre; or, in 
the language of mythology, Apollo, the inventor and im¬ 
prover of the lyre, engaged in a stubborn conflict with 
Marsyas, the representative of the double pipe. Apol¬ 
lo conquers; that is, the pipe was long regarded by 
the Greeks as a barbarian instrument, and banished 
from the hymns and festivals of the gods : it could only 
find admittance into the festivals of the vintage, in the 
Bacchanalian orgies, and in the chorus of the drama. 

( Wieland , Attisches Museum, vol. 1, p 311, seqq .)— 
A statue of Marsyas, representing him in the act of 
being flayed, stood in the Roman forum, in front of the 
rostra. The story of Marsya3, understood in its liter¬ 
al sense, presents a remarkable instance of well-mer¬ 
ited punishment inflicted on reckless presumption; 
and as this feeling is nearly allied to, if not actually 
identified with, that arrogant and ungovernable spirit 
which formed the besetting sin of the ancient democ¬ 
racies, we need not wonder that, in many of the cities 
of antiquity, it was customary to erect a group of 
Anollo and Marsyas, in the vicinity of their courts of 
5 I 


justice, both to indicate *he punishment which sucn 
conduct merited, and to denote the omnipotence o. 
the law. Servius {ad Virg., JEn., 4, 58) alludes to 
the custom of which we have just made mention. His 
explanation, however, shows that he only half under¬ 
stood the nature of the allegory : “ Marsyas per civi- 
tates in foro posilus liber tads indicium est ."—II. A 
river of Phrygia, rising, according to Xenophon, in a 
cavern under the Acropolis of Cela3nae, and falling into 
the Mseander. {Anab., 1, 2, 8.) Here, as the same 
writer informs us, Apollo contended with Marsyas, and 
hung up the skin of his vanquished antagonist in the 
cavern whence the river flowed. The following re¬ 
marks of Mr. Leake appear worthy of insertion. “ Ac¬ 
cording to Xenophon, the Maeander rose in the palace 
of Cyrus, flowing thence through his park and the city 
of Celaenae: and the sources of the Marsyas were at 
the palace of the King of Persia, in a lofty situation 
under the Acropolis of Celaenae. From Arr.un (1, 29) 
and Quintius Curtius (3, 1) we learn, that the citadel 
was upon a high and precipitous hill, and that the Mar¬ 
syas fell from its fountains over the rocks with a great 
noise: from Herodotus (7, 26) it appears, that the same 
river was from this circumstance called Catarrhactes ; 
and from Strabo (578), that a lake on the mountain 
above Celaenae was the reputed source both of the Mar¬ 
syas, which rose in the ancient city, and of the Maeander. 
Comparing these authorities with Livy (38, 38), who 
probably copied his account from Polybius ; with Pliny 
(5, 29); with Maximus Tyrius (8, 8); and with the 
existing coins of Apamea, it may be inferred, that a 
lake or pool on the summit of a mountain which rose 
above Celaenae, and which was called Celaenae or Sig- 
nia, was the reputed source of the Marsyas and Maean¬ 
der ; but that, in fact, the two rivers issued from dif¬ 
ferent parts of the mountain below the lake ; that the 
lake was named Aulocrene, as producing reeds well 
adapted for flutes, and that it gave the name of Aulo- 
crenis to a valley extending for ten miles from the lake 
to the eastward ; that the source of the Marsyas was 
in a cavern on the side of a mountain in the ancient 
agora of Celaenas, and that the Marsyas and Maeander, 
both of which flowed through Celaenae, united a little 
below the ancient site.” {Leake's Journal, p. 158, 
seqq.) —III. A river of Caria, mentioned by Herodo¬ 
tus (5, 118) as flowing from the country of Idrias into 
the Maeander. Idrias was one of the earlier names of 
the city which, under the Macedonians, assumed the 
name of Stratonicea. The Marsyas of Herodotus is 
supposed, therefore, to be the same with the modern 
Tshina. {Barbie du Bocage. — Voyage de Chandler, 
vol. 2, p. 252.— Leake's Journal, p. 234.)—IV. A na 
tive of Pella, brother of Antigonus. He wrote, in 
ten books, a History of the Kings of Macedon, from 
the origin of the monarchy to the founding of Alex¬ 
andra ; and also a work on the Education of Alex¬ 
ander, with which prince he had been brought up. 
The loss of both these works, but particularly the lat¬ 
ter, is much to be regretted. Marsyas is also named 
among the grammarians, and Suidas calls him ypop- 
u(iTodiduGKa?LOC, “ a master of a school.” ( Scholl , 
Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 3, p. 207.) 

Martia or Marcia Aqua, a name given to the wa 
ter conveyed to the city by one of the Roman aque¬ 
ducts. This water was considered the most whole¬ 
some of any brought to Rome. The history of the 
Marcian aqueduct is as follows : Previous to its erec¬ 
tion, the Romans obtained their supply of water from 
the Aqua Appia and Anio Vetus. At the end, how 
ever, of 127 years after the erection of the two last- 
mentioned aqueducts, their channels had become de 
cayed, and much of their water wa? abstracted by the 
fraud of private individuals. The prastor Quintus Mar 
cius Rex was thereupon appointed by the senate to re¬ 
pair the injuries sustained by the old aqueducts; in 
addition to which, he also constructed a new one, 

801 



MAR 


MAS 


wntch was ever after called from him the Aqua Marcia. 
Pliny, however, states that the Aqua Marcia was first 
conveyed to Rome by Ancus Marcius ; and that Quin¬ 
tus Marcius Rex merely re-established the conduits. 
The same writer informs us that the earlier name of 
the water was Saufeia. ( Plin ., 31, 24.)—The Mar- 
cian water was obtained from the little river Pitonius, 
now Giovenco. This stream entered the Lacus Fu- 
cinus on the northeast side, and was said not to mix 
its ( waters, the coldest known, with those of the lake. 
According to the same popular account, it afterward 
emerged by a subterranean duct near Tibur, and be¬ 
came the Aqua Marcia. ( Cramer’s Anc. It., vol. 1, 
p. 327.— Burgess, Anliq. of Rome, vol. 2, p. 328.) 

Martialis, Marcus Valerius, a Latin epigram¬ 
matic poet, born at Bilbilis in Spam, about A.D. 40. 
Rader fixes his birth at A.D. 43 ; while Masson ( Vit. 
Plin., p. 112) makes him not to have died before A.D. 
101.—Very few particulars of his life are ascertained, 
and even these are principally collected from his own 
writings. He was destined originally for the bar, but 
showed little disposition to apply himself to such a 
career. In order to complete his education, Martial 
was sent to Rome. It was at the age of about twenty- 
two years, and in the sixth year of Nero’s reign, that 
he established himself in the capital. Here he gave 
himself up entirely to poetry, which he made a means 
of subsistence, for he was compelled to live by his 
own exertions. Titus and Domitian both favoured 
him, and the latter bestowed on him the rank of an 
eques and the office of a tribune, granting to him at 
the same time all the privileges connected with the 
Jus trium liberorum. After having passed thirty-five 
years at Rome, he felt desirous of visiting his native 
country. Pliny the younger supplied him with the ne¬ 
cessary means for travelling. Having reached Spain, 
he there, according to some critics, married a rich fe¬ 
male named Marcella, who had possessions on the Bil¬ 
bilis or Salon, and lived many years in the enjoyment 
of conjugal happiness. The conclusion, however, to 
be drawn from his writings rather favours the supposi¬ 
tion that such an union did not take place. Martial 
was acquainted with most of his literary contempora¬ 
ries, Juvenal, Quintilian, Pliny the younger, and others, 
as appears from his own writings. ( Ep ., 2, 90; 12, 
18, &c.)-We have about 1200 epigrams from the 
pen of .Martial : they form fourteen books, of which 
the last two are entitled Xenia and Apophoreta re¬ 
spectively, from the circumstance of their containing 
mottoes or devices to be affixed to presents offered to 
his friends, or distributed at the Saturnalia and other 
festivals. These fourteen books are preceded by one 
under the title of Spectacula, containing epigrams or 
small pieces on the spectacles given by Titus and 
Domitian. These are not all productions of Martial ; 
but it is very possible that he may have made and pub¬ 
lished the collection.—The greater part of Martial’s 
epigrams are of a different kind from those of Catullus. 
They approach more nearly to the modern idea of 
epigram, for they terminate with a point for which the 
author reserves all the edge and bitterness of his sat¬ 
ire. Among the numerous epigrams which Martial 
has left behind him, there are some that are excellent; 
of the collection as a whole, however, we may say, in 
the words of the poet himself (1, 17): “ Sunt bona, 
sunt queedam mediocria, sunt mala plura .” Many 

of these epigrams have lost their point for us, who are 
ignorant of the circumstances to which they allude. 
A large portion, moreover, are disgustingly obscene. 
Besides the epigrams which form the collection here 
referred to, there are others ascribed to Martial, which 
Butmann has inserted in his Anthology, vol. 1, p. 237, 
340, 470, 471.—The best editions of Martial are, that 
of Rader, Ingolst., 1602, 1611, fol., et Mogunt., 1627; 
that of Scnven is, Lugd. Bat., 12mo, 1619; that of 
bmidsius, Amst , 8vo, 1701 ; and that of Lemaire, 2 
802 


vols. 8vo, Paris ( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 2 

p. 349.) 

Marullus, a tribune of whom Plutarch makes 
mention in his life of Julius Caesar. Marullus and 
another of his colleagues, named Flavius, when the 
statues of Caesar were seen adorned with royal dia¬ 
dems, went and tore them off. They also found out 
the persons who had saluted Caesar king, and com¬ 
mitted them to prison. The people followed with 
joyful acclamations, calling the tribunes Brutuses; 
but Caesar, highly irritated, deposed them from office. 
( Plut., Vit. Gees.) 

Mas^esylii or Mass^esyli, a people in the western 
part of Numidia, on the coast, between the river Mu- 
lucha and the promontory Masylibum or Musulubium 
( Polyb., 3, 33.— Dionys. Perieg., 187.— Sallust, Ju- 
gurth., c. 92.— Liv., 28, 17.) They were under the 
dominion of Syphax. The promontory of Tretum, 
now Sebda-Kuz, or the Seven Capes, separated this 
nation from the Massyli, or subjects ofMasinissa. 

Masca or Mascas, a river of Mesopotamia, falling 
into the Euphrates, and having at its mouth the city 
Corsote, which it surrounded in a circular course. 
Mannert, after a review of the several authorities 
which have a bearing on the subject, charges D’An- 
ville with an error in placing the Masca too far to the 
west of Anatho, and in fixing this latter place at too 
great a distance from the Chaboras, since Isidorus 
makes the intervening space only 29 miles, whereas, 
on D’Anville’s chart, it is 35 geographical miles. 
D’Anville also is alleged to err in giving the Eu¬ 
phrates too large a bend to the southwest of Anatho. 
The river Masca is termed by Ptolemy the Saocoras. 
Mannert thinks that the Masca was nothing more than 
a canal from the Euphrates. (Mannert, Anc. Geogr 
vol. 5, p. 323.) 

Masinissa, king of Numidia, was the son of Gula, 
who reigned among the Massyli in the eastern portion 
of that country. (Liv., 24, 48, seq.) Masinissa was 
educated at Carthage, and became, though still quite 
young, enamoured of Sophonisba, daughter of Has- 
drubal, who promised him her hand. Urged on by 
his passion, and wishing, moreover, to signalize him¬ 
self by some deed of renown, the young prince pre¬ 
vailed upon his father to declare against Rome and in 
favour of Carthage. This was at the commencement 
of the second Punic war, and Masinissa was only 
seventeen years of age, but even then .gave great 
promise of future eminence. (Liv., 24, 49.) Hav¬ 
ing attacked Syphax, another monarch, reigning over 
the western part of Numidia, and then in alliance with 
the Romans, he gained over him two great victories, 
and afterward, passing the straits, united his forces with 
those of the Carthaginians in Spain. Hannibal was 
at that time carrying all before him in Italy, while 
Hasdrubal his brother was defending Spain. Not 
long after his arrival, Masinissa contributed essentially 
to the entire defeat of Cneus and Publius Scipio, by 
charging the Roman army with his Numidian horse, 
B.C. 212 ; but, after some other less successful cam¬ 
paigns, both he and his allies were compelled to yield 
to the superior ability of the young Scipio, afterward 
surnamed Africanus, and to abandon to him almost 
the whole of the peninsula. Having retreated to¬ 
wards the frontiers of Baetica, the Carthaginians were 
reduced to the greatest extremity, when Scipio made 
prisoner of Massiva, the nephew ofMasinissa, and sent 
him back to his uncle loaded with presents. The 
hostility of Masinissa towards the Romans immediate¬ 
ly changed into the warmest admiration : he had a se¬ 
cret conference with Scipio near Gades, which was 
eventually followed by his complete defection from the 
Carthaginian cause. It is more than probable that 
the Numidian prince was long before secretly disposed 
to this step, in consequence of the bad faith of Has¬ 
drubal, who had offered his daughter Sophonisba in 







MASINISSA. 


MAS 


mairiage to Syphax However this might have been, 
Masinissa, before declaring openly against Carthage, 
made a secret treaty with the Romans, and advised 
Scipio, it is said, to carry the war into Africa. Re¬ 
turning to this country himself, he found his kingdom 
a prey to usurpers, his father and elder brother having 
both died during his absence. With the aid, however, 
of Bocchus, king of Mauretania, he obtained posses¬ 
sion of his hereditary throne, and would have enjoyed 
it peaceably, if the Carthaginians, irritated at his now 
open avowal for the Romans, had not incited Syphax 
to make war upon him. Defeated and stripped of his 
dominions, Masinissa was compelled to take refuge 
near the Syrtis Minor, where he defended himself until 
the arrival of Scipio. The aspect of affairs immedi¬ 
ately changed, and Masinissa, by his valour and skill, 
contributed greatly to the victory gained by Scipio 
over Hasdrubal and Syphax. Having been sent with 
Laelius in pursuit of the vanquished, he penetrated, 
after a march of fifteen days, to the very heart of his 
rival’s kingdom, gained a battle against him, made 
himself master of Cirta, the capital of Syphax, and 
found in it Sophonisba, to whom, as we have said, 
he had been attached in early youth. The charms of 
the daughter of Hasdrubal proved too powerful for the 
Numidian king, and he married her at once, in the 
hope of rescuing her from slavery, since she belonged 
to the Romans by the right of conquest. This impru¬ 
dent union, however, with a captive whose hatred to¬ 
wards Rome was so deep-rooted, could not but prove 
displeasing to Scipio, and Masinissa was severely re¬ 
proved in private by the Roman commander. The 
Numidian, in his despair, sent a cup of poison to his 
bride, who drank it off with the utmost heroism. ( Liv., 
30, 15.) To console him for his loss, Scipio bestowed 
upon Masinissa the title of king and a crown of gold, 
and heaped upon him other honours ; and these dis¬ 
tinctions, together with the hope of soon seeing him¬ 
self master of all Numidia, caused the ambitions mon¬ 
arch to forget the death of Sophonisba. Constantly 
attached to the fortunes of Scipio, Masinissa fought on 
his side at the battle of Zama, defeated the left wing 
of the enemy, and, though severely wounded, never¬ 
theless went in pursuit of Hannibal himself, in the 
hope of crowning his exploits by the capture of this 
celebrated commander. Scipio, before leaving Africa, 
Established Masinissa in his hereditary possessions, 
and added to these, with the authority of the sen¬ 
ate, all that had belonged to Syphax in Numidia. 
Master now of the whole country from Mauretania to 
Cyrene, and become the most powerful prince in Af¬ 
rica, Masinissa profited by the leisure which peace af¬ 
forded him, and exerted himself in introducing among 
his semi-barbarous subjects the blessings of civiliza¬ 
tion. Neither age, however, nor the tranquil posses¬ 
sion of so extensive a territory, could damp his ardour 
for conquest. Imboldened by his relations with 
Rome, he violated the treaties subsisting between 
himself and the Carthaginians, and, although in his 
ninetieth year, placed himself at the head of a power¬ 
ful army and marched into the territories of Carthage. 
He was preparing for a general action when Scipio 
iEmilianus arrived at his camp, having come from 
Spain to visit him. Masinissa received the young Ro¬ 
man with distinguished honours, alluded with tears to 
his old benefactor Africanus, and afterward caused the 
6lite of his troops to pass in review before the son of 
Paulus iEmilius. The young Scipio was most struck, 
however, by the activity and address of the monarch 
himself, whose physical powers seemed but little im¬ 
paired by age, who still performed all the exercises 
of youth, and mounted and rode his steed with all the 
spirit of earlier years. On the morrow Scipio was the 
witness of one of the greatest conflicts that had ever 
taken place in Africa, which, after having been main¬ 
tained for a long time on both sides with the utmrst 


obstinacy, was decided at last in favour of Masinissa. 
A second battle, equally disastrous for Carthage, soon 
followed, and peace was concluded on such terms as 
it pleased Masinissa to dictate. Not long after this 
the third Punic war broke out; but the Numidian 
monarch did not live to see the downfall of Carthage, 
having expired a short time before its capture, at the 
age of ninety-seven, and after a reign of sixty years. 
Masinissa was remarkable for his abstemious mode of 
life, which, joined to his habits of constant exercise, 
enabled him to enjoy so protracted an existence. He 
left fifty-four sons, only three of whom, Micipsa, Gu- 
lussa, and Mastanabal, were legitimate. Scipio, who 
had been requested to do so by Masinissa, divided the 
kingdom among these three, and assigned consider¬ 
able revenues to the others. {Liv., lib. 24, 25, 28, &c. 
— Polyb., lib. 11, 14, 15, &c.— Biogr. Uiiiv., vol. 27 
p. 364, seqq.) 

Massagetae, a nation of Scythia, placed by the an¬ 
cient writers to the east of the river Iaxartes. The 
Macedonians sought for the Massagetae in the northern 
regions of Asia, judging from the history of Cyrus’s 
expedition against these barbarians, by which some 
definiteness was given to the position which they oc¬ 
cupied. They missed, indeed, the true Massagetae, 
but the term became a general one for the northern 
nations of Asia, like that of Scythians. Larcher con¬ 
siders the term Massagetae equivalent probably to 
“ Eastern Getae.” {Hist, d'Herodote, vol. 8, p. 323, 
Table Geographique.) According to Herodotus, the 
Massagetae occupied a level tract of country to the 
east of the Caspian. {Herod., 1, 201.) Hailing takes 
the Massagetae for Alans, and refers to Ammianus 
Marcellinus (23, 14 ; 31, 2) in support of his opinion. 
{Wien-Iahrb., 63, p. 131.) Gatterer, on the other 
hand, thinks that they occupied the present country 
of the Kirgisk Tatars. ( Comment. Soc. Gott 14., 
p. 9.— Bohr, ad Herod., 1 . c.) 

MassaEsyli. Vid. Masaesylii. 

Massicus, Mons, a range of hills in Campania, fa¬ 
mous for the wines produced there. Consult remarks 
under the article Falernus, near the beginning (p. 515, 
col. 2). 

Massilia, by the Greeks called Massalia (Macrcra- 
/U'a), a celebrated colony of the Phocaeans, on the 
Mediterranean coast of Gaul, now Marseille. The 
period of its settlement appears to have been very re¬ 
mote. Scymnus of Chios (v. 210), Livy (5, 34), and 
Eusebius, agree in placing it in the 45th Olympiad, 
during the reign of Tarquinius Priscus. Their com. 
mon authority appears to have been Timseus ; at least 
Scymnus mentions him. — The circumstances con¬ 
nected with the founding of Massilia will be seen un¬ 
der the article Phoc.sea. The natives endeavoured to 
prevent the establishment of this colony, but, accord 
ing to Livy (5, 34), the Phocseans were enabled to 
make an effectual resistance, and to fortify their posi¬ 
tion, by the aid of a body of Gauls. (Compare the 
account of Justin, 43, 3, 4.) Massilia soon became 
a powerful and flourishing city, and famed for its ex¬ 
tensive commerce. It engaged in frequent contests 
with Carthage, its maritime rival, and sent out many 
colonies, from Emporiae in Spain as far as Monoecus 
in Italy. {Strabo, 180.) The most prosperous pe¬ 
riod in the history of Massilia would seem to have 
been the interval from the fall of Carthage to the com¬ 
mencement of the contest between Caesar and Pom- 
pey. This city was always the firm ally of Rome. 
The origin of its friendship with the Romans is not 
clearly ascertained : Justin, or, rather, Trogus Pompe- 
ius (43, 3), dates it from the reign of Tarquiniu# Pris¬ 
cus, but this appears deserving of no credit. {Man- 
ncrt, Geogr., vol. 2, p. 83, seqq.) It is more than 
probable, that the friendship in question began about 
the end of the first Punic war. Before this war we 
hear nothing of the Massilians in Roman history, an$ 

803 



MAU 


M A U 


previous to the commencement of the second Punic 
contest we find them the allies of the Romms, (Inv., 

21, 20.) The political importance of this city re¬ 
ceived a severe check in the civil war between Caesar 
and Pompey, in consequence of its attachment to the 
party of the latter. It had to sustain a severe siege, 
in which its fleet was destroyed, and, after surrender¬ 
ing, to pay a heavy exaction. ( Cces., Bell. Civ., 2, 

22. ) The conqueror, it is true, left the city the title 
of freedom, but its power and former importance were 
gone. The downfall of its political consequence, 
however, was succeeded by distinguished eminence 
in another point of view, and already, in the days of 
Augustus, Massilia began to be famous as a school of 
the sciences, and the rival of Athens. Even in a much 
later age, though surrounded by barbarous tribes, she 
continued to enjoy her literary rank, and was also re¬ 
markable for the culture of philosophy and the healing 
art. Massilia remained a flourishing city until the in¬ 
roads of the barbarians and the subjugation by them 
of nearly the whole of southern Gaul. The govern¬ 
ment of the place was a well-regulated aristocracy. 

( Mannert , Geogr., vol. 2, p. 81, seqq.) 

Massyli, a people of Numidia, to the east of the 
Massaesyli and Cape Tretum. They were the sub¬ 
jects of Masinissa. ( Liv ., 24, 48.— Polyb., 3, 33.— 
Sil. Ital., 16, 170.) 

Matinum, a city of Messapia or Iapygia, southeast 
of Callipolis. Near it was the Mons Matinus. It 
was here, according to Horace, that the celebrated 
philosopher, Archytas of Tarentum, was interred, 
when cast on shore after shipwreck. ( Od ., 1, 28.) 
This region was famed for its bees and honey. The 
modern Matinata seems to mark the site of the an¬ 
cient city. ( Cramer's Anc. Italy , vol. 2, p. 277.) 

Matrona, a river of Gaul, now the Marne , which 
formed part of the ancient boundary between Gallia 
Belgica and Gallia Celtica. It takes its rise at Lan- 
gres , runs northwest to Chalons, then westward, pass¬ 
es by Meaux, becomes navigable at Vitry, and a‘. 
Charenton, a little above Paris, falls into the Sequa- 
na or Seine, after a course of about 92 leagues 
(Cces., B. C., 1, 1.— Auson., Mosel., y. 461.— Am- 
mian. Marcell., 15, 27. — Sidon., Pxnegyr. Mxrja- 
rian., 208.) 

Matronalia, a festival celebrated at P-ome on the 
Calends, or first of March, and on this same occasion 
presents used to be given by husbands to their wives. 
The day is said to have been kept sacred in remem¬ 
brance chiefly of the reconciliation between the Ro¬ 
mans and the Sabines. On this same day, also, a 
temple had been dedicated by the Roman ladies to 
Juno Lucina, on the Esquiline Hill, and here they 
presented their annual offerings. (Ovid, Fast., 3, 170, 
seqq.) From this last-mentioned circumstance, and 
particularly from a part of the passage last referred to 
(v. 235, seqq.), the true reason of the celebration 
may perhaps be inferred. Ovid speaks of offerings 
of flowers made on this occasion to Juno.'y 

Mattiaci, a nation in the western quarter of Ger¬ 
many : according to Wilhelm ( Germanien und seine 
Bewohner, Weimar, 1823), a branch of the Catti, be¬ 
tween the Lahn and Maine, in the country between 
Mayence and Coblenz; but, according to Kruse, ly¬ 
ing between the Maine, the Taunus, and the Rhine 
( Archiv. fur alte Geogr.). The Aquae Mattiacse cor¬ 
respond to the modern Wiesbaden. (Ammian. Mar- 
c ell, 29, 20.) 

Matuta, a deity among the Romans, the same as 
the Leucothoe of the Greeks. (Vid. Ino and Leuco- 
hoe.) 

Mavors, a name of Mars. (Vid. Mars.) 

Mauri, the inhabitants of Mauritania. Bochart de¬ 
rives the r.a*<ye from Mahur, or, as an elision of gut- 
uraia s very lommon in the Oriental languages, from 
U:iur i. e., me from the west, or an occidentalist, 
804 


Mauritania being west of Carthage and Phoenicia 
(Geogr. Sacr., 1, 25.— Op., vol. 2, c. 496.) 

Mauritania, a country of Africa, on the Mediter¬ 
ranean, now the empire of Fez and Morocco. It was 
bounded on the north by the Straits of Gibraltar and 
the Mediterranean, on the east by Numidia, on the 
south by Gffitulia, and on the west by the Atlantic. 
It was, properly speaking, in the time of Bocchus the 
betrayer of Jugurtha, bounded by the river Mulucha 
or Molochath, now Malva, and corresponded nearly 
to the present kingdom of Fez ; but, in the time of 
the Emperor Claudius, the western part of Numidia 
was added to this province under the name of Mauri¬ 
tania Caesariensis, the ancient kingdom of Mauritania 
being called Tingitana, from its principal city 1 mg’ 3 ; 
or Old Tangier, on the west of tf s straits. ( Plin ., 
5,. 1 . — Cats., Bell. Civ., 1, 6 .—Id, Bell. Afric .,22. 
—Mela, 1, 5. — Id., 3, 10.— Vid. Maun, and Mau- 
rusii.) 

Maurus Terentianus, a Latin grammarian, gen 
erally supposed to have been an African by birth. 
The time when he flourished kxs been made a rnattei 
of dispute. Vossius supposes him to have been the 
same Terentianus who is addressed by Martial as the 
prefect of Syene in Egypt. (Fp., L 87.) Terenti- 
anus declares himself a contemporary ol Septimius 
Serenus, which la,ter poet Wernsdorff refers to the 
age of Vespasian. (Poet. Bat. Min., vol. 2, p. 249.) 
He at all events lived during or before the time of 
St. Augustine, sirco he is mentioned by the latter ir. 
terms of the highest respect. (Be Civ. Bei, 6, 2. 

Be Util Crcd , c. 17.) Terentianus, when advanced 
in life, wrote a poem on letters, syllables, feet, anr 
metres ( l ~ Be Litems, Syllabis, Pedibus et Metris Car 
men ”), in which these dry topics are handled with al ! 
the art of which they are susceptible. This poem is ex 
tremely useful for a knowledge of Latin Prosody : tbf 
author unites in it example and precept, by employing, 
fer the explanation of the various metres, verses writ¬ 
ten in the very measures of which he treats.—The 
most recent editions of the poem in question are, that 
of Santen, completed by Van Lennep, Traj. ad Rhen., 
1825, and that of Lachmann, Lips., 1836. It is giv¬ 
en also among the Latin grammarians, ed. Putsch., p. 
2383, seqq., and in the Corpus Poetarum of Mait- 
taire. 

Maurusii, a poetical name for the people of Mau 
ritania. 

Mausolus, a prince of Caria, the brother and hus¬ 
band of Artemisia. His death was deeply lamented 
by the latter, who caused a splendid monument to bo 
erected to his memory. (Vid. Artemisia I., Halicar 
nassus, and Mausoleum.) 

Mausoleum, I. (Maucxw/leiox', scil. pvrifielov, u t,he 
tomb of Mausolus"), a magnificent monumental struc¬ 
ture, raised by Artemisia in memory of her husband 
Mausolus, king of Cari? in the city of Halicarnassus, 
B.C. 352. Of this monument, once reckoned among 
the wonders of the world, no remains now exist; but, 
from Pliny’s description (36, 5), it appears to have 
been nearly square in its plan, measuring 113 feet on 
its sides, and 93 on each of its ends or fronts, and to 
have been decorated with a peristyle of 36 columns 
(supposed by Hardouin to have been 60 feet high or 
more), above which the structure was carried up in 
a pyramidal form, and surmounted at its apex by a 
marble quadriga executed by Pythis, who, according 
to Vitruvius, was joint architect with Sat.yrus in the 
building. It was farther decorated with sculptures 
and reliefs by Scopas, Bryaxis, Timotheus, and Leo- 
chares. The entire height was 140 feet.—II. Tho 
Mausoleum erected at Babylon by Alexander the 
Great, in honour of Hephaestion, appears to have beeK 
still more magnificent, and somewhat extravagant ir 
its decorations, as far as can be gathered from the ac 
count given of it by Diodorus Siculus (17, 115). Tr 





MAX 


MAX 


was auorned below by gilded rostra or beaks of 240 
ships, and every successive tier or story was enriched 
with a profusion of sculpture, representing various an¬ 
imals, fighting centaurs, and other figures, all of which 
were gilded ; and on the summit were statues of si¬ 
rens, made hollow, in order that the singers who 
chanted the funeral dirge might be concealed 'ithin 
them.—III. The Mausoleum of Augustus at rlome 
was a structure of great magnitude and grandeur, and 
circular in plan. It stood in the Campus Martius, 
wt.3re remains of it yet exist in the two concentric 
circles forming the first and second stories of the 
building, and the vaulted chambers between, which 
supported the first or lowest terrace. Of these terra¬ 
ces there were three; consequently, four stages in the 
building, gradually decreasing in diameter, the upper¬ 
most of which was crowned with a colossal statue of 
the emperor. The terraces themselves were planted 
with trees. From traces of something of the kind 
that yet remain, it is conjectured that there was ori¬ 
ginally an advanced portico attached to the building, 
in the same manner as that of the Pantheon, though 
considerably smaller in proportion to the rest of the 
plan, as it could not have been carried up higher than 
the first stage of the building. According to Hirt’s 
representation of it, in his “ Baukunst bei den Allen," 
it was a Corinthian hexastyle, advanced one inter¬ 
column before the side-walls connecting it with the 
circular edifice behind it.—IV. The Mausoleum of 
Hadrian was also of great magnitude and grandeur, 
and, like the preceding, circular in plan. It is now 
converted into the Castle of St. Angelo, in which 
shape it is familiar to almost every one. This is a 
work of most massy construction, and originally pre¬ 
sented an unbroken circular mass of building, erect¬ 
ed upon a larger square basement, lofty in itself, yet 
of moderate height in proportion to the superstruc¬ 
ture, the latter being about twice as high as the for¬ 
mer. This nearly solid rotunda, which was originally 
coated with white marble, had on its summit numer¬ 
ous fine statues, which were broken to pieces and the 
fragments hurled down by the soldiers of Belisarius 
upon the Goths, who attempted to take the building 
by storm. Neither are any remains now left of the 
uppermost stage of the edifice, which assumed the 
form of a circular peripteral temple, whose diameter 
was about one third of the larger circle. According 
to tradition, its peristyle consisted of the twenty-four 
beautiful marble Corinthian columns which afterward 
decorated the Basilica of San Paolo fuori delle Mura 
(partially destroyed some few years ago by fire, but 
now nearly restored) ; and its tholus or dome was 
surmounted by a colossal pine-apple in bronze, now 
placed in the gardens of the Vatican. ( Encycl. Us. 
Knowi, vol. 15, p. 21.) 

Maxentius, Marcus Aurelius Valerius, son of 
Maximianus, the colleague of Dioclesian in the em¬ 
pire, was living in obscurity, when, after his father’s 
abdication, and the elevation of Constantine to the 
rank of Caesar, he became envious of the latter, and 
dissatisfied with the neglect which he experienced 
from Galerius. Accordingly, he stirred up a revolt 
among the praetorian soldiers at Rome, and was pro¬ 
claimed emperor A.D. 306. Galerius, who was then 
in the East, sent orders to Severus Caesar, who had 
the command of Italy, to march from Mediolanum to 
Rome with all his forces, and put down the insurrec¬ 
tion. In the mean time, Maximianus, who lived in re¬ 
tirement in Campania, came to Rome, and was pro¬ 
claimed emperor and colleague with his son, A.D. 307. 
Severus, on arriving with his troops near Rome, was 
deserted by most of his officers and soldiers, who had 
formerly served under Maximianus, and were still at¬ 
tached to their old general. Upon this he retired to 
Ravenna, which he soon after surrendered to Maxim¬ 
ianus, on being promised his life and liberty ; but 


Maximianus put him to death. The latter then pro¬ 
ceeded to Gaul, to form an alliance with Constantius, 
leaving Maxentius at Rome. Galerius soon after ar¬ 
rived in Italy with an army ; but, not finding himself 
strong enough to attack Maxentius in Rome, and 
fearing the same fate as that of Severus, he made a 
precipitate retreat. Maximianus, returning to Rome, 
reigned for some months together with his son, but 
afterward quarrelled with him, and took refuge with 
Galerius, who acknowledged him as emperor. There 
were then no less than six emperors ; Galerius, Max¬ 
imianus, Constantine, Maxentius, Licinius, and Max¬ 
iminus Daza. In the following year, A.D. 309, Max¬ 
entius was proclaimed consul at Rome, together with 
his son, M. Aurelius Romulus, who, in the ensuing 
year, was accidentally drowned in the Tiber. Max¬ 
entius possessed Italy and Africa ; but Africa revolt¬ 
ed, and the soldiers proclaimed as emperor an ad¬ 
venturer of the name of Alexander, who reigned at 
Carthage for three years. In the year 311, Maxen¬ 
tius sent an expedition to Africa, defeated and killed 
Alexander, and burned Carthage. Proud of his suc¬ 
cess, for which he enjoyed a triumph, Maxentius made 
great preparations to attack Constantine, with whom 
he had till then preserved the appearance of friend¬ 
ship. Constantine moved from Gaul into Italy, ad¬ 
vanced to Rome, and defeated Maxentius, who was 
drowned in attempting to swim his horse across the 
Tiber, A.D. 312. ( Encycl. Us. Knowledge , vol. 15, 

p. 22.) 

Maximianus I., Marcus Valerius, a native of Pan- 
nonia, born of obscure parents. Pie served in the 
Roman armies with distinction, and was named by 
Dioclesian his colleague in the empire, A.D. 286. 
The remainder of his life is given under Diocletianus, 
Constantinus, and Maxentius. He was put to death 
by Constantine, at Massilia, for having conspired 
against his life (A.D. 310.)—II. Galerius Valerius, 
was surnamed Aimentarius on account of his having 
been a herdsman in his youth. “The events of his life 
are narrated under Diocletianus, Constantius, and Con¬ 
stantinus. According to historians, he died A.D. 311, 
of a loathsome disease, which was considered by his 
contemporaries and himself as a punishment from 
heaven for his persecution of the Christians. ( En¬ 
cycl. Us. Knowi., vol. 15, p. 23.) 

MaximInus, I. Caius Julius Verus, was originally 
a Thracian shepherd. He was of gigantic size and 
great bodily strength, and, having entered the Roman 
army under Septiinius Severus, was rapidly advanced 
for his bravery. Alexander Severus gave him the 
command of a new legion raised in Pannonia, at the 
head of which he followed Alexander in his campaign 
against the Germans, when, the army being encamped 
on the banks of the Rhine, he conspired against his 
sovereign, and induced some of his companions to 
murder him in his tent, as well as his mother Mam- 
maea, A.D. 235. Maximinus, being proclaimed em¬ 
peror, named his son, also called Maximinus, Caesar 
and his colleague in the empire. He continued the 
war against the Germans, and devastated a large tract 
of country beyond the Rhine ; after which he repaired 
to Ulyricum to fight the Dacians and Sarmatians. But 
his cruelty and rapacity raised enemies against him in 
various parts of the empire. The province of Africa 
revolted, and proclaimed Gordianus, who was soon after 
acknowledged by the senate and people of Rome, A.D. 
237. But Capellianus, governor of Mauritania for 
Maximinus, defeated Gordianus and his son, who both 
fell in the struggle, after a nominal reign of little more 
than a month. Rome was in consternation at the 
news, expecting the vengeance of Maximinus. The 
senate proclaimed as emperors Clodius Pupienus Maxi¬ 
mus and Decimus Caslius Albinus ; but the people ip 
sisted upon a nephew of the younger Gordianus, a boy 
twelve years of age, being associated with them 

805 




MAX 


M A Z 


Maximus marched out of Rome with troops to oppose 
Maximinus, who had laid siege to Aquileia. The lat¬ 
ter, however, experienced a brave resistance from the 
garrison and people of that city, which excited still more 
his natural cruelty, and the soldiers, becoming weary of 
him, mutinied and killed both him and his son, A.D. 
238. Maximinus, the father, then 65 years old, was 
a ferocious soldier and nothing else, and wonderful 
tales are related of his voracity, and the quantity of 
food and drink which he swallowed daily. His son is 
said to have been a handsome but arrogant youth. 
(Jul. Capitol ., Vit. Maxim. — Encycl. Us. KnowL, 
vol. 15, p. 23.)—II. Daia or Daza, an Illyrian peas¬ 
ant, served in the Roman armies, and was raised by 
Galerius, who was his relative, to the rank of military 
tribune, and lastly to the dignity of Caesar, A.D. 303, 
at the time of the abdication of Dioclesian and Max- 
irnian, when he had for his share the government of 
Syria and Egypt. After the death of Galerius, A.D. 
311, Maximinus and Licinius divided his dominions 
between them, and Maximinus obtained the whole of 
the Asiatic provinces. Both he and Licinius behaved 
ungratefully towards the family of Galerius, their 
common benefactor. Valeria, the daughter of Diocle- 
sian and widow of Galerius, having escape.d from Li¬ 
cinius into the dominions of Maximinus, the latter of¬ 
fered to marry her, and, on her refusal, banished her, 
with her mother, to the deserts of Syria. He perse¬ 
cuted the Christians, and made war against the Ar¬ 
menians. A new war having broken out betwe^.j Li¬ 
cinius and Maximinus, the latter advanced as far as 
Adrianopolis, but was defeated, fled into Asia, and 
died of poison at Tarsus, A.D. 313. ( Encycl. Us. 
Knowl., vol. 15, p. 24.) 

Maximus, I. Magnus, a native of Spain, who pro¬ 
claimed himself emperor A.D. 383. The unpopular¬ 
ity of Gratian favoured his usurpation, and he was ac¬ 
knowledged by the troops. Gratian marched against 
him, but he was defeated, and soon after assassinated. 
Maximus refused the' honours of burial to the re¬ 
mains of Gratian; and, when he had made himself 
master of Britain, Gaul, and Spain, he sent ambassa¬ 
dors into the East, and demanded of the Emperor The¬ 
odosius to acknowledge him as his associate on the 
throne. Theodosius endeavoured to amuse and de¬ 
lay him, but Maximus resolved to enforce his claim by 
arms, and, crossing the Alps, made himself master of 
Italy. Theodosius, however, marched against and be¬ 
sieged him in Aquileia, where he was betrayed by his 
own soldiers, and put to death, A.D. 383.—II. Pe- 
tronius, a Roman senator, twice consul, and of pa¬ 
trician origin. He caused the Emperor Valentinian 
III. to be assassinated, and ascended the throne, but 
was stoned to death, and his body thrown into the Ti¬ 
ber by his own soldiers, A.D. 455, after a reign of 
only 77 days. {Procop., Bell. Vand. — Sidon., Apoll., 

1, 23.)—III. Tyrius, a native of Tyre, distinguished 
for his eloquence, and who obtained some degree of 
celebrity also as a philosopher of the New-Platonic 
school. According to Suidas, he lived under Corn- 
modus ; but, according to Eusebius and Syncellus, un¬ 
der Antoninus Pius. The accounts of these chronol- 
ogers may be reconciled by supposing that Maximus 
flourished under Antoninus, and reached the time of 
Commodus. Joseph Scaliger believed that Maximus 
was one of the instructors of Marcus Aurelius ; and 
that emperor, in fact, mentions a Maximus among his 
preceptors ; but this individual was Claudius Maximus, 
as we learn from a passage in Capitolinus. ( Vit. An¬ 
ton., Phil., c. 3.) Although he was frequently at 
Rome, Maximus Tyrius probably spent the greater 
part of his time in Greece. We have from him, un¬ 
der the title of Discourses (or Dissertations ), A oyoi 
(or A lake^eig), forty-one treatises or essays on various 
subjects of a philosophical, moral, and literary nature. 
That he possessed the most captivating powers of elo¬ 


quence, sufficiently appears from these elegant produc 
tions ; but they are of little merit on the score of ideas. 
They are, for the most part, written upon Platonic prin* 
ciples, but sometimes lean towards scepticism. The 
following may serve as a specimen of the topics dis¬ 
cussed by this writer. Of God , according to Plato's 
idea.—If we must return Injury for Injury.—How we 
may distinguish a Friend from a Flatterer.—That an 
Active is better than a Contemplative Life. (The con¬ 
trary position is maintained in another discourse.)—■ 
That the Farmer is more usef ul to a State than the Sol¬ 
dier .— Whether the Liberal Arts contribute to Virtue. 
—Of the End of Philosophy.—That there is no greater 
Good than a good Man.—Of the Demon of Socrates. 
— Of the beneficial Effects of adverse Fortune .— 
Whether the Maladies of the Body or the Mind be 
more severe. —The best edition of Maximus Tyrius is 
that of Davis, Lond., 1740, 4to, enriched with some 
excellent observations by Markland. It had been pre¬ 
ceded by a smaller edition in 8vo, Cantab., 1703, also 
by Davis. The larger edition was reprinted at Leip- 
sic in 1774, in 2 vols. 8vo, under the editorial care of 
Reiske. ( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Gr ., vol. 4, p. 286, seqq.) 
—IV. A native of Ephesus, and philosopher of the 
New-Platonic school. According to Eunapius (p. 86, 
seqq.), he was, through the recommendation of h.is 
master JEdesius, appointed by Constantins preceptor 
to Julian. According to the Christian historians, how¬ 
ever, he introduced himself to Julian, during his Asi¬ 
atic expedition, at Nicomedia. By accommodating his 
predictions to the wishes and hopes of the emperor, 
and by other parasitical arts, he gained entire posses¬ 
sion of his confidence. The courtiers, as usual, fol¬ 
lowed the example of their master, and Maximus was 
daily loaded with new honours. He accompanied Ju 
lian in his expedition into Persia, and there, by the as¬ 
sistance of divination and flattery, persuaded him that 
he would rival Alexander in the glory of conquest. 
The event, however, proved as unfortunate to the phi¬ 
losopher as to the hero ; for, Julian being slain by a 
wound received in battle, after the short reign of Jo¬ 
vian Maximus fell under the displeasure of the emper¬ 
ors Valentinian and Valens, and, for the imaginary 
crime of magic, underwent a long course of confine¬ 
ment and suffering, which was n-ot the less truly perse¬ 
cution because they were inflicted upon a pagan. At 
last Maximus was sent into his native country, and there 
fell a sacrifice to the cruelty of the proconsul Festus. 
{Ammian. Marcell., 29, 1.— Socr., Hist. Eccles., 3, 
1.— Enfield's History of Philosophy, vol. 2, p. 70, 
seqq.) —V. An ecclesiastical writer, at first chief sec¬ 
retary to the Emperor Heraclius, and afterward abbot 
of a monastery at Chrysopolis, near Constantinople. 
The Greek church has numbered him among the con 
fessors, from his having resisted all the attempts that 
were made to draw him over to the Monothelites, for 
which he was banished to Colchis, where he died A.D. 
662. Among other works, we have from him a spe¬ 
cies of Anthology, divided into 71 chapters, and enti 
tied K£(j>u?iaia QeoXoyiKu, tjtol ek "hoyal etc &iad)6pou 
ftiblldv ruv re uad' ijpug Kal ruv ■&vpad£v. It differs 
from the Anthology of Stobaeus in containing selec¬ 
tions also from the scriptures and from ecclesiastical 
writers. The works of Maximus were edited by Com- 
befis, Paris, 1675, 2 vols. fol.—VI. An ecclesiastical 
writer, a bishop of Turin {Augusta Taurinorum ), who 
died subsequently to 465 A.D. He was one of the 
most eloquent speakers of the Western Church. Many 
of his homilies remain. 

Mazaca. Vid. Cssarea ad Arganim. 

Mazac^e, a people of Sarmatia, in the vicinity of 
the Palus Maeotis. {Plin., 6, 7.) 

Mazices, a people of Mauritania Cassariensis, also 
called, by some writers, Mazyes, and Machines 
{Steph. Byz., s. v. — Ammian. Marcell., 29, 25.— 
Suet., Ner., c. 31.) 







MED 


MED 


MEATiE, a people in the north of Britain, near the 
Vallum Severi. They are the same with the Maeatse. 

Medea, daughter of HCetes, king of Colchis, and 
famed for her skill in sorcery and enchantment. 
When Jason came to Colchis in quest of the golden 
fleece, she aided him in obtaining it, and then fled 
with him in the Argo to Greece. (Vid. Argonaut®.) 
Here she displayed her magic skill in the case of 
Jfron, whom she restored from the decrepitude of 
age to the bloom of early youth. In order to effect 
this change, she is said by the poets to have drawn off 
all the.blood from his veins, and then to have filled 
them with the juices of certain herbs. This sudden 
renovation of the parent of Jason so wrought upon the 
daughters of Pelias, that they entreated Medea to per¬ 
form the same act for their aged father. The Colchian 
princess eagerly availed herself of this opportunity to 
avenge the wrongs which Pelias had done to Jason, and, 
in order to pique still more the curiosity of his daugh¬ 
ters, she is said to have cut to pieces an old ram, and 
then, boiling the parts in a caldron, to have caused a 
young lamb to come forth from it. The daughters of 
Pelias thereupon slew their father, and boiled his flesh 
in a caldron; but Medea refused to perform the requi¬ 
site ceremonies; and, in order to avoid the punishment 
she had a right to expect for this cruel deed, fled with 
Jason to Corinth.—According to another account, how¬ 
ever, Medea did not restore ffEson to youth, he having 
been driven by Pelias, before the return of Jason, to 
the act of self-destruction. ( Vid. iEson.)—After re¬ 
siding for some time at Corinth, Medea found herself 
deserted by Jason, who espoused the daughter of 
C-reon, the Corinthian king. Taking, thereupon, sum¬ 
mary vengeance on her rival, and having destroyed her 
two sons whom she had by Jason (vid. Jason), Medea 
mounted a chariot drawn by winged serpents and fled 
to Athens, where she had by King iEgeus a son named 
Med us. Being detected, however, in an attempt to 
destroy Theseus (vid. Theseus), she fled from Athens 
with her son. Medus conquered several barbarous 
tribes, and also, say the poets, the country which he 
named Media after himself; and he finally fell in bat¬ 
tle with the Indians. Medea, returning unknown to 
Colchis, found that her father Jiletes had been robbed of 
his throne by her brother Perses. She restored him, and 
deprived the usurper of life.—Neither Jason nor Medea 
can be well regarded as a real historical personage. 
(Compare remarks at the close of the article Jason.) 
Whether the former, whose name is nearly identical 
with Iasion, Iasios, Iasos, is merely a personification 
of the Ionian race (’Idoveq), or, in reference to a myth 
to be noticed in the sequel, signifies the healing , ato¬ 
ning god or hero, may be doubted. Medea, however, 
seems to be plainly only another form of Juno, and to 
have been separated from her in a way of which many 
instances occur in ancient legends. She is the coun¬ 
selling (gijdoq) goddess ; and in the history of Jason 
we find Juno always acting in this capacity towaids 
him, who, as Homer says, “ was very dear to her" 
(Od., 12, 72) ; an obscure hint, perhaps, of the love 
of Jason and Medea. Medea, also, always acts a 
friendly part; and it seems highly probable that the 
atrocities related of her are pure fictions of the Attic 
dramatists. ( Muller, Orchom ., p. 68.) The bringing 
of Jason and Medea to Corinth seems also to indicate 
a connexion between the latter and Juno, who was 
worshipped there under the title of Acraea, and the 
graves of the children of Medea were in the temple of 
this goddess. It was an annual custom at Corinth, that 
seven youths and as many maidens, children of the 
most distinguished citizens, clad in black, with their 
hair shorn, should go to this temple, and, singing 
mournful hymns, offer sacrifices to appease the deity. 
The cause assigned for this rite was as follows. Me¬ 
dea reigned at Corinth; but the people, disdaining to 
be governed by an enchantress, conspired against her, 


and resolved to put her children (seven of each sex) tt 
death. The children fled to the temple of Juno, but 
were pursued and slain at the altar. The anger of 
heaven was manifested by a plague, and, by the advice 
of an oracle, the expiatoryffite just mentioned was in¬ 
stituted. ( Parmeniscus, ap. Schol ad Eurip ., Med., 
9, 275.— Pausan ., 2, 3, 7.) It was even said that 
the Corinthians, by a bribe of five talents, induced 
Euripides to lay the guilt of the murder of her children 
on Medea herself. ( Schol ., 1 . c.) There was also a 
tradition that Medea resided at Corinth, and that she 
caused a famine to cease by sacrificing to Ceres and 
the Lemnian nymphs, and that Jupiter made love to 
her, but she would not hearken to his suit, fearing the 
anger of Juno, who therefore rewarded her by making 
her children immortal; a thing she had vainly attempt¬ 
ed to do herself, by hiding them in the temple of the 
goddess, whose priestess she probably was in this 
myth. (Schol. adPind., 01., 13, 74.— Pausan., 2, 3, 
11.) It is also remarkable, that the only place besides 
Corinth in which there were legends of Medea was 
Corcyra, an island which had been colonized by the 
Corinthians. iEetes himself was, according to Eu- 
melus (ap. Schol. ad Find., 1. c.), the son of Helius 
and Antiope, and born at Ephyra or Corinth, which 
his sire gave to him; but he committed it to the 
charge of Bunus, and went to Colchis. It would 
thus appear, that the whole myth of HUetes and Medea 
is derived /rom the worship of the Sun and Juno at 
Corinth. (Keightley's Mythology, p. 310, scqq .) 

Media, a country of Upper Asia, the boundaries of 
which are difficult to determine, as they differed at va¬ 
rious times. In the time of Strabo, it was divided 
into Great Media and Atropatene. Great Media, 
which is a high table-land, is said by all ancient writers 
to have had a good climate and a fertile soil ; an ac¬ 
count which is fully confirmed by modern travellers. 
It was separated on the west and southwest from the 
low country, watered by the Tigris and Euphrates, by 
a range of mountains known to the ancients under the 
name of Zagros and Parachoatras. Xenophon, how¬ 
ever, appears to include in Media all the country be¬ 
tween the Tigris and Mount Zagrus. (Anab., 2, 4, 
27.) On the east it was bounded by a desert and the 
Caspian Mountains (the modern Elburz range), and 
on the north and northwest by the Cadusii, Atropatene, 
and the Matieni, thus answering, for the most part, to 
the modern Irak Ajemi. Atropatene, on the other 
hand, which corresponds to the modern Azerbijan, ex¬ 
tended as far north as the Araxes (now Aras). It was 
much less fertile than Great Media, and does not ap¬ 
pear to have been included in the Media of Herodotus. 
It derived its name from Atropates, who successfully 
opposed the Macedonians, and established an inde¬ 
pendent monarchy, which continued till the time of 
Strabo, notwithstanding its proximity to the Armenian 
and Parthian dominions. The principal town of Great 
Media was Agbatana or Ecbatana, the summer resi¬ 
dence cf the Persian kings. (Vid. Ecbatana.) In 
Great Media also was the Nissan plain, celebrated 
for its breed of horses, which were considered in an¬ 
cient times the best in Asia. Arrian informs us, that 
there were 50,000 horses reared in this plain in the time 
of Alexander, and that there were formerly as many as 
150,000. (Herod., 3, 106.— Id., 7, 40.— Arrian, Exp. 
Al, 7, 13.— Strabo, 525.— Ammian. Marcell., 23, 6.) 
The mountainous country in the southwestern part of 
Great Media was inhabited by several warlike tribes, 
who maintained their independence against the Persian 
monarchy. Strabo mentions four tribes in particular; 
the Mardi, bordering on the northwest of Persia ; the 
Uxii and Elymaei, east of Susiana ; and the Cossaei, 
south of Great Media. The King of Persia was 
obliged to pass through the country of the latter when¬ 
ever he visited Ecbatana, and could only obtain a free 
passage by the payment of a considerable sum o* 

807 



MED 


MED 


money. The Cossaei were defeated by Alexander, 
but they never appear to have been completely subdued 
by the Macedonians. — According to Herodotus (1, 
101), the Medes were originally divided into six tribes, 
the Busse, Paretaceni, Struchates, Arizanti, Budii, and 
Magi. They were originally called Arii {Herod., 7, 
62); which word appears to contain the same root as 
Ar-taei, the ancient name of the Persians. {Herod., 
7, 61.) It is not improbable that this name was ori¬ 
ginally applied to most of the Indo-Germanic nations. 
Tacitus speaks of the Arii as one of the most power¬ 
ful of the German tribes {Germ., 43); and India 
proper is called in the most ancient Sanscrit works, 
Arrya-varta, “ holy land.” The same name was re¬ 
tained in the province of Ariana, and is still employed 
in the East as the proper name of Persia, namely, Iran. 
{Vid. Aria.)—Media originally formed part of the As¬ 
syrian empire, but its history as an independent king¬ 
dom is given so differently by Herodotus and Ctesias, 
as to render it probable that the narrative of Ctesias 
must refer to a different dynasty in Eastern Asia. 
Ctesias makes the Median monarchy last 282 years ; 
and, as Media was conquered by Cyrus about B.C. 
560, it follows that the Median monarchy would com¬ 
mence, according to his account, about B.C. 842. 
Herodotus, on the contrary, assigns to the Median 
monarchy a period of 128 years, which, including the 28 
years during which the Scythians had possession of the 
country, would place the commencement of the Medi¬ 
an monarchy B.C. 716. The founder of this monar¬ 
chy was Arbaces, according to Ctesias, who reckons 
eight kings from him to Astyages. According to the 
account of Herodotus, however, there were four kings 
of Media: 1. Dejoces, who reigned B.C. 716-657. 
—2. Phraortes, B.C. 657-635, greatly extended the 
Median empire, subdued the Persians and many other 
nations, but fell in an expedition against the Assyrians 
of Ninus (Nineveh).—3. Cyaxares, B.C. 635-595, com¬ 
pletely organized the military force of the empire, and 
extended its boundaries as far west as the Halys. In 
an expedition against Nineveh, he was defeated by the 
Scythians, who had made an irruption into Southern 
Asia, and was deprived of his kingdom for 28 years. 
After the expulsion of the Scythians, he took Nineveh, 
and subdued the Assyrian empire, with the exception 
of the Babylonian district {Ba6v?uoviyc —4. 

Astyages, B.C. 595-560, who was dethroned by his 
grandson Cyrus, and Media reduced to a Persian 
province. The history of the rise of the Persian mon¬ 
archy is related differently by Xenophon, who also 
makes a fifth Median king, Cyaxares II., succeed As¬ 
tyages.—The Medes revolted during the reign of Da¬ 
rius II., the father of the younger Cyrus, about B.C. 
408, but were again subdued. {Herod., 1, 130.— 
Xen., Hist. Gr., 1, 2, 19.) They do not appear, after I 
this time, to have made any farther attempt at recov- i 
ering their independence. On the downfall of the 1 
Persian empire they formed a part of the kingdom of ; 
the Seleucidae, and were subsequently subject to the i 
Parthians. {Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 15, p. 54.) 1 

Mediolanum, I. a city of Cisalpine Gaul, among < 
the Insubres, now Milan. According to Livy (5, 34), I 
it was founded by the Insubres, and called by them i 
Mediolanum, from a place of the same name among i 
the TEdui in Gaul. (Compare Pliny , 3, 17.— Ptol., 
p. 63.) This city is named for the first time in his- i 
tory by Polybius (2, 34), in his account of the Gallic I 
wars. The capture of it by Cn. Scipio and Marcellus I 
was followed by the submission of the Insubres them- i 
selves. {Oros., 4,13.— Plut., Vit. Marcell.) It was 1 
situate on a small river, now the Olona, in a beautiful < 
plain between the Ticinus or Tesino, and the Addua i 
or Adda. In the vicinity of this city, to the west, i 
D’Anville and others locate the Raudii Campi, where I 
Marius defeated the Cimbri; but Mannert places them i 
near Verona. In Strabo’s time, Mediolanum was con- s 
808 


', sidered a most flourishing city. {Strabo, 213.—Co» 
J pare Tacit., Hist., 1, 70.— Suet., Aug., c. 20.— Plin.. 
, Ep., 4, 13.) But its splendour seems to have been 
, greatest in the time of Ausonius, who flourished to 
1 wards the end of the fourth century, and who assigns 
, it the rank of the sixth city in the Roman empire, 
s Procopius, who wrote a century and a half lattr, speaks 
, of Mediolanum as one of the first cities of the west, 
and as inferior only to Rome in population and extent. 
{Rer. Got., 2, 8.) In it was also established the gold 
and silver coinage of the north of Italy. At a later 
period, the frequent inroads of the barbarians of the 
north compelled the emperors to select, as a place of 
arms, some city nearer the scene of action than Rome 
was. The choice fell on Mediolanum. Here, too, 
Maximian resigned the imperial djadein {Eutrop., 9, 
27), and the famous St. Ambrose established the see 
of a bishopric. Although subsequently plundered by 
Attila {Jornandcs, c. 42), it soon revived, and under 
Odoacer became the imperial residence. In its vi¬ 
cinity was fought the battle which put Theodoric, 
king of the Ostrogoths, in possession of Italy, and 
Mediolanum under this prince became second only 
to Rome. (Procop., Rer. Got., 2, 8.) It met with its 
downfall, however, when, having sided with Belisari- 
us, and having been besieged by the Goths and Bur¬ 
gundians, it was taken by the latter, and 300,000 of 
the inhabitants, according to Procopius, were put to 
the sword (2, 21). It never, after this severe blow, 
regained its former eminence, although in the middle 
ages it became a flourishing and opulent place of trade. 
{Mannert, Geogr., vol. 9, pt. 1, p. 167, seqq. — Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 51.)—II. A town of the 
Gugerni in Germania Inferior, corresponding, as is 
thought by Cluver and Cellarius, to the present village 
of Moyland. —III. A city in Moesia Superior. {Cod. 
Thcod., 1. 8, de qur. fisc.) —IV. A town of the Ordovi- 
ces in Britain, near the present town of Ellesmeere. 

Mediomatrici, a people of Gallia Belgica on the 
Mosella or Moselle. The Treviri were their neigh¬ 
bours on the north. Their chief town was Divodu- 
rum,afterward Mediomatrici, now Metz. They were a 
powerful nation previous to their reduction by the Ro¬ 
mans, and their territory corresponded to what is now 
le pays Messin. {Cces., B. G., 4, 10.— Plin., 4, 17 
— Tacit., Ann., 1, 63.— Id., Hist., 4, 70.) 

Meditf.rraneum Mare {ox Midland Sea), the Med¬ 
iterranean, a sea between the Straits of Gibraltar to the 
west and the Dardanelles and Syria to the east. It was 
anciently called ‘‘The Sea,” or “The Great Sea,” by 
the Jews. The Greeks, on the other hand, do not seem 
to have had any genera! name for it. Herodotus calls 
it “this sea” (1, 185); and Strabo, “the sea within 
the columns,” that is, within the Straits of Gibraltar 
{Strab., 491). Mela calls the whole sea “ mare nos¬ 
trum," “ our sea,” and observes that different parts 
had their several names. Pliny appears to have no 
general appellation for it. The term Mediterranean is 
not applied to this sea by any classical Latin writer, 
but, instead of Mediierraneum, they use internum, or 
else, with Mela, call it nostrum. We will return to 
this subject at the close of the article.—The Mediter¬ 
ranean is comprised between the parallels of 30° 15' 
and 45° 50', and the meridians of 5° 30' W. and 36° 
10' E. The distance from Gibraltar to the farthest 
shore of Syria is 2000 miles, and the narrowest part 
from Sicily to Africa is 79 miles across. Including 
the islands, it occupies an area of 734,000 square 
miles. On the shores of this sea have been transacted 
the most important events in the history of mankind, 
and its character seems to mark it as the theatre best 
adapted to the complete and rapid civilization of the 
race. From the great diversity of soil and produc¬ 
tions, under a varied and favourable climate, the colo 
nists, from whatever points they first proceeded, would 
soon acquire those different habits under whi'/h theij 







MEDITERRANEUM MARE. 


MEDITERRAXEUM MARE. 


several energies and capabilities would be developed. 
The comparative shortness of the distances of the sev¬ 
eral places, rendering navigation easy and pleasant 
in small and imperfect vessels, would, by facilitating 
intercourse from an early period, tend to diffuse and 
promote civilization; while commerce, by bringing 
together men of different habits, manners, and lan¬ 
guages, and t'u .5 circulating practical information, 
would supply the materials for the perfection of the 
arts and sciences.—The navigation of the Mediterra¬ 
nean must no doubt be of very early date. The story 
oi Minos destroying pirates ( Thucyd ., 1, 4) takes for 
granted the fact, that there must have been merchant 
ve-sels carrying something worth plundering from the 
earliest recorded period. If, with Strabo, we allow 
the accuracy of Homer’s descriptions, it by no means 
follows that the Greeks knew everything that could 
have been known to every other nation at that time ; 
and the stories told of the jealousy with which the 
Phoenicians and Carthaginians guarded their discover¬ 
ies, prove at least that geographical knowledge was 
not common property : and with regard to these very 
nations, the knowledge which the Greeks could have 
had of them, among other barbarians, must have been 
inferior to that which we possess in the minute ac¬ 
curacy of the Scriptures alone. The story of Utica 
having been established 130 years before Carthage, 
proves a regular communication between this place 
and Syria, a distance of upward of 1200 miles; and 
we may conclude that occasional voyages of that en¬ 
terprising people had already extended the bounds of 
knowledge far beyond these limits. If the precise 
time of the discovery of places, lying, as it were, in 
the thoroughfare of this sea, is so uncertain, the his¬ 
tory of the places in the deep bays of the northern 
shores must be still more obscure : we shall therefore 
give at once a slight sketch of the geography of this 
sea from Strabo, who wrote in the first century of our 
era.—The stadium adopted by Strabo was that of 
Eratosthenes, 700 stadia making 1° of latitude or lon¬ 
gitude on the equator, or 60 nautical miles; hence a 
stadium is 0.0857 of a nautical mile, the mile being 
about 6082 feet. The Mediterranean was divided into 
three basins : the first comprised the sea between the 
Columns of Hercules and Sicily; the second, between 
Sicily and Rhodes; the third, between Rhodes and the 
shores of Syria. Strabo supposed that the parallel of lat¬ 
itude of 36A° passed through the Sacred Promontory 
(Cape St. Vincent ) between the Pillars of Hercules, di¬ 
viding this part of the Mediterranean in the middle of 
its breadth, which was believed by navigators to be 5000 
stadia, or 423£ nautical miles, from the Gulf of Lyons 
to the shores of Africa, but which measures only 330. 
The sea here, however, lies altogether to the north of 
this parallel; and hence, as the configuration of the 
European shores seems to have been tolerably good, 
the coast of Africa must have been proportionably dis¬ 
torted. This parallel was carried through the straits 
of Sicily, Rhodes, and the Gulf of Issus, now the Gulf 
of Scanderoon. In consequence of the above suppo¬ 
sition, he placed Massilia ( Marseille ) to the southward 
instead of the northward of Byzantium. He supposed 
Sardinia and Corsica to lie northwest and southeast 
instead of north and south, and made the distance of 
Sardinia from the coast of Africa 2400 stadia, or 206 
miles, instead of 100, which is the true distance. 
From the Columns of Hercules to the Straits of Sicily 
he considers to be 12,000 stadia, or 1028 miles : it is 
only about 800. From Pachynum (Cape Passaro ) to 
the western extremity of Crete he reckoned 4500 sta¬ 
dia, or 386 miles ; it measures 400 : and he supposed 
the length of Crete 2000 stadia, or 171 miles, the true 
length being 140. He supposed that a line drawn 
through Byzantium, the middle of the Propontis, the 
Hellespont, and along the capes of the coast of Asia 
Minor would coincide with the meridian : this error 
5 K 


placed Byzantium too fa> to the north, and not far 
enough to the east. From Alexandrea to the east 
end of Crete he considered 3000 stadia, or 257 
miles ; it measures about 290. From Alexandrea to 
Rhodes he made 3600 stadia, or 308 miles : it meas¬ 
ures 320.—Many of the latitudes given by Strabo are 
very near, that is, within 10'; those of Massilia and 
Byzantium excepted, the former being 3 U 43' too lit¬ 
tle, and the latter 2° 16' too much. The longitudes, 
which were all at that time referred to the Sacred 
Promontory as the first meridian, and the extreme 
western point, as was believed, of the known world, 
are without exception too small; that of Carthage, the 
nearest to the truth, being 1° 9', and Alexandrea, the 
most erroneous, 6° 40' too small. ( Encycl. Useful 
Knowl., vol. 15, p. 59, seqq.) — The Mediterranean 
Sea afforded a very frequent topic of consideration 
to the ancient writers. Democritus, Diogenes, and 
others, maintained that its waters kept constantly de¬ 
creasing, and would eventually all disappear. Aris¬ 
totle ( Meteor., 2, 3) held to the opinion, that the 
Mediterranean had at one time covered a large part 
of Africa and Egypt, and had extended inland as 
far as the temple of Jupiter Ammon. This doctrine 
was maintained also by Xanthus the Lydian, Strabo, 
and Eratosthenes. The ancients appear to have been 
led to this conclusion by observing in various parts 
of Africa and Egypt manifest traces and indications 
of the sea. They found here shells, pebbles evi¬ 
dently rounded or worn smooth by the action of 
water, incrustations of salt, and many salt lakes. 
Some of these appearances were particularly frequent 
on the route through the desert to the temple of 
Ammon. [Herod., 2, 12.— Pint., de Is. el Os. — 
Strab., 809.— Mela, 1, 6. — Solin., 26. — Seidel., ad 
Eratosth., fragm., p. 28.) The ancient writers main¬ 
tained, that the temple and oracle of Ammon never 
could have become so famous if the only approach to 
them had always been over vast and dangerous des¬ 
erts. They insisted that the Oases had all originally 
been islands in the earlier and more widely extended 
Mediterranean. In this remote period, according to 
them, there existed as yet no communication between 
the Pontus Euxinus and Mediterranean Sea (vid. Lec- 
tonia), nor between the latter and the Atlantic. The 
isthmus connecting Arabia with Egypt was under wa¬ 
ter, and Eratosthenes believed that Menelaus had sail¬ 
ed over this narrow passage, which is now the Isth¬ 
mus of Suez. When the waters of the Euxine forced 
a passage into the Mediterranean (vid. Cyaneae), the 
great influx of water opened another outlet for itself 
through what were called by the ancients the Pillars 
of Hercules, Spain and Africa having been previously 
joined. In thjs tremendous convulsion the ancient 
land of Lectonia is thought to have been inundated, 
and to have sunk in the sea, leaving merely the islands 
of the Archipelago, its mountain-tops, to attest its 
former existence. According to Diodorus Siculus (5, 
47), the inhabitants of Samothrace had a tradition that 
a great part of their island, as well as of Asia, was 
ravaged and laid under water by this inundation, and 
that, in fishing near their island, fragments of temples 
and other buildings were frequently rescued from the 
waves. (Compare Diod. Sic., 5, 82. — Strab., 85.— 
Plat., de Leg., 3, p. 677, Opp., ed. Bip., vol. 8, p. 
106.— Plin., 2, 80.— Philon., de Mund. non corrupt., 
p. 959. — Lyell's Principles of Geology, vol. 1, p. 
25, seqq.) — Before bringing the present article to a 
close, it may not be amiss to enter more fully into 
one part of the subject, on which we merely touched 
at the commencement, the different appellations, name¬ 
ly, which have been given to this sea. Herodotus, as 
we have already remarked, calls it “this sea,” rr/vde 
ryv duTiacoav (4, 39. — Compare Aristot.., Meteor., 2, 
2. — Appian, Schweigh. ad Prcef., c. 1.— Wesseling. 
ad Diod. Sic., 4 18). Polybius, y kau ddlaGoa (3 

809 



MED 


MEG 


39.--Compare Aristot., de Mundo, c. 3.— Gellius, N. 
A., 10, 7.) Diodorus Siculus, y lead’ yydg Jd'Aaoaa 
(4, is. — Compare Polyb., 3, 37.— Strab., 83.— Ap - 
pian, Bell. Mithradat., c. 93. — Maximus Tyrius, 
14, 2). Maximus Tyrius, y Sevpo Jdlaaaa (41, 1). 
Strabo, y evrog tfd/lacraa. (Compare Marc. Heracl., 
Peripl., p. 65.— Agathem., 2, 4.) Aristotle, y kvrog 
'HpauXeiov cryldv D-dlacca (Meteor ., 2, 1.—Com¬ 
pare Dion. Hal., 1, 3.— Plut., Vit. Pomp., c. 25). The 
Latin writers in general, as we have already said, give 
it the appellation of Nostrum Mare (Sallust., Jug., c. 
17.— Mela, 1, 1, 5.—Li®., 26, 4.—C<z»., B. G., 5, 1. 
Avien., Or. Marit., v. 56.—Compare Duker, ad Flor., 

3, 6, 9. — Cort. ad Sallust., B. Jug., c. 18). Pliny 
styles it Mare internum. (3, proem., c. 5). Florus, 
Mare intestinum (4, 2). Later writers, not classical, 
have Mare Mediterraneum. (Solin., c. 22.) Isidorus 
gives the following explanation of th 5 name : “ Quia 
per medium terram usque ad Orientem perfunditur, Eu- 
ropam et Africam Asiamque disterminans." ( Orig., 
13, 13. — Compare Priscian., Perieg., 52.) Orosius 
says, “ Mare nostrum quod Magnum generaliter dici- 
mus;" and Isidorus remarks, “ quia cetera maria in 
zomparatione ejus minora sunt.” (Oros., 1,2.— Isid., 
Orig., 13, 16.—Compare Hardouin, ad Plin , 9, 18. 
— Burmann,ad Val. Place., Arg., 1, 50.) According 
to Polybius (3, 42), that part of the Mediterranean 
which lay between the Pillars of Hercules and the 
Rhone was called 2apSoviov rre'kayoq, while Aristotle 
calls the part between the Pillars and Sardinia Sap- 
doviKoq {Meteor., 2, 1.— Id., de Mund., 3.— Eratosth., 
ap. Plin., 3, 10). Strabo gives the part between the 
Pillars and the Pyrenees the name of’I bypiuov neTiayog 
(122. — Compare Agathem., 1, 3. — Dionys. Perieg-., 
v. 69. — Niceph. Blem., ed. Spohi., p. 3). Pliny re¬ 
marks, “ Hispanum mare, quatenus Hispanias alluit; 
ab aliis Ibericum aut Balearicum ” (3, 2. — Id. ibid, 

4, 34.—Compare Solin., c. 23.— Ampel., c. 7.— Ptol., 

2, 6). According to Zonaras (Annul., 8, p. 406), the 
sea to the east of the Pyrenees was called the Sea of 
the Bcbrycians. (Compare Markland., ad Max. Tyr., 
32, 3.— Ukert's Geogr ., vol. 2, p. 247, seqq., in notis.) 

Meditrina, the goddess of healing, whose festival, 
called Meditrinalia, was celebrated at Rome and 
throughout Latium on the 5th day before the Ides of 
October. (Compare the Ancient Calendar given by 
Gruter, p. 133.) On this occasion new and old wine 
were poured out in libation, and tasted, “ medicamcnti 
causa." Compare the explanatory remarks of Fes- 
tus : “ Meditrinalia dicta hac de causa. Mos crat 
Latinis populis, quo die quis primum gustaret mus- 
tum, dicere ominis gratia , ‘ vetus novum vinum bibo: 
veteri novo morbo medeor.’ A quibus verbis Medi- 
trinaz dece nomen cap turn, ejusque sacra Meditrinalia 
dicta sunt." (Festus, s. v .—Consult Dacier, ad loc.) 

Medoaci, a people of Venetia, in Cisalpine Gaul, 
noticed only by Strabo (216). From the affinity which 
their name bears to that of the Meduacus or Brenta , it 
seems reasonable to place them near the source of that 
river, and in the district of Bassano. (Cramer's Anc. 
Italy, vol. 1, p. 125.) 

Medoacus or Meduacus, I. Major, a river of Vene¬ 
tia, now the Brenta. —II. Minor, a river of Venetia, 
now the Bachiglione .—Both these rivers rise in the 
territory of the Euganei, and fall into the Adriatic be¬ 
low Venice. Patavium was situate between these 
two streams, but nearer the Medoacus Minor. (Plin., 

3, 16.— Liv., 10, 2.) 

Medobriga, a city of Lusitania, southwest of Norba 
Caesarea; now Marvao, on the confines of Portugal. 
(Cces., Bell. Afric., c. 48.) 

Medon, s‘£n of Codrus, the 17th and last king of 
Athens, was the first of the perpetual archons. He 
held the office for life, and transmitted it to his pos¬ 
terity ; but still it would appear that, within the house 
©f the Medontidae, the succession was determined by 
810 


the choice of the nobles. It is added, that the archon 
at this period, though holding the office for life, was 
nevertheless deemed a responsible magistrate, which 
implies that those who elected had the power of de¬ 
posing him ; and, consequently, though the range of 
his functions may not have been narrower than that 
of the king’s, he was more subject to control in the 
exercise of them. This indirect kind of sway, how¬ 
ever, did not satisfy the more ambitious spirits ; and 
we find them steadily, though gradually, advancing to 
wards the accomplishment of their final object—a com¬ 
plete and equal participation of the sovereignty. After 
twelve perpetual archonships, ending with that of Alc- 
mason, the duration of the office was limited to ten 
years ; and through the guilt or calamity of Hippoma- 
nes, the fourth decennial archon, the house of Medon 
was deprived of its privilege, and the supreme magis 
tracy was thrown open to the whole body of the nobles. 
This change was speedily followed by one much more 
important: the archonship was reduced to a single 
year; and, at the same time, its branches were sever¬ 
ed, and were distributed among nine new magistrates. 
(Vid. Archontes.— Thirlwall's History of Greece, vol. 
2, p. 16. — Compare Clinton, Fast. Hell., vol. 1, p. 
ix., seqq.) 

Meduacus. Vid. Medoacus. 

Meduana, a river of Gallia Belgica, flowing into 
the Ligeris or Loire. Now the Mayenne% (Lucan, 
1 , 438. — Theod. Aurel., 4, carm. 6.) 

Medus, I. a river of Persis, falling into the Rogo 
manes ; now the Abi-Kuren. (Strabo, 729.)—By the 
Medumflumen in Horace (Od., 2, 9, 21) is meant the 
Euphrates.—II. A son of iEgeus and Medea, who was 
fabled to have given name to Media, in Upper Asia. 
(Vid. Medea.) 

Medusa, one of the three Gorgons, daughter of 
Phorcys and Ceto, and the only one of the number 
that was not immortal. (Apollod., 2, 4, 2.) Accord¬ 
ing to one legend, Medusa was remarkable for per¬ 
sonal beauty, and captivated by her charms the mon¬ 
arch of the sea. Minerva, however, incensed at their 
having converted her sanctuary into a place of meet¬ 
ing, changed the beautiful locks of Medusa into ser¬ 
pents, and made her in other respects hideous to the 
view. Some accounts make this punishment to have 
befallen her because she presumed to vie in personal 
attractions with Minerva, and to consider her tresses 
as far superior to the locks of the former. (Serv., ad 
Virg., JEn., 6, 289.) Apollodorus, however, gives 
the Gorgons snaky tresses from their birth. ( Vid. 
Gorgones.)—Medusa had, in common with her sisters, 
the power of converting every object into stone on 
which she fixed her eyes. Perseus slew her (vid. 
Perseus), and cut off her head ; and the blood that 
flowed from it produced, say the poets, the serpents of 
Africa, since Perseus, on his return, winged his way 
over that country with the Gorgon’s head. The con¬ 
queror gave the head to the goddess Minerva, who 
placed it in the centre of her seeds or shield. (Vid. 
HSgis.) 

Meg^era, one of the Furies. (Vid. Furiae.) 

Megalesia, games in honour of Cybele. (Vid 
Ludi Megalenses.) 

Megalia or Megaris, a small island in the Bay of 
Naples, near Neapolis, on which the Castle del Ovo 
now stands. (Plin., 3, 6.— Colum., R. R., 10 ) 

Megalopolis, the most recent of all the Arcadian 
cities, and also the most extensive, situate in the 
southern part of Arcadia, in a wide and fertile plain 
watered by the Helissus, which flowed from the cen¬ 
tral parts of Arcadia, and nearly divided the town into 
two equal parts. Pausanias informs us, that th,e Ar¬ 
cadians, having, by the advice of Epaminondas, re¬ 
solved on laying the foundations of a city, which was 
to be the capital of their nation, deputed ten commis¬ 
sioners, selected from the principal states, to make the 




MEGALOPOLIS. 


MEG 


necessary arrangements for conducting the lew col¬ 
ony. ( Pans an., 8, 27.) This event took place in 
the I02d Olympiad, or 370-1 B.C. The territory as¬ 
signed to Megalopolis was extensive, since it reached 
as far as the little states of Orchomenus and Caphyse 
on the northeast, while to the south and southwest it 
adjoined Laconia and Messenia. ( Pausan ., 8, 25.) 
Diodorus affirms, that the city contained about 15,000 
men capable of bearing arms, according to which cal¬ 
culation we may compute the whole population at 
65,000. ( Diod. Sic., 18, 70.) The Megalopolitans 

(xperienced no molestation from the Lacedaemonians 
as long as Theban was able to protect them ; but, on 
the decline of that city, and when it also became en¬ 
gaged in the sacred war against the Phocians, they 
were assailed by the Spartans, who endeavoured to 
obtain possession of their town ; these attacks, how¬ 
ever, were easily repelled by the aid of the Argives 
and Messenians. (Pausan., 8, 37.) To the Athe¬ 
nians the Megalopolitans were likewise indebted for 
their protection against the attempts of Sparta, as well 
as for their assistance in settling some dissensions in 
their republic, which had led to the secession of several 
townships that originally contributed to the foundation 
of the city. (Dcmosth., Oral, pro Megalop., p. 202.) 
In order to strengthen themselves still farther against 
the Lacedaemonians, they formed an alliance with 
Philip, son of Amyntas, who conciliated the favour of 
the Arcadians not only towards himself, but towards 
all his successors. (Pausan., 8, 27.— Polyb., 2, 48.) 
On the death of Alexander, Megalopolis had to defend 
itself against the army of Polysperchon, who was en¬ 
gaged in^ war with Cassander. This general vigor¬ 
ously assaulted the city, but, owing to the bravery of 
the inhabitants, headed by Damis, who had served 
under Alexander, his attacks were constantly repulsed. 
(Diod Sic., 18,70.) Subsequently we find Megalop¬ 
olis governed by tyrants, the first of whom was Aris- 
todemus of Phigalea, whose excellent character ob¬ 
tained for him the surname of Xpycrog. Under his 
reign the Spartans again invaded Megalopolis, but 
were defeated after an obstinate conflict; Acrotatus, 
the son of Cleomenes, who commanded the army, be¬ 
ing among the slain. (Pausan., 8, 27.) Some time 
after the death of Aristodemus, the sovereignty was 
again usurped by Lydiades, a man of ignoble birth, but 
of worthy character, since he voluntarily abdicated his 
authority for the benefit of his countrymen, in order 
that he might unite them with the Achaean confederacy. 
(Pansa.n., 8, 27 — Polyb., 2, 44.) At this period Me¬ 
galopolis was assailed for the third time by the Spar¬ 
tans ; who, having defeated the inhabitants, laid siege 
to the city, of which they would have made themselves 
masters but for a violent wind, which overthrew and 
demolished their engines. (Pausan., 8, 27.) Not 
long, however, after this failure, Cleomenes, the son 
of Leonidas, in violation of the existing treaty, sur¬ 
prised the Megalopolitans by night, and, putting to the 
sword all who offered any resistance, destroyed the 
city. Philopoemen, with a considerable part of the 
population, escaped into Messenia. (Polyb., 2, 55.— 
Pausan., 8, 27.) Megalopolis was restored by the 
Achasans after the battle of Sellasia; but it never 
again rose to its former flourishing condition. The 
virtues and talents of its great general Philopoemen 
added materially to its celebrity and influence in the 
Achaean councils, and after his death its fame was 
upheld by the abilities of Lycortas and Polybius, who 
trod in the steps of their gifted countryman, and were 
worthy of sharing in the lustre which he had reflected 
on his native city. (Pausan., 8, 49.— Polyb., 2, 40. 
— Id:, 10, 24. — Id., 24, 9. — Plut., Vit. Philopeem.) 
In the time of Polybius, Megalopolis was fifty stadia 
in circumference, but its population was only equal to 
half that of Sparta ; and when Strabo wrote, it was so 
reduced that a comic poet was justified in saying, 


’E pyfiia peyd/iij karlv y ’M.eyalo'iro'Xig. (Strabo, 388 
—The village of Sinano has been built on the site, 
and amid the ruins of Megalopolis. (Dodwell, Tour, 
vol. 2, p. 375.— Pouqueville, Voyage de la Grece, vol. 
5, p. 494.) Dodwell says that Sinano, which con¬ 
sists of an aga’s pyrgo and a few cottages, is situated 
“just without the ancient walls.’* Pouqueville, how¬ 
ever, makes the distance one mile between Sinano 
and the ruins of Megalopolis. The former is undoubt¬ 
edly the more accurate statement. Leondari has been 
erroneously regarded by some as occupying the site ol 
this ancient city. (Cramer's Anc . Greece, vol. 3, p. 
329, seqq.) 

Meganira, the wife of Celeus, king of Eleusis in 
Attica. She was mother of Triptolemus, to whom 
Ceres- taught agriculture. Meganira received divine 
honours after death, and had an altar raised to her near 
the fountain where Ceres had first been seen when she 
arrived in Attica. (Pausan., 1, 39.) 

Megara, a daughter of Creon, king of Thebes, given 
in marriage to Hercules, because he had delivered the 
Thebans from the tribute they had bound themselves 
to pay to the Orchomenians. Subsequently, having 
been rendered insane by Juno, Hercules threw into the 
fire the children of whom he had become the father by 
Megara. (Apollod., 2, 4, 12.) He afterward gave 
her in marriage to Iolafis. (Apollod., 2, 6, 1.) 

Megara (gen. -ce ; and also, as a neuter plural, - a , 
-orum: in Greek, ret M^yapa), a city of Greece, the 
capital of a district called Megaris, about 210 stadia 
northwest of Athens. It was situate at the foot ol 
two hills, on each of which stood a citadel : these were 
named Caria and Alcathoiis. It was connected with 
the port of Nissea by two walls, the length of which 
was about eight stadia (Thucyd., 4, 66), or eighteen 
according to Strabo (391). They were erected by the 
Athenians, at the time that the Megareans placed them¬ 
selves under their protection. (Thucyd., 1,103.) The 
distance from Athens, as has been already stated, was 
210 stadia. (Procop., Bell. Vand., 1, 1.) Dio Chry¬ 
sostom calls it a day’s journey. (Oral., 6.) Modern 
travellers reckon eight hours. (Dodwell, vol. 2, p. 
177.) The writer just referred to states that Megara 
is now but a miserable place ; the houses small, and 
flat roofed. One only of the hills is occupied by the 
modern town ; but on the other, which is the more 
eastern of the two, are some remains of the ancient 
walls, which appear to have been massive and of great 
strength. Not any of the numerous temples described 
by Pausanias can now be identified with certainty. 
Altogether, there are few places in Greece where the 
ancient monuments have so totally disappeared. (Dod¬ 
well, vol. 2, p. 177.—Compare Gell's Itin., p. 16.)— 
Tradition, as Pausanias affirms, represented Megara 
as already existing under that name in the time of Car, 
the son of Phoroneus ; while others have derived it 
from Megarus, a Boeotian chief, and son of Apollo or 
Neptune. (Pausan., 1, 39.— Steph. Byz., s. v. Me- 
yapa .) Car was succeeded by Lelex, who, as was re¬ 
ported, came from Egypt, and transmitted his name to 
the ancient race of the Leleges, whom we thus trace 
from the Acheloiis to the shores of the Saronic Gulf, 
Lelex was followed by Cleson, and Pylas, who abdica¬ 
ted his crown in favour of Pandion, the son of Ce- 
crops, king of Athens, by which event Megaris became 
annexed to the latter state. (Pausan., 1, 39.) Nisus, 
the son of Pandion, received Megaris as his share ol 
his father’s dominions. ( Strabo , 392.) The history 
of this prince and his daughter Scylla, as also the cap¬ 
ture of Megara by Minos, are found in all the mytho¬ 
logical writers of Greece ; but Pausanias observes (1, 
39) that these accounts were disowned by the Mega¬ 
reans. Nisus is said to have founded Nisaaa, the port 
of Megara; whence the inhabitants of that city were 
surnamed Nisaei, to distinguish them from the Mega¬ 
reans of Sicily, their colonists. (Theocr., Idyll., 12, 

811 



MEGARA 


MEG 


27.) The walls of Megara, which had been destroyed 
by Minos, were rebuilt by Alcathoiis, the son of Pe- 
lops, who came from Elis. ( Pausan., 1, 41.) In this 
undertaking, Apollo was said to have assisted him. 
( Theogn., 771.— Ovid, Met., 8, 14.) Hyperion, the 
son of Agamemnon, according to Pausanias, was the 
last sovereign of Megara ; after his death, the govern¬ 
ment, by the advice of an oracle, became democrati- 
cal. {Pausan., 1, 43.) As a republic, however, it re¬ 
mained still subject to Athens. Strabo indeed af¬ 
firms, that, till the reign of Codrus, Megaris had al¬ 
ways been included within the limits of Attica ; and 
he thus accounts for Homer’s making no special men¬ 
tion of its inhabitants, from his comprehending them 
with the Athenians under the general denomination of 
Ionians. ( Strab ., 392.) In the reign of Codrus, Me¬ 
gara was wrested from the Athenians by a Pelopon¬ 
nesian force ; and a colony having been established 
there by the Corinthians and Messenians, it ceased to 
be considered as of Ionian origin, but thenceforth be¬ 
came a Dorian city, both in its language and political 
institutions. The pillar, also, which marked the bound¬ 
aries of Ionia and the Peloponnesus, was on that oc¬ 
casion destroyed. {Strab., 393.— Pausan., 1, 39.— 
The scholiast on Pindar (Nem. 7) informs us, that the 
Corinthians, at this early period, considering Megara 
as their colony, exercised a sort of jurisdiction over 
r .he city. Not long after, however, Theagenes, one of 
its citizens, usurped the sovereign power, by the same 
method, apparently, which was afterward adopted by 
Pisistratus at Athens. ( Aristot ., Rhet., 1, 2. — Id., 
Polit., 5, 5.— Thucyd., 1, 126.) He was finally ex¬ 
pelled by his countrymen ; after which event a mod¬ 
erate republican form of government was established, 
though afterward it degenerated into a violent democ¬ 
racy. (Plug, Qucest. Gr., 18.) This should probably 
be considered as the period of Megara’s greatest pros¬ 
perity, since it then founded the cities of Selymbria, 
Mesembria, and Byzantium, on the shores of the Eux- 
ine, and Megara Hybltea in Sicily. {Strabo, 319.) It 
was at this time also that its inhabitants were engaged 
in war with the Athenians for the possession of Sala- 
mis, which, after an obstinate contest, finally remained 
in the hands of the latter. {Pausan., 1, 40.— Strabo, 
394.) The Megareans fought at Artemisium with 
twenty ships, and at Salamis with the same number. 
{Herod., 8, 1, 45.) They also gained some advantage 
over the Persians under Mardonius, in an inroad which 
he made into their territory {Pausan., 1, 40); and, 
lastly, they sent 3000 soldiers to Platsea, who deserved 
well of their country in the memorable battle fought 
in its plains. {Herod., 9, 21.— Plut., de defect. Orac., 
p. 186.) After the Persian war, we find Megara en¬ 
gaged in hostilities with Corinth, and renouncing the 
Peloponnesian confederacy to ally itself with Athens. 
{Thucyd., 1, 103.— Diod. Sic., 2, 60.) This state of 
things was not, however, of long duration ; for the Co¬ 
rinthians, after effecting a reconciliation with the oli¬ 
garchical party in Megara, persuaded the inhabitants 
to declare against the Athenians who garrisoned their 
city. These were presently attacked and put to the 
sword, with the exception of a small number who es¬ 
caped to Nissea. {Thucyd., 1,114.) The Athenians, 
justly incensed at this treacherous conduct, renounced 
all intercourse with the Megareans, and issued a decree 
excluding them from their ports and markets ; a meas¬ 
ure which appears to have been severely felt by the 
latter, and was made a pretence for war on the part of 
their Peloponnesian allies. {Thucyd., 1, 67, 139.) 
Megara was, during the Peloponnesian war, exposed, 
with the other cities of Greece, to the tumults and 
factions engendered by violent party spirit. The par¬ 
tisans of the democracy favoured, it is true, the Pelo¬ 
ponnesian cause ; but, dreading the efforts of the ad¬ 
verse faction, which might naturally look for support 
trom the Eacedsemonians in restoring the government 
812 


to the form of an oligarchy, they formed a plan of giv¬ 
ing up the city to the Athenians in the seventh year 
of the war. An Athenian force was accordingly de¬ 
spatched, which appeared suddenly before Nisaea, the 
port of Megara, and, having cut off the Peloponnesian 
troops which garrisoned the place, compelled thwai to 
surrender. Megara itself would also have fallen into 
their hands, if Brasidas had not at this juncture arrived 
with a Spartan army before the walls of that city, 
where he was presently joined by the Boeotians and 
other allies. On his arrival, the Athenians, not feeling 
sufficiently strong to hazard an action, withdrew to 
Nisasa, and, after leaving a garrison in that port, return¬ 
ed to Athens. The leaders of the democratical party 
in Megara, now fearing that a reaction would ensue, vol¬ 
untarily quitted the city, which then returned to an oli¬ 
garchical form of government. {Thucyd., 4, 66, seqq.) 
From this period we hear but little of Megara in Gre¬ 
cian history ; but we are told that its citizens remain¬ 
ed undisturbed by the contest in which their more pow¬ 
erful neighbours were engaged, and in the tranquil en¬ 
joyment of their independence. “ The Megareans,” 
says Isocrates, “ from a small and scanty commence 
ment, having neither harbours nor mines, but cultiva¬ 
ting rocks, nevertheless possess the largest houses of 
any people in Greece ; and though they have bur. a 
small force, and are placed between the Peloponnesians, 
the Thebans, and our own city, yet they retain their in¬ 
dependence and live in peace” (de Pace, p. 183).—Phi¬ 
losophy also flourished in this city, Euclid, a disciple 
of Socrates, having founded there a school of some 
celebrity, known by the name of the Megaric sect. 
{Strab., 393.— Cic., Orat., 3, 17.— Id., Acad,., 2, 42.) 
—Plutarch reports, that the Megareans offered to make 
Alexander the Great a citizen of their town, an hon¬ 
our which that prince was inclined to ridicule, though 
they asserted it had never been granted to any foreigner 
except Hercules. {Pint., de Monarch., p. 238.) Af¬ 
ter the death of that monarch, Megara fell successive¬ 
ly into the hands of Demetrius Poliorcetes, Ptolemy 
Soter, and Demetrius, son of Antigonus Gonatas, by 
whom, according to Plutarch, the city was destroyed 
{de Instit. Puer ., p. 3); but, as Pausanias mentions a 
war waged by the Megareans against Thebes, in which 
they were assisted by the Achseans, we may infer that 
it was subsequently restored (8, 50), and we know that 
it was taken by the Romans under Metellus {Pausan., 
7, 15) and Calenus. {Plut., Vit. Brut.) Strabo also 
affirms (393), that Megara still existed in his time, 
though much reduced, as we are assured by Sulpicius, 
in the well-known passage of his letter to Cicero {ad 
Fam.,- 4. 5). “ Post me erat Mgina, ante Megara, 

dextra Pirceus, sinistra Corinthus ; quce oppida quo- 
dam tempore florentissima fuerunt, nunc prostrata et 
diruta ante occulos jacent .” Pausanias affirms, that 
Megara was the only city of Greece which was not 
restored by Hadrian, in consequence of its inhabitants 
having murdered Anthemocritus, the Athenian herald 
1, 36). Alaric completed the destruction of this 
once flourishing city.. {Procop., Bell. Vand., 1, 1.— 
CrnmePs Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 424, seqq.)—l\. A 
city ol Sicily, founded by a colony from Megr-ra in 
Greece. (Vid. Hybla, III.) 

Megaris, a small territory of Greece, lying to the 
west and northwest of Attica. Its capital was Me¬ 
gara. (Vid. Megara ; under which head an historical 
sketch is given.) It was separated from Bceotia, on 
the north, by the range of Mount Cithseron ; and from 
Attica by the high land which descends from the 
northwest boundary of the latter country, and ter¬ 
minates, on the west side of the bay of Eleusis in 
two summits, formerly called Kerata, or the Horns 
and now Kandili. Megaris was divided from the 
Corinthian territory on the west by the Onean range 
of mountains, through which there were only two 
roads from Corinth into Megaris : one of these, called 





MEL 


MEL 


me Scironian Pass, which is the steep escarpment 
of the mountains that terminate on the coast of the 
Saronic Gulf, passed by Crommyon ( Strabo , 391); 
and along the side of the escarpment was the direct 
road from Corinth to Athens. This road was made 
wide enough, by the Emperor Hadrian, for two ve¬ 
hicles abreast ( Pausan., 1, 40, 10), but at present it 
only admits a single vehicle, except in a few places 
( Thiersch , De VEtat Actucl de la Grece, 2, p. 32); 
yet the roj.d, on the whole, is in good condition. The 
other road, following the coast of the Corinthian Gulf, 
crossed the Geranean Mountains, which belong to the 
Oneian range, and led to Pegse, on the Corinthian 
Gulf, and thence into Boeotia.—The extreme breadth 
of Megaris, from Pegae to Nisasa on the Corinthian 
Gulf, is reckoned by Strabo at 120 stadia; and the 
area of the country is calculated by Mr. Clinton, from 
Arrowsmith’s map, at 720 square miles. (Fast. Hell., 
vol. 2, p. 385.) Megaris is a rugged and mountain¬ 
ous territory, aifd contains only one plain of small ex¬ 
tent, in which the capital Megara was situated. The 
rocks are chiefly, if not entirely, calcareous. The 
country :s very deficient in springs. (Encycl. Us. 
Knowl., vol. 15, p. 64.) 

Megasthenes, a Greek historian and geographical 
writer in the age of Seleucus Nicator, king of Syria, 
about 300 years before Christ. He was sent by Se¬ 
leucus to Palibothra in India, to renew and confirm a 
previous treaty with Sandrocottus, monarch of the 
Prasii. He remained there many years, and after his 
return he wrote, under the title of Indica (’Ivdina), 
an account of whatever he had seen or heard during 
his travels. His work is lost; but Strabo, Arrian, 
and ^Elian have preserved some fragments of it. He 
was the first who made the western nations acquaint¬ 
ed with the countries beyond the Ganges, and with 
the manners of their inhabitants. Strabo has on sev¬ 
eral occasions expressed an unfavourable opinion of 
the trustworthiness of Megasthenes ; but still it is 
quite certain, that the work of the latter contained 
much valuable information, which was then entirely 
new to the Greeks. Megasthenes gave the first ac¬ 
count of Taprobane or Ceylon. (Scholl, Hist. Lit. 
Gr., vol. 3, p. 383.) 

Mela, Pomponius, a geographical writer, the first 
Latin author of a general work on this subject, and 
who flourished during the reign of the Emperor Clau¬ 
dius. He was born in Spain, of an illustrious Roman 
family, the Pomponii, who pretended to trace up their 
lineage to Numa. Some critics have thought that 
Mela only belonged to this family by adoption, and 
that he was that third son of the rhetorician Marcus 
Seneca to whom this writer dedicated his works ; 
while others are inclined to regard him as the grand¬ 
son of Seneca the philosopher. (Consult Tzschucke, 
Diss. dePomp. Mel., c. 1.) In either of these cases, 
however, the word Annasus would most probably have 
been added to his name.—There is reason to believe 
that his true name was not Mela, but Mella. (Com¬ 
pare Voss., de Hist. Lat., 1,25. — Fabricius, Bibl. 
Lat., 2, 8, p. 75, seqq. — Saxe, Onomast., 1, p. 243.— 
Tzschucke, Diss. de Pomp. Mel.) Pomponius Mela 
names his native city in one passage of his work (2, 
6), but the text unfortunately is so corrupt, that it is 
uncertain whether we ought to read Tingentera, Mel- 
I'aria , Tartessus, or Tingisbera. He lived, as has 
been already remarked, under the Emperor Claudius, 
for the passage (3, 6) in which he speaks of a triumph 
which the emperor was upon the point of celebrating 
over the Britons, can only apply to that monarch. 
Pomponius Mela was the author of a geographical 
outline or abridgment, entitled “ De Situ Orbis ,” 
or, as some manuscripts read, “ De Chorographia." 
This work is divided into three books. After having 
spoken of the world in general, and given a sketch of 
tho geography of Asia, Europe, and Africa, the writer 


commences his more particular description with this 
latter country. Mauritania, as being the westernmost 
quarter, is treated of first ; from this he proceeds in 
an eastern direction, traverses Numidia, Africa Pro¬ 
pria, and Cyrena'iea, and then describes Egypt, which 
latter country he regards as forming part of Asia. 
From Egypt he passes into Arabia, Syria, Phoenicia 
Cilicia, and the different provinces of Asia Minor.— 
The second book opens with European Scythia. Me 
la then treats of Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece 
He next passes into Illyria, and from Illyria into It¬ 
aly. From Italy he proceeds to Gaul, and from Gau; 
to Spain. He finally describes the isles of the Med¬ 
iterranean.—In the third book he returns to Spain, of 
which he had in the previous book described merely 
the westernmost part; he then gives an account of the 
Atlantic coast of Gaul, which conducts him to Ger¬ 
many, and from Germany he passes to Sarmatia and 
to the extremity of Scythia. Having thus gone round 
our hemisphere, he next gives an account of the isl¬ 
ands in the Northern Ocean, of the Eastern Ocean, 
of India, and of the Red Sea, including under the last- 
mentioned appellation the Arabian and Persian Gulfs. 
He next passes to Ethiopia, and concludes his work 
by a description of the sea which washes the western 
shores of Africa.—Mela did not, like Strabo, actu¬ 
ally visit a large portion of the countries which he 
describes : he has followed, however, though often 
without citing them, the best Greek and Roman au¬ 
thorities, and, above all, the geographical writings ot 
Eratosthenes : he has consulted and followed these 
authorities with judgment and care, and has admitted 
into his work only a comparatively small number of 
fables, which must be set down to the account of the 
age in which he lived, when great ignorance still pre 
vailed in relation to some of the simplest laws of na 
ture. The style of his narrative is marked by con¬ 
ciseness and precision ; he has been successful, at the 
same time, in avoiding the dryness of a mere nomen¬ 
clature, by intermingling agreeable descriptions, phys¬ 
ical discussions, and notices of remarkable events of 
which the places that he describes have been the the 
atre. His work, however, is not exempt from errors : 
sometimes, from not paying sufficient attention to the 
periods when the writers whom he follows respective¬ 
ly flourished, he describes things as existing which 
had ceased to exist; various omissions also occur in 
the course of his work ; no mention, for example, is 
made of Cannae, Munda, Pharsalia, Leuctra, and Man- 
tinea, all famous in the annals of warfare ; nor of Ec 
batana and Persepolis, the capitals of great empires 
nor of Jerusalem, to which so high a religious im 
portance is attached; nqr of Stagira, the native place 
of one of the greatest philosophers of antiquity. Like 
Strabo, he considers the earth as penetrated by four 
great inlets of the ocean, of which the Mediterranean, 
the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf were three ; the 
fourth was the Caspian Sea. This singular error as 
to the Caspian is the more remarkable, when contrast¬ 
ed with the fact that Herodotus knew the Caspian to 
be a lake. (Herod., 1, 203.— Strabo, 121.— Mela, 1, 
1.— Id., 3, 6.)—The best editions of Mela are, that 
of Gronovius, Lugd. Bat., 1685, 8vo, frequently re¬ 
printed, and that of Tzschucke, Lips., 1807, 7 vols. 
8vo (in 3). 

Melampus, I. a celebrated soothsayer of Argos, 
son of Amythaon and Idomene, and famed also for 
skill in the healing art. His father lesided at Pylos, 
but he himself lived in the country near that place. 
Before his house stood an oak-tree, in a hole of which 
abode some serpents. His servants finding these an 
imals, killed the old ones, whose bodies Melampus 
burned, but he saved and reared the young ones. As 
he was sleeping one day, these serpents, which were 
now grown to full size, came, and getting each on one 
of his shoulders, licked his ears with their tongues 

813 



MEL 


MEL 


He awoke in some terror; and, to his astonishment, 
found that he understood the voices of the birds which 
were flying around him; and, learning from their 
tongues the future, he was enabled to declare it to 
mankind. Meeting Apollo on the banks of the Al- 
pheus, he was taught by him the art of reading futu¬ 
rity in the entrails of victims, and he thus became an 
excellent soothsayer. ( Apollod ., 1, 9, 11.— Schol. ad 
Apoll. Rhod., 1, 118) Meanwhile, his brother Bias 
fell in love with Pero, the daughter of Neleus. As 
th? hand of this beautiful maiden was sought by most 
of the neighbouring princes, her father declared that 
he would give her only to him, who should bring him 
from Thessaly the cows of his mother Tyro, which 
Iphiclus of Phylace detained, and which he guarded 
by means of a dog whom neither man nor beast could 
venture to approach. Bias, relying on the aid of his 
brother, undertook the adventure. Melampus, pre¬ 
viously declaring that he knew he should be caught 
and confined for a year, but then get the cattle, set 
out for Phylace. Every thing fell out as he said.— 
The herdsman of Iphiclus took him, and he was 
thrown into prison, where he was attended by a man 
and a woman. The man served him well, the woman 
badly. Towards the end of the year he heard the 
worms in the timber conversing with one another. 
One asked how much of the beam was now gnawed 
through ; the others replied that there was little re¬ 
maining. Melampus immediately desired to be re¬ 
moved to some other place ; the man took up the bed 
at the head, the woman at the foot, Melampus himself 
at the middle. They had not got quite out of the 
house, when the roof fell in and killed the woman. 
This coming to the ears of Iphiclus, he inquired, and 
learned that Melampus was a soothsayer or Mantis. 
He therefore, being childless, consulted him about 
having offspring. Melampus agreed to tell him on 
condition of his giving him the cows. The seer, on 
Iphiclus assenting to his terms, then sacrificed an ox 
to Jupiter, and, having divided it, called all the birds 
;o the feast. All came but the vulture ; but no one 
of them was able to tell how Iphiclus might have chil¬ 
dren. They therefore brought the vulture, who gave 
the requisite information. Iphiclus became the father 
of a son named Podarces; and Melampus drove the 
kine to Pylos, whereupon Pero was given to his 
brother. ( Od ., 11,287.— Schol., ad loc. — Od., 15, 225. 
— Apollod., 1, 9, 11.— Schol. ad Theocr., 3, 43.)— 
Melampus was also famous for the cure of the daugh¬ 
ters of Proetus, who were afflicted with insanity. For 
an account of this legend, consult the article Proeti- 
des. {Keightley's Mythology, p. 436, scq.) —II. A 
writer on divination, who lived in the time of Ptolemy 
Philadelphus. He was the author of a treatise en¬ 
titled M avruiy %epl TcaXpfiv, “ Divination from vi¬ 
brations of the muscles ,” and of another styled Ilepl 
eXaiibv tov cufiarog, “ Art of divining from marks on 
the body .” We have only fragments remaining of 
these two works. The library at Vienna contains 
another work of this same writer’s, in manuscript, on 
the Art of predicting from the phases of the moon. 
The fragments of Melampus were edited by Perusius, 
at the end of his JElian, Roma, 1545, 4to, and subse¬ 
quently by Sylburgius, who, in his edition of Aristotle, 
reunited them to the physiognomical works of that 
philosopher. They are to be found also in the Scrip- 
tores Physiognomies Vetercs of Franz , Altenb., 1780, 
8vo. 

Melampyges, an epithet applied to Hercules in the 
Greek mythology, and connecting him with the legend 
of the Cercopes. These last, according to Diodorus 
Siculus (4, 31), dwelt in the vicinity of Ephesus, and 
ravaged the country far and wide, while Hercules was 
leading with Omphale a life of voluptuous repose. 
Their mother hid cautioned them against one to 
whom ti e name Melampyges should apply, but they 


disregarded her warning, and the hero, having at 
length been roused from his inactivity, proceeded 
against them by order of Omphale, and, having over¬ 
come them, brought them to her in chains.—A dif¬ 
ferent tradition placed the Cercopes in the islands fa¬ 
cing the coast of Campania. Jupiter, according to 
this latter account, being engaged in his war with the 
Titans, came to these islands to demand succours of 
the Arimi. The people promised him their aid, bul 
afterward made sport of him, whereupon the irri 
tated deity changed them into apes (7 ndyKOL), and 
from that period the islands of Inarime and Pro- 
chyta were called Pithecusae (TfcOysovoai, from iridr} 
nog. — Vid., however, another explanation under th« 
article Pithecusae.)—The legend of the Cercopes ap 
pears to be an astronomical one. The Lydian Her 
cules is the sun, pale and enfeebled at the winter sol 
stice, and which, in some sense may be said to turi 
its obscurer parts upon the earth; while the Cercopes, 
as symbols of this period of languor, crowd around 
and insult him. On the approach, however, of the 
vernal equinox, the god resumes his former energies 
and subjugates his foes. In like manner Jupiter, the 
sun of suns, overcomes and dissipates all things that 
tend to obscure the light and disturb the repose of 
the universe. ( Guigniaut, vol. 2, p. 181.) 

Melanchl^eni, a people near the Cimmerian Bos 
porus, so called from their black garments. Man- 
nert conjectures them to have been the progenitors 
of the modern Russians. By later writers they are 
called Rhoxolani. ( Mannert , Geogr., vol. 4, p. 134, 
167.) 

Melanippides, I. a lyric poet, who flourished about 
500 B.C. He was either, as some suppose, a native 
of the island of Melos, or, as others think, of the city 
of Miletus.—II. A poet, who lived about 446 B.C., 
at the court ofPerdiccas II., king of Macedonia. He 
was the' grandson of the former. Various poems are 
ascribed to these two individuals, and it is a difficult 
matter to make a division between them. They com 
posed dithyrambics, epopees, elegies, and songs. The 
younger Melanippides is placed by Plutarch in the 
number of those who corrupted the ancient music by 
the novelties which they introduced. He also com¬ 
posed some tragedies. (Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr. vol. 
1, p. 289.) 

Melanippus, a son of Astacus, one of the Theban 
chiefs who defended the gates of Thebes against the 
army of Adrastus, king of Argos. He was opposed 
by Tydeus, whom he wounded mortally. As Tydeus 
lay expiring, Minerva hastened to him with a remedy 
which she had obtained from Jupiter, and which would 
make him immortal ; but Amphiaraus, who hated Ty¬ 
deus as the chief cause of the war, perceiving what 
the goddess was about, cut off the head of Melanip¬ 
pus, whom Tydeus, though wounded, had slain, and 
brought it to him. The savage warrior opened it and 
devoured the brain, and Minerva, in disgust, withheld 
her aid. ( Bacchyl ., ap. Schol. ad Arisloph ., Av., 1536. 
— Eurip., Frag. Melcag., 18.— Keightley's Mytholo¬ 
gy, p. 479.) 

Melanthius, I. an Athenian tragic poet, of inferioi 
reputation, a contemporary of Aristoph.anes. He was 
afflicted with the leprosy, to which the comic poet al¬ 
ludes in the Aves ( v. 151). In the Pax (v. 974) he is 
ridiculed for his gluttony.—II. A painter, whose na 
tive country is uncertain. He was a contemporary of 
Apelles, and received, in connexion with him, the in¬ 
structions of Pamphilus in the art of painting. ( Plin ., 
35, 10, 36.) Quintilian particularly mentions his skill 
in the designs of his pictures; and Pliny observes, that 
he was one of those painters who, with only four col¬ 
ours, produced pieces worthy of immortality. Even 
Apelles conceded to him the palm in the arrangement 
or grouping of his figures. {Plin., 1. c.) That his 
pictures were held in high estimation, is evident from 




M E L 


MELEAGER. 


the circumstance that Aratus, no mean judge of works 
of art, collected from every quarter the productions of 
Melanthius along with those of Pamphilus, and made 
a present of them to Ptolemy III., king of Egypt. 
(Pint., Vit. Arat., c. 21.) He left a treatise on Paint¬ 
ing, a fragment of which has been preserved by Dio¬ 
genes Laertius (4, 18), and of which Pliny availed 
himself in writing the 30th book of his Natural His¬ 
tory. ( Sillig, Diet Art., s. v.) 

Melanthus, a son of Andropompus, whose ances¬ 
tors were kings of Pylos, in Messenia. Having been 
driven by the Heraclidae from his paternal kingdom, 
he came to Athens, where Thymoetes, monarch of 
Attica, gave him a friendly reception. Some time 
after this, the Boeotians, under Xanthus, having invaded 
Attica, Thymoetes marched forth to meet them. 
Xanthus thereupon proposed to decide the issue of 
the war by single combat, but Thymoetes shrank from 
the risk, whereupon Melanthus came forward and ac¬ 
cepted the challenge. By a stratagem, famous in af¬ 
ter ages, he diverted the attention of his adversary, 
and slew him as he turned to look at the ally whom 
Melanthus affected to see behind him. The victor 
was rewarded with the kingdom, which Thymoetes 
had forfeited by his pusillanimity, and which now pass¬ 
ed for ever from the house of Erechtheus. Melanthus 
transmitted the crown to his son Codrus. ( Pausan., 
2, 18.— Thirlwall's Greece, vol. 1, p. 274.) 

Melas (gen. -ie), I. a deep gulf formed by the 
Thracian coast on the northwest, and the shore of the 
Chersonese on the southeast; its appellation in mod¬ 
ern geography is the Gulf of Saros. —II. A river of 
Thrace, now the Cavatcha., emptying into the Sinus 
Melas at its northeastern extremity. (Herod., 7, 58.— 
Liv., 38, 40.— Plin., 4, 11.)—III. A river of Thes¬ 
saly, in the vicinity of the town of Trachis. (Herod., 
7, 199.— Liv., 37, 24.)—IV. A small river of Bosotia, 
near Orchomenu^, emptying into the Lake Copais. 
(Pausan., 9, 38.) Plutarch says that it rose close 
to the city, and very soon became navigable, but 
that part of it was lost in the marshes, while the re¬ 
mainder joined the Cephissus. (Vit. Syll. — Strab., 
415.) Pliny remarks of its waters, that they had 
the property of dying the fleeces of sheep black (2, 
103). In the marshes formed near the junction of 
this river with the Cephissus grew the reeds so much 
esteemed by the ancient Greeks for making pipes and 
other wind-instruments. ( Pindar, pyth., 12, 42. — 
Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 249.)—V. A river 
of Cappadocia, rising «ear Caesarea ad Argseum, and 
falling into the Euphrates near the city of Melitene. 
Schillinger (Reise., p. 68) calls it the Gensin; but on 
D’Anville’s map it bears in the beginning or its course 
the name of Koremoz, and near its mouth that of 
Kirkghedid. (Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 2, p. 296.) 
—VI. A river of Pamphylia, rising in the range of 
Mount Taurus, to the west of Homonada, and running 
into the sea between Side and Coracesium. (Strabo, 
667.) It formed originally the boundary between 
Pamphylia and Cilicia. (Plin., 5, 27.) According to 
Leake, there can be no doubt that the Melas is the 
river now called Menavgdt-su, for Zosimus (5, 16) 
and Mela (1, 14) agree in showing its proximity to 
Side. Strabo, Mela, and the Stadiasmus, all place it 
to the eastward of Side, and the distance of 50 stadia 
in the Stadiasmus between the Melas and Side is pre¬ 
cisely that which occurs between the ruins of Side 
and the mouth of the river of Menavgat. (Leake's 
Tour, p. 196.) 

Meld.® or Meldorum urbs, a city of Gaul, now 
Mcaux. (Cces., B. G., 5, 5.— Plin., 4, 13.) 

Meleager, I. a celebrated hero of antiquity, son of 
CEneus, king of yEtolia, by Althaea, daughter of ffhes- 
tius. When he was seven days old, the Moirae or 
Fates came to the dwelling of his parents, and de¬ 
clared that when the billet which was burning on the 


hearth should be consumed, the babe would die. Al* 
thaea, on hearing this, snatched the billet from the fire, 
and laid it carefully away in a coffer. The fame of 
Meleager increased with his years ; he signalized him¬ 
self in the Argonautic expedition, and subsequently in 
the Calydonian boar-hunt. Of this latter event there 
appear to have been two legends, an earlier and a later 
one. The former appears to have been a tale of great 
antiquity, and is commemorated in the Iliad (9, 527). 
According to this version of the story, CEneus, in the 
celebration of his harvest-home feast (d-alvaia), had 
treated Diana with neglect, and the goddess took ven¬ 
geance upon him by sending a wild boar of surpassing 
size and strength to ravage the territory of Calydon. 
Hunters and dogs were collected from all sides, and 
the boar was, with the loss of several lives, at length 
destroyed. A quarrel arose, however, between the 
Curetes and yEtolians about the head and hide, and a 
war was the consequence. As long as Meleager 
fought, the Curetes had the worst of it, and could not 
keep the field ; but when, enraged at his mother Al¬ 
thaea, he remained with his wife the fair Cleopatra, 
and abstained from the war, noise and clamour rose, 
about the gates, and the towers of Calydon were sha 
ken by the victorious Curetes : for Althaea, grieved a' 
the fate of her brother, who had fallen in the fight, had 
with tears invoked Pluto and Proserpina to send death 
to her son. The elders of the yEtolians supplicated 
Meleager : they sent the priests of the gods to entreat 
him to come forth and defend them : they offered him 
a piece of land (repevog) of his own selection. His 
aged father CEneus ascended to his chamber and im¬ 
plored him, his sisters and his mother supplicated 
him, but in vain. He remained inexorable, till his 
very chamber was shaken, when the Curetes had 
mounted the towers and set fire to the town. Then 
his wife besought him with tears, picturing to him th© 
evils of a captured town, the slaughter of the men, the 
dragging away into captivity of the women and chil¬ 
dren. Moved by this last appeal, he arrayed himself 
in arms, went forth and repelled the enemy ; but, not 
having done it out of regard for them, the yEtolians 
did not give him the proffered recompense.—Such 
is the more ancient form of the legend, in which it 
would appear that the yEtolians of Calydon and the 
Curetes of Pleuron alone took part in the hunt. In 
after times, when the vanity of the different states of 
Greece made them send their national heroes to every 
war and expedition of the mythic ages, it underwent 
various modifications. Meleager, it is said (Nicand., 
ap. Anton. Lib., 2.— Apollod., 1, 8, 2.— Ovid, Met., 
8. 270, seqq. — Hygin., fab., 181, 5), invited all the 
heroes of Greece to the hunt of the boar, proposing 
the hide of the animal as the prize of whoever should 
slay him. Of the yEtolians there were Meleager, and 
Dryas son of Mars ; of the Curetes, the sons of Thes- 
tius ; Idas and Lynceus, sons of Aphareus, came from 
Messene ; Castor and Pollux, sons of Jupiter and Le- 
da, from Laconia; Atalanta, daughter of Iasus, and 
Anceeus and Cepheus, sons of Lycurgus, from Arca¬ 
dia ; Amphiaraus, son of 0‘icles, from Argos; Tela¬ 
mon, son of yEacus, from Salamis ; Theseus, son of 
yEgeus, from Athens; Iphicles, son of Amphitryon, 
from Thebes ; Peleus, son of yEacus, and Eurytion, 
son of Actor, from Phthia ; Jason, son of yEson, from 
Iolcos ; Admetus, son of Pheres, from Pheroe; and 
Pirithoiis, son of Ixion, from Larissa.—These chiefs 
were entertained during nine days in the house of 
CEneus. On the tenth, Cepheus and Ancaeus, and 
some others, refused to hunt in company with a maid¬ 
en ; but Meleager, who was in love with Atalanta, 
obliged them to give over their opposition. The hunt 
began; Ancaeus and Cepheus speedily met their fate 
from the tusks of the boar : Peleus accidentally killed 
Eurytion: Atalanta, with an arrow, gave the monst^x 
the first wound ; Amphiaraus shot him in the eye ; and 

815 





MEL 


MEL 


Meleager ran him through the Hanks and killed him. 
He presei ted the skin and head to Atalanta ; but the 
sons of Hiestius, his two uncles, offended at this 
preference of a woman, took the skin from her, saying 
that it fell to them of right, on account of their family, 
if Meleager resigned his claim to it. Meleager, in a 
rage, killed them, and restored the skin to Atalanta. 
Althaea, on hearing of the death of her brothers, in¬ 
fluenced by resentment for their loss, took from its 
place of concealment the billet, on which depended 
the existence of Meleager, and cast it into the flames. 
As it consumed, the vigour of Meleager wasted away ; 
and when it was reduced to ashes, his life terminated. 
Repenting, when too late, of what she had done, Al¬ 
thaea put an end to her own life. Cleopatra died of 
grief; and the sisters of Meleager, who would not be 
comforted in their affliction, were, by the compassion 
of the gods, all but Gorgo and De'ianira, changed into 
birds called Meleagrides.—There was another tradi¬ 
tion, according to which Meleager was slain by Apol¬ 
lo, the protecting deity of the Curetes. ( Pausan ., 10, 
31, 3.— Keightley's Mythology , p. 321, seqq.) —II. 
A Greek poet, a native of Gadara in Ccelesyria, and 
either contemporary with Antipater, or a very short 
time subsequent to him. He composed several works 
of a satirical character, which we find quoted under 
the following titles : 1. hvpnboiov, “ The Banquet .'’'’— 
2. A skWov teal tyaufjq avyaptaiq, U A mixture of 
yolks of egss and beans.' 1 ' —3. Xaptreq, “ The Gra¬ 
ces." Jacobs, however, thinks that the whole collec¬ 
tion of his satires may have been rather entitled Xdp- 
LTeg. ( Animadv. in Anthol ., 1, 1 .—Prolegom., p. 
xxxviii.)—III. Another poet, who has left about 130 
epigrams. They are marked by purity of diction and 
by feeling, but they betray, at the same time, some¬ 
thing of that sophistic subtlety which characterized his 
age. Occasionally we meet with words rather too 
boldly compounded. Meleager was the first who made 
a collection of epigrams, or an anthology. He entitled 
i* Irtchavop, “ The Crown." It contained a selection 
of the best pieces of forty-six poets, arranged in al¬ 
phabetical order according to the names of the authors. 
This compilation is lost. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., 
vol. 4, p. 45, 55.) 

Meleagrides, the sisters of Meleager, daughters 
of CEneus and Althaea. They were so disconsolate 
at the death of their brother Meleager, that they re¬ 
fused all aliment, and were changed into birds called 
Meleagrides. The youngest of these sisters, Gorgo 
and De'ianira, who had been married, alone escaped 
this metamorphosis. ( Apollod ., 1, 8.— Ovid, Met., 8, 
540.) 

Meles (etis), a river of Asia Minor, near Smyrna. 
Some of the ancients supposed that Homer was born 
on the banks of this river, from which circumstance 
they call him Melcsigenes. They also showed a cave, 
where it was said that Homer had composed his verses. 
(Pausan ., 7, 5.) Chandler informs us that he search¬ 
ed for tkis cavern, and succeeded in discovering it 
above the aqueduct of the Meles. It is about four 
feet wide, the roof of a huge rock, cracked and slant¬ 
ing, the sides and bottom sandy. Beyond it is a pas¬ 
sage cut, leading into a kind of well., ( Travels in Asia 
Minor, p. 91.) According to the same traveller, the 
Meles, at the present day, is shallow in summer, not 
covering its rocky bed ; but, winding in the deep val¬ 
ley behind the castle of Smyrna, it murmurs among the 
evergreens, and receives many rills from the slopes; 
after turning an overshot mill or two, it approaches 
the gardens without the town, where it branches out 
into small canals, and is divided and subdivided into 
still smaller currents, until it is absorbed, or reaches 
die sea, in ditches, unlike a river. In winter, howev¬ 
er, after heavy rains, or the melting of snow on the 
mountains, it swells into a torrent rapid and deep, of¬ 
ten not fordable without danger ; and it then finds its 
816 


way into the inner bay, where the ancient city stood 
( Chandler's Travels, p. 76, seqq.) 

Melesigenes or Melesigena, a name given tu 
Homer. ( Vid. Meles and Homerus.) 

Melibcea, I. a town of Thessaly, in the district of 
Estiasotis, near Ithome. ( Liv ., 36, 13.)—II. A city 
of Thessaly, in the district of Magnesia. According 
to Livy (44, 13), it stood at the base of Mount Ossa, 
in that part which stretches towards the plains of Thes¬ 
saly, above Demetrias. Homer assigns it to the do¬ 
mains of Philoctetes (II., 2, 716), hence called “Me- 
liboeus dux" by Virgil. (xEn., 3,401.) Melibcea was 
attacked in the Macedonian war by M. Popilius, a Ro¬ 
man commander, at the head of five thousand men ; 
but the garrison being re-enforced by a detachment 
from the army of Perseus, the enterprise was abandon¬ 
ed. (Livy, l. c.) We know from Apollonius (Arg., 
1, 592) that it was a maritime town. (Cramer's Arte. 
Greece, vol. 1, p. 423.) According to Pouqueville 
(Voyage, vol. 3, p. 404), the village of Daoukli indi¬ 
cates the site of the ancient Melibcea. (Compare Paul 
Lucas's map, appended to his Travels, 1704.) 

Melicerta or Melicertes, a son of Athamas and 
Ino. He was saved by his mother from the fury of 
his father, who prepared to dash him against a wall 
as he had done his brother Learchus. The mother 
was so terrified that she threw herself into the sea, 
with Melicerta in her arms. Neptune had compassion 
on Ino and her son, and changed them both into sea 
deities. Ino was called Leucothoe or Matuta, and Me¬ 
licerta was known among the Greeks by the name of 
Palasmon, and among the Latins by that of Portumnus 
(Vid. Leucothoe and Ino. — Apollod., 1, 9; 3, 4. —- 
Pausan., 1, 44.— Ovid, Met., 4, 529.) 

Meligunis, one of the earlier names of Lipara. 
(Vid. Lipara.) 

Melii. Vid. Malii. 

Melissa, I. a daughter of Melissus, king of Crete, 
who, with her sister Amalthaea, fed Jupiter with the 
milk of goats. According to the account quoted by 
Lactantius, she was appointed by her father the first 
priestess of Cybele. (Lactant., 1, 22.)—II. A nymph, 
who first discovered the means of obtaining honey 
through the aid of bees. She was fabled to have been 
herself changed into one of these little creatures. 
(Columell., 9, 2.)—III. One of the Oceanides, who 
married Inachus, by whom she had Phoroneus and 
xEgialus.—IV. A daughter of Procles, who married 
Periander, the son of Cypselus, by whom, in her preg 
nancy, she was killed with a blow of his foot, by the 
false accusation of his concubines. (Diog. Laert., 1, 
100.— Herod., 3, 50.— Bahr, ad Herod., 1. c. — Pau¬ 
san., 1, 28.) 

Melissus, a philosopher of Samos, of the Eleatic 
sect, who flourished about 440 B.C. He was a disci¬ 
ple of Parmenides, to whose doctrines he closely ad¬ 
hered. As a public man, he was conversant with af¬ 
fairs of state, and acquired great influence among his 
countrymen, who had a high veneration for his talents 
and virtues. Being appointed by them to the com¬ 
mand of a fleet, he obtained a great naval victory over 
the Athenians. As a philosopher, he maintained that 
the principle of all things is one and immutable, or 
that whatever exists is one being; that this one being 
includes all things, and is infinite, without beginning 
or end ; that there is neither vacuum nor motion in 
the universe, nor any such thing as production or de¬ 
cay ; that the changes which it seems to suffer are 
only illusions of our senses, and that we ought not 
to lay down anything positive concerning the gods, 
since our knowledge of them is so uncertain. The- 
mistocles is said to have been one of his pupils. (En¬ 
field's History of Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 418, seqq.) 

Melita, I. an island in the Mediterranean, sixty 
miles southeast of Sicily, now Malta. It is first men¬ 
tioned by Scylax (p. 50), but is considered by him as 



MEL1TA. 


MELITA. 


belonging to Africa, from its having Punic inhabitants, 
and being no farther from Africa than from Sicily. 
The earlier Greek historians do not mention it, since 
it was regarded as a Carthaginian island, and lay with¬ 
out their historical limits. Diodorus Siculus is the 
first that gives us any account of it. “ There are,” 
he says, “over against that part of Sicily which lies to 
the south, three islands at a distance in the sea, each 
of which has a town and safe ports for ships overtaken 
Dy tempests. The first, called Melite, is about 800 
iUdia from Syracuse, and has several excellent har¬ 
bours. The inhabitants are very rich, inasmuch as 
they exercise many trades, and, in particular, manufac¬ 
ture cloths remarkable for their softness and fineness. 
Their houses are large, and splendidly ornamented 
with projections and stucco (yeicrooig nai Kovidfiaoi,). 
The island is a colony of the Phoenicians, who, trading 
to the Western Ocean, use it as a place of refuge, be¬ 
cause it has excellent ports, and lies in the midst of 
the sea. Next to this island is another named Gaulus 
( Gozo ), with convenient harbours, which is also a 
colony of Phoenicians.” ( Diod. Sic., 5, 12.) Malta 
is said to have been subsequently occupied by the 
Greeks ; but, however this may be, the Carthaginians 
obtained possession of it B.C. 402. In the first Pu¬ 
nic war it was plundered by the. Roman consul At- 
tilius. ( Orosius , 4, 8.) In the second Punic war it 
surrendered to the Romans, and was regarded hence¬ 
forth as an appendage to the province of Sicily. Its 
commerce declined under its new masters, and the isl¬ 
and became a not unfrequent haunt of pirates. It 
appears, however, that its temple of Juno was rich 
enough to be an object of plunder to the rapacious 
Verres when he was praetor of Sicily. ( Cic. in Verr., 
4 . 46.) The linen cloth of Malta was considered an 
article of luxury at Rome. After the division of the 
Roman empire at the death of Constantine, this island 
was included in the share allotted to Constantius. It 
fell subsequently into the hands of the Goths, who 
were expelled by Belisarius, A.D. 533. The Arabs 
conquered it in 870, and though it was recovered, and 
held by the Eastern empire for the space of 34 years, 
it was retaken by the Arabs, and the Greek inhabitants 
w r ere exterminated. In 1120, Count Roger, the Nor¬ 
man conqueror of Sicily, took possession of Malta and 
expelled the Arabs. Malta was thus again attached to 
the island of Sicily, and it became subject to the differ¬ 
ent dynasties which successively governed that island. 
In 1516, Sicily, with the Maltese islands, passed to 
the Emperor Charles V., as heir to the crown of Arra- 
gon. On the 4th March, 1530, Charles granted to 
the Knights of St. John, who had been recently expel¬ 
led from Rhodes by the Turks, the ownership of all the 
castles, fortresses, and i^les of Tripoli, Malta, and 
Gozo, with complete jurisdiction*. The sovereignty 
of Malta was by this grant, in effect, surrendered to the 
knights, though the form of tenure from the crown of 
Sicily was maintained by the reservation of the annual 
payment of a falcon by the same to the King of'Si¬ 
cily or his viceroy. It was soon fortified by the knights, 
and underwent several memorable sieges. In 1798, Bo¬ 
naparte took possession of it on his expedition to Egypt; 
and in 1800, the French garrison was obliged by famine 
to capitulate to a British force. In 1814, the possession 
of it was confirmed to Great Britain by the treaty of 
Paris.—The cotton manufactories of Malta have been 
celebrated for many ages, and would seem to trace 
their origin to the times of the Phoenicians. The soil 
consists of a thin covering of earth on a soft, calcare¬ 
ous rock, and is increased by breaking up the surface 
of the stone into a sort of gravel, and mixing it through 
the earth. It is no uncommon thing, however, for 
soil to be transported from Sicily, especially when a 
proprietor wishes to make a new garden ; a fact that 
could hardly be inferred from the number and excel¬ 
lent flavour of the Maltese oranges, from its beautiful 
A L 


roses, and the exhalations of a thousand flowers.— 
The city of Melita, the ancient capital, lay some distance 
inland, where Cittu Pinto is at present situated.—Two 
questions are connected with this island. The first re¬ 
lates to the voyage of St. Paul, which will be consid¬ 
ered under Melita II.; the other is of a more trivial na¬ 
ture, namely, which island, this or the Illyrian Melita 
(now Meleda), furnished the Catuli Melitcei, so much 
esteemed by the Roman ladies. Pliny, on the author¬ 
ity of Callimachus and Stephanus of Byzantium, pro¬ 
nounces in favour of Meleda, Strabo of Malta (280).— 
II. An island in the Adriatic, northwest of Epidaurus, 
and lying off the coast of Dalmatia. Its modern name 
is Meleda. —The question has often been agitated, 
whether it was on this island, or Melita (now Malta) 
below Sicily, that St. Paul was shipwrecked. (Acts, 27 
and 28.) Upon a fair review of the whole subject, it 
will be found that the Illyrian island presents the better 
claim to this distinction. The following reasons may 
be alleged in favour of this side of the question : 1. 
The vessel, when lost, was in “ Adria,” the Adriatic 
Gulf, which cannot by any geographical contrivance 
be made to extend, as some would wish to have it, to 
the coast of Africa. — 2. The island on which tha 
Apostle was wrecked was an obscure one in the Adri¬ 
atic sea, formerly called Melita, and now known by 
the name of Meleda. This island lies confessedly in 
the Adriatic, off the coast of Illyricum ; it lies, too, 
nearer the mouth of the Adriatic than any other island 
of that sea, and would, of course, be more likely to 
receive the wreck of any vessel that would be driven 
by tempests to that quarter.—3. Meleda is situate, 
moreover, nearly N.W. by N. of the southwest prom 
ontory of Crete, and nearly in the direction of a storm 
from the southeast quarter.—4. The manner likewise 
in which Melita is described by St. Luke agrees with 
the idea of an obscure place, but not with the celebrity 
of Malta at that time. Cicero speaks of Melita (Malta) 
as abounding in curiosities and riches, and possessing 
a remarkable manufacture of the finest linen. (Orat. 
in Verr., 4, 18, 46.) Malta, according to Diodorus 
Siculus (5, 1), was furnished with many and very good 
harbours, and the inhabitants were very rich ; for it 
was full of all sorts of artificers, among whom were ex¬ 
cellent weavers of fine linen. The houses were state¬ 
ly and beautiful, and the inhabitants, a colony of Phoe¬ 
nicians, famous for the extent and lucrative nature of 
their commerce. It is difficult to suppose that a place of 
this description could be meant by such an expression 
as “ an island called Melitanor could the inhabitants, 
with any propriety of speech, be understood by the 
epithet “ barbarous.” But the Adriatic Melita per¬ 
fectly corresponds with that description. Though too 
obscure and insignificant to be particularly noticed bj 
ancient geographers, the opposite and neighbouring 
coast of Illyricum is represented by Strabo in such a 
way as perfectly corresponds with the expression of 
the apostle. — 5. Father Giorgi, an ecclesiastic of 
Melita Adriatica, who has written on this subject, sug¬ 
gests, very properly, that as there are now no serpents 
in Malta, and as it should seem there were none in the 
time of Pliny, there never were any there, the country 
being dry and rocky, and not affording shelter or proper 
nourishment for animals of this description. But Me¬ 
leda abounds with these reptiles, being woody and 
damp, and favourable to tneir way of life and propa¬ 
gation.—6. The disease with which the father of Pub¬ 
lius was affected (dysentery combined with fever, 
probably intermittent) affords a presumptive evidence 
of the nature of the island. Such a place as Malta, 
dry, and rocky, and remarkably healthy, was not likely 
to produce such a disease, which is almost peculiar to 
moist situations and stagnant waters, but mifjht well 
suit a country woody and damp, and, probably for want 
of draining, exposed to the putrid effluvia of confined 
moisture.—7. It has been alleged, however, in favour 

817 




MEL 


MEM 


of Malta's having been the island in question, that, had 
Meleda been the one, St.‘Paul would not have called 
at Syracuse in his way to Rhegium, “ which is so far 
out of the track,” says a writer who advocates this 
opinion, “ that no example can be produced in the his¬ 
tory of navigation of any ship going so far out of her 
course, except it was driven by a violent tempest.” 
This argument tends principally to show that the wri¬ 
ter had a very incorrect idea of the relative situations 
of the places to which he refers. The ship which car¬ 
ried St. Paul from the Adriatic to Rhegium would not 
deviate from its course more than half a day’s sail by 
touching at Syracuse ; and the delay so occasioned 
would probably be but a few hours more than it would 
have been had they proceeded to Syracuse in their way 
to the Straits of Messina from Malta. Besides, the 
master of the ship might have, and probably had, some 
business at Syracuse, which had originated at Alexan¬ 
dra, from which place it must have been originally in¬ 
tended that the ship should commence her voyage to 
Puteoli; and in this course the calling at Syracuse 
would have been the smallest deviation possible.—8. 
Again, supposing the ship to have come from Malta , 
it must have been on account of some business, prob¬ 
ably commercial, that they touched at Syracuse in 
their w<jy to Puteoli, as Malta is scarcely more than 
one day and night’s sail from Syracuse : whereas 
there might be some reasons respecting the voyage, 
had the ship come from Meleda, which is more than 
five times that distance, and probably a more uncer¬ 
tain navigation.—9. As regards the wind Euroclydon, 
it may be observed, that the word evidently implies a 
southeast wind. It is composed of E vpog, the south¬ 
east wind, and kXvScjv, a wave, an addition highly ex¬ 
pressive of the character and effects of this wind, but 
orobably chiefly applied to it when it became t.yphonic 
or tempestuous. Typhon is described by Pliny (2, 
48) as prcecipuo navigantium pestis, non antennas 
modo, verum ipsa navigia contorta frangens. The 
course of the wind from the southeast would impel the 
ship towards the island of Crete, though not so di¬ 
rectly but At at they might weather it, as they in fact 
did, and got clear, though it appears they encountered 
some risk of being wrecked when running under, or 
to the south of, the island of Clauda or Gaudos, which 
lies opposite to the port of Phoenice, the place where 
they proposed to winter. A circumstance occurs in 
this part of the narrative which creates some difficulty. 
They who navigated the ship were apprehensive of 
falling among the Syrtes, which lay on the coast of 
Africa, nearly to the southwest of the western point of 
Crete. But we should consider that this danger lay 
only in the fears of the mariners, who, knowing the 
Syrtes to be the great terror of those seas, and prob¬ 
ably not being able to ascertain from what quarter the 
wind blew, neither sun nor stars having been visible 
for several days, and as these violent typhonic Le¬ 
vanters are apt to change their direction, might en¬ 
tertain apprehensions that they might be cast on these 
dangerous quicksands. The event, however, proved 
that the place of their danger was mistaken. ( Class¬ 
ical Journal, vol. 19, p. 212, seqq. — Hale's Anal¬ 
ysis of Chronology, vol. 1, p. 464, seqq., ed. 2 d, 
1830.) 

Melitene, a district of Asia Minor, in the south¬ 
eastern part of Armenia Minor, and lying along the 
right bank of the Euphrates. The soil was fertile, 
and yielded fruits of every kind; in this respect dif¬ 
fering from the rest of Cappadocia, of which Armenia 
Minor was a part. The chief product was oil, and a 
wine called Monarites, which equalled the best of Gre¬ 
cian growth. ( Strab ., 535 .—Plin., 6, 3.) Its cap¬ 
ital was Melitene, now Malatie, on a branch of the 
river Melas. (Plin., 5, 24.— Steph. Byz., s. v. — Pro¬ 
cop., de JEdif., 3, 5.) 

Melitus, one of the accusers of Socrates. After 
818 


he had prevailed, and Socrates had been ignominious- 
ly put to death, the Athenians repented of their se¬ 
venty to the philosopher. Melitus was condemned to 
death ; and Anytus, another of the accusers, to escape 
a similar fate, went into voluntary exile- ( Diog. La- 
ert., 2.) 

Melius or Melius, Spurius, a Roman knight, sus¬ 
pected of aiming at kingly power, in consequence of 
his uncommon liberality in supplying the populace wi h 
corn. He was summoned by the dictator L. Q. Cin- 
cinnatus to appear before him ; and, having refused 
so to do, was slain on the spot by Ahala, the master 
of the norse. ( Liv., 4, 13, seqq. — Vid. iEquimelium.) 

Mella or Mela, a small river of Cisalpine Gaul, 
near Brixia. It retains its ancient name. ( Virg ., 
Georg., 4, 278.— Catullus, 66, 32.) 

Melos, now Milo, an island in the ^Egean Sea, 
forming one of the group of the Cyclades. It was sit¬ 
uate, according to Strabo (84), about 700 stadia to 
the southeast of Cape Scyllseum, and nearly as many, 
in a northeastern direction, from the Dictynnsean prom¬ 
ontory in Crete. It was first inhabited by Phoenicians 
(Steph. Byz., s. v. M yAoq), and afterward colonized 
by Lacedsemon, nearly 700 years, as Thucydides re¬ 
lates, before the Peloponnesian war. This island ad¬ 
hered to the interest of that state against the Atheni¬ 
ans, and successfully resisted at first an attempt made 
by the latter to reduce it. (Thucyd., 3, 91.) But 
some years after, the Athenians returned with a great¬ 
er force ; and, on the rejection of all their overtures, in 
a conference which the historian has preserved to us, 
they proceeded to besiege the principal town, which 
they at length captured after a brave and obstinate re¬ 
sistance. Having thus gained possession of the city, 
they, with a degree of barbarity peculiar to that age, 
put all the males to death, enslaved the women and 
children, and sent 500 colonists into the island. (Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 404.) 

Melpes, a river of Lucania, flowing into the sea to 
the southeast of the promontory of Palinurus. (Plin.. 
3, 5.) It is now the Molpa, and is probably the same 
stream which Lycophron (v. 1083) calls the Membles. 

Melpomene, one of the Muses, daughter of Jupiter 
and Mnemosyne. Her name is derived from pie'A.TToyai, 
“ to celebrate in song." She presided over tragedy, of 
which the poets made her the inventress. Hence the 
language of Ausonius, “ Melpomene tragico proclamat 
moesta boatu." (Auson., Idyll, ult., v. 2.) She was 
commonly represented as veiled, and holding in her 
hand a tragic mask. Her instrument was the lyre. 
Melpomene became, by the river-god Achelous, the 
mother of the Sirens. (Vid. Musae.) 

Memmia (more correctly Remmia) Lex, a law, by 
whom proposed, or in what year, is uncertain. It or¬ 
dained, that an accusation should not be admitted 
against those who were absent in the service of the 
public. (Val. Max., 3, 7, 9.— Suet., Vit. Jul., 23); 
and if any one was convicted of false accusation, that 
he should be branded on the forehead with a letter, 
probably K, as anciently the name of this crime was 
written KALUMNL\.—As regards the correct form 
of the name of this law, consult Heineccius, Ant. Rom., 
p. 731, ed. Haubold. 

Memmii, the name of one of the branches of an old 
plebeian house, who were themselves subdivided ir.tc 
the families of the Galli and Gemelli. The most re¬ 
markable of the Memmii were the following.—I. C. 
Memmius Gallus, was praetor B.C. 176 and 170, and 
afterward ambassador to the HDtolians.—II. C. Mem¬ 
mius Gallus, son of the preceding, was tribune of the 
commons, and a bold and popular speaker. It was 
he who induced the people to summon Jugurtha, kino 
of Numidia, to Rome, in order to expose, if possible^ 
by his means, the corruption of the Roman nobility. 
(Vid. Jugurtha.) He was afterward elected consul, 
B.C. 100, but was assassinated by Glaucia, a dis 



MEM 


MEM 


appointed candidate. ( Vicl. Marius.)—III. L. Mem- 
mius Gemellus, was tribune of the commons B.C. 
64, and prsetor B.C. 59, in which latter capacity he 
had the government of Bithynia. He was distinguish¬ 
ed as an orator and poet, and was the friend and patron 
of Catullus and Lucretius, the latter of whom dedicated 
his poern to him. Cicero describes him as a man of 
great literary acquirements, and well acquainted with 
the Grecian language and literature. {Brut., 70.) 
The same writer, however, represents him elsewhere 
as a man of licentious habits. (Ep. ad Alt., 1, 18.) 
He was an opponent of Cassar’s, and was driven into 
exile by means of the latter, on the charge of bribery 
in suing for the consulship, and also of extortion in the 
province of Bithynia. He died in exile. {Cic., Ep. 
ad Fam., 13, 1.— Manut., ad loc. — Id., Ep. ad Alt., 
6 , 1 .— Ernesti , Ind. Hist., s. v.) 

Memnon, I. a personage frequently mentioned by 
the Greek writers. He is first spoken of in the Odys¬ 
sey as the son of Eos, or the morning, as a hero re¬ 
markable for his beauty, and as the vanquisher of An- 
tilochus (4; 188; 11, 521) Hesiod calls him the 
King of the Ethiopians, and represents him as the son 
of Tithonus. ( Theog., 986 ) He is supposed to have 

fought against the Greeks in the Trojan war, and to 
have been slain by Achilles. In the 'i'vxocrTaoia, a 
lost drama of HSschylus, the dead body of Memnon is 
carried away by his mother Eos. {Fragm. No. 281, 
ed. Dindorf.) He is represented by most Greek wri¬ 
ters as King of the Ethiopians, but he is also said to 
have been connected with Persia. According to Dio¬ 
dorus (2, 22), Tithonus, the father of Memnon, govern¬ 
ed Persia, at the time of the Trojan war, as the viceroy 
of Teutamus, the Assyrian king ; and Memnon erected 
at Susa the palace which was afterward known by the 
name of Memnonium. Diodorus also adds, that the 
Ethiopians claimed Memnon as a native of their coun¬ 
try. Pausanias combines the two accounts : he repre¬ 
sents Memnon as king of the Ethiopians, but also says 
that he came to Troy from Susa, and not from Ethio¬ 
pia, subduing all the nations in his way. ( Pausan., 
10, 31, 6.— Id., 1, 42, 2.) JEschylus also, according 
to Strabo, spoke of the Cissian, that is, Susian, parent¬ 
age of Memnon {Strabo, 720): and Herodotus men¬ 
tions the palace at Susa, called Memnonia, and also 
says, that the city itself was sometimes described by 
the same name. {Herod., 5, 53, seq. — Id., 7, 151.) 
The great majority of Greek writers agree in tracing 
the origin of Memnon to Egypt or Ethiopia ; and it is 
not improbable that the name of Memnon was not 
known in Susa till after the Persian conquest of Egypt, 
and that the buildings there called Memnonian by the 
Greeks were, in name, at least, the representative of 
those in Egypt. The partial deciphering of the Egyp¬ 
tian proper names affords us sufficient reason for be¬ 
lieving, with Pausanias (1,42, 2), that the Memnon of 
the Greeks may be identified with the Egyptian Pha- 
menoph, Phamenoth, Amenophis, or Amenothph, of 
which name the Greek one is probably only a corrup¬ 
tion. Phamenoph is said to mean “ the guardian of 
the city of Ammon,” or “ devoted to Ammon,” “ be¬ 
longing to Ammon.”—Memnon, then, must be regard¬ 
ed as one of the early heroes or kings of Egypt, whose 
fame reached Greece in very early times. In the 
eighteenth dynasty of Manetho the name of Amenophis 
occurs, with this remark : “ This is he who is supposed 
to be the Memnon and the vocal stone.” He is Ameno¬ 
phis II., and the son of Thutmosis, who is said to have 
driven the shepherds out of Egypt.—As regards the 
vocal statue of Memnon, consult the article Memno¬ 
nium II. {Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 15, p. 88, seq.) 
—II. A native of Rhodes, the brother of the wife 
of Artabazus satrap of Lower Phrygia. He was ad¬ 
vanced, together with his brother Mentor, to offices of 
great trust and power by Darius Ochus, king of Persia. 
We are ignorant of the time of Memnon’s birth, but 


he is mentioned by Demosthenes as a young man in 
B.C. 352. {Aristocrat., p. 672.) Memnon possessed 
great military talents, and was intrusted by Darius 
Codomannus, the last king of Persia, on the invasion 
of Asia by Alexander, with an extensive command in 
Western Asia ; but his plans were thwarted and op¬ 
posed by the satraps, and it was contrary to his advice 
that the Persians offered battle to the Macedonians ai 
the Granicus. After the defeat of the Persians on this 
occasion, Memnon was appointed to the chief command 
in Western Asia, as the only general who was able to 
oppose the Macedonians. He first retired to Miletus, 
and afterward withdrew to Halicarnassus in Caria, 
which he defended against Alexander, and only aban¬ 
doned it at last when it was no longer possible to hold 
out. After the fall of Halicarnassus, Memnon entered 
into negotiations with the Lacedsemonians, with the 
view of attacking Macedonia. He was now complete¬ 
ly master of the sea, and proceeded to subdue the isl¬ 
ands in the iEgean. He took Chios, and obtained 
possession of the whole of Lesbos, with the exception 
of Mytilene, before which place he died, B.C. 333. 
The loss of Memnon was fatal to the Persian cause : 
if he had lived, he would probably have invaded Mace¬ 
donia, and thus have compelled Alexander to give up 
his prospects of Asiatic conquest, in order to defend 
his own dominions. {Arrian, Exp. Al., 1, 20, seqq .— 
Id. ib., 2, 1, seqq. — Diod. Sic., 16, 52.— Id., 17, 23, 
seqq. — Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 15, p. 89.)—III. A 
native of Heraclea Pontica, in Bithynia, generally re¬ 
garded as contemporary with Augustus, but who, in 
the opinion of some critics, ought to be placed in a la¬ 
ter period. He wrote a history of his native city, and 
of the tyrants who had ruled over it, in twenty-four 
books. Photius has preserved for us an abridgment, 
or, rather, an extract from the 9th to the 16th book; 
for already, in his time, the first eight, as also the last 
eight books, were lost; and it is precisely from this cir¬ 
cumstance that we are unable to fix the period when 
the history terminated, and which would give us some 
idea of the time when the author flourished. The ex¬ 
tracts preserved by Photius are more interesting from 
the fact of Memnon’s speaking, in the course of them, 
by way of digression, of other nations and communities 
with whom his townsmen had at any time political in¬ 
tercourse or relations. These extracts extend from 
the first year of the 104th Olympiad (B.C. 364) to 
B.C. 46.—The latest and best edition of the fragments 
of Memnon is that of Orellius, Lips., 1816, 8vo, con¬ 
taining fragments of the works of other writers of Her¬ 
aclea. {Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 4, p. 105.) 

Memnoisium, I. the citadel of Susa. The city also 
bore the epithet of “Memnonian.” {Herod., 5, 54; 
7, 151. — Compare remarks under the article Mem¬ 
non I.)—II. A splendid structure at Thebes, in Egypt, 
on the western side of the river. The ruins of the 
Memnonium aie regarded at the present day as per¬ 
haps the most ancient in Thebes. This beautiful relic 
of antiquity looks to the east, and is fronted by a vast 
propylaaon, of which 234 feet in length are still re¬ 
maining. The main edifice has been about 200 feet 
wide and 600 feet long, containing six courts and 
chambers, passing from side to side, with about 160 
columns thirty feet high. All the sidewalks have 
been broken down, and the materials of which they 
were composed carried away ; nothing remaining but 
a portion of the colonnade and the inner chambeis, to 
testify to the traveller what a noble structure once 
occupied this interesting spot. Champollion consid¬ 
ers the Memnonium to be the same with the tomb of 
Osymandias, described by Diodorus Siculus (1, 47). 
In the Memnonium is still to be seen the statue of 
Osymandias. It is pronounced to be by far the finest 
relic of art which the place contains, and to have been 
once its brightest ornament, though at present it is 
thrown down ' k s nedestal, laid prostrate on th* 

819 





MEMNONIUM. 


MEMNONIUM 


ground, and shattered into a thousand pieces. It 
is about 26 feet broad between the shoulders, 54 feet 
round the chest, and 13 feet from the shoulder to the 
elbow. There are on the back and on both arms 
hieroglyphical tablets, extremely well executed, which 
identify this enormous statue with the hero whose 
achievements are sculptured on the walls of the tem¬ 
ple. This figure has sometimes been confounded 
with that which bears the name of Memnon, and 
which has so long been celebrated for its vocal quali¬ 
ties. The latter, however, is one of the two statues 
vulgarly called Shama and Dama, which stand a little 
distance from Medinet Abou towards the Nile. These, 
w T e are told, are nearly equal in magnitude, being about 
52 feet in height. The thrones on which they re¬ 
spectively rest are 30 feet long, 18 broad, and be¬ 
tween seven and eight feet high. They are placed 
about 40 feet asunder; are in a line with each other, 
and look towards the east, directly opposite to the 
temple of Luxor. If there be any difference of size, 
the southern one is the smaller. It appears to be of 
one entire stone. The face, arms, and front of the 
body have suffered so much from studied violence, 
that not a feature of the countenance remains. The 
head-dress is beautifully wrought, as are also the shoul¬ 
ders, which, with the back, continue quite uninjured 
The massy hair projects from behind the ears like that 
of the sphinx. The sides of the throne are highly 
ornamented, with the elegant device of two bearded 
figures tying the stem of the flexible lotus round the 
ligula. The colossus is in a sitting posture, with the 
hands resting on the knees. The other statue, which 
stands on the north side, appears to be that of the 
vocal Memnon. It presents the same attitude as its 
companion. This famous statue was said to utter, 
when it was struck by the first beams of the sun, a 
sound like the snapping asunder o f a musical string. 
(Pausan., 1, 42, 3.) Cambyses, who spared not the 
Egyptian god Apis, suspecting some imposture, broke 
the statue from the head to the middle of the body, 
but discovered nothing. Strabo (816), who visited 
the spot in a later age, states that he saw two colos¬ 
sal figures, one of them erect, and the other broken off 
from above, and the fragments lying on the ground. 
He adds, however, a tradition, that this had been oc¬ 
casioned by an earthquake. The geographer says 
that he and /Elius Gallus, with many other friends 
and a large number of soldiers, were standing by these 
statues early in the morning, when they heard a cer¬ 
tain sound, but could not determine whether it came 
from the colossus, or the base, or from the surrounding 
multitude. He mentions also that it was a current 
belief that the sound came from that part of the statue 
which remained on the base. Pliny and Tacitus 
mention the sound produced from the statue without 
having themselves heard it ( Plin ., 36, 11. — Tacit., 
Ann., 2, 61.—Compare Juvenal, 15, 5), and Lucian 
informs us that Demetrius went on purpose to ./Egypt 
to see the pyramids andMemnon’s statue, from which 
a voice proceeded at the rising of the sun. ( Toxaris, 

6, 27.) It was a general persuasion, indeed, among 
the Egyptians as well as others, that before Cambyses 
broke this colossus, it uttered the seven mysterious 
vowels. What characterizes, however, in a particu¬ 
lar degree, the statue of vocal celebrity, is the inscrip¬ 
tions, both in Greek and Latin, in verse and prose, with 
which its legs are covered. Most of these inscriptions 
belong to the period of the early Roman emperors, 
and all attest that the writers had hpard the heavenly 
voice of Memnon at the first dawn of day. Transla¬ 
tions of two of these inscriptions follow: “ I, Publius 
Balbinus, heard the divine voice of Memnon or Pha¬ 
menoph. I came in company with the Empress Sabi¬ 
na, at the first hour of the sun's course, the 15 th year 
of the reign of Hadrian, the 24 th day of Athyr, the 
:&5th of the month of November." The other inscrip- 
820 r 


tion is as follows : “/ write after having hrai d Mem 
non.—Cambyses hath wounded me, a sione cut into 
an image of the Sun-king. I had formerly the sweet 
voice of Memnon, but Cambyses has deprived me of 
the accents which express joy and grief .— You relate 
grievous things. Your voice is now obscure. Oh 
wretched statue ! I deplore your fate." (American 
Quarterly Review, No. 9, p. 32.—Compare Champol 
lion, Precis du Systeme Hieroglyphique, vol. 1, p. 
236.) It will be perceived, from the first of these 
inscriptions, that Memnon, as we have already re¬ 
marked in a previous article (Memnon I.), is made 
identical with the Egyptian Phamenoph; and, in fact, 
the hieroglyphic legend on the statue, as deciphered 
by Champollion, shews it to have been the effigy of 
Amenophis. There is some difficulty, however, not¬ 
withstanding these inscriptions, in identifying this 
statue with the one described by Strabo and Pausani- 
as. These writers say that the upper part had in 
their time fallen down or been broken off; but at 
present the upper part exists in its proper position, 
though not in a single piece, being adapted to the 
lower portion of the body by courses of the common 
sandstone used so generally in the buildings of Thebes. 
Heeren conjectures that the broken statue might have 
been repaired after the time of Strabo.—Of the fact 
that the statue of Memnon uttered sounds when the 
sun shone upon it, there can be no doubt: as to the 
mode, however, in which this was effected, great di¬ 
versity of opinion exists. It has been thought by 
some, that the priests of Thebes might have fabricated, 
by mechanical art, a kind of speaking head, the springs 
of which were so arranged that it sent forth sounds 
at the rising of the sun. Such an explanation, how¬ 
ever, is altogether unsatisfactory ; the circumstances 
of the case are directly against it. The more gener¬ 
ally received opinion ascribes the sound to some pe¬ 
culiar property in the stone itself, of which the Egyp¬ 
tian priests artfully took advantage, though in what 
way is quite uncertain. Alexander Humboldt speaks 
of certain sounds that are heard to proceed from the 
rocks on the banks of the Oronoko, in South America, 
at sunrise : these he attributed to confined air making 
its escape from crevices or caverns, where the differ¬ 
ence of the internal and external temperature is con¬ 
siderable. The French savans attest to their having 
heard such sounds at Carnak, on the east bank of the 
Nile; and hence it has been conjectured that the 
priests, who had observed this phenomenon, took ad¬ 
vantage of their knowledge, and contrived, by .what 
means we know not, to make the credulous believe 
that a similar sound proceeded from the colossal stat¬ 
ue of Phamenoph. ( British Museum , Egypt. An - 
tiq., vol. 1, p. 266.) Mr. Wilkinson, however, in 
his work on the “Topography of Thebes” ( Lond ., 
1835), gives a far more satisfactory solution of the dif¬ 
ficulty. “The sound which this statue uttered,” ob¬ 
served this writer, “ was said to resemble the breaking 
of a harp-string, or, according to the preferable au¬ 
thority of a witness, a metallic ring (one of the in¬ 
scriptions says, ‘ like brass when struck’), and the 
memory of its daily performance is still retained in the 
traditional appellation of Salamat, ‘salutations,’ by 
the modern inhabitants of Thebes. In the lap of 
the statue is a stone, which, on being struck, emits 
a metallic sound, that might still be made use of to 
deceive a visiter who was predisposed to believe in 
its powers ; and from its position, and a square space 
cut in the block behind, as if to admit a person who 
might thus lie concealed from the most scrutinous ob¬ 
server in the plain below, it seems to have been used 
after the restoration of the statue ; and another simi¬ 
lar recess exists beneath the present site of this stone 
which might have been intended for the same purpose 
when the statue was in its mutilated state. Mr. Bur¬ 
ton and I first remarked the metallic sound of this 






MEM 


MEMPHIS. 


liune in the lap of the statue in the year 1824, and 
ronjectured that it might have been used to deceive 
the Roman v:‘=iters ; but the nature of the sound, 
which did not agree with the accounts given by an- 
tient authors, seemed to present an insuperable objec¬ 
tion. In a subsequent visit to Thebes in 1830, on 
igair. examining the statue and its inscriptions, I found 
that one Ballilla had compared it to the striking of 
Vrass ; and feeling convinced that this authority was 
more decisive than the vague accounts of those wri¬ 
ters who had never heard it, I determined on posting 
some peasants below and ascending myself to the lap 
of the statue, with a view of hearing from them the 
impression made by the sound. Having struck the 
sonorous block with a small hammer, I inquired what 
they heard, and their answer, Ente betidrob e'nahas, 
‘You are striking brass,’ convinced me that the 
sound was the same that deceived the Romans, and 
led Strabo to observe that it appeared to him as the 
effect of a slight blow." (Wilkinson's Topography 
of Thebes , p. 36, seq .)—The head of the colossal 
Memnon in the British Museum has no claim to be con¬ 
sidered the vocal Memnon described by Strabo, Taci¬ 
tus, and Pausanias. The height of the figure to which 
the head belongs was about 24 feet when entire. 
There is also an entire colossal Memnon in the British 
Museum 9 feet inches high, which is a copy of the 
great Memnon at Thebes. (Hamilton's Mgyptiaca. 
— Philological Museum , No. 4, art. Memnon. — En- 
cycl. Us. Knoiol., vol. 15, p. 88, seqq.) 

Memphis, a famous city of Egypt, on the left side 
of the Nile. Concerning the epoch of its foundation 
and its precise situation, writers are not agreed. With 
regard to its position, it would seem, from a review 
of all the authorities which bear upon the subject, 
that Memphis stood about 15 miles south of the Apex 
of the Delta; this, at least, is D’Anville’s opinion. 
Herodotus (2, 99) assigns the founding of Memphis 
to Menes, and Diodorus (1, 50) to Uchoreus. From 
the account given by the former of these writers, it 
would seem that the Nile originally ran nearer the 
Libyan mountains, and that Menes, having erected a 
large dam about a hundred stadia south of the spot 
where Memphis afterward stood, caused the river to 
pursue a more easterly course. After he had thus di¬ 
verted the current of the stream, he built Memphis 
within the ancient bed of the Nile. The great em¬ 
bankment was always an object of attention, and 
Herodotus states that under the Persian dominion it 
was annually repaired ; for if the river had at any time 
broken through the bank, the whole city would have 
been inundated. In Memphis the same Menes erected 
a magnificent temple to Vulcan or Phtha. (Herod., 1. 
c.) What Herodotus partly saw and partly learned 
from the lips of the priests relative to this city, Dio¬ 
dorus confirms (1, 50). He, too, speaks of the large 
embankment, of a vast and deep excavation which re¬ 
ceived the water of the river, and which, encircling 
the city, excep in the quarter where the mound was 
constructed, rendered it secure against any hostile 
attack. He differs from Herodotus, however, in ma¬ 
king, as has already been remarked, Uchoreus to have 
been its founder. On this point, indeed, there appears 
to have been a great diversity of opinion among the 
ancient writers, for we find the building of Memphis 
assigned also to Epaphus ( Schol., in Stat., Theb., 4, 
737) and to Apis. ( Syncellus , p. 149. — Compare 
Wesseling, ad Diod. Sic , l. c.) It is more than 
probable, that the Egyptian priests themselves were 
possessed of no definite information on this head, and 
that Memphis was the capital of Lower Egypt, as 
Thebes was of Upper Egypt, at a very early period, 
when the land was under the sway of many contempo¬ 
raneous monarchs. When, however, the whole coun¬ 
try was united under one king, the royal residence 
would seem to have been transferred to Memphis, in 


order to enjoy, probably, the cool breezes from the 
sea, and Thebes would then appear to have declined 
in importance. The circuit of Memphis is given by 
Diodorus at 150 stadia, from which it would seem that 
it was still larger in compass than the city of Thebes. 
Memphis is supposed to have suffered much in the in¬ 
vasion of Cambyses. It was adorned and beautified, 
however, under the Ptolemies ; and, about the time of 
our Saviour, was the second city of Egypt, Alexan¬ 
dra being the capital : but its decay had already be¬ 
gun. Strabo, who visited it about this time, describes 
the temple of Vulcan, another of Venus, and a third 
of Osiris, where the Apis, a sacred bull, was wor¬ 
shipped ( vid. Apis); and also a Serapeum and a large 
circus. But many of its palaces were in ruins ; an 
immense colossus, formed of a single stone, lay in 
front of the circus ; and among a number of sphinxes 
near the Serapeum, some were covered with sand to 
the middle of the body, and others were so nearly 
buried as to leave only their heads visible—melan¬ 
choly and certain presages of its future fate. In the 
seventh century the Saracen or Arabian conquest of 
Egypt occurred. Memphis was not indeed destroyed 
by the victors, yet it had to supply abundant materials 
for the new capital of Cairo, as a view of this latter 
place even at the present day conclusively proves. 
From this period Memphis fell gradually to ruin; and 
though Benjamin of Tudela, in the twelfth century 
found it still in part standing, yet the process of dilapi¬ 
dation was actively carried on, and most of the for 
mer inhabitants had taken up their residence in the 
new capital of Cairo. This latter city he calls “ New 
Misraim,” and Memphis “ Old Misraim” (c. 21). The 
first modern traveller who seems to have discovered 
the true site of Memphis is Fourmont ( Description 
des mines d'Heliopolis et de Memphis, Paris, 1755, 
8vo). The whole subject is now clearly elucidated 
by the researches of the French in Egypt. The ruins 
of the ancient city extend, on the western side of the 
Nile, for more than one geographical mile in a south¬ 
ern direction from Old Cairo. In the vicinity of 
Saccara is to be seen the spot where once stood the 
temple of Vulcan. The village which occupies a part 
of the site of Memphis is called by Fourmont Ma- 
nuf, while more modern authorities name it Myt-Rah- 
yneh. Both are, in fact, right: along the side of 
Memphis many villages rise, but the largest masses 
of ruins show themselves principally at Myt-Rahyneh, 
on the southern side of the city.—The following de¬ 
scription of Memphis, as it appeared in the twelfth 
century, is from an Oriental writer. ( Abdollatif's 
Abridgment of Edrisi, translated by Be Sacy. — En¬ 
cyclopaedia Metropolitan, art. Egypt.) “Among the 
monuments of the power and genius of the ancients 
are the remains still extant in old Misr or Memphis. 
That city, a little above Fostat, in the province of 
Djizeh, was inhabited by the Pharaohs, and is the an¬ 
cient capital of the kingdom of Egypt. Such it con¬ 
tinued to be until ruined by Bokhtnasr (Nebuchad¬ 
nezzar) ; but many years afterward, when Alexander 
had built Iskanderiyeh (Alexandrea), this latter place 
was made the metropolis of Egypt, and retained that 
pre-eminence till the Moslems conquered the country 
under Amru-ebn-el-Aasi, who transferred the seat of 
government to Fostat. At last El Moezz came frem 
the west and built El Cahirah (Cairo), which has ever 
since been the royal place of residence.—But let us 
return to the description of Menuf, also called old 
Misr. Notwithstanding the vast extent of this city, 
the remote period at which it was built, the change of 
dynasties to which it has been subjected, the attempts 
made by various nations to destroy even the vestiges, 
and to obliterate every trace of it, by removing the 
stones and materials of which it was formed—ruining 
its houses and defacing its sculptures—notwithstand¬ 
ing all this, combined with what more than four thou 

821 




MEN 


MENANDER. 


sand years mus; have done towards its destruction, 
there are yet found in it works so wonderful that they 
confound even a reflecting mind, and are such as the 
most eloquent would not be able to describe. The 
more you consider them, the more does your astonish¬ 
ment increase ; and the more you look at them, the 
more pleasure you experience. Every idea which they 
suggest immediately gives birth to some other still 
more n.'vel and unexpected ; and as soon as you ima¬ 
gine that you have traced out their full scope, you dis¬ 
cover that there is something still greater behind.” 
Among the works here alluded to, he specifies a mon¬ 
olithic temple similar to the one mentioned by Herod¬ 
otus, adorned with curious sculptures. He next ex¬ 
patiates upon the idols found among the ruins, not less 
remarkable for the beauty of their forms, the exactness 
of their proportions, and perfect resemblance to na¬ 
ture, than for their truly astonishing dimensions. We 
measured one of them, he says, which, without in¬ 
cluding the pedestal, was 45 feet in length, 15 feet 
from side to side, and from back to front in the same 
proportion. It was of one block of red granite, covered 
with a coating of red varnish, the antiquity of which 
seemed only to increase its lustre. The ruins of 
Memphis, in his time, extended to the distance of half 
a day’s journey in every direction. But so rapidly has 
the work of destruction proceeded since the twelfth 
century, that few points have been more debated by 
modern travellers than the site of this celebrated me¬ 
tropolis. The investigations of the French, as nas al¬ 
ready been remarked, appear to have decided the ques¬ 
tion. “At Myt-Rahyneh (Metrahaine), one league 
from Saccara, we found,” says General Dugna, “so 
many blocks of granite covered with hieroglyphics and 
sculptures around and within an esplanade three leagues 
in circumference, enclosed by heaps of rubbish, that we 
were convinced these must be the ruins of Memphis. 
The sight of some fragments of one of those colos- 
susses, which Herodotus says were erected by Sesos- 
tris at the entrance of the temple of Vulcan, would, 
indeed, have been sufficient to dispel our doubts had 
any remained. The wrist of this colossus shows that 
it must have been 45 feet high.” ( Russell's Egypt, 
p. 216, seqq.)— Memphis is thought bv many to have 
been the Noph of Scripture. {Isaiah, 19, 13 — Jer, 
2, U.—Ezek.,Z0, 13-16.) 

Menander (M ivavdpoq), I. a celebrated comic poet, 
of Athens, born B.C. 342. According to Suidas, he 
was the son of Diopithes and Hegistrate, wa§ cross¬ 
eyed, and yet clear-headed enough {urpabog rdf oipeig 
o^vg 6e rov vovv). His father was at this time com¬ 
mander of the forces stationed by the Athenians at the 
Hellespont, and must therefore have been a man of 
some consequence. Alexis, the comic poet, was his 
uncle and instructer in the drama. {Proleg., Aris- 
toph., p. 30.) Theophrastus was his tutor in philoso¬ 
phy and literature, and he may have derived from the 
latter the knowledge of character for which he was so 
eminent. {Diog. Laert., 5, 36.) The merit of his 
pieces obtained for him the title of Chief of the New 
Comedy. His compositions were remarkable for their 
elegance, refined wit, and knowledge of human nature. 
In his 21st year he brought out the ’0 pyy, his first 
drama. {Proleg., Aristoph., p. xxx.) He lived 29 
years more, dying B.C. 292, after having composed 
105 plays, according to some authorities {Apollod., ap. 
Aul. Gell., 17, 4), and according to others 108. {Sui¬ 
das. yeypatye Kopcpdiag pi].') He gained the prize, 
however, only eight times, notwithstanding the num¬ 
ber of his productions, and although he was the most 
admired writer of his time. One hundred and fifteen 
titles of comedies ascribed to him have come down to 
us ; but it is clear, of course, that all these are not 
correctly attributed to him. {Fabric., Biblioth. Gr., 
vol. 2, p. 460, 468, ed. Earles.) Menander is said 
to have been drowned while bathing in the harbour of 


Piraeus, and a line in the Ibis of Ovid is supposed by 
some to allude to this : “ Comicus ut mediis periit dum 
nabat in undisd' {lb., 591.) According to another 
account, he drowned himself because his rival Phile¬ 
mon obtained the prize in a dramatic contest. — All 
antiquity agrees in praise of Menander. We learn 
from Ovid that all his plots turned on love, and that 
in his time the plays of Menander were common chil¬ 
dren’s books. {Ovid, Trist., 2, 370.) Julius Csesar 
called Terence a “ dimidialus Menander ,” or “ halved 
Menander,” having reference to his professed imita¬ 
tion of the Athenian dramatist. Terence, indeed, was 
but a translator of his dramas. Plutarch preferred 
Menander to Aristophanes, and Dio Chrysostom rank¬ 
ed him above all the writers of the Old Comedy. 
Quintilian (10, 1, 69) gives him unqualified praise as 
a delineator of manners. From these notices, from 
the plays of Terence, and from an awkward compli¬ 
ment passed upon him by Aristophanes the gramma¬ 
rian, we may infer that Menander was an admirable 
painter of real life. He was a man, however, of licen¬ 
tious principles ; and his effeminate and immoral hab¬ 
its, and that carelessness in his verses which subjected 
him to the charge of plagiarism, or, at least, of copying, 
all point to the man of fashion rather than the ima¬ 
ginative poet. It has been observed that there is very 
little of the humorous in the fragments of Menander 
which remain ; but we cannot judge of a play by frag¬ 
ments. Sheridan’s plays, if reduced to the same state, 
would be open to a similar charge, although he is 
perhaps the most witty writer of any age or coun¬ 
try. The essential aim of the comedy of manners is 
to excite interest and smiles, not laughter. The plays 
of Menander were probably very simple in dramatic 
action. Terence did not keep to this simplicity, but, 
as he tells us himself, added to the main plot some 
subordinate one taken from a different piece of Me¬ 
nander; thus making, as he says, one piece out of two. 
Between the time of Aristophanes and that of Menan¬ 
der, a great change must have taken place in the Athe¬ 
nian character, which, in all probability, was mainly 
brought about by the change in the political condition 
of the Athenian state. The spirit of the people had 
declined from the noble patriotism which character¬ 
ized the plays of Aristophanes at a time when Athens 
was struggling for supremacy in Greece ; and, in the 
time of Menander, Macedonian influence had nearly 
extinguished the spirit that once animated the con¬ 
querors of Marathon and Platsea. Manners probably 
had not changed for the belter in Athens; though the 
obscenity and ribaldry of Aristophanes would no long¬ 
er have been tolerated. The transition from coarse¬ 
ness of expression to a decent propriety of language 
marks the history of literature in every country. Thus 
the personal satire and the coarseness, which charac¬ 
terized the old comedy, were no longer adapted to the 
age and circumstances ifi which Menander lived, and 
there remained nothing for him to attempt as a dram¬ 
atist but the new species of comedy, in which, by the 
unanimous judgment of all antiquity, he attained to 
the highest excellence.—The fragments of Menander 
are principally preserved in Athenseus, Stobseus, and 
the Greek lexicographers and grammarians. They 
were published along with those of Philemon bv Le 
Clerc (Clericus), in 1709, 8vo. This edition, exe¬ 
cuted with very little care, gave occasion to a very 
disgraceful literary warfare, in which Bentley, Bur- 
mann, Gronovius, De Pauw, and D’Orville took an 
active part. {Fabric., Bibl. Gr., x ol. 2, p. 457,. ed. 
Harles.) The best edition is that of Meineke, Berol., 
1823, 8vo.—It seems possible that some of the plays 
of Menander may yet exist; at least there is evidence 
to the fact of some of the plays having been in ex¬ 
istence in the seventeenth century. {Encyclop. Us. 
Knowl. , vol. 15, p. 92.— Theatre of the Greeks, 4th 
ed., p. 122.)—II. A native of Laodicea, who lived 







MEN 


MEN 


about 270 B.C He was the author of a treatise 
Ilepi ’EmfieiKTtK&v, “ Concerning discourses delivered 
for mere display — III. Surnamed “Protector,” a 
Greek writer, who lived at Constantinople during the 
latter half of the sixth century. He was one of the 
emperor’s body-gugjd, whence he derived the name of 
“Protector.” {Cod. Theodos., 6, 24.) He wrote a 
history of the Eastern empire, from A.D. 559 to A.D. 
582, in eight books, of which considerable extracts 
have been preserved in the “ Eclogce Legationum ,” 
attributed to Constantine Porphyrogenitus. The best 
edition of Menander is by Bekker and Niebuhr, Bonn., 
\830, together with the fragments of Dexippus, Eu- 
napius, Patricias, &c. {Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 15, 
p. 92.) 

Menapij, I. a powerful tribe of Belgic Gaul, occu¬ 
pying originally all the country between the Rhenus 
and Mosa {Rhine and Meuse) as far nearly as the ter¬ 
ritory of Julich. In Caesar’s time they had even pos¬ 
sessions on the eastern side of the Rhine, until driven 
thence by the German tribes. {Coes., B. G., 4, 4.) 
At a later period they removed from the banks of the 
Rhine, when the Ubii and Sigambri, from Germany, 
established themselves on the western bank of the riv¬ 
er. From a passage in Tacitus {Hist., 4, 28), it ap¬ 
pears that the territory of this tribe was subsequently 
to be found along the lower Meuse. They had a for¬ 
tress on this last-mentioned stream, whose name of 
Castellum still subsists in Kessel. In Csssar’s days 
the Menapii had no city, but lived after the German 
fashion, in the woods and among the fens. {Man¬ 
nert, Geogr., vol. 2, pt. 1, p. 201.)—II. A Gallic tribe 
who migrated into Hibernia {Ireland), and settled in 
part of the modern province of Leinster. {Mannert, 
Geogr., vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 218.) 

Menas, a freedman of Pompey the Great, noted for 
frequently changing sides in the war between Sextus 
Pompeius and the triumvirs. He first deserted the 
party of Sextus, under whom he held an important 
naval command, and went over to Augustus : then 
he returned to his former side; and again abandoned 
it and joined the forces of the enemy. (Compare Ap- 
pian , B. C., 5, 78, seqq.) The historian just quoted 
applies to him the very appropriate title of rzahLfnrpo- 
fioTTjc- Horace has been thought to allude to him in 
his 4th Epode ; but this opinion, though countenanced 
by the earlier commentators, has been rejected by 
nore recent scholars. {Boring, ad Horat., Epod., 4, 
irg.) 

Mendes, a city of Egypt, in the Delta Parvum, 
northeast of Sebennytus, and near the coast. It was 
the chief city of, and gave name to, the Mendesian 
nome. From it also the Mendesian mouth of the Nile 
(Ostium Mendesium), now the canal of Achmun, de¬ 
rived its appellation. The goat was here an object of 
adoration, and Herodotus states (2, 46) that both this 
animal and the god Pan were called in the Egyptian 
language Mendes. Pan was worshipped at this place 
with the visage and feet of a goat; though what the 
Greek writers here call Pan answers more correctly 
to the deity Priapus, or the generative attribute con¬ 
sidered abstractedly. At Mendes, female goats were 
also held sacred. The fable of Jupiter having been 
suckled by a goat probably arose from some emble¬ 
matic composition, the true explanation of which was 
known only to the initiated.—The city of Mendes 
gradually disappeared from history, and in its imme¬ 
diate vicinity rose the city of Thmuis, where the goat 
was still worshipped as at Mendss.—Jablonski {Panth. 
JEgypt., I, 2, 7) makes Mendes signify “ fertile ” or 
“ prolific,” and regards it as expressive of the fertil¬ 
izing and productive energies of nature, especially of 
the sun. In like manner, we find it stated that Thmu¬ 
is in the Egyptian tongue also signified u a goat.” 
{Hieron., ad Jovin., 2, 6.) Lacroze, on the contrary, 
makes Thmuis equivalent to “ the city of Lions.” 


Jablonski {Voc., p. 89, seqq.) inclines to the former of 
these explanations ; while Champollion, on his side, 
seeks to overthrow both, by giving Thmuis the mean¬ 
ing of “ island ” {L'Egypte sous les Pharaons , vol. 
2, p. 119. — Compare Creuzer, Symbolik, vol. 1, p. 
476.— Knight , Inquiry into the Symb. Lang., &c., $ 
191.— Class. Journ., vol. 26, p. 265.)—The ruins 
of Mendes are in the neighbourhood of the modern 
town of Achmun. ( Mannert , Geogr., vol. 10, pt. 1, 
p. 579.) 

Menecles, a native of Barce in Cyrena’ica, who 
wrote an historical work on the Athenians. Plarpo 
cration and the scholiast on Aristophanes are in doubt 
whether to assign this production to Menecles, or to a 
certain Callistratus. The scholiast on Pindar ( Pyth ., 
4, 10) has preserved a fragment from a work of Men¬ 
ecles, which relates to Battus, the founder of Cyrene. 
It is supposed to be taken from the A l6vko. of this 
writer. {Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol 3, p. 225.) 

Menecrates, I. a native of Elasa, in JEolis, con¬ 
temporary with Hecataeus. Strabo cites his work “ On 
the origin of cities” {rcepl tcrloeuv), and his “ Descrip¬ 
tion of the Hellespont ” {'E.KX'na'KovTLater) neplodog). 
—II. Tiberius Claudius, a physician in the reign of 
Tiberius, and a resident at Rome. Galen makes 
mention of him, and speaks also of several of his 
preparations. He was the inventor of the diachylon, 
a species of plaster much used even in modern times 
{Galen, de Compos. Medic., 5, p. 228), and also of a 
preparation called kudopLoq, composed of escharotic 
substances. {Id. ib.) An inscription given by Mont- 
faucon informs us that he was imperial physician, and 
that he composed 155 works. {Montfaucon, suppl., 
vol. 3, pt. 4.— Sprengel, Hist. Med., vol. 2, p. 50, 
seq.) —III. A physician, a native of Syracuse, who 
became extremely vain in consequence of his success 
in curing epilepsies. He assumed, in consequence, the 
appellation of Jupiter, as the dispenser of life unto 
others, while he gave the names of other deities to the 
individuals whom he had cured, and always had some 
of them following him as minor gods throughout the 
cities of Greece. He is said to have stipulated for 
this service on their part before he undertook to cure 
them. In a letter which he wrote to Philip of Mace- # 
don, he employed the following language : “ Menecra¬ 
tes, Jupiter (o Zevq) to Philip, the king of the Mace¬ 
donians, success ” {ev tt paTreiv). The reply of the 
Macedonian monarch was characteristic : “ Philip to 
Menecrates, a sound mind {vyialveLv): I advise thee 
to betake thyself to Anticyra.”■ —The same king; played 
off, on one occasion, a good practical joke on this crazy 
disciple of JEsculapius. Having invited him to a 
splendid banquet, he seated him apart from the other 
guests, and placed before him a censer containing frank¬ 
incense. The fumes of this were his only portion of 
the feast, while the rest of the company banqueted on 
more substantial food. Menecrates at first was de¬ 
lighted at the compliment, but the cravings of hunger 
soon convinced him that he was still a mortal, and he 
abruptly left the apartment, complaining of having been 
insulted by the king. {Athenceus, 7. p. 2S9.— JElian, 
V. H, 12, 51.) Plutarch makes Menecrates to have 
written the letter in question to Agesilaus, king of 
Sparta {Apophth. Reg. et Due.), but incorrectly ac¬ 
cording to Perizonius. {Perizon., ad JEl., l. c.) 

Menec'2mus, I a Greek philosopher, a native of 
Eretria, who flourished towards the close of the fourth 
century before Christ. Though nobly descended, he 
was obliged, through poverty, to submit to a mechan¬ 
ical employment, either as a tent-maker or mason. 
He formed an early acquaintance with Asclepiades, 
who was a fellow-labourer with him in the same occu¬ 
pation. Having resolved to devote themselves to phi¬ 
losophy, they abandoned their mean employment and 
went to Athens, where Plato presided in the Academy. 
It was soon observed that these strangers had no visn 

823 




MEN 


MEN 


ble means of subsistence, and, according to a law of 
Solon’s, they were cited before the court of Areopagus, 
to give an account of the manner in which they were 
supported. The master of one of the public prisons 
was, at their request, sent for, and attested, that every 
night these two youths went among the criminals, and, 
by grinding with them, earned two drachmas, which 
Enabled them to spend the day in the study of philoso¬ 
phy. The magistrates, struck with admiration at 
such an extraordinary proof of an indefatigable thirst 
after knowledge, dismissed them with high applause, 
and presented them with two hundred drachmas. 
{Athcnczus , 4, p. 168.) They met with several other 
friends, who liberally supplied them with whatever was 
necessary to enable them to prosecute their studies. 
By the advice of his friend, and probably in his society, 
Menedemus went from Athens to Megara, to attend 
upon the instructions of Stilpo. He expressed his 
approbation of the manner in which this philosopher 
taught, by giving him the appellation of “the Liber¬ 
al.” He next visited Elis, where he became a disci¬ 
ple of Phsedo, and afterward his successor. Transfer¬ 
ring the Eliac school from Elis to his native city, he 
gave it the name of Eretrian. In his school he neg¬ 
lected those forms which were commonly observed in 
places of this kind; his hearers were not, as usual, 
placed on circular benches around him ; but every one 
attended him in whatever posture he pleased, standing, 
walking, or sitting. At first Menedemus was received 
by the Eretrians with contempt, and, on account of the 
vehemence with which he disputed, he was often 
branded with the appellation of cur and madman. But 
afterward he rose into high esteem, and was intrusted 
with a public office, to which was affixed an annual 
stipend of 200 talents. He discharged the trust with 
fidelity and reputation, but would only accept a fourth 
part of the salary. He was afterward sent as ambas¬ 
sador to Ptolemy, Lysander, and Demetrius, and did 
his countrymen several important services. Antigonus 
entertained a personal respect for him, and professed 
himself one of his disciples. His intimacy with this 
prince made the Eretrians suspect him of a design to 
betray their city to Antigonus. To save himself, he 
•fled to Antigonus, and soon after died, in the 84th year 
of his age. It is thought he precipitated his death by 
abstaining from food, being oppressed with grief at the 
ingratitude of his countrymen, and on being unable to 
persuade Antigonus to restore the lost liberties of his 
country. ( Diog. Laert., 2, $ 125, seqq. —Enfield's 
History of Philosophy , vol. 1, p. 204, seqq.) —II. A 
native of Lampsacus, in whom the spirit of the Cynic 
sect degenerated into downright madness. Dressed 
in a black cloak, with an Arcadian cap upon his head, 
on which were drawn the figures of the twelve signs 
of the zodiac, with tragic buskins on his legs, with a 
long beard, and with an ashen staff in his hand, he 
went about like a maniac, saying that he was a spirit, 
returned from the lower world to admonish the living. 
He lived in the reign of Antigonus, king of Macedon. 
(Diog. Laert., 6, $ 102.— Suid.,s.v. <j>aog. — Enfield's 
History of Philosophy , vol. 1 , p. 314.) 

Menelai Portus (fiLeveTidio^ Tuprjv, Herod., 4, 
169), a harbour on the Mediterranean coast of Africa, 
in Cyrena'ica, and between the city of Cyrene and 
Egypt. It was fabled to have derived its name from 
Menelaus, who, on fleeing from Egypt, urded upon 
this coast. (Strab., 1195.— Scylax, p. 45.— Corn. 
Nep., Vit. Ages., 17.— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 10, pt. 
2 , P-86.) 

Menelai’um (or Menelai Mons), a range of hills on 
the left bank of the Eurotas, stretching to the south¬ 
east of the city, and rising abruptly from the river. 
Polybius (5, 22) says these hills were remarkably high 
(ftiafiepovTi jf v\prj7,ovQ), but modern travellers assure us 
that this is not the case, and that they are mere hil¬ 
locks when compared to Taygetus ( Dodwell , vol. 2, 
824 ♦ 


p. 409.— Gell, Itin. of the Morea, p. 222), so that 
perhaps we should read, in the text of Polybius, ov 
dia^epovruQ vipyXovg. (Cramer's Anc. Greece, \ ol. 3, 

p. 210.) 

Menelaus, king of Sparta, and brother of Aga¬ 
memnon. He was the son of Plisthenes; but his fa¬ 
ther dying young, and his mother Aerope having been 
taken in marriage by Atreus, her father-in-law, both 
Menelaus and Agamemnon received the common name 
of Atridae, as if they had been the sons of Atreus. 
After the murder of Atreus, Thyestes bis brother as¬ 
cended the throne, and compelled Menelaus and 
Agamemnon to flee from Argolis. They found an 
asylum, first with Polyphides, king of Sicyon, and 
then with CEneus, king of Calydon. From the latter 
court they proceeded to Sparta, where Menelaus be¬ 
came the successful candidate for the hand of Helen 
(Vid. Helena); and, at the death of his father-in-law, 
succeeded to the vacant throne. His conjugal felici¬ 
ty, however, was not destined to be of long continu¬ 
ance. Paris, the son of Priam, king of Troy, came 
on a visit to Sparta, accompanied by HCneas. Here 
he was hospitably entertained by Menelaus. The 
Trojan prince, at the banquet, bestowed gifts on hit 
fair hostess Helen, and shortly after Menelaus sailed 
to Crete, directing his queen to entertain the guests as 
long as they stayed. Venus, however, inspired Paris 
and Helen with mutual love, and, filling a vessel with 
the property of Menelaus, they fled from Sparta du¬ 
ring his absence. A tempest sent by Juno drove 
them to Sidon, which city Paris took and plundered, 
and, sailing thence to Ilium, he there celebrated his 
union with Helen. Menelaus, being informed by Iris 
of what had occurred, returned home and consulted 
with his brother Agamemnon, king of Myceme, about 
an expedition to Ilium ; he then repaired to Nestor at 
Pylos, and, going through Greece, they assembled the 
chieftains for the war, all of them having been bound, 
as is said, by an oath to lend such aid whenever it 
might be demanded of them.—After the destruction of 
Troy (vid. Troja) and the recovery of Helen (vid. 
Helena and De'iphobus), Menelaus, who had com¬ 
manded the Spartan forces in that memorable war, 
kept company with Nestor, on his return to Greece, 
until they reached the promontory of Suniom in Attica. 
Apollo here slew Phrontis, the pilot of Menelaus’ ship, 
and the latter was obliged to stay and bury him. Hav¬ 
ing performed the funeral rites, he again put to sea ; 
but, as he approached Cape Malea, Jupiter sent forth 
a storm, which drove some of his vessels to Crete, 
where they went to pieces against the rocks. Five, 
on board of one of which was Menelaus himself, were 
carried by the wind and waves to Egypt. (Od., 3, 
276, seqq.) During the eight years of his absence, 
Menelaus visited all the adjacent coasts, Cyprus. 
Phoenicia, Egypt, the Ethiopians, Sidonians, and 
Erembians, and also Libya (Od., 4, 81, seqq.), where 
the lambs are born horned, and the sheep yean three 
times a year, and milk, cheese, and flesh are in the 
utmost abundance, for king and shepherd alike. In 
these various countries he collected much wealth ; but, 
leaving Egypt on his voyage homeward, he neglected 
offering sacrifices to the gods, and was, in consequence, 
detained by want of wind at the isle of Pharos 
They were here twenty days, and their stock of pro¬ 
visions were nearly exhausted, when Menelaus was in¬ 
formed of what he ought to do by Proteus, whom ho 
had caught for that purpose by the advice of the sea- 
nymph Idothea. Having offered due sacrifices to ihs 
immortal gods, a favourable wind was sent, which 
speedily carried him homeward ; and he arrived in his 
native country on the very day that Orestes was giv¬ 
ing the funeral-feast for his mother and JEgisthus, 
whom he had slain. (Od., 4, 351, seqq.) Such is the 
narrative of Homer. Helena, according to thi 3 sam« 
poet, was the companion of all the wanderings of 





MEN 


MEN 


Menalaus ; but the Egyptian priests pretended that 
Paris was driven by adverse winds to Egypt, where 
Proteus, who was then king, learning the truth, kept 
Helena and dismissed Paris; that the Greeks would 
not believe the Trojans, that she was not in their city, 
till they had taken it; and that then Menelaus sailed 
to Egypt, where his wife was restored to him. (He¬ 
rod., 2, 113, seqq .— Vid. Helena.— Keightley's My- 
tkalogy, p. 492, seqq.) —As regards the reconciliation 
of Menelaus and Helen, Virgil follows the account 
which makes the latter to have ingratiated herself into 
the favour of her first husband by betraying De'ipho- 
bus into his hands on the night when Troy was taken. 
(Mn., 6, 494, seqq. —Compare Quint. Col., 13, 354, 
seqq. — Diet. Cret., 5, 116.) 

Menenius, I. Agrippa, a celebrated Roman, who 
obtained the consulship B.C. 501, and who afterward 
prevailed upon the people, when they had seceded to 
the Mons Sacer, to return to the city. He related on 
this occasion the well-known fable of the stomach and 
the limbs. (Liv., 2, 10.— Id., 2, 32.)—II. Titus, son 
of the preceding, was chosen consul with C. Hora- 
tius, B.C. 475, when he was defeated by the Tusci, 
and being called to an account by the tribunes for this 
failure, was sentenced to pay a heavy fine. He died 
of grief soon after. (Liv., 51, seqq.) 

Menes, the first king mentioned as having reigned 
over Egypt, and who is supposed to have lived above 
2000 B.C., about the time fixed by biblical chronolo- 
gists for the foundation of the kingdom of Assyria by 
Nimrod, and corresponding also with the era of the 
Chinese emperor Yao, with whom the historical pe¬ 
riod of China begins. All inquiries concerning the 
history of nations previous to this epoch are mere 
speculations unsupported by evidence. The records 
of the Egyptian priests, as handed down to us by He¬ 
rodotus, Manetho, Eratosthenes, and others, place the 
era of Menes several thousand years farther back, 
reckoning a great number of kings and dynasties after 
him, with remarks on the gigantic stature of some of 
the kings, and on their wonderful exploits, and other 
characteristics of mystical and confused tradition. 
(Consult Eusebius , Chron. Canon., ed. Maii et Zoh- 
rab., Mediol., 1818.) It has been conjectured that 
several of Manetho’s dynasties were not successive, 
but contemporaneous, reigning over various parts of 
the country. From the time of Menes, however, 
something like a chronological series has been made 
out by Champollion, Wilkinson, and other Egyptian 
chronologists, partly from the list of Manetho, and 
partly from the Phonetic inscriptions on the monu¬ 
ments of the country.—Menes, it is said by some 
(Herod., 2, 99), built the city of Memphis, and, in the 
prosecution of his work, stopped the course of the 
Nile near it, by constructing a causeway several miles 
broad, and caused it to run through the mountains. 

( Vid. Nilus.) Diodorus Siculus, however (1, 50), as¬ 
signs the foundation of Memphis to Uchoreus. Bish¬ 
op Clayton contends that Menes was not the first king 
of Egypt, but that he only transferred the seat of em¬ 
pire from Thebes to Memphis. ( Vid. remarks under 
the article Memphis.) Zoega finds an analogy be¬ 
tween the names Menes and Mnevis; to which may 
be added those of the Indian Menu and the Cretan 
Minos, to say nothing of the German Mannus. (Zoe¬ 
ga, de Obelise., p. 11.) 

Menesthei Portus, a harbour not far from Gades, 
on the coast of Spain, in the territory of Baetica. An 
oracle of Menestheus was said to have been in or near 
the place. The modern Puerto de Santa Maria is 
thought to correspond to the ancient spot. (Ukert, 
Geogr., vol. 2, p. 342.) 

Menestheus or Mnestheus, a son of Peteus, and 
great-grandson of Erechtheus, who so insinuated him- 
ielf into the favour of the people of Athens, that, during 
the long absence of Theseus, who was engaged in per- 

5 M 


forming his various adventures, he was elected king. 
The lawful monarch, at his return home, was expelled, 
and Menestheus established his usurpation by his pop¬ 
ular manners and great moderation. As he had been 
one of Helen's suiters, he went to the Trojan war at 
the head of the people of Athens, and died on his re¬ 
turn in the island of Melos. He was succeeded by 
Demophoon, the son of Theseus. (Plut., Vit. Thes.) 

Meninx, or Lotophagitis Insula, an island off 
the coast of Africa, in the vicinity of the Syrtis Minor, 
and forming part of its southern side. Its name of 
Lotophagitis (AoTocpayin?) or Lotophagorum insula 
(AioroQdyov vtjooq) was given it by the Greeks, from 
the belief that in this quarter was to be placed Homer’s 
land of the Lotophagi; and, in fact, both the island it¬ 
self, and also the adjacent country along the coast of 
the Syrtis, produced abundance of this sweet and 
tempting fruit. (Herod., 2, 92.— Id., 4, 177.— Polyb., 
12, 2.— Eustath. ad Horn., Od., 10, 84, p. 1616.) In 
our editions of Scylax, the island is called Brachion 
(B paxeiuv), a manifest interpolation, which has found 
its way into the text from the note or gloss of some in¬ 
dividual, who wished to convey the information that 
there were many shallows in the neighbourhood. (Man- 
nert, Geogr., vol. 10, pt. 2, p. 144.)—The island fell 
into the hands of the Romans during the first Punic 
war, and then, for the first time, we learn that the true 
name, and the one used among the natives themselves, 
was Meninx ( Mrfviy f.— Polyb., 1, 39.—Compare Di- 
onys. Perieg., v. 480). From this time forward, 
Meninx remained the more usual appellation among 
the geographical writers.—Strabo (834) informs us 
that the chief city bore the same name with the island. 
Pliny (5, 4) speaks of the city of Meninx towards Af¬ 
rica, and of another named Thoar. Ptolemy likewise 
mentions two cities, Meninx and Gerra, the former of 
which he places to the northeast, and the latter to the 
southwest. It is more than probable, that the chief 
city of the island was not called Meninx, but only re¬ 
ceived this name from those who traded thither, and 
that the true appellation was Girba, which was given 
at a later period to the whole island. (Aurel. Viet., 
Epit.., c. 31. “ Creati in insula Meninge, quee nunc 

Girba dicitur .”) The Arabs still give it the name oi 
Gerbo or Zerbi. —Meninx was famed for its purple 
dye, obtained from the shellfish along its shores, and 
Pliny ranks it next in value to the Tyrian. 

Menippus, a cynic philosopher, born at Sinope in 
Asia Minor, but whose family were originally from 
Gadara, in Palestine. According to an authority cited 
by Diogenes Laertius, he was at first a slave, but af¬ 
terward obtained his freedom by purchase, and event¬ 
ually succeeded, by dint of money, in obtaining citi¬ 
zenship at Thebes. Here he pursued the employment 
of a money-lender or usurer, and obtained from this cir¬ 
cumstance the appellation of 'HpepodaveicrTr/c (“one 
who lends money at daily interest’ 1 ' 1 ). Having been 
defrauded, and having lost, in consequence, all his prop¬ 
erty, he hung himself in despair. Menippus was the 
author of several works, and his satiric style was imi¬ 
tated by Varro. (Vid. remarks on the Menippean Sa¬ 
tire, under the article Yarro.) Among other produc¬ 
tions, he wrote a piece entitled A toyevovg rrpaenc, 
“ The Sale of Diogenes ,” and another called Neicvia, 
“ Necromancy .” It is thought by some, that this lat¬ 
ter performance suggested to some imitator of Lucian 
the idea of composing the “ Menippus, or Oracle of 
the Dead," which is found among the works of the 
native of Samosata. (Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 2, 
p. 363.) 

Mennis, a city of Assyria, in the district of Adiabene, 
to the south of Arbela. The adjacent country abound¬ 
ed with bitumen. Mannert supposes it to have been 
near the modern Dus-Churmalu. ( Mannert , Geogr., 
vol. 5, p. 453.) Curtins calls it Memnium (5, 1). 

‘ Menodotus, a physician of the empiric school, born 

825 





MER 


' MERCURIIJS. 


at Nicomedia. Hb was a disciple of Antiochus of 
Laodicea in Lycia, and lived during the reigns of Tra¬ 
jan and Hadrian. Sextus Empiricus ranks him among 
the Sceptics. ( Pyrrhon. liypotyp., 1, 222, p. 57.) 
He banished analogy from the Empiric system, and 
substituted what was called epilogism. The hatred 
which he bore towards the dogmatists was so great, 
that he never designated them by any other but the 
most derisory epithets, such as rpibovLKoi, “ old-rou¬ 
tine-men;" dpLfiv/JovTec, “furious lions;" Spijuv/iu 5- 
povq, “ contemptible fools," &c. ( Galen , de subfog. 

empir., c. 9, p. 65.— Sprengel, Hist. Med., vol. 1, p. 
494.) 

Menceceus (three syllables), the father of Jocasts 

Mencetes, I. the pilot of the ship Gyas, at the na¬ 
val games exhibited by .Tineas at the anniversary of 
his father’s death. He was thrown into the sea by 
tv’s commander for having so unskilfully steered his 
vessel as to prevent his obtaining the prize in the 
contest. He saved himself by swimming to a rock. 
(Virg., JEn., 5, 161.) — II. An Arcadian, killed by 
Turnus in the war of TJneas. (Id., 12, 517.) 

Mencetiades. Vid. Mencetius. 

Mengetius, a son of Actor apd JEgina after her 
amour with Jupiter. He left his mother and went to 
Opus, where he had, by Sthenele, Patroclus, often call¬ 
ed from him Mencetiades. Mencetius was one of the 
Argonauts. (Apollod., 3, 14. — Horn., II., 1, 307.— 
Hygin., fab., 97.) 

Menon, a Thessalian commander in the expedition 
of Cyrus the Younger against his brother x4.rtaxerxes. 
He commanded the left wing in the battle of Cunaxa. 
He was entrapped along with the other generals after 
the battle by Tissaphernes, but was not put to death 
with them. Xenophon states that he lived an entire 
year after having had some personal punishment inflict¬ 
ed, and then met with an end of his existence. (Anab., 

2, 6, 29.) Diodorus states that he was not punished 
with the other generals, because it was thought that he 
was inclined to betray the Greeks, and he was there¬ 
fore allowed to escape unhurt. (Diod. Sic., 14, 27.) 
Marcellinus, in his life of Thucydides, accuses Xeno¬ 
phon of calumniating Menon, on account of his enmity 
towards Plato, who was a friend of Menon. ( Vit. 
Thucyd., p. 14, ed. Bip. — Schneider, ad Xen., Anab., 
loc. cit.) 

Mentor, I. one of the most faithful friends of Ulys¬ 
ses, and the person to whom, before his departure for 
Troy, he consigned the charge of his domestic affairs. 
Minerva assumed his form and voice in her exhortation 
to Telemachus, not to degenerate from the valour and 
wisdom of his sire. (Od., 2, 268.) The goddess, 
under the same form, accompanied him to Pylos. 
(Od., 3, 21, seqq.) —II. A very eminent engraver on 
silver, whose country is uncertain. He flourished be¬ 
fore the burning of the temple at Ephesus, in B.C. 
356, as several of his productions were consumed in 
this conflagration. (Plin., 32, 12, 55.— Martial , Ep., 

3, 41.— Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.) 

Mera or Mjera, a dog of Icarius, who by his cries 
showed Erigone where her murdered father had been 
thrown. Immediately after this discovery the daugh¬ 
ter hung herself in despair, and the dog pined away, 
and was made a constellation in the heavens, known 
by the name of Canis. (Ovid, Met., 7, 363.— Hygin., 
fab-, 130.— jElian, H. A., 7, 28.) 

Mercurii Promontorium, the same with the Her- 
maeum Promontorium. A promontory of Africa, on 
the coast of Zeugitana, now Cape Bon. 

Mercurius, I. a celebrated god of antiquity, called 
Hermes ('Epyjjc;) by the Greeks. Homer and Hesiod, 
however, style him Hermeias ('E pyelaq ); and wherever 
the form 'E pyr/g occurs in these poets, the passage 
may be regarded as an interpolation. Mercury was 
the messenger of the gods, and of Jupiter in particular; 
he was the god of speech, of eloquence; the patron of 


orators, of merchants, of all dishonest persons, and 
particularly thieves, of travellers, and of shepherds. 
He also presided over highways and crossways, and 
conducted the souls of the dead to the world below. 
The Greeks ascribed to their Hermes the invention of 
the lyre, of letters, of commerce, and of gymnastic 
exercises, and they placed his birth either on Mount 
Cerycius in Boeotia, or on Mount Cyllene in Arca¬ 
dia. In the Iliad he is called the son of Jupiter 
(24, 333), but his mother is unnoticed. In the later 
legends, however, he is styled the offspring of Jupitei 
and Maia. His infancy was intrusted to the Seasons 
or Horae ; but he had hardly been laid in his cradle, 
when he gave a proof of his skill in abstracting the 
property of others, by stealing away the oxen of Ad- 
metus, which Apollo was tending on the banks of 
the Amphrysus. He displayed his thievish propen¬ 
sities on other occasions also, by depriving Neptune 
of his trident, Venus of her girdle, Mars of his sword, 
Jupiter of his sceptre, and Vulcan of many of the im¬ 
plements of his art. It was his dexterity that recom¬ 
mended him to the notice of the gods, and that pro¬ 
cured for him the office of cup-bearer to Jupiter, in 
which station he was succeeded by Hebe. Jupiter 
presented him with a winged cap (petasus), winged 
sandals (talaria), and a short sword ( harpe) bent like 
a scythe. This last he lent on one occasion to Per¬ 
seus, to enable him to destroy the Gorgon Medusa. 
(Vid. Perseus and Gorgones.) By means of his cap 
and sandals he was enabled to go into whatever part 
of the universe he pleased with the greatest celerity, 
and, besides, he was permitted to make himself invisi¬ 
ble, and to assume whatever shape he pleased. He 
was the ambassador and plenipotentiary of the gods, and 
was concerned in all alliances and treaties. He was 
the confidant of Jupiter also in his erotic relations with 
the fair ones of earth, and was often set to watch and 
baffle the jealous schemes of Juno. After inventing 
the lyre, he gave it to Apollo, and received from him 
in exchange the “ golden three-leafed rod,” the giver 
of wealth and riches. (Vid. Caduceus.) In the wars 
of the giants against the gods, Mercury showed himself 
brave, spirited, and active.—He delivered Mars from 
the long confinement w r hich he had suffered from the 
Aloidas ; he tied Ixion to his wheel in the infernal re¬ 
gions ; he destroyed the hundred-eyed Argus; he sold 
Hercules to Omphale, the queen of Lydia ; he con¬ 
ducted Priam to the tent of Achilles, to redeem the 
body of his son Hector ; and he carried the infant 
Bacchus to the nymphs of Nysa. Mercury had many 
surnames and epithets. He was called Cyllenius, Ca- 
duceator, Argiphontes (or the slayer of Argos), Chtho- 
nius (or the god who guides the dead to the world 
below), Agoneus (or the god who presides over gym¬ 
nastic exercises), &c. He was father of Autolycus, by 
Chione; Myrtilius, by Cleobula ; Libys, by Libya; 
Echion and Eurytus, by Antianira; Cephalus, by 
Creiisa; Prylis, by Issa; Hermaphroditus, by Venus; 
Eudorus. by Polimela, &c. The Roman merchants 
yearly celebrated a festival on the the 13th of May, in 
honour of Mercury, in a temple near the Circus Maxi¬ 
mus. A pregnant sow was then sacrificed, and some¬ 
times a calf, and particularly the tongues of animals 
were offered. After the votaries had sprinkled them¬ 
selves with lustral water, they offered prayers to the 
divinity, and entreated him to be favourable to them, aud 
to forgive whatever dishonest means they had employed 
in the acquisition of gain.—Mercury is usually repre¬ 
sented with a chlamys or cloak neatly arranged on his 
person, with his petasus or winged cap, and the talaria 
or winged sandals. In his hand he bears his caduceus 
or staff, with two serpents twined about it, and which 
sometimes has wings at its extremity. The more an¬ 
cient statues of Mercury were nothing more than 
wooden posts, with a rude head and a pointed beard 
carved on them. They were set up on the roads and 




MERCURIUS. 


M E R 


aotpaths, and in the fields and gardens. The Herm* 
»'ere pillars of stone; and the heads of some other 
deity at times took the place of that of Hermes ; such 
were the Hermathenae, Hermeracles, and others. The 
veneration in which these Hermae were held by the 
Athenians may be inferred from the odium excited 
against Alcibiades when suspected of having disfigured 
these images.—Hermes or Mercury may be regarded 
as in some degree a personification of the Egyptian 
priesthood. It is in this sense, therefore, that he was 
regarded as the confidant of the gods, their messenger, 
the interpreter of their decrees, the genius who presi¬ 
ded over science, the conducter of souls ; elevated in¬ 
deed above the human race, but the minister and the 
agent of celestial natures. He was designated by the 
name Thot. According to Jablonski ( Panth. Mgypt., 
5, 5, 2), the word Thot, Theyt, Thayt , or Thoyt, sig¬ 
nified in the Egyptian language an assembly, and more 
particularly one composed of sages and educated per¬ 
sons, the sacerdotal college of a city or temple. Thus 
the collective priesthood of Egypt, personified and 
considered as unity, was represented by an imaginary 
being, to whom was ascribed the invention of language 
and writing, which he had brought from the skies and 
imparted to man, as well as the origin of geometry, 
arithmetic, astronomy, medicine, music, rhythm : the 
institution of religion, sacred processions, the intro¬ 
duction of gymnastic exercises, and, finally, the less 
indispensable, though not less valuable, arts of archi¬ 
tecture, sculpture, and painting. So many volumes 
were attributed to him, that no human being could 
possibly have composed them. (Fabric., Biblioth. 
Graze., 1, 12, 85-94.) To him was even accorded the 
honour of discoveries made long subsequent to his ap¬ 
pearance on earth. All the successive improvements 
in astronomy, and, generally speaking, the labours of 
every age, became his peculiar property, and added to 
his glory. In this way, the names of individuals were 
lost in the numerous order of priests, and the merit 
which each one had acquired by his observations and 
labours turned to the advantage of the whole sacer¬ 
dotal association, in being ascribed to its tutelary ge¬ 
nius ; a genius who, by his double figure, indicated the 
necessity of a double doctrine, of which the more im¬ 
portant part was to be confined exclusively to the 
priests. An individual of this order, therefore, found 
his only recompense in the reputation which he ob¬ 
tained for the entire caste. To these leading attributes 
of Thoth was joined another, that of protector of com¬ 
merce • and this, in like manner, was intended to ex¬ 
press the influence of the priesthood on commercial 
enterprises. Our limits will not permit any far¬ 
ther development of the various ideas which, besides 
those already mentioned, were combined in the imagi¬ 
nary character of Hermes: his identity, namely, with 
Sirius, the star which served as the precursor of the 
inundation of the Nile, and the terrestrial symbol of 
which was the gazelle, that flies to the desert on the 
rising of the stream; his rank in demonology, as the 
father of spirits and guide of the dead ; his quality of 
incarnate godhead, subject to death; and his cosmo- 
gonical alliance with the generative fire, the light, the 
source of all knowledge, and with water, the principle 
of all fecundity. It is surprising, however, to observe 
how strangely the Grecian spirit modified the Egyptian 
Hermes, to produce the Hermes or Mercury of Hel¬ 
lenic mythology. The Grecian Hermes is quite a dif¬ 
ferent being from the Egyptian. He neither presides 
over the sciences, over writing, over medicine, nor 
over astronomy. He has not composed any divine 
works containing the gerrne and elements of these sev¬ 
eral departments of knowledge. The interpreter of 
the gods in Egypt, he is in Greece only their messen¬ 
ger ; and it is by virtue of this latter title that he pre¬ 
serves his wings, which were among the Egyptians 
merely an astronomical symbol For the shackles on 


the feet of Saturn serve to explain the wings ol Mer¬ 
cury. Saturn is represented in this state, because it 
requires thirty years nearly to complete its revolution 
round the sun ; while Mercury has wings, because this 
planet accomplishes the same revolution in little less 
than three months. Again, if, in memory of the di¬ 
rections given by the priests of Ammon to the caravans 
that traversed the desert, the Egyptian Hermes be¬ 
comes the protector of commerce, the Greeks managed 
to deprive this peculiar attribute of all its gravity. With 
them Hermes or Mercury, by a ludicrous analogy, is 
made the god of fraud and falsehood. Is this a reac 
tion of the Grecian spirit against the pretensions of a 
sacerdotal order, and one which preserves, at the same 
time, a reminiscence of what the Egyptian Hermes 
was 1—It is worthy of remark, moreover, how, even 
when all the sacerdotal attributes of this deity have 
disappeared from the popular belief, they again appear 
in the mystic portion of the early Greek religion which 
the Orphic and Homeric hymns have preserved to us. 
The Hermes of these hymns has nothing in common 
with the Hermes of the Iliad, or even of the Odyssey. 
At one time he recalls to our minds all the peculiar 
qualities of the Egyptian Hermes, at another the 
strange legends of the Hindoo avatar?. The dif¬ 
ference between the sacerdotal and the Greek Her¬ 
mes becomes very perceptible among the Romans. 
This people first received the sacerdotal Hermes, 
whose worship had been brought into Etruria by the 
Pelasgi previous to the time of Homer; and as 
the earlier Hermes was represented by a column 
(Jablonski , Panth. Mgygt., 5, 5, 15), he became 
with them the god Terminus. When, however, the 
Romans were made acquainted with the twelve great 
deities of the Athenians, they adopted the Grecian 
Hermes under the name of Mercury, preserving at the 
same time the remembrance of their previous tradi¬ 
tions. (Compare Constant, de la Religion, vol. 2, p. 
122, in nods, ibid., p. 409.— Creuzer's Symbolik, par 
Guigniaut, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 453, id., pt. 2, p. 851.)— 
II. Trismegistus, a celebrated Egyptian priest and 
philosopher. Manetho distinguishes him from the first 
Hermes or Thot, and says of him (ap. Syncell., p. 
40), that from engraved tables of stone, which had been 
buried in the earth, he translated the sacred characters 
written by the first Mercury, and wrote the explana¬ 
tions in books, which were deposited in the Egyptian 
temples. He calls him the son of Agathodaemon, and 
adds, that to him are ascribed the restoration of the 
wisdom taught by the first Mercury, and the revival 
of geometry, arithmetic, and the arts among the 
Egyptians. The written monuments of the first Her¬ 
mes having been lost or neglected in certain civil 
revolutions or natural calamities, the second Hermes 
recovered them, and made use of them as means of es 
tablishing his authority. (Herod., 2, 82.— Marsham, 
Chron., p. 241. — Clem. Alex., Strom., 5, p. 242.) 
By an ingenious interpretation of the symbols inscribed 
upon the ancient columns, he impressed the sacred 
sanction of antiquity upon his own institutions ; and, 
to perpetuate their influence upon the minds of the 
people, he committed the columns, with his own in¬ 
terpretations, to the care of the priesthood. Hence 
he obtained a high degree of respect among the peo¬ 
ple, and was long revered as the restorer of learning. 
From the tables of the first Hermes he is said to have 
written, as commentaries and explanations, an incred¬ 
ible number of books. It has been asserted that he 
was the author of more than 20,000 volumes, which 
treated of universal principles, of the nature and orders 
of celestial beings, of astrology, medicine, and other 
topics. For an account of his pretended works, con¬ 
sult the article Trismegistus. 

Meriones, son of Molus, a Cretan prince, and of 
Melphidis. He had been among the suitors of Helen, 
and was therefore bound to join in the common causa 

827 




M E R 


ME ROE. 


■gainst Troy. Meriones assisted Idomeneus in the 
conduct of the Cretan troops, under the character of 
charioteer, and not only distinguished himself by his 
Talour, but, at the funeral games in honour of Patro- 
clus, he obtained the prize for archery. {II., 2, 651; 
4 ; 254 ; 5, 59, &c.) 

Mermnad^e, the name of a dynasty of kings in Lyd¬ 
ia, of whom Gyges was the first. The line ended 
with Croesus. They claimed descent from Hercules. 
{Vid. Lydia.) 

Mer5e, according to the ancient writers, an island 
and state of Ethiopia. Herodotus only mentions the 
city of Meroe. All other writers, however, describe 
Mere>e as an island, with a city of the same name. 
It was situated between the Astaboras and Astapus. 
“ The Astaboras,” says Agatharchides, “ which flows 
through Ethiopia, unites its stream with the greater 
Nile, and thereby forms the island of Meroe by flow¬ 
ing round it. ( Huds ., Geogr. Min., 1, p. 37.) Stra¬ 
bo is still more precise. “ The Nile,” says this geog¬ 
rapher, “receives two great rivers, which run from 
the east out of some lakes, and encompass the great 
island of Meroe. One is called the Astaboras, which 
flows on the eastern side ; the other the Astapus. 
Seven hundred stadia above the junction of the Nile 
and the Astaboras is the city of Meroe, bearing the 
same name as the island.” ( Strab., 786.) A glance 
at the map, remarks Heeren ( Ideen, vol. 4, p. 397; 
vol. 1, p. 385, Oxford transl.), will immediately show 
where the ancient Meroe may be found. The Asta¬ 
boras, which flows round it on the eastern side, is the 
present Atbar or Tacazze; the Astapus, which bounds 
it on the left, and runs parallel with the Nile, is the 
Bahr el Abiad, or White River. From these and 
Dther statements, Heeren comes to the following con¬ 
clusions : First: that the ancient island of Meroe is 
the present province of Atbar, between the river of 
the same name, or the Tacazze , on the right, and the 
White stream and the Nile on the left. The point 
where the island begins is at the junction of the Ta¬ 
cazze and the Nile ; in the south it is enclosed by a 
branch of the above-mentioned river, the Waldubba, 
and a branch of the Nile, the Bahad, whose sources 
are nearly in the same district, although they flow in 
different directions. It lies between 13° and 18° N. 
lat. In recent times a great part is included in the 
kingdom of Sennaar, while the southern part belongs 
to Abyssinia. — Secondly: Meroe was, therefore, an 
extensive district, surrounded by rivers; whose super¬ 
ficial contents exceeded those of Sicily rather more 
than one half. It cannot be called an island in the 
strictest sense of the word, because, although it is very 
nearly, it is not completely enclosed by rivers; but it 
was taken for an island of the Nile, because, as Pliny 
(5, 9) expressly observes, the various rivers which 
flow round it were all considered as branches of that 
stream. It becomes, moreover, as we are told by 
Bruce, a complete island in the rainy season, in con¬ 
sequence of the overflowing of the river.— Thirdly: 
Upon this island stood the city of the same name. It 
is impossible, from the statements of Herodotus, to de¬ 
termine precisely its site. Fortunately, other writers 
give us more assistance. According to Eratosthenes 
{ay. Strab., 1. c.), it lay 700 stadia (about 80 English 
miles) above the junction of the Tacazze or Astabo¬ 
ras. and the Nile. Pliny (6, 29), following the state¬ 
ments of those whom Nero had sent to explore it, 
reckons 70 milliaria (63 English miles); and adds 
the important fact, that near it, in the river on the 
right side going up stream, is the small island Tadu, 
which serves the city as a port. From this it may be 
concluded with certainty, that the city of Meroe was 
not on the Tacazze , as might otherwise be conjec¬ 
tured from the names of those rivers being so unset¬ 
tled, but on the proper Nile ; and its situation, not¬ 
withstanding the little difference between Pliny and 
828 


Eratosthenes, may be determined with the nicest ac 
curacy by the small island just mentioned, which Bruce 
has not omitted to note upon his map. The ancient 
city of Meroe . then stood a little below the present 
Shendy, under 17° N. lat., 5?° E. long. Bruce saw 
its ruins from a distance. What Bruce and Burck- 
hardt, however, only saw at a distance and hastily, 
has now been carefully examined by later travellers, 
especially Caillaud, and placed before our eyes by 
their drawings. But, although it is probable that the 
true site of Meroe has here been indicated, yet it is 
proper to remark, that antiquaries have differed on 
the subject: some considering the ruins of Mount 
Berkel, considerably farther down the river, to point 
to the spot. {Edinb. Review, vol. 41, p. 181.) Mount 
Berkel is situated in Ear Sheyga, near a village called 
Merawe, at about 18° 3U N. lat., and the ruins are 
nearly of equal extent with those near Shendy. The 
circumstance of the name Merawe has doubtless led 
partly to this idea, but the argument is rendered null 
by the fact mentioned by Caillaud, that a place not 
far from Shendy, covered with remains of ancient 
buildings, is called El Meraouy, and similar names 
are by no means uncommon in many of the provinces 
of the Nile. The ruins at Mount Berkel, according 
to Caillaud, are probably those of Napata, originally 
the second city, and latterly the capital, of Ethiopia. 
{Long's Anc. Geogr., p. 78.) The site of the ancient 
city of Meroe is still indicated by the remains of a 
few temples, and of many other edifices of sandstone. 
The whole extent, according to Caillaud, amounts to 
nearly 4000 feet. The plain allowed sufficient room 
for a much larger city, and that the city itself was 
larger than what is here stated cannot for a moment 
be doubted. 

1. Religion of Meroe. 

From the observations of travellers who have caie 
fully examined the ruins of Meroe, we arrive at the 
important deduction, that this region was once inhab¬ 
ited by a people equally as far advanced in refinement 
as the Egyptians, and whose style of architecture and 
religious ceremonies, as portrayed on the remains of 
that architecture, bear a close resemblance to those 
of Egypt. All this becomes extremely interesting 
when we call to mind what is stated by many of the 
ancient writers, that Meroe was the cradle of the re¬ 
ligious and political institutions of Egypt: that here 
the arts and sciences arose ; that here hieroglyphic 
writing was discovered ; and that temples and pyra¬ 
mids had already sprung up in this quarter, while 
Egypt still remained ignorant of their existence. It 
stands as an incontrovertible fact, remarks Heeren 
{Ideen, vol. 4, p. 419 ; vol. 1, p. 406, Oxford transl ), 
that, besides the pastoral and hunting tribes, which 
led a nomade life to the west of the Nile, and still 
more to the east, as far as the Arabian Gulf, there 
existed a cultivated people near this stream, in the 
valley through which it flows, who had fixed abodes, 
built cities, temples, and sepulchres, and whose re¬ 
mains even now, after the lapse of so many centu¬ 
ries, still excite our astonishment. It may farther be 
stated as a certainty, that the civilization of this peo¬ 
ple was, in an especial manner, connected with their re¬ 
ligion ; that is, with the worship of certain deities. 
The remains of their foundation prove this too clearly 
for any doubt to be entertained on the subject. This 
religion, upon the whole, is not uncertain. It was 
the worship of Ammon and his kindred gods. The 
circle of these deities was very nearly of the same ex¬ 
tent as that of Olympus among the Greeks ; it might, 
possibly, be somewhat larger. It became extended 
by the appearance of the same deity in different rela¬ 
tions, and consequently with changed attributes, espe¬ 
cially with different head-ornaments, and also'under 
various forms. Without digressing into a detailed 





MEROE. 


MEROE. 


description of particular deities, we may venture a step 
farther, adds the same writer, without fear of contradic¬ 
tion, and. assert that this worship had its origin in nat¬ 
ural religion connected with agriculture. The great 
works of nature were revered accordingly as they pro¬ 
moted o: regarded and hindered this. It seems nat¬ 
ural that :he sun and moon, so far as they determined 
the seasons and the year, the Nile and the earth as 
sources of fruitfulness, the sandy deserts as the oppo- 
eers of it, should all be personified. One thing is re¬ 
markable, namely, that of all the representations of 
Nubia yet known, there is not one which, according 
Jo our notions, is offensive to decency. But this wor¬ 
ship had, besides, as we know with certainty, a sec¬ 
ond element, oracles. Ammon was the original ora¬ 
cle-god of Africa: if afterward, as was the case in 
Egypt, other deities delivered oracles, yet they were 
of his race, of his kindred. Even beyond Egypt we 
hear of the oracles of Ammon. “The only gods wor¬ 
shipped in Meroe,” says Herodotus (2, 29), “are 
Zeus and Dionysos” (which he himself explains to be 
Ammon and Osiris). “They also have an oracle of 
Ammon, and undertake their expeditions when and 
how the god commands.” How these oracles were 
delivered we learn partly from history, partly from 
representations on monuments. In the sanctuary 
stands a ship ; upon it many holy vessels ; but, above 
all, in the midst a portable tabernacle, surrounded with 
curtains, which may be drawn back. In this is an 
image of the god, set, according to Diodorus (2, 199), 
in precious stones ; nevertheless, according to one 
account, it could have no human shape. ( Curtius, 
4, 7. “ Umbilico similis.") This statement of Cur¬ 

tius, however, is incorrect, not only because contra¬ 
dicted by the passage just quoted from Diodorus, but 
also because we see on one of the common monu¬ 
ments a complete portrait of Ammon.—The ship in 
the great temples seems to have been very magnifi¬ 
cent. Sesostris presented one to the temple of Am¬ 
mon at Thebes, made of cedar, the inside of cedar 
and the outside of gold. ( Diod ., 1, 57.) The same 
was hung about with silver goblets. When the ora¬ 
cle was to be consulted, it was carried around by a 
body of priests in procession, and from certain move¬ 
ments, either of the god or of the ship, both of which 
the priests had well under their command, the omens 
were gathered, according to which the high-priest then 
delivered the oracle. This ship is often represented, 
both upon the. Nubian and Egyptian monuments, some¬ 
times standing still, and sometimes carried in proces¬ 
sion ; but never anywhere except in the innermost 
sanctuary, which was its resting-place. Upon the 
Nubian monuments hitherto made known we discover 
this in two places; at Asseboa and Derar, and on each 
twice. Those of Asseboa are both standing. In one 
the tabernacle is veiled, but upon the other it is with¬ 
out a curtain. ( Gau , plate xlv., B.) Ammon ap¬ 
pears in the same sitting upon a couch ; before him 
an altar with gifts. (Gau, plate xlv., A) Upon one 
the king is kneeling before the ship at his devotions ; 
in the other he is coming towards it with an offering 
of frankincense. In the sanctuary of the rock monu¬ 
ment at Derar we also discover it twice. Once in 
procession, borne by a number of priests (Gau, plate 
li., C .); the tabernacle is veiled, the king meets it, 
bringing frankincense : the other time at rest. (Ibid., 
plate lii.) These processions are not only seen upon 
the great Egyptian temples at Philse, Elephantis, and 
Thebes, but also in the great Oasis. (Description 
de VEgypte, pi. xiii., xxxvii., lxix.) These oracles 
were certainly the main support of this religion ; and 
if we connect with them the local features of the coun¬ 
tries, it will at once throw a strong light upon its ori¬ 
gin. Fertility is here, as well as in Egypt, confined 
to the borders of the Nile. At a very short distance 
from it the desert begins. How could it, then, be 


otherwise than that crowds of men should congregate 
on the borders of the stream where the dhourra, al¬ 
most the only corn here cultivated, would growl And 
if they could satisfy their first cravings with the pro¬ 
duce of this scanty space, was not the rise of a natural 
religion, referring to it, just what might be expected 7 
Add to all this, however, another circumstance highly 
important. Meroe was, besides, the chief mart for 
the trade of these regions. It was the grand empo¬ 
rium of the caravan trade between Ethiopia, the north 
of Africa, and Egypt, as well as of Arabia Felix and 
even India. (Heeren, Ideen, vol. 4, p. 423 ; vol. 1, p 
411, Oxford transl.) 

2. Government and General History of Meroe. 

Meroe, according to the accounts of the ancient 
writers, was a city which had its settled constitution 
and laws, its ruler and government. But the form of 
this state was one which we too often find among the 
kingdoms of these southern regions ; it was a hie¬ 
rarchy ; the government was in the hands of a race or 
caste of priests, who chose from among themselves a 
king. Diodorus’s account of them, which is the most 
extensive and accurate that we have, is here given. 

“ The laws of the Ethiopians,” says he, speaking of 
Meroe (3, 5), “ differ in many respects from those of 
other nations, but in none so much as in the election 
of their kings, which is thus managed. The priests 
select the most distinguished of their own order, and 
upon whichever of these the god (Jupiter Ammon) 
fixes, as he is carried in procession, he is acknowl¬ 
edged king by the people ; who then fall down and 
adore him as a god, because he is placed over the gov¬ 
ernment by the choice of the gods. The person thus 
selected immediately enjoys all the prerogatives which 
are conceded to him by the laws, in respect to his 
mode of life ; but he can neither reward nor punish 
any one be/ond what the usages of their forefathers 
and the laws allow. It is a custom among them to 
inflict upon no subject the sentence of death, even 
though he should be legally condemned to that pun¬ 
ishment ; but they send to the malefactor one of the 
servants of justice, who bears the symbol of death. 
When the criminal sees this, he goes immediately to 
his own house, and deprives himself of life. The 
Greek custom of escaping punishment by flight into a 
neighbouring country is not there permitted. It is 
said that the mother of one who would have attempted 
this strangled him with her own girdle, in order to save 
her family from that greater ignominy. But the most 
remarkable of all their institutions is that which re¬ 
lates to the death of the king. The priests at Meroe, 
for example, who attend to the service of the gods, 
and hold the highest rank, send a messenger to the 
king with an order to die. They make known to him 
that the gods command this, and that mortals should 
not withdraw from their decrees; and perhaps added 
such reasons as could not be controverted by weak un¬ 
derstandings, prejudiced by custom, and unable to op¬ 
pose anything thereto.” Thus far Diodorus. The 
government continued in this original state till the pe¬ 
riod of the second Ptolemy, and its catastrophe is not 
less remarkable than its foundation. By its increased 
intercourse with Egypt, the light of Grecian philoso¬ 
phy penetrated into the interior of Africa. Ergame- 
nes, at that time king of Meroe, tired of being priest- 
ridden, fell upon the priests in their sanctuary, put 
them to death, and became effectually a sovereign. 
(Diodorus, 3, 6.)—Of the history of this state previ¬ 
ous to the revolution just mentioned, but very scanty 
information has been preserved ; but yet enough to 
show its high antiquity and its early aggrandizement 
Pliny tells us (6, 35) that “ Ethiopia was ruined by its 
wars with Egypt, which it sometimes subdued and 
sometimes served; it was powerful and illustrious ever 
as far back as the Trojan war, when Memnon reigned 

829 




MERGE. 


MERGE. 


At the time of his sovereignty,” he continues, “ Meroe 
is said to have contained 250,000 soldiers and 400,000 
artificers. They still reckon there forty-five kings.” 
Though these accounts lose themselves in the darkness 
of tradition, yet we may, by tracing history upward, dis¬ 
cover some certain chronological data. In the Persian 
period Meroe was certainly free and independent, and 
an important state ; otherwise Cambyses would hardly 
have made so great preparations for his unfortunate ex¬ 
pedition. ( Herod ., 2, 25.) The statement of Strabo, 
according to which Cambyses reached Meroe, may per¬ 
haps be brought to accord with that of Herodotus, if we 
understand him to mean northern Meroe, near Mount 
Berkel.—During the last dynasty of the Pharaohs at 
Sa'is, under Psammetichus and his successors, the 
kingdom of Meroe not only resisted his yoke, although 
his son Psammis undertook an expedition against 
Ethiopia; but we have an important fact, which gives 
a clew to the extent of the empire at that time towards 
the south; the emigration of the Egyptian warrior- 
caste. These migrated towards Meroe, whose ruler 
assigned them dwellings about the sources of the Nile, 
in the province of Gojam, whose restless inhabitants 
were expelled their country. ( Herod ., 2, 30.) The 
dominions of the ruler of Meroe, therefore, certainly 
reached so far at that time, though his authority on 
the borders fluctuated in consequence of the pastoral 
hordes roving thereabout, and could only be fixed by 
colonies. Let us go a century farther back, between 
800 and 700 B.C., and we shall mount to the flourish¬ 
ing periods of this empire, contemporaneous with the 
divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah; especially with 
the reign of Hezekiah, and the time of Isaiah, 750- 
700, where we shall consequently have a light from the 
Jewish annals, and the oracles of the prophets, in con¬ 
nexion with Herodotus. This is the period in which 
the three mighty rulers, Sabaco, Seuechu^, and Tar- 
haco started up as conquerors, and directed their 
weapons against Egypt, which, at least Upper Egypt, 
became an easy prey, from the unfortunate troubles 
preceding the dodecarchy having just taken place. Ac¬ 
cording to Eusebius ( Chron ., vol. 2, p. 181.—Com¬ 
pare Marsham , p. 435), Sabaco reigned twelve, Seu- 
echus also twelve, and Tarhaco twenty years : but by 
Herodotus, who only mentions Sabaco, to whom he 
gives a reign of fifty years, this name seems to des¬ 
ignate the whole dynasty, which not unfrequently fol¬ 
lows that of its founder. Herodotus expressly says 
that he had quitted Egypt at the command of his ora¬ 
cle in Ethiopia (2, 137, seqq.). It may therefore be 
seen, by the example of this conqueror, how great their 
dependance must have been, in their native country, 
upon the oracle of Ammon, when even the absent 
monarch, as ruler of a conquered state, yielded obedi¬ 
ence to it. Sabaco, however, is not represented by 
him as a barbarian or tyrant, but as a benefactor to the 
community by the construction of dams. The chro¬ 
nology of Seuechus and Tarhaco is determined by the 
Jewish history. Seuechus was the contemporary of 
Hosea, king of Israel, whose reign ended in 722, and 
of Salmanassar (2 Kings, 17, 4 ; 19, 9). Tarhaco 
was the contemporary of his successor Sennacherib, 
and deterred him, in the year 714 B.C., from the in¬ 
vasion of Egypt merely by the rumour of his advance 
against him. (2 Kings, 19, 9.) His name, however, 
dees not seem to have been unknown to the Greeks. 
Eratosthenes ( ap. Strabo, 680) mentions him as a con- 
jueror who had penetrated into Europe, and as far as 
the Pillars of Hercules ; that is, as a great conqueror. 
Certainly, therefore, the kingdom of Meroe must have 
ranked about this time as an important state. And 
we shall find this to be the case if we go about 200 
years farther back, to the time of Asa, the great-grand¬ 
son of Solomon, but who nevertheless mounted the 
throne of Judah within twenty years after his grand- 
sire’s death. 95! B.C. Against him, it is said in the 
830 


Jewish annals, went out Zerah, the Ethiopian, with a 
host of a hundred thousand men and three hundred 
chariots. (2 Chron., 14, 9.) Although this number 
signifies nothing more than a mighty army, it yet af¬ 
fords a proof of the mightiness of the empire, which at 
that time probably comprised Arabia Felix ; but the 
chariots of war, which were never in use in Arabia, 
prove that the passage refers to Ethiopia. Zerah’s ex¬ 
pedition took place in the early part of Asa’s reign ; 
consequently, about 950 B.C. ; and as such an empire 
could not be quite a new one, we are led by undoubt¬ 
ed historical statements up to the period of Solomon, 
about 1000 B.C. ; and, as this comes near to the Tro¬ 
jan period, Pliny’s statements, though only resting on 
mythi, obtain historical weight. Farther back than 
this, the annals of history are silent; but the monu¬ 
ments now begin to speak, and confirm that high an¬ 
tiquity which general opinion and the traditions of 
Meroe attribute to this state. The name of Ramesses 
or Sesostris has already been found upon many of the 
Nubian monuments, and that he was the conqueror of 
Ethiopia is known from history. (Herod., 2, 110.— 
Strabo, 791.) The period in which he flourished can¬ 
not be placed later than 1500 years before the Christian 
era. But the name of Thutmosis, belonging to the 
preceding dynasty, has also been found in Nubia, and 
that assuredly upon one of the most ancient monu¬ 
ments of Armada. But in this sculpture, as well as 
in the procession, representing the victory over Ethio¬ 
pia in the offering of the booty, there appears a degree 
of civilization which shows an acquaintance with the 
peaceful arts ; they must consequently be attributed 
to a nation that had long been formed. We thus ap¬ 
proach the Mosaic period, in which the Jewish tradi¬ 
tions ascribe the conquest of Meroe to no less a person 
than Moses himself. (Joseph., Ant. Jitd., 2, 10.) The 
traditions of the Egyptian priesthood also agree in this, 
that Meroe, in Ethiopia, laid the foundation of the most 
ancient states. In a state whose government differed 
so widely from anything that we have been accustom¬ 
ed to, it is reasonable to suppose that the same would 
happen with regard to the people or subjects. We 
cannot expect a picture here that will bear any simili¬ 
tude to the civilized nations of Europe. Meroe rather 
resembled in appearance the larger states of interior 
Africa at the present day ; a number of small nations, 
of the most opposite habits and manners—some with, 
and some without settled abodes—form there what is 
called an empire ; although the general political band 
which holds them together appears loose, and is often 
scarcely perceptible. In Meroe this band was of a 
twofold nature ; religion, that is, a certain worship, 
principally resting upon oracles, and commerce ; un¬ 
questionably the strongest chains by which barbarians 
could be fettered, except forcible subjugation. The 
rites of that religion, connected with oracles, satisfied 
the curious and superstitious, as did trade the cravings 
of their sensual appetites. Eratosthenes has handed 
us down an accurate picture of the inhabitants of Me¬ 
roe in his time (ap. Strab., 821). According to his 
account, the island comprised a variety of people, of 
whom some followed agriculture, some a nomade, pas¬ 
toral life, and others hunting ; all of them choosing 
that which was best adapted to the district in which 
they lived. (Heeren, Ideen, vol. 4, p. 433 ; Oxford 
transl., vol. 1, p. 420.) 

3. Commerce of Meroe. 

The ruling priest-caste in Meroe seem to have sent 
out colonies, who carried along with them the service 
of their gods, and became the founders of states. One 
of these colonies, according to the express testimony 
of Herodotus (2, 42), was Ammonium in the Libyan 
desert, which had not merely a temple and an oracle, 
but probably formed a state in which the priest-caste 
as in Meroe, continued a ruling race, and chose a king 



MEROE. 


MEROE. 


Jrom their own body. Ammonium served as a rest¬ 
ing-place for the caravans passing from northern Afri¬ 
ca to Meroe. Another still earlier settlement of this 
kind was very probably Thebes in Upper Egypt. The 
circumstance of a town flourishing to such an extent 
in the midst of a desert, of the same worship of 
Ammon, of the all-powerful priest-caste, and its per¬ 
manent connexion with Meroe (united with which it 
founded Ammonium), conjoined with the express as¬ 
sertion of the Ethiopians that they were the founders 
( Diod ., 3, 3), gives to this idea a degree of probability 
bordering on certainty. The whole aspect of the cir¬ 
cumstances connected with this wide-spread priest- 
caste gains a clearer light, if we consider Ammonium, 
Thebes, and Meroe the chief places of the African 
caravan trade ; in this view of the subject, the dark¬ 
ness of ^Egy.pto-Ethiopian antiquity is cleared up, as 
in the hands of this priest-caste the southern caravan 
trade was placed, and they founded the proud tem¬ 
ples and palaces along the banks of the Nile, and the 
great trading edifices, which served their gods for 
sanctuaries, themselves for dwellings, and their cara¬ 
vans for places of rest. To this caste, the states of 
Meroe and Upper Egypt very probably owed their 
foundation ; except, indeed, that Egypt was much more 
exposed to the crowding in of foreign relations from 
Asia, than Meroe, separated as this last was from oth¬ 
er countries by deserts, seas, and mountains. The 
close connexion, in high antiquity, between Ethiopia 
and upper Egypt, is shown by the circumstance that 
the oldest Egyptian states derived their origin partly 
from Abyssinia ; that Thebes and Meroe founded, in 
common, a colony in Libya; that Ethiopian conquer¬ 
ors several times advanced into Egypt, and, on the 
other hand, that Egyptian kings undertook expeditions 
to Ethiopia ; that in both countries a similar worship, 
similar manners and customs, and similar symbolical 
writing were found ; and that the discontented soldier- 
caste, when oijended by Psammetichus, emigrated into 
Ethiopia. By the Ethiopians Egypt was likewise pro¬ 
fusely supplied with the productions of the southern 
countries. Where else, indeed, could it have ob¬ 
tained those aromatics and spices with which so many 
thousands of its dead were annually embalmed'? 
Whence those perfumes which burned upon its altars? 
Whence that immense quantity of cotton in which 
the inhabitants clothed themselves, and which Egypt 
itself furnished but sparingly ? Whence, again, that 
sarjy report in Egypt of the Ethiopian gold-countries, 
which Cambyses sought after, and lost half his army 
in the fruitless speculation ? Whence the quantity of 
ivory and ebony which adorned the oldest works of art 
of the Greeks as well as of the Hebrews ? Whence, 
especially, that early extension of the Ethiopia^ name, 
which shines in the traditionary history of so many 
nations, and which the Jewish poets as well as the 
oldest Greek bards have celebrated ? Whence all 
this, if the deserts which bordered on Ethiopia had 
always kept the inhabitants isolated from those of 
more northern countries ?—At a later period, in the 
time of Ptolemy I., it is astonishing how completely 
that able prince had established the trade between his 
own country, India, Ethiopia, and Arabia. The series 
of magnificent and similar monuments, interrupted on 
the frontiers of Egypt, near Elephantine, and recom¬ 
mencing on the southern side of the African desert, at 
Mount Berkel, and especially at Meroe, to be contin¬ 
ued to Axum and Azab, certainly denote a people of 
similar civilization and activity. Meroe was the first 
fertile country after crossing the Libyan desert, and 
formed a natural resting-place for the northern cara¬ 
vans. It was likewise the natural mart for the pro¬ 
ductions of inner Africa, which were brought for the 
use of the northern portion, and was reckoned the 
outermost of the countries which produced gold, while 
bv the navigable rivers surrounding it on all sides, it 


had a ready communication with the more southern 
countries (Diod., 1 , 33). As ready, owing to the 
moderate distance, was its connexion with Arabia Fe¬ 
lix ; and so long as Yemen remained in possession of 
the Arabian and Indian trade, Meroe was the natural 
market-place for the Arabian and Indian wares in Af¬ 
rica. The route which led in antiquity from Meroe 
to the Arabian Gulf and Yemen, is not designated by 
any historian : the commerce between those nation* 
being indicated only by monumental traces which the 
hand of time has not been able to destroy. Imme¬ 
diately between Meroe and the gulf are situated the 
ruins of Axum, and at the termination of the route, 
on the coast opposite to Arabia Felix, are those of 
Azab or Saba. Heeren, from whom the above ideas 
are principally borrowed, deduces the following con¬ 
clusions from a review of the entire subject—1. That 
in the earlier ages, a commercial intercourse existed 
here between the countries of southern Asia and Afri¬ 
ca ; between India and Arabia, Ethiopia, Libya, and 
Egypt, which was founded upon their mutual neces¬ 
sities, and became the parent of the civilization of 
these nations.—2. That the principal seat of this in¬ 
ternational commerce was Meroe ; and its chief route 
is distinguished by a chain of ruins reaching from the 
shores of the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean : 
Axum and Azab being links in this chain between 
Arabia Felix and Meroe ; Thebes and Ammonium be¬ 
tween Meroe, Egypt, and Carthage.—3. That chief pla¬ 
ces for trade were at the same time settlements of 
that priest-caste, which, as the ruling tribe, had its 
chief residence at Meroe, and sent out colonies thence, 
who became builders of towns and temples, and, at the 
same time, founders of new states.—The conductors 
of this caravan trade in Africa, as in Asia, were the 
Nomadic shepherd-nations. Men accustomed to fix¬ 
ed residences and to dwellings in towns were not 
adapted for the restless caravan-life, especially on ac 
count of the attention necessary for the camels, and 
for the loading and unloading of wares. It was better 
suited to Nomadic nations. In the case of the Car¬ 
thaginian caravans, we know that they were managed 
by the Nomadic Lotophagi and Nasamones, as the car¬ 
avans were by the Midianites and Edomites in Arabia: 
this is historically proved, and it is probable that it 
was the case on the great commercial road from Am¬ 
monium to Azab, as similar Nomadic tribes are still 
found on the coast of the Arabian Gulf.—Meroe had 
mines not only of silver and gold, but also of copper 
and even of iron itself. (Diod., 1 , 33.) 

4. Influence of Meroe on Egyptian civilization. 

Everything seems to favour the supposition that 
Meroe gave religion and the arts of civilized life to 
the valley of the Nile. The following are some of 
the principal arguments in support of this opinion : 1. 
The concurrent testimony of the ancient writers.—2. 
The progress of civilization in Egypt from south to 
north ; for the Delta, the part of Egypt contiguous to 
Arabia, appears to have been originally uninhabitable, 
except a small space about the extremities of the 
marsh ; and history asserts that the inhabitants of up¬ 
per Egypt descended and drained the country.—3. 
The improbability that an Arabian colony would hav® 
crossed Syria from Babylon to Suez, and wandered so 
far south as Thebes to found its first settlement.—4. 
The radical difference between the Coptic and Arabic 
languages, which existed even in the days of Abra¬ 
ham. (Murray, Appendix to Bruce, book 2, p. 479.) 
—5. The trade from the straits of Babelmandel by 
Azab, Axum, Meroe, and Upper Egypt. If this trade 
be as old as from the remarks previously made it 
would seem to be, we may consider Ethiopia as one 
of the first seats of international trade, or, in other 
words, of civilization ; for an exchange of wares 
would lead to an exchange of ideas, aid this recipro- 

83! 



MEROE 


M E S 


>ai communication would necessarily give rise to 
moral and intellectual improvement.—6. The curious 
fact, that the images of some of the Egyptian gods 
were at certain times conveyed up the Nile, from their 
temples to others in Ethiopia ; and, after the conclu¬ 
sion of a festival, were brought back again into Egypt. 
( Eustath., ad II, 1, 424.)—7. The very remarkable 
character of some of the Egyptian paintings, in which 
Dlack (or, more correctly, dark-coloured) men are rep¬ 
resented in the costume of priests, as conferring on 
Certain red figures, similarly habited, the instruments 
md symbols of the sacerdotal office. “ This singular 
representation,” says Mr. Hamilton, “ which is often 
repeated in all the Egyptian temples, but only here at 
Philae and at Elephantine with this distinction of col- 
ur, may very naturally be supposed to commemorate 
ne transmission of religious fables and the social in¬ 
stitutions from the tawny Ethiopians to the compara¬ 
tively fair Egyptians.”—8. Other paintings of nearly 
the same purport. In the temple of Philae, the sculp¬ 
tures frequently depict two persons, who equally repre¬ 
sent the characters and symbols of Osiris, and two per¬ 
sons equally answering to those of Isis ; but in both 
cases one is invariably much older than the other, and 
appears to be the superior divinity. Mr. Hamilton 
conjectures that such figures represent the communi¬ 
cation of religious rites from Ethiopia to Egypt, and 
the inferiority of the Egyptian Osiris. In these delin¬ 
eations there is a very marked and positive distinction 
between the dark figures and those of fairer complex¬ 
ion ; the former are most frequently conferring the 
symbols of divinity and sovereignty on the other. — 9. 
The very interesting fact recorded by Diodorus, name¬ 
ly, that the knowledge of picture-writing in Ethiopia 
was not a privilege confined solely to the caste of 
priests as in Egypt, but that every one might attain it 
as freely as they might in Egypt the writing in com¬ 
mon use. A proof at once of the earlier use of pic¬ 
ture-writing, or hieroglyphics, in Meroe than in Egypt, 
and also of its being applied to the purposes of trade. 
—10. The more ancient form of the pyramid, ap¬ 
proaching that of the primeval mound, occurs more to 
the south than the rectilinear form. Thus the pyra¬ 
mids of Saccara are older in form than those of Djiza, 
another proof of architecture’s having come in from 
the countries to the south. ( Clarke's Travels , vol. 
5, p. 220, Lond. ed .)—From this body of evidence, 
then, we come to the conclusion, that the same race 
which ruled in Ethiopia and Meroe spread themselves 
by colonies, in the first instance, to Upper Egypt; that 
these latter colonies, in consequence of their great 
prosperity, became in their turn the parents of others ; 
and as m all this they followed the course of the river, 
there gradually became founded a succession of colo¬ 
nies in the valley of the Nile, which, according to the 
usual custom of the ancient world, were probably, at 
first, independent of each other, and therefore formed 
just so many little states. Though, with the promul¬ 
gation of their religion, either that of Ammon himself, 
or of his kindred deities and temple-companions, after 
whom even the settlements were named, the extension 
of trade was the principal motive which tempted colo¬ 
nists from Meroe to the countries beyond the desert; 
yet there were many other causes, such as the fertil¬ 
ity of the land, and the facility of making the rude na¬ 
tive tribes subservient to themselves, which, in a pe¬ 
riod of tranquillity, must have promoted the prosperity 
and accelerated the gradual progress of this coloniza¬ 
tion. The advantages which a large stream offers, by 
facilitating the means of communication, are so great, 
that it is a common occurrence in the history of the 
world to see civilization spreading on their banks. The 
shores of the Euphrates and Tigris, of the Indus and 
Ganges, of the Kiangh and Hoangho, afford us as plain 
proofs of this as the banks of the Nile. ( Heeren , Ideen, 
vol. 5, p. 109, seqq. ; Oxford transl.. vol. 2, p. 110.) 
832 


—As to the origin of the civilization of Meroe itself, 
all is complete uncertainty; though it is generally sup¬ 
posed to have been derived from the plains of India. 
The reader may consult on this subject the work of 
Von Bohlen , Das alte Indien, mit btsonderer Ruck- 
sicht auf IEgypten, vol. 1, p. 119, seqq. 

Merope, 1. one of the Pleiades. She married Sis¬ 
yphus, son of iEolus, before her transformation into a 
star; and it was fabled that, in the constellation of the 
Pleiades, Merope appears less luminous than her sister- 
stars, through shame at having been the only one of 
the number that had wedded a mortal. Other mythol- 
ogists relate the same of Electra. Schwenck sees in 
the union of Merope with Sisyphus a symbolical allu¬ 
sion to Corinthian navigation. ( Schwenck, Skizzen , 
p. 19.—Compare Welcker, lEsch., Till., p. 555.— Id. 
ib., p. 573.)—II.- A daughter of Cypselus, who mar¬ 
ried Cresphontes, king of Messenia, by whom she had 
three children. Her husband and two of her children 
were murdered by Polyphontes. The murderer wish¬ 
ed her to marry him, and she would have been obliged 
to comply had not Epytus or Telephontes, her third 
son, avenged his father’s death by assassinating Poly¬ 
phontes. ( Apollod ., 2, 6.— Pausan., 4, 3.) 

Merops, a king of the island of Cos, who married 
Clymene, one of the Oceanides. He was changed into 
an eagle, and placed among the constellations. (Ovid, 
Met., 1, 763.) 

Meros, a mountain of India sacred to Jupiter. It 
is said to have been in the neighbourhood of Nysa, and 
to have been named from the circumstance of Bacchus’s 
being enclosed in the thigh ( firjpo f) of Jupiter. This 
attempt at etymology, however, is characteristic of the 
Grecian spirit, which found traces of their nation and 
language in every quarter of the world. The mount¬ 
ain in question is the famous Meru of Indian mythol¬ 
ogy. (Creuzer's Symbolik, vol. 1, p. 537.) 

Mesembria, a maritime town of Thrace, east of the 
mouth of the Nessus, now Mesevria or Mesera. Ac¬ 
cording to Herodotus (7, 108), it was ^settlement of 
the Samothracians.—Von Humboldt notices the ter 
minations of magus, briga, and briva, appended to the 
names of towns, as undoubtedly Celtic. He refers to 
the same source the termination bria. which is met 
with in the geography of Thrace, as, for example, in 
the cities of Selymbria and Mesembria. He thinks 
that the Basque iri and uri are also connected with 
this ; and that we can go no farther than to say that 
there was an old root bri or bro, expressing land, hab¬ 
itation, settlement, with which the Teutonic burg and 
the Greek rrvpyot; may have been originally connected. 
In the Welsh and Breton languages, bro is still, he 
says, not only a cultivated field, but generally a coun¬ 
try or district; and the scholiast on Juvenal (Sat., 8, 
234) explains the name of Allobroges as signifying 
strangers, men from another land, “ quoniam broga 
Galli qgrum dicunt; alia autem aliud.” (Vid., how¬ 
ever, Allobroges.— Arnold's Rome, p. xxii.) 

Mesene, I. an island in the Tigris, where Apamea 
was built. It is now Digel. (Strab., in Huds., G. 
M., 2, p. 146.— Plin., 6, 31.— Steph. Byz., p. 91, n. 
8.)—II. Another, enclosed between the canal of Bas¬ 
ra and the Pasitigris, and which is called in .‘he Orien¬ 
tal writers Perat-Miscan, or “the Mesene >f the Eu¬ 
phrates,” to distinguish it from the Mesene of the Ti¬ 
gris. The term Mesene is a Greek one, and refeis to 
land enclosed between two streams. ( Philostorgius , 
3, 7. — Cellarius, Geogr. Antiq., vol. 1, p. 641, sd. 
Schwartz .) 

Mesomedes, a poet, a native of Crete. He was a 
freedman of the Emperor Hadrian’s, and one of his fa¬ 
vourites, and wrote a eulogium on Antinoiis. Ha¬ 
drian’s successor, the philosophic Antoninus, made it 
a duty to restore order and economy into the finances 
of the empire ; and, among other things, he stopped 
the salaries which had been allowed to the useless 





MES 


MES 


courtiers with whom ‘‘.he palace of Hadrian had swarm¬ 
ed. It was on this occasion that the stipend allowed 
to Mesomedes suffered a reduction. ( Jul. Cap., Vit. 
Ant. Pii, c. 7.)—We have two epigrams of this poet’s 
in the Anthology, and also a piece of a higher charac¬ 
ter, a Hymn to Nemesis. Judging from this last spe¬ 
cimen, Mesomedes must have possessed talents of no 
mean order. The Hymn to Nemesis was published 
for the first time, with ancient musical notes, by Fell, 
at the end of his edition of Aratus, Oxon., 1762, 8vo. 
It was subsequently given by Burette in the 5th vol. 
of the Mem. de VAcad. des Insert , &c., by Brunck in 
his Analecta, and by Snedorf in his work, “ De Hym- 
nis veterum Grcecorum ,” Hafn., 1786, 8vo. ( Scholl, 
Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 4, p. 51.) 

Mesopotamia, an extensive province of Asia, the 
Greek name of which denotes between the rivers (from 
ueaoq and 7 roragog.) It was situate between the Eu¬ 
phrates and the Tigris. The name itself, however, 
does not appear to have been given to this tract prior 
to the Macedonian conquest. The southern part of 
Mesopotamia Xenophon calls Arabia ( Anab., 1, 5, 1); 
and other writers included this country, especially the 
northern part, under the general name of Syria. ( Stra¬ 
bo , 737.) The Romans always regarded Mesopotamia 
as a mere division of Syria. {Mela, 1, 11. — Plin., 5, 
13.) It is called by the Arabs at the present day 
Al Jezira, or “ the island.” In scripture it is styled 
Aram and Aramcea; but as Aram also signifies Syria, 
it is denominated, for distinction’ sake, Aram Naha- 
raim, or the “ Syria of the rivers.” It was first peo¬ 
pled by Aram, the father of the Syrians, though little 
is known of its history till it became a province of the 
Persian empire. Cushan-rishthathaim, who is men¬ 
tioned in Judges (3, 8, 10) as king of Mesopotamia, 
appears to have been only a petty prince of a district 
east of the Euphrates. In the time of Hezekiah, the 
different states of Mesopotamia were subject to the 
Assyrians (2 Kings, 19, 13), and subsequently belonged 
in succession to the Chaldaean, Persian, and Syro-Ma- 
cedonian monarchies.—Mesopotamia, which inclines 
from the southeast to the northwest, commenced at 
lat. 33° 20' N., and terminated near N. lat. 37° 30'. 
Towards the south it extended as far as the bend form¬ 
ed by the Euphrates at Cunaxa, and to the wall of 
Semiramis, which separated it from Mesene. To¬ 
wards the north it was bounded by a part of Mount 
Taurus. The northern part of Mesopotamia, which 
extended as far as the Ohaboras, a tributary of the Eu¬ 
phrates, is mountainous, and for the most part fruitful. 
The southern portion consists chiefly of reddish hills, 
and deserts without any trees, except liquorice-wood ; 
and, like the desert of Arabia, suffers, at a distance 
from the rivers, a dearth of food and water. Here, on 
the parched steppes or table-lands, where the simoom 
often breathes destruction, hordes of Arabs have from 
the earliest times wandered. When history, therefore, 
speaks of the Romans and Persians as possessing Mes¬ 
opotamia, we must understand the northern j art, which 
abounded in all the necessaries of life. A he inhabi¬ 
tants of this portion, who still speak an Armeno-Syriac 
dialect, were called among themselves Mygdonians, 
and their district was known by the name of Mygdo- 
nia. {Polyb., 5, 51. — Steph. Byz., s. v.) Subse¬ 
quently, under the Syro-Macedonian monarchy, it took 
the name of Anthemusia. {Amm. Marcell., 14, 9.— 
Eutrop., 8, 2.— Sextus Rufus , c. 20.) In the time 
of the Parthian sway, about 120 B.C., an Arab sheik, 
Osroes, took possession of the northwestern part of the 
land, wresting a principality in this quarter from the 
Seleucidse of Syria. This district then assumed the 
name of Osroene. {Steph. Byz., s. v. — Procop., Pers., 

1, 17.— Amm. Marcell., 14, 3.) Mesopotamia was fre¬ 
quently the scene of warlike operations, especially be¬ 
tween the Parthians and Romans, who here lost Cras- 
sus, and between the latter nation and the new Per- 
5 N 


sians. After remaining for some time a Roman prov¬ 
ince, it fell under the power of the new Persian king¬ 
dom, and then successively under the Saracens and 
Turks. The oppression of the Turkish government 
has so altered the appearance of this large tract of 
country, that these fruitful plains, which once were 
covered with cities, now scarcely exhibit more than a 
few miserable villages. The lower part of Mesopota¬ 
mia is now called Irak Arabi , the upper Diar-Bekr. 
{Laurent's Arne. Geogr., p. 268. — Rennell, Geogra¬ 
phy of Western Asia, vol. 1, p. 432.) 

Messala, I. Marcus Valerius Messala Corvinus, 
a Roman nobleman of ancient family. In the Euse- 
bian Chronicle he is said to have been born A.U.C 
694 ; but if that date be correct, he would have been 
17 when he joined the republican standard at Philippi. 
He acted a prominent part in that battle, and, after it 
was lost, was offered the command of the dispersed 
forces of the commonwealth. It is not, therefore, 
likely that he was younger than 21 at this period, 
and his birth, consequently, ought not to be fixed later 
than the year 690. In his youth he studied for a 
short time at Athens, along with the son of Cicero. 
After his return to Rome, his name having appeared 
in the roll of the proscribed by the nomination of An¬ 
tony, he tied from Italy, and sought refuge with the 
army of Brutus and Cassius. Previous, however, tc 
the battle of Philippi, his name, along with that of 
Varro, was erased from the fatal list, on the plea that 
he had not been in Rome at the time of Caesar’s mur¬ 
der. Varro accepted the proffered pardon, and retired 
to his studies and his books, among which he after¬ 
ward died in the ninetieth year of his age ; but it wa» 
indignantly rejected by Messala, who steadily adhered 
to the cause of the commonwealth. The night before 
the battle of Philippi he supped in private with Cas¬ 
sius in his tent. That chief had wished to protract 
the war, and opposed himself to the general desire 
that prevailed in the army to hazard the fortunes ol 
the republic on one decisive battle. At parting for 
the night, he grasped Messala by the hand, and, ad- 
j dressing him in Greek, called him to bear witness that 
he was reduced to the same painful necessity as the 
great Pompey, who had been reluctantly forced to 
stake on one throw the safety of his country. On 
the following day, so fatal to the liberties of Rome, 
Messala conynanded one of the best legions in the 
army of Brutus. After the second defeat at Philippi 
he escaped to Thasus, an island in the JEgean Sea. 
He was there invited to place himself at the head of 
the remains of the republican party. But he probably 
considered the cause of the commonwealth as now 
utterly hopeless, and accordingly listened to the per¬ 
suasions of Pollio, who undertook to reconcile him to 
the conquerors, and to preserve the lives of those who 
should surrender under his command. Antony passed 
over to Thasus, and, with great appearance of cordi¬ 
ality, received Messala, as well as some of his friends, 
into favour, and, in return, was put in possession of 
the stores which had been amassed in that island for 
the wreck of the republican forces. Having now join¬ 
ed the arms of Antony, Messala accompanied him in 
the dissolute progress which he made through the 
Roman dominions in Asia, when he received the horn- 
acre of the tributary kings and settled their disputes. 
Messala, from his earliest youth, had been distinguish¬ 
ed for his powers in speaking, and he sometimes plead 
before Antony in favour of an accused tetrarch or of 
an injured people. At length, however, the scanda¬ 
lous and infatuated conduct of Antony, and the com¬ 
parative moderation of Augustus, induced him to 
transfer his services to the latter, whom he continued 
to support during the remainder of his life. In the 
naval war with Sextus Pompey, he was second in 
command under Agrippa, and, on one occasion du- 
rinor his absence, had the supreme direction of th* 

° 833 




MESSALA. 


MESSALA. 


fleet. In the course of this contest he was also for 
some time stationed with an army on the Neapolitan 
shore ; and Augustus, having been not only defeated, 
but shipwrecked in one of the many naval engage¬ 
ments which he fought with Pompey, sought shelter 
m the most wretched condition in the camp of Mes- 
sala, by whom he was received as a friend and master, 
and treated with the tenderest care. The death of 
Sextus Pompey at length opened both sea and land 
o his successful adversary, and it was qtfickly follow¬ 
ed by the long-expected struggle for superiority be¬ 
tween Antony and Augustus.—Messala was consul 
in A.TJ.C. 721, the year of the battle of Actium, in 
which he bore a distinguished part. After that deci¬ 
sive victory and the firm establishment of the throne 
of Augustus, he lived the general favourite of all par¬ 
ties, and the chief ornament of a court where he still 
asserted his freedom and dignity. While at Rome 
he resided in a house on the Palatine Hill, which had 
formerly belonged to Marc Antony; but he was fre¬ 
quently absent from the capital on the service of the 
state. War after war was intrusted to his conduct, 
and province after province was committed to his ad¬ 
ministration. In some of his foreign expeditions he 
was accompanied by the poet Tibullus, who has cel¬ 
ebrated the military exploits of Messala in his famed 
panegyric, and his own friendship and attachment to 
nis patron in his elegies. The triumph which Messa¬ 
la obtained in 727, for his victories in a Gallic cam¬ 
paign, completed the measure of his military honours ; 
and he filled in succession all the most important civ¬ 
il offices in the state. Besides holding the consulship 
in 721, he was elected into the college of Augurs, and 
was intrusted with the superintendence of the aque¬ 
ducts, one of those great public works for which 
Rome has been so justly celebrated. In 736, on ac¬ 
count of the absence of Augustus and Maecenas from 
the capital, he was nominated prefect of the city ; but 
he resigned that situation a few days after his appoint¬ 
ment, regarding it as inconsistent with the ancient 
constitution of his country. He is also believed to 
have been the person who, by command of the Con¬ 
script fathers, first saluted Augustus in the senate- 
house as the “ Father of his country a distinction 
which was bestowed in a manner that drew tears from 
the master of the Roman world (Suet., Aug., 58), and 
a reply, in which he declared that, having .attained the 
summit of his wishes, he had nothing more to desire 
from the immortal gods but a continuance of tha same 
attachment till the last moments of his lifs.—From 
this period the name of Messala is scarcely once men¬ 
tioned by any contemporary writer. He survived, 
however, ten or twelve years longer. Tiberius Cae¬ 
sar, who was then a youth, fond of the liberal arts, 
and by no means ignorant of literature, paid Messala, 
when in his old age, much deference and attention, 
and attempted to imitate his style of oratory. (Suet., 
Tib., c. 70.) Towards the close of his life he was 
dreadfully afflicted with ulcers in the sacra spina; and 
it is said that, two years before his death, he was de¬ 
prived of both sense and memory. He at length for¬ 
got his own name (Plin , 7, 24), and became incapa¬ 
ble of putting two words together with meaning. It 
is mentioned in the Eusebian Chronicle that he per¬ 
ished by abstaining from food when he had reached 
the age of seventy-two ; but if he were born in 690, 
as is supposed, this computation would extend his ex¬ 
istence till the close of the reign of Augustus, which 
is inconsistent with a passage of the dialogue “He 
causis corruptee eloquentice ,” where it is said, “ Cor- 
vinus in medium usque Augusti principatum, A sinus 
pane ad extremum duravitP Now the middle of the 
reign of Augustus cannot be fixed later than the year. 
746, when Messala could only have attained the age 
of fifty-six.—His death was deeply lamented, and his 
funeral elegy was written by Ovid. (Bp., ex. Pont., 
834 


1, 7.)—Though Messala had attained the highest porn* 
of exaltation, in an age of the most violent political 
factions and the most flagrant moral corruption, he 
left behind him a spotless character; being chiefly 
known as a disinterested patron of learning, and a 
steady supporter, so far as was then possible, of the 
principles of the ancient constitution. “ Messala,” 
says Berwick, “had the singular merit of supporting 
an unblemished character in a most despotic court, 
without making a sacrifice of those principles for 
which he had fought in the fields of Philippi; and the 
genuine integrity of'his character was so deeply im¬ 
pressed on all parties, that it attracted a general ad¬ 
miration in a most corrupt age. He was brave, elo¬ 
quent, and virtuous ; he was liberal, attached to let¬ 
ters, and his patronage was considered as the surest 
passport to the gates of fame, and extended to every 
man who was at all conversant with letters. This 
character is supported by history, is not contradicted 
by contemporary writers, and is sealed by the impar¬ 
tial judgment of posterity. No writer, either ancient 
or modern, has ever named Messala without some 
tribute of praise. Cicero soon perceived that he pos¬ 
sessed an assemblage of excellent qualities, which he 
would have more admired had he lived to see them 
expanded and matured to perfection. Messala was 
his disciple, and rivalled his master in eloquence. In 
the opinion of the judicious Quintilian, his style was 
neat and elegant, and in all his speeches he displayed 
a superior nobility. In the Dialogue of Orators, he is 
said to have excelled Cicero in the sweetness and 
correctness of his style. His taste for poetry and po¬ 
lite literature will admit of little doubt, when we cal. 
to mind that he was protected by Caesar, favoured by 
Maecenas, esteemed by Horace, and loved by Tibul¬ 
lus. Horace, in one of his beautiful odes, praises 
Messala in the happiest strains of poetry, calls the 
day he intended to pass with him propitious, and 
promises to treat him with some of his most excellent 
wine. ‘ For,’ says the poet, ‘though Messala is con¬ 
versant with all the philosophy of Socrates and the 
Academy, he will not decline such entertainment as 
my humble board can supply.’ (Od., 3, 21.) The 
modest Tibullus flattered himself with the pleasing 
hope of Messala’s paying him a visit in the country, 
‘where,’ says he, ‘my beloved Delia shall assist in 
doing the honours for so noble a guest’ (1, 5). The 
rising genius of Ovid was admired and encouraged 
by Messala ; and this condescension the exiled bard 
has acknowledged in an epistle to his son Messalinus, 
dated from the cold shores of the Euxine. In this 
letter Ovid calls Messala his friend, the light and di¬ 
rector of all his literary pursuits. It is natural to sup¬ 
pose that an intimacy subsisted between Messala and 
Virgil, and yet no historical circumstance has come 
to our knowledge sufficient to evince it. The poem 
called Ciris, which is dedicated to Messala, and has 
been ascribed to Virgil by some grave authorities, 
grows more suspicious every day. Tacitus, whose 
judgment of mankind is indisputable, and whose de¬ 
cision is not always in the most favourable point of 
view, seems fond of praising Messala ; and in a speech 
given to Silius, the consul-elect, he considers him 
among the few great characters who have risen to the 
highest honours by their integrity and eloquence, 
(Ann., 11 , 6.) Even Tiberius himself, when a vouth 
took him for his master and pattern in speaking; and 
happy would it have been for the Roman people had 
he also taken him for his guide and pattern in virtue. ’ 
(Berwick's Lives, p. 59, seqq.) —Messala was united 
to Terentia, who had been first married to Cicero, and 
subsequently to Sallust, the historian. After the 
death of Messala, she entered, in extreme old age, 
into a fourth marriage, with a Roman senator, who 
used to say that he possessed the two greatest curi¬ 
osities in Rome, the widow of Cicero, and the chair 





M E S 


M E S 


in which Julius Caesar had been assassinated. Mos- 
3ala left by Terentia two sons, Marcus and Lucius. 
The elder of these, who was consul in 751, took the 
name of Messalinus; he greatly distinguished himself 
under Tiberius, when that prince commanded, before 
his accession to the empire, in the war of Pannonia. 
[Veil. Paterc., 2, 112.) Messalinus inherited his 
father’s eloquence, and also followed the example he 
had set in devoted attachment to Augustus, and the 
patronage he extended to literature. But, during the 
reign of Tiberius, he was chiefly noted as one of the 
most servile flatterers of that tyrant. {Tacit., Ann., 
3, 18.) The younger son of Messala assumed the 
name of Cotta, from his maternal family, and acted a 
conspicuous, though by no means reputable part in 
the first years of Tiberius. Both brothers were friends 
and protectors of Ovid, who addressed to Messalinus 
two of his epistles from Pontus, which are full of re¬ 
spect for the memory of his illustrious father. ( Dun¬ 
lop's Roman Lit., vol. 3, p. 53, seqq., Lond. ed.) 

Messalina, I. Valeria, the first wife of the Emper¬ 
or Claudius, dishonoured his throne by her unbridled 
and disgusting incontinence. Her cruelty equalled 
her licentiousness. After a long career of guilt, she 
openly married a young patrician named Silius, du¬ 
ring the absence of the emperor** who had gone on a 
visit to Ostia. Narcissus, the freedman of Claudius, 
was the only one who dared to inform Claudius of the 
fact, and, when he had roused the sluggish resentment 
of his imperial master, he brought him to Rome. The 
arrival of Claudius dispersed in an instant all who had 
thronged around Messalina; but still, though thus de¬ 
serted, she resolved to brave the er-orm, and sent to 
the emperor demanding to be heard. Narcissus, how¬ 
ever, fearing the effect of her presence on the feeble 
spirit of her husband, despatched an order, as i;' com¬ 
ing from him, for her immediate punishment. The 
order found her in the gardens of Lucullus. She en¬ 
deavoured to destroy herself, but her courage failing, 
6he was put to death by a tribune who had been sent 
for that purpose, A.D. 43. {Tacit., Ann., 11 et 12. 
— Suetonius, Vit. Claud.) —II. Called also Statilia, 
the grand-daughter of Statilius Taurus, who had been 
consul, and had enjoyed a triumph during the reign 
of Augustus. She was married four times before she 
came to the imperial throne. The last of her four 
husbands was Atticus Vestinus, a man of consular 
rank, who had ventured to aspire to her hand, al¬ 
though he was not ignorant that he had Nero for a 
rival. The tyrant, who had long favoured Vestinus 
as one of the companions of his debaucheries,, now 
resolved to destrov him, and accordingly compelled 
him to open his veins. Messalina was transferred to 
the imperial bed. After the death of Nero she en¬ 
deavoured to regain her former rank, as empress, by 
means of Otho, whom she had captivated by her beau¬ 
ty, and hoped to espouse. But Otho’s fall having de¬ 
stroyed all these expectations, she turned her atten¬ 
tion to literary subjects, and obtained applause by 
some public discourses which she delivered. {Biogr. 
Univ., vol. 28, p. 431.) 

Messalinus, M. Valerius, so$ of Valerius Messa¬ 
la Corvinus. (Consult remarks at the close of the ar¬ 
ticle Messala.) 

Messana, an ancient and celebrated city of Sicily, 
situate on the straits which separate Italy from that 
island. The first settlers in this quarter would seem 
to have been a body of wandering Siculi, who gave 
the place, from the scythe like form of its harbour, the 
name of Zancle (Z dyK?<,y, “ a scythe ”). The Siculi 
were not a commercial race, and therefore could not 
avail themselves of the superior advantages for trade 
which the spot afforded; they, in consequence, finally 
left it. To them succeeded a band of pirates from 
Cumae in Campania. {Thucyd., 6,4.) These settled 
in the place, and, to give the new colony more stability, 


formed a union with the parent city of Chalcis in Eu 
bcea, in consequence, of which a considerable body o< 
colonists, coming from Chalcis and the rest of Euboea, 
participated in the distribution of the lands. {Thucyd., 
1. c.) Chslcis had previously founded the city of 
Naxos or* tu*i eastern coast below ; and it is probable 
that a pari cj the new population came from this latter 
place. On this supposition, at least, we can reconcile 
with the statement t>f Thucydides the account of 
Strabo, who informs us that Zancle was a settle¬ 
ment of the Naxians who dwelt near Catana (N atjlov 
KTiaya tQv npbg K ardvy. — Strabo, 268). Zancle 
went on silently increasing in strength, and was soon 
powerful enough to found the city of Himera {Thu 
cyd., 6, 5), and to carry on a successful warfare against 
the neighbouring Siculi in the interior. As it was, 
however, the only Grecian city in this corner of the 
island, it sought to strengthen itself by new accessions 
from abroad ; and, accordingly, the Ionians of Asia 
Minor were invited to send a colony to the “Beautiful 
Shore” (Kcil^ ’A ury), which lay along the coast of 
Sicily on the Tyrrhene Sea. {Herod., 6, 22.) This 
happened about the period when Miletus was destroyed 
by the Persians, and when the other Greek cities of 
Lower Asia had either to submit to the yoke of Darius, 
or imitate the example which the Phocaeans had set in 
the time of Cyrus. The Samians, therefore, and a body 
of Milesians who had escaped being led into captivity, 
embraced the offer of the people of Zancle. They land¬ 
ed at Locri, on the Italian coast; but Scythes, the king 
or tyrant of Zancle, would seem to have made no prep¬ 
arations whatever for receiving them, being engaged at 
the time in besieging one of the cities of the Siculi. An- 
axilas, tyrant of Rhegium, who was on no friendly foot¬ 
ing with his neighbours in Zancle, took advantage of this 
circumstance. He proceeded to Locri, told the new¬ 
comers to give up all thought of a settlement in that 
quarter, that Zancle was undefended and might easily 
be taken, and that he would aid them in the attempt. 
The enterprise succeeded, Zancle was taken, and the 
inhabitants became united as one common people with 
their new invaders. The Samians, however, were 
not long after driven out by the same Anaxilas who 
had aided in their attempt on Zancle. He established 
here, according to Thucydides (6, 5), “a mixed race,” 
and called the city by a new name, “ Messana” (Mecr- 
auva), well from the country (Messenia) whence 
he was anciently descended, as from a body of Mes- 
senian exiles whom he settled here. Messana (or, 
as the Attic writers call it, Messene, MeGGyvr]), soon 
became a very flourishing city, both by reason of its 
very fruitful territory and its advantageous situation 
for commerce. It was also a place of some strength, 
and the citadel of Messana is often mentioned in his¬ 
tory. {Diod., 14,87.— Polyb., 1,10.) Messana was 
regarded also by the Greeks as the key of Sicily 
{Thucyd., 4, 1), as being the place, namely, to which 
vessels cruising from Greece to Sicily directed their 
course on leaving the Iapygian promontory. {Bloom¬ 
field, ad Thucyd., I. c.) And yet, notwithstanding all 
these advantages, it was never other than an unlucky 
place, always undergoing changes, and unable at any 
time to play an important part in the affairs of Sicily ; 
for its wealth, and its advantageous situation as regard 
ed the passage from Italy into the island, always made 
it a tempting prize to the ambitious and powerful prin 
ces around. No Greek city, therefore, experience: 
more frequent changes of rulers than this, and non»- 
contained within its walls a more mixed population. - 
At a later period {01. 96, 1), Messana fell into the hands 
of the Carthaginians, who destroyed it {Diod., 14, 56, 
seqq.), being aware of their inability at that time to re 
tain a place so far distant from their other strong¬ 
holds, and not wishing it to come again into the pos¬ 
session of their opponents. Dionysius of Syracuse, 
however, began to rebuild it in the same year, and 

835 



M E S 


M E S 


oesides establishing in it the remnant of the former in¬ 
habitants, added a considerable number of Locrians, 
Methymna?ans, and Messenian exiles. The latter, 
however, through fear of offending the Lacedaemonians, 
were afterward transferred to the district of Abacene, 
and there founded Tyndaris. Messana thus came to 
contain as mixed a population as before. ( Diod 14, 
78.) It remained under the sway of Dionysius and 
his son ; and subsequently, after enjoying a short pe¬ 
riod of freedom, it passed into the hands of Agathocles. 
(Diod., 19, 102.) The following year the inhabitants 
revolted from his sway, and put themselves under the 
protection of the Carthaginians. (Diod., 19, 110.) 
Soon, however, a new misfortune befell the unlucky 
city. It was seized by the Mamertini (vid. Mamerti¬ 
ni), its male inhabitants were either slaughtered or 
driven out. and their wives and children became the 
property of the conquerors. Messana now took the 
name of Mamertina, though in process of time the other 
appellation once more gained the ascendancy. (Po- 
lyb., 1, 7.—Diod., 21, 13.—P/m., 3, 7.) This act of 
perfidy and cruelty passed unpunished. Syracuse was 
too much occupied with intestine commotions to attend 
to it, and the Carthaginians gladly made a league with 
the Mamertini, since by them Pyrrhus would be pre¬ 
vented from crossing over into Sicily and seizing on a 
post so important to his future operations. (Diod., 22, 
8.) The Mamertini, however, could not lay aside their 
old habits of robbery. They harassed all their neigh¬ 
bours, and even became troublesome to Syracuse, 
where King Hiero had at last succeeded in establish¬ 
ing order and tranquillity. This monarch defeated 
the lawless banditti, and would have taken their city, 
had not the Carthaginians interposed to defend it. A 
body of these, with the approbation of part of the in¬ 
habitants, took possession of the citadel; while another 
portion of the inhabitants called in the assistance of 
the Romans, and thus the first of the Punic wars had 
its origin. (Vid. Punicum Bellum, and compare Po- 
}yb., 1, 9, seqq. — Diod., 22, 15.—-Id., 23, 2, seqq.) 
Messana and the Mamertines remained from hence¬ 
forth under the Roman power; but the city, as before, 
could never enjoy any long period of repose. It suf¬ 
fered in the early civil wars between Marius and Sylla, 
in the war of the slaves in Sicily, and, more particular- 
'y, in the contest between Sextus Pompey and the tri¬ 
umvir Octavianus. Messana formed during this war 
the chief station of Pompey’s fleet, and his principal 
place of supply, and the city was plundered at its close. 
(Appian, B. Civ-, 5, 122.) A Roman colony was af¬ 
terward planted here. (Mannert, Geogr., vol. 9, pt. 

2, p. 267, seqq.) —The modern Messina corresponds 
to the ancient city. Even in later times, the fates 
seem to have conspired against this unfortunate place. 

A plague swept away a great part of the inhabitants ; ' 
then rebellion spread its ravages ; and finally, the dread- ] 
ful earthquake in 1783 completed tie downfall of a 
city which rivalled, if it did nor surpass, Palermo. 1 
(Hoare's Classical Tour, vol. 2, r 203.) Although i 
the town has since been rebuilt according to a regular 1 
plan and although it has been declared a free port, - 
Messina is not so important as it once was. It con- ' 
tained before the last catastrophe a hundred thousand 1 
inhabitants : the present population does not amount 
to seventy thousand (Malte Brun, Geogr., vol. 7, p. i 
732, Am. ed.) ; 

Messapia, a c r. mtry of Italy in Magna Graecia, com- i 
monly supposed to have been the same with Iapygia, i 
but forming, in strictness, the interior of that part of i 
Italy. The town of Messapia, mentioned by Pliny < 
(3, 11), is thought to have communicated its name to ( 
the Messapian nation. The generality of Italian to- ' 
•j'*ographers identify the site of this ancient town with \ 
that of Mcssagna, between Oria and Brindisi. (Pra - < 
iii, Via Appia, 4, 8 .—Romanelli, vol. 2, p. 127.— 1 
Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 312 ) , 

836 


Messene, a daughter of Triopas, king of Argos, 
, who married Polycaon, son of Lelex, king of Laconia. 
', She encouraged her husband to levy troops, and to 
, seize a part of the Peloponnesus, which, after it had 
, been conquered, received her name. (Pausan., 4, 1.) 
) Messene (or, in the Doric dialect of the country, 
, Messana, Mecauva), the chief city of Messenia, in the 
l Peloponnesus : situate at the foot of Mount Ithome, 

■ and founded by Epaminondas. It is said to have 
. been completed and fortified in eighty-five days, so 
; great was the zeal and activity displayed by the The- 
; bans and their allies in this undertaking. (Diod. 

\ Sic., 15, 66.) Pausanias informs us, that the walls of 
this city were the strongest he had ever seen, being 
entirely of stone, and well supplied with towers and 
buttresses. The citadel was situated on Mount Ith¬ 
ome, celebrated in history for the long and obstinate 
defence which the Messenians there made against the 
Spartans in their last revolt. The history of this city 
is identified with that of Messenia, which latter article 
may hence be consulted.—The ruins of Messene are 
visible, as we learn from Sir W. Gell, at Maurommali, 
a small village, with a beautiful source, under Ithome, 
in the centre of the ancient city. (Itin., p. 59.— 
Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 150.'— Gell's Itin. of 
the Morea, p. 60.— Dodwell, vol. 2, p. 365.) 

Messenia, a country of the Peloponnesus, between 
Laconia, Elis, Arcadia, and the Ionian Sea. The 
river Neda formed the boundary tovvards Elis and Ar¬ 
cadia. From the latter country it was farther divided 
by an irregular line of mountains, extending in a south¬ 
easterly direction to the chain of Taygetus on the La¬ 
conian border. This celebrated range marked the 
limits of the province to the east, as far as the source 
of the little river Pamisus, which completed the lint 
of separation from the Spartan territory to the south, 

( Strabo , 361.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 130., 
Its area is calculated by Clinton at 1162 square miles 
(Fast. Hell., vol. 2, p. 385.) Messenia is describe!, 
by Pausanias as the most fertile province of Pelopon 
nesus (4, 15, 3), and Euripides, in a passage quote! 
by Strabo (366), speaks of it as a land well watered; 
very fertile, with beautiful pastures for cattle, and pos 
sessing a climate neither too cold in winter nor too 
hot in summer. The western part of the country is 
drained by the river Pamisus, which rises in the 
mountains between Arcadia and Messenia, and flows 
southward into the Messenian Gulf. The basin of 
the Pamisus is divided into two distinct parts, which 
are separated from each other on the east by some 
high land that stretches from the Taygetus to the Pa¬ 
misus, and on the western side of the river by Mount 
Ithome. The upper part, usually called the plain of 
Stenyclerus, is of small extent and moderate fertility; 
but the lower part, south of Ithome, is an extensive 
plain, celebrated in ancient times for its great fertilitv, 
whence it was frequently called Macaria, or “ the 
blessed.” Leake describes it as covered at the present 
day with plantations of the vine, the fig, and the mul¬ 
berry, and “ as rich in cultivation as can well be ima¬ 
gined.” (Travels in the Morea, vol. 1 , p. 352.) The 
western part of Mess^pa is diversified by hills and val¬ 
leys, but contains no high mountains. (Encycl. Us. 
Knowl., vol. 15, p. 126.)—We learn from Pausanias 
(4, 1, 2), that Messenia derived its appellation frorr 
Messene, wife of Polycaon, one of the earliest sover 
eigns of the country. He also observes, that when 
ever this name occurs in Homer, it denotes the prov 
ince rather than the city of Messene, which he con- 
ceives did not exist till the time of Epaminondas 
(Compare Strabo, 358.) At the period of the Troian 
war, it appears from the poet that Messenia was partly 
under the dominion of Menelaus, and partly under that 
of Nestor. This is evident from the towns which he 
has assigned to these respective leaders, and is farthei 
confirmed bv the testimony of Strabo and Pausanias 







MESSENIA. 


MESSENIA. 


{ Strab ., 350 .—Pausan., 4, 3.) In the division of the 
Peloponnesus, made after the return of the Heraciidae, 
Messenia fell to the share of Cresphontes, son of Aris- 
todemus, with whom commenced the Dorian line, 
which continued without interruption for many gener¬ 
ations. In the middle of the eighth century before 
the Christian era, a series of disputes and skirmishes 
arose on the borders of Messenia and Laconia, which 
gave rise to a confirmed hatred between the two na¬ 
tions. Prompted by this feeling, the Spartans are 
said to have bound themselves by an oath never to 
return home till Messenia was subdued; and they 
commenced the contest by a midnight attack on Am- 
pheia, a frontier town, which they took, and put 
the inhabitants to the sword. This was the com¬ 
mencement of what was called the First Messenian 
War , the date of which is usually given, though 
it cannot be believed with certainty, as B.C. 743. 
Euphaes, the Messenian king, had wisdom, howev¬ 
er, and courage sufficient for the crisis. Aware of 
the Lacedaemonian superiority in the field, he pro¬ 
tracted the war, avoiding battles and defending the 
towns. In the fourth year, however, a battle was 
fought with great slaughter and doubtful success. But 
the Messenians were suffering from garrison-confine¬ 
ment and the constant plundering of their lands. 
New measures were taken. The people were collect¬ 
ed from the inland posts at Ithorne, a place of great 
natural strength, and open to supplies by sea, the 
Lacedaemonians having no fleet. Meanwhile they 
asked advice of the Delphic oracle, which bade them 
sacrifice to the infernal deities a virgin of the blood 
of ^Epytus, son of the Heracleid Cresphontes. Im¬ 
pelled by patriotism or ambition, Aristodemus offered 
his own daughter ; and, when it was intended to save 
her by falsely denying her virginity, in his rage he slew 
her with his own hand. The fame of the obedience 
paid to the oracle so far disheartened the enemy, that 
the war languished for five years ; in the sixth an in¬ 
vasion took place, and a battle, bloody and indecisive 
like the former. Euphaes was killed, and left no is¬ 
sue, and Aristodemus was elected to succeed him. 
The new prince was brave and able, and the Lacedae¬ 
monians, weakened by the battle, confined themselves 
for four years to predatory incursions. At last they 
again invaded Messenia, and were defeated ; but, in 
the midst of his success, Aristodemus was so pos¬ 
sessed with remorse for his daughter’s death, that he 
slew himself on her tomb, and deprived his country of 
the only leader able to defend her. Ithome was be¬ 
sieged. The famished inhabitants found means to 
pass the Lacedaemonian lines, and fled for shelter and 
subsistence, some to neighbouring states where they 
had claims of hospitality, others to their ruined homes 
and about their desolated country. Ithome was dis¬ 
mantled ; and those who remained of the Messenians 
were allowed to occupy most of the lands, paying half 
the produce to Sparta.—The absence from home to 
which the Lacedaemonians had bound themselves, be¬ 
came, by the protraction of the war, an evil threaten¬ 
ing the existence of the state, no children being born 
to supply the waste of war and natural decay. The 
remedy said to have been adopted was a strange one, 
highly characteristic of Lacedaemon, and such as no 
other people would have used. The young men who 
had come to maturity since the beginning of the war 
were free from the oath, and they were sent home to 
cohabit promiscuously with the marriageable virgins. 
But even at Sparta this expedient, in some degree, 
ran counter to the popular feelings. When the war 
was ended, and the children of this irregular inter¬ 
course were grown to manhood, though bred in all the 
discipline of Lycurgus, they found themselves gener¬ 
ally slighted. Their spirit was high, their discontent 
dangerous ; and it was thought prudent to offer them 
the means of settling out of Peloponnesus. They 


willingly emigrated, and, under Phalanthus, one ot then 
own number, they founded the city of Tarentum in 
Italy. ( Vid. Parthenii.)—During forty years Messe¬ 
nia bore the yoke. But the oppression of the inhabi¬ 
tants was grievous, and imbittered with every circum¬ 
stance of insult, and the Grecian spirit of mdepenri- 
ence was yet stiong in them ; they anly wanted a 
leader, and a leader was found in Aristomenes, a youth 
of the royal line. Support being promised from Ar¬ 
gos and Arcadia, allies of his country in a former war, 
Aristomenes attacked a body of Lacedaemonians, and, 
though not completely successful, did such feats of 
valour that the Messenians would have chosen him 
king ; but he declined it, and was made general-in¬ 
chief. His next adventure was an attempt to practise 
on the superstitious fears of the enemy. Sparta hav¬ 
ing neither walls nor watch, he easily entered it alone 
by night, and hung against the Brazen House (a sin¬ 
gularly venerated temple of Minerva) a shield, with an 
inscription declaring that Aristomenes, from the spoils 
of the Spartans, dedicated that shield to the goddess. 
Alarmed lest their protecting goddess should be wo.n 
from them, the Lacedaemonians sent to consult the 
Delphian oracle, and were directed to take an Athe¬ 
nian adviser. The Athenians, though far from wish¬ 
ing the subjugation of Messenia, yet feared to offend 
the god if they refused compliance ; but, in granting 
what was asked, they hoped to make it useless, and 
sent Tvrtasus, a poet, and supposed to be of no ability. 
The choice proved better than they intended, since 
the poetry of Tyrtmus being very popular*, kept up the 
spirit of the people in all reverses.—The Messenian 
army had now been re-enforced from Argos, Elis, Ar¬ 
cadia, and Sicyon, and Messenian refugees came in 
daily : the Lacedaemonians had been joined by the 
Corinthians alone. They met at Caprusema, where, 
by the desperate courage of the Messenians, and the 
conduct and extraordinary personal exertions of their 
leader, the Lacedaemonians were routed with such 
slaughter that they were on the point of suing for 
peace. Tyrtaeus diverted them from this submission, 
and persuaded them to recruit their numbers by asso¬ 
ciating some Helots, a measure very galling to Spar¬ 
tan pride. Meanwhile Aristomenes was ever harass¬ 
ing them with incursions. In one of these he carried 
off from Caryae a number of Spartan virgins assem¬ 
bled to celebrate the festival of Diana. He had form¬ 
ed a body-guard of young and noble Messenians, 
who always fought by his side, and to their charge 
he gave the captives. Heated with wine, the young 
men attempted to violate their chastity, and Aris¬ 
tomenes, after vainly remonstrating, killed the most 
refractory with his own hand, and, on receiving their 
ransom, restored the girls uninjured to their pa¬ 
rents. Another time, in an assault on HCgila, he 
is said to have been made prisoner by some Spar¬ 
tan women there assembled, who repelled the assault 
with a vigour equal to that of the men ; but one of 
them who had previously loved him favoured his es¬ 
cape. — In the third year of the war, another battle 
took place at Megaletaphrus, the Messenians being 
joined by the Arcadians alone. Through the treach¬ 
ery of Aristocrates, prince of Orchomenus, the Arcadi- 
“an leader, the Messenians were surrounded and cut to 
pieces, and Aristomenes, escaping with a scanty rem¬ 
nant, was obliged to give up the defence of his country, 
and collect his forces at Ira, a stronghold near the sea. 
Here he supplied the garrison by plundering excur¬ 
sions, so ably conducted as to foil every precaution ol 
the besiegers, insomuch that they forbade all culture 
of the conquered territory, and even of part of Laconia, 
At last, falling in with a large body of Lacedaemonians 
under both their kings, after an obstinate defence he 
was struck down and taken, with about fifty of his 
band. The prisoners were thrown as rebels into a 
deep cavern, and all were killed by the fall exceni 

837 




MESSENIA. 


MESSENIA. 


Aristomenes, who was wonderfully preserved and en¬ 
abled to escape, and, returning to Ira, soon gave 
proof to the enemy of his presence by fresh exploits 
equally daring and judicious. The siege was protract¬ 
ed till the eleventh year, when the Lacedaemonian 
commander, one stormy night, learning that a post in 
the fort had been quitted by its guard, silently occu¬ 
pied it with his troops. Aristomenes flew to the spot 
and commenced a vigorous defence, the women assist¬ 
ing by throwing tiles from the house-tops, and many, 
when driven thence by the storm, even taking arms 
and mixing in the fight. But the superior numbers of 
the Lacedaemonians enabled them constantly to bring 
up fresh troops, while the Messenians were fighting 
without rest or pause, with the tempest driving in 
their faces. Cold, wet, sleepless, jaded, and hungry, 
they kept up the struggle for three nights and two 
days ; at length, when all was vain, they formed their 
column, placing in the middle their women and chil¬ 
dren and most portable effects, and resolved to make 
their way out of the place. Aristomenes demanded 
a passage, which was granted by the enemy, unwilling 
to risk the effects of their despair. Their march was 
towards Arcadia, where they were most kindly re¬ 
ceived, and allotments were offered them of land. 
Even yet Aristomenes hoped to strike a blow for the 
deliverance of his country. He selected 500 Messe- 
nians, who were joined by 300 Arcadian volunteers, 
and resolved to attempt the surprise of Sparta while 
the army was in the farthest part of Messenia, where 
Pylos and Methone still held out. But the enterprise 
was frustrated by Aristocrates, who sent word of it to 
Sparta. The messenger was seized on his return, 
and the letters found on him discovering both the pres¬ 
ent and former treachery of his master, the indignant 
people stoned the traitor to death, and erected a pillar 
to commemorate his infamy.—The Messenians, who 
fell under the power of Lacedaemon, were made He¬ 
lots. The Pylians and Methonaeans, and others on 
the coast, now giving up all hope of farther resistance, 
proposed to their countrymen in Arcadia to join them 
in seeking some fit place for a colony, and requested 
Aristomenes to be their leader. He sent his son. 
For himself, he said, he would never cease to war 
with Lacedaemon, and he well knew that, while he 
lived, some ill would ever be happening to it. After 
the former war, the town of Rhegium in Italy had 
been partly peopled by expelled Messenians. The ex¬ 
iles were now invited by the Rhegians to assist them 
against Zancle, a hostile Grecian town on the oppo¬ 
site coast of Sicily, and in case of victory the town 
was offered them as a settlement. Zancle was be¬ 
sieged, and the Messenians having mastered the walls, 
the inhabitants were at their mercy. In the common 
course of Grecian warfare, they would all have been 
either slaughtered or sold for slaves, and such was the 
wish of the Rhegian prince. But Aristomenes had 
taught his followers a nobler lesson. They refused to 
inflict on other Greeks what they had suffered from 
the Lacedaemonians, and made a convention with the 
Zanclaeans, by which each nation was to live on equal 
terms in the city. The name of the town was chan¬ 
ged to Messana. ( Vid. Messana.)—Aristomenes vain¬ 
ly sought the means of farther hostilities against Spar¬ 
ta, but his remaining days were passed in tranquillity 
with Damagetus, prince of Ialysus in Rhodes, who 
had married his daughter. His actions dwelt in the 
memories of his countrymen, and cheered them in 
their wanderings and sufferings : and from their legen¬ 
dary songs, together with those of the Lacedaemo¬ 
nians, and with the poems of Tyrtseus, the story of 
the two Messenian wars has been chiefly gathered by 
<he learned and careful antiquary Pausanias, from 
-;'hose work it is here taken The character of Aris- 
‘omenes, as thus represented, combines all the ele¬ 
ments of goodness and greatness, in a degree almost 
838 


unparalleled among Grecian heroes. Inexhaustible in 
resources, unconquerable in spirit, and resolutely per¬ 
severing through every extremity of hopeless disaster, 
an ardent patriot and a formidable warrior, he yet was 
formed to find his happiness in peace ; and after pass¬ 
ing his youth under oppression, and his manhood in 
war against a cruel enemy, wherein he is said to have 
slain more than 300 men with his own hand, he yet 
retained a singular gentleness of nature, insomuch 
that he is related to have wept at the fate of the traitor 
Aristocrates. The original injustice and subsequent 
tyranny of the Lacedaemonians, with the crowning out¬ 
rage in the condemnation as rebels of himself and his 
companions, might have driven a meaner spirit to 
acts of like barbarity : but, deep as was his hatred 
to Sparta, he conducted the struggle with uniform 
obedience to the laws of war, and sometimes, as in 
the case of the virgins taken at Caryae, with more 
than usual generosity and strictness of morals.— 
The Messenians who remained in their country were 
treated with the greatest severity by the Spartans, 
and reduced to the condition of Helots or slaves. 
This cruel oppression induced them once more to 
take up arms, in the 79th Olympiad, and to fortify 
Mount Ithome, where they defended themselves for 
ten years : the Lacedaemonians being at this time 
so greatly reduced in numbers by an earthquake, 
which destroyed several of their towns, that they 
were compelled to have recourse to their allies for as¬ 
sistance. ( Thucyd ., 1 , 101. — Pausan., 4, 24.) At 
length the Messenians, worn out by this protracted 
siege, agreed to surrender the place on condition that 
they should be allowed to retire from the Peloponne¬ 
sus. The Athenians were at this time on no friendly 
terms with the Spartans, and gladly received the refu¬ 
gees of Ithome, allowing them to settle at Naupactus, 
which they had taken from the Locri Ozolse. {Thu¬ 
cyd., 1 , 103.— Pausan., 1. c.) Grateful for the protec 
tion thus afforded them, the Messenians displayed great 
zeal in the cause of Athens during the Peloponnesian 
war. Thucydides has recorded several instances in 
which they rendered important services to that power, 
not only at Naupactus, but in vEtolia and Amphilochia, 
at Pylos, and in the island of Sphacteria, as well as in 
the Sicilian expedition. When, however, the disaster 
of yEgospotamos placed Athens at the mercy of her 
rival, the Spartans obtained possession of Naupactus, 
and compelled the Messenians to quit a town which 
had so long afforded them refuge. Many of these, on 
this occasion, crossed over into Sicily, to join their 
countrymen who were established there, and others 
sailed to Africa, where they procured settlements 
among the Evesperitaa, a Libyan people. {Pausan., 
4, 26.) After the battle of Leuctra, however, which 
humbled the pride of Sparta, and paved the way for 
the ascendancy of Thebes, Epaminondas, who directed 
the counsels of the latter republic, with masterly pol¬ 
icy determined to restore the Messenian nation, by 
collecting the remnants of this brave and warlike peo¬ 
ple. He accordingly despatched agents to Sicily, It¬ 
aly, and Africa, whither the Messenians had emigra¬ 
ted, to recall them to their ancient homes, there to 
enjoy the blessings of peace and liberty, under the 
powerful protection of Thebes, Argos, and Arcadia. 
Gladly did they obey the summons of the Theban 
general, and hastened to return to that country, the 
recollection of which they had ever fondly cherished. 
Epaminondas, meanwhile, had made every preparation 
for the erection of a city under Ithome, which was to 
be the metropolis of Messenia ; and such was the zeal 
and activity displayed by the Thebans and their allies 
in this great undertaking, that the city, which they 
named Mess^ne, was completed in eighty-five days. 
{Diod Sic., 15, 66.) The entrance of the Messenians, 
which took place in the fourth year of the 102d Olym¬ 
piad, was attended with great pomp, and the celebra* 






MET 


MET 


ion of solemn sacrifices, and devout invocations to 
their gods and heroes. The lapse of 287 years from 
the capture of Ira, and the termination of the second 
war, had, as Pausanias affirmed, made no change in 
their religion, their national customs, or their language, 
which, according to that historian, they spoke even 
more correctly than the rest of the Peloponnesians. 
Pausan., 4, 27.) Other towns being soon after re¬ 
built, the Messenians were presently in a condition to 
make head against Sparta, even after the death of 
Epaminondas and the decline of Thebes. That great 
general strenuously exhorted them, as the surest means 
of preserving their country, to enter into the closest 
alliance with the Arcadians, which salutary counsel 
they carefully adhered to. ( Polyb ., 4, 32, 10.) They 
likewise conciliated the favour of Philip of Macedon, 
whose power rendered him formidable to all the states 
of Greece, and his influence now procured for them 
the restoration of some towns which the Lacedasmonians 
still retained in their possession. ( Polyb., 9, 28, 7.— 
Pausan ., 4, 28.— Strabo , 361.) During the wars and 
revolutions which agitated Greece upon the death of 
x\lexander, they still preserved their independence, and 
having, not long after that event, joined the Achaean 
confederacy, they were present at the battle of Sellasia 
and the capture of Sparta by Antigonus Doson. ( Pau¬ 
san. , 4, 29.) In the reign of Philip, son of Demetrius, 
an unsuccessful attack was made on their city by De¬ 
metrius of Pharos, then in the Macedonian service. 
The inhabitants, though taken by surprise, defended 
themselves on this occasion with such intrepidity, that 
nearly the whole of the enemy’s detachment was cut 
tc pieces, and their general, Demetrius, slain. (Stra¬ 
bo, 361.— Polyb., 3, 19, 2.— Pausan., 4,29.) Nabis, 
tyrant of Lacedaemon, made another attack on this city 
by night some years afterward, and had already pene¬ 
trated within the walls, when succours arriving from 
Megalopolis under the command of Philopoemen, he 
was forced to evacuate the place. Subsequently to 
this event, dissensions appear to have arisen, which 
ultimately led to a rupture between the Achteans and 
Messenians. Pausanias was not able to ascertain the 
immediate provocation which induced the Achseans to 
declare war against the Messenians. But Polybius 
does not scruple to blame his countrymen, and more 
especially Philopoemen, for their conduct to a people 
with whom they were united by federal ties. (Polyb., 
33, 10, 5.) Hostilities commenced unfavourably for 
the Acha3ans, as their advanced guard fell into an am¬ 
buscade of the enemy, and was defeated with great 
loss, Philopoemen himself remaining in the hands of 
the victors. So exasperated were the Messenians at the 
conduct of this celebrated general, that he was thrown 
into a dungeon, and soon after put to death by poison. 
His destroyers, however, did not escape the vengeance 
of the Achaeans ; for Lycortas, who succeeded to the 
command, having defeated the Messenians, captured 
their city, and caused all those who had been con¬ 
cerned in the death of Philopoemen to be immediately 
executed. Peace was then restored, and Messenia 
once more joined the Aduean confederacy, and re¬ 
mained attached to that republic till the period of its 
dissolution. (Liv., 39, 49.— Polyb., 24, 9.— Pausan., 
4, 29.— -Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 122, seqq.) 

Metabus, a tyrant of Privernum. He was father 
of Camilla, whom he consecrated to the service of 
Diana, when he had been banished from his kingdom 
by his subjects. (Virg., JEn., 11, 540.) 

Metapontum, a city of Lucania in Italy, on the 
coast of the Sinus Tarentinus, and a short distance to 
the south of the river Bradanus. It was one of the 
most distinguished of the Greek colonies. The ori¬ 
ginal name of the place appears to have been Metabum, 
which it is said was derived from Metabus, a hero to 
whom divine honours were paid. Some reports as¬ 
cribed its foundation to a party of Pylians on their re¬ 


turn from Troy ; and, as a proof of this fact, it was re¬ 
marked that the Metapontini, in more ancient times, 
made an annual sacrifice to the Neleidre. The pros¬ 
perity of this ancient colony, the result of its attention 
to agriculture, was evinced by the offering of a harvest 
of gold to the oracle of Delphi. The Greek words 
are- i9 spoq xpuGOvu, which commentators suppose to 
mean some golden sheaves. (Strabo, 264.) It may 
be remarked, also, that the scholiasts on Homer iden¬ 
tify Metapontum with the city which that poet calls 
Alyba in the Odyssey (24, 303). Other traditions are 
recorded, relative to the foundation of Metapontum, 
by Strabo, which confirm, at least, its great antiquity. 
But his account of the destruction of the first town by 
the Samnites is obscure, and not to be clearly un¬ 
derstood. It appears, however, that Metabum, if such 
was its name, was in a deserted state, when a number 
of Achasans, invited for that purpose by the Sybarites, 
landed on the coast and took possession of the place, 
which thenceforth was called Metapontum. ( Strab ., 
265. — Compare Stejph. Byz., s. v. MeraTrovTiov.- 
Eustatli. ad Dionys. Perieg., v. 368.) The Achseans, 
soon after their arrival, seemed to have been engaged 
in a war with the Tarentini, and this led to a treaty, by 
which the Bradanus was recognised as forming the 
separation of the two territories.—Pythagoras was held 
in particular estimation by the Metapontini, in whose 
city he is reported to have lived for many years. Af¬ 
ter his death, the house which he had inhabited was 
converted into a temple of Ceres. (Iambi., Vit. 
Pythag., 1, 30. — Cic., de Fin., 5, 2. — Liv., 1, 18.) 
We find this town incidentally mentioned by Herodo¬ 
tus (4, 15) with reference to Aristeas of Proconnesus, 
who was said to have been seen here 340 years after 
disappearing from Cyzicus. Its inhabitants, after con¬ 
sulting the oracle upon this supernatural event, erect¬ 
ed a statue to the poet in the Forum, and surrounded 
it with laurel. This city still retained its independ¬ 
ence when Alexander of Epirus passed over into Italy. 
Livy, who notices that fact, states that the remains of 
this unfortunate prince were conveyed hither previous 
to their being carried over into Greece (8, 24). It 
fell, however, ultimately into the hands of the Romans, 
together with the other colonies of Magna Grascia, on 
the retreat of Pyrrhus, and with them revolted in fa¬ 
vour of Hannibal, after his victory at Cannse. (Liv., 
22, 15.) It does not appear on what occasion the Ro¬ 
mans recovered possession of Metapontum, but it must 
have been shortly after, as they sent a force thence 
to the succour of the citadel of Tarentum, which was 
the means of preserving that fortress. (Livy, 25, 11 
— Polybius, 8, 36.) It would seem, however, to have 
been again in the hands of the Carthaginians. (Po¬ 
lyb., 8, 36.) In the time of Pausanias, this city was a 
heap of ruins (6, 19). Considerable vestiges, situated 
near the station called Torre di Mare, on the coast, 
indicate its ancient position. (Swinburne's Travels, 
p. 273. — Romanelli, vol. 1, p. 275. — Cramer's Anc. 
Italy, vol. 2, p. 347, seqq.) 

Metaurum, a town in the territory of the Bruttii, in 
Italy, not far from Medura, and below Yibo Yalentia. 
Its site is generally supposed to accord with that ol 
the modern Gioja. According to Stephanus, this an¬ 
cient place was a colony of the Locri; and the same 
writer farther states, that, according to some accounts, 
it gave birth to the poet Stesichorus, though that hon¬ 
our was also claimed by Himera in Sicily. Solinus, 
on the other hand (c. 8), asserts, that Metaurum was 
founded by the Zancloeans. (Compare Mela, 2, 4. — 
Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 423.) 

Metaurus, I. a river in the territory of the Bruttii, 
running into the Tyrrhene or Lower sea. The town 
of Metaurum is supposed to have stood at or near its 
mouth. It is now called the Marro, and sometimes 
the Petrace. ( Cluver ., It. Ant., vol. 2, p. 1292.) It 
appears to have been noted for the excellence of the 

839 




M ft l 


M ft T 


thunny fish caught at its mouth. ( Athen 7, 63.) Stra- 
bu speaks of a port of the same name, which may have 
been the town of Metaurum. ( Strab ., 256.— Cramer's 
Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 423.)—II. A river of Umbria, in 
Italy, flowing into the Adriatic. It was rendered 
memorable by the defeat of Hasdrubal, the brother of 
Hannibal. The Roman forces were commanded by 
the consuls Livius Salinator and Claudius Nero, A.U.C 
545. It is now the Metro. The battle must have ta¬ 
ken place near the modern Fossombrone, and on the 
left bank of the Metaurus. Though Livy has given no 
precise description of the spot, it may be collected that 
it was in that part of the course of the river where it 
begins to be enclosed between high and steep rocks 
(27, 47). Tradition has preserved a record of the 
event in the name of a hill between Fossombrone and 
the pass of Furba, called Monte d'Asdrubale. {Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 261.) 

Metelli, a distinguished family of the Caecilian 
gens in Rome. Those most worthy of notice are : 
I. Q. Csecilius Metellus Macedonicus, was sent, when 
prastor (B.C. 148), into Macedonia, against Andriscus, 
who pretended to be a son of Perseus, the last king 
of Macedonia, and who had excited a revolt against 
the Romans. In this war Andriscus was defeated 
and taken prisoner by Metellus, who obtained, in con¬ 
sequence, a triumph, and the surname of Macedon¬ 
icus. {Livy, Epit.., dO.—Pausamas , 7, 13, l.-Eu- 
trop., 4, 13.) In his consulship, B.C. 143, Metellus 
was sent into Spain to oppose Viriathus, who had ob¬ 
tained possession of the whole of Lusitania, and had 
defeated successively the praetors Vetilius and Plautius. 
Metellus remained in Spain two years, and obtained 
several victories ; but was superseded in the command, 
before the conclusion of the war, bv Pompey. ( Liv., 
Epit., 52, 53.— Val. Max., 3, 2, 21.— Id., 7, 4, 5.— 
Id., 9, 3, 7.— Appian, Iber., 76.) During the cen¬ 
sorship of Metellus and Pompey, B.C. 131, it was de¬ 
creed that all citizens should be obliged to marry. The 
oration which Metellus delivered on this subject was 
extant in the time of Livy, and is referred to by Suetoni¬ 
us. {Liv., Epit., 59. — Suet., Vit. Aug., 89.) We 
are told by Livy and Pliny, that, when Metellus was 
returning one day from the Campus Martius, he was 
seized by command of C. Attinius Labeo, a tribune of 
the commons, whom he had in his censorship expelled 
from the senate, and was dragged to the Tarpeian rock ; 
and that it was with the greatest difficulty that his friends 
were enabled to preserve his life by obtaining another 
tribune to put his veto upon the order of Attinius. 
{Liv., Epit., 59 .—Plin., 7, 45.) Pliny refers to Me¬ 
tellus as an extraordinary example of human happi¬ 
ness : “ For, besides the possession of the highest dig¬ 
nities,” says the Roman writer, “ and having obtained 
a surname from the conquest of Macedonia, he was 
carried to the funeral pile by four sons, of whom one 
had been praetor, three had been consuls, two had en¬ 
joyed a triumph, and one had been censor.” {Plin., 

7, 45.)—II. Q. Caecilius Metellus Numidicus, derived 
his surname from his victories in Numidia, whither he 
was sent in his consulship, B.C. 109, in order to op¬ 
pose Jugurtha. He remained in Numidia, B.C. 108, 
as proconsul; but, in the beginning of the following 
year, he was superseded in the command by Marius, 
who had previously been his legatus or lieutenant- 
general. On his return to Rome Metellus obtained 
the honours of a triumph. {Sallust, Bell. Jug.—Vel¬ 
leius Paterc., 2, 11 .—Eutropius, 4, 27.— Liv., Epit., 
65.) Metellus was censor B.C. 102. He took an 
active part in the civil commotions of his time, and was 
one of the most powerful supporters of the aristocrati- 
cal party. In B.C. 100 he was obliged to go into exile, 
in consequence of opposing the measures of the tribune 
Saturninus ; but, on the execution of the latter, Me¬ 
tellus was recalled from exile in the following year. 
.Vid Marius.)—III. Q. Csecilius Metellus Pius° son of 


the preceding, belonged to the same political party as 
his father, and supported Sylla in his contest with Ma¬ 
rius. Metellus received especial marks of favour from 
Sylla, and was consul with him B.C. 80. He was 
sent, in B.C. 78, against Sertorius in Spain, where he 
appears to have remained till the conclusion of the war, 
in B.C. 72. From the year 76 B.C., Pompey was his 
colleague in command, and they triumphed together at 
the end of the war. {Veil. Paterc., 2, 30.-— Eutrop.. 
6, 5. — Pint., Vit. Pomp.) Metellus was Pontifex 
Maximus; and on his death, B.C. 63, in the consul¬ 
ship of Cicero, he was succeeded in that dignity by 
Julius Caesar. {Encycl. Us. Knowl.,\ ol. 15, p. 137.) 

Methodius, I. surnamed Eubulius, a father of t&fc 
church, and a martyr, flourished at the beginning of the 
fourth century. He was at first bishop of Olympus oi 
Patara in Lycia, but.was afterward translated to the 
see of Tyre. This latter station, however, he occupied 
only a short time. His zeal for the purity of the 
Christian faith exposed him to the resentment of the 
Arians; he was exiled to Chalcidice in Syria, and 
there received the crown of martyrdom, A.D. 312. He 
was the author of a long poem against Porphyry ; a 
treatise on the Resurrection, against Origen ; another 
on the Pythoness; another on Free Will; a dialogue 
entitled “ The Banquet of the Virgins,” &c. Several 
fragments of this author have been collected. The 
“ Banquet of the Virgins” has reached us entire. It 
was first published at Rome, 1656, 8vo, with a Latin 
version and a Dissertation by Leo Allatius. It is a 
dialogue on the excellence of chastity, modelled after 
the Banquet of Plato. The best edition is that of Fa- 
bricius, appended to the second volume of the works of 
St. Hyppolitus, Hamb., 1718.—II. A patriarch of Con¬ 
stantinople, born at Syracuse about the commence¬ 
ment of the ninth century. After various difficulties, 
into which he was plunged by his attachment to the 
worship of images, and the opposition of the Icono¬ 
clasts, he obtained the see of Constantinople, A.D. 
842. His first act after his accession to the episcopal 
office was to assemble a council and re-establish the 
worship of images. He died A.D. 846. He was the 
author of several works, which are given by Combefis 
in his Bibliotheca Patrum. —III. A monk and painter, 
born at Thessalonica, and who flourished about the 
middle of the 9th century. He is celebrated for hav¬ 
ing converted to Christianity Bogoris, king of the Bul¬ 
garians, by means of a picture representing the scenes 
of the last judgment. {Biogr. Univ., vol. 28, p. 465.) 

Methone, I. a city of Macedonia, about forty sta¬ 
dia north of Pydna, according to the epitomist of Stra¬ 
bo (330). It was celebrated in history from the cir¬ 
cumstance of Philip’s having lost an eye in besieging 
the place. {Strab., 1. c. — Demosth., Olynth., 1 , 9.*) 
That it was a Greek colony we learn from Scylax 
{Peripl., p. 26), and also Plutarch, who reports that, a 
party of Eretrians settled there, naming the place Me¬ 
thone, from Methon, an ancestor of Orpheus. He adds, 
that these Greek colonists were termed Aposphendone- 
ti by the natives. {Queest. Grcec.) It appears from 
Athenseus that Aristotle wrote an account of the Me- 
thomean commonwealth (6, 27). This town was oc¬ 
cupied by the Athenians towards the close of the Pel¬ 
oponnesian war, with a view of annoying Perdiccas by 
ravaging his territory and affording a refuge to his dis¬ 
contented subjects. When Philip, the son of Amyn- 
tas, succeeded to the crown, the Athenians, who still 
held Methone, landed three thousand men, in order to 
establish Argseus on the throne of Macedon ; they 
were, however, defeated bv the young prince, and 
driven back to Methone. Several years after, Philip 
laid siege to this place, which at the end of twelve 
months capitulated. The inhabitants having evacua¬ 
ted the town, the walls were razed to the 5 ground. 
{Diod., 16, 34.) Dr. Clarke and Dr. Holland concul 
m supposing that the site of Methone answers to tha 







MET 


MET 


cf Leutzrochon. (Cramer's Anc. Greece , vol. 1, p. 
216.) — M. A city of Thessaly, noticed by Homer 
(II., 2, 716), and situate, like the preceding, on the 
seacoast. It must not, however, be confounded with 
the Macedonian one, an error into which Stephanus 
seems to have fallen ( s. v. MeOcovt].) —III. A city of 
Messenia, on the western coast, below Pylos Messe- 
niacus. According to Pausanias, the name was Mo- 
thone. Tradition reported, that it was so called from 
Mothone, the daughter of iEneas ; but it more probably 
derived its name from the rock Mothon, which formed 
the breakwater of its harbour. ( Pausan ., 4, 35.) 
Strabo informs us, that, in the opinion of many wri¬ 
ters, Methone should be identified with Pedasus, rank¬ 
ed by Homer among the seven towns which Agamem¬ 
non offered to Achilles. (II., 9, 1294.— Strab., 359.) 
Pausanias makes the same observation. In the Pelo¬ 
ponnesian war Methone was attacked by some Athe¬ 
nian troops, who were conveyed thither in a fleet sent 
to ravage the coast of the Peloponnesus; but Brasidas, 
who was quartered in the neighbourhood, having forced 
his way through the enemy’s line, threw himself into 
the town with 100 men, which timely succour obliged 
the Athenians to re-embark their troops. (Thucyd., 
2,25.) Methone subsequently received a colony of 
Nauplians: these, being expelled their native city by 
the Argives, were established here by the Lacedaemo- 
nians. (Pausan., 4, 35.) Many years after, it sus¬ 
tained great loss from the sudden attack of some Il¬ 
lyrian pirates, who carried off a number of inhabitants, 
both men and women. Methone was afterward be¬ 
sieged and taken by Agrippa, who had the command 
of a Roman fleet: that general having found here Boc- 
chus (Boyop), king of Mauritania, caused him to be put 
to death as a partisan of Marc Antony. (Strab., 359. ) 
We learn from Pausanias that Trajan especially fa¬ 
voured this city, and bestowed several privileges on 
its inhabitants. Sir W. Gell states, that at about 
2700 paces to the east of Modon is a place called 
Palaio Mothone, where are vestiges of a city. Mo¬ 
don is a Greek town of some size, with a fortress 
built by the Venetians. (Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 
3, p. 137.)—IV. or Methana, a peninsula of Argolis, 
within the district of Troezene, formed by the harbour 
or bay of Pogon on one side, and the curvature of 
the Epidaurian Gulf on the other, and connected with 
the mainland by a narrow isthmus, which the Athe¬ 
nians occupied and fortified in the seventh year of the 
Peloponnesian war. (Thucyd., 4,45.) Diodorus Sic¬ 
ulus says it was taken by the same people under Tol- 
mides, in the interval between the Persian and Pelo-, 
ponnesian wars : and this is perhaps the meaning of 
Thucydides, when he says that, on peace being made, 
or, rather, a truce for thirty years, Troezene, among 
other towns, was restored to the Peloponnesians. 
(Thucyd., 1, 115.) Within the peninsula was a small 
town, also called Methone, which possessed a temple 
of Isis. About thirty stadia from the town were to 
be seen some hot springs, produced by the eruption 
of a volcano in the reign of Antigonus Gonatas. 
(Pausan., 2, 34.) Dodwell says, that “the moun¬ 
tainous promontory of Methana consists chiefly of a 
volcanic rock of a dark colour. The outline is grand 
and picturesque, and the principal mountain which 
was thrown up by the volcano is of a conical form. 
Its apparent height is about equal to that of Vesu¬ 
vius.” The ancient city of Methone, according to 
the same intelligent traveller, “ was situated in the 
plain, at the foot of its acropolis, near which are a few 
remains of two edifices.” (Dodwell, vol. 2, p. 281.— 
Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 269, segq.) 

Methymna, a city of Lesbos, lying opposite to As- 
sus in Troas, and situate, according to Ptolemy, near 
the northernmost point of the island. It was, next to 
Mytilene, the most important city of Lesbos. The 
territory of the place was contiguous to that of Myti- 
5 O 


lene, a circumstance which appears to have created 
considerable rivalry between them, and probably in¬ 
duced the Methymneans to adhere to the Athenians, 
while their neighbours were bent on detaching them¬ 
selves from that power. (Thucyd., 3, 2, 18.) As a 
reward for their fidelity, the Methymneans were ex¬ 
empted from contributions in money. (Thiuyi., 6, 
85.) Towards the close of the Peloponnesian war, 
Methymna fell into the power of the Spartan com¬ 
mander Callicratidas, who, though urged to treat the 
citizens with severity, and to sell them as slaves, re¬ 
fused to comply with the advice, declaring that, as 
long as he was admiral, no Greek, as far as lay in his 
power, should be enslaved. (Xen., Hist. Gr., 1, 6,8.) 
The best Lesbian wine was obtained from an adja¬ 
cent territory belonging to this city (Ovid, A. A., 1, 
57), and hence Bacchus was frequently called the god 
of Methymna. (Athenceus, 8, p. 363, b. — Pausan., 
10, 19.) According to Strabo, this city was the na 
tive place of the historian Hellanicus. (Strab., 616.) 
It was also the birthplace of Arion, whose adventure 
with the dolphin is related by Herodotus (1, 23).— 
The modern name, according to D’Anville, is Porto 
Petcra; but Olivier (vol. 2, p. 87) makes Molivo, 
which others write Moliwa, correspond to the site of 
the ancient city. (Compare De Sinner, ad Bondel- 
mont., Ins. Archipel., p. 219.— Cramer's Asia Minor, 
vol. 1, p. 160.) 

Metis (Prudence), daughter of Oceanus, was the 
first wife of Jupiter, and exceeded gods and men in 
knowledge. Heaven and Earth, however, having told 
Jupiter that the first child of Metis, a maid, would 
equal him in strength and counsel; and that her sec¬ 
ond, a son, would be king of gods and men, he deceiv¬ 
ed her when she was pregnant, and swallowed her; 
and, after a time, the goddess Minerva sprang from 
his head. (Apollod., 1, 3, 6.) Metis is said to have 
given a potion to Saturn, which compelled him to 
vomit up the offspring whom he had swallowed.— 
(Apollod., 1, 2, 1.) 

METTUs,or Mettius Fuffetius, I. dictator of Al¬ 
ba. He fought against the Romans in the reign of 
Tullus Hostilius, and agreed at length with the foe 
to leave the issue of the war to a combat between 
the three Horatii and three Curiatii. Beholding with 
pain his country subdued by the defeat of the latter, 
he imagined that he should be able to recover her 
freedom for her by joining with the Fidenates, who 
had attempted, during the late war, to shake off the 
Roman yoke. Secretly encouraged by him, they took 
the field, and advanced to the neighbourhood of Rome, 
in conjunction with the Veientes, their allies. Fuffe¬ 
tius had promised to abandon the Romans, and go 
over to the Fidenates and Veientes in the middle of 
the engagement. He had not courage enough to keep 
his word, but proved a traitor alike to the Romans 
and to his new allies, by drawing off his troops from 
the line of battle, and yet not marching over to the 
foe, but waiting to see which side would conquer. 
The Romans gained the victory, and Fuffetius was 
torn asunder by being attached to two four-horse char¬ 
iots, that were driven in different directions. . (Liv., 
1, 23, scqq .)—The common form of the name is Met- 
tus Fuffetius, but the more correct one is Mettius, as 
is shown by Niebuhr (Rom. Hist., vol. 1, p. 299, Eng. 
transl.) —II. Tarpa, a critic. (Vid. Tarpa.) 

Meton, a celebrated astronomer, who lived at Ath¬ 
ens in the fifth century B.C. He was, according 
to some, a Lacedaemonian (A atcuv), but the best au¬ 
thorities call him a Leuconian (Aevuovievq). He is 
said to have pretended insanity in order not to go 
with the Athenian expedition against Syracuse, the 
disastrous termination of which he plainly foresaw.— 
The solstices which Meton observed with Euctemon 
are preserved by Ptolemy. He is best known, how 
ever, as the founder of the celebrated lunar cycle, 



M E V 


MID 


called “ the Metonic” after his name, and which is 
still preserved by the Western churches in their com¬ 
putation of Easter. This cycle takes its rise as fol¬ 
lows : 235 revolutions of the moon are very nearly 19 
revolutions of the sun, and one complete revolution of 
the moon’s node. If these approximations were exact, 
ail the relative phenomena of the sun and moon, par¬ 
ticularly those of eclipses, would recommence in the 
same order, at the end of every 19 years. There is, 
however, an error of some hours in every cycle. The 
first year of the first Metonic period commenced with 
the summer solstice of the year 432 B.C. ; and if the 
reckoning had been continuous, what is now called 
the golden number of any year would have denoted 
the year of the Metonic cycle, if the summer solstice 
had continued to be the commencement of the year. 
On reckoning, however, it will be found that A.D. 1, 
which is made the first year of a period of 19 years, 
would have been part of the fourteenth and part of the 
fifteenth of a Metonic cycle. ( Ideler, iiber den Cyclus 
des Meton. — Abhand. Acad., Berlin , 1814-1815, Hist. 
Philol. Cl., p. 230.— Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 15, p. 
144.) “ It has been suspected,” observes Dr. Hale, 

“ and not without foundation, that the celebrated lunar 
cycle of 19 years, which Meton introduced into Greece 
for the adjustment of their lunar year with the solar, 
was borrowed from the ancient Jewish tables. This 
was the opinion of the learned Anatolius, bishop of 
Laodicea, about A.D. 270.” ( Hale's Chronology, 

vol. 1, p. 66.) 

Metrocles, a disciple of Crates. He had previ¬ 
ously been a follower of Theophrastus and Xenocra- 
tes ; but when he commenced cynic, he committed 
their works to the flames, as the useless dreams of idle 
speculation. In his old age he became so dissatisfied 
with the world that he strangled himself. ( Enfield, 
Hist. Philos., vol. 1, p. 314.) 

Metrod6rus, I. an intimate friend of Epicurus. 
He first attached himself to that philosopher at Lamp- 
sacus, and continued with him till his death. He 
maintained the cause of his friend and master with 
great intrepidity, both by his discourses and his wri¬ 
tings, against the Sophists and Dialectics, and con¬ 
sequently partook largely of the obloquy which fell 
upon his sect. ( Cic., Tusc. Quast., 2, 3. — Id., de 
Fin., 2, 3.) Plutarch charges him with having rep¬ 
robated the folly of his brother Timocrates in aspi¬ 
ring to the honours of wisdom, while nothing was of 
any value but eating and drinking, and indulging the 
animal appetites. {Adv. Colot. — Op., ed. Reiske, vol. 
10, p. 624, seqq.) But it is probable that this calumny 
originated with Timocrates himself, who, from a per¬ 
sonal quarrel with Metrodorus, deserted the sect, and 
therefore can deserve' little credit. ( Enfield , Hist. 
Phil., vol. 1, p. 456.— Jonsius, Hist. Phil., 1, 2, 6.— 
Menage ad Diog. Laert., 10, 22.)—II. A painter and 
philosopher of Stratonicea, B.C. 171. He was sent 
to Paulus iEmilius, who, after his victory over Perse¬ 
us, king of Macedonia, B.C. 168, requested of the 
Athenians a philosopher and a painter, the former to 
instruct his children, and the latter to make a painting 
of his triumphs. Metrodorus was sent, as uniting in 
himself both characters: and he gave satisfaction in 
both to the Roman general. ( Plin ., 35, 11.— Cic., 
de Fin., 5, 1, de Orat., 4.) 

Mevania, a city of Umbria, on the river Tinia, in 
the southwestern angle of the country, and to the 
northwest of Spoletium. It was famous for its wide- ; 
extended plains and rich pastures. ( Colum ., 3, 8.) : 
Strabo mentions Mevania as one of the most consider¬ 
able cities of Umbria. ( Strab ., 227.—Compare Liv., < 
9, 41.) Here Vitellius took post, as if determined to . 
make a last stand for the empire against Vespasian, 
but soon after withdrew his forces. {Tacit., Hist., 3, : 
55.) If its walls, as Pliny says, were of brick, it : 
;-ould not be capable of much resistance (35, 14). 


This city is farther memorable as the birthplace of 
Propertius, a fact of which he himself informs us (4, 
1, 21). It is now an obscure village, which still, 
however, retains some traces of the original name in 
that of- Bevagna. ( Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 
269.) 

Mezentius, king of Caere, at the time that ^Eneas 
was fabled to have landed in Italy. He is represented 
by Virgil as a monster of ferocity, w’antonly murdering 
many of his subjects, and causing others, fastened face 
to face unto dead bodies, to expire amid loathsomeness 
and famine. His subjects, exasperated by his tyranny, 
expelled him from the throne. He and his son Lausus 
took refuge in the court of Turnus, whom they assist¬ 
ed in his war against iEneas. They both fell by the 
hand of the Trojan prince. The narrative of the com¬ 
bat in which they were slain is justly esteemed one of 
the most brilliant passages in the whole iEneid. Vir¬ 
gil has described Lausus as eminent for beauty of per¬ 
son, bravery, and filial piety; a pleasing contrast to 
his ferocious parent. The epithet contemptor divum 
was applied to Mezentius by Virgil, because he de¬ 
manded of his subjects the first fruits of their lands and 
their flocks, instead of appropriating them in sacrifice 
to the gods. {Cato, ap. Macrob., Sat., 3, 5.— Virg., 
Mn., 8, 478.— Id. ib., 10, 762, seqq.) 

Micipsa, king of Numidia, eldest son of Masinissa, 
shared with his brothers Gulussa and Mastanabal the 
kingdom of their father, which had been divided among 
them by Scipio ^Emilianus. ( Vid. Masinissa.) On 
the death of his brothers he became monarch of the 
whole country, about 146 B.C. Of a pacific disposi¬ 
tion, Micipsa enjoyed a quiet reign, and proved the 
mildest of all the Numidian kings. Animated by the 
same enlightened policy as his father, he exerted him¬ 
self strenuously for the civilization of his subjects, es¬ 
tablished a colony of Greeks in his capital, and assem¬ 
bled there a large number of learned and enlightened 
men. Although he had many children by numerous 
concubines, still Hiempsal and Adherbal were his fa¬ 
vourite sons. Unhappily, however, he adopted his 
nephew, the famous Jugurtha, and declared him, by his 
will, joint heir to the kingdom along with his two sons 
just mentioned. This arrangement brought with it 
the ruin of his family and kingdom. {Vid. Jugurtha.) 

Micon, I. a painter and statuary, contemporary with 
Polygnotus, who flourished about Olymp. 80. ’ This 
artist has been noticed at great length by Bottiger 
{Archaol. Piet., 1, p. 254, seqq.). In ancient MSS. 
his name is sometimes written M view, sometimes 
M tjkov or N lkuv, but the more correct form is proba¬ 
bly M lkuv (Micon). Varro mentions him among the 
more ancient painters, whose errors were avoided by 
Apelles, Protogenes, and others. (L. L., 8, p. 129, 
ed. Bip.) Pliny states, that, in connexion with Po¬ 
lygnotus, he either invented some new colours, or em¬ 
ployed those in use in his paintings on a better plan 

than that previously adopted. {Plin., 33, 13, 56._ 

Id., 35, 6, 25.) A list of some of his productions is 
given by Sillig {Diet. Art., s. v.). —II. Another painter, 
distinguished from the former by the epithet of “ the 
Younger.” His age and country are uncertain. {Plin., 
35, 9, 35.) Bottiger confounds him with Micon l' 
{Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.) —III. A statuary of Syracuse. 
At the request of the children of Hiero II., kino- of 
Syracuse, he made two statues of this monarch, which 
were placed at Olympia, the one representing him on 
horseback, the other on foot. The death of Hiero 
took place B.C. 215 ; and as the statues in question 
were made soon after this event, we can decide with 
certainty on the age of Micon. {Sillig, Diet. Art 
s. v.) ' 

Midas, an ancient king of the Brygians in Thrace, 
son of Gordius, and whose name is connected with 
some of the earliest mythological legends of the Greeks. 
According to one account, he possessed, at the foot of 






MIDAS. 


MIL 


Mount Bermion, a garden, in which grew spontane¬ 
ously roses with sixty petals, and of extraordinary 
fragrance. ( Herod., 8, 138. — Compare Wesscling, 
ad loc.) To this garden Silenus was in the habit of 
repairing; and Midas ( Pausan 1, 4, 5) or his people, 
by pouring wine into the fount from which he was 
wont to drink, intoxicated him, and he was thus cap¬ 
tured. {Herod., 1. c.) Midas put various questions to 
him respecting the origin of things and the events of 
past times. ( Serv. ad Virg., Eclog., 6, 13.) One 
was, What is best for men 1 Silenus was long silent; 
at length, when he was constrained to answer, he 
said : “Life is most free from pain when one is igno¬ 
rant of future evils. It is best of all for man not to 
be born : the second is, for those who are born to die 
as soon as possible.” {Aristot., de An. — Plut., Con¬ 
sol. ad Apoll. Op., 7, p. 352, ed. Hutten.) He also, 
it is said, gave the king a long account of an immense 
country which lay without the ocean-stream, the peo¬ 
ple of which once invaded the land of the Hyperbore¬ 
ans. ( Theopomp ., ap. JElian, V. H., 3, 18.)—The 
name of Midas is also connected with the migration 
of the Brygians from Thrace into Asia Minor, where 
they are said to have changed their name to Phrygi¬ 
ans ( Strab., 295. — Plin., 5, 32. — Sleph. Byz., s. v. 
Bpiyeg), and it has been supposed that the Brygians 
passed over under the same Midas of whom the above 
legend is related. {Hock, Kreta, vol. 1, p. 129.) At 
all events, we find the name Midas reappearing in the 
legends of Asia Minor. Thus, mention is made of 
a King Midas who reigned at Pessinus, where he built 
a splendid temple to Cybele, and established her sa¬ 
cred rites. (Diod. Sic., 3, 5.) So also Xenophon 
places near Thyrnbrium the fountain where Midas was 
said to have caught the satyr. {Anab., 1, 2, 13.) 
We have likewise another legend relative to Midas and 
Silenus, the scene of which is laid, not in Europe, but 
in Lower Asia. According to this account, as Bac¬ 
chus was in Lydia, on hit* return from the conquest of 
the East, some of the country people met Silenus stag¬ 
gering about, and, binding him with his own garlands, 
led him to their king. Midas entertained him for ten 
days, and then conducted him to his foster-son, who, in 
his gratitude, desired the king to ask whatever gift he 
would. Midas craved that all he touched might turn 
to gold. His wish was granted ; but when he found 
his very food converted to precious metal, and himself 
on the point of starving in the midst of wealth, he 
prayed the god to resume his fatal gift. Bacchus di¬ 
rected him to bathe in the Pactolus, and hence that 
river obtained golden sands. {Ovid, Met., 11, 85, 
seqq. — Hygin., fab., 191. — Serv., ad JEn., 10, 142. 
— Max. Tyr., 30.) There is a third legend relative 
to Midas. Pa.n, the god of shepherds, venturing to 
set his reed-music in opposition to the lyre of Apollo, 
was pronounced overcome by Mount Tmolus ; and all 
present approved the decision except King Midas, 
whose ears were, for their obtuseness, lengthened by 
the victor to those of an ass. The monarch endeav¬ 
oured to conceal this degradation from his subjects ; 
but it was perceived by one of his attendants, who, 
finding it difficult to keep the secret, yet afraid to re¬ 
veal it, dug a hole in the ground, and whispered there¬ 
in what he had perceived. His words were echoed by 
the reeds which afterward grew on the spot, and which 
are said to have repeated, when agitated by the wind, 
“ King Midas has asses' ears." ( Ovid, Met., 11,153, 
seqq .)—The legend respecting the wealth of Midas 
would seem to have an historical basis, and to point 
to some monarch of Phrygia who had become greatly 
enriched by mines and commercial operations. Hence 
the Phrygian tradition, that when Midas was an in¬ 
fant, some ants crept into his mouth as he lay asleep, 
and deposited in it grains of wheat. This was re¬ 
garded as an omen of future opulence. {JEiian, V. 
H, 12, 45.— Cic., Div., 1, 36.— Val. Max., , 6.) 


The same monarch, in all probability, gave a favourable 
reception to the rites of Bacchus, then for the first time 
introduced into his dominions, and hence his success 
in the accumulation of riches may have been ascribed 
to the favour of the god. The later cycle of fable, how¬ 
ever, appears to have changed the receiver and protec¬ 
tor of the rites of Bacchus into a companion or follower 
of Bacchus himself. Hence we find Midas numbered 
among the Sileni and Satyrs, and, as such, having the 
usual accompaniment of goat's ears. (Compare the 
language of Philostratus : gerelxo gw yap tov ruv 
IjaTvpuv yevovg 6 M iddg, dig kdylov rd ti~a. — Vit. 
Apoll. Tyan., 6, 13, p. 303, ed. Morell.) Now it 
would seem that the Attic poets, in their satyric dra¬ 
mas, made the story of Midas a frequent theme of tra¬ 
vesty, and in this way we have the wealthy monarch 
converting everything into gold by his mere touch, even 
his food undergoing this strange metamorphosis ; and 
again, the pricked-up ears of the goat-footed Satyr 
become changed by Attic wit into the ears of an ass. 
It may be, too, that the first satyric composer, who in¬ 
troduced these appendages into his piece, discharged, 
in this way, a shaft at some theatrical judges who had 
rejected one of his own productions. (Consult the 
remarks of Wieland, Attisches Museum, vol. 1, p. 
354, seqq., and compare Welcker, Nachtrag, p. 301.) 
Schwenck, however, takes a very different view of 
the subject. He makes Midas to have been an old 
Thracian or Phrygian deity, referring to Hesychi- 
us (Midap 1 9eog) as an authority for this, and identi¬ 
fies him with the moon-god, or Pens Lunus. Pie 
compares the name Middf with peig, pevbg, as the 
Cretan lttov was related to elg, hog. Now utig in¬ 
dicates unity, being merely elg with a prefix, as in 
pia for la ; and hog {annus), “ the year,” has also re¬ 
lation to unity. Thus, according to Schwenck, Midas 
indicated the lunar year as a unit of time. The long 
ears of Midas he also makes a lunar symbol, as in the 
case of the Scandinavian goddess Mani, or the Moon. 
{Etymologised-Mythol. Andcut., p. 66, seq.) This 
explanation is very far-fetched.—It is more than prob¬ 
able that the name Midas was common to the Lydians 
as well as Phrygians, since Midas, according to some 
accounts, was the husband of Omphale. ( Cleared ., 
ap. Athen., 12, p. 516.)—Mr. Leake gives an account 
of a very ancient monument at Doganlir, in what was 
originally a part of Phrygia, which appeared to him to 
have been erected in honour of one of the kings of 
Phrygia, of the Midaian family. ( Journal of a Tour 
in Asia Minor, p. 31.) It is very probable, indeed, 
that many monarchs of the Phrygian dynasty bore the 
name of Midas. {Leake, l. c.) 

Midea, I. an ancient city of Bceotia, near the lake 
Copai's, and, according to tradition, swallowed up, 
along with Arne, by the waters of that lake. {Horn., 
II., 2, 507.— Strab., 413.)—II. A town of Argolis, in 
the Tyrinthian territory, named, as was said, after t-he 
wife of Electryon {Find., Olymp ., 7, 49.— Scliol., ad 
loc.)', but Apollodorus affirms that it already existed in 
the time of Perseus (2, 4) —It was afterward destroyed 
by the Argives. {Strab., 373.) The vestiges of this 
place are near the monastery of Agios Adrianos, where 
there is a Palczo Castro in a bold rock; the walls are 
of ancient masonry. {Gell, Itin. of the Morea, p 
185 .— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 250.) 

Milesii, the inhabitants of Miletus. {Vid. Miletus.) 

Milesiorum Murus (Milyciov relxog), a place in 
Lower Egypt, to the west of the Sebennytic mouth of 
the Nile, and which owed its foundation to the Mile¬ 
sians, or people of Miletus. {Eustath. ad Dionys .— 
Huds., Geogr. Min., vol. 4, p. 146.) 

Miletopolis, a city of Mysia, northeast of Adra 
myttium, and situate on a branch of the river Rhyn 
dacus. It coincides, according to D’Anville, with the 
modern Beli Kessk. {Plin., 5, 32.— Steph. Byz.. p 
467.) 


843 




MILETUS. 


M i. L 


Miletus, I. a son of Apollo, who fled from Crete 
to avoid falling into the hands of Minos. ( Apollod., 3, 
1, 2.) He came to Caria, and was said to have been 
the founder of the city of Miletus. {Apollod., 1. c .— 
Compare Heyne, ad loc.) —II. The most celebrated of 
the cities of Ionia, situate on the southern shore of the 
bay into which the river Latmus emptied, and, accord¬ 
ing to Strabo, eighty stadia south of the embouchure 
of the Maeander. {Strab., 634.) The origin of this 
city falls in the period of the first Greek emigrations 
from home ; but the circumstances connected with its 
founding are involved in great uncertainty. As far as 
any opinion can be formed from various accounts that 
are given of this event, it would appear that the place 
was first settled by natives of the country ; that to 
these came Sarpedon from Miletus in Crete, and after 
him Neleus from Attica, together with other settlers 
in process of time. {Strab., 1. c. — Pausan , 7, 2.— 
Apollod., 3, 1.— Eustath. ad Dionys., v. 825.) Mile¬ 
tus was already large and flourishing when the cities 
of the parent country were but just beginning to emerge 
from obscurity. The admirable situation of the place, 
and the convenience of having four harbours, one of 
which was capable of containing a large fleet, gave it 
an early and great preponderance in maritime affairs. 
It carried on an active and extensive commerce with 
the shores of the Euxine on the one hand, and the dis¬ 
tant coast of Spain on the other, to say nothing of the 
principal ports of the Mediterranean, which were like¬ 
wise frequented by the Milesian vessels. Its most 
important trade, however, was with the shores of the 
Euxine. Almost all the Greek cities along the coast 
of this inland sea, which were found there at the pe¬ 
riod of the Persian power, were of Milesian origin. 
As, however, many of those cities were themselves 
conspicuous for size and population, one can hardly 
comprehend how Miletus, in the midst of so active a 
‘■raffle, which of itself must have required the attention 
of considerable numbers, could command a superflu¬ 
ous population, sufficiently extensive for the establish¬ 
ment of so many colonies, which Pliny makes to have 
been eighty in number, and Seneca seventy-five. 
{Plin., 29.~Senec., Consol, ad Helv., c. 6.—Consult 
Rambach, de Mileto ejusque Coloniis, Hal. Sax., 1790. 

Larcher , Hist, d'Herod., vol. 8, p. 344, 359.) It is 
more than probable, that, in sending out these colonies, 
the natives of the country, the Lydians, Carians, and 
Leleges, were invited to join, and did so.—Miletus 
was already a powerful city when the Lydian monarchy 
rose into consequence. The kings of Lydia, posses¬ 
sors of all the surrounding territory, could not brook 
the independence of the Ionian city ; they accordingly 
carried on war against it for many years, and were at 
times powerful enough to advance even to the city walls, 
and to destroy or carry off the produce of the neigh¬ 
bouring country ; but they were unable to mar the pros¬ 
perity of a city which had the control of the sea, and 
consequently bade defiance to their power. The Mile¬ 
sians appear subsequently to have made a treaty with 
Croesus, in which they probably acknowledged that 
sovereign as their liege lord, and consented to pay him 
tribute. The same treaty was also agreed upon be¬ 
tween them and Cyrus, when the latter had conquered 
Lydia ; and this saved Miletus from the disasters which 
befell at that time the other Ionian states. {Herod., 
1,141, 143.) But it was not always equally fortunate. 

In the reign of Darius, the whole of Ionia was excited 
£0 revolt by the intrigues and ambitious schemes of 
Histiaeus, who had been raised to the sovereignty of 
Miletus, his native city, by the Persian monarch, in 
recompense for the services he had rendered in the 
Scythian expedition. Aristagoras, his deputy and 
kinsman, also greatly contributed to inflame the minds 
of his countrymen. At his instigation, the Athenians 
sent a force to Asia Minor, which surprised and burned 
Sardis; but this insult was speedily avenged by the 


e Persian satraps, and, after repeated defeats, Miletus 
, was besieged by land and sea, and finally taken by 
i storm. This beautiful and opulent city, the pride and 

- ornament of Asia, was thus plunged into the greatest 
f calamity ; the surviving inhabitants were carried to 
? Susa, and settled, by order of Darius, at Ampe, near 

- the mouth of the Tigris. The town itself was given 
3 up by the Persian commanders to the Carians. The 
3 Athenians are said to have been so much affected by 
; this event, that when Phrynichus, the tragic writer, in- 
s troduced on the stage his play of “ the Capture of Mi- 
i letus,” the whole house burst into tears, and the peo- 
i pie fined the poet 1000 drachmas, and forbade the per- 
! formance for the future. {Herod., 6, 6, seqq. — Cal- 
> listh., ap. Strab., 635.)—When Alexander, after the 
' battle of the Granicus, appeared before Miletus, the 
i inhabitants, encouraged by the presence of a Persian 
■ army and fleet stationed at Mycale, refused to submit 

to that prince, and open their gates to his forces ; upon 
which he immediately commenced a most vigorous at 
tack on their walls, and finally took the city by assault. 
He however forgave the surviving inhabitants, and 
granted them their liberty. {A.rrian, Exp. Al., 1, 18, 
seqq.) The Milesians sided with the Romans during 
the war with Antiochus. {Liv., 37, 16.— Id., 43, 6.) 
This city was yet flourishing when Strabo wrote {Stra¬ 
bo, l. c. — Compare Tacit., Ann., 4, 55 et 63), and 
still later, in the time of Pliny (5, 29) and Pausanias 
(7, 2). It appears from the Acts of the Apostles, that 
St. Paul sojourned here a few days on his return from 
Macedonia and Troas, and summoned hither the el¬ 
ders of the Ephesian Church, to whom he delivered an 
affectionate farewell address. {Acts, 20, 17, seqq.) 
The Milesian Church was under the direction of bish¬ 
ops, who sat in several councils, and ranked as metro¬ 
politans of Caria. {Hierocl., Synecd , p. 687.) This 
continued as late as the decline of the Byzantine em¬ 
pire {Mich. Due., p. 41); at which time, however, the 
town itself was nearly in ruins, from the ravages of the 
Turks and other barbarians, and the alluvial deposites 
caused by the Masander. Miletus deserves farther 
mention as the birthplace of Thales, the celebrated 
mathematician and philosopher; and his successors 
Anaximander and Anaximenes ; also of Cadmus and 
Hecatseus, two of the earliest historians of Greece. 
{Strab., 635.— Plin., 5, 39. — Suid., s. v. K dSjuoq.) 
The Milesians were in repute for their manufactures ot 
couches and other furniture ; and their woollen cloths 
and carpets were especially esteemed. ( Athenceus, 1, 
p. 28.— Id. , 11, p. 428 .-^ld., 12, p. 540, &c.) The 
modern village of Palatscha occupies part of the site 
of the ancient city. The coast, however, has under¬ 
gone great changes, for some remarks on which con¬ 
sult the article Mteander. {Cramer's Asia Minor, 
vol. 1, p. 385, seqq.) 

Milo, I. a celebrated athlete of Crotona in Italy. 
He accustomed himself from early life to bear bur¬ 
dens, the weight of which he successively augmented, 
and at last became so conspicuous for strength as to 
carry the most surprising loads with the utmost ease. 
Many curious stories are related bv the ancients con¬ 
cerning his wonderful strength. He could hold a 
pomegranate in his hand, with his fingers closed over 
it, and yet, without either crushing or even pressing on 
the fruit, could keep his fingers so firmly bent as to 
render it impossible for any one to take the fruit from 
him. He could place himself on a discus, some say 
a shield, covered over with oil or other unctuous sub¬ 
stances, and rendered, of course, very slippery, and yet 
he could retain so firm a foothold that no one was able to 
dislodge him. He could encircle his brow with a cord, 
and break this asunder by holding his breath and caus¬ 
ing the veins of the head to distend. He could hold hit 
right arm behind his back, with the hand open and 
the thumb raised, and a man could not then separate 
his little finger from the rest The accovm* that is 






MILO. 


MILO. 


givln of his voracity is almost incredible. He ate, it 
is said, every day, twenty pounds of animal food, 
twenty pounds of bread, and drank fifteen pints of 
wine. Athenasus relates, that on one occasion he 
carried a steer four years old the whole length of the 
stadium at Olympia (606 feet), and then, having cut it 
up and cooked it, ate it all up himself in one day. 
(Athen ., 10, p. 412, e .) Some authorities add, that 
he killed it with a single blow of his fist. He had an 
opportunity, however, at last, of exerting his prodi¬ 
gious strength in a more useful manner. One day, 
while attending the lectures of Pythagoras, of whom 
he was a disciple and constant hearer, the column 
which supported the ceiling of the hall where they 
were assembled was observed to totter, whereupon 
Milo, upholding the entire superstructure by his own 
strength, allowed all present an opportunity of esca¬ 
ping, and then saved himself. Milo was crowned 
seven times as victor at the Pythian games, and six 
times at the Olympic, and he only ceased to present 
himself at these contests when he found no one will¬ 
ing to be his opponent. In B.C. 509 he had the 
colnmand of the army sent by the people of Crotona 
against Sybaris, and gained a signal victory.—His 
death was a melancholy one. He was already ad¬ 
vanced in years, when, traversing a forest, he found a 
trunk of a tree partly cleft by wedges. Wishing to 
sever it entirely, he introduced his hands into the open¬ 
ing, and succeeded so far as to cause the wedges to 
fall out; but his strength here failing him, the separa¬ 
ted parts on a sudden reunited, and his hands remain¬ 
ed imprisoned in the cleft. In this situation he was 
devoured by wild beasts. (Aid. Gell • 15. 16.— Val.' 
Max., 9, 12, 17.)—II. Titus Annius, was a native of 
Lanuvium in Latium, and was born about 95 B.C. 
His family appears to have been a distinguished one, 
since we find him espousing the daughter of Sylla. 
Having been chosen tribune of the commons B.C. 57, 
he zealously exerted himself for the recall of Cicero, 
but the violent proceedings of Clodius paralyzed all 
his efforts. Determined to put an end to this, he 
summoned Clodius to trial as a disturber of the pub¬ 
lic peace; but the consul Metellus dismissed the pros¬ 
ecution, and thus enabled Clodius to resume with im¬ 
punity his unprincipled and daring career. Milo there¬ 
upon found himself compelled, for the sake of his 
own personal safety, to keep around him a band of 
armed followers. His private resources having suf¬ 
fered greatly by the magnificent games which he had 
exhibited, Milo, in order to repair his shattered for¬ 
tunes, married Fausta, the daughter of Sylla; but the 
union was an unhappy one ; Fausta was discovered to 
be unfaithful to his bed, and her paramour, the histo¬ 
rian Sallust, was only allowed to escape after receiving 
severe personal chastisement, and paying a large sum 
of money to the injured husband. Clodius mean¬ 
while, having obtained the office of aedile, had the as¬ 
surance to accuse Milo in his turn of being a disturber 
of the public tranquillity, and of violating the laws bv 
keeping a body of armed men in his service. Pom- 
pey defended the latter; Clodius spoke in reply ; and 
the whole affair was carried on amid the most violent 
clamours from their respective partisans. No decis¬ 
ion, however, was made ; the matter was protracted, 
and at last allowed to drop. Some years after this 
(B.C. 51) Milo offered himself as a candidate for the 
consulship against two other competitors. Clodius, 
of course, opposed him ; but the powerful exertions of 
his friends would have carried him through, had not 
an unfortunate occurrence frustrated all his hopes. 
Clodius, it seems, had openly declared, that if Milo 
did not abandon all pretensions to the consulship, in 
three days he would be no more. This threat fell upon 
the head of its own author. On the 20th of January, 
Milo set out from Rome to go to Lanuvium, of which 
he was the chief magistrate or dictator, and where, by 


virtue of his office, he was on tAe following day to ap¬ 
point a flamen for the performance of some of the re¬ 
ligious ceremonies of the municipality. He travelled 
in a carriage, accompanied by his wife and one of his 
friends, and attended by a strong body of slaves, and 
also by some of the armed followers, whose services 
he had occasionally employed in his contests with 
Clodius. While prosecuting his route, he fell in with 
the latter, who was returning to Rome, followed by 
about thirty of his slaves. Clodius and Milo passed 
one another without disturbance ; but the armed men, 
who were among the last of Milo’s party, provoked a 
quarrel with the slaves of Clodius ; and Clodius turn¬ 
ing back, and interposing in an authoritative manner, 
Birria, one of Milo’s followers, ran him through the 
shoulder with a sword. Upon this the fray became 
general. Milo’s slaves hastened back in great num¬ 
bers to take part in it, while Clodius was carried into 
an inn at Bovillae. Meanwhile, Milo himself was in¬ 
formed of what had passed, and, resolving to avail 
himself of the opportunity which was offered, he or¬ 
dered his slaves to attack the inn and destroy his ene¬ 
my. Clodius was dragged out into the road and 
there murdered ; his slaves shared his fate, or saved 
their lives by flying to places of concealment ; and his 
body, covered with wounds, was left in the middle ot 
the highway. ( AsconArg. in Cic., Orat. pro Mil.) 
When the corpse of Clodius was brought to Rome, a 
violent popular commotion ensued. The body waa 
carried into the Forum and exhibited on the rostra ; 
and at last the mob, having conveyed it from the rostra 
into the senate-house, set fire to a funeral pile made 
for it at the moment out of the benches, tables, and 
other furniture which they found at hand. The con¬ 
sequence was, as might be expected, that the senate- 
house itself was involved in the conflagration and 
burned to the ground. These, and several other dis¬ 
orders committed by the multitude, somewhat turned 
the tide of public opinion in favour of Milo. He was 
now encouraged to return to Rome and renew his can¬ 
vass for the consulship. He did so, but the whole 
city became eventually a scene of the greatest confu¬ 
sion ; and, in order to restore public tranquillity, Pom- 
pey was declared sole consul, and armed with full pow¬ 
ers to put a stop to farther disturbances. Milo was 
thereupon brought to trial for the murder of Clodius, 
and was defended by Cicero ; but the clamours and 
outcries of the populace devoted to the party of Clo¬ 
dius, and the array of armed men that encompassed 
the tribunal, to prevent any outbreak of popular vio¬ 
lence, prevented the orator from displaying his usual 
force and eloquence, and Milo was condemned. When 
the event of the trial was known, he went into exile, 
and fixed his abode at Massilia in Gaul. Milo was 
also tried after his departure for three other distinct 
offences ; for bribery, for illegal caballing and combi¬ 
nations, and for acts of violence, and was successive¬ 
ly found guilty on all.—It is said that, soon after Mi 
lo’s condemnation, and when he was residing at Mas¬ 
silia, Cicero sent him a copy of his speech in the form 
in which we now have it, and that Milo, having read 
it over, wrote a letter to the orator, in which he stated 
that it was a fortunate thing for himself that Cicero 
had not pronounced the oration which he sent, since 
otherwise he (Milo) would not then have been eat¬ 
ing such fine mullets at Massilia. It has been some¬ 
times stated, that Milo was subsequently restored to 
his country. This, however, is altogether erroneous. 
Velleius Paterculus and Dio Cassius both contradict 
the fact of his recall, by what we find in their respect¬ 
ive histories. According to Dio Cassius, Milo was the 
only one of the exiles whom Caesar refused tcf recall, 
because, as is supposed, he had been active in exci¬ 
ting the people of Massilia to resist Caesar. Vellei¬ 
us Paterculus states that Milo returned without per¬ 
mission to Italy, and there busily employed himselt 

845 




M I L 


MILTIADES. 


in raising opposition to Csesar during that command-* 
er's absence in Thessaly against Pompey. He adds 
that Milo was killed by the blow of a stone while lay¬ 
ing siege to Compsa, a town of the Hirpini. ( Cic ., 
Or. pro Mil .— Veil. Paterc., 2, 47, 68. — Encyclop. 
Metropol., div. 3, vol. 2, p. 218, seq. — Biogr. Univ., 
vol. 29, p. 57.) 

Miltiades, I. an Athenian, son of Cypselus, who 
obtained a victory in a chariot-race at the Olympic 
games, and led a colony of his countrymen to the 
Chersonesus. The cause of this step on his part was 
a singular one. It seems that the Thracian Dolonci, 
harassed by a long war with the Absinthians, were di¬ 
rected by the oracle of Delphi to take for their king 
the first man they met in their return home, who in¬ 
vited them to come under his roof and partake of his 
entertainments. The Dolonci, after receiving the or¬ 
acle, returned by the sacred way, passed through Pho- 
cis and Boeotia, and, not being invited by either of 
these people, turned aside to Athens. Miltiades, as 
he sat in this city before the door of his house, ob¬ 
served the Dolonci passing by, and as by their dress 
and armour he perceived they were strangers, he call¬ 
ed to them, and offered them the rites of hospitality. 
They accepted his kindness, and, being hospitably 
treated, revealed to him all the will of the oracle, with 
which they entreated his compliance. Miltiades, dis¬ 
posed to listen to them because weary of the tyranny 
of Pisistratus, first consulted the oracle of Delphi, and 
the answer being favourable, he went with the Dolon¬ 
ci. He was invested by the inhabitants of the Cher¬ 
sonese with sovereign power. The first measure he 
took was to stop the farther incursions of the Absin¬ 
thians, by building a wall across the isthmus. When 
he had established himself at home, and fortified his 
dominions against foreign invasion, he turned his arms 
against Lampsacus. His expedition was unsuccess¬ 
ful ; he was taken in an ambuscade, and made pris¬ 
oner. His friend Croesus, king of Lydia, however, 
was informed of his captivity, and procured his release 
by threatening the people of Lampsacus with his se¬ 
verest displeasure. He lived a few years after he had 
recovered his liberty. As he had no issue, he left his 
kingdom and possessions to Stesagoras, the son of 
Cimon, who was his brother by the same mother. The 
memory of Miltiades was greatly honoured by the 
Dolonci, and they regularly celebrated festivals and 
exhibited shows in commemoration of a man to whom 
they owed their preservation and greatness. {Herod., 

6, 38.— Id., 6, 103.)—II. A nephew of the former, and 
brother of Stesagoras. His brother, who had been 
adopted by Miltiades the elder, having died without 
issue, Miltiades the younger, though he had not, like 
Stesagoras, an interest established during the life of 
his predecessor, and though the Chersonese was not 
by law an hereditary principality, was still sent by the 
Pisistratidse thither with a galley. By a mixture of 
fraud and force he succeeded in securing the tyranny. 
On his arrival at the Chersonese, he appeared mourn¬ 
ful, as if lamenting the recent death of his brother. 
The principal inhabitants of the country visited the 
new governor to condole with him, but their confidence 
in his sincerity proved fatal to them. Miltiades seiz¬ 
ed their persons, and made himself absolute in Cher¬ 
sonesus ; and, to strengthen himself, he married He- 
gesipyla, the daughter of Olorus, king of the Thra¬ 
cians. When Darius marched against the Scythians, 
Miltiades submitted to him and followed in his train, 
and was left with the other Grecian chiefs of the army 
to guard the bridge of boats by which the Persians 
crossed the Danube. He then proposed to break up 
ine bridge, and, suffering the king and army to perish 
by the Scythians, to secure Greece and deliver Ionia 
from the Persian yoke. His suggestion was rejected, 
not for its treachery, but because Persia was to each 
of the tyrants his surest support against the spirit of 
846 


freedom in the people. Miltiades, soon alter, wa» 
driven out by the Scythians, but recovered his posses¬ 
sions on their departure. Knowing himself, however, 
to be obnoxious to the Persians, he fled to Athens, 
when their fleet, after the re-conquest of Ionia, wa? 
approaching the coast of Thrace. The Athenian 
laws were severe against tyrants, and Miltiades, on ar» 
riving, was tried for his life. He was acquitted, how¬ 
ever, more perhaps owing to the politic way in which 
he had used his power in the Chersonesus, than to 
the real merit of his conduct. Nay, he even so far 
won the favour of the people as to be appointed, not 
long after, one of the ten generals of Athens. It was 
at this same period that the Persian armament, under 
Datis and Artaphernes, bore down upon the shores of 
Attica ; and, guided by Hippias, who knew the capa¬ 
bilities of every spot of ground in his countiy, the in¬ 
vading force landed at Marathon. According to cus¬ 
tom, the Athenian army was under the command of 
its ten generals. The opinions of the ten were equal¬ 
ly divided as to the propriety of engaging, when Mil¬ 
tiades, going privately to the polemarch Callimachus, 
who, by virtue of his office, commanded the right wing, 
and had an equal vote with the ten generals, prevailed 
upon him to come over to his way of thinking, and 
vote in favour of a battle. The vote of the polemarch 
decided the question ; and when the day of command 
came round to Miltiades, the battle took place. The 
details of this conflict are given elsewhere. ( Vid. 
Marathon.)—Perhaps no battle ever reflected more 
lustre on the successful commander than that of Mar¬ 
athon on Miltiades ; though it should be observed, that 
he whom all ages have regarded as the defender of 
liberty, began his career as an arbitrary ruler, and on 
only one occasion in his whole life was engaged on 
the side of freedom ; but for the same man to be the 
liberator of his own country and a despot in another, 
is no inconsistency, as the course of human events has 
often shown.—The reward bestowed upon Miltiades 
after this memorable conflict was strikingly charac¬ 
teristic. He and the polemarch Callimachus were 
alone distinguished from the other combatants in the 
painted porch, and stood apart with the tutelary gods 
and heroes.—Miltiades now rose to the utmost height 
of popularity and influence, insomuch that when he re¬ 
quested a fleet of seventy ships, without declaring how 
he meant to employ them, but merely promising that 
he would bring great riches to Athens, the people 
readily agreed. He led them to the Isle of Paros, 
under the pretence of punishing its people for their 
compelled service in the Persian fleet, but really to 
avenge a personal injury of his own. He demanded 
one hundred talents as the price of his departure; but 
the Parians refused, and resisted him bravely ; and in 
an attempt to enter the town, he received a wound, and 
was obliged to withdraw his army. On his return he 
was brought to trial for his life by Xanthippus, a man 
of high consideration, on account of the failure of his 
promises made to the people. His wound disabled 
him from defending himself, but he was brought into 
the assembly on a couch, while his brother Tisagoras 
defended him, principally by recalling his former ser¬ 
vices. The memory of these, with pity for his pres¬ 
ent condition, prevailed on the people to absolve him 
from the capital charge ; but they fined him fifty tal¬ 
ents, nearly $53,000. As he could not immediately 
raise this sum, he was cast into prison, where he soon 

after died of his wound, which had gangrened._The 

character of Miltiades is one on which, with the few 
materials that history has left, we should not judge 
too exactly. The outline which remains is one that, 
if filled up, would seem fittest to contain the very 
model of a successful statesman in an age when the 
prime minister of Athens was likewise the leader of 
her armies. Heeren has briefly noticed the transition 
which took place in the character of Athenian state® 







M I M 


M I N 


men, from the warrior-like Miltiades and Themistocles, 
to the warlike rhetorician Pericles, and thence to the 
orator, who to his rhetorical skill united no military 
prowess. Miltiades, with great generalship, showed 
great power as a statesman, and some, but not much, 
as an orator. This is agreeable to his age. Wheth¬ 
er he was a true patriot, governed by high principle, 
it is now impossible to determine. He achieved one 
great action, which for his country produced a most 
decisive result. The unfortunate close of his career 
may be regarded by some as shovying the ingratitude 
of democracies; but perhaps a judicious historian will 
draw no conclusion of the kind, especially with so 
imperfect materials before him as we possess of the 
life of this illustrious Athenian. If the Athenians 
conceived that nothing he had done for them ought 
to raise him above the laws ; if they even thought 
that his services had been sufficiently rewarded by the 
station which enabled him to perform them, and by 
the glory he reaped from them, they were not un¬ 
grateful or unjust; and if Miltiades thought other¬ 
wise, he had not learned to live in a free state. (He¬ 
rod., lib. 5 et 6 — Corn. Nep., Vit. Milt.—Encycl. 
Us. Knowl., vol. 15, p. 227 .—ThirlwalVs Greece, 
vol. 2, p. 246.) 

Milto. Vid. Aspasia II. 

Milvius Pons, a bridge about two miles from 
Rome, over the Tiber, in a northerly direction. It 
was also called Mulvius. Its construction is ascribed 
to M. HDmilius Scaurus, who was censor A.U.C. 644, 
and its ancient appellation is probably a corruption of 
his nomen. The modern name is Ponte Molle. If it 
be true that the bridge owed its erection to ./Emilius, 
Livy, when he speaks of it (27, 51), must be supposed 
to mention it by anticipation. We learn from Cicero 
that the Pons Mulvius existed at the time of Catiline’s 
conspiracy, since the deputies of the Allobroges were 
here seized by his orders. In later times, it witnessed 
the defeat of Maxentius by Constantine. (Zosim., 2, 
16. — Cramer's Anc. Italy , vol. 1 , p. 239.) 

Milyas. Vid. Lycia. 

Mimallones, a name given to the priestesses of 
Bacchus among the Thracians, according to Hesv- 
chius and Suidas, or, more correctly, to the female Bac¬ 
chantes in general. Suidas deduces the term from 
the Greek / upyaig , “ imitation ,” because the Baccha¬ 
nals, under the influence of the god, imitated in their 
wild fury the actions of men. Others, however, de¬ 
rive it from Mimas, a mountain of Thrace. Nonnus 
enumerates the Mimallones among the companions of 
Bacchus in his Indian expedition. (Compare Persius, 
Sat., 1 , 99. — Ovid, A. A., 1, 541. — Sidon., Prcef. 
Paneg. Anthem.) Bochart gives as the etymology of 
the word the Hebrew Memallelan (“ garrulse,” “ lo- 
quaculai”); or else Mamal , “ a wine-press.” ( Rolle, 
Rechcrches sur le culle de Bacchus , vol. 1 , p. 136.) 

Mimas, I. one of the giants that warred against the 
gods. (Compare Eurip., Ion, 215. — Senec., Here. 
Fur., 981.— Apoll. Rhod., 3, 1227.)—II. A mountain 
range of Ionia, terminating in the promontory Argen- 
num, opposite the lower extremity of Chios. ( Thu - 
cyd., 8, 34.— Plin.,5, 29.— Amm. Marc., 31, 42.) 

Mimnermus, an elegiac poet, a native of Colophon 
in Ionia, and contemporary with Solon. Muller, quo¬ 
ting a fragment of Mimnermus’ elegy entitled “ Nan- 
no,” says that he was one of the colonists of Smyrna 
from Colophon, and whose ancestors, at a still earlier 
period, came from Nelean Pylos. (Hist. Lit. Gr., 
p. 115.) Muller also ascribes the melancholy char¬ 
acter of his poems to the reduction of Smyrna by 
Alyattes. From Horace and Propertius we gather, 
that his poems had reference, for the most part, to 
those appetites which, in poetical language, are ex¬ 
pressed by the name, of love. ( Horat ., Epist., 1, 6, 
65.— Propert., 1, 9, 11.) His mind, however, was of 
» melancholy turn, which gave to his writings a pen¬ 


sive cast, not traceable in the productions of others 
who belonged to the same school. In the few frag¬ 
ments which we have remaining of Mimnermus, he 
complains of the briefness of human enjoyment, the 
shortness of the season of youth, and of the many 
miseries to which man is exposed. Mimnermus was 
the first who adapted the elegiac verse to those sub¬ 
jects which, from this adaptation, are now usually con¬ 
sidered as proper for it; Callinus, its inventor, having 
used it as a vehicle for warlike strains. The ancient 
writers speak with great admiration of his poem on 
Nanno, a young female musician of whom he was 
deeply enamoured, and who preferred him to young¬ 
er and handsomer rivals. The'sweetness of his ver¬ 
ses obtained for him also from the ancients the appel¬ 
lation of Ligystades (Aiyvarddyg, from ?uyvg, “me¬ 
lodious.") —The fragments of Mimnermus have been 
several times edited, in the collections of Stephens, 
Brunck, Gaisford, and Boissonade ; to which may be 
added Bach’s separate edition, published at Leipzig 
in 1826. ( Wieland, Attisches Museum, vol. 1, p. 338. 

— Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 1, p. 191.— Encycl. 
Us. Knowl., vol. 15, p. 230.— Muller, Hist. Lit. Gr., 
p. 115, seqq.) 

Mina (Mm), a name given by the Athenians, not 
to a particular coin, as is commonly but erroneously 
imagined, but merely to a certain sum, or, in other 
words, to so much money of account. The mina 
was equivalent, as a sum, to 100 drachmas, which 
would make, in our currency, a little more than $17 
59 cts. The term was also employed as a weight, 
and was then equivalent to a little over 15 oz. avoir 
dupois weight.—This appears to be the proper place 
for a few remarks relative to Athenian coinage. Na 
gold coins appear to have been minted at Athens, al¬ 
though the gold coinage of other places circulated 
there freely. (Consult Cardwell's Lectures on the 
Coinage of the Greeks and Romans, p. 112, seqq.) 
But the metal of the greatest importance to Athens 
wa>s silver. It had been employed by them for their 
coinage from the earliest periods of their history ; it 
was obtained in considerable quantity from their own 
neighbourhood (vid. Laurium) ; and it formed an im¬ 
portant item in their national revenue. The high 
commendation given to this coinage by Aristophanes, 
refers, not to any delicacy of workmanship, but to the 
extreme purity of the metal; and the same cause 
seems to have deterred the Athenians from excelling 
in the execution of their coins, which induced them 
to preserve the greatest purity in the standard. The 
specimens, accordingly, of Athenian silver are very 
numerous, and, though evidently minted at periods 
verv different from each other, retain so great a de¬ 
gree of correspondence, as implies either much polit¬ 
ical wisdom on the part of Athens, or, at least, a will¬ 
ing acquiescence in the authority of public opinion. 
The most important property, in fact, of the Athenian 
coinage w T as its purity, carried to so great an extent 
that no baser metal appears to have been united with 
it as an alloy. It may readily be supposed that the 
lead, which was found, together with the silver, in the 
mines of Laurium, was not always perfectly separa¬ 
ted from it by the ancient process of refining: but the 
quantity of that metal which has hitherto been discov¬ 
ered in the silver coins of Athens is not likely to have 
been added designedly ; and copper, which would 
have been more suitable for the purpose, does not 
appear to have been used at any period as an alloy, 
much less in the way of adulteration. Connected 
with this superiority, and with the rude method of 
minting which prevailed in former times, was the far¬ 
ther advantage possessed by the Athenian coin of be¬ 
ing less exposed to wear from constant use than is 
the case with the thinner lamina and the larger sur¬ 
face of a modern coin ; whether it were owing to the 
smaller degree of hardness in the metal they employ- 

847 




M I ft 


MINERVA. 


ett, or to their want of mechanical contrivances, or to 
their knowledge that a compact and globular body is 
least liable to loss from friction, the Athenian coin 
was minted in a form more massive than our own, 
and much less convenient for tale or transfer, but bet¬ 
ter calculated to maintain its value unimpaired by the 
wear of constant circulation.—The only question that 
remains to be considered here is this: to what cause 
was it owing that the coins of Athens should have 
been executed throughout in a style of inelegance and 
coarseness; ai a time, too, when the coins of other 
districts, far inferior in science and deputation to 
Athens, were finished in the most perfect workman¬ 
ship 1 The fact is certainly remarkable; and the 
only explanation that has hitherto been given of it, 
may tend to illustrate still farther the beneficial effects 
of commerce in its influence on the Athenian mint. 
The ancient coinage, says Eckhel, had recommended 
itself so strongly by its purity, and had become so 
universally known among Greeks and barbarians by 
its primitive emblems, that it would have been im¬ 
possible to have made any considerable change in the 
form or workmanship of the coin, without creating a 
degree of suspicion against it, and eventually con¬ 
tracting its circulation. ( Walpole's Collection , vol. 1, 
p. 433.— Cardwell's Lectures, p. 9, seqq.) 

Mincius, now Mincio, a river of Gallia Cisalpina, 
flowing from the Lake Benacus, and falling into the 
Po. ( Virg., Eclog., 7, 13.— Id., Georg., 3, 1 5.—Id., 
JEn., 10, 206.) 


Mineides or Minyeides, the daughters of Minyas, 
king of Orchomenus, in Boeotia. They were three in 
number, Leucippe, Aristippe, and Alcathoe. These 
females derided the rites of Bacchus, and continued 
plying their looms, while the other women ran through 
the mountains. Bacchus came as a maiden and re¬ 
monstrated, but in vain; he then assumed the form 
of various wild beasts; serpents filled their baskets; 
vines and ivy twined round their looms, while wine 
and milk distilled from the roof; but their obstinacy 
was unsubdued. He finally drove them mad; they 
tore to pieces the son of Leucippe, and then went’roam- 
ing through the mountains, till Mercury touched them 
with his wand, and turned them into a bat, an owl, 
and a crow. ( Corinna et Nicqnd., ap. Anton. Lib., 10.’ 

JElian, V. H., 3, 42. — Ovid , Met., 4, 1, seqq .— 
Keightley's Mythology, p. 213.) 

Minerva, an ancient Italian divinity, the same in 
general with the Pallas-Athene (IlalUdp ’kdqvri) of 
the Greeks, and to be considered, therefore, in com¬ 
mon with her, in one and the same article.—Minerva 
or Athene was regarded in the popular mythology as 
the goddess of wisdom and skill, and, in a word, of 
all the liberal arts and sciences. In both the Homeric 
poems she is spoken of as the daughter of Jupiter, and 
in one place it seems to be intimated that she had no 
other parent. {II., 5, 375, seqq.) In later writers, 
however, the legend assumes a more extended form. 
It is said that Jupiter, after his union with Metis, was 
informed by Heaven and Earth that the first child born 
from this marriage, a maiden, would equal him in 
strength and counsel; and that the second, a son, 
would be king of gods and men. Alarmed at this 
prediction, the monarch of Olympus swallowed his 
spouse, who was then pregnant; but being seized, 
after a tins;a, with racking pains in the head, the god 
sumrn<T;}Xi ^ mean to his aid, who, in obedience to the 
commands of Jupiter, cleft the head of the latter with 
a blow af his brazen hatchet, and Minerva immediate¬ 
ly leape 1 forth, in panoply, from the brain of her sire. 

^'A 88 ?’ s m- — Ib., 924. — Schol. ad Theog., 
? 1 ' 7 ’ 63 —Schol, ad lob.-Schol. ad 
4 Poll■ Rhod.., 4, 1310.) Still later authorities assign 
the task of opening the head of Jove to Prometheus 
{Euripides, Ion, 462 .—Apollod., 1, 3), or to Hermes 
{Schol. ad Find., 01 7, 66).—Minerva is in Homer, 
848 ’ 


as in the general popular system, the goddess of wis 
dom and skill. She is in war opposed to Mars, the 
wild war-god, as the patroness and teacher of just and 
scientific warfare. She is therefore on the side of the 
Greeks, as he on that of the Trojans. But on the 
shield of Achilles, where the people of the besieged 
town are represented as going forth to lie in ambush, 
they are led by Mars and Minerva together {II, 18, 
516), possibly to denote the union of skill and courage 
required for that service. {II., 13, 277.) Every pru¬ 
dent chief was esteemed to be under the patronage ol 
Minerva, and Ulysses was therefore her especial fa¬ 
vourite, whom she relieved from all his perils, and 
whose son Telemachus she also took under her protec¬ 
tion, assuming a human form to be his guide and di¬ 
rector. In like manner, Cadmus, Hercules, Perseus, 
and other heroes were favoured and aided by this god¬ 
dess. As the patroness of arts and industry in gen¬ 
eral, Minerva was regarded as the inspirer and teacher 
of able artists. Thus she taught Epeus to frame the 
wooden horse, by means of which Troy was taken ; 
and she also superintended the building of the Argo. 
She was likewise expert in female accomplishments ; 
she wove her own robe and that of Juno, which last 
she is said to have embroidered very richly. {II., 5, 
735.— lb., 14, 178.) When the hero Jason was set¬ 
ting out in quest of the golden fleece, Minerva gave 
him a cloak wrought by herself. {Apoll. Rhod., 1, 
721.) She taught this art also to mortal females who 
had won her affection. ( Od., 20, 72.) When Pando¬ 
ra was formed by Vulcan for the ruin of man, she was 
attired by Minerva. {Theog., 573.) In the Homer¬ 
ic hymn to Vulcan {H. 20), this deity and Minerva 
are mentioned as the joint benefactors and civilizers 
of mankind by means of the arts which they taught 
them, and we shall find them in intimate union also 
in the mythic system of Attica.—The invention of the 
pipe {av\6q) is also ascribed to this goddess. When 
Perseus, says Pindar {Pyth., 12, 15, seqq. — Schol, ad 
loc.), had slain Medusa, her two remaining sisters bit¬ 
terly lamented her death. The snakes which formed 
their ringlets mourned in concert with them, and Mi¬ 
nerva, hearing the sound, was pleased with it, and re¬ 
solved to imitate it: she in consequence invented the 
pipe, whose music was named many-headed {Ko'hvKe- 
tyaloq), on account of the number of serpents whose 
mournful hissings had given origin to the instrument. 
Others {Hygin., fab., 165) say that the goddess formed 
the pipe from the bone of a stag, and, bringing it with 
her to the banquet of the gods, began to play upon it. 
Being laughed at by Juno and Venus, on account of 
her green eyes and swollen cheeks, she went to a fount¬ 
ain on Mount Ida, and played before the liquid mirror. 
Satisfied that the goddesses had had reason for their 
mirth, she threw the pipe away. Marsyas unfortunate¬ 
ly found it, and, learning to play on it, ventured to be¬ 
come the rival of Apollo. His fate is related else¬ 
where {vid. Marsyas). — The favourite plant of Mi¬ 
nerva was the olive, to which she had given origin in 
her well-known contest with Neptune {vid. Cecrops), 
and the animals consecrated to her were the owl and 
the serpent. Minerva w r as most honoured at Athens, 
the city to which she gave name {'kdrjvai, fiorn'kOr/vy), 
where the splendid festival of the Panathenaea was cel¬ 
ebrated in her honour. This goddess is represented 
with a serious and thoughtful countenance, her eyes 
are large and steady, her hair hangs in ringlets over her 
shoulders, a helmet covers her head ; she wears along 
tunic and mantle, she bears the aegis on her breast or 
on her arm, and the head of the Gorgon is in its cen¬ 
tre.— According to the explanation of Muller, the 
name Pallas-Athene appears to mean “the Athenian 
maid” {UalTidq being the same as tt akla%, which or 
ginally meant “maid”); and she thus forms a parallel 
to “ the Eleusinian maid” (Kdpa) or Proserpina. As 
this is her constant title in Homer, it is manifest that 






MINERVA. 


MIN 


she had long been regarded as the tutelary deity of 
Athens. We may therefore safely reject the legends 
of her being the same with the Ne’ith ( Hesych., N 77 ^ 77 ) 
of Sa'is in Egypt, or a war-goddess imported from the 
banks of the Lake Tritonis in Libya, and view in her 
one of the deities worshipped by the agricultural Pe- 
lasgians, and therefore probably one of the powers 
engaged in causing the productiveness of the earth. 
Her being represented, in the poetic creed, as the 
goddess of arts and war alone, is merely a transition 
from physical to moral agents, that will presently be 
explained. ( Muller , Proleg ., p. 244.— Schwenck,'An- 
deut ., p. 230.— Welcker, Tril., p. 282.)—The etymol¬ 
ogy of the Latin name Minerva is doubtful. The first 
part probably contains the same root {min, men , or 
man) that we have in the Latin me-min-i,men-s , &c., 
and also in the Greek pev-oq, pi-pvy-miu, &c., and 
the Sanscrit man-as. Cicero (N. D., 3, 24) gives a 
very curious etymology, “ Minerva, quia minuit, aut 
quia minatur but some of the ancient grammarians 
appear to have been more rational in considering it a 
shortened form of Meminerva, since she was also the 
goddess of memory. Festus connects it with the verb 
monere. Muller supposes that the word, like the wor¬ 
ship of the goddess herself, came to the Romans from 
Etruria, and he makes the Etrurian original to have 
been Menerfa or Menrfa. {Etrusk., vol. 2, p. 48.)— 
There were some peculiarities in the worship of Mi¬ 
nerva by the Romans that deserve to be mentioned. 
Her statue was usually placed in schools ; and the 
pupils were accustomed every year to present their 
masters with a gift called Minerval. {Varro, R. R', 
3, 2.—Compare Tertull ., de Idol , c. 10.) Minerva 
also presided over olive-grounds ( Varro, R. R., 1, 1); 
and goats were not sacrificed to her, according to 
Varro, because that animal was thought to do peculiar 
injury to the olive. (R. R., 1, 2.) There was an 
annual festival of Minerva, celebrated at Rome in the 
month of March, which was called Quinquatrus, be¬ 
cause it lasted five days. {Varro, L. L., 5, 3.— Ovid, 
Fast., 3, 809.— Aul. Gell., 2, 21.) On the first day 
sacrifices were offered to the goddess, and on the other 
four there were gladiatorial combats, &c. There was 
also another festival of Minerva, celebrated in June, 
which was called Quinquatrus Minores. {Ovid, Fast., 
6,651.)—There were several temples in Rome sacred 
to Minerva. Ovid mentions one on the Cselian Hill, 
in which she was worshipped under the name of Mi¬ 
nerva Capta, but the origin of the appellation is un¬ 
known. {Fast., 3, 835, seqq.) It also appears from 
several inscriptions, in which she is called Minerva 
Medica, that this goddess was thought to preside over 
the healing art. {Encycl. Us. Knowl, vol. 15, p. 
232.)—The most probable theory relative to Pallas- 
Athene, or Minerva, is that of Muller, which sees in 
her the temperate celestial heat, and its principal 
agent on vegetation, the moon. {Muller , Minerva Po- 
lias, p. 5.) This idea was not unknown to the ancients 
themselves. Athene is by Aristotle expressly called 
“ the moon” {ap. Arnob.,adv. Gent., 3, p. 69.—Compare 
Tstr., ap. Harpocr ., T ptropyuiq. — Creuzer, Symbolik, 
vol. 4, p. 237.) On the coins of Attica, anterior to 
the time of Pericles, there was a moon along with the 
owl and olive-branch. {Eckhel, D. N., vol. 2, p. 163, 
209.) There was a torch-race {lapna5o<j>opia) at the 
Psjisthenosa, a contest with which none but light-bear¬ 
ing deities were honoured, such as Vulcan, Prome¬ 
theus, Pan (whom the ancients thence denominated 
Phanetes), &c. At the festival of the Skirophoria, 
the priest of the sun and the priestess of Athene went 
together in procession. {Aristoph., Ecclcs., 18.) A 
title of Athene was “ All-Dew ” (Pandrosos). In the 
ancient legends of Athens, mention was made of a 
sacred marriage {tepoq yajuoq) between Athene and 
Vulcan {“ cui postea Attici, ne tirginilas dece interi- 
meretur, comment or um spur citiem obduxerunt .”— Mul- 
5 P 


ler). This goddess is also said to have given fire to 
the Athenians {Plut., Vit. Cim., 10), and perpetual 
flame was maintained in her temples at Athens and 
Alalcomenas. {Pausan., 1 , 26, 7.— Id., 9, 34, 1.) 
It could hardly have been from any other cause than 
that of her being regarded as the moon, that the noc¬ 
turnal owl, whose broad, full eyes shine so brightly in 
the dark, was consecrated to her; although some in¬ 
deed maintain that this bird was.sacred to her as the 
goddess of wisdom, since the peculiar formation of its 
head gives it a particular air of intelligence. {Law¬ 
rence's Lectures, p. i47, Am. ed.) The shield or 
corslet, moreover, with the Gorgon’s head on it, seems 
to represent the full-orbed moon; and finally, the epi¬ 
thet Glaucopis, which is, as it were, appropriated to 
Athene, is also given to Selene, or the Moon. {Em¬ 
pedocles, ap. Plut., de Fac., in Orb. Lun., 16, 21.— 
Eurip., Fr. incert., 209.) In accordance with this 
theory, the epithet Tritogencia (T piroyeveia), so often 
applied to Minerva, has been ingeniously explained b) 
considering it indicative of the three phases of the 
moon, just as the term T piyladiivy is applied to Hec 
ate. {Welcker, Trilogie, p. 283.) There are two 
other interpretations of this epithet, which have had 
general currency, both of which, however, are inferior 
to the one just mentioned. The first of these supposes 
it to signify Head-sprung, as the word rptrw is said 
to have signified head in some of the obscurer dialects 
of Greece (that of the Athamanes, according to Ni- 
cander of Colophon, Hesych., s. v.: Etym. Mag., and 
Photius, s. v.: that of the Cretans, Eustath., ad II, 
4, p. 524; 8, p. 696: Od., 3, p. 1473: that of the 
Boeotians, Tzetz. ad Lyc., 519). But accounts like 
this are very suspicious, and the later Greeks would 
have made little scruple about coining a term, if they 
wanted it to suit any purpose. The other interpreta¬ 
tion, which makes the banks of the river or lake Triton 
the birthplace of Minerva, has found a great number 
of supporters ; but, as so many countries sought to ap¬ 
propriate this Triton to themselves, the choice among 
them might seem difficult. The contest, however, 
has lain between the river or lake Triton in Libya, 
and a small stream of the same name in Boeotia. The 
ancients in general were in favour of the former ; but, 
as there is no reason to suppose that the Greeks krew 
anything of the Libyan Triton in the days of Homer, 
or probably till after the colony had been settled at 
Cyrene, this theory seems to have little in its favour. 
Muller, therefore, at once rejects it, and fixes on the 
banks of the Boeotian brook as the natal spot of the 
goddess. {Orchom., p. 355.) Here, however, Homei 
again presents a difficulty, for the practice of assigning 
birthplaces on earth to the gods does not seem to have 
prevailed in his age.—The moon-goddess of the Athe¬ 
nians probably came by her moral and political charac¬ 
ter in the following manner. It was the practice of 
the different classes and orders in a state to appropriate 
the general tutelary deity to themselves by some suit¬ 
able appellation. The Attic peasantry, therefore, 
named Athene the Ox-yoker (B ovdeia), the citizens 
called her the Worker (’E pydvrj), while the military 
men styled her Front-fighter (II popaxoq). As these 
last were the ruling order, their view of the character 
of the goddess became the prevalent one; yet even in 
the epic poetry we find the idea of the goddess’ presi¬ 
ding over the arts still retained. {Muller, Miner- 
va°Polias, p. 1 . — Keightley's Mythology , p. 153, 
seqq.) 

Minerv^e Promontorium, a promontory of Campa¬ 
nia, closing the Bay of Naples to the southwest. It 
was sometimes called Surrentinum Promontorium, 
from the town of Surrentum in its vicinity; and also 
not unfrequently the Sirens’Cape. {Slrab., 247.) It 
is now Punto della Campanella. The name of Mi- 
nervse Promontorium was given it from a temple of 
that goddess which stood here, and which was said to 
b 849 





M I N 


MI1S 


have been raised by Ulysses. ( Strab., 1. c. — Crame 4, s 
Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 185.) 

Minervalia, festivals at Rome in honour of Miner¬ 
va. (Vid. Minerva, page 849, col. 1, line 37, seqq.) 

Minio, a small river of Etruria, falling into the Mare 
Tyrihenum or Lower sea, a short distance above Cen¬ 
tum Cell®. It is now the Mignone. (Virg., JEn., 
10, L83.— Rutil., Iiin., 1, 277.) 

Minimi or Mincei, a people in the southern ex¬ 
tremity of Arabia Felix. Their country was called 
Minnsea, and their capital Carana. The name of the 
atter is preserved in Almakarana, which is a strong 
fortress. ( Diod .. 3, 42.— Agatharch., in Hudson's 
Geogr. Min., vol. 1, p. 57.-— Plin., 6, 28.) 

Minois, a patronymic of Ariadne, as daughter of 
Minos. (Ovid, Met., 8, 157.) 

Minos, an ancient king, who in history appears as 
the lawgiver of Crete. Those critics who consider all 
the personages of mythological history as little more 
than names to which is attached the history of social 
development, would view Minos simply as the concen¬ 
tration of that spirit of order, which about hi* time be¬ 
gan to exhibit in the island of Crete forms of a regular 
polity. But we are not to consider, because there is 
much undoubtedly mythological about the history of 
Minos, that therefore he never existed. The concur¬ 
rent testimony of Thucydides and Aristotle shows it to 
have been the general belief in their times, that Minos 
was the first among the Greeks who possessed any 
amount of naval power. According to the latter au¬ 
thor, he conquered and colonized several islands, and at 
last perished in an expedition against Sicily, to which 
island he was fabled to have pursued Daedalus after the 
affair of Pasiphae, and where the daughters of Cocalus 
suffocated him in a warm bath. ( Vid. Cocalus.) In 
the second book of the “ Politics,” Aristotle draws a 
parallel between the Cretan and Spartan institutions, 
and he there ascribes the establishment of the Cretan 
laws to Minos. This comparison, aided probably by 
the connexion which existed between Crete and Sparta, 
owing to colonies, as early as the time of Homer, has 
no doubt suggested the theory invented and supported 
by Muller, that Minos was a Doric prince; a theory, as 
Mr. Thirlwall asserts, utterly unknown to the ancients. 
The subject is ably discussed by him in his “ History 
of Greece” (vol. 1, p. 1.35). Some post-Homeric au¬ 
thorities make Minos a judge in Hades in company 
with iEacus, Rhadamanthus being chief judge. In 
this character he appears in a short Platonic dialogue 
called “Minos,” or “ On law,” which, however, some 
critics consider spurious. Minos, according to the le¬ 
gend, was a son of Jupiter ; this being the usual meth¬ 
od taken by mythographers to express a person so 
ancient that they could put him on a level with no 
mere mortal; and from Jupiter as his father he is said 
to have learned those laws which he afterward delivered 
unto men. For this purpose, he is related to have re¬ 
tired to a cave in Crete, where he feigned that Jupi¬ 
ter his father dictated them unto him, and every time 
he returned from the cave he announced some new law. 
—Minos is chiefly remarkable as belonging to a period 
when history and mythology interlace, and as uniting 
in his own person the chief characteristics of both. 
He is the son of Jupiter, and yet the' first possessor of 
a navy ; a judge in Hades, but not the less for that a 
king of Crete. It is very curious that Crete, so fa¬ 
mous at this age both for its naval power and for be¬ 
ing the birthplace of the Olympian gods, should never 
afterward have attained anything like that celebrity 
which its position seemed to promise. Its office seems 
to have been that of leading the way in naval suprema¬ 
cy. Too insulated for power of a durable nature, it 
was lost in the confederate or opposing glories of Ath¬ 
ens and Sparta; but while they were yet in their infan¬ 
cy, its insular form (together, perhaps, with some Asiatic 
refinement) gave it that concentrated energy which in 
850 


an early age is irresistible. (Horn., II., 2, 65.— Id. ib 
13, 450.— Id. ib., 14, 321.'— Id., Od., 19, 175.— Thu- 
cyd., 1, 3.— Plat., Leg., lib. 1 et 2.— Id., Mm .—Jra- 
tot., Polit., lib. 2 et 7.— Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol 15, 
p. 248.) 

Minotaurus, a celebrated monster, half man and 
half bull, the offspring of Pasiphae, wife of Minos, by 
a bull. According to the legend, the Cretans had hes¬ 
itated to give Minos the royal dignity after the death 
of Asterion, whereupon, to prove his claim to it, he as¬ 
serted that he could obtain whatever he prayed for. 
Then, sacrificing to Neptune, he besought him to send 
him a bull from the bottom of the sea, promising to 
offer up whatever should appear. Neptune sent the 
bull, and Minos received the kingdom. The bull, how¬ 
ever, being of a large size and of a brilliant white hue, 
appeared to Minos too beautiful an animal to be slain, 
and he put him in his herd, and substituted an ordinary 
bull. Neptune, offended at this act, made the bull run 
wild, and inspired Pasiphae with a strange passion for 
him, which she was enabled to gratify by the contri¬ 
vance of Dosdalus. Her offspring was the Minotaur. 
Minos, in compliance with an oracle, made Daedalus 
build for him the labyrinth. In this he placed the Mino¬ 
taur, where he fed him on human flesh, and afterward 
on the youths and maidens sent from Athens. ( Vid. 
Androgeus.) Theseus, by the aid of Ariadne, killed the 
monster (vid. Theseus and Labyrinthus), thereby deliv¬ 
ering the Athenians from the cruel obligation of sending 
their children to be devoured.—Such is the mythologi¬ 
cal story. Its meaning is uncertain. It very likely be¬ 
longs to that class of mythological tales which express 
a political fact, and the connexion in which Theseus 
stands with the Minotaur adds probability to this theory ; 
for the exploits of Theseus are generally such effects as 
would be produced in historical times by the course ol 
events in the formation of a polity. Such, at least, 
are his exploits in and about Attica, and there appears 
no sound reason to exclude this from the number. It 
may then, perhaps, be assumed, that, under the slaying 
of the Minotaur, is shadowed forth the abolition of cer¬ 
tain obstacles existing in the way of free intercourse 
between Athens and Crete. But the descent of the 
Minotaur from Pasiphae (JlaaKparj), probably a name 
of the moon, and from the Bull, one of the zodiacal 
signs, may perhaps imply some astronomical fact con¬ 
nected with the recurrence of the tribute paid to Crete. 
The affection of Ariadne for Theseus, in mythological 
language, may be taken to mean a union of Cretan and 
Attic tribes. It should be observed that Schwenck, 
in his very fanciful but ingenious treatise on mytholo¬ 
gy, considers the first two syllables of the word Mino¬ 
taur to be identical with /ueie or /ur/v, yrjvog (the moon), 
as also with the root of the German mond and the Eng¬ 
lish moon, so that we get the two parents of the Mino¬ 
taur in the two parts of its name. This might lead 
us to believe that the name suggested the genealogy, 
and that the latter part referred, not to a bull’s being 
the father of the Minotaur, but to the fact that horns 
were a symbol of the moon-goddess. In this case, the 
slaying of the Minotaur by Theseus might mean the 
introduction of the Attic worship in place of the pre¬ 
viously prevalent Doric form. (Hock, Kreta, vol. 2, 
p. 63. — Schwenck, Andeut., p. 65. — Encycl. Useful 
Knowl., vol. 15, p. 248.) 

Minthe, a daughter of Cocytus, loved by Pluto. 
Proserpina discovered her husband’s amour, and 
changed his mistress into an herb, called by the same 
name, and still, at the present day, denominated mint. 
(Ovid, Met., 10, 729.) 

Minturn^e, a town of Latium, on the river Liris, 
and only three or four miles from its mouth : its ex¬ 
tensive ruins sufficiently mark the place which it oc¬ 
cupied ; out of these the neighbouring town of Tra- 
jetta was built. (Strabo, 233.— Ptol., p. 66.— Plin., 
3, 5.) We are informed by Livy (8,25) that this town 




M I N 


MIN 


» 


belonged to the Ausones ; but when that nation ceas¬ 
ed to exist, Minturnse fell into the hands of the Ro¬ 
mans, by whom it was colonized, A.U.C. 456. ( Liv., 

10, 21. — Veil. Paterc., 1 , 14.— Dion. Hal., 1 , 9.)— 
It was one of those maritime towns which were re¬ 
quired to furnish sailors and naval stores for the Ro¬ 
man fleets. (Liv., 27, 38.— Id., 26, 3.) According 
to Frontinus, another colony was afterward sent thith¬ 
er under the direction of Julius Caesar. Minturnae, 
however, is chiefly known in history from the events 
by which it was connected with the fallen fortunes of 
Marius. This general, in endeavouring to effect his 
escape into Africa from the pursuit of the victorious 
Sylla, was forced to put in at the mouth of the Liris ; 
when, after being put on shore and abandoned by the 
crew of the vessel, he sought shelter in the cottage of 
an old peasant. But this retreat not affording the 
concealment requisite to screen him from the pursuit 
which was now set on foot, Marius had no other re¬ 
source left but to plunge into the marshes, with 
which the neighbourhood of Minturnae abounds. Here, 
though almost buried in the mud, he could not escape 
from his vigilant pursuers, but was dragged out and 
thrown into a dungeon at Minturnae. A public slave 
was shortly after sent to despatch him; but this man, 
a Cimbrian by birth, could not, as the historians re¬ 
late, face the destroyer of his nation, though unarmed, 
in chains, and in his seventieth year; such was still 
the glare of his eye and terror of his voice. Struck 
with this circumstance, the magistrates of Minturnse 
determined to set Marius at liberty, since such seem¬ 
ed to be the will of heaven. They farther equipped 
a vessel which was destined to convey him to Africa. 
(Pint., Vit. Mar. — Juv., Sat., 10, 276. — Compare 
Lin., Epit., 77.— Appian, Bell. Civ., 1, 61. — Veil. 
Paterc., 2, 19.— Val. Max., 1, 5.) The grove and 
temple of the nymph Marcia, supposed by some to 
have been the mother of Latinus, and by others 
thought to be Circe ( Virg., JEn., 7, 47.— Lactant., #c. 
fals. Rel., 1, 21), were close to Minturnse, and held 
In the highest veneration. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 

2, p. 131.) 

Minutia Via, a Roman road, leading from the Por¬ 
ta Minulia or Trigemina, through the country of the 
Sabines, as far as Brundisium. (Schol. ad Horat., 
Epist., 1, 18, 20.) 

Minutius, I. Augurinus, a Roman consul B.C. 
458. He was defeated by the HHqui, and would have 
ost his whole army had not the dictator Cincinnatus 
come to his aid. He was degraded by the latter to 
the rank of lieutenant or legatus, and at the same 
time deprived by him of his consular authority. (Liv., 

3, 29.)—II. Rufus, a master of horse to the dictator 
Fabius Maximus. His disobedience to the commands 
of the dictator, who was unwilling to hazard an action, 
was productive of an extension of his prerogative, and 
the master, of the horse was declared equal in power 
to the dictator. Minutius, soon after this, fought with 
ill success against Hannibal, and was only saved by 
the interference of Fabius ; which circumstance had 
such an effect upon him, that he laid down his power 
at the feet of his deliverer, and swore that he would 
never act but by his directions. He was killed at the 
battle of Cannae. (Liv., 23, 21.— Nep., Vit. Hannib., 
5.)—III. Felix, a native of Africa, who is generally 
supposed to have flourished a short time after Tertul- 
lian, though some have undertaken to prove that he 
was contemporary with Marcus Aurelius. (Van Ho- 
ven, Epist. Crit. de vera estate, tf-c. M. Minutii Fe- 
licis, Campis, 1762, 4to.) Lactantius (Inst. Div., 5, 
1) and St. Jerome (Catai,., S. S. Eccles., c. 58) state 
that he followed with reputation tha employment of 
an advocate at Rome. We have only one work of 
his remaining, a dialogue entitled Octavius, and con¬ 
taining a demonstration of the truth of Christianity, 
ft is an interesting production r or those who wish to 


become acquainted with the charges the pagans went 
accustomed to make against the new religion, and 
which Minutius Felix gives in a fairer manner than 
any other. It is apparent that he has availed himself 
of the apology of Tertullian; but he has a mode of 
viewing his subject which is peculiarly his own, and 
his style is much purer and more elegant than that of 
his model. He may be regarded, in general, as one 
of the most elegant of the Latin ecclesiastical writers. 
The dialogue is between a heathen and a Christian, 
in which Minutius himself sits as a judge and modera¬ 
tor. By this contrivance he replies to the objections 
and arguments brought forward by the adversary, and 
refutes the calumny cast upon Christianity by the 
heathen philosophers, and at the same time, exposes 
the absurdities of their creed and worship, powerfully 
demonstrating the reasonableness and excellence of 
the Christian religion. Minutius Felix is said to have 
been originally a pagan.—Erasmus thought his work 
was lost. This mistake arose from the copyists of 
the middle ages having joined the production of Felix 
to the treatise of Arnobius against the Gentiles, of 
which it was regarded as the eighth book. Adrian 
Junius (de Jonghe), a celebrated critic of Holland, 
was the first to detect this false arrangement. Bal- 
duinus then printed the work of Felix separately. 
The honour of this discovery, however, on the part of 
Junius, has been contested by some. The best edi¬ 
tions of his work are, that of Gronovius, Lugd. Bat., 
1709, 8vo, and that of Davis, Cant., 1712, 8vo.) 

Miny^, a race of great celebrity in the most an¬ 
cient epic poetry of Greece, but whose name seems 
to have been almost forgotten before the beginning of 
the period when fable gives place to history. The 
adventurers who embarked in the Argonautic expedi¬ 
tion were all called Minyans, though they were mostly 
iEolian chieftains, and the same name recurs in the 
principal settlements which referred their origin to the 
line of JSolus. Iolcos itself, though founded by Cre- 
theus, is said to have been inhabited by Minyans-; and 
a still closer affinity is indicated by a legend, which 
describes Minyas, the fabulous progenitor of the race, 
as a descendant of Htlolus. (Apoll. Rhod., 3, 1094. 
— Schol., ad loc .) There are two ways in which this 
connexion may be explained, between which it is not 
easy to decide. The Minyans may have been a Pe- 
lasgic tribe, originally distinct from the Hellenes : and 
this may seem to be confirmed by the tradition, that 
Cretheus, when he founded Iolcos, drove out the Pe- 
lasgians who were previously in possession of the 
land. (Pausan., 4, 36, 1 . — Schol., ad II., 2.) But 
in this case we are led to conclude, from the celebrity 
to which the Minyans attained in the Greek legends, 
that they were not a rude and feeble horde, which the 
^Eolians reduced to subjection, but were already so 
far advanced in civilization and power, that the inva¬ 
ders were not ashamed of adopting their name and 
traditions, and of treating them as a kindred people. 
It may, however, also be conceived, and perhaps ac¬ 
cords better with all that we hear of them, that the 
appellation of Minyans was not originally a national 
name, peculiar to a single tribe, but a title of honour, 
equivalent to that of “ heroes” or “ warriors,” which 
was finally appropriated to the adventurous JEolians, 
who established themselves at Iolcos and on the ad¬ 
jacent coast. If we take this view of it, all the indi¬ 
cations we find of the wealth and prosperity of the 
Minyans will serve to mark the progress of the iEoli- 
an states in which the name occurs ; and it will only 
remain doubtful, whether the iEolians or Hellenes 
were not more closely connected with other tribes in 
the north of Thessaly, among which the name of the 
Minyans likewise appears, than the common tradition 
would lead us to suppose. We hear ot a town called 
Minya on the borders of Thessaly and Macedonia 
(compare Steph. Byz., s. v. Nlcvva, and 'A2.(jujma\ 

851 



M I S 


MIT 


and of a Thessalian Orchomenus Minyeus. ( Pliny , 
4, 8.) In considering the elements of which the Hel¬ 
lenic race was composed, it must not be overlooked 
that the Dolopes, who were seated on the western con¬ 
fines of Phthia, and are described in the Iliad (9, 484) 
as originally subject to its king, retained their name 
and an independent existence, as members of the 
great Hellenic confederacy, to a very late period. 
( Pausan.j 10, 8, 2, seq.) If, according to either of the 
views just suggested, we consider Minyans and HCo- 
lians as the same people, we find the most flourishing 
of the HTiOlian settlements in the north of Boeotia. 
Here the city of Orchomenus rose to great power and 
opulence in the earliest period of which any recollec¬ 
tion was preserved. Homer compares the treasures 
which flowed into it to those of the Egyptian Thebes. 
The traveller Pausanias, who was familiar with all the 
wonders of art in Greece and Asia, speaks with ad¬ 
miration of its most ancient monument, as not inferior 
to any which he had seen elsewhere. This was the 
treasury of Minyas, from whom the ancient Orcho- 
menians were fabled to have been called Minyans; 
and the city continued always to be distinguished from 
others of the same name, as the Minyean Orchome¬ 
nus. Minyas, according to the legend, was the first 
of men who raised a building for such a purpose. 
His genealogy glitters with names which express the 
traditional opinion of his unbounded wealth. Thus 
he is the son of Chryses, whose mother is Chrysoge- 
nea, &c. ( Pausan ., 9, 36, 4.— ThirlwalVs Hist. Gr., 
vol. 1, p. 91.— Compare Muller , Orchomenus und die 
Minyer , p. 139, seqq.) 

Minyas, a king of Orchomenus in Boeotia, son of 
Chryses, and grandson of Neptune. He was famed 
for his opulence, and for the treasury or structure 
which he built to contain his riches. (Consult re¬ 
marks towards the end of the article Minyse.) 

Misenum, I. Promontorium, a promontory of Cam¬ 
pania, forming the upper extremity of the Bay of Na¬ 
ples, now Cape Miseno. It was so named, according 
to Virgil (Ain., 6, 234), from Misenus, the trumpeter 
of iEneas, who was drowned and interred here (Com¬ 
pare Propert., 3, 18.— Slat. Silv., 3, 1.) Other ac¬ 
counts speak of Misenus as a companion of Ulysses. 

( Strabo , 245.)—II. A town and harbour on the prom¬ 
ontory of the same name. Misenum was probably first 
used by the Cumseans as a harbour ( Dion. Hal., 7, 5). 
In the reign of Augustus it became one of the first 
naval stations of the Roman empire, being destined to 
guard the coast of the Tuscan Sea. (Suet., Aug., 48. 
— Florus, 1, 10.) In process of time, a town grew up 
around the harbour, the inhabitants of which were 
called Misenenses. (Veget., 5, 1.) The neighbour¬ 
hood of this place abounded with marine villas, among 
which may be mentioned that of C. Marius, too luxu¬ 
rious, as Plutarch observes, for such a soldier. (Com¬ 
pare Plin., 18, 6.) It was purchased afterward by Lu- 
cullus for 500,200 denarii. According to Seneca 
(Ep., 51), it stood on the brow of the hill overlooking 
the sea. Some years after it came into the possession 
of Tiberius, as we learn from Phasdrus (2, 36), who 
has made it the scene of one of his fables. It was 
here that emperor ended his days. (Suet., Tib., 74.) 
—Pliny the elder was stationed at Misenum, as com¬ 
mander of the fleet, at the time of the great eruption 
of Vesuvius, in which he perished. (Cramer's Anc. 
Italy, vol. 2, p. 154, seqq.) 

Misenus, a Trojan, conspicuous for both his prowess 
m arms and his skill on the clarion or lituus. He of¬ 
ten signalized himself by the side of Hector in the 
fight ; and, after the fall of Troy, accompanied iEneas 
to Italy, on the shores of which country, near the city 
of Cumae, he lost his life, having been drowned amid 
the breakers by a Triton who was envious of his mu¬ 
sical skill. (Virg., JEn., 6,164.) Virgil calls him 
’Eolides, not as indicating any divine descent from 


vEolus, the god of the winds, but merely as a patro- 
nymic denoting his origin from a mortal father named 
iEolus. The same poet is guilty of an anachronism 
in making Misenus acquainted with the lituus , since 
both the lituus and tuba were unknown in Homeric 
times. He has merely, however, followed in this the 
custom of the tragic writers. (Consult Heync , Ex 
curs, vii., ad JEn., 6.)—The ashes of Misenus wer« 
interred on the promontory, fabled to have been called 
Misenum after his name, and which is now still de¬ 
nominated Miseno. (Virg., JEn., 6, 232, seqq.) 

Misitheus, father-in-law of Gordian III. (Vid 
Gordianus III.) 

Mithra or Mitra, a deity of Persia, generally sup 
posed to have been the Sun. His worship was, in 
process of time, introduced at Rome, and altars were 
there erected to him, with the inscription, “ Deo Soli 
Mithrce ,” or “ Deo lnvicto Mithra .” He is generally 
represented in sculpture as a young man, his head sur¬ 
mounted with a Phrygian bonnet, and in the attitude 
of supporting his knee upon a bull that lies on the 
ground. He holds with one hand a horn of the ani¬ 
mal, while with the other he plunges a dagger into its 
neck. Mithras here represents the generative Sun, in 
the full bloom of youth and power, while the bull in¬ 
dicates the earth, containing in its bosom the seeds or 
germes of things, which the sun-god causes to come 
forth in an abundant flood from the wound inflicted by 
his dagger of gold. (Creuzer, Symbohk, par Guig- 
niaut, v ol. 1 , p. 356.) — The mysteries of Mithras were 
celebrated with much pomp and splendour on the re¬ 
vival of the Persian religion under the Sassanidae, but 
we do not read of the worship of the sun under this 
name in the earlier Greek writers. (Hyde, Hist. Rel., 
Vet. Pers., c. 4, p. 109.) The word is evidently the 
same as mitra, one of the. names of the sun in San¬ 
scrit. It also appears in many ancient Persian names, 
as M idpaddryc or M LTpaddryg (Herod., 1, 110); 
MirpobaTifc (Herod., 3, 120); ’Idapirpyg (Herod., 9, 
102); 2 Lpoplrpyg (Herod., 7, 68); and in M irpalog, 
Midptvyc, or Midpr/vnc (Xen., Hist. Gr., 2, 6.— Ar¬ 
rian, Exp. Al., 1 , 17. — Id. ib., 3, 16), which appear 
to be derivatives. (Pott, Etymol. Forsch., vol. 1, p. 
xlvii., seqq. — Rosen, in Journal of Education, No. 9, 
p. 334, seq. — Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 15, p. 289.) 

Mithradates or Mithridates, a common name 
among the Medes and Persians, which appears to 
have been formed from Mithra or Mitra, the Persian 
name for the sun, and the root da, signifying “ to 
give,” which occurs in most of the Indo-Germanic 
languages. The name, however, was written in sev¬ 
eral ways. In Herodotus (1, 110) we find M irpadd- 
77]s ; in Xenophon ( Anab., 7, 8, 25), M idpiduryc; 
in the Septuagint (Ezra, 1, 8.— Id., 4, 7), M idpaddryq-, 
and in Tacitus (Ann., 12, 10), Mcherdales. On the 
Greek coins it is written Mithradates. A large class 
of names in different dialects of the Indo-German¬ 
ic languages have the same termination as Mithra¬ 
dates. Thus, in Sanscrit, we find the names Deva- 
datta, Haradatta, Indradalta, Somadatta, that is, 
“ given by the gods,” “ given by Hara or Siva,” “ by 
Indra,” “ by Soma, or the moon ;” and in Greek, such 
names as Theodotus, Diodotus, Zenodotus, an.| He¬ 
rodotus. In Persian names the same termination oc¬ 
curs, as in the Hormisdates of Agathias ; the Pharan - 
dates and Pherendates of Herodotus (7, 67 ; 9, 76) • 
and the Madates of Curtius (5, 3).—The most cele¬ 
brated race of princes of the name of Mithradates wera 
the kings of Pontus, who were descended from Arta- 
bazes, one of the seven Persian nobles who overthrew 
the magi, B.C. 521. (Florus, 3, 5 .—Diod. Sic., 19, 
40.— Polyb., 5, 43.) The following is a list of these 
kings.—I. Mithradates I, of whom little is known. 
(Aristot., de Rep., 5, 10.) — II. Mithradates II., 
succeeded Ariobarzanes II., B.C. 363. He took an 
active part in the various wars which were carried on 



MITHRADATES. 


MITHRADATES. 


Oy the successors of Alexander the Great; and, being 
an active and enterprising prince, he greatly extended 
his paternal dominions, whence he tf frequently sur- 
named the founder ( ktlgttjc;) of the kingdom of Pontus. 
He also ruled over Cappadocia and Phrygia. He was 
put to death by Antigonus, B.C. 302, at Cius in 
Mysia, at the age of 84, according to Lucian ( Macrob., 
c. 13), because he was suspected of favouring the in¬ 
terests of Cassander.—Ill Mithradates III., son of 
the preceding, ruled from B.C. 302 to 266.—IV. 
Mithradates IV., the son of Ariobarzanes IIP, was 
left a minor by his father. He attacked Sinope, 
which was taken by his successor Pharnaces, and car¬ 
ried on war against Eumenes II. He was in close 
alliance with the Rhodians ; and joined with some 
princes of Asia Minor in making valuable presents to 
that people, to repair their losses after an earthquake. 
(Polyb., 5, 89, seq.) He married the sister of Seleu- 
cus Callinicus, by which alliance he obtained Phrygia. 
His own daughter was married to Antiochus the Great. 

_V. Mithradates V., surnamed Euergetes, reigned 

from about 156 to 120 B.C. He was an ally of the 
Romans, and assisted them in the third Punic war with 
a considerable fleet. He was assassinated at Sinope, 
and succeeded by his son, the famous Mithradates.— 
VI. Mithradates VI., surnamed Eupator, and called 
the Great, was one of the most formidable enemies 
that the Romans ever encountered. He was only 
eleven \Gclxs old at the death of his father, and, during 
his minority, his life was frequently in danger from the 
numerous conspiracies formed against him. He is 
6aid to have been in the habit of taking an antidote 
discovered by himself, which was sufficient to coun¬ 
teract the effect of the most violent poisons. ( Plin ., 
23, 77.— Id., 25, 3. — Id., 29, 8.) Mithradates pos¬ 
sessed a strong mind and vigorous body ; he excelled 
in all athletic sports, and was distinguished in his early 
years by his bodily strength and his daring spirit. He 
had also paid great attention to the study of philosophy 
and polite literature: and, according to Pliny, was 
able to converse in twenty-two different languages 
20, 3). As soon as Mithradates was old enough to 
take the government into his own hands, he attacked 
the Colchians and the barbarous nations who dwelt on 
the eastern shores of the Black Sea, whom he reduced 
to subjection. The next acquisition which he made 
was Paphlagonia, which was said to have been left to 
the kings of Pontus by Pylaemenes II., king of Paph¬ 
lagonia, who died about B.C. 121. Part of Paphla- 
goriia he gave to Nicomedes II., king of Bithynia, 
who was, next to Mithradates, the most powerful mon¬ 
arch in Asia Minor. Nicomedes, however, was jealous 
of the increasing power of Mithradates ; and on the 
death of Ariarathes VII., king of Paphlagonia, who had 
married a sister of Mithradates, Nicomedes married Ins 
widow, and.seized the kingdom of Cappadocia, to the 
exclusion of the son of Ariarathes. Mithradates imme¬ 
diately took up arms in favour of his nephew, defeat¬ 
ed Nicomedes, and placed his nephew on the throne, 
under the title of Ariarathes VIII. In a few months 
afterward this prince was murdered by his uncle at a 
private conference, who placed a son of his own on 
the vacant throne, and defeated successively the broth¬ 
er of the late king, and a pretender to the throne, 
whom Nicomedes represented as a son of Ariarathes. 
Unable to cope with his formidable enemy, Nicomedes 
applied to Rome ; and the Romans, who had long 
been anxious to weaken the power of Mithradates, de- 
lared both Cappadocia and Paphlagonia to be free 
states, but allowed the Cappadocians, at their own re¬ 
quest, to elect Ariobarzanes as their king. Mithrada¬ 
tes, however, did not tamely submit to the loss of his 
dominions. He entered into an alliance with Tigra- 
nes, king of Armenia, to whom he gave his daughter 
m marriage : and with his assistance he expelled Ari- 
#barzanes from his kingdom, and also deprived Ni¬ 


comedes III., who had lately succeeded his fatner, 
of Bithynia. The two expelled kings applied to the 
Romans for assistance, and the latter sent an army 
under Aquilius to reinstate them in their kingdoms. 

A war with the Romans was now inevitable, and 
Mithradates conducted it with the utmost vigour. 
The Roman armies were defeated one after another, 
Aquilius was taken prisoner, and put to death by hav¬ 
ing melted gold poured down his throat; and in B.C. 
88 the whole of Asia Minor was in the hands of Mith¬ 
radates. In the same year he commanded all Romans 
to leave the country ; but, before they could do so, 
they were massacred bv the inhabitants of the difleren 
provinces of Asia Minor, to the number, it is said, oJ 
80,000. Whether this massacre took place by the 
command of Mithradates, or was occasioned by the 
hatred which the Asiatics bore to the Romans, is 
doubtful. The islands in the JSgean followed the ex¬ 
ample of the countries of the mainland. Athens also 
submitted to the power of Mithradates, together with 
several other places in Greece. The Rhodians, the 
only people who offered him any vigorous resistance, 
were attacked, but without any-success. In B.C. 87, 
Sylla arrived in Greece, and immediately commenced 
the siege of Athens, which was taken on the 1st of 
March in the following year. Sylla followed up his 
success by the defeat of Archelaus, the general of 
Mithradates, near Chasronea, and shortly afterward by 
another victory at Orchomenus. During the successes 
of Sylla in Greece, the party of Marius had obtained 
the ascendancy at Rome; and Flaccus, who had beer, 
consul with Cinna, was sent to succeed Sylla in the 
command. Flaccus, however, was put to death by 
Fimbria, an unprincipled man, but who possessed con¬ 
siderable military talents and prosecuted the war against 
Mithradates in Asia with great success. The victories 
of Fimbria and the state of parties at Rome made Syl¬ 
la anxious for peace, which was at length agreed upon 
(B.C. 84), on condition that Mithradates should aban¬ 
don all his conquests in Asia, and restore Bithyn¬ 
ia to Nicomedes, and Cappadocia to Ariobarzanes 
But this war was scarcely ended before Mithradates 
was again involved in hostilities with the Romans. He 
had collected a large army to carry on war against the 
Colchians. Muraena, who commanded in Asia, per¬ 
ceiving or pretending to perceive a disposition in Mith¬ 
radates to renew the war, seized the opportunity of en¬ 
riching himself, and, without any authority from the 
senate or Sylla, invaded the dominions of Mithradates, 
and collected much plunder. Mithradates, having in 
vain complained to the senate, collected an army to 
defend his dominions, and completely defeated Murae¬ 
na on the banks of the Halys. But, as Sylla was dis¬ 
pleased with Muraena for having attacked Mithradates, 
the peace was renewed, and thus an open rupture was 
avoided for the present. During the next eight years 
Mithradates employed himself in making preparations 
for a renewal of the war; and in B.C. 75 he broke 
the treaty which existed between him and the Romans 
by the invasion of Bithynia. Lucullus was appointed 
to the command B.C. 74, and commenced the cam¬ 
paign by besieging Cyzicus, a city on the. Propontis, 
which had been supplied by Mithradates with every de¬ 
scription of military stores. In the following year 
Mithradates made an effort to relieve the place, but 
was defeated by Lucullus and obliged to retire to Pon¬ 
tus. He was soon after followed by the Roman gen¬ 
eral, and, having lost another battle at Cabiri, on the 
borders of Pontus and Bithynia, he fled into A rmenia, 
to his son-in-law Tigranes. His own son Machares, 
who had been appointed king of the wild-tribes on the 
eastern shores of the Euxine, refused to assist his fa¬ 
ther, and provided for his own safety by making peace 
with Lucullus. In B.C. 69 Tigranes was completely 
defeated by Lucullus, during the absence of Mithradates, 
near his capital Tigranocerta, which was soon after ta 





M I T 


MNE 


Ken by the conqueror. In the following year Tigranes 
was again defeated, together with Mithradates, near 
Artaxata; but Lucullus was not able to derive all the 
advantages he might have done from his victories in 
consequence of the mutinous disposition of his troops. 
( Vid. Lucullus.) Mithradates was thus enabled to col¬ 
lect another army without opposition ; and, having re¬ 
turned to Pontus, he defeated the Roman general Tri- 
arius, with the loss of 7000 men, before Lucullus could 
march to his assistance. This victory was followed 
by others; various parts of Asia Minor again submit¬ 
ted to his authority ; and the Romans appeared to be 
on the point of losing all the acquisitions they had 
made during the war. But the power of Mithradates 
had been shaken to its foundation; and, on the appoint¬ 
ment of Pompey to the command, B.C. 66, the war 
was soon brought to an end. Mithradates was defeat¬ 
ed on the banks of the Euphrates ; and, in consequence 
of Tigranes having submitted to Pompey, fled to the 
barbarous tribes dwelling to the north of Caucasus, 
who received him with hospitality and promised him 
support. 1 he spirit of Mithradates had not yet been 
broken by adversity ; and he purposed, with the assist¬ 
ance of the Colchians and Scythians, to carry into ex¬ 
ecution a plan which he is said to have formed in his ear¬ 
lier years, namely, of marching through Thrace and 
Macedonia, and invading Italy from the north. But 
these plans were frustrated by the plots of his eldest 
son Pharnaces, who gained over the army to his side, 
and deprived his father of the throne. Unwilling to 
fall into the hands of the Romans, Mithradates put an 
end to his own life, B.C. 63, at the age of 68 or 69, 
after a reign of 57 years. ( Appian, Bell. Mithrad.— 
Plut., Vit. Lucull. — Id., Vit. Syll. — Clinton, Fast. 
Hell., vol. 3, Appendix, S.—Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol 
15, p. 289, seq.) 

Mitylene, or, more correctly (if we follow the lan¬ 
guage of coins), Mytilene, the capital of Lesbos, in 
the southeastern quarter of the island, facing the coast 
of Mysia. It was first built on a small island, con¬ 
nected by means of some low rocks with Lesbos it¬ 
self. In process of time, the population increased so 
much as to require an enlargement of the ancient lim¬ 
its. The space between Lesbos and the small island 
was filled up, and the city was extended to the main 
island of Lesbos. In this way the place became pos¬ 
sessed of two harbours, which the small island and the 
causeway connecting it with Lesbos separated from 
each other. The larger harbour was the northern one, 
and was also protected by works from the violence of 
the wind. ( Strabo , 617.— Diod. Sic., 13, 79.) The 
city is said to have been named from the elder daugh¬ 
ter ° f Macareus. (Steph. Byz., s. v. MmiM/vu.— 
Diod. Sic., 5, 80.) The fortunes of this place were 
always intimately connected with those of Lesbos it¬ 
self. In the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, the 
people of Mytilene being accused of a secret negotia¬ 
tion with the Lacedemonians, Athens sent a fleet 
against them. The other cities in the island, except 
Methymna, made common cause with Mytilene. Af¬ 
ter some resistance, however, the Athenians gained a 
complete victory, when the walls of Mytilene were 
raze ^ an( l many of its wealthier inhabitants put to 
death. The Athenians even sent an order to their 
commander to put to death all the males who had at¬ 
tained the age of puberty, but they became ashamed 
ot their own barbarity, and despatched messengers to 
revoke the order. The countermand arrived just one 
t0 tllat appointed for the slaughter. 
(Thucyd. , 3 36-49.) The whole island, except the 
territory of Methymna, which was spared, being divi¬ 
ded into 3000 parts, 300 of these parts were devoted 
to sacred purposes, and the rest distributed'among the 
Athenians, by whom they were rented to the former 
proprietors. Mytilene, however, soon recovered from 
the effects of this blow, but always after this adhered 
854 


to the side of the Athenians. It became a large and 
strong city, and the strength of its fortifications was 
tested by the siege it underwent from Memnon, the 
general of Darius, during Alexander’s expedition mto 
Asia. ( Arrian, 2, 1.) It sutfered at a subseq lent 
period from the Romans on accouut of its adherence 
to the side of Mithradates. ( Epit ., Liv., 89.— Com¬ 
pare Veil. Paterc., 2, 18.) It again, however, re¬ 
covered from this misfortune, and was restored by 
Pompey to its former privileges, through favour to 
Theophanes. These privileges were confirmed by the 
Roman emperors, so that Mytilene now held a distin¬ 
guished rank among the first cities of the empire 
Pliny styles it “ libera Mytilene, annis MD. potens ” 
(5, 39.—Compare Strab., 617.— Veil. Paterc , 2, 18). 
Athenaeus praises its shellfish and wine (3, p. 86, e. ; 
ib., p. 92, d. ; 1, p. 30, b.). Mytilene could boast of 
having given birth to Sappho and Alcaeus, and to the 
historians Myrsilus and Hellanicus. Pittacus, too, one 
of the seven wise men of Greece, long presided over 
her councils. The modern Mitylen occupies the site 
of the ancient city. The following description of it is 
given by a recent traveller. “The town of Mitylen is 
built on a small peninsula, and has two ports, one on the 
north, and one on the south of it, both too shallow for 
anything but boats: the port on the north is protected 
by a Genoese mole, now in ruins ; the extremity of 
the peninsula is covered by a very large Genoese cas¬ 
tle, and the remainder of it, and some of the conti¬ 
nent, by the town. The town contains about 700 
Greek houses, and 400 Turkish; its streets are nar¬ 
row and filthy.” ( Turner, Tour in the Levant , vol 
3, p. 299.) 

Mnemon (M vij/auv'), a surname given to Artaxerxe? 
on account of his retentive memory. (Vid. Arta- 
xerxes II.) 

Mnemosyne, a daughter of Coelus and Terra, 
mother of the nine Muses by Jupiter, and goddess ol 
Memory. The meaning of the myth becomes very 
apparent when we regard the Muses as symbolical of 
the inventive powers of the mind as displayed in the 
various arts. The power of remembering, gained by 
practice, at a time when books were rare, may well be 
assigned to the Muses as a parent. (AEsch., P V 
461.) 

Mnesarchus, I. an engraver on precious stones, 
born in Etruria, and father of Pythagoras the philoso¬ 
pher. Hence he probably flourished about Olymp. 88. 

( Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.) —II. A son of Pythagoras, 
who succeeded Aristssus of Crotona, the immediate 
successor of Pythagoras himself. (Tennemann, Hist. 
Phil., 95.) 

Mnesicles, a celebrated architect, born a slave in 
the house of Pericles. By the command of this dis¬ 
tinguished statesman, he built the magnificent vesti¬ 
bule of the Athenian citadel, the erection of which 
occupied five successive years (B.C. 437-433.— Plut., 
Vit. Pericl., 13). While engaged in this undertaking 
he fell from an eminence, but was healed by Pern 
cles by the application of the herb pellitory, which it 
was fabled Minerva had pointed out to the latter in a 
dream. (Plut.., 1. c.—Plin., 22, 17, 20.) A brazen 
statue of him was cast by Stipax, and this statue waa 
designated “ Splanchnoptes.” (Plin., 1. c. — Id., 34 
8, 19.— Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.) 

Mnestheus. Vid. Menestheus. 

Mnevis, the name of a sacred bull, consecrateo to 
the sun, and worshipped by the Egyptians at Heliop¬ 
olis. According to Jablonski ( Voc. JEgypt., p. 146, 
184), his name signified “ the bull of light”’ or “ of 
the sun.” (Compare Strabo , 803.— Diod Sic 1 21 
-Plut., de Is. et Os., p. 492, cd. Wytt.) The ’col¬ 
our of Mnevis had to be black, and his skin must be 
rough and bristly. His worship, however, gradually 
disappeared when Apis became the general deity of 
the country, and we may date its downfall from the 







MCER 


MOL 


time when Cambyses overthrew the magnificent tem¬ 
ple of Heliopolis. Mnevis was worshipped with the 
same superstitious ceremonies as Apis, and at his 
death he received the same magnificent funeral. (Con¬ 
sult Creuzer, Symbolik, par Guigniaut, vol. 1, p. 498.) 

Modestus, a Latin military writer, whose history 
is unknown. He wrote a work “ De vocabulis rei 
mih:aris ,” by order of the Emperor Tacitus, A.D. 
275 or 276. The first edition was published in 1474, 
4to, Venet., edited by J. Aloysius ; and is a book of 
extreme rarity. There is also another edition, sup¬ 
posed to have been printed at Rome by Laver, about 
1475, 4to. An edition was also published in 1679, 
2 vols. 4to, Vestdiuz. 

Mgenus, a river of Germa-ny. ( V'id . Maenus.) 

Morris, I. a king of Egypt, who occupied the throne, 
according to chronologists, for the space of 68 years, 
and was succeeded by Sesostris. ( Larcher, Tabl. 
Chronol. , p. 572.— Id., Chronol. d'Herod., p. 86, seq. 
—j Bahr, ad Herod., 2, 100.)—II. A lake of Egypt, 
supposed to have been the work of a king of the same 
name, concerning the situation and extent, and even 
the existence of which, authors have differed. It has 
been represented as the boldest and most wonderful 
of all the works of the kings of Egypt, and, according¬ 
ly, Herodotus considers it superior even to the pyra¬ 
mids and labyrinth. {Herod., 2, 149.) As to its sit¬ 
uation, Herodotus and Strabo (810) mark it out by 
placing the labyrinth on its borders, and by fixing the 
towns which were around it, such as Acanthus to the 
south, Aphroditopolis towards the east, and Arsinoe 
to the north. Diodorus (1, 52) and Pliny (5, 9) con¬ 
firm this statement, by placing it at 24 leagues from 
Memphis, between the province of that name and Ar¬ 
sinoe. The position thus indicated is supposed to 
answer to the modern Birket-Caroun, a lake near¬ 
by 50 leagues in circumference. Herodotus makes 
the Lake Mceris 3600 stadia in circumference, and its 
greatest depth 200 cubits. Bossuet has vindicated 
the statement of its large extent against the raillery 
of Voltaire. Rollin, however, deeming it to be in¬ 
credible, adopts the opinion of Pompomus Mela (1,9), 
and makes it 20,000 paces. D’Anville, with a view 
of reconciling the contending parties, has marked on 
his map of Egypt two lakes of this name, one of which 
is in fact a canal running parallel with the Nile ; this 
he makes the Moeris of Herodotus and Diodorus, 
while the other is situate to the northwest, and cor 
responds, according to him, with the Moeris of Strabo 
and Ptolemy. This last is the Birket-Caroun men¬ 
tioned above ; the former, which still subsists, is 
known by the name of Bahr Jouseph, or Joseph’s riv¬ 
er. It opens near Tarout Eccheriff, and ends near 
Birket-Caroun. The explanation given by Malte- 
Brun is, however, the simplest. He supposes that 
the canal dignified with the name of Joseph, like many 
other remarkable works, was executed by order of 
King Moeris. The waters then filled the basin of the 
lake Birket-Caroun, which received the name of the 
prince who effected this great change. Thus a rea¬ 
son is given why the ancients say that the lake was 
of artificial formation, while the Birket-Caroun gives 
no evidence of any such operation. ( Malte-Brun, 
Geogr., vol. 2, p. 447, Brussels cd.) If we listen, 
however, merely to the relation of Herodotus, the Lake 
Moeris was entirely the work of human art; and, to 
show this, two pyramids were to be seen in its centre, 
each of which was 200 cubits above, and as many be¬ 
low the water, while on the summit of each was a 
colossus in a sitting posture. The object of the ex¬ 
cavation was to regulate the inundations of the Nile. 
When the waters of the river were high, a large por¬ 
tion was carried off by the canal to the lake, in order 
that it might not remain too long on the soil of Egypt 
(lower at that time than in our days), and occasion 
sterility; when the inundation had declined, a second 


one was produced by the waters in Lake Mceris. 'The 
lapse of nearly 1200 years has made a great change 
in this as in the other Egyptian works of art. Mceris 
is now nearly 50 leagues in circumference. It might 
still, however, be made to answer its ancient purposes, 
if the canal of Joseph were cleared of the immense 
quantity of mud collected in it, and the dikes restored. 
The pyramids in this lake were no longer visible in 
the lime of Strabo. The lake itself is said to have 
afforded a most abundant supply of fish. The profits 
of this fishery were appropriated to find the queen 
with clothes and perfumes. (Compare Martin, De¬ 
script. Hydrogr. — Descript, de VEgypte, Etat. Mod., 
livraison 3, p. 195, seqq. — Ibid., Anliq. Mem. sur le 
Lac de Mceris, par Jornand., vol. 1, p. 79, seqq.— 
Letronne sur Rollin, vol. 1, p. 22, seqq.) 

Mcesia, the name of a province of the Roman em 
pire, extending north of the range of Mount Hsemus. 
the modern Balkan, as far as the Danube, and east¬ 
ward to the Euxine, and corresponding to the present 
provinces of Servia and Bulgaria. Its boundaries to 
the west were the rivers Drinus and Savus, which di¬ 
vided it from Pannonia and Illyricum. Strabo (295) 
says, that the old inhabitants of the country were call¬ 
ed Mysi (M vaol), and were a tribe of Thracians, like 
their eastern neighbours the Getae, and that they were 
the ancestors of the Mysians in Asia Minor. The 
Romans first invaded their country under the reign 
of Augustus, and it was afterward made into a Roman 
province, and divided into Mcesia Superior, to the 
west, between the Drinus and the (Escus (or modern 
Isker), and Mcesia Inferior, extending from the CEs 
cus to the Euxine. Being a frontier province of the 
empire, it was strengthened by a line of stations and 
fortresses along the southern bank of the Danube, of 
which the most important were Axiopolis, Durosteron, 
Nicopolis ad Istrum, Viminiacum, and Singidunum. 
A Roman wall was built from the Danube to the Eux¬ 
ine, from Axiopolis to Tomi, as a security against the 
incursions of the Scythians and Sarmatians, who in* 
habited the delta of the Danube. The conquest of 
Dacia by Trajan removed the frontiers of the empire 
farther north, beyond Mcesia ; but after the loss of the 
province of Dacia, about A.D. 250, Mcesia became 
again a border country, and, as such, exposed to the 
irruption of the Goths, who, after several attempts, 
crossed the Danube, and occupied Mcesia in the reign 
of the Emperor Valens. The Moeso-Goths, for whom 
Ulphilas translated the Scriptures, were a branch of 
Goths settled in Mcesia. Some centuries later, the 
Bulgarians and Sclavonians occupied the country of 
Mcesia, and formed the kingdoms of Bulgaria and Ser¬ 
via. —The Greek writers called this country Mucrfa. 
{Dio Cass., 38, 10.— Amm. Marcell. ,27, 9.— Plin., 
3, 26.— Id., 4, 1.— Tac., Ann., 15, 6.— Herodian , 2, 
10 .—Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 15, p. 297.) 

Moguntiacum or Magontiaccjm, afterward Mogun- 
tia or Magontia, a city of the Yangiones, lying oppo¬ 
site to the mouth of the Mcenus or Mayn. It was 
founded, or, at least, considerably embellished by Dru- 
sus, brother of Tiberius, B.C. 10, and became subse 
quently the metropolis of Germania Prima, and the 
residence of the governor or prefect of Gaul. It often 
suffered from the Batavi in the earlier periods of the 
empire, and at a later day from the barbarians. The 
modern name is Mainz, or, as we commonly write it, 
Mayrnce. {Tacit., Hist., 4, 15, 37, 61, 70, et 71.— 
Ptol., 3, 9.) 

MoliSne, the wife of Actor, son of Phorbas. She 
became mother of Cteatus and Eurytus, who from 
her are called Molionides. {Pausan., 8, 14.— Apol- 
lod., 2, 7.) 

Molionides, the two sons of Actor and Molione, 
called Actorides from their father, and Molionides 
from their mother. {Heyne, ad 11., 2, 708.) Their 
names were Eurytus and Cteatus. Horner describes 

855 



MOL 


MON 


nem, according to the common interpretation, as 
twins (dlSvpoi), and one as managing the chariot, 
while the other held the lash. Aristarchus, however, 
explained didvpoL by dctyveig, on the authority of He¬ 
siod (/card tov 'H (nodov pvOov ), and saw in the Mo¬ 
lionides a double body with two heads and four arms, 
like the double men of whom Hesiod speaks. This 
explanation has been rejected by many as too artificial 
for the age of Homer ; and in the same way has the 
tradition mentioned by the poet Ibycus been treated, 
which makes the Molionides both to have come from 
a silver egg ( ap. Athen ., 2, p. 57,/.). If we examine 
attentively the genealogy assigned to these heroes, 
new light will be found to break in upon this singular 
fable. Actor, the father, is “ the man of the shore,” 
against which the waves of the sea break; he is also 
“ the man of grinding,” of the grain crushed and bro¬ 
ken by the mill. ("A/crwp, from aary. —A ypyrepog 
ukttj. — Hes., Op. et D., 32.) On the other hand, Mo- 
lione is “ the female of combat.” MoAof is the name 
of her father (compare puXog), according to Pherecy- 
des, and Apollodorus (1, 7) mentions two individuals 
of this name, one the son of Mars, the other of Deu¬ 
calion. Without war we can neither conquer nor de¬ 
fend the soil destined for culture. Hence one of 
these warriors is named Eurytus, or “ the good de¬ 
fender,” the guardian, like the two Anaces or Dios¬ 
curi, whom the Spartan tradition made to have issued 
from the same egg. Thus Eurytus is from ev and 
(ovopat, with an active signification. (Compare Butt- 
man, , Lexilogus, vol. 1, p. 146.) The other, Cteatus 
(K rearog. — ureap, res mancipii), is “ the possessor” 
or “ proprietor.” When the sea has entered within 
its proper limits, and the shore now contains it, then 
’appear the cultivators of the soil. The man who 
would remain master of his paternal soil must in 
some sort be double. He must have two arms for 
the sword and buckler, two for the lash and the reins 
with which he guides his coursers. A single body 
ought to carry a double array of members, a single 
will to actuate two souls. These are the double men 
of Hesiod (<J itpvelg ).—Such is the explanation of Creu- 
zer as regards the fable of the Molionides. ( Symbo- 
lik, vol. 2, p. 387.— Symbolik, par Guigniaut, vol. 2, 
pt. 1, p. 334, seqq.) In place of this very poetical ver¬ 
sion of the legend, Hermann gives one altogether dif¬ 
ferent, and singularly prosaic. He sees in the whole 
story a general reference to traders coming by sea, 
disposing of their merchandise to advantage, and be¬ 
coming possessed of riches. ( TJeber das Wesen und 
die Behandlung der Mythologies p. 55.)—The Moli¬ 
onides are also mentioned as having come to the aid 
of Augeas against Hercules. ( Heyne, ad II ., 11, 

708.) The Cyclic poets, from whom Pherecydes and 
Pindar ( 01 ., 10, 32) drew, in this instance, their ma¬ 
terials, make them to have been slain by Hercules, 
whereas Homer speaks of them as surviving Hercu¬ 
les, as being still young (7 raid’ ef eovte), and contem¬ 
porary with Nestor. 

Molo, a philosopher of Rhodes, called also Apollo¬ 
nius. ( Vid. Apollonius V.) 

Molorchus, an old labouring-man near Cleonae, 
who hospitably entertained Hercules when the latter 
was on his way against the Nemean lion. Molorchus 
wishing to offer a sacrifice, in order to propitiate the 
gods and obtain for Hercules a successful accomplish¬ 
ment of his enterprise, the hero begged him to reserve 
it till the thirtieth day, saying that if he should then 
return victorious, he might offer it to Jupiter the pre¬ 
server ; but if he fell in the conflict, to make it a fu¬ 
neral offering unto him as a hero. After having de¬ 
stroyed the lion, Hercules came to the abode of Mo¬ 
lorchus on the last day of the appointed period, and 
found him just on the point of offering the victim for 
him as being dead. Hence we have in Tibullus the 
expression “ Molorchcis tectis ” (4, 13), and in Vir- 

S56 


gil, “ lucos Molorchi ” {Georg., 3, 19 .—Apollod , X 
5, Y.-^-Heync, ad loc.). 

Molossi, a people of Epirus, occupying the north¬ 
eastern portion of the country ; that is, from the head 
of the Aoiis, and the mountainous district which con¬ 
nects Macedonia, Thessaly, and Epirus to the Ambra- 
cian Gulf, a small portion of the shores of which was 
considered to belong to them. ( Scylax , p. 12.) Mo- 
lossis must therefore have comprehended the territory 
of Janinna, the present capital of Albania, together 
with its lakes and mountains, including the country of 
the Tymphasi, which bordered on that part of Thessaly 
near the source of the Peneus. Its limits to the west 
cannot precisely be determined, as we are equally ig¬ 
norant of those of Thesprotia. The principal town of 
the Molossi was Ambracia. Under their king Alex¬ 
ander, about 320 B.C., they gained the preponderance 
over the rest of Epirus, which they maintained under 
his successors, of whom Pyrrhus was the most celebra¬ 
ted. After the defeat of Perseus, Paulus .Emilius, 
the Roman general, ravaged the country of the Molossi, 
as well as the rest of Epirus, and destroved their 
towns. The effects of the devastation which he 
caused were still visible in the time of Strabo. This 
country was famed for its dogs; they were of a robust 
make, and very useful in defending the flocks. (Aris- 
tot., Hist. An., 9, 1.— Cramers Anc. Greece, vol. 1, 
p. 131.) 

Molossia or Molossis, the country of the Molossi 
in Epirus. ( Vid. Molossi.) 

Molossus, a son of Pyrrhus and Andromache. He 
reigned in Epirus after the death of Helenus. ( Pau - 
san., 1, 11.) 

Molycrion or Molycreia, a town of Etolia, on 
the borders of the Locri, and in the immediate vicinity 
of Antirrhium. According to Thucydides, it was sit¬ 
uate close to the sea. This place had been colonized 
by the Corinthians, who were expelled by the Atheni¬ 
ans, and it was afterward taken by the Etolians and 
Peloponnesians under Eurylochus. {Thucyd , 2,8.— 
Id., 3, 102.) It is also alluded to by Pausanias (5, 34), 
who elsewhere writes it Molycria (9, 31), while other 
Greek writers give Molycreia, as for example Strabo 
(451). The spot on which it stood is now called 
Cavrolimne, where its remains are yet perceptible. 
{Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 81.) 

Momus, the god of raillery and ridicule, was the 
son of Night, without a sire. {Hesiod, Theog., 211.) 
He does not appear to have been known to Homer, 
but is alluded to by Plato and Aristotle, and, as might 
well be expected, by Lucian. {Hermot., 20. — Ver. 
Hist., 2, 3. — Nigr., 32.) Nothing was perfect or 
found favour in his sight; and the gods themselves 
were the objects of his perpetual and unlimited satire. 
He blamed Vulcan, because in the human form which 
he had made of clay, he had not placed a window in 
the breast, by which whatever was done or thought 
there might easily be brought to light. He censured 
the house which Minerva had constructed, because the 
goddess had not made it moveable, by which means a 
bad neighbourhood might be avoided. In the case of 
the bull which Neptune had produced, he observed that 
his blows might have been surer if his eyes were placed 
nearer the horns. Venus herself was exposed to his 
satire ; and when he could find no fault with her per¬ 
son, he censured the noise made by her golden sandals. 
He was eventually driven from Olympus.—Momus re¬ 
minds us of the Gigon {Tlyov) in the Cabiric myste 
ries. ( Creuzer , Symbolik, vol. 2, p. 423.) 

Mona, I. an island between Britain and Hibernia, now 
the Isle of Man. Caesar gives it the name of Mona 
{B. G., 5,13). Ptolemy calls it M ovuoitia {ed. Erasm., 
where some MSS. give Movapiva). He removes it, 
however, too far to the north. Orosius (1, 11) styles 
it Mcnavia, which closely resembles the Monapia of 
Pliny (4,10), especially if, with Cambden, we read Mo- 


f 






MON 


MOP 


r . .*oiu ior the latter. ( Cellarius, Geogr. Ant., vol. 2, p. 
355.)—II. An island off the coast of Britain, and fa¬ 
cing the territory of the Ordovices, of which, in strict¬ 
ness, it formed part. It was situate to the southeast 
of the former, and is now the Isle of Anglesey. Ta¬ 
citus. gives it the name of Mona (Ann., 14, 29.-— Vit. 
Agric., 14), and Ptolemy styles it M ova, while Dio 
Cassius (62, 7) names it M Qvva. It was remarkable 
as having been one of the principal seats of the Druids. 
Suetonius Paullinus had conquered Anglesey; but the 
insurrection of the Britons under Boadicea did not 
leave him time to secure its possession. Agricola, at 
a subsequent period, having subdued the Ordovices, 
undertook the reduction of the island and succeeded. 
Tha invasion by Paullinus was seventeen years previous 
to the conquest of Agricola. (Tacit., Vit. Agric., 18.) 
Pennant mentions a pass in Wales, into, the valley of 
Clwyd, in the parish of Llanarmon, which, he says, is 
still called Bwlch Agrikle, probably from having been 
occupied by Agricola on his way to the isle of Mona. 
Tacitus (Ann., 14, 29, seqq.) gives an interesting 
account of the first conquest by Paullinus. The sa¬ 
cred groves, stained with the blood of human sacrifices, 
were destroyed by the Roman general. (Consult, in 
relation to the Druidical sacrifices, Higgins' Celtic 
Druids, p. 291, seqq.) 

Monteses, I. a Parthian commander, the same with 
ihe Surena that defeated Crassus. The appellation 
Surena, by which he is more commonly known, was 
merely a Parthian term denoting his high rank.—II. A 
Parthian officer in the time of Corbulo. (Dio Cass., 
62, 19.— Tacit., Ann., 15, 2.) 

Monda, a river on the western coast of Lusitania, 
between the Durius and Tagus. Conimbriga (the 
modern Coimbra) was situate on its banks. It is now 
the Mondego. (Mela, 3, 1.— Mar dan., Pcripl., in 
Huds. Gr. M., vol. 1, p. 43.) Pliny calls it the 
Munda (4, 22). 

Moneta, a surname of Juno among the Romans. 
She received it, according to one account, because 
she advised them (monuit) to sacrifice a pregnant sow 
to Cybele, to avert an earthquake. (Cic., de Div ., 1, 
15.) Livy says, that a temple was vowed to Juno 
under this name by the dictator L. Furius Camillus, 
when the Romans waged war against the Aurunci, 
and that the temple was raised to the goddess by the 
senate on the spot where the house of Manlius Ca- 
pitolinus had formerly stood. (Livy, 7, 28. — Com¬ 
pare Ovid, Fast., 6, 183.) Suidas, however, states 
that Juno was surnamed Moneta from her assuring the 
Romans, when, in the war against Pyrrhus, their pecu¬ 
niary resources had failed them, and they had address¬ 
ed her in prayer, that, as long as they prosecuted the 
war with justice, the means for carrying it on would be 
supplied to them. After their arms were crowned with 
success, they rendered divine honours to Juno, styling 
her 11 Moneta," or the “adviser,” and resolved, for the 
time to come, to coin money in her temple. (Suid., 

s. v. M ovyra.) —Many etymologists derive the English 
word “ money” from the Latin moneta ; and this last, 
according to Yossius, comes from moneo; 11 quod ideo 
moneta vocatur; quia nota inscripta monet nos autoris 
et valoris .” The true root, however, is most probably 
contained in the Anglo-Saxon myneg-ian, “to mark,” 
or myneth-ian, “ to stamp,” (Richardson, Eng. Diet., 

t. v. “ mint,” “money.”—Compare Tooke, Diversion/ 
ij Parley, vol. 2, p. 210, ed. 1829.) 

Monodus, a son of Prusias. He had one continued 
bone instead of a row of teeth, whence his name (po- 
voq odovq. — Plin.. 7, 16.—Consult G. Cuvier, ad loc.). 

Moncecus. Vid. Herculis II.—(Herculis Monasci 
Portus.) 

Mons Sacer, a low range of sandstone hills, ex¬ 
tending along the right bank of . the Anio, and about 
three miles from Rome. It is celebrated ir history by 
the secession of the Roman people. (Lit , 2, 32.— 
5 Q 


Ovid, Fast., 3, 663.)—It was called Mons Sacer, oe» 
cause, says Festus, the people, after their secession, 
consecrated it to Jupiter. (Gell, Topography of 
Rome, vol. 2, p. 107.) 

Monychos, a powerful giant, who could root up 
trees and hurl them like a javelin. (Juv., 1, 11.— • 
Ovid, Met., 12, 499, seqq. — Lucan, 6, 388. — Val. 
Flacc., 1 , 146, et. Burm., ad loc.) 

Mopsium, an eminence between Larissa andTempe, 
on the southern bank of the Peneus. A severe skir¬ 
mish took place in its vicinity between the troops of 
Perseus and the Romans. (Livy, 42, 61, et 67.) 
There appears to have been a fortress on it; and Sir 
W. Gell observed some vestiges on a hill near the vil¬ 
lage of Eremo, which were probably the remains of 
this ancient post. (Itin., p. 282. — Cramer's Anc. 
Greece, vol. 1, p. 384.) 

Mopsopia, an ancient appellation for Attica, sup¬ 
posed to be derived from the hero Mopsopus or Mop- 
sops. (Strab., 397.—Compare Lycophr., v. 1339.) 

Mopsuhestia, a town of Cilicia, near the sea, on the 
banks of the Pyramus. Strabo (675) informs us, that 
Mopsus and Amphilochus settled in this neighbourhood 
after the Trojan war, and founded the city of Mallus, 
and that subsequently they quarrelled about the place. 
This legend, no doubt, induced the Greeks of a later 
age to search in this quarter for a city of Mopsus, and 
hence arose the name Mopsuhestia (Mo^oiieorfa, “ the 
retreat of Mopsus"), given to the place in question-; 
whether correctly or otherwise, it is difficult to say, 
most probably, however, the latter. This appellation 
continued for a long period. Cicero (Ep. ad Fam., 
3, 8) speaks of Mopsuhestia. Pliny, however (5, 27), 
calls it merely Mopsus. Under the Byzantine empire 
its name was corrupted to Mampsysta, or Mamista, or 
Mansista. (Cod. Theodos., deconlat. donator., 1. 1.— 
Glycas, Ann., pt. 4, p. 306.— Itin., Hierosol., p. 580.) 
The modern Mensis appears to be a farther corruption 
of these names. (Leake, Journal, p. 217.) It would 
seem that the early origin of Mopsuhestia is contradict¬ 
ed by the silence of Xenophon, and also of the histo¬ 
rians of Alexander. Strabo is the first who makes 
mention of the place. (Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 2, 
p. 101, seqq.) 

Mopsus, I. a celebrated prophet, son of Manto and 
Apollo. He officiated at the altars of Apollo at 
Claros; and from his unerring wisdom and discern¬ 
ment gave rise to the proverb, “more certain than 
Mopsus.” He distinguished himself at the siege of 
Thebes; but he was held in particular veneration at 
the court of Amphilochus, at Colophon in Ionia. Hav¬ 
ing been consulted, on one occasion, by Amphilochus, 
who wished to know what success would attend his 
arms in a war which he was going to undertake, he pre¬ 
dicted the greatest calamities : but Calchas, who had 
been the soothsayer of the Greeks during the Trojan 
war, promised the greatest successes. Amphilochus 
followed the opinion of Calchas, but the prediction of 
Mopsus was fully verified. This had such an effect 
upon Calchas that he died soon after. His death is 
attributed by some to another mortification of the same 
nature. The two soothsayers, jealous of each other’s 
fame, came to a trial of their skill in divination. Cal¬ 
chas first asked his antagonist how many figs a neigh¬ 
bouring tree bore ; ten thousand and one, replied Mop¬ 
sus. The figs were gathered, and his answer was 
found to be true. Mopsus now, to try his adversary, 
asked him how many young ones a certain pregnant sow 
would bring forth, and at what time. Calchas con¬ 
fessed his inability to answer, whereupon Mopsus de¬ 
clared that she would be delivered on the morrow, and 
would bring forth ten y >ung ones, of which only one 
would be a male. The morrow proved the veracity 
of his prediction, and Calchas died through the grief 
which his defeat produced. (Tzetzes, ad Lycophr., 
427.) Amphilochus subsequently, having occasion ta 



M 0 R 


M 0 S 


visit Argos, intrusted the sovereign power to Mopsus, 
to keep it foi him during the space of a year. On his 
return, however, Mopsus refused to restore to him 
the kingdom, whereupon, having quarrelled, they en¬ 
gaged and slew each other. ( Tzelz. ad Lycophr., 
440.) According to another legend, he was slain by 
Hercules. ( Tzelz. ad Lycophr., 980.)—II. A son of 
Ancpyx and Chloris, born at Titaressa in Thessaly. 
He was the prophet and soothsayer of the Argonauts, 
and died at his return from Colchis by the bite of a ser¬ 
pent in Libya. (Hygin., fab., 14, 128, 172.— Tzetz. 
ad Lycophr., 980.) 

Morgantium (or ia), a town of Sicily, southeast of 
Agyrium, and nearly due west from Catana. It lay in 
the neighbourhood of the river Symaethus. The vil¬ 
lage of Mandri Bianchi at present occupies a part of 
its site. ( Mannert, vol. 9, pt. 2, p. 430.) 

Morimarusa, a name applied by the Cimbri to the 
Nonfiern Ocean ( Plin., 4, 27), and which means “ the 
Dead Sea.” In the Welsh tongue, Mor is the “ sea,” 
and Marr “dead.” In the Irish, mmr-croinn denotes 
a thick, coagulated, frozen sea. (Class. Journ., vol. 
6, p. 296, seqq.) 

Morini, a people of Belgic Gaul, on the shores 
of the British Ocean, and occupying what would cor¬ 
respond to le Boulonnais, part of the Department du 
Nord, and of Flanders along the sea. Their name 
is derived from the Celtic Mor, which signifies “ the 
sea,” and denoted a people dwelling along the sea- 
coast. (Compare Thierry, Hist, des Gaulois, vol. 2, 
p. 40.) The Portus Itius or Iccius lay within their 
territories, and the passage hence to Britain was con¬ 
sidered as the shortest. Virgil (AZn., 8, 727) calls 
them “ extremi hominum,” with reference to their re¬ 
mote situation on the coast of Belgic Gaul. (Heyne, 
ad loc. —Compare Plin., 19, 1.) Their cities were, 
Civitas Morinorum, now Terouenne; and Castellum 
Morinorum, now Montcassel. (Cces., B. G., 4, 21.) 

Morpheus (two syllables), the God of Sleep, and 
also of dreams, and hence his name from the various 
forms (pop<prj, “form,” “figure”) to which he gives be¬ 
ing in the imagination of the dreamer. Thus Ovid 
(Met., 11, 634) styles him “ artificem, simulatoremque 
figures.” (Compare Gierig, ad loc.) Morpheus is 
sometimes represented as a man advanced in years, 
with two large wings on his shoulders, and two small¬ 
er ones attached to his head. This is the more com¬ 
mon way of representing him. ( Winckelmann, Werke, 
vol. 2, p. 555.) In the Museum Pio-Clementinum, he 
is sculptured in relief on a cippus, as a boy, treadina 
lightly on tiptoe : on his head he has two wings ; in 
his right hand a horn, from which he appears to be 
pouring something; in his left a poppy-stalk with 
three poppy-heads. On a relief in the Villa Borghese, 
the god of dreams is again represented as a boy with 
wings, and holding the poppy-stalk, but without any 
horn. (Winckelmann, vol. 2, p. 713.) 

Mors, one of the deities of the lower world, born 
of Night without a sire. Nothing is particularly known 
relative to the manner in which she was worshipped. 
“The figures of Mors or Death,” says Spence, “ are 
very uncommon, as indeed those of the evil and hurt¬ 
ful beings generally are. They were banished from all 
medals; on seals and rings they were probably con¬ 
sidered as bad omens, and were, perhaps, never used. 

—Among the very few figures of Mors I have ever 
met with, that in the Florentine gallery is, I think, the 
most remarkable: it is a little figure in brass, of a 
skeleton, sitting on the ground, and resting one of its 
hands on a long urn. I fancy Mors was common 
enough in the paintings of old, because she is so fre¬ 
quently mentioned in a descriptive manner by the Ro¬ 
man poets. The face of Mors, when they gave her 
any face, seems to have been of a pale, wan, dead 
colour. The poets describe her as ravenous, treacher¬ 
ous, and furious. They speak of her roving about 


open-mouthed, and seem to give her blacK robes and 
dark wings. As the ancients had more horrid and 
gloomy notions of death than we have at present, so the 
greater part of their descriptions are of a most frightful 
and dismal turn.”—Compare with this the language 
of Niebuhr (Raman Hist., vol. 1, p. 110, Cambridge 
Iransl.), who speaks of the genius of death, represented 
on Etrurian bas-reliefs, as a perfect cherub, (Micali 
pi. 44.) 

Mortuum Mare. Vid. Mare Mortuum. 

Mosa, a river of Gallia Belgica, on the confines of 
Germania Cisrhenana. It rose in Mount Vogesus, 
among the Lingones, and emptied into the Vahalis. 
It is now the Maas or Meuse. (Cces., B. G., 4, 10. 

— Tacitus, Ann., 2, 6— Plin., 4, 14, seqq. — Amm 
Marcell., 17, 2, 9.) In the Peutingcr Table it is cal 1 
ed the Mosaha.—Mosse Pons, otherwise called Tra- 
jectus Moses (Itin. Ant., 461), is the modern Maes- 
tricht. 

Moscha, a harbour of Arabia Felix, at the mouth 
of the Sinus Persicus. (Ptol., in Huds. G. M., 3, 13. 

— Arrian, Peripl., in Huds. G. M., 1, 18.) It was 
much frequented, according to Arrian, on account of 
the Sachalitic incense obtained there. Much doubt 
has arisen relative to the precise situation of this port. 
The opinion which makes it correspond to the mod¬ 
ern Mascate , though plausible on account of the sim¬ 
ilarity of names, cannot be supported. Moscha more 
probably answers to the modern Sadschar, which D’An- 
ville calls Seger, and Vincent Schoehr (Mannert 
Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 1, p. 102, ed. 1831.— Vincent's Per- 
iplus, p. 344, seqq.) 

Moschi, a people of Asia, dwelling, according to 
Mela (1, 2; 3, 5), in the vicinity of the Hyrcanian 
Sea ; but according to Pliny (6, 4), around the sour¬ 
ces of the Phasis, between the Euxine and Caspian 
Seas. Stephanus of Byzantium calls them Mocj^oj, 
and Procopius M eoxol. (Rer. Got., 4, 2.) 

Moschion, I. a physician, whose era is not ascer¬ 
tained. A treatise on “ Female Complaints” (Ilepi 
ru)v yvvauielov TraOtiv) is commonly ascribed to- him. 
The best edition is that of Dewez, Vindob ., 1793, 8vo. 
The text is here given after a very good MS. in the 
Imperial Library at Vienna.—“ It is to be regretted,” 
says Mr. Adams, “ that this author’s work on ‘ Female 
Complaints’ has descended to us in so imperfect a state ; 
for it appears to have contained very original and in¬ 
genious views of practice. His directions relative to 
the umbilical cord after delivery are more judicious 
than those laid down by any other ancient author. He 
disapproves of all the superstitious and ignorant modes 
of procedure formerly resorted to in such cases, and 
recommends to tie the cord in two places, and to di¬ 
vide it in the middle with a scalpel or sharp knife. 
He reprobates the ancient practice of using instruments 
of wood, glass, reed, or hard crusts of bread. In cases 
of retention of the placenta, he disapproves of sternu¬ 
tatories, fumigations, suspending wmights from the cord, 
and the like, because such means are apt to occasion 
hemorrhage ; and he directs the midwife in other par¬ 
ticulars with great judgment.” 

Moschus, I. or Mochus, a philosopher of Sidon, and 
the most ancient name remaining on the list of Phoeni¬ 
cian philosophers. If we are to credit Iamblichu.? ( Vit. 
Pythag., 3, 14), he lived before the time of Pythagoras. 
After Posidonius, many writers ascribe to him a system 
of philosophy, which subsequently rose into great ce¬ 
lebrity under the Grecian philosophers Leucippus and 
Epicurus, called the Atomic. It is urged, in defence 
of this opinion, that the Monads of Pythagoras were the 
same with the Atoms, of Moschus, with which Pythag¬ 
oras became acquainted during his residence in Phoe¬ 
nicia , and that from Pythagoras this doctrine passed 
to Empedocles and Anaxagoras, and afterward to Leu¬ 
cippus and Epicurus. (Stob., Eel. Phys., 1, 13.— 
Anst., Metaph., 13, 6.) To this may be replied, that 









MOSCHUS. 


MIS 


tne single evidence of Posidonius the Stoic, who lived 
so many ages after the time of Moschus, to whom also 
Cicero allows little credit, and of whose authority even 
Strabo and Sextus Empiricus, who refer to him, inti¬ 
mate some suspicion, is too feeble to support the whole 
weight of this opinion. But the circumstance which 
most of all invalidates it is, that the method of philos¬ 
ophizing by hypothesis or system, which was followed 
by the Greek philosophers, was inconsistent with the 
genius and character of the Barbaric philosophy, which 
consisted in simple assertion, and relied entirely upon 
traditional authority. The argument drawn from the 
history and doctrines of Pythagoras is fully refuted, 
by showing that this part of the history of Pythagoras 
has been involved in obscurity by the later Platonists, 
and that neither the doctrine of Monads, nor any of 
those systems which are said to have been derived from 
Moschus, are the same with the Atomic doctrine of 
Epicurus. We may therefore safely conclude, that, 
whatever credit the corpuscular system may derive 
from other sources, it has no claims to be considered 
as the ancient doctrine of the Phoenicians. ( Enfield's 
History of Philosophy , vol. 1, p. 75.)—II. A Greek 
pastoral poet, whose era is not clearly ascertained. 
Suidas ( s. v. Mocr^of) states positively that Moschus 
was the friend or disciple of Aristarchus (for the word 
yvupiyoq, which he employs, may have either significa¬ 
tion). If this be correct, the poet ought to have flour¬ 
ished about the 156th Olympiad (B.C. 156). This 
position, however, is very probably erroneous, since 
Suidas is here in contradiction with a passage of Mos¬ 
chus himself ( Epitaph. Bion., v. 102), in which the 
poet speaks of Theocritus as a contemporary. Now 
Theocritus flourished B.C. 270.—Moschus is said to 
have been a native of Syracuse, though he spent the 
greater part of his days at Alexandrea. He was the 
frend, at:d, according to some, the disciple of Bion. 
We have four idyls from him, and some other smaller 
pieces. 1 , ‘E pog dparreryg (“ Cupid , a run-away' 1 '’), a 
poem of twenty-nine verses. Venus offers a reward 
to any one who will bring him back to her ; and draws 
a picture of the young deity, so that no one may mis¬ 
take him.—2. ’RypuTcy (“ Europa"). The subject of 
this poem, which consists of 161 verses, is the carry¬ 
ing otf of Europa from Phoenicia to Crete. It is a very 
graceful and charming piece, and would be worthy of the 
best age of Grecian literature, were not the introduc¬ 
tion rather too long.— Emratyiog 'Blovog (“ Elegy on 
Bion"), a piece of 133 verses. The poet represents 
all nature as mourning the death of Bion. It is a very 
elegant production ; but overloaded with imagery, and 
open to the charge of what Valckenacr calls “ elegan- 
tissimam luxuriem .”—4. Meydpa, yvvy 'HpcuiXsovg 
(“ Mcgara, spouse of Hercules"), a fragment, contain¬ 
ing 125 verses. It is this fragment which some crit¬ 
ics have sought to assign to Pisander, and others to 
Panyasis. We have in it a dialogue between the 
mother and the wife of Hercules. The scene is laid 
at Tiryns, and the hero is supposed to be absent at 
the time, accomplishing one of the labours imposed upon 
him by Eurystheus. The two females deplore their 
own hard lot and that of Hercules. This piece con¬ 
tains less imagery and ornament than the other re¬ 
mains which we possess of Moschus. It is marked 
by a simplicity of manner which recalls to mind the 
ancient epopee, and is distinguished by tiaits of gen¬ 
uine feeling.—“Moschus,” observes Elton, “seems 
to have taken Bion for his model, and resembles him 
m his turn for apologues, his delicate amenity of style, 
his luxuriance of poetic imagery, and his graceful and, 
as it were, feminine softness. The ‘ Elegy on Bion’ 
may at first view appear forced and affected, from 
its exuberance of conceit; and Dr. Johnson, in his 
critique on ‘ Lycidas,’ has given a currency to the 
opinion that, where there is real sorrow, there can 
be nothing of mere poetry. I am satisfied 'hat the 


j inference is unphilosophical. What is the reason 
that ‘ Lycidas,’ and that the ‘ Monody or. Lucy,’ by 
Lord Lyttleton, continue to be popular in defiance 
of criticism l It is that the criticism is hypercriti¬ 
cal, and that the popular feeling is right. Shaks- 
peare, who had from nature the deepest intuition 
into the complicated science of mental philosophy, 
saw that the human mind perpetually foils the cal¬ 
culations of previous reasoning. We are often 
struck with the language and deportment of his char¬ 
acters, as contrary to what might have been expected 
under such circumstances ; and yet we shall, I be¬ 
lieve, invariably find that Shakspeare, in disappoint¬ 
ing the vulgar notions of probability or consistency, 
has taken his instructions from practical human life 
Among various instances, that of a seemingly affected 
and overstrained mode of diction, and far-fetched train 
of sentiment, may be adduced as one of the most 
prominent, and as that which is most frequently con¬ 
demned, with a positive cpnfidence, as a glaring vio¬ 
lation of a universally acknowledged rule. But it will 
be found that the human mind, when acted upon by 
any extraordinary excitement, does in fact fly to re¬ 
mote associations, and vent its superfluous energy in 
violent combinations, and in a wild sportiveness of 
imagery. The ‘ Elegy’ of Moschus, like the ‘ Ly 
cidas’ of Milton, is no impeachment of the poet’s ac¬ 
curate taste or genuine simplicity of feeling ; it is, in 
either instance, the luxury of sorrow which pleases 
itself with grotesque and romantic creations of an ex¬ 
cited fancy : it is the revery of a poet; accompanied 
with that natural irregularity of mind, that unseating 
of the judgment by an overbalance of the imagination, 
which marks the delirious excess of melancholy in the 
man.” ( Specimens of the Classic Poets, vol. 1, p. 
369, seqq.) —The remains of Moschus are given in 
the collections of Brunck, Gaisford, and Boissonade. 
One of the best separate editions is that of Manso, 
Gothae, 1784 and 1807, 8vo. ( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Gr., 
vol. 3, p. 165.) 

Moschylus. Vid. Mosychlus. 

Mosella, a river of Belgic Gaul, rising in the 
range of Mount Vogesus, and flowing through the ter¬ 
ritories of the Leuci, Mediomatrici, and Treveri, into 
the Rhine at Confluentes ( Coblentz ). It is now the 
Moselle. ( Tac., Ann., 13, 53.— Amm. Marcell., 16, 
3.— Flor., 3, 10.) 

Mosychlus or Moschylus, a mountain in Lem 
nos, and the earliest volcano known to the Greeks. 

( TJkert , ubcr Lemnos und den Mosychlos. — Allg. Ge- 
ogr. Ephem., 1802, p. 12.) Hence Lemnos is men¬ 
tioned by Homer ( Od ., 8, 283) as the favourite abode 
of Vulcan ; and this island received him when hurled 
from the skies. {11, 1,592.) Mosychlus is mention¬ 
ed as a volcanic mountain by many of the later wri¬ 
ters, and was situate on the eastern side of the isl¬ 
and'. ( Antirn., ap. Schol. ad Nicand., Theriac., 474.— 
Schol. ad Lycophr., 227.— Nicand., Theriac., 458.- 
Hesych., s. v. Mocr^uAop.— Steph. Byz., s. v. AWdhy. 
— Varro, L. L., 7, 19, &c.) It is thought to have 
sunk in the sea a short time after the age of Alexander, 
together with the island Chrysa.—When the western 
parts of Europe became better known to the Greeks, 
and iEtna, with the HSolian isles, attracted their atten¬ 
tion, they seem to have transferred the forges of Vul¬ 
can to this latter quarter. (Compare the authorities 
cited by Cluver, Sic. Ant., 1. 2, p. 407.) According 
to other mythological fables, Typhon or Typhoeus lay 
buried beneath JEtna ( JEschyl ., Prom. Vinct., 372, 
seqq. — Pind., Pyth., 1, 29, seqq. — Cluv., Sic. Ant., 
1. 1, p. 108), or, as others relate, Enceladus {Oppian t 
Cyneg., 1, 273, seqq. — Creuzer, ad Xanth., fragm., 
p. 163, seqq.)’, and the battle-ground between the 
gods and giants was placed by some in Sicily, by oth¬ 
ers near Cumae in Italy. {Apollod., 1, 6, 3.— Strab., 
243.— Id., 281.— Plin., 3,-9.— Id., 18, 29 .—Polyb., 

859 





MUM 


MU N 


3, 91 — l)iod. Sic., 4, 21.— Id., 5, 71.) Almost ev¬ 
ery volcanic situation, however, in the ancient world, 
seems to have had this honour in succession conferred 
upon it. ' (Compare Bcrkel, ad Steph. Byz., s. v. 
YiaXkyvri.) 

Mosvn^eci, a people of Pontus in Asia Minor, on 
the coast near Cerasus. (Xen., Anab., 5, 4, 2.) The 
10,000 Greeks passed through their country in their 
retreat. The name is one given them by the Greeks, 
from the circumstance of their dwelling in wooden 
nvers cr forts {poaow, a wooden tower, and oik6w, “to 
~>well." — Sturz, Lex. Xen., vol. 3, p. 175.—Compare 
Apotl, Rhod., 2, 1018.— Schneider, ad Xen., 1. c.). 

M ulciber, a surname of Vulcan, from the verb 
mulceo, “ to soften,” and alluding to the softening in¬ 
fluence of fire upon metals. ( Aul. Gell., 13, 22.— 
Macrob., Sat., 1, 12 .—Ovid, Met., 2, 5.) 

Mulucha, a river of Africa, the same, according to 
the common account, with the Molochath and Malva, 
and which separated Mauritania from Numidia in the 
time of Bocchus, king of the former country. Hama- 
ker, however ( Miscellanea Phoenicia, p. 240, seqq.), 
disputes the correctness of this, and makes distinct 
rivers of the Molochath, Malva, and Mulucha. Ac¬ 
cording to this writer, the Molochath was the bounda¬ 
ry between the two countries above mentioned in the 
time of Bocchar ( Liv ., 29, 30) ; at a subsequent pe¬ 
riod, Mauritania was extended to the river Mulucha, 
in tht days of Bocchus : under Bogud, the son of 
Bocchus, it was farther extended to the Ampsagas , 
but afterward, under Juba, was circumscribed by the 
Nasava: and finally, under the Emperor Claudius, the 
Ampsagas was again made the eastern limit, and 
Mauritania, thus enlarged, was divided by that em- 
e-ror into two provinces, which the third river, the 
lalva, separated. ( Hamaker, l. c.) According to 

the same Oriental scholar, the names Mulucha and 
Molochath both signify “ salt while Malva has the 
meaning of “ full ,” and indicates a large and copious 
stream. ( Hamaker , p. 245. — Compare Gescnius, 
Phcen. Monument., p. 425.) 

Mulvius Pons. Vid. Milvius Pons. 

Mummius, I. Lucius, a Roman of plebeian origin. 
Having been sent (B.C. 153) into Farther Spain° as 
prajtor, he experienced at first a considerable check ; 
but not long after retrieved his credit, and gained sev¬ 
eral advantages, which, though not very decisive, yet 
obtained for him the honours of a triumph. ( Appian, 
Bell. Hisp., 56.— Schweigh., ad loc.) Having been 
elected consul B.C. 146, and charged with the con¬ 
tinuance of the war against the Achaean league, he 
received the command of the forces from Metellus, 
encamped under the walls of Corinth, and defeated 
the enemy in a pitched battle. This victory put him 
in possession of the city, which was plundered and 
burned by his troops. The finest works of art be¬ 
came the prey of the conquerors, and were either de¬ 
stroyed in the conflagration or sent off to Rome. It 
is said that Mummius, in the true spirit of a rude and 
unlettered soldier, made it an express condition with 
those who had contracted to convey, on.this occasion, 
some of the choicest works of art to Rome, that if 
they lost any they must replace them by new ones ! 

si cas perdidissent, 7iovas esse redditurosP — Veil. 
Patcrc., 1, 13). On his return, Mummius was hon¬ 
oured with another triumph, and obtained the surname 
of Achdicus. He was elected consul a second time, 
B.C. 141, during which year the Capitol was gilded. 

( Plin., 33, 3.) Mummius died so poor as not to leave 
sufficient for a dowry fof his daughter, who accord- 
ingly received a portion from the senate. He left 
some orations behind him, which Cicero characterizes 
as plain and oldfashioned in their style (“ simplex 
quidem L. Mummius et antiquusP — Brut., 25). But 
the same writer does justice elsewhere to his great 
probity and disinterestedness, h bringing back from 


Corinth nothing wherewith to make himself a rich¬ 
er man. ( Be Officiis, 2, 22.) Appian states that 
Mummius was condemned under the Varian law, and 
punished with exile, and that he ended his days at 
Delos. {Bell. Civ., 1, 37.) This, however, is very 
probably an error on the part of the historian, who 
seems to have confounded him with L. Memmius, 
mentioned by Cicero in his Brutus (c. 89. — Consull 
Schweigh., Ind. ad App., s. v. Mummius.—Frein 
shem., 71; 41).—II. Spurius, brother of the prece¬ 
ding. He is mentioned by Cicero, with more praise 
as a public speaker than his brother; and is also said 
to have been attached to the Stoic philosophy. ( Cic ., 
Brut., 25.) 

Munatius, Plancus, a Roman whose name frequent 
ly occurs in the history of the civil wars. He was 
one of Caesar’s warmest partisans, and was sent by 
him into Gaul to found colonies there. He was also 
intended by him for the consulship. After the battle 
of Mutina, he joined his forces to those of Antony and 
Lepidus, and became consul with the former, AAJ.C. 
712. He afterward accompanied Antony into Egypt, 
where he performed the part of a vile courtier, and 
even of a buffoon, around the person of Cleopatra. 
When fortune deserted his protector, he turned his 
back upon him and embraced the party of Octavianus. 
In 732 he was chosen censor. We have several let¬ 
ters of his among the correspondence of Cicero. 
They betray the equivocal character of the man. 
{Scholl, Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 2, p. 149.) 

Munda, a strongly fortified and large city of His- 
pania Bsetica, on the coast, southwest of Malaca. 

(Strabo , 141, 160.) In its vicinity was fought the 
famous battle between Caesar and the sons of Pompey, 
which put an end to the war. {Hirt., Bell. Hisp., c. 
31.) It was a most desperate action, and even the 
veterans of Caesar, who for upward of fourteen years 
had signalized their valour, were compelled to give 
way. It was only by the most vigorous exertions 
that the sons of Pompey were at last defeated. Cae¬ 
sar is said to have given up all for lost at one period 
of the fight, and to have been on the point of destroy¬ 
ing himself. As he retired after the battle, he told 
his friends that he had often fought for victory, but 
that this was the first time he had fought for his life. 
Cassar is said to have lost 1000 of his best soldiers: 
the enemy had 30,000 slain. The battle was fought 
the 17th March, B.C. 45. After the battle, the siege 
of Munda ensued, and the assailants are said actually 
to have made use of the dead bodies of the enemy in 
elevating their mound to a sufficient height. The lit¬ 
tle village of Monda in Grenada is supposed to lie 
near the ancient city. {Plin., 3, 3.— Liv., 24, 42.— 
Sil. Ital., 3, 400.— Florus, 4, 2.— Dio Cass., 43, 39. 
— Val. Max., 7, 6.) 

Munychia (and ^e), one of the ports of Athens, sc 
called, it is said, from Munychus, an Orchomenian, 
who, having been expelled from Bceotia by the Thra¬ 
cians, settled at Athens. {Diod. Sic., fragm., 7.) 
Strabo describes it as a peninsular hill, connected with 
the continent by a narrow neck of land, and abound¬ 
ing with hollows, partly natural and partly the work 
of art. When it had been enclosed by fortified lines, 
connecting it with the other ports, Munychia became 
a most important position, from the security it afford¬ 
ed to these maritime dependencies of Athens, and, 
accordingly, we find it always mentioned as the point 
which was most particularly guarded when any attack 
was apprehended on the side of the sea. {Thucyd 
8, 92.— Xen., Hist. Gr., 2, 4.— Pint., Vit. Phoc.~ 
CramcPs Anc. Greece, vcl. 2, p. 351.) Hobhouse 
in speaking of the Munychian harbour, observes, “ the 
old harbour of Munychia is of a circular form there 
are several remains of wall running into the water 
and a piece of pier is to be seen at each side of the 
mouth of it; so that the entrance, as well as the 







MUS 


M U 8 


whole port, is smaller than that of the Piraeus. The 
direction of the port is from south to north. If the 
harbour once contained four hundred ships, ea-ch ves¬ 
sel must have been a wherry.” (Vol. 1, p. 301, Am. 
ed.) See more on this subject in the remarks on the 
articles Phalerus and Piraeus. 

MuRiENA, I. L. Licinius, a Roman commander. 
He had charge of Sylla’s left wing in the battle with 
Archelaus, near Chseronea, and contributed powerfully 
to the victory which Sylla gained on that occasion. 
After the latter had concluded a treaty of peace with 
Mithradates, he left Mursena in command of the Ro¬ 
man forces in Asia, who, not long after, broke the 
treaty and invaded Cappadocia, plundering the treas¬ 
ures of the temple at Comana. ’ Mithradates, how¬ 
ever, met and defeated him on the banks of the Halys. 
( Vid. Mithradates VI.) — II. The son of the prece¬ 
ding, a consul, and colleague of D. Silanus, was ac¬ 
cused by Servius Sulpicius and Cato of having been 
guilty of bribery in suing for the consulship, and was 
ably defended by Cicero. The oration delivered on 
this occasion is still extant. Mursena was acquitted. 

Mursa, a city of Pannonia Inferior, on the Dravus, 
a short distance to the west of its junction with the 
Danube. It was founded by Hadrian, and in its vi¬ 
cinity Magnentius was defeated by Constantius. It 
corresponds to the modem Essek, the capital of Scla- 
vonia. ( Stcph. Byz., p. 472.— Ptol.) 

Murtia or Murcia, a surname given to Venus by 
the Romans. The more popular orthography with 
the ancient writers was Myrtxa, from myrtus, “ the 
myrtle,” and various reasons are assigned for this 
etymology. ( Serv. ad Eclog., 7, 62.— Ovid, Fast., 
4, 141.— Serv. ad Georg., 2, 64.) The other form 
of the name, Murcia, is explained as follows by St. 
Augustine {de Civ. Dei, 4, 16) : “ Dea Murcia, qua 
prater modum non moveretur, ac faceret hominem, ut 
ait Pomponius, murcidum, id est, nimis desidiosum 
et inactuosum .” (Compare Arnobius, 1. 4, p. 132.) 
She had a temple at the foot of the Aventine Hill, 
and hence this hill was anciently called Murcius. 
( Festus. — Liv., 1, 33.) 

Musa, Antonius, a celebrated physician at Rome, in 
the age of Augustus. He is commonly supposed to 
have been a freedman of that emperor’s. Some, how¬ 
ever, make him to have been of Greek origin, and the 
son of a parent named Iasus. Pliny speaks of a broth¬ 
er of Musa’s, named Euphorbus, who was physician to 
Tuba II., king of Mauritania; and he adds, that a cer¬ 
tain plant, the virtues of which were discovered by him, 
received from this prince the complimentary name of 
Euphorbia. ( Plin., 25, 7.) Musa had received an ex¬ 
cellent education. It appears that he took up the study 
if medicine merely with the view of relieving his own 
father, who was weighed down with infirmities, and 
his filial piety was richly rewarded by the distinguished 
proficiency to which he attained in the healing art. 
His reputation became established by a successful cure 
which he performed in the case of the emperor. Au¬ 
gustus had been suffering for a long time under a com¬ 
plaint about which the ancient writers give us no exact 
information, but which the imperial physicians appear 
only to have aggravated by the use of warm remedies. 
Musa was at length called in, and the emperor placed 
himself in his hands. Discarding all fomentations and 
heating remedies, Musa prescribed the cold bath and 
refreshing drinks, and Augustus soon recovered the 
health to which he had long been a stranger. ( Sue - 
ton., Vit. Aug., 81.— Dio Cass., 53, 30.— Plin., 29, 
1.) Augustus and the senate not only presented Musa 
with a considerable sum of money, but also bestowed 
upon him the rank of an eques or knight, and caused a 
brazen statue to be erected to him in the temple of TEs- 
culapius. ( Ackermann, Prolus. de Ant. Mus., § 6, p. 
15.) It is also said, that, out of consideration for Mu- 
-,a, the whole medical profession were to be exempted 


from taxes for the time to come. Indeed, from this pe» 
riod, instruction in the healing art became mere highly 
esteemed at Rome, and was placed on a level witf 
the teaching of Philology, Rhetoric, and Philosophy 
(Consult Gaupp, de prof, ct med. corumque priviltg. 

р. 29, Vratislav., 1827.) Musa was not always, how¬ 
ever, so successful in his practice ; and the use of th* 
cold bath, which had saved Augustus, hastened, or, at 
least, could not prevent, the death of the young Mar 
cellus. This, at least, is the account given by Die 
Cassius (53, 30). It must be observed, however, in 
justice to Musa, that Suetonius, Velleius Paterculus, 
Pliny, and Tacitus, are silent on this head. Dio Cas¬ 
sius, in another passage (53, 33), states, that Livia was 
suspected by some of having caused poison to be*ad- 
ministered to young Marcellus, which baffled all the 
skill of his physicians; but he adds, that the preva¬ 
lence of a severe epidemic during that and the follow¬ 
ing year, by which great numbers perished, rendered 
this suspicion somewhat improbable. Velleius Pater¬ 
culus, Pliny, and Tacitus make no such reproach to 
the memory of Musa; and Servius, in a note to Virgil 
(JEn ., 6, 862), attributes the death of Marcellus to 
a different cause. (Compare Bianconi, Lettres sui 
Celse, p. 59.— Rose, Diss. de Aug. contr. med. cura- 
to, Hal., 1741.) The cold bath, after this, was for 
a long time discontinued, until Charmis of Massilia 
brought it again into use at Rome, with great emolu¬ 
ment to himself and advantage to invalids. {Plin., 1. 

с. —Essai Hist, sur le Med. cn France, p. 20, Paris, 
1762.)—The talents of Musa do not appear to have 
been confined to the medical art. Virgil praises his 
spirit and taste in an epigram contained in the Catalcc- 
ta (13), in which he says that Phoebus and the Muses 
had bestowed upon him their choicest gifts. He ap¬ 
pears, in fact, to have been on intimate terms with both 
Virgil and Horace, the latter of whom he advised to 
leave off bathing at Baise. ( Epist ., 1 , 15.) Musa is 
said to have been the first that made use of the flesh of 
vipers in curing ulcers, and employed, as simples, let¬ 
tuce, succory, and endives. He was the inventor of 
many remedies, which all bore his name. {Galen, de 
Comp. Med., sec. loc., lib. 8, p. 287, &c.— Plin., 29, 6.) 
—Two works are erroneously ascribed to Musa, one a 
treatise “ De Herba Betonicaf published by Humel- 
berg with notes, Ttgur., 1537, 4to ; and the other a 
poetical fragment, “ De tuenda valetudine,” addressed 
to Mrecenas, which appeared at Nuremberg, 1538, 8vo, 
under the editorial care of Troppau. The genuine frag¬ 
ments of Musa were collected by Caldani: “ Antonii 
Musa fragmenta qua exstantf Bassano, 1800, 8vo.—* 
There is a curious dissertation of Bishop Atterbury’s 
{Lond., 1740, 8vo), in which he undertakes to prove 
that Virgil has commemorated Musa in the twelfth book 
of the HCneid, under the character of laspis. {Biogr. 
Univ., vol. 30, p. 465, seq. — Sprengel, Hist. Med., vol. 
2, p. 23, seq. — B'dhr, Gesch. Rom. Lit., vol. 1 , p. 691.) 

Mus.®, certain goddesses who presided over poetry, 
music, and all the liberal arts and sciences, and who 
were the daughters of Jupiter by the nymph Mnemos¬ 
yne. No definite number of the Muses is given by 
Homer ; for the verse in which they are said to be nine 
is now regarded as spurious. {Od., 24, 60.) Perhaps 
originally, as in the case of the Erinnyes and so many 
other deities, there was no precise number. Pausan- 
ias (9, 29,1) gives an old tradition, according to which 
there were only three Muses: Melete {Practice), 
Mneme {Memory), and Aoede {Song). Aratus said 
there were four, the daughters of Jupiter and the nymph 
Plusia {Wealthy), and that their names were Thelxi- 
noe ( Mind-soother ), Acede, Melete, and Arche {Begin¬ 
ning .— Cic., N. D., 3, 21.— Eudocia, 294). Ale¬ 
man and some other poets made the Muses the daugh¬ 
ters of Heaven and Earth. {Diod. Sic., 47.— Pau- 
san., 9, 29, 4.) The more received opinion makes 
them nine in number, and, as we have already remark- 

861 



M U S 


MUSiEUS. 


cd, the daughters of Jupiter and of Mnemosyne, the 
goddess of Memory. ( Hes., Theog., 53, seqq. — Id. ib., 
76.)—The names of the Muses were Calliope, Clio, 
Melpomene, Euterpe, Erato, Terpsichore, Urania, Tha¬ 
lia, and Polymnia, an account of each of whom will be 
found under their respective names, as well as of the par^ 
ticular departments which later ages assigned to each. 
—Pieria in Macedonia is said by Hesiod ( Theog ., 53) 
to have been the birthplace of the Muses ; and every¬ 
thing relating to them proves the antiquity of the tra¬ 
dition, that the knowledge and worship of these god¬ 
desses came from the North into Hellas. ( Buttmann , 
Mythol., vol. 1, p. 293.—Foss, Mythol. Briefe, vol. 
4, j>. 3.— Muller, Orchom., p. 381.— Id., Prolegom., 
p. 219.) Almost all the mountains, grottoes, and 
springs from which they have derived their appella¬ 
tions, or which were sacred to them, were in Mace¬ 
donia, Thessaly, Phocis, or Boeotia. Such are the 
mountains Pimpla, Pindus, Parnassus, Helicon ; the 
fountains Hippocrene, Aganippe, Castalia; and also 
the Corycian Cave.—The Muses, as Homer informs us 
{II., 2, 594), met the Thracian Thamyris in Dorion (in 
the Peloponnesus) as he was returning from CEchalia. 
He had boasted that he could excel them in singing; 
and, enraged at his presumption, they struck him blind 
and deprived him of his knowledge of music. Shortly 
after the birth of these goddesses, the nine daughters 
of Pierus, king ofiEmathia, are said to have challenged 
them to a contest of singing. The place of trial was 
Mount Helicon. At the song of the daughters of Pi¬ 
erus, the sky became dark, and all nature was put out 
of harmony ; but at that of the Muses, the heavens 
themselves, the stars, the sea, and the rivers, stood mo¬ 
tionless, and Helicon swelled up with delight, so that 
ais summit would have reached the sky had not Nep¬ 
tune directed Pegasus to strike it with his hoof. The 
Muses then turned the presumptuous maidens into 
nine different kinds of birds. ( Nicander, ap. Anton. 
Lib., 9.) Ovid, who relates the same legend {Met., 5, 
300, seqq.), says they were turned into magpies, and 
he is followed by Statius. ( Silv., 2, 4, 19.) — The 
most probable derivation of the name Muse (M ovca) 
seems to be that which deduces it from the obsolete 
verb fiao, “ to inquire” or “invent;” so that the Mu¬ 
ses are nothing more than personifications of the in¬ 
ventive powers of the mind as displayed in the several 
arts. {Kcightley's Mythology, p. 185, seqq.) 

MusiEus, I. an early Greek bard, of whom little 
more is known than of Orpheus, the history of his life 
being enveloped in mystery and encumbered with fa¬ 
bles. Plato calls him the son of Selene, and, as if to 
leave no doubt about the meaning of this latter name, 
Hermesianax, in a passage of his Leontion, preserved 
by Athenaeus, says that Mene, that is, the Moon, was 
the mother of this poet, whom he styles the favourite 
of the Graces. {Athen., 13, p. 597, c. -Compare 
Schol. ad Aristoph., Ran., 1065.) Others merely 
make a nymph to have been his parent. Musaeus was 
born either at Athens or at Eleusis, for the ancient 
writers are not agreed upon this point: he was origi¬ 
nally, however, from Thrace, and descended from the 
illustrious family of the Eumolpidae, which owed its 
origin to the Thracian Eumolpus. This family was 
in possession of certain mysteries and peculiar rites of 
initiation, and claimed from father to son the gift of 
prophecy. Musaeus was the fourth or fifth in descent 
from Eumolpus : tradition named Antiphenes for his 
father. He is placed in the Arundelian marbles at 
1426 B.C., when his hymns are said to have been re¬ 
ceived into the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries. 
He passed the greater part of his life at Athens, and 
in the time of Pausanias, the quarter of the city where 
he had resided, and where he was also interred, still 
bore the name of Museum (M ovcseiov.—Pausan., 1, 
25). He was married to Deiope, by whom he had Eu- 
naolpus the younger, who presided at the expiation of 
862 


Hercules. Some traditions made Musaeus the disciple 
of Orpheus ; others, on the contrary, call him the pre¬ 
ceptor of the latter ; and Suidas states expressly, that, 
although a disciple of Orpheus, he was more advanced 
in years than the latter, who bequeathed to him his 
lyre. According to another tradition, this irstrument 
was intrusted to Musaeus by the Muses, who had found 
it on the seashore after the death of Orpheus.—The 
poems of Musseus, neglected very probably at a later 
period, when the poetry of Ionia, more consonant with 
the genius of the Greek nation, became widely diffused, 
were interpolated to such a degree, that, when in a 
subsequent age they became the subject of critical in¬ 
vestigation, it was no longer possible to distinguish be¬ 
tween what was -original and what had been added. 
Pausanias (1, 22) regarded the hymn in honour of Ceres 
as the only genuine one ; all the rest appeared to him 
the work of Onomacritus, who was contemporary with 
the Pisistratidae ; for the poem of Hero and Leander , 
which we have remaining, is by another Musaeus, sur- 
named the grammarian,—We will now proceed to enu¬ 
merate the titles of the works ascribed to the ancient 
bard.— Xpijopol {“ Oracles”). Musaeus, according to 
Herodotus (8, 96), had predicted the happy issue of 
the battle of Salamis; that is, some one had applied to 
this event, so glorious for the Greeks, one of the old 
prophecies preserved among the people ; just as was 
afterward done with regard to the three verses preserv¬ 
ed for us by Pausanias (10, 9), and in which the Athe¬ 
nians saw, with the more willingness, a prediction rel¬ 
ative to the battle of HSgos Potamos, because it con¬ 
firmed the suspicions they had before entertained of 
the treachery of Adimantus. This last-mentioned ora 
cle of Musaeus, and also another, likewise in three 
verses, preserved by Clemens Alexandrmus {Stro¬ 
mata, 8, p. 738), are the two chief fragments that re¬ 
main to us of the poetry of Musaeus. Plis oracles 
were collected by Onomacritus, in obedience to the 
orders of Hipparchus ; but the poet Lasus, of Her- 
mione, having detected the fraud practised by Ono¬ 
macritus, who had intermingled his own productions 
with these ancient prophecies, Hipparchus drove the 
impostor into exile. {Herodotus, 7, 6.) It appears, 
that after this it was impossible to distinguish what 
belonged to Musaeus from what had been interpola¬ 
ted by Onomacritus.—2. Teleral {“Initiations”). A 
passage in the Republic of Plato (vol. 6, p. 221, ed. 
Bipont.) explains the object of this species of poe¬ 
try : by these initiatory forms the acts of sacrilege 
committed ei'.her by individuals or entire communities 
were expiated. They were also cited under the title 
of K adapfiol {“Purifications”), or TLapaXvaeiq {“Ab¬ 
solutions”). 3. ’Aueoeiq voauv (“ Charms against 
maladies”). Cited by Aristophanes {Ran., 1033) 
and Eustathius {ad. 11, introd.). —4. 2<palpa {“ The 
Sphere”). An astrological poem. Diogenes Laertius, 
in speaking of Musaeus, says, noiyoat tie Qeoyovlav 
ual Scpaipav npurov :: the meaning of this is, that he 
was the first who versified such subjects as a Theocro- 
ny and the Sphere. Sir Isaac Newton incorrectly 
gives this a literal translation, that Musaeus was the 
first who constructed a sphere, and on this error is 
founded the calculation of that celebrated mathemati¬ 
cian, according to which the Argonautic expedition 
took place 936 B.C. (Consult Clavier, Hist, deg 

premiers temps de la Grece, 2d ed., vol. 3, p. 24 )_5 

Qeoyovla {“A Theogony”).—0. Ttravaypabia ,’a de¬ 
scription of the war of the Titans.—-7. 'rnodqKai 
{“ Precepts”). Addressed to his son Eumolpus. Also 
cited under the title of EvpoTima rcoiTjOig, It is sup¬ 
posed by some to have been a code of instructions foi 
the celebration of the mysteries. According to Sui¬ 
das, it contained 4000 verses.—8. Kparpp. Servius 
{ad jEn., 6, 667) is the only one that cites this poem 
He says it was the first production of Musaeus and 
was dedicated to Orpheus. The title would seem to in- 





MUSAEUS. 


MIT 


aicate a work of a mixed character, as the term Kparr/p 
denotes a vessel in which wine and water were mixed. 
—9. A Hymn to Ceres. Cited by Pausanias as the 
only authentic production of Musaeus. It was com¬ 
posed for the family of the Lycomedae, who appear to 
have cherished a particular veneration for Ceres ; for 
they possessed a temple of this goddess, which was 
destroyed by the Persians, and which Themistocles, 
who belonged to this same family, rebuilt. ( Pint., 
Vit. Them .)—10. A Hymn in honour of Bacchus. 
Cited by iElius Aristides in his Eulogium on this di¬ 
vinity.—11. II e-pi 0e<77T portiv (“ Of the Thesproti- 
ans ”). Clemens Alexandrinus states, that Eugam- 
mon of Cyrene, a poet who flourished about the 53d 
Olympiad, claimed this as his own production, and 
published it under his own name. To render such 
an act of plagiarism at all possible, the poem of 
Musaeus must have previously fallen into complete 
oblivion. It contained a description of the remark¬ 
able things in Thesprotia. —12. Isthmian Songs. 
Cited by the scholiasts on Euripides and on Apol¬ 
lonius Rhodius. These cannot, however, have been 
productions of Musaeus, as he lived before the es¬ 
tablishment of the Isthmian games.—The few scat¬ 
tered remains that we possess of Musseus have been 
reunited by H. Stephens, in his collection of the 
philosophic poets, and, among others, by Passow, 
in his “ Musceus , Urschrift, Uebersetzung, Einlei- 
tung, und Kritische Anmerkungen ,” Leipzig , 1810, 
8vo. — II. A native of Ephesus, who resided at Per- 
gamus. He was the author of an epic poem in ten 
books, entitled Perscis, and also of other effusions 
in honour of Eumenes and Attalus. Moreri thinks 
that he wrote the Isthmian Songs, which the scho¬ 
liasts on Euripides and on Apollonius Rhodius cite 
under the name of Musaeus. He does not appear to 
have been the writer of whom Martial speaks (12, 
97).—III. A grammarian, the author of a poem found¬ 
ed on the story of Hero and Leander. Opinions have 
greatly varied relative to the age of this production. 
Julius Caesar Scaliger believed that it was the compo¬ 
sition of the elder Musaeus, the Athenian, and anterior, 
consequently, to the Iliad and Odyssey. ( Ars Poet., 
5, 2, 214.) The poem in question is undoubtedly, 
as far as regards the story itself and the diction in 
which it is arrayed, worthy of a place among the ear¬ 
lier poems of the Greeks ; and yet, at the same time, 
it bears evident marks of a much more recent origin, 
as well in the colouring of sentiment with which the 
author has softened down the plainer and less deli¬ 
cate handling of such subjects as this, which mark¬ 
ed the earlier writers, as in some of the images which 
are occasionally introduced. For example, no poet of 
the Homeric age would have indulged in such a senti¬ 
ment as the following : “The ancients falsely asserted 
that there were only three Graces : every laughing 
glance of Hero’s blooms with a hundred.” The opin¬ 
ion, therefore, of the elder Scaliger has been rejected 
by Joseph his son, and by all subsequent critics. 
Some have placed this poem in the 12th or 13th cen¬ 
tury, because the first and only mention of it is made 
by Tzetzes, who speaks of it in his Chiliads (2, 435 ; 
10, 520 ; 13, 943). The purity of language, however, 
and the taste which distinguish this production of Mu- 
steus, do not warrant the opinion of its having been so 
modern a work. Hence some critics have endeav¬ 
oured to show that Achilles Tatius and Aristsenetus 
had it under their eyes when they wrote. Now Achil¬ 
les Tatius is supposed by the best philologists to have 
written about the middle of the fifth century, and Aris- 
taenetus about the close of the same century. Again, 
Hermann, in his remarks on the changes experienced 
by the Greek hexameter, has shown that the poem of 
Hero and Leander is later than the Dionysiacs of Non- 
nus. From all these approximations, therefore, we 
may fix the era of the poem in question between 430 


and 480 A.D. A circumstance, moreover, unimpor¬ 
tant in itself, comes in support of this calculation. All 
the manuscripts give to the author of the poem the 
title of grammarian : now, among the letters of Pro¬ 
copius of Gaza, there is one addressed to a certain 
Musaeus: and though he is not styled, in the address, 
a grammarian, yet the letter evidently is intended for 
a person of this description. The period when Proco¬ 
pius flourished is fixed at about 520 A.D. If we sup¬ 
pose, then, that the poem of Hero and Leander was a 
production of Musaeus’s youth, and that he had attained 
an advanced age when Procopius addressed to him the 
letter in question, perhaps between 480 and 500 A.D., 
nothing will prevent our regarding the correspondent 
of Procopius as the author of this poem, which thus 
might have been composed before 450 A.D. — The 
poem in question bears the following title, Ta k a& 
"H po teal A eavdpov. It consists of 340 hexameters. 
The story on which it is founded is an old one ; Vir¬ 
gil and Ovid were both acquainted with it, and it bears 
on its very front the stamp of antiquity : the merit of 
the composition, however, does not the less belong to 
the poet. “ The Hero and Leander,” observes Elton, 
“exhibits that refinement of sentiment, and that spark¬ 
ling antithetical ornament which are the indications 
of modern composition. It is a beautiful and impas¬ 
sioned production ; combining in its love-details the 
warmth and luxuriance of Ovid, with the delicate and 
graceful nature of Apollonius Rhodius ; and, in the 
peril and tumult of the catastrophe, rising to the gloomy 
grandeur of Homeric description.” ( Specimens of the 
Classic Poets, vol. 3, p. 330.— Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., 
vol. 1, p. 46, seqq. — Id., vol. 3, p. 123, seqq. — Id., 
vol. 6, p. 85, seqq.) The best editions of Musaeus are, 
that of Schrader, Leonard., 1742, 8vo, and Magd., 
1775, 8vo, improved by Schaffer, Lips., 1825, 8vo; 
that of Passow, Lips., 1810, 8vo; and that of Mcebius, 
Hal., 1814, 8vo. 

Mutia or Mucia, a daughter of Q. Mutius Scaevola, 
and sister of Metellus Celer. She was Pompey’s 
third wife. Her infidelity induced her husband to di 
vorce her, on his return from the Mithradatic war, al¬ 
though she had borne him three children. Caesar was 
the seducer; and hence, when Pompey married Caesar’s 
daughter, all blamed him for turning off a wife who had 
been the mother of three children, to espouse the 
daughter of a. man whom he had often, with a sigh, 
called “ his iEgisthus.” Mucia’s disloyalty must have 
been very public, since Cicero, in one of his letters 
to Atticus, says, “ Divortium Mucia vehementer pro- 
batur .” (Ep. ad Att., 1, 12.) 

Mutina, a city of Cisalpine Gaul, now Modena, sit¬ 
uate on the iEmilian Way, in a southeast direction 
from Placentia and Parma. It is often mentioned in 
history, and more particularly during the stormy pe¬ 
riod which intervened between the death of Caesar and 
the reign of Augustus. Livy asserts (39, 55) that 
Mutina was colonized the same year with Parma, that 
is, 569 U.C. ; but Polybius speaks of it as a Roman 
colony thirty-four years prior to that date (3, 40). Ci¬ 
cero styles it (Phil., 5, 91 “ firmissimam et splendidis- 
simam Populi Romani Coloniam .” It sustained a se¬ 
vere siege against the troops of Antony, A.U.C. 709. 
D. Brutus, who defended the place, being apprized of 
the approach of the consuls Hirtius and Pansa by 
means of carrier-pigeons, made an obstinate defence. 
Antony, being finally defeated by those generals anc 
Octavius, was forced to raise the siege. ( Liv., Epit.. 
118 et 119.— Cic., Ep., ad Fam., 10, 14.— Veil. Pa 
terc., 2, 61.— Florus, 4, 4.— Suet., Aug., 10.) Muti 
na was also famous for its wool. From Tacitus (Hist, 
2, 52) we learn that it was a municipium. (Cramer'i 
Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 56.) 

Mutinus. Vid. Mutunus. 

Mutius or Mucius. Vid. Scaevola. 

Mutunus or Mutinus, a deity among the Roman# 

863 




M YC 


M Y C 


much the tame as the Priapus of the Greeks. His 
temple was at first in the city, but was afterward, in 
the time-of Augustus, removed to the twenty-sixth 
milestone. Festus calls him Mutinus Titinus. (Con¬ 
sult Lactant., 1, 20.— Arnob., 1. 4, p. 131.— August., 
de Civ. Dei, 4, 11.— Id. ib., 6, 9.— Tertull., Apol., c. 
25.— Dulaure, Hist, des Cultes,\ ol. 2, p. 160, seqq.) 

Muzeris, a harbour of India intra Gangem, on the 
western coast, below the Sinus Barygazenus. It was 
much frequented in the first century of our era, though 
somewhat dangerous to visit on account of the pirates 
in its vicinity. ( Plin ., 6, 23.) It appears to corre¬ 
spond to the modern Mirzno or Mirdschno. (Man- 
nert , Geogr., vol. 5, pt. 1, p. 199, seqq.) 

Mycale, I. a promontory of Ionia, in Asia Minor, 
opposite the island of Samos. It is a continuation of 
Mount Messogis, which chain ran along the upper 
side of the Mseander for the greater part of its course. 
Mycale was known to Homer (II., 2, 869), and, at a 
later day, the Panionium, or solemn assembly of the 
Ionian states, was held in a temple situate at its foot. 
(Herod. , 1, 148). Its princiftal celebrity, however, 
arose from the battle that was fought here between the 
Greeks and Persians on the 22d of September, 479 
B.C., the same day that Mardonius was defeated at 
Plataea. The battle of Mycale took place in the morn¬ 
ing, that of Plataea in the evening. The Samians, 
without the knowledge of their tyrant or the Persians, 
had sent messengers to invite the Grecian fleet at 
Delos to pass over to Ipnia, assuring the commanders 
of their superiority to the Persian force in those seas, 
and of the disposition of the Ionians to revolt. The 
Greeks complied ; and on their approach, the Persian 
leaders, feeling themselves too weak for a sea-fight, 
sent away the Phoenician ships, and, bringing the others 
to the promontory of Mycale, near Miletus, where the 
iand-army was encamped, drew them upon the beach, 
an easy thing with the light vessels used in ancient 
war, and surrounded them with a rampart. The Per¬ 
sian land-army was under the command of Tigranes, 
and amounted to 60,000 men. It had been left by 
Xerxes, when he began his expedition, for the security 
of Ionia : he himself was still at Sardis. The army 
was posted in front of the ships. The chief com¬ 
mander of the Greeks was Leotychides, a Spartan of 
one of the royal houses. On arriving, he repeated, 
with the same double purpose, the stratagem of The- 
mistocles at Artemisium. Sailing along the shore, he 
made proclamation by a herald to the Ionians, bidding 
them remember that the Greeks were fighting for their 
liberty. The Persians were already jealous of the 
Samians, because they had ransomed and sent home 
some Athenian prisoners ; and their suspicions being 
strengthened and made more general by the proclama¬ 
tion, they disarmed the Samians, and sent the Mile¬ 
sians to guard the passes, under pretence of profiting 
by their knowledge of the country, but really to re¬ 
move them from the camp. The Athenians, advan¬ 
cing along the beach, commenced the action, followed 
by the Corinthians, Troezenians, and Sicyonians. After 
some hard fighting they drove the enemy to his intrench- 
ments, and then forced the enclosure, on which the 
mass of the army fled, the Persians only still resisting. 

It was not till now that the Lacedaemonians came up, 
having been impeded by steep and broken ground. 
On seeing the Greeks prevailing, the Samians, though 
unarmed, did what they could in their favour, and the 
other Ionians followed their example, and sided with 
the Greeks. The Milesians, who had been sent to 
guard the passes by the Persians, turned against them, 
and slaughtered the fugitives. All Ionia now revolted. 
The fleet proceeded to Samos, where a consultation 
was held on the fate of that country. It could not 
protect Lself unassisted, and its defence was a burden 
the Greeks were loath to support. The Peloponne¬ 
sians proposed to remove the inhabitants, and settle 
864 


them on the lands of those states that had joined the 
common enemy : but the Athenians were averse to 
the desolation of Ionia, and jealous of the interference 
of others with their colonies ; and when they urged 
the reception of the Ionians into the confederacy, the 
Peloponnesians gave way, and the Samians, Chians, 
and other islanders who had joined the fleet were ad¬ 
mitted.— Herodotus states, that, after the disembarca- 
tion of the Greeks, and previous to the battle, a her¬ 
ald’s wand was discovered by them on the beach as 
they were advancing towards the enemy, and that a 
rumour, in consequence, circulated among the Greeks 
that a victory had been obtained by their countrymen 
over the forces of Mardonius. Nothing, indeed, could 
be more natural than such a rumour, whether it be 
considered as the effect of accident or design : that it 
should afterward have been found to coincide with the 
truth, is one of those marvels which would be intol¬ 
erable in a fictitious narrative, and yet now and then 
occur in the real course of events. Being believed, 
however, without any reason, it was much more effica¬ 
cious in raising the confidence and courage of the 
Greeks than if it had been transmitted through any or¬ 
dinary channel on the strongest evidence. For now 
the favour of the gods seemed visible, not only in the 
substance, but in the manner of the tidings. (Thirl- 
walUs Greece, vol. 2, p. 358. — Herod., 9, 98, seqq.) 
—Mount Mycale, according to Strabo, was well wood¬ 
ed, and abounded with game ; a character which, as 
Chandler reports, it still retains. This traveller de¬ 
scribes it as a high ridge, with a beautifully-cultivated 
plain at its foot, and several villages on its side. 
(Travels, p. 179, seq.) —II. It has been a subject of 
considerable discussion among commentators, to as¬ 
certain the meaning of Cornelius Nepos, in his Life of 
Cimon (2, 2), where he makes this commander to have 
gained a victory at Mycale over the combined fleets 
of the Cyprians and Phoenicians. The battle is de¬ 
scribed by Diodorus Siculus (2, 61), and by Plutarch 
in his Life of Cimon. It is mentioned also by Thu 
cydides (1, 100), by Plato (Menex. — Op., ed. Bek., pt. 

2, vol. 3, p. 391), by Polysenus (1, 34), by Frontinus 
(4, 7, 45), and by Mela (1, 14). But all these author¬ 
ities uniformly make the battle to have been fought at 
the river Eurymedon, not far from Cyprus. In order 
to free Cornelius Nepos from the charge of a gross 
error, it is best to adopt the opinion of Tzschucke, who 
thinks that there must have been a second and ob¬ 
scurer Mycale, near the Eurymedon in Pamphylia, 
where the battle above referred to was fought. (Com¬ 
pare Fischer , ad Corn. Nep., 1. c.) 

Mycalessus, a city of Boeotia, northeast of Thebes, 
and a short distance to the west of Aulis. It was an 
ancient place, and known to Homer. (II., 2, 498.— 
Hymn, in Apoll., 224.) We learn from Thucydides, 
that, in the Peloponnesian war, Mycalessus sustained 
a most afflicting disaster, owing to an attack made 
upon it by some Thracian troops in the pay of Athens. 
These barbarians, having surprised the town, put all 
the inhabitants to the sword, sparing neither women 
nor children, since they savagely butchered a number 
of boys who were assembled in the public school be¬ 
longing to the place. The historian affirms, that this 
was one of the greatest calamities which ever befell a 
city. (Thucyd., 7, 30. — Pausan., 1 , 23. — Strabo. 
404.) The only remarkable building which it possess¬ 
ed was a temple of Ceres. Sir W. Gell has the fol¬ 
lowing note on the ruins of this ancient town. “ Blocks 
and foundations of a temple, and tombs; possibly the 
temple of Ceres Mycalessia. The wall of a city on 
the left, about three hundred yards. Many traces 
probably, of Mycalessus.” (Itin., p. 130.— Cramer's 
Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 161, seqq.) 

Mycenae, I. an ancient city of Argolis, in a north 
eastern direction from Argos. It was said to have 
been founded by Perseus, after the death of his grand- 







M YC 


M Y G 


lather Acrisius. ( Pausanias, 2, 18.— Strabo , 377.) 
The name was supposed by some to be derived from 
Mycene, daughter of Inachus ; but others assigned a 
different origin to the word, as may be seen from Pau- 
sanias (2, 16). Perseus was succeeded by Sthenelus, 
married to a daughter of Pelops named Astydamia; 
after whom followed Eurystheus, Atreus, and Aga¬ 
memnon. Under the last named monarch, the empire 
of Mycense reached its highest degree of opulence and 
power, since his authority was acknowledged by the 
whole of Greece. ( Thucyd., 1, 9.— Diod. Sic., 11, 
65.)—Mycenaj, which had been superior even to Argos 
in the Trojan war, declined after the return of the Her- 
aclidae ; and in the 78th Olympiad, or 468 B.C., the 
Argives, having attacked and captured the city, lev¬ 
elled it to the ground and enslaved its inhabitants. 
[Diod. Sic., 11, 65.— Strabo, 372.) Pausanias at¬ 
tributes the destruction of Mycenaa to the envy which 
the glory acquired by the troops of that city at Ther- 
rnopylaa and Plataea had excited in the minds of the 
Argives (2, 16.—Compare Herod., 7, 202). But Di¬ 
odorus affirms, that the war arose from a dispute rela¬ 
tive to the temple of Juno, which was common to the 
two republics. Strabo states, that so complete w r as 
the destruction of this celebrated capital, that not a 
vestige remained of its existence. This assertion, 
however, is not correct, since Pausanias informs us 
that several parts of the walls were yet standing, as 
also one of the gates, surmounted by lions, when he 
visited the ruins. Modern travellers have given us a 
full and interesting account of these vestiges. The 
most remarkable among the remains of antiquity is 
what is termed the Treasury of Atreus. It is a hollow 
cone of 50 feet in diameter, and as many in height. It 
is composed of enormous masses of a very hard breccia, 
or sort of pudding-stone. This extraordinary edifice 
has obviously been raised by the projection of one stone 
above another, and they nearly meet at the top. The 
central stone at the top has been removed, along wiih 
two or three others, and yet the building remains as 
durable as ever, and will probably last to the end of 
time. Sir W. Gell discovered brass, nails placed at 
regular distances throughout the interior, which he 
thinks must have served to fasten plates of brass to 
the wall. (GelVs Argolis, p. 29, seqq.) These nails 
consist of 88 parts of copper and 12 of tin. Dr. 
Clarke opposes the opinion of this being the Treasury 
of Atreus, principally on the ground that it was without 
the walls of the city, deeming it far more probable, 
and more in conformity with what we find in ancient 
writers, that the Treasury was within the walls, in the 
very citadel. He considers it to be the Heroiim of 
Perseus. ( Travels , vol. 6, p. 493, Lond. ed.) What¬ 
ever may have been its use, it is worthy of notice, 
that cells of bronze or brass, i. e., covered within with 
plates of brass, were very common in ancient Argolis. 
Such, no doubt, were the brazen place of confinement 
of Danae, and the lurking-place of Eurystheus when in 
fear of Hercules. The remains of the ancient walls 
are also very curious, being evidently of that style of 
building called Cyclopean. Among other things, the 
Gate of the Lions, mentioned by Pausanias, still re¬ 
mains. The modern village of Krabata. stands near 
the ruins of Mycense.—The name of Mycenae was 
probably derived from its situation in a recess {pvx&) 
formed by two mountains, and not, as Pausanias im¬ 
agines, from a mushroom, or the pommel of a sword. 

Mycerinus, a king of Egypt, son of Cheops ac¬ 
cording to Plerodotus (2, 129), but of Chemmis ac¬ 
cording to Diodorus (1, 64). The last-mentioned wri- 
.er calls him Mecherinus (M excplvog), a name which 
Zoega, by the aid of the Coptic, makes equivalent to 
‘ -peaceful,” and which agrees, therefore, very well 
with the epithet r/niog (“ mild ” or “ gentle”), applied to 
him by Herodotus (/. c.— Zoega, dc Obelise., p. 415.) 
Mycerinus was remarkable for the justice and modera- 
5 R 


tion of his reign. Larcher makes him to have riled 
over Egypt for the space of 20 years, he having as¬ 
cended the throne, according to this critic, in B.C. 
1072, and having been succeeded by Asychis B.C. 
1052.—Mycerinus built one of the pyramids, which 
travellers usually call the third one. It is smaller in 
size than the others, but, was equally as expensive as 
the rest, being cased, according to Diodorus Siculus, 
half way up with Ethiopian marble. Herodotus in¬ 
forms us (2, 133) that this monarch, after having reign¬ 
ed for no great length of time, was informed by the 
oracle of Latona, at Butos, thajt he was destined to 
live only six years longer; and that, on complaining 
that he, a pious prince, was not allowed a long reign, 
while his father and grandfather, who had been inju¬ 
rious to mankind and impious to the gods, had en¬ 
joyed each a long life, he was told that his short life 
was the direct consequence of his piety, for the fates 
had decreed that for the space of 150 years Egypt 
should be oppressed, of which determination the two 
preceding monarchs had been aware. ( Herod., 1. c. 
— Bahr, ad loc .) * 

Myconos, one of the Cyclades, lying a little to the 
east of Delos. It is described by Athenseus (1, 14) as 
a poor and barren island, the inhabitants of which were 
consequently rapacious and fond of money. Strabt 
reports that they lost their hair at an early age, whenct 
the name of Myconian was proverbially used to desig 
nate a bald person. ( Strabo, 487. — Compare th*' 
words of Donatus, ad Ter., Hec., 3, 4: “ My con 
calva omnis juventus.”) It was also said, that th< 
giants whom Hercules had conquered lay in a heaj 
under the island ; a fable which gave rise to anothe. 
saying {pda M vaovog), applied to those authors whi 
confusedly mixed together things which ought to have 
been treated of separately. ( Plut., Symp., 1, 2.— 
Zenob., Cent., 5, 17.— Apollod., 1, 6, 2.) This island 
is mentioned by Thucydides (3, 29) and Herodotus 
(6, 118). Pliny assigns to it a mountain named Di* 
mastus (4, 12). Scylax states that it had two towns 
(p. 22). The modern name of the island is Myconi. 

( Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 409, seqq.) 

MyGDONiA, I. a province of Macedonia, which ap¬ 
pears to have extended from the river Axius to the 
lake Bolbe, and at one period even to the Strymon. 
{Herod., 7, 123.— Thucyd., 1, 58.) It originally be¬ 
longed to the Edones, a people of Thrace : but these 
were expelled by the Temenidas. {Thucyd., 2, 99.) 
Under the division of Mygdonia we must include sev¬ 
eral minor districts, enumerated by different historians 
and geographers. These are, Amphaxitis and Paraxia, 
Anthemus and Grestonia or Crestonia. {Cramer's 
Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 233.)—II. A district of Meso 
potamia The later geographical writers affix this 
name merely to the northeastern section of the land, 
especially to the country around Nisibis ; Strabo, how¬ 
ever, expressly includes the western part also. He far¬ 
ther mentions, that the name of the region,^s well as that 
of the inhabitants (Mygdones), were first given by the 
Macedonians. {Strab., 747.) In this latter particular 
he is wrong ; for we find that the ten thousand, in their 
retreat, met with Mygdonians {Xen., Anab., 3, 3), 
united with the Armenians, who disputed with tlsem 
the passage of the river Centrices. Under the Mace¬ 
donian sway, the name of Mygdonia began to be dis¬ 
used, and that of Anthemusia (’A vOepovma, “ the 
blooming.”— JZtocop., Pers., 1, 17) was employed in 
its stead, morcrespecially with reference to the tract 
of country enclosed between Mons Masius, the Eu¬ 
phrates, anu the Chaboras. {Mannert, Geogr., vol. 5, 
pt. 2, p. 260, seqq.) 

Mygdonius, I. a river of Mesopotamia, called also 
the Saocoras, rising in the district of Mygdonia, and 
falling into the Chaboras. It is now the Hcrmas, or, 
according to others, the Sindschar. —II. The epithet 
“Mygdonian” is applied by Horace {Od., 2, 12, 22) to 

865 




MYN 


M Y R 


Phrygia, either from a branch of the Mygdones having 
settled there at a very early period, while they were still 
regarded as a Thracian tribe, or else from one of the 
ancient monarchs of the land. In favour of the first 
of these opinions we have the authority of Strabo (575), 
who speaks of the Mygdones as occupying the northern 
parts of Phrygia. On the other hand, Pausanias makes 
the Phrygians to have received the appellation of Myg- 
donians from Mygdon, one of their early kings (10, 
27). With Pausanias coincide Stephanus of Byzanti¬ 
um, and the scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius (2, 787). 
In Homer, moreover, the Phrygians are styled T^aol 
’Orprjoq Kal M vy&ovog avnOeoLo. The first of these 
two opinions, however, is evidently the more correct 
one. It is more consistent with reason that a country 
should give an appellation to its ruler than receive 
one from him. 

Mygdonus or Mygdon, I. an ancient monarch of 
the Mygdones. (Pausan ., 10, 27.— Vid. Mygdonus 
II.)—II. A brother of Hecuba, Priam’s wife, who 
reigned in part of Thrace. His son Coroebus was 
called Mygdonides from him. ( Virg ., JEneid, 2, 
341.) 

Mylasa ( orum ), a city of Caria, situate to the south¬ 
west of Stratonicea, and a short distance to the north 
of the harbour Physcus. It was of Grecian origin, 
and was founded at a very early period, but by whom 
is uncertain. Here, at one time, resided Hecatomnus, 
the progenitor of Mausolus. ( Strabo, 659.) Mylasa, 
as Strabo reports, was situate in a fertile plain, and at 
the foot of a mountain containing veins of a beautiful 
white marble. This was of great advantage to the 
city for the construction of public and other buildings; 
and the inhabitants were not slow in availing them¬ 
selves of it; few cities, as Strabo remarks, being so 
sumptuously embellished with handsome porticoes and 
stately temples. ( Strabo , 659.) It- was particularly 
famous, however, for a very ancient temple of the Ca- 
rian Jove, and for another, of nearly equal antiquity, 
sacred to Jupiter Osogus. In after times a very beau¬ 
tiful temple was erected here, dedicated to Augustus 
and to Rome. Mylasa suffered severely in the inroad 
of Labienus, during the contest between Antony and 
Augustus, but was subsequently restored. ( Dio Cass., 
48, 26.) Pococke saw the temple to Augustus nearly 
entire, but it has since been destroyed, and the mate¬ 
rials have been used for building a mosque. (Pococke, 
vol. 2, pt. 2, c. 6.—Compare Chandler, Asia Minor, 
c. 56.) Mylasa is now Melasso, and is at the pres¬ 
ent day remarkable for producing the best tobacco in 
Turkey. Mannert, however, thinks that Mylasa must 
be sought for in the vicinity of the modern Mulla, 
while Reichard ( Thes. Top. Noremb., 1824) is in fa¬ 
vour of Myllesch. —As regards the ancient name of 
this city, it may be remarked that the older Greek wri¬ 
ters, with the exception, perhaps, of Polybius ( de Virt ., 
&c., 1. 16, ad fin.), give Mu laooa ( Mylassa); while 
Pliny, Pausanias, Stephanus of Byzantium, Hierocles, 
and others, have Mylasa (JAvlava), and with this lat¬ 
ter form the coins that have been discovered appear to 
agree. ( Mannert , Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 3, p. 281.) 

Myle or MyljE, now Milazzo, was situate on a 
tongue of land southwest of Pelorum, on the northern 
coast of Sicily. Between this place and a station 
called Naulochus, the fleet of Sextus Pompeius was 
defeated by that of the triumvir Octavius, under the 
command of Agrippa. (Thucyd ., 3, j|f. — Plin., 3, 8. 
— Veil. Patcrc., 2, 79.) Reichard makes Mylse an¬ 
swer to tne modern Melilli. (Thes. ; tab. Sic.) 

Mylitta, a surname of Venus among the Assyri¬ 
ans. (Herod., 1, 131, 199.—Consult the remarks of 
Rhode, Heilige Sage der alien Baktrer, Meder, und 
Perser, p. 279, seqq. — Dulaure, Hist, des Cultes, 
vol. 2, p. 190, seqq.) 

Myndus, a maritime town of Caria, northwest of 
Halicarnassus, on the northern shore of the peninsula 
860 


below ti.e Sinus Iassius. It was fcunded by a coiO< 
ny from Troezene (Pausan., 2, 30), and appears te 
have been at no great distance from Halicarnassus, 
since Alexander marched over the- intervening space 
in one night with a part of his troops. ( Arrian , 1, 
24.) The city was a strong one, and Alexander 
would not stop to besiege it, though he attempted, 
but without success, to take it by surprise. Hiero¬ 
cles gives it, probably by corruption, the name of 
Amyndus. Pliny, besides Myndus, speaks of Palae 
myndus (5, 29); and perhaps his Neapolis is no other 
than the new town. (Compare Mela, 1, 16.)—“ We 
can hardly doubt,” remarks Leake, “ that Myndus 
stood in the small sheltered port of Gumishlu, where 
Captain Beaufort saw the remains of an ancient pier 
at the entrance of the port, and some ruins at the 
head of the bay.” (Journal, p. 228.) PaLemyndus 
may have been situate, as Mannert supposes, near the 
Cape Astypalaaa of Strabo, which derived its name 
probably from that circumstance, and which Cramer 
takes to be the peninsula of Pasha Liman; but Myn¬ 
dus itself must be Mentesha. (Cramer's Asia Minor, 
vol. 2, p. 176.) 

Myonnesus, I. a town of Asia Minor, between 
Teos and Lebedus, and situated on a high peninsula. 
(Strab., 643.—Lm, 37, 27.) The hill of Myonne¬ 
sus is now called Hypsili-bounus, and is described by 
modern travellers as commanding a most extensive 
view of a picturesque country, of the seacoast and 
island. (Chandler's Travels, p. 124.)—II. A small 
island off the coast of Phthiotis, in Thessaly, and be¬ 
tween the Artemisian shore of Eubcea and the main 
land. It was near Aphetae.—III. One of the small 
islands near Ephesus, which Pliny calls the Pisistrati 
(5, 31). 

Myos Hormos or “ Mouse's Harbour," a seaport 
of Egypt, on the coast of the Red Sea. Arrian says 
that it was one of the most celebrated ports on this 
sea. It was chosen by Ptolemy Philadelphus for the 
convenience of commerce, in preference to Arsinoe 
(or Suez), on account of the difficulty of navigating 
the western extremity of the gulf. It was called also 
Aphrodites portus, or the port of Venus. It is full of 
little isles, and its modern name of Suffange-el-Bahri, 
or “ the sponge of the sea,” has an evident analogy to 
the etymology of the second of the Greek names giv¬ 
en above, from the vulgar error of sponge being the 
foam of the sea, and Venus (Aphrodite) having been 
fabled to have sprung from the foam of the ocean. 
(From suffange our English term is s'funge, s'phunge, 
spunge.) The situation of Myos Hormos is deter¬ 
mined by three islands, which Agatharchides men¬ 
tions, known to modern navigators by the name of 
the Jaffeteens , and its latitude is fixed, with little fluc¬ 
tuation, in 27° 0' O'", by D’Anville, Bruce, and De la 
Rochette. (Vincent, Periplus, p. 78.) The entrance 
is said to be very crooked and winding, on account of 
the islands lying in front; and hence, perhaps, may 
have arisen the ancient appellation, the harbour being 
compared to a mouse’s hole. (Bruce, vol. 7, p. 314, 
8vo ed.) 

Myra (orum or ce), a town of Lycia, near the 
southern coast, southwest of Limyra and west of the 
Sacrum Promontorium. It was situate on the brow 
of a lofty hill, at the distance of twenty stadia from the 
shore. (Strabo, 664.) According to Artemidorus 
(ap. Strab., 1. c.), it was one of the six most impor¬ 
tant cities of the country. The Emperor Theodosius 
II. made it finally the capital of the province of Lycia 
(Malala, 14.— Hierocles, p. 684), as it was about this 
period the most distinguished city in the land. (Ba¬ 
sil, Seleuc., Vit. S. Thccloe , 1. 1, p. 272.) Myra, ac¬ 
cording to Leake, still preserves its ancient name. 
The distance of the ruins from the sea is said to cor¬ 
respond very accurately with the measurement of 
Strabo. (Journal, p. 183, 321.) 



M YR 


MYS 


Myriandros, a city of Asia Minor, on the Bay of 
Issus, below Alexandrea ( Kara ’1 cvov), which Xeno¬ 
phon ( Anab ., 1, 4) places in Syria beyond the Pylae 
Cilicias; but Scylax includes it within the limits of 
Cilicia (p. 40), as well as Strabo, who says that Se 
leucia of Pieria, near the mouth of the Orontes, was 
the first Syrian town beyond the Gulf of Issus. It 
was a place of considerable trade in the time of the 
Persian dominion. Xenophon speaks of the number 
of merchant vessels here. It declined at a later pe¬ 
riod, in consequence of its vicinity to the more flour¬ 
ishing city of Alexandrea. It appears to have been 
originally a Phoenician settlement. ( Xcn.,1. c. — Scy¬ 
lax, l. c.) The modern name is not given by any trav¬ 
eller. 

Myrina, I. a city and harbour of ^Eolis, in Asia 
Minor, forty stadia to the north of Cyma. ( Strabo, 
621.) According to Mela (1, 18), it was the oldest 
of the ^Eolian cities, and received its name from My- 
rinus its founder. Pliny (5, 30) states that it after¬ 
ward assumed the name of Sebastopolis, of which, 
however, no trace appears on its coins. Philip, king 
of Macedonia (son of Demetrius), held possession of 
it for some time, with a view to future operations in 
Asia Minor ; but, being vanquished by the Romans, 
he was compelled by that people to evacuate the 
place. ( Polyb ., 18, 27. — Liv., 33, 30.) Hierocles 
makes mention of this city at a later period (p. 661), 
after which we lose sight of it. It was the native 
oiace of Agathias. Choiseul Gouffier gives the mod¬ 
ern name as Sandarlik. —II. A city on the north¬ 
western coast of Lemnos, and one of the principal 
places in the island. It was situate on the side look¬ 
ing towards Mount Athos, since Pliny reports (4, 12) 
'hat the shadow of the mountains was visible in the 
forum of this city at the time of the summer solstice. 
—Myrina alone offered resistance to Miltiades when 
;hat general went against Lemnos. It was taken, 
however, by his forces. {Herod., 6, 140. — Steph. 
Byz ., s. v. Mvptva.) The ruins of this town are still 
to be seen. On its site stands the modern Castro. 
{Walpole's Collection, vol. 1, p. 54.)—III. A town of 
Crete, north of Lyctus. {Pliny, 4, 12.) It still re¬ 
tains its ancient name. {Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 
3, p. 393.) 

Myrinus, a surname of Apollo, from Myrina in 
^Eolia, where he was worshipped. 

Myrmecides, an artist of Miletus, mentioned as 
making chariots so small that they were covered by 
the wing of a fly. He also inscribed an elegiac distich 
on a grain of sesamum. {Cic., Acad., 4. — JElian, 
V. H., 1, 17. — Perizon, ad loc. — Sillig, Diet. Art., 
s. v.) 

^Myrmidones, a people on the southern borders of 
Thessaly, who accompanied Achilles to the Trojan 
war. They received their name, according to one 
account, from Myrmidon, a son of Jupiter and Eury- 
medusa, who married one of the daughters of HSolus, 
and whose son Actor married vEgina, the daughter 
of the Asopus. According to some, the Myrmidons 
were so called from their having been originally ants, 
uvppij/cec. {Vid. iEacus.) This change from ants 
to men is founded merely upon the equivocation of 
their name, which resembles that of the ant ( i uvppr] £)• 
{Ovid, Met., 7, 654.— Strab. — Hygin.,fab., 52.) 

Myron, a celebrated statuary and engraver on sil¬ 
ver, who lived in Olymp. 87. Pausanias styles him 
an Athenian (6, 2, 1). The reason of this is satis¬ 
factorily explained by Thiersch. {Epoch. Art. Gr., 2, 
Adnot., 64.) Myron rendered himself particularly fa¬ 
mous by his statue of a cow, so true to nature that 
bulls approached her as if she were alive. This is 
frequently alluded to among the epigrams in the An¬ 
thology. ( Sonntag, Unterhalt., vol. 1, p. 100.— Bot- 
tiger, Andeutung., p. 144.— Goethe, ueber Kunst und 


list of Myron’s productions may be seen in Sillig 
{Diet. Art., s. v.). 

Myrrha, a daughter of Cinyras, king of Cyprus. 
She had a son by her own father, called Adonis. 
When Cinyras was apprized of the crime he had un¬ 
knowingly committed, he attempted to stab his daugh¬ 
ter, but Myrrha fled into Arabia, where she was chan¬ 
ged into a tree called myrrh. {Hygin., fab., 58, 275. 
— Ovid, Met., 10, 298.) 

Myrtilus, a son of Mercury and Phaethusa, chari¬ 
oteer to CEnomaus. ( Vid. Hippodamia, QSnomaus, 
and Pelops.) 

Myrtis, a Grecian female of distinguished poetical 
abilities, who flourished about 500 B.C. She was 
born at Anthedon, in Bceotia. Pindar is said to have 
received his first "instructions in the poetic art from 
her, and it was during the period of his attendance 
upon her that he became acquainted with Corinna, 
who was also a pupil of Myrtis. Several of her pro¬ 
ductions were still remaining in the age of Plutarch, 
though none exist now. The story of her having giv¬ 
en instruction in the poetic art to Corinna and Pindar 
does not seem consistent with the reproach which the 
former addresses to her for having ventured to con¬ 
tend with the latter. (Foss, Excerpt, ex Apoil. Dys- 
col. — Maittaire, Dial., ed. Sturz., p. 546.) A statue 
of bronze was raised in honour of her. 

Myrtoum Mare, that part of the JEgean which lay 
between the coast of Argolis and Attica. {Strabo, 
233.— Id., 375.) Pausanias states that it was so 
called from a woman named Myrto (8, 14.— Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 7). 

Myrtuntium, I. an inland lake of Acarnania, below 
Anactorium ; the water of which, however, is salt, as 
it communicates with the sea. It is now called Mur- 
tari. {Strabo, 459.)—II. A town of Elis, originally 
named Myrsinus, and classed by Homer, under this 
latter appellation, among the Epean towns. It was 
about seventy stadia from the city of Elis, on the 
road from thence to Dyme, and near the sea. ( Strabo , 
341.) The ruins of this ancient place probably cor¬ 
respond with the vestiges of high antiquity observed 
by Sir W. Gell near the village of Kaloteichos, on the 
road from Kapeletti to Palaiopolis. {Itin. of the Mo- 
rea, p. 31.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 82, 
seqq .) 

Mys, I. a celebrated engraver on silver, whose coun¬ 
try is uncertain. According to the statement of Pau¬ 
sanias (1, 28, 2), he must have been contemporary 
with Phidias. Mys carved the battle between the 
Centaurs and Lapithse on the shield held by the Mi¬ 
nerva of Phidias. {Pausan., 1. c .) As regards the 
anachronism committed by Pausanias in the passage 
just referred to, and which makes Parrhasius to have 
assisted Phidias about Olymp. 84, consult the remarks 
of Sillig {Diet. Art., s. v.)— II. A slave and follower of 
Epicurus. The philosopher manumitted him by his 
will. {Diog. Laert., 10, 3.—Menag„ ad loc.) 

Mysia, a country of Asia Minor, lying to the north 
of Lydia and west of Bithynia. It is extremely diffi¬ 
cult, as Strabo had already obseived, to assign to the 
Mysians their precise limits, since these appear to have 
varied continually from the time of Homer, and are 
very loosely marked by all the ancient geographers 
from Scylax to Ptolemy. Strabo conceives, that the 
Homeric boundaries of the lesser Mysia were the JEse- 
pus to the west and Bithynia to the east {Strab., 564); 
but Scylax removes them considerably to the east of 
this position by placing the Mysians on the Gulf of 
Cius. {Peripl., p. 35.) Ptolemy, on the other hand, 
has extended the Mysian territory to the west as far 
as Lampsacus, while to the east he separates it from 
Bithynia by the river Rhyndacus. It was the prevail¬ 
ing opinion, of antiquity, that the Mysians were not an 

., t r. _ _ indigenous people of Asia, but that they had been 

ALterthum., 2, p. Y.—Vid. Lemnos and Athos.)—A | transplanted to its shores from the banks^of the Dan- 



MySIa. 


N A U 


ube, where the original race maintained itself under 
the name of Moesi, by which they were known to the 
Romans for seveial centuries after the Christian era. 
(Strab., 303.— Artem., ap. eund., 571.) Nor is that 
opinion at variance with the tradition which looked 
upon this people as of a kindred race with the Carians 
and Lydians, since these two nations were likewise 
supposed to have come from Thrace ( Herod., 1, 172.— 
Strab., 659); nor with another, which regarded them 
in particular as descended from the Lydians, in whose 
language the word mysos signified “ a beech,” which 
tree, it was farther observed, abounded in the woods 
of the Mysian Olympus. Strabo, who has copied 
these particulars from Xar.thus the Lydian, and Me- 
necrates of Elfea, states also, on their authority, that 
the Mysian dialect was a mixture of those of Phrygia 
and Lydia. (Strab., 572.)—We may collect from 
Herodotus that the Mysians were already a numerous 
and powerful people before the Trojan war, since he 
speaks of a vast expedition having been undertaken by 
them, in conjunction with the Teucri, into Europe, in 
the course of which they subjugated the whole of Thrace 
and Macedonia, as far as the Peneus and the Ionian 
Sea. (Herod., 7, 20, 75.) Subsequently, however, 
to this period, the date of which is very remote and 
uncertain, it appears that the Mysi were confined in 
Asia Minor within limits which correspond but lit¬ 
tle with such extensive conquests. Strabo is inclined 
to suppose that their primary seat in that country was 
the district which surrounds Mount Olympus, whence 
he thinks they were afterward driven by the Phrygians, 
and forced to retire to the banks of the Ca'icus, where 
the Arcadian Telephus became their king. (Eurip., 
ap. Aristot., Rhet., 3, 2.— Strab., 572.— Hygin., fab., 
101.) But it appears from Herodotus that they still 
occupied the Olympian district in the time of Croesus, 
whose subjects they had become, and whose aid they 
requested to destroy the wild boar which ravaged their 
country (l, 36). Strabo himself also recognises the 
division of this people into the Mysians of Mount Olym¬ 
pus and those of the Ca'icus (571). These two dis¬ 
tricts answer respectively to the Mysia Minor and Ma¬ 
jor of Ptolemy. Homer enumerates the Mysi among 
the allies of Priam in several passages, but he nowhere 
defines their territory, or even names their towns; in 
one place, indeed, he evidently assigns to them a sit¬ 
uation among the Thracians of Europe. (II., 13, 5.) 

-—The Mysians of Asia had become subject to the 
Lydian monarchs in the reign of Alyattes, father to 
Croesus, and perhaps earlier, as appears from a pas¬ 
sage of Nicolaus Damascenus, who reports that Crce- 
sus had been appointed to the government of the ter¬ 
ritory of Adramyttium and the Theban plain during 
the reign of his father. (Creuzer, Hist. Frag., p. 
203.) Strabo even affirms that Troas was already 
subjected in the reign of Gyges. (Strab., 590.) On 
the dissolution of the Lydian empire, they passed, to¬ 
gether with the other nations of Asia, under the Per¬ 
sian dominion, and formed part of the third satrapy in 
the division made by Darius. (Herod., 3, 90.— Id., 
7, 74.) After the death of Alexander they were an¬ 
nexed to the Syrian empire ; but, on the defeat of An- 
tiochus, the Romans rewarded the services of Eume- 
nes, king of Pergamus, with the grant of a district so 
conveniently situated with regard to his own dominions, 
and which he had already occupied with his forces. 
(Polyb., 22, 27.— Liv., 38, 39.) At a later period, 
Mysia was annexed to the Roman proconsular prov¬ 
ince (Cic., Ep. ad Quint. Fr., 1, 8); but under the 
emperors it formed a separate district, and was govern¬ 
ed by a procurator. (Athenceus, 9, p. 398, e.) It is 
to be observed, also, that St. Luke, in the Acts, dis¬ 
tinguishes Mysia from the neighbouring provinces of 
Bithyma and Troas (16, 7, seq.). —The Greeks have 
stigmatized ti & Mysians as a cowardly and imbecile 
face, who wo|'.| suffer themselves to be injured and 


plundered by their neighbours in the most passive man¬ 
ner. Hence the proverbial expression M vauv "keia, 
used by Demosthenes (De Cor., p. 248,23) and Aris¬ 
totle (Rhet., 1, 12, 20), to which Cicero also alludes 
when he says, “ Quid porro in Grceco sermone tarn tri¬ 
tium atque celebratum est, quam, si quis despicatui 
ducitur, ut Mysorum idtimus esse dicatur ?" (Pro 
Flacc., c. 27.) Elsewhere the same writer describes 
them as a tribe of barbarians, without taste for litera¬ 
ture and the arts of civilized life. ( Orat., c. 8.— Cra¬ 
mer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 30, seqq .) 

Mysius, a river of Mysia, which falls into the Ca'i¬ 
cus near the source of the latter river. Mannert takes 
it for the true Ca'icus in the early part of its coui;se. 
(Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 3, p. 397.) 

Mystes, a son of the poet Yalgius, whose early 
death was so deeply lamented by the father that Hor¬ 
ace wrote an ode to allay the grief of his friend. ( Ho- 
rat., Od., 2, 9.) 

Mytilene. Vid. Mitylene. 

_ Myus (gen. Myuniis), the smallest of all the Ionian 
cities, as appears from its only contributing three ves¬ 
sels to the united fleet of 350 sail. (Herod., 6, 8.) It 
was situate, according to Strabo, on the southern bank 
of the Masander, thirty stadia from its mouth. (Strab., 
636.) The Meeander was not navigable for large ves¬ 
sels, and to this circumstance may principally be as¬ 
cribed the inferior rank of Myus among her Ionian sis¬ 
ters in pointof opulence and power. The inundations 
of the river, too, must have been very injurious. Myus 
was founded by the Ionians about the same time w r ith 
Priene (Pausan., 7, 2), and was subsequently under 
the immediate sway of the Persians, since it was one 
of the cities given by Artaxerxes to Themistocles. 
(Diod. Sic., 11, 57.) The city afterward sank great¬ 
ly in importance. It became subjected also to a very 
annoying kind of visitation. The sea would seem to 
have formed originally a small bay as far as Myus. 
This bay, in process of time, became converted by the 
depositions of the Mseander into a fresh water lake, 
and so great a number of gnats was in consequence 
produced, that the inhabitants of the city determined 
to migrate. The Ionian confederacy, upon this, trans¬ 
ferred the vote and the population of Myus to the city 
of Miletus. (Pausan., 7, 2.)—The ruins of Myus are 
called at the present day Palatsha (the Palace), from 
the remains of an ancient theatre, mistaken by the pres¬ 
ent inhabitants around for the ruins of a palace. (Man¬ 
nert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 3, p. 262, seqq.) 


N. 

Nabath^a, a country of Arabia Petrsea. 1 
tended from the Euphrates to the Sinus Arabicus. 
The Nabathceans are scarcely known in Scripture un¬ 
til the time of the Maccabees. Their name is sup¬ 
posed to be derived from that of Nebaioth, son of Ish- 
mael. (Genesis, 25, 13.— Ibid., 28, 9.— Isaiah; 70, 7.) 
—In the time of Augustus they were a powerful peo¬ 
ple ; but their kingdom, of which Petra was the cap¬ 
ital, ended about the reign of Trajan. At a still later 
period their territory belonged to Palasstina Tertia. 
Nabathaea appears to correspond to the modern Hed- 
schas. (Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 1 , p. 165, seqq.) 

Nabis, a tyrant of Lacedaemon, who usurped the su¬ 
preme power after the death of Machanidas, B.C. 205 
He appears to have been a man surpassing all former 
tyrants in the monstrous and unheard-of wickedness 
that characterized his rule. From the very first he 
deliberately grounded his power on a regular system oi 
rapine and bloodshed; he slew or banished all in Spar¬ 
ta who were distinguished either for birth or fortune, and 
distributed their wives and their estates among his own 
mercenaries, to whom he entirely trusted for support. 
His extortions were boundless, and death with torture 
was the penalty of refusal. No source of gain was 




NAB 


N JE V 


too mean for him or too iniquitous. He partook in 
the piracies of the Cretans, who were infamous for 
that practice; and he maintained a sort of alliance 
with the most noted thieves and assassins in the Pelo¬ 
ponnesus, on the condition that they should admit him 
to a share in their gains, while he should give them 
refuge and protection in Sparta whenever they needed 
it. It is said that he invented a species of automaton, 
made to resemble his wife, and that he availed himself 
of this as an instrument of torture to wrest their wealth 
from his victims. Whenever he had summoned any 
opulent citizen to his palace, in order to procure from 
him a sum of money for the pretended exigences of the 
state, if the latter was unwilling to loan, “ Perhaps,” 
Nabis would say, “ I do not myself possess the talent 
requisite for persuading you, but I hope that Apega 
(this was the name of his wife) will prove more suc¬ 
cessful.” He then caused the horrid machine to be 
brought in, which, catching the unfortunate victim in 
its embrace, pierced him with sharp iron points con¬ 
cealed beneath its splendid vestments, and tortured 
him into compliance by the most excruciating suffer¬ 
ings.—Philip, king of Macedon, being at war with the 
Romans, made an alliance with Nabis, and resigned 
into his hands the city of Argos as a species of de- 
posite. Introduced into this place during the night, 
the tyrant plundered the wealthy citizens, and sought 
to seduce the lower orders by proposing a general abo¬ 
lition of debts and a distribution of lands. Foresee¬ 
ing, however, not long after this, that the issue of the 
war would prove unfavourable for Philip, he entered 
into secret negotiations with the Romans in order to 
assure himself of the possession of Argos. This per¬ 
fidy, however, was unsuccessful; and Flamininus the 
Roman commander, after having concluded a peace 
with the King of Macedon, advanced to lay siege to 
Sparta. The army which Nabis sent against him hav¬ 
ing been defeated, and the Romans and their allies 
having entered Laconia and made themselves masters 
of Gythium, Nabis was forced to submit, and, besides 
surrendering Argos, had to accept such terms as the Ro¬ 
man commander was pleased to impose. Humiliated 
by these reverses, he thought of nothing but regaining 
his former power, and the Roman army had hardly re¬ 
tired from Laconia before his emissaries were actively 
employed in inducing the maritime cities to revolt. At 
last he took up arms and laid siege to Gythium. The 
Achseans sent a fleet to the succour of the place, under 
the command of Philopoemen ; but the latter was de¬ 
feated by Nabis in a naval engagement, who thereupon 
pressed the siege of Gythium with redoubled vigour, 
and finally made himself master of the place. The 
tyrant, however, not long after this, experienced a to 
tal defeat near Sparta from the land forces of Philopce 
men, and was compelled to shut himself up in his cap¬ 
ital,’while the Achaean commander ravaged Laconia 
fpr thirty days, and then led home his army. Mean¬ 
while Nabis was continually urging the ^Etolians, 
whom he regarded as his allies, to come to his aid, and 
this latter people finally sent a body of troops, under 
the command of Alexamenus ; but they sent also se¬ 
cret orders along with this leader to despatch Nabis 
himself on the first opportunity. Taking advantage of 
a review-day, on which occasions Nabis was wont to 
ride about the field attended by only a few followers, 
Alexamenus executed his instructions, and slew Na¬ 
bis, with the aid of some chosen yEtolian horsemen, 
who had been directed by the council at home co obey 
any orders which Alexamenus might give them. The 
AStolian commander, however, did not reap the advan¬ 
tage which he expected from this treachery ; for, while 
he himself was searching the treasury of the tyrant, 
and his followers were pillaging the city, the inhabi¬ 
tants fell upon them and cut them to pieces. Sparta 
thereupon joined the Achaean league. ( Flat., Vit. 
Fhilop. — Pausan., 7, 8.— Biogr. Univ., v. 30, p. 517.) 


Nabonassar, a king of Babylon, who lived about 
the middle of the 8th century before the Christian era, 
and who gave name to what is called the Nabonassa- 
rian era. The origin of this era is thus represented 
by Syncellus from the accounts of Polyhistor and Be- 
rosus, the earliest writers extant in Chaldaean history 
and antiquities. “ Nabonassar, having collected the 
acts of his predecessors, destroyed them, in order that 
the computation of the reigns of the Chaldsean kings 
might be made from himself.” ( SyncellChrono¬ 
graph., p. 207.) It began, therefore, with the reign 
of Nabonassar (Febr. 26, B.C. 747). The form of 
year employed in it is the moveable year of 365 days, 
consisting of 12 equal months of 30 days, and five 
supernumerary days ; which was the year in common 
use among the Chaldaeans, Egyptians, Armenians, 
Persians, and the principal Oriental nations from the 
earliest times. This year ran through all the seasons 
in the course of 1461 years. The freedom of the Na- 
bonassarean year from intercalation rendered it pecu¬ 
liarly convenient for astronomical calculation. Hence 
it was adopted by the early Greek astronomers Timo- 
chares and Hipparchus ; and by those of the Alexan- 
drean school, Ptolemy, &c. In consequence of this, 
the whole historical catalogue of reigns has been com¬ 
monly, though improperly, called Ptolemy’s canon ; 
because he probably continued the original table of 
Chaldaean and Persian kings, and added thereto the 
Egyptian and Roman down to his own time. ( Hale s 
A?ialysis of Chronology, vol. 1, p. 155, scqq., 8vo cd.) 
—Foster, in his epistle concerning the Chaldaeans, as 
given by Michaelis ( Spicilcgium Geographies Hebice- 
orum , vol, 2, p. 162), seeks to explain the name Nabo¬ 
nassar on the supposition of an affinity between the 
ancient Chaldee language and the Sclavonic tongue. 
According to him, it is equivalent to Nebu-nas h-tzai , 
which means, Our Lord in Heaven. This etymology 
has been impugned by some, on the ground that the 
Russian term for emperor or king is written Czar , 
and is nothing more than a corruption for Cezsar. 
Unfortunately, however for this very plausible objec¬ 
tion, the Russian term in question is written with an 
initial Tsui or Ts (Tsar), and cannot, therefore, by any 
possibility, come from Cczsar . (Consult Schmidt s 
Russian and German Diet., s. v.) 

Nabopolassar, a king of Babylon, who united wuth 
Astyages against Assyria, which country they con¬ 
quered, and, having divided it between them, founded 
two kingdoms, that of the Medes under Astyages, 
and that of the Chaldaeans under Nabopolassar, B.C. 
626. Necho, king of Egypt, jealous of the power^of 
the latter, declared war against and defeated him. Na¬ 
bopolassar died after a reign of 21 years. The name, 
according to Foster, is equivalent to Nebu-polezi-tzar, 
which means, Our Lord dwells in Heaven. (Consult 
remarks near the close of the article Nabonassar.) 

N^enia or Nenia, a goddess among the Romans 
who presided over funerals. She had a chapel with¬ 
out the Porta Viminalis. (Fcstus, s. v. Compare 
Arnob., 4, p. 131.— Augustin., de Civ. Dei , 6, 9.) — 
The term is more commonly employed to denote a 

funeral-dirge. (Fcstus, s. v.) 

N^vius, I. Cnaeus, a native of Campania, was the 
first imitator of the regular dramatic works which had 
been produced by Livius Andronicus. He served m 
the first Punic war, and his earliest plays were repre¬ 
sented at Rome in A.U.C. 519, B.C. 235. (Aul. Gell., 
17, 21.) The names of his tragedies (of which as few 
fragments remain as of those of Livius) are still pre¬ 
served : Alccstis, from which there is yet extant a de¬ 
scription of old age in rugged and barbarous verse, 
Danae, Dulorestes , Hesiona, Hector, lphigenih, Ly- 
curgus, Phcenisscc, Protesilaus, and Telephus. All 
these were translated or closely imitated from the 
works of Euripides, Anaxandrides, and other Greek 
dramatists. Naavius, however, was accounted a bet- 




NAH 


N A K 


ler comic than tragic poet. Cicero has given us some 
specimens of his jests, with which he appears to have 
been greatly amused ; but they consist rather in un¬ 
expected turns of expression, or a play of words, than 
in genuine humour. Nsevius, in some of his comedies, 
indulged too much in personal invective and satire, 
especially against the elder Scipio. Encouraged by 
the silence of this illustrious individual, he next at¬ 
tacked the patrician family of the Metelli. The poet 
was thrown into prison for this last offence, where he 
wrote his comedies, the Hariolus and Leontcs. These 
being in some measure intended as a recantation of 
his former invectives, he was liberated by the tribunes 
of the commons. Relapsing soon after, however, into 
his former courses, and continuing to satirize the no¬ 
bility, he was driven from Rome by their influence, 
and retired to Carthage, where he died, according to 
Cicero, A.U.C. 550, B.C. 204; but Varro fixes his 
death somewhat later.—Besides his comedies, Naevius 
was also author of the Cyprian Iliad, a translation from 
a Greek poem called the Cyprian Epic. Whoever 
may have written this Cyprian Epic, it contained 12 
books, and was probably a work of amorous and ro¬ 
mantic fiction. It commenced with the nuptials of 
Thetis and Peleus ; it related the contention of the 
three goddesses on Mount Ida; the fables concern¬ 
ing Palamedes ; the story of the daughters of Anius; 
and the love adventures of the Phrygian fair dilring 
the early period of the siege of Troy ; and it termina¬ 
ted with the council of the gods, at which it was re¬ 
solved that Achilles should be withdrawn from the 
war, by sowing dissensions between him and Atrides. 
—Some modern critics think that the Cyprian Iliad 
was rather the work of Laevius, a poet who lived some 
time after Noevius, since the lines preserved from the 
Cyprian Iliad are hexameters ; a measure not else¬ 
where used by Naevius, nor introduced into Italy, ac¬ 
cording to their supposition, before the time of Ennius. 

( Osann., Analect. Crit., p. 36. — Hermann , Elem. 
Doctr. Metr., p. 210, ed. Glasg.) — A metrical chron¬ 
icle, which chiefly related the events of the first Punic 
war, was another, and probably the last work of Nasvi- 
us, since Cicero says ( De Senect., c. 14) that in wri¬ 
ting it he filled up the leisure of his latter days with 
wonderful complacency and satisfaction. It was ori¬ 
ginally undivided; but, after his death, was separated 
into seven books. (Suet., de Illustr. Gramm.) —Al¬ 
though the first Punic war was the principal subject, 
as appears from its announcement, 

“ Qui terrai Latidi hemones tuserunt 
Vires fraudesque Poinicas fabor,” 

yet it also afforded a rapid sketch of the preceding inci¬ 
dents of Roman history.—Cicero mentions ( Brutus , c. 
19) that Ennius, though he classes Naevius among the 
fauns and rustic bards, had borrowed, or, if he refused 
to acknowledge his obligations, had pilfered many or¬ 
naments from his predecessor. In the same passage, 
Cicero, while he admits that Ennius was the more fin¬ 
ished and elegant writer, bears testimony to the merit 
of the older bard, and declares that the Punic war of 
this antiquated poet afforded him a pleasure as exqui¬ 
site as the finest statue that was ever formed by Myron. 
To judge, however, from the lines that remain, though 
in general too much broken to enable us even to divine 
their meaning, the style and language of Naevius in 
this work were more rugged and remote from modern 
Latin than his plays or satires, and infinitely more so 
than the dramas of Livius Andronicus. The whole, 
too, is written in the rough Saturnian verse. ( Dunlop , 
Roman Literature, vol. 1 , p. 74, seqq.) — II. An augur 
in the reign of Tarquin, more correctly Navius. ( Vid. 
Attus Navius.) 

Naharvali, a people of Germany, ranked by Tacitus 
under the Lygii (Germ., 43). According to Kruse 
(Archiv fur alte Geogravhie) and Wersebe (uber die 
87C 


Volker des Alten Tcutschlands ), they dwelt in wnat 
is now Upper Lusutia and Silesia. vVilhelm, how* 
ever (Germanien und Seine Bewohner), places them in 
Poland on the Vistula , and Reichard between the 
Wartha and Vistula. 

Naiades, certain inferior deities who presided over 
rivers, brooks, springs, and fountains. Their name is 
derived from valid, “to flow,” as indicative of the gen- 
tie motion of water. The Naiades are generally repre¬ 
sented as young and beautiful virgins, leaning upon an 
urn, from which flows a stream of water. They were 
held in great veneration among the ancients, and sac¬ 
rifices of goats and lambs were offer&d them, with liba¬ 
tions of wine, honey, and oil. Sometimes they re¬ 
ceived only offerings of milk, fruit, and flowers. (Vid. 
Nymphas.) 

Naissus, a city of Dacia Mediterranea, southwest of 
Ratiaria. It was the birthplace of Constantine the 
Great. Reichard identifies it with the modern Nezza 
or Nissa, in the southern part of Servia. The name 
is sometimes written Naisus and Naesus. (Const. 
Porphyr ., de Them., 2, 9 . —Zosim., 3, 11.— Anton., 
Itin., p. 134.-— Amm. Marcell., 21, 10.) 

Namnetes or Nannetes (Strab. N ayviral. — Plol. 
N ayvrjTai), a people of Gallia Celtics, on the north 
bank of the Liger oi Loire, near its mouth. Their 
capital was Condivicnum, afterward Namnetes, now 
Nantes (Nantz ). Their city is sometimes (as in 
Greg. Tur., 6, 15) called Civitas Namnetica. 

Nantuates, a people of Gallia Narbonensis, on the 
south of the Lacus Lemanus or Lake of Geneva. 
(Cces., B. G., 4, 10.) 

Nap^e^e, certain divinities among the ancients who 
presided over the forests and groves. Their name is 
derived from vany, “a grove.” ( Virgil , Georg., 4, 
535.) 

Nar, a river of Italy, rising at the foot of Mount 
Fiscellus, in that part of the chain of the Apennines 
which separates the Sabines from Picenum (Plin., 3, 
12), and, after receiving the Yelinus and several other 
smaller rivers, falling into the Tiber near Ocriculuin. 
(Virg., Mn., 7, 516.— Sil. Ital., 8, 453.) The mod¬ 
ern name is the Nera. It was noted for its sulphurous 
stream and the whitish colour of its waters. (Virg., 1. 
c.—Sil. Ital., I c.—Plin., 3, 5, 12.) “The Nera,” 
says Eustace, “ forms the southern boundary of Um¬ 
bria, and traverses, in its way to Narni, about nine 
miles distant, a vale of most delightful appearance. 
The Apennine, in its mildest form, “ coruscis ilicibus 
fremens,” bounds this plain ; the milky Nar intersects 
it; and fertility, equal to that of the neighbouring vale 
of Ciitumnus, adorns it on all sides with vegetation and 
beauty.” (Classical Tour, vol. 1, p. 334.) 

Narbo Martius, a city of Gaul, in the southern 
section of the country, and southwest of the mouths of 
the Rhone. It was situate on the river Atax (or Aude), 
and became, by means of this stream, a seaport and 
a place of great trade. Narbo was one of the oldest 
cities of the land, and had a very- extensive commerce 
long before the Romans established themselves in this 
quarter. Avienus (Or. Marit., v. 585) makes it the 
capital of the unknown tribe of the Elesyces. The sit¬ 
uation of this place appeared so favourable to the Ro¬ 
mans, that they sent a colony to it before they had 
even firmly established themselves in the surrounding 
country, A.U.C. 636. (Veil. Paterc., 1, 15.— Eu- 
trop., 4, 3.) The immediate cause of ihis settlement 
was the want of a good harbour on this coast, and of a 
place also that might afford the necessary supplies to 
their armies when marching along the Gallic shore 
into Spain. (Polyb., 3, 39.) At a later period, after 
the time of Caesar, Narbo became the capital of the 
entire province, which took from it. the appellation of 
Narbonensis. This distinction probably would not 
have been obtained by it had not Massilia ( Marseille ) 
been declared a free ar d independent community by 



N AH 


N A K 


the Romans.—As a Roman colony, this place took 
tho name of Narbo Martius. In the time of Caesar 
it was called also Decumanorum Colonia, from that 
commander’s having sent thither as colonists, at the 
close of the civil contest, the remnant of his favour¬ 
ite tenth legion. ( Sueton., Tib., 4.) It continued a 
flourishing commercial city until a late period, as it 
is praised by writers who lived when the power of the 
Reman capital itself had become greatly diminished. 

' Ausonius, de Clar. Urb., 13.— Sidonius, carm., 23.) 
The remains of the canal constructed by the Romans 
for connecting the waters of the Atax with the sea by 
means of the lake Rubresus, clearly prove the ancient 
power and opulence of Narbo. This city owed its 
downfall, along with so many others, to the inroads of 
the barbarous nations. It is now Narbonne. {Man¬ 
ner^ Geogr., vol. 2, p. 63, seqq.) 

Narbonensis Gallia, one of the great divisions 
of Gaul under the Romans, deriving its name from the 
city of Narbo, its capital. It was situate in the south¬ 
ern and southeastern quarter of the country, and was 
bounded on the east by Gallia Gisalpina, being sep¬ 
arated from it by the Varus or Var (Plin ., 3, 4); on 
the north by the Lacus Lemanus or Lake of Geneva , 
the Rhone, and Gallia Lugdunensis ; on the west by 
Aquitania; and on the south by the Mediterranean 
and Pyrenees. It embraced what was afterward the 
northwestern part of Savoy, Dauphine, Provence; the 
western part of Languedoc, together with the country 
along the Rhone, and the eastern part of Gascony. 

(Vid. Gallia.) 

Narcissus, I. a beautiful youth, son of the river-god 
Cephisus and.the nymph Liriope, was born at Thespis 
in Boeotia. He saw his image reflected in a fountain, 
and, becoming enamoured of it, pined away till he was 
changed into the flower that bears his name. This 
was regarded in poetic legends as a just punishment 
upon him for his hard-heartedness towards Echo and 
other nymphs and maidens. {Ovid, Met., 3, 341, seqq. 
— Hygin., fab., 271.) According to the version of 
this fable given by Eudocia (p. 304), Narcissus threw 
himself into the fountain and was drowned (eppiipev 
eavrov ekei, Kai ETccKviyy rip evoTcrpc) vdari). Pau- 
sanias, after ridiculing the common legend, mentions 
another, which, according to him, was less known than 
the one we have just given. This latter version of 
the story made Narcissus to have had a twin-sister of 
remarkable beauty, to whom he was tenderly attached. 
She resembled him very closely in features, wore sim¬ 
ilar attire, and used to accompany him on the hunt. 
This sister died young ; and Narcissus, deeply lament¬ 
ing her death, used to go to a neighbouring fount¬ 
ain and gaze upon his own image in its waters, the 
strong resemblance he bore to his deceased sister 
making this image appear to him, as it were, the form 
of her whom he had lost. ( Pausan., 9, 31, 6.)—The 
flower alluded to in the story of Narcissus is what bot¬ 
anists term the “ Narcissus poeticus ” {Linn., gen., 
550). It loves the borders of streams, and is admira¬ 
bly personified in the touching legends of poetry ; 
since, bending on its fragile stem, it seems to seek its 
own image in the waters that run murmuring by, and 
soon fades away and dies. (Fee, Flore de Virgile, 
p. cxviii.)—II. A freedman of the Emperor Claudius. 
H<3 afterward became his private secretary, and in the 
exercise of this office acquired immense riches by the 
most odious means. Messalina, jealous of his power, 
endeavoured to remove him, but her own vices made 
her fall an easy victim to this unprincipled man. ( Vid. 
Messalina.) Agrippina, however, was more success¬ 
ful. She was irritated at his having endeavoured 
to prevent her ascending the imperial throne ; while 
Narcissus, on his side, espoused the interests of the 
young Britannicus, and urged Claudius to name him 
as his successor. Apprized of these plans, Agrippina 
drove Narcissus into a kind of temporary exile, by 


compelling him to go to the baths of Campania lor ma 
health; an^^having taken advantage of his absence 
from Rome to poison the emperor, she next compelled 
Narcissus to put .himself to death. {Tacit., Ann., 11, 
29 .—Id. ib., 11, 37.— Id. ib., 12, 57.— Id. ib., 13, 1. 
— Sueton., Vit. Claud.) 

Narisci, a nation of Germany, occupying what now 
corresponds to the northern part of Upper Pfalz in 
th o Palatinate. {Tacit., Germ., 42.) 

Narnia, a town of Umbria, on the river Nar, a short 
distance above its junction with the Tiber. The more 
ancient name was Nequinum, which it exchanged for 
Narnia when a Roman colony was sent hither, A.U.C. 
453. {Liv., 10, 9, seqq.) The story of the name 
Nequinum having been given to it in sport by the Ro¬ 
mans, on account of the roguery of its inhabitants ( ne - 
quam, il a rogue”), is a mere fiction.—Narnia was col¬ 
onized with the view of serving as a point of defence 
against the Umbri. Many years after, we find it in¬ 
curring the censure of the senate for its want of zeal 
during the emergencies of the second Punic war. 
{Livy, 29, 15.) The situation of the place on a lofty 
hill, at the foot of which flows the Nar, has been de¬ 
scribed by several poets. {Claud., 6.— Cons., Hon., 
515. — Sil. Ital., 8, 458.— Martial, 7, 92.) In the 
passage of Martial just referred to, the poet alludes to 
the noble bridge raised over the Nar by Augustus, the 
arch of which was said to be the highest known. 
(Procop., Per. Got., 1.) The modern Narni occupies 
the site of the ancient town. Travellers speak in high 
terms of the beautiful situation of the place. (Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 277, seqq.) 

Naro, now Narenta, a river of Dalmatia, rising in 
the mountains of Bosnia, and falling into the Adriatic 
opposite the island of Lesina. ( Plin., 3, 22.) On its 
banks lay the city of Narona, a Roman colony of some 
note. (Scylax, p. 9.— Mela, 2, 3.) Its ruins should 
be sought for in the vicinity of Castel Norin. ( Man - 
nert, Geogr., vol. 7, p. 347.) 

Narses, a eunuch of the court of the Emperor Jus¬ 
tinian I. at Constantinople. The place of his birth is 
unknown. He so ingratiated himself with the emper¬ 
or, that he appointed him his chamberlain and private 
treasurer. In A.D. 538 he was placed at the head of 
an army destined to support Belisarius in the expul¬ 
sion of the Ostrogoths from Italy ; but the dissensions 
which soon arose between him and Belisarius occasion¬ 
ed his recall. Nevertheless, in 552 he was again sent 
to Italy, to check the progress of Totila the Goth, and. 
after vanquishing Totila, he captured Rome. He also 
conquered Tejas, whom the Goths had chosen king in 
the place of Totila, and, in the spring of 554, Bucellinus, 
the leader of the Alemanni. After Narses had cleared 
nearly all Italy of the Ostrogoths and other barbarians, 
he was appointed governor of the country, and ruled it 
fifteen years. During this time he endeavoured to en¬ 
rich the treasury by all the means in his power, and 
excited the discontent of the provinces subject to him, 
who laid their complaints before the Emperor Justinian 
II. Narses was deposed in disgrace, and sought re¬ 
venge by inviting the Lombards to invade Italy, which 
they did in 568, under Alboin their king. Muratori 
and others have doubted whether Narses was concern¬ 
ed in the invasion of the Lombards. After his depo¬ 
sition he lived at Naples, and died at an advanced age. 
at Rome, in 567. (Encyclop. Am., vol. 9, p. 136.) 

Narycium or Naryx, a city of the Locri Opuntii, 
rendered celebrated by the birth of Ajax, son of 0‘ileus. 
(Strabo, 425.) From Diodorus we learn that Isme- 
nias, a Boeotian commander, having collected a force 
of JEnianes and Athamanes, whom he had seduced 
from the Lacedaemonian service, invaded Phocis, and 
defeated its inhabitants near Naryx (14, 82). The 
same historian afterward relates, that Phayllus, the Pho- 
cian, having entered the Locrian territory, surprised tho 
town of Naryx, which he razed to the ground.—Virgil 

871 





NAS 


N A U 


app les the epithet “ Narycian” to the Locri who set¬ 
tled in Italy, as having been of the OpujAian stock. 
(JEn.,3, 396.) 

Nasamones, a people of Africa, to the southeast of 
Cyrena'ica, and extending along the coast as far as the 
midd’e of the Syrtis Major. (Compare Herod., 4, 
172.) They were a roving race, uncivilized in their 
habits, and noted for their robberies in the case of all 
vessels thrown on the quicksands. They plundered 
the cargoes and sold the crews as slaves, and hence 
Lucan (9, 444) remarks of them, that, without a sin¬ 
gle vessel ever seeking their shores, they yet carried 
on a traffic with all the world. Augustus ordered an 
expedition to be sent against them, both in consequence 
of their numerous robberies, and because they had put 
to death a Roman prefect. They were soon conquered; 
and Dionysius Periegetes (v. 208) speaks of the “de¬ 
serted dwellings of the destroyed Nasamones” {epy- 
f ludtvra yeXaOpa airotpOiyivov Naoayuvuv). They 
were not, however, completely destroyed*, for we find 
the race again appearing in their former places of abode, 
and resuming their former habits of plunder, until in the 
reign of Domitian they were completely chased away 
from the coast into the desert. ( Euseb., Chron.,01., 
216, 2.— Josejphus, Bell., 2, 16.)—Some mention has 
, been made, in another part of this work (vid. Africa, 
page 81, col. 1), of a journey performed through part of 
the interior of Africa by certain young men of the Na¬ 
samones ; and the opinions of some able writers have 
been given on this subject. The following remarks, 
however, of a late critic may be compared with what 
is stated under the article Niger. “Herodotus says 
that the Nasamones went through the deserts of Libya; 
and that he may not be misunderstood as to what he 
means by Libya, which is sometimes put for Africa, 
he states distinctly that it extends from Egypt to the 
promontory of Soloeis, where it terminates; that it is 
inhabited by various nations besides the Grecians and 
Phoenicians; that, next to this, the country is abandon¬ 
ed to beasts of prey, and that all beyond is desert; that 
the young Nasamones, having passed the desert of 
Libya (not Sahara), came to a region with trees, on 
which were perched men of little stature; that they 
were conducted by them over morasses to a city on a 
great river, running from the west towards the rising 
sun; that the people were black, and enchanters, &c. 
Now it is perfectly clear to us that the country alluded 
to by Herodotus was no other than Mauritania, and 
that the notion of their having crossed the great des¬ 
ert, and reached the Niger about Timbuctoo, is found¬ 
ed entirely on a misrepresentation of his quoters and 
editors, some of whom make the course of the young 
men to have been southwest , contrary to what Herodo^ 
tus says, and for no other reason that we can devise but 
that such a course was required to bring them to a pre¬ 
determined city and river, known to the moderns, but 
not to Herodotus. Herodotus, however, sanctions no 
such notion ; he distinctly states, on the contrary, that 
they proceeded to the west, repo? Z eftvpov aveyov , 
words that are never applied to any portion of the com¬ 
pass lying between west and south, the word Zephy- 
nis, in Latin as well as in Greek, being used exclu¬ 
sively for west, and An (j generally for southwest. If 
we will only let Herodotus tell his own story, we shall 
find in those parts of the Emperor of Morocco’s do¬ 
minions, situated between the Great Allas and the Sa¬ 
hara, plenty of rivers, two of them, the Tajilet and the 
Ad-judi, both running to the east, and both great riv¬ 
ers in the eyes of men who had never witnessed a run¬ 
ning stream ; we shall also find cities and towns, in¬ 
tervening deserts, morasses, sands, and black men of 
small stature, the modern Berbers, the ancient Mela- 
nogastuli, omnes colore nigri, to answer the description 
of Herodotus; who says, moreover, that his river, 
which he calls the Nile, not only descends from Lib¬ 
ya, but traverses all Libya, dividing that country in 


the midst. Pliny’s information is still more explicit, 
and tends to corroborate our suggestion. He tells us 
that Suetonius Paulinus, the Roman general, after 
crossing the western Atlas, and a black, dirty plain 
beyond it (dry morass or peat-moss, of which we un¬ 
derstand there is plenty), fell in with a river running 
to the eastward, which he (Pliny) calls the Niger, 
probably from the black people or the black soil, and 
which is stated to lose itself in the sands ; and which, 
according to Pliny, emerging again, flows on to the 
eastward, divides the Libyans from the Ethiopians, 
and finally falls into the Nile. Now the Tajilet, 
which flows from the southern side of the snowy At¬ 
las, crossed by the Roman general, runs in an eastern 
course, and loses itself in the sands ; and the Ad-judi, 
which rises from the same side, or the Central Atlas 
(in Mauritania Caesariensis), and runs easterly into the 
lake Melgig, might very well be considered by Pliny 
as the continuation of the Tajilet or his Niger; and it 
is sufficiently remarkable that this river, or some other 
of the numerous streams in the neighbourhood, should, 
according to Leo Africanus, be called the Ghir, which, 
it seems, is a native name. Here, then, we have at 
once the foundation for the Geir and Nigeir of Ptol¬ 
emy, supplied to him by Pliny.” ( Quarterly Review, 
No. 82, p. 233, seqq .) 

Nasica, I. a surname of one of the Scipios. {Vid. 
Scipio V.)—II. A character delineated by Horace in 
one of his satires. Nasica, a mean and avaricious 
man, marries his daughter to Coranus, who was a 
creditor of his, in the hope that his new son-in-law 
will either forgive him the debt at once, or else will 
leave him a legacy to that amount in his will, which 
would, of course, be a virtual release. He is disap¬ 
pointed in both these expectations. Coranus makes 
his will and hands it to his father-in-law, with a re¬ 
quest that he will read it : the latter, after repeatedly 
declining so to do, at last consents, and finds, to his 
surprise and mortification, no mention made in the in¬ 
strument of any bequest to him or his. ( Horat , Sat 
2, 5, 65.) 

Nasidienus (by synsresis Nasid-yenus, a quadri¬ 
syllable), a character satirized by Horace. Under this 
feigned name the poet describes an entertainer of bad 
taste and mean habits affecting the manners of the 
higher classes. {Sat., 2, 8.) 

Naso. Vid. Ovidius. 

Nasus or Nesus, a town or fortress near CEniadse 
in Acarnania. The name evidently implies an insular 
situation.. Livy (26, 24; 38, 11) writes it Naxos; 
but that is probably a false reading. From the ac¬ 
counts of ancient writers, Nasos seems always to 
have been included with CEniadae in the cessions of 
the latter place, made by the Romans first to the ^Eto- 
lians, and afterward to the Acarnanians. {Polijb., 9, 
2.) If Trigardon be not CEniadae, it may represent 
Nasos, which was probably the port and arsenal of 
CEniadae ; and, though now joined to the continent, 
might very well have been an island in ancient times! 
{Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 26.) 

Natiso, a river of \ enetia, in Cisalpine Gaul, rising 
in the Alps, and falling into the Adriatic near Aquileia 8 
It is now the Natisone. Modern critics, however, are 
divided in opinion as to the identity of the Natisone 
with the Natiso, which Strabo and other ancient wri¬ 
ters place close to Aquileia; as the Natisojie is now 
some miles distant from the ruins of that city. The 
most probable supposition is, that some change has 
taken place in the bed of the river. {Cramer's Anc 
Italy , vol. 2, p. 129.) * 

Naucratis, a city of Egypt, in the Delta, and be¬ 
longing to the Saitic nome. It was situate on the 
Canopic arm of the Nile, to the south of Metelis and 
northwest of Sais. Strabo informs us (802) that in 
the time of Psammitichus, a body of Milesians landed 
at the Bolbitine mouth of the river, and l ther- 






N A.U 


N A U 


stronghold, which he calls “ the fortress of the Mile¬ 
sians” (to Mihrjoluv T£i%or). The geographer evi¬ 
dently refers here to the arrival on the coast of Egypt 
of some Carians and Ionians, by whose aid, accord¬ 
ing to Herodotus (2, 152), Psammitichus was enabled 
to subdue his colleagues in the kingdom. When, how¬ 
ever, Strabo adds, that these Milesians, in process of 
time, sailed into the Sa'itic nome, and, after having 
conquered Inarus in a naval conflict, founded the city 
of Naucratis, it would seem that he mixes up with his 
account of this place the circumstance of the succours 
tl.at were given by the Athenians to Inarus, king of 
Egypt, and by means of which he gained a victory 
o\er the Persians. Inaius, it is true, was afterward 
defeated, but no author mentions that the Milesians 
had any share in his overthrow, Naucratis appears, 
in fact, to have been founded long before any Greek 
set foot in Egypt. It was given by Amasis to the 
Ionians as an entrepot for their commerce, and was not 
founded by them. This favour, however, on the part 
of the Egyptian monarch, was granted under such re¬ 
strictions as prudence seemed to require. The Greek 
vessels were only allowed to enter the Canopic arm, 
and were obliged to stop at Naucratis. If a ship hap¬ 
pened to enter another mouth of the river, it was 
detained ; and the captain was not set at liberty un¬ 
less he could swear that he was compelled to do so 
uy necessity. He was then obliged to sail to Nau¬ 
cratis ; or, if continual north winds made this impos¬ 
sible, he had to send his freight in small Egyptian 
vessels round the Delta to Naucratis. (Herod., 2, 
179.) But, how rigidly soever these restrictions were 
originally enforced, they must soon have fallen into 
disuse, as the mouths of the Nile were open to any 
one after the conquest by the Persians. — Naucratis, 
from its situation, became the connecting link in the 
chain of communication between the coast and the in¬ 
terior of the country, and continued for a long period 
an important city. It is mentioned by numerous wri¬ 
ters as low down as the sixth century. — The ruins 
which Niebuhr found near a place called Salhadsjar 
seem to indicate the site of the ancient city.—Nau¬ 
cratis was the native place of Athenaaus. Like every 
commercial city, it contained among its population a 
large number of dissolute persons of both sexes. 

( Larcher , Geogr. d'Herodote, p. 359, seqq. — Mannert, 
Geogr., vol. 10, pt. 1, p. 563, seqq.) 

Naulochus, I. a naval station on the northeastern 
coast of Sicily. Between this place and Mylse, which 
lay to the west of it, the fleet of Sextus Pompeius 
was defeated by that of Octavius (A.U.C. 718, B.C. 
36.)—II. An island off the coast of Crete, near the 
promontory of Sammonium. (Plin., 4. 12.) — III. 
The port of the town of Bulis in Phocis, near the con¬ 
fines of Bosotia. (Plin., 4, 3.) It is supposed to 
have been the same with the Mychos of Strabo. 

Naupactus, a city of Locris, at the western ex¬ 
tremity of the territory of the Ozohe, and close to 
Rhium of ^Etolia. It was said to have derived its 
name from the circumstance of the Heraclidse having 
there constructed the fleet in which they crossed over 
into the Peloponnesus (vavg, a ship, and 7rr)yvv/u, to 
construct. — Strabo, 426.— Apollod., 2, 7, 2).—After 
the Persian war, this city was occupied by the Atheni¬ 
ans, who there established the Messenian Helots after 
they had evacuated Ithome. (Thucyd.., 1, 103.— Id., 
2, 90.— Pausan., 4, 24, seqq.) The acquisition of 
Naupactus was of great importance to the Athenians 
during the Peloponnesian war, as it was an excellent 
station for their fleet in the Corinthian Gulf, and not 
only afforded them the means of keeping up a com¬ 
munication with Corcyra and Acarnania, but enabled 
them also to watch the motions of the enemy on the 
opposite coast, and to guard against any designs they 
might form against their allies. Some important na¬ 
val operations which took place off this city in the 
5 S 


third year of the war, will be found detailed in Thu* 
cydides (2, 83, seqq). —After the failure of the expe¬ 
dition undertaken by Demosthenes, the Athenian gen¬ 
eral, against the ^Etolians, the latter, supported by a 
Peloponnesian force, endeavoured to seize Naupactus 
by a coup de main; but such were the able arrange¬ 
ments made by Demosthenes, who threw himself into 
the place with a re-enforcement of Acarnanian aux¬ 
iliaries, that the enemy did not think proper to pros¬ 
ecute the attempt. (Thucyd., 3, 102.) On the ter¬ 
mination of the Peloponnesian war, however, Naupac¬ 
tus surrendered to the Spartans, who expelled the 
Messenians from the place. (Pausan., 4, 26.) De¬ 
mosthenes informs us, that it had afterward been 
occupied by the Achaeans, but was ceded by Philip of 
Macedon to the ^Etolians (Phil., 3, p. 120.— Strabo, 
426), in whose possession it remained till they were 
engaged in a war with the Romans. The latter, af¬ 
ter having defeated Antiochus at Thermopylae, sud^ 
denly crossed over from the Maliac Gulf to that of 
Corinth, and invested Naupactus, which would prob¬ 
ably have been taken, notwithstanding the obstinate 
defence made by the .dEtolians, had they not obtained 
a truce by the intervention of T. Flamininus. (Liv., 
36, 30, seqq.—Polyb ., 5, 102.) Naupactus was still 
a city of some importance in the time of Hierocles 
(p. 643), but it was nearly destroyed by an earthquake 
in the reign of Justinian. (Procop., Bell. Got., 3.)— 
The modern town is called Enebachti by the Turks, 
Nepacto by the Greeks, and Lepanto by the Franks, 
with a strong accent on the last syllable. (Keppell's 
Journey, vol. 1, p. 8.) “ Nepacto,” says Sir W. Gell, 

“ is a miserable pashalia, and a ruinous town ; but it 
is worth visiting, because it gives a very exact idea 
of the ancient Greek city, with its citadel on Mount 
Rhegani, whence two walls, coming down to the 
coast and the plain, form a triangle. The port abso¬ 
lutely runs into the city, and is shut within the walls, 
which are erected on the ancient foundations.” (Itin., 
p. 293.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 105, seqq.) 

Nauplia, a maritime town of Argolis, the port of 
Argos, situate on a point of land at the head of the 
Sinus Argolicus. It was said to have derived its 
name from Nauplius, the son of Neptune and Amy- 
mone. (Strabo, 368. — Herod., 6, 76.— Xen., Hist. 
Gr., 4, 7, 6.) Nauplia was deserted and in ruins 
when visited by Pausanias. The inhabitants had been 
expelled several centuries before by the Argives, upon 
suspicion of their favouring the Spartans. The latter 
people, in consequence, received them into their ter- 
ritoryi and established them at Methone of Messenia. 
(Pausan., 4, 35.) Nauplia has been succeeded by 
the modern town of Napoli di Romania, as it is called 
by the Greeks, which possesses a fortress of some 
strength. Sir W. Gell remarks, that “ Nauplia is the 
best built city of the Morea. It is situated on a rocky 
point, on which are many remains of the ancient wall. 
The port is excellent and very defensible.” (Itin., p. 
181.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, v ol. 3, p. 239, seqq.) 

Naupliades, a patronymic of Palamedes, son of 
Nauplius. (Ovid, Met., 13, 39.) 

Nauplius, I. a son of Neptune and Amymone, and 
the founder of Nauplia. (Pausanias, 2, 38.— Id., 4, 
35.) He was the one that sold Auge, daughter of 
Aleus, to King Teuthras. (Vid. Auge.) This Nau¬ 
plius must not be confounded with the second of the 
name, who was, in fact, one of his descendants. 
(Heyne, ad Apollod., 2, 1, 5. — Compare Burmann, 
Catal. Argonaut., ad Val. Flacc., s. v.) —II. A de¬ 
scendant of the preceding, and one of the Argonauts. 
(Heyne, ad Apollod., 2, 1, 5 . — Burmann, Catal. Ar¬ 
gonaut., s. v.) —III. A son of Neptune, the father of 
Palamedes by Clymene, and king of Eubcea. He was 
so indignant at the treatment which his son had ex¬ 
perienced from the Greeks, that, to avenge his death, 
he set up a burning torch on the promontory of Ca 



WAX 


NE A 


phareus, in order to deceive the Grecian vessels that 
were sailing by in the night on their return from Troy ; 
and he thus caused their shipwreck on the coast. 
The torch, it seems, had been placed on the most dan¬ 
gerous part of the shore ; but the Greeks mistook it 
for a friendly signal, inviting them to land here as the 
safest part of the island. Those of the shipwrecked 
crews that came safe to the land were slain by Nau- 
who is said, however, to have thrown himself 
into the sea when he saw his plan of vengeance in a 
great measure frustrated by the escape of Ulysses, 
whom the winds bore away in safety from the danger¬ 
ous coast. {Hygin., fab., 116.)—The obscure and 
curious legend related by Apollodorus (2, 1, 5) is 
thought by many to have reference to this Nauplius. 
It assigns him a different end. According to this 
version of the story, Nauplius attained a great age, 
and passed his time on the sea, lamenting the fate of 
those who were lost on it. At length, through the 
anger of the gods, he himself met with the same fate 
which he deplored in others. ( Heyne , ad Apollod., 1. c.) 

Nauportus, a town of Pannonia, on a river of the 
same name, now Obcr {Upper) Layback. { Veil. Pat., 
2, 110.— Plin., 3, 18.— Tacit., Ann., 1, 20.) 

Nausicaa, daughter of Alcinoiis, king of the Phre- 
acians. She met Ulysses shipwrecked on her father’s 
coast, and gave him a kind reception. ( Od ., 6, 17, 
seqq.) 

Naustathmus, I. a port and harbour in Sicily, at 
the mouth of the river Cacyparis, below Syracuse ; 
now Asparanetto. ( Cluv., Sic. Ant., p. 97. — Rei- 
chard, Thes. Topogr.) —II. A village and anchoring- 
place of Cyrena'ica, between Erythron and Apollonia. 
{Mela, 1, 8.)—III. An anchoring-place on the coast ; 
of the Euxine, in Asia Minor, about 90 stadia from 
the mouth of the Halys : it is supposed by some to 
have been identical with the Ibyra or Ibora of Hiero- 
cles (p. 701). D’Anville gives Balirch as the mod¬ 
ern name; but Reichard, Kupri Aghzi. {Arrian, 
Peripl., Huds., G. M., 1, p. 16.) 

Naxos, I. a town of Crete, celebrated for produ¬ 
cing excellent whetstones. {Pind., Isthn., 6, 107. 

* — Schol. ad Pind., 1. c .)—II. The largest of the Cyc¬ 
lades, lying to the east of Paros, in the ^Egean Sea. 

It is said by Pliny (4, 12) to have borne the several 
names of Strongyle, Dia, Dionysias, Sicilia Minor, 
and Callipolis. The same writer states that it was 
75 miles in circuit, and twice the size of Paros. It 
was first peopled by the Carians {Steph. Byz., s. v. 

N d^og), but afterward received a colony of Ionians 
from Athens. {Herod., 8, 46.) The failure o’f the 
expedition undertaken by the Persians against this 
island, at the suggestion of Aristagoras, led to the 
revolt of the Ionian states. {Herod., 5, 28.) At this 
period Naxos was the most flourishing of the Cycla¬ 
des ; but, not long after, it was conquered by the Per¬ 
sian armament under Datis and Artaphernes, who de- , 
stroyed the city and temples, and enslaved the inhab¬ 
itants. {Herod., 6,96.) Notwithstanding this calam¬ 
ity, the Naxians, with four ships, joined the Greek fleet i 
assembled at Salamis {Herod., 8, 46), and yet they 
were the first of the confederates whom the Athenians 
deprived of their independence. {Thucyd., 1, 98, 137.) ; 
It appears from Herodotus (1, 64) that they had al- j 
ready been subject to that people in the time of Pi- < 
sistratus. Naxos was farther celebrated for the wor- ] 
ship of Bacchus, who is said to have been born there. 
{Virg., JEn., 3, 125.— Horn., Hymn in Apoll., 44.— ’ 
Pind., Pyth., 4, 156 .—Apollod., 1, 7, 4.) The prin- j 
cipal town was also called Naxos.—The modern { 
name of the island is Naxia. {Cramer's Anc. Greece, 
vol. 3, p, 408.) Mr. Hawkins gives the longest di- ] 
ameter of the island, according to the Russian chart, ( 
as about eighteen miles, and its breadth about twelve. < 
( Clarke's Travels, vol. 6, p. 112, London ed.) Dr. 
Clarke observes of Naxos, that its inhabitants are ’ 
874 


still great votaries of Bacchus. Olivier speaks in in* 
; ferior terms of the present Naxian wine, adding that 
. the inhabitants know neither how to make nor preserve 
■ it. Dr. Clarke, on the contrary, observes that the 
- wine of Naxos maintains its pristine celebrity, and 
! that he thought it excellent. Naxos is said to have 
. no ports for the reception of large-sized vessels, and 
has therefore been less subject to the visits of the 
Turks. Dr. Clarke states that, when he visited the 
island, he was told that there was not a single Moham 
medan in it, and that many of the inhabitants of the 
interior had never seen a Turk. The produce of the 
island consists at present of wines, wheat, barleyoil, 
oranges, lemons, peaches, figs, cheese, which is ex¬ 
ported to Constantinople, cotton, honey, and wax. 
The vintage was one year so abundant, that the peo¬ 
ple were obliged to pour their wines into the cisterns 
of the Capuchins. {Malte-Brun, Geogr., vol. 6, p. 
168, Am. ed.) —III. A city on the eastern- side of 
Sicily, situate on the southern side of Mount Taurus, 
and looking towards Catana and Syracuse. It was 
founded by a colony from the island of Naxos, one 
year before the settlement of Syracuse {Ol. 17, 3), 
and at the same time, consequently, with Crotona in 
Italy. {Thucyd., 6, 3. — Scymnus, v. 276.) The 
colony was a powerful one, and the rapid growth of 
the new state is clearly shown by the early founding 
of Zancle or Messana. Naxos, however, not long af¬ 
ter this, fell under the sway of Hippocrates, tyrant of 
Gela. {Herod., 7, 154.) But it soon recovered its 
freedom, waged a successful contest with Messana, 
and appeared subsequently as the ally of the Athe¬ 
nians against Syracuse, the rapid increase of this citj 
having filled it with apprehensions for its own safety 
At a still later period, Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse 
destroyed the city {Diod., 14, 15. — Ol. 94, 2), bu 
the old inhabitants, together with some new-comers 
afterward settled in the immediate vicinity, and found 
ed Tauromenium. {Vid. Tauromenium.) 

Nazianzus, a city of Cappadocia, in the southwest 
ern angle of the country, and to the southeast of Ar 
chela'is. This place derives all its celebrity fror> 
Gregory, th,e distinguished theologian, who was bon 
at Arianzus, a small village in the immediate neigh¬ 
bourhood, but who was promoted to the bishopric c j 
Nazianzus. {Niceph., Call., 14, 39. — Philostorg., 
ap. Suid., s. v. Tpriyopiog.) Nazianzus is assigned 
by Hierocles to Cappadocia Secunda. The Itinera¬ 
ries remove it 24 miles from Archela'is. {Cramer's 
Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 114.) 

Ne^thus, a river of Bruttium, rising to the north¬ 
east of Consentia, and falling into the Sinus Taren- 
tinus above Crotona. It is now the Nieto. This 
stream was said to have derived its name from the 
circumstance of the captive Trojan women having 
there set fire to the Grecian fleet (vavg, al6u) ; a cir¬ 
cumstance alluded to by many of the ancients, but 
with great diversity of opinion as regards the scene of 
the event. The use which Virgil has made of this 
tradition is well known. {Strabo, 262.— Cramer's 
Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 391.) 

Neapolis, a celebrated city of Campania, on the 
Sinus Crater, now Naples , or, in Italian, Napoli. In¬ 
numerable accounts exist relative to the foundation 
of this celebrated place; but the fiction most preva¬ 
lent seems to be that which attributed it to the Siren 
Parthenope, who was cast upon its shores, and from 
whom it derived the name (Parthenope) by which 
it is usually designated in the poets of antiquity. 
{Lycophr., 717. — Dionysius Periegetes, 357. — Sil. 
Pal., 12, 33.) According to Strabo, the tomb of this 
pretended foundress was shown there in his time. 
{Strab., 246.)—Hercules is also mentioned as founder 
of Neapolis by Oppian and Diodorus Siculus {ap. 
Tzetz ; ad Lycophr., 1. c.)-We find also considerable 
variations in what may be regarded as the historical 







NEAPOLIS. 


NEB 


account of the origin of Neapolis. Scymnus of Chios 
mentions both the Phocaeans and Cumasans as its 
founders, while Stephanus of Byzantium names the 
Rhodians. But by far the most numerous and respect¬ 
able authorities attribute its foundation to the Cumae- 
ans, a circumstance which their proximity renders high¬ 
ly probable. ( Strabo, 246.— Livy, 8, 22.— Veil. Pa- 
ierc., 1, 4.) Hence the connexion of this city with 
Euboea, so frequently alluded to by the poets, and es¬ 
pecially by Statius, who was born here. ( Silv ., 1, 2; 
3, 5; 2, 2, &c.) A Greek inscription mentions a hero 
of the name of Eumelus as having had divine honours 
paid to him, probably as founder of the city. ( Capa- 
cio, Hist. Nap., p. 105.) This fact serves to illustrate 
another passage of Statius. (Silv., 4, 8, 45.) — The 
date of the foundation of this colony is not recorded. 
Velleius Paterculus observes only that it was much 
posterior to that of the parent city. Strabo seems to 
recognise another colony subsequent to that of the 
Cumaeans, composed of Chalcidians, Pithecusans, and 
Athenians. (Strab., 246.) The latter were probably 
the same who are mentioned in a fragment of Tjmseus, 
quoted by Tzetzes (ad Lycophr., v. 732-37), as hav¬ 
ing migrated to Italy under the command of Diotimus, 
who also instituted a "XagnadotyopLa, still observed at 
Neapolis in the time of Statius (Sylv., 4, 8, 50). 
The passage of Strabo above cited will account also 
for the important change in the condition of the city 
now under consideration, which is marked by the 
terms Pala*polis and Neapolis, both of which are ap¬ 
plied to it by the ancient writers. It is to be noticed, 
that Palsepolis is the name under which Livy men¬ 
tions it when describing the first transactions which 
connect its history with that of Rome, A.U.C. 429 
(Livy, 8, 23); while Polybius, speaking of events 
which occurred in the beginning of the first Punic 
war, that is, about sixty years afterward, employs only 
that of Neapolis (1, 51).—Livy, however, clearly al¬ 
ludes to the two cities as existing at the same time ; 
but we hear no more of Palsepolis after it had under¬ 
gone a siege and surrendered to the Roman* arms. 
According to the same historian, this town stood at 
no great distance from the site of Neapolis, certainly 
nearer to Vesuvius, and in the plain. ( Romanelli , 
vol. 3, p. 530.) It was betrayed by two of its chief 
citizens to the Roman consul, A.U.C. 429. (Liv., 8, 
25.) Respecting the position of Neapolis, it may be 
seen from Pliny, that it was placed between the river 
Sebethus, now il Flume Madalona, and the small isl¬ 
and Megaris, or Megalia, as Statius calls it (Sylv., 2, 
2, 80), on which the Castel del Ovo now stands. 

( Plin ., 3, 6.— Columella, R. R., 10.)—It is probable 
that Neapolis sought the alliance of the Romans not 
long after the fall of the neighbouring city ; for we 
find that they were supplied with ships by that town 
in the first Punic war, for the purpose of crossing over 
into Sicily. (Polyb., 1, 51.) At that time we may 
suppose the inhabitants of Neapolis, like those of 
Cum*, to have lost much of their Greek character, 
from being compelled to admit the Campanians into 
their commonwealth ; a circumstance that has been 
noticed by Strabo (246). In that geographer’s time, 
however, "there still remained abundant traces of their 
first origin. Their gymnasia, clubs, and societies 
were formed after the Greek manner. Public games 
were celebrated every five years, which might rival in 
celebrity the most famous institutions of that nature 
in Greece ; while the indolence and luxury of Grecian 
manners were also very prevalent, and allured to Ne- 
apolis many a Roman, whose age and temperament 
inclined him to a life of ease. (Ovid, Met., 15, 711. 
— Hor., Epod., 5, 24, 3. — Stl. ltal., 12, 31. — Stat., 
Silv., 3, 5, 85.) Claudius and Nero seem to have 
shown a like predilection for Neapolis as a residence. 
(Tacit., Ann., 15, 53.— Id., 16, 10.) The epithet of 
docta, applied to this city by Marti?l (5, 79), proves 


that literature continued to flourish here in his time 
—Among other superstitions, we learn from Macro- 
bius (Sat. 1 , 18), that the people of Neapolis wor¬ 
shipped the sun, under the image of a bull with a hu¬ 
man face, which they called Hebon. This fact is 
confirmed by numerous coins, and also by an inscrip 
tion which has come down to us. (Cramer's Anc. 
Italy, vol. 2, p. 168, seqq.) 

Nearchus, a celebrated naval commander in the 
time of Alexander the Great. He was a native of 
Crete, and one of the friends of Alexander in early 
life, sharing with the young prince the disgraces in¬ 
curred during the reign of Philip. When Alexander 
had subdued the empire of Darius, he sent Nearchus 
on a voyage of discovery, from the mouth of the Hy- 
daspes down the Indus, and from the embouchure of 
the Indus to the Euphrates, along the coast of Gedro- 
sia, Carrnania, and Persia. The narrative of this 
voyage has been preserved to us by Arrian, who pro¬ 
fesses to give an extract from the journal of Nearchus. 
It is contained in his Indica. The authenticity of the 
account has been questioned by Hardouin and Dod- 
well, but is fully established by Sainte-Croix (Examcn 
Critique des Historiens d'Alexandre), Gossellin (Re- 
cherches sur la Geographie Ancienne), and Vincent 
(Voyage of Nearchus, Land., 1807.— Commerce and 
Navigation of the Ancients in the Indian Ocean, vol. 
1). It must be confessed, however, that the three 
writers just mentioned differ in other respects as re¬ 
gards this celebrated voyage. Gossellin thinks, for 
example, that all the statements made by Nearchus 
can be rigorously confirmed by modern geography. 
Vincent, on the other hand, supposes that the defect¬ 
ive system of the ancients must necessarily have in¬ 
troduced into the narrative of the Greek commander 
many errors and contradictions. Sainte-Croix, again, 
is deserted by his usual good sense and judgment 
when he assigns to the expedition of Nearchus no 
other motive but the foolish ambition of Alexander. 
If this had been the case, why would Nearchus have 
kept a journal so full of nautical and geographical ob¬ 
servations ?—Nearchus was recompensed by Alexan¬ 
der with a golden crown, which the monarch placed 
upon his head. A new route was marked out. Al¬ 
exander was to undertake an expedition against Ara¬ 
bia, and Nearchus and his fleet were to accompany 
him, and to coast the Arabian shore; but the death of 
the monarch put an end to the design. After the de¬ 
cease of Alexander, Nearchus, who had obtained the 
prefecture or satrapy of Pamphylia and Lycia, exerted 
himself, but to no purpose, to secure the throne of AL 
exander to Hercules, son of Barsine.—He also wrote a 
history, or historical memoirs of the reign of Alexan¬ 
der ; but of this work the title alone remains. The 
voyage of Nearchus, besides being contained in the 
common text of Arrian, may be found in Hudson’s 
Geographi Minorcs Grad, vol. 1. It appeared also 
in 1806, from the Vienna press, under the title of Ne- 
aprov Treprrclovc ea tov ’Abpiavov. (Hoffmann, Lex. 
Bibliogr., voj. 3, p. 114.) 

Nebo, a mountain situate east of the river Jordan, 
and forming part of the chain of Abarim, north of the 
Dead Sea. The Israelites encamped at the foot of 
this mountain in the 46th year of their Exodus, and 
Moses, having executed the commission with which 
he was intrusted, and having pronounced his blessing 
on the twelve tribes assembled to receive his last 
charge, ascended this mountain, from the summit of 
which, called Pisgah, he had a view of the Promised 
Land, into which he was not permitted to enter: on 
this mountain he soon afterward died. Burckhardt 
supposes the Djebel Atlarous, about 15 miles north 
of the Arnon, and a little to the right of the route 
from Madeba to Araayr or Aroer, and which is the 
highest point, in the neighbourhood, to be Nebo. 
(Mansford's Scripture Gazetteer, p. 335.) 






NEC 


i 


N E M 


Nebri-ssa, or Colonia Venerea Nebrissa, a town 
of the Turdetani, in Hispania Bsetica, northeast of Ga- 
des, and southwest of Hispalis. It is now Lebrija or 
Labrixa. (Strabo, 143.— Plin., 3, 3.) 

Nebrodes, a general name for the chain of mount¬ 
ains running through the northern part of Sicily. The 
Greek name is Neypudy opy. (Strabo , 274. — Sil. 
Ital., 14, 234.) 

Necho, a king of Egypt who endeavoured to open 
a communication, by means of a canal, between the 
li«d Sea and the Mediterranean. The attempt was 
abandoned, after the loss of 120,000 men, by order of 
an oracle, which warned the monarch “ that he was 
working for the barbarian” (r<p (Sapbdpip avrov rvpo- 
cpyu&odat. — Herod., 2, 158). The true cause, how¬ 
ever, of the enterprise having been abandoned would 
seem to have been the discovery, that the water of the 
Arabian Sea stood higher than the sandy plains through 
which the canal would have to run. (Compare Aris- 
tot., Meteor ol., 1,14.— Strabo, 804.)—A similar attempt 
was made, but with no better success, by Darius Hys- 
taspis. {Herod., 1. c.) Ptolemy Philadelphia at last 
accomplished this important work. An account of it 
is given by Strabo (804) from Artemidorus. (Com¬ 
pare Mannert’s remarks on Strabo’s statement, Geogr., 
vol. 10, pt. 1, p. 507, seqq.) — This same Necho is 
also famous in the annals of geographical discovery 
for a voyage which, according to Herodotus (4, 42), 
he caused to be performed around Africa, for the so¬ 
lution of the grand mystery which involved the form 
and termination of that continent. He was obliged 
to employ, not native, but Phoenician navigators, of 
whose proceedings Herodotus received an account 
from the Egyptian priests. They were ordered to sail 
down the Red Sea, pass through the Columns of Her¬ 
cules (Straits of Gibraltar), and so up the Mediterra¬ 
nean to Egypt; in other words, to circumnavigate 
Africa. The Phoenicians related, that, passing down 
the Red Sea, they entered the Southern Ocean; on 
the approach of autumn, they landed on the coasl and 
planted corn ; when this was ripe, they cut it down and 
again departed. Having thus consumed two years, 
they, in the third, doubled the Columns of Hercules 
and returned to Egypt. They added, that, in passing 
the most southern coast of Africa, they were surprised 
to observe the sun on their right hand ; a statement 
which Herodotus himself rejects as impossible. Such 
is all the account transmitted to us of this extraordi¬ 
nary voyage, which has given rise to a learned and 
voluminous controversy. Rennell, in his Geography 
of Herodotus; Vincent, in his Periplus of the Eryth¬ 
raean Sea; and Gossellin, in his Geography of the An¬ 
cients, have exhausted almost every possible argu¬ 
ment ; the first in its favour, the two latter to prove 
that it never did or could take place. To these last 
it appears impossible that ancient mariners, with their 
slender resources, creeping in little row-galleys along 
the coast, steering without the aid of a compass, and 
unable to venture to any distance from land, could 
have performed so immense a circuit. All antiquity, 
they observe, continued to grope in doubt and dark¬ 
ness respecting the form of Africa, which was only 
fully established several thousand years afterward by 
the expedition of Gama. On the other side, Rennell 
urges that, immense as this voyage was, it was en¬ 
tirely along a coast of which the navigators never re¬ 
quired to lose sight even for a day; that their small 
barks were well equipped, and better fitted than ours 
for coasting navigation ; and that these, drawing very 
little water, could be kept quite close to the shore, 
and even be drawn on land whenever an emergency 
made this step indispensable. The statement that, 
at the extremity of Africa, they saw the sun on the 
right, that is, to the north of them (a fact which causes 
Herodotus peremptorily to reject their report), affords 
the strongest confirmation of it to us, who know that 
876 


to the south of the equator this must have really taKen 
place, and that the historian’s unbelief arose entirely 
from his ignorance of the real figure of the earth. 
{Vid. Africa, p. 79, col. 1.) 

Necropolis (from vcupog, “dead,” and iroAn, 
“ city ”), the city of the dead; a name beautifully ap¬ 
plied to the cemeteries in the neighbourhood of many 
of the ancient cities, such as Thebes in Egypt, Cyrene, 
Alexandrea, &c. 

Nectanebis, a king of Egypt, cousin to Tachos 
and proclaimed king during the absence of the latter, 
with the Egyptian forces, in Phoenicia. He was sup¬ 
ported by Agesilaus, whom Tachos had offended by 
rejecting his advice. Aided by the Spartan king, 
Nectanebis defeated a competitor for the crown from 
Mendes, and was at last firmly established in his king¬ 
dom. Being subsequently attacked by Artaxerxes 
Ochus, who wished to reduce Egypt once more under 
the Persian sway, he met with adverse fortune, and 
fled into ^Ethiopia, whence he never returned. Nec¬ 
tanebis was the last king of Egypt of the Egyptian 
race. {Pint., Vit. Ages.—Diod. J Sic., 15, 92.— Id., 
16, 48, seqq.) — As regards the variations in the or¬ 
thography of the name, consult Wesseling, ad Diod. 
Sic., 15, 92. 

Neleus (two syllables), I. a son of Neptune and 
Tyro. He was brother to Pelias, with whom he was 
exposed by his mother, who wished to conceal her frail¬ 
ty from her father. They were preserved and brought 
to Tyro, who had then married Cretheus, king of Iol- 
chos. After the death of Cretheus, Pelias and Neleus 
contended for the kingdom, which belonged of rio-ht 
to iEson, the son of the deceased monarch and Tyro. 
Pelias proved successful, and Neleus departed with a 
body of followers into the Peloponnesus. {Diod. Sic., 
4, 68.) Here he founded Pylos in Messema, and, 
marrying Chloris, daughter of Amphion, became the 
father ot twelve sons, the oldest of whom was Peri- 
clymenus, the youngest Nestor, and of one daughter, 
named Pero. {Diod., 1. c.) When Hercules attacked 
Pylos, -he killed Neleus and all his sons but Nestor, 
who was then a child, and reared among the Gereni’ 
ans. {Horn., 11, 11, 690 — Hes., ap. Schol. ad Apoll. 
Rhod., 1 , 156. — Apollod., 1, 9, 8, seqq.) Neleus had 
promised his daughter in marriage to him who should 
bring to Pylos the cows of Tyro, detained by Iphiclus. 
Bias was the successful suitor; for an account of 

which legend, consult the article Melampus._II. A 

disciple of Theophrastus, to whom that philosopher 
bequeathed the writings of Aristotle. ( Vid. Apel- 
licon.) 

Nemausus, an important city of Gallia Narbonensis, 
next in rank to Narbo. It was situate on the main 
route from Spain to Italy, and was the capital of the 
Arecomici. It is now Nismcs, and is famed for its 
remains of antiquity. {Mela, 2, b.—Plin., 3, 4.) 

Nemea (N epea), a city of Argolis, to the northwest 
of Mycenaa, celebrated as the haunt of the lion slain by 
Hercules, and the spot where triennial games were 
held in honour of Archemorus, or Opheltes, son of Ly- 
curgus, king of Nemea. {ApoUoa.i 3, 6, 3 .—Hytrin 
fab., 74.— Id., fab., 273.) The games were solem¬ 
nized in the grove of Molorchus, who was said to have 
entertained Hercules when he came to Nemea in pur 
suit of the lion. {Apollod., 2, 7.)—We know from 
Polybius and Livy, that the Nemean games continued 
to flourish in the reign of Philip, son of Demetrius 
{Polyb., 2, 7, 4. — Id., 5, 101, 6.— Livy, 27, 30.- 
Strabo, 377); but we may infer, that in the time "of 
Pausanias they had fallen into great neglect, from the 
slight mention he has made of their solemnization (2 
lb) The ruins of Nemea are to be seen near the 
modern village of Kutchumadi. {Cramer's Ancient 
Greece vol. 3 284 , seqq.)-The Nemean games, 

though, like the Olympic and Isthmian, originally a ’ 
te-Donc, became subsequently Doric in their charac 




NEM 


NE M 


*ec They were celebrated under the presidency of 
the Corinthians, Argives, and inhabitants of Cleonse 
C Arg. ad Find ., Nem., 3.—Compare Pausan., 2, 14, 
2); but in later tiroes they appear to have been entirely 
under the management of the Argives. (Livy, 34, 
41.) They are said to have been celebrated every 
third year ; and sometimes, as we learn from Pau¬ 
sanias, in the winter. (Pausan., 2, 15, 2.— Id., 6, 
16, 4.) The crowns bestowed on the victors were of 
parsley, since these games were originally funeral ones, 
and since it was customary to lay chaplets of parsley 
on the tombs of the dead. (Wachsmuth, Gr. Antiq., 
vol. 1, p. 163, Eng. transl.) 

Nemesianus (Marcus Aurelius Olympius), a Latin 
poet, a native of Carthage, who flourished about 280 
A.D. Few particulars of his life are known. His 
true family name was Olympius ; that of Nemesianus, 
by which he is commonly cited, indicates probably that 
his ancestors were residents of Nemesium, a city of 
Marmarica. Vopiscus, in his life of Numerian (who 
was clothed with the imperial purple A.D. 282), in¬ 
forms us that Nemesianus had a poetical contest with 
this prince, but was defeated. It is possible that Ne¬ 
mesianus may have been a kinsman of his ; at least, 
the Emperor Carus, and his two sons, Carinus andNu- 
merianus, bear, like our poet, the prasnomen of Marcus 
Aurelius. Vopiscus also states that Nemesianus com¬ 
posed Halieutica, Cynegetica, and Nautica, and gained 
all sorts of crowns (“ omnibus coronis illustratus emicu- 
it ,” according to the felicitous emendation of Casau- 
bon). So that, whatever opinion may be formed of his 
merits by modern critics, it is certain that the emperor’s 
triumph over him was by no means lightly esteemed by 
his contemporaries. We have only one of the three 
poems, of which the historian speaks, remaining, name¬ 
ly, that entitled Cynegetica , the subject of which is the 
chase, together with some fragments of the two others. 
The Cynegetica, or poem on hunting, consists of 325 
verses; but the work is incomplete, either from hav¬ 
ing been left in that state by the poet himself, or from 
a portion of it having been lost. The plan of the 
piece is entirely different from that of Gratius Faliscus. 
This latter treats in a single strain of all the species of 
hunting, and in a very succinct way; Nemesianus, on 
the contrary, appears to have treated of each kind of 
hunting separately, and in a detailed manner. In the 
first book, which is all that we possess, the poet speaks 
of the preparations for the hunt, of the rearing of dogs 
and horses, and of the various implements and aids 
which must be provided by the hunter. In this portion 
of his work, Nemesianus often gives spirited imitations 
of Virgil and Oppian. Though the poem is not free 
from the faults of the age in which it was written, yet 
in point of correctness and elegance it is far before 
most contemporaneous productions.—Besides the Cyn¬ 
egetica, and the fragments of the other two poems that 
have been mentioned (which some, however, assign to 
a different source), we have a small poem in honour of 
Hercules, and two fragments of another poem on fowl¬ 
ing, “ Ds Aucupio .” The best edition of the remains 
of Nemesianus is that given by Wernsdorff in the first 
volume of his Poetce Latini Minores. (Scholl, Hist. 
Lit. Rom., vol. 3, p. 33, seqq. — B'ahr, Gesch. Rom. 
Lit., vol. 1, p. 211.) 

Nemesis, a female Greek divinity, who appears to 
have been regarded as the personification of the right¬ 
eous anger of the gods. She is represented as inflex¬ 
ibly severe to the proud and insolent. (Pausan., 1, 
33, 2.) According to Hesiod, she was the daughter 
of Night. (Theog., 223.—Compere Pausanias, 7, 5, 
1.) There was a celebrated temple sacred to her at 
Rhamnus, one of the boroughs of Attica, about sixty 
stadia distant from Marathon. In this temple there 
was a statue of the goddess, made from a block of Pa¬ 
rian marble, which the Persians had brought thither to 
erect as a troDhy of their expected victory at Marathon. 


Pausanias says, that this statue was the work of Phid¬ 
ias (1, 33, 2, seq.); but Pliny ascribes it to Agorae* 
ritus: and adds, that it was preferred by M. Varro to 
all other statues which existed. (Plin., 36, 4, 3.) A 
fragment, supposed by some to be the head of this statue, 
was found in the temple of Rhamnus, and was pre¬ 
sented to the British Museum in 1820. (Elgin and 
Phigaleian Marbles, vol. 1, p. 120; vol. 2, p. 123.) 
The inhabitants of Rhamnus considered Nemesis to 
be the daughter of Oceanus. (Pausan., 7, 5,1.) The 
practice of representing the statues of Nemesis with 
wings was first introduced after the time of Alexander 
the Great by the inhabitants of Smyrna, who worshipped 
several goddesses under this name. (Pausan., 7, 5, 
1. — Id., 9, 35, 2.) According to a myth preserved 
by Pausanias, Nemesis was the mother of Helen by 
Jupiter; and Leda, the reputed mother of Helen, was 
only, in fact, her nurse (1, 33, 7); but this myth seems 
to have been invented in later times, to represent the 
divine vengeance which was inflicted on the Greeks 
and Trojans through the instrumentality of Helen. 
There was a statue of Nemesis in the Capitol at Rome; 
though we learn from Pliny that this goddess had no 
name in Latin. (Pliny, 28, 5. — Id., 11 , 103. — En- 
cycl. Us. Knowl, vol. 16, p. 141.) 

Nemesius, a native of Emesa in Syria, and one of 
the ablest of the ancient Christian philosophers. Of 
his life very few particulars are known ; and even the 
time when he lived is uncertain, though this is gener¬ 
ally supposed to have been during the reign of Theodo¬ 
sius the Great, towards the end of the fourth century. 
He became, in time, bishop of his native city. Neme¬ 
sius has been accused of holding some of Origen’s er¬ 
roneous opinions, but has been defended by Bishop 
Fell (Annot., p. 20, ed. Oxon., 1671), who however 
confesses, with regard to the pre-existence of souls, 
that “he differed from the commonly-received opinion 
of the church.” But it is as a philosopher and physi¬ 
ologist that Nemesius is best known, and his work 
Ilepi (pvereue dvOpcmov, “ On the Nature of Man," is 
one of the most accurate treatises of antiquity. Some 
writers (among whom we may mention Bishop Fell, 
Fabricius, and Brucker) have even supposed that he 
was acquainted with the circulation of the blood ; but 
in the opinion of Freind (Hist, of Physic), Haller 
(Biblioth. Anat.), and Sprengel (Hist, de la Med.), he 
has no right whatever to be considered as the au¬ 
thor of this discovery. The passage which has now- 
given rise to the discussion is certainly remarkable : 
“ The motion of the pulse,” says he, “ takes its rise 
from the heart, and chiefly from the left ventricle of it: 
the artery is with great vehemence dilated and con¬ 
tracted, by a sort of constant harmony and order. 
While it is dilated, it draws with force the thinner part 
of the blood from the next veins, the exhalation or va¬ 
pour of which blood is made the aliment for the vital 
spirit; but while it is contracted, it exhales whatever 
fumes it has through the whole body and by secret 
passages, as the heart throws out whatever is fuliginous 
through the mouth and nose by expiration” (cap. 24, 
p. 242, ed. Matth.). There is another passage equally 
curious respecting the bile (cap. 28, p. 260, ed. Matth.), 
from which Nemesius is supposed to have known all 
that Sylvius afterward discovered with respect to the 
functions of the bile; but his claim in this case is no 
better than the former, and, indeed, Haller and Sprengel 
both say that his physiology is not at all more perfect 
than that of Galen. But even if we cannot allow Ne 
mesius all the credit that has been claimed for him, 
still, from his general knowledge of anatomy and phys¬ 
iology (which is quite equal to that of the professional 
men of his time), his acuteness in exposing the errors 
of the Stoics and the Manichees, the purity and ele¬ 
gance of his style compared with that of his contem¬ 
poraries, and the genuine piety which shows itself 
throughout his work, he has always ranked very high 

877 



N E O 


N EP 


m the list of ancient Christian philosophers. The best 
and most comnlete edition of Nemesius is that of Alat- 
thaei, Hal Magd., 1802, 8vo. Before the appearance 
of this, the edition of Fell, Oxon., 1671, 8vo, was 
most esteemed. ( Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 16, p. 141, 
seqq.) 

Nemetacum, a town of the Atrebates in Gaul, now 
Arras. ( Vid. Atrebates.) 

Nemetes, a nation of northern Gaul, in the division 
called Germania Prima, lying along the banks of the 
Rhine, and between the Vangiones and Tribocci. 
Their chief city was Noviomagus, now Spire. Ac¬ 
cording to some, they occupied both banks of the 
Rhine, and their transrhenane territory corresponded 
in part to the Grand Duchy of Baden. ( Tacit., Germ., 
28.— Cas., B. G., 1, 31.— Lemaire, Ind. Geogr. ad 

C(BS -, S. V.) 

Nemossus, the same with Augustonemetum and 
Claromontium, the capital of the Averni in Gaul, now 
Clermont. Strabo, from whom we obtain the name 
Nemossus, is thought by some to mean a different 
place from Augustonemetum. ( Mannert , Geogr., vol. 

2, pt. 1, p. 117.) 

Neobule, I. a daughter of Lycambes, satirized by 
Archilochus, to whom she had been betrothed. ( Vid. 
Lycambes.)—II. A young female to whom Horace 
addressed one of his odes. The bard laments the un¬ 
happy lot of the girl, whose affection for the youthful 
Hebrus had exposed her to the angry chidings of an 
offended relative. ( Horat ., Od., 3, 12.) 

Neoclesarea, a city of Pontus, on the river Lycus, 
northwest of Comana. Its previous name appears to 
have been Ameria, and it would seem to have received 
the appellation of Neoesesarea in the reign of Tibe¬ 
rius. In the time of Gregory Thaumaturgus, who 
was a native of this place, it is stated to have been the 
most considerable town of Pontus. {Greg. Neoc., 
Vit., p. 577.) It appears also, from the life of the 
same saint, to have been the principal seat of pagan 
idolatry and superstitions, which affords another pre¬ 
sumption for the opinion that it had risen on the found¬ 
ation of Ameria and the worship of Men-Pharnaces. 
Niksar, the modern representative of Neocaesarea, is 
a town of some size, and the capital of a district of the 
same name, in the pachalic of Sirvas or Roum. {Cra¬ 
mer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 315, seq .)—II. A city on 
the Euphrates, in the Syrian district of Chalybonitis ; 
now, according to Reichard, Kalat el Nedsjur. 

Neon, the same with Tithorea in Phocis. ( Vid. 
Tithorea.) 

NeontIchos, a town of yEolis, in Asia Minor, 
founded by the JEolians, as a temporary fortress, on 
their first arrival in the country, and thirty stadia dis¬ 
tant from Larissa. Pliny leads us to suppose that it 
was not on the coast, but somewhat removed from it; 
and we collect from a passage in the Life of Homer 
($ 11, seq.), that it was situate between Larissa and 
the Hermus. The ruins of this place should be sought 
for on the right bank of the Hermus, and above Giuzel- 
hissar, on the road from Smyrna to Bergamah. {Cra¬ 
mer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 151.) 

Neoptolemus, I. son of Achilles and Deidamia. 
{Vid. Pyrrhus I.) — II. A king of the Molossi, father 
of Olympias, the mother of Alexander. ( Justin, 17, 

3. )—III. An uncle of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, raised 
to the throne during the absence of the latter in Italy. 
Pyrrhus, on his return home, associated Neoptolemus 
with him in the government; but afterward put him 
to death on a charge of attempting to poison. {Plut., 
Vit. Pyrrh.) —IV. A captain of Alexander’s life-guards. 
After the death of that monarch he took part in the 
collisions of the generals, and was defeated, along with 
Craterus, and slain by Eumenes. {Plut., Vit. Eum.) 
—V. A poet, a native of Naupactus, who wrote a 
poem on the heroines and other females celebrated in 
mythology, which he entitled 'Navira/criua, in honour 

878 


of his native city. {Schol. ad Apoll. Rhod., 2 , 299 , 
&c.) Others, however, make Carcinus to have been 
the author of this poem.—VI. A native of Paros, who 
composed a work on Inscriptions (nep£ ’E mypaypd- 
tuv), of which Athenaeus makes mention (10, p. 454). 

Nepa, according to Festus, an African word, and 
equivalent to the Latin li sidus." Cicero often em¬ 
ploys it in his translation of Aratus, and it occurs in 
Manilius (2, 32) and elsewhere. Plautus uses it {Ca- 
sin., 2, 8, 7) for Cancer, and Cicero {de Fin., 5, 15) 
for Scorpio. This latter writer, moreover, who, in his 
translation of Aratus, commonly employs Nepa in the 
sense of Scorpio , in one passage (v. 460) uses it in 
the sense of Cancer. In Columella, also (11, 2, 30), 
Nepa occurs for Cancer, according to some, but per¬ 
haps with more correctness for Scorpio. (Compare 
Ideler, Sternnamen, p. 169.) 

Nepe or Nepete, a town of Etruria, southwest ol 
Falerii. Pliny (3, 5) calls it Nepet, and Sigonius con¬ 
tends for this being the true reading: but in all the 
ancient inscriptions which have been found here, it 
is written Nepete. In Strabo it is named Nepita. 
{Strab., 226.) The modern name is Nepi. {Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 233.) 

Nephele, the first wife of Athamas king of Thebes, 
and mother of Phryxus and Helle. {Vid. Athamas.) 

Nepos, Cornelius, a biographical writer, who lived 
towards the end of the republic, and during the earlier 
part of the reign of Augustus. He is generally be¬ 
lieved to have been born at Hostilia (now Ostiglia), 
a small town situate on the banks of the Po, near the 
confines of the Veronese and Mantuan territories. The 
year of his birth is uncertain, but he first came to Rome 
during the dictatorship of Julius Caesar. He does not 
appear to have filled any public office in the state; but 
his merit soon procured him the friendship of the most 
eminent men who at that time adorned the capital of 
the world. Catullus dedicated to him the volume of 
poems which he had privately read and approved of 
before their publication. Nepos addressed one of his 
own works to Pomponius Atticus, with whom also he 
was on terms of intimacy. {Vit. Atlici, 13.) He 
likewise obtained the esteem and affection of Cicero 
{Aul. Gell., 15, 28), who speaks of his writings with 
high approbation in one of his letters, and in another 
alludes with much sympathy to the loss which Nepos 
had sustained by the death of a favourite son. {Ep. 
ad Att., 16, 5 et 14.) It farther appears that Cicero 
had frequently corresponded with him, for Macrobius 
quotes the second book of that orator’s epistles to Cor¬ 
nelius Nepos. {Sat., 2, 1.)—It is thus probable that 
some of our author’s works had been prepared, or were 
in the course of composition, previous to the death of 
Cicero; but they were not given to the public till early 
in the reign of Augustus, since Eusebius considers him 
as flourishing in the fourth year of that emperor (ap. 
Voss, de Hist. Lat., 1, 14). The precise period of 
his death is unknown, and it can only be ascertained 
that he survived Atticus, whose biography he writes, 
and who died in the 722d year of the city. Some 
chronological accounts extend his life till the com¬ 
mencement of the Christian era, but it is scarcely pos¬ 
sible that one who was a distinguished literary char¬ 
acter in the time of Catullus could have existed till 
that epoch. Fabricius makes a curious mistake con¬ 
cerning the death of Cornelius Nepos, in saying that 
he was poisoned in 724 by his freedmanCallisthenes, 
and inciting Plutarch’s Life of Lucullus as his author¬ 
ity for the fact. {Bibl. Lat., 1, 6.) The passage in 
Plutarch only bears, that C. Nepos had somewhere 
said that the mind of Lucretius had become impaired 
in his old age, in consequence of a potion administered 
to him by his freedman Callisthenes. —Whether the 
Cornelius Nepos concerning whose life these circum¬ 
stances have been gleaned was the author of the well- 
known book entitled Vita Excehentium Impcratorum, 



NEPOS. 


NEPOS. 


has been a subject, ever since the work was first print¬ 
ed, of much debate and controversy among critics and 
commentators. The cfissension originated in the fol¬ 
lowing circumstances; A person of the name of HCmil- 
ius Probus, who lived in the fourth century, during the 
reign of Theodosius the Great, presented to his sover¬ 
eign a copy of the Vita Imperatorum , and prefixed to 
it some barbarous verses, which left it doubtful whether 
he meant to announce himself as the author, or merely 
as the transcriber, of the work. These lines, being 
piefixed to the most ancient MSS. of the Vita Excel¬ 
lentium Imperatorum, induced a general belief during 
the middle ages that yEmilius Probus was himself the 
author of the biographies. The Editio Princeps, which 
was printed by Janson in 1471, was entitled “ Probi 
JEmilii Liber de Virorum Excellentium Vita." All 
subsequent editions were inscribed with the name of 
^Emilius Probus, till the appearance of that of Lambi- 
nus in 1568, in which the opinion that Probus was the 
author was first called in question, and the honour of 
the work restored to Cornelius Nepos. Since that 
time the Vita Excellentium Imperatorum have been 
usually published with his name ; but various supposi¬ 
tions and conjectures still continued to be formed with 
regard to the share that ^Emilius Probus might have 
had in the MS. which he presented to Theodosius. 
Barthius was of opinion, that in this MS. Probus had 
abridged the original work of Nepos in the same man¬ 
ner as Justin had epitomized the history of Trogus 
Pompeius ; and in this way he accounts for some sole¬ 
cisms and barbarous forms of expression, which would 
not have occurred in the genuine and uncorrupted 
work of an Augustan writer. ( Adversaria , 24, 18 ; 
25, 15.) Since the time of Barthius, however, this 
hypothesis, which divides the credit of the work be¬ 
tween Cornelius Nepos and Probus, has been generally 
rejected, and most commentators have adopted the 
opinion that Probus was merely the transcriber of the 
work of Nepos, and that he did not mean to signify 
more in the lines which he prefixed to his MS. They 
argue that it is clear, from a passage in the commence¬ 
ment of the Life of Pelopidas, that the work had not 
been reduced, as Barthius supposes, to a compendium, 
but had originally been written in a brief style and 
abridged form : “ Vereor, si res explicare incipiam, 
non vitam ejus enarrare, sed historiam videar scribere: 
si tantum modo summas attigero, ne rudibus literarum 
Gracarum minus lucide appareat, quantus fuerit ille 
vir. Itaque utrique rei occurram, quantum potero; et 
medebor cum satietati , turn ignorantia lectorum." It 
is worthy of remark, that in some of the old MSS. of 
the “ Vita Imperatorum," which furnished the text of 
the earlier editions, there is written at the end, “ Com- 
pletum est opus JEmilii Probi, Cornelii Nepotis," as 
if the copyist had been in doubt as to the real author. 
—So far from admitting those solecisms of expres¬ 
sion for which Barthius thinks it necessary to account, 
Vossius chiefly founds his argument in favour of the 
classical authenticity of the work on that Augustan 
style, which neither ^Emilius Probus nor any other 
writer of the time of Theodosius could have attain¬ 
ed. A very recent attempt, however, has been made 
again to vindicate for /Emilius Probus the honour of 
the composition, in Rinck’s “ Saggio per restiluire 
a JEmilio Probo il libro di Cornelio Nepote." —After 
allowing for the superior dignity of the office of tran¬ 
scriber in the age of Theodosius, compared with its 
diminished importance at the present day, it would 
seem that there is something more implied in the ver¬ 
ses of Probus than that he was merely a copyist; and 
he must either have had a part in the composition, or, 
having discovered the MS., was not unwilling that he 
should have some share of the credit due to the au¬ 
thor.—The Vita Imperatorum., properly so called, con¬ 
tain the lives of nineteen Greek, one Persian, and two 
Carthaginian generals. It has been conjectured that 


there was also a series of lives of Roman command¬ 
ers, but that these had perished before ^Emilius Pro- 
bus commenced his transcription. That Nepos a* 
least intended to write these biographies, appears from 
a passage at the end of the life of Hannibal, in which 
he says, “ It is now time to conclude this book, and 
proceed to the lives of the Roman generals, that, their 
exploits being compared with those of the Greeks, it 
may be determined which are to be preferred” (c. 13). 
That he actually accomplished this task is rendered 
at least probable from the circumstance of Plutarch’s 
quoting the authority of Nepos for facts concerning 
the lives of Marcellus and Lucullus ; and it seems not 
unlikely that the sentence at the close of Hannibal 
may have suggested to that biographer the idea of his 
parallel lives.—The principles which Nepos displays 
in that part of the work which still remains are those 
of an admirer of virtue, a foe to vice, and a supporter 
of the cause of freedom. He wrote in the crisis of 
his country^ fate, and during her last struggle for 
freedom, when despotism was impending, but when 
the hope of freedom was not yet extinguished in the 
breasts of the last of the Romans. The work, it has 
been conjectured ( Harles, Introduct. in Lit. Rom., 
vol. 1, p. 367), was undertaken to fan the expiring 
flame, by exhibiting the example of such men as Dion 
and Timoleon, and by inserting sentiments which were 
appropriate to the times. In choosing the subjects of 
his biographies, the author chiefly selects those heroes 
who had maintained or recovered the liberties of their 
country, and he passes over all that bears no reference 
to this favourite theme. It must be confessed, how¬ 
ever, that he does not display in a very enviable view 
the fate of those popular chiefs who defended or liber¬ 
ated their native land. The “ Invidia, gloria comes,’ 
lighted on almost every Grecian hero ; and Miltiades 
and Themistocles ultimately received no better reward 
from the free Athenian citizens than Datames obtain¬ 
ed from the Persian despot.—With regard to the au¬ 
thenticity of his facts, Nepos has given us no informa¬ 
tion in his'preface concerning the sources to which he 
resorted ; but in the course of his biographies he cites 
Thucydides, Xenophon, Theopompus, and Philistus, 
and also Dinon, to whose authority he chiefly trusted 
with regard to Persian affairs. (Vit. Conon, c. 5.) 
That he compared the different opinions of these his¬ 
torians on the same subject is evincod by a passage in 
his Alcibiades (c. 11); and it appears from another pas¬ 
sage, in his life of Themistocles, that when they dif¬ 
fered in their statement of facts, he had the good sense 
and judgment to prefer the authority of Thucydides 
(c. 9). Aulus Gellius rather commends his diligence 
in the investigation of facts (15, 28). But Pliny (5, 
1), on the other hand, censures both his credulity and 
haste. The investigations, moreover, of modern com¬ 
mentators have discovered many mistakes and incon¬ 
sistencies in almost every one of his biographies. For 
example: 1. It was not the great Miltiades, son of 
Cimon, as Nepos erroneously relates, who founded a 
petty sovereignty in the Thracian Chersonese, but Mil¬ 
tiades the son of Cypselus, aft the Latin biographer 
might have learned from Herodotus (6, 34), an author 
whom he never quotes, and scarcely appears to have 
consulted.—2. In the life of Phocion he has mistaken 
the Greek words eptyvloq riq (“ a certain person of the 
same tribe") for a proper name, Emphjletus. It is be¬ 
lieved, however, by Tzschucke, that Phocion may have 
had a friend of this name, since the same appellation 
occurs in Andocides. Without some excuse of this 
kind, Nepos’s knowledge of Greek becomes very sus 
picious.—3. In the life of Pausanias (c. 1) he con¬ 
founds together Darius and Xerxes ; Mardonius was 
the son-in-law of the former, and the brother-in-law of 
the latter.—4. He confounds the victory of Mycale, 
gained bv Xantippus and Leotychides, vdith the naval 
battle gained by Cimon, nine years after, near the river 

879 



NEPOS. 


NEP 


Eurymedon. ( Vid. Mycale.)—5. In comparing the 
end of the second chapter and the commencement of 
the third of the life of Pausanias, with the clear and 
circumstantial nairative of Thucydides (1, 130-134), 
we shall perceive that Nepos has violated the order of 
time, and confounded the events.—6. There is no less 
disorder in the third chapter of the life of Lysander. 
Nepos confounds two expeditions of this general into 
Asia, between which there elapsed an interval of sev¬ 
en years. (Compare Xen., Hist. Gr., 3, 4, 10.— Diod. 
Sic., 14, 13.)—7. In the second chapter of the life of 
Dion, Nepos confounds the order of events. Plato 
made three voyages to Sicily ; the first in the time of 
Dionysius the Elder, who had him sold as a slave; 
Dion was then only fourteen years old. At the time 
of his second voyage, Dionysius the Elder was no lon¬ 
ger alive. It was during his third visit to the island 
that the philosopher reconciled Dion and Dionysius the 
Younger. Finally, it was not Dionysius the Elder, 
but the son, who invited Plato “ magna ambitione." 

•—8. In the second chapter of the life of Chabrias, 
utter confusion prevails. At the period when Nepos 
makes Agesilaus to have gone on his expedition into 
Egypt, this monarch was busily occupied in Boeotia; 
and Nepos himself, in his life of Agesilaus, makes 
no mention of this expedition. The king of Egypt 
who was assisted by Chabrias was Tachus, and not 
Nectanebis.—9. Hannibal did not immediately march 
to Rome after the victory at Cannae, as Nepos in his 
life of Hannibal (c. 5) states, but after having permit¬ 
ted the spirit of his army to become corrupted in Cam¬ 
pania.—10. In the life of Conon (c. 1), he says that 
this general had no share in the battle of Hlgospota- 
mos ; the contrary is proved by Xenophon. (Hist. 
Gr., 2, 1, 28.)—11. In the life of Agesilaus (c. 5) he 
attributes to this king the victory at Corinth, which 
was due to Aristodemus, as Xenophon informs us 
{Hist. Gr., 4, 2, 9).—Nepos is also charged with 
being too much of a panegyrist, and with having giv¬ 
en to his Lives the air rather of a series of professed 
eulogies than of discriminating and impartial biogra¬ 
phies. In fact, however, he selected the lives of those 
whom he considered as most worthy of admiration ; 
and he has not failed to bestow due reprobation on 
the few who, like Pausanias and Lysander, degen¬ 
erated from the virtues of their countrymen. Nepos 
appears to have been fully aware of the difference be¬ 
tween history and biography ; remembering that the 
latter was more simple than the former, that it did not 
require to be so full with regard to public events, and 
admitted more details of private life and manners. To 
this distinction he alludes in his preface; and we ac¬ 
cordingly find that the life of Epaminondas, for exam¬ 
ple, is occupied with the private character and mem¬ 
orable sayings, more than with the patriotic exploits, 
of that renowned hero. He has thus recorded a great 
many curious particulars which are not elsewhere to 
be found ; and he excels in that art (the difficulty of 
which renders good abridgments so rare) of perceiving 
the features which are most characterstic, and painting 
vividly with a few touches. “ The character of Alcib- 
iades,” says Gibbon, “is such that Livy need not 
have been ashamed of it.” ( Misc. Works, vol. 4, p. 
417.j—The MS. of iEmilius Probus, the copies taken 
from it, and the Editio Princeps published by Janson 
in 1471, all terminated with the life of Hannibal. The 
fragment of the life of Cato the Censor, and the life 
of Pomponius Atticus, now generally appended to 
the Vita Excellentium Imperatorum, were discover¬ 
ed by Cornerus in an old MS. containing the letters of 
Cicero to Atticus, and were published by him along 
with the Vila Imperatorum, in an edition which is 
without date, but is generally accounted the second 
of that production of Nepos. It is evident that the 
life of Atticus was a separate work, or an extract of 
a work, which was altogether different from the Vita 
880 


Imperatorum; for, in the first place, Atticus was noi 
a military commander; and, secondly, Nepos dedi¬ 
cates the Vita Imperatorum to Atticus, while, in the 
last chapters of the life of Atticus, he minutely re¬ 
lates the circumstances of his death. The old scholi¬ 
asts are of opinion, that, along with the fragment on 
the life of Cato the Censor, it had originally formed 
part of a treatise by Cornelius Nepos which is now 
lost, and which was entitled “ De Historicis Latinis .” 
—The life of Atticus is much more curious and valu¬ 
able than the biographies of the Greek generals. It is 
fuller, and it is not drawn, as they are, from secondary 
sources. Nepos was the intimate friend of Atticus, 
and was himself an eye-witness of all that he relates 
concerning the daily occurrences of his life, and with 
regard to the most minute particulars of his domestic 
arrangements, even down to his household expenses. 
As exhibiting the fullest details of the private life of a 
Roman (though a specimen, no doubt, highly favoura¬ 
ble and ornamental), it is perhaps the most interesting 
piece of biography which has descended to us from an¬ 
tiquity.—Nepos appears to have been a very fertile 
writer. Besides the lives of commanders and that of 
Pomponius Atticus, he was the author of several 
works, chiefly of an historical description, which are 
now almost entirely lost. He wrote, in three books, an 
abridgment of the history of the world ; and he had the 
merit of being the first author among the Romans who 
completed a task of this laborious and useful descrip¬ 
tion. Aulus Gellius mentions his life of Cicero (Id, 
28), and quotes the fifth book of his work entitled Ex- 
cmplorum libri (7, 18). He also composed a treatise 
on the difference of the terms literatus and eruditus ; 
and, finally, a passage in the life of Dion informs us of 
a work which Nepos wrote, De Historicis Grads. — 
While so many of his productions have been lost, and 
while it has been denied that he was the author of 
some which he actually composed, others, by a strange 
caprice, have been attributed to him which he certain¬ 
ly did not write. One of these is the work De Viris 
Illustribus, now generally assigned to Aurelius Victor. 
Another is the book De Excidio Troja, which pro¬ 
fesses to be a Latin translation, by Cornelius Nepos, 
from a Greek work by Dares Phrygius, though, in fact, 
it was written by an obscure author, after the age of 
Constantine. Along with the book which passed un¬ 
der the name of Dictys Cretensis, it became the origin 
of those folios of romance and chivalry, in which the 
heroes of Greece were marshalled with Arthur’s 
Round-Table Knights, and with the Paladins of Char¬ 
lemagne.—The best editions of Nepos are, that of 
Longolius, Colon., 1543; Lambinus, Lutet., 1569, 
4to ; et Francof., 1608, fol. ; Bosius, Lips., 1657, 
1675, 8vo ; Van Staveren, Lugd. Bat., 1773, 8vo ; 
Tzschucke, Gotting., 1804, 8vo ; Harles, Lips., 1806, 
8vo ; Fischer, Lips., 1806, 8vo ; Dahne, Lips., 1827, 
8vo ; and Bremi, Lips., 1827, 8vo. (Dunlop's Ro¬ 
man Literature, vol. 3, p. 512, seqq .) 

Nepotianus, Flavius Popilius, a son of Eutropia, 
the sister of the Emperor Constantine. He proclaim¬ 
ed himself emperor after the death of his cousin Con- 
stans, marched to Rome with a body of gladiators and 
other worthless followers, defeated Anicetus the prae¬ 
torian prefect, and pillaged the city. He enjoyed his 
usurped power only twenty-eight days, at the end of 
which period he was defeated and slain by Marcelli- 
nus, one of the lieutenants of Magnentius. (Le Beau, 
Hist, du Bas-Empire, vol. 1, p. 358.) 

Neptunium, a promontory of Bithynia, on the Pro¬ 
pontis, at the mouth of the Cianus Sinus. It is more 
usually known by its Greek name Posidium. Man- 
nert gives the modern appellation as Bos Buruu. 
(Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 3, p. 578.) 

Neptunius Dux, an expression applied by Horace 
■(Epod., 9, 7) to Sextus Pompeius, who boastingly 
styled himself the son of Neptune, because his fathei 



N F. P 


NER 


flat! once held the command of ihe sea. ( Dio Cass., 
48, 19 ) Coins still exist of this Roman leader, bearing 
the effigy of Neptune, with the inscription Magnus 
Puts Impcrator iterurn; or this, Prafectus classis et 
ora maritime, ex s. c. (Consult Raschc, Lex Rei 
Num., vol. 6, col. 1676, seqq.) 

Neptunus or Neptcjmnus, the god of the sea, a 
Roman divinity, whose attributes are nearly the same 
as those of the Greek Poseidon (Iloasidtjp). They 
will both, therefore, be considered in one and the same 
article. Neptune or Poseidon, the son of Saturn and 
Khea, and the brother of Jupiter and Juno, appears 
to have been one of the most ancient divinities of 
Greece; although, according to Herodotus (2, 50), he 
was not originally a Greek deity, but his worship 
was imported from Libya. This statement, however, 
on the part of the historian, cannot be correct. Nep¬ 
tune was the god of water in general, of the sea, the 
rivers, and the fountains, but he was more particular¬ 
ly regarded as the god of the sea, which he acquired in 
his share of the dominions of his father Saturn. His 
wife was Amphitrite, and their children were Triton 
and Rhode, or Rhodos, which last became the bride of 
Heiius, or the Sun-god. A late legend said that Am¬ 
phitrite fled the love of the god, but that he came riding 
on a dolphin, and thus won her affection ; and for this 
service he placed the dolphin among the stars. ( Era- 
tostk., Catast., 31.— Hygin., Poet. Astron., 1, 17.) 
Neptune, like his brother Jupiter, had a numerous 
progeny by both goddesses and mortals. The fleet 
steed Arion was the offspring of the sea-god and Ce¬ 
res, both having assumed the equine form. Accord¬ 
ing to one account,'the nymph Rhodos was his daugh¬ 
ter by Venus. ( Heroph ., ap. Schol. ad Pind., 01, 7, 
24.)—Neptune is said to have produced the horse in 
his well-known contest with Minerva for the right of 
naming the city of Athens. ( Vid. Cecrops.) Accord¬ 
ing to some, we are to understand by this myth that 
the horse was imported into Greece by sea. But this 
explanation is far from satisfactory. It is difficult to 
give a reason for the connexion of Neptune with the 
horse ; but it is evident, from several passages in the 
Greek, writers, that he was regarded as a kind of 
equestrian deity as well as the god of the sea. In the 
absence of a better explanation, we will give the one 
suggested by Knight. “The horse,” says this writer, 
“ was sacred to Neptune and the rivers, and was em¬ 
ployed as a general symbol of the waters. Hence 
also it may have been assumed as one of the types of 
fertility, and may furnish a clew to the fable of Nep¬ 
tune and Ceres. It may also throw some light on the 
narrative of Pausanias, where he states (8, 24) that 
the* Phigalenses dedicated a statue to Ceres, having 
the figure of a woman in every other part except the 
head, which was that of a horse ; and that she held in 
one hand a^dolphin, and in the other a dove.” ( Knight, 
Enquiry, &c., §111, seqq. — Class. Journ., vol. 25, 
p. 34, seqq.) —Besides his residence on Olympus, Nep¬ 
tune had a splendid palace beneath the sea at JEgse. 
(II., 13, 21.— Od., 5, 331.) Homer gives a noble de¬ 
scription of his passage from it on his way to Troy, 
his chariot-wheels but touching the watery plain, and 
the monsters of the deep gambolling around their king. 
His most celebrated temples were at the Corinthian 
Isthmus, at Onchestus, Helice, Troezene, and the 
promontories of Taenarum and Gersestus.— Neptune 
is represented, like Jupiter, of a serene and majestic 
aspect; his form is exceedingly strong and muscular ; 
and hence “the chest of Neptune” (arepvov Hocetdd- 
uvog, II., 5, 479) is the poetic expression for this char¬ 
acteristic of the deity, which is illustrated by the noble 
fragment from the pediment of the Parthenon in the 
British Museum. He usually bears in his hand the 
trident, the three-pronged symbol of his power ; the 
dolphin and other marine objects accompany his im¬ 
ages. The animals offered to him in sacrifice were 
5 T 


usually black bulls, rams, and boar-pigs.--Neptune 
was not originally a god of the Doric race. He was 
principally worshipped by the Ionians, who were in 
most places a maritime people. In those Dorian cities, 
however, which acquired a love for foreign commerce, 
we find that the worship of Neptune extensively pre¬ 
vailed. ( Muller's Dorians, vol. 1, p. 417, seq., Eng. 
transl.) —The etymology of the names Poseidon and 
Neptunus is doubtful. Poseidon is written in Doric 
Greek Poteidan (n oretdav), of which we have another 
example in the name of Potidcea, written Poteidaia 
(n oTEtdala) in the inscription, now in the British 
Museum, on those Athenians who fell before this city. 
The name, according to some writers, contains the 
same root in the first syllable as we find in norog and 
iroTayog ; and has the same reference, in all likelihood, 
to water and fluidity. ( Muller, Proleg., p. 289.)— 
Neptunus, on the other hand, is derived by the Stoic 
Balbus, in Cicero, from nando (N. D , 2, 26), an ety¬ 
mology which Cotta subsequently ridicules. (N. D., 
3, 24.) Varro deduces it from nuptu, because this 
god “covers” ( obnubit) the earth with the sea. ( L. 
L., 4, 10.) This latter derivation, though approved 
of by Vossius ( Etymol., s. v. nuptse), is no better than 
the former. We may compare the form of the word 
Nept-unus or Ncpt-umnus with Port-umnus, Vert - 
umnus, and the word al-umnus; but the meaning or 
origin of the root Nept or Nep seems uncertain.' It 
may, perhaps, be connected with the same root that is 
contained in the Greek vlttt-o), “ to wet.” (Keight - 
ley's Mythology, p. 85, seqq. — Encycl. Us. Knowl., 
vol. 16, p. 146.) 

Nereides (Nrjpytdeg), nymphs of the sea, daughters 
of Nereus and Doris. They are said by most ancient 
writers to have been fifty in number, but Propertius 
makes them a hundred (3, 5, 33). The most celebra¬ 
ted of them were Amphitrite, the wife of Neptune ; 
Thetis, the mother of Achilles ; Galatsea, Doto, &c. 
The worship of the Nereids was generally connected, 
as might be supposed, with that of Neptune. Thus, 
they were worshipped in Corinth, where Neptune was 
held in especial honour, as well as in other parts of 
Greece. (Pausan., 2, 1, 7, seq. — Id., 3, 26, 5.— Id., 
5, 19, 2.) The Nereids were originally represented 
as beautiful nymphs ; but they were afterward de¬ 
scribed as beings with green hair, and with the lower 
part of their body like that of a fish. (Plin., 9, 4.) 

Nereus (two syllables), a sea-deity, the eldest son of 
Pontus and Earth. (Hesiod, Theog., 233.) Though 
not mentioned by name in Homer, he is frequently 
alluded to under the title of the Sea-elder (uXtog ye- 
pov), and his daughters are called Nereids. Accord¬ 
ing to Hesiod, he was distinguished for his knowl¬ 
edge and his love of truth and justice, whence he was 
termed an elder: the gift of prophecy was also assign¬ 
ed to him. When Hercules was in quest of the ap¬ 
ples of the Hesperides, he was directed by the nymphs 
to Nereus. He found the god asleep and seized, him. 
Nereus, on awaking, changed himself into a variety 
of forms, but in vain : he was obliged to instruct 
him how to proceed before the hero would release 
him. (Apollodorus, 2, 5.) He also foretold to Par¬ 
is, when carrying away Helen, the evils he would 
bring on his country arid family. (Horat., Od., 1, 
15.) Nereus was married to Doris, one of the ocean 
nymphs, by whom he became the father of the Ne¬ 
reids, already mentioned. (Keightley's Mythology, 
p. 244.)—Hermann makes ISypevg equivalent to Ne- 
jluus (vtj t>elv), and understands by the term the bot¬ 
tom of the sea. Hence, according to the same au¬ 
thority, Nereus is called “the aged one,” because he 
is ever unchangeable ; he is called true, because the 
bottom of the ocean never gapes in fissures, so as to 
allow the waters to escape : and he is termed mild 
and peaceful, because the depths of ocean are eYej 
tranquil and at rest. ( Hermanni Opuieula, voh 2,p, 



NER 


NERO. 


I 18.) Schwenck, on the other hand, derives the name 
Nereus from vdw, “ to flow.” ( Andeut p. 180.) 
The best etymology, however, is undoubtedly that 
which traces the form N qpevg to the old Greek term 
VTjpoVy “ water,” which last may itself be compared 
with the Hebrew nahar. The modern Greek vepov, 
“ water,” is therefore a word of great antiquity. 
(Compare Loleck, ad Phryn ., p. 42.) 

Neritos, the highest and most remarkable mountain 
in the island of Ithaca. ( Horn ., Od., 1, 21. — 11., 2, 
632. — Virg.y Mn., 3, 270.) According to Dodwell, 
the modern name is Anoi, which means “lofty he 
observes, also, that the forests spoken of by Homer 
have disappeared : it is at present bare and barren, 
producing nothing but stunted evergreens and aro¬ 
matic plants. {Cramer ' 1 s Anc. Greece , vol. 2, p. 45.) 

Neritum, a town of Calabria, about five miles to 
the north of Callipolis. {Plin., 3, 11.— Ptol., p. 62.) 
It is now Nardo. From an ancient inscription, cited 
by Muratori, it appears to have been a municipium. 
{Cramer's Anc. Italy , vol. 2, p. 317.) 

Nerium, a promontory of Spain, the same with Ar- 
tabrum ; now Cape Finistcrre. 

Nero, Claudius Caesar, the sixth of the Roman 
emperors, was born at Antium, in Latium, A.D. 37, 
nine months after the death of Tiberius. {Sueton., 
Vit. Ner., c. 6.) He was the son of Domitius Ahe- 
nobarbus and Agrippina the daughter of Germanicus, 
and was originally named Lucius Domitius. After 
the death of Ahenobarbus, and a second husband, 
Crispus Passienus, Agrippina married her uncle, the 
Emperor Claudius, who gave his daughter Octavia in 
marriage to her son Lucius, and subsequently adopted 
him with the formal sanction of a Lex Curiata. ( Tacit., 
Ann ., 12, 26.) The education of Nero was carefully 
attended to in his youth. He was placed under the 
care of the philosopher Seneca, and he appears to 
have applied himself with considerable perseverance 
to study. He is said to have made great progress 
in the Greek language, of which he exhibited a 
specimen in his sixteeenth year, by pleading in that 
tongue the rights or privileges of the Rhodians, and 
of the inhabitants of Ilium. {Sueton., Vit. Ner., c. 
7. — Tacit., Ann ., 12, 58.) At the death of Clau¬ 
dius (A.D. 54), while Agrippina, by soothings, flat¬ 
teries, and affected lamentations, detained Brittanicus, 
the son of Claudius and Messalina, within the cham¬ 
bers of the palace, Nero, presenting himself before 
the gates, was lifted by the guard in waiting into the 
covered coach used for the purpose of carrying in 
procession an elected emperor, and was followed by a 
multitude of the people, under the illusion that it was 
Britannicus. He entered the camp, promised a dona¬ 
tive to the cohorts, was saluted emperor, and pro¬ 
nounced before the senate, in honour of Claudius, an 
oration of fulsome panegyric composed by his precep¬ 
tor Seneca. Agrippina soon endeavoured to obtain 
the chief management of public affairs ; and her vin¬ 
dictive and cruel temper would have hurried Nero, at 
the commencement of his reign, into acts of violence 
and bloodshed, if her influence had not been counter¬ 
acted by Seneca and Burrus, to whom Nero had in¬ 
trusted the government of the state. Through their 
counsels the first five years of Nero’s reign were dis¬ 
tinguished by justice and clemency ; and an anecdote 
is related of him, that, having on one occasion to sign 
an order for the execution of a malefactor, he ex¬ 
claimed, “ Vfould that I could not write {Sueton., 
Vit. Ner., 10.) He discouraged public informers, 
refused the statues of gold and silver which were 
offered him by the senate and people, and used every 
art to ingratiate himself with the latter. But his moth¬ 
er was enraged to find that her power over him be¬ 
came weaker every day, and that he constantly disre 
garded her advice and refused her requests. His neg¬ 
lect of his wife Octavia, and his criminal love of Acte, 
882 


a woman of low birth, still farther widened the bread* 
between him and his parent. She frequently address¬ 
ed him in the most contemptuous language; remimi- 
ed him that he owed his elevation solely to her, and 
threatened that she would inform the soldiers of the 
manner in which Claudius had met his end, and 
would call upon them to support the claims of Bri¬ 
tannicus, the son of the late emperor. The threats oJ 
his mother only served to hasten the death of Britan¬ 
nicus, whose murder forms the commencement of 
that long catalogue of crimes which afterward dis 
graced the reign of Nero. But while the manage 
ment of public affairs appears, from the testimony of 
most historians, to have been wisely conducted by 
Burrus and Seneca, Nero indulged in private in the 
most shameless dissipation and profligacy. He was 
accustomed, in company with other young men of his 
own age, to sally into the streets of Rome at night, 
in order to rob and maltreat passengers, and even to 
break into private houses and take away the properly 
of their owners. But these extravagances were com¬ 
paratively harmless; his love for Poppsea, whom he 
had seduced from Otho, led him into more serious 
crimes. Poppsea, who was ambitious of sharing the 
imperial throne, perceived that she could not hope to 
attain her object while Agrippina was alive, and, ac¬ 
cordingly, induced Nero to consent to the murdei of 
his mother. The entreaties of Poppsea appear to 
have been supported by the advice of Burrus and Sen¬ 
eca ; and the philosopher did not hesitate to palliate 
or justify the murder of a mother by her son. {Tacit., 
Ann., 14, 11.— Quintil., 8, 5.) — In the eighth year 
of his reign, Nero lost his best counsellor, Burrus; 
and Seneca had the wisdom to withdraw from the 
court, where his presence had become disliked, and 
where his enormous wealth was calculated to excite 
the envy even of the emperor. About the same time 
Nero divorced Octavia and married Poppsea, and soon 
after put to death the former on a false accusation of 
adultery and treason. In the tenth year of his reign, 
A.D. 64, Rome was almost destroyed by fire. Of 
the fourteen districts into which the city was divided, 
four only remained entire. The fire originated at that 
part of the Circus which was contiguous to the Pala¬ 
tine and Coelian Hills, and raged with the greatest fu¬ 
ry for six days and seven nights ; and, after it was 
thought to have been extinguished, it burst forth again, 
and continued for two days longer. Nero appears to 
have acted on this occasion with the greatest liberal¬ 
ity and kindness; the city was supplied with provis¬ 
ions at a very moderate price ; and the imperial gar¬ 
dens were thrown open to the sufferers, and buildings 
erected for their accommodation. But these acts of 
humanity and benevolence were insufficient to screen 
him from the popular suspicion. It was generally be¬ 
lieved that he had set fire to the city himself, and 
some even reported that he had ascended the top of 
a high tower in order to witness the conflagration, 
where he amused himself with singing the Destruction 
of Troy. From many circumstances, however, it ap¬ 
pears improbable that Nero was guilty of this crime. 
His guilt, indeed, is expressly asserted by Suetonius 
and Dio Cassius, but Tacitus admits that he was not 
able to determine the truth of the accusation. In or¬ 
der, however, to remove the suspicions of the people, 
Nero spread a report that the Christians we:e the au¬ 
thors of the fire, and numbers of them, accordingly, 
were seized and put to death. Their execution serv¬ 
ed as an amusement to the people. Some were cov¬ 
ered with skins of wild beasts, and were torn to pie¬ 
ces by dogs; others were crucified; and severa. 
were smeared with pitch and other combustible rna 
terials, and burned in the imperial gardens in th 
night: “ Whence,” says the historian, “ pity arose fo 
the guilty (though they deserved the severest punish 
rnents), since they were put to death, not for the dub 




NERO. 


IN E R 


t<c good, but to gratify the cruelty of a single man.” 
yTacit., Ann., 15, 44.)—In the following year, A.D. 
55, a powerful conspiracy was formed for the purpose 
of placing Piso upon the throne, but it was discovered 
by Nero, and the principal conspirators were put to 
death. Among others who suffered on this occasion 
were Lucan and Seneca ; but the guilt of the latter 
is doubtful. In the same year Poppaea died, in con¬ 
sequence of a kick which she received from her hus¬ 
band while she was in an advanced state of pregnan¬ 
cy.—During the latter part of his reign, Nero was 
principally engaged in theatrical performances, and in 
contending for the prizes at the public games. He 
had previously appeared as an actor on the Roman 
stage ; and he now visited in succession the chief cit¬ 
ies of Greece, and received no less than 1800 crowns 
for his victories in the public Grecian games. On 
his return to Italy he entered Naples and Rome as 
a conqueror, and was received with triumphal hon¬ 
ours. But while he was engaged in these extrava¬ 
gances, Vindex, who commanded the legions in Gaul, 
declared against his authority; and his example was 
speedily followed by Galba, who commanded in Spain. 
The praatorian cohorts espoused the cause of Galba, 
and the senate pronounced sentence of death against 
Nero, who had fled from Rome as soon as he heard 
of the revolt of the praetorian guards. Nero, how¬ 
ever, anticipated the execution of the sentence which 
had been passed against him, by requesting one of 
his attendants to put him to death, after making an 
ineffectual attempt to do so with his own hands. He 
died A.D. 68, in the 32d year of his age, and the 14th 
of his reign.—It is difficult to form a correct estimate 
of the character of this emperor. That he was a li¬ 
centious voluptuary, and that he scrupled at commit¬ 
ting no crimes in order to gratify his lust or strength¬ 
en his power, is sufficiently proved ; ,iut that he was 
such a monster as Suetonius and Dio have described 
him, may reasonably admit of a doubt. The posses¬ 
sion of absolute power at so early an age tended to 
call forth all the worst passions of human nature, 
while the example and counsels of his mother Agrip¬ 
pina must have still farther tended to deprave his 
mind. Though he put to death his adoptive brother, 
his wife, and his mother, his character appears to have 
been far from sanguinary ; his general administration 
was wise and equitable, and he never equalled, in his 
worst actions, either the capricious cruelty of Caligula, 
or the sullen ferocity of Domitian. Nero was a lover 
of the arts, and appears to have possessed more taste 
than many of the emperors, who only resembled him 
in their profuse expenditure. The Apollo Belvidere 
is supposed by Thiersch ( Epochen , &c., p. 312) and 
some other writers to have been made for this em¬ 
peror. His government seems to have been far from 
unpopular. He was anxious to relieve the people 
from oppressive taxes, and to protect the provinces 
from the rapacity of the governors ; and it may be 
mentioned as an instance of his popularity, that there 
were persons who for many years decked his tomb 
with spring and summer flowers, and that, in conse¬ 
quence of a prevalent rumour that he had escaped 
from death, several impostors at various times as¬ 
sumed the name of Nero, and gave no small trouble 
to the reigning emperors. (Tacit., Hist., 1, 2.— Id., 
ib., 2, 8.— Sueton., Vit. Ner., 57.— Casaubon, ad Sue- 
ton., 1. c.) During the reign of Nero the Roman em¬ 
pire enjoyed, in general, a profound state of peace. 
In the East the Parthians were defeated by Corbulo ; 
and in the West, the Britons, who had risen in arms 
under Boadicea, were again reduced to subjection un¬ 
der Suetonius Paulinus. (Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 
16, p. 147, scq.) —It may not be amiss, before con¬ 
cluding this article, to make some mention of Ne¬ 
ro’s celebrated “Golden House” ( Aurea Domus). 
The only description on record of this costly struc- I 


ture is that of Suetonius: “ In nothing,” says this 
writer, “was Nero so ruinous as in building. H<» 
erected a mansion extending from the Palatine as t&i 
as the Esquilise. At first he called it his ‘House of 
Passage,’ but afterward, when it had been destroyed 
by fire and restored again, he gave* it the name of his 
‘ Golden House.’ To form an idea of its extent and 
magnificence, it may suffice to state the following par¬ 
ticulars. The vestibule admitted his colossal statue, 
which was 120 feet high : the building was on so 
large a scale, that it had a triple portico a mile long, 
also, an immense pool like a sea, enclosed by build¬ 
ings presenting the appearance of towns. There were, 
moreover, grounds laid out for tillage and for vine¬ 
yards, and for pasturage and woods, stocked with a 
vast number of every description 6f cattle and wild 
animals. In other respects, everything was overlaid 
with gold, embellished with gems and with mother-of- 
pearl. The ceilings of the banqueling-rooms were 
fretted into ivory coffers made to turn, that flowers 
might be showered down upon the guests, and also 
furnished with pipes for discharging perfumes. The 
principal banqueting-room was round, and by a per¬ 
petual motion, day and night, was made to revolve 
after the manner of the universe.” (Sueton., Vit. 
Ner., c. 31.) When the structure was completed, 
Nero is said to have declared “ that he at length had 
a house fit for a human being to live in” (se quasi 
hominem tandem habitare ccepisse. — Sueton., 1. c.\ 
Various explanations have been given of the way in 
which the contrivance was effected in the case of the 
principal banqueting-room. Donatus makes it a hol¬ 
low globe, fixed inside a square room, and turning on 
its own axis ; and he introduces the guests by a door 
near the axis, “ where there is the least motion !” 
(Donat., de Urb. Vet., lib. 3.— ap. Grcev. Tkes., vol. 
3, p. 680.) Dr. Adam (Rom. Ant., p 491) thinks 
that the ceiling was made “ to shift and exhibit new 
appearances as the different courses or dishes were 
removed but this does not explain “ the perpetual 
motion, day and night, after t-he manner of the uni¬ 
verse.” Nero’s architects, Severus and Celer. cer¬ 
tainly deserve the mention of their names. (Tacit., 
Ann., 15,42.) Tacitus remarks, that “ the gems and 
the gold which this house contained were not so 
much a matter of wonder (being quite common at that 
period) as the fields and pools ; the woods, too, in one 
direction, forming a kind of solitude; while here, 
again, were open spaces with commanding views.” 
(Tacit., 1. c .)—The house of Nero and the palace of 
the Caesars must not, however, be confounded. They 
were evidently two distinct things. (Tacit., Ann., 15, 
39. — Burgess, Antiquities of Rome, vol. 2, p. 172, 
seq.) —II. A Roman consul. (Vid. Claudius III.)— 
III. Caesar, son of Germanicus and Agrippina. He 
married Julia., daughter of Drusus, the son of Tibe¬ 
rius. By the wicked arts of Sejanus he w'as banished 
to the isle of Pontia, and there put to death. (Tacit., 
Ann., 4, 59, seq.—Sueton , Vit. Tib., 54.) 

Neronia, a name given to Artaxata by Tiridates, 
who had been restored to his kingdom by Nero. (Vid. 
Artaxata.) 

Nertobriga, I. a city of Hispania Baetica, some 
distance to the west of Corduba. It was also called 
Concordia Julia, and is now Valera la Vieja. (Polyb., 
35, 2.— Ukert, Geogr., vol. 2, p. 381.) In Polybius 
it is written ’E pKofjpLxa by a mistake of the copyists, 
the N being omitted probably on account of the prece¬ 
ding rrjv. (Compare Schweigh. ad Appian., 6, 48, 
p. 260.) On D’Anville’s map this place is set down 
within the limits of Lusitania—II. A city of Hispania 
Tarraconensis, in the territory of the Celtiberi,. be 
tween Bilbilis and Caesaraugusta. It is now Almunia. 
( Florez , 2, 17.— Appian, 6, 50.— Itin. Ant., p.437, 
439.— Ukert, Geogr., vol. 2, p. 400.) Casaubon (ad 
Polyb., fragm., 35, 2) alters ’O profiprya into N epr6" 



NE S 


N E S 


tpiya, but incorrectly, since the place meant is probably 
the Areobriga of the Itinerary. As regards the termi¬ 
nation of the name Nertobriga, consult remarks under 
tire article Mesembria. ( Ukert, l. c .) 

Nerva, Marcus Cocceius, the thirteenth Roman 
emperor, was born at Narnia, in Umbria, A.D. 27 ac¬ 
cording to Eutropius (8, 1), or A.D. 32 according to 
Dio Cassius (68, 4). His family originally came from 
Crete ; but several of his ancestors rose to the highest 
honours in the Roman state. His grandfather Coc¬ 
ceius Nerva, who was consul A.D. 22, and was a 
great favourite of the Emperor Tiberius, was one of 
the most celebrated jurists of his age. We learn from 
Tacitus that this individual put an end to his own 
life. {Ann., 6, 28.)—Nerva, the subject of the pres¬ 
ent sketch, is first mentioned in history as a favourite 
of Nero, who bestowed upon him triumphal honours, 
A.D. 66, when he was praetor elect. The poetry of 
Nerva, which is mentioned with praise by Pliny and 
Martial, appears to have recommended him to the fa¬ 
vour of Nero. Nerva was employed in offices of trust 
and honour during the reigns of Vespasian and Titus, 
but he incurred the suspicion of Domitian, and was 
banished by him to Tarentum. On the assassination 
of Domitian, A.D. 96, Nerva succeeded to the sover¬ 
eign power, through the influence of Petronius Secun- 
dus, commander of the Praetorian cohorts, and of Par- 
thenius, the chamberlain of the palace. The mild and 
equitable administration of Nerva is acknowledged and 
praised by all ancient writers, and forms a striking 
contrast to the sanguinary rule of his predecessor. 
He discouraged all informers, recalled the exiles from 
banishment, relieved the people from some oppressive 
taxes, and granted toleration to the Christians. Many 
instances of his liberality and clemency are recorded 
by his contemporary, the younger Pliny ; he allowed 
no senator to be put to death during his # reign ; and he 
practised the greatest economy, in order to relieve the 
wants of the poorer citizens. But his impartial ad¬ 
ministration of justice met with little favour from the 
Prastorian cohorts, who had been allowed by Domitian 
to indulge in excesses of every kind. Enraged at the 
loss of their benefactor and favourite, they compelled 
Nerva to deliver into their hands Parthenius and their 
0 own commander Petronius, both of whom they put to 
death. The excesses of his own guards convinced 
Nerva that the government of the Roman empire re¬ 
quired greater energy both of body and mind than he 
possessed, and he accordingly adopted Trajan as his 
successor, and associated him with himself in the sov¬ 
ereignty. Nerva died A.D. 98, after a reign of sixteen 
months and nine days. {Dio Cass., 68, 1, seqq. — 
Pliny, Paneg., c. 11.—Id. ib., c. 89.— -Aurel. Viet., 
c. 12.— Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 16, p. 149.) 

Nervii, a warlike people of Belgic Gaul, whose 
country lay on both sides of the Scaldis or Scheldt, 
near the sources of that river; afterward Hainaudt and 
Nord. Their original capital was Bagacum, now Ba- 
ma; but afterward Camaracum {Cambray) and Tur- 
nacum ( Tournay) became their chief cities towards 
the end of the fourth century. ( Cces., B. G., 5, 39.— 
Plin., 4, 17.) 

Nesis {is or idis), now Nisida, an island on the 
coast of Campania, between Puteoli and Neapolis, and 
within a short distance of the shore. Cicero mentions 
it as a favourite residence of his friend Brutus. ( Ep. 
ad Att., 16, 1.) 

Nessus, I, a centaur, who attempted the honour of 
Deianira. {Vid. De’ianira.)—II. A river of Thrace, 
more correctly the Nestus. ( Vid. Nestus.) 

Nestor, son of Neleus and Chloris, nephew of Pe- 
lias and grandson of Neptune. He was the youngest 
of twelve brothers, all of whom, with the single excep¬ 
tion of himself, were slain by Hercules, for having 
taken part against him with Augeas, king of Elis\ 
The tender years of Nestor saved him from sharing 
884 


their fate. {Vid. Neleus.) Nestor succeeded his la 
ther on the throne of Pylos, and subsequently, thougl 
at a very advanced age, led his forces to the Trojar 
war, in which he particularly distinguished himself 
among the Grecian chiefs by his eloquence and wis¬ 
dom. Indeed, by the picture drawn of him in the 
Iliad, as well as by the description contained in the 
Odyssey, of his tranquil, virtuous, and useful life, it 
would appear that Homer meant to display in his char¬ 
acter the greatest perfection of which human nature i? 
susceptible. The most conspicuous enterprises i» 
which Nestor bore a part prior to the Trojan war, 
were, the war of the Pylians against the Elians, antf 
the affair of the Lapithae and Centaurs. Some have 
also placed him among the Argonauts. Nestor mar 
ried Eurydice, the daughter of Clymenus (according to 
others, Anaxibia, the sister of Agamemnon), and had 
seven sons and two daughters. He returned in safety 
from the Trojan war, and ended his days in his native 
land.—Nestor is sometimes called the “ Pylian sage,” 
from his native city Pylos. He is also styled by Homer 
“ the Gerenian,” an epithet commonly supposed to 
have been derived from the Messenian town of Gere- 
nia, in winch he is said to have been educated {Heync, 
ad II., 2, 336), although others refer it to his advanced 
age {yypaq .—Compare Schwenck, Andeut., p. 181). 
Homer makes Nestor, at the time of the T/ojan war, to 
have survived two generations of men, 'and to be then 
living among a third. This would give his age at about 
seventy years and upward. ( Heyne, ad II., 1, 250.) 

Nestorius, a Syrian by birth, who became patriarch 
of Constantinople A.D. 428, under the reign of The¬ 
odosius II. He showed himself very zealous against 
the Arians and other sects ; but, after some time, a 
priest of Antioch named Anastasius, who had followed 
Nestorius to Constantinople, began to preach that 
there were two persons in Jesus Christ, and that the 
Word or divinity had not become man, but had de¬ 
scended on the man Jesus, born of the Virgin Mary ; 
and that the two natures became morally united, as it 
were, but not hypostatically joined i» one person; and 
that, when Jesus died, it was the human person, and 
not the divinity, that suffered. This doctrine being 
not only not discountenanced, but actually supported 
by Nestorius, was the origin of what is termed the 
Nestorian schism. Nestorius refused to allow to the 
Virgin Mary the title of Theotokos (0 eoronog), or 
Mother of God, but allowed her that of Christotokos 
{XpioToroKoq), or Mother of Christ. He met, of 
course, with numerous opponents, and the controversy 
occasioned great disturbances in Constantinople. Cyr- 
ill, bishop of Alexandrea in Egypt, with his character¬ 
istic violence, anathematized Nestorius, who, in his 
turn, anathematized Cyrill, whom he accused of degra¬ 
ding the divine nature, and making it subject to the 
infirmities of the human nature. The Emperor Theo¬ 
dosius convoked a general council at Ephesus to de¬ 
cide upon the question, A.D. 431. This council, 
which was attended by 210 bishops, condemned the 
doctrine of Nestorius, who refused to appear before it, 
as many Eastern bishops, and John of Antioch ainono 
the rest, had not yet arrived. Upon this ttie council 
deposed Nestorius. Soon after, John of Antioch and 
his friends came, and condemned Cyrill as being guilty 
of the Apollinarian heresy. The emperor, being apl 
pealed to by both parties, after some hesitation sent foi 
Nestorius and Cyrill; but it appears that he was dis¬ 
pleased with what he considered pride and obstinacy 
in Nestorius, and he confined him in a monastery. 
But, as his name was still a rallying word for faction 
Theodosius banished him to the deserts of Theba’is ii 
Egypt, where he died. His partisans, however, spread 
over the East, and have continued to this day to* form 
a separate church, which is rather numerous, especially 
in Mesopotamia, where their patriarch resides at Diar 
bekr. The Nestorians, at one time, spread into Per 





NIC 


n r c 


sia, and thence to the coast of Coromandel , where the 
Portuguese found a community of them at St. Thome, 
whom they persecuted and compelled to turn Roman 
Catholics. (Doucin, Histoire du Nestorianisme, 1G98. 
—Assemani, Biblioth. Orient., vol. 4.— Encycl. Us. 
Knovol., vol. 16, p. 155.) 

Nestus (less correctly Nessus), a river of Thrace, 
forming the boundary between that country and Mace¬ 
donia in the time of Philip and Alexander.. This ar¬ 
rangement subsequently remained unchanged by the 
Romans on their conquest of the latter empire. ( Stra¬ 
bo, 331.— Liv., 45, 29.) Thucydides states that the 
river descended from Mount Iconius, whence the He- 
brus also derived its source (2, 96), and Herodotus 
informs us that it fell into the ^Egean Sea near Ab- 
dera (7, 109.—Compare Theophrast., Hist. PL, 3, 2). 
The same writer elsewhere remarks, that lions were 
to be found in Europe only between the Nestus and 
the Acheloiis of Acarnania (7, 126.— Pliny, 4, 11.— 
Mela, 2, 3). In the middle ages, the name of this 
river was corrupted into Mestus; and it is still called 
Mesto, or Cara-sou (Black River), by the Turks. 
( Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 308.) 

NauRi, a Scythian race, who appear to have been 
originally established towards the head waters of 
the rivers Tyras and Hypanis ( Dneisler and Bog). 
They appear also to have touched on the Bastarnian 
Alps, which would separate them from the Agathyrsi. 
(Herod., 4, 105.— Mela, 2, 1.— Plin., 4, 12.— Rennell, 
Geogr. of Herodotus , vol. 1, p. 112.) 

Nicaea, I. a city of India, founded by Alexander in 
commemoration of his victory over Porus. It was 
situate on the left bank of the Hydaspes, on the road 
from the modern Attock to Lahore, and just below the 
southern point of the island of Jamad. (Arrian, 5, 
9, 6.— Justin, 12, 8.— Curtius, 9, 4.— Vincent's Peri- 
qlus, p. 110.)—II. The capital of Bithynia, situate at 
the extremity of the lake Ascanius. Stephanus of 
Byzantium informs us, that it was first colonized by 
the Bottiasi, and was called Anchore (’A yx^PV)- 
Strabo, however, mentions neither of these circum¬ 
stances, but states that it was founded by Antigonus, 
son of Philip, who called it Antigonea. It subse¬ 
quently received the name of Nicaea from Lysimachus, 
in honour of his wife, the daughter of Antipater. 
(Strab., 565.) Nicaea was built in the form of a 
square, and the streets were drawn at right angles to 
each other, so that from a monument which stood near 
the gymnasium, it was possible to see the four gates 
of the city. (Strab., 1. c.) At a subsequent period, 
it became the royal residence of the kings of Bithynia, 
having superseded Nicomedea as the capital of the 
country. Pliny the younger makes frequent mention, 
in his Letters, of the city of Nicaea and its public 
buildings, which he had undertaken to restore, being 
at that time governor of Bithynia. (Ep., 10, 40.— 
lb., 10, 48, seqq) In the time of the Emperor Va- 
Jens, however, the latter city was declared the metrop¬ 
olis. (Dio Chrysost., Orat., 38.) Still Nicaea re r 
mained, as a place of trade, of the greatest impor¬ 
tance ; and from this city, too, all the great roads di¬ 
verged into the eastern and southern parts of Asia Mi¬ 
nor. (Mannert, Geogr., vol. G, pt. 3, p. 569, seqq.) 
Nicaea was the birthplace of Hipparchus the astrono¬ 
mer (Saidas, s. v. "Imrapxoc ), and also of Dio Cas¬ 
sius.—The present town of Isnik, as it is called by 
the Turks, has taken the place of the Bithynian city ; 
but, according to Leake, the ancient walls, towers, 
and gates are in tolerably good preservation. In most 
places they are formed of alternate courses of Roman 
tiles and large square stones, joined by a cement of 
great thickness. The Turkish town, however, was 
never so large as the Grecian Nicsea, and it seems to 
have been almost entirely constructed of the remains 
of that city. (Leake's Journal, p. 10, seq. — Cra¬ 
mer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 181.)—Nicaea is famous 


in ecclesiastical history as the seat of the first an<s 
most important oecumenical council held in the Chris¬ 
tian church. It was convened by the Emperor Con 
stantine for the purpose of settling the Arian contro¬ 
versy, after he had in vain attempted to reconcile 
Arius and Alexander, the leaders of the two opposing 
parties in that dispute. The council met in the. year 
325 A.D., and sat probably about two months. It 
was attended by bishops from nearly every part of the 
East; few, however, came from Europe, and scarcely 
any from Africa, exclusive of Egypt. According to 
Eusebius, there were more than 250 bishops present, 
besides presbyters, deacons, and others. Some writers 
give a larger number. The account generally follow¬ 
ed is that of Socrates, Theodoret, and Epiphanius, 
who state that 318 bishops attended the council. It 
is uncertain who presided, but it is generally supposed 
that the president was Hosius, bishop of Corduba 
(Cordova) in Spain. Constantine himself was present 
at its meetings. The chief question debated in the 
council of Nice was the Arian heresy. Eusebius of 
Caesarea proposed a creed which the Arian party 
wquld have been willing to sign, but it was rejected 
by the council, and another creed was adopted as im- 
bodying the orthodox faith. The most important fea¬ 
ture in this creed is the application of the word con- 
substantial (oyoovoioq) to the Son, to indicate the na¬ 
ture of his union with the Father; this word had been 
purposely omitted in the creed proposed by Eusebius 
The creed agreed upon by the council was signed by 
all the bishops present except two, Secundus, bishop 
of Ptolema'is, and Theonas, bishop of Marmarica. 
Three others hesitated for some time, but signed at 
last, namely, Eusebius of Nicomedea, Theognis of Ni¬ 
caea, and Maris of Chalcedon. The council excom¬ 
municated Arius, who was immediately afterward ban¬ 
ished by the emperor. The decision of this council 
had not the effect of restoring tranquillity to the East¬ 
ern church, for the Arian controversy was still warmly 
carried on; but it has supplied that mode of stating 
the doctrine of the Trinity (as far as relates to the 
Father and the Son) in which it has ever since been 
received by the orthodox. The time for the celebra¬ 
tion of Easter was also fixed by this council in fa¬ 
vour of the practice of the Western church. It also 
decided against the schism of Meletius. The only 
documents which have been handed down to us from 
this council are, its creed, its synodical epistle, and its 
twenty canons.—The second council of Nice, held in 
the year 786, declared the worship of images to be 
lawful. (Lardner's Credibility, pt. 2, c. 71. — En¬ 
cycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 16, p. 207.) — III. A city of 
Liguria, on the coast, one geographical mile to the east 
of the mouth of the Varus. It was situate on the 
river Paulon, now Paglione. Nicaea was .of Milesian 
origin, and was established in this quarter as a trading- 
place with the Ligurians. The Romans had no such 
inducement to establish themselves in these parts, and 
therefore, under the Roman sway, the city of Nicaea is 
seldom spoken of. The modern name is Nizza, or, 
as we term it, Nice. (Plin., 3, 5.— Mela, 2, 5.) 

Nicander, a physician, poet, and grammarian, of 
whose life very few particulars are found in ancient 
authors, and even those few are doubtful and contra¬ 
dictory. Upon the whole, it seems most probable that 
he lived about 135 B.C. in the reign of Attalus III., 
the last king of Pergamus, to whom he dedicated one 
of his poems which is no longer extant. (Suidas .— 
Eudoc., ap. Villois., vol. 1, p. 308. — Anon. Script., 
Vit. Nicand.) His native place, as he himself informs 
us, was Claros, a town of Ionia, near Colophon, 
whence he is commonly called Colophonius (Cic., de 
Orat , 1, 16), and he succeeded his father as heredi¬ 
tary priest of Apollo Clarius. (Eudoc., 1. c. — Anon 
Vit.) —He appears to have been rather a voluminous 
writer, as th# 3 titles of more than twenty of his works 

885 




NICANDER. 


NICANDER. 


nave been preserved; but of all these we possess at 
present only two in a perfect state, with a few frag¬ 
ments of some of the others. Both are poems. One 
is entitled Qypiaud (Theriaca), the other ’A.le!;i<pdpua- 
ua ( Alexipharmaca ).—The Theriaca consists of near¬ 
ly 1000 lines in hexameter verse, and treats of the 
wounds caused by different venomous animals, and 
the proper treatment of each. It is characterized by 
Haller ( Biblioth. Botan.) as “ longa, incondita, et 
nullius jidei farrago ,” but still we occasionally find 
some curious passages relating to natural history. 
We have in it, for example, an exact, but rather long 
description of the combat between the ichneumon and 
serpents, whose flesh this quadruped eats with impu¬ 
nity. He speaks of scorpions, which he divides into 
nine species, an arrangement adopted by some modern 
naturalists. Then come some curious observations on 
the effect of the venom of various kinds of serpents, 
each differing in the appearances and symptoms to 
which it gives rise. Nicander thought he had discov¬ 
ered that the poison of serpents is concealed in a 
membrane surrounding the teeth ; which is, after all, 
not very far removed from the true state of the c^se. 
He describes a species of serpents, named or/ip, which 
always assumes the colour of the ground over which 
it moves. (Compare Pliny, 8, 35 ; Aristotle, Mirah. 
Auscult., c. 178 ; and JSlian, N. A., 16, 40.) Ni¬ 
cander is the first, who distinguishes between the moth 
or night-butterfly, and that which flies by day, and he 
gives to the former the name of (puXaiva. He is one 
of the earliest writers also who mentions the sala¬ 
mander. This poem contains, too, a great number of 
popular fables, which were credited, however, at the 
time that Nicander wrote ; as, for example, that wasps 
are produced from horse-flesh in a putrid state, and 
bees from that of an ox. He likewise states that the 
bite of the field-mouse is poisonous, and also that the 
animal dies if it should fall into a wheel rut, both 
which circumstances are repeated by Pliny (8, 83) 
and HHian (H, A , 2, 37).—The Alexipharmaca is 
rather a shorter poem, written in the same metre, and 
may be considered as a sort of continuation of the 
Theriaca. Haller’s judgment on this work is as se¬ 
vere as that on the preceding. He says of it, “ De- 
scriptio vix ulla, symptomata fuse recensentur , el 
magna farrago et incondita plant.arum potissimum 
alexiphar mac arum subjicitur." Among the poisons 
of the animal kingdom he mentions the cantharis of 
the Greeks, which is not the Lytta Vesicatoria, but 
Meloe Chichorii. He speaks also of the buprestis 
(Carabus Bucidon ) ; of the blood of a bull; of coag¬ 
ulated milk in the stomach of mammiferous animals ; 
of the leech ( hirudo venenata') ; and of a species of 
gecko (cralhapuvdpa). Among the vegetable poisons 
we find the aconite, coriander (which has sometimes 
been fatal in Egypt), the hemlock, colchicum, henbane, 
and the different species of fungi, the growth of which 
Nicander attributes to fermentation. Of mineral poi¬ 
sons he mentions only white lead, a carbonate of lead 
and litharge, or protoxide of lead.—To counterbal¬ 
ance, in some degree, Haller’s unfavourable opinion of 
Nicander’s extant works, it ought in justice to be sta¬ 
ted, that his knowledge of natural history appears to 
be at least equal to that of other writers of his own or 
even a later age, while on the subject of poisons he 
was long considered a great authority. Galen several 
times quotes him; and Dioscorides, Aetius, and Jo¬ 
hannes Actuarius have borrowed from him largely.— 
“ Nicander’s general treatment of cases,” observes 
Dr. Adams, “ in as far as my knowledge and experi¬ 
ence enable me to form a judgment, is founded upon 
very rational principles ; and, in some instances, the 
correctness of his physiological views is such as can¬ 
not but command our admiration, considering the age 
in which i e lived. I hus, he states that poison is most 
f atal to a person when fasting, which clearly implies 
886 


his acquaintance with the fact that the vessels a'baorti 
most readily when in an empty state. This doctrine, 
which has been revived of late years by a celebrated 
French experimentalist as a new discovery, is alluded 
to not only by our author, but more fully by Celsus, 
Dioscorides, Paulus HCgineta, Avicenna, Avensoar, 
and Averrhoes. It was. no doubt, from his knowledge 
of this principle, that Nicander has nowhere recom¬ 
mended general bleeding, lest, by emptying the ves¬ 
sels, the absorption and its distribution over the sys¬ 
tem should be promoted. Hence subsequent writers 
on Toxicology, such, for example, as Paulus JEgineta 
and Avicenna, only approve of bleeding when the poi¬ 
son is diffused over the body; and a very late author¬ 
ity, Dr. Paris, is at great pains to enforce the impro¬ 
priety of venesection in the early stages before absorp¬ 
tion has taken place.—Nicander recommends cupping 
and the actual cautery as preservatives from absorption 
in cases of poisoned wounds, and both these modes of 
practice have been revived of late years with great en¬ 
comiums. The application of leeches to the vicinity 
of the wound, though not generally had recourse to 
now, seems a remedial measure deserving of trial.—In 
a word, the great merit of his practice is, that his rem¬ 
edies appear to have been administered upon gener¬ 
al principles, and that he did not put much trust in 
specifics. Of many of his medicines, indeed, no one 
nowadays can speak from personal experience, and it 
seems but reasonable to judge of them in the indulgent 
manner that Socrates did respecting the obscurer part 
of the philosophical system of Heraclitus : ‘ What I 
do understand of it,’ said he, with becoming modesty, 

‘ I find to be admirable, and therefore I take it for 
granted that what I do not understand is equally so.’ ” 
—With respect to Nicander’s merits as a poet, the 
most opposite opinions are to be found in both ancient 
and modern writers. In the Greek Anthology, Colophor, 
is congratulated for being the birthplace of Homer and 
Nicander (vol. 3, p. 270, ep. 567, ed. Brunch.). Cice¬ 
ro, in alluding to his “ Georgies ,” a poem not now ex¬ 
tant, praises the poetical manner in which he treats a 
subject of which he was entirely ignorant ( de Oral., 
I. 16) ; while Plutarch, on the other hand, says that 
the Theriaca only escapes being prose because it is 
put into metre, and will not allow it to be called a 
poem because there is nothing in it “ of fable or false¬ 
hood.” ( De Aud. Poet., c. 2.) This very point, 
however, Julius Caesar Scaliger thinks worthy of es¬ 
pecial commendation, and says, “ Magna ei laus quod 
ne quid ineptum aut inepte dicat." {Poet., lib. 5, e. 
15.) He goes on to praise the accuracy of his ex¬ 
pressions and versification, and declares that among all 
the Greek authors a more polished poet is hardly to be 
found. M. Merian, on the other hand, in an essay 
“ Comment les Sciences influent dans la Poesie ” 
{Mem. de VAcad. Royal de Berlin, 1776, p. 423), 
mentions Nicander, to show the antipathy that exists 
between the language of poetry and the subjects of 
which he treated. He calls him “ a grinder of anti¬ 
dotes, who sang of scorpions, toads, and spiders,” and 
considers his poem as fit only for the apothecaries.— 
Nicander’s poetical genius, in all probability, was a 
good deal cramped by the prosaic nature of the sub¬ 
jects which he chose for his theme ; and we may fair¬ 
ly say, that his writings contain quite as much poetry 
as could be expected from such unpromising materials. 
As for his style and language, probably every one who 
has ever read half a dozen lines of either of his poems 
will agree with Bentley, who says that he studiously- 
affected obsolete and antiquated words, and must have 
been an obscure writer even to his contemporaries. 
(Museum Criticum, vol. 1, p 371.)—-The best edition 
of the Alexipharmaca is that of Schneider, Mala, 
1792, Svo. The Theriaca, by the same editor, and 
equally valuable, appeared in 1816, Lips., Svo. The 
Theriaca was also published the same year in tlw* 





NIC 


NICE PHOIIUS. 


Museum Criticum, with Bentley’s emendations (vol. 
I, p. 370 y.seqq.). There is extant a Greek paraphrase, 
tn prose, of both poems (printed in Schneider’s edi¬ 
tions), by Eutecnius the sophist, of whom nothing is 
known except that he has done the same to Oppian’s 
Cynegetica and Halieutica. (Encyclop. Us. Knowl., 
vol. 16, p. 203, seq.) 

Nicator (N LH&Twp, i. e., “ Victor") a surname as¬ 
sumed by Seleucus I. ( Vid . Seleucus.) 

Nicephorium (N iKTjtpoptov), a strongly-fortified city 

Mesopotamia, south of Charraa, and at the confluence 
of the Billichia and Euphrates. Alexander is said to 
have selected the site, which was an extremely advan¬ 
tageous one. (Plin., 6, 26;— Isidor., Charac., p. 3.) 
The name remained until the fourth century, when 
it disappeared from history, and, in- the account of Ju¬ 
lian’s expedition, a city named Callinicum (Kc/t/tm- 
kov) is mentioned, which occupies the same place 
where Nicephorium had previously stood. This con¬ 
formity of position, and sudden change of name, lead 
directly to tlie supposition that Nicephorium and Cal- 
linicum were one and the same place, and that the 
earlier appellation (“ Victory-bringing ,” vikt] and cpepu) 
had merely been exchanged for one of the same gen¬ 
eral import (“ Fair-conquering ,” Kakoq and viarj). 
Hence we may reject the statement sometimes made, 
that the city received its later name from Seleucus 
Callinicus as its founder ( Ckron. Alexandra Olymp. 
134, 1), as well as what Valesius ( ad Amm. Marcell., 
23, 6) cites from Libanius ( Ep. ad Anstanet.), that 
Nicephorium changed its name in honour of the soph¬ 
ist Callinicus, who died there.—Marcellinus describes 
Callinicum as a strong place, and carrying on a great 
trade (“ munimentum robustum, et commercandi opimi- 
to.te gratis sim,urn"). Justinian repaired and strength¬ 
ened the fortifleations. (Compare Theodoret, Hist, 
ttelig., c. 26.) At a subsequent period, the name of 
the city again underwent a change. The Emperor 
Leo, who about 466 A.D. had contributed to adorn 
the place, ordered it to be called Leontopolis , and 
under this title Hierocles enumerates it among the 
cities of Osroene. ( Synecdcm ., ed. Wesseling, p. 
715.) Stephanus of Byzantium asserts that Nicepho¬ 
rium, at a later period, changed its name to Constan- 
tina ; but this is impossible, as the city of Constantina 
belongs to quite a different part of the country. D’An- 
ville fixes the site of Nicephorium near the modern 
Racca , in which he is followed by subsequent writers. 
(Mannert , vol. 5, pt. 2, p. 286, seqq.) 

Nicephorius, a river of Armenia Major, the same 
with the Centritis. (Vid. Centritis.) 

Nicephoros, I. an emperor of the East, was origi¬ 
nally Logotheta , or intendant of the finances, during 
the reign of the Empress Irene and her son Constan¬ 
tine VI., in the latter part of the eighth century. Irene, 
having deprived her son of sight, usurped the throne, 
and reigned alone for six years, when a conspiracy broke 
out against her, headed by Nicephoros, who was pro¬ 
claimed emperor, and crowned in the church of St. 
Sophia, A.D. 802. He banished Irene to the island 
of Lesbos, where she lived and died in a state of great 
destitution. The troops in Asia revolted against Ni- 
cephorus, who showed himself avaricious and cruel, 
and they proclaimed the patrician Bardanes emperor; 
but Nicephorus defeated and seized Bardanes, confined 
him in a monastery, and deprived him of sight. The 
Empress Irene had consented to pay an annual tribute 
to the Saracens, in order to stop their incursions into 
the territories of the empire. Nicephorus refused to 
continue this payment, and wrote a message of defiance 
to the Caliph Haroun al Raschid. The caliph collect¬ 
ed a vast army, which devastated Asia Minor, and de¬ 
stroyed the city of Heraclea on the coast of the Eux- 
ine, and Nicephorus was obliged to sue for peace, and 
pay tribute as Irene had done. In an attack which he 
subsequently made on the Bulgarians, he was utterly 


defeated by them, and lost his life A.D. 811. His 
son Stauracius succeeded him, but reigned only six 
months, and was succeeded by Michael Rhangabe, 
master of the palace.—II. The second emperor of the 
name, surnamed Phocas (but who must not be con¬ 
founded with the usurper Phocas, who reigned in the 
beginning of the seventh century), was descended of 
a noble Byzantine family, and distinguished himself 
as a commander in the field. After the death of Ro- 
manus II., A.D. 950, his widow Theophano, who was 
accused of having poisoned him, reigned as guardian 
to her infant son ; but, finding herself insecure on the 
throne, she invited Nicephorus to come to Constan¬ 
tinople, and promised him her hand. Nicephorus 
came, married Theophano, and assumed the title of 
Augustus, A.D. 963. He repeatedly attacked the 
Saracens, and drove them out of Cilicia and part of 
Syria. In 968, Otho I., emperor of Germany, sent an 
embassy to Nicephorus, who received it in an uncivil 
manner. His avarice made him unpopular, and his 
wife, the unprincipled Theophano, having formed an 
intrigue with John Zimisces, an Armenian officer, 
conspired with him against her husband. Zimisces, 
with his confederates, was introduced at night into the 
bedchamber of the emperor, and murdered him, A.D. 
969.—We have remaining, at the present day, a por¬ 
tion of a military work under the name of this em¬ 
peror. It is entitled Ilept napaSpopf/p tt oXepov, “ Of 
war with light troops," making known the mode of car¬ 
rying on war in mountainous countries, as practised in 
the tenth century. Hase has given the first 25 chap¬ 
ters of this work, at the end of his edition of Leo Dia- 
conus, these being the only ones contained in three 
MSS. of the Royal Library at Paris. A MS. at Hei¬ 
delberg has 30 chapters more ; but Hase believes that 
they do not belong to this work, or, rather, that they 
form part of a second work on the same subject. It 
is thought, however, that the production first mention¬ 
ed appeared after the death of Phocas, and that the 
compiler, or perhaps author of it, lived in the time of 
Basilius II. and Constantine VIII. ( Scholl, Gesck. 
Gr. Lit., vol. 3, p. 350.)—III. The third emperor of 
the name, surnamed Botoniates, was an old officer of 
some military reputation in the Byzantine army in 
Asia, and revolted against the Emperor Michael Ducas, 
A.D. 1078. With a body of troops, chiefly composed 
of Turkish mercenaries, he marched to Chalcedon; 
upon which Michael resigned the purple, and Nicephorus 
was proclaimed emperor at Constantinople. Michael 
was sent to a monastery with the title of Archbishop of 
Ephesus. Another aspirant to the throne, Nicephorus 
Bryennius, was defeated, taken prisoner, and deprived 
of sight. A fresh insurrection, led by Basilacius, was 
likewise pqt down by the troops of Nicephorus, un¬ 
der the command of Alexius Comnenus. Alexius him¬ 
self, who had an hereditary claim to the throne, was 
soon after proclaimed emperor by the soldiers. Hav 
ing entered Constantinople by surprise, he seized Ni¬ 
cephorus, and banished him to a monastery, where he 
died a short time after, A.D. 1081. ( Encyclop. Us. 

Knowl., vol. 16, p. 207.)—IV. Basilaces, a teacher of 
rhetoric at Constantinople during the latter half of the 
eleventh century. He has left-some fables, tales, and 
epopees ; for example, Joseph accused by Potiphar’s 
wife ; David in the cave with Saul; David pursued by 
Absalom, &c. These productions are contained in 
the collection of Leo AUatius.—V. Bryennius, a na¬ 
tive of Orestias, in Macedonia, and son-in-law to the 
Emperor Alexius I. (Comnenus), who conferred upon 
him the title of UawnepaebaaTop, equivalent to that 
of Cczsar. In 1096 A.D., his father-in-law intrusted 
to him the defence of Constantinople against Godfrey 
of Bouillon. In 1108 he negotiated the peace with 
Boemond, prince of Antioch. At the death of Alexius 
in 1118, Irene, widow of the deceased, and Anna 
Comnena, wife of Bryennius, wished him to ascend 

887 



NICEPHORUS. 


NIC 


tne throne; but his own indifference on this point, and 
the measures taken by John, the son of Alexius, de¬ 
feated their plans. It was on this occasion that Anna 
Comnena passionately exclaimed, that nature had mis¬ 
taken the two sexes, and had endowed Bryennius with 
the soul of a woman. He died in 1137. At the 
order of the Empress Irene, Bryennius undertook, du¬ 
ring the life of Alexius, a history of the house of Com- 
nenus, which he entitled "Til?; 'laropiag, “Materials 
for History ,” and which he distributed into four books. 
He commenced with Isaac Comnenus, the first prince 
of this line, who reigned from 1057 to 1059 A.D., 
without being able to transmit the sceptre to his fam¬ 
ily, into whose hands it did not pass until 1081, when 
Alexius I. ascended the throne. Nicephorus stops at 
the period of his father-in-law’s accession to the throne, 
after having given his history while a private individ¬ 
ual. He had at ms disposal excellent materials ; but 
his impartiality as an historian is not very highly es¬ 
teemed. In point of diction, his work holds a very 
favourable rank among the productions of the Lower 
Empire. It was continued by Anna Comnena. ( Scholl, 
Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 6, p. 388.)—VI. Blemmida, a 
monk of the 13th century. He has left three works: 
“a Geographical Abridgment” (Teuypacpia cvvoutikt/), 
which is nothing but a prose metaphrase of the Periege- 
sis of Dionysius the Geographer: a work entitled “A 
Second History (or Description) of the Earth ” ( f E repa 
ioropia rrepi Tqg yVQ), in which he gives an account 
of the form and size of the earth, and of the different 
lengths of the day : and a third, “ On the Heavens and 
Earth, the Sun , Moon, Stars, Time, and Days" (ITepi 
Ovpavov nai yrjg, r H Xlov, 'Lehijvrjg, ’Aarepuv, Xpovov, 
Kai 'H yeptiv). In this last the author develops a sys¬ 
tem, according to which the earth is a plane. The 
first two were published by Spohn, at Leipzig, 1818, in 
4to, and by Manzi, from a MS. in the Barberini Library, 
Rom., 1819, 4to. Bernhardy has given the Metaphrase 
in his edition of Dionysius, Lips., 1828 ; the third is 
unedited. It is mentioned by Bredow in his Epistolee 
Parisienses. — VII. Surnamed Xanthopulus, lived 
»bout the middle of the 14th century. He wrote an 
Ecclesiastical History in 18 books, which, along with 
many useful extracts from writers whose productions 
are now lost, contains a great number of fables. This 
history extends from the birth of our Saviour to A.D. 
610. The arguments of five other books, which would 
carry it down to A.D. 911, are by a different writer. 
In preparing his work, Nicephorus availed himself of 
the library attached to the church of St. Sophia, and 
here he passed the greater part of his life. He has 
left also Catalogues, in Iambic verse, of the Greek 
emperors, the patriarchs of Constantinople, and the 
fathers of the church, besides other minor works. To 
this same writer is likewise ascribed a work contain¬ 
ing an account of the church of the Virgin, situate at 
certain mineral waters in Constantinople, and of the 
miraculous cures wrought by these.—The Ecclesias¬ 
tical History was edited by Ducseus (Fronton du Due), 
Paris, 1630, 2 vols. fol. The metrical Catalogues 
are to be found in the edition of the Epigrams of The- 
odorus Prodromus, published at Bale, 1536, 8vo. The 
account of the mineral waters, &c., appeared for the 
first time at Vienna in 1802, 8vo, edited by Pampe- 
reus.—VIII. Surnamed Chumnus, was Prcefectus Can- 
tclei ('O £7 ri tov Kavinhciov) under Andronicus II., 
surnamed Palasologus. The canicleus ( KavlK?iet,og ) 
was a small vessel filled with the red liquid with which 
the emperors used to sign their names to documents. 
His daughter Irene was married in 1304 to John Pa- 
lasologus, the eldest son of Andronicus, who, together 
with his younger brother Michael, had been associated 
with him in the empire by their father, A.D. 1295, 
and who died A.D. 1308, without issue. Nicephorus 
composed a number of works, which still remain un¬ 
edited They treat of rhetorical, philosophical, and 
888 


physical subjects. He wrote also two discourses, one 
addressed to Andronicus II., the other to Irene, to 
console them for the loss of a son and husband. His 
letters are also preserved. Disgusted with active life, 
Nicephorus became a monk, and took the name of 
Nathaniel. Creuzer (ad Plotin. de Pulcr., p. 400) 
makes him a native of Philippopolis ; but in this there 
is a double error : first, in ascribing to the father a let¬ 
ter written by his son Johannes ; and, secondly, in 
reading tov ^ihimrovnoheug instead of rip Onhinnov- 
rroheug, “ to the Bishop of Philippopolis .” ( Scholl, 

Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 3, p. 147.)—IX. Gregoras, a native 
of Heraclea, who wrote on grammatical, historical, 
and astronomical subjects. Andronicus II. appointed 
him chartophylax of the church, and in 1325 sent him 
on an embassy to the King of Seivia. Gregoras did 
not abandon his royal patron when dethroned by An- 
dronicus III., and it was he who, four years after this 
event, assisted at the deathbed of the fallen monarch. 
He showed himself a zealous opponent of the Palam- 
ites, a sect of fanatics who were throwing the church 
into confusion, but was condemned for this by the 
synod of Constantinople, A.D. 1351, at the instance of 
the patriarch Callistus, and confined in a conveht, 
where he ended his days.—His grammatical works- 
are in part unedited. He wrote also a Byzantine, or, 
as he calls it, Roman ('Pupa'inrj) History, in thirty- 
eight books, of which the first twenty-four alone, ex¬ 
tending from 1204 to 1331 A.D., have been published : 
the other books, which terminate at A.D. 1359, remain 
still unedited. Gregoras is vain, passionate, and par¬ 
tial : his style is affected, and overloaded with figures, 
especially hyperboles, and full of repetitions. The la¬ 
test edition of the history which had been published, 
was, until very recently, that of Boivin, Paris, 1702, 
2 vols. fol. It contained the first eleven books, with 
the Latin version of Wolff, and the succeeding thirteen, 
with a translation by the editor himself. It was to have 
been completed in two additional volumes, containing 
the last fourteen books, but these have never appeared. 
A new edition, however, of Gregoras, forms part of 
the Byzantine Historians at present in a course of pub¬ 
lication at Bonn. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 6. p, 
362, seqq.) There are also several works of Gregoras 
treating of Astronomy, but they are all unedited, except 
a treatise on the astrolabe, which appeared in a Latin 
translation at Paris in 1557, 12mo, edited by Valla. 
( Scholl , vol. 7, p. 65.) — X. A native of Constanti¬ 
nople, commonly surnamed the Patriarch, for distinc¬ 
tion’ sake. He was at first a notary, and afterward 
imperial secretary, which latter station he quitted for 
a convent, but was subsequently elevated to the see 
of Byzantium, A.D. 806. As one of the defenders of 
the worship of images, he was, in 815, compelled to 
take refuge in a monastery, where he ended his days, 
A.D. 828. He has left behind him two works : 1. A 
Chronicle or Chronographical Abridgment ( Xpovo - 
ypaepia), commencing with Adam and carried down to 
the period of the author’s own death, or, rather, some¬ 
what farther, since it was continued by an anonymous 
writer : 2. An Historical Compend, 'IcTopta cvvTopog, 
embracing the events that occurred from A.D. 602 to 
770. The latest edition of the Greek text of the 
Chronicle is that of Credner, Giessce, 1832, 4to. It 
was also given in Dindorf’s edition of Syncellus, Bonn., 
1829. The latest edition of the Compend is tha* of 
Petavius (Petau), Paris , 1648. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit 
Gr., vol. 6, p. 370, seqq ) 

Nicer or Nicar, now the Necker, a river of Ger¬ 
many, falling into the Rhine at the modern town of 
Manheim. (Amm Marcell., 28, 2.— Cluv., Germ., 
3, 225.— Pertz, Mon. Germ. Hist., 1, 361.) 

Niceratus, a physician mentioned by Dioscorides 
( Prcef ., lib. 1, p. 2, ed. Spreng.) as one of the followers 
of Asclepiades, and who attended particularly to mate¬ 
ria medica. None of his writings remain, but his pro* 




NIC 


N I C 


scr'ptions are several times mentioned by Galen (Op., 
ad. Kuhn, vol. 12, p. 634; vol. 13, p. 96, 98, 110, 
180, &c.; vol. 14, p. 197), and once by Pliny (32, 
31). We learn from C*lius Aurelianus ( Morb. Chron., 

1. 2, c. 5) that he wrote also on catalepsy. He flour¬ 
ished about 40 B.C. ( Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 16, 
p. 207.) 

Nicetas, I. Eugenianus, author of one of the poor¬ 
est of the Greek romances that have come down to us. 
Pic appears to have lived not long after Theodore Pro- 
dromus, whom, according to the title his work as 
given in a Paris manuscript, he selected for his model, 
lie wrote of the Loves of Drosilla and Chariclea. 
Boissonade gave to the world an edition of this ro¬ 
mance in 1819, Paris, 2 vols 12mo, respecting the 
merits of which, consult Hoffmann, Lex. Bibliogr., vol. 
3, p. 137.—II. Acominatus, surnamed Choniates, from 
his having been born at Chonae, or Colossae, in Phry¬ 
gia. He filled many posts of distinction at Constanti¬ 
nople, under the Emperor Isaac II. (Angelus). About 
A.D. 1189, he was appointed by the same monarch 
governor of Philippopolis, an office of which Alexius V. 
deprived him. He died A.D. 1216, at Nicasa, in Bi- 
thynia, to which city he had fled after the taking of 
Constantinople by the Latins. He wrote a History of 
the Byzantine Emperors, in twenty-one books, com¬ 
mencing A.D. 1118 and ending A.D. 1206. It forms, 
in fact, ten different works of various sizes, all imbodied 
under one general head.—Nicetas possessed talent, 
judgment, and an enlightened taste for the arts, and 
would be read with pleasure if he did not occasionally 
indulge too much in a satirical vein, and if his style were 
not so declamatory and poetical. The sufferings of 
Constantinople, which passed under his own eyes, appear 
to have imbittered his spirit, and he is accused of be¬ 
ing one of the writers who contributed most to kindle 
a feeling of hatred between the Greeks and the nations 
of the West.—We have a life of Nicetas by his broth¬ 
er Michael Acominatus, metropolitan of Athens. It 
is entitled Monodio.i, and has never yet been published 
in the original Greek ; a Latin translation of it is given 
in the Biblioth. Patrum Maxim. Lugd., vol. 22.—The 
latest edition of Nicetas was that of Paris, 1647, fol. 
A new edition, however, has lately appeared from 
the scholars of Germany, as forming part of the Byzan¬ 
tine collection, now in a course of publication at Bonn. 
—III. An ecclesiastical writer, who flourished during 
the latter half of the eleventh century. He was at first 
bishop of Serrse in Macedonia (whence he is sometimes 
surnamed Serrariensis), and afterward metropolitan of 
Heraclea in Thrace. He is known by his commentary 
on sixteen discourses of St. Gregory Nazianzen, and by 
other works connected with theology and sacred criti¬ 
cism. He was the author, likewise, of some gram¬ 
matical productions, of which, however, only a small 
remnant has come down to us, in the shape of a trea¬ 
tise “ on the Names of the Gods” (Eif ra ovoyara tu>i> 
$£wi>), an edition of which was given by Creuzer, in 
1187, from the Leipzig press.—IV\ David, a philoso¬ 
pher, historian, and rhetorician, sometimes confound¬ 
ed with the preceding, but who flourished two centu¬ 
ries earlier. He was bishop of Dadybra in Paphlago- 
nia, and wrote, among other things, an explanatory 
work on the poems of St. Gregory Nazianzen, and a 
paraphrase of the epigrams of St. Basil. An edition 
of these works appeared at Venice in 1563, 4to. 

Nicia, a small river of Cisalpine Gaul, rising in the 
territory of the Ligures Apuani, and falling into the Po 
at Brixellum. The ^Emilian Way crossed it a little be¬ 
fore Tanetum. It is now the Leuza. Mannert, how¬ 
ever, gives the modern name as Crostolo; and Rei- 
chard, Ongino. 

Nicias, I. son (jf Niceratus. He was a man of birth 
and fortune ; but in whom a generous temper, popular 
manners, and considerable political and military talent, 
were marred by unreasonable diffidence and excessive 

6U 


dread of responsibility. Nicias, however, signalized 
himself on several occasions. He took the island of 
Cythera from the Lacedaemonians, subjugated many 
cities of Thrace which had revolted from the Atheni¬ 
an sway, shut up the Megarians within tueir city-walls, 
cutting off all communication from without, and taking 
their harbour Nisasa. When the unfortunate expedition 
against Syracuse was undertaken by Athens, Nicias 
was one of the three commanders who were sent at its 
head, the other two being Alcibiades and Lainachus. 
He had previously, however, used every effort to pre¬ 
vent his countrymen from engaging in this affair, on the 
ground that they were only wasting their resources in 
distant warfare, and multiplying their enemies. After 
the recall of Alcibiades, the natural indecision of Ni¬ 
cias, increased by ill-health and dislike of h-is command, 
aroved a principal cause of the failure of the enterprise. 
In endeavouring to retreat by land from before Syra¬ 
cuse, the Athenian commanders, Nicias and Demos¬ 
thenes (the latter had come with re-enforcements), were 
pursued, defeated, and compelled to surrender. 1 he 
generals were put to death ; their soldiers were con¬ 
fined at first in the quarry of Epipolse, and afterward 
sold as slaves. We have a life of Nicias by Plutarch. 

( Thucyd ., lib. 3, 4, 5, seqq. — Plut., Vit. Me.)—II. 
An Athenian artist, who flourished with Praxiteles, 01. 
104, and assisted him in the decoration of some of his 
productions. ( Plin ., 35, 11. —Consult Sillig , Diet. 
Art.,- s. v )—III. The younger, an Athenian painter, 
son of Nicomedes, and pupil of Euphranor. He be¬ 
gan to practice his art 01. 112. ( Sillig, Diet. Art., 

s. v .) Nicias is said to have been the first artist who 
used burned ochre in his paintings. (Plin., 35, 6, 20.) 

Nico, an architect and geometrician, father of Ga¬ 
len, who lived in the beginning of the second century 
of our era. (Suid., s. v. Ta?\.yv6g.) 

Nicocles, I. king of Paphos, in the island of Cy¬ 
prus. He owed his throne to the kindness of Ptole¬ 
my I., king of Egypt, who continued thereafter to be¬ 
stow upon him many marks of favour. Having learn¬ 
ed, however, at last, that Nicocles, forgetful of past 
benefits, had formed an alliance with Antigonus, Ptol¬ 
emy sent two of his confidential emissaries to Cy¬ 
prus, with orders to despatch Nicocles in case his 
traitorous conduct should be clearly ascertained by 
them. These two individuals, having taken with 
them a party of soldiers, surrounded the palace of the 
King of Paphos, and making known to him the orders 
of Ptolemy, compelled him to destroy himself, although 
he protested his innocence. His wife Axiothea, when 
she heard of her husband’s death, killed her maiden 
daughters with her own hand, and then slew herself. 
The other female relatives followed her example. T. he 
brothers of Nicocles, also, having shut themselves up 
in the palace, set fire to it, and then fell by their own 
hands. (Diod. Sic., 20, 21. — Wesseling, ad loc.— 
Polycen., 8, 48.)—II. King of Cyprus, succeeded his 
father Evagoras B.C. 374. He celebrated the funer¬ 
al obsequies of his parent with great splendour, and en¬ 
gaged Isocrates to write his eulogknn. Nicocles had 
been a pupil of the Athenian rhetorician, and recom¬ 
pensed his services with the greatest liberality. (Vid. 

Isocrates ) ' 

Nicocreon, a tyrant of Cyprus in the age of Alex 
ander the Great. A fabulous story is related of his 
having caused the philosopher Anaxarchus to be pound¬ 
ed alive in a mortar. ( Vid. Anaxarchus.) 

Nicolaus, I. a comic poet whose era is unknown. 
He belonged to the New Comedy according to some 
Stobeeus has a fragment of his in 44 verses, which he 
ascribes, however, to Nicolaus Damascenus.—II. Sur¬ 
named Damascenus (Nr/cd^aoc 6 A apacynyvo^), a na¬ 
tive of Damascus of good family. He was the friend 
of Herod the Great, king of the Jews, and in the year 
6 B.C. was sent by that monarch on an embassy to 
Augustus, who had taken offence at Herod because 




NICOLAUS. 


N I C 


le hail led an army into Arabia to enforce certain 
claims which he had upon Syllseus, the prime-minister 
of the King of Arabia, and the real governor of the 
country. {Joseph., Ant. Jud., 16, 9.) Nicolaus, hav¬ 
ing obtained an audience of the emperor, accused Syl- 
lasus, and defended-Herod in a skilful speech, which is 
given by Josephus {Ant. Jud., 16, 10). Syllseus was 
sentenced to be put to death as soon as he should 
have given satisfaction to Herod for the claims which 
the latter had upon him. This is the account of Jose¬ 
phus, taken probably from the history of Nicolaus him¬ 
self, who appears to have exaggerated the success of 
his embassy ; for Syllseus neither gave any satisfac¬ 
tion to Herod, nor was the sentence of death executed 
upon him. {Joseph., Ant. Jud., 17, 3, 2.) We, find 
Nicolaus afterward acting as the accuser of Herod’s 
son Antipater, when he was tried before \ arus for 
plotting against his father’s life, B.C. 4 {Joseph., Ant. 
Jud., 16, 5, 4, seqq .— Id., Bell. Jud., 1, 32, 4); and 
again as the advocate of Archelaus before Augustus, 
in the dispute for the succession to Herod’s kingdom. 
{Joseph., Ant. Jud., 17, 9, 6. — Id. ib., 11 , 3. — Id., 
Bell. Jud., 2, 2, 6.)—As a writer, Nicolaus is known 
in several departments of literature. He composed 
tragedies, and, among others, one entitled 'Loaavvlc; 
(“ Susanna"). Of these nothing remains. He also 
wrote comedies, and Stobaeus has preserved for us 
what he considers to be a fragment of one of these, but 
what belongs, in fact, to a different writer. ( Vid. Ni¬ 
colaus I.) He was the author, also, of a work r on the 
Remarkable Customs of various nations {hvva-yuyy 
Trapado^uv ydtiv) ; of another on Distinguished Ac¬ 
tions (Ilept tuv h rolg TtpauTtuoZg uaTitiv) ; and also 
of several historical works. Among the last-mention¬ 
ed class of productions was a Universal History ('Icr- 
ropla K.ado?UK7/), in 1,44 books (hence called by Athe- 
nseus 7ro7iv6t6?\.og, 6, p. 249, a.), a compilation for 
which he borrowed passages from various historians, 
which he united together by oratorical flourishes. As 
he has drawn his materials in part from sources which 
no longer exist for us, the fragments of his history 
which remain make us acquainted with several facts 
of which we should otherwise have had no knowledge. 
This history included the reign of Herod; and Jose¬ 
phus gives the following character of the 123d and 
124th books: “For, living in his kingdom and with 
him (Herod), he composed his history in such a way 
as to gratify and serve him, touching upon those things 
only which made for his glory, and glossing over many 
of his actions which were plainly unjust, and conceal¬ 
ing them with all zeal. And wishing to make a spe¬ 
cious excuse for the murder of Mariamne and her chil¬ 
dren, so cruelly perpetrated by the king, he tells false¬ 
hoods respecting her incontinence, and the plots of 
the young men. And throughout his whole histo¬ 
ry he eulogizes extravagantly all the king’s just ac¬ 
tions, while he zealously apologizes for his crimes.” 
{Ant. Jud., 16, 7, 1.) Nicolaus wrote also a life of 
Augustus, of which a fragment, marked too strongly 
with flattery, still remains. He was the author, too, of 
some metaphysical productions on the writings of Aris¬ 
totle. As regards his own Biography, which has like¬ 
wise come down to us, we may be allowed to doubt 
whether he ever wrote it.—The latest and most com¬ 
plete edition of the remains of Nicolaus Damascenus 
is that of Orellius, Lips., 1804, with a supplement pub¬ 
lished in 1811, and containing the result of the labours 
of Bremi, Ochsner, and others, in collecting the scat¬ 
tered fragments of this writer. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., 
Vol. 4, p. 101.)—III. surnamed the Sophist, a disciple 
of Proclus and a New-Platonisj^lived during the latter 
half of the fifth century. Suidas makes him to have 
been the author of Progymnasmata and Declamations. 
One MS. assigns to Nicolaus the Sophist a portion of 
the Progymnasmata, which have been published under 
the name of Libanius. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 6, 
890 


p. 210.)—IV. (or Laonicus) Chalcondylas, a mstiv* 
of Athens, and one of the Byzantine historians. He 
wrote a history of the Turks, and of the fall of the 
Eastern empire, from A.D. 1297 down to 1462, in ten 
books. It was continued by an anonymous writer to 
A.D. 1565. The narrative of Chalcondylas is rich in 
facts, but the author sometimes displays great credu¬ 
lity. The first edition of the text is that of Fabrot, 
Paris, if650, fol., which was reprinted in 1750 at 
Venice, fol.—V. Bishop of Methone, about A.D. 1190, 
author of a commentary on the 2 TOtxelcucig dtoTioytKy 
of Proclus It remains unedited.—VI. Cabasila, was 
bishop of Thessalonica about 1350 A.D. He was a 
learned man, and famed for his eloquence. We have 
a commentary by him on the third book of the Alma¬ 
gest, printed at the end of the Basle edition of Ptole- 
mcei Syntaxis, 1538, fol. 

Nicomachus, the father of the philosopher Aristotle. 
{Vid. Aristoteles.) 

Nicomedes, I. king of Bithynia, succeeded his fa¬ 
ther Ziphoetes, B.C. 278. His succession was dis¬ 
puted by his brother, and he called in the Gauls to 
support his claims, B.C. 277. With their assistance 
he was successful : but his allies became his masters, 
and the whole of Asia Minor was for a long time over¬ 
run by these barbarians. He probably died about B C. 
250, and was succeeded by his eldest son Zielas.—II. 
The second of the name, surnamed Epiphanes, suc¬ 
ceeded his father Prusias II., B.C. 149. He accom¬ 
panied his parent to Rome, B.C. 167, where he ap¬ 
pears to have been brought up under the care of the 
senate. {Liv., 45,44.) Prusias, becoming jealous of 
the popularity of his son, and anxious to secure the 
succession of his younger children, formed a plan for 
his assassination ; but Nicomedes, having gained in¬ 
telligence of his purpose, deprived his father of the 
throne, and subsequently put him to death. Nicome¬ 
des remained during the whole of his long reign a faith¬ 
ful ally, or, rather, obedient subject, of the Romans. 
He assisted them in their war with Aristonicus, broth¬ 
er of Attalus, king of Pergamus, B.C. 131 ; and he 
was applied to by Marius for assistance during the 
Cimbrian war, about B.C. 103. During the latter part 
of his reign he was involved in a war with Mithrada- 
tes, of which an account is given in the life of that 
monarch. ( Vid. Mithradates VI.)—III The third of 
the name, surnamed Philopator, succeeded his father 
Nicomedes II., B.C. 91. During the first year of his 
reign, he was expelled from his kingdom by Mithrada¬ 
tes, who placed upon the throne Socrates, the younger 
brother of Nicomedes. He was restored, however, to 
his kingdom in the following year by the Romans, who 
sent an army under Aquilius to support him. At the 
breaking out of the Mithradatic war, B.C. 88, Nicom 
edes took part with the Romans; but his army was 
completely defeated by the generals of Mithradates, 
near the river Amnias, in Paphlagonia {Strabo, 562), 
and he himself was again expelled from his kingdom, 
and obliged to take refuge in Italy. At the conclusion 
of the Mithradatic war, B.C. 84, Bithynia was restored 
to Nicomedes. He died B.C. 74, without children, 
and left his kingdom to the Romans. {Memnon., ap. 
Phot. — Appian , Bell. Mithrad. — Clinton, Fast. Hell., 
vol. 3, Append., 7.— Encycl. Us. Know!, vol. 16, p. 
213.)—IV. A celebrated geometrician. He is famoua 
for being the inventor of the curve called the conchoid, 
which has been made to serve equally for the solution 
of the two problems relating to the duplication of the 
cube, and the trisection of an angle. It was much 
used by the ancients in the construction of solid prob¬ 
lems. It is not certain at what period Nicomedes 
flourished, but it was probably at no great distance 
from the time of Eratosthenes. 

Nicomedea (N LKoppdeLa), a city of Bithynia, situate 
at the northeastern extremity of the Sinus Astacenus. 
It was founded by Nicomedes I. (B.C. 264), who 





N I C 


N I G 


'ran sferred to it the inhabitants of the neighbouring 
«ity of Astacus. ( Memnon, ap. Phot., c. 21, p. 722.) 
This city was much frequented by the Romans, and 
by Europeans generally, as it lay directly on the route 
from Constantinople to the more eastern provinces, 
and contained, in its fine position, its handsome build¬ 
ings, and its numerous warm baths and mineral waters, 
very strong attractions for travellers. Under the Ro¬ 
mans, Nicomedea became one of the chief cities of the 
empire. Pausanias speaks of it as the principal city 
in Bithynia (6, 12, 5); but under Dioclesian, who 
chiefly resided here, it increased greatly in extent and 
populousness, and became inferior only to Rome, Al¬ 
exandra, and Antioch. ( Liban., Oral., 8, p. 203.— 
Lactant., de morte persec., c. 17.) Nicomedea, how¬ 
ever, suffered severely 'from earthquakes. Five of 
these dreadful visitations fell to its lot, and it was al¬ 
most destroyed by one in particular in the reign of 
Julian; but it was again rebuilt with great splendour 
and magnificence, and recovered nearly its former 
greatness. (Amm. Marcell , 17, 6.— Id., 22, 13.— 
Mtxlala , 1. 13.) — The modern Is-Mid occupies the 
site of the ancient city, and is still a place of consid¬ 
erable importance and much trade. The modern name 
is given by D’Anville and others as Is-Nikmid. (Man¬ 
ner t, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 3, p. 582.) 

Nicopdus (“City of Victory,” v'curi and tcoTu^), I. 
a city of Palestine, to the northwest of Jerusalem, the 
same with Emraaus. It received the name of Nicop- 
olis in the third century from the Emperor Heliogaba- 
ius, who restored and beautified the place. (Chron. 
Pasch. Ann., 223.) Josephus often calls the city 
Ammaus. (Bell. Jud., 1, 9. — Ibid., 2, 3.) It must 
not be confounded with the Emmaus of the New 
Testament (Luc., 24, 13), which was only eight miles 
from Jerusalem. (Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 1, p. 
283.)—II. A city of Cilicia, placed by Ptolemy in the 
northeastern corner of Cilicia, where the range of 
Taurus joins that of Amanus. D’Anville puts it too 
low down on his map.—III. A city of Armenia Minor, 
on the river Lycus, near the borders of Pontus. It 
was built by Pompey in commemoration of a victory 
gained here over Mithradates. (Appian, Bell. Mith- 
rad., 101, 105. — Strabo, 555.— Pliny, 6, 9.) The 
modern Devrigni is supposed to occupy its site, the 
Tephrice of the Byzantine historians probably. (Man¬ 
nert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 2, p. 318.) — IV. A city in 
Moesia- Inferior, on the river Iatrus, one of the tribu¬ 
taries of the Danube. It was founded by Trajan in 
commemoration of a victory over the Dacians, and was 
generally called, for distinction’ sake, Nicopolis ad 
Istrum or ad Danubium. The modern name is given 
as Nicopoli. (Amm. Marcell., 24, 4.— Id., 31, 5.)— 
V. A city of Moesia Inferior, southeast of the prece¬ 
ding, at the foot of Mount Haemus, and near the 
sources cf the Istrus. It was called, for distinction’ 
sake, Nicopolis ad Hcemum, and is now Nikub. —VI. 
A city of Egypt, to the northeast, and in the immedi¬ 
ate vicinity, of Alexandrea. Strabo gives the inter^ 
veiling space as 30 stadia. (Strab., 794.) It was 
founded by Augustus in commemoration of a victory 
gained here over Antony, and is now Kars or Kiasse- 
ra. (Dio Cass., 51, 18.— Joseph., Bell. Jud., 4, 14.) 
— VII. A city of Thrace, on the river Nessus, not far 
from its mouth, founded by Trajan. It is now Nicop¬ 
oli. The later name was Christopolis. (Ptol. — 
Hierocl., p. 635. — Wesseling, ad Hierocl., l. c.) — 
VIII. A city of Epirus, on the upper coast of the Ara- 
bracian Gulf, and near its mouth. It was founded by 
Augustus, in honour of the victory at Actium, which 
place lay on the opposite or lower shore. Nicopolis 
may be said to have risen out of all the surrounding 
cities of Epirus and Acarnania, and even as far as 
JEtolia, which were compelled to contribute to its 
prosperity. (Strab., 325. — Pausan., 5, 23. — Id., 7, 
18.) So anxious was Augustus to raise his new col¬ 


ony to the highest rank among the cities of Greecet 
that he caused it to be admitted among those states 
which sent deputies to the Amphictyonic assembly. 
(Pausan., 10,8.) He also ordered games to be celebra¬ 
ted with great pomp every five years, which had been 
previously triennial. Suetonius states that he enlarged 
a temple of Apollo, and consecrated to Mars an® Nep¬ 
tune the site on which his army had encamped before 
the battle of Actium, adorning it with naval trophies. 
(Aug., 18.— Strab., 1. c .) Having afterward fallen to 
decay, it was restored by the Emperor Julian. (Mam- 
ert., Paneg. — Nicepli., 14, 39.) Hierocles terms it 
the metropolis of Old Epirus (p. 651). St. Paul, in 
his Epistle to Titus (3, 12), speaks of his intention 
of wintering at Nicopolis: it is probable he there al¬ 
ludes to this city, though that is not quite certain.— 
Modern travellers describe the remains of Nicopolis 
as very extensive: the site which they occupy is now 
known by the name of Prevesa Vccchia. (Hughes's 
Travels , vol. 2, p. 412.— Holland's Travels, vol. 1, p 
103.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 135, seqq.) 

Nicostratus, ene of the sons of Aristophanes, and 
ranked among the poets of the Middle Comedy. The 
titles of some of his own and his brothers’ comedies 
are preserved in Athemeus. The names of his broth¬ 
ers were Araros and Philippus. None of the three 
appear to have inherited any considerable portion of 
their father’s abilities. (Theatre of the Greeks, p. 

115, 4th ed.) 

Niger, Caius Pescennius, appears to have been of 
humble origin, but his great military talents recom¬ 
mended him successively to the notice of Marcus Au¬ 
relius, Commodus, and Pertinax, by whom he wa? 
employed in offices of trust and honour. He was con¬ 
sul together with Septimius Severus, and obtained the 
government of Syria. On the murder of Pertinax, 
A.D. 193, the empire was exposed for sale by the 
praetorian guards, and was purchased by Didius Julia- 
nus, whom the senate was compelled to acknowledge 
as emperor. The people, however, did not tamely 
submit to this indignity, and three generals, at the 
head of their respective legions, Septimius Severus, 
who commanded in Pannonia, Clodius Albinus in Brit¬ 
ain, and Pescennius Niger in Syria, refused to ac¬ 
knowledge the nomination of the praetorians, and 
claimed each the empire. Of these Niger was the 
most popular, and his cause was warmly espoused by 
all the provinces of the East. But he did not possess 
the energy and activity of his rival Severus. Instead 
of hastening to Italy, where his presence was indis¬ 
pensable, he quietly remained at Antioch, while Sev 
erus marched to Rome, dethroned Didius, and made 
active preparations for prosecuting the war against 
Niger in Asia. Roused at length from his inactivity, 
Niger crossed over to Europe, and established his 
headquarters at Byzantium ; but he had scarcely ar¬ 
rived at this place, before his troops in Asia were de¬ 
feated near Cyzicus by the generals of Severus. He 
,was soon, however, able to collect another army, 
which he commanded in person; but, being defeated 
successively near Nicaea and at Issus, he abandoned 
his troops, and fled towards the Euphrates, with the 
intention of seeking refuge among the Parthians. But 
before he could reach the Euphrates, he was overtaken 
by a detachment of the enemy, and put to death on 
the spot. (Spartian., Vit. Nig. — Aurel. Viet., c. 20. 
— Eutrop., 8, 10.— Encycl. Us. Knoiol., vol. 16, p. 
223.) 

Niger, or rather Nigir, a name which has been 
given till lately to a large river, mentioned by ancient 
as well as modern geographers as flowing through the 
interior of Libya or Central Africa. Herodotus (2, 
32) gives an interesting account of five young men 
of the Libyan nation of the Nasamones, which dwelt 
on the coast of the greater Syrtis, who proceeded on 
a journey of discovery into the interior. After traver¬ 
sal 





NIGER. 


NIGER. 


sing in a southern direction the inhabited region, and 
next to it the country of the wild beasts, they crossed 
the great sandy desert in a western direction for many 
days, until they arrived at a country inhabited by men 
of low stature, who conducted them through extensive 
marshes to a city built on a great river, which con¬ 
tained crocodiles, and flowed towards the rising sun. 
This information Herodotus derived from the Greeks 
of Cyrene, who had it from Etearchus, king of the 
Ammonii, who said that the river in question was a 
branch of the Egyptian Nile, an opinion in which the 
historian acquiesced. ( Vid. Nasamones, and Africa.) 
—Strabo seems to have known little of the interior of 
Africa and its rivers : he cites the opposite testimo¬ 
nies of Posidonius and Artemidorus, the former of 
whom said that the rivers of Libya were few and 
small, while the latter stated that they were large and 
numerous.—Pliny (5, 1) gives an account of the ex¬ 
pedition into Mauritania of the Roman commander 
Suetonius Paulinus, who (A.D. 41) led a Roman army 
across the Atlas, and, after passing a desert of black 
sand and burned rocks, arrived at a river called Ger, in 
some MSS. Niger, near which lived the Canarii, next 
to whom were the Perorsi, an Ethiopian tribe ; and 
farther inland were the Pharusii, as Pliny states above 
in the same chapter. The Canarii inhabited the country 
now called Sus, in the southern part of the empire of 
Marocco, near Cape Nun, and opposite to the Fortu¬ 
nate or Canary Islands ; and the Perorsi dwelt to the 
south of them along the seacoast. The Ger or Niger 
of Suetonius Paulinus, which he met after crossing the 
Atlas, must have been one of the streams which flow 
from the southern side of the great Atlas, through the 
country of Tajilelt, and which lose themselves in the 
southern desert. One of these streams is still called 
Ghir, and runs through Segelmessa ; and this, in all 
probability, is the Ger or Niger of the Roman com¬ 
mander. Ger or Gir seems, in fact, to be an old gen¬ 
eric African appellation for “river.” As for the des¬ 
ert which Suetonius crossed before he arrived at the 
Ger, it could evidently not be the great desert, which 
spread far to the south of the Canarii, but one of the 
desert tracts which lay immediately south of the Atlas. 
Caillie describes the inhabited parts of Draha , Tajilelt, 
and Segelmessa as consisting of valleys and small 
plains, enclosed by steril and rocky tracts of desert 
country.—But, besides the Ger or Niger of Suetonius, 
Pliny in several places (5, 8, seq.; 8, 21) speaks of 
another apparently distinct river, the Nigris of ^Ethi¬ 
opia, which he compares with the Nile, “ swelling at 
the same seasons, having similar animals living in its 
waters, and, like the Nile, producing the calamus and 
papyrus.” In his extremely confused account, which 
he derived from the authority of Juba II., king of Mau¬ 
ritania, he mixes up the Nigris and the Nile together 
with other rivers, as if all the waters of Central Africa 
formed but one water-course, which seems to have been 
a very prevalent notion of old. He says (5, 9) that the 
Nile had its origin in a mountain of Lower Mauritania,^ 
not far from the ocean ; that it flowed through sandy 
deserts, in which it was concealed for several days ; 
that it reappeared in a great lake in Mauritania Cassa- 
riensis, was again hidden for twenty days in deserts, 
and then rose again in the sources of the Nigris, which 
river, separating Africa (meaning Northern Africa) from 
^Ethiopia, flowed through the middle of ^Ethiopia, and 
became the branch of the Nile called Astapus. The 
same stoiy, though without any mention of the Nigris, 
is alluded to by Vitruvius, Strabo, and others ; and 
Mela (3, 9) adds, that the river at its source was called 
Daras, which is still the name of a river that flows 
along the eastern %ide of the southern chain of the 
Atlas of Marocco , and through the province of the 
same name which lies west of Tajilelt , and is nomin¬ 
ally subject to Marocco. The Tara or Draha has a 
uouthern course towards the desert, but its termination 
892 


is unknown. There is another river, the Akassa, call* 
ed also Wadi Nun, on the west side of the Adrar 
ridge, or Southern Atlas, which flows through the 
country of Sus in a western direction, enters the sea 
to the south of Cape Nun, and seems to correspond to 
the Daras or Daratus of Ptolemy.—Throughout all 
these confused notions of the hydrography of interior 
Africa entertained by the ancients, one constant re¬ 
port or tradition is apparent, namely, that of the exist¬ 
ence of a large river south of the great desert, and 
flowing towards the east. It is true that Herodotus, 
Strabo, Pliny, and their respective authorities, thought 
that this river flowed into the Nile, but Mela seems to 
have doubted this, for he says that when the river 
reached the middle of the continent, it was not known 
what became of it. — Ptolemy, who wrote later than 
the preceding geographers, and seems to have had 
better information concerning the interior of Africa, 
after stating that “ Libya Interior is bounded on the 
north by the two Mauritaniae, and by Africa and Cy- 
renaica ; on the east by Marmarica, and by the ^Ethi¬ 
opia which lies south of Egypt; on the south by In¬ 
terior ^Ethiopia, in which is the country of Agisymba; 
and on the west by the Western Ocean, from the Hes¬ 
perian Gulf to the frontier of Mauritania Tingitana,” 
proceeds to enumerate various positions on the coast 
of the ocean; after which he mentions the chief mount¬ 
ains of Libya, and the streams that flow from them to 
the sea. He then adds, “In the interior, the two 
greatest rivers are the Geir and the Nigeir : the Geir 
unites Mount Usargula (which he places in 20° 20" N. 
lat. and 50° E. long.) with the Garamantic pharanx 
(the name of a mountain which he had previously 
stated to be in 10° N. lat. and 33° E. long ). A 
river diverges from it at 42° E. long, and 16° N. lat., 
and makes the lake Chelonides, of which the middle 
is in 49° E. long, and 20° N. lat. This river is said 
to be lost under ground, and to reappear, forming an¬ 
other river, of which the western end is at 46° E. 
long, and 16° N. lat. The eastern part of the river 
forms the Lake Nuba, the site of which is 50° E. long, 
and 15° N. lat.” The positions here assigned to the 
Geir, and the direction of its main stream, from the 
Garamantic mountain to Mount Usargula, being south¬ 
east and northwest, seem to point out for its represent¬ 
ative either the Shary of Bornou, and its supposed 
affluent, the Bahr Kulla of Browne, or perhaps the 
Bahr Misselad of the same traveller, called Om Tey- 
mam by Burckhardt, who says that its indigenous ap¬ 
pellation is Gir, a large stream coming from about 10° 
N. lat., and flowing northwest through Wa.dai, west 
of the borders of Dar-fur. The Miss-elad is sup¬ 
posed to flow into Lake Fittre : we do not know 
whether any communication exists between Lake Fit¬ 
tre and the Tschadd. In fact, it appears that several 
streams, besides the Bahr Kulla and the Bahr Mis¬ 
selad, all coming from the great southern range, or 
Mountains of the Moon, flow in a northwest direction 
^through the countries lying between Bornou and Dar- 
jur, and the Geir of Ptolemy may have been the rep¬ 
resentative of any or all of them. — We now come to 
Ptolemy’s Nigeir, a name which, having been mistaken 
for the Latin word Niger, has added to the confusion 
on the subject. Nigeir is a compound of the general 
appellative Geir or Gir, which is found applied to va¬ 
rious rivers in different parts of Africa, and the prefix 
Ni or IV’, which is found in several names of the same 
region reported by Denham and Caillie. Ptolemy 
makes the Nigeir quite a distinct river from the Geir, 
and places it to the westward. He says that it joins 
the mountain Mandrus, 19° N. lat. and 14° E. long., 
with the mountain Thala, 10° N. lat. and 38° E. long 
Its course is thereby defined as much longer and in a 
less oblique line to the equator than that of the Geir. 
In fact, it would correspond tolerably well (allowing 
for the imperfection of the means of observation in an- 






NIGER. 


NIG 


cient times) with the actual direction of the course of 
the Joliba and that of the river of Sakkatoo, supposing 
that river to form a communication with Lake Tschadd, 
as Ptolemy says that the Nigeir has a divergent to the 
lake Libye, which he places in 16° 30' N. lat. and 
35° E. long., and the words of the text seem to ex¬ 
press that the water ran into the lake ; so that the 
course of the Nigeir, according to Ptolemy, as well as 
his predecessors, was easterly, as the Joliba or Quorra 
actually runs for a great part of its course. “ The 
lake Libye,” observes a distinguished geographer, “to 
which there was an easterly divergent, I strongly sus¬ 
pect to have been the lake Tschadd, notwithstanding 
that the position of Libye falls 300 geographical miles 
northwestward of this lake ; for the name of Libye 
favours the presumption that it was the principal lake 
in the interior of Libya ; it was very natural that Ptol¬ 
emy, like many of the moderns, should have been 
misinformed as to the communication of the river with 
that lake, and that he should have mistaken two riv¬ 
ers flowing from the same ridge in opposite directions, 
one to the Quorra and the other to the Tschadd (I 
allude to the Sakkatoo and the Yeu rivers), for a 
single communication from the Quorra to the lake.” 
(Leake’s paper “ On the Quorra and Niger,” in the 
second volume of the Journal of the Royal Geograph¬ 
ical Society of London, 1832.)—But Ptolemy, after 
all. may not have been so much misinformed with re¬ 
spect to a communication existing between the lake 
and his Nigeir, if, as is now strongly suspected, the 
communication really exists, though in an inverse di¬ 
rection from that which Ptolemy appears to have un¬ 
derstood. It is surmised that the river Tschadda, 
which, at its junction with the Quorra, just above the 
beginning of the delta, is larger than the Quorra itself, 
receives an outlet from the lake somewhere about the 
town of Jacobah. (Captain W. Allen, R. N., On a 
new construction of a Map of a Portion of Western 
Africa, &c .—Journal of the Royal Geogr. Soc. of 
Itondon , vol. 8, 1838.) If this surmise prove true, 
it would explain the statement of the Arabian geogra¬ 
phers of the middle ages, Edrisi, Abulfeda, and Leo 
Africanus, who state that the Nil-el-Abid, or river of 
the negroes, flowed from east to west. The Tschad¬ 
da then would be the river of the Arabian, and the 
Joliba. or Upper Quorra that of the Greek and Roman, 
geographers. Both were ignorant of the real termi¬ 
nation of their respective streams. “ It is neverthe¬ 
less remarkable, that the distance laid by Ptolemy 
between his source of the river and the western coast 
is the same as that given by modern observations ; 
that Thamondocana, one of the towns on the Nigeir, 
is exactly coincident with Tombuctoo, as recently laid 
down by M. Jomard from the itinerary of M. Cail- 
lie ; that the length of the course resulting from Ptole¬ 
my’s positions is nearly equal to that of the Quorra, 
as far as the mountains of Kong, with the addition of 
the Tschadda or Shary of Funda ; and that his po- 
sitiorkof Mount Thala, at the southeastern extremity 
of the Nigeir, is very near that in which we may sup¬ 
pose the Tschadda to have its origin ; so that it would 
• seem as if Ptolemy, like Sultan Bello and other mod¬ 
ern Africans, had considered the Tschadda as a con¬ 
tinuation of the main river, though he knew the Egyp¬ 
tian Nile too well to fall into the modern error of sup¬ 
posing the Nigeir to be a branch of the Nile. The 
mountains of Kong, and the passage of the river 
through them at right angles to their direction, form¬ 
ed a natural termination to the extent of the geogra¬ 
pher’s knowledge; in like manner, as among ourselves, 
the presumed, and at length the ascertained, existence 
of those mountains, has been the chief obstacle to 
a belief that the river terminated in the Atlantic.” 
{Leake's Paper “ On the Quorra and Niger,” already 
quoted.)—The opinions established by the Arabian 
geographers of the middle ages, that the Niger flow¬ 


ed westward, "led Europeans to look for its estuary 
in the Senegal, Gambia, and Rio Grande; but, upon 
examination of those rivers, the mistake was ascer^ 
tained ; and D’Anville and other geographers separa¬ 
ted the course of the Senegal from that of the Niger, 
and of the latter from that of the Nile. Mungo Park 
was the first European who saw the great interna! 
river of Soudan flowing towards the east, and called 
Joliba. He traced it in two different journeys from 
Bammakoo, about ten days from its source, to Bous- 
sa, where he was unfortunately killed in 1806. Clap- 
perton crossed the river at Boussa on his second 
journey to Sakkatoo, in 1826 ; and, after his death, 
his faithful servant, Richard Lander, undertook to nav¬ 
igate the river from Boussa to its mouth. In 1827 
he proceeded from Badagry, on the coast, to Boussa, 
and there embarked on the river. He found that it 
flowed in a southern direction, receiving several large 
rivers from the east ; among others, the noble Tschad¬ 
da, after which the united stream passed through an 
opening in the Kong chain, and that, after issuing 
from the mountains, it sent off several branches both 
east and west towards the coast, while he himself 
reached the sea by the branch known till then by the 
name of Rio Nun. — From all, then, that has been 
stated, it will satisfactorily appear, that the great river 
of the Libya of Herodotus, the Nigris of Pliny, the 
Nigeir of Ptolemy, and the Niger of modern geogra¬ 
phy, are one and the same river with the Quorra. M. 
Walckenaer ( Recherches Geographiques sur Vlnteri- 
eur de VAfrique Septcntrionale) has maintained the 
negative side of the question, asserting that the an¬ 
cients had no knowledge of Soudan, and that the Ni¬ 
geir of Ptolemy was one of the rivers flowing from 
the Atlas'; but Col. Leake has ably answered him, 
and supported the affirmative in ^he paper already 
quoted. ( Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 16, p. 22\,seqq.) 
—The singular theory of Sir Rufane Donkin, that the 
Niger once flowed into the Mediterranean where the 
Syrtes now are, but that it has been choked up and 
obliterated, in this part of its course, by the sands of 
the desert, is very ably refuted in the Quarterly Re¬ 
view (vol. 41, p. 226, seqq.). 

Nigidius Figulus, P., a celebrated astrologer, and 
yet a man of excellent judgment. He was the friend 
of Cicero, and consulted by him on all important oc¬ 
casions. Nigidius was a senator at the time of Cat¬ 
iline’s conspiracy, and lent his best endeavours in aid 
of Cicero. Five years after this he attained to the 
prsetorship, and displayed great firmness in dischar¬ 
ging the duties of that office. He was, at a subsequent 
period, allowed a free legation for visiting Asia ; and, 
returning from this country, met Cicero at Mytilene, 
when the latter was going to take charge of his gov¬ 
ernment of Cilicia. The peripatetic Cratippus assist¬ 
ed at the conference which the two friends held here, 
and in which Nigidius, without doubt, maintained the 
tenets of Pythagoras, to whose school he belonged. 
In the civil wars Nigidius followed the party of Pom - 
pey. Caesar, who pardoned so easily, would not, how¬ 
ever, become reconciled to him : he drove him into 
exile, notwithstanding all the efforts of Cicero in his 
behalf. Nigidius died in exile a year before the as¬ 
sassination of the dictator.—We have said that he was 
a celebrated astrologer. He was strongly attached, 
indeed, to this pretended science, and devoted much 
of his time to it. The ancient writers have recorder 
several of his predictions, and, in particular, a very 
remarkable one relative to Octavius (Augustus), and 
his becoming the master of the world. ( Sucton ., 
Aug., c. 94.— Dio Cass., 45, 1.) Cicero speaks or 
many occasions of his great erudition, and he was re> 
garded as the most learned of the Romans after Var 
ro. He wrote a great number of works : one oi 
grammar, under the title of Commentarii Grammatx 
ci, in thirty books ; a Treatise on Animals , in foui 

8fla 



N I L 


NILUS. 


books; another On Wind; a very large work On the 
Gods; ViC.; above all, a System of Astrology , or a 
theory of the art of divination. Macrobius and Au- 
lus Gellius, in citing these works, have preserved for 
us some few fragments of them. An extract On 
Thunder, from one of his productions, exists in Greek, 
having been translated into that tongue by Lydus, 
and inserted in his treatise on Prodigies. ( Scholl , 
Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 2, p. 187.) 

NIlus, the name of the great river of Eastern Afri¬ 
ca, the various branches of which have their rise in the 
high lands north of the equator, and, flowing through 
Abyssinia and other regions to the westward of it, 
meet in the country of Sennaar. The united stream 
flows northward through Nubia and Egypt, and, after 
a course of more than 1800 miles from the farthest 
explored poirjt of its principal branch, enters the Med¬ 
iterranean by several mouths, which form the delta of 
Egypt. The word Nil seems to be an old indigenous 
appellation, meaning “river,” like that of Gir in Sou¬ 
dan and other countries south of the Atlas. ( Vid. Ni¬ 
ger.) The modern Egyptians call the river Bahr-Nil , 
or simply Bahr ; in Nubia it is known by various 
names ; in Sennaar the central branch, or Blue Riv¬ 
er, is called Adit; and in Abyssinia, Abawi. The 
three principal branches of the Nile are: 1. The 
Bahr el Abiad , or White River, to the west, which is 
now ascertained to be the largest and longest. 2. 
The Bahr el Azrek, or Blue River, in the centre. 3. 
The Tacazze, or Atbara, which is the eastern branch. 
These three branches were known to Ptolemy, who 
seems to have considered the western as the true 
Nile, and to have called the Bahr el Azrek by the 
name of Astapus, and the Tacazze by the appellation 
of Astaboras. He fixed the sources of the western 
river in numerous lakes at the foot of the Mountains 
cf the Moon, which he placed in 10° S. lat. Strabo 
(821) speaks of the island of Meroe as bounded on 
the south by the confluence of the Astaboras, Astapus, 
and Astasobas. In another place (786) he says, that 
the Nile receives the Astaboras and Astapus ; which 
latter “some call the Astasobas, and say that the As¬ 
tapus is another river, which flows from some lakes in 
the south, and makes pretty nearly the direct course 
of the Nile, and is swollen by summer-rains.” While 
these passages certainly prove that the ancient geog¬ 
raphers knew there were three main streams, they 
also prove that their notions about them were extreme¬ 
ly confused.—The Nile, as if it were doomed for ever 
to share the obscurity which covers the ancient history 
of the land to which it ministers, still conceals its true 
sources from the eager curiosity of modern science. 
The question which was agitated in the age of the 
Ptolemies has not yet been solved; and,°although 
2000 years have elapsed since Eratosthenes published 
his conjectures as to the origin of the principal branch, 
we possess not more satisfactory knowledge on that 
particular point than was enjoyed in his days by the 
philosophers of Alexandrea. The repeated failures 
which had already attended the various attempts to 
discover its fountains, convinced the geographers of 
Greece and Rome that success was impossible, and 
that it was the will of the gods to conceal from all 
generations this great secret of nature. Homer, in 
language sufficiently ambiguous, describes it as a 
stream descending from heaven. Herodotus made in¬ 
quiry in regard to its commencement, but soon saw 
reason to relinquish the attempt as altogether fruitless. 
Alexander the Great, and Ptolemy Philadelphia, en¬ 
gaged in the same undertaking, and despatched per¬ 
sons well qualified by their knowledge for the arduous 
task ; but who, nevertheless, like the great father of 
history himself, travelled and inquired in vain. Pom- 
ponius Mela was doubtful whether it did not rise in 
the country of the Antipodes. Pliny traced it in im¬ 
agination to a mountain in the Lower Mauritania 
894 


while Euthemenes was of opinion that it proceeded 
from the borders of the Atlantic, and penetrated 
through the heart of Africa, dividing it into two con¬ 
tinents. Virgil {Georg., 4, 290) appears to have fa¬ 
voured a cQnjecture, which also found supporters at a 
later period, that the Nile proceeded from the east, 
and might be identified with one of the great rivers 
of Asia. {Russell's Egypt, p. 32, seqq.) —The.nu¬ 
merous leports of the natives, who call the Mountains 
of the Moon by the Arabic version of the same name 
lbalu 7 Kamari, though generally pronounced Ibali 
’IKumri, which would mean “blue mountains,” seem 
to agree in placing the sources of the Abiad several 
degrees north of the equator, at nearly an equal dis 
tance between the eastern and western coasts of Af 
rica. But we have no positive information either as 
to the true position of the sources or of the mountains 
themselves. The Bahr el Azrek, or Blue River, 
which was long supposed to be the main branch of 
.the Nile, and which Bruce also took for such, has 
three sources in the high land of Gojam, near the'vil¬ 
lage of Geesh, southwest of Lake Dembea, in 10° 59' 
25" N. lat., and 36° 55' 30" E. long., according to 
Bruce’s observations. The sources of the Azrek ap¬ 
pear to have been visited by Father Paez, and per¬ 
haps by other missionaries, long before Bruce. The 
vast importance attached to that discovery has become 
much diminished since the information which we have 
acquired of the Abiad, whose sources are still unex 
plored, and still involved in that mystery which the 
ancients represent as hovering about the fountains of 
the Nile. The Tacazze rises in the high mountains 
of Lasta, in about 11° 40' N. lat., and 39° 40' E. 
long. Its sources were known to the Jesuit mission¬ 
aries in Abyssinia, and have been visited of late years 
by Pearce.—The Nile, from the confluence of the 
Tacazze down to its entrance into the Mediterranean, 
a distance of 1200 geographical miles measured along 
the course of the river, receives no permanent streams ; 
but in the season of rains it has wadys or torrents 
flowing into it from the mountains that lie between 
it and the Red Sea. North of Argo, in 19° 40' N 
lat., the Nile enters the province of bar Mahass , in 
Lower Nubia, where it forms a cataract or rapid, com¬ 
monly called the third cataract by those who ascend 
the river. After several windings, the river inclines 
to the northeast ; and near 22° N. lat. forms the sec¬ 
ond cataract, called Wady Haifa, after which it pass¬ 
es the splendid temple of Ipsambul. Continuing its 
northeast course, the Nile, at about 24° N. lat., forms 
the last cataract, between granite rocks which cross 
the river near Assouan , the ancient Syene. After en¬ 
tering the boundaries of Egypt, the Nile flows through 
the whole length of that country, which it waters and 
fertilizes, especially the Delta. Egypt, in fact, owes to 
the Nile its very existence as a productive and habita¬ 
ble region, and accordingly, in olden times, the people 
worshipped the beneficent river as their tutelary god. 

1. The Delta. 

The Nile, issuing from the valley a few miles north 
of Cairo, enters the wide low plain which, from its tri¬ 
angular form and its resemblance to the letter A. re-* 
ceived from the Greeks the name of the Delta. The 
river, at a place called Batu el Sahara, near the an¬ 
cient Cercasorus, divides into two branches, the one 
of which, flowing to Rosetta, and the other to Dami- 
etta , enclose between them the present Delta. These 
two arms or branches were anciently called the Ca¬ 
nopic and Phatnitic. The figure of the Delta is now 
determined by these two branches, although the culti¬ 
vated plain known by that name extends considerably 
beyond to the east and west, as far as the sandy des¬ 
ert on either side. In ancient times, however, the 
triangle of the Delta was much more obtuse at its 
apex, as its right side was formed by the Pelusiac 






NILUS. 


NILUS. 


branch, which, detaching itself from the Nile higher 
up than the Damietta branch, flowed to Pelusium, at 
the eastern extremity of Lake Mcnzuleh. This branch 
is now in a great measure choked up, though it still 
serves partly for the purpose of irrigation. During 
our winter months, which are the spring of Egypt, the 
Delta, as well as the valley of the Nile, looks like a 
delightful garden, smiling with verdure, and enamel¬ 
ed with the blossoms of trees and plants. Later in 
the year the soil becomes parched and dusty; and 
in May the suffocating khamseen begins to blow fre¬ 
quently from the south, sweeping along the fine sand, 
and causing various' diseases, until the rising of the 
beneficent river comes again to refresh the land.—For 
some remarks on the fertility of Egypt, and of the 
Delta in particular, consult the article Egypt, § 1, page 
35, col. 1. 

2. Mouths of the Nile , and Inundation of the River. 

The ancients^ were acquainted with, and mention, 
seven mouths of the Nile, with respect to the changes 
in which, the following are the most established re¬ 
sults. 1. The Canopic mouth, now partly confound¬ 
ed with the canal of Alexandrea, and partly lost in 
Lake Elko. 2. The Bolbitine mouth at Rosetta. 3. 
The Sebennytic mouth, probably the opening into the 
present Lake Burlos. 4. The Phatnitic or Bucolic 
at Damietta. 5. The Mendesian, which is lost in the 
Lake Menzaleh, the mouth of which is represented by 
that of Dibeh. 6. The Tanitic or Sa’itic, which cor¬ 
responds to the Moes canal. 7. The Pelusiac .mouth 
seems to be represented by what is now the most 
easterly mouth of I#ke Menzaleh , where the ruins of 
Pelusium are still visible.—The rise of the Nile, in 
iommon with that of all the rivers of the torrid zone, 
e caused by the heavy periodical rains which drench 
!he table-land of Abyssinia and the mountainous coun¬ 
try that stretches from it towards the south and west. 
This phenomenon is well explained by Bruce. “ The 
ftir,” he observes, “is so much rarefied by the sun du¬ 
ring the time he remains almost stationary over the 
tropic of Capricorn, that the winds, loaded with va¬ 
pours, rush in upon the land from the Atlantic on the 
west, the Indian Ocean on the east, and the cold 
Southern Ocean beyond the Cape. Thus a great quan¬ 
tity of vapour is gathered, as it were, into a focus ; 
and, as the same causes continue to operate during 
the progress of the sun northward, a vast train of 
clouds proceed from south to north, which are some¬ 
times extended much farther than at other periods. 
In April all the rivers in the south of Abyssinia begin 
to swell ; in the beginning of June they are all full, 
and continue so while the sun remains stationary in 
the tropic of Cancer.”—The rise of the Nile begins 
in June, about the summer solstice, and it continues 
to increase till September, overflowing the lowlands 
along its course. The Delta then looks like an im¬ 
mense marsh, interspersed with numerous islands, 
with villages, towns, and plantations of trees, just 
above the water. Should the Nile rise a few feet 
above its ordinary elevation, the inundation sweeps 
away the mud-built cottages of the Arabs, drowns 
their cattle, and involves the whole population in ruin. 
Again, should it fall short of the customary height, 
bad crops and dearth are the consequences. The in¬ 
undation, after having remained stationary for a few 
days, begins to subside, and about the end of Novem¬ 
ber most of the fields are left dry, and covered with 
a fresh layer of rich brown slime : this is the ^ime 
when the lands are put under culture. It would seem 
that the river cuts a passage through a considerable 
extent of rich soil before it approaches the granite 
range which bounds the western extremity of Nubia. 
The tropical rains collect on the table-lands of the 
interior, where they form immense sheets of water, or 
temporary lakes. When these have reached a level 


high enough to overflow the boundaries of their ba¬ 
sins, they suddenly send down into the rivers an enor¬ 
mous volume of fluid impregnated with the soft earth 
over which it has for some time stagnated. Hence 
the momentary pauses and sudden renewals in the 
rise of the Nile; hence, too, the abundance of fer¬ 
tilizing slime, which is never found so copious in 
the waters of rivers that owe their increase soleb to 
the direct influence of the rains. The mud of the 
Nile, upon analysis, gives nearly one half of argilla¬ 
ceous earth, with about one fourth of carbonate of 
lime ; the remainder consisting of water, oxyde of 
iron, and carbonate of magnesia. On the very banks 
the slime is mixed with much sand, which it loses in 
proportion as it is carried farther from the river, so 
that, at a certain distance, it consists almost entirely 
of pure argil. This mud is employed in several arts 
among the Egyptians. It is formed into excellent 
bricks, as well as into a variety of vessels for domes¬ 
tic uses. It enters, also, into the manufacture of to¬ 
bacco-pipes. Glass-makers employ it in the construc¬ 
tion of their furnaces, and the country people cover 
their houses with it.—We have already remarked, 
that Egypt is indebted for her rich harvests to the 
mould or soil which is deposited by the river during 
the annual flood. As soon as the waters retire, the 
cultivation of the ground commences. If it has im 
bibed the requisite degree of moisture, the process of 
agriculture is neither difficult nor tedious. The seed 
is scattered over the soft surface, and vegetation, 
which almost immediately succeeds, goes on with 
great rapidity. Where the land has been only par 
tially inundated, recourse is had to irrigation, by 
means of which many species of vegetables are rais¬ 
ed, even during the dry season. Harvest follows at 
the distance of about six or eight weeks, according to 
the different kinds of grain, leaving time, in most ca¬ 
ses, for a succession of crops wherever there is a full 
command of water.—The swellings of the Nile, in 
Upper Egypt, are from 30 to 35 feet ; at Cairo they 
are 23 feet, according to Humboldt, but, according to 
Girard, 7.419 metres, nearly 24| feet ; in the north¬ 
ern part of the Delta, owing to the breadth of the in¬ 
undation and the artificial channels, only 4 feet.— 
The common Egyptian mode of clarifying the water 
of the Nile is by means of pounded almonds. It 
holds a number of substances in a state of imperfect 
solution, which are in this way precipitated. Its wa¬ 
ter is then one of the purest known, remarkable foi 
its being easily digested by the stomach, for its salu¬ 
tary qualities, and for all the purposes to which it is 
applied. Europeans, as well as natives, are loud in 
their eulogies on the agreeable and salubrious quali¬ 
ties of the water of the Nile. Giovanni Finati, for 
example, who was no stranger to the limpid streams 
of other lands, sighed for the opportunity of returning 
to Cairo, that he might once more drink its delicious 
water, and breathe its mild atmosphere. Maillet, too, 
a writer of good credit, remarks, that it is among 
waters what Champagne is among wines. The Mus¬ 
sulmans themselves acknowledge, that if their prophet 
Mohammed had tasted it, he would have supplicated 
heaven for a terrestrial immortality, that he might en¬ 
joy it for ever. ( Russell's Egypt, p. 48, 52, seqq.) 

3. Deposites of the Nile, and increase of the Della. 

We have here a very interesting topic of inquiry. It 
is an observation as old as the days of Herodotus, that 
Egypt is the gift of the Nile. This historian imagined 
that all the lowerdivision of the country was formerly 
a deep bay or arm of the sea, and that it had been 
gradually filled up by depositions from the river. He 
illustrates his reasoning on this subject by supposing, 
that the present appearance of the Red Sea resembles 
exactly the aspect which Egypt mus-t have exhibited 
in its original state; and that if the Nile by anj/ 

895 




NILUS 


NILUS. 


means were admitted to liow into the Arabian Gulf, 
it would, in the course of 20,000 years, convey into it 
such a quantity of earth as would raise its bed to the 
level of the surrounding coast. I am of opinion, he 
subjoins, that this might take place even within 10,000 
years ; why then might not a bay still more spacious 
than this be choked up with mud, in the time which 
passed before our age, by a stream so great and pow- 
erlul as the Nile? (2, 11.)—The men of science who 
accompanied the French expedition into Egypt under¬ 
took to measure the depth of alluvial matter which has 
been actually deposited by the river. By sinking pits 
at different intervals, both on the banks of the current 
and on the outer edge of the stratum, they ascertained 
satisfactorily, first, that the surface of the soil de¬ 
clines from the margin of the stream towards the foot 
of the hills ; secondly, that the thickness of the de- 
posite is generally about ten feet near the river, and 
decreases gradually as it recedes from it; and, thirdly, 
that beneath the mud there is a bed of sand analogous 
to the substance which has at all times been brought 
down by the flood of the Nile. This convex form as¬ 
sumed by the surface of the valley is not peculiar to 
Egypt, being common to the banks of all great rivers, 
where the quantity of soil transported by the current 
is greater than that which is washed down by rain 
from the neighbouring mountains. The plains which 
skirt the Mississippi and the Ganges present in many 
parts an example of the same phenomenon.—An at¬ 
tempt has likewise been made to ascertain the rate of 
the annual deposition of alluvial substance, and there¬ 
by to measure the elevation which has been conferred 
upon the valley of Egypt by the action of its river. 
But on no point are travellers less agreed than in re¬ 
gard to the change of level and the increase of land 
on the seacoast. Dr. Shaw and M. Savary take their 
Stand on the one side, and are resolutely opposed by 
Bruce and Volney on the other. Herodotus informs 
us, that in the reign of Moeris, if the Nile rose to the 
height of eight cubits, all the lands of Egypt were suf¬ 
ficiently watered ; but that in his own time—not quite 
900 years afterward—the country was not covered 
with less than fifteen or sixteen cubits of water. The 
addition of soil, therefore, was equal to seven cubits 
at the least, or 126 inches in the course of 900 years. 
“But at present,” says Dr. Shaw, “the river must 
rise to the height of twenty cubits—and it usually 
rises to 24- cubits—before the whole country is over¬ 
flowed. Since the time, therefore, of Herodotus, 
Egypt has gained new soil to the depth of 230 inches. 
And if we look back from the reign of Mceris to the 
time of the Deluge, and reckon that interval by the 
same proportion, we shall find that the whole perpen¬ 
dicular accession of the soil, from the Deluge to A.D. 
1721, must be 500 inches; that is, the land of Egypt has 
gained 41 feet 8 inches of soil in 4072 years. Thus, 
in process of time, the country may be raised to such 
r height that the river will not be able to overflow its 
banks; and Egypt, consequently, from being the most 
fertile, will, for want of the annual inundation, become 
one of the most barren parts of the universe.” ( Shaw's 
Travels , vol. 2, p. 235.)—We shall see presently that 
this fear on the part of the learned traveller is entirely 
without foundation. Wer$ 'it possible to determine 
the mean rate of accumulation, a species of chronome¬ 
ter would be thereby obtained for measuring the lapse 
of time which has passed since any monument, or oth¬ 
er work of art in the neighbourhood of the river, was 
originally founded. In applying the principle now sta¬ 
ted, it is not necessary to assume anything more than 
that the building in question was not placed by its 
architect under the level of the river at its ordinary in¬ 
undations, a postulaturn which, in regard to palaces, 
temples, and statues, will be most readily granted. 
Proceeding on this ground, the French philosophers 
hazarded a conjecture respecting a number of dates, 
896 


of which the following are some of the most remarfe- 
able: 1. The depth of the soil round the colossal 
statue of Memnon, at Thebes, gives only 0.106 of a 
mdtre (less than four inches) as the rate of accumula¬ 
tion in a century, while the mean of several observa¬ 
tions made in the valley of Lower Egypt gives 0.126 
of a metre, or rather more than four inches. But the 
basis of the statue of Memnon was certainly raised 
above the level of the inundation by being placed on 
an artificial mound ; and excavations made near it 
show that the original height of that was six metres 
(19.686 feet) above the level of the soil. A similar 
result is obtained from examining the foundations ol 
the palace at Luxor. Taking, therefore, 0.126 of a 
metre, the mean secular augmentation of the soil, as a 
divisor, the quotient, 4760, gives the number of years 
which have elapsed since the foundation of Thebes 
was laid. This date, which, of course, can only be 
considered as a very imperfect approximation to the 
truth, carries the origin of that celebrated metropolis 
as far back as 2960 years before Christ, and, conse¬ 
quently, 612 years before the Deluge, according to the 
reckoning of the modern Jews. But the numbers 
given there differ materially from those of the Samarian 
text and the Septuagint version ; which, carrying the 
Deluge back to the year 3716 before Christ, make an 
interval of seven centuries and a half between the 
flood and the building of Thebes. Though no dis¬ 
tinct account of the age of that city is to be found 
in the Greek historians, it is clear from Diodorus that 
they believed it to have been begun in a very remote 
period of antiquity. ( Diod. Sic., 1 ,*15.)—2. The rub¬ 
bish collected at the foot of the dfeelisk of Luxor indi¬ 
cates that it was erected fourteen hundred years before 
the Christian era.—3. The causeway which crosses 
the plain of Siout furnishes a similar ground for sup¬ 
posing that it must have been founded twelve hundred 
years anterior to the same epoch. — 4. The pillar at 
Heliopolis, six miles from Cairo, appears, from evi¬ 
dence strictly analogous, to have been raised about 
the period just specified ; but, as the waters drain off 
more slowly in the Delta than in Upper Egypt, the 
accumulation of alluvial soil is more rapid there than 
higher up the stream ; the foundations, therefore, of 
ancient buildings in the former district will be at as 
great a depth below the surface as those of much great¬ 
er antiquity are in the middle and upper provinces. 
But it is obvious that to form these calculations with 
such accuracy as would render them less liable to dis¬ 
pute, more time and observation would be requisite 
than could be given by the French in the short period 
during which they continued in undisturbed possession 
of Egypt. One general and important consequence, 
however, arising from their inquiries, can hardly be 
overlooked or denied ; namely, that the dates thus ob¬ 
tained are as remote from the extravagant chronology 
of the ancient Egyptians, as they are consistent with 
the testimony of both sacred and profane history, with 
regard to the early civilization of that interesting 
country. — But, little or no reliance can be placed on 
such conclusions, because it is now manifestly impos¬ 
sible to ascertain, in the first instance, whether the 
measures referred to by the ancient historians were in 
all cases of the same standard ; and, secondly, whether 
the deposition of soil in the Egyptian valley did not 
proceed more rapidly in early times than it does in our 
days, or even than it has done ever since its effects 
first, became an object of philosophical curiosity. That 
the' level of the land has been raised, and its extent 
towards the sea greatly increased since the age of He¬ 
rodotus, we might safely infer, as well from the great 
infusion of earthy matter which is held in suspension 
by the Nile when in a state of flood, as from the anal¬ 
ogous operation of all large rivers, both in the old con 
tinents and in the new. There is, in truth, no good 
reason for questioning the fact mentioned by Dr. Shaw 




NILUS. 


NIN 


that the mud of Ethiopia has been detected by sound¬ 
ings at the distance of not less than twenty leagues 
from the coast of the Delta. Nor yet is there any sub¬ 
stantial ground for apprehending, with the author just 
named, that, in process of time, the whole country 
may be raised to such a height that the river will not 
be able to overflow its' banks ; and, consequently, that 
Egypt, from being the most fertile, will, for want of 
the annual inundation, become one of the most barren 
parts of the universe. “ According to an approximate 
calculation,” observes Wilkinson, “ the land about the 
first or lowest cataract has been raised nine feet in 
1700 years, at Thebes about seven feet, and at Cairo 
about five feet ten inches ; while at Rosetta and the 
mouths of the Nile, where the perpendicular thickness 
of the deposite is much less than in the valley of Cen¬ 
tral and Upper Egypt, owing to the great extent, east 
and west, over which the inundation spreads, the rise 
of the soil has been comparatively imperceptible.” As 
the bed of the Nile always keeps pace with the eleva¬ 
tion of the soil, and the proportion of water brought 
down by the river continues to be the same, it follows 
that the Nile now overflows a greater extent of land, 
both east and west, than in former times ; and that the 
superficies of cultivable land in the plains of Thebes 
and of Central Egypt continues to increase. All fears, 
therefore, about the stoppage of the overflowing of the 
Nile are unfounded. ( Russell’s Egypt , p. 37, seqq .— 
Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 16, p. 234.) 

4. Change in the course of the Nile. 

The Nile is said by Herodutus (2, 99) to have flow¬ 
ed, previously to the time of Menes, on the side of 
Libya. This prince, by constructing a mound at the 
distance of 100 stadia from Memphis, towards the 
south, diverted its course. The ancient course is not 
unknown at present, and may be traced across the 
desert, passing west of the Natron Lakes. It is call¬ 
ed by the Arabs Bahr-bela-Maieh, “ The river with¬ 
out water,” and presents itself to the view in a valley 
which runs parallel to that containing the lakes just 
mentioned. > In the sand with which its channel is ev¬ 
erywhere covered, trunks of trees have been found in 
a state of complete petrifaction, and also the vertebral 
bone of a large fish. Jasper, quartz, and petrosilex 
have likewise been observed scattered over the sur¬ 
face. “That the Nile originally flowed through the 
valley of the Dry River,” observes Russell (Egypt, p. 
102, seqq ), “ is admitted by the most intelligent among 
modern travellers. M. Denon, for example, regards 
as proofs of this fact the physical conformation of the 
adjoining country ; the existence of the bed of a river 
extending to the sea, but now dry ; its depositions and 
incrustations ; its extent; its bearing towards the north 
on a chain of hills which run east and west, and turn 
off towards the northwest, sloping down to follow the 
course of the valley of the dry channel, and likewise 
the Natron Lakes. And, more than all the other proofs, 
the form of the chain of mountains at the north of the 
Pyramid, which shuts the entrance of the valley, and 
appears to be cut perpendicularly, like almost all the 
mountains at the foot of which the Nile flows at the 
present day ; all these offer to the view a channel left 
dry, and its several remains. (Denon, vol. 1, p. 163 ) 
The opinion that the river of Egypt penetrated into 
the Libyan desert, even to the westward of Fayoum, 
is rendered probable by some observations recorded in 
the second volume of Belzoni’s Researches. In his 
journey to the Oasis of Ammon, he reached, one even¬ 
ing, the Bahr-bela-Maieh. ‘ This place,’ he remarks, 

‘ is singular, and deserves the attention of the geogra¬ 
pher, as it is a dry river, and has all the appearance 
of water having been in it, the bank and bottom being 
quite full of stones and sand. There are several isl¬ 
ands in the centre; but the most remarkable circum¬ 
stance is, that at a certain height upon the bank there 
’ 5 X 


is^§, mark evidently as if the water had reached so high: 
the colour of the materials, also, above that mark, is 
much lighter than that of those below. And what 
would almost determine that there has been water here 
is, that the island has the same mark, and on the same 
level with that on the banks of the supposed river. I 
am at a loss to conjecture how the course of this river 
is so little known, as I only found it marked near the 
Natron Lakes, taking a direction of northwest and 
southeast, which does not agree with its course here, 
which is from north to south, as far as I could see from 
the summit of a high rock on the west side of it. The 
Arabs assured me that it ran a great ways in both di¬ 
rections, and that it is the same which passes near the 
Natron Lakes. If this be the case, it must pass right 
before the extremity of the lake Moeris, at the distance 
of two or three days’ journey in a western direction. 
This is the place where several petrified stumps of 
trees are found, and many pebbles, with moving or 
quick water inside.’ ” (Bclzoni, vol. 2, p. 183.) 

Ninus, I. son of Belus, and king of Assyria. His 
history is known to us merely through Ctesias, from 
whom Diodorus Siculus and Justin have copied. 
(Heyne, de Fontibus, Diod. Sic., p. liii., seqq , vol. 1, 
ed. Bip ) Ctesias and Julius Africanus make him to 
have ascended the throne 2048 B.C., and from the 
narrative of Diodorus he would appear to have been a 
warlike prince, who signalized himself by extensive 
conquests, reducing under his sway the Babylonians, 
Armenians, Medes, Bactrians, Indi, and, in a word, 
the whole of Upper and Lower Asia. Even Egypt 
felt his sway. In his expedition against the Bactrians 
he met with the famous Semiramis, with whom he 
united himself in marriage. After completing his con¬ 
quests, Ninus, according to the Greek writers, erected 
for his capital the celebrated city of Nineveh (vid. Ni¬ 
nus II.—Compare, however, remarks under the article 
Assyria), and on his death was succeeded by Semira¬ 
mis, who reared a tomb of vast dimensions over his 
grave.—Much of what is stated respecting this mon¬ 
arch is either purely fabulous, or else various legends 
respecting different conquerors are made to unite in 
one. He occupies the boundary between fable and 
history. (Ctes., ap. Diod. Sic., 2, 1, seqq. — Ctcs., 
Fragm., ed. Bdhr, p. 389, seqq.) —II. The capital of 
the Assyrian Empire, called by the Greeks and Ro¬ 
mans Ninus (No-of), but in Scripture Nineveh, and in 
the Septuagint version, N ivevi or N ivevy. It was sit¬ 
uate in the plain of Aturia, on the Tigris (Strabo, 737. 
— Herod., 1, 193.— Id., 2, 150.— Ptol., 6, 1), and not 
on the Euphrates, as Diodorus states on the authority 
of Ctesias. (Diod. Sic., 2, 3.) The Hebrew and 
Greek writers concur in describing Nineveh as a very 
large and populous city. Jonah speaks of it as “ an 
exceeding great city, of three days’ journey” (Jon. 3, 
3), and states that there were more than 120,000 per¬ 
sons in it that knew not their right hand from their left 
(4, 11). Rosenmuller and other commentators suppose 
this to be a proverbial expression to denote children 
under the age of three or five years, and accordingly 
estimate the entire population at two millions; but 
the expression in Jonah is too vague to warrant us 
in making any such conclusion. Strabo says that it 
was larger than Babylon (Strab., 737); but if any 
dependence is to be placed on the account of Dio¬ 
dorus (2, 3), who states that it was 480 stadia in cir¬ 
cumference, it must have been about the same size as 
Babylon. (Herod., 1, 178.) The walls of Nineveh 
are described by Diodorus as 100 feet high, and so 
broad that three chariots might be driven on them 
abreast. Upon the walls stood 1500 towers, each 200 
feet in height, and the whole was so strong as to be 
deemed impregnable. (Diod. Sic., 2, 3.— Nahum, c. 
2.) According to the Greek writers, Ninus was found¬ 
ed by a king of the same name (vid. Ninus I.); but 
in the book of Genesis it is stated to have been built 

897 





NINUS. 


NIO 


by Assur, or, if we adopt the marginal translation, by 
Nimrod. ( Vid. Assyria.) Possibly Nimrod and Ni- 
nus were the same.—Nineveh was the residence of 
the Assyrian monarchs (2 Kings , 19, 36.— Isaiah, 
37, 37.—Compare Strabo, 84, 737), and it is men¬ 
tioned as a place of great commercial importance ; 
whence Nahum speaks of its merchants as more than 
the stars of heaven (3, 16). But, as in the case of 
most large and wealthy cities, the greatest corruption 
and licentiousness prevailed, on account of which Na¬ 
hum and Zephaniah foretold its destruction.—Nineveh, 
which for 1450 years had been mistress of the East, 
to whom even Babylon itself was subject, was first 
taken in the reign of Sardanapalus, B.C. 747, by the 
Medes and Babylonians, who had revolted under their 
governors Arbaces and Belesis. This event put an 
end to the first Assyrian empire, and divided its im¬ 
mense territory into two lesser kingdoms, those of 
Assyria and Babylon. But Nineveh itself suffered 
little change from this event; it w y as still a great city ; 
and, soon after, in the reign of Esarhaddon, who took 
Babylon, it became again the capital of both empires, 
which continued 54 years ; when Nabopolassar, a gen¬ 
eral in the Assyrian army, and father of the famous 
Nebuchadnezzar, seized on Babylon and proclaimed 
himself king: after which Nineveh was no more the 
seat of government of both kingdoms. It was, in fact, 
now on the decline, and was soon to yield to the rising 
power of its great rival. The Medes had again revolt¬ 
ed, and in the year 633 B.C., their king, Cyaxares, 
having defeated the Assyrians in a great battle, laid 
siege to Nineveh; but its time was not yet come, and 
it was delivered on this occasion by an invasion of 
Media by the Scythians, which obliged Cyaxares to 
withdraw his army to repel them. But in the year 
612, having formed an alliance with Nabopolassar, king 
of Babylon, he returned, accompanied by that monarch, 
to the siege of Nineveh, and finally took the city. 
The prophecy made by Zephaniah, of its utter destruc¬ 
tion, must refer to this latter event. Strabo says that 
it fell into decay immediately after the dissolution of 
the Assyrian monarchy ; and this account is confirmed 
by the fact, that, in the history of Alexander the Great, 
the place is not mentioned, although in his march 
along the Tigris, previous to the battle of Arbela, he 
must have been very near the spot where it is supposed 
to have stood. Under the Roman emperors, however, 
we read of a city named Ninus {Tacit., Ann., 12, 13) 
or Ninive (4mm. Marcell., 18, 7) ; and Abulpharagi, 
in the 13th century, mentions a castle called Ninivi. 
—Little doubt can arise that Nineveh was situate 
near the Tigris, and yet the exact site of that once 
mighty city has never been clearly ascertained. On 
the eastern bank of the Tigris, opposite the town of 
Mosul, and partly on the site of the modern village of 
Nunia or Nebbi Yunus, are some considerable ruins, 
which have been described at different periods by 
Benjamin of Tudela, Thevenot, Tavernier, &c., as 
those of ancient Nineveh. But it is thought by others, 
from the dimensions of the ruins, that these travellers 
must have been mistaken; and that the remains de¬ 
scribed by them were those of some city of much 
smaller extent and more recent date than the Scripture 
Nineveh. Mr. Kinneir, who visited this spot in the 
year 1808, says, that “ On the opposite bank of the 
Tigris (that is, over against Mosul), and about three 
quarters of a mile from that stream, the village of Nu¬ 
nia and sepulchre of the prophet Jonas seem to point 
out the position of Nineveh .”—“ A city being after¬ 
ward erected near this spot, bore the name of Ninus ; 
and, in my opinion, it is the ruins of the latter, and 
not of the old Nineveh, that are now visible. I exam¬ 
ined these ruins in November, 1810, and found them to 
consist of a rampart and a fosse, forming an oblong 
square not exceeding four miles in compass, if so much. 

I saw neither stones nor rubbish of any kind. The wall 
898 


is, on an average, 20 feet in height; and, as it is cov¬ 
ered with grass, the whole has a striking resemblance 
to some of the Roman intrenchments which are extant 
in England.” Mr.. Kinneir’s opinions are in every¬ 
thing worthy of respect, and with regard to these ruins, 
the traces of the wall point them out very evidently 
as belonging to some city or building of much less 
dimensions than ancient Nineveh; while these traces 
being visible at all would seem to place their date long 
subsequent to that of the structure of the Scripture 
Nineveh. It cannot be supposed, that while the walls 
of Babylon, which were at least as high and as thick, 
according to the concurrent testimony of historians, afe 
those of Nineveh, and were entire long after the de¬ 
struction of that city, are utterly effaced, those of 
Nineveh should still be visible. Mr. Rich, indeed, 
supposes that he has discovered in these intrenchments 
the ruins of the palace of Nineveh ; which he describes 
as an enclosure of a rectangular form, corresponding 
with the cardinal points of the compass ; the area of 
which is not larger than that of the town of Mosul. 
The boundary of this enclosure may, he says, be per¬ 
fectly traced all around ; and looks like an embank¬ 
ment of earth or rubbish of small elevation, and has 
attached to it, and in its. line at several places, mounds 
of greater size and solidity. The first of these forms 
the southwest angle ; and on it is built the village of 
Nebbi Yunus, where they show the tomb of the 
prophet Jonas. The next, and largest of all, which 
Mr. Rich supposes to be the monument of Ninus, is 
situate near the centre of the western face of the en¬ 
closure, and is joined, like the others, by the boundary 
wall ; the natives call it Koyunjuk Tcpe. Its form is 
that of a truncated pyramid, with regular steep sides 
and a flat top, and composed of stones and earth ; 
there being sufficient of the latter to admit of cultiva¬ 
tion by the inhabitants of Koyunjuk, which is built at 
the northeast extremity. This mound, according to 
measurements taken by Mr. Rich, is 178 feet high, 
1850 long from east to west, and 1147 broad from 
north to south. The other mounds on the boundary 
wall offer nothing worthy of remark ; but out of one 
of these, a short time since, an immense block of 
stone was dug, on which were sculptured the figures 
of men and animals ; cylinders, like those of Babylon, 
with some other antiques, and stones of very large di¬ 
mensions, are also occasionally dug up. Whether 
these ruins be really what Mr. Rich supposes them to 
be, or a part only of the more recent city referred to 
by Mr. Kinneir, cannot be decided. It is quite clear, 
however, that of whatever structure these mounds may 
be the remains, their dimensions will not allow us to 
consider them as those of the walls of Nineveh ; they 
must either be those of a palace, as supposed by Mr. 
Rich, or of some other stupendous building of that 
city, or of a more modern one erected on this spot; 
and the uncertainty which exists on this point is alone 
sufficient to testify the fulfilment of the prophecies. 
In fact, these prophecies respecting Nineveh have 
long since received their entire completion ; “ an utter 
end is made of the place,” and the true site may for 
ever be sought in vain. {Mansford's Scripture Gaz¬ 
etteer, p. 339, seqq. — Drummond's Origines, p 172 
seqq.) _ 

Nin"as, a son of Ninus and Semiramis, king of 
Assyria, who succeeded his mother on her voluntarily 
abdicating the crown. {Vid. Semiramis.) Altogether 
unlike his parents, he gave himself up to a, life of se¬ 
clusion and pleasure, in which he was imitated by his 
successors. {Diod. Sic., 2, 21.) 

Niobe, daughter of Tantalus, king of Lydia, was 
married to Amphion, by whom she had, according to 
Ovid and other ancient writers, seven sons and seven 
daughters. This is the most commonly received opin¬ 
ion, though Homer {II, 24, 602) and others give the 
number variously. The pride of Niobe at having this 






NIOBE. 


NIS 


numerous offspring was so great, that she is said to 
have insulted Latona, the mother of Apollo and Diana, 
by refusing to offer at the altars raised in her honour, 
declaring that she herself had a better claim to worship 
and sacrifices than one who was the mother of only 
two children. Latona, indignant at this insolence and 
presumption, called upon her children for revenge. 
Apollo and Diana heard her prayer, and obeyed the 
entreaty of their outraged parent. All the sons of 
Niobe fell by the arrows of Apollo, while the daugh¬ 
ters, in like manner, met their death from the hands 
of Diana. Chloris alone escaped the common fate. 
She was the wife of Neleus, king of Pylos. This ter¬ 
rible judgment of the gods so affected the now heart- 
stricken and humiliated Niobe, that she was changed 
by her excessive grief into a stone on Mount Sipylus, 
in Lydia. Amphion also, in attempting, in retalia¬ 
tion, to destroy the temple of Apollo, perished by the 
shafts of that deity. (Ovid, Met.., 6, 146, seqq. — Hy- 
gin., fab., 9.— Apollod., 3, 5, 6.— Soph., Anhg., 823, 
seqq.) Pausanias says, that the rock on Sipylus, 
which went by the name of Niobe, and which he had 
visited, “ was merely a rock and precipice when one 
came close up to it, and bore no resemblance at all to 
a woman ; but at a distance you might imagine it to 
be a woman weeping with downcast countenance.” 
( Pausan ., 1, 21, 3.)—The myth of Niobe has been 
explained by Volcker and others in a physical sense. 
According to these writers, the name Niobe (N i66y, i. 
e., Neofo?) denotes Youth or Newness. She is the 
daughter of the Flourishing-one (Tantalus), and the 
mother of the Green-one (Chloris). In her, then, we 
may view the young, verdant, fruitful earth, the bride 
of the sun (Amphion), beneath the influence of whose 
fecundating beams she pours forth vegetation with 
lavish profusion. The revolution of the year, howev¬ 
er, denoted by Apollo and Diana (other forms of the 
sun and moon), withers up and destroys her progeny ; 
she weeps and stiffens to stone (the torrents and frosts 
of winter); but Chloris, the Green-one, remains, and 
spring clothes the earth anew with its smiling verdure. 
(Volcker, Myth, der Jap., p. 359 . — Keightlcy's My¬ 
thology, p. 338.)—The legend of Niobe and her chil¬ 
dren has afforded a subject for art, which has been fine¬ 
ly treated by one of the greatest ancient masters of 
sculpture. It consists of a series, rather than a group, 
of figures of both sexes, in all the disorder and agony 
of expected or present suffering ; while one, the moth¬ 
er, the hapless Niobe, in the most affecting attitude of 
supplication, and with an expression of deep grief, her 
eyes turned upward, implores the justly-offended gods 
to moderate their anger and spare her offspring, one 
of whom, the youngest girl, she strains fondly to her 
bosom. It is difficult, however, by description, to do 
justice to the various excellence exhibited in this ad¬ 
mirable work. The arrangement of the composition 
is supposed to have been adapted to a tympanum or 
pediment. The figure of Niobe, of colossal dimen¬ 
sions compared with the other figures, forms, with her 
youngest daughter pressed to her, the centre. The 
execution of this interesting monument of Greek art 
is attributed by some to Scopas, while others think it 
the production of Praxiteles. Pliny says it was a 
question which of the two was the author of it. The 
group was in the temple of Apollo Sosianus at Rome. 
(Plin., 36, 10.— Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.) This beau¬ 
tiful piece of sculpture is now in the gallery of the 
Grand-duke of Tuscany at Florence, though some re¬ 
gard it merely as a copy.—The subject of Niobe and 
her children was a favourite one also with the poets of 
antiquity. Besides the beautiful-allusion to it in the 
Antigone of Sophocles (v. 823, seqq.), and the equally 
% beautiful story in Ovid (Met., 6, 146, seqq.), there are 
numerous epigrams in the Greek Anthology, several 
of which have great merit, and appear to be descriptive 
either of the group of figures which still exists, or of 


some similar group. (Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 16, 
p. 238.) 

Niphates, a range of mountains in Armenia, form¬ 
ing part of the great chain of Taurus, and lying to the 
southeast of the Arsissa Palus, or Lake Van. Their 
summits were covered with snow during the whole 
year, and to this circumstance the name Niphates 
is supposed to allude (NiQuryg, quasi vitperudyCi 
“ snowy”). There was also a river of the same name 
rising in this mountain chain. (Virg., Georg., 3, 30 
— Horat., Od., 2, 9.— Mela, 1, 15.—Pliny, 5, 27.— 
Amm. Marcell., 23, 6.— Cellarms, Geogr., vol. 2, 
p. 321.) 

Nireus, a king of Naxos, son of Charops and 
Aglaia. He was one of the Grecian chiefs during the 
Trojan war, and was celebrated for his beauty. (Horn.. 
II., 2, 671.— Horat., Od., 3, 20, 15.) 

Nissea, I. a city and district of Upper Asia, near 
the sources of the river Ochus, now the Mar gab. 
According to Strabo, it would appear to have been sit¬ 
uate between Parthiene and Hyrcania. (Strab., 511. 
—Compare Mannert, Geogr., vol. 5, pt. 1, p. 100.) 
The same writer states elsewhere (p. 508) that it be¬ 
longed in part to Hyrcania, and was in part an inde¬ 
pendent district. The city of Nissea, however, is 
generally considered to have been the chief city of 
Parthiene, becoming such, no doubt, on the first spread 
of the Parthian power. Mannert, in consequence, 
seeks to identify it with the Asaak (probably Arsak) 
of Isidorus of Charax (p. 7).—The famous Nissan 
horses are thought to have come from this quarter. 
D’Anville gives Nesa as the modern name of the city 
of Nissa, and remarks that it “has before it vast 
plains, proper for the Parthian Nomades or shepherds, 
as they were characterized. And it was thence that 
the Turkish sultan, ancestor of the Ottoman family, 
departed for the banks of the Euphrates” (vol. 2, p. 
69, Am. cd.). Mannert merely places Nissea near the 
modern Herat. —II. The harbour of Megara, situate 
on the Saronic Gulf, and connected with the main city 
by long walls. The citadel was also called by the 
same name, and stood on the road between Megara 
and the port. It was a place of considerable strength. 
Thucydides states (4, 66) that the citadel might be cut 
off from the city by effecting a breach in the long wall. 
(Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 433.) 

Nisibis, a large and populous city of Mesopotamia, 
about two days’ journey from the Tigris, in the midst 
of a pleasant and fertile plain at the foot of Mons Ma- 
sius, and on the river Mygdonius. The name was 
changed by the Macedonians into Antiochia Mygdoni- 
ca (’Avrioxeia M vydovucq), but this new appellation 
only lasted as long as their power. When the Mace¬ 
donian sway ceased, the old name of Nisibis was re¬ 
sumed. The Romans became acquainted with it for 
the first time during the war carried on by Lucullus 
against the King of Armenia (Pint., Vit. Lucull.), and 
it was then represented as a large and populous city, 
situate in the midst of a fruitful territory. It was ta¬ 
ken and plundered by Lucullus. (Dio Cass., 35, 7.) 
The Parthians subsequently became masters of the 
place, and held it until the time of Trajan, who took it 
from them. (Dio Cass., 68, 23.) Hadrian gave back 
to the Parthians the provinces conquered from them, 
and yet Nisibis appears as a Roman city in the expe¬ 
dition of Severus. It had very probably, therefore, 
been taken by the generals of Lucius Yerus. Seve¬ 
rus declared it a Roman colony, and the capital of the 
province : he also adorned and strengthened it. (Di „ 
Cass., 75, 3.— Id., 30, 6.— Spanhcim, de usu. N., p. 
606.) From this period it remained, for the space of 
two centuries, a strong bulwark of the Roman empire 
in this quarter, against which all the attacks of the 
Persian power were directed in vain, with the excep¬ 
tion of two instances, when it was taken and held by 
this nation, though only for a short time. (Capiol 

899 




N I T 


NIT 


Vit. Gordian, tert., c. 26.— Trebelhi , Vit. Odenat., c. 
15.) After the death of Julian, Nisibis was ceded to 
Sapor, king of Persia, by Jovian, and remained hence¬ 
forth for the Persians, what it had thus far been to the 
Romans, a strong frontier town. The latter could 
never regain possession of it.—The modern Nisibin 
or Nissabin, which occupies the site of the ancient 
city, is represented as being little better than a mere 
village. ( Mannert, Geogr., vol. 5, pt. 2, p. 297, seqq .) 

Nisus, I. a son of Hyrtacus, born on Mount Ida, 
near Troy. He came to Italy with iEneas, and was 
united by ties of the closest attachment to Euryalus, 
son of Opheltes. During the prosecution of the war 
w r ith Turnus, Nisus, to whom the defence of one of 
the entrances of the camp was entrusted, determined 
to sally forth in search of tidings of JEneas. Eury¬ 
alus accompanied him in this perilous undertaking. 
Fortune at first seconded their efforts, but they were 
at length surprised by a Latin detachment. Euryalus 
was cut down by Volscens ; the latter was as imme¬ 
diately despatched by the avenging hand of Nisus ; 
who, however, overpowered by numbers, soon shared 
the fate of his friend. (Virg ., Mn., 9, 176, seqq. — 
Compare AEn., 5, 334, seqq .)—II. A king of Megara. 
In the war waged by Minos, king of Crete, against 
the Athenians, on account of the death of Androgeus 
(vid. Androgeus), Megara was besieged, and it was 
taken through the treachery of Scylla, the daughter of 
Nisus. This prince had a golden or purple lock of 
hair growing on his head ; and as long as it remained 
uncut, so long was his life to last. Scylla, having 
seen Minos, fell in love with him, and resolved to give 
him the victory. She cut off her father’s precious 
lock as he slept, and he immediately died; the town 
was then taken by the Cretans. But Minos, instead 
of rewarding the maiden, disgusted with her unnatural 
treachery, tied her by the feet to the stern of his ves¬ 
sel, and thus dragged her along until she was drowned. 
(Apollod., 3, 15, 1.— Schol. ad Eurip ., Hippol., 1195.) 
Another legend adds, that Nisus was changed into the 
bird called the Sea-eagle (dTaderog), and Scylla into 
that named Gins (ueipig), and that the father continu- 
ally pursues the daughter to punish her for her crime. 
(Ovid, Mctam., 8, 145.— Virg., Cir. — Id., Georg., 1, 
403.) According to HCschylus ( Choeph., 609, seqq.), 
Minos bribed Scylla with a golden collar. ( Height- 
ley's Mythology, p. 385.) 

Nisyros, I. an island in the AEgean, one of the 
Sporades, about sixty stadia north of Telos. Strabo 
describes it as a lofty and rocky isle, with a town of 
the same name. Mythologists pretended that this isl¬ 
and had been separated from Cos by Neptune, in or¬ 
der that he might hurl it against the giant Polyboetes. 

( Strabo, 448.— Apollod., I., 6, 2.— Pausan., 1, 2.— 
Steph. Byz., s. v.) Herodotus informs us that the Ni- 
syrians were subject at one time to Artemisia, queen of 
Caria (7, 99). The modern name is Nisari. From 
this island is procured a large number of good mill¬ 
stones. (Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 418.)—II 
The chief town in the island of Carpathus. (Strabo, 
489.) 

Nitetis, a daughter of Apries, king of Egypt, mar¬ 
ried by his successor Amasis to Cambyses. Herodo¬ 
tus states (3, 1), that Cambyses was instigated to ask 
in marriage the daughter of Amasis, by a certain phy¬ 
sician, whom Amasis had compelled to go to Persia 
when Cyrus, the father of Cambyses, was suffering 
from weak eyes, and requested the Egyptian king to 
send him a man skilled in medicine. The physician 
did this, either that Amasis might experience affliction 
at the loss of his daughter, or provoke Cambyses by a 
refusal. Amasis, however, did not send his own 
daughter, but Nitetis, who discovered the deception to 
Cambyses, which so exasperated that monarch that 
he determined to make war on Amasis. Prideaux de¬ 
nies the truth of this account, on the ground that 
900 


Apries having been dead above forty years, no daughter 
of his could have been young enough to be acceptable 
to Cambyses. Larcher, however, endeavours to rec¬ 
oncile the apparent improbability, by saying that there 
is great reason to suppose that Apries lived a prisoner 
many years after Amasis had dethroned him, and that, 
therefore, Nitetis might have been no more than 20 or 
22 years of age when she was sent to Cambyses. 
(Larcher, ad Herod., 1. c.) 

Nitiobriges, a people of Gaul, of Celtic origin, 
but who settled among the Aquitani. Their chief 
city was Nitiobrigum or Agennum, on the Garumna, 
now Agen, and their territory answers to l'Agcnnois, 
in the Department de Lot et Garonne. (Coes., B. G., 

7, 7.— Lemaire, Ind. Geogr., ad Coes., s. v.) 

Nitocris, I. a queen of Babylon, generally supposed 
to have been the wife of Nebuchodonosor or Nebu¬ 
chadnezzar, and grandmother, consequently, to Labyne- 
tus or Nabonedus, who is called in Daniel Belshatzar 
or Beltzasar. (Heeren, Ideen, vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 154. 
— Larcher, ad Herod., 1 , 184.) Wesseling, however, 
and others, make her the queen of Evilmerodach, son 
of Nebuchadnezzar. (Wesseling, ad Herod., 1. c.)— 
Herodotus informs us that Nitocris, in order to render 
her territories more secure from the Medes, altered 
the course of the Euphrates, and made it so very 
winding that it came in its course three times to Ar- 
dericca. (Vid. Ardericca.) She also faced the banks 
of the Euphrates, where it passed through Babylon, 
with burned bricks, and connected the two divisions of 
the city by a bridge of stone. (Herod., 1, 186.) The 
historian likewise informs us, that she prepared a sep¬ 
ulchre for herself over the most frequented gate of the 
city, with an inscription to this effect, that if any of 
her successors should find himself in want of money, 
he should open this sepulchre and take as much as he 
might think fit; but that, if he were not reduced to 
real want, he ought to forbear: otherwise he would 
have cause to repent. This monument remained un¬ 
touched till the reign of Darius ; who, judging it un¬ 
reasonable that the gate should remain useless to the in¬ 
habitants (for no man would pass under a dead body), 
and that an inviting treasure, moreover, should be ren¬ 
dered unserviceable, broke open the sepulchre : but, 
instead of money, he found only the remains of Nito¬ 
cris, and the following inscription: “ Hadst thou not 
been insatiably covetous, and greedy after the most 
sordid gain, thou wouldst not have violated the sepul¬ 
chres of the dead." (Herod., 1, 187.) Plutarch tells 
the same story of Semiramis. (Apophth., Reg. el 
Due .—vol. 6, p. 661, ed. Reiske.) The custom, how r - 
ever, of depositing treasures in the tombs of deceased 
monarchs was very common with the ancients. Solo¬ 
mon did this in the case of David's sepulchre ; and 
Hyrcanus, and after him Herod, both opened the tomb 
and obtained large amounts of treasure from it. (Jo¬ 
seph., Ant. Jud., 7, 15.— Id. ib., 13, 8.)—II. A queen 
of Egypt, who succeeded her brother. The Egyp¬ 
tians, having dethroned and put to death the latter, set 
her over them. She took a singular revenge, howev¬ 
er, for the death of her brother ; for, having construct¬ 
ed a large subterranean apartment, and having invited 
to an entertainment in it those individuals who had 
been most concerned in her brother’s murder, she let 
in the river by a secret passage, and drowned them all. 
She then destroyed herself. (Herod., 2, 100.) Hee¬ 
ren takes this Nitocris for a queen of ^Ethiopian ori¬ 
gin ; no instance of a reigning queen being found 
among the pure Egyptian dynasties. (Ideen, vol. 2, 
pt. 1, p. 412.) Jablonski approves of the interpreta¬ 
tion which Eratosthenes gives to the name Nitocris, 
according to whom it is equivalent to ’AOtjvu vinyipo- 
pog. (Jablonsk., Voc. AEgypt., p. 162.) $ 

Nitria, a city of Egypt, to the west of the Canopic 
branch of the Nile, in the desert near the lakes which 
afforded nitre. It gave name to the Nitriotic nome, 




N OM 


NON 


receiving its own from the adjacent Natron lakes. 
Many Christians were accustomed to flee hither for 
refuge during the early persecutions of the church. 
(Sozom., 6, 31.— Socrat ., Eccles., 4, 23.— Plin., 5, 9. 
— Id., 31, 10.) 

Nivaria, I. one of the Fortunatse Insulie, off the 
western coast of Mauritania Tingitana. It is now the 
island of Tenenffe. The name Nivaria has reference 
to the snows which cover the summits of the island 
for a great part of the year. It was also called Con- 
vallis. {Plin., 4, 32.)—II. A city of Hispania Tar- 
raconensis, in the territory of the Vaccaei, and to the 
north of Cauca. ( Itin. Ant., 435.) 

Noctiluca, a surname of Diana, as indicating the 
goddess that shines during the night season. The ep¬ 
ithet would also appear to have reference to her tem¬ 
ple’s being adorned with lights during the same period. 
This temple was on the Palatine Hill. Compare the 
remark of Varro : 11 Luna, quod sola lucet noctu : 
itaque ea dicta Noctiluca in Palatio, nam ibi noctu 
lucet templum" {L. L., 4, 10). 

Nola, one of the most ancient and important cities 
of Campania, situate to the northeast of Neapolis. The 
earliest record we have of it is from Hecatseus, who is 
cited by Stephanus of Byzantium ( s. v. N tila). That 
ancient historian, in one of his works, described it as 
a city of the Ausones. According to some accounts, 
Nola was said to have been founded, by the Etrurians. 
{Veil. Paterc., 1, 6.— Polyb., 2, 17.) Others, again, 
represented it as a colony of the Chalcidians. ( Jus¬ 
tin, 20, 1, 13.) If this latter account be correct, the 
Chalcidians of Cumae and Neapolis are doubtless 
meant. All these conflicting statements, however, 
may be reconciled by admitting that it successively 
fell into the hands of these different people. Nola af¬ 
terward appears to have been occupied by the Sam- 
nites, together with other Campanian towns, until they 
were expelled by the Romans. {Liv., 9, 28.— Strab., 
249.) Though situated in an open plain, it was capa¬ 
ble of being easily defended, from the strength of its 
walls and towers ; and we know it resisted all the ef¬ 
forts of Hannibal after the battle of Cannae, under the 
able direction of Marcellus. {Liv., 23, 14, seqq. — 
Cic., Brut., 3.) In the Social war, this city fell into 
the hands of the confederates, and remained in their 
possession nearly to the conclusion of the war. It 
was then retaken by Sylla, and, having been set on fire 
by the Samnite garrison, was burned to the ground 
{Liv., Epit., 89.— Appian, Bell. Civ., 1, 42.— Veil. 
Paterc., 2, 18.) It must have risen, however, from 
its ruins, since subsequent writers reckon it among 
the cities of Campania, and Frontinus reports that it 
was colonized by Vespasian. {Plin., 3, 5.— Front., 
de Col ) Here Augustus breathed his last, as Taci¬ 
tus and Suetonius remark, in the same house and 
chamber in which his father Octavius had ended his 
days. {Tacit., Ann., 1, 5, et 9.— Suet., Aug., 99.) 
The modern name of the place is the same as the an¬ 
cient, Nola. {Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 210.) 
Aulus Gellius relates a foolish story, that Virgil had 
introduced the name of Nola into his Georgies (2, 
225), but that, when he was refused permission by the 
inhabitants to lead off a stream of water into his 
grounds adjacent to the place {aquam uti duceret in 
propinquum rus ), he obliterated the name of the city 
from his poem, and substituted the word ora. {Aul. 
Cell., 7, 20.—Compare Serv., ad JEn., 7, 740.— Phi- 
lurg., ad Georg., 1. c.) Ambrose Leo, a native of 
Nola, has taken the trouble of refuting the idle charge 
{de Nola, 1,2— Schott., Script. Hist. Ital. —Consult 
Heyne, ad Georg., 1. c. — Var. Led .— Foss, ad Georg., 
1. c.). The only particular of any value to be obtain¬ 
ed from the story would seem to be the locality of 
Virgil’s farm in the neighborhood of Nola, in what 
were called the Campi Phlegraei. (Foss, /. c .) 

Nomades {ISlopudeq), a general name among the 


Greeks for the pastoral nations of antiquity, which 
lived in wandering tribes, as the Scythians, Arabs, &c, 
Sallust makes the Numidians to have obtained their 
name in this way {Bell. Jug., 18), but without the 
least propriety. The term Numidce is evidently of 
Phoenician origin. Le Clerc explains Numidse by Ne~ 
moudim, “wanderers” {Cleric., ad Gen., 10, 6). 

Nomentum, a city of Italy, in the territory of the 
Sabines, and to the northeast of Rome. It was a col¬ 
ony of Alba {Dion. Hal., 2, 53), and therefore origi¬ 
nally, perhaps, a Latin city {Liv., 1 , 38), but from its 
position it is generally attributed to the Sabines. No¬ 
mentum was finally conquered, with several other 
towns, A.U.C. 417, and admitted to the participation 
of the privileges granted to Latin municipal cities. 
{Liv., 3, 14.) It was, however, but an insignificant 
place in the time of Propertius (4, 10). Its territory 
was nevertheless long celebrated for the produce of 
its vineyards ; and hence, in the time of Seneca and 
Pliny, we find that land in this district was sold for 
enormous sums. The former had an estate in the vi¬ 
cinity of this town, which was his favourite retreat. 
{Epist., 104.— Plin., 14, 4.'— Columella, R. R., 3, 3.) 
The wine of Nomentum is commended by Athenseus 
(1, 48) and Martial (1, 85). The poet had a farm near 
this spot, to which he makes frequent allusions. 
{Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 305.) 

Nonacris, a town of Arcadia, to the northwest of 
Pheneus, and on the confines of AcHaia. It was sur¬ 
rounded by lofty mountains and perpendicular rocks, 
over which the celebrated torrent Styx precipitated it¬ 
self to join the river Crathis ; the waters were said to 
be poisonous, and to possess the property of dissolving 
metals and other hard substances exposed to their ac¬ 
tion. {Pausan., 8, 18.— Plin., 2, 104.— Vitruv., 8, 
3.) Herodotus describes the Nonacrian Styx as a scan¬ 
ty rill, distilling from the rock, and falling into a hol¬ 
low basin surrounded by a wall (6, 75).—Pausanias 
only saw the ruins of Nonacris. (Compare Stephan. 
Byz., s. v. N dvaKpcq.) Pouqueville informs us, that 
the fall of the Styx, which is now called Mauronero, 
or the “Black Water,” is to be seen near the village 
of Vounari, and somewhat to the south of Calavnta. 
He describes it as streaming in a sheet of foam from 
one of the loftiest precipices of Mount Chelmos, and 
afterward uniting with the Crathis in the Valley of 
Kloukinais. {Voyage, vol. 5, p. 459.) The rocks 
above Nonacris are called Aroanii Montes by Pau¬ 
sanias. {Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 3, p. 314.) 
The epithet Nonacrius is sometimes used by the po¬ 
ets in the sense of “Arcadian.” Thus, Ovid employs 
it in speaking of Evander, as being an Arcadian by 
birth {Fast., 5, 97), and also of Atalanta. {Met., 8, 
426.) 

Nonius Marcellus, a Latin grammarian. The 
period when he flourished is not exactly known. It 
has been supposed, however, from his citing no writer 
later than Apuleius, that he lived towards the end of 
the second century. Hamberger believes him to have 
been contemporary with Constantine {Zuvcrl. Nachr. 
von den torn. Schriftst., vol. 5, p. 783), while Funccius, 
relying on a passage of Ausonius {Profess. Burdeg., 
c. 18), where mention is made of a Marcellus, a gram¬ 
marian of Narbo, thinks that our author could not have 
lived earlier than the beginning of the 5th century. 
{Funcc., de inqrti ac decrep. ling. Lat. sencct., p. 302.) 
Nonius Marcellus is surnamed, in some manuscripts, 
Peripateticus Tiburiensis, because perhaps he had 
studied the philosophy of Aristotle in the library ap¬ 
pended to Hadrian’s Tiburtine villa. Lie has left be¬ 
hind him a work entitled “ De proprietate sermonum," 
divided into nineteen chapters. It is occupied with 
grammatical topics, except the last six chapters, which 
treat of matters connected principally with the sub¬ 
ject of archieology. {Gothofrcd., Auct. Lat. ling., p. 
482.) In the extracts from the ancient grammari- 

901 



NON 


NONNUS. 


a ns, who had written on the difference between words, 
extracts published by Gothofredus (Godefroi), among 
others, we find fragments of the writings of Marcellus 
(p. 1335). Some modern critics have formed rather 
an unfavourable opinion of Nonius Marcellus. G. J. 
Yossius says that he is deficient in learning and judg¬ 
ment ; and Justus Lipsius treats him as a man of very 
weak mind. (Foss, de Philolol., 5, 13.— Lips., An- 
tiq Led., 2, 4.) On the other hand, Isaac Vossius 
laments the hard fate of this grammarian, whom, ac¬ 
cording to him, modem scholars have been accustomed 
to insult because unable to understand his writings 
(ad Catull., p. 212) It is certain, that no ancient 
grammarian is so rich in his citations from previous 
writers, which he often gives without passing any 
opinion upon them. It is sufficient, however, for 
modern scholars to obtain these citations; nor need 
they, in fact, regret that the compiler has not append¬ 
ed to them his individual sentiments. ( Scholl, Hist. 
Lit. Rom., vol. 3, p. 310, seqq.) 

Nonnus, I. a native of Panopolis in Egypt, and 
distinguished for his poetical abilities. The precise 
period when he flourished is involved in great un¬ 
certainty, nor is anything known with accuracy re¬ 
specting the circumstances of his life. Conjecture 
has been called in to supply the place of positive infor¬ 
mation Nonnus was, as appears from his produc¬ 
tions, a man of great erudition, and we cannot doubt 
that he was either educated at Alexandrea, or had 
lived in that city, where all the Greek erudition cen¬ 
tred during the first ages of the Christian era.—Was 
he born a Christian, or did he embrace Christianity 
after he had reached a certain age ? We have here a 
question about which the ancients have left us in com¬ 
plete uncertainty. The author of the Dionysiaca must 
have been a pagan; for it is difficult to believe that 
any Christian, even supposing that he had made the 
Greek mythology a subject of deep study, would have 
felt inclined to turn his attention to a theme, in treat¬ 
ing of which he must inevitably shock the feelings and 
incur the censure of his fellow-Christians. And yet 
Nonnus composed also a Christian poem.—It is prob¬ 
able, then, that he was at first a pagan, and embraced 
the new religion at a subsequent period of his life. 
But here a new difficulty presents itself. How comes 
it that no Christian writer of the time makes mention 
of the conversion of a man who must have acquired a 
high reputation for learning'? To explain this silence, 
it has been supposed that Nonnus was one of those 
pagan philosophers and sophists, who were a party in 
the tumult at Alexandrea, which had been excited by 
the intolerance of the bishop Theophilus. To escape 
the vengeance of their opponents, some of these phi¬ 
losophers expatriated themselves, others submitted to 
baptism. If Nonnus was in the number of the latter, 
it may easily be conceived that the ecclesiastical wri¬ 
ters of the day could derive no advantage to their 
cause from his conversion. ( Wcichert, dc Nonno Pa- 
nopolitano, Viteb., 1810.) This hypothesis fixes, the 
period when Nonnus flourished at the end of the fourth, 
and the commencement of the fifth century. He was 
then contemporary with Synesius. Now, among the 
letters of this philosopher, there is one ( Ep. 43, ad 
Anastas.) in which he recommends a certain Sosena, 
son of Nonnus, a young man who, he says, has re¬ 
ceived a very careful education. He speaks, on this 
same occasion, of the misfortune into which Sosena’s 
father had fallen, of losing all his property, and this 
very circumstance suits perfectly well the case of one 
who had been involved in the troubles at Alexandrea, 
which had for their result the pillaging of the dwell¬ 
ings of the pagans.—We have already remarked that 
there exist two poems composed by Nonnus : one of 
these, the f ruit, probably, of his old age, is a stranger 
to profane literature ; it is a paraphrase on the gospel 
of St. John. The other is entitled A lovvoiand or 
902 


B aacapind. It is in 48 books or cantos, and gives an 
account of the adventures of Dionysius or Bacchus, 
from the time of his birth to his return from his expe¬ 
dition into India; and the early books also contain, 
by way of introduction, the history of Europa and 
Cadmus, the battle of the giants, and numerous other 
mythological stories. There are few works about the 
merits of which the opinions of the learned have been 
more divided than this last-mentioned production of 
Nonnus. He who would be a competent judge in 
this matter, must possess as much taste as erudition, 
and, unfortunately, these two qualities are not often 
found united in the same individual. The first editor 
of Nonnus, Falckenberg, a philologist of the 16th cen¬ 
tury, carried his admiration so far as to place the poet 
on a level with Homer. Julius Caesar Scaliger even 
preferred him to Homer; while Politian and Muretus, 
without carrying their enthusiasm to such an extreme, 
held him, however, in the highest estimation. On the 
other hand, Nicholas Heinsius, Peter Cunaeus, Joseph 
Scaliger, and Rapin, allowed Nonnus no merit what¬ 
ever. The truth probably lies between these two ex¬ 
tremes.—In order to judge fairly of Nonnus, we must 
be careful to put away from our minds every idea of 
a regular epic poem, and must consider the A covvai- 
ana merely as a species of exercise or declamation 
(peleTrj) in verse, which has served the author for a 
groundwork on which to display the fruits of vast read¬ 
ing and research. If we view the poem in this light, 
we shall find that it is not even wanting in a regular 
plan, and that there reigns throughout it all that order 
and method which suffice for such a production. A 
man of taste very probably would never have selected 
such a theme, yet Nonnus has displayed great spirit 
in the management of its details. His work is dis¬ 
tinguished by a great variety of fables, by the beauty 
of the images employed, and by the correctness of the 
sentiments which it contains ; yet his style is unequal, 
sometimes bordering on simplicity, often emphatic, 
sometimes easy and graceful, but much more frequently 
languid, prolix, and trivial. (Consult Ouwaroff, Non¬ 
nus von Panopolis , der Dichter, &c., Petersb., 1847, 
4to.)—But, whatever may be the rank which is to be 
assigned to Nonnus in the list of poets, his A lovvoiaica 
certainly possess a strong interest for us as a rich 
storehouse of mythological traditions. It is sufficient, 
in order to appreciate the importance of the work, 
when considered in this light, to recollect the great 
number of poems of every kind of which Bacchus and 
his mysterious rites were the subject, and of which 
nothing now remains to us but the mere titles and a 
few fragments preserved by the erudition of Non¬ 
nus Among these works that have thus perished 
may be enumerated five tragedies, bearing each the 
title of “ The Bacchantes ,” and having for their au¬ 
thors TEschylus, Cleophon, Iophon, Xenocles, and 
Epigenes ; two other tragedies of /Eschylus, namely, 

“ The Bassandes ” and “ Semele a piece by Carci- 
nus ; three pieces offiEschylus, Euripides, and Iophon, 
each entitled u Pcntheus two of Sophocles, each en¬ 
titled “ Athamas a satyric drama under the same 
name by Xenocles; various comedies entitled the 
“ Bacchantes ,” by Epicharmus, Antiphanes, Diodes, 
and Lysippus ; together with a host of dithyrambics* 
and other works both in prose and verse.—Hermann 
remarks, that Nonnus ought to be regarded as the re¬ 
storer of the hexameter. After the example of Ho¬ 
mer, the poets anterior to Nonnus placed the caesural 
pause on the first syllable of the third foot (called the 
penthemimeral pause in the language of the gramma¬ 
rians) ; they did not. however, at the same time, con¬ 
sider that the verses of the Iliad and Odyssey are 
rich in dactyls, and that their own hexameters were 
rendered harsh by reason of the many spondees they 
contained. What also interfered with the harmony 
of their lines was the practice of regarding as short 






NONNUS. 


NOR 


a vowel placed before a mute followed by a liquid, 
in which they directly departed from Homeric usage. 
Nonnus, on his part, replaced a portion of the spondees 
by dactyls, introduced the trochaic ccesura in the third 
foot, banished the trochees from the fourth, made long 
the vowels followed by a mute with a liquid, excluded 
the hiatus excepting in phrases borrowed from Homer, 
and which had received the sanction of ages, and in¬ 
terdicted himself the license of making the caesura 
fall upon a short syllable. If by these changes the 
hexameter lost somewhat of its stateliness and grav¬ 
ity, it gained, at the same time, in point of fulness 
and elegance. In fine, versification, which had be¬ 
come too easy, now resumed the rank of an art. 
( Hermann , Orphica, p. 60.— Id., Elem. Doctr. Metr., 
p. 333, ed. Lips., 1816.) A good edition of Nonnus 
is still a desideratum. The first edition of the A covv- 
ciand was given by Falckenberg, from a manuscript 
which is now at Vienna, from the Plantin press, Ant¬ 
werp, 1569, in 4to. It contained merely the Greek 
text. This edition was reprinted by Wechel, with a 
poor translation by Lubin, at Hanover, in 1605, in 8vo. 
Cunsus published in 1610, at Leyden, Animadversio- 
ncs in Nonnum, with a dissertation on the poet by 
Daniel Heinsius, and conjectures by Scaliger, which 
Wechel afterward joined to his edition of 1605, pre¬ 
fixing, at the same time, a new title-page. Few of the 
learned, after this, occupied themselves with Nonnus. 
In 1783, Villoison published in his Epistolce Vinari- 
enscs (Turin, 4to), some good corrections made by an 
anonymous scholar on the margin of a copy of the edi¬ 
tion of 1605. In 1809, Moser gave an edition of six 
books of the A lowmanu (namely from the 8th to the 
13 th inclusive) at Heidelberg. The part here edited 
contains the exploits of Bacchus previously to his In¬ 
dian expedition. It is accompanied with notes, and 
with arguments for the entire poem. The latest and 
best edition, however, of the A lowoiand is that of 
Grgefe, Lips., 1819-1826, 2 vols. 8vo. The notes to 
this are merely critical. The editor has promised an 
explanatory and copious commentary ; but this has not 
yet appeared. ( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 6, p. 79, 
seqq .)—The other work of Nonnus, the paraphrase of 
St. John’s Gospel, was published for the first time by 
Aldus Manutius at Venice, about 1501. (Compare, in 
relation to this rare edition, Annal. des Aides, vol. 1, 
p. 438.) The best edition, however, is that of Passow, 
Lips., 1834. The Paraphrase was translated into Lat¬ 
in by several scholars, and has been very frequently re¬ 
printed. (Consult Fabricius, Bibl. Gr., vol. 7, p. 687, 
seqq.) Daniel Heinsius has criticised this production 
too severely in his Aristarchus Sacer ( Lugd. Bat., 
1627, 8vo). The style is clear and easy, though not 
very remarkable for poetry : the reproach, however, 
which some make against it, that the work contains 
expressions which cause his orthodoxy to be suspect¬ 
ed, is not well grounded. The work is, in fact, of 
some value, as it contains a few important readings, 
which have been of considerable use to the editors of 
the Greek Testament. It omits the woman taken in 
adultery which we have at the beginning of the eighth 
chapter of St. John’s Gospel, and which is considered 
by Griesbach and many other critics to be an interpola¬ 
tion. In chapter 19, verse 14, Nonnus appears to have 
read “about the third hour” instead of “ the sixth." 
(Consult Griesbach, ad loc.) — There is also extant 
“A Collection of Histories or Fables,” which is ci¬ 
ted by Gregory Nazianzen in his work against Julian, 
and which is ascribed by some critics to the author 
of the “ Dionysiaca.” But Bentley has given good 
reasons for believing that the collection was composed 
by another individual of the same name. ( Bentley, 
Diss. on Phalaris, p. 80, ed. 1816.)—II. An ecclesi¬ 
astical writer, whose era is not ascertained. He is 
supposed, however, to have flourished subsequently to 
the fourth or fifth century, and before the eleventh. 


This Nonnus must not be confounded with the pre¬ 
ceding. ( Bentley on Phalaris, p.'80, ed. 1816.) He 
was the author of a commentary on Gregory Nazian- 
zen’s invectives against Julian, and of another on the 
funeral discourse pronounced by the same father in 
memory of St. Basil. The first of these commenta¬ 
ries, if they strictly deserve this name, contains a col¬ 
lection of all the mythological notices and legends to 
which Gregory makes allusion in the course of his two 
works against Julian : the second contains all the no¬ 
tices of Greek history introduced into the funeral dis¬ 
course on St. Basil. An edition of the former was 
given by Montague, Eton, 1610, 4to, and of the latter 
in Creuzer’s Opuscula Mythologica, etc., Lips., 1817, 
8vo. Bentley gives some amusing examples of the 
mistakes committed by this Nonnus. {Diss. on Phal., 
1. c.) —III. (sometimes called Nonus) A Greek phy¬ 
sician, and author of a medical work still extant, en¬ 
titled ’E 7 riTOjuq rye laTpinyg dirdoriq rexvyg, “ An epit¬ 
ome of the whole Medical Art." Nothing is known 
of his life, except that he composed his work at the 
command of the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogeni- 
tus (to whom also it is dedicated), who was most prob¬ 
ably the seventh of that name, and who died A.D. 959. 
The real name of Nonnus is supposed by Freind, 
Sprengel, and Bernard to have been Theophanes, as 
he is called so in one MS., and as a*physician of that 
name is found to have lived in the 10th century. In 
three MSS. the work is anonymous, and there is only 
one which mentions the name of Nonnus. This epit¬ 
ome is divided into 297 chapters, and contains a short 
account of most diseases and their treatment. It con¬ 
tains very little that is original, and is almost entirely 
compiled from Aetius, Alexander Trallianus, and Pau- 
lus JEgineta, from whom whole sentences are tran¬ 
scribed with hardly any variation.—There are only 
two editions of this work. . The first is by Martius 
(who writes the author’s name Nonus), Argent., 1568, 
8vo. The last and best is by Bernard, and was pub¬ 
lished after his death in two vols. 8vo, Gothce et 
Amst., 1794, 1795, with copious and learned notes 
by the editor. 

Norba, I. a town of Latium, northeast of Antium, 
the position of which will nearly agree with the little 
place now called Norma. It is mentioned among the 
early Latin cities by Pliny (3, 5); and Dionysius of 
Halicarnassus speaks of it as no obscure city of that 
nation (7, 13). It was early colonized by the Romans 
as an advantageous station to check the inroads of the. 
Volsci. (Liv., 2, 34.) The zeal which it displayed, 
at a later day, in the cause of Marius, drew upon it 
the vengeance of the adverse faction. Besieged by 
Lepidus, one of Sylla’s generals, it was opened to 
him by treachery; but the undaunted inhabitants chose 
rather to perish by their own hands than become the 
victims of a bloody conqueror. ( Appian, Bell. Civ., 
1, 94.) The name of C. Norbanus, who was descend¬ 
ed from a distinguished family of this city, occurs fre¬ 
quently in the history of those disastrous times as a 
conspicuous leader on the side of Marius. {Cramer's 
Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 106.)—II. A town of Apulia, 
northwest of Egnatia. The intervening distance is 
given on the Tabula Theodosiana at 16 rqiles. This 
ancient site is supposed to answer nearly to that of 
Conversano. {Romanelli, vol. 2, p. 179.— Cramer's 
Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 300..)—III. Caesarea, a city in 
the northwestern part of Lusitania. It was also nail¬ 
ed Colonia Norbensis or Ccesariana. {Plin., 4, 22.— 
Id., 4, 35.) The ruins of this place are in the vicinity 
of the modern Alcantara. ( Ukert, Geogr., v. 2, p. 396.) 

Norbanus, C., a native of Norba, of a distinguish¬ 
ed family, and a conspicuous leader on the side of Ma^ 
rius. {Vid. Norba I.) 

Noricum, a province of the Roman empire, was 
bounded on the north by the Danube, on the west by 
Vindelicia and Rhsetia, on the east by Pannonia, and 

903 



NOT 


NUC 


on the south by Illyricum and Gallia Cisalpina. It 
was separated from Vindelicia by the (Enus or Inn, 
and from Gallia Cisalpina by the Alpes Carnicae or 
Juliae ; but it is difficult to determine ^the limits be¬ 
tween Noricum and Pannonia, as they differed at va¬ 
rious times. During the later periods of the Roman 
empire, Mount Cetius and part of the river Murius 
{Mur) appear to have formed the boundaries, and 
Noricum would thus correspond to the modem Styria, 
Carinthia, and Salzburg , and to part of Austria and 
Bavaria. A geographer who wrote in the reign of 
Constantius, the son of Constantine the Great, in¬ 
cludes Germania, Rhaetia, and the Ager Noricus in 
one province. ( Bode, Mythographi Vaticani, vol. 2.) 
Noricum is not mentioned by name in the division of 
the Roman empire made by Augustus, but it may be 
included among the Eparchies of the Caesar. ( Stra¬ 
bo , 840.)—Noricum was divided into two nearly equal 
parts by a branch of the Alps, called the Alpes Nori- 
cae. These mountains appear to have been inhabited 
from the earliest times by various tribes of Celtic ori¬ 
gin, of whom the most celebrated were the Norici 
(whence the country obtained its name), a remnant of 
the Taurisci. Noricum was conquered by Augustus ; 
but it is uncertain whether he reduced it into the form 
of a province. It appears, however, to have been a 
province in the time of Claudius, who founded the 
colony Sabaria, which was afterward included in Pan¬ 
nonia. ( Plin ., 3, 27.) It was under the government 
of a procurator. ( Tacit., Hist., 1, 11.) From the 
“ Notitia Imperii ” we learn, that Noricum was sub¬ 
sequently divided into two provinces, Noricum Ri- 
pcnse and Noricum Mediterraneum, which were sep¬ 
arated from each other by the Alpes Noricae. In the 
former of these, which lay along the Danube, a strong 
military force was always stationed, under the com¬ 
mand of a Dux .—In addition to the Norici, Noricum 
was inhabited in the west by the Sevaces, Alauni, and 
Ambisontii, and the east by the Ambidravi or Ambi- 
drani: but of these tribes we know scarcely anything 
except the names. Of the towns of Noricum the best 
known was Noreia, the capital of the Taurisci or No¬ 
rici, which was besieged in the time of Caesar by the 
powerful nation of the Boii. ( Cces., B. G., 1, 5.) It 
was subsequently destroyed by the Romans. {Plin., 
3, 23.) The only other towns worthy of mention 
were, Juvanum {Salzburg), in the western part of the 
province ; Boiodurum {Innstadt), at the junction of 
the Inn and Danube ; and Ovilia, or Ovilaba, or Ovila- 
va {Weis), southeast of Boiodorum, a Roman colo¬ 
ny founded by Marcus Aurelius.—The iron of Nor¬ 
icum was in much request among the Romans {Plin., 
24, 41), and, according to Polybius, gold was once 
found in this province in great abundance. {Polyb., ap 
Strab., 208.— Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 16, p. 274.) 

Nortia, a name given to the goddess of Fortune 
among the Yulsinii. {Livy, 7, 3.) Tertullian calls 
her Nersia. {Apolog., c. 24.) 

Nothus, the surname of Darius Ochus among the 
Greeks. {Vid. Ochus.) 

Notium, the harbour of Colophon, in Asia Minor. 
After the destruction of Colophon by Lysimachus, and 
the death of that prince, Notium became a flourishing 
city, and would seem from some authorities to have 
assumed the name of Colophon instead of its own. 
New Colophon certainly occupied a different site from 
the 'ancient city. {Plin., 5, 29.— Liv., 37, 36.) 

Notus, the south wind (from the Greek Norof), and 
corresponding to the Latin Auster. The term votoc 
itself is supposed to be derived from the same root 
with vorlg, “ dampness’’' 1 or “humidity ,” with reference 
to the damp or humid character of the south wind in 
both Greece and Italy. {Aul. Gell., 2, 22.) It is 
also spoken of by the ancients as a stormy wind. 
{Horat., Epod., 10, 19.— Virg., Ain., 6, 355.— Ovid, 
Her., 2, 12.) 

904 


Novaria, a town of Cisalpine Gaul, about ten miles 
northeast of Yercellae, and to the west of Mediolanum. 
The modern name is Novara. It was situate on a 
river of the same name, now la Gogna. {Tacit., Hist., 
1, 70 .—Plin., 17, 22.) 

Novesium, a town of the Ubii, on the west of the 
Rhine, now called Neuss, and situate near Cologne. 
{Tacit., Hist., 4. 26.) Ptolemy calls it Novalcuov, 
and Gregory of Tours Nivisium. The name Nove¬ 
sium occurs among The writers of the middle ages. 
{Pertz., Mon. Germ. Hist., vol. 1, p. 218, 459.) 

Noviodunum, I. a city of the Bituriges Cubi, in Gal¬ 
lia Aquitanica. {Cces., B. G., 7, 12.) D’Anville and 
Manert agree in placing its site near the modern 
Nouan. The more correct location, however, would 
be Nouan-le-Fuzclier. {Lemaire, Ind. Geogr., ad 
Cces., s. v.) —II. A city of Gallia Lugdunensis, on the 
river Liger or Loire. It corresponds to the modern 
Nevers. {Cces., B. G., 7, 55.) In the Itin. Ant., p. 
367, it is called Nivirnum.—III. A city of the Sues- 
sones, in Gallia Belgica, now Soissons. It was more 
commonly called Augusta Suessonum or Suessionum. 
{Cces., B. G., 2, 12.— Bischoff und Mbller, Worterb. 
der Geogr., p. 133.) 

Noviomagus, or Neomagus, I. or Noviomagum, a 
city of the Batavi, now Nimeguen. In the Peutinger 
Table it is called Niumaga.—II. The capital of the 
Lexubii or Lixovii, in Gallia Lugdunensis. Accord¬ 
ing to Mannert, it corresponds to the modern Caen; 
others, however, are in favour of the modern Lisicux. 
—III. or Augusta Nemetum, the capital of the Neme- 
tes, now Spires. —IV. A city of the Bituriges Vivis- 
ci, in Gallia Aquitanica. According to Mannert, it is 
now Castillon, not far from the mouth of the Gironde. 
Reichard, however, decides in favour of Castelnau de 
Mcdoc. —V. A city of Britain, the capital of Regni, 
the remains of which may be traced at Woodcote, 
near Croydon. {Mannert, Geogr., vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 
159.)—VI. A city of the Treveri, on the Mosella, now 
Numagen or Neumagen. —VII. A city of the Vero- 
mandui, in Belgica Secunda, now Noyon. It is also 
called Novionum or Noviomum. {Pertz., Mon. Germ. 
Hist., vol. 1, p. 30, 63, 146, &c.) 

Nox, one of the most ancient deities, daughter of 
Chaos. From her union with her brother Erebus, she 
gave birth to the Day «and the Light. She was also 
the mother of the Parcse, Hesperides, Dreams, of Dis¬ 
cord, Death, Momus, Fraud, &c. She is called by 
some of the poets the mother of all things, of gods as 
well as of men, and was worshipped with great solem¬ 
nity. A black sheep and a cock, the latter as announ¬ 
cing the approach of day, were sacrificed to her.— 
Night was represented under various forms : us riding 
in a chariot preceded by the constellations, with wings, 
to denote the rapidity of her course ; as traversing the 
firmament seated in her car, and covered with a black 
veil studded with stars. Sometimes her veil seems to 
be floating on the wind, while she approaches the earth 
to extinguish a flaming torch which she carries in her 
hand. She has often been confounded with Diana, or 
the moon : and her statue was placed in the temple of 
that goddess at Ephesus. {Hygin., Prcef. — Serv. ad 
Virg., JEn., 6, 250.— Tibull., 3, 4, 17.— Virg., JEn., 
5, 721, &c.) 

Nuceria, I. a town of Cisalpine Gaul, north of Brix- 
ellum, now Luzzara. {Ptol., p. 64.)—II. A city of 
Umbria, some distance to the north of Spoletium, and 
situate on the Flaminian Way. It is now Nocera. 
It is noticed by Strabo for its manufacture of wooden 
vessels. {Strab., 227.)—III. A town of Campania, 
about twelve miles south of Nola, now Nocera de Pa- 
gani. The appellation of Alfaterna was commonly at¬ 
tached to it, to distinguish it from the other places of 
the same name. {Liv., 10, 41 —Plin., 3, 5.) It was 
said to have been founded by the Pelasgi Sanastes. 
{Conon., ap. Serv. ad JEn., 7, 738.) Nuceria was 



NUM 


NUM 


besieged by Hannibal after his unsuccessful attack on 
Nola, and, on its being deserted by the inhabitants, 
he caused it to be sacked and burned. ( Liv. 23, 15.) 
We learn from Tacitus {Ann., 13, 31), that, under the 
reign of Nero, Nuceria was restored and colonized. 
{Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 212.) 

Nuithones, a people of Germany, whose territory 
appears to have corresponded to the southeastern part 
of Mecklenburg. {Tacit., Germ., 40.) 

Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, was, 
according to tradition, a native of the Sabine town of 
Cures. On the death of Romulus, the senate at first 
chose no king, and took upon itself the government 
of the state ; but, as the people were more oppress¬ 
ively treated than before, they insisted that a king 
should be appointed. A contest, however, arose, re¬ 
specting the choice of a monarch, between the Ro¬ 
mans and Sabines, and it was at length agreed that 
the former should select a king out of the latter. 
Their choice fell upon Numa Pompilius, who was re¬ 
vered by all for his wisdom, which, according to a 
popular tradition, he had derived from Pythagoras. 
Numa would not, however, accept the sovereignty till 
he was assured by the auspices that the gods approved 
of his election. Instructed by the Camena or Nymph 
Egeria, he founded the whole system of the Roman 
religion ; he increased the number of Augurs, regu¬ 
lated the duties of the Pontifices, and appointed the 
Flamines, the Vestal Virgins, and the Salii. He for¬ 
bade all costly sacrifices, and allowed no blood to be 
shed upon the altars, nor any images of the gods to 
be made. In order to afford a proof that all his insti¬ 
tutions were sanctioned by divine authority, he is said 
to have given a plain entertainment, in earthenware 
dishes, to the noblest among his subjects, during 
which, upon the appearance of Egeria, all the dishes 
were changed into golden vessels, and the food into 
viands fit for the gods. Numa also divided among 
his subjects the lands which Romulus had conquered 
in war; and he secured their inviolability by ordering 
landmarks to be set on every portion, which were con¬ 
secrated to Terminus, the god of boundaries. He di¬ 
vided the artisans, according to their trades, into nine 
companies or corporations. During his reign, which 
is said to have lasted thirty-nine years, no war was 
carried on ; the gates of Janus were shut, and a tem¬ 
ple was built to Faith. He died of gradual decay, in 
a good old age, and was buried under the hill Janicu- 
lum ; and near him, in a separate tomb, were buried 
the books of his laws and ordinances.—Such was the 
traditional account of the reign of Numa Pompilius, 
who belongs to a period in which it is impossible to 
separate truth from fiction. According to Niebuhr, 
and the writers who adopt his views of Roman his¬ 
tory, the reign of Numa is considered, in its political 
aspect, only as a representation of the union between 
the Sabines and the original inhabitants of Rome, or, 
in other words, between the tribes of the Titienses 
and the Ramnes. {Liv., 1 , 18, seqq. — Dion. Hal., 2, 
53, seqq. — Cic., de Repub., 2, 12, seqq. — Pint., Vit. 
Num. — Histories of Rome, by Niebuhr, Arnold, and 
Malden. — Encycl. TJs. Knowl., vol. 16, p. 363.) 

Numantia, a celebrated town of the Celtiberi in 
Spain, on the river Durius (now the Douro), at no 
great distance from its source. {Strabo, 162.— Ap- 
pian, Rom. Hist., 6, 91.) It appears to have been 
the capital of the Arevaoi {Appian, 6, c. 46, 66, 76.— 
Ptol., 2, 6), but Pliny states that it was a town of the 
Pelendones, a people who lived a little to the north of 
the Arevaci. Numantia was situate on a steep hill of 
moderate size. According to Florus (2, 18), it pos¬ 
sessed no walls, but was surrounded on three sides 
by very thick woods, and could only be approached on 
one side, which was defended by ditches and palisades. 
{Appian, 6, c. 76, 91.) It was twenty-four stadia in 
circumference. The site of this place has been a sub- 
5 Y 


ject of considerable dispute ; but it appears most prob¬ 
able that its ruins are those near the modern Puente 
de Don Garray. {Ukert, Geogr., vol. 2, page 455.)—■ 
Numantia is memorable in history for the war which it 
carried on against the Romans for the space of four¬ 
teen years. {Flor., 2, 18.) Strabo states that the war 
lasted twenty years ; but he appears, as Casaubon has 
remarked, to include in this period the contest which 
was carried on by Viriathus. {Strab., 162.— Casaub., 
ad loc.) The Numantines were originally induced to 
engage in this war through the influence of Viriathus. 
They were first opposed by Quintus Pompeius, the 
consul, B.C. 141, who was defeated with great slaugh¬ 
ter {Oros., 5, 4), and who afterward offered to make 
peace with them, on condition of their paying thirty 
talents of silver. This negotiation was broken off by 
M. Popillius, who succeeded Pompeius, B.C. 139. 
Popillius, however, did not meet with any better suc¬ 
cess than his predecessor ; he was ignominiously de¬ 
feated, and obliged to retire from the country. His 
successors, Mancinus, Hilmilius, Lepidus, and Piso, 
met with similar disasters ; till at length the Roman 
people, alarmed at the long continuance of the war, ap¬ 
pointed the younger Scipio Africanus consul, B.C. 134 
(twelve jmars after the destruction of Carthage), for the 
express purpose of conquering the Numantines. After 
levying a large army, he invested the place; and having 
in vain endeavoured to take it by storm, he turned the 
siege into a blockade, and obtained possession of the 
place, B.C. 133, at the end of a year and three months 
from the time of his first attack. The Numantines 
displayed the greatest courage and heroism during the 
whole of the. siege ; and, when their provisions had 
entirely failed, they set fire to the city, and perished 
amid the flames. {Appian, lib. 6.— Flor., 2, 17, scq. 
— Liv., Epit., 57.— Veil. Paterc., 2, 4. — Encycl. Us. 
Knowl., vol. 16, p. 363.) 

Numenius, I. a Greek philosopher of the Platonic 
school, who is supposed to have flourished about the 
beginning of the third century of our era. He was 
born at Apamea in Syria, and was regarded as an or¬ 
acle of wisdom. Both Origen and Plotinus mention 
him with respect. He was the author of a treatise en¬ 
titled Tlepl rfjQ tuv ’AuadiyadiKcjv Tvepl TlTidrova 6ia- 
gtucjcos, “ Of the disagreement among the Academic 
philosophers respecting Plato." Eusebius has pre¬ 
served a few fragments of this work. ( Scholl, Hist. 
Lit. Gr., vol. 5, p. 107.) — II. A Greek rhetorician, 
who flourished in the time of the Antonines. He 
wrote two works, which have been printed in the Al- 
dine Rhetorical Collection. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., 
vol. 4, p. 328.)—III. An epigrammatic poet, a native 
of Tarsus. {Jacobs, Catal. Poet. Epigr., p. 926.) 

Numerianus, Marcus Aurelius, succeeded to the 
throne conjointly with his elder brother Carinus, after 
the death of their father Cams, at the beginning of 
A.D. 284. Numerianus was with the army in Meso¬ 
potamia at the death of Probus ; but, instead of follow¬ 
ing up the advantage which his father had gained over 
the Persians, he was compelled by the army to aban¬ 
don the conquests which had been already made, and 
to retreat to Syria. During the retreat, a weakness of 
the eyes obliged him to confine himself to the dark¬ 
ness of a litter, which was strictly guarded by the 
prietorians. The administration of all affairs, civil as 
well as military, devolved on Arrius Aper, the prseto- 
rian prefect, his father-in-law. The army was eight 
months on its march from the banks of the Tigris to 
the Thracian Bosporus, and during all that time the 
imperial authority was exercised in the name of the 
emperor, who never appeared to his soldiers. Re¬ 
ports at length spread among them that their emperor 
was no longer living ; and when they had reached the 
city of Chalcedon, they could not be prevented from 
breaking into the imperial tent, where they found only 
his corpse. Suspicion naturally fell upon Arrius ; and 






NUM 


NYC 


an assembly of the army was accordingly held, for the 
purpose of avenging the death of Numerianus, and 
electing a new emperor. Their choice fell upon Dio- 
clesian, who, immediately after his election, put Arrius 
to death with his own hands, without giving him an op¬ 
portunity of justifying himself, which might, perhaps, 
have proved dangerous to the new emperor. The vir¬ 
tues of Numerianus are mentioned by most of his biog¬ 
raphers. His manners were mild and affable ; and he 
was celebrated among his contemporaries for eloquence 
and poetic talent. He successfully contended with 
Nemesianus for the prize of poetry ; and the senate 
voted to him a statue, with the inscription, “ To Nu¬ 
merianus Caesar, the most powerful orator of his times.” 
( Vopisc., Vit. Numerian. — Aurel. Victor, cle Cces., c. 
38.— Eutrop., 9, 12.— Zonaras, lib. 12.) 

Numicia Via, a Roman road, traversing the north¬ 
ern part of Samnium. It communicated with the Va¬ 
lerian, Latin, and Appian Ways, and after crossing 
through part of Apulia, fell into the Via Aquilia in 
Lucania. ( Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 260.) 

Numicius, a small river of Latium near Lavinium, 
in which, according to some authorities, JEneas was 
drowned. (Ovid, Fast., 3, 647.— Virg., Mn., 7, 150, 
seqq. — Ovid, Met., 14, 358, seqq.) It is now the Rio 
Torto. ( Nibby, Viaggio Antiquario, vol. 2, p. 266.) 

Numida, Plotius, a friend of Horace, who had re¬ 
turned, after a long absence, from Spain, where he 
had been serving under Augustus in the Cantabrian 
war. The poet addresses one of his odes to him, and 
bids his friends celebrate in due form so joyous an 
event. ( Horat., Od., 1, 36.) 

Numidia, a country of Africa, bounded on the east 
by Africa Propria, on the north by the Mediterranean, 
on the south by Gsetulia, and on the west by Maurita¬ 
nia. The Roman province of Numidia was, however, 
of much smaller extent, being bounded on the west by 
the Ampsagas, and on the east by the Tusca (or Zairi), 
and thus corresponded to the eastern part of Algiers. 
The Numidians were originally a nomadic people ; 
and hence some think they were called by the Greeks 
Nomades (Nopddeq), and their country Nomadia (No- 
padia), whence came by corruption Numidce and Nu¬ 
midia. (Compare Polyb., 37, 3. — Sail., Bell. Jug., 
18.— Pirn., 5, 2.) Others, however, are in favour of 
a Phoenician etymology. ( Vid. Nomades.) — When 
the Greek and Roman writers speak of the Numidians, 
the term is usually limited to the two great tribes of 
the Masssesyli and Massyli, the former of which ex¬ 
tended along the northern part of Africa, from the Mu- 
lucha on the west to the Ampsagas on the east; and 
the latter from the Ampsagas to the territories of Car¬ 
thage. When the Romans first became acquainted 
with the Numidians, which was during the second 
Punic war, Syphax was king of the Masssesyli, and 
Gala of the Massyli. Masinissa, son of Gala, suc¬ 
ceeded to the throne after various turns of fortune, 
and, siding with the Romans during the latter part of 
the second Punic war, yielded them very important 
assistance, which they requited by bestowing upon him 
all the dominions of his rival Syphax, and a considera¬ 
ble part of the Carthaginian territory, so that his king¬ 
dom extended from the Mulucha on the west to Cy- 
renaica on the east, and completely surrounded the 
small district which was left to the Carthaginians on 
the coast. ( Appian, 8, 106.) Masinissa laid the 
foundation of a great and powerful state in Numidia. 
He introduced the arts of agriculture and civilized life, 
amassed considerable wealth, and supported a well- 
appointed army. (Vid. Masinissa.) — Masinissa left 
three sons, Micipsa, Mastanabal, and Gulussa. The 
two latter died soon after their father, but Micip sa lived 
to B.C. 118, and bequeathed the kingdom to his two 
sons Adherbal and Hiempsal, and to his nephew Ju- 
gurtha. The two former soon fell victims to the am¬ 
bitious schemes of the last-mentioned individual; but 


he himself, no long time thereafter, paid the penalty of 
his crimes with his own life. ( Vid. Jugurtha.)—After 
the capture and death of Jugurtha (B.C. 106), the king¬ 
dom of Numidia appears to have been given by the 
Romans to Hiempsal II. ( Hirtius , Bell. Afric., 56), 
who was probably the nephew of Hiempsal the son of 
Micipsa. Hiempsal was succeeded, about B.C. 50, 
by his son Juba I., who took an active part in the civil 
contest between Pompey and Caesar, and had the mis¬ 
fortune to espouse the party of the former. After the 
victory of Thapsus, therefore, Caesar declared the whole 
kingdom of Numidia to be Roman territory, and Sal¬ 
lust the historian was sent thither as its governor. 
(Appian, Bell. Civ., 2, 100.) The western district, 
around the city of Cirta, was bestowed on Sittius, in 
recompense for his services to Caesar. (Vid. Cirta.) 
The country, however, still remained in an unsettled 
state, a prey to intestine commotions, until it fell into 
the hands of the triumvir Lepidus, and after him into 
those of Augustus, under the latter of whom the aspect 
of afiairs was completely changed, and a more regular 
administration introduced into Numidia. Juba, son of 
the first Juba, an intelligent prince, who had been ed¬ 
ucated at Rome, and had gained the friendship of Au¬ 
gustus, received back from that emperor his father’s 
former kingdom, but with very important alterations. 
The western part of Numidia, included between the 
rivers Mulucha and Ampsagas, which had formed the 
old territory of the Masssesyli and Syphax, together 
with all Mauritania, were assigned him for his king¬ 
dom, which now assumed the general name of Mauri¬ 
tania. At a later period, in the reign of Claudius, the 
western portion of Numidia, from the river Ampsagas, 
together with the eastern part of Mauritania as far as 
the Malva, were formed into a Roman province under 
the name of Mauritania Ccesarlensis, from Caesarea, 
its capital; the remainder of Mauritania received the 
epithet of Tingitana. In the eighth century Numidia 
fell into the hands of the Saracens, and is now nomin¬ 
ally under the Ottoman porte.—The Numidians were 
a brave and hardy race, and remarkable for their skill 
in horsemanship. Hence the epithet of infreni applied 
to them by Virgil, and poetically denoting a nation 
who could dispense with the use of bridles. (Mela, 
L 6.— Plin., 5, 3.— Virg,, Mn., 4, 41. — Encycl. Us. 
Knowl., vol. 16, p. 369. — Mannert, Geogr., vol. 10, 
pt. 2, p. 192, seqq.) 

Numitor, I. a son of Procas, king of Alba, and 
brother of Amulius. (Vid. Amulius.)—II. A son of 
Phorcus, who fought with Turnus against HCneas. 
(Virg., Mn., 10, 342.) 

Nundina, a goddess whom the Romans invoked when 
they named and purified their children. This happen¬ 
ed the ninth day after their birth, whence the name of 
the goddess, Nona dies. (Macrob., Sat., 1, 16.) 

Nurs^:, a town of the Sabines, or more correctly, 
perhaps, in the territory of the JEqui, and near the 
banks of the Anio. Its particular site is unknown 
(Virg., Mn., 7, 744.) 

Nursia, a city of the Sabines, at the foot of the 
central chain of the Apennines, and near the sources 
of the river Var. It was noted for the coldness of its 
atmosphere. (Virg., Mn., 7, 715.— Sil. Ital., 8, 418.) 
The modern Norcia corresponds to the ancient site. 
Polla Vespasia, the mother of Vespasian, was born 
here. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 320.) 

Nycteis, I. a daughter of Nycteus, who was mother 
ofLabdacus.—II. A patronymic of Antiope,the daugh¬ 
ter of Nycteus, mother of Amphion and Zethus by Ju¬ 
piter. (Ovid, Met.* 6, 110.) 

Nyctelius, a surname of Bacchus, because his or¬ 
gies were celebrated in the night (vv£, night, and re- 
leu, to perform). The words latex Nyctelius thence 
signify wine. (Scnec., (Ed., v. 492.— Pausan., 1, 40. 

Ovid, Met., 4, 15.—Compare Serv. ad Virg., Mn., 

4, 303 .—Liv., 39, 8.) 






NYM 


0 AS 


Nycteus, father of Antiope. ( Vid. Antiope I.) 

Nymphje, certain female deities among the ancients. 
The imagination of the Greeks peopled all the regions 
of earth and water with beautiful female forms called 
Nymphs, divided into various orders, according to the 
place of their abode. Thus, 1. the Mountain-Nymphs, 
or Orcades (’O peiddeq), haunted the mountains ; 2. 
the Dale-Nymphs, or Napace (NaTraiai), the valleys ; 
3. the Mead-Nymphs, or Leimoniadcs (A ei/xuvuideq), 
the meadows; 4. the Water-Nymphs, or Naiades 
(N aiudee), the rivers, brooks, and springs; 5. the 
Lake-Nymphs, or Limniades (Ai/uviudeg), the lakes 
and pools. There were also, 6. the Tree-Nymphs, or 
Hamadryades (' AyadpvuAeq), who were born and died 
with the t^pes ; 7. the Wood-Nymphs, or Dryades 
(A pvddeg), who presided over the forests generally ; 
and, 8. the Fruit-tree-Nymphs, or Flock-Nymphs (Me- 
liades, M qAiddeg), who watched over gardens or flocks 
of sheep.—The Nymphs occur in various relations to 
gods and men. The charge of rearing various deities 
and heroes was committed to them ; they were, for 
instance, the nurses of Bacchus, Ban, and even Jupi¬ 
ter himself, and they also brought up Aristseus and 
iEneas. They were, moreover, the attendants of the 
goddesses; they waited on Juno and Venus, and in 
huntress attire they pursued the deer over the mount¬ 
ains in company with Diana. The Sea-Nymphs also 
formed a numerous class, under the appellation of 
Oeeanides and Nereides.—The word Nymph ( vvycpq) 
seems to have originally signified “ bride,” and was 
probably derived from a verb vvbu, “ to cover ” or 
“ veil,” .and which was akin to the Latin nubo and 
nubes. It was gradually applied to married or mar¬ 
riageable young women, for the idea of youth was al¬ 
ways included. It is in this last sense that the god¬ 
desses of whom we have been treating were called 
Nymphs. ( Keightlcy's Mythology, p. 237, seqq.) 

Nymph.eum, I. a place in the territory of Apollo- 
nia, in Illyricum, remarkable for a mine of asphaltus, 
of which several ancient writers have given a descrip¬ 
tion. Near this spot was some rising ground, whence 
fire was constantly seen to issue, without, however, 
injuring either the grass or trees that grew there. 
( Aristot ., Mirand. Auscult. — JElian, Var. Hist., 13, 
16.— Plin., 24, 7.) Strabo supposes it to have arisen 
from a mine of bitumen liquefied, there being a hill 
in the vicinity whence this substance was dug out, the 
earth which was removed being in process of time 
converted into pitch, as it had been stated by Posido¬ 
nius. ( Strabo, 316.) Pliny says this spot was con¬ 
sidered as oracular, which is confirmed by Dio Cas¬ 
sius, who describes at length the mode of consulting 
the oracle (41, 45). The phenomenon noticed by the 
writers here mentioned has been verified by modern 
travellers as existing near the village of Selenitza, on 
the left bank of the Aoiis, and near the junction of 
that river with the Sutchitza. ( Jones's Journal, cited 
by Hughes, vol. 2, p. 262.) From Livy (42, 36 et 
49) it appears that there was a K.oman encampment 
here for some time during the Macedonian war. 
( Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 61.) Plutarch ( Vit. 
Syll.) tells an amusing story of a satyr having been 
caught asleep in this vicinity and brought to Sylla, the 
Roman commander, who was then on the spot 1 —II. A 
promontory of Athos, on the Singitic Gulf, now Cape 
S. Georgio. (Ptol , p. 82.)—III. A city in the Tau- 
ric Chersonese, on the route from Theodosia to Pan- 
ticapseum, and having a good port on the Euxine. In 
Pliny’s time it no longer existed (4, 12). The ru¬ 
ins, however, may still be traced in the vicinity of the 
modern Vosfor. (Mela, 2, 130. — Steph. Byzant., p. 
500.) 

Nymph/Eus, a river of Armenia Major, which, ac¬ 
cording to Procopius, formed a separation between 
the Roman and Persian empires. It ran from north 
to south, entered the town of Martyropolis, and dis¬ 


charged itself into the Tigris southeast of Amida. 
(Amm. Marcell., 18, 9.) 

Nymphodorus, a native of Syracuse, whose era is 
uncertain. He wrote a work on the “ Navigation 
along the coasts of Asia,” and another on the “Won¬ 
ders in Sicily and Sardinia.” (Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., 
vol. 2, p. 184.) 

Nysa, I. according to the Greek writers, a city of 
India, on a mountain named Meros, whose inhabi¬ 
tants were said to be descended from a colony planted 
there by Bacchus in his Indian expedition. Arrian 
(5, 1) places it between the Cophenes and Indus. 
(Compare Plin., 6, 21.— Diod. Sic., 2, 38.— Thco- 
phrast., Hist. PL, 4, 4.— Polyczn., 1 , 1 , 2.) D’An- 
ville is inclined to give a real existence to Nysa, apart, 
however, from the story of its origin, and seeks to 
identify its site with that of the ancient Nagger. 
(Gcogr. Ancicnne, vol. 2, p. 339.— Eclairc. sur la 
Carte de Linde, p. 21.) Ilennell also, and Barbier 
du Bocage, are in favour of the existence of such a 
place as Nysa, and strive to identify it with the mod¬ 
ern Nughz, making the river Cophenes the same with 
the Cow. (Rennell, Description of India, vol. 2, p. 
219.— Barbier du Bocage, p. 831.) Sainte-Croix, on 
the other hand, denies that there ever was such a 
place as Nysa, or such a mountain as Meros. (Ex- 
amen des Hist, d'Alex., p. 241.) It is pretty evident 
that this last is the most correct opinion, and that the 
story was invented by the Greeks to flatter the vanity 
of Alexander, who was thus treading the same ground 
that Bacchus had. Hence the etymology given by 
them to the name A lovvooq (the Greek appellation of 
Bacchus), namely, the god (Alq) from Nysa (Ast, 
Grundriss der Philologie, p. 44); and hence, too, the 
analogy that was found between the name of the 
mountain (M rjpoq) and the Greek term for a thigh 
(pypoq), which was supposed to be connected with the 
legend of Bacchus’s concealment in the thigh of Jove, 
and his double birth.—II. According to Diodorus Sic¬ 
ulus (1, 15), a city of Arabia Felix, where Osiris was 
nurtured. The same writer elsewhere states (4, 2) 
that it was situate between Phoenicia and the Nile 
(yera^v ^oiviKijq ical N eDov), leaving its precise sit¬ 
uation altogether unknown.—III. A city of Cappado¬ 
cia, on the Halys, between Parnassus and Osianas, 
now Nous Shehr. (Itin. Anton., p. 200.— Hierocles, 
Synecdem., p. 699.)—IY. A city of Caria, called also 
Pythopolis (Steph. Byz., p. 567), on the slope of 
Mount Messogis, in the valley of the Mfeander. Stra¬ 
bo studied here under Aristodemus. It is now Nasli 
or Nosli. (Strabo, 650 — Plin., 5, 29.— Pococke, 
vol. 3, b. 2, c. 10.— Chandler, c. 63.)—Y. A place in 
Euboea, where the vine was said to put forth leaves 
and bear fruit the same day. (Steph Byz., s. v. Nw- 
oai .—VI. A small town on Mount Helicon, in Boeo- 
tia. (Strabo, 403.— Steph. Byz., s. v. Nicm.)—VII. 
A town in the island of Naxos. (Steph Byz.) 

Nys^eus, a surname of Bacchus, as the god of Nysa. 
(Vid. Nysa.) 

Nysiades, a name given to the nymphs of Nysa, to 
whose care Jupiter intrusted the education of his son 
Bacchus. (Ovid, Met., 3, 314, &c.) 

O. 

Oarus, a river of Sarmatia, falling into the Palus 
Maeotis. De Guignes conjectures it to be the modem 
Wardan. (Mem. de VAcad. des Inscr., &c., vol. 35, 
p 546.) Mannert, on the other hand, is in favour of 
the Uzcn. (Geogr., vol. 4, p. 79.) The river in 
question is mentioned by Herodotus, who gives, how¬ 
ever, no particular information respecting it. (Herod., 
4, 123.—- Bahr , ad loc.) 

Oasis (in Greek "Oacng, and sometimes A vamq), 
the appellation given to those fertile spots, watered 
by springs and covered with verdure, which are scat- 

907 



OASIS. 


OASIS. 


tered about the great sandy deserts of Africa. In 
Arabic they are called Wahys. The Arabic and the 
Greek names seem to contain the same root with the 
Coptic Oiuihe, and possibly the word may be originally 
a native African term.—The Oases appear to be de¬ 
pressions in the table-land of Libya. On going from 
the Nile westward, the traveller gradually ascends till 
he arrives at the summit of an elevated plain, which 
continues nearly level, or with slight undulations, for 
a considerable distance, and rises higher on advancing 
towards the south. The Oases are valleys sunk in this 
plain ; and, when you descend to one of them, you 
find the level space or plain of the Oasis similar to a 
portion of the valley of Egypt, surrounded by steep 
hills of limestone at some distance from the cultivated 
land. The low plain of the Oasis is sandstone or clay, 
and from this last the water rises to the surface and fer¬ 
tilizes the country ; and, as the table-land is higher in 
the latitude of Thebes than in that of Lower Egypt, 
we may readily imagine that the water of the Oases is 
conveyed from some elevated point to the south, and, 
being retained by the bed of clay, rises to the surface 
wherever the limestone superstratum is removed. 

( Wilkinson , “ On the Nile , and the present and for¬ 
mer levels of Egypt.' 1 '—Journal of the London Geo¬ 
graphical Society , 1839.) The principal Oases are 
four in number : 1. The Great Oasis ( v O aaig M eyalrj, 
Ptol.), which Strabo calls “ the First Oasis" (y 
Trpurr] v O acne, 791). 2. The Little Oasis ("O aoig Mf- 
Kpd, Ptolemy ), called by Strabo the Second Oasis 
("Oaaig devrepa). 3. The Oasis of Ammon. 4. 
The Western Oasis, which does not appear to have 
been mentioned by any ancient geographer except 
Olympiodorus, and was never seen by any Euro¬ 
peans until Sir Archibald Edmonstone visited it about 
20 years ago.—These four constitute, as has been 
said, the principal Oases. The writers of the mid¬ 
dle ages enlarge the number materially, from Arabic 
sources, and modern writers increase it still more, 
making upward of thirty Oases. ( Bischoff und Moi¬ 
ler, Worterh. der Geogr., p. 795.)—The Great Oasis 
is the most southern of the whole, and is placed by 
Strabo and Ptolemy to the west of Abydos. It is the 
only one, with the exception of that of Ammon, with 
which Herodotus seems to have been acquainted (3, 
26). He translates the term Oasis into Greek by 
Mandpiov vyaoq , “ Island of the blessed," and without 
doubt this, or any other of these fertile spots, must 
have appeared to the traveller of former days well 
worthy of such an appellation, after he had suffered, 
during many painful weeks, the privations and fatigue 
of the desert. To the Greeks and Romans, however, 
of a later age, they generally presented themselves in 
a less favourable aspect, and were not unfrequently 
assigned as places of banishment, where the state- 
malefactor and the ministers of the Christian church, 
who were sometimes comprehended in the same class, 
were, in the second and third centuries, condemned to 
waste their days in the remote solitude of the desert. 
—The Great Oasis consists of a number of insulated 
spots, which extend in a line parallel to the course of 
the Nile, separated from one another by considerable 
intervals of sandy waste, and stretching not less than 
a hundred miles in latitude. Its Arabic name is El- 
Wah, a general term in that language for Oasis. M. 
Poncet, who examined it in 1698, says that it contains 
many gardens watered with rivulets, and that its palm- 
groves exhibit a perpetual verdure. It is the first stage 
of the Darfur caravan, which assembles at Siout, be¬ 
ing about four days’ journey from that towm, and 
nearly the same distance from Farshout. The exer¬ 
tions of Browne, Caillaud, Edmonstone, and Henniker 
have supplied us with ample details relative to this in¬ 
teresting locality.—The Little Oasis , now El-Kas- 
sar, has not been much visited by travellers. We 
owe the latest and most distinct account to Belzoni, 
908 


who, proceeding in search of it westward from the 
valley of Fayoum, arrived at the close of the fourth 
day on the brink of what he calls the Elloah , that is, 
the Elwah or Oasis. He describes it as a valley sur¬ 
rounded with high rocks, forming a spacious plain of 
twelve or fourteen miles in length, and about six miles 
in breadth. There is only a small portion cultivated 
at present, but there are many proofs remaining that 
it must at one time have been all under crop, and that, 
with proper management, it might again be easily ren¬ 
dered fertile. Here also the traveller found a fount¬ 
ain, the waters of which resembled, in their chan¬ 
ges of temperature at different times of the day, the 
famous Fons Solis in the Oasis of Ammon. It is now 
ascertained that such fountains are not peculiar to any 
one of the Oases, having been discovered in various 
parts of the Libyan desert. The change, in fact, takes 
place in the surrounding atmosphere.—The Oasis of 
Ammon, called by the Arabs Siwah, has already been 
partially alluded to under the article Ammon. It is 
situated in latitude 29° 12' N., and longitude 26° 6' 
E., being about six miles long, and between four and 
five in width, the nearest distance from the river of 
Egypt not exceeding one hundred and twenty miles. 
A large proportion of the land is occupied by date- 
trees ; but the palm, the pomegranate, the fig, the 
olive, the vine, the apricot, the plum, and even the 
apple, are said to flourish in the gardens. No soil 
can be more fertile. Tepid springs, too, holding salts 
in solution, are numerous throughout the district; and 
it is imagined that the frequency of earthquakes is con¬ 
nected with the geological structure of the surrounding 
country. The ruins of the temple of Ammon are de¬ 
scribed as still very imposing ; and nearly a mile from 
these ruins, in a pleasant grove of date-palms, is still 
discovered the celebrated Fountain of the Sun, dedi¬ 
cated of old to the Ammonian deity. ( Vid. Ammon.) 
The interest of the traveller is still farther excited by 
a succession of lakes and remains of temples, which 
stretch into the desert far towards the west; all ren¬ 
dered sacred by religious associations, and by the tra¬ 
ditionary legends of the native tribes. Tombs, cata¬ 
combs, churches, and convents are scatteied over the 
waste, which awaken the recollections of the Christian 
to the early history of his belief, and which, at the 
same time, recall to the pagan and Mohammedan 
events more interesting than are to be found in the 
vulgar annals of the human race, or can touch the 
heart of any one but those who are connected with a 
remote lineage by means of a family history. At a 
short distance from the sacred lake there is a temple 
of Roman or Greek construction, the architecture of 
which is executed with much care and precision, a cir¬ 
cumstance which cannot fail to excite surprise in a 
country surrounded by the immense deserts of Libya, 
and at the distance of not less than 400 miles from the 
ancient limits of civilization. In the consecrated ter¬ 
ritory of that mysterious land is the salt lake of Ara- 
shieh, distant two days and a half from Siwah, in a 
valley enclosed by two mountains, and extending from 
six to seven leagues in circumference. So holy is it 
esteemed, that M. Caillaud could not obtain permis¬ 
sion to visit its banks. Even the pacha’s firman failed 
to alter the determination of the sheiks on this essential 
point. They declared that they would sooner perish 
than suffer a stranger to approach that sacred island, 
which,, according to their belief, contained treasures 
and talismans of mysterious power. It is said to possess 
a temple, in which are the seal and sword of the proph¬ 
et, the palladium of their independence, and not to be 
seen by any profane eye. A reasonable doubt may, 
however, be entertained as to these assertions ; for 
M. Drovetti, who accompanied a detachment of troops 
under Hassan Bey, walked round the borders of the 
lake, and observed nothing in its bosom but naked 
rocks. Mr. Browne, too, remarks that he found mis- 




O AX 


OCE 


shapen rocks in abundance, but nothing that he could 
positively decide to be ruins ; it being very unlikely, 
he adds, that any should be there, the spot being en¬ 
tirely destitute of trees and fresh water. Major Ren- 
nell has employed much learning to prove that the 
Oasis of Siwah is the site of the famous temple of Ju¬ 
piter Ammon. He remarks that the variations between 
all the authorities, ancient and modern, amount to 
little more than a space equal to twice the length of 
the Oasis in question, which is, at the utmost, only six 
miles long. “And it is pretty clearly proved,” he re¬ 
marks, “ that no other Oasis exists in that quarter, 
within two or more days’ journey ; but, on the con¬ 
trary, that Siwah is surrounded by a wide desert; so 
that it cannot be doubted that this Oasis is the same 
with that of Ammon, and the edifice found there the 
remains of the celebrated temple whence the oracles 
of Jupiter Ammon were delivered.” ( Gcogr. of He¬ 
rodotus , vol ; 2, p. 230, ed. 1830.) — The Western 
Oasis, as it is termed, was visited in the year 1819 by 
Sir A Edmonstone, in company with two friends. 
Having joined a caravan of Bedouins at Beni Ali, and 
entered the Libyan desert, they proceeded towards the 
southwest. At the end of six days, having travelled 
about one hundred and eighty miles, they reached the 
first village of the Western Qasis, which is called Bel- 
lata. The principal town of the Oasis, however, is 
El Cazar. The situation of this last-mentioned place 
is said to be perfectly lovely, being on an eminence at 
the foot of a line of rock which rises abruptly behind 
it, and encircled by extensive gardens filled with palm, 
acacia, citron, and various other kinds of trees, some 
of which are rarely seen even in these regions The 
principal edifice is an old temple or convent called 
Dacr et Hadjm, about fifty feet long by twenty- 
five wide, but presenting nothing either very magnifi¬ 
cent or curious. The Oasis is composed of twelve 
villages, of which ten are within five or six miles of 
each other. The prevailing soil is a very light red 
earth, fertilized entirely by irrigation. The latitude 
of this Oasis is nearly the same as that of the Great 
Oasis, or about 28° north. The longitude eastward 
from Greenwich may be a little more or less than 28°. 
—At different distances in the desert, towards the 
west, are other Oases, the exact position and extent 
of which are almost entirely unknown to the European 
geographer. The ancients, who would appear to have 
had more certain intelligence in regard to this quarter 
of the globe than is yet possessed by the moderns, 
were wont to compare the surface of Africa to a leop¬ 
ard’s skin ; the little islands of fertile soil being as nu¬ 
merous as the spots on that animal.—The fertility of 
the Oases has always been deservedly celebrated. 
Strabo mentions the superiority of their wine ; Abul- 
feda and Edrisi the luxuriance of their palm-trees. 
The climate, however, is extremely variable, especially 
in winter. Sometimes the rains in the Western Oasis 
are very abundant, and fall in torrents, as appears from 
the furrows in the rocks; but the season Sir A. Ed¬ 
monstone made his visit there was none at all, and the 
total want of dew in the hot months sufficiently proves 
the general dryness of the atmosphere. The springs 
are all strongly impregnated with iron and sulphur, and 
hot at their sources ; but, as they continue the same 
throughout the whole year, they supply to the inhabi¬ 
tants one of the principal means of life. The water, 
notwithstanding, cannot be used until it has been cool¬ 
ed in an earthen jar. ( Russel! s Egypt, p. 393, seqq.) 

Oaxes, a river of Crete, said to have derived its 
name from Oaxes, a son of Apollo. {Virg., Eclog., 
1, 66. — Serv., ad loc.) It is now the Mylopotomo, 
and is apparently one of the most considerable streams 
in the island. Some, however, identify it with the 
Pctrea. ( Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 381.) — 
Bischoff und Muller, Worterb. der Gcogr., p. 795.) 

Oaxus, a town of Crete, on the northern side of the 


island, at the mouth, probably, of the Oaxes It was 
the capital of a kingdom which had its appropriate 
sovereign, and was said to have been founded by the 
Oaxes mentioned in the preceding article. (Herod , 
5, 153 — Serv. ad Virg., Eclog., 4, 66.— Steph. Byz., 
s. v. — Hierocles, p. 650.) 

Obringa, a river of Germany, forming the line of 
separation between Germania Superior and Inferior. 
According to Spener, Cluverius, Cellarius, and others, 
it corresponds to the modern Aar or A hr. Mannert, 
however, and Wilhelm, make it the same with the be¬ 
ginning of the Upper Rhine (“ den Anfang des Ober 
Rheins .”— Mannert, Gcogr., vol. 3, p. 432). 

Obsequens, Julius, a Latin writer, whose era is 
uncertain. Vossius places him a short period prior to 
Honorius; but his style indicates an earlier era. 
Scaliger makes him to have been before the time of St. 
Jerome ; while Saxe assigns him to about 107 A.D. 
(G. I. Foss, de Hist. Lat., 3, p. 710. — Saxe, Ono- 
niast., vol. 1, p. 289 — Funcc., de vcget. L. L. se- 
nect., 8, 11, seq.). He was probably either a Roman 
or an Italian, and some are inclined to identify him 
with the M. Livius Obsequens whose name occurs in 
one of Gruter’s inscriptions ( Inscript., 241), on the 
supposition that Livius may have been altered to Ju¬ 
lius in the only MS. that has come down to us of this 
work. ( Fuhrmann , Handbuch., vol. 2, p. 490.) Obse¬ 
quens has left us a work “ On Prodigies ” {de Prodi- 
giis ), containing a brief account of all the presages re¬ 
marked at Rome from the consulship of Scipio and 
Lselius, A.U.C. 453, down to that of Paulus Fabius 
and Quintus yElius, in the time of Augustus, or A.U C. 
742. The portion of the work which comprehended 
the history of the first five or six centuries is lost. 
This production is taken in part from Livy ; but it 
contains, at the same time, some historical details which 
are nowhere else to be found. It is written in a pure 
style, and is not unworthy of the Augustan age. The 
contents, however, are full of absurdity. The best 
edition is that of Kapp, Curice, 1772, 8vo. ( Fuhrmann, 
Handbuch, vol. 2, p. 490. — Scholl, Hist. Lit. Rom., 
vol. 2, p. 465.— Bahr, Gesch. Rom. Lit., p. 658, seq ) 

Oceanides (’Q,KEavideq), the Ocean-Nymphs, daugh¬ 
ters of Oceanus and Tethys, and sisters of the rivers. 
Mythologists make them three thousand in number. 

( Hes ., Theog., 384.— Apollod., 1, 2. — Hcyne, not 
cut., ad loc.) From their pretended names, as given 
by some of the ancient writers, they appear to be only 
personifications of the various qualities and appearan¬ 
ces of water. {Theog., 346. — Gotthng, ad loc .—- 
Keightley's Mythology, p. 244.) 

Oceanus, I. the god of the stream Oceanus {vid 
Oceanus II.), earlier than Neptune. Fie was the first¬ 
born of the Titans, the offspring of Coelus and Terra, 
or Heaven and Earth. Oceanus espoused his sister Te¬ 
thys, and their children were the rivers of the earth, and 
the three thousand Oceanides or Nymphs of Ocean. 
{Hesiod, Theog., 337, seq.) This is all the account 
of Oceanus that is given in the Theogony. Homer 
speaks of him and Tethys as the origin of the gods 
{II, 14, 201, 302.) When Jupiter, he also says, placed 
his sire in Tartarus, Rhea committed her daughter Ju¬ 
no to the charge of Oceanus and Tethys, by whom she 
was carefully nurtured. {II., 14, 202, 303.) The abode 
of Oceanus was in the West. {II., 14, 200, 301.) 
He dwelt, according to HUschylus, in a grotto palace, 
beneath his stream, as it would appear. {Prom. Vinc- 
tus, 300.) In the “ Prometheus Bound” of this poet, 
Oceanus comes borne through the air on a hippogriff, 
to console and advise the lofty-minded sufferer; and 
from the account he gives of his journey, it is mani¬ 
fest that he came from the West.—When Hercules 
was crossing his stream in the cup of the Sun-god to 
procure the oxen of Geryon, Oceanus rose, and, by 
agitating his waters, tried to terrify him ; but, on the 
hero’s bending his bow at him, he retired. {Pherec., 

909 




OCE 


OCH 


ap. Aiken., 11, p. 470.— Kcightley's Mythology, p. 51, 
scq .)—II. Besides being the name of a deity, the term 
Oceanus (’£2 ueavog) occurs in Homer in another sense 
also. It is made to signify an immense stream, which, 
according to the rude ideas of that early age, circula¬ 
ted around the terraqueous plain, and from which the 
different seas ran out in the manner of bays. This 
opinion, which is also that of Eratosthenes, was prev¬ 
alent even in the time of Herodotus (4, 36). Homer 
terms the ocean ufoppoog, because it thus flowed back 
into itself. ( Mus. Crit., vol. 1, p. 254.) This same 
river Oceanus was supposed to ebb and flow thrice in 
the course of a single day, and the heavenly bodies 
were believed to descend into it at their setting, and 
emerge from it at their rising. Hence the term dnte- 
ovog is sometimes put for the horizon ( Damm. Lex., 
s. v. 6 opi^uv Kal aTTOTEyvuv to virkp yrjg KaL vnd yr/v 
ypia^atpiov). In Homer, therefore, uueavog and #d- 
Tiaooa always mean different things, the latter merely 
denoting the sea in the more modern acceptation of 
the term. On the shield of Achilles the poet repre¬ 
sents the Oceanus as encircling the rim or extreme 
border of the shield, in full accordance with the popu¬ 
lar belief of the day , whereas in Virgil’s time, when' 
this primitive meaning of the term was obsolete, and 
more correct geographical views had come in, we find 
the sea (the idea being borrowed, probably, from the 
position of the Mediterranean) occupying in the poet’s 
description the centre of the shield of Hdneas. If it 
be asked whether any traces of this peculiar meaning 
of the term uueavog occurs in other writers besides 
Homer, the following authorities, in favour of the af¬ 
firmative, may be cited in reply. Hesiod, Theog., 
242. — Id., Here. Clyp., 314. — Eurip., Orest., 1369. 
— Orph., Hymn., 10, 14.— Id., II., 82.— Id., fragm., 
44. — ( Maltby, ad Morcll., Thes., s. v. ’Queavog. — 
Compare Volcker, Homerische Geographic, p. 86, seq.) 
As regards the etymology of the term ciKeavog, we are 
left in complete uncertainty. The form uyr/vog oc¬ 
curs in Pherecydes {Clem. Alex., Strom., 6, p. 621. 
— Sturz, ad Phcrecyd.), from which it appears to some 
that the root was connected} with the Greek yea, yy 
{(j-yea-vog, u-yy-vog). On the other hand, Munter 
{Rcl. dcr Karthager, p. 63) finds the root of uyyvog 
in the Hebrew hug, “ in orbem ire,'" as referring to the 
circular course of the fabled Oceanus. Creuzer is in¬ 
clined to consider uyeviog as equivalent to nalaiog, 

“ antiquus." {Creuzer und Hermann, Briefe, p. 160.) 
It is remarkable that one of the oldest names of the 
Nile among the Greeks was coueavog {Tzetz. ad Ly- 
cophron., 119), or, more correctly, perhaps, uueapy. 
{Diod Sic., 1, 19.—Compare Ritter's Erdkunde, vol. 
1, p. 570, 2d ed.) Now in the Coptic, according to 
Champollion, oukame means “black,” “dark;” and 
according to Marcel, ochcmau, in the same language, 
denotes “a great collection of water.” Will either 
of these give cmeavog as a derivative! ”The one or 
the other of them seems connected in some way with 
the Arabic Kamus, “ ocean.” ( Ritter, loc. cit ) Per¬ 
haps, however, the most satisfactory derivation for 
the term Oceanus is that alluded to in the article Ogy- 
ges. 

Ocellus, surnamed Lucanus, from his having been 
a native of Lucania, a Pythagorean philosopher, who 
flourished about 480 B.C. He wrote many works 
on philosophical subjects, the titles of which are giv¬ 
en in a letter written by Archytas to Plato, which has 
been preserved by Diogenes Laertius (8, 80). But 
the only production of his which has come down to 
us, is “ On the Nature of the Universe" (Ilcpi rr/g 
tov Travrog tyvoeug). Its chief philosophical topic is 
to maintain the eternity of the universe. Ocellus 
also attempts to prove the eternity of the human race 
(c. 3, s. 3). These works were, without doubt, writ¬ 
ten in the Doric dialect, which prevailed in the na¬ 
tive country of Ocellus; and hence much surprise 
910 


has been occasioned by the circumstance of the last 
of these productions, which we still possess, being 
in Ionic Greek In consequence of this discrepance, 
Barth {Advcrs., 1. 42, c. 1, p. 1867), Parker {Disp. 
de Deo et Provid., 1678. — Disp., 4, p. 355), Thom¬ 
as Burnet {Archceol. Philos., p. 152), and Meiners 
{Philolog. Bihlioth., vol. 1, pt. 3, p. 100 et 204.— 
Hist. Doctr. de vero Deo, p. 312.— Gesch. der Wis- 
sensch., p. 584), have attacked the authenticity of the 
work in question ; while, on the other hand, Bentley 
{Phalaris, p. 307, ed. 1816), Lipsius {Manud. ad 
Stoic. Phil., h 1, diss. 5), Adelung {Gesch. der Phi¬ 
losophic fur Liebhaber), Tiedemann {Griechenl. erste 
Philosophen, p. 198 et 209), and Bardili {Epochcn 
der vorzogl. philos. Begnffc, vol. 1, p. 165), declare 
in favour of the work. These conflicting opinions 
have been carefully examined and weighed by Rudol- 
phi, in a Dissertation appended to his edition of the 
work, and he comes to the conclusion that the treatise 
in question was written by Ocellus. It would appear 
that some grammarians of subsequent ages, in copy¬ 
ing the text of Ocellus, caused the Doric forms to dis¬ 
appear, and translated the work, so to speak, into the 
more common dialect. This idea was first started by 
Bardili, and what tends to clothe it with almost abso¬ 
lute certainty is, that thejragments of the same work 
which we meet with in the selections of Stobseus 
have preserved their original Doric form. And yet 
it must, at the same time, be acknowledged, that this 
production of Ocellus is only cited for the first time 
by the writers of the second century of our era, and 
at a period when the New-Pythagoreans began to 
forge works under the guise of celebrated names.— 
The best edition is that of Rudolphi, Lips., 1801, 
8vo. The edition of Batteux, Pans, 1768, 3 vols. 
12mo, is also a very good one. Batteux corrected 
the text after two Paris MSS., and Rudolphi availed 
himself of Siebenkee’s collation of a Vatican MS. 
Gale has placed the work of Ocellus in his Opuscula 
Mythologica, &c., Cantabr., 1671. {Scholl, Hist. 
Lit. Gr., vol. 2, p. 311, seqq .) 

Ocelum, I. a city in Hispania Tarraconensis, in the 
territory of the Vettones, now Formosellc .—II. A city 
in Hispania Tarraconensis, in the territory of the Gal- 
laici.—III. A city of Gallia Cisalpina, among the Cot- 
tian Alps, on the eastern borders of the kingdom of 
Cottius. According to Mannert, it is now Avigliana, 
a small town with a castle, in Piedmont, not far from 
Turin. {Cces., B. G., 1, 10.) 

Ochus, a surname or epithet applied to Artaxerxes 
III , and also to Darius II., kings of Persia. It is gen¬ 
erally thought to indicate illegitimate birth, and to be 
equivalent to the Greek Nodoc ( Nolhus) This ex¬ 
planation is opposed, however, by some Oriental schol¬ 
ars, who deduce the term Ochus from the Persian Ochi 
or Achi, which they make equivalent to the Latin dig- 
nus or majestate dignus. (Consult Gesenius, Lex. 
Hebr , s v Achas. — Bahr, ad Ctcs., p. 186.) The 
reign of Artaxerxes Ochus has been noticed else¬ 
where {vid. Artaxerxes III.), that of Darius Ochus, 
or Darius II., will now be given. This prince was 
the illegitimate son of Artaxerxes Longimanus. Soon 
after the murder of Xerxes II., Darius succeeded in 
deposing Sogdianus, and ascended the throne himself, 
B.C. 423. By his wife Parysatis he had Artaxerxes 
Mnemon and Cyrus the Younger. Nothing very re¬ 
markable occurred during his reign, but some success¬ 
ful wars were carried on under Cyrus and other gen¬ 
erals. Ide died B.C. 404, after a reign of nineteen 
years, and was succeeded by his son Artaxerxes, who 
is said to have asked him, on his death-bed, by what 
rule he had acted in his administration, that he might 
adopt the same, and find the same success. The 
king’s answer is said to have been, that he had always 
kept, to the best of his knowledge, the strict path of 
justice and religion. {Xen., Anab., 1, \.~Diod. Sic., 





OCT 


OCT 


12, 71. — Justin, 5, 11.) — II. A river of Bactriana, 
rising in the mountains that lie northward of the 
source of the Arius, and falling into the Oxus. ( Phn ., 
6, 17.) Mannert makes it the modern Dchasch. — 
(Consult Wahl , Mittel und Vorder Asien, vol. 1, p. 
753.— Ritter, Erdkunde, vol. 2, p. 22.) 

Ocnus, son of Manto, and said by some to have 
founded Mantua. (But vid. Mantua.) 

Ocriculum, a town of Umbria, below the junction 
of the Nar and Tiber, and a few miles from the bank 
of the latter river, now Otricoli. According to Livy 
(9, 41), it was the first city of Umbria which volun¬ 
tarily submitted to Rome. Here Fabius Maximus 
took the command of the army under Servilius, and 
bade that consul approach his presence without lie- 
tors, in order to impress his troops with a due sense 
of the dictatorial dignity. (Lz'y., 22, 11.) Ocriculum 
suffered severely during the social war. ( Flor ., 3, 
18.) In Strabo’s time it appears, however, to have 
been still a city of note ( Strah ., 227), a fact which is 
confirmed by the numerous remains of antiquity which 
have been extracted from its ruins. From Cicero we 
collect that Milo had a villa in its vicinity. ( Or at. 
pro Mil. — Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 278.) 

Octavia, I. daughter of Caius Octavius and Accia, 
and sister to the Emperor Augustus. All the histori¬ 
ans praise the beauty and virtues of this celebrated fe¬ 
male. She was first married to Marcus Marcellus, a 
man of consular rank, and every way worthy of her ; 
and after his death she became the wife of Marc An¬ 
tony, this latter union being deemed essential to the 
public welfare, as a means of healing existing differ¬ 
ences between Antony and Octavius. It was with 
this view that the senate abridged the period of her 
widowhood and of her mourning for her first husbancT, 
who had been dead little more than five months. An¬ 
tony, however, was incapable of appreciating the ex¬ 
cellence of her character. After her marriage she fol¬ 
lowed him to Athens, where she passed the winter with 
him (B.C. 39), though keeping far aloof from the dis¬ 
solute pleasures to which he abandoned himself. With¬ 
out her interposition, civil war would even then have 
broken out between Octavius and Antony. By urgent 
prayers she appeased her husband, who was incensed 
against her brother for his suspicions, and then, disre¬ 
garding the difficulties of the journey and her own 
pregnancy, she went with his consent from Greece to 
Rome, and induced her brother to consent to an inter¬ 
view with Antony, and to come to a reconciliation with 
him. When Antony went to make war against the 
Parthians, she accompanied him to Corcyra, and at 
his order returned thence to remain with her brother. 
New quarrels arose between Octavius and Antony. 
To have a pretext for a rupture, the former ordered 
his sister to go to her husband, in the expectation that 
he would send her back. This actually happened. 
Antony was leading a life of pleasure with Cleopatra 
at Leucopolis, when letters from Octavia at Athens 
informed him that she would soon join him with mon¬ 
ey and troops. The prospect of this visit was so un¬ 
welcome to Cleopatra, that she persisted in her en¬ 
treaties until Antony sent his wife an order to return. 
Even now, however, she endeavoured to pacify the 
rivals. Octavius commanded her to leave the house 
of a husband who had treated her so insultingly ; but, 
feeling her duties as a wife and a Roman, she begged 
him not, for the sake of a single woman, to destroy the 
peace of the world, and of two persons so dear to her, 
by the horrors of war. Octavius granted her wish ; 
she remained in the house of Antony, and occupied 
herself with educating, with equal care and tenderness, 
the children she had borne him, and those of his first 
wife Fulvia. This noble behaviour of hers increased 
the indignation of the Romans against Antony. At 
last he divorced her, and ordered her to leave his man¬ 
sion at Rome. She obeyed without complaint, and 


took with her all her children except Antillus, her el¬ 
dest son, who was then with his father. The civil war 
soon after broke out.—On the overthrow and death of 
Antony, Octavia gave herself up to complete retire¬ 
ment. Her son Marcellus, the issue of her first mar¬ 
riage, was united to Julia, the daughter of Augustus, 
and intended by the emperor as his successor ; but his 
early death frustrated this design, and plunged his 
mother and friends in the deepest affliction. It was 
on Virgil’s reading to Octavia and Augustus the beau¬ 
tiful passage towards the close of the sixth book of 
the iEneid, where the premature death of Marcellus is 
deplored, that the poet received from the sorrowing 
parent so splendid a recompense. (Vid. Virgilius.) 
Octavia, in fact, never recovered from the loss of her 
son. His death continually preyed upon her mind, 
and she at last ended her days in deep melancholy, 
about 12 B.C. Augustus pronounced her funeral ora¬ 
tion, but declined the marks of honour which the sen¬ 
ate were desirous of bestowing upon her. ( Sueton., 
Vit. Jul., 27. — Id., Vit. Aug., 17. — Id. ib., 61.— 
Pint., Vit. Ant., 88.— Encycl. Am., vol. 9, p. 367.) 
—II. A daughter of the Emperor Claudius by Messa- 
lina, and sister to Britannicus. Her life, though short, 
offers only one series of misfortunes. While still quite 
young, she was affianced to Lucius Silanus, the grand¬ 
son of Augustus ; but Agrippina, availing herself of 
her influence over the imbecile Claudius, broke off the 
match, and gave Octavia to her own son Nero, when 
the latter had attained his sixteenth year. Nero, on 
ascending the throne, repudiated Octavia on the ground 
of sterility, but, in reality, that he might unite himself 
to Poppasa; and this latter female, dreading the pres¬ 
ence of one who was still young and beautiful, and her 
possible influence at some future day over the capri¬ 
cious feelings of the emperor, accused Octavia of crim¬ 
inal intercourse with a slave. Some pretended testi¬ 
mony having been obtained by means of the torture, 
Octavia was banished to Campania. The murmurs 
of the people, however, compelled Nero to recall her 
from exile, and her return was hailed by the populace 
with every demonstration of joy. Alarmed at this, 
and fearing lest the recall of Octavia might prove the 
signal of her own disgrace, Popprea threw herself at 
the feet of Nero, and begged him to revoke the order 
for Octavia’s return. The emperor granted more than 
she asked; for he caused the infamous Anicetus, the 
author of his mother’s murder, to come forward and 
testify falsely to his criminality with Octavia. The 
unhappy princess, upon this, was banished to the island 
of Pandataria, and soon after put to death there. Her 
head was brought to Poppasa. Octavia was only twenty 
years of age at the time of her death. (Tacit., Ann., 
24, 63.— Sueton., Vit. Ncr., 35.) 

Octavianus, the name of Octavius (afterward Au¬ 
gustus), which he assumed on his adoption into the 
Julian family* in accordance with the Roman custom 
in such cases. Usage, however, though erroneous, 
has given the preference to the name Octavius over 
that of Octavianus. (Cic., Ep. ad Fam., 12, 25.— 
Tacit., Ann., 13, 6.— Aurcl. Viet., de Cces., c. 1.) 

Octavius, I. Nepos, Cn., was praetor B.C. 168, and 
appointed to the command of the fleet against Perseus. 
He followed this monarch, after his defeat by Paulus 
Hamilius to the island of Samothrace, and there ob¬ 
tained his surrender. For this he was rewarded with 
a naval triumph. (Liv., 44, 17.— Id., 44, 45. — Id., 
45, 6.— Id., 45, 42.) In B.C. 165 he was consul with 
M. Torquatus. Having been sent, three years after 
this, into Syria, at the head of a deputation to act as 
guardians to the young king, Antiochus Eupator, he 
was assassinated by order, as w T as supposed, of Lysias, 
a relation of the previous monarch, and who claimed 
the regency during the minority of Antiochus. The 
arrogant and haughty conduct of Octavius appears to 
have hastened his fate. The senate, however, erected 

911 



ODE 


ODI 


a statue to his memory.—II. M., a tribune of the com¬ 
mons, deprived of his office by means of Tiberius Grac¬ 
chus. (Vid Gracchus II.) — III. Cn., was consul 
33.C. 87, along with Cinna. Being himself attached 
to the party of Sylla, and having the support of the 
senate, he drove his colleague out of the city. Marius, 
however, having returned this same year and re-enter¬ 
ed Rome with Cinna, Octavius was put to death.—IV. 
C., the father of Augustus, was praetor B.C. 61, and 
distinguished himself by the correctness and justice of 
his decisions. After his praetorship he was appointed 
governor of Macedonia, and defeated the Ressi and 
other Thracian tribes, for which he received from his 
soldiers the title of Imperator. He died at Nola, on 
his return from his province. Octavius married Atia, 
the sister of Julius Caesar, and had by this union Oc¬ 
tavius (afterward Augustus) and Octavia, the wife of 
Antony.—V. The earlier name of the Emperor Au¬ 
gustus. ( Vid. Augustus and Octavianus.) 

Octodurus, a town of the Veragri, in Gallia Nar- 
bonensis. It was situate in the Vallis Pennina, on 
the river Dransa or Drance, near its junction with the 
Rhone, at a considerable distance above the influx of 
the latter into the Lacus Lem anus or Lake of Geneva. 
It is now Martigni, or, as the Germans call it, Mar- 
tenaeh. (Cces ., B. G., 3, 1.) 

Octogesa, a town of Spain, a little above the mouth 
of the Iberus, on the north bank of that river, where it 
is joined by the Sicoris. It is commonly supposed to 
answer to the modern Mequinenza. Ukert, however, 
places it in the territory of La Granja. (Cces., Bell. 
Civ., 1, 61.) 

Ocypete, one of the Harpies. The name signifies 
swift-flying, from d>Kvg, “ swift,” and Treropat, 11 to 
fly A (Vid. HarpyisB.) 

Odenatus, a celebrated prince of Palmyra, in the 
third century of the Christian era, who distinguished 
himself by his military talents and his attachment to 
the Romans. The accounts of his origin differ. 
Agathias makes him of mean descent; but the state¬ 
ments of others are entitled to more credit, according 
to whom he exercised hereditary sway over the Arab 
tribes in the vicinity of Palmyra. These same writers 
inform us, that his family had for a long time back 
been connected by treaties with the Romans, and had 
received from the latter not only honorary titles, but 
also subsidies for protecting the frontiers of Syria. 
That there existed, indeed, some sort of alliance be¬ 
tween this family and the Roman power, is evident 
from the name Septimius, which was borne by some of 
his predecessors as w r ell as by Ocfenatus himself, and 
which would carry us back probably to the time of 
Septimius Severus, who resided a long time in Syria, 
and from whom the honorary appellation may have 
been obtained. (Saint-Martin, in Biog. XJniv., vol. 
31, p. 494, seqq.) —The manner in which Odenatus at¬ 
tained to the supremacy in Palmyra is not very clear¬ 
ly stated. He appears, independently of his sway over 
the adjacent tribes, to have held at first the office of 
decurio or senator in the city itself. When Philip the 
Arabian proclaimed himself emperor, after the murder 
of the younger Gordian, A.D. 244, and had set out 
for Rome, he left the government of Syria in the hands 
of his brother Priscus. The tyranny and oppression 
of the latter soon caused a general revolt. Palmyra 
from this time assumed the rank of an independent 
city ; and we find Septimius Airanes, father of Ode¬ 
natus, ruling over it as sovereign prince, A.D. 251. 
He was succeeded by his son, the subject of this arti¬ 
cle. (Saint-Martin, l. c .) Odenatus was twice mar¬ 
ried. The name and family of his first wife are not 
known. He had by her a son called Septimius Oro- 
des. His second wife was the celebrated Zenobia, 
daughter of an Arabian prince, or sheik, who held un¬ 
der his sway all the southern part of Mesopotamia. By 
Zenobia he became the father of two sons, Herennius 
912 


and Timolaus. Zenobia herself had also a son by a 
previous husband.—After the defeat and capture of Va¬ 
lerian by the King of Persia, Odenatus, desirous at 
least to secure the forbearance of the conqueror, sent 
Sapor a magnificent present, accompanied by a letter 
full of respect and submission ; but the haughty mon¬ 
arch, instead of being softened by this expression of 
good-will, ordered the gift to be thrown into the Eu¬ 
phrates, and returned an answer breathing the utmost 
contempt and indignation. The Palmyrian prince, 
who read his fate in the angry message of Sapor, im¬ 
mediately took the field, and falling upon the enemy, 
who had already been driven across the Euphrates by 
the Roman general Balista, gained a decisive advan¬ 
tage over their main body. He then burst into their 
camp, seized the treasures and the concubines of Sa¬ 
por, dispersed the intimidated soldiers, and in a short 
time restored Carrhse, Nisibis, and all Mesopotamia to 
the possession of the Romans. Trebellius Pollio in¬ 
forms us, that he even proceeded so far as to lay siege 
to Ctesiphon, with the view of liberating Valerian, 
who was still alive, but that neither his arms nor his 
entreaties could effect this benevolent object. (Treb. 
Poll.,' Trigint. Tyrann., 13.— Zonar., 12, 23.— Zos- 
im., lib. 1, p. 661.) The Palmyrian prince then turned 
his arms against Quietus, son of Macrinus, and a can¬ 
didate for the empire, and overthrew his party in the. 
East. As a recompense for these important services, 
and his constant attachment to Gallienus, the son 
of Valerian, the senate, with the consent of the empe¬ 
ror, conferred on Odenatus the title of Augustus, and 
intrusted him with the general command of the East. 
Zenobia also received the title of Augusta, and Oro- 
des, Herennius, and Timolaus that of Csesars. Odena¬ 
tus signalized his attainment to these honours by new 
successes ; and by one of the writers of the Augustan 
history, his name is connected with the repulse of the 
Goths, who had landed on the shores of the Euxine, 
near Heraclea. (Treb. Poll., Gallieni Duo, c. 12.) 
Of this fact, however, there remains no satisfactory evi¬ 
dence ; but it admits not of any doubt that the sov¬ 
ereign of Palmyra fell soon afterward by the hand of 
domestic treason, in which his queen Zenobia was 
suspected to have had a share. The murderer was 
his own nephew. His son Orodes was slain along 
with him. (Trebell. Poll., 1. c.) 

Odessus, a city on the coast of Moesia Inferior, to 
the east of Marcianopolis. It was founded by a colo¬ 
ny of Milesians, and is now Varna in Bulgaria. It 
was also called Odesopolis. Some editions of Ptole¬ 
my give the form ’Odvrrooq (Odyssus), and in the Itin- 
Ant. (p. 218) Odissus occurs. (Mela, 2, 2.— Pliny, 
11.— Ov., Trist., 1, 9, 37.) 

Odeum, a musical theatre at Athens. (Suidas, s. v. 
udelov. — Aristoph., Vesp., 1104.) It was built by 
Pericles (Pint., Vit. Pencl .— Vitruv., 5, 9), and was 
so constructed as to imitate the form of Xerxes’ tent. 
(Pint., Vzt. Per.) This shape gave rise to some pleas¬ 
antries on the part of the Athenians. Thus, for exam¬ 
ple, Cratinus, in one of his comedies, wishing to ex¬ 
press that the head of Pericles terminated as it were in 
a point, said that he carried the Odeum on his head. 
(Compare Plut., 1. c.) This building was destroyed 
by fire at the siege of Athens by Sylla. It was re¬ 
erected soon after by Ariobarzanes, king of Cappado¬ 
cia. (Pausan., 1 , 20.) 

Odinus or Odin, the principal deity of the ancient 
Scandinavians and Northern Germans. Other forms 
for the name were Wodan, Guodan, Godan, Vothin, 
Othin, &c. Among the Anglo-Saxons, Wodan was 
the god of merchants, corresponding to the Hermes of 
the Greeks or the Mercurius of the Latins. The fourth 
day of the week derived its name from him (Wodans- 
tag). In the account of the origin of the world, as 
given in the older Edda, Odin,, the eldest son of B6r, 
the second man, is represented as having, with his two 




ODINTJS. 


ODO 


brothers, Vile and Ve, defeated and slain the frost- 
giant Ymer, out of whose body they formed the habi¬ 
table world. Some expounders of mythology make 
Odin and his brethren, together with their antagonist, 
as set forth in this fable, to be mere personifications 
of the elements of the world.—But there is another 
and a younger Odin, who, according to some writers, 
is partly a mythological and partly an historical person¬ 
age. In all the Scandinavian traditions preserved by 
the chroniclers, mention is made of a chief called Odin, 
who came from Asia with a large host of followers call¬ 
ed Aser (vid . Asi), and conquered Scandinavia, where 
they built a city by the name of Sigtuna, with temples, 
and established a worship and a hierarchy ; he also in¬ 
vented or brought with him the characters of the Runic 
alphabet; he was, in short, the legislator and civilizer,of 
the North. He is represented also as a great magician, 
and was worshipped as a god after death, when some 
of the attributes of the elder Odin are supposed to have 
been ascribed to him. The epoch of this emigration 
of Odin and his host is a subject of great uncertainty. 
Some place it in the time of the Scythian expedition 
of Darius Hystaspis : others (and this has been the 
most common opinion among Scandinavian archaeolo- 
gists) fix it about the time of the Roman conquests in 
Pontus, 50 or 60 B.C. Siihm, in his “ Gcschichte der 
Nordischen Fabelzeit ,” enumerates four Odins. One 
was Bor's son ; he came from the mouths of the Ta- 
nais, and introduced into the North the worship of the 
Sun. A second came with the Aser, from the borders 
of Europe and Asia, at the time of the invasion of Da¬ 
rius. He brought with him the Runic alphabet, built 
temples, and established the mythology of the Edda: 
he is called Mid Othin, or Mittel Othin. A third Odin, 
according to Siihm, fled from the borders of the Cau- 
casus at the time of Pompey’s conquests, 50 or 60 
years B.C. The fourth Odin he makes to have lived 
in the third or fourth century of our era. All this, how¬ 
ever, is far from being authenticated ; though the north¬ 
western emigration of Odin from the borders of the 
Caucasus to Scandinavia has the support of a uniform 
tradition in its favour. Odin was worshipped by the 
German nations until their conversion to Christianity. 
( Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 16, p. 400.) — The legend 
of Odin evidently points to the introduction of religious 
rites and ceremonies among the northern nations by 
some powerful leader from the East, who was himself, 
in some degree, identified after death with the deity 
whose worship he had brought in with him. This de¬ 
ity appears to have been none other than the Budda 
of the East, just as the traditions of the North respect¬ 
ing the Aser connect the mythology of Scandinavia 
in a very remarkable manner with that of Upper Asia. 
(Vid. Asi.) The striking resemblance that exists be¬ 
tween Budda and Odin, not only in many of their ap¬ 
pellations, but also in numerous parts of their worship, 
has been fully established by several Northern wri¬ 
ters. (Consult Magnusen , Eddalceren og dens Oprin- 
delse, vol. 4, preef. v., seqq. — Id. ib., vol. 4, p. 474,478, 
seqq.; 512, seqq.; 534, seqq.; 541, seqq. — Palmblad, 
de Budda ct Wodan, Upsal , 1822, 4to.— Wallman,om 
Odin och Budda, Holm., 1824, 8vo.—Compare Ritter, 
Vorhalle, p. 472.— Sir W. Jones, Asiatic Researches, 
vol. 1, p. 511 .—Id. ib., vol. 2, p. 343.) One feature, 
however, in which these two deities approximate very 
closely, is too remarkable to be here omitted. The 
same planet, namely, Mercury, is sacred to both; and 
the same day of the week (Wednesday) is called after 
each of them respectively. Thus we have the follow¬ 
ing appellations for this day among the natives of In¬ 
dia : in the Birman, Buddahu: in the Malabaric, Bu- 
den-kirumei, &c. So again, some of the names given 
to Budda coincide very closely with those of Odin. 
Thus we may compare the Godama , Gotama, and 
Samana-Codam of the former, with the Godan, Gu- 
tan, Guodan. &c., of the latter. (The Westphalians 
5 Z 


still call Wednesday Godenstag.) We may even ad¬ 
vance a step farther, and compare the names of botli 
Odin and Budda with one of the earliest appellations 
of Deity among many nations of Asia and Europe. 
Thus we have in Sanscrit, Coda; in Persian, Choda, 
Chuda, and Ghuda; in the language of the Kurds, 
Chudi; in that of the Afghans, Chudai; in the Goth¬ 
ic and German, God and Gott; in the Icelandic and 
Danish, Gud, &.c. It is curious to observe, moreover, 
that traces of the worship of Odin or Budda appear 
even in America. Among the ancient traditions col¬ 
lected by the Spanish bishop Nunez de la Vega, there 
is one which was current among the Indians of Chiapa 
respecting a certain Wodan or Votan. This individ¬ 
ual is said to have been the grandson of one who, to¬ 
gether with his family, was alone saved from a univer¬ 
sal deluge. He aided in the erection of a great edi¬ 
fice, by which men attempted to reach the skies ; but 
the execution of this daring project was frustrated; 
each family of men received a different language ; and 
the Great Spirit ( Tcotl ) ordered Wodan to go and peo¬ 
ple the country of Anahuac, or Mexico. This same 
Wodan, moreover, like Odin and Budda, gave name to 
a particular day. So strong, indeed, does the resem¬ 
blance between Odin and the Mexican Wodan appear, 
that even Humboldt himself hesitates not to use the 
following language in relation to it: “ Ce Votan, ou 
Wodan, Americain paroit de la meme famillc avee les 
Wods ou Odins des Goths et dcs peuples d'origine 
Celtique .” (Monumens de VAmerique, vol. 1, p. 382.) 
It would appear, then, from all that has been said, that 
the worship of Odin or Budda is to be referred in its 
origin to the earliest periods of the history of our race, 
these names being nothing more than early appella¬ 
tions for Deity, and being afterward shared also by 
those individuals who had spread this particular wor¬ 
ship over different parts of the earth. (Consult Mag¬ 
nusen, Mythol. Boreal. Lex., p. 261, seqq. — Niemey- 
cr, Sagen, betreffend Othin, &c., Erf., 1821, 8vo.— 
Leo, iiber Othin's Verehrung in Deutschland , Erl., 
1822, 8vo. — Klemm, Germ. Alterthumsk., p. 280, 
seqq.) 

Odoacer, a Gothic chief, who, according to some 
authorities, was of the tribe of the Heruli. He origi¬ 
nally served as a mercenary in the barbarian auxiliary 
force which the later emperors of the West had taken 
into their pay for the defence of Italy. After the two 
rival emperors, Glycerius and Julius Nepos, were both 
driven from the throne, Orestes, a soldier from Pan- 
nonia, clothed his own son Romulus, yet a minor, with 
the imperial purple, but retained all the substantial au¬ 
thority in his own hands. The barbarian troops now 
asked for one third of the lands of Italy, to be distrib¬ 
uted among them as a reward for their services. Ores¬ 
tes having rejected their demand, they chose Odoacer 
for their leader, who immediately marched against 
Orestes, who had shut himself up in Ticinum or Pa¬ 
via. Odoacer took the city by storm, and gave it up 
to be plundered by his soldiers. Orestes himself was 
taken prisoner, and led to Placentia, where he was pub¬ 
licly executed, A.D. 475, exactly a twelvemonth after 
he had driven Nepos out of Italy. Romulus, who was 
called Augustulus by way of derision, was in Raven¬ 
na, where he was seized by Odoacer, who stripped him 
of his imperial ornaments, and banished him to a cas¬ 
tle in Campania, but allowed him an honourable main¬ 
tenance. Odoacer now proclaimed himself King of 
Italy, rejecting the imperial titles of Caesar and Augus¬ 
tus. For this reason the Western empire is consid¬ 
ered as having ended with the deposition of Romulus 
Augustulus, the son of Orestes. Odoacer’s authority 
did not extend beyond the boundaries of Italy. Little 
is known of the events of his reign until the invasion 
of Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, who, at the in¬ 
stigation, as some historians assert, of Zeno, emperor 
of the East, marched from the banks of the Danube to 

912 




ODR 


1 ODYSSEA. 


dispossess Odoacer of his kingdom. Theodoric, at 
the head of a large army, defeated Odoacer near Aqui- 
Ieia, and entered Verona without opposition. Odoa¬ 
cer shut himself up in Ravenna, A.D. 489. The war, 
however, lasted for several years ; Odoacer made a 
brave resistance, but was compelled by famine to sur¬ 
render Ravenna, A.D. 493. Theodoric at first spared 
his life, but in a short time caused him to be put to 
death, and proclaimed himself King of Italy. ( Encycl. 
Us. Knowl., vol. 16, p. 400.) 

Odrysae, one of the most numerous and warlike of 
the Thracian tribes. Under the dominion of Sitalces, 
a king of theirs, was established what is called in his¬ 
tory the empire of the Odrysse. Thucydides, who has 
entered into considerable detail on this subject, ob¬ 
serves, that of all the empires situated between the 
Ionian Gulf and the Euxine, this was the most con¬ 
siderable, both in revenue and opulence. Its mili¬ 
tary force was, however, very inferior to that of Scy¬ 
thia both in strength and numbers. The empire of Si¬ 
talces extended along the coast from Abdera to the 
mouths of the Danube, a distance of four days’ and 
nights’ sail; and in the interior, from the sources of 
the Strymon to Byzantium, a journey of thirteen days. 
The first founder of this empire appears to have been 
Teres. (Herod., 7, 137.— Thucyd., 2, 29.) For far¬ 
ther remarks on the Odrysa;, see the article Thracia. 

Odyssea, I. a city of Iiispania Bastica, north of Ab¬ 
dera, among the mountains. It was founded, accord¬ 
ing to a fabulous tradition, by Ulysses. ( Posidon., 
Artemidor., Asclep., Myrl., ap. Strab., 149. — Eus- 
tath. ad Od., p. 1379. — Id. ad Dionys. Pcrieg., 281. 
— Stcph. Byz., s. v. — Tzschucke ad Mel., 3, 1, 6.) 
Some have supposed it to be the same with Oiisippo 
or Ulysippo (now Lisbon), and very probably we owe 
Odyssea to the same fabulous legend which assigns 
Ulysses as the founder of Ulysippo. There must have 
been a town in Bsetica, the name of which, resembling 
in some degree the form Odyssea (’Odvoaeia), the 
Greeks, in their usual way, converted into the latter, 
and then appended to it the fable respecting a founding 
by Ulysses. (Consult Ufccrt, Gcogr., vol. 2, p. 351.— 
Merida, Cosmogr., pt. 2, 1. 2, c. 26.) — II. A prom¬ 
ontory of Sicily, near Pachynum, supposed by Fazel- 
lus to be the same with the present Cabo Marzo. 
( Bischoff und Moller, Worterb. der Geogr., p. 798.) 
—III. The second of the two great poems ascribed 
to Homer. It consists, like the Iliad, of twenty-four 
books ; and the subject is the return of Ulysses (’Odbcr- 
aevg), after the fall of Troy, from a land lying beyond 
the range of human intercourse or knowledge, to a home 
invaded by a band of insolent intruders, who seek to rob 
him of his wife and kill his son. Hence, the Odyssey 
begins exactly at that point where the hero is considered 
to be farthest from his home, in the island of Ogygia, at 
the navel, that is, the central part, of the sea; where 
the nymph Calypso (KaTivipu, “ The Concealer ”) has 
kept him hidden from all mankind for seven years ; 
thence, having, by the help of the gods, who pity his 
misfortunes, passed through the dangers prepared for 
him by his implacable enemy, Poseidon or Neptune, he 
gains the land of the Pha3acians, a careless, peaceable, 
and effeminate nation, to whom war is known only by 
means of poetry. Borne along by a marvellous Phaga- 
cian vessel, he reaches Ithaca sleeping; here he is 
entertained by the honest swineherd Eumseus, and, 
having been introduced into his own house as a beg¬ 
gar, he is there made to suffer the harshest treatment 
from the suiters, in order that he may afterward appear 
with the stronger right as a terrible avenger. With this 
simple story a poet might have been satisfied ; and 
we should, even in this form, notwithstanding its small¬ 
er extent, have placed the poem almost on an equality 
with the Iliad. But the poet to whom we are indebt¬ 
ed for the Odyssey in a complete form, has interwoven 
a second story, by whic]h the poem is rendered much 


richer and more complete ; although, indeed, from the 
union of two actions, some roughnesses have been 
produced, which, perhaps, with a plan of this kind, 
could scarcely be avoided. While the poet represents 
the son of Ulysses, stimulated by Minerva, coming 
forward in Ithaca with newly-excited courage, and 
calling the suiters to account before the people, and 
then afterward describes him as travelling to Pyle s 
and Sparta in order to obtain intelligence of his lost 
father, he gives us a picture of Ithaca and its anar¬ 
chical condition, and of the rest of Greece in its state 
of peace after the return of the princes, which produces 
the finest contrast; and, at the same time, he prepares 
Telemachus for playing an energetic part in the work 
of vengeance, which by this means becomes more prob¬ 
able.—The Odyssey is indisputably, as 'well as the Il¬ 
iad, a poem possessing a unity of subject; nor can any 
one of its chief parts be removed without leaving a 
chasm in the development of the leading idea; but it 
differs from the Iliad in being composed on a more 
artificial and more complicated plan. This is the 
case partly, because, in the first and greater division of 
the poem, up to the sixteenth book, two main actions 
are carried on side by side ; and partly, because the 
action, which passes within the compass of the poem, 
and, as it were, beneath our eyes, is greatly extended 
by means of an episodical narration, by which the 
chief action itself is made distinct and complete, and 
the most marvellous part of the story is transferred 
from the mouth of the poet to that of the hero him¬ 
self.—It is plain that the plan of the Odyssey, as well 
as that of the Iliad, offered many opportunities for 
enlargement by the insertion of new passages ; and 
many irregularities in the course of the narration, and 
its occasional diffuseness, may be explained in this 
manner. The latter, for example, is observable in the 
amusements offered to Ulysses when entertained by 
the Phseacians ; and some of the ancients even ques¬ 
tioned the genuineness of the passage about the dance 
of the Phseacians, and the song of Demodocus respect¬ 
ing the loves of Mars and Venus, although this part of 
the Odyssey appears to have been at least extant in the 
50th Olympiad (B.C. 580-577), when the chorus of the 
Phaeacians was represented on the throne of the Amy- 
clsean Apollo. ( Pausan., 3, 18, 7.) So likewise 
Ulysses’ account of his adventures contains many in¬ 
terpolations, particularly in the nckyia, or invocation 
of the dead, where the ancients had already attributed 
an important passage (which, in fact, destroys the 
unity and connexion of the narrative) to the diaskcu- 
astce, or interpolators ; among others, to the Orphic 
Qnomacritus, who, in the time of the Pisistratidse, was 
employed in collecting the poems of Plomer. (Schcl. 
ad Od., 11, 104.) Moreover, the Alexandrine critics, 
Aristophanes and Aristarchus, considered the whole 
of the last part (from Od. 23, 296, to the end), from the 
recognition of Penelope, as added at a later period. 
Nor can it be denied that it has great defects ; in par¬ 
ticular, the description of the arrival of the suiters in the 
infernal regions is only a second and feebler nekyia, 
which does not precisely accord with the first, and is 
introduced in this place without sufficient reason. At 
the same time, the Odyssey could never have been 
considered as concluded until Ulysses had embraced 
his father Laertes, who is often mentioned in the 
course of the poem, and until a peaceful state of things 
had been restored, or begun to be restored, in Ithaca. 
It is not, therefore, likely that the original Odyssey al¬ 
together wanted some passage of this kind; but it 
was probably much altered by the Homeridse, until it 
assumed the form in which we now possess it.—That 
the Odyssey was written after the Iliad, and that 
many differences are apparent in the character and 
manners both of men and gods, as well as in the man¬ 
agement of the language,, is quite clear ; but it is diffi¬ 
cult and hazardous to raise upon this foundation any 



CE A 


GECH 


definite conclusions as to the person and age of the 
poet. With the exception of the anger of Neptune, 
who always works unseen in the obscure distance, the 
gods appear in a milder form; they act in unison, 
without dissension or contest, for the relief of man¬ 
kind, not, as is so often the case in the Iliad, for their 
destruction. It is, however, true, that the subject af¬ 
forded far less occasion for describing the violent and 
angry passions and vehement combats of the gods. 
At the same time, the gods all appear a step higher 
above the human race ; they are not represented as 
descending in a bodily form from their dwellings on 
Mount Olympus, and mixing in the tumult of the bat¬ 
tle, but they go about in human forms, only discerni¬ 
ble by their superior wisdom and prudence, in the com¬ 
pany of the adventurous Ulysses and the intelligent 
Telemachus. But the chief cause of this difference 
is to be sought in the nature of the story, and, we may 1 
add, in the fine tact of the poet, who knew how to 
preserve unity of subject and harmony of tone in his 
picture, and to exclude everything irrelevant. The 
attempt of many learned writers to discover a different 
religion and mythology for the Iliad and the Odyssey, 
leads to the most arbitrary dissection of the two poems. 
M. Constant, in particular, in his celebrated work 
“ De la Religion ” (vol. 3), has been forced to go to 
this length, as he distinguishes “ trois espcces de my- 
thologic ” in the Homeric poems, and determines from 
them the age of the different parts. It ought, how¬ 
ever, above all things, to have been made clear how 
the fable of the Iliad could have been treated by a 
professor of this supposed religion of the Odyssey, 
without introducing quarrels, battles, and vehement 
excitement among the gods; in which theie would 
have been no difficulty, if the difference of character in 
the gods of the two poems were introduced by the 
poet, and did not grow out of the subject. On the 
other hand, the human race appears, in the houses of 
Nestor, Menelaiis, and especially of Alcinous, in a far 
more agreeable state, and one of far greater comfort 
and luxury, than in the Iliad. But where could the 
enjoyments, to which the Atridse, in their native palace, 
and the peaceable Phaeecians could securely abandon 
themselves, find a place in a rough camp 1 Granting, 
however, that a different taste and feeling is shown in 
the choice of the subject and in the whole arrange¬ 
ment of the poem, yet there is not a greater difference 
than is found in the inclinations of the same man in 
the prime of life and in old age ; and, to speak can¬ 
didly, we know no other argument, adduced by the 
Chonzontes both of ancient and modern times, for at¬ 
tributing the wonderful genius of Homer to two differ¬ 
ent individuals. It is certain that the Odyssey, in re¬ 
spect of its plan and the conception of its chief char¬ 
acters, of Ulysses himself, of Nestor and Menelaiis, 
stands in the closest affinity with the Iliad ; that it al¬ 
ways presupposes the existence of the earlier poem, 
and silently refers to it ; w r hich also serves to explain 
the remarkable fact, that the Odyssey mentions many 
occurrences in the life of Ulysses which lie out of the 
compass of the action, but not one which is celebrated 
in the Iliad. If the completion of the Iliad and the 
Odyssey seems too vast a work for the lifetime of one 
man, we may, perhaps, have recourse to the supposition 
that Homer, after having sung the Iliad in the vigour of 
his youthful years, communicated in his old age to some 
devoted disciple the plan of the Odyssey, which had 
long been working in his mind, and left it to him for 
completion. ( Muller, Hist. Gr. Lit., p. 57, seqq.) 

CEa, I. a town in the island of ffEgina, above 20 
stadia from the capital. ( Herod., 5, 83.)—II. A town 
in the island of Thera, called also Calliste.—III. A 
city on the coast of Africa, between the two Syrtes, 
and forming, together with Sabrata and Leptis Magna, 
the district called Tripolis. This city first grew up 
under the Roman sway, and was founded by a colo¬ 


ny consisting of the natives and certain Sicilians in¬ 
termingled. (Compare Silius Ital., 3, 257.) It was a 
small place in comparison with the neighbouring Lep¬ 
tis, and yet was able to sustain a contest with this city 
about their respective boundaries, by the aid of the 
Garamantes in its vicinity. {Tacit., Hist., 4, 50.) 
In the reign of Valentinian, the Tripolitan cities were 
for the first time obliged to shut their gates against a 
hostile invasion of the savages of Ga;tulia ; and, find¬ 
ing themselves unprotected by the venal command¬ 
er to whom the defence of Africa was intrusted, 
they joined the rebellious standard of a Moor. The 
insurrection was suppressed by the ability of The¬ 
odosius, the Roman general. Seventy years after, 
the wffiole country was ravaged by the Vandals. In 
the sixth century, CEa no longer existed, since Pro¬ 
copius, who speaks of the walls of the other cities 
in Tripoli being rebuilt, passes over CEa in silence. 
The ruins of the ancient city are said to lie four geo¬ 
graphical miles to the east of the modern Tripoli (or, 
as the natives call it, Tarables). Ptolemy writes the 
name of the city 'E ua {Eoa ); the Peutinger Table 
gives Osa, and the Antonine Itinerary (Eea. {Man- 
nert, Geogr., vol. 10, pt. 2, p. 135.) 

CEagrus, the father of Orpheus by Calliope. He 
was king of Thrace, and from him Mount Heemus, 
and also Hebrus, one of the rivers of the country, have 
received the appellation of (Eagrius , which thus be¬ 
comes equivalent to “ Thracius ” or “ Thracicus .” 
{Ovid, lb., 484.— Virg., G., 4, 524.— Apollod., 1, 3.) 

CEbalia, I. the ancient name of Laconia, which it 
received from CEbalus, one ofits ancient kings. ( Serv. 
ad Virg., Georg., 4, 125.) Hence CEbalius is used 
by the poets as equivalent to Laconicus or Spartanus, 
and is applied to Castor and Pollux (“ C Ebalu fralres ,” 
Statius, Sylv., 3, 2, 10), to Helen (“ CEbalia pcllex ,” 
Ovid, Rem. Am. 458), to Hyacinthus (“ CEbalius 
pucr," Martial, 14, 173), &c.—II. A name applied 
to Tarentum, because founded by a Spartan colony. 
{Plin., 3, U.—Flor., 1, 18.) 

CEbalus, I. a son of Argulius, king of Laconia, 
which country received from him, among the poets, 
the name of CEbalia. He was the father of Tyndarus, 
and grandfather of Helen. {Hygin., Fab., 78.)—II. 
A son of Telon, king of Capreae, and of the nymph 
Sebethis. {Virg., En., 7, 734.— Serv., ad Ice.) 

CEchalia, I. a city of Thessaly, in the district of 
Estiseotis. {Horn., IL, 2, 729.) Homer here couples 
it with Tricca and Ithome, and of course means by it 
a Thessalian city. Many poets, however, as Strabo 
observes, not adhering to the Homeric geography, 
were of opinion that CEchalia was in Euboea, as Soph¬ 
ocles, for instance, in his Trachinise ; while others 
consigned it to Arcadia or Messenia. {Strabo, 438.— 
Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 326.)—II. A city of 
.Etolia, belonging to the tribe ofEurytanes. ( Strabo, 
448.)—III. A city of Euboea, where Eurytus reigned, 
and which was destroyed by Hercules. But this opin¬ 
ion, which is maintained by many w riters, w ould seem 
not to have been a well-grounded one, and we ought 
to look, in all probability, for the CEchalia of Eurytus 
in Thessaly. ( Vid. CEchalia I. — Cramer's Ancient 
Greece, vol. 2, p. 139.)—IV. A city of Messenia, ac¬ 
cording to some the residence of Eurytus. {Pausan., 
4, 33.) This is, however, a question w'hich has been 
much agitated by the commentators on Homer ; for, 
as Strabo remarks, the poet seems to speak of two 
places of that name, both belonging to Eurytus, one 
in Thessaly, the other in Messenia ; it was from the 
latter that Thamyris, the Thracian bard, was proceed¬ 
ing on his way to Dorium, another Messenian city, 
when he encountered the Muses, who deprived him 
of his art. {II., 2, 594.) Apollodorus acknowledged 
only one CEchalia of Eurytus, which he placed in 
Thessaly; but Demetrius of Scepsis admitted also the 
Messenian city, W'hich he identified with Andania, a 

915 



CEDI 


CEDIPUS. 


well-known town of that province on the Arcadian 
frontier ( Strabo , 339.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 
3, p. 146, seqq.) 

CEcumenius, an ancient Greek commentator on the 
Scriptures. The time at which he lived is uncertain ; 
but it was after the eighth century and before the 
tenth. He is generally placed in the ninth century ; 
Cave assigns to him the date A.D. 990 ; Lardner, 
A.D. 950. CEcumenius was bishop of Tricca, and 
the author of commentaries on the Acts of the Apos¬ 
tles, the fourteen epistles of St. Paul, and the seven 
Catholic epistles, which contain a concise and per¬ 
spicuous illustration of these parts of the New Tes¬ 
tament. Besides his own remarks and notes, they 
consist of a compilation of the notes and observations 
of Chrysostom, Cyrill of Alexandrea, Gregory Nazian- 
zen, and others. He is thought to have written also 
a commentary on the four gospels, compiled from the 
writings of the ancient fathers, which is not now ex¬ 
tant. The works of CEcumenius were first published 
in Greek at Verona in 1532, and in Greek and Latin 
at Paris in 1631, in 2 vols. fol. To the second vol¬ 
ume of the Paris edition is added the commentary of 
Arethas on the book of Revelations. (Consult Hoff¬ 
mann, Lex. Bihliogr., vol. 3, p. 156.) 

CEdipus (016'nvovg), was the son of Laius, king 
of Thebes, and of Jocasta, the daughter of Menoeceus. 
Homer calls his mother Epicasta. An oracle had 
warned Laius against having children, declaring that 
he would meet his death by means of his offspring; 
and the monarch accordingly refrained, until, after 
some lapse of time, having indulged in festivity, he 
forgot the injunction of the god, and Jocasta gave 
birth to a son. The father immediately delivered the 
child to his herdsman to expose on Mount Cithseron. 
The herdsman, moved to compassion, according to 
one account (Soph., (Ed. Tyr., 1038), gave the babe 
to a neatherd belonging to Polybus, king of Corinth, 
or, as others say (Eurip., Pheeniss., 28), the neatherds 
of Polybus found the infant after it had been exposed, 
and brought it to Peribcea, the wife of Polybus, who, 
being childless, reared it as her own, and named it 
CEdipus, on account of its swollen feet (from olSeu, to 
swell, and novg, a foot ) ; for Laius, previous to its ex¬ 
posure, had pierced its ankles, and had inserted through 
the wound a leathern thong. The foundling CEdipus 
was brought up by Polybus as his heir. Happening 
to be reproached by some one at a banquet with being 
a supposititious child, he besought Peribcea to inform 
him of the truth ; but, unable to get any satisfaction 
from her, he went to Delphi and consulted the oracle. 
The god directed him to shun his native country, or 
else he would be the slayer of his father and the sharer 
of his mother’s bed. He therefore resolved never to 
return to Corinth, where so much crime, as he thought, 
awaited him, and he took his road through Phocis. 
Now it happened that Laius, at this same time, was 
on his way to Delphi, for the purpose of ascertaining 
whether the child which had been exposed had perish¬ 
ed or not. He was in a chariot, accompanied by his 
herald Polyphontes ; a few attendants came after. 
The father and son, total strangers to each other, met, 
in a narrow road in Phocis. CEdipus was ordered to 
make way, and, on his disregarding the command, the 
charioteer endeavoured to crowd him out of the path. 
A contest thereupon ensued, and both Laius and the 
charioteer, together with all the attendants except one, 
who fled, were slain by the hand of CEdipus. Imme¬ 
diately after the death of Laius, Juno, always hostile 
to the city of Bacchus, sent a monster named the 
Sphinx to ravage the territory of Thebes. It had the 
face of a woman, the breast, feet, and tail of a lion, 
and the wings of a bird. This monster had been 
taught riddles by the Muses, and she sat on the Phi- 
cean Hill, and propounded one to the Thebans. It was 
this : “ What is that which has one voice, is four-foot- 
916 


ed, two-footed, and at last three-footed T’ or, as oth¬ 
ers give it, “ What animal is that which goes on four 
feet in the morning, on two at noon, and on three at 
evening!” The oracle told the Thebans that they 
would not be delivered from her until they had solved 
her riddle. They often met to try their skill ; and 
when they had failed, the Sphinx always carried off 
and devoured one of their number. At length Hsemon, 
son of Creon, having become her victim, the father of¬ 
fered by public proclamation the throne, to which he 
had succeeded on the death of Laius, and the hand of 
his sister Jocasta, to whoever should solve the riddle of 
the Sphinx. CEdipus, who was then at Thebes, hear¬ 
ing this, came forward and answered the Sphinx that it 
was Man ; who, when an infant, creeps on all fours ; 
when he has attained to manhood, goes on two feet; 
and when old, uses a staff, a third foot. The Sphinx 
Thereupon flung herself down to the earth and perish¬ 
ed ; and CEdipus now unknowingly accomplished the 
remainder of the oracle. He had by his mother two 
sons, Eteocles and Polynices, and two daughters, An¬ 
tigone and Ismene.—After some years Thebes was 
afflicted with famine and pestilence ; and the oracle 
being consulted, ordered the land to be purified of the 
blood which defiled it. Inquiry was set on foot after 
the murder of Laius, and a variety of concurring cir¬ 
cumstances brought the guilt home to CEdipus. Jo¬ 
casta, on the discovery being made, hung herself, and 
her unhappy son and husband, in his grief and despair, 
put out his eyes. He was banished from Thebes ; 
and, accompanied by his daughters, who faithfully ad¬ 
hered to him, he came, after a tedious period of miser¬ 
able wandering, to the grove of the Furies at Colonus, 
a village not far from Athens, and there found the ter¬ 
mination of his wretched life, having mysteriously dis¬ 
appeared from mortal view, and been received into the 
bosom of the earth. ( Apollod ., 3, 5, 8, seq. — Soph., 
(Ed. Col.) The history of his sons will be found 
under the articles Eteocles and Polynices.—Such is 
the form in which the history of CEdipus has been 
transmitted to us by the Attic dramatists. We will 
now consider its most ancient shape. The hero of 
the Odyssey says, “ I saw (in Erebus) the mother of 
CEdipodes (such being his Homeric name), the fail 
Epicasta, who, in her ignorance, did an awful deed, 
marrying her own son, and he married, having slain 
his own father, and immediately the gods made this 
known unto men. Now he ruled over the Cadmseans 
in desirable Thebes, suffering woes through the perni¬ 
cious councils of the gods ; but she, oppressed with 
grief, went to the abode of Aides, the strong gate¬ 
keeper, having fastened a long halter to the lofty roof, 
and left to him many woes, such as the Furies of a 
mother produce.” (Od., 11, 271, seqq.) In the Ili¬ 
ad (23, 679) the funeral games are mentioned which 
were celebrated at Thebes in honour of the “ fallen 
CEdipodes.” Hesiod (Op. et D., 162) speaks of the 
heroes who fell fighting at the seven-gated Thebes, on 
account of the sheep of CEdipodes. It would also 
seem that, according to the above passage of the Odys> 
sey, and to the epic poem the “CEdipodea” (Pausan., 
9, 5, 11), Epicasta had not any children by her son; 
Eurygeneia, the daughter of Hyperphas, being the 
mother of his well-known offspring. According to the 
cyclic Thebais, the fatal curse of CEdipus on his sons 
had the following origin : Polynices placed before his 
father a silver table which had belonged to Cadmus, 
and filled a golden cup with wine for him ; but when 
CEdipus perceived the heir-looms of his family thus set 
before him, he raised his hands and prayed that his 
sons might never divide their inheritance peaceably, 
but ever be at strife. Elsewhere (ap. Schol. ad Soph., 
(Ed. Col., 1440) the Thebais said, that his sons hav¬ 
ing sent him the loin, instead of the shoulder of the 
victim, he flung it to the ground, and prayed that they 
might fall by each other’s hands. The motives as- 





CENI 


E NO 


signed by the tragedians are certainly of a more digni¬ 
fied nature than these, which seem trifling and insig¬ 
nificant.—This story affords convincing proof of the 
great liberties which the Attic tragedians allowed them¬ 
selves to take with the ancient myths. It was purely 
to gratify Athenian vanity that Sophocles, contrary to 
the current tradition, made (Edipus die at Colonus. 
His blindness also seems a tragic fiction. Euripides 
makes Jocasta survive her sons, and terminate her life 
by the sword. ( Keightlcy's Mythology , p. 340, scqq.) 

(Eneus, a king of Calydon in Etolia, son of Par- 
thaon. He married Althaea, the daughter of Thestius, 
by whom he had, among other children, Meleager and 
Deianira. After Althaea’s death, he married Peribcea, 
the daughter of Hipponoiis, by whom he became the fa¬ 
ther of Tydeus. In a sacrifice which (Eneus made 
to all the gods, upon reaping the rich produce of his 
fields, he forgot Diana, and the goddess, to revenge 
this neglect, sent a wild boar to lay waste the terri¬ 
tory of Calydon. The animal was at last killed by Me¬ 
leager and the neighbouring princes of Greece, in a 
celebrated chase known by the name of the chase of 
the Calydonian boar. {Vid. Meleager.) After the 
death of Meleager, (Eneus was dethroned and impris¬ 
oned by the sons of his brother Agrius. Diomede, 
having come secretly from the city of Argos, slew all 
the sons of Agrius but two, who escaped to the Pelo¬ 
ponnesus, and then, giving the throne of Calydon to 
Andraemon, son-in-law of (Eneus, who was himself now 
too old to reign, led the latter with him to Argolis. 
(Eneus was afterward slain by the two sons of Agrius, 
who had fled into the Peloponnesus. Diomede buried 
him in Argolis, on the spot where the city of Enoe, 
called after (Eneus, was subsequently erected. En¬ 
eus is said to have been the first that received the vine 
from Bacchus. The god taught him how to cultivate 
it, and the juice of the grape was called after his name 
{olvoq, u vnne.” — Apollod. 1, 8.— Hygin., Fab. 129). 

Eniadse, a city of Acarnania, near the mouth of 
the Acheloiis. Thucydides represents it as situated 
on the Acheloiis, a little above the sea, and surround¬ 
ed by marshes caused by the overflowing of the river, 
which rendered it a place of great strength, and de¬ 
terred the Athenians from undertaking its siege; when, 
unlike the other cities of Acarnania, it embraced the 
cause of the Peloponnesians, and became hostile to 
Athens. ( Thucyd ., 1, 111 ; 2, 102.) At a later pe¬ 
riod of the war, it was, however, compelled by the 
Acarnanian confederacy to enter into an alliance with 
that power. ( Thucyd ., 3, 77.) The same writer 
gives us to understand, that Eniadse was first founded 
by Alcmseon, according to an oracle which he consult¬ 
ed after the murder of his mother, and that the prov¬ 
ince was named after his son Acarnan (2, 102). Ste- 
phanus asserts that this city was first called Erysiche, 
a fact of which the poet Aleman had made mention in 
a passage cited by more than one' writer ; but Strabo, 
on the authority of Apollodorus, places the Erysichsei 
in the interior of Acarnania, and consequently appears 
to distinguish them from the Eniadse. From Pau- 
sanias we learn (4, 25), that the Messenians, who had 
been settled at Naupactus by the Athenians not long 
after the Persian invasion, made an expedition from 
that city to Eniadse, which, after some resistance, 
they captured and held for one year, when they were 
in their turn besieged by the united forces of the 
Acarnanians. The Messenians, despairing of being 
able to defend the town against so great a number of 
troops, cut their way through the enemy, and reached 
Naupactus without experiencing any considerable loss. 
The Etolians having, in process of time, conquered 
that part of Acarnania which lay on the left bank of 
the Achelous, became also possessed of Eniadse, 
when they expelled the inhabitants under circumstan¬ 
ces apparently of great hardship and cruelty, for which, 
it was said, they were threatened with the vengeance 


of Alexander the Great. ( Pint ., Vit. Alex.) By the 
advice of Cassander, the Eniadse settled at Sauria 
(probably Thyria), another Acarnanian town. Many 
years afterward, the Etolians were compelled to evac¬ 
uate Eniadse by Philip the son of Demetrius, king of 
Macedon, in an expedition related by Polybius. This 
monarch, aware of the advantage to be derived from 
the occupation of a place so favourably situated with 
regard to the Peloponnesus, fortified the citadel, and 
enclosed within a wall both the fort and arsenal. {Po- 
lyb., 4, 65.) In the second Punic war this town was 
taken by the Romans, under Valerius Laevinus, and 
given up to the Etolians their allies ( Liv ., 26, 24.— 
Polyb., 9, 39); but, on a rupture taking place with 
that people, it was finally restored to the Acarnanians. 

( Ltv. 38, 11.— Polyb., Fragm., 22, 15.) The precise 
site of this ancient city remains yet unascertained ; 
for, though many antiquaries have supposed that it is 
represented by a place called Trigardon , close to the 
mouth of the Achelous, and on its right bank, there 
are several strong objections against the correctness 
of this. A principal obstacle to the reception of such 
an opinion is found in the fact, that Trig ar don is sit¬ 
uated on the right bank of the Achelous, whereas the 
ancient town was evidently on the left. The ruins 
which Sir W. Gell describes as situated above Mzsso- 
longhx and the lake of Anatohco, on the spot named 
Kuna Irene, seem to possess many of the characteris¬ 
tic features appertaining to Eniadse. ( Itin. of Greece, 
p. 297.) Dodwell, however, decides against Kuria 
Irene, and in favour of Tngardon. {Cramer's Anc. 
Greece, vol. 2, p. 21, seqq.) 

EnIdes (O Iveidyq), a patronymic of Meleager, son 
of Eneus. {Ovid, Met., 8, 414.) 

Enoe, I. a town, and demus or borough, of At¬ 
tica, classed by Harpocration and the other lexicogra¬ 
phers under the tribe Eantis. We are informed by the 
same writers that it was part of the Tetrapolis. ( Har - 
poor., s. v. Oivoy. — Steph. Byz., s. v. — Strabo, 383.) 
From Dodwell we learn (vol. 2, p. 163) that the site 
of this town still retains its name and some vestiges 
near the cave of Pan.—II. Another borough of Atti¬ 
ca, on the confines of Bceotia, near Eleutherse.—III. 
A small Corinthian fortress, near the promontory of 
Olmise. {Strabo, 380.) Xenophon states {Hist. Gr., 
4, 5, 5) that it was taken on one occasion by Agesi- 
laus.—IV. A city of Elis, supposed by some to be the 
same with Ephyre, situated near the sea, on the road 
leading from Elis to the coast, and 120 stadia from 
that city. {Strabo, 338.)—V. A town of Argolis, be¬ 
tween Argos and Mantinea, and on the Arcadian fron¬ 
tier. It was said to have been founded by Diomede, 
and named after his grandfather Eneus. {Pausan., 
2, 25.— Apollod., 1, 8, 6.) The site of this place, ac¬ 
cording to modern maps, is still called Enoa. {Cra- 
mer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 292.) 

Enomaus, a son of Mars by Sterope, the daughter 
of Atlas. The legend connected with his name will 
be found under the article Pelops. 

Enone, a nymph of Mount Ida, daughter of the 
river Cebrenus in Phrygia. Paris, when a shepherd 
on Mount Ida, and before he was discovered to be a 
son of Priam, had united himself in marriage to 
Enone ; and as she had received from Apollo the 
gift of prophecy, she warned her husband against the 
consequences of his voyage to Greece. She at the 
same time told him to come to her if ever he was 
wounded, as she alone could cure him. Paris came 
to her, accordingly, when he had been wounded by 
one of the arrows of Philoctetes, but Enone, offended 
at his desertion of her, refused to aid him, and he 
died on his return to Ilium. Repenting of her cruel¬ 
ty, Enone hastened to his relief; but, coming too 
late, she threw herself on his funeral pile and perish¬ 
ed. {Apollod., 3, 12, 6.— Quint. Smyr., 10, 259, seqq. 
Conon., 22.) 


917 




CETA 


OGY 


GEnopia, one of the ancient names of the island 
./Egina. {Ovid, Met., 7, 473.) 

CEnopion, a son of Bacchus and Ariadne, and king 
of Chios. His name is connected with the legend of 
Orion. ( Vid. Orion.) 

CEnotri, the inhabitants of CEnotria. 

CEnotria, a name derived from the ancient race of 
the CEnotri, and in early use among the Greeks, to 
designate a portion of the southeastern coast of Italy. 
The name is derived hy some from olvog, “ wine," 
and they maintain that the early Greeks called the 
country CEnotria, or the wine-land, from the number 
of vines they found growing there when they first be¬ 
came acquainted with the region. {Mannert, Geogr., 
vol. 9, pt. 1, p. 542.) With the poets of a later age 
it is a general appellation for all Italy. The CEnotri, 
as they were called, appear to have been spread over 
a large portion of Southern Italy, and may be regard¬ 
ed, not as a very early branch of the primitive Italian 
stock, but rather as the last scion propagated in a 
southerly direction. {Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 
336.) 

CEnotrides, small islands, two in number, off the 
coast of Lucania, and a little above the promontory 
of Palinurus. They lay in front of the city of Velia, 
where the river Heles empties into the sea. {Plin., 

7, 7.) 

CEnotrus, a son of Lycaon. He was fabled to 
have passed with a body of followers from Arcadia 
into Southern Italy, and to have given the name of 
CEnotria to that part of the country where he settled. 
(But consult remarks under the article CEnotria, where 
a more probable etymology is given for the name of 
the country.) 

CEnus^e or CEnuss.®, I. small islands in the Aege¬ 
an Sea, between Chios and the mainland, now Sper- 
madori , or (as the modern Greeks more commonly 
term them) Egonuses. {Herod., 1, 165. — Thucyd., 

8, 24. — Plm., 5, 31.— Bischoff und Moller, Worterb. 
der Geogr., p. 800.)—II. Small islands off the coast 
of Messenia, and nearly facing the city of Methone. 
They are two in number, and are now called Sapien- 
za and Cabrera. {Pausan., 4, 34.— Plin., 4, 11.) 

CEnus, I. a town of Laconia, supposed to have been 
situated on the river of the same name flowing near 
Sellasia. {Polyb., 2, 65. — Liv., 34, 28.) The mod¬ 
ern name is Tchclesina. Sir W. Gell describes the 
river as a large stream, which falls into the Eurotas a 
little north of Sparta. {Itin. of the Morea, p. 223.) 
—II. or JEnus, a river of Germany, separating Nori- 
cum from Vindelicia, and falling into the Danube at 
Boiodurum or Passau. It is now the Inn. {Tacit., 
Hist., 3, 5.— Id., Germ., 28.— Ptol., 2, 14.) 

CEta, a celebrated chain of mountains in Thessaly, 
whose eastern extremity, in conjunction with the sea, 
forms the famous pass of Thermopylae. It extended 
its ramifications westward into the country of the Do¬ 
rians, and still farther into yEtolia, while to the south 
it was connected with the mountains of Locris, and 
those of Boeotia. {Liv., 36, 15.— Strabo, 428. — He¬ 
rod., 7,217.) Its modern name is Katavothra. Soph¬ 
ocles represents Jove as thundering on the lofty crags 
of CEta. {Track., 436.) As regards the expression 
of Virgil, “ tibi desent Hesperus (Etam," the meaning 
of which many have misconceived, consult the re¬ 
marks of Heyne {ad Eclog., 8, 30). The highest 
summit of CEta, according to Livy, was named Calli- 
dromus : it was occupied by Cato with a body of 
troops in the battle fought at the pass of Thermopylae 
between the Romans under Acilius Glabrio and the 
army of Antiochus, and, owing to this manoeuvre, the 
latter was entirely routed. {Liv., 36, 15. — Plin., 4, 
7.) Herodotus describes the path by which the Per¬ 
sian army turned the position of the Greeks as begin¬ 
ning at the Asopus. Its name, as well as that of the 
mountain, is Anopaea. It leads along this ridge as far j 
918 


as Alponus, the first Locrian town (7, 216). On 
the summit of Mount CEta were two castles, named 
Tichius and Rhoduntia, which were successfully de¬ 
fended by the JEtolians against the Romans. {Liv., 
36, 19. — Strabo, 428.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1 , 
p. 445.) 

CEtylus, a town of Laconia, so called from an Ar- 
give hero of that name, was situate eighty stadia from 
Thalamse. {Pausan., 3, 26.) Homer has noticed it 
among the towns subject to Menelaus. {11., 2, 585.) 
Strabo observes that it was usually called Tyius. 
{Strab., 360 ) Ptolemy writes the name Bityla (p. 
90), and it is still known by that of Vitulo. {Gell's 
Itin., p. 237.) Pausanias noticed here a temple of 
Serapis, and a statue of Apollo Carneiusin the lorum. 
{Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 187.) 

Ofellus, a character drawn in one of the satires of 
Horace. Ofellus represents a Sabine peasant, whose 
plain good sense is agreeably contrasted with the ex¬ 
travagance and folly of the great. {Horat., Sat., 2, 2.) 

Oglasa, a small island off the coast of Etruria, 
some distance below Planasia, famed for its wine, now 
Monte Cristo. {Plin., 3, 7.) 

Ogyges or Ogygus {’'Q-yw/y^ or "Qyvyoc) is said 
to have been the first king of Athens and of Thebes. 
(T zetz. ad Lycophr., 1206.) Thus, Pausanias tells 
us that the Ectenes, who were the most ancient in¬ 
habitants of Boeotia, were the subjects of Ogyges, and 
that Thebes itself was called Ogygian, an epithet which 
is also applied to it by Aeschylus. {Pausan., 9, 5, 1. 
— AEsch., Pers., 37.) That Ogyges was closely con¬ 
nected with Thebes as well as Attica, appears from 
the tradition, according to which he was said to be 
the son of Boeotus. {Schol. ad Apollon. Rh., 3, 1178.) 
It may also be mentioned, that the oldest gate in 
Thebes was called Ogygian. {Pausan., 9, 8, 3.) 
The name of Ogyges is connected with the ancient 
deluge which preceded that of Deucalion, and he is 
said to have been the only person saved when the 
whole of Greece was covered with water. We pos¬ 
sess scarcely any particulars concerning him; and the 
accounts which have come down to us are too vague 
and unsatisfactory to form any definite opinion on the 
subject. He clearly belongs to mythology rather than 
to history. The earlier Greek writers, Herodotus, 
Thucydides, Xenophon, &c., make no mention of his 
name ; but the accounts preserved by Pausanias and 
other authors appear to indicate the great antiquity of 
the traditions respecting him. Varro places the del¬ 
uge of Ogyges, which he calls the first deluge, 400 
years before Inachus, and, consequently, 1600 years 
before the first Olympiad. This would refer it to a 
period of 2376 years before Christ; and the deluge 
of Noah, according to the Hebrew text, is 2349, there 
being only 27 years difference. Varro’s opinion is 
mentioned by Censorinus ( de Die Nat., c. 21). It 
appears from Julius Africanus {ap. Euscb.,-Proep. Ev.) 
that Acusilaus, the first author who placed a deluge in 
the reign of Ogyges, made this prince contemporary 
with Phoroneus, which would have brought him very 
near the first Olympiad. Julius Africanus makes only 
an interval of 1020 years between the two epochs ; 
and there is even a passage in Censorinus conform¬ 
able to this opinion. Some also read Erogitium in 
place of Ogygium., in the passage of Varro which we 
have quoted. But what would this be but an Erogi- 
tian cataclysm, of which nobody has ever heard! 
{Cuvier, Theory of the Earth, p. 144, Jameson's trans¬ 
lation.) —In a note appended to Lemaire’s edition of 
Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Cuvier enumerates the Mosa¬ 
ic, Grecian, Assyrian, Persian, Indian, and Chinese 
traditions concerning a universal deluge, and con¬ 
cludes from them that the surface of the globe, five 
or six thousand years ago, underwent a general and 
sudden revolution, by which the lands inhabited by 
the human beings who lived at that time, and by the 






OLB 


0 LI 


various species of animals known at the present day, 
were overflowed by the ocean; out of which emerged 
the present habitable portions of the globe. This cel¬ 
ebrated naturalist maintains, that these regions of the 
earth were peopled by the few individuals who were 
saved, and that the tradition of the catastrophe has 
been preserved among these new races of people, va¬ 
riously modified by the difference of their situation 
and their social condition. According to Cuvier, sim¬ 
ilar revolutions of nature had taken place at periods 
long antecedent to that of the Mosaic deluge. The 
dry land was inhabited, if not by human beings, at 
least by land animals at an earlier period ; and must 
have been changed from the dry land to the bed of 
the ocean; and it might even be concluded, from the 
various species of animals contained in it, that this 
change, as well as its opposite, had occurred more 
than once. ( Theory of the Earth, Jameson's transl., 
p. 418.) This theory, however, has been ably attack¬ 
ed by Jameson.—Various etymologies have been pro¬ 
posed for the name Ogyges. Kenrick supposes that 
the word was derived from the root yvyy, signifying 
darkness or night , and quotes a passage of Hesychi- 
us in support of his view, which appears, however, 
to be corrupt. The more favourite theory of mod¬ 
ern scholars connects the name with Oceanus : which 
etymology is supported, as is thought, by the tradi¬ 
tion that places Ogyges in the time of the deluge. 
In support of this view, it is remarked that Ogyges 
is only a reduplication of the radical syllable Og or 
Oc, which we find in Oceanus (md. Oceanus II.), and 
also in Ogen (which is explained by Hesychius as 
equivalent to Oceanus: 'Hyijv, ’Qkeuvoc;). A similar 
reduplication appears to take place in ervyog, ett/tv- 
yog • birroyai, omirTEvo ' uralkog, uTiTuihXcj. (Ken¬ 
rick :, Philol. Museum , No. 5, “ On the early Kings 
of Attica." — Thirlwall, Philol. Mas., No. 6, “On 
Ogyges."—Creuzer und Hermann, Briefe ilber Ho¬ 
mer und Hesiodus, p. 105, in notis. — Volckcr, My- 
thol. des lap. Geschl ., p. 67.— Schwenck, Andcut ., p. 
179.) Regarding, therefore, the name Ogyges as a 
general type of the waters, we may trace a resem¬ 
blance between its radical syllable and the forms o^-a, 
“ water" (compare the Latin aq-ua ); aly-eg, “ the 
waves;" ’Aj-i/Lfc, “the water-god;” A lan-og, anoth¬ 
er marine deity, and the ruler over the island Aly-iva. 
( Schwenck, l. c.) But, whatever may be the etymol¬ 
ogy of the name, the adjective derived from it is fre¬ 
quently employed by the Greek writers to indicate any 
thing ancient or unknown. We learn from the scho¬ 
liast on Hesiod, that, according to one tradition, Ogy¬ 
ges was the king of the gods, and some think that the 
name originally indicated nothing more than the high 
antiquity of the times to which it referred. ( Encycl. 
Us. Knowl., vol. 16, p. 412.) 

Ogygia, I. an ancient name of Boeotia, from Ogy¬ 
ges, who reigned there. (Vid. Ogyges.) — II. The 
island of Calypso. (Vid. Calypso.) The name Ogy¬ 
gia is supposed to refer to its being in the middle of 
the ocean. (Vid. Ogyges.) 

OiLuus, king of the Locrians, was son of Odoedo- 
cus, and father of Ajax the Less, who is called, from 
his parent, the Oilean Ajax. O'fleus was one of the 
Argonauts. ( Apollod., 3, 10, 7. — Hygin., Fab., 14, 
18.) 

Olbia, I. a city of Bithynia, in the eastern angle of 
the Sinus Olbianus, and probably the same with Asta- 
cus. (Plin., 5, 27.— Steph. Byz., p. 512.) — II. A 
city- on the coast of Pamphylia, west of Attalea. 
( Ptol . — Steph. Byz., p. 512.) — III. A town on the 
coast of Gaul, founded by Massilia. It was also call¬ 
ed Athenopolis, and is supposed by Mannert to have 
been the same with Telo Martius, or Toulon , these 
three ancient names indicating, as he thinks, one and 
the same city. (Mannert, Gcogr., vol. 2, p. 81.) — 
IV. A town on the eastern coast of Sardinia, in the 


northern part of the island. According to Reichard, 
some traces of it still remain on the shores of the bay 
of Volpe. ( Ilin. Ant., p. 79.) — V. Or Borysthenis 
called also Olbiopolis and Miletopolis, a city of Euro¬ 
pean Sarmatia, according to Stephanus of Byzantium 
and Mela, at the mouth of the Borysthenes, but, ac¬ 
cording to other writers, at some distance from the 
sea. It was colonized by the Milesians, and is at the 
present day, not Otchakow, as some have thought, but 
Kudak, a small place in the vicinity. ( Bischoff und 
Moiler, W'orlerb. der Geogr., p. 195.) The latest of 
the ancient names of this place was Borysthenes, and 
the one preceding it Olbia. 

Olchinium or Olcinium, now Dulcigno, a town of 
Dalmatia, on the coast of the Adriatic. ( Liv., 45, 26. 
—Plin., 3, 22.) 

Olearos. Vid. Antiparos. 

Olen ('iL'k’fjv), the name of one of the earliest bards 
mentioned in the history of Greek Poetry. Accord¬ 
ing to a tradition preserved by Pausanias (10, 5, 4), 
he came originally from the country of the Hyperbo¬ 
reans, and the Delphian priestess Bceo called him the 
first prophet of Phoebus, and the first who, in early 
times, founded the style of singing in epic metre (ctt- 
ecjv doidu). He appears to have settled in Lycia, 
and afterward to have proceeded" to Delos, whither he 
transplanted the worship of Apollo and Diana, and the 
birth of which deities, in the country of the Hyperbo¬ 
reans, he celebrated in his hymns. Many ancient 
hymns, indeed, attributed to Olen, were preserved at 
Delos, which are mentioned by Herodotus (4, 35), 
and which contained remarkable mythological tradi¬ 
tions and significant appellatives of the gods. Men¬ 
tion is also made of his nomes, that is, simple and an¬ 
tique songs, combined with certain fixed tunes, and 
fitted to be sung for the circular dance of a chorus. 

The time when Olen flourished is uncertain. It is 
supposed to have been before Orpheus. ( Scholl, Hist. 

Lit. Gr., vol. 1, p. 33.— Muller, Hist. Lit. Gr., p. 24.) 

Olenus, I. an ancient city of AEtolia, in the vicin¬ 
ity of Pleuron, and known to Homer, who enumerates 
it in his catalogue. (II., 2, 638.) It was destroyed 
by the HCtolians, and preserved but few vestiges in 
Strabo’s time. (Strab., 460.) The goat Amalthaea 
is called Olenia by the poets (Ovid, Met., 2, 594), be¬ 
cause nurtured in the vicinity of this place.—II. One 
of the most ancient of the cities of Achaia, situate on 
the western coast, at the mouth of the river Peyrus. 
According to Polybius (2, 41, 7), it was the only one 
of the twelve cities which refused to accede to the con¬ 
federation, upon its renewal after an interruption of 
some years. In Strabo’s time it was deserted, the in¬ 
habitants, as Pausanias affirms, having retired to the ad¬ 
jacent villages. (Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 70.) 

Olisippo, a city of Lusitania, at the mouth of the 
Tagus, near the Atlantic Ocean. (Plin., 4, 35.— Id., 

8, 67.— Varro, R. R., 2, 1.) It was the only muni- 
cipium in this section of the country, and, as such, had 
the appellation of Felicitas Julia. It was very prob¬ 
ably of Roman origin, and the story of its having 
been founded by Ulysses is a mere fable, arising out of 
an accidental coincidence of name. The horses bred 
in the territory adjacent to this place were remarkable 
for their speed. (Plin., 8, 42.) Mannert and many 
other geographical writers make Olisippo coincide 
with the modern Lisbon (Lissabon), but others op¬ 
pose this. (Mannert, Geogr., vol. 1, p. 342.—Com¬ 
pare Ukcrt, vol. 2, p. 394.) The name of this city is 
variously written. Thus we have Olisipo is some au¬ 
thors, and in others, who favour the account of its 
foundation by Ulysses, we find Ulysippo. (Consult 
Wesscling, ad Itin., p. 41<3.— Tzschucke, ad Mel., 3, 

1, vol. 2, pt. 3, p. 25.) 

Ollius, a river rising in the Alps, and falling into < 
the Po. It is now the Ogho, and forms in its course 
the Lake Sebinus, now Lago d'lseo. (Plin., 3, 19.) 

919 




OLYMPIA. 


OLYMPIA. 


Olympia. ( orum ), I. the chief of the four gieat na¬ 
tional games or festivals of the Greeks. They were 
celebrated at Olympia, a sacred spot on the banks of 
the Alpheus, near Elis, every fifth year. The exact 
interval at which they recurred was one of forty-nine 
and fifty lunar months alternately ; so that the cele¬ 
bration sometimes fell in the month Apollonius (July), 
sometimes in the month Parthenius (August). ( Bockh , 
ad Pind., Olymp., 3, 18. — Muller's Dorians , vol. 1 , 
p. 281, Eng. transl.) The period between two cele¬ 
brations was called an Olympiad.—The Olympic fes¬ 
tival lasted five days. Its origin is concealed amid 
the obscurity of the mythic period of Grecian history. 
Olympia was a sacred spot, and had an oracle of Ju¬ 
piter long before the institution of the games. The 
Eleans had various traditions, which attributed the 
original foundation of the festival to gods and heroes 
at a long period prior to the Trojan war, and among 
these to the Idaean Hercules, to Pelops, and to Her¬ 
cules the son of Alcmena. The Eleans farther stated, 
that, after the .JEtolians had possessed themselves of 
Elis, their whole territory was consecrated to Jupiter ; 
that the games were revived by their king Iphitus, in 
conjunction with Lycurgus, as a remedy for the disor¬ 
ders of Greece ; and that Iphitus obtained the sanc¬ 
tion of the Delphic oracle to the institution, and ap¬ 
pointed a periodical sacred truce, to enable persons to 
attend the games from every part of Greece, and to 
return to their homes in safety. This event was re¬ 
corded on a disc, which was preserved by the Eleans, 
and on which the names Iphitus and Lycurgus were 
inscribed. ( Plut ., Vit. Lycurg., l.—Pausan., 5, 20, 
21.) Other accounts mention Cleosthenes of Pisa as 
an associate of Iphitus and Lycurgus in the revival of 
the festival. All that can safely be inferred from this 
tradition, which has been embeliished with a variety of 
legends, seems to be, that Sparta concurred with the 
two states most interested in the plan, and mainly con¬ 
tributed to procure the consent of the other Pelopon¬ 
nesians. ( Thirlwall's Greece , vol. 1, p. 386.) The 
date of the revival by Iphitus is, according to Eratos¬ 
thenes, 884 B.C.; according to Callimachus, 828 B.C. 
Mr. Clinton prefers the latter date. (Fast. Hell ., 
vol. 2, p. 408, note h .) The Olympiads began to be 
reckoned from the year 776 B.C., in which year Co- 
roebus was victor in the foot-race. We have lists of 
the victors from that year, which always include the 
victors in the foot-race, and in later times those in the 
other games. ( Pausan ., 5, 8, 3.)—The Olympic, like 
all the other public festivals, might be attended by all 
who were of the Hellenic race ; though at first prob¬ 
ably the northern Greeks, and perhaps the Achsans of 
Peloponnesus, were not admitted. Spectators came 
to Olympia, not only from Greece itself, but also from 
the Grecian colonies in Europe, Asia, and Africa. 
Among them were solemn deputations sent to repre¬ 
sent their respective states. Women, however, were 
forbidden to appear at Olympia, or even to cross the 
Alpheus during the festival, under pain of death. But 
at a later period we find women taking part in the 
chariot-race, though it is doubtful whether they ever 
drove their own chariots. An exception was made to 
this law of exclusion in favour of the priestess of Ceres 
and certain virgins, who were permitted to be pres¬ 
ent at the games, and had a place assigned to them op¬ 
posite the judges. The management of the festival 
was in the hands of the Eleans. Originally, indeed, 
Pisa, in whose territory Olympia lay, seems to have 
had an equal share in the administration ; but in the 
fiftieth Olympiad the Eleans destroyed Pisa, and from 
that time they had the entire management of the 
games. They proclaimed the sacred truce, first in 
their own territories, and then throughout the whole of 
Greece. This truce took effect from the time of its 
proclamation in Elis, and while it lasted the Elean ter¬ 
ritory was inviolable, any armed invasion of it being 
920 


esteemed an act of sacrilege. On this privilege the 
Eleans founded a claim to have their territory always 
considered sacred, though, in fact, they themselves did 
not abstain from war. As the presiding nation, they 
gave laws for the regulation of the festival, imposed 
penalties on individuals and states, and had the power 
of excluding from the games those who resisted their 
decrees. They actually thus excluded the Lacedae¬ 
monians on one occasion, and the Athenians on an¬ 
other. The Eleans appointed the judges of the con¬ 
test, who were called Hcllanodicd. (jPATiavodinai). 
These were instructed in the duties of their office, for 
a period of ten months before the festival, by Elean 
officers called Nomophylaces (No/ao^vXaiceg): they 
were sworn to act impartially, and an appeal might be 
made from their decision to the Elean senate. Their 
number varied at different periods: in the 106th 
Olympiad it was fixed at ten, which was the number 
ever afterward. The judges had under them different 
officers, called akvrai, whose business it was to keep 
order. These officers were called paonyotyopoi in 
the other Grecian games. (Consult, in relation to 
these details, Pausanias, 5, 9, 4, scq. — 6, 24, 3.)—• 
The Olympic festival consisted of religious ceremo¬ 
nies, athletic contests, and races. The chief deity 
who presided over it was Jupiter Olympius, whose 
temple at Olympia, containing the ivory and gold 
statue of the god, was one of the most magnificent 
works of art in Greece. The worship of Apollo was 
associated with that of Jupiter ( Muller's Dorians, vol. 
1, p. 279, seqq., Eng. transl .); and the early tradi¬ 
tions connect Hercules with the festival. (Id. ib., p. 
453.) This is another proof of the Dorian origin of 
the games, for Apollo and Hercules were two of the 
principal deities of the Doric race. There were al¬ 
tars at Olympia to other gods, which were said to 
have been erected by Hercules, and at which the vic¬ 
tors sacrificed. The most magnificent sacrifices and 
presents were also offered to Jupiter Olympius by the 
competitors, and by the different states of Greece.— 
The games consisted of horse and foot races, leaping, 
throwing, wrestling and boxing, and combinations of 
these exercises. 1. The earliest of these games was 
the foot-race (dpopoq), which was the only one revived 
by Iphitus. The space run was the length of the sta¬ 
dium, in which the games were held, namely, about 
600 English feet. In the 14th Olympiad (724 B.C.), 
the diavlog was added, in which the stadium was trav¬ 
ersed twice. The 667uxoq, which consisted of several 
lengths of the stadium (seven, twelve, or twenty-four, 
according to different authorities), was added in the 
15th Olympiad (B.C. 720). A race in which the run¬ 
ners wore armour (ottTutuv dpopoq) was established in 
the 65th Olympiad, but soon after abolished. 2. 
Wrestling (rraXy) was introduced in the 18th Olym¬ 
piad (B.C. 708). The wrestlers were matched in 
pairs by lot. When there was an odd number, the 
person who was left by the lot without an antagonist 
wrestled last of all with him who had conquered the 
others. He was called tyedpop. The athlete who 
gave his antagonist three throws gained the victory. 
There was another kind of wrestling (dvcuiXivondTir/), 
in which, if the combatant who fell could drag down 
his antagonist with him, the struggle was continued 
on the ground, and the one who succeeded in getting 
uppermost and holding the other down gained the vic¬ 
tory.—3. In the same year was introduced i\\e pentath¬ 
lon (7revTad?iov), or, as the Ilomans called it, quin- 
quertium, which consisted of the five exercises enumer¬ 
ated in the following verse, ascribed to Simonides : 

"A \pa, TToduKelyv, dtanov, uKovra , ttuTltjv, 

that is, “ leaping , running , throwing the quoit, throw¬ 
ing the javelin, wrestling .” Others, however, give a 
different enumeration of the exercises ofthe pentathlon. 
In leaping, they carry weights in their hands or on 




OLYMPIA. 


OLYMPIA. 


their shoulders : the object was to leap the greatest 
distance, without regard to height. The discus, or 
quoit, was a heavy weight of a circular or oval shape; 
neither this nor the javelin was aimed at a mark, but 
he who threw farthest was the victor. In order to 
gain a victory in the pentathlon, it was necessary to 
conquer in each of its five parts.—4. Boxing {revygr/) 
was introduced in the 23d Olympiad (B.C. 688). The 
boxers had their hands and arms covered with thongs 
of leather, called cestus , which served both to defend 
them and to annoy their antagonists. Virgil (AEn., 5, 
405) describes the cestus as armed with lead and iron ; 
but this is not known to have been the case among 
the Greeks.—5. The Pancratium ( Traynpuriov ) con¬ 
sisted of boxing and wrestling combined. In this ex¬ 
ercise, and in the cestus, the vanquished combatant 
acknowledged his defeat by some sign; and this is 
supposed to be the reason why Spartans were forbid¬ 
den by the laws of Lycurgus to practise them, as it 
would have been esteemed a disgrace to his country 
that a Spartan should confess himself defeated. In 
these games the combatants fought naked. — The 
horse-races were of two kinds. 1. The chariot-race , 
generally with four-horse chariots (Imruv teIeiov Spo- 
goe), was introduced in the 25th Olympiad (B.C. 
680). The course (hnro^popop) had two goals in the 
middle, at the distance probably of two stadia from 
each other. The chariots started from one of these 
goals, passed round the other, and returned along the 
other side of the hippodrome. This circuit was made 
twelve times. The great art of the charioteer con¬ 
sisted in turning as close as possible to the goals, but 
without running against them or against the other 
•hariots. The places at the starting-post were as¬ 
signed to the chariots by lot. There was another sort 
of race between chariots with two horses (dvopig or 
cvvupig). A race between chariots drawn by mules 
{unr/vr/) was introduced in the 70th Olympiad, and 
abolished in the 84th.—2. There were two sorts of 
races on horseback , namely, the keXtjp, in which each 
competitor rode one horse throughout the course, and 
the KaXrrp, in which, as the horse approached the 
goal, the rider leaped from his back, and, keeping hold 
of the bridle, finished the course on foot.—In the 37th 
Olympiad (B.C. 632), racing on foot and wrestling be¬ 
tween boys was introduced.—There were also con¬ 
tests in poetry and music at the Olympian festival.— 
All persons were admitted to contend in the Olympic 
games who could prove that they were freemen, that 
they were of genuine Hellenic blood, and that their 
* characters were free from infamy and immorality. So 
great was the importance attached to the second of 
these particulars, that the kings of Macedon were 
obliged to make out their Hellenic descent before they 
were allowed to contend. The equestrian contests 
were necessarily confined to the wealthy, who display¬ 
ed in them great magnificence ; but the athletic exer¬ 
cises were open to the poorest citizens. An example 
of this is mentioned by Pausanias (6, 10, 1). In the 
equestrian games, moreover, there was no occasion 
for the owner of the chariot or horse to appear in per¬ 
son. Thus Alcibiades, on one occasion, sent seven 
chariots to the Olympic games, three of which ob¬ 
tained prizes. The combatants underwent a long and 
rigorous training, the nature of which varied with the 
game in which they intended to engage. Ten months 
before the festival they were obliged to appear at Elis, 
to enter their names as competitors, stating at the 
same time the prize for which they meant to contend. 
This interval of ten months was spent in preparatory 
exercises ; and for a part of it, the last thirty days at 
least, they were thus engaged in the gymnasium at 
Elis. When the festival arrived, their names were 
proclaimed in the stadium, and after proving that they 
were not disqualified from taking part in the games, 
they were led to the altar of Jupiter the guardian of 
6 A 


oaths (Zevp opiaoq), where they swore that they had 
gone through all the preparatory exercises required by 
the laws, and that they would not be guilty of any 
fraud, nor of any attempt to interfere with the fair 
course of the games. Any one detected in bribing 
his adversary to yield him the victory was heavily fined. 
After they had taken the oath, their relations and coun¬ 
trymen accompanied them into the stadium, exhorting 
them to acquit themselves nobly.—The prizes in the 
Olympic games were at first of some intrinsic value, 
like those given in the games described by Homer. 
But, after the 7th Olympiad, the only prize given 
was a garland of wild olive, cut from a tree in the 
sacred grove at Olympia, which was said to have 
been brought by Hercules from the land of the Hyper¬ 
boreans. Palm-leaves were at the same time placed 
in the hands of the victors, and their names, 'together 
with the games in which they had conquered, were 
proclaimed by a herald. A victory at Olympia, be¬ 
sides being the highest honour which a Greek could 
obtain, conferred so much glory on the state to which 
he belonged, that successful candidates were frequent¬ 
ly solicited to allow themselves to be proclaimed citi¬ 
zens of states to which they did not belong. Fresh 
honours awaited the victor on his return home. He 
entered his native city in triumph, through a breach 
made in the walls for his reception ; banquets were 
given to him by his friends, at which odes were sung 
in honour of his victory; and his statue was often 
erected, at his own expense or that of his fellow-citi¬ 
zens, in the Altis, as the sacred grove at Olympia was 
called. At Athens, according to a law of Solon, the 
Olympic victor was rewarded with a prize of 500 
drachma?: at Sparta the foremost place in battle was 
assigned him. Three instances are on record in which 
altars were built and sacrifices offered to conquerors 
at the Olympic games.—It seems to be generally ad¬ 
mitted that the chief object of this festival was to form 
a bond of union for the Grecian states. Besides this, 
the great importance which such an institution gave 
to the exercise of the body must have had an im¬ 
mense influence in forming the national character. 
Regarded as a bond of union, the Olympic festival 
seems to have had but little success in promoting 
kindly feelings between the Grecian states, and per¬ 
haps the rivalry of the contest may have tended to ex¬ 
asperate existing quarrels ; but it undoubtedly furnish¬ 
ed a striking exhibition of the nationality of the Greeks, 
of the distinction between them and other races. Per¬ 
haps the contingent effects of the ceremony were after 
all the most important. During its celebration, Olym¬ 
pia was a centre for the commerce of all Greece, for 
the free interchange of opinions, and for the publica¬ 
tion of knowledge. The concourse of people from all 
Greece afforded a fit audience for literary productions, 
and gave a motive for the composition of works wor¬ 
thy to be laid before them. Poetry and statuary re¬ 
ceived an impulse from the demand made upon them 
to aid in perpetuating the victor’s fame. But the 
most important and most difficult question connected 
with the subject is, whether their influence on the na¬ 
tional character was for good or evil. The exercises 
of the body, on which these games conferred the great¬ 
est honour, have been condemned by some philoso¬ 
phers, as tending to unfit men for the active duties of 
a citizen {Artstot., Polit., 7, 14, 18. — Athenaus, 10, 
p. 413): while they are regarded by others as a most 
necessary part of a manly education, and as the chief 
cause of the bodily vigour and mental energy which 
marked the character of the Hellenic race.'—The de¬ 
scription which we have given of the Olympic game3 
will, for the most part, serve also for the other three 
great festivals of Greece, namely, the Isthmian, Ne- 
mean, and Pythian games. ( Pausan ., lib. 5, 6, seqq. 
— West's Pindar, Prelim. Diss .— Wachsmuth, Hcl- 
len. Alterthumsk., vol. 1, p. 108. — Potter's Grecian 

921 




OLYMPIA. 


OLY 


Antiquities , vol. 1, p. 495.— Thirlwall's Greece , vol. 

I. p. 384, segq. — Encyclop. Us. Kn“wl. vol. 16, p. 
430, scqq.)—ll. A name given to the aggregate of 
temples, altars, and other structures on the banks of 
the Alpheus in Elis, in the immediate vicinity of the 
spot where the Olympic games were celebrated. It 
was not, as many have incorrectly supposed, a city, 
nor did it at all resemble one. The main feature in 
the picture was the sacred grove Altis, planted, as le¬ 
gends told, by Hercules, and which he dedicated to 
Jupiter. ( Pvid., Olymp., 10, 51.) Throughout this 
grove were scattered in rich profusion the most splen¬ 
did monuments of architectural, sculptural, and picto¬ 
rial skill. The site was already celebrated as the seat 
of an oracle ; but it was not until the Eleans had con¬ 
quered the Pisatse, and destroyed their city, that a tem¬ 
ple was erected to the god with the spoils of the van¬ 
quished. This temple of the Olympian Jove was of 
Doric architecture, with a peristyle. It was sixty- 
eight feet in height from the ground to the pediment, 
ninety-five in width, and two hundred and thirty in 
length. Its roof, at each extremity of which was 
placed a gilt urn, was covered with slabs of Pentelic 
marble. The architect was a native of the country, 
named Libo. In the centre of one of the pediments 
stood a figure of victory, with a golden shield, on 
which was sculptured a Medusa’s head. Twenty-one 
gilt bucklers, the offering of the Roman general Mum- 
mius on the termination of the Achaean war, were also 
affixed to the outside frieze. The sculptures of the 
front pediment represented the race of Pelops and 
GEnomaus, with Myrtilus and Hippodamia ; also Jupi¬ 
ter, and the rivers Alpheus and Cladeus ; these were 
all by Paeoniug, an artist of Mende in Chalcidic Thrace. 
In the rear pediment, Alcmenes had sculptured the 
battle of the Centaurs and Lapithse. The other parts 
of the building were enriched with subjects taken from 
the labours of Hercules. On entering the gates, 
W'hich were of brass, the spectator passed the statue 
of Iphitus crowned by Ecechiria, on his right; and, 
advancing through a double row of columns supporting 
porticoes, reached the statue of Jupiter, the chef-d'oeuvre 
of Phidias. The god was represented as seated on 
his throne, composed of gold, ebony, and ivory, stud¬ 
ded with precious stones, and farther embellished with 
paintings and the finest carved work. {Pansan., 5, 

II. ) The Olympian deity was portrayed by the great 
Athenian artist in the sublime attitude and action con¬ 
ceived by Homer. {II., 1, 528, seqq .) The figure was 
of ivory and gold, and of such vast proportions that, 
though seated, it almost reached the ceiling, which sug¬ 
gested the idea that in rising it would bear away the 
roof. {Strabo, 354.) The head was crowned with olive. 
In the right hand it grasped an image of victory, and 
in the left a sceptre, curiously wrought of different 
metals, on which was perched an eagle. Both the 
sandals and vesture were of gold ; the latter was also 
enriched with paintings of beasts and flowers by Pan- 
aenus, the brother, or, as some say, the nephew of 
Phidias. {Pausan., 1. c. — Strabo, l. c .) An enclosure 
surrounded the whole, by which spectators were pre¬ 
vented from approaching too near; this was also dec¬ 
orated with paintings by the same artist, which are 
minutely described, together with the other ornamental 
appendages to the throne and its supporters, by Pau- 
sanias. The ivory parts of the statue were constantly 
rubbed with oil as a defence against the damp {Pau¬ 
san., 5, 12), and officers, named (paidpvvTai, or clean¬ 
sers, were appointed to keep it well polished. The 
veil of the temple was of wool dyed with Phoenician 
purple, and adorned with Assyrian embroidery, pre¬ 
sented by King Antiochus. Various other offerings 
are mentioned by Pausanias, to whom the student 
is referred for an account of these, as well as a de¬ 
scription, &c., of the other buildings at Olympia. 
Among the altars, the most remarkable was that in the 

922 


temple of Pelops. It was entirely composed of ashes 
collected from the thighs of victims, which, being di¬ 
luted with water from the Alpheus, formed a kind of 
cement.—A conspicuous feature at Olympia was the 
Cronius, or Hill of Saturn, often alluded to by Pin¬ 
dar, and on the summits of which priests named Basilas 
offered sacrifices to the god every year at the vernal 
equinox. {Pind., Olymp., 10, 56.) Xenophon men¬ 
tions {Hist. Gr., 7, 4, 14) that, in a war waged by 
the Eleans with the Arcadians, Mount Cronius was 
occupied and fortified by the latter. Below that hill 
stood the temple of Lucina Olympia, where Sosipolis, 
the protecting genius of Elis, was worshipped. The 
stadium was a mound of earth, with seats for the Hel- 
lanodicse, who entered, as well as the runners, by a 
secret portico. The hippodrome, which was contig¬ 
uous to the stadium, was likewise surrounded by a 
mound of earth, except in one part, where, on an em¬ 
inence, was placed the temple of Ceres Chamyne. 
Not far from this were the Olympic gymnasia, for 
all sorts of exercises connected with the games.— 
Olympia now presents scarcely any vestiges of the 
numerous buildings, statues, and monuments so elab¬ 
orately detailed by Pausanias. Chandler could only 
trace “ the walls of the cell of a very large temple, 
standing many feet high and well built, the stones all 
injured, and manifesting the labour of persons who 
have endeavoured by boring to get at the metal with 
which they were cemented. From a massive capital 
remaining, it was collected that the edifice had been 
of the Doric order.” ( Travels, vol. 2, ch. 76.) Mr. 
Revett adds, that “this temple appears to be rather 
smaller than that of Theseus at Athens, and in no 
manner agrees with the temple of the Olympian Jove.” 
The ruins of this latter edifice, as Sir W. Gell re¬ 
ports, are to be seen towards the Alpheus, and fifty- 
five geographic paces distant from the Hill of Saturn. 
There are several bushes that mark the spot, and the 
Turks of Lalla are often employed in excavating the 
stones. Between the temple and the river, in the de¬ 
scent of the bank, are vestiges of the hippodrome, or 
buildings serving for the celebration of the Olympic 
games. These accompany the road to Miracca on 
the right for some distance. The whole valley is 
very beautiful. (Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 3, p. 
95, seqq.) 

Olympias, I. an Olympiad, or the space of time in¬ 
tervening between any two celebrations of the Olym¬ 
pic games. {Vid. Olympia I.) The Greeks compu¬ 
ted time by means of them, beginning with B.C. 776, 
each Olympiad being regarded as equal to four years. 
The last one (the 304th) fell on the 440th year of the 
Christian era. (Consult remarks at the commence¬ 
ment of the article Olympia I.)—II. Daughter of Ne- 
optolemus, king of Epirus, and wife of Philip, king of 
Macedon, by whom she had Alexander the Great. 
The conduct of Olympias had given rise to the suspi¬ 
cion that Alexander was not the son of Philip ; and 
the brilliant career of the Macedonian conqueror made 
his flatterers assign to him for a parent the Father of 
the Gods. Olympias herself, in the intoxication of 
female vanity, hesitated not, at a later day, to sanction 
the story, and Jupiter was said to have approached 
her under the form of a serpent. (Consult Wicland, 
ad Lucian. Pseudomant., 13.— Sueton., Vit. Aug., 
92.— Bottiger, Sabina, p. 212.) The haughtiness of 
Olympias, or, more probably, her infidelity, led Philip 
to repudiate her, and contract a second marriage 
with Cleopatra, the niece of King Attalus. The mur¬ 
der of Philip, which happened not long after, has been 
attributed by some to her intrigues, though with no 
great degree of probability. Alexander, after his ac¬ 
cession to the throne, treated her with great respect, 
but did not allow her to take part in the government. 
At a subsequent period, after the death of Antipater, 
Polysperchon, in order to confirm his power, recalled 



OLY 


OLY 


Olympias from Epirus, whither she had fled, and con¬ 
fided to her the guardianship of the young son of 
Alexander. She now cruelly put to death Aridfeus, son 
of Philip, with his wife Eurydice, as also Nicanor, the 
brother of CassandeT, together with many leading men 
of Macedonia who were inimical to her interests. Her 
cruelties, however, did not remain long unpunished. 
Cassander besieged her in Pydna, and she was obliged 
to surrender after an obstinate siege, and was put 
to death. ( Vid . Cassander.— Justin, lib. 7, 9, 11, 14, 
&c.) 

Olympiodorus, a name common to many individu¬ 
als. The most deserving of our notice are the fol¬ 
lowing : I. A native of Thebes in Egypt, flourished 
in the beginning of the fifth century of our era. He 
continued the history of Eunapius from 407 to 425 
A.D. His work, entitled "TA?; 'laropiaq (“Materials 
for History"), or 'laropiaol loyoi (“ Historical Narra¬ 
tives"), consisted of twenty-two books. Only a frag¬ 
ment of it has been preserved by Photius. The 
work began with the seventh consulship of the Em¬ 
peror Ilonorius, and was brought down to the acces¬ 
sion of Valentinian. It was dedicated to the younger 
Theodosius. The historian appears to have been em¬ 
ployed also on public business, for he mentions his 
having been sent on a mission to Donatus, king of 
the Huns. In his description of the African Oases, 
he speaks of wells being made to the depth of 200, 
300, and even 500 cubits, and of the water rising up 
and flowing from the aperture. Some have supposed 
that these must have been Artesian wells. Olympio¬ 
dorus was a heathen.—II. An Alexandrean philoso¬ 
pher, who flourished about the year 430 B.C. He is 
celebrated for his knowledge of the Aristotelian doc¬ 
trines, and was the master of Proclus, who attended 
upon his school before he was 20 years of age. This 
philosopher is not to be confounded with a Platonist 
of the same name who wrote a commentary upon Plato. 
He is also to be distinguished from a peripatetic of a 
still later age, who wrote a commentary on the Mete¬ 
orology of Aristotle.—III. A Platonic philosopher, who 
flourished towards the close of the sixth century. He 
was the author of Commentaries on four of Plato’s di¬ 
alogues, the first Alcibiades, the Phsedon, Gorgias, and 
Philebus. The first of these contains a life of Plato, 
in which we meet with certain particulars relative to 
the philosopher not to be found elsewhere. This 
Olympiodorus was a native of Alexandrea, and enjoy¬ 
ed great reputation in that capital, as will appear from 
a distich appended to his commentary on the Gorgias. 
The title which his commentaries bear appears to in¬ 
dicate by the words urco (jujvr/g (“from the mouth" of 
Olympiodorus) that they were copied down by the 
hearers of the philosopher. Sainte-Croix, however, 
thinks that this phrase is merely employed to indicate 
that the doctrine contained in the commentaries was 
traditional in its nature. (Magasin, Encycl., 3 ann., 
vol. 1 , p. 195.) Fragments of the commentary on the 
Phasdon are given in Fischer’s edition of four Platonic 
dialogues (Lips., 1783, 8vo), and in Foster’s edition 
of five of Plato’s dialogues (Oxon., 1752, 8vo). Frag¬ 
ments of the commentary on the Gorgias were pub¬ 
lished by Routh, in his edition of the Gorgias and Eu- 
thydemus (Oxon., 1784, 8vo). The commentary or 
scholia on the Philebus will be found in Stallbaum’s 
edition of that dialogue (Lips., 1820, 8vo). The 
commentary on the first Alcibiades forms the second 
part of Creuzer’s Initia Philosophies ac Theologies, &c. 
(Francf., 1820, 8vo).—IY. A native of Alexandrea, a 
peripatetic, who flourished during the latter half of the 
sixth century. He was the author of a commentary 
on the Meteorology of Aristotle, which was edited by 
Aldus, Venet., 1551, fol. (Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr.,v& 1. 
7, p 132, &c.) 

Olympius, I. a surname of Jupiterat Olympia, where 
the god had a celebrated temple and statue, which 


passed for one of the seven wonders of the world. 
(Vid. Olympia II.)—II. A poet. (Vid. Nemesianus.) 

Olympus, I. a celebrated mountain on the coast of 
Thessaly, forming the limit, when regarded as an en¬ 
tire range, between the latter country and Macedonia. 
The highest summit in the chain, to which the name 
of Olympus was specially confined by the poets, was 
fabled to be the residence of the gods, and well de¬ 
served the honour. Travellers who have visited these 
shores dwell with admiration on the colossal magnifi¬ 
cence of Olympus, which seems to rise at once from 
the sea to hide its snowy head amid the clouds. Dr. 
Holland, who beheld it from Litochori at its foot, ob¬ 
serves, “ We had not before been aware of the extreme 
vicinity of the town to the base of Olympus, from the 
thick fogs which hung over us for three successive 
days while traversing the country ; but on leaving it, 
and accidentally looking back, we saw through an 
opening in the fog a faint outline of vast precipices, 
seeming almost to overhang the place, and so aerial in 
their aspect, that for a few minutes we doubted wheth¬ 
er it might not be a delusion to the eye. The fog, 
however, dispersed yet more on this side, and partial 
openings were made, through which, as through arches, 
we saw the sunbeams resting on the snowy summits 
of Olympus, which rose into a dark blue sky far above 
the belt of clouds and mist that hung upon the sides 
of the mountain. The transient view we had of the 
mountain from this point showed us a line of preci¬ 
pices of vast height, forming its eastern front towards 
the sea, and broken at intervals by deep hollows or 
ravines, which were richly clothed with forest-trees. 
The oak, chestnut, beach, plane-tree, &c., are seen in 
great abundance along the base and skirts of the mount¬ 
ain ; and, towards the summit of the first ridge, large 
forests of pine spread themselves along the acclivities, 
giving that character to the face of the mountain which 
is so often alluded to by the ancient poets.” (Trav¬ 
els, vol. 2, p. 27.) The modern name of the mountain 
with the Greeks is Elimbo, and with the Turks Scma- 
vat Evi. (Kruse, Hellas, vol. 1, p. 282.— Cramer's 
Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 211, seqq.) “Few of the Gre¬ 
cian mountains,” remarks Dodwell, “ soar to the height 
of Olympus.” Plutarch ( Vit. AEmil. Paul.), citing the 
philosopher Xenagoras, says that it is more than ten 
stadia in height, and M. Bernouille makes it 1017 toises 
(6501 English feet). It forms a gigantic mass, and 
occupies a very extensive space. Its southern side 
constitutes the boundary of Thessaly, and its northern 
base encloses the plains of Macedon. To the west it 
branches out towards Othrys, where its remote swells 
are blended with those of Pindus, which terminates in 
the Adriatic with the abrupt and stormy promontory of 
Acroceraunia. Its rugged outline is broken into many 
summits, from which circumstance Homer gives it the 
epithet of noTivdeipug. It is never completely free 
from snow, and Hesiod (Theog., 118) characterizes it 
with the epithet of vicpoaq. Homer, in, his Iliad, calls 
it aydvvifyoq, whereas in his Odyssey he says that it is 
never agitated by the wind, rain, or snow, but enjoys 
a clear and luminous air. (II., 1, 420. — Od., 6, 45.) 
Nothing is easier, says an ingenious author, than to 
reconcile these apparent contradictions. M. Boivin, 
indeed, employs for this purpose a climax of singular 
conjecture. He supposes a heavenly Olympus, which 
he turns upside down, with its foot in the heavens, 
where it never snows, and its summit towards the 
earth ; to which part he conceives Homer gave the 
epithet of snowy. As the gods and mortals were An- 
ticephali, he maintains that Homer imagined mountains 
to be in similar situations ! (Mem. de Lift, dans 
I'Hist. de VAcad. des laser., &c., vol. 7.) But the 
poet represents the seat of the gods as on the summit 
of Olympus, under the clouds, and of course he does 
not imagine it turned upside down.—Olympus is full of 
breaks, glens, and forests, whence it had the epithets 

923 



OLYMPUS. 


OLY 


of 7to?,v7ttvxoc and noXvdtvfipeoc. ( Dodiccll's Tour, 
vol. 2. p. 105, seqq.) —Near the top Dodwell encoun¬ 
tered large quantities of snow, and at last reached a 
part where the mountain became bare of all vegetation, 
and presented only a cap of snow and ice, on which it 
was impossible to be sustained or to walk. At this 
time it was the middle of July; the heat was extreme 
towards the base of the mountain, as well as in the 
plain, while the masses of snow near its summit gave 
no signs of melting. The view from the highest ac¬ 
cessible part of Olympus is described as being very 
extensive and grand. The mountain seemed to touch 
Pelion and Ossa, and the vale of Tempe appeared only 
a narrow gorge, while the Peneus was scarcely percep¬ 
tible. There are hardly any quadrupeds to be seen 
boyond the half height of Olympus, and scarcely do 
even birds pass this limit.—The idea has been started, 
on mere conjecture, however, that the name Olympus 
may have some reference to the idea of a “ limit” or 
“boundary,” and it is a curious fact that the positions 
of most, if not all, of the mountains that bear this 
name would seem to countenance the assertion. The 
most remarkable instances, after the one we have just 
been considering, are the following.—II. A range of 
mountains in the southwestern angle of Bithynia. 
Mount Olympus, the loftiest of the range, rose above 
Prusa, and was one of the highest summits in Asia 
Minor, being covered with snow during great part of 
the year. ( Browne's Travels , in Walpole’s Collec¬ 
tion, vol. 2, p. 112.) The lower parts, and the plains 
at the foot, especially on the western side, had from 
the earliest period been occupied by the Mysians, 
whence it was generally denominated the Mysian 
Olympus. ( Plin ., 5, 32.) Its sides were covered 
with vast forests, which afforded shelter to wild beasts, 
and not unfrequently to robbers, who erected strong¬ 
holds there. (Strab., 574.) We read in Herodotus, 
that, in the time of Croesus, an immense wild boar, 
issuing from the woods of Olympus, laid waste the 
fields of the Mysians, and became so formidable that 
the inhabitants were obliged to send a deputation to 
the Lydian monarch to request his aid for deliverance 
from the monster. ( Herod ., 1, 36.) The lower re¬ 
gions of this great mountain are still covered with ex¬ 
tensive forests, but the summit is rocky, and destitute 
of vegetation. The Turks call it Anadolt Dagh. 
{Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 178.)—III. A mount¬ 
ain range of Lycia, on the eastern coast, above the 
Sacrum Promontorium. A city of the same name was 
situate in a part of the range. Mount Olympus would 
appear to be the chain to which Homer alludes in the 
Odyssey (5, 282, seqq.), under the name of the Soly- 
maean mountains, whence he supposes Neptune to 
have beheld in his wrath Ulysses sailing towards Phoe¬ 
nicia. The mountains rising at the back of the per¬ 
pendicular cliffs which line the shore in this quarter, 
attain to the height of six and seven thousand feet. 
The highest, as we learn from Captain Beaufort, bears 
the name of Adratchan, and appears to answer to the 
Olympus of Strabo. ( Caramania, p. 43.— Cramer's 
Asm Minor, vol. 2, p. 257.)—IV. A city of Lycia, 
alluded to in the preceding paragraph. It ranked 
among the six communities of Lycia. {Strab., 666.) 
Cicero also bears testimony to its importance and op¬ 
ulence. Having become the residence and haunt of 
pirates, it was captured by Servilius Isauricus, and 
became afterward a mere fortress. {Cic. in Verr., 1, 
2L — Eutrop., 6, 3.— Plin., 5, 27.) Strabo states 
that it was the stronghold of the pirate Zenicetus ; 
and the situation was so elevated that it commanded 
a view of Lycia, Pamphylia, and Pisidia. {Strab., 
671.) We are indebted to Captain Beaufort for the 
discovery of the ruins of this place, which exist in 
a small circular plain, surrounded by the chain of 
Adratchan {vid. Olympus IIP), and at a little distance 
from the sea. The only way leading to the site is by 
924 


a natural aperture in the cliff; it is now called Dehk- 
tash, or “the perforated rock.” {Cramer's Asm Mi¬ 
nor, vol. 2, p. 257, seq.) —V. A mountain on the east¬ 
ern coast of Cyprus, just below the promontory Dina- 
retum. It is now Monte Santa-Croce. This mount¬ 
ain had on it a temple sacred to Venus Acrsea, from 
which women were excluded ; the mountain itself 
was shaped like a breast. (Strab., 683.— Cramer's 
Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 379, 385.) 

Olynthus, a powerful city of Macedonia, in the 
district of Chalcidice, at the head of the Sinus Toro- 
naicus. It was founded probably by the Chalcid- 
ians and Etrurians of Euboea. {Strabo, 447.) He¬ 
rodotus relates, that it was afterward held by the Bot- 
tiaei, who had been expelled from the Thermafc Gulf 
by the Macedonians ; but on the revolt of Potidaea, 
and other towns on this coast, from the Persians, it 
was besieged and taken by Artabazus, a commander 
of Xerxes, who put all the inhabitants to the sword, 
and delivered the town to Critobolus of Torone and 
the Chalcidians. (Herod., 8, 127.) Perdiccas, some 
years after, persuaded the Bottiasi and Chalcidians to 
abandon their other towns and make Olynthus their 
principal city, previous to their engaging in hostility 
with the Athenians. (Thucyd., 1 , 58.) In this war, 
the Olynthians obtained some decisive advantages 
over that republic ; and the expedition of Brasidas en¬ 
abled them effectually to preserve their freedom and 
independence, which was distinctly recognised by 
treaty. From this time, the republic of Olynthus 
gradually acquired so much power and importance 
among the northern states of Greece, that it roused 
the jealousy and excited the alarm of the more power¬ 
ful of the southern republics, Athens and Lacedaemon. 
The Olynthians, apparently proceeding on the feder¬ 
al system, afterward so successfully adopted by the 
Achaeans, incorporated into their alliance all the small¬ 
er towns in their immediate vicinity ; and, by de¬ 
grees, succeeded in detaching several important places 
from the dominions of Amyntas, king of Macedonia, 
who had not the power of protecting himself from 
these encroachments. At length, however, a deputa¬ 
tion from the Chalcidic cities of Apollonia and Acan¬ 
thus, whose independence was at that time immedi¬ 
ately threatened by Olynthus, having directed the at¬ 
tention of Sparta, then at the height of its political 
importance, to this rising power, it was determined, 
in a general assembly of the Peloponnesian states, to 
despatch an army of ten thousand men into Thrace. 
(Xen., Hist. Gr., 5, 2, 14.) Teleutias, brother of 
Agesilaus, and one of the most distinguished com¬ 
manders of Sparta, was appointed to conduct the 
war. Having collected his forces, and those of 
Amyntas and his allies, he marched against the 
Olynthians, who ventured to give him battle before 
their walls; but, after a well-fought action, they 
were compelled to take refuge within their city. In 
a skirmish, however, which happened not long after, 
the Peloponnesian forces, in their disorderly pursuit 
of a body of Olynthian cavalry close to the town, 
were thrown into confusion by a sortie of the enemy, 
which communicated such a panic to the whole army, 
that, notwithstanding the efforts of Teleutias to stop 
the flight of his troops, a total rout ensued, and he 
himself was slain. (Hist. Gr., 5, 3.) This disaster, 
instead of disheartening, called forth fresh exertions 
on the part of the Spartan government. Agesipolis, 
one of the kings, was ordered to take the command, 
and prosecute the w r ar with vigour. This young mon¬ 
arch had already obtained some advantages over the 
enemy, when he was seized with a disorder, which, 
baffling all remedies, soon proved fatal; he died at 
Aphyte, near the temple of Bacchus. Polybiades, his 
successor, had thus the credit of putting an end to the 
war; for the Olynthians, left to their own resources, 
found themselves unable to cope with their powerful 




OMP 


ONC 


and persevering antagonists, and were at length forced 
to sue for peace, which was granted on condition that 
they should acknowledge their dependance on Sparta, 
and take part in all its wars. ( Xen ., Hist. Gr., 5, 4, 
27.) Olynthus, though awed and humbled, was far 
from being effectually subdued ; and not many years 
^elapsed before it renewed its attempts to form a con¬ 
federacy, and again dismember the Macedonian states. 
In consequence of the alliance which it entered into 
with Amphipolis, once the colony of Athens, it be¬ 
came involved in hostilities with the Athenians, sup¬ 
ported by Philip, son of Amyntas, who had just as¬ 
cended the throne of Macedon ; and Potidaea and Me- 
thone were successively wrested from its dominion. 
Indeed, Olynthus itself could not long have resisted 
such powerful enemies, had not jealousy, or some se¬ 
cret cause, spread disunion among the allies and in¬ 
duced them to form other designs. Shortly after, we 
find Philip and the Olynthians in league against Ath¬ 
ens, with the view of expelling that power from 
Thrace. ( Demosth ., Olynth ., 2, p. 19.) Amphipolis 
was besieged and taken by assault; Potidaea surren¬ 
dered, and was restored to Olynthus, which for a time 
became as flourishing and powerful as at any former 
period of its history. Of the circumstances which 
induced this republic to abandon the interests of Ma¬ 
cedon in favour of Athens, we are not well informed ; 
but the machinations of the party hostile to Philip led 
to a declaration of war against that monarch ; and the 
Athenians were easily prevailed upon by the eloquence 
of Demosthenes to send forces to the support of Olyn¬ 
thus under the command of Chares. Although these 
troops were at first successful, it was evident that they 
were unable effectually to protect the city against the 
formidable army of Philip. The Olynthians, beaten 
in two successive actions, were soon confined within 
their walls ; and, after a siege of some duration, were 
compelled to surrender, not without suspicion of treach¬ 
ery on the part of Eurysthenes and Lasthenes, who 
were then at the head of affairs. On obtaining pos¬ 
session of this important city, Philip gave it up to 
plunder, reduced the inhabitants to slavery, and razed 
the walls to the ground. ( Diod. Sic., 16, 53. — De¬ 
mosth., Phil., 3, p. 113.-— Justin, 8, 4.— Cramer's Anc. 
Greece, vol. 1, p. 249, seqq.) 

Ombos, a city of Egypt, a little north of Syene, on 
the eastern side of the Nile. The Antonine Itinerary 
calls it Ambos (p. 165), and Ptolemy, Ombi ( v O y6oi. 
The edition of Erasmus has *0 pbpoi by a mistake of 
the press). Pliny speaks of the Ombitis Prcefeciura, 
whence we may conclude that Ombos was at one pe¬ 
riod the capital of a Nome. ( Plin., 5, 9.) Its posi¬ 
tion is now found in the name of Koum-Ombo, or the 
Hill of Ombo. Between the inhabitants of this place 
and Tentyra constant hostilities prevailed, the former 
adoring, the latter killing, the crocodile. A horrible 
instance of religious fury, which took place in conse¬ 
quence of their mutual discord, is the subject of the 
15th satire of Juvenal (Consult Ruperti ad Sat. cit.) 
In relation to the Ombites worshipping the crocodile, 
while the inhabitants of Tentyra and other places de¬ 
stroyed it, we may cite the explanation of two of the 
French savans (Chabrol and Jomard, Descript de 
I'Egypte, vol. 1. — Antiq., c. 4, p. 8, seqq.). They 
suppose, that the crocodile was revered by those cities 
which were more or less removed from the immediate 
vicinity of the Nile, by reason of its swimming towards 
them when the river began to overflow its banks, and 
thus bringing the first intelligence of the approach of 
the inundation. (Compare Creuzer, Comment. Herod., 
p. 84.) 

Omphale, a queen of Lydia, daughter of Iardanus. 
She married Tmolus, who, at his death, left her mis¬ 
tress of his kingdom. Omphale had been informed of 
the great exploits of Hercules, and wished to see so 
illustrious a hero. Her wish was soon gratified. Af¬ 


ter the murder of Iphitus, Hercules fell into a malady, 
and was told by the oracle at Delphi that he would 
not be restored to health, unless he allowed himself to 
be sold as a slave for the space of three years, and 
gave the purchase-money to Eurytus as a compensa¬ 
tion for the loss of his son. Accordingly, in obedi¬ 
ence to the oracle, he was conducted by Mercury to 
Lydia, and there sold to Omphale. During the period 
of his slavery with this queen, he assumed female at¬ 
tire, sat by her side spinning with her women, and 
from time to time received chastisement at the hand 
of Omphale, who, arrayed in his lion-skin, and armed 
with his club, playfully struck him with her sandal for 
his awkward way of holding the distaff. Fie became 
by this queen the father of Agelaus, from whom, ac¬ 
cording to Apollodorus, came the race of Croesus 
(bdev nal rd K poioov yevoq. — Apollod., 2, 7, 7). Some 
writers make the Lydian Heraclidae to have sprung 
from this union, and not the line of Croesus ; but the 
weight of authority is in favour of the opinion that the 
Heraclidae of Lydia claimed descent from Hercules 
and a female slave of Iardanus. (Creuzer, Fragm. 
Hist., p. 186, seqq. — Hcllanic. ap. Steph. Byz., s. v. 
'AneXy. — Diod. Sic., 4, 31.— Dio Clirysost., Or at., 4, 
p. 236, b.) —The myth of Hercules and Omphale is 
an astronomical one. The hero in this legend repre¬ 
sents the Sun-god, who has descended to the bgfyaXoq 
(omphalos), or “navel” of the world, amid the signs 
of the southern hemisphere, where he remains for 
a season shorn of his strength. Hence the Lydian 
custom of solemnizing the festival of the star of day 
by an exchange of attire on the part of the two 
sexes ; and hence the fable of the Grecian writers, 
that Hercules had assumed, during his servitude with 
Omphale, the garb of a female. (Creuzer, Symbolik, 
par Guigniaut, vol. 2, pt. 1, p. 179.) Walker, how¬ 
ever, takes a moral view of the legend which we have 
just been considering, and regards it as expressing the 
abasement of power amid sensual indulgence. (Anal¬ 
ysis of Beauty, p. 32.) 

Oncjeum, a town of Arcadia, near Thelpusa, on the 
banks of the river Ladon. The place was famed for a 
temple of Ceres, and the legend connected with it 
was as follows : When Ceres was in search of her 
daughter Proserpina, Neptune continually followed 
her. To elude him, she changed herself into a mare, 
and mingled with the mares of Oncus ; but the sea- 
god assumed the form of a horse, and thus became the 
father of the celebrated steed Arion. ( Pausanias, 8, 
25, 4.) 

Onchesmus, a town of Epirus, on the coast, situate, 
according to Strabo (324), opposite the western ex¬ 
tremity of Corcyra. Dionysius of Halicarnassus pre¬ 
tended that the real name of this place was Anchisae 
Portus, derived from Anchises, the father of JEneas. 
(Ant. Rom., 1, 32.) Cicero seems to refer to the 
port of Onchesmus when he speaks of the wind On- 
chesmites as having favoured his navigation from Epi¬ 
rus to Brundisium. (Ep. ad Att., 7, 2. — Cramer's 
Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 96.) Pouqueville gives Santi 
Quaranta as the modern name of Onchesmus (vol. 2, 
p. 133), or, more correctly, of a small place near it 
(vol. 2, p. 104). 

Onchestus, I. a river of Thessaly, rising near Cy- 
noscephalae, and falling into the Sinus Pelasgicus. It 
is supposed to correspond to the modern Patrassi. 
(Liv., 33, 6.— Polyb., 18, 3.— Steph. Byz., s. v.) Some 
have thought it to be the same with the river which 
Herodotus calls Onochonus (7, 196), but without any 
good reason. The Onochonus, whose waters were 
drained by the army of Xerxes, falls into the Peneus, 
and is probably the river Rejani. (Cramer's Ancient 
Greece, vol. 1, p. 390.)—II. A city of Boeotia, north¬ 
west of Thebes, and south of the lake Copafs. It re¬ 
ceived its name from Onchestus, a son of Neptune, 
whose temple and grove are often celebrated by the 

925 



OPH 


OPH 

$ 

poets of antiquity, from Homer to Lycophron. Sir 
W. Gell noticed, on the ascent uniting Mount Phaga 
or Sphinx on the left, with the projecting hills from 
Helicon on the right, an immense tumulus of earth 
and stones, and many other vestiges, probably of On- 
chestus. ( Itin ., p. 125.— Cramer's Anc. Greece , vol. 
2, p. 231, seqq.) 

Onesicritus, a Cynic philosopher, a native of 
JEgina, and, according to Diogenes Laertius, a disci¬ 
ple of Diogenes of Sinope. He accompanied Alexan¬ 
der into Asia, and officiated as pilot to the principal 
vessel in the fleet of Nearchus. He wrote a history 
of Alexander’s expedition, a work swarming with false¬ 
hoods and absurdities. ( JElian , H. A., 16, 39.— Diog. 
Laert., 6,4.— Saintc-Croix, Examen des Hist. d'Alex., 
p. 38.) 

Onion, a city of Egypt, southwest of Herobpolis. 
It was inhabited by Jews, who had a temple here, 
which continued from the time of Onias, who built it, 
to that of Vespasian. Onias was nephew to Menelaus, 
and the rightful successor to the priesthood at Jerusa¬ 
lem ; but, being rejected by Antiochus Eupator, who 
made Alcimus high-priest, he fled to Egypt, and per¬ 
suaded Ptolemy Philometor to let him build this tem¬ 
ple there, about 173 B.C. This structure remained 
for the space of 248 years, when it was destroyed by 
order of Vespasian, after the fall of Jerusalem. ( Jo¬ 
sephus , Ant. Jud., 14, 14.— Id., Bell. Jud , 1, 7.) 

Onomacritus, a Greek poet in the time of the Pis- 
istratidie, who is said to have written the “ hymns of 
initiation” {TeXerai) ascribed to Orpheus. ( Vid. Or- 
phica.) He was accused also of interpolating the po¬ 
ems of Musseus, mention of which has already been 
made in another article. ( Vid. Musaeus.) The ora¬ 
cles of this latter poet were collected by Onomacri¬ 
tus, in compliance with the orders of Hipparchus ; but 
the poet Lasus of Hermione having discovered the 
fraud committed by him in intermingling his own ver¬ 
ses among the ancient predictions, Onomacritus was 
thereupon driven into exile as an impostor by Hippar¬ 
chus. It appears that from this time it was no longer 
possible to distinguish what was genuine in the poetry 
of Musaius from what was mere interpolation. ( He¬ 
rati., 7, 6.— Pausan., 1, 22.) 

Onosander, or, as Coray writes the name, Onesan- 
der, a Greek author and Platonic philosopher. Con¬ 
cerning the period in which he flourished, nothing 
more can be ascertained than that he lived about the 
middle of the first century. He was the author of a 
work of much celebrity, entitled, IrpaTrjyiKbp Xoyop, 
being a treatise on the duties of a general. This pro¬ 
duction is the source whence all the works on this 
subject, in Greek and Latin, that were subsequently 
published, derived their origin. It is still held in es¬ 
timation by military men. The best editions are, that 
of Schwebel, Norimb., 1762, fob, and that of Coray, 
Paris, 1822, 8vo. Appended to the latter are the first 
elegy of Tyrtieus and a translation of Onosander, both 
in French. The profits of his edition were given to 
the unfortunate sufferers of Chios. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. 
Gr., vol. 5, p. 261, seqq.) 

Opheltes, son of Lycurgus, king of Nemea. Hyp- 
sipyle, the Lemnian princess, whom her countrywomen 
had sold into slavery when they found that she had 
saved her father, was nurse to the infant Opheltes, 
when the army of Adrastus marched to Nemea, on 
its way to Thebes. She undertook to guide the new¬ 
comers to a spring ; and, for that purpose, left the 
child lying on the grass, where a serpent found and 
killed it. The Argive leaders slew the serpent and 
buried the child. Amphiaraus, the famous soothsayer 
and warrior, augured ill luck from this event, and call¬ 
ed the child Archemorus {Fate-beginner), as indicative 
of the evils that were to befall the chieftains. Plis 
other name, Opheltes, is derived, according to the 
mythologists, from btjiig, as he died by the bite of a 
926 


serpent. Adrastus and the other chiefs then celebra¬ 
ted funeral games in his honour, which were the com¬ 
mencement of what were afterward called the Neme- 
an games. {Apollod., 3, 6, 4.— Hcyne, ad loc.) 

Ophir, a land which was known to the Hebrews 
and to the neighbouring nations as early as the time 
of Job, and was famed for producing such an abundance 
of excellent gold, that “ the gold of Ophir” became a 
proverbial expression for fine gold. (1 Chron., 29, 4.— 
Job, 22, 24.— Id., 28, 16.— Psalms, 45, 9.— Isaiah, 13, 
12.) The Septuagint version gives Sophira (lo^tpd) 
as the name of the region ; but various forms occur in 
the MSS., such as 'Zotyelp, 2ov<peip, lovijitp, hoxpeip, 
hexjupu, houjiapu. We meet with this last also in 
Josephus {Ant. Jud., 8, 6, 4.—Consult Havercamp, 
ad loc.). The position of Ophir is very difficult to de¬ 
termine, and much diversity of opinion exists among 
biblical critics on the subject. We are informed in 
Scripture, that Solomon, in conjunction with Hiram, 
king of Tyre, sent a navy from Ezion-geber, at the 
head of the Red Sea, to Ophir, and that this navy re¬ 
turned, bringing four hundred and twenty (in Chroni¬ 
cles 450) talents of gold, sandal-wood (called, in our 
translation, almug or algum trees), and precious stones 
(1 Kings, 9, 26-28.— lb., 10, 11.—Compare 2 Chron., 
8, 17, 18 ; lb., 9, 10); and also that Jehoshaphat built 
ships of Tarshish to go to Ophir for gold (in Chroni¬ 
cles it is said that he built ships to go to Tarshish), 
which were wrecked at Ezion-geber. (1 Kings, 22, 
48, 49. — Compare 2 Chron., 20, 36, 37.) We are 
also told, in 1 Kings, 10, 22, that Solomon had at 
sea a navy of Tarshish with the navy of Hiram. Once 
in three years (or every third year) came the navy of 
Tarshish, bringing gold and silver, ivory, and apes, and 
peacocks.—Now, since both Solomon and Jehoshaphat 
built the navies bound for Ophir at Ezion-geber, at 
the head of the Red Sea, it is clear that we must seek 
for Ophir somewhere on the shores of the Indian 
Ocean ; for it is highly improbable that Solomon's 
ships went farther than the Cape of Good Hope in one 
direction, or than the Indian Archipelago in the other : 
it is not likely, indeed, that they went so far either 
way. Nearly all the inquiries into the position of 
Ophir have proceeded on the assumption, that the pas¬ 
sage in 1 Kings , 10, 22, refers to the same navy which 
is spoken of in 1 Kings, 9, 27, seqq., and, consequent¬ 
ly, that Tarshish and Ophir were visited in the same 
vo}mge. It has therefore been necessary for those 
who make this assumption not only to find a place 
which suits the description of Ophir, and which pro¬ 
duces “ gold, sandal-wood, and precious stones,” but 
also to account for the “silver, ivory, apes, and pea¬ 
cocks” which were brought by the navy of Tarshish, 
and for the three years consumed in the voyage. But 
Tarshish was probably the same place as Tartcssus in 
Spain ; and therefore, if Tarshish and Ophir arc to be 
connected, we must make the gratuitous supposition 
that there was another Tarshish in the East. Besides, 
Tarshish and Ophir are not mentioned together in the 
account of Solomon’s voyages : the ships that went to 
Ophir (1 Kings, 9, 28) seem to have made only a single 
voyage, for the purpose of fetching only a specified 
quantity of gold, while the “ navy of Tarshish,” which 
“the king had” (not going to Ophir, but) “at sea,” 
made its voyage every three years ; and, moreover, the 
products of the two voyages were different, gold beino' 
the only article common to the tw r o. For these rea¬ 
sons, Rennell appears to be correct in saying “ that 
two distinct kinds of voyages were performed by these 
fleets : that to Ophir from the Red Sea, and that to 
the coast of Guinea (or to Tarshish, wherever it was) 
from the Mediterranean.” {Rennell, Gcogr. of Herod¬ 
otus, vol. 2, p. 353.) The conjoint mention of Ophir 
and Tarshish, in the account of Jehoshaphat’s navy, 
admits of easy explanation. Either there may be 
some mistake in the account in 2 Chron., 20, 36, seq. t 



OPH 


OPI 


which differs materially from that in 1 Kings, 22, 48, 
scq., or “ Tarshish” in the former passage may mean 
only “ a distant voyageand we know that the phrase 
in the latter passage, “ ships of Tarshish,” is frequent¬ 
ly used in the Old Testament for large, strong ships. 
The question, therefore, as to the position of Ophir 
must not be encumbered with any considerations that 
refer to Tarshish. ( Encycl . (Js. Knowl., vol. 16, p. 
447.)—The early Portuguese navigators believed that 
they had found Ophir in the modern Sofala , on the 
eastern coast of Africa, opposite the island of Mada¬ 
gascar, and this same opinion was subsequently main¬ 
tained by Dapper ( Africa , p. 395), Montesquieu, and 
Bruce ( Travels , vol. 1, p. 352). The improbability, 
however, of this position being the true one, has been 
fully shown by Vincent ( Pcriplus , p. 266) and Salt 
(Voyage to Abyssinia, p. 102). The chief ground, 
indeed, for so erroneous an opinion, seems to have 
been a supposed resemblance in name between B'ofala 
and Ophir, or Bophara. Cahnet places Ophir at the 
head waters of the Tigris and Euphrates, among the 
Taperes or Saspires ; the gold being conveyed from 
this quarter, he supposes, to some harbour on the Per¬ 
sian Gulf. {Diet. Bibl., s. v.) Bochart makes two 
Ophirs, one in Arabia, near the Sabah ( Geogr. Baer., 
2, 27 .—Op., vol. 2, col. 138), and the other in India. 
The former only of these, he thinks, was known to 
the Jews down to the time of Solomon, who, in con¬ 
junction with Hiram, king of Tyre, first sent an expe¬ 
dition to the latter. This latter Ophir he considers to 
be identical with Ceylon. {Geogr. Baer., 1. c. — Op., 
vol. 2, ed. 141.) Wells places Ophir in India, in the 
vicinity of Cabal. {Baer. Geogr., s. v.) Schleusner 
is in favour of Spain. {Lex. Vet. Test., vol. 3, p. 75.) 
Tychsen also decides in favour of India, and supposes 
Ophir to have been one of the Isles of Banda ,. an isl¬ 
and called Ophir lying near Sumatra at the present 
day. ( l)e Cornmerc. et Navigat. Ilebrceorum, &c.— 
Comment. Giitt., vol. 16, p. 164, seqq.) Michaelis 
supposes Ophir to have been in Arabia, and condemns 
the opinion of Bochart, who finds another in India, as 
already stated. {Spicilegium, Geogr. Hebr. ext., pars. 
11, p. 184, seqq.) Prideaux, Gossellin {Reek., vol. 2, 
p. 118), Vincent {Periplus, p. 265, seqq.), Niebuhr, 
and others, likewise declare for Arabia Felix, or the 
country of the Sab®i, where Aphar {Bap/iar) and the 
ruins of the ancient Himiarite dwellings make it prob¬ 
able to them that we must here look for the Ophir of 
Solomon. Manncrt comes to the same conclusion. 
{Geogr., vol. 10, pt. 1, p. 123.) It is most probable, 
therefore, that Ophir was in the southern part of Arabia. 
It is mentioned in connexion with the names of Ara¬ 
bian tribes, in Genesis, 10, 29. The “gold of Ophir” 
is spoken of in the book of Job, a work most probably 
of Arabian origin. The products of the voyage, too, 
might easily have been obtained from Arabia ; for, 
though gold is not found there now, we have the tes¬ 
timony of many ancient writers that it was in ancient 
times. It is, however, very probable that Ophir was 
an emporium of the Phoenicians for their eastern trade; 
and, if so, the difficulty as to the productions is at 
once removed.—Before bringing this article to a close, 
it may not be amiss to notice the very singular opinion 
of Arius Montanus, who finds Ophir in Peru, the gold 
of Parvaim (2 Chron ., 3, 6) being, according to him, 
the gold of that country {Peru-aiin). It is of this that 
Scaliger remarks, “ Puto Anurn Montanum illius joc- 
ulatori® interpretationis auctorcm esse .” ( Bcaligcr, 

Epist., 237.) 

Owns, I. a small river of Asia Minor, forming part 
of the eastern boundary of Pontus. It rises in the 
mountains of the Tzani, and falls into the Euxino to 
the southwest of Ilhizzaeum. Reichard gives Of as 
the modern name. {Arrian, Penpl. Eux. — Hudson, 
Geogr. Min., 1, 6.)—II. A river in Arcadia, running by 
Mantinea, and falling into the Alpheus. {Pans.,8, 8.) 


Oeuiiusa (’0 (/novaa) or Ophiussa (’0 (jnovaaa), a 
name given to many places in ancient geography* and 
referring to their having been, at one time or other, 
more or less infested by serpents {b(jng, a serpen/). 
The most worthy of notice are the following : I. An 
island in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Spain, and 
forming one of the Pityus®, or Pine islands. By the 
Romans it was generally culled Colubraria, a transla¬ 
tion of the Greek name, and is now styled las Colum- 
bretes, or Mont Calibre. Strabo and Ptolemy con¬ 
found it with Formontcra. {Ufccrt, Geogr., vol. 2, p. 
471.) — II. A city of European Scythia, on the left 
bank of the river Tyras, which in Pliny’s time was 
also called Tyra. The modern Palanca, not far from 
the mouth of the Dncister, is supposed to correspond 
to the ancient city. {Pliny, 4, 12. — BiscHojf und 
Miiller, Worterb. dcr Geogr., p. 806.) — III. The ear¬ 
lier name of the island of Tenos. {Plin., 4, 12.) —- 
IV. One of the earlier names of the island of Rhodes. 
{Pirn., 5, 31.) 

Opici, the same with the Osci. {Vid. Osci.) 
“That Opieas, Opseus, and Oscus are the same name, 
is expressly remarked,” observed Niebuhr, “ by Roman 
grammarians. {Festus, s. v. Os cum.) The Greek 
language adopted only the first form, and the last pre¬ 
vailed in the Latin.” {Rom. Hist., vol. 1, p. 54, Cam¬ 
bridge transl.) — Buttmann indulges in some curious 
speculations respecting this and other ancient names 
of cognate form. “ There is a multiplicity of traces,” 
he observes, “ which concur in proving that in the 
word Apis, Apia, lies the original name of a most an¬ 
cient people who inhabited the European coasts of the 
Mediterranean. The fabulous personages Pelops, Cc- 
crops, Merops, compared with the names of countries 
and people, as the Peloponnesus and the Meropes (in 
Cos); and, in the same w.ay, the names Dry opes, Dry- 
ops ; Dolopcs, Dolops, show that Ops, Opes, corre¬ 
sponding with the Opici, Opsci, in Italy, and meaning 
the same as Apis, were ancient names of people; and 
that the first syllable in those names served to distin¬ 
guish the different families or tribes, as the Pelopes, 
Cercopes, Meropes, Ac. The Abanles in Euboea, the 
Aones in Boeotia, the Ausones and Osci in Italy, are 
but varieties of the same name.” {Lcxilugus, p. 154, 
not., Fishlalte's transl.) 

Oi'Ima Spoma, spoils taken by a Roman general 
from a general of the enemy whom he had slain. They 
were dedicated to, and suspended in the temple of, Ju¬ 
piter Ferctrius. These spoils were obtained only th rice 
before the fall of the republic. The first by Romulus, 
who slew Acron, king of the Cffininenses; the next 
by A. Cornelius Cossus, who slew Lars Tolumriius, 
king of the Vcicntos, A.U.C. 318 ; and the third by 
M. Claudius Marccllus, who slew Viridomarus, a king 
of the Gauls, A.U.C. 530. 

Opimius, L. Nepos, was consul 121 B.C. Ho 
made himself conspicuous by his inveterate hostility to 
Cains Gracchus, and was the leader in the affray which 
terminated with the death of the latter. He was after¬ 
ward convicted of having received a bribe from Jugur- 
tha, and was banished. He ended his days in great 
poverty and wretchedness at Dyrrhachium. {(he., 
Orat., 2, 132. — Id., pro Plane., 69. — Ball., Bell. Jug., 
12. — Veil. Paterc., 2, 6.) From all that we can gath¬ 
er relative to this individual, it would appear that ho 
was a victim to the spirit of party. His conduct to¬ 
wards Caius Gracchus and his followers is represented 
as cruel in the extreme ; and yet, when brought to 
trial by the tribune Duilius for having put to death a 
great number of citizens during his consulship without 
observing the forms of justice, ho was acquitted 
through the powerful eloquence of the consul Papirius 
Carbo. Bo, again, his trial and condemnation for bri¬ 
bery arc pronounced by Cicero {pro Bcxtio) decidedly 
unjust, (Compare Bchegk. ad Veil. Paterc., 2, 7.) — 
During the consulship of Opimius, the heat of the 

927 




OPP 


OPPIANUS. 


summer was so great as to produce an extraordinary 
fertility and excellence in all the fruits of the earth 
throughout Italy. Hence the Opimian wine became 
famous to a late period. ( Vid. Falernus.) 

Opis, a city on the river Tigris, in Assyria, west of 
Artemita. It is probably the same with that which 
Pliny calls Antiochia. ( Herodotus, 1, 189. — Xen., 
Anab., 2, 4.— Pliny, 6, 27.) 

Opitergium, a city of Venetia in Northern Italy, 
on the right bank of the river Plavis. It is now Odcz- 
zo, a town of some consequence. ( Strabo , 214.— 
Pliny , 3, 19.) The Opitergini Montes are in the 
neighbourhood of this place, and among them rises 
the Liquentia or Livcnza. 

Oppia Lex, by C. Oppius, a tribune of the com¬ 
mons, A.U.C. 540. It required that no woman should 
have in her dress above half an ounce of gold, nor 
wear a garment of different colours, nor ride in a car¬ 
riage in the city or in any town, or within a mile of it, 
unless upon occasion of a public sacrifice. This 
sumptuary law was made during the public distresses 
consequent on Hannibal’s being in Italy. It was re¬ 
pealed eighteen years afterward, on the petition of the 
Roman ladies, though strenuously opposed by Cato. 
{Livy, 34, 1.— Tacit., Ann., 3, 33.) 

Oppianus, an eminent Greek grammarian and poet 
of Cilicia, two of whose works are still extant un¬ 
der the titles “ Cynegetica" (K vvyyerixa), or “On 
Hunting;” and “ Halieutica" ( r A Tvievrixa), or “On 
Fishing.” The time and place of his birth are not 
fully agreed upon. Syncellus {Chronogr., p. 352, scq.) 
and Jerome { Chronic.) place him in the reign of Mar¬ 
cus Aurelius Antoninus ; but Sozomen {Prcef. ad 
Hist. Eccles.), Suidas {s. v. 'Oinriavoq), and others, 
make him to have lived in the time of Severus ; and 
though Oppian, in both his poems, addresses the em¬ 
peror by the name “ Antoninus ,” it is more than proba¬ 
ble that Caracalla is meant, as this appellation was con¬ 
ferred upon him when he was associated with his fa¬ 
ther in the empire (A.D. 198.— Herodian, 2, 10), and as 
this is the name by which he is commonly designated 
by the ancient historians, Herodian, Dio Cassius, &c. 
As to his birthplace, Suidas supposes it to have been 
Corycus, but the anonymous author of the Greek life 
of Oppian, and most other authorities, say that he was 
born at Anazarba, a city which also gave birth to Dios- 
corides. His father appears to have been a person of 
some consideration in his native city, for he was ban¬ 
ished to the island of Melita, in the Adriatic, by Sev¬ 
erus, for suffering himself to be so entirely engrossed 
by his philosophical studies as to neglect coming in per¬ 
son, along with his fellow-citizens, to pay his respects 
to the emperor, when, in taking a progress through 
Cicilia, the latter made his entrance into Anazarba. 
He was accompanied in his exile by his son Oppian, 
who had enjoyed the advantage of an excellent educa¬ 
tion under the superintendence of his father, and who 
now began to devote himself to poetry. Accordingly, 
he now composed his poem on fishing, and presented 
it to the Emperor Severus {Sozomen, Prccf. ad Hist. 
Ecclcs.), or, more probably {Suidas, s. v. 'Oiriuavog .— 
Oppian, Halicut., 1, 3.— Id. ib., 4, 5), to his son Car¬ 
acalla, who was so much pleased with it that he not 
only repealed the sentence of his father’s banishment, 
but also presented Oppian with a piece of gold for 
each verse that it contained. Suidas says that he re¬ 
ceived on this occasion 20,000 gold pieces ; but he 
must have counted the verses contained in all Oppian’s 
poems, since the Halieutica consisted of only about 
3500. Reckoning the aureus at about $3 40 cts. of 
our currency, the sum received by the poet will be 
nearly $12,000. The verses of Oppian might there¬ 
fore well be called XP V(J & eTry, “ golden verses .” 
(Sozomen, l. c .)—Oppian died of the plague shortly 
after his return to his native country, at the early age 
of thirty, leaving behind him three poems, on “ Hawk- 
928 


ing ” {'l&VTLxd), “ Hunting ” {Kvvyyenxd), and 11 Fish¬ 
ing" ('A AuvTixd). — The ’!£evrixu consisted of two 
books according to Suidas, or rather of five accord¬ 
ing to the anonymous Greek author of Oppian’s life, 
and are no longer extant ; but a Greek paraphrase in 
prose, by Eutecnius, of three books, was published in 
1792 ( Havnice, 8vo, ed. E. Windingius), which is also 
inserted in Schneider’s edition of Oppian, Argent., 
8vo, 1776.—The “ Cynegetica" are written in hexam¬ 
eter verse, consist of about 2100 lines, and are divided 
into four books. They display a very fair knowledge 
of natural history, with which, however, a good many 
absurd fables are mixed up. — The “ Halieutica" are 
also written in hexameter verse, and consist of five 
books, of which the first two contain the natural histo¬ 
ry of fishes, and the last three the art of fishing. In 
this poem, as in the “ Cynegetica," the author displays 
considerable zoological knowledge, though it contains 
several fables and absurdities. The “ Halieutica" are 
much superior to the “ Cynegetica'” in point of style 
and poetical embellishment, and it is partly on account 
of this great disparity that it has been supposed that 
the two poems were not composed by the same per¬ 
son. But there are other and stronger reasons in sup¬ 
port of this opinion (which was first put forth by 
Schneider, in the preface to his first edition of Oppian’s 
works), rendering it almost certain that, though by 
the universal consent of antiquity Oppian wrote a 
poem on hunting, yet it cannot be that which now goes 
under his name. Oppian was, as we have seen, a Ci- 
lician, but the author of the “ Cynegetica ” tells us 
distinctly, in two different passages, that his native 
place was a city on the Orontes in Syria (probably 
Apamea, lib. 2, v. 125, seqq. — Ib., v. 156, scq.). 
Schneider supposes that the two Oppians were either 
father and son, or uncle and nephew. This opinion 
respecting two Oppians has been denied by Belin de 
Ballu, who published an edition of the “ Cynegetica" 
in 1786, Argent., 4to and 8vo, and who, as Dibdin 
says, “ seems to have entered upon the task almost ex¬ 
pressly with a determination to oppose the authority 
and controvert the positions of Schneider but it is 
only by altering the text in both passages (and that, 
too, not very skilfully) that he has been able to recon¬ 
cile them with the commonly-received opinion that the 
poem is the work of Oppian. In Schneider’s second 
edition he continues to hold his former opinion, and re¬ 
plies to the objections of Belin de Ballu. It appears, 
from an allusion to fishing and the sea deities, in the 
first book of the “ Cynegetica" (v. 77, seqq.), that this 
poem was composed after the “ Halieutica," and as a 
sort of supplement or companion to it; and this has 
tended to confirm the common opinion that both poems 
were written by the same author.—With regard to the 
poetical merits of Oppian, he seems to be one of those 
poets whose works have been more praised than read. 
Julius Csesar Scaliger pronounces him to be “ a sub¬ 
lime and incomparable poet, the most perfect writer 
among the Greeks, and the only one of them that ever 
came up to Virgil.” {Poet., 5,9.) Sir Thomas Browne 
calls him “ one of the best epic poets,” and “wonders 
that his elegant lines should be so much neglected ( Vul¬ 
gar Errors, 1,8); and if, as Rapin says, he is some¬ 
times dry {Reflex, sur la Poctique , p. 176), it may fairly 
be accounted for and excused when we consider the 
unpropitious nature of his subject.” His style is florid 
and copious, the language upon the whole very good, 
though (as is noticed by Heinsius, ad Nonni Dionys., 
p. 197) it is now and then deformed by Latinisms.— 
The last and (as far as it goes) the best edition of Op¬ 
pian’s two poems is Schneider’s second one, which 
unhappily is unfinished, Lips., 8vo, 1813. The most 
complete edition is that published by Schneider in 1776, 
Argent., 8vo, containing also the paraphrase of the 
U lxcutica," by Eutecnius, to which we have already 
referred. Schneider published some addenda to this 




ORA 


ORACULUM. 


edition in his Analecta Critica, Franco/., 1777, 8vo, 
fascic. 1, p. 31, seqq. —( Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 16, 
p. 459, seqq. — Scholl , Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 4, p. 67.) 

Ops, called also Tcllus, the goddess of the Earth, and 
the same with the Rhea of the Greeks. ( Vid. Rhea.) 
Another form of her name was Opis. The appella¬ 
tion Ops or Opis is plainly connected with opes, 
“ wealth,” of which the earth is the bestower; and 
her festival, the Opalia, was on the same day with the 
original Saturnalia. ( Macrob., Sat., 1, 10.— Varro, 
L. L., 5, p. 57.— Keightley's Mythology, p. 525.) 

Opus (gen. Opuntis), one of the most ancient cities 
of Greece, the capital of the Locri Opuntii, whose ter¬ 
ritory lay to the north of Boeotia. According to Stra¬ 
bo, it was fifteen stadia from the sea, and the distance 
between it and Cynus, its emporium, was sixty stadia. 
(Strabo, 425.) Livy places Opus, however, only one 
mile from the sea (28, 6).—This place is celebrated 
by Pindar as the domain of Deucalion and Pyrrha ( 01., 
9, 62), and by Homer as the birthplace of Patroclus. 
(Iliad, 18, 325.) The form of government adopted 
by the Opuntians was peculiar, since, as we learn 
from Aristotle, they intrusted the sole administration 
to one magistrate. ( Poht., 3, 16.) Plutarch com¬ 
mends their piety and observance of religious rites. 
Herodotus informs us that they furnished seven ships 
to the Greek fleet at Artemisium (8, 1). They were 
subsequently conquered by Myronides, the Athenian 
general. In the war between Antigonus and Cassan- 
der, Opus, having favoured the latter, was besieged by 
Ptolemy, a general in the service of Antigonus. It 
was occupied several years after by Attalus, king of 
Pergamus, in the Macedonian war; but, on the advance 
of Philip, son of Demetrius, he was forced to make a 
precipitate retreat to his ships, and narrowly escaped 
being taken. (Livy, 28, 6.) — The position of this 
town has not been precisely determined by the re¬ 
searches of modern travellers. ( Whelers Travels, p. 
575.— Melet., Geogr., 2, p. 323.— Dodwell, vol. 2, p. 
58.— Gell's Itinerary, p. 229.) Its ruins are laid down, 
in Lapie’s map, a little to the southwest of Alachi, and 
east of Talanta. (Cramer' 1 s Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 
117, seqq.) 

Oraculum, an oracle. The primary and proper sig¬ 
nification of the term is that of a response from an ora¬ 
cle, and Cicero says that “ oracula ” were so called 
“ quod inest in his Deorum oratio .” (Top., 20.) The 
word, however, is frequently employed to denote the 
place whence the answers of divinities, as regarded the 
events of the future, were supposed to be obtained. 
Oracular responses were called by the Greeks xpyogoi 
or yavrela ; the name yavrelov was also often given 
to the oracular place, or seat of the oracle.—Curiosity 
regarding the future, and the desire to penetrate its 
mysteries, are dispositions which excite a powerful 
control over the minds of men in every stage of soci¬ 
ety. Among nations that have made little advance¬ 
ment in civilization and intelligence, they operate with 
peculiar force ; and in these dispositions, combined 
with the belief that the gods had both the ability and the 
inclination to afford the knowledge so eagerly sought 
after, the oracles of the pagan world had their origin. 
Of these oracles the most famous were those of Greece, 
and among them the three most noted were those of 
Dodona, Delphi, and Trophonius. In the number of 
other noted oracles of antiquity may be mentioned that 
of Jupiter Ammon in the deserts of Libya, of the 
Branchidse in Ionia, of Pella in Macedonia, of the head 
of Orpheus at Lesbos, &c. There were also current 
in Greece numerous so-called prophecies, the produc¬ 
tion of individuals who were probably supposed to 
speak under a divine influence. Such were those of 
Bacis and Musaeus, in which the battle of Salamis was 
predicted; and that of Lysistratus, an Athenian. (He¬ 
rod., 8, 96.)—-Though the Romans had various modes 
t)f ascertaining the will of the deities, it does not ap- 
6 B' 


pear that oracles, like those of Dodona or Delphi, were 
ever established among them ; and we find that the 
oracles of Greece, and particularly the far-famed one 
of Delphi, were consulted by them on many important 
occasions. (Livy, to, 15. — Id., 22, 57, &.c.)— The 
importance attached by the Greeks and Romans to 
oracular responses is a striking feature in the history 
of that people. Hardly any enterprise, whether public 
or private, of any moment, was undertaken without re¬ 
course being had to them, and their sanction being ob¬ 
tained. In later times, indeed, their influence was 
greatly diminished, and thus gradually fell into disre¬ 
pute. Cicero affirms, that, long before his age, even 
the Delphic oracle was regarded by many with con¬ 
tempt ; and there is little doubt that oracles were con¬ 
sidered by philosophers as nothing different from what 
they really were, and by politicians as instruments 
which could be used for their purposes.—The modes 
in which oracular responses were delivered were vari¬ 
ous. . At Dodona they issued from the sacred oaks, of 
were obtained from the sounds produced by the lash¬ 
ing of a brazen caldron. At Delphi they were deliver¬ 
ed by the Pytha after she had inhaled the vapour that 
proceeded from the sacred fissure. At Memphis, a fa¬ 
vourable or unfavourable answer was supposed to be 
returned, according as Apis received or rejected what 
was offered him. (Vtd. Apis.) Sometimes the reply 
was given by letter: and sometimes the required in¬ 
formation could be obtained only by casting lots, th® 
lots being dice with certain characters engraven on 
them, the meaning of which was ascertained by refer¬ 
ring to an explanatory table. Dreams, visions, and 
preternatural voices also announced the will of the di¬ 
vinities.—Bishop Sherlock, in his discourses concern¬ 
ing the use and intent of prophecy, expresses his opin¬ 
ion that it is impious to disbelieve the heathen oracles, 
and to deny them to have been given out by the Evil 
Spirit. Dr. Middleton, however, in his Examination, 
&c., confesses that he, for his own part, is guilty of 
this very impiety, and that he thinks himself warrant¬ 
ed to pronounce, from the authority of the best and 
wisest heathens, and the evidence of these oracles, as 
well as from the nature of the thing itself, that they 
were all a mere imposture, wholly invented and sup¬ 
ported by human craft, without any supernatural aid 
or interposition whatever. He adds that Eusebius de¬ 
clares that there were 600 authors among the heathens 
themselves who had publicly written against the reality 
of them. Although the primitive fathers constantly 
affirmed them to be the real effects of a supernatural 
power, and given out by the devil, yet M. de Fonte- 
nelle maintains, that while they preferred this way of 
combating the authority of the oracles, as most com" 
modious to themselves and the state of the controversy 
between them and the heathens, yet they believed them 
at the same time to be nothing else but the effects of 
human fraud and contrivance, which he has illustrated 
by the examples of Clemens of Alexandrea, Origen, 
and Eusebius.—Another circumstance respecting the 
ancient oracles, which has given birth to much contro¬ 
versy, is the time when they ceased altogether to give 
responses. Eusebius was the first who propounded 
the opinion that they became silent ever after the birth 
of Christ; and many writers, willing thus to do hon¬ 
our to the author of Christianity, have given it their 
support. Milton makes allusion to this theory also in 
the most magnificent of all his minor poems, “ The 
Hymn of the Nativity .” But the circumstance that 
may be made available for the purpose of poetical or¬ 
nament happens unfortunately to be contrary to the 
fact. It appears from the edicts of the emperors 
Theodosius, Gratian, and Yalentinian, that oracles ex¬ 
isted, and were occasionally, at least, consulted as late 
as A.D. 358. About that period they entirely ceased, 
though for several centuries previous they had sunk 
very low in public esteem. So few resorted to them, 

• 929 




ORACULUM. 


ORC 


that it was no longer a matter of interest to maintain ] 
them. Towards this consummation Christianity pow- ( 
erfully contributed, by the superior enlightenment i 
which it carried along with it wherever it was intro- 1 
duced, and by the display whichMt made of the false- 1 
hood and folly of the superstitions which it was des- ] 
tined to overthrow. ( Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 16, p. t 
464, seq.) —The Grecian oracles, or, at least, the most t 
celebrated of them, were of foreign origin, and were t 
established either by Egyptian or Phoenician strangers. ; 
( Hceren , Ideen, vol. 6, p. 94.—Compare Knight's In- 1 
quiry, $ 43, 71, 223.) But it was impossible for these 1 
sacerdotal settlements to assume in Greece the aspect 1 
which they took in Africa. The character of the coun- i 
try and the spirit of the people were alike opposed to i 
it. For though the popular religion in Greece was i 
not wholly unconnected with politics, the state, having i 
never, as in Egypt, been founded entirely upon reli- ; 
gion, never made a temple its central point, these set- 1 
tlements, however, continued as oracles, of which the 1 
Greek stood in need both in public and private life. 

( Heeren , Ideen , l. c. — Politics of Ancient Greece , p. > 
78.) Somewhat analogous to this view of the sub¬ 
ject is the position assumed by the advocates for the 
existence of early sacerdotal castes or colleges in 
Greece ; and they consider the oracles as a remnant 
surviving the overthrow of sacerdotal power. Hence 
they undertake to explain why the oracles play so sub¬ 
ordinate a part, and exercise so little influence in the 
earlier periods of Grecian history; for the struggle be¬ 
tween the sacerdotal caste and the warlike portion of 
the population had been too recent for this, and the ha¬ 
tred of the latter was still ardent against those who had 
endeavoured to reduce them under their sway. ( Con¬ 
stant , de la Religion , vol. 3, p. 369.) Homer speaks 
of no oracle except Dodona, and of that indirectly ; 
no mention is made of Delphi in either of his poems. 
What had, however, been wrested by force from the 
sacerdotal caste, was in a great measure regained by 
the influence of these very oracles on the weak and su¬ 
perstitious. Everything that could tend to keep up a 
feeling of awe in the visiter was carefully exhibited. 
The seats of the oracles were established in the bosoms 
of forests, by the lonely sources of rivers, on wild and 
craggy mountains, in gloomy caves, but, above all, near 
the mansions of the (lead; and, notwithstanding the 
efforts of philosophy, and the raillery and sarcasm of 
the comic muse, they succeeded in acquiring a power 
which often placed in the hands of their expounders 
the common fortunes of Greece.—The ambiguity of 
the oracular responses has always been a subject of 
remark : in this, indeed, all the artifice and adroitness 
of the priests directly centred. Every prediction was 
susceptible of a double meaning, and the veracity of 
the gods in this way remained safe from impeachment. 
It must be remarked, however, that this fatal ambigu¬ 
ity on the part of the oracles does not confine itself 
merely to the ages of tradition and fable. On the con¬ 
trary, it becomes more frequent the more men part 
with the improper and degrading notions of the deity 
which they had originally entertained. As long as 
men are still sufficiently rude and ignorant to believe 
the gods capable of voluntary falsehood, the predic¬ 
tions of oracles need be marked by no ambiguity ; a 
deviation from truth on the part of the deity is in such 
a condition of society regarded merely as a mark 
of divine anger. But when the character of the gods 
is better understood, and when their attributes are 
made to assume a more perfect and becoming form, 
their honour is consulted, and the hypothesis of in¬ 
tentional falsehood ori their part is no longer admit¬ 
ted. The predictions of Jupiter in the Iliad are false, 
but not obscure, whereas the oracles mentioned in He¬ 
rodotus are obscure in order not to be false. Thus 
it is not merely La'ius who, by exposing his newlv- 
born child, prepares the accomplishment of the very 
930 


prediction which he believed he was eluding: it is not 
Croesus alone who rushes to his own destruction by 
marching against the Iving of Persia, because the gods 
had announced to him that, by crossing a certain river, 
he would overthrow a great empire - , at a much later 
period than all this we find the Pythoness inducing 
the Lacedsemonians by a response of similar ambiguity 
to engage in a war with the Tegjeans, who put them 
to the rout (j Herod., 1, 66) ; and again we see the or¬ 
acle of Dodona, in counselling the Athenians to estab¬ 
lish themselves in Sicily, excite them to engage in a 
war with Syracuse, which proved the primary cause of 
their downfall and ruin, while all the time the Sicily 
indicated by the oracle was merely a small hill in the 
neighbourhood of Athens. ( Pausan ., 8, 2.) In floe, 
it was at a period characterized by the general diffu¬ 
sion of mental culture that Epaminondas, who had 
always avoided maritime expeditions, because the gods 
had warned him to beware of pelagos, that is, as he 
thought, the sea, died in a wood wffiich bore this name 
in the vicinity of Mantinea. These anecdotes, wheth¬ 
er we regard the occurrences connected with them as 
authentic facts or otherwise, serve nevertheless to 
show the prolongation of popular belief on this all-en¬ 
grossing topic.—When a religion has fallen and been 
succeeded by another, the more zealous advocates of 
the new belief sometimes find themselves in a curious 
state of embarrassment. So it is with regard to the 
heathen system and the Christian code. Among the 
numerous oracles given to the world in former days, 
some have chanced to find a remarkable accomplish¬ 
ment ; and the pious but ill-judging Christian, unable 
to ascribe them to deities in whom man no longer be¬ 
lieves, is driven to create for them a different origin. 

“ God,” says Rollin, “ in order to punish the blindness 
of the heathen, sometimes permits evil spirits to give 
responses conformable to the truth.” (Hist. Anc., 
1, 387.) The only evil spirit which had an agency in 
the oracular responses of antiquity was that spirit of 
crafty imposture which finds so congenial a home 
among an artful and cunning priesthood. (Constant, 
de la Religion , vol. 3, p. 369, seqq .) 

Orbilius Pupillus, a grammarian of Beneventum, 
who was the first instructor of the poet Horace. He 
came to Rome in his 50th year, in the consulship of 
Cicero. From the account which Suetonius gives of 
him, as well as from the epithet “ plagosus" applied 
to him by Horace, he appears to have been Avhat we 
would call at the present day a rigid disciplinarian. 
Orbilius, in early life, had served as a soldier. On 
settling at Rome he acquired more fame than profit, 
and is said to have alluded to his poverty in one of 
his writings. He published also a work entitled “ Pe- 
rialogos ,” containing complaints against parents on 
account of the treatment which instructors of youth 
were accustomed to receive at their hands. Orbilius 
reached nearly his 100th year, and for a long time be¬ 
fore his death had completely lost his memory. A 
statue was erected to him at Beneventum. He left a 
son, named also Orbilius, who, like himself, was an in¬ 
structor. (Sueton., de Illustr. Gramm., 9. — Horat., 
Epist., 2,1,71.) 

Orcades, islands to the north of Britain, answering 
to the modern Orkney and Shetland isles. They are 
supposed to have been first discovered by the fleet of 
Germanicus when driven in this direction by a storm, 
i Agricola afterward made the Romans better acquaint- 
: ed with their existence as islands, separate from the 
, mainland of Britain, when he circumnavigated the 
■ northern coast of that country. Mela (3, 6), following 

- the oldest accounts, makes the number of these islands 
, to be thirty, and this statement is received by subse- 

- quent writers, with the exception of Pliny (4, 16), 
3 who gives forty as the amount, provided the reading 

- be correct. Orosius, in a later age, would seem to 
j have had more recent information on this point, sines 









ORC 


ORCHOMENUS. 


he states the number at thirty-three, of which twenty, 
according to him, were inhabited, and the remaining 
thirteen deserted.—The Orkneys at the present day are 
still called Oreades by the French. They are separa¬ 
ted from the northern extremity of Scotland by the 
Pentland Straits or Frith, in which the sea is so bois¬ 
terous that the surf upon the rocks spreads a fine rain 
to a league’s distance within the land : no wind, how¬ 
ever strong, will enable the mariner to stem the cur¬ 
rent in this place. The group consists of 67 islands 
and islets, 27 of which are inhabited. Red sand¬ 
stone is the prevailing rock. The soil of some of the 
islands is of inferior quality, but that of others is ex¬ 
cellent. The Shetland or Zetland islands are eighty- 
six in number, of which forty are inhabited. They 
contain granite and rocks of igneous origin, with red 
sandstone : their vegetation is poorer than that of the 
Orkneys, and their soil for the most part is marshy. 
( Malte-Brun, vol. 8, p. 684.) 

Orchomenus, I. a celebrated city of Boeotia, near 
the Cephissus, and to the northwest of the Lake Co- 
pais. It was the second city of the land, and at one 
time even rivalled Thebes itself in wealth, power, and 
importance. Its first inhabitants are said to have been 
the Phlegyae, a lawless race, who regarded neither 
gods nor men, but laid the whole country under con¬ 
tribution by their frequent and daring robberies. 
( Horn., Hymn. Apoll., 278. — Schol. in Apollon. 
Rhod., 1, 735 — Horn., II, 13, 302 .—Pausan., 9, 36.) 
Pausanias, however, reports that a city named An¬ 
dreis existed before the time of Plilegyas, who is said 
to have been a son of Mars. The Phlegyae having 
been destroyed by the gods for their impiety, with the 
exception of a small remnant who fled into Phocis, 
were succeeded by the Minyae (vid. Minyse), who are 
commonl}' looked upon as the real founders of Orchom¬ 
enus, which thence obtained the surname of “ the 
Minyean.” ( Od., 11, 283.— Pind., 01., 14, 1.— Apoll. 
Jhfwd., 3, 1094.— Thucyd., 4, 36.) At this period 
Orchomenus became so renowned for its wealth and 
power that Homer represents it as vying with the most 
opulent cities in the world. (II., 9, 381.) These 
riches are said to have been deposited in a building 
erected for that purpose by Minyas, and which Pau¬ 
sanias describes as an astonishing work, and equally 
wurthy of admiration with the walls of Tyrins or the 
pyramids of Egypt (9, 36). Thebes was at that time 
inferior in power to the Minyean city, and in a war 
with Erginus, king of the latter, was compelled to be¬ 
come its tributary. (Strabo, 414. — Pausan., 1. c .) 
As another proof of the wealth and civilization to 
which Orchomenus had attained, it is mentioned that 
Eteocles, one of its early kings, was the first to erect 
and consecrate a temple to the Graces (Strab., 1. c. — 
Pausan., 9, 35), whence Orchomenus is designated 
by Pindar (Pyth., 12, 45) as the city of the Graces. 
In a war waged against Hercules, its power, however, 
was greatly impaired, though at the period of the 
Trojan war it still retained its independence, since we 
find it mentioned by Homer as a separate principality, 
distinct from Boeotia. (II., 2, 511.) It appears to 
have joined the Boeotian confederacy about six years 
after the siege of Troy (Strabo, 410), and Thucydides 
informs us in his time it was no longer termed the 
Minyean, but the Boeotian Orchomenus (4, 76.— 
Compare Herod., 8, 34). It was occupied by the 
Lacedaemonians at the time they held the Cadmean 
citadel, but joined the Thebans after the battle of 
Leuctra. (Diod. Sic., 15, 57.) The latter, however, 
being now in the height of their ascendency, not long 
after made an expedition against Orchomenus, and, 
having seized upon the town, put to death the male 
inhabitants, and enslaved the women and children. 
(Diod. Sic., 15, 79 .—Pausan., 9, 15.) The pretext 
for this was an attempt on the part of some Orchome- 
nian horsemen, 300 in number, to get possession of 


Thebes, in conjunction with certain exiles from the 
latter city. During the sacred war Orchomenus was 
twice in the possession of Onomarchus and the Pho- 
cians (Diod. Sic., 16, 33), but on peace being con¬ 
cluded it was given up by Philip to the Thebans. 
(Demosth., dc Pac.., p. 62.— Phil., 2, p. 69.) Orchom¬ 
enus was not restored to liberty and independence 
till the time of Cassander, when that prince rebuilt 
Thebes. (Pausan., 9, 3.) It is mentioned by Di- 
csearchus as existing at this period. (Stat., Grcec., 96. 
—Compare Pint., Vit. Syll. — Arrian, Exp. Al., 1, 
9.)—According to the accounts of modem travellers, 
the ruins of Orchomenus are to be seen near the vil¬ 
lage of Scripou. Dodwell says, “ This celebrated 
city still exhibits traces of its former strength, and 
some remains of its early magnificence. The Acropo¬ 
lis stands on a steep rock, rising close to the west of 
the lower town ; the Cephissus winds at its southern 
base. The walls, which extend from the plain to the 
summit of the hill, enclose an irregular triangle, the 
acuter angle of which terminates at the summit of the 
rock, which is crowned with a strong tower, the walls 
of which are regularly constructed. In the interior a 
large cistern is formed in the solid rock; ninety-one 
steps are cut in the rock, and lead up to the tower, 
the position of which is remarkably strong. It com¬ 
mands an extensive view over Phocis and Boeotia, 
while the distant horizon is terminated by the mount¬ 
ains of Euboea” (vol. 1, p. 229). At the eastern foot 
of the Acropolis the same antiquary observed some 
remains of the treasury of Minyas. “ The entrance 
is entire, though the earth, being raised above its an¬ 
cient level, conceals a considerable part of it, as only 
six large blocks, which are of regular masonry, re¬ 
main above ground. The whole building is of white 
marble, which must have been brought from a great 
distance, as the nearest quarries are those of Penteli- 
cus.” Mr. Dodwell found by approximation the di¬ 
ameter of the building to have been upward of sixty- 
five feet, which shows it to have been far superior to 
the treasury at Mycenae. “ The architecture of that 
portion which remains is composed of a single block, 
fifteen feet four inches in length, the breadth six feet 
three inches, the thickness three feet three inches, and 
it weighs at least twenty-four tons” (vol. 1, p. 227). 
Sir W. Gell says, “ It has been a dome, formed by 
approaching blocks, laid in horizontal courses, which 
do not diverge from a centre like the principle of an 
arch. The interior of the building was in the form of 
a cone, or, rather, beehive. There seem to be two 
other treasuries very near, but buried. Hence there is 
a steep ascent to the citadel, passing some huge blocks 
in the way.” In the monastery of Scripou are sev¬ 
eral inscriptions, with the name of the city written Er- 
chomenos. This appears also in the coins of the city, 
where the epigraph is EPX. instead of OPX. In 
others of more recent date it is OPXOMENIS2N. 
(Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 244, seqq.) With 
regard to the form Erchomenos, the remarks of Bast 
may be consulted. (Lcttre Critique a Boissona.de sur 
Anton. Lib., p. 123. — Compare Muller, Orchcmenos 
und die Minyer, p. 129.) — II. A city of Arcadia, 
some distance to the northwest of Mantinea. It was 
first situated on the summit of a hill, but was after¬ 
ward, as we learn from Pausanias, removed to the 
plain below. Tradition assigned its foundation to Or¬ 
chomenus, the son of Lycaon (Pausan., 8, 3), and its 
antiquity is farther evinced by Homer’s mention of it 
in the catalogue of ships. (II., 2, 605.) Orchome¬ 
nus sent 120 soldiers to Thermopylae (Herod., 7, 102) 
and 600 to Plataea (9, 28). In the Peloponnesian 
war, this town, being in alliance with Sparta, was be¬ 
sieged and taken by the Argives and Athenians 
(Thucyd., 5, 61.) Several years after that event it 
fell into the power of Cassander (Diod. Sic., 19, 63), 
but, having at length regained its independence, joined 

931 



ORE 


ORE 


the Achrean league. Surprised again by Cleomenes, 
it was retaken by Antigonus Doson, who placed there 
a Macedonian garrison. After his death, however, it 
appears to have reverted to the Achseans. ( Polyb., 2, 
48.— Id., 2, 54.— Id., 4, 6.— Strabo, 338.) The plain 
of Orchomenus was in a jfrreat measure occupied by a 
small lake, formed by the rain-water which descended 
from the surrounding hills : one of these, situated 
over against the town, was named Trachys. The 
modern village of Kalpaki is built on the ruins of Or¬ 
chomenus. {Cramer''s Anc. Greece , vol. 3, p. 306, 
se?? .)__III. A city of Thessaly, on the confines of 
Macedonia. ( Schol. in Apoll. Khod ., 2, 1186. Van 
Staveren, ad Hygin., fab., 1. — Muller, Orchomenos 
and die Minyer, p. 249.)—IV. A city of Pontus, ac¬ 
cording to the scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius (2, 
1186). Consult the remarks of Muller ( Orchomenos, 
&c., p. 288). 

Orcus, the god of the lower world, in the old Latin 
religion, corresponding to the Hades or Pluto of the 
Gre'eks. Verrius says that the ancients pronounced 
Orcus as if written Uragus, or, rather, Urgus, whence 
it would signify the Driver (from urgco ), answering to 
the Hades-Agesilaus of the Greeks. This etymology, 
however, is very doubtful. ( Festus , s. v. — Keightley's 
Mythology , p. 527.) 

Ordovices, a people of Britain, occupying what 
would correspond at the present day to the northern 
portion of Wales, together with the isle of Anglesey. 
{Tacit., Hist., 12, 33.— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 2, pt. 
2, p. 187.) It was probably owing to the nature of 
their country, and to the vicinity of Deva, now Ches¬ 
ter, where a whole Roman legion was quartered, that 
the Romans had so few towns and stations among the 
Ordovices. Mediomanium was their capital, and was 
probably situated at Maywood or Mcifad, in Mont¬ 
gomeryshire. {Mela, 3, 6.— Plin., 4, 16.— Mannert, 
l. c .) 

Oreades, nymphs of the mountains, so called from 
the Greek opog, “ a mountain .” Another form of the 
name is Orestiades {’OpeoTiddec;). They generally at¬ 
tended upon Diana, and accompanied her in hunting. 
{Virg., JEn., 1 , 504.— Ovid, Met., 8, 787 .—Horn., II., 
6, 420.) 

Orests, a people of Epirus, situate apparently to 
the southeast of the Lyncestae, and, like them, origi¬ 
nally independent of the Macedonian kings, though af¬ 
terward annexed to their dominions. At a later peri¬ 
od, having revolted under the protection of a Roman 
force, they were declared free 6n the conclusion of 
peace between Philip and the Romans. {Liv., 33, 34. 
— Id., 42, 38.) Their country was apparently of small 
extent, and contained but few towns. Among these 
Orestia is named by Stephanus Byzantmus, who states 
it to have been the birthplace of Ptolemy, the son of 
Lagus. Its foundation was ascribed by tradition to 
Orestes. This is probably the same city called by 
Strabo (326) Argos Oresticum, built, as he affirms, by 
Orestes. Hierocles also (p. 641) recognises an Ar¬ 
gos in Macedonia. {Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 1, 
p. 197.) 

Orestes, son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra.. 
On the assassination of Agamemnon, Orestes, then 
quite young, was saved from his father’s fate by his 
sister Electra, who had him removed to the court of 
their uncle Strophius, king of Phocis. There he form¬ 
ed an intimate friendship with Pylades, the son of 
Strophius, and with him concerted the means, which 
he successfully adopted, of avenging his father’s death, 
by slaying his mother and yEgisthus. {Vid. Clytsem- 
nestra and Hlgisthus.) After the murder of Clytem¬ 
nestra, the Furies drove Orestes into insanity; and 
when the oracle at Delphi was consulted respecting 
the duration of his malady, an answer was given that 
Orestes would not be restored to a sane mind until 
he went to the Tauric Chersonese, and brought away 
932 


from that quarter the statue of Diana to Argos. It 
was the custom in Taurica to sacrifice all strangers to 
this goddess, and Orestes and Pylades, having made 
the journey together, and having both been taken cap¬ 
tive, were brought as victims to the altar ol Diana. 
Iphigenia, the sister of Orestes, who had been carried 
offi by Diana from Aulis when on the point of being im¬ 
molated {vid. Aulis and Iphigenia), was the priestess 
of the goddess among the Tauri. Perceiving the stran¬ 
gers to be Greeks, she offered to spare the life ol one 
of them, provided he would carry a letter from her to 
Greece. This occasioned a memorable contest of 
friendship betw r een them, which should sacrifice him¬ 
self for the other, and it ended in Pylades’ yielding to 
Orestes, and agreeing to be the bearer of the letter. 
The letter was for Orestes, and a discovery was the 
consequence. Iphigenia, thereupon, on learning the 
object of their visit, contrived to aid them in carrying 
off the statue of Diana, and all three arrived sale in 
Greece. Orestes reigned many years in Mycenae, and 
became the husband of ITermione, after having slain 
Neoptolemus. {Vid. Hermione and Pyrrhus I.) 
Such is the ordinary form of the legend of Orestes. 
The tragic writers, of course, introduced many varia¬ 
tions. Thus, it is said, that when the 4 uries ol his 
mother persecuted him, he fled to Delphi, whose god 
had urged him to commit the deed, and thence went to 
Athens, where he was acquitted by the court of Are¬ 
opagus. {AZschyl., Eumen. —Compare Muller, Eu- 
men.) — Orestes had by Hermione two sons, Tis- 
amenus and Penthilus, who were driven from their 
country by the Heraclidae. {Apollod., 2, 8, 5. Eu- 
np., Orest.—Soph., Electr. — VEschyl., Agam., &c.) 

Oresteum or Orestheum, called by Pausanias (8, 
3) Oresthasium, a town of Arcadia, southeast of Me¬ 
galopolis, in the district of Orestliis. Its ruins, ac¬ 
cording to Pausanias, were to be seen to the right of 
the road leading from Megalopolis to Tegasa (8, 44). 
Allusion is made to it by Euripides. {Orest., 1643. 
— Electr., 1273.) It would seem from Thucydides 
and Herodotus to have been on the road from Sparta 
to Tegaea. {Thucyd., 5, 64.— Herod., 9, 11.) Ores¬ 
tes died here. {Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 347.) 

Orestia. Vid. Orest©. 

Orestias, the primitive name of Adrianopolis, in 
Thrace, and which the Byzantine authors frequently 
employ in speaking of that city. The name is de¬ 
rived from the circumstance of Orestes having purified 
himself on this spot after the murder of his mother. 
Three rivers had here their confluence, the Hebrus, re¬ 
ceiving the Ardiscus or Arda on one side, and the 
Tonsus or Tonza on the other. {Vid. Adrianopolis.) 

Oretani, a people of Hispania Tarraconensis, whose 
territory is supposed to have corresponded to the east¬ 
ern part of Estremadura, the middle section of La 
Mancha, the eastern extremity of Jacn, and the north¬ 
ern extremity of Grenada. {Liv., 21, 11. — Id., 35, 
7 .—Plin., 3, 3 .—Polyb., 10, 38.— Id., 11, 20.) 

Oreus (’12 peog), an ancient city of Eubcea, in the 
northeastern part of the island, founded, as was said, by 
an Athenian colony. It was situate in the district of 
Ellopia. {Strabo, 445.) Scymnus of Chios, however, 
ascribes a Thessalian origin to the place. Its primi¬ 
tive name was Histiaea, and it retained this appella¬ 
tion until, having endeavoured to shake off the galling 
yoke of Athens, after the close of the Persian war, it 
met with a cruel punishment at the hands of that pow¬ 
er. The inhabitants were expelled, and Athenian col¬ 
onists were sent to occupy the lands which they had 
evacuated. {Thucyd., 1, 115.) Strabo, on the au¬ 
thority of Theopompus, informs us, that the Histiseans 
withdrew on this occasion to Macedonia {l. c.). From 
henceforth we find the name of the place changed to 
Oreus, which at first was that of a small place depend¬ 
ant on Histisea, at the foot of Mount Telethrius, and 
near the spot called Drymos, on the banks of the riv- 






0 RI 


ORIBASIUS. 


er Callas. Thucydides first notices Oreus at the close 
of his history, as the last place retained by the Athe¬ 
nians in Euboea (8, 95). From Xenophon we learn, 
that, having been subsequently occupied by the Lace¬ 
daemonians, who had expelled Neogenes the tyrant, it 
revolted from them previous to the battle of Leuctra. 
{Hist. Gr., 5, 4, 57.) After that period we find His- 
tiaea, or Oreus, governed by another tyrant named Phil- 
istides, who, as Demosthenes asserts, was secretly sup¬ 
ported and befriended by Philip of Macedon ( Phil ., 3, 
p. 125): he was afterward defeated and slain by the 
Athenians and Chalcidians. ( Steph. Byz., s. v.) yEs- 
chines, on the other hand, cites a decree of Oreus, to 
prove that Demosthenes had been bribed by the citi¬ 
zens of that town. ( JEsch. in Ctes., p, 68.)—In the 
second Punic war, Oreus, when besieged by Attalus 
and Sulpicius, a Roman general, was betrayed into 
their hands by Plator, who had been intrusted by Phil¬ 
ip with the command of the place. ( Liv ., 28, 6.) It 
must have been restored, however, to that monarch on 
peace being concluded ; for, in the Macedonian war, 
we find it sustaining another obstinate siege against 
the same enemies, when it was taken by assault. ( Liv ., 
31, 46. — Polyb., 11, 6.— Id., 18, 28.) This city no 
longer existed in Pliny’s time (4, 12). Its ruins are 
still to be seen near the coast, opposite to Cape Volo 
of Thessaly. {Cramer's Anc. Greece, \ ol. 2, p. 126.) 

Orgetorix, a nobleman of the Helvetii, the most 
conspicuous for rank and riches of any of his country¬ 
men. He attempted to possess himself of the chief 
power in his native state, and was, in consequence, 
summoned to trial. His retainers, however, assembled 
in great numbers, and prevented the case from being 
heard. He died not long after, having fallen, as was 
supposed, by his own hands. {Cces., B. G., 1, 2, 
seqq.) 

Oribasius, an eminent physician, and the intimate 
friend of the Emperor Julian, was born at Sardis, in 
Lydia, according to Suidas and Philostorgius {Hist. 
Eccles., 7, 15), or, rather, according to Eunapius {De 
Vitis Philosoph. et Sophist.), who was his contempo¬ 
rary, at Pergamus, a celebrated city of Mysia, and the 
birthplace of Galen. After enjoying the advantages of 
a good education, he became a pupil of Zeno, an able 
physician of Cyprus, to whom the Emperor Julian ad¬ 
dressed a letter, still extant. {Epist., 47.) Oribasius 
soon became so famous in the practice of his profession, 
as to induce Julian, upon being raised to the rank of 
Caesar, to take him with him into Gaul as his physician, 
A.D. 355. Julian always held him in high esteem; 
and, indeed, he owed him a debt of gratitude, if, as 
Eunapius asserts, Oribasius aided in procuring for him 
the empix-e. How this was effected by Oribasius, the 
writer just mentioned does not state, and history is si¬ 
lent on the subject. It is this circumstance which has 
led Boissonade, the last editor of Eunapius, to doubt 
the accuracy of the meaning commonly attached to 
the words of this writer. He asks whether the pas¬ 
sage in question, 'O de tooovtov en’deoveKru rale; ak- 
laig dperalp, ioare nal (3aai7iea rov ’lovTuavdv dire- 
dei^e, may not in fact mean that Oribasius had in¬ 
stilled into the bosom of Julian, both by precept and ex¬ 
ample, such virtues as made him truly a king 1 But, 
however this may be, it is certain that they were upon 
the most intimate terms, as is proved by one of Ju¬ 
lian’s letters, addressed to Oribasius, which still re¬ 
mains {Epist., 17), and is, at the same time, a monu¬ 
ment of their superstition and pagan idolatry. When 
Julian succeeded to the empire, A.D. 361, he raised 
Oribasius to the rank of quaestor of Constantinople, 
and afterward sent him to consult the oracle at Delphi, 
whence he brought back the celebrated answer, that 
the oracles had ceased to utter predictions. {Cedre- 
nus, Chrome., p. 304, ed. Paris, 1647.) Oribasius ac¬ 
companied the emperor in his expedition against Per¬ 
sia, and was present at his death. He afterward fell 


into disgrace through the envy of his enemies, had all 
his estate confiscated, and was banished by Valentinian 
and Valens. He supported his misfortunes with for¬ 
titude, and by his medical talents gained so much love 
and reverence, that the barbarians (as they were called) 
to whom he had come began almost to adore him as a 
god. At last the emperors, feeling the loss of his pro¬ 
fessional skill, recalled him from banishment, restored 
his confiscated fortune, and loaded him with honours. 
He was still alive when Eunapius, who was his inti¬ 
mate friend, wrote his account of his life, which is 
placed by Lardner about the year 400 ; and as this 
was more than 50 years after his attending Julian in 
Gaul, he must have lived to a good old age. There 
are in the Greek Anthology two epigrams written in 
honour of him.—Oribasius composed, by order of the 
Emperor Julian, an abridgment of the works of Galen, 
under the title of II paypareia iarpiKy (“ Treatise on 
Medicine"), in four books, a compilation entirely lost. 
He afterward, at the instance of the same monarch, 
made a collection of extracts from the writings of pre¬ 
vious physicians ; these he arranged in methodical or¬ 
der, and distributed into seventy books, as the title of 
the compilation indicates, 'E bdopyKovrdbib'koq. {Pho~ 
tius, Cod., 217.) Suidas, however, says that it con¬ 
sisted of seventy-two. Of this large work we possess 
rather more than one third part, namely, books 1-15, 
24, 25, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50. Dietz states, 
in the preface to his unedited “ Scholia in Hippocra- 
tem et Galcnum ” {Regim. Pruss., 1834, 2 vols. 8vo), 
that he discovered two more books that had been over¬ 
looked by Mai, but does not specify which they are. 
These he intended to insert in their proper places in 
the new edition of Oribasius which he was preparing 
for the press at the time of his death. Among these 
are books 43d to 47th inclusive, which treat of various 
matters connected with surgery, and are taken from 
the works of Galen, Heliodorus, Archigenes, Asclepi- 
ades, and other ancient writers on medicine. Oriba¬ 
sius subsequently made an abridgment of this great 
work, which he entitled hvvoipiq, in nine books. Al¬ 
though these two works are merely compilations, they 
are, notwithstanding, important for the history of the 
healing art ; besides, the paraphrases of Oribasius 
serve frequently to explain passages in the originals 
which would otherwise be difficult to understand. 
Oribasius finally composed a treatise on Simples (Ef>- 
7r opioTia), in four books. A commentary on the Aph¬ 
orisms of Hippocrates, which exists merely in a Latin 
translation, has been erroneously ascribed to him ; it 
is the work of a Christian writer, who, in order to 
make the production pass for an ancient one, feigned 
that it had been composed by order of Ptolemy Euer- 
getes. {Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 17, p. 10.— Scholl, 
Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 7, p. 248, seqq.) —“ Oribasius,” 
observes Mr. Adams, “ is the first medical writer of 
celebrity after Galen, from whom he borrows so freely 
that he has been called the Ape of Galen. But, 
although this appellation might indicate that he is a 
servile copyist from his prototype, his work contains 
many curious things, which are either original, or de¬ 
rived from some other source of information which is 
now lost. He describes minutely the mode of letting 
blood by scarification, which, as described by him, is 
an operation which does not seem to have been prac¬ 
tised by his predecessors. He is also particularly full 
upon the use of baths, and gives from Herodotus an 
account of the manner of practising with most advan¬ 
tage the bath of oil. This appears to have been a 
very powerful remedy, which has now been laid aside 
for no other reason than the expense attending it. No 
ancient writer on the Materia Medica has given so 
circumstantial an account of the mode of administer¬ 
ing hellebore as he has done in the 8th book. In the 
24th and 25th books of the Collectanea, he gives a 
complete treatise on anatomy, which, although mostly 

933 




0 RI 


0 R I 


copied from Galen, is highly valuable from its accu¬ 
racy and precision. As Dr. Freind remarks, he has 
given a correct account of the salivary glands, which 
appear to have been overlooked by Galen ; at least no 
description of them is to be found in such anatomical 
works of his as have come down to us. His method 
of treating epilepsy is also deserving of attention, as 
it appears to be a rational one, and yet is not clearly 
recommended by any other ancient authority. It con¬ 
sists in first abstracting blood several times, then ad¬ 
ministering drastic purgatives, such as colocynth, scam- 
mony, and black or white hellebore, applying cupping 
instruments to the occiput, and afterward sinapisms 
and other stimulants. In confirmation of the benefi¬ 
cial effects of hellebore in epilepsy, I would refer the 
reader to a case related by Aulus Gellius (17, 15). 
As a professed copyist from Galen, Oribasius may be 
safely consulted for a correct exposition of his doc¬ 
trines.”—We have no complete edition of Oribasius. 
The 40th chapter of the first book of the ILebdomekon- 
tabiblos, treating of waters, and the first six chapters 
of the fifth book, were edited by Riccius, Roma, 1548, 
4to. The first two books were edited by Gruner, 
Jence, 1784, 4to. The 24th and 25th books, treating 
of anatomy, &c., were edited by Dundas, Lugd. Bat., 
1735, 4to. The 46th and 47th books, treating of frac¬ 
tures, &c., as well as the fragments of the books re¬ 
specting bandages and dressings, are contained in the 
collection of Cocchi. There remain unedited from 
the 3d to the 15th books, and from the 43d to the 45th 
inclusive ; and there remain to be discovered from the 
16th to the 23d, and from the 26th to the 42d, inclu¬ 
sive. Latin translations, however, have been printed 
of some of the books that are yet unpublished in the 
Greek text.—The text of the Abridgment has never 
been printed. A Latin translation by Rasarius ap¬ 
peared at Venice, 1553, 8vo, and at Paris, 1554, 12mo. 
—The treatise on Simples, translated into Latin, ap¬ 
peared at the end of Sichard’s edition of Ccelius Au- 
relianus, Basle, 1559, fol. Another translation by 
Rasarius is contained in the Basle edition of the works 
of Oribasius.—The Commentary on the Aphorisms of 
Hippocrates was published at Paris by Winter (Quin- 
terius), 1533, 8vo, and reprinted at Basle in 1535, at 
Rome in 1553, and at Padua in 1558, in8vo. ( Scholl, 
Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 7, p. 250, seqq.) 

Oricum or Oricus, a port of Illyricum, at the head 
of a bay, the outer side of which is formed by the 
Acroceraunian promontory. Scylax (p. 10) and other 
early writers place it in Illyria, while Ptolemy enu¬ 
merates it among the cities of Epirus. Herodotus (9, 
94) speaks of it as a port not far from Apollonia and the 
mouth of the Aoiis. It was known also to Hecatse- 
us and Apollodorus ( ap . Steph. Byz., s. v. ’£2 piKoq). 
Scymnus of Chios appears to be the only writer who 
gives any account of its foundation ; he ascribes it to 
the Euboeans after their return from Troy. These are 
the same people with the Abantes (v. 440). Apollo¬ 
nius speaks of the arrival of a party of Colchians in 
this port (4, 1216), whence Pliny calls it a colony of 
that people (3, 23). Oricum, however, is much more 
known in history as a haven frequented by the Ro¬ 
mans in their communication with Greece, being very 
conveniently situated for that purpose from its proxim¬ 
ity to Hydruntum and Brundisium. During the sec¬ 
ond Punic war, this town was taken by Philip, king 
of Macedonia, but was afterward recovered by the 
prsetor Valerius Lavinus, who surprised the enemy in 
his camp before Apollonia during the night, and put 
him to the rout. Philip having retired into Macedon, 
the Roman general established winter-quarters at Ori¬ 
cum. (Livy, 24, 40.) It was from this place that 
Paulus JEmilius sailed back to Italy, after having so 
happily terminated the Macedonian war. We find it 
subsequently occupied by Caesar, soon after his landing 
on this coast. (Bell. Civ., 3, 11.) Horace, Proper¬ 


tius, and Lucan also speak of Oricum as a well-known 
port in their time. (Horat., Od., 3, 7.— Propert., 1, 
8.— Lucan, 3, 187.) Philostratus says the town of 
Oricus was restored by Herodes Atticus, together with 
many other Greek cities. It would seem from Virgil 
that it was famous for its turpentine. (JEn., 10, 136.) 
Nicander alludes to its boxwood. (Ther., v. 516.) 
No traveller appears to have investigated the remains 
of Oricum ; but it would seem, from modern maps, that 
the name of Ericho is still attached to the spot on 
which the town must have stood. (Mannert, Gcogr., 
vol. 7, p. 407.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 62, 
seqq.) 

Origenes (’Qpiyevyq), commonly called, by Eng¬ 
lish writers, Origen, a celebrated father of the church, 
who flourished in the latter part of the second, and 
during the first half of the third, century. He was a 
native of Alexandrea, where he chiefly resided. Ori¬ 
gen was distinguished not more for his learning than 
for his piety and eloquence ; and his indefatigable ap¬ 
plication to study procured for him the surname of 
Adamantius (’Ada/udvrioq), i. e., “Man of adamant.” 
Porphyry supposes him to be of heathen parentage, 
and educated in the heathen faith ; but Eusebius, who 
wrote his life, has shown conclusively that his parents 
were Christians, and took the greatest possible care of 
his early religious instruction. His father Leonidas 
having been put to death during the persecution in the 
reign of Severus, Origen, who was then not quite 
seventeen years of age, was with difficulty restrained 
by the care of his mother from offering himself also 
for martyrdom. He sent a letter to his father in pris¬ 
on, containing this sentence : “ Take heed, father, 
that you do not change your mind for our sake.” After 
his father’s death, Origen was supported for a short 
time by a rich lady of Alexandrea, but he soon became 
able to support himself and the rest of the family (he 
was the eldest of seven children), by teaching gram¬ 
mar. At the age of eighteen, Demet rius, bishop of Al¬ 
exandrea, put him at the head of the catechetical school 
in that city, to the duties of which he devoted himself en¬ 
tirely and with great success. Renouncing his gram¬ 
matical pursuits, he sold all his books connected with 
profane learning to an individual, who agreed, in return, 
to supply him with four oboli a day, and he made this 
scanty pittance suffice for all his wants. We are not 
told how long this payment was continued. His man¬ 
ner of life was now marked by the very extremity of 
self-denial; he drank no wine, ate little food, w ent bare¬ 
foot even in winter, contented himself with a single 
garment, and took on the ground the little repose 
which he could not refuse to nature. So great was 
the interest excited by his discourses, that the phi¬ 
losophers, the learned, the very pagans themselves, 
flocked to hear him. During all this time Origen 
signalized his zeal for the true faith by visiting the 
confessors in prison, accompanying them into the 
judgment-hall, going with them to the place of execu¬ 
tion, and giving them, when about to die, the kiss of 
peace. Conduct such as this, together with the fact 
of his having made many conversions, naturally ex¬ 
posed him to danger, and he was at last compelled 
constantly to change his place of abode in order to es¬ 
cape the persecution of the pagans. His retreats 
were frequently discovered, and he was more than 
once dragged through the streets of the capital, and 
put to the torture. His firmness, however, never for¬ 
sook him. Being a young man, and obliged, in the 
exercise of his office as a catechist, to be frequently in 
the company of those whose presence might excite 
other thoughts than such as ought ever to be connect¬ 
ed with his sacred functions, Origen, in order to avoid 
all temptation, took the words of Holy Writ (Malt., 
19, 12) in their most literal acceptation, and resorted 
to physical means as a preventive. Though he strove 
to keep this rash act a profound secret, yet Demetrius 



ORIGENES. 


ORIGENES. 


eventually became acquainted with it. Surprised at 
the hardihood of the deed, and yet forced to respect 
such ardent and devoted piety in so young a man, he 
encouraged him to persevere. Origen himself was 
subsequently convinced of his error, and confuted in 
his writings the literal interpretation of a text which 
had led him to this extreme.—After a visit to Rome, 
where Zephirinus was the bishop, Origen turned his 
attention to the acquiring of the Hebrew tongue, a 
thing very unusual at that time ( Hie/on ., dc Vir. II- 
lustr., c. 56); but his knowledge of the language was 
never very great. About the year 212, his preaching 
reclaimed from the Valentinian heresy a wealthy per¬ 
son of the name of Ambrose, who afterward assisted 
him materially in the publication of his Commentaries 
on the Scriptures. His reputation kept continually in¬ 
creasing, and he became eminent not merely as an in¬ 
structor in religion, but also in philosophy and human 
sciences. The governor of Arabia, having heard won¬ 
derful accounts of his abilities, requested Demetrius 
and the patriarch of Egypt to send Origen to him, 
that they might converse together on literature and 
the sciences. The voyage was made, and, when the 
curiosity of the ruler was gratified, Origen returned to 
his native capital. This city, however, he soon after 
quitted, and fled to Caesarea to avoid the crueltie/ex¬ 
ercised upon the Alexandreans by the odious Caracal- 
la. At Caesarea he gave public lectures, and, though 
not yet a priest, was invited by the bishops in this 
quarter to expound the scriptures in the assemblies of 
the faithful. Demetrius took offence at this, and Ori¬ 
gen, at his earnest request, returned to the capital of 
Egypt and resumed his former functions. About this 
time the Emperor Alexander Severus had stopped for 
a while at Antioch, to expedite the preparations for 
war against the Persians ; and the Empress Mammea, 
who accompanied her son, sent letters and an escort 
to Origen, inviting him to Antioch. The opportunity 
was eagerly embraced, and Origen unfolded to his il¬ 
lustrious hearer the hopes and the promises of the gos¬ 
pel. At a later period also he had a correspondence 
with the Emperor Philip and his wife Severa. On his 
return once more to Alexandrea, he directed his atten¬ 
tion to the writing of commentaries on the Old and 
New Testaments, at the instance principally of Am¬ 
brose, whom he had both instructed in the sciences, 
and, as we have already observed, reclaimed from his 
heretical opinions. This disciple, well known in Alex¬ 
andrea by the fame of his riches, liberally supplied his 
former master with all the means requisite for pursuing 
his studies. Origen had around him several secreta¬ 
ries, to whom he dictated notes, and seven others to 
arrange these notes in order: the former were called 
notani, the latter librarii. Other copyists were em¬ 
ployed in transcribing works. Origen commented first 
on the Gospel of St. John, then on Genesis, the first 
twenty-five Psalms, and the Lamentations of Jere¬ 
miah. Obliged at this period to undertake a journey 
to Athens, for the purpose of succouring the churches 
of Achaia, he again visited Csesarea on his way, where 
the bishop of this church and the bishop of Jerusa¬ 
lem ordained him priest. He was at this time forty- 
five years of age. Demetrius vehemently disapproved 
of this ordination, and made known the act committed 
by Origen on his own person, and which he had thus 
far kept secret. According to him, Origen could not 
be admitted to sacred orders, and he insisted that this 
point of ancient discipline could not be abandoned by 
the church. An assembly was convened, and Origen 
received orders to leave Alexandrea, whither he had re¬ 
turned. In a second assembly or council, Demetrius 
pronounced sentence of deposition against him, and 
excommunicated him for the errors which he had prop¬ 
agated in his writings. These errors were principally 
contained in the Treatise on First Principles, and one 
of the most prominent is said to have been the opin¬ 


ion maintained by him in favour of the finite punish¬ 
ment of the wicked, the doctrine of the modern Uni- 
versalists. It must be observed, however, in behalf 
of Origen, that we are not fully competent, at the 
present day, to pronounce an opinion on this subject, 
or to determine whether he actually inclined towards 
this particular heresy. We no longer possess the 
Greek text of this work of his, and only know it 
through the medium of a very free, and, to all appear¬ 
ances, very unfaithful translation, executed by Rufi- 
nus. For some curious remarks on this head, the 
reader is referred to Bayle ( Diet ., vol. 8, p. 44, seqq ., 
ed. Lond., 1739). Origen retired, after this ecclesi¬ 
astical sentence, to the city of Caesarea, where, at the 
instance of the bishops in this quarter, he once more 
undertook to expound in public the Sacred Writings. 
Hearers came from far and near, and among them Fir- 
milianus, one of the most illustrious bishops of Cappa¬ 
docia. The most eminent of the disciples of Origen 
was undoubtedly St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, and in 
the discourse pronounced by this grateful follower in 
honour of his master, we see what was the method 
pursued by Origen, and by what degrees he conducted 
his pupils to the science of sciences. The persecu¬ 
tion under Maximin compelled Origen to flee from 
Palestine, and he took refuge with Firmilianus, who 
concealed him for the space of two years in the house 
of a pious widow. In this abode he discovered a 
large number of volumes, which Symmachus, the 
translator of Scripture, had left as an heritage to the 
female with whom Origen was residing, and he was 
thus enabled to devote himself to profitable study, and 
compare together the different versions of the sacred 
volume. Ambrose, the disciple and generous friend 
of Origen, having been arrested, the latter addressed to 
him, from his place of retreat, an Exhortation to mar¬ 
tyrdom. This production not only urges the motives 
which ought to animate to unshaken constancy the 
confessors of the faith, but also unfolds the rules of 
conduct and the principles of Christian philosophy to 
which they ought to adhere. The persecution having 
ceased on the death of Maximin, Origen returned to 
Alexandrea, and ceased not to occupy himself with 
what had so long been the subject of his labours, the 
famous Hexapla. This great work was completed at 
Tyre, but in what year is not precisely known. At 
the age of sixty Origen consented that his Homilies 
or familiar sermons should be published: these had 
been taken down during delivery by notarii, and, 
though many had been lost, it is said that by this 
means more than a thousand of his discourses were 
preserved. As he was consulted from all quarters, his 
correspondence became very voluminous : more than 
a hundred of these letters were preserved by Euse¬ 
bius, and, among the number, two in particular, one 
addressed to the Emperor Philip, and the other to his 
consort Severa. Origen wrote also to Fabian and 
other bishops, to repel imputations that had been cast 
upon his faith. After a long and honourable life, to¬ 
wards the close of which he wrote his famous work 
against Celsus, he suffered martyrdom, according to 
some accounts, in the Decian persecution ; but, ac¬ 
cording to the more correct and general opinion, he 
died a natural death at Tyre, A.D. 254. His suffer¬ 
ings, however, during the last-mentioned persecution 
were dreadfully severe ( Euseb ., Hist. Eccles., 6, 39. 
— Niceph., 5, 32), and this, perhaps, has led to the er¬ 
ror of supposing that they terminated his existence. 
Origen, says Epiphanius (De Pond, et Mejis.), “ suf¬ 
fered very much, yet he did not arrive at the end to 
which a martyrdom leads.”—Origen is undoubtedly one 
of the most remarkable men among the Christian wri¬ 
ters. His talents, eloquence, and learning have been 
celebrated, not only by Christian writers, but by hea¬ 
then philosophers, including Porphyry himself. Jerome 
calls him “ a man of immortal genius, who understood 

935 



ORIGENES. 


ORIGENES. 


logic, geometry, arithmetic, music, grammar, rhetoric, 
and all the sects of the philosophers ; so that he was 
resorted to by many students of secular literature, 
whom he received chiefly that he might embrace the 
opportunity of instructing them in the faith of Christ” 
(de Vir. Illustr., c. 54). Elsewhere he calls him the 
greatest teacher since the Apostles. We find this 
same Jerome, however, at a later period of his life, vi¬ 
olently attacking Origen, and approving of the perse¬ 
cution of his followers. Sulpicius Severus says, that 
in reading Origen’s works he saw many things that 
pleased him, but many also in which he (Origen) was 
undoubtedly mistaken. He wonders how one and the 
same man could be so different from himself; and 
adds, “ where he is right, he has not an equal since 
the Apostles ; where he is in the wrong, no man has 
erred more shamefully.” (Dialog., 1, 3.) All agree 
that he was a man of an active and powerful mind, 
and of fervent piety ; fond of investigating truth, and 
free from all mean prejudices, of the most profound 
learning, and the most untiring industry. His whole 
life was occupied in writing, teaching, and especially 
in explaining the Scriptures. No man, certainly none 
in ancient times, did more to settle the true text of 
the sacred writings, and to spread them among the 
people ; and yet few, perhaps, have introduced more 
dangerous principles into their interpretation. For, 
whether from a defect in judgment or from a fault in 
his education, he applied to the Scriptures the allegor¬ 
ical method which the Platonists used in interpreting 
the heathen mythology. He says himself, “ that the 
source of many evils lies in adhering to the carnal or 
external part of Scripture. Those who do so shall 
not attain the kingdom of God. Let us therefore seek 
after the spirit and the substantial fruit of the word, 
which are hidden and mysterious.” And, again, “ the 
Scriptures are of little use to those who understand 
them as they are written.”—In the fourth century, the 
writings of Origen led to violent controversies in the 
Church. Epiphanius, in a letter preserved by Jerome, 
enumerates eight erroneous opinions as contained in 
his works. He is charged with holding heretical no¬ 
tions concerning the Son and the Holy Spirit; with 
maintaining that the human soul is not created with 
the body, but has a previous existence ; that in the 
resurrection the body will not have the same members 
as before; and that future punishments will not be 
eternal, but that both fallen angels and wicked men 
will be restored, at some distant period, to the favour 
of God. ( Hieron. adv. Ruf., lib. 2, vol. 4, p. 403.) 
These opinions were not generally held by his follow¬ 
ers, who maintained that the passages from which they 
had been drawn had been interpolated in his writings 
by heretics. In 401, Theophilus, bishop of Alexan¬ 
dra, held a synod, in which Origen and his followers 
were condemned, and the reading of his works was 
prohibited ; and the monks, most of whom were Ori- 
genists, were driven out of Alexandrea. His opin¬ 
ions were again condemned by the second general 
council of Constantinople, in A.D. 553. — We will 
now proceed to give a more particular account of the 
several works of this father, as far as they have come 
down to us, or are known from the statements of other 
writers. 1. ITept ’Apxtiv (“ On First Principles' 1 '). 
This work was divided into four books ; but we pos¬ 
sess only a short notice of it in the Myriobiblon of 
Photius (Cod., 8), an extract in Eusebius (contra Mar¬ 
cell. Ancyran., lib. 1), and some fragments in the Phi- 
localia. Rufinus made a Latin translation of the work 
in the fourth century, which has reached us ; but he 
has, by his own confession, added so much to Origen’s 
work, that it cannot be taken as a fair exhibition of his 
opinions. In the first book, Origen treats of God : 
he explains in it also his views with regard to the 
Trinity, which are in accordance with the principles 
of the Platonic school; and it is in this particularly that 
936 


he deviates from the path pointed out by the church, 
though it must be confessed that she had not yet ex¬ 
pressed herself as clearly in relation to this fundamen¬ 
tal doctrine as she subsequently did at the Council of 
Nice. In this same book Origen starts the strange 
idea that the stars are animated bodies. In the sec¬ 
ond book he discusses the origin of the world, which, 
like the Platonists, he regards as having been created 
from all eternity ; the incarnation of the Son of God ; 
the nature of the soul, which he assigns also to the 
brute creation ; the resurrection of the dead, and eter¬ 
nal life. The third book treats of Free Agency ; 
Demons or Evil Spirits, and the various ways in which 
men are tempted by them. The fourth book is devo¬ 
ted to the Interpretation of the Bible.—2. QDiOooqov- 
peva (“ Doctrines of the Philosophers"). This is 
properly the first book of a work entitled Kara tt aouv 
alpeoeuv f/l eyxog (“ Refutation of all sects"), and 
consisting of two books. In it Origen briefly explains 
the doctrines of the different Greek schools of philos¬ 
ophy, and the second book was devoted to their refu¬ 
tation. There is some doubt, however, whether Ori¬ 
gen was actually the author of it.—3. ■ Commentaries 
on the Old and New Testaments, the greater part of 
which, however, is now lost. In these Commentaries 
Origen gave full scope to his learning and imagination, 
in what appeared to him to be the historical, literal, 
mystical, and moral sense of the Bible. His grand 
fault, as we have already remarked, is that of allego¬ 
rizing the Scriptures too much ; and this method of 
interpretation he adopted from the Alexandrine philos¬ 
ophers, in the hope of establishing a union between 
heathen philosophy and Christian doctrine. His fun¬ 
damental canon of criticism was, that, wherever the 
literal sense of Scripture was not obvious or not 
clearly consistent with his peculiar tenets, the words 
were to be understood in a spiritual and mystical 
sense ; a rule by which he could easily incorporate 
any fancies, whether original or borrowed, with the 
Christian creed.—4. Scholia, or short notes explana¬ 
tory of difficult passages of Scripture. Of these some 
extracts only are preserved in the collection made by 
Gregory Nazianzen and Basil the Great, entitled Phi- 
localia. —5. Homilies, or familiar sermons, in which he 
addressed himself to the capacities of the people.—6. 
Hexapla ('E^airTid). The great use which had been 
made by the Jews of the Septuagint, previously to 
their rejection of it, and the constant use of it by the 
Christians, naturally caused a multiplication of cop¬ 
ies ; in which, besides the alterations designedly 
made by the Jews, numerous errors became intro¬ 
duced, in the course of time, from the negligence or 
inaccuracy of transcribers, and from glosses or mar¬ 
ginal notes, which had been added for the explana¬ 
tion of difficult words, being suffered to creep into 
the text. In order to remedy this growdng evil, Ori¬ 
gen, in the early part of the third century, undertook 
the laborious task of collating the Greek text then in 
use with the original Hebrew, and with the other trans¬ 
lations then in existence, and from the whole to pro¬ 
duce a new recension or revisal. Twenty-eight years 
were devoted to the preparation of this arduous task, 
in the course of which he collected manuscripts from 
every possible quarter, aided by the pecuniary liberality 
of Ambrose. Origen commenced, as has already been 
stated, his labour at Caesarea, and, it appears, finished 
his Polyglott at Tyre, but in what year is not precise¬ 
ly known. This noble critical work is designated by 
various names among ancient writers ; as Tetrapla, 
Hexapla, Octapl-a , and Enneapla. The Tetrapla con¬ 
tained the four Greek versions of Aquila, Symmachus. 
the Septuagint, and Theodotion, disposed in four col¬ 
umns ; to these Origen added two columns more, con¬ 
taining the Hebrew text in its original characters, and 
also in Greek letters ; these six columns, according 
to Epiphanius, formed the Hexapla. Having subse- 



ORIGENES. 


0 R I 


quently discovered two other Greek versions of some 
parts of the Scriptures, usually called the fifth and 
sixth, he added them to the preceding, inserting them 
in their respective places, and thus composed the Oc- 
tapla, containing eight columns. A separate transla¬ 
tion of the Psalms, usually called the seventh version, 
being afterward added, the entire work has by some 
been termed the Enneapla. This last appellation, 
however, was never generally adopted. But, as the 
two editions made by Origen generally bore the name 
of the Tetrapla and Hexapla, Grabe thinks that they 
were thus called, not from the number of the columns, 
but of the versions, which were six, the seventh con¬ 
taining the Psalms only. Bauer, after Montfaucon, is 
of opinion that Origen edited only the Tetrapla and 
Hexapla; and this appears to be the real fact.—The 
original Hebrew being regarded as the basis of the 
whole work, the proximity of each translation to the 
text, in point of closeness and fidelity, determined its 
rank in the order of the columns ; thus, Aquila’s ver¬ 
sion, being the most faithful, is placed next to the sa¬ 
cred text; that of Symmachus occupies the fourth 
column ; the Septuagint the fifth ; and Theodotion’s 
the sixth. The other three anonymous translations, 
not containing the entire books of the Old Testament, 
were placed in the last three columns of the Enneapla, 
according to the order of time in which they were dis¬ 
covered by Origen. In the Pentateuch, Origen com¬ 
pared the Samaritan text with the Hebrew as received 
by the Jews, and noted their differences. To each of 
the translations inserted in this Hexapla was prefixed 
an account of the author; each had its separate pro¬ 
legomena ; and the ample margins were filled with 
notes. A few fragments of these prolegomena and 
marginal annotations have been preserved, but nothing 
remains of his history of the Greek versions. Mont¬ 
faucon supposes that the Hexapla must have made 
fifty large folio volumes. During nearly half a cen¬ 
tury this great work remained buried, as it were, in 
a corner of the city of Tyre, probably because the 
expense of procuring a copy exceeded the means of 
any single individual. It would, no doubt, have per¬ 
ished there, had not Eusebius and Pamphilus restored 
it to the light, and placed it in the library of the lat¬ 
ter at Caesarea. It may be doubted whether a copy 
of the original work was ever made. St. Jerome saw 
it still at Caesarea, but as no writer makes mention 
of it after his time, it is probable that it perished in 
653 A.D., when Caesarea was taken by the Arabi¬ 
ans.—To repair as much as possible the loss of the 
Hexapla of Origen, various scholars have occupied 
themselves, in modern times, with the care of restoring 
it. The first that undertook this task was Flaminio 
Nobili, in the notes to his edition of the Septuagint 
( Romre , 1587) ; and after him Drusius, in his Frag- 
menta veterum interpretum (Arnh., 1622). With 
these materials, and with the aid of manuscripts, 
Montfaucon arranged his Hexapla Origenis, which 
were printed in 2 vols. folio, at Paris, in 1713, and 
were reprinted by Bahrdt ( Lips., 2 vols. 8vo., 1769). 
It is thought, however, that the learned Benedictine 
was not sufficiently well acquainted with Hebrew, and 
that he was deficient in critical acumen.—7. The last 
work of Origen’s deserving of mention is his Reply to 
Celsus. This philosopher, a member of the Epicu¬ 
rean sect, had composed, under the Emperor Hadrian, 
a work against Christianity, replete with calumny and 
falsehood. ( Vid. Celsus II.) At the instance of his 
friend Ambrose, Origen undertook to reply to it, and 
triumphantly succeeded.—The best edition of Origen’s 
works is that of De la Rue, Paris, 1733-59, 4 vols. 
fob, reprinted by Oberthur, at Wurceburg, in 15 vols. 
8vo, 1780 and following years. The best edition of 
the commentaries separately is that of Huet, Rotom., 
1668, 2 vols. fol. The Scholia were published by 
themselves in 1618, Paris, 4to. (Horne's Introduc- 
6 C 


tion, vol. 2, p. 172, scqq. — Id. ibid., vol. 2, p. 742. 
— Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 3, p. 451, scqq. —Id. 
ibid., vol. 5, p. 223, seqq. — Biogr. Univ., vol. 32, p. 
71, scqq. — Montefalc., Pralim. in Hex. Ong.) 

Orion (’tiptuv), a celebrated giant, was said by 
one legend to have been the son of Neptune and Eu- 
ryale. His father, according to this same .account, 
gave him the power of wading through the depths of 
the sea, or, as others say, of walking on its surface. 
(Hesiod ap. Schol. ad Nicandr., Ther., 15.) He 
married Side, whom Juno cast into Erebus for con¬ 
tending with her in beauty. (Apollod., 1, 4, 3.) An¬ 
other and more common account makes Hyria, a town 
ofBoeotia, to have been the birthplace of Orion, and the 
story of his origin is told as follows : As Jupiter, Nep¬ 
tune, and Mercury were one time taking a ramble upon 
earth, they came, late in the evening, to the house of a 
farmer named Hyrieus. Seeing the wayfarers. Hy- 
rieus, who was standing at his door, invited them to 
enter, and pass the night in his humble abode. The 
gods accepted the kind invitation, and were hospitably 
entertained. Pleased with their host, they inquired if 
he had any wish which he desired to have gratified. 
Hyrieus replied, that he once had a wife whom he 
tenderly loved, and that he had sworn never to marry 
another. She was dead : he w r as childless : his vow 
was binding : and yet he was desirous of being a father. 
The gods took the hide of his only ox, which he, on 
discovering their true nature, had sacrificed in their 
honour : they buried it in the earth ; and ten months 
afterward a boy came to light, whom Hyrieus named 
Urion or Orion (a7ro rov ovpelv. — Euphorion ap. 
Schol. ad II., 18, 1, 86.— Ovid, Fast., 5, 495, seqq. — 
Hygm., Fab., 195.— Id., Poet. Astron., 2, 34). This 
unseemly legend owes its origin to the name Orion, and 
was the invention of the Athenians. (Miiller, Or- 
chom., p. 99.) In Hyginus, Hyrieus is Byrseus (from 
the hide, fdvpoa). —When Orion grew up, he went, 
according to this same account, to the island of Chios, 
where he became enamoured of Merope, the daughter 
of CEnopion, son of Bacchus and Ariadne. He sought 
her in marriage ; but, while wooing, seized a favour¬ 
able opportunity, and offered her violence. Her fa¬ 
ther, incensed at this conduct, and having made Orion 
drunk, blinded him, and cast him on the seashore. 
The blinded hero contrived to reach Lemnos, and 
came to the forge of Vulcan, who, taking pity on him, 
gave him Kedalion (Guardian), one of his men, to be 
his guide to the abode of the Sun. Placing Kedalion 
on his shoulder, Orion proceeded to the East; and 
there meeting the Sun-god, was restored to vision by 
his beams. Anxious for revenge on CEnopion, he re¬ 
turned to Chios ; but the Chians, aware of his in¬ 
tention, concealed the object of his search under the 
ground, and Orion, unable to find him, returned to Crete. 
(Hesiod, l. c. — Apollod., 1. c. — Hygin., 1. c.) — The 
death of Orion is variously related. As all the legends 
relating to him are evidently later than the time of 
Homer, none ventures to assign any other cause to it 
than the goddess Diana, whose wrath (though Homer 
rather says the contrary) he drew on himself. Some 
said that he attempted to offer violence to the goddess 
herself; others to Opis, one of her Hyperborean maid¬ 
ens, and that Diana slew him with her arrows ; others, 
again, that it was for presuming to challenge the god¬ 
dess at the discus. It was also said that, when he 
came to Crete, he boasted to Latona and Diana that 
he was able to kill anything that would come from the 
earth. Indignant at his boast, they sent a scorpion, 
which stung him, and he died. It was said finally 
that Diana loved Orion, and was even about to marry 
him. Her brother was highly displeased, and often 
chid her, but to no purpose. At length, observing one 
day Orion wading through the sea with his head just 
above the waters, he pointed it out to his sister, and 
maintained that she could not hit that black thing on 

937 






ORM 


ORO 


the sea. The archer-goddess discharged a shaft: the 
waves rolled the dead body of Orion to the land ; and, 
bewailing her fatal error with many tears, Diana placed 
him among the stars.—The hero Orion is not mention¬ 
ed in the Iliad; but in the Odyssey (5, 121) we are 
told by Calypso, that rosy-fingered Aurora took him, 
and that Diana slew him with her gentle darts in Or- 
tygia. In another place his size and beauty are praised. 
(Od., 11, 309.— Keightley's Mythology , p. 461, seqq.) \ 
—The constellation of Orion, which represents a man | 
of gigantic stature wielding a sword, is mentioned as 
early as the time of Homer and Hesiod (II., 17, 486. 

Op. et D., 589, 615, 619). Both poets, in alluding j 
to it, use the expression odevoq ’Qp'uovoq, “ the strength 
of Orion' 1 ' 1 (i. e., the strong or powerful Orion), analo¬ 
gous to the jliy 'H paKkuy. We must connect, there¬ 
fore, with the idea of Orion, as represented on the ce¬ 
lestial planisphere, that of a powerful warrior, armed 
with his “ goldep sword,” or, as Aratus expresses it, 

£ i(j)eoc . . . i<jn ttstt oiOuq (v, 588). So, too, the Ara¬ 
bic name for this constellation, namely, El-dschebbar, 
means the “ Giant," the “ Hero." According to Butt- 
man, the form Oarion (’Qapiov, Find., Isth., 3, 67) 
is earlier than Orion, and the letter 0 itself has arisen 
from a peculiar mode of pronouncing the digamma, 
which is known to have had a sound resembling our 
wh or w. The name Fapiov, therefore, will be de¬ 
rived from Ydpyq or ’'A pyq, and signify “ a warrior .” 
Indeed, the English term Warrior is almost identical 
in form with the Greek ’O apiov, and the word War 
connects itself as plainly with the root of F ap-yq or 
Mars. It is worthy of remark, too, that the constella¬ 
tion Orion was called by the Boeotians Kavddav, a de¬ 
rivative in all likelihood of K avddoq, a name given to 
the god Mars. ( Lycophr ., 328.— Tzetz., ad loc. — Ly- 
cophr., 938.)—That part of the legend, also, which re¬ 
lates to the ox’s hide, is explained by the same eminent 
scholar, on the supposition of some resemblance hav¬ 
ing been discovered between the position of the stars 
in this constellation and the hide of an ox. Thus the 
four stars, a, /3, y, k, will indicate the four extremities 
or corners, and the feebler stars, which now form the 
head, will represent the neck. In the same way, the 
three brilliant stars in the middle may have suggested 
the idea of the three deities, Jupiter, Neptune, and 
Mercury. (Buttmann, Anmerk. — Idelcr, Sternnamen, 
p. 331.)—The cosmical setting of Orion, which took 
place towards the end of Autumn, was always ac¬ 
companied with rain and wind. Hence the south 
wind is called by Horace “ the rapid companion of the 
setting Orion” (Od., 1, 28, 21), and Orion himself as 
“ fraught with harm to mariners.” (Epod., 15, 7.— 
Compare Od., 3, 27, 18.— Virg., JEn., 1, 535.— Id. 
ih., 4, 52.)—Frorirthe view which has here been taken 
of the origin of the name Orion, it will be seen at 
once how erroneous is the etymology assigned by Isi- 
dorus, when he says, “ Orion dictus ab urina, id est 
ab inundatione aquarian. Tempore enim liiemis obor- 
tus, mare et terras aquis et tempestatibus turbat." 
(Orig., 3, 70.) There is also another error here. It 
was not the rising, but the cosmical setting, of the 
constellation which brought stormy weather. (Ideler, 
Sternnamen, p. 219.) 

Orithyia (four syllables), a daughter of Erechtheus, 
king of Athens, by Praxithea. She was carried off by 
Boreas, the god of the northern wind. ( Vid. Boreas.) 

Ormenium, a city of Thessaly, in the district of 
Magnesia, near the shores of the Sinus Pelasgicus, and 
southeast of Demetrias. It is noticed by Homer, in 
the catalogue of the ships, as belonging to Eurypy- 
lus. (II., 2, 734.) According to Demetrius of Scep¬ 
sis, it was the birthplace of Phoenix, the preceptor of 
Achilles. (Strabo, 438. — Eustath. ad U., p. 762.) 
Strabo affirms, that in his time it was called Ormini- 
um ; and that it contributed, with many of the neigh¬ 
bouring towns, to the rise and prosperity of the city of 
938 


Demetrias, from which it was distant only twenty- 
ggyg^j stadia. In Diodorus Siculus it is said that Cas¬ 
sandra had wished to remove the inhabitants of Or- 
chomenus and Dium to Jhebes of I htliia, but was 
prevented by the arrival of Demetrius Poliorcetes. 
As there was no Thessalian city named Orchomenus, 
it is very likely that we ought to read Ormenium in 
the passage here referred to (Diod. Sic., 4, 37. Con¬ 
sult Wesseling, ad loc.). The modern Goritza ap¬ 
pears to occupy the site of the ancient city. (Cra¬ 
mer's Ancient Greece, vol. 1, p. 427.) 

Orne^e, a city of Argolis, northwest of Nemea, 
and near the confines of the country. It was situate on 
or near a river of the same name. Pausanias reports, 
that this place was founded by Orneus, son of Erech¬ 
theus (2, 25). The Orneatas were originally inde¬ 
pendent of Argos ; but, in process of time, having 
been conquered by their more powerful neighbours, 
from Ionians they became Dorians, as Herodotus in¬ 
forms us (8, 73). But we may observe that, accord¬ 
ing to Homer (Iliad, 2, 569, seqq.), this place was 
held in subjection by the sovereigns of Mycenae as 
early as the time of the Trojan war. Thucydides 
writes, that Orneai was destroyed by the Argives in 
the sixteenth year of the Peloponnesian war, after it 
had been abandoned by its inhabitants (6, 7). Strabo 
seems to acknowledge two towns of this name, as¬ 
signing one to Argolis, and the other to Corinthia or 
Sicyonia ; but in regard to this fact he was probably 
mistaken. In his time Orneas was deserted. No 
modern traveller appears to have discovered the ruins 
of this ancient city; Fourmont, however, whose au¬ 
thority is very dubious, affirmed that the site was in 
his time still known by the name of Ornica. (Voy¬ 
age manuscript, cited by Pouqueville, vol. 5, p. 297. 
— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 283, seqq.) 

Orodes, king of Parthia. He was on the throne 
when Crassus undertook his ill-starred expedition 
against that country. (Vid. Parthia.) 

Orcetes, a Persian governor of Sardis, notorious 
for his cruel murder of Polycrates. He was put to 
death, B.C. 521, by order of Darius Hystaspis, on 
account of various offences committed by him, more 
particularly for having destroyed Mitrobates, governor 
of Daschylium, and his son Cranapes, and for having 
put to death a royal messenger. Historians are not 
quite agreed about the name of this man. He is call¬ 
ed by some Orontes. (Herod., 3, 120, seqq.) 

Orontes, a river of Syria, rising on the eastern side 
of the range of Libanus, and, after pursuing a norther¬ 
ly course, falling into the Mediterranean about six 
leagues below Antiochia. It was called Orontes, ac¬ 
cording to Strabo, from the person who first built a 
bridge over it, its previous name having been Typhon. 
(Strab., 758, seqq.) This name it received from a 
dragon, which, having been struck with a thunderbolt, 
sought in its flight a place of concealment by breaking 
through the surface of the earth, from which aperture 
the river broke forth, so that, according to this state¬ 
ment, it pursued a part of its course at first under¬ 
ground. This, however, is a mere fable. Typhon 
was probably a fanciful appellation given to it by the 
Greeks, since it is altogether different from the Syriac 
term which the natives now apply to it, namely, El 
Aasi, or, “ the Obstinate,” in reference to its only irri¬ 
gating the neighbouring fields through compulsion, as it 
were, and by the agency of machines (Abulfeda, Tab. 
Syr., ed. Kohler, p. 150). This name, no doubt, was 
also given to it by the Syrians of former days, since 
from it the Greeks appeared to have formed their other 
name for this river, viz., the Axius. Scylax calls the 
stream Thapsacus. The Orontes is a large river in 
winter, on account of the accession to its waters from 
the rain and melted snows, but it is a very small stream 
in summer. (Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 1, p. 446, 
seqq.) 








0110 


ORJP 


Oropus, I. a city on the confines of Boeotia and At¬ 
tica, on the lower bank of the Asopus, and not far 
from its mouth. The possession of this place was 
long the object of eager contest between the Boeotians 
and the Athenians. There is little doubt but that the 
former could prove priority of possession ; but, as the 
Athenians were anxious to enlarge their territory at 
the expense of their Boeotian neighbours, and to make 
(as all nations have been anxious to do) a river (the 
Asopus) their boundary, and also to secure their com¬ 
munication with Euboea, they used their rising pow¬ 
er to appropriate this place to themselves. ( Bloomf'. 
ad Thucyd., 2, 23.) In the Peloponnesian war we 
find it occupied by the Athenians; but, towards the 
close of that contest, we hear of the city being sur¬ 
prised by the Boeotians, who retained possession of it 
for many years. {Thucyd., 8, 60.) In consequence 
of a sedition which occurred there, the Thebans chan¬ 
ged the site of the place, and removed it about seven 
stadia from the sea. {Diod. Sic., 14, 17.) After the 
overthrow of Thebes, Oropus was ceded to the Athe¬ 
nians by Alexander. Hence Livy, Pausanias, and 
Pliny place the town in Attica. Dicaearchus and 
Stephanus, on the other hand, ascribe it to Boeotia. 
Diccearchus {Stat. Gr., p. 11) styles Oropus “the 
dwelling-house of Thebes, the traffic of retail venders, 
the unsurpassable avarice of excisemen versed in ex¬ 
cess of wickedness for ages, ever imposing duties on 
imported goods. The generality are rough in their 
manners, but courteous to those who are shrewd; they 
are repulsive to the Boeotians, but the Athenians are 
Boeotians.” The meaning of this last passage is per¬ 
haps this, that the Athenians on this border were so 
much mixed with the Boeotians as to have lost their 
Usual characteristics for acuteness and intelligence. 
“ Oropus,” says Dodwell, “ is now called Ropo, and 
contains only few and imperfect ruins” (vol. 2, p. 156. 
— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 272).—II. A city 
of Macedonia, mentioned by Stephanus (p. 770), but 
otherwise unknown.—III. A city in the island of Eu¬ 
boea. ( Arum. Marcell., 30, 4.— Steph. Byz., p. 770.) 

Orosius, Paulus, a presbyter of the Spanish Church, 
and a native of Hispania Tarraconensis, who flourished 
about the beginning of the fifth century, under Arca- 
dius and Honorius. The invasion of his country by 
the barbarians, and the troubles excited by the Priscilli- 
anistae, a sect of the Gnostics or Manichaeans, caused 
him, about A.D. 414, to betake himself to St. Augus¬ 
tin in Africa, who afterward sent him to St. Jerome. 
The latter prelate was then in Palestine. Orosius act¬ 
ed in this country the part of a turbulent man, and em¬ 
broiled St. Jerome with Pelagius and John of Jerusa¬ 
lem. He wrote also a treatise against Pelagius, who 
was at that time spreading his opinions concerning 
original sin and grace. The title of this production 
is “ Liber Apologeticus contra Pelagium, de Arbitrii li- 
bertale .” The treatise is annexed to the “ History” 
of Orosius. From Palestine he returned to Hippo 
Regius in Africa, to his friend St. Augustin, and thence 
to Spain. The calamities which had befallen the Ro¬ 
man empire, and, above all, the capture and pillage of 
Rome by Alaric (A.D. 410), afforded to the heathens, 
and to Symmachus among the rest, a pretence for ac¬ 
cusing the Christian religion of being the cause of all 
these disasters, and of saying that, since the abandon¬ 
ment of the old religion of the state, victory had utter¬ 
ly forsaken the Roman arms. To refute this charge, 
Orosius, at the advice of St. Augustin, composed a 
history, in which he undertook to show that ever since 
the creation, which he dated back 5618 years, the hab¬ 
itable world had been the theatre of the greatest ca¬ 
lamities. The work consists of seven books, divided 
into chapters. It begins with a geographical descrip¬ 
tion of the world, then treats of the origin of the hu¬ 
man race according to the book of Genesis, and after- ! 
ward relates the various accounts of the mythologists , 


and poets concerning the heroic ages. Then follow's 
the history of the early monarchies, the Assyrian, Bab- ^ 
ylonian, and Persian, the conquests of Alexander, and 
the wars of his successors, as well as the early his¬ 
tory of Rome, the contents being chiefly taken from 
Trogus Pompeius, and his abridger Justin. The fourth 
book contains' the history of Rome from the wars of 
Pyrrhus to the fall of Carthage. The fifth book com¬ 
prises the period from the taking of Corinth to the wai- 
of Spartacus. Orosius quotes among his authorities 
several works which are now lost. The narrative in 
the sixth book begins with the war of Sylla against 
Mithradates, and ends with the birth of our Saviour. 
The seventh book contains the history of the empire 
till A.D. 416, including a narrative of the capture and 
sack of Rome by Alaric, which was the great event of 
the age. Orosius intermingles with his narrative mor¬ 
al reflections, and sometimes whole chapters of advice 
and consolation, addressed to his Christian brethren, 
and intended to confirm their faith amid the calamities 
of the times, which, however heavy, were not, as he 
asserts, unprecedented. The Romans, he says, in 
their conquests, had inflicted equal, if not greater, 
wrongs on other countries. His tone is that of a 
Christian moralist, impressed with the notions of jus¬ 
tice, retribution, and humanity, in which the heathen 
historians show themselves so deficient. As an his¬ 
torical writer, Orosius shows considerable critical 
judgment in general, though in particular passages he 
appears quite credulous, as in chapter 10th of the first 
book, where he relates from report, that the marks of 
the chariot-wheels of Pharaoh’s host are still visible at 
the bottom of the Red Sea.—As an instance of the in¬ 
cidental value of the passages taken by Orosius from 
older writers, consult Savigny {Das Recht des Besitzcs, 
p. 176). King Alfred made a free translation of the 
History of Orosius into the Anglo-Saxon language, 
which was published by Daines Barrington, with an 
English version, London , 1773, 8vo. The work of 
Orosius, in some MSS., is entitled “ Adversus Pa- 
ganos Historiarum libri vii.” In others it is called 
“ De totius Mundi Calamitatibus ;” in others, again, 

“ De Cladibus et Miseriis Antiquorum." The most 
singular title, however, given by some MSS., is u Hor- 
mesta" or “ Ormesta .” The general opinion is, that 
this has arisen from a mistake made by some old copy¬ 
ist. The true title, in all probability, was Pauli Oro- 
sii moesta mundi, from which, by abbreviation, was 
first made Pauli Or. moesta mundi, and finally Pauli 
Ormesta, or simply Ormesta. {Withof., Relat., Duis- 
bicrg,' 1762, N. 47, 52.)—One of the best editions of 
Orosius is that of Havercamp, Lugd. Bat., 1738, 4to. 
{Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 17, p. 36.— Scholl, Hist. 
Lit. Rom., vol. 3, p. 170.— Bahr, Gesch. Rom. Lit., 
vol. 1, p. 477.) 

Orospeda. Vid. Ortospeda. 

Orpheus (two syllables), a poet, musician, and phi¬ 
losopher, whose name is very prominent in the early 
legends of Greece. The traditions respecting him are 
remarkably obscure. According to Cicero {N. D., 1, 
38), Aristotle believed that no such person as Orpheus 
the poet had ever existed ; but perhaps he only means 
that the poems ascribed to him were spurious. Or¬ 
pheus is mentioned as a real person by several of the 
ancient Greek writers, namely, by the lyric poets Iby- 
cus and Pindar, the historians Hellanicus and Phere- 
cydes, and the Athenian tragedians : he is not men¬ 
tioned by Homer or Hesiod. Some ancient writers 
reckon several persons of this name, and Herodotus 
speaks of two. In later times a number of marvellous 
stories were connected with his name.—The following 
is the legendary history of Orpheus. His native coun¬ 
try was Thrace. It is a remarkable fact, that most of 
the traditions respecting Greek civilization are con¬ 
nected with the Thracians, who in later times spoke a 
language unintelligible to the Greeks, and were looked 



ORPHEUS. 


ORPHEUS. 


upon by them as barbarians. Muller explains this by 
pointing out that the Thracians of these legends were 
not the same people as those of the historical period, 
but a Greek race who lived in the district called Pie- 
ria, to the east of the Olympus-range, to the north of 
Thessaly, and to the south of Emathia or Macedonia. 

( Miiller, Hist. Gr. Lit., p. 26.) The time at which 
Orpheus lived is placed by all writers not long before 
the Trojan war, and by most at the period of the Argo- 
nautic expedition, about twelve or thirteen centuries 
before our era. He was said to have been the son of 
Apollo and the muse Calliope, or, according to an¬ 
other account, of Oeagrus and a muse. The poets 
represent him as a King of Thrace, but the historians 
are generally silent about his station. According to 
Clemens of Alexandrea he was the disciple of Musseus, 
but the more common accounts make him his teacher. 
He was one of the Argonauts, to whom he rendered 
the greatest service by his skill in music; the en¬ 
chanting tones of his lyre made the Argo move into 
the water, delivered the heroes from many difficulties 
and dangers while on the voyage, and mainly contrib¬ 
uted to their success in obtaining the golden fleece. 
After the voyage, Orpheus returned to the cavern in 
Thrace in which he commonly dwelt. He is said by 
some authors to have made a voyage to Egypt before 
the Argonautic expedition.—The skill with which Or¬ 
pheus struck the lyre was fabled to have been such as 
to move the very trees and rocks, and the beasts of the 
forest assembled round him as he touched its chords. 
He had for his wife a nymph named Eurydice, who 
died from the bite of a serpent, as she was flying from 
Aristseus. Orpheus, disconsolate at her loss, deter¬ 
mined to descend to the lower world, to endeavour to 
mollify its rulers, and obtain permission for his beloved 
Eurydice to return to the regions of light. Armed 
only with his lyre, he entered the realms of Hades, and 
gained an easy admittance to the palace of Pluto. At 
the music of his “ golden shell,” to borrow the beauti¬ 
ful language of ancient poetry, the wheel of Ixion stop¬ 
ped, Tantalus forgot the thirst that tormented him, the 
vulture ceased to prey on the vitals of Tityos, and Plu¬ 
to and Proserpina lent a favouring ear to his prayer. 
Eurydice was allowed to return with him to the upper 
world, but only on condition that Orpheus did not look 
back upon her before they had reached the confines of 
the kingdom of darkness. He broke the condition, and 
she vanished from his sight. His death is differently 
related. The most common account is, that he was 
torn in pieces by the Thracian women, at a Bacchic 
festival, in revenge for the contempt which he had 
shown towards them through his sorrow for the loss of 
Eurydice. ( Apollod ., 1 , 3.— Virg., Georg., 4, 454.) 
His limbs were scattered over the plain, but his head 
was thrown upon the river Hebrus, which bore it down 
to the sea, and the waves then carried it to Lesbos, 
where it was buried. ( Vid. Lesbos.) The Muses col¬ 
lected the fragments of his body and interred them at 
Libethra, and Jupiter, at their prayer, placed his lyre 
in the skies. {Apollod., 1. c. — Apoll. Rhod., 1 , 23.— 
Hermes ap. Athen., 13, p. 597.)—The poets and fab¬ 
ulists have attributed to Orpheus many great improve¬ 
ments in the condition of the human race. Indeed, his 
having moved even animals, and trees, and the flinty 
rocks by the sweetness of his strains, would seem to 
indicate nothing more than his successful exertions in 
civilizing the early race of men. {Horat., Ep. ad 
Pis., 391.) Nearly all the ancient writers state, that 
Orpheus introduced into Greece the doctrines of reli¬ 
gion and the worship of the gods. The foundation of 
mysteries is also ascribed to him. {Aristoph., Ran., 
1030.— Eurip., Rhes., 945.— Plato, Protag., p. 216.) 
Herodotus (2, 91) speaks of Orphic and Bacchic mys¬ 
teries. These mysteries seem to have been different 
from those of Eleusis. The establishment of social in¬ 
stitutions, and the commencement of civilization, are, 
940 


as we have just remarked, attributed to Orpheus. Aris¬ 
tophanes says, that he taught men to abstain from mur¬ 
der. {Ran., 1030.) He is said to have been the au¬ 
thor of many fables. A passage in an epigram, to 
which, however, no authority can be attached, ascribes 
to him the invention of letters. {Fabric., Bib. Grcec., 
vol. 1, p. 173.) The discovery of many things in med¬ 
icine is also assigned to him {Phn., 25, 2), and the re¬ 
call of Eurydice from the lower world is sometimes ex¬ 
plained as referring to his skill in the healing art. He 
was said to have been a soothsayer and an enchanter, 
and he had a famous oracle in Lesbos. A share in the 
invention of the lyre is also ascribed to him : he receiv¬ 
ed it from Apollo with seven strings, and added to it two 
more. According to Plutarch, he was the first that ac¬ 
companied the lyre with singing. The fable that, after 
his death, his head floated to Lesbos, is a poetical mode 
of representing the skill of the natives of that island in 
lyric poetry. Orpheus is said to have embodied his re¬ 
ligious and philosophical opinions in poems, but the 
works ascribed to him are evidently spurious. An ac¬ 
count of these will be found under the article Orphica. 
{Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 17, p. 37.)—It is stated of Or¬ 
pheus, by some ancient authorities, that he abstained 
from the eating of flesh, and had an abhorrence of eggs, 
considered as food, from a persuasion that the egg was 
the principle of all beings. Many other accounts are 
given of him, which would seem to assimilate his char¬ 
acter to that of the early priests of India. The an¬ 
cients, however, unable to discover any mode by which 
he could have obtained his knowledge from any other 
source, pretended that he had visited Egypt, and had 
there been initiated into the mysteries of Isis and 
Osiris. This, however, appears to be a supposition 
purely gratuitous, since a careful examination of the 
subject leads directly to the belief that Orpheus was 
of Hindu origin, and that he was a member of one of 
those sacerdotal colonies which professed the religion 
of Budda, and who, being driven from their homes 
in the northern parts of India and in the plains of Tar¬ 
tary by the superior power of the rival sect of Brah¬ 
ma, moved gradually onward to the west, dispensing in 
their progress the benefits of civilization, and the mys¬ 
teries and tenets of their peculiar faith. There seems 
to be a curious analogy between the name of the poet 
and the old Greek term opcpoc, dark or tawny-colcured 
(compare optyavog, epeSog, orbus, furvus), so that the 
appellation Orpheus may have been derived by the 
early Greeks from his dusky Hindu complexion. The 
death of Eurydice, and the descent of Orpheus to the 
shades for the purpose of effecting her restoration, ap¬ 
pear to be nothing more than an allegorical allusion to 
certain events connected with the religious and moral 
instructions of the bard. It will not, we hope, be 
viewed as too bold an assertion, that such a female as 
Eurydice never existed. The name Eurydice (E vpv- 
diKp) appears to be compounded of the adverbial form 
evpv, or perhaps the adjective evpvg, considered as be¬ 
ing of two terminations {Mattfuce, Gr. Gr., vol. 1, 
<$> 120.— Kiihner, Gr. Gr., vol. 1, p. 353, § 309), and 
the noun diay, and it would seem to be nothing more 
than an appellation for that system of just dealing and 
moral rectitude which Orpheus had introduced among- 
the earlier progenitors of the Grecian race, and the 
foundations of which had been laid broadly and deeply 
by him in the minds of his hearers. According to the 
statements of the ancient mythologists, Aristseus, the 
son of Apollo and the nymph Cyrene, became enam¬ 
oured of Eurydice, the wife of Orpheus, and pursued 
her into a wood, where she ended her days from the 
sting of a serpent.—It has already been stated, in 
another part of this volume {vid. Aristseus), that Aris¬ 
tseus would seem to be in reality an early deity of the 
Greeks, presiding over flocks and herds, over the 
propagation of bees and the rearing of the olive. At 
the same time, we find among the ancient writers the 




ORP 


ORPHICA. 


name of Aristteus connected, in a greater or less de¬ 
gree, with the rites and mysteries of Bacchus. Thus, 
Diodorus Siculus (3, 39) cites a legend, in which 
Aristaeus is mentioned as the instructor or governor 
of the young Bacchus. From the same source (3, 71) 
we are informed, that Aristaeus was the first who sac¬ 
rificed to Bacchus as to a god. Nonnus represents 
him as one of the principal leaders in the expedition of 
Bacchus against India ; ancTin Greece his history is 
connected with that of the time of Cadmus, the found¬ 
er of Thebes, the birthplace of Bacchus in Grecian 
mythology. (Nonni Dionys., 5, p. 153, ed. 1605,8vo.) 
From a view of these and other authorities, it would 
seem that there had been some union effected be¬ 
tween the religious worship of Aristaeus and Bac¬ 
chus. Regarding this latter deity as emblematic of 
the great productive principle, which imparts its ani¬ 
mating and fertilizing influence to everything around, 
it is not difficult to conceive how a union should 
have taken place between this system and that of 
Aristaeus, the god of agriculture and of the flocks. 
Now the religious system introduced by Orpheus, 
though itself connected with the worship of Bacchus, 
was very different from the popular rites of this same 
deity. The Orphic worshippers of Bacchus did not 
indulge in unrestrained pleasure and frantic enthusi¬ 
asm, but rather aimed at an ascetic purity of life and 
manners. The consequence, therefore, would seem to 
have been, that these two systems, the Orphic and the 
popular one, came at last into direct collision, and the 
former was made to succumb. In the figurative lan¬ 
guage of poetry, Aristaeus (the type of the popular sys¬ 
tem) pursues Eurydice (Ei ipy-diny, the darling insti¬ 
tutions of Orpheus), and the venom of the serpent (the 
gross license connected with the popular orgies) occa¬ 
sions her death. Orpheus, say the poets, lamenting 
the loss of his beloved Eurydice, descended in quest 
of her to the shades. The meaning of the legend 
evidently is, that, afflicted at the overthrow of the fa¬ 
vorite system which he had so ardently promulgated, 
and the corruption which had succeeded to his purer 
precepts of moral duty, he endeavoured to reclaim men 
from the sensual indulgences to which they had be¬ 
come attached, by holding up to their view the terrors 
of future punishment in another world. Indeed, that 
he was the first who introduced among the Greeks the 
idea of a future state of rewards and punishments, is 
expressly asserted by ancient authorities. ( Diod. Sic., 
1, 96.— Wesseling, ad Diod., 1. c. — Banier's Mythol¬ 
ogy, vol. 4, p. 159.) The awful threatenings that 
were thus unfolded to their view, and the blissful en¬ 
joyments of an Elysium which were at the same time 
promised to the faithful, succeeded for a time in bring¬ 
ing back men to the purer path of moral rectitude, and 
to a fairer and brighter state of things ; but either the 
impatience of their instructer to see his efforts realized, 
or some act of heedlessness and inattention on his 
part, frustrated all his hopes, and mankind relapsed 
once more into moral darkness. In the fanciful phra¬ 
seology of the poet, the doctrine of a future state of 
punishment, as taught by Orpheus, was converted into 
his descent to the shades. His endeavour to re-es¬ 
tablish by these means the moral system which he had 
originally promulgated, became, to the eye of the ear¬ 
lier bard, an impassioned search, even amid the dark¬ 
ness of the lower world, for the lost object of conjugal 
affection ; and by the tones of the lyre, which bent even 
Pluto and Proserpina to his will, appear to be indicated 
those sweet and moying accents of moral harmony, 
in which were described the joys of Elysium, and 
whose power would be acknowledged even by those 
whom the terrors of punishment could not intimidate. 

Orphica, certain works falsely ascribed to Orpheus, 
which imbodied the opinions of a class of persons 
termed ’Opcpucoi. These were the followers of Or¬ 
pheus, that is to say, associations of persons who, under I 


the guidance of the ancient mystical poet Orpheus, 
dedicated themselves to the worship of Bacchus, in 
which they hoped to find the gratification of an ardent 
longing after the soothing and elevating influence of re¬ 
ligion. The Bacchus, to whose worship those Orphic 
rites (tu ’Optyuiu. KaTieopeva ual Banxind, Iicrod, 2, 
81) were annexed, was the Chthonian deity, Bacchus 
or Dionysus Zagreus, closely connected with Ceres 
and Proserpina, and who was the personified expres¬ 
sion, not only of the most rapturous pleasure, but also 
of a deep sorrow for the miseries of human life. The 
Orphic legends and poems related in great part to this 
same Bacchus, who was combined, as an infernal deity, 
with Pluto or Hades (a doctrine given by the philoso¬ 
pher Heraclitus as the opinion of a particular sect), 
and upon whom the Orphic theologers founded their 
hopes of the purification and ultimate immortality of 
the soul. But their mode of celebrating this worship 
was very different from the popular rites of Bacchus. 
The Orphic worshippers of Bacchus did not indulge 
in unrestrained pleasure and frantic enthusiasm, but 
rather aimed at an ascetic purity of life and manners. 
The followers of Orpheus, when they had tasted the 
mystic sacrificial feast of raw flesh torn from the ox 
of Bacchus (djuo^ayia), partook of no other animal 
food. They wore also white linen garments, like 
Oriental and Egyptian priests. ( Muller, Hist. Lit. 
Gr., p. 231, seqq .)—Of the Orphic writers, the most 
celebrated are, Onomacritus, who lived under Pisis- 
tratus and his sons, and Cercops, a Pythagorean, who 
lived about B.C. 504. Works ascribed to Orpheus 
were extant at a very early period. Plato mentions 
several kinds of Orphic poems ; but he intimates that 
they are not genuine. Aristotle speaks of them as 
the so-called (ra naXovpeva) Orphic poems. In later 
times, all manner of works on mysteries and religion 
were ascribed to him. There are also Orphic poems 
later than the Christian era, which are difficult to be 
distinguished from those of earlier times.—The wri¬ 
tings ascribed to Orpheus, and which have reached our 
times, are as follows : 1. Hymns ( T T pvot), eighty-eight 
in number. They are in hexameter verse, and were 
most of them, as is thought, composed by Onomacri¬ 
tus.—2. An historical or epic poem on the Expedition 
of the Argonauts (’Apyovavrind), in 1384 verses, prob¬ 
ably by Onomacritus ; at least, by some one not earlier 
than Homer.—3. A work on the Magical virtues of 
Stones (nepc Acduv, or A lOiku), in 768 hexameters, 
showing how they may be used as preservatives against 
poisons, and as a means of conciliating the favour of 
the gods.—4. Fragments of various other works; 
among which is placed a poem of 66 verses, entitled 
7r epl Hcuj/utiv, concerning Earthquakes, that is, of the 
prognostics to be derived from this species of phenom¬ 
ena ; a production sometimes ascribed to the fabulous 
Hermes Trismegistus. Many other fragments of the 
Orphic poems, some in a metrical form, others con¬ 
verted into prose, and scattered throughout the com¬ 
mentary of Proclus on the Cratylus of Plato, were col¬ 
lected from the Munich MSS. by Werfer, and inserted 
in the Philological Transactions of Munich. (Acta 
Philologorum Monacensium, vol. 2, p. 113, seqq .)—• 
Other writings, also ascribed to Orpheus, but which 
have not come down to us, except it be a few scat¬ 
tered fragments of some of them, are the following: 
1. Sacred Legends {'lepol Xoyoc), a complete system 
of Orphic theology, in twenty-four books. It was as¬ 
cribed by some to Cercops and Diognetus, but was 
probably the production of several authors.—2. Proph¬ 
ecies (Xpyogoi). —3. Ba/cji/cu, probably stories relative 
to Bacchus and his mysteries. They were attributed 
by some to Arignotes, a pupil or daughter of Pythag¬ 
oras.—4. The descent to Hades ('H eg AlSov Kard6a- 
aig), a poem of great antiquity, ascribed, among oth¬ 
ers, to Cercops.—5. Religious Rites or Mysteries 
(T e?.erai), directions for worshipping and appeasing 

941 




ORPHICA. 


ORT 


the gods; probably by Onomacritus.—As late as the 
17th century, no qne doubted but that the different 
works which bear the name of Orpheus, or, at least, the 
o-reater part of them, were either the productions of 
Orpheus himself, or of Onomacritus, who was regard¬ 
ed as the restorer of these ancient poems. The learn¬ 
ed Huet was the first who, believing that he had dis¬ 
covered in them traces of Christianity, expressed the 
suspicion that they might be the work of some pious 
impostor. In 1751, when Ruhnken published his sec¬ 
ond critical letter, he attacked the opinion of Huet, 
and placed the composition of the works in question 
in the tenth century before the Christian era. Gesner 
went still farther, and in his Prolegomena Orphica, 
which were read in 1759 at the University of Gottin¬ 
gen, and subsequently placed in Hamberger’s edition 
of Orpheus, published after Gesner’s death, he declared 
that he had found nothing in these poems which pre¬ 
vented the belief that they were composed before the 
period of the Trojan war. He allowed, however, at 
the same time, that they might have been retouched 
by Onomacritus. Gesner found an opponent in the 
celebrated Yalckenaer, who believed the author of the 
poems in question to have belonged to the Alexandre- 
an school. ( Valck. ad Herod., ed. Wcsseling.) In 
1777, Schneider revised and adopted the theory of 
Huet. ( Schneider, de dubia Carm. Orphic, auctoritate 
et vetustate. — Analect. Crit., fasc. 1.) The same 
poems, in which Ruhnken had found a diction almost 
Homeric, and Gesner the simple style of remote an¬ 
tiquity, appeared, to the German professor, the work 
of a later Platonist, initiated into the tenets of Judaism 
and the mysteries of Christianity. His arguments, 
deduced entirely from the style of these productions, 
were strengthened by Thunmann ( Neue philolog. Bib- 
liothek, vol. 4, p. 298), who discovered in these poems 
historical and geographical errors such as could only 
have been committed by a writer subsequent to the 
age of Ptolemy Euergetes. And yet it is singular 
enough, that Mannert, arguing from the acquaintance 
wfith geographical terms displayed by the author of 
these poems, places him between Herodotus and Pyth¬ 
ias. (Geogr., vol. 4, p. 67.) In 1782 Ruhnken pub¬ 
lished a new edition of his critical letter, in which he 
endeavoured to refute the opinion of Schneider, al¬ 
lowing, at the same time, that the position assumed by 
Valckenaer was not an improbable one. The discus¬ 
sion rested here for twenty years, when Schneider, in 
his edition of the Argonautics published in 1803, de¬ 
fended the theory which he had supported in his 
younger days, adding, at the same time, however, 
some modifications ; for he allowed that the author of 
the Argonautics, although comparatively modern, had 
appropriated to himself the style and manner of the 
Alexandrean school. Two years after, Hermann, in 
a memoir annexed to his edition of the Orphica, and 
subsequently in a separate dissertation, supported 
with rare erudition the opinion of Huet, and that which 
Schneider had advanced in 1777. After giving a brief 
account of the state of the controversy, Hermann pro¬ 
ceeds to examine the structure of the Orphic verse. 
He first indicates the progressive modification of the 
hexameter verse, through the series of the epic and 
didactic hexameter writers, pointing out the gradual 
changes which it underwent from the time of Homer 
till it was wholly remodelled by Nonnus. He detects, 
in the hexameters of the Orphic poems, those peculiar¬ 
ities which show, as he thinks, that their author must 
have lived in the fourth century of the Christian era, 
just before the hexameter verse received its last con¬ 
siderable modification under the hands of Nonnus. 
(Vid. Nonnus.) Five German critics, Heyne, Voss, 
Wolf, Huschke, and Konigsmann, opposed the hypoth¬ 
esis of Schneider and Hermann, and declared in favour 
of Valckenaer’s theory. (Foss, Dcdic. der iibcrsetz. 
des Hesiodus. — Id., Rccens. Jen. L. Z., 1805, n. 138. 

942 


— Huschke, de Orphei Argonaut., Rost., 1806, 4to.— 
Konigsmann, Prolus. Crit., 1810, 4to.)—The author¬ 
ity of the grammarian Draco, who cites the Argonaut¬ 
ics of Orpheus, having been strongly urged by Ko- 
nigsmann against Hermann, the latter obtained the 
work of Draco, which until then had remained uned¬ 
ited, from the celebrated Bast, and published it at 
Leipsic in 1812. Draco does, in fact, cite the Argo¬ 
nautics, and his authority is the more entitled to atten¬ 
tion, since Hermann himself has shown that he lived 
before the time of Apollonius Dyscolus, and, conse¬ 
quently, at the beginning of the second century; 
whereas, before this, he had been generally assigned 
to the sixth century. (Compare Tiedemann, Grie- 
chenlands crste Philosophen, Leipz., 1780, 8vo. — 
Gerlach, de Hymnis Orphicis Commentatio, Gbit., 
1797, 8vo.) Hermann, however, has greatly shaken 
the authority of Draco, and leads us to entertain the 
opinion that we possess only an extract of the work, 
augmented by interpolations and marginal glosses that 
have crept into the text. (Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 
1, p. 38, seqq.) It is even probable that the very part 
relating to Orpheus was added by Constantine Lasea- 
ris.—In 1824, a prize dissertation appeared by another 
German scholar, Bode. ( Orpheus Poetarum Graeco¬ 
rum Antiquissimus, Gott., 4to.) Assuming the spu¬ 
riousness of the Orphic poems, the author claims only 
to establish the country, age, and character of the 
poet; and of him, not as one historical personage, but 
only as the representative of a primeval school of 
bards. By a learned and ingenious train of argument, 
he fixes the period of the commencement of the Orphic 
school about the 13th century before the commence¬ 
ment of the Christian era, making it earlier than the 
time of the Homeric poems, which he assigns to the 
10th century.—The best edition of the Orphica is that 
of Hermann, Lips., 1805, 8vo. The edition of Ges¬ 
ner is also a valuable one, Lips., 1764, 8vo. Schaf¬ 
fer published likewise a new edition of the Greek text 
in 1818,12maj., for the use of preelections and schools. 

( Hoffmann, Lex. Bibliog., vol. 3, p. 186.) The Or¬ 
phic fragments are given by Lobeck in his Aglaopha- 
mus, Regiom., 1829, 8vo. 

Orthia, a surname of Diana at Sparta. At her al¬ 
tar boys were scourged during the festival called Di- 
amastigosis (AiagaoTiyucug). The young sufferers 
were called Bomonicse. ( Vid. Bomonicee and Diana.) 

Orthos, the dog that guarded the oxen of Geryon. 
He had two heads, and was sprung from the union of 
Echidna and Typhon. ( Apollod., 2, 5.) 

Ortospeda or Orospeda Mons (Ptolemy giving it 
the former name, and Strabo the latter), a chain of 
mountains in Spain ; properly speaking, a continuation 
of the range of Idubeda. One part terminates, in the 
form of a segment of a circle, on the coast of Murcia 
and Grenada , while two arms are sent off in the di¬ 
rection of Baetica, one of which pursues nearly a 
western direction, and is called Mons Marianus, now 
Sierra Morcna; the other runs more to the south¬ 
west, nearer the coast, and is called Mons Ilipula, now 
Sierra Nevada, ending on the coast at Calpe or Gib¬ 
raltar. ( Mannert, Geogr., vol. 1, p. 406.) 

Ortygia, I. a spot near the port of Ephesus, thickly 
planted with cypresses and other trees, and watered 
by the little river Cenchrius. Latona was said by 
some to have been delivered here of her twins. The 
grove was filled with shrines, and adorned with statues 
by the hand of Scopas and other eminent sculptors. 
(Strab., 639.) According to ^handler (Travels in 
Asia Minor, p. 176), this part of the coast has under¬ 
gone considerable alterations. Ortygia has disappear¬ 
ed, the land having encroached on the sea. (Cra¬ 
mer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 376.)—II. An island in 
the bay of Syracuse, forming one of the five quarters 
of that city. The colonists under Archias first set¬ 
tled here, and afterward extended to Achradina on the 





osc 


OSI 


mainland of Sicily. Ortygia was famed for containing 
the celebrated fount of Arethusa. The earliest men¬ 
tion of this island is found in Hesiod ( Theog., 1013). 
On it is now situate the greater part of modern Syra¬ 
cuse. ( G'oller, de Situ et Orig. Syracus., p. 39, scq.) 
—III. One of the early names of the island of Delos. 
( Vid. Delos.) 

Orus, an Egyptian deity, son of Osiris and Isis. 
( Vid. Horus.) 

Osca, a town of Hispania Baetica, in the territory 
of the Turdetani. According to Mannert, it corre¬ 
sponds to the modern Huesca, in Aragon. ( Geogr., 
vol. 1, p. 410.) Ukert, however, places its site to the 
west of the city. It was in Osca that Sertorius col¬ 
lected together, from the various nations of Spain, the 
children of the nobility, and placed masters over them 
to instruct them in Greek and Roman literature. Plu¬ 
tarch states, that this had the appearance only of an 
education, to prepare them for being admitted citizens 
of Rome; but that the children were, in fact, so many 
hostages. {Vit. Sertor.) 

Osci or Opici, a people of ancient Italy, who seem 
to have been identical with the Ausones or Aurunci, 
and who inhabited the southern part of the peninsula. 
Some ancient writers consider the Ausones to be a 
branch of the Osci; others, as Polybius, have spoken 
of them as distinct tribes, but this appears to be an 
error. The names Opicus and Oscus are undoubtedly 
the same. Aristotle {Polity 7, 10) calls the country 
from the Tiber to the Silarus, Ausonia and Opicia; 
and other ancient writers extended the name much 
farther, to the Straits of Sicily ; but the southern ex¬ 
tremity of the peninsula appears to have been occu¬ 
pied previously by the CEnotrians, a Pelasgic race, 
who were conquered by the Lucanians and Bruttii. 
Cumse, one of the earliest Greek colonies on the coast 
of Italy, was in the country of the Opici. The early 
immigrations of the Illyrians or Liburnians along the 
eastern coast of Italy, drove the aboriginal inhabitants 
from the lowlands into the fastnesses of the central 
Apennines, whence they issued under the various 
names of Sabini, Casci, or Latini veteres. There 
was an ancient tradition in Italy, in the time of the 
historian Dionysius, of a sudden irruption of strangers 
from the opposite coast of the Adriatic, which caused 
a general commotion and dispersion among the abo¬ 
riginal tribes. Afterward came the Hellenic colonies, 
which occupied the whole seacoast from Mount Gar- 
ganus to the extremity of the peninsula, in the first 
and second centuries of Rome ; in consequence of 
which, the population of the southern part of the Ital¬ 
ian peninsula became divided into two races, the tribes 
of Aboriginal or Oscan descent, such as the Sabini, 
Samnites, Lucani, and Bruttii, who remained in pos¬ 
session of the highlands, and the Greek colonists and 
their descendants, who occupied the maritime districts, 
but never gained possession of the upper or Apennine 
regions. Such is the view taken by Micali and other 
Italian writers. But Niebuhr describes the Sabini, 
and their colonies the Samnites, Lucani, and other 
tribes, which the Roman writers called by the general 
name of Sabellians, as a people distinct from the Osci 
or Opici. He says, after Cato and other ancient his¬ 
torians, that the- Sabini issued out of the highlands of 
the central Apennines, near Amiternum, long before 
the epoch of the Trojan war, and, driving before them 
the Cascans nr Prisci Latini, who were an Oscan 
tribe, settled themselves in the country which has to 
this day retained the name of Sabina. Thence they 
sent out numerous colonies, one of which penetrated 
into the land of the Opicans, and became the Samnite 
people ; and afterward the Samnites occupied Cam¬ 
pania, and, mixing themselves with the earlier Oscan 
population, settled there and adopted their language. 
But, farther on, in speaking of the Sabini and Sabel¬ 
lians, Niebuhr admits the probability of their being 


originally a branch of the same stock as the Opici or 
Osci. Micali considers the Sabini, Apuli, Messapii, 
Campani, Aurunci, and Volsci, as all branches of the 
great Oscan family.—The Greeks, being superior to 
the native tribes in refinement and mental cultivation, 
affected to despise them, and they applied to the na¬ 
tive Italian tribes, including the Romans, the epithet. 

“ Opican,” as a word of contempt, to denote barba¬ 
rism both in language and manners {Cato, ap. P/in., 
29, 1); and the later Roman writers themselves 
adopted the expression in the same sense : “ Osce lo- 
qui ” was tantamount to a barbarous way of speaking. 
Juvenal says (3, 207), “ Et divina Opici rodebant car- 
mina mures,” where Opici is equivalent to il barba- 
n;” and Ausonius {Prof., 22, 3) uses “ Opicas char- 
las” in the sense of rude, unpolished compositions. 
The Oscan language -was the parent of the dialects of 
the native tribes from the Tiber to the extremity of 
the peninsula, Sabini, Hernici, Marsi, Samnites, Sidi- 
cini, Lucani, and Bruttii, while in the regions north of 
the Tiber the Etrurian predominated. Livy (10, 20) 
mentions the Oscan as being the language of the Sam¬ 
nites. The older Latin writers, and especially En- / 
nius, have many Oscan words and Oscan terminations. 
The Oscan language continued to be understood at 
Rome down to a later period of the empire, and the 
Fabulce Atellance, which were in the Oscan tongue, 
were highly relished by the great body of the people. 

In the Social war, the Confederates, who were chiefly 
communities of Oscan descent, stamped Oscan legends 
on their coins. In Campania and Samnium, the Os¬ 
can continued to be the vulgar tongue long after the 
Roman conquest, as appears from several monuments, 
and especially from the Oscan inscriptions found at 
Pompeii. {Micali, Storia degli Antichi Popoh Itali- 
am, ch. 29.— Id., Atlas, pi.'120.— De Iorio, Plan of 
Pompeii, pi. 4.)—The Oscan race, like the Etruscan, 
appears to have been, from the remotest times, strong¬ 
ly under the influence of religious rites and laws {Fes- 
tus, s. v. Oscum) ; and the primitive manners and sim¬ 
ple morals of the Oscan and Sabine tribes, as well as 
their bravery in arms, have been extolled by the Ro¬ 
man writers, among others by Virgil {Mn., 7, 728, 
seqq.) and Silius Italicus (8, 526, seqq.). — Concern¬ 
ing the scanty remains of the Oscan language which 
have come down to us, the following may be consult¬ 
ed : “ Lingua. Oscce Specimen Singulars, quod, su- 
perest Nolce, in marmore Mused Seminarii,” which is 
given by Passeri in his “ Pictures Etruscorum in Vas- 
culis,” &c., Rome, 3 vols. fol., 1767-75 ; and also 
Guarini, in his “ In Osca Epigrammata nonnulla 
Commentarius,” Naples, 1830, 8vo, where several 
Oscan inscriptions are found collected ; but particu¬ 
larly the learned work of Grotefend, “ Rudimenta 
Linguee Oscce,” Hannov., 1840. Another work of 
the last-mentioned writer, entitled “ Rudimenta Lin¬ 
guee Umbricee,” Hannov., 1835, &c., is also worthy of 
being consulted. Grotefend makes both the Oscan 
and the Latin come from the Umbrian language. 
{Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 17, p. 47. — Niebuhr, Rom. 
Hist., vol. 1, p. 55, Cambr. transi.) 

OsIris, one of the principal Egyptian deities, was 
brother of Isis, and the father of Horus. His history 
is given in the first book of Diodorus, and in Plutarch’s 
treatise “ On Isis and Osiris;” but it is not improb¬ 
able that the genuine Egyptian traditions respecting 
the deity had been considerably corrupted at the time 
of these writers. According to their accounts, how¬ 
ever, Osiris was the first who reclaimed the Egyptians 
from a state of barbarism, and taught them agriculture 
and the various arts and sciences. After he had in¬ 
troduced civilization among his own subjects, he re¬ 
solved to visit the other nations of the world and con¬ 
fer on them the same blessing. He accordingly com¬ 
mitted the administration of his kingdom to Isis, his 
sister and queen, and gave her Hermes to assist her 

943 




OST 


OSTIA. 


in council, and Hercules to command her troops. 
Having collected a large army himself, he visited in 
succession Ethiopia, Arabia, and India, and thence 
marched through Central Asia into Europe, instruct¬ 
ing the nations in agriculture, and in the arts and sci¬ 
ences. He left his son Macedon in Thrace and Ma¬ 
cedonia, and committed the cultivation of the land of 
Attica to Triptolemus. After visiting all parts of the 
inhabited world, he returned to Egypt, where he was 
murdered soon after his arrival by his brother Typhon, 
who cut up his body into twenty-six parts, and divided 
it among the conspirators who had aided him in the 
murder of his brother. These parts were afterward, 
with one exception, discovered by Isis, who enclosed 
each' of them in a statue of wax, made to resemble 
Osiris, and distributed them through different parts of 
Egypt.—Other forms of the legend may be found in 
Creuzer’s elaborate work ( Symbolik , vol. 1, p. 259, 
scqq. — Symbolik, par Guigniaut, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 389, 
scqq.) For some remarks explanatory of it, consult 
the article Isis.—Herodotus informs us (2, 48), that 
the festival of Osiris was celebrated in almost the 
same manner as that of Bacchus. It appears, howev¬ 
er, not improbable, that the worship of Osiris was in¬ 
troduced into Egypt, in common with the arts and sci¬ 
ences, from the Ethiopian Meroe. We learn from 
Herodotus (2, 29), that Ammon and Osiris were the 
national deities of Meroe, and we are told by Diodorus 
(3, 3) that Osiris led a colony from Ethiopia into 
Egypt.—Osiris was venerated under the form of the 
sacred bulls Apis and Mnevis ( Diod. Sic., 1,21); and 
as it is usual in the Egyptian symbolical language to 
represent their deities with human forms, and with 
the heads of the animals which were their representa¬ 
tives, we find statues of Osiris with the horns of a 
bull. ( Egyptian Antiquities, vol. 2, p. 295.) Osiris, 
in common with Isis, presided over the world below ; 
and it is not uncommon to find him represented on 
rolls of papyrus, as sitting in judgment on departed 
spirits. His usual attributes are the high cap, the 
flail or whip, and the crosier. ( Encycl. Us. Knowl., 
vol. 17, p. 49.— Cory, Horapollo Niloiis, p. 164, pi. 2.) 

Osismii, a people of Gallia Lugdunensis Tertia, on 
the coast of the Mare Britannicum, and at the south¬ 
western extremity of the Tractus Armoricus. Their 
country, according to some, answers to the modern 
Leon and Treguier; but, according to D’Anville, 
their chief city was Vorgannum, now Karhez, in Basse 
Bretagne. (Cces., B. G., 2, 34.— Id. ib., 3, 9, &c.— 
Lsmaire, Ind. Geogr. ad Cces., s. v.) 

Osrhoene, a district of Mesopotamia, in the north¬ 
western section of the country. (Vid. Mesopotamia.) 

Ossa, I. a celebrated mountain, or, more correctly, 
mountain-range of Thessaly, extending from the right 
bank of the Peneus along the Magnesian coast to the 
chain of Pelion. It was supposed that Ossa and 
Olympus were once united, but that an earthquake 
had rent them asunder (Herod., 7, 132.— JElian, V. 
H., 3, 1), forming the vale of Tempe. ( Vid. Tempe.) 
Ossa was one of the mountains which the giants, in 
their war with the gods, piled upon Olympus in order 
to ascend to the heavens. (Horn., Od., 11, 312, seqq. 
— Virg., Georg., 1, 282.) The modern name is Kis- 
sovo , or, according to Dodwell, Kissabos (Kissavos). 
“ Mount Ossa,” observes Dodwell, “ which does not 
appear so high as Pelion, is much lower than Olympus. 
It rises gradually to a point, which appears about 5000 
feet above the level of the plain ; but I speak only 
from conjecture.” (Tour, vol. 2, p. 106.— Cramer's 
Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 422.) — II. A small town of 
Macedonia, in the territory of Bisaltia, and situate on 
a river (probably the Basaltes) falling into the Stry- 
mon. * 

Ostia, a celebrated town and harbour, at the mouth 
of the river Tiber, in Italy. It was the port of Rome, 
and its name even now continues unchanged, though 


few vestiges remain of its ancient greatness. All his¬ 
torians agree in ascribing the foundation ol Ostia to An- 
cus Marcius. (Liv., 1, 33.— Dion. Hal., 3, 44.— Flor., 
1, 4.) That it was a Roman colony we learn from 
Florus (l. c. —Compare Senec., 1, 15.— Tacit., Hist., 

I, 80). When the Romans began to have ships of 
war, Ostia became a place of greater importance, and a 
fleet was constantly stationed there to guard the mouth 
of the Tiber. (Liv., 22, 11 et 27.—Id., 23, 38.— Id., 
27, 22.) It was here that the statue of Cybele was 
received with due solemnity by Scipio Nasica, when 
the public voice had selected him for that duty, as the 
best citizen of Rome. (Livy, 29, 14.— Herodian, 1, 

II, 10.) In the civil wars, Ostia fell into the hands 
of Marius, and was treated with savage cruelty. (Liv., 
Epit., 79.) Cicero, in one of his orations, alludes 
with indignation to the capture of the fleet stationed 
at Ostia by some pirates. (Pro L. Manil.) The 
town and colony of Ostia were distant only thirteen 
miles from Rome, but the port itself, according to the 
Itineraries, was at the mouth of the Tiber; unless it 
be thought with Vulpius, that the town and harbour, 
with all their dependencies, might occupy an extent 
of three miles along the river. (Vet. Lat ., 2, 1, p. 
136.) There is some difficulty, however, in ascer¬ 
taining the exact situation of the harbour, from the 
change which appears to have taken place in the 
mouth of the river during the lapse of so many ages. 
Even the number of its channels is a disputed point. 
Ovid seems to point out two (Fast., 4, 291.— Ibid., 
4, 329), but Dionysius Periegetes positively states 
that there was but one. The difference, however, 
may be reconciled by supposing that, in the geog¬ 
rapher’s time, the right branch of the river might 
alone be used for the purposes of navigation, and that 
the other stream was too insignificant and shallow for 
the reception of ships of any size. The two streams 
still exist ; the left is called Fiumaro, the right, on 
which the Portus Augusti was situate, is known by 
the name of Fiumecino. —According to Plutarch, Ju¬ 
lius Csesar was the first who turned his attention to 
the construction of a port at Ostia, by raising there a 
mole and other works; but it was to the Emperor 
Claudius that this harbour seems indebted for all the 
magnificence ascribed to it by antiquity. Suetonius, 
in his life of that prince, has given us a detailed ac¬ 
count of the formation of this harbour with its pharos 
(c. 20.—Compare Dio Cass., 60, 11.— Plin., 36, 9. 
— Id., 36, 15 et 40). It is generally supposed that 
Trajan subsequently improved and beautified the port 
of Ostia ; but the only authority for such a supposition 
is derived from the scholiast on Juvenal, in his com¬ 
mentary on the passage where that poet describes the 
entrance of Catullus into this haven (12, 75). It is 
not improbable, however, that the scholiast might con¬ 
found the harbour of Ostia with that of Centum Cellae. 
—In process of time, a considerable town was formed 
around the harbour of Ostia, which was itself called 
Portus Augusti, or simply Portus ; and a road was 
constructed thence to the capital, which took the name 
of Via Portuensis. Ostia, as has been remarked, at¬ 
tained the summit of its prosperity and importance 
under Claudius, who always testified a peculiar regard 
for this colony. It seems to have flourished likewise 
under Vespasian, and even as late as the reign of Tra¬ 
jan ; for Pliny the younger informs us, when descri¬ 
bing his Laurentine villa, that he derived most of his 
household supplies from Ostia. In the time of Pro¬ 
copius, however, this city was nearly deserted, all its 
commerce and population having been transported to 
the neighbouring Portus Augusti. The same writer 
gives a full account of the trade and navigation of the 
Tiber at this period ; from him we learn, that the island 
which was formed by the separation of the two branch¬ 
es of that river was called Sacra. (Rcr. Got., 1.-— 
Compare Rutil., Itin., 1, 169.) The salt marshes form- 




O S 1 


0 T H 


ea by Ancus Marcius, at the first foundation of Ostia 
(Liv., 1, 33), still subsist near the site now called 
Casone del Sale. (Cramer's Anc. Iruly, vol. 2, p. 

11, scqq.) —“Nothing,” observes a modern traveller, 
“ can be more dreary than the ride from Rome to 
this once magnificent seaport. You issue out of the 
Porta San Paola, and proceed through a continued 
scene of dismal and heart-sinking desolation; no 
fields, no dwellings, no trees, no landmarks, no marks 
of cultivation, except a few scanty patches of corn, 
thinly scattered over the waste ; and huts, like wig¬ 
wams, to shelter the wretched and* half-starved people 
that are doomed to live on this field of death. The 
Tiber, rolling turbidly along in its solitary course, 
seems sullenly to behold the altered scenes that have 
withered around him. A few miles from Ostia we 
entered upon a wilderness indeed. A dreary swamp 
extended all around, intermingled with thickets, through 
which roamed wild buffaloes, the only inhabitants of 
the waste. A considerable part of the way was upon 
the ancient pavement of the Via Ostiensis, in some 
places in good preservation, in others broken up and 
destroyed. When this failed us, the road was exe¬ 
crable. The modern fortifications of Ostia appeared 
before us long before we reached them. At length 
we entered its gate, guarded by no sentinel; on its 
bastions appeared no soldier; no children ran from 
its houses to gaze at the rare splendour of a carriage ; 
no passenger was seen in the grass-grown street. It 
presented the strange spectacle of a town without in¬ 
habitants. After some beating and hallooing, on the 
part of the coachman and lackey, at the shut-up door 

I of one of the houses, a woman, unclosing the shutter 
of an upper window, presented her ghastly face ; and, 
having first carefully reconnoitred us, slowly and reluc¬ 
tantly admitted us into her wretched hovel. ‘Where 
are all the people of the town'!’ we inquired. ‘Dead,’ 
was the brief reply. The fever of the malaria annually 
carries off almost all whom necessity confines to this 
pestilential region. But this was the month of April, 
the season of comparative health, and we learned, on 
more strict inquiry, that the population of Ostia, at 
present, nominally consisted of twelve men, four wom¬ 
en, no children, and two priests.—The ruins of old 
Ostia are farther in the wilderness. The sea is now 
two miles, or nearly, from the ancient port. The 
cause of this, in a great measure, seems to be, that 
the extreme flatness of the land does not allow the 
Tiber to carry off the immense quantity of earth and 
mud its turbid waters bring down; and the more that 
is deposited, the more sluggishly it flows, and thus the 
shore rises, the sea recedes, and the marshes extend. 
The marshy insula sacra, in the middle of the river, 
is now inhabited by wild buffaloes. We had intended 
to cross to the sacred island, and from thence to the 
village of Fiumecino, on the other side, where there 
are said to be still some noble remains of ancient 
Porto, particularly of the mole, but a sudden storm 
prevented us.” ( Rome in the Nineteenth Century, 
vol. 2, p. 449.) 

Ostorius Scapula, a governor of Britain in the 
reign of Claudius, who defeated and took prisoner the 
famous Caractacus. He died A.D. 55. (Tacit., Ann., 

12, 36.) 

Ostrogoths, or Eastern Goths, a division of the 
great Gothic nation, who settled in Pannonia in the 
fifth century of our era, whence they extended their 
dominion over Noricum, Rhaetia, and Illyricum. About 
482 or 483 A.D., their king Theodoric was serving 
as an auxiliary under the Emperor Zeno, and distin¬ 
guished himself in Syria. On his return to Constanti¬ 
nople, Theodoric, according to the statement of the 
historian Evagrius, fearing Zeno’s jealousy of his suc¬ 
cess, retired into Pannonia in 487, where he collected 
an army, and in the following year marched into Italy, 
with all his tribe, men. women, and children, and, as 

6 D 


appears, with the consent of Zeno himself, who wish 
ed to remove the Ostrogoths from his territories 
Theodoric defeated Odoacer in various battles, took 
him prisoner, and some time after put him to death. 
Upon this event, Theodoric sent an ambassador tG 
Anastasius, the emperor of Constantinople, who trans¬ 
mitted to him, in return, the purple vest, and acknowl 
edged him as King of Italy. It appears that both 
Theodoric and his predecessor Odoacer acknowledged, 
nominally at least, the supremacy of the Eastern em¬ 
peror. The rest of the history of the Ostrogoths is 
connected with that of Theodoric, who established his 
dynasty over Italy, which is generally styled the reign 
of the Goths in that country. (Encycl. Us. Knowl., 
vol. 17, p. 55.) 

Osymandyas, a king of Egypt, the same with Ame- 
proph or Phamenoph. (Vid. Memnon, and Memno- 
nium.) Jablonski makes Osymanydas equivalent in 
meaning to “ dans vocem," voice-emitting. (Voc. 
ASgypt., p. 29, p. 97.—Compare Creuzer, Symbolik, 
par Guigniaut, vol. 1, p. 482.) 

Otho, I. Marcus Salvius, was born A.D. 31 or 32. 
He was descended of.an honourable family, which 
originally came from Ferentinum, and which traced its 
origin to the Lucumones of Etruria. His grandfather, 
who belonged to the equestrian order, was made a sen¬ 
ator through the influence of Livia Augusta, but did 
not rise higher in office than the prsetorship. His fa¬ 
ther, Lucius Otho, was advanced to offices of great 
honour and trust by the Emperor Tiberius, whom he 
is said to have resembled so closely in person as to 
have been frequently taken for a near relation. Mar¬ 
cus Otho was an intimate friend of Nero during the 
early years of his reign, and his associate in his ex¬ 
cesses and debaucheries ; but Nero’s love for Poppaea, 
whom Otho had seduced from her husband, and to 
whom he was greatly attached, produced a coolness 
between them, and this rivalry for the affections of an 
unprincipled woman would soon have terminated in 
the ruin of Otho, had not Seneca procured for the lat¬ 
ter the government of Lusitania, to which he was sent 
as into a kind of honourable exile. In this province, 
which he governed, according to Suetonius ( Vit. Otho- 
nis, 3), with great justice, he. remained for ten years; 
and afterward took an active part in opposition to 
Nero, and in placing Galba on the throne, A.D. 68. 
Otho appears to have expected, as the reward of his 
services, that he would be declared his successor; 
but when Galba proceeded to adopt Piso Licinianus, 
Otho formed a conspiracy among the guards, who pro¬ 
claimed him emperor, and put Galba to death after a 
reign of only seven months. Otho commenced his 
reign by ingratiating himself with the soldiery, whom 
Galba had unwisely neglected to conciliate. He 
yielded to the wishes of the people in putting to death 
Tigellius, who had been the chief minister of Nero’s 
pleasures, and he acquired considerable popularity by 
his wise and judicious administration. He was, how¬ 
ever, scarcely seated upon the throne, before he was 
called upon to oppose Vitellius, who had been pro¬ 
claimed emperor by the legions in Germany a few 
days before the death of Galba. Vitellius, who was 
of an indolent disposition, sent forward Csecina, one of 
his generals, to secure the passes of the Alps, while 
he himself remained in his camp upon the Rhine. Otho 
quickly collected a large army and marched against 
Csecina, while he sent his fleet to reduce to obedience 
Liguria and Gallia Narbonensis. (Compare Tacitus, 
Agric., c. 7.) At first Otho was completely success¬ 
ful. Liguria and Gallia Narbonensis submitted to his 
authority, while Csecina was repulsed with considera 
ble loss in an attack upon Placentia. Csecina encoun 
tered subsequently a second check. But, shortly after 
Otho’s army was completely defeated by the troops o 
Vitellius, in a hard-fought battle near Bebriacum, a vil 
lage on the Po, southwest of Mantua. Otho, wht 

945 



o y i 


0V1DIUS 


Joes not appear, however, to have been deficient in 
bravery, had been persuaded, for the security of his 
person, to retire before the battle to Brixellum; a 
step which tended, as Tacitus has observed, to occa¬ 
sion his defeat. When he was informed of the result 
of the conflict, he refused to make any farther effort 
for the empire, but put an end to his own life by fall¬ 
ing upon his sword, at the age of 37 according to 
Tacitus (Hist., 2, 50), or of 38 according to Sueto¬ 
nius ( Vit. Oth., c. 11), after reigning 95 days. Plu¬ 
tarch, in his life of Otho, relates that the soldiers im¬ 
mediately buried his body, that it might not be exposed 
to indignity by falling into the hands of his enemies, 
and erected a plain monument over his grave, with the 
simple inscription, “To the memory of Marcus Otho.” 
The early debaucheries of Otho threw a stain upon his 
reputation, which his good conduct in Lusitania and his 
mildness as emperor did not altogether remove. The 
treatment which he received from Nero might in some 
degree justify his rebellion against that prince ; but no 
palliation can be found for the treason and cruelty with 
which he was chargeable towards Galba. In all things 
his actions were marked by a culpable extreme ; and 
perhaps both the good and the evil which appeared in 
his life were the result of circumstances rather than of 
virtuous principles or of fixed and incurable depravity. 
(Tacit., Hist., lib. 1 et 2. — Sueton., Vit. Othon .— 
Plut., Vit. Othon.—Dio Cass., lib. 64.— Encycl. Us. 
Knowl., vol. 17, p. 59. — Encycl. Metropol., div. 3, 
vol. 2, p. 497, scqq.) —II. L. Roscius, a tribune of the 
commons, who, in the year that Cicero was consul, 
proposed and caused to be passed the well-known law 
which allowed the equestrian order particular seats in 
the theatre. The equites, previous to this, sat promis¬ 
cuously with the commons. By this new regulation 
of Otho’s, the commons considered themselves dishon¬ 
oured, and hissed and insulted Otho when he appeared 
in the theatre: the equites, on the other hand, receiv¬ 
ed him with loud plaudits. The commons repeated 
their hissings and the knights their applause, until at 
last they came to mutual reproaches, and the whole 
theatre presented a scene of the greatest disorder. 
Cicero, being informed of the disturbance, came and 
summoned the people to the temple of Bellona, where, 
partly by his reproofs and partly by his persuasive elo¬ 
quence, he so wrought upon them that they return¬ 
ed to the theatre, loudly testified their approbation of 
Otho, and strove with the equites which should show 
him the most honour. The speech delivered on this 
occasion was afterward reduced to writing. It is now 
lost, but, having been delivered extempore, it affords 
a strong example of the persuasive nature of his elo¬ 
quence. One topic which he touched on in this ora¬ 
tion, and the only one of which we have any hint from 
antiquity, was his reproaching the rioters for their want 
of taste, in creating a tumult while Roscius was per¬ 
forming on the stage. (Livy, Epit., 99. — Horat., 
Epist., 1 , 1 , 62.— Juv., Sat., 3, 159.— Veil. Paterc., 
2,32.— Fuss,Rom. Antiq., p. 147.) 

Othrys, a mountain-range of Thessaly, which, 
branching out of Tymphrestus, one of the highest 
points in the chain of Pindus, closed the great basin 
of Thessaly to the south, and served at the same time 
to divide the waters which flowed northward into the 
Peneus from those received by the Sperchius. This 
mountain is often celebrated by the poets of antiquity. 
(Eurip., Alcest., 583.— Theocr., Idyll., 3,43.— Virg., 
ffln., 7,674.— Lucan , 6, 337.) At present it is known 
by the different names of Hellovo, Varibovo, and Gou- 
ra. (Pouquetillc, vol. 3, p. 394. — Cramer's Anc. 
Greece, vol. 1, p. 412.) 

Otus and Ephialtes, sons of Neptune. (Vid. 
Aloxdaa.) 

Ovidius Naso, P., a celebrated poet, born at Sul- 
mo (now Sulmona), a town lying on the river Pes¬ 
cara, in the territory of the Peligni, at the distance of 
946 


ninety miles from Rome. Ovid came into the world 
A.U.C. 711, the memorable year in which Cicero wa* 
murdered, and on the very day when the two consuls, 
Hirtius and Pansa, fell at the battle of Mutina. The 
events of his life are chiefly known from his own wri¬ 
tings, and more particularly from the tenth elegy of 
the fourth book of the Tristia. Ovid was of an eques¬ 
trian family, and was brought to Rome at an early 
period of life, along with an elder brother, to be fully 
instructed in the arts and learning of the capital. 
(Trist., 4, 10.) He soon disclosed an inclination to¬ 
wards poetry; but he was for some time dissuaded 
from a prosecution of the art by his father, whose 
chief object was to make him an accomplished orator 
and patron, and thereby open up to him the path to 
civic honours. The time was indeed past when polit¬ 
ical harangues from the rostra paved the way to the 
consulship or to the government of wealthy provinces; 
but distinction and emolument might yet be attained 
by eminence in judicial proceedings, and by such elo¬ 
quence as the servile deliberations of the senate still 
permitted. Ovid, accordingly, seems to have paid con¬ 
siderable attention to those studies which might qual¬ 
ify him to shine as a patron in the Forum, or procure 
for him a voice in a submissive senate. He practised 
the art of oratory, and not without success, in the 
schools of the rhetoricians Arellius Fuscus and Por¬ 
cius Latro, the two most eminent teachers of their 
time. Seneca, the rhetorician, who himself had heard 
him practising declamation before Fuscus, informs us, 
that he.surpassed all his fellow-students in ingenuity : 
but he harangued in a sort of poetical prose ; he was 
deficient in methodical arrangement, and he indulged 
too freely in digressions, as also in the introduction of 
the commonplaces of disputation. He rarely declaim¬ 
ed, moreover, except on ethical subjects ; and pre¬ 
ferred delivering those sort of persuasive harangues 
which have been termed Suasorice. (Senec., Controv., 
2, 10.) After having assumed the Toga Virilis, and 
completed the usual course of rhetorical tuition at 
Rome, he proceeded to finish his education at Athens. 
It is not known whether he made much progress in 
philosophy during his stay in that city ; but, from th6 
tenour of many of his works, it appears probable that 
he had at least studied physics, and that in morals he 
had embraced the tenets of the Epicurean school. In 
company with ^Emilius Macer, he visited the most- 
illustrious cities of Asia (Ep. e Ponlo, 2, 10) ; and 
on his way back to Rome he passed with him into 
Sicily. He remained nearly a year at Syracuse, and 
thence made several agreeable excursions through dif¬ 
ferent parts of the island. After his return to Rome, 
and on attaining the suitable age, Ovid held success¬ 
ively several of the low'er judicial offices of the state, 
and also frequently acted as arbiter, highly to the satis¬ 
faction of litigants whose causes he decided. (Trist., 
2, 93.) These avocations, however, were speedily re¬ 
linquished. The father of Ovid had for some time 
restrained his son’s inclination towards poetry ; but 
the arguments he deduced against its cultivation, from 
the stale example of the poverty of Homer (Trist., 4, 
10), were now receiving an almost practical refuta¬ 
tion in the court favour and affluence of Virgil and 
Horace. The death, too, of his elder brother, by leav¬ 
ing Ovid sole heir to a fortune ample enough to sat¬ 
isfy his wants, finally induced him to abandon the pro¬ 
fession to which he had been destined, and bid adieu at 
once to public affairs and the clamours of the Forum. 
Henceforth, accordingly, Ovid devoted himself to the 
service of the Muses ; though he joined with their 
purer worship the enjoyment of all those pleasures o 
life which a capital, the centre of every folly anu 
amusement, could afford. He possessed an agreeable 
villa and extensive farm in the neighbourhood of Sul- 
mo, the place of his birth; but he resided chiefly at 
his house on the Capitoline Hill (Trist., 1, 3), or hia 




OVIDIUS. 


OVIDIUS. 


gardens, which lay a little beyond the city, at the junc¬ 
tion of the Clodian and Flaminian Ways, near the 
Pons Milvius, where he composed many of his verses. 
He was fond, indeed, of the rural pleasures of flowers 
and trees, but he chiefly delighted to sow and plant 
them in these suburban gardens. ( Ep . e Ponto, 1 , 8.) 
Far from hiding himself amid his groves, like the mel¬ 
ancholy Tibullus, he courted society, and never was 
happier than amid the bustle of the capital. One day, 
when Augustus, in his capacity of censor, according 
to ancient custom, made the whole body of Roman 
knights pass before him in review, he presented our 
poet with a beautiful steed. ( Tristia , 2, 89.) The 
gift was accounted a peculiar mark of favour, and 
shows that, at the time when it was bestowed, he had 
incurred no moral stain which merited the disapproba¬ 
tion of his prince. While frequenting the court of 
Augustus, Ovid was well received by the politest of 
the courtiers. The titles of many of the epistles writ¬ 
ten during his banishment, show that they were ad¬ 
dressed to persons well known to us, even at this dis¬ 
tance of time, as distinguished statesmen and imperial 
favourites. Messala, to whose house he much resort¬ 
ed, had early encouraged the rising genius, and direct¬ 
ed the studies of Ovid ; and the friendship which the 
father had extended to our poet was continued to him 
by the sons. But his chief patron was Q. Fabius Max¬ 
imus, long the friend of Augustus, and, in the closing 
scenes of that prince’s life, the chief confidant of his 
weaknesses and domestic sorrows. {Tacit., Ann., 1, 
5.) Nor was Ovid’s acquaintance less with the cele¬ 
brated poets of his age than with its courtiers and sen¬ 
ators. Virgil, indeed, he had merely seen, and pre¬ 
mature death cut off the society of Tibullus ; but Hor¬ 
ace, Macer, and Propertius were long his familiar 
friends, and often communicated to him their writings 
previous to publication. While blessed with so many 
friends, he seems to have been undisturbed, at least 
during this period of his life, by the malice of a sin¬ 
gle foe : neither the court favour he enjoyed nor his 
poetical renown procured him enemies; and he was 
never assailed by that spirit of envy and detraction by 
which Horace had been persecuted. His poetry was 
universally popular {Tristia, 1 , 1 , 64): like the stanzas 
of Tasso, it was often sung in the streets or at enter¬ 
tainments ; and his verses were frequently recited in the 
theatre amid the applause of the multitude. Among 
his other distinctions, Ovid was a favourite of the 
fair, with whom his engagements wpre numerous and 
his intercourse unrestrained. {Am., 2,4. — Tristia, 
4, 10, 65.) He was extremely susceptible of love, 
and his love was ever changing. His first wife, whom 
he married when almost a boy, was unworthy of his 
affections, and possessed them but a short while. 
The second, who came from the country of the an¬ 
cient Falisci, led a blameless life, but was soon repu¬ 
diated. After parting with her, Ovid was united to a 
third, who was of the Fabian family. In her youth 
she had been the companion of Marcia, the wife of 
Fabius Maximus, and a favourite of Marcia’s mother, 
who was the maternal aunt of Augustus. She was a 
widow at the time of her marriage with Ovid, and had 
a daughter by her former husband, who was married to 
Suillius, the friend of Germanicus. {Ep. e Ponto, 4, 
8 .) But these successive legitimate connexions did 
not prevent him from forming others of a different de¬ 
scription. Corinna, a wanton, enticing beauty, whose 
real name and family the commentators and biogra¬ 
phers of our poet have ineffectually laboured to dis¬ 
cover, allured him in his early youth from the paths of 
rectitude. It is quite improbable that Corinna denoted 
Julia, the daughter of Augustus, and impossible that 
she represented Julia, his granddaughter, who was 
but an infant when Ovid recorded his amours with Co¬ 
rinna. Ovid passed nearly thirty years in the volup¬ 
tuous enjoyment of the pleasures of the capital, blessed 


with the smiles of fortune, honoured with the favour 
of his prince, and fondly anticipating a tranquil old 
age. {Tristia, 4, 8, 29.) He now remained at Rome 
the last of the constellation of poets which had 
brightened the earlier age of Augustus. That prince 
had by this time lost his favourite ministers, Maecenas 
and Agrippa : he was less prosperous than during for¬ 
mer years in the external affairs of the empire, and 
less prudently advised in his domestic concerns : he 
was insidiously alienated from his own family, and 
was sinking in his old age under the sway of the im¬ 
perious Livia and the dark-souled Tiberius. Ovid’s 
friendships lay chiefly among those who supported the 
lineal descendants of Augustus, the unfortunate off¬ 
spring of Julia and Agrippa. He thus became an ob¬ 
ject of suspicion to the party in power, and had lost 
many of those benefactors who might have shielded 
him from the storm which now unexpectedly burst on 
his head, and swept from him every hope and comfort 
for the remainder of his existence. It was in the 
year 762, and when Ovid had reached the age of 51, 
that Augustus suddenly banished him from Rome to a 
wild and distant corner of the empire. Ovid has de¬ 
rived nearly as much celebrity from his misfortunes 
as his writings ; and, having been solely occasioned 
by the vengeance of Augustus, they have reflected 
some dishonour on a name which would otherwise 
have descended to posterity as that of a generous and 
almost universal protector of learning and poetry. 
The real cause of his exile is the great problem in the 
literary history of Rome, and has occasioned as much 
doubt and controversy as the imprisonment of Tasso 
by Alphonso has created in modern Italy. The se¬ 
cret unquestionably was known to many persons in 
Rome at the time {Tristia, 4, 10. — Compare Ep. e 
Ponto, 2, 6); but, as its discovery had deeply wounded 
the feelings of Augustus {Tristia, 2, 209), no con¬ 
temporary author ventured to disclose it. Ovid him¬ 
self has only dared remotely to allude to it, and when 
he does mention it, his hints and suggestions are 
scarcely reconcilable with each other, sometimes 
speaking of his offence as a mistake or chance, in 
which he was more unfortunate than blameable, and at 
other times as if his life might have been forfeited 
without injustice. {Tristia, 5, 11.) No subsequent 
writer thought of revealing or investigating the mys¬ 
tery till it was too late, and it seems to be now closed 
for ever within the tomb of the Caesars. The most 
ancient opinion (to which Sidonius Apollinaris refers) 
is, that Ovid was banished for having presumed to 
love Julia, the daughter of Augustus, and for having 
celebrated her under the name of Corinna {Sidon. 
Apoll., Carm., 23, v. 158); and it was considered as 
a confirmation of this opinion, that exile was the pun¬ 
ishment inflicted on Sempronius, the most known and 
best beloved of all her paramours. This notion was 
adopted by Crinitus and Lylius Gyraldus ; but it was 
refuted as early as the time of Aldus Manutius, who 
has shown from the writings of Ovid that he was en¬ 
gaged in the amour with his pretended Corinna in his 
earliest youth ; and it certainly is not probable that 
such an intrigue should have continued for about thirty 
years, and till Ovid had reached the age of fifty-one, 
or that Augustus should have been so slow in discov¬ 
ering the intercourse which subsisted. Julia, too, was 
banished to Pandataria in the year 752, which was 
nine years before the exile of Ovid ; and why should 
his punishment have been delayed so long after the 
discovery of his transgression 1 Besides, had he been 
guilty of such an offence, would he have dared in his 
Tristia, when soliciting his recall from banishment, to 
justify his morals to the emperor, and to declare that 
he had committed an involuntary error ! Or would he 
have been befriended and supported in exile by the 
greatest men of Rome, some of whom were the fa¬ 
vourites and counsellors of Augustus 1 —Subsequently 

947 




O VIDIUS. 


OVIDIUS. 


o tiie time of Manutius, various other theories have 
)een devised to account for the exile of Ovid. Dry- 
den, in the Preface to his translation of Ovid’s Epis¬ 
tles, thinks it probable that “ he had stumbled by some 
inadvertency on the privacies of Livia, and had seen 
jer in a bath ; for the words ‘ sine vests Dianam ,’ he 
remarks, agree better with Livia, who had the fame 
of chastity, than with either of the Julias.” It would 
no doubt appear that our poet had a practice of break¬ 
ing in unseasonably on such occasions ( A. A., 3, 245). 
But it is not probable that Augustus would have pun¬ 
ished such an offence so severely, or that it would 
have affected him so deeply. Livia, at the time of 
Ovid’s banishment, had reached the age of sixty-four, 
and was doubtless the only person in the empire who 
would consider such an intrusion as intentional.—Ti- 
rabeschi has maintained, at great length, that he had 
been the involuntary and accidental witness of some 
moral turpitude committed by one of the imperial 
family, most probably Julia, the granddaughter of Au¬ 
gustus, who had inherited the licentious disposition of 
her mother, and was banished from Rome on account 
of her misconduct, nearly at the same time that the 
sentence cf exile was pronounced on Ovid. This 
theory, on the whole, seems the most plausible, and 
most consistent with the hints dropped by the poet 
himself. He repeatedly says, that the offence for 
which he had been banished was a folly, an error, an 
imprudence rather than a crime: using the words 
siiutitia and error in opposition to crimen and / aci¬ 
nus. , (Tristia , 1,2, ICO, et passim.) He invariably 

talk.) of what he had seen as the cause of his misfor¬ 
tunes ( Tristia , 2, 103, seqq.), and he admits that what 
he had seen was a fault. But he farther signifies, that 
the fault he had witnessed was of a description which 
offended modesty, and which, therefore, ought to be 
covered with the veil of night. ( Tristia , 3, 6.) It is 
by no means improbable that he should have detected 
the granddaughter of the emperor in some disgraceful 
intrigue. Neither of the Julias confined their amours 
to the recesses of their palaces, so that the most dis¬ 
solute frequenter of the low T est scenes of debauchery 
may have became the witness of her turpitude. Far¬ 
ther, it is evident that it was something of a private 
nature, and which wounded the most tender feelings 
of Augustus, who, we know from history, was pecu¬ 
liarly sensitive with regard to the honour of his family. 
Lastly, it appears, that, after being a witness of the 
shameful transgression of Julia, Ovid had fallen into 
some indiscretion through timidity ( Ep. e Ponto, 2, 2), 
ivhich might have been avoided, had he enjoyed the 
benefit of good advice ( Tristia , 3, 6, 13) ; and it 
seems extremely probable, that the imprudence he 
committed was in revealing to others the discovery he 
nad made, and concealing it from Augustus.—It is 
not likely that any better guess will now be formed on 
the subject. Another, however, has been recently at¬ 
tempted by M. Yillenave, in a life of Ovid prefixed 
to a French translation of the Metamorphoses. His 
opinion, which has also been adopted by Scholl (Hist. 
Lit. Rom., vol. 1, p. 240), is, that Ovid, from accident 
or indiscretion, had become possessed of some state 
secret concerning Agrippa Posthumus, the son of 
Agrippa and Julia, and grandson of Augustus. The 
existence of the family of Julia long formed the great 
obstacle to the ambition of Livia and her son Tiberius. 
Agrippa Posthumus, the last surviver of the race, was 
banished from Rome to the island of Planasia, near 
Corsica, in 758; but considerable apprehensions seem 
to have been entertained by Livia that he might one 
tAy be recalled. Ovid, in a poetical epistle from Pon- 
tr<s written in the fifth year of his exile, accuses him- 
■Xiif as the cause of the death of his friend Fabius 
VAximus ; and this Fabius Maximus, it appears, was 
he chief confidant of the emperor in all that related 
o the affairs of Agrippa, which he wished concealed 
948 


from Livia. A few months before his own death, Au¬ 
gustus, attended by Fabius Maximus alone, privately 
visited Agrippa in his retirement of Planasia; and 
the object of his journey from Rome having been dis¬ 
covered by Livia, the death of this counsellor followed 
shortly after. It will be remarked, however, that this 
voyage was undertaken in 666, four years subsequent¬ 
ly to the exile of Ovid, and was disclosed through the 
indiscretion of the wife of Fabius. ( lacit ., Ann., 1, 
5.) But the French author conjectures, that the 
scene to which Ovid alludes in his writings as having 
witnessed, had some close connexion with the ensuing 
visit to Planasia, and gave a commencement to those 
suspicions which terminated in the death of his friend. 
His chief objection to the theory of Tiraboschi is, that 
Augustus would not have banished Ovid for discover¬ 
ing or revealing the disgrace of Julia, when, by her 
exile, he had already proclaimed her licentiousness to 
the whole Roman people. But, in fact, Ovid was not 
banished for the sake of concealment. The discovery 
which proved so fatal to himself was no secret at Rome; 
and, had secrecy been the emperor’s object, banish¬ 
ment was the very worst expedient to which he could 
have resorted. Ovid might better have been bribed to 
silence ; or, if sentence of death could have served the 
purpose more effectually, the old triumvir would no4 
have scrupled to pronounce it. The secret, however, 
was already divulged, and was in the mouths of the 
citizens. Ovid was therefore exiled as a punishment 
for his temerity, as a precaution against farther dis¬ 
coveries, and to remove from the imperial eye the 
sight of one whose presence must have reminded Au¬ 
gustus of his disgrace both as a sovereign and pa¬ 
rent.—’Whatever may have been the real cause of the 
exile of Ovid, the pretext for it was the licentious 
verses he had written. (Ep. e Ponto , 2, 9.) Augus¬ 
tus affected a regard for public morals ; and conceal¬ 
ing, on this occasion, the true motive by which he was 
actuated, he claimed a merit with the senate, and all 
who were zealous for a reformation of manners, in 
thus driving from the capital a poet who had reduced 
licentiousness tp a system, by furnishing precepts, de¬ 
duced from his own practice, which might aid the ir 
experienced in the successful prosecution of lawles- 
love. He carefully excluded from the public libraries 
not merely the “ Art of Love,” but all the other wri¬ 
tings of Ovid. (Tristia, 3, 1, 65.) It is evident, 
however, that this was all colour and pretext. Ovid 
himself ventures gently to hint, that Augustus was 
not so strict a moralist that he would seriously have 
thought of punishing the composition of a few licen¬ 
tious verses with interminable exile. (Tristia, 2, 
524.) In point of expression, too, the lines of Ovid 
are delicate compared with those of Horace, whom 
the emperor had always publicly favoured and support¬ 
ed. Nor was his sentence of banishment passed until 
many years after their composition ; yet, though so 
long an interval had elapsed, it was suddenly pro¬ 
nounced, as on the discovery of some recent crime, 
and was most rapidly carried into execution. The 
mandate for his exile arrived unexpectedly in the 
evening. The night preceding his departure from 
Rome was one of the utmost^ grief to his family, and 
of consternation and dismay to himself. In a fit 
of despair, he burned the copy of the Metamorphoses 
which he was then employed in correcting, and some 
others of his poems. He made no farther preparations 
for his journey, but passed the time in loud complaints, 
and in adjuration to the gods of the Capitol. His 
chief patron, Fabius Maximus, was absent at the 
time, and his only daughter was with her husband in 
Africa ; but several of his friends came to his house, 
where they remained part of the night, and endeav¬ 
oured, though in vain, to console him. After much 
irresolution, he at length departed on the approach 
of dawn, his dress neglected and his hair dishevelled 





OVIDIUS. 


OVIDIUS. 


His wife, who had wished to accompany him, but was 
not permitted, fainted the moment he left the house. 
—After his departure from Rome, Ovid proceeded to 
Brundisium, where he had an interview with Fabius 
Maximus. He recommended his wife to the care of 
his friend, and received repeated assurances of his 
Gupport.—The destined spot of his perpetual exile was 
Tomi, the modern Temisvoar , on the shore of the Eux- 
ine, a few miles to the south of the spot where the 
most southern branch of the Danube unites with that 
sea. ( Vid. Tomi.) The place had been originally an 
Athenian colony, and was still inhabited by a few 
remains of the Greeks, but it was chiefly filled with 
rude and savage barbarians, of whose manners and 
habits the poet draws a most vivid description. The 
town was defended by but feeble ramparts from the 
incursions of the neighbouring Getae, or still more 
formidable tribes to the north of the Danube. Alarms 
from the foe were constant, and the poet himself had 
sometimes to grasp a sword and buckler, and place a 
helmet on his gray head, on a signal given by the sen¬ 
tinel ( Trisiia , 4, 1, 73), when squadrons of barbarians 
covered the desert which Tomi overlooked, or sur¬ 
rounded the town in order to surprise and pillage it.— 
Without books or society, Ovid often wished for a 
field (Ep. e Ponto , 1, 8) to remind him of the garden 
near the Flaminian Way, in which, in his happier 
days, he had breathed his love-sighs and composed his 
amorous verses. Some of the barbarian inhabitants 
were along with our poet in the small and inconvenient 
house which he inhabited ( Tristia, 2, 200), and kept 
him in a state of constant alarm by their ferocious ap¬ 
pearance. They neither cut their beards nor hair, 
which, hanging dishevelled over the face, gave a pecu¬ 
liar horror to their aspect. The whole race were 
clothed in the shaggy skins of various animals {Tristia, 

3, 10), and each barbarian carried with him constantly 
■4 bow, and a quiver containing poisoned arrows. 
[Tristia, 5, 7.) They daily filled the streets with tu¬ 
mult and uproar, and even the litigants sometimes de¬ 
cided their cause before the tribunals by the sword. 
{Tristia, 5, 10.) But if there was danger within the 
walls of Tomi, destruction lay beyond them. Tribes, 
who foraged from a distance, carried off the flocks and 
burned the cottages. From the insecurity of property 
and severity of climate, the fields were without grain, 
the hills without vines, the mountains without oaks, 
and the banks without willows. {Tristia, 3, 10, 71.) 
Absinthium, or wormwood, alone grew up and covered 
the plains. {Ep. e Ponto, 4, 8.) Spring brought 
with it neither birds nor flowers. In summer the sun 
rarely broke through the cloudy and foggy atmosphere. 
The autumn shed no fruits ; but, through every season 
of the year, wintry winds blew with prodigious vio¬ 
lence ( Tristia , 3, 10, 17), and lashed the waves of the 
boisterous Euxine on its desert shore. ( Tristia , 4, 

4, 57.) The only animated object was the wild Sar- 
matian driving his car, yoked with oxen, across the 
snows, or the frozen depths of the Euxine {Tristia, 3, 
10, 32), clad in his fur cloak, his countenance alone 
uncovered, his beard glistening and sparkling with the 
hoar-frost and flakes of snow. {Tristia, 3, 10, 21.) 
—Such was the spot for which Ovid was compelled 
to exchange the theatres, the baths, the porticoes, and 
gardens of Rome, the court of Augustus, the banks of 
the Tiber, and the sun and soil of Italy.—While thus 
iriving him to the most remote and savage extremity 
jf his empire, Augustus softened the sentence he had 
pronounced on Ovid with some alleviating qualifica¬ 
tions. He did not procure his condemnation by a de- 
;ree of the senate, but issued his own mandate, in 
which he employed the word “ relegation” {relegatio), 
ind not “ banishment” ( exsilium ), leaving'him, by this 
choice of terms, the enjoyment of his paternal fortune 
and some other privileges of a Roman citizen. {Tris- 
‘ia, 5, 11, 21.— Ibid., 4, 9.) Nor were other circum¬ 


stances wanting in his fate which might have con¬ 
tributed to impart consolation. His third wife, to 
whom he was tenderly attached, though not permitted 
to accompany him on the voyage to Scythia, continued 
faithful to her husband during his long exile, and pro¬ 
tected his property from the rapacity of his enemies 
{Tristia, 1 , 5.) Many of his friends remained unsha¬ 
ken by his misfortunes, and from time to time he re¬ 
ceived letters from them, giving him hopes of recall. 
The Getse, though they at length became displeased 
with his incessant complaints of their country {Ep. e 
Ponto, 4, 14), received him at first with kindness and 
sympathy, and long paid him such distinguished hon¬ 
ours, that he almost appears to have realized the fa¬ 
bles of Orpheus and Amphion, in softening their native 
ferocity by the magic of the Roman lyre. {Ep. e Pon¬ 
to, 4, 9.— Ibid., 4, 14.)—Nothing, however, could 
compensate for the deprivations he suffered; nor was 
anything omitted on Ovid’s part which he thought 
might prevail on the emperor to recall him to Rome, 
or assign him, at least, a place of milder exile ; and 
Sicily was particularly pointed at as a suitable spot 
for such a mitigation of punishment. {Tristia, 5, 2.) 
This is the object of all his epistles from Pontus, the 
name of the district of Moesia in which Tomi was sit¬ 
uate, and not to be confounded with the Pontus of 
Asia Minor. He flattered Augustus during his life 
with an extravagance which bordered on idolatry {Ep. 
e Ponto, 4, 6.— -Tristia, 2); and the letters address¬ 
ed to his friends inculcate skilful lessons of choosing 
the most favourable opportunities for propitiating the 
despot. It does not appear, however, that any one oi 
his numerous and powerful acquaintances ventured to 
solicit his recall, or to entreat Augustus in his behalf. 
Yet the poet seems to suppose that Augustus, pre¬ 
vious to his decease, was beginning to feel mors 
favourably towards him. {Ep. e Ponto, 4, 6.) After 
the death of the emperor, with a view, doubtless, of 
propitiating his successor, Ovid wrote a poem on hia 
Apotheosis, and consecrated to him, as a new deity, 
a temple, where he daily repaired to offer incense and 
worship. {Ep. e Ponto, 4, 9.) Nor was he sparing 
in his panegyrics on the new emperor {Ep. e Ponto, 
4, 13); but he found Tiberius equally inexorable with 
Augustus—The health of Ovid had been early and 
severely affected by his exile and confinement at Tomi. 
He was naturally of a feeble constitution, and, in the 
place of his banishment, every circumstance was com¬ 
bined which could wear out the mind and the body. 
The rigour of the climate bore hard on one who had 
passed a delicate youth of pleasure and repose under 
an Italian sky. In consequence, soon after his arrival 
at Tomi, he totally lost his strength and appetite {Ep. 
e Ponto, 1 , 10), and became thin, pale, and exhaust¬ 
ed. From time to time he recovered and relapsed, 
till at length, at the age of 60, he sunk under the 
hardships to which he had been so long subjected. 
His death happened in the year 771, in the ninth year 
of his exile, and the fourth of the reign of Tiberius. 
Before his decease, he expressed a wish that his ashes 
might be carried to Rome ; even this desire, however, 
was not complied with. His bones were buried in 
the Scythian soil, and the Getae erected to him a motv 
ument near the spot of his earthly sojourn.—It would 
seem that Ovid had commenced his poetical career 
with some attempt at heroic subjects, particularly the 
Gigantomachia. But he soon directed his attention 
from such topics to others which were more consonant 
to his disposition. Accordingly, the earliest writings 
of Ovid now extant are amatory elegies in the style 
of Tibullus and Propertius. These elegies are styled 
Amores, amounting in all to forty-nine, and were ori¬ 
ginally divided by the poet into five books. There 
are now only three books in the printed editions of 
Ovid ; but it has been doubted whether all the elegies 
he wrote be still included in this division, or if two 

949 



OVIDIUb. 


OVIDIUS 


books have been suppressed. These elegies, with a 
very few exceptions, are of an amatory description.— 
As an elegiac writer, Ovid has more resemblance to 
Propertius than to Tibullus. His images and ideas 
are for the most part drawn from the real world. He 
dwells not amid the visionary scenes of Tibullus, he 
indulges not in his melancholy dreams, nor pours forth 
such tenderness of feeling as the lover of Delia. The 
Amoves of Ovid have all the brilliancy and freshness 
of the period of life in which they were written. They 
are full of ingenious conceptions, graceful images, and 
agreeable details. These are the chief excellences of 
the elegies of Ovid. Their faults consist in an abuse 
of the facility of invention, a repetition of the same 
ideas, an occasional affectation and antithesis in the 
language of love, and (as in the elegies of Propertius) 
the too frequent, and sometimes not very happy or ap¬ 
propriate, allusion to mythological fables.—Before fin¬ 
ishing the elegies styled Amoves, Ovid had already 
commenced the composition of the Hevoides (Am., 2, 
18), which are likewise written in the elegiac measure. 
They are epistles supposed to be addressed chiefly 
from queens and princesses who figured in the heroic 
ages, to the objects of their vehement affections, and 
are in number not fewer than twenty-one; but there 
is some doubt with regard to the authenticity of six of 
them, namely, Paris to Helen, Helen to Paris ; Lean- 
der to Hero, Hero to Leander; Acontius to Cydippe, 
Cydippe to Acontius. These six, though they appear 
in the most ancient MSS. under the name of Ovid, 
along with the others, are of doubtful authenticity, 
and have been generally ascribed by commentators to 
Aulus Sabinus, a friend of Ovid’s, who was also the 
author of several answers to the epistles of our poet, 
as Ulysses to Penelope, and iEneas to Dido.—The 
Hercrides present us with some of the finest and most 
popular fictions of an amorous antiquity, resounding 
with the names of Helen, Ariadne, and Phaedra. Ju¬ 
lius Scaliger pronounces them to be the most polish¬ 
ed of all the productions of Ovid. (Poet., 6, 7.) But 
there is a tiresome uniformity in the situations and 
characters of the heroines. The injudicious length to 
which each epistle is extended has occasioned a repe¬ 
tition in it of the same ideas ; while the ceaseless tone 
of complaints uttered by these forsaken damsels has 
produced a monotony, which renders a perusal, at 
least of the whole series of epistles, insupportably fa¬ 
tiguing. There is also a neglect of a due observ¬ 
ance of the manners and customs of the heroic ages: 
and in none of the works of Ovid is his indulgence in 
exuberance of fancy so remarkable to the reader, be¬ 
cause many of the epistles, as those of Penelope, Bri- 
se'is, Medea, Ariadne, and Dido, lead us to a compar¬ 
ison of the Latin author with Homer, the Greek tra¬ 
gedians, Catullus, and Virgil, those poets of true sim¬ 
plicity and unaffected tenderness. The work of Ovid 
entitled JDe Arte Amandi, or, more properly, Artis 
Amatorice Liber, is written, like the Amoves and 
Hevoides, in the elegiac measure. There is no¬ 
thing, however, elegiac in its subject, as it merely 
communicates, in a light and often sportive manner, 
those lessons in the Art of Love which were the fruits 
of the author’s experience, and had been acquired in 
the course of the multifarious intrigues recorded in 
the Amoves. This poem was not written earlier than 
the year 752; for the author mentions in the first 
boo* the representation of a sea-fight between the 
Greek and Persian fleets, which was exhibited at that 
period in the Naumachia, under the direction of Au¬ 
gustus. The whole worn is divided into three books. 
—This work is curious and useful, from the informa¬ 
tion it affords concerning Roman manners and an¬ 
tiquities in their lighter departments; and, though not 
written in the tone or form of satire, it gives us nearly 
the same insight as professed satirical productions 
into the minor follies of the A agustan age. Whatever 
950 


object the poet may have had in view when composing 
this work, it may be safely concluded that the poem 
itself did not in any degree tend to the corruption of 
the morals of his fellow-citizens, since the indulgence 
of every vice was then so licensed at Rome that they 
could hardly receive any additional stain; on the con¬ 
trary, this very depravation of manners gave birth to 
the work of Ovid, suggested its pernicious counsels-, 
and obtained for it the popularity with which it wai 
crowned.—The book Dc Rcmedio Amoris is connect¬ 
ed with that Dc Arte Amandi, and was written a short 
while after it. This poem discloses the means by 
which those who have been unsuccessful in love, oi 
are enslaved by it to the prejudice of their health and 
fortune, may be cured of their passion. Occupation, 
travelling, society, and a change of the affections, if 
possible, to some other object, are the remedies op. 
which the author chiefly relies. This work, on the 
whole, is not so pleasant and entertaining as the De 
Arte Amandi. It is almost entirely destitute of those 
agreeable episodes by which the latter poem is so 
much beautified and enlivened. It has fewer sport¬ 
ive touches and fewer fascinating descriptions.—The 
Metamorphoses of Ovid had been composed by him 
previous to his exile. But he received jhe mandate 
for his relegation while yet employed in the task of 
correction, and when he had completed this labour 
only on the first three books. Finding himself thus 
condemned to banishment from Rome, he threw the 
work into the flames, partly from vexation and disgust 
at his verses in general, which had been made the pre¬ 
text for his punishment, and partly because he consid- 1 
ered it an unfinished poem, which he could no longer 
have any opportunity or motive for perfecting. (Tris- 
tia, 1,6.) Fortunately, however, some transcripts had 
been previously made by his friends of this beautiful 
production, which was thus preserved to the world. 
After Ovid’s departure from Rome, these quickly 
passed into extensive circulation ; they were gener¬ 
ally read and admired, and a copy was placed in his 
library, which was still preserved and kept up by his 
family. (Tristia, 1, 1, 118.) In the depths of his 
dreary exile, Ovid learned, perhaps not without satis¬ 
faction, that his work had been saved ; and he even 
expressed a wish that some of his favourite passages 
might meet the eye of Augustus. ( Tristia , 2, 557.) 
But he was annoyed by the recollection that the poem 
would be read in the defective state in which he had 
left it. ( Tristia , 3, 14, 23.) He had no copy with him 
at Tomi, on which he could complete the corrections 
which he had commenced at Rome, He therefore 
thought it necessary to apprize his friends in Italy, 
that the work had not received his last emendations; 
and, as an apology for its imperfections, he proposes 
that the six following lines should be prefixed as a 
motto to the copies of his Metamorphoses which were 
then circulating in the capital. ( Tristia , 1, 6.) 

“ Orba parente suo quicumque volumina tangis ; 

His saltern vestra detur in urbe locus. 

Quoque magis fareas, non hcec sunt edita ab ipso, 
Sed quasi de domini funere rapta sui. 

Quicquid in his igitur vitii rude carmen habebit, 
Emendaturus, si licuisset, eral." 

The Metamorphoses, therefore — at least the twehe 
concluding books—should be read with some degree of 
that indulgence which is given to the last six books of 
the JEneid ; though, from what we see in the perfect¬ 
ed works of Ovid, it can hardly be supposed that, even 
if he had been permitted, he would have expunged 
conceits and retrenched redundancies with the pure 
taste and scrupulous judgment of the Mantuan bard 
—In the composition of his Metamorphoses, Ovid can 
lay no claim to originality of invention. Not one ol 
the immense number of transmutations which he has 
recorded, from the first separation of Chaos till the 





ovidius. 


oviDiuy. 


apotneosts of Julius Caasar, is of his own contrivance. 
They are all fictions of the Greeks and Oriental na¬ 
tions, interspersed, perhaps, with a few Latin or Etrus¬ 
can fables. In fact, a book of Metamorphoses which 
were feigned by the poet himself, would have pos¬ 
sessed no charm, being unauthorized by public belief, 
or even that species of popular credulity which be¬ 
stows interest and probability on the most extravagant 
fictions. And, indeed, Ovid had little motive for in¬ 
vention, since, in the relations of those who had gone 
before him in this subject, he could enter the most ex¬ 
tensive field ever opened to the. career of a poet.— 
The Metamorphoses of Ovid are introduced by a de¬ 
scription of the primeval world, and the early changes 
it underwent. All that he writes of Chaos is merely 
a paraphrase of what he had found in the works ef the 
ancient Greeks, and is more remarkable for poetic 
beauty than philosophic truth and consistency. The 
account of the creation, which is described with im¬ 
pressive brevity, is followed by a history of the four 
ages of the world, the war with the giants, Deucalion’s 
deluge, and the self-production of various monsters in 
those early periods by the teeming and yet unexhaust¬ 
ed earth. This last subject leads to the destruction 
of the. serpent Python by Apollo, and the institution of 
the Pythian games in honour of his victory : at their 
first celebration, the conquerors were crowned with 
oak, the laurel being unknown till the transformation 
of Daphne, when it became the prize of honour and 
renown. Our poet thus glides into the series of his 
metamorphoses, which are extended to fifteen books, 
and amount in all to not less than two hundred and 
fifty. The stories of this description related by Ovid’s 
predecessors were generally insulated, and did not 
hang together by any association or thread of dis¬ 
course. But the Roman poet continues as he had 
commenced, and, like the Cyclic writers of Greece, 
who comprehended, in one book, a whole circle of fa¬ 
bles, he proceeds from link to link in the golden chain 
of fiction, leading us, as it were, through a labyrinth 
of adventures, and passing imperceptibly from one tale 
to another, so that the whole poem forms an uninter¬ 
rupted recital. In themselves, however, the events 
have frequently no relation to each other, and the con¬ 
nexion between the preceding and succeeding fable 
often consists in nothing more than that the transfor¬ 
mation occurred at the same place or at the same 
time, or had reference, perhaps, to the same amorous 
deity.—In such an infinite number, the merit of the 
stories must be widely different; the following, how¬ 
ever, may be mentioned as among the best: the fables 
of Cephalus and Procris, of Philemon and Baucis, of 
Hippomanes and Atalanta, the flight of Dajdalus and 
Icarus, the loves of Pyramus and Thisbe. But of the 
whole, the story of Phaethon is, perhaps, the most splen¬ 
did and highly poetical.—It has been objected, how¬ 
ever, to the Metamorphoses , that, however great may 
be the merit of each individual tale, there is too much 
uniformity in the work as a whole, since all the stories 
are of one sort, and end in some metamorphosis or 
other. ( Kaimes's Elements of Criticism , vol. 1, c. 9.) 
But this objection, if it be one, can lie only against 
the choice of the subject; for if a poet announces that 
he is to sing of bodies changed and converted into 
new forms, what else than metamorphoses can be ex¬ 
pected 1 Besides, in the incidents that lead to these 
transformations, there is infinite variety of feeling ex¬ 
cited, and the poet intermingles the noble with the fa¬ 
miliar, and the gay with the horrible or tender. Some¬ 
times, too, the metamorphosis seems a mere pretext 
for the introduction of the story, and occupies a very 
inconsiderable portion of it. The blood which flowed 
from Ajax, when he slew himself in a transport of in¬ 
dignation, because the arms of Achilles were adjudged 
to Ulysses, produced a hyacinth, and on this feeble 
stem the poet has ingrafted the animated and eloquent 


speeches of the 'contending Grecian chiefs. In the 
tragic history of Pyramus and Thisbe, the lovers them¬ 
selves are not metamorphosed, but the fruit of the mul¬ 
berry-tree under which their blood was shed assumes 
a crimson dye. It would be endless to point out in 
detail the blemishes and beauties of such an extensive 
work as the Metamorphoses. The luxuriance of thought 
and expression which pervade all the compositions of 
Ovid, prevails likewise here ; but his comparisons are 
pleasing and appropriate, and his descriptions are rich 
and elegant, whether he exhibits the palace of the Sun 
or the cottage of Philemon. The many interesting sit¬ 
uations displayed in the Metamorphoses have formed 
a mine for the exertion of human genius in all suc¬ 
ceeding periods, not merely in the province of narra¬ 
tive fable, but in the department of the drama and fine 
arts ; and no work, with the exception of the Sacred 
Scriptures, has supplied so many and such happy sub¬ 
jects for the pencil. The Greek books from which 
the Metamorphoses were chiefly taken having been 
lost, the work of Ovid is now the most curious and 
valuable record extant of ancient mythology. It 
would be difficult to reduce every story, as some 
writers have attempted, into a moral allegory ( Garth, 
Pref. to Translation ); it would be impossible to find 
in them, with others, the whole history of the Old 
Testament, and types of the miracles and sufferings 
of our Saviour, or even the complete ancient history 
of Greece, systematically arranged (compare Muller , 
Einleitung , vol. 4, p. 163, &c.— Fabric., Bibl. Lari, vol. 
1, p. 447.— Goujet, Bib. Franc., vol. 6, p. 16, 52.) It 
cannot be denied, however, that the Metamorphoses 
are immense archives of Grecian fable, and that, be¬ 
neath the mask of fiction, some traits of true history, 
some features of manners and the primeval world, 
may yet be discovered. In this point of view, the 
Fasti of Ovid, though written in elegiac and not in 
heroic measure, may be considered as a supplement or 
continuation of the Metamorphoses. Its composition 
was commenced at Rome by the author previous to 
his exile. The work was corrected and finished by 
him at Tomi (Fasti, 4, 81), and was thence sent to 
Rome, with a prefatory dedication to the great Ger- 
manicus. The plan of this production was probably 
suggested by the didactic poem which Callimachus 
had published under the title of A Irla, in which he 
feigns that, being transported to Helicon, he was there 
instructed by the Muses in the nature and origin of 
various religious usages and ancient ceremonies. It 
would appear that, before the time of Ovid, some 
vague design of writing a poem of this description had 
been entertained by Propertius (Eleg., 4, 1). But 
Ovid, in his Fasti, executed the work which Propertius 
did not live, or, perhaps, found himself unable, to ac¬ 
complish. In the Latin language, the word Fasti ori¬ 
ginally signified, in opposition to Nefasti, the days on 
which law proceedings could be legally held, or other 
ordinary business transacted ; and thence it came, in 
course of time, to denote the books or tables on which 
the days in each month accounted as Fasti or Nefasti 
were exhibited. The term at length was applied to any 
record digested in regular chronological order, as the 
Fasti Consulares; and with Ovid it signifies the anni¬ 
versaries of religious festivals, of dedications of temples, 
or of other memorable events, indicated in the calen¬ 
dar under the name of Dies Fasti, and which in general 
belonged, in the ancient meaning, to the class of Dies 
Nefasti rather than Fasti. C. Hemina and Claudius 
Quadrigarius had given histories of these festivals in 
prose: but their works were dry and uninteresting; 
and Ovid first bestowed on the subject the embellish¬ 
ments of poetry and imagination. The object of the 
Fasti of Ovid is to exhibit in regular order a history of 
the origin and observance of the different Roman fes¬ 
tivals, as they occurred in the course of the year ; and 
to associate the celebration of these holydays with the 

951 



OVIDIUS. 


OVIDIUS. 


jun’s course in the zodiac, and with the rising or set¬ 
ting of the stars. A book is assigned to each month, 
but the work concludes with June. The six other 
books, which would have completed the Roman calen¬ 
dar, may have perished during the middle ages ; but 
it seems more probable that they never were written. 
No ancient author or grammarian quotes a single phrase 
or word from any of the last six books of the Fasti; 
and, in some lines of the Tristia (2, 549, scqq), the 
author himself informs us that the composition had 
been interrupted. This subject itself does not afford 
much scope for the display of poetic genius. Its ar¬ 
rangement was prescribed by the series of the festi¬ 
vals, while the proper names, which required to be so 
often introduced, and the chronological researches, 
were alike unfavourable to the harmony of versifica¬ 
tion. The Fasti, however, is a work highly esteem¬ 
ed by the learned on account of the antiquarian knowl- 
edge which may be derived from it. The author has 
poured a rich and copious erudition over the steril in¬ 
dications of the calendar, he has traced mytnological 
worship to its source, and explained many of the mys¬ 
teries of that theology which peopled all nature with 
divinities. Even Scaliger, whose opinions are gen¬ 
erally so unfavourable to Ovid, admits the ancient and 
extensive erudition displayed in the Fasti. {Poet., 6, 
7.) In particular, much mythological information may 
be obtained from it as to the points in which the su¬ 
perstitions and rites of the Romans differed from those 
of the Greeks, and also the manner in which they were 
blended. “The account,” says Gibbon, “of the dif¬ 
ferent etymologies of the month of May, is curious and 
well expressed. We may distinguish in it an Oriental 
allegory, a Greek fable, and a Roman tradition.” Some 
truths concerning the ancient history of Rome may be 
also elicited from the Fasti. It may appear absurd to 
appeal to a poet in preference or contradiction to an¬ 
nalists and chroniclers; but it must be recollected, that 
these annalists themselves originally obtained many of 
their facts from poetical tradition. Ovid, besides, had 
studied the Registers of the Pontifex Maximus, which 
are now lost, and which recorded, along with religious 
observances, many historical events. Occasional light 
may therefore be thrown by the Fasti of Ovid on 
some of the most ancient and dubious points of Ro¬ 
man story. For example, our poet completely vindi¬ 
cates Romulus from the charge of having slain his 
brother in a momentary transport of passion. Remus 
was legally sentenced to death, in consequence of hav¬ 
ing violated a salutary law enacted by the founder of 
Rome, and which, in an infant state, it was requisite 
to maintain inviolably.—The circumstance of the mel¬ 
ancholy exile of Ovid gave occasion to the last of his 
works, the Tristia, and the Epistolce e Ponto. The 
first book of the Tristia, containing ten elegies, was 
written by Ovid at sea, during his perilous voyage from 
Rome to Pontus. ( Tristia, 1, 1, 42.— Rid., 1, 10.) 
It may be doubted, however, whether this, which is 
the generally received opinion, will hold good with 
respect to all the elegies of the first book. He speaks 
in the sixth of copies of his Metamorphoses being cir¬ 
culated at Rome, and it is not likely that he could re¬ 
ceive this intelligence while on his way to Pontus. 
The first book is chiefly occupied with detailing the 
occurrences at his departure from the capital, the 
storms he encountered, and the places he saw in the 
course of his navigation. The remaining four books 
were composed during the first three years of his 
gloomy residence at Tomi. In the second book, ad¬ 
dressed to Augustus, he apologizes for his former life 
and writings. In some of the elegies of the third, 
fourth, and fifth books, he complains to himself of the 
hard fate he had suffered in being exiled from Italy to 
the inhospitable shores of the Euxine : in others he 
exhorts his correspondents, at Rome to endeavour to 
mitigate the anger of Augustus and obtain his recall. 
952 


The names, however, of the friends and patrons whom 
he addressed are not mentioned ( Tristia , 1,4, 7), since, 
during this time, his relatives and acquaintances were 
afraid lest they should incur the displeasure of Augus¬ 
tus by holding any communication with the unhappy 
exile. At the end of three years, this apprehension, 
which, perhaps, had been all along imaginary, was no 
longer entertained; and, accordingly, the epistles which 
he wrote from Pontus during the remainder of his se¬ 
vere sojourn are inscribed with the names of his friends, 
among whom we find the most distinguished charac¬ 
ters of the day. These elegiac epistles differ from the 
Tristia merely in the poet’s correspondents being ad 
dressed by name, instead of receiving no appellation 
whatever, or being only mentioned under some private 
and conventional title. The subjects of the four booKs 
of epistles from Pontus are precisely the same with 
those in the Tristia, complaints of the region to which 
the poet had been banished, and exhortations to his 
friends to obtain his recall. From the first line of the 
Tristia to the last of the epistles from Pontus, the lyre 
of the exiled bard sounds but one continued strain of 
wailing and complaint. All the melancholy events of 
his former life are recalled to his recollection, and each 
dismal circumstance in his present condition is im¬ 
measurably deplored. But he speaks of his old age, 
mortifications, and sorrows with such touching and 
natural eloquence, and in a tone so truly mournful, that 
no one can read his plaintive lines without being deeply 
affected. The only elegies in which Ovid quits even 
for a moment this tone of complaint, are those where 
he celebrates the victories of Tiberius in Germany ; 
and the commencement of a poem on the return of 
spring, which contains the sole lines in the Tristia 
that give any indication of a mind soothed by the im¬ 
proving season or the reviving charms of nature. 
During his exile, Ovid appears to have been much in 
debte<f to the kindness and commiseration of the friends 
whom he had left behind him at Rome. A few, how¬ 
ever, with whom he had been bound in ties of the clo¬ 
sest intimacy, not only neglected him during his ban¬ 
ishment, but attempted to despoil him of tne patrimony 
which he still retained by the indulgence of the em¬ 
peror. The conduct of one who had been his warm¬ 
est friend in prosperity, and became his bitterest foe in 
adversity, prompted him, while at Tomi, to dip his pen 
in the gall of satire, from which, during a long life, he 
had meritoriously abstained. The friend, now changed 
to foe, whose altered conduct drove our poet to pen a 
vehement satire, is generally supposed to have been 
Hyginus, the celebrated mythograph, and at this time 
the keeper of the imperial library. Ovid, however, 
does not name his enemy, but execrates him in his 
Ibis. Callimachus, having had a quarrel with Apol¬ 
lonius Rhodius, satirized him under the appellation 
of Ibis, an unclean Egyptian bird, and hence Ovid be¬ 
stowed it on Hyginus, who, though a native of Spain, 
had gone in earlyyouth to Egypt, and was brought from 
Alexandrea to Rome. He had offended our poet by 
attempting to persuade his wife to accept another hus¬ 
band, and by soliciting the emperor to confiscate his 
property, with a view of having it bestowed on him¬ 
self. The poem which Ovid directed against this self¬ 
ish and ungrateful friend cannot, perhaps, be properly 
termed a satire, being a series of curses in the style 
of the Dir or of Valerius Cato. They are of such a 
description that, compared with them, the Anathemas 
of Ernulphus and the Curse of Kehama may be consid¬ 
ered as benedictions.—Besides the works of Ovid 
which yet remain entire, and which have now been 
fully enumerated, there are fragments still extant from 
some poems of which he is reputed to have been the 
author. The Halieuticon, which is much mutilated, 
is attributed to Ovid on the authority of the elder 
Pliny (32, 2), who says that he has told many wonder¬ 
ful things concerning the nature of fishes i*i his Hair 





oxu 


0 zo 


ruticon: and we find in Pliny the names of several 
fishes which are not mentioned by any other author, 
but perhaps were natives of the sea on the shore of 
which Ovid commenced this poem towards the close 
of his life. Notwithstanding this authority, Werns- 
dorffis of opinion that it was not written by Ovid, as 
it is not found in any MS. of his works; and he as¬ 
signs it to Gratius Faliscus. Ovid also wrote a poem 
De Medicamine faciei , as we learn from two lines in 
his Art of Love (3, 205). It is doubted, however, 
if the fragment remaining under this title be the gen¬ 
uine work of our poet.—During his residence at Tomi, 
Ovid acquired a perfect knowledge of the language 
winch was there spoken. The town had been origi¬ 
nally founded by a Greek colony, but the Greek lan¬ 
guage had been gradually corrupted, from the influx of 
the Getae, and its elements could hardly be discovered 
in the jargon now employed. Ovid, however, com¬ 
posed a poem in this barbarous dialect, which, if ex¬ 
tant, would be a great philological curiosity. The sub¬ 
ject he chose was the praises of the imperial family at 
Rome. When completed, he read it aloud in an as¬ 
sembly of the Getae ; and he paints with much spirit 
and animation the effect it produced on his audience. 
—After what has been already said of the different 
works of Ovid in succession, it is unnecessary to in¬ 
dulge in many general remarks on his defects or merits. 
Suffice it to say, that the brilliancy of his imagination, 
the liveliness of his wit, his wonderful art in bringing 
every scene or image distinctly, as it were, before the 
view, and the fluent, unlaboured ease of his versifica¬ 
tion, have been universally admired. But his wit was 
too profuse and his fancy too exuberant. The natural 
indolence of his temper, and his high self-esteem, did 
not permit him to become, like Virgil or Horace, a 
finished model of harmony and proportion. ( Dunlop's 
Roman Literature, vol. 3, p. 349, seqq.) —The best 
editions of Ovid are, that of Burmann, Amst., 1727, 
4 vols. 4to, and that of Lemaire, Paris, 1820-24, 10 
vols. 8vo. The edition of N. Heinsius, Amst., 1661, 
3 vols. 12mo, is also a valuable one. 

OxE.iE, small pointed islands, near the Ech.nades, 
off the coast of Acarnania. Their ancient name has 
reference to their form (’O^eiai). Strabo reports, 
that these are the same which Homer calls Thors. 

( Od ., 15, 298. — Strabo, 458.) Stephanus supposes 
the Oxeae to be Dulichium (s. v. AovTiixeov). This 
group is now commonly known by the name of Cur- 
zolari, but the most considerable among them retains 
the appellation of Oxia. (Gell's Itin., p. 298.) 

Oxus, a large river of Bactriana, rising in the north¬ 
eastern extremity of that country, or, rather, in the 
southeastern part of Great Bukharia, and flowing for 
the greater part of its course in a northwest direction. 
It receives numerous tributaries, and falls, after a course 
of 1200 miles, into the Sea of Aral. The Oxus is now 
the Amoo or Jihon (the latter being the name given 
to it by the Arabian geographers). According to most 
of the ancient writers, it flowed direct into the Caspi¬ 
an, and this statement is said to be confirmed by the 
existence of its former channel; but, in all probability, 
they were ignorant of the existence of the Sea of Aral. 
Some -writers think that Herodotus speaks of the Oxus 
under the name of Araxes (1, 201, seqq.; 4, 11); but 
it is more likely that he there refers to the Volga. The 
historian, however, certainly confounds it with the 
Araxes of Armenia, since he says it rises in the coun¬ 
try of the Matieni (1, 202), and flows towards the east 
(4, 40). According to his account, there were many 
islands in it, some as large as Lesbos, and it emptied 
itself by forty mouths, which were all lost in marshes, 
with the exception of one, that flowed into the Caspi¬ 
an (1, 202). Strabo says, that the Oxus rose in the 
Indian Mountains, and flowed into the Caspian ( Strab ., 
509, 519), which is also the opinion of Mela (3, 51 
and Ptolemy. P li ny (6, 18/ makes it rise in a lake 
GE 


j called y/xus; but it is not improbable that, with his 
usual carelessness in matters relating to geography, 
he confounds its source with its termination. The 
Oxus is a broad and rapid river, and receives many af¬ 
fluents, of which the most important mentioned by the 
ancients was the Ochus, which, according to most ac¬ 
counts, flowed into the Oxus near its mouth, though 
some make it to have entered the Caspian by a separ¬ 
ate channel. (Strab., 509, 518.) — The Oxus has ex¬ 
ercised an important influence upon the history and 
civilization of Asia. It has in almost all ages formed 
the boundary between the great monarchies of South¬ 
western Asia and the wandering hordes of Scythia and 
Tartary. The conquests of Cyrus were terminated 
by its banks, and those of the Macedonians were few 
and unimportant beyond it. The Oxus appears also to 
have formed one of the earliest channels for the con¬ 
veyance of the produce of India to the western coun¬ 
tries of Asia. Strabo informs us, on the authority of 
Aristobulus, that goods were conveyed from India 
down the Oxus to the Caspian, and were thence carried 
by the river Cyrus into Albania and the countries bor¬ 
dering on the Euxine. (Strab., 509.) This account is 
also confirmed by the statement of Varro (ap. Plin 6, 
19), who informs us, that Pompey learned, in the war 
with Mithradates, that Indian goods were carried by 
the Oxus into the Caspian, and thence through the 
Caspian to the river Cyrus, from which river they were 
conveyed, by a journey of five days, to the river Phasis 
in Pontus. The breadth of the Oxus, immediately to 
the north of Balkh, is 800 yards, and its depth 20 
feet (Burners Travels, vol. 1, p. 249); but south of 
Bokhara the river is only 650 yards wide, but from 25 
to 29 feet deep. (Burne's Travels , vol. 2, p. 5.— En- 
cycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 17, p. 108.)—According to 
Wahl, the term Oschan in Pehlvi meant “ river,” and 
he thinks that this name was softened down by the 
Greeks into Oxus, the intermediate form having been 
probably Oschus or Ochus. A Hindoo name for the 
same river is said to be Kasseh, which means water,” 
and has a strong resemblance to the German Wasser. 
The Oxus, therefore, may have been so called /car 
etjoxr/v, as being in an emphatic sense the great river 
of Upper Asia. The root in Oschan (or Och-i) bears 
some analogy to that in the old names Ogyges and 
Oceanus. (Vid. Ogyges. — Wahl, Mittekund Vor- 
der-Asien , vol. 1, p. 753.— Ritter, Erdkunde, vol. 2, 
p. 22.— B'dhr, ad Ctes., p. 186.) 

Oxydrac^e, a nation of India who are supposed to 
have inhabited the district now called Outsch, near the 
confluence of the Acesines and Indus. (Strabo, 701. 
— Steph. Byz., p. 615.— Arrian, 6, 13. — Vincent's 
Nearchus, p. 133.) 

Oxyrynchus, a city of Egypt, in the district ol 
Heptanomis, and capital of the Oxyrynchite Nome 
It was situate on the canal of Moeris, south of Herac- 
leopolis Magna, and received its name (a translation 
very probably from the Egyptian) on account of a fish 
called bt-vpvyxoc in Greek, a species of pike, being 
worshipped and having a temple-here. This place be¬ 
came a great resort of monks and hermits when Chris¬ 
tianity was spread over Egypt. Nothing remains of 
this city, in the village called Behnese, built on its ru¬ 
ins, but some fragments of stone pillars, and a single 
column left standing, and which appears to have form¬ 
ed part of a portico of the composite order. ( 2Elian, 
Hist. An., 10, 46.— Ruffinus , de vita Patrum, c. 5. - 
Mannert, Geogr., vol. 10, pt. 1, p. 412.) 

Ozol^e, one of the divisions of the Locri in Greece. 
Besides the explanation of their name as given in a 
previous article (vid. Locri I.), the following etymol¬ 
ogies are mentioned by Pausanias. 1. During the 
reign of Orestheus, son of Deucalion, a bitch brought 
forth a stick (fvPiov) instead of a whelp. Orestheus 
planted this, and a vine shot up, from the branches 
(o&v) of which the race derived their name. 2. An- 






P AC 


P A C 


otner explanation made the term come from the stench 
(ofy; of the stagnant water in the neighbouring pasts. 
3 . A third class of etymologists derived the appella¬ 
tion from the stench that proceeded from the persons 
of the early Ozolae, they having been accustomed to 
wear undressed skins of wild beasts. ( Pausan., 10, 
38.—Consult also Siebelis, ad loc.) 

P. 

Pa : iic anus, Titus Julius, a general of the Roman 
armies, who proclaimed himself emperor in Gaul about 
the latter part of Philip’s reign. He was soon after 
defeated, A.D. 249, and put to death. 

Pachynus (ILuxwog uupa ), a promontory of Sicily, 
forming the southeastern extremity of the island, and 
called also, by some of the Latin writers, Pachynum. 
(Mela, 2, 7.— Plin., 3, 8.) It is one of the three prom¬ 
ontories that give to Sicily its triangular figure, the 
other two being Pelorus and Lilybaeum. The modern 
name is Capo Passaro. Its southernmost point is 
called by Ptolemy Odyssea Acra (’Odvooeia uupa), and 
coincides with the projection of the coast before which 
the islands delle Correnti lie. Between Pachynus and 
this latter cape lies a small harbour, called at the pres¬ 
ent day Porto di Palo, and the same with what Cice¬ 
ro terms Portus Pachyni. (In Verr., 5, 34.) It 
served merely as a temporary refuge for mariners in 
stress of weather. This harbour is very probably meant 
by the Itin. Marit. when it gives the distance “a Syra- 
cusis Pachyno ” at 400 stadia or 45 geographical miles 
along the coast, since the direct line from Syracuse to 
the promontory of Pachynus is less than this. (Itin. 
Marit., p. 492, ed. Wesseling. — Mannert, Geogr., vol. 
9, pt. 2, p. 341.) 

Pacorus, I. the eldest of the sons of Orodes, king 
of Parthia, and a prince of great merit. After the de¬ 
feat of C-rassus, he was sent by his father to invade 
Syria, having Osaces, a veteran commander, associa¬ 
ted with him. The Parthians were driven back, how¬ 
ever, by Caius Cassius, and Osaces was slain. After 
the battle of Philippi, Pacorus invaded Syria in con¬ 
junction with Labienus, and, having many exiled 
Romans with him, met with complete success, the 
whole of the country being now reduced under the Par¬ 
thian sway. From Syria he passed into Judaea, and 
placed on the throne Antigonus, son of Hyrcanus. 
The Roman power having been re-established in Syria 
by the efforts of Ventidius, Pacorus again crossed the 
Euphrates, but was defeated and slain by the Roman 
commander. His death was deeply lamented by Oro¬ 
des, who for several days refused all nourishment. 
(Justin, 42, 4.— Veil. Paterc., 12, 78.— Tacit., Hist., 
5, 9.)—II. Son of Vonones II., king of Parthia. He 
received from his brother Vologeses, who succeeded 
Vonones, the country of Media as an independent 
kingdom. Hi3 dominions were ravaged by the Alani, 
who compelled him to take shelter for some time in 
the mountains. (Tacit., Ann., 15, 2 el 14.) 

Pactolus, a river of Lydia, rising in the southeast¬ 
ern part of Mount Tmolus, and falling into the Her- 
mus, after having passed by Sardes, the ancient cap¬ 
ital of Crcesus. Its sands were auriferous, the parti¬ 
cles of gold being washed down by the mountain tor¬ 
rents (Plin., 5, 29), and hence it was sometimes called 
Chrysorrhoas. The poets accounted for the golden 
6auds of the river by the fable of Midas having bathed 
in its waters when he wished to rid himself of the 
transmuting powers of his touch. (Vid. Midas.) It 
was from the gold found amid the sands of the Pacto¬ 
lus that Crcesus is said to have acquired his great rich¬ 
es. At a time when this precious metal was scarce, 
the labour of procuring it in this way was no doubt 
w ill bestowed. At a later period, however, the stream 
was neglected ; and Strabo, passing over the true rea¬ 
son, informs us that the river yielded no more (vvv 6’ 
954 


kultloLTze TO piiypa.—Strab., 627). Callimuchus aid 
Dionysius Periegetes speak of the swans of the Pac»r. 
lus. (Callim., H. in Del., 249.—Dionys. Peiieg., 
830.) The Turkish name of this stream is the Bagou 
ly. ( Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 442.— Manni't. 
Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 3, p. 361.) 

Pacuvius, M. an early Roman dramatic poet, th«e 
nephew of Ennius by a sister of his (Plin., 35, 4), wa* 
born at Brundisium, A.U.C. 534. At Rome he be¬ 
came intimately acquainted with Lselius, who, in Ci¬ 
cero's treatise De Amicitia, calls him his host and 
friend. There is an idle story, that Pacuvius had three 
wives, all of whom successively hanged themselves op 
the same tree ; and that, lamenting this to Attius, who 
was married, he begged for a slip of it to plant in his 
own garden ; an anecdote which has been very seri¬ 
ously confuted by Annibal di Leo, in his learned me¬ 
moir on Pacuvius. A story somewhat similar to this 
is told of a Sicilian by Cicero (dc Orat., 2, 69). Pa¬ 
cuvius, besides attending to poetry, employed himself 
also in painting. He was one of the first Romans who 
attained any degree of eminence in that elegant art, 
and he particularly distinguished himself by the pic¬ 
ture which he executed for the temple of Hercules in 
the Forum Boiamum. (Plin., 35, 4.) He published 
his last piece at the age of eighty (Cic., Brut., c. 63); 
after which, being oppressed with old age, and afflict¬ 
ed with perpetual bodily illness, he retired to Tarentum, 
where he died, after having nearly completed his nine¬ 
tieth year. (Aul. Gell., 13, 2. — Hieron., Chron., p. 
39.) An elegant epitaph, supposed to have been writ¬ 
ten by himself, is quoted with much commendation by 
Aulus Gellius, who calls it verecundissimum et puris - 
simum (1, 24). It appears to have been inscribed on 
a tombstone, which stood by the side of a public road, 
according to the usual custom of the Romans.— 
Though a few fragments of the tragedies of Pacuvius 
remain, our opinion of his dramatic merits can only be 
formed at second hand, from the observations of those 
critics who wrote while his works were yet extant. Ci¬ 
cero, though he blames his style, and characterizes him 
as a poet male loculus (Brut., c. 74), places him on 
the same level for tragedy as Ennius for epic poetry, or 
Cascilius for comedy ; and he mentions, in his treatise 
De Oratore, that his verses were by many considered 
as highly laboured and adorned : “ Omnes apud hunt 
ornati elaboratique sunt versus It was in this la¬ 
boured polish of versification, and skill in the drama¬ 
tic conduct of the scene, that the excellence of Pacu¬ 
vius chiefly consisted ; for so the lines of Horace have 
been usually interpreted, where, speaking of the pub¬ 
lic opinion entertained concerning the dramatic writers 
of Rome, he says (Ep., 2, 1, 56), 

il Ambigitur quoties uter utro sit prior, aufert 
Pacuvius docti famam senit, Attius alti 

and the same meaning must be affixed to the passage 
in Quintilian: “ Virium tamen Attio plus tribuitur; 
Pacuvium videri doctiorem, qui esse docti adfectant, 
volunt." (Inst., Orat., 10, 1.) Most other Latin 
critics, though, on the whole, they seem to prefer Atti¬ 
us, allow Pacuvius to be the more correct writer. The 
names are still preserved of about 20 tragedies of Pacu¬ 
vius. Of these the Antiopa was one of the most distin¬ 
guished. It was regarded by Cicero as a great national 
tragedy, and an honour to the Roman name. (De Fin., 
1,2.) Persius, however, ridicules a passage in this tra- 
gedy, where Antiopa talks of propping her melancholy 
heart with misfortunes (1, 78).—With regard to the 
Dulorestes (Orestes Servus), another of these tragedies, 
there has been a good deal of discussion and difficulty. 
Nsevius, Ennius, and Attius are all said to have writ¬ 
ten tragedies which bore the title of Dulorestes; but 
a late German writer has attempted, at great length, to 
show that this is a misconception ; and that all the 
fragments which have been classed with the remains 



PAD 


PAD 


of these invee dramatic poets, belong to the Dulorestes 
of Pacuvius, who was, in truth, the only Latin poet that 
wrote a tragedy with this appellation. What the ten- 
our or subject of the play, however, may have been, he 
admits, is difficult to determine, as the different pas¬ 
sages still extant refer to different periods of the life 
of Orestes; which is rather adverse, it must be ob¬ 
served, to his idea, that all these fragments were writ¬ 
ten by the same person, unless, indeed, Pacuvius had 
utterly set at defiance the observance of the celebrated 
unities of the ancient drama. On the whole, however, 
he agrees with Stanley in his remarks on the Choe- 
phori of vEschylus, that the subject of the Choephori, 
which is the vengeance taken by Orestes on the mur¬ 
derers of his father, is also that of the Dulorestes of 
Pacuvius. ( Eberhardt, Zustand der schonen Wissen- 
chaften bci den Romern , p. 35, seqq .)—In the Iliona, 
the scene where the shade of Polydorus, who had been 
assassinated by the King of Thrace, appears to his 
mother, was long the favourite of a Roman audience, 
who seemed to have indulged in the same partiality for 
such spectacles that we still entertain for the goblins in 
Hamlet and Macbeth.—All the plays of Pacuvius were 
either imitated or translated from the Greek, except 
Paulus. This was of his own invention, and was the 
first Latin tragedy formed on a Roman subject. Un¬ 
fortunately, there are only five lines of it extant, and 
these do not enable us to ascertain which Roman of 
the name of Paulus gave his appellation to the trage¬ 
dy. It was probably either Paulus yEmilius, who fell 
at Gann®, or his son, whose story was a memorable 
instance of the instability of human happiness, as he 
lost both his children by his second marriage, one five 
days before and the other five days after, his Macedo¬ 
nian triumph.—From no one play of Pacuvius are there 
more than fifty lines preserved, and these generally 
very much detached. It does not appear that his 
tragedies had much success or popularity in his own 
age. He was obliged to have recourse for his sub¬ 
jects to foreign mythology and unknown history. Iph- 
igenia and Orestes were always more or less strangers 
to a Roman audience, and the whole drama in which 
these and similar personages flourished, never attained 
in Rome to a healthy and perfect existence. ( Dunlop's 
Roman Literature , vol. 1, p. 343, seqq.) — The frag¬ 
ments of Pacuvius are given in the collections of Ste¬ 
phens, Maittaire, &c. 

Padus, now the Po, the largest river of Italy, an¬ 
ciently called also Eridanus, an appellation which is 
frequently used by the Roman poets, and almost al¬ 
ways by Greek authors. ( Vid. Eridanus.) This lat¬ 
ter name, however, belongs properly to the Ostium 
Spineticum of the Padus. ( Plin ., 3, 20.— Muller, 
Etrusker, vol. 1, p. 225.) The name Padus is said 
to have been derived from a word in the language of 
the Gauls, which denoted a pine-tree, in consequence 
of the great number of those trees growing near its 
source. {Plin., 3, 16.) Whatever be the derivation 
of the term Padus, the more ancient name of the river, 
which was Bodincus, is certainly of Celtic origin, and 
is said to signify “ bottomless." (Compare the Ger¬ 
man bodenlos. — Dalecamp, ad Plin., 3, 16.) The Po 
rises in Mons Vesulus, now Monte Viso , near the 
sources of the Druentia or Durance , runs in an east¬ 
erly direction for more than 500 miles, and discharges 
its waters into the Adriatic, about 30 miles south of 
Portus Venetus or Venice. It is sufficiently deep to 
bear boats and barges at 30 miles from its source, but 
the navigation is at all times difficult, and not unfre- 
quently hazardous, on account of the rapidity of the 
current. Its waters are liable to sudden increase from 
the melting of the snows and from heavy falls of rain, 
the rivers that flow into it being almost all mountain- 
streams ; and in the flat country, in the lower part of 
its course, great dikes are erected on both sides of the 
river to nrotect the lands from inundation. During its 


long course it receives a great number of tributanes, 
its channel being the final receptacle of almost every 
stream which rises on the eastern and southern decliv¬ 
ities of the Alps, and the northern declivity of the 
Apennines. The mouths of the Po were anciently 
reckoned seven in number, the principal one, which 
was the southernmost, being called Padusa, and now 
Po di Primaro. It was this mouth also to which the 
appellations Eridanus and Spineticum Ostiumwereap- 
plied. It sends off a branch from itself near Trigaboli, 
the modern Ferrara, which was anciently styled Vola- 
na Ostium, but is now denominated Po di Ferrara. 
(Polyb ., 2, 16.) Pliny mentions the following other 
branches or mouths of the Po : the Caprasiae Ostium, 
now Bocca di bel Occhio; Sagis, now Fossage; and 
Carbonaria, now Po d' Ariano (3, 16). The Fossa 
Philistina is the Po grande. {Cramer's Anc. Italy, 
vol. 1, p. 115.)—The Padus is rendered famous in the 
legends of mythology by the fate of Phaethon, who fell 
into it when struck down from heaven by the thunder¬ 
bolt of Jove. ( Vid. Phaethon.) 

Padusa, the same with the Ostium Spineticum, or 
southernmost branch of the river Padus. ( Vid. Pa¬ 
dus.) A canal was cut by Augustus from the Padusa 
to Ravenna. {Valg., el. ap. Serv. ad Virg., AEn., 
11, 456.) Virgil speaks of the swans along its banks 
{l. c. — Cramer's Anc . Italy, vol. 1, p. 114). 

P^ean, an appellation given to Apollo, who under 
this name was either considered as a destroying {Tcalu, 
“ to smite"), or as a protecting and healing deity, who 
frees the mind from care and sorrow (tt avu, “ to cause 
to cease"). The tragedians, accordingly, by an ana¬ 
logical appellation of the word, also called Death, to 
whom both these attributes belonged, by the title of 
Paean. {Eurip., Hippol., 1373. — AEseh., ap. Stcl., 
Serm., p. 121.) And thus this double character of 
Apollo, by virtue of which he was equally formidable 
as a foe and welcome as an ally ( JEsch., Agam., 518), 
was authorized by the ambiguity of the name. Homer 
speaks of Pceeon {Tlairiov) as a separate individual, 
and the physician of Olympus ; but this division ap¬ 
pears to be merely poetical, without any reference tc 
actual worship. Hesiod also made the same distinc 
tion. {Schol. ad Horn., Od., 4, 231.) Still, however, 
Apollo must be regarded as the original deity of the 
healing art. From very early times, the paean had, in 
the Pythian temple, been appointed to be sung in hon¬ 
our of Apollo. {Horn., Hymn, ad Apoll. — Eurip., 
Ion, 128, 140.— Pind., Pecan, ap. Fragm.) The 
song, like other hymns, derived its name from that of 
the god to whom it was sung. The god was first 
called Paean, then the hymn, and lastly the singers 
themselves-. {Horn., Hymn, ad Apoll., 272, 320.) 
Now we know that the pasan was originally sung at 
the cessation of a plague and after a victory ; and gen¬ 
erally, when any evil was averted, it was performed as 
a purification from the pollution. {Proclus, ap. Phot. 
— Soph., (Ed. T., 152. — Schol. ad Soph., (Ed. T., 
174.— Suid., s. v. lylov.) The chant was loud and 
joyous, as celebrating the victory of the preserving and 
healing deity. {Callim., Hymn, ad Apoll., 21.) Be¬ 
sides the paeans of victory, however, there were others 
that were sung at the beginning of a battle {AEsch., 
Sept. c. Theb., 250); and there was a tradition, that 
the chorus of Delphian virgins had chanted “ Io Paean ” 
at the contest of Apollo with the Python. {Callim. 
ad Apoll., 113.— Apoll. Rh., 2, 710.—Compare Athe- 
nccus, p. 15, 701, c.) The paean of victory varied ac- 
according to the different tribes; all Dorians, namely, 
Spartans, Argives, Corinthians, and Syracusans, had 
the same one. {Thucyd., 7, 44.—Compare 4, 43.) 
This use of the paean as a song of rejoicing for vic¬ 
tory, sufficiently explains its double meaning; it bore 
a mournful sense in reference to the battle, and a joy¬ 
ous one in reference to the victory. ( Muller's Dori * 
ans, vol. 1, p. 319, seqq., Eng. transl.) 



P JE O 


P JE S 


P^emani, a people of Belgic Gaul, supposed by 
D’Anville and Wersebe to have occupied the present 
district of Famene, in Luxemburg. {Cas., B. G., 2, 
4 .— D'Anville, Notice de la Gaule, p. 188.— Wersebe, 
uber die Volker, des alten Peutschlands, Hanno ., 1826.) 
Lemaire, however, thinks the analogy between the an¬ 
cient and modern names, on which this opinion is found¬ 
ed, too far-fetched. ( Ind. Geogr. ad Ccbs., s. v.) 

Pjson (II aiuv), or, according to the earlier and Ho¬ 
meric form of the name, P^eeon ( Uairjuv ), the phy¬ 
sician of the gods. Nothing is said in Homer about 
his origin. All we are told is, that he cured Mars 
when wounded by Diomede ( II., 5, 899), and Pluto 
of the wound in his shoulder given him by Hercules 
{11., 5, 401), and also that the Egyptian physicians 
were of his race. ( Od., 4, 232.) He would seem to 
have been, in the Homeric conception of the legend, 
distinct from Apollo, though perhaps originally iden¬ 
tical with him. {Keightley's Mythology, p. 200.— 
Consult remarks under the article Paean.) 

P^e5nes (n aiovep), a numerous and ancient nation, 
that once occupied the greatest part of Macedonia, and 
even a considerable portion of what is more properly 
called Thrace, extending along the coast of the ffGgean 
as far as the Euxine. This we collect from Herodo¬ 
tus’s account of the wars of the Paeones with the Pe- 
v inthians, a Greek colony settled on the shores of the 
Propontis, at no great distance from Byzantium. Ho¬ 
mer, who was apparently well acquainted with the 
Paeones, represents them as following their leader As- 
teropseus to the siege of Troy in behalf of Priam, and 
places them in Macedonia, on the banks of the Axius. 
{II, 11, 849.) We know also from Livy (40, 3) that 
Emathia once bore the name of Pseonia, though at 
what period we cannot well ascertain. From another 
passage in the same historian, it would seem that the 
Dardani of Illyria had once exercised dominion over 
the whole of Macedonian Paeonia (45, 29). This pas¬ 
sage seems to agree with what Herodotus states, that 
the Paeones were a colony of the Teucri, who came 
from Troy (5, 13.—Compare 7, 20), that is, if we sup¬ 
pose the Dardani to be the same as the Teucri, or at 
least a branch of them. But these transactions are 
too remote and obscure for examination. Herodotus, 
who dwells principally on the history of the Paeonians 
around the Strymon, informs us, that they were early 
divided into numerous small tribes, most of which were 
transplanted into Asia by Megabyzus, a Persian gen¬ 
eral, who had made the conquest of their country, by 
order of Darius. The circumstances of this event, 
which are given in detail by Herodotus, will be found 
in the fourth book, c. 12 . It appears, however, from 
Herodotus, that these Paeonians afterward effected 
their escape from the Persian dominions, and returned 
to their own country (5, 98). Those who were found 
on the line of march pursued by Xerxes were com¬ 
pelled to follow that monarch in his expedition. He¬ 
rodotus seems to place the main body of the Paeonian 
nation near the Strymon; but Thucydides (2, 99), with 
Homer, extends their territory to the river Axius. But 
if we follow Strabo and Livy, we shall be disposed to 
remove the western limits of the nation as far as the 
great chain of Mount Scardus and the borders of Illy¬ 
ria. In general terms, then, we may affirm, that the 
whole of northern Macedonia, from the source of the 
river Erigonus to the Strymon, was once named Pae- 
or.ia. This large tract of country was divided into 
two parts by the Romans, and formed the second and 
third regions of Macedonia. ( Liv ., 44, 29.) The 

Paeonians, though constituting but one nation, were di¬ 
vided into several tribes,, each probably governed by a 
separate chief. We hear, however, of a king of Pae- 
onia, named Autoleon, who is said to have received as¬ 
sistance from Cassander against the Antariatae, an Illy¬ 
rian horde, who had invaded his country. {Diod. Sic., 
20, 19.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 266’, seqq.) 
956 


P,no* ia, the country of the Paeones. ( Vid. Paeones.j 

PyESTANUs Sinus, a gulf on the lower coast of Italy, 
its upper shore belonging to Campania, and its lowei 
to Lucania. According to Strabo (251), it extended 
from the Siren’s Cape to the Promontory of Posidium 
The modern name is the Gulf of Salerno. Its ancienl 
appellation was derived from the city of Psestum. 

PiEsruM, a celebrated city of Lucania, in Lowei 
Italy, below the river Silarus, and not far from the 
western coast. Its Greek appellation was Posidonia 
the place being so called in honour of Neptune (Houei 
Suv). The name Paestum is used by the Latin wri 
ters more commonly. This latter Mazocchi, on no 
ver y good grounds, derives from the Phoenician Pose- 
tan or Postan, the alleged root, with some Oriental 
scholars, for the Greek Ilooeiduv. {Vid., however, 
remarks under the article Neptunus.) Nothing, how¬ 
ever, can be more fallacious than Phoenician etymolo 
gies.—The origin of this once flourishing city has af¬ 
forded matter of much conjecture and discussion to 
antiquaries. Mazocchi, who has just been referred to, 
makes Paestum to have been founded by a colony from 
Dora, a city of Phoenicia, to which place he also as¬ 
signs the origin of the Dorian race ! This same wri¬ 
ter distinguishes between Paestum and Posidonia, the 
latter place having been founded, according to him, in 
the immediate vicinity of the former, by a Sybarite 
colony, who expelled at the same time the primitive 
inhabitants of Paestum. Eustace {Class. Pour, vol. 
3 , p. 92), following this authority, has fallen into the 
same error of making Psestum and Posidonia distinct 
places.—Those who contend for an earlier origin than 
that which history assigns to Psestum, adduce in sup¬ 
port of their opinion the Oscan or Etruscan coins of 
this city, with such barbarous legends as PHISTV, 
PHISTVL, PHISTELIA, PHISTVLIS,and PHIIS. 
A very eminent numismatic writer, however, attributes 
them to a different town. But, even supposing that 
they ought to be referred to Paestum, it must be 
proved that they are of an earlier date than those with 
the retrograde Greek inscriptions nOM, n02EI, nO- 
2EIAAN, n02EIAI2NEA. Others inscribed nAE2, 
IIAI2, nAI2TANO, are more recent, and belong to 
Paestum in its character of a Roman colony. {Sestini, 
Monet. Vet., p. 16 and 14.— Paoli, Rovine della cittd 
di Pesto Tav., 49. — Micali, Italia avanti il dominio 
dei Romani, vol. 1 , p. 233.— Romanelli, vol. 1, p. 332. 
— Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2 , p. 362.)—It seems now 
generally determined, that whether the CEnotri or 
Tyrrheni were the original possessors of this coast, 
they can lay no claim to those majestic piles which, 
under the name of the ruins of Psestum, form at the 
present day the admiration and wonder of ail who 
have visited them. The temples of Psestum too 
closely resemble in their plan and mode of structure 
the early edifices of Greece and Sicily, to be the work 
of any of the native tribes of Italy. The Tuscans, 
to whom alone they could be referred, have left us no 
example of a similar style in any of their architectural 
monuments.—Strabo is the only ancient writer who 
has transmitted to us any positive account of the 
foundation of Posidonia. He states, that it was built 
by a colony of Sybarites, close to the shore in the first 
instance, but that it was afterward removed more into 
the interior. {Strab., 251.) This account is farther 
confirmed by Scymnus of Chios, and agrees with what 
we know of the extent of dominion possessed by Sy- 
baris at an early period on this sea, where she founded 
also the towns of Laiis and Scidrus. {Herod., 6 , 21 .) 
We are left in uncertainty as to the exact date of this 
establishment of the Sybarites ; but we have two 
fixed points which may assist us in forming a right 
conclusion on the subject. The first is the foundatior 
of Sybaris itself, which took place about 720 B.C. 
the other is that of Velia, a Phocsean colony, built, aa 
we learn from Herodotus, in the reign of Cyrus, of 




PAESTUM. 


PAL 


nearly 540 B.C. It will be seen by that historian’s 
account of the events which induced the Phocseans to 
settle on the shores of Lucania, that they were chiefly 
led to form this resolution by the advice of a citizen 
of Posidjnia ( 1 , 167). It may thence reasonably be 
supposed, that the latter city had already existed for 
twenty or thirty years.—There are but few other par¬ 
ticulars on record relative to its history. That it must 
have attained a considerable degree of prosperity, is 
evident from the circumstance of its name having been 
attached to the present Gulf of Salerno (vid. Paesta- 
nus Sinus); and we possess yet farther confirmation 
of the fact in the splendid monuments which age has 
not yet been able to deface or destroy. It appears 
from Strabo that the Posidoniatae, jealous of the ag¬ 
grandizement of Velia, endeavoured more than once to 
reduce that town to subjection : these attempts, how¬ 
ever, proved fruitless ; and, not long after, they were 
called upon to defend themselves against the aggres¬ 
sions of the Lucani, the most determined and danger¬ 
ous of all the enemies with whom the Greeks had to 
contend. After an unsuccessful resistance, they were 
at length compelled to acknowledge the superiority of 
these barbarians, and to submit to their authority. It 
was probably to rescue Posidonia from their yoke that 
Alexander of Epirus landed here with a considerable 
army, and defeated the united forces of the Lucanians 
and Samnites in the vicinity of that place. (Liv ., 8, 
17.) The Romans, having subsequently conquered 
the Lucani, became possessed of Posidonia, whither 
they sent a colony A.U.C. 480. (Liv., Epit., 14, et 
27, 10 .— Strab., 251.) The loss of their liberty, even 
under these more distinguished conquerors, and still 
more the abolition of their usages and habits as Greeks, 
seem to have been particularly afflicting to the Posi- 
doniatae. Aristoxenus, a celebrated musician and phi¬ 
losopher at Tarentum, who is quoted by Athenajus (10, 
11 ), feelingly depicts the distress of this hapless peo¬ 
ple. “ We follow the example,” says this writer, “of 
the Posidoniatae, who, having been compelled to be¬ 
come Tuscans, or, rather, Romans instead of Greeks, 
and to adopt the language and institutions of barba¬ 
rians, still, however, annually commemorate one of the 
solemn festivals of Greece. On that day it is their 
custom to assemble together in order to revive the 
recollection of their ancient rites and language, and to 
iament and shed tears in common over their sad desti¬ 
ny : after which they retire in silence to their homes.” 

•—The unhealthy situation of Paestum, which has been 
remarked by Strabo, may probably have prevented that 
colony from attaining to any degree of importance ; 
and as it was placed on an unfrequented coast (Cic. 
ad AH., 11, 17), and had no trade of its own, it soon 
decayed, and we find it only noticed by subsequent 
writers for the celebrity of its roses, which were said 
to bloom twice in the year. ( Virg., Georg., 4, 118.— 
Propert., 4, 5.— Ovid, Met., 15, 708.— Id., ep. e Pon- 
to, 2, 4.— Auson., Idyll., 14.)—The ruins of Paestum, 
as has already been remarked, form a great object of 
attraction to the modern tourist. Eustace has given a 
very spirited description of the beautiful temples of 
this ancient city, the most striking edifices, unques¬ 
tionably, which have survived the dilapidations of time 
and the barbarians in Italy. (Class. Tour, vol. 3, p. 
94, seqq.) “ Within these walls,” he remarks in con¬ 
clusion, “ that once encircled a populous and splendid 
city, now rise one cottage, two farmhouses, a villa, 
nnd a church. The remaining space is covered with 
thick matted grass, overgrown with brambles spread¬ 
ing over the ruins, or buried under yellow undulating 
corn. A few rosebushes, the remnants of biferi ro- 
saria Pcesti, flourish neglected here and there, and 
still blossom twice a year, in May and in December, 
as if to support their ancient fame, and justify the de¬ 
scriptions of the poets. The roses are remarkable for 
their fragrance. Amid these objects, and scenes rural 


and ordinary, rise the three temples, like the mausole¬ 
ums of the ruined city, dark, silent, and majestic.— 
Paestum stands in a fertile plain, bounded on the west 
by the Tyrrhene Sea, and about a mile distant on the 
south by fine hills : on the north by the Bay of Saler¬ 
no and its rugged border ; while to the east the coun¬ 
try swells into two mountains, which still retain theii 
ancient names Callimara and Cantena, and behind them 
towers Mount Alburnus itself with its pointed sum¬ 
mits.” (Class. Tour, vol. 3, p. 99, seqq. — Cramer’s 
Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 362, seqq.) 

P^etus, C^ecina, the husband of Arria. (Vid. 
Arria.) 

PagasjE, a maritime town of Thessaly, on the Sinus 
Pagasasus, and just below the mouth of the river On- 
chestus. It was the port of Iolcos, and afterward of 
Pherae, and was remarkable in Grecian story as the 
harbour whence the ship Argo set sail on her distant 
voyage. It was, indeed, asserted by some, that it de¬ 
rived its name from the construction of that famous 
vessel (nr/yvvpL, to construct ”). But Strabo is o r 
opinion that it rather owed its appellation to the nu¬ 
merous springs which were found in its vicinity (nyyy, 
a spring), and this, indeed, seems the preferable ety- 
mology. ( Strabo , 436. — Compare Schol. ad Apoll. 
Rhod., 1, 237.) Apollo was the tutelary deity of the 
place. (Apoll. Rhod., 1 , 411.) Hermippus, a comic 
poet, cited by Athenseus ( 1 , 49), says of this town, 

al II ayaaal dovAovq sal oTiygariag Trapexovci. 

Its site is nearly occupied by the present castle ol 
Volo. (Gell’s Itinerary of Greece, p. 260.— Cra¬ 
mer’s Anc. Greece, vol. 1 , p. 431.) Pagasae gave its 
name to the extensive gulf, on the shores of which it 
was situated ; and which we find variously designated, 
as Pagaseticus Sinus (Scyl., p. 25. — Strab., 438), or 
Pagasites (Demosth., Phil., Epist., 159), Pagasseus 
(Mela, 2 , 3), and Pagasicus (Plin., 4, 9). In modern 
geography it is called the Gulf of Volo. (Cramer’s 
Anc. Greece, vol. 1 , p. 432.) 

Pagasseus Sinus, a gulf of Thessaly, on the coast 
of Magnesia ; now the Gulf of Volo. (Vid. Pagasae.) 

Pal^emon, I. a sea-deity, son of Athamas and Ino. 
His original name was Meliccrla, and he assumed that 
of Palaemon after he had been changed into a sea-de¬ 
ity by Neptune. (Vid. Athamas, and Leucothea.) 
Both Palaemon and his mother were held powerful to 
save from shipwreck, and were invoked by mariners. 
Palaemon was usually represented riding on a dolphin. 
The Isthmian games were celebrated in his honour, 
and indeed his name (UaXalyuv, “ Champion”) ap¬ 
pears to refer to them. (Keightley’s Mythology , p. 
249.)—II. A Roman grammarian (M. or Q. Remmius), 
the preceptor of Quintilian, and who flourished under 
Tiberius and Claudius. From the account of Sueto¬ 
nius, he appears to have been a man of very corrupt 
morals. He was also excessively arrogant, and boast¬ 
ed that true literature was born and would die with 
him. (Juv., 6 , 452.— Id., 7, 215.— Suet., de Illustr. 
gramm., 23.— Dodwell , Ann. Quint., p. 183. seqq .)— 
III. or Palaemonius, a son of Vulcan, one of the Argo¬ 
nauts. (Apoll. Rhod., 1, 202, seqq. — Krause, ad loc.) 

Pal^epaphos. Vid. Paphos. 

Pal^ephatus, I. a town of Thessaly, in the north 
western section of the country, plundered by Philip, 
in his retreat through Thessaly, after his defeat on thf 
banks of the Aoiis. (Livy, 32, 13.) — II. An early 
Athenian epic poet, mentioned by Suidas. The lexi. 
cographer states, that, according to some, he lived be* 
fore the time of Phemonoe, the first priestess of Del - 
phi, while others placed him after her. Suidas cites 
the following productions of his. 1 . A Cosmopeeia, 
in five books.— 2 . The Nativity of Apollo and Diana, 
in four books.—3. Discourses of Venus and Love 
(’A (ppodlrriq nal V E poroq (jnvvai ical hoyot), in five 
books.—4. The dispute between Minerva and Nep 

957 



PAL 


1* A li 


tune.—5. Latova's tress {Ayrovc nhoica/ioc). {Scholl , 
Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 1, p. 36.)—IH. A native either of 
Paros or Priene, who lived in the time of Artaxerxes 
Mnemon, and wrote, according to Suidas, a work in 
&ve books, entitled “Arncra, “ Incredible Things .” 
{Suid., s. v.) —IV. A native of Abydos, and a great 
friend of Aristotle’s. He wrote several historical 
works. ( Suid., s. v.) —V. A grammarian of Alexan¬ 
dra, according to Suidas, but called by Tzetzes and 
others a Peripatetic philosopher. The period in which 
he lived is not stated. ( Fabric ., Bill. Gr., lib. 1 , c. 
21.) Suidas mentions a work by him, entitled “ Ex¬ 
planations of things related in Mythology.' 1 ' 1 This 
seems to be the production which has come down to 
us, in one book, divided into 50 short chapters, under 
the name of Palaephatus, and which is commonly en¬ 
titled “ On Incredible things ” (Ilept 'Aniorov). The 
author explains, according to his fashion, the origin of 
many of the Greek fables, such as those of the Cen¬ 
taurs and Lapithae, Pasiphae, Actaeon, &c. All these 
legends have, according to him, an historical basis, 
and more or less truth connected with them, but which 
has been strangely distorted by the ignorance and cre¬ 
dulity of men. Palaephatus, therefore, may be as¬ 
signed, as a mythologist, to what is termed the class of 
pragmatisers. The work is written in a very good 
style, and, notwithstanding the forced nature ol many 
of the explanations, may be regarded as, in sorpe re¬ 
spects, an instructive book. Virgil alludes to Palae- 
phatus in his Ciris, 

“ Docta Palcepliatia testatur voce papyrus.” 

The term docta would seem to refer to the productions 
of some Alexandrean writer, and the word papyrus to 
imply that his work consisted merely of a single book. 
Simson places Palaephatus in 409 B.C. ( Chron. Ca- 
thol. , col. 779), while Saxius assigns him to 322 B.C. 
(Onomast., vol. 1, p. 88 .)—The best edition of the 
treatise nepl ’Anicrrov is that of Fischer, Lips., 1789, 
8 vo, in the prolegomena to which is contained much 
information from Fabricius, relative to the various in¬ 
dividuals who have borne the name of Palaephatus. 
There are also two other pieces published with this 
work under the name of Palaephatus, one on the in¬ 
vention of the purple colour, and the other on the first 
discovery of iron. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 3, p. 
194.) 

Palaspolis. Vid. Neapolis. 

Palaeste, a little harbour of Epirus, on the Chao- 
nian coast, and south of the Ceraunian promontory. 
Here Caesar landed his forces from Brundisium, in or¬ 
der to carry on the war against Pompey in Illyria. 
{Bell. Civ., 3, 6 .) It must be observed, however, 
that in nearly all the MSS. of Caesar, this name is 
written Pharsalia ; but, on the other hand, Lucan cer¬ 
tainly seems to have read Palaesta (5, 458, seqq.). 
Some trace of the ancient name is perceptible in that 
of Paleassa, marked in modern maps as being about 
twenty-five miies southeast of the Acroceraunian cape. 
{Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 95, seqq.) 

Palasstina, a country of Asia below Syria, though, 
properly speaking, forming part of that land. In its 
earliest acceptations, the name was applied to the 
tract of coast between Egypt and Phoenicia, having 
Ascalon for its chief city. {Josephus, Bell. Jud., 3. 
— Id., Ant. Jud., 1, 19.) It was extended at a later 
period to the territory of the Jewish nation, and the 
terms Palestine and Holy Land are now regarded as 
synonymous. The Jews were not acquainted with 
the name Palaestina; it is thought to be derived from 
that of the Philistaei or Philistines. A full description 
of Palestine will be found under the article Judaea. — 
A late writer {Russell, Egypt, p. 71) has revived 
Wilford’s etymology for the name Palsestina, name¬ 
ly, Pali-stan, “ Shepherd-land,” and has adopted the 
theory relative to the migration of the Pali, or Shep- 
958 


herd-race, from India towards the West. It is very 
surprising that such a derivation as this should be 
gravely advanced at the present day, when there are 
few who do not know how little faith is to be reposed 
in the researches of Captain Wilford, and how grossly 
he was imposed upon by the pundits of India. 

Paljetyrcjs, the ancient town of Tyre on the Con¬ 
tinent. {Vid. Tyrus.) 

Palamedes, son of Nauplius, king of Euboea, and 
a pupil of the famous Chiron. He is celebrated in 
fable as the inventor of weights and measures ; of the 
games of chess and backgammon; as having regulated 
the year by the sun, and the twelve months by the moon ; 
and as having .Produced the mode of forming troops 
into battalions. He was said to have been the first 
also who placed sentinels round a camp, and excited 
their vigilance and attention by giving them a watch¬ 
word. {Philostr., Heroic., p. 682, ed. Morell. Pau- 
san., 10, 31. — Eudocia, p. 321 . — Schol. ad Eurip., 
Orest., 426.) Pliny ascribes to him the addition of 
the four letters 0, S, 4>, X, to the Greek alphabet 
{Pliny, 7, 57); for which Suidas gives Z, II, <5, X 
{Suid., s. v. II aTiapr/dyg. — Consult Salmas., ad In¬ 
script. Herod., p. 29, seqq., 221 , seqq.—Fischer, Ani- 
madv. ad Well., Gr. Gr., vol. 1 , p. 5.) A fragment of 
Euripides, preserved by Stobaeus, assigns to Palamedes 
the honour of having invented the .Greek vowel-signs. 
The meaning of this evidently is, that he was the first 
who conceived the idea of employing the four aspi¬ 
rates of the Phoenician alphabet to express the vowel 
sounds in Greek. {Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 1 , p. 87. 
—Compare Hug, Erfindung der Buchstabenschrift, p. 
123, seqq.) —Palamedes was the prince deputed by 
the Greeks to induce Ulysses to join in the war 
against Troy; but the stratagem by which he effected 
the desired object, and exposed the pretended insanity 
of the chieftain of Ithaca {vid. Ulysses), produced an 
irreconcilable enmity between these two heroes. His 
death is attributed to the revenge of Ulysses, for hav¬ 
ing, by his intervention, been separated from his wife 
Penelope, or to his jealousy at having been superseded 
by Palamedes in an expedition in which he had failed. 
Ulysses had been despatched to Thrace for the pur¬ 
pose of obtaining provisions for the army; but, not 
having succeeded in his mission, Palamedes instituted 
an accusation against him, and, to justify his charge, 
undertook to supply what was required. He was 
more successful than Ulysses, who, to be revenged on 
his rival, hid a sum of money in his tent; and, to make 
it appear that the supplies had been furnished by Pal¬ 
amedes for the enemy, counterfeited a letter to him 
from Priam, expressive of his thanks for the strata¬ 
gem of Palamedes in favour of the Trojans, and in¬ 
forming him that he had caused the reward to be de¬ 
posited in his tent. The tent being searched, the mon¬ 
ey was discovered, and Palamedes was stoned to death 
by the Greeks for his supposed treachery. {Eudocia, 
l. c. — Philostr., 1. c.) Another account states, that, 
while fishing on the seashore, Ulysses and Diomede 
drowned him. {Pausanias, 10, 31.) According to 
Dictys of Crete, the two chieftains just mentioned in¬ 
duced Palamedes to descend into a well in search ot 
a treasure which they pretended was hidden there, 
and of which they promised him a share. After he 
had been let down by means of a rope, they hurled 
stones upon and destroyed him. {Diet. Crct., 2 , 15.) 
The death of Palamedes appears to have been related 
in the Cypria. {Siebelis, ad Pausan., 1. c. —Consult 
Hopfncr, ad Eurip., Iph. in Aul., 198.) Virgil makes 
Sinon impute the tragical end of Palamedes to his 
disapproval of the war. He was called Belides, from 
Belus his progenitor, if the reading in Virgil be cor¬ 
rect, on which point consult the learned critical note 
of Heyne {ad Virg., Mn., 2 , 82). 

Palantja, a city of the Vaccasi, in Hispania Tarra* 
conensis, now Palencia. {l T kert, Geogr., vol. 2, p 



PAL 


PAL 


432.) Strabo (162) assigns it to the Averaci, but oth¬ 
er authorities to the Vaccsei. ( Plin., 3, 4.— Appicn , 
Bell. Hisp., c. 55, c. 80 .— Liv., 48, 25. — Id ., 56, 8.) 

PalatInus Mons, one of the seven hills on which 
Home was built, and the first of the number that was 
nhabited. It formed, consequently, the most ancient 
uart of the city. Although of comparatively little ex¬ 
tent, it was remarkable as the favourite residence of 
me Caesars, from the time of Augustus to the decline 
of the empire. It contained also several spots, vener- 
aDle from their antiquity, and to which the Romans at¬ 
tached a feeling of superstition, from their being con¬ 
nected with the earliest traditions of the infant city. 
Among these were the Lupercal, a cave supposed to 
nave been consecrated to Pan by Evander {Dion. Hal., 

1 , 32.— JEn., 8 , 342); the Germalus, deriving its name 
from the Latin word Germani, because the twin-broth¬ 
ers Romulus and Remus were said to have been found 
under the “ ficus Ruminalis,” which grew in its vicinity 
(Varro, L. L., 4, 18), while at the foot of the hill was 
the temple of Jupiter Stator, said to have been found¬ 
ed by Romulus. (Liv., 1, 12 . — Dion. Hal., 2 , 50.) 
Here also were the cottage of Romulus, near the steps 
called “ Gradus pulchri littoris ” {Pint., Vit. Rom.), 
and the sacristy of the Salii, in which were kept the 
ancilia, and other sacred relics. {Dion. Hal, 2 , 70. 
— Val. Max., 1, 8 , 11.) — Sixty years before the de¬ 
struction of Troy (B.C. 1244), Evander, at the head of 
a colony of Arcadians, is said to have left the city of 
Pallantium, and to have fixed his settlement on this 
hill, to which he gave the name of Pallatium, from his 
native city in Arcadia. Dionysius (2, 2), Livy (1, 5), 
Solinus {de cons. Urb ., lib. 2 ), Virgil (JEn., 8 , 51), 
and other ancient writers, agree in giving this as a re¬ 
ceived tradition, of the value of which, however, the 
investigations of modern philologists have taught us 
to entertain no very exalted opinion. In one thing, 
however, all writers, both ancient and modern, agree, 
namely, that the original site of Rome was on the 
Palatine, whether we ascribe its foundation to Evander 
or to Romulus. The steepness of the sides of the hill 
would be its natural defence, and on one quarter it was 
still farther strengthened by a swamp, which lay between 
the hill and the Tiber, and which was afterward drained 
and called the Velabrum. In the course of time, dwell¬ 
ings sprung up around the foot of the hill, but the Pala¬ 
tine must still have remained the citadel of the growing 
town, just as at Athens, that which was the tt okiq be¬ 
came eventually the dspoTroTug. These suburbs were' 
enclosed by a line, probably a rude fortification, which 
the learning of Tacitus enabled him to trace, and which 
he calls the pomcerium of Romulus. {Ann., 12, 24.) 
It ran under three sides of the hill; the fourth was 
occupied by the swamp before mentioned, where it 
was neither needful nor possible to carry a wall. The 
ancient city was comprised within this outline, or pos¬ 
sibly only the citadel on the summit of the hill was 
called by Roman antiquaries the “Square Rome” 
{Roma Quadrata). {Ennius , ap. Fest., s. v. Quadrata 
Roma.— Pint., Vit. Rom.)—V arro, in the true spirit 
of an etymologist, gives us our choice of several deri¬ 
vations for the name of Palatium: “It might be called, 
he says, “ Palalium, because the companions of Evan¬ 
der were pulantes ” or “ wanderers; or because the 
inhabitants of P alantcum, which is the Reatine terri¬ 
tory, who were also the aborigines, settled there ; or 
because Palatia was the name of the wife of Latinus; 
or, finally, because the bleating sheep ( balantes) were 
accustomed to stray upon it.” {Varro, L. L,. 4, p. 
161.) It is hardly necessary to state, that no one of 
these etymologies is of the least value. The name in 
question is most probably connected with that of the 
goddess Pales, whose festival, termed Palilia, was 
regarded as the natal day of Rome. {Vid. Pales.)- 
The Palatine Mount at the present day is about a mile 
and a half in circuit, and is nearly square. The ruins 


of the successive edifices which have stood upon it 
have raised the soil around its base considerably above 
the ancient level. About one half of the surface of it 
is called the Villa Farnese, which is let and cultivated 
as a kitchen-garden. Adjoining on the south is the 
Villa Spada. —“ With all my respect for this venera¬ 
ble mount,” observes a modern tourist, “I must say, 
that it is very little of its size. I had previously been 
disappointed in the lowly height of the Capitol; but I 
stood yet more amazed at the square, flat-topped, and 
dwarfish elevation of the Palatine. It must certainly 
have been materially degraded by the fall of the suc¬ 
cessive generations of buildings which have stood on 
it, from the straw-roofed cottages of Romulus and his 
Roma quadrata to the crumbling erections of popes 
and cardinals. The ruins of these multifarious edi¬ 
fices, heaped up round its base, have raised the surface 
at leasi, twenty feet above the ancient level: still, with 
all the allowances one can make, it must originally 
have been very little of a hill indeed.” {Rome in the 
Nineteenth Century, vol. 1 , p. 152, Am. ed. — Com¬ 
pare Burgess, Antiquities of Rome, vol. 2, p. 159.— 
Malden's History of Rome, p. 123.) —On this same 
hill stood the famous Palatine Library, an account of 
which will be given under the article Palatium. 

Palatium, I. an appellation sometimes given to the 
Palatine Hill. The plural form {Palatia) is more fre 
quently used, and contains a particular reference to 
the Ca?sars.—II. The residence of Augustus, on the 
Palatine Hill, afterward, when enlarged and beautified, 
the palace of the Caesars. Augustus appears to have 
had two houses on the Palatine; the one in which he 
was born, and which after his decease was held sacred, 
was situated in the street called Capita Bubula {Suet., 
Vit. Aug., 5 ); the other, where he is said to have re¬ 
sided for forty years, formerly belonged to Hortensius. 
After the battle of Actium, he decreed that this last 
should be considered as public property. {Suet., Vit. 
Aug., 72. — Serv.'ad Virg., Mn., 4, 410.) Tiberius 
made considerable additions to the house of Augustus, 
which neither in size nor appearance was worthy of 
an emperor of Rome, and from that time it exchanged 
the name of Domus Augusti for Domus Tiberiana. 
(Tacit., Hist., 1, 77 .—Suet., Vit. Vitcll., 15.) Calig¬ 
ula augmented still farther the imperial abode, and 
brought it down to the verge of the Forum, connect¬ 
ing it with the temple of Castor and Pollux, which he 
converted into a vestibule for this now overgrown pile. 
He also formed and executed the gigantic project of 
uniting the Palatine and Capitol by a bridge; and 
concluded by erecting a temple to himself. (Suet., 
Vit. Calig., 22.) But even his folly was far surpassed 
by the extravagance of Nero, whose golden house ex¬ 
tended from the Palatine to the Ccelian Hill, and even 
reached as far as the Esquilino. (Suet., Vit. Net., 
31 , —Tacit., Ann., 15, 42.) It was not, however, 
destined to be of long duration ; that portion of the 
building which interfered with the projects of Vespa¬ 
sian and Titus, on the Coelian, was soon destroyed, 
and little remained of this huge and glittering palace, 
except the part which stood on the Palatine Hill. 
(Vid. Nero, where an account of the “Golden House” 
is given.) Domitian again, however, renewed and 
even enlarged the favourite abode of the Csasars , and 
such appears to have been the lavish magnificence 
which he displayed in these works, that Plutarch, quo 
ting a sentence of Epicharmus, compares him to M< • 
das, who converted everything into gold. ( Vit. Publ.) 
Stripped by Trajan of its gaudy decorations, which 
were destined to adorn the temple of Jupiter Capito- 
linus (Mart., 12 , 75), it was afterward destroyed or 
much injured by fire under Commodus, but was once 
more restored by that emperor, and further enrich¬ 
ed by Heliogabalus, Alexander Severus (Lampridius, 
Hcliogab., 8 .—Id., Alex. Sev., 24), and almost every 
succeeding emperor until the reign of Theodoric. 






.PAL 


PAR 


(Cassiod., 7, 5 .)—Contiguous to the house of Augus¬ 
tus was the famous temple of the Palatine Apollo, 
erected by the emperor in fulfilment of a vow made to 
that deity on the morning of the battle of Actium. 
Ovid and Propertius describe it as a splendid structure 
of white marble. ( Ov., Trist., 3, 1 .—Property 2, 31.) 
The portico more especially was an object of admira¬ 
tion ; it was adorned with columns of African marble, 
and statues of the Danaides. Connected with the 
temple was a magnificent library, filled with the works 
of the best Greek and Latin authors. (Suet., Vit. 
Aug., 29.) It contained, according to Pliny (34, 7), 
a colossal statue of Apollo, in bronze, of Tuscan work¬ 
manship, which was much esteemed. ( Cramer's Anc. 
Italy, vol. 1 , p. 448, seqq .)— “The fall of the palace 
of the Caesars,” observes a late writer, “like that of 
almost every other monument of antiquity, was less 
the work of foreign barbarians than of the Romans 
themselves. The Goths, in the fifth century, pillaged 
it of its gold, its silver, its ivory, and most of its port¬ 
able treasures. Genseric seized its bronze, and all 
its remaining precious metals; and the shipload of 
statues which the capricious Vandal sent to Africa, 
was supposed to consist chiefly of the plunder of the 
imperial palace. The troops of Belisarius lodged in 
it; so also did the soldiers of Totila, during his second 
occupation of Rome ; but that is no proof of its de¬ 
struction; on the contrary, the spoils of modern exca¬ 
vations have proved how vast were the treasures of art 
and magnificence, which had been spared or despised 
by their forbearance or ignorance ; and, however the 
interior splendour of the palace of the Caesars might 
suffer by these barbarian inmates, we know, at least, 
that its immense exterior, its courts and corridors, and 
walls, and roofs, and pavements, were in perfect pres¬ 
ervation at a much later period; for in the days of 
Heraclius, the beginning of the seventh century, it 
was still fit to receive a royal guest, and it appears to 
have been entire in the eighth century, from the men¬ 
tion made of it by Anastasius. In the long feudal 
wars of the Roman nobles, during the barbarous ages, 
its ruin began. It was attacked and fortified, taken 
and retaken, and for a length of time was the central 
fortress of the Frangipani family, who possessed a 
chain of redoubts around it, erected on the ruins of 
Rome. But its final destruction was consummated 
by the Farnese popes and princes, who laboriously de¬ 
stroyed its ruins to build up their palaces and villas 
with the materials ; buried these magnificent halls be¬ 
neath their wretched gardens, and erected upon them 
the hideous summer-houses and grottoes, the deformity 
of which still impeaches the taste of their architect, 
Michael Angelo Buonarotti.—In the southern part of 
the palace, about 150 years ago, a room full of Roman 
coins was discovered, and a magnificent hall hung 
with cloth of gold, which fell into dust as soon as the 
air was admitted. About one hundred years ago, a 
hall forty feet in length was discovered on the Palatine, 
the walls of which were entirely covered with paint¬ 
ings. They were taken off and sent to Naples, and 
there were permitted to lie mouldering in damp cellars 
until every vestige of the paintings had disappeared.” 
(Rome in the Nineteenth Century, vol. 1 , p. 164, seqq., 
Am. cd.) 

Pales, the goddess who presided over cattle and 
pastures among the ancient Romans. Her festival, 
called the Palilia, was celebrated on the 21 st of April, 
end was regarded as the day on which Rome had been 
founded. The shepherds, on the Palilia, lustrated their 
flocks by burning sulphur, and making fires of olive, 
pine, and other substances. Millet, and cakes of it 
and milk, were offered to the goddess, and prayers 
were made to her to avert disease from the cattle, and 
to bless them with fecundity and abundance of food. 
Fires of straw were kindled in a row, and the rustics 
leaped thrice through them; the blood of a horse, the 
960 


ashes of a calf, and bean-stalks, were used foi purifica¬ 
tion. (Ovid, Fast., 4, 721, seqq. — Kcightley, ad loc 
— Tibull., 1 , 1 , 36.— Id., 2, 5, 87, seqq. — Propert., 
4, 1, 19.) The statue of Pales was represented bear¬ 
ing a sickle. (Tibull., 2, 5, 28.— Keightlcy's My¬ 
thology, p. 538, scq.) The worship of Pales was often 
blended with that of Vesta (Serv. ad Virg., JEn., 
Georg., 3, 1), and sometimes, a^ain, she was repre¬ 
sented as an androgynous divinity. ( Spangenberg, 
De Vet. Lat. Rcl. Dom., p. 60.) Among the Etruri¬ 
ans we meet with a male deity of this name. ( Muller , 
Etrusker, vol. 2, p. 130.)—For the etymology of the 
term Pales, consult Zoega (de Obelise., p. 213, seqq ). 

Palibothra (HaTiibodpa, Strab. — Plin.) or Palim- 
bothra (JAaTiLfiSoQpa, Arrian.--Ptol. — Steph. Byz.), 
a large city of ancient India, at the junction of the Eran- 
noboas with the Ganges. (Arrian, Ind., c. 10.) It 
appears, from the accounts of the ancient writers, to 
have been defended by wooden ramparts, having 570 
towers and 64 gates, to which Diodorus Siculus (2, 39) 
adds the equally incredible statement that the place 
was founded by Hercules. Making all due allowance 
for Oriental exaggeration, the city of Palibothra would 
seem to have been one of considerable size. The 
position of Palibothra has been much disputed. Rob¬ 
ertson places it at Allahabad; but the opinion of Major 
Rennell, who assigns it to the neighbourhood of Pat¬ 
na near the confluence of the Ganges and the Sone, 
appears more correct. Strabo says it was at the 
confluence of the Ganges with another river (Strab., 
702), but he does not mention the name. Arrian, as 
above quoted, makes it to have been situate at the 
junction of the Ganges with the Erannoboas. This 
latter river, Sir W. Jones remarks, is evidently the 
Sanscrit Hiranyavaha. The “ Amara Kesha,” an an¬ 
cient Sanscrit dictionary, gives this river as synony¬ 
mous with Sone. (Schlegel, Reflexions sur VEtude 
dcs Langues Asiatiques, p. 100.— Id., Indische Bibli- 
othek., vol. 2 , p. 394.— Wilson's Theatre of the Hin¬ 
dus, vol. 2, p. 135, 2d ed.) 

Palici or Palisci, two deities, sons of Jupiter by 
the Sicilian nymph Thalia, or, as others give the name, 
iEtna. Thalia having been united to Jupiter near the 
river Symasthus, and not far from the city of Catana, 
and fearing the wrath of Juno, entreated the god to 
conceal her from that deity. Jupiter complied, and 
hid her in the bowels of the earth; and, when the 
time of her delivery had arrived, the earth opened 
again, and two children came forth. These were 
called Palici, either from Tra?uv, “ again," because 
they came forth into the light on the earth’s having 
again gaped; or from tcclTuv, “ again ,” and t/keiu, 
“ to come," because, after having been consigned to the 
bowels of the earth, they had again come forth there¬ 
from. The Palici were worshipped with great solem 
nity by the Sicilians, and near their temple were two 
small lakes of sulphureous water, which were supposed 
to have sprung out of the earth at the same time that 
they were born. These pools were properly craters 
of volcanoes, and their depths were unknown. (Diod. 
Sic., 11 , 89.) The water kept continually bubbling 
up from them, emitting at the same time a sulphureous 
stench. The neighbouring inhabitants called them 
Delli, and supposed them to be the brothers of the 
Palici. (Macrob., Sat., 5, 19.) A curious custom, 
tending to show the power of the priesthood, was con¬ 
nected with these lakes. All controversies, of what¬ 
soever kind, were here decided ; and it was sufficient 
in order to substantiate a charge or clear one’s self from 
an accusation, to swear by these waters and depart 
unhurt; for, if the oath were a false one, the party 
who made it was either struck dead, or deprived oi 
sight, or punished in some other preternatural manner. 
(Diod. Sic,, l. c .) The temple also was an inviolable 
asylum for slaves, especially those who had cruel mas 
ters; and the latter were compelled U> promise a more 




PAL 


PALLADIUM. 


gentle mode of treatment, and to ratify their promise 
witn an oath, before the fugitives returned.—The Si¬ 
cilian leader Ducetius founded a city named Palice in 
the vicinity of the temple and lakes. It did not, how¬ 
ever, flourish for any length of time, but was already in 
ruins in the time of Diodorus. We are not acquaint¬ 
ed with the causes of its overthrow. — The Sicilian 
Palici, according to Creuzer, are mythic creations typ¬ 
ifying some of the movements of the elements. Some 
authorities make Jupiter, changed into a vulture, to 
have been their father; while others mention Menanus 
or Amenanus, a deified stream (perhaps the stream of 
the year), as their parent. (Clem., Homil., 6, 13.— 
Creuzer, ad Cic. de N. D., 3, 22 .) Vulcan, the god 
of fire, was one of these subterranean genii. The 
story of their birth and subsequent movements, when 
stripped of its mythic character, is simply this: the 
Palici denote the elements of fire and water in a state 
of activity ; engendered by the eternal power of na¬ 
ture, but subjected, like it, to eternal vicissitudes, 
they alternately escape from the bowels of the earth in 
torrents of flame or water, and again, when their fury 
is spent, plunge into its bosom. (Creuzer, Symbolik, 
vol. 2 , p. 229.— Guigniaut, vol. 3, p. 186.) 

Palilia, a festival celebrated by the Romans, in 
honour of the goddess Pales. (Vid. Pales.) 

Palinurus, I. the son of Iasius, a Trojan, and the 
pilot of the vessel of HSrieas. While the fleet was 
sailing near Caprese, he yielded to sleep and fell into 
the sea ; a circumstance which Virgil has dignified, 
by representing Morpheus as overpowering Palinurus, 
who had been already exhausted by the fatigue of 
watching. He floated in safety for three days, but, on 
landing near Velia, he fell a victim to the ferocity of 
the inhabitants, who (it seems) were wont to assail 
and plunder the shipwrecked mariner. When JEneas 
visited the lower world, he assured Palinurus that, 
though his bones had been deprived of sepulture, and 
though he was thereby prevented from crossing the 
Stygian Lake, there should yet be a monument dedica¬ 
ted to his memory on the spot where he had been in¬ 
humanly murdered. This eventually took place. 
The Lucani, being afflicted by a pestilence, were told 
by the oracle that, in order to be relieved from it, they 
must appease the manes of Palinurus. A tomb was 
accordingly erected to his memory, and a neighbouring 
promontory called after his name. (Virg., JEn., 5, 
840, seqq. — Id. ib., 6 , 337, seqq. — Serv., ad loc .)—II. 
A promontory of Italy, on the western coast of Luca- 
nia, just above the Laiis Sinus. It was also called 
Palinurum, and Palinuri Promontorium. Tradition 
ascribed its name to Palinurus, the pilot of iEneas. 
( Virg., JEn., 6 , 380.) The modern appellation is 
Capo di Palinuro. Orosius (4, 9) records a disastrous 
shipwreck on the rocks of Palinurus, sustained by a 
Roman fleet on its return from Attica, when 150 ves¬ 
sels were lost. Augustus also encountered great peril 
on this part of the coast, when, according to Appian, 
many of his ships were dashed against this headland. 
(Bell. Civ., 5, 98. — Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2 , p. 
373.) 

Paucoki’?! Stagna, sulphureous pools in Sicily. 
(Vid. Palici.) 

Palladium, a celebrated statue of Minerva, said to 
have fallen from the skies, and on the preservation of 
which depended the safety of the city of Troy. The 
traditions respecting it were innumerable. According 
to Apollodorus, it was made by Minerva herself, and 
was not an image of that goddess, but of Pallas, 
daughter of Triton, whom Minerva had slain, and 
whose loss she afterward deplored. It was first placed 
in the skies with Jupiter ; but when Electra had been 
corrupted by the latter, and had polluted the statue by 
her touch, it was thrown by Minerva upon earth, and 
fell in the Trojan territory, where Ilus placed it in a 
temple which he had founded. (Apollod., 3, 12, 3.— 
6 F 


Heyne, ad loc.) One of the scholiasts to the Iliad ( 6 , 
311) describes it as fydiov yupov %vXivov, “a small 
wooden figure of an animal,” made by a sage named 
Asius, and given to Tros, when he was building the 
city of Troy, as a talisman on the preservation of 
which the safety of his capital depended. (Compare 
Tzetz. ad Lycophr., 363.) Another legend, alluded 
to by Clement of Alexandrea, made the Palladium to 
have been formed of the bones of Pelops. (Clem. 
Alex., Admon. ad Gent., p. 30, D, ed. Paris, 1629.)— 
But, whatever may have been the origin of this famous 
statue, the Greeks, while before Troy, had discovered, 
it seems, from Helenus, whom they had made captive, 
that the Palladium was the chief obstacle to the fall 
of the city. He informed them also that, in order to 
ensure the safety of this revered image, and to dimin¬ 
ish the risk of its being stolen, there were many others 
made like it, but that the true statue was the smallest 
one of the whole number. Helenus, it seems, was in¬ 
duced to make these disclosures partly by threats and 
partly by presents, but most of all by resentment to¬ 
wards the Trojans, in consequence of Helen’s having 
been given to De'iphobus. The Greeks now resolved 
to carry off this fated image, and the enterprise was 
intrusted to Ulysses and Diomede. When these two 
heroes had reached the wall of the citadel, Diomede 
raised himself on the shoulders of Ulysses, and thus 
ascended the rampart; but he would not draw up 
Ulysses, although the latter stretched out to him his 
arms for that purpose. Diomede then went and took 
the Palladium, and returned with it to Ulysses. The 
latter beginning to inquire into all the particulars, Di¬ 
omede, knowing the art of the man, determined on 
overreaching him, and told him that he had not taken 
the Palladium which Helenus had mentioned, but 
another image. The statue, however, having moved 
in a preternatural manner, Ulysses immediately knew 
that it was the true one ; and, having come behind 
Diomede as he was returning through the plain, was 
going to despatch him, when Diomede, attracted by 
the brightness of the weapon (as it was moonlight), 
drew his own sword in turn, and frustrated the pur 
pose of the other. He then compelled Ulysses to go 
in front, and kept urging him on by repeatedly stri¬ 
king him on the back with the flat part of his sword. 
Hence arose, say the mythographers, the proverb, “ Di- 
omedean necessity" (r] Aioprjdeug dvdyKt]), applicable 
to one who is compelled to act directly contrary tc 
his inclination. (Consult Erasmus, Adag. Chil., 1 . 
cent. 9, col. 290,. where other explanations are giv 
en.) The narrative which we have just been detail 
ing is taken from Conon (ap. Phot., cod., 186—vol 
1 , p. 137, ed. Bckker.) The scholiast to Homer (11. . 
6 , 311) states, that after the Greeks had become pos 
sessed of the Palladium, and Troy had fallen, a quar¬ 
rel arose between Ajax and Ulysses as to which ot 
the two should carry the image home. Evening hav¬ 
ing come on, and the dispute being still undecided, 
the statue was intrusted to Diomede for safe-keeping 
until the next morning ; but during the night Ajax 
was secretly murdered. Other accounts make the 
Palladium to have willingly accompanied Ulysses and 
Diomede (Ovid, Fast., 6 , 431.— Tryphiod., 54), and 
both heroes to have been equally concerned in the en¬ 
terprise. (Prod., Arg. II. Parv. — Heyne, Excuvs., 9, 
ad JEn., 2 , p. 308.) Pausanias relates, that Diomede, 
on his return from Troy, brought away the Palladium 
along with him ; and that, having reached the coast of 
Attica, near the promontory of Phalerum, his followers, 
mistaking it for an enemy’s country, landed by night 
and ravaged the adjacent parts. Demophoon, howev¬ 
er, came out against them, and being equally ignorant, 
on his part, of the real character of his opponents, at¬ 
tacked them, and took from them the Palladium, 
which was preserved thereafter in the Athenian Acrop¬ 
olis. (Pausanias, 1, 28.) Harpocration, who is fol, 



PAL 


PAJLjlADIUS. 


fowed by Suidas, says it was not Diomede, but Aga¬ 
memnon. The Argives, on the other hand, main¬ 
tained that they had the true Palladium in their coun¬ 
try ( Pausan., 2, 23); while Pausanias himself insists 
that .Eneas carried off with him the true statue to 
Italy (/. c.). It was an established belief among the 
Romans that their city contained the real Palladium, 
and that it was preserved in the temple of Vesta. It 
was regarded as the fated pledge of the continuance 
t>f their empire, and not even the Pontifex Maximus 
was allowed to behold it. (Ovid, Fast., 6 , 424, seqq.) 
Hence on ancient gems we sometimes see Vesta rep¬ 
resented with the Palladium. ( Maffei, Gemm. Ant., 
D. 2, n. 76.) Herodian relates ( 1 , 114), that when, in 
the reign of Commodus, the temple of Vesta was 
consumed, the Palladium was for the first time ex¬ 
posed to public view, the Vestal Virgins having con¬ 
veyed it through the Via Sacra to the palace of the 
emperor. This was the only instance of its having 
been disturbed since the time when Metellus the Pon¬ 
tifex rescued it from the flames on a similar occasion. 
(Ovid, Fast., 1. c .) In the reign of Elagabalus, how¬ 
ever, that emperor, with daring impiety, caused the 
sacred statue to be brought into his bedchamber, npog 
ydpov t <3 $ec 3 . (Herodian, 5, 6 , 8 .)—In order to ac¬ 
count for the Romans having the Palladium among 
them, it was pretended that Diomede had, in obedience 
to the will of heaven, restored it to Eneas when the 
latter had reached Italy ; and that Eneas being enga¬ 
ged at the time in a sacrifice, an individual named Nau- 
tes had received the image, and hence the Nautian, not 
the Julian, family had the performance of the rites of 
Minerva. ( Varro , ap. Serv. ad Virg., AEn., 2 , 166.) 
This story deserves to be classed with another, which 
states, that the Ilienses were never deprived by the 
Greeks of the statue of Minerva, but concealed it in a 
cavern until the period of the Mithradatic war, when 
it was discovered and sent to Rome by Fimbria. 
(Serv., I c.) —From all that has been said, it would ap¬ 
pear, that the ancient cities in general were accustom¬ 
ed to have tutelary images, which they held peculiarly 
sacred, and with which their safety was thought to be 
intimately connected ; and as Pallas or Minerva was 
in an especial sense the “protectress of cities” (noTuov- 
^of), it was but natural that many places should con¬ 
tend for the honour of having the true image of that 
goddess contained within its walls. (Du Theil, Mem. 
de VAcad. des Inscr., &c., vol. 39, p. 238.— Heyne, 
Excurs., 9, ad JEn., 2 .— Spanheim, ad Callim., H. in 
Lav. Pall., 39.) 

Palladios, I. a sophist, a native of Methone, who 
lived in the time of Constantine the Great. He wrote 
Dissertations or Declamatory Essays, and also a work 
on the Roman festivals. (Photius, cod., 132, vol. 1 , 
p. 97, ed. Bekfcer. — Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 6, p. 
312.)—II. An eastern prelate and ecclesiastical writer, 
a native of Galatia, born about A.D. 368, and made 
bishop of Hellenopolis in Bithynia. He was ordain¬ 
ed by Chrysostom, to whose party he attached him¬ 
self, and, on the banishment of Chrysostom, fell un¬ 
der persecution, and, being obliged to withdraw from 
his see, retired to Italy, and took refuge at Rome. 
Some time after, venturing to return to the East, he 
was banished to Syene. Having regained his liberty, 
h<e resigned the see of Hellenopolis, and was appoint¬ 
ed to the bishopric of Alexandrea. He is thought to 
have died A.D. 431. He wrote the “ Lausiac History” 
about the year 421, which contains the lives of per¬ 
sons who were at that time eminent for their extraor¬ 
dinary austerities in Egypt and Palestine. It was 
called the “ Lausiac History,” from Lausus, an officer 
jn the imperial court at Constantinople, to whom it 
was dedicated. It is by no means certain whether 
Palladius, author of the “ Lausiac History,” and Pal- 
ladius, author of the “ Life of Chrysostom,” were dif¬ 
ferent persons, or one and the same. Dupio thinks 
962 


that these were the productions of the same individu¬ 
al ; but Tillemont and Fabricius adopt the opposite 
opinion. The best edition of the history is that of 
Meursius, L. Bat., 1616. A work on the nations 
and Brahmins of India (II epi tuv 'Ivdiag eOviov 
teal tuv Bpaxyuvov) is also ascribed io him by the 
MSS. It would appear, however, that the author of 
this book had been actually in India, w.'ach cannot b® 
affirmed with any certainty of the anchoret Palladiua, 
This latter work is given in the gnomologic Collect no 
of Camerarius. An edition also appeared from the 
London press in 1665, 4to, and, with a new title-page 
merely, in 1668. The editor (Bissaeus) speaks of the 
work as previously unedited, not knowing that it had 
already, (.appeared in the Collection of Camerarius. 
(Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 7, p. 34.)—III. A physi 
cian of Alexandrea, distinguished from other individ¬ 
uals of the same name by the appellation ol ’larpoao- 
(jnarrjg. This title he is supposed to have gained by 
having been a professor of medicine at Alexandrea. 
His age is very uncertain ; but as he quotes Galen, 
and as he is several times mentioned by Rases, we 
may safely place him somewhere between the begin¬ 
ning of the third and the end of the ninth century 
A.D. Palladius wrote a commentary on the work of 
Hippocrates respecting Fractures, which has reached 
us in an imperfect state; but, in Freind’s opinion, 
what remains is enough to let us see that we have not 
lost much, the text being as full and as instructive as 
the annotations. He has left also Scholia on the sixth 
book of Epidemics; others, still unpublished, on the 
regimen to be observed in acute maladies, and a trea¬ 
tise on Fevers. The scholia on the Epidemics of 
Hippocrates has, like the work on Fractures, reached 
us only in part, but is more valuable. In it, accord¬ 
ing to Freind, he with great perspicuity and exactness 
illustrates not only Hippocrates, but also several pas¬ 
sages of Galen. The treatise on Fevers is too short 
to be of much value, and almost the whole of it is to 
be found in Galen, Aetius, and Alexander Trallia- 
nus. A work on alchymy is also ascribed to him, but 
very probably the author of this last production has 
merely borrowed his name. The commentary is pub¬ 
lished with the works of Hippocrates. The scholia 
on the Epidemics have appeared in a Latin translation 
by Crassus, Basil, 1581, 4to. The Greek text has 
lately been published, for the first time, by Dietz, in 
his “ Scholia in Hippocratem et Galenum ,” &c., Re - 
giomont. Pruss., 1834, 2 vols. 8 vo. The treatise on 
Fevers was edited, with a Latin version, by Chartier, 
Paris, 1646, 4to; the last and best edition is by St. 
Bernard, Lugd. Bat., 1745, 8 vo. The commentary 
on Fractures was translated into Latin by Santalbi- 
nus, and is inserted in the edition of Hippocrates by 
Foesius, and in that of Hippocrates and Galen by 
Chartier. Dietz, in his preface, mentions another work 
by Palladius, which he found in MS. in the library at 
Florence, consisting of Scholia on Galen’s work “ De 
Secta ,” which he intended to publish, but he found 
the MS. so corrupt that he was obliged to give it up. 
Palladius appears to have been well known to the 
Arabians, since, besides being quoted by Rases, he 
is mentioned, among other commentators ?r Hippocra¬ 
tes, by the unknown author of “ Philosopr,Bihliolh 
quoted in Casiri, “ Biblioth. Arabico-Hisp. Escu - 
na/,” vol. 1 , p. 237. (Encyclop. Use. Knoiol., vol. 
17, p. 171.— Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 7, p. 359.) 
— IV. Rutilius Taurus Emilianus, the last of the 
Latin writers on agriculture. His work is entitled 
“ De Re Rustica," and is divided into fourteen books. 
It contains materials selected from earlier authors on 
this subject, and especially from Columella, who is of¬ 
ten literally copied. Nevertheless, Palladius treats, 
in a much more exact manner than Columella, the re¬ 
spective heads of fruit-tiees and kitchen-gardens, hav 
ing followed in these the work of Gargilius Martiali* 




PAL 


PAL 


What he states respecting the mode of preserving 
fruits, &c., is taken from the Greek Geoponica, of 
which he appears to have possessed a much more com¬ 
plete copy than the abridgment which has come down 
to us.—Of the fourteen books of his work, the first 
contains a general introduction ; each of the twelve 
following bears the name of one of the months of the 
year, and treats of the labours proper to each season ; 
the fourteenth book is a poem, in elegiac measure, on 
the grafting of trees. The style of Palladius is in¬ 
correct and ful.l of neologisms. In his poems he dis¬ 
plays some talent by the variety which he introduces 
in describing the operation of grafting as suitable to 
different kinds of trees. He is often, however, ob¬ 
scure, and too figurative.—Critics have not been able 
to agree as to the period when this writer lived; some 
placing him at the beginning of the second century, 
others at the end of the fourth. Some suppose him to 
be the same with the relative of whom the poet Rutil- 
ius speaks in his Itinerary ( 1 , 208), while others very 
justly remark, in opposition to this, that the last-men¬ 
tioned writer was a young Gaul, sent by his father to 
the capital of the empire, to study law there, whereas 
Palladius had possessions in Italy and Sardinia: they 
add, t® t the name of Palladius does not occur among 
those of the prefects and other high magistrates du¬ 
ring the first half of the fifth century, while the title 
of Vir illustris, which the manuscripts give to our au¬ 
thor, indicate that he was invested with some high 
official dignity. Wernsdorff has attempted another 
mode of ascertaining the age of Palladius. The four¬ 
teenth book of his work being dedicated to a certain 
Pasiphilus, he has endeavoured to discover the period 
when this latter individual lived, whom Palladius styles 
a wise man, and whose fidelity he praises ( ornatus 
fidei). Ammianus Marcellinus (29, 1), in speaking of 
the conspiracy against Valens, which was discovered 
in 371, relates, that the proconsul Eutropius, who was 
among the accused, was saved by the courage of the 
philosopher Pasiphilus, from whom the torture could 
wring no confession. These circumstances harmonize 
in some degree, according to Wernsdorff, with the ep¬ 
ithets bestowed by Palladius on his friend ; and if this 
is the same Pasiphilus who, in 395, was rector of a 
province, as appears from a law of the Theodosian 
code (L. 8 .— Cod: Theod., 1. 2 , tit. 1 ), we may sup¬ 
pose that the fourteenth book of Palladius, where no 
allusion is made to this official rank, was written be¬ 
tween 371 and 395. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 3, 
p. 243, seqq.) 

Pallanteum, an ancient town of Italy, in the vi¬ 
cinity of Reate, in the territory of the Sabines. It 
was said, in tradition, to have been founded by the 
Arcadian Pelasgi united with the Aborigines. (Dion. 
Hal., 1, 14.) From it, according to some, the Pala¬ 
tine Mount at Rome is said to have derived its name. 
( Varro , L. L., 4.) Holstenius (ad Steph. Byz., s. v.) 
thinks it must have occupied the site of Palazzo , on 
the hill called Fonte di Rieti. The real name of this 
place was Palacium, as appears from a rare coin pub¬ 
lished by Sestini from the Museo Fontana. (Classes 
Gen. seu Mon. Vet., p. 12 .— Cramer's Ancient Italy, 
vol. 1, p. 317.) 

Pallantias, I. a name of Aurora, as being related 
to the giant Pallas, whose cousin she was. Pallas was 
eon of Creiis (rod Kpeiov), Aurora was daughter of 
Hyperion, and Hyperion and Creiis were brothers, off¬ 
spring of Coelus and Terra. (Hesiod, Theog., 134, 
371, seqq -~-Ovid, Fast., 4, 373.— Id., Met., 9,420.— 
Id. ib., 15, 191.) — II. An appellation given to the 
Tritonis Pams in Libya, because Minerva (Pallas) was 
fabled by some to have been first seen on its banks. 
(Pliny, 5, 4 .—Mela, 1 , 7 . — Serv. ad Virg., JEn., 2 , 
171.) 

Paluantid^e, the fifty sons of Pallas the brother 
nf Egeus. and next heirs tr the latter if Theseus had 


not been acknowledged as his son. They had re¬ 
course to arms in order to enforce their claim to the 
sovereignty, but were defeated by Theseus. (Plut., 
Vit. Thes.) 

Pallantium (TlaTildvnov), a town of Arcadia, north¬ 
west of Tegea. The Romans affirmed, that from this 
place Evander led into Italy the colony which settled 
on the banks of the Tiber. (Pausan., 8, 43.— JEn., 
8, 54.— Plin., 4, 6 ) Pallantium was subsequently 
united to Megalopolis, and became nearly deserted ; 
but in the reign of Antoninus it was again restored to 
independence, and received other privileges from that 
emperor, in consideration of the ancient connexion 
which was supposed to exist between its inhabitants 
and the Romans. The vestiges of this town are dis¬ 
cernible near the village of Thana, on the right of the 
road leading from Tripolitza to Leondari. (GeWs 
Itin., p. 136.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p 349.) 

Paulas (gen. - adis ), an appellation given to the god¬ 
dess Minerva (Ila/l/ldf ’AOyvti—Pallas Athena). For 
a probable etymology of the term, consult remarks at 
the close of the article Minerva. The ordinary deri¬ 
vation makes the goddess to have obtained this name 
from having slain the Titan, or Giant, Pallas. (Vid. 
Pallas, -antis, I.) 

Pallas (gen. -antis'), I. a son of Pandion, who be¬ 
came the father of Clytus, Butes, and the “ fifth Mi¬ 
nerva,” according to Cicero’s enumeration. (N. D , 
3, 23.) He was destroyed by his daughter for attempt¬ 
ed violence to her person. (Cic., 1. c. — Ovid, Met., 7, 
500.)—II. One of the Titans, but enumerated by Clau 
dian (Gigantom., 94), and others, among the Giants. 
He was the son of Creiis, and grandson of Coelus and 
Terra, and was also cousin to Aurora. (Vid. Pallan¬ 
tias I.) — III. King of Arcadia, the grandfather or 
great-grandfather of King Evander. (Serv. ad Virg., 
JEn., 8 , 54.)—IV. The son of Evander, according to 
Virgil. (JEn., 8, 104.) Other poetic legends, how¬ 
ever, made him the offspring of Hercules and Dymae 
the daughter of Evander. Pallas followed Eneas to 
the war against Turnus, by whose hand he fell, after 
having distinguished himself by his valour. The belt 
which Turnus tore from the body of the young prince, 
and wore as a trophy of his victory, was the immedi¬ 
ate cause of his own death ; for, being vanquished by 
.Eneas in single combat, he had almost persuaded the 
victor to spare his life, when the sight of Pallas’ belt 
rekindled the wrath of Eneas, and he indignantly slew 
the destroyer of his youthful friend. ( Virg., JEn., 10. 
439.— Id. ib., 12 , 941.) 

Pallene, a peninsula of Macedonia, one of the three 
belonging to the district of Chalcidice. It was situate 
between the Sinus Therma'icus or Gulf of Saloniki, 
and the Sinus Torona’icus or Gulf of Cassandria. 
This peninsula was said to have borne the name of 
Phlegra, and to have witnessed the conflict between 
the gods and the earth-born Titans. (Find., Nem., 1 , 
100.— Id., Isth., 6 , 47.— Lycophron, 1408.) It is 
connected with the mainland by a narrow isthmus of 
little more than two miles in breadth, on which once 
stood theticKand flourishing city of Potidasa. (Scyl., 
Peripl., p. 26.) Among other towns on this penin¬ 
sula was one of the same name with it, according to 
Stephanus of Byzantium. - ( Cramer's Ancient Greece , 
vol. 1, p. 244.) 

Palmaria, a small island in the Tyrrhenian Sea, ofl 
the coasts of Latium and Campania, and south of the 
promontory of Circeii. It is now Palmaruola. (Plin., 
3) 5.) 

Palmyra, a celebrated city of Asia, situate in an 
oasis of the Syrian desert, nearly half way between the 
Orontes and Euphrates, and about 140 miles east- 
northeast of Damascus. Its Oriental name was Tad- 
mor, which, according to Josephus, signifies the same 
as Palmyra, “ the place of palm-trees.” There seems 
to be sufficient evidence that the Palmyra of the 

%3 




PALMYRA. 


PALMYRA 


Greeks was the “Tadmor in the wilderness” built 
by Solomon : from which two things may be inferred ; 
first, that this monarch extended his arms and his ter¬ 
ritory thus far; and, secondly, that he must have had 
some adequate object for so doing, and for maintain¬ 
ing an establishment and erecting a city, at incredible 
pains and expense, on a spot so remote from the habita¬ 
ble parts of his kingdom. The circumstance of Palmy¬ 
ra’s being situated in an oasis, sheltered by hills to the 
west and northwest, and supplied with wholesome wa¬ 
ter, and also on a line leadibg from the coast of Syria 
to the regions of Mesopotamia, Persia, and India, 
must have pointed it out, in very early times, to the 
caravans, as a convenient halting-place in the midst of 
the desert. The Phoenicians, in all probability, were 
acquainted with it at an early period, and may have 
suggested to Solomon, with whom the King of Tyre 
was in alliance, the idea of establishing an emporium 
here. We read in the second book of Chronicles (8, 
4), that Solomon “ built Tadmor in the wilderness, 
and all the store-cities which he built in Hamath.” 
Hamath was a town and territory extending along the 
banks of the Orontes, and bordering on the Syrian 
desert. After this, we read no more of Tadmor in 
the Scriptures ; but John of Antioch, probably from 
some tradition, says that it was destroyed by Nebu- 
chadnezsar. The first notice which we have of it in 
Roman history is at the commencement of the wars 
with the Parthians, when we find it mentioned as a 
rich and powerful city, and permitted to maintain a 
state of independence and neutrality between the con¬ 
tending parties in this struggle. Marc Antony, indeed, 
attempted to plunder it, but the inhabitants removed 
their most valuable effects over the Euphrates, and de¬ 
fended the passage of the river by their archers. The 
pretence he made use of, to give such conduct a colour 
of justice, was, that they did not preserve a strict neu¬ 
trality ; but Appian savs his real motive was to en¬ 
rich his troops with the plunder of the Palmyrenes. 
In the time of Pliny it was the intermediate emporium 
of the trade with the East, a city of merchants and 
factors, who carried on traffic with the Parthians on 
the one hand, and the Romans on the other. The 
produce of India found its way to the Roman world 
through Palmyra. Pliny has very happily collected in 
a few lines the most striking circumstances with re¬ 
gard to this place, except that he takes no notice of 
the buildings. “ Palmyra is remarkable for situation, 
a rich soil and pleasant streams ; it is surrounded on 
all sides by a vast sandy desert, which totally separates 
it from the rest of the world, and has preserved its in¬ 
dependence between the two great empires of Rome 
and Parthia, whose first care when at war is to engage 
it in their interest.” Palmyra afterward became alli¬ 
ed to the empire as a free state, and was greatly fa¬ 
voured by Hadrian and the Antonines, under whom it 
attained its greatest splendour. We find, from the in¬ 
scriptions, that the Palmyrenes joined Alexander Sev- 
erus in his expedition against the Persians. We do 
not meet with the mention of the city again until 
the reign of Gallienus, when it makes a principal fig¬ 
ure in the history of those times, and in a few years 
experienced the greatest vicissitudes of good and bad 
fortune.' After attaining to a widely-extended sway 
under Odenatus and his queen Zenobia, who survived 
him, it fell at length, together with the latter, under 
the power of Aurelian. ( Vid . Odenatus, and Zeno¬ 
bia.) A revolt, on his departure, compelled him to 
return, and, having retaken the city, he delivered it 
without mercy to the pillage and havoc of his soldiery. 
This event happened in the year 272, after which Pal¬ 
myra never recovered her former importance, although 
t is certain that none of the public edifices were de¬ 
stroyed, though some were damaged, by the soldiers 
of Aurelian. From this time Palmyra had a Roman 
jfwernor. The first Illyrian legion was stationed here 
964 


about A.D. 400. But Procopius states that the place 
had been for some time almost desened, when Justinian 
repaired the town, and supplied it with water for the use 
of a garrison which he left there. We hear no more 
of Palmyra in the Roman history, and the ecclesiastical 
historians supply us with no information rejecting its 
subsequent fortunes. The Moslems are said to have 
taken it under the caliphate of Abu Bekr, Mohammed's 
successor. That it has been made use of as a p.ace 
of strength by the Saracens and Turks appears from 
the alterations made in the temple, as well as from the 
modern temple on the hill. Benjamin of Tudela, who 
visited it about A.D. 1172, states that it then contain¬ 
ed about 2000 Jews. Abulfeda, who wrote about 
1321 A.D., mentions very briefly its situation, refer¬ 
ring to its many ancient columns, its palm and fig trees, 
its walls and castle; he only calls it Tedmor. — The 
ruins of Palmyra are said to present a fine view at a 
distance, but disappointment succeeds when they are 
examined in detail. “ On opening upon the ruins of 
Palmyra,” says Captain Mangles, “ as seen from the 
valley of the tombs, we were much struck with the 
picturesque effect of the whole, presenting altogether 
the most imposing sight of the kind we had ever seen. 
It was rendered doubly interesting by our havilfg trav¬ 
elled through a wilderness destitute of a single building, 
from which we suddenly opened upon these innumera¬ 
ble columns and other ruins, on a sandy plain on the 
skirts of the desert. So great a number of Corinthian 
columns, mixed with so little wall or solid building, and 
the snow-white appearance of the ruins contrasted 
with the yellow sand, produced a very striking im¬ 
pression.” Great, however, he proceeds to say, was 
the disappointment of himself and his fellow-travel¬ 
ler (Mr. Irby), when, on a minute examination, they 
found that there was not a single column, pediment, 
architrave, portal, frieze, or other architectural rem¬ 
nant worthy of admiration. None of the columns ex¬ 
ceed forty feet in height or four feet in diameter; 
those of the boasted avenue have little more than 
thirty feet of altitude : whereas the columns of Bal- 
bec are nearly sixty feet in height and seven in di¬ 
ameter, supporting a most rich and beautifully-wrought 
epistylium of twenty feet more ; and the pillars are 
constructed of only three pieces of stone, while the 
smallest columns at Palmyra are formed of six, sev¬ 
en, and eight parts. In the centre of the avenue, 
however, are four granite columns, each of one sin¬ 
gle stone, about thirty feet high : one only is still 
standing. “Take any part of the ruins separately,” 
says this traveller, “ and they excite but little inter¬ 
est ; and, altogether, we judged the visit to Palmy¬ 
ra hardly worthy of the time, expense, anxiety, and 
fatiguing journey through the wilderness which we 
had undergone to visit it. The projecting pedestals 
in the centre of the columns of the great avenue have 
a very unsightly appearance. There is also a great 
sameness in the architecture, all the capitals being 
Corinthian, excepting those which surround the Tem¬ 
ple of the Sun. These last were fluted, and, when 
decorated with their brazen Ionic capitals, were doubt¬ 
less very handsome ; but the latter being now defi¬ 
cient, the beauty of the edifice is entirely destroyed. 
The sculpture, as well of the capitals of the columns 
as of the other ornamental parts of the doorways and 
buildings, is very coarse and bad. The three arches 
at the end of the avenue, so beautiful in the designs of 
Wood and Dawkins, are excessively insignificant, the 
decorated frieze is badly wrought, and even the de¬ 
vices are not striking. They are not to be compared 
to the common portals of Thebes, if indeed the Egyp¬ 
tians were unacquainted with the arch.”—If inferior, 
however, to Balbec, and not to be compared to 
Thebes, it is only by comparison that these remains of 
ancient magr. .licence can be with any propriety thus 
slightly estimated ; and when this traveller speaks of 




F A M 


PAM 


l5&em as hardly repaying the toils and expense of the 
journey, it must be recollected that he was already 
satiated with the wonders of Egypt. Yet, taken as a 
tout ensemble, he admits that they are more remarka¬ 
ble by reason of their extent (being nearly a mile and 
a half in length), than any which he had met with ; 
they have the advantage, too, of being less encumber¬ 
ed with modern fabrics than almost any ancient ruins. 
Exclusive of the Arab village of Tadmor , which oc¬ 
cupies the peristyle court of the Temple of the Sun, 
and the Turkish burying-place, there are no obstruc¬ 
tions whatever to the antiquities. The temple itself 
is disfigured, indeed, by modern works, but it is still 
a most majestic object. The natives firmly believe, 
Mr. Wood informs us, that the existing ruins were the 
works of King Solomon. “ All these mighty things,” 
say they, “ Solyman Ebn Daoud (Solomon the son of 
David) did by the assistance of spirits.” King Solo¬ 
mon is the Merlin of the East, and to the genii in his 
service the Persians as well as the Arabs ascribe all 
the magnificent remains of ancient art. From the 
dates in the inscriptions, in which the era of Seleucus 
is observed, with the Macedonian names of the months, 
it appears that none of the existing monuments are 
earlier than the birth of Christ ; nor is there any in¬ 
scription so late as the destruction of the city by 
Aurelian, except one in Latin, which mentions Dio- 
clesian. “ As to the age of those ruinous heaps,” 
says Mr. Wood, “ which belonged evidently to build¬ 
ings of greater antiquity than those which are yet 
partly standing, it is difficult even to guess ; but if 
we are allowed to form a judgment by comparing their 
state with that of the monument of Iamblichus at Pal¬ 
myra, we must conclude them extremely old ; for 
that building, erected 1750 years ago” (Mr. Wood 
published in 1753), “ is the most perfect piece of an¬ 
tiquity I ever saw.” ( Mansford's Scripture Gazet¬ 
teer, p. 451, seqq.—Modern Traveller, part 5, p. 10, 
seqq.) 

Pamisos, I. a river of Thessaly, now the Fanari, 
falling into the Peneus to the east of Tricca. (He¬ 
rod., 7, 132.)—II. Major, a river of Messenia, falling 
into the Sinus Messeniacus at its head. It is now 
the Pimatza. (Walpole, vol. 2, p. 35.) Pausanias 
affirms, that the waters of this river were remarkably 
pure, and abounded with various kinds of fish. He 
adds, that it was navigable for ten stadia from the sea 
(4, 34.—Compare Polyb., 16, 16).—III. A torrent of 
Messenia, falling into the Sinus Messeniacus near 
Leuctrum, and forming part of the ancient boundary 
between Laconia and Messenia. (Strab., 361.) 

Pamphila, a Grecian female, whom Photius makes 
a native of Egypt, but who, according to Suidas, Dio¬ 
genes Laertius (1, 24), and others, was born at Epi- 
daurus in Argolis. She wrote several works, the con¬ 
tents of which were chiefly historical. One of these 
was entitled 'FiTTiropat. uxTOpccvv (Historical Abridg¬ 
ments). Another, which Photius has made known to 
us, bore the name of ILvppiKTa urropiKa vrcopyr/para 
(Historical Miscellany). It was a species of note or 
memorandum book, in which this female regularly in¬ 
serted, every day, whatever she heard most deserving 
of being remembered, in the conversations between her 
Husband Socratidas and the literary friends who visited 
his house, and also whatever she had met with wor¬ 
thy of being recorded, in the course of her historical 
reading. She was united to Socratidas for thirteen 
years, during all which time the compilation was being 
formed. The work, however, was without any syste¬ 
matic arrangement, though it would appear to have con¬ 
tained a vast variety of literary anecdote, some few 
portions of which have reached us in the quotations of 
others. Photius only knew of eight books of this col¬ 
lection, but Suidas says it contained thirty-three ; and, 
in fact, Aulus Gellius (15, 17) quotes ths 29th, and 
Diogenes Laertius (1, 24) the 30th. The work is un¬ 


fortunately lost. There were some vho ascribed it to 
Soterides, the father of Pamphila. ( Suidas, s.v., cor¬ 
rected by Vossius, de Hist. Grcec., p. 237, ed. West- 
ermann.) According to Photius, Pamphila lived in 
the reign of Nero. (Phot., cod., 175—vol. 1, p. 119« 
ed. Bekkcr. — Vossius, de Hist. Grcec., 1. c.. — Scholl, 
Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 4, p. 106.) Kruger, in his Life 
of Thucydides (p. 7), calls in question the credit of 
this female author. (Westermann, ad Voss., i. c.) 

Pamphilus, I. an Alexandrine grammarian, and a 
pupil of Aristarchus. He was the author of a large 
lexicon, in 91 or 95 books, often quoted by Athenseus, 
in which he had incorporated the lexicon of the Cro- 
tonian dialect by Hermonax, and an Italian (i. e., Do¬ 
ric) lexicon bv Diodorus and Heracleon. Other works 
of his are enumerated by Athenasus. ( Needham, Pro¬ 
leg. ad Gcopon., p. 63, seqq. — Schweighaeuser, Ind. 
Auct. ad Athen, vol. 9, p. 159.) — II. A celebrated 
painter, a native of Amphipolis, but who studied his 
art under Eupompus of Sicyon, and succeeded in es¬ 
tablishing the school which his master had founded. 
The characteristics of the Sicyonian school of paint¬ 
ing were, a stricter attention to dramatic truth of com¬ 
position, and a finer and more systematic style of de¬ 
sign. Pamphilus taught the principles of this school 
to Apelles. Such was his authority, says Pliny (35, 
10, 36), that, chiefly through his influence, first in Si¬ 
cyon and then throughout all Greece, noble youth were 
taught the art of drawing before all others ; it was 
considered among the first of liberal arts, and was 
practised exclusively among the freeborn, for there was 
a law prohibiting all slaves the use of the cestrum or 
ypacpig. In this school of Pamphilus, the most fa¬ 
mous of all the ancient schools of painting, the pro¬ 
gressive courses of study occupied the long period of 
ten years, and the fee of admission was not less than 
a talent. Pamphilus, like his master Eupompus, 
seems to have been occupied principally with the the¬ 
ory of his art and with teaching, since we have very 
scanty notices of his works. Yet he, and his pupil 
Melanthius, according to Quintilian (12, 10), were the 
most renowned among the Greeks for composition. 
We have accounts of only four of his paintings, the 
“ Heraclidffi,” mentioned’ by Aristophanes ( Plutus, 
385), and three others named by Pliny, the “ Bat¬ 
tle of Phlius and victory of the Athenians,” “ Ulysses 
on the raft,” and a “ Relationship” or Cognatio, 
probably a family portrait. These pictures were all 
conspicuous for the scientific arrangement of their 
parts, and their subjects certainly afford good materials 
for fine composition. The period of Pamphilus is 
sufficiently fixed by the circumstance of his having 
taught Apelles, and he consequently flourished some¬ 
what before, and about the time of Philip II. of Ma- 
cedon, from B.C. 388 to about B.C. 348. He left 
writings upon the arts, but they have unfortunately 
suffered the common fate of the writings of every oth¬ 
er ancient artist. He wrote on painting and famous 
painters. (Encyclop. Us. Knowl. , vol. 17, p. 177. 
Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.)— III. A bishop of Caesarea in 
Palestine, and the intimate friend of Eusebius, who, 
in memory of him, appended “ Pamphili (i. e., the 
friend of Pamphilus) to his own name (vid. Eusebius). 
He is said to have been born at Berytus, and educated 
by Pierius. He spent the greater part of his life in 
Caesarea, where he suffered martyrdom in the year 
309. Pamphilus was a man of profound learning, and 
devoted himself chiefly to the study of the Scriptures 
and the works of the Christian writers. Jerome 
states, that he wrote out with his own hand the great¬ 
er part of Origen’s works. He founded a library at 
Cssarea, chiefly consisting of ecclesiastical works, 
which became celebrated thoughout the ancient world 
It was destroyed, however, before the middle of the 
seventh century. He constantly lent and gave away 
conies of the Scriptures. Both Eusebius and Jerom* 





PAM 


PAN 


■peak in tne highest terms of his piety and benevo¬ 
lence. Jerome states, that Parnphilus composed an 
apology for Origen before Eusebius ; but, at a later 
period, having discovered that the work which he had 
taken for Pamphilus’s was only the first book of Eu- 
»cbius’s apology for Origen, he denied that Parnphilus 
wrote anything except short letters to his friends. 
The truth seems to be, that the first five books of the 
“ Apology for Origen” were composed by Eusebius 
and Parnphilus jointly, and the s^xth book by Euse¬ 
bius alone, after the death of Parnphilus. Another 
work, which Parnphilus effected in conjunction with 
Eusebius, was an edition of the Septuagint, from the 
text in Origen’s Hexapla. This edition was gen¬ 
erally used in the Eastern church. Montfaucon and 
Fabricius have published “ Contents of the Acts of 
the Apostles” as a work of Parnphilus ; but this is in 
all probability the work of a later writer. Eusebius 
wrote a “ Life of Parnphilus,” in three books, which 
is now entirely lost, with the exception of a few frag¬ 
ments, and even of these the genuineness is extremely 
doubtful. We have, however, notices of him in the 
“ Ecclesiastical History” of Eusebius (7, 32), and in 
the “ De Viris ILlustribus ,” and other works of Je¬ 
rome. ( Lardner's Credibility , pt. 2, c. 59.) 

Pamphus, an early Athenian bard, and a disciple, as 
was said, of Linus. Philostratus has preserved two 
remarkable verses of his, which recall to mind the 
symbol under which the Egyptians typified the Crea¬ 
tor of the universe, or the author of animal life. The 
lines are as follows : 

7,ev, kv8lot £, yeyiGTs Jefiv, eiTivpeve Konpcp 

MrjTieiy re xai Imrely kcu ryiioveiy. 

“ Oh Jove , most glorious, most mighty of the gods > 
thou that art enveloped in the dung of sheep, and 
horses , and mules.” (Philoslr., Heroic., c. 2, p. 98, 
ed. Boissonade.) — According to Pausanias (9, 27), 
Pamphus composed hymns for the Lycomedte, a fam¬ 
ily which held by hereditary right a share in the Eleu- 
sinian worship of Ceres. Pamphus is also said to have 
first sung the strain of lamentation at the tomb of Li¬ 
nus. ( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 1, p. 33.— Muller, 
Hist. Lit. Gr., p. 25.) 

Pamphylia (Hafi<j)vMa), a province of Asia Minor, 
extending along the coast of the Mediterranean from 
Olbia to Ptolemais, and bounded on the north by Pi- 
sidia, on the west by Lycia and the southwestern part 
of Phrygia, and on the east by Cilicia. Pliny (5, 
26) and Mela (1, 14) make Pamphylia begin on the 
coast at Phaselis, which they reckon a city of Pamphyl¬ 
ia, but the majority of writers speak of it as a Lycian 
city. Pamphylia was separated from Pisidia by Mount 
Taurus, and was drained by numerous streams which 
flowed from the high land of the latter country. The 
eastern part of the coast is described by Captain Beau¬ 
fort as flat, sandy, and dreary ; but this remark does 
not apply to the interior of the country, which, accord- 
to Mr. Fellows’ account (Excursion in Asia Minor, 
p. 204), is very beautiful and picturesque. The west¬ 
ern part of the coast is surrounded by lofty mountains 
which rise from the sea, and attain the greatest height 
in Mount Solyma, on the eastern borders of Lycia. The 
western part of the country is composed, according to 
Mr. Fellows (p. 184), “ for thirty or forty miles, of a 
mass of incrusted or petrified vegetable matter, lying 
imbosomed, as it were, in the side of the high range of 
marble mountains which must originally have formed 
the coast of this country. As the streams, and, in¬ 
deed, large rivers which flow from the mountains, enter 
the country formed of this porous mass, they almost 
totally disappear beneath it; a few little streams only 
ire kept on the surface by artificial means, for the pur¬ 
pose of supplying aqueducts and mills, and, being car¬ 
ried along the plain, fall over the cliffs into the sea. 
The course of the rivers beneath these deposited plains 
966 


is continued to their termination at a short distance 
out at sea, where the waters of the rivers rise abun¬ 
dantly all along the coast, sometimes at the distance 
of a quarter of a mile from the shore.” f Encycl. Us. 
Knowl., vol. 17, p. 177.)—The Greeks, ever prone to 
those derivations which flattered their national vanity, 
attached to the word “ Pamphyli” (n.ag(pv?.oi) that 
meaning which the component words rvuv and 
would in their language naturally convey, namely, “an 
assemblage of different nations.” (Strab., 668.) It 
was, however, farther necessary to account for the im¬ 
portation of Grecian terms among a people as barba¬ 
rous as the Carians, Lycians, and other tribes on the 
same line of coast; and the siege of Troy, so fertile a 
source of fiction, gave rise to the tale which supposed 
Calchas and Amphilochus to have settled on the Pam- 
phylian shores with portions of various tribes of the 
Greeks. This story, which seems to have obtained 
general credit, is to be traced, in the first instance, tc 
the father of history (Herod., 7, 91), and after him it 
has been repeated by Strabo (l. c ), Pausanias (7, 3), 
and others. Of the Grecian origin of several towns 
on the Pamphylian coast we can indeed have no doubt, 
but there is no reason for supposing that the main pop¬ 
ulation of the country was of the Hellenic race. It is 
more probable that they derived their origin from the 
Cilicians or the ancient Sol-ymi. Other etymologies 
may be found in Stephanus of Byzantium (s. v. Uap- 
(pvXia). Pliny reports, that this country was once call¬ 
ed Mopsopia, probably from the celebrated Grecian 
soothsayer Mop*sus (5, 26.)—Pamphylia possesses but 
little interest in an historical point of view. It became 
subject in turn to Croesus, the Persian monarchs, Al¬ 
exander, the Ptolemies, Antiochus, and the Romans. 
The latter, however, had considerable difficulty in ex¬ 
tirpating the pirates, who swarmed along the whole ol 
the southern coast of Asia Minor, and even dared tc 
insult the galleys of those proud republicans off the 
shores of Italy, and in sight of Ostia. Pamphylia was 
entirely a maritime country : its coast is indented by 
a deep’gulf, known to the ancients by the name of Mare 
Pamphylium, and in modern geography it bears that ol 
“ Gulf of Altalia.” The Turks call this part of Cara- 
mama by the appellation of Teke-lh. (Cramer's Asia 
Minor, vol. 2, p. 273, seqq.) Mr. Leake gives the 
following account of the natural features of part of this 
country, which may be compared with that of Mr. Fel¬ 
lows. “ From Alaya (the ancient Coracesium) to 
Alar a (the ancient Ptolema'is) are eight reputed or 
caravan hours. The road leads along the seashore, 
sometimes just above the seabeach, upon high woody 
banks, connected on the right with the great range of 
mountains which lies parallel to the coast; at others, 
across narrow fertile valleys, included between branch¬ 
es of the same mountains. There are one or two fine 
harbours, formed by islands and projecting capes; but 
the coast for the most part is rocky and without shel¬ 
ter.—From Alara to Menavgat (situate near the mouth 
of the ancient Melas) the road proceeded at a distance 
of three or four miles from the sea, crossing several 
fertile and well-cultivated valleys, and passing some 
neat villages pleasantly situated. The valleys are wa¬ 
tered by streams coming from a range of lofty mount¬ 
ains, appearing at a great distance on the right.” 
(Leake's Journal, p. 130.) — The Melas is described 
as a large river, and the adjacent valleys as well-cul¬ 
tivated and inhabited. From Menavgat to Das hasher 
(the ancient Syllium) the country is represented as be¬ 
ing a succession ol fine valleys, separated by ridges 
branching from the mountains, and each watered by a 
stream of greater or less magnitude. (Leake's Jour 
nal, l. c.) 

Pan (IIuv), the god of shepherds, and in a later age 
the guardian of bees, and the giver of success in fish 
ing and fowling He haunted mountains and pastures, 
was fond of the pastoral retd and of entrapping nymphs 




PAIN. 


PAN 


in form he combined that of man and beast, having a 
red face, horned head, his nose flat, and his legs, thighs, 
tail, and feet those of a goat. Honey and milk were 
offered to him.—This god is unnoticed by Homer and 
Hesiod ; but, according to one of the Homeridaa, he 
ivas the son of Mercury by an Arcadian nymph. (Horn., 
Hymn., 19.) So monstrous was his appearance, that 
the nurse, on beholding him, fled away in affright. 
Mercury, however, immediately caught him up, wrap¬ 
ped him carefully in a hareskin, and carried him away 
to Olympus: then taking his seat with Jupiter and the 
other gods, he produced his babe. All the gods, es¬ 
pecially Bacchus, were delighted with the little stran¬ 
ger ; and they named him Pan (i. e., “ All"), because 
he had charmed them all ! — Others fabled that Pan 
was the son of Mercury by Penelope, whose love he 
gained under the form of a goat, as she was tending 
in her youth the flocks of her father on Mount Tayge- 
tus. (Herod., 2, 145.— Schol. ad Theocr., 7, 109.— 
Eudocia, 323.— Tzetzes, ad Lycophr., 772.) Some 
even went so far as to say that he was the offspring 
of the amours of Penelope with all her suitors. (Schol. 
ad Theocr., 1, 3. — Eudocia, l. c. — Serv. ad JEn., 2, 
44.) According to Epitnenides (Schol. ad Theocr., 
1. c.). Pan and Areas were the children of Jupiter and 
Callisto. Aristippus made Pan the offspring of Jupi¬ 
ter and the nymph CEne'is ; others, again, said that he 
was a child of Heaven and Earth. (Schol. ad Theocr., 
7, 123.) There was also a Pan said to be the son of 
Jupiter and the nymph Thymbris or Hybris, the in¬ 
structor of Apollo in divination. (Apollod., 1, 4, 1.) 
—The worship of Pan seems to have been confined to 
Arcadia till the time of the battle of Marathon, when 
Phidippides, the courier who was sent from Athens to 
Sparta to call on the Spartans for aid against the Per¬ 
sians, declared that, as he was passing by Mount Par- 
thenius, near Tegea in Arcadia, he heard the voice of 
Pan calling to him, and desiring him to ask the Athe- 
nians why they paid no regard to him, who was al¬ 
ways, and still would be, friendly and willing to aid. 
After the battle, the Athenians consecrated a cave to 
Pan under the Acropolis, and offered him annual sac¬ 
rifices. (Herod., 6, 105.— Plat., Vit. Arist., 11.) 
Long before this time, the Grecian and Egyptian sys¬ 
tems of religion had begun to mingle and combine. 
The goat-formed Mendes of Egypt was now regarded 
as identical with the horned and goat-footed god of the 
Arcadian herdsmen (Herod., 2, 46); and Pan was el¬ 
evated to great dignity by priests and philosophers, be¬ 
coming a symbol of the universe, for his name signi¬ 
fied all. Moreover, as he dwelt in the woods, he was 
called “ Lord of the Hyle ” ( r O rye vlyg Kvptog) ; and 
as the word hyle (vly), by a lucky ambiguity, signi¬ 
fied either wood or primitive matter, this was another 
ground for exalting him. It is amusing to read how 
all the attributes of the Arcadian god were made to 
accord with this notion. “ Pan,” says Servius, “ is a 
rustic god, formed in similitude of nature, whence he 
is called Pan, i. e., All: for he has horns, in simili¬ 
tude of the ravs of the sun and the horns of the moon; 
his face is ruddy, in imitation of the ether ; he has a 
spotted fawnskin upon his breast, in likeness of the 
stars ; his lower parts are shaggy, on account of the 
trees, shrubs, and wild beasts ; he has goat’s feet, to 
denote the stability of the earth ; he has a pipe of 
seven reeds, on account of the harmony of the heav¬ 
ens, in which there are seven sounds; he has a crook, 
tlsct is, a curved staff, on account of the year, which 
rims back on itself, because he is the god of all nature. 
It is feigned by the poets that he struggled with Love, 
and was conquered by him, because, as we read, Love 
conquers all, “ Omnia vincit amor.” (Serv. ad Virg., 
Eclog., 2, 31. — Compare Schol. ad Theocr., 1, 3.— 
Eudocia, 323.) — In Arcadia, his native country, Pan 
appears never to have attained to such distinction; on 
the contrary, we fkd in Theocritus (7,106) a ludicrous 


account of the treatment which this deity received trora 
the Arcadians whe r they were unsuccessful in hunting. 
(Schol. ad Theocr., 1. c.) —The Homerid already quo¬ 
ted, who is older than Pindar, describes in a very 
pleasing manner the occupations of Pan. He is lord 
of all the hills and dales : sometimes he ranges along 
the tops of the mountains, sometimes pursues the 
game in the valleys, roams through the woods, floats 
along the streams, or drives his sheep into a cave, and 
there plays on his reeds, producing music not to be 
excelled by that of the bird “which, among the leaves 
of the flowery spring, laments, pouring forth her moan, 
a sweet-sounding lay.” In after times, as we have 
already remarked, the care of Pan was held to extend 
beyond the herds. We find him regarded as the 
guardian of the bees (Anthol., 9, 226), and as the 
giver of success in fishing and fowling. (Anthol., 7, 

11, seqq. ; 179, seqq .) — The origin of the syrinx or 
pipe of Pan is given as follows: Syrinx was a Naiad, 
of Nonacris in Arcadia, and devoted to the service of 
Diana. As she was returning one day from the chase, 
and was passing by Mount Lycseus, Pan beheld her i 
but when he would address her, she fled. The god 
pursued : she reached the river Ladon, and, unable to 
cross it, implored the aid of her sister-nymphs ; and 
when Pan thought to grasp the object of his pursuit, 
he found his arms filled with reeds. While he stood 
sighing at his disappointment, the wind began to agi¬ 
tate the reeds, and produced a low musical sound. 
The god took the hint, cut seven of the reeds, and 
formed from them his syrinx (ovpr yf) or pastoral pipe. 
(Ovid, Met., 1, 690, seqq.) Another of his loves was 
the nymph Pitys, who was also beloved by Boreas. 
The nymph favoured more the god of Arcadia, and 
the wind-god, in a fit of jealousy, blew her down from 
the summit of a lofty rock. A tree of her own name 
(ttLT vg, pine ) sprang up where she died, and it became 
the favourite plant of Pan. (Nonnus, 43, 259, seqq. 
— Geopon., 11, 4.)—What are called Panic terrors 
were ascribed to Pan; for loud noises, whose cause 
could not easily be traced, were not unfrcquently heard 
in mountainous regions ; and the gloom and loneliness 
of forests and mountains fill the mind with a secret 
horror, and dispose it to superstitious apprehensions.— 
The ancients had two modes of representing Pan : the 
first, according to the description already given, as 
horned and goat-footed, with a wrinkled face and a 
flat nose. The artists, however, sought to soften the 
idea of the god of shepherds, and they portrayed him 
as a young man hardened by the toils of a country life. 
Short horns sprout on his forehead to characterize him, 
he bears his crook and his syrinx, and he is either na¬ 
ked, or clad in the light cloak denominated chlamys. 
(Sil. Ital., 13, 326, seqq.) Like many other gods who 
were originally single, Pan was multiplied in course ol 
time, and we meet with Pans in the plural. (Plat., 
Leg., 7, 815. — Aristoph., Eccles., 1089. — Moschus, 
3, 22.) — The name Pan (Udv) is probably nothing 
more than rniuv, “ feeder ” or “ owner.” Buttmann 
connects Pan with Apollo Nomius, regarding his name 
as the contraction of Paean (Uaidv), and he refers, in 
support of his opinion, to the forms Aleman from Ale- 
maon, Amythan from Amythaon, &c. (Mythologus, 
vol. 1, p. 169.) This, however, would rather favour 
the derivation of Pan from Paon, as first given. 
Welcker says that Pan was the Arcadian form ol 
$dov, $&v tPhaon, Phan), apparently regarding him 
as the sun. (Welcker, Kret. Kol ... p. 45.— Schwenck, 
Andeut., p. 213.— Keightley's Mythology, p. 229, seqq.) 

Panacea (All-Heal), a daughter of ^Esculapius 
(Vid. HDsc.ulapius.) 

Panjetius, a Greek philosopher, a native of Rhodes. 
He studied at Athens under Diogenes the Stoic, and 
afterward came to Rome, about 140 B.C., where he 
gave lessons in philosophy, and was intimate with 
Scipio iEmilianus, the younger Lselius, and Polybius. 



PAN 


PANATHENAEA. 


After a time Panjetius returned to Athens, where he 
became the leader of the Stoic school, and where he 
died at a very advanced age. Posidonius, Scylax of 
Halicarnassus, Hecaton, and Mnesarchus are mention¬ 
ed among his disciples. Panaetius was not apparently 
a strict Stoic, but rather an Eclectic philosopher, who 
tempered tho austerity of his sect by adopting some¬ 
thing of the more refined style and milder principles 
of Plato and the other earlier Academicians. ( Cic., 
de Fin., 4, 28.) Cicero, who speaks repeatedly of the 
works of Pansetius in terms of the highest veneration, 
and acknowledges that he borrowed much from them, 
says that Panaetius styled Plato “the divine,” and 
'< the Homer of Philosophy,” and only dissented from 
him on the subject of the immortality of the soul, 
which he seems not to have admitted. ( Tusc. 
Qucest., 1, 32.) Aulus Gellius says (12, 5) that Pa¬ 
nsetius rejected the principle of apathy adopted by the 
later Stoics, and returned to Zeno’s original meaning, 
namely, that the wise man ought to know how to mas¬ 
ter the impressions which he receives through the 
senses. In a letter of consolation which Panaetius 
wrote to Q. Tubero, mentioned by Cicero ( De Fin., 
4, 9), he instructed him how to endure pain, but he 
never laid it down as a principle that pain was not an 
evil. He was very temperate in his opinions, and he 
often replied to difficult questions with modest hesita¬ 
tion, saying, “ I will consider.”—None of the 

works of Panaetius have come down to us ; but their 
titles, and a few sentences from them, are quoted by 
Cicero, Diogenes Laertius, and others. He wrote a 
treatise “ On Duties ,” the substance of which Cicero 
merged in his own work “ De OJJiciis.” Panaetius 
wrote also a treatise “On Divination,” of which Cicero 
probably made use in his own work on the same sub¬ 
ject. He wrote likewise a work “ On Tranquillity of 
Mind,” which some suppose may have been made use 
of by Plutarch in his work bearing the same title. 
Cicero mentions also a treatise “ On Providence,” 
another “ On Magistrates,” and one “ On Heresies,” 
or sects of philosophers. His book “ On Socrates,” 
quoted by Diogenes Laertius, and by Plutarch in his 
“ Life of Aristides,” made probably a part of the last- 
mentioned work. Laertius and Seneca quote several 
opinions of Panaetius concerning ethics and metaphys¬ 
ics, and also physics. ( Eneycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 17, 
p. 178.— Van Lynden, Disp. Historico-Crit. de Pa- 
ncetio Rhodio, Lugd. Bat., 1802. — Chardon de la 
Rochette, Melanges, &c., vol. 1, Paris, 1812.) 

Panathen^ea ( Uavadyvaia ), the greatest of the 
Athenian festivals, was celebrated in honour of Miner¬ 
va (Athena) as the guardian deity of the city. It is 
said to have been instituted by Erichthonius, and to 
have been called originally Athenaa (’ AOr/vaia ), but it 
obtained the name of Panathenaea in the time of The¬ 
seus, in consequence of his uniting into one state the 
different independent communities into which Attica 
had been previously divided. ( Pausan ., 8, 2, 1.— 
Pint., Vit. Thcs., c. 20 . — Thucyd., 2, 15.) There 
were two Athenian festivals which had the name of 
Panathenaea ; one of which was called the Great Pan¬ 
athencea (M eyaha II avadyvaia), and the other the 
Less (M mpa). The Great Panathenaea was celebra¬ 
ted once every five years, with very great magnificence, 
and attracted spectators from all parts of Greece. The 
Less Panathenaea was celebrated every year in the 
Piiaeus. ( Harpocrat., s. v. II avad. — Plat., Rep., 1, 
1.) When the Greek writers speak simply of the fes¬ 
tival of the Panathenaea, it is sometimes difficult to 
determine which of the two is alluded to ; but when 
the Panathenaea is mentioned by itself, and there is no¬ 
thing in the context to mark the contrary, the presump¬ 
tion is that the Great Panathenaea is meant; and it 
is thus spoken of by Herodotus (5, 56) and Demos¬ 
thenes ( De Fals. Leg., p. 394).—The Great Panathe¬ 
naea was celebrated on the 28th day of Hecatombaeon 
968 \ 


( Clinton, Fast. Hell., vol. 1, p. 325), the first c- th» 
Athenian months ; which agrees with the accou.it ol 
Demosthenes ( contra Tirnocr., p. 708, seq .), who j Iace» 
it after the twelfth day of the month. There is con 
siderable dispute as to the time when the Less Pan 
athenaea was celebrated. Meursius places the celebra¬ 
tion in Thargelion, the eleventh of the Athenian 
months; but Petitus and Corsini in Hecatombaeon. 
Mr. Clinton, who has examined the subject at consid¬ 
erable length (Fast. Hell., vol. 1, p. 332, seqq.), sup¬ 
ports the opinion of Meursius : and it does not appear 
improbable that the Less Panathenaea w’as celebrated 
in the same month as the Great, and was perhaps 
omitted in the year in which the great festival occurred. 
The celebration of the Great Panathenaea only lasted 
one day in the time of Hipparchus (Thucyd., 6, 56), 
but it was continued in later times for several days.— 
At both of the Panathenaea there were gymnastic con¬ 
tests (Find., Is thru., 4, 42.— Pollux, 8, 93), among 
which the torch-race seems to have been very popular. 
In the time of Socrates there was introduced at the 
Less Panathenaea a torch-race on horseback. (Plat., 
Rep., 1,1.) At the Great Panathenaea there was also 
a musical contest, and a recitation of the Homeric 
poems by rhapsodists. (Lycurg., contra Leocr., p. 
209.) The victors in these contests were rewarded 
with vessels of sacred oil. (Pind., Nem., 10, 64.— 
pchol., ad loc. — Schol. ad Soph., (Ed. Col., 698.)— 
The most celebrated part, however, of the grand Pan- 
athenaic festival was the solemn procession (Tco/ury), 
in which the Peplus (IUtcXoc;), or sacred robe of 
Athena, was carried through the Geramicus, and the 
other principal parts of the city, to the Parthenon, and 
suspended before the statue of the goddess within 
This Peplus was covered with embroidery (' KOiuiXpa - 
ra. — Plat., Euthyph., c. 6), on which was represented 
the battle of the Gods and the Giants, especially th« 
exploits of Jupiter and Minerva (Plat., 1. c. — Eu* 
rip., Hcc., 468), and also the achievements of the he¬ 
roes in the Attic mythology, whence Aristophanes 
speaks of “ men worthy of this land and of the Peplus.” 
(Equit., 564.) The embroidery was worked by young 
maidens of the noblest families in Athens (called kp- 
yaarlvai), of whom two were superintendents, with 
the name of Arrephorse. When the festival was cele¬ 
brated, the Peplus was brought down from the Acrop¬ 
olis, where it had been worked, and was suspended 
like a sail upon a ship (Pausan., 29, 1), which was 
then drawn through the principal parts of the city. 
The old men carried olive-branches in their hands, 
whence they were called Thallophori (Qa'h'hotyopoi) ; 
and the young men appeared with arms in their hands, 
at least in the time of Hipparchus (Thucyd., 6, 65). 
The young women carried baskets on their heads, 
whence they were called Canephori (K avptyopoi). 
The sacrifices were very numerous on this occasion. 
During the supremacy of Athens, every subject state 
had to furnish an ox for the festival. (Schol. ad 
Aristoph., Nub., 385.) It was a season of general 
joy ; even prisoners were accustomed to be liberated 
that they might take part in the general rejoicing. 
(Schol. ad Demosth., Tirnocr., p. 184.) After the 
battle of Marathon, it was usual for flie herald at the 
Great Panathenaea to pray for the good of the Plataeans 
as well as the Athenians, in consequence of the aid 
which the former had afforded to the latter in that 
memorable fight. The procession which has just been 
described formed the subject of the bas-reliefs which 
embellished the exterior of the Parthenon, and which are 
generally known by the name of the Panathenaic frieze, 
A considerable portion of this frieze, which is one of the 
most splendid of the ancient works of art, is now in 
the British Museum, and belongs to the collection 
called the “ Elgin Marbles.”—A full and detailed ac¬ 
count of the Panathenaic festivals is given by Meur¬ 
sius in a treatise on the subject, which is printed ic 



PAN 


PANDORA 


ne seventh volume of the “Thesaurus” of Gronovius. 

Encycl. Us. Knowl. , vol. 17, p. 182.) / 

Panchaia, a fabled island in the Eastern or In¬ 
dian Ocean, which Euhemerus pretended to have dis¬ 
covered, and to have found in its capital, Panara, a 
temple of the Triphylian Jupiter, containing a column 
inscribed with the date of the births and deaths of 
many of the gods. ( Vid. Euhemerus.) — Virgil makes 
mention of Panchaia and its “ turifera arena.." 
(Georg ., 2, 139.) The poet borrows the name from 
Euhemerus, but evidently refers to Arabia Felix. 
(Compare Heyne and Foss, ad loc.) 

Pandarus, son of Lycaon, and one of the chieftains 
^•it fought on the side of the Trojans in the war 
v\ h the Greeks. He led the allies of Zelea from the 
banks of the iEsepus in Mysia, and was famed for his 
skill with the bow. (II, 2, 824, seqq.) It was Pan- 
darus that broke the truce between the Greeks and 
Trojans by wounding Menelaus. (II., 4, 93, seqq.) 
He was afterward slain by Diomede. (II., 5, 290.) In 
one part of the Iliad (5, 105) he is spoken of as com¬ 
ing from Lycia, but the Lycia there meant is only a 
part of Troas, forming the territory around Zelea, and 
inhabited by Lycian colonists. (Consult Eustath. ad 
II., 2, 824.— Heyne, ad loc.) 

Pandataria, an island in the Mare Tyrrhenum, in 
the Sinus Puteolanus, on the coast of Italy. It was 
the place of banishment for Julia, the daughter of Au¬ 
gustus, and many others. It is now Isola Vandotina. 
(Livy, 53, 14. — Mela, 2, 7 .— Pliny, 3, 6. — Itin. 
Marit., 515.) 

Pandion, I. an early king of Athens, belonging to 
mythology rather than to history. He was the son of 
Erichthonius, and succeeded his father in the kingdom. 
In his reign Ceres and Bacchus are said to have come 
to Attica. The former was entertained by Celeus, 
the latter by Icarius. Pandion married Xeuxippe, the 
sister of his mother, by w T hom he had two sons, Erech- 
theus and Butes, and two daughters, Procne and Phi¬ 
lomela. Being at war with Labdacus, king of Thebes, 
about boundaries, he called to his aid Tereus, the son 
of Mars, out of Thrace ; and having, with his assist¬ 
ance, come off victorious in the contest, he gave him 
bis daughter Procne in marriage, by whom Tereus 
lad a son named Itys. The tragic tale of Procne and 
Philomela is related elsewhere. ( Vid. Philomela.) 
Pandion is said to have died of grief at the misfortunes 
of his family, after a reign of 40 years. He was suc¬ 
ceeded by Erechtheus. (Apollod., 3, 14, 5, seqq.) 
The visit paid by Ceres and Bacchus to Attica, during 
the reign of Pandion, refers merely to improvements 
in agriculture which were then introduced. (Words¬ 
worth's Greece , p. 96 )—II. The second of the name, 
was also king of Attica, and succeeded Cecrops II., 
the son of Erechtheus. He was expelled by the Me- 
tionidae, and retired to Megara, where he married Pylia, 
the daughter of King Pylos. This last-mentioned 
monarch being obliged to fly for the murder of his 
brother Bias, resigned Megara to his son-in-law, and, 
retiring to the Peloponnesus, built Pylos. Pandion 
had four sons, .Egeus, Pallas, Nisus, and Lycus, who 
conquered and divided among them the Attic territory, 
/Egeus, as the eldest, having the supremacy. (Apol¬ 
lod., 3, 15, 4.—Consult Heyne, ad loc.) 

Pandora, the first created female, and celebrated 
tn one of the early legends of the Greeks as having 
seen the cause of the introduction of evil into the 
world. Jupiter, it seems, incensed at Prometheus for 
having stolen the fire from the skies, resolved to pun¬ 
ish men for this daring deed. He therefore directed 
Vulcan to knead earth and water, to give it human 
voice and strength, and to make it assume the fair 
form of a virgin like the immortal goddesses. He de¬ 
sired Minerva to endow her with artist-knowledge, 
• r emt* to give her beauty, and Mercury to inspire hei 
5 impudent and artful disposition. When form- 
« G 


ed, she was attired by the Seasons and Graces, an 1 
each of the deities having bestowed upon her the com¬ 
manded gifts, she was named Pandora (All-gifted — 
rrdv, all, and dtipov, a gift). Thus furnished, she wa» 
brought by Mercury to the dwelling of Epimetheus ; 
who, though his brother Prometheus had warned him 
to be on his guard, and to receive no gifts from Jupi¬ 
ter, dazzled with her charms, took her into his house 
and made her his wife. The evil effects of this im¬ 
prudent step were speedily felt. In the dwelling of 
Epimetheus stood a closed jar, which he had been for¬ 
bidden to open. Pandora, under the influence of fe¬ 
male curiosity, disregarding the injunction, raised the 
lid, and all the evils hitherto unknown to man poured 
out, and spread themselves over the earth. In terror 
at the sight of these monsters, she shut down the lid 
just in time to prevent the escape of Hope, which thus 
remained to man, his chief support and comfort. (He¬ 
siod, Op. et D., 47, seqq. — Id., Theog., 570, seqq .)— 
An attempt has frequently been made to trace an 
analogy between this more ancient tradition and the 
account of the fall of our first parents, as detailed by 
the inspired penman. Prometheus, or forethought, is 
supposed to denote the purity and wisdom of our early 
progenitor before he yielded to temptation ; Epime¬ 
theus, or after-thought, to be indicative of his change 
of resolution, and his yielding to the arguments of 
Eve ; which the poet expresses by saying that Epi¬ 
metheus received Pandora after he had been cautioned 
by Promethus not to do so. The curiosity of Pandora 
violated, it is said, the positive injunction about not 
opening the jar, just as our first parent Eve disregard¬ 
ed the commands of her Maker respecting the tree of 
knowledge. Pandora, moreover, the author of all hu¬ 
man woes, is, as the advocates for this analogy assert, 
the author likewise of their chief, and, in fact, only sol¬ 
ace ; for she closed the lid of the fatal jar before 
Hope could escape ; and this she did, according to 
Hesiod, in compliance with the will of Jove. May 
not Hope, they ask, thus secured, be that hope and 
expectation of a Redeemer which has been traditional 
from the earliest ages of the world 1 Even so our 
first parents commit the fatal sin of disobedience, but 
from the seed of the woman, who was the first to of¬ 
fend, was to spring one who should be the hope and 
the only solace of our race.—All this is extremely in¬ 
genious, but, unfortunately, not at all borne out by the 
words of the poet from whom the legend is obtained. 
The jar contains various evils, and, as long as it re¬ 
mains closed, man is free from their influence, for they 
are confined closely within their prison-house. When 
the lid or top is raised, these evils fly forth among men, 
and Hope alone remains behind, the lid being shut 
down before she could escape. Here, then, we have 
man exposed to suffering and calamity, and no hope 
afforded him of a better lot, for Hope is imprisoned in 

the jar (ev up^yKToicu doyoicn . nWov vi to xel- 

Tieatv), and has not been allowed to come forth and 
exercise her influence through the world. Again, how 
did Hope ever find admission into the jar 7 Was it 
placed there as a kindred evil 1 It surely, then, could 
have nothing to do with the promise of a Redeemer. 
Or, was it placed in the jar to lure man to the com¬ 
mission of evil, by constantly exciting dissatisfaction 
at the present, and a hope of something better in the 
future 1 This, however, is not hope, but discontent. 
Yet the poet would actually seem to have regarded 
hope as no better than an evil, since, after stating 
that the exit of Hope from the jar was arrested by the 
closing of the lid, he adds, “but countless ether woes 
wander among men” (aXka 6e p.vpia Xvypd naf dv- 
dpuTtovc akakriTai, v. 100). It is much more ration¬ 
al, then, to regard the whole legend as an ebullition of 
that spleen against the female sex occasionally exhib¬ 
ited by the old Grecian bards. The resemblance it 
bears to the Scripture account is very unsatisfactory l 

969 





PAN 


P A IN 


Evj was tempted, Pandora was not; the former was 
actuated by a noble instinct, the love of knowledge, 
the latter by mere female curiosity.—It seems very 
strange that the ancients should have taken so little 
notice of this myth. There is no allusion to it in Pin¬ 
dar cr the tragedians, excepting Sophocles, one of 
whose lost satyric dramas was named “ Pandora, or 
the Hammerers.” It was equally neglected by the 
Alexandreans Apollodorus merely calls Pandora the 
first woman. In fact, with the exception of a dubious 
passage in Theognis ( Parcen ., 1135, seq.), where 
Hope is said to have been the only good deity that re¬ 
mained among men, we find no allusion to it in Gre¬ 
cian literature except in the fables of Babrius, in Non- 
nus ( Dionys., 7, 56), and in the epigrammatic Mace- 
donius. ( Anthol. Palat., 10, 71.) It seems to have 
had as little charms for the Latin poets, even Ovid 
passing over it in silence.—It is also deserving of no¬ 
tice, that Hesiod and all the others agree in naming 
the vessel which Pandora opened a jar (iridog), and 
never hint at her having brought it with her to the 
house of Epimetheus. Yet the idea has been univer¬ 
sal among the moderns, that she brought all the evils 
with her from heaven, shut up in a iox (nv^ig). The 
only way of accounting for this is, that, at the resto¬ 
ration of learning, the narrative in Hesiod was misun¬ 
derstood. ( Keightley’s Mythology, p. 292, seqq. — 
Buttmann, Mythologies, vol. 1, p. 48, seqq.) 

Pandosia, I. a city of Lucania, in Lower Italy, on 
the banks of the Aciris, and not far from Heraclea. 
The modern Anglona is thought to represent the an¬ 
cient place. ( Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 351.) 
—II. A city in the territory of the Bruttii, near the 
western coast, and often confounded with the prece¬ 
ding. It was anciently possessed by the CEnotri, as 
Strabo reports, but is better known in history as hav¬ 
ing witnessed the defeat and death of Alexander, king 
of Epirus. ( Strabo, 255.— Lin., 39, 38.)—The pre¬ 
cise position which ought to be assigned to the Brut- 
tian Pandosia remains yet uncertain. The early Cala¬ 
brian antiquaries placed it at Castel Franco, about 
five miles from Consenza. D’Anville lays it down, in 
his map of ancient Italy, near Lao and Cirella, on the 
confines of Lucania. Cluverius supposes that it may 
have stood between Consentia and Thurii; but more 
modern critics have, with greater probability, sought 
its ruins in a more westerly direction, near the village 
of Mendocino, between Consentia and the sea, a hill 
with three summits having been remarked there, which 
answers to the fatal height pointed out by the oracle, 

Havdoola rpiKoXuve, 7 roXvv rrore habv oXecroeig, 

together with the rivulet Maresanto or Arconti, which 
last name recalls the Acheron, denounced by another 
prediction as so inauspicious to the Molossian king. 

( Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 436.)—III. A city of 
Epirus, not far removed from the Acheron and the 
Acherusian Lake, as we may infer from the passage 
in which Livy speaks of this city with reference to the 
oracle delivered to Alexander, king of Epirus (8, 24). 
It is not improbable that the antiquities which have 
been discovered at Paramythia, on the borders of the 
Souliot territory, may belong to this ancient place. 
( Hughes's Travels, vol. 2, p. 306. — Holland’s Trav¬ 
els, vol. 2, p. 251.— Strabo, 324.— Plin., 4, 1.— Cra¬ 
mer’s Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 132.) 

Pandrosos, a daughter of Cecrops, king of Athens, 
eister to Aglauros and Herse. For an explanation of 
the name, consult remarks under the article Cecrops. 

Pang^us, a celebrated ridge of mountains in 
Thrace, apparently connected with the central chain of 
Rhodope and Hsemus, and which, branching off in a 
southeasterly direction, closed upon the coast at the 
defile of Acontisma. The name of this range often 
appears in the poets. ( Pind., Pyth., 4, 319.— JEsch., 
Pers., 500.— Eurip., Rhcs., 972.— Virg., Georg., 4, 


462.) It is now called Pundhar Dagh, or Castag 
nats, according to the editor of the French Strabo. 
Herodotus informs us (7, 112), that Mount Pangaeus 
contained gold and silver mines, which were worked 
by the Pieres, Odomanti, and Satrae, clans of Thrace, 
but especially the latter. Euripides confirms this ac¬ 
count ( Rhes ., 919, seqq ). These valuable mines nat¬ 
urally attracted the attention of the T. hasians, who 
were the first settlers on this coast; and they accord¬ 
ingly formed an establishment in this vicinity at a place 
named Crenides. ( Vid. Philippi.) — Theophrastus 
speaks of the rosa centifolia, which grew in great 
beauty and was indigenous on Mount Pangaeus ( ap. 
Athen., 15, 29). Nicander mentions another sort, 
which grew in the gardens of Midas (ap. Athen., 16, 
31.— Cramer’s Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 302). 

Panionium, a sacred spot, with a temple and grove, 
at the foot of Mount Mycale in Ionia. It derived its 
name from having been the place where delegates from 
the Ionian states were accustomed to meet at stated 
periods. Not only the place, but also the temple and 
the assembly itself were called Panionium. The tem¬ 
ple was dedicated to the Heliconian Neptune, whose 
worship had been imported by the Ionians from Achaia 
in Peloponnesus ; and the surname of Heliconian was 
derived from Plelice, one of their cities in that coun¬ 
try. ( Slrab ., 639. — Pausan., 7, 24.) But the as¬ 
sembly was not merely convened for religious purpo¬ 
ses : it was also a political body, and met for deliber¬ 
ative and legislative ends ; and it appears that some 
remnants of this ancient institution were preserved till 
very late in the Roman empire, if it be true, as Chan¬ 
dler imagines, that there is a medal of the Emperor 
Gallus which gives a representation of a Panionian 
assembly and sacrifice. ( Travels, p. 192.) The site 
of this celebrated convention is supposed, with great 
probability, to answer to that of Tchangeli, a Turkish 
village close to the sea, and on the northern slope of 
Mycale. ( Cramer’s Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 379.) 

Panium (II dvtov opog), a mountain of Syria, form¬ 
ing part of the chain of Mount Libanus. It makes 
part of the northern boundary of Palestine, and at the 
foot of it was situate the town of Paneas, afterward 
called Caesarea Philippi. Herod, out of gratitude for 
having been put in possession of Trachonitis by Au¬ 
gustus, erected a temple to that prince on the mount¬ 
ain. On the partition of the states of Herod among 
his children, Philip, who had the district Trachonitis, 
gave to the city Paneas the name of Caesarea, to which 
was annexed, for distinction’ sake, the surname of Phil¬ 
ippi. This did not, however, prevent the resumption 
of its primitive denomination, pronounced Banias, 
more purely than Belines, as it is written by the his¬ 
torians of the crusades. (Josephus, Bell. Jud., 1, 21. 
— Euseb., Hist. Eccles., 7,17.)—II. Panium (Tiavel- 
ov), a cavern at the sources of the Jordan. (Vid. Jor 
danes.) 

Pannonia, an extensive province of the Roman em¬ 
pire, bounded on the west by the range of Mount Ce- 
tius, separating it from Noricum ; on the south by Il¬ 
lyria, including in this direction the country lying along 
the lower bank of the Savus ; and on the north and 
east by the Danube. It answered, therefore, to what 
is now the eastern part of Austria, Styria, a part o 1 
Carinthia, that portion of Hungary which lies on the 
southern side of the Danube, the greater part of Scla- 
vonia, and the portion of Bosnia which lies along the 
Saave. Ptolemy distinguishes between Upper and 
Lower Pannonia, Pannonia Superior and Inferior, and 
separates the two divisions by an imaginary line drawn 
from Bregactium to the Savus. In the fourth century, 
the Emperor Galerius formed out of a part of Lowei 
Pannonia the province of Valeria, and then Pannonia 
Superior changed its name to that of Pannoma Prima, 
while the part of Pannonia Inferior that remained af¬ 
ter Valeria was taken from it, received the appellation 




PAN 


PAN 


j»f Pannonia Sccunda .—The Pannonii were of Illyrian 
origin, and their earlier seats extended from the river 
Colapis, on the southern side of the Savus, in a south¬ 
easterly direction, as far as the Dardanii and the con¬ 
fines of Macedonia. With one branch of their race, 
under the name of Paeones, the Greeks were acquaint¬ 
ed from an early period, along the southern coast of 
Thrace. That the Pasones, however, were one and 
the same race with the distant Pannonii to the north¬ 
west, they first discovered at a later period, and from 
this time the appellation of Paeones was applied by 
the Grecian historical writers to both divisions. ( Man - 
fieri, Geogr., vol. 3, p. 502 .—Cramer s Anc. Greece, 
vol. 1, p. 46.) The Romans, on the other hand, be¬ 
coming acquainted with the race from the west, learned 
the name Pannonii as the national appellation, and re¬ 
tained it as such. The etymology assigned to this 
name by some, from the patches (panni) of which their 
long sleeved tunics were formed, is too ridiculous to 
require refutation. (Dio Cass., 49, 36.) They were 
reduced under the Roman sway in the reign of Augus¬ 
tus, especially during the campaigns of Tiberius and 
Drusus ; and, after their subjection, were transplant¬ 
ed to the country beyond the Savus, which had been 
occupied by the Scordisci, and which now received 
from them the name of Pannonia. The Pannonians 
becoming, in process of time, completely Romanized in 
laws, customs, and language, served as a rampart that 
might be confided in against the Sclavonian Iazyges 
and the Marcomanni, beyond the Danube.—After the 
fall of the Roman empire, Pannonia passed under the 
power of the barbarians, especially the Huns, Avares, 
and Bulgarians. ( Mannert, Geogr., vol. 3, p. 304.) 
The chief city in Pannonia Superior was Carnuntum, 
now Altenbourg, a little to the east of Vindobona or 
Vienna. The chief city in Pannonia Inferior was Sir- 
mium. 

pANOMPHiEUs, a surname of Jupiter, from his being 
the parent source of omen and augury, “ omnium omi- 
num omnisque vaticinii auctor .” (Heyne ad II., 8, 
250.) 

PanSpe or Panopea, one of the Nereids, named 
by Virgil as a representative of the whole number, and 
often invoked by mariners. (Hesiod, Theog., 250.— 
Virg., Georg., 1, 437.— Id., JEn., 5, 240, &c.) 

Panop5lis, a city of Egypt in the Thebaid, on the 
eastern bank of the Nile, and south of Antaeopolis. It 
was the capital of the Panopolitic Nome, and, as its 
name implies, sacred to the god Pan (“City of Pan”). 
According to the later traditions, however, it would 
6eem to have been sacred to the Pans or wood-deities 
collectively, and hence we find it in Strabo (812) des¬ 
ignated by the appellation of ILavtiv ttoXic. (Com¬ 
pare Diod. Sic., 1, 18.— Plut., de Is. et Os.) In some 
of the subsequent writers we find the place called Pa- 
nos, the term polis being omitted. (Itin. Ant., p. 
166.) The name Panopolis (Havoc nolle) is sup¬ 
posed to be merely a translation of the Egyptian term 
Chemmis, by which this city was known to the natives 
of the land. This Chemmis, however, must not be 
confounded with the place of that name mentioned by 
Herodotus (2, 91), and by which that historian intends 
evidently to designate Coptos. (Mannert, Geogr., 
vol. 10, pt. 1, p. 374.) The modern Akhenyn is sup¬ 
posed to occupy part of the site of the ancient Pano¬ 
polis. (Description de V Egypte, vol. 4, p. 43, seqq.) 

Panormus, I. now called Palermo, a town of Sici¬ 
ly, built by the Phoenicians, on the northwest part 
of the island, with a good and capacious harbour. 
The ancient name is derived from the excellence and 
capaciousness of its harbour (tcuc opfioe), and is equiv¬ 
alent to All-Port. (Diod. Sic., 22, 14.) It is uncer¬ 
tain, however, whether this name originated with the 
Greeks, or was merely a translation of the Phoenician 
one. From the Phoenicians Panormus passed into the 
hands of the Carthaginians, and was for a long period 


an important stronghold of the latter people, thougn 
little noticed by the Grecian writers. Here was the 
chief station of their fleet, and here also were the win¬ 
ter quarters of their army. (Polyb., 1, 21, 24.) It 
was taken by the Romans, with their fleet of 300 sail 
(A.U.C. 500), and carefully guarded by them to pre¬ 
vent its again falling into the hands of the foe. (Po¬ 
lyb., 1, 38.) It was subsequently ranked among the 
free cities of Sicily. (Cic. in Verr., 3, 6.— Mannert, 
Geogr., vol. 9, pt. 2, p. 400.)—II. A harbour on the 
eastern coast of Attica, south of the promontory of 
Cynosema, and opposite to the southern extremity of 
Euboea. It is now Porto Raphti .— III. A harbour on 
the coast of Achaia, east of Rhium and opposite Nau- 
pactus. It is now Teket. (Thucyd., 2, 86.— Plin., 
4, 5.)—IV. A name given to the harbour of Ephesus. 
(Mela, 2, 7.)—V. A harbour in Crete, between Ri- 
thymna and Cytaeum. (Plin., 4, 12.)—VI. A town in 
the Thracian Chersonese, between Cardia and Ccelos, 
(Plin., 4, 11.) 

Pansa, C. Vibius, consul with Hirtius the year al¬ 
ter Caesar’s assassination, B.C. 43. He had previous¬ 
ly served under Caesar in Gaul, and had aided him as 
tribune of the commons in attaining to sovereign powr 
er. Though Pansa and Hirtius had obtained the con¬ 
sulship through Caesar’s nomination, they nevertheless 
joined the party of the senate after the death of the 
dictator, and marched against Antony, who was be¬ 
sieging Brutus in Mutina. In the first engagement 
Antony had the advantage, and Pansa received two 
mortal wounds ; but Antony himself was defeated the 
same day by Hirtius as he was returning to his camp. 
In a t second engagement Hirtius also fell.'—It was a 
current report at the time, that Glycon, the physician 
in attendance on Pansa, having been gained over by 
Octavius, had taken off the Roman consul by poison¬ 
ing his w T ounds. (Sueton., Vit. Aug., 11.) Another 
account stated that Pansa, finding his wounds mortal, 
sent for Octavius, and engaged him to become recon¬ 
ciled to Antony, unfolding to him, at the same time, 
the project of the senate, which was to destroy the 
partisans of Caesar by means of one another. Pansa 
appears to have been a worthy man, and esteemed by 
Cicero, who, without sharing his political sentiments, 
lived on terms of intimacy with him. (Biogr. Univ., 
vol. 32, p. 496.) 

Pantagvas, a small river on the eastern coast of 
Sicily, which falls into the sea between Megara and 
Syracuse, according to Pliny (3, 8), after running a 
short space in rough cascades over a rugged bed. 
(Virg. AEn., 3, 689.) Ptolemy writes the name ndv- 
raxog, and Thucydides Havraiiioc (6, 4). 

Panthea, the wife of Abradates, celebrated for her 
beauty and conjugal affection. She slew herself on 
the corpse of her husband, who had fallen in battle or* 
the side of the elder Cyrus. (Xen., Cyrop., 4, 6, 11 
— Id. ib., 7, 3, 14.) 

Pantheon (or Pantheon), a famous temple of a cir 
cular form, built by M. Agrippa, son-in-law of Augustus, 
in his third consulship, about 27 A.C., and repaired by 
Septimius Severus, and Caracalla. The architect wa» 
Valerius of Ostia. The structure consists of a ro¬ 
tunda, with a noble Corinthian octastyle portico at¬ 
tached to it. That the portico of the Pantheon in¬ 
deed was erected by Agrippa, is testified by the in¬ 
scription still remaining on the frieze. Yet some 
have supposed that he merely made that addition to 
the previously erected rotunda. Hirt, in his work on 
the Pantheon, very reasonably argues, that, there be¬ 
ing no direct proof to the contrary, the whole structure 
may safely be assumed to have been erected according 
to one original plan, because without the portico it 
would have been a lumpish and heavy mass. Hirt 
farther rejects the idea of the rotunda’s having been 
originally not a temple, but an entrance to public 
baths. It is certain that circular plana, were greatly 

971 



PANTHEON. 


PAN 


affected by the Romans both in their temples and oth¬ 
er buildings, on which account their architecture pre¬ 
sents a variety that does not occur in that of Greece. 
—The structure was dedicated to Jupiter Ultor. Be¬ 
sides the statue of this god, however, there were in 
six other niches as many colossal statues of other dei¬ 
ties, among which were those of Mars and Venus, the 
founders of the Julian line, and that of Julius Caesar. 
About the other three we know nothing ; but in all 
probability they were the images of iEneas, lulus, 
and Romulus. The edifice was called the Pantheon 
(II uvOeiov or UdvOeov), not, as is commonly supposed, 
from its having been sacred to all the gods (tv uq, “a//,” 
and “ a god”), but from its majestic dome, which 

represented, as it were, the “ all-divine” firmament 
(tcuv, “ all,” and fteTov, “divine”). —The Pantheon is 
by far the largest structure of ancient times, the ex¬ 
ternal diameter being 188 feet, and the height to the 
summit of the upper cornice 102, exclusive of the flat 
dome or calotte, which makes the entire height about 
148 feet. The portico (103 feet wide) is, as has been 
said, octastyle, yet there are in all sixteen columns, 
namely, two at the returns, exclusive of those at the 
angles, and two others behind the third column from 
each end, dividing the portico, internally, into three 
aisles or avenues, the centre one of which is consider¬ 
ably the widest, and contains the great doorway within 
a very deep recess, while each of the others has a 
large semicircular tribune or recess. But, although, 
independently of its recessed parts, the portico is only 
three intercolumns in depth, its flanks present the 
order continued in pilasters, making two additional 
closed intercolumns, and the projection there from the 
main structure about 70 feet; which circumstance 
produces an extraordinary air of majesty. The col¬ 
umns are 47 English feet high, with bases and capitals 
of white marble, and granite shafts, «ach formed out of 
a single piece. The interior diameter of the rotunda 
is 142 feet, the thickness of the wall being 23 feet 
through the piers, between the exhedrae or recesses, 
which, including that containing the entrance, are 
eight in number, and each, except that facing the en¬ 
trance, is divided into three intercolumns by two col¬ 
umns (34.7 feet high), between antae or angular pilas¬ 
ters. But as, besides being repaired and altered by 
Septimius Severus, the interior has undergone many 
changes, or, rather, corruptions, it is hardly possible 
now to determine what it originally was.—The dome 
has five rows of coffers (now stripped of their deco¬ 
rations), and a circular opening in the centre, 26 feet 
in diameter, which not only lights the interior perfect¬ 
ly, but in the most charming and almost magical man¬ 
ner. Indeed, there has scarcely ever been but one 
opinion as to the captivating effect thus produced, and 
the exquisite beauty of the whole as regards plan and 
general proportions. ( Encyclop. Us. Knowl., vol. 17, 
p. 192.— Hirt, Geschichte der Baukunst, vol. 2, p. 
283, seqq.) The Pantheon is now commonly called 
the Rotunda , from its circular form. It was given to 
Boniface IV. by the Emperor Phocas in 609, and was 
dedicated as a Christian church to the Virgin and the 
Holy Martyrs, a quantity of whose relics were placed 
under the great altar. In 830 Gregory IV. dedicated 
it to all the saints. This consecration of the edifice, 
however, seems to have afforded it no defence against 
the subsequent spoliations, both of emperors and popes. 
The plates of gilded bronze that covered the roof, the 
bronze bassi relievi of the pediment, and the silver that 
adorned the interior of the dome, were carried off by 
Constans II. (A.D. 655), who destined them for his 
imperial palace at Constantinople ; but, being murder¬ 
ed at Syracuse when on his return with them, they 
were Conveyed by their next proprietors to Alexan¬ 
dra ; and thus the spoils of the Pantheon, won from 
the plunder of Egypt after the battle of Actium, by a 
kind of poetical justice, reverted tc their original 
072 


source. Urban the Eighth carried off all that was lei* 
to purloin, the bronze beams of the portico, which 
amounted in weight to more than forty-five millions of 
pounds. He records his plunder with great compla¬ 
cency in an inscription on the walls of the portico, as 
if it were a meritorious deed ; seeming to pride him¬ 
self on having melted it down into the frightful taber¬ 
nacle of St. Peter’s, and the useless cannon of th* 
castle of St. Angelo. Urban, who was one of th* 
Barberini family, also gave a share of it to his neph¬ 
ew, for the embellishment of the Barberini palace ; 
and this gave rise to the pasquinade, 

“ Quod non fecerunt Barhari fecere Barberini.” 

But he did more mischief by adding than by taking 
away, for he bestowed upon it two hideous belfries, as 
a perpetual monument of his bad taste.—Beautiful as 
the Pantheon is, it is not what it was. During eigh¬ 
teen centuries it has suffered from the dilapidations of 
time and the cupidity of barbarians. The seven steps 
which elevated it above the level of ancient Rome are 
buried beneath the modern pavement. Its rotunda of 
brick is blackened and decayed; its leaden dome, over 
looked by the modern cupolas of every neighbouring 
church, boasts no imposing loftiness of elevation; the 
marble statues, the bassi relievi, the brazen columns, 
have disappeared ; its ornaments have vanished ; its 
granite columns have lost their lustre, and its marble 
capitals their purity; all looks dark and neglected, and 
its splendour is gone for ever. Yet, under every dis¬ 
advantage, it is still beautiful, pre-eminently beautiful. 
No eye can rest on the noble simplicity of the match¬ 
less portico without admiration, and without feeling, 
what is so rarely felt, that there is nothing wanted to 
desire, nothing committed to rectify. Its beauty is of 
that sort which, while the fabric stands, time has no 
power to destroy. ( Rome in the Nineteenth Century 9 
vol. 1, p. 254.) 

Pantheus, or Panthus, a Trojan, son of Othryas, 
and priest of Apollo. He fell in the nocturnal combat 
described by Virgil as attendant on the taking of Troy 
(JEn ., 2, 429). He was father of Polydamas, Eu¬ 
phorbus, and Hyperenor. {Horn., II., 3, 146 ; 15, 
522.) The story which Servius, and also Eustathius 
relate, of Panthus’s having been by birth a Delphian, 
and of his having been brought away from Delphi to 
Troy to explain an oracle for King Priam, is a fiction 
of the posthomeric bards. {Eustath. ad II., 12, 225 
— Heyne ad Virg., JEn., 2, 318.) 

Panthoides, a patronymic of Euphorbus, the son 
of Pantheus. {Vid. Euphorbus.— Horat., Od., 1, 28, 
10 .) 

Panticap^eum, a city in the Tauric Chersonese, on 
the shore of the Cimmerian Bosporus, and opposite to 
Phanagoria on the Asiatic shore. Ptolemy gives the 
name as Panlicapcea {UavriKuTrcua). It was founded 
by a Milesian colony, and lay on a hill, and was in 
circumference 20 stadia. On the east side was a 
good harbour, and also an inner and stronger one 
{vedpiov). This place was the capital of the kings of 
Bosporus, and was also known by the name of Bos¬ 
porus as early as the time of Demosthenes. Some 
writers erroneously distinguish between the two ap¬ 
pellations, as if they belonged to different cities. 
(Eulrop., 7, 9.) The modern Kertsch lies near the 
site of the ancient Panticapaeum. {Mannert, Geogr ., 
vol. 4, p. 307, seqq.) Here Mithradates the Great 
ended his days. 

Panyasis, a native of Samos, or, according to oth¬ 
ers, of Halicarnassus (for his country is uncertain ; we 
only know that he was an uncle of Herodotus). He 
flourished about 490 B.C., and was regarded as an ex¬ 
cellent epic poet, the Alexandrean critics having subse¬ 
quently assigned him the fourth place in the Epic canon. 
He was the author of an Heracleid, in fourteen books, to 
which, according to Valckenaer’s conjecture, belong two 



PAP 


PAP 


fragments found in the collection of the works of The¬ 
ocritus, but which others attribute to Pisander. Both 
parties, however, agree in regarding them as worthy 
of a writer of the first merit, and above the strength of 
Theocritus. Hermann, however, does not adopt this 
opinion. He recognises, it is true, in these pieces an 
imitation of Homer ; but he discovers in the prosody 
certain licenses which were unknown to the epic poets, 
and only introduced by the bucolic ones. ( Orphica, 
ed. Hermann , p. 691.) Besides, these pieces are writ¬ 
ten in Doric, whereas Panyasis made use of the Ionic 
dialect. According to Suidas, he also composed Ele¬ 
gies entitled ’Iuvlku. There exist, likewise, some oth¬ 
er fragments of Panyasis. They are all found in the 
collections of Winterton, Gaisford, and Boissonade. 
( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 2, p. 121. — Muller, Die 
Dorier, vol. 2, p. 471, German work.) 

Paphia, I. a surname of Venus, because worship¬ 
ped at Paphos.—II. An ancient name of the island of 
Cyprus. 

Paphlagonia {Ha^Xa-yovta), a province of Asia 
Minor, also called Pylsemenia, according to Pliny (6, 
2). It was bounded on the north by the Euxine, on 
the south by the part of Phrygia afterward called Ga¬ 
latia, on the east by Pontus, and on the west by Bi- 
thynia. It was separated from Bithynia by the river 
Parthenius, and from Pontus by the Halys, which was 
also its eastern boundary in the time of Herodotus (1, 
6). Paphlagonia is described by Xenophon ( Anab ., 5, 
6, 6) as a country having very beautiful plains and very 
high mountains. It is traversed by two chains of 
mountains running parallel to one another from west 
to east. The higher and more southerly of these 
chains, called Olgassys by Ptolemy, is a continuation of 
the great mountain chain which extends from the Hel¬ 
lespont to Armenia, and was known to the ancients 
under the names of Ida and Temnon in Mysia, and 
Olympus in the neighbourhood of Prusias. Strabo, 
however, appears to give the name of Olgassys to the 
chain of mountains in the northern part of Paphlago¬ 
nia, on which the Paphlagonians had built many tem¬ 
ples. The country between these two chains is drain¬ 
ed by the Amnias, which flows into the Halys. The 
only river of importance, besides the Amnias and the 
Halys, was the Parthenius, which is said by Xenophon 
to be impassable {Anab., 5, 6, 9). In the neighbour¬ 
hood of Pompeiopolis, in the central part of the prov¬ 
ince, was a mountain called Sandaracurgium, where, 
according to Strabo (562), sandaraca was obtained in 
mines, which were worked by criminals, who died in 
great numbers on account of the unhealthiness of the 
labour. The sandaraca spoken of by Strabo was 
probably the same as sinopis, which was a kind of red 
ochre, obtained by the Greeks from Sinope, from 
which place it derived its name.—The Paphlagonians 
are said by Homer {II., 2, 851, seq.) to have come to 
the assistance of the Trojans under the command of 
Pylaemenes, from the country of the Heneti. This 
mention of the Heneti in connexion with the Paphla¬ 
gonians seems to have puzzled some of the ancient 
writers. Several explanations of the passage were 
given ; but the one which appeared most probable to 
Strabo (544) was, that the Heneti were a Paphlago- 
nian people, who followed Pylaemenes to Troy, and 
after the death of their leader emigrated to Thrace, 
and at length wandered to Italy, where they settled 
under the name of Veneti. Pliny (6, 2) also connects 
the Heneti of Homer with the Veneti of Italy, upon 
the authority of Cornelius Nepos. Few modern crit¬ 
ics, however, will be disposed to attach much credit 
to a rambling story of this kind, which seems to have 
arisen merely from the similarity of the two names. 

( Vid. Veneti.)—The Paphlagonians were subdued by 
Croesus. {Herod., 1, 28.) They afterward formed a 
part of the Persian empire, and were governed by a sa¬ 
trap in the reign of Darius Hystaspis {Herod., 7, 72); 


but they appear in later times, like several other na¬ 
tions in the remote parts of the Persian empire, to 
have been only nominally subjects. On the return of 
the Ten Thousand we find that they were governed by 
Corylas, who does not appear to have been a satrap 
(Xenophon calls him apxuv, Anab., 6, 1, 2), and who 
did not hesitate to afford assistance to the Greeks. 
After the death of Alexander, Paphlagonia, together 
with Cappadocia, fell to the share of Eumenes. {Di- 
od. Sic., 18, 3.) It subsequently formed part of the 
kingdom of Pontus ; but, after the conquest of Pontus 
by the Romans, it appears to have been allowed to 
have kings of its own, the last of whom was Deiota- 
rus, the son of Castor. {Strabo, 564.) Under the 
early Roman emperors it did not form a separate prov¬ 
ince, but was united to Galatia till the time of Con¬ 
stantine, who first erected it into a separate province. 
{Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 17, p. 216.)—The chain of 
mountains in the southern part of Paphlagonia was 
covered with forests, which yielded abundance of ex¬ 
cellent timber for ship-building, and various kinds of 
wood for tables and other ornamental works. They 
contained also salt-mines. Eudoxus reports that fos¬ 
sil fish were likewise to be found in some parts of the 
country. {Strabo, 561, 563.) The plains afforded 
rich pastures for horses and cattle, and the mules of 
the Paphlagonian Heneti were celebrated as early as 
the days of Homer {II ., 2, 852). The sheep of the 
country adjoining the Halys furnished wool much es¬ 
teemed for the fineness of its quality ( Strabo, 546); 
and the Euxine, along the whole extent of coast, sup¬ 
plied great quantities of excellent fish ; especially the 
kind of tunny called pelamys. {Strabo, 545.— Athe- 
nceus, 7, p. 307.)—Cramer thinks that the Paphlago¬ 
nians were of the same race with the Bithyni, Mysi, 
and Phryges ; that is, that they were a Thracian peo¬ 
ple, and that they came in from the West, driving the 
Leuco-Syri from the country, and finally compelling 
them to retire beyond the Halys. {Cramer's Asia 
Minor, vol. 1, p. 217, scqq.) 

Paphos, I. Palaspaphos (Old Paphos), a very an¬ 
cient city of Cyprus, on the southwestern side of the 
island, situate on a rising ground near the little river 
Bocarus. {Hesych., s. v. B ddKapop.) Strabo places 
it ten stadia from the coast. It was peculiarly 
famed for the worship of Venus, who was fabled to 
have been wafted' hither after her birth amid the 
waves. {Mela, 2, 7. — Tacitus, Hist., 2, 3.) The 
Grecian writers give, as the founder of the place, 
Cinyras the son of Apollo, or Paphos the son of Ciny- 
ras, about the time of the Trojan war. Apollodorua 
also makes Cinyras to have been a Syrian monarch (3, 
14.—Compare Heyne, ad loc. Obs., p. 325). Tacitus 
makes it to have been founded by Aerias; at least he 
names him as the founder of the temple ; he adds, 
however, that a later tradition assigns the origin of the 
temple to Cinyras. {Hist., 2, 3.— Ann., 3, 62.) Eu¬ 
sebius carries back the founding of the city to the 
time of the Hebrew Gideon. {Chron., n. 590.)—The 
Phoenician or Syrian origin of the place was clearly 
shown by the worship established here ; for Venus 
Urania was here adored under the same attributes and 
with the same licentiousness as the Syrian goddess at 
Ascalon, Emesa, and elsewhere in that country. The 
effigy of the goddess was not of human shape. She 
was represented under the form of a white, round, co¬ 
nical stone. {Tyrius Max. Diss., 38.— Tacit., Hist., 
2, 3. — Clem. Alex., protrept, 29, scqq.) The office 
of high-priest was next in rank to the regal dignity. 
The worship of the goddess continued long after the 
ancient city was completely sunk in importance, and 
had been supplanted by the Paphos of later origin. 
Annual processions were still made to the earlier tem¬ 
ple, which was regarded as the most sacred of any, and 
acquired great fame by an oracle connected with it.— 
—Pococke found many ruins on this ancient site 

973 





PAP 


PAP 


(Manncrt, Gcogr., vol. 6, pt. 1, p. 584, seqq.) —II. 
Neapaphos (New Paphos), a city of Cyprus, on the 
western coast of the island, and north of Palaepaphos. 
According to Strabo (683), the distance between the 
two places was sixty stadia, while the Peutinger Ta¬ 
bles give eleven miles. The place had a good har¬ 
bour, was adorned with handsome temples, and was 
the capital of a separate principality. ( Diod. Sic., 
20. 21.) Under the Roman sway, it was the chief 
city of the whole western coast. Strabo and Pau- 
sanias (8, 5) make the Arcadian Agapenor to have 
been the founder of the place, having been driven 
hither bv a storm on his return from Troy. Stepha- 
nus of Byzantium asserts, that the previous name of 
this city was Erythra ; and, if he be correct, Agape¬ 
nor could only have enlarged and strengthened it. 
Paphos suffered severely from earthquakes, and partic¬ 
ularly from one in the reign of Augustus. That em¬ 
peror not only aided the suffering inhabitants, but also 
directed the city, when rebuilt, to be called by his name. 
The earlier appellation, however, eventually prevailed. 
Strabo ^nd Ptolemy make no mention of any Augus¬ 
ta, but merely of a city called Paphos. It appears 
from Tacitus, that the worship of Venus was yet re¬ 
maining in the reign of Titus, who visited Paphos, 
and made many inquiries about the rites and customs 
of the place. {Tacit., Hist., 2, 2.— Id., Ann., 3, 62. 
— Sueton., Vil. Tit., 5.) Paphos appears in later wri¬ 
tings, both civil and ecclesiastical, as an episcopal 
town, and one of the most noted in the island. The 
site is yet marked by some ruins, and the name of 
Buffo serves sufficiently to attest their identity. {Cra¬ 
mer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 376.— Mannert, Geogr., 
vol. 6, pt. 1, p. 585.) For an account of the remains 
of antiquity in this quarter, consult Turner's Tour in 
the Levant, vol. 2, p. 557. 

Papia Lex, I. de peregrinis, by C. Papius Celsus, 
tribune of the commons, A.U.C. 638, which required 
that all foreigners should depart from Rome, excepting 
those who were inhabitants of Italia Propria. {Dio 
Cass., 37, 9.— Cic., de Off., 3, 11.— Heinecc., Antiq. 
Rom., p. 345, ed. Haubold.) —II. Another, called Pa¬ 
pia Poppcea, because it was proposed by the consuls 
Papius and Poppasus, A.U.C. 762. It was passed at 
the desire of Augustus, and enforced and enlarged the 
Julian law for promoting population, and repairing the 
desolation occasioned by the civil wars. ( Vid. Julia 
lex de maritandis ordinibus .) 

Papias, one of the early Christian writers in the 
Greek language, was bishop of Hierapolis in Asia at 
the beginning of the second century. According to 
Cave, he flourished in the year 110; according to 
others, in 115 or 116. He wrote a work in five books, 
entitled “ An Explanation of the Words (or Oracles) 
of the Lord," which is now lost. In a passage of this 
work, quoted by Eusebius, Papias professes to have 
taken great pains to gain information respecting Chris¬ 
tianity from those who had known the Apostles, and 
tome remarkable statements of his respecting the 
\postles and Evangelists are still preserved. Ac¬ 
cording to Irenaeus, he was himself a hearer of John 
ind a companion of Polycarp. He is said by Euse¬ 
bius to have been a Millenarian, and a man of little 
mind, “ as appears,” says Eusebius, “ from his own 
writings.” {Euscb., Hist. Eccles., 3, 39. — Cave, 
Hist. Lit., s. v. — Lardner's Credibility, pt. 2, c. 9.) 

Papinianus, iEmilius, a celebrated Roman lawyer. 
He was born A.D. 175, and was a pupil of the jurist 
Q. Cervidius Scoevola at the same time with Septim- 
ius Severus, afterward emperor. Under Marcus Au¬ 
relius he held the office of advocatus fisci, in which he 
succeeded S. Severus. After Severus became em¬ 
peror, Papinian was his libellorum magister and prez- 
fectus prceto\ io ; and the monarch had so high an 
opinion of him, that at his death he recommended his 
sons Caracalla and Geta to his care. The former, 
974 


having brutally murdered his brother Geta, enjoined 
on Papinian to compose a discourse in accusation of 
the deceased, in order to excuse his barbarity in the 
eyes of the senate and people. With this mandate 
the prefect not only refused to comply, but he nobly 
observed that it was easier to commit a parricide than 
to excuse it, and that slander of innocence was a 
second parricide. Caracalla, enraged by this refu¬ 
sal, secretly induced the prastorian guards to muti¬ 
ny, and demand their leader’s head; and, apparently 
to satisfy them, Papinian was executed in 212, and 
his body dragged through the streets of Rome. The 
reputation of Papinian as a lawyer was so high, that 
Valentinian III. ordered that, whenever the opinions 
of the judges were divided, Papinian’s should be fol j 
lowed. The Roman law-students, too, when they 
had reached the third year of their studies (the whole 
number of years being five), were called Papinian- 
ists {Papinianistce), and a festival was celebrated on 
the occasion of commencing his work. Papinian 
composed several works, among which were twenty- 
seven books of “Questions on the Law;” nineteen of 
“Responses” or “Opinions;” two of “Definitions;” 
two upon “ Adultery ;” and one upon the “ Laws of 
^Ediles.” Extracts from all his works are found in 
the “ Digest.” {Scholl, Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 3, p. 
285.) 

Papirii, the name of a patrician and plebeian gens 
in Rome, who were at first called Papisii. {Cic., Ep. 
ad Fam., 9, 21.) This gens was divided into several 
families, such as the Mugillani, Crassi, Cursores, and 
Massones, and the most celebrated of the different in 
dividuals of these families was L. Papirius Cursor 
He was the grandson of the L. Papirius Cursor who 
was censor in the year in which Rome was taken by 
the Gauls, and son of Spurius Papirius Cursor, who 
was military tribune B.C. 379. {Liv., 6, 27.)—We 
first read of L. Papirius Cursor as master of the horse 
to L. Papirius Crassus, who was created dictator B.C. 
339, by the consul Manlius, in order to carry on the 
war against the Antiates. {Liv., 8, 12.— Cic., Ep. ad 
Fam., 9, 21.) The time of his first consulship is 
doubtful. Livy mentions C. Poetilius and L. Papirius 
Mugillanus as consuls B.C. 325; but he adds, chat, 
instead of Papirius Mugillanus, the name of Papirius 
Cursor was found in some annals. {Livy, 8, 28.) 
During the year of their consulship the Lex Pcelilia- 
Papiria was passed, which enacted that no one should 
be kept in fetters or bonds except for a crime which 
deserved them, and only until he had suffered the pun¬ 
ishment which the law provided : it also enacted that 
creditors should have a right to attach the goods, but 
not the persons, of their debtors. {Liv., 1. c.) In the 
following year, Papirius Cursor, who is said by Livy 
(8, 29) to have been considered at that time the most 
illustrious general of his age, was appointed dictator 
to carry on the war against the Samnites. He ap¬ 
pointed Q. Fabius Maximus his master of the horse ; 
and during his absence at Rome to renew the au¬ 
spices, Fabius attacked the enemy contrary to his com¬ 
mands, and gained a signal victory. On his return to 
the camp he commanded Fabius to be put to death; 
but the soldiers espousing the cause of the latter, the 
execution was delayed till the following day, before 
which time Fabius had an opportunity of escaping to 
Rome, where he placed himself under the protection 
of the senate. The proceedings which followed &?« 
interesting to the student of the constitutional history 
of Rome, as they show that an appeal could be made 
to the people from the decision of a dictator, which is 
in accordance with a remark of Livy in another part 
of his history (3, 55), that, after the decemvirs were 
expelled from Rome, a law was passed, enacting that, 
in future, no magistrate should be made from whom 
there should be no appeal. Papirius demanded Fa¬ 
bius of the senate; and as neither the entreaties of 




PAP 


PAR 


iitc senators nor those of the father of Fabius, who 
had been dictator and three limes consul, could induce 
Papirius to pardon him, the father of Fabius appealed 
to the people, and'at length, at the earnest entreaties 
of the people and the tribunes of the commons, the 
life of Fabius was spared. Papirius named a new 
master of the horse, and, on his return to the army, 
defeated the Samnites, and put an end to the war at 
the time. ( Liv ., 8, 29, seqq.) Papirius was elected 
consul a second time, with Q. Publius Philo, in B.C. 
320, arid again defeated the Samnites; and apparently 
a third time in the following year, though there appears 
to be some doubt upon the latter point. {Liv., 9, 7, 
seqq.) He was consul for the fourth time in B.C. 
315 {Liv., 9, 22), and for the fifth time in B.C. 313. 
{Liv., 9, 38.) He was again named dictator in B.C. 
309, to carry on the war against his old enemies the 
Samnites, whom he defeated with great slaughter, and 
obtained, on account of his victory, the honours of a 
triumph {Liv., 9, 38, seqq.) ; after which time we find 
no more mention of him. Papirius Cursor, says Livy 
(9, 16), was considered the most illustrious man of his 
age, and it was thought he would have been equal to 
contend with Alexander the Great, if the latter, after 
the conquest of Asia, had turned his arms against Eu¬ 
rope. {Encycl. Use. Knowl., vol. 17, p. 218.) — II. 
One of this family received the surname of Prcetexta- 
tus, from an action of his while still wearing the prce- 
texta, or youthful gown, and before he had assumed the 
toga virilis, or gown of manhood. It was customary 
in those days for fathers to take their young sons to 
the senate-house when anything important was under 
discussion, in order that they might sooner become 
familiarized with public affairs. The father of young 
Papirius took him on one of these occasions, while a 
matter of considerable moment was pending ; and it 
having been deemed advisable to adjourn the debate 
unto the morrow, an injunction of secrecy was laid 
upon all who were present. The mother of young Pa¬ 
pirius wished to know what had passed in the senate ; 
but the son, unwilling to betray the secrets of that as¬ 
sembly, amused his parent by telling her that it had 
been debated whether it would be more advantageous 
to the republic to give two wives to one husband, or 
two husbands to one wife. The mother of Papirius 
was alarmed, arid she communicated the secret to the 
other Roman matrons, and on the morrow they assem¬ 
bled in large numbers before the senate-house, bathed 
in tears, and earnestly entreating that one woman might 
have two husbands rather than one husband two wives. 
The senators were astonished at so singular an appli¬ 
cation ; but young Papirius modestly explained the 
cause, and the fathers, in admiration of his ready tact, 
passed a decree, that for the future boys should not be 
allowed to come to the senate with their fathers, ex¬ 
cept Papirius alone. This regulation continued until 
the time of Augustus, who rescinded it. {Macrob., 
1, 6.) 

Pappus, a celebrated mathematician of Alexandrea, 
who lived towards the end of the fourth century. He 
is known by his Mathematical Collections (M aOypaTi- 
ical GvvayuyaV), in eight books, and by other works, 
among which were a Commentary on Ptolemy’s Al¬ 
magest, a work on Geography, a Treatise on Military 
Engines, a Commentary on Aristarchus of Samos, &c. 
His Collections have chiefly come down to us ; of 
his other productions we have merely some fragments. 
The last five books of the Collections remain entire ; 
the third is acephalous, wanting the commencement. 
Wallis published a fragment of the second. The first 
two books contained the Greek Arithmetic. What 
we have of the work is interesting, on account of the 
extracts it contains from works that are now lost, and 
it merits the careful perusal of those who make re¬ 
searches into the history of the exact sciences. Mon- 
tuc'a ascribes to Pappus the first idea of the principle 


often referred to by mathematicians, the use, namely 
of the centre of gravity for the dimension of figures 
We owe to Pappus also an elegant though indirect so 
lution of the famous problem of the trisection of ar 
angle. “ Pappus,” observes a writer in the Americar. 
Quarterly Review (No. 21, p. 124), “is the only name 
worthy of note that occurs to fill up the great blank 
between Archimedes and the Italian mechanicians of 
the sixteenth century. He attempted to ascertain the 
principle of all the simple machines, in the same man¬ 
ner that his illustrious predecessor had that of the le¬ 
ver ; his attention, however, was principally directed 
to the inclined plane. In this he failed, owing to the 
fundamental error upon which all his investigations 
proceeded, that some force was necessary to keep a 
body even on a plane of no inclination.”—Only parts 
of the Greek text of the Collections have been pub¬ 
lished. We have a Latin version of six books, from 
the third to the end of the work, made by Commandi- 
no, an Italian mathematician of the sixteenth century. 
It was printed at Pesaro in 1588, fob, with a com¬ 
mentary by Ubaldi, and afterward revised by Mano- 
lessius, and reprinted at Bologna, 1660, fol. A frag¬ 
ment of the Greek text of the second book was given 
by Wallis at the end of his Aristarchus, Oxon., 1688, 
8 vo, and in the third volume of his Opera Mathemati¬ 
cs. The second part of the fifth book was published 
by Eisenmann, professor in “L’Ecole royale des ponts 
et chaussees,” Paris, 1824, fol. A part of the preface 
of the seventh book is given in the Prolegomena of 
Gregory’s Euclid, Oxon., 1703, fob, and the entire 
preface in the edition of Apollonius of Perga, Oxon., 
1706, 8vo. Meibomius has inserted some lemmas 
from the seventh book in his Dialogi de Proportioni- 
bus, Hafnice, 1655, fol. {Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 
7, p. 49.— Biogr. Univ., vol. 32, p. 538.) 

Par^etac^b or -taceni, a people of Persia, occu 
pying the mountain range between that country and 
Media. Their territory was called by the Greeks Pa- 
raetacene, and Stephanus Byzantinus makes mention of 
a city in it by the name of Parastaca (p. 626. — Diod. 
Sic., 19, 34.— Arrian, 3, 19.— Plin., 6, 26). 

Par^etonium, a strongly-fortified place, the frontier- 
city of Egypt on the side of Libya, and situate on the 
coast of the Mediterranean. It had, including its har¬ 
bour, a circuit of about 40 stadia. {Strab., 798.) Jus¬ 
tinian repaired and strengthened it. {Procop., deJEdif., 
6, 2.) Strabo gives the distance from Alexandrea at 
about 1300 stadia: Scylax makes it 1700, and Pliny 
1600. Ptolemy removes Paraetonium from Alexan¬ 
drea 3° 30', or 35 geographical miles.—The modem 
name is Al Bareton. {Mannert, Gcogr., vol. 10, pt. 
2, p. 29, seqq.) 

Parasanges {Tlapaodyyrjq), in Latin Parasanga. 
a parasang, or Persian measure of length, which, ac¬ 
cording to Herodotus (2, 6 ; 5, 53; 6, 42), was equal 
to 30 stadia ; and if we reckon eight stadia as equal 
to one English mile, the parasang was consequently 
equal to nearly four English miles. Hesychius and 
Suidas also give the length of the parasang at 30 sta¬ 
dia ; and Xenophon must have calculated it at the 
same length, since he says {Anab., 2, 2, 6) that 16,050 
stadia are equal to 535 parasangs (16,050 ^535=30). 
Pliny (6, 30), however, informs us, that the length o' 
the parasang was reckoned differently by different au¬ 
thors ; and Strabo (518) states, that some reckoned it 
at 60, others at 40, and others at 30 stadia. The Ara¬ 
bian geographers {Freytag, Lex. Arab . s. v. Farsakh) 
reckon it equal to three miles, which agrees with the 
statements of English travellers (quoted by Rodiger, 
in Ersch and Gruber's Encyclopadie), who estimate it 
variously at from 3£ to 4 English miles. Franklin 
{Tour to Persia, p. 17) reckons it at four miles: Ous- 
ley ( Travels, vol. 1, p. 23) at between 3£ and 3| miles; 
and Kinneir {Geogr. of Persia, p. 57) at 3f miles.— 
Parasang is a Persian word, and is derived from the 

975 





P A R 


PAR 

Ancient Farsang, which is pronounced in modern Per¬ 
sian Ferscng. " It has been changed in Arabic into 
Farsakh. Various etymologies have been proposed 
for the term. The latter part of the word is thought 
to be the Persian seng , “ a stone,” and the term might 
thus be derived from the stones which were placed to 
mark the distances in the road. Bohlen (quoted by 
Rodigcr) supposes the first part of the word to be 
the preposition /era, and compares the word with the 
Latin ad lapidem. (Encycl . Us. Knowl., vol. 17, p. 
241.) 

Parcce, the Fates, called also Fata, and in Greek 
Moipat (Moira). In the Iliad, with the exception of 
one passage (20, 49), the Moira is spoken of in the 
singular number, and as a person, almost exactly as we 
use the word Fate. But in the Odyssey this word is 
employed as a common substantive, followed by a gen¬ 
itive of the person, and signifying decree. The The- 
ogony of Hesiod limits the Fates, like so many other 
goddesses, to three, and gives them Jupiter and The¬ 
mis for their parents. ( Theog ., 904.) In an interpo¬ 
lated passage of the same poem (v. 217) they are class¬ 
ed among the children of Night ; and Plato, on his 
part, makes them the daughters of Necessity. (Rep., 
10, 617.) Their names in Hesiod are Clotho (Spin¬ 
ster), Lachesis (Allotter), and Atropos (Unchange¬ 
able) ; but he does not speak of their spinning the 
destinies of men. This office of theirs is, however, 
noticed in both the Iliad and Odyssey. It is probable 
that Homer, in accordance with the sublime fiction in 
the Theogony, regarded the Fates as the offspring of 
Jupiter and Order, for in him they are but the minis¬ 
ters of Jupiter, in whose hands are the issues of all 
things. ( Nitzch, ad Od., 3, 236.) ./Eschylus makes 
even Jupiter himself subject to the Fates. (Prom. 
Vinct., 515.— Keightley's Mythology, p. 195.) — Ac¬ 
cording to the popular mythology, Clotho held the dis¬ 
taff, Lachesis span each one’s portion of the thread of 
existence, and Atropos cut it off: hence the well- 
known line expressing their respective functions: 

u Cloiho colum retinet, Lachesis net, et Atropos occat." 

The more correct explanation, however, is to make 
Clotho spin, Lachesis mark out each one’s portion, 
and Atropos sever it.— The Latin writers indulge in 
various views of the functions of the Parcae, as sug¬ 
gested by their own ingenuity of elucidation. Thus 
Apuleius (De Mundo, sub fin.) makes Clotho preside 
over the present, Atropos the past, and Lachesis the 
future ; an idea probably borrowed from Plato, who 
introduces the Moirae singing ra yeyovora, ra ovra, 
ra psTCkovra. (Rep., 10, 617.) So in the Scandina¬ 
vian mythology, the Norns or Destinies, who are also 
three in number, are called Urdur, Verdandi, and 
Skuld, or “ Past,” “ Present,” and “ Future.”—Ac¬ 
cording to Fulgentius (Mythol., 1, 7), Clotho presides 
over nativity, Atropos over death, and Lachesis over 
each one’s lot in life.—The term Moira (M olpa) comes 
from petpu, “ to divide” or “ portion out?' The or¬ 
dinary etymology for the word Parcce. deduces it by 
antiphrasis from parco, “to spare,” because they never 
spared. (Scrv. ad 2En., 1, 26.— Martian. Capell. — 
Donat. — Diomcd., ap. Voss., Elymol.) Varro derives 
it “ a pariendo," because they presided over the birth 
of men (Aul. Gell., 3, 16); or, to quote his own words, 
<l Parca, immutata litera una, a partu nominata. ” Scal- 
iger makes it come from parco, “ to spare,” in a dif¬ 
ferent sense from Servius and the other grammarians 
quoted above ; because, according to him, only one of 
the Fates cuts the thread of existence, whereas of the 
other two, one gives life and the other prolongs it. 
Perhaps, after all, the best explanation (supposing the 
word Parcce to be of Latin origin) is that which makes 
it come from parco, “ to spare,” not by antiphrasis, 
nor in accordance with Scaliger’s notion, but because 
these deities were invoked in prayer to spare the lives 
976 


of mortals. (Consult Scheller , Lat. Dcutsch. Wot 
terb., s. v.) 

Paris, the son of Priam, king of Troy, by Hecuba, 
and also called Alexander. He was destined, even be¬ 
fore his birth, to become the ruin of his country; and 
when his mother, being about to lie-in of him, had 
dreamed that she brought forth a torch which set all Il¬ 
ium in flames, the soothsayer H^sacus declared that tho 
child would prove the ruin of his country, and recom¬ 
mended to expose it. As soon as born, the babe was 
given to a servant to be left on Ida to perish. 1 he 
domestic obeyed, but, on returning at the end of five 
days, he found that a bear had been nursing the infant. 
Struck with this strange event, he took home the in¬ 
fant, reared him as his own son, and named him Paris. 
When Paris grew up he distinguished himself by his 
strength and courage in repelling robbers from the 
flocks, and the shepherds, In consequence, named him 
Alexander (Man-protector), or, according to the Greek 
form, ’A Mt-avdpog (utto tov aXefriv rovg uvdpag). 
In this state of seclusion, too, he united himself to the 
nymph CEnone, whose tragical fate is elsewhere related. 
(Vid. QEnone.) Their conjugal happiness was soon dis¬ 
turbed. At the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, the god¬ 
dess of Discord, who had not been invited to partake 
of the entertainment, showed her displeasure by throw¬ 
ing into the assembly of the gods who were at the cele¬ 
bration of the nuptials a golden apple, on which were 
written the words *H nahy Tiaberu, “ Let the beauty 
(among you) take me." Juno, Minerva, and Venus 
laying claim to it, and Jove being unwilling to decide, 
the god commanded Mercury to lead the three deities 
to Mount Ida, and to intrrfct the decision of the affair 
to the shepherd Alexander,' whose judgment was to be 
definitive. The goddesses appeared before him, and 
urged their respective claims, and each, to influence 
his decision, made him an alluring offer of future ad¬ 
vantage. Juno endeavoured to secure his preference 
by the promise of a kingdom, Minerva by the gift of 
intellectual superiority and martial renown, and Venus 
by offering him the fairest woman in the world for his 
wife. To Venus he assigned the prize, and brought 
upon himself, in consequence, the unrelenting enmity 
of her two disappointed rivals, which was extended 
also to his whole family and the entire Trojan race. 
Soon after this event, Priam proposed a contest among 
his sons and other princes, and promised to reward 
the conqueror with one of the finest bulls of Mount 
Ida. Persons were sent to procure the animal, and it 
was found in the possession of Paris, who reluctantly 
yielded it up. The shepherd, desirous of obtaining 
again this favourite animal, went to Troy, and entered 
the lists of the combatants. Having proved success¬ 
ful against every competitor, and having gained an 
advantage over Hector himself, that prince, irritated 
at seeing himself conquered by an unknown stranger, 
pursued him closely, and Paris must have fallen a 
victim to his brother’s resentment had he not fled to 
the altar of Jupiter. This sacred place of refuge pre¬ 
served his life; and Cassandra, the daughter of Priam, 
struck with the similarity of the features of Paris to 
those of her brothers, inquired his birth and his age. 
From these circumstances she soon discovered that he 
was her brother, and as such she introduced him to 
her father and to his children. Priam, thereupon, for¬ 
getful of the alarming predictions of ^Esacus, acknowl¬ 
edged Paris as his son, and all enmity instantly ceased 
between the new-comer and Hector. Not long aftei 
this, at the instigation of Venus, who had not forgotter 
her promise to him, Paris proceeded on his memorable 
voyage to Greece, from which the soothsaying Helenu* 
and Cassandra had in vain endeavoured to deter him. 
The ostensible object of the voyage was to procure in¬ 
formation respecting his father’s sister Hesione, who 
had been given in marriage by Hercules to his followei 
Telamon, the monarch of Salamis. The real motive. 




PAR 


PAR 


uowever, which prompted the enterprise, was a wish 
to obtain, in the person of Helen, then the fairest 
woman of her time, a fulfilment of what Venus had 
offered him when he was deciding the contest of 
beauty. Arriving at Sparta, where Menelaus. the hus- 
of Helen, was reigning, he met with an hospitable re¬ 
ception ; but, Menelaus soon after having sailed away 
to Crete, the Trojan prince availed himself of his ab¬ 
sence, seduced the affections of He(pn, and bore her 
away to his native city, together with a large portion 
of the wealth of her husband. (Consult remarks under 
the article Helena.) Hence ensued the war of Troy, 
which ended in the total destruction of that ill-fated 
city. ( Vid. Troja.) Paris, though represented in 
general as effeminate and vain of his personal appear¬ 
ance, yet distinguished himself during the siege of 
Troy by wounding Diomede, Machaon, Antilochus, 
and Palamedes, and subsequently by discharging the 
dart which proved fatal to Achilles. Venus took him 
under her special protection, and, in the single com¬ 
bat with Menelaus, rescued him from the vengeance 
of the latter. The circumstances of his death are 
mentioned under the article CEnone. {Diet. Cret., 1, 
3. 4. — Apollod., 3, 12. — Hygin., fab., 92, 273.— 
Tzetz. ad Lycophr., 57, 61, 63, 86, &c.) 

ParIsi, a British nation lying to the north of the 
Coritani, and occupying the district which is called 
Holderness , or, according to Camden, the whole East- 
Riding of Yorkshire. They are supposed to have de¬ 
rived their name from the two British words paur isa, 
which signify low pasture, and which are descriptive 
of the situation and uses of their country. Their cap¬ 
ital was Petuaria. {Mannert, Geogr., vol. 2, pt. 2, 
p. 187.) 

Parish, a people and city of Gaul, now Dans, the 
capital of the kingdom of France. ( Vid. Lutetia.— 
Coes., B. G., 6, 3.) 

Parisus, a river of Pannonia, falling into the Dan¬ 
ube ; according to Mannert, the Mur, in the Hungarian 
part of its course. {Mannert, Geogr., vol. 3, p. 489.) 

Parium, now Camanar, a town of Asia Minor, in 
Mysia Minor, on the Propontis, southwest of Linus, 
and northeast from Paesus. It was founded by the 
Milesians and Parians. {Plin., 5, 32.— Paul. Lex., 
viii., de Censih.) 

Parma, a city of Italy, south of the Po, on the small 
river Parma. It was founded by the Etrurians, taken 
by a tribe of Gauls called the Boii, and at last colon¬ 
ized by the Romans, A.U.C. 569. {Liv., 39, 55.) 
From Cicero it may be inferred that Parma suffered 
from the adverse factions in the civil wars. {Ep. ad. 
Fam.., 10, 33.— Id. ibid., 12, 5. — Id., Philipp., 14, 
3.) It was probably recolonized under Augustus, as 
some inscriptions give it the title of Colonia Julia Au¬ 
gusta Parma. Strabo (216) speaks of it as a city of 
note. From Martial we learn that its wool was highly 
prized (14, 53; 5, 13). In the ages that immedi¬ 
ately succeeded the fall of the Roman empire, we find 
this city distinguished also by the appellation of Chry- 
sopolis" {Gold-city), but are unacquainted with the 
causes that led to the adoption of the name. {Geogr. 
Ravennas, 4, 33.— Donizo, Vit. Machtildis, 1, 10.) 
The modern name is Parma. ( Mannert, Geogr., vol. 
9, pt. 1, p. 218.) 

Parmenides {YlappevtSyg), the second in the series 
of the Eleatic philosophers, was a native of Elea. He 
was descended from a noble family, and is said to have 
been induced to study philosophy byAminias. {Diog. 
Laert., 9, 21.) He is also stated to have received 
instruction from Diochaetes, the Pythagorean, to whom 
he erected an heroiim. Later writers inform us that 
he heard Xenophanes, the founder of the Eleatic school, 
but Aristotle {Met., 1, 5) speaks of it with some doubt. 
We read that Parmenides gave a code of laws to his 
native city, which was sc highly esteemed that at first 
the citizens took an oath every year to observe it. 
6 H 


{Diog. Laert., 9, 23.— Pint,., Adv. Colot., 32.— Stra¬ 
bo, 252.) The time when he lived has been much dis¬ 
puted. According to Plato {Parmen,, 127), Parme¬ 
nides, at the age of sixty-five, accompanied by Zeno 
at the age of forty, visited Athens during the great 
Panathenaea, and stopped at the house of Pythodorus 
As this visit to Athens probably occurred about B.C 
454 {Clinton, Fast. Hell., p. 364), Parmenides would 
have been born about B.C. 519. But to this date two 
objections are urged ; first, that Diogenes Laertius (9, 
23) says that Parmenides flourished {r/Kpa^e) in the 
69th Olympiad ; and, secondly, that Socrates is stated 
by Plato, in his dialogue entitled Parmenides, to have 
conversed with Parmenides and Zeno on the doctrine 
of ideas, which we can hardly suppose to have been 
the case, as Socrates at that time was only thirteen or 
fourteen. Athenaeus, accordingly (11, p. 505), has cen¬ 
sured Plato for saying that such a dialogue ever took 
place. But in reply to these objections it may be re¬ 
marked, first, that little reliance can be placed upon 
the vague statement of such a careless writer as Dio¬ 
genes ; and, secondly, that the dialogue which Plato 
represents Socrates to have had with Parmenides and 
Zeno is doubtless fictitious ; yet it was founded on a 
fact, that Socrates, when a boy, had heard Parmenides 
at Athens. Plato mentions, both in the “ Thccetetus ” 
(p. 183) and the “ Sophistes ” (p. 127), that Socrates 
was very young {ndvv veoc) when he heard Parmeni¬ 
des. We have no other particulars of the life of Par¬ 
menides. He taught Empedocles and Zeno, and with 
the latter lived on the most intimate terms. {Plato, 
Parmen., 127.) He is always spoken of by the ancient 
writers with the greatest respect. In the “ Thcccte 
tus ” (p. 183) Plato compares him with Homer; and 
in the “ Sophistes ” (p. 237) he calls him “ the Great.” 
('Compare Arislot., Met., 1,5.) Parmenides wrote a 
poem, which is usually cited by the title “ Of Nature" 
{rzepl <jtbaeo>q. — Sext. Empir., adv. Matkem., 7, 111. 
— Theophr., ap. Diog. Laert., 8, 55), but which also 
bore other titles. Suidas calls it (pvatoXo-yta {s. v. Uap- 
pevid.), and adds, on the authority of Plato, that he also 
wrote works in prose. The passage in Plato {Soph., 
p. 237), however, to which Suidas refers, perhaps only 
means an oral exposition of his system, which inter¬ 
pretation is rendered more probable by the lact that 
Sextus Empiricus {adv. Mathem., 7, 111) and Dio¬ 
genes Laertius (1, 16) expressly state, that Parmeni¬ 
des only wrote one work. Several fragments of this 
work “ On Nature ” have come down io us, principal¬ 
ly in the writings of Sextus Empiricus and Simplicius. 
They were first published by Stephanus in his “Foe- 
sis Philosophica" {Paris, 1573), and next by Fiille- 
born, with a translation in verse, Zullichau, 1795. 
Brandis, in his “ Commcntationes Eleaticce," Hafnice, 
1813, also published the fragments of Parmenides, to¬ 
gether with those of Xenophanes and Melissus ; but 
the most recent and complete edition is bv Karscen, in 
the second volume of his “ Philosophorum Grcecorum 
veterum, preesertim qui ante Platonem,Jloruerunt, Ope - 
rum Reliquiae" Brux., 1835- The fragments of his 
work which have come down to us are sufficient to en¬ 
able us to judge of its general method and subject. It 
opened with an allegory, which was intended to exhib¬ 
it the soul’s longing after truth. The soul is repre¬ 
sented as drawn by steeds along an untrodden road to 
the residence of Justice (Ai/o?), who promises to reveal 
everything to it. After this introduction the work is 
divided into parts; the first part treats of the knowl¬ 
edge of truth, and the second explains the physiologi¬ 
cal system of the Eleatic school. {Encyclop. Useful 
Knowl., vol. 17, p. 283.) 

Parmenio, a Macedonian general, who distinguished 
himself in the service of Philip, father of Alexander the 
Great. He gained a decisive victory over the lllyri 
ans about the time of Alexander’s birth, and the news 
of both ♦ vents reached Philip, who was then absen 

977 




PAR 


PAR 


from his capital on some expedition, together with that 
of his having won the prize at the Olympic games. 
Philip, while preparing to invade the Persian empire, 
sent a considerable force into Asia as an advanced 
guard, and he chose Parmenio and Attalus as the lead¬ 
ers of the expedition. These commanders began by 
expelling the Persian garrisons from several Greek 
towns of Asia Minor. Parmenio took GrynEeum. in 
^Eolis, the inhabitants of which, having sided with the 
Persians, and fought against the Macedonians, were 
sold as slaves. When Alexander set out on his Asi¬ 
atic expedition, Parmenio had one of the chief com¬ 
mands in the army. At the head of the T. hessalian cav¬ 
alry he contributed much to the victory of the Grani- 
cus ; and at Issus he had the command of the cavalry 
on the left wing, which was placed near the seacoast, 
and had to sustain for a time the principal attack of 
the Persians. At Arbela he advised Alexander not to 
give battle until he had well reconnoitred the ground. 
Being in command of the left wing, he was attacked 
in flank by the Persians, and was ior a time in some 
danger, until Alexander, who had been successful in 
another part of the field, came to his assistance. Par¬ 
menio afterward pursued the fugitives, and took pos¬ 
session of the Persian camp, with the elephants, cam¬ 
els, and all the baggage. When Alexander marched 
beyond the Caspian gates in pursuit of Darius and 
Bessus, he left Parmenio, who was now advanced in 
years, in Media, at the head of a considerable force. 
Some time after, while Alexander was encamped at 
Artacoana, a conspiracy is said to have been discovered 
against his life, in which Philotas, the son of Parme¬ 
nio, was accused of being implicated. He was, in con¬ 
sequence, put to the torture, and, after enduring dread¬ 
ful agonies, confessed, though in vague terms, that he 
had conspired against the life of Alexander, and that 
his father Parmenio was cognizant of it. This being 
considered sufficient evidence, Philotas was stoned to 
death, and Alexander despatched a messenger to Me¬ 
dia, with secret orders to Oleander and other officers 
who were serving under Parmenio, to put their com¬ 
mander to death. The unsuspecting veteran, while 
conversing with his officers, was run through the body 
by Oleander. This is the substance of the account of 
Ourtius (lib. 6 et 7). Arrian’s account is somewhat 
different (lib. 3). Whatever may be thought of the 
trial and execution of Philotas, and it appears to have 
been at least a summary and unsatisfactory proceed¬ 
ing, the murder of Parmenio, and the manner of it, form 
one of the darkest blots in Alexander’s character. 
Parmenio was evidently sacrificed in cold blood to 
what have been styled, in after ages, “reasons of 
state.” He was seventy years of age ; he had lost 
two sons in the campaigns of Alexander, and Philotas 
was the last one remaining to him. Parmenio appears 
to have been a steady, brave, and prudent command¬ 
er. ( Encycl. Us. Knowl ., vol. 17, p. 283, seq.) 

Parnassus (n apvaaoofi, I. the name of a mount¬ 
ain-chain in Phocis, which extends in a northeasterly 
direction from the country of the Locri Ozolae to 
Mount (Eta, and in a southwesterly direction through 
the middle of Phocis, till it joins Mount Helicon on 
the borders of Boeotia. Strabo (316) says that Par¬ 
nassus divided Phocis into two parts ; but the name 
was more usually restricted to the lofty mountain upon 
which Delphi was situated. According to Stephanus 
of Byzantium, it was anciently called Larnassus, be¬ 
cause the ark or larnax of Deucalion landed here af¬ 
ter the flood. (Compare Ovid, Met., 1, 318.) Pau- 
aanie 3 (10, 6, 1) derives the name from Parnassus, the 
son of Neptune and Cleodora. It is called at the pres¬ 
ent day Liakura. Parnassus is the highest mountain 
in Central Greece. Strabo (379) says that it could 
be seen from the Acrocorinthus in Corinth, and also 
states (409) that it was of the same height as Mount 
Helicon : but in the latter point he was mistaken, ac- 
978 


cording to Colonel Leake, who informs us ,Travels in 
Northern Greece, vol. 2, p. 527) that Liakura is some 
hundreds of feet higher than Paleovuna, which is the 
highest point of Helicon. Parnassus was covered the 
greater part of the year with snow, whence the epithet 
of “ snowy ” so generally applied to it by the poets. 
(Soph., (Ed. Tyr., 473 .—Eunp., Phcen., 214.) When 
Biennus invaded Greece, we learn from Pausanias (10, 
23, 3 et 4) that*it was covered with snow. Above 
Delphi there were two lofty rocks, from which the 
mountain is frequently called by the poets the two- 
headed (tiiKopvtyog), one pi which Herodotus (8, 39) 
names Hyampea, but which were usually called Phaa- 
driades. Between these two rocks the celebrated Cas- 
talian fount flows from the upper part of the mountain. 
The water which oozes from the rock was in ancient 
times introduced into a hollow square, where it was 
retained for the use of the Pythia and the oracular 
priests. The fountain is ornamented with pendant ivy, 
and overshadowed by a large fig-tree. (Dodwell's 
Travels, vol. 1, p. 172.) Above the spring, at the dis¬ 
tance of 60 stadia from Delphi, was the Corycian cave, 
sacred to Pan and the Corycian nymphs, which Pau¬ 
sanias (10, 32, 2, 5) speaks of as superior to every 
other known cavern. (Compare Strabo, 417.) When 
the Persians were marching against Delphi, a part of 
the inhabitants took refuge in this cavern. (Herod., 
8, 37.) It is described by a modern traveller ( Raikes , 
in Walpole's Collection, &c., vol. 1, p. 312) as 330 
feet long and nearly 200 wide. As far as this cave 
the road to Delphi was accessible by horses and mules, 
but beyond it the ascent was difficult even for an ac¬ 
tive man ( civdpl ev&v<p. — Pausan., 10, 32, 2, 5). 
Above this cave, and near the summit of Parnassus, 
at the distance of 80 stadia from Delphi (Pausan., 10, 
32, 6) was the town of Tithorea or Neon, the ruins of 
which are near the modern village of Velitza. (En¬ 
cycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 17, p. 284, seq.) —II. A son of 
Neptune, who gave his name to a mountain of Phocis. 

Parnes (gen. -etis), a mountain of Attica, north ol 
Athens, famous for its wines. It was the highest 
mountain in the whole country, rising on the northern 
frontier, and being connected with Pentelicus to the 
south, and towards Bosotia with Cithaeron. Pausan¬ 
ias says (1, 32) that on Mount Parnes were a statue 
of Jupiter Parnethius, and an altar of Jupiter Semaleus. 
It abounded with wild boars and bears. (Pausan., 1. 
c. — Pliny, 11, 37.) The modern name is Nozea. 
“ Mount Parnes is intermingled,” says Dodwell, “ with 
a multiplicity of glens, crags, and well-wooded rocks 
and precipices, and richly diversified with scenery 
which is at once grand and picturesque : its summit 
commands a view over a vast extent of country ” 
(Tour, vol. 1, p. 504 ) 

Paropamisus, a province of India, the eastern limit 
of which, in Alexander’s time, was the river Cophenes. 
According to the ideas of Ptolemy, it lay between the 
countries which the moderns name Khorasan and Ca- 
bul, and it answers to the tract between Herat and Ca¬ 
bal. This province was separated from Bactria by a 
range of mountains also called Paropamisus, now Hen- 
du Khos, and which formed part of the great chain of 
Imaus. (Vid. Imaus.— Mela, 1, 15.— Plin., 6, 17.) 

Paros, now Paro, one of the Cyclades, to the south 
of Delos, at the distance of about seven and a half 
miles. It was said to have been first peopled by the 
Cretans and Arcadians. (Steph. Byz., s. v. ndpof.) 
Its early prosperity is evinced by the colonies it es¬ 
tablished at Thasus and on the shores of the Helles¬ 
pont. ( Thucydides, 4, 104.— Strabo, 487.) During 
the time of the Persian war, we are told that it was 
the most flourishing and important of the Cyclades. 
(Ephor., ap. Steph. Byz., s. v. Uupog. — Herod., 5, 
28, seqq.) After the battle of Marathon it was be 
sieged in vain by Miltiades for twenty-six days, and 
thus proved the cause of his disgrace. (Herod , 6, 





PAROS. 


PAROS. 


134. ) The Parians, according to the historian just 
cited, did not take part with the Persians in the battle 
of Salamis., but kept aloof near Cythnus, awaiting the 
issue'of the action. {Herod., 8 , 67.) Themistocles, 
however, subsequently imposed upon them a heavy 
fine. {Herod., 8 , 112 .) Paros was famed for its mar¬ 
ble. The quarries were on Mount Marpessa. ( Virg., 
JEn., 6 , 470.— Pind., Nem., 4, 131. — Virg., Georg., 
3, 34.— Hor., Od., 1 , 19,5. — Sfeph. Byz., s. v. Mdp- 
rcrjaaa.) Some remarks on the Parian marble will 
be offered below. — Paros was the birthplace of the 
poet Archilochus. ( Strabo, l. c. — Fair., Bill. Gr., 

vol. 2 , p. 107.) — It was in Paros that the famous 
marble was disinterred, known by the name of the Pa¬ 
rian Chronicle, from its having been kept in this isl¬ 
and. It is a chronological account of the principal 
events in Grecian, and particularly in Athenian, his¬ 
tory, during a period of 1318 years’, from the reign of 
Cecrops, B.C. 1450, to the archonship of Diognetus, 
B.C. 264. But the chronicle of the last 90 years was 
lost, so that the part now remaining ends at the ar¬ 
chonship of Diotimus, B.C. 354. The authenticity 
of this chronicle has been called in question by Mr. 
Robertson, who, in 1788, published a “ Dissertation 
on the Parian Chronicle His objections, however, 
have been ably and fully discussed, and .the authen¬ 
ticity of this ancient document has been fully vindi¬ 
cated by Porson, in his review of Robertson’s essay. 
{Monthly Review, January, 1789, p. 690. — Porson's 
Tracts, ed. Kidd, p. 57, seqq. —Consult also the En¬ 
cyclopaedia, Metropolitana, Art. “ Arundelian Mar¬ 
bles.") The chronicle is given, with an English ver¬ 
sion, in Hale's Analysis of Chronology (vol. 1 , p. 107, 
seqq.) —The following very interesting account of the 
quarries and marbles of Paros is given by Dr. Clarke. 
“ This day we set out upon mules for the ancient 
quarries of the famous Parian marble, which are sit¬ 
uate about a league to the east of the town, upon the 
summit of a mountain, nearly corresponding in altitude 
with the situation of the Grotto of Antiparos. The 
mountain in which the quarries are situate is now 
called Capresso: there are two of these quarries. 
When we arrived at the first, we found in the mouth 
of the quarry heaps of fragments detached from the 
interior : they were tinged, by long exposure to the 
air, with a reddish, ochreous hue ; but, upon being 
broken, exhibited the glittering sparry fracture which 
often characterizes the remains of Grecian sculpture : 
and in this we instantly recognised the beautiful mar¬ 
ble, which is generally named, by way of distinction, 
the Parian, although the same kind of marble is also 
found in Thasos. The marble of Naxos only differs 
from the Thasian and Parian in exhibiting a more ad¬ 
vanced state of crystallization. The peculiar excel¬ 
lence of the Parian is extolled by Strabo ; and it pos¬ 
sesses some valuable qualities unknown even to the 
ancients, who spoke so highly in its praise. These 
qualities are, that of hardening by exposure to atmo¬ 
spheric air (which, however, is common to all homo¬ 
geneous limestone), and the consequent property of 
resisting decomposition through a series of ages; and 
this, rather than the supposed preference given to the 
Parian marble by the ancients, may be considered as 
the cause of its prevalence among the remains of Gre¬ 
cian sculpture. That the Parian marble was highly 
and deservedly extolled by the Romans, is w r ell 
known : but in a very early period, when the arts had 
attained their full splendour in the age of Pericles, the 
preference was given by the Greeks, not to the mar¬ 
ble of Paros, but to that of Mount Pentelicus, because 
it was whiter ; and also, perhaps, because it was found 
in the immediate vicinity of Athens. The Parthenon 
was built entirely of Pentelican marble. Many of the 
Athenian statues, and of the works carried on near 
Athens during the administration of Pericles (as, for 
.sample, the temple of Ceres at Eleusis), were exe¬ 


cuted in tne marble of Pentelicus. But the finest 
Grecian sculpture which has been pieserved to the 
present time, is generally of Parian marble. The 
Medicean Venus, the Belvidere Apollo, the Anti- 
nous, and many other celebrated works, are made oV 
it; notwithstanding the preference which was so ear¬ 
ly bestowed upon the Pentelican ; and this is easi¬ 
ly explained. While the works executed in Parian 
marble retain, with all the delicate softness of wax, 
the mild lustre even of their original polish, those 
which were finished in Pentelican marble have been 
decomposed, and sometimes exhibit a surface as 
earthy and as rude as common limestone. This is 
principally owing to veins of extraneous substances 
which intersect the Pentelican quarries, and which 
appear more or less in all the works executed in this 
kind of marble. The fracture of Pentelican marble 
is sometimes splintery, and partakes of the foliated 
texture of the schistus, which traverses it; conse¬ 
quently, it has a tendency to exfoliate, like cipolino, 
by spontaneous decomposition.—We descended into 
the quarry, whence not a single block of marble has 
been removed since the island fell into the hands of 
the Turks; and perhaps it was abandoned long before, 
as might be conjectured from the ochreous colour by 
which all the exterior surface of the marble is now 
invested. We seemed, therefore, to view the grotto 
exactly in the state in which it had been left by the 
ancients: all the cavities, cut with the greatest nicety, 
showed to us, by the sharpness of their edges, the 
number and the size of all the masses of Parian mar¬ 
ble which had been removed for the sculptors of an¬ 
cient Greece. If the stone had possessed the soft¬ 
ness of potter’s clay, and had been cut by wires, it 
could not have been separated with greater nicety, 
evenness, and economy. The most evident care was 
everywhere displayed, that there should be no waste 
of this precious marble : the larger squares and par¬ 
allelograms corresponded, as a mathematician would 
express it, by a series of equimultiples, with the small¬ 
er, in such a manner that the remains of the entire 
vein of marble, by its dipping inclination, resembled 
the degrees or seats of a theatre.—We quitted the 
larger quarry, and visited another somewhat less ele¬ 
vated. Here, as if the ancients had resolved to mark 
for posterity the scene of their labours, we observed 
an ancient bas-relief on the rock. It is the same 
which Tournefort describes {Voy. du Lev., vol. 1 , p. 
239), although he erred in describing the subject of 
it. It is a more curious relic than is commonly sup¬ 
posed. It represents, in three departments, a festi¬ 
val of Silenus, mistaken by Tournefort for Bacchus. 
It has never been observed that Pliny mentions the 
image of Silenus in this bas-relief as a natural curios¬ 
ity, and one of the marvels of ancient Greece. The 
figure of Silenus was accidentally discovered, as a 
lusus naturae, in splitting the rock, and the other parts 
of the bas-relief were adjusted by the hand of art. 
Such a method of heightening and improving any 
casual effect of this kind has been very common in all 
countries, especially where the populace are to be de¬ 
luded by some supposed prodigy : and thus the cause 
is explained why this singular piece of sculpture, so 
rudely executed, yet remains as a part of the natural 
rock. * A wonderful circumstance,’ says Pliny, ‘ is 
related of the Parian quarries. The mass of entire 
stone being separated by the wedges of the workmen, 
there appeared within it an effigy of Silenus’ (36, 5). 
In the existence of this bas-relief as an integral part 
of the natural rock, and in the allusion made to it by 
Pliny, we have sufficient proof that these were ancien* 
queries ; consequently, they are the properest places 
to resort to for the identical stone whose colour was 
considered as pleasing to the gods {Plato, de Leg., 
12 , p. 296), which was used by Praxiteles {Property 
3 7 16. — Quintil., 2, 19) and by other illustrious 

979 





PAR 


PAR 


Grecian sculptors, and celebrated for its whiteness 
6y Pindar (Ncm ., 4, 262) and by Theocritus (6, 38). 
We collected several specimens : in breaking them 
we observed the same whiteness and brilliant fracture 
which characterizes the marble of Naxos, but with a 
particular distinction before mentioned, the Parian 
marble being harder, having a closer grain, and a less 
foliated texture. Three different stages of crystal¬ 
lization may be observed, by comparing the three dif¬ 
ferent kinds of marble dug at Carrara in Italy, in Pa¬ 
ros, and in Naxos : the Carrara marble being milk- 
white, and less crystalline than the Parian ; and the 
Parian whiter, and less crystallized than the Naxian.” 

( Clarke's Travels, vol. 6, p. 133, seqq , Lond. ed .)— 
Parian marble has been frequently confounded not 
only with Carrara marble, but also with alabaster, 
though differing altogether in nature from the latter 
substance, and in character from the former. The 
true Parian marble has generally somewhat of a faint 
bluish tinge among the white, and often has blue 
veins in different parts of it. (Elm.cs Diet, of the 
Fine Arts, s. v.) 

Parrhasii, a people of Arcadia, apparently on the 
Laconian frontier ; but the extent and position of their 
territory is not precisely determined. Thucydides 
says their district was under the subjection (ft Manti- 
nea, and near Sciritis of Laconia (5, 33). But Pau- 
sanias seems rather to assign the Parrhasii a more 
western situation ; for he names as their towns Lyco- 
sura, Thocnias, Trapezus, Acacesium, Macarea, and 
Dasea, all of which were to the west and northwest of 
Megalopolis. (Cramer's Anc. Greece, ol. 3, p. 350.) 

Parrhasius, a celebrated painter, son and pupil of 
Evenor, and a native of Ephesus, but who became 
eventually a citizen of Athens, having been presented 
with the freedom of that place. (Pint., Vit. Thes., 
4,—, Junius, Catal., p. 142.) The period when he 
flourished admits of some discussion. From a passage 
in Pliny (35, 9, 36) it would appear to have been 
about the 96th Olympiad; and Quintilian (12, 10) 
places Parrhasius and Zeuxis about the time of the 
Peloponnesian war, producing, in support of this opin¬ 
ion, the well-known conversation of the former artist 
with Socrates. (Xen., Mem., 3, 10.) Now Socrates 
died ins the 'first year of the 95th Olympiad, and this 
date fully accords with the year to which Parrhasius 
isiiBSsig.ned by Pliny. (Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.) — 
Parrhasius raised the art of painting to perfection in 
all that is exalted and essential. He compared his three 
great predecessors; with one another, rejected what 
was exceptionable,-'and; adopted what was admirable 
in each. The iclassic* invention of Polygnotus, the 
magic tone of Apoliodorus, and the exquisite design 
of Zeuxis, were all united in the works of Parrhasius ; 
what they had produced in : practice, he reduced to 
theory He so circumscribed and defined, says Quin¬ 
tilian (l:2 y hl0), all the-powers ?and objects of art, that 
he was termed [the legislator';; and all contemporary 
and subsequent artists adopted hjsistandard 0 f (j; v i ne 
and heroic proportions. , Parrhasius gave, in fact, to 
the divine andoheroiccharacter,in painting what Poly- 
cletus had given to the humap.in sculpture, by his Do- 
ryphorus, namely,-a canon p.f (proportion. , Phidias had 
discovered in the, nod of the Homeric Jupiter the char¬ 
acteristic of majesty v inclination of tlie,head ;j this hint¬ 
ed to him adrigher elevation of the neck behind, a bolder 
protrusion of. the. front, and the increased: perpendicu¬ 
lar of the profile-.. * To : this conception Parrhasius fixed 
a maximum ; :that point ffrom which descends the ul¬ 
timate-line of celestial beauty, the angle within yvluph 
moves whatever is inferior, beyond which what is por r 
lentous.—Parrhasius himself was aware of his own 
ability.: he assumed the cppellation of the.* 4 Elegant” 
, 'A 6pc**iat,TO£), ■. and styles! himself die “.Pripep, of 
Pafcriw i.” He also * ,an epigram ; u P or V himself 
AtUw 12, p. 643),» m -b he proclaimed his birth- 
380 


place, celebrated his father, and pretended that in hin 
self the art of painting had attained to perfection. H* 
likewise declared himself to be descended from Apollo, 
and carried his arrogance so far as to dedicate his own 
portrait in a temple as Mercury, and thus receive the 
adoration of the multitude. (Themist.,\k.) Hewore 
a purple robe and a golden garland ; he carried a staff 
wound round with tendrils of gold, and his sandals 
were bound with golden straps. ( JElian , V. H., 9, 
11.) It appears, therefore, that Pliny was right in 
styling him the most insolent and most arrogant of 
artists° (Pliny, 35, 10, 36.) The branch of art in 
which Parrhasius eminently excelled was a beautiful 
outline, as well in form as execution, particularly in 
the extremities, for, says Pliny, when compared with 
himself, the intermediate parts were inferior. The 
fault here censured consisted, according to Fuse4i, in 
an affectation of smoothness bordering on insipidity, 
in something effeminately voluptuous, which absorbed 
the character of his bodies and the idea of elastic vig¬ 
our ; and this Euphranor seems to have hinted at, 
when, on comparing his own Theseus with that of Par- 
rhasius, he pronounced the Ionian’s to have fed on 
roses, his own on beef: emasculate softness was not, 
in his opinion, the proper companion of the contour, 
nor flowery freshness of colour an adequate substitute 
for the sterner tints of heroic form. One of the most 
celebrated works of Parrhasius was his allegorical fig¬ 
ure of the Athenian people or Demos. Pliny says 
that it represented and expressed, in an equal degree, 
all the good and bad qualities of the Athenians at the 
same time ; one might trace the changeable, the irrita¬ 
ble, the kind, the unjust, the forgiving, the vain-glori¬ 
ous, the proud, the humble, the fierce, and the timid. 
How all these contrasting and counteracting qualities 
could have been represented at the same time, it is 
difficult to conceive. If we are to suppose it to hare 
been a single figure, it is very certain that it could not 
have been such as Pliny has described it; for, except 
by symbols, it is totally incompatible with the means 
of art. “We know,” observes Fuseli, “that the per¬ 
sonification of the Athenian Demos was an object of 
sculpture, and that its images by Lyson and Leochares 
were publicly set up ; but there is no clew to decide 
whether they preceded or followed the conceit of Par¬ 
rhasius.” Pliny enumerates many other works of 
this eminent painter; and he mentions a contest be¬ 
tween him and Timanthes of Cythnus, in which the 
former was beaten. The subject of the picture was 
the contest between Ulysses and Ajax; and the proud 
painter, indignant at the decision of the judges, is said 
to have remarked, that the unfortunate son of Telamon 
was for a second time, in the same cause, defeated 
by an unworthy rival. (Athenaus, 12, p. 543.) Pliny 
records also a trial of skill between Parrhasius and 
Zeuxis (rid. Zeuxis), in which the latter allowed his 
grapes to have been surpassed by the curtain of the 
former: “this contest,” remarks Fuseli, “if not a 
frolic, was an effort of puerile dexterity.”—The story 
told by Seneca of Parrhasius having crucified an old 
Olynthian captive when about to paint a “ Prome 
theus chained,” that he might seize from nature the 
true expression of bodily agony, cannot relate to this 
Parrhasius, and is probably a fiction : it is nowhere 
to be found but in the “Controversies” (5, 10) of the 
preceptor of Nero. Olynthus was taken by Philip in 
the second year of the 108th Olympiad, or B.C. 347, 
which is nearly half a century later than the latest ac¬ 
counts we have of Parrhasius. (Encycl. Us, .l^noici, 
vol. 17, p. 287. — Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v,-r- Fuseli, 
^Lecture on. Ancipnti-^f^^^x:?cqq .),,■ ro , vv *, 
pA^THENj;ZE, a name giyep at s ope period to a cei 
tapy.class ; of persons at Sparta, whose history is as 
follows,: Tt^e, absence from home ,to. which the Lace- 
daemoniaps h^d .^oupd; themselves*;.,duripg . the first 
Messenian, Messema), bqeame, by ,4he pro- 





PAK 


PAR 


traction of the contest, an evil threatening the exist¬ 
ence of the state, no children being born to supply the 
waste of war and natural decay. The remedy said to 
have been adopted was a strange one, highly charac¬ 
teristic of Lacedaemon, and such as no other people 
would have used. The young men who had come to 
maturity since the beginning of the war were free 
from the oath which had been taken, and they were 
sent home to cohabit promiscuously with the marriage¬ 
able virgins. But even at Sparta this expedient in 
some degree ran counter to the popular feelings. 
When the war was ended, and the children of this ir¬ 
regular intercourse, called Parthenire ( jilii virginum), 
had attained to manhood, they found themselves, 
though bred in all the discipline of Lycurgus, becom¬ 
ing every day more and more slighted. Their spirit 
was high, and a conspiracy was accordingly formed by 
them against the state, in conjunction with the Helots; 
but the public authorities, aware of the existence of 
disaffection among them, obtained information of all 
their plans, by means of certain individuals whom they 
had caused to join the Parthenias, and to pretend to 
be friendly to their views. The festival of the Hya- 
cinthia was selected by the conspirators as the day for 
action; and it was arranged, that when Phalanthus, their 
leader, should place his felt-cap upon his head, this 
was to be the signal for commencing. The appointed 
time arrived, and the festival had begun, when a pub¬ 
lic crier coming forth, made proclamation, in the name 
of the magistrates, that “Phalanthus should not put 
his felt-cap on his head” (firj dv nepideivai Kvvyv ‘bu- 
Tiavdov). The Parthenise immediately perceived that 
their plot was discovered, and were soon after sent off 
in a colony, under the guidance of Phalanthus, and 
founded the city of Tarentum in Italy. (Strab., 279.) 
It is more than probable that so much of this story as 
relates to the oath taken by the Spartans, and the 
sending home of their young men, is a mere fiction. 
On the other hand, however, it would seem that the 
emergencies of the state had actually induced the 
Spartans to relax the rigour of their principles, by 
permitting marriages between Spartan women and 
Laconians of inferior condition. Theopompus (ap. 
Athen., 6, p. 271) says, that certain of the Helots 
were selected for this purpose, who were afterward 
admitted to the franchise under a peculiar name (enev- 
vaKTOi). Still, however, even supposing that the 
number of the Spartans was thus increased by a con¬ 
siderable body of new citizens, drawn from the servile 
or the subject class of Laconians, or from the issue of 
marriages formed between such persons and Spartan 
women, it would nevertheless remain to be explain¬ 
ed, how this act of wise liberality could be connected 
with that discontent, which is uniformly mentioned, 
certainly not without some historical ground, as the 
occasion of the migration to Tarentum. And this 
seems inexplicable, unless we suppose that a distinc¬ 
tion was made between the new and the old citizens, 
which provoked a part of the former to attempt a rev¬ 
olution, and compelled the government to adopt one of 
the usual means of getting rid of disaffected and tur¬ 
bulent subjects. ( ThirlwaWs Greece , vol. 1, p. 353.) 

Parthenium Mare, a name sometimes given to 
that part of the Mediterranean which lies on the right 
of Egypt. It was also called Isiacum Mare. ( Amrn. 
Marcell., 14, 8 . — Id., 22, 15.) Gregory Nazianzen 
styles the sea around Cyprus n apdevucov irfkayoq. 
(Or., 19.) 

Parthenium, I. the southwestern extremity of the 
Tauric Chersonese. It received its name (Tlapdeviov 
dKpoTTjpiov, “ Virgin's Promontory ”) from Iphigenia’s 
having been fabled to have offered up here her human 
sacrifices to the Tauric Diana. It is now called Fe- 
ienk Bournon , and on it stands the monastery of St. 
George. (Plin., 4, 12.— Bischoff and Moller, H oY- 
terb. der Geogr., p 828.) — II A city of Mysia, in 


the territory of Troas. ( Xen., Anah., 7, 8. — Plm % 
5, 30.) 

Parthenius, I. a river of Asia Minor, forming the 
boundary between Paphlagonia and Bithynia, and fall¬ 
ing into (he Euxine to the southwest of Amastris. 
Strictly speaking, it separates Bithynia from Paphla- 
gonia only in the lower part of its course, being else¬ 
where considerably within the limits of the latter 
country. The modern Greek inhabitants in this quar¬ 
ter call it the Bar tin; the Turkish name is the Do- 
lap. ( Apoll. Rhod., 2, 938.— Xen., Anab., 6, 2.) 
The Greek name of this river was very probably a 
corruption of the original appellation, or, rather, an 
adaptation of it to a Grecian ear ; and the name Par- 
thenes (Hapdevyg, Anon. Peripl., p. 8) would seem 
to be an intermediate form. The Greeks, who were 
never at a loss for explanations derived from their 
national mythology, made the stream obtain its title 
of Parthenius ( Virgins River ) from the circumstance 
of Diana’s having delighted to bathe in its pure waters 
and hunt along its banks. (Apoll. Rhod., 1. c. — Sckol. 
ad Apoll. Rhod., 1. c. — Steph. Byz., s. v. — Anon. 
Peripl., p. 70.)—II. A mountain in Arcadia, forming 
the limit between that country and Argolis, and lying 
to the east of Tegea. (Strabo , 376.— Pausan., 8, 6. 
— Liv., 34, 26.) It was on this mountain that Pan 
was said to have appeared to Phidippides, the Athe¬ 
nian courier, who was sent to Sparta to solicit succour 
against the Persians. (Herod., 6, 107.— Apollod., 2, 
7, 4.) It still retains the name of Parthem. (Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 294.)—III. A river of 
Elis, to the east of the Harpinates, and, like it, a trib¬ 
utary of the Alpheus. On its banks lay the town of 
Epina. (Pausan., 6, 21.— Strab., 356.)—IV. A na¬ 
tive ofNicaea, in Asia Minor, taken prisoner by Cinna 
in the war with Mithradates (B.C. 81), and brought to 
Rome, where he instructed Virgil in Greek. Suidas 
states that he lived till the time of the Emperor r fibe- 
rius. The same lexicographer informs us that he 
gained his freedom on account of his learning. Of 
the numerous works written by Parthenius, only one 
now remains. Its title is Ilepr epoTiKtiv nadr/fiuTov 
(“ Of Amatory Affections"), and it is addressed to Cor¬ 
nelius Gallus, the elegiac poet. It is a collection of 
thirty-six erotic tales, all of a melancholy cast. At 
the period when he wrote, the corruption of taste had 
not, as yet, become strongly marked, and hence he may 
almost be regarded as one of the classic Greek writers. 
Virgil and Ovid have imitated him. He has preserv¬ 
ed for us some interesting extracts from various an¬ 
cient poets, especially those of the elegiac class; as, 
for example, Alexander the HCtolian, and Euphorion 
of Chalcis. (Le Beau, Mem. de l'Acad, des Inscr., 
&c., vol. 34, p. 63, seqq.) The ancients cite other 
works of Parthenius, such as his Metamorphoses, 
which, perhaps, first suggested to Ovid the idea of 
his mythological poem. If any reliance is to be placed 
on a marginal note in a Milan manuscript, the More- 
turn of Virgil is a mere imitation of one of the poems 
of Parthenius. (Vos-s, de Poet. Gr., p. 70.) The 
best edition of this writer is that of Passow, Lips., 
1830, 12mo. There is only one MS. of Parthenius 
(Bast, Epist. Crit., p. 168, 208), from which the 
early editions often depart without any necessity. 
Passow has made this MS. the basis of his edition. 
(Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 5, p. 42, seqq.) 

Parthenon, a celebrated temple at Athens, on the 
summit of the Acropolis, and sacred to Minerva, the 
virgin-goddess (napOevoq, “ Virgin"). It occupied the 
site of an older temple, also dedicated to Minerva, and 
which was denominated Hecatompedon ('EaaTOfnre- 
dov), from its having been one hundred feet square. 
This earlier temple was destroyed in the Persian in¬ 
vasion, and the splendid structure of the Parthenon, 
enlarged and modelled after a more perfect plan, arose 
in its place. In beauty and grandeur it surpassed all 

981 



PARTHENON. 


PARTHENON. 


•ther buildings of the kind, and was constructed en¬ 
tirely of Pentelic marble. It was built during the 
splendid era of Pericles, and the expense of its erec¬ 
tion was estimated at six thousand talents. The ar¬ 
chitects were Ictinus and Callistratus, and the work 
was adorned with sculptures from the hand of Phidias 
and his scholars. The following animated descrip¬ 
tor), by a modern scholar, may afford some idea of 
the appearance presented by this splendid edifice in 
‘.lie days of its glory.—“Let us here suppose our- 
seh>38 as joining that splendid procession of minstrels, 
priests, and victims, of horsemen and of chariots, 
wh.ch ascended the Acropolis at the quinquennial so¬ 
lemnity of the great Panathemea. Aloft, above the 
heads of the traifi, the sacred Peplus, raised and 
stretched like a sail upon a mast, waves in the air: it 
is variegated with an embroidered tissue of battles, of 
giants, and of gods : it will be carried to the temple 
of the Minerva Polias in the citadel, whose statue it 
is intended to adorn. In the bright season of sum¬ 
mer, on the twenty-eighth day of the Athenian month 
Hecatombaeon, let us mount with this procession to 
the western slope of the Acropolis. Towards the ter¬ 
mination of its course we are brought in face of a 
colossal fabric of white marble, which crowns the 
brow of the steep, and stretches itself from north to 
south across the whole western part of the citadel, 
which is about 170 feet in breadth. The centre of 
this fabric consists of a portico 60 feet broad, and 
formed of six fluted columns of the Doric order, raised 
upon four steps, and intersected by a road passing 
through the midst of the columns, which are 30 feet in 
height, and support a noble pediment. From this por¬ 
tico two wings project about 30 feet to the west, each 
having three columns on the side nearest the portico 
in the centre. The architectural mouldings of the 
fabric glitter in the sun with brilliant tints of red and 
blue : in the centre the coffers of its soffits are span¬ 
gled with stars, and the antis of the wings arc fringed 
with an azure embroidery of ivy-leaf. We pass along 
the avenue lying between the two central columns of 
the portico, and through a corridor leading from it, and 
formed by three Ionic columns on each hand, and are 
brought in front of five doors of bronze; the central 
one, which is the loftiest and broadest, being imme¬ 
diately before us. This structure which we are de¬ 
scribing is the Propylaa , or vestibule of the Athenian 
citadel. It is built of Pentelic marble. In the year 
B.C. 437 it was commenced, and was completed by 
the architect Mnesicles in five years from that time. 
Its termination, therefore, coincides very nearly with 
the commencement of the Peloponnesian war. We 
will now imagine that the great bronze doors of 
which wo have spoken are thrown back upon their 
hinges, to admit the riders and charioteers, and all 
that long and magnificent array of the Panathenaic 
procession, which stretches back from this spot to the 
area of the Agora, at the western foot of the citadel. 
We behold through this vista the Interior of the Athe¬ 
nian Acropolis. We pass under the gateway before 
us, and enter its precincts, surrounded on all sides by 
massive walls : we tread the soil on which the great¬ 
est men of the ancient world have walked, and behold 
buildings ever admired and imitated, but never equal¬ 
led in beauty. We behold before and around us al¬ 
most a city of statues, raised upon marble pedestals, 
the works of noble sculptors, of Phidias and Polycle- 
tufi, )f Alcamenes, and Praxiteles, and Myron ; and 
commemorating the virtues of benefactors of Athens, 
or representing the objects of her worship : we see 
innumerable altars dedicated to heroes and gods ; we 
perceive large slabs of white marble inscribed with 
the records of Athenian history, with civil contracts 
and articles of peace, with memorials of honours 
awarded to patriotic citizens or munificent stran¬ 
gers. Proceeding a little farther, we have, on our 
982 


left, raised on a high base, a huge statue of bronze, 
the labour of Phidias. It is seventy feet in height, 
and looks towards the west, upon the Areopagus, 
the Agora, and the Pnyx, and far away over the ^Ege- 
an Sea. It is armed with a long spear and oval 
shield, and bears a helmet on its head; the point of 
the lance and the crest of the casque, appearing above 
the loftiest building of the Acropolis, are visible to 
the sailor who approaches Athens from Sunium. This 
is Minerva Promachus, the champion of Athens, who, 
looking down from her lofty eminence in the cita¬ 
del, seems, by her attitude and her accoutrements, to 
promise protection to the city beneath her, and to 
bid defiance to its enemies. Passing onward to the 
right, we arrive in front of the great marble temple, 
which stands on the most elevated ground of tho 
Acropolis. We see eight Doric columns of huge di¬ 
mensions elevated on a platform, ascended by three 
steps at its western front. It has the same number of 
columns on the east, and seventeen on each side. At 
either end, above the eight columns, is a lofty pedi¬ 
ment, extending to a length of eighty feet, and fur¬ 
nished with nearly twenty figures of superhuman size. 
The group which we see before us, at the western 
end, represents the contest of Minerva with Neptune 
for the soil of Athens ; the other, above the eastern 
front, exhibits the birth of the Athenian goddess. Be¬ 
neath the cornice, which ranges on all sides of the 
temple, is the frieze, divided into compartments by an 
alternating series of triglyphs and metopes, the latter 
of which are ninety-two in number, namely, fourteen 
on either front, and thirty-two on each flank ; they are 
a little more than four feet square, and are occupied 
by one or more figures in high relief; they represent 
the actions of the goddess, to whom the temple is 
dedicated, and of the heroes, especially those that 
were natives of Athens, who fought under her protec¬ 
tion and conquered by her assistance. They are the 
works of Phidias and his scholars ; and, together with 
the pediments at the two fronts, may be regarded as 
offering a history in sculpture of the most remarkable 
subjects contained in the mythology of Athens. At¬ 
tached to the temple, beneath each of the metopes on 
the eastern front, hang round shields covered with 
gold ; below them are inscribed the names of those 
who dedicated them as offerings to Minerva, in testi¬ 
mony of their gratitude for the victories they had won; 
the spoils of which they shared with her, as she par¬ 
took in the labours which achieved thqm. The mem¬ 
bers of the building above specified are enriched with 
a profusion of vivid colours, which throw around the 
fabric a joyful and festive beauty, admirably harmoni¬ 
zing with tho brightness and transparency of the at¬ 
mosphere that encircles it. The cornice of the pedi¬ 
ments is decorated with painted ovoli and arrows; 
coloured ma?anders twine along its annulets and beads; 
and honeysuckle ornaments wind beneath them ; the 
pediments themselves are studded with disks of various 
hues ; the triglyphs of the frieze are streaked with tints 
which terminate in plate-bands and guttse of azure dye; 
gilded festoons hang on the architrave below them It 
would, therefore, be a very erroneous idea to regard 
this temple which we are describing merely as the 
best school of architecture in the world. It was also 
the noblest museum of sculpture, and the richest gab 
lery of painting. We ascend by three steps, wind 
lead to the door of the temple at the posticum or west 
end, and stand beneath the roof of the peristyle 
Here, before the end of the cella, and also at the pro 
naos or eastern front, is a range of six columns, stand 
ing upon a level raised above that of the peristyle by 
two steps. The cella itself is entered by one door a) 
the west and another at the east: it is divided into 
two compartments of unequal size, by a wall running 
from north to south ; of which, the western or smalle” 
chamber is called the Opisthodomus, and serves a« 




FAR 


PARTHIA. 


the treasury of Athens; the eastern is the temple 
properly so called: it contains the colossal statue of 
Minerva, the work of Phidias, composed of ivory and 
gold, and is peculiarly termed, from that circumstance, 
the Parthenon, or Residence of the Virgin-Goddess, 
a name by which, however, the whole building is more 
frequently described.” ( Wordsworth's Greece , p. 135, 
seqq.) —The statue of Minerva, to which allusion has 
just been made, was 39 feet high. It was ornamented 
with gold to the amount of 40 talents according to 
Thucydides, but according to Philochorus 44 talents, 
or about $465,000. Of this, however, it was stripped 
by Lachares, somewhat more than a century and a 
quarter after the death of Pericles.—This magnificent 
temple had resisted all the outrages of time, had been 
in turn converted into a Christian church and a Turk¬ 
ish mosque; but still subsisted entire when Spon 
and Wheeler visited Attica in 1676. It was in the 
year 1687 that the Venetians besieged the citadel of 
Athens, under the command of General Konigsberg. 
A bomb fell most unluckily on the devoted Parthenon, 
set fire to the powder which the Turks had made there¬ 
in, and thus the roof was entirely destroyed, and the 
whole building almost reduced to ruins. The Vene¬ 
tian general, being afterward desirous of carrying off 
the statue of Minerva, which had adorned the pedi¬ 
ment, had it removed ; thereby assisting in the deface¬ 
ment of the place, without any good result to himself, 
for the group fell to the ground and was shattered to 
pieces. Since this period, every man of taste must 
have deplored the demolition of this noble structure, 
and the enlightened travellers who have visited the 
spot have successively published engravings of its re¬ 
mains. One of the first of these was Le Roy, in his 
Ruins of Greece; after him came Stuart, who, pos¬ 
sessing great pecuniary means, surpassed his prede¬ 
cessor in producing a beautiful and interesting work on 
the Athenian antiquities. Chandler, and other travel¬ 
lers in Greece, have also described what came under 
their eye of the remains of the Parthenon, of which 
many models have likewise been executed. But, not 
content with these artistical labours and publications, 
more recent travellers have borne away with them the 
actual spoils of the Parthenon. The foremost of these 
was Lord Elgin, who, about the year 1800, removed a 
variety of the matchless friezes, statues, &c., which 
were purchased of him by parliament on the part of 
the nation, and now form the most valuable and inter¬ 
esting portion of the British Museum. This act of 
Lord Elgin’s called forth at the time severe animad¬ 
version, though it is now well known that there was 
imminent danger of those relics of art being totally 
destroyed by the wanton barbarism of the Turks and 
others. ( Rime’s Dictionary of the Fine Arts, s. v. 
Parthenon.) 

ParthenopuEUS, son of Milanion (according to 
some, of Mars) and Atalanta. He was one of the 
seven chieftains who engaged in the r I heban war. 

( Vid . Eteocles and Polynices.) He was slain by Am- 
phidicus, or, as others state, by Periclymenus. ( Apol - 
lod., 3, 6, 8.—Consult Heyne , ad. loc.) 

Parthenope, one of the Sirens. ( Vid. Neapolis.) 

Parthia, called by Strabo and Arrian Parthyasa 
II apdvaia), was originally a small extent of country to 
the southeast of the Caspian Sea, of a mountainous and 
sandy character, with here and there, however, a fruit¬ 
ful plain, and regarded as forming, under the Persian 
sway, one satrapy with the province of Hyrcania, which 
lay to the west of it. The inhabitants, a nomadic 
race, were of Scythian descent. Under the succes¬ 
sors of Alexander, the Parthian Arsaces, a man of ob¬ 
scure origin but great military talents, succeeded in 
founding a separate kingdom, which gradually extend¬ 
ed itself, under those who came after him, until it 
reached the Euphrates, comprehending the fairest prov¬ 
inces of the old Persian monarchy. This new empire 


took the name of Parthian from the country where n 
first arose, and, in its fullest extent, reached to the 
Indus on the east, the Tigris on the west, the Mart 
Erythraeum on the south, and the range of Caucasus, 
together with a portion of Scythia, on the north. The 
primitive Parthia was now regarded, under the name 
of Parthyene, as the royal province, and contained 
Hecatompylos, the capital, until succeeded by Ctesi- 
phon, of the whole empire. The Parthian empire 
lasted from B.C. 256 to A.D. 226. Its history may 
be divided into three periods. — First Period, from 
B.C. 256 to B.C. 130. During this period the Par- 
thians were engaged in almost continual struggles 
with the Syrian kings. Under Mithradates I., the 
fifth or sixth in succession from Arsaces I., the do¬ 
minions of the Parthian kings were extended as far as 
the Euphrates and the Indus ; and Demetrius II., 
king of Syria, was defeated and taken prisoner about 
B.C. 140. Mithradates was succeeded by Phraate3 
II., whose dominions were invaded by Antiochus Si- 
detes, the brother and successor of Demetrius. Anti- 
ochus met with considerable success at first, but he 
was afterward cut off with all his army, about B.C 
130, and Parthia was from this time entirely delivered 
from the attacks of the Syrian kings. {Joseph., Ant. 
Jud , 13, 8.— Appiav, Bell. Syr., 68.)— Second Period, 
from B.C. 130 to B.C. 53. During the early part of 
this period, the Parthians were constantly engaged in 
war with the nomadic tribes of Central Asia, who, af¬ 
ter the destruction of the Greek kingdom of Bactria, 
attempted to obtain possession of the western parts of 
Asia. Phraates II. and his successor Artabanus fell 
in battle against these invaders ; but their farthex 
progress was effectually stopped by Mithradates II., 
who met, however, with a powerful rival in Tigranes, 
king of Armenia. Tigranes obtained possession of 
some of the western provinces of the Parthian em¬ 
pire ; but, after his overthrow by the Romans, the Par¬ 
thians acquired their former power, and were brought 
into immediate contact with Rome. — Third Period , 
from B.C. 53 to A.D. 226. This period comprises 
the wars with the Romans. The invasion of Crassus, 
during the reign of Orodes, terminated in the death of 
the Roman general and the destruction of his army, 
B.C. 53. In consequence of this victory, the Parthi¬ 
ans obtained a great increase of power. They invaded 
Syria in the following year, but were driven back by 
Cassius. In the war between Caesar and Pornpey 
they took the side of the latter, and after the death of 
Caesar they sided with Brutus and Cassius. Orodes, 
at the instigation of Labienus, sent an army into Syria 
commanded by Pacorus and Labienus, but they were 
defeated the following year by Ventidius, B.C. 48, 
and again in B.C. 38. In B.C. 37, Orodes was mur¬ 
dered by his son Phraates IV., an ambitious and enei 
getic prince, who, as soon as he obtained the throne, 
made great preparations for renewing the war with the 
Romans. Antony marched into Media against him, 
but was obliged to retire with great loss. Phraates, 
however, was unable to follow up his victory, in con¬ 
sequence of having to contend with Tiridates, a formi¬ 
dable competitor for the Parthian throne. After an 
obstinate struggle, Tiridates was defeated (B.C. 25), 
but he contrived to get into his power the youngest 
son of Phraates, with whom he fled to Rome, and be¬ 
sought the aid of Augustus. Menaced by a Roman 
invasion, and in danger from a large part of his own 
subjects, Phraates willingly made great concessions to 
Augustus. He sent four of his sons to Rome as hos¬ 
tages, and restored to Augustus the Roman standards 
which had been taken on the defeat of Crassus, an 
event which is frequently alluded to by the poets of 
the Augustan age. The history of Parthia after this 
becomes of less importance, and is little more than a 
record of civil wars and revolts, which tended greatly 
to diminish the power of this once formidable empire ; 

983 




PAR 


PAS 


und it was the great object of Roman policy to support, 
as much as possible, pretenders to the throne, and there¬ 
by prevent all offensive operations on the part of the Par- 
thians. The great subject of contention between the 
Romans and Parthians was the kingdom of Armenia, 
which had monarchs of its own, and was nominally in¬ 
dependent; but its rulers were always appointed either 
by the Parthians or the Romans, and the attempts of 
each nation to place its own dependants on the throne, 
led to incessant wars between them. In the reign of 
Trajan, Armenia and Mesopotamia were converted 
into Roman provinces, and a new king of the Parthi¬ 
ans was appointed by the emperor. Under Hadrian, 
however, the conquered territory was given up, and the 
Euphrates again became the boundary of Parthia. 
The two nations now remained at peace with each 
other until the reign of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius 
Verus. Cassius, the general of Verus, met with great 
success in the war, and at length took and almost de¬ 
stroyed the powerful city of Seleucia on the Tigris, 
A.D. 165. Under the reign of Vologeses IV., the 
Parthian dominions were invaded by Septimius Sever- 
us, who took Ctesiphon and several other important 
places, A.D. 198, and annexed to the Roman empire 
the important province of Osrhoene. Caracalla fol¬ 
lowed up the successes of his father ; and though Ma- 
crinus, who came after him, made a disgraceful peace 
with the Parthians, their power had become greatly 
weakened by the conquests of Verus, Severus, and 
Caracalla.—Artaxerxes, who had served with great 
reputation in the army of Artabanus, the last king of 
Parthia, took advantage of the weakened state of the 
monarchy to found a new dynasty. He represented 
himself as a descendant of the ancient kings of Persia, 
and called upon the Persians to recover their independ¬ 
ence. The call was readily responded to : a large 
Persian army was collected; the Parthians were de¬ 
feated in three great battles, and Artaxerxes succeed¬ 
ed to all the dominions of the Parthian kings, and be¬ 
came the founder of the new Persian empire, which is 
usually known as that of the Sassanidse. ( Vid. Artax¬ 
erxes IV.— Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 17, p. 292.)— 
The Parthians, as we have already remarked, were of 
Scythian origin ; and, according to Justin (41, 1), 
their name signified, in the Scythian language, “ ban¬ 
ished or “ exiles.” Isidorus makes the same state¬ 
ment, and adds, that they were driven out of Scythia 
by domestic strife. ( Orig ., 10, 2, 44. — Compare 
Wahl, Vordcr- und Mittel-Asien, p. 545, in notis.) 
The mode of fighting adopted by their cavalry was pe¬ 
culiar, and well calculated to annoy. When apparent¬ 
ly in full retreat, they would turn round on their steeds 
and discharge their arrows with the most unerring ac¬ 
curacy ; and hence, to borrow the language of an an¬ 
cient writer, it was victory to them if a counterfeited 
flight threw their pursuers into disorder. ( Plut., Vit. 
Grass., 24.— Horat., Od., 1, 19, 11. — Id. ib., 2, 13, 
17.— Lucan , 1, 230.— Herodian., 3, 4, 20.) 

Parthyene, the original, and subsequently the roy¬ 
al, province of Parthia. (Vid. remarks near the com¬ 
mencement of the preceding article.) 

Paryades or Paryardes ( Ptol.), a branch of Cau¬ 
casus, running off to the southwest, and separating 
Cappadocia from Armenia. On the confines of Cap¬ 
padocia the name was changed to Scordiscus : it here 
united with the chain of Antitaurus, and both stretched 
onward to the west and southwest through Cappado¬ 
cia. The highest elevation in this range was Mons Ar- 
gaeus. Ptolemy gives the name of Paryardes, in par¬ 
ticular, to that part of the chain in which the Euphra¬ 
tes and Araxes took their rise ; but Pliny calls this 
Capotes. (Plin , 5, 27.— Strabo, 528.) 

Parysatis, a Persian princess, queen of Darius 
Ochus, by wlnm she had Artaxerxes Mnemon and 
Cyrus the younger, the lattel of whom was her fa¬ 
vourite. (Xen., Anab., 1,1.) She is represented as 
984 


a very cruel woman, and wreaked her vengeance, as tai 
as she was able, on all who had been instrumental in 
the fall and death of her son. One of the principal 
sufferers was the eunuch Mesabates, who had cut off 
the head and right hand of Cyrus by order of Artax¬ 
erxes. She also poisoned Statira, the wife of the 
king. (Plut., Vit. Artax., 17.) Von Hammer makes 
the Persian name to have been Perisade, i. e., “ Peri- 
born.” ( Wien. Jahrb., vol. 8, p. 394.) Strabo, on 
the other hand (a very poor authority in such a matter), 
says that the original Persian name was Pharziris. 
(Strab., 785.— B'dhr, ad Ctes., p. 186.) 

Pasargadae, sometimes written Passargadce, and 
also, but only by Ptolemy and Solinus, Pasargada, a 
very ancient city of Persia, and the royal residence 
previous to the founding of Persepolis. Some dif¬ 
ference of opinion has existed relative to its site, 
but, from the accounts of Ptolemy and other writers, 
it would appear to have stood to the southeast of 
Persepolis, and near the confines of Carmania. (Man- 
next, Geogr., vol. 5, pt. 2, p. 529. — B'dhr, ad Ctes.- 
p. 118.) Hence Morier is wrong in fixing the position 
of this place at the modern Mourgaub (vol. 1, p. 206), 
which lies to the north of Persepolis, an error in which 
he is followed by Malte-Brun. Pasargadae was situate 
in Ccele-Persis, on the banks of the Cyrus or Kores 
(Strabo, 729), a circumstance which would seem to 
point to the modern Pasa or Fasa as occcupying its 
site. (Compare the remarks of Lassen, in Ersch und 
Grubers Encyclopddie, s. v. Pasargadce.) It was said 
to have owed its origin to a camp which remained on 
the spot where Cyrus defeated Astyages, and the name 
of the city has been explained as signifying “ the camp 
of the Persians.” (Steph. Byz., s. v. — Curt., 5, 6.— 
Strabo, 730.) Lassen, however, says that it means 
“the treasury of the Persians.” Here Cyrus, in fact, 
built a treasury, and erected his own tomb in an adja¬ 
cent park. Strabo (730) and Arrian (6, 30) have given 
a description of this sepulchre, taken from the work of 
Aristobulus, who had visited the spot. According to 
their accounts, the tomb was situated in a well-watered 
park, and surrounded by numerous trees. The lower 
part of it, which was solid, was of a quadrangular 
shape, and above it was a chamber built of stone, with 
an entrance so very narrow that a person of thin and 
pliant make could alone pass through. Aristobulus 
entered this chamber by the command of Alexander, 
and found in it a golden couch, a table with cups 
upon it, a golden coffin, and many beautiful garments, 
swords, and chains. Aristobulus says, that the inscrip¬ 
tion on the tomb was, “ Oh man, I am Cyrus,ywho ac¬ 
quired sovereignty for the Persians, and was King of 
Asia. Do not then grudge me this monument.” There 
were certain Magi appointed to guard this tomb, who 
received every day a sheep, and a certain quantity of 
wine and wheat, and also a horse every month as an 
offering to Cyrus. This tomb was plundered during 
the lifetime of Alexander by some robbers, who carried 
off everything except the couch and the coffin.—Ac¬ 
cording to Plutarch, the kings of Persia were conse¬ 
crated at Pasargadae by the Magi. (Vit. Artax., 3.)— 
Those modern travellers who make Mourgaub corre¬ 
spond to the site of the ancient Pasargadae, have dis¬ 
covered a building in the plain which they have im 
agined to be the tomb of Cyrus. This building is 
called by the people of the country “ Ruhr Maden 
Suleiman,'’' i. e., the tomb of the mother of Solomon 
and the description given by Sir Robert K. Porter 
(Travels, vol. 1, p. 498) corresponds in many particu 
lars to that of Arrian and Strabo. The tomb contains 
no inscription, but on a pillar in the neighbourhood 
there is a cuneiform inscription, which Grotefend, in 
an essay on the subject, appended to Heeren’s work 
on Asia (vol. 2, p. 360, seqq., Eng. trans.), interprets 
to mean “Cyrus the King, ruler of the universe.” 
Saint-Martin, however (Journal Asiatique for Pebru- 





PAS 


r a T 


ary, 1828), supposes that it rather refers to Artaxerxes 
Ochus ; and Lassen, a most competent authority on 
the subject, thinks it impossible to make out the name 
of Cyrus in this inscription. Hock is of opinion, that 
the building described by Porter, and before him by 
Morier, is the tomb of one of the Sassanian kings, the 
dynasty that ruled in Persia from the third to the mid¬ 
dle of the seventh century of our era. {Veter is Medice 
et Persice Monumenta, Gott., 1818.) Herodotus does 
not speak of Pasargadae as a place, but as the noblest 
of the Persian tribes, so that Cyrus must have founded 
the city of the same name in their territory. ( Herod., 
1, 125— Creuzer, ad loc.) 

Pasiphae, a daughter of the Sun and of Perse'is, 
and wife of Minos, king of Crete. The ordinary le¬ 
gend connected with her name has been given in a 
different article (vid. Minotaurus), and the opinion has 
there been advanced, that the whole story rests on 
some astronomical basis, and that Pasiphae is identi¬ 
cal with the moon. Thus we find the epithet Ilao-i- 
<par/g (“ all-illumining ” or “ all-bright") applied to Di¬ 
ana in the Orphic hymns (35, 3), after having been giv¬ 
en to the Sun in a previous effusion (7,14). The same 
term, together with ILaai^avrjg, is applied to Selene, 
or the full moon, by a later bard. ( Maximus, Philos ., 
7T epl KarapxLjv, ap. Fabric., Bibl. Gr., vol. 8, p. 415. 
— Creuzer, Symbolik, vol. 4, p. 88.) The “all-illu¬ 
ming” Pasiphae, then, is, with every appearance of 
probability, a goddess in the sphere of the Cretan lunar 
worship. With regard to Pasiphae, considered as a 
divinity, we have no direct proof from the island of 
Crete itself: in Laconia, however, which derived so 
many of its institutions from Crete, several confirma¬ 
tory circumstances do not fail to present themselves. 
Tertullian mentions the ora le of Pasiphae in Laconia 
as one of the most celebrated in that country {de Ani- 
ma, c. 46.— Op., vol. 4, p. 311, ed. Semi.). Plutarch 
also speaks of a temple and oracle of Pasiphae at 
Thalamaa, though he leaves it undecided what partic¬ 
ular deity is meant by the name. {Vit. Agid., c. 9.) 
It would seem, however, to have been an oracle of one 
of their most ancient and revered deities, and there¬ 
fore, in all likelihood, a Cretan one, since it was con¬ 
sulted on all great political occasions by the Spartan 
Ephori. (Compare Cic., de Divin., 1 , 43. — Plut., 
Vit. Cleom., c. 7.) — Pausanias mentions this same 
sanctuary (3, 26). He calls it, indeed, the temple and 
oracle of Ino ; and yet he informs us that without was 
a statue of Pasiphae, and another of the sun. We 
must here read Ua<n<f>ayc with Sylburgius and Meur- 
sius, in place of the common lection n atpeye- (Con¬ 
sult, in relation to the Laconian Pasiphae, Meursius, 
Misc. Lacon., 1,4; and, on the subject of Pasiphae 
generally, Hock, Kreta, vol. 2, Vorrede, p. xxix.— Id. 
ib., vol. 2, p. 49, seqq.) 

Pasitigris. Vid. Tigris. 

Passaron, a town of Epirus, the capital of the Mo- 
lossi. Here, according to Plutarch ( Vit. Pyrrh.), the 
kings of Epirus convened the solemn assembly of the 
whole nation, when, after having performed the cus¬ 
tomary sacrifices, they took an oath that they would 
govern according to the established laws, and the peo¬ 
ple, in return, swore to maintain the constitution and 
defend the kingdom. After the termination of the war 
between the Romans and Perseus, king of Macedon, 
Passaron did not escape the sentence which doomed 
to destruction so many of the unfortunate cities of 
Epirus that had shown an inclination to favour the 
cause of the enemy. It was given up to plunder, and 
its walls were levelled to the ground. ( Liv., 45, 34.) 
With regard to the site of this ancient place, it seems 
highly probable that it is to be identified with some re¬ 
markable ruins, described by more than one traveller, 
near Joannma , in a S.S.W. direction, and about four 
hours from that city. (Hugheses Travels , vol. 2, p. 
486.— Cramer's Anc. Greece , vol. 1, p. 138, seqq.) 

6 I 


Passienus, Paulus, a Roman knight, nephew to th 
poet Propertius, whose elegiac compositions he sue 
cessfully imitated. He likewise attempted lyric poe¬ 
try w T ith equal success, and chose for his model the 
writings of Horace. (Pliny, Ev., 6, 9." — Crinit., de 
Poet. Lat., c. 75.) 

Patala. Vid. Pattala. 

Patara (orum), a city of Lycia, on the left bank and 
at the mouth of the river Xanthus. {Arrian, 1, 24. 
— Leake's Tour, p. 183.) According to Strabo (665), 
it was built by Patarus, whom mythology made a son 
of Apollo. {Eustath. ad Dionys. Perieg., v. 129. 
Hence the high estimation in which the god was here 
held, and the famous oracle which he had in this place. 
Hence also his surname of Patareus {Hor., Od., 3,4, 
64), and the legend that he spent the six winter-months 
at Patara, and the summer at Delos. {Servius ad 
Virg., jEn., 4, 143.) Strabo speaks of the numerous 
temples in this city, without particularizing the temple 
and oracle of Apollo. The oracle, probably, had by this 
time declined in reputation, and Mela, the geographer, 
speaks of its former fame (1, 15). We learn from 
Strabo, that Ptolemy Philadelphus restored Patara, and 
attempted to change its name to “ Arsinoe in Lycia;” 
but this alteration does not appear to have succeeded. 
Livy and other writers always use the other appella¬ 
tion. {Liv., 37, 15.— Id., 38, 39 . — Polyb., 22, 26 ) 
Patara was a city of considerable size, and had a good 
harbour, though too small to contain the allied fleet 
of the Romans, Rhodians, and other Greek states in 
the war with Antiochus. {Liv., 37, 17.) It is now 
entirely choked up by encroaching sands. Appian 
remarks, that Patara was like a port to Xanthus; 
which city appears from Strabo and the Stadiasmus 
to have been on the banks of the river Xanthus, eight 
or nine miles above Patara.—The modern Patera oc¬ 
cupies the site of the ancient city, but is nothing more 
than a collection of ruins, being entirely uninhabited. 
Captain Beaufort describes the harbour of Patara as a 
swamp filled with sand and bushes, and all communi¬ 
cation with the sea as being cut off by a straight beach, 
through which there is no opening. The sand has not 
only filled up the harbour, but has accumulated to a 
considerable height between the ruins and the river 
Xanthus. The ruins are represented as extensive. 
{Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 250.— Leake's Tour, 

p. 182.) 

Patavium, a city of Cisalpine Gaul, in the district 
of Venet.ia, and situate between the Meduacus Major 
and Minor, in the lower part of their course. From 
its celebrity and importance it may justly be consid¬ 
ered as the capital of ancient Venetia. The story of 
its foundation by Antenor is one which will scarcely 
be believed in the present day, though so universally 
accredited by the poets of antiquity. {JEn., 1, 242. 
— Compare Mela, 2, 4.— Solin.,8. — Senec., Consol, 
ad Hclv., 7.) It seems as difficult to refute as to 
prove a fact of so remote an era ; but, granting the 
origin of Patavium, as far as regards the Trojan 
prince, to be an invention of a later period, it does 
not follow that the tradition should be wholly desti¬ 
tute of foundation : perhaps a similarity of name be¬ 
tween the Antenor of Homer and the chief of the 
Heneti might not unreasonably be fixed upon as ac¬ 
counting for this otherwise improbable story ; most 
improbable, indeed, when we consider that, in the Iliad, 
Antenor is represented as of the same age with Priam 
(3, 148). — An interesting event in the subsequent 
history of Patavium is recorded at some length bv 
Livy, who naturally dwells on it as honourable to his 
native city (10, 2). A Spartan fleet, under the conv 
mandof Cleomenes, king of Lacedaemon, being driven 
by contrary winds from the neighbourhood of Taren- 
tum, to the aid of which city he had been summoned 
against a threatened attack on the part of the Romans 
{Strabo, 208), arrived unexpectedly in the Adriatic, 

9P5 



PAT 


PAl 


tnd anchored at the mouth of the Meduacus Major, i 
and near the present villages of Chiozza and Fusina. 
A party of these adventurers, having advanced up the 
river in some light vessels, effected a landing, and 
proceeded to bum and plunder the defenceless villa¬ 
ges on its banks. The alarm of this unexpected at¬ 
tack soon reached Patavium, whose inhabitants were 
kept continually on the alert and in arms, from fear 
of the neighbouring Gauls. A force was instantly 
despatched to repel the invaders ; and such was the 
skill and promptitude with which the service was per¬ 
formed, that the marauders were surprised and their 
vessels taken before the news of this reverse could 
reach the fleet at the mouth of the river. Attacked 
at his moorings, it was not without great loss, both in 
ships and men, that the Spartan commander effected 
his escape. The shields of the Greeks and the beaks 
of their galleys were suspended in the temple of Juno, 
and an annual mock-fight on the Meduacus served to 
perpetuate the memory of so proud a day in the an¬ 
nals of Patavium. This event is placed by the Ro¬ 
man historian in the 450th year of Rome. Strabo 
speaks of Patavium as the greatest and most flourish¬ 
ing city in the north of Italy ; and states that it count¬ 
ed in his time 500 Roman knights among its citizens, 
and could at one period send 20,000 men into the 
field. Its manufactures of cloth and woollen stuffs 
were renowned throughout Italy, and, together with 
its traffic in various commodities, sufficiently attested 
the great wealth and prosperity of its inhabitants. 

(Strab ., 213.— Compare Martial , 14, 141.) Vessels 
could come up to Patavium from the sea, a distance 
of 250 stadia, by the Meduacus. About six miles to 
the south of the city were the celebrated Patavinae 
Aquae. ( Plin., 2, 103.— Id., 31, 6.) The principal 
source was distinguished by the name of Aponus 
Fons, from whence that of Bagni d'Abano, by which 
these waters are at present known, has evidently been 
formed.—The modern Padua (in Italian Padova,) oc¬ 
cupies the site of the ancient Patavium. ( Cramer's 
Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 120, seqq.) 

Paterculus, an historian. (Vid. Velleius Pater¬ 
culus.) 

Patmos, a small rocky ilsland in the dJgean, south 
of Icaria, and southwest of Samos. It belonged to 
the group of the Sporades. This island appears to 
have had no place which deserved the name of a city. 
It became a spot of some consequence, however, in 
the early history of the church, from St. John’s having 
been banished to it, and having here written his Apoc¬ 
alypse. It is the general opinion of commentators on 
Scripture, that St. John was banished to Patmos to¬ 
wards the close of the reign of Domitian. It is not 
known how long his captivity lasted, but it is thought 
that he was released on the death of Domitian, which 
happened A.D. 96, when he retired to Ephesus. 
(Iren., 2, 22, 5.— Euseb., Hist. Eccles., 3, 18.— Dio 
Cass., 68, 1.) A small bay on the east side, and two 
others on the western shore, divide Patmos into two 
portions, of which the southern is the more considera¬ 
ble. The modern name of the island is Patmo or 
Palmosa. It contains several churches and convents; 
the principal one is dedicated to the apostle. There 
are also the ruins of an ancient fortress, and some 
other remains. (Whittington, in Walpole's Memoirs 
of Turkey, vol. 2, p. 43.) Dr. Clarke, in speaking of 
Patmos, declares that there is not a spot in the Archi¬ 
pelago with more of the semblance of a volcanic origin 
than this island. (Travels, vol. 6, p. 73, Lond. ed.) 

Patr^e, a city of Achaia, west of Rhium, and at 
the opening of the Corinthian Gulf. It is said to have 
been built on the site of three towns, called Aroe, 
Anthea, and Messatis, which had been founded by the 
lonians when they were in possession of the country. 
On their expulsion by the Achaeans, the small towns 
above mentioned fell into the hands ^f Patreus, an il- 
986 


! lustrious chief of that people ; who, uniting; them into 
one city, called it by his name. Patraj is enumer¬ 
ated by Herodotus among the 12 cities of Achaia (1, 
46). We are informed by Thucydides, that, during 
the interval of peace which occurred in the Pelopoiv 
nesian war, Alcibiades persuaded its inhabitants to 
build long walls down to the sea (5, 53). This was 
one of the first towns which renewed the federal sys¬ 
tem after the interval occasioned by the Macedonian 
dominion throughout Greece. (Polyb., 2, 41.) Its 
maritime situation, opposite to the coast of HCtolia and 
Acarnania, rendered it a very advantageous port for 
communicating with these countries ; and in the So¬ 
cial war, Philip of Macedon frequently landed his troops 
there in his expeditions into Peloponnesus. The Pa- 
traeans sustained such severe losses in the different 
engagements fought against the Romans during the 
Achaean war, that the few men who remained in the 
city determined to abandon it, and to reside in the sur¬ 
rounding villages and boroughs. (Pausanias, 7, 18. 
— Polybius, 40, 3, seqq.) Patrse was, however, raised 
to its former flourishing condition after the battle of 
Actium by Augustus, who, in addition to its dispersed 
inhabitants, sent thither a large body of colonists, cho¬ 
sen from his veteran soldiers, and granted to the city, 
thus restored under his auspices, all the privileges 
usually conceded by the Romans to their colonies. 
Strabo (387) affirms, that in his day it was a large and 
populous town, with a good harbour. The modern 
Patras occupies the site of the ancient city. (Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 67.) 

Patroclus, one of the Grecian chieftains during 
the Trojan war, son of Menoetius, and of Sthenele the 
daughter of Acastus, and the beloved friend of Achil¬ 
les. Having in his youth accidentally killed Clyson- 
ymus, the son of Amphidamas, in a moment of ungov¬ 
ernable fury, he was compelled to fly from Opus, 
where his father reigned, and found an asylum with 
Peleus, king of Phthia, who educated him with his 
son Achilles under the centaur Chiron; and thus was 
contracted between the two youthful heroes a friend¬ 
ship that never suffered the slightest diminution. Up¬ 
on the determination of Achilles to retire from the 
war after his quarrel with Agamemnon, Patroclus, 
impatient at the successes of the Trojans, obtained 
permission from his friend to lead the Thessalians to 
the conflict. Achilles equipped him in his own ar¬ 
mour, except giving him the spear called Pelias, which 
no one but the hero himself could wield, and which 
he had received from his father Peleus, on whom Chi¬ 
ron had bestowed it. (II, 16,140, seqq.) The strat¬ 
agem proved completely successful; and from the 
consternation into which the Trojans were thrown at 
the presence of the supposed Achilles, Patroclus was 
enabled to pursue them to the very walls of the city. 
The protecting hand, however, of their tutelary god, 
Apollo, at last prevailed, and the brave Greek fell be¬ 
neath the arm of Hector, who was powerfully aided 
by the son of Latona. A fierce contest ensued for 
the dead body of Patroclus, of which Ajax and Men- 
elaus ultimately obtained possession. The grief of 
Achilles, and the funeral rites performed in honour ol 
his friend, are detailed in the 18th and 23d books of 
the Iliad. Patroclus was surnamed Mencetiades from 
his father, and Actorides from his grandfather. (Horn., 
II., 1. c. — Avollod., 3, 13.— Hygin., fab., 97, 275.— 
Ovid , Met., 13, 273.) 

Patulcius, a surname of Janus. ( Vid. Janus.) 

Paulinus, a Roman commander. (Vid. Suetonius 
Paulinus.) 

Paulus, I. HJmilius, son of the consul of the satrw 
name, who fell in the battle near Cannae (B.C, 216), 
after using his utmost efforts to check the rashness oi 
his colleague. Young .Hmilius was a mere boy at 
the death of his father, yet by his personal merits, and 
the powerful influence of his friends, he eventually at- 




PAULUS. 


PAULUS. 


tamed to the highest honours of his country. His sis¬ 
ter Emilia was married to P. Cornelius Scipio, the 
conqueror of Hannibal, who was consul for the second 
time B.C. 194; and this very year Emilius, though he 
had held no public office, was appointed one of three 
commissioners to conduct a colony to Crotona, in the 
south of Italy, a city with which he might claim some 
connexion on the ground of his descent from Mamer- 
cus, the son of Pythagoras. Two years after, at the 
age of about 36, he was elected a curule sedile in pref¬ 
erence, if we may believe Plutarch, to twelve candi¬ 
dates of such merit that every one of *ihem became 
afterward consuls. His sedileship was distinguished 
by many improvements in the city and neighbourhood 
of Rome. The following year (191 B.C.) he held the 
office of praetor, and in that capacity was governor of 
the southwestern part of the Spanish peninsula, with a 
considerable force under his command. The appoint¬ 
ment was renewed the following year, but with en¬ 
larged powers, for he now bore the title of proconsul, 
and ;vas accompanied by double the usual number of 
lictors. In an engagement, however, with the Lusi- 
tani, 6000 of his men were cut to pieces, and the rest 
only saved behind the works of the camp. But this 
disgrace was retrieved in the third year of his govern¬ 
ment, by a signal defeat of'.he enemy, in which 18,000 
of their men were left upon the field. For this success 
a public thanksgiving was voted by the senate in hon¬ 
our of Emilius. Soon after he returned to Rome, 
and found that he had been appointed, in his absence, 
one of the ten commissioners for regulating affairs in 
that part of Western Asia which had lately been wrest¬ 
ed by the two Scipios from Antiochus the Great. 
Emilius was a member also of the college of augurs 
from an early age, but we do not find any means of 
fixing the period of his election. As a candidate for 
the consulship he met with repeated repulses, and only 
attained that honour in 182 B.C., nine years after hold¬ 
ing the office of praetor. During this and the following 
year he commanded an army in Liguria, and succeeded 
in the complete reduction of a powerful people called 
the Ingauni (who have left their name in the maritime 
town of Albenga, formerly Albium Ingaunum). A 
public thanksgiving of three days was immediately 
voted, and, on his return to Rome, he had the honour 
of a triumph. For the next ten years we lose sight of 
Emilius, and at the end of this period he is only men¬ 
tioned as being selected by the inhabitants of farther 
Spain to protect their interests at Rome, an honour 
which at once proved and added to his influence. It 
was at this period (B.C. 171) that the last Macedo¬ 
nian war commenced ; and though the Romans could 
scarcely have anticipated a struggle from Perseus, who 
inherited from his father only the shattered remains of 
the great Macedonian monarchy, yet three consuls, in 
three successive years, were more than baffled by his 
arms. In B C. 168 a second consulship, and with it 
the command against Perseus, was intrusted to Emil- 
ius. He was now at least 60 years of age, but he was 
supported by two sons and two sons-in-law, who pos¬ 
sessed both vigour and ability. By Papiria, a lady be¬ 
longing to one of the first families in Rome, he had two 
sons and three daughters. Of the sons, the elder had 
been adopted into the house of the Fabii by the cele¬ 
brated opponent of Hannibal, and consequently bore the 
name of Quintus Fabius Maximus, with the addition of 
Emilianus, to mark his original connexion with the 
house of the Emilii. The younger, only seventeen 
years of age at this period, had been adopted by his 
own cousin, the son of Scipio Africanus, and was now 
called by the same name as his grandfather by adoption, 
viz., P. Cornelius Scipio, with the addition of Ernil- 
ianus, as in his brother’s case. The careless reader 
of Roman history often confounds these two persons, 
and the more so as the younger eventually acquired 
the same title of Africanus. By the marriage of his 


daughters, again, Emilius was father-in-law to Marcus 
Porcius Cato, son of the censor, and to Elius Tubero. 
These four young men accompanied Emilius to the 
war in Macedonia, and all contributed in a marked 
manner to his success. Perseus was strongly posted 
in the range of Olympus to defend the passes from 
Perrhaebia into Macedonia, but he allowed himself to 
be out-manoeuvred. Emilius made good his passage 
through the mountains, and the two armies were soon 
in view of each other near Pydna. On the evening be¬ 
fore the battle, an officer in the Roman army, named 
Sulpicius, obtained the consul’s pern.ission to address 
the troops upon a point which was of no little impor¬ 
tance in those ages. An eclipse of the moon, it was 
known.to Sulpicius, would occur that night, and he 
thought it prudent to prepare the soldiers for it. When 
the eventful moment arrived, the soldiers went out, in¬ 
deed, to assist the moon in her labours with the usual 
clamour of their kettles and pans, nor omitted to offer 
her the light of their torches ; but the scene was one ol 
amusement rather than fear. In the Macedonian camp, 
on the other hand, superstition produced the usual ef¬ 
fect of horror and alarm; and on the following day the 
result of the battle corresponded to the feelings of the 
night. In a single hour the hopes of Perseus were 
destroyed for ever. The monarch fled with scarcely a 
companion, and on the third day reached Amphipolis. 
Thence he proceeded to Samothrace, where he soon 
after fell into the hands of the conqueror. The date 
of the battle of Pydna has been fixed by the eclipse to 
the 22d of June. Livy, indeed, assigns it to a day in 
the early part of September ; but it is not impossible 
that the difference may be owing to some irregularity 
in the Roman calendar, which, prior to the Julian cot 
rection, must often have differed widely from the pres 
ent distribution of the year. The Romans were care 
ful in recording the day of every important battle. 
After reducing Macedonia to the form of a Romar 
province, Emilius proceeded on his return to Epirus. 
Here, under the order of the senate, he treacherously 
surprised seventy towns, and delivered up to his army 
150,000 of the inhabitants as slaves, and all their prop¬ 
erty as plunder. On his arrival in Rome, however, 
he found in this army, with whom he was far from pop¬ 
ular, the chief opponents to his claim to a ^triumph. 
This honour he at last obtained, and Perseus, with 
his young children, some of them too young to be sen¬ 
sible of their situation, were paraded for three success¬ 
ive days through the streets of Rome. But the tri¬ 
umphant general had a severe lesson from affliction in 
the midst of his honour. Of two sons by a second 
wife (he had long divorced Papiria), one, aged twelve, 
died five days before the triumph, the other, aged four¬ 
teen, a few days after; so that he had now no son to 
hand down his name to posterity. Emilius lived eight 
years after his victory over Perseus, in which period 
we need only mention his censorship, B.C. 164. At 
his death, 160 B.C., his two sons, who had been adopt¬ 
ed into other families, Fabius and Scipio, honoured his 
memory in the Roman fashion by the exhibition of 
funeral games; and the Adelphi of Terence, the Iasi 
comedy the poet wrote, was first presented to the Ro¬ 
man public on this occasion. The fact is attested by 
the inscription still prefixed to the play. Emiliuf 
found in his grateful friend Polybius one willing and 
able to commemorate, perhaps to exaggerate, his vir¬ 
tues. Few Romans have received so favourable & 
character from history. ( Encycl . Us. Knowl. , vol. 1, 
p. 143.)—II. Egineta, a medical writer. (Vid. Egi- 
neta.)—III. A native of Alexandrea, who wrote, A.D. 
378, an Introduction to Astrology (FAoaywyrj dg rr]v 
’ATTOTEkcoyanKriv), dedicated to his son Cronammon, 
which has come down to us. We have also a body 
of scholia on this work, composed A.D. 1151. The 
author of these is called, in one of the MSS., by the 
apparently Arabian name of Apomasar. Another wri 

987 



P AU 


PAUSANIAS. 


ter, equally unknown, by the name of Heliodorus, is 
the author of a Commentary on this same work, in 53 
chapters, which still remains in MS. There are two 
editions * of the work of Paulus: one by Schaton, 
Witeb., 1586, 8vo, and the other in 1588, Witeb., 
4to. (Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr ., vol. 7, p. 47.)—IV. Si- 
lentiarius, a poet in the time of Justinian. (Vid. Si- 
lentiarius.) 

Pausanias, I. son of Cleombrotus, was of that royal 
house in Sparta which traced its descent from Eurys- 
thenes. Aristotle calls him “ king,” but he only gov¬ 
erned as the cousin-german and guardian of Pleistar- 
chus, who succeeded to the throne on the death of 
Leonidas. Pausanias comes principally into notice 
as commander of the Grecian army at the battle of 
Plataea. The Spartan contingent had been delayed 
as long as was possible ; but, owing to the represen¬ 
tations made by the Athenian ministers at Lacedse- 
mon, it was at last despatched, though not until the 
Persians had advanced into Boeotia. This delay, how¬ 
ever, had one good effect, that of taking the Argives 
by surprise, and defeating their design of intercepting 
any troops hostile to Persia which might march through 
their territory. The Spartans, under the command of 
Pausanias, got safe to the Isthmus, met the Athenians 
at Eleusis, and ultimately took up that position which 
led to the battle of Plataja. The result is well known. 
Pausanias, elated by his success, took all methods of 
showing his own unfitness to enjoy good fortune. Be¬ 
ing sent with 20 ships, and in the capacity of com¬ 
mander-in-chief of the confederates, to the coast of 
Asia Minor, he, by his overbearing conduct, disgusted 
the Greeks under his command, and particularly those 
Asiatic Greeks who had lately revolted from the Per¬ 
sian rule. To his oppression he added an affectation 
of Eastern luxury ; and what we know of Spartan 
manners seems to lead to the conclusion, that no mix¬ 
ture could possibly be more repugnant to persons ac¬ 
customed at once to Persian elegance and Ionic re¬ 
finement, than a clumsy imitation of both, such as the 
conduct of Pausanias in all probability presented. Prej¬ 
udice in favour of the Athenians, who were of the 
Ionic race, was also active; intrigues commenced, the 
Athenians encouraged them, and Pausanias was re¬ 
called. Much criminality was imputed to him by those 
Greeks who came to Sparta from the seat of war, and 
his conduct was clearly more like the exercise of ar¬ 
bitrary power than of regular military command. He 
was accordingly put on his trial. Private and public 
charges were brought, against him ; from the former 
he was acquitted, but his Medism (or leaning to Per¬ 
sia) seemed to be clearly proved. Dorcis was sent in 
his place; but the Spartan supremacy had received its 
death-blow, and thenceforward Lacedsemon interfered 
only sparingly in the prosecution of the contest with 
Persia. Pausanias, however, with the feelings of a 
disappointed man, went in a private capacity to the 
Hellespont, on pretence of joining the army. After 
the taking of Byzantium, which happened during his 
command, he had winked at the escape of certain Per¬ 
sian fugitives of rank, and, by means of an accomplice, 
had conveyed a letter to the Persian monarch, contain¬ 
ing an offer to subjugate Greece to his dominion, and 
subjoining the modest request of having his daughter 
to wife. A favourable answer had elated him to such 
a degree as to disgust the allies in the manner already 
stated. On his second journey he was forcibly pre¬ 
vented from entering Byzantium, upon which he re¬ 
tired to a city in Troas. There, too, his conduct was 
unfavourably reported at home, and a messenger was 
despatched with orders for his immediate return, under 
threats of declaring him a public enemy. Pausanias 
returned, but it was still hard to bring home any defi¬ 
nite charge against him, and the Spartans were shy of 
adducing any but the strongest evidence. At last, 
however, one of his emissaries, having discovered that 
988 


he was, like all his predecessors, the bearer of orders 
for his own death, as well as of his master’s treason, de¬ 
nounced him to the ephori. By their instructions, this 
person took sanctuary, and, through a partition made 
by a preconcerted plan in a hut where he had found 
refuge, they had the opportunity of hearing Pausanias 
acknowledge his own treason, during a visit which he 
paid to his refractory messenger. The ephori proceed¬ 
ed to arrest Pausanias; but a hint from one of their 
number enabled him to make his escape to the temple 
of Minerva of the “ Brazen House,” only, however, 
to suffer a more lingering death. He was shut up in 
the temple, and, when on the brink of starvation, was 
brought out to die (B.C. 467). His mother is said to 
have carried the first stone to the temple-door for the 
purpose of immuring him within. ( Thucyd ., 1, 132, 
scqq. — Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 17, p. 330.)—II. A 
youth of noble family, at the court of Philip, and who 
filled, according to Diodorus Siculus, a post in the royal 
guards. Pie is rendered memorable in history for the 
murder of Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the 
Great. The motive that impelled him to the deed 
was, that he had suffered an outrage from Attalus, one 
of the courtiers, for which Philip had refused to give 
him satisfaction. ( Vid. Philippus.) After commit¬ 
ting the deed, the murdert r rushed towards the gates 
of the city, where horses v ere waiting for him. H« 
was closely pursued by some of the great officers of 
the royal body-guard, but he would have mounted be¬ 
fore they had overtaken him if his &andal had not been 
caught by the stump of a vine, which brought him to 
the ground. In the first heat of their passion his pur¬ 
suers despatched him. ( Justin , 9, 6.— Diod. Sic., 16, 
93.)—III. A traveller and geographical writer, whose 
native country has not been clearly ascertained. He 
is supposed by some to have been born in Lydia, from 
a passage in his own work (5, 13, 4. — Compare the 
remarks of Siebelis , Prcef. ad Pausan., p. v., seqq.), 
and to have flourished during the reigns of Hadrian 
and the Antonines. ( Siebelis , Prcef. ad Pausan., p. 
viii.) He travelled in Greece, Macedonia, Asia, Egypt, 
and even in Africa as far as the temple of Jupiter Am¬ 
mon. After this he appears to have taken up his res¬ 
idence at Rome, and to have there published his Trav¬ 
els through Greece ('E/lAddo? nepiqyTjcug), in ten books. 
It is an important work for antiquities and archeology, 
combining with a description of public edifices and 
works of art, the historical records and the legends 
connected with them. Hence the researches into 
which this mode of handling the subject has led him, 
and the discussions on which he enters, serve not only 
to throw light upon the Grecian mythology, but also 
to clear up many obscure points of ancient history. 
Pausanias displays judgment and erudition : occasion¬ 
ally, however, he falls into errors. He describes, 
moreover, many things too much in the style of a trav¬ 
eller who has not had sufficient leisure to examine ev¬ 
ery object with attention ; and he describes things, too, 
on the supposition that Greece would always remain 
nearly in the same state in which he himself saw it. 
In consequence of this, he is satisfied oftentimes with 
merely indicating objects ; and, even when he gives 
an account of them, he does it in a manner that is 
very concise, and sometimes actually obscure. (Com¬ 
pare Heyne, Antiq. Aufs., vol. 1, p. 11.— Manso, Ver- 
suchen, &c., p. 377.— Hemst. ad Lucian , vol. 1, p. 4, 
ed. Amst. — Valck. ad Herodot ., 7, 50.— Siebelis, Prcef. 
ad Pausan,. p. xix.) — In respect of style, Pausanias 
cannot be cited as a model. His own, which is a bad 
imitation of that of Herodotus, offends frequently by 
an affectation of conciseness.—In the first book of hi* 
work Pausanias describes Attica and Megaris ; in the 
second, Corinth, Sicyonia, the territory of Phlius, and 
Argolis ; in the third, Laconia; in the fourth , Mes- 
senia ; in the fifth and sixth, Elis ; in the seventh , 
Achaia; in the eighth, Arcadia ; in the ninth, Boeotia; 





p a i; 


PEG 


arid m the tenth, Phocis.—The best edition of Pausan- 
ias is that of Siebelis, Lips., 1822-28, 5 vois. 8vo. 
A new edition has recently appeared, by Schubart and 
Walz, Lips., 1838-40, 3 vols. 8vo. ( Scholl, Hist. 
Lit. Gr., vol. 5, p. 307.) — IV. A grammarian, a na¬ 
tive of Caesarea ad Argaeum, in Cappadocia. He is 
often confounded with the preceding. ( Philostr., Vit. 
Sophist., 2, 13. — Siebelis, Prcef. ad Pausan., p. iv., 
seqq.) 

Pausias, a painter of Sicyon, contemporary with 
Apelles. After he had learned the rudiments of his 
art from his father Brietes, he studied encaustic in the 
school of Pamphilus, where he was the fellow-pupil of 
Apelles and Melanthius. Pausias was the first painter 
who acquired a great name for encaustic with the ces- 
trum. He excelled particularly in the management of 
the shadows; his favourite subjects were small pic¬ 
tures, generally of boys, but he also painted large com¬ 
positions. He was the first who introduced the cus¬ 
tom of painting the ceilings and walls of private apart¬ 
ments with historical and dramatic subjects. The 
practice, however, of decorating ceilings simply with 
stars or arabesque figures (particularly those of tem¬ 
ples) was of very old date. Pausias undertook the 
restoration of the paintings of Polygnotus at Thespise, 
which had been greatly injured by the hand of time ; 
but he was judged inferior to his ancient predecessor, 
for he contended with weapons not his own ; he gen¬ 
erally worked with the cestrum, whereas the paintings 
of Polygnotus were with the pencil, which Pausias, 
consequently, also used in this instance. The most 
famous work of his was the sacrifice of an ox, which 
in the time of Pliny was in the hall of Pompey. In 
this picture the ox was foreshortened; but, to show 
the animal to full advantage, the painter judiciously 
threw his shadow upon a part of the surrounding crowd, 
and he added to the effect by painting a dark ox upon 
a light ground. Pausias, in his youth, loved a native of 
his own city named Glycera, who earned her living by 
making garlands of flowers and wreaths of roses, which 
led him into competition with her, and he eventually 
acquired great skill in flower-painting. A portrait of 
Glycera, with a garland of flowers, was reckoned among 
his master-pieces ; a copy of it was purchased by Lu- 
cullus at Athens at the great price of two talents (near¬ 
ly $2200). Pausias was reproached by his rivals for 
being a slow painter ; but he silenced the censure by 
completing a picture of a boy, in his own style, in a 
single day, which on that account was called the 
'* Hemeresius" (T Ipepr/mog), or the work “of a single 
day.” {Plin., 35, 11, 40.— Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v. — 
Junius, Catal., s. v. — Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 17, p. 
331.) At a later period, the Sicyonians were obliged 
to part with the pictures which they possessed of this 
distinguished artist, to deliver themselves from a 
heavy debt. They were purchased by M. Scaurus 
when sedile, and were brought to Rome to adorn the 
new theatre which he had erected. ( Plin., 21, 2.) 

Pausilypus, a celebrated mountain and grotto near 
the city of Naples. It took its name from a villa of 
Vedius Pollio, erected in the time of Augustus, and 
called Pausilypum, from the effect which its beauty 
was supposed to produce in suspending sorrow and anx¬ 
iety ( iravccov ’kvrtyv, “ about to make care cease"). 
This mountain is said to be beautiful in the extreme, 
and justly to merit the name bestowed upon it. The 
grotto is nearly a mile in length, and is made through 
the mountain 20 feet in breadth, and 30 in height. On ( 
the mountain, Vedius Pollio had? not only a villa,, but ( 
also a reservoir .or pond, in which he.kept a. number of 
lampreys, to which he used :to throw such slaves as had 
committedia fault. When he died, he bequeathed, 
amongmother rpants of his possessions,, his villa to Au¬ 
gustus : but this monarch, abhorring a house: where so. 
many! ill-dated creatures had lost* i their Jives >for very 
•light faults caused it to be demolished* and the finest 


materials in it to be brought to Rome, and with them 
raised Julia’s portico. Virgil’s tomb is said to be 
above the entrance of the grotto of Pausilypus. Clu- 
verius and Addison, however, deny this to be the tomb 
of the poet. ( Vid. Virgilius, where an account of this 
sepulchre is given.) 

Paxos, a small island southeast of Corcyra, now 
Paxo. It is one of the seven Ionian islands. ( Plin ., 
4, 12.) The distance from Corcyra is about six miles. 
No fresh spring-water has been discovered on it; the 
land does not yield much corn or pasture, but is fruit¬ 
ful in oil and wine. It is peopled by six or seven thou 
sand inhabitants. ( Malte-Brun, Geogr., vol. 6, p. 172 
— Pouqueville, Voyage de la Gr'ece, vol. 2, p. 145.) 

Pedasus, I. the mortal one of the three steeds of 
Achilles, and which that hero obtained when he sacked 
the city of Eetion. {11., 16, 153.) He died of a 
wound received from Sarpedon, in the contest between 
the latter and Patroclus. {II., 16, 467, seqq.) —II. A 
town of the Leleges in Troas, on the river Satnioeis. 
{II., 21, 86.) The situation of this Homeric town re¬ 
mains undefined. It appears from Pliny, that some 
authors identified it with Adramyttium. {Plin., 5, 32.) 
—III. More commonly Pedasum or Pedasa, a city of 
the Leleges in Caria, and the capital of a district which 
included no less than eight cities within its limits. It 
was situated above Halicarnassus, towards the east, 
and not far from Stratonicea, and the site corresponds 
probably to the modern Peitchin. {Strab., 611.) He¬ 
rodotus also notices Pedasa, on account of a strange 
phenomenon which was stated to occur there. When 
ever the inhabitants were threatened with any calamity, 
the chin of the priestess of Minerva became furnished 
with a beard : this prodigy was reported to have happen¬ 
ed three times. {Herod., 1, 175.—Compare Amstot., 
Hist. An., 3, 11.)—IV. The Homeric name, accord¬ 
ing to some, for Methone, in Messenia. {II., 9, 294.) 

Pedo Albinovanus. Vid. Albinovanus II. 

Pedum, an ancient town of Latium, often named in 
the early wars of Rome, and which must be placed in 
the vicinity of Praeneste. The modern site of Zagarolo 
seems best to answer to the data which are supplied 
by Livy respecting its position. For, according to 
this historian (8, 11), Pedum was situate between Ti- 
bur, Praaneste, Bola, and Labicum. {Nibby, Viag. 
Antiq., vol. 1, p. 261.) It was taken by storm, and 
destroyed by Camillus. {Liv., 8, 13.) Horace men¬ 
tions the Regio Pedana in one of his epistles (1, 4.— 
Cramer's Anc. Italy , vol. 2, p. 74.) 

Pegasides, a name given to the Muses from the 
fountain Hippocrene, which the winged steed Pegasus 
is said to have produced with a blow of his hoof 
{Propert., 3, 1, 19. — Ovid, Hcroid., 15, 27.— Colu¬ 
mella, 10, 273.) 

Pegasus, a winged steed, the offspring of Neptune 
and Medusa, and which sprang forth from the neck of 
the latter after her head had been severed by Pers¬ 
eus. {Apollod., 2, 4, 2.—Tzetz. ad Lycophr., 17.) 
Hesiod says he was called Pegasus (n^yacrof) because 
born near the sources {reyyal) of Ocean. {Theog., 
282.) As soon as he was born he flew upward, and 
fixed his abode on Mount Helicon, where with a blow 
of his hoof he produced the fountain Hippocrene. 
{Ovid, Met., 5, 256, seqq.) He used, however, to 
come and drink occasionally at the fountain of Pirene, 
on the Acrocorinthus, and it was here that Bellerophon 
caught him preparatory to his enterprise against the 
Chimera., * After throwing off Bellerophon when the 
latter wished. to fly to the heavens, Pegasus directed 
his pourse to the; skies, and was made a constellation 
by Jupiter. >, (Consult renqarks under the article Beller- 
ophon-) Pegasus was, the favourite of therMuses, 
who derived from him, among, the poets, the appella¬ 
tion off “ P.igcysidw” , The ; fqimtain of Hippocrene is 
likewise called from, him Pegasides under." or “ Pe- 
gasis unda." {Tzctz. ad Lycophr.,,1. c*.-^-Apollod. 




PEL 


PEL 


l. c . —- Ovid, Met., 4, 785. — Hygin., fab., 57. — Van 
Siaveren, ad Hygin., 1. c.) —“The horse,” observes 
Knight, “was sacred to Neptune and the rivers; and 
employed as a general symbol of the waters, on account 
of a supposed affinity, which we do not find that mod¬ 
ern naturalists have observed. Hence came the com¬ 
position, so frequent on the Carthaginian coins, of the 
horse with the asterisk of the sun, or the winged disk 
and hooded snakes, over his back ; and also the use 
made of him as an emblematical device on the medals 
of many Greek cities. In some instances the body of 
the animal terminates in plumes ; and in others has 
only wings, so as to form the Pegasus, fabled by the 
later Greek poets to have been ridden by Bellerophon, 
but only known to the ancient theogonists as the bear¬ 
er of Aurora, and of the thunder and lightning to Jupi¬ 
ter, an allegory of which the meaning is obvious.” 
( Inquiry into the Symb. Lang., &c., <J> 111. — Class. 
Journ., vol. 25, p. 34.)—As regards the constellation 
Pegasus, it may be remarked, that the Greek astrono¬ 
mers always give it the simple appellation of “ the 
Horse ” (T7r7rof). The name Hrjyaaoq first comes in 
among the later mythological poets. It does not even 
occur in Aratus ; the poet merely remarking that this 
is supposed to be the same horse whose hoof produced 
the fountain Ilippocrene. ( Arat., Phcen., 219.) Era¬ 
tosthenes, however, says (c. 18) that this is the steed, 
as some think, which, after Bellerophon had been 
thrown from it, flew upward to the stars. The opin¬ 
ion, however, is, according to him, an erroneous one, 
since the steed in the heavens has no wings. It would 
appear, therefore, from this remark of Eratosthenes, 
that the custom of representing Pegasus with wings 
came in at a later period. They are added in Ptolemy. 
The Romans, in imitation of the Greeks, call the con¬ 
stellation simply Equus , for which the poets substi¬ 
tute Sonipes , Sonipes ales, Cornipes, and other simi¬ 
lar expressions. The name Pegasus appears to occur 
3 nly in Germanicus (v. 221, 282). Ovid has Equus 
Gorgoneus , in allusion to the fabled birth ff the steed. 
[Fast., 3, 450.— Ideler, Sternnamen , p. 115.) 

Pelagonia, I. a district of Macedonia bordering on 
Illyria. The Pelagones, though not mentioned by Ho¬ 
mer as a distinct people, were probably known to him, 
from his naming Pelagon, the father of Asteropseus, 
a Pasonian warrior. (Compare Strabo, 331.) They 
must at one time have been widely spread over the 
north of Greece, since a district of Upper Thessaly 
bore the name of Pelagonia Tripolitis, and it is inge¬ 
niously conjectured by Gatterer, in his learned com¬ 
mentary on ancient Thrace {Com. Soc. Gott., vol. 6, 
p. 67), that these were a remnant of the remote expe¬ 
dition of the Teucri and Mysi, the progenitors of the 
Pcsonians, who came from Asia Minor, and conquered 
the whole of the country between the Strymon and 
Peneus. [Herod., 7, 20. — Strab., 327.) Frequent 
allusion is made to Pelagonia by Livy, in his account 
of the wars between the Romans and the kings of Mace- 
don. It was exposed to invasion from the Dardani, 
who bordered on its northern frontiers ; for which rea¬ 
son, the communication between the two countries was 
carefully guarded by the Macedonian monarchs. ( Liv., 
31, 28.) This pass led over the chain of Mount Scar- 
dus. An account of it is given in Brown's Travels, 
p. 45. {Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 269.) — II. 
Civitas, a city of Pelagonia, the capital of the fourth 
division of Roman Macedonia. {Liv., 45, 29.) Little 
is known of it. Its existence at a late period appears 
from the Synecdemus of Hierocles, and the Byzantine 
historian Malchus, who speaks of the strength of its 
citadel. {Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 270.)—III. 
Tripolitis or Tripolis, a district of Thessaly, around 
the upper part of the course of the river Titaresius. It 
was called Tripolitis from the circumstance of its con¬ 
taining three principal towns ; which, as Livy informs 
us (42,53), were Azorus, Doliche, and Pythium. This 


district was connected with Macedonia by a narrow 
defile over the Cambunian mountains. Livy describes 
this same canton in one part of his history under the 
name of Ager Tripelitanus (36, 10 — Cramer's Anc. 
Greece, vol. 1, p 365). 

Pelasgi {YleXacryol), were the most ancient inhabi¬ 
tants of Greece, as far as the knowledge of the Greeks 
themselves extended. A dynasty of Pelasgic chiefs 
existed in Greece before any other dynasty is mention¬ 
ed in Greek traditions. Danaus is in the ninth, Deu¬ 
calion in the eighth, and Cadmus in the seventh gener¬ 
ation before the Trojan war; but Phoroneus, the Pe- 
lasgian, is in the eighteenth generation before that 
epoch. The Greek traditions represent the Pelasgic 
race as spread most widely over almost all parts of 
Greece and the islands of the JGgean. The whole 
of Hellas, according to Herodotus (2, 56), was origi¬ 
nally called Pelasgia ; and HCschylus {Suppl., 250) 
introduces Pelasgus, king of x\rgos, as claiming for 
the people named after him all the country through 
which the Algus flows, and to the west of the Strymon. 
We find mention of the Pelasgi in the Peloponne¬ 
sus, Thrace, Thesprotia, Attica, Boeotia, and Phocis. 
{Strab., 321.— Herod., 8, 44.) The oracles of Dodo- 
na and Delphi were originally Pelasgic {Strab., 402.— 
Herod., 2, 52), and Clinton {Fast. Hell., vol. 1, p. 22) 
and Niebuhr {Rom. Hist., vol. 1, p. 27) have adduced 
reasons for believing that the Macedonians were also a 
Pelasgic race. We likewise find traces of the Pelas¬ 
gi in many of the islands of the JEgean Sea, as Lem¬ 
nos, Imbros, Lesbos, Chios, &c. {Strab., 621), and 
Herodotus informs us (7, 95), that the islands were 
inhabited by the Pelasgic race till they were subdued 
by the Ionians. The neighbouring coast of Asia Mi¬ 
nor was also inhabited in many parts by the Pelasgi. 
{Strab., 621.) The country afterward called ./Eolia 
was occupied by Pelasgians {Herod , 7, 95), and hence 
Antandros was called Pelasgic in the time of Herod> 
tus (7, 42). Tralles in Caria was a Pelasgic town 
{Niebuhr, Rom. Hist., vol. 1, p. 33), and two of their 
towns on the Hellespont were still extant in the time 
of Herodotus (1, 57). The preceding authorities are 
sufficient to show the wide diffusion of the Pelasgic 
race ; but it is a difficult matter to determine from 
what quarter they originally came. Many modern 
writers conclude, from our knowledge of the origi¬ 
nal seats of the human race, that the Pelasgians spread 
themselves from Asia into Europe, across the Helles¬ 
pont, and around the northern shores of the JEgean 
Sea. {Malden, Hist, of Rome, p. 69.— Marsh, Hora 
Pelasgicce, c l.) This, no doubt, is the true opinion, 
though it is opposed to many Greek traditions, which 
represent the Peloponnesus as the original seat of the 
Pelasgians, whence they spread to Thessaly, and thence 
to the islands of the jEgean and the Asiatic coast.— 
The Pelasgi were also widely spread over the south of 
Italy ; and the places in which they appear to have 
been settled are indicated by Malden {Rom. Hist., p. 
72, seqq .) and Niebuhr {Rom. Hist., vol. 1, p. 25, 
seqq.). There seems no reason for rejecting, as some 
modern writers have done, the account of Dionysius, 
that the Pelasgi emigrated from Greece to Italy. — In 
some parts of Greece, the Pelasgians remained in pos¬ 
session of the country to the latest times. The Arca¬ 
dians were always considered by the Greeks themselves 
as pure Pelasgians, and a Pelasgian dynasty reigned 
in Arcadia until the second Messenian war. {Herod 
1, 146.— Id., 2, 171.— Id., 8, 73.) According to He¬ 
rodotus (8, 44; 1, 57), the Athenians were a Pelas¬ 
gic race, which had settled in Attica from the earliest 
times, and had undergone no change except by receiv¬ 
ing a new name and adopting a new language. In 
most parts of Greece, however, the Pelasgic race be¬ 
came intermingled with the Hellenic ; but the Pelasgi 
probably at all times formed the principal part of the 
population of Greece. The Hellenes excelled the Pe 



PELASGI. 


PELASGI. 


fasgt in military prowess and a spirit of enterprise, and 
were thus enabled, in some cases, to expel the Pelas- 
gi from the country, though the Hellenes generally 
settled among the Pelasgi as a conquering people.— 
The connexion between the Pelasgic and Hellenic races 
has been a subject of much controversy among modern 
writers. Many critics have maintained that they be¬ 
longed to entirely different races, and some have been 
disposed to attribute to the Pelasgians an Etrurian or 
Phoenician origin. It is true that many of the Greek 
writers speak of the Pelasgians and their language as 
barbarous, that is, not Hellenic; and Herodotus (1, 
57) informs us, that the Pelasgian language was spo¬ 
ken in his time at Placia and Scylace on the Helles¬ 
pont. This language he describes as barbarous ; and 
on this fact he mainly grounds his general argument as 
to the ancient Pelasgian tongue. It may, however, be 
remarked, that it appears exceedingly improbable, if 
the Pelasgic and Hellenic languages had none or a 
very slight relation to each other, that the two tongues 
should have so readily amalgamated in all parts of 
Greece, and still more strange that the Athenians and 
Arcadians, who are admitted to have been of pure Pe¬ 
lasgic origin, should have lost their original language 
and learned the pure Hellenic tongue. In addition to 
which, it may be remarked, that we scarcely ever read 
of any nation entirely losing its own language and 
adopting that of its conquerors. Though the Persians 
have received many new words into their language from 
their Arab masters, yet twelve centuries of Arab dom¬ 
ination have not been sufficient to change, in any es¬ 
sential particular, the grammatical forms and general 
structure of the ancient Persian ; and, notwithstanding 
all the efforts that were used by the Norman conquer¬ 
ors to bring the French language into, general use in 
England, the Saxon remains to the present day the 
main element of the English language. It is there¬ 
fore reasonable to suppose that the Pelasgic and Hel¬ 
lenic tongues were different dialects of a common lan¬ 
guage, which formed by their union the Greek language 
of later times.—The ancient writers differ as much re¬ 
specting the degree of civilization to which the Pelas¬ 
gi attained before they became an Hellenic people, as 
they do respecting their original language. Accord¬ 
ing to some ancient writers, they were little better than 
a race of savages till conquered and civilized by the 
Hellenes; but others represent them, and perhaps more 
correctly, as having attained to a considerable degree 
of civilization previous to the Hellenic conquest. 
Many traditions represent the Pelasgians as cultivating 
agriculture and the useful arts. Pelasgus in Arcadia, 
said the tradition, taught men to bake bread. ( Pausan ., 
1, 14, 1.) The ancient Pelasgic Buzyges yoked bulls 
to the plough ( Etym. Mag., s. v. Bov&yyq) ; Pelas¬ 
gians invented the goad for the purpose of driving an¬ 
imals {Etym. Mag., s. v. uiccuva. — Bekker, Anecd. 
Gr., 357); and a (Pelasgic) Thessalian in Egypt 
taught the art of measuring land {Etym. Mag., ubi 
sup.).—It is a curious fact, which has been noticed by 
Mr. Malden {Hist, of Rome, p. 70), that the Grecian 
race which made the most early and the most rapid 
progress in civilization and intellectual attainments, 
was one in which the Pelasgian blood was least adul¬ 
terated by foreign mixture, namely, the Ionians of At¬ 
tica and of the settlements in Asia ; and that we prob¬ 
ably owe to the Pelasgic element in the population of 
Greece all that distinguishes the Greeks in the history 
of the human mind. The Dorians, who were the most 
strictly Hellenic, long disdained to apply themselves to 
literature or the fine arts. —Some writers have main¬ 
tained, that the Greeks derived the art of writing and 
most of their religious rites from the Pelasgians ; but, 
without entering into these questions, it may be as¬ 
serted, with some degree of certainty, that the most 
ancient architectural monuments in Europe clearly ap- 
tvear to have been the work of their hands. The struc¬ 


tures in Greece, Italy, and along the western coast o! 
Asia Minor, usually called Cyclopean, because, accord¬ 
ing to the Greek legends, the Cyclopes built the walla 
of Tiryns and Mycenas, may properly be assigned to a 
Pelasgic origin. All these structures are character¬ 
ized by the immense size of the stones with which they 
are built. The most extraordinary of them all is the 
treasury, or, as others call it, the tomb of Atreus at 
Mycenae. — It remains but to add a few remarks re¬ 
specting the name of this race. The most ancient 
form of the name was Ile/l apyoi, and Mr. Thirlwall 
rather fancifully supposes that the appellation was de¬ 
rived from apyoq and 7re/lw, and that it signified “ in¬ 
habitants” or “cultivators of the plain.” The analogy, 
however, of a’nvoXoq, ravpoTvdXog, &c., seems, as Mr. 
Thirlwall himself confesses, unfavourable to this ety- 
mology. {Hist, of Greece, vol. 1, p. 59.) There is 
also another objection. Such a derivation of the name 
makes the Pelasgians to have been solely addicted to 
agricultural pursuits, a statement which is not borne 
out by facts. We are told, it is true, that they loved 
to settle on the rich soil of alluvial plains. The pow¬ 
ers, too, that preside over husbandry, and protect the 
fruits of the earth and the growth of the flocks, appear 
to have been the eldest Pelasgian divinities ; but this 
is taking too narrow a view of the subject. Even if it 
were not highly probable that a part of the nation 
crossed the sea to reach the shores of Greece, and 
thus brought with them the rudiments of the arts com 
nected with navigation, it would be incredible that the 
tribes settled on the coast should not soon have ac¬ 
quired them. Accordingly, the islands of the iEgean 
are peopled by Pelasgians, the piracies of the Leleges 
precede the rise of the first maritime power among tho 
Greeks, and the Tyrsenian Pelasgians are found infest¬ 
ing the seas after the fall of Troy. {Thirlwall's Greece, 
vol. 1, p. 60.)—Mr. Kenrick, in a very ingenious paper 
“ On the names of the Antehellenic inhabitants ol 
Greece” {Philol. Museum , vol. 1, p. 609, seqq.), main¬ 
tains, that the name Pelargi (Yle'Aapyoi) was given to 
the race on account of their rudeness of speech, which 
sounded “ to the exquisite fineness of the Hellenic ear” 
like the cry of the stork (tt eXapyoq). Hence the peo 
pie who spoke thus were called LleXapyoi or storks. 
And he seeks to confirm this etymology by endeav¬ 
ouring to show that, “among birds, the stork laboured 
under the heaviest charge of defective elocution ;” 
that he was held to have no tongue at all; that, as 
being ayTiucooq. he was especially adapted to repre¬ 
sent a people of barbarous speech ; and that we find, 
in the time of Homer, the inhabitants of the Thracian 
side of the Hellespont called K iKoveq, a name which 
appears to be closely analogous to the Latin Ciconia. 
This etymology, however, proves too much. It is 
based on the supposition that there was a radical dif¬ 
ference between the Pelasgic and Hellenic forms of 
speech, which, from what has already been premised, 
could not possibly have been the case. This same 
derivation of the name from that of tv eTiapyoq, “ a 
stork,” appears also among the Greek writers, but there 
the explanation is founded on the erroneous idea that 
the Pelasgi were a roaming race. Myrsilus of Lesbos 
related, according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, that 
the Tyrrhenians, flying from public calamities with 
which they were chastised by heaven, because among 
other tithes they had not offered that of their children, 
had quitted their home, and had long roamed about te- 
fore they again acquired a fixed abode ; and that, as 
they were seen thus going forth and returning, the 
name of Pelargi, or storks, was given to them! {Dion. 
Hal., 1, 23.) This etymology is about as valuable as 
the one which deduces Pelasgus from Peleg, or Graius 
from Reu. Nor is that derivation much superior which 
traces Pelasgus to TvPkayoq, “the sea,” and makes the 
name refer to the maritime habits of the race. It is 
sanctioned, indeed, by the authority of Hermann 

99] 



PEL 


PEL 


(Ojjusc., vol. 2, p. 174), but it offends grievously 
against analogy ( Lobeck, ad Phryn p. 109) ; and if 
it be applicable to the Tyrrhenian Pelasgians of later 
times, it certainly is not so to the original Pelasgians 
of Dodona or Thessaly. Perhaps the peculiar style of 
building ascribed to the Pelasgic race may furnish us 
with an etymology for their name, equal, at least in 
point of plausibility, to any of those which have thus 
far been enumerated. The term Pelargi may mean 
“ stone-builders ” or “ stone-workers ,” as indicating a 
race whose massive style of architecture may have ex¬ 
cited the wonder of the early Greeks, and have given 
rise to a species of national appellation. Thus, in the 
Macedonian dialect, neXa signified “ a stone 1 ' 1 (rug 
7 xelag, rovg lidovg, Kara ryv Manedovov (puvyv .— 
Ulpian, ad Demosth ., de fals. leg., p. 376, B., ed. 
Francof., 1604.—Compare Ruhnken, ad Tim. Lex., 
p. 270), and apyov (or Fupyov) is an earlier form for 
epyov. (Bockh , Corp. Inscript., fasc., 1 , p. 29, 83.) 
The two old forms, then, neka (“a stone") and apyov 
(“ work''), may perhaps have produced, by their com¬ 
bination, the name of Uekapyoc. (Encycl. Us. Knowl., 
vol. 17, p. 377, seqq. — Clinton, Fast. Hell., vol. 1, p. 

1, seqq. — Curtins, de Antiquis Italics incolis, t) 6, seqq. 

— Kruse, Hellas , vol. 1, p. 404, seqq. — Thirlwall's 
Greece, vol. 1, p. 33, seqq. — Philological Museum, vol. 
1, p. 613.) 

Pelasgicum (Flekaayinov), a name given to the 
most ancient part of the fortifications of the Acropolis 
at Athens, from its having been constructed by the 
Pelasgi, who, in the course of their migrations, settled 
in Attica, and were employed by the Athenians in the 
erection of these walls. The rampart raised by this 
people is often mentioned in the history of Athens, 
and included also a portion of ground below the wall 
at the foot of the rock of the Acropolis. This had 
been allotted to the Pelasgi while they resided at 
Athens, and on their departure it was forbidden to be 
inhabited or cultivated. ( Thucyd ., 2, 7.— Pollux, 8, 
102.— Myrsil., ap. Dion. Hal., 1, 19.— Herod. ,2,51. 

— Id., 6, 137.) It was apparently on the northern 
side of the citadel, as we are informed by Plutarch, 
that the southern wall was built by Cimon, from whom 
it received the name of Cimonium. ( Cramer's Anc. 
Greece, vol. 2, p. 382.) 

Pelasgiotis, a district of Thessaly, occupying the 
lower valley of the Peneus as far as the sea. It was 
originally inhabited by the Perrhsebi, a tribe of Pelas¬ 
gic origin. (Simon., ap. Strab., 441.— Cramer's Anc. 
Greece, vol. 1, p. 363.) 

Pelasgus, an ancient monarch of the Pelasgi. (Vid. 
Pelasgi.) 

Pelethronii, an epithet given to the Lapithae, be¬ 
cause they dwelt in the vicinity of Mount Pelethro- 
nium, in Thessaly. ( Virg., Georg., 3, 115.) Pele- 
thronium appears to have been a branch of Pelion. 

Peleus, a king of Thessaly, son of yEacus mon¬ 
arch of JEgina, and the nymph Ende'is the daughter 
of Chiron. Having been accessory, along with Tela¬ 
mon, to the death of their brother Phocus, he was ban¬ 
ished from his native island, but found an asylum at 
the court of Eurytus, son of Actor, king of Phthia in 
Thessaly. He married Antigone, the daughter of Eu¬ 
rytus, and received with her, as a marriage portion, 
the third part of the kingdom. Peleus was present 
with Eurytus at the chase of the Calydonian boar; 
but, having unfortunately killed his father-in-law with 
the javelin which he had hurled against the animal, 
he was again doomed to be a wanderer. His second 
benefactor was Acastus, king of lolcos; but here 
again he was involved in trouble, through a false 
charge brought against him by Astydamia, or, as Hor¬ 
ace calls her, Hippolyte, the queen of Acastus. (Vid. 
Acastus.) To reward the virtue of Peleus, as fully 
shqwn by his resisting the blandishments of Astyda- 
nuia> the gpds ; resolved to give him a goddess in mar- 
992 


riage. The spouse selected for him was the sea- 
nymph Thetis, who had been wooed by Jupiter him¬ 
self and his brother Neptune ; but Themis having de¬ 
clared that her child would be greater than his sire, 
the gods withdrew. (Pind., Isth.,8, 58, seqq.) Oth¬ 
ers say that she was courted by Jupiter alone, till he 
was informed by Prometheus that, if he had a son by 
her, that son would dethrone him. (Apollod., 3, 13 
1.— Schol. ad II., 1, 519.) Others, again, maintain 
that Thetis, who was reared by Juno, would not as¬ 
sent to the wishes of Jupiter, and that the god, in his 
anger, condemned her to espouse a mortal; or that Ju¬ 
no herself selected Peleus for her spouse. (II., 24, 
59.— Apoll. Rhod., 4, 793, seqq.) Chiron, being 
made aware of the will of the gods, advised Peleus to 
aspire to the bed of the nymph of the sea, and instruct¬ 
ed him how to win her. He therefore lay in wait, and 
seized and held her fast, though she changed herself 
into every variety of form, becoming fire, water, a 
serpent, and a lioness. (Pind., Nem., 4, 101. — Soph., 
frag. ap. Schol. ad Nem., 3, 60.) The wedding was 
solemnized on Mount Pelion : the gods all honoured 
it with their presence, and bestowed armour on the 
bridegroom. (11., 17, 195. — lb., 18, 84.) Chiron 
gave him the famous ashen spear afterward wielded 
by his son ; and Neptune bestowed on him the im¬ 
mortal Harpy-born steeds Balius and Xanthus. The 
offspring of this union was the celebrated Achilles. 
According to one account, Peleus was deserted by his 
goddess-wife for not allowing her to cast the infanl 
Achilles into a caldron of boiling water, to try if he 
were mortal. (Vid. Achilles.) This, however, is a 
posthomeric fiction, since Homer represents Peleus 
and Thetis as dwelling together all the lifetime of 
their son. Of Peleus it is farther related, that he sur¬ 
vived his son, and even grandson (Od., 11, 493.— 
Eurip., Androm.), and died in misery in the island of 
Cos. (Callim., ap. Schol. ad Pind., Pyth., 3, 167. 
— Keightley's Mythology, p. 313, seqq.) It was at 
the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis that the goddess of 
Discord threw the apple of gold into the middle of the 
assembled deities, with which was connected so much 
misfortune for both the Trojans and the Greeks. 
(Vid. Helena, and Paris.) 

Peliades, daughters of Pelias. (Vid. Jason, and 
also Pelias, towards the end of the latter article.) 

Pelias, the twin brother of Neleus, was son of 
Neptune by Tyro, the daughter of Salmoneus. The 
mother, to conceal her disgrace, exposed her twin- 
sons as soon as they were born. A troop of mares, 
followed by their keeper, passing by where they lay, 
one of the mares touched the face of one of the in¬ 
fants with her hoof, and made it livid (nekiov). The 
keeper took and reared the babes, naming the one 
with the mark Pelias, the other Neleus. When they 
grew up they discovered their mother, and resolved to 
kill her stepmother Sidero, by whom she was cruelly 
treated. They pursued her, accordingly, to the altar 
of Juno; and Pelias, who never showed any regard 
for that goddess, slew her before it. The brothers 
afterward fell into discord, and Pelias abode at lolcos, 
but Neleus settled in Elis, where he built a town 
nam^d Pylos. Tyro afterward married her uncle 
Cretheus, to whom she bore three sons, iEson, Phe- 
res, and Amythaon. Cretheus was succeeded in the 
kingdom of lolcos by HCson, who became by Alci- 
mede the father of Jason. Pelias, by force or fraud, 
deprived H2son of his kingdom, and then sought the 
life of the infant Jason ; but the parents of the latter 
gave out that he was dead, and meantime conveyed 
him by night to the cave of the centaur Chiron, to 
whose care they committed him.—The rest of the le¬ 
gend of Pelias will be found under the article Jason. 
(Apollod., 1, 9, 7, seqq. — Od., 11, 235, seqq.) Pelias 
married Anaxibia the daughter of Bias, or, as others 
say, Philomache the daughter of Amphion, and became 




PEI, 


PEL 


by her the father of one son, Acastus, and of four 
daughters, Pisidice, Pelopea, Hippothoe, and Alces- 
tis. ( Apollod ., 1 , 9, 10.) These daughters were 
called Peliades, and became, unwittingly, through 
the arts of Medea, the slayers of their sire. ( Vid. 
Jason.) 

PelIdes, a patronymic of Achilles, as the son of 
Peleus. ( Vid. Peleus.) 

Peligni, an Italian tribe, belonging to the Sabine 
race, according to Ovid (Fast., 3, 95), but, according 
to Festus, deriving their origin from Illyria. The 
statement of Ovid appears the more probable one, if 
we consider the uniformity of language, customs, and 
character apparent in all the minor tribes of central 
Italy, as well as in the Samnites, between whom and 
the Sabines these tribes may be said to form an inter¬ 
mediate link in the Oscan chain.—The Peligni were 
situate to the east and northeast of the Marsi, and 
had Corfinium for their chief town. They derive some 
consideration in history from the circumstance of their 
chief city having been selected by the allies in the 
Social way as the seat of the new empire. Had their 
plans succeeded, and had Rome fallen beneath the 
efforts of the coalition, Corfinium would have become 
the capital of Italy, and perhaps of the world. ( Strab ., 
241.)—The country of the Peligni was small in ex¬ 
tent, and mountainous, and noted for the coldness of 
its climate, as well as for the abundance of its springs 
and streams. ( Horace, Od., 3, 19. — Ovid, Fast., 4, 
685.) That some portion of it, however, was fertile, 
we learn also from the latter poet. (Am., 2, 16.— 
Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 332.) 

Pelion, I. a range of mountains in Thessaly, along 
a portion of the eastern coast. Its principal summit 
rises behind Iolcos and Ormenium. The chain ex¬ 
tends from the southeastern extremity of the Lake 
Boebe'is, where it unites with one of the ramifications 
of Ossa, to the extreme promontory of Magnesia. 
(Strabo, 443. — Herod., 7, 129. — Cramer's Ancient 
Greece, vol. 1, p. 429.) In a fragment of Dicsear- 
chus which has been preserved to us, we have a detail¬ 
ed description of Pelion and its botanical productions, 
which appear to have been very numerous, both as to 
forest-trees and plants of various kinds. ( Cramer, 
l. c.) On the most elevated part of the mountain was 
a temple dedicated to Jupiter Actaeus, to which a 
troop of the noblest youths of the city of Demetrias 
ascended every year by appointment of the priest; 
and such was the cold experienced on the summit, 
that they wore the thickest woollen fleeces to protect 
themselves from the inclemency of the weather. (Di - 
ccearch., p. 29.) It is with propriety, therefore, that 
Pindar applies to Pelion the epithet of stormy. (Pyth., 
9, 6.)—Homer alludes to this mountain as the ancient 
abode of the Centaurs, who were ejected by the Lap- 
ithae. (11, 2, 743.—Compare Find., Pyth., 2, 83.) 
It was, however, more especially the haunt of Chiron, 
whose cave, as Dicsearchus relates, occupied the high¬ 
est point of the mountain. (Cramer, l. c .) In their 
wars against the gods, the giants, as the poets fable, 
placed Ossa upon Pelion, and “ rolled upon Ossa the 
leafy Olympus,” in their daring attempt to scale the 
heavens. (Virg., Georg., 1, 281, seq.) The famous 
spear of Peleus, which descended to his son Achilles, 
and which none but the latter and his parent could 
wield, was cut from an ash-tree on this mountain, and 
thence received its name of Pelias. (Horn., II., 16, 
144.)—II. A city of Illyria, on the Macedonian bor¬ 
der, and commanding a pass leading into that country. 
It was a place of considerable importance from its 
situation ; and Arrian speaks of it at some length in 
his relation of an attack made upon it by Alexander. 
(Exp. Al., 1, 5, seqq.) We must look for it, most 
probably, in the mountains which separate the district 
of Castoria (the ancient Orestis) from that of Okrida. 
It cannot, have been far from the modern town of 
fi K 


Bichhstas, situated on a river of the same name.- 
(Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 76.) 

Pella, a city of Macedonia, near the top of the 
Sinus Therrna'icus, on the confines of Emathia. It 
became the capital of the kingdom when Edessa was 
annihilated, according to Ptolemy, and owed its gran¬ 
deur to Philip and to his son Alexander, who was born 
there, and who was hence styled Pellceus Juvenii by the 
Roman poets. According to Stephanus Byzantmus, its 
more ancient appellation was Bunomus and Buromeia, 
which it exchanged for the name of its founder Pelias. 
Livy describes it as situate on a hill which faced the 
southwest, and surrounded with morasses formed by 
stagnant waters from the adjacent lakes, so deep as to 
be impassable either in winter or in summer. In the 
morass nearest the city, the citadel rose up like an 
island, being built on a mound of earth formed with 
immense labour, so as to be capable of supporting the 
wall, and secure against any injury from the surround¬ 
ing moisture. At a distance it seemed to join the 
city rampart, but it was divided from it by a river 
which ran between, and over which was a bridge of 
communication. This river was called Ludias, Los-- 
dias, and Lydius. (Liv., 44, 46.) The baths of Pel¬ 
la were said to be injurious to health, producing bil 
iary complaints, as we are informed by the comic poet 
Macho. (Athen., 8, 41.) Pella, under the Romans, 
was made the chief town of the third region of Mace- 
don. (Liv., 45,29.) It was situated on the Via Eg- 
natia, according to Strabo (323) and the Itineraries. 
From the coins of this city we may infer that it was 
colonized by Julius Caesar. Under the late emperors it 
assumed the title of Col. Jul. Pella; and it is prob¬ 
able, as Mannert has observed, that in the reign of 
Bioclesian this name was exchanged for Dioclesianop- 
olis, which we find in the Antonine Itinerary (p. 330. 
— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 7, p. 479). Its ancient ap¬ 
pellation, however, still remained in use, as may be 
seen from Jornandes (R. G., 56) and Hierocles (Sy~ 
necdem., p. 638). The ruins of Pella are yet visible on 
the spot called Palatisa or Alaklisi by the Turks. 
“ II ne reste plus de Pella,” says Beaujour, “ que 
quelques ruines insignificantes ; mais on voit encore 
le pourtour de son magnifique port, et les vestiges du 
canal qui joignoit ce port a la rner par le niveau le 
mieux entendu. Les mosquees de Jenidje ont etd 
baties avec les debris des palais des rois Machdoni- 
ens.” (Tableau du Commerce de la Grece, vol. 1, p. 
87.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 225.) 

Pellene, a city of Achaia, southwest of Sicyon, 
situate on a lofty and precipitous hill about sixty stadia 
from the sea. From the nature of its position, the town 
was divided into two distinct parts. (Pausan., 7, 26. 
— Strabo, 386.) Its name was derived either from the 
Titan Pallas, or Pellen, an Argive, who was son ot 
Phorbas. (Apollon., Arg., 1,176.— Horn., II., 2, 574.) 
The Pellenians alone among the Achaeans first aided 
the Lacedaemonians in the Peloponnesian war, though 
afterward all the other states followed their example. 
(Thucyd., 2, 9.) They were often engaged in hostil¬ 
ities with their neighbours the Phliasians and Sicyo- 
nians. (Xen., Hist. Gr., 7, 2.) Pellene was cele¬ 
brated for its manufacture of woollen cloaks, which 
were given as prizes to the riders at the gymnastic 
games held there in honour of Mercury. (Pindar, 
Olymp., 9,146.) The ruins of Pellene are to be seen 
not far from Tricala, as we ar.e assured by Sir. W. 
Gell, who obtained his information from Col. Leake. 
(Itin. of the Mona, p. 20. — Cramer's Anc. Greece , 
vol. 3, p. 55.) 

Pelopea or Pelopia, a daughter of Thyestes, the 
brother of Atreus. She became, by her own parent, 
the mother of iEgisthus. (Vid. Atreus.) 

Pelopidas, son of Hippoclus, belonged to one of the 
principal families of Theoes. He distinguished him¬ 
self at the battle of Mantinea.(B.C. 385), in which the 

99.3 



PELOPIDAS. 


PEL 


Thebans took part as allies of the Lacedaemonians, 
under the Spartan king Agesipolis. In this battle, 
Pelopidas being wounded and thrown down, was saved 
from death by Epaminondas, who protected him with 
his shield, maintaining his ground against the Arcadi¬ 
ans until the Lacedaemonians came to their relief, and 
saved both their lives. From that time a close friend¬ 
ship was formed between Epaminondas and Pelopidas, 
which lasted till the death of the latter. When the 
Lacedaemonians surprised the citadel of Thebes, and 
established the power of the aristocracy in that city, 
Pelopidas, who belonged to the popular party, retired 
to Athens, together with a number of other citizens. 
After a time, he and his brother exiles formed a plan, 
with their friends in Thebes, for surprising and over¬ 
throwing the oligarchy, and restoring the popular gov¬ 
ernment. Pelopidas and some of his friends set off 
from Athens disguised as hunters, found means to en¬ 
ter Thebes unobserved, and concealed themselves in 
the house of a friend, whence they issued in the night, 
and, having surprised the leaders of the aristocratic 
party, put them to death. The people then rose in 
arms, and, having proclaimed Pelopidas their com¬ 
mander, they obliged the Spartan garrison to surrender 
the citadel by capitulation (B.C. 379). Pelopidas 
soon after contrived to excite a war between Sparta 
and Athens, and thus divide the attention of the. for¬ 
mer power. The war between the 1 hebans and the 
Lacedaemonians was carried on for some years in Boe- 
otia by straggling parties, and Pelopidas, having ob¬ 
tained the advantage in several skirmishes, ventured 
to encounter the enemy in the open field at Tegyrae, 
near Qrchomenus. The Lacedaemonians were defeat¬ 
ed, and thus Pelopidas demonstrated, for the first time, 
that ths armies of Sparta were not invincible; a fact 
which was afterward confirmed by the battle of Leuc- 
tra (B.C. 371), in which Pelopidas fought under the 
command of his friend Epaminondas. In the year 
369 B.C., the two friends, being appointed two of the 
Bceotarchs {Pint., Vit. Pclop., c. 24), marched into 
the Peloponnesus, obliged Argos, and Arcadia, and 
other states to renounce the alliance of Sparta, and 
carried their incursions into Laconia in the depth of 
winter. Having conquered Messenia, they invited the 
descendants of its former inhabitants, who had gone 
into exile about two centuries before, to come and re¬ 
people their country. They thus confined the power 
of Sparta to the limits of Laconia. Pelopidas and 
Epaminondas, on their return to Thebes, were tried 
for having retained the command after the expiration 
of the year of their office, but were acquitted ; and 
Pelopidas was afterward employed against Alexander, 
tyrant of Phera?, who was endeavouring to make him¬ 
self master of all Thessaly. He defeated him. From 
Thessaly he was called into Macedonia, to settle a 
quarrel between Alexander, king of that country, and 
son of Amyntas II., and his natural brother Ptolemy. 
Having succeeded in this, he returned to Thebes, bring¬ 
ing wfth him Philip, brother of Alexander, and thirty 
youths of the chief families of Macedonia as hostages. 
A year after, however, Ptolemy murdered his brother 
Alexander, and took possession of the throne. Pelop- 
tdas, being applied to by the friends of the late king, 
enlisted a^band of mercenaries, with which he marched 
against Ptolemy, who entered into an agreement to 
hold the government only in trust for Perdiccas, a 
younger brother of Alexander, till he was of age, and 
to keep the alliance of Thebes; and he gave to Pelop¬ 
idas his own son Philoxenus and fifty of his compan¬ 
ions as hostages. Some time after, Pelopidas, being 
in Thessaly, was treacherously surprised and made 
prisoner W Alexander of Pherae, but the Thebans sent 
Epaminonuas with an army, who obliged the tyrant to 
releasp him. The Thebans, soon after, having discov¬ 
ered tbit the Spartans and Athenians had sent ambas¬ 
sadors to conclude an alliance with Artaxerxes, king 
994 


of Persia, sent on their part Pelopidas to support their 
own interest at the same court. His fame had pre¬ 
ceded him, and he was received by the Persians with 
great honour, and Artaxerxes showed him peculiar fa¬ 
vour. Pelopidas obtained a treaty, in which the The¬ 
bans were styled the king’s hereditary friends, and in 
which the independence of each of the Greek states, 
including Messenia, was fully recognised. He thus 
disappointed the ambition of Sparta and of Athens, 
which aimed at the supremacy over the rest. The 
Athenians were so enraged at this, that they put their 
ambassador Timagoras to death on his return to Athens. 
Pelopidas, after his return, was appointed to march 
against Alexander of Phera?, who had committed fresh 
encroachments in r lhessaly. But, when the army was 
on the point of marching, an eclipse of the sun took 
place, which so dismayed the r i hebans that Pelopidas 
was obliged to set off with only 300 volunteers, trust¬ 
ing to the Thessalians, who joined him on the route. 
Alexander met him with a large army at a place called 
Cynoscephalae. Pelopidas, by great exertions, although 
his army was much inferior in numbers, obtained an ad¬ 
vantage, and the troops of Alexander were retreating, 
when Pelopidas, venturing too far amid the enemy, 
was slain. The grief of both I hebans and 1 hessalians 
at his loss was unbounded : they paid splendid funeral 
honours to his remains. The Thebans avenged his 
death by sending a fresh army against Alexander, who 
was defeated, and was soon after murdered by his own 
wife.—Pelopidas was not only one of the most dis¬ 
tinguished and successful commanders ol his age, but 
he and his friend Epaminondas rank among the most 
estimable public men of ancient Greece. ( PlutVit. 
Pelop. — Xen., Hist. Gr — Pausan., 9, 13, &c.—-£w- 
cycl. Us. Knowl, vol. 17, p. 388, seq.) 

Peloponnesiacum Bellum is tlie name given to 
the great contest between Athens and her allies on the 
one side, and the Peloponnesian confederacy, headed 
by Sparta, on the other, which lasted from 431 to 404 
B.C. The war was a consequence of the jealousy with 
which Sparta and Athens regarded each other, as states 
each of which was aiming at supremacy in Greece, as 
the heads respectively of the Dorian and Ionian races, 
and as patrons of the two opposite forms of civil gov¬ 
ernment, oligarchy and democracy. The war was ea¬ 
gerly desired by a strong party in each of those states , 
but it was necessary to find an occasion for commen¬ 
cing hostilities, especially as a truce for thirty years had 
been concluded between Athens and Sparta in the 
year B.C. 445. Such an occasion was presented by 
the affairs of Corcyra and Potidaea. In a quarrel, which 
soon became a war, between Corinth and Corcyra, re¬ 
specting Epidamnus, a colony of the latter state (B.C. 
436), the Corcyreans applied to Athens for assistance. 
Their request was granted, a^far as the conclusion of 
a defensive alliance between Athens and Corcyra, and 
an Athenian fleet was sent to their aid, which, how¬ 
ever, soon engaged in active hostilities against the Co¬ 
rinthians. Potidaea, on the isthmus of Pallene, was a 
Corinthian colony, and, even after its subjection to 
Athens, continued to receive every year from Corinth 
certain functionaries or officers (eTudijpiovp'yol). 4 he 
Athenians, suspecting that the Potidaeans were inclined 
to join in a revolt, to which Perdiccas, king of Macedon, 
was instigating the towns of Chalcidice, required them 
to dismiss the Corinthian functionaries, and to give 
other pledges of their fidelity. The Potidaeans re 
fused ; and, with most of the other Chalcidian towns, 
revolted from Athens, and received aid from Corinth 
The Athenians sent an expedition against them, and, 
after defeating them in battle, laid siege to Potidaea 
(B.C. 432). The Corinthians now obtained a meet¬ 
ing of the Peloponnesian confederacy at Sparta, ir 
which they complained of the conduct of Athens with 
regard to Corcyra and Potidaea. After others of the 
allies had brought their charges against Athens, and 








PELOPONNESIACUM BELLUM. 


PELOPONNESIACUM BELLUM. 


after some of the Athenian envoys, who happened to 
be in the city, had defended the conduct of their state, 
the Spartans first, and afterward all the allies, decided 
that Athens had broken the truce, and they resolved 
upon immediate war; King Archidamus alone recom¬ 
mended some delay. In the interval necessary for 
preparation, an attempt was made to throw the blame 
of commencing hostilities upon the Athenians, by send¬ 
ing three several embassies to Athens with demands of 
such a l&ture as could not be accepted. In the as¬ 
sembly which was held at Athens to give a final an¬ 
swer to these demands, Pericles, who was now at the 
height cf his power, urged the people to engage in the 
war, end laid ao^n a plan for the conduct of it. He ad¬ 
vised the people to bring all their moveable property 
from the country into the city, to abandon Attica to the 
ravages of the enemy, and not to suffer themselves to be 
provoked to give them battle with inferior numbers, but 
to expend all their strength upon their navy, which might 
be employed in carrying the war into the enemy’s ter¬ 
ritory, and in collecting supplies from subject states ; 
and farther, not to attempt any new conquest while the 
war lasted. His advice was adopted, and the Spartan 
envoys were sent home with a refusal of their de¬ 
mands, but with an offer to refer the matters in differ¬ 
ence to an impartial tribunal, an offer which the Lace¬ 
daemonians had no intention of accepting. After this, 
the usual peaceful intercourse between the rival states 
was discontinued. Thucydides (2, 1) dates the begin¬ 
ning of the war from the early spring of the year 431 
B.C., the fifteenth of the thirty years’ truce, when a 
>**arty of Thebans made an attempt, which at first suc- 
•eeded, but was ultimately defeated, to surprise Pla- 
aea. The truce being thus openly broken, both par¬ 
ses addressed themselves to the war. The Pelopon- 
Besian confederacy included all the states of Pelopon¬ 
nesus except Achaia (which joined them afterward) 
and Argos, and without the Peloponnesus, Megaris, 
Phocis, Locris, Boeotia, the island of Leucas, and the 
cities of Ambracia and Anactorium. The allies of the 
Athenians were Chios and Lesbos, besides Samos and 
the other islands of the iEgean which had been re¬ 
duced to subjection (Thera and Melos, which were 
still independent, remained neutral), Platea, the Mes- 
senian colony in Naupactus, the majority of the Acar- 
nanians, Corcyra, Zacynthus, and the Greek colonies 
in Asia Minor, in Thrace and Macedonia, and on the 
Hellespont. The resources of Sparta lay chiefly in 
ter land forces, which, however, consisted of contin¬ 
gents from the allies, whose period of service was lim¬ 
ited; the Spartans were also deficient in money. The 
Athenian strength lay in their fleet, which was manned 
chiefly by foreign sailors, whom the wealth they col¬ 
lected from their allies enabled them to pay. Thu¬ 
cydides informs us, that the cause of the Lacedemoni¬ 
ans was the more popular, as they professed to be de¬ 
liverers of Greece, while the Athenians were fighting 
in defence of an empire which had become odious 
through their tyranny, and to which the states which 
yet retained their independence feared to be brought 
into subjection. In the summer of the year 431 B.G., 
the Peloponnesians invaded Attica under the command 
of Archidamus, king of Sparta. Their progress was 
slow, as Archidamus appears to have been still anx¬ 
ious to try what could be done by intimidating the 
Athenians before proceeding to extremities. Yet their 
presence was found to be a greater calamity than the 
people had anticipated ; and, when Archidamus made 
his appearance at Acharnse, they began loudly to de¬ 
mand to be led out to battle. Pericles firmly adhered 
to his plan of defence, and the Peloponnesians returned 
home. Before their departure the Athenians had sent 
out a fleet of 100 sail, which was joined by fifty Cor- 
cyrean ships, to waste the coasts of Peloponnesus ; 
and towards the autumn Pericles led the whole dispo¬ 
sable force of the 'dty into Megaris, which he laid 


waste. In the same summer the Athenians expelled 
the inhabitants of yEgina from their island, which they 
colonized with Athenian settlers. In the winter there 
was a public funeral at Athens for those who had fallen 
in the war, and Pericles pronounced over them an ora¬ 
tion, the substance of which is preserved by Thucydi¬ 
des (2, 35-46). In the following summer (B.C. 430) 
the Peloponnesians again invaded Attica under Archi¬ 
damus. who now entirely laid aside the forbearance 
which he had shown the year before, and left scarcely 
a corner of the land unravaged. This invasion lasted 
forty days. In the mean time, a grievous pestilence 
broke out in Athens, and raged with the more viru¬ 
lence on account of the crowded state of the city. Of 
this terrible visitation Thucydides, who was himself a 
sufferer, has left a minute and apparently faithful de¬ 
scription (2, 46, seq.). The murmurs of the people 
against Pericles were renewed, and he was compelled 
to call an assembly to defend his policy. He suc¬ 
ceeded so far as to prevent any overtures for peace 
being made to the Lacedaemonians, but he himself 
was fined, though immediately afterward he was re¬ 
elected general. While the Peloponnesians were in 
Attica, Pericles led a fleet to ravage the coasts of 
Peloponnesus. In the winter of this year Potidea 
surrendered to the Athenians on favourable terms. 

( Thucyd ,., 2, 70 ) The next year (B.C. 429), instead 
of invading Attica, the Peloponnesians laid snge tc 
Platoea. The brave resistance of the inhabitants forced 
their enemies to convert the siege into a blockade. In 
the same summer, an invasion of Acarnania by the 
Ambracians and a body of Peloponnesian troops was 
repulsed ; and a large Peloponnesian fleet, which was 
to have joined in the attack on Acarnania, was twice 
defeated by Phormion in the mouth of the Corinthian 
gulf. An expedition sent by the Athenians against 
the revolted Chalcidian towns was defeated with great 
loss. In the preceding year (B.C. 430) the Athenians 
had concluded an alliance with Sitalces, king of the 
Odrysse in Thrace, and Perdiccas, king of Macedon, on 
which occasion Sitalces had promised to aid the Athe¬ 
nians to subdue their revolted subjects in Chalcidice. 
He now collected an army of 150,900 men, with which 
he first invaded Macedonia, to revenge the breach of 
certain promises which Perdiccas had made to him 
the year before, and afterward laid waste the territory 
of the Chalcidians and Bottiaeans, but he did not at¬ 
tempt to reduce any of the Greek cities. About the 
middle of this year Pericles died. The invasion of 
Attica was repeated in the next summer (428 B.C.); 
and, immediately afterward, all Lesbos except Me- 
thymne revolted from the Athenians, who laid siege to 
Mytilene. The Mytilenseans begged aid from Sparta, 
which was promised, and they were admitted into the 
Spartan alliance. In the same winter a body of Pla- 
teans, amounting to 220, made their escape from the 
besieged city in the night, and took refuge in Athens. 
In the summer of 427 the Peloponnesians again in¬ 
vaded Attica, while they sent a fleet of 42 galleys, un¬ 
der Alcidas, to the relief of Mytilene. Before the 
fleet arrived Mytilene had surrendered, and Alcidas, 
after a little delay, sailed home. In an assembly 
which was held at Athens to decide on the fate of the 
Mytilenseans, it was resolved, at the instigation of 
Cleon, that all the adult citizens should be put to death, 
and the women and children made slaves; but this 
barbarous decree was repealed the next day. The 
land of the Lesbians (except Methymne) was seized 
and divided among Athenian citizens, to whom the 
inhabitants paid a rent for the occupation of their for¬ 
mer property. In the same summer the Plateaus sur¬ 
rendered ; they were massacred, and their city was 
given up to the Thebans, who razed it to the ground. 
In the year 426 the Lacedemonians were deterred 
from invading Attica by earthquakes. An expeditior 
against iEtolia, under the Athenian general Demos 

995 




PELOPONNESIACUM BELLUM. 


PEL 


ilenes, completely failed ; but afterward Demosthe¬ 
nes and the Acarnanians routed the Ambracians, who 
nearly all perished. In the winter (426-5) the Athe¬ 
nians purified the island of Delos, as an acknowledg¬ 
ment to Apollo for the cessation of the plague. At 
the beginning of the summer of 425, the Peloponne¬ 
sians invaded Attica for the fifth time. At the same 
time, the Athenians, who had long directed their 
thoughts towards Sicily, sent a fleet to aid the Leon- 
tini in a war with Syracuse. Demosthenes accom¬ 
panied this fleet, in order to act, as occasion might 
offer, on the coast of Peloponnesus. He fortified Py- 
lus on the coast of Messenia, the northern headland 
of the modern Bay of Navarino. In the course of the 
operations which were, undertaken to dislodge him, a 
body of Lacedaemonians, including several noble Spar¬ 
tans, got blockaded in the island of Sphacteria, at the 
mouth of the bay, and were ultimately taken prisoners 
by Cleon and Demosthenes. Pylus was garrisoned 
by a colony of Messenians, in order to annoy the Spar¬ 
tans. After this event the Athenians engaged in vig¬ 
orous offensive operations, of which the most impor¬ 
tant was the capture of the island of Cythera by Nici- 
as early in B.C. 424. This summer, however, the 
Athenians suffered some reverses in Bceotia, where 
they lost the battle of Delium, and on the coasts of 
Macedonia and Thrace, where Brasidas, among other 
exploits, took Amphipolis. The Athenian expedition 
to Sicily was abandoned, after some operations of no 
great importance, in consequence of a general pacifica¬ 
tion of the island, which was effected through the in¬ 
fluence of Hermocrates, a citizen of Syracuse. In the 
year 423, a year’s truce was concluded between Spar¬ 
ta and Athena, with a view to a lasting peace. Hos¬ 
tilities were renewed in 422, and Cleon was sent to 
cope with Brasidas, who had continued his opera¬ 
tions even during the truce. A battle was fought be¬ 
tween these generals at Amphipolis, in which the de¬ 
feat of the Athenians was amply compensated by the 
double deliverance which they experienced in the deaths 
both of Cleon and Brasidas. In the following year 
(421) Nicias succeeded in negotiating a peace with 
Sparta for fifty years, the terms of w'hich were, a mu¬ 
tual restitution of conquests made during the war. and 
the release of the prisoners taken at Sphacteria. This 
treaty was ratified by all the allies of Sparta except, 
the Boeotians, Corinthians, Eleans, and Megarians. 
This peace never rested on any firm basis. It was no 
sooner concluded than it was discovered that Sparta 
had not the power to fulfil her promises, and Athens 
insisted on their performance. The jealousy of the 
other states was excited by a treaty of alliance which 
was concluded between Sparta and Athens immediate¬ 
ly after the peace ; and intrigues were commenced for 
the formation of a new confederacy, with Argos at the 
head. An attempt was made to draw Sparta into al¬ 
liance with Argos, but it failed. A similar overture, 
subsequently made to Athens, met with better suc¬ 
cess, chiefly through an artifice of Alcibiades, who 
was at the head of a large party hostile to the peace, 
and the Athenians concluded a treaty offensive and 
defensive with Argos, Elis, and Mantinea for 100 
years (B.C. 420). In the year 413, the Argive con¬ 
federacy was broken up by their defeat at the battle of 
Mantinea, and a peace, and soon after an alliance, was 
made between Sparta and Argos. In the year 416 an 
expedition was undertaken by the Athenians against 
Melos, which had hitherto remained neutral. The 
Melians surrendered at discretion ; all the males who 
had attained manhood were put to death; the women 
and. children were made slaves ; and subsequently 500 
Athenian colonists were sent to occupy the island. 

( Thucyd ., 5, 116.) The fifty years’ peace was not 
considered at an end, though its terms had been bro¬ 
ken on both s' £es, till tfc'e year 415, when the Atheni¬ 
ans undertook ‘.heir !i; istrous expedition to Sicily. 

996 


( Vid . Syracuse.) Sicily proved a^rock against wnu a 
their resources and efforts were fruitlessly expended. 
And Sparta, which furnished but a commander and a 
handful of men for the defence of Syracuse, soon be¬ 
held her antagonist reduced, by a series of unparalleled 
misfortunes, to a state of the utmost distress and weak¬ 
ness. The accustomed procrastination of the Spar¬ 
tans, and the timid policy to which they ever adhered, 
alone preserved Athens in this critical moment, or at 
least retarded her downfall. Time was allowed for 
her citizens to recover from the panic and consterna¬ 
tion occasioned by the news of the Sicilian disaster; 
and, instead of viewing the hostile fleets, as they had 
anticipated, ravaging their coasts and blockading the 
Piraeus, they were enabled still to dispute the empire 
of the sea, and to preserve the most valuable of their 
dependancies. Alcibiades, whose exile had proved so 
injurious to his country, since it was to his counsels 
alone that the successes of her enemies are to be at¬ 
tributed, now interposed in her behalf, and by his in¬ 
trigues prevented the Persian satrap, Tissaphernes, 
from placing at the disposal of the Spartan admiral 
that superiority of force which must at once have termi¬ 
nated the war by the complete overthrow of the Athe¬ 
nian republic. {Thucyd., lib., 8.) The temporary rev¬ 
olution which was effected at Athens by his contri¬ 
vance also, and which placed the state at variance 
with the fleet and army stationed at Samos, afforded 
him another opportunity of rendering a real service to 
his country by moderating the violence and animosity 
of the latter. The victory of Cynossema and the sub¬ 
sequent successes of Alcibiades, now elected to the 
chief command of the forces of his country, once more 
restored Athens to the command of the sea, and, had 
she reposed that confidence in the talents of her gen¬ 
eral which they deserved and her necessities required, 
the efforts of Sparta and the gold of Persia might have 
proved unavailing. But the second exile of Alcibia¬ 
des, and, still more, the iniquitous sentence which con¬ 
demned to death the generals who fought and con 
quered at Arginusse, sealed the ruin of Athens; and 
the battle of Argos Potamos at length terminated a 
contest which had been carried on, with scarcely any 
intermission, during a period of twenty-seven years, 
with a spirit and animosity unparalleled in the annals 
of warfare. Lysander now sailed to Athens, receiving 
as he went the submission of the allies, and blockaded 
the city, which surrendered after a few months (B.C. 
404) on terms dictated by Sparta, with a view of ma¬ 
king Athens a useful ally by giving the ascendancy in 
the state to the oligarchical party. The history of the 
Peloponnesian war was written by Thucydides, upon 
whose accuracy and impartiality, as far as his narrative 
goes, we may place the fullest dependanee. His his¬ 
tory ends abruptly in the year 411 B.C. For the rest 
of the war we have to follow Xenophon and Dio¬ 
dorus. The value of Xenophon’s history is impaired 
by his prejudices, and that of Diodorus by his careless¬ 
ness. ( Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 17, p. 389, seqq.— 
Cramer's Ancient Greece , vol. 2, p. 299, seq.) 

Peloponnesus ( Hc7.ojr6vvr]aoq ), that is, according 
to the commonly-received explanation, “ the island of 
Pelops" (UeXoTrog vrjcog), a celebrated peninsula, com 
prehending the most southern part of Greece, and 
which would be an island were it not for the Isthmus 
of Corinth. Its name is said to have been derived 
from Pelops, who is reported by the later Greek my- 
thologists to have been of Phrygian origin. Thucyd¬ 
ides, however (1, 9), simply observes that he came 
from Asia, and brought, great wealth with him. He 
married Hippodamia, the daughter of (Encmaus, king 
of Pisa'in Elis, and succeeded to his kingdom. Pe¬ 
lops is said also to have subsequently extended his do¬ 
minions over many of the districts bordering upon Ehs, 
whence the whole country, according to the common 
account, obtained the name of Peloponnesus. Aga- 




PELOPONNESUS. 


PEL 


memnon and Menelaus were descended from him.— 
Such is the mythic legend relative to the origin of the 
name Peloponnesus. The word, however, does not 
occur in Homer. The original name of the peninsula 
appears to have been Apia {Horn., II., 1, 270 —Id. ib., 
3, 49), and it was so called, according to iEschylus 
(Suppl ., 255), from Apis, a son of Apollo, or, accord¬ 
ing to Pausanias (2, 5, 5), from Apis, a son of Telchin, 
and descendant of ^Egialeus. When Argos had the 
supi imacy, the peninsula, according to Strabo (371), 
was sometimes called Argos; and, indeed, Homer 
seems to use the term Argos, in some cases, as inclu¬ 
ding the whole peninsula. {Thucyd., 1,9.) The ori¬ 
gin, therefore, of the name Peloponnesus still remains 
open to investigation. It is possible that Pelops, in¬ 
stead of having actually existed, may be merely a sym¬ 
bol representing an old race by the’name of Pelopes, 
according to the analogy which we find in the national 
appellations of the Dryopes, Meropes, Dolopes, and 
others. The Peloponnesus, then, will have derived 
its name from this old race, and the very term Pelopes 
(Pel-opes) itself will receive something like confirma¬ 
tion from the ingenious remarks of Buttmann relative 
to the early population along the shores of the Medi¬ 
terranean. ( Vid. Apia, and Opici.) After the line of 
the mythic Pelops had become celebrated in epic poe¬ 
try as the lords of all Argos and of many islands, the 
name of Peloponnesus would appear to have come into 
general use, and, by a common error, to have been 
transferred from the race or nation of the Pelopes to 
their fabulous leader. ( Vid. Pelops.)—Peloponnesus, 
.hough inferior in extent to the northern portion of 
Greece, may be looked upon, says Strabo, as the acrop¬ 
olis of Hellas, both from its position, and the power 
and celebrity of the different people by which it was 
inhabited. In shape it resembled the leaf of a plane- 
tree, being indented by numerous bays on all sides. 
\Strab., 335.— Plin., 4, 5.— Dionys. Per., 403.) It 
is from this circumstance that the modern name of Mo- 
reu is doubtlessly derived, that word signifying a mul¬ 
berry leaf.—Strabo estimates the breadth of the penin¬ 
sula at 1400 stadia from Cape Chelonatas, now Cape 
Tornese, its westernmost point, to the isthmus, being 
nearly equal to its length from Cape Malea, now Cape 
St. Angelo , to ./Egium, now Vostizza, in Achaia. Po¬ 
lybius reckons its periphery, setting aside the sinuosities 
of the coast, at 4000 stadia, and Artemidorus at 4400 ; 
but, if these are included, the number of stadia must 
be increased to 5600. Pliny says that “ Isidorus com¬ 
puted its circumference at 563 miles, and as much 
again if all the gulfs were taken into the account. The 
narrow stem from which it expands is called the isth¬ 
mus. At this point the /Egean and Ionian seas, break¬ 
ing in from opposite quarters north and east, eat away 
all its width, till a narrow neck of five miles in breadth 
is all that connects Peloponnesus with Greece. On 
one side is the Corinthian, on the other the Saronic 
Gulf. Lechasum and Cenchreaa are situated on oppo¬ 
site extremities of the isthmus, a long and hazardous 
circumnavigation for ships, the size of which prevents 
their being carried over land in wagons. For this rea¬ 
son various attempts have been made to cut a naviga¬ 
ble canal across the isthmus by King Demetrius, Ju¬ 
lius Caesar, Caligula, and Nero, but in every instance 
without success.” (Plin., 4, 5.) — On the north the 
Peloponnesus is bounded by the Ionian Sea, on the 
west by that of Sicily, to the south and southeast by 
that of Libya and Crete, and to the northeast by the 
Myrtoan and ^Egean. These several seas form in 
succession five extensive gulfs along its shores: the 
Corinthiacus Sinus, now Gulf of Corinth or Lepanto, 
tvhich separated the northern coast from ^Etolia, Lo- 
eris, and Phocis ; the Sinus Messeniacus, now Gulf 
of Coron, on the coast of Messenia ; the Sinus Lacon- 
jcus, now Gulf of Colokythia, on that of Laconia ; 
the Sinus Argolicus, now Gulf of Napoli; and, lastly, 


the Sinus Saronicus,a name derived from Saron, whicli 
in ancient Greek signified an oak leaf (Plin., 4, 
now called Gulf of Engia. (Slrab., 1. c.)—The prim 
cipal mountains of Peloponnesus are, those of Cyllene 
(Zyria) and Erymanthus (Olonos) in Arcadia, and 
Taygetus (St. Elias ) in Laconia. Its rivers are, the 
Alpheus, now Rouphia, passing through Arcadia and 
Ehs, and discharging itself into the Sicilian Sea ; the 
Eurotas, or Basilipotamo, watering Laconia, and fall¬ 
ing into the Sinus Laconicus ; the Pamisus, or Pir- 
natza, a river of Messenia, falling into the Sinus Mes¬ 
seniacus. The Peloponnesus contains but one small 
lake, which is that of Stymphalus, or Zaracca, in Ar¬ 
cadia.—According to the best modern maps, the area 
of the whole peninsula may be estimated at 7800 square 
miles ; and in the more flourishing period of Grecian 
history, an approximate computation of the population 
of its different states furnishes upward of a million as 
the aggregate number of its inhabitants.—The divisions 
of the Peloponnesus were Achaia, Elis, Messenia, La¬ 
conia, Argolis, and Arcadia. (Cramer''s Anc. Greece, 
vol. 3, p. 1, seqq.) 

Pelops, son of Tantalus king of Phrygia, and cel¬ 
ebrated in both the mythic and historical legends of 
Greece. At an entertainment given to the gods by 
Tantalus, the latter, in order to try their divinity, is 
said to have killed and dressed his son Pelops, and to 
have set him for food before them. The assembled 
deities, however, immediately perceived the horrid na¬ 
ture of the banquet, and all abstained from it with the 
exception of Ceres, who, engrossed with the loss of 
her daughter Proserpina, in a moment of abstraetioi 
ate one of the shoulders of the boy. At the desire ot 
Jupiter, Mercury put all the parts back into the cal¬ 
dron, and then drew forth the young Pelops alive again, 
and perfect in all his parts except the shoulder, which 
was replaced by an ivory one, that was said to possess 
the power of removing every disorder and healing ev¬ 
ery complaint by its touch. Hence, says the scholiast 
to Pindar, the descendants of Pelops had all such a 
shoulder as this (toiovtov el%ov ~dv upov .— Schol. 
ad Pind., Ol ., 1, 38). The ivory shoulder of Pelops 
became also a subject for the painter, as appears from 
Philostratus (Imag., 1, 30, p. 807), where Pelops is 
said doTpdipai rep u/u ; ), to flash forth rays of light 
from his shoulder .” The shoulder of the son of Tan¬ 
talus also plays a conspicuous part in the legend of 
Troy. The soothsayers, it seems, had declared that 
the city of Priam would never be taken until the 
Greeks should have brought to their camp the arrows 
of Hercules and one of the bones of Pelops. Ac¬ 
cordingly, the shoulder-blade (hpoixTiUTi]) of the son of 
Tantalus was brought from Pisa to Troy. (Pausan., 
5, 13, 3. — Bbckh, ad Pind., 1. c .) Another legend 
states, that the Palladium in Troy was made of the 
bones of Pelops. (Vid. Palladium.)—But to return 
to the regular narrative : Neptune, attracted by the 
beauty of Pelops, carried him off in his golden car to 
Olympus, where he remained until his father Tantalus 
had drawn on himself the indignation of the gods, 
when they sent Pelops once more down to the “ swift- 
fated race of men.” (Pind., Ol., 1, GO, seqq.) —When 
Pelops had attained to manhood, he resolved to seek 
in marriage Hippodamia, the daughter of CEnomaue, 
king of Pisa. An oracle having told this prince that 
he would lose his life through his son-in-law, or, as 
others say, being unwilling, on account of her surpass¬ 
ing beauty, to part with her, he proclaimed that he 
would give his daughter orjy to the one who should 
conquer him in the chariot-race. The race was from 
the banks of the Cladius in Elis to the altar of Nep¬ 
tune at the Isthmus of Corinth, and it was run in the 
following manner. CEnomaus, placing his daughter 
in the chariot with the suiter, gave him the start; he 
himself followed with a spear in his hand, and, if he 
overtook the unhappy lover, he ran him through.— 

997 



PELOPS. 


PEl 


Thirteen had already lost their lives when Pelops 
came. In the dead of the night, says Pindar, Pelops 
went down to the margin of the sea, and invoked the 
trod who rules it. On a sudden Neptune stood at his 
feet, and Pelops conjured him, by the memory of his 
former affection, to grant him the means of obtaining 
the lovely daughter of CEnomaus. Neptune heard his 
prayer, and bestowed upon him a golden chariot, and 
horses of winged speed. Pelops then went to Pisa 
to contend for the prize. He bribed Myrtilus, son of 
Mercury, the charioteer of CEnomaus, to leave out the 
linchpins of the wheels of his chariot, or, as others 
say, to put in waxen ones instead of iron. In the 
race, therefore, the chariot of CEnomaus broke down, 
and he fell out and was killed, and thus Hippodamia 
became the bride of Pelops. ( Schol. ad Pind., 01., 
1, 114.— Hygin., fab., 84.— Pind., 01, 1, 114, seqq. 
— Apoll. Rhod., 1, 752. — Schol., ad loc. — Tzetz. ad 
Lycophr., 156.) Pelops is said to have promised 
Myrtilus, for his aid, one half of his kingdom, or, as 
other accounts have it, to have made a most dishon¬ 
ourable agreement of another nature with him. Un¬ 
willing, however, to keep his promise, he took an op¬ 
portunity, as they were driving along a cliff, to throw 
Myrtilus into the sea, where he was drowned. To 
the vengeance of Mercury for the death of his son 
were ascribed all the future woes of the line of Pelops. 
(Soph., Electr., 504, seqq.) Hippodamia bore to Pe¬ 
lops five s8ns, Atreus, Thyestes, Copreus, Alcathofis, 
and Pittheus, and two daughters, Nicippe and Lysid- 
ice, who married Sthenelus and Mestor, sons.of Per¬ 
seus.—The question as to the personality of Pelops 
has been considered in a previous article (vid. Pelo¬ 
ponnesus), and the opinion has there been advanced 
which makes him to have been merely the symbol of 
an ancient race called Pelopes. To those, however, 
who are inclined to regard Pelops as an actual per¬ 
sonage, the following remarks of Mr. Thirlwall may 
not prove uninteresting: “ According to a tradition, 
which appears to be sanctioned by the authority of 
Thucydides, Pelops passed over from Asia to Greece 
with treasures, which, in a poor country, afforded him 
the means of founding a new dynasty. His descend¬ 
ants sat for three generations on the throne of Argos: 
their power was generally acknowledged throughout 
Greece ; and, in the historian’s opinion, united the 
Gfecian states in the expedition against Troy. The 
renown of their ancestor was transmitted to posterity 
by the name of the southern peninsula, called after 
him Peloponnesus, or the isle of Pelops. Most au¬ 
thors, however, fix his native seat in the Lydian town 
of Sipylus, where his father Tantalus was fabien tb 
have reigned in more than mortal prosperity, till he 
abused the favour of the gods, and provoked them to 
destroy him. The poetical legends varied as to the 
marvellous causes through which the abode of Pelops 
was transferred from Sipylus to Pisa, where he won 
the daughter and the crown of the bloodthirsty tyrant 
CEnomaiis as the prize of his victory in the chariot- 
race. The authors who, like Thucydides, saw no¬ 
thing in the story but a political transaction, related that 
Pelops had been driven from his native land by an in¬ 
vasion of Ilus, king of Troy ( Pausan ., 2, 22, 3) ; and 
hence it has very naturally been inferred, that, in 
leading the Greeks against Troy, Agamemnon was 
merely avenging the wrongs of his ancestor. (Kruse, 
Hellas, vol. 1, p. 485.) On the other hand, it has 
beein observed that, far from giving any countenance 
to this hypothesis, Homer, though he records the gen¬ 
ealogy by which the sceptre of Pelops was transmitted 
to Agamemnon, nowhere alludes to the Asiatic ori¬ 
gin of the house. As little does he seem to have 
heard of the adventures of the Lydian stranger at Pi¬ 
sa. The zeal with which the Eleans maintained this 
pait of the story, manifestly with a view to exalt the 
antiquity and the lustre of the Olympic games, over 
998 


which they presided, raises a natural suspicion that 
the hero’s connexion with the East may have been a 
mere fiction, occasioned by a like interest, and prop¬ 
agated by like arts. This distrust is confirmed by the 
religious form which the legend was finally made to 
assume when it was combined with an Asiatic super¬ 
stition, which found its way into Greece after the 
time of Homer. The seeming sanction of 1 hucydi- 
des loses almost all its weight, when we observe that 
he does not deliver his own judgment on the question, 
but merely adopts the opinion of the Peloponnesian 
antiquaries, which he found best adapted to his pur¬ 
pose of illustrating the progress of society in Greece.” 
(ThirtwaWs Greece, vol. 1, p. 70.) Mr. Kenrick sees 
in Pelops the dark-faced one (neXoq and uxp), and 
thinks that the reference is to a system of religion, 
characterized by dark and mysterious rites, which 
spread from Phrygia into Greece. (Philol. Museum, 
No. 5, p. 353.) For another explanation of the le¬ 
gend of Pelops, consult remarks under the article 
Tantalus. 

Pelorus (v. is-idis, v. ias-iados ), now Cape Faro, 
one of the three great promontories of Sicily. It lies 
near the coast of Italy, and is said to have received 
its name from Pelorus, the pilot of the ship which car¬ 
ried Hannibal away from Italy. This celebrated gen¬ 
eral, as it is reported, was carried by the tide into the 
straits between Italy and Sicily ; and, as he was igno¬ 
rant of the coast, and perceived no passage through 
(for, in consequence of the route which the vessel was 
pursuing, the promontories on either side seemed to 
join), he suspected the pilot of an intention to deliver 
him into the hands of the Romans, and killed him on 
the spot. He was soon, however, convinced of his 
error, and, to atone for his rashness and pay honour to 
his pilot’s memory, he gave him a magnificent funeral, 
and called the promontory on the Sicilian shore after 
his name, having erected on it a tomb with a statue 
of Pelorus. (Val. Max., 9, 8.— Mela, 2, 7.— Strab., 
5. — Virg., JEn., 3-, 411, 687. — Ovid, Met., 5, 350 ; 
13, 727 ; 15, 706.)—This whole story is fabulous ; 
nor is that other one in any respect more worthy of 
belief, which makes the promontory in question to 
have derived its name from a colossal (ite^upiog) stat¬ 
ue of Orion placed upon it, and who was fabled to 
have broken through and formed the straits and prom¬ 
ontory. (Diod. Sic., 4, 85.— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 
9, pt. 2, p. 264.) The name is, in fact, much older 
than the days of Hannibal. Polybius, a contemporary 
of the Carthaginian commander, gives the appellation 
of Pelorius to this cape without the least allusion to 
the story of the pilot: Thucydides, long before the 
time of Hannibal, speaks of Peloris as being included 
in the territory of Messana (4, 25): and, indeed, it 
may be safely asserted that Hannibal never was in 
these straits.—The promontory of Pelorus is sandy, 
but Silius Italicus errs when he speaks of Us being a 
lofty one (14, 79). It is a low point of land, and the 
sand-flats around contain some salt-meadows. Soli- 
nus describes them with an intermixture of fable (c. 
11). The passage directly across to Italy is the short¬ 
est ; but as there is no harbour here, and the current 
runs to the south, the route from the Italian shore ic 
a southwestern one to Messana. The Italian prom¬ 
ontory facing Pelorus is that of Caenys. (Mannen 
Geogr., vol. 9, pt. 2, p. 265.) 

Pelt.®, a city of Phrygia, southeast of Cotvseam, 
mentioned by Xenophon in his narrative of the retrea* 
of the Ten Thousand (1, 2). He describes it as we! 
inhabited. Pliny (5, 27) speaks of Peltae as belong 
ing to the Conventus Juridicus of Apamea. In the no 
tices of the ecclesiastical writers it appears as the seat 
of a bishopric. Xenophon makes the distance be 
tween it and Celamae ten parasangs. We must lool 
for the site of this place to the north of the Maeander 
cr.d Drobably in the valley and plain Airmed by th? 



PEN 


PEN 


•vestern branch of that river, now called Askli-tchai, 
out formerly Gluucus. (Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, 
p. 24.— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 3, p. 104.—Com¬ 
pare Pennell's Geography oj Western Asia, vol. 2, p. 
141, seqq., in notis.) 

Pelusium, an important city of Egypt, at the en¬ 
trance of the Pelusiac mouth of the Nile, and about 
20 stadia from the sea. It was surrounded by marsh¬ 
es, and was with truth regarded as the key of Egypt 
in this quarter. An Arabian horde might indeed trav¬ 
erse the desert on this side without approaching Pe- 
lusium; but an invading army would be utterly una¬ 
ble to pass through this sandy waste, where water 
completely failed. The route of the latter would have 
to be more to the north, and here they would encoun¬ 
ter Pelusium, surrounded with lakes and marshes, and 
which extended from the walls of the city down to 
the very '•oast. Hence it was that the Persian force 
sent against King Nectanebis did not venture to at¬ 
tack the city, but sailed into the Mendesian mouth 
with their vessels. (Diod. Sic., 15, 42.) Subse¬ 
quently, however, the Persians diverted the course of 
that arm of the Nile on which the city stood, and suc¬ 
ceeded in throwing down the walls and taking the 
place. Pelusium, after this, was again more than 
once taken, and gradually sank in importance. Ptol¬ 
emy does not even name it as the capital of a Nome. 
In the reign of Augustus, however, it became the 
chief city of the newly-erected province of Augustam- 
nica. The name of this city is evidently of Grecian 
origin, and is derived from the term mfkdq, mud, in 
allusion to its peculiar situation. It would seem to 
have received this name at a very early period, since 
Herodotus gives it as' the usual one, without alluding 
to any older term. Most probably the appellation was 
first given under the latter Pharaohs, and a short time 
previous to the Persian sway, since about this time 
the Greeks were first allowed to have any regular 
commercial intercourse with the ports of Egypt. To 
give a more reputable explanation of the Grecian 
name than that immediately suggested by its root, the 
mythologists fabled that Peleus, the father of Achilles, 
came to this quarter, for the purpose of purifying him¬ 
self, from the murder of his brother Phocus,-in the lake 
that afterward washed the walls of Pelusium, being 
ordered so to do by the gods ; and that he became 
the founder of the city. ( Aram. Marcell., 22, 16.)— 
As soon as the easternmost or Pelusiac mouth of the 
Nile was diverted from its usual course, Pelusium, as 
has already been remarked, began to sink in impor¬ 
tance, and soon lost all its consequence as a frontier 
town, and even as a place of trade. It fell back 
eventually to its primitive mire and earth, the mate¬ 
rials of which it was built having been merely burned 
bricks ; and hence, among the ruins of Pelusium at 
the present day, there are no remains of stone edifices, 
no large temples ; the ground is merely covered with 
heaps of earth and rubbish. Near the ruins stands a 
dilapidated castle or fortress named Tineh, the Arabic 
term for “rnire.” 

Penates, a name given to a certain class of house¬ 
hold deities among the Romans, who were worshipped 
in the innermost part of their dwellings. For the 
points of distinction between them and the Lares, con¬ 
sult the latter article. 

Penelope, a princess of Greece, daughter of Ica- 
rius, brother of Tyndarus king of Sparta, and of Po- 
lvcaste or Periboea. She became the wife of Ulysses, 
monarch of Ithaca, and her marriage was celebrated 
about the same time with that of Menelaus and Helen. 
Penelope became by Ulysses the mother of Telema- 
chus, and was obliged soon after to part with her hus¬ 
band, whom the Greeks compelled to go to the Tro¬ 
jan war. ( Vid. Ulysses.) Twenty years passed away, 
ind Ulysses returned not to his home. Meanwhile, 
we nalace at Ithaca was crowded with numerous and 


importuna; e suiters, aspiring to the hand of the oueen 
Her relations also urged her to abandon all thought* 
of the probability of her husband’s return, and not to 
disregard, as she had, the solicitations of the rival as¬ 
pirants to her favour. Penelope, however, exerted 
every resource which her ingenuity could suggest to 
protract the period of her decision : among others, 
she declared that she would make choice of one of 
them as soon as she should have completed a web 
that she was weaving (intended as a funeral ornament 
for the aged Laertes); but she baffled their expecta¬ 
tions by undoing at night what she had accomplished 
during the day. This artifice has given rise to the 
proverb of “ Penelope’s web/* or “ to unweave the 
web of Penelope” (Penelopes lelam retexere), applied 
to whatever labour appears to be endless. (Erasm., 
Adag. Chil., 1, cent. 4, col. 145.) For three years 
this artifice succeeded ; but, on the beginning of a 
fourth, a disclosure was made by one of her female 
attendants ; and the faithful and unhappy Penelope, 
constrained at length by the renewed importunities of 
her persecutors, agreed, at their instigation, to bestow 
her hand on him who should shoot an arrow from the 
bow of Ulysses through a given number of axe-eyes 
placed in succession. An individual disguised as a 
beggar was the successful archer. This was no other 
than Ulysses, who had just returned to Ithaca. The 
hero then directed his shafts at the suiters, and slew 
them all. (Vid. Ulysses.)—The character of Penel¬ 
ope has been variously represented ; but it is the 
more popular opinion that she is to be considered as 
a model of conjugal and domestic virtue. (Apullod., 
3, 10, 11. — Heyne, ad loc. — Horn., Od. — Hygin., 
fab., 127.— Ovid , Her. Ep., 1.) 

Peneus, I. a river of Thessaly, rising in the chain 
of Pindus, and falling into the Sinus Therma’icus after 
traversing the vtfhole breadth of the country. Towards 
its mouth it flows through the celebrated Vale of Tempe. 
(Vid. Tempe.) It seems to have been the general 
opinion of antiquity, founded on very early traditions, 
that the great basin of Thessaly was at some remote 
period covered by the waters of the Peneus and its 
tributary rivers, until some convulsion of nature had 
rent asunder the gorge of Tempe, and thus afforded a 
passage to the pent-up streams. This opinion, which 
was first reported by Herodotus in his account of the 
march of Xerxes (7, 129), is repeated by Strabo, who 
observes in confirmation of it, that the Peneus in his 
day was still liable to frequent inundations, and alsc 
that the land in Thessaly is higher towards the sea 
than towards the more central parts. (Strab., 430.) 
The Peneus is called Salambria by Tzetzes (Chil., 9, 
707), and Salabria and Salampria by some of the By¬ 
zantine historians, which name appears to be derived 
from aa'Xdp.by, “ an outlet,” and was applicable to it 
more particularly at the Vale of Tempe, where it has 
forced a passage through the rocks of Ossa and Olym¬ 
pus. ( Dodwell, Tour, vol. 2, p. 102.) The Peneus 
is said to be never dry, though in summer it is shal¬ 
low : after heavy rains, and the sudden melting of the 
snow on Pindus, it sometimes overflows its banks, 
when the impetuous torrent of its waters sweeps away 
houses and inundates the neighbouring plain. /Elian, 
in his description of Tempe (V. H., 3, 1), makes the 
Peneus flow through the vale as smoothly as oil: and 
Dodwell remarks, that, in its course through the town 
of Lari-ssa, it has at the presest day a surface as smooth 
as oil. The intelligent traveller just mentioned ob¬ 
serves in relation to this river, “Many authors have 
extolled the diaphanous purity of the Peneus, although 
it must in all periods have exhibited a muddy appear¬ 
ance, at least during its progress through the Thes¬ 
salian plain ; for who can expect a current of lucid 
crystal in an argillaceous soil 1 Strabo, Pliny, and 
others have misunderstood the meaning of Homer (II., 
2, 756) when he speaks of the confluence of the silvery 

999 





PEN 


PER 


Peneus and the beautiful Titaresius, which he says do 
not mix their streams, the latter flowing like oil on the 
silver waters of the former. Strabo, in complete con¬ 
tradiction to the meaning of Homer, asserts that the 
Peneus is clear, and the Titaresius muddy. Pliny has 
committed the same error. The mud of the Peneus is 
of a light colour, for which reason Homer gives it the 
epithet of silvery. The Titaresius, and other smaller 
streams, which are rolled from Olympus and Ossa, are 
so extremely clear, that their waters are distinguished 
from those of the Peneus to a considerable distance 
from the point of their confluence. Barthelemy has 
followed Strabo and Pliny, and has given an interpre¬ 
tation to the descriptive lines of Homer which the ori¬ 
ginal was never intended to convey. The same effect 
is seen when muddy rivers of considerable volume 
mingle with the sea or any other clear water.” (7 our, 
Tol. 2, p. 110.)—II. A river of Elis, now the Igliaco, 
falling into the sea a short distance below the promon¬ 
tory of Chelonatas. Modern travellers describe it as 
a broad and rapid stream. ( I tin. of the Morea, p. 32.) 
The city of Elis was situate in the upper part of its 
course. ( Strab ., 337. — Cramer's Anc. Greece , vol. 
3, p. 86.)' 

Pennine Alpes, a part of the chain of the Alps, 
extending from the Great St. Bernard to the source 
of the Rhone and Rhine. The name is derived from 
the Celtic Penn , a summit. (Vid. Alpes.) 

PentapSlis, I. a town of India, placed by Mannert 
in the northeastern angle of the Sinus Gangeticus, or 
Bay of Bengal. —II. A name given to Cyrena'ica in 
Africa, from its five cities. (Vid. Cyrenaica.) — III. 
A part of Palestine, containing the five cities of Ga¬ 
za, Gath, Ascalon, Azotus, and Ekron.—IV. A name 
applied to Doris in Asia Minor, after Halicarnassus 
had been excluded from the Doric confederacy. ( Vid. 
Doris.) 

Pentelicus, a mountain of Attica, containing quar¬ 
ries of beautiful marble. According to Dodwell ( Tour, 
vol. 1. p. 498), it is separated from the northern foot 
of Hymettus, which in the narrowest part is about 
three miles broad. It shoots up into a pointed sum¬ 
mit; but the outline is beautifully varied, and the great¬ 
er part is either mantled with woods or variegated with 
shrubs. Several villages and some monasteries and 
churches are seen near its base.—According to Sir 
W. Gell, the great quarry is forty-one minutes dis¬ 
tant from the monastery of Penteli, and affords a most 
extensive prospect from Cithseron to Sunium. ( Itin., 
p. 64.) “Mount Pentelicus,” observes Hobhouse, “at 
this day called Pendele, and sometimes Mendele, must 
be, I should think, one third higher than Hymettus, 
and its height is the more apparent, as it rises with 
a peaked summit into the clouds. The range of Pen¬ 
telicus runs from about northwest to southeast, at no 
great distance from the eastern shore of Attica over¬ 
hanging the plain of Marathon, and mixing impercept- 
ibly° at its northern extremity, with the hills of Bri- 
lessus, now called, as well as part of Mount Parnes, 
Ozea." (Hobhouse, Journey , vol. 1, p. 235, scqq.) 
Interesting accounts of visits to the quarries are given 
by Dodwell and Hobhouse. 

Penthesilea, a celebrated queen of the Amazons, 
daughter of Mars, who came to the aid of Priam in the 
last year of the Trojan war, and was slain by Achilles 
after having displayed great acts of valour. Accord¬ 
ing to Tzetzes, Achilles, after he had slain Pei.thesilea, 
admiring the prowess which she had exhibited, and 
struck by the beauty of the corpse, wished the Greeks 
to erect a tomb to her. Thersites, thereupon, both 
ridiculed the grief which the hero testified at her fall, 
and indulged in other remarks so grossly offensive that 
Achilles slew him on the spot. Diomede, the relative 
of Thersites, in revenge for his loss, dragged the dead 
body of the Amazon out of the camp, and threw it into 
the Scamander (Tzetz. ad Lvcophr., 999 —Diet. 

1000 


Cret4 , 3 .—Heyne ad Virg ., Mn. } 1, 490.) Dares 
Phrygius, however, makes Penthesilea to have been 
slain by Neoptolemus. (Dar. Phryg., 36.) 

Pentheus, son of Echion and Agave, and king of 
Thebes in Bceotia. During his reign, Bacchus came 
from the East, and sought to introduce his orgies into 
his native city. The women all gave enthusiastically 
in to the new religion, and Mount Cithasron resounded 
with the frantic yells of the Bacchantes. Pentheua 
sought to check their fury ; but, deceived by the god, 
he went secretly and ascended a tree on Githsron, to 
be an ocular witness of their revels. While there he 
was descried by his mother and aunts, to whom Bac¬ 
chus made him appear to be a wild beast, and he was 
torn to pieces by them. (Eurip., Bacchce. — Apollod., 
3, 5, 2.— Ovid, Met., 3, 511, seqq.) 

Peparethos, a small island in the JEge&n Sea, off 
the coast of Thessaly, and in a northeastern direction 
from Euboea. Pliny (4, 12) observes that it was for¬ 
merly called Evaenus, and assigns to it a circuit of nine 
miles. It was colonized by some Cretans, under the 
command of Staphylus. ( Scymn ., Ch., 579.) I he 
island produced good wine (Alhen., 1, 51) and oil. 
(Ovid, Met., 7, 470.) The town of Peparethos suffer¬ 
ed damage from an earthquake during the Peloponne¬ 
sian war. (Thucyd., 3, 89.) It was defended by Phil¬ 
ip against the Romans (Liv., 28, 5), but was after¬ 
ward destroyed. (Strab., 9, p. 436.) — Diodes, who 
wrote an early history of the origin of Rome, was a na¬ 
tive of this island. (Plut., Vit. Rom. — Athen., 2, 44.) 
The modern name is Piperi. (Cramer's Anc. Greece , 
vol. 1, p. 453.) 

Perhsa, I. a name given by the Greeks to that part 
of Judaea which lay east of Jordan, from its egress out 
of the Lake of Gennesareth to its entrance into the 
Dead Sea, and still lower down as far as the river Ar 
non. The term is derived from Trepan, beyond. (Plin. y 
5, 14.) — II. A part of Caria, deriving its name from 
its lying over against Rhodes (nepav, beyond, over 
against). It began at the promontory Cynossema, 
and is mentioned by Scylax (p. 38) under the name of 
y 'P oSiuv x^pa. Philip, king of Macedon, having seiz¬ 
ed upon it, was called upon by the Romans to restore 
it to Rhodes. (Polyb., 17, 2, seq. — Liv., 32, 33.) 
The Rhodians, however, were obliged to recover this 
territory by force of arms. (Liv., 33, 18.) 

Percote, an ancient town of Mysia, south of Lamp- 
sacus, and not far from the shores of the Hellespont 
It appears to have been situate on the banks oi the 
small river Practius. (II., 2, 835.) Charon of Lamp- 
sacus, cited by Strabo (583), reckoned 300 stadia from 
Parium to the Practius, which he looked upon as the 
northern boundary of the 'broad. This distance serves 
to identify the stream with the river of Bergaz or Bo¬ 
gan, a small Turkish town situated on its left bank, 
and which probably represents Percote. This place 
continued to exist long after the Trojan war, since it 
is spoken of by Herodotus (5, 117), Scylax (Peripl., p. 
35), Arrian (Exp. Al, 1, 13), Pliny (5, 32), and others. 
It is named by some writers among the towns given 
to Themistocles by the King of Persia. ( Athenaus, 
1, p. 29. — Plut., Vit. Themist., c. 30. — Cramer's 
Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 69, seq.) 

Perdiccas, I. the youngest of the three brothers who 
came from Argos and settled in Upper Macedonia, and 
who are said to have been descended from Temenus. 
(Vid. Macedonia.) The principality of which they be¬ 
came possessed devolved on Perdiccas, who is there¬ 
fore considered by both Herodotus (8, 137) and Thu¬ 
cydides (2, 99) as the founder of the Macedonian dy¬ 
nasty. Eusebius, however, names three kings before 
Perdiccas I., thus making him the fourth Macedonian 
monarch. These are, Caranus, who reigned 28 years ; 
Ccenus, who reigned 12 years ; and Thurimas, who 
continued on the throne for 38. Herodotus and Thu¬ 
cydides, however, omit all notice of these three mon 



PERDICCAS. 


PER 


archs, and begin with the dynasty of the Temenidse. 
(Compare Clinton , Fast. Hell., vol. 1 , p. 221.) Little 
is known of the reign of Perdiccas. On his deathbed 
he is said to have given directions to his son and suc¬ 
cessor Argaeus, where he wished his remains to be in¬ 
terred; and to have told him also, that, as long as the 
remains of the Macedonian kings should be deposited 
in the same place, so long the crown wduld remain in 
his family. ( Justin, 7, 2.— Vid. Edessa II.)—II. The 
second of the name, was son of Alexander I. of Ma¬ 
ce-dan, and succeeded his father about 463 B.C. He 
was a fickle and dishonourable prince, who took an ac¬ 
tive part in the Peloponnesian war, and alternately as¬ 
sisted Athens and Sparta, as his interests or policy 
dictated. ( Thucyd ., 1, 57, seqq. — Id., 4, 79. — Id., 
2, 99, &c.) There is great uncertainty about the be¬ 
ginning and the length of this monarch’s reign. Dod- 
well makes it commence within B.C. 454; but Alex¬ 
ander I. lived at least to B.C. 463, when Cirnon re¬ 
covered Thasos. ( Pint., Vit. Cim., 14.) Mr. Clin¬ 
ton makes the last year of Perdiccas to have been the 
third of the 91st Olympiad, or B.C. 414. (Fast. Hell., 
vol. 1, p. 223.)—III. The third of the name, who suc¬ 
ceeded Alexander II., after having cut off Ptolemy 
Alorites, who was acting as regent, but who had 
abused his trust. Perdiccas, after a reign of five 
years, fell in battle against the Illyrians, B.C. 359. 
( Diod. Sic., 16, 2.— Clinton, Fast. Hell., vol. 1, p. 
227.)—IV. Son of Orontes, was one of the generals of 
Alexander the Great, to whom that conqueror, on his 
deathbed, delivered his royal signet, thus apparently 
intending to designate him as protector or regent of his 
vast empire. Alexander’s wife Roxana was then far 
advanced in pregnancy, and his other wifg, Statira, the 
daughter of Darius, was supposed to be in the same 
situation. In the mean time, the Macedonian generals 
agreed to recognise as king, Aridaeus, a natural son of 
Philip, a youth of weak intellects, with the understand¬ 
ing that, if the child of Roxana should prove a son, he 
should be associated in the throne with Aridaeus. Per¬ 
diccas contented himself with the command of the 
household troops which guarded the person of King 
Aridasus ; but in that capacity he was in reality the 
guardian of the weak king and the minister of the whole 
empire. He distributed among the chief generals the 
government of the various provinces, or, rather, king¬ 
doms, subject to Alexander’s sway. Roxana being 
soon after delivered of a son, who was called Alexan¬ 
der, became jealous of Statira, from*fear that the child 
she was pregnant with might prove a rival to her own 
son ; and, in order to remove her apprehensions, Per¬ 
diccas did not scruple to put Statira to death. He en¬ 
deavoured to strengthen himself by an alliance with 
Antipater, whose daughter he asked in marriage, while, 
at the same time, he was aspiring to the hand of Cle¬ 
opatra, Alexander’s sister. Olympias, Alexander’s 
mother, who hated Antipater, favoured this last alli¬ 
ance. Antipater, having discovered this intrigue, re¬ 
fused to give his daughter to Perdiccas, who, in the 
end, obtained neither. The other generals, who had 
become satraps of extensive countries, considered 
themselves independent, and refused to submit to Per¬ 
diccas and his puppet-king. Perdiccas, above all, fear¬ 
ing Antigonus as the one most likely to thwart his 
views, sought to destroy him ; but Antigonus escaped 
to Antipater in Macedonia, and represented to him the 
necessity of uniting against the ambitious views of Per¬ 
diccas. Antipater, having just brought to a success¬ 
ful termination a war against the Athenians, prepared 
to march into Asia, and Ptolemy joined the confeder¬ 
acy against Perdiccas. The latter, who was then in 
Cappadocia, with Aridaeus and Alexander the infant 
son of Roxana, held a council, in which Antipater, An¬ 
tigonus, and Ptolemy being declared rebels against the 
royal authority, the plan of the campaign against them 
was arranged. Eurnenes, who remained faithful to 


Perdiccas, was appointed to make head against An¬ 
tipater and Antigonus, while Perdiccas, having with 
him the two kings, marched to attack Ptolemy in 
Egypt. He was, however, unsuccessful, owing to his 
ill-concerted measures ; he lost a number of men in 
crossing a branch of the Nile, and the rest became dis¬ 
contented, and, in the end, Perdiccas was murdered in 
his tent, B.C. 321, after holding his power for two 
years from the death of Alexander. ( Encycl. Useful 
Knowl., vol. 17, p. 435.) 

Perdix, nephew of Daedalus. He is said to have 
shown a great genius for mechanics ; having, from the 
contemplation of a serpent’s teeth, or, according to 
some, of the back bone of a fish, invented the saw. 
He also discovered the compasses. Daedalus, jealous 
of his skill, and apprehensive of the rivalry of the young 
man, cast him down from the Acropolis at Athens and 
killed him. The poets fabled that he was changed 
after death into the bird called Perdix or “partridge.” 
(Hygin., fab., 274.— Ovid, Met., 8, 241, se^q.) The 
cry of the partridge resembles very much the noise 
made by a saw in cutting wood, and this circumstance, 
in all likelihood, gave rise to the fable. ( Buffon, Hist. 
Nat., vol. 6, n. 25.— Gierig, ad Ovid, l. c.) 

Perenna. Vid. Anna Perenna. 

Perga or Perge (Utpya or Uepyrj), a city of Pam- 
phylia, at the distance of sixty stadia inland from the 
mouth of the river Oestrus. It was renowned for the 
worship of Diana Pergsea. The temple of the goddess 
stood on a hill near the city, and a festival was annu¬ 
ally celebrated in her honour. ( Callirn ., H. in Dian., 
187.— Strab., 667.) Alexander occupied Perga with 
part of his army after quitting Phaselis ; and we are 
informed by Arrian that the road between these two 
places was long and difficult. (Exp. Al., 1, 26.) Po¬ 
lybius leads us to suppose that Perga belonged rather 
to Pisidia than Pamphylia (5, 72, 9.—Compare 22, 25. 
— Liv., 38, 37). We learn from the Acts of the Apos¬ 
tles (14, 24, seq.), that Paul and Barnabas, having 
“passed throughout Pisidia, came to Pamphylia. And 
when they had preached the word in Perga, they went 
down into Attalia.” This was their second visit to 
the place, since they had come thither from Cyprus. 
It was here that John, surnamed Mark, departed from 
them; for which he incurred the censure of St. Paul. 
(Acts 13, 13.) Perga, in the Ecclesiastical Notices, 
and in Hierocles (p. 679), stands as the metropolis of 
Pamphylia. (Compare Plin., 5, 28.— Steph. Byz., s. 
v. Tiepyy.) The ruins of this city are probably those 
noticed by General Kohler, under the name of Eski 
Kelesi, between Stauros and Adalia. (Leake's Asia 
Minor, p. 132.) Mr. Fellows says, “The first object 
that strikes the traveller on arriving here (at Perga) is 
the extreme beauty of the situation of the ancient town, 
lying between and upon the sides of two hills, with an 
extensive valley in front, watered by the river Cestrus, 
and backed by the mountains of Taurus.” He speaks 
also of the ruins here of an immense and beautiful the¬ 
atre ; and likewise of the remains of an enormous 
building, which he thinks can have been nothing but a 
palace of great extent. (Fellows' Asia Minor, p. 191. 
— Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 279.) 

Pergamus (gen. -i, in the plural Pergama, gen. 
-orum), the citadel or acropolis of Ilium (Horn., II, 4, 
508), and sometimes used by the poets as a term for 
the city itself. (Sencc., Troad., 14.— Id., Agava ., 
421.— Virg ., JEn., 1, 466, &c.) The relationship of 
the word Pergamus to the Greek irvpyog and the Teu¬ 
tonic berg, is obvious. The names of the towns Berge 
in Thrace and Perge in Pamphylia, contain the same 
element berg. (Compare the Gothic baurgs; the Ger¬ 
man burg, “ a castle, fort, citadel;” the Irish brog and 
brug, “a grand house or building; a fortified place; a 
palace or royal residence,” &c.) The writers on Lin¬ 
guistic seek to trace these and other cognate expres¬ 
sions to the Sanscrit root par or pur, “to fill,” “ to 

1001 



PERGAMUS. 


PER 


furnish,” but with no very great success. (Consult re¬ 
marks under the article Mesembria.— Eichhoff, Paral- 
lele des Langues, p. 348.— Kallschmidt , Vergleichung 
der Sprachen, p. 238.)—II. or Pergamum (II epyagoq 
or Ilepyagov), the most important city in Mysia, situate 
in the southern part of that country, in a plain watered 
by two small rivers, the Selinus and Cetius, which af¬ 
terward joined the Ca'icus. This celebrated city is 
mentioned for the first time in Xenophon’s Anabasis 
(7, 84). Xenophon remained here for some time as 
the guest of Gorgion and Gongylus, who appear to have 
been the possessors of the place. (Compare Hist. Gr., 
3, 1, 4.) It would seem to have been at first a for¬ 
tress of considerable natural strength, situate on the 
top of a conical hill, and, when the city began to be 
formed around the base of this hill, the fortress served 
as a citadel. In consequence of the strength of the 
place, it was selected by Lysirnachus, Alexander’s 
general, as a place of security for the reception and 
preservation of his great wealth, said to amount to the 
enormous sum of 9000 talents. The care of this treas¬ 
ure was confided to Philetaarus of Tium in Bithynia, 
in whom he placed the greatest confidence. Philetse- 
rus remained for a long time faithful to his charge ; but, 
having been injuriously treated by Arsinoe, the wife of 
Lysirnachus, who sought to prejudice the mind of her 
husband against him, he was induced to withdraw his 
allegiance from that prince, and declare himself inde¬ 
pendent. The misfortunes of Lysirnachus prevented 
him from taking vengeance on the offender, and thus 
Philetasrus remained in undisturbed possession of the 
town and treasure for twenty years, having contrived, 
by dexterous management and wise measures, to re¬ 
main at peace with all the neighbouring powers. He 
transmitted the possession of his principality to Eu- 
menes, his nephew. An account of the reign of this 
monarch, and of the other kings of Pergamus, has been 
already given. ( Vid . Eumenes II., III. ; Attalus I., 
II., III.)—After the death of Attalus III., who left his 
dominions by will to the Romans, Aristonicus, a nat¬ 
ural son of Eumenes, the father of Attalus, opposed 
this arrangement, and endeavoured to establish him¬ 
self on the throne ; but he was vanquished and made 
prisoner, and the Romans finally took possession of the 
kingdom, which henceforth became a province of the 
empire under the name of Asia. ( Strab., 624, 646.) 

Pergamus continued to flourish and prosper as a Ro¬ 
man city, so that Pliny (5, 32) does not scruple to 
style it “ longe clarissimum Asicz Pergamum .” To 
the Christian the history of Pergamus affords an ad¬ 
ditional interest, since it is one of the seven churches 
of Asia mentioned in the Book of Revelations. Though 
condemnation is passed upon it as one of the churches 
infected by the Nicola'itan heresy, its faithful servants, 
more especially the martyr Antipas, are noticed as 
holding fast the name of Christ. {Rev. 2, 12, seqq.) 
—Pergamus was famed for its library, which yielded 
only to that of Alexandrea in extent and value. {Strab., 
624.— Athenczus, 1, 3.) It was founded by Eumenes 
II., and consisted of no less than 200,000 volumes. 
This noble collection was afterward given by Antony 
to Cleopatra, who transported it to Alexandrea, where 
it formed part of the splendid library in the latter city. 
{Pint., Vit. Ant., 58.) It was from their being first 
used for writing in this library that parchment skins 
were called “ Pergvmznce chartcz ” {Varro, ap. Plin., 
13, II), but it is erroneous to say that parchment was 
invented at Pergamus. What drove Eumenes to em¬ 
ploying it for bocks, was the circumstance of Ptole¬ 
my’s having forbidden the exportation of papyrus from 
his kingdom, in order to check, if possible, the growth 
of the Pergamenian library, and prevent it from rival¬ 
ling his r 'wn.—Pergamus was the native place of the 
celebrated Galen. In the vicinity of the city was a 
famous temple of Aesculapius, which, among other 
privileges, had that of an asylum. Ths concourse of 
1002 


individuals to this temple was almost without numbei 
or cessation. They passed the night there to invoke 
the deity, who communicated remedies, either in 
dreams or by the mouths of his priests, who distribu¬ 
ted drugs and performed chirurgica. operations. The 
Emperor Caracalla, A.D. 215, repaired to Pergamus 
for the recovery of his health, but Aesculapius was un¬ 
moved by his prayers. When Prusias, second king 
of Bithynia, was forced to raise the siege of Pergamus, 
he nearly destroyed this temple, which stood contigu¬ 
ous to the theatre, without the city walls.—The mod¬ 
ern town retains the name of Bergamah or Bcrgma, 
and is still a place of considerable importance. Mr. 
Fellows, who visited it in 1838, says that it is as busy 
and thriving as heavy taxation will allow, and has seven 
or eight khans. {Tour in Asia Minor, p. 34.) It 
contains many extensive ruins. Col. Leake informs 
us, that remains of the temple of Aesculapius, of the 
theatre, stadium, amphitheatre, and several other build¬ 
ings, are still to be seen. {Journal, p.266.) Mr. Fel¬ 
lows remarks, that the walls of the Turkish houses are 
full of the relics of marbles, with ornaments of the 
richest Grecian art (p. 34.— Cramer's Asia Minor , 
vol. 1, p. 136, seqq.). 

Perge. Vid. Perga. 

Periander, son of Cypselus, tyrant of Corinth. He 
succeeded his father in the sovereign power, and in 
the commencement of his reign displayed a degree of 
moderation unknown to his parent. Having subse¬ 
quently, however, contracted an intimacy with Thra- 
sybulus, tyrant of Miletus, he is said by Herodotus to 
have surpassed, from that time, his father Cypselus in 
cruelty and crime. It is certain that, if the particulars 
which the historian has related of his conduct towards 
his own family be authentic, they would fully justify 
the execration he has expressed for the character of 
this disgusting tyrant (5, 92 ; 3, 50, &c.). Notwith¬ 
standing these enormities, Periander was distinguished 
for his love of science and literature, which entitled 
him to be ranked among the seven sages of Greece. 
{Diog. Laert., Vit. Periand.) According to Aristotle, 
he reigned 44 years, and was succeeded by his nephew 
Psammetichus, who lived three years only. {Cramer's 
Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 13.)—Iderodotus relates, that 
Periander, having sent a messenger to Thrasybulus oi 
Miletus, to ascertain from him in what way he might 
reign most securely, Thrasybulus led the messenger 
out of the city, and, taking him through a field of stand¬ 
ing corn, kept interrogating him about the object of his 
mission, and every now and then striking dowr. an ear 
of grain that was taller than the rest. After having 
passed through the field, he dismissed the man without 
any answer to his message. On his return to Corinth, 
the messenger reported to Periander all that had oc¬ 
curred, and the latter, quickly perceiving what Thra¬ 
sybulus meant by nis apparently strange conduct, put 
to death the most prominent and powerful of the citi¬ 
zens of Corinth. {Herod., 5, 92.) Niebuhr thinks 
that this story furnished the materials for the some¬ 
what similar one related of Sextus Tarquinius and the 
people of Gabii. {Rom. Hist., vol. 1, p. 450, Eng. 
transl.) Plutarch, however, makes Periander to have 
disapproved of the advice which Thrasybulus silently 
gave him, and not to have followed it. [Sept. Sap. 
Conviv. — Op., ed. Reiske, vol. 6, p. 558.) Aristotle, 
on the other hand, reverses the story, and says that Pe¬ 
riander was applied to by Thrasybulus, and did what 
Herodotus makes the latter to have done. {Polit., 3, 
11 .— Id., 5, 10.—Consult Creuzcr, ad Herod., 5, 92.) 

Pericles (II eptn?i7jg) was son of Xanthippus, who 
defeated the Persians atMycale, and of Agariste, tiiece 
of the famous Clisthenes. {Herod., 6, 131.) He was 
thus the representative of a noble family, and he im¬ 
proved the advantages of birth by those "of education. 
He attended the teaching of Damon, who communica¬ 
ted political instruction in the form of music lessons • d 




PERICLES 


PERICLES. 


Zeno the Eleatic; and, most especially, of the subtle 
and profound Anaxagoras. Plutarch’s account shows 
that, he acquired from Anaxagoras moral as well as 
physical truths ; and that, while he learned enough of 
astronomy to raise him above vulgar errors, the same 
teachers supplied him with those notions of the order¬ 
ly arrangement of society which were afterward so 
much the object of his public life. But all these stud¬ 
ies had a political end ; and the same activity and 
acuteness which led him into physical inquiries, gave 
him the will and the power to become ruler of Athens. 
In his youth, old men traced a likeness to Pisis- 
trutus, which, joined to the obvious advantages with 
which he would have entered public life, excited dis¬ 
trust, and actually seems to have retarded his appear¬ 
ance on the stage of politics. However, about the 
year 469, two years after the ostracism of Themis- 
tocles, and about the time when Aristides died, Per¬ 
icles came forward in a public capacity, and before 
long became head of a party opposed to that of Cimon 
the son of Miltiades. Plutarch accuses Pericles of 
taking the democratic side because Cimon headed that 
of the nobles. A popular era usually strengthens the 
hands of the executive, and is therefore unfavourable 
to public liberty ; and the Persian war seems to have 
been emphatically so to Athens, as at its termination 
she found herself under the guidance of a statesman 
who partook more of the character of a general than 
of the prime minister. (Hcerens Polit. Antiq. of 
Greece.) Cimon’s character was in itself a guarantee 
against aggrandizement, either on his own part or oth¬ 
ers ; but we may perhaps give Pericles credit for see¬ 
ing the danger of so much power in less scrupulous 
hands than Cimon’s. Be this as it may, Pericles took 
the popular side, and, as such, became the opponent 
of Cimon. About the time when Cimon was prose¬ 
cuted and fined (B.C. 461), Pericles began his first 
attack on the aristocracy through the side of the Are¬ 
opagus ; and in spite of Cimon, and of an advocate 
yet more powerful (the poet iEschylus), succeeded in 
depriving the Areopagus of its judicial powers, except 
in certain inconsiderable cases. This triumph pre¬ 
ceded, if it did not produce, the ostracism of Cimon 
(B.C. 461) From this time until Cimon’s recall, 
which Mr. Thirlwall places, though doubtfully, in the 
year 456, we find Pericles acting as a military com¬ 
mander, and by his valour at Tanagra preventing the 
regret which Cimon’s absence would otherwise un¬ 
doubtedly have created. What caused him to bring 
about the recall of Cimon is doubtful; perhaps, as 
Mr. Thirlwall suggests, to strengthen himself against 
his most virulent opponents by conciliating the more 
moderate of them, such as their great leader him¬ 
self. After the death of Cimon, Thucydides took his 
place, and for some time stood at the head of the 
stationary party. He was a better rhetorician than 
Cimon; in fact, more statesman than warrior; but 
the influence of Pericles was irresistible ; and in 444 
Thucydides was ostracized, which period we may con¬ 
sider as the turning point of Pericles’ power, and after 
which it was wellnigh absolute. We are unable to 
trace the exact steps by which Athens rose from the 
situr.tion of chief among allies to that of mistress 
over tributaries ; but it seems pretty clear that Per¬ 
icles aided in the change, and increased their contri¬ 
butions nearly one third. His finishing blow to the 
independence of the allies was the conquest of Samos 
and Byzantium, a transaction belonging rather to his¬ 
tory than biography ; he secured his success by plant¬ 
ing colonies in various places, so as to accustom the 
allies to look on Athens as the capital of a great em¬ 
pire, of which they themselves were component parts, 
but still possessed no independent existence. f rom 
this time till the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, 
Pericles appears engaged in peaceful pursuits. He 
constructed a third wall from Athens to the harbour of 


the Piraeus. He covered the Acropolis with magnili* 
cent buildings, and encouraged public taste by the su¬ 
rest of all methods, the accustoming the eye to statu¬ 
esque and architectural beauty. At Athens, as is 
usually the case, poetry had the start of the kindred 
arts; but, during the age of Pericles, it attained to a 
greater height than had ever before been reached. 
The drama was then at perfection in the hands of 
Sophocles ; and, by enabling the poor to attend theat¬ 
rical representations, Pericles nurtured their taste, and 
increased his own popularity by thus throwing open the 
theatre to all. This precedent, whether made by Per¬ 
icles or not, ultimately proved more ruinous to the 
state than any defeat. It made the people a set of 
pleasure takers, with all that restlessness in the pur¬ 
suit of pleasure which usually belongs to the privileged 
few. Another innovation, of which Pericles is sup¬ 
posed to have been the author, was equally injurious 
in its consequences, that, namely, of paying the dicasts 
in the courts. At first the pay was only moderate; 
but it operated as a premium on the attendance at 
lawsuits, the causes became a mode of excitement for 
a people whose intellectual activity made them partic¬ 
ularly eager for anything of the kind, and thence re¬ 
sulted that litigious spirit which is so admirably ridi¬ 
culed in the “ Wasps” of Aristophanes. But we may 
well excuse mistakes of this kind, grounded probably 
on a false view of civil rights and duties, such as an 
Athenian, with the highest possible sense of the dig¬ 
nity of Athens, would be the most likely to fall into. 
Pericles, no doubt, had an honest and serious wish to 
establish such an empire for Athens as should enable 
her citizens to subsist entirely on the contributions of 
their dependant allies, and, like a class of rulers, to di¬ 
rect and govern the whole of that empire, of which the 
mere brute force and physical labour were to be sup¬ 
plied by a less noble race. Pericles was descended, as 
we have seen, bv the mother’s side from the family ol 
Clisthenes, and he was thus implicated, according tc 
the religious notions of those times, in the guilt of the 
murder of Cylon’s partisans, which was committed at 
the very altars of the Acropolis. ( Thucyd ., 1, 126.— 
Herod., 5, 70, &c.) The Lacedaemonians, before the 
actual commencement of the Peloponnesian war, urged 
on the Athenians the necessity of banishing the mem¬ 
bers of the family who had committed this offence 
against religion, which was only an indirect way of 
attacking Pericles and driving him into exile. The 
Athenians retorted by urging the Lacedaemonians to 
cleanse themselves from the guilt incurred by the death 
of Pausanias. (Vid. Pausanias.) Pericles lived to 
direct the Peloponnesian war for two years. His pol¬ 
icy was that of uncompromising though cautious re¬ 
sistance, and his great effort was to induce the Athe¬ 
nians to consider Attica in the light merely of a post, 
to be held or resigned as occasion required, not of hal¬ 
lowed ground, to lose which was to be equivalent to 
the loss of all. In the speech which he made before 
war was declared, as it is recorded by Thucydides, he 
impressed the Athenians with these opinions, represent¬ 
ing the superiority of their navy and the importance of 
avoiding conflicts in the field, which, if successful, 
could only bring temporary advantage; if the contrary, 
would be irretrievable. At the end of the first cam¬ 
paign, Pericles delivered an oration upon those who 
had fallen in the war, as he had done before at the 
close of the Samian war. From that speech (at least 
if Thucydides reported well) we learn what Pericles 
considered to be the character of a good citizen, and 
we see in what strong contrast he placed the Spar¬ 
tan to the Athenian method of bringing up members 
of the state. This speech, the most remarkable of all 
the compositions of antiquity—the full transfusion of 
which into a modern language is an impossibility—ex¬ 
hibits a more complete view of the intellectual power 
and moral character of Pericles than all that the histo 

1003 




PERICLES. 


PER 


riar and oiographers have said of him. The form in 
which the great orator and statesman has imbodied 
his lofty conceptions, is beauty chastened and eleva¬ 
ted by a noble severity. Athens and Athenians are 
the objects which his ambition seeks to immortalize, 
and the whole world is the theatre and the witness of 
her glorious exploits. His philosophy teaches that life 
is a thing to be enjoyed ; death a thing not to be fear¬ 
ed. The plague at Athens soon followed, and its de¬ 
bilitating effects made restraint less irksome to the 
people; but, while it damped their activity, it increased 
their impatience of war. In spite of another harangue, 
in which he represented most forcibly how absurd it 
would be to allow circumstances like a plague to in- 
w^rfere with his well-laid plans, he was brought to trial 
nnd fined, but his influence returned when the fit was 
over. In the third year of the war, having lost his 
two legitimate sons, his sister, and many of his best 
friends, he fell ill, and, after a lingering sickness, died. 
Some beautiful tales are told of his deathbed, all tend¬ 
ing to show that the calm foresight and humanity for 
which he was so remarkable in life did not desert him 
in death. It is an interesting question, and one which 
continually presents itself to the student of history, 
how far those great men, who always appear at impor¬ 
tant junctures for the assertion of some principle or the 
carrying out of some great national object, are con¬ 
scious of the work which is appointed for them to do. 
It would, for instance, be most instructive, could we 
now ascertain to what extent Pericles foresaw that 
approaching contest of principles, a small part only of 
which he lived to direct. Looking from a distance, 
we can see a kind of necessity imprinted on his actions, 
and think we trace their dependance on each other and 
the manner in which they harmonize. Athens was to 
be preserved by accessions of power, wealth, and civ¬ 
ilization, to maintain a conflict in which, had she been 
vanquished, the peculiar character of Spartan institu¬ 
tions might have irreparably blighted those germes of 
civilization, the fruit of which all succeeding genera¬ 
tions have enjoyed. But how should this be ? Her 
leader must have been a single person, for energetic 
unity of purpose was needed, such as no cluster 
of contemporary or string of successive rulers could 
have been expected to show. That ruler must have 
governed according to the laws, for a tyrant would 
have been expelled by the sword of the Spartans, as 
so many other tyrants were, or by the voice of the 
commonalty, every day growing into greater power. 
Moreover, without being given to change, he must 
have been prepared to modify existing institutions so 
as to suit the altered character of the times. He must 
have been above his age in matters of religious belief, 
and yet of so catholic a temper as to respect prejudi¬ 
ces in which he had no share ; for otherwise, in so tol¬ 
erant an age, he would probably have incurred the fate 
of Anaxagoras, and destroyed his own political influ¬ 
ence without making his countrymen one whit the 
wiser. He must have been a man of taste, or he 
would not have been able to go along with and direct 
that artistic skill, which arose instantly on the abolition 
of those old religious notions forbidding any departure 
from traditional resemblances in the delineation of the 
features of gods and heroes, otherwise he would have 
lost one grand hold upon the people of Athens. If 
Pericles had not possessed oratorical skill, he would 
never have won his way to popularity ; and later in life 
he must have been able to direct an army, or the ex¬ 
pedition to Samos might have been fatal to that edifice 
of power which he had been so long in building. 
Lastly, had he not lived to strengthen the resolve of 
the wavering people while the troops of Sparta were 
yearly ravaging the Thriasian plain, the Peloponnesian 
war would have been prematurely ended, and that les¬ 
son, so strikingly illustrative of the powers which a free 
people can exercise under every kind of misfortune. 
1004 


would have been lost to posterity. ( Encycl. Uscjut 
Know!, vol. 17, p. 445, seqq.) —As regards the con¬ 
nexion that existed between Pericles and the celebra 
ted Aspasia, consult remarks under the latter article. 

Perillus, an ingenious artist, who made a brazen 
bull as an instrument of torture, and presented it to 
Phalaris, tyrant of Agrigentum. His native city has 
not been ascertained. In the pseudo-epistles of Pha¬ 
laris he is called an Athenian ; but it is more probable 
that he was a Sicilian, perhaps an Agrigentine. (Bent 
ley on Phalaris , p. 382, cd. 1816.) The brazen im 
age which he fabricated was hollow, and had an open¬ 
ing or door ( ■&vpig) on the upper part of the back, 
where the shoulder-blades approach each other ('Kepi 
rdq avvDfiiaq. — Polyb., 12, 25). Through this open¬ 
ing the victim of the tyrant’s cruelty was introduced 
into the body of the bull, and, a fire being kindled be¬ 
neath the belly of the image, was slowly roasted alive; 
while the cry of the sufferer, as it came forth from the 
mouth of the bull, resembled the roaring of a living 
animal. Phalaris is said to have tried the experiment 
first upon the artist himself. He lost his own life, 
too, according to Ovid, in this same manner, having 
himself been burned in the bull when stripped of his 
tyranny, and having had his tongue previously cut out. 

( Val. Max., 3, 3 .—Phal., Epist., 103.— Pirn., 34, 8. 

| — Lucian, Phalaris prior, 1 1 .— Ovid, Ibis , 441.) Ac¬ 
cording to Lucian’s account, pipes were to be inserted 
into the nostrils of the bull when a person was about 
to suffer, and the cry of the victim would come forth 
j with a kind of low, moaning music (rj flop 6s 6td tuv 
| av'/\C)v pskr] dKoreksGsi, oia TayvpciTaTa, Kai SKav?\.y- 
au fiprivudeg, sac pvni}oeTai yospurarov. — Lucian, 1. 
c). This, however, is all embellishment ; and in the 
same light, no doubt, are we to regard what this wri¬ 
ter also tells us, that Phalaris, after having punished 
the artist by means of his own work, sent the bull aa 
an offering to Apollo at Delphi; unless, as Bentley 
inclines to believe, there was some tradition that the 
bull had been so sent, and that, having been rejected 
by the priests, it was carried back to Agrigentum. 
(Bentley on Phalaris , p. 383.)—Timaeus, the Sicilian 
historian, who wrote about the 128th Olympiad (B.C. 
268-264), maintained, as we are informed by Polybius 
(12, 25) and Diodorus Siculus (13, 90), that the whole 
story of the bull of Phalaris was a mere fiction, though 
it had been so much talked of by historians as well as 
poets. The two writers just mentioned, however, un¬ 
dertake to refute this assertion of Timaeus, and inform 
us that the brazen.bull of Phalaris was carried off' from 
Agrigentum by the Carthaginians; and that, when 
Carthage was taken by the younger Scipio, the image 
was restored to Agrigentum by the Roman command¬ 
er, its identity having been fully proved by the open¬ 
ing on the back alluded to above. ( Polybius, l. c. 

— Diod. Sic., 1. c.) The scholiast on Pindar (Pyth., 
1, 185) gives the narration of Timams in a different 
way; for he tells us, from this historian, that the 
Agrigentines cast the bull of Phalaris into the sea ; 
and that the bull in Agrigentum, which in his (Timae¬ 
us’) time was shown for that of Phalaris, was only 
an effigy of the river Gela. From this it would ap¬ 
pear, that Timaeus did not deny that the tyrant had a 
brazen bull, but only censured the mistake of those 
who took a tauriform image of a river for it. Bent¬ 
ley thinks, however, that few will prefer the account 
of the scholiast to that of Polybius and Diodorus 
(Phal., p. 380), but perhaps the solution which Goller 
proposes is the best, namely, that the bull of Phalaris 
had been carried awmy to Carthage, and that the one 
which Timams saw at Agrigentum was actually a tau¬ 
riform effigy of the river Gela. The only difficulty 
that remains is the statement respecting the bull of 
Phalaris having been cast into the sea, which may 
possibly be an error on the part of the scholiast. 
(Goller, de Situ et orig. Syracus., p. 274.—Compare 











PER 


PER 


Jhe remarks of Bockh, ad Schol., l. c.,in not. — Find., 
Op., vol. 2, p. 310.)—As regards the name of the ar¬ 
tist himself, most authors adopt the form Perillus , as 
we have given it; Lucian, however, and the scholiast 
on Pindar have Perilaus, and Bentley also prefers this. 
The change, indeed, from IIEPIAA02 to IIEPIAA- 
02 is so extremely easy, that one or the other must 
be a mere error of transcription. A similar name has 
been critically discussed by Hermann in his work en¬ 
titled, “ Uebcr Bdckhs Behandlung der Griech. In - 
schriften (p. 106.— Sillig , Diet. Art., s. v.). 

Perinthus, a city of Thrace, on the coast of the 
Propontis, west of Byzantium. It was originally col¬ 
onized by the Samians ( Scymn., Ch.,v. 713.— Scylax, 
p. 28), and was said to have received its name from 
the Epidaurian Perinthus, one of the followers of Ores¬ 
tes. Another account, however, assigned its founda¬ 
tion to Hercules, and the inhabitants themselves would 
seem to have believed this, from their having a figure 
of Hercules on the reverse of their coins. Perinthus 
soon became a place of great trade, and, surpassing in 
this the neighbouring Selymbria, eventually rivalled 
Byzantium. When this last-mentioned city, howev¬ 
er, fell under the Spartan power, Perinthus was com¬ 
pelled to follow its example. It subsequently suffered 
from the attacks of the Thracians, but principally from 
those of Philip of Macedon, who besieged and vig¬ 
orously pressed the city, but was unable to take it. 
The city was situate on a small peninsula, and the 
isthmus connecting it with the mainland was only a 
stadium broad, according to Ephorus, but Pliny (4, 
11) makes it somewhat more. The place was built 
along the slope of a hill, and afforded to one approach¬ 
ing it the appearance of a theatre, the inner rows of 
dwellings being overtopped by those behind. ( Diod ., 
16, 76.) Perinthus continued to be a flourishing city 
even under the Roman power, and received a great 
accession of power when its rival Byzantium fell un¬ 
der the displeasure of the Emperor Severus. The 
case was altered, however, when Constantine trans¬ 
ferred the seat of empire to Byzantium ; and about 
this period we find Perinthus appearing with the addi¬ 
tional name of Heraclea, without our being able to as¬ 
certain either the exact cause or period of the change. 
Ptolemy, it is true, says “Perinthus or Heraclea,” but 
this is evidently the interpolation of some later scholi¬ 
ast. The coins of this place reach upward to the time 
of Aurelian : they bear no other name but that of Pe¬ 
rinthus. With the writers of the fourth century, on 
the other hand, the more usual name is Heraclea; 
though they almost all add that the city was once 
called Perinthus, or else, like Ammianus Marcellinus, 
join both names together. Hence it would appear 
that the change of appellation was a gradual one, and 
not suddenly made, in accordance with the command 
of any emperor, as in the case of Constantinople. Af¬ 
ter this last-mentioned place Perinthus was the most 
important city in this quarter of Thrace. Justinian re¬ 
built the ancient palace in it, and repaired the aque¬ 
ducts. {Procop., Mdif., 4, 9.) It could not, indeed, 
be an unimportant city, as all the main roads to By¬ 
zantium from Italy and Greece met here. The mod¬ 
ern Erekli occupies the site of the ancient city. {Man- 
nerl, Geogr., vol. 7, p. 174, seqq.) 

Peripatetici {ILEpnraTJjTiKol), a name given to the 
followers of Aristotle. According to the common ac¬ 
count, the sect were called by this appellation from 
the circumstance of their master’s walking, about as 
he discoursed with his pupils ( U.epLTcaT7]TLKOt, utto rov 
nepnraTElv). Others, however, more correctly, de¬ 
rive the name from the public walk {nepiTcaTog) in the 
Lycaeurn, which Aristotle and Tiis disciples were ac¬ 
customed to frequent. {Brucker, Hist. Grit. Phil., 
vol. 1, p. 788.) A summary of the doctrine of this 
school will be found under the article Aristoteles. 
Before withdrawing from his public labours, Aristotle 


appointed Theophrastus his successor in the chaii 
{vid. Theophrastus), and the latter was followed con¬ 
secutively by Strato of Lampsacus, Lycon or Glycon 
of Troas, Ariston of Ceos, and Critolaus the Lycian. 
With Diodorus of Tyre, who came immediately aftei 
Critolaus, the uninterrupted succession of the Peripa¬ 
tetic school terminated, about the 140th Olympiad. 
The Peripatetic doctrines were introduced into Rome, 
in common with the other branches of the Greek phi¬ 
losophy, by the embassy of Critolaus, Carneades, and 
Diogenes, but were little known until the time of Syl- 
la. Tyrannion the grammarian and Andronicus ol 
Rhodes were the first who brought the writings of 
Aristotle and Theophrastus into notice. The obscu¬ 
rity of Aristotle’s works tended much to hinder the 
success of his philosophy among the Romans. Julius 
Caesar and Augustus patronised the Peripatetic doc¬ 
trines. Under Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius, how¬ 
ever, the adherents of this school, in common with 
those of other sects, were either banished or obliged 
to remain silent on the subject of their peculiar tenets. 
This was the case, also, during the greater part of t*he 
reign of Nero, although, in the early part of it, philos¬ 
ophy was favoured. Aminonius the Peripatetic made 
great exertions to extend the authority of Aristotle; ^ 

but about this time the Platonists began to study his 
writings, and prepared the way for the establishment 
of the Eclectic Peripatetics under Ammonius Sacas, 
who flourished about a century after Ammonius the 
Peripatetic. After the time of Justinian, philosophy 
in general languished. But in that mixture of ancient 
opinions and theological dogmas which constituted 
the philosophy of the middle ages, the system of Aris¬ 
totle predominated. About the 12th century it had 
many adherents among the Saracens and Jews, particu¬ 
larly in Spain ; and at the same period, also, it began to 
be diligently studied, though not without much opposi¬ 
tion, among the ecclesiastics of the Christian Church. 

Out of this latter circumstance gradually arose the 
Scholastic philosophy, which took its tone and com¬ 
plexion from the writings of Aristotle, and which con¬ 
tinued long to perplex the minds of men with its friv¬ 
olous though subtile speculations. The authority of 
Aristotle received a severe shock at the Reformation, 
but it survived the fall of the scholastic system. Plis 
opinions were patronised by the Catholic Church on 
account of their supposed favourable bearing upon cer¬ 
tain doctrines of faith ; and, although Luther and oth¬ 
ers of the Reformers determinedly opposed them, they 
were maintained by such men as Melanchthon, who 
himself commented on several portions of the works 
of the Stagirite. Many individuals, distinguished for 
their genius and learning, exerted themselves to revive 
the Peripatetic philosophy in its primitive purity; nor 
did it cease to have numerous illustrious supporters 
until the time of Bacon, Grotius, and Des Cartes. 
{Brucker, Hist. Grit. Phil. — Enfield, Hist. Phil., vol. 

2, p. 95, seqq. — Tennemann, Hist. Phil., p. 121, 168, 
275.) 

Permessus, a river of Boeotia, rising in Mount Hel¬ 
icon, and which, after uniting its waters with those of 
the Olmius, flowed along with that stream into the 
Copa'ic Lake near Haliartus. Both the Olmius and 
Permessus received their supplies from the fountain# 
of Aganippe and Hippocrene. The river Permessus, 
as well as the fountain Aganippe, were sacred to the 
Muses. {Strab., 407.— Propert., 2, 10, 26.) 

Pero, a daughter of Neleus, king of Pylos, by 
Chloris. She married Bias, son of Amythaon. ( Vid. 
Melampus.) 

Perpenna, I. M., was consul B.C. 130, and de¬ 
feated and took prisoner Aristonicus in Asia. {Liz., 

44, 27.— Id., 44, 32 .—Veil. Pat., 2, 4.)—II. M. Ven- 
to, was proscribed by Sylla, whereupon he passed inta 
Spain, and became one of the lieutenants of Sertorius. 
Dissatisfied eventually with playing only a secondarf 

1005 



PER 


PER 


part, and envious of the fame and successes of his 
leader, he conspired against him, along with others of 
his officers. Sertorius was assassinated by the con¬ 
spirators at a banquet, and Perpenna took the com¬ 
mand of the forces; but he soon showed his utter inca¬ 
pacity, and was defeated by Pompey and put to death. 
(Phil., Vit. Sertor.) 

Perrh^ebia, a district of Thessaly. Strabo, in his 
critical examination of the Homeric geography of 
Thessaly, affirms, that the lower valley of the Peneus, 
as far as the sea, had been first occupied by the Per- 
rhaebi, an ancient tribe, apparently of Pelasgic origin. 
(Simonid. ap. Slrab., 441.) On the northern bank of 
the great Thessalian river, they had peopled also the 
mountainous tract bordering on the Macedonian dis¬ 
tricts of Elimiotis and Pieria, while to the south they 
stretched along the base of Mount Ossa, as far as the 
shores of Lake Boebeis. These possessions were, 
however, in course of time, wrested from them by the 
Lapithae, another Pelasgic nation, whose original abode 
seems to have been in the vales of Ossa and the Mag¬ 
nesian district. Yielding to these more powerful in¬ 
vaders, the greater part of the Perrhaabi retired, as 
Strabo informs us, towards Dolopia and the ridge of 
Pindus; but some still occupied the valleys of Olym¬ 
pus, while those who remained in the plains became 
incorporated with the Lapithaa, under the common 
name of Pelasgiotaa. (Slrab., 439.) The Perrhaabi 
are noticed in the catalogue of Horner among the 
Thessalian clans who fought at the siege of Troy. (II., 
2, 794.) Their antiquity is also attested by the fact 
of their being enrolled among the Amphictyonic states. 
As their territory lay on the borders of Macedonia, and 
comprised all the defiles by which it was possible for 
an army to enter Thessaly from that province, or re¬ 
turn from thence into Macedonia, it became a frequent 
thoroughfare for the troops of different nations. The 
country occupied by them seems to have been situa¬ 
ted chiefly in the valley of the river Titaresius, now 
Saranta Poros. (Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 363, 
seqq.) 

Pers^e, the inhabitants of Persia. ( Vid. Persia.) 

Persephone, the Greek name of Proserpina. ( Vid. 
Proserpina.) 

Persepoms, a celebrated city, situate in the royal 
province of Persis, about twenty stadia from the river 
Araxes. It is mentioned by Greek writers after the 
time of Alexander as the capital of Persia. The name, 
however, does not occur in Herodotus, Ctesias, Xeno¬ 
phon, or Nehemiah, who were well acquainted with the 
other principal cities of the Persian empire, and make 
frequent mention of Susa, Babylon, and Ecbatana. 
Their silence may be accounted for by the fact that Per- 
eepolis never appears to have been a place of residence 
for the Persian kings, though we must conclude, from 
the account of Arrian and other writers, that it was 
from the most ancient times regarded as the capital of 
the empire. The kings of Persia appear to have been 
buried here or at Pasargadse. There was at Persepo- 
lis a magnificent palace, which, at the time of Alexan¬ 
der’s conquest, was full of immense treasures, that had 
accumulated there since the time of Cyrus. (Diod. 
Sic., 17, 71.— Slrab., 729.) We know scarcely any¬ 
thing of the history of Persepolis. The palace of the 
Persian kings was burned by Alexander (Arrian, 3, 18. 
—Curt., 5, 7 .—Strab., 729.—Diod. Sic., 17, 70), and 
Persepclis was plundered by the Macedonian soldiers 
in retaliation, according to Diodorus Siculus (17, 69), 
for the cruelties inflicted by the Persians upon the 
Greek prisoners that had fallen into their hands; for 
Alexander had met, in his approach to the city, with a 
body of about 800 Greek captives shamefully mutilated. 
Ourtius, after speaking of the plundering of Persepolis, 
states that Alexander, while under the influence of 
wine, was instigated by Thais, the courtesan, to set 
fire to the royal palace, an account in which Diodorus 
1006 


also concurs. The city was not destroyed ly Ire or 
this occasion, as some suppose. The palace wes the 
only building that suffered, Alexander having repent¬ 
ed of the rash act almost the very instant after the 
work of destruction had commenced. That the city 
was not laid in ruins on this occasion is proved by the 
circumstance of Peucestes, the satrap of Persis, hav¬ 
ing given in Persepolis, only a few years after, a splen¬ 
did entertainment to the whole army. (Diod., 19, 22.) 
Alexander, moreover, found the city still standing on 
his return from India. (Arrian, 7, 1.) Persepolis 
is mentioned also by subsequent writers, and even 
under the sway of Mohammedan princes, this city, 
with its name changed to Istakhar, was their usual 
place of residence. Its destruction was owing to the 
fanatic Arabs. (Langle, Voyages, &c., vol. 3, p. 199.) 
Oriental historians say that the Persian name for Per¬ 
sepolis was likewise Istakhar or Eslekhar. (D'Her¬ 
bert, Bibiiolh. Oriental.) The fullest account of the 
ruins of Persepolis is to be found in the Travels of Sir 
Robert Ker Porter. The most remarkable part ol 
these ruins is the Shekel-Minar, or Forty Columns. 
The general impression produced by this part of the 
ruins is said to be the strong resemblance which they 
bear to the architectural taste of Egypt. It is some¬ 
what doubtful, however, whether the ruins called She - 
hel-Minar are in reality those of Persepolis, and wheth¬ 
er we are not to look for the remains of the ancient 
city more to the north. The sculptures of Persepolis, 
though of no value as works of art, serve to elucidate 
some passages in Greek and Roman writers which re¬ 
late to Persian affairs. (Compare the remarks of Hirt, 
Geschichte der Baukunst, vol. 1, p. 168.) 

Perses, a son of Perseus and Andromeda. From 
him the Persians, who were originally called Cephenes, 
are fabled to have received their name. (Herod., 7, 61.) 

Perseus, I. son of Jupiter and Danae the daughtes 
of Acrisius. A sketch of his fabulous history has al¬ 
ready been given under a previous article (vid. Danae); 
and it remains here but to relate the particulars of his 
enterprise against the Gorgons.—When Perseus had 
made his rash promise to Polydectes, by which he 
bound himself to bring the latter the Gorgon’s head, 
full of grief, he retired to the extremity of the island 
of Scyros, where Mercury came to him, promising 
that he and Minerva would be his guides. Mercury 
brought him first to the Graiae (vid. Phorcydes), whose 
eye and tooth he stole, and would not restore these 
until they had furnished him with directions to the 
abode of the Nymphs, who were possessed of the 
winged shoes, the magic wallet, and the helmet of 
Pluto which made the wearer invisible. Having ob¬ 
tained from the Graiaa the requisite information, he 
came unto the Nymphs, who gave him their precious 
possessions : he then flung the wallet over his shoul¬ 
der, placed the helmet on his head, and fitted the 
shoes to his feet. Thus equipped, and grasping the 
short curved sword (harpe) which Mercury gave him, 
he mounted into the air, accompanied by the gods, 
and flew to the ocean, where he found the three Gor¬ 
gons asleep. ( Vid. Gorgones.) Fearing to gaze on theii 
faces, which changed the beholder to stone, he looked 
on the head of Medusa as it was reflected on hid 
shield, and Minerva guiding his. hand, he severed it 
from her body. The blood gushed forth, and with it 
the winged steed Pegasus, and Chrysaor the father of 
Geryon, for Medusa was at that time pregnant by Nep¬ 
tune. Perseus took up the head, put it into his wal¬ 
let, and set out on his return. The two sisters awoke, 
and pursued the fugitive ; but, protected by the hel¬ 
met of Pluto, he eluded their vision, and they were 
obliged to give over the bootless chase. Perseus pur¬ 
sued his aerial route, and after having, in the course of 
his journey, punished the inhospitality of Atlas by 
changing him into a rocky mountain (vid. Atlas), he 
came to the country of the ^Ethiopians. Here he h\> 





PERSEUS. 


PERSEUS. 


crated Andromeda from the sea-monster, and then 
returned with the Gorgon’s head to the island of Ser- 
iphus. This head he gave to Minerva, who set it in 
the middle of her shield. The remainder of his his¬ 
tory, up to the death of Acrisius, is given elsewhere. 

( Vid. Danae, and Acrisius.) After the unlooked-for 
fulfilment of the oracle, in the accidental homicide of 
his grandfather, Perseus, feeling ashamed to take the 
inheritance of one who had died by his means, pro¬ 
posed an exchange of dominions with Megapenthes, 
the son of Proetus, and thenceforward reigned at Ti- 
rvns. He afterward built and fortified Mycenae and 
Midea. ( Apollod ., 2, 4, 2, seqq. — Schol. ad Apoll. 
Rhod ., 4, 1091, 1515. — Keightley's Mythology , p. 
415, seqq )—We now come to the explanation of the 
whole legend. The Perseus of the Greeks is nothing 
more than a modification of the Persian Mithras {Creu- 
zer, Symbolik, par Guigniaut, vol. 1, p. 368, in no- 
tis ), and a piece of ancient sculpture on one of the 
gates of the citadel of Mycenae fully confirms the an¬ 
alogy. ( Guigniaut, l. c. — Gell, Specimens of Ancient 
Sculpture, Load ,, 1810. — Id., Itinerary of Greece, 
p. 35, seqq. — Knight, Carm.. Homeric. Prolegom , 58, 
p. 31.)—Perseus, however, if we consult his geneal¬ 
ogy as transmitted to us by the mythographers, will 
appear to have still more relation to Egypt than to 
Asia. Descended from the ancient Inachus, the fath¬ 
er of Phoroneus and Io, we see his family divide itself 
at first into two branches. From Phoroneus sprang 
Sparton, Apis-Serapis, and the Argive Niobe. The 
union of Io and Jupiter produced Epaphus, Belus, Da- 
naiis, and, omitting some intermediate names, Acri¬ 
sius, Danae, and the heroic Perseus. If we examine 
closely the import of the names that form both branch¬ 
es of this completely mythic genealogy, we shall dis¬ 
cover an evident allusion to Mithriac ideas and sym¬ 
bols. For example, Sparton has reference to the sow¬ 
ing of seed ; Apis, become Serapis, is the god-bull 
upon or under the earth ; Io is the lowing heifer, wan¬ 
dering over the whole earth, and at last held captive ; 
Epaphus, another and Graecised name of Apis, is the 
sacred bull, the representative of all the bulls in 
Egypt; Belus is the Sun king both in Asia and Egypt, 
&c. It is in the person, however, of Perseus that all 
these scattered rays are in some degree concentrated. 
The name of his mother Danae would seem to have 
reference to the earth in a dry and arid state. Ju¬ 
piter, descending in a shower of gold, impregnating 
and rendering her the mother of Perseus, is Mithras, 
or the golden Sun, fertilizing the earth. Perseus, 
coming forth from the court of the king of the shades 
(Polydectes, the “all-recipient;” rrolvq and dexopai), 
proceeds under the protection of the goddess Minerva, 
holding in his hand the harpe (dp-iry), symbol of fertil¬ 
ity, to combat in the West the impure and sleril Gor- 
gons : after this, returning to the East, he delivers An¬ 
dromeda from the sea-monster, and becomes the pa¬ 
rent of a hero of light, another Perses, a son resem¬ 
bling his sire. Having returned victorious to Argolis, 
he builds, by the aid of the Cyclopes subterranean 
workmen whom he leads in his train, a new city; My¬ 
cenae, the name of which, according to different tra¬ 
ditions, had reference either to the lowings of Io, or to 
the Gorgons mourning for the fate of their sister (pvKy, 
“lowing:” pvicdopai, -uqiai, “ to low.” — Mvayvat). 
Others, again, derive the appellation from the scab¬ 
bard {(ivKyq) of the hero’s sword, which fell upon the 
Bpot; and others, again, from a mushroom {pvKrjq) torn 
op by Perseus when suffering from thirst, and which 
yielded a refreshing supply of water in the place it had 
occupied. ( Pausan ., 2, 16.— Pint., de flam., 18, p. 
1034, ed. Wytt.) In all these there is more or less 
of mystic meaning, the leading idea being still that of 
the earth ; just as in the legend which makes Perseus 
to have killed Acrisius (the “ confused,” “dark,” or 
“ gloomy one,” a and icpivo), there Is an evident allu¬ 


sion in the discus, by which the blow was given, tc 
the orb of the sun.—If now we closely compare the 
principal features of these legends with the essential 
symbols presented by the Mithriac bas-reliefs, we can¬ 
not but discover, as well in the myths as in the sculp¬ 
tures of Mycenaa, a wonderful accordance with these 
symbols. The Argive fables tell of a heifer, a heifer 
lowing and distracted by pain. An allusion to the 
sword plunged into the bosom of the earth (represent¬ 
ed by the heifer and by the Mithriac bull) is preserved 
in the legend of the scabbard that fell to the earth, and 
gave name to the city of which it presaged the found¬ 
ing. The shower of gold, the mushroom, and the 
never-ending stream of water, of which this last is the 
pledge, are emblems of the solar emanations, the signs 
of terrestrial fertility, and all Mithriac ideas. The 
Gorgons have reference to the moon, regarded as a 
dark body ; and in the early language of Greece the 
moon was called yopyovtov, in allusion to the dark 
face believed to be seen in it. {Clem. Alex., Strom., 
5, p. 667.) They typify the natural impurity of this 
planet, and which the energies of the sun (Mithras- 
Perseus, armed with his golden sword) are to re¬ 
move, and to give purity in its stead. Here, then, 
at the very foundation of the mythus, we find ideas of 
purification. Perseus, and Hercules who descends 
from him, are purifiers in heaven and on earth. They 
purify the stains of evil by force and by the shed¬ 
ding of blood. They are just murderers; and the 
wings given in preference to Perseus enter into this 
general conception. ( Olympiodor ., Comment, in Al~ 
cib., 1, p. 156, seqq., ed. Creuzer.) Both, assuming 
an aspect more and more moral, end with intermin¬ 
gling themselves in human history ; and thus Perseus, 
according to one tradition, put to death the sensual and 
voluptuous Sardanapalus. ( Malal., Chron., 21, Oxon. 
— Suid., s. v. Zapdav. — Reines., Obs. in Suid., p. 222, 
ed. Muller.) This brings us to consider the numerous 
points of approximation, acknowledged to exist even 
by the ancient writers themselves, between the Greek 
hero Perseus and various countries of antiquity, such 
as Asia Minor, Colchis, Assyria, and Persia. At Tar¬ 
sus in Cilicia, of which city both Perseus and Sarda¬ 
napalus passed as the founders, the first was worshipped 
as a god, and very probably the second also. {Hel- 
lanic., frag., p. 92, ed. Sturz, ad loc. — Dio Chrysost., 
Orat., 32, p. 24, seqq., ed. Reiske. — 4mm. Marcell., 
14, 8.) The name of Perseus (or Perses) is found in 
the solar genealogies of Colchis. ( Hesiod , Theog., 
tab. 5, p. 164, ed. Wolf. — Apollod., 1 , 9, 1 . — Diod. 
Sic., 4,45.) Perses, the son of Perseus and Androm¬ 
eda, was, according to Hellanicus, the author of civil¬ 
ization in the district of Persia called Artaea. ( Fragm., 
p. 94.) Herodotus also was acquainted with the tra¬ 
ditions which, emanating originally from Persia itself, 
claimed Perseus for Assyria (6, 54). Finally, in the 
place of Perses, it is Achaemenes (Djemschid) whom 
the ancient expounders of Plato make to have sprung 
from Perseus and Andromeda. ( Olympiodor., I c ,p. 
151, Coll., 157. — Schol. Plat., Alcib., 1, p. 75, ed. 
Ruhnken.) We have here, under the form of a Greek 
genealogy, the fundamental idea of the worship of 
Mithras ; the beam of fire which the sun plunges into 
the bosom of the earth, produces a solar hero, who in 
his turn becomes the parent of one connected with ag¬ 
riculture. Djemschid-Perses, the chief and model of 
the dynasty of the Achaemenides, was the first to open 
the soil of Persia with the same golden sword wielded 
by Perseus and Mithras, and which is nothing else but 
an emblem of the penetrating and fertilizing rays of the 
luminary of day. If Perseus, however, seems, by his 
father or his primitive type, to have reference to Asia, 
on the mother’s side he is connected with Egypt, the 
native country of Danaus and the Dana'ides. {Herod., 
2, 91, 171.— Apollod., 2, 1, 4.) At Chemmis he had 
a temple and statue ; and as Tarsus, where he was 

1007 




PERSEUS. 


PER 


also worshipped, received its name from the impress 
made by the fertilizing foot of Pegasus or Bellerophon, 
who followed in the track of the high deeds achieved 
by Perseus in Lower Asia, so the Chemmites pretend¬ 
ed that Egypt was indebted for its fertility to the gi¬ 
gantic sandal left by the demi-god upon earth at the 
eriods of his frequent visitations. (Herod., 2, 91.) 
'hey alone of the Egyptians celebrated games in hon¬ 
our of this warlike hero of the Sun, this conqueror in 
his celestial career, this worthy precursor of Hercules, 
his grandson.—If we connect what has been here said 
with the traces of Mithriac worship in Ethiopia and 
Egypt, as well as in Persia and Greece, we will be 
tempted to conjecture, that these two branches of a 
very early religion, the fundamental idea in which was 
the contest incessantly carried on by the pure and fer¬ 
tilizing principle of light against darkness and sterility, 
unite in one parent trunk at the very centre of the 
East. ( Creuzer , Symbolik, par Guigniaut , vol. 3, p. 
156, scqq.) —II. Son of Philip V., king of Macedonia, 
began at an early age to serve in his father’s army, 
and distinguished himself by some successes against 
the barbarous nations which bordered on Macedonia. 
His younger brother Demetrius was carried away as 
hostage by the consul Flamininus, at the time of the 
peace between Rome and Philip, and, after remaining 
several years at Rome, where he won the favour of the 
senate, was sent back to Macedonia, After a time, he 
was again sent by his father to Rome, on a mission, in 
consequence of fresh disagreements which had sprung 
up between the two states. Demetrius succeeded in 
maintaining peace, but, after his return to Macedonia, 
he was accused of ambitious designs, of aspiring to the 
crown, and of being in secret correspondence with 
Rome. Perseus, who was jealous of him, supported 
the charges, and Philip doomed his younger son to 
death; but, not daring to have him openly executed, 
through fear of the Romans, he caused him to be poi¬ 
soned. It is said that, having discovered his inno¬ 
cence, his remorse and his indignation against Perseus 
hastened his death. Perseus ascended the throne B.C. 
179. This monarch had been brought up by his father 
with sentiments of hatred against the Romans, for the 
humiliation which they had inflicted on Macedonia. 
He dissembled his feelings, however, at the beginning 
of his reign, and confirmed the treaty existing between 
his father and the senate. Meanwhile he endeavoured, 
by a prudent and diligent administration, to strengthen 
b'ts power, and retrieve the losses which his kingdom 
had sustained during the previous reign. But the Ro¬ 
mans, who viewed with suspicion these indications of ri¬ 
sing opposition, sought an early opportunity of crushing 
their foe, before his plans could be brought to maturity. 
Pretexts were not long wanting for such a purpose, 
and war was declared, notwithstanding every offer of 
concession on the part of Perseus. After a campaign 
of no decisive result in Thessaly, the war was trans¬ 
ferred to the plains of Pieria in Macedonia, where Per¬ 
seus encamped in a strong position on the banks of the 
river Enipeus. But the consul Paulus HJmilius hav¬ 
ing despatched a chosen body of troops across the 
mountains to attack him in the rear, he was compell¬ 
ed to retire to Pydna, where a battle took place, which 
terminated in his entire defeat, 20,000 Macedonians 
having fallen on the field. This single battle decided 
the fate of the ancient and powerful kingdom of Mace¬ 
donia, after a duration of 530 years. Perseus fled al¬ 
most alone, without waiting for the end of the conflict. 
He went first to Pella, the ancient seat of the Mace¬ 
donian kings, then to Amphipolis, and thence to the 
sland cf Samothrace, whose asylum was considered 
inviolable. From this quarter he attempted to escape 
by sea to Thrace ; but a Cretan master of a vessel, 
after having shipped part of his treasure, sailed away, 
and left the king on the shore. The attendants hav¬ 
ing also forsaken him except one, Perseus, with his 
1003 


eldest son Philip, came out of the temple where he had 
taken refuge and surrendered to the Romans. He 
was treated at first by MCmilius with considerable in¬ 
dulgence, but was obliged to parade the streets of 
Rome with his children, to grace the triumph of his 
conqueror. He was afterward confined, by order of 
the senate, at Alba Fucentia, near the lake Fucinus, 
where he died in a few years. His son Philip also 
died at Alba. Another and younger son is said to 
have become a scribe or writer to the municipality of 
the same place. ( Liv ., 44, 42.— Plut., Vit. P. JEmii. 

: — Encycl. Us. Knowl. , vol. 17, p. 466. — Cramer's 
Anc. Greece , vol. 1, p. 191.) 

Persia, a celebrated kingdom of Asia, comprehend¬ 
ing, in its utmost extent, all the countries between the 
Indus and the Mediterranean, and from the Euxine and 
Caspian to the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. In its 
more limited acceptation, however, the name Persia 
(or rather Persis) denoted a particular province, the 
original seat of the conquerors of Asia, where they 
were inured to hardship and privation. This region 
was bounded on the north and northwest by Media, 
from which it was separated by the mountain-range 
known to the ancients under the name of Paracho- 
athras (Ptol., 6, 4. — Strab ., 522); on the south by 
the Persian Gulf; on the east by Carmania; and on 
the west by Susiana, from which it was separated by 
rugged and inaccessible mountains. (Strab., 728.) 
The country included within these limits is, according 
to Chardin’s estimate, as large as France. The south¬ 
ern part of it, near the coast, is a sandy plain, almost 
uninhabitable, on account of the heat and the pestilen¬ 
tial winds that blow from the desert of Carmania. 
(Plin., 12, 20. — Strab., 727.) But, at some distance 
from the coast, the ground rises, and the interior of the 
country, towards the north, is intersected by numerous 
mountain-ranges. The soil upon these mountains is 
very dry and barren, and, though there are some fertile 
valleys among them, they are in general fit only for the 
residence of nomadic shepherds. In the inner part of 
the country, however, there are many well-watered and 
fertile plains, in the largest of which Persepolis is sit 
uated. (Strab., 727.— Ptol., 6, 4.) 

1 . Names of Persia 

Persia is called, in the Old Testament, Paras. An¬ 
other name employed by the sacred writers is Elam. 
Moses first uses this appellation in Genesis (10, 22), 
but a great error is committed by many who regard 
the ancient Elamites as the forefathers and progenitors 
of the whole nation of the Persians. The term Elam , 
strictly speaking, belongs only to one particular prov¬ 
ince of the Persian empire, called by the Grecian wri¬ 
ters Elyma'is, and forming part of the modern Chou- 
sistan. The geographical notions of the ancient He¬ 
brews were extremely limited : and as they first be¬ 
came acquainted with the inhabitants of the province 
of Elyma'is, before they knew anything respecting the 
rest of the Persians, they applied the term Elam to 
the whole of Persia.—Some modern writers have also 
regarded the name Chouta (Cuthaea), in the Scriptures, 
as designating Persia; and, in forming this opinion, 
they have been guided by the passage in the 2d book 
of Kings, 17, 24, where a Chouta is mentioned, which 
Josephus (Ant. Jud., 9, 14, 3) places in Persia. Mi- 
chaelis, however (Spicileg., Geogr. Hebr. Ext., pt. 1, 
p. 104, seqq.), seeks to prove chat Chouta was in 
Phoenicia, not in Persia ; while Hyde and Reland 
place it in Babylonia. If we adopt, in preference to 
the two last-mentioned writers, the testimony of Jo¬ 
sephus, we may, with great probability, conclude that 
Chouta, like Elam, only denoted in fact a part, but, 
like it, was used to designate a whole. — Among the 
Greek and Roman writers Persia occasionally bears 
the name of Achcemenia, and the Persians themselves 
that of Achamenii (’A xcugevioi) Hence Hesy :hius 





PERSIA. 


PERSIA. 


remarKs, Xxaifiivrjc, IHpayc. Amrnianus Marcelli- 
nus (19, 2), in the common text of his history, gives 
AcJuzmenium as equivalent, in the Persian tongue, to 
''Rex regibus imperans but Valois (Valesius) cor¬ 
rects the common reading by the substitution of Saan- 
eaan, which closely resembles the modern title of roy¬ 
alty in Persia, Schaahinschaah. —The name Achcemema 
comes in reality from that of Achcemencs, the founder 
of the royal line of Persia. In the word Aclicemenes, 
the last two syllables (- enes) are a mere Greek append¬ 
age, owing their existence to the well-known custom, 
on the part of the Greeks, of altering foreign, and par¬ 
ticularly Oriental names, in such a way as to adapt 
them to their own finer organs of hearing. (Compare 
Josephus , Ant. Jud., 1 , 6.— Plin.,Ep., 8,4 ) We have, 
then, Achaem (jkxaip.) remaining. The initial letter 
is merely the Oriental alif pronounced as a soft breath¬ 
ing, and the root of the word is Chacm (Xa ip), r On 
comparing this with the Oriental name Djemschid (in 
which the final syllable, schid, is a mere addition of a 
later age), we cannot fail to be struck by the resem¬ 
blance. And this resemblance will become still more 
marked if we consider that Djem (Djoemo in the Zend- 
Avesta) begins properly with a species of sibilant G, 
which, being pronounced more roughly in some dia¬ 
lects than in others, approximates very closely to the 
sound of Ch. Besides, all that the Greeks tell us of 
Achasmenes corresponds very exactly with what the 
East relates of its Djemschid. Achoemenes was the 
founder of the royal line of Persia, and to him Cyrus, 
Darius, and Xerxes were proud of tracing their origin. 
With the Persians of the present day, the name of 
Djemschid is held in the highest veneration as that of 
the founder of Persepolis, and a great and glorious 
monarch.—Herodotus (7, 61) states that the Persians 
were anciently (nuhcu) called by the Greeks Cephenes 
(KrjtpTjvep), but by themselves and their neighbours Ar- 
tai (’ kpraloc ). As regards the name Cephenes, there 
is an evident mistake on the part of the historian, and 
the appellation beyond a doubt belongs only to certain 
tribes of the ancient Northern Chaldea, who actually 
bore this name. With respect to the term Artcei it 
may be remarked, that it merely designates a brave 
and warrior-people, being derived from the Persian art 
or ard, “ strong,” “ brave.” (Consult remarks at the 
end of the article Artaxerxes.)— One of the earliest 
nam^rs of Persia and the Persian empire, and the one 
most usual with the Persians themselves up to the 
present day, is Iran, while all the country beyond the 
Oxus was denominated Turan. The former of these 
appellations is identical with the Eericne of the Zend- 
Avesta, and will be alluded to again in the course of 
the present article.—The name Persia would seem to 
have come from that of the province of Faarsi-stan or 
Paarsi-stan, called also Faars or Paars, and the same 
with the Persis (Jlepertf) of the Greeks. (Compare 
the Scripture Paras already mentioned.) In this prov¬ 
ince we find the genuine race of Iranians ; and it was 
here that the magnificent city of Istakhar, which the 
Greeks have made known to Europe by the name of 
Persepolis, was built by the monarchs of Iran. The 
origin of the term Faars or Paars has been much dis¬ 
puted by philologists ( Wahl, Vorder und Mittel-Asien, 
p. 225, scqq.) ; the root is evidently to be sought for 
in the term Aria or Eeriene, and this would bring Iran 
and Persia, as names of the same country, in close 
approximation. (Vid. Aria.) One explanation of the 
name “ Persian” will be given farther on. 

2. Origin and Early History of the Persians. 

The first historical and religious epochs of Persia 
are enveloped in such obscurity, and so many have 
erred in relation to the character, far more mythic than 
historical, of the early Oriental traditions, that we need 
not wonder at the earnest enthusiasm with which such 
men as Sir W. Jones and J. von Muller have adopted 
6 M 


the fictions of Dabistan. These fictions have far more 
connexion with the Brahminical traditions than with 
those of the Zend-Avesta, though they are found, in 
fact, ingrafted on the latter. The fourteen Abads ; 
the institution of the four castes by the great Abad; 
in a word, that ideal empire, as unlimited in geograph¬ 
ical extent as in the immensity of the periods (sidereal 
in appearance, but at bottom purely artificial and ar¬ 
bitrary), that are connected with it; all this is evidently 
borrowed from India : arm yet all this, when joined to 
the name of Mahabali, supposed to be identical with 
Baal or Belus, was thought to furnish a wonderful con¬ 
firmation of the favourite hypothesis of a great ante¬ 
diluvian monarchy, which had embraced India, Persia, 
and Assyria in a common bond of language, religion, 
and national institutions. In this way it was believed 
that a solution could be given of all the difficult prob¬ 
lems presented by the earliest portion of the history 
of the world. These traditions, however, have an air 
of philosophic abstraction, or, to speak more candidly, 
of premeditated invention, which ill agrees with the 
native simplicity that marks the legends of the Zend- 
Avesta. It is from the Zend-Avesta, carefully com¬ 
pared with the more genuine portion of the Schah-Na- 
meh, and with the scanty information which the He¬ 
brews and Greeks have transmitted to us on this sub¬ 
ject, that we must seek for some true information rel¬ 
ative to the first periods of Persian history. At first 
view, indeed, there seems to be the widest possible 
difference between the narratives of the Jews and 
Greeks, and the national recollections of the people 
of Iran; and critics have heaped hypothesis upon hy- * 
pothesis, in order to reconcile this discrepance : some 
have even regarded the thing as altogether impossible 
Before the discovery of the Zend books, it was easy 
to suppose that the Oriental writers, coming as they 
did at so late a period upon the stage, had confounded 
together the Assyrians, Medes, and Persians as one 
and the same people, or else that they had designedly, 
and from feelings of national vanity, connected their 
own history with that of the powerful communities 
which had preceded them in the sovereignty of West¬ 
ern Asia. (Consult Anquetil du Perron, Mem. de 
I Acad, des Inscript., vols. 40 and 42.— G'orres, My - 
thengesch., vol. 1, p. 213, seqq., &c.) At the present 
day, however, this opinion is accompanied with great 
difficulties ; for the same names, and, in general, the 
same ancient facts, are found, with some slight shades 
of difference, in the Zend-Avesta and in Ferdousi or 
his copyists. Everything, therefore, depends upon 
the period to be assigned for the composition of the 
Zend books.—Most writers distinguish between the 
Medes and Persians from their very origin ; and to the 
former of these two nations they refer Zoroaster, his 
laws, the books that bear his name—in a word, the 
whole system of the Magian worship, and the civiliza¬ 
tion of the Persians themselves. This theory makes 
the Medes to have formed originally a part of a great 
Bactrian nation, a Bactro-Median empire, and to have 
received from the Bactrians the elements of their own 
civilization. (Compare Hecren, Ideen, vol. 1, p. 427 , 
seqq.) The writer just mentioned even inclines to 
the opinion that the Medes and Bactrians formed, 
for a long time, two distinct states, of which the lat¬ 
ter was much earlier in its origin than the former 
( Handbuch dcr Gesch., p. 29) ; and this will serve to 
explain the two dynasties, so different from each other 
and so very unequal in number, that are given by He¬ 
rodotus and Ctesias, while it at the same time re-estab¬ 
lishes in their rights the communities on the banks of 
the Oxus, whom Aristotle and Clearchus regarded as 
having enjoyed, at so remote a period, the blessings 
of civilization. ( Diog . Laert-., prooem. vi.)—As re¬ 
gards the origin of the Medes, Persians, and other 
ancient nations of the remote East, as well as their 
early history, all remains uncertain and obscure. It 

1009 



PERSIA. 


PERSIA. 


rs generally conceded, however, that the Bactrians, 
Medes, and Persians bore at first the common name 
of Am, which recalls to mind that of Iran; but with 
respect to the primitive country of these Arii there is 
little unanimity of opinion. Some make them to have 
come from Caucasus ; others seek for their earliest 
settlement among the mountains to the northeast of 
India, and, it must be confessed, with great proba¬ 
bility. Gorres persists in his hypothesis of making 
the Assyrians, Medes, and Persians to have descend¬ 
ed from the chain of Caucasus, speaking the same lan¬ 
guage, and forming one and the same race ; and to 
'tis race, thus combined, he assigns a great monarchy 
Iran, extending from Caucasus to the Himmalayan 
Mountains. He brings together and compares with 
each other the names Iran, Aria, Aturia, Assyria, 
Assur, &c., and appears to identify Shem with Djem 
or Djemschid , the first mythic chief of this early em¬ 
pire. ( Mythengesch., vol. 1, p. 213, seqq. —Compare 
Schah. Named, Einleit., p. vi., seqq.) Another sys¬ 
tem has been more recently started by Rhode, and has 
been developed with great ability. According to this 
writer, the Bactrians, Medes, and Persians composed 
the common and primitive Iran, speaking the Zend 
language or its different dialects, and coming origin¬ 
ally from Eeriene Veedjo, and from Mount Albordj, 
which he finds near the sources of the Oxus and the 
mountains to the north of India, the names of which 
were transferred in a later age to Caucasus and Ar¬ 
menia. The arguments adduced by this writer in 
support of his hypothesis are drawn from the Zend 
‘books, and in particular from the Vendidad, at the 
commencement of which latter work an account is 
given of the creation, or, as Rhode expresses it, of 
the successive inhabitings of various countries, and in 
the number of which we find, after Eeriene Veedjo, 
Soghdo (Sogdiana), Moore (Merou), Bakhdi (probably 
Balk), Neva (Nysa), Haroiou (Herat), &c. Rhode 
sees in this enumeration an ancient tradition respect¬ 
ing the migrations of a race, for a long period of no¬ 
madic habits, who kept moving on gradually towards 
fche south, under the conduct of Djemschid, as far as 
Ver or Var, a delightful country, where they finally 
established themselves, and where Djemschid built a 
city and palace, Var-Djemsgherd, which Rhode, after 
Herder, takes for Persia proper ( Persis) or Pars, 
with its capital Persepolis, identifying at the same 
time Achaemenes with Djemschid. M. Von Hammer 
adopts, in general, this opinion of Rhode in regard to 
the geography of the Vendidad, with the exception of 
.he last point. He thinks that Ver and Var-Djems- 
chid cannot be Pars or Fars and Persepolis, but the 
country more to the north, where are at the present 
day Damaghan and Kaswin, and where stood in for¬ 
mer days Hecatompylos, the true city of Djemschid. 
The celebrated traveller and Orientalist, Sir W. Ouse- 
ly, without identifying Var and Pars as Rhode does, 
inclines, nevertheless, to the belief that it is to Persep¬ 
olis, its edifices, and the plain in which it is situated, 
that the Zend-Avesta refers under the names already 
mentioned, as well as under that of Djemkand. With¬ 
out presuming to offer any opinion on this disputed 
point, we may take the liberty of remarking, that the 
Greeks themselves speak of the Arii as a large family 
of nations, to which the Magi, and, in general, all the 
Median tribes or castes were considered as belonging. 
(Mayot <5e aai rrdv to ' ApcLov yevoq. — Damasc.,ap. 
Wolf, Anecd. Grac., 3, p. 259.—Compare Herod., 7, 
62, and 1, 101.) The Persians called their ancient 
heroes ’A pracoi {Herod., 7, 61.— Id., 6, 98.— Hellan- 
ic.. an. Sleph. Byz.,s.v. ’Aprala ), and Artaxerxes is said 
to signify, as an appellation, “ a great warrior,” and to 
be compounded of Art or Ard, “ strong,” and the 
Zendic Khshetra, “ a warrior,” which is almost iden¬ 
tical in form with the Sanscrit Arta-Kchatryia. More¬ 
over, the terms Arii and Aria or Anana, together 
101 f 


with Artrza and Ari or Eeri (a root found in various 
Zendic terms, such as Ariema, Eeriene, Ecriemeno, 
Eeriene-Veedjo, &c.), re-appear in the Aryas and Aria- 
Verta of the Sanscrit books, “ the illustrious,” and 
“ the land of the illustrious,” or “ of heroes.” (Com¬ 
pare the Greek "Hpueq, a word of the same origin.) 
All these analogies, joined to the striking resemblance 
between the Zend, the Parsi, and the Sanscrit, point to 
a primitive race of one and the same origin, speaking 
at first one arid the same language, but subsequently 
divided into various nations and dialects. The tribes 
in Bactriana and the neighbouring country, continuing 
to dwell in the neighbourhood of the parent source, re¬ 
mained more faithful than others to the ancient name 
and language. Other tribes moved off in a southeast 
direction, and towards the region of Caucasus, whither 
they transported with them the names of both Albordj 
and Ariema (Armenia). Hence we have both East¬ 
ern and Western Arii, and these last became in time 
a separate nation, the Medes, known to the Hindus 
under the name of Pahlavas ( Pehlavan is “ a hero” 
in Firdousi), which recalls to mind the Pehlvi, their 
language, the fruit of their intermixture with people 
of another race. Finally, the Persians, the antiquity 
of whose name (Parsi, “ the clear,” “ the pure,” “ the 
brilliant,” “ the inhabitants of the country of light”), 
as well as their idiom, worship, and traditions, would 
seem to indicate a close and long-continued connexion 
with the first branch, established themselves, we know 
not at what epoch, in the country of Parcs or Pars 
which became, in the time of Cyrus, the centre of an 
empire, that recalled to mind in some degree the fab¬ 
ulous sway of his great progenitor Djemschid. (Rhode, 
Heilige Sage, p. 60, seqq. — Id., uber Alter., &c., p. 
18, seqq. — Von Hammei, Heidelb. Jahrb., 1823. p. 
84, seqq. — Ousely's Travels, vol. 2, p. 305, seqq. — 
F. Von Schlegel , Wien. Jahrb., vol. 8, p. 458, seqq. 
— D'Anquetil, Zend-Avesta, vol. 1, p. 2, 263, seqq. ; 
vol. 2, p. 408. — Creuzer, Symbolik, par Guigniaut, 
vol. 2, p. 677, seqq.) —According to the Pehlvi tradi¬ 
tions, the first dynasty in Iran was that of the Pisch- 
dadians. Keioumaratz, say the same legends, was 
the first who governed in the world. He lived a thou¬ 
sand years, and reigned thirty. Covered with the skin 
of a tiger, he descended from the mountains and taught 
men the use of vestments and more nutritive food. 
Ahriman, the genius of evil, sent & demon to attack 
him. Siamek, the son of Keioumaratz, was slain in 
the conflict,. Houcheng avenged the death of his fa¬ 
ther. He came to the throne at the age of forty years. 
He reigned with justice, taught men the art of culti¬ 
vating and sowing the fields, and made them acquaint¬ 
ed with the use of grain. Meeting, on one occasion, 
a monster in a forest, he seized an enormous stone to 
attack him ; the stone, striking against a rock, flew 
into a thousand pieces, and fire was discovered. With 
the aid of this element he invented the art of working 
metals: he thus formed the pincers, the saw, and the 
hammer. He directed also the courses of rivers, and 
constructed canals. He taught his selects, more¬ 
over, the art of raising cattle and of substituting wool¬ 
len stuffs for the skins of animals. Theioumouratz, son 
of Houcheng, succeeded. He was the first that pur 
sued the chase with the onca and the falcon, and 
taught music to men. An angel, sent from heaven, 
presented him with a lance and horse, to combat and 
subdue the evil spirits. He gave them battle at the 
head of the Iranians, completely defeated them, and 
took a great, number prisoners. These begged for life, 
and, in return for the boon, taught him writing and 
the elements of knowledge. Theioumouratz, the con¬ 
queror of these demons, reigned thirty y.ears. He was 
succeeded by his son Djemschid. The birds, and the 
pens or good spirits, obeyed him. He invented the 
cuirass, precious stuffs, and the art of embroidery, 
He built the citv of Var Djemschid, divided his sub. 



PERSIA. 


PERSIA. 


/ects into four castes, and during three hundred years 
reigned in the utmost prosperity and power, until his 
pride impelled him to revolt against the deity. Dzo¬ 
hak ’ was at this time prince of the Tasi , and held 
communication with the evil genii. He collected to¬ 
gether the subjects of Djemschid, who had abandoned 
their sovereign since his altered course of conduct, 
put himself at their head, dethroned Djemschid, and 
deprived him of existence after a reign of seven hun¬ 
dred years. Dzohak' reigned a thousand years. His 
tyranny reduced Persia to the utmost wretchedness. 
By the malice of the evil spirits,'two serpents sprang 
from his shoulders and remained attached to them. 
To appease their craving appetites, they had to be fed 
every day with the brains of men. By an adroit strat¬ 
agem, the cooks of the palace saved each day one of the 
two persons destined thus to afford nourishment to the 
serpents, and sent him to the mountains: it is from these 
fugitives, say the traditions of Persia, that the Kurds 
of the present day derived their origin. A dream fore¬ 
warned the sanguinary Dzohak’ of the lot that awaited 
him, and of the vengeance that would be inflicted on him 
by Feridoun, the son of one of his victims. Fie caused 
diligent search to be made for the formidable infant, 
but the mother of Feridoun , who had given him to the 
divine cow Pour-mayeh to be nursed, saved herself 
and her child by fleeing to Mount Albrouz , in the north 
of India. There Feridoun was brought up by a Parsi. 
Having attained the age of sixteen years, he descend¬ 
ed from the mountain and rejoined his mother, who 
made him acquainted with the story of his birth and 
misfortunes : for he was a member of the royal line, 
which had been driven from the throne of Persia by 
the sanguinary Dzohak’. Burning with the desire of 
avenging his wrongs, he seized the first opportunity 
that presented itself. A sedition broke out in Persia, 
headed by a smith, who affixed his apron to the point 
of a spear, and made it the standard cl revolt. The 
continued searches ordered by Dzohfik’ had apprized 
the people both of the dream of the tyrant and the ex¬ 
istence of the young prince whom he persecuted. The 
Persians ran in crowds to their deliverer, who caused 
the apron of the smith to be profusely adorned with 
gold and precious stones, adopted it as the royal stand¬ 
ard, and named it Direfch-gawany; and this standard 
continued to be in after ages an object of the greatest 
veneration throughout all the empire of Persia. Feri¬ 
doun immediately marched against the tyrant, crossed 
the Tigris where Bagdad now stands, proceeded to 
Beit-ul-makaddes , the residence of Dzohak’, conquered 
his antagonist, and confined him with massive fetters 
in a cavern of Mount Damawend. The two sisters of 
Djemschid, Chehrnius and Amcwas, had been the fav¬ 
ourite wives of Dzohak’. Feridoun found them, though 
after the lapse of a thousand year3, still young enough 
to espouse. He had by them three sons, whom he 
married to three princesses of Yemen. The eldest 
was 8elm, the second Tour , and the youngest Iredj. 
He divided the earth among them. Seim received 
Roum and Khawcr, that is to say, Greece, Asia Minor, 
and Egypt. Tour obtained Touran and Djin, that is, 
the country beyond the Oxus and China. Iredj be¬ 
came master of Persia {Iran) and Arabia. Dissatis¬ 
fied with this division, the first two made an inroad, at 
the head of an army, into Persia ; '.lew Iredj , who 
had come to their camp for the purpose of appeasing 
them, and sent his head to Fe r doun. The afflicted 
father prayed the gods to p r oiong his life until he 
could avenge the death of Hs son. Only one of the 
wives of Iredj proved with child ; she gave birth to a 
daughter, whom Feridovu united to Menoutchehr , his 
brother’s son. He b r ougnt him up in wisdom, and, 
when he had reach'd the age of manhood, gave this 
Menoutchehr the fflrone. Seim and Tour , having en¬ 
deavoured but ; n '’ain, to appease their irritated father, 
determined 'o have recourse to arms. Their forces, 


composed of the people of Djin and Khawer , entered 
Persia, but were defeated in succession, and their lead¬ 
ers slain. Feridoun died beloved by his subjects, 
whom he had rendered happy during a period of five 
hundred years. During this time lived the valiant 
Sam, son of Nerimdn, prince of Sedjestan , and of Za- 
boulistdn or Ghizneh. His son Zal received from 
Menoutchehr the sovereignty of all the countries from 
K'aboul to the river Sind, and from his father the coun¬ 
try of Zaboulistdn. Mihrab reigned at this period in 
K'aboul. He was of Tasi origin, and of the race of 
Dzohak.'. Zal married his daughter Rovdabch, and 
became the father of Roustem, the hero of Persia, and 
whose exploits form the principal subject of the poem 
of Firdousi. Menoutchehr transmitted the crown to 
his son Nawder. This latter followed not the precepts 
of his father : his subjects revolted, and his kingdom 
being invaded by Afrasiab, the son of Pecheng, king 
of Touran, he fell into the hands of his opponent and 
was put to death, after a reign of only seven years. 
Afrasiab then quitted the province of Dahestan, which 
had been the theatre of the war, and entered by Rei 
into Iran, where he placed the crown of the schahs 
upon his own head. During this invasion of Afrasiab, 
Zal, the son and successor of Sam, had taken upon 
him, in his turn, the defence of the dynasty of Feri¬ 
doun, and had caused a member of the race to be pro¬ 
claimed schah : this was Zou, son of Thamasp. Du¬ 
ring five years the country was exposed to the ravages 
of war, and afterward a general scarcity prevailed. 
Peace was concluded ; according to the terms of which 
the river Gihon {Djihoun or Oxus) was declared the com¬ 
mon limit of the two empires. Zou died soon after, leav¬ 
ing as his successor his son Gerchasp, who only reigned 
nine years, and left Persia, at his death, without a mas¬ 
ter. With him ended the dynasty of the Pischdadi- 
ans .—Before proceeding to the consideration of the 
second or Kaianian dynasty, we shall offer a few re¬ 
marks on the one of which we have just been treating. 
The lives and reigns of 700 and 1000 years will obtain, 
of course, no credit now. Djemschid and Dzohak' 
represent, in all probability, entire families.—It would 
be useless to compare the Greek traditions with the 
monstrous recital of the Schah namch, through which 
we have just passed. These recitals, having only been 
collected under the Sassanides, have reached us full 
of fable and improbability, It will be safer and more 
reasonable to limit ourselves to some general approxi¬ 
mations. The Greek historians mention three princi¬ 
pal facts : 1. The existence of a vast empire, known 
among them by the name of the Assyrian empire ; 2. 
The overthrow of this empire by the Medes; 3. The 
frequent incursions of the Scythian tribes from the re¬ 
gion of Caucasus, from the vicinity of the Caspian, and 
from the Oxus. These three grand movements may 
be traced without difficulty in the Persian traditions. 
In fact, the theatre of the first four reigns of the Schah- 
nameh is, beyond a doubt, Media, where was established 
the worship of fire by Houcheng. Kaioumaratz and 
his successors were then a Median dynasty dethroned 
by Dzohak, a Tasi or Arab prince, and who began what 
is called by the Greeks the Assyrian empire. The 
word Tasi designates, at the present day, the inhabi¬ 
tants of Arabia ; but there is nothing to prevent the 
belief that anciently it was applied to all the people of 
the Semitic race, and consequently to the Assyrians. 
The new dynasty of Dzohak’, so detested by the Ira¬ 
nians, because it was composed of strangers, and 
brought in with it an impure and devilish worship, 
was probably none other than that of the Assyrian 
princes, who, according to the Greek writers, were 
masters of all Persia as far as the Indus and Oxus 
(Djihoun or Gihon). Feridoun- himself, who, accord 
ing to the Schah-nameh, dethroned and imprisoned 
Dzohak’, will be the representative of the new dynas¬ 
ty of the Medes, which commenced with Dejoces and 

1011 



.PERSIA. 


PERSIA. 


overthrew the Assyrian empire. The Assyria a princes, 
or Tasi, did not inhabit Jerusalem, as one might be 
inclined to suppose from the name Bcit-ul-makaddes, 
“ the holy dwelling,” given by Firdousi to their resi¬ 
dence, and which is that by which the Arabs designate 
the capital of the Jews. The Persian poet himself 
gives us the requisite information on this point, by 
adding that Beit-ul-makaddes also bore the Tasi name 
of Hameh cl-Harran. It was probably, therefore, 
Harran, in Mesopotamia, in the region called Diar 
Modzdr. According to traditions still existing, this 
city was built a short time after the deluge ; and it is 
regarded by the people of the East as one of the most 
ancient in the world. Albrouz is the ancient name of 
the great chain of mountains which commences on the 
west of the Cimmerian Bosporus, borders the Cas¬ 
pian Sea to the southeast and south, and, proceeding 
eastward, joins the Himalayan chain which separates 
Hindoostan from Thibet. It comprehends, there¬ 
fore, the Caucasus of our days, the mountains of Ghi- 
la?i, Mount Damawend , the chain of Chorasan, and 
the Paropamisus or Hendu-Khos. Feridoun, coming 
from Media to found the new Median empire on the 
ruins of the Assyrian, descended Mount Albrouz. 
Eastern Persia, comprising Sedjestan and Zaboulis- 
tan, which is the country of Ghizneh , was subject to 
the schah, but governed under him by the princes of 
the race of Sam. As to Kaboul, it was only tributary, 
and belonged to a branch of the family of Dzohak', 
that is, to princes of Assyrian origin who had treated 
with the Medes. The third analogy between the 
Greek and Persian traditions is found in the inroads 
of barbarous tribes from Eastern Persia. The incur¬ 
sions of the Scythian Nomades, mentioned by the 
Greek writers, will agree very well with those of the 
princes of Touran, coming from beyond the Djihoun 
or Oxus. From the earliest periods, Persia has been 
exposed to invasion from the tribes in the direction of 
Jaucasus, the Caspian, and the Oxus. The Greeks 
called all these tribes Scythians, because they had no 
other name by which to designate these barbarous 
communities. The Persians call them Turan and 
Djin (Turks and Chinese), although at this time (700 
B.C.) neither the one nor the other of the two last- 
mentioned people were to be found on the eastern 
borders of Persia. When, however, the Schah-nameh 
was composed, the Persians knew only the Turks and 
Chinese, and they gave their names to all those who 
had at any time preceded them. The ancient enemies 
of Persia, in this quarter, were probably Hunnic and 
Tudesc tribes, to whom, about the era of the Sassan- 
ides, succeeded the Turks and Chinese.—The main 
fact that results from a comparison of these traditions 
is, that two empires followed in succession : one, com¬ 
ing from Assyria, ruled over Media and all Eastern 
Asia; the other, coming from Media, reacted on the 
first, and drove the Semitic communities across the 
Tigris and Euphrates; and, finally, to these two great 
revolutions were joined frequent inroads on the part of 
the barbarous tribes coming from Caucasus, Scythia, 
and the banks of the Oxus.—To the Pischdadian suc¬ 
ceeded the Kaianian dynasty. The recital of the 
Schah-nameh respecting this second dynasty is as dis¬ 
figured by fable as that which treats of the first ; and 
it would be of no use to seek in it any exact coinci¬ 
dences with the narratives of Xenophon and Herodo¬ 
tus. The Dejoces of the latter historian was, like Kai 
K'obad , chosen king on account of his justice and 
wisdom, at a time when Persia was involved in mis¬ 
ery and anarchy. We find also another resemblance 
between Dejoces and Kai K'obad. Kai K'obad is 
called Arch by some Mohammedan authors, and Dc- 
j( :es is called Arcceces by Ctesias. Herodotus in¬ 
fo ms us that Dejoces had for his successor a son 
OR fled Phraortes, and it is to this Median prince that 
ae ascribes the conquest of Persia. Firdousi makes 
1012 


no mention of this monarch ; he probably confound* 
his reign with that of his father. Nevertheless, a Mo 
hammedan author mentions this second Phraortes, and 
he states that Kai K'aous was the son of Aphra and 
grandson of Kai K'obad. It would appear, moreover, 
that the history of Kai K’aous, as given by Fir¬ 
dousi, is at one and the same time that of Cyaxares 
and Astyages. The blindness of Kai K'aous and his 
army is probably nothing else but the total eclipse of 
the sun, which took place between Cyaxares and the 
Lydians, and which had been predicted to the Ionians 
by Thales. The expedition against Hamawer appears 
to coincide with the siege of Nineveh mentioned by 
the Greek writers ; and these same writers also agree 
with Firdousi, when they make the operations of the 
siege to have been broken off by an invasion of the 
Scythians. The statement also, made by Herodotus, 
respecting the marriage of Astyages with the daughter 
of the Lydian monarch, agrees with that of the Persian 
author, who informs us of the marriage of Kai Khos- 
rou with Sendabeh. With regard to Kai Khosrou, 
or simply Khosrou , it appears evident that he was the 
same with the Cyrus of the Greek writers. Khosrou , 
however, according to Firdousi, was not the grandson 
of the schah of Persia, but of Afrasiab, king of Tou¬ 
ran, and the scene of the history of his youth is laid 
entirely in this latter country. After Kai Khosrou , 
the narrative of the Mohammedan writers begins to 
differ totally from that of the Greeks. Down to the 
time of Alexander, there are only two points of resem¬ 
blance between the two statements : the first is the 
name of Gouchtasp, who is the Darius Hystaspis of 
the Greeks ; and the other, that of Ardechccr Diraz- 
dcst (Artaxerxes Longimanus), given to Bahmen of 
the Schah-nameh by Mirkhond. (Klaproth, Tableau a 
Historiques de VAsie, &c., p. 5, seqq.) 

3. Later history of Persia. 

The accession of Darius Hystaspis is fixed by chro 
nologists in the year 521 B.C. ; and in his reign, sup 
posing him to be the same with Gouchtasp , all author 
ities seem to agree that the famous Zerdusht, the Zo 
roaster of the western writers, succeeded in establish¬ 
ing his new religion. The reign of Gouchtasp is ex¬ 
tended by the Persian historians over sixty years, that 
of Xerxes, his son and successor, being wholly passed 
over; but Isfundeer, who is supposed by Sir John 
Malcolm to be the same as Xerxes, is made the 
hero of his reign. His chivalrous achievements are 
rivalled only by those of the illustrious Roustem, who 
is again brought on the scene, and Isfundeer is slain 
by him in an unjust war, in which he had reluctantly 
engaged, at the command of his wicked father, with 
the king of Segistan. It is from the Western histo¬ 
rians only that we learn anything of the leading events 
of the reign of Darius Hystaspis. In like manner, all 
the great events of the history of Xerxes, which form 
the most brilliant page in the history of Greece, are 
passed over in silence in the Persian annals. The 
assassination of Xerxes, by his relative Artabanus, 
took place B.C. 461, in the twenty-first year of his 
reign. He was succeeded by his third son, Arta¬ 
xerxes Longimanus, the Bahmen or Ardecheer Di- 
razdest of the Persian annals, and the Ahasuerus of 
the book of Esther. Something like a disguised or 
confused account of these transactions is found in 
the pages of Firdousi. After Isfundeer had subdued 
all the foreign enemies of his father Gouchtasp, he is 
sent to reduce to obedience the King of Segistan, who 
• had thrown off his allegiance. In this expedition he 
is represented as engaging with the greatest r&.uc- 
tance, and he meets his death from the hand of Rous- 
tem, to whom, nevertheless, the dying hero commits 
his son, Bahmen, entreating him to educate him as s 
warrior. That son, however, on ascending the throne 
soon became jealous of Roustem, and, having irvadec 





PERSIA. 


PERSIA. 


and subdued his hereditary province, put him to death 
with his family, on the pretext of avenging the blood 
of his father. The general facts, that Roustem, a 
powerful chief, slew Isfundeer, yet protected his son ; 
that a civil contest attended the accession of Arde- 
cheer : and that it terminated in the massacre of Rous¬ 
tem and his family, so far accord with what the Greek 
historians state respecting the character and fate of 
Artabauus, as to leave little doubt that both stories re¬ 
late to the same personages. Of the identity of Ar- 
decheer with Artaxerxes M aicpoxetp or Longimanus, 
there can be no doubt. His surname, Dirazdest 
(“ Long arms”) is a full proof of this. The author of 
the Tarikh Tabrce states, that under this monarch, to 
whom he erroneously ascribes the overthrow of Bel¬ 
shazzar, the Jews had the privilege granted them of 
being governed by a ruler of their own nation ; and the 
favours they experienced, it is added, were owing to 
the express orders of Bahmen, whose favourite lady 
was of the Jewish nation. Josephus expressly affirms, 
that Artaxerxes Longimanus was the husband of Es¬ 
ther; and the extraordinary favour which he showed 
to the Jews strengthens this testimony. He would 
seem, indeed, to have been the first monarch of Persia 
who, strictly speaking, by the subjugation of Segistan, 
“ reigned from India even to Ethiopia, over a hundred 
*nd twenty seven provinces.” Persian historians as¬ 
sign to this great monarch a reign of a hundred and 
twelve years, but the Greek writers limit it to forty, 
and his death is fixed in the year B.C. 424. He was 
succeeded, according to the Persian annals, by his 
daughter Homai, who, after a reign of thirty-two years, 
resigned the crown to her son, Darab I , the Darius 
Nothus of the Greeks. It is natural that no notice 
should be taken of the ephemeral reigns of Xerxes II. 
and Sogdianus, which together occupied only eight 
months; and in Ptolemy’s canon, Darius Nothus is 
made the immediate successor of Artaxerxes Longi¬ 
manus, his reign extending from 424 B.C. to 405. 
Homai appears to be the Parysatis whom the Greek 
writers make to be the queen of her half-brother Da¬ 
rius, and to whom they attribute a very prominent part 
in the transactions of his reign. Her son Arsaces is 
stated to have succeeded to the throne under the title 
of Artaxerxes, to which the Greeks added the surname 
of Mriemon , on account of ly s extraordinary memory. 
No sovereign, however, besides Longimanus or Di¬ 
razdest, is ever noticed by Oriental writers under the 
name of Ardecheer; it is therefore highly probable, 
that Mnemon is the Darab I. of the Persian annals, 
and that he succeeded his mother Homai or Parysa¬ 
tis, who might reign conjointly with Darius Nothus, 
whether as her husband or her son. The banishment 
of Queen Parysatis to Babylon, in the reign of her son 
Artaxerxes, may answer to the abdication of Queen 
Homai. This is a moot obscure epoch in the native 
annals. The Egyptian war which broke out in the 
reign of Darius Nothus, the revolt of the Medes, and 
the part taken by Persia in the Peloponnesian war, are 
not referred to. Even the name of the younger Cyrus 
is not noticed by any of the Oriental writers, nor is 
the slightest allusion made to the celebrated expedi¬ 
tion which has given immortality to its commander. 
The pages of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon 
leave little room, however, for regret that these events 
have not found an Oriental historian. With respect 
to the second Darab of the Persians, who is made the 
immediate successor of the first, his identity with the 
Darius Codomanus of the Greeks is completely estab¬ 
lished by the -conquest of Persia during his reign by 
Alexander of Macedon. The intermediate reigns of 
Artaxerxes Ochus, the most barbarous and abandoned 
monarch of his race, and of his son Arses, both of 
whom were assassinated, appear to be passed over, or 
to be included in that of Darab I. The reign of this 
Darab is distinguished in the native annals by the 


breaking out of a war with Philippous of Roum (Ma¬ 
cedon), which, though at first unsuccessful, is stated 
to have terminated gloriously for the Persians ; and 
Philip was glad to make peace, on the terms of giving 
his daughter to Darab, and becoming his tributary 
This daughter is fabled to have been the mother of the 
Macedonian conqueror. Darab I. built Darabjird, a 
city about 150 miles east of Shiraz. ( Malcolm , vol. 
1, p. 69.)—The character of Ochus seems, howev¬ 
er, to have been transferred by the Persians to the 
unfortunate and noble-minded Darius, who is alleged 
to have been deformed in body and depraved in mind; 
as if, Sir John Malcolm remarks, “ to reconcile the 
vanity of the nation to the tale of its subjugation.” It 
is nevertheless true, that the crimes of their monarchs, 
the mal-administration into which the affairs of the 
government had fallen, the assassinations and massa¬ 
cres occasioned by the repeated disputes for the suc¬ 
cession, and the slender bond which held together the 
various provinces of so gigantic an empire, had pre¬ 
pared the way for its easy dissolution. The traditions 
which the Eastern writers have preserved of the Mace¬ 
donian hero (whom they call Secunder and Iskandeer) 
are very imperfect; and upon a few historical facts, 
they have reared a superstructure of the most extrav¬ 
agant fable. They agree, however, with the Greek 
writers in most of the leading facts; such as the inva¬ 
sion of Persia, the defeat and subsequent death of Da¬ 
rius, the generosity of the conqueror, and the strong 
impression which his noble and humane conduct made 
upon his dying enemy. They allude, too, to the alli¬ 
ance which Alexander established with Taxilis or 
Omphis, to his battle with Porus, and his expedition 
against the Scythians ; but the circumstances in which 
these events are disguised are for the most part fab¬ 
ulous. “ His great name,” says Sir John Malcolm, 
“ has been considered sufficient to obtain credit for 
every story that imagination could invent ; but this 
exaggeration is almost all praise. The Secunder of 
the Persian page is a model of every virtue and of ev- 
ery great quality that can elevate a human being above 
his species ; while his power and magnificence are al¬ 
ways represented as far beyond what has ever been 
attained by any other monarch in the world.” The 
quarrel between the two monarchs originated, accord 
ing to the author of the Zee'rut-ul-Tuarikh, in Alex¬ 
ander’s refusing to pay the tribute of golden eggs to 
which his father had agreed, returning the laconic an¬ 
swer by the Persian envoy, that “ the bird that laid the 
eggs had flown to the other wou.1.” Upon this, an¬ 
other ambassador was despatched to the court of the 
Macedonian, bearing the present of a bat and a ball, in 
ridicule of Alexander’s youth, and a bag of very small 
seed, called gunjud , as an emblem of the innumerable 
army with which he was threatened. Alexander, ta¬ 
king the bat and ball in his hand, compared the one tc 
his own power, and the other to the Persian’s domin¬ 
ions ; and the fate which would await the invaders 
was intimated by giving the grain to a fowl. In re¬ 
turn. he sent the Persian monarch the significant pres¬ 
ent of a bitter melon. ( Modern Traveller, pt. 37, p. 
64, seqq.) —The native writers, as has been said, make 
Alexander to have been the son of Darius and a daugh¬ 
ter of Philip of Macedon ! and they add that Darius 
sent his wife home to her father, on account of her 
offensive breath ; from which circumstance the war 
between the two monarchs arose ! (Klaproth, Asia 
Polyglotta, p. 3.) The Persian writers give no detail¬ 
ed account of the operations of Alexander in Persia, 
erroneously stating that Darius was killed in the first 
action. 

4. Parthian Dynasty. 

Passing over the period of the Macedonian power in 
Asia, which is detailed in other parts of this volume, 
we come to the establishmen-t of the Parthian kingdom, 

1013 




PERSIA. 


PERSl/l. 


tne mention of which falls naturally under the present 
article, from the circumstance of the Parthians being 
designated as Persians by many of the Roman writers, 
particularly the poets, although they were, in fact, of 
Scythian rather than Persian origin.—Seleucus was 
succeeded in his Asiatic empire by his son Antiochus 
Soter, who reigned nineteen years, and left his throne 
to his son Antiochus Theos. In his reign (B.C. 250) 
a man of obscure origin, whom some, however, make 
to have been a tributary prince or chief, and the native 
writers a descendant of one of the former kings of Per¬ 
sia, slew the viceroy of Parthia, and raised the standard 
of revolt. His name was Ashk, or Arsaces, as the 
Western historians write it. After having slain the 
viceroy, he fixed his residence at Rhe, where he in¬ 
vited all the chiefs of provinces to join him in a war 
against the Seleucidae ; promising at the same time to 
exact from them no tribute, and to deem himself only 
the head of a confederacy of princes, having for their 
common object to maintain their separate independ¬ 
ence, and to free Persia from a foreign yoke. Such 
was the commencemept of that era of Persian history 
which is termed by the Oriental writers the Moulouk 
ul Towaeif, or commonwealth of tribes, and which ex¬ 
tends over nearly five centuries. Pliny states that the 
Parthian (meaning the Persian) empire was divided 
into eighteen kingdoms. The accounts of this period 
given by Persian writers are vague and contradictory. 
“ They have evidently,” Sir John Malcolm remarks, 
“ no materials to form an authentic narrative ; and it 
is too near the date at which their real history com¬ 
mences to admit of their indulging in fable. Their 
pretended history of the Ashkanians and Ashganians 
is, consequently, little more than a mere catalogue of 
names ; and even respecting these, and the dates they 
assign to the different princes, hardly two authors are 
agreed. Ashk the First is said to have reigned fifteen 
years : Khondemir allows him only ten. Some au¬ 
thors ascribe the defeat and capture of Seleucus Cal- 
linicus, king of Syria, to this monarch ; and others to 
his son, Ashk II. The latter prince was succeeded 
by his brother Shahpoor (or Sapor), who, after a long 
contest with Antiochus the Great, in which he expe¬ 
rienced several reverses, concluded a treaty of peace 
with that monarch, by which his right to Parthia and 
Hyrcania was recognised. From the death of this 
prince there appears to be a lapse of two centuries in 
the Persian annals : for they inform us that his suc¬ 
cessor was Baharam Gudurz ; and if this is the prince 
whom the Western writers term Gutarzes, as there is 
every reason to conclude it is, we know from authen¬ 
tic history that he was the third prince of the second 
dynasty of the Arsacidae.—From the death of Alexan¬ 
der till the reign of Artaxerxes (Ardecheer Babigan) 
is nearly five centuries ; and the whole of that remark¬ 
able era may be termed a blank in Eastern history. 
And yet, when we refer to the pages of Roman writers, 
we find this period abounds with events of which the 
vainest nation might be proud, and that Parthian mon- 
archs, whose names cannot now be discovered in the 
history of their own country, were the only sovereigns 
upon whom the Roman army, when that nation was in 
the very zenith of its power, could make no impression. 
But this, no doubt, may be attributed to other causes 
than the skill and valour of the Persians. It was to 
the nature of their country, and their singular mode of 
warfare, that they owed those frequent advantages 
which they gained over the disciplined legions of 
Rome. The frontier which the kingdom of Parthia 
presented to. the Roman empire extended from the 
Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf. It consists of lofty 
and barren mountains, of rapid and broad streams, and 
of wide-spreading deserts. In whatever direction the 
legions of Rome advanced, the country was laid waste. 
The war was made, not against the army, but the sup¬ 
plies by which it was supported ; and the mode in 
1014 


which the Parthian warrior took his unerring aim 
while his horse was carrying him from his enemy, may 
be viewed as a personification of the system of warfare 
by which his nation, during this era of its history, main¬ 
tained its independence. The system was suited to 
the soil, to the man, and to the fleet and robust animal 
on which he was mounted; and its success was so 
certain, that the bravest veterans of Rome murmured 
when their leaders talked of a Parthian war.” ( Mal¬ 
colm , vol. 1, p. 84, seqq.) —The blank which occurs in 
the native annals may be accounted for, Sir John Mal¬ 
colm thinks, by the neglect into which the rites of Zo¬ 
roaster fell during the dynasty of the Arsacidre, and 
the decay of letters consequent upon the depression of 
the priesthood. In that nation, as in others similarly 
circumstanced, the literati and the priesthood were sy¬ 
nonymous terms ; and as the priests alone cultivated 
letters, so they would be prompted to avenge them¬ 
selves on the enemies of thejr faith and order by con¬ 
signing their race, so far as they had the power, to ob¬ 
livion. The Arsacidas, Gibbon affirms (but without 
citing his authority), “ practised, indeed, the worship 
of the magi, but they disgraced and polluted it with a 
various mixture of foreign idolatry.”—According to 
the Western historians, it was under Mithradates I., 
the fourth in descent and the fifth in succession of the 
Arsacidae, that the Parthian power was raised to its 
highest pitch of greatness. That monarch, having 
subdued the Medes, the Elymeans, the Persians, and 
the Bactrians, extended his dominions to the Indus, 
and, having vanquished Demetrius, king of Syria, final¬ 
ly secured Babylonia and Mesopotamia also to his 
empire. ( Prideaux , vol. 2, p. 404.)—Justin states 
that this monarch, having conquered several nations, 
gathered from every one of them whatsoever he found 
best in its constitution, and from the whole collection 
framed a body of most wholesome laws for the gov¬ 
ernment of his empire. If one half of this be true, 
what is history, that it should have preserved no more 
minute record of such a sovereign 1—The remainder 
of the history of Parthia will be found under that 
article. 

5. Dynasty of the Sassanidce. 

Artaxerxes is said to have sprung from the illegiti¬ 
mate commerce of a tanner’s wife with a common 
soldier. The tanner’s name was Babec, the soldier’s 
Sassan ; from the former Artaxerxes obtained the sur¬ 
name of Babigan (son of Babec), from the latter all 
his descendants have been styled Sassanidce. ( Gib¬ 
bon , Decline and Fall , c. 8.)—The flattery of his ad¬ 
herents, however, represents him as descended from 
a branch of the ancient kings of Persia, though time 
and misfortune had gradually reduced his ancestors to 
the humble station of private citizens. ( D'Herbelot , 
Bibl. Orient., Ardecheer.)—The establishment of th« 
dynasty of the Sassanidse took place in the fourth year 
of the Emperor Severus, 226 years after the Christian 
era. One of the first acts of the new monarch was 
the re-establishment of the magi and of the creed of 
Zoroaster. A reign of fourteen years ensued, which 
formed a memorable era in the history of the East, and 
even in that of Rome. Having, after various alterna¬ 
tions of victory and defeat, established his authority 
on a basis which even the Roman power could not 
shake, he left behind him a character marked by those 
bold and commanding features that generally distin¬ 
guish the princes who conquer from those who inherit 
an empire. Till the last period of the Persian mon¬ 
archy, his code of laws was respected as the ground¬ 
work of their civil and religious policy. Artaxerxes 
bequeathed his new empire, and his ambitious designs 
against the Romans, to Sapor, a son not unworthy of 
his great father; but those designs were too extensive 
for the power of Persia, and served only to involve 
both nations in a long series of destructive war# and 





PERSIA. 


PERSIA. 


reciprocal calamities. ( Gibbon , c. 8.)—The subse¬ 
quent history of the dynasty of the Sassanidae will be 
found detailed in part tander the articles Sapor, Chos- 
roes, &c. 

6. Remarks on the Constitution of the Persian Em¬ 
pire in the time of Darius. 

Cyrus and Cambyses had conquered nations : Da¬ 
rius was the true founder of the Persian state. The 
dominions of his predecessors were a mass of coun¬ 
tries only united by their subjection to the will of a 
common ruler, which expressed itself by arbitrary and 
irregular exactions. Darius first organized them into 
an empire, where every member felt its place and knew 
its functions. His realm stretched from the yEgean 
to the Indus, from the steppes of Scythia to the cata¬ 
racts of the Nile. He divided this vast tract into 20 
satrapies or provinces, and appointed the tribute which 
each was to pay to the royal treasury, and the propor¬ 
tion in which they were to supply provisions for the 
army and for the king’s household. A high road, on 
which distances were regularly marked, and spacious 
buildings were placed at convenient intervals to re¬ 
ceive all who travelled in the king’s name, connected 
the western coast with the seat of government: along 
this road, couriers trained to extraordinary speed suc¬ 
cessively transmitted the king’s messages. The sa¬ 
traps were accountable for the imposts of their several 
provinces, and were furnished with forces sufficient to 
carry the king’s pleasure into effect.—Compared with 
the rude government of his predecessors, the institu¬ 
tions of Darius were wise and vigorous; in them¬ 
selves, however, unless they are considered as founda¬ 
tions laid for a structure that was never raised, as out¬ 
lines that were never filled up, they were weak and 
barbarous. He had done little more than cast a bridge 
across the chaos over which he ruled : he had intro¬ 
duced no real uniformity or subordination among its 
elements. The distribution of the provinces, indeed, 
may have been grounded on relations which we do not 
perceive, and may, therefore, have been less capricious 
than it seems. But it answered scarcely any higher 
end than that of conveying the wealth of Asia into the 
royal treasury, and the satraps, when they were most 
faithful and assiduous in their office, were really no¬ 
thing more than farmers of the revenue. Their ad¬ 
ministration was only felt in the burdens they imposed : 
in every other respect the nations they governed re¬ 
tained their peculiar laws and constitution. The Per¬ 
sian empire included in it the dominions of several 
vassal kings, and the seats of fierce, independent 
hordes, who preyed on its more peaceful subjects with 
impunity. In this, however, there was much good and 
comparatively little mischief. The variety of institu¬ 
tions comprehended within the frame of the monarchy, 
though they were suffered to stand, not from any en¬ 
larged policy, but because it would have been difficult 
or dangerous to remove them, and there was nothing 
better to substitute for them, did not impair, but rather 
increased its strength ; and the independence of a few 
wild tribes was more a symptom than a cause of weak¬ 
ness. The worst evil arose from the constitution of 
the satrapies themselves. The provinces were taxed 
not only for the supply of the royal army and house¬ 
hold, but also for the support of their governors, each 
of whom had a standing force in his pay, and of whom 
some kept up a court rivalling in magnificence that of 
the king himself. The province of Babylon, besides 
its regular tribute and the fixed revenue of its satrap, 
which was equal to that,of a modern European prince 
of the first rank, defrayed the cost of a stud and a 
hunting equipage for his private use, such as no Eu¬ 
ropean prince was ever able to maintain. Four large 
villages were charged with the nourishment of his In¬ 
dian dogs, and exempted from all other taxes. It must, 
however, be observed, that when an extraordinary bur¬ 


den was thus laid on a particular district, the rest of 
the province was not relieved, but the more heavily 
loaded. When the king granted the revenues of whole 
cities to a wife or a favourite, he did not give up any 
portion of his own dues; and the discharge of all 
these stated exactions did not secure his subjects from 
the arbitrary demands of the satraps and their officers. 
If the people suffered from the establishment of these 
mighty viceroys, their greatness was not less injurious 
to the strength of the state and the power of the sov¬ 
ereign. As the whole authority, civil and military, in 
each province was lodged in the hands of the satrap, 
he could wield it at his pleasure without any check 
from within ; and if he were unwilling to resign it, it 
was not always easy to wrest it from him. The great¬ 
er his distance from the court, the nearer he approach¬ 
ed to the condition of an independent and absolute 
prince. He was seldom, indeed, tempted to throw off 
his nominal allegiance, which he found more useful 
than burdensome, or to withhold the tribute which he 
had only the task of collecting ; but he might often 
safely refuse any other services, and defy or elude the 
king’s commands with impunity : and least of all was 
he subject to control in any acts of rapacity or oppres¬ 
sion committed in his legitimate government. Xeno¬ 
phon, indeed, in his romance, represents the founder 
of the monarchy as having provided against this evil 
by a wise division of power. ( Cyrop ., 8, 6.)—Cyrus 
is there said to have appointed that the commanders 
of the fortresses and of the regular troops in each prov¬ 
ince should be independent of the satrap, and should 
receive their orders immediately from court; and a 
modern author finds traces of this system in the nar¬ 
rative of Herodotus himself. ( Heeren , Ideen, vol. 1, 
pt. 1, p. 403.)—But it seems clear, that if the conquer¬ 
or designed to establish such a balance of power, it 
was neglected by his successors, and that the satraps 
engrossed every branch of authority within their re¬ 
spective governments. Thus the huge frame of the 
Persian empire was disjointed and unwieldy ; and the 
spirit that pervaded it was as feeble as its organization 
was imperfect. The Persians, when they overthrew 
the Medes, adopted their laws, religion, and manners ; 
their own, though they may have resembled them in 
their principal features, were certainly more simple, 
and better fitted to a conquering people. The religion 
of the two nations was probably derived from a com¬ 
mon source ; but before the Persian conquest it ap¬ 
pears to have undergone an important change in the 
reformation ascribed to Zoroaster. In what points his 
doctrine may have differed from those of the preceding 
period is an obscure question ; but it seems certain 
that the code of sacred laws which he introduced, 
founded, or at least enlarged, the authority and influ¬ 
ence of the Magian caste. Its members became the 
keepers and expounders of the holy books, the teach¬ 
ers and counsellors of the king, the oracles from whom 
he learned the divine will and*the secrets of futurity, 
the mediators who obtained for him the favour of heav¬ 
en, or propitiated its anger. How soon the tenets of 
their theology may have been introduced into Persia, 
is not clear : but, as they were a Median tribe, it is 
only with the union of the two nations under Cyrus 
that they can have begun to occupy the station which 
we find them filling at the Persian court. If the re¬ 
ligion of Zoroaster was originally pure and sublime, 
it speedily degenerated, and allied itself to many very 
gross and hideous forms of superstition : and if we 
were to judge of its tendency by the practice of its 
votaries, we should be led to think of it more harshly 
or more lightly than it may probably have deserved 
The court manners were equally marked by luxury and 
cruelty: by luxury refined till it had killed all natural 
enjoyment, and by cruelty carried to the most loath¬ 
some excesses that perverted ingenuity could suggest. 
It is above all the atrocious barbarity of the women 

1015 



PER 


PER 


ihat fills the Persian chronicles with their most horrid 
stories: and we learn from the same sources the dread¬ 
ful depravity of their character, and the vast extent of 
their influence. Cramped by the rigid forms of a 
pompous and wearisome ceremonial, surrounded by 
the ministers of their artificial wants, and guarded from 
every breath of truth and freedom, the successors of 
Cyrus must have been more than men if they had not 
become the slaves of their priests, their eunuchs, and 
their wives. The contagion of these vices undoubt¬ 
edly spread through the nation : the Persians were 
most exposed to it, as they were in the immediate 
neighbourhood of the court. Yet there is no difficul¬ 
ty in conceiving that, long after the people had lost 
the original purity and simplicity of their manners, the 
noble youth of Persia may have been still educated in 
the severe discipline of their ancestors, which is rep¬ 
resented as nearly resembling the Spartan. They may 
have been accustomed to spare diet and hard toil, and 
trained to the use of horses and arms. These exer¬ 
cises do not create and are not sufficient to keep alive 
the warlike spirit of a nation, any more than rulers and 
precepts to form its moral character. The Persian 
youth may still have been used to repeat the praises 
of truth and justice from their childhood, in the later 
period of their history, as they had when Cyrus up¬ 
braided the Greeks with their artifices and lies: and 
yet in their riper years they might surpass them, as at 
Cunaxa, in falsehood and cunning, as much as they 
were below them in skill and courage. Gradually, 
however, the ancient discipline either became wholly 
obsolete or degenerated into empty forms ; and the 
nation sank into that state of utter corruption and im¬ 
becility which Xenophon, or, rather, the author of the 
chapter that concludes his historical romance, has 
painted, not from imagination, but from the very life. 
—(ThirlwaWs Greece , vol. 2, p. 185, seqq.) 

Persicus Sinus, a part of the Indian Ocean, on the 
coast of Persia and Arabia, now called the Persian 
Gulf. 

Persis, or Persia Proper, the original province of 
the Persians. ( Vid. Persia.) 

Persius, or Aulus Persius Flacous, a Roman sat¬ 
irist, was born at Volaterra, a town of Etruria, about 
the 20th year of the reign of Tiberius, A.D. 34. He 
was of equestrian rank. He lost his father at the age 
of six years, and his mother, Fulvia Sisenna, married 
a second time, but the stepfather whom she gave her 
son lived only a short period. Persius appears to have 
shown towards his mother tbo strongest filial affection. 
He was trained at Volaterrae till his twelfth year, and 
he then proceeded to Rome, where he studied gram¬ 
mar under Rhemnius Palaemon, and rhetoric under Vir- 
ginius Fiaccus. At the age of sixteen he became a 
pupil of Annaeus Cornutus, a Stoic philosopher, who 
had come from Leptis in Africa to settle at Rome. 
Lucan, the poet, was his fellow-disciple in the school 
of Cornutus. Persius *and Cornutus were bound to 
each other by feelings more like those of father and 
son, than such as usually subsist between preceptor 
and scholar. This friendship continued without inter¬ 
ruption till the death of Persius, which took place in 
his 28th or 30th year. The poet bequeathed his books 
and a large sum of money to Cornutus, who, however, 
declined to receive the latter, and gave it up to the 
sisters of Persius. The materials for a life of Per¬ 
sius are scanty, but they are sufficient to show him 
in a very favourable light. Amid prevailing corrup¬ 
tion, he maintained a high moral character. He con- 
jistently applied his principles as a Stoic to the pur¬ 
poses of self-discipline. His acquaintance with men 
and things was the result of private study more than 
of actual converse with the world, so that, as his wri¬ 
tings testify, he viewed human life as he thought it 
should be, rather than as it really was. Different opin¬ 
ions are formed of Persius as a satirical poet. Quin- 
1016 


tilian and Martial, with some of the early Christiav 
writers, bear a high testimony to his merits, as do like¬ 
wise several modern critics. Others consider him not 
worth reading. Gifford, who studied him thoroughly, 
says, among many eulogies of him, “ His life may be 
contemplated with unabated pleasure ; the virtue he 
recommends he practised in the fullest extent; and, at 
an age when few have acquired a determinate charac¬ 
ter, he left behind him an established reputation for 
genius, learning, and worth.”—The works of Persius 
consist of six satires, with a prologue. The metre ot 
the latter is of the kind called Choliambic (lame Iam¬ 
bic), being an Iambic trimeter, with a spondee in the 
sixth place instead of an iambus. The Satires contain 
altogether only 650 hexameters ; and in some manu¬ 
scripts they are given as one continuous work. Wheth¬ 
er Persius wrote more than we now possess, as the 
author of his life attributed to Suetonius affirms, we 
know not; but since Quintilian and Martial speak of 
his claims to distinction, though he left “ only one 
book,” we should conclude that no other production 
of his was known in their time. The chief defect of 
Persius is an affected obscurity of style, which is so 
great and so general that there are few scholars who 
read these performances for the first time, whose prog¬ 
ress is not arrested at almost every line by some diffi¬ 
culty that presents itself. It has been conjectured, 
and not without some show of reason, that one of the 
causes of the great obscurity of Persius is the caution 
with which he constantly conceals his attacks upon 
Nero. The scholiast, moreover, expressly states, with 
regard to several verses of the poet, that they were 
intended for the emperor. This may be a sufficient 
apology for Persius as far as Nero is concerned ; but 
why allow the same obscurity to pervade the rest of 
his poem '] The Satires of Persius would, in fact, be 
absolutely unintelligible for us, if we had not the la¬ 
bours of an ancient scholiast, or, rather, a collection 
of extracts from several scholiasts, to guide us ; and 
even with this aid we are frequently unable to com¬ 
prehend the meaning of the satirist. The conclusion 
seems irresistible, that much of this obscurity is owing 
to the peculiar character of the poet’s mind, to his af¬ 
fected conciseness, and to the show of erudition which 
he is so fond of exhibiting. Some critics, who con¬ 
demn the negligent style of Horace, give the prefer¬ 
ence to Persius as a satirist on account of the greater 
harmony of his hexameters. Melody of diction, how¬ 
ever, cannot compensate for the want of perspicuity ; 
besides, the style of Horace, in his satires, is purpose¬ 
ly made to approximate to that of familiar life. I* 
must appear surprising that Persius is so reserved re 
specting the gross vices and immorality of the age in 
which he lived. The best way of accounting for this 
is to ascribe it to the retired life led by the youthful 
poet in the bosom of a virtuous family, and his conse¬ 
quent want of experience in the excesses of the day. 
The best editions of Persius are, that of Isaac Casau- 
bon, revised by his son Meric, Lend., 1647, 4to ; Bond, 
Norib., 1631, 8vo ; Koenig, Gbtt., 1803, 8vo, and 
also with Rupert’s edition of Juvenal, Glasg., 1825. 

Pertinax, Publius Helvius, a Roman emperor af¬ 
ter the death of Comrnodus, was born about A.D. 126, 
at Villa Martis, near Alba Pompeia, on the banks of 
the Tanarus, in the modern Piedmonf. His father 
was a freedman, who dealt in charcoal, an important 
article of fuel in Italy even at the present day. He 
received from his parent a good education, and was 
placed by him under the tuition of Sulpicius A poll i- 
naris, a celebrated grammarian, who is repeatedly men¬ 
tioned by Aulus Gellius. Pertinax became a proficient 
in the Greek and Roman languages ; and, after the 
death of his master, he taught grammar himself. But, 
being dissatisfied with the small profits of his profes¬ 
sion, he entered the army ; and, being assisted by the 
interest of Lollianus Avitus, a man of consular fami- 






PER 


P E S 


ly, and his father’s patronus , he was promoted to a 
command. He was sent to Syria at the head of a co¬ 
hort., and served with distinction against the Parthians, 
under L. Verus, the colleague of Marcus Aurelius. 
He was afterward sent to Britain, where he-remained 
for some time. He subsequently served in Moesia, 
Germany, and Dacia, but, upon some suspicion of his 
f.delity, he was recalled by Marcus Aurelius. Having 
cleared himself, he was made praetor, and commander 
of the first legion, and obtained the rank of senator. 
Being sent to Rhaetia and Noricum, he drove away the 
hostile German tribes. His next promotion was to the 
consulate, and he publicly received the praise of Mar¬ 
cus Aurelius, in the senate and in the camp, for his 
distinguished services. In Syria he assisted in re¬ 
pressing the revolt of Avitus Cassius. He was next 
removed to the command of the legions on the Dan¬ 
ube, and was made governor of Moesia and Dacia, and 
afterward returned to Syria as governor, where he re¬ 
gained until the death of Marcus. Capitolinus says, 
that his conduct was irreprehensible till the time of his 
Syrian government, when he enriched himself, and his 
conduct became the subject of popular censure. On 
his return to Rome, he was banished by Perennis, the 
favourite of Commodus, to his native country, Ligu¬ 
ria. Here he adorned Villa Martis with sumptuous 
buildings, in the midst of which, however, he left his 
humble, paternal cottage untouched. He remained 
three years in Liguria. After the death of Perennis, 
Commodus commissioned him to proceed to Britain, 
where the licentiousness of the troops had degenerated 
into mutiny. On his arrival, the soldiers wished to sa¬ 
lute him as emperor, and were with difficulty prevent¬ 
ed by Pertinax, who seems to have found the disci¬ 
pline of the legions in a most deplorable state. One of 
the legions revolted against him ; and, in trying to re¬ 
press the revolt, he was wounded and left among the 
dead.- On his recovery he punished the mutineers, 
and solicited the emperor for his recall, as his attempts 
at restoring discipline had rendered him obnoxious to 
the army. He was then sent as proconsul to Africa, 
and was afterward made prefect of Rome, in which of¬ 
fice he showed much moderation and humanity. Af¬ 
ter the murder of Commodus, two of the conspirators, 
Lastus and Electus, went to Pertinax and offered him 
the empire, which the latter at first refused, but after¬ 
ward accepted, and was proclaimed emperor by the 
senate on the night previous to the first of January, 
A.D. 193. In the speech which Pertinax delivered 
on the occasion, he said something complimentary to 
Laetus, to whom he owed the empire, on which Q. 
Sosius Falco, one of the consuls, observed, that it was 
easy to foresee what kind of an emperor he would 
make, if he allowed the ministers of the atrocities of 
Commodus to retain their places. Pertinax mildly re¬ 
plied, “ You are but a young consul, and do not yet 
know the necessity of forgiving. These men have 
obeyed the orders of their master Commodus, but they 
did it reluctantly, as they have shown whenever they 
had an opportunity.” He then repaired to the impe¬ 
rial palace, where he gave a banquet to the magistrates 
and principal senators, according to ancient custom. 
The historian Dio Cassius was one of the guests. 
Pertinax recalled those who had been exiled for trea¬ 
son under Commodus, and cleared from obloquy the 
memory of those who had been unjustly put to death. 
But his attempts to restore discipline in the army alien¬ 
ated the affections of the soldiers, who had been ac¬ 
customed to license during the reign of Commodus. 
As he found the treasury empty, he sold the statues, 
the plate, and all the valuable objects amassed by his 
predecessor. By this means he collected money to 
pay the praetorians, and to make the usual gifts to the 
people of Rome. He publicly declared that he would 
receive no legacies or inheritance from any one, and 
he abolished several taxes and tolls which had been 
6 N 


imposed by Commodus. Pertinax was cherished n y 
the senate and people ; but the turbulent praetorians, 
secretly encouraged by the traitor Laetus, conspired 
against the new emperor. After offering the empire 
to several persons, they went to the palace three hum 
dred in number. The friends of Pertinax urged birr, 
to conceal himself until the storm had passed ; but the 
emperor said that such conduct would be unworthy of 
his rank ; and he appeared before the mutineers, and 
calmly remonstrated with them upon the guilt of their 
attempt. His words were making an impression upon 
them, when one of the soldiers, a German by birth, 
threw his spear at him, and wounded him in the breast. 
Pertinax then covered his face, and, praying the gods 
to avenge his murder, was slain by the other soldiers. 
Electus alone defended him as long as he could, and 
was killed with him. The soldiers cut off the head of 
Pertinax and carried it into their camp, and then put 
up the empire at auction, offering it to the highest bid¬ 
der. It was purchased by Didius Julianus. Pertinax 
was 67 years of age, and had reigned 87 days. ( Cap¬ 
itol ., Vit. Pert. — l)io Cass., 73, 1.— Encycl. Useful 
Knowl., vol. 17, p. 509.) 

Pep.usia, now Perugia , one of the most ancient and 
distinguished cities of Etruria, situate at the south¬ 
eastern extremity of Lacus Trasymenus, or Lago di 
Perugia. The era of its foundation long preceded 
that of Rome, though the precise period cannot be as¬ 
certained with certainty. In conjunction with the 
other Etrurian states, it long resisted the Roman arms, 
but, when reduced, it became a powerful and wealthy 
ally. It was a Roman colony about 709 A.U.C.. 
under the consulship of C. Vibius Pansa ; and, some 
years after, sustained a memorable siege, in which Am 
tony held out against Octavius Caesar, but was at last 
forced by famine to surrender. On this occasion, 
many of the Perusians were put to death, and the 
city was accidentally burned ; a madman having set 
fire to his own house, a general conflagration ensued. 
( Appian , Bell. Civ., 5, 49. — Compare Veil. Palcrc., 
2, 74.— Floras, 4, 5.— Suet., Vit. Aug., 96.) Pe- 
rusia appears, however, to have risen again from its 
ruins, according to Appian and Dio Cassius (48, 15); 
and ynder the Emperor Justinian we find it main¬ 
taining a successful siege against the Goths. ( Cra¬ 
mer's Ancient Italy , vol. 1, p. 219.) 

Pescennicjs. Vid. Niger. 

Pessinus (gen. -untis; in Greek HeacLvovq, gen. 
-ovvroe), a city of Ga-latia, on the river Sangarius, and 
near the western confines, according to D’Anville’a 
map. It was of very early origin, but chiefly famous 
on account of the worship of Cybele. Strabo says, 
that Mount Dindymus (whence she was named Din 
dymene) rose above the town. So great was the 
fame of the shrine and statue of the goddess, that the 
Romans, enjoined, as it is said, by the Sibylline books, 
caused the latter to be conveyed to Rome, since the 
safety of the state was declared to depend on its re¬ 
moval to Italy. A special embassy was sent to King 
Attalus, to request his assistance on this occasion : 
this sovereign received the Roman deputies with grea/ 
kindness and hospitality, and, having conveyed them 
to Pessinus, obtained for them permission to remove 
the statue of the mother of the gods, which was no 
thing else but a great stone. On its arrival at Rome, 
it was received with great pomp apd ceremony by the 
Roman senate and people, headed by Scipio Nasica, 
who had been selected for this office by the national 
voice aa-the best citizen, according to the injunction 
of the Pythian orac/e. This took place in the year 
547 U.C., near the close of the second Punic war 
( Liv., 29, 10, seqq. — Strab., 567.) Stophanus of By 
zantium affirms, that Pessinus originally bore the name 
of Arabyza, when the district in which it stood be 
longed to the Caucones; but he does not mention 
from what author he derives this information. ( Steph. 

1017 





PE T 


PET 


s. v. ’A/)d6v£a.) Herodian and Ammianus give 
various deiivations of the name of Pessinus, which are 
not worth repeating. {Herod., 1, 11.— Ammian. Mar- 
cell., 22, 22.—Compare Sleph. Byz., s. v. TLeafTLvovg.) 
It would seem that the inhabitants of Pessinus, after 
parting with the image of their goddess to the Ro¬ 
mans, had still another one in store, for we learn from 
Livy, that the worship of Cybele was still observed in 
this city after its occupation by the Gauls, since the 
priests of the goddess are said to have sent a deputa¬ 
tion to the army of Manlius, when on the banks of the 
Sangarius. {Livy, 38, 18.) Polybius mentions the 
names of the individuals who then presided over the 
worship and temple of Cybele. {Polyb., fragm., 20, 
4.) In the fourth century, also, the Emperor Julian 
turned away from his line of march against the Per¬ 
sians, for the purpose of visiting the shrine. {Amm. 
Marccll., 22, 9.)—Pessinus was the chief city of the 
Tolistoboii, who settled in this part of the country, 
and, according to Strabo’s account, was a place of 
considerable trade. It sank in importance under the 
Romans ; and although Constantine the Great, in his 
new arrangement of the provinces, made Pessinus the 
capital of Western Galatia {Galatia Salutaris. — Hier- 
ocles, p. 697), yet the city gradually disappeared from 
notice after the commencement of the sixth century.— 
Great uncertainty exists with regard to the site of this 
place, since its ruins have not been explored by any 
modern traveller. From the Antonine Itinerary we 
know that it was ninety-three miles from Ancyra, with 
which it communicated through Germa, Vindia, and 
Papiria. Germa, the first of these stations, is known 
to answer to Yerma, on the modern road leading from 
Eski-cker to Ancyra : the Itinerary would lead us to 
place it sixteen miles from that site, towards the San¬ 
garius. The Table Itinerary, on the other hand, gives 
a route from Dorylaeum to Pessinus, by Midasum and 
Tricomia, and allows seventy-seven miles for the whole 
distance. But the road from Dorylreum to Ancyra 
did not pass by Pessinus, but by Archelaiutn and Ger¬ 
ma, as appears from another route in the Antonine 
Itinerary (p. 202), so that it is evident that Pessinus 
could not have been situated where Colonel Leake 
would place it, beyond Juliopolis, or Gordium, on the 
right bank of the Sangarius, and near its junction with 
the Hierus, as it would then have been exactly on the 
road to Ancyra, and such a route as that by Germa 
would never have been given in the Antonine Itine¬ 
rary. We ought therefore, perhaps, to look for the 
ruins of Pessinus not far from the left bank of the 
Sangarius, somewhere in the great angle it makes be¬ 
tween its junction with the Yerma and the Pursek. 
In Lapie’s map, the ruins of Pessinus are laid down in 
the direction which we have just mentioned, on a site 
called Kahe, but the authority for this is not given. 
{Cramer' 1 s Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 86, seqq. — Leake's 
Tour, p. 88, seqq.) —The temple of Cybele at Pessi¬ 
nus, as also its porticoes, were of white marble, and 
surrounded by a beautiful grove. The city was in¬ 
debted for these decorations to the kings of Perga- 
mus. The priests of the goddess were at one time 
high in rank and dignity, and possessed of great privi¬ 
leges and emoluments. {Slrab., 567.) 

Petilia, I. a town of Italy, in the territory of the 
Bruttii, or. the coast of the Tarentine Gulf, and to the 
north of Crotona. It was fabled to have been settled 
by Philoctetes after the Trojan war. ( Virg., 2En., 

o, 401.) In the opinion of the most judicious and 
best informed topographers, it occupied the situation 
of the modern Strongoli. {Holsten., ad Steph. Byz., 

p. 307. llomanelli, vol. 1, p. 206.) This small town, 
of whose earlier history we have no particulars, gave 
a striking proof of its fidelity to the Romans in the 
second Punic war, when it refused to follow the ex¬ 
ample of the other Bruttian cities in joining the Car¬ 
thaginians. In consequence of this resolution, it was 

1018 


besieged by Hannibal, and, though unassisted bv ttw 
Romans, it held out until reduced to the last extrem¬ 
ity of famine; nor was it till all the leather in the 
town, as well as the bark and young shoots of trees, 
and the grass in the streets, had been consumed for 
subsistence, that they at length surrendered. ( Vel. 
Paterc., 6, 6.— Liv., 23, 30.) Ptolemy incorrectly 
classes Petilia with the inland towns of Magna Graicia 
(p. 67), and Strabo confounds it with the Lucanian 
Petilia. {Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 389.)—II. 
A town of Lucania, confounded by Strabo with the 
Bruttian Petilia. It is supposed to have been situated 
on what is now the Manic della Stella, not far from 
Paesturn. {Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 368.) 

Petilius, an individual at Rome, surnamed Capi- 
tolinus. According to the scholiasts on Horace {Sat., 
1, 4, 94), he had been governor of the Capitol. They 
add, that he was accused of having stolen, during his 
office, a gold crown consecrated to Jupiter, and that, 
having plead his cause in person, he was acquitted by 
the judges in order to gratify Augustus, with whom 
he was on friendly terms. Hence, they say, arose his 
surname of Capitolinas. One part, at least, of the 
story is incorrect, since the Capilolini were a branch 
of the Petilian family long before this. (Compare 
Vaillant, Num. Fam. Rom , vol. 2, p. 222.) What 
degree of credit is due to the rest of the narrative it 
is hard to say. A full examination of the whole point 
is made by Wieland {ad Horat., 1. c.). 

Petosikis, a celebrated astrologer and philosopher 
of Egypt. He wrote, according to Suidas, an astro¬ 
logical work, compiled from the sacred books ; a trea¬ 
tise concerning the mysteries of the Egyptians, &c. 
{Suidas, s. v. — Pliny, 2, 23.— Juv , 6, 581.— Athe- 
nceus, 3, p. 114— Jacobs, ad Anthol. Gr., vol. 2, pt. 
2, p. 470. — Salmas., de Ann. Clim., p. 66, 353.) 
Ptolemy everywhere calls him ’A pxatoq. and says that 
he and Necepsus were the authors rf/q KAiyaKTypiKyq 
uyoyijq, that is, of the art of computing a perscn’s 
nativity from an enumeration of “ climacteric years,” 
reference being also had at the same time to the posi¬ 
tion of the stars. {Salmas., 1. c.) 

Petra, I. a city of Arabia, the capital of the Na- 
bathcei, and giving name to the division of the country 
called Arabia Petraea. It was situate a short distance 
below the southern boundary of Palestine. The ordi¬ 
nary form of the name is Petra (?) Ilerpa); Josephus, 
however, in some places gives the neuter plural (rd 
n erpti), and many of the Church-fathers the feminine 
plural Petra, {ai lltrpai). The appellation given to 
the city originated in the peculiar nature of its situa¬ 
tion. It stood on an elevated plain, and was well sup¬ 
plied with fountains and trees; but all around were 
rocks, which only allowed an access to the place on 
one side, and that a difficult one. Hence the name of 
the place, from tt erpa, “ a rock.” The country be¬ 
yond this, especially towards the borders of Palestine, 
was a continued sandy waste. According to Diodo¬ 
rus Siculus (19, 55), there was no city in this quar¬ 
ter in the time of Antigonus, but only a place strongly 
fortified by nature, and supplied with numerous caves 
that were used as dwellings. Here, upon a rock {erri 
rivoq 7 rerpaq), the Nabathsei were accustomed to leave 
their families and plunder whenever they went on dis¬ 
tant expeditions, and this served them as a stronghold. 
The troops of Antigonus, on their sudden inroad into 
the country, found in this spot a large quantity of 
frankincense and myrrh, and also five hundred talents 
in silver. {Diod., 1. c.) The incense and mvrrh show 
that they carried on an overland traffic with the neigh¬ 
bouring communities, and it is to this same traffic that 
the city of Petra owed its origin. All subsequent wri¬ 
ters speak of Petra as a city, and an important place 
of trade. Eckhel gives a coin, on which we find the 
inscription 'A Spiuvy flsTpa MqTpoTcoTaq. If the coin 
be genuine, »t shows that in the time of the Emoenr 




PET 


PET 


Hadrian, Petra not only belonged to ^e Roi ia^\. way, 
but had also adopted the name of its ct. epwror. {Dio 
Cass., 68, 14.) The Syrians (and the Church fatners) 
-all this place JRhekem ('Pe/ce/r) which also denotes 
“ a roc k and Arhekeme {’ApeKipy .— Josephus, Ant. 
Jud., 4, 7). Josephus states that Aaron died in its 
neighbourhood ; he calls it in this passage Arke ( "Apia]) 
by contraction. {Ant. Jud., 4, 4.) St. Jerome makes 
it the same with the Sela of Scripture (2 Kings, 14, 
7). Traces of the Syrian name remained at a late 
period, and we find the place mentioned by Abulfeda 
under the appellation of Ar Hakim, with the remark 
that there were dwellings here cut'out of the rock. 
D’Anville names it incorrectly Karak. Petra seems 
not to have continued a place of trade for an) very loner 
time ; at least Aininianus Marcellinus is silent re¬ 
specting it, though he enumerates very carefully the 
important places in this region. Petra lay, according 
to Diodorus (19, 108), at the distance of 300 stadia 
from the Dead Sea; and, according to Strabo (779), 
three or four days’ journey, or from twelve to sixteen 
geographical miles in a southern direction from Jeri¬ 
cho.— 1 he remains of the ancient city were for a long 
time undiscovered by modern travellers. Burckhardt 
and Bane, at last, discovered them at Wady Moussa, 
in 1812, but could not give them a close examination 
through fear of the Arabs. In 1828, two French 
travellers, De la Borde and Linant, visited the spot, 
and gave a description of \he ruins ; but the best and 
fullest account is that afforded by the pages of Mr. 
Stephens, who was at Petra in 1836. ( Incidents of 

Travel, vol. 2, p. 50, seqq. — Mannert, Geogr., vol. 
6, pt. 1, p. 137, 2 d ed .)— II. A fortress of Macedo¬ 
nia, among the mountains beyond Lihethra, the pos¬ 
session of which was disputed by the Perrhaebi of 
Thessaly and the kings of Macedonia. (Liv., 39, 26. 
— Id., 44, 32.) It commanded a pass which led to 
Pythium in Thessaly by the back of Olympus.—III. 
A fortress on Mount Haemus. {Liv., 40, 22.) — IV. 
A Corinthian borough or village, of which Eetion, the 
father of Cypselus, was a native. {Herod., 5, 91.) — 
V. A rock-fortress in Sogdiana, taken by Alexander. 
{Qtiint. Curt., 7, 11.) It was also called Oxi Petra, 
probably from its being near the river Oxus. 

Petr^ea, one of the divisions of Arabia, so called, 
not, as is commonly supposed, from its stony or rocky 
character {irerpa, “ a rock,” “ a stone”), but from its 
celebrated emporium Petra. ( Vid. Petra, I.) It was 
bounded on the east by Arabia Deserta, on the west 
bv Egypt, and the Mediterranean, on the south by the 
Red Sea, which here divides and runs north in two 
branches, and on the north by Palestine. This coun¬ 
try contained the southern Edomites, the Amalekites, 
the Cushites, who are improperly called the Ethiopi¬ 
ans, the Hivites, &c. Their descendants are at pres¬ 
ent known by the general name of Arabians ; but it is 
of consequence to notice the ancient inhabitants as they 
are mentioned in the text of Scripture. (Fid. Arabia.) 

Petreius, Marcus, a Roman commander. He was 
lieutenant to the consul C. Antonius, and was intrust¬ 
ed by the latter, who feigned indisposition, with the 
command of the Roman forces against the army of 
Catiline, whom he totally defeated. {Sail., Bell. Cat., 
c. 59, seq.) Faithful to the cause of the republic, he 
became one of Pompey’s lieutenants in Spain during 
the civil contest, and endeavoured, in conjunction with 
Afranius, to oppose the progress of Caesar in that coun¬ 
try. They were both, however, compelled to surren¬ 
der {Cats., Bell. Civ., 1, 38, seqq.), and retired after 
this to Greece, where they joined the army of Pom- 
pey. After the battle of Pharsalia, Petreius fled to 
Patrae, where Cato afforded him an asylum ; and he 
subsequently accompanied Scipio into Africa. Here 
again, however, the defeat at Thapsus disappointed his 
hopes, and he fell, according to Livy, by his own hand, 
after having performed the same sad office for Juba, 


the partner of his flight. {Liv., Epit., 114.) Ac¬ 
cording to Hirtius, however, Juba and Petreius hav¬ 
ing agreed to die by each others’ hands, the African 
prince easily killed his Roman friend, who was already 
advanced in years ; but having attempted, without ef¬ 
fect, to slay himself, persuaded one of his own slaves t«» 
become his executioner. {Hirtius, Bell. Afric., c. 94. 
—Compare Flcrus, 4, 2, 69.— Appian, Bell. Civ , 2, 
100.— Senec., Suas., 7. — Id., de Provid., 2.) 

Petrinum, a village in the district of Sinuessa, in 
Italy. {Hor., Epist., 1, 5, 5.) 

Petrocokii, a Gallic tribe, belonging originally to 
Celtic Gaul, but subsequently forming part of Gallia 
Aquitamca, when this last was detached from Celtica. 
Their territory corresponded to the modern Perigord, 
and their capital Petrocorii answers to the present 
Perigneux. Both these modern names retain mani¬ 
fest traces of the ancient appellation. {Cces., B. G ., 
7, 75.'— Lemaire, Ind. Geogr. ad Cces., s. v.) 

Petronius, Titus, surnamed Arbiter, because Nero 
had named him Arbiter elegantice. He was born, ac¬ 
cording to some modern scholars, at Massilia ( Mar¬ 
seille ) or somewhere in its vicinity, of a good family, 
but received his education at Rome-. No one knew 
better how to unite the love of letters with the most 
unrestrained desire for pleasure. His portrait has been 
drawn by Tacitus with, the hand of a master. It must 
be confessed, however, that the Petronius of Tacitus 
has the praenomen of Caius, and the Petronius of whom 
we are now treating that of Titus. There prevail.?, 
indeed, much uncertainty respecting the pramomen of 
Petronius ; Pliny (37, 7) calls the Petronius of Taci¬ 
tus, Titus ; while the scholiast on Juvenal gives him 
the name of Publius.—We will here insert the pas 
sage of the historian above mentioned, which gives s.*? 
graphic a description of the character of the man: 

“ He passed his days in sleep, and his nights in busi 
ness or pleasure. Indolence was at once his passkn 
and his road to fatne. What others did by vigour ar a 
industry, he accomplished by his love of pleasure and 
luxurious ease. Unlike the men who profess to un¬ 
derstand social enjoyment, and ruin their fortunes, ho 
led a life of expense without profusion ; an epicure, 
yet not a prodigal; addicted to his appetites, but with 
taste and judgment; a refined and elegant voluptuary. 
Gay and airy in his conversation, he charmed by a cer¬ 
tain graceful negligence, the more engaging as it flow¬ 
ed from the natural frankness of his disposition. With 
all his delicacy and careless ease, he showed when h.' 
was governor of Bithynia, and afterward in the year 
of his consulship, that vigour of mind and softness of 
manners may well unite in the same person. From 
his public station he returned to his usual gratifica¬ 
tions, fond of vice, or of pleasures that bordered upon 
it. His gayety recommended him to the notice of the 
prince. Being in favour at court, and cherished as ths? 
companion of Nero in all his select parties, he was al¬ 
lowed to be the arbiter of taste and elegance. With¬ 
out the sanction of Petronius nothing was exquisite, 
nothing rare or delicious. Hence the jealousy of Ti- 
gellinus, who dreaded a rival, in the good graces of the 
emperor almost his equal, in the science of luxury 
his superior. Tigellinus determined to work his down¬ 
fall, and accordingly addressed himself to the cruelty 
of the prince ; that master passion to which all other 
affections and every motive were sure to give way. 
He charged Petronius with having lived in close inti¬ 
macy with Saevinus the conspirator; and, to give col¬ 
our to that assertion, he bribed a slave to turn inform¬ 
er against his master. The rest of the domestics were 
loaded with irons. Nor was Petronius suffered to 
make his defence. Nero at that time happened to be 
on one of his excursions into Campania. Petronius 
had followed him as far as Cumae, but was not allow¬ 
ed to proceed farther than that place. He seemed to 
linger in doubt and fear, and vet he was not in a hur 

1019 




PETRONIUS. 


PETRONIUS. 


ry to leave a world which he loved. He opened his 
veins and closed them again, at intervals losing a small 
quantity of blood, then binding up the orifice, as his 
own inclinations prompted. He conversed during the 
whole time with his usual gayety, never changing his 
habitual manner, nor talking sentences to show his 
contempt of death. He listened to his friends, who 
endeavoured to entertain him, not with grave discour¬ 
ses on the immortality of the soul or. the moral wisdom 
of philosophers, but with strains of poetry, and verses 
of a gay and natural turn. He distributed presents to 
some of his servants, and ordered others to be chastised. 
He walked out for his amusement, and even lay down 
to sleep. In his last scene of life he acted with such 
calm tranquillity, that his death, though an act of ne¬ 
cessity, seemed no more than the decline of nature. 
In his will, he scorned to follow the example of others, 
who, like himself, died under the tyrant’s stroke : he 
neither flattered the emperor, nor Tigellinus, nor any 
of the creatures of the court; but having written, under 
the fictitious names of profligate men and women, a nar¬ 
rative of Nero’s debauchery, and his new modes of vice, 
he had the spirit to send to the emperor the tablets, 
sealed with his own seal, which he took care to break, 
that, after his death, it might not be used for the destruc¬ 
tion of any person whatever.” ( Tacitus, Ann., 16, 18, 
seqq .)—Some critics have thought that the Petronius 
to whom this passage refers is not the same with the 
author of the work that has come down to us, entitled 
Satyricon. Their chief argument is, that the work 
which, according to Tacitus, Petronius, when dying, 
caused to be sent to Nero, was written on portable 
tablets ( codicilli ), a circumstance that militates against 
the idea of its being a production of any length. It is 
urged, moreover, that the accomplices in the tyrant’s 
debaucheries and crimes were named in the work, 
whereas the actors in the Satyricon bear fictitious 
names. It is evident, indeed, that the Satyricon is 
not the piece of which Tacitus makes mention, and 
that Nero caused the latter to be destroyed ; but it 
would seem that the critics who advocate this opinion 
go too far when they deny also the identity of the wri¬ 
ters. What is there to prevent our supposing that 
Petronius, having now no measure to keep with the 
world, amused himself with tracing on his testament¬ 
ary tablets the scandalous lives of the individuals, 
whose general manners he was content with depict¬ 
ing in his larger work 1 Those critics, on the other 
hand, who do not see in the author of the Satyricon 
the friend and intimate companion of Nero, are divided 
in opinion as to the period when he lived. Some car¬ 
ry him up as high as the era of Augustus, while others 
place him under the Antonines, or even in the fourth 
century. Both parties ground their respective argu¬ 
ments on his style. The former discover in it the 
purity of the golden age, while the latter find it mark¬ 
ed with many low and trivial expressions, and with 
many solecisms that indicate the decline of the language. 
Without wishing to throw the blame of some of these 
faults on the manuscript itself, which is in so deplora¬ 
ble a state that many passages remain incapable of be¬ 
ing deciphered, notwithstanding all the efforts of the 
commentators, may we not suppose that these pretend¬ 
ed solecisms have been purposely put by the author in 
the mouths of individuals of the lower class, and that 
the unusual words employed by him only appear such 
to us, because we are unacquainted with the language of 
debauchery and intoxication among the Romans'! — 
Some critics, surprised that Seneca makes no mention 
of Petronius, think that this silence is owing to the cir¬ 
cumstance of that philosopher’s believing himself to be 
alluded to in the following lines aimed by Petronius 
against the Stoics : 

“Ipsi qui cynica traducunt tempora scena, 
Nonnunquam nummis vender e verba solent .” 

1020 


If it were certain, as some suppose, that Terentianui 
Maurus was the contemporary of Martial, there would 
remain but little doubt respecting the epoch when Pe¬ 
tronius lived, since Terentianus cites him once under 
the name of Arbiter, and another time under that of 
Petronius. In 1770, a learned Neapolitan, Ignarra, 
supported, with some new reasons, the opinion that Pe¬ 
tronius lived towards the end of the era of the Anto¬ 
nines. It appears more than probable, he maintains, 
that the Satyricon was written in the same city in which 
the scene of the banquet of Trimalcion is laid, and 
that its object is to depict the manners of the Nea¬ 
politans. Many hellenisms and solecisms, some of 
which still remain among the lower orders at Naples, 
prove, he thinks, that Petronius was either born in that 
city, or received his education there. As to the peri¬ 
od in which he lived, he indicates it himself, according 
to Ignarra, in the 44th, 57th, and 76th chapters, and 
elsewhere, by giving to the city of Naples the title of 
colony, or in speaking of the colonial magistrates. Ig¬ 
narra then proceeds to show that Naples only became 
a Roman colony towards the close of the reign of Corn- 
modus. Finally, he remarks that Petronius, in the 
76th chapter, makes mention of the mathematician 
Serapion, who lived under Caracalla, as appears from 
a passage in Dio Cassius (78, 4). Ignarra thinks that 
Petronius, born under the Antonines, had, by a careful 
study of good models, appropriated to himself much of 
the elegance of the golden age, without getting entire¬ 
ly rid of the corruption of that in which he happen¬ 
ed to live. ( De Palcestra Neapolitana, &c., p. 182, 
seqq.) Wyttenbach appears to favour the opinion of 
Ignarra, in some of its features (Bibl. Grit., pt. 5, p. 
84, seqq.) ; but many arguments might be cited against 
it.—Some critics, again, have thought that the author 
of the Satyricon was not called Petronius, but that, as 
the treatise on the art of cookery was entitled Apicius, 
and the Distichs Cato, so this Menippeau Satire has 
been styled Petronius by the author : this opinion, 
however, is altogether untenable.—The Satyricon of 
Petronius is written in the Yarronian or Menippean 
style of satire. We have merely a fragment of it, or, 
to speak more correctly, a succession of fragments, 
which some lover of loose and indecent reading would 
seem to have, selected from the work in the middle 
ages, for it is said that the Satyricon existed entire in 
the twelfth century. The fragments that remain form 
so many episodes : the most witty of these is the well 
known history of the Ephesian Matron ; but the long 
est, and the one most descriptive of the manners of 
the day, is the Banquet of Trimalcion, a ridiculous per 
sonage, intended, as some think, to represent the Em 
peror Claudius. This fragment was found in the 17th 
century at Trau in Dalmatia, in the library of a certain 
Nicolaus Cippius, and was published for the first time 
at Padua, in 1662. It gave rise to a very warm con¬ 
test among the scholars of the day. Adrien de Valois 
and Wagenseil attacked its authenticity, which was 
defended in its turn by Petit, the celebrated physician, 
in a treatise in which he assumed the name of Mari- 
nus Statileius. The manuscript was sent to Rome 
and examined by some of the first critics of the day. 

It passed after this into the library of the King of 
France. At present there is no doubt as to its au¬ 
thenticity.— The noise which this discovery made in 
the literary world induced a French officer named No¬ 
dot to attempt an imposture, which did not, however, 
answer his hopes. He published, in 1693, at Rotter¬ 
dam, a pretended Petronius, complete in all its parts, 
which he said had been found at Belgrade, in 1688, by 
a certain Dupin. At first, some members of the acad¬ 
emies of Nimes and Arles suffered themselves to be 
imposed upon ; the fraud, however, was soon discov¬ 
ered. We must not confound with this last-mention- 
ed individual a Spaniard named Marchena, who, in 
1800, amused himself with publishing a new fragmen 



P HiE 


PH;E 


of Petronius, found, according to him, in the library 
at St. Gall. {Repertoire <ie Litter. Anc ., vol. 1, p. 
239.)—A poem in 295 verses, on the fall of the Ro¬ 
man republic, forms a fine episode to the Satyricon of 
Petronius. The Satyricon itself, it may be remarked, 
in concluding, is admirable for the truth with which 
the author delineates the characters of his personages. 
It contains many pleasing pictures, full of irony ; and 
it is characterized by great spirit and gayety of man¬ 
ner ; but it is to be regretted that the author has em¬ 
ployed his abilities on a subject so truly immoral and 
disgusting. The style is rich, picturesque, and ener¬ 
getic ; but often obscure and difficult, either from the 
unusual words w 7 hich we meet with in it, or by reason 
of the corrupt state of the text. The best edition is 
that of Barman, 4to, Ultraj., 1709 ; to which may be 
added that of Reinesius, 1731, 8vo, and that of C. G. 
Anton. Lips., 1781, 8vo. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. Rom., 
vol. 2, p. 416, seqq. — B'dhr, Gesch. Rom. Lit., vol. 1, 
p. 577, seqq.) 

Peuce, a name applied to the land insulated by the 
two principal arms of the Danube at its mouth. The 
ancient appellation still partly remains in that of Pic- 
zina. It was called Peuce from Ttevny, a pine-tree, 
with which species of tree it abounded. From this 
island the Peucim, who dwelt in and adjacent to it, de¬ 
rived their name. We find them reappearing in the 
Lower Empire, under the names of Pieziniges and 
Patzinacites. {Lucan, 3, 202.— Plin., 4, 12.) 

Peucetia, a region of Apulia, on the coast, below 
Daunia. The Peucetii, according to Dionysius of 
Halicarnassus, derived their name from Peucetius, son 
of Lycaon, king of Arcadia,who, with his brother CEno- 
trus, migrated to Italy seventeen generations before 
the siege of Troy. But modern critics have felt little 
disposed to give credit to a story, the improbability of 
which is so very apparent, whether we look to the 
country whence these pretended settlers are said to 
have come, or the state of navigation at so remote a 
period. {Freret, Mem. de l'Acad., &c., vol. 18, p. 
87.) Had the Peucetii and the CEnotri really been of 
Grecian origin, Dionysius might have adduced better 
evidence of the fact than the genealogies of the Arca¬ 
dian chiefs, cited from Pherecydes. The most re¬ 
spectable authority he could have brought forward on 
this point would unquestionably have been that of An- 
tiochus the Syracusan ; but this historian is only quo¬ 
ted by him in proof of the antiquity of the CEnotri, not 
of their Grecian descent. {Dion. Hal., 1, 2.— Strabo, 
283.— Plin., 3, 11.) The Peucetii are always spoken 
of in history, even by the Greeks themselves, as bar¬ 
barians, who differed in no essential respect from 
the Daunii, Iapyges, and other neighbouring nations. 
f Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 296.) 

Peucim. Vid. Peuce. 

Phacusa, a town ot Egypt, on the Pelusiac arm of 
the Nile. The ruins are found near the modern Tell 
Phakus (hill of Phacusa). {Steph. Byz., s. v.) 

Phacussa, one of the Sporades, now Gaiphonisi. 
{Plin., 4, 12.— Steph. Byz., s. v. fydnovcoa.) 

Ph^eacia, the Homeric name for the island of Cor- 
cyra. {Vid. Corcyra.) When visited by Ulysses, Al- 
cinoiis was its king, and his gardens are beautifully 
described by the poet. The Phajacians are represent¬ 
ed as an easy-tempered and luxurious race, but remark¬ 
able for their skill in navigation. They were fabled 
to have derived their name from Phseax, a son of Nep¬ 
tune. {Horn, Od., 6, 1, seqq. — Id. ib., 7, 1, seqq .— 
Volcker, Homerische Geographic, p. 66.) 

Ph^edon, a native of Elis, and the founder of the 
Eliac school. He was descended from an illustrious 
family ; but had the misfortune early in life to be de¬ 
prived of his patrimony, and sold as a slave at Athens. 
It happened that Socrates, as he passed by the house 
where Phaedon lived, remarked in his countenance tra- 
es of an ingenuous mind, which induced him to per¬ 


suade one of his friends, Alcibiades or Crito, to re 
deem him. From that time Phaedon applied himself 
diligently to the study of moral philosophy under Soc¬ 
rates ; and to the last adhered to his master with the 
most affectionate attachment. He instituted a school 
at Elis after the Socratic model, which was continued 
by Plistanus, an Elian, and afterward bv Menedemus 
of Eretria. One of the dialogues of Plato is named 
after Phaedon, namely, the celebrated one respecting 
the immortality of the soul. {Diog. Laert., 2, 106.— 
Aul. Gell., 2, 18.) 

Phaedra, a daughter of Minos and Pasiphae, who 
married Theseus, by whom she became mother of 
Acamas and Demophoon. {Vid. Hippolytus I.) 

Ph^edrus (or Ph^eder, for the genitive Phadri ad¬ 
mits of either of these forms being the nominative), a 
Latin fabulist. All that we know respecting him is 
obtained from his own productions, for no ancient wri¬ 
ter down to the time of Avienus has made mention of 
him, except, perhaps, on one occasion, Martial. Avi¬ 
enus speaks of him in the preface to his own Fables, 
and his authority can only be combated by the erro¬ 
neous assertion, that the Fables of this latter writer 
himself are the productions of more modern times. 
{Christ. Prolus., de Phad.ro, p. 8.—Compare, on the 
opposite side of the question, the Nachtrage zu Sul 
zer, p. 36, seqq.) Martial also alludes to a Phsedrus 
in one of his epigrams (3, 10). where some very erro¬ 
neously refer the name to an Epicurean philosopher, 
one of Cicero's earlv instructors {Christ. Prolus., p. 
6), and others to a certain writer of mimes. {Farnab. 
ad Martial., 1. c .— Hulsemann, de Cod. Fab. Avian., 
Gott ., 1807.) The whole question turns on the true 
force of the epithet “ improbus,'’’ as applied by Martial 
to Phsedrus, and this has been well discussed by Adry, 
who decides in favour of the Fabulist. {Dissertation 
sur les qnatre MSS. de Phedre, p. 195.— Phadrus, 
ed. Lemaire, vol. 1.) Phasdrus is generally supposed 
to have been a Thracian by birth ; and two passages 
in his writings {Prol., lib. 3, 17, and 54) would seem 
to indicate this. Some of the later editors make him 
a Macedonian, but he can only be called so as far as 
the term Macedonian comprises that of Thracian also. 
{Schwabe, Vit. Phadr.) The year of his birth is un¬ 
known : it is not ascertained either whether he was 
born in slavery, or whether some event deprived him 
of his freedom. The year that Cicero was proconsul 
in Asia, C. Octavios, the father of Augustus, and pro- 
prator in Macedonia, gained a victory over some Thra¬ 
cian clans. It has been conjectured that Phasdrus, ‘ 
still an infant, was among the captives taken on this 
occasion ; but, if this be true, then Phasdrus will have 
written a portion of his fables at the age of more than 
seventy years ; which appears contrary to a passage in 
his work (lib. 4, epil. 8), in which he prays one of his 
patrons not to put off his favours to a period when, 
having reached an advanced age, he would be no long¬ 
er able to enjoy them. However this may be, Phas¬ 
drus was brought to Rome at a very early age, where 
he learned the Latin tongue, which became as famil¬ 
iar to him as his native language. Augustus gave 
him his freedom, and the means of living comfortably 
without the necessity of exertion Under the reign of 
Tiberius he was persecuted by Sejanus, who became 
his accuser and effected his condemnation. The cause 
of Sejanus’s hatred, and the pretext for the accusation, 
are equally unknown. Some commentators, ana, m 
particular, Brotier, think they have discovered the mo¬ 
tive for this persecution in the sixth fable of the first 
book, on the marriage of the sun. They have sup¬ 
posed that by the sun Phiedrus meant to designate Se¬ 
janus, who aspired to the hand of Livilla, widow of the 
son of Tiberius ; but in this fable the allusion is to a 
marriage, not to a project of marriage. It is more 
probable that, in order to render the poet suspected by 
Tiberius, some one had persuaded the tyrant, who 

1021 



PH^EDRUS. 


PH.EDRUS 


since his retirement to the island of Capre®, was be¬ 
come an object of general contempt, that Ph®drus 
meant him, in the second fable of the first book, by 
the log given to the frogs as their king. But, if Ph®- 
drus has indeed represented Tiberius under the alle¬ 
gory of a log, the hydra, which takes its place, will in¬ 
dicate the successor of the monarch, unless we sup¬ 
pose Sejanus to be intended by the reptile : this inter¬ 
pretation, however, appears extremely forced. Titze 
thinks that Ph®drus may have been at first a favourite 
of Sejanus, and afterward involved in his disgrace ; 
and that Eutychus, in the reign of Caligula, had given 
him hopes of a restoration to imperial patronage. This 
theory, however, is contradicted by the prologue to the 
third book of the fables (v. 41.— Titze , Introduct. in 
Phcedr. — Id., de Phcedri vita, scriptis, et usu ).— 
Ph®drus composed five books of fables, containing, in 
all, ninety fables, written in Iambic verse. He has the 
merit of having first made the Romans acquainted with 
the fables of HUsop; not that all his own fables are 
merely translations of those of the latter, but because 
the two thirds of them that appear original, or, at least, 
with the originals of which we are unacquainted, are 
written in the manner of HUsop. Ph®drus deserves 
the praise of invention for the way in which he has ar¬ 
ranged them ; and he is quite as original a poet as 
Fontaine, who, like him, has taken from other sources 
besides the fables of TEsop the materials for a large 
portion of his own. He is distinguished for a precis¬ 
ion, a gracefulness, and a naivete of style and manner 
that have never been surpassed. The air of simplicity 
which characterizes his pieces is the surest guarantee 
of their authenticity, which some critics have contest¬ 
ed. His diction is at the same time remarkable for 
its elegance, though this occasionally is pushed rather 
too far into the regions of refinement. The manu¬ 
scripts of Ph®drus are extremely rare. The one from 
which Pithou (Pithceus) published, in 1596, the ediiio 
princeps of the fables, passed eventually, by marriage, 
into the hands of the Lepelletier family ; and is now 
in the library of M. Lepelletier de Rosanbo ( De Xi- 
vrey, ad. Phcedr., p. 23, scqq. — Id. ib., p. 40, seqq.). 
A second manuscript, which Rigalt used in his edition 
of 1617, was destroyed by fire at Rheims in 1774; 
but we have remaining of this a very accurate colla¬ 
tion. A third one, or, rather, the remains of one, is 
now in the Vatican library, and is said to contain from 
the first to the twenty-first fable of the first book. 
{Notit. Literar. de Codd. MSS., Phcedri, No. 3, de 
Cod. Danielis.) This rarity of manuscripts is one 
cause of the doubts that have been entertained by some 
respecting the authenticity of the fables ascribed to 
him, and even the very existence of the poet. Some 
other circumstances lend weight to these doubts : the 
silence, namely, of the ancient writers concerning Ph®- 
drus, and the positive declaration of Seneca, who re¬ 
marks {Consol, ad Polyb., c. 27) that the Romans had 
never attempted to compose after the manner of the 
iEsopic fables. (“ Non audeo te usque eo producere, ut 
fabellas quoque ct ASsopeos logos, intentatum Romanis 
ingeniis opus, solita tibi venustate connectasN) An¬ 
other argument on this same side of the question is as 
follows : Nicolas Perotti, who, about the middle of 
the 15th century, was archbishop of Manfredonia, and 
one of the patrons of Greek literature in Italy, cites 
in his Cornu Copice a fable which he says he took in 
his early days from the fables of Avienus. (“ Allusit 
ad fabulam , quam nos ex Avieno in fabellas nostras 
adolescentes Iambico carmine transtulimus .” Cornu 
Cop., p. 963, 34, seqq., ed. Basil , 1532, fol.) The 
fable, however, is not in the collection of Avienus, but 
forms the 17th of the 3d book of Ph®drus ; and from 
this inaccuracy of citation, which was regarded as a 
falsehood, some concluded that Perotti was a plagia¬ 
rist, while others regarded Ph®drus as a supposititious 
author. Both these opinions were a little too precip- 
1022 


itate ; and the discovery that was made, at the begia 
ning of the 18th century, of the manuscripts of th# 
fables of Perotti, cleared up at once the whole mys¬ 
tery. One of the titles of this MS. is as follows 
“ Nicolai Perotti Epitome Fabularum JEsopi, Avieni, 
et Phcedri, ” &c. ; and to this are subjoined some 
verses, in which Perotti openly declares that the fables 
are not his, but taken from TEsop, Avienus, and Ph®- 
drus. The fables taken from Ph®drus in this collec¬ 
tion are the 6th, 7th, and 8th of the first book, to¬ 
gether with the epilogue ; a large number of the sec¬ 
ond book; from the 19th to the 24th of the fourth 
book, and the first five of the 5th book. Perotti, there¬ 
fore, is by no means the plagiarist some suppose him 
to be, since he names the authors from whom he bor¬ 
rows. Two other arguments may also be adduced in 
favour of the opinion which makes the fables of Ph®- 
drus much earlier than Perotti’s time : one is afforded 
by a monumental inscription, found at Apulum, in Da¬ 
cia, and consisting of a verse of one of the fables of 
Ph®drus (3, 17.— Mannert, Res Trajani ad Danub., 
etc., p. 78) ; the other argument is deduced from the 
age of the MSS., which is much earlier than the era 
of the Bishop of Manfredonia, and falls in the ninth 
or tenth century. It has been conjectured, and with 
great appearance of probability, that the fables of 
Ph®drus were frequently taken by the writers of the 
twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, and con¬ 
verted into prose, and in this way we are to account 
for the great destruction of MSS.—There is, however, 
another question connected with this subject. The 
manuscript of Perotti, to which we have just alluded as 
having been discovered near the beginning of the eight¬ 
eenth century, had, by some fatality or other, been 
again lost, and remained so until 1808, when it was 
rediscovered at Naples, and in 1809 a supplement of 
32 new fables of Ph®drus (as they were styled) was 
published by Casitto and Jannelli. A literary warfare 
immediately arose respecting the authenticity of these 
productions, in which several eminent scholars took 
part ; and the opinion is now very generally enter¬ 
tained, that they are not, as was at first supposed, the 
composition of Perotti, but of some writer antecedent 
to his time, though by no means from the pen of Ph®- 
drus himself. (Consult Adry, Examen dcs nouvellcs 
fables de Phedre, Paris, 1812. — Phcedrus, cd. Le- 
maire, vol. 1, p. 197, seqq.) —It remains but to add 
a few words in relation to the time when Ph®drus 
published his fables. The main difficulty here arises 
from the words of Seneca, already quoted, and which 
expressly state that the Romans had never attempted 
to compose after the manner of the gEsopic fables. 
Brotier thinks that Seneca makes no mention of Ph®* 
drus, because the latter was a barbarian, not Roman- 
born. This reason, although given also by Fabricius 
and Vossius, is very unsatisfactory. What would we 
say of a writer who, having to speak of the Latin 
comic poets, should omit all mention of Terence be¬ 
cause he was a native of Africa! Vavasseur thinks, 
that, as Ph®drus expresses himself with great free¬ 
dom, his fables were suppressed under Tiberius, Ca¬ 
ligula, Claudius, and Nero, so that Seneca had never 
heard of them. “Perhaps,” he adds, “it was an act 
of pure forgetfulness on his part;” and he seems al¬ 
most induced to believe, that Seneca, through jealousy 
towards an author who had written with so much simpli¬ 
city, and so unlike his own affected manner, has purpose¬ 
ly passed him over in silence. Desbillons, dissatisfied 
with both these reasons, believes that Ph®drus, who 
survived Sejanus, lived to the third year of the’reign 
of Claudius, a period when Seneca, writing his work on 
“Consolation,” might easily say, that the Romans 
lad not as yet any fabulist, since the productions of 
Phmdrus might not yet have been published. This 
explanation is not devoid of probability.—The best 
editions of Ph®drus are, that ofBurmann, Amst., 1698 




P H A 


PHALARIS. 


Lugd. Bad., 1727, 4to, and 1745, 8vo ; that of Bent¬ 
ley, at the end of his Terence, Cantab ., 1726, 4to, 
and Amst., 1727, 4to; that of Brotier, Paris, 1783, 
12tno ; that of Schwabe, Brunsv., 1806, 2 vols. 8vo; 
that of Gail, in Lemaire’s collection, Paris , 1826, 2 
vols. 8vo; and that of Orelli, Turici , 1831, 8vo. 
( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 2, p. 343, seqq. — Bahr, 
Gesch. Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. 308, seqq.) 

Phaethon (Qaiduv), son of Helios and the Ocean- 
nymph Clymene. His claims to a celestial origin 
being disputed by Epaphus, son of Jupiter, Phaethon 
journeyed to the palace of his sire, the sun-god, from 
whom he extracted an unwary oath that he would 
grant him whatever he asked. The ambitious youth 
instantly demanded permission to guide the solar char¬ 
iot for one day, to prove himself thereby the undoubted 
progeny of the sun. Helios, aware of the conse¬ 
quences, remonstrated, but to no purpose. The youth 
persisted, and the god, bound by his oath, reluctantly 
committed the reins to his hands, warning him of the 
dangers of the road, and instructing him how to avoid 
them. Phaethon grasped the reins, the flame-breath¬ 
ing steeds sprang forward, but, soon aware that they 
were not directed by the well-known hand, they ran 
out of the course ; the world was set on fire, and a 
total conflagration would have ensued, had not Jupiter, 
at the prayer of Earth, launched his thunder, and hurled 
the terrified driver from his seat. He fell into the river 
Eridanus. His sisters, the Heliades, as they lament¬ 
ed his fate, were turned into poplar-trees on its banks, 
and their tears, which still continued to flow, became 
amber as they dropped into the stream. Cycnus, the 
friend of the ill-fated Phaethon, also abandoned him¬ 
self to mourning, and at length was changed into a 
swan (kvkvoc;). {Ovid, Met , 1, 750, seqq. — Hygin., 
fab., 152, 154.— Nonnas, Dioirys., 38, 105, 439.— 
Apoll. Rhod., 4, 597, seqq .— Vtrg , JEn., 10, 190.— 
Id., Eclog., 6, 62.) This story was dramatized by 
^Eschylus, in the Heliades, and by Euripides in his 
Phaethon. Some fragments of both plays have been 
preserved. Ovid appears to have followed closely the 
former drama.—The legend of Phaethon is regarded 
by the expounders of mythology at the present day 
as a physical myth, devised to account for the origin 
of the electron , or amber, which seems to have been 
brought from the Baltic to Greece in the very earliest 
■times. The term y'kcKrpov, as Welcker observes, 
resembles yUnrop, an epithet of the sun. In the 
opinion of this last-mentioned writer, the story of 
Phaethon is only the Greek version of a German le¬ 
gend on the subject. The tradition of the people of 
the country was said to he {Apoll. Rhod.. 4, 611), 
that the amber was produced from the tears of the sun- 
god. The Greeks made this sun-god the same with 
their Apollo, and added that he shed these tears when 
he came to the land of the Hyperboreans, an exile from 
heaven on account of his avenging upon the Cyclops 
the fate of his son iEsculapius. But, as this did not 
accord with the Hellenic conception of either Helios 
or Apollo, the Heliades were devised to remove the 
inconsistency. The foundation of the fable lay in the 
circumstance of amber being regarded as a species of 
resin, which drops from the trees that yield it. 'Ihat 
part of the legend which relates to the Eridanus, con¬ 
founds the Po with the true Eridanus in the north of 
Europe. ( Welcker, JEsch. Trilogie, p. 566, seq. — 
Keightley's Mythology, p. 57, seq.) 

PhaethontiXdes or Phaethontides, the sisters of 
Phaethon, changed into poplars. {Vid. Heliades, and 
Phaethon.) 

Phalanthus, a Lacedaemonian, one of the Par- 
thenise, and the leader of the colony to Tarentum. 
{Vid. Parthenias.) 

Phalakis, a tyrant of Agrigentum in Sicily, whose 
nge is placed by Bentley in the 57th Olympiad, or 
about 550 B.C. This, however, is done by that emi¬ 


nent scholar, in the course of his well-known contro¬ 
versy with Boyle and others, merely to give more 
force to his own refutation, since it is the latest period 
that history will allow, and, therefore, the most favour¬ 
able to the pretended letters of Phalaris, which pro¬ 
voked the discussion. {Monk's Life of Bentley, p. 
62.) It is from these same letters that Boyle com¬ 
posed a life of Phalaris; but the spurious nature of the 
productions from which he drew his information, and 
the absence of more authentic documents, cast an air 
of suspicion on the whole biography. According to 
this life of him, he was born in Astypalea, one of the 
Sporades, and was banished from his native island for 
allowing his ambitious views to become too apparent. 
Proceeding thereupon to Sicily, he settled at Agrigen¬ 
tum, where he eventually made himself master of the 
place and established a tyranny. (Compare Polycenus, 
5, 1.) He at first exercised his power with modera¬ 
tion, and drew to his court not only poets and artists, 
but many wise and learned men, whose counsels he 
promised to follow. Deceived by this state of things, 
the people of Himera were about to request his aid in 
terminating a war which they were carrying on with 
their neighbours, when Stesichorus dissuaded them 
from this dangerous scheme by the well-known fable 
of the horse and the stag. ( Vid. Stesichorus ) The 
seditions which afterward took place in Agrigentum 
compelled Phalaris to adopt a severer exercise of his 
authority, and hence his name has come to us as that 
of a cruel tyrant. The instrument of his cruelty, also, 
namely the brazen bull made by the artist Perillus, is 
often alluded to by the ancient writers. {Vid. Peril¬ 
lus.) The manner of his death is variously given. 
Some make him to have been stoned to death for his 
cruelty by the people of Agrigentum ; others relate 
that his irritated subjects put him into his own bull and 
burned him to death. {Vid. Perillus.)—We have re¬ 
maining, under the name of Phalaris, a collection o\ 
letters, supposed to have been written by him, but 
which Bentley has shown to be the mere forgeries of 
some sophist, who lived at a later period. The letters 
of Phalaris were first published by Bartholomaeus Jus- 
tinopolitanus in 1498, Venet., 4to. This edition, 
which is very rare, ought to be accompanied by a 
Latin version ; since Bartholomaeus promises one in 
his praefatory epistle to Peter Contarenus; but no 
copy occurs with one. {Laire, Index Libr. — Hoff¬ 
mann, Lex. Bibliogr., vol. 3, p. 210.) The most es 
teemed among subsequent editions is that of Van 
Lennep, completed by Valckenaer, Gronivg., 1777, 
4to, republished under the editorial supervision of 
Schaefer, Lips., 1823, 8vo, maj. The edition of 
Boyle, which gave rise to the controversy between 
the Christ-Church wits and the celebrated Bentley, 
was issued from the Oxford press in 1695, 8vo, and 
reprinted in 1718. It owes its only notoriety to the 
lashing which Bentley inflicted upon the editor, the 
Hon. Charles Boyle, brother to the Earl of Orrery, 
and, at the time of the first publication, a member 
of Christ-Church. In preparing this edition, Boyle 
was assisted by Mr. John Freind, one of the junior 
students of the college, afterward the celebrated phy¬ 
sician, who officiated as his private tutor. The preface 
contained a remark, reflecting, though without any 
just grounds whatever, on Bentley’s want of courtesy 
in not allowing a manuscript in the King’s Library, 
of which he was keeper, to be collated for Boyle’s 
edition. This drew from Bentley his first Disserta¬ 
tion on the Epistles of Phalaris, in the form of Letters 
to Mr. Wotton, a work which, though afterward eclipsed 
by the enlarged dissertation, is no less amusing than 
learned. The author is completely successful in 
proving the epistles spurious. His arguments are 
drawn from chronology, from the language of the let¬ 
ters, from their matter, and, finally, from their late dis¬ 
covery. Having overthrown the claim of Phalaris t« 

1023 




P H A 


PH A 


a p.ace among royal or noble authors, Bentley exam¬ 
ines certain other reputed pieces of antiquity, such as 
the Letters of Themistocles, of Socrates, and of Eu¬ 
ripides ; all which he shows not to be the productions 
of the individuals whose names they bear, but forgeries 
of some sophists many centuries later. The publica¬ 
tion of this work excited a sensation in the literary 
and academical circles that was without example. 
The society of Christ-C'nurch was thrown into a per¬ 
fect. ferment, and the task of inflicting a full measure 
of literary chastisement upon the audacious offender 
was assigned to the ablest scholars and wits of the 
college. The leaders of the confederacy were Atter- 
bury and Smalridge, but the principal share in the at¬ 
tack fell to the lot of the former. In point of classi¬ 
cal learning, however, the joint stock of the coaliton 
bore no proportion to that of Bentley : their acquaint¬ 
ance with several of the books on which they comment 
appears only to have been begun upon this occasion ; 
and sometimes they are indebted for their knowledge 
of them to the very individual whom they attack, and 
compared with whose boundless erudition their learn¬ 
ing was that of schoolboys, and not always sufficient 
to preserve them from distressing mistakes. But 
profound literature was at that period confined to 
few; while wit and raillery found numerous and 
eager readers. The consequence was, that when 
the reply of the Christ-Church men appeared, this 
motley production of theirs, which is generally known 
by the name of “ Boyle against Bentley,” it met with 
a reception so uncommonly favourable as to form a 
kind of paradox in literary history. But the triumph 
of his opponents was short-lived. Bentley replied in 
his enlarged Dissertation, a work which, while it ef¬ 
fectually silenced his antagonists, and held them up to 
rid'c.ule as mere sciolists and blunderers, established 
on the firmest basis his own claims to the character of 
a consummate philologist. (Monk's Life of Bentley., 
n. 49, seqq.) 

Phaleron, the most ancient of the Athenian ports ; 
but wffiich, after the erection of the docks in the Pirae¬ 
us, ceased to be of any importance in a maritime point 
of view. It was, however, enclosed within the forti¬ 
fications of Themistocles, and gave its name to the 
southernmost of the long walls, by means of which it 
was connected with Athens. Phaleron supplied the 
Athenian market with abundance of the little fish 
named Aphyse, so often mentioned by the comic 
writers. ( Aristoph., Acharn., 901.— Id., Av., 96.— 
Athen ., 7, 8.— Aristot., Hist. An., 6, 15.) The lands 
around it were marshy, and produced very fine cab¬ 
bages. (Hesych., s. v. <f> alp penal.- — Xen., (Econ., c. 

1 S') The modern name of Phaleron is Porto Fanari. 
“ Phalerum,” says Hobhouse (vol. 1, p. 301, Am. ed.), 
u is of an elliptical form, smaller than Munychia ; and 
the remains of the piers on each side of the narrow 
mouth are still to be seen. The line of its length is 
from east to west, that of its breadth from north to 
south. On the northeast side of the port, the land is 
high and rocky until you come to the fine sweep of the 
bay of Phalerum, perhaps two miles in length, and ter¬ 
minated on the northeast by a low promontory, once 
that of Colias. The clay from this neighbourhood was 
preferred to any other for the use of the potteries.” 

Phan^e, a harbour of the island of Chios, with a 
temple of Apollo and a palm-grove in its vicinity. 
Near it also was a promontory of the same name. 

( Strabo , 645.— Lin., 36, 43.— Id., 44, 28.) Phanae 
was in the southern part of the island, and the neigh¬ 
bourhood was remarkable for its excellent wine. 

( Virg ., Georg., 2, 98.) The promontory is called at 
the present day Cape Mastico. (Mannert., Geogr., 
vol. 6, pt. 3, p. 326.) 

Phanote, a town of Chaonia in Epirus, correspond¬ 
ing to the modern Gardiki, a fortress once belonging 
to the Suliots. ( Cramer's Greece, vol. 1, p. 99 ) 

1024 


Phaon, a mariner of Lesbos, accustomed to ferry 
passengers across from the island to the main land 
(Tcopdyoq ijv DaTidGca. — Palceph., de Incred., 49). Lu¬ 
cian calls him a native of Chios. (Dial. Mort., 9, 2.) 
According to one legend, he was beloved by Venus, 
who concealed him amid lettuce. (AElian, V. H., 12, 
18.) Another version of the fable stated, that Venus 
came to him on one occasion under the form of an 
aged female, and, having requested a passage, was fer 
ried across to the main land by him, free from charge, 
such being his wont towards those who were in indi¬ 
gent circumstances. The goddess, out of gratitude, 
presented him with an alabaster box, containing a pe¬ 
culiar kind of ointment, and, when he had rubbed him¬ 
self with this, he became the most beautiful of men 
Among others, Sappho became enamoured of him, but. 
finding her passion unrequited, threw herself into the 
sea from the promontory of Leucate. ( Vid. Sappho, 
and Leucate.— Palccph., 1. c. — jElian, l. c. — Arsen. 
Violar., p. 461, ed. Walz. — Eudocia, p. 413.— Suid., 
s. v. 4>uwv.) 

Pharhs, I. a borough of Tanagra in Boeotia. (Stra¬ 
bo, 405.)—II. One of the twelve cities of Achaia, sit¬ 
uate on the river Pirus, about 70 stadia from the sea, 
and 120 from Patras. (Pausan., 7, 22.) It was an¬ 
nexed by Augustus to the colony of Patrae. The ruins 
were observed by Dodwell on the left bank of the 
Camenilza (vol. 2, p. 310).—III. A town of Crete. 
(Steph. Byz ., s. v. Qapai.) —IV. A town of Messenia, 
on the Sinus Messeniacus, northwest of Cardamvla. 
Among other divinities worshipped here were Nicom- 
achus and Gorgazus, sons of Machaon. They had 
both governed this city after the death of their father, 
to whom, as well as themselves, was attributed the art 
of healing maladies. (Steph. Byz., s. v.) 

Pharmacus^e, I. two islets a short distance from the 
Attic shore, in the Sinus Saronicus, east of Salainis. 
In the larger of these Circe was said to have been in¬ 
terred. (Strabo, 395.— Steph. Byz., s. v. fyappa- 
novoaa.) They are now called Kyra. (Chandler's 
Travels, vol. 3, p. 220.) — II. An island of the .TJgean 
Sea, southwest from Miletus, and about 120 stadia 
distant from that place. It is known as the place 
where Julius Caesar was taken by the pirates. (Plut., 
Vit. Cces.) 

Pharnaces, I. grandfather of Mithradatesthe Great, 
and son and successor of Mithradates IV. of Pontus. 
He conquered Sinope and Tium (Slrab., 545. — Diod. 
Sic-., Frag.), and was engaged in a war with Eume- 
nes, king of Pergamus, which lasted for some years, 
and w r as put an end to chiefly through the interference 
of Rome. (Polyb., Exc., 24, 4, seqq.) Polybius re¬ 
cords of Pharnaces that he was more wicked than all 
the kings who had preceded him. (Polyb., 27, 15 )— 
II. Son of Mithradates the Great, proved treacherous 
to his father when the latter was forming his bold de¬ 
sign of advancing towards Italy from Asia, and cross¬ 
ing the Alps as Hannibal had done before him. Al¬ 
though the favourite son of that celebrated monarch, 
he incited the army to open rebellion, disconcerted all 
his father’s plans, and brought him to the grave. As 
a reward of his perfidy, Pharnaces was proclaimed 
King of Bosporus, and styled the ally and friend of 
the Roman nation. ( Appian, Bell. Mithrad.. c. 103, 
seqq.) During the civil w r ar waged by Caesar and 
Pompey, Pharnaces made an attempt to recover his 
hereditary dominions, and succeeded in taking Sinope, 
Amisus, and some other towns of Pontus. But Julius 
Caesar, after the defeat and death of Pompey, marched 
into Pontus, and, encountering the army oLPharnaces 
near the city of Zela, gained a complete victory ; the 
facility with which it was gained being expressed by 
the victor in those celebrated words, “ Veni, Vidi, 
Vici." (Hirt., Bell. Alex., c. 72.— Plut., Vit. Cas. 
— Sueton, Vit. Cces., 37. —Dio Cass., 42, 47.) Af- 
| ter his defeat, Pharnaces retired to the Bosporus, 






P H A 


PH A 


where he was slain by some of his own followers. 
(Apptan, Bell. Mithrad., c. 120.— Dio Cass., 1. c.) 

Pharnacia, a city of Pontus, on the seacoast, and 
jn the territory of the Mosynoeci. It is erroneously 
confounded with Cerasus by Arrian ( Peripl., p. 17), 
while the anonymous geographer, though in this in¬ 
stance he copies that writer, yet afterward places Cera- 
jus 530 stadia farther to the east (p. 13). It should 
be observed, also, that Strabo says that Cotyorum, and 
not; Cerasus, had contributed to the foundation of 
Pharnacia ( Strabo, 548); and he afterward names 
Cerasus as a small place distinct from that town and 
nearer Trapezus. Pliny, moreover, distinguishes Phar¬ 
nacia and Cerasus, and he besides informs us that the 
former was 100 miles from Trapezus (6, 4). Xeno¬ 
phon and the Greeks were three days on their march 
from Trapezus to Cerasus, a space of time too short 
to accomplish a route of 100 miles over a difficult 
country. ( Anab ., 5, 3, 5.) It is apparent, therefore, 
that the Cerasus of Xenophon is not to be identified 
with Pharnacia, though it might be thought so in Arri¬ 
an’s time ; and it is remarkable that this erroneous 
opinion should have prevailed so strongly as to leave 
the name of Keresoun to the site occupied by the an¬ 
cient Pharnacia. With respect to this latter place, it 
appears to have been founded by Pharnaces, grandfa¬ 
ther of Mithradates the Great, though we have no pos¬ 
itive authority for the fact. We know only that it ex¬ 
isted in the time of the last-mentioned monarch, since 
it is spoken of in Plutarch’s Life of Lucullus. Man- 
nert is inclined to think, that Pharnacia was founded on 
the site of a Greek settlement named Choerades, which 
Scylax places in this vicinity (p. 33). It is also no¬ 
ticed by Stephanus of Byzantium as a town of the 
Mosynoeci, on the authority of Hecataeus ( s. v. Xoipd- 
tieg. — Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 2, p. 386.— Cra¬ 
mer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 281). 

Pharos, I. a small island in the bay of Alexandrea, 

the entrance of the greater harbour, upon which was 
built, in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, a cele¬ 
brated tower, to serve as a lighthouse. The architect 
w’as Sostratus, son of Dexiphanes. This tower, which 
was also called Pharos, and which passed for one of 
tne seven wonders of the world, was built with white 
marble, and could be seen at a very great distance. 
It had several stories raised one above another, adorn¬ 
ed with columns, balustrades, and galleries, of the 
finest marble and workmanship. On the top, fires were 
kept lighted in the night season, to direct sailors in the 
bay, which was dangerous and difficult of access. 
The building of this tower cost the Egyptian monarch 
800 talents, about 850,000 dollars. According to 
Strabo, there was on the tower the following inscrip¬ 
tion, cut into the marble, 2f22TPAT02 KNIAI02 
AEEI<&ANOT2 0EOI2 2QTHP2IN TIIEP Tf2N 
IIA12IZOMENQN (“ Sostratus the Cnidian, son of 
Dexiphanes, to the gods the preservers, for the benefit 
of mariners''). Pliny also speaks of the magnanimity 
of Ptolemy, in allowing the name of Sostratus, and not 
his own, to be inscribed upon the tower. ( Strab ., 791. 
— Plin., 36, 12.) Lucian, however, tells a different 
story. According to that writer, Sostratus, wishing to 
enjoy in after ages all the glory of the work, cut the 
above inscription on the stones, and then, covering 
them over with cement, wrote upon the latter another 
inscription, which assigned the honour of having erect¬ 
ed this structure to the author of the work, King Ptol¬ 
emy. The cement, however, having decayed through 
time, Ptolemy’s inscription disappeared, and the other 
became visible. ( Lucian, Quomodo hist, conscrib. 
sit, 62.) Where Lucian obtained this story is not 
known ; it is certainly a most incredible narrative, and 
very probably an invention of his own. ( Du Soul, ad 
Inician, l. c.) —The island of Pharos was eight stadia 
from the main land, and connected with it by a cause¬ 
way, which had two bridges, one at either end. {Vos- 
6 O 


sius, ad Mel., 2, 7, p. 761.) *Strabe. however, and 
Josephus call the mound or causeway bm-aorddiov 
X&pa, or one of seven stadia, referring probably to the 
work itself, exclusive of the bridges. ( Strabo, l. c .—- 
Joseph., Ant. Jud., 12, 2, 12.) Ammianus Marcelli* 
nus, and some other writers after him, make Cleopatra 
to have erected the tower and built the causeway 
{Arum. Marcell., 22, 16.— Tzetz. — Cedren.), and 
some critics suppose that the tower must have been 
destroyed by Cassar in the Alexandrine war, and re¬ 
built by the Egyptian queen. This, however, can 
hardly have been the case, since Caesar merely speaks 
of his having ordered the private dwellings to be pulled 
down, but refers to the Pharos apparently as still 
standing. {Bell. Alex., 19.) As to the causeway it¬ 
self, it is possible that Cleopatra may have continued it 
to the main land, after the bridge at that end had been 
destroyed. {Voss., ad Mel., 1. c.) The Nubian ge¬ 
ographer, in a later age, gives the elevation of the Pha¬ 
ros as 300 cubits, from which it would appear that the 
tower must have lost a portion of its original height. 
{Falconer, ad Strab., 1. c .) The name Pharos itself 
would seem to have been given to the tower first, and 
after that to the island, if the Greek etymology be the 
true one, according to which the term comes from the 
Greek (j>du, “ to shine' 1 ' 1 or “ be bright' 1 ' 1 {(pdo, rpdoq, 
cjraepoq, rpdpoq). Jablonski, however, makes the word 
of Egyptian origin, and deduces it from pharez, “ & 
watch-tower” or “look-out place.” {Voc. xEgypt., s. 
v. — Opusc., vol. 1, p. 378, ed. Te Water.) The ce¬ 
lebrity of the Egyptian Pharos made this a common 
appellation among the ancients for any edifice that 
was raised to direct the course of mariners either by 
means of lights or signals. The Emperor Claudius 
ordered one to be erected at Ostia, and there was an¬ 
other at Ravenna. (Foss., ad Plin., 36, 12.)—In¬ 
stead of the ancient Pharos at Alexandrea, there is now 
only a kind of irregular castle, without ditches or out¬ 
works of any strength, the whole being accommodated 
to the inequality of the ground on which it stands. 
Out of the midst of this clumsy building rises a tower, 
which serves for a lighthouse, tut which has nothing 
of the beauty and grandeur cf the old one.— II. An 
island off the coast of Illyricum, to the east of Issa, 
and answering to the modern Lessina. It was settled 
by a colony from Paros {Scylax, p. 8.— Scymn., Ch., 
v. 425), and was the birthplace of Demetrius the Pha- 
rian, whose name often occurs in the writings of Po 
lybius. {Polyb., 2, 10, 8.— Id., 2, 65, 4, &c.) 

Pharsalia, I. the region around the city of Phar- 
salus in Thessaly, celebrated for the battle fought in 
its plains between the armies of Caesar and Pompey. 
{Vid. Pharsalus.)—II. The title of Lucan’s epic poem. 
{Vid. Lucanus.) 

Pharsalus, a city of Thessaly, situate in that part 
of the province which Strabo designates by the name 
of Thessaliotis. It lay southwest of Larissa, on the 
river Enipeus, which falls into the Apidanus, one of 
the tributaries of the Peneus. Although a city of 
considerable size and importance, we find no mention 
of it prior to the Persian invasion. Thucydides re¬ 
ports that it was besieged by the Athenian general 
Myronides after his success in Bceotia, but without, 
avail (1, 111). The same historian speaks of the ser¬ 
vices rendered to the Athenian people by Thucydides 
the Pharsalian, who performed the duties of proxenos 
to his countrymen at Athens (8, 92); and he also 
states that the Pharsalians generally favoured that 
republic during the Peloponnesian war. At a later 
period, the plains in the vicinity of this city became 
celebrated for the battle fought in them between the 
armies of Csesar and Pompey. {Vid. Pharsalia I.)— 
Livy seems to make a distinction between the old and 
new town, as he speaks of Palceo-Pharsalus (441.— 
Compare Strabo, 431) Dr. Clarke ( Travels, vol. 7, 
p. 328, Land, ed A observes, that there are few anti- 

1025 




PH A 


PHE 


quities at Pharsalus. The name of Pharsa alone re¬ 
mains to show what it once was. Southwest of the 
town there is a hill surrounded with ancient walls, 
formed of large masses of a coarse kind of marble. 
Upon a lofty rock above the town to the south are 
other ruins of greater magnitude, showing a consider¬ 
able portion of the walls of the Acropolis and remains 
»f the Propylsea. ( Cramer's Anc. Gr., vol. 1, p. 398.) 

Pharusii, a people of Africa, beyond Mauritania, 
iituate perhaps to the east of the Autololes, which lat¬ 
ter people occupied the Atlantic coast of Africa, op¬ 
posite to the Insulte Fortunatse. {Mela, 1, 4, 23.— 
Vossius, ad loc.) 

Phaselis, a town of Lycia, on the eastern coast, 
near the confines of Pamphylia. Livy remarks, that 
it was a conspicuous point for those sailing from Cili¬ 
cia to Rhodes, since it advanced out towards the sea ; 
and, on the other hand, a fleet could easily be de¬ 
scried from it (37, 23). Hence the epithet of rjvepo- 
tooa applied to it by Dionysius Periegetes (v. 854). 
We are informed by Herodotus (2, 178), that this 
town was colonized by some Dorians. Though united 
to Lycia, it did not form part of the Lycian confed¬ 
eracy, but was governed by its own laws. ( Strabo, 
667.) Phaselis, at a later period, having become the 
haunt of pirates, was attacked and taken by Servilius 
Isauricus. ( Flor ., 3, 6. — Eutrop., 6, 3.) Lucan 
speaks of it as nearly deserted when visited by Pom- 
pey in his flight after the battle of Pharsalia (8, 251). 
Nevertheless, Strabo asserts that it was a considera¬ 
ble town, and had three ports. He observes, also, 
that it was taken by Alexander, as an advantageous 
post for the prosecution of his conquests into the inte¬ 
rior. {Strab.,666. —Compare Arrian, Exp. Al., 1,24. 
— PluL, Vit. Alex.) Phaselis, according to Ather.se- 
us, was celebrated for the manufacture of rose perfume 
(14, p. 688). Nicander certainly commends its roses 
[ap. Athen., p. 683.)—“On a small peninsula, at the 
foot of Mount Takhtalu (the highest point of the Soly- 
mean mountains),” says Captain Beaufort, “ are the 
remains of the city of Phaselis, with its three ports 
and lake as described by Strabo. The lake is now a 
mere swamp, occupying the middle of the isthmus, 
and was probably the source of those baneful exhala¬ 
tions which, according to Livy and Cicero, rendered 
Phaselis so unhealthy. The modern name of Phase¬ 
lis is Tekrova .” {Karamania, p. 56.) “ The harbour 
and town of Phaselis,” observes Mr. Fellows, “are 
both extremely well built and interesting, but very 
small. Its theatre, stadium, and temples may all be 
traced, and its numerous tombs on the hills show how 
long it must have existed.” (Tour in Asia Minor, p. 
211.)—Beyond Phaselis the mountains press in upon 
the shore, and leave a very narrow passage along the 
strand, which at low water is practicable, but, when 
storms prevail and the sea is high, it is extremely 
dangerous: in this case, travellers must pass the mount¬ 
ains, and proceed into the interior by a long circuit. 
The defile in question, as well as the mountains over¬ 
hanging it, was called Climax, and it obtained celeb¬ 
rity from the fact that Alexander led his army along it, 
after the conquest of Caria, under circumstances of 
gTeat difficulty and danger; for, though the wind 
blew violently, Alexander, impatient of delay, hur¬ 
ried his troops forward, along the shore, where they 
had the water up to their middle, and had great diffi¬ 
culty in making their way. ( Strab ., 666, seq. — Ar¬ 
rian, Exp. AL, 1, 26. — Pint., Vit. Alex ) Captain 
Beaufort remarks, that “ the shore at present exhibits 
a remarkable coincidence with the account of Alexan¬ 
der’s march from Phaselis. The road along the beach 
is, however, interrupted in some places by projecting 
cliffs, which would have been difficult to surmount, 
but round which the men could readily pass by wading 
through the water.” {Karamania, p. 115, seq. —Com¬ 
pare Leake's Tour, p. 190.) 

1026 


PhasiIna, a district of Armenia Major, througa 
which the river Phasis or Araxes flows ; whence the 
name of the region. The beautiful birds, which we 
call pheasants, still preserve in their name the traces 
of this their native country. {Vid. Araxes I.) 

Phasias, a patronymic given to Medea, as being 
born in Colchis, on the banks of the Phasis. {Ovid, 
A. A., 2, 381.) 

Phasis, I. a river of Asia, falling into the Euxin« 
after passing through parts of Armenia, Ibflna, and 
Colchis. According to Strabo and Pliny, it rose in 
the southern portion of the Moschian mountains, which 
were regarded as belonging to Armenia. ( Strabo, 
498.— Plin., 6, 4.) Procopius states that in the early 
part of its course it was called Boas, but that, after 
reaching the confines of Iberia, and becoming increased 
in size by several tributaries, it took the name of Pha¬ 
sis. {Procop., Pers., 2, 29.) Its modern name i* 
Rion or Rioni, which would seem more properly to 
belong to the Rheon, one of its tributaries. The Turks 
call it the Fasch. The Phasis is famous in mythology 
from Jason’s having obtained in its vicinity the golden 
fleece of Grecian fable. Arrian {Peripl., Mar. Eux.) 
says, that the colour of the water of the Phasis resem¬ 
bled that of water impregnated with lead or tin ; that 
is, it was of a bluish cast. It was said, also, not to in¬ 
termingle with the sea for some distance from land. 
—For some general remarks on the name Phasis, con¬ 
sult remarks at the end of this article. {Mannert, 
Geogr., vol. 4, p 394, seqq.) —II. A city at the mouth 
of the Colchian Phasis, founded by a Milesian colony. 
{Mela, 1, 85.) It does not appear to have been a 
place of any great trade. In Hadrian’s time it was a 
mere fortress, with a garrison of 400 men. ( Arrian, 
Peripl. — Ammian. Marcell., 22, 8.) The place is not 
mentioned by Procopius. In the vicinity of this spot, 
the Turks, in former days, had the small fortress of 
Potti. {Mannert, Geogr., vol. 4, p. 396.)—III. A 
river of Armenia Major, the same with the Araxes. 

( Vid. Araxes, I.)—The name Phasis would seem to 
have been a general appellation for rivers in early Ori¬ 
ental geography, and the root of it may be very fairly 
traced in the Indo-Germanic dialects. {Phas. — Was 
—German Wasser, “Water.”—Consult Ritter, Vor 
halle, p. 466.) 

Phavorinus (in Greek Qabupivog), a native of Ar 
elate in Gaul, who lived at Rome during the reigns of 
Trajan and Hadrian, and enjoyed a high degree of con¬ 
sideration. He wrote numerous works, but no part of 
them has reached us except a few fragments in Sto- 
bseus. Aulus Gellius, however, has preserved for us 
some of his dissertations in a Latin dress. {Noct. Alt., 
12, 1 ; 14, 1, 2 ; 17, 10.) Phavorinus loved tow.He 
on topics out of the common path, and more or less 
whimsical; he composed, for example, a eulogium on 
Thersites, another on Quartan Fever, &c. Having had 
the misfortune to offend the Emperor Hadrian, his 
statues, which the Athenians had raised to him, were 
thrown down by that same people. He bequeathed 
his library and mansion at Rome to Herodes Atticus. 
Phavorinus was a friend of Plutarch’s, who dedicated 
a work to him. For farther particulars relating to this 
individual, consult Philostratus ( Vit. Sophist., 1, 8, 1), 
and Lucian {Eunuch., c. 7.— Demon., c. 12, seq. — 
Scholl, Gesch. Gr. Lit., vol. 2, p. 607.) 

Phazania, a region of Africa, lying to the soutl » 4 
Tripolis. It is now Fezzan. {Plin., 5, SA 

Phenetjs (4>eveof), a city in the northern part of 
Arcadia, at the foot of Mount Cyllene. It was a town 
of great antiquity, since Hercules is said to have re¬ 
sided there after his departure from Tiryns, and Ho¬ 
mer has mentioned it among the principal Arcadian 
cities. {11., 2, 605.) The place was surrounded by 
some extensive marshes, which are said to have once 
inundated the whole country, and to have destroyed 
the ancient town. They are more commonly called 



P HE 


PHE 


the Lake of Pheneus, and were principally formed by 
the river Aroanius or Olbius, which descends from 
the mountains to the north of Pheneus, and usually 
finds a vent in some natural caverns or katabathra at 
the extremity of the plain ; but when, by accident, 
these happened to be blocked up, the waters filled the 
whole valley, and, communicating with the Ladon and 
Alpheus, overflowed the beds of those rivers as far as 
Olympia. ( Eratosth ., ap. Strab., 389.) Pausanias 
reports, that vestiges of some great works undertaken 
to drain the Phenean marshes, and ascribed by the na¬ 
tives to Hercules, were to be seen near the city 
$, 14). The vestiges of the town itself are visible, 
according to Dodwell, near the village of Phonia, upon 
an insulated rock. The lake is said to be very small, 
and to vary according to the season of the year. (Dod¬ 
well, vol. 2, p. 436.— Cramer's Anc. Gr., vol. 3, p. 
321.) 

Pher^e, I. a city of Pelasgiotis, in Thessaly, one of 
the most ancient and important places in the country. 
It was the capital of Admetus and Eumelus, as we 
learn from Homer (II. , 2, 711, seq.) and Apollonius. 
(Arg ., 1, 49.—Compare Horn., Od., 4, 798.) Pherae 
was famed at a later period as the native place of Ja¬ 
son, who, having raised himself to the head of affairs 
by his talents and ability, became master not only of 
his own city, but of nearly the whole of Thessaly. 
(Vid. Jason, II.) After the death of Jason, Pherae 
was ruled over by Polydorus and Polyrophon, his two 
brothers. The latter of these was succeeded by Al¬ 
exander, who continued for eleven years the scourge 
of his native city and of the whole of Thessaly. 

( Xen., Hist. Gr ., 6, 5.) His evil designs were for a 
time checked by the brave Pelopidas, who entered 
that province at the head of a Boeotian force, and oc¬ 
cupied the citadel of Larissa ; but, on his falling into 
the hands of the tyrant, the Boeotian army was placed 
in a most perilous situation, and was only saved by the 
presence of mind and ability of Epaminondas, then 
serving as a volunteer. The Thebans subsequently 
rescued Pelopidas, and, under his command, made war 
upon Alexander of Pherae, whom they defeated, but at 
the expense of the life of their gallant leader, who fell 
m the action. (Plut ., Vit. Pelop. — Polyb., 8, 1, 6, 
seqq.) Alexander was not long after assassinated by 
his wife and her brothers, who continued to tyrannize 
over this country until it was liberated by Philip of 
Macedon. (Xen., Hist. Gr., 6, 4. — Diod. Sic., 16, 
38.) Many years after, Cassander, as we are informed 
by Diodorus, fortified Pherae, but Demetrius Polior- 
cetes contrived, by secret negotiations, to obtain pos¬ 
session of both the town and citadel. (Diod. Sic., 20, 
110.) In the invasion of Thessaly by Antiochus, Phe¬ 
rae was forced to surrender to the troops of that mon¬ 
arch after some resistance. (Lit., 36, 9.) It. after¬ 
ward fell into the hands of the Roman consul Acilius. 
(Id., 36, 14.) Strabo observes, that the constant ty¬ 
ranny under which this city laboured had hastened its 
decay. (Strab., 436.) Its territory was most fertile, 
»nd the suburbs, as we collect from Polybius, were 
surrounded by gardens and walled enclosures (18, 2). 
Stephanus Byzantinus speaks of an old and new town 
of Pherae, distant about eight stadia from each other. 
Pliers, according to Strabo, was ninety stadia from 
Pagass, its emporium. (Cramer's Ancient Greece, 
vol 1, p.393.)—II. A town of HCtolia. (Steph.Byz., 
s. v. <&epa,L.) — III. A town of Messenia, to the east of 
the river Pamisus. At this place Homer makes Tele- 
machus and the son of Nestor to have been entertain¬ 
ed by Diodes, on their way from Pylos to Sparta. 
(Od., 15, 186.) It is also alluded to in the Iliad 
(5, 543). Pherae was one of the seven towns offered 
by Agamemnon to Achilles. (II., 9, 151.) It was 
annexed by Augustus to Laconia, after the battle of 
Actinm. ( Pausan., 4,30.— Cramer's Ancient Greece, i 
vol. 3, p. 141.) I 


j PherjEus, a surname of Jason, as being a native 
of Pherae. (Vid. Jason, II.) 

Pherecrates, a cornic poet of Athens, contempo¬ 
rary with Plato, Phrynichus, Aristophanes, and Eu- 
polis. (Said., s. v. Tlharov. — Clinton, Fast. Flell., 
vol. 1, p xl.) Little is known of him. He is said to 
have written 21 comedies, of which a few fragments 
remain. The following are the titles of some of his 
pieces: “ The Deserters,” “ Chiron,” “ The Old Wom¬ 
en,’’“The Painters,” “The False Hercules,” &c. 
Such was the license which prevailed at this period on 
the Greek stage, that Pherecrates was particularly 
commended for having abstained entirely in his pieces 
from any personal attacks. He was also the inventor 
of a species of verse, which was called from him the 
Pherecratean or Pherecratic. The Pherecratic verse 
is the Glyconic deprived of the final syllable, and con¬ 
sists of a spondee, a choriambus, and a catalectic syl¬ 
lable. The first foot was sometimes a trochee or an 
anapaest, rarely an iambus. When this species of verse 
has a spondee in the first station, it may then be scan¬ 
ned as a dactylic trimeter. It has been conjectured 
that the trochee was originally the only foot admissi¬ 
ble in the first place of the Pherecratic. (Ramsay, 
Lat. Pros., p. 192.— Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 2, p. 
90.) The fragments of Pherecrates were given with 
those of Eupolis, by Runkel, Lips., 1829, 8vo. 

Pherecydes, I. a Grecian philosopher, contemporary 
with Terpander and Thales, who flourished about 600 
B.C., and was a native of the island of Scyros. The 
particulars which remain of the life of Pherecydes are 
few and imperfect. Marvellous circumstances have 
been related of him, which only deserve to be men¬ 
tioned in order to show, that what has been deemed 
supernatural by ignorant spectators may be easily con¬ 
ceived to have happened from natural causes. A ship 
in full sail was, at a distance, approaching its harbour; 
Pherecydes predicted that it would never come into 
the haven, and it happened accordingly, for a storm 
arose which sunk the vessel. After drinking water 
from a well, he predicted an earthquake, which hap¬ 
pened three days afterward. It is easy to suppose 
that these predictions might hare been the result of a 
careful observation of those pi enomena which com¬ 
monly precede storms or earthquakes, in a climate 
where they frequently happen. Pherecydes is said to 
have been the first among the Greeks who wrote con¬ 
cerning the nature of the gods ; but this can only mean 
that he was the first who ventured to write upon these 
subjects in prose. For, before his time, Orpheus, Mu- 
sreus, and others, had written theogonies in verse. 
Some have ascribed to him the invention of the sun¬ 
dial: but the instrument was of a more ancient date, 
being mentioned in the Jewish history of Hezekiah, 
king of Judea (2 Kings, 20., 11.) Concerning the 
mariner in which he died, nothing certain is known; 
for, as to the story of his having been gradually con¬ 
sumed for his impiety by the loathsome disease called 
morbus pediculous, this must doubtless be set down in 
the long list of idle tales by which the ignorant and 
superstitious have always endeavoured to bring philos¬ 
ophy into contempt. He lived to the age of eighty- 
five years.—It is difficult to give, in any degree, an 
accurate account of the doctrines of Pherecydes; both 
because he delivered them, after the manner of the 
times, under the concealment of symbols, and be¬ 
cause a very few memoirs of this philosopher remain. 
It is most probable, that he taught those opinions con¬ 
cerning the gods and the origin of the world which 
the ancient theogonists borrowed from Egypt. An¬ 
other tknet, which is, by the universal consent of the 
ancients, ascribed to Pherecydes, is that of the immor¬ 
tality of the soul, for which he was, perhaps, indebted 
to the Egyptians. Cicero says (Tusc. Qucest., 1 , 16' 
that he was the first philosopher in whose writings 
this doctrine appeared. He is also said, and not ini- 

1027 






P H I 


PHIDIAS. 


f robably, to have taught the doctrine of the transmi¬ 
gration of the soul ; for this was a tenet commonly re¬ 
ceived among the Egyptians, and afterward taught by 
Pythagoras. Whether it was that Pherecydes insti¬ 
tuted no sect; or that his writings fell into disuse 
through their obscurity ; or that Pythagoras designed¬ 
ly suppressed them, that he might appear the original 
author of the doctrines which he had learned from his 
master ; or whatever else might be the cause, we are 
left without farther information concerning his philos¬ 
ophy. {Enfield's History of Philosophy , vol. 1, p. 
362, seqq.) There are extant some fragments of a 
Theogony composed by him, which bear a strange 
character, and have a much closer resemblance to the 
Orphic poems than to those of Hesiod. They show 
that, by this time, the characteristic of the theogonic 
poetry had been changed, and that Orphic ideas were 
m vogue. ( Muller , Hist. Gr. hit ., p. 234.) The 
fragments of Pherecydes, together with those of his 
namesake of Leros, were edited by Sturz, Gerce, 1789, 
8vo, and a new edition appeared in 1824, Lips., 8vo, 
with additional fragments, and more enlarged explana¬ 
tions. The preface to this latter edition contains the 
greater part of Matthiae’s dissertation, which Sturz un¬ 
dertakes to refute. The dissertation just mentioned 
was published by Matthias, in 1814, Altenb., 8vo, and 
was reprinted in Wolf’s Analekten, vol. 1, p. 321, 
seqq. — Pherecydes, and Cadmus of Miletus, are said 
to have been the first of the Greeks that wrote in prose. 
( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 1, p. 212. — Hoffmann, 
Lex. Bibliogr., vol. 3, p. 219.)—II. A native of Leros, 
one of the Sporades, and a contemporary with Herod¬ 
otus. He was the last of the Logographers , or com¬ 
pilers in prose of historical traditions {koyot, and ypa- 
0 «)■ After him the regular historians begin. Phere¬ 
cydes, among other works, made a collection of tradi¬ 
tions relative to the early history of Athens. The 
fragments of this writer have been edited, along with 
those of Pherecydes of Scyros, by Sturz, Gerce, 1789, 
8vo, republished at Leipsic in 1824. ( Scholl, Hist. 

Lit. Gr., vol. 2, p. 140.) 

Pheres, son of Cretheus, and of Tyro the daugh¬ 
ter of Salmoneus. He founded Pherse in Thessaly, 
where he reigned, and became the father of Admetus, 
and of Lycurgus, king of Nemea. {Apollod., 1, 9, 11. 
—Id., 1, 9, 13.) 

Phidias, a celebrated statuary, son of Charmidas, 
and a native of Athens. Nothing authentic is related 
concerning his earlier years, except that he was in¬ 
structed in statuary by Hippiasand Ageladas, and that, 
when quite a youth, he practised painting, and made a 
picture of Jupiter Olympius. ( Plin., 35, 8, 34.— Sie- 
bel., Indie. Winkelm., p. 324.— Jacobs, Amalth., vol. 
2, p. 247.) Respecting Hippias we have little inform¬ 
ation. In what period Phidias was a pupil of Agela¬ 
das is likewise uncertain ; but as Pausanias makes 
Ageladas a contemporary of Onatas, who flourished 
about the 78th Olympiad ( Pausan ., 8, 42, 4), and as 
in this period Ageladas was both distinguished by his 
own productions as an artist, and was at the head of a 
very celebrated school of statuary, we may properly 
assume this as the time in which Phidias was under 
his tuition. Between the date just mentioned and the 
third year of the 85th Olympiad, there is an interval of 
30 years. If with these conclusions we attempt to 
ascertain the time of the birth of Phidias, it is by no 
means an improbable conjecture that he w'as about 
SO years of age when he received the instructions of 
Ageladas, and, therefore, was born in the first year of 
the 73d Olympiad, or B.C. 488, a date very nearly ac¬ 
cording with that given by Muller. This computation 
^vill explain the fact, that in B.O. 438, Phidias, then 
50 years of age, represented himself as bald on the 
shield of the Athenian Minerva. He must also have 
‘^een about 56 years of age at the time of his death. 

Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v .)—Phidias brought to his pro- 
1028 


fession a knowledge of all the finer parts of science 
which could tend to dignify and enhance it. With 
the most exqu’sitc harmonies of poetry, and the most 
gorgeous fictions of mythology, he was no less familiar 
than with geometry, optics, and history. From Homer, 
whose works he must have deeply studied, he drew 
those images of greatness, which he afterward mould¬ 
ed in earthly materials with a kindred spirit. The cir¬ 
cumstance which, by a singular felicity, not often ac¬ 
corded to genius, elicited the powers of Phidias, was 
the coincidence, in point of time, of the full maturity 
of his talents with the munificent administration of 
Pericles. Intent on his great national design of adorn¬ 
ing Athens with the choicest specimens of art, this 
statesman saw with eagerness, in the genius of Phidi 
as, the means of giving form, shape, and completeness 
to the most glorious of his conceptions. He accord, 
ingly appointed this great sculptor the general super 
intendent of all the public works then in progress, bom 
of architecture and statuary ( Plut ., Vit. Pericl., 13), 
and well did the event sanction the choice which was 
thus made by him. The buildings reared under the 
direction of Phidias, though finished within a compara¬ 
tively short period, seemed built for ages, and, as ob 
served by Plutarch, had the venerable air of antiquity 
when newly completed, and retained all the freshness 
of youth after they had stood for ages. The beauti 
ful sculptures on the frieze of the Parthenon were the 
work of Phidias and his scholars, while the statue of 
the goddess within the temple was his entire produc¬ 
tion. This was, indeed, the most celebrated of all his 
works, if we except the Olympian Jupiter at Elis. In¬ 
dependently of the workmanship, the statue was of no¬ 
ble dimensions and of the most costly materials. It was 
twenty-six cubits, or thirty-nine feet in height, and 
formed of ivory and gold ; being most probably com¬ 
posed originally of the former, and overlaid, in part, 
by the latter. The goddess was represented in a no¬ 
ble attitude, erect, clothed in a tunic reaching to her 
feet. On her head was a casque : in one hand she 
held a spear; in the other, which was stretched out, 
an ivory figure of Victory, four cubits high ; while at 
her feet was a buckler, exquisitely carved, the concave 
representing the war of the giants, the convex the bat¬ 
tle between the Athenians and Amazons, and portraits 
of the artist and his patron were introduced among the 
Athenian combatants, one cause of the future misfor¬ 
tunes which envy brought upon the author. On the 
middle of her helmet a sphinx was carved, and on each 
of its sides a griffon. On the aegis or breastplate was 
displayed a head of Medusa, The golden sandals 
were sculptured with the conflict between the Cen¬ 
taurs and Lapithae, and are described as a perfect gem 
of minute art. On the base of the statue was repre 
sented the legend of Pandora’s creation, together with 
the images of twenty deities. {Pausan., 1 , 24, 5.— 
Siebelis, ad loc. — Max. Tyr., Diss. 14. — Plin, 36, 
5, 4.) It was from this statue that Philorgus to>k 
away the golden head of Medusa {Isocrat. ad Callim., 
57, ed. Bekk.), in the place of which an ivory figure of 
this head was afterward introduced, which was seen 
by Pausanias. {Bockh, Corp. Inscript., 1 , 242.) 
This magnificent statue was repaired by Aristocles, in 
Olymp. 95.3 {Bockh, Corp. Inscript., 237) ; and that 
it might not be without the necessary moisture, as it 
was placed on the dry ground, they were accustomed 
to sprinkle water on the ivory. {Pausan., 5, 11, 5.) 
According to the account of an ancient writer named 
Philochorus {ap. Schol. ad Aristoph. Pac., 604), Phid¬ 
ias, soon after completing this statue, was charged with 
having embezzled a portion of the materials intended 
for the work, and, in consequence, fled to Elis, where 
he was employed in making the famous statue of Ju¬ 
piter ; but here again he was accused of similar em¬ 
bezzlement, and was put to death by the Elians 
The best critics, however, consider this whole story 



PHIDIAS 


PHIDIAS. 


io be false. Heyne, though he errs in maintaining that 
this statue was dedicated before that of Minerva, yet 
has very properly observed that, had Phidias been 
guilty of embezzlement in relation to it, the Elians 
would never have allowed him to inscribe his name 
on it, nor would they have intrusted its preservation 
to his descendants. ( Antiq . Aufs., vol. 1, p. 201.) 
Muller, too, examines the whole subject with great 
impartiality, and comes to the conclusion, that the fame 
which Phidias had acquired by his Minerva induced 
the Elians to invite him to their country, in connexion 
with his relations and pupils ; and that this journey was 
undertaken by him in the most honourable circum¬ 
stances. ( Muller, de Phidice Vita , p. 25, seqq.) —The 
statue of the Olympian Jupiter graced the temple of that 
god at Olympia in Elis, and was chryselephantine 
(made of gold and ivory), like that of Minerva. Like 
it, too, the size was colossal, being sixty feet high. 
The god was represented as sitting on his throne : in 
his right hand he held a figure of Victory, also made 
of gold and ivory, in his left a sceptre beautifully 
adorned with all kinds of metals, and having on the 
top of it a golden eagle. His brows were encircled 
with a crown, made to imitate leaves of olive ; his 
robe was of massive gold, curiously adorned, by a kind 
of encaustic work probably, with various figures of an¬ 
imals, and also with lilies. The sandals, too, were of 
gold. The throne was inlaid with all kinds of precious 
materials, ebony, ivory, and gems, and was adorned 
with sculptures of exquisite beauty. On the base was 
an inscription recording the name of the artist. (Pau- 
san ., 5, 11. — Compare Quatremere de Quincy, Jup. 
Olymp., p. 310. — Siebclis ad Pausan.,l. c .) Lucian 
informs us, that, in order to render this celebrated work 
as perfect in detail as it was noble in conception and 
outline, Phidias, when he exposed it for the first time 
after its completion to public view, placed himself be- 
hit d the door of the temple, and listened attentively 
to every criticism made by the spectators : when the 
crowd had withdrawn and the temple gates were closed, 
he revised and corrected his work, wherever the ob¬ 
jections he had just heard appeared to him to be well- 
grounded ones. (Lucian, pro Imag., 14.) It is also 
said, that when the artist himself was asked, by his rela¬ 
tion Panaenus, the Athenian painter, who, it seems, aid¬ 
ed him in the work, whence he had derived the idea of 
this his grandest effort, he replied, from the well-known 
passage in Homer, where Jove is represented as causing 
Olympus to tremble on its base by the mere move¬ 
ment of his sable brow. (II., 1, 528.) The lines in 
question, with the exception of their reference to the 
“ambrosial curls,” and the brow of the god, contain no 
allusion whatever to external form, and yet they carry 
with them the noble idea of the Supreme Being nod¬ 
ding benignant assent with so much true majesty as to 
cause even Olympus to tremble. (Strab., 354.— Po- 
iyb., Exc. L., xxx., 15, 4, 3.— Muller, de Phid. Vit., 
p. 62.)—Of the whole work Quintilian remarks, that it 
even added new feelings to the religion of Greece 
(Inst. Or., 12, 10, 9), and yet, when judged according 
to the principles of genuine art, neither this nor the 
Minerva in the Parthenon possessed any strong claims 
to legitimate beauty. It does not excite surprise, 
therefore, to learn that Phidias himself disapproved of 
the mixed effect produced by such a combination of 
different circumstances, nor will it appear presurnptu- 
ou 5 in us to condemn these splendid representations. 
In these compositions, exposed, as they were, to the 
dim light of the ancient temple, and from their very 
magnitude imperfectly comprehended, the effects of 
variously reflecting substances, now gloom, now glow¬ 
ing with unearthly lustre, must have been rendered 
doubly imposing. But this influence, though well 
calculated to increase superstitious devotion, or to im¬ 
press mysterious terror on the bewildered sense, was 
meretricious, and altogether diverse from the solemn 


repose, the simple majesty of form and expression, 
which constitute the true sublimity of sculptural repre¬ 
sentation. ( Memes , History of the Fine Arts , p. 52.) 
—In the time of Pausanias, there was still shown, at 
Olympia, the building in which this statue of Jupiter 
was made, and the posterity of Phidias had the charge 
of keeping the image free from whatever might sully 
its beauty, and were, on this account, styled fyatdpvv- 
rai. (Pausan., 5, 14, 5.)—We have already remark¬ 
ed that, according to the best critics, this statue wn? 
executed subsequently to that in the Parthenon, and 
not, as the common accounts have it, before this. It 
was on his return to Athens, after completing the 
Olympian Jove, that Phidias became involved in the 
difficulty, which many erroneously suppose to have 
preceded his visit to Elis. According to Plutarch, his 
friendship and influence with Pericles exposed the ar¬ 
tist to envy, and procured him many enemies, who, 
wishing, through him, to try what judgment the people 
might pass upon Pericles himself, persuaded Menon, 
one of his workmen, to place himself as a suppliant in the 
forum, and to entreat the protection of the state while 
he lodged an information against Phidias. The peo¬ 
plegranting his request, Menon charged the artist with 
having embezzled a portion of the forty talents of gold 
with which he had been furnished for the decoration of 
the statue in the Parthenon. The allegation, however, 
was disproved in the most satisfactory manner; for 
Phidias, by the advice of Pericles, had put on the gold¬ 
en decorations in such a way that they could be easi¬ 
ly removed without injury to the statue. They were 
accordingly taken off, and, at the order cf Pericles, 
weighed by the accusers; and the result established 
the perfect innocence of the artist. His enemies, how¬ 
ever, were not to be daunted by this defeat, and a new 
charge was, in consequence, soon prepared against 
him. It was alleged that, in his representation of the 
battle of the Amazons upon the shield of Minerva, he 
had introduced his own effigy, as a bald old man ta¬ 
king up a large stone with both hands, and a highly- 
finished picture of Pericles contending with an Ama¬ 
zon. This was regarded as an act of impiety, and 
Phidias was cast into prison, to await his trial for the 
offence ; but he died in confinement before his cause 
could be heard. (Plut., Vit. Pericl. — Muller , de Vit. 
Phid., p. 33, seqq. — Schbmann, de Comil., p. 219.— 
Platner , der Process, und die Klagen, vol. 1, p. 353.) 
—The numerous works of Phidias belong to three dis¬ 
tinct classes : Toreutic, or statues of mixed materials, 
ivory being the chief; statues of bronze; and sculp¬ 
tures in marble. In this enumeration are included 
only capital performances ; for exercises in wood, plas¬ 
ter, clay, and minute labours in carving, are recorded 
to have occasionally occupied his attention. — Of the 
first class of works we have already mentioned the 
two most remarkable ones, the statues of Minerva and 
Jupiter. Among his works in bronze may be enumer¬ 
ated the following : 1. The celebrated statue of Mi¬ 
nerva Promachus, to which we have alluded in a previ¬ 
ous article. (Vid. Parthenon.)—2. A statue of Mi¬ 
nerva, placed, like the previous one, in the Athenian 
Acropolis, and highly praised by Pliny (34, 8, 19). 
Lucian prefers it to every other work of the artist’s. 
(Imag., 4.)—3. Another statue of Minerva, removed 
to Rome in B.C. 168, and placed by Paulus ./Emitiu* 
in the temple of Fortune. (Plin., 1. c .)—4. Thirteen 
brazen statues, dedicated at Delphi, by the Athenians, 
out of the spoils taken at Marathon. (Pausan., 10, 
30, 1.)—The following were among the productions 
of Phidias in marble. 1. A statue of Venus Urania, 
placed in a temple dedicated to this goddess, not fat 
from the Ceramicus at Athens. It was of Farian mar¬ 
ble. (Pausan., 1, 24, 8.)—2. Another statue of Ve¬ 
nus, of exquisite beauty, which was in the collection 
of Octavia at Rome. (Plin., 36, 5, 4.)—3. A statue 
of Mercury, placed in the vicinity of Thebes. (Pau 

1029 




P H I 


PHIDON. 


tan., 9, 10, 2.)—Phidias not only practised statuary, 
the art in which he was pre-eminent, but also engra¬ 
ving, as we learn from Martial ( Epigr. , 3, 35), and 
from Julian (Epist, 8, p. 377, ed. Spanh.). The pu¬ 
pils of this most distinguished artist were, Agoracritus, 
Alcamenes, and Colotes. ( Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v. — 
Junius, Catal. Artijic., p. 151, seqq. — Muller, de 
Phid. Vit ., p. 37, seqq.) —The sublime style perfected 
by Phidias seems almost to have expired with himself; 
not that the art declined, but a predilection for sub¬ 
jects of beauty and the softer graces, in preference to 
more heroic and masculine character, with the excep¬ 
tion of the grand relievos on the temple at Olympia, 
may be traced even among his immediate disciples. 
In the era and labours of Phidias, we discover the ut¬ 
most excellence to which Grecian genius attained in 
the arts ; and in the marbles of the British Museum, 
the former ornaments of the Parthenon, we certainly 
behold the conceptions, and, in some measure, the very 
practice of the great Athenian sculptor. Of the intel¬ 
lectual character of these admirable performances, 
grandeur is the prevailing principle ; the grandeur of 
simplicity and nature, devoid of all parade or ostenta¬ 
tion of an ; and their author, to use the language of 
antiquity, united the three characteristics, of truth, 
grandeur, and minute refinement; exhibiting majesty, 
gravity, breadth, and magnificence of composition, with 
a practice scrupulous in detail, and with truth of indi¬ 
vidual representation, yet in the handling rapid, broad, 
and firm. This harmonious assemblage of qualities, in 
themselves dissimilar, in their result the same, gives 
to the productions of this master an ease, a grace, a 
vitality, resembling more the spontaneous overflow¬ 
ings of inspiration than the laborious offspring of 
thought and science. ( Merries, History of the Fine 
Arts, p. 52, seqq.) — In the course of this article, we 
have frequently referred to the Life of Phidias by Mul¬ 
ler. We will end with a brief account of it, which 
may also serve, in some degree, as a recapitulation of 
what has here been advanced. Muller published, in 
1827, three dissertations relative to Phidias, read be¬ 
fore trie Royal Society of Sciences at Gottingen. The 
first is a biographical sketch of Phidias, and establishes 
beyond doubt that Phidias began to embellish Athens 
with his works of sculpture in Olympiad 82 or 83, 
when Pericles was emoTuTTig; that he finished, in the 
third year of Olympiad 85, the statue of Minerva for the 
Parthenon ; that the Elians, when the name of Phid¬ 
ias had become known over all Greece for the splen¬ 
did works he had executed at Athens, induced him to 
come to Elis, and that he made there the statue of the 
Olympian Jove between Olympiads 85.3, and 86.3; 
and, finally, that after his return to Athens, he was 
thrown into prison by the enemies of Pericles, on a charge 
of impiety, and that he died in prison, in the first year 
of Olympiad 87, in which year the last work of Peri¬ 
cles, the Propylaja, had been finished.—The second 
shows the state of the fine arts before Phidias, and to 
what height they were carried by his genius. — The 
third gives a new explanation of the statues on the 
western front of the Parthenon at Athens. The work 
is in Latin, and has the following title : “ C. Odofr. 
Muelleri de Phidice Vita et Operibus Commentationes 
tres, &c.” ( Gotting ., 1827, 4to.) 

Phidon, I. a king of Argos, of the race of the Herac- 
[idae, who, breaking through the constitutional checks 
oy which his power was restrained, made himself ab¬ 
solute in his native city. He soon became possessed 
of extensive rule by various conquests, reducing, about 
the 3d Olympiad, the city of Corinth under his sway, 
and subsequently, about the 8th Olympiad, the greater 
part of the Peloponnesus. ( Muller , JEginet., p. 51, 
seqq.) The Lacedaemonians were at this time too much 
occupied with the first Messenian war to be able to 
check his progress, while he himself, as the descend¬ 
ant of Temenus, one of the Heraclidae, founded his 
1030 


conquests upon his claim to the possessions of his 
progenitor. ( Muller, p. 52.) Phidon is described by 
Herodotus (6, 127) and Pausanias (6, 22) as having 
exercised his authority in the most arbitrary manner 
of any of the Greeks. Among other acts of high¬ 
handed power was his driving at the Elian agono- 
thetae, or presidents of the games, and presiding him¬ 
self in their stead. {Herod., 1. c .— Pausan., I. c .) 
Phidon is said to have been the first who established 
a common standard of weights and measures for the 
Peloponnesians. Not that, as some maintain, he was 
the inventor of weights and measures, for these were 
in existence long before (Salmas , de Usur., p. 429.— 
Heyne, ad. Horn., vol. 5, p. 389), but he caused one 
uniform kind of weights and measures to be used by 
those of the Peloponnesians whom he had reduced be¬ 
neath his sway. (Herod., 1. e. — Muller, p. 56.) He 
is reported also to have been the first that stamped 
money, or, in other words, introduced among the 
Greeks a regular coinage. This can only mean, nqt, 
as Salmasius thinks, that he merely stamped a certain 
mark on silver and brass laminse, which had before 
been estimated by weight, but that he abolished the 
use of metallic bars or spits, and brought in stamped 
laminae for the first time. ( Muller , JEginet., p. 57.—. 
Id., Dorians, vol. 2, p. 386, Eng. transl. — Etymol. 
Mag., s. v. ’ObeXloKog.) This early mint was estab¬ 
lished in the island of ^Egina, at that time subject to 
his sway, and the very place for one, since its inhabi¬ 
tants were famed for their industrious and commercial 
habits. (Strab., 376.— Eustath. ad 11., 2, p. 604.— 
Marmor. Par., p. 25, ep. 31.) The scholiast on Pin¬ 
dar (01., 13, 27) makes Phidon to have been a Corin¬ 
thian ; erreiSi] QelAuv rig, K opi'vdiog uvf/p, evpe psrpa 
Kai oraOpla. This, however, can only mean, that 
Phidon, on the conquest of Corinth, introduced there 
the same weights and measures, and the same stamped 
money as at yEgina. Hence the more correct remark 
of Didymus (ad v. 36), ori 4>tu5«r, 6 rrpuTog nofag 
K opivdloig to fj-ETpov, ’Apyelog r/v. (Muller, JEginet., 
p. 55.) But what are we to do with the authority of 
Aristotle, who speaks of Phidon as a Corinthian, and 
very early legislator ( Polit ., 2, 3, 7, ed. Schn.), while 
elsewhere he makes mention of Phidon, the tyrant 
reepi “Apyog (Polit., 5, 8, 4, p. 218, Schn.)' 1 . The 
best answer is that contained in the words of Muller: 

“ Potest Arislotcles, de instituto vetere Corinthiorum, 
quod ad Phidonem legislatorem referebant, certior fac¬ 
tus, quis ille Phido fuerit ipse dubitasse(JEginet., 
p. 56.) The question, however, still remains open to 
discussion, and Heyne, among others, expressly dis¬ 
tinguishes the Corinthian from the Argive Phidon. 
(Opusc. Acad., vol. 2, p. 255, in notis.) In a frag¬ 
ment also of Heraclides Ponticus (p. 22), mention is 
made of a Cumsean Phidon, who ttX elocn periduKS 
Trig 7r oTuTEiag. So that the name appears to have be¬ 
longed to more than one legislator.—The power of 
the Argive Phidon is said to have been overthrown 
by the Lacedaemonians about the 11th Olympiad, when 
leisure was allowed them to attend to the affairs of the 
Peloponnesus, the first Messenian war having been 
brought to a close. The chronology of Phidon’s reigr 
has been satisfactorily settled by Muller, in his “ JEgi- 
neticap a work to which we have already me re than 
once referred, and in the course of the discussion he 
examines critically the computation of the Parian Mar¬ 
ble, and also that of Eusebius. The same scholar has 
likewise explained away the difficulty in the text of 
Herodotus (6, 127), by supposing that the historian 
confounded a later Phidon with the ruler of Argos. 
There is no need, therefore, of any of the emendations 
proposed by Gronovius, Reitz, and others, although 
the correction suggested by Gronovius meets with the 
approbation of Larcher, Porson, and Gaisford. ( Lur¬ 
cher, ad Herod., 1. c.—Porson, Tracts, p. 325 — Gais¬ 
ford ad Herod., 1. c .—Compare Musgrave, Disscrta- 






PHI 


PHI 


toons, |. 178, seqq.) In the Brandenburg collection, 
there is a coin, described by Beger, which bears on 
one side a diota, with the inscription 4>IAO, and on 
the. other a Boeotian shield. This has been often 
taken for a coin of Phidon the Argive, but on no good 
grounds whatever. The known device of Angina is, 
almost without an exception, a tortoise, while the 
shield portrayed upon this coin is as exclusively a badge 
of Bceotia, and is too highly executed for so remote a 
period. It appears, also, that it was a common prac¬ 
tice in Boeotia to inscribe the name of some magistrate 
upon their coins. {Beger, Thesaurus Brandenb., p. 
279. — Cardwell , Lectures on Ancient Coinage, p. 
111.)—II. A native of Cum®. (Vid. Phidon I.) 

Philadelphia { Qihadetyeui ), I. a city of Lydia, 
southeast of Sardis. It stood on a root of Mount 
Tmolus, by the river Cogamus, and derived its name 
from its founder, Attalus Philadelphus, brother of Eu- 
rnenes. The frequent earthquakes which it experi¬ 
enced were owing to its vicinity to the region called 
Gatacecaumene. Even the city walls were not se¬ 
cure, but were shaken almost daily, and disparted. 
1 he inhabitants lived in perpetual apprehension, and 
were almost constantly employed in repairs. They 
were few in number, the people chiefly residing in the 
country, and cultivating the soil, which was very fer¬ 
tile. ( Strabo, 628.) Tacitus mentions it among the 
cities restored by Tiberius, after a more than ordinary 
calamity of the kind to which we have just alluded. 
[Ann., 2, 47.) In the .midst of these alarms, however, 
Christianity flourished in Philadelphia, and the place 
is mentioned in the Book of Revelations as one of the 
seven churches of Asia (3, 7). At a later day, the 
zeal of the Philadelphians showed forth conspicuously 
in the gallant defence they made against the Turks 
on more than one occasion. ( G. Packym., p. 290.) 
At length they were conquered bv Bajazet in 1390. 
M. Due., p. 70.— Chalcond., p. 33.) The place is 
now called Allah-sehr , and preserves some remains of 
Christianity, and also a few monuments of heathen an¬ 
tiquity. Chandler states, “ that it is now a mean but 
considerable town, of large extent, spreading up the 
slopes of three or four hills. Of the walls which en¬ 
compassed it, many remnants are standing, but with 
large gaps.” ( Travels , p. 310, seq.) Mr. Arundell, 
who visited this place in 1826, was informed by the 
Greek bishop that there were “ twenty-five churches 
in it, but that divine service was chiefly confined to 
five only, in which it was regularly perforjned every 
week, but in the larger number only once a year.” 
{Visit to the Seven Churches of Asia, p. 170.) Mr. 
Fellows, who visited the spot in 1838, remarks, “ Of 
the ancient city of Philadelphia but little remains ; 
its walls are still standing, enclosing several hills, 
ipon the sides of which stood the town, but they 
are fallen into ruins. They are built of unhewn stone, 
massed and cemented together with fragments of old 
edifices : some immense remains of buildings, huge 
square stone pillars, supporting brick arches, are also 
standing, and are called the ruins of the Christian 
Church. All the remains which have been pointed 
out to me as ruins of Christian churches appear to 
have been vast temples, perhaps erected by imperial 
command, and dedicated to nominal Christianity, but 
showing, in the niches and brackets for statues and 
architectural ornaments, traces of heathen supersti¬ 
tion.” {Tour in Asia Minor, p. 288.) The meaning 
of the modern name, Allah-sehr, is “ the city of God,” 
an appellation which forms a strange kind of coinci¬ 
dence with the departed glories of the place, (inm- 
dell, p. 169.—Compare Milner's History of the Seven 
Churches, p. 317.) — II. A city of Cilicia Trachea, 
on the river Calycadnus, to the north of Seleucia 
Trachea. The site is thought by Leake to correspond 
no the modern Ermenek. {Journal, p. 117.) Cap¬ 
tain Beaufort, on the other hand, supposes that Phila¬ 


delphia may be represented by Mout or Mood, a town 
of some size, near the junction of the two principal 
branches of the Calycadnus. {Karamania, p. 223.) 
Leake, however, makes Mout to be Claudiopolis. 
{Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 332.)—III. The cap¬ 
ital city of the Ammonites, situate among the mount* 
ains of Gilead, near the sources of the Jabok or Jo- 
baccus. It received its name from Ptolemy Philadel¬ 
phus. {Steph. Byz.) Its Oriental appellation wa* 
Rabbath Ammon. Stephanus of Byzantium informs 
us, that it was first called Amrnana (Ammon), after¬ 
ward Astarte, and at last Philadelphia. It was one of 
the cities of Becapolis. Pliny, in enumerating these 
ten cities, names Raphana after Philadelphia, which 
Mannert thinks rhay be a corruption from Rabatham- 
mona. Abulfeda speaks of ruins at a place called 
Amman, which would seem to correspond with the site 
of this city. {Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 1, p. 320.) 

Philadelphus, the surname of the second Ptolemy 
of Egypt. ( Vid. Ptolermeus II.) 

Phil^e, an island and city of Egypt, south of Syene. 
The city appears to have owed its existence to the 
Ptolemies, who intended it as a friendly meeting 
place and a common emporium for the Egyptians and 
the Ethiopians from Meroe. Hence, according to 
some, the name of the place. ($i?i,ai, from ipiXoq — 
Compare Servius, ad JEn., 6, 323, “ locum quern Phi- 
las, hoc est arnicas, vocant.") Others, however, derive 
it from the Egyptian Phi lakh, “ the end” or “ ex¬ 
tremity” (i. e., of Egypt), and others, again, from the 
Arabic Phil, “an elephant,” making Phil® and Ele- 
phantina identical. (Consult Jablonski, Voc. JEgypt., 
s. v. — Opusc., vol. 1, p. 455, seq., ed. Te Water.) 
The island contains at present many splendid remains 
of antiquity. In its immediate vicinity was a small 
rocky island called ’AbaToq (Abatos) by the Greeks, 
from the circumstance of its being permitted the priests 
alone to set foot on it, and its being hence inaccessible 
to others. In this place was the tomb of Osiris, Isis 
having here deposited his remains. ( Tzetz. ad Ly- 
cophr., v. 212.— Zoega , de Obelise., p. 286.— Descrip¬ 
tion de VEgypte, Antiq.,\ ol. 1, p. 44.— Creuzer, Com¬ 
ment. Herod., p. 182, seqq.) The modern name is 
Gezirat-el-Birbe (“ Temple-island”), in allusion to the 
remains of antiquity upon it. {Mannert, Geogr., vol. 
10, pt. 1, p. 235, seqq.) 

Phil^eni, two Carthaginian brothers, whose names 
have been handed down to modern times for a signal 
act of devotion to their country. A contest, it seems, 
had arisen between the Carthaginian's and Cyreneans, 
respecting the point where their respective territories 
met, and this was the more difficult to be determined, 
since the country on the borders of the two states was 
a sandy desert, and without anything that might serve 
as a common landmark. It was agreed at last, that 
two individuals should set out at the same time from 
Carthage and Cyrene respectively, and that the spot 
where they might meet should be regarded as the 
common boundary of the two communities. The par¬ 
ties accordingly set out, the two Philaeni having been 
selected by the Carthaginians for this purpose; but the 
two Cyreneans travelled more slowly than their Car¬ 
thaginian antagonists, and only met the Philaeni after, 
the latter had advanced a considerable distance into 
the disputed territory. The Cyreneans thereupon ac¬ 
cused the Philaeni of unfairness, and of having started 
before the appointed time. The Philaeni, on their 
part, offered to do anything to show that they had act¬ 
ed fairly, and the two Cyreneans then gave them their 
choice, either to be buried alive on the spot where 
they were standing, or else to allow them, the Cyre¬ 
neans, to advance as far as they pleased into the dispu¬ 
ted territory, and there be buried alive on their part. 
The Philaeni accepted the former part of the offer, and 
were accordingly entombed. The Carthaginians erect¬ 
ed two altars on the spot, which were thenceforth to* 

'031 







PHI 


P H I 


garded as the limits of their territory in this direction. 
(Sail., Bell. Jug., 19.— Id. ib., 79.) These altars 
stood in the innermost bend of the Syrtis Major, and 
not, as Sallust erroneously states, to the west of both 
the Syrtes. The story of the Philseni, moreover, as 
given by the Roman historian, seems to wear a doubt¬ 
ful appearance, from the circumstance of Gyrene’s 
being so much nearer the point in question than Car¬ 
thage. If the distance between these two cities be 
divided into eight equal parts, the Philaeni will be found 
to have travelled six, and the deputies from Cyrene 
only two, of these parts. The truth, therefore, was 
probably this : the territory in dispute lay between 
Hesperis on the Cyrenean side, and Leptis Magna on 
the Carthaginian ; and the deputies started from these 
two places, not from Carthage and Cyrene. ( Man - 
nert, Geogr., vol. 10, pt. 2, p. 116.) 

Philammon, an ancient bard, belonging to the wor¬ 
ship of Apollo at Delphi, and whose name was cele¬ 
brated at that place. To him was attributed the for¬ 
mation of Delphian choruses of virgins, which sang 
the birth of Latona and of her children. (Muller, 
Hist. Gr. Lit., p. 24.) He is said to have taken 
part in the Argonautic expedition, and passed for a 
son of Apollo. (Plut., de Mas., p. 629, ed Wyttcnb.) 

Philemon, I. a comic poet, the rival of Menander. 
According to some authorities, he was a native of 
Syracuse (Suidas, s. v.), while others make him to 
have been born at Soli, in Cilicia. (Strabo, 671.) He 
seems to have been a writer of considerable powers. 
His wit, ingenuity, skill in depicting character, and 
expression of sentiment, are praised by Apuleius 
(Florid., 3, n. 16), while he pronounces him inferior, 
however, to his more celebrated antagonist. The 
popular voice, on the other hand, often gave Philemon 
the prize over Menander (Aul. Gell., 17, 4), perhaps be¬ 
cause he studied more the tastes of the vulgar, or used 
other adscititious means of popularity. This, at least, 
Menander gave him to understand, when on one occa¬ 
sion he met his rival and asked him : Pr’ythee, Phi¬ 
lemon, dost thou not blush when thou gainest the prize 
over my head]” (Aul. Gell., 1. c.) We may see a 
favourable specimen of his construction of plots in the 
Trinummus of Plautus, which is a translation from 
his Qr/oavpog. (Prol. Trinumm., 18, seqq.) Tem¬ 
perance of body, with cheerfulness of mind, prolonged 
his life to the great age of ninety-seven years (Lucian, 
Macrob., 25), during which period he composed ninety- 
seven comedies. The manner of his death is vari¬ 
ously related. The common account makes him to 
have died of laughter on seeing an ass eat figs. The 
statement of Apuleius, however, is the most proba¬ 
ble, according to which he expired without pain or dis¬ 
ease, from the pure exhaustion of nature ( l. c. _ Val. 

Max,, 12, 6). — Philemon began to exhibit comedy 
during the reign of Alexander, a little earlier than 
Menander, and before the 113th Olympiad. He died 
in the reign of the second Antigonus, son of Deme¬ 
trius. It has been said above that he lived to the age 
of ninety-seven years ; Suidas, however, makes it nine¬ 
ty-six, and other authorities ninety-nine. ( Diod., 

Eclog., lib. 23, ed. Bip., vol. 9, p. 318. — Clinton's 
Fasti Hellenici, 2d ed., p. 157.) The fragments of 
Philemon are usually printed along with those of Me¬ 
nander. The best edition of these conjointly is that 
of Meineke, Berol., 1823, 8vo. (Theatre of the Greeks, \ 
p. 121, ed. 4.) — II. A son of the preceding, also a i 
comic poet, and called, for distinction’ sake, Philemon ] 
the younger (6 veurepog.—Athen., 7, p. 291, d.). 

Philetlerus, a eunuch made governor of Perga- i 
mus by Lysimachus. (Vid. Pergamus II.) 

Philetas, a native of Cos, and the only poet that 
we know of at the court of Ptolemy I., who made him , 
preceptor to his son and successor Ptolemy Philadel- 
phus. Philetas was both a grammarian and poet. He 
composed elegies, which were the model of those of i 
1032 


Propertius, and he is said to have given quite a new 
i character to this species of poetry, in his description 
1 of the joys arid sorrows of love. He wrote also lyric 
i and lighter poems. The ancients prized him very 
1 highly, and the inhabitants of Cos erected a brazen 
statue to him. Quintilian ranks him next to Calli¬ 
machus (10, 1, 58). We have only a few fragments 
remaining of his elegies, and some verses also in the 
anthology. Philetas was remarkable for his devotion 
to study, and reduced himself by his great application 
to so emaciated a habit of body, that, according to the 
story told in iElian, he used to wear leaden soles to 
his shoes or sandals (/uoMdfiov TCETrotypeva kv rolg 
vnodr/paoi tt eX/uara) to prevent his being blown over 
by the wind! (JElian, V. H., 9, 14.) Athenaeus 
says, that he wore balls of lead around his feet, (ctyat- 
pug Ik /aoXvdov Tcercotripivag exeiv rrepl rdi tt ode, 12, 
p. 552, b.). The wonder is how he could have walked. 
Athenasus also states that he fairly wore himself away 
in fruitless endeavours to solve the sophism called by 
the ancients ipevdopevov r or 'ipevdoXoyog), and the epi¬ 
thet on his tomb, which this writer cites, corroborates 
the statement. (Athen., 9, p. 401, e. — Casaub., ad 
loc.) 

Philippi, a city of Thrace, to the northeast of Am- 
phipolis, and in the immediate vicinity of Mount Pan- 
gasus. It was founded by Philip of Macedon, on the 
site of an old Thasian settlement. The Thasians had 
been attracted by the valuable gold and silver mines 
in this quarter, and the settlement formed by them was 
called Crenides, from the circumstance of its being sur¬ 
rounded by numerous sources which descended from 
the neighbouring mountain ( Kpr/vrj, a spring). Philip 
of Macedon having turned his attention to the affairs 
of Thrace, the possession of Crenides and Mount Pan- 
gssus naturally entered his views. Accordingly, he in¬ 
vaded this country, expelled the feeble Cotys from his 
throne, and then proceeded to found a new city on the 
site of the old Thasian colony, as above mentioned, 
which he named after himself, Philippi. (Diod. Sic., 
16, 8.) When Macedonia became subject to the Ro¬ 
mans, the advantages attending the peculiar situation 
of Philippi induced that people to settle a colony there ; 
and we know from the Acts of the Apostles that it was 
already at that period one of the most flourishing cities 
in this part of their empire (16, 12.—Compare Plin., 
4, 10). It is, moreover, celebrated in history from the 
great victory gained here by Antony and Octavianns 
over the forces of Brutus and Cassius, by which the 
republican party was completely subdued. (Appian., 
Bell. Civ., 4, 107, seqq.—Dio Cass., 47, 41.) Phil¬ 
ippi, however, is rendered more interesting from the 
circumstance of its being the first place in Europe 
where the Gospel was preached by St. Paul (A.D. 
51), as we know from the 16th of the Acts of the 
Apostles, and also from the Epistle he has addressed 
to his Philippian converts (4, 15), where the zeal and 
charity of the Philippians towards their apostle re¬ 
ceived a just commendation, We hear frequently of 
bishops of Philippi, and the town is also often men¬ 
tioned by the Byzantine writers. Its ruins still retain 
the name of Filibah. (Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. I, 
p. 301, seqq. — Mannert, Geogr., vol. 7, p. 232.) 

Philippopoms, a city in the interior of Thrace, os 
the southeast side of the Hebrus, and some distarr* 
to the northwest of Hadrianopolis. It was situate in 
a large plain, on a mountain with three summits, and 
hence received also the appellation of Trimontium 
It was founded by Philip of Macedon. In the Roman 
times it became the capital of the province of Thracia 
The modern name is Filibe or Philinopoli. (Stepk 
Byz., s. v.—Itin. Ant., 136 .—Hierocl., p. 685.—7V 
cit., Ann., 3, 38 Polyb., 5, 100.— A mm. Marc., 26, 

10.J 

Philippus, I. one of the earlier kings of Macedo 
nia, and the first of the name. He succeeded hi? 







PHILIPPUS. 


PHILIPPU3. 


fatner Argaeus, about 649 B.C, according to some 
chronologers, and reigned, as Eusebius states, thirty- 
eight years, but, according to Dexippus, thirty-five. 
{Euseb., p. 57. — Dexipp., ap. SyncclL, p. 262, seq.) 
These numbers, however, are obviously manufactured 
by chronologers, upon no certain or positive testimony, 
since none existed. ( Clinton , Fast. Hell., vol. 1, p. 
221.)—II. The second of the name was the son of 
Amyntas II. of Macedonia. This latter monarch left 
three sons at the time of his death, under the care of 
their mother Eurydice. Of these, Alexander, the el¬ 
dest, had just attained to man’s estate ; but Perdiccas, 
and Philip the youngest of the three, were still under 
age. Alexander, who appears to have been a prince 
of great promise, had scarcely ascended the throne, 
when he lost his life by the hand of an assassin. 
( Diod. Sic., 15, 71.) During his reign, however, 
short as it was, he was engaged in a contest with 
Ptolemy of Alorus. We do not know whether Ptole¬ 
my was in any way related to the royal family, nor 
whether he laid claim to the crown. But it seems 
clear that he was favoured by the queen Eurydice, 
the widowed mother, and was probably her paramour. 
According to Diodorus and Plutarch, Pelopidas, the 
Tbeban commander, came into Macedonia to arbitrate 
between Alexander and Ptolemy, and Philip was one 
of the hostages delivered on this occasion to the um¬ 
pire. As this, however, is expressly contradicted by 
the testimony of the contemporary orator ffSschines, 
who relates that Philip was still in Macedonia at the 
time of his elder brother’s death, Mr. Thirlwall in¬ 
clines to the following opinion : According to Plu¬ 
tarch, after the murder of Alexander, which must have 
happened a very short time after the compromise, Pe¬ 
lopidas, who was in Thessaly, on his second expedi¬ 
tion against the tyrant of Pherae, was invited into 
Macedonia by the friends of the deceased king, and 
obliged Ptolemy to enter into an engagement to pre¬ 
serve the crown for the younger brothers. Ptolemy, 
it is said, gave fifty hostages as a security for the per¬ 
formance of his promises, among whom was his own 
son Philoxenus. It seems more natural, according to 
Mr. Thirlwall, that Philip should have been committed 
to the custody of the Thebans under these circum¬ 
stances, than on the occasion of the contest between 
Ptolemy and Alexander. ( History of Greece , vol. 5, 
p. 163.) Ptolemy kept possession of the government 
three years : Diodorus simply says that he reigned so 
long : probably, however, he never assumed any other 
title than that of regent, though he may have had no 
intention of ever resigning his power to the rightful 
heir. And it was, perhaps, as much in self-defence, as 
to avenge his brother’s murder or his mother’s shame, 
that Perdiccas killed him. Concerning the reign of 
Perdiccas III. we have but very scanty information. 
He was slain in battle by the Illyrians, in the fifth 
year of his rule, leaving behind him an infant son by 
the name of Amyntas. At the time of this event 
Philip was twenty-three years of age. Diodorus sup¬ 
poses that he was still at Thebes, but that, on receiv¬ 
ing intelligence of his brother’s death, he made his es¬ 
cape and suddenly appeared in Macedonia (16, 2). It 
is not difficult to understand how the story may have 
taken this form : a hostage so important, it might ea¬ 
sily be supposed by writers acquainted with his subse¬ 
quent history, would not have been willingly surren¬ 
dered by the Thebans; it is certain, however, from 
better authority, that he had been already restored 
to his country, and, it is probable, early in the reign 
of Perdiccas, when the Thebans could have no mo¬ 
tive for detaining him. Extravagantly as some mod¬ 
ern writers have indulged their imagination with re¬ 
gard to the manner in which his time was employed 
during his sojourn at Thebes, it is hardly possible to 
overrate the importance of the opportunities it afforded 
him for the acquisition of various kmds of knowledge, 

6 P 


or to doubt that he availed himself of them with all th« 
energy and perseverance which belonged to his char 
acter. It is, perhaps, less probable that the house of 
Polymnis, the father of Epaminondas, should have 
been chosen for his residence, as Diodorus relates, 
than that of Pammenes, according to Plutarch’s state¬ 
ment : and the fable of his Pythagorean studies, wor¬ 
thy of Diodorus, is below criticism. But a certain 
tincture of philosophy was at this time deemed almost 
an indispensable requisite in a liberal education. It 
was undoubtedly, however, not the study of philoso¬ 
phy, either speculative or practical, that chiefly occu¬ 
pied Philip’s attention during the period of his resi¬ 
dence at Thebes. To'the society in which it was 
passed, he may have been mainly indebted for that 
command of the Greek language, which enabled him 
both to write and speak it with a degree of ease and 
eloquence not inferior to that of the most practised 
orators of the day. But the most important advan¬ 
tages which he gained from his stay at Thebes were 
probably derived from the military and political les¬ 
sons, with which the conversation of generals arid 
statesmen like Epaminondas, Pelopidas, and their 
friends, could not fail to abound. It was by them 
that the art of war had been carried to the highest 
point it had yet reached in Greece ; or rather they, 
more particularly Epaminondas, had given it a new 
form ; and the details of their battles and campaigns 
would be eagerly collected by an intelligent and ambi¬ 
tious youth. Thebes was at this time the great centre 
of political movements : the point from which the con¬ 
dition, interests, and mutual relations of the Grecian 
states might be most distinctly surveyed. Here, too, 
were gained the clearest ideas of the state of parties 
of the nature and working of republican, especially of 
democratical, institutions : here probably Philip learned 
many of those secrets which often enabled him to con¬ 
quer without drawing the sword. And as he was 
placed in one cf the most favourable positions for 
studying the Gnek character, so the need which his 
situation imposed on him, of continual caution and self- 
control must have served very greatly to sharpen his 
natural sagacity, and to form the address which he af¬ 
terward displayed in dealing with men, and winning 
them for his ends. Nature had gifted him with almost 
every quality that could fit him for the station which he 
was destined to fill: a frame of extraordinary robust¬ 
ness, which was, no doubt, well trained in the exercises 
of the Theban palsestras : a noble person, a command¬ 
ing and prepossessing mien, which won respect and 
inspired confidence in all who approached him: ready 
eloquence, to which art only applied the cultivation re¬ 
quisite to satisfy the fastidious demands of a rhetorical 
age : quickness of observation, acuteness of discern¬ 
ment, presence of mind, fertility of invention, and dex¬ 
terity in the management of men and things. There 
seem to have been two features in his character, which, 
in another station or under different circumstances, 
might have gone near to lower him into an ordinary per¬ 
son, but which were so controlled by his fortune as to 
contribute not a little to his success. He appears to 
have been by his temperament prone to almost every 
kind of sensual pleasure. But as his life was too busy 
to allow him often to indulge his bias, his occasional ex¬ 
cesses wore the air of an amiable condescension. So 
his natural humour would perhaps have led him too 
often to forget his dignity in his intercourse with his in¬ 
feriors. But to Philip, the great king, the conqueror, 
the restless politician, these intervals of relaxation oc¬ 
curred so rarely, that they might strengthen his influ¬ 
ence with the vulgar, and could never expose him to 
contempt. From that he was secured by the energy ol 
his will, which made all his faculties and accomplish¬ 
ments of mind and body, and even his failings, as weii 
as what may be called, in a lower sense, his virtues, his 
affability, clemency, and generosity, always subservient 

1033 



PHILIPPUS. 


PHILIPPUS. 


to the purposes of his lofty ambition. A moral esti¬ 
mate of such a man’s character is comprised in the bare 
mention of his ruling passion, and cannoL be enlarged 
by any investigation into the motives of particular ac¬ 
tions ; and it is scarcely worth while to consider him 
in any other light than as an instrument of Providence 
for fixing the destiny of nations.—It was in the 105th 
Olympiad, and about 360 B.C., that Philip took charge 
of the government of Macedonia, not as monarch, but 
as the nearest kinsman, and as guardian of the royal 
infant, the son of his brother Perdiccas. The situa¬ 
tion in which he was now placed was one of great 
apparent difficulty and danger, and the throne which 
he had to defend was threatened by enemies in many 
quarters, by the victorious Illyrians as well as by the 
Pseonians, and lastly by an Athenian force, which was 
destined to place Argseus, a pretender to the crown, 
on the throne of Macedon. The Illyrians, happily, 
did not press their advantage ; and the Paeonians were 
induced to desist from hostilities by skilful negotia¬ 
tions, and secret presents made to their leaders. The 
Athenians were encountered in the field, and, after sus¬ 
taining a defeat, were forced to surrender. {Died. 
Sic., 16, 3.) Philip, however, generously granted 
them their liberty, and immediately sent a deputation 
to Athens with proposals of peace, which were gladly 
accepted ( Demosth. in Aristocr., § 144.) By the 
death of the reigning prince of Paeonia that country 
was soon after annexed to the dominion of Philip, but 
whether by right of succession or by conquest we are 
not informed. He next directed his arms against the 
Illyrians, who were totally routed after a severe con¬ 
flict. The loss of the enemy is said to have amounted 
to 7000 men ; and they were compelled to accept the 
terms of peace imposed by the conqueror. They ceded 
to him all that they possessed east of the Lake of Lych- 
nitis, and thus not only gave him the command of the 
principal pass by which they had been used to penetrate 
into Macedonia, but opened a way by which he might 
at any time descend through their own territory to the 
shores of the Adriatic. (Consult Leake's Northern 
Greece, vol. 3, p. 321.) It may safely be presumed 
that, after this brilliant success, Philip no longer hesi¬ 
tated to assume the kingly title. His usurpation, for 
such it appears to have been according to the laws of 
Macedon, was, however, most probably sanctioned by 
the unanimous consent of both the army and nation. 
How secure he felt himself in their affections is mani¬ 
fest from his treatment of his deposed nephew. He 
was so little jealous of him, that he brought him to his 
court, and, in time, bestowed the hand of one of his 
daughters upon him. ( Polyccn., 8, 60.— Arrian, 
Exp. Al, 1, 5.— Athenceus, 13, p. 557.) The trans¬ 
fer of the crown was so quiet and noiseless that it 
seems not to have reached the ears of the Athenian 
orators, whose silence may, at all events, be admitted 
as a proof that there was nothing in the transaction on 
which they could ground a charge against Philip.—His 
victory over the Illyrians is connected by Diodorus 
with the institution of the Macedonian phalanx, which 
he is said to have invented. The testimony of the 
ancients on this point has been very confidently reject¬ 
ed in modern times, without any just reason. We 
may indeed doubt whether this body, as it existed in 
the beginning of Philip’s reign, differed in any impor¬ 
tant feature from that which was already familiar to 
the Greeks, or, at least, from the Theban phalanx. But 
tt is another question whether the Macedonian armies 
had ever been organized on this plan ; and there is 
nothing to prevent us from admitting the statement of 
authors, certainly better informed than ourselves, that 
xc was first introduced by Philip. Nor is there any 
difficulty in believing, that he at the same time made 
some improvements in the arms or the structure of the 
halanx, which entitled it to its peculiar epithet, and 
im to the honour of an inventor. Both the tactics 
1034 


and the discipline of the army seem to have been m 
a very low state under his predecessors; and this was, 
perhaps, the main cause ol the defeats which they so 
often experienced from the neighbouring barbarians. 
Philip paid no less attention to the discipline than to 
the organization of his forces ; and his regulations 
were enforced with inflexible severity.—In the course 
of about a year from his brother’s death, Philip had 
freed himself from all his domestic embarrassments, 
and had seated himself firmly on the throne. In a 
summary account like the present, we must necessari¬ 
ly confine ourselves to a rapid sketch of the principal 
events of his reign. Allied with Athens, we find him, 
in conjunction with that power, carrying on operations 
against the republic of Olynthus, and seizing upon the 
city of Potidsea ; but, soon after, from some cause 
which is not apparent, he made peace with the Olyn- 
thians, and turned his arms against Amphipolis, which 
had preserved its independence ever since the days of 
Brasidas. After a siege of some duration, the place 
was taken and added to his dominions, and Philip 
next turned his attention to the acquisition of some 
valuable gold-mines on the Thracian coast, which be¬ 
longed to the people of Thasos. For this purpose he 
crossed the Strymon, and, having easily overcome the 
resistance that was offered on the part of Cotys, king 
of Thrace, he took possession of Crenides, the Tha- 
sian mining establishment, where he founded a con¬ 
siderable town, and named it Philippi. r ihe Athe¬ 
nians, meanwhile, incited the Thracians and Illyrians 
to take up arms against the King of Macedon, whose 
rising power inspired them with well-founded grounds 
for jealousy and alarm ; but the latter were again de¬ 
feated by Parmenio, and Philip easily repelled the 
former in person The small republic of Methone, 
which had also shown a spirit of hostility at the insti¬ 
gation of Athens, was surrounded by a Macedonian 
army, and, though the town held out for more than a 
year, and Philip received during the siege a wound by 
which he lost an eye, it was at length compelled to 
surrender. At this period, the Thessalian towns, being 
threatened by the forces of Lycophron, tyrant of Phe- 
riE, supported by the Phocians, urgently sought the aid 
of the King of Macedon. He accordingly entered 
Thessaly at the head of a powerful army, and in its 
plains encountered the enemy, commanded by Ono- 
marchus, the Phocian leader. Here, however, the 
usual good fortune of Philip forsook him ; and, being 
twice vanquished with great loss, he effected his re¬ 
treat into Macedonia with considerable difficulty. Un¬ 
dismayed, however, by these reverses, and having 
quickly recruited his army, he once more entered Thes¬ 
saly, whither also Onomarchus directed his march from 
Phocis. The two armies were again engaged at no 
great distance from Pherae, when Philip gained a com¬ 
plete victory ; six thousand of the enemy having per¬ 
ished on the field, among whom w'as Onomarchus, their 
general. This success was followed up by the cap¬ 
ture of Pherae, Pagasae, and the whole of Thessaly, 
which henceforth warmly espoused the interests of 
Philip on every occasion. ( Justin , 8, 2.— Polyb., 9, 
33.) Meanwhile, the republic of Olynthus, which had 
recovered its strength under the protection of Mace¬ 
donia, came to a rupture with that power, probably at 
the instigation of a party in Athens. War was, in con¬ 
sequence, determined upon, and the Olynthians, sup¬ 
ported by a considerable Athenian force under Chares, 
twice ventured to attack the army of Philip, but, being 
unsuccessful on both occasions, were at length com¬ 
pelled to retire within the walls of their city, to which 
the enemy immediately laid siege. At variance among 
themselves, and open to treachery and defection, from 
the bribery employed, as it is said, on more than one 
occasion by Philip, the Olynthians were ultimately 
forced to surrender ; when the King of Macedo >;mt 
on the destruction^ a state which had so often men* 





PHILIPPUS. 


PHILIPPUS. 


acpd the security of his dominions, gave up the town 
to plunder, and reduced the inhabitants to slavery. 
Intimidated by these reverses, the Athenians, not long 
after, sought a reconciliation with Philip, and sent a 
deputation, consisting of eleven of their most distin¬ 
guished orators and statesmen, among whom were 
-dEschines, Demosthenes, and Ctesiphon, to negotiate 
a treaty. {JEschin., de Fals. Leg., p. 30.) ^hese 
ambassadors were most graciously received by Philip, 
amd on his sending envoys to Athens, with full power 
to settle the preliminaries, peace was concluded. ( Be - 
mosifi., ie Leg., p. 414.) Philip was now enabled to 
terminate the Sacred War, of which he had been in¬ 
vited to take the command, by the general voice of 
the Amphictvonic assembly. ( Vid . Phccis.) Hav¬ 
ing passed Thermopylae without opposition, he entered 
Phocis at the head of a considerable army, and was 
enabled to put an end at once to this obstinate strug¬ 
gle without farther bloodshed. He was now unan¬ 
imously elected a member of the Amphictyonic coun¬ 
cil, after which he returned to Macedon, having reaped 
in this expedition a vast accession of fame and popu¬ 
larity, as the defender and supporter of religion. The 
success of Philip in this quarter was calculated, how¬ 
ever, to awaken the jealousy and fears of Athens, and 
the party which was adverse to his interests in that 
city took advantage of this circumstance to urge the 
people to measures that could end only in a renew¬ 
al of hostilities with Macedon. The Athenian com¬ 
manders in Thrace were encouraged to thwart and 
oppose Philip in all his undertakings, and secretly to 
favour those towns which might revolt from him. Ac¬ 
cordingly, when that monarch was engaged in besie¬ 
ging the cities of Perinthus and Selymbria, near the 
Hellespont, the Athenians on several occasions assist¬ 
ed them with supplies, and did not scruple even to 
make incursions into the Macedonian territory from 
the Chersonese. These measures could not fail to 
rouse the indignation of Philip, who, finally abandon¬ 
ing his projects on the Hellespont, turned his thoughts 
entirely to the overthrow of the Athenian power. 
Meanwhile another Sacred War had arisen, which, 
tnough of trifling magnitude in itself, produced very 
important results to two of the leading states of Greece. 
The Amphissians, who belonged to the Locri Ozolae, 
had occupied by force, and cultivated a portion of the 
territory of Cirrha, which had been declared accursed 
by the Amphictyones, and unfit for culture. This act of 
defiance necessarily called for the interference of that 
assembly ; and as it was to be feared that the people 
of Amphissa would be supported by Athens and other 
states, it was determined to elect Philip general of the 
Amphictyonic council, and to commit to him the sole 
Jirection of the measures to be pursued. ( JEschin. 
in Ctes., p. 71.— Dem., de Cor.) The Amphissians 
were, of course, easily reduced and punished ; but the 
Athenians, who had avowedly favoured their cause, 
found themselves too far implicated to recede with 
honour upon the near approach of Philip. Finding, 
therefore, that he had already occupied Elatea, w T hich 
commanded the principal pass into Phocis, the coun- 
cd was summoned, and it was determined to mus- ' 
ter all the forces of the republic, and, if possible, to in¬ 
duce the Thebans to espouse their interests. An em- : 
bassy was accordingly despatched to Thebes, at the < 
head of which was Demosthenes ; and such was the i 
effect of their great orator’s eloquence, that he sue- « 
ceeded in persuading the Boeotians to join the Athe- ! 
nians, notwithstanding all the arguments urged against ] 
this step by the deputy of Philip, who was present at < 
the debate. The combined forces of the two repub¬ 
lics took the field, and, marching towards the Phocian I 
frontier, encamped at Chseronea, in Boeotia. Here, 1 
after some partial and indecisive actions, a general en¬ 
gagement at length took place, which was obstinately ; 
ontested on both sides, but finally terminated in the ] 


total discomfiture of the Athenians and their allies, 
This result might easily have been foreseen. Thebe* 
possessed at the time no general of sufficient note ti 
be even mentioned, except Theagenes, who is named 
only to be branded as a traitor {Dinarchus in Dem . ; 
§ 75), and the names of Chares, Lysicles, and Strato- 
cles, who commanded the Athenians, could inspire 
little confidence. In numbers, the confederates ap- 
, pear to have at least equalled the enemy ; but though 
the Sacred Band still preserved its excellent discipline 
and spirit, the Athenians, who had now for many years 
been little used to military service, were ill-matched 
with the Macedonian veterans led by their king, and 
by the able officers formed in his school, and animated 
by the presence of the young prince Alexander, whom 
his father intrusted with the command of one wing, 
where, however, some of his best generals were sta¬ 
tioned at his side. We know very little more of the 
causes which determined the event of the battle, and 
these are amply sufficient to account for it. If we 
may believe Polyaenus, Philip at first restrained the 
ardour of his troops, until the Athenians had spent 
much of the vigour and fury with which they made 
their onset (4, 2, 7). Then it appears Alexander 
made a charge, which broke the enemy’s ranks, and 
decided the fortune of the day. ( Diod., 16, 86., 

Alexander was in the wing opposed to the Thebans, 
and first charged the Sacred Band. The Thebans 
seem to have kept their ground longest, and probably 
suffered most. The Sacred Band was cut off to a 
man, but fighting where it stood. Demosthenes w T as 
not a hero of this kind : but he was certainly reproach¬ 
ed with cowardice, because he escaped in the general 
flight, only by those who wished that he had been left 
on the field. Of the Athenians not more than 1000 
we¥e slain, but 2000 were taken prisoners : among 
these, Demades fell into the enemy’s hands. The los3 
of the Thebans is not reported in numbers, but the 
prisoners were probably fewer than the slain. It was 
not the amount of these losses, however, that gave 
such importance to the battle of Chseronea, that it has 
been generally considered as the blow which put an 
end to the independence of Greece, any- more than it 
was the loss sustained by Sparta at Leuctra that de¬ 
prived her of her supremacy. But the event of this 
day broke up the confederacy which had been formed 
against Philip, as it proved that its utmost efforts could 
not raise a force sufficient to meet him, with any chance 
of success, in the field. Each of the allied states was 
therefore left at his mercy. The consternation which 
the tidings of this disaster caused at Athens was prob¬ 
ably greater than had ever been known there, except 
after the loss at /Egos Potamos. As long as it re¬ 
mained uncertain what use Philip would make of his 
victory, there was certainly reason to fear the worst: 
and if it be true that at first he rejected the application 
of the heralds, who came from Lebadea to ask leave to 
bury the slain ( Plut., Vit. X., Orat. Hyperid, p. 849, a.), 
we might suppose that he wished to keep the vanquish¬ 
ed a while in suspense as to their fate. That he should 
even have forgotten himself for a time on the scene 
of his triumph, intoxicated by the complete success 
which had suddenly crowned the plans and labours of 
so many years, would not be at all inconsistent with his 
character. He is said to have risen from the banquet 
to visit the field of battle, and, as he moved in dance 
among the bodies of the slain, though the sight of the 
Sacred Band drew from him an exclamation of sym¬ 
pathy, to have parodied and sung the commencement 
of one of the decrees of Demosthenes. {Plut., Vit. 
Demosth., 20.) This anecdote is more credible than 
that he exposed himself to the rebuke of Demades by 
his behaviour to his prisoners. {Diod. Sic., 16, 87.) 

It would be absurd to suppose, with Diodorus, that 
such a man as Demades, however the king might be 
pleased at such a moment with his freedom and wit, 

1035 







PHILIPPUS. 


PHILIPPUS. 


could have had any influence over him ; but it seems 
that Philip did not disdain to gain him for his own ends, 
and to communicate his designs to him, and employ 
him as his agent. The manner in which Philip finally 
treated his conquered enemies excited general sur¬ 
prise, and has earned, perhaps, more praise than it de¬ 
serves. He dismissed the Athenian prisoners without 
ransom, several of them even newly clothed, and all 
with their baggage ; and rent Antipater, accompanied, 
Justin says, by Alexander, to bear the bones of their 
dead, whom he had himself honoured with funeral rites 
{Polyb., 5, 10), to Athens, with oflfers of peace, on 
terms such as an Athenian would scarcely have ven¬ 
tured to propose to him. The commonwealth was re¬ 
quired, indeed, to resign a part of its foreign posses¬ 
sions, perhaps all but the Chersonesus, Lemnos, Im- 
bros, and Samos ( Pint., Vit. Alex., 28); but it was 
left in undisturbed possession of all its domestic re¬ 
sources, and its territory was even enlarged by the ad¬ 
dition of Oropus, which Thebes was forced to resign. 
( Faasan ., 1, 34.) The value of these concessions 
was greatly enhanced by comparison with the condi¬ 
tions on which peace was granted to the Thebans. 
They were obliged to ransom not only their prisoners, 
but their dead. Not only Oropus, but the sovereignty 
of the Boeotian towns was taken from them. Platsea 
and Orchomenus were restored to as many as could 
be found of their old inhabitants : at least they were 
filled with an independent population implacably hos¬ 
tile to Thebes. But this was the lightest part of her 
punishment. She lost not only pow r er, but freedom. 
She was compelled to admit a Macedonian garrison 
into the citadel, and to recall her exiles. The gov¬ 
ernment was lodged in their hands : a council of three 
hundred, selected from them, was invested with su¬ 
preme authority, both legislative and judicial. ( Jus¬ 
tin, , 9, 4.) Philip’s treatment of the Athenians has 
been commonly accounted magnanimous. It may in¬ 
deed be said, that in them he did honour to the manly 
resistance of open enemies, while in the case of the 
Thebans he punished treachery and ingratitude, and, 
knowing the people to be generally hostile to him, he 
crushed the power of the state, and used the faction 
which depended on him as the instrument of his ven¬ 
geance. On the other hand, it must be remembered 
that, when this was done, he had the less reason to 
dread the hostility of Athens : he might safely concil¬ 
iate the favour of the Greeks by a splendid example 
of lenity and moderation. It is not improbable that 
this was the course to which he was inclined by his 
own prepossessions. But, had it been otherwise, there 
were reasons enough to deter so wary a prince from 
violent measures, which would have driven the Athe¬ 
nians to despair. He had probably very early intelli¬ 
gence of the preparations for defence which they had 
begun while they expected an invasion. He might, 
indeed, have ravaged Attica, and have carried on a 
Decelean war : but it was by no means certain that 
he could make himself master of the city and Pirreus : 
and nothing but a very clear prospect of immediate 
success could have rendered the attempt advisable. 
The danger of a failure, and even the inconvenience 
of delay, was far greater than the advantage to be 
reaped from it. Philip’s offers were gladly, if not 
thankfully received at Athens ; and he now saw his 
road open to the Peloponnesus. Proceeding to Cor¬ 
inth, whither he had invited all the states of Greece 
to send their deputies, he held a congress, as in the 
time of the ancient league against Persia. The avow¬ 
ed object of this assemblage was indeed to settle the 
affairs of Greece, and to put an end to intestine feuds 
by the authority of a supreme council. But it was 
well known, that Philip meant to use it for the pur¬ 
poses of an enterprise, which he had long cherished, 
the invasi rn, namely, of the Persian empire. All his 
proposals were adopted. War was declared against 


Persia, and he was appointed to command the national 
forces with which it was to be waged. One object 
only now remained to detain Philip in the south of 
Greece : to fulfil the promises which he had made 
some years before to his Peloponnesian allies, to ani¬ 
mate them by his presence, and to make Sparta feel 
the effects of his displeasure, for having been the only 
Grecian state which did not send ministers to the con 
gress at Corinth. His march through the Peloponne¬ 
sus was for the most part a peaceful, triumphant prog¬ 
ress, and hence it may be that so few traces of it are 
left in our historical fragments. It is chiefly by some 
casual allusions to it in Polybius and Pausanias that 
the fact itself is ascertained. In Laconia Philip made 
a longer stay, and encountered some resistance. It 
appears, however, that in the end Sparta was com¬ 
pelled to submit to the terms which he prescribed. 
The western states beyond the isthmus likewise ac¬ 
knowledged his authority : the leaders of the anti- 
Macedonian parly in Acarnania were driven into exile, 
and Ambracia consented to receive a Macedonian gar¬ 
rison. (Diod. Sic., 17,3.) Byzantium also, it seems, 
entered into an alliance with him, which was little more 
than a decent name for subjection. Thus crowned 
with new honours, having overcome every obstacle, 
and having established his power on the firmest founda¬ 
tion in every part of Greece, he returned in the autumn 
of 338 B.C. to Macedonia, to prepare for the great en¬ 
terprise on which his thoughts were now wholly bent. 
This brilliant fortune, however, was before long over¬ 
cast by a cloud of domestic troubles. Philip, not less 
from temperament than policy, had adopted the Oriental 
usage of polygamy, which, though repugnant to the an 
cient Greek manners, did not in this age, as we find 
from other examples, shock public opinion in Greece. 
Thus, it seems, before his marriage with Olympias, he 
had formed several matrimonial alliances, which might 
all contribute to strengthen his political interests. An 
Illyrian princess, a Macedonian lady, apparently of the 
Lyncestian family, which had some remote claims to 
the throne, and two from Thessaly, one a native of 
Pherse, the other from Larissa, are mentioned before 
Olympias in the list of his wives. After his marriage 
with Olympias, he did not reject the hand of a Thra¬ 
cian princess, which was offered to him by her father. 
In each of these cases, however, there was an appa¬ 
rent motive of policy, which may have rendered the 
presence of so many rivals more tolerable than it would 
otherwise have been to Olympias, a woman of mascu¬ 
line spirit and violent passions, and who, as a daugh¬ 
ter of the house of Epirus, which traced its pedigree 
to Achilles, no doubt regarded herself as far superior 
to them all in rank, and as Philip’s sole legitimate 
consort.* But after his return to Macedonia from his 
victorious campaign in Greece, perhaps early in the 
following spring, he contracted another union, for 
which it does not appear that he had the same ex¬ 
cuse to plead. Cleopatra, the niece of Attalus one 
of his generals, had, it seems, attracted him by her 
beauty. He sought her hand, and their nuptials 
were celebrated, with the usual festivities, in the pal¬ 
ace at Pella, where Olympias was residing. This 
would not be stranger than it is that Alexander was 
present at the banquet, which, according to the custom 
of the court, was prolonged until both Philip and his 
guests were much heated with wine. Attalus had 
secretly cherished the presumptuous hope, that his 
niece’s influence over the king might induce him to 
alter the succession, and to appoint a child of hers heir 
to the throne. When the wine had thrown him offhis 
guard, he could not refrain from disclosing his wishes, 
and called on the company to pray that the gods would 
crown the marriage of Philip and Cleopatra by the 
birth of a legitimate successor to the kingdom. Alex¬ 
ander took fire at this expression : and exclaiming, 
“ Do you, then, count me a bastard!” hurled the gob- 



PHILIPPUS. 


PHILIPPUS. 


fet out of which he was drinking at his head. The 
hall became a scene of tumult. Philip started from 
his couch, and, instead of rebuking Attalus, drew his 
sword and rushed at his son ; but, before he reached 
him, stumbled and fell. Alexander, before he with¬ 
drew, is said to have pointed to his father as he lay 
on the floor, with the taunt: “ See the man who would 
pass over from Europe to Asia, upset in crossing from 
5>rr.e couch to another.” ( Pint., Vit. Alex., 9.— Athe- 
aceus, 13, p. 557.) The quarrel did not end with the 
ntoxication of the evening, as the offence which had 
been given to the prince was much deeper than the 
momentary provocation. He and his mother quitted 
the kingdom ; she found shelter at the court of her 
brother Alexander, who, after the death of Arybas, had 
succeeded, through Philip’s intervention, to the throne 
of Epirus, having supplanted vEacides, the lawful heir. 
Alexander took up his abode in Illyria, and Philip was 
obliged at last to employ the good offices of a Corin¬ 
thian, named Demaratus, to induce his son to return 
to Macedonia. ( Plut ., Vit. Alex., 9.) It was not so 
easy to appease Olympias : and it was most likely with 
a view to baffle her intrigues that Philip negotiated a 
match between his brother-in-law and their daughter 
Cleopatra. When the brother-in-law had been gained 
by this offer, his sister saw that she must defer her re¬ 
venge, and returned, apparently reconciled, to her hus¬ 
band’s court. These unhappy differences, and perhaps 
the continued apprehension of hostile movements on 
the side of Illyria and Epirus, may have been the causes 
which prevented Philip from crossing over to Asia in 
person in 337 B.C. In the course of this year, how¬ 
ever, h&sent over a body of troops, under the command 
of Parmenio, Amyntas, and Attalus (whom, perhaps, 
he was glad to remove in this honourable manner from 
his court), to the western coast of Asia, to engage the 
Greek cities on his side, and to serve as a rallying 
point for all who were disaffected to the Persian gov¬ 
ernment. It was in this same year that Pixodarus, 
the usurper of the Carian throne, sought the alliance 
of Philip, and proposed to give his eldest daughter to 
Aridaeus,* Philip’s son by his Larissajan wife, Philinna, 
a youth of imbecile intellect. Olympias was, or af¬ 
fected to be, alarmed by this negotiation ; several of 
Alexander’s young companions shared her suspicions, 
and their insinuations persuaded him that the intended 
marriage was a step by which Philip designed to raise 
Aridaeus to the throne. Under this impression he 
despatched Thessalus, a Greek player, who was ex¬ 
ercising his profession at the Macedonian court, on a 
secret mission to Caria, to induce Pixodarus to break 
off the match with Aridaeus and to transfer his daugh¬ 
ter’s hand to Alexander himself. Pixodarus joyfully 
accepted the prince’s offer. But Philip, having dis¬ 
covered the correspondence, shamed his son out of his 
suspicions by an indignant expostulation, which he ad¬ 
dressed to him in the presence of his young friend, 
Parmenio’s son, Philotas, on the unworthiness of the 
connexion which he was about to form with a barbarian, 
who was not even an independent prince, but a Persian 
vassal. Alexander dropped the project, which had so 
strongly excited his father’s resentment, that the latter 
wrote to Corinth to demand that Thessalus should be 
sent to him in chains, and banished four of Alexander’s 
companions, Harpalus, Nearchus, Phrygius, and Ptol- 
emceus, from Macedonia : to one of them the beginning 
of a wonderful elevation. So passed the year 337. 
Towards the end of the next spring, Philip’s prepara¬ 
tions for his Asiatic expedition were far advanced. 
He had summoned the Greek states to furnish their 
contingents, ana, as became the general of the Am- 
phictyonic council, had consulted the Delphic oracle 
on the event of his enterprise ; and, it is said, had re¬ 
ceived an answer worthy of its ancient reputation for 
its politic ambiguity : “ Crowned is the victim, the al¬ 
tar is ready, the stroke is impending ” (Diod. Sic., 16, 


91), though the event renders this anecdote somewhat 
suspicious. It only remained, to take the precaution 
which he had meditated, for securing the peace of hia 
dominions during his absence, by a closer alliance with 
the King of Epirus, which might also sooth Olympias. 
The day of the marriage was fixed, and Philip deter¬ 
mined to celebrate the event with the utmost splen¬ 
dour. It afforded an opportunity which he never let 
slip, of attracting Greeks from all parts to his court, 
of dazzling them by his magnificence, and winning 
them by his hospitality. A solemn festival, either th« 
national one of the Muses, or the Olympic games in¬ 
stituted by Archelaus, was proclaimed to be held in 
the ancient capital of gEgae. Musical and dramatic 
contests were announced, for which artists of the great¬ 
est celebrity were engaged. When the time arrived, 
the city was crowded with strangers ; not only guests 
invited by the king and his courtiers, but envoys de¬ 
puted by most of the leading cities of Greece to hon¬ 
our the solemnity, and to offer presents, chiefly crowns 
of gold, to the king. A splendid banquet followed the 
nuptials. On the morrow an exhibition was to take 
place in the theatre : it was filled at an early hour with 
spectators. The entertainments began with a solemn 
procession, in which, among other treasures, were car¬ 
ried images of exquisite workmanship, and gorgeously 
adorned, of the twelve Olympian gods : a thirteenth, 
which seemed to be somewhat profanely associated 
with them, represented Philip himself. The shouts 
of an admiring, applauding multitude then announced 
the king’s approach. He advanced in white robes and 
festal chaplet, with his son and the bridegroom on ei¬ 
ther side, a few paces behind him. His guards he had 
ordered to keep at a distance, that all might have a 
view of his person, and that it might not be supposed 
he doubted the universal good-will of the Greeks. 
This was the moment when a young man stepped forth 
from the crowd, ran up to the king, and, drawing a 
Celtic sword from beneath his garments, plunged it 
into his side. Philip fell dead. The murderer rushed 
towards the gates of the town, where horses were wait¬ 
ing for him. He was closely pursued by some of the 
great officers of the royal body-guard, but would have 
mounted before they had overtaken him if his sandal 
had not been caught by the stump of a vine, which 
brought him to the ground. In the first heat of their 
passion his pursuers despatched him. His name was 
Pausanias ; and the motive that impelled him to the 
deed was, that he had suffered an outrage from Attalus 
for which Philip had refused to give him satisfaction. 
( Aristot., Polit., 5, 8, 10.) Both Olympias and Alex¬ 
ander were suspected of having been privy to the deed, 
but, as would seem, without any very strong grounds. 
Indeed, the character of Alexander instinctively re¬ 
coiled from every species of baseness, and yet Niebuhr, 
in his lectures, expresses a suspicion, almost, amount¬ 
ing to a full conviction, of Alexander’s guilt!—Thus, 
in the 47th year of his age and the 24th of his reign, 
perished Philip of Macedon, at the end of one great 
stage of a prosperous career, near the outset of anoth¬ 
er which opened immeasurable ground for hope. A 
great man certainly, according to the common scale of 
princes, though not a hero like his son, nor to be tried 
by a philosophical model. But it was something great, 
that one who enjoyed the pleasures of animal existence 
so keenly, should have encountered so much toil and 
danger for glory and empire. It was something still 
greater, that one who was so well acquainted with the 
worst sides of human nature, and who so often profited 
by them, should yet have been so capable of sympa¬ 
thy and esteem. If we charge him with duplicity in 
his political transactions, we must remember that he 
preferred the milder ways of gratifying his ambition to 
those of violence and bloodshed : that he at least de¬ 
sired the reputation of mercy and humanity. If he 
once asked whether a fortress was so inaccessible that 

1037 



PHILIPPUS. 


PHILIPPUS. 


not even an ass laden with gold could mount to it, we 
ma> as well believe the anecdote which relates of him, 
that he replied to his counsellors who urged him to 
treat Athens with rigour, that they were advising him 
to destroy the theatre of his glory. ( Pint ., Reg. et 
Imp. Apophtk., 11.) The many examples of gener¬ 
ous forbearance reported in Plutarch’s collection of his 
apophthegms cannot be all groundless fictions: and 
the less restraint he set on many of his passions, the 
more amiable appears, by contrast, the self-control 
which he exercised, when he was tempted to an un¬ 
just or harsh use of his power. He is one of the men 
of whom we wish to know more, whose familiar let¬ 
ters and conversation must have been worth preserv¬ 
ing. But even the history of his outward life is like 
an ancient statue, made up of imperfect and ill-ad¬ 
justed fragments. He left the task of his life un¬ 
finished, and his death must have appeared to his 
contemporaries premature. We must rather admire 
the peculiar felicity of the juncture at which he was 
removed to make room for one better fitted for the 
work. What he had done, his successor would per¬ 
haps not have accomplished so well. What he med¬ 
itated was probably much less than his son effect¬ 
ed, and yet more than he himself would have brought 
to pass. If he had begun his enterprise, he would 
most likely have done little more than mar some 
splendid pages in the history of the world. ( Thirl- 
wall's History of Greece, vol. 6, p. 69.'— Cramer's 
Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 174.) — III. The third of the 
name, was more commonly known by the name of 
Aridaeus. {Vid. Aridaeus.)—IV. One of the sons of 
Alexander, slain by order of Olympias.—V. The 
fifth of the name, was the eldest son of Cassander, 
and succeeded his father on the throne of Macedon 
about 298 B.C. He was carried off by sickness after 
a reign of one year. ( Justin, 15, 4.— Id., 16, 1.)— 

VI. The sixth of the name, was still an infant at the 
death of his father, Demetrius III. of Macedon. He 
was left under the care of his uncle Antigonus Doson, 
who, being guardian of his nephew, became, in fact, 
the reigning sovereign. ( Polyb ., 2, 45.— Pint., Vit. 
Arat. — Justin, 28, 3.) Antigonus ruled over Mace¬ 
don for the space of twelve years, when his exertions 
in defeating the Illyrians, who had made an inroad 
into his territories, caused the bursting of a blood¬ 
vessel, which terminated his existence. {Polyb , 2, 
70.) His nephew Philip, though only fifteen years of 
age, now assumed the reins of government, and showed 
himself deficient neither in energy nor talents. Adopt¬ 
ing the policy of his wise and able predecessor in pro¬ 
tecting the Achasans against the ambitious designs of 
the JEtolians, who were now become one of the most 
powerful states of Greece, he engaged in what Polyb¬ 
ius has termed the Social War, during which he ob¬ 
tained several important successes, and effectually re¬ 
pressed the daring spirit of that people. {Polyb., lib. 
4 et 5.) The great contest which was now waging 
in Italy, between Hannibal and the Romans, naturally 
attracted the attention of the King of Macedon ; and 
it appears from Polybius and Livy that he actually 
entered into an alliance with the Carthaginian gen¬ 
eral. By securing, however, the co-operation of the 
^Htolians, the Romans were enabled to keep in check 
the forces of Philip ; and, on the termination of the 
struggle with Carthage, sought to avenge the injury 
the prince had meditated by invading his hereditary 
dominions Philip, for two campaigns, resisted the 
attacks of the Romans and their allies, the HStolians, 
Eumenes, king of Pergamus, and the Rhodians; 
finally, however, he sustained a signal defeat at Cy- 
noscephalaa, in the plains of Thessaly, and was com¬ 
pelled to sue for peace on such conditions as the vic¬ 
tors chose to impose. These were, that Demetrius, 
his younger son, should be sent as a hostage to Rome, 
and that he should not engage in any war without their 
1038 


consent. They farther imposed a fine of one tnoa- 
sand talents, and demanded the surrender of all his 
galleys. {Liv., 33, 30.) In the war which the Ro¬ 
mans afterward carried on with Antiochus, king of 
Syria, Philip actively co-operated with the former; 
but, jealous of his talents, and aware also of his ambi¬ 
tious spirit, the Romans seized every opportunity of 
counteracting his efforts to restore the empire of Ma¬ 
cedon to its former power and importance. Philip 
beheld this course of conduct with ill-disguised vexa¬ 
tion and disgust; and it is probable that this mutual 
ill-will would have led to an open rupture if the death 
of Philip had not intervened. This event is said to 
have been hastened by the domestic troubles which 
concurred to imbitter the latter years of his life. Dis¬ 
sensions had long subsisted between his two sons Per¬ 
seus and Demetrius ; and, by the arts of the former, 
who was the elder, but illegitimate, a violent preju¬ 
dice had been raised in the mind of Philip against the 
latter, who had resided at Rome for some years as a 
hostage, even after peace was concluded with that 
power. The unfortunate Demetrius fell a victim to 
his brother’s treachery, and his father’s credulity and 
injustice. {Liv , 40, 24.) But Philip having discov¬ 
ered, not long after, the fatal error into which he had 
been betrayed, was so stung with remorse, that an¬ 
guish of mind soon brought him to the grave. ( Vid. 
Perseus.) He died B.C. 179, after a reign of forty- 
two years. {Clinton, Fast. Hell., vol. 1, p. 243.) — 
VII. M. Julius, a Roman emperor, of an obscure 
family in Trachonitis, a province of Arabia, to the 
south of Damascus, and hence called the Arabian 
Zonaras (12, 19) and Cedrenus (vol. 1, p. 257) make 
Bostra, the capital of the country, to have been his 
native city ; but the language of Aurelius Victor would 
rather incline us to believe that he was born in the en¬ 
virons of that city, since he calls him in one part 
“Arabs Trachonitis" {de Cces., 28), and in another 
speaks of his father as having been “ nobilissimus la - 
tronum ductor." {Epit., 28.) His first act, also, on 
attaining to the empire, was to found a city not far 
from Bostra, which he dignified with the name of Phil- 
ippopolis. St. Jerome, who speaks of this foundation, 
confounds with the Arabian city another of the same 
name in Thrace. Jornandes falls into the same error 
(p. 108). Burckhardt found in the environs ofBostra 
a Greek inscription bearing the name Philippopohs, 
whicl sets the matter at rest. {Travels, p. 98.)- — 
Philip entered the Roman armies, and soon distin¬ 
guished himself by his services, until he was at length 
appointed commander of the body-guard, in the reign 
of Gordian III., having succeeded Misitheus, whom 
he was suspected of having cut off. In taking the 
place of Misitheus, Philip became, in fact, as his pre¬ 
decessor had been, the guardian of the young prince, 
and the master of the empire. Gordian had, under 
the auspices of Misitheus, undertaken, the year previ¬ 
ous, an expedition against the Persians, which ended 
gloriously for the Roman arms ; and he now prepared 
for a second campaign against the same foe, when 
Philip produced an artificial scarcity by intercepting 
the supplies of cbm, and thus raised a spirit of dis¬ 
affection against the young emperor. These intrigues, 
however, did not delay the march of the army, which 
advanced into Mesopotamia, defeated the Persians, 
and compelled their king to take shelter in the very 
heart of his dominions. Gordian returned triumphant, 
when the partisans of Philip excited a commotion in 
the camp, and finally compelled the emperor to re¬ 
ceive Philip as an associate in the empire. This di¬ 
vision of power, consummated by forcible means, could 
not prove of very long duration, and the young monarch 
was soon after deposed and put to death. His ashes 
were conveyed to Rome, and a splendid monument was 
erected to his memory, near Circesium, on the Euphra¬ 
tes. Meanwhile the letters of Philip to the senate pur 




PHILIPPUS. 


P II I 


ported that G'ordian had died of illness, and that the 
choice of the army had fallen upon him. Arganthis, 
king of Scythia, was encouraged to advance by the 
tidings of the death of Misitheus ; but Philip, sacri¬ 
ficing the interests of the state to his own, and payincr 
no regard to this new invasion, hastened to secure his 
election at Rome, where he professed to venerate the 
statues of Gordian, who had been deified by the sen¬ 
ate. The fickle multitude were amused and concili¬ 
ated by one of those juggles of public pageantry which 
are found to be so useful in turning the attention of 
the people from the flagitiousness of their rulers. The 
thousandth anniversary of the building of Rome was 
celebrated by splendid games, and by combats in the 
amphitheatre. But the claim of the Arabian” to the 
empire of Rome was disputed by Decius, who had 
been sent to quell a sedition in Pannonia, and who 
joined the revolters. Philip lost a battle near Verona, 
and this event was to his soldiers the signal for his 
assassination (A.D. 249). His son was slain in the 
Praetorian camp. {Capitol., Vit. Gord. Tert., 29, 
seqq. — Aurel. Viet., 1. c. Casaub., de Us qui post 
Gord. Tert., principes fuere, <) iv.)—VIII. An Acar- 
nanian, and physician to Alexander the Great. When 
that monarch had been seized with a fever, after ba¬ 
thing, while overheated, in the cold stream of the 
Cydnus, and most of his medical attendants despaired 
of his life, Philip, who stood high in his confidence, 
undertook to prepare a medicine which would relieve 
him. In the mean while, a letter was brought to the 
king from Parmenio, informing him of a report, that 
Philip had been bribed by Darius to poison him. Al¬ 
exander, it is said, had the letter in his hand when the 
physician came in with the draught, and, giving it to 
him, drank the potion while the other read ; a theatri¬ 
cal scene, as Plutarch unsuspectingly observes, but 
one which would not have been invented except for 
such a character, and which Arrian was therefore in¬ 
duced, though doubtingly, to record. The remedy, 
or Alexander’s excellent constitution, prevailed over 
the disease; but it was long before he had regained 
sufficient strength to resume his march. {Plat., Vit. 
Alex. — Arrian, Exp. AL, 2, 4, 12, seqq.) The whole 
story is now regarded as a very apocryphal one. We 
cannot very well understand what Parmenio was doing, 
that he did not come himself instead of writing. One 
sees from Curtius (3, 6) how the narrative was em¬ 
bellished. In Arrian, Parmenio’s letter only mentions 
a report which he had heard, that Philip had been 
bribed. In Curtius, it is asserted that he had been 
promised one thousand talents, and the hand of the 
sister of Darius. There was certainly some confu¬ 
sion between this story and that of Alexander the 
Lyncestian. Seneca {de Ira , 2, 23) says, that it was 
Olympias who sent the warning letter about Philip. 
{ThirlwalVs History of Greece, vol. 6, p. 173.)—IX. 
A pretender to the crown of Macedonia, after the 
overthrow of Perseus. He is commonly known by 
the appellation of “ Pseudophilippus.” His true 
name was Andriscus. {Vid. Andriscus.) — X. The 
Greek translator of the work of Horapollo. From the 
internal evidence afforded by the translation itself, he 
is supposed to have lived a century or two later than 
Horapollo ; and at a time when every remnant of ac¬ 
tual knowledge of the subject, on which Horapollo 
treats, must have vanished. {Cory, Hieroglyphics of 
Horapollo, pref, p. ix.)—XI. A comic poet of Athens, 
son of Aristophanes. He does not appear to have in¬ 
herited any considerable portion of his father’s won¬ 
derful abilities. {Theatre of the Greeks, p. lib, 4th 
ed.) —XII. A native of Opus, and a disciple of Plato. 
Diogenes Laertius informs us (3, 37), that Plato died 
before publishing his “ Laws,” and that Philip of Opus 
gave to the world the manuscript of the work, which 
he found among his master’s tablets. ( Vid. Plato.) 
Philip wrote “ on Eclipses, and on the size of the Sun, 


1 Moon, and Earth” {itepl eK?.eiipeo)v, nai fiey£6ovr J/Mov 
' tcai oefo'/vric icai yrg;). The work is cited bv Stobceo*. 
{Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 3,. p. 8.)—XIII. An epi¬ 
grammatic poet, a native of Thessalonica, who flour¬ 
ished during the reign of Tiberius. He is sometime* 
called “ the Macedonian,” but more frequently “ Phil¬ 
ip of Thessalonica.” We have eighty-five epigrams of 
his remaining. They display little originality, being 
for the most part imitations of preceding poets. {Jar 
cohs, Calal. Poet. Epigr., p. 935.) Philip of Thes¬ 
salonica is the compiler of what is termed the “ Sec¬ 
ond Anthology,” thus continuing the work commenced 
by Meleager. The interval between the two compila¬ 
tions was about 150 years. {Jacobs, l. c. — Scholl, 
Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 4, p. 49, 55.) 

Philiscus, I. an orator, and also an epigrammatic 
poet, one of whose effusions has been preserved by 
Plutarch, who speaks of him as a contemporary of 
Lysias, and a pupil of Isocrates. He was a native of 
Miletus in Ionia ; and, besides his poetical pieces, left 
several harangues and a life of Lycurgus. {Ruhnken, 
Hist. Crit. Orat. Gr., p. lxxxiii. — Pint., X. Orat. 
Vit., p. 836. — Suidas, s. v .— Jacobs, Calal. Poet. 
Epigr., p. 936.) — II. or perhaps Philicus, a tragic 
poet, a native of Corcyra, and contemporary with 
Theocritus (270 B.C.). He gave his name, as inven¬ 
tor, to a particular species of Iambic verse {Metrum 
Philisceum or Philiceum). {Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., 
vol. 3, p. 86.) — III. A tragic poet, a native of -dEgi- 
na, and contemporary with Philiscus of Corcyra. 
{Scholl, l. c.) —IV. A sculptor of Rhodes, whose era 
is uncertain. He made, among others, two statues, 
one of Apollo, the other of Venus, which were placed 
in the collection of Octavia. {Plin., 36, 5, 4.) 

Philistus, a wealthy native of Syracuse, who em¬ 
ployed his riches in procuring the sovereign power for 
Dionysius the Elder. He became, subsequently, the 
confidant, minister, and general of the tyrant; but he 
lost his favour by having secretly married one of his 
nieces, and was driven into exile. He retired to 
Adria, where he wrote on the “ Antiquities of Sicily,” 
in seven books, which was carried down to the third 
year of the 83d Olympiad, and embraced a period of 
eight centuries. He composed also a “ Life of Dio¬ 
nysius,” in four books. Having been recalled from 
banishment by Dionys'us the younger, he became the 
antagonist of Dion and Plato, who had gained an as¬ 
cendancy over the mind of that prince. Philistus 
commanded the fleet of Dionysius in the naval battle 
with Dion and the Syracusans, which cost the tyrant 
his throne, and his vessel having run aground, he was 
taken prisoner and put to an ignominious death. Be¬ 
sides the two works already mentioned, Philistus 
wrote the life of Dionysius the younger, in two books. 
These three productions being united, bore the com¬ 
mon name of hiKehutd. Cicero praises this historian, 
and calls him “ almost a little Thucydides” {pcene pu- 
sillus Thucydides. — Ep., ad Q. Fratr., 2, 13—Com¬ 
pare de Divin., 1, 20). But Plutarch and Pausanias 
reproach him with having sacrificed truth to the de¬ 
sire of recovering the good graces of his master. 
Dionysius of Halicarnassus also observes, that if ho 
has managed to resemble his model, Thucydides, it is 
only in two respects, in having **left. behind him un¬ 
finished writings, and in the disorder which prevails 
throughout his works. In point of sentiment and feel¬ 
ing, there is, according to Dionysius, no resemblance 
whatever between the two: Thucydides had a lofty 
and noble spirit; Philistus, on the other hand, yielded 
slavish obedience to tyrants, and sacrificed truth to 
them. Dionysius confesses, however, that the style 
of Philistus was clear, and marked by “ roundness” 
and energy, though without figmres and ornament.— 
Alexander the Great is said to have greatly admired 
the w r orks of Philistus, and they formed part of his 
portative library. The fragments of this writer have 

1039 




P H I 


PH I 


boon collected by Goller, in his work “ De situ et Ori- 
ginc Syracusarum ,” p. 177. — M. Sevin, in his “ Re- 
chcrches sur la vie eU les ecrits de Philistus ” {Mem. 
de l’Acad, dts Inscr ., vol. 13, p. 1, seqq.), maintains 
that Philistus was a pupil of Isocrates ; Goller, how¬ 
ever, shows very conclusively, that Sevin was misled 
by a corrupt passage in Cicero {de Orat ., 2, 23), where, 
instead of “ Philisti,” we ought to read “ Philiscif 
and where the reference can only be to Philiscus the 
Milesian. ( Goller, Op. cit., p. 112, seqq. — Dion. 
Hal., De Vet. Script, cens. {Op., ed Reiske , vol. 5, 
p. 427).— Id., Epist. ad Cn. Pomp. {Op., vol. 6, p. 
780).— Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 2, p. 177, seqq.— 
Sainte-Croix, Examen des Hist, d'Alex., p. 12.) 

Philo, I. a statuary, in the age of Alexander the 
Great. This is evident from the circumstance of his 
having made a statue of Hephaestion. ( Tatian, Orat. 
adv. Gr., 55.) This artist is undoubtedly referred to 
in a well-known inscription given by Wheler {Itin., 
209. — Compare Spohn, Misc. Erud. Antiq., 332.— 
C his hull, Antiq. Asiat., p. 59, seqq. — Jacobs , Anthol. 
Gr., 3, 1, p. 192.— Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.) —II. A 
native of Byzantium, who flourished about 150 B.C. 
He must not be confounded with the architect Philo, 
who, in the time of the orator Lycurgus, built the ar 
senal in the Piraeus.—Philo of Byzantium was the au¬ 
thor of a treatise having relation to mechanics, in five 
books, <J which only the last two remain to us. These 
treat of the making of missile weapons (Bello ttouku, 
or ’OpyavoTtoiiKii), of the construction of towers, walls, 
ditches, as well as other works required for the siege 
of cities. There is ascribed to him also a work on 
the “ Seven Wonders of the World ” (TTept tuv f E tttu 
Q eaudroiv). These wonders are, the gardens of Se- 
miramis, the pyramids of Egypt, the statue of Jupiter 
at Olympia, the colossus of Rhodes, the walls of Bab¬ 
ylon, "the temple of Diana at Ephesus, and the Mauso¬ 
leum. The last chapter of the work, however, is want¬ 
ing, and the last but one is in a very mutilated state. 
It is a production of very little value, excepting the 
chapter which treats of the Colossus of Rhodes, and 
the fragment that remains of the description of the 
Ephesian temple, two monuments which Philo himself 
saw. As he no doubt had also beheld the tomb of 
Mausolus, we have to regret the loss of the last chap¬ 
ter, in which this was described. The style, however, 
of this work indicates a more recent writer than the 
author of the BeHoTroti'/rd. The twu books of the trea¬ 
tise relating to Missiles, &c., are to be found in the 
collection of the “ Ancient Mathematicians’* ( Mathe - 
matici Veteres, Paris, 1693, p. 49-104). The first 
five chapters of the “ Seven Wonders” were published, 
for the first time, by Leo Allatius, Pom., 1640, 8vo, 
with a very careless Latin version. A corrected edi¬ 
tion was given by De Boissieu, who accompanied M. 
de Crequi in his embassy to Rome, and delivered a 
harangue before Urban VIII. This edition was cor¬ 
rected by the Vatican MS., and appeared at the end 
of the Ibis of Ovid published in 1661, at the Lyons 
press, 8vo. It is rarely met w’th, and was unknown 
to Bast, who, when the Vatican MS. was brought to 
Paris, published the variations contained in it, though 
they were already given in the edition of Boissieu. 
This edition of Bcfissieu swarms with typographical 
errors ; but it is accompanied by a good Latin ver¬ 
sion. The edition of Allatius, corrected by Gronovi- 
as, was reprinted in the Thesaurus Antiq. Grit.., vol. 
7, with the fragment of the sixth chapter, which Hol- 
stenius had found. Teucher promised a new edition 
in 1811, but it never saw the light, the editor having 
died before he could complete it. In 1816, Orelli 
published a new edition, with the text corrected after 
Boissieu and Bast, -and with “ Testimonia Vcterum ,” 
&c. This is the best edition: it contains also the 
fragments of the Sophist Callinicus, and of Adrian of 
Tyre. {Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 3, p. 367.— Hof- 
1040 


mann , Lex. Bibliogr., vol. 3, p. 224.) III. Called, 
for distinction’ sake, Judaeus {’lovdaloc) or “ the Jew,” 
was a native of Alexandrea, a member of & sacer¬ 
dotal family, and flourished about 40 A.D. He be¬ 
longed to the sect of the Pharisees, and was a great 
zealot for the religion of his fathers. On occasion of 
a tumult which had taken place at Alexandrea, the 
Hellenistic Jews of this city sent him to Rome to car¬ 
ry their justification before the Emperor Caligula ; but 
the latter refused to receive him into his presence. 
Philo was a man of great learning. He had carefully 
studied all the Grecian systems of philosophy, and he 
made an admirable use of this knowledge in accom¬ 
plishing the object which he had in view, ol presenting 
the pagans, namely, with the sacred Scriptures of his 
nation as the perfection of all human wisdom. Of all 
the systems of profane philosophy, no one suited his 
views so well as the Platonic. His inclination to¬ 
wards a contemplative life was nurtured by the peru¬ 
sal of Plato’s writings, while their mysterious tenden¬ 
cy served to inflame his imagination. The ideas of 
Plato were amalgamated with Philo’s doctrine respect¬ 
ing the Scriptures, and he may thus be regarded as 
the precursor of that strange philosophy which, one 
hundred and fifty years after his time, developed itself 
in Egypt. The style of Philo is expressly modelled 
after that of Plato. A perusal of his works, which are 
quite numerous, is not only interesting for the study 
of the New-Platonic philosophy, but extremely impor¬ 
tant for understanding the Septuagint and the books of 
the New Testament. Mai discovered, in 1816, some 
unedited fragments of this writer. An Armenian trans¬ 
lation was also found at Lemberg, in Galicia, by Zoh- 
rab, an Armenian, in 1791, which contained thirteen 
productions of Philo, of which eight no longer exist, in 
Greek. {Mail de Philonis Judcci et Eusebii Pamphili 
scriptis ineditis Dissertatio, Mediolani, 1816, 8vo.) 
The best edition of Philo is that of Mangey, Lond., 
1742, 2 vols. fol. : the latest is that of Richter, form¬ 
ing the second part of the “ Bibliotheca Sacra,” Lips., 
1828-1830, 8 vols. 12mo. It contains merely the text. 
The two works found by Mai were published at Milan 
in 1818, 8vo, and Aucher published at Venice, in 1822, 
a Latin translation of the three works of Philo, of 
which Zohrab had found the Armenian text. The 
Hebrew Lexicon of Philo, which exists only in a Latin 
version, and which is found in no edition of his works, 
is contained in the second volume of the works of St. 
Jerome, published in Paris, 1633. {Scholl, Hist. *Lih 
Gr., vol. 5, .p. 65, seqq .— Hoffmann, Lex. Bibliogr., 
vol. 3, p. 225, seq.) —IV. An epigrammatic poet, who 
flourished from the reign of Nero to that of Hadrian. 
He celebrated, in a separate production, the reign of 
the latter. Eudocia states (p. 424), that he composed 
four books of epigrams. Only one small distich re¬ 
mains. {Jacobs, Catal. Poet. Epigr., p. 936.) — V. 
A native of Larissa, the pupil and successor of Cli- 
tomachus in the chair of the New Academy. He 
also taught at Rome, having retired to that city from 
Athens during the Mithradatic war, B.C. 100. By 
some he has been considered the founder of a Fourth 
Academy. Philo confined s epticism to a contradic¬ 
tion of the metaphysics of the Stoics and their pretend¬ 
ed criteria of knowledge : he contradicted the sphere 
of logic ; made moral philosophy merely a matter of 
public instruction : and endeavoured to prove that the 
Old and New Academies equally doubted the certain¬ 
ty of speculative knowledge. Cicero was one of his 
auditors, and often makes mention of him in his wri¬ 
tings. {Tennemann, Manual Hist. Philos., p. 154.— 
Compare Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 5, p. 198.) 

Philoctetes, a Thessalian prince, son of Poeas or 
Poean, king of Melibcea. According to the account of 
Apollodorus and others, which we have followed in 
the narrative of the death of Hercules, that hero gave 
his bow and arrows to Poeas, father of Philoctetes, as 





PHILOCTEl'ES. 


PHI 


a reward for having kindled his funeral pile on Mount 
CEta, when all his immediate followers declined so to 
do. A different form, however, is given to the story 
by Hyginus and other authorities, who make Hercules 
to have bestowed the gift on Philoctetes, the son, for 
having performed the same service which other mythol- 
ogists assign to the father. ( Hygin., fab ., 36.— Schol. 
ad Horn., II., 6.— Ovid, Met., 9, 234.— Serv. ad JEn., 
3, 402.— Muncker, ad Hygin., 1. c.) Sophocles, again, 
differs from both accounts, in assigning the task of 
kindling the pile to Hyllus, the son of the hero him¬ 
self. (Soph., Track., 1211, 1270, 1273.) —Philocte- 
tes, as one of the suiters of Helen, was compelled to 
take part in the war cgainst Priam. He led the forces 
of Methone, Thaumaua, Meliboea, and Qlizon, and 
sailed from Aulis, along with the rest of the fleet, to 
the land of Troy. He was nat, however, suffered to 
remain for any long time an inmate of the Grecian 
camp. A very offensive wound in his foot, and the 
loud and ill-omened cries of suffering which he was 
constantly uttering, induced the Greeks to move him 
from their vicinity, and, having transported him to the 
island of Lemnos, they treacherously left him there. 
Ulysses is said to have planned and executed the deed. 
(Soph., Philoct., 5.) The causes of the wound of 
Philoctetes are differently stated by mythologists. 
Some ascribe it to the bite of a serpent, which Juno 
sent to attack him, because he had kindled the funeral 
pile for Hercules, and had collected his ashes ; and 
they make him to have received the wound in the isl¬ 
and of Lemnos, and to have been there abandoned by 
the Greeks. (Hygin , fab., 102.) The scholiast on 
Homer (II., 2, 722) says that he was bitten in Lem¬ 
nos, at the altar of Minerva surnamed Chrysa (com¬ 
pare Philos trains, Icon., p. 863, ed. Morell), while 
Dictys of Crete (2, 14) and Tzetzes (ad Lycophr., 
911) make him to have received his wound in the city 
of Chrysa, near Troy. Others, again, laid the scene 
of the fable in the small island of Neas, near Lemnos. 
(Steph. Byz.,s. v. Neat.) Theocritus says that he was 
wounded by the serpent while contemplating the tomb 
of Troilus, in the temple of the Thymbraean Apollo. 
(Meurs. ad Lycophr., 912.) Finally, the scholiast on 
Sophocles tells us that Philoctetes was bitten on the 
shore of Lemnos, while in the act of raising an altar to 
Hercules. (Schol. ad Soph., Philoct., 269.) — The 
Greeks, having been informed by an oracle that Troy 
could not be taken without the arrows of Hercules, 
despatched Ulysses and Pyrrhus to Lemnos, to urge 
Philoctetes to put an end, by his presence, to the 
tedious siege. The chief, whose resentment towards 
the Greeks, and especially towards Ulysses, the imme¬ 
diate promoter of his removal from the camp, was still 
unabated, refused to comply with their summons, and 
would have persisted in his refusal had not Hercules 
appeared, and enjoined upon him, on a promise that his 
wounds should be cured, to accede to the request that 
was made of him. Philoctetes accordingly returned to 
the camp before Troy, where he was cured by Macha- 
on, and where he particularly distinguished himself by 
his valour, and by his dexterity in the use of the bow. 
Paris, among others, fell by hss hand. (Tzetz. ad Ly¬ 
cophr., 911. — Hygin., fab., 112, 114.) Philoctetes 
survived the siege ; but, instead of returning to Greece, 
settled with his followers in Italy, where he founded 
the city of Petilia in the territory of the Bruttii. (Vir¬ 
gil, JEn., 3, 401.) —Servius, in his commentary on 
Virgil, gives another and very different legend con¬ 
cerning the Thessalian hero. According to this ver¬ 
sion of the fable, Philoctetes was the companion and 
friend of Hercules, and the latter, just before his death, 
enjoined upon him, with an oath, not to disclose where 
his ashes were interred, and he gave him, on condi¬ 
tion of his preserving the secret, his bow and arrows. 
When the Greeks were informed by the oracle that 
Troy could not be taken without the arrows of Hercu- 
6 Q 


les, they went in quest of Philoctetes (wno. according 
to this account, had not gone to the Trojan war), and 
made inquiries of hirr. respecting the son of Alcrnena. 
At first, Philoctetes pretended not to know where he 
was ; at length, however, he informed them that he was 
dead. The Greeks then urging him to declare where 
the hero was buried, Philoctetes, in order to evade hia 
oath, struck the ground with his foot, without uttering 
a word, and the spot was discovered. He himself was 
then led away to the war; but, not long after, one of 
the arrows fell on the foot with which he had betrayed 
the burial-place of Hercules, and inflicted a painful 
and most noisome wound. The Greeks for a long 
time bore with him on account of the oracle. At 
last, their patience being exhausted, and the stench of 
the wound, together with the cries of the sufferer, be¬ 
ing quite insupportable, Philoctetes was conveyed to 
he island of Lemnos, his arrows being first taken from 
him. His wound presenting a return to his native 
I country, he sailed frcm Lemnos to Italy, and founded 
j Petilia ; and here he was finally cured. (Serv. ad 
Virg., JEn., 3, 401.) Sophocles has made the suffer- 
1 ings of Philoctetes the subject of one of his tragedies. 
(Vid. Sophocles ) 

Philolaus, a Pythagorean philosopher, born at Cro 
tona, but who afterward lived at Thebes, and also at 
Heraclea. He was a disciple of Archytas, and flour¬ 
ished in the time of Plato. It was from him that Pla¬ 
to purchased the written records of the Pythagorean 
system, contrary to an express oath taken by the soci¬ 
ety of Pythagoreans, pledging themselves to keep se¬ 
cret the mysteries of their sect. Plutarch relates, that 
Philolaus was one of the persons who escaped from 
the house which was burned by Cylon during the life 
of Pythagoras ; but this account cannot be correct. 
Philolaus was contemporary with Plato ; and, there¬ 
fore, certainly not with Pythagoras. Interfering in af¬ 
fairs of state, he fell a sacrifice to political jealousy. 
Philolaus treated the doctrines of nature with great 
subtlety, but, at the same time, with great obscurity; 
referring everything that exists to mathematical prin¬ 
ciples. He taught that the world is one whole, which 
has a fiery centre, about which the ten celestial spheres 
revolve, heaven, the sun, the planets, the earth, and 
the moon.—At Thebes, Philolaus was the teacher of 
Simmias and Cebes, before they came to Socrates at 
Athens. (Plat., Phced., p. 61.) Fragments of the 
writings of this philosopher have come down to us, the 
genuineness of which has been satisfactorily establish¬ 
ed by Bockh in his two treatises. (Bockh, de Pla- 
tonico Systemate, &c., Heidelb., 1810, 4to.— Id.,Phil- 
olaos des Pythagoreers Lehren, &c., Berlin, 1819, 
8vo.— Enfield, Hist. Phil., vol. 1, p. 411, seq. — Rit¬ 
ter, Hist. Philos., vol. 1, p. 348. seQ.) 

Philomela, daughter of Pandion, king of Athens, 
and sister to Procne, who had married Tereus, king of 
Thrace. (Vid. Pandion.) Procne became by Tereus 
the mother of a son named Itys ; but, after living some 
time in Thrace, she became desirous of seeing her sis¬ 
ter, and, at her request, Tereus went to Athens, and 
prevailed on Pandion to let Philomela accompany him 
back to Thrace. On the way thither he violated her; 
and, fearing the truth might be discovered, he cut out 
her tongue and confined her. She contrived, however, 
to communicate her story to her sister by means of 
characters woven into a peplus or robe. Procne, 
who had been informed by Tereus that she had died 
by the way, and who had for some time been plunged 
in the greatest affliction for her loss, now sought her 
out and released her ; and, killing hei own son Itys, 
served up his flesh to his father. The two sisters fled 
away; and Tereus, discovering the truth, pursued 
them with an axe. Finding themselves nearly over¬ 
taken, they prayed to the gods to change them into 
birds : Procne immediately became a nightingale (up- 
duv), and Philomela a swallow (xeTaduv). Tereui 

1041 




P H I 


PHI 


was also changed, and became a hoopoo (eno^). 

(Apollod., 3, 13.— Ovid, Met., 6, 424, seq. — Hygin., 
fab., 45.— Schol. ad Aristoph., Av., 212 .—Eudocia, 
327.)—Like so many others, this story is told with con¬ 
siderable variations. According to some, Tereus had 
early conceived a passion for Philomela, and he ob¬ 
tained her in marriage by pretending that Procne was 
dead. {Apollod., 1. c. — Hygin,, l. c.) Again, there 
is great discrepance respecting the transformation, 
some saying that Procne, others that Philomela, was 
the nightingale. This last, which has the signification 
of the name in its favour (Philomela being song-lov¬ 
ing), was not, however, the prevalent opinion. It was 
also said that Tereus was changed into a hawk, and 
that Itys became a wood-pigeon.—The legend we have 
here been giving is one of those invented to account 
mythically for the habits and properties of animals. 
The twitter of the swallow sounds like Itys, Itys ; the 
note of the nightingale was regarded as lugubrious, and 
the hoopoo chases these birds. ( Keightley's Mythol¬ 
ogy, p. 379, seq.) 

Philopator, the surname of the fourth Ptolemy of 
Egypt. ( Vid . Ptolemams.) 

Philopcemen, a distinguished general of the Achae¬ 
an league, bom at Megalopolis, in Arcadia, and edu¬ 
cated under the best masters. He was no sooner able 
to bear arms, than he entered among the troops which 
the city of Megalopolis sent to make incursions into 
Laconia, and in these inroads never failed to give some 
remarkable proof of his prudence and valour. When 
Cleomenes, king of Sparta, attacked Megalopolis, 
Philopcemen greatly signalized himself among the de¬ 
fenders of the place. He distinguished himself no 
less, some time after this, in the battle of Sellasia, 
where Antigonus Doson gained a complete victory over 
Cleomenes, B.C. 222. Antigonus, who had been an 
eyewitness of his gallant behaviour, and who admired 
his talents and virtues, offered him a considerable 
command in his army, but Philopcemen declined it, 
because he knew, as Plutarch observes, that he could 
not bear to be under the direction of another. Not 
choosing, however, to remain idle, and hearing that 
there was war in Crete, he sailed to that island to ex¬ 
ercise and improve his military talents. When he 
had served there for some time, he returned home with 
high reputation, and was immediately appointed by the 
Achaeans general of the horse. In the exercise of this 
command, he acquitted himself with signal ability ; so 
much so, in fact, that the Achaean horse, heretofore of 
no reputation, soon became famous over all Greece. 
He was not long after appointed to the command of 
all the Achaean forces, and zealously employed himself 
in reforming the discipline of the army, and infusing 
a proper spirit into the soldiers of the republic. An 
opportunity occurred soon after this, of ascertaining 
how the troops had profited by his instruction. Ma- 
chanidas, tyrant of Lacedaemon, with a numerous and 
powerful army, was watching a favourable moment to 
subdue the whole of the Peloponnesus. As soon, then, 
as intelligence was brought that he had attacked the 
Mantineans, Philopcemen took the field against him, 
and defeated and slew him. The Lacedasmonians lost 
on this occasion above 8000 men, of whom 4000 were 
left dead upon the field. The Achaeans, in commem¬ 
oration of the valour of Philopoemen, set up at Delphi 
a brazen statue, representing him in the very act of 
s lying the tyrant. At a subsequent period, however, 
he experienced a reverse of fortune; for, having ven¬ 
tured to engage in a naval battle with Nabis, the suc¬ 
cessor of Machanidas, he was not only defeated, but 
in danger of being lost through the leaky condition of 
his own vessel, which was an old one fitted up for the 
occasion. His want of skill, however, on this element 
was amply compensated not long after by a victory 
over the land forces of the enemy, commanded by Na- 
bis in person, the greater part of whom were cut off. 

1042 


When Nabis had been assassinated by the iEtohani 
{vid. Nabis), Philopcemen performed another distin¬ 
guished service for his countrymen, by inducing the 
Spartans to join the Achaean league. Sparta, indeed, 
was an acquisition of no small importance to the con¬ 
federacy, of which she was now become a member. 
It was also a most acceptable service to the principal 
Lacedaemonians, who hoped henceforth to have him for 
the guardian of their newly-recovered freedom. Hav¬ 
ing sold, therefore, the house and property of Nabis 
by a public decree, they voted the money, which 
amounted to 120 talents, to Philopcemen, and deter¬ 
mined to send it by persons deputed from their own 
number. But so high was the private character of the 
illustrious Megalopolitan, that it was a difficult matter 
to find any individual who would venture to speak to 
him on the subject. At last, one Timolaus, who was 
connected with Philopcemen by the ties of hospitality, 
undertook the task; but when he went to Megalopolis, 
and observed the purity and simplicity of his private 
life, he uttered not a word respecting the present, but, 
having assigned another cause for his visit, returned to 
Lacedajmon. He was sent a second time, but stifi 
could not mention the money. In a third visit, he in¬ 
troduced the subject with much hesitation, and stated 
to him the kind intentions of Sparta. But Philopce¬ 
men immediately declined the offer, and, going himseli 
to Lacedaemon, advised the people not to tempt the 
good with the money, but to employ it rather in silen- 
ing the opposition of the bad. And yet it was in this 
same city that he afterward inflicted, as the general of 
the Achaean league, an act of severe intimidation ; for 
Lacedaemon having violated the terms of the compact, 
her walls were demolished by Philopcemen, the insti 
tutions of Lycurgus were abolished, and the laws of 
the Achaeans cvere established in their room. Not 
long after this the city of Messene withdrew from the 
Achaean league, and a war was the consequence, in 
which the forces of the confederacy proved altogether 
superior, until their success was turned into mourning 
by a great and most unexpected disaster. Philopce¬ 
men was surprised by the enemy when passing with a 
small party of cavalry through a difficult defile. It 
was thought that he might have escaped by the aid of 
some light-armed Thracians and Cretans in his band : 
but he would not quit the horsemen, whom he had 
recently selected from the noblest of the Achaeans ; 
and, while he was bringing up the rear, and bravely 
covering the retreat, his horse fell under him. He 
was seventy years old, and weakened by recent sick¬ 
ness ; and he lay stunned and motionless under his 
horse till he was found by the Messenians. The pop¬ 
ular feeling was in his favour, since it was remembered 
that the Messenian state had formerly received im¬ 
portant benefits at his hands ; but the magistrates were 
hostile, most of them having been the authors of the 
revolt, and it was resolved by them that Philopcemen 
should die. He was accordingly compelled to drink 
a cup of poison. His eulogy is summed up by Polyb¬ 
ius with the words, that in forty years, during which 
he played a distinguished part in a democratical com¬ 
munity, he never incurred the enmity of the people, 
though he spoke and acted freely and boldly, nor ever 
courted popular favour by unworthy compliance.—We 
have a biography of him by Plutarch. {Polyb., 2, 40. 
— Id., 2, 67 , scqq.^-Id., 11, 10, &c.— Pint, in Vit.) 

Philostratus, I. Flavius, surnamed, for distinction' 
sake, the elder, was the son of Philostratus of Lemnos, 
who is represented to us as one of the greatest orators 
of his time. He lived towards the end of the second 
century of our era, at the court of the Emperor Sep- 
timius Severus, and at the commencement of the 
third, under Alexander. It was to please the Empress 
Julia, the wife of Severus, who had a strong predilec¬ 
tion for literary pursuits, that Philostratus composed 
the most famous of his works, the Life of Apollonius 





PHILOSTRATUS. 


PHI 


of Tyana ( Arro^Aioviov rov T vaveug (Log), a well- 
known charlatan and wonder-worker, whom his biog¬ 
rapher wishes to represent as a supernatural being. 
Hence Eunapius of Sardis, in speaking of this book, 
remarks, that, instead of being called the Life of Apol¬ 
lonius, it ought to be entitled, a History of the visit of 
God unto men (deov eTudppiav eg avOpunovg Jeov 
kclaeIv). Three writers before the time of Philostra- 
tus had given Lives of Apollonius, namely, Damis of 
1 linus, his friend, and two unknown writers, Maximus 
and Moeragenes. Their works were of service to 
Ph'.lostratus in framing his compilation ; a compilation 
entirely destitute of critical arrangement, filled with 
the most absurd fables, and swarming with geograph¬ 
ical errors and with anachronisms. And yet, notwith¬ 
standing these so serious defects, the work is useful 
for an acquaintance with the Pythagorean philosophy, 
and the history of the emperors who reigned after 
Nero.—A question naturally presents itself in relation 
to this singular piece of biography. Did Philostratus, 
in writing it, wish to parody the life and miracles of 
the divine founder of our religion! It is difficult to 
exculpate him from such an intention. Various par¬ 
ticulars in the biography of Apollonius, such as the 
annunciation of his nativity, made to his mother by Pro¬ 
teus ; the incarnation of this Egyptian divinity in the 
person of Apollonius ; the miracles by which his birth 
was accompanied ; those that are attributed to the in¬ 
dividual himself; and his ascension into heaven, ap¬ 
pear borrowed from the life of our Saviour ; and within 
less than a century after Philostratus wrote, in the 
time of Dioclesian, Hierocles of Nicomedia opposed 
this work to the gospels. Huet was the first that as¬ 
cribed an evil intention to Philostratus ( Demonstr. 
Evang. Prop os., 9, c. 147); while the opposite side 
is maintained by Meiners ( Gesch. der Wissensch., 
&c., vol. 1 , p. 258) and by Tiedemann ( Geist . der 
Speculat. Philos., vol. 3, p. 116).—Philostratus has 
also left us, under the title of HputKa ( Hero'ica. ), the 
fabulous history of twenty-one heroes of the Trojan 
war. This work is in the form of a dialogue between 
a Phoenician mariner and a vinedresser of Thrace, who 
had heard all these particulars from the lips of Protes- 
llaus. Another work is the E ixoveg, in two books. It 
is a discourse on a gallery of paintings which was at 
Naples, and contains some valuable remarks on the 
state of the arts at this period. We have also the 
Lives of the Sophists (Biot, 2 odioT&v), in two books, 
the first containing the lives of the philosophical soph¬ 
ists, the second those of the rhetorical. The former 
are twenty-six in number; the latter thirty-three. It 
is an interesting work, and gives an amusing account 
of the sophists of the day, their vanity and impudence, 
their jealousies and quarrels, their corrupt morals; a 
living picture, in fine, of the fall of the art and the cor¬ 
ruption of literary men. There exist also from the 
pen of Philostratus sixty-three letters, and an epigram 
in the Anthology. There are only two editions of the 
entire works of Philostratus ; that of Morell, Paris, 
1608, fol., and that of Olearius, Lips., 1709, fol. 
The latter is the better one of the two, although in 
numerous instances it only copies the errors of'the 
former. Olearius is said to have appropriated to his 
own use the notes of Reinesius, written on the mar¬ 
gin of a copy of Morell’s edition, which he obtained 
from the library of Zeitz ; and then to have destroyed 
this copy. ( Hoffmann, Lex. Bibliogr ., vol. 3, p. 235.) 
In 1806, Boissonade published a good edition of the 
Hero'ica, from the Paris press, in 8vo, and Welcker 
an edition of the E iicoveg of both the elder and younger 
Philostratus, with archaeological illustrations by him¬ 
self, and a commentary by F. Jacobs, Lips., 1825, 
8vo. Among the works that may be consulted in re¬ 
lation to Philostratus are the following : Baden, de 
arte et judicio Philostrati in describendis imaginibus, 
Hafn , 1792, 4to.— Bekken Specimen var. led. et ob- 


servat. in Philostratum , Ace. F. Creuzeri dr.not , 
Hcidelb., 1818, 8vo.— Eauiaker, Lectiones Philostra• 
tea, Lugd. Bat., pars 1, 1816, 8vo .'^Heyne, Phi/eg - 
trati imagines, &e., Gotting., 1796, 1801 ( Progr.), 
fol.— Jacobs, Exercitationes Crilicce in script, vet., 
vol. 2, Lips., 1797, 8vo.—II. A nephew of the former, 
called, for distinction’ sake, Philostratus the young¬ 
er Pie was the author of a work which has come 
down to us under the title of Etnoveg (like that of the 
elder Philostratus). It is contained in a single book, 
ap'l is less a description of paintings that have actually 
existed, than a collection of subjects for artists. This 
work is commonly printed along with the E htoveg of 
the elder Philostratus. The latest and best edition is 
that of Welcker, Lips., 1825, 8vo. ( Scholl, Hist 
Lit. Gr., vol. 4, p. 288, seqq.) 

Philotas, son of Parmenio. He distinguished him¬ 
self on many occasions, but was at last accused of 
conspiring against the life of Alexander. The mon¬ 
arch was encamped at Artacoana when information of 
this design was brought to him. The informer was 
a boy of infamous character, and the persons accused 
were officers, though not of exalted rank. The in¬ 
former said, that he had at first told his secret to Phi- 
Iotas, who had daily access to Alexander, but who had 
taken no notice of it for two days, at the end of which 
time, through the means of another officer near Alex¬ 
ander’s person, the information was conveyed to the 
king. This threw strong suspicion on Philotas, who, 
however, was not implicated by either the informer or 
any of the accused in their confessions. But Craterus, 
who had an old jealousy against Philotas, on account 
of the favour which the latter enjoyed with the king, 
encouraged the suspicions of Alexander, who recol¬ 
lected what Philotas had said at the time when the 
former claimed Jupiter Ammon for his father, that he 
pitied those who w r ere doomed to serve a man that fan¬ 
cied himself to be a god. Craterus had also, for some 
time previous, bribed a courtesan intimate with Philo¬ 
tas, who reported to him. and, through him, to the king, 
all the boastful vapourings and expressions of discon¬ 
tent uttered by Philotas in his unguarded moments. 
In short, Alexander, according to Quintus Curtius, was 
induced to order Philotas to be tortured in conse¬ 
quence of the suggestions of Craterus, Hephses^ion, 
and others of the king’s companions. Coenus, who had 
married the sister of Philotas, was one of the most 
violent against the accused, for fear, it was supposed, 
of being thought an abettor of his brother-in-law. The 
torture was administered by Craterus himself, and 
Philotas, after enduring dreadful agonies, confessed, 
though in vague terms, that he had conspired against 
the life of Alexander, and that his father Parmenio 
was cognizant of it This being considered sufficient 
evidence, Philotas was stoned to death ; and Parme¬ 
nio suffered not long after him. ( Vid. Parmenio.— 
Quint. Curt., 6, 7, 18.— Arrian, Exp. Al., 3, 26, 
seqq.) 

Philoxenus, I. a native of the island of Cythera, 
born 439 B.C. He is highly praised as a dithyrambic 
poet by the ancient writers. The inhabitants of Cy¬ 
thera having been subjected by the Lacedaemonians, 
Philoxenus, while still a boy, came as a slave into the 
hands of a Spartan, and afterward into those of the 
younger Melanippides, who instructed him in the po¬ 
etic art, and gave him his freedom. Philoxenus lived 
subsequently at the court of Dionysius the elder, ty 
rant of Syracuse, where he acquired the character ot 
a bon vivant and a wit. Dionysius, on one occasion, 
gave him one of his dramas to correct, and the poet i.3 
said to have run his pen through the whole. The of¬ 
fended tyrant sent him to the quarries, and the poet is 
said to have there composed the best of his dramas, 
entitled Cyclops. JElian says, that the hole or cham¬ 
ber in which he wrote his play was shown a long time 
after to strangers, and went by the poet’s name. ( Var 

1043 




P H I 


PHI 


Hist., 12, 44.) Philoxenus was afterward restored to 
favour, and the tyrant, imagining that he would now 
find in him a more complimentary critic, invited him 
to attend the reading of one of his poems. Philoxe¬ 
nus, after enduring the infliction for a while, rose from 
nis seat, and, on being asked by Dionysius whither he 
was going, coolly replied, “ To the quarries /” ( Nicol. 
Damasc., ap. Stob., 13, 16, p. 145. — Suid., s. v. 
UTtaye ye elg rag "haToyiag .— Id., s. v. A aroytag .— 
Hellad., ap. Phot., Cod., 279.) Eustathius gives a 
curious account of his having escaped on this occasion, 
by dexterously using a word susceptible of a double 
meaning. Dionysius, according to this version of the 
story, read one of his tragedies to Philoxenus, and then 
asked him what kind of a play it appeared to him to 
be. The poet answered, “ A sad one ” ( OLKTpd\ 
meaning sad stuff; but Dionysius thought he meant a 
drama full of pathos, and took his remark as a com¬ 
pliment. ( Eustath. ad. Od., p. 1691.) According to 
the scholiast on Aristophanes (Pint., 290), Philoxenus 
was sent to the quarries for having rivalled the tyrant 
in the affections of a concubine named Galataea. 
Having escaped, however, from this confinement, he 
fled to his native island, and there avenged himself by 
writing a drama, in which Dionysius was represented 
under the character of the Cyclops Polyphemus, enam¬ 
oured of the nymph Galatsea. The allusion was the 
more galling, as Dionysius laboured under a weakness 
of sight, or, more probably, saw well with only one of 
his eyes. ( Schoi ad. Aristoph., 1. c. —Compare Athe- 
nceus, 1, p. 7.)—The reputation of Philoxenus rested 
more, however, upon his lyric than upon his dramatic 
productions. Athenseus has preserved some extracts 
from his works, particularly one from his comic, or, 
rather, burlesque poem, entitled Aelnvov, or “ The En¬ 
tertainment .” Philoxenus was noted for his gluttony, 
and Athenaeus records a wish of his (8, p. 341, d.), that 
he might have a throat three cubits long, in order that 
the pleasure arising from the tasting of his food might 
be the more prolonged. (Compare AE lian, 10, 9.) 
He is said to have died of a surfeit, in eating a poly¬ 
pus two cubits in size. ( Athenceus, 8, p. 341.— 
Scholl, Gesch. Lit. Gr., vol. 1, p. 206.)—II. A native 
of Leucadia. Bockh considers this one to have been 
the glutton, and "the Cytherean the poet. ( Scholl, 
Gesch.. Lit. Gr., vol. 1, p. 207, Anm. 1.)—III. or 
Flavius Philoxenus, was consul A.D. 525, and is com¬ 
monly known as the author of a Latin-Greek Lexicon, 
in which the Latin words were explained in Greek. 
H. Stephens gave this Lexicon, without knowing the 
name of the compiler, in his “ Glossaria duo e situ 
vetustatis eruta,” Paris, 1573, fol. It appears under 
the name of Philoxenus in the collection of Bonav. 
Vulcanius. It forms part also of the London edition 
of Stephens’s Thesaurus, 1826. ( Scholl , Gesch. Lit. 

Gr., vol. 3, p. 193.) 

Philyra, one of the Oceanides, and the mother of 
Chiron by Saturn. The god, dreading the jealousy of 
his wife Rhea, changed Philyra into a mare, and him¬ 
self into a horse. The offspring of their love was the 
Centaur Chiron, half man, half horse. Philyra was so 
ashamed of the monstrous shape of the child, that she 
prayed the gods to change her form and nature. She 
was accordingly metamorphosed into the linden-tree, 
called by her name among the Greeks (QiXvpa, Phi¬ 
lyra). (Hygin., fab., 138.) Modern expounders of 
mythology, however, make E/U'pa equivalent to $tXt- 
hvpa, u lyre-loving ,” and consider it a very fit designa¬ 
tion for the mother of one who was so skilled in music 
as Chiron. ( Wclcher, Nachtrag zur Tril., p. 53, not.) 

Philyrides, a patronymic of Chiron, the son of 
Philyra. ( Virg., G., 3, 550.) 

Phineus, I. a son of Agenor (or, according to some, 
Cif Neptune), who was gifted with prophetic powers, 
md reigned at Salmydessus, on the coast of Thrace. 
Fie married Cleopatra, the daughter of Boreas and 
1044 


Orithyia, and became by her the father of two sons, 
Plexippes and Pandion. Cleopatra having died, he 
married Idasa, the daughter of Dardanus, who, becom¬ 
ing jealous of her step-clnldren, maligned them to their 
father, and the latter, believing the slander, deprived 
them of sight and imprisoned them. According to 
the commonly-received account, the gods, to punish 
him, struck him with blindness, and sent the Harpies 
to torment him. These fell monsters came flying the 
instant food was set before him, carried off the great* 
er portion of it, and so defiled what they left that no 
mortal could endure to eat it. The Argonauts com¬ 
ing to consult Phineus about their future course, he 
promised to direct them, on condition of their deliver¬ 
ing him from the Harpies. This they undertook to do. 
The table was spread ; the Harpies instantly descend¬ 
ed, screaming, and seized the viands. Zetes and Ca¬ 
lais, the winged sons of Boreas, then drew their swords 
and pursued them through the air. The Harpies flew 
along the Propontis, over the Egean Sea and Greece, 
to some islets beyond the Peloponnesus, where their 
pursuers came up with them, and were about to slay 
them, when Iris, appearing, forbade the deed, and the 
Harpies were dismissed, on their taking a solemn oath 
never more to molest Phineus. The isles were thence¬ 
forth named the Strophades (hrpotyadeg, from arpe(j) 0 ), 
“ to turn")', because the sons of Boreas there turned 
back from the pursuit. ( Apollon. Rh., 2, 284.)—The 
legend of Phineus appears to have assumed a variety 
of shapes among the ancient writers, and this would 
seem to have been owing to its being frequently made 
the subject of dramatic composition. Thus, there was a 
“ Phineus” composed by .Eschylus ; another by Soph¬ 
ocles ; not to speak of inferior dramatists. ( Heyne , 
ad Apollod., 1, 9, 21.) One version of the story made 
Phineus to have been blinded by Neptune, because he 
pointed out to Phryxus the route to Scythia. This 
was given in particular by Hesiod in his Eoce. (Schoi. 
ad Apollod. Rhod., 2, 181.) The same poet, accord¬ 
ing to Strabo (463), gave another legend elsewhere, 
which related that Phineus had been carried off by the 
Harpies to the northern regions of the earth, the land 
of the Galactophagi. (Compare Orphica.,\. 675, scqq.) 
Another account, mentioned by Apollodorus, made 
Phineus to have been blinded by Boreas and the Ar¬ 
gonauts (Apollod., 1, 9, 21. — Id., 3, 15, 4); while 
Diodorus Siculus states, that Zetes and Calais, in con¬ 
junction with Hercules, made war upon the Thracians, 
liberated the two sons of Phineus from confinement, 
and that Hercules slew the king himself in battle. 
(Diod. Sic., 4,44.) Finally, some innovator, guided 
probably by this passage of Diodorus, would seem to 
have changed crvv B opea in the text of Apollodorus 
(3, 15, 4), into ovv B opeddatg, and hence arose an¬ 
other version of the fable, that Phineus had been blind¬ 
ed by the sons of Boreas, for his cruel treatment of 
their relatives. (Heyne, ad Apollod., 1. c.) —II. The 
brother of Cepheus, king of .Ethiopia. Andromeda, 
daughter of the latter, had been promised him in mar¬ 
riage ; and when she was given to Perseus, a contest 
arose, in which Phineus was changed to stone by the 
Gorgon’s head which Perseus had brought with him. 
(Vid. Andromeda and Danae.) 

Phintias, I. a city of Sicily, to the east of Gela, 
on the southern coast. It was founded by Phintias, a 
tyrant of Agrigentum, who began to reign the next 
year after the death of Agathocles. Phintias trans¬ 
ferred to his new city the inhabitants of Gela (Diod. 
Sic., 22, 2), which latter place from this time became 
deserted and ceased to exist. (Strabo, 272.) Cluver 
makes Phintias correspond to the modern Alicata ; 
but Mannert proves very conclusively from Diodorus 
and Polybius, that it lay to the east of Gela, not to the 
west, as it appears on D’Anville’s map, near the mouth 
of the river Dnllo. (Geogr., vol. 9, pt. 2, p. 349, 
I seqq.) —II. A tyrant of Agrigentum, the year after the 




P H L 


P H S 


death of Agathocles. He was the founder of Phintias, 
a city of Sicily to the east of Gela. ( Vid. Phintias I.) 

Phlegethon, a river of the low§r world, which 
/oiled in waves of fire. Hence its name <&/ieyeOuv, 
from (p'heyu, “ to burn .” The god of the stream was 
fabled by the poets to be the son of Cocytus. ( Stat., 
Theb., 4, 522.— Senec., Thyest., 1018.— Virg., JEn 
6, 264.) 

Phlegon, I. a native of Tralles, in Lydia, one of the 
Emperor Hadrian’s freedmen. He wrote a species of 
universal chronicle, commencing with the first Olym¬ 
piad, since he regarded all that preceded this period 
as fabulous. In this work he recounted all the events 
that had taken place in every quarter of the globe, 
during the four years of each Olympiad. Hence it 
bore the title of ’OXv/ituovikCjv Kal Xpovuctiv ovva- 
yoyy {“A Collection of Olympic Conquerors, and of 
Events"). Independently of a fragment, which appears 
to have formed the introduction to the work, we have 
only remaining of it what relates to the 176th Olym¬ 
piad. Photius has preserved this for us; and from this 
it would appear that Phlegon confined himself to a 
simple enumeration of facts, without taking any trou¬ 
ble about ornament of style, or without accompanying 
his work with any reflections. Photius, therefore, had 
good reason, no doubt, to consider its perusal as some¬ 
what fatiguing. The loss of the work, however, is the 
more to be lamented, since ancient historians in gen¬ 
eral neglect chronology too much. It. was in this 
work that Phlegon made mention of the famous eclipse 
of the sun in the eighteenth year of the reign of Tibe¬ 
rius, which, according to him, produced so great an 
obscurity that the stars were seen at the sixth hour of 
the day (12 o’clock at noon), and which was accom¬ 
panied with an earthquake. It was the eclipse that oc¬ 
curred at our Saviour’s crucifixion. ( Eusebap. Syn- 
cell., p. 325.) Numerous works have appeared in 
England on this passage of Phlegon, where the eclipse 
is mentioned. Among these, the following may be 
enumerated : “ Sykes, Dissertation upon the Eclipse 
mentioned by Phlegon ,” London , 1732, 8vo.—“ The 
Testimony of Phlegon vindicated , &c., by W. Whis- 
ton ,” London , 1732, 8vo. To this work there was a 
reply by Sykes, to whom Whiston rejoined.—“ Phle¬ 
gon examined critically and impartially, by John 
Chapman," London, 1743, 8vo, &c—We have re¬ 
maining two small works of Phlegon : one, entitled 
ITepi. Javpaaiuv, “ Of wonderful Things," containing 
a collection of most absurd stories, which could only 
have been made by a man equally destitute of critical 
acumen and sound judgment; the other treats “ of Per- 
sons who have attained to a very advanced old age 
(IHpi M aupoSiov), and is a dry catalogue of individu¬ 
als who had reached the age of 100 to 140 years. 
Phletjon was the author of several other works, which 
are now lost, such as, “An Abridgment of the Work 
on the Olympiads," a “Description of Sicily," a trea¬ 
tise “ on Roman Festivals," another “ on the most Re¬ 
markable Points of the City of Rome," and “a Life 
of Hadrian" Spartianus informs us, that this biog¬ 
raphy was believed to have been written by the em¬ 
peror himself, who borrowed for the purpose the name 
of his freedman. ( Spart ., Vit.Hadr., 15.) Phlegon 
is thought to have been the author also of a small 
work, on “ Females distinguished for Skill and Cour¬ 
age in War" (Twaineg ev nolepiKolg ovveral Kal 
hvSpelat), containing short notices of Semiramis, Ni- 
tocris, &c. The best editions of Phlegon are, that of 
Meursius, Lugd. Bat.. 1620, 4to, and that of Franz, 
Hal, 1822, 8vo, containing the critical observations 
of Bast. The latter, however, which is very negli¬ 
gently printed, does not comprehend the work on re¬ 
markable women. This last-mentioned production 
was published by Heeren, in the Bibliothek fur alte 
Lit. und Kunst, Nos. VI. and VII , after a MS. be- 
jonging to the Escurial, which was copied by Tychsen, 


and after another copy which was in the Barhernn 
library at Rome, and which Holstenius had made 
from a Florence MS. ( Scholl , Hist. Lit., vol. 4, p. 
201, seqq.) —II. One of the four horses of the sun 
The name means “ the Burning one” (4>/l eyuv, from 
0/1 eyu, “to burn"). {Ovid, Met., 2, 154.) The 
names of the Sun-god’s steeds are differently given by 
different poets. (Consult Munker, ad Hygin., fab., 
183.— Spanheim, ad Callim., H. in Del., 169.) 

Phlegra, I. the earlier name of the peninsula of Pal- 
lene in Thrace (afterward Macedonia). The appella¬ 
tion is derived from 0Aeyca, “ to burn," and the place 
was fabled to have witnessed the conflict between the 
gods and the earth-born Titans. The spot most prob¬ 
ably had been volcanic at an early period. {Find., 
Nem., 1 , 100.— Schol. et Bockh, ad loc.) — II. More 
commonly Phlegraei Campi, a region of Italy, respect¬ 
ing which a tradition was related similar to that in the 
case of the peninsula of Pallene. {Vid. Phlegra I.) 
The territory of Italy thus denominated formed part 
of ancient Campania, and appears to have experienced 
in a very great degree the destructive effects of sub¬ 
terraneous fires. Here we find Mount Vesuvius ; the 
Solfaterra, still smoking, as the poets have pretended, 
from Jupiter’s thunder ; the Monte Nuovo, which was 
suddenly thrown up from the bowels of the earth on 
the day of St. Michael’s feast, in the year 1538 ; the 
Monte Barbara, formerly Mons Gaurus ; the grotto of 
the Sybil; the noxious and gloomy lakes of Avernus 
and Acheron, &c. It is not improbable that these 
objects terrified the Greeks in their first voyages to 
the coast, and that they were afterward embellished 
and exaggerated by the fancy and fiction of the poets, 
{Plin , 3, 5. — Sil. Ital., 8, 540. — Propert., 1 , 20, 8.^) 

Phlegy/E {^eyvai), the followers of Phlegyas, in 
Bceotia. {Vid. Phlegyas.) 

Phlegyas, son of Mars and Chrysogenea, the 
daughter of Halmus. Pausanias relates (9, 34), that 
the country about Orchomenus in Bceotia was first 
possessed by Andreus, the son of the river Peneus, 
who named it from himself Andreis. He was suc¬ 
ceeded by his son Eteocles, who is said to have been 
the first that sacrificed to the Graces. Eteocles gave 
a portion of his territory to Halmus, the son of Sisy¬ 
phus of Corinth, to whose posterity, on Eteocles dy¬ 
ing childless, the kingdom came : for Halmus had 
two daughters, Chrysogenea and Chryse, the former 
of whom, as we have already said, became by Mars 
the mother of Phlegyas ; the latter bore to Neptune a 
son named Minyas. Phlegyas obtained the dominion 
after Eteocles, and named the country Phlegyonitis. 
He also built a city called Phlegya, into which he 
collected the bravest warriors of Greece. These sep¬ 
arated themselves from the other people of the coun¬ 
try, and took to robbing and plundering. They even 
ventured to assail and burn the temple of Delphi; and 
Jupiter, on account of their impiety, finally destroyed 
them with lightning and pestilence. A few only es¬ 
caped to Phocis. {Keightley’s Mythology, p. 346.)— 
The Phlegyans are regarded by Buttmann as belong¬ 
ing to the universal tradition of an impious people be¬ 
ing destroyed by fire from heaven. Muller regards 
the Phlegyans as being the same with the Lapithse 
and the military class of the Minyans. Their name 
probably (4 'leyvat, from <j>Myu, “to burn") gave oc¬ 
casion to the legend of their destruction. {.Keightley, 
l. c.) 

Phlius, a small independent republic of the Pelo¬ 
ponnesus, adjoining Corinth and Sicyon on the north, 
Arcadia on the west, and the Nemean and Cleonsean dis¬ 
tricts of Argolis on the south and southeast ( Strabo , 
382.) It is sometimes, however, referred to Argolis, 
since Homer represents it, under the early name of 
Araethyrea, as dependant on the kingdom of Mycenae 
{II., 2, 569.) The remains of the city of Phlius are 
to be seen not far from Agios Giorgios, on the road 

1045 



P H O 


P H O 


:o the Lake of Stjmphalus in Arcadia. ( Gell , Itin. of 
the Morca, p. 169.) 

Phocaea, a maritime town of Ionia, in Asia Minor, 
BOUthwest of Cyma, and the most northern of the 
Ionian cities. It was founded, as Pausanias reports, 
by some emigrants of Phocis, under the guidance of 
two Athenian chiefs, named Philogenes and Damon. 
The city was built, with the consent of the Cymseans, 
on part of their territory ; nor was it included in the 
Ionian confederacy till its citizens had consented to 
place at the head of the government princes of the line 
of Codrus. Its favourable situation for commerce 
made it known from a very early period; and, as Mile¬ 
tus enjoyed almost exclusively the trade of the Eux- 
ine, so Phocsea had become possessed of great mari¬ 
time ascendancy in the western part of the Mediterra¬ 
nean. The colony of Alalia in Corsica was of Pho- 
c$an origin, and Phocaean vessels traded to Tartessus 
and the southwestern coast of Spain. It was in these 
distant voyages, no doubt, that their long vessels of 
fifty oars, which they had adopted from the Cartha¬ 
ginians, were commonly employed ; and they would 
seem to have been the first of the Greeks that em¬ 
ployed ships of this construction. ( Herod ., 1, 163.) 
Herodotus informs us, that the Phocaeans were the 
first Greeks that made their countrymen acquainted 
with the Adriatic, and the coasts of Tyrrhenia and 
Spain. Tartessus was the spot which they most fre¬ 
quented ; and they so conciliated the favour of Argan- 
thonius, sovereign of the country, that he sought to 
induce them to leave Ionia and settle in his dominions. 
On their declining this offer, he munificently presented 
them with a Urge sum of money, for the purpose of 
raising a strong line of fortifications around their city, 
a precaution which the growing power of the Median 
empire seemed to render necessary. The historian 
observes, that the liberality of the Iberian sovereign 
was attested by the circuit of its walls, which were 
several stadia in length, and by the size and solid con¬ 
struction of the stones employed. Phocaea was one 
of the first Ionian cities besieged by the army of 
Cyrus under the command of Harpagus. Having in¬ 
vested the place, he summoned the inhabitants to sur¬ 
render, declaring that it would be a sufficient token 
of submission if they would pull down one battle¬ 
ment of their wall, and consecrate one dwelling in 
their city. The Phocaeans, aware that to comply with 
this demand was to forfeit their independence, but 
conscious also of their inability to resist the over¬ 
whelming power of Cyrus, determined to abandon 
their native soil, and seek their fortune in another 
clime. Having formed this resolution, and obtained 
from the Persian general a truce of one day, under the 
pretence of a wish to deliberate on his proposal, they 
launched their ships, and, embarking with their wives 
and children, and the : r most valuable effects, sailed to 
Chios. On their arrival in that island, they sought to 
purchase the GEnussae, a neighbouring group of isl¬ 
ands, belonging to the Chians; but the people of Chi¬ 
os, fearing a diminution of their own commerce from 
such active neighbours, refused to comply with their 
wishes, and the Phocaeans resolved to sail to Corsica, 
where, twenty years prior to these events, they had 
founded a town named Alalia. Before sailing thither, 
however, they touched at Phocaea, and, having sur¬ 
prised the Persian garrison left there by Harpagus, 
put it to the sword. They then bound themselves by 
a solemn oath to abandon their native land, and not to 
return to it until a mass of iron which they cast into the 
sea should rise to the surface. Nevertheless, one half 
of their number, overcome by the feelings which the 
sight of their city recalled to their minds, could not be 
prevailed upon to forsake it a second time. The rest 
continued their voyage to Corsica, and were well re¬ 
ceived by their countrymen already settled in the isl¬ 
and During the five years in which they remained 
1046 


there, they rendered themselves formidable to the suf* 
rounding nations by their piracies and depredations, so 
that at length |jre Tuscans and Carthaginians united 
their force* to check these aggressors and destroy their 
power. The hostile fleets met in the Sardinian sea, 
and, after a most obstinate engagement, the Phccae- 
ans succeeded in beating off the enemy. They sus¬ 
tained, however, so great a ioss in the conflict, and 
their ships were so crippled, that, despairing of being 
able to continue the contest against their powerful 
foes, they resolved to abandon Corsica, and proceed 
to Rhegium in Italy. Soon after their arrival in that 
port, they were persuaded to settle at Velia or Elaea, 
in Lucania, by a citizen of Posidonia. This new col¬ 
ony became, in process of time, a considerable ani 
flourishing town. {Herod., 1, 163, seqq.) —It is re¬ 
markable that Herodotus, in this detailed account ot 
the settlements made at different times by the Phocae¬ 
ans, should have made no mention of the most impor¬ 
tant and celebrated of-their foundations, namely Mas- 
silia, or the modern Marseille , which he notices only 
once, and that incidentally, and not as a Phocaean col¬ 
ony (5, 9). Thucydides, however, distinctly ascribes 
the origin of that city .to the Phocaeans (1, 13), as also 
Strabo, who enters very fully into the history of that 
event. ( Strah ., 179, seqq. — Id., 647.—Compare Liv., 
5, 34. — Athenaus, 13, p. 576. — Steph. Byz., s. v. 
MaooaXla.) It is probable that Massilia had been al¬ 
ready founded by the Phocaeans, before they were 
forced by the Persians to abandon Ionia; and that the 
Corsican settlement was but an offset of the principal 
colony.—Phocaea still continued to exist under the 
Persian dominion, but greatly reduced in population 
and commerce. This is apparent from the fact of its 
having been ahle to contribute only three ships to the 
combined fleet of the revolted Ionians assembled at 
Lade. Little mention is made of Phocaea subsequent 
to the events of this insurrection. {Thucyd., 8, 31.) 
Some centuries later, however, it is described by Livy 
as a town of some size and consequence, on occasion 
of its being besieged by a Roman naval force, in the 
war against Antiochus. (Liu., 37, 31.) “The town,” 
says the historian, “ stands at the bottom of a bay, and 
is of an oblong shape. The wall encompasses a space 
of two miles and a half in length, and then contracts 
into a narrow, wedge-like form, which place they 
call Aa/ncrr/p (Lampter, or ‘ the lighthouse ’). The 
breadth here is one thousand two hundred paces; and 
a tongue of land, stretching out about a mile towards 
the sea, divides the bay nearly in the middle, as if 
with a line, and where it is connected with the main 
land by a narrow isthmus, so as to form two very 
safe harbours, one on each side. The one that fronts 
the south is called Naustathmos, the station for ships, 
from the circumstance of its being capable of contain¬ 
ing a vast number; the other is close to Lampter.” 
We can trace the existence of Phocaea through the 
Caesars by means of its coins, and Pliny (5, 31), and 
even down to the latest period of the Byzantine empire, 
with the help of the annalists and ecclesiastical wri¬ 
ters. {Hierocl., Synecd., p. 166.— Act. Concil. Eph. et 
Coned. Chalced.) We learn from Michael Ducas {Ann., 
p. 89), that a new town was built not far from the an¬ 
cient site, which still retains the name of Paiceo-Phog • 
gia, by some Genoese, in the reign of Amurath. This, 
as Chandler informs us ( Travels in Asia Minor, p. 
96), is situated on the isthmus mentioned above in 
Livy’s description. {Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 
330, seqq. — Rennell, Geography of Western Asia, 
vol. 2, p. 5.) 

Phocion, a celebrated Athenian, born about 409 
B.C. A common, but, perhaps, too easily-received 
tradition, made him of obscure origin, and the son ot 
a turner. Be this as it may, he certainly received « 
careful education, and attended the lectures of Plato, 
and afterward of Xenocrates. Phocion was remark 




PHOCION. 


1 riO 


r 

able, in a corrupt age,for purity and simplicity of char¬ 
acter, and, though he erred in his political views, yet 
m his private relations he certainly deserved the praise 
of a virtuous and excellent man. His first service in 
warfare was under Chabrias, to whom he proved him¬ 
self, on many occasions, of signal utility, urging him on 
when too slow in his operations, and endeavouring to 
bring him to act coolly when unreasonably violent. 
In this way he eventually gained a remarkable ascend¬ 
ancy over that commander, so that Chabrias intrusted 
h;m with the most important commissions, and assign¬ 
ed to him the most prominent commands. In the 
naval battle fought off Naxos, Phocion had charge of 
the left wing of the fleet, and contributed essentially, 
by his gallant bearing, to the success of the day. The 
Athenians began now to regard him as one who gave 
promise of distinguished usefulness to the state. In 
entering on public affairs, Phocion appears to have ta¬ 
ken Aristides and Pericles for his models, and to have 
endeavoured to attain to eminence in both civil and 
military affairs, a union of characters by no means 
common in his time. He was elected general five- 
and-forty times, without having once attended at the 
election; having been always appointed in his absence, 
at the free motion of his countrymen. This was the 
more honourable to him, as Phocion was one who gen¬ 
erally opposed their inclinations, and never said or did 
anything with a view to recommend himself. In his 
military capacity, Phocion signalized himself on sev¬ 
eral occasions. He defeated the forces of Philip of 
Macedon, which that monarch had sent into Euboea, 
with the view of getting a footing in that island : he 
saved Byzantium from Philip ; took several of his 
ships, and recovered many cities which had been gar¬ 
risoned by his troops. As a statesman, however, Pho¬ 
cion seems less deserving of praise. His great error 
was too strong an attachment to pacific relations with 
Macedon, a line of policy which brought him into di¬ 
rect collision with Demosthenes, though it subsequent¬ 
ly secured for him the favour of Alexander. In this, 
however, there was nothing corrupt: the principles of 
Phocion were pure, and his desire for peace was a 
sincere one ; but his great fault was in despairing too 
readily of his country. Alexander, to testify his re¬ 
gard for Phocion, sent him a present of 100 talents, 
which the latter, however, unhesitatingly refused. 
The same monarch offered him his choice of one of 
four Asiatic cities ; but Phocion again declined the 
gift, and Alexander died soon afterward. We find 
Phocion, at a later period, in pursuance of his usual 
line of policy, opposing the Lamian war; and, in con¬ 
sequence, sent to Antipater to treat of peace, when 
that war had eventuated unsuccessfully for Athens. 
When the city had submitted, and a Macedonian gar¬ 
rison was placed in Munychia, the chief authority at 
Athens was vested in Phocion, who was recommended 
by his superior character and talents, and by the high 
esteem in which he was known to be held by Antipater. 
On the death of the latter, however, new troubles com¬ 
menced. (Vid. Polysperchon ) The Athenian peo¬ 
ple held an assembly, with every circumstance of tu¬ 
mult and confusion, in which they voted the complete 
re-establishment of democracy, and the death or ban¬ 
ishment of all who had borne office in the oligarchy, of 
whom the mc3t conspicuous was Phocion. The exiles 
fled to the camp of Alexander, son of Polysperchon, and 
were sent by him to his father, and recommended to his 
favour. They were followed thither by an Athenian 
Embassy, sent to accuse them and to demand their sur¬ 
render. Polysperchon basely gave up the fugitives, 
in word, to stand their trial, but, in truth, to perish by 
the party-fury of their bitterest enemies. When the 
victims were brought before the assembly, their voices 
were drowned by the clamour of their judges, who 
were mostly of the persons newly restored to a share 
ia the government, from which they had been excluded 


after the victory of Antipater. Every one was hooted 
down who attempted to speak in favour of the accused, 
and a tumultuous vote was passed condemning all the 
prisoners to death. They were for the most part men 
of distinguished rank and respectable character, and, 
while their hard fate affected many with pity and con¬ 
sternation, there were others who vented in insults 
that envious malice which, while its objects were in 
prosperity, had been prudently suppressed. One of 
these wretches is said to have spit on Phocion as he 
was led to prison ; but the outrage failed to ruffle the 
composure of the captive, who only looked towards 
the magistrates and asked, “ Will no one stop this 
man’s indecency 1” Before he drank the hemlock he 
was asked if he had any message for his son Phocus : 
“ Only,” he said, <£ not to bear a grudge against the 
Athenians.” As the draught prepared proved not suf¬ 
ficient for all, and the jailer demanded to be paid for 
a fresh supply, he desired one of his friends to satisfy 
the man, observing that Athens was a place where 
one could not even die for nothing. His body, ac¬ 
cording to law in cases of treason, was carried to the 
waste ground between Megaris and Attica, where, as 
his friends did not venture to take part in the funeral 
obsequies, it received the last offices from the hands 
of hirelings and strangers. His bones were collected 
by a Megarian woman, who interred them by the hearth 
of her dwelling, as a sacred deposite for better times. 
When the angry passions of the people had subsided, 
the remembrance of his virtues revived. His bones 
were brought back to Athens and publicly interred, 
and a bronze statue was erected to his memory. Ag- 
nonides, one of those most instrumental in effecting 
his condemnation, had sentence of death passed against 
him by the popular assembly, and two of his other ac¬ 
cusers having fled from the city, were overtaken by 
the vengeance of Phocus. These were effects of a 
change rather in the times than in the opinions of 
men. But the more the Athenians resigned them¬ 
selves to the prospect of permanent subjection to for¬ 
eign rule, the better they were disposed to revere the 
character of Phocion. Had he lived in an earlier pe¬ 
riod, he might have served his country, like Nicias, 
with unsullied honour. In a later age he might have 
passed his life in peaceful obscurity. His lot fell on 
dark and troubled times, when it was difficult to act 
with dignity, and when the best patriot might be in¬ 
clined to despair. But he despaired and yet acted. 
He despaired not merely of his country, which any 
one may innocently do ; but also for her, which no 
man has a right to do. He would have forced her to 
despair of herself. He resisted every attempt that 
was made by bolder and more sanguine patriots to re¬ 
store her independence. He did not withdraw from 
public life : he acted as the tool of his country’s ene¬ 
mies, as the servant of a foreign master: content to 
mitigate the pressure of the degrading yoke which he 
had helped to impose. Towards the close of his life 
he descended lower and lower, constant only in his 
opposition to whatever hore the aspect of freedom. 
The fellow who spat on him, in his way to execution, 
was perhaps a more estimable person than the man 
to whom he would have surrendered Athens as well 
as himself. He left a character politically worse than 
doubtful : one which his private worth alone redeems 
from the infamy that clings to the names of a Callime- 
don and a Demades : a warning to all who may be 
placed in like circumstances, to shun his example, 
whether they value their own peace or the esteem of 
posterity. (Pint., Vit. Phoc. — ThirlwaWs Greece , 
vol. 7, p. 256, seq.) 

Phocis, a small tract of country in Greece Proper, 
bordering on the Locri Ozolas and Doris to the west 
and northwest, and the Opuntian Locri to the north, 
while to the east it was bounded by the Boeotian ter¬ 
ritory, and to the south by the Corinthian Gulf. (Sira- 

1047 




PHOCIS. 


PH O 


Do, 416.) Its appellation was said to be derived from 
Phocus the son of iEacus. (Pausan., 2,4.— Eustath. 
ad II., 2, 519.) The more ancient inhabitants of the 
country were probably of the race of the Leleges ; but 
the name of Phocians already prevailed at the time of 
the siege of Troy, since we find them enumerated in 
Homer’s catalogue of Grecian warriors. (II., 2, 517.) 
From Herodotus we learn that, prior to the Persian 
invasion, the Phocians had been much engaged in war 
with the Thessalians, and had often successfully re¬ 
sisted the invasions of that people (8, 27, seqq. — Pau¬ 
san., 10, 1). But when the defile of Thermopylae was 
forced by the army of Xerxes, the Thessalians, who 
had espoused the cause of that monarch, are said to 
have urged him, out of enmity to the Phocians, to rav¬ 
age and lay waste with fire and sword the territory of 
this people. (Herod., 8, 32.) Delphi and Parnassus 
on this occasion served as places of refuge for many 
of the unfortunate inhabitants; but numbers fell into 
the hands of the victorious Persians, and were com¬ 
pelled to serve in their ranks under the command of 
Mardonius. (Herod., 9, 17.) They seized, however, 
the earliest opportunity of joining their fellow-country¬ 
men in arms ; and many of the Persians, who were 
dispersed after the rout of Platsea, are said to have 
fallen victims to their revengeful fury. (Herod., 9, 31. 
— Pausan., 10, 2.)—A little prior to the Peloponne¬ 
sian war, a dispute arose respecting the temple at Del¬ 
phi, which threatened to involve in hostilities the prin¬ 
cipal states of Greece. This edifice was claimed ap¬ 
parently by the Phocians as the common property of 
the whole nation, whereas the Delphians asserted it 
to be their own exclusive possession. The Lacedse- 
monians are said by Thucydides to have declared in 
favour of the latter, whose cause they maintained by 
force of arms. The Athenians, on the other hand, 
were no less favourable to the Phocians, and, on the 
retreat of the Spartan forces, sent a body of troops to 
occupy the temple, and deliver it into their hands. 
The service thus rendered by the Athenians seems 
greatly to have cemented the ties of friendly union 
which already subsisted between the two republics. 
(T/mcyd., 3, 95.)—After the battle of Leuctra, Pho- 
cis, as we learn from Xenophon, became subject for a 
time to Boeotia (Hist. Gr., 6, 5, 23), until a change of 
circumstances gave a new impulse to the character of 
this small republic, and called forth all the energies of 
the people in defence of their country. A fine had 
been imposed on them by an edict of the Amphictyons 
for some reason, which Pausanias professes not to have 
been able to ascertain, and which they themselves con¬ 
ceived to be wholly unmerited. Diodorus asserts that 
it was in consequence of their having cultivated a 
part of the Cirrhean territory which had been declared 
sacred (16, 23). By the advice of Philomelus, a Pho- 
cian high in rank and estimation, it was determined 
to oppose the execution of the hostile decree, and, in 
order more effectually to secure the means of resist¬ 
ance, to seize upon the temple of Delphi and its treas¬ 
ures. This measure having been carried into imme¬ 
diate execution, they were thus furnished with abun¬ 
dant supplies for raising troops to defend their country. 
(Pausan., 10, 2.— Diod. Sic., 1. c.) These events led 
to what the Greek historians have termed the Sacred 
War, which broke out in the second year of the 106th 
Olympiad, B.C. 355. The Thebans were the first to 
taka up arms in the cause of religion, which had been 
thus openly violated by the Phocians ; and, in a battle 
that took place soon after the commencement of hos¬ 
tilities, the latter were defeated with considerable loss, 
and their leader Philomelus perished in the rout which 
ensued. (Diod. Sic., 16, 31.— Pausan., 10, 2.) The 
Phocians, however, were not intimidated by this ill 
success, and, having raised a fresh army, headed by 
Onomarchus, they obtained several important advan¬ 
tages against the Amphictyonic army, notwithstanding 
048 


the accession of Philip of Macedon to the confederacy 
Onomarchus, having united his forces with those of 
Lycophron, tyrant of Pherae, then at war with Philip, 
was enabled to vanquish the latter in two successive 
engagements, and compel him to evacuate Thessaly. 
Philip, however, was soon in a state to resume hostil¬ 
ities and re-enter Thessaly, when a third battle was 
fought, which terminated in the discomfiture and death 
of Onomarchus. Diodorus asserts that he was taken 
prisoner, and put to death by order of Philip ; Pausa¬ 
nias, that he perished by the hands of his own soldiers. 
(Diod. Sic., 16, 35.— Pausan., 10, 2.) He was suc¬ 
ceeded by his brother Phayllus, who at first appears 
to have been successful, but was at length overthrown 
in several engagements with the Boeotian troops ; and 
was soon after seized with a disorder which terminated 
fatally. On his death the command devolved upon 
Phalsecus, who, according to Pausanias (10, 2), was 
his son, but Diodorus affirms that he was the son of 
Onomarchus. This leader being not long after de¬ 
posed, the army was intrusted to a commission, at the 
head of which was Philo, whose total want of probity 
soon became evident, by the disappearance of large 
sums from the sacred treasury. He was, in conse¬ 
quence, brought to trial, condemned, and put to death. 
Diodorus estimates the whole amount of what was ta¬ 
ken from Delphi during the war at 10,090 talents (16, 
56). PhaltEcus was now restored to the command ; 
but, finding the resources of the state nearly exhaust¬ 
ed, and Philip being placed by the Amphictyonic coun¬ 
cil at the head of their forces, he deemed all farther 
resistance useless, and submitted to the King of Mace¬ 
don on condition of being allowed to retire with hie 
troops to the Peloponnesus. This convention put an 
end at once to the Sacred War, after a duration of 
ten years, when a decree was passed in the Amphic¬ 
tyonic council, by which it was adjudged that the 
walls of all the Phocian towns should be razed to the 
ground, and their right of voting in the council trans¬ 
ferred to those of Macedonia. (Diod. Sic., 16, 60.) 
Phocis, however, soon after recovered from this state 
of degradation and subjection, by the assistance of 
Athens and Thebes, who united in restoring its cities 
in a great measure to their former condition. In re¬ 
turn for these benefits, the Phocians joined the con¬ 
federacy that had been formed by the two republics 
against Philip ; they also took part in the Lamiac war 
after the death of Alexander; and when the Gauls 
made their unsuccessful attempt on the temple of Del¬ 
phi, they are said by Pausanias to have displayed the 
greatest zeal and alacrity in the pursuit of the com¬ 
mon enemy, as if anxious to efface the recollection 
of the disgrace they had formerly incurred. (Pausan., 
10, 3.) Other passages, which serve to illustrate the 
history of Phocis, will be found in Demosthenes (dr, 
Fals. Legat ), Isocrates (ad Phil.), Aristotle (Anal. 
Pr., 2, 24).—The maritime part of this province oc¬ 
cupied an extent of coast of nearly one day’s sail, as 
Dica?archus reports (v. 79), from the border of the 
Locri Ozolas to the confines of Boeotia. (Cramer's 
Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 147, seqq.) 

Phocus, the son of Phocion. He was remarkable 
only for a dissolute mode of life, and was in no respect 
worthy of his parent, although Phocion had*sent him 
to Sparta to be trained after the strict discipline of 
Lycurgus. (Plut., Vit. Phoc.) 

Phocylides, a gnomic poet contemporary with The- 
ogr.is, and a native of Miletus, whom Suidas calls a 
philosopher, and whose birth-year he makes to have 
been 647 after the fall of Troy, or Olympiad 59. The 
ancient writers are silent respecting his life, and the 
few genuine fragments which we possess of his poems 
contain no allusion to bis personal circumstances. He 
composed epic and elegiac poems, which the ancients 
ranked, like the productions of Theognis, in the gno¬ 
mic class. (Isocr. ad Nicacl , \ii — Id. ib. c. 13.—* 






PIKE 


PHOENICIA. 


Dio Ctnysost., Or ., 2, init.) Suidas says, his verses 
were pilfered from the Sibylline books, a remark de¬ 
rived, in all probability, from some father of the church, 
and to be understood in just the opposite sense. In 
order to stamp his productions with the impress of 
genuineness, Phocylides found it necessary to accom¬ 
pany them with the perpetually-recurring introduction, 
“ This, too, is a saying of Phocylides just as The¬ 
ognis, at the end of his poem on Cyrnos, appended his 
name as a mark of literary property. What we have 
at present remaining of Phocylides consists, for the 
most part, of hexameters, and breathes a quite differ¬ 
ent spirit from the Dorian gnomes of Theognis, with 
which the Ionic precepts pf the Milesian poet are often 
directly at variance. For example, in place of com¬ 
ing forward as an ardent defender of aristocratical prin¬ 
ciples, and as a martyr to his political creed, the ad¬ 
vantages of birth are to him altogether indifferent. 

I he contest, in fact, between aristocracy and demo- 
cratical principles was by no means so obstinate and 
violent in the Ionian cities as in those of Dorian ex¬ 
traction. There is more of a philosophical character 
in the poetry of Phocylides, more reference to the com¬ 
mon weal, and a greater wish to promote its true in¬ 
terests, than in the aristocratic gnomes of Theognis. 
He composed his gnomic precepts in two or three ver¬ 
ses each, and was considered as not belonging to those 
who produced long continuous poems, but rather as 
loving the philosophical conciseness of separate and 
individual propositions. The longest fragment we have 
of Phocylides consists of eight hexameters, in which 
he draws a picture of the different classes of females, 
and compares them with as many classes of animals. 
In treating of individual or personal subjects, however, 
he appears to have employed the elegiac measure, as 
in the case of the satirical effusion against the island¬ 
ers of Leros. The verses of Phocylides were so high¬ 
ly esteemed, that they were recited by the rhapsodists 
along with those of Homer, Hesiod, Archilochus, and 
Mimnermus. A poem that still exists, under the title 
of Yloiypa vovOctikov ( Exhortation ), in 217 hexame¬ 
ters, is sometimes, though incorrectly v ascribed to him. 
It is probably the production of some Christian writer 
of the twelfth or thirteenth century. The fragments 
of Phocylides are found in the collections of Stephens, 
Brunck, Gaisford, Boissonnade, and others. Schier 
gave a separate edition of them in 1751, Lips., 8vo. 
(Bode, Geschichte der Lyrischen Dichlk. der Hell., vol. 
1, p. 243, seqq. — Scholl, Hist. Lit. G r., vol. 1, p. 240, 
seqq ) 

Phcebe, I. one of the female Titans, the offspring 
of Heaven and Earth (Ccelus and Terra). From her 
union with Cceus, another of the Titans, sprang Lato- 
na and Asteria. The name Phoebe ($oi6y) signifies 
the bright one (from (ftau, “ to shine"); and Coeus (Koi- 
oq ), the burning (from Kano, “ to burn"). (Keight- 
ley's Mythology, p. 64.)—II. One of the names of Di¬ 
ana, or the Moon. (Vid. Diana.) 

Phcebus, one of the names of Apollo, derived from 
<j>u(o “ to shine." (Vid. Apollo.) 

Phcenice or Phoenicia (QoivlKy), a country of 
Asia, extending along the coast of Syria, from the 
river Eleutherus and the city and island of Aradus, on 
the north, to Mount Carmel on the south. In all prob¬ 
ability, however, some of the cities on the coast below 
Carmel may likewise have belonged to Phoenicia, and 
hence Ptolemy carries the southern limit of the country 
as far down as the river Chorseus, on which Caesarea 
lay. In general parlance, indeed, the whole line of 
coast was termed Phoenicia, from Aradus to the con¬ 
fines of Egypt, though the stricter limits are those first 
given. The tract of country thus denominated was 
only 35 geographical miles from Aradus to Carmel, or 
100 in its greatest extent. The breadth was very 
limited, the ranges of Libanus and Antilibanus form¬ 
ing its utmost barrier to the east. The surface of the 
6 R 


country was in general sandy and hilly, and not well 
adapted for agriculture ; but, to counterbalance this, 
the coast abounded in good harbours, the fisheries were 
excellent, while the mountain-ranges in the interior 
afforded, in their cedar forests, a rich supply of timber 
for naval and other purposes. Hence 'he early pro¬ 
ficiency which the Phoenicians made in navigation, and 
hence the flourishing commercial cities which covered 
the whole line of coast. 

1. Origin of the name Phoenicia. 

Respecting the etymology of the name Phoenice or 
Phoenicia, various conjectures have been offered Bo- 
chart maintains, that the appellation comes from Beni- 
Anak (or Ben-Anak , contracted Beanak), “ the sons 
of Anak,” a name by which, according to him, the 
people of Phoenicia designated themselves in their own 
language. From this he says the Greeks first made 
Pheanac, and afterward Phcenice and Phoenix, soften¬ 
ing down the Oriental appellation in their usual way. 
(Bochart, Canaan, 1, 1, col. 347.) To this etymol¬ 
ogy it is well objected by Gesenius, that the domestic 
appellation of the Phoenician race was not Bcni-Anak 
or Ben-Anak, but Kenaanim, and their country Ke- 
naan. That this was the native name of the nation is 
also clear from the Phoenician coinage, on which we 
read Kenaan. (Gesen., Phcen. Monument., p. 338, 
not. — Id. ib., p. 271.) The Punic settlers in Africa, 
moreover, gave themselves the same appellation. 
Thus, St. Augustine informs us, that the country-peo¬ 
ple near Hippo, on being asked whence they derived 
their origin, answered that they were Kenani, i. e., 
Kenaanites, or from Kenaan. (Augustin., Expos, ad 
Rom. — Eckhel, Doctr. Num., vol. 4, p. 409.— Ge¬ 
senius, Gesch. der hebr. Sprache, &c., p. 16.)—Equally 
unfortunate with Bochart’s is the etymology proposed 
by Arius Montanus and others, who deduce Phoenice 
and Phoenicia from Phenakim, contracted from Phe- 
Anakim (“ the Anakim”), the prefix Phe being anal¬ 
ogous, in their opinion, to the Egyptian article Pi, as it 
appears in the term Pharaoh (Pi-Ro, i. e., “the king”). 
The same argument may be urged against this 
against Bochart’s derivation.—There are other Orien¬ 
tal etymologies; such as Scaliger’s, from the Hebrew- 
Phoenician Prnchas (the same with the proper name 
Phineas); and Fuller’s, from the Syriac panak, “ to 
bring up delicately." These scarcely deserve men¬ 
tion, and certainly do not need refutation.—The most 
common opinion, at the present day, is that which 
makes the terms Phcenice and Phoenicia of Grecian 
and not of Oriental origin, and which deduces them 
from the Greek term (poivi |, in its signification of “ a 
palm-tree so that Phoenice or Phoenicia will signify 
“ the land of palm-trees" or “ Palm-land." Gesenius, 
however, doubts the accuracy of this explanation, and 
is inclined to trace the names in question to (poivi f, in 
its sense of “purple," making Phoenicia, therefore, to 
mean “ the land of the purple-dye ,” in allusion to the 
famous purple or crimson of Tyre : “ Videant autem 
eruditi, sitne ^olvikov appcllatio ducta a (poivi pur¬ 
pura, cui afjhnes sunt (poivoq, (poivr/etq (II, 12, 202), 
purpureus, sanguineus (conj. (povoq), (poivlaou rube 
facio ; ita ut appellative purpurarium designet." 

(Phoen. Monument., p. 338, not.) This suggestion of 
Gesenius’s is most probably the true one, since it is 
more natural to suppose, that the purple cloths of 
Phoenicia were made known to the Greeks by the 
Phoenician traders, for a long period before the Greeks 
themselves were allowed to visit in their own vessels 
the Syrian coast, and become acquainted with the 
physical features of the country.—Before quitting this 
subject, it may not be amiss to remark, that among 
many of the Roman writers, the terms Phcenices (Phoe¬ 
nicia) and Poeni (Punicus ) are made so far to differ 
in meaning, as that the first indicates the Phoenicians, 
properly so called, and the latter their descendants ot 
‘ * ' 1049 





PHCENICIA. 


PHOENICIA. 


cofonists in Africa, such as the Carthaginians, &c. 
This distinction, however, has no good ground on 
which to rest. The term fyoivwee;, in Greek, com¬ 
prises not only the Phoenicians, but also the Cartha¬ 
ginians as well as the other Poeni {Herod., 5, 46.— 
Eurip ., Troad., 222.— Bockh, ad Pind., Pyth., 1, 72), 
a usage which is imitated by the Latin poets : thus we 
have in Silius Italicus (13, 730) the form Phcenicium 
for Pcenorum, and (16, 25) Phoenix for Pconus. In¬ 
deed, the term Poenus is nothing more than fyolvii; 
itself, adapted to the analogy of the Latin tongue ; just 
as from the Greek fbom/aof comes the old Latin form 
Pcenicus, found in Cato and Varro, and from this the 
more usual Punicus. (Compare coerare and curare; 
mccnia, munia, and munire; poena and punio. — Ge- 
senius, l. c. — Festus, ed. Muller , p. 241, Fragm. e 
Cod. Farn ., L. 16.) 

2. History , Commerce, Arts, &c., of the Phoenicians. 

The Phoenicians were a branch of that widely ex¬ 
tended race known by the common appellation of Ara¬ 
maean or Semitic. To this great family the Hebrews 
and the Arabians belonged, as well as the inhabitants 
of the wide plain between the northern waters of the 
Euphrates and Tigris. The Phoenicians themselves, 
according to their own account, came originally from 
the shores of the Persian Gulf {Herod., 7, 89), and 
Strabo informs us, that in the isles of Tyrus and Ara- 
dus, in the gulf just named, were found temples simi¬ 
lar to those of the Phoenicians, and that the inhabitants 
of these isles claimed the cities of Tyre and Aradus, 
on the coast of Phoenicia, as colonies of theirs. {Stra¬ 
bo, 766.) The establishment, indeed, of the earlier 
Phoenician race in the Persian Gulf, and the enterpri¬ 
sing habits which always characterized this remarkable 
people, would seem to point to a very active commerce 
carried on in the Indian seas, at a period long antecedent 
to positive history, and may perhaps furnish some clew 
to the marks of early civilization that are discovered 
along the western shores of the American continent. 
(Compare Ritter , Erdkunde, vol. 2, p. 163.)—The loss 
of the Phoenician annals renders it difficult to investi¬ 
gate the history of this people. Our principal author¬ 
ities are the Hebrew writers of the second book of 
Kings, and Ezekiel and Isaiah. Herodotus, Jose¬ 
phus, and Strabo help to supply the deficiency. In¬ 
cidental notices are found in other writers also. The 
Phoenician towns were .probably independent states, 
with a small territory around them : the political union 
that existed among them till the era of the Persians, 
was preserved by a common religious worship. The 
town of Tyre seems to have had a kind of supremacy 
over the rest, being the richest city, and containing the 
temple of the national god, whom the Greeks call 
the Tyrian Hercules. The several cities were gov¬ 
erned by supreme hereditary magistrates named kings. 
Hiram was king of Tyre, and a friend of Solomon, the 
king of Israel. When Xerxes invaded Greece, there 
was a King of Tyre, and also a King of Sidon in his 
army. {Herod., 8, 67.) We infer from a few pas¬ 
sages of the ancient writers, and from the enterprising 
spirit of the Phoenicians, that the despotism of i\sia did 
not exist among them. The Sidonians are .the first 
people recorded in history who formed a commercial 
connexion between Asia and Europe; the articles 
which they manufactured, or procured from other parts 
of Asia, were distributed by them over the coasts of 
the Mediterranean. These long voyages led to colo¬ 
nial establishments, and to the diffusion of the useful 
arts. The island of Cyprus contained Phoenician col¬ 
onies: they established themselves in many of the 
small islands of the Archipelago, particularly in those 
where the precious metals were found. The island 
of Thasus exhibited, in the time of Herodotus, mani¬ 
fest traces of their excavations. {Herod., 6, 47.) 
With the early Greeks of the main land the Phoeni- 
1050 


cians had occasional commercial connexions: tnev 
furnished the natives with trinkets and female orna¬ 
ments, and sometimes carried off the people. {Herod., 
1, 1.) Slave-dealing was one source of wealth to the 
Tyrians {Ezekiel xxvii., 12); the simple narrative of 
Eumaeus, in the 15th book of tht Odyssey, presents a 
natural picture of this practice. We know nothing 
of Phoenician settlements in Italy ; but they occupied 
Sicily before the Greeks, and * retired towards the 
western parts, as the nation became more numerous 
and powerful in the island. (T hucyd., 6, 2.) 4 he 

great object of the enterprise of the Phoenicians, and 
the seat of their chief colonial establishments, was the 
southern part of Spain, or the modern province of An¬ 
dalusia. The silver-mines and the gold-dust of the 
peninsula made Spain to the Tyrians what Peru once 
was to the Spaniards. Not far from the mouths of 
the Bretis are two small islands : on one of these the 
Tyrians founded the city of Gadeira or Gades, Cadiz, 
and built a temple to their national god, which existed 
even in the age of Strabo, and was justly considered a 
curious monument of antiquity. 'I he advantageous 
situation of Gades, west of the Pillars of Hercules, and 
on the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, would naturally 
lead to voyages of discovery ; but these were always 
confined to coasting. Of these voyages no records 
are preserved. The Phoenicians are said to have sup¬ 
plied the Greeks and the Asiatics with two articles, 
which are supposed to indicate an acquaintance with 
the southwestern angle of Britain and the coast of 
Prussia, on the Baltic Sea. These were tin'and am¬ 
ber. With regard to the first, however, though there 
can be little doubt that the Phoenicians, and the Ro¬ 
mans long after them, traded for it to the Cassiterides, 
or Scillv Isles, yet the Greeks, in all probability, ob¬ 
tained their supply of it by an overland trade from 
India. {Vid. India.) The amber certainly came from 
the shores of the Baltic, but whether it was obtained 
by actual sailing thither, or procured by an overland 
trade at the head-waters of the Adriatic, remains, 
among modern scholars, a disputed point. An argu¬ 
ment in favour of the former of these opinions may be 
drawn from the fact of the Phoenicians’ having been 
acquainted with the existence of the Rodaun, a small 
river near Dantzic, on the Prussian coast. {Vid. 
Eridanus.)—The connexion between the parent city 
of Tyre and her distant possessions in Europe and Af¬ 
rica was probably only a commercial one. Whatever 
might have been their original condition, they were 
independent places in the time of Herodotus (1, 163). 
The Phoenician colonies on the northern coast of Af¬ 
rica were at least as old as the settlements in the 
south of Spain. They were situated in a fertile re¬ 
gion, which, by its position, formed, between Central 
Africa and the shores of the Mediterranean, a point of 
union similar to that which Tyre furnished between 
Asia and Europe. Utica was the first establishment 
on the African coast: Carthage, called by the Greeks 
Carchedon, was the next: other towns afterward 
sprung up. For the history of Phoenician commerce, 
particularly the commerce with Asia, we possess a 
most valuable document in the 27th chapter of Eze¬ 
kiel. The Hebrew prophet lived at the time of the 
greatest splendour of Tyre, before her Eastern con¬ 
querors diminished her traffic and deprived her of na¬ 
tional independence. At an earlier period, the Phoe¬ 
nicians had friendly connexions with the Hebrews. 
Solomon, thl most powerful of their kings, made Je¬ 
rusalem, during his life, the centre of Eastern mag¬ 
nificence and wealth. The Tyrians gladly formed an 
alliance with this potentate, and by his permission ob¬ 
tained the navigation of the Red Sea. The town of 
Eziongeber, which Solomon had taken from the people 
of Edom, was the point to which the Tyrian and He¬ 
brew navies brought the gold and precious stones of 
Ophir. The Phoenicians also established trading-DOsts 





PHOENICIA. 


PHOENICIA. 


on the Vvest side t;f the Persian Gulf. Here the an¬ 
cient geographers placed the isles of Aradus and Ty- 
rus, to which the Tyrians brought the products of In¬ 
dia. They were taken by the caravans across the 
Arabian desert to Tyre on the Mediterranean, at that 
time the great mart of the world.—A commercial road 
between Tyre and the Euphrates would be necessary 
to diffuse the products of Tyrian industry and com¬ 
merce, and also to procure the valuable wool furnished 
by the nomadic tribes. In the Syrian desert, about 
three days’ journey from the old ford of the Euphra¬ 
tes, modern travellers behold with astonishment the 
magnificent and extensive ruins of Palmyra. The 
Arabs of the desert still call it Tadmor, and attribute 
these buildings to the magic power of Solomon. We 
are told that Solomon built Baleth and Tadmor in the 
wilderness. The latter was no doubt intended as a 
great entrepot between the Euphrates and the sea. 
Its situation, and the possession of springs of water in 
an arid desert, would not fail to attract a prince so wise 
as Solomon, and a merchant with such extensive deal¬ 
ings as Hiram.—From the mountains of Armenia, the 
Tyrians procured copper and slaves : the regions of 
the Caucasus, at the present day, supply the harems 
of the Turks and Persians with the females of Georgia 
and Circassia.—The Phoenicians seem, in the earlier 
ages, not to have had very extensive dealings with the 
Egyptians : but cotton and cotton cloths are enumer¬ 
ated among the articles which they received from 
Egypt. When Thebes, in Upper Egypt, ceased to be 
the place of resort for the caravans of Africa and Asia, 
the favourable situation of Memphis, at the apex of the 
Delta, made it the chief mart of Egypt; and the Tyr¬ 
ians who traded there were so numerous, that a part 
01 the city was inhabited by them.—Grain of various 
kinds was carried to Tyre from the country of the 
Hebrews and other parts of Syria. Solomon gave Hi¬ 
ram wheat and oil; and the Tyrian, in exchange, fur¬ 
nished him with the pines and cedars? of Libanus.— 
The commercial intercourse between the Greeks and 
Tyrians appears never to have been great : the two 
trading nations of the Mediterranean were probably 
jealous of one another; and, besides this, their colo¬ 
nies led them in different directions. Sicily was the 
point where the Greek and Tyrian merchant met in 
competition. When the Phcenicians were obliged to 
submit to the Persians, we find their navy willingly 
and actively employed against their commercial rivals. 
—Tyre was, before the era of the Persians, the centre 
of the traffic of the ancient world : in her markets 
were found the products of all the countries between 
India and Spain, between the extremity of the great 
peninsula of sandy Arabia, and the snowy summits of 
Caucasus. Her vessels were found in the Mediter¬ 
ranean, on the Atlantic, and in the Indian Ocean. 
There was even a tradition, that in the time of Necho, 
king of Egypt, some Tyrian ships, at the desire of that 
king, sailed down the Red Sea ; and, after circumnav- 
igatihg the continent of Africa, entered the Mediter¬ 
ranean at the Strait of Gibraltar. ( Vid . Africa.)—The 
Phoenicians furnished the world with several articles 
produced by their own industry and skill. The dyed 
cloths of Sidon, and the woven vests and needlework 
of Phoenician women, were in high repute among the 
ancient Greeks. The name of Tyrian purple is famil¬ 
iar, even in modern times ; but it is a mistake to sup¬ 
pose that a single colour is to be understood : deep red 
and violet colours were those which were most highly 
prized. The liquor of a shellfish, that was found in 
abundance on their coast, supplied them with the vari¬ 
ous colours denominated purple. ( Plin ., 9, 36.) It 
was principally woollen cloths the Tyrians used to dye, 
though cotton and linen dyed garments are mention¬ 
ed also.—The Phoenicians are said to have possessed 
the art of making glass : it is probable they had man¬ 
ufactured Cis aP'cle for many centuries at Sidon and 


] Sarephta. Little trinkets and ornaments were also 
made by this people. 'The Phoenician merchant offers 
for sale to the females of Syria a string of amber beads 
with gold ornaments. (Horn., Od., 14, 459.) The 
ivory, which they procured from ./Ethiopia and India, 
received new forms under the skilful hands of the Tyr¬ 
ians ; and all the costly decorations of Solomon’s tem¬ 
ple were made under the direction of an artist of Tyre, 
i whose mother was “ a woman of the daughters of Dan, 
and his father a man of Tyre.” ( Chronicles . 2, 1, 14 j 
2, 4, 17.— Long's Ancient Geography , p. 3, scqq .— 
Heeren, Idcen, vol. 2, p. 1, seqq.) 

3. Decline of Phoenician Commerce. 

The Phcenicians, from what has just been remarked, 
were then a manufacturing and a traerng people, de¬ 
pending on others for their subsistence, n some points 
resembling the English, in others more lute the Dutch. 
The prosperity of such a people could not be everlast¬ 
ing, and it is interesting to examine into the causes of 
their decline. It is probable that the increase of the 
wealth and power of Carthage was in some degree pre¬ 
judicial to the parent state, as the trade of Spain must 
have fallen, in a great measure, into the hands of the 
former. In such a case, it is likely that the Phoenicians 
must have had to pay dearer for its productions than 
heretofore, and perhaps, as Carthage and the other col¬ 
onies were manufacturers also, the demand for Phoe¬ 
nician goods decreased. It is also supposed, that the 
Phoenicians must have suffered by the planting of the 
Grecian colonies on the coast of Asia Minor, as these 
likewise manufactured to a great extent, and, it is al¬ 
most certain, traded directly, by means of caravans, 
with Thapsacus on the Euphrates, to which place the 
goods of Babylon and India were brought up the river. 
We doubt, however, if they interfered much with the 
Phcenicians, as their trade took chiefly a northern di¬ 
rection, extending into Tartary, and perhaps to China 
The settlement of the Greeks in Egypt, however, must 
have been positively injurious to them, as the wine- 
trade of that country, of which they appear before this 
to have had the monopoly, must have been now, in 
great measure, carried on by the Greeks in their own 
bottoms ; and perhaps this is the true reason of the 
hostility which the Phoenicians are said to have evinced 
to the Greeks in the time of the Persian war. It is 
remarkable enough, that in the accounts which we have 
of the trade of Athens and Corinth, no mention is 
made of any with the Phoenicians. Perhaps their 
chief commerce was with the colonies in Asia. From 
the Hebrew prophet it appears that they traded with 
the Ionians (of Asia) and with the people of the Pelo¬ 
ponnesus. The rivalry just noted, however, could 
have but little affected the prosperity of the Phoeni¬ 
cians. The real cause of their decline was the com¬ 
motions that took place in Western Asia, which caused 
the downfall of so many states ; for independent states 
are always better customers to a manufacturing people 
than those which are under the yoke of foreigners. 
While the kingdoms of Israel, Judah, Damascus, and 
others flourished, the demand for Phoenician manufac¬ 
tures must have been far gieater than after they be¬ 
came subject to the monarchs of Babylon and Persia. 
Let any one, for example, compare Judah under her 
kings with Judah after the return from captivity. The 
very circumstance of there being no court must have 
made a great difference to those who supplied them 
with luxuries. The conquest and reduction to prov¬ 
inces of Babylonia and Egypt by the Persian monarch 
must have greatly affected the Phoenician commerce ; 
but it was the foundation of Alexandrea by the Mace¬ 
donian conqueror which proved the ruin of the trade ot 
both Phoenicia and Babylon, just as the discovery of 
the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope ru¬ 
ined, in a great measure, Bagdad, Alexandrea, and 
Venice—the Tyre of the middle ages. From that time 

1051 





PHOENICIA. 


PHCENICIA. 

the decline of the prosperity of the towns (in the coast 
of Phoenicia was rapid and irremediable, (koreign 
Quarterly Review , No. 27, p. 211, seq .) 

4. Did Phoenicia give an alphabet to Greece ? 

On this point, though for a long; time made the sub¬ 
ject of learned discussion, there is now no room for 
dispute. The names of most of the letters, their or¬ 
der, and the forms which they exhibit in the most an¬ 
cient monuments, all confirm the truth of the tradition, 
that the Greek alphabet was derived from the Phoeni¬ 
cian ; and every doubt on this head, which a hasty 
view of it, in its later state, might suggest, has long 
since received the most satisfactory solution. Several 
changes were necessary to adapt the Eastern charac¬ 
ters to a foreign and totally different language. I he 
powers of those which were unsuited to the Greek or¬ 
gans were excnanged for others which were wanting 
in the Phoenician alphabet; some elements were final¬ 
ly rejected as superfluous from the written language, 
though they were retained for the purpose of numera¬ 
tion ; and, in process of time, the peculiar demands of 
the Greek language were satisfied by the invention of 
some new signs. The alterations which the figures 
of the Greek characters underwent may be partly 
traced to the inversion of their position, which took 
place when the Greeks instinctively dropped the East¬ 
ern practice of writing from right to left; a change 
the gradual progress of which is visible in several ex¬ 
tant inscriptions. This fact, therefore, is established 
by evidence, which could scarcely borrow any addi¬ 
tional weight from the highest classical authority. But 
the epoch at which the Greeks received their alphabet 
from the Phoenicians is a point as to which we cannot 
expect to find similar proof; and the event is so re¬ 
mote, that the testimony even of the best historians 
cannot be deemed sufficient immediately to remove 
all doubt upon the question. A statement, however, 
deserving of attention, both on account of its author, 
and of its internal marks of diligent and thoughtful in¬ 
quiry, is given by Herodotus. The Phoenicians, he 
relates, who came with Cadmus to Thebes, introduced 
letters, along with other branches of knowledge, among 
the Greeks : the characters were at first precisely the 
same as those which the Phoenicians continued to use 
in his own day ; but their powers and form were grad¬ 
ually changed, first by the Phoenician colonists them¬ 
selves, and afterward by the Greeks of the adjacent re¬ 
gion, who were Ionians. These, as they received their 
letters from Phoenician teachers, named them Phoe¬ 
nician letters ; and the historian adds, that, in his own 
time, the Ionians called their books or rolls, though 
made from the Egyptian papyrus, skins , because this 
was the material which they had used at an earlier pe¬ 
riod, as many barbarous nations even then continued to 
do. It cannot be denied that this account appears, at 
first sight, perfectly clear and probable ; and yet there 
are some points in it which, on closer inspection, 
raise a suspicion of its accuracy. The vague manner 
in which Herodotus describes the Ionians, who were 
neighbours of the Phoenician colony, seems to imply 
that what he says of them is not grounded on any di¬ 
rect tradition, but is a mere hypothesis or inference. 
The fact which he appears to have ascertained is, that 
the Asiatic Ionians, who were, according to his own 
view, a very mixed race, were beforehand with the 
other Greeks in the art of writing: they called their 
books or rolls by a name which probably expressed the 
Phoenician word for the same thing, and they descri¬ 
bed their alphabet by the epithet which marked its Ori¬ 
ental origin. But, as the historian thought he had suf- 
cient grounds for believing that it had been first com¬ 
municated to the Greeks by the Phoenician colony at 
Thebes, he concludes that the Asiatic Ionians must 
have received it, not directly from the Phoenicians, but 
through their European forefathers. Still, if this was 
1052 


the process by which he arrived at his conclusion, it 
would not follow that he was in error. But if we ex¬ 
amine the only reasons which he assigns for his beliel 
that the most ancient Greek alphabet was tound at 
Thebes, we find that they are such as we cannot rely 
on, though to him they would seem perfectly demon¬ 
strative. He produces three inscriptions in verse, 
which he had seen himself, engraved on some vessels in 
a temple at Thebes, and in characters which he calls 
Cadmaean, and which he says nearly resembled the Io¬ 
nian. These inscriptions purported to record dona¬ 
tions made to the temple before the Trojan war, and 
to be contemporaneous with the acts which they re¬ 
corded. And that they were really ancient need not 
be questioned, though imitations of an obsolete mode 
of writing were not uncommon in Greece ; but then 
genuineness cannot be safely assumed as the ground 
of an argument. Other grounds he may indeed have 
had; but, since he does not mention them, they are to 
us none, and we are left to form our own judgment on 
the disputed question of the Cadmaean colony at 
Thebes. ( Thirlwall's Greece , vol. 1, p. 238, seq.) 
We have already, in a previous article (vid. Cadmus), 
shown the utter improbability of any Phoenician colony 
under Cadmus, and have traced this latter name to a 
Pelasgic origin. In this way, perhaps, the two traui- 
tions maybe reconciled ; one of which makes the Phoe¬ 
nicians to have introduced letters into Greece, while 
the other states that they were previously known to, 
and invented by the Pelasgi. It is probable that twc 
distinct periods of time are here alluded to, an earlier 
and a later introduction of them ; in both instances, 
however, from Phoenicia. When the alphabet of this 
country was first brought in, its use may have been 
extremely limited ; it may have come in, as Knight 
supposes, with the first Pelasgic settlers, who may have 
brought an alphabet much less perfect, and, therefore, 
probably more ancient than the so-called Cadmsean. 
The second introduction of letters found the Greeks, 
in all likelihood, much more advanced in civilization, 
and it therefore took a firmer hold, and became the sub¬ 
ject of more established and general tradition. (Con¬ 
sult Knight , Analytical Essay on the Greek Alphabet 
p. 120.— Sandford, Remarks on Thiersch's Gr. Gr. y 
p. 6. — Hug , die Erjindung der Buchstabenschrift, 
p. 7.) 

5. Remains of the Phoenician Language. 

The remains of the Phoenician language at the pres¬ 
ent day consist of, 1. Coins and inscriptions. 2. Gloss¬ 
es and Phoenician proper names , occurring in the 
Greek and Latin writers. 3. A Phoenician passage 
of considerable length (together with some shorter spe¬ 
cimens) in the Poenulus of Plautus. — The coins and 
inscriptions give us the written forms of the language 
with great accuracy, but throw no light on the sounds 
of the Phoenician tongue or its system of pronuncia¬ 
tion, since in almost every instance the vowels are 
omitted. The ablest work on these is that of Gese- 
nius, entitled “ Scriptures Linguoeque Phoenicia Monu- 
menta quotquot supersunt," &o., Lips., 1837, 4to.— 
On the other hand, the Punic words that occur in the 
Greek and Roman writers, give, it is true, a sound ex¬ 
pressed in the characters of those languages, and show 
us with what vowels they were enunciated by the Phoe¬ 
nicians : still, however, there is often very great dif¬ 
ficulty in tracing back these same words to a Phoeni¬ 
cian orthography, since the common or vulgar mode 
of pronouncing was accustomed to contract certain 
forms, and io neglect in others the letters that, were 
necessary to indicate the etymology of the term.—The 
most curious remnant, however, of the Phoenician 
tongue is the passage, already referred to, in Plautus. 
It occurs in fho first see: 'e of the fifth act of the Poenu¬ 
lus, and corsiotf (ffisn euMro Pun ; c versos, expressed 
in Latin charu *.<r* (fu *ho k un'nbg oix are Liby* 





PHOENICIA. 


PHOENICIA. 


Phoenician, or, as some think, vulgar Punic), to which 
are to he added fourteen short sentences, intermingled 
with a Latin dialogue, in the second and third scenes. 
Modern scholars have, at various times, exercised their 
skill in remodelling and explaining these specimens of 
the Phoenician, and in attempting to recall them to the 
analogy of the Hebrew tongue. Some have confined 
their attention to particular words or individual sen¬ 
tences, such as Joseph Scaliger(«d fragm. Gracorum, 
p. 32), Aldrete ( Antiguedades , p. 207), Selden (de Dis 
Syris , prolcg ., c. 2), Le Moyne ( Varia Sacra, p. 100, 
113), Hyde ( ad Peritsol. , p. 45), Reinesius ('Icrropov- 
ueva lingua Tunica, c. 12), Tychsen (Nov. Act. Up- 
sal., vol. 7, p. 100, scq.), and many others, enumera¬ 
ted by Fabricius ( Bibl . Lat., vol. 1, p. 5), and by the 
Bipont editor of Plautus (vol. 1, p. xix.). A smaller 
number have undertaken to interpret alf the Punic spe¬ 
cimens contained in the three scenes alluded to. The 
first of these was Petitus (Petit), who, in his work en¬ 
titled “ Mxsccllaneorum Libri novem” (p. 58, seqq., Par¬ 
is. 1640, 4to), endeavoured to mould the Punic of the 
three scenes into Hebrew, and gave a translation, of 
them in Latin. Pareus, who came after, also exhibit¬ 
ed the Punic of Plautus in a Hebrew dress, and even 
added vowel points ; but the whole is 'done so care¬ 
lessly and strangely, that the words resemble Chinese 
and Mongul as much as they do Hebrew. This was 
in the first and second editions of his Plautus. In the 
third, however, he adopted the interpretation of Peti¬ 
tus, and even enlarged upon it in a poetical paraphrase. 
Many subsequent editors of Plautus have followed in 
the same path, such as Boxhorn, Operarius, Gronovi- 
us, and Ernesti. Sixteen years after Petitus, the learn¬ 
ed Bochart published the result of his labours on the 
Punic of the first scene, in his Sacred Geography (Ca¬ 
naan, 2, 6), and executed the task with so much learn¬ 
ing and ability, that, during nearly two centuries, un¬ 
til tiie explanation given by Gesenius in 1837, though 
there may have been some who have given more prob¬ 
able interpretations of particular phrases and words, 
"io one was found more successful in explaining the 
passage as a whole. (Gesen., Phan. Mon., p. 359.) 
Clericus (Le Clerc) closely follows the interpretation 
of Bochart (Biblioth. Univ. et Hist., vol. 9, p. 256), 
though he errs in thinking that each verse consists of 
two hemistichs, which have a similarity of ending. 
Passing over some others who have written on this 
same subject, we come to the three most recent ex¬ 
pounders of this much-contested passage; namely, 
Bellermann (Versuch eincr Erklarung der Punischen 
Stellen im Panulus des Plautus. Stuck, 1-3, Berlin, 
1806-1808, ed. 2, 1812), Count de Robiano (Etudes 
sur Vecriture, &c., suivies d'un essai sur la langue 
Punique, Paris, 1834, 4to), and Gesenius (Phan. 
Mon., p. 366, seqq.). The first two, abandoning the 
true view of the subject, as taken by Bochart, regard 
the whole sixteen verses as Punic, and endeavour, alter 
the example of Petitus, to adapt them, by every possi¬ 
ble expedient, to the analogy of the Hebrew tongue. 
Bellermann, however, in doing this, confines himself 
within the regular limits of Hebraism, whereas Robi¬ 
ano calls in to his aid, at one time the Syriac, at anoth¬ 
er the Arabic, and discovers also many peculiarities in 
the structure of the Punic language, of which no one 
dreamed before, and the sole authority for which is 
found in his own imagination. The explanation of 
Gesenius, as may readily be inferred from his known 
proficiency in Oriental scholarship, is now regarded as 
having borne away the palm, though some parts have 
been made the subject of criticism by the learned of 
his own country. (Gesen., Phan. Mon., p. 366.— 
Jahrbucher fur wissenschaftliche Kritik, 1839, p. 539, 
seqq.) —The writers thus far mentioned have, with the 
exception, perhaps, of Robiano, attempted to illustrate 
the Punic of Plautus by a reference to the Hebrew, 
occasionally calling in the Chaldee and Syriac. This 


undoubtedly is the more correct course, and far supe 
rior to the plan pursued bv those who have had re 
course to the Arabic, as, for example, Casiri (Bibl 
Escurial., vol. 2, p. 27), or to the Maltese idiom, a, 
Agius de Soldanis (Dissertazione cioe vtra spiega- 
zione della scena della coinedia di Plauto m Vanulo , 
Rom., 1751, 4to ) Another class of writers hardly de¬ 
serve mention. They are those dreaming visionaries, 
who call in to their aid the Irish language ! such as Val- 
lancey (Essay on the Antiq. of the Irish Lang., Dub¬ 
lin, 1722, 8vo ; Lond., 1808, 8vo), 0‘Connor (Chron¬ 
icles of Eri, &c., from the original MSS. in the Pha- 
nician dialect (1) of the Scythian language, London, 
1822, 2 vols. 8vo), Viilaneuva, (Phanician Ireland, 
translated by H. O'Brien, Lond., 1833, 8vo), or who 
have resource to the Basque, as De l’Ecluse (Gram- 
maire Basque, Toulouse, 1826, 8vo), and Santa Te¬ 
resa ( Robiano , Etudes, &c., p. 78.— Gesenius, Phot 
nic. Mon., p. 357, seqq). 

6. General character of the Phanician tongue. 

That the Phoenician or Punic language was closely 
allied to the Hebrew, we learn from the express testi¬ 
mony of St. Jerome and St. Augustine. The latter, in 
particular, is a very high authority on this subject, since 
he lived in Africa at a period when the Punic tongue 
was still spoken in that country, and since, in one part 
of his writings, he even acknowledges himself to be of 
Punic origin. (Contra Julian., lib. 3, c. 17.) On 
another occasion, referring to the Hebrew and Punic, he 
remarks, “ Ista lingua non multum inter se differ unt.” 
(Quast. in Jud., % lib. 7, qu. 16. — Op., ed. Benedict., 
vol. 3, p. 477.) So again, speaking of our Saviour, 
he says, “ Hunc Hebrai dicunt Messiam, quod ver- 
bum lingua Punica consonum est, sicut alia permulta 
et pane omnia.” (Contra lit. Petil., 2, 104— Op., 
vol. 9, col. 198.) Again, in another part of his wri¬ 
tings, he observes, “ Cognata quippe sunt lingua istat 
et vicina, Hebraa, Punica et Syr a.” (In Joann., 
tract. 15.— Op., vol. 3, col. 302.) In commenting 
on the words of our Saviour (Serm., 35), where he 
explains what is meant by the term “ Mammon ,” he 
says, “ Ilebraum verbum est, cognatum lingua Pu¬ 
nica: ista enim lingua significationis quad am vicin- 
itate sociantur .” To the same effect St. Jerome; 
“ Tyrus et Sidon in Phanices litore principcs civitates, 
&c. Quarum Carthago colonia. Unde et Pani ser- 
monc corrupto quasi Phani appellantur. Quarum 
lingua lingua Hebraa magna ex parte confnis est.” 
(In Jerem., 5, 25.) So again, “ Lingua quoque Pu¬ 
nica, qua de Hcbraorum fontibus manure dicitur, pro- 
prie virgo alma appellalur(In Jes., 3, 7.)—Modern 
scholars, as many as have turned their attention to 
the subject, have come to the same conclusion, al¬ 
though on one point there exists among them a great 
difference of opinion. Some of them maintain, for 
instance, that, with the exception of a slight differ¬ 
ence in the mode of writing and pronouncing, the 
Phoenician was identical with the Hebrew, and free 
from any forms derived from the cognate dialects. 
(Tychsen, Comment, de ling. Phan, et Hebr. mutua 
aqualitate, p. 89.— Akerblad, de Inscr. Oxon., p. 26. 
—Fabricy, de Phan. lit. fontibus, p. 29, 221.— Gese¬ 
nius, Gesch. der Hebr. Sprache, &c., p. 229.) Others 
affirm, that the Phoenician is like the Hebrew, it is 
true ; but, at the same time, intermingled with Arabic, 
Syriac, Chaldee, and Samaritan forms. Among these 
latter may be mentioned Bochart, Mazocchi, Clericus, 
Sappuhn, Peyron, and Hamaker. The last-mentioned 
writer, indeed, exceeds all bounds, and blends, in his 
explanations, all the Semitic tongues, so that he forms 
for himself a Phoenician language very far removed 
from the true one. (Hamaker, Diatrib., p. 65.— Id., 
Miscell. Phan., praf, p. viii., &c.)—If we follow 
the authority of Gesenius, and we do not know a safer 
one to take for our guide, the chief features in the 

1053 



P H CE 


PHCENIX. 


Phoenician language may be briefly stated as follows : 
1. The Phoenician agrees in most, if not all, respects 
with the Hebrew, whether we regard roots, or the 
mode of forming and inflecting words.—2. Wherever 
the usage of the earlier writers of the Old Testament 
differs from that of the later ones, the Phoenician 
agrees with the latter rather than with the former.—3. 
Only a few words are found that savour of Aramseism, 
nor will more Aramsisms be found in the remains of 
the Phoenician language than in the books of the Old 
Testament.—4. There are still fewer resemblances to 
Arabism. The most remarkable of these is in the 
case of the article, which on one occasion occurs under 
the full form al, and often under that of a, though most 
frequently it coincides with the Hebrew form.—Other 
words, which now can only be explained through the 
medium of the Arabic, were undoubtedly, at an earlier 
period, equally with many anal; Tieyopeva of the Old 
Testament, not less Hebrew than Arabic.—5. Among 
the peculiarities of the Phoenician and Punic tongues, 
the following may be noted : (a) A defective mode of 
orthography, in which the matres leclionis are em¬ 
ployed as sparingly as possible, (b) In pronouncing, 
the Phoenicians (the Carthaginians certainly) expressed 
the long o by u; as, sufes, lu, alonuth, &c. (c) In¬ 

stead of Segol and Schwa mobile, they appear to have 
employed an obtuse kind of sound, which the Roman 
writers expressed by the vowel y ; as, yth (Hebrew eth, 
the mark of the accusative), ynnynu (ecce turn), &c. 
(d) The syllable al they contracted into o, analogous 
somewhat to the French cheval (chevau), chevaux. 
For other peculiarities consult Geseniys {Phoen. Mon., 
p. 33G). 

Phcenicia. Vid. Phoenice. 

Phcenix, I. a fabulous bird, of which Herodotus 
gives the following account in that part of his work 
which treats of Egypt. “ The phoenix is another sa¬ 
cred bird, which I have never seen except in effigy. 
He rarely appears in Egypt; once- only in five hun¬ 
dred years, immediately after the death of his father, 
as the Heliopolitans affirm. If the painters describe 
him truly, his feathers represent a mixture of crimson 
and gold ; and he resembles the eagle in outline and 
size. They affirm that he contrives the following 
thing, which to me is not credible. They say that he 
comes from Arabia, and, bringing the body of his fa¬ 
ther enclosed in myrrh, buries him in the temple of 
the sun ; and that he brings him in the following man¬ 
ner. First he moulds as great a quantity of myrrh 
into the shape of an egg as he is well able to carry ; 
and, after having tried the weight, he hollows out the 
egg, and puts his parent into it, and stops up with 
some more myrrh the hole through which he had in¬ 
troduced the body, so that the weight is the same as 
before : he then carries the whole mass to the temple 
of the sun in Egypt. Such is the account they give 
of the phoenix.” {Herod., 2, 73.)—The whole of this 
fable is evidently astronomical, and the following very 
ingenious explanation has been given by Marcoz. He 
assumes as the basis of his remarks the fragment of 
Hesiod preserved by Plutarch in his treatise De Orac- 
ulorum Dejecta. (Hept ruv enXsTionr. XPV ° T -— Op., 
ed. Rciske, vol. 7, p. 635.) 

hvea tol &et yeveag 'kanepvCa Kopcbvrj 
- dvdpuv yScjvTcov ' eAa^of de re TerpaKopuvog * 

rpclg d’ e?M(j>ovg 6 KOpat; yypdoneTaL' avrdp 6 (poivit; 
evvia rovg nopanag • de/ca d’ ypelg rovg <j>olvLKag 
vv/LMpcu kvrrTioKapoi, novpai Atbf alyioxoio. 

“ The noisy crow lives nine generations of men who 
are in the bloom of years; the stag attains the age of 
four crows; the raven, in its turn, equals three stags 
in length of days ; while the phoenix lives nine ravens. 
We nymphs, fair-of-tresses, daughters of Jove the aegis- 
bearer, attain to the age of ten phoenixes.” (Com¬ 
pare Auson., Idyll., 18. — Plin., 7, 48. — Gaisford. 
1054 


Poet. Min. Grcec., vol. 1, p. 189.)—The whole com¬ 
putation here turns upon the meaning of the term 
generation (yeveu ). Marcoz takes the moon for his 
guide ; and as this luminary ceases, like man, to exist, 
only, like him, again to arise, the period of its revolu¬ 
tion becomes the standard required. I wenty-seven 
days and a third, then, converted into twenty-seven 
years and a third, give the measure of a generation 
among men. Reducing this, in order to make the 
analogy with the moon as complete as possible, he 
gives twenty-six years and two thirds as the result 
The computation is then as follows : 

Nine generations of men, or the 
life of one crow, make 234-f 6 

Four lives of the crow, or that 
of a stag, make 

Three lives of a stag, or that of ) 2880 years, 
a raven, make j 3 

Nine lives of the raven, or that ( 25900 years 
of the phcenix, make ji ~ 3 

This period of 25920 years is precisely the duration 
of the Great Year ( Magnus Annus) of the fixed stars, 
having for its element exactly 50”, the annual preces¬ 
sion of the equinoxes. From this computation also 
we will be enabled to perceive how 50”, converted 
into years, and multiplied by 1 —2—3—[—4, that is, by 
10, gave the Egyptians 500 years as the duration of 
the phoenix. These numbers, l-j-2-|-3-|-4, indicate 
that the 50 seconds, converted into years, traverse 
successively the four quarters ot the ecliptic, in order 
to form the Great Year, the astronomical duration of 
the life of the phoenix. ( Marcoz , Astronomie Solatre 
d' Hipparque, p. xvi., seq.) —II. Son of Amyntor, king 
of Argos, and the preceptor of Achilles, to whom 
he was so attached that he accompanied him to the 
Trojan war. According to the Homeric account {II., 
9, 447, seqq.), Amyntor having transferred his affec¬ 
tions from his lawful wife, Hippodamia, to a concu¬ 
bine, the former besought her son Phoenix to gain the 
affections of his father’s mistress, and alienate her 
from Amyntor. Phoenix succeeded in his suit, and 
his enraged father imprecated upon him the bitterest 
curses. The son, therefore, notwithstanding the en¬ 
treaties and efforts of his relations to detain him at hi? 
parent’s court, fled to Phthia, in Thessaly, where ne 
was kindly received by Peleus, monarch of the coun¬ 
try, who assigned him a territory on the confines of 
Phthia, and the sway over the Dolopians. He in¬ 
trusted him also with the education of his son Achilles. 
—Such is the Homeric account. Later writers, how¬ 
ever, make Amyntor to have put out his son s eyes, 
and the latter to have fled in this condition to Peleus, 
who led him to Chiron, and persuaded the centaur to 
restore him to sight. (Lycophron, 422. Tzetz. ad 
Lycophr., 1. c.) The curse uttered against Phcenix yvas, 
that he might remain ever childless, and hence I zet- 
zes seeks to explain the story of his blindness, by 
making it a figurative allusion to his childless condi¬ 
tion, a father’s offspring being as it were his eyes in 
the language of antiquity. {Tzetz., /. c. Muller., ad 
schol. Tzetz., 1. c.) — Apollodorus says that Phoenix 
was blinded by his father, on a false charge preferred 
against him by the concubine {Karaipevoapevyg (pdopav 
QOiaq ryg tov 7t arpog rraXhaiddog. —- Apollod ., 3, 13 
8). The variations in the legend arose probably from 
the circumstance, of the tragic poets having frequentlj 
made the story of Phoenix the subject of their compc 
sitions, and having, of course, introduced more or P t 
variations from the original tale. {Heyne, ad Apoi 
l. c.) There was a Phoenix of Sophocles, another of 
Euripides, and a third of Ion. {Valck., Diatrib., c 
24.)—To return to the story of the son of Amyntor 
after the death of Achilles, Phcenix was one of those 
commissioned to return to Greece and bring young 
Pyrrhus to the war. On the fall of Troy, he returnee 
Cvith that prince to Thessaly, in which country he cou 


240 years. 
9G0 years. 



PHO 


PHOTIUS 


llnued until his death. He was buried, according to 
Strabo, near the junction of the small river Phoenix 
with the Asopus, the former of these streams having re¬ 
ceived its name from him. ( Strab ., 428.)—>^11. A 
ion of Agenor, sent, as well as his brothers Cadmus 
and Cilix, in quest of their sister Europa. Not hav¬ 
ing succeeded in finding her, he was fabled to have 
settled in and given name to Phoenicia. ( Apollod ., 3, 
\, 1.—Consult Heyne, ad loc.) 

Pholoe, a mountain of Elis, at the base of which 
stood the town of Pylos, between the heads of the 
rivers Peneus and Selleis. ( Strabo , 339.) 

Pholus, a centaur, son of Silenus and the nymph 
Melia, and residing at Pholoe in Elis. In the perform¬ 
ance of his fourth task, which was to bring the Ery- 
/nanthian boar alive to Eurystheus, Hercules took his 
road through Pholoe, where he was hospitably enter¬ 
tained by Pholus. The centaur set before his guest 
roast meat, though he himself fared on raw. Her¬ 
cules asking for wine, his host said he feared to open 
the jar, which was the common property of the cen¬ 
taurs ; but, when pressed by the hero, he consented to 
unclose it for him. The fragrance of the wine spread 
over the mountain, and soon brought all the centaurs, 
armed with stones and pine sticks, to the cave of 
Pholus. The first who ventured to enter were driven 
back by Hercules with burning brands : he hunted the 
remainder with his arrows to Malea. When Hercules 
returned to Pholoe from this pursuit, he found Pholus 
lying dead along with several others; for, having drawn 
the arrow out of the body of one of them, while he 
was wondering how so small a thing could destroy 
such large beings, it dropped out of his hand and 
stuck in his foot, and he died immediately. ( Apollod ., 
2, 5, 4, seqq. — Keightley's Mythology , p. 355, seq .) 

Phorbas, a son of Priam and Epithesia, killed du¬ 
ring the Trojan war by Menelaus. The god Somnus 
borrowed his features when he deceived Palinurus, 
and hurled him into the sea from the vessel of iEneas. 

( Vid. Palinurus.) 

Phorcydes or Gr^e.e, the daughters of Phorcys 
and Ceto« They were hoary-haired from their birth, 
whence their other name of Grteae (‘* the Gray Maids ”). 
They were two in number, “ well-robed” Pephredo 
(Horrifier ), and “ yellow-robed” Enyo (Shaker). (He¬ 
siod, Theog., 270, seq.) We find them always united 
with the Gorgons, whose guards they were, according 
to iEschylus. ( Eratosth ., Cat., 22.— Hygin., P. A., 
2, 12.— Volcker, Myth. Geog., 41.) This poet de¬ 
scribed them as three long-lived maids, swan-formed, 
having one eye and one tooth in common, on whom 
neither the sun with his beams, nor the nightly moon 
ever looks. (Prom. Vinct., 800, seqq.) Perseus, it 
is said, intercepted the eye as they were handing it 
from the one to the other, and, having thus blinded the 
guards, was enabled to come on the Gorgons unper- 
ceived. The name of the third sister given by the 
later writers is Deino (Terrifier). (Apollod., 2, 4, 2. 
—Keightley' 1 s Mythology, p. 252.) 

Phoroneus, son of Inachus and the ocean-nymph 
Melia, and second king of Argolis. He was the first 
man, according to one tradition, while another makes 
him to have collected the rude inhabitants into one 
society, and to have given them fire and social institu¬ 
tions. (Apollod., 2, 1. — Pausanias , 2, 15, 5.) He 
also decided a dispute for the land, between Juno and 
Neptune, in favour of the former, who thence became 
he tutelar deity of Argos. By the nymph Laodice 
Phoroneus had a son named Apis, from whom the 
peninsula, according to one account, was called Apia ; 
and a daughter Niobe, the first mortal woman who 
enjoyed the love of Jupiter. Her offspring by the god 
were Argus and Pelasgus, and the country was fabled- 
o have been named from the former, the people from 
the latter. (Keightley's Mythology, p. 405.) 

Photius, a patriarch of Constantinople in the ninth 


century, of a noble family, and who enjoyed the repu¬ 
tation of being the most learned and accomplished man 
of his age. He was a native of the capital, and lor 
some time a layman, having been sent as an ambassa¬ 
dor to Assyria by the Emperor Michael. In this ca¬ 
pacity Photius acquitted himself so well as to gain 
the favour of his imperial master, who appointed him, 
on his return, commander of the imperial guard (Ilpw- 
TooTcadapiog), and subsequently chief secretary (Hpcj- 
rooyKpyryg, Protosecretarius). These dignities gave 
him access to the privy council, and the privilege of 
taking part in their deliberations ; and his ambition be¬ 
ing now awakened, he strove to ingratiate himself 
with Bardas, the uncle of the emperor, whom the lat¬ 
ter had associated with himself on the throne, and 
upon whom he had thrown all the cares of govern¬ 
ment. Bardas, having become displeased with the 
patriarch Ignatius, sent him into banishment, and ap¬ 
pointed Photius to the vacant see (December 25, A I). 
857), who went through all the ecclesiastical orders in 
six successive days, having been consecrated monk, 
anagnostes, subdeacon, deacon, priest, and patriarch. 
During the succeeding ten years, a controversy was 
carried on with much acrimony between him and Pope 
Nicholas the First, in the course of which each party 
excommunicated the other, and the consequence was a 
complete separation of the Eastern and Western church¬ 
es. Bardas, his patron, being at length taken off by his 
nephew and associate in the empire, Michael the Third, 
that prince was in his turn assassinated by Basilius, the 
Macedonian, who then ascended the throne in 866. Bil 
Photius, denouncing him for the murder, was in the 
following year removed, to make way for his old enemy 
Ignatius, and was forced to retire into banishment. 
He was recalled in 878. An anecdote, related by 
Simon Logothetes (Annal. in Basil., n. 6, p. 341, ed. 
Ven.), explains the cause of his recall. Photius forged 
a document which traced the genealogy of Basilius to 
Tiridates, king of Armenia. He imitated so skilfully 
the ancient characters, that, when the work in question, 
placed by his means in the imperial library, and found, 
as if by chance, by one of his confidential friends, was 
placed before the emperor, there was no one able tc 
decipher it but Photius. He maintained himself in 
the patriarchal chair during the rest of that reign ; 
but was at length accused, on insufficient grounds, o! 
conspiring against the new sovereign, Leo the Philos¬ 
opher, when that prince once more removed him, and 
sent him, in 886, into confinement in an Armenian 
monastery, where he died in 891. Photius appears tc 
have been very learned and very wicked—a great 
scholar and a consummate hypocrite—not only neg¬ 
lecting the occasions of doing good which presented 
themselves, but perverting the finest talents to the 
worst purposes. This learned though corrupt prelate 
was the author of a work entitled M vplo6i61ov (Myrio- 
biblon), or Bibliotheca, containing extracts from, and 
a critical judgment upon, two hundred c *"d eighty (the 
title says 279) works, which were read by him during 
his embassy to Assyria, and a summary of the con¬ 
tents of which had been requested by his brother Ta- 
rasius. If this statement be correct, the ambassador 
must have had but little to do in his diplomatic capa¬ 
city. There is a story, that, as often as he had read 
an author, and made his extracts from him, he threw 
the manuscript into the fire, in order to enhance the 
value of his own abridgment. This statement, in¬ 
deed, is sufficiently improbable ; but it may possibly 
have originated from some known propensity of the 
patriarch to literary dishonesty. It is highly probable 
that some grammarian pursued this same method with 
regard to Hesychius, whose original lexicon he first 
epitomised, and then destroyed. The Myriobiblon ol 
Photius was the precursor, and has served as the model, 
of works of a critical and bibliographical nature. It 
is characterized by neither order nor method. Pagun 

1055 



PHOTIUS 


P H R 


and Christian writers, ancient and modern, follow one 
another as chance caused their works to fall into the 
hands of the author; thus we pass from a work of an 
erotic nature to one that treats of philosophy or theology, 
from an historian to an orator ; the productions of the 
same writer are not even considered together. Gen¬ 
erally speaking, the greater number of the productions 
of which Photius gives us critical notices and extracts, 
ha ve reference to theology, to the decrees of councils, 
and to religious disputes; profane literature with him 
occupies only a secondary rank. Nevertheless, among 
the works of historians, philosophers, orators, gram-* 
rnarians, romancers, geographers, mathematicians, and 
physicians, that Photius has read, and on which he 
gives his opinion, or from which he favours us with 
extracts, there are between seventy and eighty that 
are lost, and of which we would know nothing or next 
to nothing without the aid of the Myriobiblon. In the 
case of some works, Photius contents himself with 
giving merely a short literary notice,*while from oth¬ 
ers he makes extracts of greater or less size. He was 
he author, likewise, of a work called Nomocanon, or 
a collection of the canons of the church. He com¬ 
piled also a glossary or Lexicon {Ae^eov ovvayuyy), 
which has only reached us in an imperfect and muti¬ 
lated state. The various MSS. of this work in differ¬ 
ent libraries on the Continent are mere transcripts from 
each other, and originally from one, venerable for its 
antiquity, which was formerly in the possession of the 
celebrated Thomas Gale, and which is now deposited 
in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. This 
manuscript, which is on parchment, bears such evident 
marks of great antiquity, that it may not unreasonably 
be supposed to have been a transcript from the author’s 
copy. The various transcripts from this ancient MS. 
were miserably faulty and corrupt, and it was natural 
that scholars,, who wished for the publication of this 
lexicon, should be desirous of seeing it printed from 
the Galean MS. in preference to any other. Her¬ 
mann, indeed, published an edition in 1818, from two 
transcripts, but he gives merely the naked text, with 
scarcely a single correction, or any attempt whatso¬ 
ever towards the restitution of the text. At the end 
of the volume, however, are some ingenious and valu¬ 
able observations of Schneider. Porson, meanwhile, 
had transcribed and corrected this lexicon for the 
press, from the Galean MS. ; and when unfortunately 
his copy had been destroyed by fire, had, with incred¬ 
ible industry and patience, begun the task afresh, and 
completed another transcript in his own excellent 
handwriting. His death, however, for a time pre¬ 
vented the appearance of the work, until at length his 
labours were given to the world by Dobree, in 1822, 
Lond , 8vo. This edition, however, notwithstanding 
all the praise so justly bestowed upon it, is greatly in¬ 
jured by want of more editorial skill and labour, the 
Addenda and Corrigenda occupying 44 pages. Pho¬ 
tius, who threw together his lexicon upon a much more 
confined plan than Hesychius, probably brought to his 
undertaking greater learning and judgment than the 
latter, and seems to have given most of his authorities 
from his own knowledge of the authors whom he cites. 
Yet even his work is little more than a compilation, of 
which many parts are copied verbatim from the scholia 
on Plato, the Lexicon of Harpocration, that of Pausa- 
n'as, and, in all probability, from the A P-isa K ufutcu 
k T T paymu of Theo or Didymus, from which latter the 
grammarians derived most of their explanations of the 
scenic phrases of the Greeks. These Dramatic Lexi¬ 
cons are unfortunately lost; but there is in the royal 
library of Paris a MS., which seems to be an epitome 
of one of them, under the title of 'A/Ll oq ’AhtydbrjToq. 
And, with a little care and discrimination, a very con¬ 
siderable part of them might be recovered from the 
pages of existing grammarians. Photius also enriched 
his work from the Lexica Ilhetorica, and the Platonic 
]056 


Lexicon of Timseus ; nor has he forgotten the Lexicon 
Technologicum of Philemon. The patriarch informs 
us, in his preface, that his dictionary is destined prin¬ 
cipally for the explanation of the remarkable words 
which occur in the Greek orators and historians, but 
occasionally to illustrate the phraseology of the poets. 
Several lacunae occur in the MSS., the leaves being 
torn out from tne Galean copy, from udiaKpiTuq to 
ETiuvvfioL , and from tyopyTuq to i/nAo 6diudaq —Photius 
has left also a collection of letters, in one of which, 
addressed to the Bulgarian prince Michael, there is a 
brief history of Seven (Ecumenical Councils.—The 
best edition of the Myriobiblon or Bibliotheca is that 
of Bekker, Berol., 1824, 2 vols. 4to, The text is cor¬ 
rected from a Venice manuscript, and also three Paris 
ones. The previous editions are accompanied by a 
Latin version of Schott’s, which is far from accurate. 
Bekker’s edition gives the Greek text without a ver¬ 
sion.—The Nomocanon was first printed in 1615, 
Paris, 4to, with the commentaries of Balsamon, pa¬ 
triarch of Antioch. A second edition appeared in 
1661, with a Latin version, and with additions and 
corrections. It is much superior to the previous one. 
—The Epistles were edited by Montague, bishop of 
Norwich, Lond., 1651, fol. ; but he has given only 
248 letters, whereas a much greater number exists. 
A curious and rare edition was also published in 1705, 
fol., under the care of Dositheus, patriarch of Jerusa¬ 
lem, and Anthimus, a Greek bishop. ( Scholl, Hist. 
Lit. Gr., vol. 6, p. 285.— Id. ib., p. 301.— Id. ib.,\ ol. 
7, p. 31.— Id. ib., p. 238.— Edinburgh Review, No. 
42, p. 329, seqq. — Weiss, inBiogr. Unix., vol. 34, p 
218, seqq. — Hofmann, Lex. Bibliogr., vol. 3, p. 246, 
seqq.) 

Phraates, a name common to several Parthian 
kings. ( Vid. Parthia.) 

Phrahates, the same as Phraates. ( Vid. Phraates.) 

Phraortes, son and successor of Dejoces, on the 
throne of Media. He reigned from B.C. 657 to 635, 
greatly extended the Median empire, subdued the Per¬ 
sians, and many other nations, but fell in an expedi¬ 
tion against the Assyrians of Ninus or iS 7 ineveh. 
{Herod., 1, 102.— Vid. Media.) 

Phric6nis, a surname given to Cyma in vEolis. 
{Vid. Cyma.) 

Phrixus, son of Athamas, king of Orchomenus in 
Boeotia, and Nephele. (Consult the commencement 
of the article Argonaut®.) 

Phrygia, a country of Asia Minor, bounded on the 
north by Paphlagonia and Bithynia, on the south by 
the range of Taurus and Pisidia, on the west by Oaria 
and Lydia, and on the east by Cappadocia and Pon- 
tus.—Herodotus relates (2, 2), that Psammitichus, 
king of Egypt, having made an experiment to discov¬ 
er which was the most ancient nation in the world, 
ascertained that the Phrygians surpassed all other 
people in priority of existence. ( Vid. Psammitichus.) 
The story itself is childishly absurd ; but the fact that 
the Egyptians allowed the highest degree of antiquity 
to this nation is important, and deserves attention. 
What the Greeks knew of the origin of the Phrygians 
does not accord, however, with the Egyptian hypothe¬ 
sis. Herodotus has elsewhere reported that they came 
originally from Macedonia, where they lived under the 
name of Briges (or Bryges), and that, when they cross¬ 
ed over into Asia, this was changed to Phryges (7, 73). 
This account has been generally followed by subse¬ 
quent writers, especially Strabo (295), who appeals to 
quote Xanthus, and Menecrates of Elaea, Artemido- 
rus, and others, who made the origin of nations and 
cities the object of their inquiries. {Strab., 572.— 
Id., 680. — Compare Plin ., 5, 32. — Steph. Byz ., s. 
v. B plyeq.) It is certain, indeed, that there was a 
people named Briges or Bryges, of Thracian origin, 
living in Macedonia at the time that Herodotus was 
writing (6, 45 ; 7, 185); and tradition had long fixed 




PHRYGIA. 


PHRYGIA. 


tne abode of the Phrygian Midas, who was a chief or 
monarch of this people, near Mount Bermius, in Ma¬ 
cedonia. {Herod., 8, 138.— Compare Nicand., ap 
Athen 15, p. 683.— Bion, ap. eund., 2, p. 45.) Again, 
the strong affinity which was allowed to exist between 
the Phrygians, Lydians, Carians, and Mysians. who 
were all supposed to have crossed from 'mrace into 
Asia Minor, serves to corroborate the hypothesis 
which regards the Phrygian migration in particular; 
but, while there seems no reasonable doubt of the 
Thracian origin of this people, it is not so easy to es¬ 
tablish the period of their settling in Asia. Xanthus 
is represented by Strabo (680) as fixing their arrival 
in that country somewhat after the Trojan war; but 
the geographer justly observes, that, according to 
Homer, the Phrygians were already settled on .the 
banks of the Sangarius before that era, and were en¬ 
gaged in a war with the Amazons {II., 3, 187); and, if 
mythological accounts are to have any weight, the ex¬ 
istence of a Midas in Asia Minor, long before the pe¬ 
riod alluded to, would prove that there had been a 
Phrygian migration in times to which authentic his¬ 
tory does not extend. (Compare Conon, Narrat ., 
ap. Phot., cod. 186.) Great as was the ascendancy, 
however, of the Thracian stock, produced by so many 
tribes of that vast family pouring in at various times, 
there must have entered into the composition of the 
Phrygian nation some other element besides the one 
which formed its leading feature. It has been conjec¬ 
tured, and with great show of probability, that the 
Thracian Bryges found the country, which from them 
took the name of Phrygia, occupied by some earlier 
possessors, but who were too weak to resist the inva¬ 
ders. What name this people bore cannot now be 
ascertained ; but there can be little doubt that they 
were of Asiatic origin ; probably Leuco-Syrians or 
Cappadocians. Herodotus, indeed, has stated a cir¬ 
cumstance, which, if true, would go far to overthrow 
the theory of a Thracian origin for the Phrygian people. 
In the muster which he makes of Xerxes’ myriads, he 
informs us that the Phrygians and Armenians were 
armed alike ; the latter being, as he observes, colonists 
of the former. {Herod., 7, 73.) Herodotus, how¬ 
ever, is quite singular in this statement, which is, 
moreover, at variance with all received notions on the 
subject. The Armenians are a people of the highest 
antiquity, and we must not seek for their primitive 
stock beyond the upper valleys of the Tigris and Eu¬ 
phrates ; in other words, they are a purely Asiatic 
people ; and if there existed any resemblance between 
them and the Phrygians, we ought rather to account 
for it by supposing that the latter were not altogether 
Europeans, but mingled with an indigenous race of 
Asia, whose stock was also common to the Arme¬ 
nians. — The political history of the Phrygians is 
neither so brilliant nor so interesting as that of their 
neighbours the Lydians. What we gather respecting 
them from ancient writers is, generally, that they cross¬ 
ed over from Europe into Asia, under the conduct of 
their leader Midas, nearly a hundred years before the 
Trojan war. {Conon, ap. Phot., cod., 186.) That 
they settled first on the shores of the Hellespont and 
around Mount Ida, whence they gradually extended 
themselves to the shores of the Ascanian lake and the 
valley of the Sangarius. It is probable that the Doli- 
ones, Mygdones, and Bejpryces, who held originally the 
coasts of Mysia and Bithynia, were Phrygians. The 
Mygdones were contiguous to the Bryges in Macedo¬ 
nian Thrace, and they are often classed with the Phry¬ 
gians by the poets. Driven afterward from the Hel¬ 
lespont and the coast of the Propontis by the Teucri, 
Mysi, and Bithyni, the Phrygians took up a more cen¬ 
tral position in what may be called the great basin of 
Asia Minor. Still preserving the line of the Sanga¬ 
rius, they occupied, to the southwest of that great jiver, 
the upper valleys of the Macestus and Rhyndacus, to- 
6 S 


wards the Mysian Olympus, a:sd those of the Hermua 
and Hyllus on the side of Lydia. On the west they 
ranged along Catacecaumene and ancient Mseonia, till 
they reached the Masander. The head of that river, 
with its tributary streams, was included within their 
territory. To the south they held the northern slope 
of Mount Cadmus, which, with its continuation, a 
branch of Taurus, formed their frontier on the side of 
Caria, Milyas, and Pisidia, as far as the borders of 
Cilicia. To the east of the Sangarius the ancient 
Phrygians spread along the borders of Paphlagoma till 
they met the great river Plalys, which divided them 
from Pontus, and, farther south, from Cappadocia and 
Isauria. This extensive country was very unequal in 
its climate and fertility. That which lay in the plains 
and valleys, watered by rivers, exceeded in richness 
and beauty almost every other part of the peninsula 
{Herod., 5, 49); but many a tract was rendered bleak 
and desolate by vast ranges of mountains, or uninhab¬ 
itable from extensive lakes and fens impregnated with 
salt, or scorching deserts destitute of trees and vege¬ 
tation. (Compare Fellows' Asia Minor, p. 127.)— 
The Phrygians appear at first to have been under the 
dominion of kings; but whether these were absolute 
over the whole country, or each was the chief of a 
petty canton, is not certain. The latter, more proba¬ 
bly, was the case, since we hear of Midaaum and Gor- 
dium, near the Sangarius, as royal towns, correspond¬ 
ing with the well-known names of Midas and Gordius 
{Strab., 568) ; and again, Celaenas, seated in a very 
opposite direction, near the source of the Mseander. 
appears to have been the chief city of a Phrygian prin¬ 
cipality. {Athenceus, 10, p. 415.) The first Phrygian 
prince, whose actions come within the sphere of an 
authenticated history, is Midas, the son of Gordius, 
who, as Herodotus relates, was the first barbarian that 
made offerings to the god at Delphi. He dedicated 
his throne of justice, the workmanship of which, as the 
historian affirms, was worthy of admiration (1, 14). 
At this period the Phrygians were independent, but 
under the reign of Croesus the Lydian we hear of their 
being subject to that sovereign (1, 28). The con¬ 
queror was probably content with exacting from the 
Phrygian ruler an avowal of his inferiority, in the shape 
of a tribute or tax ; for the tragic tale of the Phrygian 
Adrastus affords evidence that the ancient dynasty of 
that country still held dominion, as the vassals of Croe¬ 
sus. {Herod., 1, 35.) Adrastus is said to have been 
the son of Gordius, who was himself the son of Midas. 
The latter was probably the grandson of the Midas 
who dedicated his throne to the shrine at Delphi, and 
is called son of Gordius ; so that we have a regular 
alternation of monarchs, bearing those two names from 
father to son, for seven generations. Indeed, these 
two names are so common, that they would seem to 
have been appellatives rather than proper names. The 
first Gordius is probably the one who is indebted for a 
place in history to the puzzle which he invented ; but 
which, if it had not fallen into the way of Alexander, 
would probably never have given rise to the proverbial 
expression of “ the Gordian knot.” {Arrian, Exp. 
Al., 2, 3.) After the overthrow of the Lydian monar¬ 
chy by Cyrus, Phrygia was annexed to the Persian 
empire, and, under the division made by Darius, form¬ 
ed part of the Hellespontine or Bithynian satrapy. 
{Herod., 3, 91.) In the partition of Alexander’s do¬ 
minions, it fell at first into the hands of Antigonus, 
then of the Seleucidae, and, after the defeat of Antio- 
chus, was ceded to Eumenes, king of Pergamus, but 
finally reverted to the Romans. {Polyb., 22, 27. — 
Liv., 37, 56.) At that time Phrygia had sustained a 
considerable diminution of territorial extent, owing to 
the migration of a large body of Gauls into Asia, where 
they settled in the very centre of the province ; and, 
having succeeded in appropriating to themselves a con¬ 
siderable tract of country, formed a new province and 

1057 




P H R 


PHY 


people, named Galatia and Galatae, or Gallo-Grseci.— 
The Phrygians are generally stigmatized by the an¬ 
cients as a slavish nation, destitute of courage or en¬ 
ergy, and possessing but little skill in anything save 
music and dancing. ( Athemzus, 1, p. 27.— Virg., 
JEn., 12,99.— Eurip., Alcest.,6 78.— Id., Orest., 1447. 
— Athenceus, 14, p. 624, seqq.) —Phrygia, considered 
with respect to the territory once occupied by the peo¬ 
ple from whence it obtained its appellation, was di¬ 
vided into the Great and Less. The latter, which was 
also called the Hellespontine Phrygia, still retained 
that name, even when the Phrygians had long retired 
from that part of Asia Minor, to make way for the 
Mysians, Teucrians, and Dardanians ; and it would be 
hazardous to pronounce how much of what is included 
under Mysia and Troas belonged to what was evi¬ 
dently only a political division. Besides this ancient 
classification, we find in the Lower Empire the prov¬ 
ince divided into Phrygia Pacatiana and Phrygia 
Salutaris. The name Epictetus, or “ the Acquired,” 
was given to that portion of the province which was 
annexed by the Romans to the kingdom of Pergamus. 

( Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 1, seqq.) 

Phrynichus, I. an Athenian tragic poet, a scholar 
of Thespis. The dates of his birth and death are alike 
unknown : it seems probable that he died in Sicily. 

( Clinton, Fast. Hell., vol. 2, p. xxxi., note (t).) He 
gained a tragic victory in 511 B.C., and another in 476, 
when Themistocles was his choragus. {Pint., Vit. 
Themist.) The play which he produced on this occasion 
was probably the Phcenissaa, and ^Eschylus is charged 
with having made use of this tragedy in the composition 
of his Persae, which appeared four years after ( Arg . ad 
Pers.), a charge which ^Eschylus seems to rebut in 
“ the Frogs” of Aristophanes (v. 1294, seqq.). In 
494 B.C., Miletus was taken by the Persians, and 
Phrynichus, unfortunately for himself, selected the cap¬ 
ture of that city as the subject of an historical tragedy. 
The skill of the dramatist, and the recent occurrence 
of the event, affected the audience even to tears, and 
Phrynichus was fined 1000 drachmae for having recall¬ 
ed so forcibly a painful recollection of the misfortunes 
of an ally. (Herod., 6, 21.) According to Suidas, 
Phrynichus was the first who introduced a female 
mask on the stage, that is, who brought in female 
characters; for, on the ancient stage, the characters of 
females were always sustained by males in appropriate 
dress. Bentley is thought to have purposely mistrans¬ 
lated this passage of Suidas, in his Dissertation on 
Phalaris (vol. 1, p. 291, ed. Dyce.—Donaldson , The¬ 
atre of the Greeks, p. 47). Phrynichus seems to have 
been chiefly remarkable for the sweetness of his melo¬ 
dies, and the great variety and cleverness of his figure- 
dances. (Aristoph., Av., 748.— Id., Vesp., 269.— Id. 
ib., 219.— Plutarch, Symp., 3, 9.) The Aristophanic 
Agathon speaks generally of the beauty of his dramas 
(Thesmoph., 164, seqq.), though, of course, they fell far 
short of the grandeur of iEschylus, and the perfect art 
of Sophocles. The names of seventeen tragedies at¬ 
tributed to him have come down to us, but it is prob¬ 
able that some of these belonged to two other writers, 
who bore the same name. ( Theatre of the Greeks, 
ed. 4, p. 59, seq.) —II. A comic poet, who must be 
carefully distinguished from the tragedian of the same 
name. He exhibited his first piece in the year 435 
B.C., and was attacked as a plagiarist in the §opyo- 
4>6pot of Hermippus, which was written before the 
death of Sitalces, or, in other words, before 424 B.C. 
( Clinton, Fast. Hell, vol. 2, p. 67.) In 414 B.C., 
when Ameipsias was first with the K u/uaoral, and Ar¬ 
istophanes second with the v O pvtdeq, Phrynichus was 
third with the M ovorponop. (Arg., Av.) In 405 
B.C , Philonides was first with the Barpaxot of Aris¬ 
tophanes, Phrynichus second with the M ovoai, and 
Plato third with the K Tieotytiv. (Arg., Ran.) He is 
ridiculed by Aristophanes in the Barpaxot for his cus- 
1058 


tom of introducing gi Ambling slaves on the stage. 
The names of ten of his pieces are known to us. 
(Fabric., Bibl. Gr., vol. 2, p. 483, ed. Harles. — The¬ 
atre of the Greeks, ed. 4, p. 101.)—III. A native of 
Arabia, as is supposed, but who establishrd himself in 
Bithynia in the latter half of the second century of oux 
era. He compiled a Lexicon of Attic forms of Ex¬ 
pression (EKloyT] ’Attikuv fir/gurov nal ovo/mruv). 
We have also from the same writer another work, en¬ 
titled UpoTrapaoKevij ootpicriKT] (Sophistic Apparatus ), 
in thirty-seven books, a production of considerable 
importance on account of the numerous quotations 
which it contains from ancient writers. Phrynichus 
distinguishes between wolds, according to the style to 
which they are adapted, which is either the oratorical, 
the historical, or the familiar kind. As models of gen¬ 
uine Atticism, he recommends Plato, Demosthenes, 
and the other Attic orators, Thucydides, Xenophon, 
iEschines the Socratic, Critias, and the two authentic 
discourses of Antisthenes; and among the poets, 
Aristophanes and the three great tragic writers. He 
then makes a new arrangement of these authors, and 
places Plato, Demosthenes, and ^Eschines in the first 
rank. As regards his own style, Phrynichus is justly 
chargeable with great prolixity.—The best edition of 
the Lexicon is that of Lobeck, Lips., 1820, 8vo. Of 
the “ Sophistic Apparatus” Montfaucon published a 
portion in his “ Catalogus Bibliotheca Coisliniance,'” 
p. 465, seqq. Bast made another extract from the 
MS. (No. 345, Biblioth. Coislin., at present in the 
Royal library at Paris), accompanied with critical re¬ 
marks, which has passed from the Continent to Eng¬ 
land. In 1814, Bekker published a part in the first 
volume of his “ Anecdota Graeca,” under the title, ’E« 
ruv dtpvvlxov rov ’A pabiov rfjg ootjneriniis nponapa- 
anevqg. (Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 5, p. 12.) 

Phthia, a district of Thessaly, forming part of tha 
larger district of Phthiotis. ( Vid. Phthiotis.) 

Phthiotis, a district of Thessaly, including, ac¬ 
cording to Strabo, all the southern portion of that coun¬ 
try, as far as Mount CEta and the Maliac Gulf. To 
the west it bordered on Dolopia, and on the east reach¬ 
ed the confines of Magnesia. Referring to the geo¬ 
graphical arrangement adopted by Homer, we shall 
find, that he comprised within this extent of territory 
the districts of Phthia and Hellas properly so called, 
and, generally speaking, the dominions of Achilles, 
together with those of Protesilaus and Eurypylus. 
(Strab., 432, seqq.) Many of his commentators have 
imagined that Phthia was not to be distinguished from 
the divisions of Hellas and Achaia, also mentioned by 
him. But other critics, as Strabo observes, were of a 
different opinion, and the expressions of the poet cer¬ 
tainly lead us to adopt that notion in preference to the 
other. (II., 2, 683.— II., 1, 478.— Cramer's Ancient 
Greece, vol. 1, p. 397.) 

Phurnutus. Vid. Cornutus. 

Phya, a tall and beautiful woman of Attica, whom 
Pisistratus, when he wished to re-establish himself in 
his usurped power, arrayed like the goddess Minerva, 
and led to the city in a chariot, making the populace 
believe that the goddess herself came to restore him 
to power. Such is the account of Herodotus (I, 59) 
Consult, however, remarks under the article Pisistra- 
tus. 

Piiycus (gen. -untis: in Greek, Qvkovc, gen. -oi5j»~ 
rop), a promontory of Cyrena'ica, northwer- of Apollo- 
nia, and now Ras Sem. 

Phylace, I. a town of Macedonia, m the interior of 
Pieria, according to Ptolemy (p. 84), and of which 
Pliny (4, 10) makes mention. Some similarity to the 
ancient name is discoverable in that of Phili, situate 
on the Haliacmon, somewhat to the west of Servitza. 
—II. A town of Epirus, supposed to correspond with 
the vestiges observed by Hughes (vol. 2, p. 483) near 
the village of Velchista, on the western side of the lake 




F H Y 


PIC 


©1 loanina. —III. A town of Thessaly, in the Mag¬ 
nesian district, near Phthiotic Thebes, and on the river 
Sperchius. It was the native place of Protesilaus, 
who is hence sometimes called Phylacides. There was 
a temple here consecrated to him. (Pind., Islh ., 1, 
83.—Compare Horn., II, 2, 698.) Sir W. Gell is in¬ 
clined to place the ruins of this town near the village 
of Agios Theodoras , “ on a high situation, which, with 
its position, as a sort of guard (i/w/la/ay) to the en¬ 
trance of the gulf, suggests the probability of its being 
Phylace.” ( Itin ., p. 255.) But Strabo asserts that 
Phylace was near Thebes, consequently it could not 
have been so much to the south as Agios Theodor os. 

ICramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 407 ) 

Phyle, a place celebrated in the history of Athens 
as the scene of Thrasybulus’s first exploit in behalf of 
his oppressed country. It was situate about 100 sta¬ 
dia from Athens, to the northwest, according to Dio¬ 
dorus (41, p. 415); but Demosthenes estimates the 
distance at more than 120 stadia. ( Pseph ., in Or. de 
Cor., p. 238.—Compare Xen., Hist. Gr., 2, 4, 2.— 
Strabo, 396.) The fortress of Phyle, according to Sir 
W. Gell ( Itin ., p. 52), is now Bigla Castro. “It is 
situated on a lofty precipice, and, though small, must 
have been almost impregnable, as it can only be ap¬ 
proached by an isthmus on the east. Hence is a 
most magnificent view of the plain of Athens, with 
the Acropolis and Hymettus, and the sea in the dis¬ 
tance.” Dodwell, however, maintains, that its modern 
name is Argiro Castro. The town of Phyle was 
placed at the foot of the castle or acropolis ; some 
traces of it still remain. ( Tour , vol. 1, p. 502.—Cra¬ 
mer’s Anc. Greece , vol. 2, p. 405.) 

Phyllis, I. daughter of Sithon, king of Thrace, and 
betrothed to Demophoon, son of Theseus, who, on his 
return from Troy, had stopped on the Thracian coast, 
»nd there became acquainted with and enamoured of 
the princess. A day having been fixed for their union, 
Demophoon set sail for Athens, in order to arrange 
iffairs at home, promising to return at an appointed 
time. He did not come, however, at the expiration 
of the period which he had fixed, and Phyllis, fancying 
herself deserted, put an end to her existence. The 
trees that sprang up around her tomb were said at a 
certain season to mourn her untimely fate, by their 
leaves withering and falling to the ground. ( Hygin ., 
fab., 59.) According to another account, Phyllis was 
changed after death into an almond-tree, destitute of 
(eaves; and Demophoon having returned a few days 
jubsequently, and having clasped the tree in his em¬ 
brace, it put forth leaves, as if conscious of the pres¬ 
ence of a once-beloved object. Hence, says the fable, 
■'eaves were called tyvXka in Greek, from the name of 
Phyllis (4>u/l/Uf). ( Serv. ad Virg., Eel., 5, 10.) 

Ovid has made the absence of Demophoon from Thrace 
the subject of one of his heroic epistles.-—It is said 
.hat Phyllis, when watching for the return of Demo- 
phoon, made nine journeys to the Thracian coast, 
vhence the spot was called Ennca-Hodoi (’E vv£a 
'Odor) or “the Nine Ways.” {Hygin., 1. c.) The 
true reason of the name, however, was the meeting 
here of as many roads from different parts of Thrace 
and Macedon. ( Walpole's Collect, vol. 2, p. 510.)-Tzet- 
ees o-ives a somewhat different account of the affair, 
especially as regards Demophoon, whom he calls Aca- 
mas, and whom he makes to have been thrown from 
his horse when hurrying back to Phyllis, and to have 
been transfixed by his own sword. (Tzet.z. ad Ly- 
cophr., 496.)—II. A region of Thrace, forming part 
of Edonis, and situate to the north of Mount Pangasus. 
{Herod., 7, 114.) 

Physccn, a surname of one of the Ptolemies, king 
of Egypt, from his great abdominal rotundity (< pvosov, 
“ the & paunch from tyvacy, “ the lower belly”). 

Physcos, a town of Caria, opposite Rhodes, and 
subject to that island. ( Stepk . Byz., s. v.) | 


Picentes, a people of Italy, occupying what was 
called Picenum. {Vid. Picenum.) 

Picentia, a city of Campania, about seven miles 
beyond Salernum, and once the capital of the Picen- 
tini. ( Strabo , 251.— Mela, 2, 4.— Pliny, 3, 5.) It 
is now Vicenza or Bicenza. 

PicentIni, a people of Italy, south of Campania, 
occupying an inconsiderable extent of territory, from 
the promontory of Minerva to the mouth of the river 
Silarus. We are informed by Strabo, that these were 
a portion of the inhabitants of Picenum whom the 
Romans transplanted thither to people the shores of 
the Gulf of Posidonia or Paestum. It is probable that 
their removal took place after the conquest of Pice¬ 
num, and the complete subjugation of this portion of 
ancient Campania, then occupied by the Samnites. 
Cluver fixes the date at A.U.C. 463. ( Ital. Ant., 

vol. 2, p. 1188.) According to the same writer, the 
Picentini were at a subsequent period compelled by the 
Romans to abandon the few towns which they pos¬ 
sessed, and to reside in villages and hamlets, in con¬ 
sequence of having sided with Hannibal in the second 
Punic war. As a farther punishment, they were exclu¬ 
ded from military service, and allowed only to perform 
the duties of couriers and messengers. ( Strabo, 251. 
— Plin., 3, 5.— Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 214.) 

Picenum, a district of Italy, along the Adriatic, 
south and east of Umbria. Little has been ascertain¬ 
ed respecting the Picentes, its inhabitants, except the 
fact that they were a colony of the Sabines, sent out 
in consequence of a vow of a sacred spring, and said 
to have been guided to this land by a woodpecker 
(picics), a bird sacred to Mars. ( Strabo, 240.— Plin., 
3, 13.) In this region they had to contend with the 
Umbrians, who had wrested it from the Liburni and 
Siculi. (Plin., 1. c.) But the Sabines were not ap¬ 
parently the first or sole possessors of the country. 
The Siculi, Liburni, and Umbri, according to Pliny 
(3, 13), the Pelasgi, as Silius Italicus reports (8, 445), 
and the Tyrrheni, according to Strabo (241), all at 
different periods formed settlements in that part of 
Italy. The conquest of Picenum cost the Romans 
but little trouble. It was effected about 484 A.U.C., 
not long after the expedition of Pyrrhus into Italy 
( Liv ., Epit., 15.— Florus, 1, 19), when 360,000 men, 
as Pliny assures us, submitted to the Roman author¬ 
ities. From the same writer we learn, that Picenum 
constituted the fifth region in the division of Augus¬ 
tus. This province was considered one of the most 
fertile parts of Italy. (Liv., 22, 9.— Strabo, 240.) 
The produce of its fruit-trees was particularly esteem¬ 
ed. (Hor., Sat., 2, 4, 70.— Id., Sat., 2, 3, 272.— 
Juv., Sat., 11, 72.) It may be regarded as limited 
to the north by the river H2sis. To the west it was 
separated from Umbria and the Sabine country by the 
central chain of the Apennines. Its boundary to the 
south was the river Matrinus, if we include in this di¬ 
vision the Pratutii, a small tribe confined between the 
Matrinus and Helvinus. ( Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. I, 
p. 279, seqq.) 

Picti, a Caledonian race, first mentioned under this 
denomination in a panegyric of Eumenius, A.D. 297. 
Various derivations have been assigned for their name, 
among which the most common is that which deduces 
it from the Latin picti (“ painted”), in reference to the 
custom which the ancient Britons had of painting their 
bodies of a blue colour. This etymology, however, 
can hardly be correct, since the custom to which we 
have just referred was common to all the Britons, not 
confined to one particular tribe. The simplest deri¬ 
vation, therefore, appears to be that which makes the 
name in question come from the Gaelic pictith, “ rob¬ 
bers” or “ plunderers,” the Piets being famed for theii 
marauding expeditions into the country to the soutl 
of them. According to Adelung, their true national 
name was Cruitnich, “ corn-eateis,” from their hav 

\059 



P 1 E 


PIN 


Ing devoted a jart of their territory to the raising of 
grain. ( Adclung, Mithradates, vol. 2, p. 96.) 

Pictones, a people of Aquitanic Gaul, a short dis¬ 
tance below the Ligeris or Loire. Their territory 
corresponds to the modern Poitou. Ptolemy assigns 
them two capitals, Augustoritum and Limonum, but 
the former in strictness belonged to the Lemovices. 
The city of Limonum, the true capital, answers to the 
modern Poitiers. Strabo gives the name of this peo¬ 
ple with the short penult, Ptolemy with the long one. 
The short quantity is followed by Lucan (1, 436). 
Ammianus Marcellinus uses the form Pictavi. ( Amm. 
Mar cell., 15, 11.) 

Picumnus and Pilumnus, two deities of the Latins, 
presiding over nuptial auspices. (Non., c. 12, n. 36. 
— Varro, op.. Non., 1. c.) The new-born child, too, 
was placed by the midwife on the ground, and the fa¬ 
vour of these deities was propitiated for it. Pilum¬ 
nus was also one of the three deities who kept otf Sil- 
vanus from lying-in women at night. (Varro, frag., 
p. 231.) The other two were Intercido and Deverra. 
Three men went by night round the house, to signify 
that these deities were watchful: they first struck the 
threshold with an axe, then with a pestle (pilum), and 
finally swept ( deverrere ) with brooms ; because trees 
are not cut (cceduntur) and pruned without an axe, 
corn bruised without a pestle, or heaped up without 
brooms. Hence the names of the deities, who pre¬ 
vented the wood-god Silvanus from molesting partu¬ 
rient females. (Keightley's Mythology, p.537.) Ser- 
vius in place of Picumnus, uses the name Pithumnus, 
and makes this deity to have been the brother of Pi¬ 
lumnus, and to have discovered the art of manuring 
land ; hence he was also called Sterculius and Ster- 
quilinus, from stercus, “ manure.” The same au¬ 
thority makes Pilumnus to have invented the art of 
pounding corn in a mortar (pilum), whence his name. 
(Serv. ad Virg., JEn., 9, 4.—Compare Plin., 3, 18.) 
Some of the ancient grammarians regarded these two 
deities as identical with Castor and Pollux, than which 
nothing can be more erroneous. Piso, one of this 
dags of writers, deduced the name Pilumnus from 
pello, “ to drive away” or “avert,” because he avert¬ 
ed the evils that are incident to infancy, “ quia pellit 
mala infanticz .” (Spangenberg, Vet. Lat. Relig. Do¬ 
mes t., p. 65.) 

Picus, a fabulous king of Latium, son’ of Saturn, 
and celebrated for his beauty and his love of steeds. 
He married Canens, the daughter of Janus and Venil- 
ia, renowned for the sweetness and power of her 
voice. One day Picus went forth to the chase clad 
in a purple cloak, bound round his neck with gold. 
He entered the wood where Circe happened to be at 
that time gathering magic herbs. She was instantly 
struck with love, and implored the prince to respond 
to her passion. Picus, faithful to his beloved Canens, 
indignantly spurned her advances, and Circe, in re¬ 
venge, struck him with her wand, and instantly he 
was changed into a bird with purple plumage and a 
yellow ring around its neck. This bird was called by 
his name Picus, “ the woodpecker.” (Ovid, Met., 14, 
320, seqq. — Plut., Queest. Rom., 21.) Servius says 
that Picus was married to Pomona (ad JEn., 7, 190). 
—This legend seems to have been devised to give an 
origin for the woodpecker after the manner of the 
Greeks. (Keightley's Mythology, p. 538.—Compare 
Spangenberg, Vet. Lat. Rel. Dorn , p. 62.) 

Pieria, I. a region of Macedonia, directly north of 
Thessaly, and extending along the Therma'ic Gulf. 
It formed one of the most nteresting parts of Mace¬ 
donia, both in consideration of the traditions to which 
t has given birth, as being the first seat of the Muses, 
nd the birthplace of Orpheus ; and also of the im¬ 
portant events which occurred there at a later period, 
involving the destiny of the Macedonian empire, and 
many other parts of Greece. The name of Pieria, 
1060 


which was known to Homer (II, 14, 226), was de¬ 
rived apparently from the Pieres, a Thracian people, 
who were subsequently expelled by the Tememdas, 
the conquerors of Macedonia, and driven north beyond 
the Strymon and Mount Pangasus, where they formed 
a new settlement. ( Thucyd., 2, 99.— Herod., 7, 112.) 
The boundaries which historians and geographer? have 
assigned to this province vary ; for Strabo, or, rather, 
his epitomiser, includes it between the Haliacmon and 
Axius. (Strab., 330.) Livy also seems to place it 
north of Diurn (44, 9), while most authors ascribe that 
town to Pieria. Ptolemy gives the name of Pieria to 
all the country between the mouth of the Peneus and 
that of the Ludias. (Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, 
p. 204.)—II. A district of Syria, bounded on the west 
by the Sinus Issicus, on the north by Mount Pierius 
(the southern continuation of Amanus), from which 
the region received its name. (Ptol. — Bischoff und 
Mbller, Wortcrb. der Geogr., p. 851.) 

Pie rides, I. a name given to the Mases, from the 
district of Pieria, their natal region. (Vid. Musae.)— 
II. The nine daughters of Pierus, who challenged the 
Muses to a contest of skill, and were overcome and 
changed into magpies. Some suppose that the victo¬ 
rious Muses took their name, just as Minerva, accord¬ 
ing to some authorities, assumed that of the giant 
Pallas after she had conquered him. (Ovid, Met., 5, 
300.) 

Pierus, a native of Thessaly, father of the Pieridei 
who challenged the Muses. (Vid. Pierides, II.) 

Pigrum Mare, an appellation given to the extreme 
Northern Ocean, from its being supposed to be in a 
semi-congealed or sluggish state. (Plin., 4, 13.— 
Tacit., Germ., 45.) 

Pilumnus. Vid. Picumnus. 

Pimplea, a small town of Macedonia, not far from 
Dium and Libethra, where Orpheus was said by som« 
to have been born. (Strab., Epit., 330.— Apollon. 
Rhod., 1, 23, et Schol. ad loc. — Lycophr., v. 273.) 

Pinarii and Potitii, two distinguished families 
among the subjects of Evander, at the time when Her¬ 
cules visited Italy on his return from Spain. A sac¬ 
rifice having been offered to the hero by Evander, the 
Potitii and Pinarii were invited to assist in the cere¬ 
monies and share the entertainment. It happened 
that the Potitii attended in time, and the entrails were 
served up to them ; the Pinarii, arriving after the en¬ 
trails were eaten, came in for the rest of the feast; 
hence it continued a rule, as long as the Pinarian fam¬ 
ily existed, that they should not eat of the entrails. 
The Potitii, instructed by Evander, were directors of 
that solemnity for many ages, until the solemn office 
of the family was delegated to public servants, on 
which the whole race of the Potitii became extinct. 
This desecration of the rites of Hercules was brought 
about, it is said, by the censor Appius Claudius, who 
induced the Potitii by means of a large sum of money 
to teach the manner of performing these rites to the 
public slaves mentioned above. (Liv., 1, 7. — Id., 9, 
29.— Festus, s. v. Potitium. — Serv. ad JEn., 8, 269.) 

Pinarus, a river of Cilicia Campestris, rising in 
Mount Amanus, and falling into the Sinus Issicus 
near Issus. The Greek and Persian armies were at 
first drawn up on opposite banks of this stream : Dari¬ 
us on the side of Issus, Alexander towards Syria. 
The modern name of the Pinarus is the Deli-sou 
(French Strabo, vol. 4, pt. 2, p. 384.) 

Pindarus, a celebrated lyric poet of Thebes, in 
Boeotia, born, according to Bockh, in the spring of 
522 B.C. (Olympiad 64.3), and who died, according 
to a probable statement, at the age of eighty. (Pin¬ 
dar, ed. Bockh, vol. 3, p. 12.—Compare Clinton, Fast. 
Hell., vol. 1, p. 17, who makes his birth-year 518 
B.C.) He was, therefore, nearly in the prime of life 
at the time when Xerxes invaded Greece, and when 
the battles of Thermopylae and Salamis were fought 




PINDARUS. 


PINDARUS. 


/id he thus belongs to that period of the Greek nation 
vhen its great qualities were first distinctly unfolded, 
md when it exhibited an energy of action and a spirit 
jf enterprise never afterward surpassed, together with 
a love of poetry, art, and philosophy, which produced 
much, and promised to produce more. His native 
place was Cynocephalae, a village in the territory of 
Thebes, and the family of the poet seems to have been 
skilled in music : since we learn from the ancient bi¬ 
ographies of him, that his father or his uncle was a 
flute-player. Rut Pindar, very early in life, soared far 
beyond the sphere of a flute-player at festivals, or even 
a lyric poet of merely local celebrity. Although, in his 
time, the voices of Pierian bards, and of epic poets of 
the Hesiodean school, had long been mute in Boeotia, 
yet there was still much love for music and poetry, 
which had taken the prevailing form of lyric and cho¬ 
ral compositions. That these arts were widely culti¬ 
vated in Boeotia is proved by the fact that two females, 
Myrtis and Corinna, had attained celebrity in them 
during the youth of Pindar. Both were competitors 
with him in poetry. Myrtis strove with the bard for a 
prize at public games ; and although Corinna said, 
“ It is not meet that the clear-toned Myrtis, a woman 
born, should enter the lists with Pindar,” yet she is 
said (perhaps from jealousy of his rising fame) to have 
often contended against him in the agones, and five 
times to have gained the victory. ( jElian , V. H., 13, 
24.) Corinna also assisted the young poet with her 
advice ; and it is related of her, that she recommend¬ 
ed him to ornament his productions with mythical nar¬ 
rations ; but that, when he had composed a hymn, in 
the first six verses of which (still extant) almost the 
whole of the Theban mythology was introduced, she 
smiled and said, “ We should sow with the hand, not 
with the whole sack.” — Pindar placed himself under 
the tuition of Lasus of Hermione, a distinguished poet, 
jut probably better versed in the theory than the prac¬ 
tice of poetry and music. Since Pindar made these 
irts the whole business of his life, and was nothing but 
a poet and musician, he soon extended the boundaries 
of his art to the whole Greek nation, and composed 
poems of the choral lyric kind for persons in all parts of 
Greece. At the age of twenty he composed a song of 
victory in honour of a Thessalian youth belonging to the 
family of the Aleuadae (Piyth. 10, composed in Olym¬ 
piad 69.3, B.C. 502). We find him employed soon af¬ 
terward for the Sicilian rulers, Hiero of Syracuse and 
Theron of Agrigentum ; for Arcesilaus, king of Gyrene, 
and Amyntas, king of Macedonia, as well as for the 
free cities of Greece. He made no distinction ac¬ 
cording to the race of the persons whom he celebra¬ 
ted : he was honoured and loved by the Ionian states 
for himself as well as for his art: the Athenians made 
him their public guest (tv po^evog ); and the inhabitants 
of Ceos employed him to compose a processional song 
(rvpocrodiov), although they had their own poets, Si¬ 
monides and Bacchylides. Pindar, however, was not 
a common mercenary poet, always ready to sing the 
praises of him whose bread he ate. He received, in¬ 
deed, money and presents for his poems, according to 
the general usage previously introduced by Simoni¬ 
des ; yet his poems are the genuine expression of his 
thoughts and feelings. In his praises of virtue and 
good fortune, the colours which he employs' are not 
too vivid : nor does he avoid the darker shades of his 
subject ; he often suggests topics of consolation for 
past and present evil, and sometimes warns and ex¬ 
horts to avoid future calamity. Thus he ventures to 
speak freely to the powerful Hiero, whose many great 
and noble qualities were alloyed by insatiable cupid¬ 
ity and ambition, which his courtiers well knew how 
to turn to a bad account; and he addresses himself in 
the same manly tone to Arcesilaus IV., king of Cy- 
rene, who afterward brought on the ruin of his dynas¬ 
ty by his tyrannical severity. Thus lofty and dignified 


was the position which Pindar assumed with regard to 
these princes ; and, in accordance with this, he fre< 
quently proclaims, that frankness and sincerity are al¬ 
ways laudable. But his intercourse with the princes of 
his time appears to have been limited to poetry. We do 
not find him, like Simonides, the daily associate, coun¬ 
sellor, and friend of kings and statesmen ; he plays no 
part in the public events of the time, either as a poli¬ 
tician or a courtier. Neither was his name, like that of 
Simonides, distinguished in the Persian war: partly be¬ 
cause his fellow-citizens, the Thebans, were, together 
with half of the Grecian nation, on the Persian side, 
while the spirit of independence and victory was with 
the other half. Nevertheless, the lofty character of 
Pindar's muse rises superior to these unfavourable 
circumstances. He did not, indeed, make the vain 
attempt of gaining over the Thebans to the cause of 
Greece ; but he sought to appease the internal dissen¬ 
sions which threatened to destroy Thebes during the 
war, by admonishing his fellow-citizens to union and 
concord ( Polyb ., 4, 31, 5. — Frag, incert., 125, ed. 
Bockh) ; and, after the war was ended, he openly pro¬ 
claims, in odes intended for the iEginetans and Athe¬ 
nians, his admiration of the heroism of the victors.— 
Having mentioned nearly all that is known of the 
events of Pindar’s life, and his relations to his con¬ 
temporaries, we proceed to consider him more closely 
as a poet, and to examine the character and form of 
his poetical productions. The only class of poems 
which enable us to judge of Pindar’s general style are 
the ETTiviKia, or triumphal odes. Pindar, indeed, ex¬ 
celled in all the known varieties of choral poetry; name¬ 
ly, hymns to the gods, paeans, and dithyrambs appro¬ 
priate to the worship of particular divinities, odes for 
processions (rvpocodia), songs of maidens (tv apdiveia), 
mimic dancing songs (vtv opxv/aara), drinking songs 
(ovcoAw), dirges (• dprjvot ), and encomiastic odes to 
princes (eyKCjpta), which last approached most nearly 
to the knLVLKLa. The poems of Pindar in these vari¬ 
ous styles were nearly as renowned among the ancients 
as the triumphal odes, which is proved by the numer¬ 
ous quotations of them. Horace, too, in enumerating 
the different styles of Pindar’s poetry, puts the dithy¬ 
ramb first, then the hymns, and afterward the epinikia 
and the dirges. Nevertheless, there must have been 
some decided superiority in the epinikia, which caused 
them to be more frequently transcribed in the later 
period of antiquity, and thus rescued them from per¬ 
ishing with the rest of the Greek lyric poetry. At 
any rate, these odes, from the vast variety of their sub¬ 
jects and style, and their refined and elaborate struc¬ 
ture, some approaching to hymns and pseans, others 
to scolia and hyporchemes, serve to indemnify us for 
the loss of the other sorts of lyric poetry. We will 
now explain, as briefly as possible, the occasion of an 
epinikian ode, and the mode of its execution. A vic¬ 
tory has been gained in a contest at a festival, partic¬ 
ularly at one of the four great games most prized by 
the Greeks. Such a victory as this, which shed a 
lustre not only on the victor himself, but on his fami¬ 
ly, and even on his native city, demanded a solemn 
celebration. This celebration might be performed by 
the victor’s friends on the spot where the prize was 
obtained ; as, for example, at Olympia, when, in the 
evening, after the termination of the contests, by the 
light of the moon, the whole sanctuary resounded 
with joyful songs after the manner of encomia ; or it 
might be deferred till after the victor’s solemn return 
to his native city, where it was sometimes repeated in 
following years, in commemoration of his success. A 
celebration of this kind always had a religious character; 
it often began with a procession to an altar or tem¬ 
ple, in the place where the games had been held, or in 
the native city of the conqueror; a sacrifice, followed 
by a banquet, was then offered at the temple, or in the 
house of the victor; and the whole solemnity conc’» 

1061 




PINDARUS. 


PINDARUS. 


ded with the merry and boisterous revel called by the 
Greeks Kti/nog. At this sacred and, at the same time, 
joyous solemnity (a mingled character frequent among 
the Greeks), appeared the chorus, trained by the poet 
or some other skilled person, for the purpose of reci¬ 
ting the triumphal hymn, which was considered the 
fairest ornament of the festival. It was during either 
the procession or the banquet that the hymn was reci¬ 
ted, as it was not properly a religious hymn, which 
could be combined with the sacrifice. The form of 
the poem must, to a certain extent, have been deter¬ 
mined by the occasion on which it was to be recited. 
From expressions which occur in several epinikian 
odes, it is probable that all odes consisting of strophes 
w’thout epodes were sung during a procession to a 
temple or to the house of the victor; although there 
are others which contain expressions denoting move¬ 
ment, and which yet have epodes. It is possible that 
the epodes in the latter odes may have been sung at 
certain intervals when the procession was not ad¬ 
vancing ; for an epode, according to the statements of 
the ancients, always required that the chorus should be 
at rest. But by far the greater number of the odes of 
Pindar were sung at the Comus, at the jovial termi¬ 
nation of the feast: and hence Pindar himself more 
frequently names his odes from the Comus than from 
the victory. The occasion of the epinikian ode—a 
victory in the sacred games—and its end—the enno¬ 
bling of a solemnity connected with the worship of the 
gods—required that it should be composed in a lofty 
and dignified style. But, on the other hand, the bois¬ 
terous mirth of the feast did not admit the severity of 
the antique poetic style, like that of the hymns and 
nomes; it demanded a free and lively expression of 
feeling, in harmony with the occasion of the festival, 
and suggesting the noblest ideas connected with the 
victor. Pindar, however, gives no detailed descrip¬ 
tion of the victory, as this would have been only a 
repetition of the spectacle which had already been be¬ 
held with enthusiasm by the assembled Greeks ; nay, 
he often bestows only a few words on the victory, re¬ 
cording its place, and the sort of contest in which it 
was won. On the other hand, we often find a precise 
enumeration of all the victories, not only of the actual 
victor, but of his entire family: this must evidently 
have been required of the poet. Nevertheless, he does 
not (as many writers have supposed) treat the victory 
as a merely secondary object ; which he despatches 
quickly, in order to pass on to objects of greater inter¬ 
est. The victory, in truth, is always the point, upon 
which the whole of the ode turns ; only he regards it, 
not simply as an incident, but as connected with the 
whole life of the victor. Pindar establishes this con¬ 
nexion by forming a high conception of the fortunes 
and character of the victor, anil by representing the 
victory as the result of them. And as the Greeks 
were less accustomed to consider a man in his indi¬ 
vidual capacity than as a member of his state and his 
family, so Pindar considers the renown of the victor 
in connexion with the past and the present condition 
of the race and state to which he belongs. Even, 
however, when the skill of the victor is put in the fore¬ 
ground, Pindar, in general, does not content himself 
with celebrating this bodily prowess alone, but he usu¬ 
ally adds some moral virtue which the victor has 
shown, or which he recommends and extols. This 
virtue is sometimes moderation, sometimes wisdom, 
sometimes filial love, sometimes piety to the gods. 
The latter is frequently represented as the main cause 
of the victory ; the victor having thereby obtained the 
protection of the deities who preside over gymnastic 
contests, as Mercury or the Dioscuri. — Whatever 
might be the theme of one of Pindar’s epinikian odes, 
it would naturally not be developed with the systemat¬ 
ic completeness of a philosophical treatise. Pindar, 
however, has undoubtedly much of that sententious 
1062 


wisdom, which began to show itself among the Greeks 
at the time of the Seven Wise Men, and which formed 
an important element of elegiac and choral lyric poe¬ 
try before the time of Pindar.—The other element 
of his poetry, his mythical narratives, occupies, how¬ 
ever, far more space in most of his odes. That these 
are not mere digressions for the sake of ornament has 
been fully proved by modern commentators. — This 
admixture of apophthegmatic maxims and typical nar 
ratives would alone render it difficult to follow the 
thread of Pindar’s meaning; but, in addition to this 
cause of obscurity, the entire plan of his poetry is so 
intricate, that a modern reader often fails to under¬ 
stand the connexion of the parts, even where he thinks 
he has found a clew. Pindar begins an ode full of 
the lofty conception which he has formed of the glori¬ 
ous destiny of the victor; and he seems, as it were, 
carried away by the flood of images which this con¬ 
ception pours forth. He does not attempt to express 
directly the general idea, but follows the strain of 
thought which it suggests into its details, though 
without losing sight of their reference to the main ob¬ 
ject. Accordingly, when he has pursued a train of 
thought, either in an apophthegmatic'or mythical form, 
up to a certain point, he breaks off, before he has gone 
far enough to make the application to the victor suffi¬ 
ciently clear; he then takes up another thread, which 
is, perhaps, soon dropped for a fresh one ; and at the 
end of the ode he gathers up all these different threads, 
and weaves them together into one web, in which the 
general idea predominates. By reserving the expla¬ 
nations of his allusions until the end, Pindar con¬ 
trives that his odes should consist of parts which are 
not complete or intelligible in themselves ; and thus 
the curiosity of the reader is kept on the stretch 
throughout the entire ode. — The characteristics of 
Pindar’s poetry, which have just been explained, may 
be discovered in all his epinikian odes. Their agree¬ 
ment, however, in this respect, is quite consisted 
with the extraordinary variety of style and expression 
which belongs to this class of poems. Every epinik¬ 
ian ode of Pindar has its peculiar tone, depending 
upon the course of the ideas and the consequent 
choice of the expressions. The principal differences 
are connected with the choice of the rhythms, which 
again is regulated by the musical style. According 
to the last distinction, the epinikia of Pindar are of 
three sorts, Doric, yEolic, and Lydian ; which can be 
easily distinguished, although each admits of innu¬ 
merable varieties. In respect of metre, every ode of 
Pindar has an individual character, no two odes being 
of the same metrical structure. In the Doric ode the 
same metrical forms occur as those which prevailed in 
the choral lyric poetry of Stesichorus, namely, sys¬ 
tems of dactyls and trochaic dipodies, which most 
nearly approach the stateliness of the hexameter. Ac¬ 
cordingly, a severe dignity pervades these odes ; the 
mythical narrations are developed with greater fulness, 
and the ideas are limited to the subject, and are free 
from personal feeling; in short, their general charac¬ 
ter is that of calmness and elevation. The language 
is epic, with a slight Doric tinge, which adds to its 
brilliancy and dignity. The rhythms of theyEolic odea 
resemble those of the Lesbian poetry, in which light 
dactylic, trochaic, or logaoedic metres prevailed : these 
rhythms, however, when applied to choral lyric poetry, 
were rendered far more various, and thus often ac¬ 
quired a character of greater volubility and liveliness 
The yEolic odes, from the rapidity and variety of their 
movement, have a less uniform character than the Do¬ 
ric odes ; for example, the first Olympic, with its joy¬ 
ous and glowing images, is very different from the 
second, in which a lofty melancholy is expressed, 
and from the ninth, which has an air of proud and 
complacent self-reliance. The language of the y-Eo- 
lic epmikia is also bolder, more difficult in its svn- 



PINDARUS. 


PIR 


tax, and marked by rarer dialectic forms. Lastly, 
there are the Lydian odes, the number of which is 
inconsiderable: their metre is mostly trochaic, and 
of a particularly soft character, agreeing with the 
tone of the poetry. Pindar appears to have preferred 
the Lydian rhythms for odes which were destined to 
be sung during a procession to a temple or at the al¬ 
tar, and in which the favour of the deity was implored 
in an humble spirit. ( Muller , Gr. Lit., p. 216, seqq.) 
-—The scholar comes to the study of Pindar, as to that 
of one whom fable and history, poetry and criticism, 
have alike delighted to honour. The writers of Greece 
speak of him as the man whose birth was celebrated 
by the songs and dances of the deities themselves, in 
joyous anticipation of those immortal hymns which he 
was to frame in their praise ; to whom in after life 
the God of Poetry himself devoted a share of the of¬ 
ferings brought to his shrine, and conceded a chair of 
honour in his most favoured temple. These were in¬ 
deed fables, but fables that evinced the truth : the 
reputation which they testified went on increasing in 
magnitude and splendour. The glory of succeeding 
poets, the severity of the most refined criticism, the 
spread of sceptic philosophy no way impaired it ; it 
was not obscured by the literary darkness of his coun¬ 
try ; it was not overpowered by the literary brightness 
of rival states. The fastidious Athenian was proud of 
the compliment paid to his city by a Boeotian ; the el¬ 
egant Rhodian inscribed his verses in letters of gold 
within the temple of his guardian deity ; and, in a la¬ 
ter age, Ajexander, the son of Philip, “ bade spare the 
house of Pindarus,” when Thebes fell in ruins beneath 
his hand. Pindar has not improperly been called the 
Sacerdotal Poet of Greece ; and that he must have 
been of high consideration with the priesthood will be 
easily believed. He stood forth the champion of the 
“ graceful religion of Greece and he seems to have 
laboured, on the one hand, to defend it from the sneers 
and profaneness of the philosophers ; and, on the oth¬ 
er, to spiritualize it, and to prevent its degenerating 
into the mere image-worship of the vulgar. His dei¬ 
ties, therefore, are neither like those of Homer, nor 
the insulted Olympians of riEschylus ; they come in 
visions of the night; they stand in a moment before 
the eyes of the mortal who prays to them, and whom 
they deign to favour ; they see and hear all things ; 
they flit in an instant from land to land, and the ele¬ 
ments yield, and are innoxuous to their impassible 
forms. But these forms are not minutely described ; 
the fables respecting them are rejected in the whole 
as untrue, or better versions of them are given. With 
Pindar the deity is not the capricious, jealous being, 
whose evil eye the fortunate man has reason to trem¬ 
ble at ; but just, benignant, the author and wise ruler 
of all things; whom it is dreadful to slander, and with 
whom it is idle to contend : he moulds everything to 
his will ; he bows the spirit of the high-minded, and 
crowns with glory the moderate and humble ; he is the 
guardian of princes, and if he deign not to be a guide 
to the ruler of the city, it is hard indeed to restore the 
people to order and peace. Nor is this all. Pindar 
is not merely a devout, but he is also an eminently 
moral poet. Plato observes of him, in the Menon, that 
he maintained the immortality of the soul; and he lays 
down, with remarkable distinctness, the doctrine of 
future happiness or misery. On principles such as 
these, it is no wonder that Pindar’s poetry should 
abound with maxims of the highest morality in every 
part ; not a page, indeed, is without them. They 
spread a colour over the whole, of which no idea can 
*i>e given by a few extracts. (Quarterly Review, No. 
56, p. 410, seqq .)—We have remaining, at the present 
Jay, forty-five of the Epinikia, or triumphal odes of 
Pindar, together with some few fragments of his other 
jroductions. The Epinikia are divided into four class- 
is or kinds, and derive their names respectively from 


the four great games of Greece. Thus we have, 1st, 
Olympic Odes, to the number of fourteen ; 2d, Pyth¬ 
ian, to the number of twelve; 3d, Nemean, eleven 
in number; and, 4th, Isthmian, amounting to eight. 
This division, however, is not that of the poet himself; 
we owe it to the grammarian Aristophanes of Byzan¬ 
tium. This individual selected out of the general col¬ 
lection of Epinikia a certain number of pieces that had 
reference, more or less, to victories gained at the sev¬ 
eral games of Greece. It did not suffice, in the eyes 
of this critic, that an ode should celebrate some victory 
gained in these assemblies in order to be judged wor¬ 
thy of a place in his selection ; for there are fragments 
remaining of the poems of Pindar which have direct 
allusion to such subjects, and yet were excluded by 
Aristophanes. On the other hand, we find, in the se¬ 
lection made by him, one ode, having no reference to 
any particular victory, namely, the second Pythian ; as 
well as some others, which, though they celebrate 
deeds of martial prowess, contain no mention whatever 
of those peculiar exploits, of which the four great na¬ 
tional celebrations of the Hellenic race were respect¬ 
ively the theatres.—Hermann has shown, that the ba¬ 
sis of Pindar’s diction is epic, but that he employs 
Doric forms as often as they appear more expressive, 
or are better adapted to the metre which he employs. 
Sometimes he gives the preference to .dEolic forms, 
which was his native dialect. Hermann also remarks, 
that the verses of Pindar abound in hiatus , without 
there being any appearance of his having used the di¬ 
gamma, which in his days had partially disappeared 
from the iEolic dialect, and which Alcaius and Sappho 
had only occasionally employed. After the example 
of the ancient poets, he makes the vowel long which 
is followed by a mute and liquid. The remark of Her¬ 
mann respecting the mixture of dialects in Pindar has 
been acquiesced in by Bockh, who observes, that the 
copyists have frequently removed the Doricisms from 
the Olympic Odes, while they have been preserved 
more carefully in the other works of the poet.—The 
best edition of Pindar is that of Bockh, Lips., 1811-22, 
3 vols. 4to. The text is corrected by the aid of thir¬ 
ty-seven MSS. Previous to the appearance of this 
edition, that of Heyne was regarded as the best. 
Heyne’s work appeared in 1773, Gotting., 2 vols. 8vo. 
A second edition of it was published in 1798, Got- 
ting., 3 vols. 8vo, containing Hermann’s commentary 
on the metres of Pindar. The third edition appeared, 
after Heyne’s death, in 1817, under the supervision of 
Schaeffer. An excellent school and college edition, 
by L. Disseti, based on that of Bockh, forms part of 
Jacobs’s and Rost’s “ Bibliotheca Graeca,” Goth, et 
Erfurdt., 1830, 8vo. ( Scholl , Gesch. Gr. Lit., vol. 
1, p. 196, seqq. — Id, ih., vol 3, p. 598.) 

Pindenissus, a city of Cilicia, belonging to the 
Eleuthero-Cilices. It was situated on a height of 
great elevation and strength, forming part of the range 
of Amanus. Cicero took it after a siege of 57 days, 
and compelled the Tibareni, a neighbouring tribe, to 
submit likewise. The modern Behesni is supposed 
to occupy its site. ( Cic., Ep. ad Earn., 15, 4. — Id., 
Ep. ad Att., 5, 20.) 

Pindus, I. a name applied by the Greeks to the 
elevated chain which separates Thessaly from Epirus, 
and the waters falling into the Ionian Sea and Arnbra- 
cian Gulf, from those streams which discharge them¬ 
selves into the JEgean. Towards the north it joined 
the great Illyrian and Macedonian ridges of Bora and 
Scardus, while to the south it was connected with the 
ramifications of GCta, and the riEtolian and Acarnani- 
an mountains. ( Herodotus , 7, 129.— Strabo, 430.— 
Find., Pyth., 9, 27.— Virgil, Eclog., 10, 11.— Ovid , 
Metamorph ., 2, 224. — Cramer's Ancient Greece, 
vol. 1, p. 353.) — II. A town and river of Doris in 
Greece. The river flowed into the Cephissus at 
Litea, a Phocian town. According to Strabo, the 

1063 




PIR 


PIRJSUS 


earlier name of the town was Acryphas. ( Strabo, 

427.) 

Pir^eum, a small fortress of Corinthia, on the Sinus 
Corinthiacus, and not far from the promontory of 01- 
mise. It was taken on one occasion by Agesilaus. 
{Xen., Hist. Gr., 4, 5, 5.— Id., Vit. Ages., 2,18.) We 
must not confound this place with the Corinthian har¬ 
bour of Pirteus, on the Sinus Saronicus, near the con¬ 
fines of Argolis. ( Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 3, 
p. 34.) 

Piraeus {Tfetpaioq), or Piraeus (Jleipcuevq), a cel¬ 
ebrated and capacious harbour of Athens, at some dis¬ 
tance from it, but joined to it by long walls, called 
fiaitpd reixv . The southern wall was built by The- 
mistocles, and was 35 stadia long and 40 cubits high ; 
this height was but half of what Themistocles design¬ 
ed. The northern was built by Pericles ; its height 
the same as the former, its length 40 stadia. Both of 
these walls were sufficiently broad on the top to admit 
of two wagons passing each other. The stones were 
of an enormous size, joined together without any ce¬ 
ment, but with clamps of iron and lead, which, with 
their own weight, easily sufficed to unite walls even 
of so great a height as 40 cubits (GO feet). Upon both 
of the walls a great number of turrets were erected, 
which were turned into dwelling-houses when the 
Athenians became so numerous that the city was not 
large enough to contain them. The wall which en¬ 
compassed the Munychia, and joined it to the Piraeus, 
was 60 stadia, and the exterior wall on the other side 
of the city was 43 stadia, in length. Athens had three 
harbours, of which the Piraeus was by far the largest. 
East of it was the second one, called Munychia ; and, 
still farther east, the third, called Phalerus, the least 
frequented of the three. The entrance of the Piraeus 
was narrow, being contracted by two projecting prom¬ 
ontories. Within, however, it was very capacious, 
and contained three large basins or ports, named Can- 
tharus, Aphrodisus, and Zea. The first was called af¬ 
ter an ancient hero, the second after Venus, the third 
from the term &a, signifying bread-corn. The Piraeus 
is said to have been capable of containing 300 ships. 
The walls which joined it to Athens, with all its for¬ 
tifications, were totally demolished when Lysander put 
an end to the Peloponnesian war by the reduction of 
Attica. They were rebuilt by Conon with the money 
supplied by the Persian commander Pharnabazus, after 
the defeat of the Lacedaemonians, in the battle off the 
Arginusae Insulae. In after days the Piraeus suffered 
greatly from Sylla, who demolished the walls, and set 
fire to the armory and arsenals. It must not be ima¬ 
gined, however, that the Piraeus was a mere harbour. 
It was, in fact, a city of itself, abounding with temples, 
porticoes, and other magnificent structures. Strabo 
compares the maritime part of Athens to the city of 
the Rhodians, since it was thickly inhabited, and en¬ 
closed with a wall, comprehending within its circuit 
the Piraeus and the other ports. Little, however, re¬ 
mains of the former splendour of the Piraeus. Ac¬ 
cording to Hobhouse, nothing now is left to lead one 
to suppose that it was ever a large and flourishing port. 
{Journey, vol. 1, p. 299.) The ancient Zea is a marsh, 
and Cantharus of but little depth. The deepest wa¬ 
ter is at the mouth of the ancient Aphrodisus. He 
adds, that the ships of the ancients must have been ex¬ 
tremely small, if 300 could be contained within the 
Pira?us, since he saw an Hydriote merchant-vessel, of 
about 200 tons, at anchor in the port, which appeared 
too large for the station, and an English sloop of war 
was warned that she would run aground if she attempt¬ 
ed to enter, and was therefore compelled to anchor in 
the straits between Salamis and the port once called 
Phoron. The Piraeus is now called Draco by the 
Greeks, but by the Franks Porto Leone, from the fig¬ 
ure of a stone lion with which it was anciently adorn¬ 
ed, and which was carried away by the Venetians. 

1064 


1. Athenian Imports and Exports. 

The commodities which Attica did not produce with¬ 
in her own territory, were obtained by foreign com¬ 
merce, and, unless the importation was prevented by 
some extraordinary obstacle, such, for example, as war, 
there could be no danger of a scarcity, even in the 
case of a failure of the crops, because it consumed the 
surplus produce of other countries. {Xen., Repub. 
Alh., 2, 6.) Although not an island, yet it possessed 
all the advantages of insular position, that is, excellent 
harbours conveniently situated, in which it received 
supplies during all winds ; in addition to which, it had 
sufficient facilities for inland traffic : the intercourse 
with other countries was promoted by the purity of the 
coin, as the merchant, not being obliged to take a re¬ 
turn freight, had the option of carrying out bullion, al¬ 
though Athens abounded in commodities which would 
meet with a ready sale. {Xen., de Vect., 1, 7.) If 
a stagnation in trade was not produced by war or pi¬ 
racy, all the products of foreign countries came to 
Athens ; and articles which in other places could hard¬ 
ly be obtained single, were collected together at the 
Piraeus. {Thucyd., 2, 38.— Isocr., Paneg., p. 34, ed. 
Hall.) Besides the corn, the costly wines, iron, brass, 
and other objects of commerce, which came from all 
the regions of the Mediterranean, they imported from 
the coasts of the Black Sea slaves, timber for ship¬ 
building, salt fish, honey, wax, tar, wool, rigging, 
leather, goatskins, &c. ; from Byzantium, Thrace, 
and Macedonia, timber, slaves, and salt fish ; also, 
slaves from Thessaly, whither they came from the in¬ 
terior ; and carpets and fine wool from Phrygia and 
Miletus. “ All the finest products,” says Xenophon, 
“of Sicily, of Italy, Cyprus, Lydia, the Pontus, and 
the Peloponnesus, Athens, by her empire of the sea, is 
able to collect into one spot.” {Repub. Ath., 2, 7.) 
To this far-extended intercourse the same author at¬ 
tributes the mixture of all dialects which prevailed at 
Athens, and the admission of barbarous words into the 
language of ordinary life. On the other hand, Athens 
conveyed to different regions the products of her own 
soil and labour; in addition to which, the Athenian 
merchant trafficked in commodities which they collect¬ 
ed in other countries. Thus, they took up wine from 
the islands and shores of the H5gean Sea, at Pepare- 
thus, Cos, Thasus, and elsewhere, and transported it 
to theEuxine. {Demosth. in Lacrit., p. 935.) The 
trade in books alone appears to have made but small 
advances in Greece, a branch of industry which was 
more widely extended in the Roman Empire after the 
reign of Augustus. There was, it is true, a book- 
market (rd f3i6Xa) at Athens {Jul. Poll., 9, 47), and 
books were exported to the Euxine and to Thrace 
{Xen., Anab., 7, 5, 14), but there can be no doubt 
that the books meant were merely blank volumes. 
The trade in manuscripts was in the time of Plato so 
little common, that Hermodorus, who sold the books 
of this writer in Sicily, gave occasion to a proverb, 

“ Hermodorus carries on trade with writings.” ( Cic., 
Ep. ad Att., 13, 21.— Suid., s. v. T^oyoimv r E p/uodo)~ 
peg epnopeveTai.) At a subsequent period, while Ze 
no the ptoic was still a youth, dealers in manuscripts 
are mentioned as having been at Athens. {Diog. 
Laert., in Vit.) The merchant-vessels appear to have 
been of considerable size ; not to quote an extraordi¬ 
nary instance, we find in Demosthenes {in Pkorm.) 
a vessel of this kind, which, besides the cargo, the 
slaves, and the ship’s crew, carried 300 free inhabi¬ 
tants. ( Bockh , Public Economy of Athens , vol. 1, p. 
65, seqq., Eng. transl.) 

2. Credit System of the Athenians. 

The advocates for a credit system at the present 
day will be agreeably surprised to find one fully estab¬ 
lished among the Athenians, and deemed by that i» 








PI R 


PI S 


telligent people essential to commercial operations. 
The system of banking pursued at Athens gave occa¬ 
sion to a new kind of money, constructed upon the 
credit of individuals or of companies, and acting as a 
substitute for the legal currency. In the time of De¬ 
mosthenes (vol. 2, p. 1236, ed. Reiske), and even at 
an earlier period, bankers appear to have been numer¬ 
ous, not only in Pirseus, but also in the upper city ; 
and it was principally by their means that capital, 
which would otherwise have been unemployed, was 
distributed and made productive. Athenian bankers 
were, in many instances, manufacturers or specula¬ 
tors in land, conducting the different branches of their 
business by means of partners or confidential servants, 
and acquiring a sufficient profit to remunerate them¬ 
selves, and to pay a small rate of interest for the cap¬ 
ital intrusted to them. But this was not the only ben¬ 
efit they imparted to the operations of commerce. 
Their legers were books of transfer, and the entries 
made in them, although they cannot properly be called 
a part of the circulation, acted in all other respects as 
bills of exchange. In this particular their banks bore 
a strong resemblance to modern banks of deposite A 
depositor desired his banker to transfer to. some other 
name a portion of the credit assigned to him in the 
books of the bank {Demosth., rrpbg KaUXnv. —vol. 2, p. 
1236, ed. Reiske ); and by this method, aided, as it 
probably was, by a general understanding among the 
bankers (or, in the modern phrase, a clearing house), 
credit was easily and constantly converted into money 
in ancient Athens. “ If you do not know,” says De¬ 
mosthenes, “ that credit is the readiest capital for ac¬ 
quiring wealth, you know positively nothing.” (Et 
be tovto dyvoelg, on rcianq atyopp.q ruv rraafiv eon 
usyiGTij npog xP r ll iaTL<J l i bv, ndv dv dyvor/oeiae .—vol 
2, p. 958, ed. Reiske.) The spirit of refinement may 
be traced one step farther. Orders were certainly is¬ 
sued by the government in anticipation of future re¬ 
ceipts, and may fairly be considered as having had the 
force and operation of exchequer bills. They were 
known Dy the name of dvopoloyfipara. We learn, 
for instance, from the inscription of the Choiseul mar¬ 
ble ( Bockh , Corp. Inscript ., vol. 1, p. 219), written 
near the close of the Peloponnesian war, that bills of 
this description were drawn at that time by the gov¬ 
ernment at Athens on the receiver-general at Samos, 
and made payable, in one instance, to the paymaster 
at Athens ; in another, to the general of division at 
Samos. These bills were doubtless employed as mon¬ 
ey, on the credit of the in-coming taxes, and entered 
probably, together with others of the same kind, into 
the circulation of the period. ( Cardwell's Lectures 
on the Coinage of the Greeks and Romans , p. 20, 
seqq.) 

Pirene, a fountain near Corinth, on the route from 
the city to the harbour of Lechseum. According to 
the statement of Pausanias (2, 3), the fountain was of 
white marble, and the water issued from various arti¬ 
ficial caverns into one open basin. This fountain is 
celebrated by the ancient poets as being sacred to the 
Muses, and here Bellerophon is said to have seized 
the winged horse Pegasus, preparatory to his enter¬ 
prise against the Chirnaera. ( Rind., Olymp , 13, 85. 
— Eurip., Med., 67.— Id., Troad., 205.— Soph., Elec- 
f r., 475, &c.) The fountain was fabled to have de- 
ived its name from the nymph Pirene, who was said 
& have dissolved in tears at the death of her son Cen- 
threas, accidentally slain by Diana. ( Pausan ., /. c.) 

Pirithous, son >f Ixion and Dia, and one of the 
ihieftains (or, according to another account, the mon- 
trch) of the Lapithae. He is memorable in mytholog¬ 
ical narrative for his friendship with Theseus, which, 
though of a most intimate nature, originated never¬ 
theless in the midst of arms. The renown of Theseus 
having spread widely over Greece, Pirithous, it seems, 
became desirous of not only beholding him, but also 
6 T 


of witnessing his exploits, and he accordingly made 
an irruption into the plain of Marathon, and carried oh 
the herds of the King of Athens. Theseus, on re¬ 
ceiving information, went to repel the plunderers. 
The moment Pirithous beheld him, he was seized with 
secret admiration, and, stretching out his hand as a 
token of peace, exclaimed, “ Be judge thyself ! What 
satisfaction dost thou require!”—“ Thy friendship,” 
replied the Athenian ; and they thereupon swore eter¬ 
nal fidelity. Theseus and Pirithous were both present 
at the hunt of the Calydonian boar; and the former 
also took part ip the famous conflict between the Cen¬ 
taurs and Lapithae. The cause of this contest was as 
follows : Pirithous, having obtained the hand of Hip- 
podamia, daughter of Adrastus, king of Argos, the 
chiefs of his nation, the Lapithae, were all invited to 
the wedding, as were also the Centaurs, who dwelt in 
the neighbourhood of Pelion. Theseus, Nestor, and 
other strangers were likewise present. At the feast, 
Eurytion, one of the Centaurs, became intoxicated 
with the wine, and attempted to offer violence to the 
bride. A dreadful conflict thereupon arose, in which 
several of the Centaurs were slain, and they \yere final¬ 
ly driven from Pelion, and obliged to retire to other 
regions. ( Vid. Lapithas.) — Like faithful comrades, 
Theseus and Pirithous aided each other in every pro¬ 
ject, and, the death of Hippodamia having subsequent¬ 
ly left Pirithoiis free to form a new attachment, the 
two friends, equally ambitious in their love, resolved 
to possess each a daughter of the king of the gods. 
Theseus fixed his thoughts on Helen, then a child 
of but nine years. The friends planned the carrying 
her oft’, and succeeded. Placing her under the care 
of his mother JEthra, at Aphidnas, Theseus prepared 
to assist his friend in a bolder and more perilous at¬ 
tempt : for Pirithoiis resolved to venture on the daring 
deed, of carrying away from the palace of the monarch 
of the under-world his queen Proserpina. Theseus, 
though aware of the risk, would not abandon his friend. 
They descended together to the region of shadows; 
but Pluto, knowing their design, seized them, and pla¬ 
ced them upon an enchanted rock at the gate of his 
realms. Here they sat, unable to move, till Hercules, 
passing by in his descent for Cerberus, freed Theseus, 
having taken him by the hand and raised him up ; but 
when he would do the same for Pirithous, the earth 
quaked, and he left him. Pirithoiis therefore re 
mained everlastingly on the rock, in punishment of his 
audacious attempt. ( Apollod ., 1, 8, 2.— Id., 2, 5, 12. 
— Pint., Vit. Thes. — Hygin., fob., 14, 79, 155.— 
Virg., JEn., 7, 304.— Keightley's Mythology, p. 316, 
323, 392.) 

Pisa, an ancient city of Elis, giving name to the 
district of Pisatis, in which it was situated. Tradition 
assigned its foundation to Pisus, grandson of JEolus 
{Pausan., 6, 22); but, as no trace of it remains, its 
very existence was questioned in later ages, as we are 
informed by Strabo (35G), some affirming that there 
was only a fountain of the name, and that those writers 
who spoke of a city meant only to express the king¬ 
dom or principality of the Pisatas, originally composed 
of eight towns. Other authors, however, have ac¬ 
knowledged its existence ( Pind., 01., 2, 4.— Id., 01., 
10, 51); and Herodotus states that the distance from 
Pisa to Athens was 1485 stadia (2, 7). Its site was 
commonly supposed to be on a hill between two 
mountains, named Ossa and Olympus, and on the left 
bank of the Alpheus {Strabo, l. c.) ; but Pausanias 
could nowhere discover any vestiges of a town, the 
soil being entirely covered with vines. {Pausan., 1. c. 
— Plin., 4,5.— Schol. ad. Pind., Olymp., 10, 55.) It 
is generally agreed that the Pisatae were in possession 
of the temple of Olympia, and presided at the celebra¬ 
tion of the games from the earliest period of their in¬ 
stitution, till their rights were usurped by the Eleans 
and Heraclida3. They did not, however, tamely sub- 

1065 



P I s 


P I s 


mit to this injury on the part of their more powerful 
neighbours, and, having procured the assistance of 
Phidon, tyrant of Argos, Yecovered Olympia, where, in 
the eighth Olympiad, they again celebrated the festi¬ 
val ; but the Eleans, in their turn, obtaining succour 
frosn Sparta, defeated Phidon, and once more expelled 
the Pisatas from Olympia. ( Ephor ., ap. Strab., 358. 
— Pausan., 6, 22.) These, during the 34th Olym¬ 
piad, being at that time under the authority of Panta- 
leon, who had possessed himself of the sovereign pow¬ 
er, made another effort to regain their ancient prerog¬ 
ative, and, having succeeded in vanquishing their op¬ 
ponents, retained possession of the disputed ground 
for several years. The final struggle took place in the 
forty-eighth Olympiad, when the people of Pisa, as 
Pausanias affirms, supported by the Triphylians, and 
other neighbouring towns which had revolted from 
Elis, made war upon that state. The Eleans, how¬ 
ever, aided by Sparta, proved victorious, and put an 
end for ever to this contest by the destruction of Pisa 
and the other confederate towns. ( Pausan., 6, 22.— 
Strabo, 355.) According to the scholiast on Pindar, 
the city o[ Pisa was distant only six stadia from Olym¬ 
pic, in which case we might fix its site neai that of 
Mirar.ca, a little to the east of the celebrated spot now 
called Antilalla; but Pausanias evidently leads us to 
suppose it stood on the opposite bank of the river. 

( Cramer's Anc. Greece , vol. 3, p. 93, seqq.) 

PisiE (or Pisa, as it is sometimes written), a city of 
Etruria, on the river Arnus or Arno, about a league 
from its mouth. We learn from Strabo (222), that 
formerly it stood at the junction of the Ausar ( Serchio) 
and Arnus, but now they both flow into the sea by 
separate channels. The origin of Pis* is lost amid 
the fables to which the Trojan war gave rise, and which 
are common to so many Italian cities. If we are to 
believe a tradition recorded by Strabo ( l. c.), it owed 
its foundation to some of the followers of Nestor, in 
their wanderings after the fall of Troy. The poets 
have not failed to adopt this idea. ( Virg., JEn., 10, 
179.— Rutil., Itin., 1, 565.) Lycophron says it was 
taken by Tyrrhenus from the Ligurians (v. 1241). Ser- 
vius reports, that Cato had not been able to discov¬ 
er who occupied Pisae before the Tyrrheni under Tar- 
cho, with the exception of the Teutones, from which 
account it might be inferred that the most ancient 
possessors of Pis* were of northern origin. ( Serv. 
ad. JEn., 10, 179.) Dionysius of Halicarnassus names 
it among the towns occupied by the Pelasgi in the 
territory of the Siculi. The earliest mention we have 
of this city in Roman history is in Polybius (2, 16, and 
27), from whom we collect, as well as from Livy (21, 
39), that its harbour was much frequented by the Ro¬ 
mans, in their communication with Sardinia, Gaul, and 
Spain. It was here that Scipio landed his army when 
returning from the mouths of the Rhone to oppose 
Hannibal in Italy. It became a colony 572 A.U.C. 

( Liv., 41, 43.) Strabo speaks of it as having been 
formerly an important naval station : in his day it was 
still a very flourishing commercial town, from the sup¬ 
plies of timber which it furnished to the fleets, and the 
early marbles which the neighbouring quarries af¬ 
forded for the splendid palaces and villas of Rome. 
(Consult Plin., 3, 5.— Ptol., p. 64.) Its territory 
produced wine, and the species of wheat called siligo. 
(Plin., 14, 3.— Id., 18, 9.) The Portus Pisanus was 
at the mouth of the river, and is described by Rutilius. 
(Itin., 1, 531.— Cramer, Anc. It., vol. 1, p. 173.) The 
modern Pisa occupies the site of the ancient city. 

Pisander, I. an early Greek poet, born at Camirus, 
in the island of Rhodes, and supposed to have flour¬ 
ished about 650 B.C., although some made him earlier 
than Hesiod, and contemporary whth Eumolpus. He 
wrote a poem, entitled “ Heraclea,” on the labours 
and exploits of Hercules, of which frequent mention is 
made by the grammarians. The Alexandrean critics 
i-066 


assigned him a rank among epic poets after Homer, 
Hesiod, Panyasis, and Antimachus. We have an ep¬ 
igram in his praise, among those ascribed to Theocri¬ 
tus (ep. 20), and Strabo likewise mentions him among 
the eminent natives of Rhodes. (Strab., 655.— Id., 
688.— Compare Quintilian, 10, 1, 56.) Reiske has 
advanced the opinion, that the 24th and 25th Idyls 
of Theocritus are portions of the poem of Pisander. 
Both these Idyls, though of considerable length, are 
imperfect. One is entitled 'Hpa/c/Uovcof, “ The Young 
Hercules the other 'Hpa/cA^f A eovrotyovog, “ Hercu¬ 
les, the lion-slayer .” There is also an Idyl of Mos- 
chus, the 4th, entitled M eydpa, yvvrj HpauXcovg, 
“ Megara, wife of Hercules ,” which Reiske assigns 
to the same source with the two other pieces just 
mentioned. (Consult Harles, ad Theocrit., Id., 25.— 
Heyne, Excurs., 1, ad JEn , 2, p. 285.)—II. A Greek 
poet, born at Laranda, a city of Lycaonia, in Asia 
Minor, and who lived during the reign of Alexan¬ 
der Severus. He composed a long poem, entitled 
'UpuiKai Qeoyayiai, in which he sang of the nuptials 
of gods and heroes. The 16th book of this poem is 
cited, and Suidas calls the whole production a history 
varied after the epic manner. One of the interlocu¬ 
tors in the Saturnalia of Macrobius (5, 2) accuses Vir¬ 
gil of having translated from Pisander almost all the 
second book of the iEneid, and particularly the story 
of the wooden horse. It is evident that Macrobius re¬ 
fers in this to Pisander of Camirus ; but he is alto¬ 
gether wrong. We know, from the Chrestornathy of 
Proclus, that Virgil borrowed from Arctinus and Les- 
ches the history of the horse ; and, in fact, the later 
Pisander, who lived in the time of Severus, borrowed 
from Virgil himself. (Heyne, Excurs., 1> ad jEn., 2, 
p. 287.— Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 5, p. 381.)—III. 
An epigrammatic poet, supposed by Jacobs to be the 
same with the native of Camirus above mentioned. 
(Catal. Poet. Epigr., p. 939.) Heyne, however, 
thinks that he was identical with the younger Pisan¬ 
der. (Excurs., 1 , ad JEn., 2, p. 288.)—IV. An Athe¬ 
nian, one of the leaders of the oligarchical party, and 
instrumental in bringing about the establishment of 
the Council of Four Hundred. (Plut., Vit. Alcib.)— 
V. A Spartan admiral, in the time of Agesilaus, slain 
in a naval battle with Conon near Cnidus, B.C. 394 
(Corn. Nep , Vit. Con. — Justin, 6, 3.) 

Pisaurum, a city of Umbria, on the seacoast, below 
Ariminum, and near the river Pisaurus. Its origin is 
uncertain. It became a Roman colony A.U.C. 568 
(Liv., 39, 44), but whether it was colonized again by 
Julius Csesar or Augustus is uncertain. Inscriptions, 
however, give it the title of Col. Julia. 4 he climate 
of Pisaurum seems to have been in bad repute, accord¬ 
ing to the opinion of Catullus (81, 3). The modern 
name of the place is Pesaro. (Cramer's Anc. Italy , 
vol. 1, p. 256.) ...... 

Pisaurus, a river of Umbria, running into the Adri¬ 
atic near Pisaurum. Lucan (2, 406) writes the name 
Isaurus. (Consult Corte, ad loc.) The modern ap¬ 
pellation is la Foglia. 

Pisidia, a country of Asia Minor, bounded on the 
west and north by Phrygia, on the east by Isauna, and 
on the south by Pamphylia. It was a mountainous 
country, inhabited by a race of the same origin prob¬ 
ably as the rude inhabitants of Cicilia Trachea. 4 nej 
seldom paid obedience to the Persian kings ; and Al¬ 
exander the Great found them divided into a number 
of small independent republics. After the time of Al¬ 
exander, this country was frequently the lurking-placft 
of the inferior party. In the time of the Seleucid® 
sever al Pisidian dynasties arose on the frontiers of 
Phrygia : they enlarged their territories by conquest, 
so that several of the towns founded by the kings of 
Syria came to be called Pisidian cities, such as Anti- 
ochia, Laodicea, &c. In the time of the Romans, the. 
number of these states of freebooters seems to have 


\ 




PISIDIA. 


P 1 S 


irh-rensed, wV'^e in the interior the old republics, such 
as Termessus, Selge, and others, mere mountain-for¬ 
tresses, still remained unrepressed, so that it was very 
seldom any of the towns paid tribute to the mistress 
of the world. It is true that Augustus did subject 
the whole of Pisidia to the Roman empire, but it was 
only in name. Even the Goths could do nothing 
against it. History, therefore, does not recognise it 
as the province of any great kingdom.—The bound¬ 
ary-line between Pisidia and Pamphylia is a matter 
not very clearly ascertained. The following remarks 
of Rennell are worthy of a place here. “ The an¬ 
cients seem to have been agreed in the opinion that 
Pamphylia occupied the seacoast from Phaselis to 
Coracesium ; but the boundary between it and Pisidia 
appears not to have been decided. For instance, Ter¬ 
messus is said to be in Pamphylia by Livy (38, 15), 
and also by Ptolemy ; but Strabo places it in Pisidia, 
and Arrian calls it a colony of Pisidia. Livy and 
Ptolemy arrange Pamphylia and Pisidia as one coun¬ 
try, under the name of Pamphylia. The former, who 
describes in detail the history of the Roman wars there, 
and who may be supposed to have studied its geogra¬ 
phy, includes Pisidia, if not Isauria, in Pamphylia. 
For he says that part of Pamphylia lay on one side, 
and part on the other side of Taurus (38, 39). Now 
Pisidia is said by Strabo to occupy the summits of 
Taurus, between Sagalassus and Homonada, togeth¬ 
er with a number o-f cities, which he specifies, on both 
sides of Taurus, including even Antiochia of Pisidia. 
Livy, then, actually includes in Pamphylia the prov¬ 
ince described by Strabo as Pisidia, and appears to 
include Isauria also. At the same time, he admitted 
the existence of a province under the name of Pisidia ; 
for he repeatedly mentions it, and says that the people 
of Sagalassus are Pisidians. On the whole, therefore, 
one cannot doubt but that he regarded Pisidia as a 
province of Pamphylia. Ptolemy, as we have observ¬ 
ed, arranged Pamphylia and Pisidia together as one 
country ; or, rather, makes Pisidia a province of Pam¬ 
phylia, and subdivides it into Pisidia proper and Pi¬ 
sidia of Phrygia. He has also a province of Pam¬ 
phylia. In the distribution of the parts of Pamphylia 
at large, Ptolemy assigns to the province of that name 
the tract towards the sea, which includes Olbia, At- 
talea, and Side,,on the coast; Termessus, Selge, As- 
pendus, Perge, &c., more inland. And Pisidia con¬ 
tained the inland parts, extending beyond Taurus 
northward, and containing the cities of Baris, Ambla- 
da, Lysinoe, Cormasa, &c. Moreover, his Pisidia ex¬ 
tended to the neighbourhood of Celaenaa and Apamea 
Cibotus. Pliny is much too brief on the subject. It 
is only to be collected from him (5, 27), that the cap¬ 
ital of Pisidia was Antiochia ; and that the other prin¬ 
cipal cities were Sagalassus and Oroanda. That it 
was shut in by Lycaonia, and had for neighbours the 
people of Philomelium, Thymbrium, Peltee, &c. And, 
finally, that the state of Homonada, formed of close 
and deep valleys, within Taurus, had the mountains 
of Pisidia lying above it. From all this we may col¬ 
lect, that the Pisidia of Pliny extended along the north 
of Pamphylia and of Taurus, from the district of Sa¬ 
galassus westward, to that of Homonada eastward ; 
the latter being on the common frontiers of Lycaonia, 
Cilicia Trachea, and Pisidia. The Pisidia of Pliny, 
therefore, agrees with that of Ptolemy, and will be 
found to agree also with that of Strabo. Strabo (667) 
clearly distinguishes Pisidia and Pamphylia as two 
distinct countries : that is, Pamphylia as a maritime 
country, extending from Lycia to Cilicia Trachea, in 
length along the coast 640 stadia ; and Pisidia (p. 
569, seqq.) occupying the summits of Taurus, or, ra¬ 
ther, the whole base of that region, from Sagalassus 
and Termessus to Homonada ; and that it occupied 
certain tracts of land below Taurus on both sides. 
And besides the general extent given it by this de¬ 


scription, he classes so many places belonging to it as 
to prove that it has a great extent in point of breadth ; 
for Selge appears to have been at a great distance to 
the south of the main ridge, and Antiochia of Pisidia 
is from thirty to thirty-five miles to the north of it.” 
{Rennell's Geography of Western Asia, vol. 2, p. 71, 
seqq.) 

Pisistratidje, a patronymic appellation given to 
Hippias and Hipparchus, the sens of Pisistratus. 

Pisistratus, a celebrated Athenian, who obtained 
the tyranny at Athens. His family traced their de¬ 
scent from Peleus ; and Codrus, the last king of x4th- 
ens, belonged to the same house. ( Larcher , ad He¬ 
rod., 1, 59.) Herodotus relates, that Hippocrates, the 
father of Pisistratus, being present on one occasion at 
the Olympic games, met with a remarkable prodigy. 
According to the historian, he had just offered a sac¬ 
rifice, and the caldrons were standing near the altar, 
filled with pieces of the flesh of the victim and with 
water, when, on a sudden, these bubbled up without 
the agency of fire, and began to run over, Chilo, the 
Lacedaemonian, who happened to be present, and was 
a witness of what had taken place, advised Hippoc¬ 
rates not to marry, or, if he had already a wife, to re¬ 
pudiate her. His counsel, however, was disregarded, 
and Pisistratus was born to Hippocrates. {Herod., 1, 
59.)—Not long after the legislation of Solon had been 
established at Athens, and while the lawgiver himself 
was away in foreign lands, the state became again dis¬ 
tracted by contentions between the old parties of the 
Plain, the Coast, and the Llighlands. The first of 
these was headed by Lycurgus ; the second by Mega- 
cles, a grandson of the archon who brought the mem¬ 
orable stain and curse upon his house by the massacre 
of the adherents of Cylon; and the third by Pisistratus. 
Solon, therefore, on his return to Athens, found that 
faction had been actively labouring to pervert and undo 
his work. Fie had early detected the secret designs oi 
Pisistratus, and is said to have observed of him, that 
nothing but his ambition prevented him from displaying 
the highest qualities of a man and a citizen. But it 
was in vain that he endeavoured to avert the danger, 
which he saw threatened by the struggle of the factions, 
and in vain did he use all his influence to reconcile their 
chiefs. This was the more difficult, because the views 
of all were perhaps equally selfish, and none was so 
conscious of his own integrity as to rely on the pro¬ 
fessions of the others. Pisistratus is said to have lis¬ 
tened respectfully to Solon’s remonstrances ; but he 
waited only for an opportunity of exect ting his project. 
When his scheme appeared to be ript for action, he 
was one day drawn in a chariot into the public place, 
his own person and his mules disfigured with recent 
wounds, inflicted, as the sequel proved, by his own 
hand, which he showed to the multitude, while he told 
them that on his way into the country he had narrowly 
escaped a band of assassins, who had been employed 
to murder the friend of the people. While the indig¬ 
nation of the crowd was fresh, and from all sides as¬ 
surances were heard that they would defend him from 
his enemies, an assembly was called by his partisans, 
in which one of them, named Aristo, came forward 
with a motion, that a guard of fifty citizens, armed 
with clubs, should be decreed to protect the person of 
Pisistratus. Solon, the only man who ventured to 
oppose this proposition, warned the assembly of its 
pernicious consequences, but in vain. The body-guard 
was decreed ; and the people, who eagerly passed 
the decree, not keeping a jealous eye on the manner 
of its execution, Pisistratus took advantage of this to 
raise a force and make himself master of the citadel. 
Perhaps his partisans represented this as a necessary^ 
precaution, to guard it against the enemies of the 
people. Megacles and the Alcmseonidse left the city. 
Solon, after an ineffectual attempt to rouse his coun¬ 
trymen against the growing power which was making 




PISISTRATUS. 


PISISTRATUS. 


such rapid strides towards tyranny, is said to have 
taken down his arms, and laid them in the street be¬ 
fore his door, as a sign that he had made his last ef¬ 
fort in the cause of liberty and the laws. Lycurgus 
and his party seem to have submitted quietly for a 
time to the authority of Pisistratus, waiting, as the 
event showed, for a more favourable opportunity of 
overthrowing him. The usurper was satisfied with 
the substance of power, and endeavoured as much as 
possible to prevent his dominion from being seen and 
felt. He made no visible changes in the constitution, 
but suffered the ordinary magistrates to be appointed 
in the usual manner, the tribunals to retain their au¬ 
thority, and the laws to hold their course. In his own 
person he affected the demeanour of a private citizen, 
and displayed his submission to the laws by appearing 
before the Areopagus to answer a charge of murder, 
which, however, the accuser did not think fit to pros¬ 
ecute. He continued to show honour to Solon, to 
court his friendship, and ask his advice, which Solon 
did not think himself bound to withhold where it might 
be useful to his country, lest he should appear to sanc¬ 
tion the usurpation which he had denounced. He 
probably looked upon the government of Pisistratus, 
though at variance with the principles of his constitu¬ 
tion, as a less evil than would have ensued from the 
success of either of the other parties ; and even as 
good, so far as it prevented them from acquiring a 
similar preponderance. Solon died the year following 
that in which the revolution took place (B.C. 559), and 
Pisistratus soon after lost the power which he had 
usurped, the rival factions of Lycurgus and Megacles 
having united to overthrow him. But no sooner had 
these two parties accomplished their object, than they 
quarrelled among themselves, and, at the end of five 
years, Megacles, finding himself the weaker, made 
overtures of reconciliation to Pisistratus, and offered 
to bestow on him the hand of his daughter, and to as¬ 
sist him in recovering the station he had lost. The 
contract being concluded, the two leaders concerted 
a plan for executing the main condition, the restoration 
of Pisistratus. For this purpose Herodotus supposes 
them to have devised an artifice, which excites his as¬ 
tonishment at the simplicity of the people on whom it 
was practised, and which appears to him to degrade 
the national character of the Greeks, who, he observes, 
had of old been distinguished from the barbarians by 
their superior sagacity. Yet, in itself, the incident 
seems neither very extraordinary, nor a proof that the 
contrivers reckoned on an enormous measure of credu¬ 
lity in their countrymen. In one of the Attic villages 
they found a woman, Phya by name, of unusually high 
stature, and comely form and features. Having ar¬ 
rayed her in a complete suit of armour, and instructed 
her to maintain a carriage becoming the part she was 
to assume, they placed her in a chariot, and sent her¬ 
alds before her to the city, who proclaimed that Mi¬ 
nerva herself was bringing back Pisistratus to her own 
citadel, and exhorted the Athenians to receive the fa¬ 
vourite of the goddess. Pisistratus rode by the wom¬ 
an’s side. When they reached the city, the Atheni¬ 
ans, according to Herodotus, believing that they saw 
the goddess in person, adored her and received Pisis¬ 
tratus. This story would indeed be singular if we 
consider the expedient in the light of a stratagem, on 
which the confederates relied for overcoming the re¬ 
sistance which they might otherwise have expected 
from their adversaries. But it seems quite as proba¬ 
ble that the pageant was only designed to add extra¬ 
ordinary solemnity to the entrance of Pisistratus, and 
to suggest the reflection that it was by the especial 
/avour of Heaven he had been so unexpectedly re¬ 
stored. The new coalition must have rendered all re¬ 
sistance hopeless. As the procession passed, the pop¬ 
ulace no doubt gazed, some in awe, all in wonder; 
but there is no reason to think that the result would 
1068 


have been different if they had all seen through thb 
artifice. Pisistratus, restored to power, nominally 
performed his part of the compact by marrying the 
daughter of Megacles ; but it was soon discovered that 
he had no intention of really uniting his blood with a 
family which was commonly thought to be struck with 
an everlasting curse, and that he treated his young 
wife as one only in name. The Alcmaeonidae were 
indignant at the affront, and at the breach of faith, and 
once more determined to make common cause with 
the party of Lycurgus. Once more the balance in¬ 
clined against Pisistratus, and, unable to resist the 
combined force of his adversaries, he retired into exile 
to Eretria in Euboea. Here he deliberated with his 
sons Hippias, Hipparchus, and Thessalus, the offspring 
of a previous marriage, whether he should not aban¬ 
don all thoughts of returning to Attica. They appear 
to have been divided in their wishes or opinions ; but 
Hippias, the eldest, prevailed on his father again to 
make head against his enemies. He possessed lands 
on the river Strymon in Thrace, which yielded a large 
revenue, and his interest was strong in several Greek 
cities, especially at Thebes and Argos. He now ex¬ 
erted it to the utmost to gather contributions towards 
his projected enterprise, and by the end of ten years 
he had completed his preparations ; a body of merce¬ 
naries was brought to him from Argos, the Thebans 
distinguished themselves by the liberality of their sub¬ 
sidies, and Lygdamis, one of the most powerful men 
in the island of Naxos, came to his aid with all the 
troops and money he could raise. In the eleventh or 
twelfth year after his last expulsion, he set sail from 
Eretria, and landed on the plain of Marathon, to re¬ 
cover his sovereignty by open force. The govern¬ 
ment of his opponents was not popular, and Pisistra¬ 
tus had many friends in the country and in Athens, 
who, on his arrival, flocked to his camp. The result 
proved a fortunate one. The leaders of the hostile 
factions found themselves deserted eventually by all 
but their most zealous adherents, who, with them, 
abandoned the city, and left Pisistratus undisputed 
master of Athens. What he had so hardly won, he 
prepared to hold henceforth with a firmer grasp. He 
no longer relied on the affections of the common peo¬ 
ple, but took a body of foreign mercenaries into con¬ 
stant pay ; and seizing the children ,of some of the 
principal citizens, who had not made their escape, 
and whom he suspected of being ill-disposed towards 
him, he sent them to Naxos, which he had reduced 
under the power of his friend Lygdamis, to be kept, as 
hostages. Pisistratus appears to have maintained a 
considerable naval force, and to have extended the 
Athenian power abroad ; while at home he still pre¬ 
served the forms of Solon’s institutions, and courted 
popularity by munificent largesses, and by throwing 
open his gardens to the poorer citizens. ( Athenaus, 
12, p. 532.) At the same time he tightened the reins 
of government, and he appears to have made use of 
the authority of the Areopagus to maintain a rigorous 
police. He enforced Solon’s law, which required ev¬ 
ery citizen to give an account of his means of gaining 
a subsistence, and punished idleness ; and hence by 
some he was supposed to have been the author of it. 
It afforded him a pretext for removing from the city a 
great number of the poorer sort, who had no regular 
employment, and for compelling them to engage in 
rural occupations, in which, however, he assisted the 
indigent with his purse. The same policy prompted 
him, no less, perhaps, than his love for the arts, to adorn 
Athens with many useful or magnificent works. 
Among the latter was a temple of Apollo, and one 
dedicated to the Olympian Jove, of which he only lived 
to complete the substructions, and which remained 
unfinished for 700 years, exciting the wonder, and 
sometimes the despair, of posterity by the vastness of 
the design, in which it surpassed every other that the 




P I s 


PISO 


ancient wend ever raised in honour of the father of the 
gods. Among the monuments in which splendour and 
usefulness were equally combined, were the Lyceum, 
a garden at a short distance from Athens, sacred to the 
Lycian Apollo, where stately buildings, destined for 
the exercises of the Athenian youth, rose amid shady 
groves, which became one of the most celebrated 
haunts of philosophy; and the fountain of Callirrhoe, 
which, from the new channels in which Pisistratus dis¬ 
tributed its waters, was afterward called the fountain 
of the Nine Springs (’E vveanpovvoc;). To defray the 
expense of these and his other undertakings, he laid a 
tithe on the produce of the land: an impost which 
seems to have excited great discontent in the class af¬ 
fected by it, and, so far as it was applied to the pub¬ 
lic buildings, was, in fact, a tax on the rich for the em¬ 
ployment of the poor ; but which, if we might trust a 
late and obscure writer, was only revived by Pisistra¬ 
tus after the example of the ancient kings of Attica. 

( Diog . Laert., 1, 53.) He is also believed to have,, 
been the author of a wise and beneficent law, which 
Solon, however, is said to have suggested, for support¬ 
ing citizens disabled in war at the public expense. 
According to a tradition once very generally received, 
posterity has been indebted to him for a benefit greater 
than any which he conferred on his contemporaries, in 
the preservation of the Homeric poems, which till 
now had been scattered in unconnected rhapsodies. 
After every abatement that can be required in this 
story for misunderstanding and exaggeration, we can¬ 
not doubt that Pisistratus at least made a collection of 
the poet’s works, superior in extent and accuracy to 
all that had preceded it, and thus certainly diffused the 
knowledge of them more widely among his country¬ 
men, perhaps preserved something that might have 
been lost to future generations. In either case he 
might claim the same merit as a lover of literature : 
and this was not a taste which derived any part of its 
gratification from the vanity of exclusive possession. 
He is said to have been the first person in Greece who 
collected a library, and to have earned a still higher 
praise by the genuine liberality with which he im¬ 
parted its contents to the public. On the whole, 
though we cannot approve'of the steps by which he 
mounted to power, we must own that he made a 
princely use of it; and may believe that, though un¬ 
der his dynasty Athens could never have risen to the 
greatness she afterward attained, she was indebted to 
his rule for a season of repose, during which she gain¬ 
ed much of that strength which she finally unfolded. 
Pisistratus retained his sovereignty to the end of his 
life, and died at an advanced age, thirty-three years 
after his first usurpation, B.O. 527. He was succeed¬ 
ed by his sons, Hippias, Hipparchus, and Thessalus. 

1 'ThirlwalVs Greece, vol. 2, p. 55, seqq.) 

Piso, the name of a celebrated family at Rome, a 
branch of the Calpurnian gens, which house claimed 
descent from Calpus, the son of Numa Pompilius. The 
family of the Pisones had both a patrician and plebeian 
side.* The principal individuals of the name were : I. 
C. Calpurnius Piso, city praetor in 212 B.C., and who 
had the command of the Capitol and citadel when Han¬ 
nibal marched out against Rome. He was afterward 
sent into Etruria as commander of the Roman forces, 
and at a subsequent period had charge of Capua in 
Campania, after which his command in Etruria was 
renew r ed. ( Liv ., 25, 41.— Id,., 26, 10, 15, et 28.— Id., 
27, 6, &c.)—II. C. Calpurnius Piso, was prmtor B.C. 
187. He obtained Farther Spain for his province, 
where he signalized his valour, and, in conjunction 
with L. Quintius Crispinus, praetor of Hither Spain, 
gained a decisive victory over the revolted Spaniards. 
More than thirty thousand of the enemy fell in the bat¬ 
tle. On his return to Rome he obtained a triumph. 
He subsequently attained to the consulship (B.C. 180), 
in which office he died, having been poisoned, as was 


believed, by his wife Hostilia. (Liv., 39, 6 .--Id., 39,8 
et 21.— Id., 39, 30, seq. — Id., 40, 35.— Id., 40,37.)— 
III. L. Calpurnius Piso, surnamed Frugi, was tribune 
of the commons B.C. 149, and afterward twice consul 
(135 and 133 B.C.). Piso was one of the most re¬ 
markable men of the Roman state, from the union oi 
talents and virtues that marked his character. An able 
speaker, a learned lawyer, a sound statesman, anu a 
wise and valiant comn^tnder, he distinguished himself 
still more by his purity of morals, and by a frugality 
and old-Roman plainness of life which obtained for him 
the surname of Frugi. He quieted the troubles to 
which the revolt of the slaves had given rise in Sicily, 
and signalized his valour against the insurgents. Piso 
wrote memoirs or annals of his time, which, according 
to Cicero (Brut., 27), were composed in a very dry 
and lifeless manner, although A ulus Gelllus (11, 14) 
speaks of their “ simplicissima suavitas .” (Cic., de 
Orat., 2, 29. — Id., pro Font., 24. — Id., in Verr., 5, 
69. — Val. Max., 2, 7.— Id., 4, 3.— Le Clerc, Jour- 
naux chez les Remains, p. 26, 150.)—IV. L. Calpur¬ 
nius Piso, son of the preceding, inherited, if not the 
talents, at least the virtues, of his father. He was sent 
praetor into Spain, where he died soon after. (Cic., in 
Verr., 1, 35.— Id. ib., 3, 85, &c.)—V. C. Calpurnius 
Piso, was consul with Acilius Glabrio, 67 B.C., and 
signalized his magistracy by warmly defending the 
prerogatives of the consular office against the attacks 
of the commons and their tribunes. He was also the 
author of a law against bribery at elections. (Cic., 
pro Flacc., 75.— Val. Max., 3, 8.)—VI. A young Ro¬ 
man, whom indigence (the result of profligate habits) 
and a turbulent disposition induced to take part in 
the conspiracy cf Catiline. The leading men at Rome, 
anxious to get rid of g, troublesome and dangerous in¬ 
dividual, caused him to be sent as quaestor, with praetori¬ 
an powers, into Hither Spain. He was not long after 
assassinated in his province, (Sail., Cat., 18, seq.) — 
VII. C. Calpurnius Frugi, a descendant of the individ¬ 
ual mentioned above (No. III.), and son-in-law of Ci¬ 
cero. He was the first husband of Tullia, and is high¬ 
ly praised by Cicero for his virtues and his oratorical 
abilities. Piso exerted himself strenuously for the re¬ 
call of his father-in-law, but died a short time before 
this took place. (Cic., ad Q. post red., 3.— Id., Ep 
ad Fam., 14, 1.— Id., Brut., 78, &c.)—VIII. L. Cal¬ 
purnius Piso, father-in-law of Caesar, and consul B.C. 
58. Before attaining to this office he had been ac¬ 
cused of extortion, and only escaped condemnation 
through the influence of his son-in-law. Cicero was 
allied to Piso by marriage, and the latter had given 
him many marks of friendship and confidence; but Clo- 
dius eventually gained Piso over to his views, by prom¬ 
ising to obtain for him the province of Macedonia, and 
he accordingly joined the demagogue in his efforts to 
procure the banishment of Cicero, which event took 
place in Piso’s consulship. Having obtained the re¬ 
ward of his perfidy, he set out for his province ; but 
his whole conduct there was narked by debauchery, 
rapine, and cruelty. The senate recalled him, chiefly 
through the exertions of Cicero, who in this way aven¬ 
ged himself on Piso for his previous conduct. On 
Piso’s return, he had the hardihood to attack Cicero 
in open senate, and complain of the treatment he had 
received at his hands. He reproached him also with 
the disgrace of exile, with excessive vanity, and other 
weaknesses. Cicero replied, on the spot, in an invec¬ 
tive speech, the severest, perhaps, that ever fell from 
the lips of any man, in which the whole life and con¬ 
duct of Piso are portrayed in the darkest colours, 
and which must hand him down as a detestable char¬ 
acter- to all posterity. Notwithstanding this, how 
ever, Piso was afterward censor along with AppiuC 
Claudius (A.U.C. 702); and we find him, at a sub 
sequent period, appointed one of the three commis 
sioners who were sent by the senate to treat with An 
• 1069 



P I s 


PI T 


lony. Piso, in his outward deportment, if we behove 
the picture drawn of him by Cicero, affected the mien 
and garb of a philosopher; but this garb of rigid vir¬ 
tue covered a most lewd and vicious mind. ( Cic. in 
Pis. — Middleton's Life of Cicero.) —IX. L. Calpurni- 
us Piso, son of the preceding, inherited many of the 
vices of his father, but redeemed them, in some de¬ 
gree, by his talents. He was at first one of the warm¬ 
est opponents of the party of Caesar, and took an ac¬ 
tive part in the war in Africa. ( Hirt ., Bell. Af.) Af¬ 
ter the death of Caesar, he followed the fortunes of 
Brutus and Cassius, until the overthrow of the repub¬ 
lican forces. Being at length restored to his country, 
he refused all public offices, until Augustus prevailed 
upon him to accept the consulship. This was in A.U.C. 
731, Augustus himself being his colleague. He was 
afterward named governor of Pamphylia, and conduct¬ 
ed himself with great ability in his province. Having 
subsequently received orders to pass into Europe, in 
order to oppose the Bessi, a Thracian tribe, he gained 
a complete victory over them. He was appointed, 
after this, prefect of the city by Tiberius, whose fa¬ 
vour he is said to have gained by drinking with him 
for two days and two nights in succession. ( Plin., 
14, 28.) Piso appears to have been a man of pleas¬ 
ure, who passed his evenings at table, and slept till 
noon ; but he possessed such, capacity for business, that 
the remainder of the day sufficed for the despatch of 
those important affairs with which he was successive¬ 
ly intrusted by Augustus and Tiberius. It was to this 
individual and his two sons that the epistle of Horace, 
commonly called the “ Art of Poetry,” was addressed. 
( Sueton., Vit. Tib., 42.— Senec., Ep., 83.— Veil. Pa¬ 
tera., 2, 92.)—X. Cn. Calpurnius Piso, son of the pre¬ 
ceding, was a man of violent passions, impatient of 
control, and possessing much of the haughty spirit of 
his sire. To the pride derived from such a father he 
united the insolence of wealth, acquired by his mar¬ 
riage with Plancina, who, besides her high descent, 
possessed immoderate riches. Tiberius appointed him 
governor of Syria, and was said to have given him se¬ 
cret instructions to thwart the movements of Germani- 
cus. Plancina, in like manner, had her lesson from 
Livia, with full instructions to mortify, in every possi¬ 
ble way, the pride of Agrippina. These machinations 
proved but too successful. Germanicus was cut off, 
and Piso, accused of having poisoned him by both 
his widow Agrippina and the public voice, and finding 
himself deserted by all. even by the emperor, put an 
end to his existence, A.D. 20. (Tacit., Ann., 2, 43.— 
Id. 2, 55.— Id., 2, 69, seqq.) —XI. C. Calpurnius Piso, 
leader of the celebrated conspiracy against Nero. His 
eloquence and his amiable qualities had conciliated to 
such a degree the public esteem, that the majority of 
the conspirators intended him as the successor of the 
emperor. The plot was discovered on the very morn¬ 
ing of the day intended for its execution, and Piso, in¬ 
stead of at once adopting energetic measures, and at¬ 
tempting to seize upon the throne by open force, as 
his friends advised him to do, shut himself up in his 
mansion and opened his veins. (Tacit., Ann., 15,48, 
seqq )—XII. C. Piso Licinianus, adopted son of the 
Emperor Galba, made himself universally esteemed by 
his integrity, his disinterestedness, and by an austerity 
of manners that recalled the earlier days of Rome. 
He was put to death, by order of Otho, after the fall of 
Galba, at the age of 31 years. (Tacit., Hist., 1, 14. 
—Id. ib., 3, 68.— Id. ib., 4, 11, 40.) 

Pistor (Baker), a surname given to Jupiter by the 
Romans, because, when their city was taken by the 
Gauls, the god was believed to have inspired them 
with the idea of throwing down loaves from the^Tar- 
peian Hill where they were besieged, that the enemy 
might suppose that they were not in want of provisions, 
though, in reality, they were near surrendering through 
famine. This deceived the Gauls, and they soon 
1070 


after raised the siege. (Ovid, Fast., 6, 377, seqq.— 
Lactant., 1, 20.) 

Pistoria, a town of Etruria, northeast of Luca, f 
and at the foot of the Apennines. Pliny calls it , 
Pistorium (3, 5), but Ptolemy (p. 64) and others give 
it the appellation of Pistoria. The modern name is 
Pistoia. This town is memorable in the history of 
Rome as having witnessed in its vicinity the c bse of 
Catiline’s desperate but short career. (SaL., Cat., 
62.) The spot on which the action was fought is too 
imperfectly marked by the concise narrative of Sallust 
to be now recognised. We may conjecture that it 
was to the north of Pistoia , and near the modern road 
from that place to Modena. (Cramer's Anc. Greece , 
vol. 1, p. 177.) 

Pitane, a town of ^Eolis, in Asia Minor, to the 
northwest of the mouth of the river Ca’icus. Scylaj 
makes mention of it, and Strabo gives it two harbours. 
(Scylax, Penpl., p. 37.— Strab., 614.) The small 
river Evenus flowed near its walls. Herodotus names 
this place among the eleven cities of ^Eolis. (Man- 
nert, Gcogr., vol. 6, pt. 3, p. 398.) 

Pithecusa. Vid. JEnaria. 

Pitholeon, a foolish poet, the author of some silly 
epigrams, in which Greek and Latin expressions wert 
intermingled together. (Schol. ad Hor., Sat., 1, 10 
22.) Bentley thinks that the individual *to whom 
Horace refers was the same of whom Suetonius ( Vit. 
Jill., 75) makes mention, under the name of Pitholaus, 
as having been the author of some defamatory verses 
against Julius Caesar, and that Horace styles him Pi 
tholeon, because Pitholaus would have been unman 
ageable in hexameter verse. (Bentl. ad Moral, l. c.) 

Pittac us, - a native of Mytilene in Lesbos, and out 
of the so-called wise men of Greece, was born about 
650 B.C. Having obtained popularity among his 
countrymen by successfully opposing the tyrant Me 
lanchrus, he was intrusted with the command of a 
fleet, in a war with the Athenians concerning some 
territory which they had seized in the island. In the 
course of this war, the Athenian commander Phryno, 
a man of uncommon size and strength, challenged 
him to single combat. Providing himself with a net, 
which he concealed under 'his buckler, he took the first 
opportunity to throw it over the head of his antago¬ 
nist, and by this means gained an easy victory. (Diog. 
Laert., Vit. Pit. — Polyccn., 1, 25.) According to 
Strabo’s account, Pittacus came into the field armed 
with a casting-net, a trident, and a dagger (Strab., 
599), and it is said that from this stratagem of the Myt- 
llenean was borrowed the mode of fighting practised 
by the Roman gladiators called Retiarii. (Polyeen., 

1. c. — Festus, s. v. Retiarius ) From this time Pit¬ 
tacus was held in high esteem among the Mytileneans, 
and was intrusted with the supreme power in the state. 
(Aristot., Polit., 3, 15.— Diog. Laert., in Vit.) Among 
other valuable presents, his countrymen offered him 
as much of the lands which had been recovered from 
the Athenians as he chose ; but he only accepted of so 
much as he could measure by a single cast of a javelin: 
and one half of this small portion he afterward dedicated 
to Apollo, saying, concerning the remainder, that the 
half was better than the whole. (Pint., de Herod. 
Malign., p. 857. — Op., ed. Reiske, vol. 9, p. 265.— 
Hes., Op. et. D , 40.) Cornelius Nepos says, that the 
Mytileneans offered him many thousand acres, but that 
he took only a hundred. (Vit. Thrasyb., 4, 11.) 
Pittacus displayed great moderation in his treatment 
of his enemies, among whom one of the most violent 
was the poet Alcaeus, who frequently made him the 
object of his satire. Finding it necessary to lay se¬ 
vere restrictions- upon drunkenness, to which the Les¬ 
bians were particularly addicted, Pittacus passed a 
law which subjected offenders of this class to double 
punishment for any crime committed in a state of in¬ 
toxication. When he had established such regulations 



m the island as promised to secure its peace and 
prosperity, he voluntarily resigned his power, which 
he had held for ten years, and retired to private life. 
—The following maxims and precepts are ascribed to 
him. The first office of prudence is to foresee threat¬ 
ening misfortunes, and prevent them. Power discov¬ 
ers the man. Never talk of your schemes before they 
are executed, lest, if you fail to accomplish them, you 
be exposed to the double mortification of disappoint¬ 
ment and ridicule. Whatever you do, do it well. 
Do not that to your neighbour which you would take 
ill from him. Be watchful of opportunities. ( Diog. 
Laertin Vit. — Plut., Conviv. Sap .— Larchcr, ad 
Herod., 1, 27.— Enfield, Hist. Phil., vol. 1, p. 144.) 

Pittheus, a king of Troezene in Argolis, son of 
Pelops and Hippodamia. He gave his daughter HCthra 
in marriage to iEgeus, king of Athens, and brought 
up Theseus at his court. {Vid. Theseus.) He also 
reared Hippolytus, the son of Theseus. ( Eunp.,Hip - 
vol., 11.— Schol.,ad loc .) Pittheus was famed for his 
wisdom, and Pausanias ascribes to him a work on the 
art of speaking, given to the world by a native of Epi- 
daurus, and which he says he himself saw. He also 
states, that Pittheus taught this same art in a temple 
of the Muses at Troezene. The same writer likewise 
mentions the tomb of Pittheus, which was still seen 
in his day, and on which were three thrones or seats 
of white stone, on which the monarch and two assist- 
ints were accustomed to sit when dispensing justice. 
The whole story of this monarch, however, appears to 
be mythical in its character. ( Pausan., 2, 31.— Plut., 
Vit. Thes.) 

Pityonesus, a small island off the coast of Argolis. 
It lay opposite to Epidaurus, and was situate six miles 
from the coast, and seventeen from iEgina. ( Plin., 
4, 11.) . 

Pityusa, a small island off the coast of Argolis, 
near Aristera. The modern name is Tulea. {Plin., 
4, 12.) 

Pityus^e, a group of small islands in the Mediter¬ 
ranean, off the coast of Spain, and lying to the south¬ 
west of the Baleares. They derived their name from 
the number of pine-trees (ttltv q, a pine) which grew 
in them. The largest is Ebusus or Ivica , and next to 
it is Ophiusa or las Columbretes. {Mela, 2, 7.— 
Plin., 3, 5.) 

Placentia, a city of Gallia Cisalpina, at the con¬ 
fluence of .the Trebia and Padus. It is now Piacenza. 
This place was colonized by the Romans, with Cre¬ 
mona, A.U.C. 535, to serve as a bulwark against the 
Gauls, and to oppose the threatened approach of 
Hannibal. {Polyb., 3, 40.— Liv., 21, 25.— Veil. Pa- 
terc , 1, 14.) Its utility in this latter respect was fully 
proved, by its affording a secure retreat to the Roman 
general after the battle of Ticinus, and more especially 
after the disaster of Trebia. {Polyb., 3, 66.— Liv., 
21, 56.) Placentia withstood all the efforts of the 
victorious Hannibal, and also, eleven years after, the 
attempts which his brother Hasdrubal made to obtain 
possession of it. The resistance which it offered to 
the latter caused a delay that led to his overthrow, and 
thus eventually, perhaps, saved the empire. After the 
termination of the second Punic war, it was, however, 
taken and burned by the Gauls, headed by Hamilcar 
the Carthaginian {Liv., 31, 10), but soon after was re¬ 
stored by the consul Valerius, 557 A.U.C. {Liv., 34, 
21 ) Placentia had acquired the rights of a munici¬ 
pal city in Cicero's time. {Or. in Pis., 1.) Strabo 
speaks of it as a celebrated town (216), and Tacitus 
extols it as a powerful and opulent colony. {Hist., 2, 
17, seqq.) Its theatre, situate without the walls, was 
burned in the civil war between Otho and Vitellius. 
(Suet., Oth., 9.— Plin., 3, 15.— Cramer's Anc. Italy, 
voi. p. 79, seqq.) 

Pl flCiDiA, a daughter of Theodosius the Great, and 
sister to Arcadiu3 and Honorius. She resided most 


commonly at the court of the latter, and was present 
when Rome was first invested by the arms of Alanc, 
being then about twenty years of age. Placidia be¬ 
came a hostage in the hands of the victor, according 
to some a captive, and her personal attractions won 
for her the hand of Ataulphus or Adolphus, the brother 
in-law of Alaric, and king of the Visigoths. After tne 
death of Ataulphus, she married Constantius, and be¬ 
came the mother of Valentinian III. Having lost her 
second husband, she acted as guardian for her son, and 
reigned twenty-five years in his name, and the charac¬ 
ter of that unworthy emperor gradually countenanced 
the suspicion, that Placidia had enervated Ins youth 
by a dissolute education, and studiously diverted his 
attention from every manly and honourable pursuit. 
Amid the decay of military spirit, her armies were 
commanded by two generals, Aetius and Boniface, 
who may be deservedly named as the last of the Ro¬ 
mans. Placidia died at Rome, A.D. 450. She wa3 
buried at Ravenna, where her sepulchre, and even her 
corpse, seated in a chair of cypress wood, were pre¬ 
served for ages. {Ducange, Fam. Byzant., p. 72.— 
Tillemont, Hist., des Emp., vol. 5, p. 260, 386, &c.— 
Id. ib., vol. 6, p. 240.— ..Gibbon, Decline and Fall, c. 
31, 33, 35.) 

Planasia, a small island between Corsica and Uva, 
now Pianosa. Tacitus relates, that Augustus was 
persuaded by Livia to banish his nephew Agrippa 
Posthumus hither. {Ann., 1 , 3— Ibid. ,2, 39.) This 
island is also noticed by Strabo (123) and Ptolemy 
(p. 67). 

Plancina, granddaughter of L. Munatius Plancus, 
and wife of Piso, governor of Syria in the reign of 
Tiberius. {Vid. Piso X.) She was supposed to have 
been an accomplice with her husband in shortening 
the days of Germanicus, but was saved by the in¬ 
fluence of Livia, her protectress. As long as Piso, 
who had been put to his trial, had any hope of ac¬ 
quittal, her language was that of a woman willing to 
share all changes with her husband, and, if he was 
doomed to fall, determined to perish with him. But, 
when she had obtained safety for herself, she left him 
to his fate. At a later period, how r ever, she was about 
being proceeded against for her criminal conduct, 
when, in despair, she laid violent hands on herself, and 
suffered at last the slow but just reward of a flagitious 
life. {Tacit., Ann., 2, 43, 55, 75; 3, 9, 15; 6, 26.) 

Plancus, I. T. Bursa, a tribune of the commons, 
52 B.C. He took part in the troubles excited by the 
death of Clodius, and, on the expiration of his office, 
was accused and condemned, notwithstanding the in¬ 
terest made by Pompey in his behalf. {Cic., Ep. ad 
Fam., 2, 9.)—II. L. Munatius, a native of Tibur, was 
in early life a pupil of Cicero’s, and obtained consid¬ 
erable eminence in the oratorical art. He afterward 
commanded a legion under Caesar in Gaul. On the 
assassination of that individual, Plancus acted at first a 
very equivocal part, and frequently changed sides, at¬ 
taching himself successively to each party according as 
it became powerful. Thus we find him, after the vie 
tory at Mutina, affecting the utmost zeal for the cause oi 
Brutus and freedom ; and subsequently, when he saw 
Antony re-established in power, he went over to him 
with four legions which he had at the time under his 
command. He obtained upon this the consulship 
along with Lepidus, B.C. 42. Tired at last of Anto¬ 
ny, he sided with Octavius, who received him with 
the utmost cordiality. It was Plancus who proposed 
in the senate that the title of Augustus should be be¬ 
stowed on Octavius. The ancient writers reproach 
him, besides his political versatility, with a total forget¬ 
fulness on one occasion of all dignity and self-respect. 
This was at the court of Cleopatra, in Alexandrea, 
when he appeared on the public stage in the character 
of a sea-god, having his person painted green, and 
in a state of almost complete nudity ; wearing a crown 

1071 



PLA 


PLATJEA. 




ot reeds on his head, and with the tail of a fish attached 
to his body behind. Plancus, however, appears to 
have been a man of literary tastes, and we have an 
ode addressed to him by Horace on one occasion, 
when he had become suspected of disaffection by Au¬ 
gustus, and was meditating his departure from Italy. 
(Pint., Vit. Ant. — Veil. Paterc., 2, 63.— Herat , Od., 
1, 7, &c.) 

Planudes, Maximus, a Greek monk, commonly 
designated “ of Constantinople,” probably by reason 
of his having long resided there ; for he was, in fact, a 
native of Nicornedia. He was a man of great learn¬ 
ing and various acquirements, and flourished in the 
fourteenth century. In 1327, the Emperor Androni- 
cus Palaeologus sent him as ambassador to the Vene¬ 
tian republic. He is said to have been the first Greek 
"that made use of the Arabic numerals, as they are 
called. Planudes has given us, 1. A collection of 
Hdsopic fables, together with a very absurd life of the 
ancient fabulist himself; 2. An Anthology, selected 
from that of Constantine Cephalas ; 3. A poetical 
Eloge on Claudius Ptolemasus ; 4. Some grammatical 
works ; 5. A Greek translation of Cassar’s Commen¬ 
taries of the Gallic war; 6. A prose translation of the 
Metamorphoses and Hero'ides of Ovid ; 7. A transla¬ 
tion of the Disticha of Cato into Greek verse ; 8. 
Various unedited works. ( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 
1, p. 252.) 

Plat^a (gen. -cc) and Plat^eje (gen. -arum), a 
town of Boeotia, of very ancient date, situate at the foot 
of Mount Cithseron, and near the river Asopus, which 
divided its territory from that of Thebes. ( Strabo, 
412.) Homer writes the name in the singular (IlAd- 
rata), but the historians use the plural (JI Xaraial). 
The Plataeans, animated by a spirit of independence, 
had early separated themselves from the Boeotian con¬ 
federacy, conceiving the objects of this political union 
to be hostile to their real interests ; and had, in con¬ 
sequence of the enmity of the latter city, been induced 
to place themselves under the protection of Athens. 
{Herod., 6, 108.) Grateful for the services which 
they received on this occasion from that power, they 
testified their zeal in its behalf by sending a thousand 
soldiers to Marathon, who thus shared the glory of 
that memorable day. {Herod., 1. c.) The Plataeans 
also manned some of the Athenian vessels at Artemi- 
sium, and fought in several battles which took place 
off that promontory; though not at Salamis, as they 
had returned to their homes after the Greeks withdrew 
from the Euripus, in order to place their families and 
valuables in safety, and could not, therefore, arrive in 
time. {Herod., 8,45.) They also fought most brave¬ 
ly in the great battle which took place near their city 
against Mardonius the Persian general, and earned the 
thanks of Pausanias and the confederate Greek com¬ 
manders for their gallant conduct on this as well as 
other occasions. {Herod., 9, 28. — Thucyd., 3, 53, 
seqq.) But it is asserted by Demosthenes that they 
afterward incurred the hatred of the Lacedemonians, 
and more especially of their kings, for having caused 
the inscription set up by Pausanias, in commemora¬ 
tion of the victory over the Persians, to be altered. 
[In Noser., p. 1378.) Plataea, which was afterward 
burned by the army of Xerxes {Herod., 8, 50), was soon 
restored with the assistance of Athens, and the alli¬ 
ance between the two cities was cemented more closely 
than before. The attack made upon Plataea by a party 
of Thebans at night was the first act of aggression com¬ 
mitted on the Peloponnesian side in the war which 
took place not long after. The enterprise failed. 
{Thucyd., 2, l, seqq.) The natural enmity of Thebes 
against this little republic was now raised to its height 
by this defeat, and pressing solicitations were made 
to the Spartan government to assist in taking signal 
vengeance on the Plataeans for their adherence to the 
Athenian interests. Accordingly, in the third year of 
1072 


the war, a large Peloponnesian force, under Archui*- 
mus, king of Sparta, arrived under the walls of Pla¬ 
taea, and, having summoned the inhabitants to aban¬ 
don their alliance with Athens, proceeded, on theii 
refusal, to lay siege to the town. The narrative of 
these operations, and the heroic defence of the Platse- 
ans, the circumvallation and blockade of the city by 
the enemy, with the daring and successful escape of a 
part of the garrison, are given with the greatest detail 
by Thucydides, and certainly form one of the most in¬ 
teresting portions of his history. {Thucyd., 2, 71, 
seqq. — Id., 3, 20, seqq.) Worn out at length by hun¬ 
ger and fatigue, those Plataeans who remained in the 
town were compelled to yield to their persevering and 
relentless foes, who, instigated by the implacable re¬ 
sentment of the Thebans, caused all who surrendered 
to be put to death, and razed the town to the ground, 
with the exception of one building, constructed out of 
the ruins of the city, which they consecrated to Juno, 
and employed as a house of reception for travellers 
From Pausanias we learn, that Platasa was again re¬ 
stored after the peace of Antalcidas ; but when the 
Spartans seized on the Cadmean citadel, the Thebans, 
suspecting that the Plataeans were privy to the enter¬ 
prise, took possession of the town by stratagem, and 
once more levelled its foundations to the ground (9, 
1). Though it seems to have been the intention of 
Philip, and also of Alexander, to restore Plataea {Ar¬ 
rian, 1, 9. — Plat., Vit. Alex., c. 34), this was not 
carried into effect till the reign of Cassander, who is 
said to have rebuilt both Thebes and Plataea at the 
same time. ( Pausan., 9, 3.) Dicaearchus, who lived 
about that period, represents the town as still existing, 
when he says, “ The inhabitants of Plataea have no¬ 
thing to say for themselves, except that they are col¬ 
onists of Athens, and that the battle between the Per¬ 
sians and the Greeks took place near their town.” 

( Stat., Groce., p. 14.) — The ruins of Plataea, accord¬ 
ing to Dr. Clarke, are situated upon a promontory 
projecting from the base of Cithseron.—The place has 
now the usual appellation bestowed upon the ruins of 
Grecian citadels; it is called Paloco Castro. The 
walls are of the earliest kind of military structure, 
consisting of very considerable masses, evenly hewn, 
and well built. {Clarke's Travels, vol. 7, p. 106, 
Lond. ed.) — The walls of Plataea, according to Sir 
,W. Gell, may be traced near the little village of 
Kockla in their circuit. The whole forms a triangle, 
having a citadel of the same form in the southern an¬ 
gle, with a gate towards the mountain at the point. 
The northwestern angle seems to have been the por¬ 
tion which was restored after the destruction of the 
city. The north side is about 1025 yards in length, 
the west '1154, and the east 1120. It is about six ge¬ 
ographical miles from the Cadmeia of Thebes {Itin., 
p. 111.-— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 212, seqq.) 
—As the battle of Platasa, between the Greeks and 
Persians, forms so important a feature in their history, 
some account of it may be here appended.—Mardonius, 
being informed by the Argives, who were secretly in 
his interest, that the Lacedaemonians were in motion, 
withdrew his army into Boeotia, for the sake of enga¬ 
ging near the friendly city of Thebes, and in a more 
level country, and, therefore, more favourable to his 
cavalry. Before leaving Athens he burned and demol¬ 
ished what remained of the city. The Athenians 
crossed from Salamis, and the confederate army being 
assembled at Eleusis, advanced to Erythrae, on the bor¬ 
der of Boeotia, where it took up a position on the roots 
of Mount Cithseron. The heavy-armed troops of the 
Grecian army amounted to 38,700, of whom the Lace- 
dsemonians contributed 10,000. Of these 5000 were 
Spartans, from the city, each of whom was attended by 
seven light-armed Helots. In the rest of the army it 
is computed that to each heavy-armed soldier there 
was one light-armed attendant. Besides, there weio 





PLATJ3A. 


PL A 


1800 light-armed Thespians, the remaining strength of 
that little state, all its heavy-armed, troops having fallen 
at Thermopylae, and those who remained being proba¬ 
bly the poorer citizens, who were unable to purchase 
the full armour, or to maintain themselves in distant 
warfare. With these the entire numbers were nearly 
110,000. The army was led by Pausanias, the Spar¬ 
tan commander, who was cousin and guardian to the 
minor-king Pleistarchus, the son of Leonidas. The 
Athenian force of 8000 heavy-armed men was led by 
Aristides. Mardonius’s army consisted of 300,000 
Asiatics and about 50,000 Macedonian and Greek aux¬ 
iliaries.—The first attack was made by the Persian 
cavalry, who, continually riding up in small parties, 
discharged their arrows and retired, annoying the 
Greeks without any retaliation. The Megarians being 
placed in the most exposed part of the line, sent to 
Pausanias to say that they could no longer maintain 
their ground, and a picked band of 300 Athenians vol¬ 
unteered to relieve them. They took with them some 
archers, a service which the Athenians cultivated with 
an attention and success unusual in Greece; and soon 
after their arrival, Masistius, the general of the Per¬ 
sian cavalry, his horse being wounded with an arrow, 
was dismounted and killed. All the horse now ma¬ 
king a desperate charge, forced back the 300, till the 
rest coming up to support the Athenians, they were 
repulsed with great slaughter. The army was encour¬ 
aged by this success, but its present position was in¬ 
convenient, particularly for want of water, and it was 
resolved to move into the territory of Platsea. A dis¬ 
pute arose between the Athenians and the Tegeans 
f or the post of honour at the extremity of the left wing ; 
but it was prevented from proceeding to extremity by 
the wise moderation of the Athenian commanders, 
who, still maintaining their claim of right, professed 
themselves willing, nevertheless, to take their place 
wherever the Lacedemonians might appoint. The 
Lacedemonians decided in their favour, placing them 
at the extremity of the left wing, and the Tegeans in 
the right, next to themselves.—Mardonius now drew 
up his army according to the advice of the Thebans, 
opposing the Persians to the Lacedemonians and Te¬ 
geans, the Boeotians and other Greeks in his service 
to the Athenians, and to the other bodies that occu¬ 
pied the centre the Medes and the rest of the Asiatics. 
The soothsayers on each side predicted success to the 
party which received the attack ; in compliance, prob¬ 
ably, with the policy of the commanders, each of whom, 
being posted on ground advantageous to himself, was 
unwilling to leave it and enter on that which had been 
chosen by his adversary. Ten days were spent in in¬ 
action, except that the Persian horse were harassing 
the Greeks, and, latterly, intercepting their convoys; 
but, on the eleventh, Mardonius, growing impatient, 
called a council of war, and resolved, against the opin¬ 
ion of Artabazus, to attack the Greeks on the follow¬ 
ing day. The same night Alexander the Macedonian, 
riding alone and secretly to the Athenian encampment, 
asked to speak to the commanders, and gave them 
notice of the resolution taken —Pausanias, being in¬ 
formed of this by the Athenian generals, proposed a 
change in the order of battle, by which the Athenians 
should be opposed to the Persians, of whose mode of 
fighting they alone had experience, while in their place 
the Lacedaemonians should act against the Boeotian 
arid other Grecian auxiliaries. The Athenians readily 
consented, and the troops began to move while the 
morn was breaking ; but Mardonius made a counter- 
movement of his Greek and Persian troops, and the 
Lacedaemonians desisted from their purpose when they 
saw that it was known. Mardonius sent a herald to 
reproach them with their fear, and then commenced 
the action with his horse, who harassed the Greeks 
severely, and filled up the spring from which their wa¬ 
ter had been supplied. The Greeks now suffered 
6 U 


both from the attacks of the cavalry, and from tin 
want of water and food, their convoys being cut off; 
and it was resolved to proceed at night to a position 
nearer Plataja, where water abounded, and the ground 
was less favourable to horse. Accordingly, in the 
night the army was jnoved ; but the Greeks of the cen¬ 
tre had been so disheartened by the attacks of the cav¬ 
alry, that, instead of taking up the appointed position, 
they fled to the city of Platsea. There remained 06 
the one wing the Lacedaemonians (10,000 heavy-arm¬ 
ed) and the Tegeans (1500); on the other, the Athe¬ 
nians (8000), with the Platseans (600), who always ac¬ 
companied them, and who had carried their zeal so far, 
that, though an inland people, they helped to man the 
Athenian ships at Artemisium. Including the light¬ 
armed, those who stood their ground were, of the La¬ 
cedaemonians and Tegeans 53,000, of the Athenians 
and Platseans about 17,200. The march of the Lace¬ 
daemonians and Tegeans was delayed by the obstinacy 
of Amompharetus, a Spartan officer, who, viewing the 
intended movement as a flight, long refused to join in 
it. The day was dawning, and the Lacedaemonians, 
through fear of the horse, proceeded over the roots of 
CithaDron. The Athenians, who had waited for the 
movement of the allies, went by the plain. Mardoni¬ 
us, on seeing the Greeks, as it seemed, retreating, 
was filled with exultation, and immediately led the 
Persians after them, while the other Asiatics followed 
tumultuously, thinking the day won. The Lacedae¬ 
monians, on the approach of the cavalry, sent to the 
Athenians for assistance, begging that, if they were 
unable to come, they would at least send the archers; 
but the Athenians, when preparing to comply with the 
summons, were prevented by the attack of the Greeks 
in the Persian service.—The battle was joined on both 
sides. The Persians fought with great bravery ; but 
neither bravery nor vast superiority in numbers could 
compensate for their inferiority in arms and discipline, 
and they were at length defeated with great slaughter, 
Mardonius being killed. The other Asiatics fled im¬ 
mediately, when they saw the Persians broken. Of 
the Grecian auxiliaries opposed to the Athenians, 
many were slack in their exertions, as not being hear¬ 
ty in the cause ; but the Boeotians, who formed the 
strongest body, were zealous for the success of Mar¬ 
donius, and they fought long and hard before they 
were defeated. The Boeotians fled towards Thebes, 
the Asiatics to their intrenched camp, their flight be¬ 
ing in some degree protected by the Asiatic and Boeo¬ 
tian cavalry. On hearing that their friends were vic¬ 
torious, the Greeks of the centre returned in haste and 
disorder to the field; and the Megarians and Phliasians, 
going by the plain, were charged and broken with con 
siderable loss by some Theban horse.—The fugitives 
who escaped into the camp were in time to close the 
gates and man the walls against the Lacedaemonians 
and Tegeans ; and, the assailants being unskilled in 
the attack of fortifications, they made a successful de¬ 
fence till the arrival of the Athenians, who went about 
the work more skilfully, and soon gained entrance. 
The passions of the Greeks were inflamed to the ut¬ 
most by long distress and danger, and no mercy was 
shown. Of the 300,000 men who were left with Mar¬ 
donius, 40,000 had been led from the field by Artaba¬ 
zus when it first became evident that the Persians 
were losing the battle ; but of the others not 3000 are 
said to have survived the battle and the subsequent 
massacre. {Herod., 9, 25, seqq. — Libr. Us. Knowl., 
Hist.. Greece , p. 40, seqq.) 

Plato, I. a celebrated philosopher, by descent ar 
Athenian, but the place of whose birth was the islam 
of iEgina, where his father, Aristo, resided after that 
island became subject to Athens. His origin is traced 
back, on his father’s side, to Codrus, and on that of 
his mother, Perictione, through five generations, to So 
Ion. (Proclus , ad Timceum , p. 25.) The time oi 

1073 




PLATO. 


PLATO. 


hrs birth is commonly placed in the first year of the 
88th Olympiad (B.C. 428), but, perhaps, maybe more 
accurately fixed in 13.0. 429. (Clinton,I'ast. Hcllen., 
p. 63.) Fable has made Apollo his father, and has 
said that he was born of a virgin. ( Pint., Sympos., 

8, 1.— Ilieron., adv. Jov. Op., vol.4, p. 186, ed. Par.) 
He was originally named Aristocles, from his grand¬ 
father, and he received that of Plato (IIA cltuv) from 
either the breadth of his shoulders or of his forehead, 
the appellation being derived from irTiarug, “ broad.” 
This latter name is thought to have been given him 
in early youth. ( Diog . Laert., 3, 4.— Senec., Ep., 
58.— Apuleius, de dogm. Plat. — Op., ed. Oudend., 
vol. 2, p. 180.) Plutarch relates that, he was hump¬ 
backed, but this, perhaps, was not a natural defect; 
it may have first appeared late in life, as a result of 
his severe studies. (Plut., de Audi end. Poet., 26,53.) 
Other ancient writers, on the contrary, speak in high 
terms of his manly and noble mien. The only authen¬ 
tic bust that we have of him is at present in the gal¬ 
lery at Florence. It was discovered near Athens in 
the 15th century, and purchased by Lorenzo de Medi¬ 
ci. In this bust, the forehead of the philosopher is 
remarkably large. ( Visconti, Icon. Gr., vol. 1, p. 172, 
ed. 4to.)—Plato first learned grammar, that is, reading 
and writing, from Dionysius. In gymnastics, Ariston 
was his teacher ; and he excelled so much in these 
physical exercises, that he went, as is said, into a pub¬ 
lic contest at the Isthmian and Pythian games. (Di¬ 
og. Laert., 3,4. — Apul., p. 184.— Olympiad., Vit. 
Plat.) He studied painting and music under the tui¬ 
tion of Draco, a scholar of Damon, and Metellus of 
Agrigentum. But his favourite employment in his 
youthful years was poetry. The lively fancy and pow¬ 
erful style which his philosophical writings so amply 
display, must naturally have impelled him, at an early 
period of life, to make some attempts at composition, 
which wore assuredly not without influence on the 
beautiful form of his later works. After he had made 
use of the instruction of the most eminent teachers of 
poetry in all its forms, he proceeded to make an essay 
himself in heroic verse ; but when he compared his 
production with the masterpieces of Homer, he con¬ 
signed it to the flames. He next tried lyric poetry, 
but with no better success ; and finally turned his at¬ 
tention to dramatic composition. He elaborated four 
pieces, or a tetralogy, consisting of three separate tra¬ 
gedies and one Satyric drama; but an accident in¬ 
duced him to quit for ever this career, to which he was 
not probably destined. A short time before the fes¬ 
tival of Bacchus, when his pieces were to be brought 
upon the stage, he happened to hear Socrates conver¬ 
sing, and was so captivated by the charms of his man¬ 
ners as from that moment to abandon poetry, and ap¬ 
ply himself earnestly to the study of philosophy. 
(. Milan, Var. IList., 10, 21, seqq. — Val. Max., 1, 6. 
— Plin., 11, 29.) But, though Plato abandoned his po¬ 
etic attempts, yet he still attended to the reading of the 
poets, particularly Homer, Aristophanes, and Sophron, 
as his favourite occupation ( Olympiod., Vit. Plat.)-, 
and he appears to have derived from them, in part, the 
dramatic arrangement of his dialogues. It was then 
customary for young men who were preparing for the 
polite world, or to distinguish themselves in any man¬ 
ner, to attend a course in philosophy. Plato had al¬ 
ready heard the instructions of Cratylus, a disciple of 
the school of Heraclitus. (Aristot., Metaphys., 1, 6. 
— Apul., p. 185.) When Diogenes, Olympiodorus, and 
other writers assert that he did not become a scholar 
of Cratylus till after the death of Socrates, they give 
less credit to Aristotle and Apuleius than they deserve; 
the former a contemporary, the latter drawing his in¬ 
formation from Speusippus. ( Tennemann's Life of 
Plato, Edwards's transl., p. 316, sea.) Plato was 20 
years of age when he became acquainted with Socra¬ 
tes, and he continued a stated disciple of that philos- 
1074 


opher for the space of eight years, until the death o? 
the latter. During all this period, Socrates regarded 
him as one of his most faithful pupils. Light aa 
must have been the task of education in respect to the 
mind, since Plato was quite teachable, and, in addi¬ 
tion to his eminent talents, possessed of great suscep¬ 
tibility for moral studies, still, on the other hand, i 
was difficult for Socrates to satisfy the aspiring aid 
inquisitive spirit of his pupil. In all his conversations, 
he started questions, raised doubts, and always de¬ 
manded new reasons, without allowing himself to be 
satisfied with those already given. (Vit. Plat., 13.— 
Bibliothek der Alien Lit.) This liveliness and activ¬ 
ity of mind could not render Sccrates displeased with 
his manner of thinking : so little, indeed, was this the 
case, that Plato already, in the lifetime of Socrates, 
wrote dialogues, in which he introduced his teacher as 
the principal person, and carried on the discussions in 
a method that was not entirely his own. Many wri 
ters think they have discovered that Socrates was by 
no means satisfied with the course of Plato, in falsely 
imputing to him so many things which he had nevei 
said. But they can adduce no satisfactory ground oi 
competent testimony for their conclusion. The single 
thing to which they appeal can prove nothing for them, 
because it is ambiguous. It is said, that when Plato 
brought forward his Lysis in the presence of Socrates, 
the latter exclaimed, “ By Hercules ! how many things 
does the young man falsely report of me !” (Diog. 
Laert., 3, 35.) The more probable opinion, however, 
is, that the story is incorrectly related, and that Socra¬ 
tes merely alluded to the rich and figurative style of 
Plato, as contrasted with his own simple manner of 
expression. (Tcnnemann, Life of Plato, Edxo. trans., 
p. 324.) Plato always cherished a deep affection and 
esteem for his master, and, when the latter was brought 
to trial, undertook to plead his cause; but the partiali¬ 
ty and violence of the judges would not permit him to 
proceed. After the condemnation, he presented his 
master with money sufficient to redeem his life, which, 
however, Socrates refused to accept. During his im¬ 
prisonment Plato attended him, and was present at a 
conversation which he held with his friends concern¬ 
ing the immortality of the soul, the substance, of which 
he afterward committed to writing in the beautiful di¬ 
alogue entitled Phaedo, not, however, without inter¬ 
weaving his own opinions and language. (Compare 
Cicero, de Nat. Deor., 3, 33.) Upon the death of hit 
master he withdrew, with several other friends of Soc¬ 
rates, to Megara, where they were hospitably enter¬ 
tained by Euclid, and remained till the ferment a, 
Athens subsided. Brucker says, that Plato receive* 
instruction in dialectics from Euclid. (Hist. Crit. 
Philos., vol. 1, p. 611, 633.) But no other writer has 
any reference to it.. It is rather probable that both, in 
their philosophical conversations, sought to enrich and 
to settle each other’s knowledge. Hence Cicero re¬ 
lates, that the Megarean philosopher drew many of his 
opinions from Plato. (Academ. Qucest., 4, 42.) De¬ 
sirous of making himself master of all the wisdom and 
learning which the age could furnish, Plato, after this, 
travelled into every country which was so far enlight 
ened as to promise him any recompense of his labour. 
He first visited that part of Magna Grmcia where a 
celebrated school of philosophy had been established 
by Pythagoras. According to Cicero, Quintilian, and 
Valerius Maximus, the particular object of this visit 
was to enrich his theoretical knowledge ; but, accord¬ 
ing to Apuleius, it was with more especial reference 
to^moral improvement. It is commonly believed that 
Plato became formally a scholar of the Pythagoreans, 
and many persons are expressly named as his teachers 
in the doctrines of that sect of philosophy. But this 
multitude of teachers is of itself sufficient to excite 
suspicion ; and, besides, Plato must then have been 
at least thirty years old, and was undoubtedly ac 





PLATO. 


PLATO. 


quainted with the Pythagorean system long previous 
to his Italian voyage. How k iig Plato remained in 
Italy cannot be determined, sine*; all the accounts rel¬ 
ative to this point are deficient. But so much is cer¬ 
tain, that he did not leave thio country before he had 
gained the entire friendship of the principal Pythago¬ 
reans, of which they subsequently gave most unequiv¬ 
ocal proofs. From Italy Plato went to Cyrene, a cel¬ 
ebrated Grsek colony in Africa. It is not certain 
whether he visited Sicily in passing. According to 
Apuleius, the object of Ins journey was to learn math¬ 
ematics of Theodorus. This mathematician, whose 
fame, perhaps, surpassed his knowledge, had given in¬ 
struction to the young in Athens in this branch of sci¬ 
ence ; and Plato, in all probability, merely wished now 
to complete his knowledge on this subject. ( Tenne■ 
tnunn's Life of Plato , Edw. tr., p 336.) From Cy¬ 
rene he proceeded to Egypt, and, in order to travel 
with more safety upon, his journey to the last-named 
country, he assumed the character of a merchant., and, 
as a seller of oil, passed through the kingdom of Ar- 
taxerxes Mnemon. Wherever he came, he obtained 
information from the Egyptian priests concerning their 
astronomical observations and calculations. It has 
been asserted that it was in Egypt that Plato acquired 
nis opinions concerning the origin of the world, and 
learned the doctrines of transmigration and the-immor¬ 
tality of the soul; but it is more than probable that 
he learned the latter doctrine from Socrates, and the 
former from the school of Pythagoras. It is not like¬ 
ly that Plato, in the habit of a merchant, could have 
obtained access to the sacred mysteries of Egypt; for, 
in the case of Pythagoras, the Egyptian priests were 
so unwilling to communicate their secrets to stran¬ 
gers, that even a royal mandate was scarcely, sufficient 
in a single instance to procure this indulgence. Little 
regard is therefore due to the opinions of those who 
assert that Plato derived his system of philosophy from 
the Egyptians. ( Iamblich , Myst JEg-, 1, 2, p. 3.) 
That Plato’s stay in Egypt extended to a period of 
thirteen years, as some maintain, or even three years, as 
others state, is highly incredible ; especially as there is 
no trace in his works of Egyptian research. All that 
he tells us of Egypt indicates at most a very scanty 
acquaintance with the subject ; and, although he prais¬ 
es the industry of the priests, his estimate of their 
scientific attainments is far from favourable. (Repub., 
4, p. 435.) Nor is there a better foundation for sup¬ 
posing that, during his residence in Egypt, Plato be¬ 
came acquainted with the doctrine of the Hebrews, 
and enriched his system with spoils from their sacred 
books. ( Huet , Dem. Pr., 4, 2, f) 15.— Gale's Court 
of the Gentiles.) This opinion has, it is true, been 
maintained by several Jewish and Christian writers, 
but it has little foundation beyond mere conjecture ; 
and it is not difficult to perceive that it originated in 
that injudicious zeal for the honour of revelation, which 
led these writers to make the Hebrew scriptures or 
traditions the source of all Gentile wisdom. After 
his Egyptian travels Plato came to Sicily, and visited 
Syracuse when he was about forty years of age, in the 
eightv-ninth Olympiad, and in the reign of Dionysius 
the Elder. According to the statement of all the wri¬ 
ters who make mention of this tour, his only object 
was to see the volcano of Etna ; but, from the seventh 
letter ascribed to him, it would seem that higher ob¬ 
jects engaged his attention, and that his wish was to 
study the character of the inhabitants, their institu¬ 
tions and laws. At the court of Dionysius Plato be¬ 
came acquainted with Dio, the brother-in-law of the 
tyrant, and Dio endeavoured to produce an influence 
upon the mind of Dionysius by the conversation of 
Plato. But the attempt failed, and had nearly cost 
the philosopher his life. Dionysius was highly in¬ 
censed at the result of an argument in which he was 
worsted by Plato, who took occasion also to advance 


in the course of it some bold and unpalatable truths, 
and, in the first heat of his passion, he would almost 
have punished the hardihood of the philosopher with 
death, unless Dio and Aristomenes had together re¬ 
strained him from it. They conceived, therefore, that 
Plato could no longer stay at Syracuse without hazard, 
and accordingly secured a passage for him in a ship 
which was about to carry home Polis, a Lacedannonian 
ambassador, or, according to Olympiodorus, a merchant 
of ^Egina. Dionysius heard of it, and bribed Polis 
either to throw Plato overboard, or, if his conscience 
would not allow him to do that, to sell him as a slave. 
He was accordingly sold by the treacherous Polls on 
the island of vEgina, which was then involved in war 
with Athens. According to some writers, he was sold 
by the /Eginetans. A certain Anniceris, from Cyrene, 
redeemed him for twenty or thirty minse. Plato’s 
friends and scholars (according to some, Dio alone) 
collected this sum in order to indemnify Anniceris, 
who, however, was so noble minded, that with the 
money he purchased a garden in the Academy, and 
presented it to the philosopher. When Plato had 
completed his travels, and had reached the end of 
their various dangers and calamities, he returned to 
Athens, and began publicly to teach philosophy in the 
Academy. He had here a garden from paternal inheri¬ 
tance, which was purchased for five hundred drachma? ; 
so that, if the story of Anniceris be true, Plato must 
have had two gardens in this place, which also a pas¬ 
sage from Diogenes allows us to conjecture. This 
writer remarks, that Plato taught philosophy first in 
the Academy, but afterward in a garden at Colonus. 
( Diog ., 3, 5.) His Academy soon became celebrated, 
and was numerously attended by high-born and noble 
young men ; for he had before, by means of his travels, 
and probably by some publications, acquired a dis¬ 
tinguished name. (Tennernann, Life of Plato, Edw. 
tra., p. 342, seq.) Plato taught in the Academy for a 
period of twenty-two years prior to his second journey 
to Syracuse, which he undertook at the instigation of 
Dio, who hoped, by the lessons of the philosopher, to 
influence the character of the new ruler of Syracuse. 
This prince, it is said, had been brought up by his 
father wholly destitute of an enlightened education, 
and it was now the task of Plato to form his mind by 
philosophy. It seems, at the same time, to have been 
the plan of Dio and Plato to bring about, by philo¬ 
sophical instruction, a wholesome reform of the Sicilian 
constitution, by giving it a more aristocratic charac¬ 
ter. But, whatever may have been their intentions, 
they were all frustrated by the weak and voluptuous 
character of Dionysius. Dio became the object of the 
tyrant’s suspicion, and was conveyed away to the 
coast of Italy, without, however, forfeiting his posses¬ 
sions. In this conjuncture of affairs, Plato did not 
long remain in Syracuse, where his position would at 
best have been ambiguous. He returned to Athens, 
but, in consequence of some fresh disagreement be¬ 
tween Dionysius and Dio, with respect to the property 
of the latter, he was induced to take a third journey 
to Syracuse. The reconciliation, which it was his ob¬ 
ject to effect, completely miscarried ; he himself came 
to an open rupture with Dionysius, and only obtained 
a free departure from Sicily through the active inter¬ 
position of his Pythagorean friends at Tarentum. It 
does not appear that he took any part in the later con¬ 
duct of Sicilian affairs, though his nephew and disci¬ 
ple Speusippus, and others of the Academy, rendered 
personal assistance to Dio, in a warlike expedition 
against Dionysius. From this time Plato seems to 
have passed his old age in tranquillity in his garden, 
near the Academy, engaged with the instruction of 
numerous disciples, and the prosecution of his literary 
labours. He died while yet actively employed about 
his philosophical compositions. Having enjoyed the 
advantage of an athletic constitution, and lived all hi* 

1075 



PLATO. 


PLATO. 


iays temperately, he arrived at the eighty-first, or, ac¬ 
cording to some writers, the seventy-ninth, year of his 
age, and died, through the mere decay of nature, in 
the first year of the 108th Olympiad. He passed his 
whole life in a state of celibacy, and therefore left no 
natural heirs, but transferred his effects by will to his 
friend Adiamantus. The grove and garden, which 
had been the scene of his philosophical labours, at last 
afforded him a sepulchre. Statues and altars were 
erected to his memory ; the day of his birth long con¬ 
tinued to be celebrated as a festival by his followers ; 
and his portrait is to this day preserved in gems ; but 
the most lasting monuments of his genius are his 
writings, which have been transmitted, without mate¬ 
rial injury, to the present times.—The personal char¬ 
acter of Plato has been very differently represented. 
On the one hand, his encomiasts have not failed to 
adorn him with every excellence, and to express the 
most superstitious veneration for his memory. His 
enemies, on the other, have not scrupled to load him 
with reproach, and charge him with practices shame¬ 
fully inconsistent with the purity and dignity of the 
philosophical character. ( Athenccus, 11, p. 507.— 
Diog. Laert., 3, 26.) We cannot so implicitly adopt 
the panegyrics of the former, as to suppose him to 
have been free from human frailties ; and we have a 
right to require much better proofs than his calumni¬ 
ators have adduced, before we can suppose him to 
have been capable of sinking, from the sublime specu¬ 
lations of philosophy, into the most infamous vices. 
The reproaches with which Plato has been assailed, as 
having boasted that he could supply their master’s place 
to the bereaved disciples of Socrates, but ill agrees with 
the pious affection with which he bewailed his death, 
and ascribed to him, as the fruits of his lessons, his 
whole philosophy. Nor can we help thinking that there 
is much injustice in the charge brought against him, 
of malice and ill feeling towards his fellow-scholars ; 
though, at the same time, we must admit, that, to all 
appearances, he did not cultivate a very intimate friend¬ 
ship with any one among them, who afterward became 
illustrious in philosophy : nay, more, it appears that 
he reviewed with some bitterness the doctrines of 
Aristippus, Antisthenes, and Euclid. To the more 
soaring flight of his own lofty views, their incomplete 
and exclusive notions must unquestionably have ap¬ 
peared unworthy of the school of Socrates, and, as 
they began by attacking his own system, it was but 
natural that Plato should retaliate with some degree 
of bitterness and warmth. The by no means exalted 
opinion entertained by Plato of his philosophical con¬ 
temporaries necessarily became a farther ground for 
the charge against him of overweening haughtiness ; 
and it would even appear that other causes existed for 
the imputation. A certain contempt for the mass of 
the people stands out prominently enough in his wri¬ 
tings, while his commendation of philosophy, as op¬ 
posed to common sense, might easily have been taken 
as personal. Besides all this, the splendour of his 
school, especially when compared with the simplicity 
and even poverty of the Socratic, seems to have be¬ 
tokened a degree of pretension and display, which nat¬ 
urally brought upon it the ridicule of the comic wri¬ 
ters. It cannot be dissembled, that Plato gave to 
philosophy and to human culture in general a tenden¬ 
cy towards ornament and refinement, a splendour of 
language and form, far removed from the pristine se¬ 
verity and rigour, and greatly favouring the fast-grow¬ 
ing spirit of effeminacy. His school was less a school 
of hardy deeds for all, than of polished culture for the 
higher classes, who had no other object than to en¬ 
hance the enjoyment of their privileges and wealth. 
This remark, however, does not so much apply to 
Plato as to the age in which he lived, and to which 
nothing else was left than to moderate and retard the 
declineof morality by its intellectual progress and en- 
1076 


lightenment. ( Ritter , History of Philosophy, vol. 2, 
p. 152, Eng. tr.)— Several anecdotes are preserved, 
which reflect honour upon the moral principles and 
character of Plato. Such was his command of tem¬ 
per, that, when he was lifting up his hand to correct 
his servant for some offence, perceiving himself angry, 
he kept his arm fixed in that posture, and said to s 
friend, who at that moment asked him what he was 
doing, “I am punishing a passionate man.”—At an¬ 
other time, he said to one of his slaves, “ I would 
chastise you if I were not angry.”—At the Olympic 
games he happened to pass a day with some strangers, 
who were much delighted with his easy and afiable 
conversation, but were no farther informed concerning 
him than that his name was Plato ; for he had pur¬ 
posely avoided saying anything respecting Socrates or 
the Academy. At parting, he invited them, when they 
should visit Athens, to take up their residence at his 
house. Not long afterward they accepted his invita¬ 
tion, and were courteously entertained. During their 
stay, they requested that he would introduce them to 
his namesake, the famous philosopher, and show them 
his Academy. Plato, smiling, said, “ I am the person 
you wish to see.” The discovery surprised them ex¬ 
ceedingly ; for they could not easily persuade them¬ 
selves that so eminent a philosopher would condescend 
to converse so familiarly with strangers. (A^lian, 
Var. Hist., 4, 9.)—When Plato was told that his ene¬ 
mies were busily employed in circulating reports to his 
disadvantage, he said, “ I will live so that none shall 
believe them.”—One of his friends, remarking that he 
seemed as desirous to learn himself as to teach others, 
asked him how long he intended to be a scholar. 
“As long,” replied he, “as I am not ashamed to grow 
wiser and better.”—It is from the writings of Plato 
chiefly that we are to form a judgment of his merit as 
a philosopher, and of the service which he rendered to 
science. No one can be conversant with these with¬ 
out perceiving that his actions always retained a strong 
tincture of that poetical spirit which he discovered in 
his first productions. This is the principal ground of 
those lofty encomiums which both ancient and modern 
critics have passed upon his style, and particularly of 
the high estimation in which it was held by Cicero, 
who, treating of the subject of diction, says, “That if 
Jupiter were to speak in the Greek tongue, he vvoiild 
use the language of Plato.” ( De Oral., 3, 20.) — 
The accurate Stagirite describes it as “A middle spe¬ 
cies of diction, between verse and prose.” (Arist., 
ap. Laert.) Some of his dialogues are elevated by 
such sublime and glowing conceptions, are enriched 
with such copious diction, and flow in so harmonious 
a rhythm, that they may be truly pronounced highly 
poetical. Even in the discussion of abstract subjects, 
the language of Plato is often clear, simple, and full of 
harmony. At other times, however, he becomes tur¬ 
gid and swelling, and involves himself in obscurities 
which were either the offspring of a lofty fancy, or bor¬ 
rowed from the Italic school. Several ancient critics 
have noticed these blemishes in the writings of Plato. 
The same inequality which is so apparent in the style 
of Plato, may also be observed in his conceptions. 
While he adheres to the school of Socrates, and dis¬ 
courses upon moral topics, he is much more pleasing 
than when he loses himself with Pythagoras, in ab¬ 
struse speculations.—The dialogues of Plato, which 
treat of various subjects, and were written with differ¬ 
ent views, are classed by the ancients under the two 
heads of didactic and inquisitive. 1 he didactic are 
subdivided into speculative (including physical and 
logical ), and practical (comprehending ethical and po¬ 
litical). The second class, the inquisitive, is charac¬ 
terized by terms taken from the athletic art, and divi 
ded into the gymnastic and agonistic. The dialogues 
termed gymnastic were imagined to be similar to the 
exercse , and were subdivided into the maicutic (as re- 



PLATO. 


PLATO. 


sembling the teaching of the rudiments of the art); 
and the peirastic (as represented by a skirmish, or 
trial of proficiency). The agonistic dialogues, sup¬ 
posed to resemble the combat , were either endeictic (as 
exhibiting specimens of skill), or ana.trcptic (as pre¬ 
senting the spectacle of a perfect defeat). Instead of 
this whimsical classification, they may more properly 
be divided into physical, logical, ethical , and political. 
—The writings of Plato were originally collected by 
Hermodorus, one of his pupils. One circumstance it 
is particularly necessary to remark : that, among other 
things which Plato received from foreign philosophy, 
he was careful to borrow the art of concealing his real 
opinions. His inclination towards this kind of con¬ 
cealment appears from the obscure language which 
abounds in his writings, and may indeed be learned 
from his own express assertions. “ It is a difficult 
thing,” he observes, “ to discover the nature of the 
Creator of the universe ; and, being discovered, it is 
impossible, and would even be impious, to expose the 
discovery to vulgar understandings.” This concealed 
method of philosophizing he was induced to adopt from 
a regard to personal safety, and from motives of vani¬ 
ty. ( Enfield's History of Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 206, 
seqq.) —Plato, by his philosophical education, and the 
superiority of his natural talents, was placed on an 
eminence which gave him a commanding view of the 
systems of his contemporaries, without allowing him 
to be involved in their prejudices. ( Sophism, vol. 2, 
p. 252, 265, ed. Bip. — Cratyl. , p. 345, 286.) He 
always considered theoretical and practical philoso¬ 
phy as forming essential parts of the same whole ; 
and thought it was only by means of true philosophy 
that human nature could attain its proper perfection. 
(De Repub., vol. 7, p. 76, ed. Bip.) —His critical ac¬ 
quaintance with preceding systems, and his own ad¬ 
vantages, enabled Plato to form more adequate no¬ 
tions of the proper end, extent, and character of phi¬ 
losophy. Philosophy he defined to be science, prop¬ 
erly so called. The source of knowledge he pronoun¬ 
ced to be, not the evidence of our senses, which are 
occupied with contingent matter, nor yet the under¬ 
standing, but Reason ( Phcedo , vol. 1 , p. 225, ed. 
Bip.), whose object is that which is invariable ab¬ 
solute (to ovtm£ ov. — Phcedr., vol. 10, p. 247, ed. 
Bip ). He held the doctrine of the existence in the 
# soul of certain innate ideas (vor/para), which form the 
basis of our conceptions, and the elements of our prac¬ 
tical resolutions. To these Ideal, as he termed them 
(the eternal rrapadelypaTa, types and models of all 
things, and the apyai, or principles of our knowledge), 
we refer the infinite variety of individual objects pre¬ 
sented to us (to uTceipov and ra rcoTiXa). Hence it 
follows, that all these details of knowledge are not the 
results of experience, but only developed by it. The 
soul recollects the ideas, in proportion as it becomes 
acquainted with their copies (opoiupaTa), with which 
the world is filled ; the process being that of recalling 
to mind the circumstances of a state of pre-existence. 

I Phcedo, vol. 1, p. 74, 75. — Phcedr., vol. 10, p. 249.) 
Inasmuch as the objects thus presented to the mind 
correspond in part with its ideas , they must have some 
principle in common ; that principle is the Divinity, 
who has formed these external objects after the model 
*f the ideas. (De Repub., 6, vol. 7, p. 116, seqq .—• 
Tim , vol. 9, p. 348.) Such are the fundamental doc¬ 
trines of the philosophy of Plato ; in accordance with 
which he placed the principles of identity and contra¬ 
diction among the highest laws of philosophy (Phcedr., 
vol. 10, p 226, 230. — De Repub., 6, vol. 7, p. 122, 
&c.), and drew a distinction between Empirical knowl¬ 
edge and Rational; the one being derived from the 
Intellectual, the other from the External world (uoa- 
poq aladyToq and voyroq) ; making the latter the only 
true object of philosophy.—The division of philosophy 
Into Logic (Dialectics), Metaphysics (Physiology or 


Physics), and Morals (the Political Science), has beer 
principally brought about by Plato (Sextus ad. Math., 
7, 16), who clearly laid down the chief attributes of 
each of these sciences, and their mutual dependen¬ 
cies, and distinguished also between the analytical and 
synthetical methods. Philosophy, therefore, is under 
great obligation to him, quoad formam. She is no 
less indebted to him for the lights he has thrown upon 
the above parts considered separately; though he did 
not profess to deliver a system of each, but continu¬ 
ally excited the attention of others, in order to farther 
discoveries.—Plato considered the soul to be a self¬ 
acting energy (avro eavro kivovv. — De Leg., 10, vol. 

9, p. 88, seqq.) ; and, viewed as combined with the 
body, he distinguished in it two parts, the rational 
( 2 , 0 -yicTinbq vovq), and the irrational or animal (alo- 
yujTLKov or ETnOvprjTiKov), mutually corrected by a 
sort of middle term (d-vpoq or to i S-vpondbg). The an¬ 
imal part has its origin in the imprisonment of the 
soul in the body ; the intellectual still retains a con¬ 
sciousness of the Ideas, whereby it is capable of re¬ 
turning to the happy condition of spirits. In Plato 
we discover also a more complete discrimination of 
the faculties of knowledge, sensation, and volition (De 
Repub., 4, vol. 6, p. 367, ed. Bip.), with admirable 
remarks on their operations, and on the different spe¬ 
cies of perception, of sensation, of motives determin 
ing the will, as well as the relations between thought 
and speech. (Thecet., ed. Steph., p. 189, E., seqq .— 
Phileb., p. 38, D.) —Plato has rendered no less ser¬ 
vice to philosophy by affording it the first sketch of the 
laws of thought, the rules of propositions, of conclu¬ 
sions, and proof, and of the analytic method : the dis¬ 
tinction drawn between the Universal (koivov) and 
Substance (ovoia) ; and the Particular and the Acci¬ 
dental. He diligently investigated the characteristics 
of Truth, and detected the signs of the phenomenon 
or apparent Truth. To him we owe the first attempt 
at the construction of a philosophical language (in the 
Cratylus) ; the first development of an abstract idea 
of knowledge and science ; the first logical statement 
of the properties of Matter, Form, Substance, Acci¬ 
dent, Cause and Effect, of Natural and Independent 
causes of Reality (to ov), and of Apparent Reality 
(cpaivopevov) ; a more adequate idea of the Divinity, 
as a Being eminently good, with a more accurate induc¬ 
tion of the Divine Attributes, especially the moral ones; 
accompanied by remarks on the popular religion, and 
an essay towards a demonstration of the existence of 
God by reasonings drawn from Cosmology. (De Leg., 

10, vol. 9, p. 68 ; 12, vol. 9, p. 229.— Phileb., vol. 
4, p. 224. — Epinomis., vol. 9, p. 254, seqq.) He 
represents the Divinity as the author of the world, in¬ 
asmuch as he introduced into rude matter (vhy — to 
apopepov) order and harmony, by moulding it after 
the ideas, and conferring, together with a rotatory mo¬ 
tion, a harmonious body, governed, as in the case of 
individual animals, by a rational spirit. (Tcnnemann, 
Manual of Philos., p. 110, seqq., Johnston's transl.) 
—I.n theology, the fundamental doctrine of Plato, as 
of all other ancient philosophers, is, that from nothing 
nothing can proceed. This universal axiom, applied 
not only to the infinite efficient, but to the material 
cause, Plato, in his Timaeus, assumes as the ground of 
his reasoning concerning the origin of the world. In 
this dialogue, which comprehends his whole doctrine 
on the subject of the formation of the universe, matter 
is so manifestly spoken of as eternally coexisting with 
God, that this part of his doctrine could not have been 
mistaken by so many learned and able writers, had 
they not been seduced by the desire of establishing a 
coincidence of doctrine between the writings of Plato 
and Moses. It is certain that neither Cicero (Acad. 
Qucest., 1, 6), nor Apuleius (1, p. 184), nor AlcinoiR 
(c. 12), nor even the later commentator Chalcidius, 
understood their master in any other sense than as ad- 

1077 






PLATO. 


PLATO. 


milting two primary and incorruptible principles, God 
and Matter. The passages quoted by those who main¬ 
tain the contrary opinion are by no means sufficient 
for their purpose.—Matter, according to Plato, is an 
eternal and infinite principle. His doctrine on this 
head is thus explained by Cicero (Acad. Qucest., 1, 
8) : “Matter, from which all things are produced and 
formed, is a substance without form or quality, but 
capable of receiving all forms and undergoing every 
kind of change ; in which, however, it never suffers 
annihilation, but merely a solution of its parts, which 
are in their nature infinitely divisible, and move in 
portions of space which are also infinitely indivisible. 
When that principle which we call quality is moved, 
and acts upon matter, it undergoes an entire change, 
and those forms are produced from which arises the 
diversified and coherent system of the universe.” 
This doctrine Plato unfolds at large in his Timseus, 
and particularly insists on the notion, that matter has 
originally no form, but is capable of receiving any. 
He calls it the mother and receptacle of forms, by the 
union of which with matter the universe becomes per¬ 
ceptible to the senses ; and maintains that the visible 
world owes its form to the energy of the divine intel¬ 
lectual nature.—It was also a doctrine of Plato, that 
there is in matter a necessary, but blind and refracto¬ 
ry, force ; and that hence arises a propensity in mat¬ 
ter to disorder and deformity, which is the cause of 
all the imperfection that appears in the works of God, 
and the origin of evil. On this subject Plato writes 
with wonderful obscurity ; but, as far as we are able 
to trace his conceptions, he appears to have thought, 
that matter, from its nature, resists the will of the Su¬ 
preme ^Artificer, so that he cannot perfectly execute 
his designs ; and that this is the cause of the mixture 
of good and evil which is found in the material world. 
The principle opposite to matter, in the system of 
Plato, is God. He taught that there is an intelligent 
cause, which is the origin of all spiritual being, and 
the former of the material world. The nature of this 
great Being he pronounced it difficult to discover, and, 
when discovered, impossible to divulge. The exist¬ 
ence of God he inferred from the marks of intelligence 
which appear in the form and arrangement of bodies 
in the visible world ; and, from the unity of the mate¬ 
rial system, he concluded that the mind by which it 
was formed must be one. God, according to Plato, is 
the Supreme Intelligence, incorporeal, without begin¬ 
ning, end, or change, and capable of being perceived 
only by the mind. The Divine Reason, the eternal 
region of Ideas or forms, Plato speaks of as having al¬ 
ways existed, and as the Divine principle which estab¬ 
lished the order of the world. He appears to have 
conceived of this principle, as distinct not merely from 
matter, but from the efficient cause, and as eternally 
containing within itself Ideas, or intelligible forms, 
which, flowing from the fountain of the divine essence, 
have in themselves a real existence, and which, in the 
formation of the visible world, were, by the energy of 
the efficient cause, united to matter, to produce sensi¬ 
ble bodies.—It was another doctrine in the Platonic 
system, that the Deity formed the material world after 
a perfect archetype, which had eternally subsisted in 
his Reason, and endued it with a soul. “ God,” says 
he, “produced mind prior in time as well as in excel- 
ence to the body, that the latter might be subject to 
u he former.—From that substance, which is indivisible 
and always the same, and from that which is corporeal 
and divisible, he compounded a third kind of sub¬ 
stance, participating in the nature of both.”—This 
substance, which is not eternal, but produced, and 
which derives the superior part of its nature from God, 
and the inferior from matter, Plato supposed to be the 
animating principle in the universe, pervading and 
adorning all things. This third principle in nature is, 
in the Platonic system, inferior to the Deity, beino- de- 
1078 


rived from that Divme Reason which is the seat of 
the Ideal world ; hc/ein differing fundamentally from 
the Stoical doctrim* of the soul of the world, which 
supposed the essence of the Divine nature diffused 
through the universe. It is evident, from this account 
of the doctrine of Plato concerning God and the soul 
of the world, that it differs materially from the doc¬ 
trine of the Trinity afterward received into the Chris¬ 
tian Church. Plato did not suppose three substances 
in one divine essence, separate from the visible world ; 
but taught that the Aoyof, or Reason of God, is the 
seat of the intelligible world or of Ideas, and that the 
soul of the world is a third subordinate nature, com¬ 
pounded of intelligence and matter. In the language 
of Plato, the universe, being animated by a soul which 
proceeds from God, is the Son of God ; and several 
parts of nature, particularly the heavenly bodies, are 
Gods. He probably conceived many subordinate di¬ 
vinities to have been produced at the same time with 
the soul of the world, and imagined that the Supreme 
Being appointed them to the charge of forming animal 
bodies, and superintending the visible world : a doc¬ 
trine which he seems to have borrowed from the Pyth¬ 
agoreans, and particularly from Timasus the Locrian. 
—Plato appears to have taught, that the soul of man 
is derived by emanation from God ; but that this em¬ 
anation was not immediate, but through the inter¬ 
vention of the soul of the world, which was itself de¬ 
based by some material admixture ; and, consequently, 
that the human soul, receding farther from the First 
Intelligence, is inferior in perception to the soul of the 
world. He teaches, also, in express terms, the doc¬ 
trine of the immortality of the rational soul ; but he 
has rested the proof of this doctrine upon arguments 
drawn from the more fanciful parts of his system. For 
example : In nature, all things terminate in their con¬ 
traries ; the state of sleep terminates in that of wa¬ 
king; and the reverse : so life ends in death, and death 
in life. The soul is a simple indivisible substance, 
and therefore incapable of dissolution or corruption. 
The objects to which it naturally adheres are spiritual 
and incorruptible; therefore its nature is so. All our 
knowledge is acquired by the reminiscence of ideas 
contemplated in a prior state : as the soul must have 
existed before this life, it is probable it will continue 
to exist after it. Life being the conjunction of the 
soul with the body, death is nothing more than their, 
separation. Whatever is the principle of motion must 
be incapable of destruction. Such is the substance of 
the arguments for the immortality of the soul, contain¬ 
ed in the celebrated dialogue of the Phasdo. It is 
happy for mankind that their belief of this important 
doctrine rests upon firmer grounds than this futile 
reasoning. (Enfield's History of Philosophy , vol. 1, 
p. 229, seqq .)—The interesting research which Plato 
carried so far, respecting the Supreme Good, belongs 
to the subject of Morals. Virtue he defined to be the 
imitation of God, or the effort of man to attain to a re¬ 
semblance of his original; or, in other terms, a unison 
and harmony of all our principles and actions acced¬ 
ing to reason, whence results the highest degree of 
happiness. Virtue is o?re, but compounded of four el¬ 
ements : Wisdom, Courage or Constancy, Temper¬ 
ance, and Justice ; which are otherwise termed the 
four cardinal virtues. Such virtues he describes as 
arising out of an independence of, and superiority to, 
the influence of the senses. In his practical philoso¬ 
phy Plato blended a right principle of moral obligation 
with a spirit of gentleness and humanity ; and educa¬ 
tion he described as a liberal cultivation and moral dis¬ 
cipline of the mind. Politics he defined to be the ap¬ 
plication, on a great scale, of the laws of morality ; a 
society being composed of individuals, and therefore 
under similar obligations ; and its end to be liberty 
and concord. In giving a sketch of his Republic, as 
governed according to reason, Plato had particularly 




PLATO. 


PLATO 


»u eye to the character and the political difficulties of 
the Greeks, connecting at the same time the discus¬ 
sion of this subject with his metaphysical opinions re¬ 
specting the soul.—Beauty he considered to be the sen¬ 
sible representation of moral and physical perfection ; 
consequently it is one with Truth and Goodness, and 
inspires love which leads to virtue, forming what is 
called Platonic love. ( Tennemann , Manual , p. 117.) 

I. General View of the Philosophy of Plato. 

It requires, indeed, considerable knowledge of the 
history of philosophy to appreciate the whole influence 
which Plato has exercised upon the human mind; 
and, still more, a thorough acquaintance with his works 
to comprehend their real scope and depth. It is, 
therefore, not surprising that such an erroneous esti¬ 
mate of his character should generally prevail; so that, 
as Schleiermacher well observes (Pref. to Introd. to 
Dialogues ), his brilliant passages should have dazzled 
the eyes of students until they forgot that in the mind 
of Plato these were but resting-stones and reliefs (ne¬ 
cessary concessions to human weakness) to enable 
the mind to ascend to a far higher range of thought. 
And yet there are certain eras in the history of hu¬ 
man reason, in which the operation of Platonism comes 
out in a form too striking to permit any doubt of its 
power or disrespect to its memory. It was something 
more than eloquence and fancy which Cicero, perplexed 
as he sometimes seems to be with the dialectical ma¬ 
noeuvres of Plato, discovered in those theories through 
which he proposed to conduct the spirit of philosophy 
into Rome. It was not mere ingenuity and abstraction 
which induced the reformers of heathenism to adopt 
his name, so that, in the words of Augustine ( De Civil. 
Dei , 8, 10), “ recentiores quique philosophi nobilissi- 
mi, quibus Plato sectandus placuit , noluerint se did 
Peripateticos aut Academicos, sed Platonicos .” Some¬ 
thing more than ordinary reason (and so the wisest 
Christians always thought) must have informed that 
spirit which, after lying dormant for three centuries, 
was resuscitated in the first age of Christianity, and 
entered into that body of rationalism which, whether 
under the name of Gnosticism or the Alexandrean 
School, rose up by the side of the true faith, to wres¬ 
tle with its untried strength, and to bring out its full 
form, in precision, by struggles with an antagonist like 
itself. Once more, at the revival of literature, Plato 
was selected as the leader of the new philosophical 
spirit, which was to throw off the yoke of Romanism, 
and with it the law of Christianity. Wherever Plato 
has led, he has elevated and improved the human mind. 
He has been followed too far—farther than the Chris¬ 
tian may follow him ; and many fatal errors have 
been sheltered under his name. But those which 
have really sprung from him have been errors of the 
heart; errors which have not degraded human nature, 
nor stifled the principle of virtue. Even the scepti¬ 
cism of the later academics offers no exception, for it 
had no authority whatever in the general principles of 
Plato. Enthusiasm, mysticism, and fanaticism have 
been the extravagances of Platonism ; coldness, ma¬ 
terialism, and scepticism the perversions of Aristotle. 
Each, when retained in his proper subordination, has 
been a useful servant to the cause of Christianity. 
But the work which Plato has performed is far higher 
than that of Aristotle ; one has drilled the intellect, 
the other disciplined the affections ; one aided in sink¬ 
ing deep the truths of Christianity, and expanding its 
form, the other complicated and entangled its parts by 
endeavouring to reduce them to system ; one supplied 
materials, the other lent instruments to shape them ; 
one fairly met the enemies of Christianity upon the 
ground of reason, the other secretly gave way to 
them without deserting the standard of authority ; one, 
when it rebelled, rebelled openly, and threw up her¬ 
esies; the other never rebelled, but engendered and 


supported corruption. No men have more inistakeo 
the nature of Plato’s system than those who have re¬ 
garded it as a speculative fabric, such as men of pow¬ 
erful intellect have wrought out at times iri schools and 
cloisters, when the tranquillity of society enabled them 
to think, without any necessity for action. Much, il 
not all, of the Eastern philosophy was of this caste. 
It sprung up like a tree in the desert, very beautiful 
but very useless, under an atmosphere fixed and change¬ 
less, perfect in all its outlines from the absence of any¬ 
thing to disturb it. Such, also, was much of the new 
Alexandrean speculations, until Julian brought them 
to bear practically upon the p-urification of the heathen 
polytheism. Such also was scholasticism, and such 
many of the rival theories which have since sprung up 
in Germany under the stimulus of a craving curiosity, 
which found nothing to do but to think. We shall, 
however, never understand the value of Plato’s phi¬ 
losophy, and still less the arrangement and dependance 
of its parts, without viewing it in this light, as a prac¬ 
tical, not a speculative, system. Even considered ag. 
a revival of the modified doctrine of Pythagoras, which,, 
probably, is the true point of view, it is still practical. 
Pythagoras was full of other thoughts than the abstract 
relation of numbers, when he organized his wonderful 
society to restore something like right government 
and religious subordination in the republics of Magna 
Graecia. He was as far from dreaming away his rea¬ 
son in empty metaphysics, though high and abstract 
truth was a necessary condition of his system, as Loy¬ 
ola was from resting in the subtleties of scholastic 
theology when he created his singular polity for up¬ 
holding the Romanist faith. Plato’s great object was 
man. He lived with man, felt as a man, held in¬ 
tercourse with kings, interested himself deeply in the 
political revolutions of Sicily, was the pupil of one 
whose boast it was to have brought down philosophy 
from heaven to earth, that it might raise man up from 
earth to heaven; and, above all, he was a witness and 
actor in the midst of that ferment of humanity exhibit¬ 
ed in the democracy of Athens. When states are at 
peace and property secure, and the wheels of common 
life move on regularly and quietly upon their fixed 
lines, men with active minds may sit and speculate 
upon the stars, or analyze ideas. But it is not so in 
the great convulsions of society. The object con¬ 
stantly before the eyes of Plato was the incorporated 
spirit, the peya -&p£ppa of human lawlessness. (Rc- 
pub., 6, p. 219.) He saw it, indeed, in an exhausted 
state, its power passed away, its splendour torn off, 
and all the sores and ulcers ( Gorgias , p. 109) which 
other demagogues had pampered and concealed, now 
laid bare and beyond cure. But it was still a specta¬ 
cle to absorb the mind of every good and thoughtful 
man. The state of the Athenian democracy is the 
real clew to the philosophy of Plato. It would be 
proved, if by nothing else, by one little touch in the 
Republic. The Republic is the summary of his whole 
system, and the keystone of all the other dialogues are 
uniformly let into it. But the object of the Republic 
is to .exhibit the misery of man let loose from law, and 
to throw out a general plan for making him subject to 
law, and thus to perfect his nature. It. is exhibited on 
a large scale in the person of a state, and in the mas¬ 
terly historical sketch with which, in the eighth and 
ninth books, he draws the changes of society. Hav¬ 
ing painted in the minutest detail the form of a licen¬ 
tious democracy, he fixes it by the slightest allusion 
(it was, perhaps, all he could hazard) on the existing 
state of Athens ; and then passes on to a frightful 
prophecy of that tyranny which would inevitably fol¬ 
low. All the other dialogues bring us to the Repub¬ 
lic, and the Republic brings us to this as its end and 
aim. On this view every part of his system will fall 
naturally into place. Even questions apparently far¬ 
thest from any practical intention are thus connected 

1079 




PLATO. 


PLATO. 


with his plan. If in the Sophist he indulges in the 
most subtle analysis of «ur notion of being, it is to 
overthrow the fundamental fallacy of that metaphysical 
school which was denying all virtue by confounding 
all truth, and thus poisoning human nature at its 
source, and justifying the grossest crimes both of the 
state and of its leaders. If he returns again and 
again to his noble theory of Ideas, it is to fix certain 
immutable distinctions of right and wrong, good and 
evil ; and to raise up the mind to the contemplation 
of a being of perfect goodness, prior in existence, su¬ 
perior in power, unamenable in its independence to 
those fancies and passions of mankind which had be¬ 
come, before the eyes of Plato, in individuals unbri¬ 
dled lusts, and in the state an insanity of tyranny. If 
in the Parmenides he takes us into the obstrusest 
mysteries of metaphysics—the nature ol unity and 
number—this also was rendered necessary, not only to 
obviate objection to his own theory of ideas, but to fix 
the great doctrine of unity in a Divine Being—unity in 
goodness—one truth in action and thought—as opposed 
to that polytheism of reason which makes every man’s 
conscience his god. It grappled also with a mystery 
which meets us at the foundation of every deep theory, 
and in the forms of every popular belief, in Christianity 
as well as in heathenism ; a mystery which, true in 
itself, as wholly distinct from man, has yet a corre¬ 
sponding mystery in the constitution of the human 
mind; and which compelled even the heathen philoso¬ 
pher to state the same seeming paradox for the very 
foundation of his system, which Christianity lays down 
at once as its grand and all-comprehensive doctrine. 
All unity implies plurality—all plurality must end in 
unity. So also the inquiry in the Theajtetus into the 
nature of science bore no resemblance whatever in its 
object to any mere speculative theories of Kant or his 
followers. It was a necessary part of that system 
which was to become the antagonist of the Sophists, 
and to contend for the preservation of truth against 
a ruinous sensualism and empiricism, which was sap¬ 
ping all the foundations of society. Even the seem¬ 
ingly frivolous and often wearisome subtleties which 
occur in the Sophist, the Euthydemus, and the Politi- 
cus, are intended as dialectical exercises for the pupil 
whom Plato is forming to become the saviour and 
guardian of a state. Even the philological absurdities 
of the Cratylus are to be explained in the same way. 
He perpetually suggests the fact in the dialogues them¬ 
selves. And in the Republic (lib. 7) he gives at length 
the principles on which they are introduced. Very 
much of the plan of his dialogues, for reasons which he 
himself supplies, is purposely left in obscurity. And 
the test of the statement here made must lie in a 
careful reference to the works themselves. But it is 
impossible to believe that Plato, the “ first of philoso¬ 
phers,” who made practical goodness and duty the one 
great end of life; whose whole history, as well as his 
theories, are full of views, not of speculative fancies, but 
of practical improvement to society ( Conviv ., p. 260); 
the friend of Dion, the adviser of Dionysius, the pupil 
of Socrates, the wrjter of the Republic and the Laws; 
who recognised, indeed, intellect and truth as neces¬ 
sary conditions of man’s perfection, but made “the 
good and the beautiful,” his heart and his affections, 
the ruling principle of his actions ; who never looked 
down upon minds beneath him without thinking of the 
task of education, and never raised his eyes to that 
image of the De.ty which he had formed from all im¬ 
aginable perfection, without seeing in it, not merely an 
abstraction of intellect, unity, identity, eternity, but 
goodness, and love, and justice; the Maker of the 
world, because he delighted in the happiness of his 
creatures; the Dispenser of rewards beyond the grave, 
the Cause of all good things (Repub., lib. 10), the Fa¬ 
ther and King of all: it is impossible to believe that 
such a man, with strong affections, consummate devo- 
1080 


tion to his end, absolute unity of purpose inculcated 15 
all his doctrines, and exhibited in the outlines of hi* 
work, should have stood before any scene of humani- 
ty, least of all before the spectacle of an Athenian 
democracy, without having his whole soul possessed 
by man and the relations of man, instead of things and 
the relations of things ; that he should have wasted 
those powers, so elevated and so pure, in idle subtle¬ 
ties ; that he should have thrown out his fancies in 
fragments, as one whose life was aimless ; or that, 
wrought as they are in every line with a consummate 
art, linked together to the observing eye by ten thou¬ 
sand of the finest reticulations, they were not intended 
as a system ; and as a system will come out to us 
when the focus is rightly adjusted, and the whole is 
regarded as a mighty effort to elevate man to his per¬ 
fection, and his perfection where only it can be reached, 
in a social and political form. We are most anxious 
to fix attention on this point (let it be a fancy—take it 
as hypothesis, only try it), because, wherever it has 
been lost (and we cannot name the commentator who 
has wholly found it), the whole of Plato’s works have 
been viewed in inextricable confusion. Even Schleier- 
macher has failed in his clew. Men seem to have 
wandered about as in a maze; here admiring, there 
perplexed, there completely at a stand. No order, 
no limits, no end. Fragments have been dealt with 
as wholes, and wholes as fragments ; irony mistaken 
for earnestness, and earnestness for irony ; play for the 
fancy gravely dealt with as meditation for the reason, 
and exercises for boys treated as the serious occupa¬ 
tion of men. Spurious pieces have been admitted 
which destroyed all consistency of thought. Doubts 
raised to remove error or rouse curiosity, have been 
carried off as final decisions, until Plato, the very dog¬ 
matist of philosophy, has been made the ringleader of 
Pyrrhonists and sceptics. And even the holiest and 
purest of ethics, which never stopped short of its ob¬ 
ject till man’s mind was withdrawn from sense and 
his heart was fixed upon its God, has been calumniated 
and perverted. But take this central position : look 
as a philosopher on man, and on man, in bis whole per¬ 
sonality, as a living, immortal soul, instinct with affec¬ 
tion and feeling, which cannot rest except in being? 
like himself. See him vainly struggling to realize that 
noble creation for which he was formed at first, and to 
raise up a polity or church in the faculties of his own 
nature, and from the members of civil society ; then 
contemplate the wreck of such a plan in the contam¬ 
inated youth and remorseless tyranny of the Athenian 
commonwealth; all that was noble in its nature, its 
“lion heart” and “human reason” (Repub., lib. 9, p. 
345), “starved, emaciated, and degraded;” and the 
“ many-headed monster of its passions,” 7ro7iVKe<pa/Jw 
dpeppa, “ howling round and tearing it to pieces and 
then a new light will fall upon the meaning and order 
of these works, which were intended to do all that 
mere philosophy could do—to raise a solemn protest 
against the sins which it witnessed ; to overthrow the j 
sophistries which pandered to those corruptions ; to 
open a nobler scene ; and to create some yearning lor 
its attainment in those few untainted minds which na¬ 
ture had prepared for its enjoyment. In this view all 
will be clear: the grand close of Ml the dialogues in 
the Republic and Laws ; the striking mode in which 
all the rest are worked into these two ; the commence¬ 
ment of them in the Phsedrus, and the perfect consist- 
ency of that piece, in any other view so wild and het¬ 
erogeneous ; the deep, melancholy tone which pervades 
every allusion of Plato to scenes before his eyes ; the 
anticipation of coming evil; the sort of prophetic ele¬ 
vation as he opens his “dream” of that city wherein 
all goodness should dwell—“ whether such has ever 
existed in the infinity of days gone by, or even now 
exists in the East far from our sight and knowledge, 
or will be perchance hereafter”—but “ which, though 







PLATO. 


PLATO. 


it oe not on earth, must have a pattern of it laid up in 
neaven, for him who wishes to behold it, and, beholding, 
resolves to dwell there.” (Repub., lib. 9, p. 349.) 
So also we shall enter into the educational character 
of his works ; their high practical morality, the mode 
u. which every question is carried up into the nature 
of truth, and, through truth, is connected with virtue ; 
the position which theology occupies, and the practical 
mode in which it is applied ; the absence of those ab¬ 
stract metaphysical speculations on the nature of the 
Deity, into which human reason always falls when it 
analyzes mental conceptions beyond what- practical 
duty requires; and into which the Neo-Platonicians 
did fall, and, still more, the Gnostics, while they boasted 
of their own ingenuity, and ridiculed Plato as one who 
had not, like them, penetrated “ into the depths of the 
Intelligible Essence.” ( Porphyr ., Vit. Plato, c. 14.) 
Even the form of Plato’s works will derive new light 
and beauty from considering them as instruments of 
instruction, not vehicles for speculation. The mode 
in which curiosity is roused by the fractured lines of 
the dialogue ; the arresting the attention by demand¬ 
ing an answer to every position ; the gradual opening 
of difficulties ; the carrying of the eye and imagination 
to the truth by portions of broken winding-stairs of 
argument, leading to dark recesses, and ruinously hung 
together in masses, rather than the throwing open be¬ 
fore the reader an easy ascending plane, which requires 
no labour and stimulates no thought. So also the 
successive overthrow of opinions ; the sudden starting 
up of doubts in apparently the most open ground ; the 
skill with which the drama of the argument is broken 
up into scenes and acts, heightened by a stage dec¬ 
oration, and relieved with the solemn or the grotesque; 
the rich melo-dramatic myths which so often close 
them ; the character of Socrates himself imbodying 
'he attributes and duties of the Greek chorus ; the se¬ 
lection of the parties among the young; the tests 
which are applied to ascertain if they possess the qual¬ 
ities of mind which, in the Republic (lib. 7), are de¬ 
clared to be necessary for those who make any prog¬ 
ress in goodness ; the gradual development of the sys¬ 
tem in exact proportion to the industry and ingenuity 
of the hearer ; and the order of the sceptical dialogue, 
all more or less destructive of errors without any dec¬ 
laration of the truth, and forming series of enigmas, 
to lead, like an avenue of sphinxes, to the grand, open 
portal of the Republic: all these and many other 
points will assume a wholly different character, whether 
we consider Plato’s work as intended to declare his 
opinions, or as constructed for the purpose of extrica¬ 
ting, by a tried and thoughtful process, the minds which 
it was still possible to save from the follies, and sins, 
and miseries in which the madness of the age and a 
vicious system of education were plunging them. All 
this, to persons who never read Plato, or read him 
carelessly and contemptuously, as men in this day do 
read whatever they do not understand, at the first 
glimpse will appear exaggerated and enthusiastic. 
And no answer can be given buVa demand that the 
trial should be made, and the hypothesis taken as a 
clew. If it is false, it will fail. But none whom wise 
men would wish to follow have ever approached the 
name of Plato without reverence and gratitude. All 
have been impressed especially with his exquisite skill 
as an artist or constructor of his works (Sclileier- 
mathcr, Introd. Pref.); and none have drawn a plan 
which gives harmony and symmetry to them all. 
Some plans, however, must exist. If we want to form 
a judgment on the grandeur of some vast cathedral, 
we do not plant ourselves in a nook, before some dis- 
proportioned arch, or out of sight of the central aisle. 
We seek for that point of view in which the builder 
himself beheld it before he commenced the work, and 
then the whole fabric comes out. And the illustration 
will bear to be dwelt on. Whoever studies Plato is 

6 X 


treading on holy ground. So heathens always felt it 
So even Christianity confessed. (Clem. Alex., 1, p 
39, 316.) And we may stand among his venerable 
works as in a vast and consecrated fabric ; vistas and 
aisles of thoughts opening on every side; high thoughts, 
that raise the mind to heaven ; pillars, and niches, and 
cells within cells, mixing in seeming confusion, and a 
veil of tracery, and foliage, and grotesque imagery 
thrown over all, but all rich with a light streaming 
through “ dim religious forms all leading up to God ; 
all blessed with an effluence from Him, though an efflu¬ 
ence dimmed and half lost in the contaminated reason 
of man. (British Critic and Quarterly Theological 
Rcvieio, No. 47, p. 3, seqq.) 

II. Works of Plato. 

We have thirty-five dialogues generally ascribed to 
Plato, and thirteen epistles ; or fifty-six dialogues, if 
we count each book of the Republic and Laws sep 
arately. These dialogues have somewhat of a dra¬ 
matic form, and are intended for the more intelligent 
class of readers, and those who are habituated to the 
exercise of reflection. The brilliant imagination of 
the author has strewed upon them all the flowers of 
eloquence, and adorned them with all the graces of the 
Attic diction ; and he has frequently interwoven with 
them poetic allegories, and political and theological 
fictions. The analogy between the dialogues of Plato 
and dramatic pieces is in many respects so great, that, 
according to Diogenes Laertius, a certain Thrasyllus 
formed the idea of dividing them into so many tetral¬ 
ogies. Still we must not imagine from this that Plato 
had proposed to himself to treat of the same subject in 
a series of works.— Schleiermacher, the celebrated 
German translator of Plato, divides these dialogues 
into four classes : those of the first class comprehend 
the elements of philosophy ; as the Phaedrus, Protago¬ 
ras, Parmenides, Lysis, Laches, Charmides, and Eu- 
thyphron. In the dialogues of the second class, these 
principles receive their application ; as in the Gor- 
gias, Theaetetus, Menon, Euthvdemus, Sophists, Po- 
liticus, Phaedon, and Philebus. In the dialogues of 
the third class, the investigations are of a more pro¬ 
found character; as the Timaeus, Critias, Republic, 
and Laws. The fourth class comprehends what he 
terms dialogues of circumstance, as the Crito, and the 
Defence of Socrates. This distribution is certainly 
an ingenious one ; but, in order to be of any real value 
the first three classes ought to form also three chron¬ 
ological series, and we ought thus to see the system 
of Plato come into existence, develop itself, and at¬ 
tain to maturity : this, however, is not the case.—An¬ 
other German writer (Socher, iiber Platons Schriflen, 
Munchen, 1820, 8vo) proposes to group the dialogues 
in the following manner: 1. Dialogues relative to the 
trial and death of Socrates : the Euthyphron, Defence, 
Crito, Phsedrus, Cratylus : 2. Dialogues which form 
a kind of continuation to each other: the Theaetetus, 
Sophists, Politicos, Republic, Timaeus, and Critias: 
3. Dialogues directed against false philosophy . the 
Euthvdemus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Ion, Hippias : 4. 
Dialogues treating of speculative questions : the Phae¬ 
don, Theaetetus, Sophists, Philebus, Timaeus, and Par¬ 
menides : 5. Dialogues devoted to politics, or the art 
of government: the Politicus, Minos, Republic, Laws, 
Epinomis : 6. Di-alogues treating of rhetorical topics . 
the Gorgias, Menexenus, Phaedrus, Banquet; 7. Di¬ 
alogues relative to individuals accustomed to associate 
with Socrates : the Theages, first Alcibiades, Laches, 
Theaetetus : 8. Dialogues in which the question is 
discussed, whether virtue can be taught : the Euthy- 
demus, Protagoras, and Menon : 9. Dialogues in which 
false opinions are considered : the Theaetetus, Soph¬ 
ists, Euthydemus, Cratylus: 10. Dialogues, the titles 
of which indicate particular subjects ; as the Charmi- 
dis, or of Moderation; the Laches, or of Bravery, 

1081 



PLATO. 


PLATO. 


the Lysis, or of Friendship ; the Euthyphron, or of 
Piety, &c.—It will appear from this classification, that 
the same dialogue may thus belong to different cate¬ 
gories at the same time, according to the point of view 
in which we regard it; which destroys, of course, all 
the utility of the arrangement.—We come now to an¬ 
other question of much greater importance. Inde¬ 
pendently of the thirty-five dialogues commonly at¬ 
tributed to Plato, there are eight which the unanimous 
opinions of the grammarians, at the commencement of 
our era, has rejected as spurious. In the number, 
however, of the thirty-five, there are several, of the au- 
thenticit) of which doubts have been entertained from 
time to time, until, in our own days, the rigid criticism 
of Germany has undertaken to eliminate a large num¬ 
ber of these dialogues from the list of the works of 
Plato. Four writers, in particular, have turned their 
attention to this subject: Tennemann, Schleierrnacher, 
Ast, and Socher. ( Tennemann , System der Platonis- 
chen Philosophic, 4 vols. 8vo, 1792.— Schleierrnacher, 
Platons Werke, 8 vols. 8vo, Berlin, 1817-26.— Ast, 
Platons Leben und Schriften, Leipzig , 1816, 8vo.— 
Socher, uber Platons Schriften , Munchen, 1820, 8vo.) 
To these may be added Thiersch, the author of an able 
criticism on the work of Ast ( Jahrbucli der Literatur., 
Wien., 1818, vol. 3, p. 59, seqq.). What renders the 
decision of this question peculiarly difficult is, that, of 
the writers contemporary with Plato, Xenophon alone 
remains to us, and he makes no mention ol him. Ar¬ 
istotle, his disciple, refers but seldom to his master’s 
dialogues: sometimes he mentions his opinions, but 
always under the name of Socrates, and that, too, when 
he even refers to dialogues in which the last-mention¬ 
ed philosopher is not one of the interlocutors, as in the 
Laws. All the works of the philosophers of the three 
following centuries are lost, down to Dionysius of 
Halicarnassus, who js one of the principal authorities 
in this inquiry. The number of witnesses increases 
very considerably after this ; but they lived at a period 
when that species of criticism which is able to separ¬ 
ate the false from the true was as yet completely un¬ 
known. The classification of Thrasyllus makes us 
acquainted with the opinion of the grammarians of his 
time, relative to the authenticity of the dialogues of 
Plato : those which he excludes from his categories 
were regarded as supposititious, but we are unacquaint¬ 
ed with the grounds on which the claim of legitimacy 
was allowed to the rest, unless it be that the claim in 
their case was never contested. Amid this array of 
negative authorities, Ast, who of all the moderns 
has pushed his scepticism on this head the farthest, 
thinks that the only one deserving of being combated 
is that of Aristotle, and he endeavours to destroy the 
weight of his testimony by denying Aristotle any au¬ 
thority in matters of criticism. B,ut can any one for a 
moment imagine that a man oPnigh intellectual en¬ 
dowments, after having passed twenty years of his life 
with Plato, could be so grossly deceived respecting 
the works of his master 1 Admitting, too, the possi¬ 
bility that one so eminently gifted with discernment 
and taste could mistake to such a degree the style of 
his master, is it at all probable that he could have been 
deceived also as to the fact whether Plato did com¬ 
pose such or such a work! After having rid himself 
in this unsatisfactory manner of the testimony of Aris¬ 
totle, Ast, acknowledging the authority of fourteen dia¬ 
logues, attacks at the same time the remaining twenty- 
one by arguments deduced from the style in which they 
are written. He finds them inferior in this point of 
view to the others, and against some no doubt the 
charge will hold good ; but the question may fairly be 
asked in reply, whether a writer, in other respects class¬ 
ic, ought, in all his productions, to attain to that perfec¬ 
tion which he appears to have reached in some! Most 
of the arguments advanced by Ast have been refuted 
by Thiersch and Socher. The latter writer, however, 
1082 


in assigning to Plato the greater part of the dialogue! 
which Schleierrnacher and Ast consider spurious, is 
unwilling himself to acknowledge the legitimacy of the 
Sophists, Politicus, and Parmenides.—Another inter¬ 
esting question is that which has reference to the 
chronological order of the dialogues. This question 
has a double aspect: it regards both the time when 
the dialogue is supposed to have taken place, and that 
when the author is thought to have composed it. It 
is often impossible to fix the former of these periods, 
by reason of the numerous anachronisms with which 
Plato is justly chargeable. So numerous, indeed, are 
they, that we are tempted to believe that Plato attach¬ 
ed no importance whatever to the giving an air of his¬ 
toric probability to his dialogues. The second period, 
that of their composition, is important in a different 
point of view; for, were it possible to fix with cer¬ 
tainty the time when each dialogue was written, and 
thus to determine the chronological order of the whole 
collection, we would be much better able to mark the 
development of his system. We must bear in mind, 
however, that the historical data afforded by any one 
dialogue is often insufficient for fixing the period when 
it was written, because Plato is very negligent in point 
of chronology.—The literary life of Plato has been di¬ 
vided into four periods : the first ends with the death 
of Socrates, and reaches to the thirtieth year of Pla¬ 
to’s life ; the second extends to the founding of the 
Academy, or Plato’s fortieth year ; the third embraces 
the maturity of his life, or about twenty years ; the 
fourth his old age, also of twenty years.—To the first 
of these periods belong the four dialogues in which 
reference is made to the trial and death of Socrates, 
such as the Euthyphron, Crito, Defence of Socrates, 
and Phasdo. Socher is undoubtedly right in conjec¬ 
turing that this latter was written immediately after 
the death of Socrates. The reasons urged by Schleier- 
rnacher for placing it in a later period are purely 
speculative, and advanced merely for the purpose of 
supporting his system.—In the same period, and even 
prior to the four dialogues just named, are ranged the 
Theages, one of the first of Plato’s productions, the 
Laches, first Alcibiades, Hipparchus, Minos, Rivals, 
Charmides, Lysis, second Hippias, Clitophon, Craty- 
lus, and Meno, supposing all these to be the composi¬ 
tions of Plato.—Ten dialogues are placed in the sec¬ 
ond period, either because they contain some chrono¬ 
logical particular which enables us to assign them to 
the time that intervened between the death of Soc¬ 
rates and the founding of the Academy ; or because, 
though wanting such an index of their age, they still 
evidently belong to this period. In all these produc¬ 
tions, Plato appears to have had for his object the con¬ 
tinuation of the enterprise which had been interrupted 
by the death of Socrates, namely, the war against the 
Sophists. These dialogues are the Ion, Euthydemus, 
the first Hippias, the Protagoras, Gorgias, Thesetetus, 
Sophist, Politicus, Parmenides, and Philebus.—All the 
other dialogues of (Plato, excepting the Timaeus and i| 
Critias, namely, the, Phsedrus, Menexenus, Banquet, 
Republic, were written by him in the prime of his life, 
and before age had impaired his mental powers, or 
during the twenty years in which he directed the Acad¬ 
emy. In the fourth period, Plato wrote the letters that 
have come down to us (supposing that these are actu¬ 
ally his), his great work on the laws, and the two dia¬ 
logues entitled Timaeus and Critias.—We will now 
proceed to give a brief sketch of the individual produc¬ 
tions of the philosopher, premising that most of the 
Platonic dialogues have, as will presently be perceived, 
a double title. The former of these is commonly the 
name of the individual who bears the most prominent 
part in the dialogue; the second is the addition oi 
some later hand, and has reference to the contents ol 
the dialogue itself. As these contents, however, are, 
for the most part, very diversified in their nature, this 







PLATO. 


PLATO. 


eec ond class of titles are frequently apt to mislead the cas¬ 
ual observer. {Wolf, ad Sympos., p. 35 ,seqq. — Ast, 
ad Repub., p. 313.— Morgenstern,ad Repub., p. 29.)— 
The works of Plato, then, are as follows : 1. liporayo- 
paq, fj Sotpiorat, “ Protagoras, or the Sophists.” This 
dialogue, a chef-d'oeuvre of Plato, is directed against 
‘he sophists, who are described in it as exceedingly 
unfit either to impart knowledge of virtue to others, or 
to inspire them with the desire of practising it. Pro¬ 
tagoras, one of the most celebrated of this class of 
philosophers, and who, in the course of the dialogue, 
is made to appear a model of charlatanerie, had arri- 
vod at Athens. A certain Hippocrates, unwilling to 
lose so favourable an opportunity of receiving instruc¬ 
tion, requests Socrates to present him to the sophist. 
Socrates consents, but first impresses Hippocrates with 
the propriety of his ascertaining the true nature of the 
science which this stranger has brought with him, be¬ 
fore he ventures to become one of his pupils. They, 
in consequence, pay a visit to Protagoras, and find him 
surrounded by a numerous and brilliant auditory. A 
colloquy thereupon begins between the sophist and 
Sqcrates, in which Prodicus and Hippias, friends of 
the former, also bear a part. The object of Protago¬ 
ras is to show the possibility of learning virtue as one 
learns an art or exercise ; but the questions put by 
Socrates embarrass him to such a degree, and the an¬ 
swers he makes from time to time involve him in so many 
contradictions, that the futility of the pretended science 
of the sophists becomes fully apparent. No little mis¬ 
take has been caused by giving to the term “ sophist” 
a wrong etymological signification. It does not mean 
what is denoted by the word in English, artful and il¬ 
logical reasoners : the Sophists were the persons who 
professed to make others wise. They were the great 
instructers. Undoubtedly the office they assumed im¬ 
plied their own personal wisdom ; and the necessity 
of maintaining appearances without any real stock of 
knowledge, coupled with the principle of pleasing with¬ 
out any regard to truth, seduced them into the habits 
of ingenious trickery which have since been known by 
their name. But, as Protagoras himself states, it was 
as the original introducers of a wholly new scheme of 
education that they took their stand, made their money, 
and incurred, in no few instances, the odium of politi¬ 
cal innovators. In this light they were regarded by 
Plato. Nothing could be more tempting than the con¬ 
dition of the youth of Athens, for clever, conceited, 
ambitious men, by their own theory discumbered of a 
conscience, and obliged, by a sense of duty, to provide 
for their own indulgences, to undertake the task of fit¬ 
ting them for those public duties of life which in a 
Grecian democracy occupied the whole field of action. 
And rhetoric, as the main engine of political eminence, 
they were thoroughly capable of teaching. The habit 
of disputation, which sent Hippias every year to the 
Olympic games, to challenge a run upon his pantologi- 
cal budget, and to improvise on all possible questions ; 
just as scholasticism, in the middle ages, sent scholars 
up and down Europe, to post their themes and syllogisms 
at the gates of universities, had given them a thorough 
command, not over language alone, but over all the 
arts of concealing ignorance and misleading weakness 
which were necessary to a popular demagogue. Lan¬ 
guage, as the instrument of power over minds ; lan¬ 
guage, as the imperfect medium of communicating 
ideas, and, therefore, the readiest means of mixing and 
embezzling them in the transfer; language, as the art 
of pleasing ; language, as the never-failing subject for 
etymological ingenuity to anatomize ; language, again, 
as th 3 natural transcript of the human mind, and the 
human mind in that low, vulgar form, in which alone 
a popular leader or an expediency-philosopher can see 
it, or wish to see it; language, in all these lights, was 
to the sophists everything. It was their stock in trade ; 
the nostrum they offered for sale, the ready, unblush¬ 


ing witness to all their paradoxes. Hence the prom¬ 
inence given in so many of Plato’s dialogues to the sub¬ 
ject of language ; and especially the unvariable con¬ 
nexion between the practical abuse of rhetoric and 
metaphysical discussions on the nature of pleasure and 
of truth. This is also the key to the Cratylus, a dia- 
logue which, by the most singular misconception, has 
been searched by Greek critics for etymologies, but 
which is, in reality, a serious extravaganza, to expose 
the Horne-Tookism of the day, and its connexion with 
the metaphysics of sophistry. ( British Critic and 
Quarterly Theological Review, No 47, p. 31, seq.) — 
The Protagoras shows that Plato, wholly engrossed 
with the philosophical topics which he makes Socrates 
and his interlocutors discuss, troubles himself but lit¬ 
tle about guarding against anachronisms. In this dia¬ 
logue Pericles and his two sons are still living, a cir¬ 
cumstance which necessarily supposes the era of the 
piece to have been prior to B.C. 429 ; and yet, at the 
same time, we see, in the course of this same dialogue, 
that the rich Callias has already lost his father Hippon- 
icus. Now we know, from a passage in the orator An- 
docides, that Hipponicus was killed in the battle of 
Delium, or B.C. 424. Thus Plato makes Pericles to 
have died five or six years too late, or Hipponicus five 
or six years too early. {Journal des Savans, 1820, p 
678.) — 2. Qaldpoq, rj veepl tov naTiov, “ Phcedrus, oi 
concerning Beauty.” This dialogue is a sort of con¬ 
tinuation of the preceding. In the Protagoras, Plato 
shows that the sophists were bad guides to conduct one 
along the path to virtue, since they were unacquainted 
with it themselves; and now, in the Phaedrus, he 
characterizes their rhetoric as a futile art. Hrenisch, 
however, gives a more general explanation of the ob¬ 
ject of this dialogue. {Lysice Amatorius, Grace, ed. 
Hanisch. Pramissa est Commentatio de auclore ora- 
tionis, utrum Lysia sit an Platonis, Lips., 1827.) 
This dialogue was composed, according to Sta' tyium, 
in the fourth year of the 98th Olympiad. {Stall. . Ibis- 
putatio de Platonis vita, See., p. 25.) It may be regard¬ 
ed as consisting of two parts, the first of which has a 
practical, the other a theoretical tendency. In the 
first of these Plato proves his thesis by an example, 
namely, by a discourse on love or beauty, composed 
by Lysias, who had just left the school of the sophists, 
and to which Socrates opposes one on the same sub¬ 
ject : in the second part, the principles and rules of 
the sophists are examined. It is in this dialogue that 
we remark for the first time that blending of the So- 
cratic philosophy with the dogmas of the schools of 
Ionia, Elea, and Italy, which characterizes the system 
of Plato. These dogmas are, that of a previous state 
of existence, the reminiscences of which are the source 
of all our knowledge ; that of the immortality of the 
soul; that of the three virtues, or energies of the soul 
(A oyioTLKov, Qv[ukov, ’EmdvpyriKov). The Phae¬ 

drus is filled with poetry, and the discourse on Love, 
put in the mouth of Socrates, is almost a continual 
parody on Homer. Whether the discourse on Love or 
Beauty, mentioned in this dialogue, was actually a pro¬ 
duction of Lysias, is a question which Haenisch has 
made the subject of a separate dissertation, and for the 
affirmative of which he gives his suffrage. (Compare 
Bdckh, ad Plat. Minoem, p. 182.— Van Heusde, Init. 
Platon., vol. 1, p. 101.)—3. Topyiaq, fj rcepl f P yropi- 
Kyq, “ Gorgias, or concerning Rhetoric.” Rhetoric, 
which in the Phredrns has been considered as an art, 
is regarded in the Gorgias in a political point of view. 
Socrates disputes with Gorgias, the rhetor Polus, and 
Callicles, on the utility of the science under this latter 
aspect : he represents it as dangerous, because, in¬ 
stead of proposing to itself, as its only object, the tri¬ 
umph of truth, it is mostly employed for the purpose of 
gaining the suffrages of the multitude.—In this dia¬ 
logue Plato not only attacks the sophists, whose po 
litical influence is depicted as pernicious to the repub* 

1083 




PLATO. 


PLATO. 


lie, but also the enemies and calumniators of Socrates, 
and even many of the illustrious men whom Athens 
had produced, especially Pericles. What most of all, 
however, characterizes this production, is, that Socra¬ 
tes does not pursue his ordinary method of question and 
answer ; he pronounces, on the contrary, connected 
discourses ; and, far from merely stating doubts, he 
expresses his sentiments in clear and precise terms. 
In general, there reigns in this dialogue a more serious 
tone than that which pervades the two previous ones, 
and less of irony. But the place of the latter is sup¬ 
plied by a caustic kind of manner, which is not found 
in the others. According to Stallbaum, this dialogue 
was written not long after 413 B.C. A writer in the 
Jena Review controverts this opinion. ( Stallbaum, 
ad Pkileb., p. xl.— Jena Allgem. Lit. Zeit., 1822, No. 
195.)—4. Qa'idov, rj rcepl “ Phcedon, or con¬ 

cerning the Soul .” This dialogue is one of the most 
remarkable of those that bear the name of Plato. The 
interlocutors are Phsedon, the subsequent founder of 
the school of Elis, and Echecrates. The former of 
these gives the latter an account of all that happened 
towards the close of Socrates’ life, and relates the con¬ 
versation of this philosopher with Cebes and Simmias. 
Socrates undertakes to prove the immortality of the 
soul by its spirituality ; and we have here the first 
traces of a demonstration, which modern philosophy, 
under the guidance of revelation, has carried on to so 
successful a result. The doctrine which Plato here 
puts into the mouth of Socrates is not entirely pure ; 
it is amalgamated with the Pythagorean hypothesis of 
the metempsychosis, and with all sorts of fables bor¬ 
rowed from the Greek mythology.—The Phasdon is 
regarded by all critics as one of the dialogues of Plato 
respecting the authenticity of which not the least 
doubt can be raised. And yet, if we are to believe 
an epigram in the Anthology ( Epidict., n. 358, An- 
thol. Pal. ; 1, 44, Anthol. Plan.), the celebrated 
Panastius rejected it as supposititious. It is most 
probable, however, that the author of the epigram 
in question mistook the sense of the passage in which 
Panaetius spoke of the Phsedon, and that the phi¬ 
losopher merely meant to say that Plato puts into 
the mouth of Socrates a doctrine which he, Panae¬ 
tius, did not admit; foi we know from Cicero that 
Panaetius differed in this point from the tenets of Pla¬ 
to. ( Tusc. Disp., 1, 32.)—5. OeacryTog, rj rrepl hria- 
TT][irjg, “ Thcoetetus, or concerning Science .” The 

geometer, Theodorus of Cyrene, his pupil Theaetetus, 
and Socrates, are the interlocutors in this dialogue : 
the subject discussed is the nature of science. Socra¬ 
tes, assuming the character of ignorance, and compa¬ 
ring himself to a midwife, pretends that all his wisdom 
is limited to the aiding of others in giving birth to their 
ideas. Under this pretext he refuses to define sci¬ 
ence ; and yet, at the same time, he shows the inad¬ 
missibility of all the definitions given by Theaetetus. 
This dialogue is a kind of sportive dialectics, and leads 
to no positive result. In it Plato, as usual, combats 
the sophists ; he turns his arms, too, against all the 
schools that had been produced from the Socratic, 
namely, the Megaric, Cynic, and Cyrenaic : he attacks, 
in particular, the dualistic system of Heraclitus.—6. 
ULotyiGTyg, rj rcepl rov ovrog, “ The Sophist, or con¬ 
cerning that which exists .” This dialogue is a con¬ 
tinuation, as it were, of the preceding. After having 
shown, in the Theaetetus, that there exists no science 
obtained through the medium of the senses, Plato here 
examines the contrary doctrine, maintained by the Ele- 
atic school, namely, that of existence, and shows its 
inadmissibility. Although the subject of this dialogue 
is speculative and abstract in its nature, Plato never¬ 
theless has succeeded in imparting to it a pleasing and 
varied air, and has sprinkled it with many satirical al¬ 
lusions : the greater part of these last, however, are 
lost for us, from our limited acquaintance with the 
1084 


circumstances to which they refer.—7. Ilo/lm/cof, rj 
rcepl (dacuTidag, “ The Statesman, or concerning the 
Art of Governing .” The researches commenced in 
the Theaetetus and Sophist are applied in this dialogue 
to the case of the statesman. We are here made ac¬ 
quainted with Plato’s ideas respecting Providence, oj 
the manner in which God governs the world, as well 
as respecting the changes which the latter has under¬ 
gone. We see in it also his opinion on the different 
forms of government, among which he gives the pref¬ 
erence to that in which the power is vested in th« 
hands of a single person. This dialogue contains an 
Oriental mythus, according to which the Deity takes 
rest at certain periods, and during this time abandons 
to chance the government of the world. Such a doc¬ 
trine being unworthy of Plato, Socher thinks that this 
dialogue, as well as the Sophist, cannot be regarded 
as his. And yet they must, in that event, have been 
produced by some contemporary, since Aristotle cites 
the present dialogue, though in truth without assign¬ 
ing it to Plato by name.—8. JJappevidyg, rj nepl ’Id- 
euv, “ Parmenides, or concerning Ideas.” This dia¬ 
logue is a kind of appendage to the three that precede. 
As in these the false dialectics of the Megaric school 
had been refuted, so in this Parmenides, the head of 
the true dialectic system, comes forward to support his 
doctrine of absolute unity, and does it with great force 
of reasoning. The Parmenides is the most difficult 
of all Plato’s works, as well from the abstract topics 
and metaphysical subtleties discussed in it, as because 
the author is driven to the necessity of employing 
terms either entirely new, or else little used, in treat¬ 
ing of matters on which no writer had as yet exer¬ 
cised his pen. The Parmenides leads to no positive 
result; it has merely for its end the demonstration of 
certain propositions of a philosophical nature ; and it 
tends solely to exercise the mind in metaphysical spec¬ 
ulation, and to show, by an example, the true dialectic 
method. It is uncertain, however, whether we have 
the end of this production. The Parmenides has a 
form entirely philosophic, and without any dramatic 
movement. The characters of the several interlocu¬ 
tors are not as distinctly marked as in the other dia¬ 
logues. Socrates appears in it as a very young per¬ 
son, and as one just beginning to turn his attention to 
philosophical subjects, and to whom many of the prop¬ 
ositions of the schools are as yet new. It has been 
inferred from this circumstance that Plato wished to 
give credit to the tradition that Socrates had seen Par¬ 
menides in his youth. Socher rejects this dialogue, 
together with the two that immediately follow. (Con¬ 
sult Schmidt , Parmenides als dialektischcs Kunstwerk 
dargestellt, Berlin, 1821. — Goetz, Uebcrs. des Par- 
men., pt. iv, p. 107.)—9. KparvTiog, rj rcepl ovoydruv 
opdoTyrog, “ Cratylus, or concerning the Correct Use 
of Words” This dialogue is written in ridicule of 
the etymologies to which the sophists attached so 
much importance as to make use of them for demon¬ 
strations with which to support their propositions. 
They even went so far as to assert that we may learn 
the nature of objects from the words by which they 
are designated, inasmuch as a perfect accordmce pre¬ 
vailed between each thing in nature, and the appella¬ 
tion by which it was known. Agreeing in the main 
principle, they made of it applications widely different 
in their nature. The adherents of the Eleatic school 
pretended that the authors of language, in their inven¬ 
tion of words, went on the supposition that everything 
in nature is immutable : the followers of Heraclitus 
maintained directly the reverse. Setting out from 
these two points of view, so diametrically opposed to 
each other, these philosophers analyzed the meaning 
of words, each in accordance with his favourite the¬ 
ory.—Of the interlocutors of the Cratylus, one, Her- 
mogenes, a disciple of Parmenides, maintains that 
there is an inherent force and propriety in w*rd». in- 





PLATO. 


PLATO. 


dependent of all conventional arrangement; the other, 
Cratylus, a disciple of Heraclitus, regards them as ar¬ 
bitrary signs of our ideas, imposed on the objects 
which they designate, either from accident, use, or 
some fitness which they possess. Socrates shows the 
insufficiency of each of these systems, without, how¬ 
ever, replacing them by a third. This discussion gives 
rise to many etymological discussions, which cannot 
now be very interesting for us.—10. ^IXrjbog, rj rcepi 
r/dovijc, “ Philebus, or concerning Pleasure.” This 
dialogue is distinguished from those already mention¬ 
ed in that it is not limited to the overthrow of false 
doctrines, but examines the subject matter itself with 
great care. It has an end in view strictly dogmatical, 
ffiat is, to establish a truth and enunciate a positive 
proposition : this proposition is, that good consists 
neither in pleasure nor in knowledge, but in the union 
of the first and the second with the sovereign good, 
which is God. The Philebus is almost entirely de¬ 
void of irony; but it is sometimes deficient in clear¬ 
ness. It is one of the principal sources from which 
to obtain an acquaintance with the moral system of 
Plato.— 11 . 'Lvpnoaiov, fj rcep't epurop, “ The Banquet , 
or concerning Love.” Plato appears to have had a 
double object in view in writing this dialogue : the 
first, to discourse upon the nature of love ; and the 
other, to defend Socrates against the calumnies to 
which he had been exposed. Agathon celebrates by 
a banquet a poetical victory which has just been gained 
by him. The guests agree that each one, in turn, 
shall write a eulogium on love. Phaffirus, Pausa- 
nias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, and Agathon, speak 
each on this subject, according to their respective 
principles and views ; and in this species of oratorical 
encounter, Aristophanes assumes a character most in 
accordance with his peculiar talent, that of satire. 
Socrates, who succeeds, paints metaphysical love, that 
is, philosophy, the end of which is to excite the love 
of virtue, the only true and imperishable source of 
beauty. The Banquet is that one of the productions 
of Plato on which he would seem to have bestowed 
the greatest care. He has spread over it all the riches 
of his imagination, his eloquence, and his talent for 
composition.—12. II oTareia, r/ nepi bacaiov, “ A Re¬ 
public , or concerning what is Just.” The following 
able analysis of this celebrated production is deserving 
of insertion. ( Southern Review, No. 7, p. 127, seqq.) 

“ To say of Plato’s Republic that it is the idea of a 
perfect commonwealth, is not to give by any means an 
adequate, or even a just description of it. It is, in 
one sense, to be sure, a dream of social and political 
perfection, and, so far, its common title is not alto¬ 
gether inapplicable to it; but it bears hardly any re¬ 
semblance to the things that generally pass under that 
name ; to the figments, for example, of Harrington and 
Sir Thomas More. Compared with it, Telemachus, 
though a mere epic in prose, is didactic and practical; 
the Cyropaedia deserves to be regarded as the manual 
of soldiers and statesmen, and as the best scheme of 
discipline for forming them. Plato’s is a mere vision, 
and that vision is altogether characteristic of his ge¬ 
nius as his contemporaries conceived of it. It is 
something between prose and poetry in style ; it is 
something made up both of poetry and philosophy in 
the plan and design. But a very small part of it is 
given to any topics that can pretend to the character 
of political. Indeed, Socrates expressly says, that the 
institution of a commonwealth is but a subordinate ob¬ 
ject with him. His principal aim is to unfold the mys¬ 
tery of perfect justice. Of the title of the work, the 
latter part (rcepl ducalov) is unquestionably the more 
appropriate designation. If it were possible to have 
any doubts, after reading the work, the repeated and 
emphatic declarations of the philosopher himself would 
remove them. It is in the second book that he first 
alludes to the commonwealth, and then the purpose 


for which he piofess s to treat of it is unequivocally ex 
plained. He compares himself to one who, not having 
very good eves, is required to read a text at some dis¬ 
tance from him, written in distressingly small letters, 
and who prepares himself for his task by conning over 
the very same text which he happens to find set forth 
somewhere else in larger characters. The justice, the 
high and perfect justice, whose nature he is endeav¬ 
ouring to penetrate and unfold, exists not only in in¬ 
dividuals, but, on a grander scale, in the more con¬ 
spicuous and palpable image of that artificial being, a 
body politic. This idea is perpetually recurring. 
Thus it runs through the whole eighth book, which 
it may be remarked by the way, is a dissertation of 
incomparable excellence, and decidedly the most prac¬ 
tical part of the work. In this hook he treats of in¬ 
justice. He again resorts to the larger type, to the 
capital letters He illustrates the effects of that vice, 
or, rather, of that vicious and diseased state of the soul, 
by corresponding distempers and mutations of the 
body politic. We are told that the form of govern¬ 
ment is an image of the character of the citizen; that 
whatever may be said of the democracy or the oli¬ 
garchy, applies as strictly to the democrat and the oli- 
garchist; that there are as many shapes or species of 
polity, as there are types or varieties of the human 
soul; that, as the most perfect commonwealth is only 
public virtue imbodied in the institutions of a country, 
so every vice generates some abuse or corruption in 
the state, some pernicious disorder, some lawless pow¬ 
er incompatible with national liberty. In running this 
parallel between the individual and the corporate ex¬ 
istence, he unfolds his idea of the to binalov, not in a 
prologue, as Tiedemann affirms, but throughout the 
whole body of his work. He begins by showing that 
there can be bo happiness without it here ; and ends 
by a revelation of other worlds, and a state of beatific 
perfection, which it fits the soul to enter upon hereaf¬ 
ter. We must take care, however, not to confound 
this sublime justice with the vulgar attribute common¬ 
ly known by that name. Plato’s justice is that so 
magnificently described by Hooker, ‘ that law whose 
seat is the bosom of God, and whose voice the har¬ 
mony of the world.’—The whole dialogue is a Pytha¬ 
gorean mystery. Plato finds the key of the universe 
in the doctrine of number and proportion. He sees 
them pervading all nature, moral and physical, holding 
together its most distant parts and most heterogene¬ 
ous materials, and harmonizing them into order, and 
beauty, and rhythm. Socrates declares his assent to 
the Pythagorean tenet, that astronomy is to the eye 
what music is to the ear. The spheres, with the Si¬ 
rens that preside over them, and the sweet melodies 
of that eternal diapason, the four elements combined 
in the formation of the world, the beautiful vicissitude 
of the seasons, light and darkness, height and depth, 
all existences and their negations, all antecedents and 
consequences, all cause and effect, reveal the same 
mystery to the adept. Man is, in like manner, sub¬ 
ject throughout his whole nature to this universal law. 
Of the four cardinal virtues, take temperance for an ex¬ 
ample. What is it but a perfect discipline of the pas¬ 
sions by which they are all equally controlled, or, rather, 
a perfect concord and symphony in which each sounds 
its proper note and no other; in which no desire is either 
too high or too low; in which the enjoyment cf the pres¬ 
ent moment is never allowed to hurt that of the future, 
nor passion to rebel against reason, nor one passion to 
invade the province or to usurp the rights of another. 
The to ditcaiov goes somewhat farther. It is that 
state of the soul wherein the three parts of which.it is 
composed, the intellectual, the irascible, and the sen¬ 
sual, exercise each its proper function and influence ; 
in which the four cardinal virtues are blended together 
in such just proportion, in such symphonious unison ; 
in which all the faculties of the mind, while they are 

1085 




PLATO. 


PLATO. 


*ally developed, are so well disciplined and disposed, 
that nothing jarring or discordant, nothing uneven or 
irregular, is ever perceived in them. And so in the 
larger type, a perfect polity is that in which the same 
proportion and fitness are observed ; in which the dif¬ 
ferent orders of society move in their own sphere, and 
do only their appointed work ; in which intellect gov¬ 
erns, and strength and passion submit; that is, coun¬ 
sellors advise, soldiers make war, and the labouring 
classes employ themselves in their humble, but neces¬ 
sary and productive calling. The division of labour is 
a fundamental principle of Plato’s legislation, and is 
enforced by very severe penalties. He considers it as 
in the highest degree absurd, as out of all reason and 
proportion, that one man should pretend to be good at 
many things.—On the other hand, the most fearfully 
depraved condition of society is that which Polybius 
calls an ochlocracy; an anarchy of jacobins and sans¬ 
culottes, where every passion breaks loose in wild dis¬ 
order, and no law is obeyed, no right respected, no de¬ 
corum observed; where young men despise their se¬ 
niors, and old men aflfect the manners of youth, and 
children are disobedient to their parents, wives to their 
husbands, slaves to their masters. The justice of 
which he speaks is not, therefore, the single cardinal 
virtue known by that name. It is not commutative 
justice, nor retributive justice, nor (except, perhaps, 
in a qualified sense) distributive justice. It does not 
consist in mere outward conformity or specific acts. 
Its seat is in the inmost mind ; its influence is the 
music of the soul; it makes the whole nature of the 
true philosopher a concert of disciplined affections, a 
choir of virtues attuned to the most perfect accord 
among themselves, and falling in with the mysterious 
and everlasting harmonies of heaven and earth.—This 
general idea is still farther illustrated by the scheme 
of education in Plato’s Republic. It is extremely sim¬ 
ple ; for young men it consists only of music and gym¬ 
nastics ; for adepts of an advanced age, it is the study 
of truth, , pure truth, the good, the to ov, the divine 
monad, the one eternal, unchangeable. It is in the 
third book that he orders the former division of the 
scheme. It is necessary to cultivate with equal care 
both the parts of which it is composed, and to allow of 
no excess or imperfection in either. They who are 
addicted exclusively to music become effeminate and 
slothful ; they, on the other hand, who only discipline 
their nature by the exercises of the gymnasium, be¬ 
come rude and savage. This music, as Tiedemann 
observes, is mystic and mathematical. Pythagoras 
and Plato thought everything musical of divine origin. 

— God gave us these great correctives of the soul and 
of the body, not for the sake of either separately, but 
that all their powers, and functions, and impulses, 
should be fully brought out into action ; and, above 
all, be harmonized into mutual assistance and perfect 
unison. Plato’s whole method and discipline is di¬ 
rected to this end. He banishes from his ideal terri¬ 
tory the Lydian and Ionic measures as ‘softly sweet’ 
and wanton, while he retains, for certain purposes, the 
grave Dorian mood, and the spirit-stirring Phrvgian. 
So, in like manner, he expels all the poets except the 
didactic., with Homer at their head. The tragic poets 
were, in reference to moral education, especially of- < 
fensive to him. In conformity with the same princi¬ 
ple, he proscribes all manner of deliciousness and ex- ' 
cess, Sicilian feasts, and Corinthian girls, and Attic 
dainties, as leading to corruption of manners, and to 
the necessity of laws and penalties, of the judge and ; 
executioner. No innovation whatever is to be tolera¬ 
ted in this system of discipline, especially in what re- i 
gards music and gymnastics ; the slightest change in 
which Plato affirms to produce decided, however se¬ 
cret and insidious, effects upon the character and man- ; 
ners of a whole people. When his citizens, divided . 
into four orders, to correspond with the cardinal vir- ; 

1086 


, tues, have gone through their preparatory discipline, 
r and discharged in their day and generation the duties 
5 that were respectively allotted to them, they (at least 
i the better sort of them) must, in the calm of declining 

■ life, turn to the study of the true philosophy; not such 
1 as is taught by mercenary sophists, mere shallow fab 

■ lacies, mountebank tricks to impose upon ignorance, 

• vile arts to ingratiate one’s self with that savage beast 
' (a favourite image with the ancient writers), the way¬ 
ward and tyrannical demos. Nor such philosophy as 
bestows its thoughts upon the depraved manners of 
men, or the fluctuating and perishable objects around 
us; but that deep wisdom, that rapturous and holy con¬ 
templation, which abstracts itself from the senses and 
the changeable scenes of life and nature, and is wrap¬ 
ped up in the harmony and grandeur of the universe, 
in communing with the First Good and the First Fair, 
the infinite and unutterable beauty, fountain of all light 
to the soul, ‘the bright countenance of truth’ reveal¬ 
ed to the purified mind ‘in the quiet and still air of 
delightful studies. By such contemplations the soul 
shall attain to the perfection of virtue, and be prepared 
for the great moral change, the glorious transfiguration 
that is to crown its aspiring progress to beatitude and 
immortality.’ ”—13. T i/uaiog, i) rrepl (pvcreoc, “ Timeeus , 
or concerning Nature .” In this dialogue Critias relates 
the tradition of an ancient Athenian state, anterior to 
the deluge of Deucalion, and which was governed by 
laws not unlike those of Egypt. The Athenians, said 
this tradition, made war, at this remote period, against 
the inhabitants of Atlantis, an island situate beyosd 
the Pillars of Hercules. The inhabitants of Atlantis 
ruled over Libya and Western Europe, and would 
have subjugated the Greeks also, had not the Atheni¬ 
ans made successful opposition to their progress. 
After this fable, the philosopher Timasus, of Locri, de¬ 
velops his system concerning God, the origin and 
nature of the world, men, and animals. Through the 
whole of this exposition there prevails the usual tone 
of the Pythagorean school. Plato is commonly sup¬ 
posed to have followed, in the composition of this dia¬ 
logue, the work attributed to the philosopher of Locri, 
which we still possess. — 14. K pirtag, fj ’A rlavriKog, 

“ Critias, or the Atlantic .” This dialogue is a con¬ 
tinuation of the preceding. Critias here gives in de¬ 
tail what he had only sketched forth in the Timaeus, 
respecting an island in the Atlantic {vid. Atlantis), in 
habited anciently by a civilized and conquering race, 
and which had been ingulfed by the sea. He gives an 
account of the laws, manners, and institutions of this 
people. It is easy to perceive that the whole of this 
recital is a mere fiction, a species of political romance, 
by which Plato wished to prove the possibility of such 

a republic being established as he had framed in his 
own imagination. And yet it is more than probable 
that the ancients had some obscure tradition among 
them relative to the existence of a large continent to 
the west of the Straits of Gibraltar, and of this we find 
traces even in the pages of Strabo.—The Critias of 
Plato has given rise to various hypotheses and reveries, 
and the writers of the last two centuries have very ac 
lively exercised their pens on so attractive a subject 
Some have found the Atlantis of Plato in Palestine, 
others in India, and others, again, in the Canaries and 
Azores. (Consult Foss, Weltkunde der Alton , p. 8, 
26.— Latreille, Memoires sur divers sujets, &c., p. 
146.— Bailly, Lettres sur VAtlanti.de de Platon, &c., 
Lond., 1775, 8vo.— Vid. Atlantis.)—This dialogue is 
an unfinished one. It appears that death prevented 

the author from putting a finishing hand to it._We 

have now enumerated the fourteen dialogues which 
Ast believes to be undoubtedly authentic. And vet 
we have seen that in this number there are three which 
Socher rejects. We will now proceed to the twenty- 
one other dialogues, which, though commonly regarded 
as the productions of Plato, have nevertheless become 









PLATO. 


PLATO. 


Ine subjects of critical scepticism, since Schleierma- 
cher thought he had discovered in some of them what 
was not characteristic of Plato, and since Ast has re¬ 
jected them all indiscriminately. —15. N o/uov y rcepl 
voftodeclaq (3i6?iia 16 ', “ Twelve books of Laics, or con¬ 
cerning Legislation. 1 " This work has, until lately, 
been regarded as that production of antiquity which 
most distinguishes itself by the importance of its sub¬ 
ject, and the richness of the materials connected with 
it; as that in which the philosopher, abandoning the 
paths of imagination, enters into those of real life, and 
unfolds a part of his system, the putting of which into 
practice he considered as possible ; for it cannot but 
be admitted that the Laws are to be viewed as the 
production of Plato’s old age. Bockh makes the work 
to have been written in Plato’s seventy-fourth year(«d 
Mm., p. 73). Plato here traces the basis of a legis¬ 
lation less ideal, and more conformable to the weak¬ 
ness of human nature, than that which he had given 
in his Republic. The scene of the dialogue is laid in 
the island of Crete. The author criticises the codes 
of Minos and Lycurgus, as having no other object in 
view but the formation of warriors. He shows that 
the object of a legislator ought to be to maintain the 
freedom and union of the citizens, and to establish a 
wise form of government. Examining the different 
forms of government that had existed in Greece or 
other countries, he exposes their several defects. In 
the course of these remarks, he traces, in his third 
book, a character of Cyrus far different from that 
which Xenophon has left. It is commonly supposed 
that Plato wished, in so doing, to retaliate on Xeno¬ 
phon, w'hose Cyropsedia appeared to him to have been 
directed against the first two books of his Republic. 
Bockh, however, has written against this opinion. 
{De Simultate, quam Plato cum Xenoplionte exer- 
cuisse fertur, Berol., 1811.) After these preliminary 
observations, the philosopher enters more directly on 
his subject in the fourth book. He treats at first of 
the worship of the gods, the basis of every well-regu¬ 
lated state. The fifth book contains the elements 
of social order, the duties of children towards their 
parents, of parents towards their children, the duties 
of citizens and of strangers. He then considers 
the political form of the state that is to be founded. 
Plato, if he is the author of the work, renounces in it 
all the chimeras of his youth, the community of prop¬ 
erty, and of women and children. In the sixth book 
he treats of magistrates, of the laws of marriage, of 
slavery ; in the seventh of the education of children ; 
in the eighth of public festivals and of commerce ; in 
the ninth of crimes ; in the tenth of religion ; in the 
eleventh of contracts, testaments, &c. ; in the twelfth 
of various topics, such as military discipline, oaths, 
right of property, prescription, &c.—Every page of 
the Laws is in contradiction to the Republic. Never¬ 
theless, the Laws existed in the time of Aristotle ; and 
this philosopher, who cites them by name, expresses 
no doubts whatever as to their authenticity. The dif¬ 
ference of style between this work and some other 
productions of Plato may be easily explained by the 
difference of age. Ast objects, that Plato himself de¬ 
clares the Republic, Timseus, and Critias to be his 
last works, and that after this he will write a dialogue, 
in which Hermogenes shall be the speaker. Now, as 
the Critias appears to have been never finished, and as 
the Hermogenes was not written, Ast concludes that 
Plato did not compose the dialogue of the Laws. 
(A^, Platon’s Leben und Schriflen, p. 379, seqq.) 
Plato, however, does not exactly say what Ast makes 
him assert. He merely spealqs of the Timaeus and 
Critias as forming a kind of continuation to the Re¬ 
public, and announces that he will one day add to them 
the Hermogenes, without, however, assuring us that 
this will be his last work. May we not suppose that 
it was the composition of a work as considerable as 


| this of the Laws that called off the attent.on of the 
I author from his design of writing the Hermogenes"?—• 
j Diogenes Laertius informs us (3, 37), that Plato died 
before publishing his Laws, and that Philip of Opus, 
one of his disciples, gave to the world the manuscript, 
which he found among his master’s tablets. This cu¬ 
rious account, which leaves no doubt as to the period 
of life when Plato wrote the work in question, has fur¬ 
nished Ast with a new hypothesis. He thinks that 
some disciple of Plato fabricated the Laws to serve as 
a supplement to the Republic. The authenticity of 
the work, on the other hand, has been supported by 
Thiersch, in his critique on the work of Ast (Wien. 
Jahrb.), and in a prize essay by Dilthey, Got ting., 
1820, 4to. — 16. ’Emvoyic, i} wuTepivop ovTiXoyo^, 
“ Epinomis, or the Nocturnal Assembly." This dia¬ 
logue forms a kind of supplement to the Laws. It 
treats of the establishment of a body of magistrates, 
who are to act as guardians of the laws and conserv¬ 
ators of the constitution. Diogenes Laertius (3, 37) 
says that Philip of Opus was regarded as the author 
of the Epinomis, and it is easy to conceive that the 
editor of a posthumous work might be tempted to add 
to it something of his own. (Compare Suidas, s. v. 
(ju?i 6 ao(j)og.) —17. Mivuv, rj rrepl aperyp, “ Menon, or 
concerning Virtue." Various questions started in the 
Protagoras, Phaedrus, Gorgias, and Phasdon, are de¬ 
veloped more fully in this piece : they all have refer¬ 
ence to the fundamental inquiry, “ Can virtue be made 
a subject of instruction.” The Menon contains men¬ 
tion of a fact (p. 90, A., ed. Steph.) which proves it 
to have been written at least six years after the death 
of Socrates. The philosopher just mentioned blames 
in the course of this dialogue, the Theban Ismenias 
for having enriched himself with the gold of Persia'-: 
this fact belongs to the third year of the 96th Olym¬ 
piad (394 B.C.), and is one with which Socrates 
could not have been acquainted. (Bockh, ad Min., p. 
46.— Id., de Simult., &c., p. 24, 26.— Schleicrmacher , 
Uebersctz. Plat., vol. 2, pt. 1, p. 356, seqq. —On the 
opposite side of the question, consult Buttmann, ad 
Menon., ed. 3, p. 48.— Stallbaum, ad Menon., p. 103, 
seqq.) Socher maintains the authenticity of this dia¬ 
logue against Ast. On the tendency of the piece, and 
the period whence it was written, consult Stallbaum, 
in the valuable Prolegomena to his edition of the Me¬ 
non ; and, on the difficult mathematical passage, Moll- 
weide, in his “ Commenlationes tres Mathematico- 
Philologicce," Lips., 1813; and also Wex, in his 
“ Commentatio de loco Mathcmatico in Platonis Mc- 
none," Lips., 1825. The student is also referred to 
the Philolog. Litteraturblatt zur Allgem. Schulzeit- 
ung., Jahrg., 1827, 2 te Abtheil. No. 5, where the 
merits of Klugel, Wolf, Muller, Gedike, Schleierma- 
cher, Buttmann, Mollweide, Wex, and other scholars, 
in elucidating this same passage, are respectively 
weighed.—18. E vdvdypoq, fj hpLoriKoq, “ Euthydemus, 
or the Disputer." In this dialogue, Socrates relates 
to Crito the conversation which he has had with two 
sophists of the Eristic school, named Euthydemus and 
Dionysodorus. He ridicules with great spirit the false 
syllogisms and captious reasonings of the philoso¬ 
phers of this school.—As a piece of composition, this 
dialogue is one of the most perfect of Plato’s. Schlei- 
ermacher admires its vivacity, and Ast, who regards 
it as supposititious, confesses that it is superior tc 
many of the productions of Plato.—19. Xapuidyp, y 
Kepi ou(j)poGvvyg, “ Charmides, or concerning Temper¬ 
ance." Socrates here refutes, perhaps with a little 
too much subtlety, the definitions which the young 
Charmides gives of temperance or moderation. Al¬ 
though this dialogue is not without merit, Socher 
adds himself to the number of those who consider it 
as supposititious. Schleiermacher is of the opposite 
opinion. (Consult Ochmann, “ Charmides Platonu 
qui fertur dialogus num sit genuinus quaritur* 

1087 






PLATO. 


PLATO 


tfresi , 1826.)—20. Avar, rj ivepl quA’.ar , “Lysis, or 
•oncerning Friendship .” The author here treats, with¬ 
out coming to any decision, a questi on which has oc¬ 
cupied much of the attention both of ancient and mod¬ 
ern philosophers, namely, “What produces friend¬ 
ship and love 1 ?” (Plato’s and Aristotle’s ideas on 
friendship are finely given by Bouterwek, in the fourth 
volume of the “ Neuen Vesta.") According to Dio¬ 
genes Laertius (3, 24), Socrates, on hearing this dia¬ 
logue read, exclaimed, “By Hercules! how many 
things does this young man falsely report of me !” 
Hence it appears to have been the work of Plato’s 
youth. Schleiermac’ner regards this dialogue as au¬ 
thentic. Ast and Socher reject it.—21. NA.ntbiddrjg 
6 pei^uv, rj rcepl tyvaeug avOpurrov, “ The first (or 
greater) Alcibiades, or concerning the Nature of Man." 
The second member of this title, added by the com¬ 
mentators, does not suit the subject. The dialogue 
has reference merely to Alcibiades, who, young and 
presumptuous, without knowledge and without experi¬ 
ence, is on the point of presenting himself before the 
people to be employed in the government of the state. 
Socrates directs him to study first the principles of 
law and politics. The end of this piece is to show 
the true nature of the attachment which Socrates had 
for this young man, an attachment which made him 
so desirous of correcting his faults.—As Socrates, in 
the course of this dialogue, compares the Deity to 
light, certain commentators have discovered in this 
expression the germe, as they think, of the system of 
emanation, in which God is light and matter is dark¬ 
ness. — Schleiermacher considers this production as 
supposititious.—22. A A.Kt 6 ui 6 rjg (3', rj rcepl repoaevxyg, 
“ The second Alcibiades, or concerning Prayer .” Soc¬ 
rates shows Alcibiades the emptiness and inconsist¬ 
ency of the prayers which mortals address to the di¬ 
vinity, unable as they are to tell whether the things 
for which they pray will turn to their advantage or 
not. Socher declares against this dialogue.—23. 

rj kpirdtpiog, “ Menexenus. or the Funeral 
Oration .” This funeral oration, in honour of those 
Athenians who had died for their country, is put in 
the mouth of Aspasia, and is supposed to have been 
an extemporaneous production on her part. The end 
of Plato, in composing this satirical piece, was, with¬ 
out doubt, to show that oratory was not a very diffi¬ 
cult art. Bockh very acutely maintains, in his com¬ 
mentary on the Minos, that Plato, in many of his dia¬ 
logues, comes forth in a polemic attitude against the 
celebrated Lysias, and especially in his Menexenus. 
{Bockh. ad Min., p. 182, seqq.) The events connect¬ 
ed with the history of Athens, which are alluded to in 
the course of this dialogue, reach to the peace of An- 
talcidas, concluded fourteen years after the death of 
Socrates. This anachronism, which may be pardoned 
in a satirical production, has nevertheless induced 
Schle-iermacher to regard as supposititious the begin¬ 
ning and end of the dialogue. Schleiermacher’s opin¬ 
ion, which is also that of Ast, and which was first 
started by Schlegel, in Wieland’s Attische Museum 
(vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 262, seqq.), has found an opponent 
in Loers, in his edition of the Menexenus, Colon. 
Agripp., 1824.—24. Au-xyg, rj rcepl avbpeiag, “ Laches , 
vr concerning Bravery .” The author shows that it is 
difficult to say what bravery properly is : his principal 
object, however, is to enforce the necessity of not 
confining the education of the young to mere bodily 
exercises.—25. 'Ircrciag jiei^uv, rj •Kepi tov KaHoi), 

“ The greater Hippias, or concerning what is Beauti¬ 
ful." A piece of banter against the sophist Hippias. 
—26. 'Ircrciag 6 eXarruv, rj rcepl fievbovg, “ Hippias 
the Leis, or concerning Falsehood." In order to ridi¬ 
cule more effectually the vanity of Hippias, who pre¬ 
tended to a knowledge of all sciences and all arts, so 
ns to boast that he carried nothing about him that was 
lot his own manufacture, as his clothing, his ring, 
1088 


&c., Socrates proves that this universal genius is not 
able to maintain, with any success, a thesis evidently 
true. The captious reasonings in which he entangles 
his adversary, extort from the latter a proposition 
manifestly false, namely, that a lie is preferable to the 
truth. — 27. E vbvQpov, rj rcepl oaiov , “ Euthyphron, 
or concerning Piety." This dialogue, written after 
the accusation of Socrates, and before his condemna¬ 
tion, appears to have a double end ; first, to establish 
by the principles of dialectics the idea of piety, which 
Socrates numbered among the cardinal virtues, but 
of which only a passing notice is taken in the previ¬ 
ous dialogues ; and, secondly, that of defending Soc¬ 
rates against the charge of irreligion. Plato shows 
the falsity of the ideas entertained by the vulgar, and 
even by the priests, in relation to what was agreea¬ 
ble to the Deity, and to the religious duties of men ; 
and he justifies Socrates by showing that it was only 
on this ground the philosopher attacked the national re¬ 
ligion. The interlocutors are Socrates and a certain 
Euthyphron, who, from a sense of religious duty, misun¬ 
derstood by him, was induced to become the accuser of 
his own father. Socrates compels him to confess that 
he does not even know in what religious duty consists , 
he ridicules the notions which the vulgar entertain ol 
the Deity ; but, unhappily, he is satisfied with throw¬ 
ing down, without thinking of building up again, for he 
puts nothing in the place of the system which he has 
prostrated ; it would have been dangerous, however, 
to have done this, under the circumstances of the case. 
The light tone in which the process against Socrates 
is alluded to, would seem to show that his friends de¬ 
ceived themselves as to the result. — Ast attacks the 
authenticity of this dialogue, on the ground principally 
of its not containing any one speculative view. Wig- 
gers, on the contrary, has defended it, in his “ Com. - 
mentatio in Platonis Euthyphronem," Rostoch, 1805, 
4to. — 28. "luv, 7 / rcepl ’I Xiubog, “Jon, or concerning 
the Iliad" (more correctly, of Poetic Enthusiasm). Th« 
interlocutors are Socrates and Ion, the latter a native 
of Ephesus, and one of those rhapsodists who roamed 
through Greece, reciting the poems of Homer, Hesi¬ 
od, and other great masters of the art. Much differ¬ 
ence of opinion has prevailed in relation both to the 
merit of this dialogue and the object which Plato 
had in view in composing it. Sydenham ( Synopsis , 
or General views, of the Works of Plato, Lond., 1759, 
4to) and Arnaud {Mem. de VAcad. des Inscr., &c., 
vol. 37, p. 1, seqq.) consider this production as level¬ 
led at the poets, “ those eternal enemies of truth.” 
As Plato, however, was afraid of incurring the re¬ 
sentment of this irascible class of persons, he only 
attacked, say the writers just named, the rhapso¬ 
dists. Socher also views this dialogue in the light 
of a satire against poets. Some commentators, on 
the other hand, think that there is no necessity for go¬ 
ing so far in order to discover Plato’s object: it was 
to repress the enthusiasm of the blinded admirers of 
poetry, which is as distinctly opposed to truth as the 
false logic of the sophists. {Platonis Ion, ed. Nitsch, 
Lips., 1822, 8vo.) — 29. 2 unparovg dreoXoyia, “ De¬ 
fence of Socrates." Diogenes Laertius (2, 41) in¬ 
forms us, that Plato made an attempt to defend Soc¬ 
rates before his judges, but that the latter refused to 
hear him. The present piece, written after the death 
of Socrates, is a monument erected to his memory, and 
an eloge pronounced, as it were, before all Greece 
Placed in the mouth of him whom it undertakes to de¬ 
fend, it combines simplicity and modesty with truth, 
and with that dignity which a good man derives from 
the consciousness of fp^nocence, when he is attacked 
by the wicked. We learn, indeed, from Xenophon 
that this was precisely the tone in which Socrates ad¬ 
dressed his judges, and that, instead of deigning to re¬ 
fute the charges alleged against him, he merely unfold¬ 
ed to their view the history of his past life. Dionysius 





PLATO. 


PLATO. 


•f Halicarnassus calls this production a eulogium un¬ 
der the form of an apology ( ed. Reiske, vol. 5, p. 295, 
35S). Bockh maintains, that Plato wrote the “ De¬ 
fence of Socrates” in a spirit of rivalry towards the 
one composed by Lysias ; and he refers to Plutarch 
(AT. Orat. Vit. — Op., ed. Reiske, vol. 9, p. 324). Ast, 
on the contrary, remarks that Plutarch appears rather 
to have had in his eye the oration of Lysias mentioned 
in the Phaedrus. {Bockh, ad Min., p. 182.— Ast , Pla¬ 
tons Leben , &c., p. 492. — Compare Beck, Comment. 
Societ. Philolog. Lips., vol. 4, pt. 1, p. 28.) — 30. 
K piruv, fj nepl npanreov, “ Crito, or concerning the 
Duty of a Citizen .” The scene of this dialogue be¬ 
tween Crito and Socrates is in the prison where the 
latter is confined, during the interval between his con¬ 
demnation and death. Crito advises him to fly, and 
hints that the keeper of the prison has been bribed by 
him, and that all things are ready for his escape. Soc¬ 
rates, on the other hand, maintains that it is not allow¬ 
ed a citizen to withdraw himself from that authority 
Ahich has power over him, nor to break the tacit com¬ 
pact by which he has bound himself to obey the laws 
of his country. Not only Ast, but another writer also, 
has attacked the authenticity of this dialogue. ( Del- 
brack, Sokrates, Koln., 1819, 8vo.) It has found, how¬ 
ever, vigorous supporters in Thiersch, Socher, and Bre- 
mi. ( Philologische Beytrdge aus der Schweiz., Zurich, 
1819, 8vo, p. 143.)—31. Qedyyg, fj rcepi oo^iap, “ The- 
ages, or concerning Wisdom .” Demodocus having 

brought to Socrates fiis son Theages, desirous of learn¬ 
ing that kind of wisdom by which one is fitted for gov¬ 
erning the state, Socrates declines the proposal, on the 
ground that he has not yet heard the voice of his Ge¬ 
nius, without whose approbation nothing that he might 
undertake would succeed. The end of the dialogue 
is to show that the method of Socrates differs from that 
of the sophists, in that the former gives no regular in¬ 
struction to his disciples, but forms them to virtue in 
his society and by his converse. This dialogue con¬ 
tains some very fine passages. Schleiermacher re¬ 
gards it as supposititious. — 32. ’A vrepaerrai, “ The 
Rivals,” also entitled ’E paaral, fj nepl tpiXocrocjiiag, 
The Lovers, or concerning Philosophy.” A very 
feeble dialogue, the object of which is to show that 
Socrates estimated virtue and justice above every¬ 
thing else, and cared very little for purely speculative 
researches.—33. "Innap^og, fj tyiTionepdfig, “ Hippar¬ 
chus, or the Lover of Gain.” This dialogue, which is 
very probably mutilated, is deficient in plan. It treats 
of the false ideas that men entertain respecting the ac¬ 
quisition and love of gain. The author advances in 
the course of it some historical paradoxes. Socher, 
who defends several dialogues against the attacks of 
Schleiermacher and Ast, acknowledges, with them, 
and also with Wolf {Prolegom. ad Horn., p. cliv.), that 
this is not one of Plato’s productions. Valckenaer 
{ad Herod., 5, 55) had already expressed the same 
opinion. — 34. M ivug, fj nepl vbpov, “ Minos, or con¬ 
cerning Law.” Socrates discourses, in this dialogue, 
with a certain Minos on the nature of law, which he 
takes, in its most extended sense, as the rule of all our 
actions. We here find the first elements of the doc¬ 
trine of modern philosophers respecting the law of na¬ 
ture and the moral law. The authenticity of this dia¬ 
logue has been ably attacked by Bockh, with whom 
Socher agrees. {Bockh, Comment, in Platonis dialog, 
qui vulgo inscribitur Min., &c., Halve, 1806, 4to.)— 
35. K?wtro(j)C)v,ynpoTp£nTU(6g, “ Clitophon, or the Ex¬ 
hortation.'’ This discourse, in which the nature of 
virtue is investigated, is not entire. Stephens and 
Serranus (De Serres) reject it from the list of Plato’s 
works.—We will now give the titles of eight other 
productions, also attributed to this philosopher, but 
which bear so openly upon their fronts the stamp of 
falsification, that the ancients themselves, though 
sometimes far from scrupulous in matters of criti- 
6 Y 


cism, regarded them as strangers to Plato. 1. ’E pv%- 
icig, y ’Epaalorparog, V rcepi nTiovrov, “ Eryxias, 
or Erasistratus, or concerning Wealth.” Diogenes 
Laertius already regarded this dialogue as spurious 
(3, 62). It is the same that is sometimes ascribed 
to iEschines Socraticus. — 2 'ATocvcjv, fj neol pera- 
poptpuaeiog, “ Halcyon, or concerning Metamorpho¬ 
sis.” This dialogue, which is found also among the 
works of Lucian, treats of the wonders of nature. Di¬ 
ogenes attributes it to the academician Leo. — 3. 2t<7- 
v(poc, i] nepl rod fiov/ieveodai, “ Sisyphus, or concerning 
Deliberation .”—4. ’A^ioxog, fj nepi flavdrov , “Azio- 
chus, or concerning Death.” This dialogue is one of 
those ascribed to .Eschines, or Xenocrates of Chal- 
cedon. {Bockh, Praef. in Sim. Socrat. dial., p. vi.— 
Wyttenbach, Philomath., pt. 2, p. 37.)—5. Aypodonog, 
fj nepl rov ovp6ov7^eveo0ai, “ Demodocus , or concern 
ing Consultation.” —6. "O pot, “ Definitions.” As¬ 
cribed also to Speusippus.—7. Ilept aperrjg, el 6 i 6 an- 
rov, “ Concerning Virtue, whether it is a thing to be 
taught .” This dialogue resembles the Menon ; it 
treats of the same subject, but less in detail, and with 
some difference of manner. Socher regards it as the 
first sketch, or else an imperfect edition, of the Men¬ 
on, and he therefore places it among the genuine 
works of Plato. Le Clerc attributes it to ^Eschines. 
{JEschinis Socrat., Dial., Amst., 1711.)—8. Kept 6 t- 
naiov, “ Concerning Justice.” In 1806, Bockh pub¬ 
lished a dissertation on the Minos of Plato, tending 
to show that the opinion of Schleiermacher, adopted 
by Wolf, was correct, which made this production to 
be a spurious one. He advanced also a peculiar hy¬ 
pothesis respecting the author of the work. Diogenes 
Laertius (2, 122) informs us, that Socrates was in the 
habit of frequenting the shop of a certain shoemaker 
or currier, named Simon, for the purpose of discours¬ 
ing there with his friends ; that this Simon was accus¬ 
tomed to commit to writing all that he could remem¬ 
ber of these conversations ; and that he afterward pub¬ 
lished thirty-three of these dialogues, among which 
were four with the following titles : Ilept vopov, “ Of 
LawHepl (piTioaepfiovg, “ Of the Love of Gain 
Hepl dinaiov, “ Of Justice;” and Ilept ciperyg, “ Of 
Virtue.” He adds, that Simon was the first who 
thought of publishing the Socratic conversations, and 
that, from the rank in life of the one who gave them 
to the world, they were called ’ZkvtlkoI AiuXoyot, 
“ The Shoemaker-dialogues,” and from their contents, 

“ Socratic.” Ast, however, regards the epithet a kvti- 
nog, here, as indicating something “ low” or “ mean.” 
(Compare Heindorff, ad Charmid., p. 83.) Bockh, 
after having shown that the dialogue entitled Minos 
originally bore the appellation nepl vopov, and the 
Hipparchus that of nepl (j)t?ioKepdovg, concludes that 
these two dialogues, hitherto ascribed to Plato, are of 
the number of those published by Simon. This hy¬ 
pothesis having met with no opponents during three 
years (whether it was that the conclusion seemed a 
plausible one, or becadse it was in accordance with 
the sceptical spirit that distinguishes the literature ol 
Germany), Bockh grew bolder, and in 1810 actually 
gave to the world these two dialogues, entitled nepl 
dperijg and nepl diKaiov, under the name of Simon the 
Socratic (“ Simonis Socratici, ut videtur, dialogi iv., 
de lege, de lucri cupidine, de juslo, ac de virtute. Ad - 
did sunt incerti aucloris dialogi Eryxia et Axiochus. 
Grceca reccnsuit, et preefationem criticam prcemisit A. 
Bockh,” Heidelb., 1810, 8vo). His whole theory, how¬ 
ever, has been ably refuted by Letronne. {Journal 
des Savans, 1820, p. 675, seqq.) —There exists also, 
under the name of Plato, % correspondence which 
would be one of great interest if it really came from the 
founder of the Academy, because it contains particu 
lars of an historical, as well as political and philosophy 
ical, nature. These Letters, some of which are ol 
considerable length, have reference to the visits mad* 

1089 





PLATO. 


PLA 


' 


Dy Plato to Sicily, and to the intrigues of which this 
•sland was the theatre, in consequence of the tyranny 
of the younger Dionysius and the movements of Dion. 
The correspondence in question appears to have been 
published by some of the followers ©f Plato with the 
view of exculpating their master and themselves from 
the charge of fomenting troubles in Syracuse. Cicero 
seems to have entertained no doubt of these letters 
being genuine, and he cites one of them as “ prccclara 
epistola Platonis .” ( Tusc. Disp., 5, 35.) The fol¬ 

lowing modern scholars have denied their authenticity: 
Meiners, Cornmentat. Soc., Gott ., 1783, p. 51, seqq. — 
Groddeck, Literatur-Geschichte. — Ticdemann, Gmech- 
enlands erste Philosophen, p. 476, seqq. — Ast, Pla¬ 
tons Lebcn und Schriften, p. 376, seqq. — Socher , 
Ucber Platons Schriften, Munchen, 1820.—In de¬ 
fence of their genuineness we may name, Schlosser, 
Platos Briefc iibersetzt (Schmid und Snell, Philos. 
Journ., vol. 2, p. 3, Giessen , 1795).— Tcnnemann, 
JLehren und Meinungen der Sokratiker, p. 17, seqq. 
— Id., System der Plat. Philos., p. 106, seqq. — Mor¬ 
gens tern. Entwurf von Platos Lcben, &c. — Grimm, 
De Epistolis Platonis, an genuine vel supposititiae 
sint, Berol., 1815.—We have six lives of Plato re¬ 
maining, three others by Speusippus, Porphyry, and 
Aristoxenus being lost. The most ancient of these 
six lives is that by Apuleius, in the first book of his 
work, “ De habitudinc doctrinarum de nativitate 
Platonis. ” The other five are written in Greek ; of 
these, one is by Diogenes Laertius, and is found in 
the third book of his compilation ; another is by Olym- 
piodorus, and is given at the head of his commentary on 
the first Alcibiades ; the third is by Hesychius of Mi¬ 
letus ; the fourth and fifth are anonymous. All these 
lives are scanty and crowded with fables. Two of the 
best modern biographies of the philosopher are those 
of Tennemann and Ast. The former of these has 
been translated by the Rev. Mr. Edwards, professor 
in the Theological Seminary at Andover, and forms 
part of a work, entitled “ Selections from German Lit¬ 
erature, by B. B. Edwards and E. A. Park, Profes¬ 
sors Theol. Sem. Andover ,” 1839. Valuable mate¬ 
rials have been obtained by us, from this, for our bi¬ 
ographical sketch of Plato. The commentaries on 
Plato are still numerous, though very many have been 
lost. A Platonic Lexicon by Timseus has come down 
to us, of which Ruhnken published an excellent edi¬ 
tion in 1754; and to the same modern scholar we 
owe the publication of some valuable Platonic scholia 
(Lugd. Bat , 1800, 8vo). A new edition of the Lex¬ 
icon of Timaeus, by Koch, appeared from the Leipsic 
press in 1828.—Of the MSS. of Plato, two possess 
great value on account of their early date. One of 
these belongs to the tenth century, and is at present in 
the Royal Library at Paris, being known among its 
collection of MSS. as Mo. 1807. The other is the 
celebrated one brought over from Greece by Dr. 
Clarke, the well-known traveller. It is now in the 
Bodleian Library at Oxford. This is the earlier of 
the two, having been written in 896 A.D. It contains 
the first twenty-four dialogues, with the titles precisely 
as they are given in the Basle edition of 1534. In the 
margin are written seholia in a very ancient hand. 
The MS. is on vellum. In 1812, Professor Gaisford 
published an account of it, in his “ Catalogus, sive 
Notitia Manuscriptorum , qui a cel. E. D. Clarke com- 
parati, in Bibliotheca Bodleiana adservantur &c., 
Gxon., 1812, 4to. In 1820, the same scholar publish¬ 
ed a collation of the same, under the title of “ Lectio- 
nes Platonicaf &c., Oxon., 8vo.—The works of 
Plato were first published, after the invention of print¬ 
ing, by Aldus Manutius, at Venice, in 1513. The 
commentaries of Serranus and Ficinus, the former of 
which accompany the edition of H. Stephens of 1578, 
and the latter that printed at Lyons in 1590, are very 
valuable; but, at the same time, are to be read with 
1090 


caution ; for Ficinus, having formed his cbncepftons 
of the doctrine of Plato after the model of the Alexan- 
drean school, frequently, in his Arguments, misrepre¬ 
sents the design of his author, and in his version ob¬ 
scures the sense of the original; and Serranus, for 
want of an accurate acquaintance with the doctrine of 
his author, and through the influence of a strong pre¬ 
dilection for the scholastic system of theology, some 
times gives an incorrect and injudicious explanation 
of the text.—Among the most useful editions of the 
entire works of Plato, the following may be enumer¬ 
ated ; The Bipont edition, 12 vols. 8vo, 1781—1 "/86 ; 
that of Bekker, Berol., 1816-1818, 10 vols. 8vo ; that 
of Ast, 1819-1840, still in a course of publication, of 
which the text and some volumes of the commentary 
have appeared, Lips., 12 vols. 8vo: it is disfigur¬ 
ed, however, by numerous typographical errors ; the 
London variorum edition, containing selections from 
thirty-four commentaries, and published under the 
care of G. Burges, Lond., 1826, 11 vols. Svo ; and, 
what may, perhaps, be regarded as the best, that of 
Stallbaum, still in a course of publication, and form¬ 
ing part of Jacobs’s and Rost’s “ Bibliotheca Graeca,” 
Lips., 1827-1840, 8 vols. Svo.—Of the select dia¬ 
logues of Plato, the best edition is that of Pleindorff, 
Berol., 1802-1810, 4 vols. 8vo, a second edition of 
which appeared in 1827, under the care of Buttmann, 
Berol., 4 vols. Of separate dialogues numerous edi¬ 
tions have been given by various eminent scholars, for 
an account of which consult Schotl, Gesch. der Griech. 
Lit., vol. 1, p. 524, seqq., and Hoffmann, Lex. Bibli - 
ograph., vol. 3, p. 285.—The best translations of 
Plato are, the German one of Schleiermacher, Berlin, 
1817-1828, 3 vols. in 6, 8vo, left uncompleted in conse¬ 
quence of the death of the author; and the French ver¬ 
sion of Victor Cousin, Paris, 1821-1840, 13 vols. Svo, 
—For some remarks on the doctrines of what is called 
the New Platonic school, consult the article Alexandri- 
na Schola.—■>11. A comic writer, who flourished about 
the period of Socrates’s death. He composed twenty 
comedies. Suidas, Plutarch, and Athenseus cite a 
much larger number, but a part of these pieces belong 
to another Plato, a writer of the Middle Comedy, and 
who lived about a century after the former. The an¬ 
cient writers praise him as well as Cratinus for clear¬ 
ness or perspicuity ( ’kapirporrit ~). His patriotic feel¬ 
ings led him frequently to attack the corrupt dema¬ 
gogues of the day, such as Cleon, Hyperbolus. Cleo- 
phon, and others. He gave his name to a particular 
kind of metre. The fragments of this writer are to be 
found in the collection of Grotius. Consult also 
Meineke, Cura Critica in Comicorum fragmenta ab 
Athenao servata, Berol., 1814. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. 

Gr., vol. 2, p. 91.)—III. A comic poet, called, for dis¬ 
tinction’ sake from the preceding, the younger. It is 
difficult, indeed impossible, to separate his remains 
from those of the elder comic poet of the same name. 
He flourished about 300 B.C. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. 
Gr., vol. 2, p. 114.) 

Plautianus, Fulvius, a native of Africa, and a 
relative, according to some, of the Emperor Scptimius 
Severus. Other accounts, however, made him to have 
been of obscure origin, and to have been banished for 
seditious conduct, as well as many acts of a criminal 
nature. In his banishment, according to these latter 
authorities, he became acquainted with Severus, who 
some years after ascended the imperial throne. ( He - 
rodian, 3, 10.) When Severus attained to the sov¬ 
ereignty, Plautianus was rapidly advanced to favour 
and power, and became eventually praetorian prefect. 
Statues were erected to him both at Rome and in the 
provinces, as well by individuals as by the senate it¬ 
self. The soldiers and senators alike swore by his 
fortune, as had been formerly done in the case of Se- 
janus, and he wanted but little to be equal in power 
with Severus. {Dio Cass., 75, 15.) Plautianus is 





P L A 


PLAUTUS. 


charged with having made use of his exorbitant power 
to oppress the people, and to excite the vindictive 
passions of his master. By the marriage of his daugh¬ 
ter Plautilla with Oaracalla, who had already, for some 
years, enjoyed the rank of Augustus, he obtained ad¬ 
mittance into the imperial household ; where his pride, 
and the influence which he possessed over the emper¬ 
or, rendered him an object of suspicion and dislike. 
Being at last accused privately to the emperor of aim¬ 
ing at the succession, he was slain by a soldier, at the 
order of Caracalla, in the presence of Severus. Plau¬ 
tilla was banished by Severus, along with her brother 
Plautus, to the island of Lipara, where, seven years 
after, she was put to death by order of Caracalla, A.D. 
211. ( Herodian, 3, 10.— Dio Cass., 75, 14, seqq .— 
Spartian., Vit. Sev.) 

Plautus, M. Accius, a celebrated comic poet, the 
son of a freedman, and bom at Sarsina, a town of Um¬ 
bria, about 525 A.U.C. He was called Plautus from 
his splay-feet, a defect common to the Umbrians. 
Having turned his attention to the stage, he soon 
realized a considerable fortune by the popularity of his 
dramas ; but, by risking it in trade, or spending it, ac¬ 
cording to others, on the splendid theatrical dresses 
which he wore as an actor, and theatrical amusements 
being little resorted to on account of the famine then 
prevailing at Rome, he was quickly reduced to such 
necessity as forced him to labour in a mill for his 
daily support. {Aulus Gellius, N. A., 3, 3.) Many 
of his plays were written in these unfavourable cir¬ 
cumstances, and, of course, have not obtained all the 
perfection which might otherwise have resulted from 
his increased knowledge of life and his long practice 
in the dramatic art. Twenty plays of this writer have 
come down to us. But, besides these, a number of 
comedies now lost have been attributed to him. Au¬ 
lus Gellius {N. A., 3, 3) mentions that there were 
about a hundred and thirty plays which, in his age, 
passed under the name of Plautus ; and of these nearly 
forty titles, with v a few scattered fragments, still remain. 
From the time of Varro to that of Aulus Gellius, it 
seems to have been a subject of considerable discus¬ 
sion what plays were genuine ; and it appears that the 
best-informed critics had come to the conclusion that 
a great proportion of those comedies which vulgarly 
passed for the productions of Plautus were spurious. 
Such a vast number were probably ascribed to him 
from his being the head and founder of a great dramat¬ 
ic school; so that those pieces which he had, perhaps, 
merely retouched, came to be wholly attributed to his 
pen. “There is no doubt,” says Aulus Gellius, “but 
that those plays, which seem not to have been written 
by Plautus, but were ascribed to him, were by certain 
ancient poets, and afterward retouched and polished 
by him.” Even those comedies written in the same 
taste with his came to be termed Fabulce Plautince or 
Plautiance, in the same way as we still speak of Hilso- 
pian fable and Homeric verse. “ Plautus quidem ,” 
says Macrobius, “ ea re clarus fuit, ut post mortem 
ejus comcedice, quae incertce ferebantur , Plautince tamcn 
esse , de jocorum copia, agnoscerenturP {Sat., 2, 1.) 
It is thus evident, that a sufficient number of jests 
stamped a dramatic piece as a production of Plautus 
in the opinion of the multitude. But Gellius farther 
mentions, that there was a certain writer of comedies 
whose name was Plautius, and whose plays, having 
the inscription Plauti , were considered as by Plautus, 
when they were, in fact, named not Plautince from 
Plautus, but Plautiance from Plautius. All this suf¬ 
ficiently accounts for the vast number of plays as¬ 
cribed to Plautus, and which the most learned and in¬ 
telligent critics have greatly restricted. They have 
differed, however, very widely as to the number which 
they have admitted to be genuine. Some, says Ser- 
vius, maintain that Plautus wrote twenty-one comedies, 
others forty, others a hundred {ad Virg., JEn., init.). 


Gellius informs us that Lucius iElius, a most learned 
man, was of opinion that not more than twenty-five 
were his. Varro wrote a work entitled Qucestiones 
Plautince, a considerable portion of which was devoted 
to a discussion concerning the authenticity o the plays 
commonly assigned to Plautus ; and the result of his 
investigations was, that twenty-one were unquestion¬ 
ably to be admitted as genuine. These were subse¬ 
quently termed Vaironian, in consequence of having 
been separated by Varro from the remainder, as no 
way doubtful, and universally allowed to be by Plau¬ 
tus. The twenty-one Varronian plays are the twenty 
still extant, and the Viduiaria. This comedy appears 
to have been originally subjoined to the Palatine MS. 
of the still existing plays of Plautus, but to have been 
torn oft’, since, at the conclusion of the Truculentus, 
we find the words “ Vidularia incipitP {Fabr., Bib. 
Lat., 1, 1.— Osann., Analect. Crit., c. 8.) And Mai 
has recently published some fragments of it, which ho 
found in the Ambrosian MS. Such, it would appear, 
had been the high authority of Varro, that only those 
plays which had received his indubitable sanction were 
transcribed in the MSS. as the genuine works of Plau¬ 
tus : yet it would seem that Varro himself had, on 
some occasion, assented to the authenticity of several 
others, induced by their style of humour corresponding 
to that of Plautus.—The following remarks may throw 
some light on the general scope and tenour of the com¬ 
edies of Plautus. In each plot there is sufficient ac¬ 
tion, movement, and spirit. The incidents never flag, 
but rapidly accelerate the catastrophe. But, if we re¬ 
gard his plays in tiie mass, there is a considerable, and, 
perhaps, too great, uniformity in his fables. They 
hinge, for the most part, on the love of some dissolute 
youth for a courtesan, his employment of a slave to 
defraud a father of a sum sufficient lor his expensive 
pleasures, and the final discovery that his mistress is a 
free-born citizen. The charge against Plautus of uni¬ 
formity in his characters as well as in his fables has 
been echoed without much consideration. The por¬ 
traits of Plautus, it must be remembered, were drawn 
or copied at the time when the division of labour and 
progress of refinement had not yet given existence to 
those various descriptions of professions and artists, 
the doctor, author, attorney—in short, all those charac¬ 
ters, whose habits, singularities, and whims have sup¬ 
plied the modern Thalia with such diversified materi¬ 
als, and whose contrasts give to each other such relief, 
that no caricature is required in any individual repre¬ 
sentation. The characters of Alcmena, Euclio, and 
Periplectomenes are sufficiently novel, and are not re¬ 
peated in any of the other dramas; but there is ample 
range and variety even in those which he most fre¬ 
quently employed, the avaricious old man, the de¬ 
bauched young fellow, the knavish slave, the braggart 
captain, the rapacious courtesan, the obsequious para¬ 
site, and the shameless pander. The severe father 
and thoughtless youth are those in which he has best 
succeeded. The captain is exaggerated, and the 
change which has taken place in society and manners 
prevents us, perhaps, from entering fully into the char¬ 
acter of the slave, the parasite, and the pander; but 
in the fathers and sons he has shown his knowledge 
of our common nature, and delineated them with the 
truest and liveliest touches.—The Latin style of Plau¬ 
tus excels in briskness of dialogue as well as purity 
of expression, and has been extolled by the learned 
Roman grammarians, particularly Varro, who declares 
that if the Muses were to speak Latin, they would em¬ 
ploy his diction {ap. Qunict., Inst. Or., 10, 1); but 
as Schlegel has remarked, it is necessary to distin¬ 
guish between the opinion of philologers and that of 
critics and poets. Plautus wrote at a period when his 
country as yet possessed no written or literary lan¬ 
guage. Every phrase was drawn from the living 
source of conversation. This early simplicity seems 

1091 



PLAUTUS. 


PL E 


pleasing and artless to those Romans who lived in an 
age of excessive refinement and cultivation ; but this 
apparent merit was rather accidental than the efifect 
of poetic art. Making, however, some allowance for 
this, there can be no doubt that Plautus wonderfully 
improved and refined the Latin language from the rude 
form to which it had been moulded by Ennius. That 
he should have effected such an alteration is not a little 
remarkable. Plautus was nearly contemporary with 
the Father of Roman song; according to most ac¬ 
counts, he was born a slave ; he was condemned, du¬ 
ring a great part of his life, to the drudgery of the low¬ 
est manual labour; and, as far as we learn, he was 
not distinguished by the patronage of the great, nor 
admitted into patrician society. Ennius, on the other 
hand, if he did not pass his life in affluence, spent it 
in the exercise of an honourable profession, and was 
the chosen and familiar friend of Cato, Scipio Africa- 
nus, Fulvius Nobilior, and Laelius, the most learned 
and polished citizens of the Roman republic, whose 
unrestrained conversation and intercourse must have 
bestowed on him advantages which Plautus never en¬ 
joyed. But perhaps the circumstance of his Greek 
original, which contributed so much to his learning 
and refinement, and qualified him for such exalted so¬ 
ciety, may have been unfavourable to that native pu¬ 
rity of Latin diction, which the Umbrian slave imbibed 
from the unmixed fountains of conversation and na¬ 
ture.—The chief excellence of Plautus is generally 
reputed to consist in the wit and comic force of his 
dialogue ; and, accordingly, the lines in Horace’s Art 
of Poetry, in which he derides the ancient Romans for 
having foolishly admired the “ Plautinos sales ,” have 
been the subject of much reprehension among critics. 
That the wit of Plautus often degenerates into buf¬ 
foonery, scurrility, and quibbles, sometimes even into 
obscenity; and that, in his constant attempts at mer¬ 
riment, he too often tries to excite laughter by exag¬ 
gerated expressions as well as by extravagant actions, 
cannot, indeed, be denied. This was partly owing to 
the immensity of the Roman theatres and to the masks 
of the actors, which must have rendered caricature 
and grotesque inventions essential to the production 
of that due effect which, with such scenic apparatus, 
could not be created unless by overstepping the mod¬ 
esty of nature. It must always be recollected, that 
the plays of Plautus were written solely to be repre¬ 
sented, and not to be read. Even in modern times, 
and subsequent to the invention of printing, the great¬ 
est dramatists, Shakspeare, for example, cared little 
about the publication of their plays ; and in every age 
or country in which dramatic poetry has flourished, it 
has been intended for public representation, and adapt¬ 
ed to the tastes of a promiscuous audience. In the 
days of Plautus, the smiles of the polite critic were 
not enough for a Latin comedian, because in those 
days there were few polite critics at Rome ; he re¬ 
quired the shouts and laughter of the multitude, who 
could be fully gratified only by the broadest grins of 
comedy. Accordingly, many of the jests of Plautus 
are such as might be expected from a writer anxious 
to accommodate himself to the taste of the times, and 
naturally catching the spirit of ribaldry which then 
prevailed. It being, then, the great object of Plautus 
to excite the merriment of the rabble, he, of course, 
was little anxious about the strict preservation of the 
dramatic unities; and it was a greater object with him 
to bring a striking scene into view, than to preserve 
the unities of place. In the Aulularia , part of the ac¬ 
tion is laid in the miser’s house, and part in the vari¬ 
ous places where he goes to conceal his treasure ; in 
the Mostellaria and Truculentus , the scene changes 
from the street to apartments in various houses. But, 
notwithstanding these and other irregularities, Plautus 
so enchanted the people by the drollery of his wit and the 
ouffoonery of his scenes, that he continued the reigning 


favourite of the stage long after the plays of Casciiius, 
Afranius, and even Terence were first represented. 
( Dunlop's Roman Literature , vol. 1, p. 136, seqq., 
LoncL. ed.) —The best editions of Plautus are, that oj 
Camerarius, Basil , 1558, 8vo; that of Lambinus, Lu 
tet ., 1576, fol.; that of Gruter, Lugd. Bat., 1592, in 
which the division into acts, scenes, and verses first 
appears; that of Taubmann, Wittcb., 1622,4to; that oi 
Mdller, Berol., 1755, 8vo, 2 vols.; that of Ernesti, 
Lips., 1760, 8vo, 2 vols.; the Bipont edition, 1779- 
88, 8vo, 2 vols., in which the text is corrected by 
Brunck; that of'Schmieder, Gotting. , 1804, 8vo, 2 
vols.; that of Bothe, Berol., 1809, 8vo, and that form¬ 
ing part of the collection of Lemaire, Paris, 1830, 4 
vols. 8vo. 

Pleiades (II 'Xuadeq), I. the daughters of Atlas and 
the ocean-nymph Pleione. They were seven in num¬ 
ber, and their names were Maia, Eiectra, Taygeta, 
Halcyone, Celseno, Sterope, and Merope. The first 
three became the mothers, by Jupiter, of Mercury, Dar- 
danus, and Lacedaemon. IJalcyone and Celaeno bore 
to Neptune Hyrieus and Lycus ; Sterope brought 
forth CEnomaiis to Mars ; and Merope married Sisy¬ 
phus. ( Schol. ad II., 18, 486.— Apollod., 3, 1.— Hy~ 
gin., Poet. Astron., 2, 21.) These nymphs hunted 
with Diana ; on one of which occasions Orion, hap¬ 
pening to see them, became enamoured, and pursued 
them. In their distress they prayed to the gods to 
change their form, and Jupiter, taking compassion, 
turned them into pigeons, and afterward made them a 
constellation in the sky. (Schol. ad II., 1. c.) Ac¬ 
cording to Pindar, the Pleiades were passing through 
Boeotia with their mother, when they were met by 
Orion, and his chase of them lasted for five years. 
(Etym. Mag., s. v. IT/lezczc-) Hyginus ( l. c.) says 
seven years. ( Keightley's Mythology, p. 464.)—The 
constellation of the Pleiades, rising in the spring, 
brought with it the spring-rains, and opened naviga¬ 
tion. Hence, according to the common etymology, 
the name is derived from irXeu (?rAeaj), “ to sail,” 
and is thought to indicate the stars that are favourable 
to navigation. ( Volcker, Mythol. dcs lap. Geschlech- 
tes, p. 77.) Ideler, however, thinks it more probable 
that the appellation is derived from the Greek tc?leIoc, 
“full,” denoting a cluster of stars ; whence, perhaps, 
the expression of Manilius (4, 523), “ glomerabile si- 
dus .” Aratus (v. 257) calls the Pleiades enTarropoi, 
“ moving in seven paths” (compare Eurip., Iph. in 
Aul., v. 6), although one can only discern six stars. 
Hence Ovid says of these same stars (Fast., 4, 170), 
“ Quce septem did , sex tamen esse solcnt.” On the 
other hand, Hipparchus asserts (ad Arat., Phcen., 1, 
14), that in a clear night seven stars can be seen. The 
whole admits of a very easy solution. The group of 
the Pleiades consists of one star of the third magni¬ 
tude, three of the fifth, two of the sixth magnitude, and 
several smaller ones. It requires, therefore, a very 
good eye to discern in this constellation more than six 
stars. Hence, among the ancients, since no more than 
six could be seen with the naked eye, and yet since, 
as with us, a seventh star, a Il/lemf b-KTaorepog (Era- 
tosth., c. 14), was mentioned, the conclusion was that 
one of the cluster was lost. Some thought that it had 
been destroyed by lightning (Theon., Schol. ad Arat., 
1. c.) ; others, making the lost Pleiad to have been Eiec¬ 
tra, fabled that she withdrew her light in sorrow at the 
fall of Ilium, and the misfortunes of her descendants, 
Dardanus "having been the son of Eiectra and Jupitei 
(Schol. ad Arat., 1. c., where for rov rjliov we must 
read rrjg 'IXlov, and for rov y?uov aMoKogevov must 
substitute rrjv Titov d’hioKogivrjv. —Compare Ovid , 
Fast., 4, 177 : “Eiectra Trojce spectare ruinas non 
tulit .”) According to another account, the 44 lost 
Pleiad” was Merope, who withdrew her light because 
ashamed of having alone married a mortal. Ovid, 
Fast , 4, 175 'i Others, again, affirmed that the star 



P LI 


PLINIUS. 


in question moved away from its own constellation, 
and became the third or middle one in the tail of the 
Greater Bear, where it received the name of 'A/lw^f, 
“ the Fox.” ( Ideler, Sternnamen, p. 145.)—From 
their rising in the spring, the Pleiades were called by 
the Romans Vergilice. ( Festus. — Isidor., Orig., 3, 
70.) This constellation appears to have been one of 
the earliest that were observed b) me Greeks. It is 
mentioned by Homer (II., 18, 483, seqq. — Od., 5, 
272, seqq.) ; and in Hesiod an acquaintance with it is 
supposed to be so widely spread, that the daily la¬ 
bours of the farmer can be determined by its rising 
and setting. ( Hes ., Op. et D., 383, 615.) The met” 
rical form of the name is Ur/iyiddeq and neAetddef, 
and hence some have been led into the erroneous opin¬ 
ion, that the name of the constellation was derived 
from 7r e/ieia, a “ pigeon ” or “dove,” in allusion to the 
fancied appearance of the cluster. (Schwenk, Mythol. 
Skizz., p. 2.)—The Pleiades are assigned on the ce¬ 
lestial sphere to a position in the rear of Taurus. (Hy- 
gin., Poet. Astron., 20.) Proclus and Geminus, how¬ 
ever, place them on the back of the animal; while 
Hipparchus makes them belong, not to Taurus, but to 
the foot of Perseus. ( Theon. ad Arat., Phan., 254. 

— Vdicker, Mythol. der lap. Gcschl., p. 78.)—II. The 
name of Pleiades was also given to seven tragic wri¬ 
ters, and the same appellation to seven other poets, of 
the Alexandrean school. ( Vid. Alexandrina Schola, 
near the conclusion of the article.) 

Pleione, one of the Oceanides, who married Atlas, 
king of Mauritania, by whom she had twelve daughters, 
and a son called Hyas. Seven of the daughters were 
changed into a constellation called Pleiades, and the 
rest into another called Hyades. (Ovid, Fast., 5, 84.) 

Plemmyrium, a promontory of Sicily, in the imme¬ 
diate neighbourhood of Syracuse, and facing the island 
of Ortygia, forming with this island the entrance to the 
great harbour of that city. Its modern name is Mas - 
sa d'Olivera. (Dorvill. Sic., p. 131.— Thucyd., 7, 4. 

— Wesseling, ad Diod. Sic., vol. 6, p. 555, ed. Bip.) 
It was fortified by Nicias during the siege of Syracuse 
by the Athenians, as being well adapted by its situa¬ 
tion for receiving supplies by sea ; and here also he 
erected three forts or castles, the largest of which con¬ 
tained all the warlike implements, and the provisions 
of the army. At a subsequent period of the v.ar, the 
Athenians were compelled to abandon this post, and 
fortified themselves near Dascon, in its vicinity. (Thu¬ 
cyd., 1. c. — Id., 7, 23.) The position of Plemmyrium 
may be regarded as one of the early causes of the fail¬ 
ure of the expedition against Syracuse ; for, as the 
place was destitute of freshwater, and the soldiers had 
to go to a distance for it, numbers of them were cut 
off from day to day by the Syracusans. (Letronne, ad 
Thucyd., 7, 4, p. 76.— Gdller, de situ et origine Syr- 
acusarum , p. 76, seqq.) 

Pleumoxii, a people of Gallia Belgica, tributary to 
the Nervii. Their precise situation is unknown. Le- 
maire places them in the vicinity of Tornacum, now 
Tournay. (Ind. Geogr.,ad Cas., p.339.— Cass., B. 
G., 5, 39.) 

Plinius, I. Secundus, C., surnamed the Elder, and 
also the Naturalist, a distinguished Roman writer, 
born of a noble family, in the ninth year of the reign 
of Tiberius, A.D. 23. St. Jerome, in his Chronicle 
of Eusebius, and a Life of Pliny ascribed to Sueto¬ 
nius, make him to have been a native of Comum ; but 
since, in the dedicatory epistle prefixed to his Natural 
History, he calls Catullus his compatriot (conterra- 
neum), and since Catullus was born at Verona, this last- 
mentioned city has disputed with Comum the honour 
of having given birth to the naturalist, and writings 
without number have been elicited by the controversy. 
One thing, however, is certain, that the Plinian family 
was settled at Comum, and possessed a large property 
in the neighbourhood, and inscriptions have been dis¬ 


covered there relative to several of its members If 
was at Comum, too, that the younger Pliny, so wel. 
known by his Letters, and the nephew of the natural¬ 
ist, was born. Pliny the Elder came to Rome at an 
early period, and attended the lectures of Appion, but 
it does not appear that he saw the Emperor Tiberius, 
the latter having already retired to Caprese. From thr 
account which he gives of the jewels which he saw at 
Lollia Paulina’s, it has been supposed, that, notwith¬ 
standing his youth, he assisted occasionally at the court 
of Caligula. His attention was attracted, even at this 
early period, by the interesting productions of nature, 
and particularly by the remarkable animals which the 
emperors exhibited in the public spectacles. He re¬ 
lates in detail, and as an eyewitness, the particulars 
of a combat in the presence of the Roman people, wrth 
a large monster of the deep, which had been taken 
alive in the harbour of Ostia. This event having ta¬ 
ken place while Claudius was constructing the port in 
question, that is, in the second year of his reign, Pliny 
could not have been at that time more than about 
nineteen years of age. We learn from himself, that, 
about his twenty-second year, he resided for a time on 
the coast of Africa, where he witnessed the change ol 
sex in the case of Larius Cossicius, who, from having 
been, as was supposed, a girl, found himself trans¬ 
formed, the very day of his marriage, into a boy ! 
Some modern writers have supposed, on no very 
strong grounds, however, that at this age Pliny served 
in the Roman fleet, and that he visited Britain, Egypt, 
and Greece. It appears, on the contrary, from the 
testimony of his nephew, that he was employed, while 
yet quite young, in the Roman armies in Germany. 
He there served under Lucius Pomponius, whose 
friendship he gained, and who intrusted him with the 
command of a part cf the cavalry. He must have 
availed himself very fully of this opportunity to ex¬ 
plore the country of Germany, since he informs us 
that he had seen the sources of the Danube, and had 
also visited the Chauci, a tribe that dwelt on the bor¬ 
ders of the ocean. It was during the operations in 
Germany that he wrote his first work, in which hr 
treated of the art of hurling a javelin from on horse¬ 
back (De Jaculatione Equestri). His second work, 
which was a Life of Pomponius, in two books, was 
dictated by his strong attachment to that commander, « 
and by the gratitude which he felt towards him for his 
numerous favours. A dream which he had during 
this same war, and in which the shade of Drusus ap¬ 
peared to him and urged him to write that prince’s 
memoirs, induced him to engage in a literary enter¬ 
prise of great labour, that of writing, namely, the his¬ 
tory of all the wars carried on in Germany by the Ro¬ 
mans, and which he executed eventually, in the com¬ 
pass of twenty books. Having returned to Rome 
about the age of thirty years, he there pleaded several 
causes, according to the custom of the Romans, who 
were fond of allying the profession of arms to the prac¬ 
tice of the bar. He passed, also, a part of his time at 
Comum, where he superintended the education of his 
nephew; and it was probably with the view of being 
useful to the latter that he composed a work entitled 
Studiosus, in which he began with the orator from his 
cradle, and conducted him onward until he had reach¬ 
ed the perfection of his art. Judging from a quota¬ 
tion made by Quintilian, we are led to infer that, in 
this work, Pliny even pointed out the manner in which 
the orator should regulate his dress, his person, his 
deportment on the tribunal, &c. It appears, that du¬ 
ring the greater part of the reign of Nero, Pliny re¬ 
mained without employment. His nephew informs 
us, that, towards the close of Nero’s reign, when the 
terror inspired by that monster prevented any one from 
devoting his attention to pursuits a little more liberal 
and elevated than ordinary, Pliny composed a work 
in eight bo“ks, entitled Dubii Sermonis, which wat 

\093 



PLINIUS. 


PLINIUS 


without doubt, a grammatical treatise on the precise 
signification and use of words. And yet it is difficult, 
if we follow chronological computation, not to believe 
that Nero named him his procurator in Spain ; for it 
is certain, from the words of his nephew, that he filled 
this office: he himself mentions certain observations 
made by him in this country, and we find no other 
period in his life in which he could have gone thither. 
We may presume that' he continued in Spain during 
the civil wars of Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, and even 
during the first years of the reign of Vespasian. It 
was during this period that he lost his brother-in-law ; 
and, being ur.able, by reason of his absence abroad, to 
become his nephew’s guardian, the care of the latter 
was intrusted to Virginius Rufus. On his return, 
Pliny would seem to have stopped for a time in the 
south of Gaul ; for he describes, with remarkable ex¬ 
actness, the province of Narbonensis, and, in particular, 
the fountain of Vaucluse. He informs us that he saw 
in this quarter a stone said to have fallen from heaven. 
Vespasian, with whom he had been on intimate terms 
during the wars in Germany, gave him a very favour¬ 
able reception, and was in the habit of calling him to 
him every morning before sunrise; which, according 
to Suetonius and Xiphilinus, was a privilege reserved 
by that emperor only for his particular friends. It 
cannot be affirmed, with any great degree of certainty, 
that Vespasian elevated Pliny to the rank of senator. 
Some writers state, moreover, though without any 
proof, that Pliny served in the w'ar of Titus against the 
Jews. What he remarks concerning Judasa is not 
sufficiently exact to induce us to believe that he speaks 
from personal observation ; and, besides, we can hard¬ 
ly assign to any other part of his life except this, the 
composition of his work on the History of his own 
Times , in thirty-one books, and forming a continua¬ 
tion of that of Aufidius Bassus. If Pliny, however, 
did not serve in the Jewish war, he was not less the 
friend of Titus on that account, having been his com¬ 
panion in the course of other contests ; and it was to 
‘his prince that he dedicated the last and most impor- 
arit of his writings, his Natural History , in thirtv-seven 
jooks. The titles given to Titus in the dedication 
show that this laborious work was concluded in the 
78th year of our era; and it is evident that it must 
have occupied the greater part of his life to collect 
together the materials. This great work is the only 
one of Pliny’s that has come down to us. It forms, 
at the same time, one of the most valuable monuments 
left us by antiquity, and is a proof of the most aston¬ 
ishing industry in a man whose time was so much oc¬ 
cupied, first by military affairs, and subsequently by 
those of a civil nature. In order fully to appreciate 
this vast and celebrated work, we must regard it un¬ 
der three different aspects ; its plan, its facts , and its 
style. The plan is an immense one. Pliny does not 
propose to himself to write merely a natural history, in 
the restricted sense in which we employ the phrase 
at the present day, that is, a treatise, more or less de¬ 
tailed, respecting animals, plants, and minerals ; he 
embraces in his plan astronomy, physics, geography, 
agriculture, commerce, medicine, and the arts, as well 
as natural history properly so called ; and he contin¬ 
ually mingles with his remarks on these subjects a 
variety of observations relative to the moral constitu¬ 
tion of man and the history of nations : so that, in 
many respects, his work may be regarded as-having 
been in its day a sort of encyclopaedia. 'After having 
given, in his first book, a kind of table of contents, 
and the names of the authors who are to supply him 
with facts and materials, he treats, in the second, of 
the world, the elements, the stars, &c. The four fol¬ 
lowing books give a geographical sketch of the then 
known world. The seventh treats of the different ra¬ 
ces of men, and of the distinctive qualities of the hu¬ 
man species, of the great characters which it has pro- 
1094 


duced, and of ths most remarkable human inventions. 
Four books are then devoted to terrestrial animals, to 
fishes, to birds, and to insects. The species belong¬ 
ing to each class are arranged according to their size 
or importance : their habits, their useful or hurtful 
properties, and their most remarkable characteristics 
are also discussed. At the end of the book on insects 
he speaks of certain substances produced by animals 
and of the parts that compose the human frame. Bot¬ 
any occupies the largest space in the work. Ten 
books are devoted to an account of plants, their cul¬ 
ture, their uses in domestic economy and the arts, and 
five to an enumeration of their medicinal properties. 
Five others treat of the remedies derived from ani¬ 
mals ; and in the last five Pliny treats of metals, mi¬ 
ning, earths, stones, and the employment of the latter 
for the purposes of life, for the calls of luxury, and for 
the arts ; while under the head of colours he makes 
mention of the most celebrated paintings, and under 
the head of stones and marbles treats of the finc-st pie¬ 
ces of statuary and the most valuable gems. It is im¬ 
possible but that, in even rapidly running over this 
prodigious number of subjects, Pliny should make us 
acquainted with a multitude of remarkable facts, and 
which are the more valuable to us as he is the only 
author that relates them. Unhappily, however, the 
manner in which he has collected and stated them 
makes them lose a large portion of their value, as well 
from his mingling together the true and the false, in 
an almost equal degree, as more particularly from the 
difficulty, and, in some cases, the impossibility, of dis¬ 
covering exactly to what creatures he alludes. Pliny 
was not such an observer of nature as Aristotle ; still 
less was he a man of genius sufficient to seize, like 
this great philosopher, the laws and the relations by 
which nature has regulated her various productions. 
He is, in general, nothing more than a mere compiler, 
and often, too, a compiler unacquainted himself with 
the things about which he collects the opinions of oth¬ 
ers, and, consequently, unable to appreciate the true 
force of these opinions, or sometimes even to com¬ 
prehend their exact meaning. In a word, he is a 
writer almost entirely devoid of critical acumen, who, 
after having passed a large part of his time in making 
extracts from the works of others, has arranged them 
under certain chapters, adding thereunto, from time to 
time, his own reflections, which have nothing to do 
with scientific discussion, properly so called, but either 
present specimens of the most superstitious belief, or 
are the declamations of a chagrined philosopher, who 
accuses, without ceasing, men, nature, and the gods 
themselves. We must be careful, therefore, not to 
regard the facts which he has accumulated in their re¬ 
lations to the opinion which he himself forms ; but 
we must restore them in thought to the writers from 
whom he has derived them, and then apply to them 
the rules of sound criticism, in conformity with what 
we know of the writers themselves, and the circum 
stances in which they found themselves placed. Stud 
ied in this way, the Natural History of Pliny presents 
one of the richest mines of learning', since, according 
to his own statement, it contains extracts from more 
than two thousand volumes, written by authors of ev¬ 
ery description, travellers, historians, geographers, phi¬ 
losophers, physicians, &c. ; authors, with many of 
whom we only become acquainted in the pages of 
Pliny. A comparison of his extracts with the origi¬ 
nals themselves, where the latter have come down to 
us, and more particularly with the writings of Aris¬ 
totle, will show that Pliny, in making his selections, 
was far from giving the preference, on every occasion, 
to what was most important or most exact in the 
authors whom he consulted. He appears, in general, 
to have a strong predilection for things of a singula! 
or marvellous nature ; for such, too, as harmonize 
more than others with the contrasts he is fond of msti 





PLINIUS. 


PLINItJS. 


luting, or the reproaches he is in the habit of making 
against Providence. He does not, it is true, extend 
an equal degree of credence to everything that he re¬ 
lates, but it is at mere random that he either doubts or 
affirms, and the most puerile tales are not always those 
which most excite his incredulity. There is not, for 
example, a single fable of the Greek travellers, con¬ 
cerning men without heads, others without mouths, 
concerning men with only one foot, or very long ears, 
which he does not place in his seventh book, and that, 
too, with so much confidence as to terminate this cat¬ 
alogue of wonders with the following remark : “ Hac 
alque (alia ex hominum genere, ludibria sibi, nobis 
miracula, ingcniosa fecit nalura .” We may without 
difficulty, therefore, after observing this facility in giv¬ 
ing credence to ridiculous stories about the human 
species, form an idea of the degree of discernment 
which Pliny has exercised in his selection of authori¬ 
ties respecting animals either entirely new or but little 
known. Hence the most fabulous creations, ■ marti- 
chori with human heads and the tails of scorpions, 
winged horses, the catoblepas whose sight alone was 
able to kill, play their part in his work by the side of 
the elephant and lion. And yet all is not false, even 
in those narratives that are most replete with falsities. 
We may sometimes detect the truth which has served 
them for a basis, by recalling to mind that these are 
extracts from the works of travellers, and by supposing 
that ignorance, and the love of the marvellous, on the 
part of ancient travellers, have led them into these 
exaggerations, and have dictated to them those vague 
and superficial descriptions, of which we find so great 
a number even in modern books of travels. Another 
very important defect in Pliny is that he does not al¬ 
ways give the true sense of the authors whom he trans¬ 
lates, especially when designating different species of 
animals. Notwithstanding the very limited means 
possessed by us at the present day of judging with any 
degree of certainty respecting this kind of error, it is 
easy to prove that on many occasions he has substi¬ 
tuted for the Greek word, which in Aristotle desig¬ 
nates one kind of animal, a Latin word which belongs 
to one entirely different. It is true, indeed, that one. 
of the greatest difficulties experienced by the ancient 
naturalists was that of fixing a nomenclature, and their 
vicious and defective method shows itself in Pliny 
more than in any other. The descriptions, or, rather, 
imperfect indications, which he gives, are almost al¬ 
ways insufficient for recognising the several species, 
when tradition has failed to preserve the particular 
name ; and there is even a large number whose names 
alone are given, without any characteristic mark, or 
any means of distinguishing them from one another. 
If it were possible still to doubt respecting the advan¬ 
tages enjoyed by the modern over the ancient meth¬ 
ods, these doubts would be completely dispelled, on 
discovering that almost all the ancient writers have 
said relative to the virtues of their plants is com¬ 
pletely valueless for us, from the impossibility of dis¬ 
tinguishing the individual plants to which they refer. 
Our regret, however, on this account, will be great¬ 
ly diminished, if we call to mind with how little care 
the ancients, and Pliny in particular, have designa¬ 
ted the medical virtues of plants. They attribute so 
many false and even absurd properties to those plants 
which we know, that we may be allowed to be very 
indifferent respecting the virtues of those which we 
do not know. If we believe that part of Pliny’s work 
which treats of the materia medica, there is no hu¬ 
man ailment for which nature has not prepared twen¬ 
ty remedies; and, most unfortunately, for the space 
of two centuries after the revival of learning, med¬ 
ical men took great pleasure in repeating these pu¬ 
erilities.—As regards the facts, therefore, detailed in 
his work, Pliny possesses at the present day no real 
interest, except as regards certain processes followed 


by the ancients in the arts, and certain particulars ol 
an historical and geographical nature, of which we 
would have been ignorant without his aid. That por¬ 
tion of his work which is devoted to the arts is the 
one that merits the most careful study. He traces 
their progress, he describes their products, he names 
the most celebrated artists, he indicates the manner 
in which their labours are conducted, and it cannot be 
doubted but that, if well understood, he would make 
us acquainted with some of those secrets by means of 
which the ancients executed works that we have only 
been able imperfectly to imitate. Here again, how¬ 
ever, the difficulties of his nomenclature present them¬ 
selves ; he names numerous substances, they are sub¬ 
stances that must enter into compositions, or be sub¬ 
jected to the operation of the arts, and yet we know 
not what they are. With difficulty are we enabled to 
divine the nature of a few, by means of certain rath¬ 
er equivocal characteristics that are related of them; 
and hence it is that we may be said to be in want, even 
at the present day, of a true commentary on Pliny’s 
Natural History, a work that would require the most 
extensive acquaintance with every department of phys¬ 
ical knowledge.—If, however, Pliny has but little merit 
for us as a critic and a naturalist, the case is different 
with regard to his talents as a writer, and the immense 
treasure of Latin terms and forms of expression with 
which the abundance of his materials obliged him to 
supply himself, and which make his work one of the 
richest depots of the Koman tongue. It has been 
justly remarked, that without Pliny it would be impos¬ 
sible to re-establish the Latin language ; and this re¬ 
mark must be understood, not only with regard to 
words, but also their various acceptations, and the turn 
and movement of sentences. It is certain, also, that 
wherever he can indulge in general ideas or philo¬ 
sophic views, his language assumes a tone of energy 
and vivacity, and his thoughts somewhat of unex¬ 
pected boldness, which make amends for the dryness 
of previous enumerations, and may find favour for 
him with the generality of his readers, and atone in 
some degree for the insufficiency of his scientific in¬ 
dications. It must be confessed, at the same time, 
however, that he is too fond of seeking for points and 
antitheses ; that he is occasionally harsh ; and that, on 
many occasions, his language is marked by an obscu¬ 
rity which arises less from the subject-matter than from 
the desire of appearing sententious and condensed. 
But he is everywhere dignified and grave, everywhere 
full of love for justice and of respect for virtue ; of 
horror for cruelty and baseness, of which he had before 
his eyes such fearful examples : and of contempt for 
that unbridled luxury which had so deeply corrupted 
the spirit of his countrymen. In this point of view 
Pliny cannot be too highly praised ; and, notwithstand¬ 
ing the defects that we are compelled to notice in him 
when we view him as a naturalist, we may still regard 
him among the most distinguished writers, and those 
most worthy of the epithet of classic, that flourished 
after the age of Augustus.—In his religious princi¬ 
ples, Pliny was almost an atheist, or, at least, he ac¬ 
knowledged no other deity but the world ; and few phi¬ 
losophers have explained the system of Pantheism 
more in detail, and with greater spirit and energy, than 
he has done in his second book.—The Natural His¬ 
tory was Pliny’s last work, for he perished the year 
after its publication. The particulars of his death are 
given in a letter of the younger Pliny to the historian 
Tacitus, who was anxious to transmit an account of it 
to posterity. The elder Pliny was then at Misenum, 
in command of the fleet which was appointed to guard 
all that part of the Mediterranean comprehended be¬ 
tween Italy, Gaul, Spain, and Africa. We will give 
the rest of the account in the words of his nephew : 
“ On the 24th of August, about one in the afternoon, 
my mother desired him to observe a cloud which ap- 

1195 



PLINIUS. 


PLINIUS. 


peared of a very unusual size and shape. He had just 
returned from taking the benefit of the sun, and, after 
bathing himself in cold water, and taking a slight re¬ 
past, had retired to his study. He immediately arose 
and went out upon an eminence, from whence he might 
more distinctly view this very uncommon appearance. 
It was not, at that distance, discernible from what 
mountain this cloud issued, but it was found afterward 
to ascend from Vesuvius. I cannot give you a more 
exact description of its figure than by resembling it to 
:hat of a pine-tree, for it shot up to a great height in 
the form of a trunk, which extended itself at the top 
into a sort of branches ; occasioned, I imagine, either 
by a sudden gust of air that impelled it, the force of 
which decreased as it advanced upward, or the cloud 
itself, being pressed back again by its own weight, 
expanded in this manner: it appeared sometimes 
bright, and sometimes dark and spotted, as it was either 
more or less impregnated with earth and cinders. 
This extraordinary phenomenon excited my uncle’s 
philosophical curiosity to take a nearer view of it. He 
ordered a light vessel to be got ready, and gave me 
the liberty, if I thought proper, to attend him. I rath¬ 
er chose to continue my studies, for, as it had hap¬ 
pened, he had given me employment of that kind. 
As he was coming out of the house, he received a note 
from Rectina, the wife of Bassus, who was in the ut¬ 
most alarm at the imminent danger which threatened 
her; for the villa being situated at the foot of Mount 
Vesuvius, there was no way to escape but by the sea ; 
she earnestly entreated him, therefore, to come co her 
assistance. He accordingly changed his first design, 
and what he began with a philosophical, he pursued 
with a heroic, turn of mind. He ordered the galleys 
to put to sea, and went himself on board with an in¬ 
tention of assisting not only Rectina, but several oth¬ 
ers ; for the villas stand extremely thick on that beau¬ 
tiful coast. When hastening to the place from whence 
others fled with the utmost terror, he steered his di¬ 
rect course to the point of danger, and with so much 
calmness and presence of mind as to be able to make 
and dictate his observations upon the motion and 
figure of that dreadful scene. He was now so nigh 
the mountain, that the cinders, which grew thicker and 
hotter the nearer he approached, fell into the ships, 
together with pumice-stones, and black pieces of burn¬ 
ing rock. They were likewise in danger, not only of 
being aground bv the sudden retreat of the sea, but 
also from the vast fragments which rolled down from 
the mountain, and obstructed all the shore. Here he 
stopped to consider whether he should return back 
again ; to which the pilot advising him, ‘ Fortune ,’ 
said he, * befriends the brave; carry me to Pomponi¬ 
anus.' Pomponianus was then at Stabise, separated 
by a gulf, which the sea, after several insensible wind¬ 
ings, forms upon the shore. He had already sent his 
baggage on board ; for, though he was not at that time 
in actual danger, yet, being within the view of it, and, 
indeed, extremely near, if it should in the least increase, 
he was determined to put to sea as soon as the wind 
should change. It was favourable, however, for car¬ 
rying my uncle to Pomponianus, whom he found in 
the greatest consternation. He embraced him with 
eagerness, encouraging and exhorting him to keep up 
his spirits ; and, the more to dissipate his fears, he or¬ 
dered the baths to be got ready with an air of com¬ 
plete, unconcern. After having bathed, he sat down 
to supper with great cheerfulness, or, at least (what is 
equally heroic), with all the appearance of it. In the 
mean time the eruption from Mount Vesuvius flamed 
out in several places with much violence, which the 
darkness of the night contributed to render still more 
visible and dreadful. But my uncle, in order to sooth 
the apprehensions of his friend, assured him it was 
only the burning of the villages, which the country 
ocople had abandoned to the flames. After this he 
’096 


retired to rest, and it is most certain he was so little 
discomposed as to fall into a deep sleep; for, being 
pretty fat, and breathing hard, those who attended 
without actually heard him snore. r I he court which 
led to his apartment being now almost filled with stones 
and ashes, if he had continued there any time longer, 
it would have been impossible for him to have made 
his way out: it was thought proper, therefore, to awa¬ 
ken him. He got up, and went to Pomponianus and 
the rest of his company, who were not unconcerned 
enough to think of going to bed. They consulted to¬ 
gether whether it would be most prudent to trust to 
the houses, which now shook from side to side witk 
frequent and violent concussions, or fly to the oper 
fields, where the calcined stones and cinders, though 
light indeed, yet fell in large showers, and threatened 
destruction. In this distress they resolved for the fields, 
as the less dangerous situation of the two: a resolu¬ 
tion which, while the rest of the company were hur¬ 
ried into it by their fears, my uncle embraced upon 
cool and deliberate consideration. They went out, 
then, having pillows tied upon their heads with nap¬ 
kins ; and this was their whole defence against the 
storm of stones that fell around them. It was now 
day everywhere else, but there a deeper darkness pre¬ 
vailed than in the most obscure night; which, how¬ 
ever, was in some degree dissipated by torches, and 
other lights of various kinds. They thought proper to 
go down farther upon the shore, to observe if they 
might safely put out to sea ; but they found the waves 
still running extremely high and boisterous. There 
my uncle, having drunk a draught or two of cold water, 
threw himself down upon a cloth which was spread 
for him, when immediately the flames, and a strong 
smell of sulphur, which was the forerunner of them, 
dispersed the rest of the company, and obliged him to 
rise. He raised himself up with the assistance of two 
of his servants, and instantly fell down dead ; suffo¬ 
cated, as I conjecture, by some gross and noxious va¬ 
pour, having always had weak lungs, and being fre¬ 
quently subject to a difficulty of breathing. As soon 
as it was light again, which was not till the third day 
after, his body was found entire, and without any 
marks of violence upon it, exactly in the same posture 
as he fell, and looking more like one asleep than dead.” 

( PhnEp., 6, 16, Melmotk's transl .)—The eruption 
here mentioned is evidently the one of which many 
historians have made mention, and which, occurring in 
the first year of the reign of Titus, destroyed the cities 
of Herculaneum and Pompeii.—The younger Pliny, 
in a letter to Macer (3, 5), where he gives a list of 
his uncle’s works, states, that he died at the age of 
fifty-six years. "VVe cannot, therefore, comprehend 
how Sammonicus Serenus, and, after him, Macrobius, 
St. Jerome, and St. Prosper, have made him live until 
the twelfth year of the reign of Trajan, unless they 
have confounded together the uncle and nephew.—. 
The younger Pliny gives an interesting account of his 
uncle’s indefatigable application. “You will won¬ 
der,” he observes, in another of his letters, “ how a 
man so engaged as he was could find time to com¬ 
pose such a number of books, and some of them, too, 
upon abstruse subjects. But your surprise will rise 
still higher when you hear that for some time he en¬ 
gaged in the profession of an advocate ; that he died in 
his fifty-sixth year; that, from the time of his quitting 
the bar to bis death, he was employed in the highest 
posts and in the service of his prince. But he had a 
quick apprehension, joined to unwearied application. 
In summer he always began his studies as soon as it 
was night; in winter, generally at one in the morning, 
but never later than two, and often at midnight. No 
man ever spent less time in bed, insomuch that he 
would sometimes, without retiring from his book, tak6 
a short sleep and then pursue his studies. After a 
short and light repast at noon (agreeably to the good 




PLINIUS. 


PLINIUS. 


old custom of our ancestors), he would frequently, in 
the summer, if he was disengaged from business, re¬ 
pose himself in the sun ; during which time some au¬ 
thor was read to him, from which he made extracts 
and observations, as, indeed, was his constant method, 
whatever book he read : for it was a maxim of his, 
that ‘ no book was so bad but something might be 
.earned from it.’ When this was over, tie generally 
went into the cold bath, and, as soon as he came out 
of it, just took some slight refreshment, and then re¬ 
posed himself for a little while. Thus, as if it had 
been a new day, he immediately resumed his studies 
till supper-time, when a book was again read to him, 
upon which he would make some hasty remarks. I 
remember once, his reader having pronounced some 
word wrong, a person at table made him repeat it 
again, upon which my uncle asked his friend if he un¬ 
derstood it. The other acknowledging that he did, 
Why, then, said he, would you make him go back 
again ? We have lost by this interruption above ten 

lines: so covetous was this great man of his time. 
In summer he always rose from supper by daylight, 
and in winter as soon as it was dark : and this was 
an invariable rule with him. Such was his manner of 
’ life amid the noise and hurry of the city ; but in the 
country his whole time was devoted to study without 
intermission, excepting only when he bathed. But in 
this exception I include no more than the time he was 
actually in the bath, for all the time he was rubbed 
and wiped he was employed either in hearing some 
book read to him, or in dictating himself. In his 
journeys he lost no time from his studies; but his mind 
at those seasons being disengaged from all other 
thoughts, applied itself wholly to that single pursuit. 
A secretary constantly attended him in his chariot, 
who, in the winter, wore a particular sort of warm 
gloves, that the sharpness of the weather might not 
occasion any interruption to his studies ; and, for the 
same reason, my uncle always used a chair in Rome. 
I remember he once reproved me for walking: ‘You 
might,’ said he, ‘ employ those hours to more advan¬ 
tage :’ for he thought all time lost not given to study. 
By this extraordinary application he found time to 
write so many volumes, besides one hundred and sixty 
which he left me, consisting of a kind of common¬ 
place, written on both sides, in a very small character ; 
so that one might fairly reckon the number consider¬ 
ably more.” ( Cuvier, Biogr. Univ., vol. 35, p. 67, 
seqq.) The best edition of Pliny is that forming part 
of the collection of Lemaire, Paris, 1827-32, 11 vols. 
8 vo. The following editions are also valuable : that 
of Dalechamp, Paris, 1587, fob; that of Hardouin, 
Paris, 1723, 3 vols. fol. (reprinted with additions and 
improvements from the edition of 1685, in 5 vols. 
4to); and more particularly that of Franzius, Lips., 
1778-91, 10 vols. 8vo. There is also a French trans¬ 
lation, in 20 vols. Svo., Paris, 1829-33, by De Grand- 
sagne, with annotations by some of the most eminent 
scientific men in France. It is an excellent work.— 
II. C. Plinius Caecilius Secundus, surnamed, for dis¬ 
tinction’ sake, the “ Younger ,” was born at or near 
Comum, about the sixth year of the reign of Nero, or 
A.D. 61. His mother was a sister of the elder Pliny; 
and as he lost his father, Lucius Csecilius, at an early 
age, he removed, with his surviving parent, to the 
house of his uncle. Here he resided for some years, 
and, having been adopted by his uncle, took the name 
of the latter in addition to his parental one of Caecilius. 
Pliny the younger appears to have been of a delicate 
constitution, and even in his youth to have possessed 
little personal activity and enterprise ; for, at the time 
of the famous eruption of Vesuvius, when he was be¬ 
tween seventeen and eighteen, he continued his stud¬ 
ies at home, and allowed his uncle to set out to the 
mountain without hitff. It was on this occasion that 
the latter lost his life. In literature, however, the 

6 7 


younger Pliny made considerable progress even at an 
early age. His uncle had given him a careful educa¬ 
tion ; he composed a Greek tragedy when only four¬ 
teen, and wrote Latin verses on several occasions 
throughout his life. His principal attention, however, 
was devoted to the study of eloquence ; and he had 
for instructors in this department the celebrated Quin¬ 
tilian, and others of the most eminent men of the day. 
Pliny, as we have already remarked, was nearly eigh¬ 
teen years of age at the time of his uncle’s death. 
One year after this he appeared as a pleader at the 
bar. In his twentieth year he served as a tribune in 
Syria, and remained eighteen months in that country. 
On his return to Rome he was appointed one of the 
quaestors of the emperor. The duties of these func¬ 
tionaries consisted in reading to the senate the re¬ 
scripts of the prince. Not long after he became tri¬ 
bune of the people. At the age of thirty he was ap¬ 
pointed praetor ; and after this he passed several years 
in retirement, in order not to attract the notice of 
Domitian. He would not, however, have escaped the 
fate which threatened all the eminent men of the day, 
had it not been for the death of Domitian, since there 
was found among the papers of the latter a denuncia¬ 
tion of Pliny, which had recently been sent to the em¬ 
peror. Nerva and Trajan recalled him to the dis¬ 
charge of public duties, and the latter prince appoint¬ 
ed him administrator of the public treasury, an office 
which he filled for the space of two years. After at¬ 
taining to the high offices of consul and augur, Pliny 
was appointed by Trajan to the government of Bithy- 
nia, a province in which many abuses existed, and 
which it required a man of ability and integrity to re¬ 
move. ( Epist ., 10, 41.) Pliny was then in his forty- 
first or forty-second year. The trust so honourably 
committed to him he seems to have discharged with 
great fidelity ; and the attention to every branch of 
his duties, which his letters to Trajan display, is pecu¬ 
liarly praiseworthy in a man of sedentary habits, and 
accustomed to the enjoyments of his villas, and the 
stimulants of literary glory at Rome. He remained in 
his government for the space of two years, and it was 
during this period (A.D. 107) that he wrote his cele¬ 
brated letter to Trajan respecting the Christians in his 
province. {Epist., 10, 97.) This letter, and the em¬ 
peror’s reply, furnish numerous important testimonials 
to the state of Christianity at that early day, and to 
the purity of Christian principles. — The period of 
Pliny’s death is quite uncertain ; he is generally sup¬ 
posed, however, to have ended his days A.D. 110, in 
the forty-ninth year of his age.—His character, as a 
husband, a master, and a friend, was affectionate, kind, 
and generous. He displayed also a noble liberality to¬ 
wards Comum, his native place, by forming a public 
library there, and devoting a yearly sum of three hun¬ 
dred thousand sesterces, for ever, to the maintenance 
of children, born of free parents, who were citizens of 
Comum.—A man like Pliny, of considerable talents and 
learning, possessed of great wealth, and of an amiable 
and generous disposition, was sure to meet with many 
friends, and with still more who would gratify his van¬ 
ity by their praises and apparent admiration of his abil¬ 
ities. But as a writer he has done nothing to entitle 
him to a very high place in the judgment of posterity. 
Still, however, no Roman, from the time of Cicero, 
acquired so high a reputation for eloquence. All his 
discourses, however, are lost, with the single excep¬ 
tion of the Panegyric on Trajan. Pliny, having been 
appointed consul, addressed to the emperor a discourse, 
in which he thanked him for the honour bestowed, and, 
at the same time, eulogized the character and actions 
of the prince. It was delivered in open senate, and 
was then enlarged and published. {Epist., 3, 18.'; 
This production belongs to a class of compositions, the 
whole object of which was to produce a striking effect, 
and it must not aspire to any greater reward. It is in* 

1097 



P L O 


PLU 


geniou3 and eloquent, but by its very nature affords 
no room for the exercise of the higher faculties of the 
mind ; nor will its readers, excepting those who are 
fond of historical researches, derive from it any more 
substantial benefit than the pleasure which a mere el¬ 
egant composition can impart. To those, however, 
who are curious in matters of history, it will certainly 
prove interesting, since, although it only covers the 
early years of Trajan’s sway, it nevertheless furnishes 
us with a number of facts, of which we should other¬ 
wise be ignorant; for what Suetonius and Tacitus wrote 
concerning Trajan is lost, as is the case, also, with this 
same portion of the history of Dio Cassius, and with 
the different accounts of Trajan’s reign that are cited 
by Lampridius, in his life of Alexander Severus.— 
Pliny is also known to modern times by his Letters. 
These consist ol ten books, and were published by 
himself. From the first to the ninth book inclusive, 
we have letters addressed to individuals of all descrip¬ 
tions. The tenth book contains the letters and reports 
sent by Pliny to Trajan, together with some answers 
of that prince. The Letters of Pliny are valuable to 
us, as all original letters of other times must be, be¬ 
cause they necessarily throw much light on the period 
at which they were written. But many of them are 
ridiculously studied, and leave the impression, so fatal 
to our interest in the perusal of such compositions, 
that they were written for the express purpose of pub¬ 
lication. Among the letters of Pliny that have ob¬ 
tained the greatest celebrity, are the two in which he 
gives an account of the elder Pliny’s mode of life, and 
of the circumstances connected with his death ; two 
others, which contain a description of villas of his own ; 
and one in which he gives an account of his proceed¬ 
ings against the Christians, and to which we have al¬ 
ready referred. The authenticity of this last-mention¬ 
ed letter has been attacked by Semler, an eminent 
German divine ( Historic?, Ecclesiastical Sclecta Capi¬ 
ta, Hal., 1767, 3 vols. 8vo.— Neue Versuche die Kirch- 
en-Historie der erslen Jahrhunderte mehr aufzukla- 
ren, Leipz., 1787, 8vo). This critic maintains that 
the letter in question was forged by Tertullian ; but 
his arguments, if they deserve the name, would inval¬ 
idate the authority of almost every literary monument 
of ancient times. This same letter of Pliny’s gave 
rise to an absurd legend at a later date, according to 
which, Plinv having met, in the island of Crete, with 
Titus, the disciple of St. Paul, was converted by him, 
and afterward suffered martyrdom.—The design of 
writing a history, which Pliny at one time entertained, 
he never carried into execution. ( Epist ., 5, 8.) The 
work “ De Viris Ulus tribus ” has been erroneously 
ascribed to him, as has also the dialogue “ De Causis 
corruptee eloquenlice .” ( Masson, Vit. Plin. — Scholl, 

Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 2, p. 408, seqq. — Bdhr, Gesch. 
Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. 566, seq.) —The best edition of 
Pliny is that of Lemaire, Paris, 1823, 2 vols. 8vo. 
It is the edition of Gesner, improved by Schaeffer 
{Lips., 1805, 8vo), with additions by Lemaire. 

Plisthenes, a son of Atreus, king of Argos, fa¬ 
ther of Menelaus and Agamemnon. ( Vid. Agamem¬ 
non, and Atridse.) 

Plotinopolis, a city of Thrace, to the south of 
Hadrianopolis, founded and named in honour of the 
Empress Plotina. On its site, at a later period, ap¬ 
peared the city of Didymotichos, now Demotica. (Itin. 
Ant., 322.— Procop., de JEd., 4, 11.) 

Plotinus, a philosopher of the New-Platonic school, 
born A.D. 205, at Lycopolis in Egypt. Nature had 
endowed him with superior parts, particularly with an 
extraordinary depth of understanding, and a bold and 
vigorous imagination. He early manifested these 
abilities in the school of Ammonius at Alexandrea. 
Subsequently he determined to accompany the army 
of Gordian to the East, in order to study the Oriental 
systems on their native soil. He returned a dreamer 
1098 ’ 


perpetually occupied with profound but extravagant 
meditations, labouring to attain the comprehension of 
the absolute by contemplation; a notion borrowed 
from Plato, which became exaggerated in his hands. 
Carried away b j his enthusiasm, he thought that he 
was developing the designs of the philosopher of the 
Academy, when, in fact, he exhibited his thoughts only 
partially and incompletely. The impetuous vivacity 
of his temper, which caused him perpetually to fall into 
extravagances, prevented his reducing his mystical 
rationalism to a system. His various scattered trea¬ 
tises were collected by Porphyry in six Enneades. 
He died in Campania, A.D. 270, having taught at 
Rome, and excited the almost superstitious veneration 
of his disciples.—An admirable analysis is given of 
the system of Plotinus by Tennemann, though occa¬ 
sionally somewhat obscure in its details. ( Manual 
of the History of Philosophy, p. 187, seqq., Johnson’s 
transl.) The best edition of Plotinus is that of Creu- 
zer, Oxon., 1835, 3 vols. 4to. An edition of the trea¬ 
tise De Pulchritudine was published in 1814, 8vo, 
Lips., by the same editor. ( Hoffmann, Lex. Biblioqr., 
vol. 3, p. 336.) 

Plutarch us, one of the most generally known and 
frequently cited, and hence, if the expression be al¬ 
lowed, one of the most popular, writers of antiquity. 
He was a native of Chaeronea in Bosotia, but the period 
of his birth is not exactly ascertained. Plutarch him¬ 
self informs us, that he was studying under Ammoni¬ 
us, at Delphi, when Nero visited Greece, which would 
be the 66th year of our era ; and hence we may con¬ 
jecture that he was born towards the close of the reign 
of Claudius, about the middle of the first century. 
Plutarch belonged to an honourable family, in which a 
fondness for study and literary pursuits had long been 
hereditary. In his early days he saw at one and the 
same time his father, his grandfather, and great grand¬ 
father in being ; and he was brought up under this in¬ 
fluence of ancient manners, and in this sweet family- 
converse, which imparted to his character an air of in¬ 
tegrity and goodness, that shows itself in so many of 
his numerous writings. In the school of Ammonius, 
which he attended when still quite young, and where 
he formed an intimate friendship with a descendant of 
Themistocles, he received instruction in mathematics 
and philosophy. Without doubt, he carefully attended 
also, under able instructors, to the various depart¬ 
ments of belles-lettres, and his works plainly show 
that the perusal of the poets had supplied his memory 
with ample materials. It appears that, while still quite 
young, he was employed by his fellow-citizens in some 
negotiations with neighbouring cities. The same mo¬ 
tive led him to Rome, whither all the Greeks pos¬ 
sessed of any industry or talent had been accustomed 
regularly to come for more than a century, to seek 
reputation and fortunes, either by attaching themselves 
to some powerful individuals, or by giving public lec¬ 
tures on philosophy and eloquence. Plutarch, it may 
readily be supposed, did not neglect this latter mode 
of acquiring celebrity. He himself declares, that du¬ 
ring his sojourn in Italy, he could not find time to be¬ 
come sufficiently acquainted with the Latin tongue, 
by reason of the public business with which he was 
charged, and the frequent conferences he had with 
educated men on matters of a philosophic nature, 
about which they came to consult him. He spoke, 
he professed in his own language; according to the 
privilege which the Greeks had preserved of imposing 
their idiom on their conquerors, and of making it the 
natural language of philosophy and letters. These 
public lectures, these declamations, were evidently 
the first germe of the numerous moral treatises that 
Plutarch subsequently composed. The philosopher ol 
Chaeronea exercised at Rome that profession of soph* 
ist, the very name of which is now become a by 
word, and the mere existence of which seems to indi 





PLUTARCHUS. 


PI UTARGHUS. 


cate the decline of national literature, bui which was 
morj than once rendered illustrious at Rome by great 
talents and the effects of persecution. It is well 
known, that, under the bad emperors, and amid the 
universal slavery that then prevailed, philosophy was 
the only asylum to which liberty fled when banished 
from the forum and the senate. Philosophy, in earlier 
days, had effected the ruin of the republic ; it was 
then only a vain scepticism, abused to their own bad 
purposes by the ambitious and the corrupting. Adopt¬ 
ing a better vocation, it became, at a later period, a 
species of religion, embraced by men of resolute spirit: 
they needed a wisdom that might teach them how to 
escape, by death, the cruelty of the oppressor, and they 
called, for this purpose, stoicism to their aid. Plutarch, 
the most constant and the most contemptuous opposer 
of the Epicurean doctrines ; Plutarch, the admirer of 
Plato, and a disciple of his in the belief of the soul’s 
immortality, of divine justice, and of moral good, 
taught his hearers truths, less pure, indeed, than those 
of Christianity, but which, nevertheless, in some de¬ 
gree adapted themselves to the pressing wants of he¬ 
roic and elevated minds.—It is not known whether 
Plutarch prolonged his stay in Italy until that period 
when Domitian, by a public decree, banished all phi¬ 
losophers from that country. Some critics have sup¬ 
posed that he made many visits to Rome, but none 
after the reign of this emperor. One thing, however, 
appears well ascertained, that he returned, when still 
young, to his native country, and that he remained 
there for the rest of his days. During this his long 
sojourn in the land of his fathers, Plutarch was con¬ 
tinually occupied with plans for the benefit of his 
countrymen ; and, to give but a single instance of his 
zeal in the public service, he not only filled the of¬ 
fice of archon, the chief dignity in his native city, 
but even discharged with great exactness, and without 
the least reluctance, the duties of an inferior office, that 
of inspector of public works, which compelled him, he 
tells us, to measure tile, and keep a register of the 
loads of stone that were brought to him. All this ac¬ 
cords but ill with the statement of Suidas, that Plu¬ 
tarch was honoured with the consulship by Trajan. 
Such a supposition is contradicted both by the silence 
of history and the usuages of the Romans. Another 
and more recent tradition, which makes Plutarch to 
have been the preceptor of Trajan, appears to rest on 
no better foundation, and can derive no support what¬ 
ever from any of the genuine works of the philosopher. 
An employment, however, which Plutarch does seem 
to have filled, was that of priest of Apollo, which con¬ 
nected him with the sacerdotal corporation at Delphi. 
The period of his death is not known ; but the proba¬ 
bility is that he lived and philosophized until an advan¬ 
ced age, as would appear both'Yrom the tone of some 
of his writings and various anecdotes that are related 
of him. — The several productions of this writer will 
now be briefly examined. The work to which he owes 
his chief celebrity is that which bears the title of B lot 
irajju?i?LT]?ioi (“Parallel Lives"). In this he gives bi¬ 
ographical sketches of forty-four individuals, distin¬ 
guished for their virtues, their talents, and their ad¬ 
ventures, some Greek, others Roman, and gives them 
in such a way that a Roman is always compared with 
a Greek. Five other biographies are isolated ones ; 
twelve or fourteen are lost. The five isolated lives 
are those of Artaxerxes Mnemon, Aratus, Galba, Otho, 
and Homer, though this last is probably not Plutarch’s. 
The lives that have perished are those of Epaminon- 
das, Scipio, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, 
Nero, VitellicHs, .Hesiod, Pindar, Crates the Cynic, 
Deiphantus, Aristomenes, and Aratus the poet.—Many 
regard the Lives of Plutarch as models of biography. 
The principal art of the writer consists in the delinea¬ 
tion of character ; but it has been objected to him, and, 
it wk. uid jee:n, with justice, that his characters are all 


I of a piece; that he represents his heroes either as com 
pletely enslaved by some passion, or as perfectly virtu¬ 
ous, and that he has not been able to depict the almost 
infinite variety of shades between vice and virtue 
What renders the perusal of these biographies partic¬ 
ularly attractive, is our seeing his personages constant¬ 
ly in action ; we follow them amid public affairs, we 
accompany them to the scenes of private life, to the 
interior of their dwellings, and into the very bosom of 
their families. “ We are not writing histories,” ob¬ 
serves Plutarch himself, “ but lives. Neither is it al¬ 
ways in the most distinguished exploits that men’s vir¬ 
tues and vices may be best discerned ; but frequently 
some unimportant action, some short saying or jest, 
distinguishes a person’s real character more than fields 
of carnage, the greatest battles, or the most important 
sieges. As painters, therefore, in their portraits, la¬ 
bour the likeness in the face, and particularly about 
the eyes, in which the peculiar turn of mind most ap¬ 
pears, and run over the rest with a less careful hand, 
so must we be permitted to strike off the features of 
the soul, in order to give a real likeness of these great 
men, and leave to others the circumstantial detail of 
their toils and their achievements.” (Vit. Alex., c. 1.) 
This reasoning of Plutarch’s is no doubt very just, but 
it supposes that the writer does not go in quest of an¬ 
ecdotes, and that he exercises a sound and rigid crit¬ 
icism in the selection of those which he actually re¬ 
ceives. Such, however, is not the case with Plu¬ 
tarch.— Another defect with which he may be justly 
charged, is the having entirely neglected the order 
of chronology, so that frequently his narrative pre¬ 
sents only an incoherent mass of facts, and the peru¬ 
sal of his lives leaves behind it, at times, only a 
confused impression. On the other hand, the Lives 
of Plutarch contain a treasure of practical philosi phy, 
of morality, and of sound and useful maxims, the 
fruit of a long experience : indeed, it may be assert¬ 
ed, that oftentimes these Lives are only so many his¬ 
torical commentaries on certain maxims. Notwith¬ 
standing all their faults, however, the Lives of Plutarch 
are full of instruction for those who wish t’i? become 
well acquainted with Greek and Roman history, since 
the author has drawn from many sources that are 
closed upon us. He cherished an ardent love for lib¬ 
erty, or, rather, democracy, which he confounded with 
liberty, and he has been reproached with allowing him¬ 
self, on certain occasions, to be so far led away by his 
enthusiasm as to mistake for heroism a forgetfulness 
of the sentiments of nature. For example, though he 
would seem to state with impartiality the different 
sensations produced by the punishment of the sons of 
Brutus, and the assassination of the brother of Timo- 
ieon, still it is evident, from the manner in which he 
expresses himself, that he approves of these two ac¬ 
tions, and that, in his eyes, the authors of them were 
deserving of commendation, and fre-e from all reproach. 

( Saint,e-Croix, Examen, &c., p. 74, 2d ed ) Plu¬ 
tarch, moreover, is not even entitled to the praise of 
being an impartial writer. The desire of showing that 
there was a time when the Greeks were superior to 
the Romans, pervades all his recitals, and prejudices 
him in favour of his Grecian heroes. His ignorance 
of the Latin tongue, which he himself avows in his 
Lives of Demosthenes and Cato, leads him into va¬ 
rious errors relative to Roman history. His style has 
neither the purity of the Attic, nor the noble simplici¬ 
ty which distinguishes the classic writers. He is 
overloaded with erudition, and with allusions that are 
often obscure for us. — An able examination of the 
sources whence Plutarch derived the materials for his 
lives, is given by Heeren (De fontibus et auctoritate 
vitarum parallelarum Plutarchi Commenta.tion.es 1V., 
Gatling., 1820, 8vo), and this inquiry becomes indis¬ 
pensably necessary to the professed scholar, who wishes 
to ascertain the degree of confidence that is due to the 

1099 



PLUTARCHUS. 


PLU 


biographical sketches of Plutarch, though our limits 
forbid our entering on the detail. It may be said, in 
a few words, that Plutarch, in the composition of his 
Lives, consulted all the existing historians ; that he 
did r.ot, however, blindly follow them, but weighed 
their respective statements in the balance of justice, 
and, when their accounts were contradictory, adopted 
such as seemed to him most probable.—The other 
historical works of Plutarch are the following : 1. 'Pcj- 
uaiicd, y Alriat 'P upatKai (“ Roman Questions”). 
These are researches on certain Roman usages: for 
example, Why, in the ceremony of marriage, the bride 
is required to touch water and fire I Why, in the same 
ceremony, they light five tapers 1 Why travellers, who, 
having been considered dead, return eventually home, 
cannot enter into their houses by the door, but must 
descend through the roof, &c.—2. 'E/M, .yvtua, y A i- 
t'lul 'E kkyvtuat (“ Hellenica, or Grecian Ques¬ 
tions ”). We have here similar discourses on points of 
Grecian antiquity. — 3. IL c oi napakkyktov 'E kkyvt- 
kuv teal 'VopaluCiv (“ Parallels drawn from Grecian 
and Roman History' 1 ' 1 ). In order to show that certain 
events in Grecian history, which appear fabulous, are 
entitled to full confidence, Plutarch opposes to them 
certain analogous events from Roman history. This 
production is unworthy of Plutarch, and very probably 
supposititious. It possesses no other merit than that 
of having preserved a large number of fragments of 
Greek historians, who are either otherwise unknown, 
or whose works have not come down to us.—4. Ilepi 
ryg 'P upatuv rvxvc (“ Of the Fortune of the Ro¬ 
mans”). —5. and 6. Two discourses mpl ryg ’Ake^- 
dvflpov tvxvc V dperyg (“ On the Fortune or Valour 
of Alexander”). In one of these Plutarch undertakes 
to show that Alexander owed his success to himself, 
not to Fortune. In the other, he attempts to prove, that 
his virtues were not the offspring of a blind and capri¬ 
cious Fortune, and that his talents and the resources of 
his intellect cannot be regarded as favours bestowed 
by this same Fortune. These two discourses are pre¬ 
ceded bygone (No. 4) which shows the true object of 
the others. Plutarch, in this, endeavours to prove, 
that the Roman exploits are less the effect of valour 
and wisdom, than the result of the influence of For¬ 
tune ; and, among the favours conferred by this god¬ 
dess, he enumerates the unexpected death of Alexan¬ 
der, at the very time that he was menacing Italy with 
his victorious arms. In all this we clearly see the 
jealousy and vqnity of the Greeks, who, from the time 
that they first fell under the Roman yoke, never ceased 
detracting from the glory of this republic, and ascribing 
its rapid progress to some blind and unknown cause. 
One of the motives that induced Polybius, moreover, 
to w'rite his history, was to undeceive his countrymen 
on this point, and prove to them that the prosperity of 
Rome was owing, not to the caprices of Fortune, but 
to good conduct and valour.—7. II orepov ’A Oyvalot 
Kara nokepov fj Kara ao<plav kvdo^orepot; (“ Wheth¬ 
er the Athenians are more renowned for War or for 
the Sciences”). The commencement and conclusion 
are wanting. The text of what remains of this piece 
is very corrupt.—8. Ilept "Icndog ual ’Oolptdog (“ Of 
Isis and Osiris”). This treatise contains a number 
of very curious remarks on the Egyptian mythology, 
but it is, at the same time, that very one of the works 
of Plutarch in which his want of critical skill is most 
apparent. His object was to give the mythological 
traditions of the Egyptians a philosophical sense, in 
order to justify them before the tribunal of reason. 
Hence this treatise can only be employed with great 
caution in studying this branch of ancient mythology. 
—9. ’Entropy ryg ovyuploFog M evdvSpov ual ’A pio- 
rodxivovg (“ Abridgment of the Comparison between 
Menander and Aristophanes”). An extract, probably, 
irom some lost work of Plutarch’s. —10. Ilepi ryg 
'H oodorov uauc yOetag (“ Of the Malignity of Herodo- 
1100 


I tus”). From a mistaken principle of patriotism, Plu¬ 
tarch here attacks the veracity of Herodotus as an 
historian. The latter has found an able advocate iu 
the Abbd Geinoz. {Mem. de l’Acad, des Inscr., &c., 
vols. 30, 36, and 38.—11. B tog ruv deica fiyropuv 
(“ Biography of the ten Orators”). This work is evi¬ 
dently supposititious. Photius has inserted it in his 
Bibliotheca, with many omissions and additions, but 
without stating that it was written by Plutarch. 
Hence some critics have ascribed it to the patriarch 
himself. This piece, however, bears the stamp of an 
age much earlier than that of Photius.—We can only 
glance at the philosophical, or, as they are more com¬ 
monly called, the moral, works of Plutarch. He was 
not a profound philosopher. He had formed for him¬ 
self a peculiar system, made up from the opinions of 
various schools, but particularly from those of Pla¬ 
to and the Academicians, which he has sometimes 
only imperfectly understood. He detested the doc¬ 
trines of Epicurus and the Porch, and the hatred he 
had vowed towards their respective schools renders 
him sometimes unjust towards their founders. He 
was not free from superstition, and he pushed to ex¬ 
cess his devotion towards the gods of paganism. His 
philosophical or moral works are more than sixty in 
number. They are full of information as regards an 
acquaintance with ancient philosohpy; and they have 
the additional merit of preserving for us a number 
of passages from authors whose works have perish¬ 
ed. An analysis of these writings is given by Scholl 
{Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 5, p. 77, seqq.). — The best edi¬ 
tions of the whole works of Plutarch are, that of 
Reiske, Lips., 1774-82, 12 vols. 8vo ; that of Hutten, 
Tubing., 1796-98, 14 vols. 8vo, and that forming 
part of the Tauchnitz collection. The best edition oi 
the Lives alone is that of Coray, Paris , 1809-15, 6 
vols. 8vo ; and the best edition of the Moral works is 
that of Wyttenbach, Oxon., 1795, 6 vols. 4to, and 12 
vols. 8vo. 

Pluto (n kovruv), called also Hades ( r A tdyg) and 
A'idoneus (’A iduvevg), as well as Orcus and Dis, was 
the brother of Jupiter and Neptune, and lord of the 
lower world, or the abode of the dead. He is de¬ 
scribed as a being inexorable and deaf to supplication 
—for from his realms there is no return—and an object 
of aversion and hatred to both gods and men. {II., 9, 
158, seq.) All the latter were sure to be, sooner or 
later, collected into his kingdom. The name Hades 
appears to denote invisibility , being derived from a, 
“not,” and eldu, “ to see,” and significatory of the na¬ 
ture of the realm over which he bore swav. The ap¬ 
pellation of Pluto was received by him at a later pe¬ 
riod, and would seem to be connected with the term 
nk ovrog, “ wealth,” a^ mines within the earth are the 
producers of the precious metals. This notion Voss 
thinks began to prevail when the Greeks first visite* 
Spain, the country most abundant in gold. {Mythol 
Briefe, vol. 2, p. 175.) Heyne, on the other hand, ; a 
of opinion that the name in question was firs* ? en 
in the mysteries {ad Apollod., 3, 12, 6) , .« em¬ 

ployed occasionally by the Attic dra.na’ sts {Soph., 
Antig., 1200 — Eurip., Alces* AlO. — Aristoph., 
Plut., 727), and it became the prevalent one in later 
times, when Hades came to signify a place rather than 
a person.—The adventures of Pluto were few, for the 
gloomy nature of himself and his realm did not offer 
much field for such legends of the gods as Grecian 
fancy delighted in ; yet he too had his love-adventures. 
The tale of his carrying off Proserpina is one of the 
most celebrated in antiquity. {Vid. Proserpina.) He 
loved, we are told, and carried off to Er.ebus the ocean- 
nymph Leuce ; and, when she died, he caused a tree, 
named from her {kevuy, “ white poplar”), to spring up 
in the Elysian fields. {Servius ad Virg., Eclog., 7, 
61.) Another of his loves was the nymph Mentha, 
whom Proserpina, out of jealousy, turned into the 






PLUTO. 


PLU 


plant which bears her name. ( Schol. ad Nicand., Al¬ 
ex , 374.— Oppian, Hal., 3, 486. — Ovid, Met., 10, 
730.)—Pluto, Homer tells us, was once wounded in 
the shoulder by the arrows of Hercules ; but, from the 
ambiguity of the phrase used by the poet (ev ttvXo, 
II., 5, 395), it is difficult to determine the scene of the 
conflict. Some say that it was at the gate of the 
nether world, when the hero was sent to drag the dog 
of Hades to the realms of day. {Schol. ad II., l. c.-*- 
Hcyne ad II., 1. c. — Schol. ad Od , 11,605.) Others 
maintain that it was in Pylos, where the god was aid¬ 
ing his worshippers against the son of Jupiter. ( Apol - 
lod , 2, 7, 3 .—Pausan., 6, 25.— Pind., 01., 9, 50.— 
Schol. ad Pind., 1. c.) Heyne, Muller, and Buttmann 
are in favour of this sense of the phrase.—The region 
over which Pluto presided is represented in the Iliad 
and in the Theogony as being within the earth. {II., 
3, 278.— lb., 9, 568.—ft., 20, 61.—ft., 23, 100.— 
Thcog., 455, 767.) In the Odyssey it is placed in 
the dark region beyond the stream of Ocean. {Od., 
10, 508.— lb., 11, 1.) Its name is Erebus, with which 
the appellation Hades became afterward synonymous. 
The poets everywhere describe it as dreary, dark, and 
cheerless. The dead, without distinction of good or 
evil, age or rank, wander there, conversing about their 
former state on earth : they are unhappy, and they feel 
their wretched state acutely. They have no strength, 
or power of mind or body. Some few, enemies of 
the gods, such as Sisyphus, Tityus, Tantalus, are pun¬ 
ished for their crimes, but not apart from the* rest of 
the dead. Nothing can be more gloomy and com¬ 
fortless than the whole aspect of the realm of Hades 
as pictured by Homer. — In process of time, when 
communication with Egypt and Asia had enlarged the 
sphere of the ideas of the Greeks, the nether world 
underwent a total change. It was now divided into 
two separate regions: Tartarus, which, in the time 
of Homer and Hesiod, was thought to lie far beneath 
, and to be the prison of the Titans, became one of 
these regions, and the place of punishment for wick¬ 
ed men ; and Elysium, which lay on the shore of 
the stream of Ocean, the retreat of the children and 
relatives of the king of the gods, was moved down 
thither to form the place of reward for good men. A 
stream encompassed the domains of Hades, over which 
the dead, on paying their passage-money {vavTiov), 
were ferried by Charon. The three-headed dog Cer¬ 
berus guarded the entrance ; and the three judges, Mi¬ 
nos, iEacus, and Rhadamanthus, allotted his place of 
bliss or of pain to each of the dead who was brought 
before their tribunal. This idea is probably founded 
on the passage in the Odyssey (11, 568) where the 
hero says he saw Minos judging in Erebus ; but, ac¬ 
cording to the earlier belief, he only judged there as 
Orion hunted ; in other words, he pursued the same 
occupation as on earth. According to the fine myth 
in Plato {Gorgias, p. 523), /Eacus and Rhadaman¬ 
thus sit at the point in the mead where the path branch¬ 
es off to the Islands of the Blessed and to Tartarus (com¬ 
pare Virg., JEn., 6, 540) ; the former judging the 
dead from Europe, the latter those from Asia. If any 
case proves too difficult fo-r them, it is reserved for 
the decision of Minos.—The River of Oblivion {6 rye 
Xr/dyc 7 rora/xog) was added to those of Homer’s trans¬ 
oceanic region (Acheron, Pyriphlegethon, and Cocy- 
tus), and the dead were led to drink of its waters pre¬ 
vious to their returning to animate other bodies on 
earth. In the sixth book of Virgil’s HCneid will be 
found the richest and fullest description of the new- 
modified under-world, and for those who love to trace 
the progress and change of ideas, it will not be an un¬ 
interesting employment to compare it with that in the 
seventh book of Homer’s Odyssey.—In reading the 
“portentous falsehoods” {Lobcck, Aglaoph., p. 811) 
of the Egyptian priests on this subject, one is at a loss 
which most to wonder at, their audacity, or the credu¬ 


lity of the Greeks. For the former asserted, and the 
latter believed, that Orpheus and Homer had both 
learned wisdom on the banks of the Nile ; and that 
the Erebus of Greece, and all its parts, personages, 
and usages, were but transcripts of the mode of burial 
in Egypt. Here the corpse was, on payment of a piece 
of money, conveyed by a ferryman (named Charon in 
the language of Egypt) over the Acherusian lake, after 
it had received its sentence from the judges appointed 
for that purpose. Oceanus was but the Egyptian 
name for the Nile ; the Gates of the Sun were merely 
those of Heliopolis; and Hermes, the conductor of 
souls, was familiar to the Egyptians ; and thus they 
boldly and falsely appropriated to themselves all the 
mythic ideas of Greece !—It is worthy of notice, with 
what unanimity the early races of men placed the 
abode of departed souls either beneath the earth or in 
the remote regions of the West. The former notion 
owes its origin, in all probability, to the simple cir¬ 
cumstance of the mortal remains of man being depos¬ 
ited by most nations in the bosom of the earth ; and 
the habits of thinking and speaking which thence arose, 
led to the notion of the soul also being placed in a re¬ 
gion within the earth. The calmness and stillness of 
evening succeeding the toils of the day, the m-ajesty 
of the sun sinking, as it were, to rest amid the glories 
of the western sky, exert a powerful influence over the 
human mind, and lead us almost insensibly to picture 
the West as a region of bliss and tranquillity. The 
idea of its being the abode of the departed good was 
therefore an obvious one. Finally, the analogy of the 
conclusion of the day and the setting of the sun with 
the close of life, may have led the Greeks, or, it may 
be, the Phoenicians, to place the dwelling of the dead 
in general in the dark land on the western shore of 
Ocean.—Hades, we are told by Homer, possessed a 
helmet which rendered its wearer invisible ; it was 
forged for him by Vulcan, the later writers say, in the 
time of the war against the Titans. Minerva wore it 
when aiding Diomede against Mars {11., 5, 845). 
When Perseus went on his expedition against the 
Gorgons, the helm of invisibility covered his brow. 
{Apollod., 1, 6, 2.)—By artists the god of the lowei 
world was represented similar to his brothers, but he 
was distinguished from them by his gloomy and rigid 
mien. {Keighlley's Mythology, p. 89, seqq.) Pluto 
had a temple at Rome under the title of Surumanus, 
dedicated to him during the war with Pyrrhus. {Ovid, 
Fast., 6, 731.) The cypress, the narcissus, the adi-' 
anthus, and the thighs of victims, were sacred to him ; 
black animals were sacrificed to him, such as black 
oxen and sheep. ( Tibull., 3, 5, 33.) His title Sum- 
manus was given to him as being sammus manium ; 
but Ovid questions whether this deity was the same 
as Pluto. {Fuss, Rom. Ant., p. 360.) 

Plutus, son of Iasion or Iasius, by Ceres, the god¬ 
dess of corn, has been confounded by many of the 
mythologists with Pluto, though plainly distinguished 
from him as being the god of riches. He was brought 
up by the goddess of peace, and, on that account, Pax 
was represented at Athens as holding the god of wealth 
in her lap. The ancients represented him as blind, 
and bestowing his favours indiscriminately on the good 
and bad. He appears as an actor in the comedy of 
Aristophanes called after his name, and also bears a 
part in the Timon of Lucian. The Greek form H\ov 
roc means “ wealth .” The popular belief among th# 
ancients assigned him a dwelling-place in the subter 
ranean regions of Spain, a country famed for its pre 
cious metals. Phsadrus relates, in one of his fables 
that when Hercules was received into heaven, and was 
saluting the gods who thronged around with their con 
gratulations, he turned away his look when Plutu> 
drew near, assigning as a reason for this to Jupiter; 
who inquired the cause of his strange conduct, tha' 
he hated Plutus because he was the friend of the bad 

1101 




POD 


POL 


and, besides, corrupted both good and bad with his 
gifts. The fable is borrowed, with some slight alter¬ 
ation, from the Greek. (Phoedr., fab., 4, 12.) 

Pluvius, a surname of Jupiter, as god of rain. He 
was invoked by that name among the Romans, when¬ 
ever the earth was parched up by continual heat, and 
was in want of refreshing showers. ( Tibull ., 1,8, 26.) 

Pnyx, the place of public assembly at Athens, es¬ 
pecially during elections, so called from the crowds ac¬ 
customed to assemble therein (and rod 'KE'KVKvuGOaC). 
The Pnyx was situate on a low hill, sloping down to 
the north, at the western verge of the city, and at a 
quarter of a mile to the west of the Acropolis. It was 
a large semicircular area, of which the southern side, 
or diameter, was formed by a long line of limestone 
rock, hewn so as to present the appearance of a verti¬ 
cal wall, in the centre of which, and projecting from 
it, was a solid pedestal, carved out of the living rock, 
ascended by steps, and based upon seats of the same 
material. This was the celebrated Bema, fiom which 
the orators addressed the people. The lowest or most 
northern part of the semicircular curve was supported 
by a terrace wall of polygonal blocks. ( Wordsworth’s 
Greece , p. 150.— Arisioph., Acliarn., 20.— Jul. Poll ., 
8 , 10.) 

Podalirius, son of iEsculapius and Epione, and a 
celebrated physician of antiquity. Xenophon calls 
him and his brother Machaon pupils of Chiron the 
centaur ( Cynegct ., 1, 14), an assertion which Aris¬ 
tides takes the unnecessary trouble of refuting. .( Orat. 
in Asclepiad ., vol. I, p. 76, ed. Cant.) The two 
brothers were also distinguished for eloquence, and for 
their acquaintance with the military art. ( Xen., L c.l 
According to Quintus Calaber, Machaon was the elder, 
and also instructed Podalirius. ( Paralipom., Rom ., 
8 , 60.) They were both present at the siege of Troy, 
and made themselves so conspicuous by thekr valour, 
that Homer ranks them among the fi^t of the Gre¬ 
cian heroes. Their skill in the healing art was also 
highly serviceable to the wounded, and they were at 
iast excused from the fight, end from all the fatigues 
jf war, in order to have more time to attend to those 
vho were injured. On his return from Troy, Poda- 
irius was driven b' r a tempest to the coast of Caria, 
vhere lie either settled in, or founded, the city of Syr- 
oa, called by --oire Syrus. (Pausan , 3, 26.— Siebe- 
■is, ad toe A The more common account is in favour 
A his having founded the place, and he is said to have 
.ailed it after Syrna, the daughter of Damcetas, king 
)f the country. He had cured her, it seems, of the 
'•ducts of a fall from the roof of a mansion, by bleeding 
oer in both arms at the moment when her life w'as 
despaired of; and he received her in marriage, to¬ 
gether with the sovereignty of the Carian Chersonese. 

( Steph. Byz., s. v. hvpva.) This story furnishes the 
first instance of a physician’s having practised bleed¬ 
ing, at least among the Greeks. ( Sprengel, Hist, de 
la Med., vol. 1, p. 131.) Another account makes 
Podalirius to have been assassinated on the coast of 
Ausonia, in the territory of the Daunians, in Italy, and 
to have been worshipped after death under the name 
of vooov uKearr/g, “healer of diseases .” ( Lycophr., 

1046, seqq.) Strabo, moreover, says, that the tomb 
of Podalirius was to be seen at the distance of 100 
stadia from the sea, in the country of the Daunians. 
(Strab., 436.) 

Poiuroes, I. the first name of Priam. When Troy 
was taken by Hercules, he was redeemed from slavery 
by his sister Hesione, and thence received the name, 
of Priam. ( Vid . Priamus.)—II. The son of Iphiclus, 
of Thessaly, and brother of Protesilaus. He went 
with twenty ships to the Trojan war, and, after his 
brother’s death, commanded both divisions, amounting 
to forty vessels. ( Horn ., II. 2, 698, seqq. — Eustath., 
ad loc. — Mvncker , ad Hygin. fab ., 97.) 

Podarge, one of the Harpies, mother of two of the 
1102 


horses of Achilles by the wind Zephyrus. ( Horn ., Il. t 
16, 150. —Consult Heyne , Excurs., ad loc.) The 
name implies swiftness of feet (from novq, “ a foot," 
and dpyog, “ swift.") 

Pceas, the father of Philoctetes. The son is hence 
culled “ Pceantia proles" by Ovid. [Met., 13, 45.) 

Pcecile, a celebrated portico at Athens, which re¬ 
ceived its name from the paintings with which it wae 
adorned (tcoiklXtj gtou, from ttolkIXoc, “ diversified"). 
its more ancient name is said to have been Peisianac- 
tius. ( Diog. Laert., Vit. Zen. — Plin., Vit. Cim.) 

The pictures were by Polygnotus, Micon, and Pam- 
pbilus, and represented the battle between Theseus 
and the Amazons, the contest at Marathon, and other 
achievements of the Athenians. (Pausan., 1, 15.— 
Diog. Laert., 1. c .— Plin., 35, 9.— AElian, Hist. An., 
7, 28.) Here were suspended also the shields of the 
Scioneans of Thrace, and those of the Lacedasmonians 
taken in the island of Sphacteria. (Pausan., 1, 15.) 
It was in this portico that Zeno first opened his school, 
which was hence denominated the “ Stoic." (The 
“ school of the porch," from gtou.) No less than 1500 
citizens of Athens are said to have been destroyed by 
the thirty tyrants in the Pcecile. (Diog. Laert , l. c. 
— Isocr., Arcop. — JEschin., de Fals. Leg.) Colonel 
Leake supposes that some walls, which are still to be 
seen at the church of Panaghia Fanaromeni, are the 
remains of this celebrated portico. (Topography oj 
Athens , p. 118.— Cramer's Anc. Greece , vol. 2, p. 
318.) 

Pceni, a name common to both the Phoenicians and 
Carthaginians. (Consult remarks under the article 
Phoenicia, page 1049, col. 2, near the end.) 

Pogon, a name given to the harbour of Trcezena 
from its shape, being formed by a curved strip of land 
which resembled a beard (rruyuv ): hence arose the 
proverbial joke, nTievGEiaq eIq T pogyva, which was ad¬ 
dressed to those whose chins were but scantily pro¬ 
vided. (Adag. Grcec. Zenob.) This port was for¬ 
merly so capacious as to contain a large fleet. We 
are told by Herodotus that the Greek ships were order 
ed to assemble there prior to the battle of Salamis 
(<) 42.— Strab., 273). At present it is shallow, ob¬ 
structed by sand, and accessible only to small boats. 

( Dodivell, vol. 2, p. 268.— Chandler, vol. 2, p. 263.— 
Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 266.) 

Pola, a town of Istria, on the western coast, near 
the southern extremity, or Promontorium Polaticum. 

It still preserves its name unchanged. Tradition re¬ 
ported it to have been founded by the Colchians, whom 
JEetes had sent in pursuit of the Argonauts. It be¬ 
came afterward a Roman colony, and took the name 
of Pietas Julia. (Pliny, 3, 19.— Mela, 2, 4. — Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 136.) 

Polemarchus. Vid. Archon. 

Polemon, I. an Athenian of good family, who m 
his youth was addicted to infamous pleasures. The 
manner in which he was reclaimed from his licentious 
course of life, and brought under the discipline of phi¬ 
losophy, affords a memorable example of the power ol 
eloquence when it is employed in the cause of virtue. 
As he was one morning, about the rising of the sun, 
returning home from the revels of the night, clad in a 
loose robe, crowned with a garland, strongly perfumed 
and intoxicated with wine, he passed by the school of 
Xenocrates, and saw him surrounded by his disciples. 
Unable to resist so fortunate an opportunity of indulging 
his sportive humour, he rushed, without ceremony, into 
the school, and took his place among the philosophers. 
The w r hole assembly was astonished at this rude and 
indecent intrusion, and all but Xenocrates discovered 
signs of resentment. The philosopher, however, pre¬ 
served the perfect command of his countenance ; and, 
with great presence of mind, turned his discourse from 
the subject on which he was lecturing to the topics of 
temperance and modesty, which he recommended witl 






POLEMON. 


POL 


60 much strength of argument and energy ol \an- 
guage, that Polemon was constrained to yield to the 
force of conviction. Instead of turning Xenocrates 
and his doctrine to ridicule, he became sensible of 
the folly of his former conduct, was heartily ashamed 
of the contemptible figure which he made in so re¬ 
spectable an assembly, took his garland from his head, 
concealed his naked arm under his cloak, assumed a 
sedate and thoughtful aspect, and, in short, resolved 
from that hour to relinquish his licentious pleasures, 
and to devote himself to the pursuit of wisdom. Thus 
was this young man, by the powerful energy of truth 
and eloquence, converted from an infamous liber¬ 
tine to a respectable philosopher. In such a sudden 
change of character, it is difficult to avoid passing 
from one extreme to another. Polemon, after his ref¬ 
ormation, in order to brace up his mind to the tone of 
rigid virtue, constantly practised the severest austerity 
and most hardy fortitude. From the thirtieth year of 
his age to his death he drank nothing but water. 
When he suffered violent pain, he showed no exter¬ 
nal sign of anguish. In order to preserve his mind 
undisturbed by passion, he habituated himself to speak 
in a uniform tone of voice, v ithout elevation or de¬ 
pression. The austerity of his manners, however, 
was tempered with urbanity and generosity. He was 
fond of solitude, and passed much of his time in a 
garden near his school. He died at an advanced 
age, of consumption. Of the tenets of Polemon lit¬ 
tle is said by the ancients, because he strictly adhered 
to the doctrine of Plato. The direction of the Acad¬ 
emy devolved upon him after the death of Xenocrates. 
He is said to have taught that the world is God ; but 
this was, doubtless, according to the Platonic system, 
which made the soul of the world an inferior divinity. 
(Diog. Laert ., 4, 16.— Suid., s. v. — Val. Max., 6, 9. 
— Cic., de Fin., 4, 6. — Athenaus , 2, p. 44. — Stob., 
Eclog. Phys., 1, 3.— Enfield's Hist, of Philos., vol. 
1, p. 247, seq.) —II. A son of Zeno of Apamea, made 
king of Pontus by Antony, after the latter had de¬ 
posed Darius, son of Pharnaces. ( Appian, Bell. Civ., 
5, 75.) This person, who had the art to ingratiate 
himself alike with Antony, Augustus, and Agrippa, 
was made king of that eastern part of Pontus, named 
Poiemoniacus after him. He was killed in an expe¬ 
dition against some barbarians of Smdice, near the 
Palus Msgotis ; but his widow, Pythodoris, was reign- 
incr in his stead at the time that Strabo wrote his Ge¬ 
ography. ( Slrab ., 556, 578.— Dio Cass., 53, 25.— 
Id., 54, 24.) — III. Son and successor of the pre¬ 
ceding, was placed on the throne by Caligula, and 
had his dominions afterward enlarged by Claudius 
with a portion of Cilicia. Nero eventually converted 
Pontus into a Roman province. (Suet., Vit. Ner., 18. 
— Crusius, ad loc.) —IV. Antonius, a celebrated soph¬ 
ist and public speaker, in the second century of our 
era. He was a native of Laodicea on the Lycus, and 
of a consular family, and was held in high esteem by 
Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius. Polemon spent 
the greater part of his life in Smyrna, where he opened 
a school of rhetoric, and was sent on several occasions 
as ambassador to Hadrian. He accumulated a large 
fortune by his oratorical talents, but made many ene¬ 
mies by his excessive haughtiness. He became a 
great sufferer by the gout, and at the age of fifty-six 
years, having become disgusted with life on account 
of the tortures to which his complaint subjected him, 
he returned to his native city, entered the tomb of his 
family, which he caused to be closed upon him, and 
there ended his existence. We have remaining of his 
works only two declamations or oratorical exercises, 
entitled “ Funeral Discourses" (F.mTdtyioi loyot). 
They are discourses feigned to have been delivered 
in honour of those who fell at Marathon, by their own 
fathers. The Emperor Marcus Aurelius, in a letter to 
Fronto, describes him as a writer of ability, but less 


pleasing than instructive. (Front, Being., p. 50, ed. 
Niebuhr.) The little that we possess of the writings 
of Polemon neither authorizes us to adhere to tins 
opinion nor to contradict it. It is true, however, that 
the two declamations which have reached us are writ¬ 
ten in a vigorous style, but are devoid of elegance. It 
was principally, too, for his strength and vehemence 
that the ancients held Polemon in esteem, and called 
him “ the Trumpet of Olympus" (2aA7rry£ ’02.v/i7ria- 
uy). St. Gregory Nazianzen studied and imitated 
him. The best edition of the two declamations of 
Polemon is that of Orellius, Lips., 1819, 8vo. (Scholl, 
Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 4, p. 226, seq.) —V. Surnamed 
Periegetes, lived during the reign of Ptolemy Epipha- 
nes, about 200 B.C. He was a pupil of the Stoic 
Pansetius, and wrote a “ History of Greece'' (A oyoq 
FTJ^yviKog) in eleven books, wherein he carefully ob¬ 
served chronology. This work is lost. Athenams 
cites many other productions of Polemon, “ On the 
Acropolis of Athens “ On the Paintings to he seen 
at Sicyon" (Plutarch has borrowed from the latter an 
anecdote, which he gives in his Life of Aratus), “ On 
Inscriptions &c. Polemon appears also as a geo¬ 
graphical writer. He composed a “ Description of 
the Earth" (Koopiuy Tlepiyyycng), whence he obtained 
the surname of Periegetes (Hepipyr/Tr)^). He wrote 
also a “ Description of Ilium" (tleptyyyau ;• ’YXtov), 
and, under the title of K riaeig, a work on the origin 
of the cities of Phocis, Pontus, &c. All these are 
lost. Strabo and the scholiasts cite another work of 
Polemon’s, written against Eratosthenes, in which the 
latter was accused of never having seen Athens. 
( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 3, p 223.— Id. ib., vol. 
3, p. 390.— Id. ib., vol. 4, p. 53.) — VI. A writer on 
Physiognomy, supposed to be the same with the pupil of 
Xenocrates mentioned above (No. I.). He composed 
a “ Manual of Physiognomy," entitled ^votO'yvo>fUKOt, 
or 4>t>cr loyvofitKtiv ’E yxeipifitov. It was published 
by Peruscus at the end of his JElian, Rom., 1545, 
4to, and is also contained in the collection of Franz, 
“ Scriptores Physiognomies Veteres," Allenb., 1780, 
8vo. 

Polemonium, a city of Asia Minor, on the coast of 
Pontus, situate, according to Pliny (6, 4), one hundred 
and twenty miles from Amisus. It derived its name 
from Polemon, the son of Zeno, its founder. This 
place is not mentioned by Strabo, and therefore was 
probably founded after his time ; but it is noticed by 
Ptolemy ; and in the Table Itinerary it is marked as a 
place of consequence. Mannert is inclined to think 
that Polemonium was built on the site of an earlier 
place called Side. The modern name is said to be 
Vatisa or Fatsa, which reminds us of the ancient for¬ 
tress of Phatisane, that once stood about ten stadia to 
the west. (Arrian, Peripl. Mar. Eux., p. 17.— Per- 
ipl. Anon., p. 4. — Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 2, p. 
439.) 

Polias (noiLdf), a surname of Minerva, as the pro¬ 
tectress of cities. This name was particularly applied 
to her in Athens, and indicated the original Minerva 
of Athens, the Minerva who had contested the soil of 
Attica with Neptune, and had triumphed in the con¬ 
test. She was, therefore, the original protectress of 
the- Acropolis and the city ; to her the embroidered 
Peplus at the festival of the Panathensea was dedica¬ 
ted ; it was to her temple that Orestes came as a sup¬ 
pliant from Delphi, when he fled from the Eumenides, 
before her statue burned the golden lamp, both night 
and day, which was fed with oil only once a year ; the 
sacred serpent, the guardian of the Acropolis, dwelt 
here; here was the silver-footed throne, on which 
Xerxes sat when he viewed the battle of Salamis; 
and here, too, was the sword of Mardonius, the Per¬ 
sian general at Plataaa.—The temple of Minerva Poliaa 
was under the same roof with the Erechtheum, the two 
forming an entire building, of which the eastern divis- 
° 1103 



POL 


POLLIO 




ion was consecrated to the worship of the goddess ; 
and the western, including the northern and southern 
porticoes, was sacred to the deified daughter of Ce- 
crops. the nymph Pandrosus. On the same site had 
previously stood the temple of Erechtheus ; and from 
this circumstance, as well as from the fact that his 
altar still remained, the entire building retained the 
name of the Erechtheum. Within the sacred enclo¬ 
sure were preserved the holiest objects of Athenian 
veneration, among which the most precious were the 
ulive of Minerva and the fountain of Neptune, both 
of which sprung up at the bidding of those divinities, 
when there was contention among the gods concerning 
the guardianship of Athens. Here, too, was the old¬ 
est and most deeply-venerated of the statues of the 
Athenian goddess ; a figure carved in olive-wood, but 
of which the legend affirmed that it had fallen from 
heaven. ( Wordsworth’’s Greece , p. 144. — Stuart's 
Antiquities of Athens , p. 37, Lond., 1827, 12mo.) 
Muller has written an interesting work on the Temple 
and Worship of Minerva Polias, under the following 
title: “ Minervce Poliadis Sacra et JEdem in arce 
Athenarum illustravit C. 0. MullerGotting ., 1820, 
4to. 

Poliorcetes {Uo^iopKyrpg), “ the besieger of cit¬ 
ies a surname given to Demetrius, son of Antigonus. 
[Vid. Demetrius I.) 

Polites, I. a son of Priam and Hecuba, killed by 
Pyrrhus in his father’s presence. (Virg., AEn., 2, 
526.)—II. His son, who bore the same name, fol¬ 
lowed iEneas into Italy, and was one of the friends of 
young Ascanius. {Virg., 5, 564.) 

Poula Argentaria, the wife of the poet Lucan. 
{Vid. Lucanus.) 

Pollentia, a town of Liguria, southeast of Alba 
Pompsia. It was a municipium, and is chiefly cel¬ 
ebrated for its wool. ( Plin ., 8, 48. — Colurn., 7, 2. 
— Sil. Ital., 8, 599.) A battle was fought in its vi- 
rinity between Stilico and the Goths, the success of 
ivhich appears to have been very doubtful. {Oros., 
T, 37.) But Claudian speaks of it as the greatest tri¬ 
umph of his hero. ( De Bell. Get., 605.) The mod¬ 
uli village of Polcnza stands near the site of the an- 
, lent city. {Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 28.) 

Pollio, I. C. Asinius, a Roman consul in the time 
of Augustus, who, though of humble birth, was one 
of the most remarkable men and most distinguished 
patrons of literature during the age in which he lived; 
and when we consider the brilliant part which he acted 
as a military commander, politician, and man of let¬ 
ters, it is singular we have so few remains of his wri¬ 
tings, and such brief records of his actions. Pollio 
was born in the 675th year of the city, and he had, 
consequently, reached the age of thirty before the liber¬ 
ties of his country were subverted. During the times 
of the republic, he so well performed the parts of a cit¬ 
izen and patriot, that in one of Cicero’s letters he is 
classed with Cato for his love of liberty and virtue. 
But in pursuing this line of conduct he offended some 
of the partisans of Pompey, and was forced, as he af¬ 
terward alleged, to espouse the part of Caesar, in 
order to shield himself from their resentment. {Cic., 
Ep. ad Fam., 10, 31.) He became a favourite officer 
of Julius Caesar, whom he served with inviolable fidel¬ 
ity, and ever entertained for him the most devoted at¬ 
tachment. A short while before the dictator’s death, 
he was sent to Spain at the head of a considerable 
army, to crush the party wMch Sextus Pompey had 
recently formed in that province ; but he was not very 
successful in h:s prosecution of this warfare. ( Dio 
Cass., 45.) After the assassination of Caesar, he of¬ 
fered his army and services to the senate ; and, in his 
letters to Cicero, made the strongest professions of love 
of liberty and zeal for the commonwealth, declaring 
that he would neither desert nor survive the republic. 
(Cic., Ep. ad Fam., 10, 33 .) The hypocrisy of these 
1104 


protestations was evinced almost as soon as the letters 
in which they were contained had reached the capital; 
for his old fellow-soldier, Antony, having retreated into 
Gaul after his defeat at Modena, Pollio joined him 
from Spain with all the troops he commanded. He 
farther contrived to disunite the fickle Plancus from 
his colleague Decimus Brutus, and to bring him over, 
with his army, to the enemies of the republic. By 
these measures he contributed more, perhaps, than 
any other of his contemporaries, to extinguish all hopes 
of the restoration of the commonwealth, and to throw 
the whole power of the state into the hands of the tri¬ 
umvirate. Having thus been chiefly instrumental in 
ruining the cause of liberty, that proud spirit of freedom 
or ferocia, as Tacitus calls it, which he afterward as¬ 
sumed, and the restoration of the Atrium liber tatis, 
which stood on the Aventine Hill, must have bea* 
looked on as a farce by his fellow-citizens, and has beet 
considered by posterity as little better than imposture. 
Pollio was present at the formation of the triumvirate 
which took place in a small island of the Reno, a 
stream that passes near Bologna. Amid other sacrw 
fices of friends and relatives then made by the heads 
of political parties, Pollio gave up his own father-in- 
law to the resentment of his new associates. He is 
said, however, to have repressed by his authority many 
disorders of the times, and to have mitigated, so far 
as was in his power, the cruelty of the triumvirs. In 
the year 713, which was that of his first consulship, a 
quarrel having arisen between Augustus and Lucius 
Antonius, the brother of the triumvir, concerning the 
settlement of the veterans in the lands allotted them, 
Pollio occupied the north of Italy for the Antonian 
party. His spirit and valour had acquired him such 
reputation among the soldiery, that, while his friend 
Munatius Plancus, though of higher birth and rank, 
was deserted by his troops, Pollio was enabled to 
make head against Agrippa and Augustus with not 
less than seven legions, and to retain the whole of the 
Venetian territory in the interests of Antony. In or¬ 
der to subsist his forces, he laid heavy contributions 
on the towns, and exacted them with the utmost rig¬ 
our. The Paduans, in particular, who had been al« 
ways attached to the cause of liberty and the republic, 
smarted severely under his displeasure and avarice. 
He stripped their city of everything valuable, whether 
public or private, and proclaimed a reward to the 
slave who should discover the concealment of his 
master. The contest between Lucius Antonius and 
Augustus was followed by the treaty of Brundisium, 
by which a new division of the empire was made among 
the triumvirs ; and, according to this distribution, the 
province of Dalmatia was included in the department 
of the empire allotted to Marc Antony. This rugged 
country, not yet completely subdued by the Romans, 
had been constantly in the view of Pollio while he 
commanded on the northeast coast of Italy. A mas¬ 
sacre committed by the natives on a Roman colony 
formed a pretext for its invasion. With the consent 
of Antony, if not by his express orders, Pollio led the 
army, which he had now commanded for five years, 
to quell the insurrection. He quickly dispersed the 
tumultuary bodies of natives which had assembled 
to oppose him; took their capital, Salona inow Spa- 
latro), and returned triumphant to Rome. This tri¬ 
umph closed his military and political career. The 
cause of Antony, which Pollio had supported both by 
his able conduct and the reputation of his name, had 
now sunk so low in Ttaly, that it could no longer be 
maintained against his rival with any regard to safety, 
interest, or character. He declined, however, to fol¬ 
low Augustus to the battle of Actium; and to the so¬ 
licitations which were used with the view of inducing 
him actually to espouse his interests, Pollio is said t« 
have replied, “ Mea in Antonium mai.ora merita sunt 
illius in me beneficia notiora; itaque discnmine ves- 




POLLIO. 


POL 


tro me subtraham, et ero pra?da victoris Veil. Pa- 
lerc.y 2,66.) From this period till hisdeath(,vhich hap¬ 
pened at his Tusculan villa in 755 U.C., when he had 
reached the age of eighty) Pollio withdrew almost entire¬ 
ly from public affairs. He was naturally of a bold, assu¬ 
ming, and overbearing temper; he affected a stern predi¬ 
lection for the forms and manners of the ancient repub¬ 
lic ; and, having amassed an enormous fortune during 
the proscriptions, he never sought to ingratiate himself 
with Augustus. Accordingly, though he was respect¬ 
ed and esteemed, he was not beloved by the emperor. 
During the contest with Lucius Antonius, several sting¬ 
ing epigrams were directed against him by Augustus. 
Pollio was well able to retort, but he did not choose, 
as he himself expressed it, “ in eum scribere qui potest 
proscribes.” {Macrob., Saturn., 2,4.) His neutral¬ 
ity during the war with Antony and Cleopatra, though 
permitted by Augustus, would little tend to conciliate 
his favour; and that prince saw around him so many 
able ministers who had uniformly supported his inter¬ 
ests, that he had no occasion to require the assistance 
or counsel of Pollio. With the exception, therefore, of 
occasionally pleading in the Forum, Pollio devoted all 
his time to literary composition and the protection of 
literary men. No Roman of that period was more ca¬ 
pable of enjoying retirement with dignity, or relishing it 
with taste. He possessed everything which could ren¬ 
der his retreatdelightful: an excellent education, distin¬ 
guished talents, a knowledge of mankind, and a splen¬ 
did fortune. To all the strength and solidity of under¬ 
standing requisite to give him weight in the serious or 
important affairs of life, he united the most lively and 
agreeable vein of wit and pleasantry. His genius and 
acquirements enabled him likewise to shine in the 
noblest branches of polite literature : poetry, elo¬ 
quence, and history, in which last department Seneca 
prefers his style to that of Livy. He had, no doubt, 
effectually improved the opportunities which the times 
afforded, of enriching himself at the cost of others ; 
and no one had profited more by the forfeited estates 
during the period of the proscriptions; but it should 
not be forgotten, that whatever fortune he amassed 
was converted to the most laudable purposes : the 
formation of a public library, the collection of the most 
eminent productions of art, and the encouragement of 
learning and literary men. Pliny, in his Natural His¬ 
tory, informs us, that Pollio was the first person who 
erected a public library at Rome. It was placed in the 
vicinity of the Atrium Libertatis , which he had con¬ 
structed on the Aventine Hill; and the expense of the 
establishment was defrayed from the spoils of conquer¬ 
ed enemies (7, 30 ; 35, 2). From the same author 
we have an account of his fine collection of statues 
by Praxiteles and other masters (34, 5), which he 
was extremely desirous should be publicly seen and 
commended. Among the labours of Praxiteles are 
mentioned a Silenus, an Apollo, a Neptune, and a Ve¬ 
nus. The specimens of the works of other artists ex¬ 
hibited the Centaurs carrying off the Nymphs, by Ar- 
chesitas ; Jupiter, surnamed Hospitalis, by Pamphilus, 
a scholar of Praxiteles ; a sitting Vesta ; and, finally, 
Zethus, Amphion, and Dirce, fastened by a cord to the 
bull, all formed out of one stone, and brought from 
Rhodes by the direction of Pollio. Still more useful 
and praiseworthy was the patronage which he extended 
to men of genius. In youth, his character and con¬ 
versational talents had rendered him a favourite with 
the master-spirits of Rome : Cmsar, Calvus, and Ca¬ 
tullus, who shone in his earlier years ; and in more ad¬ 
vanced life, he in turn favoured and protected Virgil 
and Horace, whose eulogies are still the basis of his 
fame. Pollio commanded in the district where the 
farm of Virgil lay ; and at the division of lands among 
the soldiery, was of service to him in procuring the 
restoration of his property. That distinguished poet 
composed his eclogues, it is said, by the advice of 
7 A 


Pollio ; and in the fourth of'the number he has Beau¬ 
tifully testified his gratitude for the friendship and pro¬ 
tection which had been extended to him. The odes 
of Horace show the familiarity which subsisted be¬ 
tween the poet and his patron ; the former ventures to 
give the latter advice concerning the history of the 
civil wars, on which he was then engaged ; and to 
warn him of the danger to which he might be exposed 
by treating such a subject. Timagenes, the rhetori¬ 
cian and historian, spent his old age in the house of 
Pollio ; though he had incurred the displeasure of Au¬ 
gustus by some bitter raillery and sarcasms directed 
against the imperial family. But, while Pollio pro¬ 
tected learned men, he seems to have been a severe, 
and, according to some, a capricious critic, on the wri¬ 
tings both of his own contemporaries and of authors 
who had immediately preceded him. He was envious 
of the reputation of Cicero, and expressed himself with 
severity on the blemishes of his style ( Seneca, Suas., 

6.— Quint., Inst. Orat., 12, 1) : he called in question 
the accuracy of the facts related in Caesar’s Commen¬ 
taries ( Sucton ., de Illust. Grammat.) ; and he discov¬ 
ered provincial expressions in the noble history of 
Livy. {Quint., Inst. Oral., 1, 5.) His jealous love 
of praise and spirit of competition led him to intro¬ 
duce one custom which probably proved injurious to 
poetry : the fashion of an author reading his produc¬ 
tions at private meetings of the most learned and re 
fined of his contemporaries. These recitations, as 
they were called, led to the desire of writing for the 
sake of effect, and were less calculated to improve the 
purity of taste than to engender ostentatious display. 

( Dunlop's Roman Literature, vol. 3, p. 45, seqq.)~~- 
II. Vedius. ( Vid. Pausilypus.) 

Pollux, I. (in Greek YlohvdevKric;) a son of Jupiter 
by Leda, the wife of Tyndarus. He was brother to 
Castor. ( Vid. Castor.)—II. (or YloTivdevKTjg) Julius, 
a native of Naucratis, in Egypt, who flourished about 
175 A.D , and died in the reign of the Emperor Corn- 
modus. He followed, it would seem, the profession 
of sophist at Athens, and acquired so much reputation 
there, that the Emperor Marcus Aurelius intrusted him 
with the education of his son ; but the instructions of 
the preceptor were unable to correct the vicious pro¬ 
pensities of the pupil. It has been supposed that 
Lucian intended to ridicule Pollux in his Lexiphanes 
and Rhetorum Prceceptor ('P rjTopuv didaGKalog), but 
Hemsterhusius has undertaken to disprove this, in the 
preface to his edition of the Onomasticon. The 
strongest argument adduced by him against this sup- , 
position, which rests on the testimony of one of the 
scholiasts, is that such a satire would be unjust. The 
principal work of Pollux, and the only one that re¬ 
mains to us, is entitled ’O vopaariKov (“ Onomasti- 
con 1 '). The following is the explanation which Hem 
sterhusius gives of this title. “ Onomasticorum mu 
nus est commoda rebus nomina imponere, et docere 
quibus verbis uberiore quadam et fiorente elegantia 
rem unam designare possimus: non emm in Onomas - 
ticis unquam proprio quodam loco de vocum difficilli- 
morum interpret atione agebatur, sed quo pacto pro- 
priis res queevis et pluribus insigniri posset verbis .” 

—Pollux does not, like other lexicographers, follow 
the alphabetical arrangement; he has divided his work 
into nine books, according to the matters of wnich he 
treats, or, rather, he has united nine separate works 
under the general title of “ OnomasticonP These 
nine productions would seem to have been published 
originally in a separate and consecutive order, from 
the circumstance of their each having a preface or ded¬ 
ication, addressed to the Emperor Commodus. The 
subjects of the nine books are as follows : I. Of Gods, 
Kings, Swiftness and Slowness, Dyeing, Commerce 
and the Mechanic Arts, Fertility and Sterility, Sea¬ 
sons, Houses, Ships, things relating to War, Horses, 
Agriculture, the component parts of a Plough, those oi 

1106 



POL 


POLYBIUS. 


a Chariot, Bees.—2. Of the Age of Men ; of what pre* 
cedes and follows Birth; of the Members of the Human 
Frame ; of the External and Internal Parts of the Body. 
—3. Of the various relations between the Members of a 
Family or a City ; of Friends, Country, Love ; of the 
Relation between Master and Slave ; of Metals, Trav¬ 
els, Roads ; of Gayety and Sadness ; of Happiness ; 
of Rivers ; of the Avaricious, the Industrious, and the 
Idle; of Buying and Selling, &c.—4. Of the Sciences. 
—5. Of the Chase, Animals, &c.—6. Of Repasts ; of 
various Crimes, &c.—7. Of various Arts and Trades. 
—8. Of Justice, and the public Administration of it. 
—9. Of Cities, Edifices, Games, &c.—10. Of Vases, 
Utensils, &c.—The value of the work, for acquiring 
not only a knowledge of Greek terms, but also of anti¬ 
quities, is conceded by all. The interest, moreover, is 
considerably increased by the citations from authors 
whose works are lost. Julius Pollux composed many 
other works that have not come down to us, such as 
Dissertations (A la’he^uq) and Declamations (MEle- 
rai) ; and among these are mentioned a discourse pro¬ 
nounced on the occasion of the marriage of Coramo- 
dus, an eloge on Rome, and an accusation of Socrates. 
The best edition of the Onomasticon is that of Hem- 
sterhusius, Amst., 1706, fol. There is a later one by 
W. Dindorf, Lips., 1824, 5 vols., in 6 parts, contain¬ 
ing the notes of former editors.—III. An ecclesiasti¬ 
cal writer in the ninth century, not to be confounded 
with the author of the Onomasticon. He compiled a 
chronology, which commences with the creation. The 
author calls it 'Ioropta tyvcnuri (“a physical history"), 
because his work enlarges greatly respecting the crea¬ 
tion of the world. It is rather, however, an ecclesias¬ 
tical than a political history. The best edition is that 
of Hardt, Monach , 1792, 8vo. Hardt supposed that 
this work was just newly discovered ; but the Abbe 
Morelli has proved that this is the same work with that 
entitled Historia Sacra ah orle condito ad Valentinia- 
num et Valenlem Imp. a Biancono, Bonon., 1779, fol. 

Poly.iEnu s, I. a native of Lampsacus, and one of 
the friends of Epicurus. He had attended previously 
to mathematical studies. ( Cic.,de Fin., 1,6.)—II. A 
native of Sardis, a sophist in the time of Julius Caesar, 
and who is thought to have taken his praenomen (Ju¬ 
lius) from the family that protected him. We have 
four epigrams by him remaining. — III. A native of 
Macedonia, a rhetorician or advocate, who flourished 
about the middle of the second century of our era. He 
published a work entitled iTpaTyyyyaTiKd (“ Military 
Stratagems ”), in eight books, of which the sixth and 
seventh are imperfect. This work, addressed to Mar¬ 
cus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, during their campaign 
against the Parthians, is of little value to military men, 
but not without interest in an historical point of view. 
It is well written, though rather affected, and too much 
loaded with ornament. Polyaenus has been justly cen¬ 
sured for admitting into his list of stratagems instan¬ 
ces of treachery and perfidy unworthy of warriors, and 
undeserving of being regarded as ruses de guerre. He 
is inexcusable on another point: he mutilates and dis¬ 
torts facts; he wishes to convert every military opera¬ 
tion into a stratagem, particularly those of Alexander, 
a prince who contended openly with his foes, and de¬ 
tested stratagems of every kind. The most useful edi¬ 
tion of Polyasnus is that of Mursinna, Berol., 1756, 
12mo. A more correct text than the former is given 
by Coray in the Parerga Bibl. Hell., Paris, 1809, 8vo, 
forming the first volume of this collection. A critical 
edition, however, is still a desideratum. ( Scholl, Hist. 
Lit. Gr., vol. 5, p. 268, seqq.) —IV. A native of Ath¬ 
ens, an historical writer. ( Euseb., Chron., 1, p. 25.) 

Polybius, an eminent Greek historian, born at Me¬ 
galopolis, in Arcadia, about B.C. 203. His father Ly- 
cortas was praetor of the Achaean republic and the friend 
of Philopoemen, and under the latter Polybius learn¬ 
ed the art of war, while he received from his own fa- 
1106 


ther the lessons of civil and political wisdom. H« 
played a distinguished part in the history of his country 
as ambassador to the Roman generals, and as a com¬ 
mander of the Achaean cavalry. At the age of about 
15 years he was selected by his father to join an em¬ 
bassy to Egypt, which, however, was not sent. At the 
age of 40 years he was carried as a hostage to Rome, 
and continued there for the space of 17 years. He be¬ 
came the friend, the adviser, and the companion in arms 
of the younger Scipio. In order to collect materials 
for his great historical work, which he now projected, 
he travelled into Gaul, Spain, and even traversed a part 
of the Atlantic. Scipio gave him access to the regis¬ 
ters or records known by the name of libri censuales 
which were preserved in the temple of Jupiter Capito* 
linus, as well as to other historic monuments. On his 
return to Greece, after the decree of the senate which 
granted the Achaean hostages permission to return to 
their homes, he proved of great service to his coun¬ 
trymen, and endeavoured, though fruitlessly, to dis¬ 
suade them from a war with the Romans. The war 
broke out when he was in Africa, whither he had ac¬ 
companied Scipio, and with whom he was present at the 
taking of Carthage. He hastened home, but appears 
to have arrived only after the fall of Corinth. Greece 
having been reduced under the Roman power, he trav¬ 
ersed the Peloponnesus as commissary, and by his 
mild and obliging deportment won the affections of 
all. Some years after he travelled into Egypt; in 
the year of Rome 620, he accompanied Scipio into 
Spam, and finally he returned to Achaia, where he died 
at the advanced age of about 82 years, of a fall from 
his horse.—Polybius gave to the world various histori¬ 
cal writings, which are entirely lost, with the excep¬ 
tion of his General History ('laropia KaOo?uK.y), in 
forty books. It embraced a period of 53 years, from 
the commencement of the second Punic war (A.U.C. 
555) to the reduction of Macedonia into a Roman 
province (A.U.C. 587). Thirty-eight books were de¬ 
voted to the events of this period ; while two others 
precede them, and serve as an introduction to the work. 
In these last the historian runs rapidly over the inter¬ 
val which had elapsed between the taking of Rome by 
the Gauls and the first descent of the Romans on Sicily, 
and after this enumerates what had occurred up to the 
commencement of the second Punic war. His object 
was to prove that the Romans did not owe their great¬ 
ness to a mere blind fatality ; he wished it to be made 
known by what steps, and by favour of what events, they 
had become masters, in so short 3 time, of so extensive 
an empire. (Lucas, Ueber Polybius Darstellung des 
jEtolischen Bundes, Konigsb., 1827, p. 6, seqq.) His 
history is of a general nature, because he does not con¬ 
fine himself merely to those events which related to the 
Romans, but embraces, at the same time, whatever had 
passed during that .period among every nation of the 
world. Of the 40 books which it originally compre¬ 
hended, time has spared only the first five entire. Of 
the rest, as far as the 17th, we have merely fragments, 
though of considerable size. Of the remaining books 
we have nothing left except what is found in two mea¬ 
ger abridgments which the Emperor Constantine Por- 
phyrogenitus, in the tenth century, caused to be made 
of the whole work. The one of these is entitled “ Em¬ 
bassies,” or the history of treaties of peace ; the other 
is styled “ Virtues and Vices.” Among the fragments 
that remain of Polybius are from the 17th to the 40th 
chapters of the sixth book, inclusive, which treat of 
the Roman art of war, and have often been published 
separately under this title. That part of the history 
which is lost embraced a narrative of those events of 
which the historian was himself an eyewitness ; an 
irreparable loss for us, though Livy made frequent 
use of it. The history of Polybius possesses, in one 
respect, a peculiar character, distinguishing it froir 
the works of all the historians who had preceded him 




POLYBIUS. 


POL 


Not ontent with relating events in the order in which 
they had occurred, he goes back to the causes which pro¬ 
duced them ; he unfolds their attendant circumstances, 
and the consequences they have brought with them. 
He judges the actions of men, and paints the charac¬ 
ters of the principal actors. In a word, he forms the 
judgment of the reader, and causes him to indulge in 
reflections which ought to prepare him for the adminis¬ 
tration of public affairs (Tcpayyara). Hence the title of 
his history, ’laropta repay fiat my. Never has a history 
been written by a man of more good sense, of more 
perspicacity, or of a sounder judgment, and one more 
free from all manner of prejudice. Few writers have 
united in a greater degree a knowledge of military and 
political affairs; no one has carried farther a rigid 
impartiality, and a respect for virtue. Cicero gives 
an animated character of this history in his treatise 
De Oralore (2, 15. — Compare the remarks of Ast, 
Grundriss der Pkilologie, p. 202).—The style of Po¬ 
lybius is not free from faults. The period when the 
Attic dialect was spoken in all its purity had long 
passed away, and he wrote in the new dialect which 
had arisen after the death of Alexander. A long resi¬ 
dence also out of his native country, and sometimes 
among barbarian nations, had rendered him, in some lit¬ 
tle degree, a stranger to his mother-tongue. Though 
his diction is always noble, yet he occasionally mingles 
with it foreign terms, and even Latinisms. We find 
in him, too, phrases borrowed from the school of Al¬ 
exandra, and passages taken from the poets ; he loves, 
also, occasional digressions; but, whenever he indulges 
in these, they are always instructive.—“ In Polybius,” 
says Muller, “we find neither the art of Herodotus, 
nor the strength of Thucydides, nor the conciseness 
of Xenophon, who says all in a few words : Polybius 
is a statesman full of his subject, who, caring little for 
the approbation of literary men, writes for statesmen ; 
reason is his distinctive character.” ( Allgemeine Ges- 
chichte , 5, 2.)—Dionysius of Halicarnassus (De Comp. 
Verb., c. 4) remarks, that no man of taste can endure 
to read the work of Polybius to the end. It is strange 
that he did not take into consideration the highly at¬ 
tractive nature of the events, and the spirit with which 
they are narrated.—Besides his general history, Polyb¬ 
ius wrote “Memoirs of the Life of Pnilopoemen” (lib. 
10, Exc. Peiresc., p. 28), a work on “Tactics” (lib. 
9, Exc., c. 20), and a letter “on the situation of La¬ 
conia,” addressed to Zeno of Rhodes (lib. 16, Exc.). 
From a passage of Cicero, moreover (Ep. ad Fam., 5, 
12), it would appear that Polybius had written a de¬ 
tached “ History of the Numantine war.” It is proba¬ 
ble that his visit to Spain, during the second consul¬ 
ship of Scipio, gave him the idea of this last-mentioned 
work, and furnished him with the materials.—Plutarch 
relates th6t Marcus Brutus, the assassin of Cresar, 
made an abridgment of the history of Polybius, and 
that he was occupied with this in his tent on the even¬ 
ing preceding the battle of Philippi. Casaubon is 
hence led to infer that the abridgment or epitome which 
we possess, from the 7th to the 17th books, may be 
the work of Brutus ; but this abridgment is made with 
so little judgment that we cannot properly ascribe it 
to that distinguished Roman.—The best edition of Po¬ 
lybius is that of Schweighaeuser, Lips., 1789-95, 9 
vols. 8vo. Orellius published in 1818, from the Leip- 
eic press, the commentary of JEneas Tacticus, in one 
volume 8vo. as a supplement to this edition. The 
Excerpta Vaticana of Polybius, which Mai first made 
known in his “ Scriptorum Velerum nova Collection' 
(vol. 2, Rom., 1827, 4to, p. 369-464), were after¬ 
ward published anew, under the title of “ Polybii His- 
tGriarum Excerpta Vaticana," by Geel, Lugd. Bat., 
1S29, 8vo ; and “ Polybii et Appiani Historiarum 
Excerpta Vaticana ,” by Lucht, Altonce, 1830, 8vo. 

( Scholl , Gesch. Griech. Lit., vol. 2, p. 135, seqq .— 
Id. ib. % vol. 3, p. 603.) 


Polybus, a king of Corinth, and the adoptive father 
of QEdipus. ( Vid. CEdipus.) He was succeeded by 
Adrastus, who had fled to Corinth for protection 
(Pausan., 2, 6.) 

Polycarpus, a father and martyr of the church, born 
probably at Smyrna during the reign of Nero. He was 
a disciple of the Apostle John, and was by him ap¬ 
pointed bishop of that city ; and he is thought to be 
the angel of the church of Smyrna, to whom the epis¬ 
tle in the second chapter of Revelations is addressed. 
Ignatius also esteemed Polycarp highly, who, when the 
former was condemned to die, comforted and encoura¬ 
ged him in his sufferings. On the event of a contro¬ 
versy between the Eastern and Western churches, re¬ 
specting the proper time for celebrating Easter, Poly¬ 
carp undertook a journey,to Rome to confer with Ani- 
cetus ; but, though nothing satisfactory took place on 
that affair, he violently while at Rome, opposed the 
heresies of Marcion and Valentinus, and converted 
many of their followers. During the persecution of 
the Christians under Marcus Aurelius, Polycarp suf¬ 
fered martyrdom with the most heroic fortitude, A.D. 
169. When he was going to the flames, the procon¬ 
sul offered him his life if he would blaspheme Christ, 
to which the venerable prelate answered, “ Eighty and 
six years have I served him , and he has ever treated 
me with kindness ; how , then, can I blaspheme him ?” 
His “ Epistles to the Philippians,” the only one of his 
pieces which has been preserved, is contained in Arch¬ 
bishop Wake’s “ Genuine Epistles.” The best edi¬ 
tion of the original is that by Aldrich, Oxon., 8vo, 1708. 
Another edition appeared from the same press, by 
Smith, 1709, 4to. 

Polycletus, I. a celebrated sculptor and statuary, 
who flourished about 430 B.C. Pausanias (6, 6) calls 
him an Argive ; but Pliny (34, 8, 19) introduces his 
name with the epithet of “Sicyonian.” In order to 
reconcile these two conflicting authorities, it has been 
conjectured that the artist was descended from Sicy¬ 
onian parents, and was born at Sicyon, but was after¬ 
ward presented by the Argives with the freedom of 
their city. Another supposition is, that, when a young 
man, he went to Argos, in order to avail himself of 
the instructions of the celebrated Ageladas, that he re¬ 
mained there, and having thus made Argos, as it were, 
his second native city, styled himself on his produc¬ 
tions, not a Sicyonian , but an Argive. (Sillig, Diet. 
Art., p. 103.)—Polycletus may be said to have per¬ 
fected that which his predecessor, Phidias, had in¬ 
vented. He did not possess the grandeur of imagin¬ 
ation which characterized this great artist, nor did 
he even attempt, like him, to create the images of the 
most powerful deities. It seems, indeed, that he ex¬ 
celled less in representing the robust and manly gra¬ 
ces of the human frame, than in the sweet, tender, and 
unconscious loveliness of childhood. In his works, 
however, he manifested an equal aspiration after ideal 
beauty with Phidias. He seems to have laboured to 
render his statues perfect in their kind, by the most 
scrupulous care in the finishing. Hence he is said 
to have observed, that “ the work becomes most dif¬ 
ficult when it comes to the nail.” He framed a statue 
of a life-guardsman (A opv^opo^, Doryphorus ), so mar¬ 
vellously exact in its proportions, and so exquisite in its 
symmetry, that it was called “ the Rule" (Kavuv), and 
became the model whence artists derived their canons 
of criticism which determined the correctness of a 
work. ( Plin ., 1. c. — Cic., Brut., 86 — Lucian . de 
Saltat., 75.) He executed also a statue of a youth 
binding a fillet (Amdoiy/ETof, Diadumenus), of so per¬ 
fect a beauty that it was valued at the high price 
of a hundred talents. Another of his celebrated works 
represented two boys playing at dice, which was re¬ 
garded with the highest admiration in after days at 
Rome, where it was in the possession of the Emperor 
Titus. Polycletus is said to have carried alto relieve 

1107 







POL 


POL 


which Phidias invented, to perfection. He discovered 
the art of balancing of figures on one leg; and is said 
to have been so partial to this mode of representing 
the human form, that he almost invariably adopted it 
in hvs statues. He is accused by Varro of too great 
uniformity in his figures, and the constant repetition of 
the same idea. Nothing could exceed the exactness 
of symmetry with which he framed his statues ; but it 
seems that they were destitute of passion, sentiment, 
and expression. It is singular that, notwithstanding 
the refinement, the extreme polish, and exactness of 
finishing with which his works were in general elabo¬ 
rated, he represented the hair in knots, after the fash¬ 
ion of the ancient sculptors. These defects, however, 
seem to have derogated but little from his fame, either 
in his own age or in after times. ( Encycl . Metropol., 
div. 2, vol. 1, p. 400, seq .)—Polycletus used, in many 
of his works, the brass of JEgina. ( Plin ., 34, 2, 5.) 
His highest glory, perhaps, was obtained from a statue 
made of ivory and gold, and dedicated in the Herseum 
by the citizens of Argos and Mycenaa. The estima¬ 
tion in which this work was held is evident from Stra¬ 
bo (551). The production itself is described in Pau- 
sanias (2, 17, 4), whose remarks are admirably illus¬ 
trated by Bottiger ( Andeut ., 122).—Like other statu¬ 
aries of the same age, Polycletus was also distinguish¬ 
es as an architect, and erected a theatre, with a dome, 
at Epidaurus, on a piece of ground consecrated to BGs- 
culapius. This building Pausanias pronounces to be 
superior, in respect of symmetry and elegance, to ev¬ 
ery other theatre, not excepting even those at Rome. 
All ancient writers bestow the highest praises on Pol¬ 
ycletus. Cicero pronounces his works absolutely 
perfect. ( Brut., 18.) Quintilian mentions his dili¬ 
gence and the gracefulness of his productions, but in¬ 
timates that they were deficient in majestic dignity. 
{Quint., 12, 10 ) Dionysius of Halicarnassus says of 
his works, conjointly with those of Phidias, that they 
were esteemed /card to oeyvov nal fieyaXoTexvov Kai 
a^iuyariKov {de Isocr., p. 95, ed. Sylb.). The breasts 
of his statues were particularly admired. ( Auct. ad 
Herenn .,4, 6.) We find also, in other writers, several 
narratives illustrative of his skill, and his accurate 
judgment of the arts. Consult, in particular, Plutarch 
’( Symp ., 2, 3) and JElian ( V. H., 14, 8, 16). He 
wrote also a treatise on the Symmetry of the Members 
of the Human Body , of which Galen makes mention. 
(Ilepi tcjv Had’ 'hxiroup, ual ILlar., 4, 3, vol. 5, p. 
449, ed. Kuhn. — Sillig, Diet. Art., p. 104.)—II. A 
statuary, a native of Argos, who flourished a little be¬ 
fore Olymp. 100. He executed, among other works, 
a figure of Hecate at Argos, the Amyclean Venus, and 
a statue of Alcibiades. ( Pausan., 2, 22.— Dio Chry- 
sost., Orat., 37, vol. 2, p. 122, ed. Reiske. — Sillig, 
Diet. Art., p. 104.) 

Polycrates, I. a tyrant of Samos, who raised him¬ 
self to the chief power, from the condition of a private 
person, by his abilities alone, about 566 B.C. His 
history is narrated at length by Herodotus. He shared, 
at first, the government of his country with his two 
brpthers Pantaleon and Syloson ; but subsequently 
ie caused the former to be put to death, and expelled 
the latter ; after which he reigned with undivided au¬ 
thority. His successes were great and rapid, and he 
acquired a power which made him dreaded equally by 
his subjects and neighbours ; and his alliance was 
courted by some of the most powerful sovereigns of 
that period. He conquered the Lesbians and other 
islanders, and had a fleet of 100 ships, a navy superior 
to that of any one state reoorded at so early a date. 
{Herod., 3, 39.— Thucyd., 1, 13.— Strab., 637.) The 
Samians attempted to revolt from him ; but, though 
-hey were assisted in the undertaking by the Lacede¬ 
monians, they failed of success, and many were driven 
into exile. {Herod. , 3,44, seqq.) The Spartans land¬ 
ed in the island with a large force, and besieged the 
1108 


principal city with vigour, but they were finally forced 
to abandon the enterprise, after the lapse of forty days. 
{Herod., 3, 54, seqq.) The Samian exiles then re¬ 
tired to Crete, where they founded Cydonia.—Polyc¬ 
rates was remarkable for the good fortune which, foi 
a long period, constantly attended him. So extraor 
dinary, in fact, was the prosperity which he enjoyed, 
that Amasis, king of Egypt, his friend and ally, ad¬ 
vised him by letter tb break the course of it, by de¬ 
priving himself of some one of his most valuable pos¬ 
sessions. This advice was in accordance with the 
heathen belief, that a long career of uninterrupted fe¬ 
licity was sure to terminate in the greatest misery. 
Polycrates, having resolved to follow the counsels of 
Amasis, selected an emerald ring which he was ac¬ 
customed to use as a signet, and which he regarded 
as his rarest treasure ; he then embarked on board a 
galley, and, when he had reached the open sea, con¬ 
signed this ring to the waves. Strange to relate, about 
five or six days afterward, while Polycrates was still 
grieving for the loss of the costly jewel, a fisherman 
brought to his palace, as a present for the monarch, a 
very large fish which he had caught, and, on opening 
it, the ring was found in its belly ! Polycrates wrote 
word of this to Amasis, who immediately broke off the 
alliance with him, through fear of sharing the evil for 
tune with which he was certain that the tyrant of Sa 
mos would ultimately be visited. {Herod., 3, 40, 
seqq.) The prediction of Amasis was at last fatally 
verified. Polycrates fell a victim to the cruel and art¬ 
ful designs of the Persian satrap Orcetes, who lured 
him on by the temptation of immense wealth ; and, 
having induced him to come to Magnesia, on the river 
Mseander, and thus got him into his power, nailed him 
to a cross. {Herod., 3, 120, seqq.) Herodotus alle¬ 
ges two reasons for this conduct on the part of Orce¬ 
tes ; one, that he was led to the step by the reproaches 
of an acquaintance, the governor of Dascylium, who 
upbraided him for not having added Samos to the 
Persian dominions, when it lay so near, and had been 
seized by a private citizen (Polycrates), with the help 
of but fifteen armed men; the other, that a messen¬ 
ger from Orates had been disrespectfully treated by 
Polycrates. The daughter of Polycrates had dissua¬ 
ded her father from going to Orcetes, on account of ill- 
omened dreams with which she had been visited, but 
her advice was disregarded. She dreamed, for exam¬ 
ple, that she saw her father aloft in the air, washed 
by Jupiter and anointed by the sun. The circum¬ 
stance of her father’s being suspended on a cross ful¬ 
filled the vision. He was washed by Jupiter, that is, 
by the rain, and anointed by the sun, “ which ex¬ 
tracted,” says Herodotus, “ the moisture from his 
body.” {Herod., 3, 125.)—Polycrates, though taint¬ 
ed by many vices, knew how to estimate and reward 
merit. He cultivated a friendship with Anacreon, and 
retained the physician Democedes at his court. Py¬ 
thagoras was also his contemporary; but, unable to wit¬ 
ness, as it is said, the dependance of his country, he 
quitted Samos, in order to cultivate science in foreign 
countries. {Herod., 3, 121. — Id., 3, 131.— Strab., 
638.)—II. An Athenian rhetorician and sophist, who 
wrote an encomium on Busiris, and another on Cly 
temnestra. His object in selecting these as the sub¬ 
jects of his imaginary declamations appears to have 
been to attract public notice. {Quintil., 2,17.) He 
wrote also an Oration against Socrates ; not the one, 
however, which his accuser bttered against that phi¬ 
losopher, but a mere exercise of his skill. It was 
composed, too, after the death of Socrates. Isocrates 
criticises both the eulogium on Busiris and the speech 
against Socrates, in his treatise entitled also Busiris. 
{Isocr., Busir., 2.— Argument, incert. auct. ad Isocr., 
Busir. — ttlian, Var. Hist., 11, 10.— Perizon. ad jEL, 
l. c. — Athenceus, 8, p. 335, a.) 

Polydamas, I. a Trojan, son of Antenor by The 







POL 

ath), the sister of Hecuba. He married Lycaste, a 
natural daughter of Priam. According to Dares, Po- 
lydamas, in conjunction with Antenor and ^Eneas, be¬ 
trayed Troy lo the Greeks. {Bar., Phryg., 39, scqq.) 
—II. A son of Panthoiis, and born the same night as 
Hector. He was distinguished for wisdom and val¬ 
our. Dictys of Crete makes him to have been slain 
by Ajax. Homer, however, is silent about the man¬ 
ner of his death. {Diet. Orel 2, 7.— Horn., II., 11, 
57.— Id. ib., 14, 458, &c.)—III. A celebrated athlete 
of Scotussa, remarkable for his great size and strength 
of body, in both of which respects he is said to have 
surpassed all the men of his time. He was conquered, 
indeed, according to one account, by Promachus of 
Pallene, at the Olympic games, but this was denied 
by his countrymen the Thessalians. ( Pausan ., 6, 5. 
— Id., 7, 27.) He is said to have killed lions with his 
hands, tearing them in pieces like so many lambs. 
( Diod. Sic., fragm., 18, p. 640, cd. Wess.) Pausa- 
nias, however, merely says that he met a lion on one 
occasion, and, though unarmed, destroyed it in emu¬ 
lation of Hercules (6, 5). At another time he seized 
the largest and fiercest bull in a herd, and held it so 
firmly by one of its hind legs, that the animal, after 
many efforts, only managed to escape at length with 
the loss of its hoof. He could also hold back a char¬ 
iot, when advancing at full speed, so firmly with one 
hand, that the charioteer could not urge it onward in 
the least by the most vigorous application of the lash 
to his steeds. The fame of his exploits obtained for 
him an invitation to the court of Artaxerxes, where he 
slew three of the royal body-guard, called the immor¬ 
tals, who attacked him at once. He lost his life by an 
act of foolhardiness ; for, having one day entered a 
cave along with some friends for the purpose of carous¬ 
ing in this cool retreat, the r&of of the cave became 
rent on a sudden, and was on the point of falling. The 
rest of the party fled ; but Polydamas, endeavouring 
to support with his arms the falling mass, was crushed 
beneath it. A statue was erected to him at Olympia, 
on the pedestal of which was inscribed a narrative of 
his exploits. {Pausan , 6, 5.) Lucian says, that the 
touch of this statue was believed to cure fevers. 
{Beor. ConciL, 12.) 

Polydectes, king of the island of Seriphus when 
Danae and her son Perseus were wafted thither. ( Vid. 
Danae, and Perseus.) 

Polydorus, I. a son of Cadmus and Harmonia. 
He succeeded his father on the throne of Thebes, 
and married Nycte'is, daughter of Nycteus, by whom 
he became the father of Labdacus. {Apollod., 3, 4, 
2.— Id., 3, 5, 4.—Consult Heyne, ad loc .)—II. A son 
of Priam and Hecuba, treacherously put to death by 
Polymnestor, king of Thrace, to whose care his father 
had consigned him, on account of his early years, to¬ 
wards the close of the Trojan war. {Vid. Polymnes¬ 
tor.) According to the legend followed by Euripides, 
in his play of the “ Hecuba,” the body of the young 
Trojan prince was thrown into the sea, and, having 
been washed up by the waves on the beach, was there 
found by Hecuba, then a prisoner to the Greeks. Vir¬ 
gil, however, following a different version of the fable, 
makes him to have been transfixed by many spears, 
and these spears to have grown into trees over his 
corpse. When iEneas visited the Thracian coast, and 
was preparing to offer a sacrifice in this spot, he en¬ 
deavoured to pull up some of these trees, in order to 
procure boughs for shading the altar. From the root 
of the first tree thus plucked from the earth, drops of 
blood issued. The same thing happened when an¬ 
other was pulled up ; until at last the voice of Poly¬ 
dorus was heard from the ground, entreating HSneas 
to forbear. Funeral rites were thereupon prepared for 
him, and a tomb erected to his memory. {JEn., 3, 
19, seqq.) 

p olygnotus, one of the most distinguished painters 


POL 

of antiquity. He was a native of Thasos, but obtained 
the right of citizenship at Athens ; and hence Theo¬ 
phrastus calls him an Athenian {ap. Plin., 7, 56). 
The period when he flourished has been made a mat¬ 
ter of dispute. Pliny observes, that he lived before 
the 90th Olympiad ; some modern philologists, how¬ 
ever, conjecture that the period of his fame was about 
Olyrnp. 80. {Jen. Lit. Journ., 1805, vol. 3, p. 34.) 
—As Polygnotus was born at Thasos, and was there 
instructed by his father Aglaophon, it seems necessa¬ 
ry to inquire at what period he removed to Athens ; 
and no time can be fixed on with greater probability 
than that in which Cimon returned to Athens, after 
bringing Thasos under the dominion of his country* 
men. {Muller, Nunt. Liter. Gotting., 1824, scid. 
115.) It is a very consistent supposition, that Polyg¬ 
notus accompanied Cimon on his return ; and there 
existed a powerful reason for Cimon to solicit the ar¬ 
tist to remove with him to Athens, that he might have 
his assistance, namely, in embellishing with paintings 
those public buildings which he had either begun to 
erect or had in contemplation. Among the most im¬ 
portant of these buildings was the temple of Theseus, 
still existing, reared on the ashes of the ancient hero, 
which were brought by Cimon from Scyros. This last 
circumstance took place B.C. 469 ; and it is highly 
probable that in the following year the temple itself 
was commenced. All these particulars concur to sup¬ 
port the opinion that Polygnotus flourished about 
Olymp. 80.—This distinguished painter seems to have 
contributed more largely to the advancement of his 
art than all who had preceded him. Before his time, 
the countenance was represented as destitute of ani¬ 
mation and fire, and a kind of leaden dulness per¬ 
vaded its features. His triumph it was to kindle up 
expression in the face, and to throw feeling and intel¬ 
lect into the whole frame. He was the Prometheus 
of painting. He also first represented the mouth open, 
so that the teeth were displayed, and occasion was 
given to use that part of the visage in the expression 
of peculiar emotions. He first clothed his figures in 
light, airy, and transparent draperies, which he ele¬ 
gantly threw about the forms of his women He was, 
in short, the author of both delicacy and expression 
in the paintings of Greece : but his style is said to 
have been hard, and his colouring not equal to his de¬ 
sign.—His great works consisted of mose with which 
he adorned the Pcecile {IlotKt'Xr) Etoci) at Athens. 
The decoration of this building ' -as. on the part of 
Polygnotus, gratuitous {Pint., Vd. Cim., 4) ; where¬ 
as Mycon, a contemporary artist, who was employed 
in adorning another part of the same building, received 
a liberal compensation for the exertions of his genius. 
Polygnotus, however, was not without his reward. 
The Amphictyonic council offered him a public ex¬ 
pression of thanks for having also gratuitously embel¬ 
lished the temple at Delphi, and decreed that, when¬ 
ever he should travel, he was to be entertained at the 
public expense. One of his pictures was preserved at 
Rome, representing a man on a scaling-ladder, with a 
target in his hand, so contrived that it was impossible 
to tell whether he was going upward or descending.-- 
Polygnotus and Mycon were the first who used, in 
painting, the kind of ochre termed Athenian “ sil .” 
{Plin., 33, 12, 56.) The former likewise made a 
kind of ink from the husks of grapes, styled “ tiy- 
ginon ” {Plin., 35, 6, 25) ; and he left behind him 
some paintings in enamel. {Plin., 35, 11, 36 ) Ci¬ 
cero mentions him among those who executed paint 
ings with only four colours {Cic Brut., 18) ; and 
Quintilian observes, that his productions were very 
highly esteemed even in later periods. {Quintil., 12, 
10.) Aristotle calls him ypa^evq ydtKoq ( Polit., 8, 5); 
and he elsewhere contrasts the three artists, Polygno¬ 
tus, Panso, and Dionysius, in that the paintings ol the 
first were more favourable than nature, those of tha 

1109 




F O L 


POL * 


1 


second more unfavourable, and those of the last exact 
representations. (Arista Poet., 2, 2.) Pliny states, 
that Polygnotus likewise gave attention to statuary. 
(Plin., 34, 8, 18.— Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v ) 

Polyhymnia and Polymnia, one of the Muses, 
daughter of Jupiter and Mnemosyne, who presided 
over singing and rhetoric, and was deemed the invent* 
ress of harmony. She was represented veiled in white, 
holding a sceptre in her left hand, and with her right 
raised up, as if ready to harangue. Ausonius describes 
her attributes in the following line, “ Signal cuncta 
manu, loquitur Polyhymnia gestu. {Idyll., ult.) The 
etymology of the name is disputed. According to the 
common acceptation of the term, it comes from noXvg, 
“ much," and vfivog, “ a song ” or “ hymn," and indi¬ 
cates one who is much given to singing. Some, how¬ 
ever, deduce it from rroT^vg and yvela, “memory," 
and therefore write the name Polymncia, making her 
the Muse that watches over the remembrance of things 
and the establishment of truth. Hence Virgil remarks, 
“ Nam verum fateamur: amat Polymncia verum." 
(Ciris, 55.—Consult Hcyne, ad loc. in Var. Lect.) 

Polymnestor or Polymestor, a king of the Thra¬ 
cian Chersonese, who married Ilione, one of the daugh¬ 
ters of Priam. When Troy was besieged by the 
Greeks, Priam sent his youngest son Polydorus, with 
a large amount of treasure, to the court of Polymnes¬ 
tor, and consigned him to the care of that monarch. 
His object in doing this was to guard the young prince 
against the contingencies of war, and, at the same time, 
to provide resources for the surviving members of his 
family, in case Troy should fall. As long as the city 
withstood the attacks of its foes, Polymnestor remain¬ 
ed faithful to his charge. But when the tidings reach¬ 
ed him of the death of Priam and the destruction of 
Troy, he murdered Polydorus, and seized upon the 
treasure. A very short time after this, the Grecian 
fleet touched at the Chersonese on its return home, 
bearing with it the Trojan captives, in the number of 
whom was Hecuba, the mother of Polydorus. Here 
one of the female Trojans discovered the corpse of the 
young prince amid the waves on the shore, Polymnes¬ 
tor having thrown it into the sea. The dreadful in¬ 
telligence was immediately communicated to Hecuba, 
who, calling to mind the fearful dreams which had 
visited her during the previous night, immediately con¬ 
cluded that Polymnestor was the murderer. Resolv¬ 
ing to avenge the death of her son, and having obtain¬ 
ed from Agamemnon a promise that he would not in¬ 
terfere, she enticed Polymnestor within, under a prom¬ 
ise of showing him where some treasures were hid, and 
then, with the aid of the other female captives, she de¬ 
prived him of sight, having first murdered before his 
eyes his two sons who had accompanied him. {Eu- 
rip., Hec.) — Hyginus gives a different version of the 
legend. According to this writer, when Polydorus 
was sent to Thrace, his sister Ilione, apprehensive of 
her husband’s cruelty, changed him for her son Diphi- 
lus, who was of the same age, so that Polydorus pass¬ 
ed for her son, and Diphilus for her brother, the mon¬ 
arch being altogether unacquainted with the imposi¬ 
tion. After the destruction of Troy, the conquerors, 
who wished the house and family of Priam to be ex¬ 
tirpated, offered Electra, the daughter of Agamemnon, 
in marriage to Polymnestor, if he would destroy Ilione 
and Polydorus. The y^narch accepted the offer, and 
immediately murdered hi» son Diphilus, whom he 
had been taught to regard as Polydorus. Polydorus, 
who passed as the son of Polymnestor, consulted the 
oracle after the murder of Diphilus; and when he was 
informed that his father was dead, his mother a cap¬ 
tive in the hands of the Greeks, and his country in 
ruins, he communicated the answer of the god to Ili¬ 
one, whom he had always regarded as his parent. Il¬ 
ione told him the measures she had pursued to save 
his life, and upon this he avenged the perfidy of Pol- 
1110 


ymnestor by putting out his eyes. {Hygtn., fab., 
109.) 

Polynices, a son of CEdipus, king of Thebes, by 
Jocasta. He inherited his father’s throne with his 
brother Eteocles, and it was agreed between the two 
brothers that they should reign each a year alternate¬ 
ly. Eteocles first ascended the throne by right of se¬ 
niority ; but, when the year was expired, he refused to 
resign the crown to his brother. Polynices thereupon 
fled to Argos, where he married Argia, the daughter 
of Adrastus, king of the land. Adrastus levied a iarge 
army to enforce the claims of his son in-law to the 
throne, and laid siege to the city of Thebes. The 
command of the army was divided among seven chief¬ 
tains, who were to attack each one of the seven gates 
of the city. All the Argive leaders, with the excep¬ 
tion of Adrastus, were slain, and the war ended by a 
single combat between Eteocles and Polynices, in 
which both brothers fell. (Vid. Eteocles.) 

Polyphemus, a son of Neptune, and one of the Cy¬ 
clopes in Sicily. He is represented as of monstrous 
size, with but one eye, and that in the centre of his 
forehead, and as leading a pastoral life. According to 
the Homeric fable, Ulysses, on his return from Troy, 
was thrown upon that part of the coast of Sicily which 
was inhabited by the Cyclopes; and having, with twelve 
of his companions, entered the cave of Polyphemus 
during his absence, they were found therein by him 
on his return, and were kept immured for the purpose 
of being devoured. Four of the companions of the 
Grecian chief fell a prey to the voracity of the mon¬ 
ster ; and Ulysses would probably have shared the 
same fate, had he not adopted the following expedient. 
Having intoxicated the Cyclops, he availed himself of 
his state of insensibility to deprive him of sight, by 
means of a large stakeHvhich had been discovered in 
the cave, and which, after having sharpened it to a 
point and heated it in the fire, he plunged into his 
eye. Polyphemus roared so loudly with pain that he 
roused the other Cyclopes from their mountain re¬ 
treats. On inquiring the cause of his outcries, they 
were told by Polyphemus that No man 'Our.'f), the 
name which Ulysses had applied to himself, had in¬ 
flicted the calamity, whereupon they retired to their 
dens, recommending him to supplicate his father Nep¬ 
tune for aid, since his malady came not, as he himself 
said, from human hands, and must therefore be a visit¬ 
ation from Jove. The monster then, having removed 
the immense stone which blocked up the mouth of the 
cave, placed himself at its entrance to prevent the es¬ 
cape of his enemies. Ulysses, however, eluded his 
vigilance by fastening the sheep together, “three and 
three,” with osier bands, and by tying one of his com¬ 
panions beneath the middle one of every three. In 
this way the whole party passed out safely, the hero 
himself bringing up the rear, and clinging to the belly 
of a thick-fleeced and favourite ram. {Horn., Od., 9, 
172, seqq.) Virgil has embellished his yEneid by in¬ 
terweaving the story of Ulysses and the Cyclops. He 
feigns that the prince of Ithaca, in the hurry of de¬ 
parture, had left behind him one of his followers, Achse 
menides by name, who, after supporting a miserable 
existence in the woods by the meager fare of roots 
and berries, gladly threw himself into the hands of the 
Trojans when HCneas was coasting along the island 
of Sicily. ( Virg., JEn., 3, 588, seqq.) Homer re¬ 
lates, that it was the wrath of Neptune for the injury 
inflicted on his son by Ulysses that induced the god 
to destroy his vessel on the Phaeacian coast. {Od., 
11, 101, seqq. — Od., 5, 286, seqq.) 

Polysperchon, an JEtolian, a general of Alexan¬ 
der’s, who commanded the Stymphaeans in the battle 
of Arbela, and afterward subdued Bubacene for the 
conqueror. The freedom of his remarks on a subse 
quent occasion, when he saw a Persian prostrating 
himself before Alexander, so offended that prince, tha 






POLYSPERCHON. 


POL 


he threw him into prison, and only pardoned him after 
a considerable time had elapsed. We find Polysper- 
chon, subsequently to this, again intrusted with a com¬ 
mand, and sent to besiege the city of Ora, on Alex¬ 
ander’s inarch to India. He took the place in a short 
time. After Alexander’s death, he passed over into 
Europe, and subdued the Thessalians, who had revolted 
from the Macedonian power. In B.O. 319, Antipa¬ 
ter, then on his deathbed, bestowed the regency of 
the empire on Polysperchon, as the oldest of all the 
surviving captains of Alexander, and committed to his 
care the two kings, who appear to have resided at 
Pella ever since the death of Perdiccas. Cassander, 
the son of Antipater, deeply irritated at this prefer¬ 
ence of a stranger, endeavoured to form a party against 
the new regent, and with this view engaged Ptolemy 
and Antigonus on his side. Polysperchon, on his 
part, neglected nothing that was necessary to strength¬ 
en his interests ; and he found himself compelled to 
have recourse to measures, of which some were inju¬ 
dicious, and others positively hurtful. The only wise 
step which he took during this emergency was an al¬ 
liance with Eumenes, whom, in the name of the kings, 
he appointed sole general of the army serving in Asia, 
and invested, at the same time, with the uncontrolled 
disposal of all the resources of the eastern empire. 
Desirous, too, by all possible means, to increase the 
popularity of his cause in Macedon, and to check the 
influence of Eurydice, who had still a powerful party 
in the army, Polysperchon advised the recall of Olym¬ 
pias, the mother of Alexander. But he had soon rea¬ 
son to repent of this step ; for Olympias, still un¬ 
taught by events, and thirsting for revenge, returned 
to the Macedonian capital only to gratify her worst 
passions, and to disturb the tranquillity of private life. 
But of all the measures intp which Polysperchon was 
driven by the pressure of affairs, none was more ques¬ 
tionable than the following. Eager to retain the 
Greeks in his interest, and to defeat the plans of Cas- 
sander, who, before the death of Antipater was known 
at Athens, had sent Nicanor thither to succeed Me- 
nyllus in the command of the garrison of Munychia, 
and had soon after made himself master of the Piraeus, 
Polysperchon published an edict for re-establishing 
democracy in all the states which owned the protec¬ 
tion of Macedon. The policy of this step was not 
less wicked than its effects were pernicious : the boon 
of democracy created such a degree of contention and 
popular licentiousness in most of the states, that the 
arras of the citizens were for a time employed against 
one another. Almost every individual distinguished 
by rank or merit was stripped of his property, ban¬ 
ished, or put to death. The condition of Athens, con¬ 
trolled by the garrison in the Munychia, prevented the 
people of that city from partaking of the benefit held 
out to them by Polysperchon. But when Alexander, 
the son of the latter, reached Athens with a body of 
forces, the democracy was restored, and Phocion and 
others were put to death. ( Vid. Phocion.) Cassan¬ 
der, however, soon after made himself master of Ath¬ 
ens, and Polysperchon, on receiving intelligence of 
this, immediately hastened to besiege him in that city ; 
but, as the siege took up much time, he left part of 
his troops before the place, and advanced with the 
rest into the Peloponnesus, to force the city of Mega¬ 
lopolis to surrender. The attempt, however, was an 
unsuccessful one ; and it was fortunate for the mili¬ 
tary character of the protector that an apology for his 
sudden retreat into Macedon was afforded by the vio¬ 
lent conduct of Olympias, who had already embroiled 
that part of the kingdom so seriously as to endanger 
the life and power of the elder king. In the contest 
that ensued, Cassander proved ultimately victorious; 
Olympias was taken and put to death, and Polysper¬ 
chon, driven from Macedon, took refuge among his 
countrymen the ^Etolians. After the murder of A1 


exander /Egus and his mother Roxana by Cassander, 
Polysperchon, who still retained some strongholds in 
the Peloponnesus, invited from Pergamus Hercules, 
the son of Alexander by Barc.ine, four yeEjs older than 
his brother recently murdered, but from the illegiti¬ 
macy of his birth deemed incapable of succession. 
On the arrival of the young prince, Polysperchon be¬ 
gan hostile movements : he obtained the hearty co¬ 
operation of the -i^Etolians ; his standard was joined 
by many malcontents from Macedon, and he stood on 
the frontiers of that kingdom with an army twenty 
thousand strong, while the troops which Cassander 
sent to oppose him wavered in their affections. The 
danger was imminent; but Cassander knew the man 
with whom he had to deal. By bribes and promises 
he prevailed upon Polysperchon to murder the youth, 
whom he affected to honour as his sovereign. Poly¬ 
sperchon, however, did not obtain the principal object 
for which he had been tempted to incur this most 
enormous guilt. This was the command of the Pelo¬ 
ponnesus, towards which country, with the recom¬ 
mendation and aid of Cassander, he now directed his 
march. But the inhabitants of that peninsula, assisted 
by the Boeotians, opposed his return southward. He 
was obliged to winter in Locris, and thence returned 
to a castle commanding a small district between Epi¬ 
rus and JEtolia. The recovery of this stronghold, 
which had formerly belonged to him, and of which he 
had been deprived by Cassander, now rewarded his 
detestable wickedness ; and here probably this vete¬ 
ran in villany, whq had once swayed the protectoral 
sceptre, ended many years afterward his ignominious 
life ; a life deformed by everything atrocious in cru¬ 
elty and detestable in crime. ( Diod. Sic., lib. 17, 18, 
19, &c.— Quint. Curt., 4, 13. — Id., 5, 4.— Id., 8, 5. 
— Justin, 10, 10.— Id., 13, 6.— Id., 14, 5, &c.— 
Tzetz. in Lycophr., 801.) 

Polyxena, a daughter of Priam and Hecuba, cele¬ 
brated for her beauty and misfortunes. According to 
the account given by Dictys of Crete, Hecuba, accom¬ 
panied by many Trojan females, and among the rest 
by Cassandra and Polyxena, was performing certain 
sacred rites to Apollo in the vicinity of Troy, when 
Achilles, who was anxious to witness these ceremo¬ 
nies, came suddenly on the party with some compan¬ 
ions of his. Struck by the beauty of Polyxena, the 
warrior, after fruitlessly contending with his passion 
for a few days, sent to ask the maiden in marriage 
from Hector. The Trojan chief agreed to give his 
sister, provided Achilles would betray to him the whole 
Grecian army. Achilles returned for answer that he 
would bring the whole war to a close if Polyxena 
were delivered to him. Hector replied that he must 
either betray the whole host, or else slay the Atridas 
and Ajax. This, of course, irritated Achilles, and the 
negotiation was broken off. After the death of Hec¬ 
tor, Polyxena, according to the same authority, accom¬ 
panied her father to the tent of Achilles, in order to 
obtain the restoration of her brother’s corpse, and the 
Grecian chieftain, on beholding her, felt all his former 
passion renewed. Some time after this, Priam, taking 
advantage of a truce occasioned by a sacrifice to the 
Thymbrean Apollo, in which both' armies joined, sent 
a herald to Achilles with a private message relative to 
Polyxena. The Grecian chief received the messenger 
in the grove of Apollo, and, having then entered the 
temple, was treacherously slain by Paris and De'ipho- 
bus. After the capture of Troy, Polyxena was immo¬ 
lated by Neoptolemus to the manes of his father. 
According to one account, the shade of Achilles ap¬ 
peared on the summit of his tomb, and demanded the 
sacrifice. (Diet. Cret., 3, 2, seqq. — Id., 4, 10.— Id., 
5, 13, &c.— Hygin., fab., 110.— Tzetz. ad Lycophr ., 
269.— Ovid, Met., 13, 439, seqq. — Eurip., Hec., 37 
— Virg., JEn., 3, 321.) 

Polyxo, I. a priestess of Apollo’s temple in Lem 

1111 




nos. She was also nurse to Queen Hypsipyle. It 
was by her advice that the Lemnian women murdered 
their husbands. ( Apoll. Rhod., 1 , 668. — Val. Flacc., 
2, 316.— Hygin., fab., 16.)—II. A female, a native of 
Argos, who married Tlepolemus, son of Hercules. 
When her husband was compelled to flee, in conse¬ 
quence of the accidental homicide of Licymnius, broth¬ 
er of Alcmena, Polyxo accompanied him to Rhodes, 
where the inhabitants chose him for their king. On 
the death of Tlepolemus, who fell in the Trojan war, 
Polyxo became sole mistress of the kingdom, and du¬ 
ring her reign Helen came to Rhodes, having been 
driven from the Peloponnesus, after the death of Men- 
elaus, by Nicostratus and Megapenthes. Polyxo, de¬ 
termined to avenge her husband’s fall, caused some of 
her female attendants to habit themselves like Furies, 
seize Helen while bathing, and hang her on a tree. 
The Rhodians afterward, in memory of the deed, con¬ 
secrated a temple to Helen, giving her the surname of 
Dendritis (Amlpmp) from the manner of her death. 
(Pausan., 3, 19, 10.— Siebelis ad Pausan., l.c. — Bot- 
tiger, Farienmaske, p. 47, scq.) 

Polyzelus, I. a poet of the old comedy, who flour¬ 
ished about the time of the battle of Arginusae. The 
titles of some of his pieces have reached us. (Fabric., 
Bibl. Gr., v. 2, p. 488, ed. Hades. — Hemsterhus. ad 
Polluc., 10, 76.)—II. An historian, a native of Rhodes. 
(Foss, Hist. Gr., 3, p. 406.— Alhenceus, 8, p. 361, c.) 

Pometia. Vid. Suessa Pometia. 

Pomona (from pomum, “ fruit”), a goddess among 
the Romans, presiding over fruit-trees. Her worship 
was of long standing at Rome, where there was a 
Flamen Pomonalis, who sacrificed to her every year 
for the preservation of the fruit. The story of Pomo¬ 
na and Vertumnus is prettily told by Ovid. This 
Hamadryad lived in the time of Procas, king of Alba. 
She was devoted to the culture of gardens, to which 
she confined herself, shunning all society with the 
male deities. Vertumnus, among others, was enam¬ 
oured of her, and under various shapes tried to win 
her hand : sometimes he came as a reaper, sometimes 
as a haymaker, sometimes as a ploughman or a vine¬ 
dresser : he was a soldier and a fisherman, but to 
equally little purpose. At length, under the guise of 
an old woman, he won the confidence of the goddess ; 
and, by enlarging on the evils of a single life and the 
blessings of the wedded state ; by launching out into 
the praises of Vertumnus, and relating a tale of the 
punishment of female cruelty to a lover, he sought to 
move the heart of Pomona : then resuming his real 
form, he obtained the hand of the no longer reluctant 
nymph. (Ovid, Met., 14, 623, scqq. — Keightley's 
Mythology , p. 539.) 

Pompeia Gens, an illustrious plebeian family at 
Rome, divided into two branches, the Rufi and Stra- 
bones. A subdivision of the Rufi bore the surname 
of Bithynicus, from a victory gained by one of their 
number in Bithynia. From the line of the Strabones 
Pompey the Great was descended. (Veil. Paterc., 2, 
21 .— Putean. ad Veil., 1. c.) 

Pompeia, I. daughter of Q. Pompeius, and third 
wife of Julius Caesar. She was suspected of criminal 
intercourse with Clodius, who introduced himself into 
her dwelling, during the festival of the Bona Dea, in 
the disguise of a female musician. Caesar divorced 
Pompeia ; but when the trial of Clodius came on for 
this act of impiety, he gave no testimony against him ; 
neither did he affirm that he was certain of any injury 
done to his bed : he only said, “ he had divorced Pom¬ 
peia, because the wife of Caesar ought not only to be 
clear from such a crime, but also from the very suspi¬ 
cion of it.” ' (Pint., Vit. Gees.—Id., Vit. Cic.)—ll. 
Daughter of Pompey the Great, was married to Faus- 
tus Sylla. After the battle of Thapsus, she fell into 
the hands of Caesar, who generously preserved her life 
and property. (Hirl., Bell. Afr 95.)—III. A daugh- 
1112 


ter of Sextus Pompeius and Scribonia, promised i? 
marriage to Metellus, as a pledge of peace betweer 
her father and the triumvirs. She was wedded, how 
ever, eventually to Scribonius Libo.—IV. Maerina 
great-granddaughter of Theophanes of Miletus, whr 
had been a firm friend to Pompey. Tiberius put hei 
to death because she belonged to a family that had 
been hostile to Csesar. (Tacit, Ann., 6, 18.) 

Pompeia Lex, I. de Parricidio, a law proposed by 
Pompey when consul, and enacted by the people. It 
gave a wider acceptation to the term “parricide,” and 
made it apply to the killing of any near relation. 
(Hcinecc., Ant. Rom., ed. Haubold, p. 790, seq.) —II. 
De vi, by Pompey when sole consul, A.U.C. 701, that 
an inquiry should be made into the murder of Clodius 
on the Appian Way, the burning of the senate-house, 
and the attack made on the house of Lepidus the in¬ 
terrex. (Sigonius, de Judiciis, 2, 33, p. 676.— 
Heinecc., ed Haubold, p. 796.)—III. De arabitu, by 
the same, against bribery and corruption in elections, 
with the infliction of new and severe punishments. 
(Dio Cass., 39, 37.— Id.. 40, 52.)—IV. Judiciana, 
by the same ; retaining the Aurelian law, but ordain¬ 
ing that the Judices should be chosen from among 
those of the highest fortune in the different orders. 
(Cic. in Pis., 39.— Id., Phil.., 1 , 8.) — V. De Co~ 
mitiis, by the same, that no one should be allowed to 
stand candidate for an office in his absence. In this 
law Julius Cassar was expressly excepted. (Sucton., 
Vit. Jul., 28 — Dio Cass., 40, 66.) 

Pompeii or Pompeia (the first being the Latin, the 
second the Greek, form of its name), a city of Campa¬ 
nia in the immediate vicinity of Mount Vesuvius. Of 
this city it may be truly said, that it has become fa* 
more celebrated in modern times than it ever could 
have been in the most flourishing period of its exist¬ 
ence. Tradition ascribed the origin of Pompeii, as 
well as that of Herculaneum, to Hercules (Dion. Hid., 
c. 44), and, like that city, it was in turn occupied by 
the Oscans, Etruscans, Samnites, and Romans. At 
the instigation of the Samnites, Pompeii and Hercu¬ 
laneum took an active part in the Social war, but were 
finally reduced by Sylla. (Veil. Paterc., 2, 16.) In 
the general peace which followed, Pompeii obtained 
the rights of a municipal town, and became also a mil¬ 
itary colony, at the head of which was Publius Sylla, 
nephew of the dictator. This officer being accused 
before the senate of having excited some tumult at 
Pompeii, was ably defended by Cicero. (Orat. pro 
Syll., 21.) Other colonies appear to have been subse¬ 
quently sent hither under Augustus and Nero. In the 
reign of the latter, a bloody affray occurred at Pompeii, 
during the exhibition of a fight of gladiators, between 
the inhabitants of that place and those of Nuceria, in 
which many lives were lost. The Pompeiani were, in 
consequence, deprived of these shows for ten years, 
and several individuals were banished. (Tac., Ann., 
14, 17.) Shortly after, we hear of the destruction of 
a considerable portion of the city by an earthquake. 
(Tac., Ann., 15, 22. — Senec., Quest. Nat., 6, 1.) 
Of the more complete catastrophe which buried Pom¬ 
peii under the ashes of Vesuvius, we have no positive 
account; but it is reasonably conjectured that it was 
caused by the famous eruption in the reign of Ti¬ 
tus. ( Vid. Herculaneum.) The ruins of Pompeii 
were accidentally discovered in 1748, consequently 
long after the time of Cluverius. It is curious to 
follow that indefatigable geographer in his search of its 
position, which he finally fixes at Scafati, on the banks 
of the Sarno. He would have been more correct if 
he had removed it about two miles from that river, and 
placed it nearer the base of Mount Vesuvius. ( Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 179.) The opinion gen¬ 
erally maintained, that the people of this city were sur¬ 
prised and overwhelmed by the volcanic storm while 
in the theatre, is not a very probable one. The num 












POM 


POMPEIIJS. 


ber of skeletons discovered in Pompeii does not ex¬ 
ceed sixty ; and ten times this number would be in¬ 
considerable, when compared with the extent and pop¬ 
ulation of the city. Besides, the first agitation and 
threatening aspect of the mountain must have filled 
every breast with terror, and banished all gayety and 
amusement. No doubt the previous intimations were 
of such a nature as to have fully apprized the inhabi¬ 
tants of their danger, and induced the great mass of 
them to save themselves by flight. The discovery of 
Pompeii (yid. Herculaneum), after having lain so long 
buried and unknown, has furnished us with many cu¬ 
rious and valuable remains of antiquity. The excava¬ 
tions are still continued. Although two thirds are still 
covered, it is estimated that the town was three quar¬ 
ters of a mile in length by nearly half a mile in 
breadth. The walls are from eighteen to twenty feet 
high, and twelve thick, and contained several main 
gates, of which six have been uncovered. Twenty 
streets, fifteen feet wide, paved with lava, and having 
footways of three feet broad, have also been excava¬ 
ted. The houses are joined together, and are gener¬ 
ally only two stories, with terraces for roofs. The 
fronts are often shops, with inscriptions, frescoes, and 
ornaments of every kind. The principal rooms are in 
the rear : in the centre is a court, which often con¬ 
tains a marble fountain. In some of the houses the 
rooms have been found very richly ornamented. A 
forum, surrounded by handsome buildings, two thea¬ 
tres, temples, baths, fountains, statues, urns, utensils 
of all sorts, &c., have been discovered. Most of the 
objects of curiosity have been deposited in the muse¬ 
ums of Naples and Portici : among them are a great 
number of manuscripts. It is certainly surprising, 
that this most interesting city should have remained 
undiscovered till so late a period, and that antiquaries 
and learned men should have so long and materially 
erred about its situation. In many places, masses 
of ruins, portions of the buried theatres, temples, and 
houses, were not two feet below the surface of the 
soil. The country people were continually digging up 
pieces of worked marble and other antique objects. 
In several spots they had even laid open the outer 
walls of the town ; and yet men did not find out what 
it was that the peculiarly isolated mound of cinders and 
ashes, earth and pumice-stone covered. There is an¬ 
other circumstance which increases the wonder of 
Pompeii being so long concealed. A subterraneous 
canal, cut from the river Sarno, traverses the city, and 
is seen darkly and silently gliding under the temple 
of Isis. This is said to have been cut towards the 
middle of the fifteenth century, to supply the contiguous 
town of Torre deW Annunziata with fresh water; it 
probably ran anciently in the same channel ; but, in cut¬ 
ting it or clearing it, workmen must have crossed un¬ 
der Pompeii from one side to the other.—For a more 
detailed account of the excavations made at this place, 
consult Sir W. Gell’s “ Pompeiana ,” Lond., 1832, 
8vo ; Within’s Views of Pompeii; Cooke’s Delinea¬ 
tions {London, 1827, 2 vols. fob, 90 plates); Bibent’s 
Plan of Pompeii {Paris, 1826), showing the progress 
of the excavations from 1763 to 1825 ; Romanelli, 
Viaggio a Pompei ed Ercolano, &c. 

Pompeius, I. Q. Nepos Rufus, was consul B.C. 
141, and the first of the Pompeian family who was ele¬ 
vated to that high office. He is said to have attained 
to it by practising a deception on his friend Laslius, 
who was a candidate for the same station, by promi¬ 
sing to obtain votes for him, but obtaining them, in 
fact, for himself. Pompeius was sent into Spain, 
where he laid fruitless siege to Numantia: he gained, 
however, some slight advantages over the Edetani. 
Having been continued in command the ensuing year, 
he again besieged Numantia, and by dint of intrigues 
induced the inhabitants to solicit a treaty of peace, 
which he granted them on very advantageous terms. 
7 B 


Not long after this, however, when a successor had 
come, Pompeius denied the whole affair, and insisted 
that the Numantines had surrendered at discretion. 
The matter was laid before the Roman senate, and, 
notwithstanding the numerous proofs adduced by the 
Numantine deputies, it was decided that no such trea¬ 
ty had been made. Pompeius was afterward accused 
of extortion, but his great wealth afforded him the 
means of acquittal. He was chosen censor B.C. 130. 
{Veil. Paterc., 2, 1 . — Id., 2, 21.— Id., 2,90.— Floras, 
2, 18.)—II. Q. Rufus, son of the preceding, was con¬ 
sul with Sylla, B.C. 88, and, together with his col¬ 
league, opposed the law by which the tribune Sulpi- 
cius sought to extend the rights of citizenship to all the 
Italian allies. War having been declared against 
Mithradates, and Asia and Italy being named the prov¬ 
inces of the consuls, the latter fell to the lot of Pom¬ 
peius. ( Appian, Bell. Mith., 55.) Before Sylla de¬ 
parted for his command, he endeavoured, together with 
his colleague, to baffle the projects of Sulpicius by 
proclaiming frequent holydays, and ordering, conse¬ 
quently, a suspension of the public business. But 
Sulpicius, on one of these occasions, attacked the con¬ 
suls with an armed force, calling upon them to repeal 
their proclamation for the festival; and, on their refu¬ 
sal, a riot ensued, in which Pompeius escaped with 
difficulty to a place of concealment; but his son was 
killed. At a subsequent period, when Sylla had made 
himself master of Rome and re-established his party, 
Pompeius was sent to take command of the army, that 
was still kept on foot, to oppose the remnants, of the 
Italian confederacy. But he was murdered by the 
troops as soon as he arrived among them, the soldiers 
having been instigated to the deed by Cn. Pompeius, 
the general whom Quintus was to supersede. {Ap¬ 
pian, Bell. Civ., 1 , 55, seqq .— Veil. Paterc., 2, 17.— 
Liv., Epit., 77.)—III. Cn. Strabo, father of Pompey 
the Great, was one of the principal Roman command¬ 
ers in the Social war. He brought the siege of Ascu- 
lum to a triumphant issue {Liv., Epit., 75, 76), an 
event which was peculiarly gratifying to the Romans, 
as that town had set the first example of revolt, and 
had accompanied it with the massacre of two Roman 
officers and a number of Roman citizens. He also 
gained a victory over the Marsi, and compelled that 
people, together with the Vestini, Marrucini, and Pe- 
ligni, to make a separate peace. This is the same 
Cn. Pompeius who is mentioned at the close of the 
previous article (No. II ), as having instigated his sol¬ 
diery to murder Q. Pompeius, the new commander 
sent to supersede him. He retained, after that, the 
command of the army in Umbria, and was applied to 
by the senate for aid against Cinna; but, being more 
anxious to make the troubles of his country an occa¬ 
sion of his own advancement, he remained for some 
time in suspense, as if waiting to see which party 
would purchase his services at the highest price, and 
thus allowed Cinna and his faction to consolidate 
their force beyond the possibility of successful resist¬ 
ance. At last, however, he resolved to march to 
Rome, and espouse the cause of the senate. A battle 
was fought between his army and that of Cinna im¬ 
mediately under the walls of the capital. But, though 
the slaughter was great, the event seems to have been 
indecisive ; and, soon after, Cn. Pompeius was killed 
by lightning in his own tent. {Veil. Paterc., 2, 44. 

_ Appian, Bell. Civ., 1, 68.)—According to Plutarch, 

the Romans never entertained a stronger and more 
rancorous hatred for any general than for Pompeius 
Strabo. They dragged his corpse from the bier on 
the way to the funeral pile, and treated it with the 
greatest indignity. {Plut., Vit. Pomp, init.)— IV. 
Cneius, surnamed Magnus, or “the Great,” was the 
son of Cn. Pompeius Strabo (No. III.), and hoids a 
conspicuous rank in Roman history, by reason of his 
numerous exploits, and, more particularly, his collision 

1113 




POMPEIUS. 


POMPEIUS. 



with Jdius Caesar. He was bom B.C. 106, the same 
year with Cicero. As soon as he had assumed the 
manly gown, he entered the Roman army, and made 
his first campaigns with great distinction under the 
orders of his parent. The beauty of his person, the 
grace and elegance of his manners, and his winning 
eloquence, gained him, at an early age, the hearts of 
both citizens and soldiers; and he even, on one occa¬ 
sion, possessed sufficient influence to save the life of 
his father, when Cinna had gained over some of the 
soldiery of Strabo, and a mutiny ensued. After the 
death of his parent, a charge was preferred against the 
latter that he had converted the public money to his 
own use ; and Pompey, as his heir, was obliged to an¬ 
swer it. But he pleaded his own cause with so much 
ability and acuteness, and gained so much applause, 
that Antistius, the praetor, who had the hearing of the 
cause, conceived a high regard for him, and offered 
him his daughter in marriage. After the establish¬ 
ment of Cinna’s power at Rome, Pompey retired to 
Picenum, where he possessed some property, and 
where his father’s memory, hated as it was by the 
Romans, was regarded with respect and affection. 
To account for this, we must suppose that, during the 
long period of his military command in that neighbour¬ 
hood, he had prevented'his soldiers from being bur¬ 
densome to the people, and had found means ol obli¬ 
ging or gratifying some of the principal inhabitants. 
Beffiis as it may, the son possessed so much influence 
in Picenum as to succeed in raising an army of three 
legions, or about sixteen or seventeen thousand men. 
With this force he set out to join Sylla, and, after 
successfully repelling several attacks from the adverse 
party, he effected a junction with that commander, 
who received him in the most flattering manner, and 
saluted him, though a mere youth, only 23 years of 
age, with the title of Imperator. So struck, indeed, 
was Sylla with the merits of the young Roman, that 
he persuaded Pompey to divorce the daughter of An¬ 
tistius, and marry ffEmilia, the daughter-in-law of Syl- 
fa. Three years after this (B.C. 80), Pompey retook 
Sicily from the partisans of Marius, and drove them 
also from Africa, in forty days. The Roman people 
were astonished at these rapid successes, but they 
served at the same time to excite the jeafousy of 
Sylla, who commanded him to dismiss his forces and 
return to Rome. On his coming back to the capital, 
Pompey was received with every mark of favour by 
Sylla. According to Plutarch, the latter hastened to 
meet him, and, embracing him in the most affectionate 
manner, saluted him aloud with the surname of “Mag¬ 
nus," or “ the Great,” a title which Pompey thence¬ 
forward was always accustomed to bear. The jeal¬ 
ousy of the dictator, however, was revived when 
Pompey demanded a triumph. Sylla declared to him 
that he should oppose this claim with all his power; 
but Pompey did not hesitate to reply, that the people 
were more ready to worship the rising than the setting 
sun, and Sylla yielded. Pompey therefore obtained 
the honour of a triumph, though he was the first Ro¬ 
man who had been admitted to it without possessing 
a higher dignity than that of knighthood, and was not 
yet of the legal age to be received into the senate. 
Svlla soon after abdicated the dictatorship, and, at the 
consular election, had the mortification to feel his 
rival’s ascendancy. After the death of Sylla, Pompey 
came to be generally considered as chief of the aristo¬ 
cratic party, and as heir of the influence exercised by 
Sylla over the minds of the soldiery. New troubles 
soon broke out, occasioned principally by the ambitious 
projects of the consul Lepidus, who aimed at supreme 
power ; but he was soon overpowered by the united 
forces of Catulus and Pompey. A period of quiet 
now ensued, and Catulus endeavoured to oblige Pom¬ 
pey to dismiss his troops. This the latter evaded un¬ 
der various pretexts, until the progress of Sertorius 
1114 


induced the senate to send Pompey, now thirty years 
of age, to the support of Metellus, who was unequal to 
cope with so able an adversary. He was invested with 
proconsular power. The two commanders, who acted 
independently of each other, though with a mutually 
good understanding, were both defeated through the 
superior activity and skill of Sertorius. Pompey lost 
two battles, and was personally in danger ; and as long 
as Sertorius was alive, the w'ar was continued with 
little success. But Sertorius having been murdered 
by his own officers, and succeeded in the command 
by Perpenna, Pompey and Metellus soon brought the 
struggle to an end. On his return to Italy the servile 
war was raging. Crassus had already gained a deci¬ 
sive victory over Spartacus, the leader of the rebels, 
and nothing was left for Pompey but to complete the 
destruction of the remnant of the servile forces; yet 
he assumed the merit of this triumph, and displayed 
so little moderation in his success, that he was sus¬ 
pected of wishing to tread in the footsteps of Sylla. 
He triumphed a second time, and was chosen consul 
B.C. 70, although he had yet held none of those civil 
offices, through which it was customary to pass to the 
consulship. His colleague was Crassus. Two years 
after the expiration of this office, the pirates, encour¬ 
aged by the Mithradatic war, had become so powerful 
in the Mediterranean, that they carried on a regular 
warfare along a great extent of coast, and were mas¬ 
ters of 1000 galleys and 400 towns. The tribune Ga- 
binius, a man devoted to the interests of Pompey, pro¬ 
posed that an individual (whose name he did not men¬ 
tion) should be invested with extraordinary powers, by 
sea and land, for three years, to put an end to the out¬ 
rages of the pirates. Several friends of the constitu¬ 
tion spoke with warmth against this proposition; but 
it was carried by a large majority, and the power 
was conferred on Pompey, with the title of procon¬ 
sul. In four months he cleared the sea of the ships 
of the pirates, got possession of their fortresses and 
towns, set free a great number of prisoners, and took 
captive 20,000 pirates, to whom, no less prudently than 
humanely, he assigned the coast-towns of Cilicia and 
other provinces, which had been abandoned by their 
inhabitants, and thus deprived them of an opportunity 
of returning to their former course. Meanwhile the 
war against Mithradates had been carried on with va¬ 
rious fortune ; and although Lucullus had pushed the 
enemy hard, yet the latter still found new means to 
continue the contest. The tribune Manilius then 
proposed that Pompey should be placed over Lucullus 
in the conduct of the war against Mithradates and Ti- 
granes, and likewise over all the other Roman gener¬ 
als in the Asiatic provinces, and that all the armies in 
that quarter should be under his control, at the same 
time that he retained the supreme command by sea. 
This was a greater accumulation of power than had 
ever been intrusted to any Roman citizen, and several 
distinguished men were resolved to oppose a proposi¬ 
tion so dangerous to freedom with their whole influ¬ 
ence : but Pompey was so high in the popular favour, 
that, on the day appointed for considering the proposi¬ 
tion, only Hortensius and Catulus had the courage to 
speak against it; while Cicero, who hoped to obtain 
the consulship through the support of the Pompeian 
party, advocated it with all his eloquence, and Caesar, 
to whom such deviations from the constitution were 
acceptable, used all his influence in favour of it. Ci¬ 
cero’s oration Pro Lege Manilla contains a sketch of 
Pompey’s public life, with the most splendid eulogy 
that perhaps was ever made on any individual. The 
law was adopted by all the tribes, and Pompey, with 
assumed reluctance, yielded to the wishes of his fel¬ 
low-citizens. He arrived in Asia B.C. 67, and re 
ceived the command from Lucullus, who was the lt^s 
able to conceal his chagrin, as Pompey industriously 
abolished all his regulations. The operations of Pom- 





POMPEIUS 


POMPEIUS. 


ey, m bringing the Mithradatic war to a close, have 
eeri related elsewhere. ( Vid. Mithradates VI.) Af¬ 
ter Pompey had settled the affairs of Asia, he visited 
Greece, where he displayed his respect for philosophy 
by making a valuable gift to the city of Athens. On 
his return to Italy, he dismissed his army as soon as 
he landed at Brundisium, and entered Rome as a pri¬ 
vate man. The whole city met him with acclama¬ 
tions ; his claim of a triumph was admitted without op¬ 
position, and never had Rome yet witnessed such a 
display as on the two days of his triumphal procession. 
Pompey’s plan was now, under the appearance of a 
private individual, to maintain the first place in the 
state ; but he found obstacles on every side. Lucul- 
us and Crassus were superior to him in wealth ; the 
zealous republicans looked upon him with suspicion ; 
and Caesar was laying the foundation of his future 
greatness. The last-mentioned individual, on his re¬ 
turn from Spain, aspired to the consulship. To ef¬ 
fect this purpose, he reconciled Pompey and Crassus 
with each other, and united them in forming the co¬ 
alition which is known in history under the name of 
the First Triumvirate. He was chosen consul B.C. 
59, and, by the marriage of his daughter Julia with 
Pompey (.-Emilia having died in childbed), seemed 
to have secured his union with the latter. From this 
time Pompey countenanced measures which, as a good 
citizen, he should have opposed as subversive of free¬ 
dom. He allowed his own eulogist, Cicero, to be 
driven into banishment by the tribune Clodius, whom 
he had attached to his interest; but, having after¬ 
ward himself quarrelled with Clodius, he had Cicero 
recalled. He supported the illegal nomination of Cae¬ 
sar to a five years’ command in Gaul; the fatal con¬ 
sequences of which compliance appeared but too 
plainly afterward.—The fall of Crassus in Parthia left 
but two masters to the Roman world ; and, on the 
death of Julia in childbed, these friends became rivals. 
{Encyclop. Americ., vol. 10, p. 239, scqq.) Pompey’s 
studied deference to the senate secured his influence 
with that body ; and he gained the good-will of the 
people by his judicious discharge of the duties of com¬ 
missary of supplies during a time of scarcity. In the 
mean time, he secretly fomented the disorders of the 
state, and the abuses practised in the filling up the 
magistracies, many of which remained vacant for eight 
months, and others were supplied by insufficient and 
ignorant persons, through the disgust of those who 
were capable of sustaining them with ability and hon¬ 
our. The friends of Pompey whispered about the ne¬ 
cessity of a dictator, and pointed to him as the man 
whose great services, and whose devotion to the sen¬ 
ate and the people, entitled him to expect the general 
suffrage ; while he himself appeared to decline the sta¬ 
tion, and even made a show of being indignant at the 
proposal. Plis position at Rome, while Cresar was 
absent in his province, was singularly advantageous to 
his pretensions: he had, in fact, always kept himself 
in the public eye ; and in the triumvirate division of 
power, which he had himself planned (B.C. 50), in or¬ 
der to strengthen his own influence by the rising tal¬ 
ents and activity of Caesar, and the high birth and 
riches of *Crassus, he had taken care to reserve to him¬ 
self Rome, where he continued to reside, governing 
the Spains by his lieutenants, while he despatched 
Crassus to Asia and Caesar to the Gauls. He had 
also acquired a popularity by rescinding, under one of 
his consulships, the law which Sylla, for his own pur¬ 
poses, had enacted, to restrain the power of the tri¬ 
bunes of the commons. At this time he gratified both 
senate and people by procuring, through the agency of 
the tribune Milo (B.C. 57), the recall of Cicero from 
the banishment into which he had been driven by 
the tribune Clodius, on a charge of having executed 
Cethegus and Lentulus (implicated in the Catilinarian 
conspiracy) without the forms of law. Cicero had 


provoked the enmity of Clodius by prosecuting him 
for intruding, in the disguise of a musician, into a fe 
male religious assembly, where he sought an assigna 
tion with Pompeia, the wife of Cresar. Caesar, though 
he divorced the lady, with the observation that ‘‘ Cae 
sar’s wife should not even be suspected,” overlooked 
the affront of Clodius to himself, withheld his own ev¬ 
idence against him at the trial, and even furthered his 
election to the tribuneship. He was actuated in this 
by resentment towards Cicero, who had termed the 
triumvirate a conspiracy against the public liberty; and, 
under a similar feeling, Pompey had at first connived 
at Cicero’s banishment (B.C. 58); but, as Clodius, 
who had seized Cicero’s villas and confiscated his prop 
erty, began to carry himself arrogantly towards Pom¬ 
pey, and conceive himself his equal, Pompey, as has 
been said, within two years procured the decree to be 
reversed. The sequel of this intrigue was such as to 
accelerate his advance to the dictatorship. Clodius, 
as he was returning to Rome on horseback from the 
country, was set upon and murdered by Milo and some 
attendants, who were quitting the city. As Milo was 
on his way to his native town, in disgust at the perfidy 
of Pompey, who had disappointed him of the consul¬ 
ship promised as the price of his services, it should 
not seem that this affray was the result of Pompey’s 
instigation. The populace, struck with consternation, 
passed the night in the streets, and, with the dawn of 
day, brought in the body of Clodius. At the sugges¬ 
tion of some tribunes, his friends, it was carried into 
the senate-house, either to intimate suspicion of the 
senate, or in honour of the senatorian rank of the de¬ 
ceased. Here the benches were torn up, a pile con¬ 
structed, and the body consumed; but the conflagra¬ 
tion caught the senate-house and several adjoining 
buildings. Milo, less apprehensive of punishment than 
irritated at the respect paid to Clodius, returned to the 
city with his colleague Caecilius, and, distributing 
money to a part of the multitude, addressed them from 
the tribunal as if they were a regular assembly ; ex¬ 
cusing the affair as an accidental rencounter, and en¬ 
deavouring to obtain a verdict of acquittal: he ended 
with inveighing against Clodius. While he was ha¬ 
ranguing, the rest of the tribunes, and that part of the 
populace which had not been bribed, rushed into the 
forum armed : Milo and Csecilius put on slaves’ habits 
and escaped ; but a bloody, indiscriminate assault was 
made on the other citizens, of which the friends of Milo 
were not alone the objects, but all who passed by or 
fell in the way of the rioters, especially those who were 
splendidly dressed and wore gold rings. The tumult 
continued several days, during which there was a sus¬ 
pension of all government; stones were thrown and 
weapons drawn in the streets, and houses set on fire. 
The slaves armed themselves, and, breaking into dwell¬ 
ings under pretence of searching for Milo, carried off 
everything of value that was portable. The senate 
assembled in a state of great terror, and, turning their 
eyes upon Pompey, proposed to him the acceptance of 
the dictatorship. But, by the persuasion of Cato, they 
invested him with the same power under the title of 
Sole Consul. This was probably with the secret un¬ 
derstanding of Pompey himself, as the title of dictator 
had become odious since the tyranny of Sylla. That 
Pompey and Cato were in agreement, appears from 
this : that the vote of the latter was recompensed by 
the appointment of qusestor to Cyprus ; the senate 
having decreed the reduction of that island to a Roman 
province, and the confiscation of the treasures of King 
Ptolemy, on account of the exorbitant ransom demand¬ 
ed for Clodius when taken by pirates. Pompey pro¬ 
ceeded to restore order and to pass popular acts. He 
condemned Milo for murder. He framed a law against 
bribery and corruption, and instigated an inquiry intc 
the acts of administration of all who had held magis 
trades from the time of his own first consulship 

1115 




POMPEIUS. 


POMPEIUS. 


Phis, although plausibly directed at what Pompey 
justly called the root of the state disorders, seemed to 
be aimed covertly at Caesar ; though Pompey appeared 
offended at the suggestion, and affected to consider 
Caesar as above suspicion. He presided in the court 
during the trials with a guard, that the judges might 
not be intimidated. Several, convicted of intrigue and 
malversation, were banished, and others fined. With 
a great appearance of moderation, he declined to hold 
the single consulship to the extent of the full period, 
and for the rest of the year adopted his father-in-law, 
Lucius Scipio, as his colleague ; but, even after the 
return to the regular consulships, as well as for the 
months during which Scipio was associated with him¬ 
self in office, he continued, in reality, to direct the af¬ 
fairs of state. The senate gave him two additional 
legions, and prolonged his command in his provinces. 
Hitherto Pompey had proceeded with infinite address; 
but the craftiness of his policy was no match for the 
frankness and directness of that of Caesar, who acted 
in this conjuncture, so critical to the Roman liberty, 
with a real moderation and candour that absolutely 
disconcerted his rival. Caesar, indeed, who was made 
acquainted, by the exiles that flocked to his camp, with 
everything passing at Rome, and who found himself 
obliged to stand on the defensive, availed himself of 
the means which his acquired wealth placed in his 
hands, and which the practice of the age too much 
countenanced, to divide the hostile party by buying 
off the enmity of some of them newly elected to office. 
Aware of the cabals which were forming against him, 
Cassar knew that, in returning to a private station, he 
should be placed at the feet of Pompey and his party . 
he therefore resisted the decree of his recall till he 
could assure himself of such conditions as would pre¬ 
vent his obedience from being attended with danger. 
His demands were reasonable; his propositions fair 
and open, and his desire of effecting a compromise 
apparently sincere. The unintermitted continuation 
of a consul’s- office through several years, and even 
his creation in his absence, were not unconstitutional: 
both had been granted to Marius ; and Caesar him¬ 
self had been re-elected, while absent, by the ten 
tribunes ; Pompey, when he brought in the law against 
allowing absent candidates to stand, having made a 
special exception in favour of Caesar, and recorded 
it. His requests that he might stand for the con¬ 
sulship in his absence ; that he might retain his army 
till chosen consul; that he might have his command 
prolonged in the province of Hither Gaul, should 
that of Farther Gaul not be also conceded to him, 
were refused. In the irritation of the moment, he 
13 said to have grasped the hilt of his sword, and ejac¬ 
ulated, “This shall give it me.” Curio, in the mean 
time, loudly protested against Caesar’s being recalled, 
unless Pompey would also disband his legions and re¬ 
sign his provinces ; and the people were so satisfied 
with the equity of the proposal, that they accompanied 
the tribune to his own door, and strewed flowers in his 
way. Pompey professed that he had received his com¬ 
mand against his will, and that he would cheerfully lay 
it down, though the time was not yet expired ; thus 
contrasting his own moderation with the unwillingness 
of Caesar to relinquish office, even at the termination 
of the full period. Curio, however, contended openly 
that the promise was not to be taken for the perform¬ 
ance ; but exclaimed against Pompey’s avarice of 
power; and urged with such adroitness the necessity 
either of both retaining their commands, that the one 
might be a check on any unconstitutional designs of 
the other, or of both alike resigning, that he brought 
the senate over to his opinion, the consul Marcellus 
bitterly observing to the majority, “ Take your victory, 
and have Caesar for your master.” But on a rumour 
that Csesar had crossed the Alps and was on his march 
to Rome, the consul ran to Pompey, and, presenting him 
1116 


with a sword, said, “ We order you to march against 
Caesar and fight for your country.” Curio fled to 
Caesar, who had lately returned from Britain, and was 
approaching Ravenna ; and urged him to draw togeth¬ 
er his forces and advance upon Rome. But Caesar 
was still apparently anxious for peace ; and sent, by 
Curio, letters to the senate, in which he distinctly of¬ 
fered to resign his command, provided Pompey would 
do the same ; otherwise he would not only retain it, but 
would come in person, and revenge the injuries offered 
to himself and to the country. This was received with 
loud cries, as a declaration of war ; and Lucius Domi- 
tins was appointed as Caesar’s successor, and ordered to 
march with four thousand new-raised troops. Neither 
the senate nor Pompey seem to have been in the least 
prepared. Pompey, with his usual art, had redemanded 
from Caesar the legion which he had lent him, on pre¬ 
tence of an expedition to Syria against the Parthians. 
Caesar had not only sent back the legion, but added 
another of his own. They halted at Capua, and spread 
the report, either from ignorance, or, as they were 
handsomely paid by Caesar, probably from instructions 
given them, that Caesar’s army was disaffected to him, 
and, if occasion served, would gladly come over to 
Pompey. His credulity and security were such, that 
he neglected to make the necessary levies till the op¬ 
portunity was lost. While he was at last exerting 
himself, under the authority of the senate, in collecting 
13,000 veteran-s from Thessaly, ana mercenaries from 
fereign nations, and in making forced contributions of 
money and munitions of war in the cities of Italy, 
Caesar, leaving his commanders to concentrate and 
hasten the march of the rest of his army, took the field 
with some cavalry and a division of 5000 men. He 
sent forward a picked detachment to surprise Arimi- 
num, the first Italian city after passing the frontier 
of Gaul, and, throwing himself into his chariot while 
his friends were sitting at the supper-table, crossed 
the Rubicon, with the exclamation, “ The die is cast.’’ 
When the news reached Rome, the senate repented 
their rejection of Caesar’s equitable proposals; and 
Cicero moved that an embassy should be sent to him 
to treat for peace, but was overruled by the consuls. 
Pompey had boasted that, if need were, he could raise 
an army by stamping with his foot; and Favonius re¬ 
minded him, in a tone of raillery, that “it was high 
time for him to stamp.” Domitius, who had been sent 
to supersede Caesar, was by him besieged in Corfinium, 
taken prisoner, and honourably dismissed, his troops 
going over to Caesar. Pompey, with the consuls, and 
the greater part of the senate and the nobility, aban¬ 
doned Rome and passed over into Greece. On enter¬ 
ing Rome, Caesar was, by the remnant of the senate, 
created dictator; but he held the office only eleven 
days, exchanging it for that of consul, and taking Ser- 
vilius as his colleague. Having seized the treasury, 
and secured Sicily and Sardinia, the granaries of Rome, 
by appointing his governors, he set out for Spain, 
where, in the hither province, he reduced, by cutting 
off their supplies, the Pompeian army under Petreina 
and Afranius, consisting of five legions, whom he dis¬ 
missed in safety, and allowed to join Pompey ; and in 
the farther province he compelled the surrender of Var- 
ro with his legion. It is singular that his lieutenants 
were everywhere unsuccessful: Dolabella and Cains 
Antonius, who had it in charge to secure the Adriatic, 
were surrounded with a superior fleet by Pompey’s 
lieutenant, Octavius Libo ; Domitius lost an army in 
Pontus ; and Curio, in Africa, after his troops had suf¬ 
fered much by drinking of poisoned waters, risked a 
rash action with Varus and Juba, king of Mauritania, 
the ally of Pompey, and was slain. Caesar himself ex¬ 
perienced a reverse in Illyricum, where, his army being 
reduced to such straits as to eat bread made with herbs, 
he assaulted, near Dyrrachium, the intrenched camp 
of Pompey, whose policy had been to decline a battle. 





POMPEIUS. 


POMPETUS. 


and 'Aas repulsed, with the general panic of his troops 
and the loss of many standards ; and his own camp 
would have been taken if Pompey had not drawn off 
his forces in apprehension of an ambuscade ; on which 
Ca?sar remarked that “ the war could have been at an 
end, if Pompey knew how to use victory ” Caesar 
retreated into Thessaly, and was followed by Pompey. 
A general battle was fought on the plains of Pharsa- 
lus ; the army of Pompey being greatly superior in 
numbers, as it consisted of 40,000 foot and 12,000 
horse, composed of the transmarine legions and the 
auxiliary forces of different kings and tetrarchs ; while 
that of Caesar did not exceed 30,000 foot and 1000 
horse. Pompey was, however, out-manoeuvred, his 
army thrown into total rout, his camp pillaged, and 
himself obliged to fly, leaving the field with only his 
son Sextus and a few followers of rank. He set sail 
from Mytilene, having taken on board his wife Cor¬ 
nelia, and made for Egypt, intending to claim the hos¬ 
pitality of the young King Ptolemy, to whom the sen¬ 
ate had appointed him guardian. As he came near 
Mount Casius, the Egyptian army was seen on the 
shore, and their fleet lying off at some distance, when, 
presently, a boat was observed approaching the ship 
from the land. The persons in the boat invited him 
to enter, for the purpose of landing ; but, as he was 
stepping ashore, he was stabbed in the sight of his wife 
and son ; and his head and ring were sent to Csesar, 
who, shedding tears, turned away his face, and ordered 
the bead to be burned with perfumes in the Roman 
method.—( Elton's Roman Emperors, p. 4, scqq., In- 
trod.) — Cornelia and her friends instantly put to sea, 
and escaped the pursuit of the Egyptian fleet, which 
at first threatened to intercept them. Their feelings, 
as is natural, were, for the moment, so engrossed by 
their own danger that they could scarcely compre¬ 
hend the full extent of their loss ( Cic., Tusc. Disp , 
3, 27); nor was it till they reached the port of Tyre 
in safety that grief succeeded to apprehension, and 
they began to understand what cause they had for sor¬ 
row. But the tears that were shed for Pompey were 
not only those of domestic affliction; his fate called 
forth a more general and honourable mourning. No 
man had ever gained, at so early an age, the affections of 
his countrymen ; none had enjoyed them so largely, or 
preserved them so long with so little interruption ; and, 
at the distance of eighteen centuries, the feeling of 
his contemporaries may be sanctioned by the sober 
judgment of history. He entered upon public life 
as a distinguished member of an oppressed party, 
which was just arriving at its hour of triumph and 
retaliation ; he saw his associates plunged in rapine 
and massacre, but he preserved himself pure from 
the contagion of their crimes ; and when the death 
of Sylla “eft him at the head of the aristocratical 
party, he served them ably and faithfully with his 
sword, while he endeavoured to mitigate the evils of 
their ascendancy, by restoring to the commons of 
Rome, on the earliest opportunity, the most important 
of those privileges and liberties which they had lost 
under the tyranny of their late master. He received 
the due reward of his honest patriotism in the unusual 
honours and trusts that w r ere conferred upon him ; but 
his greatness could not corrupt his virtue; and the 
boundless powers with which he was repeatedly in¬ 
vested, he wielded with the highest ability and up¬ 
rightness to the accomplishment of his task, and then, 
without any undue attempts to prolong their duration, 
he honestly resigned them. At a period of general 
cruelty and extortion towards the enemies and sub¬ 
jects of the commonwealth, the character of Pompey, 
in his foreign commands, was marked by its humanity 
and spotless integrity ; his conquest of the pirates was 
effected with wonderful rapidity, and cemented by a 
merciful policy, which, instead of taking vengeance 
for the past, accomplished the prevention of evil for the 


future : his piescnce in Asia, when he conducted the 
war with Mithradates, was no less a relief to the prov¬ 
inces from the tyranny of their governors, than it was 
their protection from the arms of the enemy. It is 
true that wounded vanity led him, after his return from 
Asia, to unite himself, for a time, with some unworthy 
associates ; and this connexion, as it ultimately led to 
all the misfortunes, so did it immediately tempt him 
to the worst faults of his political life, and involved 
him in a career of difficulty, mortification, and shame. 
But after this disgraceful fall, he again returned to his 
natural station, and was universally regarded as the fit 
protector of the laws and liberty of his country, when 
they were threatened by Caesar’s rebellion. In the 
conduct of the civil war he showed something of 
weakness and vacillation ; but his abilities, though 
considerable, were far from equal to those of his ad¬ 
versary ; and his inferiority was most seen in that want 
of steadiness in the pursuit of his own plans, which 
caused him to abandon a system already sanctioned 
by success, and to persuade himself that he might 
yield with propriety to the ill-judged impatience of his 
followers for battle. His death is one of the few tra¬ 
gical events of those times which may be regarded 
with unmixed compassion. It was not accompanied, 
like that of Cato and Brutus, with the rashness and 
despair of suicide ; nor can it be regarded, like that 
of Caesar, as the punishment of crimes, unlawfully in¬ 
flicted, indeed, yet suffered deservedly. With a char¬ 
acter of rare purity and tenderness in all his domestic 
relations, he was slaughtered before the eyes of his 
wife and son ; while flying from the ruin of a most 
just cause, he was murdered by those whose kindness 
he was entitled to claim. His virtues have not been 
transmitted to posterity with their deserved fame ; and 
while the violent republican writers have exalted the 
memory of Cato and Brutus, Pompey’s many and rare 
merits have been forgotten in the faults of the Trium¬ 
virate, and in the weakness of temper which he dis¬ 
played in the conduct of his last campaign. ( En - 
cycl. Metropol. , div. 3, vol. 2, p. 252.)—V. Cneius, 
elder son of Pompey the Great, was sent by his fa¬ 
ther into Asia, at the commencement of the civil war, 
to raise a large naval and land force from all the prov¬ 
inces of the East. After the death of his parent he 
passed into Spain, where two lieutenants of Fompev 
had reunited some of the scattered remnants of the 
republican army. His party soon became powerful, 
and he saw himself in a few months at tlie head of 
thirteen legions, and in possession of a considerable 
fleet. Csesar, finding that he must act in person against 
him, left Rome for the Spanish peninsula, and, by a 
series of bold manoeuvres, compelled the son of Pom¬ 
pey to engage in battle in the plain of Munda (45 
B.C.). This action, the last that was fought between 
the Pompeian party and Csesar, terminated, after the 
most desperate efforts, in favour of the latter ; and the 
son of Pompey, having been wounded in the fight, was 
slain in endeavouring to make his escape. ( Auct ., 
Bell. Ilisp. — Appian, Bell. Civ., 2, 87, seqq .)— VI. 
Sextus, second son of Pompey the Great, and sur- 
named sometimes, for distinction’ sake, Pompey the 
Younger, is celebrated in Roman history for the part 
that he played after the death of Caesar, and for the re¬ 
sistance which he made to Antony and Octavius. Af¬ 
ter the battle of Pharsalia, he proceeded, with some 
senators, to rejoin his father in Patnphylia; but, hearing 
of the latter’s death, he fled to Cyprus, thence to Af¬ 
rica, and finally to Spain, where he joined his brothel 
Cneius with a few vessels. The disastrous battle of 
Munda, however, again compelled him to fly ; but h« 
found himself, after some lapse of time, at the head o! 
a considerable force, composed of the remnants of th( 
army at Munda, and he succeeded in defeating tw« 
lieutenants of Csesar. After the death of the latter. 
Sextus Pompey applied to the Roman senate for thf 



POM 


PON 


restitution of his father’s property. Antony supported 
his claim, and Sextus, without obtaining precisely what 
he solicited, still received as an indemnity a large sum 
of money from the public treasury, and with it the title 
of commander of the seas. In place, however, of 
goin§ to Rome to enjoy his success, he got together 
all the vessels he could find in the harbours of Spain 
and Gaul, and, as soon as he saw the second trium¬ 
virate formed, he made himself master of Sicily, and 
gained over Octavius the battle of Scylla. While pro¬ 
scription was raging at Rome, Sextus opened an asy¬ 
lum for the fugitives, and promised to any one who 
should save the life of a proscribed person twice as 
much as the triumvirs offered for his head. Many were 
saved in consequence by his generous care. At the 
same time, his fleet increased to so large a size in the 
Mediterranean as to intercept the supplies of grain in¬ 
tended for the Roman capital, and the people, dread¬ 
ing a famine, compelled Antony and Octavius to ne¬ 
gotiate for a peace with the son of Pompey. Sextus 
demanded nothing less than to be admitted into the 
triumvirate at the expense of Lepidus, who was to be 
displaced ; and he would, in all likelihood, have ob¬ 
tained what he sought, had not his friends compelled 
him to hasten the conclusion of the alliance. As it 
was, however, the terms agreed upon were extremely 
favourable to Sextus. Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and 
Achaia were given him ; he was promised the consul¬ 
ship for the ensuing year, and the proscribed persons 
whom he had saved were erased from the fatal list. 
The peace, however, proved a hollow one. Hostilities 
soon commenced anew, and Octavius encountered two 
defeats, one through his lieutenant Calvisius, and an¬ 
other in person. Two years after, however, having 
repaired his losses, he proved more successful. Agrip- 
pa, his lieutenant, gained an important advantage over 
the fleet of Pompey off Mylse, on the coast of Sicily, 
and afterward a decisive victory between Mylse and 
Naulochus. Sextus, now without resources, fled with 
sixteen vessels to Asia, where he excited new troubles ; 
but, at the end of a few months, he fell into the hands 
of Antony’s lieutenants, who put him to death B.C. 
35. In allusion to his great naval power, Sextus Pom¬ 
pey used to style himself “ the son of Neptune” ( Nep- 
tunius .— Horat. Epod., 9, 7.— Mitsch., ad loc .— 
Dio Cass., 48, 19. — Veil. Paterc., 2, 72. — Flor., 4, 
2.— Plat., Vit. Ant. — Appian, Bell. Civ., 2, 105.— 
Id. ib., 4, 84, &c.) 

Pompelo, a city of Hispania Tarraconensis, in the 
territory of the Vascones, now Pampcluna. ( Plin ., 
1, 3.— Strab., 161) 

Pompilius Numa, the second king of Rome. ( Vid. 
Numa.) 

Pomponius, I. Atticus. (Vid. Atticus)—II. Mela. 
(Vid. Mela.)—III. Festus. ( Vid. Festus.)—IV. An- 
dronicus, a native of Syria, and a follower of the Epi¬ 
curean sect. He pursued, at Rome, the profession of 
a grammarian, but his attachment to philosophical pur¬ 
suits prevented him from being very useful as a philo¬ 
logical instructer. He was a contemporary of M. An- 
tonius Gnipho, who was one of Cicero’s instructers. 
Finding this latter grammarian, as well as others of 
inferior note, preferred to himself, he retired to Cumae, 
where he lived in great poverty, and composed several 
works. These were published by Orbilius after the 
death of Andronicus. (Suelon., de Illuslr. Gram., 
9.) —V. Marcehus, a Latin grammarian in the time 
of Tiberius. Suetonius describes him as a most troub¬ 
lesome exactor of correctness in Latin style. He oc¬ 
casionally pleaded causes, and is said to have been 
originally a pugilist. (Suelon., de Illuslr. Gram., 
22.)—VI. Secundus, a Roman tragic poet, who flour¬ 
ished in the middle of the first century of our era, and 
died GO A.D., after having held the office of consul. 
His works are lost. He is said to have been more re¬ 
markable for eloquence and brilliancy a? a writer, than 
1118 


for tragic spirit. (Dial, de caus: corr. tloq., 13.— Lip- 
sius,ad Tac., Ann., 11, 13.— Bd.hr, Gcsch. Rom. Lit.. 
p. 88.)—VII. Sextus, a Roman lawyer, who appears to 
have lived in the time of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius. 
He attained to high reputation as a jurist, and wrote 
several works on jurisprudence. (B'dhr, Gesch. Rom. 
Lit., p. 749.) 

Pomptin^e Paludes. Vid. Pontinse Paludes. 

Pontia, now Ponza, an island off the coast of La- 
tium, and south of the promontory of Circeii. Ac¬ 
cording to Livy (9, 38), it received a Roman colony 
A.U.C. 441, and it obtained the thanks of the Roman 
senate in the second Punic war. It became after¬ 
ward the spot to which the victims of Tiberius and 
Caligula were secretly conveyed, to be afterward de¬ 
spatched, or doomed to a perpetual exile. (Suet., 
Tib., 64. — Id., Cal., 15.) Among these might'be 
numbered many Christian martyrs. (Cramer' 1 s Anc. 
Italy , vol. 2, p. 135.) 

Pontinse, Pometin^e, or Pomptin^e Paludes, a 
marshy tract of country in the territory of the Volsci, 
deriving its appellation from the town of Suessa Po- 
metia, in whose vicinity it was situate. These fens 
are occasioned by the quantity of water carried into 
the plain by numberless streams which rise at the foot 
of the adjacent mountains, and, for want of a sufficient 
declivity, creep sluggishly over the level space, and 
sometimes stagnate in pools, or lose themselves in the 
sands. Two rivers principally contributed to the for¬ 
mation of these marshes, the Ufens or Uffente, and 
the Nymphseus or Ninfo. The flat and swampy tract 
spread to the foot of the Volscian mountains, and cov¬ 
ered an extent of eight miles in breadth and thirty in 
length with mud and infection. We are informed by 
Mucianus, an ancient writer quoted by Pliny, that 
there were at one time no less than twenty-three cities 
to be found in this district (3, 5). Consequently, it is 
to be inferred that formerly these marshes did not ex¬ 
ist, or that they were confined to a much smaller space 
of ground. That it was cultivated appears clearly 
from Livy (2, 34) ; and we are told by the same his¬ 
torian that the Pomptinus ager was once portioned 
out to the Roman people (6, 21). Indeed, it is evi¬ 
dent that the waters must have been gradually increas¬ 
ing from the decline of the Roman empire, until the 
successful exertions made by the Roman pontiffs ar¬ 
rested their baneful progress. When this district was 
occupied by flourishing cities, and an active and in¬ 
dustrious population was ever ready to check the 
increase of stagnation, it might easily be kept un¬ 
der ; but after the ambition of Rome and her sys¬ 
tem of universal dominion had rendered this tract of 
country desolate, these wastes and fens naturally in¬ 
creased, and, in process of time, gained so much 
ground as to render any attempt to remedy the evil 
only temporary and inefficient. It is supposed that, 
when Appius Claudius constructed the road named 
after him, he made the first attempt to drain these 
marshes ; but this is not certain, as no such work ia 
mentioned in the accounts we have of the forma¬ 
tion of this Roman way. (Livy, 9, 29.) But about 
one hundred and thirty years after, there is a posi¬ 
tive statement of that object having been partly ef¬ 
fected by the consul Corn. Cethegus. (Liv-, Epit., 
46.) Julius Caesar is said to have intended to divert 
the course of the Tiber from Ostia, and carry it through 
these marshes toTerracina; but the plan perished with 
him, and gave way to the more moderate but more 
practicable one of Augustus. This emperor endeav¬ 
oured to carry off the superfluous waters by opening 
a canal all along the Via Appia, from Forum Appii 
to the grove of Feronia. It was customary to em¬ 
bark on the canal in the nighttime, as Strabo re¬ 
lates and Horace practised, because the vapours that 
arise from these swamps are less noxious in the cool 
of the night than in the heat of the day. This canal 




PON 


POP 


Btlll remains, and is called Cavata. These marshes 
were neglected after the time of Augustus until the 
reigns of Nerva and Trajan, the latter of whom drained 
the country from Treponti and Terracina, and restored 
the Appian Way, which the neglect of the marshes 
in the previous reigns had rendered nearly impassable. 
During the convulsions of the following centuries, the 
marshes were again overflowed, until again drained 
in the reign of Theodoric, by Camilius Decius, a pub¬ 
lic-spirited individual, and apparently with good effect. 
( Cassiod ., 2, Epist. 32 and 33.) They were never, 
however, completely exhausted of their water until the 
pontificate of Pius VI., although many preceding popes 
had made the experiment. During the French inva¬ 
sion, however, the precautions necessary to keep open 
the canals of communication were neglected, and the 
waters again began to stagnate. These marshes, 
therefore, are again formidable at the present day, and, 
though contracted in their limits, still corrupt the at¬ 
mosphere for many miles around. ( Cramer's Anc. 
Italy , vol. 2, p. 96, seqq.) 

Pontius, an able commander of the Samnites, who 
entrapped the Roman army in the defile of Samnium 
called the “ Caudine Forks” ( Furccs Caudince), and 
compelled them to pass under the yoke. ( Liv ., 9, 2, 
seqq.) He was afterward defeated in his turn, and 
subjected to the same ignominy by the Romans. 
(j Liv., 9, 15.) 

Pontus, I. a country of Asia Minor. The name 
implies a political rather than a geographical division 
of territory : having been applied, in the first instance, 
to the coast of the Euxine, situated between the Col- 
chian territory and the river Halys, it was, in process 
of time, extended to the mountainous districts which 
lie towards Cappadocia and Armenia ; and it even, at 
one time, included Paphlagonia and part of Bithynia. 
The denomination itself was unknown to Herodotus, 
who always designated this part of Asia by referring 
to the particular tribes who inhabited it, and who then 
enjoyed a separate political existence, though tributa¬ 
ry to the Persian empire. Xenophon also appears to 
have been ignorant of it, since he adheres always to 
the same local distinctions of nations and tribes used 
by Herodotus; such as the Chalybes, Tibareni, Mo- 
synoeci, &c. It was not till after the death of Alex¬ 
ander that the Pontine dynasty makes any figure in 
history ; and an account of it will be found under the 
article Mithradates.—After the overthrow of Mithra- 
dates the Great, Pompey annexed the greater part of 
Pontus to Bithynia, and the rest he assigned to Deio- 
tarus, tetrarch of Galatia, and a zealous ally of Rome ; 
a small portion of Paphlagonia being reserved for some 
native chiefs of that country. ( Slrab ., 541, seqq. — 
Appian, Bell. Mithrad., c. 114.) During the civil 
wars waged by Caesar and Pompey, Pharnaces made 
an attempt to recover his hereditary dominions, and 
succeeded in taking Sinope, Amisus, and some other 
towns of Pontus. But Julius Caesar, after the defeat 
and death of Pompey, marched into Pontus, and, en¬ 
countering the army of Pharnaces near the city of 
Zela, gained a complete victory ; the facility with 
which it was obtained being expressed by the victor 
in those celebrated words,” Veni, Vidi, Vici .” ( Hirt ., 
Bell. Alex., c. 72.— Plut., Vit. Cas — Sueton., Vit. 
Jul., c. 37.— Dio Cass., 42, 47.) After his defeat, 
Pharnaces retired to the Bosporus, where he was slain 
by some of his own followers. ( Appian, Bell. Mithr., 
120. —Dio Cass , l. c.) He left a son named Darius, 
who was made king of Pontus for a short time by 
Antony, but he was soon deposed, and Polemo, son 
of Zeno of Apamea, was appointed in his stead. This 
person, who had the art to ingratiate himself alike with 
Antony, Augustus, and Agrippa, was made king of 
the eastern portion of Pontus, named from him Pole- 
moniacus. Polemo was slain in an expedition against 
some barbarians of Sindice, near the Palus Masotis; 


but his widow, Pythodoris, was reigning in his stead 
at the time that Strabo wrote his Geography. (Strab., 
556, 578 .—Dio Cass., 53, 25.— Id., 54, 24.)—Ptole¬ 
my divides Pontus into three districts, which he terms 
Galaticus, Cappadocicus, and- Polemoniacus; and, 
under the Byzantine emperors, the two former were 
included under the name of Helenopontus, derived 
from Helena, the mother of Constantine, as they had 
been usually comprehended before by the Romans 
themselves under that of Pontica Prima. ( Dio Cass., 
51, 2.— Sueton., Vit. Ner., 18.— Ptol., p. 125.— Jus 
tin., Novell., 28, 1.)—Pontus was chiefly a mountain 
ous country, especially towards the northeast frontier. 
Here we have some of the highest table-land in Asia, 
whence flow the great streams of the Euphrates and 
Tigris, the Araxes and Phasis. The climate was con¬ 
sequently extremely bleak and severe, the soil rugged 
and barren, and the different tribes scattered over its 
surface wild and savage to the last degree. (Xen., 
Anab., 5, 4.— Strab., 548, seq .) But the western 
portion of the country, around the Halys, and the val¬ 
leys of the Thermodon and Iris, were rich and fertile, 
and abounded in produce of every kind, and furnished 
the finest flocks and herds. There were also mines 
of salt, iron, and rock crystal ; and the coast exhibited 
some large and flourishing Greek cities, possessed of 
good harbours, and having an extensive traffic with 
the other parts of the Euxine, the Hellespont, and the 
HJgcan. ( Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 256, seqq.) 

Pontus Euxinus, the ancient name for the Black 
Sea. According to the common opinion, its earliest 
name was 'Afeuop (“ inhospitable"), in allusion to the 
character of the nations along its shores ; and this ap¬ 
pellation was changed to E v^eivoc (” hospitable”), 
when Grecian colonies had settled on these same 
coasts, and had introduced the usages of civilized life. 
Some Biblical commentators, however, think they dis¬ 
cover the name of Euxine, or rather ’A^evog, in the 
Scripture term Aschkenaz. ( Rosenmuller, Schol. in 
Genes., 10, 3.)—The Pontus Euxinus is now probably 
in the same state that it was in the earliest historic 
age ; the western part is shallow, but the eastern, 
which is very deep, has been attempted to be fathom¬ 
ed in some places without success. The water of 
that sea is, in many places, as fresh as that of the 
rivers which flow into it. The evaporation of the 
fresh water facilitates the formation of ice, which is 
not uncommon ; the congelation is thus occasioned by 
the freshness of the water, and that large sea is some 
times frozen to a considerable distance from the shore. 
—The Pontus Euxinus is nothing more than a vast 
lake ; it bears all the marks of one ; flows, like those 
in North America, through a kind of river, which forms 
at first the narrow channel of Constantinople, or Thra¬ 
cian Bosporus ; it then assumes the appearance of a 
small lake, called the Propontis, or Sea of Marmara, 
passes towards the southwest, and takes anew the 
form of a large river, which has been termed the Hel¬ 
lespont, or Dardanelles. These channels resemble 
many other outlets of lakes ; the great body of water 
that flows through so narrow an opening need not ex¬ 
cite wonder, although it has given rise to various hy¬ 
potheses. ( Vid. Mediterraneum Mare.— Maltc-Brun, 
Geogr., vol. 6, p. 121, Am. ed.) 

Popilius, I. M. Popilius Lsenas, was consul B.C. 
356, and ir that same year defeated the Tiburtines, 
who had made a nocturnal incursion into the Roman 
territory, and had advanced to the city gates. (Liv., 
7, 12.) At a subsequent period he accused C. Licin- 
ius Stolo under his own law, and effected his condem¬ 
nation. (Liv., 7, 16.) He obtained the consulship 
a second time, B.C. 353 ; and a third time, B.C. 347, 
in which year he defeated the Gauls, who had made an 
irruption into the Latin territory, and obtained for this 
a triumph. (Liv., 7, 23, seq.) Two years after this 
he was chosen consul for the fourth time. (Liv., 7, 

1119 



POP 


POP 


2 G.) He is said to have been the first of the Popilian 
fainil) that bore the surname of Laenas, and this appel¬ 
lation is said to have been obtained as follows. Being 
at one time priest of Carmenta (Flamen Carmcnlalis), 
and conducting a public sacrifice in his sacerdotal robe, 
or lana, intelligence was brought him that a sedition 
had broken out among the commons ; he hastened to 
the public assembly arrayed in his lana, and quelled 
the tumult by his authority and eloquence. ( Cicero , 
Brut., 14.)—II. M. Popilius Laenas, was consul 173 
B.C. Having marched of his own accord, during the 
war witti the Ligurians, into the territory of the Sa¬ 
tellites, who had committed no sort of hostility against 
the Romans, and coming to an engagement with 
them, he obtained a complete victory, and sold those 
who had survived the battle into slavery. The senate 
immediately passed a decree, ordering him to restore 
the money which he had received from the sale of the 
Satellites, to set the latter at liberty, give them back 
their effects and arms, and immediately to quit the 
province. Popilius, however, disobeyed this mandate ; 
and yet, notwithstanding this open contumacy, he pro¬ 
ceeded to Rome, inveighed severely against the as¬ 
sembled senate, and then returned to his province. 
Being afterward accused for this outrage against the 
laws, he was sheltered from punishment by the in¬ 
fluence of his brother. ( Vid. Popilius III.) He after¬ 
ward accompanied the consul Philippus to Macedonia 
as military tribune, B.C. 169. ( Liv ., 40, 4-3.— Id., 

41, 14, seq. — Id., 42, 7, seqq. — Id., 44, 1.)—III. C. 
Popilius Laenas, brother of the preceding, attained to 
the consulship B.C. 172, and only signalized his ad¬ 
ministration of that office by his intrigues in favour of 
his brother when charged with official misconduct. 

( Vid. Popilius II.) Not long after this he was sent, with 
two other senators, to Egypt, on account of the differ¬ 
ences subsisting between Cleopatra and Ptolemy Eu- 
ergetes on the one hand, and Antiochus Epiphanes on 
the other Antiochus was at the gates of Alexandrea, 
and preparing to lay siege to the city when the Roman 
deputies arrived. The decree of the senate, which 
hey communicated to him, was to the following effect: 
hat Antiochus should make peace with Ptolemy and 
retire from Egypt; but, Antiochus wishing to elude it 
by evasive answers, Popilius haughtily drew a circle 
round him in the sand with a rod which he held in his 
hand, and ordered the monarch to give him an answer 
to carry home to the senate before he stirred out of 
the circle which had just been traced. The king was 
struck with astonishment, but, after a moment’s reflec¬ 
tion, promised to obey, and accordingly evacuated 
Egypt. (Liv., 41, 18.— Id., 42, 9, seqq.- — Id., 44, 19, 
seqq. — Id., 45, 10.— Veil. Paterc., 12, 10.— Justin, 
34, 3.)—IV. A tribune, who commanded the party 
which slew Cicero. It is said that the orator had 
defended him at one time against a charge of parri¬ 
cide. This, however, some regard as a pure inven¬ 
tion of the later grammarians, who sought for brilliant 
themes on which to declaim. ( Senec. Rhet., 3, con - 
trov. 17.) 

PoPLICOLA. Vid. PuBLICOLA. 

Poppaea Sabina, I. daughter of Poppaeus Sabmus, 
and wife of T. Ollius. She lived in the time of the 
Emperor Claudius, and was the most beautiful woman 
of her time, but disgraced herself by her scandalous 
excesses. Messalina, having become jealous of her, 
compelled her to destroy herself. (Tacit., Ann., 11, 
2 .— Id. ib., 11, 4.— Id. ib., 13, 45.)—II. Daughter of 
the preceding, inherited all her mother’s beauty and 
frailty. Her father was T. Ollius, who had been in¬ 
volved in the disgrace of Sejanus, and she preferred 
to his name, therefore, that of her maternal grandfa¬ 
ther Poppaems Sabinus, who had borne the consulship, 
and had been graced with the insignia of a triumph. 
(Tacit., Ann., 13, 45.) The young Poppaea united in 
herself every attraction of wealth, beauty, and noble 
1120 


birth. She possessed all things, in fine, to borrow the 
words of Tacitus, except a virtuous heart. (“ Huic 
muheri cuncta alia fuere , ■prater honestum animum." 
Tacit., 1. c.) She was first married to Rufus Crisp! 
nus, praefect of the praetorian cohorts under Claudius, 
and bore him a daughter; but, having been seduced 
by Otho, she left her husband and lived with the lat¬ 
ter. Nero was now on the thre ne, and Otho was the 
companion of his debaucheries. Either through vani¬ 
ty or indiscretion, the charms of Poppaea were made 
a constant theme ofeulogium by Otho in the presence 
of the emperor, until the curiosity of the latter was 
excited, and he became desirous of beholding her. His 
licentious spirit soon acknowledged the power of her 
charms, and the air of modest reserve assumed by this 
artful and abandoned woman only drew him the more 
effectually into her toils. Otho was put out of the 
way by being sent to Lusitania with the title of gov¬ 
ernor ; and Poppaea now obtained over the emperor 
such an irresistible ascendancy, that he no longer lis¬ 
tened to the admonitions of Seneca, or to the remon¬ 
strances of Burrhus. Having herself violated all the 
bonds of chastity and connubial faith, the mistress of 
the emperor wished to become his wife; but, as she 
could not hope to see the Empress Octavia repudiated 
while Agrippina lived, she employed every art of in¬ 
trigue and falsehood upon the mind of her paramour, 
with the view of exciting suspicion against his mother, 
and thereby paving the way for that act of parricide 
which has left so indelible a stain upon his character. 
After the destruction of Agrippina, Nero divorced Oc¬ 
tavia, and the unprincipled Poppaea was raised to the 
throne. The schemes of this wicked woman did not, 
however, end here. Fearful lest the mild virtues of 
Octavia might cause a return of affection on the part 
of Nero, she procured her banishment frem Rome, on 
false testimony of adulterous conduct ; and when, • 
through fear of an insurrection of the people, the em¬ 
peror was compelled to recall the daughter of Claudi¬ 
us, the artful Poppaea alarmed the fears of Nero by 
telling him that his former wife was at the head of a 
numerous party in the state, and the unfortunate Oc¬ 
tavia was deprived of existence. In the year 63, 
Poppaea was delivered of a daughter, an event which 
threw Nero into transports of joy. He named the in¬ 
fant Claudia, and decreed to her and her mother the 
title of Augusta. The child, however, the subject of 
so many hopes, died at the end of four months, and 
the grief of Nero was as excessive as had been his joy 
at its birth. Poppaea herself survived her offspring 
only two years, having expired from a blow which she 
received from the foot of her brutal husband, when 
many months advanced in her pregnancy, A.D. 65. 
On returning to himself, Nero was the more afflicted 
at her death, since with her he lost the only hope he 
had entertained of an heir to his dominions. Her body, 
was embalmed, and placed in the tomb of the Caesars. 
The emperor himself pronounced her funeral eulogy, 
and not being able to praise her virtues, contented ( 
himself, as Tacitus remarks, with eulogizing her beau¬ 
ty, and the favours which fortune had heaped upon 
her.—No female ever carried to a greater extent the 
refinements and luxuries of the toilet. She is said 
to have been the first Roman lady that wore a mask 
on her face when going abroad, in order to protect 
her complexion from the rays of the sun. Whenever 
she made any excursion from Rome, she was follow¬ 
ed by a train of 500 asses, whose milk furnished her 
with a bath for preserving the fairness and softness of 
her skin. She was the inventress also of a species of 
pommade, made of bread soaked in asses’ milk, and 
laid over the face at night. ( Juvenal , 6, 467.— Bblti- 
ger, Sabina., p. 14.) — Otho, who never ceased to 
cherish an attachment for Poppaea, caused her statues, 
which had been thrown down with those of Nero, to 
I be replaced on their pedestals during the short period 



P 0 R 


POR 


hat he was in power. ( Tacit., Ann., 13, 45.— Id. 
b„ 15, 71. — Id. ib., 13, 46 .—Id. ib., 14, GO .—Id. ib., 
15, 23 — Id. ib ., 16, 6, &c.) 

Poppies Sabinus, the maternal grandfather of the 
Empress Poppaea. He held under Tiberius the gov¬ 
ernment of Moesia, to which were added Achaia and 
Macedonia. {Tacit., Ann., 1, 80.) In A.D. 25, he 
obtained the insignia of a triumph for successes over 
the Thracian tribes. {Tacit., Ann., 4, 46.) He also 
attained to the office of consul. Poppaeus died A.D. 
35. {Tacit., Ann., 6, 39.) 

Pofui.onia (or Populonium), a flourishing city of 
Etruria, on the coast, on a line with Vetulona. It was 
the naval arsenal of the Etrurians, and was the only 
considerable place which that nation founded imme¬ 
diately on the coast. In other instances they were 
prevented from doing this by the want of commodious 
havens, and through their fear of being exposed to the 
attacks of pirates. But the harbour of Populonium, 
now Porto Baratto, possessed peculiar advantages ; it 
was secure and of great extent, and, from its proximity 
to the island of Elba, so rich in metals, of the highest 
importance; as the produce of the mines appears never 
to have been prepared for use in the island itself, but 
was always sent over to Populonium for that purpose. 
{Aristot., de Mirab., p. 1158.— Strabo, 223.) Strabo 
has accurately described the site of Populonium from 
personal inspection ; he tells us that it was placed on 
a lofty cliff that ran out into the sea like a peninsula. 
On the summit was a tower for watching the approach 
of the thunny fish. The real name of this city, as.we 
may perceive from its numerous coins, was Pupluna, 
in which a strong analogy exists with some Etruscan 
names, such as Luna, and Vettluna, and probably others 
belonging to cities which we know only by their Latin 
names. {Lanzi, Saggio, &c., vol. 2, p. 27. — Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 188, seqq.) 

Porcia, a daughter of the younger Cato (Uticensis). 
She was first married to Bibulus, and, after his death, 
to her cousin Brutus. When the latter had taken 
part in the conspiracy against Caesar, and strove to 
conceal from his wife the uneasiness which the fatal 
secret occasioned him, Porcia, having suspected that 
he was revolving in mind some difficult and dangerous 
enterprise, gave herself a severe wound in the thigh, 
which she concealed from her husband, but which 
Drought on considerable fever. Brutus was much af¬ 
flicted on her account, and, as he was attending her in 
the height of her suffering, she discovered to him the 
wound which she had inflicted on her own person, and, 
in assigning a motive for the deed, said that her object 
was to see whether she was proof against pain, and 
whether she had courage to share his most hidden se¬ 
crets. The husband, struck with admiration of this 
heroic firmness, disclosed to her the conspiracy which 
was forming. According to one account, she ended 
her daysj after the overthrow and death of Brutus, by 
holding burning coals in her mouth until she was suf¬ 
focated. Another statement, however, made her to 
have died before her husband. {Plut., Vit. Bruti.) 
Valerius Maximus, however, says that she gave her¬ 
self the wound after the secret had been imparted to 
her, and on the night after the assassination of Caesar. 
{Val. Max., 3, 2, 15.) 

Porcia Lex, de civitate, ordained that no magistrate 
should punish with death, or scourge with rods, a Ro¬ 
man citizen when condemned, but should allow him 
the alternative of exile It was brought forward by 
M. Porcius Leca, tribune of the commons, A.U.C. 
557, and was, in fact, only a renewal of the Valerian 
law, which had been twice renewed previously ; once 
by Valerius Publicola and Horatius (A.U.C. 305), and 
again by Valerius Corvus (A.U .C. 453). The Porcian 
law strengthened it by increasing the penalty against 
infraction. But even this Porcian law, the existence 
of which is attested by a coin, fell into neglect, and is 
7 C 


supposed, from a passage in Aulus Gcllius (Hi, 
have been last revived by Sempronius Gracch-us. It 
referred probably to those who had been condemned 
by a magistrate in the first instance, not to such an 
had been cast in an appeal from his sentence. (Ftis 
Rom. Antiq., p. 75, seq. — Liv., 10, 9.— Sallust, Beh 
Cat., 51.) 

Porcius, Latro, a rhetorician, styled by Quintiliai 
(10, 5) “ Imprimis clari nominis professor." He ij 
supposed by some to have been the author of a decla 
mation against Cicero, which has come down to us 
which others ascribe to Sallust or to Vibius Crispu?i. 
He killed himself while labouring under a quartan 
ague (A.U.C. 750.—B C. 4). 

Porphyrion, son of Coelus and Terra, one of the 
giants who made war against Jupiter, by whom, in 
conjunction with Hercules, he was slain. {Apollod., 
1, 6, 2.— Horat., Od., 3, 4, 54.) 

Pokphyrius, a celebrated Plotinian philosopher, of 
the Platonic school, a learned and zealous supporter of 
pagan theology, and an inveterate enemy to the Chris¬ 
tian faith. He was a native of Tyre, and was born 
A.D. 233. His father very early introduced him to 
the study of literature and philosophy under the Chris¬ 
tian preceptor Origen, probably while the latter was 
teaching at Caesarea in Palestine. His juvenile edu¬ 
cation was completed at Athens by Longinus, whose 
high reputation for learning and genius brought him 
pupils from many distant countries. Under this ex¬ 
cellent instructer he gained an extensive acquaintance 
with antiquity, improved his taste in literature, and en¬ 
larged his knowledge of the Plotinian philosophy. It 
is doubtless, in a great measure, to be ascribed to Lon¬ 
ginus, that we find so many proofs of erudition, and 
so much elegance of style, in the writings of Porphyry. 
His original name was Melek, which in Syriac signi¬ 
fies king, and hence he was sometimes called king. 
Afterward Longinus changed his name to Porphyrius, 
from Tcop(j)vpa, the Greek for purple, a colour usually 
worn by kings and princes. From this time we have 
little information concerning this philosopher, till we 
find him, about the thirteenth year of his age, becoming 
at Rome a disciple of Plotinus, who had before this 
time acquired great fame as a teacher of philosophy. 
Porphyry was six years a diligent student of the eclec¬ 
tic system, and became so entirely attached to his 
master, and so perfectly acquainted with his doctrine, 
that Plotinus esteemed him one of the greatest orna¬ 
ments of his school, and frequently employed him in 
refuting the objections of his opponents, and in ex¬ 
plaining to his younger pupils the more difficult parts 
of his writings: he even intrusted him with the charge 
of methodising and correcting his works. The fanat¬ 
ical spirit of philosophy, to which Porphyry addicted 
himself, concurred with his natural propensity towards 
melancholy to produce a resolution, which he formed 
about the thirty-sixth year of his age, of putting an 
end to his life ; purposing hereby, according to the 
Platonic doctrine, to release his soul from her wretch¬ 
ed prison, the body. From this mad design he was, 
however, dissuaded by his master, who advised him 
to divert his melancholy by taking a journey to Sicily, 
to visit his friend Probus, an accomplished and excel¬ 
led man, who lived near Lilybseum. Porphyry follow¬ 
ed the advice of Plotinus, and recovered the vigour 
and tranquillity of his mind. After the death of Plo¬ 
tinus, Porphyry, still remaining in Sicily, appeared as 
an open and implacable adversary to the Christinn re¬ 
ligion. Some have maintained that in his youth he 
had been a Christian ; but of this there is no sufficient 
proof. It is not improbable, that while he was a boy 
under the care of Origen, he gained some acquaintance 
with the Jewish and Christian scriptures. He wrote 
fifteen different treatises against Christianity, which 
the Emperor Theodosius ordered to be destroyed : an 
injudicious act of zeal, which the real friends of Chri*- 

1121 



P 0 R 


PORSENNA. 


tianity, no less than its enemies, will always regret; 
for truth can never suffer by a fair discussion ; and 
falsehood and calumny must always, in the issue, serve 
the cause they are designed to injure. The spirit of 
those writings of Porphyry which are lost, may be in 
some measure apprehended from the fragments which 
are preserved by ecclesiastical historians. Many able 
advocates for Christianity appeared on this occasion, 
the principal of whom were Methodius, Apollinaris, and 
Eusebius. So vehement and lasting was the indigna¬ 
tion which was excited against the memory of Por¬ 
phyry. that Constantine, in order to cast the severest 
possible censure upon the Arian sect, published an 
edict ranking them among the professed enemies of 
Christianity, and requiring that they should, from that 
time, be branded with the name of Porphyrians. Por¬ 
phyry, after remaining many years in Sicily, returned 
to Rome, and taught the doctrines of Plotinus ; pre¬ 
tending to be not only a philosopher, endued with su¬ 
perior wisdom, but a divine person, favoured with su¬ 
pernatural communications from Pleaven. He him¬ 
self relates (Vit. Plot., c. 23), that, in the sixty-eighth 
year of his age, he was in a sacred ecstasy, in which he 
saw the Supreme Intelligence, the God who is supe¬ 
rior to all gods, without an image. This vision Au¬ 
gustine supposes to have been an illusion of some evil 
spirit: it was more probably the natural effect of a 
heated imagination ; unless, indeed, it be added to the 
long list of fictions with which the writings of Porphy¬ 
ry abound. He died about 304 A.D. Of his numer¬ 
ous works, the only pieces which have escaped the 
depredations of time (except sundry fragments, dis¬ 
persed through various authors) are his “ Life of Py¬ 
thagoras'' (TlvOayopov /3loq), a book “ On the Cave 
of the Nymphs in the Odyssey" (riep2 too ev ’OSva- 
aela rtiv ’Nvjtiv dvrpov), “Homeric Questions" 
('0 pypiad tfyTryiara), a fragment “ On the Styx" (liept 
Srwyof), “ An Epistle to Anebo, the Egyptian" (Ilpdf 
Avebfi tov Alyvnriov), a treatise “ On the Five Pred¬ 
icates" (Tlepl rtiv TcivTe (pwvtiv), commonly prefix¬ 
ed to the logical works of Aristotle, “ Thoughts on 
Intelligiblcs ” (IIpo? rd voyrd ’AQopuryoi), a treatise 
“ On Abstinence from Animal food" (Ilept anoxyg 
rtiv kyipvxov), a “ Life of Plotinus" (Tlepl U/mtIvov 
(Slov), “ A Commentary on the Harmonics of Ptolemy" 
(Eif rd 'Apyovuid TlroTiepaiov vnopvypa), and a few 
other unimportant pieces. (Enfield's History of Phi¬ 
losophy , vol. 2, p. 65, seqq. — Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., 
vol. 5, p. 131, seqq ) The best edition of the Life of 
Pythagoras is that given by Kiessling at the end of 
his edition of Iamblichus’s Life of Pythagoras (Lips., 
1818, 2 vols. 8vo); of the treatise on Abstinence from 
Animal Food, the best is that of Rhoer (Lugd. Bat., 
1792, 4to), which contains also in the same volume 
Van Goen’s edition of the work on the Cave of the 
Nymphs. The life of Plotinus is given with the edi¬ 
tion of the Enneades of the latter. 

Porsenna or Porsena (called also Lars Porsenna), 
was Lucumo of Clusium, and the most powerful of all 
the Etrurian monarchs of his time. Tarquinius Su¬ 
perbus, after being driven from his throne, finding the 
inability of the Veientians and Tarquinians to replace 
him, applied to Porsenna. This monarch raised a 
large army and marched towards Rome. He was met 
by the Romans near the fortress on the Janiculan 
Hill; but almost at the first encounter they took to 
flight, and the Etrurians pursued them impetuously as 
they sought safety by crossing the Pons Sublicius. 
It was then that the gallant feat of Codes was per¬ 
formed, who, seeing the danger of the city’s being 
taken at once if the enemy should enter it along with 
the flying Romans, posted himself on the bridge, made 
head against the pursuers, and, calling on his country¬ 
men to cut down the part of the bridge between him 
and the city, plunged into the Tiber when this was 
effected, and swam in safety to the opposite side. 

1122 


Porsenna, however, retained possession of the Janie- 
ulum, and, sending his army across the river in boats, 
pillaged the country, cut off all supplies, and reduced 
Rome to the utmost distress by famine. In this emer¬ 
gency, Caiu3 Mutius undertook to rid his country oJ 
this dangerous enemy. He made his way into the 
camp of Porsenna, and entered into the very pranori- 
um, where he slew the king’s secretary, mistaking him, 
from his appearance, for the monarch himself. He 
was immediately seized and brought before Porsenna. 
Here he acknowledged the deed, and told the king that 
his danger was by no means over. Porsenna threat¬ 
ened him with death by torture unless he divulged 
the plots by which his life was threatened. Mutius 
immediately stretched forth his right hand, and thrust 
it into the fire of an altar which was burning before 
the king, saying, “ Behold how much I regard your 
threat of torture.” He held it in the flames till it was 
consumed, without a feature of his stern countenance 
indicating that he felt the pain. Porsenna, struck 
with his noble daring and contempt of suffering, com¬ 
manded him to be set at liberty; and Mutius then 
told him, in requital for his generosity, that he was 
only one of three hundred patrician youths who had 
vowed to kill the monarch, and that he must prepare 
for their attempts, which would be not less daring than 
his own. From that time Mutius was called Scccvola, 
or “ left-handed,” because he had thus lost the use of his 
right hand. Alarmed by the dangers which threatened 
him from foes so determined, Porsenna offered terms 
of peace to the Romans. A treaty was at length con¬ 
cluded, according to which Porsenna ceased to main¬ 
tain the cause of the Tarquins ; but demanded the res¬ 
titution of all the lands which the Romans had at any 
time taken from the states of Etruria, and that twenty 
hostages, ten youths and ten maidens, of the first 
houses, should be given up to him for security that the 
treaty would be faithfully observed. The legend re¬ 
lates that Cloelia, one of the hostages, escaped from 
the Etrurian camp, swam across the Tiber on horse¬ 
back, amid showers of darts from her baffled pursuers; 
but that the Romans, jealous of their reputation for 
good faith, sent her back to Porsenna. Not to be 
outdone in generosity, he gave to her and her female 
companions their freedom, and permitted her to take 
with her half of the youths ; while she, with the deli¬ 
cacy of a Roman maiden, selected those only who 
were of tender years. The Romans then, at the final 
settlement of the treaty, sent, as a present to Porsen¬ 
na, an ivory throne and sceptre, a golden crown, and 
a triumphal robe, the offerings by which the Etruscan 
cities had once acknowledged the sovereignty of Tar¬ 
quinius. When Porsenna quitted Rome, he entered 
the Latin territories, ana attacked Aricia, the chief 
town of Latium. The Arician?, being aided by the 
other Latin cities, and also by the Cumaeans, under 
the command of Aristodemus, defeated the Etruscans 
in a great battle, and put a stop to their aggressions. 
The Romans received the fugitives from Porsenna’s 
army, and treated them with great kindness ; in requital 
of which, Porsenna restored to them the lands which he 
had conquered beyond the Tiber. (Liv., 2, 9, &c.— 
Pint., Vit. Public .— Florus, 1,10.)—Such is an outline 
of the poetical legends respecting the great war with 
Porsenna. Niebuhr has examined the subject with great 
ability, and has been followed by Arnold and other 
writers. The war with Porsenna was in reality a 
great outbreak of the Etruscan power upon the nations 
southward of Etruria, in the very front of whom lay 
the Romans. The result of the war is, indeed, as 
strangely disguised as Charlemagne’s invasion of Spain 
is in the Romances. Rome was completely conquered ; 
all the territory which the kings had won op the right 
bank of the Tiber was now lost. Rome itself was 
surrendered to the Etrurian conqueror (whence the 
language of Tacitus: “ Scdem Jovis optimi maximi 




VOS 


POT 


- quam non Porsenna, dedita urbe, neque Galli 
capta, temerare potuissent." — Hist., 3, 72); his sov¬ 
ereignty was fully acknowledged by the offerings of 
the ivory throne, the sceptre, crown, and triumph¬ 
al robe, the usual badges of submission among the 
Etrurian cities, as we have already remarked. (Dion. 
Hal, 5, 34.) The Romans, moreover, gave up their 
arms, and only recovered their city and territory on 
condition of their renouncing the use of iron, except 
for implements of husbandry. Hence the language 
of Pliny (34, 14): “ In foedere, quod expulsis regibus 
populo Romano dedit Porsenna, nominatim compre- 
hcnsum invemmus , ne fcrro nisi in agricultura ute- 
rentur." In this latter statement we have an inci¬ 
dental hint of the Eastern origin and customs of the 
Etrurians ; in proof of which, reference may be made 
to the way in which the Philistines tyrannized over 
the Israelites during one of their periods of conquest. 
(Compare 1 Samuel , xiii., 19, seqq. — Niebuhr , Rom. 
Hist., vol. 1, p. 475, seqq. — Arnold's History of 
Rome, vol. 1, p. 125, seq ) —The remains of Porsenna 
were interred in a splendid mausoleum near Clusium, 
for some remarks on which consult the article on 
Clusium. 

Portumnus, a sea-deity. ( Vid. Melicerta.) 

Porcts, king of a part of northern India, between 
the Hydaspes and Acesines, and remarkable for stat¬ 
ure, strength, and dignity of mien. When Alexander 
invaded India, Porus collected his forces on the left 
bank of the Hydaspes to defend the passage. The 
stream was deep and rapid, and, at the time Alexander 
reached it, was perhaps little less than a mile broad. 
The Macedonian monarch, however, crossed the river 
by stratagem, at the distance of a day's march above 
his camp, and defeated the son of Porus. In a sub¬ 
sequent action he gained a decisive victory over Porus 
himself, who was taken prisoner. On being brought 
into the presence of Alexander, all that Porus would 
ask of his conqueror was to be treated as a king ; 
and when Alexander replied that this was no more 
than a king must do for his own sake, and bade him 
make some request for himself, his reply was still, 
that all was included in this. His expectations could 
scarcely have equalled the conqueror’s munificence. 
He was not only reinstated in his royal dignity, but 
received a large addition of territory. Yet it was 
certainly not pure magnanimity or admiration of his 
character that determined Alexander to this proceed¬ 
ing. His object seems to have been, in some de¬ 
gree, to secure the Macedonian ascendancy in the 
Pendjab by a stroke of policy, and to adjust the bal¬ 
ance of power between Porus and Taxiles, who might 
have become formidable without a rival. (Pint., Vit. 
Alex. — Arrian, Exp. Al., 5, 8, &c. — Curt., 8, 8, 
&c.— Thirlwall's Greece, vol. 7, p. 22.) 

Posideum, I. a promontory in Caria, between Mi¬ 
letus and the Iassian Gulf. (Mela, 1, 17.) — II. A 
promontory of Chios, nearest the mainland of Ionia. 
—III. A promontory in the northern part of Bithynia, 
now Tschautsche-Aghisi, &c.—The name implies a 
promontory sacred to Neptune (II ocreidtiv). 

Posidon (TloaeiStiv), the name of Neptune among 
the Greeks. ( Vid. Neptunus.) 

Posidonia. Vid. Passtum. 

Posidonius, I. a Stoic philosopher, a native of 
Apamea in Syria, and the last of that series of Stoics 
which belongs to the history of the Greek philosophy. 
He taught at Rhodes with so great reputation, that 
Pompey came hither, on his return from Syria, after 
the close of the Mithradatic war, for the purpose of 
attending his lectures. When the Roman command¬ 
er arrived at his house, he forbade his lictor to knock, 
as was usual, at the door. The hero, who had sub¬ 
dued the Eastern and Western world, paid homage to 
philosophy by lowering the fasces at the gate of Pos¬ 
idonius. When he was informed that he was at that 


time sick of the gout, he visited him in his confine¬ 
ment, and expressed great regret that he could not 
attend upon his school. Upon this, Posidonius, for¬ 
getting his pain, gratified his guest by delivering a 
discourse in his presence, the object of which was to 
prove that nothing is good which is not honourable. , 
(Cic., Tusc. Quccst., 2, 25.— Plin., Epist., 6, 30.) 
Posidonius studied natural as well as moral science ; 
and, in order to represent the celestial phenomena, he 
constructed a kind of planetarium, by means of which 
he exhibited the apparent motions of the sun, moon, 
and planets round the earth. (Cic., N. D., 2, 34.) 
Cicero says that he himself attended upon this philos¬ 
opher (N. D., 1, 3); and a later writer asserts, that 
he was brought to Rome by Marcellus, A.U.C. 702. 
(Suid., s. v. — Enfield's Hist. Philos., vol. I, p. 360, 
seq.) Posidonius was also known as an historical 
writer, having composed a continuation of the history 
of Polybius, under the title of “ A History of the 
events that have occurred subsequent to Polybius’' 
( r Iorop/a tcov pera Ifo'kvbiov). It appears to have 
extended to B.C. 63, or the close of the Mithradatic 
war. This work is lost, and, though its loss is much 
to be regretted, since we have no historians for the 
period of which it treated, yet our disappointment is 
somewhat diminished by the consideration that Plu¬ 
tarch drew from it a large part of his materials for the 
lives of Marius, Sylla, and Sertorius. (Scholl, Hist. 

Lit. Gr., vol. 4, p. 76 ) The fragments of Posido¬ 
nius were collected and edited by Bake, Lugd. Bat., 
1810, 8vo.—II. An astronomer and mathematician of 
Alexandrea. He was the disciple of Zeno, and con¬ 
temporary with, or else a short time posterior to, Era¬ 
tosthenes. He probably flourished about 260 B.C, 

He is particularly celebrated on account of his having 
employed himself in endeavouring to ascertain the 
measure.of the circumference of the earth by means 
of the altitude of a fixed star. According to Gleom 
edes, he concluded that it was 240,000 stadia ; but, 
according to Strabo, he made it 180,000 only. He is 
the reputed author of a treatise on military tactics, 
mentioned in the first chapter of ^Elian’s work on the 
same subject. No fragments of his writings remain. 
(Consult in relation to him, Delambre, in Biogr. Unix., 
vol. 35, p. 481, and the work of the same writer on 
the History of Ancient Astronomy, vol. 1, p. 219, 223, 

&c.) 

Postverta, a goddess at Rome, who presided over 
painful travails of women. (Ovid, Fast., 1, 633.— 
Varro, ap. Gell., N. A., 16, 16. — Gruter, Inscript., 
p. 50, n. 9.) 

Potamides, nymphs who presided over rivers and 
fountains, as their name (derived from Trorapog, “ a 
river") implies. 

Potamon, a philosopher of Alexandrea, whose era 
is not determined. While he selected what he judged 
most tenable from every system, he pretended to form 
of these extracts a separate doctrine of his own ; con¬ 
cerning which we have not sufficient details to enable 
us to judge. (Diog. Laert., 1, 21. — Tennemann, 
Manual of Phil., p. 172.) 

PoTAMos, a borough of Attica, connected with the 
tribe Leontis, where was the tomb of Ion, the son of 
Xanthus. (Pausan., 1, 31.) The remains of Potamos 
are laid down in modern maps at the mouth of a small 
river to the south of port Raphti. (Cramer's Ancient 
Greece, vol. 2, p. 381.) 

Potid^ea, a city of Macedonia, situated on the isth¬ 
mus connecting the peninsula of Pallene with the 
mainland. It was founded by the Corinthians (Thu- 
cyd.. 1, 56.— Scymn., ch., v. 628), though at what pe¬ 
riod is not apparent; it must, however, have existed 
some time before the Persian war, as we know from 
Herodotus that it sent troops to Platsea (9, 28), having 
already surrendered to the Persians on their march 
into Greece. (Herod., 7 , 123.) But, after the battl* 

* 1123 




PRJE 


PRAENESTE. 


of Salamis, it closed its gates against Artabazus, who, 
at the head of a large detachment from the army des¬ 
tined to act under Mardonius, had escorted Xerxes 
to the Hellespont. On his return, this general laid 
siege to the place, of which he would probably have 
obtained possession, through the treachery of one of 
its citizens, had not the plot been actually discovered. 
The attempt subsequently made against Potidaea by 
the Persians proved very disastrous, from a sudden 
influx of the sea, which occurred as the troops were 
crossing the bay to attack the town, and which occa¬ 
sioned the loss of a great part of the Persian forces, 
obliging the remainder to make a hasty retreat. (He¬ 
rod., 8, 127, seqq.) After the termination of this war, 
Potidsea appears to have fallen under the subjection of 
the Athenians, as it was then termed a tributary city. 
We learn from Thucydides, that the harsh conduct of 
Athens towards the Potidaeans, who were naturally 
inclined to the Dorian interest, compelled them to re¬ 
volt, and to seek the protection of Perdiccas and the 
Corinthians (1, 56, seqq.). After a severe action, in 
which the Athenians were finally victorious, the town 
was regularly besieged by both sea and land ; but it 
was not until near the conclusion of the second year 
that it capitulated, when the Athenian troops, greatly 
diminished by the plague, which had been conveyed 
thither from Athens, entered the place, the inhabitants 
being allowed to withdraw whither they chose. It 
was afterward recolonized from Athens. ( Thucyd ., 2, 
70.) On the occupation of Amphipolis, and other 
towns of Thrace, by Brasidas, that general attempted 
to seize upon the garrison of Potidaea ; but the at¬ 
tack having failed, he withdrew his forces from the 
walls. (Thucyd., 4, 135 ) Many years after this 
event, Potidsea appears to have revolted from Athens 
(Xen., Hist. Gr., 5, 216) ; as we learn from Diodo¬ 
rus that it was taken by Timotheus, genera) of that 
republic. It was subsequently occupied by Philip of 
Macedon, who allowed the Athenian troops to return 
home without ransom.—When Oassander ascended 
the throne, he founded a new city on the neck of the 
peninsula of Pallene ; thither he transferred the in¬ 
habitants of several neighbouring towns, and, among 
others, those of Potidaea, and the remnant of the pop¬ 
ulation of Olynthus. Cassandrea is said to have sur¬ 
passed all the Macedonian cities in opulence and 
splendour. From Procopius we learn that it fell a 
prey to the barbarian Huns, who left scarcely a ves¬ 
tige of it remaining. (Bell. Pers., 2, 4.— De. AEdif., 
4, 3.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 244, seqq.) 

Potitius. Vid. Pinarius. 

PotnL®, a city of Bceotia, about ten stadia to the 
southwest of Thebes. It had a sacred grove dedica¬ 
ted to Ceres and Proserpina. (Xen., Hist. Gr., 5, 
451.) It was here that Glaucus was said to have been 
torn in pieces by his infuriated mares. (Strabo, 409. 
— Virg., Georg., 3, 267.) The site of this place, al¬ 
ready in ruins when Pausanius wrote, corresponds 
nearly with that occupied by the village of Taki. 
(GelVs Itin., p. 110.) Strabo informs us, that some 
authors regarded Potniae as the Hypothebas of Homer 
(II., 2, 505.) 

Praeneste, now Palestrina, an ancient city of La- 
tium, southeast of Rome. Strabo makes the interve¬ 
ning distance 25 miles (200 stadia); but the Itiner¬ 
aries give, more correctly, 23 miles. Its citadel is de¬ 
scribed by Strabo as remarkable for its strength of po¬ 
sition. It stood on the brow of a lofty hill which 
overhung the city, and was cut off from the prolonga¬ 
tion of the chain by a narrow slip of inferior elevation. 
The origin of Prseneste, like that of many of the an¬ 
cient towms in Italy, is fabulous. According to some, 
it was founded by Caeculus, the son of Vulcan ( Virg., 
Mn., 7, 678); while others ascribe it to a chief of the 
name of Pmenestus, grandson of Ulysses and Circe 
Zenodol., Troezcn.,ap. Steph. Byz.) Strabo, how- 
1124 


ever, tells us more plainly that it claimed a Greelt 
origin, and had been named formerly Ilo'kvoTctiavoc; 
(238). Pliny (3, 5) also observes that it was once 
called Stephane. We may infer from Dionysius 
(1, 31) that Prameste was afterward colonized by Al¬ 
ba. It shared the fate of the other Latin towns, m 
becoming subject to Rome, upon the failure of the 
attempts made in common to assist the family of Tar- 
quin. (Liv., 2, 19.) Subsequently we find the Praj- 
nestini oftener uniting with the Volsci and other ene¬ 
mies in their attacks on Rome, than remaining firm 
in their allegiance to that power. (Liv ,6, 27.) They 
were defeated, however, by T. Quinctius Cincinnatus, 
near the river Allia, and eight of their towns and cas¬ 
tles fell into the victor’s hands, when they thought 
proper to submit. (Id., 6, 29.) Again they revolted, 
and were again conquered by Camillus. (Id , 8, 13.) 
—The strength of Prasneste rendered it a place of too 
great importance to be overlooked by the contending 
parties of Sylla and Marius. It w r as induced to join 
the cause of the latter by Cinna, and, during the short 
success which that faction obtained, was its strongest 
hold and support. But, on the return of Sylla from 
the war against Mithradates, Prseneste had soon reason 
to repent the part it had taken. The younger Marius, 
defeated by that victorious commander, was soon obli¬ 
ged to take refuge within its walls ; and, w'hen all at¬ 
tempts on the part of his confederates failed in raising 
the siege, he preferred to die by the sword of one of 
his own soldiers than fall into the hands of his adver¬ 
saries. Prseneste was compelled to yield to the vic¬ 
tors, who did not fail to satisfy their thirst of vengeance 
by a bloody massacre of the unfortunate inhabitants, 
and the entire plunder of their town, which finally was 
sold by auction. ( Appian, Bell. Civ., 1, 94.— Pint., 
Vit. Syll. — Flor., 3, 21.) It survived, however, these 
disasters, and, as it would seem, gathered strength 
from a colony of those very troops which had bee,n so 
instrumental in hastening its downfall. Even Sylla 
himself, as if to make some atonement for his cruelty, 
employed himself in repairing and embellishing one of 
its public edifices, the famous temple of Fortune, a 
goddess whose protection he specially acknowledged. 
Prasneste was again threatened in the tumult excited 
by the seditious Catiline ; but, as he himself boasts, 
was saved by the vigilance and foresight of Cicero. 
(Cat., 1, 3.) In the wars of Antony and Octavianus, 
it was occupied by Fulvia, wife of the former, and be¬ 
came the chief hold of that party. But it does not 
appear to have suffered much in the contests.—But 
the pride and boast of Prseneste was the temple of 
Fortune, which has already been alluded to. Both 
historians and poets make mention of its celebrity, as 
well as of the magnificence of its structure. Cicero, 
in his treatise on Divination (2, 41), alludes more than 
once to the antiquity of the oracle, known by the name 
of the Prcenestince sortes ; and relates, that when the 
celebrated Carneades came to Rome and visited Pras¬ 
neste, he was heard to declare that he had never seen 
a more fortunate Fortune than the goddess of that 
city. From this anecdote, it is evident that this tem¬ 
ple was much more ancient than the time of Sylla, 
who has been erroneously supposed by some to have 
erected it. The veneration in which this temple was 
held is also apparent from the privilege which it en¬ 
joyed of affording an asylum to criminals and fugitives 
(Polyb., 6, 11.) Sylla, however, certainly beautified 
the edifice ; for Pliny says, the first mosaic pavement 
(lithostrata) introduced into Italy, was made by ordei 
of that general for the temple of Fortune at Praeneste. 
(Plin., 36, 25.)—Whether the famous Barberini pave¬ 
ment, w'hich undoubtedly was taken from the ruins ol 
this building, be the same as that of Sylla, is very 
doubtful. Suetonius tells us that Augustus often made 
excursions from Rome to Praeneste, but generally em¬ 
ployed two days in journeying thither. (Aug., 27.'i— 





PR A 


P R I 


Among the productions of the territory of Prasneste, 
none are so often remarked as its walnuts. {Cat., R. 
R., 8.) Hence the Praenestini are sometimes nick¬ 
named Nuculce, especially by Cicero, who quotes Lu- 
cilius as his authority for so doing. ( De Orat., 2, 262.) 
But Festus accounts for the name in another manner ; 
he says, the Praenestini were so called from their coun¬ 
trymen having subsisted on walnuts when besieged 
by Hannibal in Gasilinum, the garrison of which they 
formed, in the second Punic war. {Liv., 23, 17.—L., 
19.) It may be observed, that the Praenestini appear 
to have had some peculiarities of idioms which distin¬ 
guished them from their neighbours. This is seen from 
Festus ( s. v. Tammodo.— Plautus, True., 3. 2.— 
Quintil., Inst. Or., 1, 5.— Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 
2, p. 66, seqq.). 

Pretoria, or Augusta Pretoria, a city of Cisal¬ 
pine Gaul, in the territory of the Salassi. It was built 
on the site occupied by the camp of Terentius Varro, 
when that commander was sent by Augustus to re¬ 
press the plundering movements of the Salassi and to 
seize upon their country. Augustus honoured the 
rising colony by giving it the name of Augusta Pre¬ 
toria. {Strabo, 205.) It is now known as Aoste, 
which gives its name to the fine valley in which it 
lies, and where several remains of the ancient city are 
still to be seen. According to Pliny (5, 10), Augusta 
Pretoria was reckoned the extreme point of Italy to 
the north. {Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 50.) 

Pratinas, a native of Phlius, contemporary with 
iEschylus, and a dramatic poet of considerable talent. 
He once obtained a tragic victory. But the manifest 
pre-eminence of the youthful ./Eschylus probably de¬ 
terred the Phliasian from continuing to cultivate the 
graver form of the art, and led him to contrive a novel 
and lhixed kind of play. Borrowing from tragedy its 
external form and mythological materials, Pratinas 
added a chorus of Satyrs, with their lively songs, ges¬ 
tures, and movements. This new composition was 
called the Satyric Drama, of which he must therefore 
be regarded as the inventor. {Suid., s. v. IT parlvaq. 
— Casaub., Sat. Poes., p. 122, seqq.) Pratinas, ac¬ 
cording to Suidas, exhibited fifty dramas, of which 
thirty-two were satyric. On one occasion, when he 
was acting, his wooden stage gave away, and, in con¬ 
sequence of that accident, the Athenians built a stone 
theatre. The Phliasians seem to have taken great de¬ 
light in the dramatic performances of their country¬ 
man {Schneider, de Orig. Trag., p. 90), and, accord¬ 
ing to Pausanias (2, 13), erected a monument in their 
market-place in honour of “Aristias, the son of Pra¬ 
tinas, who, with his father, excelled all except Aeschy¬ 
lus in writing satyric dramas.” Pratinas wrote also 
Hyporchemes. ( Athenceus, 14, p. 617, c. — Theatre 
of the Greeks, p. 61, 4 th ed.) 

PraxagSras, an Athenian, who flourished about 
345 A.D. At the age of nineteen, he published a 
History of the Kings of Attica, and, three years after, 
the Life of Constantine, in which he speaks favourably 
of that prince, a circumstance which would show that 
Praxagoras was not a very bigoted pagan. He wrote 
also a Life of Alexander the Great. His works are 
lost. {Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 6, p. 335.) 

Praxiteles, a statuary and sculptor of the greatest 
eminence, who flourished together with Euphranor, 
about Olympiad 104, B.C. 364. The city of his 
birth is uncertain. Cedrenus {Annal., 265) notices 
him as a native of Cnidus; but this is evidently a mis¬ 
take, arising perhaps from the previous mention of the 
statue of Venus at Cnidus. Meyer (ad Winch., Op., 
6, 2, 162) contends that he was a native of Andros, 
and adduces in support of this opinion an epigram of 
Damagetes. {Anthol. Pal., 7, 355.) But no one 
who peruses the piece in question, free from the in¬ 
fluence of preconceived opinion, can view it as estab¬ 
lishing this conclusion. The writer of the lines speaks, 


indeed, of some Praxiteles of Andros, but the name 
Praxiteles was exceedingly common among the Greeks. 
The most probable opinion is, that Praxiteles was a 
native of Paros. {Sillig, Diet. Art., p. 107.) — In 
praising Praxiteles as an original inventor, as the dis¬ 
coverer of a new style, writers very generally have 
mistaken the influence exercised by his genius upon 
the progress and character of sculpture. Finding the 
highest sublimity in the more masculine graces of 
the art already reached ; perceiving, also, that the 
taste of his age tended thitherward, he resolved to 
woo extensively the milder and gentler beauties of 
style. In this pursuit he attained to eminent success. 
None ever more happily succeeded in uniting softness 
with force, or elegance and refinement with simplicity : 
his grace never degenerates into the affected, nor his 
delicacy into the artificial. He caught the delightful 
medium between the stern majesty which awes, and 
the beauty which merely seduces ; between the ex¬ 
ternal allurements of form, and the colder, bot loftier 
charm of intellectuality. Over his compositions he 
has thrown an expression spiritual at once and sen¬ 
sual ; a voluptuousness and modesty which touch the 
most insensible, yet startle not the most retiring. The 
works that remain of this master, either in originals 
or in repetitions—the Faun; the Thespian Cupid, in 
the museum of the Capitol; the Apollo with a lizard, 
one of the most beautiful, as well as difficult, speci¬ 
mens of antiquity—abundantly justify this character. 
Of the works that have utterly perished, the nude and 
draped, or Coan and Cnidiau Venus of Praxiteles, 
fixed each a standard which subsequent invention 
dared scarcely to alter. Indeed, he appears to have 
been the first, perhaps the sole master, who attained 
to the true ideal on this subject, in the perfect union 
of yielding feminine grace with the dignity of intel¬ 
lectual expression. The Venus of Cnidus, in her rep¬ 
resentative the Medicean, still enchants the world. 
{Memes, History of the Fine Arts, p. 63.) An enu¬ 
meration of the works of Praxiteles may be found in 
Sillig {Diet. Art., p. 108, seqq.). For some remarks 
relative to the Cnidian Venus, consult the article Cni¬ 
dus ; and for the story of the Cupid, vid. Phryne. 

Priamides, a patronymic applied to Paris, as being 
son of Priam. It is also given to Hector, De'iphobus, 
and all the other children of the Trojan monarch 
{Ovid, Her. — Virg., JEn., 3, 295, &c.) 

Priamus, the last king of Troy, was son of Laome- 
don. When Hercules took the city of Troy {vid. 
Laomedon), Priam was in the number of his prisoners ; 
but his sister, Hesione, redeemed him from captivity, 
and he exchanged his original name of Podarces for 
that of Priam, which signifies bought or ransomed. 
{Vid. Hesione, towards the close of that article, and 
also Podarces.) He was placed on his father’s throne 
by Hercules, and employed himself with well-directed 
diligence in repairing, fortifying, and embellishing the 
city of Troy. He had married, by his father’s orders, 
Arisba, whom now he divorced for Hecuba, the daugh¬ 
ter of Dymas the Phrygian {II , 16, 718), or, according 
to others, of Cisseus. {Eurip., Hec., 3.) Hecuba 
bore him nineteen children {11, 24, 496), of whom 
the chief were, Hector, Paris or Alexander, De'ipho¬ 
bus, Helenus, Tro'ilus, Polites, Polydorus, Cassandra, 
Creusa, and Polyxena. After he had reigned for some 
time in the greatest prosperity, Priam expressed a 
desire to recover his sister Hesione, whom Hercules 
had carried into Greece, and married to Telamon,, 
his friend. To carry this plan into execution, Priam 
manned a fleet, of which he gave the command to his 
son Paris, with orders to bring back Hesione. Paris, 
to whom the goddess of Beauty had promised the fair¬ 
est woman in the world {vid. Paris), neglected, in some 
measure, his father’s injunctions, and, as if to make 
reprisals upon the Greeks, he carried away Helen, the 
wife of Menelaiis, king of Sparta, during the absence o* 

1125 




PRI 


PRI 


her husband. This violation of Hospitality kindled the 
flames of war. All the suiters of Helen, at the request 
of Menelaus ( vid. Menelaus), assembled to avenge the 
abduction of his spouse, and the combined armament 
set sail for Troy. Priam might have averted the im¬ 
pending blow hy the restoration of Helen ; but this he 
refused to do when the ambassadors of the Greeks 
came to him for that purpose. Troy was accordingly 
beleaguered, and frequent skirmishes took place, in 
which the success was various. The siege was con¬ 
tinued for ten successive years, and Priam had the 
misfortune to see the greater part of his sons fall in 
defence of their native city. Hector, the eldest of 
these, was the only one upon whom now the r l rojans 
looked for protection and support; but he, too, fell a 
sacrifice to his own courage, and was slain by Achil¬ 
les. The father thereupon resolved to go in person to 
the Grecian camp, and ransom the body of the bravest 
of his children, The gods interested themselves in his 
behalf, and Mercury was directed to guide the aged 
monarch in safety amid the dangers of the way, and 
conduct him to the tent of Achilles. The meeting of 
Priam and Achilles was solemn and affecting. The 
conqueror paid to the Trojan monarch that attention 
and reverence which was due to his dignity, his years, 
and his misfortunes ; and Priam, in a suppliant man¬ 
ner, addressed the prince whose hands had robbed him 
of the greatest and best of his sons. Achilles was 
moved by his tears and entreaties. He restored Hec¬ 
tor, and permitted Priam a truce of 12 days for the 
funeral of his son. Some time after, Troy was betray¬ 
ed into the hands of the Greeks by Antenor and yEne- 
as, and Priam was slain by Neoptolemus, the son of 
Achilles, at the foot of the altar of Jupiter Hercaeus, at 
which that prince had killed the wounded Polites, one 
of the sons of Priam, who, after the example of his fa¬ 
ther and mother, had fled thither for protection during 
the burning of the city. ( Horn., II., 24, 139, seqq. — 
Virg. , JEn., 2, 507, &c.— Horat., Od., 10, 14.— Hy- 
• gin., fab., 110.— Q. Smyrn., 15, 226.) 

Priapus, I. a deity introduced at a comparatively 
late period into the Grecian mythology. He was a ru¬ 
ral god, worshipped by the people of Lampsacus, a 
city on the Hellespont famous for its vineyards. Pri- 
apus was not, as is supposed, from the employment 
usually assigned, him by the Romans after they had 
adopted his worship, merely the god of gardens, but of 
fruitfulness in general. “ This god,” says Pausanias, 
“ is honoured elsewhere by those who keep sheep and 
goats, or stocks of bees, calling him the son of Bac¬ 
chus and Venus.” (Pausan., 9,31.) Fishermen also 
made offerings to him, as the deity presiding over the 
fisheries (Anthol., 6, 33, 190, 192); and in the Anthol¬ 
ogy, Priapus of the haven (Aipevirag) is introduced, 
giving a pleasing description of the spring, and inviting 
the mariners to put to sea. It was fabled that Priapus 
was the son of Venus by Bacchus, whom she met on 
his return from his Indian expedition at the Lampsa- 
cene town Aparnis. Owing to the malignity of Juno, 
he was bom so deformed that his mother was struck 
with horror and renounced (arrrjpvslro) him. ( Schol. 
ad Apoll. Rhod., 1, 932.) Others said that he was the 
son of Bacchus by Ohione, or a Naiad (Schol. ad 
Theocr., 1, 21); others, that he had a long-eared fa¬ 
ther, Pan or a satyr, perhaps, or it may be his own 
sacred beast, the ass. ( Afran ., ap. Macrob., Sat., 6, 
5.— Ovid, Fast., 1 , 391. — Id. ib., 6, 345); others gave 
him Mercury or Adonis (Hygin., fob., 160.— Eudocia, 
24), or even Jove himself for a sire. ( Eudocia, 345.) 
—Priapus, like the other rural gods, is of a ruddy com¬ 
plexion. His cloak is filled with all kinds of fruits; 
he has a scythe in his hand, and usually a horn of plen¬ 
ty. ( Keightley's Mythology, p. 236.) Knight takes# 
a more philosophical view of the character and attri¬ 
butes of this deity. According to him, Priapus, like 
Osiris, is a type of the great generating or productive 
1126 


principle of the universe. In this universal character 
he is celebrated by the Greek poets under the title of 
Love or Attraction, the first principle of Animation; 
the father of gods and men ; and the regulator and dis¬ 
poser of all things. ( Aristoph ., Av., 693, ed. Brunch. 
—Parmenid., ap. Stob., c. 12. —Orph., Hymn., 5, 5.) 
He is said to pervade the universe with the motion of 
his wings, bringing pure light; and thence to be called 
the splendid, the self-illumined, the ruling Priapus 
(Orph., Hymn., 5, 5); light, being considered, in this 
primitive philosophy, as the great nutritive principle of 
all things. (Soph., (Ed. Tyr., 1437.) Wings are at¬ 
tributed to him as the emblems of spontaneous motion ; 
and he is said to have sprung from the egg of night, 
because the egg was the ancient symbol of organic 
matter in its inert state. (Inquiry, &c., $ 23.— Class 
Journ., vol. 23, p. 12.) — The same writer considers 
the name Priapus as equivalent to Briapus (BP1A- 
nOY2), i. e., “ Clamorous ,” from the ancient custom 
of attaching bells to statues and figures of this deity ; 
the ringing of bells and clatter of metals being almost 
universally employed as a means of consecration, and 
a charm against the destroying and inert powers. 
(Class. Journ., vol. 26, p. 48.) Schwenck makes 
Priapus identical with the Sun, the great source of 
life and fecundity ; and taking arena, “father,” as a 
cognate term, derives Upiarrog from Bpianog ((dpi, in¬ 
tensive, and arrog), “ the mighty father ,” i. e., the 
great parent of being. (Andeutung., p. 217.)—II. A 
town of Mysia, not far from Lampsacus, which had a 
harbour on the Propontis. It derived its name from 
the god Priapus, who was worshipped here with pecu¬ 
liar honours ; and to this place he is said to have re¬ 
tired when driven away from Lampsacus. The mod¬ 
ern name is Karaboa. (Plin., 5, 31.— Mela> 1, 19.) 

Priene, a city of Caria, north of the mouth of the 
Mseander, and at the foot of Mount Mycale. It was 
not properly a maritime place, and both Strabo and 
Ptolemy remove it some distance inland. Yet Herod¬ 
otus speaks of the vessels which it furnished for the 
Ionian fleet (6, 8), and Scylax assigns it two harbours 
(37). One of these was probably choked up at a later 
period by the alterations which the Maeander has made 
along this coast. Priene was an Ionian colony (Pau- 
san., 7, 2), and formed one of the twelve confederate 
cities of the Ionian league ; it lay, however, according 
to Herodotus and all subsequent writers, in Caria. 
(Herod., 1, 142.) It was the native place of Bias, one 
of the seven sages of Greece. The ancient city would 
seem to have existed as late as A.D. 1280. (Pachy¬ 
meres, vol. 1, p. 320.) The modern village of Sa7n- 
son-Kalesi now occupies its site. (Mannert, Gcogr., 
vol. 6, pt. 3, p. 264.) 

Priscianus, one of the most celebrated gramma¬ 
rians of antiquity, surnamed Ccesariensis , either from 
having been born in Caesarea in Palestine, or from 
having there principally taught his art. He passed a 
part of his life at Constantinople, during the reign of 
the Emperor Justinian ; as appears, not only from ihe 
title of the 13th chapter of the Orthography of Ccssi- 
odorus, his contemporary, but also from a Hamburg 
manuscript bearing the following inscription : “ Pris- 
ciani ars Grammatica viri eloquentissimi, grammatia 
Ccesariensis ; scripsi ego Theodorus Dionysii V. D. 
memorialis sacri scrinvi, epistolarum et. adjector V. M 
queestoris in urbe Roma Constantinopolitana die Cal. 
Oct. indictione quinta, Olibrio viro clarissimo Cos .’ 
This Olibrius was sole consul in 526, the year in which 
the manuscript was written, the copyist of which calls 
himself the disciple of Priscian. (Fabr., Bibl. Lat., 
vol. 3, p. 398, ed. Ernesti .) Priscian is the author ol 
the most complete grammar that has come down to us 
from the ancients. It is entitled “ Comment'anorum 
grammaticorum libri, xviii.,” or “ De octo partibus 
oralionis carundemque constructione and is address¬ 
ed to Julian, a man of consular and patrician rank. 



P R t 


PRO 


The first sixteen books, which are commonly styled 
“ the Great Priscian,” treat of the eight parts of 
speech; the last two, generally called “the Little Pris¬ 
cian,” are occupied with the Syntax. (Putsch., p. 
592.) This is not, however, the only grammatical 
work of Priscian; we have also from him treatises 
on accents ; on the declension of nouns ; on comic me¬ 
tres ; on numbers, rules, and measures (“ De Jiguris 
et nomimbus numerorum, et de normis ac ponderi- 
bus ”), &c. He is probably, too, the author of three 
poems, erroneously ascribed to Rhamnius Fannius. 
One of these is a version of the Itinerary of Diony¬ 
sius of Charax, the second is on weights and meas¬ 
ures, and the third on the stars. The first of these 
poems, entitled Periegesis e Dionysio, or De situ or- 
his terra, is an imitation rather than strict version 
of the Greek original, and consists of 1087 verses. 
Priscian follows, in general, the author’s train of ideas ; 
but he makes, at the same time, certain alterations 
which he deems necessary, especially in substituting 
Christian ideas for what related in the original to the 
worship of the heathen gods. To the description of 
places he adds various remarkable particulars, gener¬ 
ally obtained from Solinus. The object being the in¬ 
struction of the young, to whom he wished to present 
a general summary of geography, he writes in a very 
clear and simple style, without even venturing on any 
flight of poetry. The poem on weights and measures 
is incomplete; we have only 162 verses. In the first 
55, the author treats briefly of weights, probably be¬ 
cause he had already discussed this branch of his sub¬ 
ject more fully in his prose work already mentioned. 
He enters, however, into very full details respecting 
the measures of liquids and fruits, to which the rest of 
the poem is entirely devoted. The third poem of 
Priscian’s contains no more than 200 verses ; it is a 
dry nomenclature of the stars and planets, and is en¬ 
titled “ Epitome phenomenon,” or “ De Sidenbus .” 
These three poems are given in the fifth volume of 
Wernsdorff ’s Poete Latini Minores, and the third also 
in Burmann’s Anthology (vol. 2, p. 333). The gram¬ 
matical works of Priscian are given by Putschius 
among the Grammatici Latini, 1605. The latest edi¬ 
tion of the Grammatical Commentaries is that of 
Krehl, Lips., 1819, 2 vols. 8vo ; and of the minor 
works, that of Lindemann, Lugd. Bat., 1818. ( Scholl, 

Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 3, p. 113, 329. — Bdhr, Gesch. 
Rom. Lit., p. 541.) 

Privernum, a city of Latium, in the territory of the 
Volsci *, the ancient name of which is but partially lost 
in that of the modern Piperno , which marks its situa¬ 
tion. Virgil makes it the birthplace of Camilla (2En., 
11, 539). We have the authority of the same poet 
(l. c. ) for ascribing it to the Volsci; but Strabo (231) 
would seem to consider the Privernates as a distinct 
people from the Volsci, for he particularizes them 
among the petty nations conquered by the Romans 
and incorporated in Latium. The same geographer 
elsewhere points out the situation of Privernum be¬ 
tween the Latin and Appian Ways. ( Strabo , 237.) 
This apparently insignificant place, trusting, as it would 
seem, to its naturaf strength and remote situation, pre¬ 
sumed to brave the vengeance of Rome by making 
incursions on the neighbouring colonies of Setia and 
Norba. ( Liv., 7, 15.) A consul was immediately 
despatched to chastise the offenders, and in the sub¬ 
mission of the town obtained the honours of a triumph. 
The Privernates again, however, renewed their hostile 
depredations ; and the offence was repeated so often, 
that it was found necessary to demolish their walls and 
remove their senate to Rome. An assembly was held 
in that city, and a debate ensued on the punishment 
to be inflicted on the inhabitants of Privernum. A 
deputy of the conquered town being asked what pen¬ 
alty their rebellious conduct deserved, boldly replied, 
“ Such punishment as they merit who claim their free¬ 


dom.” The Romans had the generosity and good 
sense to be pleased with this spirited reply ; and, in¬ 
stead of executing farther severity, they admitted the 
Privernates to the rights of Roman citizens. (Liv., 8, 
1, seqq .— Val. Max., 6, 2.) Festus, however, men¬ 
tions it among the prefecture, or those towns in which 
the praetor at Rome administered justice by deputy. 
Frontinus classes Privernum among the military colo¬ 
nies. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 109, seqq.) 

Probus,' I. M. Aurelius Severus, a native of Sir- 
mium in Pannonia. Having been left early an orphan 
by his father Maximus, who died a tribune in Egypt, 
and having opened a road to distinction by his sword, 
he was long regarded as the man upon whom the elec¬ 
tion to the empire was, at one time, likely to fall. 
Aurelian, when appointing him to the command of the 
tenth, his own legion, which had been that of Claudi¬ 
us, says in his letters, that, “ by a sort of prerogative of 
good fortune, it had been always commanded by men 
who were one day to be princes.” Tacitus had recom¬ 
mended Probus to the senate as a fitter person than him¬ 
self for their sovereign ; and, when acquainting Probus 
with the circumstances of his own election, wrote to 
him, “You know, however, that the weight of the com¬ 
monwealth rests rather upon your shoulders, and the 
senate knows it too.” When the tribunes, on the usur¬ 
pation of Florianus, harangued their divisions in dif¬ 
ferent parts of the camp, they confined themselves, on 
a concerted plan, to describing what the qualities of 
an emperor should be, without directly naming Pro¬ 
bus ; but the cohorts everywhere, as by a unanimous 
impulse, broke out into acclamations, “ Probus Au¬ 
gustus, the gods preserve thee !” Snatching a purple 
robe from the statue of a neighbouring temple, they 
threw" it over the shoulders of Probus, and hurried him 
along to a tribunal of turf, which had been hastily 
raised, that he might deliver to them his inaugural ha¬ 
rangue. On the receipt of the despatches by the sen¬ 
ate, one of their number, Manlius, whose turn it wasRo 
speak, enlarged upon the victories of Probus over the 
Franks and Alemanni, the Sarmatians and Goths, the 
Parthians and Persians ; on his respectable life ; his 
clemency and justice, in which he resembled Trajan; 
but he was interrupted by shouts of “ all, all,” in at¬ 
testation of their unanimous assent. Though the laws 
had not consolidated, the grace of Probus confirmed 
the privileges which Tacitus had granted to the sen¬ 
ate, and the right of appointing proconsuls, hearing 
appeals from the courts, and ratifying the constitutions 
or edicts of the emperor. The Franks and Burgundi¬ 
ans having overrun Gaul, Probus marched to repel 
their invasion. In the several battles fought 400,000 
of the barbarians fell, 70 cities opened their gates, 
the spoil which had been taken was restored, contri¬ 
butions were furnished of corn, of cattle, of horses, 
and of sheep ; 16,000 Germans were draughted into 
the legions of Rome, and nine princes offered their 
hostages and their homage. Having recovered Gaul, 
he carried his arms into the countries beyond the 
Adriatic ; forced the Gets to submit to his arms or 
court his alliance ; overcame the Sarmataa ; liberated 
Isauria from the oppression of Palfurius, a famous rob¬ 
ber, who was slain ; obtained by his arms peace from 
the Persians ; subdued the Blemmy®, a people inhab¬ 
iting the borders of Egypt and ^Ethiopia; rescued 
Coptos and Ptolema'is from the barbarian yoke ; re¬ 
duced Saturninus, Proculus, and Bonosus, the former 
of whom had usurped the sovereignty in Egypt, and 
the two latter in Gaul ; and, after various battles, van¬ 
quished the Vandals, many of whom he had trans¬ 
planted to the Roman soil, and who had broken their 
pledge of fidelity. Groups of all nations preceded his 
triumphal car. Amid the transplanted trees that 
formed a forest in the amphitheatre, thousands of 
stags, wild boars, and goats w r ere turned loose as 
prizes for the most dexterous of the people ; three hun- 

1127 



PRO 


PROCLUS. 


tired bears were exposed to the archers; and a hun¬ 
dred lions, transfixed by the javelins of the hunters, 
lay stretched between Isaurian robbers and Blemmyan 
captives; of the latter tradition tells us, perhaps from 
some peculiarity in their armour, that they were head¬ 
less, and that their eyes and mouths were seated in 
their breasts.—It was the favourite maxim of Probus, 
after he had secured peace by his victories, that in a 
short time soldiers would be unnecessary. With the 
wisdom of a statesman and the policy of a general, he 
employed them, during the intervals of war, in the 
construction of bridges and aqueducts, and in the 
planting of Mount Alma, at Sirmium, with vines. 
The draining of a marsh, at the latter place, which 
was the place of his birth, proved fatal to him. The 
soldiers, impatient of their labours, aggravated by a 
hot sun, rose in mutiny, and, pursuing their emperor 
into an iron turret, which he had erected for the more 
convenient inspection of the workmen, put him to 
death, in the 50th year of his age, after a reign of six 
years and four months, A.D. 282. The deed was no 
sooner executed than they repented. They raised a 
monument to his memory, and inscribed on the mar¬ 
ble, “ Probus, emperor, a man of real probity, the con¬ 
queror of the barbarians and the usurpers.” A weapon 
or a piece of armour was the sole share which Probus 
could be prevailed upon to receive of the booty of the 
field. On the soldiers pressing upon him an Alan 
horse, which was said to run a hundred miles in a day, 
he said, “ it was fitter for a runaway soldier than for 
a fighting one.” The simplicity of his manners stri¬ 
kingly contrasted with the pride and spirit of his bear¬ 
ing as a Roman general. An embassy from the Per¬ 
sians entered his camp with a pompous retinue, bear¬ 
ing presents to the Emperor of Rome. They found 
him seated on the grass at the hour of his repast, hard 
pease and coarse bacon forming his only viands. Look¬ 
ing up at the astonished and half-incredulous envoy, 
he spoke lightly of their presents, saying “ that all their 
king possessed was already his, and that he should 
come for the rest whenever he chose.” Then, remo¬ 
ving the cap which he wore, and exposing the crown 
of his head, he added, “ Tell your master that, if he 
does not submit to Rome, I will make his kingdom as 
bare as this head is bald.” The threat was believed, 
and the submission was tendered. ( Vopisc., Vit. 
Prob.—Zosim ., 1,64, seqq. — Elton's Roman Emper¬ 
ors, p. 181.)—II. yEmilius, a grammarian in the age 
of Theodosius. The lives of excellent commanders, 
written by Cornelius Nepos, have been falsely attrib¬ 
uted to him by some authors. ( Vid. Nepos.) 

Procas, a king of Alba, after his father Aventinus. 
He was father of Amulius and Numitor. (Liv ., 1, 3. 
-Ovid, Met., 14, 622.— Virg., JEn., 6, 767.) 

Peochyta, an island off the coast of Campania, and 
adjacent to yEnaria. It is now Procida. (Virg., 
2En., 9, 714. — Sil. Ital., 8, 542.) The poet last 
quoted makes Prochyta to have been placed on the 
giant Mimas, as Inarime was on Iapetus or Typhoeus 
(12, 147). 

Procles, a son of Aristodemus and Argia, and ( 
twin-brother of Eurysthenes. ( Vid. Eurysthenes.) 

Proclid^e, the descendants of Procles, who sat on 
the throne of Sparta together with the Eurysthenidse. 

( Vid. Eurysthenes.) 

Proclus, a celebrated philosopher of the New-Pla¬ 
tonic sect, born at Constantinople A.D. 412. lie 
spent his ardent and enthusiastic youth at Xanthus, in 
Lycia, a city devoted to Apollo and Minerva, where 
his parents resided ; and from this circumstance he 
was called “ the Lycian.” From Xanthus he removed 
to Alexandrea, where he attended the lectures of 
Olvmpiodorus, a celebrated Pythagorean. From Al¬ 
exandrea he went to Athens, and became the disciple 
of the Platonist Syrianus, and of Asclepigenia, daugh- 
'•erof Plutarch. At the age of twenty-eight he wrote 
1128 


- his Commentary on the Timceus of Plato, which it 
, generally regarded as a masterpiece of erudition, 
i Syrianus designated him as his successor, and frori 
i this circumstance he obtained the surname of Diado 

- chus (A iddo^oq, “successor"). Proclus threw hint 
l self blindly into the mystic theology of the day, an< 

, was initiated into the arcana of all the Oriental sects 
t He united an imaginative temper to great learning, 
} but was unable to balance his acquirements by any 
; weight of understanding. He looked upon the Orphic 
i Hymns and Chaldrean Oracles, which he had diligent 

: ly studied, as divine revelations, and capable of be 
coming instrumental to philosophy by means of an al- 
i legorical exposition ; whereby, also, he endeavoure* 
s to make Plato and Aristotle agree. He called him 
self the last link of the Hermeic chain, that is, the lag 
■ of men consecrated by Hermes, in whom, by perpet 
ual tradition, was preserved the occult knowledge o 
the mysteries. ( Marini, Vita Procli, p. 53, seqq.- 
Id. ibid., p. 76.) He elevated faith above science 
as forming a closer bond of union with Good and Uni 
ty. (Theolog. Plat., 1, 25, 29.) His sketch of phi 
losophy contains a commentary on the doctrines of 
Plotinus, and an attempt to establish this point, that 
there is but one real cause and principle of all things, 
and that this principle is Unity, which produces ail 
things in one uniform order, by triads. His obscure 
system was founded on an imperfect analysis and syn¬ 
thesis of the properties of Being, of which it admitted 
three grand divisions, Existence, Life, and Reason, or 
NoOf. All these he derived from Unity, and made 
them the source of three other triads. He distin¬ 
guished the Divinities (making these also descend 
from Unity and give birth to triads) into Intelligible 
and Intelligent, Supernatural and Natural; attributed 
a supernatural efficacy to the name of the Supreme 
Being ; and, like his predecessors, exalted Theurgy 
above Philosophy. Proclus also attacked the Chris¬ 
tian religion, being principally offended by the doctrine 
of the creation of the world. In his three treatises 
on Providence, Fate, and Evil, he states with great 
ability his notion that the latter does not spring from 
Matter, but from the limitation of power, and labours 
to reconcile the system of Plotinus with the conclu 
sions of sound reason. Proclus died A.D. 485, with 
a reputation for wisdom and even for miraculous pow¬ 
ers approaching adoration, leaving behind him a crowd 
of followers. ( Tennemann, Manual of Philosophy, 
p. 200, seqq., Johnson's transl.) —The best edition of 
the entire works of this philosopher is that of Cousin, 
1820—27, Pans, 6 vols. 8vo. We have of Proclus, 

1. A work on the Theology of Plato (Elf rqv IlXd- 
rovoq deoloyiav), in six books. It was published in 
1618, fob, from the Hamburg press.— 2 . Theological 
Institutes CEroixeluaig Jeoloyiuri), the best edition of 
which is that of Creuzer, Franco}., 1822, 8vo.—3. A 
work On Motion (Jlepl Kivqcreog), also entitled 2 toi- 
Xdcxng $voikt/ (“ Physical Institutes"), the best edi¬ 
tion of which is that of Weis, Basil., 1545, 8vo.—4. 

A Commentary on the Works and Days of Hesiod 
('V'Koyvrjpa eiq ra 'H aiodov "Epya ual 'H /uepag), ap¬ 
pended as scholia to some of the editions of Hesiod. 

5. A Grammatical Chrestomathy (Xpecropdheia ypau- 
fiaruiri), in two books. It is a sort of treatise on 
style, extracted and derived from the ancient gramma¬ 
rians, and its principal object is to point out the dif¬ 
ferent kinds of poetry, and the writers who have dis¬ 
tinguished themselves in the same. We have only 
fragments of this work remaining, which lead us to 
regret very deeply the loss of the other portions. 
These fragments are of three kinds : (a) Notices ex 
traded from the Chrestomathy by Photius, and pre 
served in his Bibliotheca. (/?) A Life of Homer, which 
owes its preservation to its having been placed by 
some copyists at the head of certain MSS. of the Iliad, 
(y) Arguments of many of the minor epic poems, ap 








PRO 


PRO 


peitaining to the mythic and Trojan cycles, now lost. 
—6. Eighteen Arguments against the Christians 
(’Ern^apy/rara iy nard XpurTiavuv). In this work 
Proclus attempts to prove the eternity of the world, 
that favourite thesis of Platonism. The treatise would 
probably have been lost, had not Johannes Philoponus 
written a refutation, in which he has literally inserted 
the work which he attacks.—7. A Commentary on the 
Timceus of Plato (EZf rov rov II Tidrovoy T Ipatov 
iiropvypaTa), in five books. As these five books con¬ 
tain no more than one third of the dialogue, it is pos¬ 
sible that this work may not have reached us entire. 
It is regarded as the best of the productions of Pro¬ 
clus, and has, moreover, the accidental merit of having 
preserved for us the work of Timaeus of Locri, because, 
viewing it as the source whence Plato derived his*ma- 
terials, he placed it at the head of his commentary.— 
8 . A Commentary on the First Alcibiades of Plato 
(Efq rov TiAaruvoq tt purov ’AA ni6m6i]v). The best 
edition is that of Creuzer, Francof, 1820, 8vo.—9. 
Commentary on the Republic of Plato (Eiq ryv II Id- 
ruvoq 7 ToTareiav), &c. ( Scholi , Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 

7, p. 104, seqq.) —Proclus was also the author of six 
hymns, one to the Sun, another to the Muses, two to 
Venus, one to Hecate and Janus, and one to Minerva. 
They belong properly to the same class with the Or¬ 
phic hymns. The latest edition of the Hymns is that 
of Boissonade, Paris , 1824, 32ino. 

Procne. Vid. Philomela. 

Proconnesus (or the Isle of Stags), an island and 
city of Asia Minor to the northeast of Cyzicus. It is 
now Marmara , whence the modern name of the Pro¬ 
pontis is derived (Sea of Marmara). Proconnesus 
was much celebrated for its marble quarries, which 
supplied most of the public buildings in Cyzicus with 
their materials. ( Strabo, 588.) The marble was 
white, with black streaks intermixed. ( Blasius, Ca- 
ryoph. de Marm. Antiq.) Aristeas, who wrote a po¬ 
em on the Arimaspians, was a native of the city. 
(Herod., 4, 14.— Strab., 588.) 

Procopius, one of the most celebrated historians 
of the Eastern empire. He was born at Caesarea in 
Palestine, and exercised at Constantinople the profes¬ 
sion of rhetorician and sophist. It has been disputed 
whether he was a Christian or not. The indifference 
and silence with which he passes over the religious 
disputes that agitated the Church in his day have 
caused him to be suspected of paganism, but it is 
more than probable that he regarded these miserable 
quarrels as unworthy to occupy a place in a political 
historv. Justin the elder assigned him to Belisarius 
as his secretary and counsellor, with the charge of ac¬ 
companying this general in his several expeditions. 
This nomination took place a short time previous to 
A.D. 527, the year when Justin died. Belisarius, 
whom he had, in consequence of this appointment, 
followed in his campaign in Africa against the San¬ 
dals, sent him to Syracuse, on some business relative 
to the army. In 556 he employed him usefully in his 
campaign against the Goths in Italy. Subsequently 
to 559 he was named a senator, and about 562 prefect 
of Constantinople, a place which Justinian afterward 
took from him. He died at an advanced age.—In his 
History of his oxen times (Tdm icaO’ avrdv iaroptCxv 
fiibhia okt&), in eight books, of which the first four 
bear the title of Pcrsica, and the others that of Goth- 
ica , Procopius describes the wars of the Byzantine 
Empire with the Persians, the Vandals, the Moors, 
and the Goths, adding to the narrative, from time to 
time, an account of contemporaneous events. Ac¬ 
cording to two modern Oriental scholars, Procopius 
derived his materials for an account of Persia and Ar¬ 
menia from the Armenian work of the Bishop Puzunt 
Posdus, who was born at Constantinople, of Greek 
parents, and who wrote a history of Armenia $in six 
Woks, of which the last four have reached us. ( Cha- 
7 I) 


! han de Cxrbied, and F. Martin .— Rechcrckes sur 
VHist, ancicnne de VAsie , Paris, 1806, Svo, p. 294.) 
Procopius is the author of a work entitled Anecdota , 
or secret history, in which Justinian and his Empress 
Theodora are represented in the most odious light. 
Procopius assigns as a reason for writing this last 
work, that in his history he could not speak of per¬ 
sons and things as he wished. He was the author of 
a third work, “On the edifices erected by the Emperor 
Justinian.” As an eyewitness of many events which 
he describes, Procopius is entitled to great attention. 
He writes like one free from all the prejudices of his 
age ; when, however, he makes mention of the em¬ 
peror and his court, he appears entitled only to that 
degree of credit which is due to one who writes un 
der the constraint and eye of his prince. The works 
of Procopius form part of the collection of the By¬ 
zantine historians. ( Scholl, vol. 6, p. 349, seqq.) 

Procrustes, a famous robber of Attica, killed by 
Theseus near the Cephissus. He compelled travel¬ 
lers to lie down on a couch, and, if their length ex¬ 
ceeded that of the couch, he lopped off as much of 
their limbs as would suffice to make the length equal. 
If they were shorter than the couch, he stretched 
them to the requisite length. Theseus proceeded 
against and slew him. According to Plutarch, his 
true name was Damastes, and Procrustes was only a 
surname. ( Pint., Vit. Thes., II.) Pausanias, on 
the other hand, makes it to have been Polypemon. 
(Pausan ., 1, 38.) 

Proculeius, a Roman knight, and the intimate 
friend of Augustus, w'ho held him in such high esteem 
as to entertain thoughts at one time of making him his 
son-in-law. He is celebrated by Horace for his fra¬ 
ternal affection towards his brothers L. Licinius and 
M. Terentius. They had lost their estates for siding 
with the party of Pompey, and Proculeius thereupon 
generously shared his own with them. He was the 
individual sent by Augustus to Cleopatra to endeavour 
to bring her alive into his presence. He destroyed 
himself when suffering under a severe malady. (Ho- 
rat., Od., 2, 2, 5.— Plin., 36, 24.) 

Proculus, I. Julius, a Roman, who, after the 
death of Romulus, declared that he had seen him in 
appearance more than human, and that he had ordered 
him to bid the Romans offer him sacrifices under the 
name of Quirinus, and to rest assured that Rome was 
destined by the gods to become the capital of the 
world. ( Pint., Vit. Rom. — Liv., 1, 16.)—II. A Ro¬ 
man elegiac poet, mentioned by Ovid as an imitator of 
Callimachus. ( Ep. ex Pont., 4, 16, 33.) — III. A 
Roman lawyer mentioned in the Pandects. He is 
supposed by some to have been the same with the 
Proculus of whom Tacitus speaks as praetorian pre¬ 
fect in the reign of Otho. (Tacit., Hist., 1, 87.) He 
gave name to the legal party termed Proculiavx 
(Dig., lib. 1, tit. 2, leg. 2.) 

Procyon, a constellation, so called from its rising 
just before the dog-star (Upoavov, from nao, “ be¬ 
fore,” “ in front of,” and kvgjv, “a dog”)] whence its 
Latin name of Antecanis or Ante-Canem. (Compare 
Cicero, N. D., 2, 44.— Plin., 18, 28, and the remarks 
of Ideler on the last-cited authority. — Sternnamen, 
p. 283.) 

Prodicus, a sophist and rhetorician of Iulis in the 
island of Ceos, contemporary with Democritus and 
Gorgias of Leontini, and a disciple of Protagoras. 
He flourished in the 86th Olympiad, and had, among 
other disciples, Socrates, Euripides, Theramenes, and 
Isocrates. His countrymen, after bestowing upon 
him several public employments, had sent him, it 
seems, as ambassador to Athens, and he was so well 
received here as to be induced to open a school of 
rhetoric. Plato, who makes frequent mention of him, 
and even with applause, but not without sometimes 
employing irony, insinuates, that a lesire of gain 

1129 




P R (E 


PRO 


prompted Prodicus to open this school, and, indeed, 
he amassed considerable wealth by his lectures. Phi- 
lostratus also declares that Prodicus was fond of mon¬ 
ey. He used to go from one city to another display¬ 
ing his eloquence, and, though he did it in a merce¬ 
nary way ; he nevertheless had great honours paid to 
him in Thebes, and still greater in Lacedaemon. His 
charge to a pupil was fifty drachmae. The style of 
Prodicus must have been very eloquent, since such 
numbers flocked to hear him, although he had a disa¬ 
greeable voice. ( Philostr ., Vit. Soph.) It is related 
that Xenophon, when -a prisoner in Boeotia, being de¬ 
sirous of hearing Prodicus, procured the requisite bail, 
and went and gratified his curiosity. {Philostr., 1. c.) 
Few pieces have been oftener referred to than that in 
which Prodicus narrated what is termed “The Choice 
of Hercules.” The original is lost; but we have the 
substance of it in the Memorabilia of Xenophon (2, 1, 
21). Prodicus was at last put to death by the Athe¬ 
nians, on the charge of corrupting their youth. Sex¬ 
tus Empiricus ranks him among the atheists, and Ci¬ 
cero remarks that some of his doctrines were subver¬ 
sive of all religion. ( Cic ., N. D., 1, ad Jin. — Bayle, 
Diet., s. v.) 

Prcetides, the daughters of Proetus, king of Argo- 
lis, were three in number, Lysippe, Iphinoe, and Iphi- 
anassa. They were seized with insanity for contemn¬ 
ing, according to one account, the rites of Bacchus. 
(.Apollod ., 2, 2. — Eustath. ad Od., 15, p. 1746.) 
Another legend made them to have been thus punished 
for casting ridicule on Juno and her temple. ( Schol. 
ad Od., 15, 225.) While under the influence of their 
phrensy, the Prcetides roamed over the plains, the 
woods, the wastes of Argolis and Arcadia, fancying 
themselves changed into cows. {Virg., Eclog., 5, 48. 
— Serv., ad loc .) Proetus thereupon applied to Me- 
lampus to cure his daughters ; but the soothsayer, who 
was the first that exercised the art of medicine, de¬ 
manded beforehand, as a recompense, one third of the 
kingdom. Proetus refused. Thereupon the madness 
of the maidens increased, and even extended to the 
other women, who killed their children, abandoned 
their dwellings, and fled to the wilds. The reluc¬ 
tance of Proetus was now overcome, and he offered to 
comply with the terms of Melampus ; but the sooth¬ 
sayer would not now employ his art without another 
third of the realm being given to his brother Bias. 
Proetus, fearing that delay would only make him ad¬ 
vance farther in his demand, consented, and Melam¬ 
pus set about the cure. He took a number of the 
ablest young men of the place, and made them, with 
shouts and a certain inspired kind of dance, chase the 
maidens from the mountains to Sicyon. In the chase, 
Iphinoe, the eldest of the Prcetides, died ; but the oth¬ 
ers were restored to sanity ; and Proetus gave them in 
marriage to Melampus and his brother Bias. ( Keight - 
ley's Mythology, p. 413.) A fragment of Hesiod, 
cited by Eustathius ( l. c.), describes the complaint of 
the Prostides as a species of leprosy, a malady often 
followed by insanity. The cure appears to have been 
effected by the cutaneous transpiration brought about 
by the violent exercise to which the daughters of Proe¬ 
tus were subjected, and also to their having been 
made to bathe after this in the waters of the Anigrus, 
which were long after this famous for their medical 
virtues in healing the leprosy. ( Strabo, 533.— Spren- 
gel , Hist, de la Med., vol. 1, p. 95, seq.) 

Proetus, a king of Argos, son of Abas and Ocalea. 
He was twin brother to Acrisius, with whom he quar¬ 
relled even before their birth. This dissension be¬ 
tween the two brothers increased with their years. 
After their father’s death, they both tried to obtain the 
kingdom of Argos ; but the claims of Acrisius pre¬ 
vailed, and Prostus left Peloponnesus, and retired to 
the court of Jobates, king of Lycia, where he married 
Stenobcea, called by some Antea or Antiope. He af- 
1130 


terward returned to Argolis, and, by means of his fa 
ther-in-law, he made himself master of Tirynthus. 
Stenobcea had accompanied her husband to Greece, 
and she became by him mother of the Prcetides, and 
of a son called Megapenthes, who, after his father’s 
death, succeeded on the throne of Tirynthus. ( Vid. 
Stenobcea.— Apollod., 2, 2.) 

Prometheus, a son of Iapetus, by Clymenc, one of 
the Oceanides. He was brother of Epimetheus, Me- 
noetius, and Atlas, and was fabled to have surpassed 
all mankind in sagacity. In Prometheus and Epime¬ 
theus are personified the intellectual vigour and weak¬ 
ness of man. In this myth, however, there is great 
confusion, for its original sense seems to have been 
lost very early, and Prometheus to have been viewed 
as a Titan, and the creator or instructor of men. In 
Homer there is no allusion whatever to Prometheus. 
Hesiod, however, says, that when the gods and men 
had a controversy at Mecone, Prometheus took an ox, 
and, dividing it, put the flesh and entrails in the hide, 
and, wrapping the bones up in the inside fat, desired 
Jupiter to take which he would. The god, though 
aware of the deceit, selected the bones and fat, and in 
revenge he withheld fire from man. But Prometheus 
again deceived him, and, stealing the fire in a hollow 
staff (vdpdyt;, ferula), brought it and gave it to man. 
Jupiter then sent Pandora on earth, to deceive man tc 
his ruin, and he bound Prometheus with chains to a 
pillar, and sent an eagle to prey without ceasing on 
his liver, which grew every night as much as it had 
lost in the day. After a long interval of time, how¬ 
ever (according to some, thirty thousand years), Her¬ 
cules slew the eagle and freed the sufferer. ( Blomf., 
Gloss, ad JEsch., P. V., 94.)—In this narrative there 
is a combination of a local myth of Sicyon (anciently 
called Mecone) with a doctrine of a much higher na¬ 
ture. The former legend was manifestly devised to 
account for the custom at Sicyon, as at Sparta, of of¬ 
fering to the gods in sacrifice the bones of the victim 
wrapped in the caul, instead of some of the choicest 
parts of the flesh as elsewhere. {Welcker, Tril., 78. 
— Foss., Myth. Br., vol. 2, p. 353, seqq.) The lat¬ 
ter myth may be, perhaps, thus explained. The first 
men lived in a state of bliss on the abundant produc¬ 
tions of the earth. The spring was perpetual, and 
the cold was unfelt, and they therefore needed not fire, 
which Jupiter, in kindness, withheld from them. But 
the inquisitive and inventive genius (i. e., Prometheus) 
introduced fire, and the arts which result from it, and 
man henceforth became a prey to care and anxiety, the 
love of gain, and other evil passions which torment 
him, and which are personified in the eagle that fed on 
the inconsumable liver of Prometheus. ( Muller, Pro¬ 
leg., p. 122. — Petronius , ap. Fulgent., 2, 9.) In a 
word, we have here a Grecian myth of the fall ol 
man, which we shall find carried out in that of Pan¬ 
dora. (Vid. Pandora.)—The simple narrative of He¬ 
siod was, as usual, expanded by later writers, and 
Mount Caucasus was fixed upon as the place of Pro¬ 
metheus’ punishment. The pragmatisers ai&o explain¬ 
ed the myth after their own fashion. Prometheus was, 
they say, a king of the Scythians, and his country 
was wasted by a river named Eagle (’A etoq), whose 
inundations when he was unable to prevent, his sub¬ 
jects laid him in chains. But Hercules, coming thith¬ 
er, opened a passage for the Eagle into the sea, and 
thus freed the captive monarch. ( Apoll. Rhod., 2, 
1248.) — The name of Prometheus led to his being 
viewed as the bestower of all knowledge on mankind. 

( Msch., Prom. Vinct., 442. seq. — Id. ib„ 505, seq.) 
A philosophical myth, in Plato, says that the gods 
formed man and other animals of clay and fire within 
the earth, and then committed to Prometheus and his 
brother the task of distributing powers and qualities 
to the,pn. Epimetheus prayed to be allowed to make 
the distribution. Prometheus assented ; but, when he 






PROMETHEUS. 


PRO 


came lo survey the work, found that the silly Epi- 
metheus had abundantly furnished the inferior animals, 
while man was left naked and helpless. As the day 
for their emerging from the earth was at hand, Pro¬ 
metheus was at a loss what to do. At length, as the 
only remedy, he stole .fire, and with it the artist-skill 
of Minerva and Vulcan, and gave it to man. He was 
also regarded as the creator of the human race. An¬ 
other legend said, that all mankind having perished in 
Deucalion’s flood, Jupiter directed Prometheus and 
Minerva to make images of clay, on which he caused 
the winds to blow, and thus gave them life. ( Etym. 
Mag., el Sleph. Byz., s. v. ’I novtov.) A third said, 
that Prometheus had formed a man of clay, and Mi¬ 
nerva, beholding it, offered him her aid in procuring 
anything in heaven that might contribute to its per¬ 
fection. Prometheus said, that he could not tell what 
there might be in heaven suitable for his purpose, un¬ 
less he could go thither and judge for himself. The 
goddess then bore him to heaven in her sevenfold 
shield, and there, seeing everything animated by the 
celestial heat, he secretly applied his ferula to the 
wheel of the sun’s chariot, and thus stole some of the 
fire, which he then applied to the breast of his man, 
and thus animated him. Jupiter, to punish Promethe¬ 
us, bound him, and appointed a vulture to prey upon 
his liver, and the incensed gods sent fevers and oth¬ 
er diseases among men. ( Apollod., 1, 7, 1. — Ovid, 
Met., 1 , 82.— Horat., Od., 1 , 3, 29, seq. — Serv. ad 
Virg., Eclog., 6, 42.) — On the story of Prometheus 
has been founded the following very pretty fable: 
When Prometheus had stolen fire from heaven for 
the good of mankind, they were so ungrateful as to 
betray him to Jupiter. For their treachery, they got 
in reward*a remedy against the evils of old age; but, 
not duly considering the value of the gift, instead of 
carrying it themselves, they put it on the back of an 
ass, and let him trot on before them. It was sum¬ 
mer-time, and the ass, quite overcome by thirst, went 
up to a fountain to drink ; but a snake forbade all ap¬ 
proach. The ass, ready to faint, most earnestly im¬ 
plored relief. The cunning snake, who knew the 
value of the burden which the ass bore, demanded it 
as the price of access to the fount. The ass was 
forced to comply, and the snake obtained possession 
of the gift of Jupiter, but with it, as a punishment of 
his art, he got the thirst of the ass. Hence it is that 
the snake, by casting his skin annually, renews his 
youth, while man is borne down by the weight of the 
evils of old age. The malignant snakes, moreover, 
when they have an opportunity, communicate their 
thirst to mankind by biting them. ( JElian , Nat. An., 
6, 51. — Nicander, Ther., 340, seq. — Schol., ad loc.) 
—The wife of Prometheus was Pandora ( Hesiod, ap. 
Schol. ad Apoll. Rhod., 3, 1086), or Clymene (Schol. 
ad Od., 10, 2), or Hesione ( JEsch., Prom. Vinct., 
560), or Asia (Herod., 4, 45). His only child was 
Deucalion. (Keightley's Mythology, p. 288, seqq .)— 
Rosen rniiller sees in the fable of Prometheus a resem¬ 
blance to the scripture account of the fall (Rosenm., 
ad Gen., 3, 7 — Schulz, Excurs. 1, ad Prom. Vinct. 
—Battmann, Mythologus, vol. 1, p. 60.) Others car¬ 
ry this theory still farther, and in the combined fables 
of Prometheus, Epimetheus, and Pandora, discover an 
analogy, not only to the fall of Adam, but also to the 
promise of a Redeemer. (Compare Horne's Intro¬ 
duction, vol. 1, p 163, Am. ed.) Nay, some of the 
early fathers even proceeded to the length of tracing a 
resemblance between Prometheus and our Saviour. 
(Schulz, Excurs., ubi supra.) Another solution of 
this myth refers it to the overthrow of some early re¬ 
ligious system in Greece. Tzetzes, in his scholia on 
Lycophron (v. 1191), relates, that Ophion, and Euryn- 
ome, daughter of Oceanus, reigned over the gods 
previous to Saturn and Rhea. Saturn overthrew 
Ophion, and Rhea overcame Eurynome in wrestling, 


and they hurled them both to Tartarus. Prometheus 
conquered by Jove is thought to be a tradition of a 
similar nature ; and an ancient monument at Athens, 
at the entrance of a temple of Minerva, in the Aca¬ 
demia, fully testified, if we believe the scholiast to 
Sophocles (CEd. Col., 57), the priority of the Titan 
Prometheus to the Homeric Vulcan. Prometheus 
and Vulcan were there represented, and the fcaner, 
as the first and eldest of the two, held a sceptre in his 
hand (6 pev Upopydevg , npurog nai irpeabiiTepog, ev dep¬ 
ict onijTtTpov ex^v, 6 6e 'H (paiorog viog nal dtvrepog). 
Compare Constant, de la Religion, vol. 2, p. 316. 
Kruse adopts the same opinion, and makes the contest 
in question to have taken place between the Pelasgi on 
Olympus (the fabled seat of Jove), and some primitive 
race occupying the region of Mount Othrys, the latter 
of whom were conquered, and compelled to wander 
from their previous settlements towards the mountains 
of Caucasus. (Kruse, Hellas, vol. 1, p. 471.) 

Pronapides, an ancient Greek poet, a native of 
Athens, and the reputed preceptor of Homer. (Diod. 
Sic., 3, 66.— Fabric., Bibl. Gr., vol. 1, p. 27.) 

Pronuba, a surname of Juno, because she presided 
over marriages. (Vid. Juno.) 

Propertius, Sextus Aurelius, a celebrated Roman 
elegiac poet, born in Umbria on the confines of Etru¬ 
ria. Seven towns of the Umbrian territory disputed 
with each other the honour of being the birthplace of 
Propertius. From the poet’s own account, Mevania 
(the modern Bevagna) appears to prefer the strongest 
claims on this head (4, 1, 121). The time of Proper¬ 
tius’ birth has also been made a subject of controversy, 
being placed by some writers as early as 696 A.U.C., 
and by others as late as 705. From the import of 
eight lines in the fourth book of his elegies (4, 1, 123), 
which refer to himself, the year of his birth may b? 
most safely placed between these periods, and no grea; 
error will probably be committed if it be fixed in the 
year 700. In these verses we are told that his father 
died prematurely, while Propertius was yet young, and 
that his inheritance, about the same time, was divided 
among the soldiery.—Propertius was descended of an 
equestrian family of considerable possessions. But, 
his father having espoused the side of the consul Lucius 
Antonius, brother of the triumvir, in the dissensions, 
that arose with Octavius, he was made prisoner on the 
capture of Perugia, and slain at the altar erected to 
the memory of Julius Caesar. About these statements 
there exists, however, a great deal of doubt. While 
Propertius was yet in his boyhood, the chief part of 
his inheritance, like that of Tibullus, was divided, as 
we have seen, among the soldiers of the triumvirs 
With the view of re-establishing his fortune, he went 
to Rome in early life, and there commenced those 
studies which might qualify him to shine as a patron 
in the Forum. He soon, however, relinquished this 
pursuit, and devoted himself entirely to the Muses. 
His early proficiency in poetry, his learning and agree¬ 
able manners, procured for him the friendship of Gal- 
lus, of the poet Ponticus Bassus, and of Ovid, who 
frequently attended the private recital of his elegies. 
These productions appear to have been written about 
the year 730. In the second, third, and fourth books, 
our poet gives Octavius Caesar the name of Augustus, 
which was first bestowed on him in 727. In the third 
book he alludes to the death of Marcellus, who died 
in 730. Farther, in the last elegy of the’ second book, 
he speaks of Virgil as still alive, and of his xEneid as 
a work which was in progress, and of which the high¬ 
est expectations had been formed. Now Virgil com¬ 
menced his ^Eneid in 724, and had made considerable 
progress in 730, in which year he read three books of 
it to Augustus and his sister Octavia. Virgil sur¬ 
vived till the year 734, and the HCneid was published 
immediately after his death.—The first appearance of 
the elegies attracted the notice of Maecenas, who a* 

1131 



PROPERTIUS. 


PRO 


ugned Propertius a house in his own gardens on the 
Esquiline Hill. He also procured for him the patron¬ 
age of Volcatius Tullus, who was consul with Augus¬ 
tus in the year 721, and became, after the death of 
Mascenas, the general protector of learning and the 
arts. It appears that the patrons of those days teased 
their dependant poets with pressing solicitations to 
accompany them on military expeditions and embas¬ 
sies. An invitation of this sort from Tullus, request¬ 
ing Propertius to attend him to Egypt and Asia Minor, 
seems to have been declined (lib. 1, el. 6). But it 
would appear that he at length undertook a journey 
to Athens, probably as a follower of Maecenas, when 
ne attended Augustus in his progress through Greece 
(3, 21). Little farther is known concerning the events 
of his life, and even the precise period of his death 
is uncertain. He was alive in 736, when the em¬ 
peror promulgated a law concerning marriage, in 
which severe penalties were imposed on celibacy. 
His death is generally placed about the year 740, 
when he had not exceeded the age of 40. But there 
seems no sufficient proof that he died earlier than 760, 
at which time Ovid, during his banishment, wrote an el¬ 
egy, where he speaks of him as deceased.—The whole 
life of Propertius was devoted to female attachments. 
He was first enticed, in early youth, by Lycinna, an 
artful slave; but subsequently Cynthia became the 
more permanent abject of his affections. The lady 
whom he has celebrated und.er this name was the 
laughter of the poet Hostius, and her real name was 
Hostia (3, 13). This fascinating object of his ruling 
and permanent attachment had received an education 
equal to that of the most distinguished Roman ladies 
of the day. She was skilled in music, poetry, and 
every other accomplishment calculated to make an im¬ 
pression on a youthful and susceptible mind. But with 
all these advantages, she shared no small portion of the 
artifice and extravagance which characterized the do¬ 
mestic manners of the Roman fair in the age of Au¬ 
gustus. Hence our poet was the constant sport of the 
varying humours of his Cynthia. But, notwithstand¬ 
ing occasional jealousies and estrangements of affec¬ 
tion, this female, until her death (which happened when 
the poet was about thirty years of age), continued to 
be his reigning passion, and the chief theme of his el¬ 
egies.—These productions, which are nearly one hun¬ 
dred in number, are divided into four books. The 
first book is almost exclusively devoted to the celebra¬ 
tion of the poet’s love for Cynthia. In the second and 
third books, also, she is still his principal theme, but 
his strain becomes moral and didactic. He now de¬ 
claims against the extravagance of his age ; against that 
love of pomp and luxury, which, in his time, dishon¬ 
oured the Roman fair, and which he beautifully con¬ 
trasts with the simple manners of a distant period, con¬ 
cluding with a pathetic prediction of the fall of Rome, 
accelerated by its own overgrown wealth, and the per¬ 
nicious thirst of gold. The elegies of the fourth book, 
which were not made public till after the death of the 
poet, are entirely of a different description from those 
by which they are preceded. They are chiefly heroi- 
cal and didactic, comprehending the praises of Augus¬ 
tus, and long narrations drawn from Roman fable and 
Italian antiquities. — In point of general composition, 
the elegies of Propertius are almost perfect. He flour- 
shed at a period and in a capital in which style had 
attained its greatest purity. He lived in the society 
of Gallus, Ovid, and Maecenas, and under the sway 
of a prince whose greatest boast was the protection of 
learning and genius. The patronage and society he 
enjoyed communicated to his writings a degree of taste 
and politeness, which they might not have attained 
had he lived at an earlier period, or at a distance from 
the court of Augustus. Even a slight acquaintance 
with his works may convince us that he was an exten¬ 
sive reader, and his learning had supplied him with 
1132 ‘ 


such numerous topics of allusion and illustration, that 
it seduced him into what has justly been considered as 
his chief fault. Whatever is pleasing or natural in his 
elegies, he destroys by mixing up with it history and 
fable; and it is this injudicious and ill-timed pedantry 
that, pervading, as it does, almost all the elegies of 
Propertius, renders them often fatiguing, perplexing, 
and obscure. The adoption of this style of writing 
must, in a great measure, be attributed to Propertius’ 
study and imitation of the Greek authors. None of 
the Latin poets had so sedulously studied the Alexan- 
drean writers, or so closely formed on them their style 
and sentiments. The great objects of his imitation 
were Callimachus and Philetas, the latter the precep¬ 
tor of Ptolemy Philadelphus.—In this respect Proper¬ 
tius is totally different from Tibullus, with whom he 
has been so frequently compared. The writings of Ti¬ 
bullus breathe a native freshness, a simplicity and pu¬ 
rity which are remarkably contrasted with the profu¬ 
sion of obscure mythological fables by which the ele¬ 
gies of Propertius are entangled and darkened. In 
consequence of this learned imitation of the Greeks, 
there is an appearance of labour and display in most of 
the elegies of Propertius, and he has always the air of 
what has been called an ambitious writer. Tibullus 
is a poet, and in love ; his successor is more of an au¬ 
thor. The love of Propertius partook more of tem¬ 
perament and less of sentiment than the passion of 
Tibullus. Propertius often thought what he should 
write ; Tibullus always wrote what he thought.—Be¬ 
fore closing this article, we may remark, that one pe¬ 
culiarity distinguishes the versification of Propertius 
from that of all the other Latin poets ; his pentame¬ 
ters often terminate in a polysyllable, while those of 
1 ibullus and Ovid end almost always in a word of two 
syllables, forming at one time an iambus, at another a 
pyrrhic. Critics are not agreed whether this is the re¬ 
sult of accident or design on the part of Propertius. 
It is certain, however, that the plan pursued by Tibul¬ 
lus and Ovid is far more conducive to harmony." {Pun- 
lop's Roman Literature , vol. 3, p. 316, scqq. — Scholl, 
Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 1, p. 334, scqq.)— The best edi¬ 
tions of Propertius are, that of Brouckhusius, Amst., 
1727, 4to ; that of Vulpius, Palav., 1755, 2 vols. 4to ; 
that of Burmann, Traj. ad Rhen., 1780, 4to ; that of 
Lachmann, Lips., 1816, 8vo ; and that forming part 
of the collection of Lemaire, Paris , 1832, 8vo. 

Propontis, a name given by the Greeks to that mi 
nor basin which lies between the AEge&n and Euxine, 
and communicates with those seas by means of two 
narrow straits, the Hellespont and Bosporus. Herodo¬ 
tus estimates its breadth at 500 stadia, and its length 
at 1400. {Herod., 4,85.) Modern navigators reckon 
about 120 miles from one strait to another ; while its 
greatest breadth, from the European to the Asiatic 
coast, does not exceed 40 miles. It received its ancient 
name from the circumstance of its lying in front of, or 
before the Pontus Euxinus {npo liovrov). The mod¬ 
ern appellation is the Sea of Marmara, from the mod¬ 
ern name of the island Proconnesus. {Mela, 1, 19. 
— Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 34.) As regards 
the probable formation of the Propontis, vid. Mediter- 
raneum Mare, and Cyanese. 

Proserpina, a daughter of Ceres by Jupiter, called 
by the Greeks Persephone {Tlepoeipov?}). The legend 
connected with her will be found under the article 
Ceres.—Proserpina, like Diana, presents the double 
idea of the creative and destroying power, and hence 
she is styled, in one of the Orphic Hymns (29, 15), 
Kal duvaroq povvrj ‘dvrjTolq Kohvpoxdoiq. On 
the same association of ideas was founded the curious 
belief which ranked Venus among the Parcse or Fates. 
(Compare Pausan., 1, 19 — Herm. vnd Creuzer, 
Briefe uhcr Homer, &c., p. 38.) Wilford endeavours 
to prove that the name Proserpina {Tlepcreipovrj) is of 
Sanscrit origin. But this, like many other of his Ot<i 








PRO 


PRO 


ental etymologies, is remembered only to be condemn¬ 
ed. ( Asiatic Researches, vol. 5, p. 298.) On the 
supposition that Proserpina was regarded as the daugh¬ 
ter of Mother Earth, and a personification of the corn, 
her name will signify Food-shoioer (from cpepu, (pepfiu, 
“to feed," and (j>du, tyaivo, “to show" — Volcker, 
Myth, der lap., p. 201, scq.) Regarded, however, as 
* the queen of the monarch of Erebus, the appellation 
will mean Light-destroyer, the first part of the name 
being akin to Tzvp, “fire," and to the Pers in Perse 
and Perseus. ( Schwenck, Andeut., p. 247.) The 
common explanation of the term is Death-hearer, from 
<t>epo, “ to bear," and Qovoq, “ destruction," “death." 
The Perscphatta of the Dramatists seems to be only 
a corruption of Persephone, and the same remark may 
be made of the Latin Proserpina. Vossius is right in 
condemning the etymology given by Arnobius : “ Di- 
citis quod sala in lucem proserpant, cognominatam 
esse Proserpinam." (Arnob., 3, p. 119.) According 
to Knight, Proserpina was in reality the personification 
of the heat or fire supposed to pervade the earth, which 
was held to be at once the cause and effect of fertility 
and destruction, as being at once the cause and effect 
of fermentation, from which both proceed. ( Knight's 
Inquiry, 117.— Class. Journ., vol. 25, p. 39.) 

Protagoras, a Greek philosopher, a native of Ab- 
dera, and disciple of Democritus. In his youth, his 
poverty obliged him to perform the servile offices of a 
porter ; and he was frequently employed in carrying 
logs of wood from the neighbouring fields of Abdera. 
It happened, that as he was going on briskly one day 
towards the city under one of these loads, he was met 
by Democritus, who was particularly struck with the 
neatness and regularity of the bundle. Desiring him 
to stop and rest himself, Democritus examined more 
closely the structure of the load, and found that-it was 
put together with mathematical exactness. On this 
he invited the youth to follow him, and, taking him to 
his own house, maintained him at his own expense 
and taught him philosophy. Protagoras afterward ac¬ 
quired reputation at Athens, among the sophists, for 
his eloquence, and among the philosophers for his wis¬ 
dom. His public lectures were much frequented, and 
he had many disciples, from whom he received the 
most liberal rewards, so that, as Plato relates, he be- 
rame exceedingly rich. At length, however, he brought 
upon himself the displeasure of the Athenian state, by 
teaching doctrines favourable to impiety. His wri¬ 
tings were ordered to be diligently collected by the 
common crier, and burned in the market-place, and he 
himself was banished from Attica. He wrote many 
pieces upon .logic, metaphysics, ethics, and politics, 
none of which are at present extant. After having 
lived many years in Epirus, he was lost by sea on his 
voyage from that country to Sicily. The tenets of 
Protagoras, as far as they have been discovered, ap¬ 
pear to have leaned towards scepticism. ( Enfield's 
History of Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 432, seqq.) 

. Protesieaus, a king of part of Thessaly, son of 
Iphiclus, originally called Iolaus, grandson of Phyla- 
cus, and brother to Alcimede, the mother of Jason. 
He married Laodamia, the daughter of Acastus, and, 
some time after, departed with the rest of the Greeks 
for the Trojan war. He was the first of the Greeks 
who set foot on the Trojan shore, and was killed as 
soon as he had leaped from his ship. Homer has not 
mentioned the person who slew him. His wife Lao¬ 
damia destroyed herself when she heard of his death. 
(Vid . Laodamia.) Protesilaus has received the patro¬ 
nymic of Phylacides, either because he was descended 
from Phylacus, or because he was a native of Phylace. 
(Horn., 11, 2, 698. — Ovid, Met., 12, fab., 1 .—Her., 
13.— Propert., 1, 19.— Hygin , fab., 103.) 

Proteus, a sea-deity; son of Oceanus and Tethys, 
or, according to some, of Neptune and Phoenice. In 
the fourth book of the Odyssey Homtr introduces this 


sea-god. He styles him, like Ntreus and Phorcys, a 
Sea-elder, and gives him the power of foretelling tlx 
future. ( Od., 4, 384 ; 5, 561.) He calls him ^Egyp¬ 
tian, and the servant of Neptune {Od., 5, 385), and 
says that his task was keeping the seals or seacalveg. 
(Od., 5,411.) When Menelaus was wind-bound at 
the island of Pharos, off the coast of Egypt, and he 
and his crew were suffering from want of food, Er- 
dothea, the daughter of Proteus, accosted him, and, 
bringing sealskins, directed him to disguise himself 
and three of his companions in them ; and when Pro¬ 
teus, at noon, should come up out of the sea and go to 
sleep amid his herds, to seize and hold him till he dis 
closed some means of relief from their present distress. 
Menelaus obeyed the nymph; and Proteus came up 
and counted his herds, and then lay down to rest. 
The hero immediately seized him, and the god turned 
himself into a lion, a serpent, a pard, a boar, water, 
and a tree. At length, finding he could not escape, 
he resumed his own form, and revealed to Menelaus 
the remedy for his distress. He at the same time in¬ 
formed him of the situation of his friends, and partic 
ularly notices his having seen Ulysses in the island of 
Calvpso—a clear proof that his own abode was not con¬ 
fined to the coast of Egypt. Homer does not name 
the parent of this marine deity, and there is no men¬ 
tion of him in the Theogony. Apollodorus makes him 
the son of Neptune, and Euripides would seem to 
make Nereus his sire. ( Apollod., 2, 5, 9.— Eurip., 
Hel., 15.) Those who embraced the theory of repre¬ 
senting the gods as having been originally mere men, 
said that Proteus was a king of Egypt; and the Egyp¬ 
tian priests told how he detained Helen when Paris 
was driven to Egypt, and gave him an image or phan¬ 
tom in her stead, and then restored her to Menelaus. 
( Keightley's Mythology, p. 246, seq .) The name of 
this deity, signifying First (npo, irpurog), has induced 
Creuzer to consider him as representing the various 
forms and shapes assumed by the primitive matter (?/ 
Eky 7 rpuroyovog), the substance itself remaining al 
ways the same. ( Symbolik , vol. 1, p. 425.) 

Protogenes, a very eminent painter and statuary, 
one of the contemporaries of Apelles. He appears, 
however, to have survived the latter artist, inasmuch 
as he was still living in Olymp. 119, when Rhodes 
was besieged by Demetrius. Meyer (Hist. Art., 1, 
180) conjectures, with considerable probability, that he 
was born about Olymp. 104. Protogenes was a na¬ 
tive of Caunus, a Carian city, subject to the Rhodians. 
Suidas alone makes him to have been born at Xan- 
thus in Lycia. His early efforts were made amid the 
pressure of very contracted means. Who his mas¬ 
ter was is unknown ; and necessity for a long time 
compelled him to employ his abilities on subjects alto¬ 
gether unworthy of them. Compelled to paint orna¬ 
ments on vessels in order to secure a livelihood, he 
passed fifty years of his life without the gifts of for¬ 
tune, and without any marked reputation. His talents 
and perseverance at length triumphed over every ob¬ 
stacle ; and possibly the generous aid of Apelles may 
have contributed to hasten this result; for the latter, 
on perceiving that the paintings of Protogenes were 
neither sought after nor held in much estimation by 
the Rhodians, is said to have purchased some himself 
at the high price of fifty talents, and to have openly 
declared that he intended to sell them again for his 
own productions. This friendly stratagem opened at 
length the eyes of his contemporaries, and Protogenes 
rose rapidly in fame. Pliny tells a very pleasing story 
of Apelles and Protogenes. The former having come 
to Rhodes, where Protogenes was residing, paid a visit 
to the artist, but, not finding him at home, obtained 
permission, from a domestic in waiting, to enter the 
atelier of the painter. Finding here a piece of canvass 
ready on the frame for the artist’s pencil, he drew upon 
it a line (according to some, a figure in outline) with 

1133 




PROTOGENES. 

wonderful precision, and then retired without disclo¬ 
sing his name. Protogenes, on returning home, and 
discovering what had been done, exclaimed that Apel¬ 
les alone could have executed such a sketch. Still, 
however, he drew another himself, a line more perfect 
than that of Apelles, and left directions with his do¬ 
mestic, that, when the stranger should call again, he 
should be shown what had been done by him. Apel- 
es came accordingly, and perceiving that his line had 
been excelled by Protogenes, drew a third one still 
more perfect than the other two, and cutting both. 
Pretogenes now confessed himself vanquished; he 
ran to the harbour, sought for Apelles, and the two ar¬ 
tists became the warmest friends. (Consult, as re¬ 
gards the question whether the story refers to a mere 
number of separate lines having been drawn on this 
occasion, or to entire outlines, the remarks of Quatre- 
mere de Quincy, Mem. de Vlnstit., vol. 7.— Journ. 
des Sav., Avril, 1823, p. 219.— Magasin Encyclop ., 
1808, vol, 4, p. 153, 407.) The canvass containing 
this famous trial of skill became highly prized, and at 
a later day was placed in the palace of the Caisars at 
Rome. It was destroyed by a conflagration, together 
with the edifice itself. Protogenes was employed for 
seven years in finishing a picture of Ialysus, a cele¬ 
brated huntsman, supposed to have been the son of 
Apollo, and the founder of Rhodes. During all this 
time the painter lived only upon lupines and water, 
thinking that such aliments would leave him greater 
flights of fancy ; but all this did not seem to make him 
more successful in the perfection of his picture. He 
was to represent in the piece a dog panting, and with 
froth at his mouth ; but this he never could do with 
satisfaction to himself; and, when all his labours seem¬ 
ed to be without success, he threw his sponge upon 
the piece in a fit of anger. Chance alone brought to 
perfection what the labours of art could not accom¬ 
plish : the fall of the sponge upon the picture repre¬ 
sented the froth at the mouth of the dog in the most 
perfect and natural manner, and the piece was univer¬ 
sally admired. The same story is told of Nealces 
while engaged in painting a horse ; and probably one 
of these anecdotes has been copied from the other. 
According to Pliny, Protogenes painted this picture 
with four layers of colours, in such a way, that, when 
one was destroyed by the hand of time, the layer un¬ 
derneath would reproduce the piece in all its original 
freshness and beauty. The account appears a diffi¬ 
cult one to comprehend. Apelles, on seeing this pro¬ 
duction of the pencil, is said to have broken out into 
loud expressions of admiration ; but what consoled 
him was the reflection that his own pieces surpassed 
those of Protogenes in grace. When Demetrius be¬ 
sieged Rhodes, he refused to set fire to a part of the 
city*, which might have made him master of the whole, 
because he was informed that this part contained some 
of the finest productions of the pencil of the artist. Pro¬ 
togenes himself occupied, during the siege, a house in 
the suburbs, in the very midst of the enemy’s lines ; 
and when Demetrius expressed his astonishment at the 
feeling of security which the painter displayed, the lat¬ 
ter replied, “ I know very well that Demetrius is ma¬ 
king war upon the Rhodians, not upon the arts.” The 
prince thereupon, for greater safety, posted a guard 
around his dwelling.—During the reign of Tiberius, 
sketches and designs of Protogenes were to be seen at 
Rome, which were regarded as models of the beau ideal. 
His picture of Ialysus was brought from Greece, and 
placed in the temple of Peace in the Roman capital, 
where it perished in a conflagration.—Protogenes was 
also an excellent modeller, and executed several statues 
in bronze. Suidas states that he wrote two works, on 
painting and on figures. ( Plin ., 35, 10, 36.)—The 
talents of Protogenes were not so fertile as those of 
many artists, a circumstance to be ascribed to his mi¬ 
nute and scrupulous care. This is the quality which 
1134 


PRU 

Quintilian mentions as his great characteristic : and 
Petronius likewise observes, that his outlines vk*d in 
accuracy with the works of nature themselves. ( Quih - 
til., 12, 10.— Pctron., Sat., 84.) 

Proxenus, a Boeotian, one of the commanders of 
the Greek forces in the army of Cyrus the younger 
He was put to death with his fellow-commanders bj 
Artaxerxes. Proxenus was the one who induced* 
Xenophon to join in the expedition of Cyrus, and, after 
the death of Proxenus, Xenophon was chosen to supply 
his place. (Anab , 1, 1, 11.— Ibid., 3, 6, 1, &c.) 

Prudentius, Aurelius Clemens, a Latin poet, 
who flourished about A.D. 392. He was born at Cal- 
agurris ( Calahorra ), or, according to a less probable 
opinion, at Csesaraugusta (Saragossa). ( Nic. Anton , 
Bibl. Vet. Hisp., 2, 10, p. 218, seqq. — Middeldorpf, 
de Prudentio, &c., Wratislav., 1823, 4to, p. 3, seqq ) 
Some particulars of his life are given in the poetical 
preface^ appended to one of his works (KaOqpepivfiv 
Liber), from which we learn, that, according to the 
custom of his time, he first attended the schools of 
rhetoric, and then followed the profession of an advo¬ 
cate, in which he appears to have acquired considera¬ 
ble reputation, as he was twice appointed Prcefectus 
Urbis, but over what places is not mentioned. He 
was, after this, elected to a still higher office, but 
whether military or civil in its nature is uncertain 
probably the latter : this was under the Emperor The 
odosius. ( Middeldorpf\ p. 8, seqq. — Nic. Anton., p. 
221.) At last, at the age of fifty-seven ( Prcef. ad 
Cath., v. 1, seqq.), he abandoned the world, in order 
to pass the remainder of his days in devotion. From 
this period (A.D. 405) to the time of his death (about 
A.D. 413), he is supposed to have been occupied with 
the composition of the works that have come down to 
us. Prudentius is sometimes styled “ the first Chris¬ 
tian poet.a title, however, which means but little. 
In no case can he be compared with the classic wri¬ 
ters. He is even decidedly inferior to Claudian and 
Ausonius. His style is often marked by inaccuracies, 
and he offends heavily against the laws of metre.— 
The poem entitled Apotheosis is directed against the 
Patripassians, Sabellians, and other heretics ; and we 
may regard as a continuation of it the other poem 
“ On the Origin of Sin ” ( Hamartigenia , 'ApaprtyE- 
veia). In this latter production the author refutes the 
error of the Marcionites and Manichasans, who attribu¬ 
ted the origin of evil to an evil principle. The Psycho- 
machia ('Fuqo^o^fa) describes the combats between our 
virtues and vices, of which the heart is the arena. We 
may also regard as didactic the poem of Prudentius 
against Symmachus (contra Symmachi Orationem 
libri duo), relative to the restoration of the altar of 
Victory. The poet gives the origin of the gods of 
mythology, and narrates their scandalous histories; 
and he then proceeds to show, that Rome could never 
have owed her greatness to such contemptible divini¬ 
ties. The lyric pieces of Prudentius form two collec¬ 
tions ; one entitled K aOppepivtiv Liber, containing 
twelve hymns for the different parts of the year and 
for certain festivals ; the other, De Coronis, or Jlepl 
ore(j)dvuv Liber, comprising fourteen hymns in honour 
of as many martyrs. These lyric effusions contain 
some agreeable and touching passages, and Christian 
sentiments expressed with great force, but also a great 
many superstitious ideas. Those of them that are 
written in elegiac measure are distinguished by facil¬ 
ity of versification : as, for example, the hymn in hon¬ 
our of St. Hippolytus. There is also attributed to 
Prudentius a Biblical Manual ( Diptychon seu En- 
chiridium utriusque Testamenti), containing an abridg¬ 
ment of Sacred History in forty-nine sections, each 
section consisting of four verses. It is doubtful, how¬ 
ever, whether Prudentius ever wrote it. Some are 
of opinion that it is the production of a native of Spain, 
who lived in the fifth century, and who is named Pru- 






P RTT 


P 8 A 


dentius Amoenus in a Strasburg manuscript. (Fabric., 
Comment, ad Poet., p. 7.— Leyser, Hist. Poet., p. 
10.)—The best editions of Prudentius are, that of 
Weitzius, Hannov., 1613, 8vo; that of Cellarius, 
Hal., 1703, 1739, 8vo ; and that of Teollius, Parma, 
1788, 2 vols. 4to. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 3, 
p. 72, seqq. — B'dhr, Gesch. Rom. Lit., vol. 2, p. 41, 
seqq.) 

Prusa, a city of Bithynia, at the foot of Mount 
Olympus, and hence called Prusa ad Olympum (Ilpot)- 
aa crcl T(b ’0?.vy.7r(y). Pliny asserts, without naming 
his authority, that this town was founded by Hannibal 
(5, 32). By which expression we are probably to un¬ 
derstand that it was built at the instigation of this 
great general, when he resided at the court of Prusias, 
from whom the name of the city seems evidently de¬ 
rived. But Strabo, following a still more remote tra¬ 
dition, affirms that it was founded by Prusias, who 
made war against Crcesus. ( Strab., 564.) In Stepha- 
nus, who copies Strabo, the latter name is altered to 
Cyrus (s. v. Upovaa). But it is probable that both 
readings are faulty, though it is not easy to see what 
substitution should be made. (Consult the French 
Strabo, vol. 4, lib. 12, p. 82.) Dio Chrysostom, who 
was a native of Prusa, did not favour the tradition 
which ascribed to it so early an origin as that author¬ 
ized by the reading in Strabo. ( Orat ., 43, p. 585.) 
Stephanus informs us that Prusa was but a small 
town. Strabo, however, states that it enjoyed a good 
government. It continued to flourish under the Ro¬ 
man empire, as may be seen from Pliny the younger 
(10, 85) ; but under the Greek emperors it suffered 
much from the wars carried on against the Turks. 
(Nicet. Chon., p. 186, D., p. 389, A.) It finally re¬ 
mained in the hands of the descendants of Osman, 
who made it the capital of their empire, under the cor¬ 
rupted name of Brusa or Broussa. It is still one of 
the most flourishing towns possessed by the infidels 
in Anatolia. (Browne's Travels, in Walpole's Tur¬ 
key, vol. 2, p. 108. — Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, 
p. 176.) 

Prusias, I. king of Bithynia, son of Zielas, began 
to reign about B C. 228, and'was still reigning B.C. 
190, at the time of the war between the Romans and 
Antiochus ; for Polybius intimates that the Prusias 
who was solicited by Antiochus had been reigning for 
some time. ( Polyb ., 21, 9.) In B.C. 216 Prusias 
defeated the Gauls in a great battle. (Polyb., 5, 111.) 
In B.C. 207 he invaded the territories of Attalus I. 
He was included in the treaty with Philip in B.C. 
205. (Liv., 29, 12.) Strabo asserts that it was this, 
the elder, Prusias with whom Hannibal sought refuge. 
(Strab., 563.) And the accounts of other writers 
contain nothing to disprove this testimony. But if 
the elder Prusias received Hannibal, he was still liv¬ 
ing at the death of Hannibal in B.C. 183. ( Clinton , 

Fast. Hell., vol. 2, p. 415, seq.)— II. The second of 
the name appears to have ascended the throne of Bi¬ 
thynia between B.C. 183 and B.C. 179. The two 
reigns of Prusias I. and Prusias II. occupied a period 
of about 79 years (B.C. 228-150). Prusias II. mar¬ 
ried the sister of Perseus, king of Maccdon. (Appi- 
an, Bell. MUhrad., c. 2.) He was surnamed 6 Kvvy- 
yoq , or The Hunter, and was long engaged in war 
with Attalus, king of Pergamus. He is commonly 
supposed to have been the monarch who abandoned 
Hannibal when the latter was sought after by the Ro¬ 
mans ; though Strabo assigns this to Prusias I. This 
monarch extended considerably the limits of the Bithyn- 
ian empire, bv the accession of some important towns 
conceded to him by his ally Philip of Macedon (Strab., 
563.— Liv., 32, 34), and several advantages gained 
over the Byzantines and King Attalus. But the lat¬ 
ter was finally able to overcome his antagonist, by 
stirring up against him his own son Nicomedes, who, 
aftei drawing the troops from their allegiance to his 


father, caused him to be assassinated. (Liv., Eqnl. } 
50.— Justin, 34, 4.— Clinton, Fast. Hell., vol. 2, p. 
417.— Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 169.) 

Psammenitus, the last king of Egypt., and a mem¬ 
ber of the Sa'itic dynasty, the twenty-sixth of the royal 
lines that ruled in this country. Julius Africanus calls 
him Psammecherites. He was the son and successor 
of Amasis, and ascended the throne at the very mo¬ 
ment that Cambyses was marching against Egypt to 
dethrone the father. Psammenitus met Cambyses on 
the frontiers, near the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, 
with all his forces, Egyptians, Greeks, and Carians, 
but was totally defeated in a bloody battle. Shutting 
himself up in Memphis, he was besieged here by Cam¬ 
byses, and, according to Ctesias, was finally betrayed 
and taken prisoner. All Egypt thereupon fell under 
the Persian power, and the reign of Psammenitus end¬ 
ed after a duration of only six months. The greatest 
outrages were heaped upon the unfortunate monarch 
and his family; but the firmness with which he en¬ 
dured them all touched at last even the ferocious 
Cambyses with compassion. Psammenitus was there¬ 
upon retained at court, treated with honour, and final 
ly sent to Susa along with 6000 Egyptian captives. 
Having been accused, however, subsequently, of at¬ 
tempting to stir up a revolt, he was compelled to 
drink bull’s blood, and ended his days. (Herod., 3, 
10, seqq .— Cles., Pers., 9. — Bahr, ad Ctes., 1. c .— 
St. Martin, in Biogr. Univ., vol. 36, p. 177, seq.) 

Psammitichus, the first king of Egypt who opened 
that country to strangers, and induced the Greeks to 
'coyne and settle in it. He was the fourth prince of 
the Sa'itic dynasty, and the son of Necos or Nechaq 
who had been put to death by the Ethiopians, at tha; 
time masters of Egypt. Psammitichus, being quite 
young at the time of his father’s death, had been car 
ried into Syria to avoid a similar fate, and, after the 
retreat of the conquerors, was recalled to his native 
country by the inhabitants of the Sa'itic nome. It 
would seem that the Ethiopians, on their departure, 
had left Egypt a prey to trouble and dissension, and 
that the early princes of the Sa'itic dynasty, also, had 
never enjoyed sovereign authority over the whole 
kingdom. When Psammitichus, therefore, ascended 
the throne, he was obliged to share his power with 
eleven other monarchs, and Egypt was thus divided 
into twelve independent sovereignties. This form of 
government was like what the Greeks called a duo- 
decarchy (dvode/capxia). The twelve kings regulated 
in common, in a general council, all that related to the 
affairs of the kingdom considered as a whole. This 
state of things lasted for fifteen years, when it met 
with a singular termination. An oracle had declared 
that the whole kingdom would fall to the lot of that 
one of the twelve monarchs who should one day offer 
a libation with a brazen cup. It happened, then, one 
day, that the kings were all sacrificing in common in 
the temple of Vulcan at Memphis, and that the high 
priest, who distributed the golden cups for libations, 
had brought with him, by some accident, only eleven. 
When it came, therefore, to the turn of Psammitichus, 
who was the last in order to pour out a libation, he 
unthinkingly employed for this purpose his brazen 
helmet. This incident occasioned great disquiet to 
his colleagues, who thought they saw in it the fulfil¬ 
ment of the oracle. Being unable, however, with any 
appearance of justice, to punish an unpremeditated act, 
they contented themselves with banishing him to hi* 
own kingdom, which lay on the coast, and with for 
bidding him to take any part thereafter in the general 
affairs of the country. Psammitichus, however, re¬ 
taliated upon them by calling to his aid some Greek 
mercenaries who had landed on the Egyptian shore, 
and eventually conquered all his colleagues, and made 
himself master of the whole of Egypt, B.C. 652. The 
monarch now recompensed his Greek allies, not onlr 

1135 




PS 0 


P S Y 


fly paying t hem the sums of money which he had prom¬ 
ised, but also in assigning them lands on the Syrian 
frontier, where they formed, in fact, a military colony. 
Psamrnitichus showed a great partiality for the Greeks 
on all occasions ; and, in a Syrian expedition, he gave 
them the place of honour on the right, while he as¬ 
signed the left to the Egyptians. The discontent of 
the national troops was so great at this, that a large 
number of the military caste, amounting, it is said, to 
240,000 men, left Egypt and retired to Ethiopia. 
(Consult, on this subject, the learned note of St. Mar¬ 
tin, Biogr. Unix ., vol. 36, p. 180, seq.) So strong 
was the partiality of Psamrnitichus for everything 
Greek, that he caused a number of children to be 
trained up after the Grecian manner, and with these 
he formed the caste of interpreters, whom Herodotus 
found in his day existing in Egypt. Psammitichus 
also embellished his capital with several beautiful 
structures, and, among others, with the southern pro- 
pylaia of the great temple of Vulcan. He carried on 
a long war in Syria, and his forces are said to have 
remained 29 years before the city of Azotus. It was 
during this period, probably, that he arrested by pres¬ 
ents the victorious career of the Scythians, who had 
overrun Asia Minor, and were advancing upon Pales¬ 
tine and Egypt. This event would seem to have 
happened 626 B.C., or in the 13th year of the reign 
of the Jewish king Josiah, when the prophet Isaiah 
announced the approaching irruption of the Scythians 
into the territories of Israel. Psamrnitichus died after 
a reign of 54 years, leaving the crown to his son Ne- 
eos.—Herodotus relates a very foolish story of Psapa- ’ 
mitichus, who, it seems, was desirous of ascertaining 
what nation was the most ancient in the world ; or, 
in ether words, what was the primitive language of 
"“ten. In order to discover this, he took two newly- 
born children, and, having caused them to be placed 
in a lonely hut, directed a shepherd to nourish them 
with the milk of goats, which animals were sent in to 
them at stated times, and to take care himself never 
to utter a word in their hearing. The object was to 
ascertain what words they would first utter of them¬ 
selves. At length, on one occasion, when the shep¬ 
herd went in to them as usual, both the children, run¬ 
ning up to him, called out Bekos. Psamrnitichus, on 
being informed of the circumstance, made inquiries 
about the word, and found that it was the Phrygian 
term for bread. He therefore concluded that the 
Phrygians were the most ancient of men ! The truth 
is, the cry which the children uttered (supposing the 
story to be true) was bek (with the Greek termination 
as given by Herodotus, bek-os), and the children had 
learned it from the cry of the goats which suckled 
•hem. (Herod., 2, 151, seqq. — St. Martin, in Biogr. 

T mv., vol. 36, p. 178, seqq.) — II. A descendant of 
the preceding, who came to the throne about 400 13.C., 
*s a kind of vassal-king to Persia. (St. Martin, in 
Biogr. Unix., vol. 36, p. 181.) 

Psophis, a very ancient city in the northwestern 
part of Arcadia. Pausanias places it at the foot of the 
chain of Erymanthus, from which descended a river 
of the same name, which flowed near the city, and, af¬ 
ter receiving another small stream called Aroanius, 
joined the Alpheus on the borders of Elis (8, 24). 
rsophis itself had previously borne the names of Ery¬ 
manthus and Phegea. At the time of the Social war, 
vvas in the possession of the Eleans, on whose ter¬ 
ritory it bordered, as well as on that of the Achseans ; 
and, as it was a place of considerable strength, proved 
a source of great arinoyance to the latter people. It 
was taken by Philip, king of Macedon, then in alliance 
with the Achseans, and made over by him to the latfer 
people; who garrisoned it with their troops.—The re¬ 
mains of Psophis are to be seen near the Khan of Tri- 
potamia, so called from the junction of three rivers. 
(Puoquexille, vol. 5, p. 448. - A? 7 ', Itinerary of Mo- 
1136 


rea, p. 122. — Crame)'s Ancient Greece, vol, 3, p. 
323.) 

Psyche (Tugy?), a young maiden beloved by Cupid, 
and of whom the following legend is related by Apu 
leius : She was the daughter of a king and queen, and 
the youngest of three sisters. Her beauty was so re¬ 
markable that people crowded from all parts to gaze 
upon her charms, altars were erected to her, and she 
was worshipped as a second Venus, The Queen of 
Love was irritated at seeing her own altars neglected 
and her adorers diminishing. She summoned her son, 
and ordered him to inspire Psyche with a passion for 
some vile and abject wretch. The goddess then de¬ 
parted, after having conducted her son to the city where 
Psyche dwelt, and left him to execute her mandate. 
Meantime Psyche, though adored by all, was sought as 
a wife by none. Her sisters, who were far inferior to 
her in charms, were married, but she remained single, 
hating that beauty which all admired. Her father con¬ 
sulted the oracle of Apollo, and was ordered to expose 
her on a rock, whence she would be carried away by 
a monster. The oracle was obeyed, and Psyche, amid 
the tears of the people, was placed on a lofty crag. 
Here, while she sat wmeping, a zephyr, sent for the 
purpose, gently raised and carried her to a charming 
valley. Overcome by grief, she fell asleep, and, on 
awakening, beholds a grove with a fountain in the 
midst of it, and near it a stately palace of most splen¬ 
did structure. Venturing to enter this palace, she goes 
over it, lost in admiration of its magnificence ; when, 
suddenly, she hears a voice, telling her that all there is 
hers, and that her commands will be obeyed. She 
bathes, sits down to a rich repast, and is regaled with 
music by invisible performers. At night she retires 
to bed ; an unseen youth addresses her in the softest 
accents, and she becomes his bride. Her sisters, 
meanwhile, had come to console their parents for the 
loss of Psyche, whose invisible spouse informs her of 
the event, and warns her of the danger likely te arise 
from it. Moved by the tears of his bride, however, 
he consents that her sisters should come to the palace. 
The obedient zephyr conveys them thither. They 
grow envious of Psyche’s happiness, and try to per¬ 
suade her that her invisible lord is a serpent, who will 
finally devour her. By their advice she provides her¬ 
self with a lamp and a razor to destroy the monster. 
When her husband was asleep, she arose, took her lamp 
from its place of concealment, and approached the 
couch ; but there she beheld, instead of a dragon, Love 
himself. Filled with amazement at his beauty, she 
leaned in rapture over him : a drop of oil fell from the 
lamp on the shoulder of the god : he awoke and flew 
away. Psyche caught at him as he rose, and was 
raised into the air, but fell ; and, as she lay, the god 
reproached her from a cypress for her breach of faith. 
The abandoned Psyche now roams through the world 
in search of Cupid, and making many fruitless en¬ 
deavours to destroy herself. She arrives at the king¬ 
dom of her sisters ; and, by a false tale of Cupid’s love 
for them, causes them to cast themselves from the rock 
on which she had been exposed, and through their 
credulity they perish. She still roams on, persecuted 
and subjected to numerous trials bv Venus. This god¬ 
dess, bent on her destruction, despatches her to Pro¬ 
serpina with a box, to request some of her beauty. 
Psyche accomplishes her mission in safety ; but, as 
she is returning, she thinks she may venture to open 
the box and take a portion for herself. She opens the 
box, when, instead of beauty, there issues from it a 
dense, black exhalation, and the imprudent Psyche 
falls to the ground in a deep slumber from its effects 
In this state she is found by Cupid, who had escaped 
by the window of the chamber where he had been con¬ 
fined by his mother : he awakens her with the point oi 
one of his arrows, reproaches her with her curiosity, 
and then proceeds to the palace of Jupiter, to interest 




I’ T O 


PTOLEIVLEUS. 


aim in her favour. Jupiter takes pity on her and en¬ 
dows her with immortality'! Venus is reconciled, and 
the marriage of Psyche with Cupid takes place amid 
great joy in the skies. The offspring of their union 
was a child, whom his parents named Pleasure. (Apu- 
leius, Met., 4, 83, seqq. — Op., ed Oudcnd., vol. 1, p. 
300, seqq. — Keightleffs Mythology, p. 148, seqq .— 
Among the various explanations that have been given 
of this beautiful legend, the following appears the 
most satisfactory : This fable, it is said, is a represent¬ 
ation of the human soul (ipvxp). The soul, which is 
of divine origin, is here below subjected to error in its 
prisonTiouse, the body. Hence trials and purifications 
are set before it, that it may become capable of a 
higher view of things, and of true desire. Two loves 
meet it: the earthly, a deceiver, who draws it down to 
earthly things ; the heavenly, who directs its view to 
the original, fair and divine, and who, gaining the vic¬ 
tory over his rival, leads off' the soul as his bride. 
( Hirt , Berlin Akad., 1816.— Creuzer, Symbolik, vol. 
3, p. 573.) 

Psylli, a people of Libya near the Syrtes, very ex¬ 
pert in curing the venomous bite of serpents, which 
had no fatal effect upon them. They were destroyed 
by'the Nasamones, a neighbouring people. It seems 
very probable that the Nasamones circulated the idle 
story respecting the destruction of the Psylli, which 
Herodotus relates, without, however, giving credit to 
it. He states that a south wind had dried up all the 
reservoirs of the Psylli, and that the whole country, 
as far as the Syrtes, was destitute of water. They re¬ 
solved, accordingly, after a public consultation, to 
make an expedition against the south wind ; but, hav¬ 
ing reached the deserts, the south wind overwhelmed 
them beneath the sands. (Lucan, 9, 894, 937.— He- 
■'■od., 4, 172.— Pausan., 9, 28.) 

Pteria, a small territory, forming part of Cappa¬ 
docia according to Herodotus (1, 76), or, more prop¬ 
erly speaking, of Paphlagonia, and in the vicinity of 
the city of Sinope. Here the first battle took place 
between Croesus and Cyrus. (Herod., 1. c. — Lur¬ 
cher, Hist. Herod., vol. 8, p. 468.) 

Ptolem^eus, I. surnamed Soter , and sometimes 
Lagi (i. e., son of Lagus), king of Egypt, and son of 
Arsinoe, who, when pregnant by Philip of Macedonia, 
married Lagus. (Vid. Lagus.) Ptolemy was edu¬ 
cated in the court of the King of Macedonia. He be¬ 
came one of the friends and associates of Alexander, 
and, when that monarch invaded Asia, the son of Ar¬ 
sinoe attended him as one of his generals. During 
the expedition he behaved with uncommon valour ; 
he killed one of the Indian monarchs in single com¬ 
bat, and it was to his prudence and courage that Alex¬ 
ander was indebted for the reduction of the rock Aor- 
nus. After the conqueror’s death, in the general di¬ 
vision of the Macedonian empire. Ptolemy obtained 
as his share the government of Egypt, with Libya, 
and part of the neighbouring territories of Arabia. In 
this appointment the governor soon gained the esteem 
of the people by acts of kindness, by benevolence and 
clemency, though he did not assume the title of inde¬ 
pendent monarch till seventeen years after. He made 
himself master of Coelosyria, Phoenicia, and the neigh¬ 
bouring coast of Syria ; and when he had reduced Je¬ 
rusalem, he carried above 100,000 prisoners to Egypt, 
to people the extensive city of Alexandrea, which be¬ 
came the capital of his dominions. After he had ren¬ 
dered these prisoners the most attached and faithful of 
his subjects by his liberality and the grant of various 
privileges, Ptolemy assumed the title of King of Egypt, 
and soon after reduced Cyprus under his power. He 
made war with success against Demetrius and Antigo- 
nus, who disputed his right to the provinces of Syria ; 
and from the assistance he gave to the people of 
Rhodes against their common enemies, he received 
the name of Soter. While he extended his dominions, 
• 7 E 


Pi plemy was not negligent of the interests ol his suti 
jects at home, and established many wise regulations 
for the improvement of his people, and the cultivation 
of literature and the arts. He died at the age of eighty- 
four, having governed Egypt as viceroy for seventeen 
years, and then ruled over it as monarch for twenty- 
three years. The date of his death is B.C. 283. 
(Clinton, Fast. Hell., vol. 1, p. 184— Id ib., p. 237. 
— Id. ib., vol. 2, p. 379.) He was succeeded by his 
son Ptolemy Philadelphus, who had been his partner 
on the throne the last two years of his reign. Ptole¬ 
my has been commended for his abilities not only as a 
sovereign, but as a writer ; and among the many val 
uable compositions of antiquity which have been lost, 
we have to lament a history of the life and expeditions 
of Alexander the Great by the King of Egypt, greatly 
admired and valued for elegance and authenticity, and 
from which Arrian obtained important materials for his 
work on the same subject.—II. Son of Ptolemy the 
First, succeeded his father on the Egyptian throne, and 
was called Philadelphus from the affection entertained 
by him for his sister and wife Arsinoe. He showed 
himself worthy in every respect to succeed his great 
father, and, conscious of the advantages which arise 
from an alliance with powerful nations, he sent am¬ 
bassadors to Italy to solicit the friendship of the Ro¬ 
mans, whose name and military reputation had become 
universally known for the victories which they had 
just obtained over Pyrrhus and the Tarentines. But 
while Ptolemy strengthened himself by alliances with 
foreign powers, the internal peace of his kingdom was 
disturbed by the revolt of Magas, his brother, king of 
Gyrene. The sedition, however, was stopped, though 
kindled by Antiochus, king of Syria, and the death of 
the rebellious prince re-established peace for some 
time in the family of Philadelphus. Antiochus, the 
Syrian king, married Berenice, the daughter of Ptole¬ 
my ; and the father, though old and infirm, conducted 
his daughter to her husband’s kingdom, and assisted at 
the nuptials. Philadelphus died in the sixty-fourth 
year of his age, two hundred and forty-six years before 
the Christian era. He left two sons and a daughter 
by Arsinoe, the daughter of Lysimachus. He had 
afterward married his sister Arsinoe, whom he loved 
with uncommon tenderness, and to whose memory 
he began to erect a celebrated monument. (Vid. Di¬ 
nocrates.) During the whole of his reign, Philadel¬ 
phus was employed in exciting industry, and in encoura¬ 
ging the liberal arts and useful knowledge among hia 
subjects. The inhabitants of the adjacent countries 
were allured by promises and presents to increase the 
number of the Egyptian subjects, and Ptolemy could 
boast of reigning over numerous well-peopled cities. 
He gave every possible encouragement to commerce ; 
and by keeping two powerful fleets, one in the Medi 
terranean, and the other in the Red Sea, he made 
Egypt the mart of the world. His army consisted of 
200,000 foot, 40,000 horse, besides 300 elephants, 
and 2000 armed chariots. With justice, therefore, he 
has been called the richest of all the princes and mon¬ 
archs of his age ; and, indeed, the remark is not false, 
when it is observed that at his death he left in his 
treasury 750,000 Egyptian talents, a sum equivalent 
to two hundred millions sterling. His palace, was the 
asylum of learned men, whom he admired and patro¬ 
nised ; and by increasing the library which he himself, 
or, according to others, his father had founded, he 
showed his taste for learning, and his wish to encour¬ 
age genius. (Vid. Alexandrea, and Alexandria 
Schola.) The whole reign of Philadelphus was 38 
years, and from the death of his father 36 years. 
(Clinton, Fast. Hell., vol. 2, p 379.)—III. The third 
of the name, succeeded his father Philadelphus on the 
Egyptian throne B.C. 245. He early engaged in a 
war against Antiochus Theos for his unkindness to 
Berenice, the Egyptian king’s sister, whom he had 

1137 



PTOLEM^EUS. 


PTOLEMiEUS. 


married with the consent of Philadelphus. With the 
most rapid success he conquered byria and Cilicia, 
and advanced as far as Bactriana and the confines of 
India; but a sedition at home stopped his progress, 
and he returned to Egypt loaded with the spoils of 
conquered nations. Among the immense riches 
which he brought, he had many statues of the Egyp¬ 
tian gods, which Cambyses had carried away into Per¬ 
sia when he conquered Egypt. These were restored 
to the temples, and the Egyptians called their sover¬ 
eign Euergetcs (or Benefactor), in acknowledgment 
of his attention, beneficence, and religious zeal for the 
gods of his country. The last years of Ptolemy’s 
reign were passed in peace if we except the refusal 
of the Jews to pay the tribute of 20 silver talents 
which their ancestors had always paid to the Egyptian 
monarchs. Euergetes died 221 years before Christ, 
after a reign of 25 years ; and, like his two illustrious 
predecessors, was the patron of learning.—IV. The 
fourth, succeeded his father Euergetes on the throne of 
Egypt, and received the surname of Philopator, prob¬ 
ably from the regard which he manifested for the mem¬ 
ory of his father ; though, according to some authori¬ 
ties, he destroyed him by poison. He began his reign 
with acts of the greatest cruelty, and he successively 
sacrificed to his avarice his own mother, his wife, his 
sister, and his brother. He received, in derision, the 
name of Typhon, from his evil morals, and that of 
Gallus , because he appeared in the streets of Alex¬ 
andra with all the gestures of the priests of Cybele. 
In the midst of his pleasures Philopator was called to 
war against Antiochus, king of Syria, and «t the head 
of a powerful army he soon invaded his enemy’s ter¬ 
ritories, and might have added the kingdom of Syria to 
Egypt if he had made a prudent use of the victories 
which attended his arms. In the latter part of his 
reign, the Romans, whom a dangerous war with Car¬ 
thage had weakened, but, at the same time, roused to 
Euperior activity, renewed, for political reasons, the 
treaty of alliance which had been made with the 
Egyptian monarchs. Philopator at last, weakened and 
enervated by intemperance and continued debauchery, 
died in the 37th year of his age, after a reign of 17 
years, 204 years before the Christian era.—V. The 
fifth, succeeded his father Philopator as king of Egypt, 
though only in the fourth year of his age. During the 
years of his minority he was under the protection of 
Sosicius and of Aristomenes, by whose prudent ad¬ 
ministration Antiochus was dispossessed of the prov¬ 
inces of Ccelosyria and Palestine, which he had con¬ 
quered in war. The Romans also renewed their al¬ 
liance with him after their victories over Hannibal, 
and the conclusion of the second Punic war. This 
flattering embassy induced Aristomenes to offer the 
care of the patronage of the young monarch to the 
Romans; but the regent was confirmed in his honour¬ 
able office, and, by making a treaty of alliance with 
the people of Achaia, he convinced the Egyptians that 
he was qualified to wield the sceptre and to govern 
the nation. But, now that Ptolemy had reached his 
14th year, according to the laws and customs of 
Egypt, the years of his minority had expired. He re¬ 
ceived the surname of Epiphanes, or Illustrious, and 
was crowned at Alexandrea with the greatest solem¬ 
nity, and the faithful Aristomenes resigned into his 
hands an empire which he had governed with honour 
to himself and with credit to his sovereign. Young 
Ptolemy was no sooner delivered from the shackles of 
a superior, than he betrayed the same vices which had 
characterized his father. The counsels of Aristome¬ 
nes were despised, and the minister, who for ten years 
had governed the kingdom with equity and modera¬ 
tion, was sacrificed to the caprice of the sovereign, 
who abhorred him for the salutary advice which his 
own vicious inclinations did not permit him to follow. 
His cruelties raised seditions among his subjects but 
1 38 


these were twice quelled by the prudence and the 
moderation of one Polycrates, the most faithful of his 
corrupt ministers. In the midst of his extravagance, 
Epiphanes did not forget his alliance with the Romans. 
Above all others, he showed himself eager to cultivate 
friendship with a nation from whom he could derive so 
many advantaged, and during their war against Antio¬ 
chus he offered to assist them with money against a 
monarch whose daughter, Cleopatra, he had married, 
but whom he hated on account of the seditions he had 
raised in the very heart of Egypt. After a reign of 24 
years, Ptolemy was poisoned, 180 years before Christ, 
by his ministers, whom he had threatened to rob of 
their possessions to carry on a war against Seleucus, 
king of Syria.—VI. The sixth, succeeded his father 
Epiphanes on the Egyptian throne, and received the 
surname of Philometor, probably by antiphrasis, an 
account of his hatred against his mother Cleopatra 
He was in the sixth year of his age when he ascended 
the throne, and during his minority the kingdom was 
governed by his mother, and at her death by a eu¬ 
nuch, who was one of his favourites. He made war 
against Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Syria, to recov 
er the provinces of Palestine and Coelosyria, which 
were part of the Egvptain dominions, and, after seve- 
al successes, he fell into the hands of his enemy, who 
detained him in confinement. During the captivity of 
Philometor, the Egyptians raised to the throne his 
younger brother Ptolemy Euergetes, or Physcon, also 
son of Epiphanes; but he was no sooner established in 
his power than Antiochus turned his arms against 
Egypt, drove out the usurper, and restored Philometor 
to all his rights and privileges as king of Egypt. This 
artful behaviour of Antiochus was soon comprehended 
by Philometor; and when he saw that Pelusium, the 
key of Egypt, had remained in the hands of his Syriar 
ally, he recalled his brother Physcon, and made hirr 
partner on the throne, and concerted with him how to 
repel their common enemy. This union of interest in 
the two royal brothers incensed Antiochus : he en¬ 
tered Egypt with a large army, but the Romans check¬ 
ed his progress and obliged him to retire. No sooner 
were they delivered from the impending war, than Phil¬ 
ometor and Physcon, whom the fear of danger had 
united, began with mutual jealousy to oppose each 
other’s views. Physcon was at last banished by the 
superior power of.his brother, and, as he could find no 
support in Egypt, he immediately repaired to Rome. 
To excite more effectually the compassion of the Ro¬ 
mans, and to gain their assistance, he appeared in 
the meanest dress, and took his residence in the most 
obscure corner of the city. He received an audience 
from the senate, and the Romans settled the dispute 
between the two royal brothers by making them in¬ 
dependent of one another, and giving the govern¬ 
ment of Libya and Cyrene to Physcon, and confirm¬ 
ing Philometor in the possession of Egypt and the 
island of Cyprus. These terms of accommodation 
were gladly accepted ; but Physcon soon claimed 
the dominion of Cyprus, and in this he was sup¬ 
ported by the Romans, who wished to aggrandize 
themselves by the diminution of the Egyptian pow¬ 
er. Philometor refused to give up the island of Cy¬ 
prus, and, to call away his brother’s attention, he fo¬ 
mented the seeds of rebellion in Cyrene. But the 
death of Philometor, 145 years before the Christian 
era, left Physcon master of Egypt and all the depend¬ 
ant provinces.—VII. The seventh Ptolemy, surnamed 
Physcon on account of an abdominal protuberance, 
produced by his intemperate habits (vid. Physcon), 
ascended the throne of Egypt after the death of his 
brother Philometor; and, as he had reigned for some 
time conjointly with him (vid. Ptolem£eus VI.), his 
succession was approved, though the wife and the son 
of the deceased monarch laid claims to the crown. 
Cleopatra was supported in her claims by the Tev# 







PTOLEM.EUS. 


PTOLEIVLEUS. 


and it was at last agreed that Physcon should marry the 
queen, and that her son should succeed on the throne 
at his death. The nuptials were accordingly cele¬ 
brated, but on that very day the tyrant murdered Cle¬ 
opatra’s son in her arms. He ordered himself to be 
called Euergetes , but the Alexandreans refused to do 
it, and stigmatized him with the appellation of Kaker- 
getes , or Evil-doer , a surname which he deserved by 
his tyranny and oppression. A series of barbarities 
rendered him odious ; but, as no one attempted to rid 
Egypt of her tyrant, the Alexandreans abandoned their 
habitations, and fled from a place which continually 
streamed with the blood of their massacred fellow- 
citizens. If their migration proved fatal to the com¬ 
merce and prosperity of Alexandrea, it was of the most 
essential service to the countries where they retired ; 
and the numbers of Egyptians that sought a safe asy¬ 
lum in Greece and Asia, intrbduced among the inhab¬ 
itants of those countries the different professions that 
were practised with success in the capital of Egypt. 
Physcon endeavoured to repeople the city which his 
cruelty had laid desolate ; but the fear of sharing the 
fate of its former inhabitants prevailed more than the 
promise of riches, rights, and immunities. The king, 
at last, disgusted with Cleopatra, repudiated her, and 
married her daughter by Philometor, called also Cleo¬ 
patra. He still continued to exercise the greatest cru¬ 
elty upon his subjects; but the prudence and vigilance 
of his ministers kept the people in tranquillity, till all 
Egypt revolted when the king had basely murdered all 
the young men of Alexandrea. Without friends or 
support in Egypt, he fled to Cyprus, and Cleopatra, 
the divorced queen, ascended the throne. In his ban¬ 
ishment Physcon dreaded lest the Alexandreans should 
also place the crown on the head of his son, by his sis¬ 
ter Cleopatra, who was the governor of Cyrene ; and 
under these apprehensions he sent for the young 
prince, called Memphitis, to Cyprus, and murdered him 
as soon as he reached the shore. To make the bar¬ 
barity more complete, he sent the limbs of Memphitis 
to Cleopatra, and they were received as the queen was 
going to celebrate her birthday. Soon after this he 
invaded Egypt with an army, and obtained a victory 
over the forces of Cleopatra, who, being left without 
friends or assistance, fled to her eldest daughter Cleo¬ 
patra, who had married Demetrius, king of Syria. 
This decisive blow restored Physcon to his throne, 
where he continued to reign for some time, hated by 
his subjects and feared by his enemies. He died at 
Alexandrea in the 67th year of his age, after a reign 
of 29 years, about 116 years before Christ. This 
prince, notwithstanding his cruel disposition, was a 
lover of learning, and received from some the appella¬ 
tion of Philologist. Aristarchus was his preceptor, and 
he is said also to have made important additions to the 
Alexandrean library, as well in original manuscripts 
as in copies.—VIII. The eighth, surnamed Soter II., 
succeeded his father Physcon as king of Egypt. He 
had no sooner ascended the throne than his mother 
Cleopatra, who reigned conjointly with him, expelled 
him to Cyprus, and placed the crown on the head of 
his brother Ptolemy Alexander, her favourite son. 
Soter, banished from Egypt, became king of Cyprus ; 
and soon after he appeared at the head of a large army, 
to make war against Alexander Jannseus, king of Ju¬ 
daea, through whose assistance and intrigue he had 
been expelled by Cleopatra. The Jewish monarch 
was conquered, and 50,000 of his men were left on the 
field of battle. Soter, after he had exercised „the 
greatest cruelty upon the Jews, and made vain at¬ 
tempts to recover the kingdom of Egypt, retired to 
Cyprus till the death of his brother Alexander re¬ 
stored him to his native dominions. Some of the cit¬ 
ies of Egypt refused to acknowledge him as their sov¬ 
ereign, and Thebes, for its obstinacy, was closely be¬ 
sieged for three successive years, and from a powerful 


and populous city it was reduced to ruins. In tha 
latter part of his reign Soter was called upon to assist 
the Romans with a navy for the conquest of Athens ; 
but Lucullus, who had been sent to obtain the wanted 
supply, though received with kingly honours, was dis¬ 
missed with evasive and unsatisfactory answers, and 
the monarch refused to part with troops which he 
deemed necessary to preserve the peace of his king 
dom. Soter died 81 years before the Christian era, 
after a reign of 36 years since the death of his father 
Physcon, eleven of which he had passed with his 
mother Cleopatra on the Egyptian throne, eighteen in 
Cyprus, and seven after his mother’s death. This 
monarch is sometimes called Lathyrus, from an ex¬ 
crescence like a vetch (kdQvpog) on his nose.—IX. 
The ninth, called also Alexander Ptolemy I., was 
raised to the throne by his mother Cleopatra, in pref¬ 
erence to his brother, and conjointly with her. Cleo¬ 
patra expelled, but afterward recalled him ; and Alex¬ 
ander, to prevent being expelled a second time, put 
her to death; for which unnatural action he was him¬ 
self murdered by one of his subjects.—X. The tenth, 
or Alexander Ptolemy II., was son of the preceding. 
He was educated in the island of Cos, and, having fall¬ 
en into the hands of Mithradates, escaped subse 
quently to Sylla. He was murdered by his own sub¬ 
jects.—XI. The eleventh, or Alexander Ptolemy III., 
was king of Egypt after his brother Alexander, the last 
mentioned. After a peaceful reign he was banished 
by his subjects, and died at Tyre B.C. 65, leaving 
his kingdom to the Romans.—XII. The twelfth, the 
illegitimate son of Soter II., ascended the throne of 
Egypt at the death of Alexander III. He received 
the surname of Auletes, from the skill with which he 
played upon the flute. Besides, however, this deri¬ 
sory title, he had the surnames of Philopator , Phila- 
delphus , and Neodionysus (the New Bacchus or Osiris, 
these deities being often confounded by the Greeks) 
His rise showed great marks of prudence and circum¬ 
spection ; and as his predecessor, by his will, had left 
the kingdom of Egypt to the Romans, Auletes knew 
that he could not be firmly established on his throne 
without the approbation of the Roman senate. He was 
successful in his applications; and Csesar, who was 
then consul and in want of money, established his 
succession, and granted him the alliance of the Ro¬ 
mans, after he had received a very large sum. But 
these measures rendered the monarch unpopular at 
home; and, when he had suffered the Romans quietly 
to take possession of Cyprus, the Egyptians revolted, 
and Auletes was obliged to fly from his kingdom, and 
seek protection among the most powerful of his allies. 
His complaints were heard at Rome at first with in¬ 
difference ; and the murder of a hundred noblemen of 
Alexandrea, whom the Egyptians had sent to justify 
their proceedings before the Roman senate, rendered 
him unpopular and suspected. Pompey, however, 
supported his cause, and the senators decreed to re¬ 
establish Auletes on his throne ; but, as they proceeded 
slowly in the execution of their plans, the monarch 
retired from Rome to Ephesus, where he lay conceal¬ 
ed for some time in the temple of Diana. During his 
absence from Alexandrea, his daughter Berenice had 
made herself absolute, and established herself on the 
throne by a marriage with Archelaus, a priest of Bel- 
lona’s temple at Comana ; but she was soon driven 
from Egypt, when Gabinius, at the head of a Roman 
army, approached to replace Auletes on his throne. 
Auletes was no sooner restored to power than he sac¬ 
rificed to his ambition his daughter Berenice, and be¬ 
haved with the greatest ingratitude and perfidy to Ra- 
birius, a Roman who had supplied him with money 
when expelled from his kingdom. Auletes died four 
years after his restoration, about 51 years before the 
Christian era. He left two sons and two daughters, 
and by his will ordered the elder of his sons to marry 

1139 




PTOLEM^EUS. 


PTOLEJYLEUfcs. 


the elder of his daughters, and to ascend with her the 
vacant throne. As these children were young, the 
dying monarch recommended them to the protection 
and paternal care of the Romans ; and accordingly 
Pompey the Great was appointed by the senate to be 
their patron and their guardian. Their reign was as 
turbulent as that of their predecessors, and it is re¬ 
markable for no uncommon events ; only we may ob¬ 
serve that the young queen was the Cleopatra who 
soon after became so celebrated.—XIII. The thir¬ 
teenth, ascended the throne of Egypt conjointly with 
his sister Cleopatra, whom he had married according to 
the directions of his father Auletes. (Vid. Cleopatra 
VII.)—XIV. Apion, king of Cyrene, was the illegiti¬ 
mate son of Ptolemy Physcon. After a reign of twenty 
years he died ; and, as he had no children, he made the 
Romans heirs of his dominions. The Romans pre¬ 
sented his subjects with their independence.—XV. 
Ceraunus, a son of Ptolemy Soter by Eurvdice, the 
daughter of Antipater. Unable to succeed to the 
throne of Egypt, Ceraunus fled to the court of Seleu- 
cus, where he was received with friendly marks of at¬ 
tention. Seleucus was then king of Macedonia, an 
empire which he had lately acquired by the death of 
Lysimachus in a battle in Phrygia; but his reign was 
short ; and Ceraunus perfidiously murdered him, and 
ascended his throne 280 B.C. The murderer, how¬ 
ever, could not be firmly established in Macedonia as 
long as Arsinoe the widow, and the children of Lysim¬ 
achus, were alive, and entitled to claim his kingdom 
as the lawful possession of their father. To remove 
thtse obstacles, Ceraunus made offers of marriage to 
Arisnoe, who was his own sister. The queen at first 
refused, but the protestations and solemn promises of 
the usurper at last prevailed upon her to consent. 
The nuptials, however, were no sooner celebrated than 
Ceraunus murdered the two young princes, and con¬ 
firmed his usurpation by rapine and cruelty. But now 
three powerful princes claimed the kingdom of Mace¬ 
donia as their own : Antiochus, the son of Seleucus ; 
Antigonus, the son of Demetrius ; and Pyrrhus, the 
king of Epirus. These enemies, however, were soon 
removed ; Ceraunus conquered Antigonus in the field 
of battle, and stopped the hostilities of his two other 
rivals by promises and money. He did not long re¬ 
main inactive : a barbarian army of Gauls claimed a 
tribute from him, and the monarch immediately march¬ 
ed to meet them in the field. The battle was long and 
bloody. The Macedonians might have obtained the 
victory if Ceraunus had shown more prudence. He 
was thrown down from his elephant, and taken prison¬ 
er by the enemy, who immediately tore his body to 
pieces. Ptolemy had been king of Macedonia only 
eighteen months. ( Justin , 24, &c. — Pausan., 10, 
10-—XVI. An illegitimate son of Ptolemy Soter II., 
or Lathyrus, king of Cyprus, of- which he was tyran¬ 
nically dispossessed by the Romans. Cato was at the 
head of the forces which were sent against Ptolemy by 
the senate, and the Roman general proposed to the 
monarch to retire from the throne, and to pass the rest 
of his days in the obscure office of high-priest in the 
temple of Venus at Paphos. This offer was rejected 
with the indignation which it merited, and the monarch 
poisoned himself at the approach of the enemy. The 
treasures found in the island amounted to the enor¬ 
mous sum of £1,356,250 sterling, which were carried 
to Rome by ‘the conquerors.—XVII. A son of Pyr¬ 
rhus, king of Epirus, by Antigone, the daughter of 
Beienice. He was left governor of Epirus when Pyr¬ 
rhus went to Italy to assist the Tarentines against the 
Romans, where he presided with great prudence and 
moderation. He was killed, bravely fighting, in the 
expedition which Pyrrhus undertook against Sparta 
and Argos. XVIII. Claudius, a celebrated astron¬ 
omer, chronologer, musical writer, and geographer of 
iniquity, born in Egypt, and who flourished about the 
1140 


middle of the second century of our era, under the An 
tonines. During the middle ages, it was generally sup¬ 
posed that he had reigned in Egypt, and the first edi¬ 
tion of his Almagest, that of Grynseus, 1538, is dedi¬ 
cated to the King of England as the production of a 
king. This error is thought to have originated with 
Albumazar, an Arabian of the ninth century, who was 
led into the mistake by the Arabic name of the astron* 
omer ( Bathalmius ), which, according to Herbelot, 
means in Arabic “a king of Egypt” ( Bibliotheca Ori¬ 
ent., s. v ), just as the ancient monarchs of the land 
were named Feraoun {Pharaohs). Ptolemy, how- 
ever, is styled King of Alexandrea almost two centu¬ 
ries before Albumazar, by Isidorus of Seville. ( Ori - 

ginum, 3, 25.) — Another opinion, not less generally 
received, but probably just as erroneous as the for¬ 
mer, is that which makes Ptolemy to have been born 
at Pelusium. Suidas and Eudoxia call him a philoso¬ 
pher of Alexandrea ; but it has been said that this 
appellation has only been given him on account of his 
long sojourn in the capital of Egypt. No ancient 
writer makes mention of his native country, though 
many manuscripts of the Latin translations of his 
works, and also the printed editions of these versions, 
style him Pheludiensis, which many regard as a cor¬ 
ruption for Pelusiensis. Raidel {Comment, in C. 
Plol.Geogr., Norimb., 1737, 4to, p. 3) cites the Arab 
scholiast on the Tetrabiblos, Ali-Ibn-Rcdnan , named 
Haly , to prove that Pelusium was the native place of 
our astronomer. Buttmann, on the other hand, proves 
the citation of Raidel to be false. Haly, or his trans¬ 
lator, makes no mention whatever of the native place 
of Ptolemy; he only calls this writer al-Feludhi {Phe- 
ludianus), from the surname which the Arabs have 
given him. It is true, in a biography or preface found 
at the head of a Latin version of the Almagest, made 
from the Arabic, we read the following: “Hie autem 
ortus et educatus fuit in Alexandrea majori, terra 
ttgyyti. Hujus tamen propago de terra Sem, et de 
provincia quae dicitur Pheuludia.” This absurd pas¬ 
sage, however, which does not even say that Ptolemy 
was born out of Alexandrea, proves nothing else but 
the desire of the Arab translator to represent the as¬ 
tronomer as the descendant of an Arabian or a Syrian 
{de terra Sem.—Museum der Alterthums., Wissen- 
schaft, vol. 2, p..463, seqq.). —Theodorus Meliteniota 
states that Ptolemy was born at Ptolema'is, or Herme- 
ion, in the Thebaid, and that he was contemporary 
with Antoninus Pius. This writer does not, it is true, 
cite his authority ; yet nothing prevents our admitting 
the accuracy of his statement, derived, no doubt, from 
some ancient writer, provided we can reconcile it with 
the surname Al Feludi, which the Arabians have given 
to Ptolemy. 4 his surname has only thus far been 
found in the Latin translations : in the Arabic books 
Ptolemy is sometimes named Bathalmius, al Kaludi 
{Abulpharagii Hist., p. 73, 1. 5; p. 105, 1. 3 ; p. 123, 

1. antep.—Casiri , Biblioth. Anab. Hist., vol. 1, p. 348. 
—Memoircs sur VEgypte, p. 389, where an extract is 
given from Abdcraschid el Bakin, who calls Ptolemy 
Barthalmyous el Qloudy). Kaludi is expressed by 
Claudius in the Latin versions. The change from Ka¬ 
ludi to Faludi is extremely simple, since in Arabic the 
letter K is distinguished from F only by an additional 
point. Thus Pheludianus is merely corrupted from 
Claudius, and ought not to be rendered by Pelusianus. 
Thus, too, Bathalmius al Kaludi is only an Arabic 
version of TLroTie/ualoc; 6 K lavdiog, as Suidas writes 
the name, the prsenomen being mistaken by the Arabi¬ 
an translators for an appellative.—Another point, of 
more importance is to ascertain the place where Ptol¬ 
emy made his observations, because on this depends the 
degree of precision of which his observations on lati¬ 
tude were susceptible. The astronomer states posi¬ 
tively that he made these observations under the par¬ 
allel of Alexandrea; while, on the other hand, there 






PT0LE1VLEUS. 


PTOLEM/EIJS. 


exists a schc iam of Olympiodorus (in Phcpd., Plat .— 
Bouilland, Testimonia de Ptolemceo, p. 205,), which in¬ 
forms us that Ptolemy passed 40 years of his life kv 
nrepolg tov KavuSov (“in the wings of Canobus''’), 
occupied with astronomical observations, and that he 
placed columns there on which he caused to be cut the 
theorems of which he had been the author. An in¬ 
scription has come down to us which illustrates this 
remark of Olympiodorus: QeQ EuTf/pc KA avdiog IlroA- 
Efialog apxdg teal VKodmeig fiadrtyaTiKug, k. t. A., 

“ Claudius Ptolemy dedicates to the God, the Preserver, 
his mathematical principles and theses ,” &c. Combi¬ 
ning this dedication with the scholium of Olympiodorus, 
the Abbe Halma states, that he would be inclined to 
believe the deity alluded to in the inscription to be Ca¬ 
nobus, if the inscription did not expressly declare, far¬ 
ther on, that the monument containing it was placed 
in the city of Canobus (bv K avd)6<p), whence he infers 
that the protecting deity is Serapis, and that Ptolemy 
made his observations in the side-buildings connected 
with the temple of this god. He thinks that this posi¬ 
tion is not in contradiction with the passage in which 
Ptolemy informs us that he made them under the par¬ 
allel of Alexandrea ; for, according to Halma, the city 
of Alexandrea was gradually extended to Canopus, 
which became a kind of suburbs to it, so that Ptole¬ 
my, though residing at Canopus, may nevertheless be 
said to have observed at Alexandrea, or that, observ¬ 
ing at Canopus, he had no need of reducing his ob¬ 
servations to the parallel of Alexandrea, by reason of 
the trifling difference of latitude. A difficulty here 
presents itself, of which the Abbe Halma is aware, and 
which he proposes to remedy by an alteration of the 
text. If Ptolemy had made his observations in the 
temple of Serapis at Canopus, Olympiodorus, in place 
of saying kv tt repolg tov K av66ov, “in the wings of 
(the temple of) Canobus ,” would have had kv Tcrepoig 
Tr/g K avudov, “the side-buildings of (the city of) Ca¬ 
nobus Halma therefore proposes to substitute the 
latter reading for the former, or else to regard Canobus 
as the same divinity with Serapis, and to suppose that 
Ptolemy observed in the temple of Canobus at Cano¬ 
pus. This reasoning of Halma’s has been attacked 
by Letronne, and ably refuted. The latter shows, 
that Canopus, situate at the distance of 120 stadia, or 
more than two and a half geographical miles, northeast 
of Alexandrea, never made part of that capital, since 
there were several places, such as Nicopolis and Ta- 
posiris Parva, between the two cities ; that, conse¬ 
quently, the Serapeum, in which Ptolemy observed, 
could not have belonged to Canopus ; and, finally, that 
Ptolemy knew the difference in latitude between Ca¬ 
nopus and Alexandrea, and could not confound them 
together in one point. It is more probable, as Letronne 
remarks (Journal des Savans , 1818, p. 202), that 
Olympiodorus was mistaken as to the place where 
Ptolemy observed. It is ascertained that there was a 
temple of Serapis at Canopus as well as at Alexan¬ 
drea. (Strabo, 801.) Olympiodorus, therefore, must 
have supposed that the word Serapeum, in the author 
from whom he copied his remark, belonged exclusive¬ 
ly to the first of these cities, when it referred, in fact, 
in this particular instance, to Alexandrea the capital. 
Tire error of Olympiodorus, moreover, is the easier to 
bj explained, from the circumstance of the Serapeum 
at Canopus having become at one time a celebrated 
seat of the New-Platonists, and having acquired great 
distinction on this account among the last apostles of 
paganism. A commentator on Plato, therefore, would 
be very ready to suppose that this last asylum of true 
light, as he believed it, was the place where the great 
Ptolemy also made his observations and discoveries. 
—We will now proceed to the works of this distin¬ 
guished writer. 1. MeydA ?7 Evvral-ig (“ Great Con¬ 
struction'), in thirteen books. This work contains all 
the astronomical observations of the ancients, ouch as j 


those of Aristyllus, Timochares, Meton, Euctemon, 
and, above all, of Hipparchus. After the example oi 
all his predecessors, excepting Aristarchus, Ptolemy 
regards the earth as the centre of the universe, and 
makes the stars to revolve around it. This system 
was that of all succeeding astronomers until the days 
of Copernicus. Ptolemy is the inventor of epicyr <es, 
as they are called, an erroneous but ingenious system, 
and the only one that can explain the irregular revolu¬ 
tions of the planets, if we deny the sun to be the cen¬ 
tre of our system. He inserted into his work, with 
additions, the catalogue of the stars made by Hippar¬ 
chus ; the list, however, contains only 1022 stars, di¬ 
vided into 48 catasterisms. He corrected the theory of 
the lunar revolutions, by determining the equation in 
the mean distances between the new and full moon ; he 
reduced to a more regular system the parallax of the 
moon, though he has, in fact, traced it too large ; he de¬ 
termined that of the sun by the size of the shadow 
which the earth casts or> the moon in eclipses; he taught 
the mode of finding the diameter of the moon, and of 
calculating lunar and solar eclipses. “ Ptolemy,” says 
Delambre, “ was not, indeed, a great astronomer, since 
he observed nothing, or, rather, has transmitted to us no 
observation on which we can rely with the least confi¬ 
dence ; but he was a learned and laborious man, and a 
distinguished mathematician. He has collected to¬ 
gether into one body all the learning that lay scatter¬ 
ed in the separate works of his predecessors ; though, 
at the same time, it must be acknowledged, that he 
might have been more sober in his details, and more 
communicative respecting certain observations which 
are now lost to us for ever.” Tne same modern 
writer, after complaining of the little reliance that 
can be placed on the calculations of Ptolemy, prais¬ 
es the trigonometrical portion of the TeTpubibXog, and 
the mathematical theory of eclipses; adding, how¬ 
ever, the remark, that here Ptolemy would seem only 
to have copied from Hipparchus, who had resolved all 
these problems before him Indeed, it ought to be 
borne in mind, as a general remark, that Ptolemy 
owed a part of his great reputation to the circum¬ 
stance of the writings of Hipparchus being extremely 
rare, and having been, soon after Ptolemy’s time, 
completely lost.—An analysis of the Meyd?irj Evv 
ra^ig is given by Halma in the preface of his edition. 
This work of Ptolemy’s was commented upon by 
Theon of Alexandrea, Pappus, and Ammonius. Of 
these commentaries we have remaining only that of 
Theon, and some notes of Pappus. We have, how¬ 
ever, the labours of Nilus (or Nicolaus) Cabasilas, a 
mathematician of the thirteenth century, on the third 
book. The MeyaA?? EvvTa^ig of Ptolemy was trans¬ 
lated into Arabic in the 9th century. The Arabians 
gave it the title of Tahrir al mages/hi, the last word 
being corrupted from the Greek peyiarog (“the great¬ 
est"), and this title is intended to express the admira¬ 
tion with which the work had inspired them. From 
the Arabic words just given was formed the appella¬ 
tion of Almagest, under which name the work is stiff 
frequently cited ; for the knowledge of this production 
was brought into Europe by the Arabians, who, du¬ 
ring the middle ages, were the sole depositaries of aff 
the sciences. The first Arabic translation was made 
about 827 A.D., by Al-Hacer-ben-Jusef and the Chris¬ 
tian Sergius. The Caliph Almamoun himself also 
lent his literary aid to the undertaking. The second 
version is that of Honain or Ishac-ben-Honain, a Chris¬ 
tian physician, who had fled to the court of the Ca¬ 
liph Motawakl. It was on these Arabic translations 
that a Spanish one was made by Isaac-bcn-Sid-el- 
Haza. The Emperor Frederic II., a member of that 
Suabian house under which Germany began to emerge 
from barbarism, and to enjoy a dawning of national 
literature before any other of the countries of Europe, 
directed JEgidius Tebuldinus to turn this Spanish 

1141 



PT0LE1VLEUS. 


PTOLEMHBUS. 


version into Latin. Another translation was made 
from the Arabic text into Latin by Gerard of Cremo¬ 
na, an astronomer of the twelfth century, who estab¬ 
lished himself for some time at Toledo, in order to 
learn the Arabic language. He did not understand it 
perfectly, and was therefore unable to translate cer¬ 
tain technical terms, which he was consequently com¬ 
pelled to leave in the original language. His classical 
erudition could not have been very profound, since he 
was unacquainted with Hipparchus, whom he every¬ 
where calls Abrachir, as the Arabic translator had 
done.—It was not until the fifteenth century that a 
manuscript of the original Greek was discovered, from 
which the astronomer, John Muller, better known by 
the name of Regiomontanus, made his Latin abridg¬ 
ment. About the same period, George of Trebisond 
made a Latin translation from this original, but a very 
unfaithful one.—The Alexandreans called the work of 
Ptolemy which we have just been considering the 
Great Astronomer, M eyag ucrrpovdpop , in contradis¬ 
tinction to another collection which they called the 
Little Astronomer, M inpop darpovopo^, and which was 
composed of the works of Theodosius of Tripohs ; the 
Data, Optics, Catoptrics, &c., of Euclid ; the works 
of Autolycus, Aristarchus of Samos, Hypsicles, &c.— 
The best and most useful edition of the Almagest is 
that of Halma, Paris, 1813-1828, 2 vols. 4to. It 
contains a new French version, and notes by Delam- 
bre.—2. The second work of Ptolemy, as we have 
arranged it, is the ITpo^etpot K avovep. This is a col¬ 
lection of Manual Tables intended for makers of al¬ 
manacs, to facilitate their calculations, and which 
are often only extracts from the Almagest. Halma 
gave the editio princeps of this work in the first vol¬ 
ume of his edition of Theon’s Commentary, which he 
published in 1822.—3. T erpdbiKAoq, r) ’Evvra^iq paO- 
ppaTtur/ (“ Tetrahiblus, or Mathematical Syntaxis ”), 
in four books, consisting of astronomical predictions. 
It is commonly cited under the title of Quadripartitum. 
Some critics consider this work as unworthy of Ptole¬ 
my, and supposititious. Proclus has made a para¬ 
phrase of it. The latest edition is that of Melancthon, 
Basil, 1553, 8vo.—4. Kap7roc (“ Fruit ”), that is, one 
hundred astrological propositions collected from the 
works of Ptolemy. It is usually cited under the title 
of Centum Dicta. It is published with the Quadri¬ 
partitum. —5. 4 Aoeiq unAaviov aarepov nai cvvayoyp 
kmoypaotCiv (“ Appearances of the fixed stars, and a 
collection of the things indicated by them*'). This is a 
species of almanac, giving the rising and setting of 
the stars, the prognostics of the principal changes of 
temperature, &c. The work is intended for all cli¬ 
mates ; and, to make it answer this end, and prove 
useful to all the Greeks spread over the surface of the 
globe, Ptolemy gives the appearance of the stars for 
five parallels at once, namely, Svene, Lower Egypt, 
Rhodes, the Hellespont, and the Pontus Euxinus. 
The best edition is that of Halma, Paris, 1820, 4to. 
It was preceded by the edition of Ideler, Berol. , 1819. 
—6. Hepl ’Avalypparoq (“ Of the Analemma"). The 
Analemma was a species of sundial, and in this work 
we have an exposition of the whole gnomonic theory 
of the Greeks.— 7. 'YrcoOecnq rtiv Tx'kavuptvuv (“ Hy¬ 
pothesis of the Planets"). The latest edition is that 
of Halma, Paris, 1820, 4to.—8. "AreXcoaiq kru^aveiag 
cnpalpaq (‘‘ Planisphere"). This work exists only in 
an Arabic version, by Maslem, and a Latin translation 
made from this. It is a treatise on what is called ste¬ 
reographic projections. The work is probably one of 
Hipparchus’s. The latest edition is that of Coniman- 
dinus, from the press of Paulus Manutius, Vcnet., 
1558, 4to.—9. ' Appoviad (“ Elements of Harmony"), 
in three books. Ptolemy has the merit of having re¬ 
duced the thirteen or fifteen tones of the ancients to 
seven. It is generally supposed, also, that he determin¬ 
ed the true relations of certain intervals, and thus ren- 
1142 


dered the diatonic octave more conformable to nai 
mony. Some critics, however, are inclined to as¬ 
cribe this improvement rather to the New-Pythago- 
rean Didymus, whom Ptolemy has frequently criti¬ 
cised, though he obtained from his writings a large 
portion of his own work. The best edition is that of 
Wallis, Oxon., 1682, 4to. — 10. 'O ;may repay par ua 
(“‘A treatise on Optics"), cited by Heliodorus of La¬ 
rissa, and frequently also by the Arabians, but now 
lost. A Latin translation, from two Arabian MSS., 
exists in an unedited state in the Royal Library at 
Paris. It contains, however, only four books of the 
five which composed the original. In this work Ptol¬ 
emy gives the most complete idea of astronomic re¬ 
fraction of any writer down to the time of Kepler.— 
11. K avcov BacuAeov (“ Canon, or Table, of Kings"), 
a part, properly, of the Tlpoxeipoi K avoveq. This table 
contains fifty-five reigns, twenty of which belong to 
kings of Babylon subsequent to Nabonassar, ten to 
kings of Persia, thirteen to kings of Egvpt of the line of 
the Ptolemies, and the remainder to Roman emperors 
afler the. time of Augustus. This canon was not pre¬ 
pared with an historical view, but was intended for as¬ 
tronomers, to facilitate the calculation of intervals of 
time that may have elapsed between different astronom¬ 
ical observations. As, however, the years of each 
monarch’s reign are indicated in it with great exact¬ 
ness, it becomes, consequently, of great value and in¬ 
terest in historical chronology. It must be remark¬ 
ed, at the same time, that all the dates of this canon 
are given in Egyptian years, an arrangement very well 
adapted to the object in view, but productive of some 
inconvenience for chronology. Thus, for example, 
the reigns of the Babylonian, Persian, and Roman 
monarchs, calculated according to the method of their 
respective countries, ought to be in advance of, or be¬ 
hind, the years numbered in Ptolemy’s canon, by some 
days, or even months. In the case of the Roman em¬ 
perors, the difference, in Ptolemy’s time, amounted 
to forty days, and the variation must have been still 
more marked as regarded the Babylonian ai:d Persian 
reigns. The onlv exact part is that which relates to 
the line of the Ptolemies. Halma gave the latest 
edition of this work in 1820, Paris, 4to.—12. Tew- 
ypacpiny ’ Atpi'iyrjcng (“ Geographical Narration," or 
“ System of Geography"). This work is in eight 
books, and during nearly fourteen centuries was the 
only known manual of systematic geography. It still 
remains for us one of the principal sources whence 
we derive our information respecting the geography 
of the ancients. Pursuing the plan traced out by 
Marinus of Tyre, Ptolemy undertook to perfect the 
labours of that geographer. The map of Marinus and 
Ptolemy was covered, as it were, with a species of 
network ; the meridians were traced on it for every 
five degrees ; the degrees of latitude were marked by 
lines running parallel to the equator, and passed 
through the principal cities, such as Svene, Alexan¬ 
dra, Rhodes, Byzantium, and, consequently, were at 
unequal distances from each other. In this network 
were marked the points, the height of which had 
been taken according to their true latitude ; hut, in or¬ 
der to determine their longitude, and the positions, 
also, of other places, which were only known by the 
geometric distance, it was necessary to fix the length 
of a degree on one of the great circles of the globe. 
Marinus and Ptolemy, without themselves measuring 
any great distances, took the most accurate measure¬ 
ments existing in their day, and gave 500 stadia as 
the length of a degree. This was one sixth less than 
the truth, and from this error must necessarily have 
resulted many faults and erroneous deductions. Ptol¬ 
emy determined the length, from west to east, of all 
the known part of the globe, under the parallel of 
Rhodes, at 72,000 stadia, following geometrical meas¬ 
urements. These 72,000 stadia make, according to his 



PTOLEM^EUS. 


PTOLE.YLEUS. 


calculation, 180 degrees; and in this way he believed 
he had discovered the extent of one half of the globe. 
The fact, however, is, that he was acquainted with 
only 125 degrees. His error, consequently, is nearly a 
third, namely, one sixth by reason of the mistake he 
commits relative to the measurement of a degree as 
above mentioned, and about a sixth as the result of 
errors in geometric distances. With regard to lati¬ 
tudes, a large number of which were based on astro¬ 
nomical determinations, the errors committed by Ptol¬ 
emy are very unimportant; and the latitude, for exam¬ 
ple, which he gives to the southern point of Spain is 
so exact, as to lead us to imagine that observations 
had been made in this quarter by some of his prede¬ 
cessors.—Strabo had limited to 42 degrees the lati¬ 
tude of the known part of the earth (situate between 
the 12th and 54th degree of north latitude). Ptole¬ 
my, on the other hand, makes 80 degrees, from 16° 
south latitude to 63° north ; and yet he believed that 
he knew only about a quarter more than the earlier 
geographers, because these allowed 700 stadia to a 
degree, which makes nearly 30,000 stadia altogether; 
whereas Ptolemy, admitting only 500 stadia, found 
the sum total to be 40,000.—Marinus and Ptolemy 
derived some information respecting the easternmost- 
parts of Asia from the Itineraries of a Macedonian 
trader, who had sent his factors on overland journeys 
from Mesopotamia, along Mount Taurus, through In¬ 
dia, and even to the distant capital of the Seres. 
These journeys must have been prosecuted very soon 
after the time of Alexander the Great, under the first 
two monarchs of the dynasty of the Seleucidte ; since 
it is not probable that, after the defection of the Bac- 
trians and Parthians, a route remained open through 
these countries to the traffic of the Greeks. Ptolemy 
thus could hardly have gained much information re¬ 
specting these lands from the narratives of overland 
travellers. The communication by sea, however, be¬ 
tween Egypt and India, became frequent in the time 
of the Ptolemies. Strabo speaks of fleets that sailed 
for India, and, in the time of Pliny, the coast of the 
country this side of the Ganges was perfectly well 
known. The navigators of the West, however, did 
not go beyond this stream. It was supposed that 
from this point the shore of Asia bent directly to the 
north, and joined the eastern extremity of Taurus. 
At a later period navigators went beyond the mouths 
of the Ganges, and, to their great astonishment, found 
that the land redescended towards the south, and 
formed a large gulf (Bay of Bengal—Sinus Gangeti- 
cus). They pushed their adventurous career still far¬ 
ther : taking their departure from the southern part 
of the western peninsula of India, they crossed the 
gulf in a straight line, and reached the coast of Siam 
and the peninsula of Malacca ; this last they called 
the Golden Chersonese, a proof of the profitable trade 
which was there carried on by them. Having doubled 
the extremity of this second peninsula, they entered 
on a new gulf (that of Siam—Magnus Sinus). From 
the eastern coast of the Golden Chersonese they 
passed in a southern direction, and reached a large 
continent, on the shore of which was situate the city 
of Kattigara. This country was probably the Isle of 
Borneo. The discoverer of this country was called 
Alexander. (Ptol., Geogr., 2, 14.) Ptolemy, who, 
as well as this adventurer, believed that the coast was 
& prolongation of that which formed the Gulf of Siam 
(the coast of Cambodia ), founded thereon his hypoth¬ 
esis, that the Indian was a mediterranean sea. He 
supposed that, after Kattigara, the land extended from 
east to west as far as the southeast coast of A frica, with 
which it united, forming one common continent —Ma¬ 
rinus and Ptolemy were well acquainted with the east¬ 
ern coast of Africa, and mention is no longer made, in 
their pages, of the fabulous monsters which the credu¬ 
lity of a previous age had established as the dwellers of 


this region. They knew the coast, however, only to 
the tenth degree of south latitude, that is, to the prom¬ 
ontory of Prasurn, which is probably the same with 
the modern Cape Del Gardo, as his city of Iiapta would 
seem to be Melinda. From the promontory of Prasum, 
Ptolemy makes the African coast bend round to the 
east for the purpose of joining that of Kattigara. His 
island of Menuthias, placed by him near Cape Prasum, 
but which an ancient penplus brings near to Rapta, is 
Zanzibar, or one of the other islands off the coast of 
Zanguebar. Ptolemy’s acquaintance with the eastern 
coast does not extend beyond the modern Madagas¬ 
car. —After the decline of the commerce of Carthage 
and Gades, no new discoveries had been made on the 
western coast of Africa, and hence the knowledge of 
Ptolemy in this quarter was not extended beyond that 
of his predecessors ; he introduces, however, more ol 
method into the information obtained from Hanno and 
Scylax.—Ptolemy is the first who indicates the true 
figure of Spain, Gaul, and the southern part of Al¬ 
bion ; but he gives an erroneous description of the 
northern part of this island, which, according to him, 
extends towards the east. Ireland, the Ierne of Stra¬ 
bo, and the Juvernia of Ptolemy, ceases to be situated 
to the north of Albion, as Eratosthenes and Strabo 
thought; it is placed by Ptolemy to the west, but its 
northern point is parallel to the northern extremity of 
Albion To the north of this latter island he places 
the Orcades, and a little farther to the north (about 
63° N. L.), the isle of Thule, the northernmost ex¬ 
tremity of the geographical system of Ptolemy. This 
Thule is probably Mainland, situate about 60° N., 
the same that was seen by the Roman fleet under 
Agricola, covered with ice and eternal snow. {Tacit., 
Vit. Agr., c. 10.) — The description which Ptolemy 
gives of the shores of Germany as far as the Elbe, as 
well as of Scandinavia, extends no farther than the 
accounts already given by Pliny and Tacitus. He 
describes the Cimbric Chersonese, and the German 
coast of the Baltic as far as the Dwina, with consid¬ 
erable accuracy, but he is not aware that this sea is a 
mediterranean one, for his Gulf of Veneda is only a 
part of this sea, from Memel to Dantzic. The question 
has been asked, By what chance. Ptolemy was enabled 
to obtain more accurate notions respecting those coun¬ 
tries than those which Pliny and Tacitus possessed, 
and that, too, although the principal depot of amber, 
the well-known production of the shores of the Baltic, 
was in the capital of Italy I The answer is, that if 
the amber was chiefly carried to Rome, the traffic was 
conducted by merchants from Alexandrea, and it was 
through them that Ptolemy obtained the materials for 
this portion of his work.—In the last book of his geog¬ 
raphy, Ptolemy teaches the mode of preparing charts 
or maps. We here find the first principles of projec¬ 
tion ; but the book itself has reached us in a very cor¬ 
rupt state through the fault of the copyists. The more 
modern maps long preserved traces of those of Ptole¬ 
my and his successors. The Caspian Sea, for exam¬ 
ple, retained the form traced for it by Ptolemy as late 
as the eighteenth century ; for a part of the coasts of 
the Black Sea, and of Africa beyond Egypt, our maps 
still conform to the general outline of Ptolemy, and 
the substitution of modern for ancient names is the 
otdv difference. Such, at least, is the assertion of 
Mannert {Geogr., vol. 1, p. 191). — No good com¬ 
plete edition of Ptolemy’s Geography has ever ap¬ 
peared. One, however, has recently been commenced 
in Germany, by Wilberg, of which the first fasciculus, 
containing the first book, has thus far appeared. Es- 
sendice, 1838, 4to. In 1475, Lichtenstein ( Levilapis ) 
printed at Cologne, in folio, the Latin translation ol 
this work, made by Angelo, a Florentine scholar ol 
the fifteenth century, or, rather, commenced by diry- 
solaras and finished by Angelo. It was revised, foi 
the purposes of this publication, by Vadius and Picar 

1143 



PTOLEMAEUS. 


PUB 


dus. The translation of Angelo was reprinted, with 
corrections made from a manuscript of the Greek text, 
by Calderino, Romce, 1478, fol. Twenty-seven maps 
accompany this edition, which appears to have been 
printed by Arnold Pannartz. This is the second work, 
with a date, that is accompanied with engravings on 
copper. In 1482, Donis, a German monk, and a good 
astronomer for his time, gave a new edition to the world, 
printed by Holl, at Ulm, in folio. It has fewer mis¬ 
takes in the figures than those which preceded it, but 
just as many in the names. Several editions followed, 
but all swarming with errors. The celebrated Pico 
de Mirandola sent to Essler, at Strasbourg, a Greek 
manuscript of Ptolemy’s work, by the aid of which 
that scholar gave a new edition, not in the translation 
of Angelo, but in another, very literal and somewhat 
barbarous, by Philesius. Essler made many changes 
in this version, and, to justify himself, generally added 
the Greek term to the Latin. He placed in it 46 
maps cut on wood. Brunet calls this edition one of 
little value ; in this he is mistaken. The edition we 
have just spoken of was reprinted at Strasbourg in 
1520, and also in 1522. A new translation, made by 
the celebrated Pirckheymer, appeared in 1525, from 
the Strasbourg press, fol. It contains fifty maps 
cut on wood.—The first Greek edition was that of 
Erasmus, printed from a manuscript which Theobald 
Fettich, a physician, had sent him, and which issued 
from the press of Froben, at Bale, 1533, in 4to. The 
manuscript was a very good one, but, through the fault 
of the printer, a great number of errors were allowed 
to creep in among the figures. Not having a suffi¬ 
cient quantity of the peculiar type or mark which in¬ 
dicated L he employed in its place the letter g, which 
signifies ■§-. He made use, also, of the same letter 
on many occasions to designate f. The fraction § 
is marked by yo, but the manuscript often places the o 
above the y, and in a smaller character. The compos¬ 
itor, not attending to this, contented himself with put¬ 
ting in its place y alone, which is equivalent to $. 
The confusion resulting from such a course is appa¬ 
rent, and the only mode to remedy the evil is to have 
recourse to the Latin editions which appeared pre¬ 
vious to 1533. The Bale edition was reprinted by 
Wechel, at Paris, 1546, 4to.—Michael Servetus (Vil- 
lanovanus) retouched the translation of Pirckheymer, af¬ 
ter a manuscript, and published it, with fifty maps cut on 
wood, at Lyons, in 1530, and again, with corrections 
and additions, in the same city, in 1541. These two 
editions of Ptolemy play a conspicuous part in the 
history of religious fanaticism ; Calvin derived from 
them one of his grounds of accusation against Serve¬ 
tus. He was charged with having added to the de¬ 
scription that accompanies the map of Palestine, a 
passage which contradicts what Moses says respecting 
the fertility of that country. The interpolated pas¬ 
sage does actually exist, but it was added by Phrisius, 
who took charge of the edition of 1522.—The last im¬ 
pression of the Greek text was in 1618 and 1619, in 
2 vols. 4to, from the Amsterdam press, by Bertius. 
Many faults of the previous editions are corrected in 
this one, by the aid of a Heidelberg manuscript, but the 
same errors in the figures still remain, and, to aug¬ 
ment the confusion, the editor has placed beside them 
those of the Latin editions, which often differ widely. 
The only recent edition of the mathematical part of 
Ptolemy’s Geography is that of Halma, containing 
only the first book and’the latter .part of the seventh, 
with a French version and notes, Paris, 182-8, 4to. 

( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 5, p. 240, seqq.—Id. ibid., 
vol. 5, p. 271.— Id. ibid., vol. 6, p. 312, &c.—Com¬ 
pare Delambre, in Biogr. Univ., vol. 36, p. 263.)_ 

XIX. A native of Ascalon, who followed the profes¬ 
sion of a grammarian at Rome before the time of He- 
rodian, by whom he is cited. He wrote a work on 
Synonymes, nep/) dea^opag (“ On the difference 

1144 


of Words”). It is properly the fragment merely of « 
larger work. Ptolemy was the author also of a Ho¬ 
meric Prosody, a treatise on metres, and a disser¬ 
tation on Aristarchus’s revision of Homer. The frag¬ 
ment on “the Difference of Words” is given by Fa- 
bricius, Bib/. Gr., vol. 4, p. 515, of the old edition, 
vol. 6, p. 117, of the new.—XX. Surnamed Chen- 
nus, flourished under the emperors Trajan and Ha¬ 
drian. Photius has preserved for us some fragments 
of his work, Kept rfjg eig iro?.vpadiav Kaivfjg ioro- 
piag (“ New History of varied Erudition ”), in seven 
books. To give some idea of this compilation, we 
will mention some of the subjects of which it treats : 
the death of Protesilaus; that of Sophocles; that of 
Hercules; the history of Croesus; the death of Achil¬ 
les; that of Laius; the history of Tiresias ; the death 
of Adonis ; the origin of several epithets given to the 
heroes of the Iliad, and to other personages of the 
fabulous times. Ptolemy also wrote a drama entitled 
the Sphinx. He dared even to enter the lists against. 
Homer with a poem in twenty-four books or cantos, 
entitled ’A vOoyypog (“The Anti-Homer ”). Gale has 
placed the fragments of Ptolemy Chennus in his His- 
torice Poeticce Script ores, p. 303, seqq., and to the 
eighth chapter is prefixed a dissertation on this wri¬ 
ter. The fragments are also given in the edition' of 
Conon and Parthenius by Teucher. ( Scholl, Hist. 
Lit. Gr., vol. 5, p. 44.) 

Ptolemais, I. a seaport town of Phoenicia. ( Vid. 
Ace.)—II. A city on the coast of Cyrena'ica in Af¬ 
rica, and the port of Barce. It suffered so severe¬ 
ly from want of water, that the inhabitants were 
obliged to relinquish their dwellings, and disperse 
themselves about the country in different directions. 
The attempts of Justinian to obviate this evil proved 
unavailing. The ruins are called at the present 
day Ptolemata. A description of the remains of this 
ancient city is given by Captain Beechey and oth¬ 
ers. ( Modern Traveller, pt. 50, p. 114, seqq.) —III. 
A city of Egypt, in the northern part of Theba'is, 
northeast of Abydus. It rose in importance as the 
last-mentioned city declined, and eventually rivalled 
Memphis in size. Ptolemais would seem to have 
been founded by one of the Ptolemies, or, at all events, 
re-established by him on the site of some more ancient 
city, as the Greek name, Jlroleyatg y 'E p/uciov ( Ptol 
ema'is, the city of Hermes), would seem to indicate 
The city, therefore, was originally consecrated to the 
Egyptian Hermes. It appears to have received a se¬ 
vere blow to its prosperity, by reason of its resistance 
to the Emperor Probus. The modern village of Men 
sieh is in the immediate neighbourhood of Ptolema'is. 
(Mannert, Gcogr., vol. 10, pt. 1, p. 381 % se^.)—IV. 
Originally a small promontory, on the western coast of 
the Sinus Arabicus. It was near the inland sea Mo- 
noleus. A fortified port was established here by Eu- 
rnedes, a commander of Ptolemy Philadelphus; and the 
spot was selected on account of the large forest in the 
vicinity, which furnished valuable naval timber for the 
fleets of the Ptolemies. In this forest, also, wild ele¬ 
phants abounded; and, as Ptolemy wanted these ani¬ 
mals for his armies, a regular hunting establishment 
was formed here, and the place received from this cir¬ 
cumstance its second name of Qyptbv, and also that 
of ’E mdypag (km ■&ypag). In a commercial point o! 
view it was of no great importance, as Arrian mereiv 
mentions among its exports tortoise-shell and ivory ; 
but to the ancient astronomers and geographers it was 
directly the reverse, since they regarded it as the fit¬ 
test place for measuring a degree, and thus ascertain¬ 
ing the circumference of the globe. The harbour of 
Mirza Mombanik, about 15 geographical miles north 
of Massua, appears to indicate the ancient Ptolema'is 
(Mannert, Geogr., vol. 10, pt. 44, seqq.) 

Publicola, a surname given to Publius Valerius, 
according to Dionysius and Plutarch, on account of hi* 




PUB 


PUP 


protecting the rights of the people ( populum and colo, 
Poplicola, Publicola). Niebuhr dissents from this ety¬ 
mology in the following remarks : “ We cannot agree 
with the Greek Dionysius and Plutarch in translating 
Publicola as a compound term by dy/aoKr/dr/g, ‘ the 
protector of the people but we must recognise there¬ 
in the old Latin form of the adjective with a superflu¬ 
ous termination, which is sometimes mistaken for a 
diminutive, sometimes for a compound. It is equiva¬ 
lent to Pv.blicus, in the sense of driyormog. Thus 
Scaevola is not the diminutive, but synonymous with 
S'-cevuSj and Mquicolus is nothing but JEquus or 
A'.quicus ; Volsculus nothing but Volscus." (Roman 
history, vol. 1, p. 360, Waller's trans.) 

Publilia Lex, I. a law proposed by Publilius the 
Dictator, A.U.C. 414, ordaining that, before the peo¬ 
ple gave their votes, the senate should authorize what¬ 
ever they might determine. {Livy, 8 , 12.) — II. A 
law ordaming that the plebeian magistrates should be 
created at the comitia tributa. • {Liv., 2, 56.) 

Publius Syrus, a celebrated composer and actor of 
mimes. He was a native of Syria, and was brought 
from Asia to Italy in early youth in the same vessel 
with his countryman and kinsman Manlius Antiochus, 
the professor of astrology, and Staberius Eros, the 
grammarian, who all, by some desert in learning, rose 
above their original fortune. He received a good ed¬ 
ucation and liberty from his master, in reward for his 
witticisms and his facetious disposition. He first rep¬ 
resented his mimes in the provincial towns of Italy, 
whence, his fame having spread to Rome, he was sum¬ 
moned to the capital, to assist in those public specta¬ 
cles which Caesar offered his countrymen in exchange 
for their freedom. ( Macrob ., Sat., 2, 7.) On one oc¬ 
casion he challenged all persons of his own profession 
to contend with him on the stage ; and in this compe¬ 
tition he successfully overcame every one of his rivals. 
By his success in the representation of these popular 
entertainments, he amassed considerable wealth, and 
lived with such luxury that he never gave a great sup¬ 
per without having sow’s udder at table, a dish which 
was prohibited by the censors as being too great a 
luxury even for the table of patricians. {Plin., 8, 51.) 
Nothing farther is known of his history, except that 
he was still continuing to perform his mimes with ap¬ 
plause at the period of the death of Laberius, which 
happened ten months after the assassination of Caesar. 
( Chron. Euseb., ad Olymp., 184.) We have not the 
names of any of the mimes of Publius, nor do we pre¬ 
cisely know their nature or subject; all that is pre¬ 
served from them being a number of detached senti¬ 
ments or maxims, to trhe amount of 800 or 900, seldom 
exceeding a single line, but containing reflections of 
unrivalled force, truth, and beauty, on all the various 
relations, situations, and feelings of human life. Both 
the writers and actors of mimes were probably careful 
to have their memory stored with commonplaces and 
precepts of morality, in order to introduce them appro¬ 
priately in their extemporaneous performances. The 
maxims of Publius were interspersed through his 
dramas ; but, being the only portion of these produc¬ 
tions now remaining, they have just the appearance of 
thoughts or sentiments, like those of Rochefoucauld. 
His mimes must either have been very numerous, or 
very thickly loaded with these moral aphorisms. It is 
also surprising that they seem raised far above the ordi¬ 
nary tone even of regular comedy, and appear for the 
greater part to be almost stoical maxims. Seneca has re¬ 
marked, that many of his eloquent verses are litter for 
the buskin than the slipper. ( Ep ., 8.) How such ex¬ 
alted precepts should have been grafted on the lowest 
farce, and how passages, which would hardly be appro¬ 
priate in the most serious sentimental comedy, were 
adapted to the actions or manners of gross and drunken 
buffoons, is a difficulty which could only be solved had 
we fortunately received entire a larger portion of these 
7 F 


productions, which seem to have beep peculiar to Ro¬ 
man genius. The sentiments of Publius Syrus now ap¬ 
pear trite. They have become familiar to mankind, and 
have been re-echoed by poets and moralists from age 
to age. \U of them are most felicitously expressed, 
and few of them seem erroneous, while, at the same 
time, they are perfectly free from the selfish or worldly- 
minded wisdom of Rochefoucauld or Lord Burleigh. 
{Dunlop's Roman Literature, vol. 1, p. 558, seqq.) 
The sentences of Publius Syrus are appanded to many 
of the editions of Pha3drus. The most useful edition of 
these sentences is perhaps that of Gruter, Lugd. Bat., 
1727, 8vo. The latest and most accurate edition, 
however, is that of Orellius, appended to his edition of 
Phaedrus, Turici, 1832, 8vo. It contains, also, thirty 
sentences never before published. {Bixhr, Gesch. Lit. 
Rom., vol. 1, p. 776.) 

Pulcheria, I. sister of Theodosius the Great, and 
celebrated for her piety and virtues.—II. A Roman 
empress, daughter of Arcadius, and sister of Theodo¬ 
sius the younger. She was created Augusta A.D. 
414, and shared the imperial power with her brother. 
After the death of the latter (A.D. 450), she gave her 
hand to Marcianus. ( Vid. Marcianus I ) Pulcheria 
died A.D. 454, and was interred at Ravenna, where 
her tomb is still to be seen. 

Pulchrum Promontorium, the same with Hermas- 
um Promontorium. {Vid. Hermseum.) 

Punicum Bellum, the name given to the wars be¬ 
tween Rome and Carthage. The Punic wars were 
three in number. The first took its rise from the af¬ 
fair of the Mamertini, an account of which will be 
found under the article Messana, page 836, col. 1. 
This was ended by the naval battle fought off the 
Hilgates Insulae ; and it was also memorable for the 
naval victory of Duilius, the first ever gained by the 
Romans. ( Vid. Carthago, 4.—Duilius.—yEgates.) 
The Second Punic War commenced with the affair of 
Saguntum, and was terminated by the battle of Zama. 
During its continuance Hannibal carried on his cele¬ 
brated campaigns against the Romans in Italy. {Vid. 
Carthago, t) 4.—Hannibal.—Metaurus.—Zama.) The 
Third Punic War was the siege and destruction of 
Carthage itself. {Vid. Carthago, <J> 4.) 

Pupienus, Marcus Clodius Maximus, a man of 
obscure family, who raised himself by his merit to the 
highest offices in the Roman armies, and gradually be¬ 
came a praetor, consul, prefect of Rome, and a govern¬ 
or of the provinces. His father was a blacksmith. 
After the death of the Gordians, Pupienus was elected 
with Balbinus to the imperial throne, and, to rid the 
world of the usurpation and tyranny of the Maximini, 
he immediately marched against these tyrants ; but he 
was soon informed that they had been sacrificed to the 
fury and resentment of their own soldiers. He prepar¬ 
ed, after this, to make war against the Persians, who 
insulted the majesty of Rome, but was massacred, A.D. 
236, by the praetorian guards. Balbinus shared his 
fate. Pupienus is sometimes called Maximus. In 
his private character he appeared always grave and se¬ 
rious. He was the constant friend of justice, modera¬ 
tion, and clemency, and no greater encomium can be 
passed upon his virtues than to say that he was in¬ 
vested with the purple without soliciting it, and that 
the Roman senate said they had selected him from 
thousands, because they knew no person more worthy 
or better qualified to support the dignity of an em¬ 
peror. {Capitol, Vit. Maxim. — Id., Vit. Gord.) 

Pupius, a tragic poet at Rome, contemporary with 
Caesar. He was famed for his power in exciting emo¬ 
tion. Hence the scholiast on Horace remarks ( Epist ., 
1, 1, 67), “ Pupius, Tragcediographus, ita affectut 
spectantium movit, ut eos flere compelleret. Inde is- 
turn versum fecit: 

“ ‘ Flebunt amici ct bene noti mortem meam ; 

Nam vovulus in me vivo lacrymatu est satis! ’’ 

1145 



PUT 


P Y G 


PurpjrarLsi, islands off the coast of Mauritania, so 
called from the manufacture of purple dye established 
m them. They answer at the present day to Madeira 
and the adjacent isles. ( Plin ., 6, 32.) 

Puteoli, a city of Campania, now Pozzuoli, on the 
coast, and not far from the Lucrine Lake. Its Greek 
name was Dicsearchia ; but, when the Romans sent a 
colony thither, they gave it the name of Puteoli, proba¬ 
bly from the number of its walls, or perhaps from the 
stench which was emitted by the sulphureous and alu¬ 
minous springs in the neighbourhood. ( Strabo , 245. 
— Plin., 31, 2.) Respecting the origin of this place, 
we learn from Strabo that it was at first the harbour of 
Cumae. Hence we may fairly regard it as a colony of 
that city, without calling in the Samians to assist in its 
foundation, as Stephanus Byzantinus reports, and Hie¬ 
ronymus. ( Euseb., Chron., 2.) The Romans appear 
to have first directed their attention to this spot in the 
second Punic war, when Fabius the consul-was order¬ 
ed to fortify and garrison the town, which had only 
been frequented hitherto for commercial purposes. 

( Liv ., 24, 7.) In the following year it was attacked 
by Hannibal without success (Liv., 24, 13), and about 
this time became a naval station of considerable im¬ 
portance : armies were sent to Puteoli from thence 
(Liv., 26, 17), and the embassy sent from Carthage, 
which was to sue for peace at the close of the second 
Punic war, disembarked here, and proceeded to Rome 
by land (Liv., 30, 22), as did St. Paul about 250 years 
afterward. The apostle remained seven days at Puteoli 
before he set forward on his journey by the Appian 
Way. (Acts, xxviii., 13.) In the time of Strabo, this 
city appears to have been a place of very great com¬ 
merce, and particularly connected with Alexandrea ; 
the imports from that city, which was then the empori¬ 
um of the East, being much greater than the exports 
of Italy. (Strabo, 793.— Suet., Aug., 98,— Senec., 
Ep., 77.) The harbour of Puteoli was spacious and 
of peculiar construction, being formed of vast piles of 
mortar and sand, which, owing to the strongly cement¬ 
ing properties of the latter material, became very solid 
and compact masses ; and these, being sunk in the sea, 
afforded secure anchorage for any number of vessels. 
(Strab., 245 ) Pliny (35, 13) has remarked this qual¬ 
ity of the sand in the neighbourhood of Puteoli, which 
now goes by the name of Pozzolana. The same wri¬ 
ter informs us (36, 12), that this harbour possessed 
also the advantage of a conspicuous lighthouse. The 
remains which are yet to be seen in the harbour of 
Puteoli are commonly, but erroneously, considered to 
be the ruins of Caligula’s bridge; whereas that em¬ 
peror is said expressly to have used boats, anchored in 
a double line, for the construction of the bridge which 
he threw over from Puteoli to Baise ; these were cov¬ 
ered with earth, after the manner of Xerxes’s famous 
bridge across the Hellespont. Upon the completion 
of the work, Caligula is described as appearing there 
in great pomp, on horseback or in a chariot, for two 
days, followed by the prsetorlan band and a splendid 
retinue. It is evident, therefore, that this structure 
was designed for a temporary purpose, and it is farther 
mentioned that it was begun from the piles of Puteoli. 
(Suet., Calig., 19.— Josephus, Antiq. Jud., 19, 1.)— 
Puteoli became a Roman colony A.U.C. 558, was re¬ 
colonized by Augustus, and again, for the third time, 
by Nero. (Tacit., Ann., 14, 27.) This place ap¬ 
pears to have espoused the cause of Vespasian with 
great zeal, from which circumstance, according to an 
inscription, it obtained the title of Colonia Flavia. 
The same memorial informs us, that Antoninus Pius 
caused the harbour of Puteoli to be repaired. (Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Italy , vol. 2, p. 163, seqq.) 

PoTicuLi, a place at Rome, in the vicinity of the 
Esquiline. The Campus Esquilinus was, in the early 
days of Rome, without the walls of the city, and a 
number of pits were dug in it to receive the dead 
1146 


bodies of the lower orders. These holes were called 
puticuli, from their resemblance to wells, or, more 
probably, from the stench which issued from them, in 
consequence of this practice. (Varro, L. L., 4, 5.—■ 
Fest., s. v. Putic.) The Esquilise seem to have been 
considered as unwholesome till this mode of burial 
was discontinued, which change took place in the 
reign of Augustus, when the gardens of Maecenas were 
laid out here. (Hor., Sat., 1, 88.— Id., Ep., 5, 100.) 

Pydna, a city of Macedonia, on the western coast 
of the Sinus Therma'icus, above Dium. The earliest 
mention of this town is in Scylax, who styles it a Greek 
city (p. 26), from which it appears at that time to have 
been independent of the Macedonian princes. Thu¬ 
cydides speaks of an attack made upon it by the Athe¬ 
nians before the Peloponnesian war (1, 61). It was 
afterward taken by Archelaus, king of Macedon, who 
removed its site twenty stadia from the sea, as Dio¬ 
dorus asserts; but Thucydides states, that it had been, 
long before that period, in the possession of Alexan¬ 
der the son of Amyntas, and that Theinistocles sailed 
thence on his way to Persia (1, 137). After the death 
of Archelaus, Pydna again fell into the hands of the 
Athenians; but the circumstances of this change are 
not known to us. It was afterward taken from them 
by Philip, and given to Olynthus. The next fact rel¬ 
ative to Pydna which is recorded in history, is pos¬ 
terior to the reign of Alexander the Great, whose 
mother Olympias was here besieged by Cassander ; 
and, all hopes of relief being cut off by the intrench- 
ment having been made round the town from sea to 
sea, famine at length compelled Olympias to surrender, 
when she was thrown into prison, and afterward pul 
to death. (Diod. Sic., 19, 51.)—Pydna is also famous 
for the decisive victory gained in its neighbourhood by 
Paulus ^Emilius over the Macedonian army under 
Perseus, which put an end to that ancient empire. — 
The epitomiser of Strabo says, that in his time it was 
called Kitros (Strab., 509) ; as likewise the scholiast 
to Demosthenes; and this name is still attached to the 
spot at the present day. Dr. Clarke observed at Ki¬ 
tros a vast tumulus, which he considered, with much 
probability, as marking the site of the great battle 
fought in these plains. (Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol 

I, p. 214, seqq.) 

PvGMiEi, a fabulous nation of dwarfs, placed by 
Aristotle near the sources of the Nile (Hist. An., 8, 
12.— JElian. H. A., 2, 1 ; 3, 13); by Ctesias, in In¬ 
dia ( Ind., 11) ; and by Eustathius, amusingly enough, 
in England, over against Thule (evOa ra ’lyyliKu. — 
Eustathad 11., 3, 6, p. 372.)—They were of a very 
diminutive size, being, according to one account, of 
the height merely of a nvypq, or 20 fingers’ breadth 
(Eustath.,1. c.), while others made them three enuda- 
yat, or 27 inches in size. (Plin., 7, 2.) The Pyg¬ 
mies are said to have lived under a salubrious sky and 
amid a perpetual spring, the northern blasts being kept 
off by lofty mountains. (Plin., I c .) An annual war¬ 
fare was waged between them and the cranes (Horn., 

II. , 3, 3); and they are fabled to have advanced to 
battle against these birds, mounted on the backs of 
rams and goats, and armed with bows and arrows. 
They used also a kind of bells or rattles (uporaXa) to 
scare them away. (Hecatceus, ap. Schol. ad II., 3 
6.— Heync, ad loc. — Plin., 1. c .) Every spring they 
came down in warlike array to the seashore, for the 
purpose of destroying the eggs and young of the cranes, 
since otherwise they would have been overpowered by 
the number of their feathered antagonists. (Hecatceus, 
apT-Plin., 1. c .) Their dwellings were constructed oj 
clay, feathers, and the shells of eggs. Aristotle, how¬ 
ever, makes them to have lived in caves, like Troglo¬ 
dytes, and to have come out at harvest-time with hatch¬ 
ets to cut down the corn, as if to fell a forest. (Eu¬ 
stath., 1. c.) Philostratus relates, that Hercules once 
fell asleep in the deserts of Africa after he had con- 







P Y G 


P YL 


queued Antaeus, and that he was suddenly awakened by 
an attack which had been made upon his body by an 
army of these Liliputians, who professed to be the 
avengers of Antasus, since they were his brethren, 
and earthborn like himself. A simultaneous onset 
was made upon his head, hands, and feet. Arrows 
were discharged at him, his hair was ignited, spades 
were thrust into his eyes, and coverings or doors (#u- 
pai) were applied to his mouth and nostrils to prevent 
respiration. The hero awoke in the midst of the war¬ 
fare, and was so much pleased with the courage dis¬ 
played by his tiny foes, that he gathered them all into 
his lion skin and brought them to Eurystheus. ( Phi- 
lostr., Icon., 2,22, p. 817, ed. Morell.) —The Pygmies 
of antiquity, like those of more modern times, may be 
safely regarded as mere creatures of the imagination. 
We have had them even placed, by popular belief, in 
our own country. A number of small graves, two or 
three feet in length, were found in the West, contain¬ 
ing fragments of evidently adult bones. The idea of 
a pigmy race was immediately conceived ; but it was 
unknown to the discoverers, that the Indians, after dis¬ 
interring their dead, buried them in graves just large 
enough to hold the bones made up. into a small bun¬ 
dle for the convenience of transportation. ( McCul¬ 
lochi, Researches on America, p. 516.)—With respect 
to the Pygmies of ancient fable, it may be remarked, 
that Homer places them merely in southern lands, with¬ 
out specifying their particular locality ; nor does he 
say a word respecting their diminutive size. ( Heyne, 
ad Horn., II. , 3, 3.) Aristotle, as we have already said, 
assigns them a residence near the sources of the Nile 
(Hist. An., 8, 15), in which he is followed by H21ian 
(H. A., 2, 1 ; 3, 15) and others. Some agree with 
Ctesias in making India their native country. Pliny, 
in one passage, places them also in India (7, 2), but in 
another in Thrace (4, 2). Others, again, making the 
cranes to wing their way from the northern regions 
over the Pontus Euxinus, regard Scythia and Thrace 
as the Pygmy land.—Many have supposed that the fa¬ 
ble of the Pygmies and cranes has a reference to the 
country of Egypt. As the cranes make their appear¬ 
ance there about the'month of November, the time in 
which the waters are subsided, and devour the corn 
sown on the lands, the whole fable of the Pygmies may 
be explained by supposing them to have been none 
other than the Egyptians, and the term pygmy (rrvy- 
paiog) not to refer to any diminutiveness of size, but 
to the cubits (tt vypat, rrrjX 8 ^) of the Nile’s rise. Some 
scholars suppose-the germe of the fable to be found in 
the remarks of Strabo, respecting the fUKpocpvtav rtiv 
kv A i6vy (jivopevuv. (Strabo, 820.) Barrow, in his 
Travels to the Cape of Good Hope (vol. 1, p. 239), 
endeavours to identify the Bosjesmans of the Cape 
and the Pygmies of the ancients, but with no great 
success. Heeren regards the whole Pygmy narrative 
as fabulous, but assigns it an Indian origin, and makes 
it to have spread from the East into the countries of the 
West (Idcen, vol. 1, p. 368.) Malte-Brun inclines 
in favour of the existence of a pygmy race, from the 
accounts of modern travellers, who state that they 
have seen in the remote East small and deformed beings 
not unlike in appearance to the pygmies of former days, 
and for the most part only four feet in size. Hence 
he thinks it not unlikely that a diminutive race, resem¬ 
bling, in some degree, the ancient pygmies, may still 
be existing among the remote and desert regions of 
Thibet! (Malte-Brun, Annales des Voyages, vol. 1, 
p. 355, seqq. — B'dhr, ad Ctes., p. 295.) 

Pygmalion, I. a king of Tyre, son of Belqs, and 
brother to the celebrated Dido. (Vid. Dido.)—II. A 
celebrated statuary of the island of Cyprus. The de¬ 
bauchery of thd females of Amathus, to which he was 
a witness, created in him such an aversion for the fair 
sex, that he resolved never to marry. The affection 
which he had denied to the other sex he liberally be¬ 


stowed upon the works of his own hands. He be¬ 
came enamoured of a btautiful statue of ivory which 
he had made, and, at his earnest request and prayers, 
according to the mythologists, the goddess of Beauty 
changed this favourite statue into a woman, whom the 
artist married, and by whom he had a son called Pa 
phus, who founded the city of that name in Cyprus. 
(Ovid, Met., 10, 9.)—Compare the other version of 
the legend, as given from the Cyprian fables of Philo- 
stephanus, by Clemens of Alexandrea ( Protrept ., p. 
50), and by Arnobius (adv. Gent., lib. 6, p. 206). 
Consult, also, Philostratus (Vit. Apollon., 5, 5) and 
Meursius ( Cypr., 2). 

Pylades, I. a son of Strophius, king of Phocis, by 
one of the sisters of Agamemnon. He was educated 
together with his cousin Orestes, with whom he form¬ 
ed a most intimate friendship, and whom he aided in 
avenging the murder of Agamemnon by the punish¬ 
ment of ClytaBmnestra and HCgisthus. He received 
in marriage the hand of Electra, the sister of Orestes, 
by whom he had two sons, Medon and Strophius. 
The friendship of Orestes and Pylades became pro¬ 
verbial. ( Vid. Orestes.)—II. A celebrated actor in 
the reign of Augustus, banished by that emperor foi 
pointing with his finger to one of the audience who had 
hissed him, and thus making him known to all. (Suet., 
Vit. Aug., 45.— Macrob., Sat., 2, 7.) 

Pylje (livTiai), a general name among the Greeks 
for any narrow pass.' The most remarkable were the 
following. I. Pylse Albanise. (Vid. Caucasus.)—II. 
Pylse Amanicae, a pass through the range of Mount 
Amanus, between Cilicia Campestris and Syria. Da¬ 
rius marched through this pass to the battle- field of 
Issus. (Quint. Curt., 3, 4.— Ptol., 5, 8.— Plin., 5, 
27.)—III. Pylse Caspiae. ( Vid. Caspise Porta? )—IV. 
Pylae Caucasiae. (Vid. Caucasus.)—V. Pylse Cilicise, 
a pass of Cilicia, in the range of Mount Taurus, 
through which flows the river Sarus. (Plin., 5, 27. 
— Polyb , 12, 8.)—VI. Pylae Sarmatiae. (Vid. Cau¬ 
casus, towards the close of that article.)—VII. Pylae 
Syriae, a pass leading from Cilicia into Syria, and 
bounded on one side by the sea. (Xen., Anab., 1, 4. 
— Arrian, Exp. Alex., 2, 8.) 

Pylos, I. an ancient city of Elis, about eighty sta¬ 
dia to the east of the city of Elis, and which disputed 
with two other towns of the same name the honoui 
of being the capital of Nestor’s dominions ; these were 
Pylos of Triphylia, and the Messenian Pylos. This 
somewhat interesting question in Homeric geography 
will be considered under the head of the last-mention¬ 
ed city. Pausanias informs us (6, 22) that the Elean 
city was originally founded by Pylus, son of Cleson, 
king of Megara ; but that, having been destroyed by 
Hercules, it was afterward restored by the Eleans. 
(Compare Xen., Hist. Gr., 7, 4, 16.) This town was 
deserted and in ruins when Pausanias made the tour 
of Elis. We collect from Strabo (239) that Pylos 
was at the foot of Mount Pholoe, and between the 
heads of the rivers Peneus and Selle'is. This site 
agrees sufficiently with a spot named Portes, where 
there are vestiges of antiquity, under Mount Mauro- 
bouni, which must be the Pholoe of the ancients. (Gell, 
Itin. of the Morea, p. 30, seq. — Cramer's Anc. Greece, 
vol. 3, p. 91.)—II. A city of Elis, in the district of 
Triphylia, regarded by Strabo, with great probability, as 
the city of Nestor. (Vid. Pylos III.) It is placed by 
h..v. geographer at a distance of thirty stadia from the 
coast, and near a small river once called Amathus and 
Pamisus, but subsequently Mamaus and Arcadicus. 
The epithet of ijpaOoeic, applied by Homer to the Pyli- 
an territory, was referred to the first of these names. 
(Strabo, 344.) Notwithstanding its ancient celebrity, 
this city is scarcely mentioned in later times. Pau¬ 
sanias, even, does not appear to have been aware of 
its existence (6, 22). Strabo affirms that on the con¬ 
quest of Triphylia bv the Eleans, they annexed its 

1147 



PYLOS. 


P Y R 


erntory to the neighbouring town of Leprosum. 
[Strab., 355.) The vestiges of Pylos are thought by 
Sir W. Gell to correspond with a Palaio Castro , sit¬ 
uated at Pischine or Piskini, about two miles from 
the coast. Near this is a village called Sarene , per¬ 
haps a corruption of Arene. ( Itin . of the Morea, p. 
40.— Cramer's Anc. Greece , vol. 3, p. 117.)—III. A 
city of Messenia, on the western coast, off which lay 
the island of Sphacteria. It was situated at the foot 
of Mount JEgaleus, now Geranio or Agio Elia. (Stra¬ 
in, 4-59.) This city was regarded by many as the 
capital of Nestor’s dominions, and, at a later period, 
was celebrated for the brilliant successes obtained 
there by the Athenians in the Peloponnesian war. It 
is necessary, however, to distinguish between the an¬ 
cient city of Pylos, and the fortress which the Athe¬ 
nian troops under Demosthenes erected on the spot 
termed Coryphasium by the Lacedaemonians. ( Thu - 
cyd., 4, 3.) Strabo affirms, that when the town of Py¬ 
los was destroyed, part of the inhabitants retired to 
Coryphasium; but Pausanias makes no distinction be¬ 
tween the old and new town, simply stating that Py¬ 
los, founded by Pylus, son of Cleson, was situated on 
the promontory of Coryphasium. To Pylus he has 
also attributed the foundation of Pylos in Elis, whith¬ 
er that chief retired on his expulsion from Messenia 
byNeleus and the Thessalian Pelasgi. He adds, that 
a temple of Minerva Coryphasia was to be seen near 
the town, as well as the house of Nestor, whose mon¬ 
ument was likewise to be seen there. Strabo, on the 
contrary, has been at considerable pains to prove that 
the Pylos of Homer was not in Messenia, but in Tri- 
phylia. From Homer’s description, he observes, it is 
evident that Nestor’s dominions were traversed by the 
Alpheus ; and, from his account of Telemachus’ voy¬ 
age when returning to Ithaca, it is also clear that the 
Pylos of the Odyssey could neither be the Messenian 
nor Elean city ; since the son of Ulysses is made to 
pass Cruni, Chalcis, Phea, and the coast of Elis, which 
he could not have done if he had set out from the last- 
mentioned place ; if from the former, the navigation 
would have been much longer than from the descrip¬ 
tion we are led to suppose, since we must reckon 400 
tadia from the Messenian to the Triphylian Pylos 
only, besides which, we may presume, the poet would 
in that case have named the Neda, the Acidon, and 
the intervening rivers and places. Again, from Nes¬ 
tor’s account of his battle with the Epeans, he must 
have been separated from that people by the Alpheus, 
a statement which cannot be reconciled with the po¬ 
sition of the Elean Pylos. If, on the other hand, we 
suppose him to allude to the Messenian city, it will 
appear very improbable that Nestor should make an 
incursion into the country of the Epei, and return 
from thence with a vast quantity of cattle, which he 
had to convey such a distance. His pursuit of the 
enemy as far as Buprasium and the Olenian rock, after 
their defeat, is equally incompatible with the supposi¬ 
tion that he marched from Messenia. In fact, it is 
not easy to understand how there could have been 
any communication between the Epeans and the sub¬ 
jects of Nestor, if they had been so far removed from 
each other. But as all the circumstances mentioned 
by Homer agree satisfactorily with the situation of the 
Triphylian city, we are necessarily induced to regard 
it as the Pylos of Nestor. Such are the chief argu¬ 
ments adduced by Strabo.—According to Thucydides, 
the Messenian Pylos had two entrances, one on each 
side of the island of Sphacteria, Dut of unequal 
breadth ; the narrowest being capable of admitting 
only two vessels abreast. The harbour itself must 
have been very capacious for two such considerable 
fleels as those of Athens and Sparta to engage within 
it. These characteristics sufficiently indicate the port 
or bay of Navarino as the scene of those most inter¬ 
esting events of the Peloponnesian war which are de- 
1148 


tailed in the fourth book of Thucydides. A spot na¬ 
med Pila, and laid down in Lapie’s map as nearly in 
the centre of the bay, probably answers to the ancient 
Pylos. (Cramer's Anc. Greece , vol. 3, p. 132, seqq.) 

Pyramides, famous monuments of Egypt, of mass¬ 
ive masonry, which, from a square base, rise diminish¬ 
ing to a point or vertex when viewed from below.— 
The pyramids commence immediately south of Cairo, 
but on the opposite side of the Nile, and extend in an 
uninterrupted range for many miles in a southerly di¬ 
rection parallel with the banks of the river. The per¬ 
pendicular height of the first, which is ascribed to 
Cheops, is 480 feet 9 inches, that is, 43 feet 9 inches 
higher than St. Peter’s at Rome, and 136 feet 9 inch¬ 
es higher than St. Paul’s in London. The length of 
the former base was 764 feet, that of the present base 
is 746 feet. (Vysc, Operations at the Pyramids of 
Gizeh, vol. 2, p. 109.) The following are the dimen¬ 
sions of the second pyramid : the base, 684 feet ; the 
central line down the front from the apex to the base, 
568 ; the perpendicular, 356 ; coating from the top tc 
where it ends, 140. These dimensions, being consid¬ 
erably greater than those usually assigned even to the 
first or largest pyramid, are to be accounted for b; 
their being taken (by Belzoni) from the base as clear¬ 
ed from sand and rubbish, while the measurements of 
the first pyramid given by others only applied to it as 
measured from the level of the surrounding sand — 
The antiquity of these erections, and the purpose for 
which they were formed, have furnished matter for 
much ingenious conjecture and dispute in the absence 
of certain information. It has beefi supposed that 
they were intended for scientific purposes, such as 
that of establishing the proper length of the cubit, oi 
which they contain, in breadth and height, a certair 
number of multiples. They were, at all events, con¬ 
structed on scientific principles, and give evidence of 
a certain progress in astronomy ; for their sides are 
accurately adapted to the four cardinal points. Wheth¬ 
er they were applied to sepulchral uses, and intended 
as sepulchral monuments, has been doubted ; but the 
doubts have in a great measure been dispelled by the 
recent discoveries made by means of laborious exca¬ 
vations. The drifting sand had, in the course of ages, 
collected around their base to a considerable height, 
and had raised the general surface of the country 
above the level which it possessed when they were 
constructed. The entrance to the chambers had also 
been, in the finishing, shut up with large stones, and 
built round so as to be uniform with the rest of the 
exterior. The largest, called the Pyramid of Cheops, 
had been opened, and some chambers discovered in it, 
but not so low as the base, till Mr. Davison, British 
consul at Algiers, explored it in 1763, when accom¬ 
panying Mr. Wortley Montague to Egypt. He dis¬ 
covered a room before unknown, and descended the 
three successive wells to a depth of 155 feet. Cap¬ 
tain Caviglia, master of a merchant-vessel, afterward 
pursued the principal oblique passage 200 feet farther 
down than any former explorer, and found it com¬ 
municate with the bottom of the well. This circum¬ 
stance creating a circulation of air, he proceeded 28 
feet farther, and found a spacious room 66 feet by 27, 
but of unequal height, under the centre of the pyr¬ 
amid, supposed by Mr. Salt to have been the place 
for containing the theca or sarcophagus, though now 
none is found in it. The room is 30 feet above the 
level of the Nile. The upper chamber, 35$ feet by 
171, a nd high, still contains a sarcophagus.— 
Three chambers, hitherto undiscovered, were exposed 
and opened, in 1836-7, by Colonel Vyse. The long¬ 
est, measuring 38 feet 1 inch, by 17 feet 1 inch, has 
been denominated by him the “ Wellington Cham¬ 
berthe second (38 feet 9 inches, by 16 feet 8 inch¬ 
es) he named “ Nelson’s and the third (37 feet 4 
inches, by 16 feet 4 inches) has been called after 



PYRAMIDS. 


PYRAMIDES 


Lady Arbuthnot, who was present at the time of the 
discovery. These chambers vary as to height, and 
the blocks of granite which form the ceiling of the one 
below serve as the pavement of the one above it. 
According to Colonel Vyse, these three chambers were 
chiefly intended as voids in that portion of the pyra¬ 
mid above what is termed the “king’s chamber” (the 
only one that appears to have had any destination), 
and thereby to lessen the superincumbent mass. (Con¬ 
sult the costly and elaborate work of Colonel Vyse, 
“ Operations carried on at the Pyramids of Gizeh in 
1837,” &c., London, 1840, 2 vols. 4to.—vol. 1, p. 205, 
235, 256.)—In the course of the work just alluded to 
(vol. 2, p. 105), Colonel Vyse has some remarks on the 
question whether the pyramids were connected in any 
way with astronomical purposes. It seems that, in six 
pyramids which have been opened, the principal pas¬ 
sage preserves the same inclination of 26° to the ho¬ 
rizon, being directed to the polar star. “As it had 
been supposed,” remarks the colonel, “ that the in¬ 
clined passages were intended for astronomical pur¬ 
poses, I mentioned the circumstance to Sir John Her- 
schel, who, with the utmost kindness, entered into va¬ 
rious calculations to ascertain the fact. I also in¬ 
formed Sir John of the allusion in the ‘ Quarterly Re¬ 
view’ to Mr. Caviglia’s remarks respecting the polar 
star, and likewise of its having been seen by Captains 
Irby and Mangles from the inclined passage in the 
Great Pyramid, at the period of its culminating, on 
the night of the 21st of March, 1817. It would ap¬ 
pear from the remarks of Sir John, which here follow, 
that the direction of the passage was determined by 
the star which was polar at the time that the pyramid 
was constructed, and that the exact aspect of the 
building was regulated by it; but it could not have 
been used for celestial observation. The coincidence 
of the relative position of a Draconis is at all events 
very remarkable.” 

1. Sir John Herschel's Observations on the Entrance 
Passages in the Pyramids of Gizeh. 

“ Four thousand years ago, the present polar star, a 
Ursce Minoris, could by no possibility have been seen 
at any time in the twenty-four hours through the gal¬ 
lery in the Great Pyramid, on account of the preces¬ 
sion of the Equinoxes, which at that time would have 
displaced every star in the heavens, from its then ap¬ 
parent position on the sphere, by no less la quantity than 
55° 45 / of longitude, and would have changed all the 
relations of the constellations to the diurnal sphere. 
The supposed date of the pyramid, 2123 years B.C., 
added to our present date, 1839, form 3962 years (say 
4000), and the effect of the precession on the longi¬ 
tudes of the stars in that interval having been to in¬ 
crease them all by the above-named quantity, it will 
follow that the pole of the heavens, at the erection of 
the pyramid, must have stood very near to the star a 
Draconis, that is, 2° 51' 15" from it to the westward, 
as we should now call it ; a Draconis was therefore, 
at that time, the polar star ; and as it is comparatively 
insignificant, and only of the third magnitude, if so 
much, it can scarcely be supposed that it could have 
been seen in the daytime even in the climate'of Gizeh, 
or even from so dark a recess as the inclined entrance 
of the Great Pyramid. A latitude, however, of 30°, 
and a polar distance of the star in question of 1° 5F 
15", would bring it, at its lower culmination, to an al¬ 
titude of 27° 9T, and therefore it would have been di¬ 
rectly in view of an observer stationed in the descend¬ 
ing passage, the opening of which, as seen from a 
point sixty-three feet within, would, by calculation, 
subtend an angle of 7° 7'; and even from the bot¬ 
tom, near the sepulchral chamber, would still appear 
of at least 2° in breadth. In short, speaking as in or¬ 
dinary parlance, the passage may be said to have been 
directly pointed at a Draconis , at its inferior culmina¬ 


tion, at which moment its altitude above the horizon 
of Gizeh (lat. 30) would have been 27° 9'—refraction 
being neglected as too trifling (about 2') to affect the 
question. The present polar star, a Ursce Minoris, 
was at this epoch 23° more or less in arc from the 
then pole of the heavens, and, of course, at its lower 
culmination, it was only 7° above the horizon cf 
Gizeh.” (Vyse, Operations, &c., vol. 2, p. 107, seq.) 

2. Operations of Belzoni. 

Belzoni, after some acute observations on the ap¬ 
pearances connected with the second pyramid, or that 
of Chephrenes, succeeded in opening it. The stones 
which had constituted the coating (by which the sides 
of most of the pyramids, which now rise in steps, had 
been formed into plain and smooth surfaces) lay in a 
state of compact and ponderous rubbish, presenting a 
formidable obstruction; but somewhat looser in the 
centre of the front, showing traces of operations for ex¬ 
ploring it in an age posterior to the erection. On the 
east side of the pyramid he discovered the foundation 
of a large temple, connected with a portico appearing 
above ground, which had induced him to explore that 
part. Between this and the pyramid', from which it 
was fifty feet distant, a way was cleared through rub¬ 
bish forty feet in height, and a pavement was found at 
the bottom, which is supposed to extend quite round 
the pyramid ; but there was no appearance of any en¬ 
trance. On the north side, notwithstanding the same 
general appearance presented itself after the rubbish 
was cleared away, one of the stones, though nicely 
adapted to its place, was observed to be loose ; and 
when it was removed, a hollow passage was found, ev¬ 
idently forced by some former enterprising explorer, 
and rendered dangerous by the rubbish which fell from 
the roof; it was therefore abandoned. Reasoning by 
analogy from the entrance of the first pyramid, which 
is to the east of the centre on the north side, he ex¬ 
plored in that situation, and found, at a distance of thirty 
feet, the true entrance. After incredible perseverance 
and labour, he found numerous passages, all cut out of 
the solid rock, and a chamber forty-six feet three inches 
by sixteen feet three inches, and twenty-three feet six 
inches high. It contained a sarcophagus in a corner, 
surrounded by large blocks of granite. When opened, 
after great labour, this was found to contain bones, 
which mouldered down when touched, and, from speci¬ 
mens afterward examined, turned out to be the bones 
of an ox. Human bones were also found in the same 
place. An Arabic inscription, made with charcoal, 
was on the wall, signifying that “ the place had been 
opened by Mohammed Ahmed, lapicide, attended by 
the master Othman, and the king Alij Mohammed,” 
supposed to be the Ottoman emperor, Mohammed I., 
in the beginning of the fifteenth century. ^It was ob¬ 
served that the rock surrounding the pyramids, on the 
north and west sides, was on a level with the upper 
part of the chamber. It is evidently cut away all 
around, and the stones taken from it were most prob¬ 
ably applied to the erection of the pyramid. There 
are many places in the neighbourhood where the rock 
has been evidently quarried, so that there is no found¬ 
ation for the opinion formerly common, and given by 
Herodotus, that the stones had been brought from the 
east side of the Nile, which is only probable as. ap¬ 
plied to the granite brought from Syene. The opera¬ 
tions of Belzoni have thrown light on the manner in 
which the pyramids were constructed, as well as the 
purposes for which they were intended. That they 
were meant for sepulchres can hardly admit of a doubt. 

It is remarkable that no hieroglyphical inscriptions are 
found in or about the pyramids as in the other tombs ; 
a circumstance which is supposed to indicate the peri¬ 
od of their construction to have been prior to the in¬ 
vention of that mode of writing, though some think 
that the variation may be accounted for by a difference 

1149 






PYRAMIDES. 


PYRAMIDES. 


in the usages of different places and ages. Belzoni, 
however, says that he found some hieroglyphics on one 
of the blocks forming a mausoleum to the west of the 
first pyramid. The first pyramid seems never to have 
been coated, as there is not the slightest mark of any 
covering. The second pyramid showed that the coat- 
incr had been executed from the summit downward, as 
it appeared that it had not, in this instance, been finish¬ 
ed to the bottom. 

3. Who were the labourers employed on the Pyra¬ 
mids ? 

A very curious inquiry now remains as to the la¬ 
bourers employed in erecting these stupendous struc¬ 
tures, and the following remarks on this subject, though 
they may not be acceded to in their full extent, will 
yet, it is conceived, not prove unacceptable. They 
are from Calmet's Dictionary (vol. 3, p. 217, seq.). 
On the supposition that they were native Egyptians, 
Voltaire has founded an argument in proof of the sla¬ 
very of that people ; but that they were really natives 
is a point which admits of considerable doubt. The 
uniform practice of the ancient Oriental nations seems 
to have been, to employ captive foreigners in erecting 
laborious and painful works, and Diodorus (1, 2) ex¬ 
pressly asserts this of the Egyptian Sesostris. Is it 
improbable to suppose that one at least, if not all, of 
she structures in question, were the work of the Israel¬ 
ites ? Bondage is expressly attributed to them in the 
sacred writings ; and that the Israelites did not make 
brick only, but performed other labours, may be in¬ 
ferred from Exodus , 9, 8, 10. Moses took “ashes of 
the furnace ,” no doubt that which was tendered him 
by his people. So Psalm 81, 6, “I removed his 
shoulder from the burden , and his hands were deliv¬ 
ered from the mortar-basket,’' not pots, as in our 
translation ; and with this rendering agree the Septu- 
agint, Vulgate, Symmachus, and others. Added to 
this, we have the positive testimony of Josephus that 
the Israelites were employed on the Pyramids. The 
space of time allotted for the erection of these im¬ 
mense masses coincides with what is usually assigned 
to the slavery of the Israelites. Israel is understood 
to have been in Egypt 215 years, of which Joseph 
ruled seventy years ; nor was it till long after his 
death that a “ new king arose who knew not Joseph.” 
If we allow about forty years for the extent of the 
generation which succeeded Joseph, added to his 
seventy, there remain about 105 years to the Exo¬ 
dus. According to Herodotus (2, 124, seqq.), Egypt, 
until the reign of Rhampsinitus, was remarkable for 
its abundance and excellent laws. Cheops, who suc¬ 
ceeded this prince, degenerated into extreme profli¬ 
gacy of conduct. He barred the avenues of every 
temple, aqd forbade the Egyptians from offering sac¬ 
rifices. He next proceeded to make them labour ser¬ 
vilely for himself by building the first pyramid. Che¬ 
ops reigned fifty years. His brother Chephrenes suc¬ 
ceeded, and adopted a similar course ; he reigned fifty- 
six years. Thus, for the space of 106 years, were the 
Egyptians exposed to every species of oppression and 
calamity ; not having, during all this period, permis¬ 
sion even to worship in their temples. The Egyp¬ 
tians had so strong an aversion to the memory of 
these two monarchs, that they would never mention 
their names, but always attributed their pyramids to 
one Philitis, a shepherd who kept his cattle in those 
parts. We have here very plain traces of a govern¬ 
ment by a foreign family ; and of a worship contrary 
to that which had been previously established in Egypt, 
as appears in the prohibition of sacrifices. In its con¬ 
tinuance, moreover, of 106 years, it coincides with the 
bondage of the Israelites. There appears to be some¬ 
thing mysterious concealed under the name and men¬ 
tion of the shepherd Philitis. It is clear that the 
Egyptians did not call the kings, by whose orders the 
1150 


pyramids were built, by this name in. the hearing o! 
Herodotus, since they referred them to their kings Che¬ 
ops and Chephrenes. It would seem, moreover, that 
the shepherd Philitis had formerly, and at other times, 
customarily fed his cattle elsewhere. J he following, 
then, may be regarded as the meaning of the passage 
in question : they attributed the labour of constructing 
the pyramidi to a shepherd who came from Philistia , 
but who, at that time, fed his cattle in the land of 
Egypt 5 implying that they more readily told the ap¬ 
pellation of the workman (the son of Israel, the shep¬ 
herd., Gen., 47, 5) employed in the building, than of 
the kings by whose commands they were built. They 
seem to have pursued the same course in the days af 
Diodorus, who remarks (1,2), “ They admit that these 
works are superior to all which are seen in Egypt, not 
only by the immensity of their mass and by their pro 
digious cost, but still more by the beauty of their 
construction ; and the workmen, who have rendered 
them so perfect, are much more estimable than the 
kings who paid their cost; for the former have hereby 
given a proof of their genius and skill, whereas the 
kings contributed only the riches left them by their an¬ 
cestors, or extorted from their subjects. They say 
the first was erected by Armceus ; the second by Am¬ 
mo sis; the third by Inaron .” In the common Greek 
text we read V A pamg for the second name, but the 
best critics decide in favour of ’Appootg. If we make 
a slight change also in the first name, and, instead of 
Armaeus (’A ppalog), read Aramaeus (’A papalog), the 
result will be a curious one. On comparing the 
names a Mousis and in Aron with the Hebrew de 
scription of Moses and Aaron, we find that the proper 
appellation is the same, as near as pronunciation by 
natives of different countries could bring it: a Mousis, 
or ha Mousis , is hu Mouseh in Hebrew ; and in Aron, 
or hin Aron, is written hu Aaron, which certainly, 
when two vowels came together, took a consonant be¬ 
tween them, being spoken as if written hun Aaron. 
This testimony, therefore, agrees with the supposition 
that the Israelites were employed on the pyramids ; 
first under the appellation of the Syrian ot Arameean 
(the very title given to Jacob, Deut., 26, 5, ‘‘An Ara- 
mitc ready to perish,” &c.), and afterward under the 
names of the two most famous leaders of that nation, 
Moses and Aaron. ( Calmet’s Dictionary, l. c .) 

4. Various etymologies of the word Pyramid 
(TLvpaptg). 

Some derive the name Pyramid ( Pyramis , Uvpa 
pig) from rcvpog, “ wheat," on the supposition that 
they were meant for granaries! ( Steph. Byz.,s. v. 
— Etymol. Mag., s. •».) It is surprising that this silly 
derivation should have been approved of by Vossius. 
Another class of etymologists deduce the term from 
the Greek word rrvp, “fire," in allusion to the flame¬ 
shaped appearance of the structure, as it tapers to a 
point. ( Etymol. Mag., s. v. — Sylburg., ad loc. — 
Schol. ad Horat., Od,, 3, 30, 2.— Amm. Marcell., 22, 
15.) These and other derivations proceed upon the 
supposition that the word pyramid is of Greek origin, 
than which nothing can be more erroneous. ( Jablon- 
ski, Voc. JEgypl. — Opusc., vol. 1, p. 221.) Some, 
taking the passage of Pliny for their guide, where he 
explains the term obeliscus by “ radius Solis," and, 
regarding the obelisk as a species of pyramid, deduce 
the latter word from the Coptic Pi-ra-mu-e, which 
they make to signify “ a ray of the sun." ( Jablonski, 
p. 222.) Wilkins thinks that pyramis comes from the 
Coptic Poura misi, equivalent to “ regia generatio," 
the pyramids being so called, according to him, be¬ 
cause they served as places of sepulture for lines of 
kings. Jablonski, however, well observes, that Poura 
(or Pouro) misi can signify nothing else but “ de¬ 
scended from kings." Finally, De Sacy, the late emi 
nent Oriental scholar of France, favours us with th 






PFR 


PYR 


f jHowmg. He makes iq, in the word II vpapiq, a mere 
Greek termination. lit is then the Egyptian article, 
for which the Greeks wrote IIt>, in their wish to de¬ 
duce the term from nvp, “fire." The syllable pap he 
refers to the root ram, which, according to him, had 
in the Egyptian tongue the meaning of separating, or 
setting anything apart from common use. Evpapiq, 
therefore, will denote a sacred place or edifice, set 
apart for some religious purpose. ( De Sacy, Obser¬ 
vations sur Porigine da nom donne par les Grecs et 
Its Arabes aux Pyr amides d’JEgypie.—Te Water, ad 
Jablonsk.y Voc. Mgypt., p. 224.) 

Pyramus, I. a youth of Babylon. ( Vid. Thisbe.) 
—II. A river of Cilicia Campestris, rising in Mount 
' Taurus, and falling into the Sinus Issicus. It is now 
the Geilioon. This river forces its way, by a deep 
and narrow channel, through the barrier of Taurus ; 
and such was the quantity of soil which it carried down, 
that an oracle affirmed that one day it would reach 
the sacred isle of Cyprus. ( Strab ., 536.) This, how¬ 
ever, has not taken place ; but a remarkable change 
has occurred with respect to the course of this river, 
which now finds its way into the sea, twenty-three 
miles more to the east, in the Gulf of Scanderoon. 

( Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 351.) 

Pyren^ei, a well-known range of mountains, separ¬ 
ating Gallia from Hispania. The name was com¬ 
monly supposed to be derived from the Greek* term 
t rvp, “fire," and various explanations were attempted 
to be given of this etymology. According to some, 
these mountains had once been devastated by fire, an 
opinion which Posidonius deemed not improbable. 
JDiod. Sic., 5,35.-— Strab., 146.— Lucret., 5. 12,42.) 
The true derivation, however, is evidently the Celtic 
Pyren or Pyrn, “ a high mountain,” and from this 
same may in like manner be deduced the name of 
Mount Brenner in the Tyrol; that of Pyern, in upper 
Austria, that of Fernor, in the Tyrol, and many others. 
(Adelung, Mithradates, vol. 2, p. 67.)—The range of 
the Pyrenees is about 294 miles in length. These 
mountains are steep, difficult of access, and only pass¬ 
able at five places : 1st, From Languedoc to Catalo¬ 
nia; 2d, from Comminge into Aragon; 3d, at Ta- 
rafifa; 4th, at Maya and Pampeluna, in Navarre ; and 
5th, at Sebastians, in Biscay, which is the easiest of 
aii. ( Polyb ., 3, 34, seqq. — Mela, 2, 5.— Plin., 3, 3.) 

Pyrgotei.es, a celebrated engraver on gems in the 
age of Alexander'the Great. He had the exclusive 
privilege of engraving the conqueror, as Lysippus was 
the only sculptor who was permitted to make statues 
of him. Two gems carved by this artist are said to be 
extant ( Bracci, Memorie, tab. 98, 99); but Winckel- 
mann has, by many powerful arguments, proved them 
to be spurious. (Op., 6, 1, p. 107, seqq.) 

Pyrrha, I. a daughter of Epimetheus and Pandora, 
and wife of Deucalion. (Vid. Deucalion.)—II. A 
promontory of Thessaly, on the western coast of the 
Sinus Pagasaeus, and a short distance below Dernetri- 
as. It is now Cape Ankistri. —III. A rock, with an¬ 
other in its vicinity named Deucalion, near the prom¬ 
ontory mentioned in the preceding paragraph. (Stra¬ 
bo, 435.) 

Pyrrho, a celebrated Greek philosopher, a native 
of Elea. In his youth he practised the art of paint¬ 
ing ; but, either through disinclination, or because his 
mind aspired to higher pursuits, he passed over from 
the school of painting to that of philosophy. He stud¬ 
ied and admired the writings of Democritus, and had, 
as his first preceptor, Bryson, the son of Stilpo, a dis¬ 
ciple of Clinomachus. After this he became a disci¬ 
ple of Anaxarchus, who was contemporary with Alex¬ 
ander, and he accompanied his master, in the train of 
Alexander, into Asia. Here he conversed with the 
Brahmans and Gymnosophists, imbibing from their 
doctrine whatever might seem favourable to his natu¬ 
ral disposition towards doubting • disposition which 


was cherished by his master, who had formerly been a 
disciple of a sceptical philosopher, Metrodorus of 
Chios. Every advance which Pyrrho made in the 
study of philosophy involving him in fresh uncertainty, 
he left the school of the Dogmatists (so those philoso¬ 
phers were called who professed to be possessed of a 
certain knowledge), and established a new school, in 
which he taught that every object of human knowledge 
is involved in uncertainty, so that it is impossible ever 
to arrive at the knowledge of truth. (Diog. Laert., 
58, seqq.) It is related of this philosopher that he 
acted upon his own principles, and carried his scepti¬ 
cism to so ridiculous an extreme, that his friends were 
obliged to accompany him wherever he went, that he 
might not be run over by carriages or fall down preci¬ 
pices. If this was true, it was not without reason that 
he was ranked among those whose intellects were dis¬ 
turbed by intense study. But, if we pay any attention 
to the respect with which he is mentioned by ancient 
writers, or give any credit to the general history of his 
life, we must conclude these reports to have been cal¬ 
umnies "invented by the Dogmatists, whom he op¬ 
posed. He spent a great part of his life in solitude, 
and always preserved a settled composure of counte¬ 
nance, undisturbed by fear, or joy, or grief. He en¬ 
dured bodily pain with great fortitude, and in the midst 
of dangers discovered no signs of apprehension In 
disputation he was celebrated for the subtlety of his 
arguments and the perspicuity of his language. Epi¬ 
curus, though no friend to scepticism, was an admirer 
of Pyrrho, because he recommended and practised that 
self-command which produces undisturbed tranquillity, 
the great end, in the judgment of Epicurus, of all 
physical and moral science. So highly was Pyrrho 
esteemed by his countrymen, that they honoured him 
with the office of chief priest, and, out of respect to 
him, passed a decree, by which all philosophers were 
indulged with immunity from public taxes. He was a 
great admirer of the poets, particularly of Homer, and 
frequently repeated passages from his poems. Could 
such a man be so foolishly enslaved by an absurd sys¬ 
tem as to need a guide to keep him out of danger? 
Pyrrho flourished about B.C. 340, and died aboutT the 
ninetieth year of his age, probably about B.C. 228. 
After his death, the Athenians honoured his memory 
with a statue, and a monument to him was erected in 
his own country. (Enfield, History of Philosophy, 
vol. 1, p. 482.) 

Pyrrhus, I. a son of Achilles and De'idamia, the 
daughter of King Lycomedes, who received this name 
from the yellowness of his hair. He was also called 
Neoptolemus, or new warrior, because he came to the 
Trojan war in the last years of the celebrated siege of 
the capital of Troas. He was brought up, and re¬ 
mained at the court of his maternal grandfather until 
after his father’s death. The Greeks, then, according 
to an oracle, which had declared that Troy could not 
be taken unless one of the descendants of HSacus were 
among the besiegers, despatched Ulysses and Phoenix 
to Scyros for the young prince. He had no sooner ar¬ 
rived before Troy, than, having paid a visit to the tomb 
of Achilles, he was appointed to accompany Ulysses in 
his expedition to Lemnos, for the purpose of prevailing 
on Philoctetes to repair with the arrows of Hercules 
to the scene of action. Pyrrhus greatly signalized 
himself during the siege, and was the first, according 
to some accounts, that entered the wooden horse. He 
was not inferior to his father in cruel and vindictive 
feelings. After breaking down the gates of Priam’s 
palace, he pursued the unhappy monarch to the altar 
of Jupiter, and there, according to some accounts, he 
slaughtered him ; while, according to others, he drag¬ 
ged him by the hair to the tomb of Achilles, where he 
sacrificed him to the manes of his father. Pyrrhus is 
also among the number of those to whom the precipi¬ 
tation of the young Astyanax from the summit of a 

1151 



PYRRHUS. 


PYRRHUS. 


tower is attributed ; and it was he that immolated < 
Polyxena to his father’s shade. In the division of the . 
captives after the termination of the war, Andromache, i 
the widow of Hector, and Helenus, the brother of the I 
latter, were assigned to Pyrrhus. After some time I 
had elapsed, he gave up Andromache to Helenus, and I 
sought and obtained the hand of Hermione, daughter 1 
of Menelaus and Helen ; but he was slain for this by < 
Orestes, son of Agamemnon. (Eurip., Androm., 1244, < 

seqq .— Virg ., /Eft., 3, 319, seqq .— Heyne , Excurs., 
12, ad JEn., 3.)—II. A king of Epirus, descended 
from Achilles on the mother’s side. He was saved 
when an infant, by the fidelity of his servants, from : 
the pursuits of the enemies of his father, who had been 
banished from his kingdom, and he was carried to the 
court of Glautias, king of Illyricutn, who educated him 
with great tenderness. Cassander, king of Macedo¬ 
nia, wished to despatch him ; but Glautias not only 
refused to deliver him up into the hands of his enemy, 
but he even went with an army, and placed him on the 
throne of Epirus, though only twelve years of age. 
About five years after, the absence of Pyrrhtfs to at¬ 
tend the nuptials of one of the daughters of Glautias 
raised new commotions. The monarch was expelled 
from his throne by Neoptolemus, who had usurped it 
after the death of yEacides ; and being still without 
resources, he applied to his brother-in-law Demetiius 
for assistance. He accompanied Demetrius at the 
battle of Ipsus, and fought there w r ilh al^the prudence 
and intrepidity of an experienced general. He after¬ 
ward passed into Egypt, where, by his marriage with 
Antigone, the daughter of Berenice, he soon obtained 
a sufficient force to attempt the recovery of his throne. 
He was successful in the undertaking ; but, to remove 
all causes of quarrel, he took the usurper to share with 
him the royalty, and some time after he put him to 
death, under pretence that he had attempted to poison 
him. In the subsequent years of his reign Pyrrhus 
engaged in the quarrels which disturbed the peace of 
the Macedonian monarchy. He marched against De¬ 
metrius, and gave the Macedonian soldiers fresh proofs 
of his valour and activity. By dissimulation he ingra¬ 
tiated himself in the minds of his enemy’s subjects ; 
and when Demetrius laboured under a momentary ill¬ 
ness, Pyrrhus made an attempt upon the crown of Ma¬ 
cedonia, which, if not then successful, soon after ren¬ 
dered him master of the kingdom. This he shared 
with Lysimachus for seven months, till the jealousy of 
the Macedonians and the ambition of his colleague 
obliged him to retire. Pyrrhus was meditating new 
conquests, when the Tarentines invited him to Italy 
to assist them against the encroaching power of Rome. 
He gladly accepted the invitation, but his passagfe 
across the Adriatic proved nearly fatal, and he reached 
the shores of Italy after the loss of the greatest part of 
his troops in a storm. At his entrance into Taren- 
tum, B.C. 280, he began to reform the manners of the 
inhabitants, and, by introducing the strictest discipline 
among their troops, to accustom them to bear fatigue 
and to despise dangers. In the first battle which he 
fought with the Romans he obtained the victory; but 
for this he was more particularly indebted to his ele¬ 
phants, whose bulk and uncommon appearance aston¬ 
ished the Romans, and terrified their cavalry. The 
number of the slain was equal on both sides, and the 
conqueror said that another such victory would ruin 
him. He also sent Cineas, his chief minister, to 
Rome, and, though victorious, he sued for peace. 
These offers of peace were refused ; and when Pyrrhus 
questioned Cineas about the manners and the charac¬ 
ter of the Romans, the sagacious minister replied that 
their senate was a venerable assembly of kings, and 
that to fight against them was to attack another Hydra. 
A second battle was soon after fought near Asculum, 
but the slaughter was so great, and the valour so con¬ 
spicuous on both sides, that the Romans and their en- 
1152 


emies reciprocally claimed the victory as their own. 
Pyrrhus still continued the war in favour of the Paren- 
tines, when he was invited into Sicily by the inhabi¬ 
tants, who laboured under the yoke of Carthage and 
the cruelty of their own petty tyrants. His fondness 
for novelty soon determined him to quit Italy. He 
left a garrison at Tarentum, and crossed over to Si¬ 
cily, where he obtained two victories over the Cartha¬ 
ginians, and took many of their towns. He was for x 
while successful, and formed the project of invading 
Africa ; but his popularity soon vanished. His troops 
became insolent, and he behaved with haughtiness, 
and showed himself oppressive, so that his return to 
Italy was deemed a fortunate event for all Sicily. Ho 
had no sooner arrived at Tarentum than he renewed 
hostilities with the Romans with great acrimony ; but 
when his army of 80,000 men had been defeated by 
20,000 of the enemy under Curius, he left Italy with 
precipitation, B.C. 274, ashamed of the enterprise, and 
mortified by the victories which had been obtained over 
one of the descendants of Achilles. In Epirus he be¬ 
gan to repair his military character by attacking Anti- 
gonus, who was then on the Macedonian throne. He 
gained some advantages over his enemy, and was at 
last restored to the throne of Macedonia. He after¬ 
ward marched against Sparta at the request of Cleony- 
mus ; but, when all his vigorous operations were insuf¬ 
ficient to take the capital of Laconia, he retired to 
Argos, where the treachery of Aristeus invited him. 
The Argives desired him to retire, and not to interfere 
in the affairs of their republic, which were confounded 
by the ambition of two of their nobles. He complied 
with their wishes; but in the nigKt he marched his 
forces into the town, and might have made him¬ 
self master of the place had he not retarded his prog¬ 
ress by entering it with his elephants. The combat 
that ensued was obstinate and bloody; and the monarch, 
to fight with more boldness, and to encounter dangers 
with more facility, exchanged his dress. He was at¬ 
tacked by one of the enemy; but, as he was going to 
run him through in his own defence, the mother of the 
Argive, who saw her son’s danger from the top of a 
house, threw down a tile, and brought Pyrrhus to the 
ground. His head was cut off and carried to Ar.ti- 
gonus, who gave his remains a magnificent funeral, 
and presented his ashes to his son Helenus, 272 years 
before the Christian era.—In person Pyrrhus was ath¬ 
letic and commanding, and his strength and powet of 
bearing the severest fatigue were such as called forth 
the admiration of all who knew him. The turn and 
character of his mind corresponded with such powers 
of body ; and he seemed to be formed for war as much 
by his spirit of enterprise and resolution, as by his skill 
in the use of arms and the power of enduring priva¬ 
tions. His patience was not merely the endurance of 
physical evils ; it was a moral quality of much higher 
value, which showed that he had not naturally an ar¬ 
bitrary and tyrannical disposition ; and it was admira¬ 
bly exemplified in the calmness with which he bore the 
reproofs of Cineas, and the pleasure he took in listening 
to the rough and homely truths uttered by Fabricius. 
His admiration of the Romans arose as much from 
• his veneration for their probity as from astonishment 
: at their resoluteness ; and though his policy sometimes 
: partook of the tortuous character of the Greek and 
i Asiatic courts, in action he was always magnanimous. 
i This great quality showed itself even in his domestic 
. intercourse with his friends, and checked that ardour 
> and quickness, which, without it, would have made 

- him a tyrant as well as a conqueror. The whole of 
t his history shows that he was misled by passions not 
1 sufficiently controlled, but that his understanding was 
. powerful, quick, and acute. His rapidity, indeed, in 
, projecting and executing, hurried him into an excess, 

- and he seldom allowed himself time enough for delib- 

- eration and judgment: hence it was that he might fr* 






? Y T 


PYTHAGORAS. 


said to deserve the sarcastic remark of rintigonus, whi) 
compared him to a gambler, “ who makes many good 
throws, but never seems to know when he has the best 
of the game.” ( Pint ., Vit. Pyrrh. — Encyclop. Metro- 
pol., div. 2, vol. 1, p. 667.) 

Pythagoras, a celebrated philosopher of Samos. 
Great uncertainty exists as to the year when he was 
born. Some, as, for example, La Nauze and Freret, 
make it to have been the first year of the 43d Olym¬ 
piad. Bentley is in favour of the fourth year of the 
same Olympiad, Meiner contends for the second of 
the 49th, Dodwell for the fourth of the 52d. There is 
a difference of sixty-three years between the extremes 
of these dates. Some authors assert that all which 
can be stated with any degree of certainty is, that sev¬ 
enty-five or eighty-five years of the life of Pythagoras 
(for even the duration of his life is a subject of con¬ 
troversy) fall within the one hundred and forty-two 
years that elapsed between A.C. 608 and A.C. 466. 
Visconti gives the preference to Eusebius, who, in 
fixing the death of Pythagoras in the 496th year B.O., 
expresses his doubts respecting the advanced age to 
which the philosopher is said to have attained. By his 
mother’s side he is said to have been connected with 
one of the oldest families in the island. But his fa¬ 
ther, Mnesarchus, was generally believed to have been 
a foreigner, and not of purely Greek origin, though it 
was disputed whether he was a Phoenician, or belonged 
to the Tyrrhenian Pelasgians of Lemnos or Imbros, and 
to a branch, therefore, of the Pelasgian race. If we 
dismiss the tales of Iamblichus concerning the early 
wisdom, gravity, and temperance of Pythagoras, which 
are said to have been such as to have filled all men 
with admiration, to have commanded respect and rev¬ 
erence from gray hairs, and even to have led many to 
assert that, he was the son of God ( Iamb ., Vit. Pyth., 
n. 6), we meet with no other credible particulars of 
his childhood and early education, but that he was first 
instructed in his own country by Creophilus, and 
afterward by Pherecydes in the island of Scyros. 
{Thirlirail's Greece, vol. 2, p. 140, in notis.) When 
he had paid the honours to his preceptor, for whom he 
appears to have entertained a high respect, he returned 
to Samos, and again studied under the direction of 
his first master. Much is said by Iamblichus and 
other later biographers of Pythagoras’s early journey 
into Ionia, and his visits to Thales and Anaximander; 
but we find no ancient account of his journey, nor any 
traces of its effects on his doctrine, which differs es¬ 
sentially from that of the Ionic school. On his way 
to Egypt, Iamblichus asserts that he visited Phoenicia, 
and conversed with the descendants of Mochus and 
other priests of that country, and was initiated into 
their peculiar mysteries. And it may seem not en¬ 
tirely improbable that he might wish to be farther ac¬ 
quainted with the Phoenician philosophy, of which he 
had doubtless heard a general report from his father, 
who was probably of Phoenician origin. But it is cer¬ 
tainly a fiction of the Alexandrean school that Pythag¬ 
oras received his doctrines of numbers from the Phoe¬ 
nicians, for their knowledge of numbers extended no 
farther than to the practical science of arithmetic. In 
Egypt, Pythagoras was introduced, by the recommend¬ 
ation of Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, to Amasis, king 
of Egypt, a great patron of learned men, particularly 
those”of Greece, that he might the more easily obtain 
access to the colleges of the priests. The king him¬ 
self could scarcely, with all his authority, prevail upon 
the priests to admit a stranger to the knowledge of 
their sacred mysteries. The college of Heliopolis, to 
whom the king’s instructions were sent, referred Py¬ 
thagoras to the college of Memphis, as of greater anti¬ 
quity : from Memphis he was dismissed, under the 
same pretence, to Thebes. The Theban priests, not 
daring to reject the royal mandate, yet loth to comply 
with it, prescribed Pythagoras many severe and troub- 
7 G 


lesome preliminary ceremonies, among which was that 
of circumcision, hoping thereby to discourage him 
from prosecuting his design. Pythagoras, however, 
executed all their injunctions with such wonderful pa¬ 
tience and perseverance, that he obtained their entire 
confidence, and was instructed in their most recondite 
doctrine. He passed twenty-two years in Egypt. 
During this time he made himself perfectly master of 
the three kinds of writing which were used in that 
country, the epistolary, the hieroglyphic, and the sym¬ 
bolical ; and, having obtained access to their most 
learned men, in every celebrated college of priests, he 
became intimately conversant with their ancient rec¬ 
ords, and gained an accurate knowledge of their doc¬ 
trines concerning the origin of things, with their as¬ 
tronomy and geometry, and, in short, with Egyptian 
learning in its whole extent. To his stay in Egypt 
he was most likely indebted, not so much for any pos¬ 
itive knowledge or definite opinion, as for hints which 
roused his curiosity, and impressions which decided 
the bias of his mind. In the science of the Egyptians 
he perhaps found little to borrow ; but in their political 
and religious institutions he saw a mighty engine, such 
as he might wish to wield for nobler purposes. Many 
writers who flourished after the commencement of the 
Christian era, both pagan and Christian, have related 
that Pythagoras, immediately after he left Egypt, vis¬ 
ited the Persian and Chaldaean Magi, and travelled so 
far into the East as to converse with the Indian Gym- 
nosophists. The occasion of this journey is thus re¬ 
lated by Iamblichus: “After spending twenty-two 
years in Egypt, he was conveyed by the victorious 
army of Cambyses, among a numerous train of cap¬ 
tives, to Babylon, where he made himself perfectly ac¬ 
quainted with the learning and philosophy of the East; 
and, after the expiration of twelve years, when he was 
in the sixtieth year of his age, he returned to Samos.” 
Cicero, Eusebius, Lactantius, and Valerius Maximus, 
though they say nothing of the captivity, agree that he 
visited the Persian Magi. Some have even maintain¬ 
ed that in this journey he attended upon the instruc¬ 
tions of the celebrated Zoroaster; while others, who 
have placed the life of Zoroaster in an earlier period 
than that of Pythagoras, have asserted that the latter 
conversed with certain Jewish priests, who were at 
that time in captivity at Babylon, and by this means 
become intimately acquainted with the Jewish laws 
and customs. After all, however, there is great rea¬ 
son to suspect the truth of the whole narrative of 
Pythagoras’s journey into the East; for the relation is 
encumbered with inextricable chronological difficul¬ 
ties. The whole proof of the reality of this expedition 
rests either upon the evidence of certain Alexandrean 
Platonists, who were desirous of exalting as much as 
possible the reputation of those ancient philosophers to 
whom they looked back as the first oracles of wisdom , 
or upon that of certain Jewish and Christian writers, 
who were willing to credit every tale which might seem 
to render it probable that the Pythagorean doctrine 
was derived from the Oriental philosophers, and ulti¬ 
mately from the Hebrew Scriptures. It seems, there¬ 
fore, on the whole, most reasonable to look upon the 
story of his eastern journey as a mere fiction, and to 
conclude that Pythagoras never passed over from 
Egypt to the East, but returned thence immediately 
to Samos. Pythagoras, on his return to his native 
island, was desirous that his fellow-citizens should 
reap the benefit of his travels and studies, and for this 
purpose attempted to institute a school for their in¬ 
struction in the elements of science, but chose to 
adopt the Egyptian mode of teaching, and communi 
cate his doctrines under a symbolical form. Plis at¬ 
tempt was unsuccessful. He then visited in succes¬ 
sion Delos, Crete, Sparta, Elis (being present at the 
Olympic games celebrated in the latter district), and 
finally Phlius in Achaia, the residence of Leon, king- 

1153 



PYTHAGORAS. 


PYTHAGORAS. 


ot the Phliasians. Here he first assumed the appella¬ 
tion of philosopher. Cicero ascribes the invention of 
this term to Pythagoras. If this be correct, Pythago¬ 
ras probably did not intend, as has been commonly 
imagined, to deprecate the reputation for wisdom, but 
to profess himself devoted to the pursuit of it. The 
well-known story, which explains the origin of the 
name, suggests an entirely false notion of his view of 
life, so far as it implies that he regarded contemplation 
as the highest end of human existence. The story is 
as follows : It seems that Leon, charmed with the in¬ 
genuity and eloquence with which he discoursed on 
various topics, asked him in what art he principally 
excelled, to which Pythagoras replied, that he did not 
profess himself master of any art, but that he was a 
philosopher. Leon, struck with the novelty of the 
term, asked Pythagoras who were philosophers, and 
wherein they differed from other men. Pythagoras 
replied that, as in the public games, while some are 
contending for glory, and others are buying and selling 
in pursuit of gain, there is always a third class, who at¬ 
tend merely as spectators ; so in human life, amid the 
various characters of men, there is a select number 
who, despising all other pursuits, assiduously apply 
themselves to the study of nature and the search after 
wisdom; these, added Pythagoras, are the persons 
whom I denominate philosophers. — Pythagoras is 
generally believed to have found Polycrates ruling 
at Samos, on his return from his travels, and his aver¬ 
sion to the tyrant’s government was sometimes as¬ 
signed as the motive which led him finally to quit his 
native island. If there were any foundation for this 
story, it must probably be sought, not in any personal 
enmity between him and Polvcrates—who is said to 
have furnished him with letters of recommendation to 
Amasis—but in his conviction that the power of Po¬ 
lycrates would oppose insuperable objections to his de¬ 
signs. For it seems certain that, before he set out for 
the West, he had already conceived the idea to which 
he dedicated the remainder of his life, and only sought 
for a fit place and a favourable opportunity for carry¬ 
ing it into effect. We, however, find intimations, that 
he did not leave Samos until he had acquired some 
celebrity among the Asiatic Greeks, by the introduc¬ 
tion of certain mystic rites, which Herodotus repre¬ 
sents as closely allied to the Egyptian, and to those 
which were celebrated in Greece under the name of 
Orpheus as their reputed founder. But as we cannot 
believe that the establishment of a new form of reli¬ 
gion was an object that Pythagoras ever proposed to 
himself apart from his political views, we could only 
regard these mysteries, supposing the fact ascertained, 
in the light of an essay or an experiment, by which he 
sounded the disposition or the capability of his coun¬ 
trymen for the reception of other more practical doc¬ 
trines. The fame of his travels, his wisdom, and 
sanctity had probably gone before him into Greece, 
where he appears to have stayed some time, partly, per¬ 
haps, to enlarge his knowledge, and partly to heighten 
his reputation. It was nc deubt for the former pur¬ 
pose that he visited Crete and Sparta, where he found 
a model of government and discipline more congenial 
to his habits of thinking than he could have met with 
anywhere else but in Egypt or India. If, as is highly 
probable, he stopped on the same journey at Olympia and 
at Delphi, it was, perhaps, less from either curiosity or 
devotion, than from the desire of obtaining the sanction 
of the oracles, and of forming a useful connexion with 
their ministers. Thus we are told that he was in¬ 
debted for many of his ethical dogmas to Themistoclea 
of Delphi, probably the priestess. The legends about 
his appearing at Olympia—where he is said to have 
shown a thigh, like the shoulder of Pelops, of gold or 
of ivory, and to have fascinated an eagle as it flew 
over his head—may very well be connected with this 
’ourney, and would indicate that he was looked upon 
1154 


as a person partaking of a superhuman nature, and as 
an especial favourite of Heaven. How far he excited 
or encouraged such a delusion, is in all cases very 
difficult to determine; but it seems unquestionable 
that he did not rely solely on his genuine merits and 
acquirements, but put forward marvellous pretensions 
which he must have been conscious had no real 
ground, and which, we must suspect, were calculated 
to attract the veneration of the credulous. The mos* 
famous of these was the claim he laid to the privi 
lege—conferred on him, as he asserted, by the go< 
Hermes — of preserving a distinct remembrance of 
many states of existence which his soul had passed 
through ; an imposture attested by his contemporary 
Xenophanes, who, as his character in this respect 
stands much higher than that of Pythagoras, appears 
to have treated it in his elegies with deserved ridi¬ 
cule. ( Diog. Laert., 8, 36.)—What were the precise 
motives which induced him finally to fix his residence 
among the Italian Greeks, and particularly at Orotona, 
is only matter for conjecture. The peculiar salu¬ 
brity of the air of this place, its aristocratical govern¬ 
ment, a state of manners which, though falling far 
short of his idea, was advantageously contrasted with 
the luxury of Sybaris, might suffice to determine his 
choice, even if there were no other circumstances in 
its condition which opened a prospect of successful 
exertion. In fact, however, the state of parties in 
Crotona, at the time when he arrived there, seems to 
have been singularly favourable to the undertaking 
which he meditated. Causes of discord were at work 
there, as in most of the neighbouring cities, very sim¬ 
ilar to those which produced the struggle between the 
patricians and plebeians at Rome. There was a body, 
called a senate, composed of a thousand members, 
and probably representing the descendants of the more 
ancient settlers, invested with large and irresponsible 
authority, and enjoying privileges which had begun to 
excite discontent among the people. The power of 
the oligarchy was still preponderant, but apparently 
not so secure as to render all assistance superfluous. 
The arrival of a stranger outwardly neutral, who en¬ 
gaged the veneration of the multitude by his priestly 
character, and by the rumour of his supernatural en 
dowments, and who was willing to throw all his influ 
ence into the scale of the government, on. condition 
of exercising some control over its measures, was an 
event which could not but be hailed with great joy by 
the privileged class. And, according’v, Pythagoras 
seems to have found the utmost readiness in the sen¬ 
ate of Crotona to favour his designs. The real na¬ 
ture of these designs, and of the means by which he 
endeavoured to carry them into execution, is a ques¬ 
tion which has exercised the sagacity of many inqui¬ 
rers, and has been variously solved, according to the 
higher degree of importance which Pythagoras has 
been supposed to have attached to religion, or to phi¬ 
losophy, or to government. But it seems clear that 
his object was not exclusively, or even predominantly 
religious, or philosophical, or political, and that none of 
the objects stood in the relation of an end to the other 
two as its means. On the other hand, we cannot be 
satisfied with the opinion of a modern author, that the 
aim of Pythagoras was to exhibit the ideal of a Do¬ 
rian state. ( Muller , Dorians, 3, 9, 15.) This is, per¬ 
haps, in one sense more, and in another less, than he 
really attempted, and the opinion seems to affect the 
character of the Dorians rather than the views of Py¬ 
thagoras. His leading thought appears to have been, 
that the state and the individual ought, each in its 
way, to reflect the image of that order and harmony 
by which he believed the universe to be sustained and 
regulated. He did not frame a constitution or a code 
of laws ; nor does he appear ever to have assumed 
any public office. He instituted a society—an order 
we might now call it—of which he became the lead- 




PYTHAGORAS. 


PYTHAGORAS. 


er. It was composed of young men carefully select¬ 
ed from the noblest families, not only of Crotona, but 
of other Italiot cities. Their number amounted, or 
was confined, to three hundred ; and if he expected 
by their co-operation to exercise a sway firmer and 
more lasting than that of a lawgiver or a magis¬ 
trate, first over Crotona, and, in the end, over all the 
Italiot cities, his project, though new and bold, ought 
not to be pronounced visionary or extravagant. This 
celebrated society, then, was at once a philosophical 
school, a religious brotherhood, and a political associa¬ 
tion ; and all these characters appear to have been in¬ 
separably united in the founder’s mind. The ambition 
of Pythagoras was, assuredly, truly lofty and noble. 
He aimed at establishing a dominion which he be¬ 
lieved to be that of wisdom and virtue, a rational su¬ 
premacy of minds, enlightened by philosophy and pu¬ 
rified by religion, and of characters fitted to maintain 
an ascendant over others by habits of self-command. 
At first Pythagoras obtained unbounded influence over 
all classes at Crotona, and effected a general reforma¬ 
tion in the habits of the people; while in other Italian 
cities he gained such a footing as enabled him either 
to counteract revolutionary movements, or to restore 
aristocratical government where it had given way to 
tyranny or democracy.—After the celebrated battle in 
which the people of Crotona defeated the Sybarites, 
and after which they destroyed the city of the latter, 
the senate of Crotona and the Pythagorean associates 
seem to have been so elated by this success as to 
have fancied that it was the triumph of their cause, 
and that they alone were to reap its fruits. When the 
question arose as to the distribution of the spoil and 
of the conquered land, they insisted on retaining the 
whole in the name of the state, and refused to con¬ 
cede any share to those who had earned it all by their 
toil and blood. The commonalty were, of course, ir¬ 
ritated by the attempt. Their fury was directed 
against the society, chiefly, it is said, by Cylon, a no¬ 
ble and wealthy man, who is believed to have been 
rejected by Pythagoras when he sought to be admit¬ 
ted among his followers. A turn-out took place, in 
which the populace set fire to Milo's house, where the 
Pythagoreans were assembled. Many perished, and 
the rest only found safety in exile. It is not clear 
whether Pythagoras himself was at Crotona during 
this commotion ; the general belief seems to have 
been that he died, not long after, at Metapontum. The 
rising at Crotona appears to have been followed by 
similar scenes in several other Italian cities, as at 
Caulonia, Locri, and Tarentum, which would prove 
the extensive ramifications of the order, and that it 
everywhere disclosed the same political character. 
Many of the fugitives took refuge in Greece, but con¬ 
fusion and bloodshed continued to prevail for many 
years in the cities which had been the seats of the so¬ 
ciety. Tranquillity was at length restored by the me¬ 
diation. of the Achaeans of the mother country, and 
sixty of the exiles returned to their homes. But their 
presence seems to have given rise to fresh troubles, 
perhaps through their opposition to the democratical 
institutions which Crotona and other cities adopted 
from Achaia : and at a later period we find some cel¬ 
ebrated Pythagoreans in Greece, who had been driven 
out of Italy by their political adversaries, while oth¬ 
ers remained there, and endeavoured, with partial suc¬ 
cess, to revive the ancient influence of the order. 
(ThirsMrfV* Greece , vol. 2, p. 145, seqq.— Ritter's 
History of Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 327.) —Many tales 
are related of Pythagoras which carry with them 
their own refutation. That, by speaking a word, 
he tamed a Daunian bear, which had laid waste the 
country ; that he prevented an ox from eating beans 
bv whispering in its ear ; that he was on the same day 
present, and discoursed in public, at Metapontum in 
Italy, and fit Tauromeai’im in Sicily ; that he pre¬ 


dicted earthquakes, storms, and other future events 
and that a river, as he passed over it with his friends, 
cried out, “ Hail, Pythagoras,” are wonders which would 
require much clearer and better evidence to gain them 
credit than the' testimony of Apollonius, Porphyry, 
and Iamblichus, or even of Laertius and Pliny. It 
appears upon the face of the history of this philosopher, 
that he owed much of his celebrity and authority to 
seeking to excite the veneration of the credulous. His 
whole manner of life, as far as it is known, confirms 
this opinion. Clothed in a long white robe, with & 
flowing beard, and, as some relate, with a golden crown 
on his head, he preserved among the people, and in 
the presence of his disciples, a commanding gravity 
and majesty of aspect. He made use of music to pro¬ 
mote the tranquillity of his mind, frequently singing 
for this purpose hymns of Thales, Hesiod, and Ho¬ 
mer. He had such an entire command over himself, 
that he was never seen to express in his countenance 
grief, joy, or anger. He refrained from animal food, 
and confined himself to a frugal vegetable diet. By 
this artificial demeanour, Pythagoras passed himself 
off upon the vulgar as a being of an order superior to 
the common condition of humanity, and persuaded 
them that he had received his doctrine from heaven 
Pythagoras married Theano of Crotona, or, as some 
relate, of Crete, by whom he had two sons, Telauges 
and Mnesarchus, who, after his death, took charge of 
his school.—Whether Pythagoras left behind him any 
writings is a point much disputed. Diogenes Laertius 
enumerates many pieces which appeared under his 
name, and Iamblichus and Pliny increase the list. But 
Plutarch, Josephus, Lucian, and others, confess that 
there were no genuine works of Pythagoras extant; 
and from the pains which Pythagoras took to confine 
his doctrine to his own school during his life, it ap¬ 
pears highly probable that he never committed his 
philosophical system to writing, and that those pieces 
to which his name was early affixed were written by 
some of his followers, according to the tenets which 
they had learned in his school. Among the pieces at¬ 
tributed to Pythagoras, no one is more famous than the 
Golden Verses (Xpvca enr]), which Hierocles has il¬ 
lustrated with a commentary. It is generally agreed 
that they were not written by Pythagoras ; and per¬ 
haps they are to be ascribed to Epicharmus or Em¬ 
pedocles. ( Stanley, Hist. Phil., p. 301. — Fabric., 
Bibl. Gr., vol. 1, p. 794. — Brucker, Hist. Phil., vol. 
1, p. 1109.) They may be considered as a brief sum¬ 
mary of his popular doctrines.—The method of in¬ 
struction adopted by Pythagoras was twofold, exoter¬ 
ic and esoteric, or public and private. This distinc¬ 
tion he had seen introduced with great advantage by 
the Egyptian priests, who found it admirably adapted 
to strengthen their authority and increase their emolu¬ 
ment. He therefore determined, as far as circum¬ 
stances would admit, to form his school upon the 
Egyptian model. For the general benefit of the peo¬ 
ple he held public assemblies, in which he delivered 
discourses in praise of virtue and against vice ; and 
in these he gave particular instructions, in different 
classes, to husbands and wives, parents and children, 
and others who filled the several relations of society. 
The auditors who attended these public lectures did 
not properly belong to his school, but continued to fol¬ 
low their usual modd of living. Besides these, he Lad 
a select body of disciples, whom he called his compan¬ 
ions and friends, who submitted to a peculiar plan of 
discipline, and were admitted by a long course of in¬ 
struction into all the mysteries of his esoteric doctrine. 
Before any one could be admitted into this fraternity, 
Pythagoras examined his features and external appear¬ 
ance ; inquired in what manner he had been accus¬ 
tomed to behave towards his parents and friends ; re¬ 
marked his manner of conversing, laughing, and keep- 
ins silence ; and observed what passions he was roosi 
* 1155 



PYTHAGORAS. 


PYTHAGORAS. 


.nclined to indulge, with what kind of company he 
chose to associate, how he passed his leisure moments, 
and what incidents appeared to excite in him the 
strongest emotions of joy and sorrow. From these 
and other circumstances, Pythagoras formed an accu¬ 
rate judgment of the qualifications of the candidate ; 
and he admitted no one into his society till he was ful¬ 
ly persuaded of his capacity of becoming a true philos¬ 
opher. Upon the first probationary admission, the 
fortitude and self-command of the candidate was put 
to the trial by a long course of severe abstinence and 
rigorous exercise. The injunction of silence has al¬ 
ready been alluded to. This silence, or kxe/ivdia, as 
it was termed, is not to be confounded with that sa¬ 
cred reserve with which all the disciples of Pythagoras 
were bound, upon oatii, to receive the doctrines of 
their master, that they might, from no inducement 
whatsoever, suffer them to pass beyond the limits of 
their sect. Pythagoras, like all other philosophers, 
had his exoteric , or public, and his esoteric , or private, 
doctrines. The restraint which he put upon the words 
of his pupils, by enjoining silence for so long a time, 
was certainly, in one point of view, a very judicious 
expedient, as it restrained impertinent curiosity, and 
prevented every inconvenience of contradiction. Ac¬ 
cordingly, we find that his disciples silenced all doubts, 
and refuted all objections, by appealing to his author¬ 
ity. Avtoq tya, ipse dixit ( u he himself,” i. e., the 
master, “ said so”), decided every dispute. Nor was 
this preparatory discipline deemed sufficiently severe 
without adding, during the years of initiation, an en¬ 
tire prohibition of seeing their master, or hearing his 
lectures except from behind a curtain. And even this 
privilege was too great to be commonly allowed ; for 
in this stage of tuition they were usually instructed 
by some inferior preceptor, who barely recited the doc¬ 
trine of Pythagoras, without assigning the reasonings or 
demonstrations on which they were founded, and re¬ 
quired the obedient pupil to receive them as unques¬ 
tionable truths upon their master’s word. Those who 
had sufficient perseverance to pass these several steps 
of probation were at last admitted among the Esoter¬ 
ics , and allowed to see and hear Pythagoras behind the 
curtain. But if it happened that any one, through im¬ 
patience of such rigid discipline, chose to withdraw 
from the society before the expiration of the term of 
trial, he was dismissed with a share of the common 
stock, the double of that which he had advanced ; a 
tomb was erected for him as for a dead man ; and he 
was to be, as such, forgotten by the brethren as if he 
had been actually dead. It was the peculiar privi¬ 
lege of the Esoterics to receive a full explanation 
of the whole doctrine of Pythagoras, which to others 
was delivered in brief precepts and dogmas under 
the concealment of symbols. They were also per¬ 
mitted to take minutes of their master's lectures in 
writing, and to propose questions and offer remarks 
upon every subject of discourse. These disciples 
were particularly distinguished by the appellation of 
the Pythagoreans ; they were also called the Math¬ 
ematicians, from the studies upon which they enter¬ 
ed immediately after their initiation. After they had 
made a sufficient progress in geometrical science, 
they were conducted to the study of nature, the in¬ 
vestigation of primary principles, and the knowledge 
of God. Those who pursued these sublime specula¬ 
tions were called Theorists ; and such as more par¬ 
ticularly devoted themselves to theology were styled 
ce&aaTucoL, religious. Others, according to their re¬ 
spective abilities and inclinations, were engaged in 
the study of morals, economics, and policy ; and were 
afterward employed in managing the affairs of the fra¬ 
ternity, or sent into the cities of Greece to instruct 
tnem in the principles of government, or assist them 
in the institution of laws. The brethren of the Py¬ 
thagorean college at Crotona, who were about 600 in 
1156 


number, lived together, as in one family, with their 
wives and children, in a public building called o/xaKoi- 
ov, the common auditory. The whole business of the 
society was conducted with the most perfect regular¬ 
ity. Every day was begun with a distinct delibera¬ 
tion upon the manner in which it should be spent, and 
concluded with a careful retrospect of the events which 
had occurred, and the business which had been trans¬ 
acted. They rose before the sun, that they might pay 
him homage ; after which they repeated select verses 
from Homer and other poets, and made use of music, 
both vocal and instrumental, to enliven, their spirits, 
and fit them for the duties of the day. They then em 
ployed several hours in the study of science. These 
were succeeded by an interval of leisure, which was 
commonly spent in a solitary walk for the purpose of 
contemplation. The next portion of the day was al¬ 
lotted to conversation. The hour immediately before 
dinner was filled up with various kinds of athletic ex¬ 
ercises. Their dinner consisted chiefly of bread, hon¬ 
ey, and water ; for, after they were perfectly initiated, 
they wholly denied themselves the use of wine. The 
remainder of the day was devoted to civil and domes¬ 
tic affairs, conversation, bathing, and religious cere¬ 
monies. The Exoteric disciples of Pythagoras were 
taught after the Egyptian manner, bv images and sym¬ 
bols, which must have been exceedingly obscure to 
those who were not initiated into the mysteries of the 
school. And they who were admitted to this privilege 
were trained, from their first admission, to observe in¬ 
violable silence with respect to the recondite doctrines 
of their master. That the wisdom of Pythagoras 
might not pass into the ears of the vulgar, they com¬ 
mitted it chiefly to memory ; and where they found it 
necessary to make use of writing, they were careful 
not to suffer their minutes to pass beyond the limits oi 
the school. After the dissolution of their assembly by 
Cylon’s faction, Lysis and Archippus thought it neces¬ 
sary, in order to preserve the Pythagorean doctrine 
from total oblivion, to reduce it to a systematic sum¬ 
mary ; at the same time, however, strongly enjoining 
their children to preserve these memoirs secret, and to 
transmit them in confidence to posterity. From this 
time books began to multiply among the followers of 
Pythagoras, till at length, in the time of Plato, Philo- 
laus exposed the Pythagorean records to sale, and Ar- 
chytas of Tarentum gave Plato a copy of his com¬ 
mentaries upon the aphorisms and precepts of his mas¬ 
ter. It is sufficiently evident, from this account of the 
manner in which Pythagoras taught his foMowers, that 
the sources of information concerning his doctrine 
must be very uncertain. Instructions designedly con¬ 
cealed under the veil of symbols, and chiefly transmit¬ 
ted by oral tradition, must always have been liable to 
misrepresentation. Of the imperfect records of the 
Pythagorean philosophy left by Lysis, Archytas, and 
others, nothing has escaped the wreck of time, except, 
perhaps, sundry fragments collected by the diligence of 
Stobaeus, concerning the authenticity of which there 
are some grounds for suspicion ; and which, if admit¬ 
ted as genuine, will only exhibit an imperfect riew of 
the moral and political doctrine of Pythagoras under 
the disguise of symbolical and enigmatical language. 
The strict injunction of secrecy, which was given by 
oath to the initiated Pythagoreans, has effectually pre¬ 
vented any original records of their doctrine concern¬ 
ing nature and God from passing down to posterity. 
We are entirely to rely for information on this head, 
and, indeed, concerning the whole doctrine of Pythag¬ 
oras, upon Plato and his followers. Plato himself, 
while he enriched his system with stores from the 
magazine of Pythagoras, accommodated the Pythago¬ 
rean doctrines, as he did also those of his master Soc¬ 
rates, to his own system, and thus gave an imperfect, 
and, we may suppose, in many particulars, a false rep- 
I resentation of the doctrines of the Samian philosopher 




PYTHAGORAS. 


PYTHAGORAS. 


ft, was farther corrupted by the followers of Plato, even 
m the Old Academy, and afterward in the Alexan- 
drean school. The latter, especially, made no scruple 
of obtruding their own dogmas upon the world, under 
the sanction of Pythagoras or any other ancient sage, 
and were chiefly employed in attempting to reconcile, 
or, rather, confound the doctrines of the ancient phi¬ 
losophers with later systems.—If the unconnected and 
doubtful records which remain can enable us to form 
any judgment upon this subject, the following may 
perhaps be considered as a faint delineation of the Py¬ 
thagorean philosophy : The end of philosophy is to 
free the mind from those encumbrances which hinder 
its progress towards perfection, and to raise it to the 
contemplation of immutable truth, and the knowledge 
of divine and spiritual objects. This effect must be 
produced by easy steps, lest the mind, hitherto con¬ 
versant only with sensible things, should revolt at the 
change. The first step towards wisdom is the study 
of mathematics, a science which contemplates objects 
that lie in the middle way, being corporeal and incor¬ 
poreal beings, and, as it were, on the confines of both, 
and which most advantageously inures the mind to 
contemplation.—The most probable explanation of the 
Pythagorean doctrine of numbers is, that they are 
used as symbolical or emblematical representations of 
the first principles and forms of nature, and partic¬ 
ularly of those eternal and immutable essences to 
which Plato afterward gave the appellation of Ideas. 
Not being able, or not choosing, to explain in sim¬ 
ple language the abstract notions of principles and 
forms, Pythagoras seems to have made use of num¬ 
bers, as geometricians make use of diagrams, to as¬ 
sist the conceptions of scholars. More particularly, 
conceiving some analogy between numbers and the 
intelligent forms which subsist in the Divine Mind, 
he made the former a symbol of the latter. As num¬ 
bers proceed from unity, or the Monad, as a simple 
roo* whence they branch out into various combina¬ 
tions, and assume new properties in their progress, so 
he conceived the different forms of nature to recede, 
at different distances, from their common source, the 
pure and simple essence of Deity, and at every de¬ 
gree of distance to assume certain properties in some 
measure analogous to those of numbers ; and hence he 
concluded that the origin of things, their emanation 
from the first being, and their subsequent progression 
through various orders, if not capable of a perfectly 
dear explanation, might, however, be illustrated by 
jymbols and resemblances borrowed from numbers. 
According to some writers, the Pythagorean Monad 
denotes the active principle in nature, or God ; the 
Duad, the passive principle, or matter ; the Triad, the 
world formed by th.e union of the two former ; and 
the Tetractys, the perfection of nature. The Tetrac- 
tys, or quadrate, according to the Pythagoreans, was 
the root of the eternally flowing nature. ( Carrn., 
Aur., 47.— Iamblich. , Vit. Pythag., 162.) What they 
understood by the grand Tetractys, whether the sum 
-if the first four numbers, that is, ten; or the sum of 
.he first four odd and the first four even, that is, thir- 
y-six, is unimportant; for the essential is not the 
tymbol, but what the symbol represented. (Pint., de 
(s. et Os.. 76.— Id., de Anim. Procr., 30. — Ritter , 
Hist, of Philos., vol. 1, p. 363.) Next to numbers, 
ausic had the chief place in the preparatory exercise 
•j{ the Pythagorean school, by means of which the 
mind was to be raised above the dominion of passion, 
and inured to contemplation. Pythagoras considered 
music not only as an art to be judged of by the ear, 
but as a science to be reduced to mathematical prin¬ 
ciples and proportions. The musical chords are said 
to have been discovered by him in the following man¬ 
ner: As he was one day reflecting on this subject, 
happening to pass by a smith’s forge where several 
men were successively striking with their hammers a 


piece of heated i on upon an anvil, he remarked ttiai 
all the sounds produced by their strokes were harmo« 
nious except one. The sounds which he observed to 
be chords were the octave, the fifth, and the third ; 
but that sound which he perceived to lie between the 
third and the fifth be found to be discordant. Going 
into the workshop, he observed that the diversity of 
sounds arose, not from the forms of the hammers, nor 
from the force with which they were struck, nor from 
the position of the iron, but merely from the difference 
of weight in the hammers. Taking, therefore, the ex¬ 
act weight of the several hammers, he went home, and 
suspended four strings of the same substance, length, 
and thickness, and twisted in the same degree, and 
hung a weight at the lower end of each, respectively, 
equal to the weight of the hammers ; upon striking 
the strings, he found that the musical chords of the 
strings corresponded with those of the hammers. 
Hence it is said that he proceeded to form a musical 
scale, and to construct stringed instruments. His 
scale was, after his death, engraved on brass, and pre¬ 
served in the temple of Juno at Samos. Pythagoras 
conceived that the celestial spheres in which the plan¬ 
ets move, striking upon the ether through which they 
pass, must produce a sound, and that this sound must 
vary according to the diversity of their magnitude, ve¬ 
locity, and relative distance. Taking it for granted 
that everything respecting the heavenly bodies is ad¬ 
justed with perfect regularity, he farther imagined that 
all the circumstances necessary to render the sounds 
produced by their motions harmonious, were fixed in 
such exact proportions, that the most perfect harmony 
was produced by their revolutions. This fanciful doc¬ 
trine respecting the music of the spheres gave rise t® 
the names which Pythagoras applied to musical tones. 
The last note in the musical octave he called Hy - 
pate ( VTra.T7 i /), because he supposed the sphere of Sat¬ 
urn, the highest planet, to give the deepest tone; and 
the highest note he called Neate (veury), from the 
sphere of the moon, which, being the lowest or near¬ 
est the earth, he imagined produced the shrillest sound. 
In like manner of the rest. It was said of Pythago¬ 
ras by his followers, who hesitated at no assertion, 
however improbable, w'hich might seem to exalt their 
master’s fame, that he was the only mortal so far fa¬ 
voured by the gods as to have been permitted to hear 
the celestial music of the spheres. Besides arithme¬ 
tic and music, Pythagoras cultivated geometry, which 
he had learned in Egypt ; but he greatly improved it 
by investigating new theorems, and by digesting its 
principles, in an order more perfectly systematical 
than had before been done. Several Grecians, about 
the time of Pythagoras, applied themselves to mathe¬ 
matical learning, particularly Thales in Ionia. But 
Pythagoras seems to have done more than any other 
philosopher of this period towards reducing geometry 
to a regular science. His definition of a point is a 
monad or unity with position. He taught that a geo¬ 
metrical point corresponds to unity in arithmetic, a line 
to two, a superficies to three, a solid to four. Of the 
geometrical theorems ascribed to him, the following 
are the principal : That the interior angles of every 
triangle are together equal to two right angles ; that 
the only polygons which will fill up the whole space 
about a given point are the equilateral triangle, the 
square, and the hexagon ; the first ‘to be taken six 
times, the second four times, and the third three times ; 
and that, in rectangular triangles, the square of the 
side which suhtends the right angle is equal to the sum 
of the squares of the sides that contain the right angle. 
Upon the invention of this latter proposition ( Euclid , 
1, 47), Plutarch says that Pythagoras offered an ox, 
others, an hecatomb to the gods. But this story is 
thought by Cicero inconsistent with the institutions of 
Pythagoras, which, as he supposes, did not admit of 
animal sacrifices.—Pythagoras inferred the stature of 

1167 



PYTHAGORAS. 


P YT 


Hercules from the length of the Olympic course, 
which measured six hundred of his feet. Observing 
how much shorter a course six hundred times the 
length of an ordinary sized man was than the Olympic 
course, he inferred, by the law of proportion, the length 
of Hercules’ foot; whence the usual proportion of the 
length of the foot to the height of a man enabled him 
to determine the problem.—On Astronomy, the doc¬ 
trine of Pythagoras, or, at least, of the ancient Pyth¬ 
agoreans, was as follows: The term Heaven either 
denotes the sphere of the fixed stars, or the whole 
space between the fixed stars and the moon, or the 
whole world, including both the celestial sphere and 
the earth. There are ten celestial spheres, nine of 
which are visible to us; namely, that of the fixed stars, 
those of the seven planets, and those of the earth. 
The tenth is the Antichthon, or an invisible sphere 
opposite to the earth, which is necessary to complete 
the harmony of nature, as the Decad is the completion 
of the numerical harmony. Fire holds the middle 
place in the universe ; or in the midst of the four el¬ 
ements is placed the fiery globe of unity; the earth is 
not without motion, nor situated in the centre of the 
spheres, but is one of those planets which make their 
revolutions about the sphere of fire. The distance of 
the several celestial spheres from the earth corresponds 
to the proportion of notes in a musical scale. The 
moon and other planetary globes are habitable. The 
earth is a globe, which admits of Antipodes. From 
several of these particulars respecting the astronomical 
doctrine of Pythagoras, it has been inferred that he 
was possessed of the true idea of the solar system, 
which was revived by Copernicus, and fully established 
by Newton. With respect to God, Pythagoras ap¬ 
pears to have taught, that he is the universal mind, 
diffused through all things, the source of all animal 
life, the proper and intrinsic cause of all motion, in 
substance similar to light, in nature like truth, the first 
principle of the universe, incapable of pain, invisible, 
incorruptible, and only to be comprehended by the 
mind. Cicero also remarks, that Pythagoras conceived 
God to be a soul pervading all nature, of which every 
human soul is a portion, which is nothing more than 
the modern system of Pantheism. The doctrine of 
the Pythagoreans respecting the nature of brute ani¬ 
mals, and /u£T£[j,'ipvxG)cu (the Transmigration of Souls, 
was the foundation of their abstinence from animal 
food, and of the exclusion of animal sacrifices from 
their religious ceremonies. This doctrine Pythagoras 
probably learned in Egypt, where it was commonly 
taught. Nor is there any sufficient reason for under¬ 
standing it, as some have done, symbolically.—We 
will end this article with a few specimens of his Sym¬ 
bols, which, though they were at first made use of for 
the purpose of concealment, and though their meaning 
has always been religiously kept secret by the Pytha¬ 
goreans themselves, have awakened much curiosity, 
and given occasion to many ingenious conjectures, 
which, however, unless they were more satisfactory, 
it would answer no purpose to repeat. Among the 
Symbols of Pythagoras, recited by Iamblichus and 
others, are the following; Adore the sound of the 
whispering wind. Stir not the fire with a sword. 
Turn aside from an edged tool. Pass not over a bal¬ 
ance. Setting out on a journey, turn not back, for the 
Furies will return wit h you. Breed nothing that has 
crooked talons. Receive not a swallow into your 
house. Look not in a mirror by the light of a candle. 
At a sacrifice pare not your nails. Eat not the heart 
or brain. Taste not that which has fallen from the 
table, Break not bread. Sleep not at noon. When 
it thunders, touch the earth. Pluck not a crown. 
Roast not that which has been boiled. Sail not on 
the ground. Plant not a palm. Breed a cock, but 
do not sacrifice it, for it is sacred to the sun and moon. 
Plant melons in thy garden, but eat them not. Ab- 
1158 


stain from beans.—The precept prohibiting the use of 
beans is one of those mysteries which the ancient Pyth¬ 
agoreans never disclosed, and which modern inge¬ 
nuity has in vain attempted to discover. Its meaning 
was probably rather dietetic than physical or moral. 
The prohibition from beans was an Egyptian custom, 
according to Herodotus (2,37). Aristoxenus, on the 
other hand, says that Pythagoras recommended beans 
before all other food. ( Aul. Gell., 4, 4.) the ab¬ 
stinence from fish is another resemblance to Egyptian 
customs ; but the tradition on this point is not very 
extensive, and rests on fables. On abstinence from 
flesh there is a variety of traditions. ( Eudox., ap. 
Forph., V. P., 7.— Iambi, V. P., 85, 108 . — Diog. 
Laert., 8, 20.) It is safest to follow Aristotle, ac¬ 
cording to whom, the Pythagoreans only abstained 
from particular kinds of fish. {Aul. Gell., 1. c — Diog. 
Laert., 8, 19.) The statement of Aristoxenus, that 
they only abstained from the ploughing ox and the 
wether, evidently on account of their usefulness, ap¬ 
pears to be a later version. {Diog. Laert., 8, 20.— 
Compare Athenceus, 10, p. 418.) Pythagorean pre¬ 
cepts of more value are these. Above all things, gov¬ 
ern your tongue. Engrave not the image of God in 
a ring. Quit not your station without the command 
of your general. {Enfield's History of Philosophy, 
vol. 1, p. 365, seqq. — Ritter, Hist. Philos., vol. 1, p. 
326, seqq.) 

Pytheas, a native of Massilia {Marseille). His era 
is uncertain ; some writers place him under the reign 
of Ptolemy Philadelphus, but Bougainville {Mem. de 
PAcad. des Riser., vol. 19, p. 148) has undertaken to 
show that he was anterior to Aristotle. Pytheas is 
numbered among the Greek geographical writers. He 
made many important discoveries in a voyage which 
he undertook to the north of Europe, and was the first 
geographer who could call astronomical knowledge to 
his aid. Leaving the harbour of Massilia, and sailing 
from cape to cape, he coasted along all the eastern 
shore of Spain, passed the Straits of Gibraltar, naviga¬ 
ted the coasts of Lusitania, Aquitania, and Armorica, 
entered the English Channel, followed the eastern 
shore of Britain, and, on reaching its northern extrem¬ 
ity, advanced six days’ sail farther to the north, until 
he reached a country which the inhabitants called 
Thule, and where the length of the Solstitial day was 
24 hours, which corresponds to 66° 30' N. L., or mod 
ern Iceland. D’Anville {Mem. de I'Acad., &c., vol 
37, p. 436) maintains that Pytheas did not go farther 
than the Shetland Isles. Schcening, on the other 
hand, makes the Thule of this navigator to be a coun¬ 
try of Norway , which still bears the name of Thile or 
Thilemark. In a second voyage, Pytheas passed 
through the English Channel into the German Ocean, 
and thence into the Baltic, where he reached the 
mouth of a river which he calls the Tana'is, but which 
is, perhaps, the Vistula or Rodaun. In this vicinity 
the amber of commerce was obtained. Pytheas wrote 
in Greek two works, one entitled “ A Description of 
the Ocean," of which Geminus Rhodius makes men¬ 
tion {Elem. Astron., c. 5.— Uranolog. Pelav., p. 22, 
ed. Paris, 1630), and the other a “ Periplus" or 4i Pe- 
riodus of the Earth," mentioned by Marcianos, the 
scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius. The little that we 
know of these two productions is obtained from the 
pages of Strabo and Pliny, but it is so altered and dis¬ 
figured as to be almost unintelligible. Pytheas has 
been generally regarded as very mendacious in hia 
narratives. His memory, however, has been success¬ 
fully vindicated by several modern writers. {Bou¬ 
gainville, loc. cit. — Scheming , Abhandlung. in Allg. 
Weltgesch., Halle, vol. 31. — Adclung, Aeltcste Ge- 
schichte der Deutschen, Leipz., 1806, 8vo. — Man • 
nert, Geogr., vol. 1, p. 73, seqq. — Scholl, Hist. Lit 
Gr., vol. 2, p. 198.) 

Pythia, I. the priestess of Apollo at Delphi, (Vid 




QUA 


Q U I 


Delphi, and Oraculum.) — II. Games celebrated in 
honour of Apollo at Delphi. They were first institu¬ 
ted, according to the fabulous opinion, by Apollo him¬ 
self, in commemoration of the victory which he had 
obtained over the serpent Python, from which they 
received their name ; but their origin seems, in fact, to 
have been a Panegyris (Davfiyvpiq), or Festal Com¬ 
munion, in connexion with the Delphic oracle. With 
this the Delphians combined games for the purposes 
of amusement, which originally consisted of a contest 
between singers in praise of the Delphian god. This 
assembly was, in its more important capacity, denom¬ 
inated the Amphictyonic council, and was charged 
with the superintendence of the games. ( Wachsmuth , 
Gr. Ant., vol. 1, p. 163, Eng. transl.) —The Pythian 
games were, at their first institution, only celebrated 
once in nine years, but afterward every fifth year. 
The crown was of bay.—For an account of the exer¬ 
cises in the public games of the Greeks, consult the 
article Olympia. ( Potter , Gr. Ant., 2, 23.) 

Pvthius, I. a Syracusan, who defrauded Ganius, a 
Roman knight, to whom he had sold his gardens, &c. 
ICic., de Off., 3, 14.) — II. A surname of Apollo, 
which he received for his having conquered the serpent 
Python, or because he was worshipped at Delphi; 
called also Pytho. ( Vid. Pytho.) 

Pytho, the ancient name of the town of Delphi, 
which it was said to have received arco tov nvOeoOcu, 
because the serpent which Apollo killed rotted there. 
A better derivation, however, is from ttvOeo dai, “ to 
inquire ,' 1 ' 1 with reference to the oracle that was consult¬ 
ed here. The difference of quantity (JAvdd), 7 vvdeadai) 
does not appear to form a material objection, although 
Passow thinks otherwise. (Gr. D. Handwort., s. v. 
tlvdcj.) 

Python, a celebrated serpent sprung from the mud 
and stagnated waters which remained on the surface of 
the earth after the deluge of Deucalion. This monster 
abode in the vicinity of Delphi, and destroyed the 
people and cattle of the surrounding country. Apollo, 
on coming to Delphi, slew the serpent with his arrows ; 
and as it lay expiring, the exulting victor cried, “Now 
rot (ttvOev) there on the man-feeding earthand 
hence, says the legend, the place and oracle received 
the appellation of Pytho. (Vid. Pytho.) The Pythi¬ 
an games were fabled to have been established in 
commemoration of this victory. (Vid. Pythia.) — 
Dodwell supposes that the true explanation of the al¬ 
legorical fiction relating to Apollo and Python is, that 
the serpent was the river Cephissus, which, after the 
deluge of Deucalion had overflowed the plains, sur¬ 
rounded Parnassus with its serpentine involutions, and 
was reduced by the rays of'the sun within its due lim¬ 
its. ( Dodwell’s Tour, vol. 1, p. 180.) It is more 
probable, however, that the fable was one of Oriental 
origin, and was carried from that quarter of the world 
to Greece. (Vid. remarks under the article Apollo.) 

Q. 

Quadi, a German nation on the southeastern bor¬ 
ders of the country, in what is now Moravia. They 
were connected with the Marcomanni, and, along with 
them, waged war against the Romans. The Emperor 
Marcus Antoninus proceeded against them in person 
and repressed their inroads, but they soon after re¬ 
newed hostilities with increased vigour. Their name 
disappears from history about the fifth century. Their 
territory was bounded on the south by the Danube, on 
the east by the river Gran and the Jazyges, on the north 
by the Carpates and Sudetes, and on the west by the 
Marcomanni. (Tac., Germ., 42, seqq. — Id., Ann., 2, 
63. — Dio Cass., 71, 8, seqq. — Amm. Marcell., 17, 
12.— Id., 29, 6. — Wilhelm, Germanien, &c., p. 223, 
seqq, — Reichard, Germanien, p. 146, seqq. — Wersebe, 
iiber die Volker des alten Teutschlands, p. 172, seqq.) 


Quadrifrons or Quadriceps, a surname of janu^ 
because he was sometimes represented with four faces. 
(Vid. remarks under the article Janus.) 

Quindecimviri, an order of priests whom Tarquin 
the Proud appointed to take care of the Sibylline 
books. They were originally two, but afterward the 
number was increased to ten, to whom Sylla added 
five more, whence their name. (Vid. Decemviri and 
Duumviri.) 

Quinquatkia, a festival in honour of Minerva at 
Rome, at first for one day, but afterward for five 
(quinque), whence the name. The beginning of the 
celebration was the 19th of March. On the days of 
the celebration, scholars obtained holyday, and it was 
usual for them to offer prayers to Minerva for learning 
and wisdom ; and on their return to school, to present 
their master with a gift, which received the name of 
Mvnerval. (Ovid, Fast., 3, 810.— Aul. Gell., 2, 21.) 

Quintilianus, Marcus Fabius, an eminent Ro¬ 
man rhetorician, born at Calagurris, a city of Hispa- 
nia Tarraconensis, A.D. 42. — The orthography of 
the name varies in different editions. Gibson was the 
first that gave the form Quinctilianus, in which he has 
been followed by several ; but as this form is only 
found in a single inscription and on a single coin, the 
other mode of expressing the name has become well 
established. (Compare Spalding, Prcef. ad. Quintil., 
p. xxiii., seqq.) —Quintilian was still young when his 
father, after the death of Nero, conveyed him to 
Rome, and this circumstance appears to be the cause 
why some editors have believed that he was born in this 
last-mentioned city. The father of Quintilian was a 
professor of rhetoric, and the son, devoting himself to 
the same pursuits, opened a school under Vespasian. 
He was the first rhetorician that received a regular 
salary from the imperial treasury, and his emoluments 
amounted to 100,000 sesterces. Flavia Domitilla, 
niece of Domitian, and Pliny the younger, were 
among the number of his pupils. He obtained the 
distinction of the laticlave, or senatorian dress, and 
under Domitian he was nominated consul. After 
having lost his wife and two sons, he united himself 
by a second marriage to a daughter of the rhetorician 
Tutilius, by whom he had a daughter who espoused 
Nonius Celer, governor of Spain. He had professed 
rhetoric for the space of twenty years, when he re¬ 
tired from active life, and composed, between 92 and 
94 A.D., his Institutes of the Orator. The year of 
his death is unknown : it was subsequent, however, 
to 118 A.D. There exist, under the name of Quin¬ 
tilian, nineteen declamations of some length, and for¬ 
ty-five minor ones. They are incorrectly, however, 
ascribed to him, and are rather the productions of a 
much later age, and of several writers. Gerard Vos- 
sius (de Rhet. nat. et. const., p. 108) thinks that 
they were written by Postumus the younger, one of 
those ephemeral emperors called in Roman history the 
thirty tyrants. Some manuscripts give M. Florus as 
their author, a personage entirely unknown.—The 
work by which Quintilian has immortalized his name 
is entitled De Institutions Oratoria, or, rather, Institu¬ 
tions Oratories. It is in twelve books, and dedicated 
to Marcellus Victorius. This work is not merely a 
complete treatise on the rhetorical art ; it embraces a 
plan of study for the orator, from the first elements 
of grammar. Quintilian here states the results of 
long experience and deep reflection. He gives signal 
proofs in it of an excellent judgment, of a refined 
critical spirit, of a pure taste, and of extensive and 
varied reading. This work is preferable to all tha 
we have from Cicero respecting the theory of elo¬ 
quence. Quintilian has profited by the precepts of 
this great master, but he does not stop where the oth¬ 
er stops: he adds to his labours the observations 
which a long course of practical experience had sug¬ 
gested. He has formed his style upon that of Cicero, 

.1159 



Q U I 


QUINTUS. 


and he writes with an elegance which would entitle 
him to a rank by the side of the purest models of the 
Augustine age, if certain obscure expressions and 
some specimens of affected phraseology did not betray 
the writer of a later age. His tenth book, where he 
speaks of the Greek and Roman authors of the high¬ 
er class, is one of the most instructive, and of great 
importance in relation to the history of ancient litera¬ 
ture. Time has preserved for us only two manu¬ 
scripts of the Institutes of Quintilian. One, which 
is complete, was found, at the period of the council 
of Constance, in a tower of the Abbey of St. Gall, 
by the celebrated Poggio of Florence ; he made a 
copy of this, which is now in England. Nearly at the 
same time Leonard Aretin discovered a second man¬ 
uscript in Italy, but very defective. From these two 
original ones are derived all the other manuscripts of 
Quintilian. It is not known what has become of the 
manuscript of St. Gall.—With regard to the dialogue 
De Claris Oratoribus, commonly ascribed to Quintil¬ 
ian, some remarks will be offered under the article 
Tacitus.—The best editions of Quintilian are, that of 
Burmann, Lugd. Bat ., 1720, 3 vols. 4to ; that of Cap- 
peronier, Paris, 1725, fol. ; that of Gesner, Got-ting. * 
1766, 4to ; and particularly that of Spalding, Lips., 
1798-1.834, 6 vols. 8vo, the fifth volume of which 
contains supplementary annotations by Zumpt, and 
the sixth a Lexicon and Indexes by Bonelli. The 
edition of Quintilian forming part of Lemaire’s collec¬ 
tion is a reprint, for the most part, of Spalding’s. 

( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 2, p. 398, seqq. — B’ahr, 
Gesch. Rom. Lit., p. 401, seqq. — Fuhrmann, Rom. 
Lit., vol. 2, p. 168, seqq.) 

Quintus Curtius Rufus, a Latin historical writer, 
with regard to whose era great uncertainty prevails. 
No ancient writer makes mention of him ; the first 
who speak of him are John of Salisbury and Pierre 
3e Blois, who lived in the 12th century. Curtius 
himself furnishes no information respecting his own 
condition and origin, if we except one passage in 
which he speaks of an event which happened in his 
times (10, 9). He mentions this event, however, in 
such obscure terms, that the commentators are all at 
variance respecting the period when he flourished. 
Some, as, for example, Pithou and Bongars, place him 
in the Augustan age. Others, as Ausonius Popma 
and Perizonius, under Tiberius. Others, as Justus 
Lipsius and Brisson, under Claudius. Others, as 
Freinsheim, Rutgers, Vossius, and many other edi¬ 
tors, under Vespasian. Some, following the example 
of Pontanus, make him to have flourished under Tra¬ 
jan. Count Bagnolo ( Della gente Curzia e delV eta 
di Q. Curzio, &c., Bologna , 1741, 8vo), and one of 
the latest editors of Curtius, Cunze, whose edition 
appeared at Helmstadt in 1795, 8vo, have adduced 
some specious arguments for fixing the period of this 
writer under Constantine the Great. Finally, Barth 
brings him down as low as the first Theodosius.—The 
history of Quintus Curtius is entitled De rebus gestis 
Alcxandri Magni (“ Of the exploits of Alexander the 
Great”). It was divided originally into ten books, but 
the first two, the end of the fifth, and the beginning 
of the sixth are lost. Freinsheim has written a sup¬ 
plement to the work, so as to complete what is thus 
defective, and has succeeded in bringing together a 
learned collection of facts from the different historians 
who have made mention of the operations of Alexan¬ 
der.—The work of Quintus Curtius is rather to be 
termed a romance than an historical composition. 
It is the production of a rhetorician who sacrifices 
truth to the desire of brilliancy of expression, and to 
a love of the marvellous. The harangues which he 
puts into the mouths of his heroes are mere scholastic 
declamations, without any regard to the characters of 
those who are to utter them. As a critical historian 
Quintus is very far below mediocrity. He is only su- 
1160 


perficially acquainted with the good historians of Alex¬ 
ander, and appears to have given the preference to those 
Greek writers who had distorted by fable the true his¬ 
tory of the Macedonian monarch, such as Clitarchus 
and Hegesippus. His compilation is made without 
any judgment; he gives himself no trouble to recon¬ 
cile the contradictions which exist among the authors 
whom he follows, nor does he at all concern himself 
about testing the truth of their narratives. It would 
seem, moreover, that his knowledge of Greek is very 
slight. So ignorant is he in the military art, that it is 
difficult to understand his accounts of battles and 
sieges ; and oftentimes it is but too apparent that he 
does riot understand himself what he copies mechan¬ 
ically from others. In geography and astronomy his 
ignorance is equally great. He confounds Mount 
Taurus with Caucasus, and makes the Caspian and 
Hyrcanian seas two different sheets of water. He ob¬ 
serves no chronological order, and does not mention 
either the years or the seasons in which the events of 
which he treats took place. If, however, Quintus 
Curtius be refused the name of an historian, we cannot 
deny his claim to being considered an amusing and in¬ 
teresting writer. His diction is pure and elegant. 
Some of his harangues are master-pieces of their kind. 
He is rich in beautiful descriptions. His style is too 
ornamented, and sometimes declamatory; oftener, 
however, he happily imitates his model, Livy. In the 
beginning of the sixteenth century, an impostor, named 
Hugo Rugerius or Ruggieri, a native of Rhegio, pub¬ 
lished a pretended collection of the letters of Quintus 
Curtius, divided into five books, and supposed to con¬ 
tain not only letters written by the historian himself, 
but others also from various distinguished individuals 
The fabrication, however, was so clumsily executed, 
that no one was imposed upon. The best editions o 
Quintus Curtius are, that of Snakenburg, Lugd. Bat., 
1724, 4to ; that of Schmieder, Gotting., 1804, 2 vols 
8vo ; and that of Lemaire, Pans, 1822-24, 3 vols 
8vo. ( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 2, p. 383, seqq. 
— B'dhr, Gesch. Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. 441, seqq.) —II. 
(or Cointus) Calaber, a Greek poet, a native of Smyrna, 
but surnamed Calaber from the circumstance of the 
Cardinal Bessarion’s having found a manuscript of his 
work in a convent of Calabria, in Lower Italy ; and 
thus a distinguished scholar, a native of Greece, only 
became acquainted with one of the poets of his nation, 
because chance had conducted him to the convent of 
St. Nicholas, in the city of Otranto. Quintus (or Coin¬ 
tus) lived probably about the beginning of the sixth 
century. He is the author of a poem in fourteen can¬ 
tos, entitled DapaXtinofieva 'O yrjpcp (“ Things omit¬ 
ted by Homer"). It is a continuation of the Iliad 
down to the destruction of Troy, or, rather, an historical 
composition in verse, interspersed with mythological 
fictions, and adorned with abundant imagery. Vicious 
in its arrangement, because no unity either of action 
or of interest prevails in it, this production is, at the 
same time, not without merit as regards its ornaments 
and diction. The imitation of Homer is everywhere 
apparent; but it shows itself only in details, and the 
author did not possess the art of varying his descrip¬ 
tions of combats, in which his model shows himself so 
superior. He offends, also, in too frequent an intro 
duction of deities into the combats of the two con¬ 
tending parties, and their intervention is frequently as 
uncalled for as their departure is unexpected. Not¬ 
withstanding these defects, however, the poem of 
Quintus appears so far superior to the other produc¬ 
tions of the age in which he is supposed to have lived, 
that many critics have regarded these Paralipomena 
as a kind of enlargement or amplification of the Little 
Iliad of Lesches, which is lost. Others have viewed 
it as a cento of various passages borrowed from the 
cyclic poets.—Another poem, ascribed to Quintus, ia 
found in MS. in the library of St. Marc, and in that ol 






R AB 


RAY 


the king of Bavaria at Munich It is on the twelve 
labours of Hercules.—The best editions of Quintus 
Calaber are, that of Rhodomannus, Hanov., 1604, 8vo ; 
that of De Pauw, Lugd. Bat., 1784, 8vo ; and that of 
Tychsen, Argent., 1807, 8vo. The last, however, has 
never been completed. ( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 
6, p. 91, seqq.) 

Quirinalis, a hill at Rome, added to the city by 
Servius Tullius. ( Liv., 1. 44.) Numa, indeed, had 
a house upon this mountain, but it was not considered 
a nart of the city until enclosed within the Tullian 
Wall. The temple of Romulus Quirinus, from which 
it derived its name, was built by Numa, but afterward 
r(vonstructed with greater magnificence by Papirius 
Cursor, the dictator. {Liv., 10, 46.) Some vestiges 
of this edifice are said to exist in the gardens of the 
Jesuits, close to the church of S. Andrea, a Monte 
Cavallo. The expression Monte Cavallo is a corrup¬ 
tion from Mons Caballus, a name applied to the Quiri- 
nal at a later day from two marble horses placed there. • 
The Quirinal is the only one of the Seven Hills at the 
present day that is populous. It is covered with noble 
palaces, churches, streets, and fountains. {Rome in 
the Nineteejith Century, vol. 1, p. 206, Am. ed.) 

Quirinus, I. a surname of Mars among the Romans. 
This name was also given to Romulus after his trans¬ 
lation to the skies. {Ovid, Fast., 2, 475.)—II. A sur¬ 
name of the god Janus. ( Vid. remarks under the ar¬ 
ticle Janus.) 

Quirites, {Vid. remarks under the article Roma, 
page 1172, col. 2.) 

R. 

Rabirius, I. C. a Roman knight contemporary with 
Julius Caesar. The latter had, on one or two occa¬ 
sions, expressed with some ostentation his attachment 
to the party of Marius, and he now attempted to vindi¬ 
cate the memory of L. Saturninus, who, having been for 
a long time the associate of Marius, was afterward op¬ 
posed by him as the reluctant instrument of the senate, 
and, having been taken by him in actual rebellion, had 
been murdered by the armed citizens, who broke into 
his place of confinement. Caesar, it is said {Sueton., 
Vit. Jul., 12), instigated Labienus, at this time one 
of the’tribunes, and afterward distinguished as one of 
Caesar’s lieutenants in Gaul, to accuse Rabirius, then 
advanced in years, as the perpetrator of this murder. 
The cause was first tried before L. Caesar and C. Cae¬ 
sar {Dio Cass., 37, 42), who were appointed by lot to 
act as special commissioners in this case, by virtue of 
the praetor’s order ; and the accused was arraigned 
according to the old law of murder, by which, if he had 
been found guilty, he would have been condemned to 
be hanged. But this mode of proceeding was stopped 
by Rabirius appealing to the people, or by the inter¬ 
ference of Cicero as consul, as his speech seems to 
imply {pro Rab., c. 4, seq.), and his procuring the re¬ 
moval of the cause before another tribunal. 1 he peo¬ 
ple, however, it is said, were likely to condemn the 
accused, when Q Metelellus Celer, one of the prae¬ 
tors, obliged the meeting to break up, by tearing down 
the ensign which was always flying on the Janiculum 
while the people were assembled, and without which, 
according to ancient custom, they could not lawfully 
continue their deliberations. In this manner Rabirius 
escaped ; for Labienus or his instigators did not think 
proper to bring forward the business again ; whether 
despairing" of again finding the people equally disposed 
to condemn the accused, or whether the progress of the 
conspiracy of Catiline began now to turn men’s atten¬ 
tion more entirely to a different subject. {Dio Cass., 
37, 42 . — Cic., Or. pro Rab.)— II. C. Postumus, a 
Roman knight, son of C. Curius, and adopted son of 
the preceding. He became implicated in the affair of 
GaDkiius and Ptolemv Auletes. Gabinius had been 
7 II 


accused and condemned for receiving a very large sum 
of money (10,000 talents) for restoring the Egyptian 
king. His estate, however, did not yield, when sold, 
sufficient to reimburse this sum, and Rabirius there¬ 
fore, who was concerned in the affair, was sued for 
the balance {causa de residuis). Rabirius, it seems, 
had advised Gabinius to undertake the restoration of 
the king, and accompanied him into Egypt. Here he 
was employed to solicit the payment of the money, and 
lived at Alexandrea for that purpose, in the king’s ser¬ 
vice, as the public receiver of his taxes. Cicero’s de¬ 
fence of Gabinius and Rabirius, especially the former, 
excited great surprise, as Gabinius had ever been his 
most vehement enemy. It was occasioned, however, 
by Pompey’s influence. Rabirius was acquitted. 
{Cic.,pro Rab. Post., c. 8,12.— Val. Max., 4, 2.—III. 
A Roman epic poet, who flourished during the Augus¬ 
tan age. Velleius Paterculus names him immediately 
after Homer (2, 26), but Quintilian speaks of him in a 
much more moderate tone. {Inst. Or., 10, 1.) The 
grammarians have preserved for us some verses of one 
of his poems. Its subject was the battle of Actium. 

( Scholl, Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 1, p. 221.) 

Ramnes or Ramnenses, one of the three ceritu 
ries instituted by Romulus. {Vid. Roma.) 

Rampsinitus, an Egyptian monarch, of whom He¬ 
rodotus relates the following legend. “ After this, they 
said, Rampsinitus descended alive into those places 
which the Grecians call Hades ; where, playing at dice 
with Ceres, he sometimes won, and at other times lost; 
that, at his return, he brought with him as a present a 
napkin of gold” (2, 122). Szathmari applies it to the 
years of plenty and scarceness which happened under 
Pharaoh. Creuzer, however, refers it to the great 
principles, pervading all nature, of decay and restora¬ 
tion. {Symbolifc, vol. 4, p. 231.) 

Raudii Campi, plains about ten miles to the north¬ 
west of Mediolanum, in Cisalpine Gaul, which were 
rendered memorable by the bloody defeat of the Cim- 
bri by Marius. {Flor., 3, 3.— Veil. Paterc., 2, 12.— 
Oros., 5, 16.) The spot, however, on which the bat¬ 
tle took place, seems very uncertain, as no author ex¬ 
cept Plutarch mentions the situations of these plains. 
He describes them as lying in the vicinity of Vercellae 
( Vit. Mar .); but even this designation is very general. 
The Cimbri are represented as having entered Italy by 
the Tridentine Alps or the Tyrol; and we farther 
learn, that, after beating back the consul Catulus on 
the Athesis or Adige, they forced the passage of that 
river, by which time Marius having come up with con¬ 
siderable re-enforcements, a battle took place in the 
plains of which we are speaking. {Walckenacr, sur 
la situation des Raudii Campi. — Mem. de l'Acad, 
des Inscr., &c., vol. 6, p. 360.) The small place 
called Rho is thought by D’Anville to preserve some 
traces of the ancient appellation. {Cramer's Anc 
Italy, vol. 1, p. 52.) 

Ravenna, an important city of Cisalpine Gaul, sit¬ 
uate on the coast, a short distance below the Spinetic 
mouth of the Padus or Po. It laid claim to an ori¬ 
gin of remote antiquity ; for Strabo (214) reports it 
to have been founded by some Thessalians; but they 
subsequently abandoned it to the Umbii, being unable 
to resist the aggressions of the Tyrrheni, or Tuscans. 
When Pliny says it was a colony of the Sabines, he 
perhaps alludes to an old tradition, which considered 
that people as descended from the Umbri. {Plin., 3, 
18.) Strabo informs us, that Ravenna was situated 
in the midst of marshes, and built entirely on wooden 
piles. A communication was established between the 
different parts of the town by means of bridges and 
boats. (Compare Sil. Ital., 8, 602. — Martial, 13, 
18, &c.) But, as Strabo observes, the noxious air 
arising from the stagnant waters was so purified by 
the tide, that Ravenna was considered by the Romans 
a very healthy place; in'proof of which, they sent glad- 

1161 




RAVENNA. 


REG 


laiors mere to b$ trained and exercised. The vine 
grew in the marshes with the greatest luxuriance, but 
perished in the course of four or five years. (Strabo, 

218._ Plin., 14, 2.) Water was scarce at this place, 

and hence Martial observes that he would rather have 
a cistern of water at Ravenna than a vineyard, since 
he could sell the water for a much higher price than 
the wine. (Ep., 3,56.) The same writer sportively 
alludes to his having been imposed upon by a tavern- 
keeper at Ravenna : on his calling for a glass of wa¬ 
ter, he received one of wine !—We are not informed 
at what period Ravenna received a Roman colony 
(Strab ., 217) ; but it is not improbable, from a passage 
in Cicero (Oral, pro Balb., 22), that this event took 
place under the consulship of On. Pompeius Strabo. 
Ravenna became the great naval station of the Ro¬ 
mans on the Adriatic, in the latter times of the re¬ 
public, a measure which seems to have originated 
with Pompey the Great. It was from Ravenna that 
Caesar held a parley with the senate, when on the 
point of invading Italy. (Bell. Civ., 1, 5.) It was 
from this city, also, that he set forward on that march 
which brought him to the Rubicon, and involved his 
country and the world in civil war. (Appian, Bell. 
Civ., 2, 11.)—It is well observed by Gibbon (Misc. 
Works, vol. 2, p. 179), that “ Caesar had, for good 
reasons, fixed his quarters at Ravenna. He wished 
to obtain possession of Picenum, a rich and populous 
country, and thus deprive Pompey of the resources he 
might have found in a province extremely devoted to 
his family, and from which that general might have 
made legions spring up by merely striking the ground 
with his foot. He wished to turn the capital with his 
army. Had he attempted to march straight to Rome, 
Pompey would have made himself master of the diffi¬ 
cult passes, and stopped his progress, and Italy would 
have become the theatre of war. But, by marching 
towards Ariminum, Ancona, and Corfinium, he made 
it seem to be his design to cut off the retreat of his 
enemies, and his boldness threw them into such con¬ 
sternation, that they hastened to embark at Brundi- 
sium. Lastly, he wished to make sure of Ariminum. 
This important place was distant from the Rubicon 
eighteen miles by the iEmilian road, and only eleven 
by that of Ravenna. Caesar could send forward bod¬ 
ies of troops under twenty different pretences ; but 
the moment he passed it, his designs were unmasked. 
Ariminum was therefore to be surprised by a forced 
march.”—The old port of Ravenna was situated at 
the mouth of the river Bedesis (il Ronco). But Au¬ 
gustus caused a new one to be constructed at the en¬ 
trance of the little river Candianus into the sea, and 
about three miles from Ravenna. He established a 
communication between this harbour and a branch of 
the Po, by means of a canal which was called Fossa 
Augusti; and he also made a causeway to connect 
the port and city, which obtained the name of Via 
Caesaris. As the new harbour, from thenceforth, be¬ 
came the usual station for the fleet, it received the dis¬ 
tinguishing appellation of Portus Classis, a name which 
still subsists in that of a well-known monastery near 
the modern town of Ravenna. Ravenna continued to 
flourish as a naval station long after the reign of Au¬ 
gustus. (Suet., Aug., 49.— Tacit., Ann., 4, 5.— Id., 
Hist., 2, 100.— Plol., p. 63.— Zosim., 5, 28.)—Hono- 
rius made this city the place of his residence both be¬ 
fore and after Alaric had captured and burned Rome. 
When Odoacer made the conquest of Italy, he resided 
at Ravenna, and sustained here a siege of three years, 
at the termination of which he was taken and slain by 
Theodoric. This latter monarch fixed the seat of his 
empire here, and greatly adorned and embellished the 
place. Here also resided the exarch or governor ap¬ 
pointed by the Emperor of the East when Italy was in 
possession of the Lombards. In the time of the Ro¬ 
mans it was seated on a kind of bay. The mud 
1162 


thrown up by the tide has formed a tract of land, 
which is cultivated, and on which the city itself hafc 
been enlarged towards the sea. I he air is insalubri¬ 
ous, but has been somewhat amended by conveying 
along the sides of the city the rivers Mentone and Ron¬ 
co, which carry off the foetid water from the marshy 
grounds. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 94, scq.) 

Rauraci, a people of Belgic Gaul, on the Upper 
Rhine, northeast of the Sequani. Iheir capital was 
Augusta Rauracorum, now Augst. (Ccbs., B. G., 
4, 17.) ... 

Reate, an old Sabine town on the river Velinus, 
a branch of the Nar. Its modern name is Rieti. fn 
the antiquity of its origin this place was equalled by 
few of the cities of Italy, since, at the most remote pe¬ 
riod to which the records of that country extend, it is 
reported to have been the first seat of the Umbri, who 
are regarded by some as the Aborigines of Italy. (Ze- 
nod., Troez., ap. Dion. Hal., 2, 49.— Id., 1, 14.) It 
•was here, likewise, that the Arcadian Pelasgi probably 
fixed their abode, and, by intermixing with the earlier 
natives, gave rise to those numerous tribes, known to 
the Greeks by the name of Opici, and subsequently to 
the Romans under the various appellations of Latins, 
Oscans, and Campanians ; these subsequently drove 
the Siculi from the plains, and occupied in their stead 
the shores of the Tyrrhennian sea. If we may credit 
Silius Italicus, Reate derived its name from Rhea, the 
Latin Cybele (8, 417). From Cicero (in Cat., 3) we 
learn that it was only a prcefectura in his time ; from 
Suetonius, on the other hand, we collect that it was a 
municipal town. (Vesp., 1.) Reate was particularly 
celebrated for its excellent breed of mules (Strab., 228), 
and still more so for that of its asses, which sometimes 
brought the enormous price of 60,000 sestertii, about 
£484 sterling. (Varro, R. R., 2, 1.— Plin., 8, 43.) 
—The valley of the Velinus, in which this city was 
situated, was so delightful as to merit the appellation 
of Tempe (Cic., Ep. ad Atti., 4, 15); and from their 
dewy freshness, its meadows obtained the name of 
Rosei Campi. (Varro, R. R., 1, 7. — Plin., 17, 4.) 
According to Holstenius (ad Steph. Byz., p. 110), 
they still bear the name of le Rose. (Cramer's Anc. 
Ilaly, vol. 1, p. 414, seqq.) 

Redones, a Gallic nation in the interior of Lugdu- 
nensis Tertia, north of the Namnetes, and the mouth 
of the Liger or Loire. Their capital was Condate, af¬ 
terward Redones, now Rennes. (Cces., B. G., 7, 75. 
— Plin., 4, 18.) 

Regill^e or Regillum, a Sabine town near Ere- 
tum, which latter place was north of Nomentum and 
northwest of Tibur. Regillum is only known as the 
birthplace of Atta Clausus, who, under the name of 
Appius Claudius, became the founder of the Claudian 
family at Rome. (Liv., 2, 16.— Dion. Hal., 5, 40.) 

Regillus, a small lake of Latium, northwest of 
Praeneste, and southeast of Gabii. It was the scene 
of a great battle between the Romans and Latins, after 
the expulsion of Tarquin, in which the latter were to¬ 
tally defeated. (Dion. Hal., 6, 18.)—The lake Re¬ 
gillus is thought to be il Laghetto della Colonna, near 
the small town of that name. (Cic., N. D., 2.— Plin., 
33, 6.— Val. Max., 1, 8.— Florus, 4, 2.) 

Regium Lepidum or Forum Lepidi, a city of Cis¬ 
alpine Gaul, between Parma and Mutina. In Cicero 
we find it sometimes under the name of Regium Lep¬ 
idi (Ep. ad Fam., 12, 5), or simply Regium (11, 9). 
This place probably owed its origin to M. TEmilius 
Lepidus, who constructed the iEmilian road, on which 
it stood ; but when or from what caiide it took the 
name of Regium is unknown. It is farther noticed in 
history as having witnessed the death of the elder Bru¬ 
tus by order of Pompey, to whom he had surrendered 
himself. (Liv., Epit., 90.— Val. Max., 6, 8.— Oros., 
5, 22.) 

Regulus, M. Attilius, a consul during the first 





REGULUS. 


REGULUS. 


runic wai. He reduced Brundisium, and, in his sec¬ 
ond consulship, took 64, and sunk 30, galleys of the 
Carthaginian fleet off Ecnomus, on the coast of Sicily. 
After this victory, Regulus and his colleage Manlius 
sailed to Africa, and seized on Clupea, a place situ¬ 
ate to the east of Carthage, not far from the Hermean 
promontory, which they made their place of arms. 
Manlius was recalled, but Regulus was left to prose¬ 
cute the war; and so rapid was his success, that he 
made himself master of about 200 places on the coast, 
in the number of which was Tunetum or Tunis. The 
Carthaginians sued for peace, but Regulus would grant 
them none, except on conditions that could not be en¬ 
dured. His rapid success had rendered him haughty 
and intractable, and now it made him rash and impru¬ 
dent. A Lacedaemonian leader, named Xanthippus, 
arrived at Carthage with a re-enforcement of Greek 
troops, and soon changed the aspect of affairs. Ob¬ 
serving to the Carthaginians that their overthrows 
were entirely owing to their having fought on ground, 
where their cavalry, in which alone they were superior 
to the Romans, had not room to act, he promised to 
repair this mistake, and accordingly posted his forces 
in a plain, where the elephants and Carthaginian horse 
might be of service. Regulus followed him, imagin¬ 
ing himself invincible ; but he was defeated and taken 
prisoner, along with 500 of his countrymen. After 
being kept some years in prison, he was sent to Rome 
to propose an exchange of prisoners, having been first 
compelled to bind himself by an oath that he would re¬ 
turn in case he proved unsuccessful. When he came 
to Rome, he strongly dissuaded his countrymen against 
an exchange of prisoners, arguing that such an exam¬ 
ple would be of fatal consequence to the republic : that 
citizens who had so basely surrendered their arms to 
the enemy were unworthy of the least compassion and 
incapable of serving their country : that, with regard 
to himself, he was so far advanced in years, that his 
death ought to be considered as a matter of no impor¬ 
tance ; whereas they had in their hands several Car¬ 
thaginian generals, in the flower of their age. and ca¬ 
pable of doing their country great services for many 
years. It was with difficulty the senate complied with 
so generous and unexampled a counsel. The illus¬ 
trious exile therefore left Rome, in order to return to 
Carthage, unmoved by the sorrow of his friends, or the 
tears of his wife and children ; and was treated on his 
return, according to the ordinary account, with the ut¬ 
most degree of cruelty, the Carthaginians having heard 
that their offer had been rejected entirely through the 
opposition of Regulus. They imprisoned him for a 
long while in a gloomy dungeon, whence, after cutting 
off his eyelids, they brought him suddenly into the sun, 
when its beams darted their strongest heat. They 
next put him into a kind of chest full of nails, the 
points of which did not allow him a moment’s ease 
day or night. Lastly, after having been long torment¬ 
ed by being kept continually awake in this dreadful 
torture, his merciless enemies nailed him to a cross, 
their usual punishment, and left him to die on it. In 
retaliation for this cruelty, the senate at Rome are said 
to have delivered two captives into the hands of the 
widow of Regulus, to do with them what she pleased ; 
but that her cruelty towards them was so great, that 
the senate themselves were compelled at length to in¬ 
terfere.—Such is a general outline of the story of 
Regulus. The question respecting its truth or false¬ 
hood has given rise to considerable discussion. Pal- 
merius first started an objection to the common nar¬ 
rative ( Exercit. in Auct. Grcec.,.p. 151, seqq.), and, 
as well from the silence of Polybius on this point as 
from a fragment of Diodorus Siculus (lib. 24, p. 273, 
seqq., ed. Vales; vol. 2, p. 566, ed. Wesseling; vol. 9, 
p. 524, ed. Bip.), ingeniously conjectured that Regulus 
was never sent from Carthage to Rome ; that he was 
not the victim of toitures, but died of a disease during 


his captivity ; and that the whole story respecting his 
punishment was invented by the Roman writers, or 
rise by the wife of Regulus, in order to palliate the 
cruelty of which the latter had been guilty towards the 
Carthaginian captives delivered into her hands. This 
same opinion has been embraced by many subsequent 
writers. (Compare Gesner, in Chrestom., Cic., p. 
547.— Wesseling, ad Diod., 1. c. — Jani, ad Horat., 
Od., 3, 5, 49.— Lefeb., ad Sil. Ital., 6, 539.— Toland, 
Collection of several pieces, Lond., 1726, vol. 2, p 
28. — Foreign Review, vol. 1, p. 305. — Botticher , 
Geschichte der Carthager, p. 205, &c.— Beaufort, sur 
Vincertitude de VHistoire Romaine, 1738, 8vo, sul> 
fin. — Rooss, De Suppliciis quibus Regulus Cartha- 
gine traditus interfcctus.—Magazin fur offentl. Schu- 
len, Bremen, 1791, vol. 2, pt. 1, p. 50, seqq.) The 
arguments in favour of this opinion are strong, and we 
might almost say decisive. In the first place, the Ro¬ 
man writers are all at variance among themselves re¬ 
specting the nature of the punishment supposed tc 
have been inflicted on Regulus. Cicero ( De Fin., 2, 
20. — Ibid., 5, 27.— Pis., c. 19. —De Off., 3, 27), 
Seneca (De Prov., c. 3), Valerius Maximus (9, 2, 
ext. 1), Tuditanus and Tubero (ap. Aul. Geli, 6, 4), 
Silius Italicus (6, 539, seqq.), Aurelius Victor (c. 
40), and Zonaras (Ann., vol. 2), make Regulus to 
have had his eyelids cut off, and to have died of want 
of sleep and of hunger. Seneca (loc. cit., Epist., et 
98), 'Silius Italicus (2, 343, seqq.), and Florus (2, 2), 
speak also of the cross as an instrument of his suffer¬ 
ings. And, finally, Seneca (De Prov., c. 3. —De 
tranq. an., c. 15. — Epist., 67), Cicero (Pis., 19), 
Valerius Maximus (9, 2, ext. 1), Aurelius Victor and 
Zonaras (ll., cc.), Silius Italicus (6, 539, seqq.), Oro- 
sius (4, 8), Augustin (De Civ. Dei, 1, 15), Appian 
(De Reb. Pun., c. 4.— Exc., 2, ex. lib. 5.— De Reb. 
Sic., vol. 1, p. 93, ed. Schweigh.), tell of a narrow 
box or barrel, full of nails, in which he was confined ; 
and, being compelled to stand continually, perished at 
last with exhaustion. This discrepance, therefore, 
gives the whole story much the appearance.of a popu¬ 
lar fable, owing its origin to, and heightened in many 
of its features by, national feeling.—Another argument 
against the authenticity of the narrative in question is 
derived from the total silence of Polybius, who treats 
fully, in his history, of the events of the first Punic 
war, respecting not merely the punishment of Regu¬ 
lus, but even his coming to Rome and his return to 
Carthage.—A third and still stronger argument is de¬ 
duced from the language of Diodorus Siculus, who 
makes the widow of Regulus to have been urged to 
punish the captives in her hands from the persuasion 
that her husband had died the victim of carelessness and 
neglect on the part of the Carthaginians (vopiaaca 6t’ 
upeketav avrov iKkekoLrcbvaL to (fiv, frag., lib. 24 ; 
vol. 9, p. 344, ed. Bip.) The natural inference* 
from such language is, that the husband had not been 
treated with sufficient care while labouring under some 
malady, and that this neglect caused his death; it is 
impossible to derive from the words of the text any 
meaning favourable to the idea of positive and actual 
punishment.—The captives in the hands of the widow 
of Regulus were two in number, Bostar and Llamilcar, 
and they had been delivered up to her, it is said, to 
pacify her complaints, and as hostages for the safety 
of Regulus. For five days they were kept witnout 
food : Bostar died of hunger and grief, and Hamilcar 
was then shut up with the dead body for five days lon¬ 
ger, a scanty allowance of food being at the same time 
given him. The stench from the corpse and other 
circumstances caused the affair to become known, and 
the sons of Regulus narrowly escaped being condemn¬ 
ed to death by the people. Hamilcar was taken away 
from his cruel keeper, and carefully attended until his 
restoration to health. (Diod. Sic., frag., lib. 24, vol 
9, p. 346, ed. Bip.) Would the Roman senate and 

1163 




R H A 


RHE 


people have acted thus, had the story of Regulus; and 
his cruel sufferings been true 1 If any, notwithstand¬ 
ing what has been here adduced, are inclined to favour 
the other side of the question, they will find some plau¬ 
sible arguments in its support in Ruperti’s edition of 
Silius Italicus (Ad Arg., lib. 6). 

Remi, a people of Gallia Belgica, southwest of the 
Treveri, and southeast of the Veromandui. Their 
capital was Durocortorum,now Rheims. (Coes , B. G., 
2, 3, 5.— Tac., Hist., 4, 67.— Plin., 4, 17.) 

Remus, the brother of Romulus, exposed togeth¬ 
er with him by the cruelty of his grandfather. ( Vid. 
Romulus.) 

Resina, a city on the river Chaboras, in northern 
Mesopotamia. (Steph. Byz., s. v. 'P iaiva.) Its site 
was afterward occupied by Theodosiopolis (Chron., 
Edessen., p. 339), which must not be confounded 
with another city of the same name in northern Arme¬ 
nia. The modern name of Ressena is Pas-el-aim. 
(Niebuhr, vol. 2, p. 394.) 

Rha ('Pu), a large river, now the Wolga. No wri¬ 
ter, prior to Ptolemy, mentions either its name or 
course. The appellation occurs, it is true, in our edi¬ 
tions of Mela (3, 5), but it is a mere interpolation. 
Thfe true reading in Mela is, “E Cerauniis montibus 
uno alveo descendit, duobus exit in Caspium [Rha] 
Araxes Tauri latere demissusP The word Rha, 
which we have enclosed in brackets, does not belong 
to the text.—Ptolemy’s acquaintance with this river 
was so accurate, that he knew not only its mouth, but 
its western bending towards the Tanai’s, its double 
sources (ihe Wolga and the Kama), the point of their 
union, and the course of some streams flowing from 
the mountains on the east into the Wolga. All this 
knowledge of the Rha was obtained from the caravan 
traders, except, perhaps, a small portion made known 
to the world by the Roman conquests in this quarter. 
Subsequent writers never lost sight of this river. 
Agathemerus (2, 30) reckons it among the larger sized 
rivers, and calls it, probably by a corrupt name, Rhos 
('Pwf). Arnmianus Marcellinus (22, 8) speaks of a 
plant growing on its banks of great use in medicine. 
Every one will see that he alludes to the rhubarb (Rha 
barbarum ) of pharmacy. The plant, it is true, did not, 
in fact, grow here, but was brought to this quarter by 
the caravan trade. As the Romans, however, re¬ 
ceived their supplies of it from this part of the world, 
they associated with it the name of the river, and thus 
the appellation arose. The name Rha appears to 
be an appellative term, having affinity with Rhea or 
Reka, which, in the Sarmatian or Sclavonian lan¬ 
guage, signifies a river; and from the Russian denom¬ 
ination of Vclika Reka, or Great River, appears to 
be formed the name of Wolga. In the Byzantine and 
other writers of the middle ages, this stream is called 
Atel or Elel, a term, in many northern languages, sig¬ 
nifying great or illustrious. (Compare the German 
adel.) The approximation of the Tana'is to this river, 
before it changes its course to the Palus Maeotis, is 
the occasion of the erroneous opinion of some authors, 
that it is only an emanation of the Rha taking a differ¬ 
ent route. ( Mannert , Geogr., vol. 4, p. 341.) 

Rhacotis, the name of a maritime place in Egypt, 
on the site of which Alexandrea was subsequently erect¬ 
ed. (Strabo, 792. — Mannert, Geogr., vol. 10, pt. 1, 
p. 619 ) 

Rhauamanthus, a son of Jupiter and Europa, and 
brother to Minos and Sarpedon. These three brethren 
fell into discord, says the legend, on account of a 
youth named Miletus, the son of Apollo, or of Jupiter. 
The youth testifying most esteem for Sarpedon, Minos 
drove them out of Crete, their native island. Mile¬ 
tus, going to Caria, built a town there, which he named 
from himself. Sarpedon went to Lycia, where he aid¬ 
ed Cilix against the people of that country, and ob¬ 
tained the sovereignty of a part of it. Rhadamanthus 
1164 


passed into the Cyclades, where he ruled with justice 
and equity. Having committed an accidental homi¬ 
cide, he retired subsequently to Boeotia, where he mar¬ 
ried Alcmena, the mother of Hercules. According to 
Homer ( Od., 4, 164), Rhadamanthus was placed on the 
Elysian plain, among the heroes to whom Jupiter al¬ 
lotted that blissful abode. Pindar (01, 2, 127) seems 
to make him a sovereign or judge in the island of the 
blessed. Latin poets place him with Minos and Hiiacus 
in the lower world, where their office is to judge the 
dead. (Keightley's Mythology, p. 455, seq.) 

Rh^eti, the inhabitants of Rhaetia. (Vid. Rhaetia.) 

Rh^etia, a country of Europe, which occupied a 
part of the Alps, and was situate to the north of Italy 
and east of Helvetia. It is not easy to ascertain its 
limits to the north, but we may say that it was bound¬ 
ed in that quarter by Vindelicia, and, in general, that it 
corresponded to the country of the Grisons, and to the 
cantons of Uri, Glaris, &c., as far as the Lake oj 
Constance: it extended also over the Tyrol. This 
country was called western Illyricum, and was sub¬ 
jected to the Romans by Drusus, in the reign of Au¬ 
gustus. Soon afterward Vindelicia was reduced by 
Tiberius, so that the Roman possessions extended to 
the Danube. This double conquest formed a prov¬ 
ince called Rhsetia, comprehending Vindelicia, with¬ 
out obliterating altogether the distinction. But in the 
multiplication that Dioclesian, and some other em¬ 
perors after him, made of the provinces, Rhcetia was 
divided into two, under the names of Prima and Se- 
cunda ; a circumstance which caused Rhsetia Prop¬ 
er and Vindelicia to reassume their primitive distinc¬ 
tions. (Virg., G., 2, 96.— Plin., 3, 20; 14,2, &c.— 
Hor., Od., 4, 4, 14.) 

Rhamnus, a town of Attica, situate on the coast, 
sixty stadia northeast of Marathon. (Pausan., 1, 32. 
— Strabo, 399.) It was so named from the plant 
rhamnus ( thornbush ), which grew there in abundance. 
This demus belonged to the tribe vEantis, and was 
much celebrated in antiquity for the worship of Nem¬ 
esis, hence styled Rhamnusia virgo. (For an ac¬ 
count of ner temple and statue, vid. Nemesis.) Scylax 
speaks of Rhamnus as being fortified. (Peripl., p. 21.) 
It was the birthplace of the orator Antiphon. A mod¬ 
ern traveller, who has accurately explored the site of 
this ancient town, informs us that it now bears the 
name of Vroeo Castro. The ruins of the temple of 
Nemesis lie at the head of a narrow glen which leads 
to the principal gate of the town. The building must 
have been inferior in size to those Doric temples 
which still remain in Attica. Its fall seems to have 
been occasioned by some violent shock of an earth¬ 
quake, the columns being more disjointed and broken 
than in any other ruin of the kind. (Raike's Journal, 
in Walpole'’s Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 307.— Cramer's Anc 
Greece, vol. 2, p. 389, seqq.) 

Rhampsinitus. Vid. Rampsinitus. 

Rhamses or Ramises, a powerful king of Egypt, 
the same with Ramses VI., the famed Sesostris. (Vid 
Sesostris.) 

Rharius Campus, a part of the Thriasian plain, in 
Attica, near Eleusis. It was in this plain that Ceres 
was said to have first sown corn. (Pausan., 1, 38.) 
Dodwell observes, that the soil, though arid, still pro¬ 
duces abundant harvests (vol. 1, p. 588). 

Rhea, I. a daughter of Ccelus and Terra, who mar¬ 
ried Saturn, by whom she had Vesta, Ceres, Juno, 
Pluto, Neptune, &c. Her husband, however, de¬ 
voured them all as soon as born, as he had succeeded 
to the throne with the solemn promise that he would 
raise no male children, or, according to others, be¬ 
cause he had been informed by an oracle that one of 
his sons would dethrone him. To stop the cruelty oi 
her husband, Rhea consulted her parents, and was 
advised to impose upon him. Accordingly, when she 
I brought forth, the child was immediately concealed 





RHE 


RHE 


and Saturn devoured a stone which his wife had given 
him as her own child. The fears of Saturn were 
soon proved to be well founded. A year after, the 
child, whose name was Jupiter, became so strong and 
powerful, that he diove his father from his throne. 

( Vid. Saturnus.)—II or Rhea Silvia, the mother of 
Romulus and Remus. (Vid. Ilia.) 

Rhegium, one of the most celebrated and flourish¬ 
ing cities of Magna Gracia, at the extremity of Italy, 
in the territory of the Bruttii, and in a southeastern di¬ 
rection from Messana on the opposite coast of Sicily. 
This city is known to have been founded nearly 700 
years B.C., by a party of Zanclasans from Sicily, to¬ 
gether with some Ohalcidians from Euboea, and Mes- 
senians from the Peloponnesus. (Antioch. Syrac., 
Strab., 257.— Iierac., Pont, fragm., 25.— Pausan., 4, 
23.) It may, however, lay claim to a still more re¬ 
mote origin, if it be true, as Cato affirmed, that it was 
once in the possession of the Aurunci. (Ap. Veil. 
Prob. eel. et. Fragm. Hist.) According to JEschylus, 
as quoted by Strabo, the name of Rhegium was sup¬ 
posed to refer to the great catastrophe which had once 
separated Italy from Sicily (d(f ob 6y Prjyiov Kitihya- 
ketcu .— Compare Virg., JEn., 3, 414). That geog¬ 
rapher suggests as his own opinion, that this term 
was derived from the Latin word Regium; and thus 
considers it as only expressive of the importance and 
dignity of the town to which it was attached. (Strab., 
257.) It appears, however, from the more ancient 
coins of Rhegium, that the original name of the place 
was RECION. In these the epigraph is REC. RECI. 
RECINOS, in characters partaking more of the Os- 
can than of the Greek form. Those of a more recent 
date are decidedly Greek, PHT. PHTIN&N, being in¬ 
scribed on them. ( Sestini, Mon. Vet., p. 18.)—We 
may collect from different passages, that the constitu¬ 
tion of Rhegium was at first an oligarchy under the 
superior direction of a chief, who was always chosen 
from a Messenian family. ( Heyne, Opusc. Acad., vol. 
2, p. 270.— Sainle-Croiz, sur la Legist de la Grande 
Grece, Mem. des Acad, des. Inscr., vol. 42, p. 312.) 
Charondas, the celebrated lawgiver of Catana in Sici¬ 
ly, is said also to have given laws to the Rhegians. 
(Heracl. P^nt., 1. c. — jElian, V. H., 3, 17.— Aristot., 
Polit., 2, 10.) This form of government lasted near¬ 
ly 200 years, until Anaxilaus, the second of that name, 
usurped the sole authority, and became tyrant of Rhe¬ 
gium about 496 B.C. (Strabo, l. c. — Aristot., Polit., 5, 
12.) Under this prince, who, though aspiring and 
ambitious, appears to have been possessed of consid¬ 
erable talents and many good qualities ( Justin , 4, 2), 
the prosperity of Rhegium, far from declining, reached 
its highest elevation. Anaxilaus having succeeded in 
making himself master of Messana, in conjunction with 
a party of Samians, who had quitted their country, 
which was then threatened with the Persian yoke (He¬ 
rod., 6, 23 .—Thucyd., 6, 5), confided the sovereignty 
of that important town to his son Cleophron. (Schol. 
ad Find., Pyth., 2, 34.) His views were next direct¬ 
ed against the Locrians; and it is probable that here 
also he would have been successful, having already ob¬ 
tained a decided advantage over them in the field, and 
having proceeded, farther, to lay siege to their town 
(Justin, 21, 3), when he was compelled to withdraw 
his forces by the influence of Hiero, king of Syracuse, 
whose enmity he was unwilling to incur. (Schol. 
ad Pind., 1. c.) Anaxilaus reigned eighteen years, 
and, on his death, intrusted the sovereignty to Mici- 
thus, his minister and chief counsellor, until hfe sons 
should arrive at a proper age to undertake the man¬ 
agement of affairs. He held the power until the young 
princes had attained this age, and then resigning it 
to them, retired to Tegea. About six years after his 
resignation, the Rhegians succeeded in recovering 
their liberty, and freeing themselves from the tyranni¬ 
cal government of the sons of Anaxilaus. The city, 


however, remained long a prey to adverse factions, 
and it was not till it had undergone various changes 
and revolutions in its internal administration that it 
obtained at last a moderate and stable form of gov¬ 
ernment. (Thucyd., 4, 1.— Justin, 4, 3.) The con¬ 
nexion which subsisted between Rhegium and the 
Chalcidian colonies in Sicily, induced Rhegium to 
take part with the Athenians in their first hostilities 
against the Syracusans and Locrians; the latter, in¬ 
deed, proved their constant enemies, and sought to in¬ 
jure them by every means in their power. (Thucyd., 
4, 24.) In the great Sicilian expedition the Rhegians 
observed a strict neutrality ; for, though the Athenian 
fleet was long moored in their roads, and its com¬ 
manders employed all their arts of persuasion to pre¬ 
vail upon thdm to join their cause, they remained firm 
in their determination. (Thucyd., 6, 44.) The same 
policy seems to have directed their counsels at the 
time that Dionysius the elder was meditating the sub¬ 
jection of Sicily and Magna Gracia. They constant¬ 
ly opposed the designs of that tyrant ; and, had the 
other states of Magna Gracia displayed the same en¬ 
ergy, the ambitious views of this artful prince would 
have been completely frustrated ; but, after the defeat 
experienced by their forces on the Eljeporus, they of¬ 
fered no farther resistance ; and Rhegium being thus 
left unsupported, was compelled, after a gallant de¬ 
fence of nearly a year, to yield to the Sicilian forces. 
The few inhabitants who escaped from famine and the 
sword were removed to Sicily, and the place was giv¬ 
en up to pillage and destruction. Some years after, 
it was, however, partly restored by the younger Dio¬ 
nysius, who gave it the name of Phosbia. (Strabo, 
258.) During the war with Pyrrhus, this city was 
seized by a body of Campanians, who had been sta¬ 
tioned there as a garrison by the Romans, and was, in 
consequence, exposed to all the licentiousness and ra¬ 
pacity of those mercenary troops. The Roman sen¬ 
ate at length freed the unfortunate citizens from their 
persecutors, and consigned the latter to the fate which 
they so justly merited. (Strabo, l. c. — Polyb., 1, 7. 
— Liv., Epit., 12 et 15.)—The city of Rhegium sus¬ 
tained great injury at a later period from the repeated 
shocks of an earthquake, which occurred not long be¬ 
fore the Social war, or 90 B.C. It was, in conse¬ 
quence, nearly deserted when Augustus, after having 
conquered Sextus Pompeius, established there a con¬ 
siderable body of veteran soldiers for his fleet ; and 
Strabo affirms, that in his day this colony was in a 
flourishing state. (Strab., 259.) Hence also the ap¬ 
pellation of Julium, which later authors have applied 
to designate this town. (Ptol., p. 62.) Few cities 
of Magna Gracia could boast of having given birth to 
so many distinguished characters as Rhegium, wheth¬ 
er statesmen, philosophers, men of literature, or artists 
of celebrity. Among the first were many followers of 
Pythagoras, who are enumerated by Iamblichus in his 
life of that philosopher. Theagenes, Hippys, Lycus, 
surnamed Butera, and Glaucus, were historians of 
note ; Ibycus, Cleomenes, and Lycus, the adoptive 
father of Lycophron, were poets, whose works were 
well known in Greece. Clearchus and Pythagoras 
are spoken of as statuaries of great reputation ; the 
latter, indeed, is said to have even excelled the fa¬ 
mous Myron. (Plin., 35, 8.— Pausan., 6, 4.) The 
modern name of the place is Reggio. (Cramer’s 
Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 427.) 

Rhenea, a small island near Delos ; so near, in fact, 
that Polycrates of Samos is said to have dedicated it 
to Apollo, connecting it to the latter island by means 
of a chain. (Thucyd., 3, 104.) Strabo says the dis¬ 
tance which separates them is four stadia. ( Strabo , 
480.— Herod., 3, 96.— Plin., 4, 12.) Its other name 
were Celadussa and Artemis. According to moderg 
maps, Rhenea, which is larger than Delos, is also call 
ed Sdili. (Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 401.) 

1165 




RHI 


RH O 


Riienus, I. a celebrated river of Europe, rising in 
the Lepontine Alps, a little to the east of Mount St. 
Gothard, in the country of the Grisons. It passes 
tnrough Lacus Brigantinus, or the Lake of Constance, 
and afterward through Lacus Acronius, or the Lake 
of Zell , and continues to run nearly west until it 
reaches Basilia or Basle. Here it takes a northern 
direction, and becomes the boundary between Gallia 
and Germania, and afterward between the latter and 
Belgium. At Schenck, or Schenken Schans, the 
Rhenus sends off its left-hand branch, the Vahalis or 
Waal , which flows west, and joins the Mosa or 
Meuse. After parting with the Vahalis, the Rhenus 
flows on a few miles farther to the north, and then 
divides into two streams, of which the one to the 
right hand had the name of Flevo, or Flevus, or Fle- 
vum, now the Yssal, and the other that of Helium, 
now the Leek. The latter joins the Meuse above Rot¬ 
terdam.. The Yssal was originally unconnected with 
the Rhine, but was joined to it by the canal of Dru- 
sus. Before it reached the sea, it traversed a small 
take called Flevo, which, by the increase of waters it 
received through the Yssal from the Rhine, became 
in time expanded, and forms now the Zuyder Zee. 
(Vid. Flevo.) The whole course of the Rhine is 900 
miles, of which 630 are navigable from Basle to the 
sea. The Rhine was long a barrier between the Ro¬ 
mans and Germans ; it was first crossed by Julius 
Caesar.—The word Rhein , which signifies a “current” 
or “ stream,” appears to be of Celtic or ancient Ger¬ 
manic origin. ( Cces ., B. G., 4, 20. — Tac., Germ ., 1, 
28, 29 — Id., Ann., 2, 6.— Id., Hist., 2, 26.— Mela, 

2, 5.— Id., 3, 2.— Plin., 4, 15.)—II. A small river of 
Cisalpine Gaul, rising in the northern part of Etruria, 
and falling into the Padus or Po. It is now the 
Reno, and is celebrated in history for the meeting of 
the second triumvirate, which took place A.U.C. 709, 
in an island formed by its stream. Appian seems to 
place the island in the Lavinius ; but his testimony 
ought not to stand against the authority of Plutarch 
( Vit. Cic. et Ant.), Dio Cassius (46, 55), and Sue¬ 
tonius ( Vit. Aug., c. 96), who all agree in placing the 
scene of the event close to Bononia or Bologna. 
The spot which witnessed this famous meeting is 
Drobably that which is now known by the name of 
Crocetta del Trebbo, where there is an island in the 
Rheno, about half a mile long and one third broad, 
and about two miles to the wes‘t of Bologna. (Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 88.) 

Rhesus, a king of Thrace, son of the Strymon and 
the muse Terpsichore, who marched, at a late period 
of the Trojan war, to the aid of Priam, with a nu¬ 
merous army. His arrival was expected with great 
impatience, as an ancient oracle had declared that 
Troy should never be taken if the horses of Rhesus 
drank the waters of the Xanthus, and fed upon the 
grass of the Trojan plains. This oracle was well 
known to the Greeks, and therefore two of their best 
generals, Diomedes and Ulysses, were commissioned 
by the rest to intercept the Thracian prince. The 
Greeks entered his camp in the night, slew him, and 
carried away his horses to their camp. (Apollod., 1, 

3 . —Virg., JEn., 1, 473.— Ovid, Met., 13, 98.) 

Rhianus, a Greek poet, a native of Bena in Crete, 

who flourished about 230 B.C. He was originally a 
slave in a school of exercise. Rhianus wrote an Her - 
acleid, Thessalica, Messe?iiaca, Achaica, and Eliaca. 
Of all these poems we have only about thirty-three 
lines remaining. The titles of his productions appear 
to indicate, that if, like Choerilus of Samos, he gave 
history an epic form, his choice, nevertheless, fell on 
subjects which lost themselves in remote antiquity, or 
which, like the Messenian war, were almost as much 
within the domain of imagination as of history.—The 
fragments of Rhianus are contained in the collections 
of Winterton, Brunck, Gaisford, and Boissonade. 

1166 


Ten epigrams of his also remain, which are given in 
the Anthology. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., voi. 3, p. 
123.) 

Rhinocolura, a town on the coast of the Mediter¬ 
ranean ; assigned at one time to Egypt, at another to 
Syria, and lying on the confines of both. It was an 
important commercial place, and the great mart for 
the Arabian trade. The modern El Arish occupies 
its site. It derives its name, according to Strabo, 
from the circumstance of offenders being sent thither 
as to a place of exile, after having been first deprived 
of their noses (fiw, the nose, and kuXvu, to mutilate), a 
custom said to have been practised by one of the yEthi- 
opian invaders of Egypt. ( Strab., 780.) The story is 
evidently untrue ; and the name would appear to be, 
not of Greek, but Egyptian origin. Diodorus Siculus 
(1, 60) says that this town was destitute of all the 
conveniences of life ; that its water was bitter and ob¬ 
noxious ; and that it was surrounded with salt marshes. 
It was in the vicinity of this place that the Israelites 
were nourished with quails. ( Liv., 45, 11.— Plin., 5, 
13.— Itin. Ant., 151.— Hierocl., p. 726.) 

Rhion, or, as the Latins write the word, Rhium, a 
promontory of Achaia, opposite Antirrhium in Hltolia. 
The strait is seven stadia across. The castle of the 
Morea occupies the site of this place at the present 
day. (Itin. of Morea, p. 6 — Chandler's Travels, 
vol. 2, ch. 72.) Strabo makes the strait only five 
stadia, but he seems to identify Rhium with Drepa- 
num. (Strab., 335.— Vid. remarks under Antirrhium.) 

Rhiph^ei, mountains in the north of Europe, near 
the sources of the Tana'is, according to Ptolemy. 
What he designates, however, as such, do not, in real¬ 
ity, exist there. If he marks a chain of mountains 
more to the north, actual observation affords nothing 
corresponding, except it be the chain which separates 
Russia from Siberia. (Plin., 4, 12.— Lucan, 3, 272 ; 
3, 382 ; 4, 418.— Virg., G., 1, 240 ; 4, 518.) 

Rhodanus or Rhone, a large aryl rapid river of 
Europe, rising among the Lepontine Alps, not more 
than two leagues south of the sources of the Rhine. 
It passes through the Lacus Lemanus, or Lake of 
Geneva, five leagues below which it disappears be¬ 
tween two rocks for a considerable way, rises again, 
flows with great rapidity in a southern direction, and 
discharges itself by three mouths into the Sinus Gal- 
licus, or Gulf of Lyons, in the Mediterranean. The 
largest of these mouths was, in the days of Pliny, 
called Massilioticum ; the other two were much less, 
and had the common name of Libyca, although each 
was also known by a distinct appellation. Hispani- 
ense Ostium denoted the western or the one next to 
Hispania, and Metapinum that in the middle. The 
course of the Rhone is about 400 miles, during which 
it falls 5400 feet. In Strabo’s time it was navigable 
some distance up ; but its mouths are now so full 
of rocks, brought down from the mountains by its 
impetuous current, that no ship can enter them. The 
upward navigation in smaller vessels can only, on ac¬ 
count of the rapid current, be performed by draught 
or steam. This river is largest in summer, and is at 
its greatest height soon after the longest day. This ia 
most probably occasioned by the heat of the sun melt¬ 
ing part of the snow on the Alps during the summer 
months. For some remarks on the origin of the name 
Rhodanus, vid. Eridanus. (Mela, 2, 5 ; 3, 3.— Ovid, 
Met., 2, 258.— Sil. Ital., 3, 447.— Cces., B. G., 1, 1 
— Plin., 3, 4.— Lucan, 1, 433 ; 6, 475.) 

Rhodope, a mountain range of Thrace, forming, in 
a great degree, its western boundary, and evidently 
identical with the Scomius of Thucydides (2, 96). 
Herodotus gives it the appellation of Rhodope, and 
asserts that the Thracian river Escius (now Isker) 
rises in this mountain (4, 49), while Thucydides makes 
it flow from Scomius. Again, Herodotus has placed 
Rhodope in the vicinity of the Bisaltae, who were cer 



RH 0 


RHODUS. 


tainly much to the south of the sources of the Stry- 
mon. But all this is easily explained, when we take 
into consideration the vague manner in which these 
writers employ the various names of this great chain. 
Virgil has several times mentioned Rhodope as a 
mountain of Thrace. (Georg., 3, 461 ; ibid., 4, 461. 
— Eclog., 6, 30.)—Theocritus classes it among the 
highest summits of the ancient world (7, 77.— Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 272). 

Rhodopis or Rhodope, a celebrated hetrerist of an¬ 
tiquity, a native of Thrace. She was contemporary 
with ^Esop, the fabulist, and was a slave under the 
same roof with him at Samos. Xanthus, a Samian, 
afterward took her to Egypt, where she was purchased 
and manumitted by Charaxus of Mytilene, the brother 
of Sappho, who became deeply enamoured of her. 
{Herod., 2, 134.— Strab., 808.) She settled, after her 
manumission, at Naucratis, in Egypt; and, according 
to one account, a pyramid was erected in honour of 
her by some of the governors of the adjacent nomes, 
at their common expense. ( Diod. Sic., 1, 64.— Stra¬ 
bo, l. c .) ^Elian relates, that as Rhodopis was bath¬ 
ing on one occasion, an eagle, having flown down, 
seized upon one of her sandals, and, having conveyed 
it through the air to Memphis, dropped it into the bo¬ 
som of Psammitichus, who was dispensing justice at 
the time. The monarch, having admired the beauty 
and elegant shape of the sandal, and being struck also 
by the singular mode in which he had become pos¬ 
sessed of it, caused inquiry to be made for the owner 
throughout the land of Egypt; and when he discovered 
that the sandal belonged to Rhodopis, he made her his 
queen. ( Mlian, V. H., 13, 33.— Strab., 1. c.) Ac¬ 
cording to this version of the story, the pyramid was 
erected to her after death, as a royal tomb.—Herodo¬ 
tus, in arguing against the supposition that the pyra¬ 
mid in question was the tomb of Rhodopis, makes her 
to have lived under xAmasis (2, 134). Now, as there 
was an interval of forty-five years between the death 
of Psammitichus and the accession of Amasis, Perizo- 
nius is no doubt right in thinking that there were two 
hetserists named Rhodopis, one who became the queen 
of Psammitichus, and the other the fellow-slave of 
HCsop, in the time of Amasis. The latter will be the 
one whom Sappho calls Doricha, and of whom her 
brother Charaxus was enamoured. ( Perizon., ad ML, 
l. c. — Bayle, Diet., s. v. Rhodope.) Achilles Tatius 
states, that there was near Tyre a small island which" 
the Tyrians called the tomb of Rhodope. This, how¬ 
ever, may be the mere fiction of the writer. ( Achill. 
Tat., de Clit. et Leuc. am., 2, 17.) 

Rhodus (Tddof)» a celebrated island in the Mediter¬ 
ranean Sea, lying southwest of the coast of Caria, and 
being about forty-three miles distant from the main¬ 
land. It is longer from north to south than from east 
to west. Strabo gives its circuit 900 stadia ( Strabo, 
651), but Pliny 130 miles, or, according to another 
measurement, 103. (Pliny, 5, 28.) According to 
Sonnini, its greatest length is about twelve leagues, 
and its breadth six, while its circumference is com¬ 
monly estimated at forty-four leagues. Its form is 
nearly triangular, whence it obtained the name of Tri- 
nacria. According to Strabo, it was originally called 
Ophiussa (’O (ptovacra) and Stadia, and subsequently 
Telchinis. Its latest name, Rhodus, was derived, 
according to Diodorus Siculus (5, 55), from Rhodus, a 
daughter of Neptune and Halia. Others, however, 
have sought for the origin of this appellation in the 
Greek podov , signifying a rose, with which species of 
flower the island is said to abound ; and, in confirma¬ 
tion of this etymology, it has been alleged that the 
figure of a rose is given on the reverse of many Rho¬ 
dian coins still extant. ( Rasche , Lex. Rei. Num., 
vol. 7, p. 1027.— Bayer, Diss. de Numrno Rhodio, p. 
492.—Compare Schol. ad Bind., Olymp., 7, 24.) Rit¬ 
ter, however maintains, that the flower here mistaken 


for a rose is none other than the lotas, and he seek* 
from this to connect the early religious system of 
Rhodes with the most ancient worship of the East. 
(Vorhalle, p. 338.) Bochart, of course, is in favour of 
a Phoenician etymology, and, availing himself of one 
of the ancient names of the island mentioned above, 
namely, Ophiussa or “ Snake Island,” given tc it on 
account of the numerous serpents it contained when 
first inhabited, says that the Phoenicians also called it 
Snake Island, which in their language was Gezirath- 
Rhod. From this last word, which signifies “a 
snake,” the Greeks, he thinks, formed the name 'P odoq 
(Rhodes). The same scholar derives the appellation 
Stadia from the Hebrew or Phoenician Tsadia, “deso¬ 
late.” ( Geogr. Sacr., 1, 7, c. 369, seqq .)—In addition 
to the earlier names cited above from Strabo, it may 
not be arniss to mention the following as given by 
Pliny (5, 31), namely, Asteria, xEthrea, Corymbia, 
Poeessa, Atabyria, Maoris, and Oloessa.—As this isl¬ 
and lay on the dividing line between the xEgean and 
the eastern part of the Mediterranean, it became, at a 
very early period, a stopping-place for navigators, as 
well for the Phoenician mariners in their voyages to 
Greece, as for the Greeks in their route to the farther 
coast of Asia. Hence, too, it became very speedily 
inhabited. As its first settlers, we find the Telchines 
mentioned, who are styled “ sons of Thalassa” (viol 
QaXdaoTjg), i. e., “ of the sea," in allusion, evidently, 
to their having come from foreign parts. (Diod. Sic., 5, 
55.— Strabo, 654.) They were said to have migrated 
originally from Crete to Cyprus, and from the latter 
island to Rhodes. They brought with them the art of 
working iron and copper; they were the first, also, to 
form statues of the gods, and they were, in addition 
to this, powerful enchanters, who could summon at 
pleasure clouds, rain, hail, and snow, and could as¬ 
sume various forms. (Diod. Sic. et Strabo, ll. cc.) 
In all this we recognise the wonder produced among 
a barbarous race of men, by a race of strangers pos¬ 
sessed of the elements. of useful knowledge, and 
taught by experience to prognosticate the variations 
of the atmosphere ( Vid. Telchines). Tradition goes 
on to state, that Neptune, who had now attained to 
manhood, became the father of six sons and one daugh 
ter by Halia, the sister of the Telchines. This daugh¬ 
ter’s name was Rhodus, and hence, according to the 
legend, was derived the name of the island. The Tel¬ 
chines subsequently, made aware, by their skill in div¬ 
ination, of an approaching deluge, left, nearly all of 
them, the island, and were scattered over various coun¬ 
tries. Some of their number, however, remained, and, 
when the deluge came, fled to the higher grounds, 
where they saved themselves. It was here that the 
Sun beheld Rhodus, and became captivated by her 
beauty. He checked the inundation, called the island 
after her name, and became by her the father of the 
Heliadce, seven in number, and of one daughter, called 
Electryone. The Heliadae are said to have been well 
skilled in the sciences, to have invented astrology, to 
have taught the art of navigation, and to have divided 
the day into hours. From one of their number the 
Egyptians obtained a knowledge of astrology. (Diod. 
Sic., 5, 57.) The island of Rhodes remained from 
henceforth consecrated to the sun ; and, according to 
Pliny (2, 62), it continued ever after a favourite boast 
on the part of the Rhodians, that not a day passed 
during which their island was not illumined, for an 
hour at least, by the solar ravs. The eldest of the 
Heliadse was succeeded in the government of the isl¬ 
and by his three sons, Lindus, lalyssus, and Camirus, 
who each founded a city, and called it after his name. 
About this period, Danaiis, flying from Egypt, came 
to Rhodes, with his daughters, and built a temple to 
Minerva ; and, not long after, Cadmus, with his Phoe¬ 
nicians, also came, being in quest of his sister Europe 
From these and other mythological legends, it will ap 

1167 



RHODUS. 


RHODUS. 


pear very plainly that the earliest known inhabitants of 
Rhodes were not Greeks, but persons from the neigh¬ 
bouring mainland. The Greeks came in at a later pe¬ 
riod, and drove the earlier settlers into the interior of 
the island : hence we find all the cities on the coast 
with Grecian forms of constitution, and Strabo ex¬ 
pressly styles the inhabitants as of Dorian origin. 
(Strab , 653.)—All that we have thus far related coin¬ 
cides with the period prior to the Trojan war, except 
the migration of the Greeks, which took place in the 
course of the century next after the fall of Troy. It 
was long before the Rhodians attracted the notice of 
the rest of the Greeks, and before their commercial op¬ 
erations raised them to any consequence. They fell 
under the power of Persia, and in the war between this 
power and the Greeks, and in those between Sparta 
and Athens, it always sided with the conquering 
party, though without adding any remarkable weight 
to the scale. The execution of a plan subsequently 
conceived first laid the foundation of the political im¬ 
portance of Rhodes. The three, cities of Lindus, 
Ialyssus, and Camirus came to the conclusion, to¬ 
wards the close of the Peloponnesian war, of uniting to¬ 
gether and forming one common city. This city, sit¬ 
uate in the northern quarter of the island, took the 
name of Rhodus, and continued ever after the capital. 
The three older cities, which had united in its erec¬ 
tion, did not actually cease to exist from this period, 
though a large portion of their inhabitants migrated to 
the new city. The inhabitants of the new capital were 
oligarchically governed when under Lacedemonian su¬ 
premacy ; democratically when under Athenian ; but 
the state flourished under both. When Rhodes com¬ 
bined with Chios and Byzantium in revolt against the 
Athenians, the democracy seems to have been still 
maintained ; but after the termination of that war it 
was overthrown by an insurrection of the wealthy few 
and their adherents, assisted by Mausolus, the king of 
Caria. Under its new government, Rhodes continued 
to increase in trade and shipping ; from which it may 
be inferred that the administration was not inattentive 
to the wishes and interests of the people; for mari¬ 
time power always strengthened the popular party, and 
a jealous and arbitrary oligarchy would therefore have 
discouraged rather than favoured the growth of the 
navy. We are told, indeed, in one fragment of a con¬ 
temporary historian (Theopompus, quoted by Athe- 
naeus), that there was a time when all power was in 
the hands of a small knot of profligate men, who sup¬ 
ported each other in every outrage which their fierce 
passions or brutal caprices could prompt. But, what¬ 
ever chances may have enabled a small faction to ex¬ 
ercise for a while so hateful a tyranny, it must have 
quickly fallen, and the government have reverted to 
the great body of citizens having certain qualifications 
of birth and property. In the ordinary state of the 
Rhodian aristocracy, its conduct was moderate and 
upright; so we are told by ancient writers, and their 
testimony is confirmed by the prosperity of the com¬ 
monwealth, and by its continual increase in commer¬ 
cial wealth and naval power. When all the Grecian 
seas were swarming with pirates, the Rhodians alone 
for the common good undertook and effected their sup¬ 
pression. They were highly respected by Alexander, 
though he kept a garrison in their city, which, on re¬ 
ceiving the news of his death, they immediately ex¬ 
pelled. As the Macedonian supremacy appears to 
have been generally favourable to oligarchy, notwith¬ 
standing the patronage which Alexander, in the outset 
of his career, found it expedient to bestow on the dem- 
ocratical interest in Asia Minor, it is possible that this 
change was accompanied with an increase of power in 
the great body of the people. The Rhodians stood 
aloof from the quarrels of the chiefs who divided the 
empire of Alexander, and kept friendship with them 
all, thus enjoying peace when everv ^ther state was at 
1 ids 


war. This could not last for ever. Their habits and 
interests especially inclined them to close connexion 
with Ptolemy and Egypt; and though they avoided 
giving any just cause of offence to Antigonus, his vio 
lent spirit would be satisfied with nothing short of un¬ 
qualified support. This being refused, he commis¬ 
sioned officers to seize the Rhodian traders bound for 
Egypt; and when the execution of the order was re¬ 
sisted, he prepared an armament against the island. 
The Rhodians endeavoured to pacify him by compli¬ 
ments and submissions ; but, finding him inexorable, 
they made ready for defence.—In the year which fol¬ 
lowed the attack of Antigonus on Egypt (B.C. 304), 
Demetrius laid siege to Rhodes. The Rhodians sent 
to solicit aid of Ptolemy, Lysimachus, and Cassarder, 
and took measures to increase to the utmost their mil¬ 
itary force, and to unite the hearts and quicken the 
zeal of all who were in the city. Strangers and foreign 
residents were invited to join in the defence, but all 
unserviceable persons were sent away. It was voted 
that slaves, who fought with courage and fidelity, 
should be purchased from their masters, emancipated, 
and made citizens ; that every citizen who fell in bat¬ 
tle should have a public funeral; that his surviving 
parents should be supported, and his children educated 
by the state ; that marriage portions should be given 
to his daughters, and a suit of armour publicly present¬ 
ed at the feast of Bacchus to each of his sons on com¬ 
ing of age. The rich men freely gave their money, 
the poor their labour, the artificers their skill; all strove 
to surpass each other in zeal and execution. The be¬ 
sieging army was numerous and disciplined, well sup¬ 
plied and well appointed, and provided with every va¬ 
riety of warlike engines which the science of the age 
and the mechanical genius of the commander could 
furnish. Assaults were made by land and sea, in va¬ 
rious fashions and with various success ; but no deci¬ 
sive advantage could be gained over the resolute and 
active defenders of the city, who not only kept the 
walls, but made several vigorous sallies, in some of 
which they succeeded in destroying many ships and en¬ 
gines of the besiegers. Demetrius at length gave up 
the hope of successfully attacking them from the sea, 
and turned all his attention to his operations on the 
side towards the land. The Rhodians, taking advan¬ 
tage of this to employ their ships in distant cruises, 
made prizes of many vessels belonging to Antigonus, 
and intercepted some convoys which were coming to 
the enemy’s camp. Meantime the siege was pressed 
by land, and the walls were shaken in many places, 
all which the Rhodians made good by new defences 
built within ; and just as they were beginning to be 
discouraged by the power and perseverance of their ad¬ 
versary, their confidence was renewed by the arrival 
of an Egyptian fleet, with supplies in great abundance. 
—The siege was protracted for a year. A second 
fleet was sent by Ptolemy, which brought large sup¬ 
plies, and a considerable re-enforcement of troops. 
Ambassadors came from Athens and from many other 
Grecian states, to entreat that Demetrius would be 
reconciled with the Rhodians. He yielded so far as 
to grant a suspension of arms and commence a ne¬ 
gotiation ; but the terms could not be agreed on, and 
the war was renewed. He then attempted a surprise 
by night. Under cover of the darkness, a chosen body 
of soldiers entered the town through a breach which 
had been made ; and the rest of the army supported 
them at daybreak by a general assault on the walls. 
But the Rhodians were cool and firm. All who were 
defending the ramparts remained at their posts, and 
made them good against the enemies without; while 
the rest of the citizens, with the auxiliaries from Egypt, 
went, against those within the city. In the violent 
contest which ensued, the townsmen were victorious, 
and few of the storming party escaped out of their 
hands.--Letters now came from Antigonus, directing 



RHODUS. 


RHO 


uis son to make peace with the Rhodians on what 
conditions he could ; and Demetrius accordingly wish¬ 
ed for an accommodation on any terms that would 
save his credit. The Rhodians were no less anxious 
for peace ; and the more so, as Ptolemy had written 
to them, promising farther aid in case of need, but 
advising them to put an end to the war on any reason¬ 
able conditions. Peace was soon concluded on the 
terms that the Rhodians should be independent, and 
should retain all their revenues ; but that they should 
assist Antigonus in all his wars, excepting against 
Ptolemy, and should give one hundred hostages in 
pledge of fidelity to their engagements. Thus re¬ 
leased from danger, the Rhodians proceeded to fulfil 
their promises, and reward those who had served them 
well. Fit honours were bestowed upon the bravest 
combatants among the free inhabitants, and freedom, 
with citizenship, given to such of the slaves as had 
deserved it. Statues were erected to Ptolemy, Ly- 
simachus, and Cassander, all of whom had assisted 
them largely with provisions. To Ptolemy, whose 
benefits had been by far the most conspicuous, more 
extravagant honours were assigned. The oracle of 
Ammon was consulted, to learn whether the Rhodians 
might not be allowed to worship him as a god ; and, 
permission being given, a temple was actually erected 
in his honour. Such instances had already occurred in 
the case of Alexander, and in that of Antigonus and 
Demetrius at Athens ; but it must be remembered that 
Buch a practice would not bear, in Grecian eyes, the 
same unnatural and impious character which it does 
in ours, since the step was easy from hero-worship, 
which had long formed an important part of their re¬ 
ligion, to the adoration of distinguished men, even 
while alive (Hist, of Greece, p. 161, seqq. — Libr. 
Us. Knowl .)—After mingling more or less in the vari¬ 
ous collisions which ensued between the successors of 
Alexander and their respective descendants, Rhodes 
sided with the Romans, and became a valuable auxili¬ 
ary to the rising power. In return for the important 
services thus rendered, it received from its new friends 
the territories of Lycia and Caria ; but suspicion and 
distrust eventually arose, the Rhodians were deprived 
of their possessions in Asia, and at last, in the reign 
of Vespasian, of their freedom, and with it of the right 
they had so long enjoyed of being governed by their 
own laws. A new province was formed, consisting 
of the islands near the coast, of which Rhodes was the 
capital, and the island henceforth became an integral 
part of the Roman empire, and shared in its various 
vicissitudes. In a later age, it fell into the hands of 
the knights of St. John, after they had lost possession 
of Palestine, A.D. 1309. In 1480 they repelled an 
attack of the Turks, but in 1522 were compelled to 
surrender the island to Soliman II. The population 
is differently estimated : Savary makes it 36,500, of 
which about one third are Greeks, with an archbishop. 
The capital, Rhodes, has a population of about 6000 
Turks. The suburb, Ncochorio, is inhabited by 3000 
Greeks, who are not permitted to reside within the 
city. The town is surrounded with three walls and a 
double ditch, and is considered by the Turks as im¬ 
pregnable. It has two fine harbours, separated only 
by a mole.—Rhodes was celebrated for its Colossus, an 
account of which will be found elsewhere. ( Vid. Co¬ 
lossus.) Its maritime laws were also in high repute, 
and were adopted as the basis of marine law on all the 
coasts of the Mediterranean. Their main principles 
are still interwoven into the maritime codes of modern 
times. The legislative enactments at Rhodes respect¬ 
ing the condition of the poorer classes were also very 
remarkable. The government, though far from being 
a democracy, had a special regard for the poor. They 
received an allowance of corn from the public stores ; 
and the rich were taxed for their support. There were 
likewise certain works and offices which they were 
7 l 


called upon by law to undertake, on receiving a certain 
fixed salary. ( Strab ., 653.) Rhodes produced many 
distinguished characters in philosophy and literature : 
among these may be mentioned Panastius (whom Ci 
cero has so much followed in the Offices), Stratocles, 
Andronicus, Eudemus, and Hieronymus. Posidonius 
the Stoic resided for a long time in this island, and gave 
lectures in rhetoric and philosophy. The poet Pisan- 
der, author of the Pleracleid, as well as Simmias and 
Aristides, are likewise found in the list of the Rhodian 
literati.—The serene sky of the island, its soft climate, 
fertile soil, and fine fruits, are still praised by modern 
travellers. “ Rhodes,” observes Dr. Clarke, “ is a 
truly delightful spot: the air of the place is healthy, 
and its gardens are filled with delicious fruit. Here, 
as in Cos, every gale is scented with the most power¬ 
ful fragrance, which is wafted from groves of orange 
and citron trees. Numberless aromatic herbs exhaU 
at the same time such profuse odour, that the whole 
atmosphere seems to be impregnated with a spicy per¬ 
fume. The present inhabitants of the island confirm 
the ancient history of its climate ; maintaining that 
hardly a day passes throughout the year in which the 
sun is not visible. The winds are liable to little va¬ 
riation : they are north or northwest during almost ev¬ 
ery month.”—( Travels, vol. 3, p. 278, Lond. ed. — 
Compare Turners Tour in the Levant., vol. 3, p. 10.) 

Rhcecus, I. one of the Centaurs, slain by Atalanta. 
( Apollod., 3, 9, 2.) — II. One of the giants, slain by 
Bacchus under the form of a lion, in the conflict be¬ 
tween the giants and the gods. ( Horat ., Od., 2, 19, 
23.) The Greek form most in use is r P otnog, but, as 
Bentley remarks, the Latin writers in general prefer 
the form Rhcetus. (Compare Heyne, ad Apollod., 3, 
9, 2.) 

Rhceteum, a promontory of Troas, on the shore of 
the Hellespont, in a northeastern direction nearly from 
Sigaeum. On the sloping side of it the body of Ajax 
was buried, and a tumulus still remains on the spot. 
(Mela, 1, 18.— Plin., 5, 30.— Liv., 37, 37.) Between 
this promontory and that of SigseUm was the position 
of the Grecian camp. (Consult Rennell, Topography 
of Troy, p. 70.) According to Leake, Paleo Kaslro, 
near the Turkish village of It-ghelmes, marks the prob¬ 
able site of Rhceteum. (Tour, p. 275.) 

Rhosus, a city of Syria, the southernmost one in 
the district of Pieria, fifteen miles from Seleucia, and 
lying on the Sinus Issicus. It was northwest of An- 
tiochia. When Pliny speaks of it as lying near the 
Syrian Pass, he must be understood as speaking of the 
southern pass, not the northern one on the confines 
of Syria. (Plin., 5, 22. — Cic., Ep. ad Att., C, 1.) 

Rhoxalani, a Sarmatian race to the north of the 
Palus Masotis. From the testimony adduced by Mal- 
te-Brun and others, there is no reason to doubt that 
the appellation of Russians is derived from that of 
the Rhoxalani or Rhoxani. This derivation is neither 
difficult nor improbable. The x, it is supposed, was 
substituted by the Greeks for the ss or ih of the bar¬ 
barians. In the Doric and JEolic dialects, that char¬ 
acter was expressed by the simple s. Hence, from 
Rhoxani to Rhossani, Rossani , Rosi (the proper or¬ 
thography requires the o, not the u, in the first sylla¬ 
ble), the transition is natural and easy. A manuscript 
of Jornandes, in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, has 
Rossomannorum instead of Rhoxolannorum , a reading 
which confirms the identity of sound between the x 
and the ss. The addition by that historian of the 
Gothic termination mann to the primitive word will 
surprise no one. In the time of Strabo, the Rhoxalani 
were settled on the vast plains near the source of the 
Tana'is and Borysthenes. Appian tells us that they 
were warlike and powerful; and we learn from other 
writers of at least equal weight, that, having joined 
their arms to those of a neighbouring nation, they 
frequently attacked the Roman confines near the Dan- 

1169 



ROM 


ROMA. 


oDe and the Carpathian Mountains; that in A.D. 68 
they surprised Moesia ; in 166 carried on war against 
the Marcomanni, and in 270 were numbered among 
the enemies over whom Aurelian triumphed. During 
the first three centuries they occupied the southern 
parts of Poland, Red Russia, and Kiovia, the very 
seats possessed by the Russians of the ninth century. 
Jornandes assigns them the same region; and the 
anonymous geographer of Ravenna fixes them in Li¬ 
thuania and the neighbouring countries. These au¬ 
thorities are to us decisive that the Rhoxalani and the 
Russians are the same people ; but, if any doubt re¬ 
mained, it would be removed by the concurrent tes¬ 
timony of the native chronicles, the Polish traditions, 
the Byzantine historians, and the Icelandic sagas, all 
of which are unanimous in applying the term Russian 
to the inhabitants of the countries formerly possessed 
by the Rhoxalani. Hence, as they were the most cel¬ 
ebrated of the original tribes, that term, by synecdoche, 
became generic. ( Foreign Quarterly Review , No. 5, 
p. 151, seqq.) 

Rhuteni or Rutheni, a people of Gallia Aqui- 
tanica, in Narbonensis Prima. The territory was sit¬ 
uate on either side of the Tarnis or Tarn. Segodu- 
num, now Rodez, was their chief town. ( Cces., B. G., 
1, 7.— Plin., 4, 19.) 

Rhyndacus, a river of Asia Minor, rising in Mount 
Temnus, on the northern borders of Phrygia. Pliny 
states, that the Rhyndacus was formerly called Lycus, 
and took its source in the lake Antynia, near Miletop- 
olis; that it received the Macestus and other rivers, 
and separated the province of Asia from Bithynia. 
(Plin., 5, 32.) His account, though quite at variance 
with that of Strabo, is confirmed by other writers, and 
especially by modern geographers, so that he alone is 
to be followed. ( Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 50.) 

Rigodulum, a town of Gallia Belgica, in the terri¬ 
tory of the Treveri, and northeast of Augusta Trevero- 
rum. It lay on the river Mosella, and answers to the 
modern Reol. (Tac., Hist., 4, 71.) 

Robigo or Robigos, a deity of the Romans, wor¬ 
shipped to avert mildew. The Robigalia were cele¬ 
brated on the 25th of April, just before the Floralia. 
(Ovid, Fast., 4, 911. — Pliny, 18, 2.— Tertull. ad 
Gent., 16, 25.) 

Roma, the celebrated capital of Italy and of the Ro¬ 
man empire, situate on the Tiber, below the junction 
of that river with the Anio. The history of the impe¬ 
rial city is identified with that of the empire itself, and 
maybe found scattered under various heads throughout 
the present volume. A much more interesting subject 
of inquiry is that which relates to the authenticity 
of the earlier Roman history, as it has been handed 
down to us by the Romans themselves. The re¬ 
searches of modern scholars have here produced the 
most surprising results, and especially those of the 
celebrated Niebuhr. In what may be called, however, 
the work of demolition, even Niebuhr himself appears 
to have had several predecessors. The sceptical tem¬ 
per of Bayle did not suffer him to acquiesce in a nar¬ 
rative so open to a reasonable incredulity as the early 
history of Rome. Beaufort’s treatise on the “ Uncer¬ 
tainty of the Roman History,” though it did not go to 
the bottom of the matter, was sufficiently convincing 
to all persons who were not unwilling to be convinced. 
His views are often false; but his arguments utterly 
destroyed the credit of the received stories. Hooke 
endeavoured to refute him; but all that he could make 
out was a general presumption that Beaufort pushed 
his case too far, when he considered the history of the 
republic down to the destruction of the city by the 
Gauls as uncertain as the history of the kings. To 
this modification of Beaufort’s conclusions even Nie¬ 
buhr assents. Ferguson showed the conviction which 
Beaufort’s treatise had worked in his mind, by passing 
»ery rapidly over all the period anterior to the second 
1170 


Punic war, and commencing his more circumstantial 
narrative of the Roman history only at the point where 
its events had begun to be noted by contemporary an¬ 
nalists. Bayle and Beaufort were popular writers, and 
their remarks produced a wide and general effect. At 
a somewhat earlier period, Perizonius, a scholar of an 
acute and comprehensive mind, had criticised the Ro¬ 
man History with great freedom and originality in his 
“ Animadversiones Histoncce but the consequence 
of his outstripping his age was, that his disquisitions 
remained in obscurity. Bayle and Beaufort take no 
notice of him ; and his inquiries were unknown even 
to Niebuhr when he published his history (note 678, 
vol. 1). Perizonius anticipated Niebuhr in his per 
ception of the poetical origin of the history of the early 
ages of Rome, and pointed out the evidence for the ex¬ 
istence among the Romans of popular songs in praise 
of the heroes of old time. That Niebuhr should have 
perceived this truth in an age in which scholars are ac¬ 
customed to comprehend a wide range of objects and 
to form independent judgments, is not extraordinary ; 
especially after Wolf’s prolegomena to Homer had 
given birth to a new school of criticism in all that re¬ 
lates to the early literature of nations. But that Peri 
zonius should have discovered it at a time when learn 
ed men had scarcely ceased to receive with unques¬ 
tioning faith everything that was written in Latin o t 
Greek, gives a high notion of the originality and 
strength of his conceptions. Niebuhr, therefore, in 
showing the early history of Rome to be unworthy of 
credit, has only followed a path already open, or, rath¬ 
er, already beaten. He has done more, however, than 
those who have preceded him, by resolving the vulgar 
narrative into its elements, and showing how it ac¬ 
quired its present shape. He has thus examined the 
whole subject thoroughly, and made it impossible foi 
any one ever to revive the old belief. Still, however 
though we may now safely withhold our assent from a 
large portion of what used to pass current as the early 
history of Rome, we must take care not to carry this 
scepticism so far as to reject, by one sweeping sen¬ 
tence of condemnation, every portion that has come 
down to us on this head. Even allowing a considera¬ 
ble degree of doubt and uncertainty to pervade the 
first records of the Roman history, from the alleged 
foundation of the city to its capture by the Gauls, for 
that is a point which Livy himself does not scruple to 
concede (6, 1), we must yet regard even this dubious 
period as luminous and authentic, when compared with 
the times which preceded the foundation of Rome. 
Few sober-minded critics, indeed, will be disposed to 
indulge in scepticism, so far as to imagine that every¬ 
thing which relates to the kings of Rome is fictitious 
and apocryphal. . It appears to us that there are cer¬ 
tain facts recorded in the early history of that city, 
which rest on too undisputed a basis, too universal a 
consent of authorities to be easily set aside. Where 
these are borne out by the succeeding and indubitable 
parts of the history, and exhibit a connected account 
of the growth and progress of the constitution of this 
great city, surely it would be injudicious to reject 
them, except in the case of evident contradiction or 
striking improbability. Great uncertainty exists, no 
doubt, on many points; but, after all, it is more in 
matters of detail than of real importance, and especial 
ly in the relation of those petty events and circum¬ 
stances with which Livy and Dionysius have, perhaps, 
without due discrimination, endeavoured to dress up 
the meager chroniclers who preceded them, and to in¬ 
fuse some spirit into the dry records of the pontifical 
volumes. Let us retrench, if it must be so, the gaudy 
decorations and fanciful ornaments with which these 
historians have embellished their work, but let us net, 
at the same time, overthrow the whole fabric. W r e 
may prune what is exuberant or decayed, and weec 
| what is rank and unprofitable ; but we must beware 



ROMA. 


ROMA. 


in the process, of encroaching upon what is sound, or 
rooting out what is wholesome and nutritious. Let it 
be granted that the rape of the Sabine women is a fic¬ 
tion, it may still be true that the Sabines became, at 
one time, an element in the population of Rome. 
Though it be uncertain, with respect to the Horatii and 
Curiatii, which belonged to Rome and which to Alba, 
we may still believe that the latter city sank beneath 
its more powerful rival. The elder Tarquin’s reign 
does not cease to be an historical fact, because we hear 
an absurd story of an eagle uncovering his head on his 
arrival at the gates of Rome. The constitution said to 
have been formed by Servius Tullius may have been 
the result of longer experience and more practical wis¬ 
dom than falls to the lot of a single reign ; but it was 
such a constitution as Rome did receive, and which it 
was afterward enabled to bring to a state of greater per¬ 
fection than any ancient form of government that we 
are acquainted with. Suppose the story of Lucretia 
false, we cannot deny that monarchy was abolished at 
Rome, and made way for consular authority about the 
time that Livy pretends, though that historian may 
be wrong in giving Valerius Publicola, and not Hora- 
tius Barbatus, as a colleague to Brutus. ( Polyb ., 2, 
23.) The valour of Horatius Codes, and the forti¬ 
tude of Mutius Scaevola, may be left to the admiration 
of schoolboys ; but the siege of Rome by Porsenna is 
no idle tale invented for their amusement, though it 
should be proved that the consequences of that event 
were not so honourable to the Romans as Livy has 
chosen to represent them. (Tacit., 3, 72.— Plin., 34, 
14.) It is a disputed point whether two or five tribunes 
of the people were elected at first; but does that doubt 
invalidate the fact of the secession to the Mons Sa- 
cerl Cancel three fourths of the Roman victories and 
triumphs over the Equi and Volsci, will it be less 
true that the former were nearly destroyed, the latter 
completely subjugated 1 Say it was gold, and not the 
valour of her dictator and his troops, which delivered 
Rome from the Gauls ; she may surely boast of having 
lived to revenge herself on the barbarian foe, and of 
having, by a hundred triumphs, blotted out the stain of 
that transaction, and of the shameful rout on the banks 
of the Allia. In short, though we may sometimes 
pause when reading the early annals of Rome, and 
hesitate what judgment to form on many of the events 
which they record, there are landmarks enough to pre¬ 
vent us from straying far from our course, and to lead us 
on safely to the terra firma of her history. But we have 
not the same assistance for tracing our way, nor the 
same guarantees to certify us that we are treading in the 
right path, when we come to explore the truth of the 
accounts on which the origin of Rome, and the actions 
of its reputed founder, must mainly depend for their 
credibility. On the contrary, after reading all that 
Plutarch has said in the opening of his life of Romu¬ 
lus, and all that Dionysius has collected on the sub¬ 
ject, it is impossible not to feel convinced that the re¬ 
ceived story of the foundation of Rome rests on very 
questionable grounds. Here it is not merely the more 
undisguised appearance of fiction, or the greater fre¬ 
quency of the marvellous, which is calculated to awa¬ 
ken suspicion ; but it is the inconsistency and improb¬ 
ability of the whole, as an attempt to explain the first 
rise and progress of unquestionably the most interest¬ 
ing city of antiquity, which ought to startle the mind 
and revolt the judgment of the philosopher and the 
critic. It is not also because these tales are to be 
traced to a Greek source that we would reject them ; 
for we are inclined to think that the early Greek his¬ 
torians who made the antiquities of Italy their study, 
and they form a numerous class, were better informed 
about what they wrote, and more trustworthy, than 
perhaps they are generally allowed to be. The objec¬ 
tion rather lies against the particular authority on whose 
testimony they seem entirely to rest for support. Dio¬ 


des of Peparethus, an author mentioned by no uno 
else, is said by Plutarch, in his Life of Romulus, to 
have been the first to accredit the received accounts of 
the circumstances relative to the origin of Rome ; and 
it was upon his authority that Fabius Pictor, the ear¬ 
liest Roman historian, brought them into repute with 
his countrymen. Now, unless we are informed what 
peculiar sources of information were open to this ob¬ 
scure writer, which were not possessed by the othc.- 
early historians of his nation, to whom the name oi 
Romulus seems to have been known, there can be no 
reason why we should give him the preference. It 
will not be enough to say that the approval of Fabius 
is a sufficient testimony in his favour; for, as his ac¬ 
count of the birth of their founder was most flattering 
to the vanity of the Romans, their partiality towards 
him would be easily accounted for, and, by a natural 
consequence, would tend to lower rather than raise 
our opinion of his credibility. But the most solid ob¬ 
jection which can be urged against the popular ac¬ 
count of the foundation of Rome by Romulus, is chief¬ 
ly grounded on the inconsistency of the circumstan¬ 
ces under which that city is said to have commenced 
its political career, with the character and condition 
which is ascribed to it immediately after. If it be 
true that Romulus was surrounded by so much state 
and dignity, and possessed not only the insignia of 
royalty, but also a force such as no despicable city 
could display, since we are iold that he could bring 
into the field formidable armies, then we may assert 
confidently that Rome did not date its beginning 
from a motley assemblage of lawless depredators and 
runaway slaves, and that its first walls held within 
their circuit something more than the lowly huts of 
shepherds, or the rude palace of a village king. Noi 
were there traditions wanting to give strength to such 
an hypothesis, by ascribing to this great city an exist¬ 
ence anterior to that which it had afterward as a colony 
of Alba. ( Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 347, seqq). 
—But let us now proceed to the question respecting 
the real origin of Rome. 

1. Origin of Rome. 

When we inquire into the real origin of the city ot 
Rome, we meet with a tradition which carries it back 
to the age of the Pelasgians. (Pint., Vit. Rom. init.) 
The Pelasgic origin of Rome is implied in the legend 
of the settlement of the Arcadian Evander on the Pal¬ 
atine Mount. The religion and the language of Rome 
sanction this belief. The same opinion was probably 
held, at least by the earliest of the many writers who, 
according to Dionysius, supposed it to be a Tyrrhenian 
city. (Dion. Hal., 1, 29.) If any by this expression 
meant that it was Etruscan, we may oppose to this 
the well-grounded opinion that the Etrurian sway was 
not extended so far south as the lower part of the Ti¬ 
ber till about the close of the second century of 
Rome. We have, however, express testimony that 
Rome was a Siculian town. Varro informs us, that 
the old annals reported that the Siculi were sprung 
from Rome (L. L., 4, 10); and the legend of Antio- 
chus has been preserved, which derived the appella¬ 
tion of the Siceli in (Enotria and Sicily from a mythic 
chief Sicelus, who fled from Rome, and was enter¬ 
tained by Morges, king of CEnotria. (Dion. Hal., 1 , 
73.) It is scarcely necessary to observe, that Sicelua 
is a personification of the nation, and that we have 
here a record of its original seat, and of its subsequent 
migration. The considerations which tend to show 
that the Siceli or Siculi were a Pelasgian tribe, will 
be found under another article. (Vid. Siculi.) The 
Siceli fled from the Opici; and the Pelasgians of Lati- 
um were overpowered by the Casci, who were proba¬ 
bly an Opican or Oscan tribe. Whether Rome fell 
into the hands of the conquerors we cannot be certain, 
but it is very probable. It is thus we must interpret 

1171 




ROMa. 


ROMA. 


tile legend preserved by Plutarch, that Romus, king 
of the Latins, expelled the Tyrrhenians. ( Pint., Vit. 
Rom.) Such a conquest would give rise to the tradi¬ 
tion that Rome was founded as a colony from Alba. 
Palatium, the settlement on the Palatine Hill, probably 
took its name from Palatium, a town of the Oscan 
Aborigines, or. the declivity of the Apennines. (Dion. 
Hal., 1, 14.) 

2. Original site, and subsequent growth of Rome. 

All traditions agree, that the original site of Rome 
w r as on the Palatine, whether they ascribe its founda¬ 
tion to Evander or to Romulus. The steepness of 
the sides of the hill would be its natural defence ; and 
on one quarter it was still farther strengthened by a 
swamp which lay between the hill and river, which 
was afterward drained and called the Velabrutp. In 
the course of time dwellings sprung up around the 
foot of the hill; but the Palatine must still have re¬ 
mained the citadel of the growing town; just as at 
Athens that which was the original city (nohig) be¬ 
came eventually the Acropolis (aKpoTzo’Xig). These 
suburbs were enclosed with a line, probably a rude 
fortification, which the learning of Tacitus enabled 
him to trace, and which he calls the pomoerium of 
Romulus. (Ann., 12, 24.) It ran under three sides 
of the hill: the fourth side was occupied by the swamp 
just mentioned, where it was neither needful nor pos¬ 
sible to carry a wall.* The ancient city comprised 
within this outline, or, possibly, only the city on the 
summit of the hill, was called by Roman antiquaries 
the “ Square Rome'’ (Roma. Quadrata. — Ennius, ap. 
Fest., s. v. Quadrata Roma. — Plut., Vit. Rom .— 
Dio Cass., fragm. — Dion. Hal., 1, 88). There is 
reason to suppose, that some at least of the adjacent 
hills were the seat of similar settlements. The le¬ 
gend of the twin brothers, Romulus and Remus, ap¬ 
pears to have arisen from the proximity to Rome of 
a kindred town called Remoria, either on the Aven- 
tine, or on an eminence somewhat more distant to¬ 
wards the sea. (Dion. Hal., 1 , 85. — Niebuhr , Rom. 
Hist., vol. 1, note 618.) — The first enlargement of 
Rome seems to have been effected by the addition of 
the Caelian Hill, which, as we shall prosently show, was 
probably occupied by a different tribe from the people 
of the Palatine. Dionysius speaks of Romulus as 
holding both the Palatine and the Caelian Mount (2, 
50) The next addition to the city was the Esqui- 
line Hill. The festival of Septimontium preserved 
the memory of a time when Rome included only Pa- 
i.atium, with its adjacent regions, Velia, Cermalus, and 
Fagutal ; the Caelian Hill ; and Oppius and Cispius, 
the two summits of the Esquiline. (Festus, s. v. Sep¬ 
timontium. — Niebuhr, vol. 1, p. 382.) The Capito- 
line, Quirinal, and Viminal Hills were not yet com¬ 
prehended in the pomoerium : the Aventine was al¬ 
ways excluded from the hallowed boundary, even when 
it was substantially a part of the city. Thus we see 
that the notion that Rome was built on seven hills, 
was fitted originally to circumstances different from 
those to which it was afterward applied.—The Quirinal 
and Capitoline Hills seem to have been the seat of a 
Sabine settlement, distinct from the Rome on the 
Palatine, and in early times even hostile to it. The 
most poetical incident in the legend of Romulus, the 
rape of the Sabine virgins, involves an historical mean¬ 
ing. It appears to refer to a time when the Romans 
did not possess the right of intermarriage with some 
neighbouring Sabine states, and sought to extort it by 
force of arms. (Niebuhr, vol. 1, p. 286.) By the 
right of intermarriage (connubium) is meant the mu¬ 
tual recognition, that the children of parents, citizens 
of the two states, were entitled to the full rank of 
citizens in the state of their father. This right among 
the ancient states of both Greece and Italy was es¬ 
tablished only by express treaty. A citizen might live 
1172 


with a foreign wminan as his wife ; bat, unless the in¬ 
termarriage were sanctioned by public compact, his 
children lost their paternal rank. Niebuhr has ob¬ 
served, that even the poetic legend did not regard 
Rome as a genuine and lawful colony from Alba; 
otherwise it would, from the very beginning, have en¬ 
joyed the right of intermarriage w'ith the mother city 
and the other Latin towns; and there would have 
been no consistency in the story of the want of wom¬ 
en (vol. 1, note 628). — In the narrative of the war 
with the Latins, Livy calls Tatius only king of the Sa¬ 
bines ; but when he mentions that, at the close of the 
war, the Sabine appellation Quirites was extended to 
the people of Romulus, he derives it from Cures. 
(Liv., 1, 10, 13.) Dionysius has followed the An¬ 
nalists, who expressly specified Cures as the seat of 
the kingdom of Ta’tius. Strabo adopted the same 
tradition. Now, when we consider the exceedingly 
narrow limits within which all the other incidents of 
the early Roman traditions are confined, and even the 
historical events of the first years of the republic, after 
the kingly dominion of the city was reduced, it seems 
very unlikely that Rome, in its infancy, could have 
come into collision with Cures, which was distant 
from it more than twenty miles. Moreover, nothing 
is told of the war before the seizure of the Capitoline 
Hill. This is the point from which all the attacks of 
the Sabines proceed. Again, after the termination of 
the war, we hear nothing of the return of Tatius to 
Cures. He apparently deserts his old dominion, and 
establishes himself and his Sabines on the Capitoline 
and Quirinal Hills. (Dion. Hal., 2, 46, 50.) The 
senate of the people of Romulus and Tatius met in 
conference in the valley between the Palatine and 
Capitoline Hills ; and as the Palatine was the proper 
seat of the one, so the Capitoline must have been that 
of the other. Cures vanishes from our sight; and 
though the union of the Romans with the Sabine peo¬ 
ple, with whom they had warred, endured unbroken, 
there is no trace of their possessing a wider territory 
than the district immediately adjacent to the hills of 
Rome.—These considerations are sufficient *o expose 
the inconsistency of the vulgar legend : but the testi¬ 
mony to the incorporation of a part of the Sabines 
with the Roman people is far too strong to be set 
aside. The most probable supposition is, as has been 
before stated, that the Sabines, who in the early pe¬ 
riod of their national existence ^extended themselves 
down the left bank of the Tiber, had advanced even 
to the neighbourhood of Rome, and had established a 
settlement on the Quirinal and Capitoline Hills. Of 
this town the Capitoline must have been the citadel. 
It w T as likewise the seat of its religious worship: for 
the pontifical books recorded, that, before the building 
of the Capitol, its site was occupied by shrines and 
fanes consecrated by Tatius. (Liv., 1, 55.) Tatius 
we can scarcely regard as a more certainly historical 
personage than Romulus, though the story of his death 
at Lavinium has an historical aspect. He is only the 
personification of the tribe of the Titienses or Titles, 
who are said to have taken their name from him. 
But his people had a real existence. The name of 
their town has been lost: their own name was un¬ 
doubtedly Quirites. This people lived in close neigh¬ 
bourhood with the Romans on the Palatine ; but they 
were of different, and even hostile races, and no inter¬ 
course subsisted between them. Between two petty 
states, so situated in immediate neighbourhood, it is 
not at all improbable that women may have been a 
cause of contention. We can gather from the tradi¬ 
tions that war took place between them, which ended 
at last in a compact, by which not only the right of 
intermarriage, and a community of all other rights, 
were granted, but the two nations were combined into 
one. We can even trace the stages of their union 
It appears at first to have been a federal union. Each 






ROMA. 


ROMA. 


people had its own king and its own senate ; and they 
only met to confer upon matters of common interest. 
Afterward one king was acknowledged as the common 
chief of the united people: the two senates became 
one body, and consulted for the welfare of the whole 
state : the national names of Romans and Quirites 
were extended indifferently to both divisions of the 
citizens ; and they were no longer distinguished as 
nations, but only as tribes of the same people, under 
the denomination of Ramnes and Titienses. 

3. Early Roman Tribes. 

We are told that the people of Rome were divided 
into three tribes ; and, besides the Ramnes and Titi¬ 
enses, a third tribe appears, who are called Luceres. 
That they were looked upon as an important element 
in the state, is manifest from the legend that Roma 
was the daughter of Italus and Luceria. As the dis¬ 
tinction of the two former tribes arose from the dif¬ 
ference of their national origin, so we may conclude 
that the Luceres were a people of a third race, and 
united either by confederacy or subjection with the 
other two. The origin of the Titienses is distinctly 
marked : they were Sabines. That of the first tribe, 
the Ramnes, the genuine R-omans of the Palatine, is 
not so clear ; but it seems probable that they belonged 
to the Opican stock of the Latins. From these cir¬ 
cumstances we might reasonably conjecture that the 
third tribe, the Luceres, were the remains of a people 
of the Pelasgian race. They are always enumerated 
in the third place, as the Ramnes are in the first, which 
accords well with the idea that they were a conquered 
and subject class. But there is evidence that points 
more directly to this conclusion. Though the origin 
of the Luceres was accounted uncertain by the Ro¬ 
man historians, so that Livy does not venture to assign 
a cause for their name (Liv., 1, 13), yet it was gen¬ 
erally supposed to be derived from the Etruscan Lu- 
cumo, who had fought with Romulus aga'inst Tatius. 

( Varro , L. L., 4, 9.— Cic., Repub., 2, 8. — Propert., 
4, 1, 29.) Now “ Lucumo” was only a title mista¬ 
ken for a proper name, so that nothing could be de¬ 
rived from it, even if the incidents of the legend were 
received as historical facts. Moreover, the Etruscans, 
in the infancy of Rome, had not penetrated so far to 
the south. But the story becomes clear, if we admit 
that we have here the customary confusion between 
the Etruscans and Tyrrhenians, and that the allies of 
the Ramnes of the Palatine were a Tyrrhenian or Pe- 
iasgian people, a portion of the old inhabitants of La- 
tium. Dionysius adds a circumstance to the legend 
which confirms this hypothesis. He says that Lucu¬ 
mo brought his Tyrrhenians from the city Solonium 
(2, 37). No such city is known to have existed ; but 
the level tract on the seacoast south of the Tiber, 
lying between Rome on the one hand, and Laurentum 
and Lavinium on the other, was called the Solonian 
plain. This region Dionysius probably found men¬ 
tioned in some annals : this would assuredly be the 
seat of Pelasgian Latins ; and in this very direction 
we are expressly told that the early dominion of Rome 
extended most widely. ( Niebuhr , vol. 1, note 739.) 
The Tyrrhenian or Pelasgian origin of the Luceres 
may be deduced yet nore clearly from the legend 
which described their leader as Lucerus, king of Ar- 
dea. ( Festus , s. v. Lucerenses.) If we inquire for 
tne town or chief settlement of the Luceres, we shall 
find reason to conjecture that it was upon the Caelian 
Hill. We have seen that, according to one tradition, 
Romulus was supposed to possess the Palatine and 
the Caelian, while Tatius and his Quirites held the 
Quirinal and the Capitoline. (Dion. Hal, 2,50.) As 
the latter hills were the seat of the second tribe, the 
Titienses ; and the Palatine of the Ramnes, the first 
and genuine Romans, it seems reasonable to conclude 
that the Caelian wa." ‘h*’ s : te of the third and subwct 


tribe, the Luceres. Moreover, there is a tradition^ 
though a confused one, that the Caglian took its name 
from a Tyrrhenian or Tuscan chief, Caslius or Cables, 
an auxiliary of Romulus ; in short, the Lucumo from 
whom the Luceres were supposed to deduce their ap¬ 
pellation. (Dion. Hal., 2, 36.— Varro, L. L., 4, 8, 
9-— Festus, s. v. Ccelius Mons. — Tac., Ann., 4, 65.) 

4. Of Patricians and Clients; and of the Plebeian 
Order. 

Among the original population of the city, those 
who could show a noble or free ancestry constituted 
the Patrician Order, the term Patricii being equivalent 
to ingenui (Liv., 10,8. — Cincius, ap. Fest., s. v. Pa¬ 
tricks) ; and to them alone belonged a share in the 
government of the state. The rest of the people were 
subject to the king and to the body of the Patricians : 
and each man, with his household, was attached, un¬ 
der the appellation of Client, to the head of some Pa¬ 
trician family, whom he was bound to serve, and from 
whom he looked for protection and help. It has al¬ 
ready been stated, that after the Sabine war and the 
union of the people of R,omulus and Tatius, the citi¬ 
zens were distributed into three tribes, to which were 
given the names of Ramnes, Titienses, and Luceres ; 
these three primitive tribes were subdivided into thirty 
curice, ten in each tribe. In the national assembly the 
people were called together in their curice: the votes 
of the householders in each curia were taken in the 
separate curice ; and the votes of the greater number 
of the thirty curice determined the business before the 
assembly. This assembly was called the Comitia Cu- 
riata. Besides this popular assembly, there was a se¬ 
lect and perpetual council, called the senate. At its 
first institution it was composed of a hundred chief 
men of the Patrician order. Ten of these were of 
higher rank than the rest; and to one, the chief of all, 
was intrusted the care of the city whenever the king 
should be absent in war. After the completion of the 
union with the people of Tatius, the senate was doubled 
by the addition of a hundred Sabines; and the first 
Tarquinius added a third hundred to the ancient num¬ 
ber. The senators admitted by Tarquinius were call¬ 
ed “Fathers of the Less Houses or Kins” (Patres 
Minorum Gentium); and the old senators, “Fathers 
of the Greater Houses or Kins” (Patres Majorum 
Gentium). Such is a correct, although imperfect out¬ 
line of the forms of the primitive constitution.—The 
leading feature in this outline is the position that the 
original population of Rome was composed only of the 
Patrician order and their Clients. Upon this state¬ 
ment all our authorities are agreed, either by express 
assertion or implied consent. But this statement is 
generally accompanied by another, arising from a false 
conception, which has obscured and embarrassed the 
whole course of early Roman history. The Clients 
are supposed to have been the same with the Plebeians. 
They are conceived to have been called Plebeians as a 
body, in opposition to the Patrician body, but Clients 
individually, in relation to their particular patrons 
Such, at least, is the explicit statement of Dionysius, 
and of Plutarch, who has followed his authority ; and 
this view of the matter has been adopted without 
question by modern writers. This, however, is a pos¬ 
itive error. The Plebs, or Commonalty, was of more 
recent origin ; and the Plebeians, in their civil rights, 
held a middle place between the ruling Patricians and 
their dependant clients. One proof of this, and per¬ 
haps the strongest that can be adduced, is drawn from 
the nature of the Comitia Curiata. This great na¬ 
tional council was the most important of all the insti¬ 
tutions connected with the curice. At its first origin, 
and as long as it continued to have a real existence 
it was composed exclusively of the Patrician order. 
(Dion. Hal., 2, 21.) It cannot be thought strange 
that the Clients, an inferior order of men, personally 

1173 





ROMA. 


ROMA. 


dependant on individuals of the Patrician body, should 
not appear in the supreme council of the state. The 
great distinction which demands our attention is this, 
that the Plebeians were still more certainly excluded 
from it. Even when the Plebeian state had grown up 
to such magnitude and importance that it had its pe¬ 
culiar magistrates, and was become a chief element 
in the constitution of the commonwealth, even then 
the Comitia Curiata were exclusively Patrician, and 
the Plebeians had no part in them. The fact was, that 
the distribution of the people into tribes and curiae, 
and the still farther division into Gentes , or Houses, 
had respect only to the original stock of the nation ; 
and this original stock kept itself distinct from the 
body of new citizens, which was added by conquest, 
or sprung up insensibly from other causes. T. he Cli¬ 
ents, inasmuch as they were attached to individual 
Patricians, were attached to the Gentes ; and so may 
be considered, in this sense, as included in the greater 
divisions of curiae and tribes ; although it is manifest 
that they could not appear as members of the curiae, 
when these were called together as the component 
parts of the sovereign popular assembly. But the 
Plebeians grew up as a separate body by the side of 
the original Patrician citizens, and were never incor¬ 
porated in their peculiar divisions. They were not 
members of the Gentes, or of the curiae, or of the three 
tribes ; consequently they had no share in the Comi¬ 
tia Curiata ; and this assembly, in which resided the 
supreme power of the state, was, as we have alreaoy 
said, exclusively Patrician. It is needless to insist 
upon the importance of this distinction to a right view 
of the constitution, and of its successive changes ; 
and, indeed, to a right notion of the whole internal 
history, which, for more than two centuries, is made up 
of the struggles of the Patrician and Plebeian orders. 
Yet this distinction was overlooked by all the writers 
on Roman history; and they suffered themselves to 
be misled by the superficial theory of Dionysius, who 
represented the government of Rome as thoroughly 
democratical from the very foundation of the city, and 
conceived the public assembly to be composed of the 
whole male population of the state, with the exception 
of household slaves. 

5. Of the Patrician Gentes or Houses. 

The Patrician citizens of Rome were all compre¬ 
hended in certain bodies which were called Gentes 
(Kins or Houses). The word Kin would be the most 
exact translation of Gens ; but as this word is nearly 
obsolete, except in particular phrases, and as the*trans- 
lators of Niebuhr have rendered Gens by House, the 
latter term is now generally adopted. ( Philol. Muse¬ 
um, No 2, p. 348.) The members of the same Gens 
were called Gentiles. In each house were contained 
several distinct families. It is probable that these 
families were originally single households ; but where 
their numbers increased, they became families in the 
wider acceptation of the term. From the etymology 
of the term Gens, it is evident that a connexion by 
birth and kindred was held to subsist among all the 
members of the same house. The name of the house 
seems always to have been derived from some mythic 
hero ; and in the popular belief, the hero from whom 
the house was named was regarded as a common an¬ 
cestor. Thus the Julian house was regarded as the 
progeny of Julus, the son of .Eneas {Dion. Hal., 1, 70. 
— Virg., Mn., 6, 789); and the Valerian house was 
derived from Volesus, a Sabine warrior, and compan¬ 
ion of Tatius. (Dion. Hal., 2, 46.) Even those 
whose super! :r information enabled them to reject 
these fabulous genealogies, adhered to the notion of 
an original connexion by birth ; and a fictitious and 
;onventional kindred was acknowledged by the mem¬ 
bers of the same house. In describing this kindred 
of the Gentiles as fictitious and conventional, we do 
1174 


not mean to assert that in no case did such a con* 
nexion really exist. No doubt what were called 
Houses were first formed by natural consanguinity. 
But it is probable that these natural alliances had sug¬ 
gested an artificial arrangement, and that families not 
akin to one another had been distributed into houses by 
some legislative power. This will appear certain, if 
we shall be convinced of the existence of the precise 
numerical divisions which will be explained presently. 
If it be true that originally each curia contained ten 
gentes, and each gens ten householders, it is obvious 
that this exact division must have been made arbitrari¬ 
ly. A precisely similar division exisited among the 
ancient Athenians. The Eupatridae, a body which 
corresponds to the Patrician order at Rome, were di¬ 
vided into four Phyla?, which correspond to the three 
Roman tribes ; each Phylae into three Phratriae, which 
correspond to the Curise ; and each Phratria into thir¬ 
ty Genea or Houses j so that the total number oi 
Houses was three hundred and sixty. The Athenian 
Houses were distinguished by names of a patronymic 
form, which were derived from some hero or mythic 
ancestor. But, notwithstanding this fictitious kindred, 
and though all the terms which expressed the relation 
were derived etymologically from the notion of con¬ 
nexion by birth, the authorities from which we draw 
our precise knowledge of the institution directly and 
pointedly deny the reality of such a connexion, and 
ascribe the origin of the Genea to an arbitrary di¬ 
vision. ( Pollux , 8, 9, 111 .—Harpocration, s. v. yev- 
vijrai.—Niebuhr, vol. 1, note 795.) The great bond 
of union among the members of a House was a partici¬ 
pation in its common religious rites. It seems that 
each House had its peculiar solemnities, which were 
performed at a stated time and place. There can be 
no doubt that, at a fitting age, the children of the 
Gens were admitted to these solemnities, and publicly 
recognised as members of it; just as in Attica, at the 
feast of Apaturia, Athenian citizens of the pure blood 
were admitted and registered in their hereditary Phra- 
triae.—We have spoken of the Gentes as pertaining 
only to the Patricians. This is affirmed upon direct 
testimony. ( Liv., 10, 8.— Niebuhr, vol. 1, p. 316, 
note 821.) But, in making this statement, we must 
bear in mind that constructions of a similar nature ex¬ 
isted among the Plebeians, which had their origin when 
the subject and municipal towns were independent 
states. The Gentile connexions of the Plebeians were 
older than their character as Roman citizens. Thus, 
the Crecilii, though Plebeians at Rome, were Patri¬ 
cians of Praeneste, and claimed as the ancestor of their 
house Caeculus, the son of Vulcan. The distinction 
between the Patrician and Plebeian Houses was, in the 
first place, that every Patrician was a member of a 
House, while, among the Plebeians, comparatively but 
few families could claim the honours of hereditary no¬ 
bility ; and, in the second place, that the Patrician 
Houses were constituent elements of the Roman state. 
Their existence affected the constitution of the great 
councils of the nation, the Comitia Curiata and the 
senate, and their internal laws and usages were part 
of the common law of the Roman people ; while of 
the Plebeian Houses the state took no cognizance.— 
The nature of the Roman Gentes may be illustrated 
in some points by the analogy of the Gselic clans. All 
who belonged to the Gens or to the Clan bore a com¬ 
mon name. But as the clan contained not only the 
freemen or gentlemen of the clan, the Duinhewasals, 
who were the companions of the chief and the warri¬ 
ors of the clan, but also their dependants, to whom 
was left their scanty tillage ar ft the keeping of the 
cattle, and who, if ever they were called to follow the 
warlike array of the clan, were imperfectly armed, and 
placed in the hindmost ranks ; so the Roman Gens 
consisted of the freeborn Patricans and of their Clients. 
And our theory, that, notwithstanding the convention* 







ROM 


ROMULUS. 


kindred of the Gentiles , the Gentes were really, in 
many cases, composed of families which had no na¬ 
tional consanguinity, but had been arbitrarily arranged 
in them, will appear less strange when we remember 
that not only the Duinhewasals, but the meanest fol¬ 
lowers of a Highland clan, claim kindred with their 
chief, although, in many cases, it may be shown, by 
the strictest historical evidence, that the chief and his 
blood relations are of an entirely different race from 
the rest of the clan. The clansmen are Gaels or Celts, 
while the chief is not unfrequently of Norman descent. 
(. Malden's Roman History , p. 123, seqq.) 

Romulid^e, a patronymic given to the Roman peo¬ 
ple from Romulus, their first king, and the founder of 
the city. ( Virg ., jE n., 8, 638.) 

Romulus, according to the old poetic legend, was the 
son of Mars and Ilia or Rea Silvia, daughter of Numitor, 
and was born at the same birth with Remus. Amulius, 
who had usurped the throne of Alba, in defiance of the 
right of his elder brother Numitor, ordered the infants 
to be thrown into the Tiber, and their mother to be 
buried alive, the doom of a vestal virgin who violated 
her vow of chastity. The river happened at that time 
to have overflowed its banks, so that the two infants 
were not carried into the middle of the stream, but 
drifted along the margin, till the basket which contain¬ 
ed them became entangled in the roots of a wild vine 
at the foot of the Palatine Hill. At this time a she- 
wolf, coming down to the river to drink, suckled the 
infants, and carried them to her den among the thickets 
hard by. Here they were found by Faustulus, the king’s 
herdsman, who took them home to his wife Laurentia, 
by whom they were carefully nursed, and named Romu¬ 
lus and Remus. The two youths grew up, employed in 
the labours, the sports, and the perils of the pastoral oc¬ 
cupation of their foster-father. But, like the two sons 
of Cymbeline, their royal blood could not be quite con¬ 
cealed. Their superior mien, courage, and abilities 
soon acquired for them a decided superiority over 
their young compeers, and they became leaders of the 
youthful herdsmen in their contests with robbers or with 
rivals. Having quarrelled with the herdsmen of Nu¬ 
mitor, whose fiocks were accustomed to graze on the 
neighbouring hill Aventinus, Remus fell into an am¬ 
buscade, and was dragged before Numitor to be pun¬ 
ished. While Numitor, snruck with the noble bearing 
of the youth, and influenced by the secret stirrings of 
nature within, was hesitating what punishment to in¬ 
flict, Romulus, accompanied by Faustulus, hastened to 
.he rescue of Remus. On their arrival at Alba, the 
secret of their origin was discovered, and a plan was 
speedily organized for the expulsion of Amulius, and 
the restoration of their grandfather Numitor to his 
throne. This was soon accomplished ; but the twin- 
brothers felt little disposition to remain in a subordi¬ 
nate position at Alba, after the enjoyment of the rude 
liberty and power to which they had been accustomed 
among their native hills. They therefore requested 
from their grandfather permission to build a city on 
the banks of the Tiber, where their lives had been so 
miraculously preserved. Scarcely had this permission 
been granted, when a contest arose between the two 
brothers respecting the site, the name, and the sover¬ 
eignty of the city which they were about to found. 
Romulus wished it to be built on the Palatine Hill, and 
to be called by his name ; Remus preferred the Aven- 
tine, and his own name. To terminate their dispute 
amicably, they agreed to refer it to the decision of the 
gods by augury. Romulus took his station on the Pal¬ 
atine Hill, Remus on the Aventine. At sunrise Remus 
saw six vultures, and immediately after Romulus saw 
twelve. The superiority was adjudged to Romulus, 
because he had seen the greater number; against 
which decision Remus remonstrated indignantly, on 
the ground that he had first received an omen. Rom¬ 
ulus then proceeded to mark out the boundaries for 


the wall of the intended city. This was done oy a 
plough with a brazen ploughshare, drawn by a bull 
and a heifer, and so directed that the furrow should 
fall inward. The plough was lifted and carried over 
the spaces intended to be left for gates ; and in this 
manner a square space was marked out, including the 
Palatine Hill, and a small portion of the land at its 
base, termed Roma Quadrata. This took plac*) on the 
21st April, on the day of the festival of Pales, the 
goddess of shepherds. While the wall was beginning 
to rise above the surface, Remus, whose mind was still 
rankling with his discomfiture, leaped over it, scorn¬ 
fully saying, “ Shall such a wall as that keep your 
city V Immediately Romulus, or, as others say, Ce- 
ler, who had charge of erecting that part of the wall, 
struck him dead to the ground with the implement 
which he held in his hand, exclaiming, “ So perish 
whosoever shall hereafter overleap these ramparts.” 
By this event Romulus was left the sole sovereign of 
the city ; yet he felt deep remorse at his brother’s 
fate, buried him honourably, and, when he sat to ad¬ 
minister justice, placed an empty seat by his side, with 
a sceptre and crown, as if acknowledging the right of 
his brother to the possession of equal power. To 
augment as speedily as possible the number of his sub¬ 
jects, Romulus set apart, in his new city, a place of 
refuge, to which any man might flee, and be there pro¬ 
tected from his pursuers. By this device the popula¬ 
tion increased rapidly in males, but there was a great 
deficiency in females ; for the adjoining states, regard¬ 
ing the followers of Romulus as little better than a 
horde of brigands, refused to sanction intermarriages. 
JJut the schemes of Romulus were not to be so frus¬ 
trated. In honour of the god Consus, he proclaimed 
games, to which he invited the neighbouring states. 
Great numbers came, accompanied by their families ; 
and, at an appointed signal, the Roman youth, rushing 
suddenly into the midst of the spectators, snatched up 
the unmarried women in their arms, and carried them 
off by force. This outrage was immediately resented, 
and Romulus found himself involved in a war with all 
the neighbouring states. Fortunately for Rome, though 
those states had sustained a common injury, they did 
not unite their forces in the common cause. They 
fought singly, and were each in turn defeated ; Cre- 
nina, Crustumerium, and Antemnae fell successively 
before the Roman arms. Romulus slew with his own 
hands Acron, king of Caenina, and bore off his spoils, 
dedicating them, as spolia opima , to Jupiter Feretrius. 
The third part of the lands of the conquered towns was 
seized by the victors ; and such of the people of these 
towns as were willing to remove to Rome were re¬ 
ceived as free citizens. In the mean time, the Sa¬ 
bines, to avenge the insult which they had sustained, 
had collected together forces under Titus Tatius, king 
of the Quirites. The Romans were unable to meet 
so strong an army in the field, and withdrew within 
their walls. They had previously placed their flocks 
in what they thought a place of safety, on the Capito- 
line Hill, which, strong as it was by nature, they had 
still farther secured by additional fortifications. Tar- 
peia, the daughter of the commander of that fortress, 
having fallen into the hands of the Sabines, agreed to 
betray the access to the hill for the ornaments they 
wore upon their arms. At their approach she opened 
the gate, and, as they entered, they crushed her to 
death beneath their shields. From her the cliff of the 
Capitoline Hill was called the Tarpeian Rock. The 
attempt of the Romans to regain this place of strength 
brought on a general engagement. The combat was 
long and doubtful. At one time the Romans were 
almost driven into the city, which the Sabines were 
on the point of entering along with them, when fresh 
courage was infused into the fugitives in consequence 
of Romulus vowing a temple to Jupiter Stator, and by 
a stream of water which rushed out of the temple ot 

1175 




ROMULUS. 


R 0 S 


j^nus, and swept away the Sabines from the gate. 
The bloody struggle was renewed during several suc¬ 
cessive days, with various fortune and great mutual 
slaughter. At length, the Sabine women who had 
been carried away, and who were now reconciled to 
their fate, rushed with loud outcries between the com¬ 
batants, imploring their husbands and their fathers to 
spare on each side those who were now equally dear. 
Both parties paused ; a conference began, a peace was 
concluded, and a treaty framed, by which the two na¬ 
tions were united into one, and Romulus and Tatius 
became the joint sovereigns of the united people. But, 
though united, each nation continued to be governed by 
its own king and senate. During the double sway of 
Romulus and Tatius, a war was undertaken against 
the Latin town of Cameria, which was reduced and 
made a Roman colony, and its people were admitted 
into the Roman state, as had been done with those 
whom Romulus previously subdued. Tatius was soon 
afterward slain by the people of Laurentum, because 
he had refused to do them justice against his kinsmen, 
who had violated the laws of nations by insulting their 
ambassadors. The death of Tatius left Romulus sole 
monarch of Rome. He was soon engaged in a war 
with Fidenae, a Tuscan settlement on the banks of the 
Tiber. This people he likewise overcame, and placed 
in the city a Roman colony. This war, extending the 
Roman frontier, led to a hostile collision with Veii, in 
which he was also successful, and deprived Veii, at 
that time one of the most powerful cities of Etruria, 
of a large portion of its territories, though he found that 
the city itself was too strong to be taken. The reign 
of Romulus now drew near its close. One day, 
while holding a military muster or review of his army, 
on a plain near the Lake Capra, the sky was suddenly 
overcast with thick darkness, and a dreadful tempest 
of thunder and lightning arose. The people fled in 
dismay; and, when the storm abated, Romulus, over 
whose head it had raged most fiercely, was nowhere 
to be seen. A rumour was circulated, that, during the 
tempest, he had been carried to heaven by his father, 
the god Mars. This opinion was speedily confirmed 
by the report of Julius Proculus, who declared that, 
as he was returning by night from Alba to Rome, 
Romulus appeared unto him in a form of more than 
mortal majesty, and bade him go and tell the Romans 
that Rome was destined by the gods to be the chief 
city of the earth ; that human power should never be 
able to withstand her people ; and that he himself would 
be their guardian god Quirinus. (Pint., Vit. Rom .— 
Liv., 1, 4, seqq .— Dion. Hal., &c.) — So terminates 
what may be termed the legend of Romulus, the found¬ 
er and first king of Rome. That such an individual 
never existed is now very generally allowed, and, of 
course, the whole narrative is entirely fabulous. As 
to Romulus were ascribed all those civil and military 
institutions of the Romans which were handed down 
by immemorial tradition ; those customs of the nation 
to which no definite origin could be assigned ; so to 
Numawere attributed all the ordinances and establish¬ 
ments of the national religion. As the idea of the an¬ 
cient polity was imbodied under the name of Romu¬ 
lus, so was the idea of the national religion under the 
name of Numa. The whole story of Romulus, from 
the violation of his vestal mother by Mars, till the end 
of his life, when he is borne away in clouds and dark¬ 
ness by his divine parent, is essentially poetical. In 
this, as in other cases, the poetical and imaginative 
form of the tradition is also the most ancient and gen¬ 
uine : and the variations, by which it is reduced into 
something physically possible, are the falsifications of 
later writers, who could not understand that, in popu¬ 
lar legends, the marvellous circumstances are not the 
only parts which are not historically true, and that, by 
the substitution of commonplace incidents, they were 
spoiling a good poem without making a good history. 

1176 


Romulus, the founder of Rome, is merely the Romai 
people personified as an individual. It was the fash¬ 
ion in ancient tradition to represent races and nations 
as sprung from an ancestor, or composed of the fol¬ 
lowers of a leader, whose name they continued to 
bear; while, in reality, the name of the fictitious chief 
was derived from the name of the people ; and the 
transactions of the nation were not unfrequently de¬ 
scribed as the exploits of the simple hero. (Nether- 
ington's History of Rome , p. 4, seqq. — Malden s Hitt 
Rome, p. 122, seqq ) 

Romulus Silvius, I. a king of Alba.—II. Momyl- 
lus Augustulus, the last of the emperors of the west¬ 
ern empire of Rome. (Vid. Augustulus.) 

Romus, a king of the Latins, who expelled the Tyr¬ 
rhenians from the city afterward called, from him, Ro¬ 
ma. (Pint., Vit. Rom. —Consult remarks under the 
article Roma, page 1172, col. 1.) 

Roscia Lex, de Theatris, by L. Roscius Otho, the 
tribune, A.U.C. 685. ( Vid. Otho II.) 

Roscianum, a fortified port on the coast of Bruttium, 
below Sybaris. It is now Rossano. The haven of 
the Thunans, by name Roscia, was nearer the sea, at 
the mouth of a small river. (Itin. Ant. —Procop., 
Rer. Goth., 3.— Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 387.) 

Roscius, I. Q., a Roman actor, from his surname 
Gallus supposed to have been a native of Gaul, north 
of the Po, although educated in the vicinity of Lanu- 
vium and Aricia. He was so celebrated on the stage 
that his name has become, in modern times, a usual 
term to designate an actor of extraordinary excellence. 
Cicero, in his work on Divination (1, 36), makes his 
brother Quintus say that the young Roscius was found 
one night in his cradle enveloped in the folds of a ser¬ 
pent ; that his father, having consulted the auspices 
respecting this prodigy, they told him that his child 
would attain great celebrity. Quintus adds, that a 
certain Praxiteles had represented this in sculpture, 
and that the poet Archias had celebrated it in a song. 
Roscius had some defect in his eyes, and is therefore 
said to have been the first Roman actor who used the 
Greek mask ; the performers, before this, using only 
caps or beavers, and having their faces daubed and 
disguised with the lees of wine, as at the commence¬ 
ment of the dramatic art in £}reece. And yet, as ap¬ 
pears from the following passage of Cicero, the mask 
was not invariably worn even by Roscius : “ All,” 
says Cicero, “ depends upon the face, and all the pow¬ 
er of the face is centred in the eyes. Of this our old 
men are the best judges, for they were not lavish of 
their applause even to Roscius in a mask.” (De 
Orat., 3, 59.) Valerius Maximus (8, 7) states, that 
Roscius studied with the greatest care the most trifling 
gesture which he was to make in public ; and Cicero 
relates, that though the house of this comedian was a 
kind of school where good actors were formed, yet 
Roscius declared that he never had a pupil with whom 
he was completely satisfied. If Plutarch be correctly 
informed, Cicero himself studied under this great ac¬ 
tor ; he was certainly his friend and admirer. Macro- 
bius (Sat., 2, 10) informs us, that Cicero and Roscius 
sometimes tried which of the two could express a 
thought more forcibly, the one by his words, or the 
other by his gestures, and that these exercises gave 
Roscius so high an opinion ol his art, that he wrote a 
work, in which he made a comparison between it and 
eloquence. The same author mentions that Sylla, the 
dictator, to testify his admiration, sent the actor a gold 
rino-, a symbol of equestrian rank. H 19 daily profits 
were 1000 denarii (nearly one hundred and eighty dol¬ 
lars). ‘According to Pliny, his annual gains were about 
twenty thousand dollars. Roscius died about 62 B.C.; 
for, in Cicero’s defence of Archias, which was deliv¬ 
ered A.TJ. 693, the death of Roscius is alluded to as 
a recent event. (Horat., Epist., 2, 1, 82.— Plut., 
Vit. Cic. — Dunlop's Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. 591.)—IT 





RUB 


RUG 


Sextus, a native of Ameria, defended by Cicero in the 
first public or criminal trial in which that orator spoke. 
The father of Roscius had two mortal enemies, of his 
own name and district. During the proscriptions of 
Sylla, he was assassinated one evening while return¬ 
ing home from supper ; and on the pretence that he 
was in the list of the proscribed, his estate was pur¬ 
chased for a mere nominal price by Chrysocmnus, a 
favourite slave, to whom Sylla had given freedom, and 
whom he had permitted to buy the property of Roscius 
as a forfeiture. Part of the valuable lands thus ac¬ 
quired was made over by Chrysogonus 10 the Roscii. 
These new proprietors, in order to secure themselves 
in the possession, hired one Erucius, an informer and 
prosecutor by profession, to charge the son with the 
murder of his father, and they, at the same time, sub¬ 
orned witnesses, in order to convict him of the parri¬ 
cide. Cicero succeeded in obtaining his acquittal, 
and was highly applauded by the whole city for his 
courage in espousing a cause so well calculated to 
give offence to Sylla, then in the height of his power. 
The oration delivered on this occasion is still extant, 
and must not be confounded with another that has 
also come down to us in defence of the tragedian 
Roscius, and which involved merely a question of 
civil right. ( Cic ., pro Rose. Amer.) — lll. Otho. 

( Vid. Otho II.) 

Rotomagus, a city of Gallia Lugdunensis, at a la¬ 
ter period the capital of Lugdunensis Secunda. Now 
Rouen. ( Ptol.) 

Roxana, a Bactrian female, remarkable for her beau¬ 
ty. She was the daughter of Oxyartes, commander 
of the Sogdian rock for Darius ; and, on the reduction 
of this stronghold by Alexander, became the wife of 
the conqueror. At the death of the monarch she was 
enceinte, and was subsequently delivered of a son, 
who received the name of Alexander JEgus, and who 
was acknowledged as king along with Philip Aridceus. 
Roxana having become jealous of the authority of 
Statira, the other wife of Alexander, destroyed her by 
the aid of Perdiccas ; but she herself was afterward 
shut up in Amphipolis, and put to death by Cassander. 

( Pint ., Vit. Alex. — Quint. Curt , 8, 4.— Id ., 10, 6.— 
Tustin, 12, 15, &c.) 

Roxolani. Vid. Rhoxolani. 

Rubeas Promont^rium, a promontory mentioned 
by Pytheas ( Plin 4? 13), and supposed by many to 
be the same with the North Cape, but shown by Man- 
nert to correspond rather to the northern extremity of 
Curland. {Geogr ., vol. 3, p. 300, seqq.) 

Rubt, a town of Apulia, between Canusium and 
Butuntun, now Ruvo. The inhabitants were called 
Rubustini and Rubitini. {Plin., 3, 11.) It is also 
referred to by Horace and Frontinus. {Horat., Sat., 

1, 5, 94.— Frontin., de Col.) For an account of some 
interesting discoveries made near Ruvo, consult Ro- 
manelli (vol. 2, p. 172.— Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol. 

2, p. 299). 

Rubicon, a small stream of Italy, falling into the 
Adriatic a little to the north of Ariminum, and form¬ 
ing, in part, the northern boundary of Italia Propria. It 
vas on this last account that it was forbidden the Ro- : 
nan generals to pass the Rubicon with an armed force, ■ 
ander the most dreadful imprecations ; for in viola- i 
ting this injunction they would enter on the immedi- < 
ate territory of the republic, and would be, in effect, i 
declaring war upon their country. Caasar crossed this \ 
stream with his army at the commencement of the civil 
war, and narangued his troops at Ariminum. When i 
Augustus subsequently included Gallia Cisalpina with¬ 
in the limits of Italy, the Rubicon sank in importance ; 
and in modern times it is difficult to ascertain the po- ^ 
sition of the true stream. D’Anville makes it corre- ] 
spond with a current which, formed of three brooks, is < 
called at its mouth Fiumesino. A formal papal de- 1 
tree, howei er, issued in 1756. decided in favour of the < 
7 K 


3 Lusa; but popular tradition designates the Pisatett 

• as the true stream, and this river best suits the account 
5 we have of the situation of the Rubicon. ( Mannert , 

Geogr., vol. 9, pt. 1, p. 243, seqq. — Appian, Bell. Civ., 
■ 2, 135.— Suet., Cces., 30.— Plut., Vit. Cces. et Pomp. 

• —Cic., Phil., 6, 3.— Strab., 227 .—Plin., 3, 15 ) 

Rubigo, a goddess. {Vid. Robigo.) 
t Rubo or Rhubon, a river of Sarmatia, now the 
Windau according to Wilhelm {Germanien, und seine 
: Bewohner, Weimar, 1823); but, according to Gossel- 

• lin, the Niemen. 

RudIjE, I. a city of Italy, in the territory of the Ca- 
labri, in Iapygia, and below Brundisium. It was ren¬ 
dered famous by being the birthplace of Ennius. {Sil. 
Hal., 12, 393.— Horat., Od., 4, 8, 20.— Ovid, A. A., 
3, 409.— Strabo, 281.) The more proper form of the 
name is Rhudiae, the appellation being one of Greek 
origin. According to an antiquarian writer, the re¬ 
mains of Rhudi®, still known by the name of Ruge , 
were to be seen close to those of the town of Lupiae; 
he also states, that these towns were so near to each 
other that they might be said to form but one. {Ant, 
de Ferar. de sit. Iapyg., p. 77.—Compare D'Anville, 
Anal Geogr. de Vltalie, p. 230.— Cramer's Anc. It¬ 
aly, vol. 2, p. 308.) — II. A town of Apulia, in Italy, 
placed in the Tabula Theodosiana between Canusium 
and Rubi. It is sometimes called, for distinction* 
sake, Rudke (or Rhudiag) Peucetiae, as it lay in the 
district of Peucetia ; the other Rudiae being styled 
Rudise Calabriae. Romanelli places the site of this 
town at Andria (vol. 2, p. 170.— Plin., 3, 11.— Mela, 
2, 4.— Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol. 2, p. 299.) 

Rufinus, I. minister of state to the Emperors The¬ 
odosius and Arcadius, and a native of Gaul. He was 
naturally vindictive and cruel, and is supposed to have 
stimulated Theodosius to the dreadful massacre of 
Thessalonica. After the death of this monarch, he 
succeeded, in fact, to absolute authority over the East¬ 
ern empire in the reign of Arcadius. He soon, how¬ 
ever, fell beneath the power of Stilicho, general under 
Honorius in the Western empire, and was put to death 
by the army. He is said to have aspired to the supreme 
authority. — II. A Latin poet, supposed to have flour¬ 
ished about the sixth century. Cruquius published a 
small poem, which he attributed to Rufinus, on the fa¬ 
ble of Pasiphae, which he found in an old manuscript. 
This poem is composed of verses written in all the dif¬ 
ferent measures employed by Horace, and is, therefore, 
sometimes prefixed to editions of the latter poet. It 
is regarded by many as the production of some gram¬ 
marian, and, probably, of the same Rufinus, a treatise 
on metres by whom still remains, as well as a small 
poem, in thirty-two verses, on Love. {Burmann, An- 
thol, Lat., vol. 1, p. 513, 663. — Scholl, Hist. Lit. 
Rom., vol. 3, p. 99.)—III. A grammarian of Antioch, 
alluded to in the previous article. Besides the works 
there mentioned, he wrote also a commentary on the 
metres of Terence.—IV. An ecclesiastical writer, s 
native of Concordia, a place near Aquileia. By some 
he is called Toranius. He was the friend of St. Je¬ 
rome, with whom, however, he had at one time a quar¬ 
rel on points of doctrine. His death occurred A.D. 
408. Rufinus translated, from Greek into Latin, Jo¬ 
sephus, and the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius, 
&c.; besides which, he left some treatises in defence 
of Origen, and on other subjects. His works were 
printed at Paris in 1580. 

Rugii, a people of Germany, on the coast of the Si¬ 
nus Codanus, between the Viadrus or Oder and the 
Vistula, and situate to the west of the Gothones. 
They were in possession of the isle of Rugia (now Ru- 
gen), where the goddess Hertha was worshipped with 
peculiar reverence. Ptolemy gives Rhugium as their 
capital. At a subsequent period they founded a new 
kingdom on the northern side of the Danube, named 
after them Rugiland, in Austria and Upper Hungary, 

1177 





RUT 


SAB 


which was overthrown by Odoacer. ( Tac ., Germ,., 
43. — Jour. Get., 50, 57 ) 

Rupilius, a native of Prasneste, surnamed Rex, who, 
having been proscribed by Octavianus, then a trium¬ 
vir, fled to the army of Rutus, and became a fellow- 
soldier of Horace. Jealous, however, of the military 
advancement which the latter had obtained, Rupilius 
reproached him with the meanness of his origin, and 
Horace therefore retaliates in the seventh Satire of 
the first book, where a description is given of a suit 
between this Rupilius and a certain Persius, tried be¬ 
fore Marcus Brutus, at that time governor of Asia Mi¬ 
nor. (Compare Gesner, ad loc. — Dunlop's Roman 
Literature, vol. 3, p. 251.) 

Ruteni, a people of Celtic Gaul, whose territory 
answered to the modern Rouergue. Their chief city 
was Segodunum, now Rhodez. (Coes., B. G., 1, 45. 
— Id. ib., 7, 7, &c.) 

Rutilius, I. Lupus, a rhetorician, a treatise of 
whose, in two books, de Figuris Sententiarum et Elo- 
cutionis, still remains. The period when he flour¬ 
ished is uncertain. A false reading in Quintilian (3, 
1, 21) has given rise to the belief that he was con¬ 
temporary with this writer ; but Ruhnken has shown 
that, in this passage of Quintilian, we must read Tu- 
tilius for Rutilius, and that Rutilius was anterior to 
Celsus, who lived under Augustus and Tiberius. The 
work of Rutilius already alluded to is extracted and 
translated from a work by a certain Gorgias, a Greek 
writer contemporary with him, and not to be con¬ 
founded with the celebrated Gorgias of Leontini. 
The best edition is that of Ruhnken, Lugd. Bat., 
1768, 8vo, republished by Frotscher, Lips., 1831, 
8vo.—II. Numatianus, a native of Gaul, born either 
at Tolosa ( Toulouse ) or Pictavii (Poitiers), and who 
flourished at the close of the fourth and commence¬ 
ment of the fifth centuries of our era. We have an 
imperfect poem of his remaining, entitled Itinerarium, 
or De Reditu. It is written in elegiac verse, and, 
from the elegance of its diction, the variety and beauty 
of its images, and the tone of feeling which pervades 
it, assigns its author a distinguished rank among the 
later Roman poets. Rutilius had been compelled to 
make a journey from Rome into Gaul, for the purpose 
of visiting his estates in the latter country, which had 
been ravaged by the barbarians, and the Itinerary is 
intended to express the route which he took along the 
coast of the Mediterranean. Rutilius is supposed by 
some to have been prefect at Rome when that city 
was taken by Alaric, A.D. 410. He was not a Chris¬ 
tian, as appears from several passages of his poem, 
though the heavy complaints made by him against the 
Jewish race ought not, as some editors have ima¬ 
gined, to be extended to the Christians. We have re¬ 
maining of this poem the first book, and sixty-eight 
lines of the second ; and perhaps the particle potius, 
in the first line of the first book, would indicate that 
the commencement of this book was also lost. The 
remains of the poetry of Rutilius are given by Bur- 
mann and Wernsdorff, in their'respective editions of 
the Poetez Latini Minores. There are also separate 
editions. 

Rutuli, a people of Latium, along the coast be¬ 
low the mouth of the Tiber. They were a small com¬ 
munity, who, though perhaps originally distinct from 
the Latins, became subsequently so much a part of 
that nation that they do not require a separate notice. 
Their capital was Ardea, and Turnus was their prince, 
according to the fable of the iEneid, when the Trojans 
arrived in Italy. (Vid. Ardea, Latium, Turnus.) 

RutupLe (called also Ritupce, Portus Ritupis, and 
Portus Ritupius ), a harbour on the coast of Brit¬ 
ain, famed for its excellent oysters. It is generally 
considered as corresponding to Richborough, though 
D’Anville is in favour of Sandwich. (Compare Bede, 
l, 1, u Rutubi, nunc corrupte Reptacostir Rutu- 
1178 


piae was the port to which the Romans commonly 
came, from the opposite coast of Gaul, the harbour on 
this latter side, whence they usually started, being Ge- 
soriacum. Thus the Itinerarium Maritimum (p. 496) 
says, “ A portu Gesoriacensi ad portum Ritupium 
Stadia CCCCL ” (46 geographical miles). It is on 

this account that the name of the Ritupiar. harbour 
frequently occurs in the later writers. The Itin. Ant. 
(p. 463) gives the same statement as the Itin. Marit. 
relative to the passage across. ( Mannert, Geogr. % 
vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 160.) As regards the liutupian oys¬ 
ters, consult Juvenal (4, 141), and the remarks of the 
commentators, and also Pliny (9, 54 ; 32, 6). 

S. 

Saba, the capital of the Sabaei, in Arabia Felix, 
situate on a rising ground, in the interior of the coun¬ 
try, and in a northeastern direction from the harbour 
of Pudun (Dsjesan). According to Strabo (778), it 
was also called Meriaba, and in this he is followed by 
later writers, who, however, give the more correct 
form Mariaba. It would seem, that Mariaba is a gen¬ 
eral term for a chief city, and hence we find more than 
one appearing in the geography of Arabia. Accord¬ 
ing to Mannert, Saba would appear to correspond with 
the modern Saadx or Saade. (Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 1, 

p. 66.) 

Sabachus or Sabacon, a king of ^Ethiopia, who in¬ 
vaded Egypt, and reigned there after the expulsion of 
King Amasis. After a reign of fifty years he was 
terrified by a dream, and retired into his own king¬ 
dom. Diodorus Siculus states (1, 66), that after the 
departure of Sabachus, there was an anarchy of two 
years, which was succeeded by the reign of twelve 
kings, who, at their joint expense, constructed the laby¬ 
rinth. (Consult remarks under the article Psammiti- 
chus.) The name of Sabacon, in hieroglyphic char¬ 
acters, has been found amid the ruins of Abydos, 
(Bakr, ad Herod., 2, 36.) 

Sab^ei, a people of Arabia Felix, represented by 
some of the ancient writers, especially the poets, as 
one of the richest and happiest nations in the world, 
on account of the valuable products of their land. 
Another name, viz., that of the Homeritae (thought to 
be derived from Himiar, the name of a sovereign, and 
which signifies the red king), appears in a later age 
confounded with that of the Sabseans. (Vid. Saha.) 

Sabate, a town of Etruria, northeast of Caere, and 
not far from the site of the present Bracciano. It was 
in the immediate vicinity of a lake, called from it the 
Lacus Sabatinus. The town was said to have been 
swallowed up by the waters of the lake, and it was 
even asserted, that in calm weather its ruins might 
still be seen below the surface of the water. (Sotion., 
de Mirand. Font.) Columella notices the fish of the 
lake, and Frontinus speaks of its water being conveyed 
by an aqueduct to the capital. (Columell., 8, 16.— 
Front., de Aquoed., 1 . — Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1 , 
p. 235.) 

SabatIni, a people of Campania, who derived their 
name from the small river Sabatus that flowed through 
their territory. They are mentioned by Livy (26, 33) 
among the Campanian tribes that revolted to Hanni 
bal. (Cramer's Anc. Italy , vol. 2, p. 247.) 

Sabatus, $ river rising in Campania, and flowing 
into Samnium, where it joined the Calor, near Bene- 
ventum. It is now the Sabbato. (Cramer's Ant, 
Italy, vol. 2, p. 247.) 

Sabazius, a surname of Bacchus, given him, ac¬ 
cording to some, by the Thracians (Schol. ad Arist., 
Vesp., v. 9), or, according to others, by the Phrygi¬ 
ans. (Strabo, 470.— Schol. ad Aristoph., Av., v. 874. 
— Schol. ad Lysist, v. 398.) De Sacy inclines to the 
opinion that the root of this appellation may be found 
in the name of the Arabian city Saba. ‘ (Samte-Croix 





SAB 


SABINI. 


Mystbres du Paganisme, vol. 2, p. 95, edit. De 
Sacy.) 

Sabbata or Sabbatha, a city of Arabia Felix, the 
capital of the Chatramatitae. Most commentators on 
the Periplus, in which mention is made of it, suppose 
it to be the same with Schibam or Scebam, which Al- 
Edrisi places in Hadramaut, at four stations, or a 
hundred miles, from March. ( Vincent's Periplus, p. 
334.) Mannert, however, declares for March (Geogr., 
vol. 6, pt. 1, p. 83). The modern name March will 
be a corruption from Mariaba, a name common to 
many cities of Arabia. This place was the great de¬ 
pot for the incense-trade. (Vid. Saba.) 

Sabelli. Vid. Sabini. 

SabIna, Julia, grand-niece of the Emperor Trajan, 
and wife of Hadrian, to whom she became united 
chiefly through the means of the Empress Plotina. 
She lived unhappily with her husband, partly from her 
own asperity of temper, and partly, perhaps, from the 
gross vices of her consort. Hadrian’s unkindness to 
her is said to have been the cause of her death. (Vid. 
Hadrianus.) 

Sabini, a people of Italy, whose territory lay to the 
northeast of Rome. The Sabines appear to be gen¬ 
erally considered as one of the most ancient indige¬ 
nous tribes of Italy, and one of the few who preserved 
their race pure and unmixed. ( Strabo , 228.) We 
are not to expect, however, that fiction should have 
been more sparing of its ornaments in setting forth 
their origin, than in the case of other nations far less 
interesting and less celebrated. Dionysius of Halicar¬ 
nassus, among other traditions respecting the Sabines, 
mentions one which supposes them to have been a col¬ 
ony of the Lacedaemonians about the time of Lycurgus 
(2,’ 49), an absurd fable which has been eagerly caught 
up by the Latin poets and mythologists. (Sil. Ital., 
15, 545.— Odd, Fast., 1, 260 .—Hygin., ap. Serv.ad 
JEn., 8, 638 ) Their name, according to Cato, was 
derived from the god Sabus, an aboriginal deity, sup¬ 
posed to be the same as the god invoked by the Latins 
in the expression Medius Fidius. ( Cramer's Anc. 
Italy, vol. 1, p. 297.)—The Romans, observes Nie¬ 
buhr, have no common national name for the Sabines, 
and the tribes which are supposed to have issued from 
them : the latter, whether Marsians and Pelignians, or 
Samnites and Lucanians, they term Sabellians. That 
these tribes called themselves Savini or Sabini is 
nearly certain, from the inscription on the Samnite de¬ 
narius coined in the Social war ; at least as to the 
Samnites, whose name is in every form manifestly, and 
in the Greek 2 avvlrat directly, derived from Savini: 
but the usage of a people whose writings have perish¬ 
ed, like everything that is extinct in fact, has lost its 
rights. I think myself at liberty to employ the term 
Sabellians for the whole race ; since the tribes which 
were so named by the Romans are far more impor¬ 
tant than the Sabines, and it would clearly have offend¬ 
ed a Latin ear to have called the Samnites Sabines. 
—When Rome crossed the frontiers of Latium, the 
Sabellians were the most widely-extended and the 
greatest people in Italy. The Etruscans had already 
sunk, as they had seen the nations of earlier greatness 
sink, the Tyrrhenians, Umbrians, and Ausomans. As 
the Dorians were great in their colonies, the mother- 
country remaining little; and as it lived in peace, 
while the tribes it sent forth diffused themselves widely 
by conquests and settlements, so, according to Cato, 
was it with the old Sabine nation. Their original 
home is placed by him about Amiternum, in the high¬ 
est Apennines of the Abruzzo, where, on Mount Ma- 
jella, the snow is said never wholly to disappear, and 
where the mountain-pastures in summer receive the 
Apulian herds. From this district they issued in very 
anc lent times, long before the Trojan war; and. ex¬ 
pelling in one quarter the Aborigines, in another the 
Umbrans, took possession of the territory which for 


three thousand years has borne their name. Out ol 
this the overflowing population migrated to different 
parts. It was an Italian religious usage, in times of 
severe pressure from war or pestilence, to vow a sa¬ 
cred spring (ver sacrum ); that is, all the creatures 
born in the spring: at the end of twenty years the cat 
tie were sacrificed or redeemed, the youth sent out. 
(Liv., 33, 44.— Festus,s. v. Mamertini. — Dion. Hal., 
1, 16.) Such a vow the Romans made in the second 
year of the second Punic war ; but only as to their 
flocks and herds. (Liv., 22, 9.) Such vows, the tra¬ 
dition runs, occasioned the sending out of the Sabine 
colony : the gods to whom each was dedicated charged 
sacred animals to guide them on their way. One col¬ 
ony was led by a woodpecker, the bird of Mamers, 
into Picenum, then peopled by Pelasgians or Liburni- 
ans : another multitude by an ox into the land of the 
Opicans ; this became the great Samnite people : a 
wolf guided the Hirpini. That colonies issued from 
Sarnnium is known historically. The Frentani on the 
Adriatic were Samnites, who emigrated in the course 
of the second Roman war ; Samnites conquered Cam¬ 
pania and the country as far as the Silarus; another 
host, calling themselves Lucanians, subdued and gave 
name to Lucania.—The Italian national migrations 
came down like others from the North ; and Cato’s 
opinion, that the origin of all the Sabellians was de¬ 
rived from the neighbourhood of Amiternum, admits 
of no other rational meaning than that the most ancient 
traditions, whether they may have been Sabine or Um¬ 
brian, assigned that district as the habitation of the 
people that conquered Reate. Dionysius, indeed, 
seems to have understood Cato as having derived all 
the Sabines, and, consequently, through th§m their col¬ 
onies, from a single village, Testrina, near Amiter¬ 
num, as it were from a germe ; but so extravagant an 
abuse of genealogy ought not surely to be imputed to 
Cato’s sound understanding. He must have known 
and remembered how numerous the nation was at the 
time of its utmost greatness, when it counted perhaps 
millions of freemen. At Reate, in the Sabina, in the 
country of the Marsians, they found and subdued or 
expelled the Aborigines ; about Beneventum, Opicans, 
and probably, therefore, in the land of the Hirpini also. 
On the left bank of the Tiber they dwelt in the time of 
the Roman kings, low down, intermingled with the Lat¬ 
ins, even south of the Anio, not merely at Collatia and 
Regillum, but also on two of the Roman hills. Wars 
with the Sabines form a great part of the contents in 
the earliest annals of Rome; but with the year 306 
they totally cease, which evidently coincides with 
their diffusion in the south of Italy. Towards this 
quarter the tide now turned, and the old Sabines on 
the Tiber became quite insignificant.—Strictness of 
morals and cheerful contentedness were the peculiar 
glory of the Sabellian mountaineers, but especially of 
the Sabines and the four northern cantons : this they 
preserved long after the ancient virtue had disappeared 
at Rome from the hearts and the demeanour of men. 
Most of the Sabellian tribes, and the Sabines them¬ 
selves, inhabited open hamlets; the Samnites and the 
members of the northern confederacy dwelt, like the 
Epirots, around the fortified summits of their hills 
where a brave people could defend the approache 
even without walls; not that.they had no fortified 
towns, but the number was small.—The Sabellians 
would have made themselves masters of all Italy, had 
they formed a united or even a firmly-knit federal state, 
which should have lastingly appropriated its conquests, 
holding them in dependance, and securing them by col¬ 
onies. But, unlike the Romans, the enjoyment of the 
greatest freedom was what they valued the highest; 
more than greatness and power, more than the perma 
nent preservation of the state. Hence they did not 
keep their transplanted tribes attached to the mother- 
country : they became forthwith foreign, and frequently 
1 1179 





SAC 


SAG 


hostile to the state they had issued from: while Rome, 
sending out colonies of small numbers, was sure of 
their fidelity ; and by means of these, and by imparting 
dependant civil rights, converted a far greater number 
of subdued enemies into devoted subjects. ( Niebuhr, 
History of Rome, vol. 1, p. 71, seqq., Cambridge 
translation.) —In fixing the limits of the Sabine terri¬ 
tory, we must not attend so much to those remote 
times when they reached nearly to the gates of Rome, 
as to that period in which the boundaries of the differ¬ 
ent people of Italy were marked out with greater clear¬ 
ness and precision, namely, the reign of Augustus. 
We shall then find the Sabines separated from Latiurn 
by the river Anio ; from Etruria by the Tiber, begin¬ 
ning from the point where it receives the former 
stream, to within a short distance of Olricoli. The 
Nar will form their boundary on the side of Umbria, 
and the central ridge of the Apennines will be their 
limit on that of Ficenum. To the south and southeast 
it may be stated generally, that they bordered on the 
iEqui and Yestini. From the Tiber to the frontiers 
of the latter people, the length of the Sabine country, 
which was its greatest dimensions, might be estimated 
at 1000 stadia, or 120 miles, its breadth being much 
less considerable. ( Strabo, 228.— Cramer's Ancient 
Italy , vol. 1, p. 300.) 

Sabinus, Aulus, a Roman poet, the friend and con¬ 
temporary of Ovid, and to whom the last six of the he¬ 
roic epistles of that bard are generally ascribed by 
commentators. These are, Paris to Helen, Helen to 
Paris, Leander to Hero, Hero to Leander, Acontius to 
Cydippe, and Cydippe to Acontius. He was the au¬ 
thor, also, of several answers to the epistles of Ovid, as 
Ulysses to IJenelope, iEneas to Uido, &c., and like¬ 
wise of a work on Days , which his death prevented 
him from completing. This last-mentioned produc¬ 
tion is thought by some to have given Ovid the idea 
of his Fasti. (Bd.hr , Gesch. Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. 291.) 

Sabis, I. a river of Gallia Belgica, rising in the ter¬ 
ritory of the Nervii, and falling into the Mosa ( Maese) 
at Namurcum (Namur), in the territory of the Aduat- 
ici. It is now the Sambre. (Cces., B. G., 2, 16, 18.) 
—II. A river of Carmania, between the southern prom¬ 
ontory of Carmania and the river Andanis. Man- 
nert is inclined to identify it with the Anamis, which 
runs by the city of Hormuza, and falls into the Persian 
Gulf near the promontory of Armozum. (Mela, 3, 8. 
— Plin., 6, 23.) It is also called the Saganus.—III. 
A river of Cisalpine Gaul, rising in Umbria, and fall¬ 
ing into the Adriatic north of the Rubicon. It is now 
the Savio. At its mouth lay the town of Savis, now 
Torre del Savio. 

Sabrata, a city of Africa, in the Regio Syrtica, 
west of CEa and east of the Syrtis Minor. It formed, 
together with CEa and Leptis Magna, what was called 
Tripolis Africana. Justinian fortified it, and it is now 
Sabart or Tripoli Vecchio. (Itin. Anton. — Solin., c. 
27.— Plin., 5, 4.— Procop., JEdif., 6. 4.) 

Sabrina, also called Sabriana, now the Severn in 
England. (Plol. — Tac., Ann., 12, 31.) 

Sac.®, a name given by the Persians to all the more 
northern nations of Asia, but which, at a subsequent 
period, designated a particular people, whose territory 
was bounded on the west by Sogdiana, north and east 
by Scythia, and south by Bactriana and the chain of 
Imaus. Their country, therefore, corresponds in some 
degree tn Little Bucharey and the adjacent districts. 
The Sacse were a wild, uncivilized race, of nomadic 
habits, without cities, and dwelling in woods and caves. 
(Herod, 7, 9.— Mela, 3, 7.— Plin., 6, 17.— Ammian. 
Marcell., 23, 6.)—As regards the origin of the name 
Sacce, which some etymologists deduce from the Per¬ 
sian Ssagh, “ a dog,” and which they suppose to have 
Seen used as a term of contempt for a people of dif¬ 
ferent race and religion, consult remarks under the 
article Scythia. 

1180 


Sacra Insula, an island in the Tiber, not far from 
its mouth, formed by the separation of the two branch¬ 
es of that river. It received its name from the cir¬ 
cumstance of the snake’s having darted on shore hero, 
which the Romans had brought from Epidaurus, sup 
posing it to be HCsculapius. (Procop., B. G., 1, 26.) 

Sacra Via, a celebrated street of Rome, where a 
treaty of peace and alliance was fabled to have been 
made between Romulus and Tatius. It led from the 
Amphitheatre to the Capitol, by the temple of the God 
dess of Peace and the temple of Caesar. The trium- 
phal processions passed through it to the Capitol. 
(Horat., Od., 4,2— Sat., 1, 9.— Liv., 2, 13.— Cic., 
Plane., 7.— Att., Ep., 4, 3.) 

Sacrum, I. Bellum, a name given to the war car 
ried on against the Phocians, for their sacrilege in re 
lation to the sanctuary at Delphi. (Vid. Phocis.)— 
II. Promontorium, a promontory of Spain, now Cape 
St. Vincent, called by Strabo the most westerly part 
of the earth. It was called Sacrum because the an¬ 
cients believed this to be the place where the sun, at 
his setting, plunged his chariot into the sea. (Mela, 
2, 6. — Plin., 4, 22.) — III. Another promontory, on 
the coast of Lycia, near the Chelidonian Islands, and 
now Cape Kelidonia. This headland obtained great 
celebrity from its being commonly looked upon as the 
commencement of the great chain of Taurus, which 
was accounted to traverse, under various names, the 
whole continent of Asia. (Plin., 5, 27.) But Stra¬ 
bo observes, that Taurus really began in Caria (Strab., 
666); and other geographers even supposed it to com¬ 
mence with Mycale. (Arrian, Exp. Al., 5, 5, 2.) 
The modern name of the Sacred Promontory comes 
from the group of the Chelidonian Islands, in its im¬ 
mediate vicinity, to which we have already referred 
(Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 256.)—IV. Anothei 
at the southern extremity of Corsica, now Cape Coi - 
so. (Ptol.) 

Sadyates, one of the Mermnadae, who reigned ia 
Lydia 12 years after his father Gyges. He made war 
against the Milesians for six years. (Herod., 1, 16.) 

SiETABis, I. a river of Spain, between the Iberus 
and the Pillars of Hercules. According to some, it 
is now the Cennia or Senia ; Ukert, however, makes 
it the same with the .Udubra of Pliny and the Turu- 
lis of Ptolemy. (Mela, 2, 6.)—II. A city of Spain 
(Hispania Tarraconensis), in the territory of the Con- 
testani, and situate on a height, just below the river 
Sucro or Xucar. It was a municipiurn, and had re¬ 
ceived a Roman colony, from which latter circum¬ 
stance it took the name of Augusta. Ssetabis was 
famed for its linen manufacture. (Plin., 19, 2.— Ca- 
tull., 12 — Id., 20, 14.— Sil. ltd., 3, 373.) The Ara¬ 
bians changed the name to Xativa. (Marca, Hisp., 
2, 6, p. 118.— Laborde, Itin., vol. 1, p. 226.) Since 
the commencement of the present century, however, 
its more usual appellation is S. Phelippe. (Mannert, 
Geogr., vol. 1, p. 425.— Ukert, Geogr., vol. 2, p. 405.) 

Sagaris. Vid. Sangaris. 

Sagra or Sagras, a river of Magna Grsecia, in the 
territory of the. Bruttii, falling into the Sinus Taren- 
tinus, a short distance above the Zephyrian promonto¬ 
ry. It was on the banks of the Sagras that the mem¬ 
orable overthrow of the Crotoniatse took place, when 
they were defeated by a force of 10,000 Locrians, with 
a small body of Rhegians. So extraordinary a result 
did this appear, that it gave rise to the proverbial ex¬ 
pression, afa'jSecrTeoa ruv etti Idypa. Among other 
marvellous circumstances connected with this event, 
it was reported that the issue of the battle was known 
at Olympia the very day on which it was fought. 
(Strab., 261 .— Cicero, N. D., 2, 2. —Justin, °20, 
2.) Geographers differ much as to the modern river 
which corresponds with this celebrated stream ; but, 
if Romanelli is correct in affirming that the mountain 
from which the Alaro takes its source is still called 




S A I 


SAL 


Sagra, we can have no difficulty in recognising that 
river as the ancient Sagras ; more especially as its 
situation accords perfectly with the topography of Stra¬ 
bo. ( Cramer's Anc. Italy , vol. 2, p. 402.) 

Saguntum or Saguntus, a city of Hispania Tar- 
raconensis, north of Valentia, and some distance be¬ 
low the mouth of the Iberus. It was situate on a 
rising ground, about 1000 paces from the shore; Po¬ 
lybius (3, 17) says seven stadia, Pliny (3, 4) three 
miles. This place was* said to have been founded by 
a colony from Zacynthus {7iUKw6oq, Zuyovvroq, Sa¬ 
guntus), intermingled with Rutulians from Ardea. 

( Liv ., 21, 7, 14.— Sil. Ital. , 1, 291, &c.) It became 
at an early period the ally of the Romans ( Polyb., 3, 
30), and was besieged and taken by Hannibal previous 
to his march upon Italy. The siege lasted eight 
months, and, being an infraction of the treaty with the 
Romans, led at once to the second Punic war. Han¬ 
nibal’s object was to prevent the Romans retaining so 
important a place of arms, and so powerful an ally in 
a country from which he was about to depart. The 
desperate valour of the citizens, who chose to perish 
with all their effects rather than fall into the enemy’s 
hands, deprived the conqueror of a great part of his 
anticipated spoils ; the booty, however, which he saved 
from this wreck, enabled him, by his liberalities, to 
gain the affection of his army, and to provide for the 
execution of his design against Italy. {Liv., 21, 8.— 
Mela, 2, 6.— Diod. Sic., Eclog., 25, 5.— Sil. Ital., 13, 
673.) Eight years after it was restored by the Ro¬ 
mans. {Liv., 24, 42.— Plin., 3, 5.)—Saguntum was 
famous for the cups manufactured there. {Plin., 35, 
12.— Martial , 4, 46, &c.) The modern Murviedro 
(a corruption of Muri veteres ) marks the ancient city. 
(Mannert, Geogr., vol. 1, p. 428.— TJkert, Geogr., 
vol. 2, p. 415.) 

Sais, a city of Egypt, situate in the Delta, between 
he Sebennytic and Canopic arms of the Nile, and 
nearly due west from the city of Sebennytus. It was 
not, indeed, the largest, but certainly the most famous 
and important city in its day of all those in the Delta 
of Egypt. This pre-eminence it owed, on the one 
hand, to the yearly festival celebrated here in honour 
of Neith, the Egyptian Minerva, to which a large con¬ 
course of spectators was accustomed to flock {Herod.., 
2, 59) ; and, on the other, to the circumstance of its 
being the native city, the capital, and the burying-place 
of the last dynasty of the Pharaohs. {Herod., 2, 169.) 
For the purpose of embellishing it, King Amasis built 
a splendid portico to the temple of Neith in this city, 
far surpassing all others, according to Herodotus, in 
circumference and elevation, as well as in the dimen¬ 
sions and quality of the stones : he also adorned the 
building with colossal statues, and the immense figures 
of Androsphinx. Herodotus likewise informs us, that 
a large block of stone, intended for a shrine, was 
brought hither from Elephantis. Two thousand men 
were employed three whole years in its transportation. 
The exterior length of the stone was twenty-one cu¬ 
bits, its breadth fourteen, and its height eight. The 
inside was eighteen cubits and twenty-eight digits in 
length, twelve cubits in breadth, and five in height. 
This remarkable edifice was placed by the entrance of 
the temple, it being found impossible, it would seem, 
to drag it within, although Herodotus assigns a differ¬ 
ent reason (2, 175).—When Egypt had fallen under 
the Persian power, Memphis became the new capital, 
and Sais was neglected. It did not, however, fall as 
low as the other cities of the Delta. Strabo, even in 
his days, acknowledges it to have been the chief city 
of Lower Egypt ; he speaks also of a temple of Neith, 
and of the tomb of Psammitichus. In another pas¬ 
sage, he remarks, that somewhat to the south of this 
city was a very sacred temple of Osiris, in which, ac¬ 
cording to tradition,'that deity was buried. {Strab., 
802.) ° Sa'is was also famous for its festival of lamps. 


The modern Sa, with its ruins, marks the site of tne 
ancient Sais.—This city must not be confounded with 
another more easterly, Sals, commonly called Tania. 
{Mannert, Geogr., vol. 10, pt. 1, p. 561, seqq.) 

Salamis, I. a daughter of the river Asopus by Me- 
thone. Neptune became enamoured of her, and car¬ 
ried her to an island of the iEgean, which afterward 
bore her name, and where she gave birth to a son call¬ 
ed Cenchreus. {Diod. Sic., 4, 72.—Compare the re¬ 
marks of Siebelis, ad Pausan., 1, 35, 2.)—II. An isl- 
land in the Sinus Saronicus, opposite Eleusis and the 
coast of Attica, and said to have derived its name 
from Salamis, mentioned in the preceding article. It 
was also anciently called Scyras and Cychrea, from 
the heroes Scyrus and Cychreus, and Pityussa from 
its abounding in firs. {Strab., 393.) It had been al¬ 
ready celebrated in the earliest period of Grecian his¬ 
tory from the colony of the iEacidae, who settled there 
before the siege of Troy. {Strab., 1. c .) The pos¬ 
session of Salamis, as we learn from Strabo, was once 
obstinately contested by the Athenians and Megareans; 
and he affirms that both parties interpolated Homer, in 
order to prove from his poems that it had belonged to 
them. Having been occupied by Athens, it revolted 
to Megara, but was again conquered by Solon, or, ac¬ 
cording to some, by Pisistratus. {Plutarch, Vit. So¬ 
lon.) From this period it appears to have been al¬ 
ways subject to the Athenians. On the invasion of 
Xerxes'", they were induced to remove thither with 
their families ; in consequence of a prediction of the 
oracle, which pointed out this island as the scene of 
the defeat of their enemies {Herodotus, 8, 56); and, 
soon after, by the advice of Themistocles, the whole 
of the naval force of Greece was assembled in the Bay 
of Salamis. Meanwhile, the Persian fleet, station¬ 
ed at Phalerum held a council, in which it was deter¬ 
mined to attack the Greeks, who were said to be plan¬ 
ning their flight to the Isthmus. The Persian fleet ac 
cordingly were ordered to surround the island during 
the night, with a view of preventing their escape. In 
the morning, the Grecian galleys moved on to the at¬ 
tack, the iEginetans leading the van, seconded by the 
Athenians, who were opposed to the Phoenician ships, 
while the Peloponnesian squadron was engaged with 
the Ionians. The Persians were completely defeated, 
and retired in the greatest disorder to Phalerum ; not¬ 
withstanding which, Xerxes is said to have made dem¬ 
onstrations of an intention to renew the action, and 
with that intent to have given orders for joining the 
island of Salamis to the continent by a mole. The 
following night, however, the whole of his fleet aban¬ 
doned the coast of Attica, and withdrew to the Hel¬ 
lespont. {Herod., 8, 83.) A trophy was erected to 
commemorate this splendid victory on the isle of Sala¬ 
mis, near the temple of Diana, and opposite to Cyno- 
sura, where the strait is narrowest. Here it was seen 
by Pausanias (1, 30), and some of its vestiges were 
observed by Sir W. Gell, who reports that it consisted 
of a column on a circular base. {Itin., p. 303.) Stra¬ 
bo informs us that the island contained two cities ; 
the more ancient of the two, which was situated on 
the southern side, and opposite to/Egina, was deserted 
in his time. The other stood in a bay, formed by a 
neck of land which advanced towards Attica. {Stra¬ 
bo, 393.) Both were called by the same name with 
the island. Pausanias remarks, that the city of Sala¬ 
mis was destroyed by the Athenians, in consequence 
of its having surrendered to the Macedpnians when 
the former people were at war with Cassander; there 
still remained, however, some ruins of the agora, and 
a temple dedicated to Ajax. Chandler states that the 
walls may still be traced, and appear to have been 
about four miles in circumference (vol. 2, ch. 46.— 
Compare Gell, Itin., p. 303).—Salamis, according to 
the Greek geographers, measured seventy or eighty 
stadia in length, or between nine and ten miles. Tta 

1181 




SAL 


SAL 


present name is Colouri, which is that also of the prin¬ 
cipal town. ( Cramer's Anc. Greece , vol. 2, p. 364, 
seqq.) —III. A city in the island of Cyprus, situate 
about the middle of the eastern side. It <ras founded 
by Teucer, son of Telamon, and called by him after 
Salamis, his native place, from which he had been ban¬ 
ished by his father. ( Horat ., 1, 7, 21.) This city 
was the largest, strongest, and most important one in 
the island. ( Diod. Sic., 14, 98.— Id,., 16, 42.) Its 
harbour was secure, and protected against every wind, 
and sufficiently large to contain an entire fleet. ( Scy - 
lax, p. 41. — Diod., 20, 21.) The monarchs of Sala¬ 
mis exercised a leading influence in the affairs of the 
island, and the conquest of this place involved the 
fate of Cyprus at large. {Diod., 1. c. — Id., 12, 3.) 
Under the Roman dominion the entire eastern part of 
the island was attached to the jurisdiction of Salamis. 
The insurrection of the Jews in Trajan’s reign brought 
with it the ruin of a great portion of the city ( Euseb., 
Chron., ann. 19, Traj. — Oros., 7, 12); it did not, 
however, cause the entire downfall of Salamis, as it is 
still mentioned after this period by Ptolemy and in the 
Peutinger Table. In the reign of Constantine, how¬ 
ever, an earthquake and inundation of the sea com¬ 
pleted the downfall of the place, and a large portion of 
the inhabitants were buried beneath its ruins. ( Ce - 
drenus, ad ann. 29, Constant. Mag. — Malala, Chron., 
1. xii., Sub. Constantio Chloro.) Constantius restored 
it, made it the capital of the whole island, and called 
it, from his own name, Constantia. ( Hierocles, p. 
706.) A few remains of this city still exist. {Po- 
cocke, 2, p. 313.— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 1, p. 
572, seqq.) 

Salapia, a city of Apulia, near the coast, above the 
river Aufidius, and between that river and the Salapi- 
na Palus. According to Strabo, it was the emporium 
of ^.rpi: without such authority, however, we should 
have fixed upon Sipontum as answering that purpose 
better, from its greater proximity. {Strab., 282.) This 
town laid claim to a Grecian origin. The Rhodians, 
who early distinguished themselves by a spirit of en¬ 
terprise in navigation, asserted, that, among other dis¬ 
tant colonies, they had founded, in conjunction with 
some Coans, a city named Salpia, on the Daunian 
coast. This account of Strabo’s (654) seems con¬ 
firmed by Vitruvius, who attributes the foundation 
of this settlement to a Rhodian chief named Elpias 
(1,4.—Compare Meurs. inRhod., 1, 18). It is prob¬ 
able, however, that Salapia was at first dependant 
upon the more powerful city of Arpi, and, like that 
city, it subsequently lost much of the peculiar charac¬ 
ter which belonged to the Greek colonies from its in¬ 
tercourse with the natives. We do not hear of Sala¬ 
pia in Roman history till the second Punic war, when 
it is represented as falling into the hands of the Car¬ 
thaginians, after the battle of Cannae (Li®., 24, 20); 
but, not long after, it was delivered up to Marcellus 
by the party which favoured the Roman interest, to¬ 
gether with the garrison which Hannibal had placed 
there. {Livy, 26, 28.) The Carthaginian general 
seems to have felt the loss of this town severely ; and 
it was probably the desire of revenge which prompted 
him, after the death and defeat of Marcellus, to adopt 
the stratagem of sending letters, sealed with that com¬ 
mander’s ring, to the magistrates of the town, in order 
to obtain admission with his troops. The Salapitani, 
however, being warned of his design, the attempt 
proved abortive. {Liv., 27, 28. — App., Han., 51.) 
The proximity of Salapia to the lake or marsh already 
mentioned, is said to have proved so injurious to the 
health of the inhabitants, that some years after these 
events they removed nearer the coast, where they 
built a new town, with the assistance of M. Hostilius, 
a Roman praetor, who caused a communication to be 
opened between the lake and the sea. Considerable 
remains of both towns are still standing, at some dis- 
1182 


tance from each other, under the name of Salpi, which 
confirms this account of Vitruvius (1, 4.— Compare 
Cicero, de Leg. Agr., 2.— Plin., 3, 11 . — Cramer's 
Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 284). 

Salassi, a people of Gallia Cisalpina, in the north¬ 
western angle of that country, and at the foot of the 
Alps. The main part of their territory lay chiefly, 
however, in a long valley, which reached to the sum¬ 
mits of the Graian and Pennine Alps, the Little and 
Great St. Bernard. The passages over these mount¬ 
ains into Gaul were too important an object for the 
Romans not to make them anxious to secure them by 
the conquest of the Salassi. But these hardy mount¬ 
aineers, though attacked as early as 609 U.C., held 
out for a long time, and were not finally subdued till 
the reign of Augustus. Such was the difficult nature 
of their country, that they could easily intercept all 
communication through the valleys by occupying the 
heights. Strabo represents them as carrying on a 
sort of predatory warfare, during which they seized 
and ransomed some distinguished Romans, and even 
ventured to plunder the baggage and military chest of 
Julius Caesar. Augustus caused their country at last 
to be occupied permanently by a large force under 
Terentius Varro. A large number of the Salassi per¬ 
ished in this last war, and the rest, to the number of 
36,000, were sold and reduced to slavery. {Strabo, 
205.— Dio Cass., 1, 53.— Oros., 5, 4. — Liv., Epit., 
53.) A city was built on the ground occupied by 
Varro’s camp, and Augustus honoured the rising col¬ 
ony by giving it the name of Augusta Praetcria, now 
Aosta. {Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 49, seqq.) 

SalentIni, a people of Italy, in the territory of 
Messapia. They cannot be distinguished with accu¬ 
racy from the Calabri, as we find the former appella¬ 
tion used by several writers in a very extensive sense, 
and applied, not only to the greater part of Messapia 
or Iapygia, but even to districts entirely removed from 
it. Strabo himself confesses the difficulty of assign¬ 
ing any exact limits to these two people; and he con¬ 
tents himself with observing, that the country of the 
Salentini lay properly around the Iapygian promontory. 
{Strab., 277, 281.) It was asserted that they were a 
colony of Cretans, who, under the conduct of Idome- 
neus their king, had arrived thither in their wanderings 
after the capture of Troy. {Virg., JEn., 3, 400.) 
The Romans, under pretence of their having assisted 
Pyrrhus in his expedition into Italy, soon after invaded 
the territory of this insignificant people, and had no 
difficulty in taking the few towns which they possess¬ 
ed. {Floras, 1, 20. — Liv., Epit., 15.) The Salen¬ 
tini subsequently revolted, during the second Punic 
war, but they were again reduced by the consul Clau¬ 
dius Nero. {Liv., 27, 36.)—It is probable that they 
derived their name from a town called Salentia, the 
existence of which is, however, only attested by Ste- 
phanus Byzantinus, who calls it a Messapian city {s. 
v. haXevria). —The Salentinian promontory is the 
same with the Iapygian. {Cramer's Ancient Italy, 
vol. 2, p. 313.) 

Salernum, a city of Campania, southeast of Neap- 
olis, and near the shore of the Sinus Paestanus. It 
was said to have been built by the Romans as a check 
upon the Picentini. It was not, therefore, like the 
modern town of Salerno, close to the sea, but on the 
height above, where considerable remains have been 
observed. {Cluv., Ital. Anliq., vol. 2, p. 1189.— Ro~ 
manelli, vol. 3, p. 612.) According to Livy, Saler¬ 
num became a Roman colony seven years after the 
conclusion of the second Punic war (34, 45.— Veil. 
Paterc., 1, 14).—Horace tells us, that the air of Sa 
lernum was recommended to him by his physician for 
a complaint in his eyes. {Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, 
p. 214, seqq.) 

Salii, I. a college of priests at Rome, instituted in 
honour of Mars, and appointed by Numa to take care 





SAL 


SALLUSTIUS. 


of the sacred shields called A*cilia, B.(J. 709. ( Vid. 

Ancile.) They were twelve in number. Their chief 
was called prcesul, who seems to have gone foremost 
in the procession ; their principal musician, rates ; and 
he who admitted new members, magistcr. Their 
number was afterward doubled by Tullus Hostilius, 
after he had obtained a victory over the Fidenates, in 
consequence of a vow which he had made to Mars. 
The Salii were all of patrician families, and the office 
was very honourable. The 1st of March was the day 
in which the Salii observed their festival in honour of 
Mars. They were generally dressed in a short scarlet 
tunic, of which only the edges were seen ; they wore 
a large purple-coloured belt above the waist, which 
was fastened with brass buckles. They had on their 
heads round bonnets with two corners standing up, 
in their right hand they carried a small rod, and in 
their left a small buckler, one of the ancilia, or shields 
of Mars. Lucan says that it hung from the neck. In 
the observation of their solemnity, they first offered 
sacrifices, and afterward went through the streets dan¬ 
cing in measured motions, sometimes all together, or 
at other times separately, while musical instruments 
were playing before them. Hence their name of Salii, 
from their moving along in solemn dance ( Salii a. salt- 
cndo). They placed their body in different attitudes, 
and struck with their rods the shields which they held 
in their hands. They also sung hymns in honour of 
the gods, particularly of Mars, Juno, Venus, and Mi¬ 
nerva, and they were accompanied in the chorus by a 
certain number of virgins, habited like themselves, and 
called Salice. We have in Varro a few fragments of 
the Salian hymns, which, even in the time of that wri¬ 
ter, were scarcely intelligible. Thus, for example, 

“ Divum exta cante, Dirum Deo supplier cantc," 

i. e., Deorum exta canite, Deorum Deo ( Jano ) sup- 
pliciter canite ; and also the following : 

“ omnia 

dapatilia comisse jam cusioncs 

duonus ceruses divius janusque renit," 

i. e., Omnia dapalia comedisse Jani Curiones. Bo¬ 
nus creator Dimus Janusque renit. —Their feasts and 
entertainments were uncommonly sumptuous, whence 
dapes saliares is proverbially applied to such repasts 
as are most splendid and costly. (Lir., 1, 20.— Var¬ 
ro, L L., 4, 15.— Orid, Fast., 3, 387.) — II. A Ger¬ 
man tribe of Frankish origin, whose original seat is 
not clearly ascertained. Wiarda makes it between 
the Silva Carbonaria (part of the forest of Ardennes) 
and the River Ligeris (Lys, in Brabant); Wersebe, 
however, in the vicinity of the Sala or Saale. They 
first made their appearance on the Insula Batavorum, 
where they were conquered by Julian ; afterward in 
the territory of the Chamavi, by the Mosa or Meuse. 
Mannert seeks to identify them with the Cherusci. 

( Amm. Marcell., 17, 8, seqq. — Zosim., 3, 6.) 

Sallustius, Crispus, a celebrated Latin historian, 
born at Amiternum, in the territory of the Sabines, in 
the year of Rome 668. He received his education in 
the latter city, and in his early youth appears to have 
been desirous to devote himself to literary pursuits. 
But it was not easy for one residing in the capital to 
escape the contagious desire of military or political 
distinction. He obtained the situation of quaestor, 
which entitled him to a seat in the senate, at the age 
of twenty-seven ; and about six years afterward he 
was elected tribune of the commons. While in this 
office he attached himself to the fortunes of Caesar, 
and, along with one of his colleagues, conducted the 
prosecution against Milo for the murder of Clodius. 
In the year of the city 704, he was excluded from the 
senate on the pretext of immoral conduct, but more 
probably from the violence of the patrician party, to 
which he was opposed. Aulus Gellius, on the au¬ 


thority of Varro’s treatise, Pius aut de Pace , infoims 
us that he incurred this disgrace in consequence of an 
intrigue with Fausta, the wife of Milo, who caused 
him to be scourged by his slaves. ( N. A., 17, 18., 
It has been doubted, however, by modern critics, 
whether it was the historian Sallust who was thus pun¬ 
ished, or his nephew Crispus Sallustius, to whom Hor¬ 
ace has addressed the second ode of the second book. 
It seems, indeed, unlikely that, in so corrupt an age, 
an amour with a woman of Fausta’s abandoned char¬ 
acter should have been the real cause of his expulsion 
from the senate. After undergoing this ignominy, 
which, for the present, baffled all his hopes of prefer¬ 
ment, he quitted Rome, and joined his patron, Caesar, 
in Gaul. He continued to follow the fortunes of that 
commander, and, in particular, bore a share in the ex¬ 
pedition to Africa, where the scattered remains of 
Pompey’s party had united. That region being finally 
subdued, Sallust was left by Caesar as praetor of Nu- 
midia ; and about the same time married Terentia, the 
divorced wife of Cicero. He remained only a year in 
his government, but during that period enriched him¬ 
self by despoiling the province. On his return to 
Rome he was accused by the Numidians, whom he 
had plundered, but escaped with impunity by means 
of the protection of Caesar, and was quietly permitted 
to betake himself to a luxurious retirement with his ill- 
gotten wealth. He chose for his favourite retreats a 
villa at Tibur, which had belonged to Caesar, and a 
magnificent palace, which he built in the suburbs of 
Rome, surrounded by delightful pleasure-grounds, af¬ 
terward well known and celebrated by the name of the 
Gardens of Sallust. In these gardens, or his villa at 
Tibur, Sallust passed the concluding years of his life, 
dividing his time between literary avocations and the 
society of his friends ; among whom he numbered Lu- 
cullus, Messala, and Cornelius Nepos. — Such being 
his friends and studies, it seems highly improbable 
that he indulged in that excessive libertinism which 
has been attributed to him, on the erroneous supposi¬ 
tion that he was the Sallust mentioned by Horace in 
the first book of his Satires. The subject of Sallust’s 
character is one which has excited some investigation 
and interest, and on which very different opinions have 
been formed. That he was a man of loose morals is 
evident; and it cannot be denied that he rapaciously 
plundered his province, like most Roman governors of 
the day. But it seems doubtful if he was that mon¬ 
ster of iniquity he has been sometimes represented. 
He was extremely unfortunate in the first permanent 
notice taken of his character by his contemporaries. 
The decided enemy of Pompey and his faction, he had 
said of that celebrated chief, in his general history, 
that he was a man “oris probi , animo inverecundo.” 
Lenaeus, the freedman of Pompey, avenged his master, 
by the most virulent abuse of his enemy ( Suetonius, 
de lllustr. Gramm., 15), in a work which should rath¬ 
er be regarded as a frantic satire than an historical 
document. Of the injustice which he has done to the 
life of the historian, we may, in some degree, judge 
from what he says of him as an author. He calls him, 
as we farther learn from Suetonius, “ Nebulonem vita 
scriptisque monstrosum; preeterea priscorum Catonis- 
que ineruditissimum fur cm." The life of Sallust, by 
Asconius Pedianus, which was written in the age of 
Augustus, and might have acted, at the present day, 
as a corrective or palliative of the unfavourable impres¬ 
sion produced by this injurious libel, has unfortunately 
perished ; and the next work on the subject now extant 
is a professed rhetorical declamation against the char¬ 
acter of Sallust, which was given to the world in the 
name of Cicero, but was not written till long after the 
death of that orator, and is now generally assigned by 
critics to a rhetorician in the reign of Claudius, called 
Porcius Latro. The calumnies invented or exaggera¬ 
ted bv Lenteus, and propagated in the scholastic theme 

1183 




SALLUSTIUS. 


SALLUSTIUS. 


ot Porcius Latro, have been adopted by Le Clerc, pro¬ 
fessor of Hebrew at Amsterdam, and by Professor 
Meisner, of Prague, in their respective accounts of the 
life of Sallust. His character has received more jus¬ 
tice from the prefatory memoir and notes of De Bros- 
ses, his French translator, and from the researches of 
Wieland in Germany.—From what is known of Fabi- 
us Pictor and his immediate successors, it must be ap¬ 
parent that the art of historic composition at Rome 
was in the lowest state, and that Sallust had no model 
to imitate among the writers of his own country. He 
therefore naturally recurred to the productions of the 
Greek historians. The native exuberance and loqua¬ 
cious familiarity of' Herodotus were not adapted to 
his taste ; and simplicity, such as that of Xenophon, 
is, of all things, the most difficult to attain ; he there¬ 
fore chiefly emulated Thucydides, and attempted to 
transplant into his own language the vigour and con¬ 
ciseness of the Greek historian ; but the strict imita¬ 
tion with which he followed him has gone far to lessen 
the effect of his own original genius.—The first work 
of Sallust was the Conspiracy of Catiline. There ex¬ 
ists, however, some doubt as to the precise period of 
its composition. The general opinion is, that it was 
written immediately after the author went out of office 
as tribune of the commons, that is, A.U.C. 703. And 
the composition of the Jugurthine War , as well as of 
his general history, is fixed by Le Clerc between that 
period and his appointment to the prcetorship of Nu- 
midia. But others have supposed that they were all 
written during the space which intervened between 
his return from Numidia in 709, and his death, which 
happened in 718, four years previous to the battle of 
Actium. It is maintained by the supporters of this 
last idea, that he was too much engaged in politi¬ 
cal tumults previous to his administration of Nu¬ 
midia to have leisure for so important compositions ; 
that, in the introduction to Catiline’s Conspiracy, he 
talks of himself as withdrawn from public affairs, 
and refutes accusations of his voluptuous life, which 
were only applicable to this period ; and that, while 
instituting the comparison between Caesar and Cato, 
he speaks of the existence and competition of these 
celebrated opponents as things that had passed over. 
—“ Sed mea mcmoria, ingenti virtute , diversis mor- 
ibus , fuere viri duo, Marcus Cato et Caius Caesar.” 
On this passage, too, Gibbon, in particular, argues, 
that such a flatterer and party tool as Sallust would 
not, during the life of Caesar, have put Cato so much 
on a level with him in the comparison. De Brosses 
argues with Le Clerc in thinking that the Conspiracy 
of Catiline at least must have been written immediately 
after 703 ; as he would not, after his marriage with 
Terentia, have commemorated the disgrace of her sis¬ 
ter, who, it seems, was the vestal virgin whose in¬ 
trigue with Catiline is recorded by Sallust. But, 
whatever may be the case as to Catiline’s Conspiracy, 
it is quite clear that the Jugurthine War was written 
subsequently to the author’s residence in Numidia, 
which evidently suggested to him this theme, and af¬ 
forded him the means of collecting the information 
necessary for completing his work. — The subjects 
chosen by Sallust form two of the most important and 
prominent topics in the history of Rome. The peri¬ 
ods, indeed, which he describes were painful, but they 
were interesting. Full of conspiracies, usurpations, 
and civil wars, they chiefly exhibit the mutual rage 
and iniquity of imbittered factions, furious struggles 
between the patricians and plebeians, open corruption 
in the senate, venality in the courts of justice, and 
rapine in the provinces. This state of things, so for¬ 
cibly painted by Sallust, produced the conspiracy, and, 
in some degree, the character of Catiline. But it 
was the oppressive debts of individuals, the temper of 
Sylla’s soldiers, and the absence of Pompey with his 
army, which gave a possibility, and even a prospect, 
1184 


of success to a plot which affected the vital existenc* 
of the commonwealth; and which, although arrested 
in itk commencement, was one of those violent shocks 
which hasten the fall of a state.— The History of the 
Jugurthine War, if not so imposing or menacing to 
the vital interests or immediate safety of Rome, exhib¬ 
its a more extensive field of action, and a greater the¬ 
atre of war. No prince, except Mithradates, gave so 
much employment to the arms of the Romans. In 
the course of no war in which they had ever been en¬ 
gaged, not even the second Carthaginian war, were 
the people more desponding, and in none were they 
more elated with ultimate success. Nothing can bo 
more interesting than the accounts of the vicissitudes 
of this contest. The endless resources and hair¬ 
breadth escapes of Jugurtha; his levity; his fickle and 
faithless disposition, contrasted with the perseverance 
and prudence of the Roman commander Metellus, are ali 
described in a manner the most vivid and picturesque. 
—Sallust had attained the age of twenty-two when 
the conspiracy of Catiline broke out, and was an eye¬ 
witness of the whole proceedings. He had, there¬ 
fore, sufficient opportunity of recording with accu¬ 
racy and truth the progress and termination of the con¬ 
spiracy. Sallust has certainly acquired the praise of 
a veracious historian, and we do not know that he has 
been detected in falsifying any fact within the sphere 
of his knowledge. Indeed, there are few historical 
compositions of which the truth can be proved on such 
evidence as the conspiracy of Catiline. The facts 
detailed in the orations of Cicero, though differing in 
some minute particulars, coincide in everything of im¬ 
portance, and highly contribute to illustrate and verify 
the work of our historian. But Sallust lived too near 
the period of which he treated, and was too much en¬ 
gaged in the political tumults of the day, to give a 
faithful account, unbiased by animosity or predilec¬ 
tion ; he could not have raised himself above all hopes, 
and fears, and prejudices, and therefore could not, in 
all their extent, have fulfilled the duties of an impartial 
writer. A contemporary historian of such turbulent 
times would be apt to exaggerate through adulation, 
or conceal through fear; to instil the precepts, not of 
the philosopher, but the partisan ; and colour facts 
into harmony with his own system of patriotism or 
friendship. An obsequious follower of Caesar, he 
has been accused of a want of candour in varnishing 
over the views of his patron ; yet it is hard to be¬ 
lieve that Caesar was deeply engaged in the conspir¬ 
acy of Catiline, or that a person of his prudence 
should have leagued with such rash associates, or 
followed so desperate an adventurer. But the chief 
objection urged against his impartiality is the fee¬ 
ble and apparently reluctant commendation he be¬ 
stowed on Cicero, who is now acknowledged to have 
been the principal actor in detecting and Lustra- 
ting the conspiracy. Though fond of displaying hie 
talents in drawing characters, he exercises none of it 
on Cicero, whom he merely terms “ homo egregius et 
optumus consul ,” which was but cold applause for one 
who had saved the commonwealth. It is true, that, in 
the early part of the history,-praise, though sparingly 
bestowed, is not absolutely withheld. r I he election 
of Cicero to the consulship is fairly attributed to the 
high opinion entertained of his talents and capacity, 
which overcame the disadvantages of obscure birth. 
The mode adopted of gaining over one of the accom¬ 
plices, and for fixing his own wavering and disaffected 
colleague, the dexterity manifested in seizing the Al- 
lobroffian deputies with the letters, and the irresisti¬ 
ble effect produced by confronting them with the con 
spirators, are attributed exclusively to Cicero. It is in 
the conclusion of the business that the historian with¬ 
holds from him his due share of applause, and contrives 
to eclipse him by always interposing the character of 
Cato, though it could not be unknown to any witness 




3ALLUSTIUS. 


5ALLUSTIUS. 


of those ir \r y.c‘ ions that Cato himself and other sen¬ 
ators publicly hailed the consul as the father of his 
country ; and that a public thanksgiving to the gods 
was decreed in his name, for having preserved the 
city from conflagration, and the citizens from massa¬ 
cre. This omission, which may have originated part¬ 
ly in enmity, and partly in disgust at the ill-disguised 
vanity of the consul, has in all times been regarded as 
the chief defect, and even 9tain, in the history of the 
Catilinarian Conspiracy.—Although not an eyewitness 
of the war with Jugurtha, Sallust’s situation as praetor 
of Numidia, which suggested the composition, was fa¬ 
vourable to the authority of the work, by affording op¬ 
portunity of collecting materials, and procuring infor¬ 
mation. He examined into the different accounts, 
written as well as traditionary, concerning the history 
of Africa, particularly the documents preserved in the 
archives of King Hiempsal, which he caused to be 
translated for his own use, and which proved peculiar¬ 
ly serviceable in the detailed account which he has 
given of the inhabitants of Africa. In this history he 
has been accused of showing an undue partiality to¬ 
wards the character of Marius ; and of giving, for the 
sake of his favourite leader, an unfair account of the 
massacre at Vacca. But he appears to do even more 
than ample justice to Metellus, since he represents the 
war as almost finished by him previous to the arrival 
of Marius, though it was, in fact, far from being con¬ 
cluded.—Sallust evidently regarded a fine style as one 
of the chief merits of an historical work. The style 
on which he took so much pains was carefully formed 
on that of Thucydides, whose manner of writing was, 
in a great measure, original, and, till the time of Sal¬ 
lust, peculiar to himself. The Roman has wonderfully 
succeeded in imitating the vigour and conciseness of 
the Greek historian, and infusing into his composition 
,«■ jmething of that dignified austerity which distinguishes 
the work of his great model ; but when we say that 
Sallust has imitated the conciseness of Thucydides, 
we mean the rapid and compressed manner in which 
his narrative is conducted ; in short, brevity of idea 
rather than of language. For Thucydides, although 
he brings forward only the principal idea, and discards 
what is collateral, yet frequently employs long and in¬ 
volved periods. Sallust, on the other hand, is abrupt 
and sententious, and is generally considered as having 
carried this sort of brevity to a vicious excess. The 
use of copulatives, either for the purposes of connect¬ 
ing his sentences with each other, or uniting the claus¬ 
es of the same sentence, is in a great measure reject¬ 
ed. This produces a monotonous effect, and a total 
want of that flow and variety which is the principal 
charm of the historic period. Seneca accordingly 
( Episl ., 114) talks of the “Amputates sententice, et 
verba ante expectatum cadentia,'’ which the practice 
of Sallust had succeeded in rendering fashionable. It 
was, perhaps, partly in imitation of Thucydides that 
Sallust introduced into his history a number of words 
almost considered as obsolete, and which were select¬ 
ed from the works of the older authors of Rome, par¬ 
ticularly Cato the censor. It is on this point he has 
been chiefly attacked by Pollio, in his letters to Plan- 
cus. He has also been taxed with the opposite vice, 
of coining new words, and introducing Greek idioms ; 
but the severity of judgment which led him to imitate 
the ancient and austere dignity of style, made him re- 
ect those sparkling ornaments of composition which 
were beginning to infect the Roman taste, in conse¬ 
quence of the increasing popularity of the rhetorical 
schools of declamation, and the more frequent inter¬ 
course with Asia. On the whole, in the style of Sal¬ 
lust, there is too much appearance of study, and a want 
rf that graceful ease, which is generally the effect of 
an, but in which art is nowhere discovered.—Of all 
the departments of history, the delineation of character 
m the most trying to the temper and impartiality of the 
7 L 


writer, more especially when he has been contempo¬ 
rary with the individuals he portrays, and in some de¬ 
gree engaged in the transactions he records. Five or 
six of the characters drawn by Sallust have in all ages 
been regarded as master-pieces. He has seized the 
delicate shades, as well as the prominent features, and 
thrown over them the most lively and appropriate col¬ 
ouring. Those of the two principal actors in his tra¬ 
gic histories are forcibly given, and prepare us for the 
incidents which follow. The portrait drawn of Cat¬ 
iline conveys a lively notion of his mind artd person, 
while the parallel drawn between Cato and Caesar is 
one of the most celebrated passages in the history of 
the conspiracy. Of both these famed opponents we 
are presented with favourable likenesses. Their de¬ 
fects are thrown into the shade ; and the bright qual¬ 
ities of each different species by which they were 
distinguished, are contrasted for the purpose of show¬ 
ing the various qualities by which men arrive at em¬ 
inence. The introductory sketch of the genius and 
manners of Jugurtha is no less able and spirited than 
the character of Catiline. The portraits of the other 
principal characters who figured in the Jugurthine 
war are also well brought out. That of Marius, in 
particular, is happily touched. His insatiable ambition 
is artfully disguised under the mask of patriotism ; his 
cupidity and avarice are concealed under that of mar¬ 
tial simplicity and hardihood ; but, though we know, 
from his subsequent career, the hypocrisy of his pre¬ 
tensions, the character of Marius is presented to us in 
a more favourable light than that in which it can be 
viewed on a survey of his whole life. We see the 
blunt and gallant soldier, and not that savage whose in¬ 
nate cruelty of soul was first about to burst forth for the 
destruction of his countrymen. In drawing the por¬ 
trait of Sylla, the memorable rival of Marius, the his¬ 
torian represents him also such as he appeared at that 
period, not such as he afterward proved himself to be. 
We behold him with pleasure as an accomplished and 
subtle commander, eloquent in speech and versatile in 
resources; but there is no trace of the cold-blooded 
ass.assin, the tyrant, and usurper.—History, in its ori¬ 
ginal state, was confined to narrative ; the reader being 
left to form his own reflections on the deeds or events 
recorded. The historic art, however, conveys not 
complete satisfaction, unless these actions be connect¬ 
ed with their causes—the political springs or private 
passions in which they originated. It is the business, 
therefore, of the historian, to apply the conclusions 
of the politician in explaining the causes and effects 
of the transactions he relates. These transactions 
the author must receive from authentic monuments 
or records, but the remarks deduced from them must 
be the offspring of his own ingenuity. The reflections 
with which Sallust introduces his narrative, and those 
he draws from it, are so just and numerous, that he 
has by some been considered the father of philosophic 
history. It must always, however, be remembered, 
that the proper subject of history is the detail of na¬ 
tional transactions ; that whatever forms not a part of 
the narrative is episodical, and therefore improper, 
if it be too long, and do not grow naturally out of the 
subject. Now some of the political and moral di¬ 
gressions of Sallust are neither very immediately con¬ 
nected with his subject nor very obviously suggested 
by the narration. The discursive nature and inordi¬ 
nate length of the introduction to his histories have 
been strongly objected to. The first four sections of 
Catiline’s Conspiracy have indeed little relation to the 
topic. They might as well have been prefixed to any 
other history, and much better to a moral or philosoph¬ 
ic treatise. In fact, a considerable part of them, des¬ 
canting on the fleeting nature of wealth and beauty, 
and all such adventitious possessions, are borrowed 
from the second oration of Isocrates. Perhaps the 
eight following sections are also disproportioned to the 

1185 




SALLUSTIUS. 


SAli 


length of the history; but the preliminary essay they 
contain on the degradation of Roman manners and 
decline of virtue, is not an unsuitable introduction to 
the conspiracy, as it was this corruption of morals 
which gave 1 .rth to it, and bestowed on it a chance 
of success. The preface to the Jugurthine War 
has much less relation to the subject which it is 
intended to introduce. The author discourses at 
large on his favourite topic, the superiority of men¬ 
tal endowments over corporeal advantages, and the 
beauty of virtue and genius. He contrasts a life of 
listless indolence with one of honourable activity ; 
and finally descants on the task of the historian as a 
suitable exercise for the highest faculties of the mind. 
Besides the Conspiracy of Catiline and the Jugurthine 
War, which have been preserved entire, and from 
which our estimate of the merits of Sallust must be 
chiefly formed, he was the author of a civil and mili¬ 
tary history of the republic, in five books, entitled 
Historia rerum in Republica Romana Gestarum. 
This work was the mature fruit of the genius of Sal¬ 
lust, having been the last he composed, and is inscribed 
to Lucullus, the son of the celebrated commander of 
that name. It included, properly speaking, only a pe¬ 
riod of thirteen years, extending from the resignation 
of the dictatorship by Sylla till the promulgation of 
the Manilian Law, by which Pompey was invested with 
authority equal to that which Sylla had relinquished; 
and obtained, with unlimited power in the East, the 
command of the army destined to act against Mithrada- 
tes. This period, though short, comprehends some of 
the most interesting and luminous points which appear 
in the Roman annals. During this interval, and almost 
at the same moment, the republic was attacked in the 
East by the most powerful and enterprising of the 
monarchs with whom it had yet waged war ; in the 
West by one of the most skilful of its own generals ; 
and n the bosom of Italy by its gladiators and slaves. 
The work was also introduced by two discourses, the 
one presenting a picture of the government and man¬ 
ners of the Romans, from the origin of their city to 
the commencment of the civil wars ; the other con¬ 
taining a general view of the dissensions of Marius and 
Sylla; so that the whole book may be considered as 
connecting the termination of the Jugurthine War and 
the breaking out of Catiline’s conspiracy. The loss 
of this valuable production is the more to be regretted, 
as all the accounts of Roman history which have been 
written are defective during the interesting period it 
comprehended. Nearly seven hundred fragments be¬ 
longing to it have been amassed, from scholiasts and 
grammarians, by De Brosses, the French translator of 
Sallust; but they are so short and unconnected that 
they merely serve as landmarks, from which we may 
conjecture what subjects were treated of and what 
events recorded. The only parts of the history which 
have been preserved in any degree entire, are four 
orations and two letters. The first is an oration pro¬ 
nounced against Sylla by the turbulent M. JEmilius 
Lepidus, who, as is well known, being desirous, at the 
expiration of his year, to be appointed a second time 
consul, excited for that purpose a civil war, and ren¬ 
dered himself master of great part of Italy. His 
speech, which was preparatory to these designs, was 
delivered after Sylla had abdicated the dictatorship, 
but was still supposed to retain great influence at 
Rome. He is accordingly treated as being still the 
tyrant of the state ; and the people are exhorted to 
throw off the yoke completely, and to follow the 
speaker to the bold assertion of their liberties. The 
second oration is that of Lucius Philippus, which is 
an invective against the treasonable attempt of Lep¬ 
idus, and was calculated to rouse the people from the 
apathy with which they beheld proceedings that were 
likely to terminate in the total subversion of the gov¬ 
ernment. The third harangue was delivered by the 
1186 


tribune Licinius. It was an effort of that demagogue 
to depress the patrician and raise the tribunitian pow¬ 
er ; for which purpose he alternately flatters the peo¬ 
ple and reviles the senate. The oration of Marcus 
Cotta is unquestionably a fine one. He addressed it to 
the people, during the period of his consulship, in order 
to calm their minds and allay their resentment at the 
bad success of public affairs ; which, without any., 
blame on his part, had lately, in many respects, been 
conducted to an unprosperous issue. Of the two let¬ 
ters which are extant, the one is from Pompey to the 
senate, complaining in very strong terms of the defi¬ 
ciency in the supplies for the army which he com¬ 
manded in Spain against Sertorius ; the other is sup¬ 
posed to be addressed from Mithradates to Arsaces, 
king of Parthia, and to be written when the affairs of 
the former monarch were proceeding unsuccessfully. 

It exhorts him, nevertheless, with great eloquence and 
power of argument, to join him in an alliance against 
the Romans : for this purpose, it places in a strong 
point of view their unprincipled policy and ambitious 
desire of universal empire : all which could not, with¬ 
out this device of an imaginary letter by a foe, have 
been so well urged by a national historian. It con¬ 
cludes with showing the extreme danger which the 
Parthians would incur from the hostility of the Ro¬ 
mans, should they succeed in finally subjugating Pon- 
tus and Armenia. The only other fragment of any 
length, is the description of a splendid entertainment 
given to Metellus on his return, after a year’s absence 
from his government of Farther Spain. It appears, 
from several other fragments, that Sallust had intro¬ 
duced, on occasion of the Mithradatic war, a geograph¬ 
ical account of the shores and countries bordering on 
the Euxine, in the same manner as he enters into a 
topographical description of Africa in his history of the 
Jugurthine War. This part of his work has been much 
applauded by ancient writers for exactness and liveli¬ 
ness, and is frequently referred to, as the highest au¬ 
thority, by Strabo, Pomponius Mela, and other geogra¬ 
phers. Besides his historical works, there exist two 
political discourses,, concerning the administration of 
the government, in the form of letters to Julius Csesar, 
which have generally, though not on sufficient grounds, 
been attributed to the pen of Sallust. The best edi¬ 
tions of Sallust are, that of Cortius, Lips., 1742, 4to : 
that of Havercamp, Amst., 1742, 4to, 2 vols. ; that oi 
Burnouf, Paris, 1821, 8vo ; that of Gerlach, Basil., 
1823, seqq., 3 vols. 4to ; and that of Frotscher, Lips., 
1823-30, 2 vols. 8vo. ( Dunlop's Roman Literature, 
vol. 2, p. 143, seqq.) 

Salmacis, a fountain near Halicarnassus in Caria, 
which was fabled to render effeminate all who drank 
ot its waters. It was here that Hermaphroditus, ac¬ 
cording to the poets, underwent his strange metamor¬ 
phosis. The fountain was situate at the foot of a 
rock, and on the summit of this rock was a very strong 
castle, which a Persian garrison long held against 
Alexander. ( Arrian , Exp. Al., 1, 24.) 

Salmantica, a city of Hispania, in the northeastern 
angle of Lusitania. It is very probably the same with 
the Elmantica of Polybius (3, 14) and the Hermandica 
of Livy (21, 5), which Hannibal took in his expedition 
against the Vaccasi. It is now Salamanca. (Mats - 
next, vol. 1, p. 348.) 

Salmone, a city of Elis, of great antiquity, north¬ 
west of Olmypia. It is said to have been founded by 
Salmoneus. ( Apollod., 1, 9, 7.— Strabo, 356.) 

Salmoneus, a king of Elis, son of ^Eolus and 
Enarete, who married Alcidice, by whom he hau 
T ro. He wished to be called a god, and to receive 
divine honours from his subjects ; and, therefore, tc 
imitate the thunder, he used to drive his chariot ovei 
a brazen bridge, and darted burning torches on every 
side, as if to imitate the lightning. This impiety pro 
voked Jupiter. Salmoneus was struck with a thun- 




SAM 


SAM 


derbolt, and placed in the infernal regions near his 
brother Sisyphus.—Consult, in explanation of this le¬ 
gend, the article Elicius, p. 467, col. 1, near the end. 
{Horn., Od., 11, 235.— Apollod., 1, 9.— Hygin., fab., 
60. — Virg., JEn., 6, 5, 85.) 

Salmydessus (XaTijuvdrjaoo f), or, as the later Greek 
and the Latin writers give the name, Halmydessus ('A/l- 
uvdyacos), a city of Thrace, on the coast of the Eux- 
ine, below the promontory of Thynias. The name 
properly belonged to the entire range of coast from 
the Thynian promontory to the mouth of the Bospo¬ 
rus. And it was this portion of the coast in particu¬ 
lar that obtained for the Euxine its earlier name of 
Axenos, or “ inhospitable.” The shore was rendered 
dangerous by shallows and marshes ; and when any 
vessels, either through want of skill or the violence 
of the wind, became entangled among these, the Thra¬ 
cian inhabitants poured down upon them, plundered 
the cargoes, and made the inhabitants slaves. In 
their eagerness to obtain the booty, quarrels often 
arose among the petty tribes in this quarter, and hence 
came eventually the singular custom of marking out 
the shore with stones, as so many limits within which 
each were to plunder. ( Xen ., Anab., 7, 6.) Strabo 
names the Astse as the inhabitants of this region, 
whose territory reached to the north as far as Apollo- 
nia. The Thyni, no doubt, are included under this 
name. The republic of Byzantium put an end to this 
system of plunder.—The modern Midjeh answers to 
the ancient city of Salmydessus. {Mela, 2, 2.— 
Phn., 4, 11.— Diod. Sic., 14,38.— Mannert, Geogr., 
vol. 7, p. 149.) 

Salon, now Salona, the principal harbour of Dal¬ 
matia, and always considered as an important post by 
the Romans after their conquest of that country. Pliny 
styles it a colony (3, 22), which is confirmed by vari¬ 
ous inscriptions. {Gruter., Thes., 32,12.) The name 
is sometimes written Salqna and Salonse. ( Cces., B. 
G., 3, 9.— Hirt., B. Alex., 43.) It was not the na¬ 
tive place of the Emperor Dioclesian, as is commonly 
supposed. That monarch was born at Dioclea, in its 
vicinity ; and to this quarter he retired after he had 
abdicated the imperial power. Here he built a splen¬ 
did palace, the ruins of which are still to be seen at 
Spalatro, about three miles from Salona. {Wessel- 
ing, ad. ltin. Anton., p. 270.— Adam's Antiquities of 
Spalatro. — Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 36.) 

Salvianus, a native of Colonia Agrippina ( Co¬ 
logne ), one of the early fathers of the Christian Church. 
He led a religious life at Massilia during the greater 
part of the 5th century, and died in that city. Salvian 
was the author of several works on devotional sub¬ 
jects, of which there are yet extant a treatise “ on 
the Providence of God” {De gubernatione Dei, &c.), 
in eight books ; another in four books, written 
“ Against avarice, especially in priests and clerical 
persons;” and nine pastoral letters. His works, as 
far as they remain, were collected and printed to¬ 
gether, in two volumes 8vo, by Baluzins, Paris, 1663. 

Salyes, a people of Gaul, extending from the 
Rhone, along the southern bank of the Druentia or 
Durance . almost to the Alps. They were powerful 
opponents to the Greeks of Massilia. ( Liv ., 5, 34.) 

Samara, a river of Gaul, now called the Somme. 
The name of this stream in intermediate geography 
was Sumina or Sumena, corrupted into Somona; 
whence the modern appellation. ( Vid. Samarobriva.) 

Samaria, a city and country of Palestine, famous 
in sacred history. The district of Samaria lay to the 
north of Judaea. The origin of the Samaritan nation 
was as fallows : In the reign of Rehoboam, a division 
was made of the people of Israel into two distinct 
kingdoms. One of these kingdoms, called Judah, 
consisted of such as adhered to Rehoboam and the 
house of David, comprising the two tribes of Judah 
and Benjamin ; the other ten tribes retained the an¬ 


cient name of Israelites under Jeroboam. The capi¬ 
tal of the state of these latter was Samaria, which 
was also the name of their country. The Samaritans 
and the people of Judaea were lasting and bitter ene¬ 
mies. The former deviated in several respects from 
the strictness of the Mosaic law, though afterward the 
religion of the two nations became more closely as¬ 
similated ; and, in the time of Alexander, the Samar¬ 
itans obtained leave of that conqueror to build a tern- 
pie on Mount Gerizim, near the city of Samaria, in 
imitation of the temple at Jerusalem, where they prac¬ 
tised the same forms of worship. Among the people 
of Judaea, the name of Samaritan was a term of bit¬ 
ter reproach, and disgraceful in a high degree. The 
city of Samaria was situate on Mount Sameron, and 
was the residence of the kings of Israel, from Omri its 
founder to the overthrow of the kingdom. It was 
razed to the ground by Hyrcanus, but rebuilt by He¬ 
rod, who completed the work begun by Gabinius, pro- 
consul of Syria. Herod called it Sebaste, in honour 
of Augustus. (1 Kings, 16, 24. — Ibid., 17, 6.— 
Ibid. , 22, 52. — 2 Kings, 17, 6. — Jerem., 23, 13.— 
Jos., Ant., 8, 7.— Id. ibid., 13, 15. — Id. ibid., 15, 
11.— Bell. Jud., 1, 6.) 

Samarobriva, a town of Gaul, now Amiens, the 
capital of the Ambiani. Its name appears to mean 
“ the city on the Samara,” since it lay on this river, 
and since the termination briva in Celtic is thought to 
have had, among its other meanings, that of “city” or 
“place.” {Vid. Mesembria.) Some, less correctly, 
make it signify “ the bridge” or “ passage of the Sa¬ 
mara,” as, for example, Lemaire, in his Geographical 
Index to Csesar. {Amm. Mar cell., 15, 27.— Cces., B. 
G., 5, 24; 45, 51.) 

Same, the only town in the island of Cephallenia no¬ 
ticed by Homer, from which we may infer that it was 
the most ancient and considerable. {Od., 2,249.) It 
was maintained by Apollodorus, that the poet used the 
word Samos to designate the island, and Same the 
town. It is certain, however, that in another passage 
{Od., 14, 122), the latter name is applied to the island. 

( Strabo, 453.) When Cephallenia submitted to the 
Romans, Same, with other towns, gave hostages ; but 
having afterward revolted, it sustained a vigorous siege 
for four months. At length the citadel Cyatis being 
taken, the inhabitants retired into their larger fortress ; 
but surrendered the following day, when.they were all 
reduced to slavery. {Liv., 38, 28, seqq.) Strabo re¬ 
ports that some vestiges of this town remained in his 
day on the eastern side of the island. ( Strabo, 455.) 
This spot retains the name of Samo, which is also that of 
the bay at the extremity of which it is situated. It ex¬ 
hibits still very extensive walls and excavations among 
its ruins, which have afforded various specimens of an¬ 
cient ornaments, medals, vases, and fragments of stat¬ 
ues. {Holland's Travels, vol. 1, p. 55.— Dodwell, 
vol. 1, p. 75.— Cramer's Anc. Greece , vol. 2, p. 52.) 

Samnites, a people of Italy, whose territory was 
bounded on the north by the Peligni and Frentani; to 
the west it bordered on the extremity of Latium and 
on Campania, being separated from the latter province 
by the Vulturnus, Mons Callicula, and the chain of 
Mount Tifata. To the south a prolongation of the 
same ridge divided the Samnites from the Picentini 
and Lucani. To the east they were contiguous to 
Apulia, from the river Tifernus to the source of the 
Aufidus. It is usual with geographers to regard the 
ancient Samnites as divided into three tribes, the Car- 
aceni, Pentri, and Hirpini ; to which others have added 
the Caudini and Frentani; but the former classifica¬ 
tion seems to rest on better authority.—Whatever dif¬ 
ference of opinion may prevail among the writers of 
antiquity respecting the origin of other Italian tribes, 
they seem agreed in ascribing that of the Samnite na¬ 
tion to the Sabines. (Consult remarks under the arti¬ 
cle Sabini.) The Samnites, like the Romans, were an 

1187 




SAMNITES. 


SAM 


ambitious and rising nation, rendered confident by their 
successes over the Tuscans and the Oscans of Cam¬ 
pania ; and formidable not only from their own re¬ 
sources, but also from the ties of consanguinity which 
connected them with the Frenlani, Vestini, Peligni, and 
other hardy tribes of Central Italy. The rich and fer¬ 
tile territory of Campania was then the nominal object 
of the contest which ensued, but in reality they fought 
for the dominion of Italy, and consequently that of the 
world ; which was at stake so long as the issue of the 
war was doubtful. Livy seems to have formed a just 
'dea of the importance of that struggle, and the fierce 
obstinacy with which it was carried on, when he pauses 
in the midst of his narrative, in order to point out the 
unwearied constancy with which the Samnites, though 
so often defeated, renewed their efforts, if not for em¬ 
pire, at least for freedom and independence (10, 32). 
But when that historian recounts an endless succession 
of reverses sustained by this nation, attended with 
losses which must have quickly drained a far greater 
population, it is impossible to avoid suspecting him of 
considerable exaggeration and repetition ; especially 
as several campaigns are mentioned without a single 
distinct fact or topographical mark to give reality and 
an appearance of .truth to the narrative. Nor is Livy 
always careful to point out the danger which not un- 
frequently threatened Rome on the part of these for¬ 
midable adversaries. It is true that he relates with 
great beauty and force of description the disaster 
which befell the Roman arms at the defiles of Caudi- 
um ; but has he been equally explicit in laying before 
his readers the consequences of that event, which not 
only opened to the victorious Samnites the gates of 
several Yolscian cities, but exposed a great portion of 
Latium to be ravaged by their troops, and brought 
them nearly to the gates of Rome 1 (Liv., 9, 12.— 
Compare Strabo, 232, 249.) In fact, though often at¬ 
tacked in their own territory, we as often find the 
Samnite legions opposed to their inveterate foes in 
Apulia, in the territories of the Volsci and Hernici, 
and even in those of the Umbrians and Etruscans. 

( Liv ., 10.) Admirably trained and disciplined, they 
executed the orders of their commanders with the 
greatest alacrity and promptitude ; and such was the 
warlike spirit of the whole population, that they not 
unfrequently brought into the field 80,000 foot and 
8000 horse. ( Strabo , 259.) A victory over such a 
foe might well deserve the honours of a triumph; and 
when the Romans had at length, by repeated successes, 
established their superiority, they could then justly lay 
claim to the title of the first troops in the world. But 
though the Samnites were often overmatched and 
finally crushed by the superior conduct and power 
of the Romans, it is evident that the spirit of inde¬ 
pendence still breathed strong in their hearts, and 
waited but for an opportunity to display itself. Thus, 
when Pyrrhus raised his standard in the plains of 
Apulia, the Samnite bands swelled his ranks, and 
seemed rather to strengthen the forces of that prince 
than to derive assistance from his army. Nor did they 
neglect the occasion which presented itself, on the ap¬ 
pearance of Hannibal in their country, for shaking off 
the Roman yoke, but voluntarily offered to join him in 
the field against the common enemy. (Liv., 23, 42.) 
Rome had already triumphed over Carthage, Macedon, 
and Antiochus, and was regarded as mistress of the 
world, when a greater danger than any she had before 
encountered threatened her dominion in Italy, and 
shook the very seat of her power. This was the break¬ 
ing out of the Social war, which afforded the most con¬ 
vincing proof that the Samnite people were not yet 
conquered, in that bloody contest which, in the space 
of a few years, is said to have occasioned the loss of 
300,000 lives. (Veil. Paterc., 2, 15.) This people 
formed the chief strength and nerve of the coalition : 
fiach was their determined enmity against the Romans, 
1188 


that they even invited Mithradates, king of Pontus, to 
join his forces to those of the confederates in Italy. 
(Diod., Excerpt., 37.) Even though deserted by their 
allies and left to their own resources, they still con¬ 
tinued in arms till the fortune of Sylla and the Romans 
prevailed, and they ceased to exist as a nation. It 
was not till he had achieved the total destruction of 
the last Samnite army, at the very gates of Rome, that 
Sylla at length felt assured of permanent success, and 
ventured to assume the title of Felix. His fear of the 
Samnite name, however, led him farther to persecute 
that unhappy people, thousands of whom were butch¬ 
ered at his command, and the rest proscribed and ban¬ 
ished. He was said, indeed, to have declared, that 
Rome would enjoy no rest so long as a number of 
Samnites could be collected together. (Strabo, 249. 
— Flor., 3, 21.— Veil. Paterc., 2, 26.— Liv., Epit. % 
88.— Pint., Vit. Syll .— Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, 
p. 221, seqq.) 

Samnium, I. a region of Italy, inhabited by the 
Samnites. (Vid. Samnites.)—II. A city of Samnium. 
It was long a matter of great doubt with antiquaries 
and geographers, whether we could admit the exist¬ 
ence of a city called Samnium in the province of the 
same name, as the evidence of this fact rested only on 
an obscure passage of Florus (1, 16), and the still 
more uncertain testimony of Paulus Diaconus. (Rer. 
Lang., 2, 20.) But it seemed to acquire additional 
confirmation from an inscription discovered in the tomb 
of the Scipios, in which the name of Samnium occurs 
as that of a town taken by Scipio Barbatus ; nor can 
farther evidence be required on this point, after the 
proofs adduced by Romanelli from old ecclesiastical 
chronicles, which speak of a town named Samnia or 
Samne, on the site now called Cerro, near the source 
of the Vulturous. (Cramer's Anc. Italy , vol. 2, p, 
227.) 

Sammonium or Salmone, as we find it written in 
the Acts of the Apostles (27, 7), a promontory of 
Crete, forming the extreme point of the island towards 
the coast. (Dionys. Perieg., 109.) Strabo says it 
faces the Isle of Rhodes and Egypt; but his assertion 
that it is nearly in the same latitude with the Promon¬ 
tory of Sunium is erroneous (Strab., 474), since, ac¬ 
cording to the best maps, Cape Salornone, by which 
name it is now distinguished, is more than two degrees 
to the east of the Attic headland. Mannert has en¬ 
deavoured to prove that Cape Siclero or Sunio, as it is 
sometimes called, is the Sammonium of the ancients; 
but his reasons are certainly not conclusive. The very 
fact, indeed, of the Periplus allowing 120 stadia from 
the Dionysiades Insulae to the Sammonian Promontory 
is decisive against him ; as that distance agrees per¬ 
fectly with Cape Salornone, whereas Cape Sidero is 
only fifty stadia at most from those islands. (Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 371.— Mannert, Geogr., 
vol. 8, p. 706.) 

Samos, an island of the ^Egean, lying off the lower 
part of the coast of Ionia, and nearly opposite the Tro- 
gilian Promontory. The intervening strait was not 
more than seven stadia in the narrowest part. (Strab., 
637.) The first inhabitants were Carians and Lele 
ges, whose king Ancaeus, according to the poet Asius, 
cited by Pausanias, married Sarnia, daughter of the 
Masander. The first Ionian colony came into the isl¬ 
and from Epidaurus, having been expelled from the 
latter quarter by the Argives. The leader of this col¬ 
ony was Procles, a descendant of Ion. Under his son 
Leogoras, the settlement was invaded by the Ephe¬ 
sians, under the pretext that Leogoras had sided with 
the Carians against Ephesus. The colony being ex¬ 
pelled from Samos, retired for a time to Ansea in Ca- 
ria, whence they again invaded the island, and finally 
expelled the Ephesians. Samos is early distinguished 
in the maritime annals of Greece, from the naval as¬ 
cendancy it acquired in the time of Polycrates. (Vid. 



SAMOS. 


SAM 


operates ) After the death of this luler, the govern¬ 
ment was held for some time by Maeandrius, his sec¬ 
retary ; but he was expelled by the troops of Darius, 
who placed on the throne Syloson, the brother of Po¬ 
lycrates, on account of some service he had rendered 
him in Egypt, when as yet he was but a private per¬ 
son. {Herod., 3, 140.) Strabo reports, that the yoke 
of this new tyrant pressed more heavily on the Sami¬ 
ans than that of Polycrates, and that, in consequence, 
the island became nearly deserted ; whence arose the 
proverb, "Ektjtc 'Lvlootivrog evpvx^ply- {Strab., 638. 
—Compare Heraclid., Pont., p. 211.) From Herodo¬ 
tus, however, we learn, that the Samians took an ac¬ 
tive part in the Ionian revolt, and furnished sixty ships 
to the fleet assembled at Lade ; but, by the intrigues 
of iEaces, son of Syloson, who had been deposed by 
Aristagoras, and consequently favoured the Persian 
arms, the greater part of their squadron deserted the 
confederacy in the battle that ensued, and thus con¬ 
tributed greatly to the defeat of the allies. {Herod., 
6, 8, seqq.) On learning the result of the battle, many 
of the Samians determined to quit the island rather 
than submit to the Persian yoke, or that of a tyrant 
imposed by them. They accordingly embarked on 
board their ships, and sailed for Sicily, where they 
first occupied Calacte, and soon after, with the assist¬ 
ance of Anaxilas, tyrant of Rhegium, the important 
town and harbour of Zancle. H3aces was replaced on 
the throne of Samos, and, out of consideration for his 
services, the town and its temples were spared. After 
the battle of Salamis, the Samians secretly sent a dep¬ 
utation to the Greek fleet stationed at Delos, to urge 
them to liberate Ionia, they being at that time gov¬ 
erned by a tyrant named Theomestor, appointed by 
the Persian king. {Herod., 9, 90.) In consequence 
of this invitation, Leotychidas, the Spartan command¬ 
er, advanced with his fleet to the coast of Ionia, and 
gained the important victory of Mycale. The Sami¬ 
ans having regained their independence, joined, to¬ 
gether with the other Ionian states, the Grecian con¬ 
federacy, and with them passed under the protection, 
or, rather, the dominion of Athens. The latter power, 
however, having attempted to change the constitution 
of the island to a democracy, had nearly been expelled 
by the oligarchical party, aided by Pissuthnes, satrap 
of Sardis. Being overpowered, however, finally by 
the overwhelming force brought against them by the 
Athenians under Pericles, the Samians were com¬ 
pelled to destroy their fortifications, give up their ships, 
deliver hostages, and pay the expense of the war by 
instalments. This occurred a few years before the 
braking out of the Peloponnesian war. {Thucyd., 1, 
115, seqq.) After this we hear little of Samos till 
the end of the Sicilian expedition, when the maritime 
war was transferred to the Ionian coast and islands. 
At this time Samos became the great point d'appui of 
the Athenian fleet, which was stationed there for the 
defence of the colonies and subject states ; and there 
is little doubt that the power of Athens was alone pre¬ 
served at this time by means of that island. Me 
learn from Polybius (5, 35, 11), that, after the death 
of Alexander, Samos became for a time subject to the 
kings of Egypt. Subsequently it fell into the hands 
of Antiochus, and, on his defeat, into those of the Ro¬ 
mans. It lost the last shadow of republican freedom 
under the Emperor Vespasian, A.G. 70. The tem¬ 
ple and worship of Juno contributed not a little to the 
fame and affluence of Samos. Pausanias asserts that 
this edifice was of very great antiquity ; this, he says, 
was apparent from the statue of the goddess, which 
was of wood, and the work of Smilis, an artist con¬ 
temporary with Daedalus. {Pausan., 7, 4. Callim., 
Epigr., ap. Euseb., Prcep. Evang.,3,8 .— Clem. Alex., 
Protr., p. 30.) In Strabo’s time, this temple was 
idorned with a profusion of the finest works of art, es¬ 
pecially paintings, both in the nave of tLa building and 


the several chapels adjoining. The outside was equal- 
ly decorated with beautiful statues by the most cele¬ 
brated sculptors. Besides this great temple, Herodo¬ 
tus describes two other works of the Samians which 
were most worthy of admiration : one was a tunnel 
carried through a mountain for the length of seven 
stadia, for the purpose of conveying water to the city 
from a distant fountain. Another was a mole, made 
to add security to the harbour ; its depth was twenty 
fathoms, and its length more than two stadia. {He¬ 
rod., 3, 60.)—The circuit of this celebrated island, 
which retains its ancient name, is 600 stadia, according 
to Strabo. Agathemerus reckons 630. Pliny, how¬ 
ever, 87 miles, which make upward of 700 stadia. 
{Plin., 5, 31.) It yielded almost every kind of prod¬ 
uce, with the exception of wine, in such abundance, 
that a proverbial expression, used by Menander, was 
applied to it, tyepet nai opvWuv ynAa. {Strab., 637.) 
—The city of Samos was situate exactly opposite the 
Trogilian Promontory and Mount Mycale. The port 
was secure and convenient for ships, and the town, for 
the most part, stood in a plain, rising gradually from 
the sea towards a hill situate at some distance from 
it. The citadel, built by Poly.crates, was called Asty- 
palaea. {Stcph. Byz., s. v. ' ^arvirdlaia .— Cramer’s 
Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 402, seqq.) Dr. Clarke has 
the following remarks concerning this island : “ As 
we sailed to the northward of the island of Patmos, 
we were surprised to see Samos so distinctly in view. 
It is hardly possible that the relative situation of Sa¬ 
mos and Patmos can be accurately laid down in 
D’Anville’s, or any more recent chart; for, keeping 
up to windward, we found ourselves to be so close 
under Samos, that we had a clear view both of the 
island and of the town. This island, the most con¬ 
spicuous object, not only of the Ionian Sea, but of all 
the HCgean, is less visited, and, of course, less known 
than any other; it is one of the largest and most con¬ 
siderable of them all ; and so near to the mainland, 
that it has been affirmed persons upon the opposite 
coasts may hear each other speak. Its surprising ele¬ 
vation and relative position with regard to the lower 
islands of Fuorni and Nicana make it a landmark all 
over the Archipelago. According to Constantine Poi- 
phyrogenitus, any very lofty place was called Samos. 
The name of K arabdry was anciently given to that 
terrible rock which forms the cape and precipice upon 
its western side, as collecting the clouds and genera¬ 
ting thunder.” {Travels, vol. 6, p 67, Lond. ed.) 

Samosata (Td ’Layooara, but in Ammianus Mar- 
cellinus, 14, 8, Samosata, -a), a city of Syria, the 
capital of the province of Commagene. and the resi¬ 
dence of a petty dynasty. {Amm. Marcell, 18, 4.) 
It was not only a strong city itself, but had also a 
strong citadel, and in its neighbourhood was one of the 
ordinary passages of the Euphrates, on the western 
bank of which river Samosata was situated. Samos¬ 
ata was the birthplace of Lucian. The modern name 
is Somaisath or Seempsat. {Abulfeda, Tab. Syr., p. 
244.— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. I, p. 491.) 

Samothrace, an island in the TEgean, off the coast 
of Thrace. According to Pliny (4, 12), it lay opposite 
to the mouth of the Hebrus, and was twenty-eight 
miles from the coast of Thrace, and sixty-two from 
Thasos. The same authority makes it thirty-two miles 
in circuit. Though insignificant in itself, consider¬ 
able celebrity attaches to it from the mysteries of Cy- 
bele and her Corybantes, which are said by some to 
have originated there, and to have been dissemina¬ 
ted thence over Asia Minor and different parts of 
Greece.—It was said that Dardanus, the son of Jupi¬ 
ter and Electra, who was the imputed founder of Troy, 
had long dwelt in Samothrace before he passed over 
into Asia; and it is affirmed, that he first introduced 
into his new kingdom the mysteries practised in the 
island from which he had migrated {Strabo, 331 ^ 

1189 




SAN 


SAN 


and which, bv some writers, was from that circum¬ 
stance named Dardania. ( Callim ., ap. Plin., 4, 12.) 
Samothrace was also famous for the worship of the 
Cabiri, with which these mysteries were intimately 
connected. ( Vid. Cabiri.)—Various are the names 
which this island is said to have borne at different pe¬ 
riods. It was called Dardania, as we have already 
seen ; also Electris, Melite, Leucosia ( Strabo , 472.— 
Schol. in Apoll. Rhod., 1, 917), and was said to have 
been named Samothrace (Thracian Samos) by a col¬ 
ony from the Ionian Samos, though Strabo conceives 
this assertion to have been an invention of the Sami¬ 
ans. He deduces the name either from the word 
"Ldyog, which implies an elevated spot, or from the 
Saii, a Thracian people, who at an early period were 
in possession of the island. ( Strabo , 457.) Homer, 
in his frequent allusion to it, sometimes calls it sim¬ 
ply Samos (II., 24, 78.— II, 24, 753); at other times 
the Thracian Samos. (II., 13, 12.)—The Samothra- 
cians joined the Persian fleet in the expedition of 
Xerxes; and one of their vessels distinguished itself 
in the battle of Salamis. (Herod., 8, 90.) Perseus, 
after the battle of Pydna, took refuge in Samothrace, 
and was there seized by the Romans when preparing 
to escape from Demetrium, a small harbour near one 
of the promontories of the island. On this occasion, 
Livy asserts that the chief magistrate of Samothrace 
was dignified with the title of king (45, 6). Stephanus 
Byzantinus informs us there was a town of the same 
name with the island. This island was reduced, in 
the reign of Vespasian, along with the other isles of 
the /Egean, to the form of a province. It is now Sam- 
othraki. (Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 335.) 

Sana, a town of Macedonia, on the Sinus Singiti- 
cus, and situated on a neck of land connecting Athos 
with the continent. On the opposite side was x\can- 
thus, and between the two places was cut the canal 
of Xerxes. (Fid. Acanthus.) 

Sanchoniathon, a Phoenician author, who, if the 
fragments of his works that have reached us be genu¬ 
ine, and if such a person ever existed, must be re¬ 
garded as the most ancient writer of whom we have 
any knowledge after Moses. His father’s name was 
Thabion, and he himself was chief hierophant of the 
Phoenicians. According to some, he was a native of 
Berytus, but Athenaeus (3, 37) and Suidas make him 
a Tyrian As to the period when he flourished, all is 
uncertain. Some accounts carry him back to the era 
of Semiramis, others assign him to the period of the 
Trojan war. St. Martin, however, endeavours to prove 
that he was a contemporary of Gideon, the judge of 
Israel, and flourished during the fourteenth century 
before the Christian era. (Biographic Univ., vol. 40, 
p. 305, seqq.) The titles of the three principal works 
of this writer are as follows : 1. Ilepi rrjq 'E p/aov <j>v- 
aioloyiaq (“ Of the Physical System of Hermes ").— 
2. Al-yvTmaicT] Qeoloyia (“■ Egyptian Theology"). —3. 
fyoLviKa (“ Phoenician History"), cited also under 
other titles, one of which is <£om/c«v QeoTioyla (“ The¬ 
ology of the Phoenicians"). —All these works were 
written in Phoenician, and the preceding are their ti¬ 
tles in Greek. The history was translated into the 
Greek language by Herennius Philo, a native of Byb- 
lus, who lived in the second century of our era. It is 
from this translation that we obtain all the fragments 
of Sanchoniathon that have reached our times. Philo 
had divided his translation into nine books, of which 
Porphyry made use in his diatribe against the Chris¬ 
tians. It is from the fourth book of this last work that 
Eusebius took, for an end directly opposite to this, the 
passages that have come down to us. (Prap. Evang., 
1, p. 31.) And thus we have these documents rela¬ 
tive to the mythology and history of the Phoenicians 
from the fourth hand.—St. Martin and others are in¬ 
clined to the opinion that the three works mentioned 
above as having been written by Sanchoniathon, were 
1190 


only so many parts of one mam production. Accord* 
ing to Porphyry, the Phoenician history of Sanchonia 
thon was divided into eight books, while we learn, or 
the other hand, from Eusebius, that the version of 
Philo consisted of nine. Hence it has been supposed 
that the Greek translator had united two works, and 
that thus the treatise on the physical system of Her¬ 
mes, or that on Egyptian theology, became a kind of 
introduction to the Phoenician History, and increased 
the number of books in the latter by one. And it has 
been farther supposed that the two titles of “ Egyptian 
Theology” and “ Physical System of Hermes” belong¬ 
ed both to one and the same work. (Compare Bo- 
chart, Geogr. Sacr., 2, 17.)—The long interval of 
time between Sanchoniathon and his translator ren 
ders it extremely probable that the latter must often 
have erred in rendering into Greek the ideas of his 
Phoenician original; and we may suppose, too, that 
occasionally Philo may have been tempted to substitute 
some of his own. And yet, at the same time, the 
fragments of Sanchoniathon contain so many things ev¬ 
idently of Oriental origin, that it is extremely difficult 
to believe they were forged by Philo. A difference 
of opinion, however, ever has existed, and will con¬ 
tinue to exist on this head. Grotius and other writers 
highly extol the fragments in question, on account of 
the agreement which they discover between them and 
the books of the Old Testament. Cumberland and 
Meiners, on the other hand, only see in them an at 
tempt to prop up the religious system of the Phceni 
cians and Egyptians, and discover in them no other 
principle but those of the Porch concealed under Phoe¬ 
nician names. (Cumberland, Sanchoniathon's Phceni 
dan Hist., Lond., 1720, 8vo.— Meiners' Hist. Doctrina 
de Vero Deo, vol. 1, p. 63.'— Scholl, Hist. Lit. Grec., 
vol. 4, p. 115.)—In 1836 a work appeared in Germany 
with the following title: “ Sanchoniathons Urgeschich 
te der Phonizier in einem Auszuge aus der wiede t 
aufgefundenen Handschrift von Philos rolls t'andi get 
Uebersetzung. Nebst Bemerkungen von Fr. Wagen 
feld. Mit einem Vorworte vom Dr. G. F. Grotefend, 
Hanover, 1836” (Sanchoniathon’s early History of the 
Phoenicians, condensed from the lately-found man 
uscript of Philo’s complete translation of that work 
With annotations by Fr. Wagenfeld, and a preface by 
Dr. G. F. Grotefend). This was followed, in 1837, by 
another work, purporting to be the Greek version ot 
Philo itself, with a Latin translation by Wagenfeld : 
“ Sanchoniathonis Historiarum Phoenicia, lihros no- 
vem, Grace versos a Philone Byblio, edidit, Latinaque 
versione donavit F. Wagenfeld, Brema , 1837.” — 
The whole is a mere forgery, very clumsily executed; 
and the imposture has been very ably exposed in the 
37th and 39th numbers of the Foreign Quarterly Re¬ 
view. 

Sancus, a deity of the Sabines, according to some, 
identical with Hercules. The. name is said to have 
signified “heaven” in the Sabine tongue. (Lyd., de 
Mens., p. 107 ed. Schow., p. 250 ed. Rather.) San¬ 
cus at first view would seem to have some connexion 
in form with the Sandacus of Cilicia and the Sandon 
of Lydia. Another name for this deity was Semo, 
which recalls the Sem or Som of Egypt. (Creuzer's 
Symbolik, par Guigniaut, vol. 3, p. 493.) 

Sandaliotis, a name given to Sardinia from its re¬ 
semblance to a sandal. (Vid. Ichnusa.) 

Sandrocottus, an Indian of mean origin, who, hav¬ 
ing on one occasion been' guilty of insolent conduct 
towards Alexander, was ordered by that monarch to be 
seized and put to death. He escaped, however, by a 
rapid flight, and at length dropped down completely 
exhausted. As he slept on the ground, a lion of im¬ 
mense size came up to him, licked the perspiration from 
his face, and, having awakened him, fawned upon and 
then left him. The singular tameness of the animal 
appeared preternatural to Sandrocottus, and was con 






SAP 


SAP 


etrued by him into an omen of future success. Hav¬ 
ing collected, therelore, a band of robbers, and having 
roused the people of India to a change of affairs, he 
finally attained to sovereign power, and made himself 
master of a part of the country which had been previ¬ 
ously in the hands of Seleucus. It is said, that, 
while waging war, and before coming to the throne, a 
wild elephant of very large size approached him on 
one occasion, and with the greatest docility suffered 
him to mount on its back, and used after this to bear 
him into the fight. {Justin, 15, 4.) The Sandrocot- 
tus of the Greeks is thought to be the same with 
the Chandragoupta of the Hindu writers. And Chan- 
dragoupta (i. e., “ saved the moon”) is regarded by 
many as a mere epithet or surname of the Hindu 
monarch Vischarada. {De Maries, Hist, de Unde, 
vol. 3, p. 255.— Id. ib., vol. 1, p. 420.) 

Sangarius, a river of Asia Minor, rising near a 
place called Sangia ( Zayyia ), in Mount Adoreus, a 
branch of Mount Dindymus, in Galatia, and falling into 
the Euxine on the coast of Bithynia. Its source was 
150 stadia from Pessinus. According to Strabo (543), 
it formed the true eastern boundary of Bithynia, and 
his account coincides in this with that of the earlier 
writers. ( Scylax, p. 3A.—Apoll. Rhod.,2, 724 .) The 
Bithynian kings, however, gradually extended their 
dominions farther to the east, and the Romans gave 
the country a still farther enlargement on this side. 
This river is called Sangaris by Constantine Porphy- 
rogenitus (I, 5), and Sagaris by Ovid ( ep. e Pont., 4, 
10). The modern name is the Sakaria. {Mannert's 
Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 3, p. 607.) 

Sannyrion, an Athenian comic poet, contemporary 
with Aristophanes. Little is known of him. One of 
his plays, entitled A avdy (Banal ), in which he bur¬ 
lesqued a verse of the Orestes of Euripides (Schol. ad 
Anstoph., Ran., p. 142. — Schol. ad Eurip., Orest., 
279), appears to have been acted about 407 B.(3. 

( Clinton , Fast. Hellen., p. 81.) Another comedy of 
his, entitled (“ Laughter”), is also mentioned. 

( Clinton, Fast. Hellen., p. 91. — Bentley's Phalaris, 
vol. 1, p. 261, ed. Dyce.) 

Santones, a people of Gallia Aquitanica, north of 
the mouth of the Garumna, on the coast. Their cap¬ 
ital was Mediolanum Santonum, now Saintes. ( Plin ., 
4, 19.— Gas., B. G., 1, 10.— Id. ibid., 3, 11.) 

Sapis, a river of Cisalpine Gaul, rising in Umbria, 
and falling into the Hadriatic below Ravenna. It is 
now the Savio or Alps. It was also called Isapis. 
{Plin., 3, 15.— Silt Ital., 8, 449.— Lucan., 2, 405.) 

Sapor, I. a king of Persia, who succeeded his fa¬ 
ther, Artaxerxes, about the 238th year of the Christian 
era. Naturally fierce and ambitious, Sapor wished to 
increase his paternal dominions by conquest; and, as 
the indolence of the emperors of Rome seemed favour¬ 
able to his mews, he laid waste the provinces of Meso¬ 
potamia, Syria, and Cilicia; and he might have be¬ 
come master of all Asia if Odenatus had not stopped 
his progress. If Gordian attempted to repel him, his 
efforts were weak, and Philip, who succeeded him on 
the imperial throne, bought the peace of Sapor with 
money. Valerian, who was afterward invested with 
ihe purple, marched against the Persian monarch, but 
was defeated and taken prisoner. Odenatus no soon¬ 
er heard that the Roman emperor was a captive in 
the hands of Sapor, than he attempted to release him 
by force of arms. The forces of Persia were cut to 
pieces, the wives and treasures of the monarch fell 
into the hands of the conqueror, and Odenatus pene¬ 
trated, with little opposition, into the very heart of the 
kingdom. Sapor, soon after this defeat, was assassi¬ 
nated by his subjects, A.D. 273, after a reign of 32 
years. He was succeeded by his son, called Hormis- 
das.—II The second of that name, succeeded his fa¬ 
ther Hormisdas on the throne of Persia. He was as 
great as his ancestor o; the same name, and by under¬ 


taking a war against the Romans, he attempted to en 
large his dominions, and to add the provinces on the 
west of the Euphrates to his empire. Julian marched 
against him, but fell by a mortal wound. Jovian, who 
succeeded Julian, made peace with Sapor; but the 
monarch, always restless and indefatigable, renewed 
hostilities, invaded Armenia, and defeated the Emper¬ 
or Valens. Sapor died A.D. 380, after a reign of 70 
years, in which he had often been the sport of fortune. 
He was succeeded by Artaxerxes, and Artaxerxes by 
Sapor III., a prince who died after a reign of five 
years, A.D. 389, in the age of Theodosius the Great. 

Sappho, I. a celebrated poetess, a native of Myti- 
lene in the island of Lesbos, and nearly contempora¬ 
neous with her countryman Alcasus, although she must 
have been younger, since she was still alive in 568 
B.C. About 596 B.C. she sailed from Mytilene in 
order to take refuge in Sicily. {Marm. Par., ep. 36.) 
The cause of her flight appears to have been a politi¬ 
cal one, and she must at that time have been in the 
bloom of her life. At a much later period she produced 
the ode mentioned by Herodotus (2, 135), in which she 
reproaches her brother Charaxus for having purchased 
Rhodopis, and for having been induced by his love 
to emancipate her. ( Muller , Hist. Grec. Liter., p. 
172 ) Of all the females that ever cultivated the 
poetic art, Sappho was certainly the most eminent, 
and ancient Greece fully testified its high sense of 
her powers by bestowing on her the appellation of the 
“Tenth Muse.” How great, indeed, was Sappho’s 
fame among the Greeks, and how rapidly it spread 
throughout Greece itself, may be seen in the history 
of Solon, who was contemporary with the Lesbian po¬ 
etess. Hearing his nephew recite one of her poems, 
he is said to have exclaimed that he would not willing¬ 
ly die till he had learned it by heart. {Stobccus, 
Serm., 29, 28.) Indeed, the whole voice of antiquity 
has declared that the poetry of Sappho was unrivalled 
in grace and sweetness. This decision has been con¬ 
firmed by posterity, though we have only a few ver¬ 
ses remaining of her poetic effusions ; for these are of 
a high character, and stamped with the true impress 
of genius.—The history of Sappho is involved in great 
uncertainty. It is known that, as we have already 
stated, she was born at Mytilene, in the island of Les¬ 
bos ; but if we subject to a rigorous criticism the opin¬ 
ion so generally received in relation to her amorous 
propensities, and the misfortunes attendant upon these, 
we will come to the conclusion that the story of her 
passion for Phaon and its tragical consequences is a 
mere fiction. It is certain that Sappho, in her odes, 
made frequent mention of a youth, to whom she gave 
her whole heart, while he requited her passion with 
cold indifference. But there is no trace whatever of 
her having named the object of her passion, or sought 
to win his favour by her beautiful verses. The pre¬ 
tended name of this youth, Phaon, although frequent¬ 
ly mentioned in the Attic comedies, appears not to 
have occurred in the poetry of Sappho. If Phaon had 
been named in her verses, the opinion could not have 
arisen that it was the courtesan Sappho, and not the 
poetess, who was in love with Phaon. ( Alhenaus, 
13, p. 596, e.) Moreover, the marvellous stories of 
the beauty of ^haon have manifestly been borrowed 
from the myth of Adonis. {Muller, Hist. Gr. Lit., 
p. 174.) According to the ordinary account, Sappho, 
despised by Phaon, took the leap from the Leucadian 
rock, in the hope of finding a cure for the pangs of un 
requited love. But even this is rather a poetical im- 
ao-e than a real event in the life of Sappho. The Leu¬ 
cadian leap was a religious rite, belonging to the ex¬ 
piatory festivals of Apollo, which were celebrated in 
this as in other parts of Greece. At appointed times, 
criminals, selected as expiatory victims, were throwr. 
from the high overhanging rock into the sea: they 
were, however, sometimes caught at the bottom, and 

1191 




SAPPHO. 


SAPPHO. 


f saved, were sent away from Leucadia. (Concern¬ 
ing the connexion of this custom with the worship of 
Apollo, see Muller's Dorians, b. 1, ch. 11, § 10.) 
This custom was applied in various ways by the poets 
of the time to the description of lovers. Stesichorus, 
in his poetical novel named Calyce, spoke of the love 
of a virtuous maiden for a youth who despised her 
passion; and, in despair, she threw herself from the 
Leucadian rock. The effect of the leap in the story 
of Sappho (namely, the curing her of her intolerable 
passion) must, therefore, have been unknown to Ste¬ 
sichorus. Some years later, Anacreon says in an ode, 
“Again casting myself from the Leucadian rock, I 
plunged into the gray sea, drunk with love” (ap. He- 
phcest., p. 130). The poet can scarcely, by these 
words, be supposed to say that he cures himself of a 
vehement passion, but rather means to describe the 
delicious intoxication of violent love. The story of 
Sappho’s leap probably originated in some poetical im¬ 
ages and relations of this kind ; a similar story is told 
of Venus in regard to her lament for Adonis. ( Ptol ., 
Hephcest., ap. Phot., cod., 191.— ed. Bekk., vol. 1, p. 
153.) Nevertheless, it is not unlikely that the leap 
from the Leucadian rock may really have been made, 
in ancient times, by desperate and frantic persons. 
Another proof of the fictitious character of the story is, 
that it leaves the principal point in uncertainty, name¬ 
ly, whether Sappho survived the leap or perished in it. 

( Muller, Hist. Gr. Lit., p. 175.) — It appears that 
Sappho became united in marriage to an individual 
named Cercolas, and the fruit of this union was a 
daughter, named Cleis (KA«f), who is mentioned by 
the poetess in one of her fragments. Having lost her 
husband, Sappho turned her attention to literary pur¬ 
suits, and inspired many of the Lesbian females with 
a taste for similar occupations. She composed lyric 
pieces, of which she left nine books, elegies, hymns , 
&c. The admiration which these productions excited 
was universal; her contemporaries carried it to the 
highest pitch of enthusiasm, and saw in her a superior 
being: the Lesbians placed her image on their coins, 
as that of a divinity. — Sappho had assembled around 
her a number of young females, natives of Lesbos, 
whom she instructed in music and poetry. They re¬ 
vered her as their benefactress, and her attachment to 
them was of the most affectionate description. This 
intimacy was made a pretext by the licentious spirit of 
later ages for the most dishonourable calumnies. An 
expression in Horace (“ mascula Sappho ,” Ep., 1, 19, 
28) has been thought to countenance this charge, but 
its meaning has been grossly misunderstood; and, 
what is still more to the purpose, it would appear that 
the illustrious poetess has been ignorantly confounded 
with a dissolute female of the same name, a native of 
Lesbos, though not of Mytilene. ( Vid. Sappho II.) 
Indeed, as the Abbe Barthelemy has remarked, the ac¬ 
counts that have reached us respecting the licentious 
character of Sappho, have come only from writers long 
subsequent to the age in which she lived. Sappho, 
the favoured of the Muses, was, as we have just en¬ 
deavoured to show, never enamoured of Phaon, nor 
did she ever make the leap of Leucadia. Indeed, the 
severity with which Sappho censured her brother Cba- 
raxus for his love for the courtesan Rhodopis, enables 
us to form some judgment of the principles by which 
she guided her own conduct. For although, at the 
time when she wrote this ode to him, the fire of youth¬ 
ful passion had been quenched within her breast, yet 
she never could have reproached her brother with his 
love for a courtesan, if she had herself been a courte¬ 
san in her youth ; and Charaxus might have retaliated 
upon her with additional strength. Besides, we may 
plainly discern the feeling of unimpeached honour due 
to a freeborn and well-educated maiden, in the verses 
which refer to the relation of Alcaeus and Sappho. 
Alcaeus testifies that the attractions and loveliness of 
1192 


Sappho did not derogate from her moral worth, wnen 
he calls her “ violet-crowned, pure, sweetly-smiling 
Sappho.” ( Alcaeus, fragm., 38, ed. Blomf.) —Sappho’s 
misfortunes arose not, therefore, from disappointed 
love ; they had, on the contrary, a political origin, and 
terminated in exile. It is probable that, being drawn 
into a conspiracy against Pittacus, tyrant of Mytilene, 
by the persuasions of Alcreus, she was banished from 
Lesbos along with that poet and his partisans. (Marm. t 
Oxon., ep. 37.) She retired, as we have already re¬ 
marked, to Sicily.—We know nothing farther of the 
life of Sappho. Her productions, which gained fo; 
her so exalted a reputation, are almost equally un¬ 
known. All that has reached us consists of, 1. A 
beautiful Ode to Venus, in the Sapphic measure, pre¬ 
served by Dionysius of Halicarnassus.—2. A second 
ode, in the same measure, still more beautiful, de¬ 
scriptive of the tumultuous emotions of love, and pre¬ 
served *in part by Longinus.—3. Various fragments, 
all unfortunately very short, found in Aristotle, Plu¬ 
tarch, Athenceus, Stobseus, Hephaestion, Maerobius, 
Eustathius, and others.—4. Three epigrams.—Sap¬ 
pho also composed hymns to the gods, in which she 
invoked them to come from their favourite abodes in 
different countries ; but there is little information ex¬ 
tant respecting their contents.—The poems of Sappho 
are little susceptible of division into distinct classes. 
Hence the ancient critics divided them into books, 
merely according to the metre, the first containing the 
odes in the Sapphic measure, for the poetess enriched 
the melody of the language by a lyric measure of the 
most harmonious character, called after her own name; 
a measure which Catullus and Horace afterward intro¬ 
duced with so much success into the Latin tongue.— 
The best text of Sappho is that given by Blomfield, in 
the Museum Criticum (vol. 1, p. 3, seqq.). The best 
and fullest edition, however, is that of Neue, Berol ., 
1827, 4to. ( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 1, p. 205.-— 
Muller, Hist. Lit. Gr., p. 172.— Barnes, Vit. Anacr., 
p. 29.— Bayle, Diet., s. v. Sappho.) —II. A native of 
Eresus, in the island of Lesbos, for a long time con¬ 
founded with Sappho of Mytilene. The distinction 
between the turn has only been recently drawn, and 
the memory of the celebrated poetess has at last been 
freed from the dishonourable imputations which had 
been so long attached to it. An ancient medal, brought 
from Greece in 1822, presents, along with the name 
2Ari4>Q (Sappho), a female head, with the letters 
EPECI ( Eresi), the allusion being to the Lesbian city 
of Eresus, where the medal was struck. (Consu’.c De 
Hautcroche , Notice sur la courtisane Sappho d’Eresus, 
Paris, 1822.) This settles the question as to there 
having been two Sapphos, both natives of the same 
island. The period when this second Sappho flour¬ 
ished is far from being easy to determine. That she 
was a female of some celebrity appears trident from 
the inhabitants of Eresus having stamped her image 
on their coins ; but, unfortunately, we have only a few 
words, scattered here and there in ancient authors, rel¬ 
ative to this namesake of the Mytilenaean Sappho. 
The first of these authors is the historian Nymphis, 
cited by Athenseus (13, p. 596, c ), who speaks of 
Sappho, a courtesan of Eresus, as having been enam 
oured of Phaon (Kat y el; ’E picov de rig tralpa 2a?r 
cj> 0 ), tov Kahov $de>vog tpaodeioa, rrepiSoyrog yv, ug 
<pyai Nt 'pfyig tv PeplTV?M 'A mag ).—The second au¬ 
thority is iElian (Var. Hist., 12, 19), who remarks, 
“,I learn, too, that there was also another Sappho in 
the island of Lesbos, a courtesan, not a poetess” (IIw 
ddvopai St, on teal erepa tv ry Ato6(p hyevsTO 'Lantyu, 
tralpa, ov notr/Tpia ).—A third authority is Suidas, 
who distinguishes between Sappho the poetess, and 
Sappho who was enamoured of Phaon, and who leaped 
from Leucate ; only by some negligence or other he 
makes the poetess a native of Eresus, and the other of 
Mytilene. The fact of the existence of two Sapj aos 




SAR 


S AR 


being thus p.oved by the testimony of three authors, 
it remains to examine which of the two was the one 
that loved Phaon, and leaped in despair from the 
promontory of Leucate. Herodotus, the oldest au¬ 
thor that makes mention of Sappho, only knew the 
native of Mytilene. He is eilent respecting her love 
for Phaon, and, considering the discursive nature of 
his history, he no doubt would have mentioned it 
had the circumstance been true. Hermesianax, a 
piece of whose on the loves of poets is quoted by 
Athenseus (13, p. 598, seqq.), speaks of Sappho’s 
attachment for Anacreon, but is silent respecting 
Phaon, 'when, in fact, her fatal passion for the latter, 
and particularly its sad catastrophe, suited so well 
the spirit of his piece, that he could not have avoid¬ 
ed mentioning them had they been true. In an epi¬ 
gram by Antipater of Sidon {Ep., 70.— Jacobs's An- 
thologia Gr., vol. 2, p. 25), relative to the death of 
Sappho, that poet is not only silent respecting her 
tragical end at Leucate, but, according to him, she 
fell in the course of nature, and her tomb was in her 
native island. In the Bibliotheca of Photius, to which 
we have already referred (vol. 1, p. 153, ed. Bekker), 
an extract is given from a work of Ptolemy, son of 
Iiephaastion, in which is detailed a kind of history of 
the leaps from Leucate. It is remarkable that no 
mention is made in this account of the fate of Sappho, 
although many instances are cited of those who had 
made the hazardous experiment. All these negative 
authorities would seem to more than counterbalance 
the testimony of Ovid, who, in one of his Hero'ides, 
confounds the female who was enamoured of Phaon 
with the lyric poetess.—According to Strabo (452), 
Menander made Sappho to have been the first that 
ever took the leap. ( Menandri , Reliq., ed. Meineke , 
p. 105.) Now Menander lived in the fourth century 
before our era, and the existence of the Sappho, there¬ 
fore, who threw herself from the rock of Leucate, may 
be traced up as far at least as three centuries prior to 
the Christian era. It does not, however, go back as 
far as the fifth century, since Herodotus, who flourish¬ 
ed at that period, makes no mention cf the tragic end 
of the Mylilenian poetess : the natural inference, 
therefore, is, that Sappho of Mytilene did not leap 
from the promontory of Leucate, and that Sappho 
of Eresus, who did, was not born when Herodotus 
wrote his history.—Visconti has the merit of having 
been the first modern writer who suspected that the 
episode of Phaon and the catastrophe at Leucate be¬ 
longed rather to the second than the first Sappho. 
( Iconogr. Greca , vol. 1, p. 81, seqq.) His suspicions 
would have been changed into certainty if he could 
have foreseen the discovery of the ancient medal, 
brought to light after his decease, and which so fully 
establishes the existence of a second Sappho, a native 
of Eresus. ( Biogr. Univ., vol. 40, p. 398. — Com¬ 
pare the remarks of Welcker, Sappho von einem herr- 
schenden vorurtheil befreyt , Gott., 1816, 8vo.) 

Saraceni, or, more correctly, Arraceni, a name first 
belonging to a people in Arabia Felix, and derived 
most probably from that of the town Arra. The ap¬ 
plication of the name Saraceni to all the Arabians, 
and thence to all Mohammedans, is of comparatively 
recent origin. Ammianus Marcellinus employs the 
term in question as having been used by others before 
him. ( Ammianus Marcell ., 14, 4 ; 22, 15 ; 23, 6 ; 
24, 2.) 

Sardanapalus, the last king of Assyria, infamous 
for his luxury and voluptuousness. The greatest part 
of his time was spent in the company of his wives 
and favourites, and the monarch generally appeared in 
the midst of them disguised in the habit of a female, 
and spinning wool for his amusement. This effemi¬ 
nacy irritated his officers ; Belesis and Arsaces con¬ 
spired against him, and collected a numerous force to 
dethrone him. Sardanapalus quitted for a while his 
7 M 


voluptuous retreat, and appeared at the head of hia 
armies. The rebels were defeated in three successive 
battles ; but at last Sardanapalus was beaten and be¬ 
sieged in the city of Ninus for two years. When all 
appeared lost, he burned himself in his palace, with 
his eunuchs, concubines, and all his treasures, and 
the empire of Assyria was divided among the con¬ 
spirators. This event happened B.C. 820, according 
to Eusebius ; though Justin and others, with less 
probability, place it 80 years earlier. {Herod., 2, 150 
— Cic., Tusc., 5, 35.) 

Sardi, the inhabitants of Sardinia. ( Vid . Sar¬ 

dinia.) 

Sardes. Vid. Sardis. 

Sardica or Serdica, and also Ulpia Sardica, acity 
belonging originally to Thrace, but subsequently in¬ 
cluded within the limits of Dacia Ripensis, and made 
the capital of this province. It was situated in a fer¬ 
tile plain, through which flowed the river CEscus. 
The Emperor Maximian was born in its vicinity, and 
it is known in the annals of the Church from a coun¬ 
cil having been held within its walls. Attila destroyed 
the city, but it was rebuilt, and the name changed by 
the Bulgarians to Triaditza, under which appellation 
it still exists. ( Eutrop ., 9, 22.— Nicetas , 3.) 

Sardinia, an island in the Mediterranean, south of 
Corsica and west of Italy. The oldest Greek form 
for the name was lapdc), undeclined, but of the fem¬ 
inine gender, which the Latins converted into Sardin¬ 
ia. Herodotus writes eg 2 apdu ; Scylax and Scym- 
nus give no inflections of the word ; and Diodorus, in 
most instances, follows the original usage. {Herod., 
1 , 170. — Id., 5, 106. — Scylax , p. 2. — Scymn., ch. v., 
204.— Diod., 4, 29, 82, &c.) At a later period the 
form began to be gradually declined, and hence we 
have 2 apdova in Polybius, though he gives 2 apfici 
(from which others have the genitive 2 apdovg) as the 
form of the nominative. Strabo writes 2 apdd, gen. 
2 apdovog. The inhabitants were called Sardoi (2 ap- 
6 C)ol ) and Sardonii CZapdovioi) ; the Romans named 
them Sardi, rarely Sardinienses.— Scylax gives the 
distance between Sardinia and the mainland as one 
and a half days’ sail, or 750 stadia ; this, however, is 
too small, and Artemidorus is more correct when he 
makes it 1200 stadia. {Scylax, p. 2.— Strabo, 222.) 
That the island can be seen on a clear day from the 
coast of Italy, we learn from Strabo, and also from 
modern travellers. The area of Sardinia is given at 
the present day at 9200 miles, and the number of the 
inhabitants is estimated at about 4,0(10,000.—The 
Gre.eks compared the shape of this island to that of 
the human foot, and hence the appellation of Ichnusa 
that was sometimes given to it (’I xvovoa — ix vo Ci 
vestigium). Others, from its resemblance to the low¬ 
er part of the sandal, term it Sandaliotis. {Vid. 
Ichnusa, and compare the remark of Pliny, 3, 7, 
“ Sardiniam Timceus Sandaliotim appellavit ab effigie 
solece, Myrsilus Ichnusam a similitudine vestigii”) 
—Sardinia may be called a mountainous island, a 
chain of mountains running through it from north to 
south, though nearer to the eastern than the western 
coast. From the northern part of this chain another 
rises, which proceeds from east to west, and which 
separates the island, as it were, into two parts, from 
the present Capo Comino to Capo Malargin. This 
cross range is called by Ptolemy M aiv'ofieva opy {In- 
sani Montes —“The Mad Mountains”). The mount¬ 
ains of Sardinia exercise a very important influence 
on the character of its coast, on the temperature, and 
on the productiveness of the island. The numerous 
side ranges, running down to the very coast, form 
spacious bays, and, on the southern and western 
shores, safe harbours. On the east side of the island, 
however, the cliffs are high and steep, and scarcely af¬ 
ford anywhere a safe anchoring place ; while gusts of 
wind frequently blow with very sudden and great fury 

1193 



SARDINIA. 


SARDINIA. 


from the interior of the mountain ranges, and do great 
damage to vessels along these shores. Hence proba¬ 
bly the appellation of “ l'nsani Montes' ’ and hence, 
too, the language of Claudian ( Bell. Gildon ., v. 512), 
“ Insanos infamat navita montes .” Along the whole 
range, therefore, of the eastern coast, although so con¬ 
veniently situated for intercourse with Italy, the an¬ 
cients had but one harbour, Olbia, and that far to the 
north ; and in modern days, too, no place of any im¬ 
portance is found along this part of Sardinia. The 
mountain atmosphere was healthy, but the rugged na¬ 
ture of the ranges and the wild cnaracter ot the in¬ 
habitants forbade any attempts at cultivation. In the 
western and southern parts, on the other hand, the soil 
was fertile and well cultivated, but the climate very 
unhealthy. Thus Mela remarks (2,7), “ ut fecunda ita 
pane pestilens insula.’''' The noxious effects of the 
climate were still more sensibly felt by strangers than 
by natives. Hence, whenever the Romans wished to 
designate a particularly unhealthy region, they named 
Sardinia ; and so greatly did they dread the effects of 
its climate, that they never ventured to keep a stand¬ 
ing force in it for any length of time. (Cic., ep. ad 
Quint., fratrem, 2, 3.— Strabo, 225.) The principal 
causes of this unhealthiness were the pools of stag¬ 
nant water in the hollows of the island, and the want 
of northerly winds. These winds were kept off, as 
Pausanias believed (10, 17), by the mountains of Cor¬ 
sica and even of Italy. The Insani Montes also 
contributed their share in producing this. ( Claudian , 
Bell. Gildonic., v. 512, seqq.) —The fertility of the 
island is attested by all the ancient writers ; neither 
was it infested by any snakes, nor by any beasts of 
prey. Rome obtained her supplies of grain not only 
from Sicily, but also from Sardinia ; large quantities 
of salt, too, as in modern times, were manufactured 
on the western and southern coasts. The ancient 
writers speak of mines, and Solinus (c. 11) of silver 
ones : the names of various places in the island indi¬ 
cate a mining country, as Metalla, Insula Plumbaria, 
&c. ; and Ptolemy makes mention of several mineral 
springs and baths. Two products of the island, how¬ 
ever, deserve particular notice. One of these is its 
wool. Numerous herds of cattle were reared in the 
island, as might be expected among a people who paid 
little attention to, and derived little subsistence from 
agriculture. ( Diod., 5, 15.) It must be remarked, 
however, that the animals chiefly killed for food were 
of a mongrel kind, begotten between a sheep and a 
goat, and called musmones. (P/m., 8, 49.— Pausan., 
10, 17.) They were covered with a long and coarse 
hair, and their skins served for the common clothing 
of the mountaineers, whom Livy hence styles Pelliti. 
In winter they wore the hair inward. ( JElian, H. A., 
16, 34.) In war they had small bucklers covered 
with these skins. They were named from this attire 
Mastrucati; and the Mastrucati Latrunculi were of¬ 
ten very dangerous antagonists for the Romans. The 
other remarkable product of Sardinia was a species 
of wild parsley ( apiastrum ), called by Solinus herba 
Sardonia. It grew very abundantly around springs 
and wet places. Whoever ate of it died, apparently 
laughing ; in other words, the nerves became con¬ 
tracted, and the lips of the sufferer assumed the ap¬ 
pearance of an involuntary and painful laugh. Hence 
the expression Sardonicus risus. (Pausan., 10, 17. 
— Solin., c. 11.— Plin., 20, 11.) It must be remark¬ 
ed, however, that the phrase fieidrjGe 'Zapdoviov oc¬ 
curs also in Homer ( Od., 20, 302), and that other ex¬ 
planations besides the one just mentioned are given 
by Eustathius. — Whence Sardinia received its first 
inhabitants we are not informed by any ancient writer. 
They speak, indeed, of settlements made at various 
iimes in the island, but the new-comers always found 
a rude race of inhabitants already in possession. The 
first that migrated to Sardinia were said to have been 
1194 


the Etrurians and Tyrrhenians, under Phorcys, a sod 
of Neptune : these settled on the eastern coast. ( Ser - 
vius, ad Virg., JEn., 5, 829.) At a subsequent pe¬ 
riod, Sardus, a son of Hercules, led a colony thither. 
He introduced among the rude inhabitants, who were 
accustomed to dwell in caves, the first rudiments of 
civilization ; taught them agriculture, and was their 
earliest lawgiver. In gratitude to him, they called tht 
island after his name, Sardinia ; sent, at a later period, 
his statue to Delphi, and worshipped him as a god 
under the appellation of Sardus pater, whence arose 
the forms Sardipater and Sardopater. ( Serv. ad Virg., 
Mn., 8, 564.) After the Libyans came a colony of 
Iberians under Norax, from Bastica. He settled in 
the southern part of the island, and founded the city 
of Nora, which he called after his own name. Tra¬ 
dition also makes Aristams, the father of Actaeon, to 
have come to Sardinia with some Grecian followers 
after the death of his son. ( Sil. Ital., 12, 368.) He 
was the first to plant trees, and to teach the inhabi¬ 
tants how to make oil and cheese.—As regards the 
Grecian settlements in this island, it may be remarked, 
that, though the date of their first coming cannot be 
ascertained, it would appear, however, to have taken 
place at a very early period. The first of these colo¬ 
nies was that led by Iolaus. He brought with him 
many of the Thespiadae or sons of Hercules, together 
with a considerable number of Attic families. The 
inhabitants of the part conquered by him were called 
from him Iola'i, and even at the present day a part of 
the territory of Cagliari is styled Euradoria di lola. 
(Diod. Sic., 4, 24, &c.— Id., 5, 15.) The fertility ol 
Sardinia soon invited over numerous Grecian settlers ; 
and various petty republics were established, independ¬ 
ent of each other. All of these engaged with activ¬ 
ity in agriculture and commerce, and all rendered di¬ 
vine honours to Sardus, Aristaeus, and Iolaus. Traces 
of Grecian customs and attire are said still to remain. 
(Horsehelmann, Geschichte der Sardinien , p 7.) The 
Carthaginians would seem to have obtained a footing 
in Sardinia at a very early period, as the situation of 
the island in a commercial point of view was too im¬ 
portant to be neglected. Its fertility, moreover, made 
it one of their granaries, and they used every means 
in their power to promote agricultural labours. Sar¬ 
dinia fell into the hands of the Romans 237 B.C., in 
the interval between the first and second Punic wars. 
Its new masters could only, as the Carthaginians had 
done before them, obtain possession, for a long period, 
of the shores of the island. The inhabitants of the 
interior defended themselves successfully for nearly 
100 years. Indeed, it may be said that Sardinia was 
never completely subdued by the Roman arms (Strabo, 
225), and the predatory movements of the mountain¬ 
eers still occasioned trouble in the days of the emper¬ 
ors. (Tac., Ann., 2, 85.) In the fifth century it fell 
into the hands of the Vandals (Procop., Bell. Vand., 
2, 13.) The interior of the island, even at the present 
day, exhibits an astonishing degree of barbarism : the 
peasants are still dressed in leather or skins,, and the 
mountains are still infested by banditti.—The present 
island of Sardinia presents many monuments that re* 
call the successive sway of its several conquerors. 
The most remarkable, however, of these, are the very 
ancient structures called Nurages or Nuraghes, which 
have exercised the sagacity of various travellers. Th« 
number of these monuments is about 600. Those 
which are entire are 50 feet high, with a diameter of 
90 feet at the base, and terminating at the summit m 
a cone. They are built on little hills, in a plain, of 
different sorts of stone, and, in some cases, are sur¬ 
rounded by a wall. The blocks of stone are of large 
size, and put together without cement. Some nura¬ 
ghes are flanked by cones, to the number of from three 
to seven, which are grouped around the principal cone; 
they form a kind of casemates. The encompassing 




S A R 


S A R 


wall is surmounted with a parapet. Each nuraghe is 
divided into three chambers or stories, the communi¬ 
cation to which is effected by a kind of spiral ascent 
in the side wall. ( Mimant, Histoire de Sardaigne, 
Paris, 1825.— De la Marmora, Voyage cn Sardaigne, 
Paris, 1826. —Petit Radel, Notices sur les Nuraghes 
de la Sardaigne., Paris, 1826.) The author last cited 
regards the nuraghes as of Cyclopian or Pelasgic ori¬ 
gin, and carries back the period of their construction 
to the 15th century before the Christian era. (Man- 
inert, Geogr., vol. 9, pt. 2, p. 468. — Balbi, Abrege de 
Geogr aphie, p. 294.) 

Sardis or Sardes (the Ionic forms of the name are 
al 2 dpdtg and 2 updteg, the ordinary Greek form is 
at lupdetg), a city of Lydia, the ancient capital of 
the monarchs of the country. It was situate at the 
foot of Mount Tmolus, on the river Pactolus, which 
ran through the place ; and on one of the elevations 
of the mountain, comprehended within the circuit of 
the city, was the site of a strong citadel. According 
to Herodotus (1, 84), a concubine of Males, king of 
Lydia, had brought forth a young lion, and the mon¬ 
arch was informed by the Telmessian diviners, that if 
this animal were carried by him quite round the works 
of the city, Sardis should be for ever impregnable. 
The young lion was brought to every other part of the 
place except the steep side of the citadel which faced 
Mount Tmolus, this latter part being neglected as al¬ 
together insuperable and inaccessible ; and yet by this 
very part it was subsequently taken. This legend, 
combined with the statement of Joannes Lydus (de 
Mens., p. 42), that Sardis was an old Lydian word 
denoting “ the Year,” has led Creuzer to give an as¬ 
tronomical turn to the whole tradition. (Creuzer und 
Hermann, Briefe, p. 106, in notis .)— Sardis was said 
to have been destroyed by the Cimmerians during their 
inroad into Asia ( Strabo, 627), but to have been soon 
after rebuilt and strongly fortified : it is to this latter 
period, no doubt, that the legend above mentioned re¬ 
fers. As the capital of Croesus, king of Lydia, it is 
frequently mentioned in Herodotus, and the historian 
relates the manner in which it fell into the hands of 
Cyrus, the citadel having been surprised on the very 
side that was deemed inaccessible. The city retained 
its size and importance under the Persian dominion. 
Herodotus (7, 31) names it, by way of distinction, 
“the city of the Lydians” (tuv Avdcov to aorv), and 
it became the seat of the Persian satraps, as it had 
been of the Lydian kings. The fortifications, how¬ 
ever, must have been destroyed by its new masters, 
since otherwise the Greeks could not have so easily 
penetrated into the place in the expedition which pre¬ 
ceded the Persian war. From the account of Herod¬ 
otus (5, 100), the citadel alone would appear to have 
remained. And yet, with all its greatness, Sardis 
could not have been in these early times a well-built 
city ; at least the greater part of the houses would 
seem to have been constructed of reeds, according to 
the account of Herodotus, and even those which were 
built with bricks were roofed with reeds. One of 
these, on this occasion, was set on fire by a soldier, 
and immediately the flame spread from house to house, 
and consumed the whole city. The temple of Cybele 
also suffered in the conflagration, and it was this cir¬ 
cumstance that gave Xerxes a pretext for destroying 
the temples of Greece.—The city and acropolis sur¬ 
rendered. at a later day, on the approach of Alexander 
after the battle of the Granicus. He encamped by the 
river Hermus, which was 20 stadia, or two miles and 
a half, distant. He went up to the acropolis, which 
was then fortified by a triple wall, and gave orders to 
have erected in it a temple and altar to Jupiter Olym¬ 
pus, on the site of the royal palace of the Lydian mon¬ 
archs. The place, on account of its importance, was 
confided to Pausanias, one of his most trusty generals. 
(Aroian, Exp. Alex., 1, 18 ) After Alexander’s death, 


we find Sardis to be the residence of Aehseus, the gov» 
ernor, under the Syrian kings, of the whole Asiatic 
peninsula. (Polyb., 577.) It was taken, after a long 
siege, by Antiochus (Polyb., 7, 15.— Id., 8, 23), md 
again laid waste. At a subsequent period we find 
Sardis in the hands of the Romans, who, in accord¬ 
ance, probably, with a general rule pursued by them 
in Asia Minor, dismantled the citadel; at least, neither 
Strabo nor any writer after him makes mention of the 
castle of Sardis. The city sank, after this, into a 
place of inferior importance, and its principal trad© 
was transferred to Smyrna and Ephesus. The Ro 
mans, however, made it the seat of a conventus jurid- 
icus for the northeastern part of Lydia, and its size 
still remained considerable. (Strabo, 625-—7r oTug 
pteyaTir].) In the reign of the Emperor Tiberius, Sar¬ 
dis, along with eleven other of the principal cities of 
Lower Asia, was destroyed by an earthquake. The 
calamity, according to Tacitus (2, 47), happened in 
the night, and was, for that reason, the more disastrous. 
Hills are said to have sunk, and valleys to have risen to 
mountains. The emperor made liberal grants to the 
ruined cities; and Sardis was indebted for its restora¬ 
tion to his munificence. Its inhabitants were exempted 
from all taxes for five years ; and received a supply of 
one hundred thousand great sesterces.—Sardis is re¬ 
markable in the annals of Christianity as having been 
one of the seven churches of Asia.—The Turks made 
themselves masters of Sardis in the eleventh century, 
but soon lost it again. In the fourteenth century, how¬ 
ever, it again fell into their hands, together with its 
citadel. Timur subsequently took both, and by him 
the place was probably destroyed for the last time. 
A miserable village called Sart is now found on the 
site of this once famous city. For an account of the 
present condition of the place, and of the antiquities 
in its neighbourhood, consult ArundelVs Seven Church¬ 
es of Asia, p. 176, seqq .— Milner, History of the 
Seven Churches of Asia, p. 303, seqq. — Leake s 
Tour, p. 265, 342. 

Sardus, a son of Hercules, who led a colony to 
Sardinia, and gave it his name. (Vid. Sardinia.) 

Sarepta or Zarephath, now Sarfend, a city on 
the shore of the Mediterranean, between Tyre and Si- 
don. It was the scene of one of the miracles of Eli¬ 
jah. (1 Kings , 17, 9.) 

Sarmatia, an extensive country, bounded, accord¬ 
ing to Mela (3, 4), on the west by the river Vistula, 
and extending from the Sinus Codanus or Baltic Sea, 
to the Tana'is or Don. Ptolemy, on the other hand, 
makes it reach from the Vistula to the Rha or Wolga, 
and to be separated by the river Tana'is into two great 
divisions: 1. Sarmatia Europa^a, the boundaries of 
which tract of country were, the Vistula on the west, 
Mount Carpatus and the river Tyras (or Dniester ) on 
the south, the Palus Maeotis on the east, and the Si¬ 
nus Codanus on the north. It corresponded to what is 
now part of Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Prussia, Lit¬ 
tle Tartary, &c.—2. Sarmatia Asiatica. This coun¬ 
try reached from the Tana'is to the mouth of the Rha, 
and from the northernmost point of Caucasus to un¬ 
known regions in the north. It corresponded, there¬ 
fore, to Astrackhan, Orenburg, &c.—Ptolemy ban¬ 
ished from his map of Europe the name of Scythia; 
but we must not suppose that he regarded all the na¬ 
tions between the Tana'is and Vistula as Sarmatians. 
On the contrary, he expressly calls the Alani, whom he 
places between the Borysthenes and Tana'is, a Scyth¬ 
ian race.—The greater part of the Sarmatic nations, 
in the strictest sense of this name, were confounded 
together under the name of Hamaxobii, a term which 
alludes to their living, like the Scythians, in wagons 
(Malte Brun, Hist, de la Geogr., vol. l,p. 126, seqq. 
Brussels ed ) 

Sarnus, a river of Campania, now the Sarno, fall 
in** into the sea about a mile from Pompeii. Accord 
D 1195 





S AR 


SAT 


mg to Strabo, it formed the harbour of that town, which 
was also common to the inland cities of Nola, Acerrae, 
and Nuceria. The same writer adds, that it was navi¬ 
gable for the space of eighteen miles ; a circumstance 
which will scarcely be found applicable to the present 
stream; whence we should be led to conclude that a 
considerable change has taken place in its course. 
(Strabo, 247.) The Pelasgi, who occupied this coast 
at an early period, are said to have derived the name 
of Sarrastes from this river. ( Cramer's Anc. Italy, 
vol. 2, p. 180.) 

Saron, a king of Troezene, unusually fond of hunt¬ 
ing. He was drowned in the sea while pursuing a 
stag which had taken to the water, and divine hon¬ 
ours were paid him after death. According to one ac¬ 
count, he gave name to the Sinus Saronicus. Saron 
built a temple to Diana at Troezene, and instituted 
festivals in honour of her, called from himself Saronia. 
(Pausan ., 2, 30.— Mela , 2, 3.)* 

Saronicus Sinus, now the Gulf of Engia, a bay 
Df the H2gean Sea, lying to the southwest of Attica, 
and northeast of Argolis, and commencing between 
the promontories of Sunium and Scylleum. Some 
suppose that this part of the sea received its name 
from Saron, who was drowned there, or from a small 
river which discharged itself on the coast. Pliny, 
however, makes the name to have come from the for¬ 
ests of oak which at one time covered the shores of 
the gulf, the term aapuvcg, in early Greek, signifying 
“an oak.” {Pliny, 4, 9. — Compare Schol. ad Cal- 
lim., H. in Jov., 22 ) 

Sa-rpedon, I. a son of Jupiter by Europa, the daugh¬ 
ter of Agenor. He was driven from Crete by his broth¬ 
er Minos {vid. Rhadamanthus), and thereupon retired-to 
Lycia, where he aided Cilix against the people of that 
country, and obtained the sovereignty of a part of it. 
Jupiter is said to have bestowed upon him a life of 
treble duration. ( Apollod ., 3, 1, 2. — Hcyne, ad loc.) 
—II. A son of Jupiter and Laodamia the daughter of 
Bellerophon. He was king of Lycia, and leader with 
Glaucus of the Lycian auxiliaries of Priam. The char¬ 
acter of Sarpedon is represented as the most faultless 
and amiable in the Iliad. He was by birth superior 
to all the chiefs of either side, and his valour was not 
unworthy of his descent. The account of his conflict 
with Patroclus ; the concern of Jupiter at his perilous 
situation ; the deliberation of the god whether he should 
avert the hostile decrees of fate ; and the subsequent 
description of his death, are among the most striking 
of all the episodes of the Iliad. {Horn., II. , 16, 419, 
seqq.) —III. A promontory of the same name in Cili¬ 
cia, beyond which Antiochus was not permitted to sail 
by a treaty of peace which he had made with the Ro¬ 
mans. {Livy, 38, 38.— Mela, 1, 13.) 

Sarra, the earlier Latin name for the city of Tyre. 
The Oriental form was Tsor or Sor, for which the 
Carthaginians said Tsar or Sar, and the Romans, re¬ 
ceiving the term from those, converted it into Sarra, 
whence they also formed the adjective Sarranus, 
equivalent to “Tyrian.” {Virg., Georg., 2, 506.— 
Scaliger, ad Paul. Diac., s. v. Sarra.) Servius erro¬ 
neously deduces the appellation from Sar, which, ac¬ 
cording to him, is the Phoenician name for the murex, 
or shellfish that yielded the purple. {Serv. ad Virg., 

1. c.) The Greek natneTupof proceeds probably from 
an Aramaic pronunciation, Tor. {Gesenius, Hebr. 
Lex., vol. 2, p. 672, ed. Leo.) 

Sarrastes, a people of Campania on the Sarnus. 
{Virg., jEn., 7, 738.— Vid. remarks under the article 
Sarnus, at the end.) 

Sarsina, a city of Umbria, in the northern part of 
the country and on the left bank of the Sapis, towards 
its source. It still retains its name. This city was 
the birthplace of Plautus, the comic writer, a circum¬ 
stance to which he alludes in his Mostellaria (3, 2). 
Sarsina must have been once a place of note, as it 
1196 


gave its name to a numerous Umbrian tribe {PolyO., 

2, 24.) From ancient inscriptions we may collect 
that it was a municipal town. {Cramer's Anc. Italy, 
vol. 1, p. 237.) 

Saticula, a town of Samnium, the site of which 
has not been precisely determined. It seems, howev¬ 
er, evident from Livy (23, 14), that we must seek for 
it among the mountains south of the Vulturous and 
on the borders of Campania. It is supposed to corre¬ 
spond to the modern Agata dei Goti. {Cramer's 
Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 237.) 

Satureium, a town in the Tarentine territory, fre¬ 
quently alluded to bj the ancient writers. It was 
famed for the fertility of the surrounding country and 
for its breed of horses. {Horat., Sat., 1, 6, 59.) 

Saturnalia, a festival in honour of Saturn, and 
the most remarkable one in the whole Roman year. 
It was celebrated in December, and at first lasted but 
one day (the 19th); it was then extended to three, 
and subsequently, by order of Caligula and Claudius, 
to seven. {Macrob., Sat., 1, 10.) The utmost liber 
ty prevailed during its continuance : all was mirth and 
festivity; friends made presents to each other; schools 
were closed ; the senate did not sit; no war was pro¬ 
claimed ; no criminal executed ; slaves were permit 
ted to jest with their masters, and were even waited 
on at table by them. This last circumstance probably 
was founded on the original equality of master and 
slave, the latter having been, in the early times of 
Rome, usually a captive taken in the war or an insol¬ 
vent debtor, and, consequently, originally the equal of 
his master. {Dion. Hal., 4, 24. — Niebuhr, Hist. 
Rom , vol. l,p. 319.) According to some, the Satur 
nalia were emblematic of the freedom enjoyed in the 
golden age, when Saturn ruled over Italy. {Keight- 
ley's Mythology, p. 524.) 

Saturnia, I. a name given to Italy, because Saturn 
was fabled to have reigned there during the golden 
age. {Virg., G., 2, 173.)—II. A name given to Juno, 
as being the daughter of Saturn.—III. An ancient 
city of Etruria, whose ruins may be seen near the 
source of the Albinia, and which is mentioned by Di¬ 
onysius of Halicarnassus (1, 21) as formerly occupied 
by the Pelasgi. According to Pliny (3, 5), its more 
ancient name was Aurinia. Aurinia received a colony 
from Rome, A.U.C. 569. {Liv., 39, 55.) 

SaturnInus, I. L. Apuleius, a tribune of the com¬ 
mons, who, in A.U.C. 654, B.C. 100, united with 
Marius against the patricians, excited a sedition at 
Rome, intimidated the senate, caused several popular 
laws to be passed, and exercised a sort of usurped and 
tyrannical power for the space of three years. At 
length breaking out into open rebellion, and seizing, 
with his adherents, upon the Capitol, he was besieged, 
there by Marius, who was now compelled, as consul, 
to act against him. Saturninus and his adherents 
eventually surrendered themselves to Marius, upon 
his promising to save their lives ; but the people fell 
upon and destroyed them. {Plut., Vit. Mar. — Flor., 

3, 16.) — II. P. Sempronius, a general of Valerian, 
proclaimed emperor in Egypt by his troops after he 
had rendered himself celebrated by his victories over 
the barbarians. His integrity, his complaisance and 
affability, had gained him the affection of the people ; 
but his fondness of ancient discipline provoked his 
soldiers, who wantonly murdered him in the 43d yea? 
of his age, A.D. 262.—III. Sextus Julian, a Gaul, in¬ 
timate with Aurelian. The emperor esteemed him 
greatly, not only for his private virtues, but for his 
abilities as a general, and for the victories which he 
had obtained in different parts of the empire. He was 
saluted emperor at Alexandrea, and compelled by the 
clamorous army to accept of the purple, which he ha' 1 
rejected with disdain and horror. Probus, who wa«v 
then emperor, marched his forces against him, and 
besieged him in Alpainea, where he destroyed himseli 



SAT 


SAT 


when unable to make head against his powerful adver¬ 
sary.—IV. Pompeius, a writer in the reign of Trajan. 
He was greatly esteemed by Pliny the younger, who 
speaks of him with great warmth and approbation as an 
historian, a poet, and an orator. Pliny always con¬ 
sulted the opinion of Saturninus before he published 
his compositions. ( Plin., Epist ., 1 , 8. — Id., 1 , 16.) 

Saturnus (called by the Greeks Kpovog), a son of 
Coelus or Uranus, and Terra, or the goddess of the 
earth. Terra bore to Uranus a mighty progeny, the 
Titans, six males and six females. The youngest of 
the former was Saturn. These children were hated 
by their father, who, as soon as they were born, thrust 
them out of his sight into a cavern of Earth. ( Vblcker , 
Myth, der lap., 283. — Compare Apollod., 1 , 1 , 3.) 
Earth, grieved at this unnatural conduct, produced 
“ the substance of hoary steel,” and, forming from it a 
sickle, roused her children, the Titans, to rebellion 
against their father; but fear seized on them all 
except Saturn, who, lying in wait with the sickle with 
which his mother had armed him, mutilated his unsus¬ 
pecting father. The drops which fell on the earth 
from the wound gave birth to the Erinnyes, the Giants, 
and the Melian nymphs. ( Hes ., Theog., 155, seqq.) — 
After this, Saturn obtained his father’s kingdom, with 
the consent of his brethren, provided he did not bring 
up any male children. Pursuant to this agreement, 
Saturn always devoured his sons as soon as born, be¬ 
cause, as some observe, he dreaded from them a retal¬ 
iation of his unkindness to his father, till his wife 
Rhea, unwilling to see her children perish, concealed 
from her husband the birth of Jupiter, Neptune, and 
Pluto, and, instead of the children, she gave him large 
stones, which he immediately swallowed, without per¬ 
ceiving the deceit. The other Titans having been in¬ 
formed that Saturn had concealed his male children, 
made war against him, dethroned and imprisoned him 
with Rhea ; and Jupiter, who was secretly educated 
in Crete, was no sooner grown up, than he flew to de¬ 
liver his father, and to place him on his throne. Sat¬ 
urn, unmindful of his son’s kindness, conspired against 
him ; but Jupiter banished him from his throne, and the 
father fled for safety into Italy, where the country re¬ 
tained the name of Lat.ium, as being the place of his 
concealment (from lateo, “ to lie concealed”). Janus, 
who was then King of Italy, received Saturn with 
marks of attention. He made him his partner on the 
throne ; and the King of Heaven employed himself in 
aivilizing the barbarous manners of the people of Italy, 
and in teaching them agriculture, and the useful and 
liberal arts. His reign there was so mild and popular, 
so beneficent and virtuous, that mankind have called it 
the golden age, to intimate the happiness and tranquil¬ 
lity which the earth then enjoyed. Saturn was father 
of Chiron, the centaur, by Philyra, whom he previously 
changed into a mare, to avoid the observation of Rhea. 
—Hesiod, in his didactic poem, says that Saturn 
ruled over the Isles of the Blessed, at the end of the 
earth, by the “deep-eddying ocean” (Op. et D., 167, 
seq.); and Pindar gives a luxuriant description of this 
blissful abode, where the departed heroes of Greece 
dwelt beneath the mild rule of Saturn and his assessor 
Rhadamanthus. (01., 2, 123, seqq.) At a later pe¬ 
riod, it was fabled that Saturn lay asleep, guarded by 
Briareus, in a desert island near Britannia, in the 
Western Ocean. (Pint., de Defect. Orac., 18.— Id., 
de Fac. in Orb. Lun., 26. — Procop., Bell. Goth., 4, 
20.—Compare Tzetz. ad Lycoplir., 1204.) Saturn 
was in after limes confounded with the grim deity 
Moloch, to whom the Tyrians and Carthaginians of¬ 
fered their children in sacrifice. The slight analogy 
of this practice with the legend of Saturn’s devouring 
his children, may have sufficed for the Greeks to infer 
an identity of their ancient deity with the object of 
Phoenician worship. It was not improbably the cir¬ 
cumstance of both gods being armed with a sickle, 


which led to the inference of the Kpovog of the Greeks 
being the same with the Saturnus of the Latins. 
(Buttmann, Mylhologus, vol. 2, p. 28, seqq.) The 
fabled flight of this last from Olympus to Hesperia or 
Italy, and his there establishing the golden age, may 
have been indebted for its origin to the legend of the 
reign of Kronus over the Islands of the Blessed in the 
western stream of Ocean. There were no temples ol 
Kronus in Greece ; but there was a chapel of Kroriua 
and Rhea at Athens (Pausan., 1, 18, 7), and sacrifices 
were made to him on the Kronian Hill at Olympia. 
(Pausan., 6, 20, 1.) The Athenians, moreover, had 
a festival in his honour, named the Kronia, which was 
celebrated on the twelfth day of the month Hecatom- 
baaon, or at the end of July, and which, as described, 
strongly resembles the Italian Saturnalia. (Demosth., 
Timocr., p. 708.— Philoc., ap. Macrob., Sat., 1, 10.) 
—The only epithet given to Kronus by the elder poets 
is crooked-counselled (dyKVy\,op.yTr/g). Nonnus (25, 
234) calls him broad-bearded (evpvyivcLog). (Keight 
ley's Mythology, p. 68, seqq.) —Among the Romans, 
in the sacrifices the priest always performed the cere 
mony with his head uncovered, which was unusual at 
other solemnities. The god is generally represented 
as an old man bent through age and infirmity. He 
holds a scythe in his right hand, with a serpent which 
bites its own tail, which is an emblem of time and of 
the revolution of the year. In his left hand he has 
a child, which he raises up as if instantly to devour it. 
Tatius, king of the Sabines, is fabled to have first 
built a temple to Saturn on the Capitoline Hill ; a 
second was afterward added by Tullus Hostilius, and 
a third by the first consuls. On his statues were gen¬ 
erally hung fetters, in commemoration of the chains he 
had worn when imprisoned by Jupiter. From this 
circumstance, all slaves that obtained their liberty 
generally dedicated their fetters to him. During the 
celebration of the Saturnalia, the chains were taken 
from the statues, to intimate the freedom and inde¬ 
pendence which mankind enjoyed during the golden 
age. At Rome the treasury was in his temple, inti¬ 
mating, it is said, that agriculture is the source of 
wealth. (Pint., Qucest. Rom., 42.) The Nundince, 
or market days, were also sacred to this god. (Aul. 
Gcll., 13, 22.— Livy, 8, 1 . — Id., 45, 33.) — Bochart 
considers Saturn to have been the same with Noah ; 
and so well convinced of this is he, as to remark, 
“ Noam esse Saturnum tam multa docent, ut vix sit 
dubitandi locus .” (Geogr. Sacr., 1, 1.) This school 
of mythology, however, has long ago been succeeded 
by one of a more rational nature. According to oth¬ 
ers, Saturn was the same with Time, the Greek words 
which stand for Saturn and Time differing only in 
one letter (K povog, Saturn, xpovog, time); and on this 
account Saturn is represented as devouring his chil¬ 
dren, and casting them up again, as Time devours and 
consumes all things which it has produced, which at 
length revive again, and are, as it were, renewed : or 
else days, months, and years are the children of Time, 
which he constantly devours and produces anew. Nie¬ 
buhr regards Saturn and Ops as the god and goddess 
of the earth, its vivifying and its receptively-productive 
powers. (Rom. Hist., vol. 1, p. 66, Cambr. transl.) 
Creuzer makes Saturn the great god of nature, in 
many respects assimilated to Janus. He is the god 
who suffices for himself, the god who is satisfied with 
his own comprehensive powers. ( Symbolik, par Guig - 
niaut, vol. 3, p. 499.) Hence the derivation of the 
name from the Latin Satur, “ full,” “ satisfied.” 

Satvri, demigods of the country, whose origin is 
unknown. They are represented like men, but with 
the feet and the legs of goats, short horns on the head, 
and the whole body covered with thick hair. The 
Romans called them indiscriminately Fauni, Panes, 
and Silvani. —Hesiod is the first who mentions tha 
Satyrs ; he savs that they he Curetes, and the mount 

1197 



SCil 


S C A 


ain-nymphs, were the offspring of the five daughters of 
the union of Hecatseus with the daughter of Phoroneus 
(ap. Strab., 471). The Laconian term for a Satyr was 
Tityrus ( Schol. ad Theocr., 7, 72), which also signified 
the buck-goat, or the ram that led the flock. (Schol. ad 
Theocr., 3, 2.) iEschylus calls a Satyr a buck-goat 
( rpdyoc■ — Fragm., ap. Plut., de Cap., 2).—The Sa¬ 
tyrs were associated with Bacchus, and they formed 
the chorus of the species of drama which derived its 
name from them. It has been supposed that they 
were indebted for their deification to the festivals of 
this deity, and that they were originally merely the 
rustics who formed the chorus, and danced at them in 
their goatskin dresses. (Welcker, Nachtr. zur Tril., 
p. 211, seqq. — Keightley's Mythology , p. 233, seq.) 

Sauromat®, a people called Sarmatoe by the Lat¬ 
ins. ( Vid. Sarmatia.) % 

Savus, a river of Pannonia, rising in the Alpes Car- 
nicae, and flowing into the Danube at Singidunum. It 
forms near its mouth the soytheastern boundary of 
Pannonia, and is now the Sau or Saave. ( Plin ., 3, 
18. — Appian, III., 22.) The Danube, after its junc¬ 
tion with the Savus, took the name of Ister. (Vid. 
Danubius.) 

Saxones, a people of Germany, whose original seats 
appear to have been on the neck of the Cimbric Cher¬ 
sonese, from the mouth of the Elbe to the Sinus Co- 
danus and the river Chalusus (or Trave), correspond¬ 
ing to modern Holstein. They appeared for the first 
time in history about the beginning of the fourth cen¬ 
tury, as the chief tribe among the Ingaevones. In the 
eighth century we find them in possession of a large 
part of Germany. A portion of the northwestern Sax¬ 
ons, in the fifth century, in connexion with the Angli, 
conquered England. — For some remarks on the ety¬ 
mology of the name of Saxones, vid. the article Scythia. 

Sc .®a (scil. Porta.—2/cam, soil. 'Kv'ky), one of the 
gates of Troy. It received its name from anaLoq, “ left," 
as it was on the left side of the city, facing the sea and 
the Grecian camp. (Vid. Troja.) 

Sc®va, I. a centurion in Caesar’s army, who beha¬ 
ved with great courage at Dyrrhachium. (Coes., B. 
C., 3, 53.— Sueton., Vit. Jul., 68.— Val Max., 3, 2.) 
—II. Memor, a Latin poet in the reign of Titus and 
Domitian.—III A friend of Horace, to whom the poet 
addressed Ep. 1, 17. 

Sc®vola, the surname of the most celebrated branch 
of the house of the Mucii, and said to have been de¬ 
rived from that individual of the line who acted with 
so much heroic firmness in the presence of Porsenna. 

( Vid. Porsenna.) The most distinguished of the name 
were the following: I. Caius Mucius Scaevola. (Vid. 
Porsenna.)—II. Quintus Mucius Scaevola, was prastor 
in 216 B.C. The next year he received Sardinia as a 
province. He died 209 B.C., while holding the of¬ 
fice of “ Decemvir sacris faciundis." —III. Publius Mu¬ 
cius Scaevola, the younger son of the preceding, was 
quaestor 188 B.C., tribune of the commons 183 B.C., 
praetor urbanus 179 B.C., and finally consul with M. 
iEmilius Lepidus, 175 B.C. In conjunction with his 
colleague, he carried on the war successfully in Cisal¬ 
pine Gaul, especially against the Ligurians, and ob¬ 
tained the honours of a three days’ thanksgiving and a 
triumph. This last circumstance is confirmed by the 
Capitoline fragments, and also by some consular med¬ 
als.—IV. P. Mucius Scsevola, elder son of the prece¬ 
ding, and a celebrated jurist. He was conspicuous 
also as a defender of the good old-Roman virtues and 
manners against the corruption and license which had 
been introduced into Italy from abroad. In 141 B.C. 
he was tribune of the commons, and accused the prae¬ 
tor L. Tubulus of bribery on a certain trial where he 
had presided. Tubulus anticipated his sentence by 
going into exile. As aedile (133 B.C.) Scaevola re¬ 
stored the temple of Hercules, which had fallen in ruins 
to the ground. In 131 B.C. he was praetor urbanus; 

1198 


and soon after consul. He obtained Italy for his prov 
ince.—V. Publius Mucius Scaevola, son of the prece¬ 
ding, was at first tribune of the commons, then prae¬ 
tor, and at last pontifex maxirnus. He was particu¬ 
larly conspicuous as an opponent of the Gracchi. Hav¬ 
ing obtained the province of Asia, he distinguished 
himself so much in that government by his probity and 
justice, that the Asiatics celebrated a festival in his 
honour.—VI. Quintus Mucius Sca3vola, more com¬ 
monly called by the Roman jurists Quintus Mucius, 
enjoyed a distinguished reputation as a lawyer. He 
collected together the opinions of previous lawyers, and 
he also gave a better order to the civil code. Muciuo 
is the earliest jurist mentioned in the Pandects. He 
was Cicero’s legal instructer.—VII. Cervidius Scawo- 
la, one of the most eminent jurists of later times. He 
is ranked by Modestinus after Paulus and Alpranus. 
(Arnold, de Vitis Scoevolarum, ed. Arnzen Ultra]., 
1767.) 

Scalabis, a city of Lusitania, north of the Tagus, 
called by Ptolemy Scalabiscus. It formed the third 
Conventus Juridicus of the province, and its jurisdic¬ 
tion probably took in all the country that lay to the 
north of the river. As a Roman colony it took the 
name of Presidium Julium. It answers to the mod¬ 
ern Santarem, a corruption for St. Irene. (Plin., 4, 
22.— Itin. Ant., p. 420.) 

Scaldis, a river of Gallia Belgica Secunda, rising 
in the territory of the Atrebates, and falling into the 
Mosa or Meuse. It is now the Schelde. (Coes., B. 
C., 6, 37.— Plin., 4, 13.) 

Scamander, a river near Troy, rising in Mount Ida, 
and, after receiving the Simoi's, falling into the Hel¬ 
lespont near the promontory of Sigaeum. According, 
to Homer, it was called Xanthus by the gods and 
Scamander by men. The name Xanthus would seem 
to refer to the colour of its waters (Sav6*of, “ yellow 
The modern name of the Scamander is the river ol 
Bounarbachi. (Vid. Troja.— Cramer’s Asia, Minor, 
vol. 1, p. 97.) 

Scandinavia, a name given by the ancients to that 
tract of territory which contains the modern Norway, 
Sweden, Denmark, Lapland, Finland, &c. The an¬ 
cients had a very imperfect knowledge of Scandinavia, 
believing it to be totally encompassed by the sea, or 
even composed of many ; slands. The manner in which 
these islands, of the name of Scandiae, are represent¬ 
ed in the chart prepared from Ptolemy, has no relation 
to the real state of the country. The southern extrem¬ 
ity, however, and of which the Danish isles of Iceland, 
Funen, &c., make a part, recall, in the name of Skany 
or Scane, the memory of its ancient denomination. 
Tacitus, without naming Scandinavia, speaks of this 
country as being environed by the ocean, which forms 
spacious gulfs, embracing islands of great extent; he 
ascribes it to Suevia, and places two nations thereon. 
What he reports of the Suiones, in having a marine, 
appears remarkable when we recollect that the ancient 
laws concerning navigation had their origin in Wisby, 
in the isle of Gothland. (Germ., 44, seqq.) The 
country to which Tacitus conducts us retains the name 
of Sueonia in the writers of the middle ages, speaking 
precisely of Sweden. The other nation, the Sitones, 
whose sovereignty was in the hands of a woman, may 
have been Norway. According to Pliny, the only 
part of Scandinavia which was known was occupied by 
the Hilleviones, a numerous nation. (D’Anville, vol. 
1, p. 122, seqq.) 

Scaptesyle or Scapte-Hyle (2xa7rn) vTiy), which 
latter is the more correct form, a place on the coast of 
Thrace, over against the island of Thasos. It was 
celebrated lor its gold-mines, which, according to He¬ 
rodotus, belonged to the Thracians, and produced an¬ 
nually eighty talents. In these mines Thucydides the 
historian had some property, as he informs us (4, 104) 
The author of his life states that he resided there after 



S C E 


S C I 


his banishment, and employed himself in arranging the 
materials for his history. ( Marcellin., Vit. Thucyd., 
p. 10, ed. Bip. — Pint.., de Exit ., p. 605.) 

Scardus or Scordus, a ridge of lofty mountains, 
forming the natural boundary of Illyria on the side of 
Macedonia. It was connected on the north with the 
great chain extending from the head of the Adriatic 
to the Euxine, and so well known in ancient times 
under the names of Orbelus, Rhodope, and Hcemus ; 
while to the south its prolongation assumed the appel¬ 
lation of Pindus. The Turks and Servians call the 
range of Scardus Tchar Dagh. (Cramer's Anc . Gr., 
vol. 1, p. 79, seqq.) 

Scaurus, I. M. -Emilius, a Roman consul, who 
distinguished himself by his eloquence at the bar, and 
by his successes in Spain in the capacity of command¬ 
er. He was sent against Jugurtha, and was, some 
time after, accused of suffering himself to be bribed 
by the Numidian prince. According to Sallust, this 
nobleman tarnished the lustre of his splendid talents 
by avarice and other degrading passions ; while Cice¬ 
ro, on the contrary, speaks of him in the highest terms 
in various parts of his writings. Sallust’s known dis¬ 
like to the nobility may account, in some degree, for 
this discrepance. Scaurus wrote a work in three 
books, recording the principal occurrences and trans¬ 
actions of his own life, which Cicero commends, and 
considers equal to Xenophon’s Life of Cyrus. Scau¬ 
rus conquered the Ligurians, and in his censorship he 
built the Milvian bridge at Rome, and began to pave 
the road which, from him, was called the JEpailian. 
His son, of the same name, made himself known by 
the large theatre he built during his aedileship. This 
theatre, which could contain 30,000 spectators, was 
supported by 360 columns of marble, 38 feet in height, 
and adorned with 3000 brazen statues. This cele¬ 
brated edifice, according to Pliny, proved more fatal 
to the manners and the simplicity of the Romans than 
the proscriptions and wars of Sylla had done to the 
inhabitants of the city. (Cic., Brut., 29.— Val.Max., 
4, 4.— Plin., 34, 7 ; 36, 2.)—II. A Roman of consu¬ 
lar dignity. When the Cimbri invaded Italy, the son 
of Scaurus behaved with great cowardice, upon which 
the father sternly ordered him never to appear again 
in the field of battle. The severity of the father’s re¬ 
proach induced the son to destroy himself. 

Soeleratus, I. Campus, a plain at Rome near the 
Colline gate, where the vestal Minucia was buried 
alive when convicted of unchastity, and where a sim¬ 
ilar punishment was afterward accustomed to be in¬ 
flicted on other similarly offending vestals. (Liv , 8, 
14.)—II. One of the gates of Rome was called Sce- 
lerata, because the 300 Fabii who were killed at the 
river Cremera had passed through it when they went 
to attack the enemy. It was before named Carmen- 
talis. —III. There was also a street at Rome which 
received the name of the Sceleratus Vicus , because 
there Tullia had ordered her charioteer to drive over 
the body of her father, Servius Tullius. (Liv., 1,48. 
— Ovid, lb., 365.) 

Scena or Scenus, a river of Hibernia, now the 
Shannon. (Oros., 1, 2.) 

Scen^e, I. a city of Mesopotamia, on the borders 
of Babylonia. (Strabo, 748.)—II. Mandrse, a city of 
Middle Egypt, the seat of a bishopric, between Aph- 
roditopolis and Babylon. (Itin. Ant., p. 163, 169.) 
—III. Veteranorum, a village in Lower Egypt, on 
the east'side of the Nile, between Heliopolis and Vi¬ 
cus Judaeorum. (Itin. Ant., p. 169.) 

Scenit^e, I. a nomadic tribe in Arabia Felix. 
(Plin., 5, 11, 24.)—II. A nomadic tribe in Ethiopia 
(Plin., 6, 26) ; according to Strabo, in Mesopotamia. 

Scepsis, a city of Troas, situate beyond the river 
Ccbren, near the highest part of Ida. It was founded 
by the Milesians ; though Demetrius, a native of the 
place, assigns it* origin to the son of Hector, and As- 


canius the son of HUneas. The city was a strong 
one, and possessor, a strong citadel; and, at a lats? 
period, was the seat of a particular dynasty of Dardan 
origin, which acknowledged, however, the Persian su¬ 
premacy. (Xen., Hist. Gr., lib. 3, p. 285, ed. Steph ) 
Antigonus, at a later period, transferred its inhabitants 
to his new city of Alexandrea ; they returned, how¬ 
ever, under Lysimachus, and founded another city, to 
the north of the older Scepsis, which latter place from 
thenceforth took the name of Palasa Scepsis. The old 
city was afterward again inhabited ; the new one, 
however, long survived it, and is supposed to answer 
to the modern Eskiupschi. (Strabo, 607.— Plin., 5, 
30.)—Strabo relates that the library of Aristotle, left 
by him to Theophrastus, fell, together with that of 
the latter, into the hands of Neleus, a scholar of The¬ 
ophrastus. Neleus left his books to his descendants, 
illiterate persons, who kept them locked up and neg¬ 
lected ; and, when Attalus of Pergamus was seeking 
to enlarge his library, they hid them under ground, 
where they were much injured by the damp and by 
worms. They were at last sold for a large sum to 
Apellicon of Teos. (Strabo, 609.) The whole sub¬ 
ject is discussed by Brandis in the Rheinisches Mu¬ 
seum (No. 1, p. 236, seqq.). 

Schedia, a considerable village of Egypt, on the 
western side of the'Canopic arm of the Nile, and the 
place where duties were levied on exports and imports. 
(Strabo, 800.) According to Reichard, its site is now 
occupied by Dsjedje. 

Scheria, an ancient name of Corcyra. (Pausan 
2, 5.— Plin., 4, 12.) 

Sciathos, an island off the coast of Thessaly, about 
four miles to the east of the Magnesian promontory. 
It is nearly fifteen miles in circuit. (Plin., 4, 12.) 
The island once possessed a town of some size, which 
was destroyed by Philip, the son of Demetrius, to pre¬ 
vent its falling into the hands of Attalus and the Ro¬ 
mans. (Liv., 31, 28.— Id., 44, 13. — Strab., 436 ) 
According to Scymnus (v. 582), its first settlers were 
Pelasgi from Thrace, who were succeeded by some 
Chalcidians from Euboea. It produced good wine. 
(Athen., 1, 51.)—The modern name is Sciatho. (Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 451.) 

Scillus, a town of Elis, below the Alpheus, and 
not far from the coast. Xenophon places it on the 
road leading from Lacedaemon to Olympia, about 20 
stadia from the temple of Jupiter Olympus. The 
place is rendered interesting from Xenophon’s having 
fixed his abode there during his exile. The town it¬ 
self had been destroyed by the Eleans, in consequence 
of its uniting against them in the war with Pisa. But 
the territory being afterward wrested from Elis by the 
Lacedaemonians, they made it over to Xenophon, when 
that celebrated Athenian was banished by his fellow- 
citizens for having served in the army of the younger 
Cyrus. (Pausan., 5, 6.) Xenophon has himself giv¬ 
en us, in the Anabasis, an interesting account of his 
residence at Scillus, where he erected a temple to Di¬ 
ana Ephesia, in performance of a vow made during 
the famous retreat which he so ably conducted. (An- 
ab., 5, 3, 7.) Pausanias, who visited the ruins of Scil¬ 
lus, states that the tomb of Xenophon was pointed out 
to him, and over it his statue of Pentelic marble. He 
adds, that when the Eleans recovered Scillus, they 
brought Xenophon to trial for having accepted the 
estate at the hands of the Spartans, but that he was 
acquitted, and allowed to reside there without moles¬ 
tation (5, 6.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 112). 

Scinis, a cruel robber, who tied men to the boughs 
of trees which he had forcibly brought together, 
and which he afterward allowed to fly back, so that 
their limbs were torn in an instant from their body. 
(Ovid, Met., 7, 440.) 

SoiPiAUiE, a name applied by Virgil to the two 
Scipios, Africarms Major and Minor. (Mil., 6, 843., 

1199 




SCIPIO. 


SCIPIO. 


\ 

Scipio, a celebrated family at Rome, whose name j 
is identified with some of the most splendid triumphs 
of the Roman arms. They were a branch of the 
Cornelian House, and are said to have derived their 
family appellation from the Latin term scipio , “ a 
staff,” because one of their number, Cornelius, had 
guided his blind father, and been to him as a staff; 
or, as Macrobius expresses it, “ Non aliter dicti 
Scipiones; nisi quod Cornelius , qui cognominem pa- 
trern luminibus carentem pro baculo regebat, Scipio 
cognominatus, nomen ex cognomine posteris dedit.” 

1, 6 )—The most eminent of the name were, I. 
P. Cornelius Scipio, who served, B.C. 393, under the 
dictator Camillus, and distinguished himself at the 
taking of Veii. In 392 B.C. he was chosen military 
tribune with consular power, and, in conjunction with 
his colleague Cossus, ravaged the territory of the Fa- 
lisci, and compelled them to sue for peace.—II. P. 
Cornelius Scipio, son of the preceding, was curule 
asdile 363 B.C.—III. P. Cornelius Scipio, son of the 
preceding, was master of the horse to the dictator 
Camillus, 346 B.C.—IV. P. Cornelius Scipio, son of 
the preceding, was dictator 305 B.C. ; having been 
appointed such, not so much with a view to any war¬ 
like operations, as for the purpose of holding the con¬ 
sular comitia, the two consuls being absent in the 
field —V. L. Cornelius Scipio, son of the preceding, 
was chosen interrex on the refusal of the dictator 
Manlius to hold the election for consuls under the Li- 
cinian law. He softened down the irritated feelings 
of the commons by procuring the election of C. Mar- 
cius Rutilius, a plebeian, to the consulship. He ob¬ 
tained the consulship himself 348 B.C., but, being 
prevented by severe illness from conducting the war 
against the Gauls, he transferred the command to his 
plebeian colleague, M. Popilius Lsenas.— VI. L. Cor¬ 
nelius Scipio Barbatus, grandson of the preceding, 
was consul 298 B.C. He fought a bloody but inde¬ 
cisive battle with the Etrurians, near Volaterra. The 
enemy, however, having abandoned their camp in the 
night-season, the consul laid waste the adjacent coun¬ 
try with fire and sword. He also reduced Samnium 
and Lucania. His tomb was discovered in 1780, con¬ 
taining an epitaph in very early Latin, commemorating 
the events of his life and his many virtues. (Bun- 
lop'.s Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. 52, seq.) — VII. Cn. Cor¬ 
nelius Scipio Asina, so called from his having brought 
into the forum, on the back of a she-ass (asina), the 
money for a piece of ground which he had purchased, 
or, according to another account, his daughter’s mar¬ 
riage-portion, in order to display it before the eyes of 
suiters. He was the son of the preceding. In 260 
B.C. he superintended, with Duilius the consul, the 
buildmg of the first Roman fleet, and subsequently 
sailed with 17 ships, in advance of the main fleet, to 
Messana in Sicily. He was taken, however, by a 
Carthaginian squadron, and carried to Africa. Hav¬ 
ing been at length released from confinement in Car¬ 
thage, he returned home and obtained the consulship; 
and he now avenged his former disgrace by taking 
many places in Sicily, and particularly Panormus. 
He conquered also great part of Sardinia and Corsica. 
He was father to Publius and Cneus Scipio. Publius, 
in the beginning of the second Punic war, was sent 
with an army to Spain to oppose Hannibal; but, when 
he heard that his enemy had passed over into Italy, he 
attempted, by his quick marches and secret evolutions, 
to stop his progress. He was conquered by Hannibal 
near the Ticinus, where he would have lost his life had 
not his son, afterward surnamed Africanus, courageous¬ 
ly defended him. He again passed into Spain, where 
he obtained some memorable victories over the Car¬ 
thaginians and the inhabitants of the country. His 
brother Cneus shared the supreme command with him, 
but their great confidence proved their ruin. They 
keparated their armies, and soon after Publius was at- 
1200 


tacked by the two Hasdrubals and Mago, who com* 
manded the Carthaginian armies. 4 he forces of Pub¬ 
lius were too few to resist with success the three Car¬ 
thaginian generals. The Romans were cut to pieces, 
and their commander was left on the field of battle. 
No sooner had the enemy obtained this victory, than 
they immediately marched to meet Cneus Scipio, 
whom the revolt of 30,000 Celtiberians had weakened 
and alarmed. The general, who was already apprized 
of his brother’s death, secured an eminence, where he 
was soon surrounded on all sides. After desperate 
acts of valour he was left among the slain, of, accord¬ 
ing to some, he fled into a tower, where he was 
burned with some of his friends by the victorious ene¬ 
my.—VIII. Publius Cornelius, surnamed Africanus , 
was son of Publius Scipio, who was killed in Spain. 
He first distinguished himself at the battle of Ticinus, 
where he saved his father’s life. The battle of Can¬ 
nae, which proved so fatal to the Roman arms, did not 
dishearten the young Scipio; and he no sooner heard 
that some of his countrymen wished in despair to aban¬ 
don Italy, than, sword in hand, he obliged them to 
swear eternal fidelity to Rome, and to promise to put 
to immediate death the first person who attempted to 
retire from his country. In his twenty-first year Scip¬ 
io was made aedile. Not long after this, the Romans 
heard of the defeat and death of the two Scipios in 
Spain, and immediately young Scipio was appointed to 
avenge the death of his father and of his uncle, and 
to vindicate the military honour of the republic. It was 
soon known how able he was to be at the head of an 
army. The various nations of Spain were conquered, 
andin four years the Carthaginians were completely 
driven out. The whole province became tributary to 
Rome ; New Carthage submitted in one day ; and 
in a battle 54,000 of the enemy were left dead on 
the field. After these signal victories, Scipio was 
recalled to Rome, which still trembled in continual 
dread of Hannibal, who was at her gates. The con¬ 
queror of the Carthaginians in Spain was looked upon 
as a proper general to encounter Hannibal in Italy ; 
but Scipio opposed the measures which his coun¬ 
trymen wished to pursue, and he declared in the sen 
ate that if Hannibal w r as to be conquered, he must 
be conquered in Africa. These bold measures w r ere 
immediately adopted, though opposed by the age and 
experience of the great Fabius, and Scipio was em¬ 
powered to conduct the war on the coast of Africa. 
With the dignity of consul he embarked for Carthage. 
Success attended his arms ; his conquests were here 
as rapid as in Spain. The Carthaginian armies were 
routed, the camp of the crafty Asdrubal was set on 
fire during the night, and his troops totally defeated in 
a drawn battle. These repeated losses alarmed Car¬ 
thage. Hannibal, who was victorious at the gates of 
Rome, was instantly recalled to defend the walls of 
his country, and the two greatest generals of the age 
met each other in the field. Terms of accommodation 
were proposed ; but in the parley which the two com 
manders had together, nothing satisfactory was offered ; 
and, while the one enlarged on the vicissitudes of hu 
man affairs, the other wished to dictate like a con¬ 
queror, and recommended the decision of the contro¬ 
versy to the sword. This celebrated battle was fought 
near Zama, and both generals displayed their military 
knowledge in drawing up their armies and in choosing 
their ground. Their courage and intrepidity were not 
less conspicuous in charging the enemy. A thousand 
acts of valour were performed on both sides; and though 
the Carthaginians fought in their own defence, and the 
Romans for fame and glory, yet the conqueror of Italy 
was vanquished. About 20,000 Carthaginians were 
slain, and the same number made prisoners of war, 
B.C. 202. Only 2000 of the Romans were killed 
This battle was decisive : the Carthaginians sued fa 
peace, which Scipio at last granted on the most sever- 




SCIPIO. 


SCIPIO. 


and humiliating terms. The conqueror after this re¬ 
turned to Rome, where he was received with the most 
unbounded applause, honoured with a triumph, and 
dignified with the appellation of Africanus. Here he 
enjoyed for some time the tranquillity and the honours 
which his exploits merited ; but in him also, as in other 
great men, fortune showed herself inconstant. Scipio 
offended the populace in wishing to distinguish the 
senators from the rest of the people at the public ex¬ 
hibitions ; and when he canvassed for the consulship 
for two of his friends, Scipio Nasica and Caius Laelius, 
he had the mortification to see his application slighted, 
and the honours which he claimed bestowed on a man 
of no character, and recommended neither by abilities 
nor meritorious actions. He retired from Rome no 
longer to be a spectator of the ingratitude of his coun¬ 
trymen, and in the capacity of lieutenant he accom¬ 
panied his brother against Antiochus, king of Syria. 
In this expedition his arms were attended with his 
usual success, and the Asiatic monarch submitted to 
the conditions w T hich the conquerors dictated. At his 
return to Rome Africanus found the malevolence of 
his enemies still unabated. Cato, his inveterate rival, 
seemed bent on his ruin ; and he urged on the Petilii, 
two tribunes of the commons, to move in the senate 
that Africanus should be cited to give an account of 
all the money he had received from Antiochus, to¬ 
gether with such spoil as was taken in that war. As 
soon as the Petilii had preferred their charge in the 
senate, Scipio arose, and, taking a roll of papers out of 
nis bosom, which had been drawn up by his brother, 
he said, “ In this is contained an accurate statement 
of all you wish to know; in it you will find a particu¬ 
lar account both of the money and plunder received 
from Antiochus.”—“Read it aloud,” was the cry of the 
tribunes, “ and afterward let it be deposited in the treas¬ 
ury.” “ That I will not do,” said Scipio ; “ nor will I 
so insult myself;” and, without saying a word more, 
he tore it in pieces in the presence of all. It is not 
improbable that this tearing of his accounts furnished 
his enemies with the chief advantage they subsequent¬ 
ly had against him. Not long after this, a tribune of 
the name of Nsevius cited Scipio to answer before the 
people to the same charges as those which the Petilii 
had brought forward, and to other additional ones of a 
similar purport. The first day was spent in hearing 
the different charges. On the second day the trib¬ 
unes took their seats at a very early hour. The ac¬ 
cused soon after arrived, with a numerous train of 
friends and clients ; and, passing through the midst of 
the assembly to the rostra, ascended without the least 
emotion, and, with that air of dignity and confidence 
which conscious innocence and superior virtue alone 
are able to inspire, addressed the assembly as follows : 
“ On this day, tribunes of the people, and you, Ro¬ 
mans, I conquered Hannibal and the Carthaginians. 
Is it becoming to spend a day like this in wrangling 
and contention 1 Let us not then, I beseech you, be 
ungrateful to the gods, but let us leave this man here, 
and go 'to the Capitol, to thank them for the many fa¬ 
vours they have vouchsafed us .” These words had 
the desired effect. The tribes and all the assembly 
followed Scipio ; the court was deserted, and the trib¬ 
unes were left alone in the seat of judgment. Yet, 
when this memorable day was past and forgotten, Af¬ 
ricanus was a third time summoned to appear; but 
he had fled before the impending storm, and retired to 
his country-house at Liternum. The accusation was 
therefore stopped, and the accusers silenced, when 
Gracchus, one of the tribunes, formerly distinguished 
for his opposition to Scipio, rose to defend him, and 
declared in the assembly that it reflected the highest 
disgrace on the Roman people that the conqueror of 
Hannibal should become the sport of the populace, 
and be exposed to the malice and envy of disappointed 
ambition. Some time after, Scipio died in the place 
7 N 


of his retreat, about 184 years before Christ, in the 
57th year of his age ; and so strong was his sense of 
the ingratitude of his countrymen, that he directed his 
remains to be interred at Liternum, not to be con 
veyed to Rome. ( Vid . Liternum.)—Notwithstanding 
all the displeasure and rancorous feeling that existed 
among certain individuals at Rome, the day on which 
the news of Scipio’s death was known proved a day 
of general sorrow : for the very men who refused to 
pay him, when alive, the appropriate and usual honours, 
could not help mingling their tears with those of the 
people at large. Livy says he saw at Liternum the 
monument which was erected to him, and the statue 
which had stood on the top of it lying on the ground, 
where it had been blown down by a storm (38, 56). 
Pliny writes, that in his time was to be seen a myrtle 
of an extraordinary size growing at Liternum, under¬ 
neath which was a cave, wherein, it was said, a dragon 
watched the soul of that great man. There were also 
to be seen some olive-trees planted by his own hand. 

( Plin., 16,43.) All these inconsiderable objects seem 
to show how much the idea of greatness is attached 
to every circumstance connected in the most distant 
manner with illustrious men ; and the reason is, that 
each inspires interest, and, in spite of us, claims some 
degree of attention.—No character has been celebrated 
with more cordial praise than that of the elder Afri¬ 
canus. Besides the many rare gifts of nature that 
Scipio had above all others, there was in him also, as 
the old writer of his life words it, “ a certain princely 
grace and majesty. Furthermore, he was marvellous 
gentle and courteous unto them that came to him, 
and had an eloquent tongue, and a passing gift to 
win every man. He was very grave in his gesture 
and behaviour, and ever wore long hair. In tine, he 
was a truly noble captain, worthy of all commendation, 
and excelled in all virtues, which did so delight his 
mind that he was wont to say that he was never less 
idle than when at leisure, nor less alone than when 
alone.” ( Cic., Off., 3, 1.)—In all Scipio’s campaigns, 
Laelius was his chief assistant, and the man in whom 
he placed the greatest confidence. But the friendship 
subsisting between them was not more conspicuous 
than that which connected afterward the son of the 
one with the grandson of the other. Whether Laelius 
cheered the hours of Scipio’s retirement is not dis¬ 
tinctly marked in history by any writer. The poet 
Ennius is known ta|have been held in such esteem by 
him, that he orderecl the statue of his learned friend to 
be placed on his sepulchre by his own, and the re¬ 
mains of the poet to be deposited in the same tomb. 
{Plin., 7, 30.— Ovid, A. A., 3, 409.) As an instance 
of Scipio’s continence, ancient authors state that the 
conqueror of Spain refused to see a beautiful princess 
that had fallen into his hands after the taking of New 
Carthage, and that he not only restored her inviolate 
to her parents, but also added large presents for the 
person to whom she was betrothed. {Berwick's Life 
of Scipio Africanus, p. 140, seqq.) —IX. Lucius Cor¬ 
nelius Scipio, surnamed Asialicus, accompanied his 
brother Africanus in his expedition into Spain and Af 
rica. He was rewarded with the consulship A.U.C. 
562, for his service to the state, and was empowered 
to attack Antiochus, king of Syria, who had declared 
war against the Romans. Lucius was accompanied 
in this campaign by his brother Africanus ; and by his 
own valour and the counsels of the conqueror of Han¬ 
nibal, he soon routed the enemy, and in a battle near 
the city of Sardes he killed 50,000 foot and 4000 
horse. " Peace was soon after settled by the submis 
sion of Antiochus, and the conqueror, at his return 
home, obtained a triumph and the surname of Asiati- 
cus. He did not, however, long enjoy his prosperity. 
Cato, after the death of Africanus, turned his rancour 
against Asiaticus, and the two Petilii, his devoted ad¬ 
herents, presented a petition to the people, in which 

1201 




SCIPIO 


SCIPIO. 


tney prayed that an inquiry might oe s lade for the pur¬ 
pose of ascertaining what money had been received 
frorr Antiochus and from his allies. *1 he petition 
was instantly received, and Asiaticus, charged with 
having suffered himself to be corrupted by Antiochus, 
was summoned to appear before the tribunal of Fe- 
rentius Culeo, who was on this occasion created prae¬ 
tor. The judge, who was an inveterate enemy to the 
family of the Scipios, soon found Asiaticus, with his 
two lieutenants and his quaestor, guilty of having re¬ 
ceived, the first 6000 pounds’ weight of gold and 480 
pounds’ weight of silver, and the others nearly an equal 
sum, from the monarch against whom, in the name of 
the Roman people, they were enjoined to make war. 
They were condemned to pay large fines ; but, while 
the others gave security, Scipio declared that he had 
accounted to the public for all the money which he 
had brought from Asia, and therefore that he was 
innocent. Notwithstanding this grave protestation, 
the officers of justice were ordered to convey him to 
prison ; but, while they were in the actual discharge 
of their duty, Sempronius Gracchus, one of the trib¬ 
unes, interfered, and declared, “ that he should make 
no objection to their raising the money out of his ef¬ 
fects, but that he would never suffer a Roman general 
to be dragged to the common prison, wherein the lead¬ 
ers of the enemy, that were taken in battle by him, 
nad been confined.” When the entire property of 
Lucius Scipio was seized and valued, it was found in¬ 
adequate to the payment of the sum demanded ; and 
what redounded to his honour was, that, among all his 
affects, there was not found the trace of the smallest 
article that could be considered Asiatic. His friends 
and relations, indignant at the treatment he had re¬ 
ceived, came and offered to make compensation for 
jiis loss; but he refused to accept of anything except 
what was barely necessary for subsistence. Whatever 
was needful, says Livy, for domestic use, was pur¬ 
chased at the sale of his property by his nearest rela¬ 
tions ; and the public hatred now recoiled on all who 
were concerned in the prosecution. ( Livy , 38, 60.) 
Some time after he was appointed to settle the dis¬ 
putes between Eumenes and Seleucus ; and, at his re¬ 
turn, the Romans, ashamed of their severity towards 
him, rewarded his merit with such uncommon liberal¬ 
ity, that Asiaticus was enabled to celebrate games, in 
honour of his victory over Antiochus, for ten success¬ 
ive days at his own expense.—X. P*.Cornelius Scipio 
Nasica was son of Cneus Scipio, anu cousin to Scipio 
Africanus. He was refused the consulship, though 
supported by the interest and the fame of the conquer¬ 
or of Hannibal ; but he afterward obtained it, and in 
that honourable office conquered the Boii, and gained 
a triumph. He was also successful in an expedition 
which he undertook in Spain. W hen the statue of 
Cybele was brought to Rome from Phrygia, the Ro¬ 
man senate delegated one of their body, who was the 
most remarkable for the purity of his manners and the 
innocence of his life, to go and meet the goddess in 
the harbour of Ostia. Nasica was the object of their 
choice, and, as such, he was enjoined to bring the 
statue of the goddess to Rome with the greatest 
pomp and solemnity. Nasica also distinguished him¬ 
self by the active part he took in confuting the accu¬ 
sations laid against the two Scipios, Africanus and 
Asiaticus. There was also another of the same name, 
who distinguished himself by his enmity against the 
Gracchi, to whom he was nearly related.—( Paterc ., 2, 
1, & c .—Flor 2, 15 .—Liv., 29, 14, &c.)—XI. Pub¬ 
lius jEmilianus, son of Paulus HDmilius, the conquer¬ 
or of Perseus, was adopted by the son of Scipio Af¬ 
ricanus, being already a relation of the Scipio family, 
since Africanus had married his aunt. He received 
the same surname as his grandfather, and was called 
Africanus the Younger on account of his victories 
- ver Carthage. iEruilianus first appeared in the Ro- 
1202 


man armies under his father, and afterward distin¬ 
guished himself as a legionary tribune in the Spanish 
provinces, where he killed a Spaniard of gigantic 
stature, and obtained a mural crown at the siege of 
Intercatia. He passed into Africa to visit King Mas- 
inissa, the ally of Rome, and he was the spectator of 
a long and bloody battle which was fought between 
that monarch and the Carthaginians. ( Vid. Masinis- 
sa.) Some time after iEmilianus was made sedile, 
and next appointed consul, though under the age^ re¬ 
quired for that important office. The surname wnich 
he had received from his grandfather he was destined 
lawfully to claim as his own. He was empowered to 
finish the war with Carthage ; and as he was permitted 
by the senate to choose his colleague, he took with 
him his friend Laelius, whose father of the same name 
had formerly enjoyed the confidence and shared the 
victories of the first Africanus. The siege of Car¬ 
thage was already begun, but the operations of the 
Romans were not continued with vigour. Scipio had 
no sooner appeared before the walls of the enemy than 
everv communication with the land was cut off, and, 
that they might not have the command of the sea, a 
stupendous mole was thrown across the harbour with 
immense labour and expense. This, which might 
have disheartened the most active enemy, rendered 
the Carthaginians more eager in the cause of freedom 
and independence ; all the inhabitants, without dis¬ 
tinction of rank, age, or sex, employed themselves 
without cessation to dig another harbour, and to build 
and equip another fleet. In a short time, in spite of 
the vigilance and activity of H3milianus, the Romans 
were astonished to see another harbour formed, and 
fifty gallies suddenly issued under sail, ready for the 
engagement. This unexpected fleet, by immediately 
attacking the Roman ships, might have gained the vic¬ 
tory ; but the delay of the Carthaginians proved fatal 
to their cause, and the enemy had sufficient time to 
prepare themselves. Scipio soon got the possession 
of a small eminence in the harbour, and, by the suc¬ 
cess of his subsequent operations, he broke open one 
of the gates of the city and entered the streets, where 
he made his way by fire and sword. The surrendei 
of above 50,000 men was followed by a reduction of 
the citadel, and the total submission of Carthage, B.C. 
147. The captive city was set on fire ; and, though 
Scipio was obliged to demolish its very walls to obey 
the orders of the Romans, yet he wept bitterly over 
the melancholy and tragical scene ; and, in bewailing 
the miseries of Carthage, he expressed his fears lest 
Rome, in her turn, in some future age, should exhibit 
such a dreadful conflagration. The return of iEmili- 
anus to Rome was that of another conqueror of Han¬ 
nibal, and. like him, he was honoured with a magnifi¬ 
cent triumph, and received the surname of Africanus. 
He was not long left in the enjoyment of his glory be 
fore he was called to obtain fresh honours. He was 
chosen consul a second time, and appointed to finish 
the war which the Romans had hitherto carried on 
without success against Numantia. The fall of Nu- 
mantia was more glorious for Scipio than that of the 
capital of Africa. From his conquests in Spain 
^Emilianus was honoured with a second triumph, and 
with the surname of Numantinus. Yet his populari¬ 
ty was short-lived ; and, by telling the people that the 
murder of their favourite, his brother-in-law Grac¬ 
chus, was lawful, since he was turbulent and inimical 
to the peace of the republic, Scipio incurred the dis¬ 
pleasure of the tribunes, and was received with hisses 
by the assembled people. His authority for a mo¬ 
ment quelled their turbulence, when he reproached 
them for their cowardice, and exclaimed, Factious 
wretches ! do you think that your clamours can intim¬ 
idate me ? me, whom the fury of your enemies never 
daunted 1 Is this the gratitude that you owe to my 
father Paulus , who conquered Macedonia, and to me 1 





S C I 


SCO 


Without my family you were slaves. Is this the re¬ 
spect you owe to your deliverers ? Is this your affec¬ 
tion 1 This firmness silenced the murmurs of the as¬ 
sembly ; and, some time after, Scipio retired from the 
clamours of Rome to Ca'ieta, where, with his friend 
Laelius, he passed the rest of his time in innocent 
pleasures and amusement, in diversions which had 
pleased them when children; and these two eminent 
men were often seen on the seashore picking up light 
pebbles, and throwing them on the smooth surface of 
the waters. Though fond of retirement and literary 
ease, Scipio often interested himself in the affairs of 
state. His enemies accused him of aspiring to the 
dictatorship, and the clamours were most loud against- 
him when he had opposed the Sempronian law, and 
declared himself the patron of the inhabitants of the 
provinces of Italy. This active part of Scipio was 
seen with pleasure by the friends of the republic ; and 
not only the senate, but also the citizens, the Latins, 
and the neighbouring states, conducted their illus¬ 
trious friend and patron to his house. It seemed al¬ 
most the universal wish that the troubles might be 
quieted by the election of Scipio to the dictatorship, 
and many presumed that that honour would be on the 
morrow conferred upon him. In this, however, the 
expectations of Rome were frustrated : Scipio was 
found dead in his bed, to the astonishment of all; and 
those who inquired for the causes of this sudden 
death, perceived violent marks on his neck, and con¬ 
cluded that he had been strangled, B.C. 128. This 
assassination, as it was then generally believed, was 
committed by the triumvirs, Papirius Carbo, C. Grac¬ 
chus, and Fulvius Flaccus, who supported the Sem¬ 
pronian law, and by his wife Sempronia, who is charg¬ 
ed with introducing the murderers into his room. No 
inquiries were made after the authors of his death. 
Gracchus was the favourite of the mob, and the only 
atonement which the populace made for the death of 
Scipio was to attend his funeral, and to show their 
concern by their loud lamentations. JEmilianus, like 
his grandfather, was fond of literature, and he is said 
to have saved from the flames of Carthage many val- 
aable compositions, written by Phoenician and Punic 
iuthors. In the midst of his greatness he died poor; 
And his nephew, Q. Fabius Maximus, who inherited 
his estate, scarce found in his house thirty-two pounds’ 
weight of silver and tw r o and a half of gold. His 
liberality to his brother and to his sisters deserves the 
greatest commendations ; and, indeed, no higher enco¬ 
mium can be passed upon his character, private as 
well as public, than the words of his rival Metellus, 
who told his sons, at the death of Scipio, to go and 
attend the funeral of the greatest man that ever lived 
or should live in Rome.—XII. Q. Metellus Scipio, 
adopted son of Quintus Csecilius Metellus. His pre¬ 
vious name was P. Cornelius Scipio Nasica. Metel¬ 
lus Scipio was consul with Pompey, his son-in-law, 
towards the close of the year 52 B.C., the latter hav¬ 
ing been sole consul previously. Metellus and Pom¬ 
pey re-established the consulship, which had been 
completely prostrated by Clodius; and the former 
was afterward sent into Syria as proconsul, having 
sided, of course, with Pompey against Caesar. After 
the battle of Pharsalia he passed into Africa to Juba, 
assembled a body of troops there along with that 
prince and Cato, and finally engaged with Caesar in 
the battle of Thapsus, but was totally defeated, 46 
B.C. Having endeavoured to escape to the coast of 
Spain, and being driven back by stress of weather to 
the African shore, his vessels were overpowered by 
the fleet of P. Sithius, and he, to avoid falling into the 
hands of Caesar, destroyed himself. ( Appian , Bell. 
Civ., 2, 100.— Auct., Bell. Afric., 96.) 

Sciron, a celebrated thief in Attica, who plundered 
the inhabitants of the country, and threw them down 
from the highest rocks into the sea, after he had obliged 


them to wait upon him and to wash his feet. Theseus 
attacked him, and treated him in the way that he him¬ 
self was accustomed to treat travellers. According to 
Ovid, the earth, as well as the sea, refused to receive 
the bones of Sciron, which remained for some time 
suspended in the air, till they were changed into large 
rocks, called Scironides Petrce, or Scironia Saxa. 
( V'id. Scironides Petrae.) ( Ovid , Met., 7,444.— Mela, 
2, 13.— Plm., 2, 47.— Seneca, N. Q., 5, 17.) 

Scironides Petrie or Scironia Saxa, a celebrated 
pass or defile on the southern coast of Megaris, said to 
have been the haunt of the robber Sciron until he was 
destroyed by Theseus. ( Eurip ., Hippol., 979.— Ovid, 
Met,., 7, 444.) This narrow pass was situated, as we 
learn from Strabo (391), between Megara and Crom- 
omyon, a small maritime town belonging to Corinth. 
The road followed the shore for the space of several 
miles, and was shut in on the land side by a lofty mount¬ 
ain, while towards the sea it was lined by dangerous pre¬ 
cipices. Pausanias reports (1,44), that it was rendered 
more accessible by the Emperor Hadrian, so that two 
carriages could pass each other. According to mod 
ern travellers, the Scironian Way, now called Kaki 
Scala, is difficult and rugged, and only frequented by 
passengers. The precipices are two hours from Me¬ 
gara and six from Corinth. ( Chandler , vol. 2, c. 44. 
— Dodwell, vol. 2, p. 182.— Walpole's Collection, vol 
1, p. 332.) 

Scodra, a city of Illyria, the capital of Gentius, sit¬ 
uate between the rivers Clausula and Barbana. From 
the position here given to Scbdra, which is that as¬ 
signed by Livy (44, 31), the site of the place does not 
precisely correspond to that of Scutari. Scodra was 
a place of great strength, and might easily have de¬ 
fended itself against the Romans in their war with 
Gentius; but, instead of offering any resistance, it 
surrendered on the first approach of the enemy’s forces. 
Polybius calls it Scorda. {Excerpt., 28, 7.) In the 
division of the territories of Gentius, Scodra retained 
its distinction as capital of the Labeates. {Cramers 
Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 41.) 

Scombrus, a mountain range of Thrace, near Rho¬ 
dope, and, together with the latter, forming part of the 
same great central chain. Thucydides calls the name 
Scomius (2, 96), but Aristotle Scombrus. {Meteorol., 
1, 13.) 

Scopas, a celebrated architect and sculptor, born in 
the island of Paros, and who appears to have flour¬ 
ished chiefly between Olymp. 97 and 107 (B.C. 392 
and 352). It was his fortune to be employed as one 
of the four artists who were engaged by Artemisia, 
queen of Caria, in erecting and adorning the Mauso¬ 
leum, that splendid monument to the memory of her 
husband Mausolus. Scopas was employed also to 
contribute one of the columns to the temple of Diana 
at Ephesus, and the one which he executed was re¬ 
garded as the most beautiful of all. He seems, in¬ 
deed, to have been scarcely, if at all, inferior to Polv- 
cletus or Myron. His statues were numerous ; among 
the most remarkable of them were, the images of Ve¬ 
nus, Pothus, and Phaethon. Many of his compositions 
were among the noblest ornaments of Rome in the 
days of Pliny. An Apollo of his workmanship stood 
on the Palatine Mount. A Vesta seated, with two 
female attendants reclining on the ground, adorned the 
Servilian gardens. His statues also of Neptune, of 
Thetis, and of Achilles, of the Nereids riding on the 
mightiest monsters of the deep, were highly prized, 
and placed in the chapel of Cneius Domitius in the 
Flaminian circus. A colossal image of Mars, and an 
exquisite statue of Venus, were also greatly admired 
at Rome, and the latter was preferred to a similar stat¬ 
ue by Praxiteles, which has been thought to have fur¬ 
nished the original idea of the Venus de Medicis 
{Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v. — Strab., 604. — Pausan., 8, 
45, 4.— Plin., 36, 5, 4.) 


1203 




S C Y 


S C Y 


Scordisci, a numerous and powerful tribe of Illy¬ 
ria, in the interior of the country, and reaching as far 
as the Danube. Strabo divides them into the greater 
and the less, and places the former between the Noaras 
or Gurck, and the river Margus. The latter adjoined 
the Triballi and Mysi of Thrace. The Scordisci hav¬ 
ing successively subdued the nations around them, 
extended their dominion from the borders of Thrace 
to the Adriatic. They were, however, in their turn 
conquered by the Romans, though not without numer¬ 
ous struggles and much bloodshed. Though Strabo 
classes the Scordisci with the Illyrian nations, he seems 
also to acknowledge them as of Gallic origin: they 
were probably of the same race as the Taurisci and 
Carni, both Celtic people. ( Strab ., 313.— Id., 318.— 
Flor., 3, 4.— Liv., Epit., 63.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, 
vol. 1, p. 46.) 

Scoti, the ancient inhabitants of Scotland. It is 
generally conceded that the earliest inhabitants of 
Caledonia were of Celtic origin. According to Scot¬ 
tish traditions, the Scoti came from Spain, and were 
one people with the Silures, who occupied what now 
answers to Wales. They first possessed themselves 
of Ireland, which from them received the name of Sco¬ 
tia, and for some time retained the appellation. They 
afterward passed over into what was called from them 
Scotland. ( Ammian. Marcell., 20, 1.— Id., 26, 4.— 
Id., 27, 8. — Beda, Hist. Eccles., 1, 1. — Adelung, 
Mithradates, vol. 2, p. 84.— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 1, 
pt. 2, p. 92, seqq.) 

Scribonia, a daughter of Scribonius, who married 
Augustus after be had divorced Claudia. He had by 
her a daughter, the celebrated Julia. Scribonia was 
some time after repudiated that Augustus might marry 
Livia. She had been married twice before she be¬ 
came the wife of the emperor. (Suet., Vit. Aug., 62.) 

Scribonius, I. L. Libo, a Roman historian, author 
of Annals cited by Cicero (Ep. ad Alt., 13, 31).— 
II. Largus Designatianus, a physician, born at Rome, 
or in the island of Sicily. In A.D. 43 he accompanied 
the Emperor Claudius on his expediton into Britain. 
He was a physician of the Eclectic school, and wrote 
a treatise l)e Compositione medicamentorum. As this 
work is written in very inferior Latin, some critics 
have supposed that it was originally composed in 
Greek, and afterward translated into Latin. Scribo¬ 
nius has copied from Nicander, and has also derived 
many absurd and superstitious remedies from other 
medical writers. The best edition of this work is that 
of Rhodius, Patav., 1655, 4to. 

Scultenna, a river of Cisalpine Gaul, rising on the 
northern confines of Etruria, and flowing from the east 
of Mutina into the Padus. It is now the Panaro. 
(Strab , 218.— Liv., 41, 12.) 

Scylacium, a Greek city, on the coast of the Bruttii, 
in a southwest direction from Crotona, and communi¬ 
cating its name to the adjacent gulf (Sinus Scylacius). 
According to Strabo, it was colonized by the Atheni¬ 
ans under Mnestheus; but he neither mentions the 
time, nor the circumstances which led to its estab¬ 
lishment. (Strab., 361.) Servius, however, observes, 
that these Athenians were returning from Africa (ad 
En., 3, 552). At a later period it received a Roman 
colony. (Veil. Paterc., 1, 15.) Scylacium was the 
birthplace of Cassiodorus. It is now Squillace. The 
epithet navifragum is applied by Virgil to this place. 
(En., 3, 553.) Heyne considers the appellation to 
allude to the rocky and dangerous shore in its vicinity, 
or else to the frequent storms which prevailed in this 
quarter, between Tria Promontoria Iapygum and Co- 
cinthum. (Heyne, ad Virg.,l. c. — Cramer's Anc. It- 
%ly, vol. 2, p. 398.) 

Scylax, a celebrated geographer and mathematician 
A Caryanda in Caria. He is noticed bv Herodotus 
in a passage where the latter speaks of various dis¬ 
coveries made in Asia by Darius, son of Plystaspes, 
1204 


and tells of Scylax of Caryanda being sent by tna 
monarch, along with others, to ascertain where the In 
dus entered the sea. He makes them to have reachet 
the Indus, sailed down the river to the sea, and then, 
continuing their voyage on the sea towards the west, 
to have reached, in the 30th month, the place front 
which the Phoenician king despatched the Phoenicians 
to circumnavigate Africa. (Herod., 4, 44.) Suidas 
gives a brief account of Scylax, in which he has evi¬ 
dently confounded different persons of the same name; 
“Scylax of Caryanda, a mathematician and musician, 
wrote a periplus of the coast beyond the Pillars o< 
Hercules, a book respecting Heraclides, king of My 
lassa, a description of the circuit of the earth, and an 
answer to Polybius’s history.” The periplus, which 
still remains, bearing the name of Scylax, is a briel 
survey of the countries along the shores of the Medi¬ 
terranean and Euxine, of the western coast of Europe, 
together with part of the western coast of Africa, sur¬ 
veyed by Hanno, as far as the island of Cerne. It 
concludes with an account of the passages across the 
sea, from Greece to Asia, and an enumeration of 20 
important islands in the order of their magnitude. A 
question has been raised as to the date of the periplus 
of Scylax. The subject has been discussed by Nie¬ 
buhr, in his historical and philological tracts. (Klein* j 
historische und philologische Schnften, p. 105, seqq.) 
Having first stated the opinions of former critics, and 
rejected the argument derived from the omission ol 
the city of Rhodes (which was founded 408 B.C.), on 
account of the corruption of the text, Niebuhr re¬ 
marks that the proofs of its date are partly positive 
and partly negative, viz., derived either from the no¬ 
tice of or a silence respecting certain towns. By pos¬ 
itive arguments, it is shown that this work was written 
after, by negative that it was written before, a certain 
date. The uncertain interval being thus narrowed by 
different historical proof, Niebuhr determines that this 
periplus was written about 360 B.C. (Foreign Re¬ 
view, vol. 4, p. 193.) Letronne has subsequently 
written on the same subject (Journal des Savans, 
Fevr. Avr. et Mai, 1825), and has pronounced the 
periplus of Scylax a compilation, in which the materi¬ 
als of different writers and times have been made use 
of. In this opinion Muller coincides. (Etrusker,\ ol. 

1, p. 159.) Clinton (Fasti Hellenici, pt. 2, p. 564) 
thinks that Suidas confounded him with the more an- ij 
cient Scylax, who wrote, according to him, after Po¬ 
lybius, B.C. 146, and he considers the opinion of Vos- 
sius most probable, that the extant work is an epitome 
of the ancient Scylax. This periplus has reached us 
in a corrupted state. The best editions of Scylax are, 
that of Hudson, in the Geographi Grezci Minores; 
and that of Gail, in his edition of the same writers, 
Paris, 1826, vol. 1, p. 151, seqq. 

Scylla, I. a daughter of Nisus, king of Megara, 
w'ho became enamoured of Minos as that monarch 
besieged her father’s capital. (Vid. Nisus.)—II. A 
fearful monster, of whom mention is made in the 
Odyssey. Having escaped the Sirens, and shunned 
the Wandering Rocks, which Circe had told him lay 
beyond the mead of these songsters, Ulysses came to 
the terrific Scylla and Charybdis, between which, the 
goddess had informed him, his course lay. She said 
(Od., 12 , 73, seqq.) he would come to two lofty cliffs 
opposite each other, between which he must pass. 
One of these cliffs towers to such a height that its 
summit is for ever enveloped in clouds, and no man, ij 
even if he had twenty hands and as many feet, could 
ascend it. In the middle of this cliff, she says, is a 
cave facing the west, but so high that a man in a ship 
passing under it could not shoot up to it w'ith a bow. 

In this den dwells Scylla (Bitch), whose voice sounds ji| 
like that of a young whelp; she has twelve feet and 
six long necks, with a terrific head, and three rows of 
close-set teeth on each. Evermore she stretches out 




S C Y 


S C \ 


these necks and catches the porpoises, seadogs, and 
other large animals of the sea which swim by, and out 
of every ship that passes each mouth takes a man. 
The opposite rock, the goddess informs him, is much 
lower, for a man could shoot over it. A wild fig-tree 
grows on it, stretching its branches down to the wa¬ 
ter ; but beneath, “ divine Charybdis” three times each 
day absorbs and regorges the dark water. It is much 
more dangerous, she adds, to pass Charybdis than Scyl- 
la. As Ulysses sailed by, Scylla took six of his crew ; 
and when, after he had lost his ship and companions, 
he was carried by wind and wave, as he floated on a 
part of the wreck between the monsters, the mast by 
which he supported himself was sucked in by Charyb¬ 
dis, and he held by the wild fig-tree till it was thrown out 
again, when he resumed his voyage—Such is the ear¬ 
liest account we have of these monsters, in which, 
indeed, it may be doubted if Charybdis is to be regard¬ 
ed as an animate being. The ancients, who were so 
anxious to localize all the wonders of Homer, made 
the Straits of Messina the abode of Scylla and Charyb¬ 
dis. The whole fable has been explained by Spallan¬ 
zani, according to whom Scylla is a lofty rock on the 
Calabrian shore, with some caverns at the bottom, 
which, by the agitation of the waves, emit sounds re¬ 
sembling the barking of dogs. The only danger is 
when the current and wind are in opposition, so that 
vessels are impelled towards the rock. Charybdis is 
not a whirlpool or involving vortex, but a spot where 
the waves are greatly agitated by pointed rocks, and 
the depth does not exceed 500 feet. ( Spallanz ., 3, 
p 99.)—In Homer the mother of Scylla is named Gra¬ 
ta?^ {Od., 12, 124), but her sire is not spoken of. 
Stesichorus called her mother Uarnia (Euducia, 377) ; 
Hesiod said stie was the daughter of Phorbas and Hec¬ 
ate {Schol. ad Apoll. Rhad.. 4, 82S) ; Arcesilaus said, 
of Phorcys and Hecate {Schol. ad. Od., 12, 85) ; oth¬ 
ers asserted that Triton was her sire. {Eudoria,377 .) 
Later poets feigned that Scylla was once a beautiful 
maiden, who was fond of associating with the Nere¬ 
ids. The seagod Glaucus beheld and fell in love with 
her, and, being rejected, applied to Circe to exercise 
her magic arts in his favour. Circe wished him to 
transfer his affections to herself; and, filled with rage 
at his refusal, she infected with noxious juices the 
water in which Scylla was wont to bathe, and thus 
transformed her into a monster. {Ovid, Met., 14, 1, 
seqq — Hygin., fab., 199.) According to another ac¬ 
count, the change in Scylla’s form was effected by 
Amphitrite, in consequence of her intimacy with Nep¬ 
tune. {Tzctz. ad Lycophr., 650.) Charybdis was 
said to have been a woman who stole the oxen of Her¬ 
cules, and who was, in consequence, struck with thun¬ 
der by Jupiter, and turned into a whirlpool. {Serv. 
ad 420.— Keighdey's Mythology , p. 271, seqq.) 

Scvll^eum, a promontory of Argolis, opposite the 
Attic promontory of Sunium, and said to have derived 
its name from Scylla, the daughter of Nisus. It 
formed, together with the promontory of Sunium, the 
entrance of the Saronic Gulf, and closed, also, the 
Bay of Hermione. ( Strab ., 373.) 

Scymnus, a Greek geographer, a native of Chios, 
who flourished about 80 B.C., during the reign of 
Nicomedes II., king of Bithynia. He dedicated to 
this monarch his work entitled Periegesis {Ueptyyj]- 
aiq), or Description of the World, written in Greek 
Iambics. We have remaining of this the first 741 
lines, and fragments of 236 others, which together 
form, according to the critics, not more than a fourth 
part of the entire work. Scymnus informs the monv 
arch that he has collected and abridged, for his use, 
all the information he found scattered among various 
writers respecting the establishment of colonies, the 
founding of cities, &c. He proposes to give, first, an 
account of all that is clear and well ascertained in ge¬ 
ographical knowledge ; while he promises to treat, in 


a separate part of the work, of what is obscure, in or¬ 
der that Nicomedes may thus have a concise outline 
of the geography of the day. This work, which has 
little merit as a poem, is somewhat more valuable as 
a geographical treatise ; the information it gives te- 
specting the establishment of the Greek colonies is 
particularly useful ; but in some other respects it is 
not very accurate. This production, together with 
the fragments (which we owe to the labours of Ho!- 
stenius), may be found in the minor Greek geogra 
phers, of Hudson, Gail, &c. 

Scyrias, a name applied to Dei'damia as a native of 
Scyros. {Ovid, A., 1, 682.) 

Scyros, an island of the ^Egean Sea, northeast of 
Euboea, and now called Scyro. Thucydides informs 
us that its first inhabitants were Dolopians, who were 
afterward expelled by the Athenians (1, 98). It is to 
this early period that we must assign the adventures 
of Achilles and the birth of Neoptolemus. ( Strabo, 
437.) Here Theseus was said to have terminated his 
existence, by having fallen, or been pushed down a 
precipice. {Lycophr., 1324.) Scyros, according to 
Strabo, was also celebrated for its breed of goats and 
its quarries of varied marble, which vied with those of 
Carystus and Synnada. In the geographer’s time it 
was in great request at Rome for public edifices and 
other ornamental purposes. {Strab., 437.—P/m.,36, 
26.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 453.) 

Scythe, the inhabitants of Scythia. ( Vid. Scythia.) 

Scythia , a general name given by the ancient 
Greeks and Romans to a large portion of Asia, and di¬ 
vided by them into Scythia intra and extra Imaum, 
that is, on either side of Mount Imaus. The Scythi¬ 
ans have been considered by some writers as the same 
people with the Gomerians, £nd as being the descend¬ 
ants of Gorner, the eldest son of Japhet. Their name 
is derived by some from the Teutonic scheten or schu- 
ten, or the Gothic skiutq, all signifying “to shoot,” 
this nation being very expert, with the bow. (Compare 
Jamieson's Hermes Scythicus, p. 6.) Others make 
it equivalent to the Latin polaiores ; others, again, 
derive it from shakhaa, “a quiver;” while a fourth 
class deduce the term from the Persian Ssagh, “a 
dog,” and suppose it to have been applied by way of 
contempt. This last opinion, however, to say nothing 
of the others, is decidedly erroneous, since the dog 
was held in high estimation among the Persians, and 
ranked among the good animals of Ormusd. {Plut., 
de Isid. et Osir., p. 369, F, p. 514, Wytt.) It wa3 
a symbol also of faith, and especially of the hope of an 
immortal existence, and holds a conspicuous place, 
therefore, on sepulchral monuments. (Compare Creu- 
zer, Symbolik, vol. I, p. 752.) Sir William Jones 
likewise indulges in some speculations on this subject 
{Asiatic Researches, vol. 2, p. 401), as well as Ritter 
in his Erdkuvde (vol. 2, p. 729). Yon Hammer, 
however, appears to furnish the most ingenious expla¬ 
nation. According to this learned Orientalist, the wri¬ 
ters of the East, and, more particularly, the work en¬ 
titled Schahnameh, refer what the Greeks tell us con¬ 
cerning the incursion of the Sacaa, to the Turks and 
Ssakalib, as they are styled ; and^ even the very fes¬ 
tival which the Greeks term rd I,dKata is found in the 
ancient Persian calendar as a day set apart to com¬ 
memorate a victory gained over the Turks. Hence 
Von Hammer proposes to read T ovpyovq for ’Apovp- 
yiovq in the text of Herodotus (7, 64). These Turks 
are the same, according to the German scholar, with 
the Turanians, and with the Ssakalib of the Schah¬ 
nameh ; and this name Ssakalib, from Ssaklab or 
Scoklob, presents a remarkable coincidence with what 
Herodotus states respecting the Scythians (4, 6), that 
they call themselves 'Lk.o'Jotol. As in Herodotus, 
therefore, the Sacae and Amyrgii are said to be the 
same, so in the Schahnameh the Turks and the Ssa 
kalib are identical. This same term Ssakalib wil 

1205 



S V. « 


S E 1 


furnish also the root of the name Slavi j and if the the¬ 
ory of another writer be admitted, the Saxones will be 
descended from the Sacae. (Compare Bq.hr, ad Ctes., 
p # 97 )_The earliest detailed account of the Scyth¬ 

ian race is given by Herodotus, who States, as has 
already been remarked, that they called themselves by 
the general name of Scoloti (2/coAoroi). The appel¬ 
lation of Scythians (ZnvOai) originated with the Greeks 
along the Euxine. Their primitive seats were in the 
vicinity of the Caspian ; but, being driven from these 
by the Massagetae, they migrated to the countries 
around the Tana'is and north of the Euxine, and the 
head settlement of the race, according to Herodotus, 
was now between theTanais and Borysthenes. Only 
a few tribes attended to agricultural pursuits and had 
fixed abodes; the greater part were of nomadic hab¬ 
its, and roamed about in their wagons, which served 
them for abodes. These last subsisted on the produce 
of their flocks and herds. Herodotus divides them 
into Royal Scythians (B acsCkyLoi 2 KvOai ), the Noma¬ 
dic Scythians (N o/iadeg), and the Agricultural (Teup- 
yoi). Besides these, there were other tribes living to 
the west of the Borysthenes, and separated from the 
main body of the race, such as the C allipodn. and 
Alazones. Until the time of -Ptolemy, but little was 
known respecting the Scythians except what had been 
obtained from the narrative of Herodotus. In the 
days of Ptolemy, Scythia, as known to Herodotus, 
had changed its name to that of Sarmatia (compare 
Plin., 4, 12), and the northern part of Asia above the 
Sacse and beyond Sogdiana, with an indefinite extent 
towards the east, was now denominated Scythia. The 
range of Mount Imaus was considered as dividing this 
extensive region into two parts, and hence arose the 
two divisions of Scythia intra Imaum and Scyth¬ 
ia extra Imaum, or Scythia within and without the 
range of Imaus. The former of these, Scythia intra 
Imaum, had the following limits assigned to it: on 
the north, unknown lands; on the east, Imaus; on the 
south, the Sacas, Sogdiana, and Margiana, as far as the 
mouth of the Oxus, and the Caspian Sea to the mouth 
of the Rha ; on the west, Asiatic Sarmatia. Scythia 
extra Imaum had the following boundaries : on the 
north, unknown lands ; on the west, Imaus ; on the 
south, a part of India ; and on the east, Serica.—The 
Scythians made several irruptions into the more south¬ 
ern provinces of Asia, especially B.C. 624, when they 
remained in possession of Asia Minor for 28 years. 

Scythopolis, a city of Judaea, belonging to the half 
tribe of Manasseh, on the west of and near to the Jor¬ 
dan. Its Hebrew name was Bethsan, Bethshean, or 
Bethshan. It was called Scythopolis, or the city of 
the Scythians, as the Septuagint has it ( 'LuvdCiv rcblig. 
—Judges , 1, 27), from its having been taken posses¬ 
sion of by a body of Scythians in their invasion of Asia 
Minor and Syria. It is now Bysan or Baisan. (Plin., 
5, 18.— Ammian. Marcell., 19, 27.— Joseph., Ant., 5, 
1 .—Id. ibid., 12 , 12 .— Id., Bell. Jud., 3, 4.) 

Sebaste, I. vid. Samaria.—II. The name was com¬ 
mon to several cities, as it was in honour of Augustus. 
Sebaste (Lebaorr), sc. Tiolig) is the Greek form for 
Augusta, sc. urbs. 

Sebennytus, a town of the Delta in Egypt, north 
of Busiris, and the capital of the Sebennytic nome. 
The modern Scmenud corresponds to its site. (Plin., 
5, 18.) 

Sebetus, a small river of Campania, now the Mad- 
dalona, falling into the Bay of Naples, whence the epi¬ 
thet Sebctis, given to one of the nymphs who fre¬ 
quented its borders, and became mother of CEbalus by 
Telon. (Virg., JEn., 7, 734.) 

Sedetani, a people of Spain, supposed to have been 
the same with the Edetani. (Vid. Edetani.) 

Seduni, a nation of Gaul on the south bank of the 
fchodanus, to the east of Lacus Lemanus. They op- 
'-osed Hannibal near the very summit of the Alps, 


when he crossed these lofty mountains ,o ii.vade Italy 
Their capital was afterward called civitas Stdunorum., 
now Sion. They appear to have sent out numeroug 
colonies, in quest, no doubt, of a milder climate 
Hence we find tribes of this name in various places. 
(Coes., B. G., 3.) 

Sedusii, a German nation on the northeast bank of 
the Rhenus. They are named in conjunction with the 
Marcomanni, and are supposed to have been situate 
between the Danube, the Rhine, and the Nccket 
(Nicer). 

Segesta, a town of Sicily. (Vid. iEgesta.) 

Segni, a people, with a town of the same name, in 
Belgic Gaul. A small town, called Signei, points out 
the place which they once inhabited. (Coes., B. G., 6 .) 

Segobriga, the capital of the Celtiberi, in Hispania 
Tarraconensis, southwest of Csesaraugusta. Accord¬ 
ing to lieichard, it is now Priego; but the actual po¬ 
sition is much disputed. (Compare Ukert, Geogr., 
vol. 2, p. 459.) 

Segontia or Seguntia, I. a town of Hispania Tar¬ 
raconensis, in the territory of the Celtiberi, and to the 
west of Csesaraugusta.—II. A city of the Arevaci, in 
Hispania Tarraconensis, now Siguenza. (Itin. Ant., 
436, 438.) 

Segovia, a city of Hispania Tarraconensis, in the 
farthest part of the territory of the Arevaci, towards 
the southwest. It is now Segovia. (Plin., 3, 4.) 

Sejanus, BSlius, a native of Vulsinii, in Etruria, 
and prime minister to the Emperor Tiberius. His fa¬ 
ther was Seius Strabo, a Roman knight, commander 
of the praetorian guard in the reign of Augustus. His 
mother was descended from the Junian family. Seja¬ 
nus was at first one of the train of Caius Caesar, but 
he afterward gained so great an ascendancy over Ti¬ 
berius, that the emperor, who was naturally of a sus¬ 
picious temper, was free and open with him, and, while 
he distrusted others, he communicated his greatest se¬ 
crets to this fawning favourite. For eight years did 
this unprincipled man retain an undivided influence 
over the mind of the emperor ; and during that period 
he contrived to procure the death or banishment of al¬ 
most every person who might have checked his prog¬ 
ress to the possession of imperial power, which was 
the object of his treacherous ambition. The death of 
Drusus, the son of Tiberius, was effected by him and 
the adulterous Livilla (vid. Drusus II.); to him also is 
attributed the death of the two eldest sons of Germani- 
cus, and the banishment of their mother, the celebrated 
Agrippina. The younger son, Caligula, escaped, in all 
probability, in consequence of his almost constant resi¬ 
dence with the army. But the master-stroke of poli¬ 
cy by which Sejanus strove to secure his object, was 
his persuading the emperor to remove from the cares 
and dangers of Rome, and to indulge his passions in a 
retirement where he would have none around him but 
the depraved ministers of his vices. Tiberius accord¬ 
ingly retired to Caprese, where he abandoned himself to 
the most disgusting and unnatural indulgences, leaving 
Sejanus at Rome, in possession of all but the name of 
imperial power. To this base and bloody favourite the 
senate displayed the most degrading servility ; the peo¬ 
ple gave him honours second only to those of the em¬ 
peror ; and the sceptre itself seemed on the point of 
passing into his grasp. Already were his statues sef 
up by the Romans in their dwellings, in public places 
and in temples, along with those of the reigning family 
when Tiberius, in an interval of sobriety (he was now 
almost always intoxicated), either of himself perceived 
the pass to which matters had come, or was made 
aware of the real views of Sejanus by his own suit for 
the hand of an imperial princess, the adulterous widow 
of Drusus ; or finally, as Josephus states, was inform¬ 
ed of his plans by a billet from Antonia, the widow of 
the emperor’s brother. The whole demeanour and 
management of Tiberius, when he had formed the res- 






1206 







SEL 


o E L 


olution of destroying the man who had hitherto been 
his all-intrusted confidant and all-powerful minister, is 
admirably described by Dio Cassius. After a singu¬ 
lar course of dissembling, by which he withheld his vic¬ 
tim from proceeding to extremities, he sent Macro 
with full powers to arrest Sejanus, put him to death, 
and take his place. The decree of arrest was accord¬ 
ingly read in the senate ; Sejanus was enticed into the 
senate-house, by the pretext that Macro was the bear¬ 
er of a letter, bv virtue of which the minister was to 
receive the dignity of tribune ; and, being instantly 
condemned, was dragged through the streets, and put 
to death with the utmost ignominy, by those who, a 
few hours before, had followed him with acclamations. 
The execution of Sejanus was followed by that of his 
innocent children, relations, and even distant connex¬ 
ions. The numerous persons crowded into the pris¬ 
ons as friends of Sejanus were, without any judicial 
proceeding, massacred en masse, and even their bodies 
were subjected to indignities. (Suet., Vit. Tib .— 
Tacit., Ann., 4, 1 , seqq.—Id. ib., 5.— Dio Cass., 58, 
9, seqq.) 

Selemnus. Vid. Argyra II. 

Selene, the sister of Helios, and the same with 
Luna or the Moon. According to another view of 
the subject, she was the daughter of Helios, the lat¬ 
ter being regarded as the source of light. (Eurip., 
Phoen., 178, seqq. — Nonnus, 44, 191.) A third view 
makes her the mother by him of the four Seasons. 
(Quint. Smyrn., 10, 334, seq.) In one of the Ho¬ 
meric hymns Selene is called the daughter of Pallas, 
son of Megamedes. It was said that Selene was en¬ 
amoured of Endymion, on whom Jupiter had bestowed 
the boon of perpetual youth, but united with perpet¬ 
ual sleep ; and that she used to descend to him every 
night, en the summit of Mount Latmus, the place of 
his repose. She bore to Jupiter a daughter named 
Pandia; and Hersa (Dew) was also the offspring of the 
King of Heaven and the Goddess of the Moon. (Horn. 
Hymn., 32, 15.— Aleman, ap. Plut., Quasi. Nat., 
24.) In explanation of this last legend it may be re¬ 
marked, that the moon was naturally, though incorrect¬ 
ly, regarded as the cause of dew ; and nothing, there¬ 
fore, was more obvious than to say that the dew was 
the progeny of the moon and sky personified after the 
usual manner of the Greeks.—The name Selene 
CEeXyvy) is plainly derived from (jehaq, brightness, and 
is one of the large family of words of which £Aa or 
O .77 ( Helle, Germ.), may be regarded as the root, 
t Keightley's Mythology, p. 61, seq.) 

Seleucia, I. a famous city of Asia, built by Seleu¬ 
cus, one of Alexander’s generals, and situate on the 
western bank of the Tigris, about forty-five miles 
north of ancient Babylon. It was the capital of the 
Macedonian conquests in Upper Asia, and is said to 
have been the first and principal cause of the destruc¬ 
tion of Babylon. Pliny reports ( 6 , 26) that the inten¬ 
tion of Seleucus was to raise, in opposition to Babylon, 
a Greek city with the privilege of being free. Many 
ages after the fall of the Macedonian empire, Seleucia 
retained the genuine characteristics of a Grecian col¬ 
ony, arts, military virtue, and the love of freedom. 
Its population consisted of 600,000 citizens, governed 
by a senate of 300 nobles. The rise of Ctesiphon, 
however, in its immediate vicinity, proved injurious to 
Seleucia ; but it was fated to receive its death-blow 
from the hands of the Romans. The inhabitants had 
ever shown themselves friendly to the latter people, 
and had yielded them very effectual aid in their expe¬ 
ditions against the Parthians ; and yet a general of 
the Emperor Trajan’s plundered and set fire to the 
lace. The cause of this severe treatment is un- 
no wn : it may have been that the inhabitants, accus¬ 
tomed to self-government, were restless under the 
yoke of their new allies. (Dio Cass., 68 , 30.) The 
Budden death, however, of Trajan, and the rapid de¬ 


parture of his army, prevented at this time the tocai 
destruction of the city. That fate befell it under Ve- 
rus, the colleague of Marcus Aurelius. A general of 
his, notwithstanding a friendly reception from the in¬ 
habitants, destroyed the city under the pretext of its 
having violated its faith. (Eulrop., 8 , 5.— Capitolin., 
Verus, c. 8. — Dio Cass., 71, 2 .) Some idea of the 
size of the place in its best days may be formed from 
the circumstance that even at this period 400,000 
prisoners were taken. (Oros., 8 , 15.) The ruins of 
Seleucia, and those of Ctesiphon on the opposite side 
of the river, are called by the Arabs at the present 
day Al Modain (El Madeien), or “ the two cities.” 
(Mannert, Geogr., vol. 5, p. 397, seqq., part 2 .)—II. 
A city of Susiana, in the territory of the Elymaei. Ac¬ 
cording to Strabo, it was subsequently called Solyce 
('Zo'Xvkj]), and lay on the river Hedyphon. ( Strabo, 
744.— Plin., 6 , 27.)—III. A city of Cilicia Trachea, 
a short distance to the north of the mouth of the Caly- 
cadnus. It was founded by Seleucus Nicator, and is 
sometimes called, for distinction’ sake, Seleucia Tra¬ 
chea. (Steph. Byz., s. v .— Amm. Marcell., 14, 2 .)— 
IV. A city in the northwestern part of Pisidia, south 
of Amblada. It was sometimes called Seleucia Fer- 
rea, and ad Taurum. ( Hierocl., p. 673.)—V. A city 
on the coast of Pamphylia, west of Side, and coinci¬ 
ding probably with the Syllon of Scylax.—YI. A 
city of Apamene, not far from the city of Apamea. 
It was sometimes called Seleucia ad Belum. (Pliny, 
5, 23, — Hierocles, p. 712.) — VII. A city of Syria, 
on the seacoast, near the mouth of the Orontes, 
and southwest of Antioch. It was called Seleucia 
Pieria, from Mount Pierus in its vicinity, and was 
founded by Seleucus. The city was strongly forti¬ 
fied, and had a large and secure harbour. Browne 
identifies Seleucia with Suadea, the port of Antioch, 
about four hours distant from it. Others give the 
modern name as Kepse. (Strabo, 751. — Polyb., 5. 
59.— Mela, 1 , 12 .— Pliny, 5, 18.) 

Seleucid^e, a surname given to the dynasty of Se¬ 
leucus, comprising the monarchs who reigned over 
Syria from B.C. 312 to B.C. 66 . The first of these 
dates gives the commencement of the reign of Seleu¬ 
cus Nicator, the founder of the dynasty. The last 
date gives the time when Pompey reduced Syria un¬ 
der the Roman sway. Some compute the era of the 
Seleucidse from B.C. 301, the date of the battle of 
Ipsus. (Consult Vaillant, Seleucidarum Imperium, 
Horag., 1732. — Reineccius, Familia Seleucidarum , 
Wittenb., 1571.— Clinton, Fast. Hell., vol. 2 , p. 308, 
seqq.) 

Seleucis, a division of Syria, which received its 
name from Seleucus, the founder of the Syrian em¬ 
pire, after the death of Alexander the Great. It was 
called Telrapolis from the four cities it contained, 
called also sister cities ; Seleucia, Antioch, Laodicea, 
and Apamea. 

Seleucus, I. surnamed Nicator, or “ the Conquer¬ 
or,” was the son of Antiochus, a general of Philip’s. 
He served from early youth under Alexander, accom¬ 
panied him to Asia, and there had commonly the com¬ 
mand of the elephants. After the death of that mon¬ 
arch he was appointed to the command of the cavalry, 
and, on the second division of the provinces, teceived 
the government of Babylonia. He was at first on 
friendly terms with Antigonus, and acknowledged his 
authority; but the latter having taken offence at some 
slight provocation, Seleucus fled to Ptolemy in Egypt. 
Returning with an army which he had collected from 
various quarters, Seleucus recovered the possession of 
Babylon, which had, after his departure, fallen into the 
hands of Antigonus ; and the citizens of the place 
themselves, by whom his mild government had made 
him much beloved, aided him in effecting this (B.C. 
312). Nicanor and Evagoras, the governors of Medi? 
and Persia, immediately took up arms in behalf of 

1207 



SELEUCUS. 


SEL 


Antigonus, the latter himself and his son Demetrius 
being too far distant to act in person. But Seleucus, 
having planted an ambuscade, surprised the hostile 
camp in the night, and gained a complete victory. 
From the recovery of Babylon by Seleucus, the his¬ 
torians of all nations, except the Chaldseans alone, 
date the era of the Seleucidae, or dynasty of Seleucus, 
in Upper Asia. A temporary absence of Seleucus in 
Media, where he was prosecuting his conquests, left 
Babylon at the mercy of the enemy, and Demetrius, 
by rapid marches, was enabled to regain possession of 
it; but his subsequent departure, and the return of Se¬ 
leucus, soon restored things to their former condition. 
Seleucus now carried his victorious arms into Persia, 
Bactria, Hyrcania, and many other countries of Upper 
Asia, and, on account of the rapidity of his conquests, 
assumed the title of Nicator, and with it that of king, 
in imitation of the other successful generals of Alex¬ 
ander. Having united subsequently with Ptolemy, 
Cassander, and Lysimachus against Antigonus, and 
the latter having lost his life in the defeat at Ipsus, 
the kingdom of Syria, Armenia, Mesopotamia, Cata¬ 
lonia, and a part of Asia Minor, were added to $ie 
possessions of Seleucus, and he became the greatest 
and most powerful of all the generals of Alexander. 
He now built Antiochia, calling it after the name of 
his father, and made it the capital of his dominions. 
Many other cities, too, were erected in other quarters. 
The great power of Seleucus having caused at first 
uneasiness, and afterward having given rise to a con¬ 
federacy against him, this monarch sought to draw 
Demetrius to his side, by giving him in marriage his 
daughter Stratonice, and intrusting him with an army. 
But jealousy towards his son-in-law soon induced Se¬ 
leucus to deprive him of his new command, and hold 
him in confinement until his death. Seleucus after 
this took up arms against Lysimachus, at the urgent 
entreaties of the friends of Agathocles, son of Lysitn- 
achus, whom the father had put to death on a false 
charge brought against him by his stepmother. His 
real motive, however, was the removal cf a dangerous 
neighbour; and in this he was completely successful; 
for, having invaded Asia Minor, he defeated and slew 
Lysimachus in the battle of Compedion (B.C. 281). 
Ptolemy Soter had died above a year before this bat¬ 
tle took place, and Seleucus now remained alone of 
all the Macedonian captains, the fellow-soldiers and 
friends of Alexander. He became ardently desirou.* 
of revisiting Macedonia, and reigning in a country 
where he had first drawn breath ; but his schemes 
were frustrated by assassination. As he was on his 
march to Macedon, he was murdered by Ptolemy Ce- 
raunus, the expatriated prince of Egypt, who wished to 
obtain for himself the Macedonian throne ; and he 
thus fell B.C. 280, in the 73d year of his age, and the 
32d of his reign.—II. The second of the name, sur- 
named Callinicus , succeeded his father Antiochus 
Theos on the throne of Syria. He attempted to 
make war against Ptolemy, king of Egypt, but his 
fleet was shipwrecked in a violent storm, and his ar¬ 
mies soon after conquered by his enemy. He was at 
last taken prisoner by the Parthians, and retained by 
them ten years, until the period of his death, which 
was occasioned by a fall from his horse in hunting, 
B.C. 226.—III. The third, succeeded his father Se¬ 
leucus II., while the latter was in captivity. He was 
aurnamed Ceraunus (“ thunderbolt”), an ostentatious 
and unmerited title, as he was a very weak, timid, and 
irresolute monarch. He was murdered by two of his 
officers after a reign of three years, B.C. 223, and 
his brother Antiochus, though only fifteen years old, 
ascended the throne, and rendered himself so celebra¬ 
ted that he acquired the name of the Great.—IV. The 
fourth, succeeded his father Antiochus the Great on 
the throne of Syria. He was surnamed Philopator, 
or, according to Josephus, Soter. His empire had 
1208 


oeen weakened by the Romans when he became a 
monarch, and the yearly tribute of a thousand talents 
to these victorious enemies concurred in lessening his 
power and consequence among nations. Seleucus. 
was poisoned after a reign of twelve years, B.C. 175. 
His son Demetrius had been sent to Rome, there to< 
receive his education, and he became a prince of 
great abilities.—V. The fifth, succeeded his father 
Demetrius Nicator on the throne of Syria, in the 
twentieth year of his age. He was put to death its 
the first year of his reign by Cleopatra, his mother, 
who had also sacrificed her husband to her ambition. 
He is not reckoned by many historians in the number 
of the Syrian moriarchs.—VI. The sixth, one of the 
Seleucidae, son of Antiochus Gryphus, killed his uncle 
Antiochus Cyzicenus, who wished to obtain the crown 
of Syria. He was some time after banished from his 
kingdom by Antiochus Pius, son of Cyzicenus, and 
fled to Cilicia, where he was burned in a pa-lace by 
the inhabitants, B.C. 93.—VII. A prince of Syria, to 
whom the Egyptians offered the crown of which they 
had robbed Auletes. Seleucus accepted it, but he 
soon disgusted his subjects, and received the surname 
of Cvbiosactes, for his meanness and avarice. He 
was at last murdered by Berenice, whom he had mar¬ 
ried. 

Selge, the largest and most powerful of the cities 
of Pisidia, situate north of the Eurymedon. It is said 
by some of the ancient writers to have been founded 
by a Lacedaemonian colony. ( Strabo , 570.— Dionys. 
Perieg., v. 860.— Steph. Byz., s. v. — Polyb ., 5, 76.) 
The probability, however, is, that this was a mere sup¬ 
position, grounded upon the valour of the inhabitants, 
since, independent of the difficulty of establishing a 
colony in an inland and mountainous country, amid 
rude and savage tribes, we find Arrian expressly sty¬ 
ling the inhabitants of Selge Barbarians , when ma¬ 
king mention of an embassy sent by them to Alexan¬ 
der. {Exp. Alex., 1, 28, 1.) In a later age, how¬ 
ever, we find the people of Selge laying open claim to 
the honour of a Spartan origin, and even adding to 
their medals the name of Lacedaemon.—The city was 
large, and the inhabitants very warlike. They could 
bring into the field, according to Strabo, an army of 
20,000 men ( Strab ., 570), and they maintained their 
independence for a long period against the petty 
princes in the vicinity. To the Romans they subse¬ 
quently paid a stipulated sum for permission to live 
under their old republican institutions ; but under the 
weak emperors after the time of the Antonines they 
rendered little more than a mere nominal obedience. 
At a later period we read of its effectually resisting an 
army of the Goths. ( Zosimus , 5, 15.) Mr. Fellows 
describes some splendid ruins, which he considers to 
be those of Selge. {Asia Minor, p. 172, seq.) 

Selinus {-untis. — 2eXivove;, -ovvrog), I. a large 
and flourishing city of Sicily, situate on the southern 
shore of the western part of the island, and in a south¬ 
west direction from LilybEeuin. It was founded, ac¬ 
cording to Thucydides (6, 4), by a Doric colony from 
Megara or Hybla, on the eastern coast of Sicily, a 
hundred years after the establishment of the parent 
city, which latter event took place about the eigh¬ 
teenth Olympiad. (Compare, however, the remarks 
of Mannert, Geogr., vol. 9, pt. 2, p. 370.)—Selinus 
soon became a rich and powerful city, in consequence 
of the fertile territory in which it was situated, and 
was engaged in almost continual wars with the neigh¬ 
bouring city of HCgesta or Segeste. The weakness 
of the latter place induced its inhabitants to call in 
the aid of Carthage, which power gladly availed it¬ 
self of an opportunity of meddling in the affairs of the 
island. A powerful Carthaginian army was according¬ 
ly sent, and Selinus, notwithstanding the brave resist¬ 
ance of its inhabitants, was taken, plundered, and ir. 
a great measure destroyed. {Diod. Sic., 13, 42.— Id., 




SEM 


SEMIRAMIS. 


13 57.) About 16,000 men fell in the siege or during 
the slaughter that followed the taking of the place, 
5000 were led away to Carthage into slavery, 2600 
fled to Agrigentum, and many wandered about the ad¬ 
jacent country. Selinus would seem, from this ac¬ 
count, to have been a city of more than 30,000 inhabi¬ 
tants.—The Carthaginians afterward allowed the fugi¬ 
tives to return to their ruined city, and again inhabit 
it. ( Diod., 13, 59.) A short time before his death, 
Dionysius the elder, of Syracuse, made himself master 
of Selinus and the adjacent places, but they all, not 
long after, reverted to their former possessors. The 
Carthaginians at last, during the first Punic war, feel¬ 
ing the difficulty of maintaining this post, transferred 
the.few remaining inhabitants to Lilybaeum, and Seli¬ 
nus was destroyed. (Diod. Sic., 24, 1. — Mannert, 
Geogr., vol. 9, pt. 2, p. 370, seqq.) A description of the 
ruins of Selinus may be found in Hoare’s Classical 
Tour , vol. 2, p. 78, seqq. The ruins exist near what 
is called Torre di Polluce, and, according to Sir R. 
Hoare, their modern appellation is Pilieri del Castel 
Vetrano. — II. A city of Cilicia Trachea, the most 
westerly place in that province with the exception of 
Laertes, and situated on the coast. Its site was on a 
rock surrounded by the sea, at the mouth of the river 
Selinus. The Emperor Trajan died here; and from 
him the place took the new name of Trajanopolis. 
(Strabo , 681. — Liv., 33,20.) The modern name is 
Selenli. — Its territory was called Selentis. (Man¬ 
nert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 2. p. 85.) 

Sellasia, a town of Laconia, northeast of Sparta, 
and commanding one of the principal passes in the 
country. It was situate near the confluence of the 
CEnus and Gongylus, in a valley confined between 
two mountains, named Evas and Olympus. (Polyb., 
2, 6.) It commanded the only road by which an army 
could enter Laconia from the north, and was, there¬ 
fore, a position of great importance for the defence of 
the capital. Thus, when Epaminondas made his at¬ 
tack on Sparta, his first object, after forcing the passes 
which led from Arcadia into the enemy’s country, was 
to march directly upon Sellasia with all his troops. 
(Xen., Hist. Gr., 5, 5, 17.) Cleomenes, tyrant of 
Sparta, was attacked in this strong position by Antig- 
onus Doson, and totally defeated after an obstinate 
conflict. (Polyb., 2, 66, seqq.) —No modern traveller 
appears to have explored the site of Sellasia. (Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 221.) 

Selleis, a river of Elis, in the Peloponnesus, rising 
in Mount Pholoe, and falling into the sea below the 
Peneus. Near its mouth stood the town of Ephyre. 
(Strabo, 337.) x 

Selymbria, a city of Thrace, founded by the Me- 
garensians at a still earlier period than Byzantium. 
(Scymn., c. 714. — Scylax, p. 28. — Herodot., 6, 33.) 
The name of its founder, the leader of the colony, was 
Selys (Zrjlvq), at least, Strabo explains the name by 
rroliq (“ the city of Selys”), the term bria be¬ 
ing the Thracian word for “ a city.” It became a 
flourishing city, of considerable strength, and fora long 
time defended itself against the inroads of the Thra¬ 
cians, and the attempts of Philip of Macedon. It fell 
at last, however, into the hands of this monarch. It 
sank in importance after this event.—With the com¬ 
mon people in the Doric dialect, the form Salambria 
was used. The writers of the middle ages give Se- 
lybria, from which comes the modern Selivria. The 
city changed its name at a late period to that of Eu- 
doxiapolis, in honour of the wife of the Emperor Ar- 
cadius. (Mannert, Geogr., vol. 7, p. 173, seqq.) 

Semele, a daughter of Cadmus by Hermione, the 
daughter of Mars and Venus. ( Vid* Bacchus.) 

Semiramis, a celebrated queen of Assyria, daughter 
of the goddess Derceto by a young Assyrian. She 
was exposed in a desert, but her life was preserved 
bv doves for one whole year, till Sirnmas, one of the 
7 O 


shepherds of Ninus, found her and brought her up as 
his own child. Semiramis, when grown up, married 
Menones, the governor of Nineveh, and was present 
at the siege of Bactra, where, by her advice and di¬ 
rections, she hastened the king’s operations and took 
the city. The monarch, having seen and become en¬ 
amoured of Semiramis, asked her of her husband, and 
offered him his daughter Sosana instead; but Meno¬ 
nes, who tenderly loved his wife, refused, and,when 
Ninus had added threats to entreaties, he hung him¬ 
self. No sooner was Menones dead than Semiramis 
married Ninus, by whom she had a son called Ninyas. 
Not long after this Ninus died, and Semiramis became 
sole ruler of Assyria. Another account, however, 
makes her to have put Ninus to death. According 
to this latter statement, Semiramis, having secured 
the co-operation of the chief men of the state by gifts 
and promises, solicited the king to put the sovereign 
power in her hands for five days. He yielded to her 
request, and all the provinces of the empire were com¬ 
manded to obey Semiramis. These orders were ex¬ 
ecuted but too exactly for the unfortunate Ninus, who 
was put to death, says this account, either immediate¬ 
ly, or after some years’ imprisonment. Semiramis, 
on attaining to sovereign power, resolved to immor¬ 
talize her name, and with this view commenced the 
building of the great city of Babylon, in which work 
she is said to have employed two millions of men, 
who were collected out of all the provinces of her vast 
empire. She visited every part of her dominions, and 
left everywhere monuments of her greatness. To 
render the roads passable and communication easy, 
she hollowed mountains and filled up valleys, and wa¬ 
ter was conveyed, at a great expense, by large and 
convenient aqueducts to barren deserts and unfruitful 
plains. She was not less distinguished for military 
talents, and reduced many neighbouring and also dis¬ 
tant nations under her sway. India, in particular, felt 
the power of her arms. At length, being plotted 
against by her son Nmyas, and recalling to mind a 
response which she had received some time before 
from the oracle of Ammon, she voluntarily abdicated 
in favour of her son, and immediately disappeared from 
the eyes of men. Some said that she was changed 
into a dove, and that several birds of this species hav¬ 
ing alighted upon the palace, she flew away along 
with them. Hence, according to the legend, the dove 
was held sacred by the Assyrians. Semiramis is said 
to have lived 62 years, and to have reigned 42 years. 
(Diod. Sic., 2, 4, seqq .— Val. Max., 9, 3. — Herod., 
1 , 185.— Mela, 1, 3.— Paterc , 1 , 6. — Justin, 1 , 1 , 
&c.— Propert., 3, 11, 21.)—For an account of Se¬ 
miramis altogether different from the received one, 
consult the work of Cirbied and Martin, Recherches 
Curieuses sur VHistoire Ancienne, cap. 17, p. 176, 
seqq. —The legend of Semiramis serves to connect 
together the Assyrian and Syrian mythologies. That 
she was an historical personage seems extremely doubt¬ 
ful, inasmuch as all that is related of her wears so ev¬ 
idently the garb of fiction. There appears, indeed, a 
very striking resemblance between the account given 
of Semiramis and the Hindu fable of Mahadevi and 
Parvadi as detailed in the Puranas, and both narra¬ 
tives have probably emanated from the same source. 
The very name, too, would seem to favour this idea, 
for Semiramis becomes in Sanscrit Sami-Ramesi or 
Isi , u quae Sami arborem colit.” Others, however, 
give a different etymology, and make the term Semir¬ 
amis denote “ a wild dove” (columbam feram mon- 
tanamque), and a third class regard it as equivalent 
to “ the mother of doves” (Semir or Somir, the Syr¬ 
iac for “ a dove,” and Amis). The worship of doves 
among the Syrians and Assyrians is well known, and 
appears to lie at the base of the whole fable. (Con¬ 
sult Foss., Idolol., 1, 23.— Creuzer, Symboltk, vol. 2, 
p 70 , seqq .— Von Hammer, Fundgrubcn des Orients, 

1209 



S E M 


SEN 


Tol. 1, p. 209.— Id., ad Schirin., vol. 1, p. 36, n. 4.— 
Dalberg , ad Scheik Mohammed, Fanis Dabistan, p. 
110, seqq.—B'dhr, ad Ctes., p. 415.)—Regarded as a 
matter of authentic history, the narrative of Semiramis 
presents many chronological difficulties. This is fully 
apparent in the discrepance that exists among various 
writers relative to the era of her reign. Thus, for ex¬ 
ample, if we adopt the traditions which Ctesias, Di¬ 
odorus Siculus, Justin, Eusebius, and Georgius Syn- 
cellus have followed as their guides, Semiramis will 
have been anterior to Augustus at least eighteen cen¬ 
turies ; while, on the other hand, Larcher makes her 
to have been the wife of Nabonassar, and to have ex¬ 
ercised sovereign sway during the latter years of that 
prince’s reign, when he was prevented from ruling by 
a severe malady. ( Larcher, Hist, d'Herod. — Chro - 
nol., vol. 7, p. 171.) 

Semn6nes, called by Strabo Zeyvoveg, by Ptolemy 
2 e/ivovec, by Velleius Paterculus Senones, and by Ta¬ 
citus Semnones. They were a German nation, and, 
according to Velleius Paterculus (2, 106), the Albis 
or Elbe separated their territories from those of the 
Hermunduri; while, from Ptolemy’s account, they 
would seem to have inhabited what is now Branden¬ 
burg. They originally formed a part of the kingdoni 
of Maroboduus, but afterward separated from it along 
with the Langobardi. Mannert is of opinion that the 
name of Semnones was given by the German tribes, 
not to a single nation, but to all the nations in the vi¬ 
cinity of the Elbe, from whom the more southern Ger¬ 
mans were descended. ( Geogr ., vol. 3, p. 334.) The 
Semnones must not be confounded with the Senones, 
a Celtic race who settled on the coast of Umbria. 

( Vid . Senones.) 

Semones, an inferior class of divinities, such as 
Priapus, Silenus, the Fauns, &c. They were called 
Semones (i. e., semi-homines) from their holding a 
middle kind of rank between gods and men. Certain 
deified heroes were also included under this appella¬ 
tion. {Ovid, Fast., 6, 213.) 

Sempronia, I. a Roman matron, daughter of Scipio 
Africanus the elder, and mother of the two Gracchi. 
{Vid. Cornelia III.)—II. A sister of the Gracchi, and 
wife of the younger Scipio Africanus. She was sus¬ 
pected of having been privy, along with Carbo, Grac¬ 
chus, and Flaccus, to the murder of her husband.— 
The name of Sempronia was common to the females 
of the families of the Sempronii, Scipios, and Gracchi. 

Sempronia Lex, I. de Magistratibus, by C. Sem- 
pronius Gracchus, the tribune, A.U.C. 630, ordained 
that no person who had been legally deprived of a 
magistracy for misdemeanours should be capable of 
bearing an office again. This law was afterward re¬ 
pealed by the author.—II. Another, de Civitate, by the 
same, A.U.C. 630. It ordained that no capital judg¬ 
ment should be passed over a Roman citizen without 
the order of the people.—III. Another, de Comitiis, by 
the same, A.U.C. 635. It ordained that, in giving 
their votes, the centuries should be chosen by lot, and 
not give it according to the order of their classes.— 
IV. Another, de Provinces, by the same, A.U.C. 630. 
It enacted that the senators should appoint provinces 
for the consuls every year before their election.—V. 
Another, called agraria prima, by T. Sempronius 
Gracchus, the tribune, A U.C. 620. ( Vid. Agrariee 

Leges.)—VI. Another, called agraria altera, by the 
same. It required that all the ready money which was 
found in the treasury of Attalus, king of Pergamus, 
who had left the Romans his heirs, should be divided 
among the poorer citizens of Rome, to supply them 
with all the various instruments requisite in husbandry, 
and that the lands of that monarch should be farmed 
out by the Roman censors, and the money drawn from 
thence should be divided among the people.—VII. 
Another, de Civitate ltalis danda , by the same, that 
the freedom of the state should be given to all the 
1210 


Italians.—VIII. Another, called Frumentaria, by C. 
Sempronius Gracchus. It required that corn should 
be distributed among the people, so much to every m 
dividual, for every modius (or peck) of which it was 
required that they should only pay the trifling sum of a 
scmissis and a triens. —IX. Another, de Usura, by M. 
Sempronius, the tribune, A.U.C. 560, long before the 
time of the Gracchi. It ordained that, in lending 
money to the Latins and the allies of Rome, the Ro¬ 
man laws should be observed as well as among the 
citizens. The object of this law was to check the 
fraud of usurers, who lent their money in the name of 
the allies at higher interest than what was allowed a' 
Rome.—X. Another, de Judicibus, by C. Sempronius 
Gracchus, A.U.C. 630. It required that the right of 
judging, which had been assigned to the senatorian 
order, should be transferred from them to the Roman 
knights.—XI. Another, Mililaris, by the same, A.U.C. 
630. It enacted that the soldiers should be clothed at 
the public expense, without any diminution of their 
usual pay. It also ordered that no person should be 
obliged to serve in the army before the age of seven¬ 
teen. {Plat., Vit. Grace.) 

Sempronius, the father of the Gracchi. {Vid. 
Gracchus.) 

Sena, I. Julia, a city of Etruria, to the east of 
Volaterrae. The designation Julia implies a colony 
founded by Julius or Augustus Caesar. It is mention¬ 
ed by Tacitus {Hist., 4, 45) and Pliny (3, 5). The 
modern name is Sienna. — II. A city of Umbria in 
Italy, on the seacoast, northwest of Ancona, and near 
the mouth of the river Misus. It was a settlement 
made by the Galli Senones, after their irruption into 
Italy, A.U.C. 396. The Romans colonized it after 
they had expelled, or, rather, exterminated the Seno¬ 
nes, A.U.C. 471 {Polyb., 2, 19), but, according to 
Livy {Epit., 11), some years before that date. During 
the civil war between Sylla and Marius, Sena, which 
sided with the latter, was taken and sacked by Pom- 
pey. ( Appian, Civ. Bell., 1, 88.) The modern name 
is Senigaglia. {Cramer’s Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 258.) 

Seneca, I. M. Annaeus, a rhetorician and orator, 
born at Corduba, in Spain, of equestrian family, about 
58 B.C. He came to Rome, where he contracted an 
intimate friendship with Porcius Latro, and where he 
taught rhetoric and oratory until his fifty-second year 
He then returned to his native city, and married Hel- 
via, a female distinguished for her beauty and talents, 
who made him the father of three sons, L. Annaeus 
Seneca, the philosopher ; M. Annaeus Novatus, who, 
having been adopted by Junius Gallio, took the name 
of Junius Annaeus Gallio, and was, as propraetor of 
Achaia, the judge of St. Paul {Acts, 18, 12) ; and 
Annaeus Mela, the father of the poet Lucan. After 
the birth of his three sons, Seneca went back to Rome, 
and there passed the remainder of his life. We have 
two works of this writer remaining, one entitled Sua- 
soriarum liber i., the other Controversiarum libri x. 
Each of these contains passages from discourses which 
had been pronounced on various occasions, and from 
debates which had taken place in the schools, in his 
presence, between the most celebrated rhetoricians. 
The subjects of these were fictitious causes or ques¬ 
tions, proposed for discussion by the professors, such 
as the following : “ Shall Alexander embark on the 
ocean 1”—“ Shall the three hundred Spartens atTher- 
mopylse, after being abandoned by the other Greeks, 
betake themselves to flight 1”—“Shall Cicero apolo¬ 
gize to Marc Antony 1”—“ Shall Cicero consent to 
burn his works, if Antony insists upon the sacrifice'?” 
&c.—Seneca addressed these works to his sons. We 
discover in them»some fine thoughts, and some traits 
of eloquence ; but they are filled, at the same time, 
with subtle refinements and frigid declamation. We 
see plain indications of a declining taste. Neither of 
these productions is complete. They have been often 



SENECA. 


SENECA. 


panted aWq ;ith the works of Seneca the philoso¬ 
pher, and trie esc of the editions thus given is that of 
Heinsms, Ad it., 1620, 8vo. A separate edition ap¬ 
peared from .ne Bipont press in 1783, 8vo ; and in 
1831, from the Pans press, by Bouillet, forming part 
of the collection of Lemaire. From some researches 
of Niebuhr, he would seem to have been the author 
also of a history. ( Niebuhr, ad Cic ., Liv. et Seneca, 
fragm , p. 104, Rom., 1820.) — II. L., A celebrated 
Roman writer, son of M. Annaeus Seneca, the rheto¬ 
rician, and Helvia, born at Corduba, in the second or 
third year of the Christian era. He was still very 
young when his Gther removed to Rome, where the 
son received his education. The oratorical profes¬ 
sion became his choice when he attained to years of 
maturity, and he plead in several causes before the 
public tribunals. The frantic Caligula, who was jeal¬ 
ous of every species of talents, sought to destroy him, 
but spared his life, it is said, when it was represented 
to him that Seneca’s health was feeble, and that he 
would, in all probability, be only short lived. He after¬ 
ward attained to the quaestorship. In the first year of 
the reign of Claudius, Messalina, who hated him, had 
Seneca implicated in the accusation of adultery which 
was brought against the paramours of Julia, daughter 
of Germanicus, and caused him to be banished to the 
island of Corsica, where he passed eight years of se¬ 
clusion. Agrippina, the second wife of Claudius, re¬ 
called him from banishment, and appointed him tutor 
to Nero, in conjunction with Burrhus. The latter was 
the young prince’s instructer in military science, and 
endeavoured to communicate his own sedateness and 
gravity of manners. Elegant accomplishments, taste 
for the arts, and polite address were Seneca’s prov¬ 
ince. Among other tutorial employment, he com¬ 
posed Nero’s speeches. The first, a funeral oration 
for Claudius, was unfortunate in its effect, according 
to Tacitus. (Ann., 13, 3.) Nero’s next harangue, 
probably also written by Seneca, though Tacitus does 
not say so, gave universal satisfaction. It was de¬ 
livered on his first appearance in the senate, and prom¬ 
ised a reign of moderation. Dio Cassius says that 
this address was ordered to be engraven on a pillar of 
solid silver, and to be publjcly read every year when 
the consuls entered on their office.—Seneca soon ob¬ 
tained an exclusive influence over his pupil, and en¬ 
gaged Annaeus Serenus, who stood high in his esteem 
and friendship, to assist him in the means, not very 
creditable, of preserving his ascendancy, by supplying 
Nero with a mistress, and persecuting his patroness 
Agrippina, whose indignation rose above all restraint. 
Tacitus puts into her mouth a few emphatic words, 
said to have been uttered in the emperor’s hearing. 
They have been finely imitated and expanded by Ra¬ 
cine, in his tragedy of Britannicus ; and Gray, in his 
short fragment of Agrippina, has done little more than 
translate Racine. Agsippina regained a temporary in¬ 
fluence, and succeeded in punishing some of her ac¬ 
cusers and rewarding her friends. Among the pro¬ 
motions obtained by her was that of Balbillus to the 
province of Egypt. It seems strange that a person so 
highly spoken of by Seneca should have been patron¬ 
ised by Agrippina at this juncture.—It was not till 
Suillius had too justly upbraided, but, at the same time, 
coarsely reviled Seneca, that the latter incurred any 
large portion of popular censure. Among the grounds 
on which Suillius attacked him were those of usury, 
avarice, and rapacity. That he was avaricious is be¬ 
yond all question ; but his practices must have been 
exorbitant to justify so violent an invective as that 
recorded by Tacitus, and where Suillius charges him 
with having amassed 300,000,000 sesterces. (Ann., 
13, 42.) The only historical authority on which Sen¬ 
eca's memory is loaded with the charge of usury, is 
that of Dio, who says that the philosopher had placed 
very large sums out at interest in Britain, and that his 


vexatious and unrelenting demands of payment had 
been the cause of insurrections among the Britons. 
But Dio’s veracity has been suspected on some occa¬ 
sions ; and as for the colour given to the imputation 
by the passage quoted from Tacitus, it must be re¬ 
membered that it occurs as proceeding from the mouth 
of an enraged enemy. These imputed faults could 
scarcely escape a hint frpm Juvenal, although he had 
made use of him before as a contrast to Nero, and 
seems generally favourable to his character.—Sene¬ 
ca’s share in the death inflicted on Agrippina by her 
son, and a strong suspicion that he drew up the pallia¬ 
tive account of it, bears still harder on his fame. The 
savage mode of the assassination, and the meanness 
of the posthumous honours paid to her, a circumstance 
of infinitely more importance than modern ideas at¬ 
tach to it, as affecting the future happiness and con¬ 
dition of the departed spirit, reflect incredible disgrace 
on all concerned. Retribution soon overtook these 
unworthy compliances with the will of a wicked mas¬ 
ter. Nero, to whom, in the usual descent from bad to 
worse, the slightest infusion of virtue was an offence, 
listened to evil counsellors, and with complacency al¬ 
lowed the most respectable of his adherents to be tra¬ 
duced, and among them, in particular, Seneca. He 
was charged with having exorbitant wealth, above 
the condition of a private citizen, and yet, with unap¬ 
peasable avarice, grasping after more ; his rage for 
popularity was represented as no less violent; he was 
accused of courting the affections of the people, and, 
by the grandeur of his villas and the beauty of his 
gardens, hoping to vie with imperial splendour. In 
matters of taste and genius, too, and especially in po¬ 
etic composition, he had the hardihood to become the 
rival of his imperial master. The skill of the prince, 
moreover, in the management of chariots, was reported 
to be with him a matter of raillery. (Ann., 14, 52.) 
There is too much reason to believe that his numerous 
villas, his extensive gardens and great riches, whetted 
the edge of these accusations. His speech to the em¬ 
peror, in which he offers to resign all his wealth and 
power, and asks permission to retire,= is a fine speci 
men of apologetic eloquence. His admissions con¬ 
firm Dio’s account of his immoderate riches ; but the 
historian probably exaggerates when he imputes the 
insurrection in Britain to his exactions. From this 
time he avoided the court, and lived an abstemious 
life in constant danger. His works, however, show 
that he was more useful in retirement than while fill¬ 
ing high offices. He devoted himself to philosophy, 
natural and moral. Nero now sought his destruction ; 
and Piso’s conspiracy, to which he was supposed to 
be a party, gave an opportunity. (Tac., Ann., 15, 
60, seqq.) His death took place in the following 
manner: Sylvanus the tribune, by order of Nero, sur¬ 
rounded Seneca’s magnificent villa, near Rome, with 
a troop of soldiers, and then sent in a centurion to ac¬ 
quaint him with the emperor’s orders, that he should 
puUhimself to death. On the receipt of this command, 
he opened the veins of his arms and legs, and then 
was put into a hot bath : this was found ineffectual; 
at his time of life, says Tacitus, the blood was slow 
and languid. The decay of nature, and the impover¬ 
ishing diet to which he had used himself, left him in 
a feeble condition. He ordered the vessels of his legs 
and joints to be punctured. After that operation he 
began to labour with excruciating pains. Lest his suf¬ 
ferings should overpower the constancy of his wife, or 
the sight of her afflictions prove too much for his sensi¬ 
bility, he persuaded her to retire into another room. He 
called for his secretaries, and, as life was ebbing away, 
dictated his final discourse. Fatigued at last with pstn, 
worn out, and exhausted, he requested his friend Sta¬ 
tius Annaeus, whose fidelity and medical skill he had 
often experienced, to administer a draught of hemlock 
The potion was swallowed, but without anv immediate 

1211 



SENECA. 


SENECA. 


effect. He then desired to be placed in a warm bath, 
and, the vapour soon overpowering him, there breathed 
his last. Seneca’s wife was permitted to live.—Ju¬ 
venal bestows high commendation on Seneca, and 
other ancient authors as well as Juvenal, who was a 
diligent reader of Seneca’s works, have been lavish of 
their praises. Martial takes many occasions of men¬ 
tioning him with some commendatory epithet. Why 
did St. Jerome saint him? The reason is thus ex¬ 
plained by Dr. Ireland, in a communication to Mr. 
Gifford while translating Juvenal. — “The writer to 
whom you refer seems to have used the term without 
much consideration. In Jerome’s time, it was applied 
to Christians at large, as the general distinction from 
the pagans. Indeed, it was given to those who had 
not yet received baptism, but who looked forward to 
it, and were therefore called candidates for the faith. 
It could be only a charitable extension of this term 
that led Jerome to place Seneca among the sancti; 
for he still calls him a stoic philosopher. The case is, 
that in the time of St. Jerome certain letters were ex¬ 
tant, which were said to have passed between Seneca 
and St. Paul. In one of these the former had ex¬ 
pressed a wish, that he were to the Romans what 
Paul was to the Christians. This Jerome seems to 
nave interpreted as an evangelical sentiment. He 
therefore placed Seneca among the ecclesiastical wri- 
,ers and saints; in other words, he presumptively 
*tyled him a Christian, though not born of Christian 
parents.” — The sketch of Seneca’s life here given, 
when checked by the authorities, will not warrant his 
t>eing ranked in any respect with the first Christian 
worthies. His early career was confessedly irregular 
and licentious. This, if sincerely repented of, might 
fie forgiven. But his conduct after his recall, ma¬ 
king allowance for the calumny and wholesale libel of 
the times, was, to speak of it in measured and negative 
terms, not altogether commendable. That his philo¬ 
sophical professions had some occasional influence 
on his imperial pupil; that they did a little towards 
stemming the torrent of profligacy with the people for 
a time, we are'vvilling and desirous to concede: but 
that the practice of the preacher too frequently coun¬ 
teracted the tendency of his preaching, it would be 
uncandid to deny. Of the later political delinquen¬ 
cies he was unquestionably innocent. With respect 
to Piso’s conspiracy, it was the current report at 
Rome, that the conspirators, after having employed 
Piso to get rid of Nero, meant to destroy Piso him¬ 
self, and raise Seneca to the vacant throne; but the 
conception of such a scheme could have been nothing 
short of madness. Seneca was at the time old and 
infirm; and his tamperings in conduct with the virtue 
which he rigidly taught, and with the self-denial he stoi¬ 
cally enforced in his writings as what the wise man could 
undeniably exemplify, had rendered him too unpopular 
to make the tenure of the empire safe in his hands 
for the shortest period of time. In respect of this 
charge he was shamefully treated. But his personal 
biography, on the whole, has an unfortunate tendency. 
Whatever may be thought of his excellences or de¬ 
fects as a writer, or of the caricature and priggishness 
of the Stoic sect, he was in his writings an earnest, a 
highly-pretending, and apparently a sincere advocate 
of ascetic severity. When the professions of such 
persons are belied by their lives and conduct, the in¬ 
terests of society cannot fail to suffer. If his ministry 
was corrupt, his behaviour under Nero’s frown was 
not magnanimous. It is true, he did not abandon his 
literary pursuits ; but his resignation was lip-deep; 
and his exaggerated affectation of sickness under in¬ 
firmity, his anxiety about diet and fear of poison, show 
that his fine reasoning and great calmness when doom¬ 
ed to die, his excellent discourses and ostentation of 
firmness, had more of theatrical exhibition than of nat¬ 
ural and self-possessed reality. His calling for the 
1212 


particular poison (hemlock) which was given to crim¬ 
inals at Athens, shows that philosophical ostentation 
adhered to him even in the agonies of death ; for he 
had thus expressed himself in one of his letters ; 
cuta magnum Socratem fecit: Catoni gladium asser- 
torem libertatis extorque , magnam partem detraxens 
glorice .” ( Ep. 13.)—His character and love of Sto¬ 

ical paradox are admirably delineated by Massinger, 
who had considered him well; and, though the quaint¬ 
ness and studied point of his manner had rendered him 
almost indiscriminately acceptable to the readers and 
writers of that period, the shrewd old dramatist had 
thoroughly appreciated him where he was weak as 
well as where he was strong. — It remains that we 
consider Seneca as a philosopher and an author. He 
was the principal ornament of Stoicism in his day, and 
a valuable instructer of mankind. If, when com¬ 
manded to die, neither he nox his nephew Lucan main¬ 
tained to the utmost the dignity of philosophy, the in¬ 
firmity of human nature may plead as the excuse. 
Some little vanity may appear on the scene of Seneca’s 
dissolution ; but there was nothing cowardly and no¬ 
thing inconsistent. As a writer, he was exactly made 
of that stuff which invites to controversy. To say 
that his style is faulty is to say no more than that he 
lived after the Augustan age. But perhaps our admi¬ 
ration of pure style, and our desire, by constant con¬ 
templation, to impregnate our own with the same spir¬ 
it, makes us too exclusive. We shall lose much that 
is instructive and valuable if we determine to read 
nothing which is not perfectly written. Tacitus and 
Juvenal, as well as Seneca and Lucan, are beyond the 
pale of best Latinity. Yet who would relinquish the 
possession of either. Mr. Hodgson thinks that Quin¬ 
tilian’s character of Seneca is nothing short of absolute 
condemnation. He asks why he should have been so 
scrupulous in omitting Seneca’s name, while he exam¬ 
ined every different style of eloquence, if he intended 
to attack him at the close of his discussion. The 
spirited and poetical annotator of Juvenal is right in 
his estimate of Seneca to a certain extent; but surely 
he bears a little hard on Quintilian, as he avers that 
the great critic does on his client. In various passa¬ 
ges Quintilian will be found to bestow no faint praise 
upon Seneca. Suetonius, in his Caligula, gives the 
contradictory opinions of the emperor and the public 
rather than his own. The decision of Aulus Gellius 
is unfavourable, but his verdict is comparatively of 
little importance, though the anecdotes in his miscel¬ 
lany pleasantly fill up many an hiatus in the small talk 
of classical literature. ( Malkin's Classical Disquisi¬ 
tions , p. 286, seqq.) —The works of Seneca that have 
come down to us are the following: I. De Ira , “On 
Anger,” in three books. Lipsius concludes, from a 
passage of this treatise, that it was composed in the 
time of Caligula ; whence it would follow that this is 
the earliest of the productions of Seneca, since it is as¬ 
certained with sufficient certainty that all the others 
were composed under Claudius and Nero. The in¬ 
ference drawn by Lipsius, however, has been disputed. 
The work itself is well written, and contains sjme 
good reasoning, blended, however, with some exagger¬ 
ation as regards the principles of the porch.—2. De 
Consolatione, ad Helviam matrem, “ On Consolation, 
addressed to his mother Helvia.” Seneca addressed 
this work to his mother during his banishment to Cor¬ 
sica, to console her not only under the misfortune that 
had befallen her in his sentence, but under all that had 
ever been experienced by her. It is well written, and 
is that one of his works which inspires the reader with 
most esteem for the moral character of the author.—3. 
De Consolatione , ad, Polybium, “ On Consolation, ad¬ 
dressed to Polybius.” This piece was written, ac¬ 
cording to the generally-received opinion, during the 
third year of Seneca’s banishment, to a freedman of 
Claudius named Polybius, who had lately lost a broth- 



SENECA. 


SEN 


er, a young man of great promise. It contains some 
fine passages, but is unworthy of coming from the pen 
of Seneca, on account of the gross flattery with which 
it abounds. Diderot, in his Essay on the Life of Sen¬ 
eca, has attacked the authenticity of the work, and 
Ruhkopf, one of the latest editors of Seneca, has fol¬ 
lowed in the same path.—4. De Consolatione, ad Mar- 
dam. Another consolatory epistle to a friend who 
had lost her son. It is a touching and eloquent piece, 
and was written under Claudius, after the return of 
Seneca from exile.—5. De Providentia, sive quare 
bonis viris mala accidant , cum sit Providentia, “ On 
Providence, or why, if there be a superintending Prov¬ 
idence, evils happen to the good 1” It is not a general 
dissertation on Providence, but merely an attempt to 
justify Providence, and refute the cavils and murmurs 
of the discontented. The piece ends with recom¬ 
mending suicide to the unfortunate as their last ref¬ 
uge ! It was written under the reign of Nero, and 
forms part of a complete treatise on ethics, of which 
Seneca speaks in his letters.—6. De Animi tran- 
quillitate , “ On Serenity of Mind.” This work, writ¬ 
ten soon after the return of Seneca to Rome, has not 
the usual form of his productions. It is preceded by 
a letter of Annaeus Serenus, in which that friend 
depicts to Seneca the disquietude, and disgust of life, 
which torment him, and requests his advice. Seneca 
replies, and shows the mode in which this mental mal¬ 
ady may be combated. — 7. De Constantia sapien- 
tis, sive quod in sapientem non cadit injuria, “ Of 
the firmness of the sage, or proof that the wise man 
can suffer no injury.” This work is based on the 
principles and paradoxes of the porch. It is addressed 
to Annaeus Serenus.—8. De Clementia, “ On Clem¬ 
ency.” Addressed to Nero. It was in three books, 
and was composed during the second year of the 
prince’s reign. The subject is rather the mild ad¬ 
ministration of government. A great part of the sec¬ 
ond, and the third book, are lost.—The diction in this 
work is simpler and nobler than in the other works of 
Seneca.—9. De Brevilate vita, “ On the shortness 
of life.” Addressed to Paulinus, the father, or else 
the brother of Seneca’s second wife, and who filled 
the station of Prafectus Annonce. Seneca recom¬ 
mends him to renounce his public employments in a 
spirit directly contrary to that in which he urges Se¬ 
renus to engage in public affairs. These contradic¬ 
tions sometimes occur in the works of Seneca.—10. 
De Vita Beata , “ On a Happy Life.” Addressed 
to Gallio, the brother of Seneca.—11. De Olio aut 
sccessu sapientis , “ On the Leisure or Retirement 
of the Sage.” The first twenty-seven chapters are 
wanting. Some critics, believe that it formed part of 
the preceding.—12. De Beneficiis, “ On Benefits.” 
In seven books. Seneca treats, in this fine work, of 
the manner of conferring benefits, and the duty of 
him who receives them, and collaterally of gratitude 
and ingratitude. It was written at the close of Sene¬ 
ca’s life, when he had retired from the court of Nero 
to the solitude of his villa.—13. One hundred and 
twenty-four letters, addressed to Lucilius Junior. 
Though Seneca has given to these pieces an episto¬ 
lary form, they are rather moral treatises on various 
subjects. We find in them many excellent maxims, 
and a real treasure of practical philosophy. They 
were written during the later years of Seneca, after 
his retirement from court.—14. ’AKOKoXoavvOucnq, 
“The Metamorphosis into a Gourd.” A Varronian 
Satire, directed against the Emperor Claudius. It is 
unworthy a philosopher like Seneca, and in very^bad 
taste.—15. Naturalium Quastionum libri vii., “Sev¬ 
en books oi’Questions on Nature.” Independently of 
the impoxU;.ce of the subjects discussed, the work 
has the accidental merit of making us acquainted with 
the point to which the ancients carried their scientific 
researches without the aid of instruments. In some 


cases it will be found that they have anticipated mod¬ 
ern discoveries. “ The theory of earthquakes,” says 
Humboldt, “as given by Seneca,.contains the germe 
of all that has been stated in our own times concern¬ 
ing the action of elastic vapours enclosed§in the inte¬ 
rior of the globe.” ( Voyage aux contrees equinoxia- 
les , vol. 1, p. 313, ed. 4to.)—We have also, in the 
early editions, fourteen letters of Seneca to St. Paul , 
or of the apostle to the philosopher, which were at 
one time received as genuine, but .are now regarded 
as spurious. And yet St. Jerome and St. Augustine 
cite them, without expressing the least doubt as to 
their authenticity. It may be remarked, moreover, 
that an old tradition in the church makes an intimate 
friendship to have subsisted between St. Paul and 
Seneca. This tradition can scarcely be regarded as 
mere fable, and derives considerable support from the 
singular resemblance that has been found to exist be¬ 
tween many passages from the writings of these dis¬ 
tinguished men. (Consult Scholl, Hist. Lit. Rom., 
vol. 2, p, 446, seqq.) Neither is there anything im¬ 
probable in this tradition as regards the time. The 
apostle is supposed to have arrived in Rome in the 
spring of 61 A.D. The prsetorian prefect allowed 
him to occupy a separate dwelling, with a soldier for 
a guard. This prefect was Burrhus, the friend of Sen¬ 
eca ; and the latter, it is very natural to suppose, 
heard of the new-comer through him. Seneca, in¬ 
deed, may have received some information respecting 
the apostle at an earlier period ; for the propraetor of 
Achaia, before whom St. Paul was brought at Corinth, 
was Seneca’s own brother, who, having passed by 
adoption into another family, had taken the name of 
Junius Annaeus Gallio. The Roman governor could 
hardly fail to make some mention of the apostle in his 
letters home.—There are also some tragedies ascribed 
to Seneca. Quintilian supposes that the Medea is his 
composition ; while, according to others, the Troades 
and the Hippolylus were also written by him, and the 
Agamemnon, Hercules Furens, Thyestes , and Hercu¬ 
les in QHta, were composed by his father. Lipsius 
has imagined that the Medea, which he regards as the 
best of these tragedies, was written by Seneca the 
philosopher, and that the rest were the productions of 
another of the same name, who lived in the time of 
Trajan. Most critics, following the first part of the 
hypothesis of Lipsius, assign the Medea to Seneca, 
but they likewise ascribe to him the Hippolytus, 
Agamemnon, and Troades ; and some of them give 
this latter piece the preference to the Medea. The 
remaining tragedies they consider to be the produc¬ 
tions of various writers, appended to the tragedies ot 
Seneca by editors or copyists. As to these composi¬ 
tions, it is hardly possible to find a really good tragedy 
among them. All, even the Medea , are defective in 
plan and in the management of the piece ; they are 
all barren of action and full of declamation. We 
find in them, it is true, occasional bold thoughts, and 
expressions approaching the sublime, but they are of¬ 
ten misplaced. They are modelled after the Greek 
tragedies, but are very far from being good copies, and 
are generally fatiguing by reason of the exaggeration 
and emphatic tone which reign throughout. The best 
editions of Seneca are, that of Lipsius, Antv , 1652, 
fol. (the best of his five); that cum notis variorum , 
printed at Amsterdam, 1672, 3 vols. 8vo ; that of 
Ruhkopf, Lips., 1797-1811, 5 vols. 8vo ; of the phil¬ 
osophical works, that of Bouillet, Paris, 1827-30, 5 
vols. 8vo, forming part of the collection of Lemaire. 
The best editions of the tragedies separately are, tBat 
of Gronovius, Lugd. Bat., 1661, 8vo; that of Baden, 
Lips., 1821, 8vo, 2 vols. ; and that of Pierrot, Paris, 
1829-32, 3 vols. 8vo, forming part of Lemaire’s col¬ 
lection. 

Senones, I. a nation of Gallia Transalpine, who, 
under the conduct of Brennus, invaded Italy and pil- 

1213 




S E R 


SER 


aged Rome. They afterward settled in Umbria, on 
the coast of the .Adriatic. After some years of con¬ 
flict with the Romans they were expelled, or rather 
exterminated, A.U.C. 471. ( Polyb., 2, 19.) Livy, 

however, makes the date of this event some years ear¬ 
lier. ( Liv ., Epit., 11.)—II. A people of Germany. 
(Vid. Semnones.) 

Septimius I. or Titus Septimius, a Roman knight, 
intimate with Horace, and to whom the latter address¬ 
ed one of his Odes (2, 6). He appears, from the 
words of Horace on another occasion ( Epist ., 1, 3, 9, 
seqq.), to have been a votary of the Muses; and, ac¬ 
cording to one of the scholiasts, he composed lyric 
pieces and tragedies. None of his productions have 
reached us.—II. Aulus Septimius Severus, a Roman 
poet, who flourished under Vespasian. He was high¬ 
ly esteemed for his lyric talents, but none of his pieces 
have reached us. One of his poems was entitled 
Opuscula Ruralia or Opuscula Ruris, consisting of 
several books ; another was called Falisca, in which 
he sang the praises of his villa among the Falisci. 
The metre of this poem was peculiar in its kind, each 
line being composed of three dactyls and a pyrrhic. 
WernsdorfF ascribes to him the Moretum , a poem 
commonly assigned to Virgil. (Burmann, ad Anthol. 
Lat., lib. 1, ep. 27.— Wernsdorff, Poet. Lat. Min., 
vol. 2, p. 247, seqq.) —III. Q. Septimius, the transla¬ 
tor of the work of Dictys Cretensis into Latin, and 
who lived in the time of the Emperor Dioclesian. 
[Vid. Dictys I.) 

Sequana (called by Ptolemy ’Zeuovavea), a river of 
Gallia Transalpina, rising in the territory of the^Edui, 
and flowing by Lutetia or Paris into the Atlantic. It 
is now the Seine. (Cces *, B. G., 1, 1. — Id. ib., 8, 87.) 

Sequani, a people of Gallia Transalpina, whose ter¬ 
ritory lay to the east of that of the ^Edui and Lingones, 
and was separated from them by the Arar; while it 
was parted from that of the Helvetii by the range of 
Mount Jura. Their country answers to the modern 
Departmens du Doubs et du Jura . ( Cces ., B. G., 1, 

9.— Id. ib., 6, 12, &c.) 

Serapeum or Serapion, I. a name given to the 
temples of Serapis in Egypt, of which there were a 
great number. (Creuzer, Dionysus, p. 181.)—II. A 
celebrated temple of Serapis in Alexandrea, and one 
Df the two temples in which the famous library was 
deposited. (Vid. Serapis, and Alexandrea.) — III. 
Another temple of Serapis in Egypt* situate to the 
south of Heroopolis. A settlement grew up around it; 
and the place was also famous for being the middle 
point in the road from north to south. (Mannert, 
Geogr., vol. 10, pt. 1, p. 486.)—IV. A temple of Se¬ 
rapis at Rome, on the Capitoline Hill, erected by Car- 
acalla. (Vid. Serapis.) 

SerapIon. Vid. Serapeum. 

Serapion, I. a physician of Alexandrea, the suc¬ 
cessor of Philinus, in what was called the Empiric 
school (i.e., the school of observation and experience.) 
In consequence of the great extension which he gave 
to this system, he is regarded by some as its inventor. 
(Cels., Pr<zf., p. 3.) Mead believes that he was a 
disciple of Erasistratus, from his having found the 
name of Serapion on a medal discovered at Smyrna ; 
but this opinion is untenable. (Sprengel, Hist, de la 
Med., vol. 1, p. 483, seqq.) — II. An epigrammatic 
poet, a native of Alexandrea, who lived in the time of 
Trajan. One of his epigrams is preserved in the An¬ 
thology. (Jacobs, Catal. Poet. Epig., s. v.)— III. An 
Alexandrean rhetorician. (Suid., ed. Kust., vol. 3, p. 
284. (—IV. A philosophical poet of Alexandrea. (Plut., 
Op., vol. 2, p. 396, D. F.) 

Serapis or Sarapis, a celebrated Egyptian deity. 
There would appear to have been two of the name, 
in earlier and a later one. I. The earlier Serapis, 
we are assured by Plutarch, was none other than Osi- 
tis himself. (Plut.,dc Sid., c. 28.) Diodorus Sicu- 
1214 


.lus makes the same declaration (1,2); and in a nymn 
of Martianus Capella we find both these names as¬ 
signed to one god : “ Te Serapim Nilus, Memphis 
veneratur OsirimP (Hymn, ad Sol.) The same in¬ 
ference may be drawn from the connexion of the 
name of Serapis with that of Isis. He is frequently 
mentioned by ancient authors as the consort of this 
goddess, which shows that they regarded Serapis as 
another title of Osiris. Diogenes Laertius, Clemens 
of Alexandrea (Strom., 5, p. 45), and Macrobius (Sat., 
1, 20), to whom we might add many other authors, 
speak of Isis and Serapis as the great divinities of the 
Egyptians. Yet the same authors make some dis¬ 
tinction between Osiris and Serapis. Thus, Plutarch 
asserts that Serapis was Osiris after he had changed 
his nature, or after he had passed into the subterrane¬ 
an world ; and it is apparently in conformity with this 
idea that Diodorus calls him the Egyptian Pluto. 
(Cuper., Harpocr., p. 85.) Jablonski, after having 
regarded Osiris as simply the orb of the sun, obtains 
an easy explanation of the nature and distinction of 
Serapis. The latter, according to this author, repre¬ 
sented the sun in the winter months, after he had 
passed the autumnal equinox, and had reached the 
latter days of his career; or the solar Osiris, after he 
had entered upon the period of his decrepitude in the 
month of Athyr. Osiris then descended to the shades, 
and it was at this era that he became Serapis. (Pri¬ 
chard, Analysis of Egyptian Mythology, p. 89, seqq.) 
—II. Another and later Egyptian deity, whose statue 
and worship were brought from Sinope to Alexandrea, 
during the reign of Ptolemy Soter. A curious pas¬ 
sage in Tacitus (Hist., 4, 83) gives us the legend con¬ 
nected with this singular affair. The worship of this 
Serapis had not been confined to Sinope, but had 
spread along the coasts of the Euxine, and the deity 
was regarded by mariners in this quarter as the patroa 
of maritime traffic. His fame had even travelled 
eastward, and a temple anciently raised to him in Bab¬ 
ylon was repaired and adorned by Alexander. Ptole¬ 
my’s object in bringing the worship of this divinity into 
Egypt appears to have been, that the blind supersti¬ 
tions directed in that country against a seafaring life 
might be counteracted by other superstitions of a more 
useful tendency. In what way his worship was blend¬ 
ed with that of the earlier Serapis we are unable to 
say. Possibly there were some general points of re¬ 
semblance in the attributes of the two deities, and some 
accidental similarity in name. Be this as it may, how¬ 
ever, the worship of the latter Serapis soon merged in 
itself that of the earlier Osiris, and Jupiter-Serapis 
became the great divinity of Alexandrea. (Compare 
Creuzer, Dionysus, p. 183, seqq.) 

Serbonis, a lake between Egypt and Palestine, and 
near Mount Casius. Pliny makes it to have been 150 
miles long. Strabo assigns it 200 stadia of length 
and 50 of breadth. It had communicated with the 
Mediterranean by an opening which was filled up in 
the time of Strabo. The fable makes Typhon to have 
lain at the bottom of this lake or morass, and the 
Egyptians called its opening the breathing-place of 
Typhon. The place has taken the name of Sebaket- 
Bardoil, from a king of Jerusalem of that name, who 
died at Rhinocolura on his return from an expedition 
into Egypt. 

Seres, a nation of Asia. Isaac Vossius, in his 
commentary on Pomponius Mela (ad Pomp. Mel., 2, 
27), observes, that whoever doubts the identity of the 
Seres, mentioned by the ancient writers, with the mod¬ 
ern Chinese, may as well doubt whether the sun which 
now shines be the same with that which formerly im¬ 
parted light: “ Sinenses hodiernos antiquorum Seres 
esse qui dubitat, is quoque dubitet licet idemne nunc at- 
que olim sol luxeritP An eminent geographer of more 
recent times, M. Malte-Brun (System of Geography, 
vol. 2, p. 462.—Compare the note of the English trans- 




SERES. 


SERES. 


lator), has ventured, however, in opposition to an opin¬ 
ion so positively expressed, to consider Serica, or the 
country of the Seres, as including merely the western 
parts of Thibet , Serinagur, Cashmere , Little Thibet , 
and perhaps a small portion of Little Buckharia. On 
the other hand, an English writer, Mr. Murray, in a pa¬ 
per inserted in the Transactions of the Royal Society 
of Edinburgh (vol. 8, p. 171), maintains, in accordance 
with Vossius, the perfect identity of the Seres with 
the natives of China. This latter production we have 
never had the opportunity of perusing. It is said, 
however, to be extremely interesting and satisfactory, 
and to be based in part upon the narrative of Ptolemy 
the geographer, and in part upon various discoveries 
' made by modern travellers in the mountainous regions 
of Asia which lie immediately north of India. This 
subject has likewise been discussed in some of the 
numbers of the Classical Journal (vol. 1, p. 53; 3, p. 
295; 6, p. 204; 7, p. 32).—As Ptolemy is our chief 
authority in settling this long-agitated question, his 
statement is entitled to the first notice, although he is 
far from being the earliest writer who makes mention 
of the Seres. According to this geographer ( Ptol., 
Geogr., ed. Erasm., p. 25, seqq.), it appears that the 
agents of a Macedonian merchant, on their way from 
Hierapolis to Sera, crossed the rivers Euphrates and 
Tigris, entered Assyria, and advanced to Ecbatana, 
the capital of Media ; then passing through the Pylae 
Caspiae, and the chief cities of Parthia, Hyrcania, and 
Margiana, on the north of Persia, they arrived at Bac- 
tra ; thence they proceeded to the mountainous coun¬ 
try of the Comedes, and reached a place in Scythia 
called A idivog nvpyog, the Stone- Castle or Tower of 
Stone; from this spot to Sera, the capital of Serica, 
they were travelling during the space of seven months. 
What is meant by the Stone-Castle seems never to 
have been satisfactorily explained until very recently. 
Dr. Hager, in his Numismatical History of the Chinese 
(Description des Medailles Chinoises du Cabinet Im¬ 
perial de France, precede d'un Essai du Numisma- 
tique Chinoise: par J. Hager. —Compare Class. Jour., 
vol. 1, p. 54), considers the Stone-Castle to have been 
the same with the Tashkand of modern times, and the 
principal city of eastern Turkistan. This, indeed, he 
demonstrates, not only from geographical coincidences, 
but from the obvious etymology of its Tartar name ; 
Task signifying “ a stone,” and kand “ a castle,” “ tow¬ 
er,” or “ fortress.” And in this etymology he is con¬ 
firmed by parallel instances given by Du Halde, in his 
description of China, by the Oriental geography of 
Ebn Haukal, and other works. The route of the car¬ 
avans, after leaving the Stone-Castle and proceeding 
farther to the east, is involved in difficulty and obscu¬ 
rity. Ptolemy’s only source of information respecting 
this part of their journey seems to have been the ver¬ 
bal statements of the traders themselves. They in¬ 
formed him that the time occupied by this part of the 
undertaking was seven months, and that the direction 
affine which they proceeded inclined from east a little 
to the south. Marinus, the geographer, as quoted by 
Ptolemy, computes these seven months’ travel at 
36,200 stadia; Ptolemy, however, taking into con¬ 
sideration the slow progress which the caravans must 
necessarily make in passing over mountains more or 
<ess covered with snow, and in stopping at various 
laces on the route, diminishes this distance by one 
alf, and makes the space traversed during these seven 
months to have been about 18,100 stadia,or ^(^geo¬ 
graphical miles. It appears unnecessary here to enter 
into the computation of latitude and longitude as made 
by the Greek geographer. (Ptol., Geogr., ed. Erasm., 
p. 113, et seqq.) The computation of Mannert, how¬ 
ever, is followed This writer observes, that the dimi¬ 
nution is incorrectly printed in the edition of Erasmus: 
(“In derErasmischen griechischen Ausgabe ist diese 
Verkleinerung unrichtig ausgedriickt.”) Suffice it to 


say, that, to one who examines the text with care 
and attention, the Sera of Ptolemy will appear, if not 
actually to coincide with, at least to have been in the 
immediate vicinity of, Singan , the chief city of the mod¬ 
ern province of Shen-si in China. (Mannert, Geogr., 
vol. 4, p. 505.)—Let us now compare, for a moment, 
with what we have thus far stated,, the account given 
of Serica by Ptolemy himself. ( Ptolem ., Geogr., p. 
414.) 'H 'typiKy neptopi&rai, and pev dvcreug ry he¬ 
rds ’Ipaov opaug 2 KvOla. ’And de apuruv, uyvuarip 
yy- opoiug de Kai an ’ dvarohCiv dyvuarip yy. ’And de 
peorjpbpiag rip re 'XoinCi pipei ryg herds Tdyyov ’Ivdi- 
Kqg Kai eri 2 Ivaig. “ Serica is bounded on the west 
by Scythia beyond Imaus (Scythia extra Imaum ); on 
the north by unknown land, as well as on the east; on 
the south by the remaining portion of India beyond 
the Ganges, and also by the Sinae.” The geographer 
then proceeds to state (ibid.): "Opy de die£ooev 2 y- 
piKyv, rd re Kalovpeva "Arriba, Kai rCiv Av^aKiuv to 
dvarohiKov pipog, Kai ra Kalovpeva ’A cpipala oprj, 
Kai ruv K aaiuv to dvarohiKOV pipog , Kai rd Qdyov- 
pov bpog, in de ruv ’H puduv Kai lypiKijv KaTiovpivuv 
to dvaroTuKOV pipog, Kai rd KaXovpevov ’OrropoKopfiag. 
“Mountains intersect Serica; namely, the range 
which is called Anniba, and the eastern part of the 
Auxakian chain, together with those that are denomi¬ 
nated Asiniraea, the eastern part of the Casian range, 
Mount Thaguron, the eastern part of the Montes 
Emodi and the Seric chain as they are styled, and 
what is called Ottorokorras.” The continuation of the 
Auxakian chain is in the Russian province of Irkutchk; 
the Asmiraean Mountains are those which form the nor¬ 
thern boundary of the desert of Cobi; the Casian range 
extends from the country of the Chochotes for the 
most part along the Chinese wall towards the north¬ 
east ; Mount Thaguron is the southern part of the Mon¬ 
golian Mountains, which stretch from the Hoang-ho 
towards the north ; the eastern part of the Montes 
Emodi is the chain which stretches from Northern 
Thibet towards the southern part of the Chinese prov¬ 
ince of Shen-si, while Ottorokorras is its continuation, 
traversing the province of Shen-si, and giving rise to 
numerous tributaries of the Hoang-ho. ( Mannert, Ge¬ 
ogr., vol. 4, p. 495.) The geographer next proceeds to 
describe the rivers of Serica. According to him, two 
streams in particular flow through the greater part of 
the country of the Seres (A lap/biovcrt. de dvo pdJuora 
norapoi to noTiv ryg hypiKijg), the CEchardes (O Ixdp- 
dyg) and the Bautisus (Bavricog). (The Erasmian 
edition of Ptolemy calls this river B avryg.) The for¬ 
mer of these springs from three sources : one among 
the Auxakian Mountains under the 51st parallel of 
latitude ; a second farther to the southeast, among the 
Asmirasan Mountains, under the parallel of 47£ ; and 
the third much farther to the west, among the Casian 
Mountains, under the 44th parallel. The CEchardes, 
from this description of it, appears to be no other than 
the modern Selanga. The Bautisus, the second river 
which is mentioned, rises in the Casian chain, on the 
borders of Serica, to the southwest of one of the 
sources of the CEchardes, under the 43d parallel, runs 
towards the southeast to the Montes Emodi, for the 
distance of about four degrees, and here receives a 
second arm. This last branch rises among the Mon¬ 
tes Emodi under the 37th parallel. (Charts des 
Ptolemceus, appended to Vkertls Geogr.) From this 
map it will appear that the 51st parallel nearly coin¬ 
cides with the mouth of the Borysthenes, and the 43d 
nearly with that of Byzantium. The parallel of 37 is 
one degree north of that of Rhodes by the same map. 
Eight degrees eastward of the spot where these two 
arms unite, the Bautisus receives a third branch, 
which rises among the range of Ottorokorras. It 
would be difficult for one at the present day, who had 
to describe, from mere oral statements, the Hoang-h§ 
in the earlier part of its course, to do it more accu 

1215 




SERES. 


SERES. 


rately than Ptolemy has done ; for tha. trie Bautisus 
and Hoang-ho are one and the same river hardly ad¬ 
mits of a doubt. Its northern arm, the Olan-Muzen, 
rises in the country of the Chochotes, or Calmucks of 
Hoho-Nor, among the mountains which bound the 
desert of Cobi, and to the northeast of it rises the Et- 
zine, which must therefore be one of the sources of 
the CEchardes. The Hoang-ho takes its course to¬ 
wards the southeast, in order to unite with its south¬ 
ern arm, the Hara-Muzen , which rises in the southern 
chain of mountains between China and Thibet, and 
directs its course to the northeast. After this, the 
united streams take a high northerly direction, cross¬ 
ing the great wall, and then, bending to the south, 
pass once more the great wall, and re-enter China 
proper. Of the northern part of their course Ptole¬ 
my makes no mention, for a very natural reason, be¬ 
cause it passes far beyond the ancient caravan routes. 
They make their appearance-again near the site of the 
ancient capital of Serica, where Ptolemy again men¬ 
tions them, and where he places the third tributary, 
probably the Hori-ho. From all that has been said, it 
follows, as an irresistible consequence, that the Serica 
of antiquity comprehends the eastern portion of the 
country of the Chochotes , the Chinese province of 
Shen-si and also Mogul Tartary from the northern con¬ 
fines of China as far as the southern limits of Siberia. 

( Mannert, uhi supra.) —D’Anville, it is true, gives in 
his map of the ancient world a somewhat different view 
of this quarter. But D’Anville erred in placing too 
much reliance on the false representations given by 
Mercator to the rivers of Serica, in his maps illustrating 
the geography of Ptolemy. Still, the authority of the 
French geographer is valuable as far as it goes, since he 
so far makes Serica a portion of China as to consider 
Sera, its metropolis, identical with Kantcheon in the 
modem province of Shcji-si. ( D'Anville , Geogr. Anc. 
alreg ., vol. 2, p. 326.— Id., Recherches Geogr. et His- 
tnriques sur la Serique des Anciens. — Memoires de 
VAcademie des Inscriptions, vol. 32, p. 573, ct seqq.) 
In pointing out the land of Serica, Ptolemy ( Ptolem., 
Geogr. — Compare Mannert , vol. 4, p. 506) makes 
mention also of two other caravan routes, a northern 
and a southern one. The former of these commenced 
at the city of Tanais, situate at the mouth of the river 
of the same name (the modern Don), and ran onward 
to the farthest east. It was by means of this route 
that Ptolemy obtained his information respecting what 
are now the Volga and Jeik, of which nothing was 
known before his time by the Greeks. He learned also 
the existence of the mountainous chains along the south- 

O 

ern confines of Siberia, and was enabled to give a tol- 
erably correct account of their situation and direction. 
He even pushed his inquiries as far as the Issedones, 
the most remote people to the east. All this informa¬ 
tion he obtained from the traders. No Greek seems 
ever to have undertaken this long and perilous journey. 
Unacquainted with the manners and language of the 
various predatory tribes which roamed along this vast 
tract of country, the attempt would have exposed 
themselves to certain destruction, and their merchan¬ 
dise to the cupidity of the savage Nomades. The 
traders, therefore, of whom mention has just been 
made, must have belonged to some one of the native 
tribes in this quarter, perhaps to the same Kirgish Tar¬ 
tars who at the present day carry on the Russia inland 
>raffic with the countries to the south. In this way, 
and in this alone, can we satisfactorily account for the 
knowledge possessed by the Greeks of the countries 
mentioned above, and, at the same time, for the very 
loose and general nature of their information. The 
most eastern people with whom the caravan route had 
communication appear to have been the Issedones. 
They would seem to have been identical with the Is¬ 
sedones of Herodotus, whom that historian names as 
the most remote nation of the northeast (lib. 4, c. 13 
1216 


and 27). If an opinion may be ventured respecting 
them, it would be that they coincide with the modern 
Kalkas of Mongolia in Chinese Tartary. ( Mannert, 
ubi supra.) Ptolemy, in one part of his work, consid¬ 
ers this nation as a part of Serica, inasmuch as they 
were under the sway of the Seres. In his eighth 
book, however, he calls them a Scythian rac<, and 
even their capital bore the name of ’Icoyduv 2i vOlkjj 
among the Greeks. (Ptolem., Geogr. —Compare Man - 
nert, ubi supra.) These Issedones had cities of their 
own, and were, of course, some degrees removed from 
the barbarism of the Nomadic state. Their cities 
must also have been well known, since Ptolemy gives 
us the longest day of two of them. This nation appears 
to have formed the link of communication betw een the 
caravan traders and the country of the Seres, a circum¬ 
stance which arose from their being in subjection to 
the Seres, all immediate access to whom was debarred 
the merchant. Two cities close to the borders of 
China seem to have been the marts of this traffic : ’Ia- 
or]dd>v 'Lypiuy, so called from its having among its 
inhabitants Seres as well as Issedones, and A ponyaxy, 
farther to the southeast. It is curious to compare 
with what has just been stated a passage from Arr\mi- 
anus Marcellinus, in which he makes mention of the 
Seres. According to this writer ( Ammianus Marcel¬ 
linus, 23, 6, p. 299, ed. Erncsti), a high, circular, and 
continuous wall surrounds the land of the Seres. “/« 
orbis speciem consertce celsorum aggerum summitates 
arnbiunt Seras." Is not this a description of the 
great wall of China which encloses the country of the 
north 1 When this writer speaks of the western side 
of Serica, and of the route of the caravans beyond the 
Stone Castle, he makes no mention whatever of any 
wall, which in reality does not exist on this side, but 
only on the north —The second ( Mannert , vol. 4, p. 
511.— Ptol., Geogr., 1, 17) of the routes alluded to 
above proceeded from Palimbothra, the modern Patna 
on the Ganges, in a northeast direction through Thibet, 
and from thence along the southern arm of the Bauti- 
sus or Hoang-ho, in an eastern direction to Sera. 
This is precisely the same route which the Jesuits 
Gruebner and D’Orville took in the seventeenth cen¬ 
tury. ( Thevenot, Divers Voyages, fol., vol. 2.) It 
is, moreover, the oldest and most frequented. By 
it the people of India obtained the silk and other 
productions of China, concealing, at the same time, 
from the natives of the west, the true quarter whence 
these commodities were brought. The Europeans 
received the silk of which they were in quest from 
the hands of the Indians, and, in answer to their in¬ 
quiries respecting the country which produced it, they 
only received statements that were calculated to lead 
them astray. The truth, however, could not remain 
long concealed, and accordingly we find even Ptolemy 
in possession of the true account. The natives of 
India informed him that Serica and the city of Sera 
lay to the north of the Sin®; that there was another 
route to this quarter besides the one by the Stone Cas¬ 
tle ; and that this route was through India by the way 
of Palimbothra. ( Mannert , ubi supra ) From this 
last-mentioned city the route in question led through 
India, until, having proceeded eight degrees north of 
Palimbothra, it passed over the high mountains in 
Northern Thibet. Here was situate the city of Sota, 
having on its left the range of Imaus, and on its right 
the eastern portion of the chain denominated Montes 
Emodi, and which formed the boundary between India 
and Serica. Farther on to the northeast was a city 
named Chaurana, and then the way proceeded along the 
southern arm of the Bautisus, passing by the city of Oro- 
sana. The route then led to the city of Ottorokorra, the 
capital of a people named Ottorokorr®, from whom 
the easternmost portion of the Montes Emodi received 
the appellation of Ottorokorras. We now stand on 
ground with which, it is curious to observe, the Greeks 




SERES. 


SERES. 


seem to havo had some acquaintance long before the 
time of Ptolemy. In the earlier fables and traditions 
of the West, mention is made of a people named Atta- 
cori, dwelling in a valley which was always warmed 
by the genial rays of the sun, and protected by encir¬ 
cling mountains from the rude blasts of the north, a 
people closely assimilated in the peculiarities of their 
situation to the fabled Hyperboreans. (Compare Plin., 
6, 17, who quotes an earlier author, Amometus.)—Af¬ 
ter leaving the Ottorokorrae, the route led by Solona, in 
a northeast direction, to the city of Sera.—Kosmas 
Indicopleustes ( Kosmas Indicopl., Montfauc., N. Coll. 
Patr., 2, 137, D., et seqq.) states, that the Brahmins 
informed him, that if a line were drawn from the coun¬ 
try of the Sinae (T tjivLrtja) through Persia into the Ro¬ 
man world, so as to strike Byzantium, it would divide 
the earth into two equal parts. From this account 
also, loose as it is, we may obtain very satisfactory 
data for the position of Serica, which in the days of 
Kosmas was confounded with the land of the Sinse, 
both of them being known merely as the country of 
silk.—Among modern writers, the author of the “ De¬ 
cline and Fall of the Roman Empire” is decidedly in 
favour of identifying the Seres with the people of Chi¬ 
na ( Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the R. E., c. 40), and 
his extensive and accurate learning is sufficiently well 
known. But the most conclusive authority on the 
subject is to be found in the pages of one of the first 
Oriental scholars of the present day. ( Klaproth , Ta¬ 
bleaux Historiqucs de VAsie, depuis la monarchic de 
Cyrus jusqu'a nos jours., p. 58.) “II n’y a plus de 
doute,” observes this writer, “ que les Seres des an- 
ciens ne soient les Chinois. D’apres les auteurs Grecs, 
le mot ayp designe et le ver a soie et les habitants de 
la Serique ou les Seres; or, ce fait demontre, que le 
nom de ces derniers leur venait de la marchandise 
precieuse que les peuples de l’Occident allaient cher- 
cher chez eux. En Armenien, l’insecte qui produit 
la soie s’appelle cheram, nom qui ressemble assez au 
Gyp des Grecs. II est naturel de croire que ces deux 
mots avaient ete empruntes a des peuples plus Orien- 
taux. C’est ce que les langues Mogole et Mandchoue 
nous donnent la facility de ddmontrer. II en resultera 
que le nom de la soie, chez les anciens, est veritable- 
ment originaire de la partie Orientale de I’Asie. La 
•■aie s’appelle sirkek chez les Mogols, et sirghe chez 
es Mandchoux. Ces deux nations habitaient au nord 
ct au nord-est de la Chine. Est-il presumable qu’elles 
eussent requ ces denominations des peuples Occiden- 
taux 1 D’un autre cote, le mot Chinois sse ou szu, 
qui designe la soie, montre de la ressemblance avec 
sirghe ou sirkek , et avec le Gyp des Grecs. Cette 
analogie frappera d’autant plus quand on saura que, 
dans la langue mandarine, le r ne se prononce pas, 
tandis que cette finale se trouvait vraisemblablement 
dans les anciens dialects de la Chine. Mais le mot co- 
rden sir, qui designe la soie, est tout a fait identique 
avec le Gyp des Grecs, qui devait se prononcer aussi 
sir. La soie a done donne son nom au peuple qui la 
fabriquait et qui l’envoyait dans l’Occident, et les Seres 
sont evidemment les Chinois, quoi qu’en puissent dire 
les geographes, qui ne savent employer que le compas 
pour chercher l’emplacement des nations.” Previous 
to the appearance of the work from which the above 
extract is made, its author had already published a 
conjecture on the name of the Seres in one of the pe¬ 
riodicals of the day. It is to this last that M. Abel- 
Remusat, another distinguished Orientalist, alludes in 
the following remarks ( Melanges Asiatiques, vol. 1, 
p. 290), confirming, at the same time, the opinion of 
Klaproth. Ce que Particle consacre h la Chine offre 
de plus remarquable, c’est l’observation sur Porigine 
du nom de Serique, cherchd par M. Klaproth, dans le 
nom meme de la soie, sse, en Chinois, qui vraisembla¬ 
blement, dit-il, a pu etre, dans d’autres dialectes du 
nord de la Chine, change en sir. M. Klaproth, ayant 
7 P 


deja publie cette conjecture ( Journal Asiatique , voi. 
2, p. 243), j’ai eu l’occasion d’y joindre Pindication 
d’un fait qui me parait propre a la changer en certi¬ 
tude: c’est qu’en effet, dans un vocabulaire coreen, 
qui fait partie de l’Encyclopedie Japonaise, la soie est 
designee par le nom de Sirou (prononcez Sir), qui eat 
tout-a-fait identique avec le 2.yp (prononcez Sir) des 
dcrivains Grecs. It has been asserted, from a very 
respectable quarter ( Documents relative to the Manu¬ 
facturing of Silk, laid before the Congress of the Uni¬ 
ted States of America by the secretary of state, 1328), 
that the Seres were originally a people of China, driven 
into the territories of Little Bucknaria by the inroads 
of the Huns. It is difficult to conceive whence the 
data could have been obtained for this singular hypoth¬ 
esis, except from the pages of Gibbon or De Guig- 
nes. In the former of these writers ( Gibbon, Dedine 
and Fall of the R. E., c. 26), it is asserted, as a mere 
hypothesis, without any authority whatever, that “ the 
ancient, perhaps the original, seat of the Huns was an 
extensive, though dry and barren, tract of country im¬ 
mediately on the north side of the great wall.” Of 
De Guignes, on the other hand, it may with truth be 
said, in the words of Klaproth ( Tableaux Historiques, 
p. 242): “ Malgre la facilite que l’erudition de cet 
ecrivain celebre lui procurait de puiser dans les au¬ 
teurs Chinois, Arabes et Syriens, il lui manquait une 
chose essentielle, e’etait une idee juste de la parente 
des nations de I’Asie. En confondant ensemble les 
nations Turques, Mongoles, Toungouses, Finnoises 
et autres, il a manque son but, de sorte que son ou- 
vrage n’est reellement qu’un magasin immense de mate- 
riaux precieux, entassfes sans discernment.” It seems 
that De Guignes found, both before and after the 
Christian era, a powerful Nomadic nation, called Hi- 
oun]g nou by the Chinese, which continually infested 
the territories of their neighbours. They occupied 
the mountainous country to the north of China. The 
mere resemblance of names led De Guignes to con¬ 
clude that these Hioung nou were the same people with 
the Huns. Klaproth, however, has shown most con¬ 
clusively ( Tableaux Hist., p. 101, et seqq.), from the 
Chinese historians, that the Hioung nou were a branch 
of the Turkish race, who were dispersed by the Chinese 
near the sources of the Irtysh, about the 91st year of 
our present era. The remnant of this nation directed 
their course towards the west, in order to penetrate 
into Sogdiana, but they could not reach this country, 
and were compelled to stop in the region to the north 
of Khouei thsu, or the Koutche of modern days. Af¬ 
ter this they moved towards the northeast, and occu¬ 
pied a part of the Steppe of Kirghiz, where the annals 
of China cease to make mention of them. And yet 
De Guignes, without giving the least authority for what 
he advances, observes : “ Ce sont les Huns qui passe- 
rent dans la suite en Europe sous le regne de l’Empe- 
reur Valens.” It may not be amiss, before leaving this 
part of the subject, to say a few words in relation to 
the early history of the Huns, in order to disprove 
more fully the statement which has led to these re¬ 
marks. (Compare Klaproth, ubi supra.) The most 
ancient author who makes mention of the Huns is 
Dionysius Periegetes. This geographer, who wrote 
probably about A.D. 160, enumerates four nations* 
which, in the order of this narrative, followed each 
other, as regarded position, fn.m north to south along 
the shores of the Caspian, viz., the Scythians, the- 
Huns (O vvvoi), the Caspians, and the Albanians. 

( Dionysii Pericgesis , v. 730, et Eustathtu loc .) 
Eratosthenes, cited by Strabo ( Strabo, ed. Tzsch., vcL 
4, p. 458), places these nations in the same order;, 
in place of the Huns, however, he makes mention of 
the Ouitiens (O vItloi), who were probably the moei« 
eastward tribe of the Huns. Ptolemy ( Ptol ., Geogr., 
ed. Erasmus, p. 409, et seqq.). who lived about the 
middle of the third century, places the Huns (Xov~- 

1217 



SERES. 


SERES, 


tfoi) between the Bastarnes and Roxolani, and, conse¬ 
quently, on the two banks of the Borysthenes. The 
Armenian historians make mention of them under the 
name of Hounk, and assign them, for their place of 
residence, the country to the north of Caucasus, be¬ 
tween the \ olga and the Don. For this same reason 
they call the pass of Derbend the rampart of the Huns. 
In the geography which is incorrectly ascribed to Mo¬ 
ses of Khorene, the following passage also occurs: 

“ The Massagetae inhabit as far as the Caspian, where 
is the branch of Mount Caucasus which contains the 
rampart of Tarpant (Derbend), and a wonderful tower 
built in the sea : to the north are the Huns, with their 
city of Varhatchan, and others besides.” Moses of 
Khordne, in his Armenian history, makes mention of 
the wars which King Tiridates the Great, who reigned 
from A.D. 259 to A.D. 312, waged against the north¬ 
ern nations who had made an irruption into Armenia. 
This monarch attacked them in the plains of the Kar- 
keriens, in northern Albania, between Derbend and Te¬ 
rek, defeated them, slew their prince, and pursued them 
into the country of the Hounk or Huns. It were use¬ 
less, however, to multiply authorities. (Compare 
Klaproth , p. 235.) Sufficient has been said to prove 
that, in all probability, the original seats of the Huns 
were in the vicinity of the Caspian. That they were 
not of the Mongol or Calmuck race, is apparent of it¬ 
self, if any reliance is to be placed upon the descrip¬ 
tions that are given of their personal deformity by the 
ancient writers. Scarcely a single feature of the well- 
known Tartar physiognomy enters into these accounts 
of them. They were probably the same with the eastern 
division of the Fins ( Klaproth , p. 246), and hence the 
theory which makes them to have dispossessed of their 
primitive seats the ancient nations of the Seres, errs 
in placing the original settlements of the Huns too far 
altogether to the east.—We will now proceed to the 
more immediate subject of inquiry, the knowledge 
which the Greeks and Romans possessed in relation 
to the silk manufacture of antiquity. The first writer 
who gives any direct information on this head is Aris¬ 
totle (Hist. Animal., 5, 19). The surprising accuracy 
of his account, considering his imperfect sources of in¬ 
telligence, may well demand our attention. The pas¬ 
sage is as follows: ’E k 6e Tivog OKulrjKoq fjeyu?iov, 
6g E'xeL olov Kepara Kal diatyepei rtiv dXkuv, ylverai 
de npil'Tov fiev, fjeraSaXovTog tov GKuTnjKog, Ka.fj.Tvrj, 
ettelto po/jSvfooc, ek 6e tovtov veKvdalog- EV £% df 
prjci fJETaodXTiEL ravrag rag fiopcjrag ndoag‘ ek 6e tov¬ 
tov tov $dov Kai to. B 0fi6vKia avaXvovcrL tuv yvvai- 
kuv tlve g dvaTcrjvifofiEvai KanEiTa vtyaivovGL. JlpuTrj 
de teysTaL v<ptivai ev Ko Hafitylfaf Aaruov -&vydTrjp. 
Athenaeus refers to this passage in the following terms : 
'I GTOpEL [’ApiGTOT&Tjg] OTL Kal EK Tijg TUV tydsipCov 
hxeiaq ai Kovtdeg yevvuvTai,, Kal otl £/c tov GKu'krjKog 
fjETatdllovTog yiveTai Kafnvrj, ef rjg BofidvTubg, aft ov 
VEKvdalog ovofia^bfievog. — Dr. Vincent unites these 
two passages together, making the one supply what is 
defective in the other, and gives the following transla¬ 
tion of them : “There is a worm which issues from [an 
egg as small as] the nit of lice: it is of a large size, 
and has [protuberances, bearing the resemblance of] 
horns, [in which respect] it differs from other worms. 
The first change which it undergoes is by the conver¬ 
sion of the worm into a caterpillar; it then becomes a 
grub or chrysalis, and at length a moth. The whole 
of this transformation is completed in six months. 
There are women who wind off a thread from this an¬ 
imal, which it spun while it was in the state of a cater¬ 
pillar ; and that is the material from which they after¬ 
ward form the texture of the web. This invention is 
attributed to Pamphila, a woman of the isle of Cos, 
and daughter of Latoius.”— The learned translator 
then enters into a full examination of this passage of 
Aristotle, for the purpose of ascertaining whether th? 
silk mentioned in it be the true silk which we have at 
1218 


the present day, and produced by the true silkworm. 
He considers a link of the chain to be wanting in the 
passage under review, inasmuch as the silken thread 
is not wound off from the animal itself, but from tin 
cocoon. In the next place, the true silkworm is not 
of large size, but small, at its first appearance and be¬ 
fore it becomes a caterpillar. “ Neither can it proper¬ 
ly be called a worm, as distinguished from the cater¬ 
pillar. A caterpillar is discriminated from a worm by 
its small protuberances which serve for legs, and is 
called KafJTvrj in Greek, from its bending or undulating 
motion ; these legs of the reptile may be hardly dis¬ 
tinguishable at its first production, which may have in¬ 
duced Aristotle to call it a worm. As regards the 
Coan vestments, no one, after reading the passage ci¬ 
ted above, will feel inclined to maintain that they were 
of cotton. They seem to have been entirely of fine, 
thin, transparent silk, inferior, however, in softness 
and splendour to the Oriental. Salmasius and Hoff¬ 
man furnish an additional reason for the inferiority of 
the Coan article, which is, that the Coans suffered the 
aurelia to eat its way out of the cocoon. Tins ruins 
the silk for all fine work, for the thread is then obtain¬ 
ed by spinning it from a flock ; whereas, to have it 
reeled off continuous, the aurelia must be killed by heat, 
and the cocoon preserved from perforation.” We find 
no mention made of the Seres, or their peculiar manu¬ 
facture, in any Greek author for a long period subse¬ 
quent to the age of Aristotle, unless it be that the fine 
stuffs of Amorgos ( Bockh, Staatshaushaltung dex 
Athener, vol. 1, p. 115, and the authorities there cited), 
which are described as having been almost transparent, 
and in point of fineness, as well as of price, ranked 
before those made of Byssus and Carpathus, were sim¬ 
ilar to those manufactured in the island of Cos.—The 
Romans appear to have first become acquainted with 
the name and product of the Seres about the reign ol 
Augustus. Hence, whatever we find on this subject 
becomes, of course, a matter of common knowledge 
for both. Virgil appears to be the first Roman write! 
who makes mention of ths Seres. (Georg., 2, 121, 
seqq.) Who are meant in this passage by the Ethio¬ 
pians has been a subject of much more controversy, 
especially as the geographical situation of the Seres 
will depend, in a great measure, upon this. “Ethio¬ 
pians” (AldioTTEc) was a general name among the 
Greeks for every nation of a dark or swarthy complex¬ 
ion, an effect supposed to be produced by the burning 
rays of the sun. Their first acquaintance with a race 
of this description seems to have been derived from 
Egypt and Phoenicia, in both of which countries they 
would naturally meet with many accounts of the tribes 
that occupied the interior of Africa. The name was 
afterward extended to the dark-brown natives of south¬ 
ern Arabia, who brought their wares to Sidon by the 
overland trade, and hence it is that Homer makes 
mention of two Ethiopian races, the western and 
eastern. ( Odyssey, 1, v. 23.) The opinion of Aris¬ 
tarchus ( Eustathius , p. 1386), and other of the Gre¬ 
cian commentators on Homer, which makes the Nile 
to have been the dividing line between these two 
races, is too refined for the age of the poet, and im¬ 
plies a more accurate acquaintance with the interior 
of Africa, and the course of the river of Egypt, than 
he appears to have possessed. Homer’s western Ethi¬ 
opians are the natives of inland Africa; the east¬ 
ern, those of southern Arabia, who were thought by 
the earlier Greeks to dwell in the immediate vicini¬ 
ty of the great source of light. When the army of 
Xerxes, in a subsequent age, was poured upon Greece, 
the inhabitants of the latter country, perceiving some 
dark-coloured nations among the followers of the mon¬ 
arch, applied to them the name of Ethiopians, in per¬ 
fect conformity with its original import; and hence 
Herodotus (7, 69 and 70 ; 3, 94 and 97), in speaking 
of the forces which served or that expedition, enu 




SERES. 


SERES. 


merates two distinct races, the eastern and western 
^Ethiopians. It is easy to perceive, from his descrip¬ 
tion of the former, and their “ long, straight hair,” 
that none other are meant than the people of India. 
If this deduction be correct, the Seres of Virgil will, 
»f course, be the people of China. As to their comb- 
\ng fleeces from the leaves of trees, the allusion is 
manifestly to silk, which many of the ancients be¬ 
lieved to be a sort of down gathered from the leaves 
of trees. Thus Pliny (P/m., 6, 17), in a subsequent 
age, remarks, “ Primi sunt hominum qui noscantur 
Seres, lanicio sylvarum nobiles, perfusam aqua depec- 
tentes frondium caniciem .” —The moment silk be¬ 
came known among the western nations, it was ea¬ 
gerly purchased as an article of luxury, and began to 
form a conspicuous part of Greek and Roman attire. 
At that period of growing corruption, it was no won¬ 
der that such an invention should be hailed with trans¬ 
port, which, while it supplied the person with a cov¬ 
ering, still, like our gauze, exposed every limb to the 
eye of the beholder in almost perfect nudity. The 
Emperor Heliogabalus, it is true, in a later age, was 
the first who disgraced himself by appearing in a dress 
wholly of silk ; yet Seric and Coan vestments are fre¬ 
quently mentioned by the Roman writers either con¬ 
temporary with, or not long subsequent to, the time 
of Virgil. ( Tibullus , 2, 4, 29.— Id., 2, 6. 35.— Pro- 
pert., 1, 4, 22 .—Id., 4, 8, 23.— Ovid, Am., 1, 4, 16.) 
About the period of which we are speaking, it would 
appear that Seric vestments found their way to Rome 
also from foreign nations. Florus ( Florus, 4, 12, 16) 
states, that in the reign of Augustus, an embassy 
from the Seres came to Rome, with presents of pre¬ 
cious stones, elephants, and other gifts. Among 
these last, Seric vestments, or else raw silk, were no 
doubt included. If we glance at the Greek writers 
who flourished about this period, we shall be surprised 
to find Strabo passing over, in almost total silence, 
both the nation of the Seres as well as their singular 
manufacture, the more especially as his contemporary, 
Dionysius Periegetes, makes such full mention of it. 
Thus we find Dionysius describing the Seres as a na¬ 
tion of the farthest East, who paid no attention to cat¬ 
tle or sheep, but occupied themselves in combing the 
variegated flowers produced from their otherwise neg¬ 
lected land, and in making vestments of an ingenious 
and costly kind, resembling in hue the meadow-flow¬ 
ers, and with which even spiders' webs could not com¬ 
pare as to the fineness of texture. (Dionysii Perie- 
gesis, v. 752, et seqq.) Eustathius, archbishop of 
Thessalonica, who flourished about 1160 A.D., and 
wrote a learned commentary on the work whence this 
extract is taken, gives a very curious account of the 
Seres, which would tend still more strongly to con¬ 
firm the belief that they were identical with the Chi¬ 
nese. He describes them ( Euslath., in Dionys. Pe- 
rieg., p. 239, ed. Oxon.) as an unsocial nation, refu¬ 
sing all intercourse with strangers {anpoapuyelp dv- 
dpcoTTOL nai dvopiTiTjToi). They marked the price on 
the articles which they wished to sell, and, having 
left them in a particular place, retired. The traders 
then came, and placed by the side of the goods the 
amount demanded, or else so much as they were will¬ 
ing to give. Upon this they withdrew in their turn, 
and the Seres coming back, either took what was of¬ 
fered, or carried away the goods again. We have here 
the same cautious system of commercial dealing which 
characterizes the Chinese of our own days, only in a 
far stricter degree. This peculiarity in the traffic of 
the Seres is noticed also by Pliny, Pomponius Mela, 
and Ammianus Marcellinus. ( Plin., 6, 17.— Pompo¬ 
nius Mela, 3, 7.— Ammianus Marcellinus, 23, 6, p. 
299, ed. Ernesti.) —But to return to the order of 
chronology : in the reign of the Emperor Tiberius, 
according to Tacitus {Tacit., Annal., 2, 33), a law 
was passed at Rome ordaining that men should not 


disgrace themselves by the use of Seric vestments, or* 
to adopt the strong language of the original, “ ne vex- 
tis Serica viros feedaret." Lipsius, in an Excursus on 
this passage, endeavours to prove that a Seric vestment 
means one of cotton that grows spontaneously on trees 
in the country of the Seres, and that vestis bombycina, 
on the other hand, means one of silk. But surely the 
use of a cotton garment would hardly have called foi 
the interposition of the Roman senate. Besides, Syl¬ 
vester ( Forcel., Lex Tot. Lat., s. v. Bomhyx), in his 
remarks on the 2d Satire of Juvenal (v. 66), has con¬ 
clusively shown that sericum means “ silk on the 
loom," and bombyx “ raw silk." —A- a later period 
we find Seneca ( Seneca, de. Benef., 7, 9) exclaiming, 
“ Video Sericas vesles, si vestes vocandce sunt, in 
quibus nihil est quo defendi out corpus, aut denique 
pudor possit: quibus sumtis, mulier parum liquido 
nudam se non esse jurabit. Hcec ingenti summa ab 
ignotis etiam ad commercium gentibus accersuntur" 
And again, in another portion of his works, we have 
the following {Id., Ep., 90): “ Posse nos vestitos 
esse sine commercio Serum." —It is in the elder Pliny, 
however, that we find the strongest authorities on this 
subject. The passage of Aristotle, which we have 
cited above, he quotes once {Plin., 11, 26) expressly 
and once {Id., 6, 20) incidentally. In another {Id., 
6, 17) instance, he alludes, in the following express¬ 
ive words, to the object of the Roman females in 
adopting this dress : “ ut in publico malrona tra.nslu- 
ceat." in the proem to the 12th book, he remarks, 
“ Cadi montes in marmora, vestes ad Seras peti." 
Among many other passages in this author, there is 
one too long to quote here, which proves conclusively 
that the Coan vestments were of silk, and the produce 
of a particular kind of silkworm bred in the island of 
Cos. Forcellini {Lex Tot. Lat., s. v. Bombyx) cites 
the opinion of Salmasius (Saumaise), who thought 
that the silkworms of Pliny were the same as those ol 
our own time, and that Pliny had, from want of suf¬ 
ficient information on the subject, quoted an incorrec 
description of them from some earlier writer.—Quip 
tilian also alludes to the toga serica {Quintilian, Inst. 
Orat., 12, 10 ), and Juvenal, as may well be imagined, 
finds this an ample theme for indignant satire. {Ju¬ 
venal, Sat., 6, v. 260.— Sat., 8, v. 101, and the com¬ 
ments of Ruperti.) In Martial, likewise, the allu¬ 
sions to Seric vestments are more than once met 
with. {Martial, Epistles, 11, 28.— Id. ib., 9, 38.) 
Suetonius {Suetonius, Vit. Calig., c. 52) only onca 
makes mention of Seric garments, and then very 
slightly, in the case of the Emperor Caligula: “ Sape 
dcpiclas, gemmatasque indutus pcenulas, manuleatus, 
et armillatus in publicum processit, aliquando serica- 
tus." They are named, also, once in Plutarch {Plu¬ 
tarch, Conjug. Prcecep. — Op., ed. Reiske, vol. 6, p. 
550), but the allusion is a very general one. A young 
female is admonished not to make use of rd or/puca, 
which can only be obtained at great expense. Pau- 
sanias is the next writer in the order of time who chal¬ 
lenges our attention on this subject. He gives a long 
account of the silkworm, in a very interesting passage, 
which may be translated as follows : “ There is a 
worm {favtpiov) in their (the Seres’) country, which 
the Greeks call ser {ov arjpa Kalovmv "E/U. rjveq), but 
to which the natives give a different appellation. It 
is twice as large as the largest-sized beetle, but in 
other respects resembles the spiders whick vteave 
their webs under the trees, and, like them, it has eight 
feet. The Seres, in summer as well as winter, rear 
these insects in houses specially adapted to that pur¬ 
pose. They work a very slender thread, which is 
twined around their feet. They are fed nearly four 
years on panic {napexovreq ctyLcn rpo(j)7jv Zlvyov) ; in 
the fifth (for they know that they will not live longer; 
they give them a green Teed to eat. This is the ani¬ 
mal’s favourite food, which it devours until it bursts 

1219 





SERES. 


SERES. 


i'rom repletion. The Seres obtain a quantity of thread 
from its bowels.” What Pausanias adds, however, 
respecting the situation of Serica, that it is “an island 
in the recess of the Indian Ocean,” probably refers to 
Ceylon, and is grounded upon the mistaken idea (Rit¬ 
ter's Vorhalle, p. 113) that the silk, which formed a chief 
article of export from that island, was likewise manu¬ 
factured there. Tertullian ( de Pallio, c. 3 ) and Cle¬ 
mens Alexandrinus (in Pcedagog., 2, 10 ) also speak 
of the silkworm, and appear better acquainted with 
the several changes which it undergoes than Pausani¬ 
as. The principal points in which they differ from the 
correct accounts of modern times are, their making the 
insect in question resemble the spider in the mode of 
lorming its thread, and their assigning a different leaf 
from that of the mulberry for its food. (Memoires de 
VAcademie des Inscriptions , vol. 7, p. 342.) Dio 
Cassius and Herodian both make mention of the Seric 
manufactures. The former describes the ancient ayp- 
ckov in the following language (Dio Cassius, ed. Rei- 
mar, 43, 24, p. 358, 1. 25) : Tovro de to vyaapa %)u- 
dyg (3ap6dpov early kpyov, ual Trap’ ekelvov sal rcpdg 
VU-dg, kg rpvipyv ruv rcdvv yvvcuKuv TtEpirryv. “ This 
species of tissue is a work of barbarian luxury, and 
has found its way from that distant quarter even unto 
us, in order to furnish our higher class of females with 
the materials for excessive extravagance.” Herodian 
speaks of Seric vestments as fitter for females than 
for men (Herodian, ed. Irmisch., 5, 5, 9 , vol. 3 , p. 
144) : Td to lavra saTiTaairiapara ovk dvdpdaiv dXkd 
ftyTidaig TrpETTEiv. Vopiscus (Vit. Aurel., c. 45) in¬ 
forms us, “ Vestem holosericam neque ipse (Aurelia- 
nus) in vestiario suo habuit, neque alteri utendam dedit. 
Et quum ab co uxor sua peteret, ut unico pallio blatteo 
serico uteretur, ille respondit: absit ut auro fila pen- 
sentur ; libra enim auri tunc libra send fuit. ” The 
extravagant price which is here mentioned, a pound 
of gold for a pound of silk, may easily be accounted 
for by the circumstance of the overland trade to Seri- 
ea being rendered more precarious by the rapid rise 
of the second Persian Empire. Passing by the sev¬ 
eral authors who mention the Seric vestments without 
any accompanying circumstances sufficiently impor¬ 
tant to merit a quotation, we come to Lampridius, 
who devotes to infamy the Emperor Heliogabalus 
(Lampridius, Vit. Heliogab., c. 26) for having first 
dared to appear in a dress wholly of silk. St. Basil 
(S. Basil, in exam, homil., 8 ) makes a curious appli¬ 
cation of the knowledge that appears to have been 
generally diffused, about this period, respecting the 
transformations of the silkworm, by exhorting the 
rich, who could not be induced to dispense with gar¬ 
ments of silk, to remember, at least, in putting them 
on, that the worm, of whose substance they were 
made, is a type of the resurrection. Julius Pollux 
(c.384, 31, cap. 17, lib. 7) also alludes to this insect: 
'Lad)?i7]KEg eiaiv oi fioptvKEg, aft d)v rd vypara avvov- 
rai, bboTrep o apa%v7]Q' evloi 6k nal rovg hypag ano 
Toiovruv ETEpuv £(bcjv uOpoi&iv (jiaal rd vpdapara. 
Ammianus Marcellinus (Ammian. Marcell., 23,6) next 
follows, who gives the following narrative : “They 
(the Seres) weave a delicate and tender thread, form¬ 
ed from moistened wool, combining it into a kind of 
fleece by frequently sprinkling with water the pods of 
the trees; spinning this into inner garments, they 
manufacture that celebrated silk which anciently com¬ 
posed the dress of the (Roman) nobility, but' in my 
age is the indiscriminate and extravagant clothing of 
our lower ranks.” It is rather surprising to find so 
much ignorance of the true origin of silk in so late an 
age, and on the part of a writer otherwise so intelli¬ 
gent. One would imagine that Ammianus was de¬ 
scribing the cotton-tree. A distinction appears to 
have been made, long before this period, between 
Bombycinum and Sericum: the former appellation 
being given to the produce of the Assyrian silkworm 
1220 


and that of Cos, the latter being used to denote the 
genuine silk, whether the work of an insect or the 
produce of a plant. Hence we find the distinction ob¬ 
served in St. Jerome (S. Hieron., de Jnstit. puellP), 
“ Spernat Bombycum lelas, Serum vellera." Next 
in order is the lexicographer Hesychius (Hesydnus, 
s. v. hypcg), who makes hyp to have been the name 
of the insect whence the silk was obtained, and the 
silk itself to have been named 'O/l oaypiKOv, or, to use 
his own words, hypeg, (‘ua vydovra perd^av, y ovopa 
edvovg oOev kp^erai nal to 6?,oaypiKOV. And yet, as 
if to show how very fluctuating was all the knowledge 
which the ancients possessed on this subject, we find 
Achilles Tatius, about this same period, speaking of 
silk as a very fine down, deposited by birds on the 
leaves of trees, and carefully collected by the Indians. 
It remains but to add some passages from Isidorus. 
“ Bombycina est a Bombyce, vermiculo, qui longissi 
ma ex se fila generat, quorum textura bombycinum 
dicitur, conficiturque in insula Co.—Serica a Serico 
dicta, vel quod etiam Seres pnmi miserunt; holoserica 
tota serica; tramoserica starnine lineo, trama ex seri¬ 
co ; holoporphyra tota ex purpura; byssina Candida, 
confiecta ex quodam genere Uni grossioris." (Isido¬ 
rus, de colonbus, lib. 19, c. 17, p. 1294.) And again, 
“ Byssum genus est quoddam lini nimium candidi et 
mollissimi, quod Grseci papatem vocant. — Sericum 
dictum, quia id Seres primi miserunt: vermiculi enim 
ibi nasci perhibentur, a quibus hsec eircum arbores 
fila ducuntur; vermes autem ipsi Graece (36p6vKEg 
ncminantur.” (Id., de nominibus Vestium, c. 22, p. 
1299.)—Before concluding we will take the liberty of 
adding a few remarks in relation to the high price of 
silk in the ancient world, for which we are indebted 
to the pen of Dr. Vincent. (Class. Journ., vol. 7, 
p. 35.) “As late as the time of Aurelian, Vopiscus 
informs us that silk sold for its weight in gold. The 
Coan fabric seems never to have reached this extrav¬ 
agant price, but only the pure Oriental silk. The ex¬ 
pense of conveyance undoubtedly, and the difficulty 
of obtaining it, were the immediate causes of this enor¬ 
mous value being assigned to the article. The price 
seems never to have been depressed until Constanti¬ 
nople became the centre of commerce for the Eastern 
and Western world ; and there the depression advanced 
till the fifth century, when Ammianus mentions that 
silk, which had formerly been worn only by the nobil¬ 
ity, was then the common dress of the lower orders.” 
The learned writer then puts the question, why Justin¬ 
ian, as Procopius (Procopius, Goth., 4, 17) informs 
us, should send to China for the true breed, if both 
the insect and the manufacture were in existence at 
Cos l The one was a journey of hazard and difficul¬ 
ty, of nearly three thousand miles ; the other a pleas¬ 
ant voyage short of four hundred.—He proposes an 
answer to the question, namely, that the manufacture 
of Oriental silk had superseded the manufacture at 
Cos, which could only have happened from the supe¬ 
riority of the material or the manner of its fabrication. 
“ Silk,” as he informs us, “had been woven in the Ro¬ 
man empire long before it was fully understood how 
the material was obtained ; for Mirada vypa hypinov, 
or silk thread, was an article subject to a duty in the 
custom-house of Alexandrea: and whether the web of 
Tyre was wrought from this, or whether women reeved 
out the web, introduced through Media and Assyria, 
as Pliny asserts, it makes no difference in point of 
time, but it proves that the commodity was so supe 
rior in quality that the manufacture of Cos was driven 
out of the market.”—The learned writer, however, is 
wrong in censuring D’Anville for supposing that the 
monks sent by Justinian went only as far as Sirhend 
in India, and not to China itself. There is every rea¬ 
son to believe that the inhabitants of that part of India 
which lies between the Pcndjab and the river Jumna 
had learned the process of silk manufacture from theil 




SER 


SERTORIUS. 


Eastern neighbours. Hence their territory and capi¬ 
tal took the name of Serinda (Ser-Ind), and even at 
the present day the name continues to be Serhend , or 
“ the land where the Hindus nurture the silkworm.” 
It was to this quarter, very probably, that the monks 
of Justinian came. Gibbon, however, boldly asserts 
that these monks were missionaries, who had pre¬ 
viously penetrated to China, and resided at Nan-kin. 

Decline and Fall, ch. 40.) 

SerIphus, an island of the iEgean, south of Cyth- 
nus, and now Serpho. It was celebrated in mytholo¬ 
gy as the scene of some of the most remarkable ad¬ 
ventures of Perseus, who changed Polydectes, king of 
the island, and his subjects, into stones, to avenge the 
wrongs offered to his mother Danae. ( Find., Pyth., 
12, 19.) Strabo seems to account for this fable from 
the rocky nature of the island. ( Strab ., 487.) Pliny 
makes its circuit twelve miles. In Juvenal’s time 
state-prisoners were sent there (10, 169). The frogs 
of this island were said to be mute, but to utter their 
usual note when carried elsewhere; and hence the 
proverbial saying, B drpaxoc; ek Zeptyov (Rana Seri- 
pkia), applied to dull and silent persons, who on a sud¬ 
den became loquacious. (Compare, however, the re¬ 
marks of Erasmus, Chil. 1, cent. 5, ad. 31, cd. 
Steph., p. 166.) 

Serranus, I. a surname given to C. Atilius, from 
his having been engaged in sowing his field ( severe , 
“ to sow”) when intelligence was brought him of his 
having been appointed to the dictatorship. ( Plin ., 18, 
4. — Perizon., Animadv. Hist., c. 1.— Liv., 3, 26.— 
Virg., Mn., 6, 844.)—II. A poet in the time of Nero, 
to whom Sarpe has ascribed the eclogues that pass un¬ 
der the name of Calpurnius. ( Qucest . Philolog., c. 
2, p. 11, seqq. — B'dhr, Gesch. Rom. Lit., vol. 1, p. 
303.) 

Sertorius, Quintus, a distinguished Roman gen¬ 
eral, born at Nursia. He made his first campaign 
under Csepio, when the Cimbri and Teutones broke 
into Gaul; and he distinguished himself subsequently 
under Marius, when the same enemy made their mem¬ 
orable irruption into Italy. After the termination of 
this war he was sent as a legionary tribune, under Did- 
ius, into Spain, and soon gained for himself a high 
reputation in this country. On his return to Rome he 
was appointed quasstor for Cisalpine Gaul; and the 
Marsian war soon after breaking out, and Sertorius 
being employed to levy troops and provide arms, he 
made himself extremely useful in that capacity, and 
performed important services for the state. On the 
ruin of the Marian party, to which he himself belong¬ 
ed, Sertorius hastened back to Spain, and found no 
difficulty in resuming possession of that province. As 
soon as Sylla was informed of this act of rebellion, he 
sent into Spain a considerable army under Caius An- 
nius, with orders to crush the insurgent forces. Ser- 
torius, compelled to yield to the powerful force thus 
brought against him, was induced to seek for safety in 
Africa. Pursued by bad fortune even to the wilds of 
Mauritania, he was reduced to the necessity of again 
putting to sea ; but, being unable to effect a re-landing 
in Spain, he strengthened his little fleet by the addi¬ 
tion of some of the Cilician pirates, and made a de¬ 
scent upon the island of Ebusus (now Ivica ), in which 
Annius had placed a small garrison. The lieutenant 
of Sylla made haste to succour this insular colony, 
and, sailing to Ebusus with a strong squadron, was re¬ 
solved to bring Sertorius to battle. A storm prevent¬ 
ed the engagement; most of the ships were driven 
ashore, or swallowed up in the waves ; and Sertorius, 
who had with difficulty escaped from the fury of the 
tempest, bore away with a few small vessels for the 
Straits of Gibraltar, and, landing near the mouth ol 
the Baetis, refreshed his men on the shores of the At¬ 
lantic Ocean. It was on this occasion that, fatigued 
ov the vicissitudes of a hard fortune, and filled with 


gloomy views of the future, he is said to have listened 
to the romantic description of certain sailors, who 
charmed his ears with the delights and peaceful secu 
rity of a group of happy islands lying scattered at a 
convenient distance in the Western sea. He would 
have retired to that fabled paradise, had not the Cili¬ 
cian rovers, who preferred a more enterprising life, 
refused to accompany him, and sailed back to the 
coast of Africa. Sertorius in like manner returned 
into the Mediterranean, and, having landed in Africa, 
soon came in contact with Pacianus, a lieutenant of 
Sylla’s, and, though greatly inferior in number, gained 
a decisive victory, and took nearly all the opposite 
army prisoners. The reputation acquired by this vic¬ 
tory retrieved the affairs of Sertorius. The Lusitani- 
ans, irritated at the conduct of Annius, resolved to 
throw off the yoke; %nd, inviting the conqueror of Pa¬ 
cianus to assume the command of their army, they 
took the field against the deputy of Sylla, and set the 
whole power of Rome at. defiance. The most brilliant 
success attended the arms of Sertorius. With 2600 
men, whom he called Romans (though of these 700 
were Africans), and an addition of 4000 light-armed 
Lusitanians and 700 horse, he carried on the war 
against four Roman generals, who had 120,000 foot, 
6000 horse, 2000 archers and slingers, and cities with¬ 
out number under their command. Of the officers 
opposed to him, he beat Cotta at sea, near the modern 
Trafalgar ; he defeated Phidius, who had the chief 
command in Bastica, and killed 4000 Romans on the 
banks of the Baetis. By his quaestor he vanquished 
Domitius, and Lucius Manlius, proconsul of Hither 
Spain; he likewise slew Thoranius, one of the officers 
sent against him by Metellus, and cut off the whole 
army under his command. Even Metellus himself, 
one of the most experienced and successful generals 
of the age, was not a match for Sertorius in the spe¬ 
cies of warfare which the Lusitanians waged under his 
direction. Constantly changing his post, and flying 
from one fastness to another with a small body of ac¬ 
tive men, he cut off the Romans in every quarter, 
without allowing them time to make any arrangement 
for their defence, or even to see the enemy under 
whose hands their numbers were so rapidly reduced. 
In short, he combined in his character all the activity 
and hardiness of savage life with the policy and milita¬ 
ry skill of a Roman general. Nor did Sertorius think 
it enough to fight the battles of the Spaniards; he 
also undertook to establish among them the habits and 
advantages of civilization. He taught their soldiers 
all the more useful parts of Roman tactics ; he found¬ 
ed schools for the education of youth ; distinguished 
the meritorious by marks of his approbation; and 
even introduced among the higher orders the dress of 
Roman citizens. Sertorius possessed unbounded in¬ 
fluence over the minds ol the natives, as well from 
the high degree of military talent which he displayed, 
as from the conviction on the part of the Lusitanians 
that he held secret communion with Heaven. This 
belief arose principally from the circumstance of his 
being attended wherever he went by a tame white 
fawn, which he led the rude natives to believe was a 
gift from Diana, and disclosed to him many important 
secrets.—The dangerous state of their affairs in Spain 
induced the Romans to send Pornpey to the aid of 
Metellus. But this new commander proved in no de¬ 
gree more successful than the old ; nay, on one occa¬ 
sion, Pompey had the mortification of seeing the city 
of Lauron taken and burned by Sertorius, without 
being able to render it any assistance, though near 
enough (to use the strong language of an ancient wri¬ 
ter) to have warmed his hands at the flame. At last, 
however, private treachery effected what the arms of 
open foes had been unable to accomplish. Perpenna, 
one of his officers, who was jealous of his fame and 
tired of a superior, conspired against him. At a ban- 

1221 



S E R 


SERVIUS. 


quet the conspirators began to open their intentions by 
speaking with freedom and licentiousness in the pres¬ 
ence of^Sertorius, whose age and character had hith¬ 
erto claimed deference from others. Perpenna over¬ 
turned a glass of wine as a signal to the rest, and im¬ 
mediately Antonius, one of his officers, stabbed Ser- 
torius, and the example was followed by all the other 
conspirators (B.C. 73).—No sooner had Perpenna ac¬ 
complished his nefarious object, than he announced 
himself as the successor of Sertorius. But he soon 
proved as unfit for the duties as he was unworthy of 
the honour attached to that high office. Pompey, 
upon hearing that his formidable antagonist was no 
more, attacked the traitor, whom he easily defeated. 
He was taken prisoner, and afterward executed as an 
enemy to his country; and in this way ended a war 
which at one time threatened 4ie overthrow of the 
whole fabric of the Roman power in Spain. Of Ser¬ 
torius it has justly been remarked, that his great quali¬ 
ties and military talents would have undoubtedly raised 
him to the first rank among the chiefs of his coun¬ 
try, had he been, not the leader of a party, but the 
commander of a state. With nothing to support him 
but the resources of his own mind, he created a pow¬ 
erful kingdom among strangers, and defended it for 
more than ten years against the arms of Rome, al¬ 
though wielded by the ablest generals of his time ; and 
he displayed public and private virtues which would 
have rendered a people happy under his rule at a less 
turbulent period. ( Plut ., Vit. Sertor. Veil. Paterc., 
2, 30, seqq.—Flor., 3, 21, seqq.) 

Servilia Lex, I. de Pecuniis repetundis, by C. 
Servilius, the praetor, A.U.C. 653. It ordained se¬ 
verer penalties than formerly against extortion ; and 
that the defendant should have a second hearing. 
(Cic. in Verr., 1, 9.)—II. Another, de Judicibus, by 
Q. Servilius Caepio, the consul, A.U.C. 647. It di¬ 
vided the right of judging between the senators and 
the equites, a privilege which, though originally be¬ 
longing to the senators, had been taken from them by 
the Sempronian Law, and given to the equites, who 
had exercised it, in consequence, for seventeen years. 
(Cic., Brut., 43, seq. — Tac., Ann , 12, 60.) —III. 
Another, de Civitate, by C. Servilius Glaucia, ordained 
that if a Latin accused a Roman senator so that he 
was condemned, the accuser should be honoured with 
the name and the privileges of a Roman citizen —IV. 
Another, Agraria, by P. Servilius Rullus, the tribune, 
A.U.C. 690. It ordained that ten commissioners 
should be created, with absolute power, for five years, 
over all the revenues of the republic ; to buy and sell 
what lands they saw fit, at what price and from whom 
they chose ; to distribute them at pleasure to the citi¬ 
zens ; to settle new colonies wherever they judged 
proper, and particularly in Campania, &c. But this 
law was prevented from being passed by the eloquence 
A Cicero, who was then consul. ( Cic. in Pis., 2 ) 

Servilius, I. Publius Ahala, a master of horse to 
;he dictator Cincinnatus. When Maelius refused to 
ippear before the dictator to answer the accusations 
which were brought against him on suspicion of his 
aspiring to tyranny, Ahala slew him in the midst of 
the people whose protection he claimed. Ahala was 
accused of this murder, and banished ; but this sen¬ 
tence was afterward repealed. He was raised to the 
dictatorship.—II. Publius, a proconsul of Asia during 
the age of Mithradates. He conquered Isauria, for 
which service he was surnamed Isauncus, and re¬ 
warded with a triumph. (Vid. Isauria.)—III. Nonia- 
nus, a Latin historian, who wrote a history of Rome 
in the reign of Nero. He is praised by Quintilian 
( 10 , 1 , 102 ). 

Servius, I. Tullius, the sixth king of Rome. The 
accounts respecting his origin are as obscure as those 
of any of his predecessors. The most ancient and 
poetical legend represents him as the son of Ocrisia, 
1222 


a captive and slave of Tanaquil, the wife of Tarquin 
ius Priscus. by the Lar, or household god. Later le 
gends made him a son of one of the king’s clients, and 
for some time a slave ; or the son of a man of rank 
and power in one of the conquered Latin cities, who 
being slain in the war, his widow was carried to Rome 
in her pregnancy, and she and her infant son were 
protected by Tanaquil. Another account of the ori¬ 
gin of Servius has been preserved by a speech of the 
Emperor Claudius, as given in the Etruscan Annals. 
This speech was engraved on a brass plate, and wa3 
dug up at Lyons about two centuries ago. It^s now 
preserved in that city. It was printed by Brotier at 
the end of his edition of Tacitus, and has been also 
published in the Collections of Inscriptions. Claudius 
begins to recount how often the form of government 
had been changed, and even the royal dignity bestowed 
on foreigners. Then he says of Servius Tullius, “ Ac¬ 
cording to our Annals, he was the son of the captive 
Ocrisia ; but if we follow the Tuscans, he was the 
faithful follower of Cades Vibenna, and shared all 
his fortunes. At last, quitting Etruria with the re¬ 
mains of the army which had served under Cseles, he 
went to Rome, and occupied the Cselian Hill, giving 
it that name after his former commander. He ex¬ 
changed his Tuscan name, Mastama, for a Roman one, 
obtained the kingly power, and employed it to the great 
advantage of the state.” ( Nieb ., Rom. Hist., vol. 1, p. 
381.)—All accounts, however, represent him as enjoy¬ 
ing the favour of Tarquin and his queen, as having 
married the daughter of that monarch, and obtaining the 
throne in a great measure by the judicious manage¬ 
ment of the latter. It would seem as if Servius had 
in the very beginning of his reign encountered the 
opposition of the patricians. He is said not to have 
allowed any interregnum, or to have permitted the sen¬ 
ate to take the lead in his election to the sovereignty; 
but, as he had already acted as king before the death 
of Tarquinius was publicly known, to have made a di¬ 
rect application, without any other preliminary pro¬ 
cess, to the comitia cunata., and to have been by them 
invested with the powers of former kings. The only 
historical conclusion which can be deduced from these 
incidental notices is, that a contest had begun be¬ 
tween the kings and the patrician body, in which the 
kings deemed it their soundest policy to diminish the 
power of the patricians, in order to maintain their own. 
But as no direct diminution of their power could have 
been attempted without exciting an immediate insur¬ 
rection, it was deemed expedient by these kings to 
raise a counterbalancing power in the state, which, 
having received its existence from them, might be ex¬ 
pected to lend them aid in repressing the exorbitant 
power of the patrician body, combined with their he¬ 
reditary privileges. That Servius was a friend of the 
people, and that the patricians hated and plotted against 
him, appears from a passage of Festus : “ Patricius 
Vicus Roma, dictus eo quod ibi patricii habitaverunt , 
jubente Servio Tullio, nt , si quid, molirentur adversus 
ipsum, ex locis superioribus oppnmerentur .” Indeed, 
it might be indirectly gathered from the statement of 
Livy (1, 44), that he chose his habitation on the Es- 
quiline, for that was the plebeian quarter. (Dion. 
Hal., 4, 13.) The government of Servius Tullius 
was, from beginning to end, a sort of revolution. The 
organic changes ascribed to him can hardly be con¬ 
ceived of, as projected under any but republican insti¬ 
tutions. At all events, they seem to have paved the 
way for the republic. Servius prepared his constitu¬ 
tional innovations by a division of land and of building- 
ground for habitations to the poor. His constitution, 
however, had no resemblance to a pure democracy 
Property was adopted as the standard for apportioning 
the public contributions and franchise ; and on this 
principle his famous division into Classes was based. 
When it is considered that out of a hundred and 




SERVIUS. 


SES 


eighty-nine (or ninety-three) centuries, the first class 
alone contained eighty, to which must be added the 
eighteen centuries of equites , and that the last class had 
either only one voice or none at all, it is easy to see 
that Servius, if in effect he made this arrangement, 
substituted an aristocracy of wealth for the former pa¬ 
trician preponderance in the curia. As in these times 
the property of land was for the most part in the hands 
of the patricians, they of course retained preponder¬ 
ance in the new aristocracy likewise. But this was 
accidental, and soon ceased to be the case.—The war¬ 
like undertakings of Servius were principally directed 
against the Etrurians. He is said to have carried on 
war, for twenty years, with the citizens of Veii, Caere, 
Tarquinii, and, lastly, with the collective force of the 
Etruscans, till all allowed the pre-eminence of Rome 
and her king.—Servius enlarged the city, so as to 
bring within its compass the Viminal and Esquiline 
Hills ; he finished the work begun by Tarquinius, by 
building the walls of the city of hewn stone ; and, for 
the purpose of consolidating more firmly the union of 
the races of which the nation was composed, he erect¬ 
ed the temple of Diana on the Aventine Hill, which was 
to be the chief abode of the Latin population recently 
brought to Rome.—The horrible tale of the last Tar- 
quin’s accession to the throne might be regarded as 
incredible, were it not that Italian history in the mid¬ 
dle ages affords us many similar examples. The nar¬ 
rative in question is as follows: The two daughters 
of Servius were married to the two sons of the elder 
Tarquin. The one murdered her husband Aruns, and 
her sister, with the aid of the other son of Tarquin, 
and paved the way to the throne for herself and her 
new husband by the murder of her father.—The per¬ 
sonal existence of Servius Tullius is regarded by 
many recent writers as involved inconsiderable doubt. 
The constitution of the classes and centuries is as 
real as Magna Charta, or the Bill of Rights, in Eng¬ 
lish history ; yet its pretended author seems scarcely 
a more historical personage than King Arthur. We 
do not even know with certainty his name or his race ; 
still less can we trust the pretended chronology of the 
common story. The last three reigns, according to 
Livy, occupied a space of 107 years ; yet the king, 
who, at the end of this period, is expelled in mature, 
but not in declining age, is the son of the king who 
ascends the throne a grown man, in the vigour of life, 
at the beginning of it; Servius marries the daughter 
of Tarquinius a short time before he is made king, yet 
immediately after his accession he is the father of two 
grown-up daughters, whom he marries to the brothers 
of his own wife. The sons of Ancus Marcius wait pa¬ 
tiently eight-and-thirty years, and then murder Tar¬ 
quinius to obtain a throne which they had seen him so 
long quietly occupy. Still, then, we are, in a manner, 
upon enchanted ground ; the unreal and the real are 
strangely mixed up together ; but, although some real 
elements exist, yet the general picture before us is a 
mere fantasy : single trees and buildings may be cop¬ 
ied from nature, but their grouping is ideal, and they 
are placed in the midst of fairy palaces and fairy be¬ 
ings, whose originals this earth never witnessed. ( Liv ., 
1,41, seqq. — Hetherington’s History of Rome , p. 23, 
seqq. — Arnold's Roman History , vol. 1, p. 48, seqq.) 

_H. Sulpitius Rufus, an eminent Roman jurist and 

statesman, descended from an illustrious family. He 
was contemporary with Cicero, and probably born about 
a century B.C. He cultivated polite literature from a 
very early period, especially philosophy and poetry. 
At an early age he appeared as a pleader at the bar. 
In consequence of a reproof received from Quintus Mu- 
cius, an eminent lawyer, grounded upon his ignorance 
of the law, he applied himself with great industry to 
legal studies, and became one of the most eminent 
lawyers of Rome. Cicero highly commends his legal 
knowledge. Sulpitius passed through the various civil 


offices of the Roman state, and was consul B.C. 51 
Caesar made him governor of Achaia after the battle 
of Pharsalia ; but, when that chief was taken off, Sul¬ 
pitius returned to Rome, and acted with the republi¬ 
can party. He died in the camp of Antony, under the 
walls of Modena, having been sent on an embassy to 
that leader from the Roman senate. Cicero, in his 
9th Philippic, pleads for a brazen statue to be erected 
to Sulpitius, which honour was granted by the senate. 
— HI. Honoratus Maurus, a learned grammarian in 
the age of Arcadius and Honorius. He has left Latin 
commentaries upon Virgil, still extant. These are, 
however, considered rather as a collection of ancient 
remarks and criticisms on the poet than as composed 
by himself. They contain many valuable notices of 
the geography and arts of antiquity. These commen¬ 
taries are found annexed to some of the older editions 
of Virgil. They are most correctly given in the edi¬ 
tion of Virgil by Burmann, Amst., 1746, 4 vols. 4to. 

Sesostris, a celebrated king of Egypt, whose era 
will be considered in the course of the present article. 
According to the common account, his father ordered 
all the children in his dominions who were born on the 
same day with him to be publicly educated, and to pass 
their youth in the company of his son. This plan suc¬ 
ceeded fully, and Sesostris, on attaining to manhood, 
saw himself surrounded by a number of faithful min¬ 
isters and active warriors, whose education and inti¬ 
macy with their prince rendered them inseparably de¬ 
voted to his interest. When Sesostris, after achiev¬ 
ing several brilliant conquests as his father’s lieuten¬ 
ant, had succeeded his parent on the throne, he became 
ambitious of military fame, and, after he had divided 
his kingdom into 36 different districts or nomes, he 
marched at the head of a numerous army to make the 
conquest of the world. Libya, .Ethiopia, Arabia, with 
all the islands of the Red Sea, were conquered, and 
the victorious monarch marched through Asia, and 
penetrated farther into the East than the conqueror 
of Darius. He also invaded Europe, and subdued 
the Thracians ; and, that the fame of his conquests 
might long survive him, he placed columns and im¬ 
ages in the several provinces he had subdued ; and, 
many ages after, inscriptions were still to be seen 
commemorating his conquests. At his.return home 
the monarch employed his time in encouraging the 
fine arts, and in improving the revenues of his king¬ 
dom. He erected one hundred temples to the gods 
for the victories he had obtained, and mounds of earth 
were heaped up in several parts of Egypt, where 
cities were built for the reception of the inhabitants 
during the inundations of the Nile. After a long and 
glorious reign, Sesostris, now grown old and infirm, 
is said to have destroyed himself. ( Diod. Sic., 1, 
53, seqq.) — Such is the common legend relative to 
this celebrated king and conqueror : the hero of Cham- 
pollion’s system, as of all early Egyptian history, and, 
if we are to believe Diodorus, of their poetry, the Se¬ 
sostris of Herodotus, the Sesoosis of Diodorus, the 
Sethos of Manetho, the Rhamses the Great of the 
monuments, he appears at the head of the nineteenth 
dynasty as the greatest of the Theban kings. Every¬ 
where this mighty monarch stands forth in prominent 
grandeur. Before and in the temples of the Southern 
Ipsambul, no less than in Thebes and in the ruins of 
Memphis, his colossal statues appear stamped; Cham- 
pollion asserts, with the reality of portraiture. In al¬ 
most every temple, up to the confines of ^Ethiopia, 
his deeds and triumphs are wrought in relief and 
painting. The greater part of the celebrated obelisks 
either are inscribed to him or bear his record. That 
of the Lateran has been long known (from the curious 
interpretation of it in Ammianus Marcellinus) to be¬ 
long to a King Rameses ; one side of Cleopatra’s Nee¬ 
dle is occupied with his deeds; and, besides his le¬ 
gends in the ruin^of Luxor and Carnac, the immense 

1223 




SESOSTRIS. 


SESOSTRIS. 


edifice on the western side of the river, which corre¬ 
sponds with singular, if not perfect, exactness to the 
magnificent palace of Osymandyas described by Dio¬ 
dorus, is so covered with his legends as to be named 
by Champollion, without the least hesitation, the 
Rhameseion.—The date of the accession of Sesostris, 
as the head of the nineteenth dynasty, is of great im¬ 
portance, but, like all such points, involved in much 
difficulty. M. Champollion Figeac, by an ingenious 
argument deduced from the celebrated Sothic period 
of 1460 years, reckoned according to data furnished 
by Censorinus, and a well-known fragment of Theon 
of Alexandrea, makes out the date of 1473 B.C. Dr. 
Young assumes 1424. Mr. Mure maintains that it 
cannot be placed higher than 1410, nor lower than 
1400. ( Remarks on the Chronology of the Egyptian 

Dynasties, Lond ., 1829.) M. Champollion Figeac’s 
argument is unsatisfactory, and chiefly from the un¬ 
certainty of fixing the reign of Menophres, which is the 
basis of the whole system, and which is altogether a 
gratuitous assumption. It appears, however, that the 
question may be brought to a short, if not precise, con¬ 
clusion. The first date which approximates to cer¬ 
tainty is the capture of Jerusalem by Sesac or Se- 
sonchosis ; the first of the twenty-second dynasty, in 
the year 971, or, at the earliest, 975 B.C. What, 
then, was the intervening time between this event and 
the accession of the nineteenth dynasty 1 The reigns 
of the three series, as given by Mr. Mure from the va¬ 
rious authorities, stand thus : and first from Eusebius 
in the Latin text of Jerome: 


Nineteenth Dynasty 

. 

194 

Twentieth “ 

. 

178 

Twenty-first “ 

■ 

130 



502 

Add date of capture of Jerusalem . 

• 

971 



1473 

Next from Eusebius, according to 
(Syncellus—Scaliger) : 

the 

Greek text 

Nineteenth Dynasty 

• 

202 (194) 

Twentieth “ 

• 

178 

Twenty first “ 

• 

130 



510 

Add as before. 

• 

971 


1481 

Next from Eusebius, according to the Armenian text: 


Nineteenth Dynasty 

# 

* 

• 

194 

Twentieth “ 

* 


, 

172 

Twenty-first “ 

* 


* 

130 

496 

Add . . . 

* 

* 

* 

971 

1467 


Next from Africanus (Syncellus): 

Nineteenth Dynasty . 
Twentieth “ 

Twenty-first “ . . 


Add . 


And, lastly, from the Old Chronicle 


210 (204) 

135 

130 

475 

971 

1446 


Nineteenth Dynasty 
Twentieth “ 
Twenty-first “ 


194 

228 

121 


543 

\dd . .971 

1514 

The question resolves itself into the relative degrees of 
weight attached to Africanus, Eusebius, or the Old 
Chronicle, as to the reign of the Twentieth Dynasty. 
It should be observed, that there may be five years of 
error in the date of the capture of Jerusalem, and it 
ia uncertain at what period in the reign of Sesac that 
1224 


event took pjace. M. Champollion Figeac’s date, there* 
fore, for different reasons from his own, is as probable 
as any other.—Ancient history is full of the triumphs 
of this Egyptian Alexander : was it the echo of native 
legends, either poetical, or, if historical, embellished 
by national vanity, or containing substantial truth 1 
The memorable passage in Tacitus is at once the most 
brief and the fullest statement of the glories of his 
reign. On the visit of Germanicus to Thebes, the 
elder of the priests, interpreting the inscriptions in his 
native language, related to the wondering Roman the 
forces, the conquests in Africa, Asia, and Europe, and 
the tribute levied by the Great Rhamses. ( Tacitus, 
Ann., 2, 60.)—Let us trace this line of conquest, 
which appeared so vast, and perhaps romantic, as to 
have induced those writers who, towards the end of the 
last century, were for resolving all history, mythology, 
and religion into astronomy, upon grounds rather more 
plausible than usual, to consider the great king of 
Egypt no more than a mythological personification of 
“ the giant that rejoiceth to run his course from one 
end of Heaven to the other.” The first conquest gen¬ 
erally attributed to Sesostris is /Ethiopia. Some wri¬ 
ters, indeed, make him commence with a maritime 
expedition against Cyprus and Phoenicia ; but the 
most probable account states that, either during his 
father’s life or after his own accession, he led the tri¬ 
umphant banners of Egypt along the whole course of 
the Nile to the sacred Meroe. He conquered, says 
Diodorus, the southern /Ethiopians, and forced them 
to pay tribute, ebony, gold, and elephants’ teeth. No¬ 
where do the monuments so strikingly illustrate the 
history. In the Nubian temples, representations of 
the victories of this great king line the walls. One at 
Kalabsche has been described with great spirit by 
Heeren, from Gau’s engravings. It represents a na¬ 
ked queen with her children imploring the mercy of 
the conqueror. Now, though female sovereigns were 
rarely known in Egypt, in /Ethiopia they were com¬ 
mon. Even at a late period, the Candace of the Acts 
will occur to every reader. Besides the queen, there 
are the spoils at the feet of the conqueror, what seems 
to be ivory, with golden ingots, and huge logs of eb¬ 
ony. We proceed on our course, first remarking a 
fact which, if we remember rightly, has escaped the 
notice of Heeren, that the career of Sesostris is led 
precisely along the line on which he has traced, with 
so much ingenuity and research, the road of ancient 
commerce. It might almost seem that the conqueror 
followed the track of the caravan or fleet, to plunder 
or make himself master of the successive centres or 
emporia of commerce, and of the different countries 
from which the richest articles of traffic were sent 
forth. The first step, as stated, was the subjugation 
of /Ethiopia, the next of Africa to the west: of this, 
it is true, we have but an indifferent voucher, that of 
a Latin poet, and one, in general, more to be suspected 
of tumid hyperbole than his brethren, namely, Lucan. 
(Venit ad occasum , mundique extrema Sesostris, 10, 
276.) Still, some extensive subjugation of the Libyan 
tribes may be assumed without much hesitation. The 
wild animals of the desert are perpetually led in the 
triumphs of the Egyptians—the antelopes, the apes, 
the giraffes, and the ostriches.—Arabia, to the older 
world, was the land of wonder and of wealth. From 
the Hebrew prophets, who delighted to dwell on “ the 
gifts to be brought from Arabia and Saba,” to the la¬ 
test Greek and Latin poets, the geographer Dionysius 
and the luxuriant Nonnus, the riches and marvels of 
the land and people are perpetually displayed. Araby 
the Blessed, either producing or possessing the car¬ 
rying trade of those costly spices and incenses which 
were so prodigally used in Egypt in embalming the 
dead and worshipping the gods, would naturally be an 
object of ambition to an Egyptian conqueror. Ac¬ 
cordingly, even before the triumphant career of Rham 



SESOSTRIS. 


SESOSTR1S. 


ses the Great, curious vestiges of Egyptian conquest 
in the Arabian peninsula have been brought to light, 
and Arabah (the Red Earth) is described as under the 
feet of Rameses Meiamoun, in one of those curious 
representations of his conquests said to line the walls 
at Medinet-Abou. It was on a height overlooking the 
narrow strait which divides Africa from Arabia that 
Sesostris, according to Strabo, erected one of his col¬ 
umns. The wars between the later Abyssinian kings 
and the sovereigns of Yemen, in the centuries prece¬ 
ding Mohammed, may illustrate these conquests. The 
hured or terror of the sea attributed to the later 
Egyptians was either unknown to or disdained, as the 
monuments clearly prove, by the great Theban kings ; 
more than one regular naval engagement, as well as 
descents from invading fleets, being represented in 
the sculptures. On the Red Sea, Sesostris, according 
to history, fitted out a navy of four hundred sail ; but 
whither did he or his admirals sail ? Did they com¬ 
mit themselves to the trade-winds, and boldly stretch 
across towards the land of gold and spice 1 Are some 
of the hill-forts represented in the sculptures those of 
India ? Did his triumphant arms pass the Ganges ? 
Do the Indian hunches on the cattle, noticed by Mr. 
Hamilton, confirm the legend so constantly repeated 
of his conquests in that land of ancient fable 1 Or, 
according to the modest account of Herodotus, did 
they coast cautiously along, and put back when they 
encountered some formidable shoals ? Did they fol¬ 
low the course of the Persian Gulf, assail the rising 
monarchies of the Assyrians and Medes, or press on 
to that great kingdom of Bactria, which dimly arises 
amid the gloom of the earliest ages, the native place 
of Zoroaster, and the cradle of the Magian religion 1 
Champollion boldly names Assyrians, Medes, and 
Bactrians as exhibited on the monuments ; but the 
strange and barbarous appellations which he has read, 
as far as we remember, bear no resemblance to those 
of any of the Oriental tribes ; earlier travellers, how¬ 
ever, have observed that the features, costume, and 
arms of the nations with which the Egyptians join 
battle are clearly Asiatic ; the long, flowing robes, the 
line of faca, the beards, the shields, in many respects 
are remarkably similar to those on the Babylonian cyl¬ 
inders and the sculptures of Persepolis. “The do¬ 
minions of Sesostris,” our legend proceeds, “ spreads 
over Armenia and Asia Minor. His images were still 
to be seen in the days of Herodotus, one on the road 
between Ephesus and Phocaea, and another between 
Smyrna and Sardis. They were five palms high, 
armed in the Egyptian and Ethiopian manner, and 
held a javelin in one hand and a bow in the other ; 
across the breast ran a line, with an inscription : 
‘This region I conquered by my strength (lit. my 
shoulders).’ They were mistaken for statues of Mem- 
non.” This universal conqueror spread his dominion 
into Europe ; but Thrace was the limit of. his victo¬ 
ries. On the eastern shore of the Euxine he left, ac¬ 
cording to tradition, a part of his army, the ances¬ 
tors of the circumcised people, the Colchians. But 
his most formidable enemies were the redoubted 
Scythian*. Pliny and other later writers assert that 
he was vanquished by them, and fled. But Egyptian 
pride either disguised or had reason to deny the defeat 
of her hero. There is a striking story in Herodotus, that 
when the victorious Darius commanded that his statue 
should take the place of that of Sesostris, the priests 
boldly interfered, and asserted the superiority of their 
monarch, who had achieved what Darius had in vain at¬ 
tempted, the subjugation of the Scythians. Are we 
then to dismiss all this long history of triumphs and 
conquests into the regions of mythic or allegoric legend 1 
Are we to consider it the pure creation or the monstrous 
exaggeration of national vanity 1 to resolve it into the 
audacious mendacity of the priest or the licensed fiction 
of the bard 1 A priori, there is nothing improbable in 
7 Q 


the existence of one or of a line of Egyptian conquer¬ 
ors : Egypt was as likely to send forth “ its mighty 
hunter, whose game was man,” as Assyria, Persia, 
Macedonia, Arabia, or Tartary. On the other hand, 
we have the uniform testimony of ancient history, an¬ 
cient tradition, and existing monuments. Egyptian 
history is reported to us by every ancient author, 
Herodotus, Diodorus, Manetho, Strabo, and is assu¬ 
redly deserving of as much credit as the scattered frag¬ 
ments of the Oriental annals, which bear the name of 
Berosus or Sanchoniathon, or the traditions preserved 
by more modern antiquaries. The only history which 
approximates to this period is that of the Bible, and 
this we shall presently consider. How far the general 
tradition may be traced to Egypt as its sole fountain¬ 
head, may be doubted ; there is some semblance of a 
connexion with Scythian tradition preserved in Justin 
and Jornandes; in the former we find the name of a 
Scythian king contemporary with Sesostris. But the 
monuments which cover the walls of the Nubian cit¬ 
ies, more particularly of Thebes, afford the strongest 
confirmation to the extensive conquests of one or more 
of the mighty Pharaohs. These monuments, entirely 
independent, it must be remembered, of the interpre¬ 
tations of their legends by Champollion, represent bat¬ 
tles and sieges, combats by land and sea, in countries 
apparently not African, against nations which have 
every character of remote, probably Asiatic races. 
There are rivers which cannot be the Nile ; fortresses 
which, in their local character, seem totally unlike 
those of the districts bordering on Egypt.—But how is 
it that the sacred writings preserve a profound silence 
on all the invasions, conquests, and triumphs of this 
Egyptian Alexander, or, if Champollion is to be cred¬ 
ited, this race of Alexanders'? We must take up the 
question of the connexion between the sacred and 
Egyptian history at an earlier period. On this inter¬ 
esting inquiry two writers, M. Coquerel, a Protestant, 
and M. Greppo, a Roman Catholic divine, have en¬ 
tered with much candour and ingenuity. To what pe¬ 
riod in the Egyptian history is the Mosaic Exodus 
to be assigned? This question seems to have been 
debated, if we may so speak, on the scene of action 
among the Jewish and Grecian writers in Alexandrea. 
The fact was universally admitted, though the chro¬ 
nology was warmly contested ; as to the fact, it may 
be fearlessly asserted that the Mosaic record, inde¬ 
pendent of its religious sanction, has generally as high 
a claim to the character of authenticity and credibility 
as any ancient document ; he who should reject it 
would not merely expose his own sincerity as a be¬ 
liever in revealed religion, but his judgment as a phil¬ 
osophical historian. Nor can we read the histories of 
Diodorus, or Tacitus, or the treatise of Josephus 
against Apion, without clearly seeing that the Egyp¬ 
tian historians, however they might disfigure, no doubt 
did notice the servitude and the escape of the Israel¬ 
ites from Egypt. But both this and the chronological 
question were carried on with the blinding feelings of 
national pride and animosity on each side, and it is far 
from likely that we should disentangle the web which 
has thus been ravelled, nor can we expect to receive 
any direct information on this subject from the mon¬ 
uments. One pious writer has taken alarm at this si¬ 
lence ; but surely without much reason, for the monu¬ 
ments almost exclusively belong to Upper Egypt; 
nor does a proud nation inscribe on its enduring sculp¬ 
tures its losses and calamities; it is the victorious, 
not the discomfited, monarch whose deeds are hewn 
in stone.—Both M. Coquerel and M. Greppo adopt 
the common Usherian date, 1491, for the Exodus. 
Now, though this date is as probable as any other, we 
cannot think it certain. The great variation of chro- 
nologists on this point is well known; nor is any 
question of biblical criticism more open to fair debate 
than the authenticity of the text of 1 Kings, 6, 1, the 

1225 




SESOSTRIS. 


SESOSTRIS. 


basis of this calculation. Our authors likewise adopt 
M. Champollion Figeac’s date, 1473, for the access¬ 
ion of Sesostris, and the common term of two hun¬ 
dred and fifteen years for the residence of the Israel¬ 
ites in Egypt. Joseph might thus have been sold under 
Moeris ; Jacob and his family entered Egypt under his 
successor, Miphre-Thoutmosis, and departed in the 
third year of Amenophis Rhamses, father of Sesostris. 
Several curious incidental points make in favour of this 
system. At a period assigned to the ministry of Jo¬ 
seph, clearly, the native princes were on the throne ; 
the priesthood were in honour and power, particularly 
those of Phre. The obelisk raised by Moeris Miphra, 
at Heliopolis, will be remembered : his son likewise 
bore the title of Miphre. Now Joseph was married to 
the daughter of Pet-e-phre, the priest of Phre, at On or 
Heliopolis. At this period, too, the shepherds were re¬ 
cently expelled, and, therefore, an “ abomination to the 
Egyptians,” and the land of Goshen was vacant by 
their expulsion. Diodorus, it may be observed, gives 
seven generations between Moeris and Sesostris, which, 
at three for a century, amounts nearly to the date of 
the residence of the Israelites in Egypt. Towards 
the close of the period the race of Rhamses ascended 
the throne; and Raamses is the name of one of the 
cities built by the oppressed Israelites. Such are the 
curious incidental illustrations of this system, the same, 
we may observe, with that of Usher and Bishop Cum¬ 
berland ; but we must not dissemble the difficulties. 
The Exodus, according to the dates adopted, took 
place seventeen years before the death of Amenophis ; 
he, therefore, could not have been the Pharaoh drowned 
in the Red Sea; a difficulty rendered still more start¬ 
ling by the very interesting description of the sepul¬ 
chral cave of this Amenophis V. by Champollion, and 
which seems clearly to intimate that this Pharaoh re¬ 
posed with his ancestors in the splendid excavation 
ofBffian-el-Malook. Here, however, M. Greppo moves 
a previous question.—Have we distinct authority in 
the Hebrew Scriptures for the death of Pharaoh ! 
In the contemporary descriptions it is the host, the 
chariots, the horsemen of Pharaoh which are swal¬ 
lowed up; and there is no expression that intimates, 
with any degree of clearness, the death of the mon¬ 
arch ; the earliest apparently express authority for 
the death of the king is a poetic passage in the one 
hundred and thirty-sixth Psalm (v. 15), which is gen¬ 
erally considered to have been written after the cap¬ 
tivity, and even this may, perhaps, bear a different 
construction. There is a second difficulty still more 
formidable.—The scene of the Mosaic narrative is un¬ 
doubtedly laid in Lower Egypt, and seems to fix the 
residence of the kings in some part of the northern re¬ 
gion ; but it seems equally clear that Thebes was the 
usual dwelling-place of this Ammonian race of sover¬ 
eigns. Tradition agrees with the general impression 
of the narrative ; it hovers between Tanis and Mem¬ 
phis, with a manifest predilection for the former. The 
Tanitic branch of the Nile is said to be that on which 
Moses was exposed; and the “wonders in the field 
of Zoan” indicate the same scenes on much higher au¬ 
thority. The LXX. and the Chaldee paraphrast ren¬ 
der Zoan by Tanis. We are aware that Champollion 
will not “ bear a rival near the throne” of his magnifi¬ 
cent Pharaohs, and other opponents may object the 
“ all Egypt” of the Scriptures. As to the latter ob¬ 
jection, it may certainly be questioned whether “ all 
Egypt” included the Theba'id; but if Champollion 
(were we to suggest the possibility of a collateral dy¬ 
nasty and a second kingdom, at this period, in the 
northern part of the region) should urge the improb¬ 
ability that conquering sovereigns like Horus, Man- 
douee, or especially Rameses Meiamoun, would en¬ 
dure the independence of a part, as it were, of the 
great Egyptian monarchy, we can only rejoin the fre¬ 
quency with which the great sovereignties of the East 
1226 


are dismembered by the assertion of independence o* 
some powerful satrap, or the division between the sons 
on the death of a king. In the twenty-eighth year or 
JEgyptus (the Rameses Meiamoun of the monuments), 
says Eusebius, in the Chronicon (Armen. Vers.\ 
“ Busiris in partibus Nili Jluvii iyrannidem exerce- 
bat , transeuntesque perigrinos spoliabatd ’—Have any 
monuments been discovered in Lower Egypt betweer 
Moeris and Sesostris 1 Would not the restriction of 
the dominions of the latter part of the great Thebar 
dynasty to Upper Egypt, and of their conquests to th* 
south and east, account for Herodotus, who wrot« 
from Memphian authority, making Sesostris the im¬ 
mediate successor of Moeris 1 Might not the blow in¬ 
flicted on the Tanite kingdom by the loss of its slave 
population and its army, enable Sesostris with greater 
ease to consolidate the whole realm into one mighty 
monarchy ! We are not, however, blind to the ob¬ 
jections against this scheme, and rather throw it out 
for consideration than urge it with the least positive¬ 
ness. Yet far be it from us to confine the inquisitive 
reader to a choice between these two hypotheses. 
He may consult Mr. Faber, who will inform him that 
the Pharaoh who perished in the Red Sea was one 
of the shepherd kings. We may turn to Josephus, 
and find that the shepherds'and the Israelites were the 
same ; but by what strange transformation a peaceful 
minister and his family of seventy persons became a 
horde of conquering savages and a dynasty of kings, 
we are at a loss to conceive : Perizonius, however, 
has ably supported this untenable hypothesis. There 
is another theory, which we are inclined to suspect 
was that of Manetho, and, therefore, worthy of con¬ 
sideration ; but it is so strangely disfigured in Jose¬ 
phus, that it is difficult to know to whom we are to 
ascribe the flagrant contradictions. By this account, 
Amenophis was inserted by Manetho after Sesostris 
and his son Rhamses, yet he is immediately after rep¬ 
resented, either by Manetho or Josephus, as their pre¬ 
decessor ; he it was who expelled a second race of 
leprous shepherds, and his fate was moulded up with 
a tradition of a great catrastrophe connected with re¬ 
ligion. This would throw the Exodus a century later 
(the Jewish date comes as low as 1312), and would 
be somewhat embarrassing to chronology, but it would 
settle the question about Sesostris; and the Jews of 
all ages were more likely to exaggerate than depress 
the antiquity of their nation.—If, however, according to 
the general view, we place the Exodus before the ac¬ 
cession of Sesostris, in what manner do we account for 
the silence of the holy books concerning this universal 
conqueror! M. Coquerel and M. Greppo answer at 
once, and with apparent probability, that the trium¬ 
phant armies of the Egyptian marched through Pales 
tine during the forty years which the Israelites passed 
in the secret and inaccessible desert. Yet a prelimi¬ 
nary question may be started—according to the general 
accounts, Did the Egyptian pass through Palestine! 
By the line of march which we have drawn out from 
what seem the best authorities, he certainly did not, 
excepting possibly on his return, and of his return no¬ 
thing is said, excepting that he arrived, whether by land 
or sea is not stated, at Pelusium. We will not urge 
the words of Justin, that this great conqueror had a 
strange predilection for remote conquests, and de¬ 
spised those which lay near his own borders ; but it is 
possible that the comparative insignificance of Pales¬ 
tine, or its ready submission, might preserve it from 
actual invasion, if it did not happen to be on the line 
of march. It is true that Herodotus sends forth the 
Egyptian to win his first laurels by the conquest of 
Cyprus and Phoenicia; but the subjugation of the isl¬ 
and clearly denotes a maritime expedition. The con¬ 
quest of Phoenicia is confirmed by a very singular 
monument, a bilinguar inscription in hieroglyphics and 
arrow-headed characters the former of which show the 




S E S 


s e y 


egend of Rhamses the Great. This has been found 
at Nahar-el-kelb , in Syria, near the ancient Berytus. 
In fact, while Phoenicia, already perbips mercantile, 
might attract an Egyptian conqueror, Palestine, only 
rich in the fruits of the soil, which Egypt produced in 
the utmost abundance, was a conquest which miaht 
flatter the pride, but would offer no advantage to the 
sovereign of the Nile. Herodotus, indeed, expressly 
asserts, that he had seen one of his obscene trophies of 
victory raised among those nations which submitted 
without resistance in Syria Palsestina. Larcher has 
already observed on the loose way in which the bound¬ 
aries of Palestine were known by the Greeks, and has 
urged the improbability that the magnificent sovereigns 
of Judaea, David and Solomon, would suffer such a 
monument of national disgrace to stand ; he supposes, 
therefore, that it might be in the territory of Ascalon. 
We are somewhat inclined to suspect that many of 
these pillars might be no more than the symbol's of 
the worship of Baal-Peor. Was Herodotus likely to 
read a hieroglyphic inscription without the assistance 
of his friends, the priests of Egypt ] Be this as it 
may, after all, if we can calmly consider the nature of 
the Jewish history in the Bible, all difficulty, even if 
we suppose the peaceful submission to the great con¬ 
queror, ceases at once. The Book of Judges, in about 
fourteen chapters, from the third to the sixteenth, con¬ 
tains the history of between three and four centuries. 
Its object appears to be to relate the successive calam¬ 
ities of the nation, and the deliverances wrought “by 
men raised by the Lord.” But the rapid march of 
Sesostris through the unresisting territory, as it might 
exercise no oppression, would demand no deliverance. 
More particularly, if it took place during one of the 
periods of servitude, when masters and slaves bowed 
together beneath the yoke, it would have added no¬ 
thing to the ignominy or burden of slavery. ( Quar¬ 
terly Review, vol. 43, p. 141, seqq .) 

Sestos, a city of Thrace on the shores of the Hel¬ 
lespont, nearly opposite to Abydos, which lay some¬ 
what to the south. From the situation of Sestos it 
was always regarded as a most important city, as it 
commanded in a great measure the narrow channel on 
which it stood. ( Theopomp., ap. Strab., 591.) It 
appears to have been founded at an early period by 
some JEolians. ( Scymnus , ch. 708.) The story of 
Hero and Leander, and still more the passage of the 
vast armament of Xerxes, have rendered Sestos cele¬ 
brated in ancient history. Sestos is said by Herodo¬ 
tus to have been strongly fortified ; and, when besieged 
by the Greek naval force, after the battle of Mycale, 
it made an obstinate defence ; the inhabitants being 
reduced to the necessity of eating the thongs which fast¬ 
ened their beds. The barbarians at length abandoned 
the place, which surrendered to the besiegers. ( Herod ., 
9,115.— Thucyd., 1, 89.) The Athenians, when at the 
height of their power, justly attached the greatest value 
to the possession of Sestos, which enabled them to com¬ 
mand the active trade of the Euxine ; hence they were 
wont to call it the corn-chest of the Piraeus. ( Aristot., 
Rhet., 3, 10, 7.) After the*battle of AEgospotamos, 
Sestos recovered its independence with the rest of 
the Chersonese ; but the Athenians, many years after, 
having resolved to recover that fertile province, sent 
Chares to the Hellespont with a considerable force 
to attempt its conquest. The Sestians were sum¬ 
moned to surrender their town, and, on their refusal, 
were speedily besieged ; after a short resistance the 
place was taken by assault, when Chares barbarously 
caused all the male inhabitants capable of bearing arms 
to be butchered. This severe blow probably caused 
the ruin of the town, as from this period little mention 
of it occurs in history. Strabo, however, speaks of 
Sestos as being a considerable place in his time; he 
observes, that the current which flowed from the shore 
near Sestos greatly facilitated the navigation of ves¬ 


sels from thence, the reverse being the case with those 
sailing from Abydos. (Strab., 591 .—Polyb., 16, 29.) 
Mannert says the site of Sestos is now called Ialowa 
(Geogr., vol. 7, p. 193.— Cramer's Anc. Greece , vol. 
1, p. 328). 

Sethon, a priest of Vulcan, who made himself king 
of Egypt after the death of Anysis. He was attacked 
by the Assyrians, and delivered from this powerful en¬ 
emy by an immense number of rats, which in one 
night gnawed their bowstrings and thongs, so that on 
the morrow their arms were found to be useless. 
From this wonderful circumstance Sethon had a statue 
which represented him with a rat in his hand, with the 
inscription of Whoever fixes his eyes on me, let him be 
pious. — “The Babylonian Talmud,” observes Pri- 
deaux, “states that the destruction made upon the 
army of the Assyrians was executed by lightning, and 
some of the Targums are quoted for saying the same 
thing; but it seems most likely that it was effected 
by bringing on them the hot wind which is frequent in 
those parts, and often, when it lights among a multi¬ 
tude, destroys great numbers of them in a moment, as 
frequently happens to caravans; and the words of 
Isaiah, that God would send a blast against Senache- 
rib, denote also the same thing. Herodotus gives us 
some kind of a disguised account of this deliverance 
from the Assyrians in a fabulous application of it to 
the city of Pelusium instead of Jerusalem, and to Se¬ 
thon the Egyptian instead of Hezekiah.” The learned 
dean then remarks upon the strong confirmation given 
to the account in Scripture by the statement of He¬ 
rodotus, and his mentioning the very name of Sen- 
acherib. (Prideaux's Connexions , vol. 1, p. 23, seqq., 
ed. 1831.) 

Setia, a town of Latium, northeast of Antium and 
north of Circii. It is now Sezza. Its situation on a 
steep and lofty hill is marked by a verse of Lucili- 
us, preserved by Aulus Gellius (16, 9). The wine of 
this town was in considerable repute, and Augustus, 
according to Pliny (14, 6), gave it the preference, as 
being of all kinds the least calculated to injure the 
stomach. We may infer from Statius ( Silv ., 2, 6), 
that it was sometimes poured on the ashes of the weal¬ 
thy dead. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 107.) 

Severus, I. Lucius Septimius, a Roman emperor, 
born at Leptis in Africa, of an equestrian family. 
Upon coming to Rome in early life, he received the * 
benefit of a liberal education, and was subsequently 
raised to the dignity of a senator by the favour of Mar¬ 
cus Aurelius. His youth, it is said, did not escape 
untainted by the impurities that disgraced the capital; 
and on one occasion he was tried for a flagrant crime 
at the tribunal of Didius Julianus, whom he afterward 
deposed and put to death. Having held the usual of¬ 
fices which qualified a candidate for the consular power, 
Severus was intrusted with several military appoint¬ 
ments of great honour and importance. He served in 
Africa, in Spain, and in Gaul; and finally obtainea 
one of the most desirable commands in the empire, 
that, namely, of the legions employed in Pannonia, to 
defend the banks of the Danube against the inroads of 
the barbarian tribes who dwelt beyond it. When the 
news was conveyed to him that Didius Julianus had 
ascended the imperial throne, rendered vacant by the 
assassination of Pertinax, he resolved to seize the op¬ 
portunity which was thereby presented for gratifying the 
ambition which had long been lurking m his bosom. 
The memory of Pertinax was dear to the legions of 
Pannonia, whom he had often led to victory; and 
Severus lost no time in taking advantage of this rever¬ 
ence and affection for the murdered prince. The ar¬ 
dour of the troops which he addressed on this occasion, 
led them to salute their chief on the field by the names of 
emperor and Augustus, and a rapid march soon brought 
him to Rome. Julianus was put to death by a decre,e of 
the senate, Severus ascended the imperial throne, the 

1227 




SEVERUS. 


SEVERUS. 


Praetorian guards, who had murdered Pertinax and sold 
the empire to Didius, were disbanded by the new mon¬ 
arch, and a triumphal pageant witnessed the entrance of 
Severus into the Roman capital. Next followed the 
overthrows of Niger and Albinus, the two competitors 
with Severus for the empire ( vid. Niger and Albinus); 
and these events were succeeded by the death of many 
nobles of Gaul and Spain, and also of twenty-nine sena¬ 
tors of Rome, who were accused of having been the 
abetters of Albinus. Meanwhile the Parthians, under 
Vologeses, availing themselves of the absence of Seve¬ 
rus, had overrun Mesopotamia, and besieged Lsetus, one 
of his lieutenants, in Nisibis. The emperor resolved 
to march against them, and it was his intention to es¬ 
tablish the power of Rome beyond the Euphrates on 
a much firmer foundation than it had enjoyed since the 
days of Trajan. The Parthians retired at his approach ; 
he ascended the Euphrates with his barks, while the 
army marched along its banks ; and having occupied 
Seleucia and Babylon, and sacked Ctesiphon, he car¬ 
ried off 100,000 inhabitants alive, with the women and 
treasures of the court. Leading his army, after this, 
against the Atreni, through the desert of Arabia, his 
foragers were incessantly cut off by the light cavalry 
of the Arabs ; and after lying before Atra twenty days, 
and making an ineffectual attempt to storm, he was 
compelled to raise the siege and retire into Palestine. 
Hence he made the tour through Egypt, visited Mem¬ 
phis, and explored the Nile. His return to Rome was 
celebrated by a combat of 400 wild beasts in the am¬ 
phitheatre, and by the nuptials of his son Bassianus 
Caracalla with the daughter of Plautianus. (Vid. 
Plautianus.) After a short residence in his capital, 
a period marked by increased severity on the part of 
the emperor, and a degree of tyianry rendered the 
more odious from its being the result of a naturally 
suspicious temper, Severus took refuge from the dis¬ 
sensions between his two sons, Geta and Caracalla, 
and from the intrigues of state, in the stirring scenes 
of a foreign war. He passed over into Britain, accom¬ 
panied by his sons, with the view of securing the north¬ 
ern boundaries of the Roman province against the in¬ 
cursions of the Caledonians, and of the other barba¬ 
rous tribes who dwelt between the wastes of Northum¬ 
berland and the Grampian Mountains. He had hoped, 
also, that the love of military glory might exalt the 
ambition of his sons, and chase from their breasts those 
malignant passions, which at once disturbed his do¬ 
mestic repose, and ever and anon threatened to tear 
the commonwealth in pieces. His success against the 
foreign' enemy was much more complete than his 
scheme for restoring fraternal concord. The difficul¬ 
ties which he had to overcome, however, were very 
great, and must have conquered the resolution of a 
mind less firm than that of Severus. He was obliged 
to cut down forests, level mountains, construct bridges 
over rivers, and form roads through fens and marshes. 
His triumph, such as it was, was soon disturbed by 
the restless spirit of the Caledonians, and by the in¬ 
trigues of his ungrateful son Caracalla. This young 
prince, after failing in an attempt to excite the soldiers 
to mutiny, is said to have drawn his own sword against 
the person of his father. Irritated by such conduct, 
on the part of his friends as well as of his enemies, 
Severus allowed himself to fall a prey to the corroding 
feelings of anger and disappointment. He invited his 
son to complete his act of meditated parricide ; while 
in respect to the revolted Britons, who had abused his 
clemency, he expressed, in the words of Homer (II., 
6 , 57 , seqq.), his fixed resolution to exterminate them 
from the face of the earth. But death soon put an 
end to his sufferings and to all his plans for revenge. 
Having returned as far as York (Eboracum), he was 
attacked with a disease which he himself foresaw 
would, at no distant period, terminate his career ; and, 
in the expectation of this event, he called for both his 
1228 


sons, whom he once more exhorted to union and mu¬ 
tual affection. He expired at York, A.D. 21 1 , ir 
the sixty-sixth year of his age, having reigned nearly 
eighteen years.—It is difficult to obtain from the pa¬ 
ges of ancient writers a fair or consistent representa¬ 
tion of the character of Severus. One of the authors 
of the Augustan history applies to him an expression 
which was suggested by the effects which the conduct 
of the first Roman emperor (Augustus) had upon the 
fortunes of his country, namely, that it would have 
been well for the state if he had never been born, or 
had never died. ( Sparlian ., c. 18.) This remark 
has in it, perhaps, more point than truth ; for, though 
Severus was no ordinary man, he nevertheless rather 
followed than directed the general current of events. 
He considered the Roman world as his property, and 
had no sooner secured the possession, than he bestow¬ 
ed the utmost care on the cultivation and improve¬ 
ment of so valuable an acquisition. Judicious law, 
executed with firmness, soon corrected most of the 
abuses which, since the time of Marcus Aurelius, had 
infected every department of the state. Yet in his 
maxims of government he often displayed, not the le¬ 
gislator, but the mere soldier. Harsh, unpitying, and 
suspicious, although generous to those for whom he 
had conceived an attachment, it was perhaps fortunate 
for Rome that the operations of distant warfare en¬ 
gaged his principal thoughts, and employed the great¬ 
er °part of his reign.—His taste for public buildings 
and magnificent spectacles recommended him very 
greatly to the Roman people. He also showed him 
self a patron of literature. The habits of a life spent 
chiefly in the camp were, no doubt, quite incompatible 
with any distinguished progress in science or in let¬ 
ters ; but his taste, notwithstanding, induced him to 
spend his hours of leisure in the study of philosophy. 
He was much devoted, however, to that perversion 
of natural knowledge which was known by the an¬ 
cients under the name of magic. Astrology also came 
in for its share of his attention; and he is said to have 
been determined in his choice of a second wife by 
the discovery that a young Syrian lady, whose name 
was Julia, had been born with a royal nativity.—Se¬ 
verus wrote Memoirs of his own Life, in Latin ; a work 
of which Aurelius Victor praises the style not less 
than the fidelity. But Dio Cassius, who had better 
means for forming a correct judgment, insinuates that 
Severus did not, on all occasions, pay the strictest 
regard to truth, and that, in his attempts to vindicate 
himself from the charge of cruelty, he laid greater 
stress on hidden motives and refined views of policy, 
than on the palpable facts which met the eye of the 
public. ( Spartian ., Vit. Did. Jul. — Id., Vit. Pes- 
cenn. Nig. —■ Id., Vit,. Albin. — Id., Vit. Scv .— Dio 
Cass., lib. 74, seq. — Herodian, 2, 9, 2, &c.)—II. Al¬ 
exander or Marcus Aurelius Alexander Severus. a na¬ 
tive of Syria, and cousin to the Emperor Heliogaba- 
lus. Maesa, grandmother of the latter, perceiving his 
folly and grossly vicious disposition, thought of con¬ 
ciliating the Romans by prevailing upon her dissolute 
grandson to associate Alexander Severus with him¬ 
self in the empire. But Heliogabalus becoming af¬ 
terward jealous of him, and wishing to put him out 
of the way, spread a false report of Alexander’s death, 
whereupon the praetorians broke out into open mutiny, 
Heliogabalus was slain, and Alexander Severus suc¬ 
ceeded to the empire. The new emperor was of a 
character diametrically opposite to that of his prede¬ 
cessor. Among the first acts of his sovereignty, he 
banished all the guilty and abandoned creatures of 
Heliogabalus, restored the authority of the senate, and 
chose his counsellors and ministers of state of the best 
members of that body, and revoked, also, all the per 
secuting edicts that had been issued by his predeces 
sor against the Christians. This just and merciful 
procedure is thought to have been adopted by the ad 




SEX 


S I B 


vice of his mother Mammsea, who maintained an inter¬ 
course with some of the most distinguished Chris¬ 
tians, among others, the celebrated Origen, and who 
was, perhaps, herself a convert. But, however de¬ 
sirous of peace, that he might prosecute his schemes 
of reform, Alexander was soon called to encounter 
the perils and toils of war. A revolution in the East, 
which began in the fourth year of his reign, was pro¬ 
ductive of consequences deeply important to all Asia. 
Ardeshir Babegan, or Artaxerxes, who pretended to be 
descended from the imperial race of ancient Persia, 
raised a rebellion against the Parthian monarchs, the 
Arsacidse. The Parthian dynasty was overturned, 
and the ancient Persian restored ; and with its resto¬ 
ration was renewed its claims to the sovereignty of 
all Asia, which it had formerly possessed. This claim 
gave rise to a war against the Romans, and Alexander 
Severus led his troops into the East, to maintain the 
imperial sway over the disputed territories. In the 
army he displayed the high qualities of a warrior, and 
gained a great victory over the Persians, but was pre¬ 
vented from following up his success in consequence 
of a pestilence breaking out among his troops. The 
Persians, however, were willing to renounce hostili¬ 
ties for a time, and the emperor returned to Rome in 
triumph. Scarcely had Alexander tasted repose from 
his Persian war, when he received intelligence that 
the Germans had crossed the Rhine and were inva¬ 
ding Gaul. He at once set out to oppose this new 
enemy, but he encountered another still more formi¬ 
dable. The armies in Gaul had sunk into a great re¬ 
laxation of the rigid discipline necessary for even their 
own preservation. Alexander began to restore the 
ancient military regulations, to enforce discipline, and 
to reorganize such an army as might be able to keep 
the barbarians in check. The demoralized soldiery 
could not endure the change. A conspiracy was 
formed against him, and the youthful emperor was 
murdered in his tent, in his 29th year, after a short 
but. glorious reign of thirteen years.—It cannot be de¬ 
nied, that much of what rendered the reign of Alexan¬ 
der Severus truly glorious was owing to the counsels 
of his mother Mammaea. Ulpian, too, the friend of 
Papinian, the most rigidly upright man of his time, a 
man more skilled in jurisprudence than any of his con¬ 
temporaries, was the friend of Alexander, and the only 
person with whom he was accustomed to converse in 
strict confidence. This alone may be regarded as the 
young emperor’s highest praise. The character of 
Alexander presented so many points worthy of praise, 
that the writer of his life in the Augustan History 
exhausts all his powers of description in the attempt 
.0 do it justice. ( Lamprid., Vit. Alex. Sev.—Dio 
Cass., lib. 80.— Herodian, 5, 3, 7, seqq.) —III. Sul- 
pitius, an ecclesiastical historian, who died A.D. 420. 
The best of his works is his Historia Sacra, from the 
creation of the world to the consulship of Stilicho, the 
style of which is superior to that of the age in which 
he lived. The best edition is in 2 vols. 4to, Patavii, 
1741.—IV. A celebrated architect, employed, with 
another architect named Celer, in erecting Nero’s 
“Golden House.” {Tacit., Annal., 15, 42. — Vid. 
Nero.) 

Sevo, a ridge of mountains between Norway and 
Sweden. It assumes various names in different parts 
of its course ; as, the Langfield Mountains, the Do- 
frafield Mountains, &c. Some suppose the ridge of 
Sevo to have been the Rhiphfean Mountains of anti¬ 
quity. {Plin., 4, 15.) 

Sexti^e Aqute, now Aix, a town of Gallia Narbon- 
ensis, ar.d the metropolis of Narbonensis Secunda. It 
owed its foundation to Sextius Calvinus, who, in the 
first expedition of the Romans into Gaul, reduced the 
Salluvii or Salyes, in whose territory it was situate. 
It was founded on account of the warm mineral springs 
in its neighbourhood. These springs, however, had 


already lost their warmth, and much of their efficacy 
in the time of Augustus. ( Liv ., Epit., 61.— Strabo, 
.180.) Marius defeated the Teutones near this place. 
( Plat., Vit. Mar. — Floras, 3, 3.) 

SiEYLLiE, certain females supposed to be inspired 
by Heaven, who flourished in different parts of the 
world. According to the received opinion, founded 
on the authority of Varro, they were ten in number: 
the first was the Persian Sibyl, of whom Nicanor, 
one of the historians of Alexander the Great, made 
mention ; the second was the Libyan, alluded to by 
Euripides in the prologue of one of his lost plays, the 
Lamia ; the third was the Delphian , mentioned by 
Chrysippus in his lost work on Divination ; the fourth 
was the Cumcean, in Italy, spoken of by Naevius, and 
other Latin writers, especially Virgil; the fifth was 
the Erylhrcean, whom Apollodorus of Erythrce claimed 
as a native of that city, though some made her to 
have been born in Babylonia. She is said to have 
predicted to the Greeks, when they were sailing for 
Troy, that this city was destined to perish, and that 
Homer would compose falsities in relation to it; the 
sixth was the Samian, of whom Eratosthenes said he 
found mention in the ancient annals of the Samians ; 
the seventh was of Cyma, in iEolis, and was called 
Amalthaia, Demophile, or Herophile ; the eighth was 
the Hellespontine, born at Marpessus, in the Trojan 
territory. According to Heraclides Ponticus, she flour¬ 
ished in the time of Cyrus and Solon ; the ninth was 
the Phrygian, who gave oracles at Ancyra ; the tenth 
was the Tiburtine, at Tibur, in Italy, and was named 
Albunea. {Varro, ap. Lactant., 1,6.— August., Civ. 
D., 18, 23.) The most celebrated one of the whole 
number was the Cumaean, the poetic fable relative to 
whom is as follows : Apollo, having become enam¬ 
oured of her, offered to give her whatever she should 
ask. The Sibyl demanded to live as many years as 
she had grains of sand in her hand, but unfortunately 
forgot to ask for the enjoyment of health and bloom of 
which she was then in possession. The god granted 
her request, but she refused, in return, to listen to his 
suit; and the gift of longevity, therefore, unaccom¬ 
panied by freshness and beauty, proved a burden rather 
than a benefit. She had already lived about 700 years 
when Hlneas came to Italy, and, as some have ima¬ 
gined, she had six centuries more to live before her 
years were as numerous as the grains of sand which 
she had held in her hand. At the expiration of this 
period she was to wither quite away, and become con¬ 
verted into a mere voice. {Ovid, Met., 14, 104.— 
Serv. ad Virg., Mn., 6, 321.) This was the Sibyl 
that accompanied HSneas to the lower world. It was 
usual with her to write her predictions on leaves, and 
place them at the entrance of her cave ; and it re¬ 
quired great caution on the part of those who consult¬ 
ed her to take up these leaves before the wind drove 
them from their places, and, by mingling them together, 
broke the connexion, and rendered their meaning unin¬ 
telligible.—According to a well-known Roman legend, 
one of the Sibyls came to the palace of Tarquin the 
Second with nine volumes, which she offered to sell 
for a very high price. The monarch declined the offer, 
and she immediately disappeared, and burned three of 
the volumes. Returning soon after, she asked the 
same price for the remaining six books ; and, when 
Tarquin again refused to buy them, she burned three 
more, and still persisted in demanding the same sum 
of money for the three that were left. This extraor¬ 
dinary behaviour astonished the monarch, and, with 
the advice of the augurs, he bought the books ; upon 
which the Sibyl immediately disappeared, and was 
never seen after. These books were preserved with 
great care, and called the Sibylline verses. A college 
of priests was appointed to have charge of them, and 
they were consulted with the greatest solemnity when 
the state seemed to be in danger. When the Capitol 

1229 




SIBYLLA. 


S I 0 


was burned in the troubles of Sylla, the Sibylline ver¬ 
ses, which were deposited there, perished in the con¬ 
flagration ; and, to repair the loss which the republic 
seemed to have sustained, commissioners were im¬ 
mediately sent to different parts of Greece to collect 
whatever could be found of the inspired writings of the 
Sibyls.—Thus far the common account. It is gen¬ 
erally conceded, however, that what the ancients tell 
us respecting these prophetesses is all very obscure, 
fabulous, and full of contradictions. It appears that 
the name Sibylla is properly an appellative term, and 
denotes “an inspired person;” and the etymology of 
the word is commonly sought in the /Eolic or Doric 
Stof, for #eof, “a god,” and fiovly, “ advice” or 
“ counsel.” —As regards the final fate of the Sibylline 
verses, some uncertainty prevails. It would seem, how¬ 
ever, according to the best authorities, that the Emper¬ 
or Honorius issued an order, A.D. 399, for destroying 
them ; in pursuance of which, Stilicho burned all these 
prophetic writings, and demolished the temple of Apol¬ 
lo in which they had been deposited. Nevertheless, 
there are still preserved, in eight books of Greek verse, 
a collection of oracles pretended to be Sibylline. Dr. 
Cave, who is well satisfied that this collection is a for¬ 
gery, supposes that a large part of it was composed in 
the time of Hadrian, about A.D. 130 ; that other parts 
were added in the time of the Antonines, and the 
whole completed in the reign of Commodus. Dr. Pri- 
deaux says that this collection must have been made 
between A.D. 138 and 167. Some of the Christian 
fathers, not regading the imposition, have often cited 
the books of the Sibyls in favour of the Christian reli¬ 
gion ; and hence Celsus takes occasion to call the 
Christians Sibyllists. Dr. Lardner states his convic¬ 
tion that the Sybilline oracles quoted by St. Clement 
and others of the Greek fathers are the forgeries of 
some Christian. Bishop Horsley has ably supported 
the opinion, however, that the Sibylline books con¬ 
tained records of prophecies vouchsafed to nations ex¬ 
traneous to the patriarchal families and the Jewish 
commonwealth, before the general defection to idola¬ 
try. Although the books were at last interpolated, 
yet, according to the views taken of the subject by the 
learned bishop, this was too late to throw discredit on 
the confident appeal made to them by Justin.—The 
first ancient writer that makes mention of the Sibyl¬ 
line verses appears to have been Heraclitus. ( Creu - 
zer, ad Cic., N. D., 2, 3, p. 221.) The leading pas¬ 
sage, however, in relation to them, is that of Dionysius 
of Halicarnassus (4, 62). The most ancient Sibylline 
prophecy that has been preserved for us is that men¬ 
tioned by Pausanias (10, 9), and which the Athenians 
applied to the battle of iEgospotamos, because it 
speaks of a fleet destroyed through the fault of its 
commanders. Another Sibylline prediction is found 
in Plutarch ( Vit. Demosth. — Op ., ed. Reiske, vol. 4, 
p. 723), and which relates to a bloody battle on the 
banks of the Thermodon. The Athenians applied this 
oracle to the battle of Chaeronea. Plutarch states that 
there was no river of this name, in his time, near 
Chaeronea, and he conjectures that a small brook, fall¬ 
ing into the Cephissus, is here meant, and which his 
fellow-townsmen called A lyuv ( Hcemon ), or “ the 
bloody” brook. Pausanias (9, 19) speaks of a small 
stream in Boeotia called Thermodon; but he places it 
some distance from Chaeronea.—The history of Rome 
has preserved for us two Sibylline predictions, not, in¬ 
deed, in their literal form, but yet of a very definite 
nature. One of these forbade the Romans to extend 
their sway beyond Mount Taurus. Were it well ascer¬ 
tained that this prohibition, with which we are made 
acquainted by Livy (38, 18), actually formed part of 
the Sibylline books, it would suffice to show that these 
books were not composed for the Romans ; a prophecy 
which fixes Mount Taurus as the eastern limit of an 
empire, could only have been made for the monarchs 
1230 


of Lydia. It is almost superfluous, moreover, to re¬ 
mark, that, with regard to Rome, at least, this predic¬ 
tion was contradicted by subsequent events. The 
second prophecy preserved for us in Roman history is 
the one that was applied to the case of Ptolemy Au- 
letes. This prince having solicited aid from the sen¬ 
ate against his rebellious subjects, the Sibylline books 
were consulted, and the following answer was found 
in them: “ If a king of Egypt come to ask aid of 
you, refuse him not your alliance, but give him' no 
troops.” The turbulence and faction of the day ren¬ 
der it extremely probable that this prediction was a 
mere forgery. What we have remaining under the 
title of Sibylline Oracles were evidently fabricated 
by the pious fraud of the early Christians, ever anx 
ious to discover traces of their faith in pagan mythol¬ 
ogy. St. Clement of Rome himself is not free from 
the suspicion of having participated in the falsifica¬ 
tion, or else of having attached credit too readily to a 
corrupted text. According to St. Justin, this pontiff 
had cited, in his Epistle to the Corinthians, the Sib¬ 
ylline predictions, for the purpose of confirming by 
their means the truths which he was announcing to 
the pagans. ( Quoest. ad Orthod. Resp. ad qucest., 
lxxiv.) A contemporary of St. Clement’s, the histo¬ 
rian Josephus, refers to passages in these same ora¬ 
cles, where allusion is made to the tower of Babel 
(Antiq . Jud., 1 , 5), a circumstance, by-the-way, which 
proves the early falsification ot these predictions. 
Celsus, in express terms, accused the Christians of 
forging the Sibylline collection. ( Orig . adv. Gels., 
lib°7.) The fathers of the Church in the second, and, 
still more frequently, those in the third century, refer 
to passages evidently interpolated, as if they were 
genuine. (Thorlacii Itbri Sibyllistarum, &c., Hafnice, 
1615, 8vo.)—The Sibylline collection, as it exists at 
the present day, is composed of eight books. In the 
first book, the subjects are, the Creation, the Fall, and 
the Deluge. It is apparent not only that this book i? 
taken from Genesis, but also that its author made use 
of the Greek translation of the Septuagint. The 
subject of the second book is the Last Judgment. In 
the third Antichrist is announced. The fourth pre¬ 
dicts the fall of divers monarchies. The fifth is oc¬ 
cupied with the Romans down to Lucius Yerus. In 
the sixth the Baptism of our Saviour by St. John is 
made the subject. The seventh is devoted to the 
Deluge, and the fall of various States and Monarchies. 
The eighth relates to the Last Judgment and the De¬ 
struction of Rome.—A manuscript discovered by 
Maio in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, contains a 
fourteenth book, in 334 verses ; the books, however, 
between it and the eighth are lost. This last-men¬ 
tioned book, the fourteenth, speaks of a destruction of 
Rome so complete that the traveller will find no tra¬ 
ces of the city remaining, and its very name will dis¬ 
appear. The prophetess then goes on to enumerate a 
long series of princes under whom Rome shall be re¬ 
built.—The most complete edition of the Sibylline or¬ 
acles is that of Gallaeus, which appeared at Amster¬ 
dam in 1688-9, 2 vols. 4to, to which must be added 
the 14-th book, published by Maio, at Milan, 1817, 8vo. 
—In relation to the Sibylline oracles generally, con 
suit the remarks of Niebuhr (Rom. Hist., vol. 1, pi 
441, seqq., Cambridge transl.). 

Sicambri or Sygambri, a powerful German tribe, 
whose original seats were around the Rhine, the Sieg, 
and the Lippe. They were dangerous foes to the 
Romans, who finally conquered them under the lead¬ 
ing of Drusus. Tiberius transferred a large part o f 
this people to the left or southern bank of the Rhine, 
where they reappear under the name of Gugerni. 
(Flor., 42, 12.— Cces., B. G., 4, 16.— Dio Cassius, 
54, 32.— Tac., Ann., 2, 26.— Id. ibid., 4, 12.) 

Sicani, an ancient nation of Sicily. (Vid. remarks 
under the article Sicilia.) 




S I c 


SICILIA. 


Sicani a, an ancient name of Sicily. ( Vid. Sicilia.) 

Sicca Venerea, a city of Numidia, on the banks 
Df the river Bagradas, and at some distance from the 
soast. We are first made acquainted with the exist¬ 
ence of this place in the history of the Jugurthine 
war. (Sail., Bell. Jug., 3, 56.) Pliny styles it a 
colony (5, 3); and, though no other writer gives it this 
title, yet, from the way in which it is represented on 
the Peutinger table, as well as from Ptolemy’s having 
selected it for one of his places of astronomical cal¬ 
culation, we see plainly that it must have been an im¬ 
portant city. It received the appellation of Venerea 
from a temple of Venus which it contained, and 
where, in accordance with a well-known Oriental cus¬ 
tom, the young maidens of the place were accustomed 
to prostitute their persons, and thus obtain a dowry for 
marriage. ( Val. Max., 2, 6.) Bochart and De Bros- 
ses derive the name of Sicca from the Punic Succoth 
Benoth (“ tabernacula puellarum”), and make Benoth 
(“ puella”) the origin of the name Venus among the 
Romans.—Shaw regarded the modern Kaff as near 
the site of the ancient city, having found an inscrip¬ 
tion there with the Ordo Siccensium on it. ButMan- 
nert thinks the stone was brought to Kaff from some 
other quarter, a circumstance by no means uncom¬ 
mon in these parts. (Mannert, Geogr., vol. 10, pt. 2, 
p. 322, seqq.) 

SicHiEus. Vid. Acerbas. 

Sicilia, the largest, most fruitful, and populous isl¬ 
and of the Mediterranean, lying to the south of Italy, 
from which it is separated by the Fretum Siculum, 
the strait or faro of Messina, which, in the narrowest 
part, is only two miles wide. Its short distance from 
the mainland of Italy gave rise to an hypothesis, 
among the ancient writers, that it once formed part 
of that country, and was separated from it by a pow¬ 
erful flood. (Compare the authorities cited by Clu- 
ver, Sicil., 1, 1.) This theory, however, is a very 
improbable one, the more particularly as the point 
where the mountains commence on the island by no 
means corresponds with the termination of the chain 
of the Apennines at the promontory of Leucopetra, 
now Capo dell ’ armi, but is many miles to the north. 
It is more natural to suppose, therefore, that, in the 
first formation of our globe, the waters, finding a hol¬ 
low here, poured themselves into it.—The island is a 
three-cornered one, and this shape obtained for it its 
earliest name among the Grecian mariners, T pivaida 
(Trinakia, i. e., “ three-cornered”). This name, and, 
consequently, the acquaintance which the Greeks had 
with the island, must have been of a very early date, 
since Homer was already acquainted with the “ island 
Thrinakia” ( OpivaKiT] vijcog — Od., 12, 135), with the 
herds of Helios that pastured upon it, and places in 
its vicinity the wonders of Scylla and Charybdis, to¬ 
gether with the islands which he terms Plangktee 
(UTiciyKTal), or “ the Wanderers.” The later Greek 
writers, and almost all the Latin authors, make a slight 
alteration in the name, calling it Trinacria, and Pliny 
(3, 8) translates the term in question by Triquetra,, 
a form which frequently appears in the poets. The 
name Trinacria very probably underwent the change 
just alluded to, in order to favour its derivation from 
the Greek rpels (three), and a spa (a promontory), in 
allusion to its three promontories ; though, in fact, 
only one of them, that of Pachynus namely, is de¬ 
serving of the appellation. Homer’s name Qpivaicla, 
on the other hand, or rather that of Tpivaula, is much 
more appropriate, since the root is ukt/, “ a point.”— 
The island of Sicily is indebted for its existence to a 
chain of mountains, which commences in the vicinity 
cf the Fretum Siculum, runs towards the west, keep¬ 
ing constantly at only a small distance from the north¬ 
ern coast, and terminating on the northwestern coast, 
near the modern Capo di St. Vito. The name of 
this range is Montes Nebrodes. A side chain issues 


from it and pursues a southern direction, and out ol 
this .iEtna rears its lofty head. From the same Mon¬ 
tes Nebrodes another chain runs through the middle 
of the island, called Montes Heraei ('Hpala opy), and 
dividing at one time the territories of the Siculi from 
those of the Sicani. (Diod. Sic., 4, 84.)—Sicily has 
no large rivers ; the moderate extent of the island, 
and the mountainous character of the country, pre¬ 
venting this. The only considerable streams are the 
Symaethus and the Himera. The former of these re 
ceives most of the small rivers that flow from the 
eastern side of the Heraean Mountains : the Himera 
also is swelled by numerous smaller streams in its 
course through the island.—A country like Sicily, ly¬ 
ing between the 36th and 38th parallels of latitude, 
and, consequently, belonging to the southernmost re¬ 
gions of Europe, and which is well supplied with 
streams of water from its numerous mountain chains, 
must, of course, be a fertile one. Such, indeed, was 
the character of the island throughout all antiquity ; 
and the Romans, while they regarded it as one of the 
granaries of the capital, placed it, in point of product¬ 
iveness, by the side of Italy itself, or rather regarded 
it as a portion of that country. The staple of Sicily 
was its excellent wheat. The Romans found it 
growing wild in the extensive fields of Leontini, and, 
when cultivated, it yielded a hundred fold : that which 
grew in the plains of Enna was regarded as decidedly 
the best. It was natural enough, therefore, in the 
early inhabitants of the island to regard it as the pa- 
rent-country of grain ; and they had a deity among 
them whom they considered as the patroness of fertility, 
and the discoverer of agriculture to man. In this god¬ 
dess the Greeks recognised their Ceres, and they made 
Minerva, Diana, and Proserpina to have spent their 
youth here, and the last mentioned of the three to have 
been carried off by Pluto from the rich fields of Enna. 
—It has been already remarked, that the Romans re¬ 
garded Sicily as one of their granaries. They obtained 
from it, even at an early period, the necessary supplies 
when their city was suffering from scarcity. King 
Hiero II., also, frequently bestowed very acceptable 
presents of grain on these powerful neighbours of his, 
and how many and extensive demands were made by 
the Romans in later days on the resources of the island, 
after it had fallen by right of conquest into their hands, 
will plainly appear from a passage of Cicero (in Verr. t 
2, 2).—The earliest inhabitants of Sicily, accord¬ 
ing to the Grecian writers, were the Cyclopes and 
Lasstrygones. Homer, it seems, had spoken of these 
giant-races, and subsequent writers could find no more 
probable place for their abode than an island wher* 
the strange phenomenon presented by iEtna seemed 
to point to an equally strange race of inhabitants. 
Homer, it is true, had not made these two races neigh¬ 
bours to each other, nor had he placed them both b 
his island of Thrinakia ; the expounders of his my¬ 
thology, however, regardless of geographical difficul¬ 
ties, considered the point as accurately settled, and 
here, therefore, according to them, dwelled the Cy¬ 
clopes and Laestrygones. Thucydides alone (6, 2), 
after mentioning the common tradition, honestly con 
fesses that he cannot tell what has become of these 
giant-races. Other writers, however, were better in 
formed, it seems, and made the Cyclopes disappeai 
from view in the bowels of .Etna, and amid the cav 
erns of the Lipari isles.—From actual inquiry, the 
Greeks became acquainted with the fact of the exist 
ence of two early tribes in this island, the Sicani and 
Siculi. They knew, also, that the former of these 
lived at a much earlier period than the latter; bu< 
they were divided in their opinions as to the origin of 
the more ancient people. The most of them, witV 
Thucydides at their head (6, 2), derive the Sican* 
from Iberia, and make them to have been driven b) 
the Ligyes (Ligures) from their original seats in tha 




SIC1UA. 


SICILIA. 


country, around the river Sicanus, to the island which, 
Lorn them, received the name of Sicania. But, on a 
more intimate acquaintance with Iberia, the Creeks 
ound no river there of the name of Sicanus ; they 
Iherefore conceived it to be identical with the Sicoris, 
a tributary of the Iberus. No Ligurians, however, 
ever settled in Spain, and therefore no Sicani could 
ever have been driven by them from that country. 
The only solution of this difficulty Is, that as the Ibe¬ 
rians settled also along the coast of Gaul, the Sicanus 
was a river of southern Gaul, which subsequently 
changed its name, and could not afterward be identified. 
But another difficulty presents itself. In what way 
did the Sicani, after being thus expelled, reach the isl¬ 
and of Sicily 1 The nearest and readiest route was 
by sea ; but where could these rude children of nature 
have obtained a fleet 1 Did they proceed by land 1 
This path would be, if possible, still more arduous, as 
they would have to cut their way through various 
branches of their very conquerors, the Ligures, and 
then encounter many valiant tribes in central and 
southern Italy. Virgil seems to have been startled by 
the difficulties of this hypothesis, since he makes the 
Sicani inhabitants of Latium, or, rather, with the li¬ 
cense of a poet, confounds them with the Siculi. (Mn., 
7, 795 ; 8, 342.) Other writers, however, whom Di¬ 
odorus Siculus (5, 2) considers most worthy of reli¬ 
ance, declared themselves against this wandering of 
the Sicani, and made them an indigenous race in Sici¬ 
ly. The chief argument in favour of this position was 
deduced from the traditions of the people themselves, 
who laid claim to the title of Autochthones. (Thu- 
cyd., 6, 2.) This opinion found a warm supporter in 
Timaeus, as we are informed by Diodorus (5, 6).—To 
these primitive inhabitants came the Siculi. These 
were an Italian race from Latium ( vid . Siculi), and, 
previously to their settlement in Sicily, they had es-^ 
tablished themselves, for a time, among the Morgetes, 
in what is now called Calabria. On their crossing 
over into the island, the Siculi took possession of the 
country in the vicinity of ./Etna. They met with no 
opposition at first from the Sicani, for that people had 
long before been driven away by an eruption from the 
mountain, and had fled to the western parts of the isl¬ 
and. ( Diod ., 5, 6.) As the Siculi, however, extend¬ 
ed themselves to the west, they could not fail eventu¬ 
ally of coming in contact with the Sicani. Wars en¬ 
sued, until they regulated by treaty their respective 
limits. (Diod., 5,6.) According to Thucydides, how¬ 
ever, the Siculi defeated in battle the Sicani, and 
drove and confined them to the southern and western 
parts of the island.—Sicily received accessions also to 
the number of its inhabitants from other sources. I. 
The Cretans ; these, according to traditions half his¬ 
torical and half mythological, came to this island along 
with Minos, when in pursuit of Dsedalus. After the 
death of their king, they settled in the territories of 
Cocalus, a monarch of the Sicani. They subsequent¬ 
ly became blended with the Siculi. 2. The Elymi. 
According to Thucydides, a number of Trojans es¬ 
caping to Sicily, and settling in the country bordering 
on the Sicani, they both together obtained the name of 
Elymi. 3. The Phoenicians, too. formed settlements 
around the whole of Sicily, taking in the promontories 
and little islands adjacent. These settlements were 
jaot, however, meant as colonies, but only commercial 
stations. After, however, the Greeks had come over 
in great numbers, they abandoned the greater part of 
their settlements, and drew together the rest, occu¬ 
pying Motya, Soloeis, and Panormus, near the Elymi, 
both in reliance on their assistance, and because from 
this part of Sicily was the shortest passage to Carthage. 
(Thuryd., 6, 2.) An account of the Grecian settle¬ 
ments is given in Thucydides (6, 3), and ,hey had al¬ 
ready attained a flourishing maturity before anew pow¬ 
er developed itself and entered the lists with them for 
1232 


the possession of the island. This was Carthage, and 
the first serious demonstration was made when Xerx¬ 
es was prosecuting his invasion of Greece. I he 
Carthaginians, who, as Diodorus asserts, were in league 
with the Persian monarch, landed with a large army at 
Panormus, and threatened Himera. The pretext for 
this movement on the part of Carthage was furnished 
by a quarrel with Theron, tyrant of Agrigentum ; and, 
according to the usual practice of the Carthaginians, 
the armament had been strengthened from many bar¬ 
barous nations, the Tuscan fleet being also joined to it 
by treaty. But Gelon, monarch of Syracuse, marched 
to the assistance of Theron, leaving the command ot 
his fleet to his brother Hiero ; and Hiero defeated 
the Carthaginian and Tuscan fleet, while, about the 
same time, the Carthaginian land force was complete¬ 
ly broken at Himera by the united armies of Syracuse 
and Acragas. It is said by some authors that Ge- 
lon’s victory took place on the same day with the bat¬ 
tle of Salamis. No farther conquest was attempted 
in Sicily by Carthage for many years after, though 
she still remained in possession of the old Phoenician 
settlements, and could therefore make a descent on 
the island whenever she might again feel inclined. It 
was not till after the termination of the contest be¬ 
tween the Athenians and Syracusans, when the latter, 
notwithstanding their success, remained greatly enfee¬ 
bled by the struggle, that Carthage again sought an op¬ 
portunity of invading the island. This was soon af¬ 
forded by the disputes between Selinus and HCgesta; 
the Carthaginians landed at Motya, took Selinus, and 
established themselves over the entire western half of 
Sicily. They would have spread themselves farther, 
had it not been for the power of Dionysius of Syra¬ 
cuse ; and to this man, with all his tyrannical quali¬ 
ties, the Greeks of Sicily were mainly indebted for 
their deliverance from the yoke of Carthage. He was 
often defeated, it is true, but as often found the means 
of withstanding his opponents anew ; until at last it 
was agreed between the contending parties that the 
river Himera should form the limit between the Syr¬ 
acusan and Grecian territories on the east, and the 
Carthaginian dependencies on the west. The peace 
that ensued was, however, of short duration, and Car¬ 
thage sought every opportunity of advancing her pow¬ 
er, afforded by the internal dissensions of the Greeks, 
as often as these occurred. From time to time, it is 
true, there arose at Syracuse men of eminent abilities, 
such as a Timoleon and an Agathocles, who kept in 
check the aspiring power of Carthage ; yet it was but 
too apparent that this power was gaining a decided 
ascendancy, when the Romans, alarmed at the move¬ 
ments of so powerful a neighbour, were induced to 
interfere (vid. Messana), and, after a protracted strug¬ 
gle of twenty-four years, succeeded in making them¬ 
selves masters of the whole of Sicily. (Vid. Pa- 
nicum Bellum.) It must not be supposed, how¬ 
ever, that., during these contests of the Carthaginians 
with the Greeks in the first instance, and afterward 
of the former with the Romans, the early inhabitants 
of the country were merely idle spectators. In what 
relation the Sicani, in the western part of the island, 
stood to the Greeks, we have no means of ascertain¬ 
ing. When the Carthaginians appeared there they 
submitted without a struggle ; though at times, as Syr¬ 
acusan leaders penetrated into their territories, they 
assumed a brief attitude of independence. The eitua 
tion of the Siculi, in the eastern quarter of the island, 
was different from this. They acknowledged the sway 
of Gelon, and also of his two brothers ; but when, on 
the expulsion of the latter of these, intestine dissen¬ 
sions arose in Syracuse, an individual of commanding 
character among the Siculi, by name Duketius, suc¬ 
ceeded in forming a union among the petty states of 
his countrymen, and placed himself at the head of the 
confederacy. The effort was, however, only short'' 



IS I c 


S I c 


lived. After some successes he was competed to 
surrender to the Syracusans, who sent him to Corinth 
in exile. Here, however, he soon raised new forces, 
returned to Sicily, and, landing on the northern coast, 
at a point where the Grecian arms had not reached, 
founded there a city called Calacta. Death frustrated 
the schemes which he had again formed for the union 
of the Siculi, and the latter were reduced once more 
beneath the sway of Syracuse : but they did not long 
continue in this state of forced obedience. We find 
them appearing as the enemies of the Syracusans at 
the time of the Athenian expedition ; and also as the 
allies of the Carthaginians when the latter had be¬ 
gun to establish themselves in the island. Dionysius, 
however, again reduced them ; and Timoleon after¬ 
ward restored to them their freedom, and they con¬ 
tinued for some time subsequently either in the en¬ 
joyment of a brief independence, or subject to that 
power which chanced to have the ascendancy in the 
island, whether Syracusan or Carthaginian, until the 
whole of Sicily fell into the hands of the Romans. 
Under this new power the cities on the coast of the 
island were seriously injuied, both because the Ro¬ 
man policy was not very favourable to commerce, 
and the conquerors were unwilling that the Greek 
colonies in Sicily should again become powerful. 
With some exceptions, however, the Sicilian cities 
were allowed the enjoyment of their civil rights as far 
as regarded the form and administration of their gov¬ 
ernments, and hence the mention so often made by 
Cicero of a Senatus Populusque in many cities of the 
island. Hence, too, the power they enjoyed of regu¬ 
lating their own coinage. As, however, collisions 
arose between this conceded power and the magis¬ 
trates sent to govern them from Rome, we read of a 
commission of ten individuals, at the head of which 
was the prajtor Publius Rutilius, by whom a perma¬ 
nent form of government was devised, which the Si¬ 
cilians ever after regarded as their palladium against 
the tyranny of Roman magistrates. At a later pe¬ 
riod, Julius Caesar extended to the whole island the 
Jus Latii , and, by the last will of the dictator, as An¬ 
tony pretended, though brought about, in fact, by a 
iarge sum of money paid to the latter, all the inhabi¬ 
tants of Sicily were admitted to the rights of Roman 
citizens. ( Cic., Ep. ad Att., 14, 12.) It would seem, 
however, to have been a personal privilege, and not to 
have extended to their lands, since we find Augustus 
establishing in the island the five Roman colonies of 
Messana, Tauromenium, Catana, Syracuse, and Ther¬ 
mo. {Plin., 1,38. -Dio Cass., 54, 7.) Strabo names 
also as a Roman colony the city of Panormus. ( Stra¬ 
bo , 272.— Mannert, Geogr., voi. 9, pt. 2, p. 235, seqq.) 
—The Romans remained in possession of Sicily until 
Genseric, king of the Vandals, conquered it in the 
fifth century of our era. Belisarius, Justinian's gen¬ 
eral, drove out the Vandals, A.D. 535, and it remained 
m the hands of the Greek emperors nearly three cen¬ 
turies, when it was taken by the Saracens, A.D. 827. 
The Normans, who ruled in Naples, conquered Sicily 
A.D. 1072, and received it from the pope as a papal 
fief. Roger, a powerful Norman prince, took the title 
of King of Sicily in 1102, and united the island with 
the kingdom of Naples, under the name of the King¬ 
dom of the two Sicilies. 

Sicinius, Dentatus L., a tribune of Rome, cele¬ 
brated for his valour, and the honours he obtained in 
the field of battle during the period of 40 years, in 
which he was engaged in the Roman armies. He was 
present in 120 battles ; obtained 14 civic crowns ; 3 
mural crowns ; 8 crowns of gold; 180 gold chains 
{torques); 160 bracelets ( armillce ) ; 18 spears ( hastcz 
pur'E); 25 sets of horse-trappings ; and all as the re¬ 
ward of his extraordinary valour and services. He 
could show the scars of 40 wounds which he had re¬ 
ceived, all in the breast. {Val. Max., 3, 2, 24.) Dio- 
7 R 


nysius of Halicarnassus, who calls him Siccius, states 
that he gave great offence subsequently to Appius 
Claudius, the decemvir, by the freedom of his re¬ 
marks relative to the incapacity of the Roman leaders 
who were at that time carrying on war against the en¬ 
emy ; and that Appius, pretending to coincide with 
him in his views, induced Siccius to go as legatus to 
the Roman camp near Crustumeria. When the bravo 
man had reached the camp of his countrymen, tho 
generals there prevailed upon him to take the com 
mand ; and then, upon his objecting to the site of theii 
camp, as being in their own territory, not that of the 
enemy, they begged him to select a new spot for an 
encampment. A body of their immediate partisans, 
to the number of 100 men, were sent with him, on his 
setting out for this purpose, as a guard for his person, 
who attacked, and, after a valiant resistance on his part, 
slew him on the route, in accordance with previous in¬ 
structions, and then brought back word that he had 
been slain by the enemy. The falsehood, however, 
was soon discovered, and the army gave Siccius a 
splendid burial. {Dion. Hal., 11, 37.) 

Sicoris, a river of Spain, now the Segre, rising in 
the Pyrenees, and running into the Iberus, after flow¬ 
ing by the city ofllerda. It divided the territories of 
the Uergetae from those of the Lacetani. Some writers 
regard it as the Sicanus of Thucydides. {Cces., B. C., 
1, A0.—Plin., 3, 3.) 

Siculi, an ancient nation, who in very early times 
dwelt in Latium and about the Tiber, and, indeed, upon 
the site of Rome itself. All this is confirmed by Latin 
and CEnotrian traditions. {Dion. Hal., 1, 9.— Id., 2, 
1.— Varro, L. L ., 4, 10.— Antiochus, ap. Dion. Hal., 

1, 73.) A part of the town of Tibur bore the name 
of Sicelion (Sicelium ) in the time of Dionysius (1, 
16). The arguments of Niebuhr lead to the conclu¬ 
sion that these Siculi were the Pelasgians of Latium. 
They were eventually driven out by an indigenous 
race, highlanders of the Apennines, who descended 
upon them from the mountains, and from the basins 
of the Nar and Velinus. Moving south after this dis- 
lodgment, they eventually crossed over into Sicily 
then named Sicania, and gave its new and latest ap¬ 
pellation to that island. ( Vid. Sicilia, and Roma.— 
Malden’s History of Rome, p. 109.) 

Siculum Fretum, the straits that separated an¬ 
cient Italy from Sicily ; now the Straits of Messina, 
or Faro di Messina. The name was applied in strict 
ness to that part of the strait which lay between the 
Columna Rhegina on the Italian side, and a similar 
column or tower on the promontory of Pelorum. Tho 
Columna Rhegina marked the termination of the con¬ 
sular road leading to the south of Italy. The most 
prevalent and the best grounded opinion seems to be 
that which identifies this spot with the modern la Ca - 
tona. The Sicilian strait was generally supposed by 
the ancients to have been formed by a sudden disrup¬ 
tion of the island from the mainland. But consult 
remarks at the commencement of the article Sicilia. 
{Mela, 2, 4.— Plin., 3, 5.— Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 

2, p. 427.) 

Sicyon, a city of Greece, in the territory of Sicyo 
nia, northwest of Corinth. Few cities of Greece could 
boast of so high antiquity, since it already existed 
under the names of HSgialea and Mecone long before 
the arrival of Pelops in the peninsula. ( Strabo, 382. 
— Pausan., 2, 6.— Hesiod, Theog., 537.) Homer 
represents Sicyon as forming part of the kingdom of 
Mycenffi, with the whole of Achaia. {Ib., 2, 572.). 
Pausanias and other genealogists have handed down, 
to us a long list of the kings of Sicyon, from HSgialus, 
its founder, to the conquest of the city by the Dorians 
and Heraclidae, from which period it became subject 
to Argos. {Pausan., 2, 6.— Euseb., Chron — Clem. 
Alex, Strom , 1, 321.) Its population was then di¬ 
vided into four tribes, named Hyllus, Pamphyli, Dv- 

1233 



SICYON. 


SID 


tnantae, and iEgialus, a classification introduced by the 
Dorians, and adopted, as we learn from Herodotus (5, 
68), by the Argives. How long a connexion subsisted 
between the two states we are not informed ; but it 
appears that when Clisthenes became tyrant of Sicyon, 
they were independent of each other, since Herodotus 
relates that, while at war with Argos, he changed the 
names of the Sicyonian tribes, which were Dorian, that 
they might not be the same as those of the adverse 
city ; and in order to ridicule the Sicyonians, the his¬ 
torian adds that he named them afresh, after such an¬ 
imals as pigs and asses; sixty years after his death 
the former appellations were, however, restored. Si¬ 
cyon continued under the dominion of tyrants for the 
space of one hundred years ; such being the mildness 
of their rule, and their observance of the existing laws, 
that the people gladly beheld the crown thus transmit¬ 
ted from one generation to another. ( Aristot ., Polit., 

5, 12 .—Strab., 382.) It appears, however, from Thu¬ 
cydides, that, at the time of the Peloponnesian war, it 
had been changed to an aristocracy. In that contest, 
the Sicyonians, from their Dorian origin, naturally es¬ 
poused the cause of Sparta, and the maritime situa¬ 
tion of their country not unfrequently exposed it to 
the ravages of the naval force of Athens. ( Xen., 

Hist. Gr ., 4, 4, 7.) After the battle of Leuctra, we 
learn from Xenophon that Sicyon once more became 
subject to a despotic government, of which Euphron, 
one of its principal citizens, had placed himself at the 
head, with the assistance of the Argives and Arcadi¬ 
ans. {Xen., Hist. Gr ., 7, 1, 32.) His reign, howev¬ 
er, was not of long duration, he being waylaid at 
Thebes, whither he went to conciliate the favour of 
that power, by a party of Sicyonian exiles, and mur¬ 
dered in the very citadel. ( Xcn., Hist. Gr ., 7, 3, 4.) 
—On the death of Alexander the Great, Sicyon fell 
into the hands of Alexander, son of Polysperchon; but, 
on his being assassinated, a tumult ensued, in which 
the inhabitants of the city attempted to regain their 
liberty. Such, however, was the courage and firmness 
displayed by Cratesipolis, his wife, that they were 
finally overpowered. Not long after this event, De¬ 
metrius Poliorcetes made himself master of Sicyon, 
and, having persuaded the inhabitants to retire to the 
acropolis, he levelled to the ground all the lower part 
of the city which connected the citadel with the port. 
A new tower was then built, to which the name of 
Demetrius was given. This, as Strabo reports, was 
placed on a fortified hill dedicated to Ceres, and dis¬ 
tant about 12 or 20 stadia from the sea. {Strab., 382. 
—Compare Pausan., 2, 7.) The change which was 
thus effected in the situation of this city does not ap¬ 
pear to have produced any alteration in the character 
and political sentiments of the people. For many 
years after they still continued to be governed by a 
succession of tyrants, until Aratus united it to the 
Achaean league. By the great abilities of this its dis¬ 
tinguished citizen, Sicyon was raised to a high rank 
among the other Achaean states, and, being already 
celebrated as the first school of painting in Greece, 
continued to flourish under his auspices in the cultiva¬ 
tion of all the finest arts ; it being said, as Plutarch 
reports, that the beauty of the ancient style had there 
alone been preserved pure and uncorrupted. {Plut., 
Vit. Arat. — Strabo, 282. — Plin., 35, 12.) Aratus 
died at an advanced age, after an active and glorious 
life, not without suspicion of having been poisoned by 
order of Philip, king of Macedon. He was interred at 
Sicyon with great pomp, and a splendid monument 
was erected to him as the deliverer of the city. 
{Plut., Vit. Arat. — Pausan., 2, 8.) After the disso¬ 
lution of the Achaean league, little is known of Sicyon; 
it is evident, however, that it existed in the time of 
Pausanias, from the number of remarkable edifices and 
monuments which he enumerates within its walls ; 
though he allows that it had greatly suffered from va- 
1234 i 


rious ‘calamities, but especially from an earthquake, 
which nearly reduced it to desolation. The ruins of 
this once great and flourishing city are still to be seen 
near the small village of Basihco. Dr. Clarke informs 
us that these remains of ancient magnificence are still 
considerable, and in some instances exist in such a 
state of preservation, that it is evident the buildings oi 
the city must either have survived the earthquake tc 
which Pausanias alludes, or have been constructed at 
some later period. In this number is the theatre, 
which that traveller considers as the finest and most 
perfect structure of the kind in all Greece. {Clarke's 
Travels, vol. 6, p. 553, Lond. cd .) Sir W. Gell re¬ 
ports, that “ Basilico is a village of fifty houses, situ¬ 
ated in the angle of a little rocky ascent, along which 
ran the walls of Sicyon. This city was in shape trian¬ 
gular, and placed upon a high flat, overlooking the 
plain, about an hour from the sea, where is a great tu¬ 
mulus on the shore. On the highest angle of Sicyon 
was the citadel.” {Itin. of the Morea, p. 15. — Dod- 
well, Tour, vol. 2, p. 294. — Cramer's Anc. Greece , 
vol. 3, p. 46, seqq.) —Sicyonian almonds are mention¬ 
ed by Athenseus (8, p. 349, c.), and are supposed to 
have been of a softer shell than ordinary. {Casaub., 
ad loc.) We read also of the Sicyonian shoes (2 lkv- 
uvia), which were very celebrated, and were worn by 
the luxurious and effeminate in other countries. {Athe- 
noeus, 4, p. 155, c.) 

Sicyonia, the territory of Sicyon, on the Sinus 
Corinthiacus, west of Corinthia, and separated from if 
by the small river Nemea. ( Strabo, 382. Vid. Si¬ 
cyon.) 

Side, I. a city of Pamphylia, west of the river Me- 
las, and lying on the Chelidonian bay. It was found 
ed by the Cumseans of 2Eolis. {Scylax, Peripl., p 

40._ Strab., 667.) Arrian relates, that the Sidetaj, 

soon after their settlement, forgot the Greek language, 
and spoke a barbarous tongue peculiar to themselves. 
It surrendered to Alexander in his march through Pam- 
phylia. {Arrian, Exp. Alex., 1, 26.) Side, many 
years after, was the scene of a naval engagement be 
tween the fleet of Antiochus, commanded by Hannibal, 
and that of the Rhodians, in which, after a severe 
contest, the former was defeated. {Livy, 37, 23, 
seqq.) When the pirates of Asia Minor had attained 
to that degree of audacity and power which rendered 
them so formidable, we learn from Strabo that Side 
became their principal harbour, as well as the market¬ 
place where they disposed of their prisoners by auc . 
tion. {Strabo, 664.) Side was still a considerable 
town under the emperors; and, when a division was 
made of the province into two parts, it became the 
metropolis of Pamphylia Prima. {Hierocl, p. 682 — 
Consil. Const., 2, p. 240.) Minerva was the deity 
principally worshipped here.—An interesting account 
of the ruins in this place is to be found in Captain 
Beaufort’s valuable work, with an accurate plan. “It 
stands,” observes this writer, “ on a low peninsula, 
and was surrounded by walls. The theatre appears 
like a lofty acropolis rising from the centre of the 
town, and is by far the largest and best preserved of 
any that came under our observation in Asia Minor. 
The harbour consisted of two small moles, connected 
with the quay and principal sea-gate. At the extrem 
ity of the peninsula were two artificial harbours for 
larger craft. Both are now almost filled with sand 
and stones, which have been borne in by the swell.” 
{Beaufort's Karamania, p. 146, seqq.) Mr. Fellows, 
however, says, that the ruins of Side are inferior in 
scale, date, and age to any that he had previously 
seen. The Greek style is scarcely to be traced in 
any of the ruins ; but the Roman is visible in every 
part. In few buildings except the theatre are the 
stones even hewn, the cement being wholly trusted to 
for their support. “ The glowing colours,” continues 
Mr. Fellows, “ in which this town is described in the 




S 1 D 


S I I) 


4 Modern Traveller,’ as quoted from Captain Beaufort’s 
admirable survey, show how essential it is to know 
upon what standard a description is formed. It would 
have given Captain Beaufort much pleasure to have 
gone inland for a few miles, and to have seen the the¬ 
atres and towns in perfect preservation as compared 
with Side, and of so much finer architecture. From 
the account which he gives, I was led to expect that 
this would form the climax of the many cities of Asia 
Minor, but I found its remains among the least inter¬ 
esting.” ( Fellows' Journal of an Excursion in Asia 
Minor in 1838, p. 203, seq.) —In the middle ages the 
sit') of this place bore the name of Scandelor or Can- 
deloro, but it is now commonly called Esky Adalia. 
( Cramer's Asia Minor , vol. 2, p. 283.)—II. A town 
of Pontus, to the east of the mouth of the Thermodon, 
and giving name to the adjacent plain (Sidene). The 
river Sidin, which flows at the present day in this same 
quarter, recalls the ancient name of the town. ( Cra¬ 
mer's Asia Minor , vol. 1, p. 271.) 

Sidicinum, or, more correctly, Teanum Sidicinum, 
a town of the Sidicini, in Campania. ( Vid. Teanum.) 
—The territory of the Sidicini was situate to the east 
of that of the Aurunci. They were once apparently 
an independent people, but included afterward under 
the common name of Campani. This nation was of 
Oscan origin, and powerful enough to contend with 
the neighbouring Samnites, and even to afford em¬ 
ployment to a large Roman force. The period of 
their reduction by the Romans is not mentioned. 
( Cramer's Ancient Italy , vol. 2, p. 193.) 

S I'd on, in Scripture Tzidon, the oldest and most 
powerful city of Phoenicia, five geographical miles 
north of Tyrus, on the seacoast. It is supposed to 
Lave been founded by Sidon, the eldest son of Canaan, 
which will carry up its origin to about 2000 years be¬ 
fore Christ. {Gen., 10,15.— Rosenm. ad Gen., 1. c. — 
Bochart, Geogr. Sacr., 4, 35.) But if it was founded 
by Sidon, his descendants were driven out by a body 
of Phoenician colonists, most probably, who are sup¬ 
posed either to have given it its name, or to have re¬ 
tained the old one in compliment to their god Siton or 
JDagon. Justin says that the name Sidon had refer¬ 
ence to the abundance of fish in this quarter {nam pis- 
cem Phcenices Sidon vocant," 68, 3), an opinion in 
which Bochart concurs, who understands by “ Sidon, 
the eldest son of Canaan,” merely the progenitor of 
the Sidonians and the founder of Sidon, whatever his 
individual name may have been.—The inhabitants of 
Sidon appear to have early acquired a pre-eminence 
in arts, manufactures, and commerce ; and from their 
superior skill in hewing timber (by which must be un¬ 
derstood their cutting it out and preparing it for build¬ 
ing, as well as the mere act of felling it), Sidonian 
workmen were hired by Solomon to prepare the wood 
for the building of his Temple. The Sidonians are 
said to have been the first manufacturers of glass, and 
Homer often speaks of them as excelling in many use¬ 
ful and ingenious arts, giving them the title of ixolv- 
daidaTiOL. {II., 23, 742.) Add to this, they were at 
a very early period distinguished for their commerce 
and their skill in maritime affairs. The natural result 
of these advantages to Sidon was a high degree of 
wealth and prosperity; and, content with the riches 
which their trade and manufactures brought them, 
they lived in ease and luxury, trusting the defence of 
their city and property, like the Tyrians after them, to 
hired troops; so that to live in ease and security is 
said in Scripture to live after the manner of the Sido¬ 
nians. In all these respects, however, Sidon was to¬ 
tally eclipsed by Tyre, at first her colony and after¬ 
ward her rival. The more enterprising inhabitants of 
this latter city pushed their commercial dealing to the 
extremities of the known world ; raised their city to a 
rank in power and opulence before unknown, and con¬ 
verted it into a luxurious metropolis, and the empori¬ 


um of the produce of all nations. — Sidon, however, 
under her own kings, continued to enjoy a consider¬ 
able degree of commercial prosperity. From Joshua 
we learn that Sidon was rich and powerful when the 
Israelites took possession of Canaan ; and St. Jerome 
states that it fell to the lot of the tribe of Asher. In 
the year 1015 B.C. Sidon was dependant on Tyre, but 
in 720 it shook off the yoke, and surrendered to Salma¬ 
nazar when he entered Phoenicia. When the Persians 
became masters of this city in the reign of Cyrus, 
they permitted the Sidonians to have lungs of their 
own. Sidon was ruined in the year 351 B.C. by 
Ochus, king of Persia. When the inhabitants saw 
the enemy in the city, they shut themselves up in their 
houses with their wives and children, and perished in 
the flames of the place. According to Diodorus Sicu¬ 
lus, those Sidonians who were absent from the city at 
the time, returned and rebuilt it after the Persian 
forces were withdrawn. Sidon afterward passed into 
the hands of the Macedonians, and, lastly, into those 
of the Romans. After the Roman it fell under the 
Saracen power, the Seljukian Turks, and the sultan 
of Egypt ; who, in A.D. 1289, that they might never 
more afford shelter to the Christians, destroyed both it 
and Tyre. But it again revived, and has ever since 
been in the possession of the Ottoman Turks. Sidon, 
at present called Saide, is still a considerable trading 
town, and the chief mart for Damascus and upper 
Syria; but the port is nearly choked up with sand. 
Though presenting an imposing appearance at a dis¬ 
tance, as it rises from the water’s edge, it is, like all 
Turkish towns, ill-built and dirty, and full of ruins ; 
having still discoverable without the walls some frag¬ 
ments of columns, and other remains of the ancient 
city. Mr. Conner makes the number of inhabitants 
15,000 ; of whom 2000 are Christians, chiefly Maro- 
nites, and 400 Jews, who have one synagogue. They 
are chiefly employed in spinning cotton ; which, with 
some silk, and boots and shoes, or slippers, or morocco 
leather, form their articles of commerce. {Mansford’s 
Scripture Gazetteer, p. 438, seqq .) 

Sidoniorum Insulae, islands in the Persian Gulf, 
supposed to be the same with the Sidodona of Arrian. 
{Vincent's Commerce of the Ancients, vol. 1, p. 358.— 
Bischoff und Moller, Worterb. der Geogr., p. 916.) 

Sidonius Afollinaris, a Christian poet and writer. 
He was a native of Gaul, in which country his father 
and grandfather had exercised the functions of prasto 
rian prefect, and was born at Lugdunum {Lyons) about 
438 A.D. He received a very finished education, and 
was well acquainted with all the sciences known in 
his time; but poetry was his favourite occupation. 
He married Papianilla, daughter of the consul FI. 
Avitus, who in 455 was named emperor. Sidonius 
accompanied his father-in-law to Rome, and there pro¬ 
nounced, on the first day of the ensuing year, a poeti¬ 
cal panegyric in honour of the new monarch, who rec¬ 
ompensed his talent by appointing him senator and 
prefect of Rome, and raising a statue to him in the li¬ 
brary of Trajan’s forum. Soon after, Ricimer, that 
Frank who enjoyed at Rome a much greater power 
than the emperor himself, deposed Avitus, and named 
Majorianus in his stead. Sidonius was present in the 
battle in which his father-in-law lost his life. He 
then retired to Lyons, and fell with this city into the 
hands of the conqueror, who treated him so well, that, 
in the following year, Sidonius pronounced a eulogi- 
um on this emperor, and was honoured with the title 
of count {comes). Under the reign of Severus, and 
during the interregnum which succeeded his death.. 
Sidonius retired once more to Gaul, and settled in the 
province which afterward bore the name of Auvergne. 
Here he lived for some months on an estate which 
belonged to his wife. Anthemius having obtained 
the empire in 467, Sidonius went to Rome, and pro¬ 
nounced a panegyric upon him The prince, in m 

1235 




S I 5 


sr l 


.urn, named him anew prefect of Rome and senator. 
Although Sidonius was not then a priest, his country¬ 
men, notwithstanding this, chose him, in 4/2, Bishop 
of Augustunometum ( Clermont in Auvergne). After 
havin<r transferred to his son his honours and his for¬ 
tune, lie entered on the duties of the episcopate, and 
acquitted himself with zeal and fidelity. When the 
Visigoths seized upon a portion of Gaul, Sidonius fell 
into the power of Euric, their king; but, through the 
protection of .Leo, the minister of this barbarian mon¬ 
arch, he was re-established in his bishopric, and dischar¬ 
ged the episcopal functions until the day of his death, 
which appears to have taken place in 484. A French 
go.vant traces the pedigree of the Polignac family to 
Apollinaris. ( Mangon de la Lande: Essais histor- 
iques, &c., 1828.—Compare Revue Franqaise, 1828, n. 
6, p. 303, seqq ) —We have remaining of Sidonius a col¬ 
lection of letters in prose ; and twenty-four poems, the 
principal of which are the three panegyrics pronounced 
as above, and some epithalamia. We see in these the 
productions of a man of talent, not deficient in imagi¬ 
nation and poetic fire, and who knows how to interest 
and please. Although marked by the vices which 
characterized the literary efforts of the age, namely, 
subtle conceits and exaggerated metaphors, he may 
still be regarded as one of the best of the Christian 
poets.—The best edition of Sidonius Apollinaris is that 
of Labbaeus (Labbe), Paris, 4to, 1652. (Scholl, Hist. 
Lit. Rom., vol. 3, p. 96, seqq.) 

Si ga, a city in the western part of Numidia, or 
what was afterward called Mauritania Cassariensis. 
The Itinerary Antoninus makes it three miles distant 
from the coast, whereas Ptolemy ranks it among the 
maritime cities. It had a harbour, probably, on the 
sea, while the city itself stood inland. Siga was an 
old Tyrian settlement, and is the only one of the many 
mentioned by Scylax in this quarter that we can fix 
upon with certainty. A river of the same name ran 
by it. Syphax, prince of the Massassyli, selected this 
city for his residence, having taken it from the Car¬ 
thaginians. He afterward took up his abode in Cirta. 
The modern Ned-Roma, mentioned by Leo Africanus, 
is thought to answer to the ancient city. ( Mannert, 
Geogr., vol. 10, pt. 2, p. 427.) 

SiG-iEUM or Sigeum, I. a celebrated promontory of 
Troas, near the mouth of the Scamander. The mod¬ 
ern name is Cape Jenischehr , or, as it is more com¬ 
monly pronounced, Cape Janissary. Homer does not 
mention either the promontory of Sigaeum or of Rhce- 
teum. These names rather referred to cities which 
were built after his time. These two promontories 
formed the limits on either side of the station of the 
Grecian fleet. Achilles, Patroclus, and Antilochus 
were buried on Sigaeum, and three large tumuli, or 
mounds of earth, are supposed to mark at the present 
day the three tombs ; though, from a passage of Ho¬ 
mer (Od , 24, 75, seqq.), it would seem that one mound 
or tomb covered the ashes of all three. “ We visit¬ 
ed,” says Dr. Clarke, “ the two ancient tumuli called 
the tombs of Achilles and Patroclus. They are to the 
northeast of the village of Yeni-Cher. A third was 
discovered by Sir W. Gell near the bridge for passing 
the Mender; so that the three tumuli mentioned by 
Strabo are yet entire. ( Strabo, 596.) The largest 
was opened by order of M. de Choiseul. Many au¬ 
thors bear testimony to the existence of the tomb of 
Achilles, and to its situation on or by the Sigean prom¬ 
ontory. It is recorded of Alexander the Great, that 
fc '3 anointed the stele upon it with perfumes, and ran 
naked around it, according to the custom of honouring 
the manes of a hero. (JElian, Var. Hist., 12, 7.— 
Diod. Sic., 17, 17.) iElian distinguishes the tomb 
of Achilles from that of Patroclus, by relating that Al¬ 
exander crowned one, and Hephsestion the other. It 
will not, therefore, be easy to determine, at the present 
•lay, which of the three tombs now standing upon this 
1236 


promontory was that formerly venerated by the inhab 
itants of Sigaeum for containing the ashes of Achilles 
—It should also be observed, that to the south of Si- 
gaeum, upon the shore of the ./Egean, are yet other 
tumuli, of equal if not greater size, to which hardly 
any attention has yet been paid ; and these are visible 
far out at sea.” ( Travels, vol. 3, p. 210, seqq.) —II, 
A town of Troas, on the sloping side of the promon¬ 
tory. It was founded posterior to the siege of r J roy 
by an ./Eolian colony, headed by Archaeanax of M yti* 
lene. He is said to have employed the stones of an¬ 
cient Ilium in the construction of his town. The 
Athenians, some years afterward, sent a body of troops 
there, headed by Phrynon, a victor at the Olympic 
games, and expelled the Lesbians. This act of aggres¬ 
sion led to a war between the two states, which was 
long waged with alternate success. Pittacus, one of 
the seven sages, who commanded the Mytilenians, is 
said to have slain Phrynon, the Athenian leader, in 
single fight. The poet Alcseus was engaged in one 
of the actions that took place, and had the misfortune 
to lose his shield. At length both parties agreed to 
refer their dispute to Periander of Corinth, who de¬ 
cided in favour of the Athenians. ( Sirah., 599.— He¬ 
rod., 5, 95 .—Diog. Laert., 1, 74.) The latter people, 
or, rather, the Pisistratidse, remained then in posses¬ 
sion of Sigseum, and Hippias, after being expelled from 
Athens, is known to have retired there, together with 
his family. (Herod., 5, 65.) The town of Sigseum 
no longer existed when Strabo wrote, having been 
destroyed by the citizens of New Ilium. (Strab., 600. 
— Plin., 5, 30.— Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 109.) 
The modern Jeni Schehr marks the site of the ancient 
Sigaeum. (Leake's Tour, p. 276.) 

Signia, a city of Latium, southwest of Anagma 
It became a Roman colony as early as the reign of 
Tarquinius Superbus. At first it was only a military 
post, which, in process of time, however, became a 
city. (Dion. Hal., 4, 63.) When Tarquin was de¬ 
throned, he sought the assistance of Signia, but the in¬ 
habitants remained faithful to Rome. (Dion. Hal., 5, 
58.) They appear to have continued in the same sen¬ 
timents even during the severe trial of the second Pu¬ 
nic war ; as we find Signia mentioned by Livy among 
the colonies of that period most distinguished for their 
steady adherence to the Roman power (27, 10). Sig¬ 
nia is noticed by several writers as producing a wine 
of an astringent nature. (Strabo, 237.— Plin., 14, 6. 
— Sil. Ital., 8, 380.— Martial, 13, 116.) It was no¬ 
ted, also, for a particular mode of flooring with bricks, 
which was called “ opus Signinum." (Plin., 15, 12. 
— Vitruv., 8, in fin.) The modern Segni marks the 
ancient site. (Cramer's Anc. It., vol. 2, p. 103.) 

Sica Silva, a forest of vast extent, in the country 
of the Bruttii, to the south of Consentia. It consisted 
chiefly of fir, and was celebrated for the quantity of 
pitch which it yielded. (Plin., 15, 7.— Columella, 12, 
20.— Dioscorides, 1, 98.) Strabo describes the Sila 
as occupying an extent of 700 stadia, or eighty-seven 
miles, from the neighbourhood of Rhegium northward. 
(Strab., 260.— Plin., 3, 11.) Virgil also alludes to it 
in a beautiful passage. (2En., 12, 715.) These im¬ 
mense woods may probably, in ancient times, have 
furnished the Tyrrheni with timber for their fleets, as 
we know they afterward did to the sovereigns of Si¬ 
cily and to the Athenians. (Thucyd., 6, 90.— Athen. 
5, 43.— Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 437.) 

Silanus, the name of a Roman family belonging 
to the plebeian house of the Junii. The most remark¬ 
able of the name were the following : I. Marcus Si¬ 
lanus, served under Scipio in Spain (B.C. 207), and 
was sent, on one occasion, by that commander with 
10,500 men against Mago and the Celtiberians, whom 
he succeeded in conquering. In the following year 
he brought to Scipio the auxiliaries from the Spanish 
| prince Colcha, and aided him in gaining the victory 




SIL 


S J L 


near Baecula, over the forces of the Carthaginians.— 
II. Marcus Junius Silanus, was consul B.C. 109 with 
Q. Caecilius Metellus. He obtained the command of 
the forces against the Cimbri, but was so unfortunate 
as to be more than once defeated, and even to lose 
his camp. Five years after this, the tribune Domitius 
brought him to trial for this ill-success, but only two 
tribes condemned him.—III. D. Junius Silanus, son 
of the preceding, was consul elect B.C. 63, when Ci¬ 
cero asked him his-opinion in the Roman senate as to 
the punishment to be inflicted on the accomplices of 
Catiline. He gave his opinion in favour of punish¬ 
ment. In the following year he entered on the con¬ 
sular office with L. Licinius Muraena.—IV. M. Junius 
Silanus, son of the preceding, served first under Cresar 
as lieutenant in Gaul, and, after the assassination of 
that individual, attached himself to the party of Lepi- 
dus. This party, however, he afterward left, and join¬ 
ed that of Antony. In consequence of this, he was 
proscribed and his property confiscated. He after¬ 
ward, however, was pardoned by Augustus, and, re¬ 
turning to Rome, became at last on such good terms 
with Augustus, that the latter made him his colleague 
in the consulship, 25 B.C.—V. Junius Silanus Creti- 
cus, was consul A.D. 7, and afterward proconsul of 
Syria. Tiberius removed him from that province, on 
account of the friendship subsisting between him and 
Gerinanicus.—VI. D. Junius Silanus, was banished by 
Augustus for adultery with Julia. He obtained his 
recall under Tiberius, through the intercession of his 
brother.--VII M. Junius Silanus, brother of the pre¬ 
ceding, was a man of great reputation and influence, 
on account of his talents as an orator. His daughter 
Claudia married Caligula, and he himself was after¬ 
ward sent as governor into Spain. The tyrant, be¬ 
coming jealous of him, compelled him to destroy him¬ 
self.— VIII. L. Junius Silanus, prretor A.D. 49, a 
brave and illustrious individual, stood so high in the 
favour of the Emperor Claudius that the latter intend¬ 
ed to give him his daughter Octavia in marriage. 
This, however, was prevented by the artful Agrippi¬ 
na, who obtained her hand for her own son Nero. 
Various false charges were brought against Silanus ; 
he was expelled from the senate, and, in his despair, 
destroyed himself.—IX. Turpilius, an officer of Me¬ 
tellus in the Jugurthine war. Having been left by 
that commander at the head of the Roman garrison in 
Vacca, and having, through want of care, allowed the 
town to be retaken by the inhabitants, he was tried, 
and condemned to death. ( Sallust , Bell. Jug., 66, 
69.) Plutarch, however, makes the accusaion to have 
been a false one, and Turpilius to have been con¬ 
demned through the agency of Marius. ( Plutarch, 
Vit. Mar.) 

Silarus, I. a river of Lucania, in Italy, dividing 
that province from Campania. It takes its rise in that 
part of the Apennines which belonged to the Hirpini; 
and, after receiving the Tanager, now Negri, and the 
Calor, now Calore, it empties into the Gulf of Salerno. 
The waters of this river are stated by ancient wri¬ 
ters to have possessed the property of incrusting, by 
means of a calcareous deposition, any pieces of wood 
or twigs which were thrown into them. ( Strabo, 251. 
Plm., 2, 106.) This fact is confirmed by Baron Anto- 
nini, della Lucania, p. 2, disc. 1. The banks of this 
river were greatly infested by the gadfly. ( Virg., 
Georg., 3, 146, seqq.) The modern name of the 
stream is the Silaro. ( Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol. 
2, p. 360.)—II. A river of Cisalpine Gaul, to the east 
of Bononia, running into the Padusa, or Spinetic branch 
of the Padus. It is now the Silaro. ( Cramer’s An¬ 
cient Italy, vol. 1, p. 89.) 

Silentiarius, Paulus, a poet in the reign of the 
Emperor Justinian. He was the primarius or chief 
of the Silentiarii at the court of that monarch, whence 
the second part of his name. The title of Silentiarius, 


it may be remarked in passing, designates various em 
ployments ; it is sometimes synonymous with ycvxo- 
rrolog, and denotes an officer whose duty it is to pre¬ 
serve quiet in the imperial palace ; at other times the 
Silentiarius is a private secretary of the prince. — 
Paul, the Silentiary, has left various poetical produc¬ 
tions, which are not without merit. In the Greek An¬ 
thology we have about eighty epigrams of his, a por¬ 
tion of which are of an erotic character. They are de¬ 
ficient neither in spirit nor elegance. We perceive 
that their author was well read in the ancient writers ; 
but it is evident, at the same time, that his verses 
have not the conciseness so essential to the epigram. 
The most celebrated of his productions, however, are, 
his poem on the Pythian Baths in Bithynia ('H yiay6a 
elg rd kv II vdioig depyd), and his description of the 
Church of St. Sophia ("E K<ppacug rye yeydlyg eKKkyci- 
ag), which was publicly read at the dedication of that 
structure, A.D. 562. We have also a third poem, form¬ 
ing, in fact, a supplement to the second, on the pulpit 
placed in the great aisle of the patriarchal palace (’E/r- 
<ppacrtg rov 'A y6uvog, k. t. A.). The poem on the Pyth¬ 
ian Baths is given in Brunck’s Analecta, and in the edi¬ 
tions of the Anthology. The description of the Church 
of St. Sophia is given at the end of the history of Jo¬ 
hannes Cinnamus, in the edition of Ducange. In 1822, 
Grceffe published a critical edition at Leipzig, in 8vo, 
to which is added the Description of the Ambon or 
pulpit. Bekker gave an edition of this last-mentioned 
poem, from a Heidelberg manuscript, Berol, 1815, 4to. 

( Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr , vol. 6, p. 46, 115.) 

Silenus, a demigod, who became the nurse, the 
preceptor, and the attendant of Bacchus. Pindar 
calls him the Naiad’s husband ( fragrn . incert., 73). 
Socrates used to compare himself, on account of his 
baldness, his flat nose, and the quiet raillery in which 
he was so fond of indulging, to the Sileni born of the 
divine Naiads. ( Xenophon, Symp., 5, 7.—Compare 
JElian, V. H., 3, 18.) Others said that Silenus was 
a son of Earth, and sprung from the blood-drops of 
Uranus. ( Serv. ad Virg., Eel., 6, 13.— Nonnus, 14, 
97.— Id., 29,262.) Marsyas is called a Silenus. Like 
the seagods, Silenus was noted for wisdom. Hence 
some modern expounders of mythology think that Si¬ 
lenus was merely a river-god, and they derive the 
name from IXko, erA&a, to roll, expressive of the mo¬ 
tion of the streams. The connexion between Silenus 
and Bacchus and the Naiades thus becomes easy of 
explanation ; in their opinion, all being deities relating 
to water or moisture. ( Keightley's Mythology, p. 
234.)—The two legends relative to Midas and Silenus 
have already been noticed under the former article. 

( Vid. Midas.)—Silenus was represented as old, bald, 
and flat-nosed, riding on a broad-backed ass, usually 
intoxicated, and carrying his can ( cantliarus), or tot¬ 
tering along supported by his staff of fennel {ferula). 
—For other views of the legend of Silenus, consult 
Creuzer ( Symbolik , vol. 3, p. 207, seqq.), Rolle {Re- 
cherches sur le Culte de Bacchus, vol. 3, p. 354, seqq.), 
and Welcker ( Nach. zur Tril. , p- 214, seqq.). —Ac¬ 
cording to another account, Midas mixed some wine 
with the waters of a fountain to which Silenus was 
accustomed to come, and so inebriated and caught 
him. He detained him for ten days, and afterward 
restored him to Bacchus, for which he was rewarded 
with the power of turning into gold whatever he 
touched. Some authors assert that Silenus was a 
philosopher, who accompanied Bacchus in his Indian 
expedition, and assisted him by the soundness of his 
counsels. From this circumstance, therefore, he is 
often introduced speaking, with all the gravity of a 
philosopher, concerning the formation of the world 
and the nature of things.—The legend of Silenus is 
evidently of Oriental origin. ( Symbolik , voL 3, p. 
207, seqq. — Consult also Rolle, Recherches sur h 
Culte de Bacchus , vol. 3, p. 354, seqq.) 

1237 





SILIUS ITALICUS. 


SILIUS ITALICUS. 


Silius Italicus, C. a Latin poet, born about the 
25th year of the Christian era. He has been sup¬ 
posed to have been a native of Italica, in Spain ; but 
his not being claimed as a fellow-countryman by Mar¬ 
tial, who has bestowed upon him the highest praises, 
renders this improbable. Some make him to have been 
a native of Corfinium, a city of the Peligni, in Italy, 
which, according to Strabo, was called Italica in the 
time of the Social war ; but Velleius Paterculus in¬ 
forms us that Corfinium merely intended to change its 
name to Italica, and that the project was never car¬ 
ried into effect. Whether, however, he were a native 
of Italica in Spain, or of an Italica elsewhere, his sur¬ 
name certainly does not show it; for in that event it 
would have been Italicensis. It is most probable that 
Italicus was a family name ; and it may have been 
given to one of his ancestors, when residing in some 
province, to show that he was of Italian origin.— 
Silius Italicus applied himself with great ardour to the 
study of eloquence and poetry. In the former of these 
pursuits he took Cicero for his model, and acquired at 
the bar the reputation of an eminent speaker. In po¬ 
etry he gave the preference to Virgil. His predilec¬ 
tion for these two great writers led him to purchase 
two estates which had belonged to them, that of Ci¬ 
cero at Tusculum, and that of Virgil near Naples, on 
which the poet had been interred. Silius often visited 
the tomb of the latter, and celebrated his birthday 
annually with great solemnities.—Our poet passed 
through all the public employments which led to the 
consulship. He is said also to have insinuated him¬ 
self into the favour of Nero by following the vile trade 
of an informer. Pliny the younger, who mentions 
this fact, which, for the honour of literature, one could 
wish might be impugned, adds, that if it be true that 
Silius was thus guilty, he made amends for his fault 
by a long course of subsequent virtue, and enjoyed at 
Rome a high degree of consideration. The first con¬ 
sulship of Silius (for it is thought, on no very suffi¬ 
cient grounds, however, that he thrice held this ma¬ 
gistracy) was in the famous year 68, when Nero died. 
—Silius enjoyed the favour of Vitellius and Vespa¬ 
sian : under the latter he was proconsul of Asia. 
Loaded with honours, and hawing accumulated an am¬ 
ple fortune, he retired in his old age to Campania, and 
there passed the rest of his days in the society of the 
Muses. Attacked, at the age of 75 years, with an in¬ 
curable malady, he starved himself to death, in the 
reign of Trajan, A.D. 100.—Silius, through all his 
life, had a strong attachment for poetry and literature, 
and devoted to them all the leisure moments which 
his public employments allowed. It was only, how¬ 
ever, in his later years, and during his retreat at Na¬ 
ples, that he formed the serious idea of aiming at a 
place in the list of poets. He then composed an epic, 
or, rather, historical poem, in seventeen cantos, the sub¬ 
ject of which was the second Punic war. This poem, 
entitled Punica, has come down to our times. It con¬ 
firms the judgment which Pliny passed upon its au¬ 
thor when he said that he wrote with more diligence 
than genius. ( Ep ., 3, 7, 5.) It appears that Silius 
was one of those men to whom Nature has granted a 
certain facility, which makes them succeed in some 
degree in whatever they undertake, and which, when 
it is seconded by learning and taste, may, to a certain 
degree, occupy the place of genius. The subject 
which he chose for his poem was one that possessed 
an unusual share of interest to the Romans. Three 
centuries had passed away since this memorable pe¬ 
riod, and, though all the details of the war were still 
well known, because many Greek and Roman histo¬ 
rians had recorded them in their respective works, 
still there remained a wide field for the imagination of 
the poet, and he might indulge in the fictions and em¬ 
ploy all the machinery of which the epic poem was 
naturally susceptible. Silius disdained not these 
1238 


means for interesting and pleasing his readers ; but, 
like Lucan, he chose a defective plan, in preferring 
the historical method, that makes known all the con¬ 
sequences resulting from any event, to the poetic 
mode, that selects from a series A facts some single 
circumstance, which it makes the principal action, 
and towards which, as a common centre, all things 
ought to tend. Had he transported his readers in the 
very outset to the later years of the war, he might 
have taken for his theme Hannibal’s attempt to make 
himself master of Rome; this would have afforded 
the different parts that are regarded as necessary for 
an epic action, namely, a commencement, a plot, and 
a catastrophe. By pursuing a different plan, by pre¬ 
ferring to the epopee the march of history, he ought 
to have seen that he was debarred from the employ¬ 
ment of mythological fictions, which are entirely out 
of place in an historical narrative. And yet, falling 
into the same error as Lucan, he calls these very fic¬ 
tions to his aid. It is this intermingling of the sober 
details of history with the flights of mythology that has 
given birth to a strange and misshapen offspring, to 
which it would be no easy task to assign its proper ap¬ 
pellation. Is it an epic poem 1 it wants unity. Is 
it an historical production 1 its fictions become so 
many revolting improbabilities, and its machinery is 
altogether out of place,—Silius drew the subject of his 
poem from the histories of Livy and Polybius; his po¬ 
etic ornaments he chiefly borrowed from Virgil; but he 
does not possess the art of borrowing these last in such 
way as to conceal their parent source ; his imitations, 
on the contrary, are altogether too palpable. Nor are 
these imitations limited to Virgil: Silius has pillaged 
also Lucretius, Horace, Homer, and Hesiod, a circum¬ 
stance which imparts a disagreeable inequality to his 
style. Like Valerius, he endeavours to hide his medi¬ 
ocrity under an appearance of erudition and affecta¬ 
tion of pomp, which imparts an air of coldness to his 
composition. To give the character of Silius in a few 
words, we may sav that he possessed a portion of those 
talents, the union of which forms the great poet; he 
was versed in historical, geographical, and physical 
knowledge, which imparts to his poem a character of 
greater interest in the eyes of antiquarian critics, from 
the circumstance of its containing various facts omit¬ 
ted by Livy. He chose a subject at once great and 
interesting; his personages have a character of his¬ 
toric truth, but there is wanting that degree of eleva¬ 
tion which true poetry would have bestowed. He is 
most successful in his description of battles. Silius 
wants enthusiasm; his style consists of borrowed 
phrases, which he has not known how to appropriate 
to himself, or .mark, as it were, with the impress of his 
own zeal. Does he attempt to express anger or ten¬ 
derness 1 his coldness freezes the reader.—Whatever 
may have been the reputation which this poet enjoyed 
among his contemporaries, he fell soon afterward into 
neglect; no grammarian cites him, and Sidonius Apol- 
linaris alone names him among the eminent poets 
At the revival of letters, the conviction was so strong 
that the poem was lost, as to inspire the celebrated 
Petrarch with the idea of supplying its place by his Af¬ 
rica, the subject of which production is also the second 
Punic war. This point, however, is contested among 
scholars. During the sittings of the council of Con¬ 
stance, Poggio succeeded in finding a manuscript of 
Silius, probably at the monastery of St. Gall. A copy 
was made of this, which thus became the original of 
all those of which the earlier editors made use, until 
Carrion discovered, about 1575, at Cologne, another 
manuscript, which he thought might date from the era 
of Charlemagne. A third, of still more modern date, 
was found at Oxford. Villebrune, who published, in 
1781, an edition of Silius Italicus. which he pretended 
was the first complete one that had as yet appeared, 
inserted into the sixteenth book, after the twenty-sev 




S I M 


S I M 


enth verse, thirty-three other verses which he said he 
had found in a MS. at Paris, and which exist, with 
some slight changes, in the sixth book of Petrarch’s 
Latin poem entitled Africa. More recent critics, how¬ 
ever, and especially Heyne, in a review written by 
him on Villebrune’s edition, think that the thirty-three 
verses in question are rather from the pen of Petrarch 
than from that of Silius.—The best editions of Silius 
Italicus are, that of Ruperti, Gotting., 1795-98, 2 vols. 
8vo, and that of Lemaire, Paris , 1823, 2 vols. 8vo. 
The following editions are also valuable : that of Dra- 
kenborch, Traject. ad Rhen., 1717, 4to ; that of Ville- 
brune, Paris, 1781, 8vo ; and that of Ernesti, Lips., 
1791-92, 2 vols. 8vo. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 
2, p. 496, seqq. — Compare B'dhr, Gesch. Rom. Lit., 
vol. 1, p. 151, seqq.) 

Silvanus, a deity among the Romans who had the 
care of fields and cattle ( Virg., JEn., 8, 601), and 
who also presided over boundaries. ( Horat ., Epod., 
2, 22.) Groves were consecrated to him, whence per¬ 
haps his name. He was usually represented as old, 
and bearing a cypress plucked up by the roots (Virg., 
Georg., 1, 20); and the legend of Apollo and Cypa- 
rissus was transferred to him. (Serv. ad Virg., Geor- 
gica, 1, 20.) The usual offering to Silvanus was milk. 
(Horat., Epist., 2, 1, 143.) — According to the Agri- 
mensors, every possession should have three Silvani: 
one domestic , for the possession itself; one agrestic, 
for the herdsman ; a third oriental, for whom there 
should be a grove on the boundary. (Seal, ad Fest., 
s. v. Marspedis.) The meaning of this obscure pas¬ 
sage probably is, that Silvanus was to be worshipped 
under three different titles : as protector of the family, 
for we meet with an inscription Silvano Larum; of 
the cattle, perhaps those on the public pastures ; and 
of the boundaries, that is, of the whole possession. 
The Mars Silvanus, to whom Cato directs prayer to be 
made for the health of the oxen, is probably the second 
(R. R., 80), and the third is the tutor finium of Hor¬ 
ace. (Keightley's Mythology, p. 536.) 

Silures, the people of South Wales in Britain, oc¬ 
cupying the counties of Hereford, Monmouth, Rad¬ 
nor, Brecon, and Glamorgan. Their capital was Isca 
Silurum, now Ccerleon, on the river Isca or Uske, in 
Glamorganshire. Caractacus was a prince of the Si- 
lures. ( Tac ., Ann., 12, 32.— Plin., 4, 16.) 

Simethus, a river of Sicily, rising in the Herasan 
Mountains, and falling into the sea below Catana. It 
receives a number of small tributaries, and is now the 
Giarctta. (Thucyd., 2, 65.— Plin., 3, 8.) 

Simmias, I. a native of Rhodes, who flourished be¬ 
tween the 120th and 170th Olympiad. The period 
when he existed cannot be ascertained with more pre¬ 
cision. He published a collection of poems, in four 
books, entitled A idipopa iroir/para. Athenseus cites 
one of these pieces, entitled Gorgo, which appears to 
have been of an epic character. Simmias is perhaps 
the inventor of a kind of sport, which we do not find 
to have existed before him, and which could only have 
been conceived of at a period when the public taste 
had become extremely corrupt. It consisted in so 
arranging verses of different length as to represent an 
altar, an axe, a pair of wings, &c., the several verses 
at the same time making one poem. A production of 
this kind, forming a 2 vpiyf, or Pandean pipe, has been 
jften ascribed to Theocritus. It consists of twenty 
rerses, every two of the same size, and each pair less 
n length than the preceding; thus representing an in- 
jtrument c omposed of ten pipes, each shorter than the 
jther. (Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 3, p. 126.) The 
lemains of Simmias are given in the Anthology, and 
n the Poet* Graeci Minores.—II. A Theban philos¬ 
opher, a disciple of Socrates. He was the author of 
jwenty-three dialogues, which are lost. (Scholl, Hist. 
Lit. Gr., vol. 2, p. 357.) 

Simois (-entis), a river of Troas, which rises in 


Mount Ida, and falls into the Xanthus. (Consult re¬ 
marks on the Topography of Troy, under the article 
Troja.) 

Simon, a shoemaker or currier of Athens, from 
whom the so-called gkvtikoI fiiaTioyoi, mentioned un¬ 
der the article Plato, are supposed to have derived 
their origin. (Vid. Plato, near the conclusion of that 
article.) 

Simonides, I. a poet of Amorgus (one of the Cyc¬ 
lades), who died 490 B.C. He was grandfather to 
the poet of Ceos, from whom he is distinguished by 
the title of ’lap6oypd(j)oq, “ writer of Iambics.” We 
have a fragment of his preserved by Stobaeus ; it is a 
satyric piece, remarkable for its simplicity and ele¬ 
gance, and is entitled irepl yvvauz&v, “ Of Women,” 
This fragment is given in the collections of Winterton, 
Brunck, Gaisford, and separateley by Koeler, Goett., 
1781, 8vo, and Welcker, Bonn, 1835, 8vo.—II. A 
celebrated poet of Ceos, son of Leoprepas, and grand¬ 
son of the preceding, born at the city of Iulis, 556 
B.C., and who lived until B.C. 467. He attained, in 
fact, to a very advanced age, so as to become a con¬ 
temporary not only of Pittacus and the Pisistratidse, 
but also of Pausanias, king of Sparta: and he is 
named as the friend of these illustrious men. He was 
held in high estimation at the court of Hiero I., king 
of Syracuse, and acted as a mediator between this 
prince and Theron, king of Agrigentum, reconciling 
these two sovereigns at the very moment when the 
two armies were on the point of contending. Plato 
calls him a wise man (De Repub., 1 , p. 411), and 
Cicero, in speaking of him, says, “ Non enim poeta 
suavis, verum etiam cceteroquin doctus sapiensque 
traditur .” (N. D., 1 , 22.) He was the master of 

Pindar. Simonides is regarded as the first who ap¬ 
plied the alternating hexameter and pentameter, or, in 
other words, the early elegiac measure to mournful 
and plaintive themes. This measure at first was mar¬ 
tial in its character, not plaintive, and Cullinus is said 
to have been its inventor. Neither was it called elegy 
originally, but eiroq, a general term, subsequently con¬ 
fined to heroic verse. Simonides became so distin¬ 
guished in elegy (in the later acceptation of the term) 
that he must be included among the great masters of 
elegiac song. He is stated to have been victorious at 
Athens over iEschylus himself, in an elegy in honour of 
those who fell at Marathon, the Athenians having insti¬ 
tuted a contest of the chief poets. The ancient biogra¬ 
pher of iEschylus who gives this account, adds, in ex¬ 
planation, that the elegy requires a tenderness of feeling 
which was foreign to the character of HUschylus. To 
what degree Simonides possessed this quality, and, in 
general, how great a master he was of the pathetic, is 
proved by his celebrated lyric piece, containing the 
lament of Danae, and by other remains of his poetry. 
Probably, also,- in the elegies upon those who died at 
Marathon and Plataaa, he did not omit to bewail the 
death of so many brave men, and to introduce the 
sorrows of the widows and orphans, which was quite 
consistent with a lofty, patriotic tone, particularly at 
the end of the poem. Simonides likewise used the 
elegy as a plaintive song for the death of individuals ; 
at least the Greek Anthology contains several pieces 
of his, which appear not to be entire epigrams, but 
fragments of longer elegies, lamenting, with heartfelt 
pathos, the death of persons dear to the poet. Among 
these are the beautiful and touching verses concerning 
Gorgo, who, while dying, utters these words to her 
mother: “ Remain here with my father, and become . 
with a happier fate, the mother of another daughter, 
who may tend thee in thy old age." —It was Simonides 
who first gave to the epigram the perfection of which, 
consistently with its purpose, it was capable. In this 
respect he was favoured by the circumstances of his 
time ; for, on account of the high consideration which 
he enjoyed in both Athens and the Peloponnesus he 

1239 



SIM 


S I N 


was frequently employed by the states which had fought 
against the Persians, to adorn with inscriptions the 
tombs of their fallen warriors. Phe best and most 
celebrated of these epigrams is the inimitable inscrip¬ 
tion on the Spartans who died at Thermopylae, and 
which actually existed on the spot: “ Stranger, tell 
the Lacedaemonians that we are lying here in obedience 
to their laws.” Never was heroic courage expressed 
with such calm and unadorned grandeur. With the 
epitaphs are naturally connected the inscriptions on 
sacred offerings, especially where both refer to the Per¬ 
sian war; the former being the discharge of a debt to 
the dead, the latter a thanksgiving of the survivers to 
the gods. Among these, one of the best refers to the 
battle of Marathon, which, from the neatness and ele¬ 
gance of the expression, loses its chief beauty in a 
prose translation (fragm ., 25, ed. Gaisf .).—The form 
of nearly all the epigrams of Simonides is elegiac. 
When, however, a name (on account of a short be¬ 
tween two long syllables) could not be adapted to the 
dactylic metre (as ’Apxivavryq, 'ImroviKog), he em¬ 
ployed trochaic measures. ( Muller, Hist. Lit. Gr., 
p. 125, seqq .) — Simonides became avaricious and 
mercenary towards the close of his life; and it is men¬ 
tioned as a subject of dispraise, that he was the first 
who wrote verses for money. Plutarch relates, that 
some one having reproached him with his sordid ava¬ 
rice, he returned for answer that age, being deprived 
of all other sources of enjoyment, the love of money 
was the only passion left for it to gratify. ( Plut., An 
seni sit gerenda respubl. — Opp., ed. Reiske , vol. 9, p. 
142.)—To Simonides the Greek alphabet is indebted 
for four of its letters, E, T, H, ft; and to him, also, is 
attributed the invention of a system of Mnemonics, or 
artificial memory. (Compare Cic., de Orat., 2, 84.— 
Plin., 7, 24.— Quintil., 11,2, 11.)—It was Simonides 
that gave the celebrated answer, when Hiero of Syra¬ 
cuse inquired of him concerning the nature of God. 
The poet requested one day for deliberating on the 
subject; and when Hiero repeated his question on the 
morrow, the poet asked for two days. As he still 
went on doubling the number of days, and the mon¬ 
arch, lost in wonder, asked him why he did so, “ Be¬ 
cause, the longer I reflect on the subject, the more 
obscure does it appear to me to be.” (Cic., N. D., 1, 
22.)—The remains of the poetry of Simonides are 
given in the collections of Stephens, Brunck, Gaisford, 
Boissonade, and others. The latest separate edition is 
that of Schneidewin, Bruns., 1835, 8vo. (Scholl, Hist. 
Gr. Lit., vol. 1, p. 242 —Id ib., vol. 2, p. 129.— 
Compare Bode, Gesch. der Lyrischen Dichtkunst, vol. 
2, p. 122, seqq.) —III. A son of the daughter of the 
preceding. Being also a native of Ceos, he was dis- 
tinguished from the former by the appellation of the 
“Younger.” He wrote “on Inventions” (nepl evpy- 
udrtdv), and a work in three books on Genealogies. 
(Beurette, Mem. de l'Acad, des Inscr., &c., vol. 13, 
p. 257 ,— Van Goens, De Simonide Ceo et philosopho, 
Traj. ad Rhen., 1768, 4to.) 

Simplicius, a native of Cilicia, the clearest and most 
intelligent of the commentators on Aristotle. His 
commentaries are extremely valuable, from their con¬ 
taining numerous fragments of the works of previous 
philosophers. He flourished in the seventh century 
of our era, and was involved in some disputes with 
the Christian writers, particularly John Philoponus, on 
the subject of the eternity of the world. His com¬ 
mentary on the Manual or Enchiridion of Epictetus is 
regarded as one of the best moral treatises that has 
come down to us from antiquity, and proves that Sim¬ 
plicius did not confine himself to the tenets of the Per¬ 
ipatetic school. The works of Aristotle on which we 
have the commentaries of Simplicius are, the eight 
books of Physics, the Categories, the four books of the 
Heavens, and the three of the Soul. The best edition 
of the commentary on Epictetus is that of Schweig- 
1240 


haeuser, making part of his edition of Epictetus. Ths 
commentary on the Physics of Aristotle was published 
at the Aldine press, Yen., 1526, fol., and a Latin ver¬ 
sion by Lucillus Philalthaeus, Ven., 1543, fol. The 
most correct edition of the commentary on the Cat¬ 
egories is that printed at Basle, 1551, fol. There is a 
Latin version by Dorotheus, Ven., 1541, 1550, 1567, 
fol. The commentary on the treatise De Cwlo was 
published at the Aldine press, Ven., 1526, fol. There 
is a Latin version by Morbeke, printed in 1540, and 
another by Dorotheus, in 1544, both from the Venice 
press. The commentary on the treatise De Anima 
was published at the Aldine press in 1527, and a ver¬ 
sion by Faseolus, made from a more perfect manu¬ 
script, in 1543, both at Venice. There is another 
version by Lungus, which has been often reprinted at 
Venice. (Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 7, p. 129, seqq.) 

Sin.®, I. a people of India, called by Ptolemy the 
most eastern nation of the world. These Sinae, who 
dwelt beyond the river Serus, or Menan, are supposed 
to have occupied what is now Cochin-China. — II. 
There was another nation of the same name east of 
Serica, who were probably settled in Shen-si, the 
most westerly province of China, immediately adjoin¬ 
ing the great wall. In this province was a kingdom 
called Tsin, which probably gave name to these Sinae. 

Sindi, a people of Asiatic Sarmatia, below the Cim¬ 
merian Bosporus, and opposite the Tauric Chersonese. 
Their name would seem to indicate an Indian origin, 
and Ritter has attempted to prove this in his learned 
work on the earlier history of some of the ancient na¬ 
tions. (Ritter, Vorhalle, p. 157, seqq.) 

Singara, a strongly fortified city of Mesopotamia, 
the southernmost possession of the Romans on the 
eastern side of that country, from Trajan to Constan- 
tius. It is now Sindschar. (Plin., 5, 25.— Amm. 
Mar cell., 18, 5.) 

Singus, a town of Macedonia, in the peninsula of 
Sithonia, on the lower shore of, and giving name to, the 
Sinus Singiticus. The modern name of the gulf is 
that of Monte Santo. (Herod., 7, 122.— Thucyd., 5, 
18.) 

Sinon, a Greek, who accompanied his countrymen 
to the Trojan war. When the Greeks had fabricated 
the famous wooden horse, Sinon went to Troy, at the 
instigation of Ulysses, with his hands bound behind 
his back, and by the most solemn protestations assured 
Priam that the Greeks were gone from Asia, and that 
they had been ordered to sacrifice one of their soldiers 
to render the wind favourable to their return; and that, 
because the lot had fallen upon him, he had fled away 
from their camp, not to be cruelly sacrificed. These 
false assertions were immediately credited by the Tro¬ 
jans, and Sinon advised Priam to bring into his city 
the wooden horse which the Greeks had left behind 
them, and to consecrate it to Minerva. His advice 
was followed, and Sinon, in the night, to complete his 
perfidy, opened the side of the horse, from which issued 
a number of armed Greeks, who surprised the Trojans 
and pillaged their city. (Dares Phryg. — Horn., Od., 
8, 492.— Virg., ttn., 2, 79, &c.— Pausan., 10, 20.— 
Q. Smyrn., 12, &c.) 

Sinope, I. a daughter of the Asopus by Methone. 
She was beloved by Apollo, who carried her away to 
the borders of the Euxine Sea, in Asia Minor, where 
she gave birth to a son called Syrus. (Apoll. Rhod., 
2, 946.— Schol., ad loc.) —It. A city of Paphlagonia, 
on the eastern coast, and a little below its northern ex¬ 
tremity. It was the most important commercial place 
on*the shores of the Euxine, and was founded by a 
Milesian colony at a very early period, even prior to 
the rise of the Persian empire. The particular year 
of its origin, however, is not known : the Peripl. Anon. 
(p. 8) says it was at the time when the Cimmerians 
were ravaging Asia Minor. The leader of the colony 
was named Autolycus, and he received from the latej 




SIN 


SIP 


inhabitants of the place divine honours. In the my¬ 
thology of the Greeks he became one of the compan¬ 
ions of Jason. Various accounts, too, are given of 
the origin of the city’s name, one of which traces it to 
Sinope, daughter of the Asopus. (Compare Apoll. 
Rhod., 2, 946.— Schol., adloc. — Plut., Vit. Lucull. — 
Val. Flacc.y 5, 108.) — The situation of Sinope was 
extremely well chosen. It was built on the neck of a 
peninsula •, and, as this peninsula was secured from any 
hostile landing along its outer shores by high cliffs, the 
city only needed defending on the narrow isthmus 
connecting it with the mainland, while at the same 
time it had two convenient harbours, one on either 
side. The outer part of the peninsula afforded room 
for spacious suburbs, for gardens and fields, on which 
the city could easily rely for support in case of any 
scarcity produced by a siege. {Polyb., 4, 56.— Stra¬ 
bo, 545.) Sinope soon increased in wealth and pow¬ 
er, and became possessed of a dependant territory 
which reached as far as the Halys, and which was in¬ 
habited by the Leucosyrii; it became also the parent 
city of many colonies along the coast. So flourishing 
a place could not but excite the envy of the people in 
the interior ; and accordingly we find, from scattered 
hints, that it was occasionally besieged by the neigh¬ 
bouring satraps of Paphlagonia and Cappadocia ; and 
yet at other times, we are informed by Xenophon ( An - 
ab., lib. 5 et 6), it stood on a very friendly footing with 
them. It encountered more danger from the monarchs 
that arose subsequently to the time of Alexander. 
Against open attacks from these, however, it was able 
to make a successful stand {Polyb., 4, 56); but it 
could not defend itself against a surprise on the part 
of Pharnaces. {Strabo, l. c.) It lost its freedom, but 
not its commerce and prosperity, and from this time 
forward became the residence of the monarchs of Pon- 
tus, until Lucullus took it from the last Mithradates. 
It suffered severely on this occasion, and the Roman 
commander stripped it of many fine statues and valu¬ 
able works of art. Among the articles carried off on 
this occasion Strabo makes mention of the sphere of 
Billarus. From this period Sinope remained subject 
to the Roman power, and received, according to Stra¬ 
bo and Pliny {Plin., 6, 2), a Roman colony. This 
colony was settled there in the year of Julius Csesar’s 
assassination. Strabo found the city in his time well 
fortified, and adorned with many handsome edifices 
both public and private. The commerce of the place, 
indeed, had somewhat declined, having been drawn off 
partly to Byzantium, and in part to the cities of the 
Tauric Chersonese. Still the thunny-fisheries in its 
immediate vicinity continued to afford a very lucra¬ 
tive branch of trade to Sinope. The city, however, 
had begun to decline in political importance, and we 
find, not it, but the city of Amasea the capital of the 
later province of Hellenopontus. In the middle ages 
Sinope made part of the petty Greek kingdom of Tra- 
pezus ; and after this it had independent Christian 
monarchs of its own, who became conspicuous for their 
naval power and their piracies. {Abulfeda, p. 318.) 
The last of this dynasty surrendered his city and pow¬ 
er to Mohammed II. in 1461. The modern Sinub is 
still one of the most important Turkish cities along 
this coast.—Sinope was the birthplace of the Cynic Di¬ 
ogenes. {Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 3, p. 11 ,seqq.) 
— III. An ancient Greek city of Campania. {Vid. 
Sinuessa.) 

Sinti, a Thracian community, who appear to have 
occupied a district on the banks of the Strymon north 
of the Siropseones. {Thucyd., 2,98.) Strabo affirms 
that they once occupied the island of Lemnos, thus 
identifying them with the Sinties of Homer. {II., 1, 
593. — Od., 8, 294 .—Strab., 231. — Id., 457. — Id., 
54 9.— Schol. ad Thucyd., 2, 98 . — Gatterer, Com¬ 
ment. Soc., Gott., a., 1784, vol. 6, p. 53.) Livy in¬ 
forms us that, on the conquest of Macedonia by the 
7 S 


Romans, the Sinti, who then formed part of that em 
pire, were included in the first region, together with 
the Bisaltse ; and he expressly states that this part of 
the region was situated west of the Strymon, that is, 
on the right bank of that river (45, 29). Ptolemy 
gives the name of Sintice to the district in question 
(p. 83.— Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 1, p. 304).— 
Etymologists derive the name of the Sinties from the 
Greek verb oivo, “ to hurt” {dvryg, “ an injurer civ 
rig, “ a pirate”), either because they were reputed to 
have been the inventors of weapons, or from their hav¬ 
ing been notorious for piracy. Ritter, however, seeks 
to connect their name, and, consequently, their origin, 
with that of India. {Vorhalle, p. 162.) 

Sinuessa, a city of Campania, subsequently of 
New Latium, on the seacoast, southeast of Minturnae 
and the mouth of the Liris. It was said to have been 
founded on the ruins of Sinope, an ancient Greek 
city. {Livy, 10, 21. — Pliny, 3, 5.— Mela, 2, 4.) 
Strabo tells us that Sinuessa stood on the shore of 
the Sinus Setinus, and derived its name from that 
circumstance, or, in other words, from the sinuosity 
of the coast {clvog yap 6 KoXnog. — Strab., 234). 
The same writer, as well as the Itineraries, informs 
us that it was traversed by the Appian Way. Hor¬ 
ace also confirms this. {Sat., 1, 5, 39, seqq.) Sin¬ 
uessa was colonized together with Minturnae, A.U.C. 
456 {Liv., 10, 21), and ranked also among the mari¬ 
time cities of Italy. {Id., 27, 38.— Polyb., 3, 91.) 
Its territory suffered considerable devastation from 
Hannibal’s troops when opposed to Fabius. Caesar, 
in his pursuit of Pompey, halted for a few days at 
Sinuessa, and wrote from that place a very concilia¬ 
tory letter to Cicero, which is to be found in the 
correspondence with Atticus (9, 16).—The epithet of 
tepens, which Silius Italicus applies to this city (8, 
529), has reference to some warm sources in its neigh¬ 
bourhood, now called Bagni, while Sinuessa itself an¬ 
swers to the rock of Monte Dragone. The Aquae 
Sinuessanae are noticed by Livy (22, 14), Tacitus 
{Hist., I, ’77. — Ann., 12, 66), Plutarch {Vit. Oth.), 
Pliny (31, 2), Martial (6, 42), and others. {Cramer's 
Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 133.) 

Sion, one of the hills on which Jerusalem was 
built. {Vid. Hierosolyma.) 

Siphnos, an island in the H3gean Sea, one of the 
Cyclades, southeast of Seriphus, and northeast of Me¬ 
los. Herodotus reports that it was colonized by the 
Ionians (8, 48), and elsewhere speaks of the Siphnians 
as deriving considerable wealth from their gold and 
silver mines. In the age of Polycrates their revenue 
surpassed that of all the other islands, and enabled 
them to erect a treasury at Delphi equal to those of 
the most opulent cities; and their own principal 
buildings were sumptuously decorated with Parian 
marble. Herodotus states, however, that they after¬ 
ward sustained a heavy loss from a descent of the 
Samians, who levied upon the island a contribution of 
100 talents (3, 57, seqq.). In Strabo’s time it was so 
poor and insignificant as to give rise to the proverbs 
’Lifyviov dcrpdyalov, and hicpvLog dpfaabuv. {Strab., 
44.— Eustath., ad Dion. Perieg., 525.) Pliny makes 
it twenty-eight miles in circuit (4, 12). Siphnos was 
famed for its excellent fruit, and its pure and whole 
some air. The modern name is Siphanto. {Cramer's 
Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 405.— Bondelmonti, Ins. Ar- 
chipel., p. 82.) 

Sipontum, or, as the Greeks write it, 'Lnzovg (gen. 
-ovvrog), a city of Apulia, in the district of Daunia, 
and to the southwest of the promontory of Garganum. 
It lay on the Sinus Urias. Sipontum was a place of 
great antiquity, and unquestionably of Greek origin, 
even though the tradition which ascribes its founda¬ 
tion to Diomede should be regarded as fabulous, 
Strabo, who mentions this story, states that the name 
of this city was derived from the circumstance of 

1241 





S I R 


S I R 


great quantities of cuttle-fish (in Greek crynca) being j 
thrown up by the sea on its shore. ( Strab ., 284.) 
Little is known of the history of Sipontum before its 
name appears in the annals of Rome. We are told 
by Livy that it was occupied by Alexander, king of 
Epirus, when he was invited into Italy to aid the Ta- 
rentines against the Bruttii and Lucani (8, 24). Sev¬ 
eral years after, that is, A.U.C. 558, the same histo¬ 
rian informs us that a colony was sent to Sipontum ; 
but it does not appear to have prospered ; for, after 
the lapse of a few years, it was reported to the senate 
that the town had fallen into a state of complete des¬ 
olation, upon which a fresh supply of colonists was 
sent there (34, 45 ; 39, 22). Sipontum is said to 
have been once dependant upon the city of Arpi. In 
Strabo’s time its harbour could still boast of some 
trade, particularly in corn, which was conveyed from 
the interior by means of a considerable stream, which 
formed a lake near its mouth. (Strab., 284.) This 
river, which Strabo does not name, is probably the 
Cerbalus of Pliny (3, II), now Cervaro. The ruins 
of Sipontum are said to exist about two miles to the 
west of Manfredonia, the foundation of which led to 
the final desertion of Sipontum by its inhabitants, as 
they were transferred by King Manfred to this modern 
town, which is known to have risen under his au¬ 
spices. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 279.) 

Sipylus, I. a mountain in Lydia, rising to the 
south of Magnesia, and separated by a small valley 
from the chain of Tmolus to the southeast, and by 
another from Mount Mastinsia to the south. Sipylus 
is celebrated in Grecian mythology as the residence 
of Tantalus and Niobe, and the cradle of Pelops. 
These princes, though more commonly referred to by 
classical writers as belonging to Phrygia, must, in re¬ 
ality, have reigned in Lydia if they occupied Sipylus ; 
not the mountain merely, but a city of the same name, 
situate on its slope. (Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, 
p. 437.) “ It was growing dark,” observes Mr. 

Arundell, “ or we might have seen, as the traveller by 
daylight may, the abrupt termination of Mount Sipy¬ 
lus at a considerable distance on the left, behind which 
lies the town of Magnesia.” It is described by Chis- 
hull as a stupendous precipice, consisting of a naked 
mass of stone, and rising perpendicularly almost a fur¬ 
long high. It was here, too, that Chishull saw “ a 
certain cliff of the rock, representing an exact niche 
and statue, with the due shape and proportion of a hu¬ 
man body.” (Arundell's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 18.) 
The rock just mentioned as the termination of Sipy- 
\us, and also the rock of the Acropolis behind the 
town of Magnesia, have been supposed to contain 
some magnetic iron ; and the magnet is said to have 
taken its name from this locality. Mr. Arundell and 
some friends made experiments in this quarter, to test, 
as far as it could be done, the truth of the story, and 
foand clear indications of considerable magnetic in¬ 
fluence. (Arundell's Asia Minor, l. c., in not.) —II. 
A city of Lydia, situate on the slope of Mount Sipy¬ 
lus. According to traditions preserved in the country, 
it was swallowed up at an early period by an earth¬ 
quake, and was plunged into a crater afterward filled 
by a lake. The existence of this lake, named Sale or 
Sake, is attested by Pausanias, who reports, that for 
some time the ruins of the town, which he calls Idea, 
if the word be not corrupt, could be seen at the bot¬ 
tom. (Pausan., 7, 24.— Siebelis, ad loc. — Cramer's 
Asia Minor, vol. 1 , p. 437.) 

Sirenes (heipqveg), two maidens celebrated in 
fable, who occupied an island of Ocean, where they 
sat in a mead close to the seashore, and with their 
melodious voices so charmed those that were sailing 
by, that they forgot home and everything relating to 
it, and abode with these maidens till they perished 
from the impossibility of taking nourishment, and 
their bones lay whitening on the strand. As Ulysses 
1242 


and his companions were on their homeward voyage 
from HE sea, they came first to the island of the Sirens. 
But they passed in safety ; for, by the directions of 
Circe, Ulysses stopped the ears of his companions with 
wax, and had himself tied to the mast; so that, although, 
when he heard the song of the Sirens, he made signs 
to his companions to unbind him, they only secured 
him the more closely; and thus he listened to the ac¬ 
cents of the Sirens, and yet, notwithstanding, escaped. 
(Od., 12, 52, seqq.) — Hesiod describes the mead ol 
the Sirens as blooming with flowers (dvdeyoeGoa), and 
their voice, he said, stilled the winds. (Schol. ad 
Apoll. Rhod., 4,892.— Schol. ad Od., 12, 169.) Their 
names were said to be Aglaiopheme ( Clear-voice) and 
Thelxiepea ( Magic-speech ); and it was feigned that 
they threw themselves into the sea with vexation at 
the escape of Ulysses, an oracle having predicted that, 
as long as they should arrest the attention of all pas¬ 
sengers by the sound of their voice, they should live, 
but no longer. The author of the Orphic Argonau- 
tics, however, places them on a rock near the shore ol 
JEtna, and makes the song of Orpheus end their en¬ 
chantment, and cause them to fling themselves into 
the sea, where they were changed into rocks. ( Orph ., 
Argon., 1284, seqq. — Compare Nonnus, 13, 312.) — 
It was afterward fabled that they were the daughters 
of the river-god Achelous by the muse Terpsichore 
or Calliope, or by Sterope, daughter of Porthaon. 
(Apoll. Rhod., 4, 895.— Apollod., 1, 3, 4.— Tzetz. ad 
Lycophr., 712.— Eudocia, 373.) Some said that they 
sprang from the blood which ran from the god of the 
Achelous when his horn was torn off by Hercules. 
Sophocles calls them the daughters of Phorcys (ap. 
Pint., Sympos., 9, 14); and Euripides terms them the 
children of Earth. (Hel., 168.) Their number was 
also increased to three, and their names are given 
with much variety. One was said to play on the lyre, 
another on the pipes, and the third to sing. (Tzet- 
zes ad Lycophr on., 712.)—Contrary to the usual pro¬ 
cess, the mischievous part of the character of the Si¬ 
rens was afterward left out, and they were regarded as 
purely musical beings with entrancing voices. Hence 
Plato, in his Republic (10, p. 617), places one of 
them on each of the eight celestial spheres, where 
their voices form what is called the music of the 
spheres ; and when the Lacedaemonians had laid siege 
to Athens (Ol., 94, l), Bacchus, it is said, appeared 
in a dream to their general, Lysander, ordering him 
to allow the funeral rites o.f the new Siren to be cele¬ 
brated, which was at once understood to be Sophocles, 
then just dead. (Pausan., 1, 21, 1. — Plin., 7, 29.) 
Eventually, however, the artists laid hold on the Sirens, 
and furnished them with the feathers, feet, wings, and 
tails of birds. — The ordinary derivation of the word 
Siren is from aeipa, “ a chain," to signify their attrac¬ 
tive power. The Semitic shir, “song,” appears, 
however, more likely to be the true root; and the 
Sirens may be regarded as one of the wonders told of 
by the Phoenician mariners. (Keightley's Mythology , 
p. 269, seqq.) 

Sirenus^e Insult, three small rocks on the south 
side of the promontory of Surrentum or Minerva, de¬ 
tached from the island, and celebrated in fable as the 
islands of the Sirens. (Strabo, 22.— Id., 247.— Mela, 
2, 4 .—Plin., 3, 5.) 

Siris, a city of Lucania, on the Sinus Tarer:.tir:us, at 
the mouth of a river of the same name, now the Sinno. 
It was said to have been founded by a Trojan colony, 
which was afterward expelled by some Ionians, who 
migrated from Colophon under the reign of Alyattes, 
king of Lydia ; and who, having taken the town by 
force, changed its name to that of Polioeum. (Strabo, 
264.) The earliest writer who has mentioned this 
ancient city is the poet Archilochus, cited by Athense- 
us (12, 5). He speaks with admiration of the sur¬ 
rounding country, and in a manner which proves that 






S I s 


SIS 


he was well acquainted with its beauties. In the pas¬ 
sage of Athenseus where Archilochus is cited, Athe- 
nceus represents the inhabitants of Siris as rivalling in 
all respects the luxury and affluence of the Sybarites. 
Siris and Sybaris had reached, about 500 B.C., the 
summit of their prosperity and opulence. Shortly af¬ 
terward, according to Justin (20, 2), the former of the 
two was almost destroyed in a war with Metaponturn 
and Sybaris. When the Tarentines settled at Hera- 
clea they removed all the Sirites to the new town, of 
which Siris became the harbour. ( Diod. Sic., 12, 36. 
— Strabo , 263.) No vestiges of this ancient colony 
are now apparent; but it stood probably on the left 
bank, and at the mouth of the Sinno. ( Cramer's Anc. 
Italy , vol. 2, p. 352.) 

Sirius (2e/piof), a name given to the dog-star. 
Homer, though he mentions the dog-star twice, does 
not employ the term. Hesiod, however, uses the ap¬ 
pellation on several occasions (Op. et D., 417, 587, 
619. — Scut. Here., 397.) But then, in the first of 
these passages, he means by Sirius the sun. Nor is 
this the only instance of such a usage. In Hesychius, 
for example, we have, helpcog, 6 phiog, nal 6 tov kv- 
vog darpp, “ Sirius, the sun, and also the dog-star .” 
He then goes on to remark, 2o^o/c/l^f tov aoTpuov 
Kvva• 6 be ’Ap^i^o^og tov rfkiov, *16v nog 6e rruvTa to, 
aoTpa, “ Sophocles calls the dog-star so ; Archilochus 
the sun; Ibycus, however, all the stars." Eratosthenes, 
moreover (c. 33), observes : “ Such stars (as Sirius) as¬ 
tronomers call heLpLovg (Sirios) did Trjv rijg (f>Xoybg 
KLvpoiv, “ on account of the tremulous motion of their 
light.' 1 ' It would seem, therefore, that oetpiog was 
originally an appellative, in an adjective form, em¬ 
ployed to indicate any bright and sparkling star; but 
which originally became a proper name for the bright¬ 
est of the fixed stars. The verb oeiptdetv, formed 
from this, is, according to Proclus, a synonyme of 
hupireiv, “ to shine," “to be bright." (Ideler , Stern- 
namen , p. 239, seqq.) 

Sirmio, a peninsula on the shores of the Lacus 
Benacus ( Lago di Garda), now Sirmione, and the fa¬ 
vourite residence, in former days, of the poet Catullus. 
( Catull ., 31.) 

Sirmium, an important city of Pannonia Inferior, 
on the northern side of the Saavus or Save, between 
Ulmi and Bassiana. Under the Roman sway it was 
the metropolis of Pannonia. The Emperor Probus 
was born here. The ruins of Sirmium may be seen at 
the present day near the town of Mitrowitz. ( Plin., 
3, 25 .— Zosim., 2, IS.— Herodian , 7, 2. — Amm. 
Marc., 21, 10.) 

Sisapo, a town, or, rather, village of Hispania, in the 
northern part of Baetica, supposed to answer to Alma- 
den, on the southwestern limits of La Mancha. The 
territory around this place not only yielded silver, 
but excellent cinnabar ; and even at the present day 
large quantities of quicksilver are still obtained from 
the mines at Almaden. The Sisapone of Ptolemy 
(probably the same with the Cissalone of Antoninus) 
was a different place, and lay more to the northwest 
of the former, among the Oretani. ( Mannert , Ge- 
ogr., vol. 1, p. 316.— Ukert, vol. 2, p. 378.) 

Sisenna, L., a Roman historian, the friend of Pom- 
ponius Atticus. He wrote a history, from the taking 
of Rome by the Gauls down to the wars of Sylla, of 
which some fragments are quoted in different authors. 
He was considered superior to all the Roman histo¬ 
rians that had preceded him, and hence Varro entitled 
his own treatise on history Sisenna. This same wri¬ 
ter commented on Plautus. (Scholl, Hist. Lit. Rom., 
vol. 1, p. 164.) 

Sisigambis or Sisygambis, the mother of Darius, 
the last king of Persia. She was taken prisoner by 
Alexander the Great, at the battle of Issus, with the 
rest of the royal family. The conqueror treated her 
with the greatest kindness and attention, saluted her 


with the title of mother, and often granted to her in¬ 
tercession what he had sternly denied to his favourites 
and ministers. On the death of Alexander, a most 
touching tribute to his memory was offered by Sisy¬ 
gambis. She who had survived the massacre of hex 
eighty brothers, who had been put to death in one day 
by Ochus, the loss of all her children, and the entire 
downfall of her house, now, on the decease of the en¬ 
emy and conqueror of her line, seated herself on the 
ground, covered her head with a veil, and, notwith¬ 
standing the entreaties of her grandchildren, refused 
nourishment, until, on the fifth day after, she expired. 
(Quint. Curt., 3, 3, 22.— Id., 5, 2, 20.— Id., 10, 5, 24. 
— Thirlwall's Greece, vol. 7, p. 117.) 

Sisyphus, I. the son of ^Eolus, was said to have 
been the founder of Ephyra, or ancient Corinth. He 
married Merope, the daughter of Atlas, by whom he 
had four sons, Glaucus,- Ornytion, Thersandrus, and 
Halm,us. When Jupiter carried off iEgina, the daugh¬ 
ter of the Asopus, the river-god, in his search, came 
after her to Corinth. Sisyphus, on his giving him a 
spring for Acrocorinthus, informed him who the rav- 
isher was. The King of the Gods sent Death to punish 
the informer ; but Sisyphus contrived to outwit Death, 
and even to put fetters on him ; and there was great 
joy among mortals, for no one died. Pluto, however, 
set Death at liberty, and Sisyphus was given up to 
him. When dying, he charged his wife to leave hia 
body unburied ; and then, complaining to Pluto of hei 
unkindness, he obtained permission to return to the 
light, to upbraid her with her conduct. But, when 
he found himself again in his own house, he refused 
to leave it. Mercury, however, reduced him to obe¬ 
dience ; and when he came down, Pluto set him to 
roll a huge stone up a hill, a never-ending still-begin¬ 
ning toil; for, as soon as it reached the summit, il 
rolled back again down to the plain. The craft of 
Sisyphus, of which the following is an instance, wai 
proverbial. Autolycus, the son of Mercury, the cele¬ 
brated cattle-stealer, who dwelt on Parnassus, used 
to deface the marks of the cattle which he carried of! 
in such a manner as to render it nearly impossible to 
identify them. Among others, he drove off those of 
Sisyphus, and he defaced the marks as usual; but, 
when Sisyphus came in quest of them, he, to the great 
surprise of the thief, selected his own beasts out of 
the herd ; for he had marked the initial of his name 
under their hoof. (The ancient form of the 2 was C, 
which is of the shape of a horse’s hoof.) Autolycus 
forthwith cultivated the acquaintance of one who had 
thus proved himself too able for him ; and Sisyphus, 
it is said, seduced or violated his daughter Anticlea 
(who afterward married Laertes), and thus was the 
real father of Ulysses. (Pherecyd., ap.Schol.ad Od., 
19, 43.— Schol. ad II., 10, 267.— Tzetz. ad Lycophr., 
344, &c.)—Homer calls Sisyphus the most crafty of 
men (II. , 6, 153) ; Hesiod speaks of him in a similar 
manner (ap. Schol. ad Pind., Pyth., 4, 252); Ulys¬ 
ses sees him rolling his stone in Erebus (Od., 11, 593). 
Of the antiquity of this legend, therefore, there can 
be little doubt. Sisyphus, that is, the Very-wise, or 
perhaps the Over-wise (2 covipog, quasi 2 i-cofog, by a 
common reduplication), seems to have originally be¬ 
longed to that exalted class of myths in which we find 
the^Iapotidae, Ixion, Tantalus, and others, where, un¬ 
der the character of persons with significant names, 
lessons of wisdom, morality, and religion were sensibly 
impressed on the minds of men. Sisyphus is, then, 
the representative of the restless desire of knowledge, 
which aspires to attain a height it is denied man to 
reach ; and v exhausted in the effort, suddenly falls 
back into the depths of earthly weakness. This is 
expressed in the fine picture of the Odyssey, where 
every word is significant, and where, we may observe, 
Sisyphus is spoken of in indefinite terms, and not as¬ 
signed anv earthly locality or parentage. ( Welcktr , 

1243 




S M A 


S M I 


Tril., p. 550.) In the legendary history, however, we 
find him placed at Corinth, and apparently the repre¬ 
sentative of the trading spirit of that city. He is, as 
we have already said, a son of ^Eolus, probably on 
account of his name (AioTiog, “ cunning ”) ; or it may 
be that the crafty trader is the son of the Windman, 
as the wind enables him to import and export his mer¬ 
chandise. He is married to a daughter of the symbol 
of navigation, Atlas, and her name would seem to in¬ 
dicate that he is engaged with men in the active busi¬ 
ness of life (M£po7T£f, mortals, from popoq, death; 
oip being a mere adjectival ending). His children are 
Glaucus, a name of the sea-god ; Ornytion ( Quick- 
mover ); Thersandrus {Warm-man) ; and Halmus {Sea¬ 
man), who apparently denote the fervour and bustle 
of commerce. {Keightley's Mythology, p. 399, seqq. 
— Welckcr, Tril., p. 550, seqq. — Volcker, Myth, der 
lap., p. 118, not.) —II. A dwarf of M. Antony. He 
was of very small stature, under two feet, but extreme¬ 
ly shrewd and acute, whence he obtained the name 
of Sisyphus, in allusion to the cunning and dexterous 
chieftain of fabulous times. {Horat., Sat., 1, 3, 47.— 
Compare Heindorf , ad loc.) 

SithonIa, the central one of the three promonto¬ 
ries which lie at the southern extremity of Chalcidice 
in Macedonia. As Chalcidice was originally a part 
of Thrace, the term Sithonia is often applied by the 
poets to the latter country ; hence the epithet Sithonis. 
—The Sithonians are mentioned by more than one 
writer as a people of Thrace. {Lycophr., 1408, et 
Schol., ad loc.) Elsewhere the same poet alludes ob¬ 
scurely to a people of Italy descended from the Sitho- 
nian giants (v. 1354). 

Sitones, a German tribe in Scandinavia ( Tacitus, 
Germ., 54), separated by the range of Mount Sevo 
from the Suiones. Reichard places them on the 
southern side of Lake Malar, where the old city of 
Si-turn or Sig-tuna once lay. {Bischoff und Moller, 
Worterb. der Geogr., p. 923.) 

Sittius, P., a Roman knight, a native of Nuceria, 
and hence called Nucerinus by Sallust {Cat., 21). 
Having been prosecuted a short time before the dis¬ 
covery of Catiline’s conspiracy, he fled from a trial, 
and, being accompanied by a body of followers, betook 
himself to Africa, where he afterward proved of ser¬ 
vice to Julius Caesar, against Scipio and Juba, and 
received the city of Cirta as his reward. {Appian, 
Bell. Civ., 4, 55.— Vid. Cirta.) 

Slavi, an ancient and powerful tribe in Sarmatia, 
stretching from the Dniester to the Tana'is, and called 
also by the name of Antes. Having united with the 
V enedi, they moved onward towards Germany and the 
Danube, and became engaged in war with the Franks 
that dwelt north of the Rhine. In the reign of Jus¬ 
tinian they crossed the Danube, invaded Dalmatia, 
and finally settled in the surrounding territories, espe¬ 
cially in what is now called Slavonia. As belonging 
to them were reckoned the Bohemani or Bohemi {Bo¬ 
hemians) ; the Maharenses; the Sorabi, between the 
Elbe and Saale ; the Silesii, Poloni, Cassubii, Rugii, 
&c. They did not all live under one common rule, 
but in separate communities. They are represented 
as large, strong, and warlike, but very deficient in per¬ 
sonal cleanliness. Among the descendants of the 
Slavonic race may be enumerated the Russians , Poles, 
Bohemians , Moravians, Carinthians, &c. (Consult 
Hclmond, Chron. Slavorum. — Karamsin, Histoire de 
VEmpire de Russie , trad, par St. Thomas, Paris, 
1819-26.— Foreign Quarterly, vol. 3, p. 152, seqq.) 

Smaragdus Mons {"2 pup ay doc; opog), a mountain 
of Egypt, to the north of Berenice, where emeralds 
{smaragdi) were dug. It appears to have been one 
of a group of mountains, and the highest of the num¬ 
ber ; and all of them would seem to have contained 
more or less of this valuable material. The modern 
name of this mountain is Zxibara, and the situation is 
1244 


twenty-five miles, in a straight line from the Red Sea. 
These mines were formerly visited by Bruce, whose 
account of them is amply confirmed by the latest trav¬ 
ellers. The Smaragdus Mons appears to have been 
a very short distance from the sea ; being that called 
by the Arabs Maaden Uzzumurud , or the Mine of 
Emeralds. {Strab., 225.— Plin., 37, 5. — Russell's 
Egypt, p. 418.) 

Smerdis, I. a son of Cyrus, put to death by order 
of his brother Cambyses. The latter, it seems, had 
become jealous of Smerdis, who had succeeded in par¬ 
tially bending the bow which the Ichthyophagi had 
brought from the King of ^Ethiopia, a feat which no 
other Persian had been able to accomplish. Camby¬ 
ses had also subsequently dreamed that a courier had 
come to him from Persia (he was at this period in 
Egypt) with the intelligence that Smerdis was seated 
on his throne, and touched the heavens with his head. 
This vision having filled him with alarm, lest Smerdis 
might destroy him in order to seize upon the crown, 
he despatched Prexaspes, a confidential agent, to Per¬ 
sia, with orders to kill Smerdis, which was according¬ 
ly done. According to one account, he led the prince 
out on a hunt, and then slew him ; while others said 
that he brought him to the borders of the Persian Gulf, 
and there threw him headlong from a precipice. {He¬ 
rod., 3, 30.)—II. One of the Magi, who strongly re¬ 
sembled Smerdis the brother of Cambyses. As the 
death of the prince was a state secret, to which, how¬ 
ever, some of the Magi appear to have been privy, the 
false Smerdis declared himself king on the death of 
Cambyses. This usurpation would not, perhaps, have 
been known, had he not taken too many precautions 
to conceal it. Otanes, a Persian noble of the first 
rank, suspecting at last that there was some impos¬ 
ture, from the circumstance of Smerdis never quitting 
the citadel, and from his never inviting any of the no¬ 
bility to his presence, discovered the whole affair 
through his daughter Phsedyma. This female had 
been the wife of Cambyses, and, with the other wives 
of the late king, had been retained by the usurper. 
At her father’s request, she felt the head of Smerdis 
while he slept, and discovered that he had no ears. 
Otanes, on this, was fully convinced that the pretend¬ 
ed monarch was no other than the magus Smerdis, he 
having been deprived of his ears by Cyrus on account 
of some atrocious conduct. Upon this discovery, the 
conspiracy ensued which ended with the death of 
Smerdis, and the elevation of Dafius, son of Hystas- 
pes, to the vacant throne. {Herod., 3, 69, seqq.) A 
general massacre of the Magi also ensued, which was 
commemorated by the annual festival called by the 
Greeks Magophonia. (Consult remarks at the begin¬ 
ning of the article Magi.) 

Smintheus (two syllables), one of the surnames of 
Apollo. He was worshipped under this name in the 
city of Chrysa, where he also had a temple called 
Sminthium. The names Smintheus and Sminthium 
are said to have been derived from the term cpivdog, 
which in the iEolic dialect signifies a rat; and Stra¬ 
bo gives the following legend on the subject, from the 
old poet Callinus. According to him, the Teucri, 
migrating from Crete, were told by an oracle to settle 
in that place where they should first be attacked by 
the original inhabitants of the land. Having halted 
for the night in this place, a large number of field- 
mice came and gnawed away the leathern straps of 
their baggage and thongs of their armour. Deeming 
the oracle fulfilled, they settled on the spot, and raised 
a temple to Apollo Smintheus. Various other fabu¬ 
lous tales respecting these rats are to be found in 
Strabo, who observes that there were numerous spots 
on this coast to which the name of Sminthia was at¬ 
tached. The temple itself was called Sminthium 
{Strab., 604, 612.) The same geographer, however, 
| does not allow, as Scylax does (p. 36), that this edi- 



SM Y 


S 0 0 


fice, or the Chrysa here mentioned, were those to 
which Horner has alluded, in the commencement of the 
first book of the Iliad, as the abode of Chryses, the 
priest of Apollo. He places these more to the south, 
and on the Adramyttian Gulf. ( Strab., 1. c.) —The 
best explanation, however, of the whole fable appears 
to be that which makes the rat to have been in Egypt 
a type of primitive night. Hence this animal, placed 
at the feet of Apollo’s statue, indicated the victory of 
day over night; and at a later period it was regarded 
as an emblem of the prophetic power of the god, which 
read the events of the future, notwithstanding the dark¬ 
ness that enveloped them. ( Constant, De la Reli¬ 
gion, vol 2, p. 394, in notis.) 

Smyrna, a celebrated city of Asia Minor, on the 
coast of Ionia, and at the head of a bay to which it 
gave name. The place was said to have derived its 
name from an Amazon so called, who, having con¬ 
quered Ephesus, had in the first instance transmitted 
her appellation to that city. The Ephesians afterward 
founded the town, to which it has ever since been ap¬ 
propriated ; and Strabo, who dwells at length on this 
point, cites several poets to prove that' the name of 
Smyrna was once applied specifically to a spot near 
Ephesus, and afterward generally to the whole of its 
precincts. The same writer affirms that the Ephe¬ 
sian colonists were afterward expelled from Smyrna 
by the HColians ; but, being aided by the Colophonians, 
who had received them into their city, they once more 
returned to Smyrna and retook it. ( Strabo , 634.) 
Herodotus differs from Strabo in some particulars : 
he states that Smyrna originally belonged to the ^Eoli- 
ans, who received into the city some Colophonian ex¬ 
iles. These afterward basely requited the hospitality 
of the inhabitants by shutting the gates upon them 
while they were without the walls celebrating a festi¬ 
val, and so made themselves masters of the place. 
(Pausan ., 5, 8.) They were besieged by the ^Eoli- 
ans, but to no purpose ; and at last it was agreed that 
they should remain in possession of the place upon 
delivering up to the former inhabitants their private 
property. {Herod., 1, 149.) Smyrna after this ceased 
to be an JEolian city, and became a member of the 
Ionian confederacy. It was subsequently taken and 
destroyed by Alyattes, king of Lydia, and the inhabi¬ 
tants were scattered among the adjacent villages. 
{Herod., 1, 16. — Scylax, p. 37.) They lived thus 
for the space of four hundred years, and the city re¬ 
mained during all this time deserted and in ruins, 
until Antigonus, one of Alexander’s generals, charmed 
w/ith the situation, founded, about twenty stadia from 
:he site of the old, a new city called Smyrna, on the 
southern shore of the gulf. Lysimachus completed 
what Antigonus had begun, and the new city became 
one of the most beautiful in Lower Asia. ( Strabo, 
646.) Another account makes Alexander the founder 
of this city, and Pliny and Pausanias both adopt this 
opinion; but it is contradicted by the simple fact that 
Alexander, in his expedition against Darius, never 
came to this spot, but passed on rapidly from Sardis to 
Ephesus. {Pliny, 5, 29 .—Pausan., 7, 5.)—Smyrna 
was one of the many places that laid claim to being 
the birthplace of Homer, and it enjoyed, perhaps, the 
best title of all to this distinguished honour. In com¬ 
memoration of the bard, a beautiful square structure 
was erected, called Homerion, in which his statue was 
placed. This same name was given to a brass coin, 
struck at Smyrna in commemoration of the same 
event. {Strabo, l. c. — Cic., pro Arch., c. 8.) The 
Smyrneans also showed a cave, where it was said that 
Homer composed his verses. Chandler informs us 
that he had searched for this cavern, and succeeded in 
, discovering it above the aqueduct of the Meles. It is 
about four feet wide, the roof formed of a huge rock, 
tracked and slanting, the sides and bottom sandy. 
Beyond it is a passage cut, leading into a kind of well. 


{Travels in Asia Minor, p. 91.)—Under tne Roman 
sway Smyrna still continued a flourishing city, though 
not, as some have supposed, the capital of the province 
of Asia. Its schools of eloquence and philosophy 
were in considerable repute {Aris/id., in Smyrn.) 
The Christian Church flourished also through the zeal 
and care of Polycarp, its first bishop, who is said to 
have suffered martyrdom in the stadium of the city, 
about 466 years after the birth of our Saviour. {Iren., 
3, 3, 4, p. 176.) There is also an epistle from Ignatius 
to the Smyrneans, and another addressed to Polycarp. 
Smyrna experienced great vicissitudes under the Greek 
emperors. Having been occupied by Tzachas, a Turk¬ 
ish chief, towards the close of the eleventh century, it 
was nearly destroyed by a Greek fleet, commanded by 
John Ducas. It was, however, restored by the Em¬ 
peror Comnenus, but suffered again severely from a 
siege which it sustained against the forces of Tamer¬ 
lane. Not long after this (A.D. 1083), it fell into the 
hands of the Turks. The Greeks shortly after ob¬ 
tained possession of it anew, only again to lose it; and, 
under Mohammed I., the city became finally attached 
to the Turkish empire. It is now called Ismir, and 
by the Western nations Smyrna, and is the great 
mart of the Levant trade. {Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, 
pt. 3, p. 332, seqq .— Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p 
337, seqq.) 

Socrates, a celebrated philosopher, born at Alo- 
pece, a village near Athens, B.C. 469. His parents 
were of low rank. His father, Sophroniscus, was a 
statuary; his mother, Phsenarete, a midwife. So¬ 
phroniscus brought up his son, contrary to his incli¬ 
nation, in his own manual employment; m which 
Socrates, though his mind was constantly aspiring after 
higher objects, was not unskilled. While he was a 
young man, he is said to have made statues ol the 
habited Graces, which were allowed a place in the 
citadel of Athens. Upon the death of his father he 
was left with no other inheritance than the small sum 
of 80 mince (about 1400 dollars), which, through the 
dishonesty of a relation, to whom Sophroniscus left 
the charge of his affairs, he soon lost. This laid him 
under the necessity of supporting himself by labour, 
and he continued to practise the art of statuary in 
Athens; at the same time, however, devoting all the 
leisure he could command to the study of philosophy. 
Crito, a wealthy Athenian, remarking the strong pro¬ 
pensity to study which this young man discovered, 
and admiring his ingenious disposition and distin¬ 
guished abilities, took him under his patronage, and 
intrusted him with the instruction of his children. The 
opportunities which Socrates by this means enjoyed of 
attending the public lectures of the most eminent phi¬ 
losophers, so far increased his thirst after wisdom, that 
he determined to relinquish his occupation, and every 
prospect of emolument which that might afford, in 
order to devote himself entirely to his lavourite pur¬ 
suit. His first preceptor in philosophy was Anaxag¬ 
oras. After this eminent master of the Ionic school 
left Athens, Socrates attached himself to Archelaus. 
Under these instructers he diligently prosecuted the 
study of nature, in the usual manner of the philoso¬ 
phers of the age, and became well acquainted with 
their doctrines. Prodicus, the sophist, was his pre¬ 
ceptor in eloquence, Evenus in poetry, Theodorus in 
geometry, and Damo in music. Aspasia, a woman 
no less celebrated for her intellectual than her per¬ 
sonal accomplishments, whose house was frequented 
by the most celebrated characters of the day, had also 
some share in the education of Socrates. With these 
endowments, both natural and acquired, Socrates ap¬ 
peared in Athens under the respectable characters of 
a good citizen and a true philosopher. Being called 
upon by his country to take up arms in the long and 
severe struggle between Athens and Sparta, he signal¬ 
ized himself at the siege of Potidaea by both his valour 

1245 




SOCRATES. 


SOCRATES. 


and the hardihood with which he endured fatigue. 
During the severity of a Thracian winter, while others 
were clad in furs, he wore only his usual clothing, and 
walked barefoot upon the ice. In an engagement, in 
which he saw Alcibiades, whom he accompanied du¬ 
ring this expedition, falling down wounded, he ad¬ 
vanced to defend him, and saved both him and his 
arms, and then, wun the utmost generosity, entreated 
the judges to give the prize of valour, although justly 
his own due, to the young Alcibiades. Several years 
afterward, Socrates voluntarily entered upon a military 
expedition against the Boeotians, during which, in an un¬ 
successful engagement at Delium, he retired with great 
coolness from the field ; when, observing Xenophon 
lying wounded on the ground, he took him upon his 
shoulders, and bore him out of the reach of the enemy. 
Soon afterward he went out a third time, in a military 
capacity, in the expedition for the purpose of reducing 
Amphipotis ; but this proving unsuccessful, he return¬ 
ed to Athens, and remained there until his death. It 
was not until Socrates was upward of sixty years of 
age that he undertook to serve his country in any 
civil office. At that age he was chosen to represent 
his own district in the senate of five hundred. In this 
office, though he at first exposed himself to some de¬ 
gree of ridicule from want of experience in the forms 
of business, he soon convinced his colleagues that he 
was superior to them all in wisdom and integrity. 
While they, intimidated by the clamours of the popu¬ 
lace, were willing to put to the vote the illegal propo¬ 
sition relative to the Athenian commanders who had 
conquered at the Arginusae, Socrates, as presiding of¬ 
ficer for the day, remained unshaken, and declared 
that he would only act as the law permitted to be done. 
Under the subsequent tyranny he never ceased to 
condemn the oppressive and cruel proceedings of the 
thirty tyrants ; and when his boldness provoked their 
resentment, so that his life was in danger, fearing 
neither treachery nor violence, he still continued to 
support, with undaunted firmness, the rights of his 
fellow-citizens. The tyrants, that they might create 
some new ground of complaint against Socrates, sent 
an order to him to apprehend, along with several oth¬ 
ers, a wealthy citizen of Salamis : the rest executed 
the commission ; but Socrates refused, saying that he 
would rather himself suffer death than be instrument¬ 
al in inflicting it unjustly upon another. Observing 
with regret how much the opinions of the Athenian 
youth were misled, and their principles and taste cor¬ 
rupted by so-called philosophers, who spent all their 
time in refined speculations upon nature and the or gin 
of things ; and by mischievous sophists, who taught in 
their schools the arts of false eloquence and deceitful 
reasoning, Socrates formed the wise and generous de¬ 
sign of instituting a new and more useful method of 
instruction. He therefore assumed the character of a 
moral philosopher; and, looking upon the whole city of 
Athens as his school, and all who were disposed to 
lend their attention as his pupils, he seized every oc¬ 
casion of communicating moral wisdom to his fellow- 
citizens. He passed his time chiefly in public. It was 
his custom in the morning to visit the places of public re¬ 
sort, and those set apart for gymnastic exercises; at 
noon to appear among the crowds in the market-place or 
courts of law ; and to spend the rest of the day in those 
parts of the city where he would be likely to meet with 
the largest number of persons. The method of instruc¬ 
tion which Socrates chiefly made use of was to pro¬ 
pose a series of questions to the person with whom 
he conversed, in order to lead him to some unforeseen 
conclusion. He first gained the assent of his respond¬ 
ent to some obvious truths, and then obliged him to 
admit others, in consequence of their relation or resem¬ 
blance to those to which he had already assented. 
Without making use of any direct argument or persua¬ 
sion, he chose to lead the person he meant to instruct 
1246 


to deduce the truths of which he wished to convince 
him, as a necessary consequence from his own conces¬ 
sions. He commonly conducted these conferences 
with such address as to conceal his design, till the re¬ 
spondent had advanced too far to recede. On some 
occasions he made use of ironical language, that vairi 
men might be caught in their own replies, and be com¬ 
pelled to confess their ignorance. He never assumed 
the air of a morose and rigid preceptor, but communi¬ 
cated useful instruction with all the ease and pleasan¬ 
try of polite conversation. Socrates was not less dis¬ 
tinguished by his modesty than his wisdom. His dis¬ 
courses betrayed no marks of arrogance or vanity. He 
professed “ to know only this, that he knew nothing.” 
In this declaration, which he frequently repeated, he 
had no other intention than to convince his hearers of 
the narrow limits of the human understanding. No¬ 
thing was farther from his thoughts than to encourage 
universal scepticism : on moral subjects he always ex¬ 
pressed himself with confidence and decision ; but he 
was desirous of exposing to contempt the arrogance of 
those pretenders to science who would acknowledge 
themselves ignorant of nothing. — The moral lessons 
which Socrates taught, he himself diligently practised ; 
and hence he excelled other philosophers in personal 
merit no less than in his method of instruction. His 
conduct was uniformly such as became a teacher of 
moral wisdom.—Though Socrates was rather unfortu¬ 
nate in his domestic connexion, yet he converted this 
infelicity into an occasion of exercising his virtues. 
Xanthippe, concerning whose ill-humour ancient wri¬ 
ters relate many amusing tales, was certainly a wom¬ 
an of a high and unmanageable spirit. But Socrates, 
while he endeavoured to curb the violence of her tem¬ 
per, improved his own. And, after all, indeed, it is 
very probable that the infirmities of this female have 
been greatly exaggerated, and that calumny has had 
some hand in finishing the picture. ( Vid . Xanthippe.) 
—We have already alluded to the constant warfare be¬ 
tween Socrates and the Sophists. It was this same 
warfare that brought him, how undeservedly we need 
hardly say, under the lash of the comic Aristophanes. 
Not that the poet was in this case guilty either of the 
foulest motives or of the grossest mistake ; but if we 
suppose, what is in itself much more consistent with 
the opinions and pursuits of the comic bard, that he 
observed the philosopher attentively, indeed, but from 
a distance, which permitted no more than a superficial 
acquaintance, we are then at no loss to understand 
how he might have confounded him with a class of 
men with which he had, in reality, so little in common, 
and why he singled him out to represent them. He 
probably first formed his judgment of Socrates by the 
society in which he usually saw him. Aristophanes, 
too, might either immediately, or through hearsay, have 
become acquainted with expressions and arguments of 
Socrates, apparently contrary to the established reli¬ 
gion. And, indeed, it is extremely difficult to deter¬ 
mine the precise relation in which the opinions of Soc¬ 
rates stood to the Grecian polytheism. He not only 
spoke of the gods with reverence, and conformed to the 
rites of the national worship, but testified his respect for 
the oracles in a manner which seems to imply that he be¬ 
lieved their pretensions to have some just ground. On 
the other hand, he acknowledged one Supreme Being as 
the framer and preserver of the universe (6 rov o'Xov 
Koufiov GvvrdrTuv re Hal avvex uv - — Mem., 4, 3, 13): 
used the singular and the plural number indiscrimi¬ 
nately concerning the object of his adoration ; and 
when he endeavoured to reclaim one of his friends, 
who scoffed at sacrifices and divination, it was, ac¬ 
cording to Xenophon, by an argument drawn exclu¬ 
sively from the works of the one Creator. (Mem., 1, 
4 .) We are thus tempted to imagine that he treated 
many points to which the vulgar attached great impor¬ 
tance, as matters of indifference, on which it 'vas nei 





SOCRATES. 


SOCRATES. 


thei possible nor very desirable to arrive at any certain 
conclusion : that he was only careful to exclude front 
his notion of the gods all attributes which were incon¬ 
sistent with the moral qualities of the Supreme Being; 
and that, with this restriction, he considered the popu¬ 
lar mythology as so harmless that its language and 
rites might be innocently adopted.—The motives which 
induced Aristophanes to bring Socrates on the stage 
in preference to any other of the sophistical teachers, 
are much more obvious than the causes through which 
he was led to confound them together. Socrates, from 
the time that he abandoned his hereditary art, became 
one of the most conspicuous and notorious persons in' 
Athens. There was, perhaps, hardly a mechanic who 
had not, at some time or other, been puzzled or divert¬ 
ed by his questions. {Mem., 1, 2,37.) His features 
were so formed by nature, as. to serve, with scarcely 
any exaggeration, for a highly laughable mask. His 
usual mien and gait were no less remarkably adapted 
to the comic stage. He was subject to fits of ab¬ 
sence, which seem now and then to have involved him 
in ludicrous mistakes and disasters. Altogether, his ex¬ 
terior was such as might of itself have tempted an¬ 
other poet to find a place for him in a comedy. It 
would be wrong, however, to suppose, as some have 
done, that the holding up of Socrates to ridicule in the 
comedy of the “ Clouds” was the prelude, and, in 
fact, the true cause of his condemnation and death. 
In the first place, twenty-four years intervened be¬ 
tween the first representation of the “ Clouds” and 
the trial of the philosopher ; and, besides, Aristopha¬ 
nes was not the only comic poet who traduced him 
and his disciples on the stage. Eupolis, for example, 
had charged him with a sleight of hand like that de¬ 
scribed in the “ Clouds” ( Schol. ad Nub., 180), and 
had also introduced Chserephon, in his K ohaueg, as a 
parasite of Callias. {Schol., Plat., Bekker, p. 331.) 
The time, in fact, in which Socrates was brought to 
trial, was one in which great zeal was professed, and 
some was undoubtedly felt, for the revival of the an¬ 
cient institutions, civil and religious, under which 
Athens had attained to her past greatness ; and it was 
to be expected that all who traced the public calami¬ 
ties to the neglect of the old laws and usages should 
consider Socrates as a dangerous person. But there 
were also specious reasons, which will presently be 
mentioned, for connecting him more immediately with 
the tyranny under which the city had lately groaned. 
His accusers, however, were neither common syco¬ 
phants, nor do they appear to have been impelled by 
purely patriotic motives. This, however, is a point 
which must always remain involved in great uncer¬ 
tainty. Anytus, who seems to have taken the lead in 
the prosecution, and probably set it on foot, is said to 
have been a tanner, and to have acquired great wealth 
by his trade {Schol., Plat., Apol. Socr., p. 331, Bek¬ 
ker) ; but he was also a man of great political activ¬ 
ity and influence, for the Thirty thought him consider¬ 
able enough to include him in the same decree of ban¬ 
ishment with Thrasybulus and Alcibiades {Xen., Hist. 
Gr., 2, 3, 42), and he held the rank of general in the 
army at Phyle. {Lysias, Agorat., p. 137.) With 
him were associated two persons much inferior to him 
in reputation and popularity : a tragic poet named 
Melitus or Meletus, in whose name the indictment 
was brought, and who, if we may judge of him from 
the manner in which he is mentioned by Aristopha¬ 
nes, was not very celebrated or successful in his art. 
The other associate was one Lycon, who is described 
as an orator {Apol., p. 24.—Compare Diog. Laert., 
2 , 38), and who probably furnished all the assistance 
that could be derived from experience in the proceed¬ 
ings and temper of the law-courts. According to an 
opinion ascribed to Socrates himself {Apol., p. 23), 
they were all three instigated by merely personal re¬ 
sentment, which he had innocently provoked by his 


personal habits.—The indictment charged Socratea 
with three distinct offences : with not believing in the 
gods which the state believed in ; with introducing 
new divinities ; and with corrupting the young. The 
case was one of those in which the prosecutor was al¬ 
lowed to propose the penalty due to the crime (ayuv 
TLfxrjToq ); Melitus proposed death. Before the cause 
was tried, Lysias composed a speech in defence of 
Socrates, and brought it to him for his use. But he 
declined it as too artificial in its character. Among 
the works of Plato is an Apology, which purports to 
be the defence which he really made ; and, if this was 
written by Plato, it probably contains the substance 
at least of his answer to the charge. The tone is 
throughout that of a man who does not expect to be 
acquitted. The first head of the indictment he meets 
with a direct denial, and observes that he has been 
calumniously burdened with the physical doctrines of 
Anaxagoras and other philosophers. But that part 
which relates to the introduction of new divinities he 
does not positively contradict; he only gets rid of it 
by a question which involves his adversary in an ap¬ 
parent absurdity. • The charge itself seems to have 
been insidiously framed, so as to aggravate and distort 
a fact which was universally notorious, but which was 
then very little understood, and has continued ever 
since to give rise to a multitude of conjectures. 
Socrates, who was accustomed to reflect profound¬ 
ly on the state of his own mind, had, it seems, grad¬ 
ually become convinced that he was favoured by 
the gods (who, as he believed, were always willing 
to communicate such a knowledge of futurity to their 
worshippers as was necessary to their welfare) with 
an inward sign, which he describes as a voice, by 
which, indeed, he was never positively directed, but 
was often restrained from action. It was by this 
inward monitor that he professed to have been pro¬ 
hibited from taking a part in public business. In 
the latter part of his life its w r arning had been more 
frequently repeated, and it had consequently become 
a matter of more general notoriety. There was no¬ 
thing in such a claim at all inconsistent with any doc¬ 
trine of the Greek theology. But the language of the 
indictment was meant to insinuate that in this super¬ 
natural voice Socrates pretended to hear some new 
deity, the object of his peculiar worship.—His answer 
to the third charge is also somewhat evasive, and seems 
to show that he did not understand its real drift. Nev¬ 
ertheless, we have the best evidence that it was on this 
the issue of the trial mainly turned. JEschines, who 
had often, probably, heard all t.he particulars of this 
celebrated cause from his father, asserts that Socrates 
was put to death because it appeared that he had been 
the instructer of Critias {Timarch., p. 24) ; and that 
the orator neither was mistaken, nor laid too much 
stress on this fact, seems to be clearly proved by the 
anxiety which Xenophon shows to vindicate his mas¬ 
ter on this head. {Mem., 1,2.) But, at the same 
time, we learn from him, that the prosecutors did not 
confine themselves to this example of the evils which 
had arisen from the teaching of Socrates, and that 
they made him answerable also for the calamities 
which Alcibiades had brought upon his country. It 
was, however, no doubt, the case of Critias that sup¬ 
plied them with their most efficacious appeals to the 
passions of their hearers. Critias, the bloodthirsty- 
tyrant, the deadly enemy of the people, had once 
sought the society of Socrates, and had introduced 
his young cousin and ward, Charmides, to the philo§- 
opher’s acquaintance. It was true, and probably was 
not disputed by the accusers of Socrates, that Critias 
had afterward been entirely alienated from him. But 
this fact, and many others along with it, were not like¬ 
ly to counteract the impression that he contributed to 
form the mind and character of Critias. When we 
consider, too, that Socrates, notwithstanding his con- 

1247 




SOCRATES. 


S OL 


duct during the Anarchy, must have been accounted 
one of the party of the city, since he remained there 
throughout the whole period, and that the prosecutors 
were probably able to give evidence of many express¬ 
ions apparently unfavourable to democracy, which had 
fallen from him in his manifold conversations, we can¬ 
not be surprised that the verdict was against him, but 
rather, as he himself professed to be, that the votes of 
the judges were almost equally divided. It appears, 
indeed, most likely, that if his defence had been con¬ 
ducted in the usual manner, he would have been ac¬ 
quitted ; and that, even after the conviction, he would 
not have been condemned to death if he had not pro¬ 
voked the anger of the court by a deportment which 
must have been interpreted as a sign of profound con¬ 
tempt or of insolent defiance. When the verdict had 
been given, the prisoner was entitled to speak in miti¬ 
gation of the penalty proposed by the prosecutor, and 
to assign another for the court to decide upon. Soc¬ 
rates is represented as not only disdaining to depre¬ 
cate its severity by such appeals as were usually made 
in the Athenian tribunals to the feelings of the jurors, 
but as demanding a reward and honour instead of the 
punishment of a malefactor ; and he was at last only 
induced by the persuasions and offers of his friends to 
name a trifling pecuniary mulct. The execution of his 
sentence was delayed by the departure of the Theoris, 
the sacred vessel which carried the yearly offerings of 
the Athenians to Delos. From the moment that the 
priest of Apollo had crowned its stern with laurel 
until its return, the law required that the city should 
be kept pure from all pollution, and, therefore, that no 
criminal should be put to death. The opening cere¬ 
mony had taken place on the day before the trial of 
Socrates, and thirty days elapsed before the Theoris 
again sailed into the Piraeus. During this interval 
some of his wealthy friends pressed him to take ad¬ 
vantage of the means of escape which they could ea¬ 
sily have procured for him. But he refused to prolong 
a life which was so near to its natural close—for he 
was little less than seventy years old—by a breach of 
the laws, which he had never violated, and in defence 
of which he had before braved death; and his attach¬ 
ment to Athens was so strong that life had no charms 
for him in a foreign land. His imprisonment was 
cheered by the society of his friends, and was probably 
spent chiefly in conversation of a more than usually 
elevated strain. When the summons came, he drank 
the fatal cup of hemlock in the midst of his weeping 
friends, with as much composure, and as little regret, 
as the last draught of a long and cheerful banquet. 
The sorrow which the Athenians are said to have man¬ 
ifested for his death, by signs of public mourning, and 
by the punishments inflicted on his prosecutors, seems 
not to be so well attested as the alarm it excited 
among his most eminent disciples, who perhaps con¬ 
sidered it as the signal of a general persecution, and 
are said to have taken refuge at Megara and other cit¬ 
ies. ( Diog. Laert., 2, 19, seqq. — Enfield, Hist. Phi¬ 
los., vol. 4, p. 164, seqq. — Ritter, Hist. Philos., vol. 
2, p. 1, 16, seqq.—ThirlwalVs Greece , vol. 4, p. 265, 
seqq.) —II. Surnamed Scholasticus, an ecclesiastical 
historian, who flourished about the middle of the fifth 
century. He was a native of Constantinople, and a 
pupil of the grammarians Ammonius and Helladius. 
Socrates wrote an ecclesiastical history in seven books, 
from 306 to 439 A.D. He at first took for his guide 
the work of Rufinus ; but having afterward perceived, 
from the works of Athanasius and from the corre¬ 
spondence of other fathers of the church, that Rufinus 
had fallen into great errors, he retouched the first two 
books of his history. It is an exact and judicious 
work, and is written with great simplicity. The se¬ 
verely orthodox have charged him with leaning to the 
opinions of the Novatians, and at other times with 
being led away by a certain Sabinus, who made a 
1248 


collection of the acts of councils. Both reproaches, 
however, are devoid of foundation.— The best edition 
of his history is that of Reading, Cant., 1720, fob 

Sogdiana, a country of Upper Asia, between the 
Jaxartes and Oxus, lying to the west of Scythia extra 
Irnaum, from which it is separated by the range of 
Imaus. It is bounded on the north by the Jaxartes, 
and on the south by the Oxus, and appears to corre¬ 
spond at the present day to northern Bucharey, the 
country of the Usbeck Tartars, a part of the country 
of Pelur and of Little Thibet. The chief range of 
mountains in this tract was called the Sogdian, and 
traversed the whole region between the Oxus and Jax 
artes. Among the tribes in this quarter may be enu¬ 
merated the Sogdiani, the Psesicae, the Iatii, the Ta 
chori, &c., along the Sogdian Mountains ; the Mardy 
eni in what is now the land of the Usbeck Tartars ; 
the Oxiani and Chorasmii along the Oxus ; the Drep 
siani, at the sources of the Jaxartes, &c. In the mid 
die ages, Sogdiana became famous, under the Arabic 
name of Soghd, for its great fertility, and was repre¬ 
sented as a country eight days’ journey in length, 
full of gardens, groves, cornfields, &c. The territory 
around Samarcand, in particular, the Arabian geogra¬ 
phers describe as a terrestrial paradise. The rich val¬ 
ley of Soghd presented so great an abundance of ex¬ 
quisite grapes, melons, pears, and apples, that they 
were exported to Persia, and even to Hindustan. 
Marcanda answers to the modern Samarcand. ( Bis- 
choff und Moller, Worterb. dcr Geogr., p. 925.— Mal- 
te-Brun, Geogr., vol. 2, p. 378, Am. ed.) 

Sogdianus, a natural son of Artaxerxes Longima- 
nus, who murdered his brother Xerxes. He was de¬ 
throned, however, in his turn by Ochus, after a reign 
of only six months and fifteen days, and was suffocated 
in ashes according to the Persian custom. ( Diod. Sic.. 
12, 71.— Ctes., 47, seqq.) 

Sol, the Sun. ( Vid. Apollo, Hercules, Mithras, 
&c.) 

Solinus, C. Julius, a Latin writer, whose period 
is unknown. Some critics place him in the middle 
of the second century; while others make him con¬ 
temporary with the Emperor Heliogabalus, because 
they find that this prince had for a colleague, in his 
first consulship, a certain Adventus, and Solinus dedi¬ 
cates his work to a friend of the same name. This 
production is entitled Polyhistor, and is divided into 
fifty-six, or, according to other editions, seventy chap¬ 
ters. It is a collection of various notices, principally 
geographical, taken from different authors, many of 
whom are now lost, but particularly from Pliny, whose 
text may perhaps be corrected from this abridgment. 
Salmasius has proved, as far as things of this nature 
are susceptible of proof, that Solinus published two 
editions of his work, the first under the title of Collec¬ 
tanea rerum memorabilium, and the other, re-touched 
and enlarged, under that of Polyhistor. These two 
editions have been blended and confounded together 
by the copyists. We have also twenty-two verses, a 
poem, by Solinus, entitled Pontica. ( Burmann, An- 
thol. Lat ., vol. 2, p. 383.)—The best edition of the 
Polyhistor is that of Salmasius (Saumaise), Traj. 
1689, 2 vols. 8vo. 

Solis Fons, a celebrated fountain in Africa. ( Vid. 
Ammon.) 

Soloe, I. a city of Cyprus, on the northern shore 
of the island, and southwest of the promontory Crom- 
myon. The inhabitants were called Solii, whence 
some later writers give the name of the city as Soli. 
It was founded by an Athenian colony ( Strabo, 683), 
and Solon is mentioned by Herodotus as having vis¬ 
ited Philocyprus, the tyrant of the place, and having 
praised him in his verse (5, 113). Plutarch informs 
us that, at the time of Solon’s arrival, Philocyprus 
reigned over a small city near the river Clarius, in 3 
strong situation indeed, but in a very indifferent soil 





SOL 


SOLON. 


As there was an agreeable plain below, Solon per¬ 
suaded him to raise there a larger and more pleasant 
city, and to transfer thither the inhabitants of the other 
He also assisted in laying out the whole, and building 
it in the best manner for convenience and defence, so 
that Philocyprus shortly had it peopled in such a man¬ 
ner as to excite the envy of the neighbouring princes : 
and, therefore, though the former city was called ^Epia, 
yet, in honour of Solon, he called the new one Soli. 
This story, however, appears to want confirmation, 
the more particularly, as Herodotus, who is fond of 
relating such things, makes no mention of the matter. 
It is more than probable that the anecdote owed its 
origin to the accidental similarity between the name 
of Solon and that of the city. Pococke found traces 
of the ancient place, which still bore the name of So- 
iea (vol. 2, p. 324).—The inhabitants of this city, as 
well as those of Soloe in Cilicia, were charged with 
speaking very ungrammatical Greek, whence the term 
Solecism (So/lor/aoycdf), to denote any gross violation 
of the idiom of a language. ( Suidas, s. v. 26/lof.)— 
H. A city of Cilicia Campestris, near the mouth of 
the river Lamus. It was founded by an Argive col¬ 
ony, strengthened by settlers from the city of Lindus 
- n Rhodes. By intermingling with the rude Cilicians, 
the inhabitants so far corrupted their own dialect as 
to give rise to the term Solecism (SoAoi/ao/zdc), to 
denote any violation of the idiom of a language. ( Vid. 
Soloe I.) It is doubtful whether the term in question 
belongs properly to the city we are now considering, 
or the one in Cyprus ; the greater number of authori¬ 
ties appear to be in favour of the former. Soloe suf¬ 
fered severely from Tigranes, king of Armenia, who 
wrested the greater part of Syria, and also Cilicia, 
from the Seleucidse. He carried the inhabitants of 
the place to Tigranocerta, his Armenian capital, in 
order to introduce there European culture. Pompey, 
therefore, found Soloe nearly desolate in his visit to 
these parts during the war with the pirates, and estab¬ 
lished here the remainder of the latter after they were 
conquered, The city was henceforward known, be¬ 
sides its own name, by that of Pompeiopolis. ( Strab ., 
671.— Appian, Bell. Mithrad ., 105.) — This city was 
the birthplace of Chrysippus, Menander, and Aratus. 

( Mela , 1, 13.— Strabo, l. c.) Captain Beaufort gives 
a detailed account of the topography and remains of 
this interesting city. {Karamania,p.2Q\, seqq.) Me- 
zetln is the name which most of the natives give to 
the modern site. ( Beaufort , lb , p. 266.— Mannert, 
Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 2, p. 67.) 

Soltis, a promontory on the western coast of Mau¬ 
ritania Tingitana, now Cape Cantin. {Herod., 2, 32. 
-Id., 4, 43.) 

Solon, a celebrated Athenian lawgiver, and one of 
the seven sages of Greece. According to the most 
authentic accounts, he was the son of Execestides, 
and was sprung from the line of Codrus. His father 
had reduced his fortune by his imprudent liberality ; 
and Solon, in his youth, is said to have been compelled, 
in order to repair the decay of his patrimony, to em¬ 
bark in commercial adventures—a mode of acquiring 
wealth which was not disdained by men of the highest 
birth, as it frequently afforded them the means of form¬ 
ing honourable alliances in foreign countries, and even 
of raising themselves to princely rank as the founders 
of colonies. It was, however, undoubtedly not more 
the desire of affluence than the thirst of knowledge 
that impelled Solon to seek distant shores ; and the 
most valuable fruit of his travels was the experience 
he collected of men, manners, and institutions. We 
are unable to ascertain the precise time at which he 
returned to. settle in Athens ; but if, as is most prob¬ 
able, it was in the period following Cylon’s conspira¬ 
cy, he found his country in a deplorable condition, 
distracted within by the contests of exasperated par¬ 
ties, and scarcely able to resist the attacks of its least 
7 T 


powerful v’etgubours. Even the little state of Megan 
was at this time a formidable enemy. It had suc¬ 
ceeded in wresting the island of Salamis from the 
Athenians, who had been repeatedly baffled in then 
attempts to recover what they esteemed their rightful 
possession. The losses they had sustained in this 
tedious war had broken their spirit, and had driven 
them to the resolution of abandoning for ever the as¬ 
sertion of their claims. A decree had been passed, 
which, under penalty of death, forbade any one s* 
much as to propose the renewal of the desperate un¬ 
dertaking. Solon, who was himself a native of Sala¬ 
mis, and was, perhaps, connected by various ties with 
the island, was indignant at this pusillanimous policy; 
and he devised an extraordinary plan for rousing his 
countrymen from their d^pondency. He was endow¬ 
ed by nature with a happy poetical talent, of which 
some specimens are still extant in the fragments of 
his numerous works ; which, though they never rise 
to a very high degree of beauty, possess the charm of 
a vigorous and graceful simplicity. He now com¬ 
posed a poem on the loss of Salamis, which Plutarch 
praises as one of his most ingenious productions. To 
elude the prohibition, he assumed the demeanour of a 
madman ; and, rushing into the market-place, mounted 
the stone from which the heralds were used to make 
their proclamations, and recited his poem to the by¬ 
standers. It contained a vehement expostulation on 
the disgrace which the Athenian name had incurred, 
and a summons to take the field again, and vindicate 
their right to the lovely island. The hearers caught 
the poet’s enthusiasm, which was seconded by the ap¬ 
plause of his friends, and particularly by the eloquence 
of his young kinsman Pisistratus. The restraining 
law was repealed, and it was resolved once more to 
try the fortune of arms. Solon not only inspired his 
countrymen with hope, but led them to victory, aided 
in the camp, as in the city, by the genius of Pisistra¬ 
tus. The stratagem with which he attacked the Me- 
gari-ans is variously related; but he is said to have fin¬ 
ished the campaign by a single blow, and certainly 
succeeded in speedily recovering the island. We may 
even conclude that the Athenians at the same time 
made themselves masters of the port of Megara Ni- 
ssea, since it is said to have been soon after reconquer¬ 
ed by the Megarians. The reputation which Solon 
acquired by this enterprise was heightened, and more 
widely diffused throughout Greece by the part he took 
in the Sacred War, which ended with the destruction 
of Cirrha. But already, before this, he had gained 
the confidence of his fellow-citizens, and had begun 
to exert his influence in healing their intestine divis¬ 
ions. The outcry against Megacles and his associates 
in the massacre had risen so high, that it became ev¬ 
ident that quiet could never be restored until they had 
expiated their offence, and had delivered the city from 
the curse which they seemed to have brought upon it. 
Solon, with the assistance of the most moderate no¬ 
bles, prevailed on the party of Megacles to submit 
their cause to the decision of an impartial tribunal. 
Under such circumstances their condemnation was in¬ 
evitable : those who had survived went into exile, and 
the bones of the deceased were taken out of their 
graves and transported beyond the frontier. In the 
mean while the Megarians had not relinquished their 
pretensions to Salamis, and they took advantage of 
the troubles which occupied the attention of the Athe¬ 
nians to dislodge their garrison from Nissea, and to 
reconquer the island, where five hundred Athenian 
colonists, who had voluntarily shared Solon’s first ex¬ 
pedition, had been rewarded with an allotment of 
lands, which gave them a predominant influence in 
the government. It seems probable that it was after 
this event that the two states, seeing no prospect of 
terminating by arms a warfare subject to such vicissi¬ 
tudes, and equally harassing to both, now that tneil 

1249 






SOLON. 


SOLON. 


honour had been satisfied by alternate victories, agreed 
to refer their claims to arbitration. At their request 
the Lacedaemonians appointed five commissioners to 
try the cause. Solon, who was the chief spokesman 
on the Athenian side, maintained their title on the 
ground of ancient possession, by arguments which, 
though they never silenced the Meganans, appear to 
have convinced the arbitrators. The strongest seem 
to have been derived from the Athenian customs, of 
which he pointed out traces in the mode of interment 
observed in Salamis, as well as inscriptions on the 
tombs, which attested the Attic origin of the persons 
they commemorated. He is said also to have adduced 
the authority of the Homeric catalogue of the Greciari 
fleet, by forging a line which described Ajax as ram 
ging the ships which he brought from Salamis in the 
Athenian station; and he interpreted some oracular 
verses, which spoke of Salamis as an Ionian island, in 
a similar sense. Modern criticism would not have 
been much better satisfied with the plea, which he 
grounded on the Attic tradition, that the sons of the 
same hero had settled in Attica, and had been adopt¬ 
ed as Athenian citizens, and, in return, had transferred 
their hereditary dominion over the island to their new 
countrymen. The weight, however, of all these argu¬ 
ments determined the issue in favour of the Atheni¬ 
ans ; and it seems more probable that the Megarians 
acquiesced in a decision to which they had themselves 
appealed, than that, as Plutarch represents, they al¬ 
most immediately renewed hostilities. Party feuds 
continued to rage with unabated violence at Athens. 
The removal of the men whom public opinion had de¬ 
nounced as objects of divine wrath, was only a pre¬ 
liminary step towards the restoration of tranquillity; 
but the evil was seated much deeper, and required a 
different kind of remedy, which was only to be found 
in a new organization of the state. This, it is proba¬ 
ble, Solon already meditated, as he must long have 
perceived its necessity. But he saw that, before it 
could be accomplished, the minds of men must be 
brought into a frame fitted for its reception, and that 
this could only be done with the aid of religion. 
There were superstitious fears to be stilled, angry pas¬ 
sions to be soothed, barbarous usages, hallowed by 
long prescription, to be abolished ; and even the au¬ 
thority of Solon was not of itself sufficient for these 
purposes. He therefore looked abroad for a coadju¬ 
tor, and fame directed his view to a man peculiarly 
qualified to meet the extraordinary emergency. This 
was no other than the famous Epimenides, whom his 
contemporaries regarded as a being of a superior na¬ 
ture, and who, even to us, appears in a mysterious, or, 
at least, an ambiguous light, from our inability to de¬ 
cide how far he himself partook in the general opinion 
which ascribed to him an intimate connexion with 
higher powers. This person was publicly invited to 
Athens, to exert his marvellous powers on behalf of 
the distracted city ; and, when his work was accom¬ 
plished, he was dismissed with tokens of the warmest 
gratitude. (Vid. Epimenides.) But, though the visit 
of Epimenides was attended with the most salutary 
consequences, so far as it applied a suitable remedy to 
evils which were entirely seated in the imagination, 
and, though it may have wrought still happier effects 
by calming, soothing, and opening hearts which had 
before only beaten with wild and malignant passions, 
still it had not produced any real change in the state 
of things, but had, at the utmost, only prepared the 
way for one. This work remained to be achieved by 
Solon. The government had long been in the hands 
of men who appear to have wielded it only as an in¬ 
strument for aggrandizing and enriching themselves. 
They had reduced a great part of the class whose in¬ 
dustry was employed in the labours of agriculture to 
a state of abject dependance, in which they were not 
only debarred from all but, pe-rhaps, a merely nominal 
1250 


share of political rights, but ..ead even their persona* 
freedom by a precarious tenure, and were frequently 
reduced, to actual slavery. The smaller proprietors, 
impoverished by bad times or casual disasters, were 
compelled to borrow money at high interest, and to 
mortgage their lands to the rich, or to receive them 
again as tenants upon the same hard term? r.s wine 
imposed upon those who cultivated the estates of the 
great land-owners. According to the laws made by 
the nobles, the insolvent debtor might be seized by 
his creditor and sold into slavery ; or torn from his 
home and condemned to end his days in the sen ice 
of a foreign master, or driven to the still harder ne¬ 
cessity of selling his own children. The eyes of So 
Ion had frequently been struck with the dismal mon¬ 
uments of aristocratical oppression scattered over the 
fields of Attica, in the stone-posts, which marked that 
what was once a property had become a pledge, and 
that its former owner had lost his independence, and 
was in danger of sinking into a still more degaded and 
miserable condition ; and such spectacles undoubted¬ 
ly moved him, no less than that which roused the holy 
indignation of the elder Gracchus against the Roman 
grandees. ( PlutTib. Gracch., c. 8.) Those whs 
groaned under this tyranny were only eager for a 
change, and cared little about the means by which it 
might be effected. But the population of Attica was 
not simply composed of these two classes. An an¬ 
cient geographical division of the country, which, from 
time immemorial, had determined the pursuits and the 
character of its inhabitants, now separated them into 
three distinct parties (nedi£% or TLedtatoi, lowland- 
ers; Aia/cptoi, higkfayiders; and UapaXoi, the men 
of the coast), animated each by its peculiar interests, 
views, and feelings. The possessions of the nobles 
lay chiefly in the plains. As a body, they desired the 
continuance of the existing state of things, on which 
their power and exclusive privileges depended ; but 
there were among them some moderate men, who 
were willing to make concessions to prudence, if not 
to justice, and to resign a part for the sake of secu¬ 
ring the rest. The inhabitants of the highlands, in the 
eastern and northern parts of Attica, do not seem to 
have suffered any of the evils inflicted on the lowland 
peasantry ; but, though independent, they were prob¬ 
ably, for the most part, poor, and generally wished for 
a revolution which should place them on a level with 
the rich. Uniting their cause with that of the op¬ 
pressed, they called for a thorough redress of griev¬ 
ances, by reducing, namely, that enormous inequality 
of possessions, which' was the source of degradation 
and misery to them and their fellows. {Plut., Sol., 
13, 29.) The men of the coast, who probably com¬ 
posed a main part of that class which subsisted by 
trade, by the exercise of the mechanical arts, and per¬ 
haps by the working of the mines, and now included 
a considerable share of affluence and intelligence, 
were averse to violent measures, but were desirous oi 
a reform in the constitution, which should promote the 
prosperity of the country by removing all grounds of 
reasonable complaint, and should admit a larger num¬ 
ber to the enjoyment of those rights which were now 
engrossed and abused by a few. The people in gen¬ 
eral felt the need of a leader, and would have prefer¬ 
red even the despotic rule of one man to the tyranny 
of their many lords. As Solon belonged to the nobil¬ 
ity by birth and station, and had recommended him¬ 
self to the people by the proofs he had shown of ac¬ 
tivity, prudence, justice, and humanity, he was cho¬ 
sen, with the unanimous consent of all parties, to me¬ 
diate between them, and arbitrate their quarrels, as 
the person most capable of remedying the disorders 
of the state ; and, under the title of archon, was in¬ 
vested with full authority to frame a new constitution 
and a new code of laws (01. 46.3, B.C. 594). As 
such an office, und'w: such circumstances, conferred 




SOLON. 


SOLON. 


almost unlimited power, and an ambitious man might 
easily have abused it to make himself master of the 
state, Solon’s friends exhorted hirn to seize the oppor¬ 
tunity of becoming tyrant of Athens ; and they were 
not at a loss for fair arguments to colour their foul ad¬ 
vice, reminding him of recent instances—of Tynnon- 
da3 in Eubcea, and Pittacus at Mytilene, who had ex¬ 
ercised a sovereignty over their fellow-citizens without 
forfeiting their love. Solon saw through their sophis¬ 
try, and was not tempted by it to betray the sacred 
trust reposed in him; but, satisfied with the approba¬ 
tion of his own conscience and the esteem of his coun¬ 
trymen, instead of harbouring schemes of self-aggran¬ 
dizement, he bent all his thoughts and energies to the 
execution of the great task which he had undertaken. 
This task consisted of two main parts : the first and 
most pressing business was to relieve the present dis¬ 
tress of the commonalty ; the next to provide against 
the recurrence of like evils, by regulating the rights 
of all the citizens according to equitable principles, 
and fixing them on a permanent basis. In proceeding 
to the first part of his undertaking, Solon held a mid¬ 
dle course between the two extremes—those who 
wished to keep all, and those who were for taking ev¬ 
erything away. While he resisted the reckless and 
extravagant demands of those who desired all debts to 
be cancelled, and the lands of the rich to be confis¬ 
cated and parcelled out among the poor, he met the 
reasonable expectations of the public by his disbur¬ 
dening ordinance (Sefcrd^fem), and relieved the debt¬ 
or, partly by a reduction of the rate of interest, which 
was probably made retrospective, and thus, iq many 
cases, would wipe off’ a great part of the debt, and 
partly by lowering the standard of the silver coinage, 
so that the debtor saved more than one fourth in ev¬ 
ery payment. ( Pint ., Sol., 15.— Vid. Boeckh, Staatsh., 
2 , p. 360.) He likewise released the pledged lands 
from their encumbrances, and restored them in full 
property to their owners ; though it does not seem cer¬ 
tain whether this was one of the express objects of 
the measure, or only one of the consequences which 
it involved. Finally, he abolished the inhuman law 
which enabled the creditor to enslave his debtor, and 
restored those who were pining at home in such bond¬ 
age to immediate liberty ; and it would seem that he 
compelled those who had sold their debtors into for¬ 
eign countries to procure their freedom at their own 
expense. The debt itself, in such cases, was of 
course held to be extinguished. Solon himself, in a 
poem which he afterward composed on the subject of 
his legislation, spoke with a becoming pride of the 
happy change which this measure had wrought in the 
face of Attica, of the numerous citizens whose lands 
he had discharged, and whose persons he had eman¬ 
cipated, and brought back from hopeless slavery in 
strange lands. He was only unfortunate in bestowing 
his confidence on persons who were incapable of imi¬ 
tating his virtue, and who abused his intimacy. At 
the time when all men were uncertain as to his inten¬ 
tions, and no kind of property could be thought se¬ 
cure, he privately informed three of his friends of his 
determination not to touch the estates of the land-own¬ 
ers, but only to reduce the amount of debt. He had 
afterward the vexation of discovering, that the men to 
whom he had intrusted this secret had been base 
enough to take advantage of it, by making large pur¬ 
chases of land—which at such a juncture bore, no 
doubt, a very low price—with borrowed money. For¬ 
tunately for his fame, the state of his private affairs 
was such as to exempt him from all suspicion of having 
had any share in this sordid transaction. He had him¬ 
self a considerable sum out at interest, and was a loser 
in proportion by his own enactment. This seems the 
most probable and accurate account of Solon’s meas¬ 
ures of relief. There was, however, another, adopted 
bv some ancient writers, which represented him as 


having entirely cancelled all debts, and as having only 
disguised the violence of this proceeding under a soft 
and attractive mien. It does not appear that the an¬ 
cients saw anything to censure in his conduct accord 
ing to either view. But the example of Solon cannot 
fairly be pleaded by those who contend that either 
public or private faith may be rightly sacrificed to e.x 
pediency. He must be considered as an arbitrator, to 
whom all the parties interested submitted their claims, 
with the avowed intent that they should be decided 
by him, not upon the footing of legal right, but accord¬ 
ing to his own view of the public interest. It was in 
this light that he himself regarded his office, and he 
appears to have discharged it faithfully and discreetly. 
The strongest proof of the wisdom and equity of his 
measures is, that they subjected him to obloquy from 
the violent spirits of both the extreme parties. But 
their murmurs were soon drowned in the general ap¬ 
probation with which the disburdening ordinance was 
received ; it was celebrated with a solemn festival; 
and Solon was encouraged, by the strongest assurances 
of the increased confidence of his fellow-citizens, to 
proceed with his work ; and he now entered on the sec¬ 
ond and more difficult part of his task. He began by 
repealing all the laws of Draco, except those which 
concerned the repression of bloodshed, which were, 
in fact, customs hallowed by time and by religion, and 
had been retained, not introduced, by his predeces¬ 
sor. As a natural consequence, perhaps, of this meas¬ 
ure, he published an amnesty, or act of grace, which 
restored those citizens who had been deprived of their 
franchise for lighter offences, and recalled those who 
had been forced into exile ; and it seems probable that 
this indulgence was extended to the house of Mega- 
cles, the Alcmseonids, as they were called from a re¬ 
mote ancestor, the third in descent from Nestor, and 
to the partners of his guilt and punishment: the city, 
now purified and tranquillized, might be supposed to 
be no longer either polluted or endangered by their 
presence ; and it was always liable to be disturbed by 
their machinations so long as they remained in ban¬ 
ishment. The four ancient tribes were retained, with 
all their subdivisions ; but it seems probable that So¬ 
lon admitted a number of new citizens ; for it is said 
that he invited foreigners to Athens by this boon, 
though he confined it to such as settled their whole 
family and substance, and had dissolved their connex¬ 
ion with their native land. The distinguishing feature 
of the new constitution was the substitution of proper¬ 
ty for birth, as a title to the honours and offices of the 
state. (Compare Niebuhr, Rom. Hist., 2, 305, 2 d ed., 
Camb. trans .) This change, though its consequences 
were of infinite importance, would not appear so vio¬ 
lent or momentous to the generation which witness¬ 
ed it, since at this time these two claims general¬ 
ly concurred in the same person. Solon divided the 
citizens into four classes, according to the grada¬ 
tions of their fortunes, and regulated the extent of 
their franchise and their contributions to the public 
necessities by the amount of their in?-res. The 
first class, as its name expressed, consisted of persons 
whose estates yielded a nett yearly income, or rent, 
of 500 measures of dry or liquid produce (UevTaKoo- 
LOfitdifjLvot). The qualification of the second class was 
three fifths of this amount: that of the third, two thirds, 
or, more probably, half of the latter. The members of 
the second class were called knights, being accounted 
able to keep a warhorse; the name of the third class, 
whom we might call yeomen, was derived from the 
yoke of cattle for the plough, which a farm of the ex¬ 
tent described was supposed to require (Z evylrai). 
The fourth class comprehended all whose incomes fell 
below that of the third, and, according to its name, 
consisted of hired labourers in husbandry (0^ref). 
The first class was exclusively eligible to the highest 
offices, those of the nine archons- and probably to all 

1251 



SOLON. 


SOLON. 


otners which had hitherto been reserved to the nobles; 
they were also destined to fill the highest commands 
in the army, as ir iater times, when Athens became a 
maritime power, they did in the fleet. Some lower 
offices were undoubtedly left open to the second and 
third class, though we are unable to define the extent 
of their privileges, or to ascertain whether, in their po¬ 
litical rights, one had any advantage over the other. 
They were at least distinguished from each other by 
the inode of their military service ; the one furnishing 
the cavalry, the other the heavy-armed infantry. But, 
for their exclusion from the dignities occupied by the 
wealthy few, they received a compensation in the 
comparative lightness of their burdens. They were 
assessed, not in exact proportion to the amount of 
their incomes, but at a much lower rate; the nominal 
value of their property being for this purpose reduced 
below the truth, that of the knights by one sixth, that 
of the third class by one third. The fourth class was 
excluded from all share in the magistracy, and from 
the honours and duties of the full-armed warrior, the 
expense of which would, in general, exceed their means: 
by land they served only as light troops ; in later times 
they manned the fleets. In return, they were exempt¬ 
ed from all direct contributions, and they were permit¬ 
ted to take a part in the popular assembly, as well as 
in the exercise of those judicial powers which were 
now placed in the hands of the people. We shall 
shortly have occasion to observe how amply this boon 
compensated for the loss of all the privileges that were 
withheld from them. Solon’s classification takes no 
notice of any other than landed property ; yet, as the 
example of Solon himself seems to prove that Attica 
must already have carried on some foreign trade, it is 
not unlikely that there were fortunes of this kind equal 
to those which gave admission to the higher classes. 
But it can hardly be supposed that they placed their 
possessors on a level with the owners of the soil; it 
is more probable that these, together with the newly- 
adopted citizens, without regard to their various de- 
crrees of affluence, were all included in the lowest 
class. Solon’s system then made room for all free¬ 
men, but assigned to them different places, varying 
with their visible means of serving the state. His 
general aim in the distribution of power, as he himself 
explains it in a fragment which Plutarch has preserved 
from one of his poems, was to give such a share to the 
commonalty as would enable it to protect itself, and to 
the wealthy as much as was necessary for retaining 
their dignity ; in other words, for ruling the people 
without the means of oppressing it. He threw his 
strong shield, he says, over both, and permitted neither 
to gain an unjust advantage. The magistrates, though 
elected upon a different qualification, retained, their an¬ 
cient authority ; but they were now responsible for 
the exercise of it, not to their own body, but to the 
governed. The judicial functions of the archons were 
perhaps preserved nearly in their full extent ; but ap¬ 
peals were allowed from their jurisdiction to courts 
numerously composed, and filled indiscriminately from 
all classes. ( Plut ., Sol., 18.) Solon could not fore¬ 
see the change of circumstances by which this right 
of appeal became the instrument of overthrowing the 
equilibrium which he hoped to have established on a 
solid basis, when that which he had designed to exer¬ 
cise an extraordinary jurisdiction became an ordinary 
tribunal, which drew almost all causes to itself, and 
overruled every other power in the state. He seems to 
have thought that, while he provided sufficiently for the 
security of the commonalty by permitting the lowest of 
its members to vote in the popular assembly, and to sit 
in judgment on cases in which the parties were dissatis¬ 
fied with the ordinary modes of proceeding, he had 
also ensured the stability of his new order of things 
by two institutions, which appeared to be sufficient 
guards against the sallies of democratical extravagance 
1252 


—anchors, as Plutarch expresses it, on which the vea- 
sel of state might ride safely in every storm. 1 hese 
were the two councils of the Four Hundred and the 
Areopagus. The institution of the council ol the 
Four Hundred was uniformly attributed to Solon ; and, 
if this opinion be correct, which has, however, been 
made the subject of some dispute, then, according to 
the theory of Solon’s constitution, the assembly ol the 
people will appear to have been little more than the 
organ of that council, as it could only act upon the 
proposition laid before it by the latter. But the judi¬ 
cial power which Solon had lodged in the hands of ffle 
people was the most powerful instrument on vnich 
he relied for correcting all abuses and remedying all 
mischiefs that might arise out of the working of his 
constitution. A body of 6000 citizens was every yeai 
created by lot to form a supreme court, called Helisa 
which was divided into several smaller ones, not limit¬ 
ed to any precise number of persons. The qualifica¬ 
tions required for this were the same with those which 
gave admission into the general assembly, except that 
the members of the former might not be under the age 
of thirty. It was therefore, in fact, a select portion of 
the latter, in which the powers of the larger body were 
concentrated, and exercised under a judicial form. 
Passing over the other features of the Athenian con¬ 
stitution, as settled by Solon, on which our limits will 
not allow us to dwell, we proceed at once to the re¬ 
mainder of his history. Solon was not one of those 
reformers who dream that they have put an end to in¬ 
novation, and that the changes they have wrought are 
exempt from the general condition of mutability. But 
the very provisions which he made for the continual 
revision and amendment of his laws, seems to show 
the improbability of Plutarch’s account : that he en¬ 
acted them to remain in force for no more than a cen¬ 
tury. They were inscribed on wooden tablets, ar¬ 
ranged in pyramidal blocks turning on an axis ; which 
were kept at first in the Acropolis, but were after¬ 
ward, for more convenient, inspection, brought down 
to the Prytaneum. According to Plutarch, Solon, af¬ 
ter the completion of his work, found himself exposed 
to such incessant vexation from the questions of the 
curious and the cavils of the discontented, that he 
obtained permission to withdraw from Athens for ten 
years, and set out on the travels in which he visited 
Asia Minor, Cyprus, and Egypt, collecting and dif¬ 
fusing knowledge, and everywhere leaving traces of 
his presence in visible monuments or in the mem¬ 
ories of men. But there is some difficulty in reconci¬ 
ling this story with chronology, since it supposes him 
to have found Croesus in Lydia, who did not mount 
the throne within twenty or thirty years after; and the 
alleged occasion of the journey is very doubtful, though 
it is in substance the same with that assigned by Herod¬ 
otus. It is probable that Solon remained for several 
years at Athens, to observe the practical effect of his 
institutions, and to second their operation by his per¬ 
sonal influence. He was, undoubtedly, well aware 
how little the letter of a political system can avail un¬ 
til its practice has become familiar, and its principles 
have gained a hold on the opinions and feelings of the 
people, and that this must be a gradual process, and 
liable to interruption and disturbance. Hence it 
could not greatly disappoint or afflict him to hear 
voices raised from time to time against himself, and 
to perceive that his views were not generally or fully 
comprehended. But he may at length have thought 
it prudenfeto retire for a season from the public eye, 
the better to maintain his dignity and popularity ; and, 
as he himself declared, that age, while it crept upon 
him, still found him continually learning, we need not 
be surprised if, at an unusually late period of life, he 
set out on a long course of travels. On his return, he 
found that faction had been actively labouring to per¬ 
vert and undo his work, and was compelled eventually 






SUP 


SOPHOCLES. 


lo witness the partial overthrow of his system in the 

usurpation of Pisistratus. ( Vid. Pisistratus.)_It is 

not certain how long he survived this inroad upon his 
jnstitutions; one account, apparently the most authen¬ 
tic. places his death in the year following that in 
which the revolution occurred (B.C. 559). The lei¬ 
sure of his retirement from public life was to the last 
devoted to the Muses : and if we might trust Pla¬ 
to’s assertions on such subjects, he was engaged at 
the time of his death in the composition of a great po¬ 
em, in which he had designed to describe the flourish¬ 
ing state of Attica before the Ogygian flood, and to 
celebrate the wars which it waged with the inhabitants 
of the vast island which afterward sank in the Atlantic 
Ocean. On the fragments of this poem, preserved in 
the family, Plato, himself a descendant of Solon, pro¬ 
fesses to have founded a work which he left unfinished, 
but in which he had meant to exhibit his imaginary 
state in life and action. It is certainly not improba¬ 
ble that Solon, when the prospect of his country be¬ 
came gloomy, and his own political career was closed, 
indulged his imagination with excursions into an ideal 
world, where he may have raised a social fabric as un- 
l.ke as possible to the reality which he had before his 
eyes at home, and perhaps suggested by what he had 
seen or heard in Egypt. It is only important to ob¬ 
serve that the fact, if admitted, can lead to no safe 
conclusions as to his abstract political principles, and 
can still less be allowed to sway our judgment on the 
design and character of his institutions. ( Thirlwall's 
Greece , vol. 2, p. 23, seqq.) —Solon is generally ranked 
under the gnomic poets, and some fragments of his 
productions in this department have been preserved 
by the ancient writers. Of these the finest is his 
“Prayer to the Muses.” The fragments of Solon 
are found in the collections of H. Stephens, Winter- 
ton, Brunck, Gaisford, and Boissonnade.—( Scholl, 
Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 1, p. 238.) 

Solymi, a people of Lycia, of whom an account is 
given under the head of Lycia. 

Somnus, son of Erebus and Nox, was one of the 
deities of the lower world, and the god of Sleep. The 
Latin poet Ovid {Met., 11, 592, seqq.), probably after 
some Grecian predecessor, as was usually the case, 
gives a beautiful description of the Cave of Sleep, near 
the land of the Cimmerians, and of the cortege which 
there attended on him, as Morpheus, Icelos or Phor- 
bet£r, and Phantasos ; the first of whom takes the form 
of man to appear in dreams, the second of animals, the 
third of inanimate objects. {Keightleif s Mythology, 

p. 200.) 

Sonus, a river of India, falling into the Ganges, and 
now the Saone or Son. As this river towards its ori¬ 
gin is called Ando-nadi, it appears that the name An- 
domatis (given also in Arrian), or, rather, Ando-natis, 
can denote no other than it. {Plin., 6, 18.) 

Sophene, a country of Armenia, between the prin¬ 
cipal stream of the Euphrates and Mount Masius. It is 
now called Zoph. {Dio Cass., 36, 36.— Plin., 5, 12.) 

Sophocles, a celebrated tragic poet, born at Colo- 
nus, a village little more than a mile from Athens, 
B.C. 495. He was, consequently, thirty years junior 
to iEschylus, and fifteen senior to Euripides, the for¬ 
mer having been born B.C. 525, and the latter B.C. 
480.—Sophiius, his father, a man of opulence and re¬ 
spectability, bestowed upon his son a careful educa¬ 
tion in all the literary and personal accomplishments 
of his age and country. The powers of the future 
dramatist were developed, strengthened, and refined by 
a careful instruction in the principles of music and poe¬ 
try ; while the graces of a person eminently handsome 
derived fresh elegance and ripened into a noble man¬ 
hood amid the exercises of the palaestra. The gar¬ 
lands which he won attested his attainments in both 
these departments of Grecian education. A still more 
striking proof of his personal beauty and early profi¬ 


ciency is recorded in the fact that when, after the bat¬ 
tle of Salamis, the population of Athens stood in sol¬ 
emn assembly around the trophy raised by their val¬ 
our, Sophocles, at the age of sixteen, was selected to 
lead, wfith dance and lyre, the chorus of youths who per¬ 
formed the paean of their country’s triumph. {Athen., 
1, p. 20, e.) The commencement of his dramatic ca¬ 
reer was marked not more by its success than by the 
singularity of the occasion on which his first tragedy 
appeared. The bones of Theseus had been solemnly 
transferred by Cimon from their grave in the isle ol 
Scyros to Athens (B.C 468.— Marm. Arund , No. 
57). An eager contest between the tragedians of the 
day ensued. Sophocles, then in his twenty-fifth year, 
ventured to come forward as one of the candidates, 
among whom was the veteran Aeschylus, now for thir¬ 
ty years the undoubted master of the Athenian stage. 
Party feelings excited such a tumult among the spec¬ 
tators, that the archon Aphepsion had not balloted 
the judges, when Cimon advanced with his nine fel¬ 
low-generals to offer the customary libations to Bac¬ 
chus. No sooner were these completed, than, detain¬ 
ing his colleagues, he directed them to take with him 
the requisite oath, and then seat themselves as judges 
of the performance. Before this self-constituted tri¬ 
bunal Sophocles exhibited his maiden drama, and by 
their decision was proclaimed first victor. This re¬ 
markable triumph was an earnest of the splendid ca¬ 
reer before him. From this event, B.C. 468, to his 
death, B.C. 405, during a space of three-and-sixty 
years, he continued to compose and exhibit. Twenty 
times did he obtain the first prize, still more frequent 
ly the second, and never sank to the third. An accu¬ 
mulation of success which left the victories of his two 
great rivals far behind. iEschylus won but thirteen 
dramatic contests. Euripides was still less fortunate. 
—Such a continuation of poetic exertion and triumph 
is the more remarkable, from the circumstance that 
the powers of Sophocles, so far from becoming dulled 
and exhausted by these multitudinous efforts, seem to 
have contracted nothing from labour and age save a 
mellower tone, a more touching pathos, a sweet and 
gentle character of thought and expression. The life 
of Sophocles, however, was not altogether devoted to 
the service of the Muses. In his fifty-seventh year he 
was one of the ten generals, with Pericles and Thu¬ 
cydides among his colleagues, and served in the war 
against Samos. But his military talents were proba¬ 
bly of no high order, and his generalship added no 
brilliancy to his dramatic fame. At a more advanced 
age he was appointed priest to Alon, one of the an¬ 
cient heroes of his country ; an office more suited to 
the peaceful temper of Sophocles. In the civil duties 
of an Athenian citizen he doubtless took a part. 
Nay, in extreme age, we find him one of the commit¬ 
tee of the 7 rpoftov'koi, appointed, in the progress of the 
revolution brought about by Pisander, to investigate 
the state of affairs, and report thereon to the people as¬ 
sembled on the hill of Colonus, his native place. {Aris- 
tot., Rhet., 3, 18.) And there, as tt po6ov7ioq, he as¬ 
sented, with characteristic easiness of temper, to the 
establishment of oligarchy, under the council of four 
hundred, “ as a bad thing, but the least pernicious meas 
ure which circumstances allowed.” The civil dissen 
sions and extreme reverses which marked the conclu¬ 
ding years of the Peloponnesian war must have fallen 
heavily on the mind of one whose chief delight was in 
domestic tranquillity, and who remembered that proud 
day of Salaminian triumph in which he bore so con¬ 
spicuous a part. His sorrows as a patriotic citizen were 
aggravated by the unnatural conduct of his own fami¬ 
ly. {Vit. Anon .— Cic., de Sen., <$> 7.) Jealous at the 
old man’s affection for a grandchild by a second wife, 
an elder son or sons endeavoured to deprive him of 
the management of his property, on the ground of do¬ 
tage and incapacity. The only refutation which the 

1253 






'SOPHOCLES. 


SOPHOCLES 


latner produced, was to read before the court his 
CEdipus at Colonus, a piece which he had just com¬ 
posed ; or, according to others, that beautnul chorus 
only in which he celebrates the loveliness of his fa¬ 
vourite residence ( Cic.,de Fin., 5, 1). The admiring 
judges instantly arose, dismissed the cause, and ac¬ 
companied the aged poet to his house with the utmost 
honour and respect. Sophocles was spared the mis¬ 
ery of beholding the utter overthrow of his declining 
country. Early in the year 405 B.C., some months 
before the defeat of ^Egospotamos put the finishing 
stroke to the misfortunes of Athens, death came gen¬ 
tly upon the venerable old man, full of years and glory. 
The accounts of his death are very diverse, all tending 
to the marvellous. Ister and Neanthes state that he 
was choked by a grape; Satyrus makes him to expire 
from excessive exertion, in reading aloud a long para¬ 
graph out of the Antigone ; others ascribe his death 
to extreme joy at being proclaimed the Tragic victor. 
Not content with the singularity of his death, the 
ancient recorders of his life add prodigy to his funeral 
also. He died when the Athenians were cooped up 
within their walls, and the Lacedaemonians were in 
possession of Decelea, the place of his family sepul¬ 
chre. Bacchus twice appeared in a vision to Lysan- 
der, the Spartan general, and bid him allow the inter¬ 
ment ; which accordingly took place with all due so¬ 
lemnity. Pausanias, however, tells the story some¬ 
what differently (1, 21). Ister states, moreover, that 
the Athenians passed a decree to appoint an annual 
sacrifice to so admirable a man. (Vit. Anon.) —Sev¬ 
en tragedies alone remain out of the great number 
which Sophocles composed ; yet among these seven 
we probably possess the most splendid productions of 
his genius. Suidas makes the number which he wrote 
one hundred and twenty-three. Aristophanes, the 
grammarian, one hundred and thirty, seventeen of 
which he deemed spurious. Bockh considers both 
statements erroneous. It appears from the argument 
to the Antigone, that this play was exhibited a little 
before the generalship of Sophocles, B.C. 441, and 
that this was his thirty-second drama ; and it is known 
that Sophocles began to exhibit B.C. 468. Hence 
Bockh argues that, as during the first twenty-seven 
years of his dramatic career he produced thirty-two tra¬ 
gedies, so during the remaining thirty-six years it is not 
probable he composed many more than this number. 
He therefore supposes that the true number is seventy, 
or nearly so. To Iophon, the son of Sophocles, he re¬ 
fers many of the plays which bore the father’s name ; 
others he ascribes to the favourite grandson, Sopho¬ 
cles, son of Ariston, by his wife or mistress Theoris. 
The result of Bockh’s investigation is, that of the one 
hundred and six dramas whose titles remain, only twen¬ 
ty-six can, with any certainty, be assigned to the elder 
Sophocles. {Bockh, ad Trag. Groec., c. 8 ,seqq.) —The 
personal character of Sophocles, without rising into 
spotless excellence or exalted heroism, was honoura¬ 
ble, calm, and amiable. In his younger days he seems 
to have bean addicted to intemperance in love and wine. 
( Cic ., Off., 1,40.— Athen., 13, p. 603.) And a say¬ 
ing of his, recorded by Plato, Cicero, and Athenaeus, 
while it confirms the charges just mentioned, would 
also imply that years had cooled the turbulent passions 
of his youth. “ I thank old age,” said the poet, “ for 
delivering me from the tyranny of my appetites.” Yet 
even in his later days, the charms of a Theoris and 
an Archippe are reported to have been too powerful for 
the still susceptible dramatist. Aristophanes, who, in 
his Ranse, manifests so much respect for Sophocles, 
then just dead, had, fourteen years before, accused him 
of avarice ; an imputation, however, scarcely recon¬ 
cilable with all that is known or can be inferred re¬ 
specting the character of Sophocles. The old man, 
who was so absorbed in his art as to incur a charge of 
lunacy from the utter neglect of his affairs, could hard- 
1254 


ly have been a miser. A kindly and contented dispo« 
sition, however blemished by intemperance in pleasure, 
was the characteristic of Sophocles : a characteristic 
which Aristophanes himself so simply and yet so beau 
tifully depicts in that single line. 

'O 6’ evno"X .of /aev kvddd’, evnoTiog 6' tael. — Ran., 82. 

It was Sophocles who gave the last improvements tt 
the form and exhibition of tragedy, lo the two per¬ 
formers of ^Eschylus he added a third actor ; a num¬ 
ber which was never afterward increased. Under his 
directions the effect of theatric exhibitions was height¬ 
ened by the illusion of scenery carefully painted and 
duly arranged. The choral parts were still farther 
curtailed, and the dialogue carried out to its full de¬ 
velopment. The odes themselves are distinguished 
by their close connexion with the business of the play, 
the correctness of their sentiments, and the beauty of 
their poetry. His language, though at times marked 
by harsh metaphors and perplexed constructions, is 
pure and majestic, without soaring into the gigantic 
phraseology of iEschylus on the one hand, or sinking 
into the commonplace diction of Euripides on the 
other. His management of a subject is admirable. 
No one understood so well the artful envelopment of 
incident, the secret excitation of the feelings, and the 
gradual heightening of the interest up to the final cri¬ 
sis, when the catastrophe bursts forth in all the force 
of overwhelming terror or compassion. Such was 
Sophocles ; the most perfect in dramatic arrange¬ 
ments, the most sustained in the even flow of digni¬ 
fied thought, word, and tone, among the tragic trium¬ 
virate. Longinus, it is true, while bestowing the 
highest praises upon Sophocles, alleges a frequent in¬ 
equality ; but this is scarcely borne out by anything 
in his extant tragedies (§ 33.— Theatre of the Greeks, 
3d ed., p. 43, seqq.). —Nature, observes Schlegel, had 
refused Sophocles only one gift, a voice for song. He 
could only call forth and guide the harmonious effu¬ 
sions of other voices, and is therefore said to have 
departed from the established custom that the poet 
should act a part in his own play ; so that once, only, 
he made his appearance in the character of the blind 
songster, Thatnyris, playing on the lyre.—In so far as 
he had iEschylus for his predecessor, who had fashion¬ 
ed tragedy from its original rudeness into the dignity 
of his Cothurnus, Sophocles stands, in respect to the 
history of his art, in such a relation to that poet, that 
he could avail himself of the enterprise of that original 
master ; so that iEschylus appears as the projecting 
predecessor, Sophocles as the finishing successor. 
That there is more art in the compositions of the lat¬ 
ter is evident: the restriction of the chorus in propor¬ 
tion to the dialogue, the finish of the rhythms and of 
the pure Attic diction, the introduction of more nu¬ 
merous persons, the richer connexion of the fables, 
the greater multiplicity of incidents, and the complete 
development, the more quiet sustentation of all mo¬ 
menta of the action, and the more theatrical display 
of the decisive ones, the more finished rounding off 
of the whole, even in a mere outward point of view. 
But there is yet another respect in which he outshines 
iEschylus, and deserved the favour of Destiny, which 
allowed him such a predecessor, and to compete with 
him on the same subjects : I mean the inward harmo¬ 
ny and completeness of his mind, by virtue of which 
he satisfied, from his own inclination, every requisi¬ 
tion of the beautiful ; a mind whose free impulse was 
accompanied by a self-consciousness clear even to 
transparency. To surpass iEschylus in daring concep¬ 
tion might be impossible ; but I maintain that it is 
only on account of his wise moderation that Sophocles 
seems to be less daring ; since everywhere he goes 
to work with the greatest energy, nay, perhaps with 
more sustained severity ; as a man who is accurately 
acquainted with his limits insists the more confident- 



SOPHOCLES. 


SOS 


ly Iiis rights within those limits. As Eschylus 
delights in carrying all his fictions into the disturban¬ 
ces of the old world of Titanism, Sophocles, on the 
contrary, seems to avail himself of Divine interference 
only of necessity. He formed human beings, as was 
the general agreement of antiquity, better, that is, not 
more moral and unerring, but more beautiful and noble 
than they are in reality.—As characteristic of this poet, 
the ancients have praised that native sweetness and 
gracsfulness, on account of which they called him the 
Attic Bee. Whoever has penetrated into the feeling 
of- this peculiarity, may flatter himself that the spirit 
for antique art has arisen within him ; for modern sen¬ 
sibility, very far from being able to fall in with that 
judgment, would be more likely to find in the Sopho- 
elean tragedy, both in respect of the representation of 
bodily suffering and in the sentiments and arrange¬ 
ments, much that is insufferably austere.—We will 
now proceed to give a brief sketch of the tragedies of 
Sophocles that have come down to us. i. Ataq pao- 
riyofopoq, “ Ajax armed with the lash.” The sub¬ 
ject of this piece is the madness of Ajax, his death, 
and the dispute which arises on the subject of his in¬ 
terment. Many critics have regarded the play as de¬ 
fective, because the action does not terminate with 
the death of the hero ; but, after this catastrophe, an 
incident occurs which forms a second action. To this 
it has been replied that there is not, in fact, any double 
action, since the first is not terminated by the death of 
Ajax, to whom burial is refused : as the deprivation 
of funeral rites was regarded by the ancients in the 
light of one of the greatest misfortunes, the spectators 
could not have gone away satisfied so long as the 
question of burial remained unsettled in the case of one 
whose death they had mourned.—2. ’H/U/rrps, “ Elec- 
£ra .” The subject of this piece is the vengeance 
which a son, urged on by an oracle, and in obedience 
to the decree of Heaven, takes on the murderers of his 
father, by consigning to death his own mother. The 
character of Electra, the daughter of Agamemnon, 
who here plays the principal part, is admirably deline¬ 
ated, and sustained with exceeding ability throughout 
the whole play. The recognition between the brother 
and sister forms one of the most touching scenes in 
the whole compass of the Grecian drama.—3. 0 161- 
tr ovq Tvpavvog, “ King (Edipus .” It would be diffi¬ 
cult to conceive a subject more thoroughly tragical 
than that which forms the basis of this play. The 
grand and terrific meaning of the fable, however, as 
Schlegel has well remarked, is a circumstance which 
is generally overlooked ; to that very (Edipus, who 
solved the riddle of human life propounded by the 
Sphinx, his own life remained an inexplicable riddle, 
till it was cleared up, all too late, in the most dreadful 
manner, when all was irrecoverably lost. This is a 
striking image of the arrogant pretensions of human 
wisdom, which always proceeds upon generalities, 
without teaching its possessor the right application of 
them to himself. The (Edipus Tyrannus is regarded 
not merely as the chef-d’oeuvre of Sophocles, but also, 
as regards the choice and disposition of the fable, as 
the finest tragedy of antiquity. And yet we know 
that it failed of obtaining the prize. It has been imi¬ 
tated by Seneca, P. Corneille, and Voltaire.—4. ’Av- 
rlyovr,h u Antigone” Creon, king of Thebes, had or¬ 
dered that no one should bestow the rites of burial on 
Polyniees, and his object in so doing was to punish 
him for having borne arms against his country. Anti¬ 
gone, sister to the young prince, listening to the dic¬ 
tates of affection rather than those of fear, ventures to 
disregard this mandate, and falls a victim to her pious 
act.—5. T paxivtat, “ The Trachinian Women” or 
the death of Hercules. The scene is laid at Trachis, 
and the chorus is composed of young females of the 
country. Seneca has imitated this piece in his Her¬ 
cules Furens , and Rotrou in his Hereule Mourant. — 


6. ^cXoKryryq, “ Philoctetes .” It having been de¬ 
creed by fate that Troy could not be taken without 
the presence of Philoctetes, whom the Greeks had 
abandoned in the island of Lemnos, Ulysses and Pyr¬ 
rhus are sent to him to induce him to return to the 
Grecian camp. They succeed with great difficulty in 
accomplishing their object. This tragedy, though 
very simple in its plot, is marked by a constantly in¬ 
creasing interest, and the characters are well support¬ 
ed.—7. Oldtirovg h vi Kokova), “ (Edipus at Colonus .” 
The subject is the death of CEdipus, near the temple of 
the Eumeuides at Colonus. (Edipus, blind and driv¬ 
en from his throne, seeks, under the guidance of his 
daughter, for a tomb in a foreign land, where the tal« 
of his woes had arrived before him, and causes his in 
tended presence to be regarded with dread. There is 
need of manifest proof of Divine protection to enable 
him to find an asylum and tomb in this stranger-land, 
and these proofs are vouchsafed him at the closing 
scene of his life.—The best editions of Sophocles are, 
that of Brunck, Argent ., 1786, 4to, 2 vols., and 1786- 
9, 8vo, 3 vols. ; that of Erfurdt, Lips., 1802-1811, 7 
vols. 8vo ; and that of Hermann, Land., 1826, 2 vols. 
8vo. The separate editions of the plays are numerous, 
and some of them valuable. 

Sopuonisba, a daughter of Asdrubal, the Cartha¬ 
ginian, celebrated for her beauty and unfortunate end. 
(Vid . Masinissa.) 

Sophron, a native of Syracuse, born about 420 
B.C., and celebrated as a writer of mimes. His 
pieces, composed in the Doric dialect, and not in verse 
properly so called, but in a species of cadenced prose 
(KaraAoyudrjv. — Athen., ed. Schweigh., vol. 11, p. 
315), were great favourites with Plato, who became ac¬ 
quainted with them through Dion of Syracuse, and 
spread the taste for this species of composition at 
Athens. We have only a few titles and fragments 
remaining of the mimes of Sophron, which are alto¬ 
gether insufficient to enable us to form any very defi¬ 
nite opinion of the character of these compositions; 
although we know that the fifteenth Idyl of Theocri¬ 
tus is an imitation of one of Sophron’s mimes. Bar- 
thelemy thinks that these productions were in the 
style of the Fables of La Fontaine. Athenasus cites 
two kinds of mimes : one called M Ipoc avSpeloi. (Male 
mimes); the other M ipot yvva'uceioc ( Female mimes). 
Apollodorus of Athens wrote a commentary on the 
mimes of Sophron.—The fragments of Sophron are 
given in the Classical Journal , vol. 4, p. 380, and 
with additions and corrections in the Museum Criti- 
cum , vol. 2, p. 340-358, 559-560. Both these col¬ 
lections are by Blomfield. ( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Gr ., 
vol. 2, p. 117. — Consult Muller , Die Dorier, vol. 2, 
p. 360, seqq.) 

Sophroniscus, the father of Socrates. 

Soracte, a mountain of Etruria, a little to the 
southeast of Falerii, now Monte Santo Silvestro, or, 
as it is by modern corruption sometimes termed, Sanf 
Oreste. On the summit was a temple and grove ded¬ 
icated to Apollo, to whom an annual sacrifice was of¬ 
fered by a people of the country, distinguished by the 
name of Hirpii, who were on that account held sa¬ 
cred, and exempted from military service and other 
duties. ( Plin ., 7, 2.) The sacrifice consisted in their 
passing over heaps of red-hot embers without being 
injured by the fire. (iJn., 11, 785.-— Sil. Ital ., 5, 
175.) A remarkable fountain, the exhalations of 
which were fatal to birds, is mentioned as existing in 
the vicinity of this mountain by Pliny (31, 2) and Vi¬ 
truvius (8, 3.— Cramer's Anc. Italy , vol. 1, p. 230). 

Sosigenes, an Egyptian mathematician, who as¬ 
sisted Julius Csesar in regulating the Roman calendar. 
The philosopher, by tolerably accurate observations, 
discovered that the year was 365 days and 6 hours ; 
and, to make allowance for the odd hours, he invent¬ 
ed the intercalation of one day in four years. The 

1255 



SPA 


SPARTA. 


duplication of the sixth day before the calends of 
March was called the intercalary day, and the year in 
which thi? took place was styled Bissextile. This 
was the Julian year, the reckoning by which com¬ 
menced 45 B.C., and continued till it gave place tc 
something more accurate, and a still farther reforma¬ 
tion under Pope Gregory XIII. Sosigenes was the 
author of a commentary upon Aristotle’s book d t 
Ccdo. 

Sosii, celebrated booksellers at Rome, in the age of 
Horace. (Ep ., 1, 20, 2.— Ep. ad Pis., 345.) 

Sostratus, I. a grammarian in the age of Augus¬ 
tus. He was Strabo’s preceptor.—II. An architect 
of Cnidus, B C. 284, who built the tower of Pharos, 
in the Bay of Alexandrea. ( Vid. Pharos.)—III. A 
poet, who wrote a poem on the expedition of Xerxes 
into Greece. ( Juv ., 10, 178.— Lermire, ad loc.) 

Sotades, I an Athenian poet of the middle come¬ 
dy. (Scholl., Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 2, p. 115.)—II. A 
Greek poet, a native of Maronea, whose name has de¬ 
scended to posterity covered with infamy. He was 
the author of Cinasdologic strains, which exceeded in 
impurity anything that had gone before them. These 
poems, at first called lonica, were subsequently de¬ 
nominated Sotadica. Having, before leaving Alex¬ 
andrea, where he had been living some time, written a 
very gross epigram on Ptolemy Philadelphus, that 
prince caused him to be pursued. Sotades was seiz¬ 
ed in the island of Caunus, enclosed in a case of 
lead, and cast into the sea. (Athen., 14, p. 620, ed. 
Schweigh., vol. 5, p. 247.) 

Soter, a surname of the first Ptolemy. (Vid. 
Ptolemasus I.) 

Sothis, the Egyptian name of the star Sirius. 
(Vid. Sirius.) 

Sotiates, a people of Gaul conquered by Cagsar. 
Their country, which formed part of Aquitania, ex¬ 
tended along the Garumna or Garonne, and their 
chief town was Sotiatum, of which some traces still 
remain at the modern Sos. (Ccbs., B. G., 3, 20.) 

Sotion, a grammarian of Alexandrea, preceptor to 
Seneca, B.C. 204. f Senec., Ep., 49, 50.) 

Sozomen, an ecclesiastical historian, born, accord¬ 
ing to some, at Salamis, in the island of Cyprus, but, 
according to others, at Gaza or Bethulia, in Palestine. 
He died 450 A.D. His history extends from the 
year 324 to 439, and is dedicated to Theodosius the 
Younger, being written in a style of inelegance and 
mediocrity. He is chargeable with several notorious 
errors in the relation of facts, and has incurred cen¬ 
sure for his commendations of Theodorus of Mopsu- 
esta, with whom originated the heresy of two persons 
in Christ. His history is usually printed with that of 
Socrates and the other ecclesiastical historians. The 
best edition is that of Reading, Cantab., 1720, folio. 
A work of Sozomen, not now extant, containing, in 
two books, a summary account of the affairs of the 
Church from the ascension of our Saviour to the de¬ 
feat of Licinius, was written before his history. 

Sparta, a celebrated city of Greece, the capital of 
Laconia. It was situated in a plain of some extent, 
bounded on one side by the chain of Taygetus, on the 
other by the less elevated ridge of Mount Thornax, 
and through which flowed the Eurotas. In the age of 
Thucydides it was an inconsiderable town, without 
fortifications, presenting rather the appearance of a 
collection of villages than of a regularly-planned and 
well-built city. The public buildings also were very 
few, and these conspicuous neither for their size nor ar¬ 
chitectural beauty : so that the appearance of Lacedae¬ 
mon, as the historian observes, conveyed a very inad¬ 
equate idea of the power and resources of the nation 
(1, 10). Before the Peloponnesian war, a great por¬ 
tion of the city had been destroyed by an earthquake, 
which also occasioned considerable damage in other 
parts of the country. H£lian states that only five 
1256 


houses were left in Sparta after the shock had ceased. 
( Var. Hist., 6, 7.—Compare Plut., Vit. Cim. — Cic ., 
de Divin., 1 , 50.— Plin., 2, 79.) It continued with¬ 
out walls during the most flourishing period of Spar¬ 
tan history, Lycurgus having inspired his countrymen 
with the idea that the real defence of a town con 
sisted solely in the valour of its citizens. When, 
however, Sparta became subject to despotic rulers, 
fortifications were erected, which rendered the town 
capable of sustaining a regular siege. By that time it 
had increased considerably, being forty-eight stadia 
in circumference, as we are informed by Polybius, 
who adds, that it was double the size of Megalopolis 
in regard to the number of its houses and inhabitants, 
though it did not occupy an equal extent of ground, 
since the circuit of the Arcadian city was fifty stadia. 
The remains of Sparta are about two miles distant 
from the modern town of Misitra. Sir W. Gell ob¬ 
serves, that “ the wallo are of the lower ages, and 
consist of fragments and blocks taken from ancient 
edifices. The whole city appears to have been a mile 
long, in which were included five hills; some of 
these have ruins on their summits.” (Itin. of the Mo- 
rea, p. 221. — Compare Dodvrell , vol. 2, p. 44)8.)— 
We will now proceed to give a br»ef outline of Spar¬ 
tan history. According to fable, Lacedasmon, son of 
Jupiter, and of the nymph Taygeta, married Sparta, 
daughter of Eurotas, king of the Leleges, succeeded 
his father-in-law on the throne, and gave the country 
his own name, calling the city by that of his wife. 
He was probably a Hellenic prince, and one of th*" 
leaders of the Achsean colony, which Archander a mi 
Architeles led into Laconia, after their expulsion froa 
Phthiotis. Here Lacedaemon, having persuaded tin 
natives to receive a colony, gave his own name to th& 
united people. Among the most celebrated of thfi 
early kings was Tyndarus, with whose sons Castoi 
and Pollux the male line of Lacedaemon became ex¬ 
tinct. Menelaus, between whom and Lacedaemon five 
kings had reigned, married Helen, the daughter of 
Tyndarus, and thus acquired the throne. Orestes, son 
of Agamemnon, who had married Hermione, the 
daughter of Menelaus, united Argos and Mycense 
with Lacedsemon. In the reign of his son and suc¬ 
cessor Tisamenes, it was conquered by the Heraclid®, 
about 1080 B.C., who established a diarchy or double 
dynasty of two kings in Sparta. For, as neither the 
mother nor the Delphic oracle could decide which of 
the twin sons of Aristodemus, Eurysthenes and Pro- 
cles, was first born, the province of Laconia was as¬ 
signed to them in common ; and it was determined 
that the descendants of both should succeed them. 
The Lacedaemonians, however, had little cause to re¬ 
joice at the arrival of the foreigners, whose fierce dis¬ 
putes, under seven rulers of both houses, distracted 
the country with civil feuds, while it was, at the same 
time, involved in constant wars with its neighbours, 
particularly the Argives. The royal authority was 
continually becoming feebler, and the popular power 
was increased by these divisions, until the govern¬ 
ment ended in an ochlocracy. At this time Lycur¬ 
gus was born for the healing of the troubles. He 
was the only man in Avhom all parties confided ; and, 
under the auspices of the gods, whose oracle he con¬ 
sulted, he established a new constitution of govern¬ 
ment in Sparta (about 880 B.C.), and thus became 
the saviour of his country. Lacedaemon now acquired 
new vigour, which w r as manifested in her wars against 
her neighbours, particularly in the two long Messenian 
wars, which resulted in the subjugation of the Messe- 
nians (B.C. 668). The battle of Thermopylae (B.C. 
480), in which the Spartan king Leonidas successfully 
resisted the Persian forces at the head of a small body 
of his countrymen, gave Sparta so much distinction 
among the Grecian states, that even Athens consented 
to yield the command of the confederated forces, bv 




SPARTA. 


SPARTA, 


land and sea, to the Spartans. Pausanias, guardian 
of the infant son of Leonidas, gained the celebrated 
victory of Platcea over the Persians (B,.C. 479), at the 
head of the allies. On the same day, the Grecian 
army and fleet, under the command of the Spartan 
king Leotychides, and the Athenian general Xanthio- 
pus, defeated the Persians, by land and sea, near My- 
cale With the rise of the political importance of 
Sparta, the social organization of the nation was de¬ 
veloped. The power of the kings was gradually limit¬ 
ed, while that of the ephori was increased. After the 
Persians had been victoriously repelled, the Grecian 
states, having acquired warlike habits, carried on hos¬ 
tilities against each other. The jealousy of Sparta 
towards Athens rose to such a height, that the Lace¬ 
daemonians, under pretence that the Persians, in case 
of a renewal of the war, would find a tenable position 
in Athens, opposed the rebuilding of its walls and the 
fortification of the Piraeus. Themistocles, discerning 
the real grounds of this proceeding, baffled the designs 
of Sparta by a stratagem, and thus contributed to 
increase the ill-will of that state towards Athens. 
The tyrannical conduct of Pausanias alienated the 
other allies from Sparta ; and most of them submitted 
to the command of , Athens. But, while Sparta was 
learning moderation, Athens became so arrogant to¬ 
wards the confederates, that they again attached them¬ 
selves to the former power, which now began to 
make preparations in secret for a new struggle. The 
Athenians, however, formally renounced the friend¬ 
ship of Sparta, and began hostilities (B.C. 431). This 
war, the Peloponnesian, ended in the ascendancy of 
Sparta, and the entire humiliation of her rival (405). 
The rivalry of the Spartan general Lysander and the 
king Pausanias soon after produced a revolution, 
which delivered the Athenians from the Spartan yoke. 
The Spartans next became involved in a war with 
Persia, by joining Cyrus the Younger in his rebellion 
against his brother Artaxerxes Mnemon. The Per¬ 
sian throne was shaken by the victories of Agesi- 
laus; but Athens, Thebes, Corinth, and some of 
the Peloponnesian states were instigated by Persian 
gold to declare war against the Lacedemonians, who 
found it necessary to recall Agesilaus. The latter 
defeated the Thebans at Coronaea ; but, on the other 
hand, the Athenian commander, Conon, gained a vic¬ 
tory over the Spartan fleet at Cnidus, and took fifty 
galleys. This war, known as the Boeotian or Co¬ 
rinthian war, lasted eight years, and increased the rep¬ 
utation and power of Athens by the successes of her 
admiral, Conon, and her fortunate expeditions against 
the Spartan coasts and the islands of the ^Egean. 
The arrogance of Athens again involved her in hostil¬ 
ities with Persia; and Antalcidas (B.C. 388) conclu¬ 
ded the peace which bears his name, and which, though 
highly advantageous to Persia, delivered Sparta from 
her enemies. The ambitious designs of Sparta in 
concluding this peace soon became apparent: she con¬ 
tinued to oppress her allies, and to sow dissension in 
every quarter, that she might have an opportunity of 
acting as umpire. Besides other outrages, she occu¬ 
pied, without provocation, the city of Thebes, and in¬ 
troduced an aristocratical constitution there. Pelopi- 
das delivered Thebes, and the celebrated Theban war 
followed, in which Athens took part, at first against 
Sparta, but afterward in her favour. The latter was 
so much enfeebled by the war that she thenceforward 
ceased to act a distinguished part in Greece. No 
state was strong enough to take the lead, and the Ma¬ 
cedonian king Philip at last made himself master of 
aii Greece. Agis, king of Sparta, one of the bravest 
and noblest of its princes, ventured to maintain a strug¬ 
gle for the liberties of Greece ; but he lost his life in 
the battle of Megalopolis, against Antipater. Archi- 
damus IV. was attacked by Demetrius Poliorcetes, and 
Sparta was saved with liffic llty. New troubles soon 
7 U 


arose : Cleonymus, nephew of the king Areus, invited 
Pyrrhus into the country in aid of his ambitious pro¬ 
jects, which were frustrated, partly by the negligence 
of Pyrrhus, and partly by the courage of the Spartans. 
Luxury and licentiousness were continually growing 
more and more prevalent, and, though several suc¬ 
ceeding kings attempted to restore the constitution of 
Lycurgus, and restrain the power of the ephori, it was 
without success. Cleomenes, indeed, accomplished a 
reform, but it was not permanent. After an obstinate 
war against the Achaeans and Antigonus, king of Ma¬ 
cedonia, Cleomenes fled to Egypt, where he died. 
The state remained three years without a head, and 
was then ruled by the tyrants Machanidas and Nabis, 
by the latter of whom the most atrocious cruelties 
were committed. The Romans and the Achaean league 
effected the final fall of the state, which had been up¬ 
held for a short time by Nabis. Sparta was obliged 
to join the Achaean league, with which it afterward 
passed under the dominion of the Romans. ( Ency- 
clop. Americ., vol. 11, p. 529, seqq.) —This appears the 
proper place to make a few remarks relative to the 
legislation of Lycurgus. The first important change 
introduced by this lawgiver into the Spartan constitu¬ 
tion was the creation of a senate, consisting of twenty- 
eight members, who, being, in all matters of delibera¬ 
tion, possessed of equal authority with the kings, 
proved an effectual check against any infringement of 
the laws on their part, and preserved a just balance in 
■ the state by supporting the crown against the encroach¬ 
ments of the people, and protecting the latter against 
any undue influence of the regal power. It was also 
enacted that the people should be occasionally sum¬ 
moned, and have the power of deciding any question 
proposed to them. No measure, however, could origi¬ 
nate with them ; they had only the right of approving 
or rejecting what was submitted to them by the senate 
and two kings. But, as danger was to be apprehend¬ 
ed from various attempts subsequently made by the 
people to extend their rights in these meetings, it was 
at length ordained that, if the latter endeavoured to 
alter any law, the kings and senate should dissolve the 
assembly and annul the amendment. With a view of 
counterbalancing the great power thus committed to 
the legislative assembly, and which might degenerate 
into oligarchy, five annual magistrates were appointed, 
named ephori, whose office it was, like that of the 
tribunes at Rome, to watch over the interests of the 
people, and protect them against the influence of the 
aristocracy. ( Vid. Ephori.)—Lycurgus, in order to 

banish wealth and luxury from the state, made a new 
division of lands, by which the income and possessions 
of all were rendered equal. Pie divided the territory 
of Sparta into 9000 portions, and the remainder of 
Laconia into 30,000, af which one lot was assigned to 
each citizen and inhaeitant. These parcels of land 
were supposed to produce seventy medimni of grain 
for a man and twelve for a woman, besides a sufficient 
quantity of wine and oil. The more effectually to 
banish the love of riches, the Spartan lawgiver prohib¬ 
ited the use of gold and silver, and allowed only iron 
money, affixing even to this the lowest value. He 
also instituted public repasts termed Phiditia , where 
all the citizens partook in common of such frugal fare 
as the law directed. The kings even were not ex¬ 
empted from this regulation, but ate with the other 
citizens ; the only distinction observed with respect to 
them being that of having a double portion of food. 
The Spartan custom of eating in public appears to 
have been borrowed from the Cretans, who called 
these repasts Andria. ( Plut ., Vit. Lycvrg .— Arts- 
tot., Polit., 2, 8.)—At the age of seven, all the Spar¬ 
tan children, by the laws of Lycurgus, were enrolled 
in companies, and educated agreeably to his rules of 
discipline and exercise, which were strictly enforced. 
These varied according to the ages of the boys, but 

257 





SPA 


S PE 


were not entirely remitted even after they had attained 
io manhood. For it was a maxim with Lycurgus, 
that no man should live for himself, but for his coun¬ 
try. Every Spartan, therefore, was regarded as a 
soldier, and the city itself resembled a great camp, 
where every one had a fixed allowance, and was re¬ 
quired to perform regular service. In order that they 
might have more leisure to devote themselves to 
martial pursuits, they were forbidden to exercise any 
mechanical arts or trades, which, together with the 
labours of agriculture, devolved upon the Helots.— 
Till the seventh year the child was kept in the gy- 
naeeeum, under the care of the women ; from that age 
to the eighteenth year they were called boys (TTpurn- 
peg), and thence to the age of thirty youths (k^pdoi). 
In the thirtieth year the Spartan entered the period of 
manhood, and enjoyed the full rights of a citizen. At 
the age of seven the boy was withdrawn from the pa¬ 
ternal care, and educated under the public eye, in com¬ 
pany with others of the same age, without distinction 
of rank or fortune. If any person withheld his son 
from the care of the state, he forfeited his civil rights. 
The principal object of attention, during the periods 
of boyhood and youth, was the physical education, 
which consisted in the practice of various gymnastic 
exercises—running, leaping, throwing the discus, wres¬ 
tling, boxing, the chase, and the pancratium. These 
exercises were performed naked, in certain buildings 
called gymnasia. Besides gymnastics, dancing and 
the military exercises were practised. A singular cus¬ 
tom was the flogging of boys ( diamastigdsis) on the 
annual festival of Diana Orthia, for the purpose of in¬ 
uring them to bear pain with firmness. ( Vid. Bomon- 
icae.) To teach the youth cunning, vigilance, and 
activity, they were encouraged to practise theft in cer¬ 
tain cases ; but if detected, they were flogged, or obli¬ 
ged to go without food, or compelled to dance round 
the altar, singing songs in ridicule of themselves. The 
dread of the shame consequent on being discovered 
sometimes led to the most extraordinary acts. Thus 
it is related that a boy who had stolen a young fox, 
and concealed it under his clothes, suffered it to gnaw 
out his bowels rather than reveal the theft by suffer¬ 
ing the fox to escape. Modesty of deportment was 
also particularly attended to ; and conciseness of lan¬ 
guage was so much studied, that the term laconic is 
still employed to signify a short and pithy manner of 
speaking. The Spartans were the only people of 
Greece who avowedly despised learning, and excluded 
it from the education of youth. Their whole instruc¬ 
tion consisted in learning obedience to their superiors, 
the endurance of all hardships, and to conquer or die 
in war. The youth were, however, carefully instruct¬ 
ed in a knowledge of the laws, which, not being re¬ 
duced to writing, were taught orally. The education 
of the females was entirely different from that of the 
Athenians. Instead of remaining at home, as in Ath¬ 
ens, spinning, &c., they danced in public, wrestled 
with each other, ran on the course, threw the discus, 
&c. The object of this training of the women was to 
give a vigorous constitution to their children. ( Ency - 
clop. Americ ., vol. 11, p. 529, seqq. — Cramer's Anc. 
Greece , vol. 3, p. 158, seqq.) 

Spartacus, a celebrated gladiator, a Thracian by 
birth, who escaped from the gladiatorial training-school 
at Capua along with some of his companions, and was 
soon followed by great numbers of other gladiators. 
Bands of desperate men, slaves, murderers, robbers, 
and pirates, flocked to him from all quarters ; and he 
soon found himself at the head of a force able to bid defi¬ 
ance to Rome. Four consular armies were successive¬ 
ly defeated by this daring adventurer, and Rome itself 
was considered in imminent danger. But subordina¬ 
tion could not be maintained in an army composed of 
such materials. Spartacus proposed to march into 
Gaul, invite Sertorius to join him, and then together 
1258 


march on Rome. Had this plan been carried into ef» 
feet, Rome, in all probability, must have fallen into the 
hands of the combined forces ; but the tumultuous fol¬ 
lowers of Spartacus, longing for the pillage of the cap¬ 
ital, compelled their leader to abandon his intention, 
and bend his course towards Rome. He was met and 
completely routed by the praetor Crassus, who thus ac¬ 
quired some renown in war, in addition to the influ¬ 
ence which he possessed from his unequalled wealth. 
Spartacus behaved with great valour; when wounded 
in the leg, he fought on his knees, covering himself 
with his buckler in one hand, and using his sword with 
the other ; and when at last he fell, it was upon a heap 
of Romans whom he had sacrificed to his fury (B.O. 
71). In this battle no less than 40,000 of the follow¬ 
ers of Spartacus were slain, and the war was thus 
brought to an end. ( Plut., Vit. Crass. — Liv., Epit., 
97.— Eutrop., 6, 2.— Paterc., 2, 30.) 

Sparti ( 'LrcaproL ), a name given to the men who 
sprang from the dragon’s teeth which Cadmus sowed. 
They all destroyed one another except five, who sur¬ 
vived, and assisted Cadmus in building Thebes. The 
names of the five, as given by the scholiast on Eurip¬ 
ides ( Phceniss ., 498), are Chthonius, Udaeus, Pelorus, 
Hyperenor, and Echion. ( Vid. Cadmus.) 

Spartani or Spartiat.*, the inhabitants of Sparta. 

Spartianus ^Elius, a Roman historian in the 
reign of Dioclesian. In his life of iElius Verus, he 
informs us of his intention to give the biographies of 
all the emperors and Caesars from the time of Julius. 
Whether he ever executed this project is uncertain : 
we have only from his pen the lives of Hadrian, ^Elius 
Verus, Didius Julianus, Septimius Severus, Pescen- 
nius Niger, Caracalla, and Geta, among which the first 
part of the life of Hadrian, drawn from good sources, 
is the best. The first part of these biographies is 
addressed to Dioclesian ; that of Caracalla to no one ; 
the life of Geta is dedicated to Constantine. Heyne, 
therefore, is led to conclude that the last-mentioned 
biography is not by Spartianus. Casaubon had start¬ 
ed this opinion before him.—Spartianus is not re¬ 
markable for historical arrangement and method : his 
style also bears evident marks of the decline of the 
language. His works form part of the collection 
known by t,he name of “ Scriptores Histories Augus¬ 
tes''’ the best edition of which is that from the Ley¬ 
den press ( Lugd. Bat ., 1671, 2 vols. 8vo.— Scholl, 
Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 3, p. 153.— Bdhr, Gesch. Rdm. 
Lit., p. 337). 

Sperchius ( ^KspxeLog ), a river of Thessaly, flow¬ 
ing from Mount Tymphrestus, a lofty range forming 
part of the chain of Pindus, in the country of the 
JEnianes. ( Strabo , 433.) Homer frequently men¬ 
tions this river as belonging to the territory of Achil¬ 
les, around the Malian Gulf. (II., 16, 174.— lb., 23, 
142.) The tragic poets likewise allude to it. ( JEsch ., 
Pers., 492. — Soph., Philoct., 722.) The ancient 
name appears to have reference to its rapid course 
(GTrspxecdai, “ to move rapidly"). The modern ap¬ 
pellation is the Hellada. (Cramer's Anc. Greece, 
vol. 1, p. 438.) 

Speusippus, an Athenian philosopher, nephew to 
Plato, who occupied the chair of instruction during 
the term of eight years from the death of his master. 
Through the interest of Plato, he enjoyed an intimate 
friendship with Dion while he was resident at Ath¬ 
ens ; and it was at his instigation that Dion, encour¬ 
aged by the promise of support from the malcontents 
of Syracuse, undertook his expedition against Diony¬ 
sius the Tyrant, by whom he had been banished. 
Contrary to the practice of Plato, Speusippus required 
from his pupils a stated gratuity. He placed statues 
of the graces in the school which Plato had built. On 
account of his infirm state of health, fee was common¬ 
ly carried to and from the academy in a vehicle. On 
his way thither he one da/ met Diogenes and saluted 






S P I 


S T A 


nim; the surly philosopher refused tc return the sa¬ 
lute, and told him that such a feeble wretch ought to 
be ashamed to live ; to which Speusippus replied, 
that he lived, not in his limbs, but in his mind. At 
length, being wholly incapacitated by a paralytic 
stroke for the duties of the chair, he resigned it to 
Xenocrates. He is said to have been of a violent 
temper, fond of pleasure, and exceedingly avaricious. 
Speusippus wrote many philosophical works which are 
now lost, but which Aristotle thought sufficiently val¬ 
uable to purchase at the expense of three talents. 
From the few fragments which remain of his philoso¬ 
phy, it appears that he adhered very strictly to the 
doctrines of his master. ( Enfield,, History of Phi¬ 
losophy, vol. 1, p. 243, seqq.) 

Sphacteria, an island off the coast of Mycenae, 
and at the entrance of the harbour of Pylos Messeni- 
acus, which it nearly closed. It was also known by 
the name of Sphagia, which it still retains. Sphacte¬ 
ria is celebrated in Grecian history for the defeat and 
capture of a Lacedaemonian detachment in the sev¬ 
enth year of the Peloponnesian war. ( Strabo, 359.) 

Sphinx, a fabulous monster, an account of which 
will be found under the article CEdipus.—The Sphinx 
is not mentioned by Homer; but the legend is no¬ 
ticed in the Theogony (v. 326), where she is called 
Though this legend is probably older than the 
time of the first intercourse with Egypt, the Theban 
monster bears a great resemblance to the symbolical 
statues placed before the temples of that land of mys¬ 
tery. In the pragmatizing days it was said ( Pausan., 
9, 26) that the Sphinx was a female pirate, who used 
to land at Anthedon, and advance to the Phicean Hill, 
whence she spread her ravages over the country. 
CEdipus, according to these expounders of mythology, 
came from Corinth with a numerous army, and de¬ 
feated and slew her. ( Keightley's Mythology , p. 

341, not.) — The Sphinx was a favourite emblem 
among the ancient Egyptians, and served, according 
to some, as a type of the enigmatic nature of the 
Egyptian theology. M. Maillet is of opinion that the 
union of the head of a virgin with the body of a lion 
is a symbol of what happens in Egypt when the Sun 
is in the signs of Leo and Virgo, and the Nile over¬ 
flows. According to Herodotus, however, the Egyp¬ 
tians had also their Androsphinges, with the body of 
a lion and the face of a man. At the present day 
there still remains, about 300 paces east of the second 
pyramid, a celebrated statue of a sphinx, cut in the 
solid rock. Formerly, nothing but the head, neck, and 
top of the back were visible, the rest being sunk in the 
sand. It was, at an expense of 800/. or 900/. (con¬ 
tributed by some European gentlemen), cleared from 
the accumulated sand in front of it under the superin¬ 
tendence of Captain Caviglia. This monstrous pro¬ 
duction consists of a virgin’s head joined to the body 
of a quadruped. The body is principally formed out 
of the solid rock ; the paws are of masonry, extend¬ 
ing forward 50 feet from the body ; between the paws 
are several sculptured tablets, so arranged as to form 
a small temple ; and farther forward a square altar 
with horns. The length of the statue, from the fore¬ 
part of the neck to the tail, is 125 feet. The face 
has been disfigured by the arrows and lances of the 
Arabs, who are taught by their religion to hold all im¬ 
ages of men or animals in detestation. 

Spina, a city of Gallia Cisalpina, near the entrance 
of the most southern branch of the Padus, called from 
it Ostium Spineticum. If we are to believe Dionysius 
of Halicarnassus, who derives his information appa¬ 
rently from Hellanicus of Lesbos {Ant. Rom., 1, 18), 
Spina was founded by a numerous band of Pelasgi, 
who arrived on this coast from Epirus long before the 
Trojan war. The same writer goes on to state that, 
in process of time, this colony became very flourish¬ 
ing, and held for many years the dominion of the sea, 


from the fruits of which it was enabled to present to 
the temple of Delphi tithe offerings more costly than 
those of any other city. Afterward, however, being 
attacked by an overwhelming force of the surrounding 
barbarians, the Pelasgi were forced to quit their settle¬ 
ment, and finally to abandon Italy. It appears that no 
doubt can be entertained of the existence of a Greek 
city of this name, near one of the mouths of the Po, 
since it is noticed in the Periplus of Scylax (p. 13), and 
by the geographers Eudoxus and Artemidorus, as cited 
by Stephanus of Byzantium (s. v. Zva). Strabo 
also speaks of it as having been once a celebrated city. 
The same geographer adds, that Spina was still in ex¬ 
istence when he wrote, though reduced to the condi- 
tionof a mere village. {Strab., 214.— Id., 421.— Plin., 
3, 6.) But the extreme antiquity which is assigned 
to the foundation of this city by Dionysius of Halicar¬ 
nassus has been thought by some modern critics to 
be liable to dispute. (Consult, in particular, the dis¬ 
sertation of Freret, Mem. de l'Acad, des Inscr., vol. 
18, p. 90.) — Spina would seem to have stood on the 
left bank of the Po di Primaro, not far from the later 
town or village of Argenta. {Cramer's Anc. Italy, 
vol. 1, p. 97, seqq.) 

Spintharus, a Corinthian architect. By the order 
of the Amphictyonic council he erected a new temple 
at Delphi after the burning of the old one (Olymp. 
58.1.—B.C. 544). Respecting the latter event, con¬ 
sult Philochor. fragm., p. 45.— Clinton, Fast. Hell., 
p. 4. The age of Spintharus may be very probably 
fixed about Olymp. 60. {Sillig, Diet. Art., s. v.) 

Spoletium, a city of Umbria, northeast of Interam- 
na, in the southwestern section of the country. It 
was colonized A.U.C. 512 {Veil. Paterc., 1, 14), and 
is famous in history for having withstood an attack 
from Hannibal after the battle of Thrasymene. {Liv., 
22, 9.) This resistance had the effect of checking the 
advance of the Carthaginian general towards Rome, 
and compelled him to draw off his forces to Pice- 
num. It should be observed, however, that Polybius 
makes no mention of this attack upon Spoletium ; but 
expressly states that it was not Hannibal’s intention 
to approach Rome at that time, but to lead his army 
to the seacoast (3, 86). This city suffered severely 
in the civil wars of Marius and Sylla, from proscrip¬ 
tion. {Flor., 3, 21.— Appian, Bell. Civ., 5, 33.) 
The modern name is Spoleto. {Cramer's Anc. Italy, 
vol. 1, p. 271.) 

Sporades, a name given by the Greeks to the nu¬ 
merous islands scattered (like so many seed, enreipu, 
spargo) around the Cyclades, with which, in fact, sev¬ 
eral of them are intermixed, and those also which lay 
towards Crete and the coast of Asia Minor. {Strabo, 
484.— Scyl., Peripl., p. 18.— Plin., 4, 12.) 

Spurinna, an astrologer, who told Caesar to beware 
of the ides of March. As he went to the senate-house 
on the morning of the ides, Caesar said to Spurinna, 
“ The ides are at last come." “ Yes," replied Spu¬ 
rinna, “ but not yet past." Caesar was assassinated a 
short time after. {Sueton., Vit. Jul., 81.— Dio Cass., 
44, 18.— Val Max., 8, 11, 2.) 

Stable, a town of Campania, on the coast, about 
two miles below the river Sarnus, now Castelamare 
di Stabia. It was once a place of some note, but, 
having been destroyed by Sylla during the civil wars, 
its site was chiefly occupied by villas and pleasure- 
grounds. {Plin., 3, 5.) It was at Stabiae, after hav¬ 
ing just left the villa of his friend Pomponianus, that 
the elder Pliny fell a victim to his ardent curiosity and 
thirst for knowledge. {Plin.,Ep., 6,16.) According 
to Columella {R. R., 10), this spot was celebrated for 
its fountains ; and such was the excellence of the pas¬ 
tures in its vicinity, that the milk of this district was 
reputed to be more wholesome and nutritious than that 
of any other country. {Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol, 
2, p. 181.) 


1259 



S T A 


S T E 


Stagira, a city of Macedonia, on the upper shore of 
the peninsula of Mount Athos, near its junction with 
the mainland, and on the coast of the Sinus Stry- 
monicus. It was a colony of Andros, as we learn 
from Thucydides (4, 188), and celebrated as the birth¬ 
place of Aristotle. ( Diog. Laert.,5, 14, seq.) Some 
trace of the ancient name is apparent in that of Stauros. 

Staseas, a peripatetic philosopher, who resided 
many years at Rome with M. Piso. (Cic., de Orat., 
1, 22.— Id. } Fin., 5, 3, et 25.) 

StasInus, an early poet of Cyprus, the author, ac¬ 
cording to some, of the Cyprian Epics, which others 
ascribe to Hegesias. This poem, entitled in Greek ra 
Kvtt pta tTarj, was in eleven books, and comprehended 
for its subject the whole period from the nuptials of 
Peleus and Thetis to the time when Jupiter resolved 
to excite the quarrel between Achilles and Agamem¬ 
non. It would appear from a passage in Herodotus 
(2, 117), that this poem was ascribed by some to Ho¬ 
mer. The Hymn to Venus is thought to have formed 
part of the Cyprian Epics. We have only a few 
verses otherwise remaining of the poem. ( Scholl , 
Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 1, p. 166, seq.) 

Statira, I. the sister and wife of Darius, taken 
captive by Alexander, who treated her with the utmost 
respect. She died in childbed, and was buried by the 
conqueror with great magnificence. ( Plut ., Vit. Alex. 
—Consult, however, the remarks of Bougainville, as 
to the accuracy of Plutarch’s statement respecting the 
cause of her death, Mem. de VAcad. des Inscr., vol. 
25, p. 34, seqq.) —II. The eldest daughter of Da¬ 
rius, taken in marriage by Alexander. The nuptials 
were celebrated at Susa with great magnificence. 
She appears to have changed her name to Arsinoe 
after this union. This is Droysen’s conjecture, which 
seems happily to explain the variations in the name 
which we find in Arrian (7, 4), compared with Pho- 
tius (p. 686, seq.) and other authors. ( ThirlwaWs 
Greece, vol. 7, p. 77.) * She was murdered by Rox¬ 
ana, who was aided in this by Perdiccas. (Plut.., Vit. 
Alex., sub fin.) —III. A wife of Artaxerxes Mnemon, 
poisoned by her mother-in-law, Queen Parysatis. 
(Plut., Vit. Artax.) —IV. A sister of Mithradates the 
Great, celebrated for the fortitude with which she met 
her end, when Mithradates, after his defeat by Lucul- 
lus, sent Bacchides, the eunuch, with orders to put his 
wives and sisters to death. (Plut., Vit. Lucull.) 

Statius, Publius Papinius, a Latin epic poet, born 
at Neapolis A.D. 61, and descended from a family 
that came originally from Epirus. His father, who 
was distinguished by his talent for poetry, taught at 
Neapolis the Greek and Latin languages and litera¬ 
ture. Statius received his education at Rome, his 
father having gone with him to this city, where he be¬ 
came one of the preceptors of the young Domitian. 
This prince fixed his attention on the son of his in¬ 
structor, who had been recommended to him by Paris, 
a celebrated comedian, and a favourite of Domitian. 
Statius, who was very poor, had sold to this actor his 
tragedy of Agave, which Paris published as his own 
composition. Out of gratitude, he invite^ the poet to 
a grand imperial banquet.—Statius gained the prize 
three times in the Alban games, but was defeated in 
the Capitoline. At the age of nineteen years he mar¬ 
ried the widow of a musician ; her name was Claudia; 
and he extols, in many of his productions, her abilities 
and virtues. Disgusted at last, as he himself informs 
us, at the luxury of the Romans, he retired, a year be¬ 
fore his death, to a small estate in the vicinitv of Na¬ 
ples, which the emperor, perhaps, had given him, and 
there died, still quite young, A.D. 96.—Statius gained 
many admirers at Rome by the great facility with 
which Nature had endowed him for composing verses, 
on the spur of the moment, upon all kinds of subjects. 
He collected these productions together in a work 
which he entitled Sylva, or, ?s we would call it, M6- 
1 260 


langcs. It is divided into five books, and compre¬ 
hends thirty-two small poems, mostly written in hex 
ameters. Each book has a preface in prose, and is 
dedicated to one of the friends of the poet. In the 
preface to the first book Statius informs us that these 
poems have been composed in haste; that no one of 
them occupied more than two days, and that some are 
the work of merely a single day. These pieces treat 
of various subjects : we find among them a compli¬ 
mentary effusion addressed to Domitian, on the occa¬ 
sion of an equestrian statue being erected to him ; an 
epithalamium ; an ode for Lucan’s birthday, &c.— 
Statius has also left an epic poem in twelve books, en¬ 
titled Thebais (“The Theba'id”), and the commence¬ 
ment of another, called Achilleis , which his death pre¬ 
vented him from completing. The Theba'id, address- v 
ed to Domitian, is, like the Punica of Silius Italicus, 
the Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus, and the Pharsa- 
lia of Lucan, rather a historic than an epic poem. The 
principal source whence Statius borrowed was the 
poet Antimachus, whose Theba'id has not come down 
to us : his model was Virgil.—The subject of the The-- 
ba'id was well chosen; the war between the sons of 
G2dipus offered a fable truly epic, and rich in fearful 
scenes. Statius, however, has spoiled it, by giving it 
an historical form, adorned merely with episodes and 
machinery. He is not wanting in imagination, and in 
bold and daring ideas and sentiments ; in this respect, 
indeed, he is preferable to Valerius Flaccus ; but he 
is ignorant of the sublime art in which Homer surpass¬ 
es all poets, that of giving each hero an individual 
character. His diction is deficient in simplicity and 
native ease; he mistakes exaggeration for grandeur, 
and subtle refinements for proofs of talent. These 
defects are the characteristics of his age, as well as 
that of making a great display of erudition, a fault 
which shows itself in all the epic poets of this period.' 
Scaliger passes rather a favourable opinion on Statius. 
According to this critic, he ranks next to Virgil. (Po¬ 
et., 6, p. 841.)—Of the Achille'is, Statius finished only 
the first book ; the second remains imperfect. It is 
probable that this poem, had the author lived to finish 
it, would have presented the same beauties and the 
same defects as the Theba'id. The pyan was defect¬ 
ive ; the poet had not attended to unity of action, but 
proposed to himself to give the entire life of his hero. 

—The best editions of Statius are, that of Gronovius, 
Amst., 1653, 12mo ; that of Barth, Cygnce, 1664, 2 
vols. 4to ; that of Markland (the Sylvce merely), Lond 
1728, 4to ; and that of Amar and Lemaire, Paris, 
1825, 4 vols. 8vo. (Scholl, Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 2, 
p. 303, seqq.) 

Stator, a surname of Jupiter, given him by Rom¬ 
ulus, because he stopped the flight of the Romans in 
their battle with the Sabines, after the carrying off by 
the Romans of the Sabine virgins. Romulus erected 
a temple on the spot where he had stood when he in¬ 
voked Jupiter, in prayer, to stay the flight of his for¬ 
ces. The name is derived a sistendo. (Liv., 1, 12.) 

Stellio, a youth turned into a kind of lizard by 
Ceres, because he derided the goddess. (Ovid. Met., 

5, 461.) 

Stentor, a Grecian warrior in the army against 
Troy. His voice was louder than the combined voices 
of fifty men. He is erroneously regarded by sime 
commentators as a mere herald. (Horn., 11., 5, 785, 
seq. — Heyne, ad loc.) 

Stentoris Lacus, an estuary which the Hebrus 
forms at its mouth. (Herod., 7, 58.) 

Stephanus, a grammarian, who flourished, as is 
conjectured, about the close of the fifth century. He 
was professor in the imperial college at Constantino¬ 
ple, and composed a dictionary containing words de¬ 
noting the names of places, and designating the inhab¬ 
itants of those places. Of this work there exists only 
an abridgment made by Hermclaus, and dedicated to 




S T H 


STI 


he Emperor Justinian. This work was known by the 
itle trepl Ilo/lewf, de TJrbibus , but that of the original 
was EOvucd ; hence it has been inferred that the au¬ 
thor s intention was to write a geographical work. It 
seems that Stephanus, who is usually quoted by the 
title of Stephanus Byzantinus, or Stephanus of Byzan¬ 
tium, not only gave in his original work a catalogue 
of countries, cities, nations, and colonies, but, as op¬ 
portunity offered, he described the characters of dif¬ 
ferent nations, mentioned the founders of cities, and 
related the mythological traditions connected with 
each place, mingled with grammatical and etymologi¬ 
cal remarks. All this appears not in the meager 
abridgment of Hermolaus. We have a fragment, 
however, remaining of the original work relative to 
Dodona. The best edition of Stephanus is that of 
Berkell, completed by Gronovius, L. Bat., 1688, fol. 
1'here is a very recent edition of the text by Wester- 
mann, Lips., 1839, 8vo. (Scholl , Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 
r, p. 36.) 

Stesichorus, a Greek lyric poet, born at Himera, 
in Sicily, and who flourished about 570 B.C. He 
lived in the time of Phalaris, and was contemporary 
with Sappho, Alcaeus, and Pittacus. ( Clinton , Fast. 
Hellen., p. 5.) His special business was the training 
and directing of choruses, and he assumed the name 
of Stesichorus , or “ leader of choruses,” his original 
name being Tisias. This occupation must have re¬ 
mained hereditary in his family in Himera ; a younger 
Stesichorus of Himera came, in Olympiad 73.1 (B.C 
485), to Greece as a poet ( Marm ., Par., ep. 50); 
and a third Stesichorus of Himera was victor at 
Athens in Olympiad 102.3 (B.C. 370). The eldest 
of them, Stesichorus-Tisias, made a great change in 
the artistical form of the chorus. He it was who first 
broke the monotonous alternation of the strophe and 
antistrophe through a whole poem, by the introduc¬ 
tion of the epode, differing in measure, and by this 
means made the chorus stand still. The chorus of 
Stesichorus seems to have consisted of a combination 
of several rows or members of eight dancers; the 
number eight appears, indeed, from various traditions, 
to have been,' as it were, consecrated by him. The 
musical accompaniment was the cithara. On his ar¬ 
rangement of the strophe, antistrophe, and epode, was 
founded the Greek proverb, “ the three things of Ste¬ 
sichorus''' 1 (rd rpia 'Lryaixopov). His compositions, 
which consisted of hymns in honour of the gods, odes 
in praise of heroes, lyrico-epic poems, such as an I/l iov 
Trepaip ( u Destruction of Troy ’), an Orestiad, &c., 
were written in the Doric dialect, and are all now lost 
except a few fragments. Stesichorus possessed, ac¬ 
cording to Dionysius, all the excellences and graces of 
Pindar* and Simonides, and surpassed them both in 
the grandeur of his subjects, in which he well pre¬ 
served the characteristics of manners and persons ; 
and Quintilian represents him as having displayed the 
sublimity of his genius by the selection of weighty 
topics, such as important wars and the actions of 
great commanders, in which he sustained with his lyre 
the dignity of epic poetry. Accordingly, Alexander 
the Great ranks him among those who were the proper 
study of princes. He was the inventor of the fable 
of the horse and the stag, which Horace and some 
other poets have imitated, and this he wrote to pre¬ 
vent his countrymen from making an alliance with 
Phalaris. The jest collections of the fragments of 
Stesichorus are given by Blomfield, in the Museum 
Criticum, No. 6, p. 256 ; and by Kleine, Berol., 1828, 
8vo. They are also found in Gaisford’s Poetce Mino- 
res Grceci, ed. Lips., vol. 3, p. 336-348. ( Muller , 
Hist. Lit. Gr., p. 198.) 

Sthenelus, I. a king of Mycenae, son of Perseus 
and Andromeda. He married Nicippe, the daughter 
of Pelops, by whom he had two daughters, and a son 
called Eurystheus. The name of this son is connect¬ 


ed with the legend of Hercules he having been bora 
before Hercules, and, therefore, exercising a control 
over him. (Vid. Hercules.)—II. A son of Capaneus. 
He was one of the Epigoni, and also one of the suiters 
of Helen. He went to the Trojan war, and was, ac¬ 
cording to Virgil, in the number of those who were shut 
up in the wooden horse ( Pausan ., 2, 18.— Virg. y 
JEn., 2, 10.) 

Sthenobcea, a daughter of Jobates, king of Lycia, 
who married PrcEtus, king of Argos. She became en¬ 
amoured of Bellerophon, who had taken refuge at hei 
husband’s court after the murder of his brother; and 
when he refused, she falsely accused him before Proe- 
tus of attempts upon her virtue. (Vid. Bellerophon.) 

Stilicho, a Vandalic general, in the service of the 
Emperor Theodosius the Great, whose niece Serena he 
married. Theodosius having bequeathed the empire 
of the East to his son Arcadius, and that of the West 
to his second son Honorius, the former was left under 
the care of Rufinus, and the latter under the guardian¬ 
ship of Stilicho. No sooner was Theodosius removed 
by death, than Rufinus stirred up an invasion of the 
Goths, in order to procure the sole dominion ; but 
Stilicho put down this scheme, and effected the de¬ 
struction of his rival. After suppressing a revolt in 
Africa, he marched against Alaric, whom he signally 
defeated at Pollentia. After this, in A.D. 406, he re¬ 
pelled an invasion of barbarians, who penetrated into 
Italy under Rhadagasius, a Hun or Vandal leader, 
who formerly accompanied Alaric, and effected the 
entire destruction of the force and its leader. Either 
from motives of policy or from state necessity, he 
then entered into a treaty with Alaric, whose preten¬ 
sions upon the Roman treasury for a subsidy he 
warmly supported. This conduct excited a suspicion 
of his treachery on the part of Honorius, who massa¬ 
cred all his friends during his absence. He received 
intelligence of this fact at the camp of Bononia ( Bo¬ 
logna ), whence he was obliged to flee to Ravenna. 
Here he took shelter in a church, from which he was 
inveigled by a solemn oath that no harm was intended 
him, and was conveyed to immediate execution, which 
he endured in a manner worthy his great military char¬ 
acter. Stilicho was charged with the design of de¬ 
throning Honorius, in order to advance his son Euche- 
rius in his place ; and the memory of this distinguished 
captain has been treated by the ecclesiastical writers 
with great severity. Zosimus, however, although 
otherwise unfavourable to him, acquits him of the 
treason which was laid to his charge ; and he will live 
in the poetry of Claudian as the most distinguished 
commander of his age. ( Encyclop. Americ., vol. 12, 
p. 7.— Gibbon , Decline and Fall, c. 29, seq.) 

Stilpo, a philosopher of Megara, who flourished 
about 336 B.C. He was not only celebrated for his 
eloquence and skill in dialectics, but for the success 
with which he applied the moral precepts of philos¬ 
ophy to the correction of his natural propensities. 
Though in his youth he had been much addicted to 
intemperance and licentious pleasures, after he had 
ranked himself among philosophers he was never 
known to violate the laws of sobriety or chastity. 
With respect to riches he exercised a virtuous moder¬ 
ation. When Ptolemy Soter, at the taking of Mega¬ 
ra, presented him with a large sum of money, and re¬ 
quested him to accompany him to Egypt, he returned 
the greater part of the present, and chose to retire, du¬ 
ring Ptolemy’s stay at Megara, to the island of HCgina. 
Afterward, when Megara 'was again taken by Deme¬ 
trius, son of Antigonus, the conqueror ordered the sol¬ 
diers to spare the house of Stilpo ; and, if anything 
should be taken from him in the hurry of the plunder, 
to restore it. So great was the fame of Stilpo, that 
when he visited Athens, the people ran out of their 
shops to see him, and even the most eminent philoso¬ 
phers of Athens took pleasure in attending upon his 



S TO 


STR 


discourses. On moral topics Stilpo is said to have 
taught, that the highest felicity consists in a mind free 
from the dominion of passion, a doctrine similar to 
that of the Stoics. {Enfield's History of Philosophy, 
vol. 1, p. 202.) 

Stobjeus, Joannes, a native of Stobi, in Macedonia, 
whence his name Stobaeus. The particulars of his 
life are unknown, and we are even ignorant of the 
age in which he lived. All that can be said of his era 
is, that he was subsequent to Hierocles of Alexandrea, 
since he has left us extracts from his works ; and as 
he cites no more recent writer, it is probable that he 
lived not long after him. Stobaeus had read much; 
he had acquired the habit of reading with a pen in his 
hand, and of making extracts from whatever seemed 
to him remarkable. Having made a large collection 
of these extracts, he arranged them in systematic or¬ 
der for the use of his son, whose education seems to 
have constituted the father’s principal employment. 
This was the origin of a collection in four books, 
which he published under the title of 'AvOoTioyiov etc- 
Aoyuv, aTtocpOeypaTov, VTrodrjKuv (“ An Anthology of 
Extracts, Sentences, and Precepts"). This work has 
come down to us, but under a form somewhat differ¬ 
ent, and which has consequently embarrassed the com¬ 
mentators. We have three books of extracts made 
by Stobaeus, but they are given in the manuscripts as 
two distinct works: one composed of two books, the 
other of a single one. The former is entitled “ Phys¬ 
ical, Dialectic, and Moral Selections," the latter 
“ Discourses." There exists, however, some confu¬ 
sion in this respect in the manuscripts. Some, which 
contain merely the Eclogae or Extracts, call them the 
first and second books of Stobaeus, without any more 
particular designation. Others give both works the 
title of Anthology.—In the Eclogae and Discourses, 
Stobaeus appears to have proposed to himself two dif¬ 
ferent objects. The Eclogae form, so to speak, an his¬ 
torical work, because they make us acquainted with 
the opinions of ancient authors on questions of a phys¬ 
ical, speculative, and moral nature, whereas the Dis¬ 
courses constitute merely a moral work. It is on ac¬ 
count of this diversity that some critics have thought 
that the Eclogae never formed part of the Anthology, 
but originally made a separate work, and that the third 
and fourth books of the Anthology are lost. This hy¬ 
pothesis, however, seems at variance with the account 
that Photius gives of the Anthology of Stobaeus. 
“ The first book,” says he, “is entirely physical; the 
commencement of the second is strictly philosophical 
(Tioyutoc), but the greater part is moral. The third 
and fourth books are almost entirely devoted to moral 
and political subjects.” It would seem from this that 
it is wrong to divide the extracts of Stobaeus into two 
works, and that we possess actually, under two titles, 
his Anthology in four books, excepting that the copy¬ 
ists have united the third and fourth books into one.— 
It is from Photius also that we learn the object which 
Stobasus had in view when he made these selections, 
for we have not the beginning of the first book, where 
no doubt it was stated. Stobasus had devoted this 
part to a eulogium on philosophy, which was followed 
by an historical sketch of the ancient schools, and of 
their doctrines in relation to geometry, music, and 
arithmetic : of this chapter we have only the end, in 
which the subject of arithmetic is treated. The object 
of Stobasus, according to Photius, was to erect a col¬ 
umn which might serve as a landmark to his son Sep- 
timius during the latter’s course through life. The 
first book is subdivided into sixty chapters ; the sec¬ 
ond contained forty-six, but we have only the first 
nine. The third book, or the first of the Discourses, 
•as, in the time of Photius, composed of forty-two 
chapters, and the second of fifty-eight. In the manu¬ 
scripts these one hundred chapters form only one 
book: the copyists, however, have, by their subdivis- 
1262 


ion of some of the Discourses, made the number of 
chapters amount to one hundred and twenty-five, or, 
rather, one hundred and twenty-seven. Each chapter 
of the Eclogae, and each discourse, has a particulur 
title, under which the author has arranged his extracts, 
commencing with the poets, and passing from them, in 
order, to orators, philosophers, physicians, &c. The 
source whence each extract is obtained is indicated 
in the margin. These extracts are drawn from more 
than five hundred authors, both poets and prose wri¬ 
ters, whose works have in a great measure perished. 
We find here, in particular, numerous passages from 
the ancient comic writers.—The best edition of the 
Eclogae is that of Heeren, Gotting., 1792, 2 vols. (in 
4) 8vo. It contains a very valuable dissertation by 
the editor, on the sources whence Stobaeus obtained 
his materials. {Commentatio de Fontibus Eclogarum 
Joannis Stobcei.) —The best edition of the Discourses 
is that of Gaisford, under the title, Joannis Stobcei 
Florilegium, Oxon., 1822,4 vols. 8vo. {Scholl, Hist. 
Lit. Gr., vol. 7, p. 133, seqq.) 

Stobi, a city of Macedonia, in the district of Paeonia, 
to the north of Edessa, and not far from the junction 
of the Erigonus and Axius. Livy informs us that 
Philip wished to found a new city in its vicinity, to be 
called Perses, after his eldest son (39, 54). On the 
conquest of Macedonia by the Romans, Stobi was 
made the depot of the salt with which the Dardani were 
supplied from that country (45, 29). At a later period 
it became not only a Roman colony, but a Roman 
municipium, a privilege rarely conferred beyond the 
limits of Italy. {Plin.,4, 10.— Dip., Dig. de Cons, 
lex ult.) In the reign of Constantine, Stobi was con¬ 
sidered as the chief town of Macedonia Secunda, or 
Salutaris, as it was then called. {Hierocl., Syn., p. 
641.— Malch., Exc. Legat., p. 61.) Stobi was the 
birthplace of Joannes Stobaeus, the author of the Greek 
Florilegium which bears his name. The modern Istib 
is said to mark the site of the ancient city. {Cra¬ 
mer's Ancient Greece, vol. 1, p. 271.— Bischoff und 
Moller, Worterb. der Geogr., p. 931.) 

Stcechades, islands in the Mediterranean, off the 
coast of Gaul, and in a southeast direction from Telo 
Martius or Toulon, now Isles d'Hieres. Strabo and 
Ptolemy make them five in number, but Pliny only 
three. They are called Prote ( Parquerolles ), Mese 
{Porto Cros ), and Hypaea {du Levant or Titan). 
They are said to have their name from their being 
ranged on the same line {orolxog—Plin , 3, 5.— Mela , 
2, 7). 

Stoicj, a celebrated sect of philosophers, founded by 
Zeno of Citium. They received their name from the 
portico {aTod) where the philosopher delivered his lec¬ 
tures. This was the “ Poecile,” adorned with various 
paintings from the pencil of Polygnotus and other em¬ 
inent masters, and hence was called, by way of emi¬ 
nence, the Porch. An account of the Stoic doctrine 
will be found at the end of the article Zeno. 

Strabo, I. a Roman cognomen in the Fannian, 
Pompeian, and other families. It was first applied to 
those whose eyes were distorted, but afterward became 
a general name.—II. A celebrated geographer, born at 
Amasea in Pontus. The year of his birth is not ex¬ 
actly known, but it may be placed about fifty-four B.C. 
{Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, pt. 2, p. 277.) He studied 
at Nyssa under Aristodemus, at Amisus under Tyran- 
nion, and at Seleucia under Xenarchus. He then pro¬ 
ceeded to Alexandrea, and attached himself first to the 
peripatetic Boethus of Sidon ; but Athenodorus of Tar¬ 
sus eventually gained him over to the doctrines of the 
Porch. He then visited various parts of Asia Minor, 
Syria, Phoenicia, and Egypt as far as Syene and the 
Cataracts of the Nile. In this latter country he formed 
an intimate acquaintance with iElius Gallus, the Ro¬ 
man governor. In the year 24 B.C. this general 
undertook, by order of Augustus, an expedition into 




STRABO 


STRABO. 


Arabia. At a subsequent period, Strabo travelled 
over Greece, Macedonia, and Italy with the exception 
of Cisalpine Gaul and Liguria. It is important to 
determine the extent of Strabo’s travels, that we may 
know when he speaks as an eyewitness, and when 
he merely copies the accounts of his predecessors, or 
gives the narratives of other travellers. At an ad¬ 
vanced period of life he compiled a work on Geogra¬ 
phy ( Teoypatyuiu ), in seventeen books, which has come 
down to us complete, with the exception of the seventh 
book, which is imperfect.—It is remarkable that, du¬ 
ring a space of near five hundred years, from the time 
of Herodotus to that of Strabo, so little should have 
been added to the science of geography. The con¬ 
quests of the Romans westward did certainly bring 
them acquainted with parts of Europe .hitherto little 
known; but in the East, neither the Macedonian nor 
the Roman expeditions seem to have brought much to 
light that was before unknown of the state of Asia ; 
while in Africa, as Rennell justly observes, geography 
lost ground. In the course of this period, indeed, 
many writers on this subject appeared ; but, whatever 
were their merits (and the merits even of the most 
eminent among them seem to be not highly rated by 
Strabo), it is certain that they are all lost. We may 
collect, indeed, from a curious circumstance little 
known or regarded, that no complete or systematic 
work on geography at that time existed : for it appears 
from two or three of Cicero’s letters to Atticus, that he 
once entertained thoughts of writing a treatise himself 
on the subject. He was deterred, however, he says, 
whenever he considered it, by the magnitude of the 
undertaking, and by perceiving how severely even 
Eratosthenes had been censured by the writers who 
succeeded him. In fact, he was probably restrained by 
a consciousness of his own incompetency in point of 
science, of which he makes a pretty broad confession to 
his friend; and whoever values the reputation of Cice¬ 
ro cannot regret that it was never risked on a system 
of geography, to be got up , as he himself hints it was 
intended to be, during a short summer tour among his 
country-houses in Italy.—It is net, however, merely 
to the respective character of the two individuals that 
we must attribute the inferiority of the geography of 
Herodotus, in all essential requisites, to that of Strabo. 
Much undoubtedly is owing to the manners and com¬ 
plexion of the times in which they respectively lived. 
The former came to the task with few materials sup¬ 
plied to his hands. Everything was to be collected 
by his own industry, without the aid of previous his¬ 
tory, without political documents or political authori¬ 
ty. The taste, moreover, and the habits of the people 
for whom he wrote, which must ever have a powerful 
influence over the composition of any writer, demanded 
other qualities than rigid authenticity, and a judicious 
selection of facts. It should be remembered that he 
was hardly yet emerged from the story-telling age ; 
the pleasure of wondering had not yet been superse¬ 
ded by the pleasure of knowing ; and the nine deities 
who give name to his books might be allowed to im¬ 
part some share of their privilege of fiction, when¬ 
ever sober truth has been insufficient to complete or 
adorn his narrative. Before the age of Augustus, 
however, an entire revolution had been effected in the 
intellectual habits and literary pursuits of men. The 
world had become in a manner, what it now is, a read¬ 
ing world. Books of every kind were to be had in 
every place. Accordingly, it became the chief busi¬ 
ness of writers who projected any extensive work, to 
examine and compare what had been already written; 
to weigh probabilities; to adjust and reconcile apparent 
difficulties; and to decide between contending authori¬ 
ties, as well as to collect and methodise a multitude 
of independent facts, and to mould them into one reg¬ 
ular and consistent form. It was not without a just 
sense of the magnitude and difficulty of the underta¬ 


king that Strabo engaged in this task, as is sufficiently 
proved by his own elaborate introduction. How many 
years were employed upon it is not certain ; but we 
are sure, from the incidental mention made in different 
passages of historical events widely distant from each 
other, that it occupied a considerable portion of his 
life. It is impossible, indeed, to read any of his lar¬ 
ger descriptions without feeling the advantages pos¬ 
sessed by an eyewitness over a mere compiler. The 
strong and expressive outlines which he draws con¬ 
vey a lively idea, not merely of the figure and dimen 
sions, but of the surface and general character, of ex¬ 
tensive districts. These outlines are carefully filled 
up by a methodical and often minute survey of the 
whole region, marking distinctly its coasts, its towns, 
rivers, and mountains; the produce of the soil, the 
condition and manners of the inhabitants, their origin, 
language, and traffic ; and in the more civilized parts 
of the world, in the states of Greece especially, we 
meet with continual information respecting persons 
and events, the memory of which is sacred to every 
one at all conversant with the writers of that extraor¬ 
dinary people. But it is not merely from the number 
and authenticity of the facts which it communicates 
that this work derives its value. . Every page bears 
evidence of a philosophical and reflecting mind; a 
mind disciplined by science, and accustomed to trace 
the causes and connexion of things, as well in the 
province of physical phenomenon, as in the more 
intricate and varying system of human affairs. In 
this respect Strabo bears a strong resemblance to 
Polybius. But with the fondness of that historian 
for reflections and his steady love of truth, he has 
not copied the formality of his digressions, which 
so often interrupt the flow of the history, and which 
would be yet more unsuited in a geographical work. 
The reasonings and reflections of Strabo are just those 
which would naturally be excited in a mind pre¬ 
viously well informed by the scenes over which he 
was travelling; but they never tempt him to lose 
sight of his main purpose, the collection and ar¬ 
rangement of facts. There is a gravity, a plainness, 
a sobriety, and good sense in all his remarks, which 
constantly remind us that they are subordinate and in¬ 
cidental, suggested immediately by the occasion; and 
they are delivered with a tincture of literature, such as 
a well-educated man cannot fail of imparting to any 
subject. On these accounts Strabo would be entitled 
to the perusal of every scholar, even if the geographi¬ 
cal information were less abundant and authentic than 
it really is.—Strabo lived prior to any arrangement of 
the distances on the globe by measures taken from de¬ 
grees of longitude and latitude. But this writer and 
his predecessor in the same branch of science were 
not unacquainted with the practice of measuring the 
distance from the equator as from a fixed line, by 
which the comparatively northerly or southerly situa¬ 
tions of places might be determined; nor were they 
ignorant of some methods by which the longitude or 
distance of places to the east or west of each other 
might be estimated. But it was reserved for Ptolemy 
to reduce these observations into a regular system and 
to a tabular form, by which the situation of any one 
place, if correctly ascertained, might be compared with 
that of any other, and also with its distance from the 
equator and from the first meridian, drawn through 
Ferro, in the Canary or Fortunate Islands, as being 
the most westerly point of the earth known at that 
time.—The ancient astronomers and geographers could 
not but be conscious how defective were their instru¬ 
ments for observing the heavenly bodies ; and how 
much greater dependance might be placed on their 
mechanical measurement of distances, to the accuracy 
of which we have reason to think they paid great at¬ 
tention, than on their celestial observations, to ascer¬ 
tain the truth of which they had so little artificial a»- 

1263 





STRABO. 


STRABO. 


sistance. The proportion of the length of the gnomon 
to that of its meridian shadow at the solstice and the 
equinoxes, afforded the principal method of determin¬ 
ing the distance of places from the equator, and these 
were, indeed, under a clear sky, a bright sun, and con¬ 
tinued opportunities of repeating observations, laid 
down, in many instances, more nearly to the truth 
than could be expected from so simple and so rude an 
instrument. Still, however, they were liable to great 
uncertainty. The penumbra at the extremity of the 
shadow made the proportions doubtful. The semi-di¬ 
ameter of the sun (although Cleomedes seemed to be 
aware that this should be taken into the account) 
does not appear to be added to the altitude, and the 
circumstances, less important, indeed, though not to 
be neglected, of parallax and refraction, were altogeth¬ 
er unknown. Instances of the incorrectness of gno- 
monic or sciothenic observations may be given, too 
gross to be ascribed to any of these defects, and evi¬ 
dently owing to inaccuracy in the observers. Strabo 
mentions, in no less than four places, that the same 
proportion of the length of the gnomon to its solstitial 
shadow was found at Byzantium and at Marseilles, 
though the former was situated in 41° II', and the 
other in 43° 17' of latitude, a difference' of no less 
than 136' on the equator, equal to 158 English miles; 
and this fact is reported on the authority of Hippar¬ 
chus and Eratosthenes, in a case, too, which was ob¬ 
vious to the senses, and depended neither on hypothesis 
nor calculation. It is more extraordinary that this mis¬ 
take, after being adopted by Ptolemy, should be con¬ 
tinued down to ages not very remote from our own. 
A still greater error is to be found in Strabo respecting 
the situation of Carthage. He says that the propor¬ 
tion of the length of the gnomon to that of the equi¬ 
noctial shadow is as eleven to seven. This gives by 
plane trigonometry a latitude of 32° 20', which is 
very near to the one adopted by Ptolemy. The true 
latitude of Carthage, according to the best observa¬ 
tions, is 36° 5'. The error, therefore, is 272', or 313 
English miles. These, and other remarks which might 
be here made, tend fully to show, that the ancient ge¬ 
ographers are more deserving of praise when they ex¬ 
press distances by measurements, in the correctness 
of which they excelled, than when they give them by 
calculations or observations, the principles of which 
they understood, but had not the means of reducing to 
practice. ( Quarterly Review, vol. 5, p. 274, seqq .)— 
But to return more immediately to Strabo. A cir¬ 
cumstance which cannot fail to surprise us is the lit¬ 
tle success with which Strabo’s work appears to have 
met among the ancients, as far, at least, as we may 
infer from the silence which their writers for the most 
part preserve in relation to his labours. Marcianus of 
Heraclea, Athenreus, and Harpocration are the only 
ancient authors that cite him. Pliny and Pausanias 
do not even appear to have been acquainted with him 
by name. Josephus and Plutarch make mention of 
Strabo, but it is only to speak of his Historical Me¬ 
moirs. The celebrity of Strabo dates from the middle 
ages : it was then so universal, that the custom arose 
of designating him by the simple title of “ the Geog¬ 
rapher.’’—The Geography of Strabo consists of two 
parts ; the first, cosmographic.al, giving a description 
of the world, and comprising the first and second 
books • the second, chorographical, furnishing a de¬ 
tailed account of particular countries. This latter part 
commences with the third and ends with the seven¬ 
teenth book; and thus consists of fifteen books, of 
which sight are devoted to Europe, six to Asia, and 
one to Africa.—The first look of the Geography of 
Strabo contains the general introduction to the work. 
In it the author shows the importance and utility of 
geographical studies. On this occasion he treats of 
the extent of Homer’s geographical knowledge, and de¬ 
fends him against his detractors, even to such a degree 
1264 


as to support the authority of the fables related by tflt> 
bard. After Homer, Strabo passes in review the works 
of Anaximander, Hecatseus, Democritus, and Eudoxus 
of Cnidus: he commends the latter for his mathematical 
acquirements and for everything he relates concerning 
Greece, while he censures him ior being fabulous in his 
account of the Scythians. He names Dicaearchus among 
the writers that have treated of general geography, 
whereas we merely know that he wrote the B tog 'E'Xha- 
dog. Strabo ends his list of ancient geographers with 
Ephorus of Cumae ; Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, Po¬ 
lybius, and Posidonius forming the class of modern 
ones. His criticism on the first two books of Eratos¬ 
thenes furnishes him with an opportunity of indulging 
in some researches relative to the adventures of Ulys¬ 
ses as given by Homer, the degree of acquaintance 
which the poet had with Egypt, and also the revolu¬ 
tions which the surface of the earth has undergone.— 
In the second book Strabo continues his criticism on 
the work of Eratosthenes, and takes up the third 
book of that production. He makes many corrections 
on Hipparchus, and defends Eratosthenes against 
many unjust criticisms. He then proceeds to an ex¬ 
amination of the works of Posidonius and Polybius. 
The remainder of the book treats of the knowledge 
requisite for a geographer, and particularly that of a 
mathematical nature : he then treats of the figure of 
the earth, its general divisions and climates. He 
states that the earth has the form of a globe, or, 
rather, seems to have such a form. The habitable 
portion of the earth resembles, according to him, a 
chlamys or military cloak ; it is contained between 
two parallels, one of which passes through Ierne or 
Ireland, and the other through what is now the island 
of Ceylon. The earth is immoveable and in the cen¬ 
tre of the universe. The length of the earth from the 
equator to the north is 38,100 stadia, that of the hab¬ 
itable world 29,000. The breadth is about 70,000 
stadia. The Caspian Sea is a gulf. The Sacrum 
Promontorium (Cape St. Vincent) is the most wester¬ 
ly point of Europe.—With the third book commences 
the chorographical part. Spain is the first country that 
occupies Strabo’s attention ; he first describes Bsetica, 
then Lusitania and the northern coast as far as the 
Pyrenees, then the southern coast from the Columns 
of Hercules to the same range, and, finally, the islands 
in the neighbourhood of Spain, the Baleares, Gades, 
and the Cassiterides. In giving the description of 
this country Strabo follows three writers who had 
travelled in it. The first of these is Artemidorus, 
who boasted of having pushed his way as far as 
Gades, although the account which he gives of the 
phenomena that there attended the setting of the sun 
does not seem to indicate one who had observed them 
himself: this traveller was very exact in his determi¬ 
nation of distances. The second source whence 
Strabo derived his information concerning Spain, and 
his principal guide in this book, is Posidonius. The 
third is Polybius. Strabo, however, notes the changes 
which had taken place since the period of the last- 
mentioned writer. Independently of these three au¬ 
thorities, our geographer cites Ephorus, Eratosthenes, 
Timosthenes, Asclepiades of Myrlea, and Athenodo- 
rus.— The fourth book is taken up with the descrip¬ 
tion of Gaul, Britain, Ireland, Thule, and the Alps. 
After having treated of the four grand divisions of 
Gaul, Narbonensis, Aquitania, Lugdunensis, and Bel- 
gica, Strabo gives some general details on this coun¬ 
try and its inhabitants. The Alps afford him an op¬ 
portunity of treating of the Ligurians, Salyes, Rhaetii, 
Vindelicii, Taurisci, and other inhabitants of these 
mountains. For his description of Gaul Strabo could 
easily obtain information from persons who had filled 
public offices in that country (for in his day this coun¬ 
try was completly subject to the Romans), as well as 
from those who had traded thither. In other resoects 



STRABO. 


STRABO. 


Cbesar was his principal guide, especially in the de¬ 
scription of the Silva Arduenna, and the account of 
the manners and customs of the Germans in general. 
He makes use, also, of the same geographers that had 
aided him in the third book. For example, his de¬ 
scription of the Rhone and here, of their embou¬ 
chures, and of the countries lying between these rivers, 
appears to be taken from Artemidorus. In the de¬ 
scription of Gallia Narbonensis, of which Csesar does 
not treat, Polybius is his authority. In what relates 
to the ancient constitution of Massilia ( Marseille ) he 
has followed Polybius, or perhaps Aristotle’s work on 
Governments. Strabo, it is true, does not cite the 
latter writer on this occasion, but we see from another 
passage that he had consulted his work. ( Strabo , 
321.) The other accounts that he gives respecting 
Massdia are obtained from travellers with whom 
Strabo was personally acquainted. He gives the nar¬ 
rative of Timagenes, according to whom the treasure 
which Caepio found at Tolosa made part of the plun¬ 
der which the Tectosages had carried off from Delphi. 
With respect to Britain, the description of which fol¬ 
lows that of Gaul, as this country was not yet sub¬ 
jected to the Romans, Strabo had no other sources of 
information than the fifth book of Cassar’s Commen¬ 
taries, and the verbal accounts of travellers. He 
confesses, also, that he has but scanty materials for Ire¬ 
land. In speaking of Thule, he makes mention of 
Pytheas, whom he unjustly considers as a writer deal¬ 
ing altogether in fable. For the description of the 
Alps, and of their inhabitants, which terminates the 
fourth book, his authority was Polybius.—The fifth 
and sixth books are devoted to Italy. The sixth ends 
with a survey of the Roman power. With the ex¬ 
ception of Cisalpine Gaul and Liguria, Strabo knew 
Italy from personal observation. Polybius is his prin¬ 
cipal guide among the writers whom he cites, partic¬ 
ularly for Cisalpine Gaul : in his description of Ligu¬ 
ria he quotes also from Posidonius. What he says 
respecting the origin of the Etrurians is found in He¬ 
rodotus : his account of the early kings of Rome is 
probably abridged from Dionysius of Halicarnassus. 
In treating of the Etrurians, he makes a digression 
concerning the Pelasgi, and cites Ephorus, Anticlides, 
and others. For the description of Etruria he has con¬ 
sulted Polybius, Eratosthenes, and Artemidorus. In 
giving the dimensions of Corsica and Sardinia, he re¬ 
fers, for the first time, to an author whom he merely 
cites under the title of a “ Chorographer,” but whom 
he distinguishes from Eratosthenes, Polybius, and Ar¬ 
temidorus. This is a Roman waiter, for his measure¬ 
ments are not in stadia, but in miles ; and perhaps he is 
the same with the Agrippa who prepared a description 
of the Roman empire, which Augustus caused to be 
placed in the portico commenced by his sister. ( Plin ., 
3, 2.) Fabius Pictor and Caecilius are his authorities 
for what he says respecting the origin of the Romans; 
and for the rest of. Central Italy and Magna Grsecia, 
he follows Polybius, Artemidorus, Ephorus, Timseus, 
Apollodorus, but, above all, Antiochus of Syracuse. 
For Sicily he cites Posidonius, Artemidorus, Ephorus, 
and Timseus. —The seventh book commences with a 
description of the countries situate along the Ister or 
Danube, and inhabited by the Germans, Cimbri, Geta?, 
and Tauri: it then proceeds to notice the regions be¬ 
tween this river, the Euxine, the Adriatic, Illyricum, 
and Epirus. The chapters on Thrace and Macedonia 
are lost. Here Strabo was unable to procure as good 
authorities as in the preceding books, and he himself 
confesses that he was wandering in the dark. Strabo 
seems to have had under his eyes an historian who 
reated of the wars between the Romans and Ger¬ 
mans, and who was subsequent to Caesar. The name 
>f this writer appears to have been Asinius. All that 
Strabo relates concerning the Cimbri is taken from 
Pceidonius ; for Ephorus the grammarian, Apollodo- 
7 X 


rtis, and Hypsicrates of Amisa are only cited for iso 
lated facts. The two latter appear to have left histo¬ 
ries of the war with Mithradates. Illyricum is one o 
the countries which Strabo himself traversed. — From 
what he says on the subject, we see that in Aristotle’s 
work on Governments, the constitutions of Acarnania, 
Megaris, Htltolia, and Opuntia were, among others, 
considered. Polybius and Posidonius have supplied 
Strabo with his materials for these regions; Theo- 
pompus and Ephorus were his guides in Epirus, and 
Philochorus in what relates to Dodona. He cites, also, 
a certain Cineas; but whatever he drew from this other¬ 
wise unknown author has perished with the end of the 
book.—The eighth book, and the two immediately fol¬ 
lowing, contain Greece in general, and the Peloponne¬ 
sus in particular. In the description of Greece, Stra¬ 
bo takes the Flomeric poems for a basis. In the cho- 
rographical part he consults also Ephorus and Polyb¬ 
ius ; in the physical part, Posidonius and Hipparchus; 
in the description of bays and harbours, Artemidorus 
and Timosthenes ; and, in addition to all this, draws 
largely on his own information as a traveller in this 
country. Passing on to the description of Elis, he 
cites, for the fabulous ages, Homer and his commen¬ 
tators, Apollodorus, and Demetrius of Scepsis, as well 
as the other early poets ; he relies principally, however, 
upon Ephorus. The other writers consulted by him 
for his account of the Peloponnesus are Philochorus, 
Callisthenes, Hellanicus, Demetrius of Scepsis, Theo- 
pompus, Thucydides, and Aristotle. What he says of 
the Achaean league is taken from Polybius. The dis¬ 
tances between places are obtained from Artemidorus 
and Eratosthenes. — In the ninth book he describes 
Megaris, Attica, Boeotia, Phocis, Locris, and Thessa¬ 
ly, as well as Hellas, properly so called. The dimen¬ 
sions of Attica are taken from Eudoxus, the mathema¬ 
tician ; its history from the Atthidographi, among whom 
he cites Philochorus and Andron. He has consulted, 
also, the memoirs of Demetrius Phalereus, for the pur¬ 
pose of learning the condition of Attica during the time 
of that individual. For Bosotia, Locris, and Phocis 
Ephorus and others have been his authorities. What 
he gives respecting Thessaly is a kind of commentary 
on those passages in Homer where mention is made o 1 
the Thessalians.—The tenth book is occupied with the 
rest of Greece; Euboea, Arcarnania, Hiltolia, Crete, 
the Cyclades, Sporades, &c. For the antiquities of 
Euboea, Homer and his commentators have been con. 
suited; for its history, Theopompus and Aristotle. 
When he treats of Acarnania and TCtolia, he follows 
Homer and another epic poet, probably a Cyclic bard, 
who had composed an Alcmasonid, which Ephorus had 
under his eyes. His other sources of information 
were Apollodorus, Demetrius of Scepsis, and Artemi¬ 
dorus. Before passing to Crete, Strabo makes a long 
digression respecting the Curetes. Among the crowd 
of writers who had treated of the subject, he distin¬ 
guishes Demetrius of Scepsis, from whom he appears 
to have derived the account that he gives respecting 
the religious ceremonies of the Cretans ; he refers, also, 
to Archemachus of Euboea, an historian of an unknown 
epoch, cited frequently by Athenams, to Pherecydes of 
Scyros, Acusilas of Argos, who gave a prose transla¬ 
tion of the poetry of Hesiod, and to Stesimbrotus of 
Thasos. For the description of Crete his principal au¬ 
thority was Sosicrates. He names also Eudoxus, Ar¬ 
temidorus, Hieronymus of Cardia, and Staphylus of 
Naucratis. What relates to the government of Crete 
is taken from Ephorus. The account of the islands of 
the vEgean is the result of Strabo’s own observations. 
—The eleventh book begins the description of Asia. 
Strabo bounds this part of the world by the Tanais, 
the Ocean, and what is now the Isthmus of Suez ; but 
he believed it to be much less extensive than it is in re¬ 
ality. He was unacquainted with the vast regions o! 
Asiatic Russia, and with thase of Central Asia occu- 

1265 



STRABO. 


STRABO. 


pied by Tartar and Mongul tribes : he knew merely a 
portion of Southern Asia. What he states respecting 
the shores of the Palus Maeotis and E jxine, is drawn, 
for the most part, if not altogether, from the narra¬ 
tives of travellers ; perhaps, also, from his own per¬ 
sonal observations. For the measurement of distan¬ 
ces he follows Artemidorus. In relation to Iberia and 
Albania, Strabo consulted, besides Artemidorus, the 
historians of the Mithradatic war, of whom Theophanes 
and Posidonius were the two principal ones. To these 
must be added Metrodorus of Scepsis, and Hypsicrates 
of Amisa. From the latter is taken the digression re¬ 
specting the Amazons. In his description of the Caspi¬ 
an Sea, Strabo has followed very bad guides. His prej¬ 
udice against Herodotus prevented him from following 
that historian, who knew very well that the Caspian is a 
lake, and who gives its dimensions with tolerable accu¬ 
racy. The opinion which made it a gulf of the North¬ 
ern Ocean originated very probably with the followers 
of Alexander, who were either deceived as to its na¬ 
ture, or misled by national vanity. The chief author 
of Strabo’s mistake relative to the Caspian appears 
to have been Patroclus, the admiral of Seleucus and 
Antiochus. Pliny states that this navigator entered 
into the Northern Ocean by the way of the Caspian 
Sea ; but Strabo corrects Pliny’s error, by making 
Patroclus merely conjecture that one might sail by this 
route to India. The description of Hyrcania and 
the neighbouring countries is taken from Patroclus, 
Eratosthenes, Aristobulus, and Polycletus ; that of 
the Massagetffi from Herodotus ; that of Bactriana 
from Eratosthenes. For Parthia, Strabo’s authority 
was Apollodorus of Artemis, whom we know merely 
through the medium of the geographer, but who would 
seem to have lived only a short time before him, since 
he had written the history of the war between the Ro¬ 
mans and Parthians. An extract from the same his¬ 
torian, on the kingdom of Bactria, is almost all the in¬ 
formation that is given us respecting this state. The 
exact ideas which Strabo has in relation to the Oxus 
and Iaxartes are owing to Patroclus ; the fables re¬ 
specting the Derbices, Caspii, and Hyrcanii are found 
in Herodotus. For the description of Media he cites 
Apollonides, and especially Q. Dellius, the friend and 
companion of Marc Antony, whom Plutarch mentions 
in his life of the triumvir. In place of Q. Dellius, 
some editions of Strabo have the corrupt reading Adel- 
phius.—In the twelfth book commences the description 
of Asia Minor. Here Strabo finds himself in the 
country of his youth, and relates much that he him¬ 
self had seen. As regards the earlier periods, he re¬ 
lies on the authority of Hellanicus, Ephorus, Theo- 
pompus, the historians of the Mithradatic wars, and 
particularly Theophanes. When treating of the Mys- 
ians, to whom some writers join the Lydians, he 
speaks of Xanthus the Lydian, and of Menecrates of 
Elea, his contemporary, who had written an 'EAA^o - - 
7 zovTiatcy 7T epfodof, and a work on the origin of cities 
(sr epi KTiaeobv ).—In the thirteenth book Strabo returns 
towards the Propontis, and describes the seacoast from 
Cyzicus to Cumae, comprehending the Troad and ^Eo- 
lis. To this he adds an account of Lesbos, which lies 
opposite. From thenee, turning towards the interior, 
he stops by t.fee way at the cities of Pergamus, Sardis, 
Hierapolis, and some others. In his description of 
the Troad, Homer is Strabo’s first and leading author¬ 
ity ; the commentators on the poet, namely, Eudoxus 
of Cnidus, Damastes of Sigaeum, Charon of Lampsa- 
cus, Scylax, and Ephorus, occupy the second rank. 
To these must be added Callisthenes, and a writer 
born in this country, Demetrius of Scepsis, who had 
written thirty books on sixty verses of the Iliad. 
From this author is taken the story about Aristotle’s 
library. ( Vid. Scepsis.) Ephorus, Thucydides, and 
Artemidorus are cited for distances ; Lycurgus the 
orator, Hellanicus, and Menecrates are the authorities 
1266 


for the different theories among the ancients respect' 
ing the origin of the Trojans.—In tl.s Jourtcentk took 
Strabo is still occupied with Asia Minor ; - he describes 
Ionia, with the islands of Samos and Chios ; the Isle 
of Rhodes, Caria, Lycia, Pamphylia, Cilicia, and the 
isle of Cyprus. The ancient history of Ionia is taken 
from Pherecydes of Scyros, and the poets, such as 
Mimnermus and Hipponax. On the subject of the 
founding of Miletus, our author consulted Ephorus; 
and, as regards the colonies planted by this city, Am 
aximines of Lampsacus. The history of Polycrate? 
is taken from Herodotus ; that of the Athenian expe¬ 
dition to Samos, from Thucydides. In the account 
of the early history of Ephesus, Artemidorus is follow¬ 
ed ; in the case of the other cities, Pherecydes of 
Scyros, and Ephorus, as well as the poets. The his¬ 
tory of the kingdom of Pergamus, and of the attempt 
of Aristonicus, is taken, very probably, from Posido¬ 
nius. Strabo had himself visited these countries and 
collected materials ; the same was the case with 
Rhodes. For Caria he obtained accounts from the 
grammarian Apollodorus; but especially from a cer¬ 
tain Philip, who had written a history of the early 
times of Caria. The authority for Lycia was proba¬ 
bly Artemidorus, whom Strabo cites for distances. 
What he states respecting Cilicia, and of the great 
number of slaves sent from that country to the slave- 
market at Delos, in order to supply the Roman de¬ 
mand for this unfortunate class of beings, appears to 
have been extracted from Posidonius. It is certain, 
at least, that the writer from whom Strabo obtained 
these particulars was subsequent to the war of Pom- 
pey with the pirates. Strabo then engages in a dis¬ 
cussion against the grammarian Apollodorus, who, ac ¬ 
cording to him, had misunderstood both Homer and 
Ephorus in many things relating to Asia Minor. In 
the description of Cyprus he corrects Damastes and 
Eratosthenes, on the authority, probably, of Artemi¬ 
dorus.—In the fifteenth book Strabo commences the 
description of Asia beyond Taurus, or Southern Asia; 
this book is devoted to India and Persia. Here ou| 
author describes regions which he never saw. He 
himself acknowledges that all that was known in his 
day respecting India w r as full of obscurity and contra¬ 
diction. His own idea, too, concerning the shape ot 
this country, is altogether false ; he represents it as a 
rhomboid, the northern and southern sides of which 
measured 3000 stadia (nearly 115 leagues) more than 
the eastern and western. He had, consequently, no 
knowledge whatever of the peninsula of Decan. In 
the whole of India he was only acquainted with three 
cities : Taxila, Patala, and Palibothra. If, however, 
the geographical information relative to this country 
be meager and unsatisfactory, the deficiency is, in 
some degree, compensated by the very full account 
that is given of the manners and institutions of the 
people. Besides Eratosthenes, who is his principal 
guide, Strabo has derived much information from the 
historians of Alexander and his successors, particular¬ 
ly Patroclus and Aristobulus, whom he considers 
most worthy of reliance ; after them he ranks Megas- 
thenes and Nearchus : he gives little credit to Onesic- 
ritus, Daimachus, and Clitarchus. In treating of the 
course of the Ganges, he gives the opinion of Artemi 
dorus : he cites the account given by Nicolaus Damas- 
cenus of his interview with the ambassadors sent from 
Taprobana to Augustus : he quotes, also, a certain 
Megillus, who had written on the culture of rice.— 
After India, Strabo describes the Empire of Persia 
He comprehends, under the name of Ariana, the prov¬ 
inces situate between the Indus and a line drawn 
from the Caspian Gates (Pylae Caspiae) to the embou¬ 
chure of the Persian Gulf. In his description of the 
coasts of Persia he follows Nearchus and Onesieritus • 
and with regard to the countries in the interior, he re 
marks i&at he has nothing more to say respeetirj. 1 







STRABO. 


S TR 


ttiena than Eratosthenes had, who himself derived his 
own information from the historians of Alexander. 
For the dimensions of the country he cites Bseton 
and Diognetes. His authorities for the description 
of Persia Proper (or Persis) are Eratosthenes and 
Polyclitus : his account of Persepolis and Pasargada 
is borrowed from Arist.obulus, and is found also in 
Arrian. In speaking of the worship of fire, he gives 
us to understand that he has been an eyewitness of the 
ceremony, since he remarks that Cappadocia, a prov¬ 
ince over which he had travelled, contained many Ma¬ 
gi, or worshippers of fire (nvpcudoi). The remainder 
of his account of Persian manners is taken from He¬ 
rodotus and Xenophon. — The sixteenth book termi¬ 
nates the account of Asia : it contains a description 
of Assyria, a name under which Strabo, besides Adia- 
bene, comprehends also Babylonia and Mesopotamia ; 
to this succeeds an account of Syria, together with 
Phoenicia and Palestine ; and last of all comes Arabia. 
The description of Aturia, or the Assyrian province in 
which was situate the city of Ninus, is taken from an 
historian of Alexander, who, together with Herodotus, 
Polyclitus, and Eratosthenes, has also been his author¬ 
ity for Babylonia. What he states concerning the 
Parthian empire is probably taken from Posidonius ; 
for mention is made, in the course of it, of the war 
waged by Pompey against Tigranes. The account 
which he gives of the stone dikes, by which the As¬ 
syrians had fettered the navigation of the Tigris, is 
found also in Arrian, and appears to have been bor¬ 
rowed from Aristobulus and Nearchus. The picture 
of Babylonian manners is traced after the original 
drawn by Herodotus, and also after that of Posidonius. 
Strabo had travelled in Syria, and therefore speaks of 
it as an eyewitness. He gives the distances accord¬ 
ing to Eratosthenes and Artemidorus ; in the history 
of the Seleucidae he follows Posidonius. We find 
here a remarkable passage respecting Moses and the 
Je ws, taken from some author who wrote after the 
capture of Jerusalem by Pompey.—What Strabo men¬ 
tions under the head of Arabia is taken from Eratos¬ 
thenes, with the exception of the account that is given 
of the western part of the country ; this appears to 
have been drawn from Artemidorus, who had himself 
copied it from Agatharchidas. The book concludes 
with accounts derived by Strabo from conversations 
with travellers, particularly with the Stoic philosopher, 
Athenodorus of Tarsus, the friend and preceptor of Au¬ 
gustus, who had visited Petra, the chief city of the 
Nabathsei, and in company with iElius Gallus, with 
\vhom Strabo became acquainted in Egypt.—The sev¬ 
enteenth and last book comprehends Egypt, Ethiopia, 
and Libya, which we call Africa, and which comprised 
under the name of Libya the countries of Cyrena'ica, 
Mauritania, and the territories of Carthage. The di¬ 
vision of the Roman empire into provinces terminates 
the work. What Strabo relates concerning the Nile 
is obtained from Eratosthenes, Eudoxus, and Ariston. 
Strabo, moreover, was personally acquainted with the 
course of the stream as far as the Cataracts. His ac¬ 
count of the Ptolemies is based upon the testimony of 
Polybius, and in part, very probably, upon his contin- 
uator, Posidonius. In the narrative of Alexander’s 
march across the desert to the oracle of Ammon, Stra¬ 
bo follows Callisthenes and the other companions of 
the prince. The recital of Petronius, who, during the 
reign of Augustus, carried on war against the Ethio¬ 
pians, the work of Agatharchidas, and the history of 
Herodotus, are the sources whence he draws his ma¬ 
terials for an account of the countries lying to the 
south of Egypt. With regard to Libya, and particu¬ 
larly the Oases and the temple of Ammon, he takes 
Eratosthenes for his guide, and for the distances, Ar¬ 
temidorus ; while for the historical portion, Posido¬ 
nius, in all likelihood, served as authority. He cites 
also Timosthenes and Iphicrates, writers otherwise un¬ 


known, who had treated of the botany of Libya. Al¬ 
though, in treating of Mauritania, he makes mention of 
the two Jubas, he does not seem to have been acquaint¬ 
ed with the work of the younger on Africa ; for, had 
he known it, he would certainly have furnished us with 
many interesting selections relative to the interior o; 
the country.—There exists an abridgment or Chrestom- 
athy of the entire work of Strabo, made subsequent¬ 
ly to A.D. 980, by which the text of the main work 
has often been corrected, the latter having come to us 
in a very corrupt state. Besides the Chrestomathy, 
several collections of extracts from Strabo have reach¬ 
ed our time : they are still in manuscript, and to be 
found in European libraries. By the help of these, the 
text of the large work might be still farther corrected. 
—Strabo wrote also an historical work, a continuation 
of Polybius, which he himself cites under the title o 
'Yiro/ivriiuiTa iaropiKa (Historical Memoirs). These 
memoirs were carried down a little farther, it would 
seem, than the continuation of the same historian made 
by Posidonius ; for it appears from Plutarch that the 
death of Caesar was mentioned in them.— Among the 
most useful editions of Strabo may be mentioned that 
of Casaubon, Genev ., 1587, fob, reprinted at Paris by 
Morel, after the death of Casaubon, 1620, fol. ; that of 
Almeloveen, Amst., 1708, fol., which is a reprint of 
Casaubon’s, enriched with notes from various scholars ; 
that of Siebenkees, continued by Tzschucke, and af¬ 
ter him by Friedemann, but never completed, Lips., 
1796-1818, 7 vols. 8vo ; and that of Coray, Paris, 
1816-19, 4 vols. 8vo. This last contains the best 
Greek text : it has no Latin version, but is accompa¬ 
nied by an excellent commentary and several tables. 
The Oxford edition of Strabo, by Falconer, 1507, 2 
vols. fol., is a beautiful specimen of typography, but a 
very unfortunate model of accurate scholarship : it is 
noted also for having given rise to an angry controver¬ 
sy between the Edinburgh Review and some of the 
scholars of England.—The French translation of Stra¬ 
bo, undertaken at the command of government, and 
executed by Du Theil and Coray, enjoys a high repu¬ 
tation. The translation, with the critical and histon 
cal notes, was assigned to the two scholars just named ; 
and M. Gossellin had charge of the formation of the 
maps and the geographical illustrations. It appeared 
during 1805-20, and is in 5 vols. 4to. An able re¬ 
view of it is given in the London Quarterly, vol. 5, p. 
273, seqq. (Scholl , Hist. Lit. Gr ., vol. 5, p. 278, 
seqq ) 

Strato, I. a philosopher of Lampsacus, disciple 
and successor in the school of Theophrastus, or tht. 
peripatetic school,of which he took charge B.C. 28C, 
and who continued over it for eighteen years, with a 
high reputation for learning and eloquence. Ptolemy 
Philadelphus made him his preceptor, and repaid his 
services with a royal present of eighty talents. In 
his opinion concerning matter, Strato departed essen¬ 
tially from the system both of Plato and Aristotle, 
and he is said to have nearly approached that system 
of atheism which excludes the deity from the forma¬ 
tion of«the world. Cicero states that this philosopher 
conceived all Divine power to be seated in nature, 
which possesses the causes of production, increase, 
and diminution, but is wholly destitute of sensation 
and figure. He taught, also, that the seat of the soul 
is in the middle of the brain, and that it only acts by 
means of the senses. (Enfield's History of Philoso¬ 
phy, vol. 1, p. 295. seq ) — II. A physician of Bery- 
tus, a pupil of Erasistratus, and, like him, a deter¬ 
mined enemy to bleeding. He became the head of 
a school. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 3, p. 408.)—* 
III. A licentious poet, a native of Sardis. Many epi 
grams of his are preserved in the Greek Anthology 
(Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 4, p. 56.) 

Straton. Vid. Strato. 

Stratonice, wife of Antiochus I. (Soter). king o' 

1267 



S T R 


STY 


Syria, and previously the wife of Seleucus. (Con¬ 
sult remarks at the commencement of the article An- 
tiochus.) 

Stratonicea, I. a city of Caria, between Alabanda 
and Atlinda, and one of the three most important 
cities in the interior of the country. It was founded 
and fortified by Antiochus Soter, and called after his 
wile Stratonice. The modern Eskthissar marks the 
ancient site. It would seem from Stephanus of Byzan¬ 
tium ( 5 . v. ’EKarrjma), that an earlier city called Irdias, 
and also Hecatesia and Chrysaoris, occupied the spot 
where Stratonicea was afterward founded. In con¬ 
sequence of some restorations by Hadrian, this latter 
city received the name of Hadrianopolis, but did not 
long retain it, ( Hierocl .— Strabo , 660.— Polyb., 30, 
19. — Plin., 5, 29.) Ptolemy gives the name of the 
place as Stratonice. ( Leake's Tour , p. 235. Chis- 
hull, Antiq. Asiat., p. 155.)—II. A city near Mount 
Taurus, called Stratonicea ad Taurum (2 Tparoviueta 
i] rcpop tC) Tavpo)), to distinguish it from the former. 

(Strabo, l. c.) 

Stratonis Turris, a city of Judaea, afterward 
called Caesarea by Herod, in honour of Augustus. 
[Vid. Caesarea.) 

Strongyle, one of the Lipari isles, or the first of 
the yEoliae Insulae to the northeast. It was called 
Strongyle (2rpoyyu/ly) by the Greeks on account of 
its round figure, whence, by corruption, the modern 
name Stromboli. It is celebrated for its extraordinary 
volcano, which is the only one known whose erup¬ 
tions are continued and uninterrupted. The island is, 
in fact, merely a single mountain, whose base is about 
nine miles in circumference. The crater is supposed 
to have been anciently situated on the summit of the 
mountain ; it is now on the side. From various tes- 
imonies collected by Spallanzani, he .concludes that 
he volcano has burned for more than a century where 
it r.ow does, without any sensible change in its situa¬ 
tion. The same writer is of opinion that the material 
oricrin and increase of Stromboli is to be attributed 
to porphyry, which, melted by subterraneous confla¬ 
grations, and rarefied by elastic gaseous substances, 
arose from the bottom of the sea, and, extending itself 
on the sides in lava and scoriae, has formed an island 
of its present size. The earliest eruptions of Strom¬ 
boli, authenticated by historical accounts, are prior 
to the Christian era by about 290 years, the date of 
the reign of Agathocles of Syracuse. ( Schol. ad 
Apoil. Rhod., 4, 761.) It burned, likewise, in the 
time of Augustus and Tiberius. After this latter pe¬ 
riod, a long succession of ages ensued, during which, 
from the want of historical documents, we are ignorant 
of the state of Stromboli. In the seventeenth century 
we again know that it ejected fire, which it has con¬ 
tinued to do to the present time. The ancients made 
this island the residence of iEolus, monarch of the 
winds ; and Pliny gives us the germe of the whole fa¬ 
ble when he states that the inhabitants could tell three 
days beforehand, from the smoke of the volcano, what 
winds were going to blow. {Plin., 3, 8.)—Strongyle 
was inhabited as early as the days of Thudydides. 
About twenty-five years ago, Stromboli did not con¬ 
tain more than two hundred inhabitants ; but at pres¬ 
ent mors than two thousand are collected in a single 
town. ( Mannert , Gcogr., vol. 9, pt. 2, p. 465.— Mal- 
te-Brun. vol. 7, p. 750.) 

Strophades, small islands off the coast of Elis, 
in the Ionian Sea. They were two in number, and, 
according to Strabo, belonged to the territory of Cypa- 
rissa. ( Strab ., 359.) They were first called Plot®, 
but took their name of Strophades from the circum¬ 
stance of Zetes and Calais, the sons of Boreas, having 
returned from thence (crrpe^w, “ to turn”) after they 
bad driven the Harpies thither from the table of Phin- 
eus. {Apoil. Rhod., 2, 295.) According to the scho- 
. lust, however, the islands were so called because the 
1268 


sons of Boreas turned to Jupiter iEnesius, whose tl 
tar stood on a promontory of Cephallenia, and sup¬ 
plicated him for aid to overtake the Harpies. {Heyne 
ad Apollod., 1, 7, 21.)—These islands are known ta 
navigators at the present day under the name of Stri- 
vali. ( Cramer's Anc. Greece , vol. 3, p. *21.) 

Strophius, I. a king of Phocis. He married a sis¬ 
ter of Agamemnon, by whom he had Pylades, cele¬ 
brated for his friendship with Orestes. After the 
murder of Agamemnon by Clytemnestra and yEgis- 
thus, the king of Phocis educated at his own house, 
with the greatest care, his nephew, whom Electra had 
secretly removed from the dagger of his mother and 
her adulterer. {Pausan., 2, 29. — Hygin., fab., 1, 
17.)—II. A son of Pylades by Electra, the sister of 
Orestes. 

Strymon, a large river of Thrace, forming the bound¬ 
ary of that country on the side of Macedonia, ( Scyl ., 
Peripl, p. 27.) It rises in the chain of Mount Sco- 
mius, and, after a course of nearly two hundred miles, 
through the territory of the Paeonians, the Masdi, Sinti, 
and Edones, which were Thracian tribes, falls into the 
gulf to which it communicated the name of Strymoni- 
cus, now Golfo di Contessa. {Strabo, 331.) Pliny 
states, that the Strymon had its source in Mount Hse- 
mus, and that it formed seven lakes before it proceed¬ 
ed on its course (4, 10). The Strymon gave its name 
to a wind which was prevalent in the gulf into which 
that river discharges itself, and blew with great vio¬ 
lence from the north. [Herod., 8, 118.) The Stry¬ 
mon was also celebrated for its eels. {Antiph., ap. 
Athen., 7, 54.) According to Lucas, the modern 
name of this stream is Karasou, or the “ Black River 
but some maps term it the river of Orphano, from a 
small town near its mouth. {Cramer’’s Anc. Greece, 
vol. 1, p. 289.) 

Stymphalis, I. a region of Macedonia, south ot 
Orestis, and annexed to the former country upon the 
conquest of that kingdom by the Romans. {Liv , 45, 
30.)—II. Palus, a lake of Arcadia, near the town of 
Stymphalus, and once the fabled haunt of birds, thence 
called Stymphalides. {Apollod., 2, 5, 6. — Schol. ad 
Apoll. Rhod., 2, 1054.) Pausanias imagines that these 
came from Arabia, as there existed some of the same 
name in that country (8, 22). The Stymphalides, 
confounded by others with the Harpies, are said to feed 
on human flesh, and were fabled to have been de¬ 
stroyed by Hercules. The Stymphalian lake was sup¬ 
posed to communicate with the Erasinus, a small river 
of Argolis. {Herod., 6, 76.— Strabo, 371.) The Em-, 
peror Hadrian caused water to be conveyed from a 
fountain in the Stymphalian territory to Corinth. 
{Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 3, p. 309.) 

Stymphalus, a town of Arcadia, northeast of Or- 
chotnenus, and near the confines of Achaia. In the 
time of Pausanias it was annexed to Argolis hy the 
voluntary choice of its inhabitants ; but it was an Ar¬ 
cadian town at the epoch of the Trojan war, having 
been founded, according to the traditions of the country, 
long before that period by Stymphalus, a descendant 
of Areas. {Pausan., 8, 22 ) Its antiquity is also at¬ 
tested by Pindar, who calls it the mother of Arcadia. 
(Olymp ., 6, 167.) The remains of Stymphalus are 
about an hour to the wCst-southwest of Zaraka, and 
stand upon a rocky eminence rising from the northeast 
side of the lake. {Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p 
309.) 

Styx, I. a daughter of Oceanus and Tethys. She 
married Pallas, by whom she had Victory, Strength, 
Luck {ZfjTioQ. — Heyne ad Apollod., 1, 2, 4, not. crit.), 
and Violence. {Apollod., 1. c.) —II. A celebrated tor¬ 
rent in Arcadia, which precipitated itself over a rocky 
height in the vicinity of Nonacris, to join the rivet 
Crathis. The waters of the Styx were said to be poi¬ 
sonous, and to possess the property of dissolving met 
als and other hard substances exposed to their action 




SllA 


S IJ E 


The only thing in which it could be kept was a mule’s 
noof; every other kind of vessel split immediately on 
receiving it. Hence, say the ancient writers, it was 
in a mule’s hoof that some of this water was sent to 
Asia by Antipater, for the purpose of poisoning Alex¬ 
ander. (P/m., 30, 53.— JE/ian, H. A., 10, 40.— Jus¬ 
tin, 12, 14.— Quint. Curt., 10, 10, 25.— Senec ., 
Quazst. Nat., 3, 25 .—Vitruv., 8, 3 — Varro, ap. Solin., 
c. 7.) Herodotus relates that Cleomenes, king of 
Sparta, assembled in this quarter the Arcadian chiefs 
whom he had united in a plot against that city, and 
made them swear by this “ infernal” stream that they 
would persevere in their resolutions. The historian 
describes the Nonacrian Styx as a scanty rill, distilling 
from the rock, and falling into a hollow basin surround¬ 
ed by a wall (6, 75). Pausanias, however, represents 
the Styx as falling from one of the most elevated sum¬ 
mits that he had ever seen (8. 17, 5), and this state¬ 
ment agrees with the accounts of modern travellers. 
{Von Stackelberg, La Grece, Vues pittoresques, &c., 
livrais. xvii., Paris, 1831.— Pouqueville, Voyage de 
la Grece , vol. 5, p. 458.) On comparing the language 
of Herodotus with that of Pausanias in another pas- 
sage (8, 18, 2), it would appear that the historian 
merely speaks of the Styx after it has descended from 
the mountain-height. The modern name of the Styx 
is Mavronero, or “ Black Water,” an appellation de¬ 
rived from the dark colour of the rocks over which it 
flows. {Von Slackelberg, l. c. — Pouqueville, l. c .) 
Various etymologies are assigned for the ancient name. 
Servius derives it from the hateful and gloomy nature 
of the stream {and too orvyepov. — Serv. ad Virg., 
JEn., 6, 133). According to another account, when 
Ceres, in the course of her wandering to recover her 
lost daughter, was pursued by Neptune, and compelled 
to change herself into a mare, she came to this Arca¬ 
dian stream, and, having beheld her altered form in it, 
was so disgusted at the sight that she regarded its wa¬ 
ters with hatred, and made them black of hue (eorv- 
yyae re uai to v<5up pe?Mv errolyae. — Ptol, Hephcest., 
ap. Phot., cod., 190 ; vol. 1, p. 148, ed. Bekk .).—III. 
A fabulous river of the lower world* the idea of which 
was in all probability borrowed from the Styx of Arca¬ 
dia. It was said to encompass the lower region nine 
times in its winding course (Virg., Georg., 4, 480), 
and is described by the poets as a broad, dull, and slug¬ 
gish stream of but little depth, whence the expression 
“Stygian lake” (JEn., 6, 134), “ Stygian fen” ( JEn., 
6, 323), and the like, so frequently applied to it. Ac¬ 
cording to the popular belief, the gods regarded this 
stream with so much reverence that they w r ere accus¬ 
tomed to swear by it, and deemed such an oath the 
most binding in its nature. ( JEn ., 6, 324.) If, how¬ 
ever, any deity ever violated an oath thus taken, the 
punishment was believed to be deprivation of nectar 
and ambrosia, and the loss of all heavenly privileges 
for the space of ten whole years. Hesiod, in a curious 
passage of the Theogony, gives the particulars of this 
punishment very minutely, but makes it apply to the 
case of celestial perjury in general, not merely to the 
violation of an oath taken in the name of the infernal 
river. According to the poet, when any one of the 
gods is guilty of perjury, Iris is sent down to Hades, 
and brings up thence, in a golden vase, some of the 
chilling water of this celebrated stream. The offend¬ 
ing deity is compelled to swallow the noxious draught, 
and thereupon he lies outstretched for one whole year, 
without sense or motion, nor partakes of the nectar 
and ambrosia. At the end of this year other troubles 
are in store for him. For nine whole years is he now 
separated from the society of the gods, neither attend¬ 
ing at the council of Jove nor partaking of the banquet. 
In the tenth year his punishment ends, and he is re¬ 
stored to his former privileges. ( Hes ., Theog., 783, 
uqq. —Compare Horn., II. , 14, 272.— Heyne, adloc .) 

Suada, the goddess of Persuasion, called Pitho 


(n££#w) by the Greeks. Hermesianax made her une 
of the Graces. (Hermes., ap. Pausan., 9, 35.) 

Suastus, a river of India, falling into the Indus 
near the modern city of Attock. D'Anville makes the 
modern name of the Suastus to be the Suvat. Man- 
nert supposes this to be the same river with that called 
Choaspes by Strabo and Curtius, and the name Suas¬ 
tus, which is used by Ptolemy in speaking of this 
stream, to be an error. ( Mannert, Geogr., vol. 5, pt. 
1, p. 30.) 

Sub licius Pons, the most ancient, and also the 
first in order, if we ascend the river, of all the bridges 
thrown over the Tiber at Rome. It was called Sub- 
licius because constructed of wood, and resting on 
piles or stakes ( sublicce. — Fesl., s. v. Sublicius). 
This bridge was built by Ancus Marcius ( Liv ., 1, 33), 
but was rendered more celebrated for the gallant man¬ 
ner in which it was defended by Horatius Codes 
against the forces of Porsenna. For some centuries 
after, this bridge was, through motives of religious feel¬ 
ing, kept constantly in repair with the same materials 
of which it had been originally framed, without the ad¬ 
dition of a single nail for the purpose. This contin¬ 
ued, as we learn from Dio Cassius (50, 9), till towards 
the end of the republic, when it was rebuilt of stone 
by the censor Paulus JEmilius Lepidus. ( Plut., Vit. 
Num.) Julius Capitolinus states (c. 8) that it was 
repaired by Antoninus Pius in marble. (Cramer's 
Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 467.) 

Suburra, one of the most populous and busy parts 
of ancient Rome. If, however, the Suburra was one 
of the most frequented parts of Rome, it was also the 
most profligate. ( Propert., 4, 7, 15, seq. — Horat., 
Epod., 5, 57.— Martial, 6, 66.) The term Suburra 
is sometimes used synonymously with that of Rome, 
especially by Juvenal. (Sat, 3, 5.— lb., 10, 155.) 
Julius Csesar is said to have first lived in this part of 
Rome, and in rather an humble dwelling. ( Sueton ., 
Vit. Jul., 46.) Varro gives various etymologies for 
the name ( L. L-, 4, 8), but they all appear unsatisfac¬ 
tory. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 369.) 

Sucro, I. now Xucar, a river of Hispania Tarra- 
conensis, in the territory of the Contestani. It rises in 
Mount Idubeda, and falls into the Mediterranean. 
(Mela, 2, 6.— Plin., 3, 3.)—II. A city of Hispania 
Tarraconensis, in the territory of the Edetani, and at 
the mouth of the river Sucro. It lay between Carthago 
Nova and the river Iberus. It was in ruins as early as 
the days’of Pliny. The modern Cvllera marks its 
site. (Plin., 3, 3.— Liv., 28, 26.— Id., 29, 19.) 

Suessa, I. Pometia, an ancient Volscian city, the 
site of which must ever remain a matter of mere con¬ 
jecture. It appears to have been in the neighbourhood 
of the Pomptina3 Paludes, to which it gave name. 
This town was taken and sacked by Tarquinius Su¬ 
perbus, and the booty is said to have furnished him 
with the means for laying the foundation of the Capi¬ 
tol. (Liv., 1, 53.) It was again, at a later period, 
taken and sacked by the consul Servilius, and from 
that period we lose all traces of it in history. Suessa 
Pometia was a colony of Alba, according to Dionysius 
(1,4) and Virgil (JEn., 6, 773.— Cramer's Anc. Italy 
vol. 2, p. 95, seq.). —II. Aurunca, the capital of the 
Aurunci. (Vid. Aurunci.) 

Suessiones, a people of Gallia Belgica, between 
the Remi, Veromandui, Vadocasses, Meldi, ar.d Cata- 
launi. Their capital, Augusta, afterward Suessiones, 
now Soissons, stands on Oxona, now the Aisne. 
They were subdued by Cassar. ( Cces., B. G., 8, 6-r 
Liv., Epit., 104— Plin., 4, 17.) 

Suetonius, I. C. Paulinus, a Roman commander, 
who, in the reign of Claudius, made war upon the 
Mauri, and was the first Roman general that crossed 
Mount Atlas with an army. He commanded subse¬ 
quently in Britain, and there crushed a dangerous re¬ 
bellion. He wrote an account of his campaign in Af- 

1269 




SUE 


SUL 


jlca.—JJ, Tranquillus, a Roman historian, born about 
the beginning of the reign of Vespasian. His father, 
Suetonius Lenis, was tribune of the thirteenth legion 
in the war of Otho. The son followed at Rome the 
profession of a grammarian and rhetorician. He be¬ 
came intimately acquainted with the younger Pliny, 
who recommended him to Trajan, and procured for him 
the office of tribune, and the Jus trium liberorum, 
though he had, in fact, no issue. Under the Emperor 
Hadrian he was appointed private secretary ( Magister 
Epistolarum ), but was degraded from this post for 
having been wanting in respect to the Empress Sabi¬ 
na. The year of his death is not known.—The prin¬ 
cipal work that remains to us of Suetonius is his Bi¬ 
ography of the first twelve Caesars. In some manu¬ 
scripts these lives are,divided into eight books, an ar- 
sangement most probably made by the copyists. 1 he 
object of Suetonius was not so much to give a history 
of the political and military events that occurred during 
the reign of each of these princes, as to delineate their 
private characters, their virtues and vices, in a word, 
the whole of their private life. His narratives do not 
follow a chronological order: the division is rather one 
resulting directly from the subject matter ; as, for ex¬ 
ample, The birth of each emperor, his manner of life, 
occupations, amusements, &c. Suetonius traces his 
characters with remarkable fidelity, and, according to 
St. Jerome, with the same freedom with which they 
lived; “ pari liberlate ac ipsi vixerunt .” Like Plu¬ 
tarch, he seems to have collected his materials from 
several very different authorities ; but he had one 
great advantage over the Greek biographer in the su¬ 
perior knowledge which he naturally possessed of the 
laws and usages of the Romans ; so that on those sub¬ 
jects his testimony is much more trustworthy. We 
do not pee any grounds for the charge of malignity 
which has been sometimes brought against him ; on 
the contrary, he appears to have recorded the virtues 
and vices of the Caesars with great impartiality ; and 
certainly it is not the fault of Suetonius if their vices 
seem to preponderate. He merely gives a plain and 
candid account of facts, many of them otherwise un¬ 
known, but of the greatest importance for history. 
His style is simple, concise, and correct, without either 
ornament or affectation.—Besides these biographies, 
we have from the pen of Suetonius an account of dis¬ 
tinguished grammarians, and a fragment of a similar 
work on celebrated rhetoricians. To him also are as¬ 
cribed lives of Terence, Horace, Lucan, Pliny the 
elder, Juvenal, and Persius. These are probably sup¬ 
posititious. Suetonius wrote also other works, on the 
Schools of the Greeks, on Rome and its institutions, 
a genealogy of Roman families, &c., but these are all 
lost.—The best editions of Suetonius are, that'of Pi- 
.iscus, Leovard., 1714, 2 vols. 8vo ; that of Oudendorp, 
L. Bat., 1751, 2 vols. 8vo ; that of Ernesti, Lips., 
1775, 2 vols. 8vo ; but particularly that of Crusius, 
Lips., 1816-18, 3 vols. 8vo. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. 
Rom., vol. 2, p. 387.) 

Suevi, a powerful people of Germany, consisting 
of many tribes, and inhabiting the eastern section of 
the country, from the Danube to the Sinus Codanus. 
Among the separate tribes composing this nation, 
Ptolemy enumerates the Langobardi, Semnones, and 
Angli. The Catti, Marcomanni, Ubii, Sygambri, &c., 
were often included under the same general appella¬ 
tion. In process of time, the names of the several 
tribes became gradually more prevalent, that of Suevi 
less and less frequent, until the term became fixed as 
a designation of those that had settled in what, at the 
present day, is denominated Suabia. ( Cess., B. G., 
4, 1, seqq. — Tac., Germ., 38, 45. — Pliny , 4, 14.— 
Pertz., Mon. Germ. Hist., 1, 100, 283, 519.) Lu¬ 
can calls them ‘ Flavi, from their having, in general, 
reddish hair, which their name is likewise said to sig¬ 
nify. (Lucan, 2, 51.) 

1270 


Suidas, a Greek lexicographer, of whom so little 
is known that some have doubted whether a peison of 
this name ever existed. His name, however, is found 
in all the MSS. of his Lexicon, and is often mentioned 
by Eustathius in his commentary on Homer. He 
seems to have flourished between 900 and 1025 A.D. 
He is the author of a Lexicon compiled from various 
authors. It differs essentially from other works of 
this kind, in giving not only the explanation of words, 
but, at the same time, an historical notice of the most 
celebrated authors, and extracts from their works. 
On account of the peculiar uniformity of style which 
prevails in the biographical notices, it has been con¬ 
jectured that Suidas borrowed them all from some 
Onomasticon; and, from an expression which he him¬ 
self uses in the article Hesychius, some have been led 
to believe that a work of the latter furnished him with 
his chief materials. In making his compilation, how¬ 
ever, Suidas has shown great negligence, and a total 
want of judgment and critical talent. He cites from 
vitiated and corrupt readings; he confounds individ¬ 
uals and authors ; and oftentimes his citations do not 
prove what he intends. It is uncertain whether the 
carelessness of copyists may not have been the cause 
of many of these errors. Notwithstanding its errors 
and imperfections, it is a very useful book, and a store¬ 
house of all sorts of erudition. It furnishes an ac¬ 
count of poets, orators, historians, &c., with many 
passages from ancient authors whose works are lost. 
The best edition, until of late, used to be that of Kus- 
ter, Cantab., 1705, 3 vols. fol. In 1834, however, 
a new edition of Kuster’s work appeared from the 
Clarendon press, Oxford, in 2 vols. fol., by Gaisford, 
which is in every respect far superior to the former. 
In the same year, Bernhardy, a German scholar, com¬ 
menced re-editing Gaisford’s labours, in the 4to form, 
at the Halle press. This latter work is still in a course 
of publication. (Hoffmann, Lex. Bibliograph., vol. 3, 
p. 650.— Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 6, p. 289.) 

Suiones, a people of Scandinavia, famed for their 
skill in navigation as early as the days of Tacitus 
(Germ., 44). They were the earliest inhabitants of 
what is now called Sweden, which country in early 
times was called Sviar. From them Sweden, in the 
middle ages, received the appellation of Sveonland and 
Sueonia. (Bischoff und Mailer, Worterb. der Geogr., 
p. 935.) 

Sulla. Vid. Sylla. 

Sulmo, I. a city of Latium, which stood on the 
site of the modern Sermonetta Vecchia. It must not 
be confounded with the place of the same name situ 
ated among the Peligni. Virgil probably alludes to it 
when he gives the name of Sulmo to a Latin warrior. 
(JEn., 10, 517.) In Pliny’s time no vestige of it re¬ 
mained.—II. A city of the Peligni, about seven miles 
southeast of Corfinium, now Sulmone. It was the 
birthplace of Ovid, who has made us acquainted with 
that fact in more than one passage. The improbable 
story of its having been founded by Solymus, a 
Phrygian, one of the companions of HJneas, which 
we find in the same poet (Fast., 4, 79), is re-echoed 
by Silius Italicus (9, 76). We learn from Florus (3, 
21) that this city was exposed to all the vengeance of 
Sylla for having been attached to the cause of Mari¬ 
us. It was not, however, destroyed by that general, 
since we soon after hear of its having fallen into the 
hands of Csesar, together with Corfinium. (Bell. 
Civ., 1, 16.) Frontinus states that it was a Roman 
colony. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 334.) 

Sulpitia, a poetess in the time of Domitian, who 
wrote a poem on the banishment of the philosophers 
by that emperor. We have remaining a Satire in 
seventy verses, entitled “ De cdicto Domitiani, quo 
Philosophos urbe ejecerit." It is found in many edi 
tions of Persius and Juvenal, and even of Ausomus 
This is supposed to be. in fact, the production of Sul- 







SUL 


SUN 


( Bahr , Gesch. Rom. Lit., p. 181.) The Sul- 
pitia here alluded to must not be confounded with 
another in the time of Tibullus. To the latter are as¬ 
cribed by some critics a portion of the elegies in the 
fourth book of Tibullus, namely, from the 2d to the 
12th inclusive. ( Barthe , Advers., 59, 16.— Brouck- 
hus, ad Tibull., p. 384.) 

Sulpitia Lex, I. Militaris, by P. Sulpitius, the trib¬ 
une, A.U.C. 665. It ordained that the prosecution 
of the Mithradatic war should be taken from Sylla and 
vested in Marius.—II. Another, de Senatu, by Servius 
Sulpitius, the tribune, A.U.C. 665. It required that 
no senator should contract a debt over 2000 denarii 
($300).—III. Another, de Givitate, by P. Sulpitius, 
the tribune, A.U.C. 665. That the Italian allies, 
who had obtained the rights of citizenship, and had 
been formed into eight new'tribes, should be distribu¬ 
ted throughout the thirty-five old tribes ; and also that 
the manumitted slaves, who used formerly to vote only 
in the four city tribes, might vote in all the tribes. 

Sulpitia Gens, a distinguished patrician family at 
Rome, the two principal branches of which were the 
Camerini and Galbae. 

Sulpitius, I. Servius Sulpitius Rufus, a distin¬ 
guished patrician, brother-in-law of C. Licinius Stolo. 
He was highly esteemed for his talents and virtues, 
and filled many important offices in the state. Sul¬ 
pitius was four times military tribune with consular 
power; the last of these times in 400 B.C.—II. Ser¬ 
vius Sulpitius Paeticus, was consul B.C. 362, with Li¬ 
cinius Stolo. Scenic exhibitions are said to have 
been first given during this year, and it was during 
this same year that Sulpitius drove a nail into the 
side of the temple of Jupiter on account of the ceas¬ 
ing of a pestilence.—-III. Publius Sulpitius Saverio, 
was consul B.C. 279, with P. Decius Mus, and de¬ 
feated Pyrrhus at Asculum.—IV. Servius Sulpitius 
Galba. ( Vid . Galba II. and III.)—V. Caius Sulpitius 
Gallus. ( Vid. Gallus I.)—VI. Publius Sulpitius, a trib¬ 
une of the commons in 122 B.C., and a person of 
most turbulent character. As a partisan of Marius, 
he brought forward a law to deprive Sylla of the 
charge of the war against Mithradates, and to vest it in 
Marius. He also proposed another law respecting the 
Italian allies. ( Vid. Sulpitia Lex III.) While these 
matters were pending, he paraded the streets, sur¬ 
rounded by armed bands, and a set of ruffians whom 
he called his anti-senate : the Italians also streamed 
in extraordinary numbers to the city, to await the pas¬ 
sage of the law in which they were interested. On 
their first insertion into the register of citizens, eight 
aew tribes had been created for them, whose suffrages 
were only then demanded when the old five-and-thirty 
gave no decision. Sulpitius now proposed by his law 
to distribute them throughout all the tribes. Rome 
became thereupon a scene of confusion and riot; 
both parties, the old citizens and the Italians, fought 
with sticks and clubs in the streets and forum ; and 
the law was near being passed by force, when Sylla, 
who remained at Rome, came to the aid of the 
senatorial party. The senate was assembled in the 
temple of Castor, and regularly besieged by the peo¬ 
ple because it had caused to be announced the meas¬ 
ure usual in extreme confusion of an interruption of 
all public business. In the tumult that arose, (jSylla’s 
sm-in-law was slain ; his colleague escaped the 
hands of the mob with difficulty ; and Sylla himself, 
to save his life, was compelled to take off the restric¬ 
tion upon public business merely to be let out of the 
city. He betook himself to his army, while Sulpitius 
carried his law, and the appointment also of Marius in 
Sylla’s stead, as commander-in-chief against Mithra¬ 
dates. Sylla now marched upon Rome, and the city 
was stormed like a hostile town. Sulpitius the trib¬ 
une perished, a price having been set upon his head, 
aral Marius himself narrowly escaped being taken.— 


VII. Servius Sulpitius Rufus, a contemporary and 
friend of Cicero’s, and one of the most eminent law¬ 
yers of his time. He had been a pupil, in judicial 
studies, of F. Balbus and C. Aquilius Gallus. Ac¬ 
cording to the testimony of Cicero, Sulpitius was the 
first that gave a scientific form to Roman jurispru¬ 
dence ; in other words, he carried it back to first 
principles. He was consul 50 B.C., with M. Mar- 
cellus. Of his legal writings ( Reprehensa M. Sea- 
voice capita ; De testandis sacris; De dote, &c.) f 
and also of his speeches, nothing remains. (Consult 
Otto, u de Vita, studiis, scriptis, et honoribus Serv. S. 
Rufi," Traj. ad Rhen., 1737.)—VIII. C. Sulpitius 
Apollinaris, a native of Carthage, and grammarian, 
flourished in the time of the Antonines. We have 
nothing from him relative to the branch of knowledge 
which he professed to teach. The verses, however, 
that are found at the commencement of Terence’s 
plays, as arguments to the respective pieces, are sup¬ 
posed to be his. We have also an epigram of his on 
the order which Virgil gave to burn the uUneid. 
(Burmann, Anthol. Lat., vol. 1, p. 352. — Scholl , 
Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 3, p. 308.)—IX. Sulpitius Se- 
verus, an ecclesiastical historian, born about 363 A.D., 
in Aquitania. We have from him a sacred history 
{Historia Sacra), from the creation of the world to 
A.D. 410 ; a Life of St. Martin of Tours, and some 
dialogues and letters. The latest edition of his united 
works is that of Prato, Veronce, 1741-5, 2 vols. 4to. 

Summanus, an Etrurian deity, whose worship was 
adopted, probably very early, at Rome. A temple 
was erected to him at the Circus Maximus in the time 
of the war with Pyrrhus {Ovid, Fast., 6, 731), and his 
earthen statue stood on the top of the temple of Jupi¬ 
ter on the Capitol. {Cic., Div., 1, 10.) Nocturnal 
lightnings were ascribed to Summanus, as diurnal ones 
were to Jupiter {Plin., 2, 53.— August., Civ. D., 4, 
23); and when trees had been struck with lightning, 
the Fratres Arvalcs sacrificed to him black wethers. 

( Gruler, Inscrip., p. 121.) He may, therefore, have 
been only a god of the night ; but we are assured that 
he was Pluto and Dispiter. {Mart., Capell., 2, 40.— 
Arnob., adv. Gent., 37.) Varro joins him with Vul- 
canus, as one of the gods worshipped by the Sabine 
Tatius. {L. L., 4, p. 22.) As his Roman name 
was probably a translation, the usual derivation of it, 
Summus Manium, is perhaps founded on truth. His 
festival, the Summanalia, was on the 20th of June, 
when cakes shaped like a wheel were offered to him. 
{Keightley's Mythology, p. 530, seg.) 

Sunium, a celebrated promontory of Attica, forming 
the extreme point of that province towards the south. 
Near the promontory stood the town of the same name, 
with a harbour. {Pausan., 1, 1.) Sunium was held 
especially sacred to Minerva as early as the time of 
Homer {Od., 3, 278), and here the goddess had a 
beautiful temple, whence her appellation of Sumas. 
The promontory of Sunium is frequently mentioned in 
Grecian history. Herodotus, in one place (4, 99), 
calls it the Suniac angle {tov yovvov tov howia/cov), 
Thucydides reports that it was fortified by the Athe¬ 
nians after the Sicilian expedition, to protect their 
vessels which conveyed corn from Euboea, and were, 
consequently, obliged to double the promontory (8,4). 
—Travellers who have visited Sunium inform us that 
this edifice was originally decorated with six columns 
in front, and probably thirteen on each side. Spohn re¬ 
ports, that in his time nineteen columns were still 
standing. The whole edifice was of white marble, 
and of the most perfect architecture.—According to 
Hobhouse (v >1. 1, p. 342, Am. ed.), nine columns, 
without their entablatures, front the sea, in a line from 
west-northwest to east-southeast; three are stand¬ 
ing on the side towards the land, on the north ; and 
two, with a pilaster, next to the corner one of the 
northern columns, towards the sea on the east; and 

127 ? 





v 


sus 

tuere is a solitary on i on the southeastern side. This 
last has obtained for the promontory the name of Cape 
Colonni , or the Cape of the Column. The whiteness 
of the marble has been preserved probably by the sea- 
vapour, in the same manner as Trajan’s triumphal 
arch at Ancona. The rock on which the columns 
stand is precipitous, but not inaccessible, nor very 
high. It bears, according to Hobhouse, a strong re¬ 
semblance to the picture in Falconer’s “ Shipwreck 
but the view given in Anacharsis places the temple 
just in the wrong position. Sunium was considered 
by the Athenians an important post, and as much a 
town as the Piraeus, but could not have been very 
large, according to Hobhouse, who is of opinion that, 
when Euripides styles it the rich rock of Sunium in 
his Cyclops, he alludes to the wealth of the temple, 
not the fertility of the soil. The same writer justly 
considers the assertion of Pausanias to be unworthy 
of belief, when he states that the spear and the crest 
of the statue of Minerva in the Acropolis might be 
seen from Sunium, a straight line of nearly 30 miles. 
—Sir W. Gell observes that “ nothing can exceed 
the beauty of this spot, commanding from a portico of 
white marble, erected in the happiest period of Gre¬ 
cian art, and elevated 300 feet above the sea, a pros¬ 
pect of the Gulf of ^Plgina on one side, and the ACge- 
an on the other.” ( Itin ., p. 82.) Dodwell states that 
“ the temple is supported on its northern side by a 
regularly constructed terrace wall, of which seventeen 
layers of stone still remain. The fallen columns are 
scattered about below the temple, to which they form 
the richest foreground. The walls of the tower, of 
which there are a few remains, may be traced nearly 
down to the port on the southern side ; the greater 
part of the opposite side, upon the edge of the preci¬ 
pice, was undefended, except by the natural strength 
of the place and the steepness of the rock ; the walls 
were fortified with square towers.” {Tour, vol. 1, p. 
540.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 377.) 

Superum Mare, a name of the Adriatic Sea, as sit¬ 
uate above Italy. The name of Mare Inferum was 
applied for the opposite reason to the sea below Italy. 

Surena, a powerful officer under Orodes, king of 
Parthia, and who had aided in raising that monarch to 
the throne. He distinguished himself at the storming 
of Seleucia, and was afterward appointed commander 
of the Parthian forces against Crassus, whom he over¬ 
threw in the memorable victory at Charrse, and after¬ 
ward entrapped and put to death. Surena himself 
was not long after put to death by Orodes. {Plut., 
Vit. Crass.) 

Surrentum, a city of Campania, on the lower shore 
of the Sinus Crater, and near the Promontorium Mi- 
nervse. The place is reported to have been of very 
ancient date, and was said to have derived its name 
from the Sirens, who, as poets sung, in days of yore 
made this coast their favourite haunt, and had a tem¬ 
ple consecrated to them here. (Strab., 247.) Sur¬ 
rentum appears to have become a Roman colony in 
the reign of Augustus. The wine of the Surrentine 
hills was held in great estimation by the ancients. 
(Ovid, Met., 15, 709. — Martial, 13, 110. — Stat., 
Sylv., 3, 5.) Pliny, however, relates that Tiberius 
used to say of this wine, that physicians had agreed 
to give it a name, but that, in reality, it was only a bet¬ 
ter sor. of vinegar. ( Plin., 14, 16.) The modern 
name t.f Surrentum is Sorrento, and it is celebra¬ 
ted as the birthplace of Tasso, and admired for the 
exquisite beauty of its scenery and the salubrity of 
its climate. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 183.) 

Susa (- orum ), a celebrated city of Susiana in Per- 
eis, on the east side of the Eulasus or Choaspes. 
(Herod., 5, 52.) The founder, according to Herodo¬ 
tus, was Darius; whereas Strabo gives, from Grecian 
traditions, the name of Tithonus, the father of Mem- 
non; and Memnon himself is said to have built the 
1272 


S Y A 

palace at Susa, afterward called Memnonium or Mem- 
nonia. Susa itself is sometimes called Memnonia, 
(Vid. Memnon I.) Susa was 120 stadia in circumfer¬ 
ence ; according to Polyclitus 200 stadia ; and the ac¬ 
count of the last-men honed writer, which Strabo quotes, 
that the city had nc walls, deserves full credit, since, 
in all the movements of Alexander and his successors 
in this quarter, it is constantly represented as an unfor¬ 
tified city. ( Stiabo, 727.) When, therefore, men¬ 
tion is made in other writers of walls, we must refer 
what is said to the citadel merely. This citadel was 
termed Memnonium, and is represented as a place of 
great strength. Alexander found great treasures here. 

( Strabo , 731.) We are informed by Strabo that Susa 
or Susan meant in Persian “a lily,” and that the city 
was so called from the abundance of these flowers that 
grew in the vicinity. Perhaps the appellation may 
have had somewhat more of an Oriental meaning, and 
have denoted the lily (i. e., the fairest) among cities. 
—Great difficulty exists in relation to the site of this 
ancient place. Mannert declares for Toster or Schosek- 
ter, and not for the more northwestern Sus; but 
consult the remarks of Williams ( Geography of An¬ 
cient Asia, p. 12, seqq.). It was customary with the 
kings of Persia to spend the summer in the cool, 
mountainous country of Ecbatana, and the winter a! 
Susa, the climate being warmer there than elsewhere. 

Susarion, a Greek poet of Megara, who is supposed 
by some to have been the inventor of comedy, on the 
authority of the Arundel marble. If the marble, how¬ 
ever, be correct, by the term noquydia, as applied to 
him, we can understand nothing beyond a kind of 
rough, extemporal farce, performed by the chorus, into 
which Susarion might have improved the Phallic song. 
His date may be inferred to be about 562 B.C. ( The¬ 
atre of the Greeks, 3 d ed., p. 70, in notis. —Compare 
the remarks of Bentley , Dissertation on Phalaris, vol. 
1, p. 249, seqq., ed. Dyce.) 

Susiana or Susis, a province of Persia, to the east 
of Babylonia proper. It was a large level tract, shut 
in by loftv mountains on all sides but the south, and 
was hence exposed to the hot winds from this quarter, 
while the cool winds from the north were kept off by 
the mountains. Hence Susiana was selected as the 
winter residence of the Persian king, but suffered 
much from heat m summer. The chief rivers were 
the Ulseus and Tigris, and, on the confines of Persis, 
the Oroatis. The modern name of Susiana is Chu- 
sistan. The ancient capital was Susa, whence the 
appellation of Susiana was derived. (Vid. Susa.) 

Susidje Pyl^e, narrow passes over mountains from 
Susiana into Persia. (Curt., 5, 3, 17.— Consult 
Schmieder, ad loc., and Diod. Sic., 17, 68.) 

Suthul, a town of Numidia, of which mention is 
made only in Sallust (Bell. Jug., 37) and Priscian 
(5, 2 ; vol. 1, p. 173, ed. Krehl). Barbie du Bocage 
suspects that this town is the same with that called 
Sufetala (now Sbaitla ) in the Itin. Ant. The name 
Suthul is said by some to signify “ the town of eagles,” 
but with what authority it is hard to say. Gesenius 
more correctly deduces its meaning from the Hebrew, 
and makes it equivalent to “ plantatio," i. e., settle¬ 
ment or colony. (Gesen., Phcen. Mon., p. 427.) 

Sutrium, a city of Etruria, about eight miles to the 
west fef Nepete, and in a northeastern direction from 
Csere. It was a city of some note, and was consid¬ 
ered by the Romans as an important acquisition in 
furtherance of their designs against Etruria. Having 
been surprised by the latter power, it fell into their 
hands, but was almost immediately recovered by Ca- 
millus. ( Liv., 6, 3.) Sutrium was colonized by the 
Romans, as Velleius Paterculus reports, seven years 
after Rome had been taken by the Gauls (1, 14). It 
is now Sutri. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 234.) 

Svagrus, an early Greek poet, who, according to 
AClian (V. H., 14, 21), lived after Orpheus and Mu 




S Y B 


S YE 


sjbus, and was the first that sang of the Trojan war. 
Diogenes Laertius writes the name Sagaris, and makes 
him to have been the contemporary and rival of Ho¬ 
mer. ( Diog. Laert., 2, 46.) 

Sybaris, I. a river of Lucania, running by the city 
of the same name, and falling into the Sinus Tarenti- 
nus. It is now the Cochile. Its waters were said to 
render horses shy. ( Strab ., 263. — JElian , H. N., 2, 
36.)—II. A celebrated city of Lucania, on the Sinus 
Tarentinus, and near the confines of Bruttium. It 
was situate between the rivers Sybaris and Crathis, 
and is said to have been founded by the people of 
Trcczene, not long after the siege of Troy. (Aristot., 
Poht., 5, 3.— Solin., 8.) But these were subsequently 
joined by a more numerous colony of Achseans, under 
the conduct of Iseliceus (Strab., 263), about 720 B.C. 
(Euseb., Chron., 2 ) The rise and progress of this 
celebrated republic must have been wonderfully rapid. 
We are told that it held dominion over four different 
people and twenty-five towns ; and that the city extend-' 
ed fifty stadia, or upward of six miles, along the Cra¬ 
this. But the number of its inhabitants capable of bear¬ 
ing arms, which are computed at 300,000 by several 
ancient writers, and which are said to have been actu¬ 
ally brought into the field, is so prodigious as to raise 
considerable doubts as to the accuracy of these state¬ 
ments. The accounts which we have of their luxury 
and opulence are not less extraordinary : to such a 
degree, indeed, did they indulge their taste for pleas¬ 
ure, that a Sybarite and a voluptuary became synony¬ 
mous terms. Athenaaus, in particular, dwells on their 
inordinate sensuality and excessive refinement. His 
details are chiefly drawn from Timaaus, Phylarchus, 
and Aristotle. Among other particulars which he 
gives, upon the authority of these Greek writers, are 
the following. It was forbidden by law to exercise in 
the city any trade or craft, the practice of which was 
attended with noise, lest the sleep of its inhabitants 
might be disturbed ; and, for the same reason, an edict 
was enforced against the breeding of cocks. On the 
other hand, great encouragement was held out to all 
who should discover any new refinement in luxury, 
the profits arising from which were secured to the in¬ 
ventor by patent for the space of a year. Fishermen 
and dyers of purple were specially exempted from the 
payment of taxes and duties. A crown of gold was 
awarded to those who distinguished themselves by 
the sumptuousness of their entertainments, and their 
names were proclaimed by heralds, at the solemn festi¬ 
vals, as public benefactors. To these banquets their 
women were also invited, and invitations were sent 
them a year in advance, that they might have suf- 
icient time to provide themselves with dresses suita¬ 
ble to the occasion. These were of the most costly 
description, generally purple or saffron-coloured, and 
sf the finest Milesian wool. Dionysius of Syracuse, 
having become possessed of one of these robes, which 
was esteemed a singular rarity from its peculiar mag¬ 
nificence, sold it to the Carthaginians for 120 talents, 
upward of 20,000/. When they retired to their vil¬ 
las, the roads were covered with an awning, and the 
journey, which might easily have been accomplished 
in one day, was the work of three. Their cellars were 
generally constructed near the seaside, whither the 
wine was conveyed from the country by means of 
pipes. The Sybarites were also said to have invent¬ 
ed vapour baths.—History has recorded the name of 
one individual, famed beyond all his countrymen for 
his effeminacy and sensuality. Smindrydes, the son 
of Hippocrates, is stated by Herodotus to have been 
by far the most luxurious man that ever lived (6, 127). 
It is reported, that when he went to Sicyon as suiter 
to the daughter of Clisthenes, tyrant of that city, he 
was accompanied by a train of a thousand cooks and 
f owlers, and that he far surpassed that prince and all 
fiis court in magnificence and splendour. ( Athen., 12, 
7 Y 


3.) But this prosperity and excess of luxury were 
not of long duration ; and the fall of Sybaris was hast¬ 
ened with a rapidity only equalled by that of its sud 
den elevation* The events which led to this catas¬ 
trophe are thus related by Diodorus Siculus. A dem- 
ocratical party, at the head of which was Telys. hav¬ 
ing gained the ascendancy, expelled five hundred of 
the principal citizens, who sought refuge at Crotona. 
This city, upon receiving a summons to give up the 
fugitives or prepare for war, by the advice of Pythag¬ 
oras made choice of the latter alternative ; and the 
hostile armies met near the river Traens, in the Cro- 
toniat territory. The forces of Crotona, headed by 
the celebrated Milo, amounted to 100,000 men, while 
those of Sybaris were triple that number; the former, 
however, gained a complete victory, and but few of 
the Sybarites escaped from the sword of the enemy in 
the route which ensued. The victorious Crotoniats, 
following up their success, advanced against Sybaris, 
and, finding it in a defenceless state, totally destroyed 
the town by turning the waters of the Crathis, and 
thus overwhelming it with the inundation. This event 
is supposed to have happened nearly 510 years B.C. 

( Diod. Sic., 12, 9. — Herod., 5, 44.— Strabo, 263.) 
The greater part of the Sybarites who escaped from 
the general destruction retired to their colonies on 
the Tyrrhenian Sea; but a small remnant still ad¬ 
hered to their native soil, and endeavoured, but in 
vain, to restore their fallen city. The city of Thurii 
was afterward erected in the immediate vicinity. ( Vid. 
Thurii.) — As Sybaris was utterly destroyed, no ruins 
remain to guide us in our search of its position. 
Swinburne imagined, however, that he had discovered 
some vestiges of this city about three miles from the 
coast ( Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 354, seqq.X- 

Sybarita, an inhabitant of Sybaris. ( Vid . Syba¬ 
ris.) 

Syene, now Assuan, a town of Thebais, on the ex¬ 
tremities of Egypt. Juvenal, the poet, was banished 
there on pretence of commanding a legion stationed in 
the neighbourhood.—It is famous for being the place 
where the first attempt was made to ascertain the meas¬ 
ure of the circumference of the earth by Eratosthenes. 
In this town, according to Strabo, a well was sunk, 
which marked the summer solstice, and the day was 
known when the style of the sundial cast no shade at 
noon ; at that instant the vertical sun darted his rays 
to the bottom of the well. The observations of the 
French astronomers place Assuan in 24° h' 23" of 
north latitude. If this was formerly situated under the 
tropic, the position of the earth must be a little alter¬ 
ed, and the obliquity of the ecliptic diminished. But 
we should be aware of the vagueness of observations 
made by the ancients, which have conferred so much 
celebrity on these places. The phenomenon of the 
extinction of the shadow, whether within a deep pit or 
round a perpendicular gnomon, is not confined to one 
exact mathematical position of the sun, but is common 
to a certain extent of altitude, corresponding to the visi¬ 
ble diameter of that luminary, which is more than half 
a degree. It would be sufficient, therefore, that the 
northern margin of the sun’s disk should reach the zen¬ 
ith of Syene on the day of the summer solstice, to abol¬ 
ish all lateral shadow of a perpendicular object. Now, 
in the second century, the obliquity of the ecliptic, 
reckoned from the observations of H'pparchus, was 
23° 49' 25". If we add the spro'diameter of the sun, 
which is 15' 57", we find for the northern margin 24° 5' 
22", which is within a second of the actual latitude of 
Syene. At present, when the obliquity of the ecliptic is 
23° 28', the northern limb of the sun comes no nearei 
the latitude of Syene than 2T 3", yet the shadow is 
scarcely perceptible. We have, therefore, no imperi¬ 
ous reason for admitting a greater diminution in the 
obliquity of the ecliptic than that which is shown by 
real astronomical observation of the most authentic an^ 

1273 



S Y L 


SYLLA. 


exact land. That of the well of Syene is not among 
the number of these last, and can give us no assistance 
in ascertaining the position of the tropic thirty centu¬ 
ries ago, as some respectable men of science seem to 
have believed. — Nature presents a peculiar spectacle 
around Syene. Here are the terraces of reddish gran¬ 
ite of a particular character, hence called Syenite; a 
term applied to those rocks which differ from granite 
in containing particles of hornblende. These mighty 
terraces, shaped into peaks, cross the bed of the Nile, 
and over them the river rolls majestically its impetu¬ 
ous and foaming waves. Here are the quarries from 
which the obelisks and colossal statues of the Egyp¬ 
tian temples were dug. An obelisk, partially formed 
and still remaining attached to the native rock, bears 
testimony to the laborious and patient efforts of human 
art. ( Malte-Brun , vol. 4, p. 89, seqq., Am. ed.) 

Svennesis, a satrap, or, rather, tributary monarch 
of Cilicia, when Cyrus the Younger made war upon 
his brother Artaxerxes. The name Syennesis appears, 
in fact, to have been a common appellation for the na¬ 
tive princes of this country. (Consult B'dhr, ad He¬ 
rod., 1, 64. — Kruger, ad Xen., Anab., 1, 2, 12.— 
Stanl., ad Msch., Pers., 326.) 

Sylla, Lucius Cornelius, was born at Rome 
AU.C. 616, B.C. 138, in the consulship of M. iEmilius 
Lepidus and C. Hostilius Mancinus, four years before 
'he death of Tiberius Gracchus. Sylla was a patrician 
by birth ; his father, however, did nothing to promote 
either the honour or the wealth of his family, and his 
son was born with no very flattering prospects either 
of rank or fortune. We know not by whom his edu¬ 
cation was superintended ; but he acquired, either 
from his instructers, or by his own exertions in after 
life, an unusual portion of knowledge ; and he had the 
character of being very profoundly versed in the liter-, 
ature of both his own country and Greece. ( Sallust, 
Bell. Jug., 95.) But intellectual superiority affords 
no security for the moral principles of its possessor ; 
and Sylla, from his earliest youth, was notorious for 
gross sensuality, and for his keen enjoyment of low 
and profligate society. He is said to have merely oc¬ 
cupied lodgings at Rome, and to have lived in a way 
which seems to have been reckoned disgraceful to a 
man of patrician family, and to have incurred great in¬ 
digence. For his first advancement in life he was in¬ 
debted to the fondness of a prostitute, who had ac¬ 
quired a large sum of money, and left it all to him by 
her will; and he also inherited the property of his 
mother-in-law, who regarded him as her own son. Syl¬ 
la was chosen one of the quaestors A.U.C. 646, and 
joined the army of Marius, who was then in his first 
consulship, and carrying on the war against Jugurtha 
in Africa. Here his services were of great impor¬ 
tance, since it was to him that Jugurtha was at last sur¬ 
rendered by Bocchus, king of Mauritania. This latter 
circumstance excited, as is said, the jealousy of Ma¬ 
rius ; but Sylla nevertheless served under him as one 
of his lieutenants in the war with the Cimbri, where 
he again greatly distinguished himself. Finding, how¬ 
ever, the ill will of his general daily increasing, he left 
him, and served in the army of Lutatius Catulus, the 
colleague of Marius : and in this situation, being 
charged with the duty of supplying the soldiers with 
provisions, he performed it so well, that the army of 
Catulus was in the midst of abundance, while that of 
Marius was labouring under severe privations. This 
still farther inflamed the animosity with which Marius 
already regarded him. For some years after this pe¬ 
riod Sylla seems to have lived in the mere enjoyment 
of his favourite pleasures of intellectual and sensual 
excitement. At length, A.U.C. 657, he became a 
candidate for the office of pnetor, but without success. 
In the following year, however, he was more fortu¬ 
nate, having been elected to this same magistracy with¬ 
out the previous step of going through the office of 
1274 


sedile ; and he is said to have exhibited on the occ 
sion no fewer than a hundred lions ; the first time, it 
is said, that the male lion was ever brought forward in 
the sports of the circus. ( Plin ., 8, 16.) On the ex¬ 
piration of the prsetorship he obtained the province of 
Cilicia, and was commissioned to replace on the thron® 
Ariobarzanes, king of Cappadocia, who had been late¬ 
ly expelled by Mithradates. ( Plut ., Vit. Syll. , c. &. 
— Liv., Epit., 70.) This he easily effected; for Mith¬ 
radates was not yet prepared to encounter the power 
of Rome ; and it is farther mentioned as a memorable 
circumstance in the life of Sylla, that while he was yet 
in Cappadocia, he received the first communication 
ever made to any Roman officer by the sovereign of 
Parthia. Arsaces, king of that country, perceiving 
that the Romans extended their influence into his 
neighbourhood, sent an embassy to Sylla to solicit 
their alliance. In the interview between the Roman 
prator and the Parthian ambassador, Sylla claimed the 
precedence in rank with the usual arrogance of his 
countrymen ; and by this behaviour, in all probability, 
left no very friendly feeling in the mind of Arsaces ; 
and rather encouraged than lessened that jealousy of 
the Roman power, which the Parthians in the sequel 
were often enabled to manifest with more success than 
any other nation since the time of Hannibal. On Syl* 
la’s return to Rome, he was threatened with a prose¬ 
cution on account of corrupt proceedings in his prov¬ 
ince ; but the matter was never brought to a trial. 
Soon after this the Social War broke out, in which 
Sylla served as lieutenant under the consul Lucius Ju¬ 
lius Caesar; and during this same contest the name of 
Marius is hardly mentioned, whereas the services of 
Sylla were of the most eminent kind. Towards the 
close of this war, B. C. 88, Sylla went to Rome to 
stand candidate for the consulship ; an$ the prospect 
of his attaining to that dignity was most galling to the 
jealousy of Marius, especially as a war with Mithra¬ 
dates now appeared certain ; and, if a general of Sylla’a 
reputation filled the office of consul, his claims to the 
command of the army employed in the contest would 
prevail over all others. Sylla’s application for the con¬ 
sulship was a successful one, and Q. Pompeius was 
chosen as his colleague. Information soon after wa3 
received that Mithradates had attacked and overrun 
the Roman dominions in Asia Minor, and war was 
therefore declared against him at Rome ; whereupon 
Asia and Italy being named as the province of the con¬ 
suls, the latter fell to the lot of Q. Pompeius, and the 
former to that of Sylla. But the turbulent tribune 
Publius Sulpitius, the devoted partisan of Marius, was 
determined that this arrangement should not be carried 
into effect. The army which Sylla was to command 
was at this time employed near Nola. as that city, 
which had revolted in the Social "War, still refused to 
submit to the Romans ; but he himself remained in 
the city with his colleague, endeavouring to baffle the 
project of Sulpitius by proclaiming frequent holydays, 
and ordering, consequently, a suspension of public bu¬ 
siness. A violent tumult in consequence ensued ; 
Sylla, finding himself in the power of his enemies, was 
compelled to yield, and immediately thereafter left 
Rome for his army, and Sulpitius soon caused a law 
to be passed depriving Sylla of the command against 
Mithradates, and vesting it in Marius. Two military 
tribunes were sent to announce this change to Sylla 
The army of the latter, however, were as indignant 
as himself at this new arrangement. The two mil¬ 
itary tribunes were murdered, and the whole force, 
consisting of six legions, broke up from its quarters, 
and began to march upon Rome. The city was as¬ 
saulted and taken ; Sulpitius, being betrayed by one 
of his slaves, was put to death by Sylla’s orders, and 
his head exposed on the rostra ; while Marius, aftei 
a series of romantic adventures, escaped to Afri¬ 
ca. Sylla having thus crushed the opposite faction, 




SYLLA 


SYLLA. 


proscribed Marius, his son, and his chief adhe¬ 
rents, re-established the power of the senate, and ap¬ 
pointed his friend Octavius and his enemy Cinna to 
the consulship, set out against Mithradates. The re¬ 
lief of Greece was the first object of Sylla ; and this 
he accomplished after taking Athens by storm, and 
defeating the armies of Mithradates in two great bat¬ 
tles. Weakened and dispirited by these reverses, the 
King of Pontus readily concluded a treaty with the 
Roman general, who, on his part, was equally desi¬ 
rous of a peace, that he might return to Rome, where 
the Marian faction had regained the ascendancy. Syl¬ 
la had probably expected to produce a comparative 
equilibrium at Rome by the appointment to the con¬ 
sulship of one from each of the contending factions. 
Here, however, his policy failed, probably from being 
too refined, or from his not taking into consideration 
the new element which had been introduced by the 
admission of the Italian states to the citizenship. He 
had, in a great measure, exterminated the democratic 
party in Rome itself, and restored the power of the 
senate ; but Cinna perceived the means of raising a 
powerful body of new adherents, by proposing to 
throw open all the tribes to the Italian states, which 
would have given them a preponderance in every pop¬ 
ular assembly. This the other consul, Octavius, op¬ 
posed ; and Cinna was compelled to withdraw to the 
country, where he soon mustered a powerful army of 
the disaffected allies. Marius, who had fled to Africa, 
being informed of the turn which affairs had taken at 
Rome, conceived hopes of recovering his power, and 
immediately returned to Italy, joined Cinna, and, at 
the head of an immense horde of robbers and semi¬ 
barbarians, the very dregs of the populace of all Italy, 
who flocked to his standard from all quarters, advan¬ 
ced against the city. At his approach Rome was 
thrown into consternation ; and there not being any 
forces sufficient to oppose him, the senate offered to 
capitulate, on condition that the lives of the opposite 
party should be spared. During the progress of these 
negotiations, Marius entered the city at the head of 
his armed and barbarous adherents, secured the gates 
that none might escape, and gave the signal for 
slaughter. On rushed his barbarians like wolves, 
sparing neither age nor sex, while Marius gazed on 
the horrid scene with grim and savage delight. Du¬ 
ring five days and five nights the hideous massacre 
was continued with relentless ferocity, while the streets 
were deluged with blood, and the heads of the mur¬ 
dered victims were exhibited in the forum, or laid be¬ 
fore the monster himself for his peculiar gratification. 
At length Cinna grew sick of the protracted butchery ; 
but the barbarians of Marius could not be restrained 
till they were themselves surrounded and cut to pieces 
by Cinna’s soldiers. Having gratified his revenge by 
this bloody butchery, Marius nominated himself consul 
for the seventh time, and chose Cinna to be his col¬ 
league. This he did without the formalities of a pub¬ 
lic "assembly, as if to consummate his triumph over 
the liberties of his country, thus trampled upon by an 
act at once of violation and of insult. But a short time 
did he enjoy his triumph and revenge. In the seven¬ 
teenth dav of his seventh consulate, and in the sev¬ 
entieth year of his age, he expired, leaving behind him 
the character of having been one of the most suc¬ 
cessful crenera's and most pernicious citizens of Rome. 
Sylla, having concluded a treaty with Mithradates, re¬ 
turned at the head of his victorious army, prepared 
and determined to inflict the most signal and ample 
vengeance upon the Marian faction, whom he deemed 
equally foes to himself and to the republic. Before 
his arrival in Italy, Cinna had been killed in a mutiny 
of his own troops ; and none of the other leaders pos¬ 
sessed talent and influence enough to make head 
against him. After a short but severe struggle, Sylla 
pre railed, and immediately commenced his dreadful, 


deliberate, and systematic course of retribution. A1 
who had either taken part directly with Marius, oi 
who were suspected of attachment to the democratic 
party, were put to death without mercy, and, what 
was almost more terrible, apparently without wrath. 
Sylla even produced publicly a list of those he had 
doomed to death, and offered a reward for the heads 
of each. He thus set the example of proscription, 
which was afterward so fatally imitated in the various 
convulsions of the state. His next step was to de¬ 
populate entirely several of those Italian states which 
had joined the Marian faction, and to parcel out the 
lands among his own veteran troops, whom he thus at 
once rewarded and disbanded in the only manner like¬ 
ly to reconcile them to peaceful habits. Having thus 
satisfied his revenge, his next care was to reform and 
reconstruct the constitution and government of the 
state, shattered to pieces by long and fierce intestine 
convulsions. He caused himself to be appointed dic¬ 
tator for an unlimited time. He restrained the influ¬ 
ence of the tribunes by abolishing their legislative 
privileges, reformed and regulated the magistracy, 
limited the authority of governors of provinces, enact¬ 
ed police regulations for the maintenance of public 
tranquillity, deprived several of the Italian states of 
their right of citizenship, and, having supplied the due 
number of the senate by additions from the equestrian 
order, he restored to it the possession of the judica¬ 
tive order. Having at length completed his career as 
a political reformer, Sylla voluntarily resigned his dic¬ 
tatorship, which he had held for nearly three years, 
declared himself ready to answer any accusation that 
could be made against him during his administration, 
walked unmolested in the streets as a private person, 
and then withdrew to his villa near Cumae, where he 
amused himself with hunting and other rural recrea¬ 
tions. Whether his retirement might have remained 
long undisturbed by the relatives of his numerous vic¬ 
tims cannot be known, as he died in the year after 
his abdication of power, leaving, by his own direction, 
the following characteristic inscription to be engraved 
on his tomb: “ Here lies Sylla, who was never out¬ 
done in good offices by his friend, nor in acts of hos¬ 
tility by his enemy.” The civil wars between Marius 
and Sylla may be considered even more worthy the 
careful study of the historian than those of Caesar and 
Pompey, for a right understanding of the circumstan¬ 
ces which led to the destruction of Roman liberty, as 
the latter but concluded what the former had begun. 
Indeed, the strife between Marius and Sylla was itseli 
the natural sequel of that contest between the aristo¬ 
cratic and democratic factions, if they ought not rath¬ 
er to be termed the factions of wealth and poverty, 
which gave rise to the sedition of the Gracchi, and 
which, being conducted on both sides with no spirit 
of mutual concession, none of mutual regard for pub¬ 
lic welfare, deepened into the most bitter and rancor¬ 
ous animosity, such as could end in nothing but mu¬ 
tual destruction. Of the worst spirit of democracy, 
we see in Marius what may be called a personification ; 
fierce, turbulent, sanguinary, relentless ; brave to ex¬ 
cess, but savagely ferocious ; full of wily stratagems 
in order to gain his object, then dashing from him ev¬ 
ery hard-won advantage by his reckless brutality. On 
the other hand, the aristocratic spirit had its represent¬ 
ative in Sylla ; haughty, cautious, and determined, 
forming his schemes with deep forethought, prosecu¬ 
ting them with deliberate perseverance, and abandon¬ 
ing them with cold contempt when his object was ac¬ 
complished. He held his dictatorial sway till he had 
satiated his revenge, and re-established, as he thought, 
the government on an aristocratical basis ; then scorn¬ 
fully laid aside his power, and yielded himself up to 
voluptuous indulgence. By these means it was made 
clearly evident that Rome no longer possessed sufti- 
cient public or private virtue to maintain her republican 

1275 



S Y N 


S Y P 


institutions ; that she was tottering on the very brink 
of a complete and final revolution, leading with fatal 
certainty to a military despotism ; and the only ques¬ 
tion was, whether her despotic ruler should be a 
Marius or a Sy 11a ; whether he should spring from 
among the democratic populace or the aristocratic no¬ 
bility : a question not long to be left in doubt. Many 
of the laws enacted by Sy 11a were of a wise and bene¬ 
ficial character, though their general aim was too man¬ 
ifestly the restoration of aristocratic power to the 
senate. What effect his personal influence, had his 
life been prolonged, might have had in consolidating 
his political reforms, cannot certainly be known, though 
it may very safely be conjectured that not even his 
power could long have prevented new convulsions. 
The malady lay too deep to be reached by any merely 
oolitical measures of a remedial nature. It had its 
essence in the degeneracy and moral turpitude of the 
entire body of the republic, both nobles and people, 
which there was nothing in their external circumstan¬ 
ces to prevent, or in their national religion to heal. 
Besides, as, in the recent wars and revolutions, almost 
all property had experienced a change of possessors, 
there were vast numbers throughout all Italy eager for 
a counter revolution. Several young men also of abil¬ 
ities and ambition were prepared to emulate the career 
of Marius or of Sylla, which could not be done without 
a renewal of that contest, the heavings of which had 
not yet wholly subsided. Of these, the chief were 
Lepidus, Crassus, Pompey, and Sertorius, and perhaps 
Lucullus. (Hetherington's Hist. Rome , p. 141, seqq. 
Encyclop. Metropol., div. 3, vol. 2, p. 113.) 

Symmachus, a Roman senator of the fourth cen¬ 
tury, who became prefect of Rome, pontiff, augur, 
and proconsul of Africa. He vigorously resisted the 
changes that were made in the national religion by 
the triumphs of Christianity, and headed a deputation 
from the senate to the Emperor Valentinian II., re¬ 
questing the re-establishment of priests and vestals, 
and of the altar of Victory. This application was re¬ 
sisted by St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, who composed 
an answer to the petition of Symmachus, as did also 
the poet Prudentius. Symmachus lost his cause, and 
for some reason was banished by Valentinian or Theo¬ 
dosius, the latter of whom recalled him, and raised 
him to the consulship, A.D. 391. The petition above 
mentioned is preserved in the ten books of Symma- 
chus’s epistles, still extant. His oratory was of that 
kind which characterized the decline of Roman litera¬ 
ture. “The luxuriance of Symmachus,” says Gib¬ 
bon, “ consists of barren leaves without fruit, and even 
without flowers. Few facts and few sentiments can 
be extracted from his verbose correspondence.” Of 
these epistles, the best edition is that of Scioppius, 
Mogunt ., 1608, 4to. (Scholl, Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 3, 
p. 200, seqq.) 

Symplegades, two islands or rocks at the entrance 
of the Euxine Sea. ( Vid. Cyaneae.) 

Syncellus, one of the Byzantine historians, who 
derived his name from his being Syncellus, or Con¬ 
stant Resident , with Tarasius, patriarch of Constanti¬ 
nople. Syncellus lived in the time of Charlemagne, 
and began to write his history in 792, but was pre¬ 
vented by death from extending it beyoiad the times 
of Maximian and Maximin. Notwithstanding its many 
defects, the work of Syncellus forms a valuable addi¬ 
tion to the study of ancient chronology. Since the 
first book of the Chronicle of Eusebius was discov¬ 
ered, it has been ascertained that this work was one 
of the principal sources whence Syncellus drew his 
materials. He has, in fact, copied Eusebius to such a 
degree, that, by reuniting the scattered passages which 
he has culled from him, we might almost re-establish 
the text of the former. The only edition, until lately, 
was that of Goar, Paris , 1652, fol. A new edition, 
ho vever, corrected frem two valuable Paris MSS., 
1276 


was published in 1829, 2 vols. 8vo, as part of the 
Bonn collection of the Byzantine writers. (Scholl, 
Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 6, p. 365.) 

Synesius, I. a native of Cyrene, and one of the 
most remarkable among the literary men of the fifth 
century. He was born A.D. 378, of a distinguished 
family, and studied at Alexandrea under Hypatia and 
other celebrated instructors. So rapid was the prog¬ 
ress he made, that, at the age of nineteen years, he 
was chosen by the inhabitants of Cyrene to present 
to the Emperor Arcadius a golden crown which had 
been voted him. The discourse which he delivered 
on this occasion, and which is still preserved, has been 
much admired. At this period he was still a pagan . 
subsequently, however, he was persuaded by Theophi- 
lus, bishop of Alexandrea, to embrace Christianity. 
He was for a long, time, however, very unsettled in 
his theological notions, and it was this very uncer¬ 
tainty which induced him for a considerable time to 
withstand the solicitations of Synesius, and not ac¬ 
cept a bishopric. He yielded, however, A.D. 410, 
and separating from a wife for whom he cherished a 
deep affection, he was consecrated bishop of Ptolema'is 
in Cyrena’ica. Synesius appears to have died prior to 
431, since, among the members of the council of Eph¬ 
esus, which was held this same year, we find Euoptius, 
the brother of Synesius, and his successor in the dio¬ 
cese of Ptolema'is.—The works of Synesius are rather 
philosophical and literary than theological. They are 
written with elegance. When the subject admits, his 
diction is elevated, and sometimes even sublime. He 
possesses the art of rendering abstract subjects agree¬ 
able, by intermingling with them mythological and his¬ 
torical, or else poetical passages. His letters, which 
are 154 in number, afford varied, amusing, and in¬ 
structive reading. His Hymns, in iambics of four or 
five feet, present a singular mixture of poetic images, 
Christian truths, and Platonic reveries, for it was to 
the school of Plato that he always continued to be 
more or less attached. The most complete edition of 
his works is that of Petavius (Petau), Paris , 1612, 
fol. ; reprinted in 1631 and 1640. (Scholl, Hist. Lit. 
Gr., vol. r*. 91.)—II. A philosopher, who wrote a 
commentary o’ the work of Democritus respecting 
things of a physical and mystical nature. It is found 
in the Bibliotheca Grceca of Fabricius (vol. 8, p. 233). 

S ynna s (-ados), or Synnada (-orum), a town of Phry¬ 
gia, northwest of the plain of Ipsus. Ptolemy gives 
the name as Synade, probably through an error of the 
copyists: the form Synnas (-ados) is customary with 
the poets. (Slat., Sylv., 1, 5, 36 ) According to 
Stephanus Byzantinus, the name arose from the cir¬ 
cumstance of many Grecian colonists settling here, 
the city being originally called Syncea (Y.vvala), and 
this term being corrupted by the neighbouring inhabi¬ 
tants into Synnada (hvvala, from avv and vc/io, to live). 
Strabo calls it a small place (ov yeydiky — Stra¬ 

bo, 577), and we know nothing very important in rela¬ 
tion to it: with the Romans, however, it was a Con- 
ventus Juridicus. (Pliny, 5, 29, where the name ap¬ 
pears as a feminine, Synnada.) —Between this place 
and Docimseum, which lay to the northwest, were fa¬ 
mous marble quarries, whence a beautiful kind of 
white marble, with red spots, was obtained. This 
was held in very high repute by the Romans, and was 
much used in buildings. The Romans named this 
marble, after the town of Synnada, lapis Synnadicus ; 
whereas the inhabitants of the country called it 7udog 
koKiyiTiie; or A o/a/aaloc, from Docimasum. Strabo 
speaks of the high degree of value attached to it, and 
of slabs and columns of it having been transported to 
Rome at a great expense.—The site of Synnada ap¬ 
pears to have been in the neighbourhood of the mod¬ 
ern Bulwudun, where extensive quarries are still to be 
seen. (Leake's Tour, p. 54.) 

Syphax, a king of the Masoesyli in Libya, who 



SYR 


SYRACUSE. 


married Sophonisba, the daughter of Asdrubal, and 
forsook the alliance of the Romans to join himself to 
the interest of his father-in-law and of Carthage. 
Encamping his army apart from that of Asdrubal, both 
camps were in the night surprised and burned by 
Scipio. Afterward, in a general engagement, the 
united Carthaginian and Numidian armies were de¬ 
feated. Syphax, upon this, hastened back to his own 
country; but, being pursued by Laelius and Masinissa, 
he, together with his son Vermina, was taken pris¬ 
oner, and brought back to Scipio. The conqueror 
carried him to Rome, where he adorned his triumph. 
Syphax died at Tibur, B.C. 201, and was honoured 
with a public funeral. His possessions were given to 
Masinissa. ( Liv ., 24, 48, seqq.—-Id., 29, 23, seqq .— 
Id ., 30, 5, seqq. — Id ., 30, 45.) — This proper name 
has the- penult in the oblique cases always long, ex¬ 
cept in a single instance in Claudian (15, 91), where 
we find Syphacem. 'The context (haurire vcnena 
compulimus) cannot by any possibility apply to Sy¬ 
phax, and therefore Barthe conjectures Hannibalem 
for Syphacem, in the passage of Claudian just referred 
to, an emendation which is now very generally re¬ 
ceived. Aft&ud, however (in Lemaire’s edition), re¬ 
tains the old reading. 

Syracuse, a celebrated city of Sicily, founded 
about 732 years before the Christian era, by Archias, 
a Corinthian, and one of the Heraclidas. ( Thucyd ., 6, 
3.)—The parts of the city were five in number : Or¬ 
tygia, Achradina, Tyca, Neapolis, and Epipolae. The 
first was that originally colonized and fortified by the 
Corinthians under Archias ; and being then an island, 
and most of it rocky and of difficult approach, it must 
nave been very strong. It is now about two miles in 
circumference, and probably obtained its name from 
the abundance of quails there (opruf, “ a quail”). In 
process of time the city extended to the continent, 
and a suburb vas added, called Achradina, probably 
from the rockiness of the ground. This, in time, oc¬ 
cupied all the lower part of that peninsula between the 
Portus Laccius and the Portus Trogiliorum, and was, 
next to Ortygia, the best peopled, though not, perhaps, 
in proportion to its extent. A wall was then drawn in 
a straight line from the Portus Trogiliorum to the 
docks at Syracuse, and this was for some time the lim¬ 
its of the city. Afterward, however, were added no 
less than three suburbs, Tyca, Temenites (subsequent¬ 
ly Neapolis), and Epipolae. Temenites and Tyca were 
so called from the temples of Apollo and of Fortune sit¬ 
uated there, and of which the ripevy, or sacred closes, 
no doubt, originally occupied a great part of their sites. 
Tuny was probably Syracusan for tvxV {“fortune”). 
Neapolis was of later foundation, and occupied the site 
of Temenites. These several parts were all gradual¬ 
ly surrounded by walls, and included in the city ; and 
thus, in the end, Syracuse became one of the most ex¬ 
pensive cities in Europe. Ortygia, being the original 
city, was called the citadel, or the city, uar' k^oxyv. 
The Epipolae, which was north of Temenites and Tyca, 
and of a triangular figure, derived its name from its 
elevated site, now called Belvedere ; the highest parts 
of which were occupied by the Syracusan castles of 
Euryalus and Labdalum. (Compare Gdller, de situ 
zt origine Syracusarum, hips., 1818, 8vo.— Bloom- 
Held ad Thucyd., 6, 75; vol. 3, p. 118, in notis.) 
Syracuse had two harbours, formed by the island of 
Ortygia : one called the smaller harbour, and also 
Portus Laccius, between the upper side of Ortygia 
and the mainland ; the other on the southern side, be¬ 
tween Ortygia and the Plemmyrian promontory, and 
running up far like a bay ; this was called the great 
harbour, and was not only extremely capacious, but 
also perfectly secure against storms and the violence 
of the sea.—The original constitution of Syracuse, 
like that of so many Dorian settlements, was aristo- 


cratical. It subsequently fell under the power of ty« 
rants, some of whom advanced its power and prosper¬ 
ity to a very high pitch. ( Vid. Gelon, Hiero, Di¬ 
onysius.)— It occupies also a conspicuous place in 
the Peloponnesian war, on account of the unfortunate 
expedition sent hither by the Athenians. {Vid. Pelo- 
ponnesiacum Bellum.) After a long period of alter¬ 
nate fortune, Syracuse at last fell into the hands of the 
Romans under Marcellus, after a siege of about three 
years, B C. 312.—Of the five ancient divisions of Syr¬ 
acuse, Ortygia alone is now remaining; it is about 
two miles round, and supposed to contain about 17,000 
inhabitants. There are some remains, however, still 
visible of the ancient Syracuse, in the ruins of porti¬ 
coes, temples, and palaces. The famous fountain of 
Arethusa rose in the island of Ortvgia; but, though 
still a striking object from its discharge of waters, it 
now serves merely as a resort for washerwomen.— 
“ If mighty names and events,” observes a modern 
writer, “ crowd upon the mind when we barely read 
the name of Syracuse, what vivid historic associations 
must be awakened by the soil itself! The city of 
Syracuse was invoked by Pindar as ‘ The Fane of 
Mars,' and extolled by Cicero as the most beautiful 
in the Grecian world. It was the scene of some of 
the greatest beings and events of antiquity ; of Ge- 
lon’s patriotism, of Harmocrates’s valour, and of Di¬ 
onysius’s transcendant genius. It baffled Carthage ; 
it crushed and captured the proudest armada equipped 
by Athens in the plenitude of her power; and, after 
opposing the science of Archimedes to the strength of 
Rome, it was lost only by the inebriety of its guards 
during the night of Diana’s festival. Its fate stirred 
compassion even in the heart of its rugged conqueror. 
When Marcellus looked down at morning from its 
heights on the whole expanse of Syracuse, the sight ot 
its palaces and temples glittering in the sun, of its 
harbours so lately impregnable, and its fleets so lately 
invincible, the recollection of its ancient glory, the 
knowledge of its impending fate, and the importance 
of his own victory impressed him with such emotions 
that he burst into tears. x\fter a lapse of two thousand 
years, the traveller who looks down from the same 
spot sees the scene of desolation completed. Groves, 
palaces, and temples have all disappeared, and the 
arid rock alone remains, where the serpent basks, a^ 
the solitary wild-flower is unbent by human footsteps. 
From the Roman conquest the city dated its decay ; 
its treasures plundered, its pictures and statues torn 
away, and its liberties crushed, arts, commerce, agri¬ 
culture, and population simultaneously declined. Some 
vestiges of the grandeur of Syracuse undoubtedly re¬ 
mained. even under the oppression of Rome and the 
degeneracy of the Byzantine empire ; but the convul¬ 
sion of earthquakes and the fanatic fury of Saracenic 
invaders at last effaced it from the catalogue of large 
cities ; and now, under the feeblest branch of the 
Bourbons, it has only a squalid, superstitious, and idle 
population of 17,000 souls. The portion of its land 
that was once most fertile is at present become a pes¬ 
tilent marsh. But though at this day there are so few 
remains of the numerous and vast buildings of Syra¬ 
cuse that it is difficult to guess how their materials 
have disappeared, there are still some noble traces of 
its ancient architecture. In the island of the harbour 
called Ortygia, some foundations have been discov¬ 
ered which apparently belonged to the stupendous 
granaries built amid the fortifications of the place by 
the great Dionysius. The modern cathedral, dedica¬ 
ted to ‘ Our Lady of Columns' is so called from ts 
enclosing within its walls the celebrated temple of Mi¬ 
nerva, with twenty-four of its noble pillars, twenty- 
eight feet in height, and six feet six inches in diame¬ 
ter. The nave of the modern church is formed out 
of the ancient cella, the walls having been perforated 

1277 



SYR 


SYRIA. 


to admit of passages into the side aisles, which consist 
of the north and south porticoes of the ancient peri¬ 
style. Cicero is diffuse in his description of this an¬ 
cient edifice, which, though spared by Marcellus, was 
stripped to the bare walls of all its splendid ornaments 
by the infamous Verres. Upon the summit of its roof 
there was elevated an enormous gilded shield, that 
was consecrated to Minerva. This object, which was 
visible a great way off in the reflection of the sun, 
was beheld with religious respect; and the mariner at 
sea made an offering when he took leave of its last 
glimmerings. In that quarter of the city which was 
called Achradina there are also vestiges of the walls 
once defended by the genius of Archimedes. Here 
and there the rock itself is chiselled into battlements; 
and, wherever there are remains of gateways, they are 
found so placed that they must have obliged the as¬ 
sailant to approach them for a great length of way with 
his unshielded right side unprotected. The Hexapy- 
lon of Syracuse was not, as many commentators on 
Livy have supposed, a mere part of the wall, but a 
noble fortress, constructed with such consummate 
skill as to have excited the admiration of the best 
modern judges of military architecture. Its ruins still 
exhibit the size and extent of its subterranean passa¬ 
ges, whence both infantry and cavalry might make 
their sallies, and retreat again under protection of the 
fort; the huge, square towers of its solid masonry are 
still to be traced ; and the ground is strewn with the 
vast blocks of parapets, which are bored with grooves 
for pouring melted pitch and lead on the heads of the 
assailants. Such was ancient Syracuse. The fullest 
sympathy need not prevent our repeating a doubt as 
to the vast population of old ascribed to it. True, 
the circuit of its walls was twenty-two miles ; and 
Thucydides, long before its era of prosperity under 
Dionysius, allows that it was equal to Athens; but 
the increase of its population after Thucydides’ time 
is merely conjectured, and the inhabitants of all At¬ 
tica scarcely exceeded half a million.” 

Syria, a country of Asia, bounded on the east by 
the Euphrates and a small portion of Arabia, north by 
the range of Taurus, west by the Mediterranean, and 
south by Arabia. The name Syria has been trans¬ 
mitted to us from the Greeks. Pococke conjectures 
that it might possibly come from Sur, the ancient name 
of Tyre, the chief city of the whole country. It is 
more natural, however, to suppose that the name 
Syria is a corruption or abridgment of Assyria, and 
that the form in question was first adopted by the 
Ionians, who frequented these coasts after the Assyri¬ 
ans of Nineveh had made this country a part of their 
empire, about 750 B.C. ( Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 
1, p. 432, seqq .)—It was divided into several districts 
and provinces, including, besides Syria Proper, Phoeni¬ 
cia, Palestine, and, according to Pliny, Mesopotamia 
and Babylonia. Syria is called in Scripture Aram, 
and the inhabitants Aramaeans, a name derived from 
Aram, the fifth son of Shem, the father of the Syrians 
Mesopotamia is also called Aram in the sacred text; 
but the appellation Naharim, i. e., between the rivers , 
is always added, for distinction’ sake, to the latter. 
The name transmitted to us by the Greeks is, as 
above stated, a corruption or abridgment of Assyria. 
The Greeks, however, were not unacquainted with the 
term Aramaeans, but they gave it a wide appellation, 
making it comprehend the Syrians, the inhabitants of 
• Mesopotamia, the Assyrians, and the White Syrians, 
or Leuco-Syrii, as far as Pontus, because they saw 
that all these nations used a common language, the 
same customs, and the same religious faith. The his¬ 
tory of Syria is included in that of its conquerors. It 
appears to have been first reduced by Tiglath Pileser, 
king of Assyria, about 750 B.C.; previously to whose 
invasion it was divided into petty territories, of which 
1278 


the kingdom of Damascus was the principal. After 
the fall of the Assyrian monarchy it came under the 
Chaldean yoke ; it shared the fate of Babylonia when 
conquered by the Persians ; and was again subdued 
by Alexander the Great. At his death, B.C. 323, it 
was erected into an independent monarchy under the 
Seleucidse, and continued to be governed by its own 
sovereigns till, weakened and devastated by civil wars 
between competitors for the throne, it was finally re¬ 
duced by Pompey to a Roman province, about 55 
B.C., after the monarchy had subsisted two hundred 
and fifty-seven years. The Saracens, in the decline 
of the Roman empire, next became the masters of 
Syria, about A.D. 622. When the crusading armies 
poured into Asia, this country became the grand thea¬ 
tre of the contest between the armies of the cross and 
the crescent, and its plains were deluged with Chris¬ 
tian and Moslem blood. Antioch, under the Roman 
empire the magnificent and luxurious capital of the 
East, and, next to Rome and Alexandrea, the greatest 
city in the empire, was the first object of the invaders. 
It sustained, in 1098, a protracted siege uninjured, 
during which the Christian camp experienced all the 
horrors of famine: carrion was openly dressed, and hu¬ 
man flesh is said to have been eaten in secret. It tell 
at length through treachery : in the silence of the 
night, the crosses commenced their indiscriminate 
butchery of its sleeping inhabitants. The dignity of 
age, the helplessness of infancy, and the beauty of the 
weaker sex, were, say the historians, alike disregarded 
by the Latin savages ; and Greeks and Armenians 
were for some time, equally with the Mussulmans, ex¬ 
posed to their fury. More than ten thousand victims 
perished in this massacre. In the following spring 
Jerusalem shared the same fate. On the erection of 
the transitory Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, the coun¬ 
try of Tripoli formed a distinct but dependant princi¬ 
pality. In the ecclesiastical division, Berytus, Sidon, 
Acre, and Panias were episcopal sees in the province 
of Tyre. Tyre itself was a royal domain. The bat¬ 
tle of Tiberias, in 1186, made the illustrious Saladi* 
the master of these places; Jerusalem capitulated the 
following year, and Antioch submitted-to the Moslem 
conqueror, who thus became lord of both Syria and 
Egypt. Syria remained subject to the sultans of 
Egypt till, in 1517, Selim I. overthrew the Mama- 
louk dynasty, and Syria and Egypt became absorbed 
in the Ottoman empire.—The situation of Syria, its 
distance from the seat of government, and the nature 
of the country, have rendered it difficult to keep it in 
regular subjection ; and the power of the Porte in this 
country has been for some time on the decline, espe¬ 
cially since the time of Djezzar Pacha. A number of 
petty independent chiefs have sprung up, who have set 
the power of the sultan at defiance. Burckhardt states 
that Badjazze, Alexandretta, and Antakia (Antioch) 
had each an independent aga. Berber, a formidable 
rebel who had fixed his seat at Tripoli, where he had 
maintained himself for six years, had been but recently 
subdued (in 1812) by the Pacha of Damascus. Ain- 
tab (to the north of Aleppo), as v^ell as Edlip ana 
Shogre (between Aleppo and Latikia), had also theil 
own chiefs. Throughout Syria, as is the case, in¬ 
deed, with respect to the whole of Asiatic Turkey, 
the Turks do not form more than two fifths of the pop¬ 
ulation. All civil and military employments, however, 
are in their hands. Besides Turks, and those natives 
who may claim to be considered as of genuine Syrian 
extraction, the country is inhabited by Kourds. Tur¬ 
comans, Bedouin Arabs, Chinganes, and other no- 
made hordes ; by Druses, Enzairies, and Motoualis; 
by Maronites, Armenians, Greek Christians, and Jews. 
No country, perhaps, exhibits a greater variety in the 
character of its population. The old Syrian language 
is said to be spoken in a few districts, chiefly in the 





TAB 


T A C 


neighbourhood of Damascus and Mount Libanus. The 
Arabic predominates both in the country and the 
towns. A corrupt mixture of Syriac and Chaldee is 
spoken in some parts by the peasantry, while the Turk¬ 
ish is spoken by the Osmanlis and the nomade hordes 
of the north. These various nations and tribes will 
come more particularly under our notice in describing 
the districts to which they respectively belong. The 
most natural division of the country is that which cor¬ 
responds to its present political distribution into pa- 
shalics, to which we shall accordingly adhere. The 
coast from Akka to Djebail, with the mountains in¬ 
habited by the Druses, is comprehended under the 
pashalic of Seide and Akka. Near Djebail, the pa- 
shalic of Tarabolos (Tripoli) begins, and extends along 
the coast to Latikia. The north of Syria, from the 
Levant to the Euphrates, is included within that of 
Haleb (Aleppo). The remainder of the country, in¬ 
cluding by far the largest territory, is the viceroyalty 
of the Pacha of Sham (Damascus). ( Mod . Trav., pt. 
3, p. 1.) 

Syrinx, a nymph of Arcadia, daughter of the river 
Ladon. {Vid. Pan, page 967, col. 2.) 

Syros, an island in the Aegean Sea, one of the Cyc¬ 
lades, situate between Cythnus and Rhenea. It was 
celebrated for having given birth to Pherecydes, the 
philosopher, a disciple of Pittacus. ( Diog. Laert., 1, 
119.— Strabo , 487.) It is singular that Strabo should 
affirm that the first syllable of the word Syros is pro¬ 
nounced long, whereas Homer, in the passage which 
he quotes, has made it short. ( Od ., 15, 402.) Syros, 
now Syra, is said by Pliny to be twenty miles in cir¬ 
cumference. ( Pliny, 4, 12.— Cramers Anc. Greece, 
vol. 3, p. 409.) 

Syrtes, two gulfs on the northern coast of Africa, 
one called Syrtis Minor, on the coast of Byzacium, and 
now the Gulf of Cabes; the other called Syrtis Ma¬ 
jor, on the coast of Cyrena'ica, now the Gulf of Sidra. 
The former is supposed to derive its modern name 
from the city of Tacape, which was at the head of it. 
The latter is called by the natives Syrte-al-Kibber , i. 
e., “The great Syrtis,” which the sailors have cor¬ 
rupted into Sidra. The Syrtis Minor is about 45 
geographical miles in breadth, and runs up into the 
continent about 75 miles. It is still an object of ap¬ 
prehension to sailors, in consequence of the variations 
and uncertainties of the tides on a flat and shelvy 
coast. The Syrtis Major is about 180 geographical 
miles between the two capes, and penetrates 100 miles 
into the land. The name Syrtis is generally derived 
from the Greek ovpa ), “ to drag,” in allusion to the agi¬ 
tation of the sand by the force of the tides. (Com¬ 
pare Sallust, Bell. Jug., c. 78.) It is more than prob¬ 
able, however, that the appellation is to be deduced 
from the term Sert, which still exists in Arabic as the 
name for a desert tract or region: for the term Syrtis 
does not appear to have been confined to the mere 
gulfs themselves, but to have been extended also to 
the desert country adjacent, which is still, at the pres¬ 
ent day, called Sert. {Ritter , Erdkunde, vol. 1, p. 
929, 2 d ed .) 

T. 

Tabellarije Leges, laws passed at various times 
for the purpose of enabling the Roman commons to 
rote by ballot, and no longer viva voce. The object of 
/hese laws was to diminish the power of the nobility. 
Voting by ballot was allowed by the Gabinian law, 
A.U.C. 614, in conferring honours; two years after, 
at all trials except for treason, by the Cassian law ; in 
passing laws, by the Papirian law, A.U.C. 622 ; and, 
lastly, in trials for treason, also by the Coslian law, 
A.U.C. 630. 

Tabern^e, I. Rhenanae, a city of Gallia Belgica, in 
the territory of the Nemetes, now Rhein- Zabern. 


{Amm. Marcell., 16, 2.)—II. A city of Gallia Belgice, 
between Argentoratum ( Strasburg ) and Divodurusn 
{Metz). The modern name is Berg-Zabern .— III. 
Triboccorum, a town in the territory of the Tribocc, 
now Elsass-Zabern. {Bischaff und Moller, Wbrterb. 
der Geogr., p. 942.) 

Tabor, a mountain of Galilee. {Vid. Itabyrius.) 

TabrIce, a city on the coast of Numidia, and near 
the limits of the Provincia Zeugitana, now Tabarca. 
{Polyb., 12, 11.) Ptolemy writes the name Thabra- 
ca; and Pliny, Tabracha. {Plin., 5, 3.) 

Taburnus, a lofty mountain in Samnium, the south¬ 
ern declivities of which were covered with olive 
grounds. It closed in the Caudine Pass on the south¬ 
ern side. The modern name is Taburno or Tabor. 
It derives celebrity from Virgil. {JEn., 12, 715.— 
Georg , 2, 307.) 

Tacape, a town of Africa, at the head of the Syrtis 
Minor. It is now Cabes or Gags. Near it were some 
medicinal waters, called Aquae Tacapince, now El- 
Hamma. {Plin., 5, 4.— Itin. Anton., 50, 59, 74, 
&c.) 

Tacfarinas, a Numidian by birth, and the leader 
of a revolt in Africa against the Roman power, in the 
leign of Tiberius. He had served among the Roman 
auxiliaries, and acquired in this way some knowledge 
of military discipline. Deserting, subsequently, from 
the forces among which he had been enrolled, he col¬ 
lected together some predatory bands, whom he ac¬ 
customed to discipline, and finally appeared as the lead¬ 
er of the Musulani, a powerful nation on the borders 
of the desert. The Mauri also were drawn into the 
confederacy, and the Cinitriii too were forced to join 
it. Furius Camillus, the proconsul of Africa, marched 
against and defeated him. He afterward, however, 
renewed the war, and was again defeated by Apronius, 
and driven into the desert. Still unsubdued in spirit, 
he appeared a third time as an enemy, and was de¬ 
feated by Blaeus. He again carried on the war, after 
this, with renewed strength and vigour, but was again 
overcome by Dolabella, and fell fighting bravely. 
{Tacit., Ann., 2, 52.— Id. ib., 3, 20. — Id. ib., 3, 74 
— Id. ib., 4, 23, seqq.) 

Tachampso, an island in the Nile, near Philse. The 
Egyptians held one half of this island, and the rest was 
in the hands of the ^Ethiopians. (Consult Herod., 2, 
29.)—The name Tachampso is thought to signify “ the 
island of crocodiles,” the Egyptian term for these ani¬ 
mals being xuyipaL, according to Herodotus (2, 70.— 
Consult Creuzer, Comment. Ilerod., p. 83.— Jablon- 
ski, Voc. Mgypt ., p. 388. — Champollion, VEgypte 
sous les Pharaons, vol. 1, p. 152). Mannert makes 
it answer to the modern Derar {Geogr., vol. 10, pt. 

1, p. 231); but Heeren is in favour of CalaplscM 
{Ideen, vol. 2, pt. I, p. 359.—Consult Bahr, ad Herod.. 

2, 29). 

Tachos, a king of Egypt in the time of Artaxerx- 
es Ochus. Having revolted against the Persians, he 
drew the Greeks over into his interests, especially the 
Athenians and Spartans. The former sent Chabrias 
to his aid ; the latter, Agesilaus. A misunderstand 
ing soon arose between the Spartan leader and Ta¬ 
chos, on account of Agesilaus having offered advice 
which was rejected by Tachos, and also because the 
former had merely the command of the mercenaries, 
whereas Chabrias had charge of the fleet, while Ta¬ 
chos exercised supreme control over all the forces. 
Agesilaus, in consequence of this, espoused the inter¬ 
ests of Nectanebis, cousin to Tachos, and had him 
proclaimed king while Tachos was absent in Phoenicia 
with the Egyptian forces. Tachos, upon this, fled to 
the Persians, B.C. 361. He reigned about two years. 
{Corn. Nep., Vit. Ages. — Diod. Sic., 15, 92. — Id., 
16, 48, seqq.) 

Tacitus, C. Cornelius, a celebrated Latin histori¬ 
an, born in the reign of Nero. The exact year cannot 

1279 



TACITUS. 


TACITUS. 


be ascertained ; but as Pliny the Younger informs us 
that he and Tacitus were nearly of the same age, it is 
supposed that Tacitus was born A.U.C. 809 or 810, 
about the sixth year of Nero’s reign. The place of his 
nativity is nowhere mentioned, but it is generally 
thought to have been Interamna (now Terni), in Um¬ 
bria. He was the son of Cornelius Tacitus, a procu¬ 
rator appointed by the prince to manage the imperial 
revenue and govern a province in Belgic Gaul. The 
person so employed was, by virtue of his office, of 
equestrian rank. The place where Tacitus received 
his education, Massilia, now Marseille , was at that 
time the seat of literature and polished manners. 
Agricola was trained up there ; but there is no reason 
to think that Tacitus formed and enlarged his mind at 
the same place, since, when he relates the fact about 
his father-in-law, he is silent respecting himself. If 
he was educated at Rome, we may be sure that it 
was a method very different from the fashion then in 
vogue. Tacitus, it is evident, did not imbibe the 
smallest tincture of that frivolous science and that 
vicious eloquence that debased the Roman genius. 
He most probably had the good fortune to be formed 
upon the plan adopted in the time of the republic ; and 
with the help of a sound scheme of home discipline, 
and the best domestic example, he grew up, in a course 
of virtue, to that vigour of mind which gives such an¬ 
imation to his writings. It is reasonable to suppose 
that he attended the lectures of Quintilian, who, in op¬ 
position to the sophists of Greece, taught for more 
than twenty years the rules of that manly eloquence 
which is so nobly displayed in his Institutes. Some 
critics have applied to Tacitus the passage in which 
Quintilian, after enumerating the writers who flourish¬ 
ed in that period, says, “There is another person who 
gives additional lustre to the age ; a man who will de¬ 
serve the admiration of posterity. I do not mention 
him at present: his name will be known hereafter” (10, 
1). — If this passage relates to Tacitus, the prediction 
has been fully verified. When Quintilian published his 
great work, in the reign of Dornitian, Tacitus had not 
then written his Annals or his History. Those im¬ 
mortal compositions were published in the time of Tra¬ 
jan.— The infancy of Tacitus kept him untainted by 
the vices of Nero’s court. He was about twelve 
years old when that emperor finished his career of guilt 
and folly ; and in the tempestuous times that ensued, he 
was still secured by his tender years. Vespasian re¬ 
stored the public tranquillity, revived the liberal arts, 
and gave encouragement to men of genius. Our au¬ 
thor’s first ambition was to distinguish himself at the 
bar.—Agricola was joint consul with Dornitian, A.U.G. 
830, for°the latter part of the year. Tacitus, though 
not quite twenty, had given such an earnest of his fu¬ 
ture fame, that Agricola chose him for his son-in-law. 
Thus distinguished, our author began the career of 
civil preferment. Vespasian had a just discern¬ 
ment of men, and was the friend of rising merit. 
Rome at length was governed by a prince who had 
the good sense and virtue to consider himself as the 
chief magistrate, whose duty it was to redress all 
grievances, restore good order, and give energy to the 
laws. In such times, the early genius of Tacitus at¬ 
tracted the notice of the emperor. The foundation of 
his fortune was laid by Vespasian. Tacitus does not 
iel\ tue particulars, but it is probable that he began 
with the functions of the Vigintivirate ; a body of 
twenty men commissioned to execute an inferior ju¬ 
risdiction for the better regulation of the city. That 
office, according to the systeyn established by Augus¬ 
tus, was a preliminary step to the gradations of the 
magistracy. The senate had power to dispense with 
it in particular cases, and accordingly we find Tibe¬ 
rius applying to the fathers for that indulgence in fa¬ 
vour of Drusus, the son of Germanicus. It is prob¬ 
able that Tacitus became one of the Vigintivirale , 
1280 > 


and, consequently, that the road of honour was lali’ 
open to him. The death of Vespasian did not cl.ecl 
him in his progress. Titus was the friend of virtue. 
The office of quaestor was, in the regular course, thr 
next public honour ; and it qualified the person wh( 
discharged it for a seat in the senate. Titus reigned 
little more than two years. Dornitian succeeded U 
the imperial dignity. Suspicious, dark, and sullen, hn 
made the policy of Tiberius the model of his govern 
ment. He saw public virtue, and he destroyed it; 
and yet, in that disastrous period, Tacitus rose to pref¬ 
erment. The historian himself furnishes a solution 
of this enigma. Agricola, he tells us, had the address 
to restrain the headlong violence of the tyrant by his 
prudence and moderation. Tacitus imitated this line 
of conduct, and, instead of giving umbrage to the 
prince and provoking the tools of power, he was con¬ 
tent to display his eloquence at the bar. Tacitus had 
a talent for poetry, and his verses, most probably, 
served to ingratiate him with the tyrant, who affected 
to be a votary of the Muses. If, in addition to this, 
he was the author of a book of apophthegms called Fa¬ 
cetiae, that very amusement could not fail to prove 
successful in gaining for him the notice of Dornitian. 
By this emperor Tacitus was made praetor, A.D. 88 ; 
he was also appointed one of the college of Quinde- 
ciniviTi. In A.D. 78 he married the daughter of Ju¬ 
lius Agricola. On the death of his father-in-law, A.D. 
93, he quitted Rome, but returned to it in the year 97, 
when Nerva was on the throne. This prince named 
him successor in the consulship to Virginius R-ufus, 
who had just died. In honour of Virginius, the sen¬ 
ate decreed that the rites of sepulture should be per¬ 
formed at the public expense. Tacitus delivered the 
funeral oration from the rostra. Praise from such an 
orator, Pliny says, was sufficient to crown the glo¬ 
ry of a well-spent life. ( Epist ., 2, 1.) Nerva died 
A.U.G. 851, having about three months before adopt¬ 
ed Trajan for his successor. In that short interval 
the critics have agreed to place the publication of the 
life of Agricola ; and their reason is, because Tacitus 
mentions Nerva Ccesar , but does not style him Divas, 
the deified Nerva, which, they say, would have been 
the case if the emperor was then deceased ; but they 
forget that, in the same tract (c. 44), our author tells 
us how ardently Agricola wished to see the elevation 
of Trajan to the seat of empire, and that wish would 
have been an awkward compliment to the reigning 
prince. It seems therefore probable that the Life of 
Agricola was published in the reign of Trajan.—The 
production just mentioned is one of the most perfect 
specimens of biography that any language can show, 
and the noblest monument ever erected by any writer 
to anv individual. We know not, on perusing it, 
which most to admire, the exalted and amiable char¬ 
acter of the hero, or the truth, sensibility, and tone of 
calmness that prevail throughout the pieoe. The mis 
fortunes of the times had imparted an air of melan 
choly to the style of Tacitus, which gives the w r ork in 
question a sombre and touching character. His friend¬ 
ship towards his father-in-law never renders him un¬ 
faithful to the truth, nor does he attempt to conceal 
his indignation at the policy of the Roman govern¬ 
ment, of which Agricola was sometimes compelled t<t 
be the instrument.—The Treatise on the Manners oi 
the Germans ( De situ, moribus, et populis Germanic), 
it is generally agreed, made its appearance in the yeai 
of Rome 851. The new emperor, whose adoption 
and succession had been confirmed by a decree of the 
senate, was at the head of the legions of. German} 
when he received the intelligence of the death of 
Nerva and his own accession to the empire. Being 
of a warlike disposition, he was not in haste to leave 
the army, but remained there during the entire year 
In such a juncture, a picture of German manners could 
not fail to excite the curiosity of the public. The 




TACITUS. 


TACITUS. 


•econd consulship of Trajan is mentioned in the tract 
(c. 37), and that was A.U.C. 851, in conjunction with 
Nerva, who died before the end of January. It is 
therefore certain that the description of Germany saw 
the light in the course of that year.—In this treatise 
but little reliance can be placed on the geographical 
notices of Tacitus, which are very defective. His re¬ 
marks on the manners, usages, and political institu¬ 
tions of this people are, on the other hand, peculiarly 
valuable. The historian is supposed by the best crit¬ 
ics to have derived his principal information relative 
to the Germans from persons who had served against 
them, and, in particular, from Yirginius Rufus, who, 
as we learn from the Letters of Pliny, was the friend 
of Tacitus. The great work, also, of the elder Pliny 
on Germany, now lost, must have been an important 
aid. As to the object of the historian in composing 
this work, some have even gone so far as to suppose 
that his sole intention was to satirize the corrupt mor¬ 
als of his contemporaries, by holding forth to view an 
ideal and highly-coloured picture of barbarian virtue. 
According to these same writers, his object was to bring 
back his countrymen to their ancient simplicity of man¬ 
ners, and thus oppose an effectual barrier to those en¬ 
emies who menaced the safety of their descendants. 
But a perusal of the work in question destroys all this 
fanciful hypothesis. The analogy between many of 
the rude manners of the early Germans and those of 
the aborigines of North America at once stamps the 
work with the seal of truth. What if Tacitus dwells 
with a certain predilection upon the simple manners 
of Germany 1 It surely is natural in one who had be¬ 
come disgusted with the excesses of Italy. We are 
not to suppose, however, that this work of Tacitus is 
free from errors. The very manner in which he ac¬ 
quired his information on this subject must have led 
to misconceptions and mistakes. Religious prejudi¬ 
ces also served occasionally to mislead the historian, 
who beheld the traces of Greek and Roman mytholo¬ 
gy even in the North.—The friendship that subsisted 
between Tacitus and the younger Pliny is well known. 
It was founded on the consonance of their studies and 
their virtues. They were both convinced that a stri¬ 
king picture of former tyranny ought to be placed in 
contrast to the felicity of the times that succeeded. 
Pliny acted up to his own idea of this in the panegyric 
on Trajan, where we find a vein of satire against Domi- 
tian running throughout the whole piece. It appears 
in his letters that he had some thoughts of writing a 
history on the same principle ; but he had not resolu¬ 
tion to undertake that arduous task. Tacitus had 
more vigour of mind ; he thought more intensely, and 
with deeper penetration than his friend. We find 
that he had formed, at an early period, the plan of his 
History, and resolved to execute it in orderr to show 
the horrors of slavery, and the debasement of the Ro¬ 
man people through the whole of Domitian’s reign. 

( Vit. Agr ., c. 3.) He did not, however, though em¬ 
ployed in a great and important work, renounce im¬ 
mediately all his practice in the forum, but continued 
to be employed there until the trial of Marius Priscus, 
who had been proconsul of Africa, and stood im¬ 
peached before the senate at the suit of the province. 
Priscus had presented a memorial, praying to be tried 
by a commission of select judges. Tacitus and Pliny, 
by the special appointment of the fathers, were advo¬ 
cates on the part of the Africans. They thought it 
their duty to inform the house that the crimes alleged 
against Priscus were of too atrocious a nature to fall 
within the cognizance of an inferior court. The case 
was therefore heard at an adjourned meeting of the 
senate, and the eloquence of Pliny and Tacitus, but 
more particularly of the latter, succeeded in establish¬ 
ing the guilt of the accused. The senate concluded 
the business with a declaration that Tacitus and Pliny 
had executed the trust reDosed in them to the full sat- 
? Z 


isfaction of the house. The cause was tried A.U.C. 
853, in the third year of Trajan’s reign. From that 
time Tacitus dedicated himself altogether to his His¬ 
tory. Pliny informs us (Ep., 4, 13), that our author 
was frequented by a number of visiters, who admired 
his genius, and for that reason went in crowds to his 
levee. From that conflux of men of letters Tacitus 
could not fail to gain the best information. Pliny 
sent a full detail of all the circumstances attending the 
death of his uncle, the elder Pliny, who lost his life in 
the eruption of Vesuvius, in order that an exact rela¬ 
tion of that event might be transmitted to posterity. 
—Trajan reigned nineteen years. He died suddenly 
in Cilicia, A.U.C. 870, A.D. 117. The exact time 
when Tacitus published his History is uncertain, but 
it was in some period of Trajan’s reign. He was re¬ 
solved to send his work into the world in that happy 
age when he could think with freedom, and what 
he thought he could publish with perfect security. 
(Hist., 1,1.) He began from the accession of Galba, 
A.U.C. 822, and followed down the thread of his nar¬ 
rative to the death of Dornitian, in the year 849 ; the 
whole comprising a period of seven-and-twenty years, 
full of important events and sudden revolutions, in 
which the prastorian bands, the armies in Germany, 
and the legions in Syria claimed a right to raise 
whom they thought proper to the imperial seat, with¬ 
out any regard for the authority of the senate. Such 
was the subject Tacitus had before him. The sum¬ 
mary view which he has given of those disastrous 
times is the most awful picture of civil commotion 
and the wild distraction of a frantic people. It is not 
exactly known into how many books the work was di¬ 
vided. Vossius makes the number no less than thir¬ 
ty ; but, to the great loss of the literary world, we 
ha-ve only the first four books, and the commencement 
of the fifth. The work must have been a large one, 
if we may judge from the portion that has reached us, 
since this contains the transactions of little more than 
a single year. The reign of Titus, “ the delight of 
human kind,” is totally lost, and Dornitian has esca¬ 
ped the vengeance of the historian’s pen. The His¬ 
tory being finished, Tacitus did not think that he had 
completed his portraiture of slavery. He went back 
to Tiberius, who left a model of tyranny for his suc¬ 
cessors. This second work he called by the name of 
Annals. It included a period of four-and-fifty years, 
from the year 767 to the death of Nero in 821. Du¬ 
ring the period embraced by the History the whole 
empire was convulsed, and the author had to arrange 
the operations of armies in Germany, Batavia, Gaul, 
Italy, and Judaea, all in motion almost at the same 
time. This was not the case in the Annals. The 
Roman world was in a state of general tranquillity, 
and the history of domestic transactions was to sup¬ 
ply Tacitus with materials. The author has given us, 
with his usual brevity, the true characters of this part of 
his work. “ The detail,” he says, “into which he was 
obliged to enter, while it gave lessons of prudence, was 
in danger of being dry and unentertaining. In other 
histories, the operations of armies, the situation of 
countries, the events of war, and the exploits of illustri¬ 
ous generals awaken curiosity and expand the imagina¬ 
tion. We have nothing before us but acts of despo¬ 
tism, continual accusations, the treachery of friends, 
the ruin of innocence, and trial after trial, always end¬ 
ing in the same catastrophe. Events like these will 
crive to the work a tedious uniformity, without an ob¬ 
ject to enliven attention, without an incident to prevent 
satiety.” (Ann , 4, 33.) But the genius of Tacitus 
surmounted every difficulty. He was able to keep at¬ 
tention awake, to please the imagination, and enlighten 
the understanding. The style of the Annals differs, 
from that of the History, which required stately peri¬ 
ods, pomp of expression, and harmonious sentences. 
The Annals are written in a strain more subdued and 

1281 



TACITUS 


TACITUS. 


temperate : every phrase is a maxim ; the narra¬ 
tive goes on with rapidity ; the author is sparing of 
words, and prodigal of sentiment; the characters are 
drawn with a profound knowledge ol human nature ; 
and when we see them figuring on the stage of public 
business, we perceive the internal spring of their ac¬ 
tions ; we see their motives at work, and, of course, 
are prepared to judge of their conduct. The Annals, 
as well as the History, have suffered by the barbarous 
rage and more barbarous ignorance of the tribes that 
overturned the Roman empire. Of the sixteen books 
which originally composed the Annals, the following 
are lost: a part of the fifth, from the seventh to the 
tenth both inclusive, the beginning of the eleventh, and 
the end of the sixteenth. We miss, therefore, three 
years of Tiberius, the entire four years of Caligula, the 
first six of Claudius, and the last two of Nero. And, 
on the other hand, we have the history of the reign of 
Tiberius, with the exception of the three years just 
mentioned, the latter, years of Claudius, and the his¬ 
tory of Nero down to A D, 67.—We find that Taci¬ 
tus intended, if his life and health continued, to re¬ 
view the reign of Augustus (Ann., 3, 24), in order to 
detect the arts by which the old constitution was over¬ 
turned, to make way for the government of a single 
ruler. This, in the hands of such a writer, would have 
been a curious portion of history ; but it is probable he 
did not live to carry his design into execution. The 
time of his death is not mentioned by any ancient au¬ 
thor. It seems, however, highly probable that he died 
in the reign of Trajan, and we may reasonably conclude 
that he survived his friend Pliny. Those two writers 
were the ornaments of the age ; both men of genius ; 
both encouragers of literature ; the friends of liberty 
and virtue. The esteem and affection which Pliny 
cherished towards our author is evident in many of 
his letters, but nowhere more than in the following pas¬ 
sage : “ I never was touched with a more sensible 
pleasure than by an account which I received lately 
from Cornelius Tacitus. He informed me that, at the 
last Circensian games, he sat next to a stranger, who, 
after much discourse on various topics of learning, 
asked him if he was an Italian or a Provincial. Ta¬ 
citus replied, ‘Your acquaintance with literature must 
have informed you who I am.’ * Ay !’ said the man ; 

‘ pray, then, is it Tacitus or Pliny I am talking with!’ 

I cannot express how highly I am pleased to find that 
our names are not so much the proper appellations of 
men as a kind of distinction for learning itself.” (Ep., 
10, 23.) Had Pliny been the surviver, he, who la¬ 
mented the loss of all his friends, would not have fail¬ 
ed to pay the last tribute to the memory of Tacitus. 
The commentators assume it as a certain fact that 
our author must have left issue ; and their reason is, 
because they find that M. Claudius Tacitus, who was 
created emperor A.D. 276, deduced his pedigree from 
the great historian. (Vopisc., Vit. Tac.) That ex¬ 
cellent prince was only shown to the world. He was 
snatched away by a fit of illness at the end of six 
months, having crowded into that short reign a num¬ 
ber of virtues. Vopiscus tells us that he ordered the 
image of Tacitus, and a complete collection of his 
works, to be placed in the public archives, with a spe¬ 
cial direction that ten copies should be made every 
year at the public expense. But, when the mutilated 
state in which our author has come down to posterity 
is considered, there is good reason to believe that the 
crders of the prince were never executed.—Tacitus 
has well deserved the appellation that has been be¬ 
stowed upon him of “ the greatest historian of antiqui¬ 
ty.” To the generous and noble principle which gui¬ 
ded his pen throughout his work, he united a fund of 
Knowledge and the colours of eloquence. Every short 
description is a picture in miniature : we see the per¬ 
sons acting, speaking, or suffering ; our passions are 
kept in a tumult of emotion ; they succeed each other 
1282 


in quick vicissitude ; they mix and blend in varion* 
combinations ; we glow with indignation, we melt into 
tears. The Annals, in fact, may be called an histori¬ 
cal picture-gallery. It is by this magic power that Ta¬ 
citus has been able to animate the dry regularity of 
the chronologic order, and to spread a charm over the 
whole that awakens curiosity and unchains attention. 
How different from the gazette-style of Suetonius, 
who relates his facts in a calm and unimpassioned 
tone, unmoved by the distress of injured virtue, and 
never rising to indignation. Tacitus, on the contrary, 
sits in judgment on the prince, the senate, the consuls, 
and the people ; and he finds eloquence to affect the 
heart, and through the imagination to inform the un¬ 
derstanding.—Tacitus has been called the Father of 
Philosophical History ; and the title is well bestowed 
if it be considered as confined to his acute and forcible 
criticisms on individual character, and the moral dig¬ 
nity and pathos of his manner ; but of Political philos¬ 
ophy we discover in this excellent writer but few 
traces. To this department of wisdom, the times, 
both those which Tacitus saw and those of which his 
fathers could tell him, were fatally unpropitious. They 
exhibited a frame of society (if we may disgrace that 
expression by so applying it) suffering a course of ex¬ 
periments too frightfully violent to issue in fine results 
In a nation thus tried with extremes, we could hardly 
expect to meet with the refinements of political sci¬ 
ence ; and supposing them there to exist, an historical 
account of such a nation affords little scope for thf 
display of them.—It may be expected that some no¬ 
tice should be taken of the objections which have been 
urged against Tacitus by the various writers who have 
thought proper to place themselves in the chair of 
criticism. The first charge exhibited against our au 
thor is, that he has written bad Latin. This shall be 
answered by a writer who was master of as much 
elegance as can be attained in a dead language 
“Who,” exclaims Muretus, “ are we moderns, eves 
if all who have acquired great skill in the Latin lam 
guage were assembled in a body; who are we, that 
presume to pronounce against an author (Tacitus) 
who, when the Roman language still flourished in all 
its splendour (and it flourished to the time of Hadri¬ 
an), was deemed the most eloquent orator of hia 
time 1 When we reflect on the number of ancient 
authors whose works have been destroyed, which of 
us can pretend to say that the words which appear 
new in Tacitus were not known and used by the an¬ 
cients 1 and yet, at the distance of ages, when the pro¬ 
ductions of genius have been wellnigh extinguished, 
we of this day take upon us a decisive tone to con¬ 
demn the most celebrated writers, whose cooks and 
mule-drivers understood the Latin language, and spoke 
it, better than the most confident scholar of the pres¬ 
ent age.” — The next allegation against Tacitus is 
grounded upon the conciseness and consequent ob¬ 
scurity of his style. The love of brevity, which dis¬ 
tinguishes Tacitus from all other writers, was proba 
bly the result of his early admiration of Seneca; and, 
perhaps, was carried farther by that constant habit of 
close thinking, which could seize the principal idea, 
and discard all unnecessary appendages. Tacitus was 
sparing of words and lavish of sentiment. Montes¬ 
quieu says he knew everything, and therefore abridge* 
everything. In the political maxims and moral re 
flections, which, where we least expect it, dart a sud 
den light, yet never interrupt the rapidity of the narra 
tive, the comprehensive energy of the sentence give& 
all the pleasure of surprise, while it conveys a deep 
reflection. The observations which Quintilian calls 
lumina sententiarum crowded fast upon the author’s 
mind, and he scorned to waste his strength in words; 
he gave the image in profile, and left the reader to 
take a round-about view.—It may be asked, Is Taci¬ 
tus never obscure * He certainly is : his own laconic 





TACITUS. 


TACITUS. 


I 


manner, and, it may be added, the omissions of the 
copyists, have occasioned some difficulties ; but he 
who has made himself familiar with the peculiarities 
of his style will not be much embarrassed. B ;t still 
it may be said that, in so long a work, one continued 
strain of studied brevity fatigues the ear, and tires the 
reader by an unvaried and disgusting monotony. Va¬ 
riety, it must be admitted, would give new graces to 
the narrative, and prevent too much uniformity. The 
celebrated Montaigne observes, that Tacitus abounds 
with strong and vigorous sentences, often constructed 
with point and subtlety, agreeably to the taste of the 
age, which delighted in the gay and brilliant ; and 
when those were not in the thought, the writer was 
sure to find an antithesis in the expression. And yet 
it is remarkable that the same writer, who owns that 
for twenty years together he read by fits and starts, 
tells us himself that he read Tacitus a second time in 
one regular train, without interruption. — A third alle¬ 
gation of the critics is, that Tacitus was a misanthrope, 
who beheld human nature with a malignant eye, and, 
always suspecting the worst, falsified facts, in order 
to paint men worse than they were. The answer is 
obvious: Tacitus was fallen on evil times; he says, 
“ A black and evil period lies before me. The age 
was sunk to the lowest depth of sordid adulation, in¬ 
somuch that not only the most illustrious citizens, in 
order to secure themselves, were obliged to crouch in 
bondage ; but even men of consular and prastorian 
rank, and the whole senate, tried, with emulation, who 
should be the most obsequious of slaves.” {Ann., 
3,. 65.) In such times, who could live free from suspi¬ 
cion 1 Tacitus knew the character of Tiberius; he 
was an accurate observer of mankind : but he must 
have been credulous indeed, or the willing dupe of a 
profligate court, if he had not laid open the secret mo¬ 
tives of all, and traced their actions to their first prin¬ 
ciples. At the head of the critics who have endeav¬ 
oured to enforce the charge of falsehood and malevo¬ 
lence stands Famianus Strada, the elegant author of 
the well-known Prolusiones Academicee, and the wars 
in Holland, entitled De Bello Belgico: but it will be 
sufficient, in answer to his laboured declamations, to 
say with Lord Bolingbroke, “He was a rhetor, who 
condemned Tacitus, and presumed to write history 
himself.”-—The imputation of atheism, which has been 
urged by critics of more piety than discernment, is 
easily refuted. Whatever were our author’s doubts 
concerning fate, free-will, and the influence of the 
planets, let the fine apostrophe to the departed spirit 
of Agricola be perused with attention, and every sen¬ 
timent will discover a mind impressed with the idea 
of an overruling Providence. There are many pas¬ 
sages in the Annals and the History to the same ef¬ 
fect : but more on this head is unnecessary. Nor 
does the paradox suggested by Boccalini deserve a 
longer discussion. That author gives it as his opin¬ 
ion, that the whole design of the Annals was to teach 
the art of despotism : it may, with as good reason, be 
said, that Lord Clarendon wrote the history of the 
Grand Rebellion with intent to tea„h schismatics, 
Puritans, and Republicans how to murder the king. 

(Murphy , Essay on the Life and. Genius of Tacitus, 
p. 10, seqq.) —There has come down to us a dialogue 
entitled De Claris oratoribus, sive de causis corruptee 
eloquentiez. The manuscripts and old editions name 
Tacitus as the author of 'this production; a great 
number of commentators, however, ascribe it to Quin¬ 
tilian, and some to Pliny the Younger. They who 
argue from the language of manuscripts allege in their 
favour Pomponius Sabinus, a grammarian, who states 
that Tacitus had given to the works of Maecenas the 
epithet of calamistri. Now the passage to which the 
grammarian alludes is actually found in the 26th chap¬ 
ter of the dialogue under consideration. The author 
of the dialogue, moreover, informs us, in the first chap¬ 


ter, that he was a very young man {juvenis admodum) 
when he wrote it, or, at least, when he supposes it to 
have been held in his presence. This point of time 
is clearly determined in the 17th chapter; it was the 
sixth year of the reign of Vespasian, A.D. 75. Taci¬ 
tus at this period would be about sixteen years of age. 
From what has been said then, it will be perceived 
that, as far as chronology is concerned, nothing pre¬ 
vents our regarding Tacitus as the author of the dia 
logue in question. It is true, we find a marked differ¬ 
ence between the style of the writer of this dialogue 
and that of the historian ; but would not the interve¬ 
ning period of forty years sufficiently account for this 
discrepance, and the language of the man be different 
from the tone of early youth'! Might not, too, the 
same writer have varied his style in order to adapt 
it to different subjects'? Ought he not to assimilate 
it to the various characters who bear a part in the 
dialogue'! Induced by these and other reasons, Pi- 
thou, Dodwell, Schulze, and many others, have giv¬ 
en their opinion in favour of our adhering to the ti¬ 
tles of the manuscripts, and have ascribed the dia¬ 
logue to Tacitus. Rhenanus was the first who en¬ 
tertained doubts respecting the claim of Tacitus to 
the authorship of this production, and since his time, 
Dousa, Stephens, Freinshemius, and others no less 
celebrated, have contended that Quintilian, not Taci¬ 
tus, must be regarded as the true writer of the work. 
They place great reliance on two passages of Quin¬ 
tilian, where that writer says expressly that he had 
composed a separate treatise on the causes of the cor¬ 
ruption of eloquence {Inst. Or., 6, 8, 6), as well as on 
many other passages in which this same work is cited, 
without the author’s indicating the title. How can 
we suppose, it is asked, that either Tacitus or Pliny 
would be inclined to treat of a subject which had al¬ 
ready been discussed by Quintilian'! These same 
critics observe, moreover, that there appears to be a 
great analogy, not only between the matters treated of 
in this dialogue and those .which form the subject of 
Quintilian’s writings, but also between his style and 
that of the work in question. But it may be replied, 
in the first place, that, at the time when the dialogue 
was written, Quintilian was already thirty-three years 
of age, a period of life to which the expression juvenis 
admodum can with no propriety whatever be made to 
apply. 'In the next place, the argument deduced from 
analogy of style is not the most conclusive, since those 
critics who assign the work to Pliny or Tacitus ad- » 
duce a similar argument in support of their claims. 
On the other hand, the argument which has been 
drawn from identity of title would be a very strong 
one, if it were not a fact that the second title, which 
is found in modern editions, De causis corruptee elo- 
quentice, owes its existence entirely to Lipsius, who 
thought fit to add this second title, which he had found 
in Quintilian All the manuscripts and the early edi¬ 
tions merely have the title De claris oratoribus, or else 
this one, Dialogus an sui seeeuli oratores et quare con- 
cedant. Another circumstance very much against the 
idea of Quintilian’s being the author of the piece, is 
the fact of his more than once referring the reader to 
his other work for matters of which the dialogue we 
are considering makes not the slightest mention ; such, 
for example, are the hyperbole and exaggeration, of 
which he speaks in the third book, ch. 3 and 6. The 
latest editor of Quintilian, Spalding, has carefully col¬ 
lected all these passages, which, in his opinion, show 
that Quintilian was not the author of the dialogue.— 
On the introduction of printing, the manuscript of the 
Annals had become so scarce, that, when Vindelinus 
of Spires published his edition, in 1468 or 1469, of 
the works of Tacitus, it contained merely the last six 
books of the Annals, four books of the History, with 
part of the fifth, the Treatise on the Manners of the 
Germans, and the Dialogue concerning Oratory. Thn 

1283 




TACITUS. 


T M N 


fast six books of the Annals had not then been found. 
Leo X. promised a pecuniary recompense and indulgen¬ 
ces to any one who should find the lost portions of 
the work. One of his agents, Angelo Arcoinboldi, 
discovered in the monastery of Corvey, in Westpha¬ 
lia, a manuscript which had belonged to Anschaire, 
the founder of the convent, and a bishop of the church. 
It contained the first five books of the Annals, the last 
book imperfect. Beroaldus published them at Rome, 
in 1515, by order of the pope.—Among the numerous 
editions of Tacitus, the following may be mentioned 
as the best:, that of Gronovius, L. Bat., 1721, 2 vols. 
4to ; that of Brotier, Paris, 1776, 7 vols. 12mo (re¬ 
printed by Valpy, Lond., 1823, 4 vols. 8vo); that of 
Ernesti, Lips., 1760, 2 vols. 8vo ; that of Oberlinus, 
Lips., 1801, 2 vols. 8vo, in four parts, reprinted at’Ox- 
ford in 1813, 4 vols. 8vo ; that of Walther, Hal. Sax., 
1831-3, 4 vols. 8vo ; and that of Naudet, forming part 
of Lemaire’s collection, Paris, 1819-20, 5 vols. 8vo. 

( Scholl, Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 2, p. 366, seqq. — Bahr, 
Gesch. Rom. Lit., p. 311, seqq.) —II. M. Claudius, a 
Roman, elected emperor by the senate after the death 
of Aurelian. The assassination of Aurelian had so 
much enraged the army, that the soldiers were more 
intent, for a time, on bringing his murderers to condign 
punishment than on providing a successor. Even 
after they had recovered from the first paroxysm of 
wrath, they hesitated whether they should immediately 
exercise the right which long custom had placed in 
their hands, or wait for the advice and concurrence of 
the senate in choosing a head for the empire. Upon a 
short deliberation, they adopted the latter alternative, 
and resolved to write, or else to send a deputation to 
Rome. The senators, long unused to such deference, 
knew not how to act when the message came ; and, 
unwilling to incur responsibility, referred the matter 
back to the legions. But the army, actuated by a very 
uncommon degree of moderation, renewed their re¬ 
quest to the civil authorities to supply them with a 
general and ruler; and it was not until this reciprocal 
compliment was urged and rejected three times that 
the senators agreed to assemble and discharge their 
duty to the empire. Meanwhile, six or seven months 
had insensibly passed away ; an amazing period, it has 
been remarked, of tranquil anarchy, during which the 
Roman world remained without a sovereign, without 
a usurper, and without a sedition. ( Vopisc., Vit. 
Tacit., c. 1.) On the 25th of September, A.D. 275. 
the senate was convoked to exercise once more the 
valuable prerogative with which the constitution of 
Rome had invested their order. The individual whom 
they elected inherited the name and the virtues of 
Tacitus, the celebrated historian, and was, besides, re¬ 
spected for his wisdom, his experience in business, and 
his mild benevolence. This venerable legislator had 
already attained his 75th year, a circumstance which 
he urged, with a great show of reason, for declining the 
honour which was now assigned him. But his objec¬ 
tions were repelled by the most flattering encomiums, 
and his election was confirmed by acclamation among 
both citizens and soldiers. It was the wisdom not 
less than the inclination of the aged emperor that in¬ 
duced him to leave much of the supreme power in the 
hands from which he received it. He encouraged the 
senate to resume their wonted authority ; to appoint 
proconsuls in all the provinces, and to exercise all the 
other privileges which had been conferred upon them 
by Augustus. His moderation and simplicity were 
not affected by the change of his condition ; the only 
expense which he permitted to himself was the en¬ 
couragement which he bestowed on the fine arts, and 
the only personal indulgences which he would not re¬ 
sign were reading and conversation with literary men. 
He took great pains to preserve the writings of his 
ancestor the historian ; for which purpose he gave or¬ 
ders that every public library should possess that au- 
1284 


thor’s works, and that, to render this object more prac¬ 
ticable, ten copies of them should be transcribed every 
year in one of the public offices. His short reign 
however, prevented any good results from being pro 
duced by this decree.—Having obtained the approba¬ 
tion of the citizens, Tacitus departed from the capital 
to show himself to the army in Thrace. The usual 
largesses secured his popularity among the soldiers; 
and the reverence which he found still subsisting for 
the memory of Aurelian, dictated the punishment of 
certain chiefs of the conspiracy which had taken away 
his life. But his attention was soon withdrawn from 
the investigation of past delinquencies to meet an ur¬ 
gent danger. When the late emperor was making 
preparations to invade Persia, he had negotiated with 
a Scythian tribe, the Alani, to re-enforce his ranks with 
a detachment of their best troops. The barbarians, 
faithful to their engagement, arrived on the Roman 
frontiers with a strong body of cavalry ; but, before 
they made their appearance, Aurelian was dead, and 
the Persian war suspended. In these circumstances, 
the Alani, impatient of repose, and disappointed of 
their prey, soon turned their arms against the unfor¬ 
tunate provinces. They overran Pontus, Cappadocia, 
and Cilicia before Tacitus could show his readiness 
to satisfy their claims or punish their aggressions. 
Upon recovering, however, the stipulated reward, the 
greater number retired peaceably to their deserts; 
while those who refused to listen to terms were sub¬ 
dued at the point of the sword. (Vopisc., Vit. Ta¬ 
citus, c. 13.— Zosim., 1, 63, seqq. — Zonar., 12, 27.) 
But the triumphs and reign of this venerable sovereign 
were not of long duration. It is said that he fell a 
victim to the jealousy of certain officers of rank, who 
were offended at the undue promotion of his brother 
Florianus ; or to the angry passions of the soldiery, 
who despised his pacific genius and literary habits. 
But it is no less probable that he sank under the fa¬ 
tigues of the campaign, and the severity of the cli¬ 
mate, to both of which the pursuits of his later years 
had rendered him a stranger. It is clear, at all events, 
that he died at Tyana, in Cappadocia, after having 
swayed the sceptre of the Roman empire about two 
hundred days. (Vopisc., Vit. Tacit., c. 13.— Zosim., 
I, 63.— Encyclop. Melropol., div. 3, vol. 3, p. 57.) 

Tader, a river of Spain, near New 7 Carthage, called 
by Ptolemy the Terebris. It is now the Segura. 
(Plin., 3, 4.— Ptol., 2, 6.) 

T^enarus, a promontory of Laconia, forming the 
southernmost point of the Peloponnesus. It is now 
called Cape Matapan, which is a modern Greek cor¬ 
ruption from the ancient gETomov, a front, the prom¬ 
ontory boldly projecting into the Mediterranean. An¬ 
cient geographers reckoned thence to Cape Phycus 
in Africa 3000 stadia, to Cape Pachynus in Sicily 
4600 or 4000, and to the promontory of Malea 670. 
(Strabo, 363.) Near it was a cave, said to be the en¬ 
trance to Orcus, by which Hercules dragged Cerberus 
to the upper regions. Pausanias cites another version 
of the fable from Hecatseus of Miletus, which makes 
the cavern to have been the haunt of a large and dead¬ 
ly serpent, conquered by Hercules, and brought to Eu- 
rystheus (3, 25.— Creuzer, Hist. Gr. Fra.gm., p. 46). 
There was a temple on the promontory sacred to Nep¬ 
tune, and which was accounted an inviolable asylum. 
It seems to have been a species of cavern. On the 
promontory, also, was a statue of Arion seated on a 
dolphin. Taenarus became subsequently famous foi 
the beautiful marble of its quarries, which the Romans 
held in the highest estimation. It was a species of 
Verd Antique. About forty stadia from the promon¬ 
tory stood the city of Taenarus, afterward called Came 
or Camepolis. Mr. Morritt, in his journey through 
Laconia (Walpole's Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 56), was in¬ 
formed that there were considerable remains of an an- 
I cient city on Cape Grosso agreeing, as far as the dis 





TAM 


TAN 


vances could be ascertained, with Pausanias’s descrip¬ 
tion of Caenepolis. ( Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 
188.) 

Tages, an Etrurian divinity or Genius, said to have 
come forth from a clod of earth, an infant in form, but 
with all the wisdom and experience of an aged person. 
He first appeared, according to the legend, unto a 
husbandman near the city of Tarquinii, while the lat¬ 
ter was engaged in ploughing. ( Cic., Div., 2. 23.— 
Creuzer, et Moser , ad loc. — Isidor., Orig., 8, 9, p. 
374, ed. Arevall. — Lydus, dc Ostentis , p. 6, seqq., 
cd. Hase.) According to the last of the authorities 
just cited, the individual labouring in the field when 
Tages appeared was Tarchon, the founder of Tar¬ 
quinii, and the principal hero of Etrurian mythology. 
(Compare Muller, Etrusk., vol. 2, p. 26 ) Another 
account made Tages the son of Genius, and grandson 
of Jupiter; and it was he that instructed the twelve 
communities of Etruria in the art of predicting future 
events by the inspection of victims. ( Festus , p. 557, 
ed. Dacier.) —The form of this infant deity, his birth, 
and his attributes, all carry us back to the telluric di¬ 
vinities of Samothrace and Lernnos, and the mystic 
religion of the Pelasgi. The books, or, rather, oracles 
of Tages are frequently mentioned by the ancient 
writers, and were originally in verse. The Romans 
are said to have translated a part of them into prose. 
[Lydus, de Mens., p. 130, ed. Schow.; de Ostcnt., p. 
190, cd. Hase. — Guigniaut, vol. 2, pt. 1, p. 459, seq ) 

Tagus, a river of Spain, rising among the Celtiberi 
in Mons Idubeda. It pursues a course nearly due 
west, verging slightly to the south, and traverses the 
territories of the Celtiberi, Carpetani, Vettones, and 
Lusitani, until it reaches the Atlantic Ocean. The 
Tagus is the largest river in Spain, though Strabo 
considers the Minius as such, an evident error. The 
sands of this stream produced grains of gold, and, ac¬ 
cording to Mela, precious stones. It is now called by 
the Portuguese the Tajo, though its ancient name still 
remains in general use. At the mouth of this river 
stood Olisipo, now Lisbon. {Mela, 3, 1.— Ovid, Met., 
2, 251.— Sil., 4, 234.— Lucan, 7, 755. — Martial, 4, 
55, &c.) 

Talus, called otherwise Perdix, a nephew of Daed¬ 
alus. ( Vid. Perdix.) 

Tamara, I. a river of Hispania Tarraconensis, on 
the northwestern or Atlantic coast, and a short dis¬ 
tance below the Promontorium Artabrum, now the 
Tambre. {Mela, 3, 1.— Pliny, 31, 2.)—II. A town 
of Britain, on the river Tamarus, in the territory of 
the Damnonii, and, according to Cambden, now Tam - 
erton, near Plymouth. {Cambden, Britann., p. 158, 
ed. 1600.) 

Tamarus, I. a river of Britain, now the Tamar. 
{Cambden, Britann, p. 158, ed. 1600.) — II or, ac¬ 
cording to the Itin. Ant. (103), Thamarus, a river of 
Samnium, rising in the Apennines, and falling into the 
Galore. It is now the Tamaro. {Cramer's Ancient 
Italy, vol. 2, p. 261.) 

Tamasus or Tamaseus (T apdaeoq, S/eph. Byz.), 
a city of Cyprus, southeast of Soloe, and to the north¬ 
west of Mount Olympus. The adjacent territory was 
celebrated for its rich mines of copper, and for the 
metallic composition prepared on the spot, and called 
chalcanthum. {Strab., 683.) These mines appear to 
have been known as early as the days of Homer, for 
they are referred to in the Odyssey (1, 183). It has 
been disputed, however, among commentators, wheth¬ 
er the poet alludes to the Cyprian Tamasus, or the 
Italian Temesa or Tempsa, also famous for its cop¬ 
per mines. (Compare Steph. Byz., s. v. T apaoeoq.— 
Yonn., Dionys., 13, 445. — Plin., 5, 31.) In the vi¬ 
cinity of Tamasus was a celebrated plain, sacred to 
Venus, and where the goddess is said to have gathered 
the golden apples by which Hippomanes, to whom 
she gave them, was enabled to conquer Atalanta in 


the race. {Ovid, Met., 10, 644, seqq. — Cramer's 
Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 388.) 

Tamesis, a river of Britain, now the Thames. Cae¬ 
sar is generally supposed to have crossed this river at 
Coway Stakes, seven or eight miles above Kingston ; 
but Horsley seems to be of opinion that he forded it 
near that town. {Cues., B. G., 5, 11.) 

Tamos, a native of Memphis, and a faithful adherent 
of Cyrus the younger, whose fleet he commanded 
{Xen., Anab., 1, 2, 21.— Id. ib., 1, 4, 2.) After the 
death of Cyrus, he fled with his vessels, through fear 
of Tissaphernes, to Egypt, unto King Psammitichus, 
but was put to death by the latter, together with his 
children. The object of the Egyptian kirrg, in thus 
violating the rights of hospitality, was to get posses¬ 
sion of the fleet and treasures of Tamos. {Diod. Sic., 
14, 19.— Id., 14, 35.) 

Tanagra, a city of Boeotia, situate on an eminence, 
on the north bank of the Asopus, and near the mouth 
of that river. Its more ancient appellation was Graea. 
{Horn., II., 2, 498. — Lycophr., 644.) An obstinate 
battle was fought in this neighbourhood, between the 
Athenians and Lacedaemonians, prior to the Peloponne¬ 
sian war, when the former were defeated. The ruins 
of Tanagra were first discovered by Cockerell, at Gra - 
mada or Grimathi. —This place was famed among the 
ancients for its breed of fighting-cocks. {Cramer's 
Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 269.) 

Tanagrus or Tanager, a river of Lucania, rising 
in the central chain of the Apennines, between Casal 
Nuovo and Lago Negro, and, after flowing thirty 
miles through the valley of Diano, loses itself under 
ground for the space of two miles, and not twenty 
as it is stated in Pliny (2, 103). It reappears be¬ 
yond La Polla, at a place called Pertosa, and falls into 
the Silanus below Contursi. The modern name of 
the river is Negro. {Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p, 
377.) 

Tanais, I. now the Don, a large river of Europe, 
rising, according to Herodotus, in the territory of the 
Thyssagetes, from a large lake, and falling into the 
Palus Mseotis. Herodotus appears to have confounded 
the Tanais in the upper part of its course with the 
Rha or Wolga. Of the course of the latter, and its 
falling into the Caspian, he appears to have known 
nothing. The Tanais rises in the Valdai hills, in the 
government of Tula, and is about 800 miles in length. 
This river separated in ancient times European and 
Asiatic Sarmatia. In voyages written more than 
half a century ago, it is called the Tane ; at the same 
time communicating this name to the Palus Masotis ; 
the modern name Don is only a corrupt abbreviation 
of the ancient appellation. A city named Tanais, 
situate at its mouth, and which was the emporium of 
the commerce of the country, is celebrated in tradi¬ 
tion by the Slavons under the name of Aas-grad, or 
the city of Aas; and it is remarkable to find the name 
of Azof subsisting on the same site. It may, more¬ 
over, be remarked, that this name contributes to com¬ 
pose that of Tana'is, formed of two members, the first 
of which expresses the actual name of the river. The 
Greeks in the age of Alexander confounded the Tan¬ 
ais with the Iaxartes. {Vid. laxartes.)—Dr. Clarke 
{Travels in Russia, &c., vol. 1, p. 337, Lond. cd.) 
found the Cossack pronunciation of the name of this 
river to be Danaetz, Tdanaetz, or Tanaetz, and when 
sounded with quickness and volubility, it appeared to 
be the same as Tanais. Hence the ancient name of 
the river may satisfactorily be accounted for. Accord¬ 
ing to the same intelligent traveller, when the word 
Tanais was introduced into the Greek language, it had 
reference, not to the Don, but to another river, which 
enters that stream about ninety-nine rniies from its 
mouth, and which, according to a notion entertained 
from time immemorial by the people in this quarter 
it leaves again, taking a northwesterly direction, and 

1285 




TAN 


T A N 


falling into the Palus Mceotis to the north of all the 
other mouths of the Don. This northernmost mouth 
of the Don, owing to the river whose waters its chan¬ 
nel is supposed peculiarly to contain, is called Dana- 
etz also, and, to express either its sluggish current 
or its lapse into the sea, Dead Danaetz. The Greeks, 
■teering from the Crimea towards the months of the 
Don, and, as their custom was, keeping close to the 
shore, entered first this northernmost mouth of the 
river, and gave it the name of Tana'is, from its native 
appellation. As regards the etymology of the name, 
on which head Dr. Clarke is silent, it may be remark¬ 
ed that Bayer ( Commt. Acad. Petr., vol. 9, p. 375) 
supposes an early European people to have once ex¬ 
isted, in whose language a word like Tan, Ton, Don , 
or Dunai may have signified “ water,” from which 
were gradually derived such names of rivers as Tan- 
ais, Danapcris, Danaster, Danubius (Tunowe in the 
Niebelungenlied, v. 6116. — Advovbtg in Procopius), 
Don, Dima, 'P ovdov (in Ptolemy), Eridan, Ro-dan, 
&c. It is a curious confirmation, in part at least, of 
this hypothesis, that the Ossetes, a Caucasian tribe, 
have the word Don in their language as a general term 
for “ water,” “ river,” &c., and designate all mount¬ 
ain streams by this appellation. (Compare Lehrberg, 
Untersuchungen , &c., Petersb., p. 400.— Ritter, Vor- 
halle, &c., p. 304.)—II. A city in Asiatic Sarmatia, at 
the mouth of the Tanais, which soon became suffi¬ 
ciently powerful, by reason of its extensive commerce, 
to withdraw itself from the sway of the kings of the 
Bosporus, and establish its independence. One of 
these same monarchs, however, by name Polemo, sub¬ 
sequently took and destroyed it. It was afterward 
rebuilt, but never attained its former eminence. The 
ruins of the place are to the west of the modern Azof. 
(Plin., 6, 7.— Steph. Byz., s. v.) 

Tanaquil, in Etrurian Tanchufil (Muller, Etrusker, 
1, p. 72), called also Caia CczciUa, was the wife of 
Tarquinius Priscus, the fifth king of Rome. ( Vid. 
Tarquinius I.) Niebuhr makes the Tarquin family of 
Latin, not of Etrurian origin ; and thinks that the 
name Caia Ccecilia belongs to a legend concerning 
Tarquinius entirely different from that which became 
prevalent. “ In the latter legend,” observes this em¬ 
inent writer, “Tanaquil comes to Rome with Tarquin, 
and outlives him ; it is not even pretended anywhere 
that she, too, changed her Etruscan name. Caacilia 
had a statue in a temple, so intimately was she asso¬ 
ciated with the older tradition ; and her name implies 
a connexion with Praeneste, said to have been built by 
Caiculus ( Serv. ad Virg., JEn., 7,681), the hero after 
whom the Caacilii were called. In this point the 
feigned Etruscan Tarquinius has not quite obliterated 
the traces of the Latin Priscus : the historians throw 
aside altogether what they cannot bring into unison 
with their accounts.” ( Niebuhr's Rom. Hist., vol. 
1, p. 324, Cambr. transl.) —Tanaquil was represent¬ 
ed in the Roman traditions as a woman of high spirit, 
and accustomed to rule her husband ; hence the name 
is used by the Latin poets to indicate generally any 
imperious consort. (Anson., Epist., 23, 31.— Juve¬ 
nal, Sat., 6, 564.) She was also celebrated in the 
same legends as an excellent spinster ( lanifica ) and 
housewife ; and her distaff and spindle were preserved 
in the temple of Sancus or Hercules. ( Cic ., pro Mur., 
12.— Plin., 8, 48.) It was Tanaquil that, after the 
murder of Tarquinius Priscus, managed adroitly to se¬ 
cure the succession to Servius Tullius, her son-in-law. 
(Vid. Tarquinius I., near the close of that article.) 

Tanis, a city of Egypt, at the entrance of, and giv¬ 
ing name to, the Tanitic mouth of the Nile, between 
the Mendesian and Pelusiac. This city is the Zoan 
of the Scriptures, and its remains are still called San. 
The Ostium Taniticum is now the Omm-Faredje 
mouth. (Numbers, 13, 22.— Isaiah, 19, 11, 13.) 

T antalides, a patronymic applied to the descend- 
1286 


ants of Tantalus, such as Niobe, Hermione, &c.— 
Agamemnon and Menelaiis, as grandsons of lantalus, 
are called “ Tantalidae fratres" by Ovid. (Her., 8 
45, 122.) 

Tantalus, a king of Lydia, son of Jupiter by a 
nymph called Pluto (Wealth), was the father of Pe 
lops, and of Niobe the wife of Amphion.—Ulysses, 
when relating to the Phaeacians what he had be¬ 
held in the lower world, describes Tantalus as stand¬ 
ing up to the chn in water, which constantly eludes 
his lip as often as he attempts to quench the thirst 
that torments him. Over his head grow all kinds of 
fruits ; but, whenever he reaches forth his hands to 
take them, the wind scatters them to the clouds. (Od., 
11, 581, seqq.) The passage of Homer, however, on 
which this account rests, was regarded by Aristar¬ 
chus as spurious, according to the scholiast on Pindar 
(Olymp., 1,97). If we reject the verses of the Odys¬ 
sey which have just been referred to, and the authen¬ 
ticity of which has been farther invalidated by an un¬ 
edited scholiast whom Porson cites (ad Eurip., Orest., 
5), we then come, in the order of time, to the account 
given first by Archilochus (Pausan., 1ft, 21, 12), and 
after him by Pindar. According to this poet, Jupiter 
hung a vast rock in the air over the head of Tantalus, 
which, always menacing to descend and crush him, 
deprives him of all joy, and makes him “ a wanderer 
from happiness.” (01., 1, 57, seqq., ed. Bockh. — 
Bockh , ad loc.) Pindar does not mention the place 
of his punishment, but Euripides says it was the ant 
between heaven and earth, and that the rock was sus¬ 
pended over him by golden chains. (Eurip., Orest., 
6, 7,972, scq.) —The offence of Tantalus, which call¬ 
ed down upo‘n him this severe infliction, is variously 
stated. The common account makes him to have 
killed and dressed his son Pelops, and to have placed 
his remains as food before the gods, whom he had in¬ 
vited to a banquet, in order to test their divinity. (Vid. 
Pelops.) Pindar, however, rejects this legend as un¬ 
becoming the majesty of the gods, and says, that if 
ever mortal man was honoured by the dwellers of 
Olympus, it was Tantalus; but that he could not di¬ 
gest his happiness. They admitted him, he adds, to 
feast at their table on nectar and ambrosia, which made 
him immortal ; but he stole some of the divine food, 
and gave it to his friends on earth. This, according 
to Pindar, was the crime for which he was punished. 
(Pind., 1. c.) Euripides, on the other hand, says that 
the offence of Tantalus was his not restraining his 
tongue ; that is, probably, his divulging the secrets of 
the gods. (Eurip., Orest., 10.) — The residence of 
Tantalus was placed at the foot of Mount Sipylus in 
Lydia. Hence, according to another legend, Jupiter 
cast this mountain upon him ; for Pandareus having 
stolen the golden dog which had guarded the goat that 
reared the god, gave it to Tantalus to keep. Mercury 
being sent to reclaim the dog, Tantalus denied all 
knowledge of it, and, for his falsehood, the mountain 
was thrown upon him. (Schol. ad Pind., 01., 1, 97. 
— Anton., lib. 36.) This last trifling legend is, as we 
may easily see, one of the many attempts at localizing 
the ancient myths; for Sipylus, it is plain, was design¬ 
ed to take the place of the mythic rock.—The name 
Tantalus is, like Sisyphus, a reduplication, and his 
myth is evidently one of those handed down from grave 
old Pelasgic times. The root of Tantalus is probably 
JuTiko, and he represents the man who is flourishing 
and abounding in wealth, but whose desires are insa¬ 
tiable (Qd’XdaJoq, for euphony made T dvraloq, tb<» 
letters 6, r, A, and v being frequently commuted.— 
Welcker, ap. Schwenck, And,cut., p. 265.— Volcker, 
Myth, der lap. Geschl., p. 355). The Homeric pic¬ 
ture exhibits in lively colours the misery of such a 
state, The other form of the legend represents, per¬ 
haps, the cares and fears attendant upon riches ; or, 
it may be, as has ingeniously been conjectured, an im- 



TAP 


TAR 


ige ot the evils of ambition and the inordinate pursuit 
of honours ; for when Tantalus, it was said, had at¬ 
tained his ultimate desire, and was admitted to the 
table of the gods, his joy was converted into terror by 
his fancying a rock suspended over his head, and ready 
to crush him; and he sought permission to resign his 
seat at the celestial table. ( Aleman, ap. Schol. ad 
Find., 1. c. — Nic. Damasc., ap. Stob ., 14, 7.— Welck- 
er, das Epische Cyclus, p. 280, seqq.) It was prob¬ 
ably the idea of the great wealth of Lydia that caus¬ 
ed the myth of Tantalus to be localized at Sipylus. 
(Ketgktlcy's Mythology, p. 442, seq.) 

TaphLs, islands in the Ionian Sea, on the north 
coast of Ithaca, or, rather, between Leucadia and the 
east of Acarnania. They form a considerable group, 
and are often mentioned by Homer and other classical 
writers as the haunt of notorious pirates. ( Od ., 1, 
417 .) The principal island is that which is called by 
Homer Taphos, but by later writers Taphius and Ta- 
phiussa ( Strabo , 458), and is probably the one known 
to modern geographers by the name of Meganisi. 
Mr. Dodwell informs us that Calamo, another of the 
Taphian group, produces perhaps the finest flour in the 
world, which is sent to Corfu, and sold as a luxury 
(vol. 1, p 61). The Taphiae were also called Tela- 
bose. ( Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 55.) They 
were fabled to have received these names from Taphi¬ 
us and Telebous, the sons of Neptune, who reigned 
there. The Taphians made war against Electryon, 
king of Mycenas, and murdered all his sons ; upon 
which the monarch promised his kingdom and his 
daughter in marriage to whoever could avenge the 
death of his children upon the Taphians. Amphitryon 
did it with success, and obtained the hand of the 
maiden. ( Apdlod ., 2, 4.) 

Taphr^s, a city in the Tauric Chersonese, on the 
narrowest part of the isthmus. The ancient name is 
derived from ra<jipdf, a ditch or trench, one having 
been cut close to the town to defend the entrance into 
the Chersonese. The modern Prekop marks the site 
of the ancient city. (Mela, 2, 1.— Plin., 4, 12.) 

Taphros, the strait between Corsica and Sardinia, 
now the straits of St. Bonifacio. (Plin., 3, 6.) 

Taprobane, an island in the Indian Ocean, now 
called Ceylon. The Greeks first learned the exist¬ 
ence of this island after the expedition of Alexander, 
when ambassadors were sent by them to the court of 
Palimbothra. The account then received was ampli¬ 
fied so much, that this island was deemed the com¬ 
mencement of another world, inhabited by antichthones, 
or men in a position opposite to those in the known 
hemisphere. Ptolemy, better informed, makes it an 
island, five times greater, however, than it really is. 
Strabo speaks of it as though it lay off the hither coast 
of India, looking towards the continent of Africa. 
The name of Salice, which we learn from Ptolemy to 
have been the native denomination of the island, is 
preserved in that of Selen-dive, compounded of the 
proper name Selen and the appellative for an island in 
the Indian language, and it is apparent that the name 
of Ceilan or Ceylon , according to the European usage, 
is only an alteration in orthography. Ptolemy calls it 
a very fertile island, and mentions as its produce rice, 
honey (or rather, perhaps, sugar), ginger, and also 
precious stones, with ail sorts of metals; he speaks, 
toe, of its elephants and tigers. It is surprising, how¬ 
ever, that neither Ptolemy nor those who preceded 
him say anything of the cinnamon, which now forms 
the chief produce of the island. The ancients could 
not be ignorant of the nature of this article, especially 
as they called a portion of the eastern coast of Africa 
by the name of Regio Cinnamomifera. (Strabo, 72. 
— Id., 690.— Mela, 3, 7.—Plin., 6, 22 .—Cosmas In- 
dicopl , II, p. 336 ) 

Tapsus, a small and lowly situated peninsula on the 
eastern coast of Sicily Its name has reference to its 


low situation, from #d7rrw, sepelio. It lay off Hybla. 
The neck of land connecting it with the main island 
of Sicily was so low that Servius calls the promontory 
itself an island ; and it is even now styled Isola delli 
Manghisi. (Virg., JEn., 3, 689.) 

Taras (-antis), I. a son of Neptune, who, according 
to some, was the founder of Tarentum, called in 
Greek T dpa^. (Vid. Tarentum.)—II. A small river 
to the west of Tarentum, now the Tara. (Stcph. 
Byz., s. v. Tdpcf.) 

Tarasco, a city of Gaul, on the eastern side of the 
Rhone, and north of Arelate. It is now Tarascon, 
lying opposite to Beaucaire. (Bischoff und Mbller , 
Worterb. der Geogr., p. 947.) 

Tarbelli, a people of Aquitanic Gaul, at the foot 
of the Pyrenees, whose chief city was Aquas Augustas, 
now Aqs, or, according to some, Dax. (Cces., B. G., 
3, 27.) 

Tarentum (in Greek Tdpaq), now Taranto, a cele¬ 
brated city of Lower Italy, situated in the northeastern 
angle of the Sinus Tarentinus, and in the territory of 
Messapia or Iapygia. It was founded, according to 
some, by a Cretan colony before the Trojan war, and 
received its name from the leader of the colony, 
Taras, a reputed son of Neptune (i. e., a powerful 
naval chieftain). In the 21st Olympiad, a strong body 
of emigrants arrived under Philanthus from Laconia, 
so that it seemed to be refounded. The new colony 
established themselves upon an aristocratical plan, en¬ 
larged the fortifications of the city, and formed it into a 
near resemblance of Sparta. Most of the nobles having 
subsequently perished in a war with the Iapyges, democ¬ 
racy was introduced. The favourable situation of the 
place contributed to its rapid prosperity. Placed in 
the centre, as it were, it obtained the whole commerce 
of the Adriatic, Ionian, and Tyrrhenian Seas. The ad¬ 
jacent country was fertile in grain and fruit; the pastures 
were excellent, and the flocks afforded a very fine wool. 
At this most prosperous period of the republic, which 
may be supposed to date about 400 B.C., when Rome 
was engaged in the siege of Veii, and Greece was en¬ 
joying some tranquillity after the long struggle of the 
Peloponnesian war, Archytas, a distinguished philoso¬ 
pher of the school of Pythagoras, and an able statesman, 
presided over her counsels as strategos. Her navy 
was far superior to that, of any other Italian colony. 
Nor were her military establishments less formidable 
and efficient, since she could bring into the field a 
force of 30,000 foot and 5000 horse, exclusive of a 
select body of cavalry called Hipparchi. (Heyne, 
Opusc. Acad , vol. 2, p. 223.) The Tarentines were 
long held in great estimation as auxiliary troops, and 
were frequently employed in the armies of foreign 
princes and states. ( Strabo , 280.— Mlian, Var. 
Hist., 7, 4.— Polyb., II, 12.—7<L, 16, 15.)—Nor was 
the cultivation of the arts and of literature forgotten 
in the advancement of political strength and civiliza¬ 
tion. The Pythagorean sect, which in other parts of 
Magna Grsecia had been so barbarously oppressed, 
here found encouragement and refuge through the in¬ 
fluence of Archytas, who was said to have entertained 
Plato during his residence in this city. (Cic.,de Sen., 
12.) And the first sculptors and painters of Greece 
contributed to embellish Tarentum with several splen¬ 
did mournents, which ancient authors have dwelt upon 
with admiration, and which, at a later period, when 
transferred to Rome, served to decorate the Capitol. 
But their grandeur was not of long duration; for 
wealth arid abundance soon engendered a love of ease 
and luxury, the consequences of which proved fatal to 
the interests of Tarentum, by sapping the vigour of 
her institutions, enervating the minds and corrupting 
the morals of her inhabitants. Effeminacy and volup¬ 
tuousness gradually usurped the place of energy and 
courage, and the Tarentines became the abandoned 
slaves of licentiousness and vice. To such excess, 

1287 




TARENTUM. 


TAR 


indeed, was the love of pleasure carried, that the num¬ 
ber of their annual festivals is said to have exceeded 
that of the days of the year. Hence the expressions 
so ofte.i applied to it by Horace, of “ molle ” and “zw- 
belle Taicntum ,” and by Juvenal (6, 297), of “ At- 
que coronation et pctulans madidumque Tarcntum 
(Strabo , 280. — Theopomp., ap. Ath.cn ., 4, 19. — Cle¬ 
ared., ap. Eund., 12,4.— JElian, V.H., 12, 30.) En¬ 
feebled and degraded by this system of demoralization 
and corruption, the Tarentines soon found themselves 
unable, as heretofore, to overawe and keep in subjec¬ 
tion the neighbouring barbarians of Iapygia, who had 
always hated and feared, but now learned to despise 
them. These, leagued with the still more warlike 
Lucanians, who had already become the terror of 
Magna Graecia, now made constant inroads into their 
territory, and even threatened the safety of the city. 
Incapable of exertion, and having no leaders possess¬ 
ed of any military talent or energy, the Tarentines 
were compelled to call in to their aid experienced 
commanders from Greece, whom ambition, perhaps, or 
the desire of gain, might induce to quit their native 
soil in search of wealth and renown. A more gener¬ 
ous motive, perhaps, influenced Archidainus, king of 
Sparta, who was the first to engage in their defence, 
for he might regard Tarentum as having just claims to 
his protection as a Spartan colony. But this valiant 
prince fell in the first engagement with the enemy. 
Alexander of Epirus, who was the next ally of the 
Tarentines, was soon disgusted with their feeble and 
irresolute conduct, and abandoned their cause to 
prosecute his own ambitious designs. ( Strab ., 1. c. 
— Liv., 8, 17.) He was followed by the Spartan Cle- 
omenes, and afterward by Agathocles; but the ser¬ 
vices of these adventurers were productive of little 
benefit to the republic, they being more intent on their 
own interests than those of the people which sought 
their aid. Tarentum, in consequence of these failures, 
might have been induced to depend upon her own re¬ 
sources, had the barbarians of Iapygia or Lucania re¬ 
mained her only foes. But a more formidable enemy 
now entered the lists. This was Rome, who, by con¬ 
tinued successes over the Samnites, and the subjec¬ 
tion ol Apulia, had now extended her dominion nearly 
to the walls of Tarentum. A pretext for war was 
soon found by these powerful invaders. An insult 
said to have been publicly offered one of the Roman 
ambassadors was here the plea assigned for the decla¬ 
ration of war, and the Tarentines again had recourse, 
in this emergency, to foreign aid. The valour and 
forces of Pyrrhus for a time averted the storm ; but, 
when that prince withdrew from Italy, Tarentum could 
no longer withstand her powerful enemies, and soon 
after fell into their hands ; the surrender of the town 
being hastened by the treachery of the Epirot force 
which Pyrrhus had left there. The Tarentines were 
compelled by the Romans to surrender their arms and 
their ships of war ; their walls were dismantled, and 
a heavy fine was imposed as the condition of peace. 

( Liv.,.Epit ., 15.) To this harsh treatment may just¬ 
ly be ascribed the subsequent conduct of the Taren¬ 
tines during the second Punic war, in declaring for 
Hannibal, whom they must have regarded more in the 
light of a deliverer from a state of oppression than as 
an invader of their country. They opened their gates 
to his forces, and warmly seconded his efforts to re¬ 
duce the Roman garrison, which still held out in the cit¬ 
adel. ( Polyb ., 8, 26.— Liv., 25, 9.) Such, however, 
was the strength of their fortress, that it effectually 
withstood all the attacks made upon it; and when the 
attention of the Carthaginian general was drawn off 
to other parts of Italy, Tarentum was surprised and 
recaptured by the Romans, under the command of 
Fabius Maximus, who treated it as a city taken from 
the enemy. The plunder obtained by them on this 
occasion was immense; the pictures and statues be- 
1288 


ing said to have nearly equalled in number those of 
Syracuse. Livy commends, on this occasion, the 
moderation of Fabius, and intimates that he allowed 
these works of art to remain undisturbed (27, 16) ; 
but Strabo asserts that many articles were removed 
by that general, and, among others, a colossal bronze 
statue of Hercules, the work of the celebrated Lysip¬ 
pus. From this period the prosperity and political ex¬ 
istence of Tarentum may date its decline, which was 
farther accelerated by the preference shown by the 
Romans to the port of Brundisium for the fitting out 
of their naval armaments, as well as for commercial 
purposes. The salubrity of its climate, the singular 
fertility of its territory, its purple dye, and its advan¬ 
tageous situation on the sea, as well as on the Appian 
Way, still rendered it, however, a city of consequence 
in the Augustan age. Strabo reports that, though a 
great portion of its extent was deserted in his time, 
the inhabited part still constituted a large town. 
That geographer describes the inner harbour as being 
100 stadia, or 12£ miles in circuit; a computation, 
however, which does not agree with modern measure¬ 
ments, which represent the circuit.of the harbour at 
16 miles. Strabo makes the site of the town very 
low, but the ground to rise, however, a little towards 
the citadel.—The modern town now occupies the site 
of the ancient citadel. ( Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, 
p. 318.) 

Tarichea, I. a strong city of Palestine, south of Ti¬ 
berias, and lying at the southern extremity of the 
Lake of Genesareth. or Sea of Tiberias. Its situa¬ 
tion was well adapted for fisheries ; and from the pro¬ 
cess of pickling fish (Tapixevu, “ to pickle"), which 
was carried on here upon a very extensive scale, the 
town derived its name. ( Plin., 5, 6.— Joseph., B. 
J., 3, 17.)—II. Several towns on the coast of Egypt 
bore this name from a similar cause. 

Tarpa, Spurius MiEcius or Mecius, a critic at 
Rome in the age of Augustus. He was appointed, 
with four others, to examine into the merits of every 
dramatic production before it was allowed to be repre¬ 
sented on the stage ; and he is said to have dischar¬ 
ged this office with the greatest impartiality. ( Herat 
Sat., 1, 10, 38.—Compare Ep. ad Pis., 387.) 

Tarpeia, I. the daughter of Tarpeius, the governor 
of the citadel of Rome. She promised to open the 
gates of the city to the Sabines, provided they gave 
her their gold bracelets, or, as she expressed it, what 
they carried on their left arms. Tatius, the king of 
the Sabines, consented ; and, as he entered the gates, 
to punish her perfidy, he threw, not his bracelet, but 
his shield upon Tarpeia. His followers imitated his 
example, and Tarpeia was crushed under the weight 
of the shields of the Sabine army. (Liv., 1, 11.) 
This version of the story represents Tarpeia as a venal 
traitress. Piso, however, one of the earlier annalists, 
endeavours to exalt the daughter of Tarpeius to a he 
roine, who meant to sacrifice herself for her country. 
She was described by him as having planned to make 
the Sabines, by virtue of their agreement, ratified as it 
was by oath, deliver up to her their arms and armour, 
and so to consign them, disarmed, to the Romans: the 
laying down of the arms was to take place on the Cap¬ 
itol, a spot where not a Roman, except perhaps pris¬ 
oners, would have been to be found ! Livy alludes to 
this version of the tale, but makes no remark about 
its utter absurdity. (Liv., 1. c .—Compare Niebnkr, 
Rom. Hist., vol. 1, p. 199, Cambr. transl.) Tarpeia 
was buried on the hill, and from her one of the two 
summits of the Capitoline Mount took the name of the 
Tarpeian rock (Tarpeia Rapes, called also Tarpeius 
Mons), and from it state criminals were afterward ac¬ 
customed to be thrown. (Vid. Tarpeius Mons.)—Nie¬ 
buhr, who very properly rejects the whole story about 
Tarpeia as purely fabulous, observes, that the Roman 
poet who invented the Jegend “ conceived the pool 




TAR 


TAR 


Sabines covered with gold, as, Fauriel remarks, the 
bards of modern Greece do their Clephts. Here is 
popular poetry unequivocally obvious for one who has 
eyes to see it. The fiction of Propertius (4, 4) seems 
to be a transfer, warranted by no tradition, from the 
history of the Megarian Scylla.” (Rom. Hist., vol. 1, 
p. 192.) The same writer informs us, that the re¬ 
membrance of Tarpeia’s guilt still lives in a popular 
legend at the present day. “ The whole of the Capi- 
toline Hill,” he observes, “ is pierced with quarries, 
passages of remote antiquity worked through the loose 
tufo : many of these have been walled up ; but near 
the houses erected upon the rubbish which covers the 
Hundred Steps, on the side of the Tarpeian rock that 
looks towards the forum, beside some ruinous build¬ 
ings known by the name of the Palazzacio, several are 
accessible. A report of a well of extraordinary depth,- 
which must have been older than the aqueducts, since 
no one would have spent the labour on it afterward, 
and which, no doubt, secured a supply of water to the 
garrison during the Gallic siege, attracted me into this 
labyrinth : we were conducted by girls from the ad¬ 
joining houses, who related, as we went, that in the 
heart of the hill the fair Tarpeia sits, covered with 
gold and jewels, enchanted : he who endeavours to 
reach her never finds out the way ; once only she had 
been seen by the brother of one of our guides. The 
inhabitants of this quarter are smiths and low victual¬ 
lers, without the slightest touch of that seemingly liv¬ 
ing knowledge of antiquity which other classes have 
drawn from the most turbid sources of vulgar books. 
Real oral tradition, therefore, has kept Tarpeia for five- 
and-twenty hundred years in the mouth of the com¬ 
mon people, who for many centuries have been stran¬ 
gers to the names of Olcelia and Cornelia.” (Niebuhr, 
Rom. Hist., vol. ], p. 193.)—II. One of the female 
attendants of Camilla in the Rutulian war. (Virg., 
Mn., 11, 656.) 

Tarpeius, Sp., the governor of the citadel of Rome 
under Romulus. (Vid. Romulus, Tarpeia, and Capit- 
olinus III.) 

Tarpeius Mons, or, more correctly, Tarpeia Ru- 
pes, a celebrated rock at Rome, forming a part of the 
Mons Capitolinus, and on the steepest side, where it 
overhung the Tiber. From this rock state criminals 
were accustomed to be thrown in the earlier Roman 
times It received its name in commemoration of the 
treachery of Tarpeia, and of her having been killed 
here by the Sabines.—Vasi gives the present height 
at fifty-five feet. A modern tourist remarks as fol¬ 
lows : “Though it is certain that the Tarpeian rock 
was on the western side of the Capitoline Mount, it 
would be in vain to inquire where was the precise spot 
of execution ; whether Manlius was hurled down that 
part of the precipice at the extremity of Monte Capri- 
no , or that behind the Palazzo de' Conservatori. 
There is still height enough in either to make the pun¬ 
ishment both tremendous and fatal ; although not only 
have the assaults of time, war, and violence, but the 
very convulsions of nature, contributed to lower it ; 
for repeated earthquakes have shattered the friable tufo 
of which it is composed, and large fragments of it fell 
as late as the middle of the fifteenth century. The 
fall of these masses has diminished the elevation in 
two ways : by lowering the actual height, and filling 
up the base, to which the ruins of the overthrown build¬ 
ings that once stood upon it have materially contribu¬ 
ted. Still the average of various measurements and 
computations of its present elevation make it above 
60 feet; nor do I think it overrated. Certainly those 
who have maintained that there would be no danger in 
leaping from its summit, would not, I imagine, be bold 
enough to try the experiment themselves. The en¬ 
trance to it is through a mean, filthy passage, which 
leads to an old wooden door.” (Rome in the Nine¬ 
teenth Century , vol. 1, p. 179, Am. ed.) 

8 A 


! Tarquinii, one of the most powerful cities of Etru¬ 
ria, and celebrated in history for its early connexion 
with Rome. It was situate in the lower part of Etru¬ 
ria, near the coast, and to the northwest of Casre. 
Strabo ascribes the foundation of the place to Tarchon, 
the famous Etruscan chief, who is so often mentioned 
by the poets. Justin makes it to have been founded 
by some Thessalians and Spinumbri, meaning, doubt¬ 
less, the Pelasgi and Umbri', who came from Spma on 
the Adriatic. According to the common account, the 
progenitor of the Tarquinian family, Demaratus, set¬ 
tled here, and from this city the Tarquinian family 
came to Rome. Niebuhr, however, holds a different 
opinion, and makes the Tarquinian family of Latin, not 
Etruscan, origin. (Consult remarks under the articles 
Tanaquil, and Tarquinius I.) Some ruins, to which 
the name of Turchina is attached, point out the an¬ 
cient site of Tarquinii. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, 
p. 197.) The Etrurians regarded Tarquinii as the 
metropolis, or parent of all their other cities : a strong 
proof in favour of civilization having come to this coun¬ 
try from the sea. ( Muller . Etrusker, vol. 1, p. 72.) 

Tarquinia, a daughter of Tarquinius, who married 
Servius Tullius. When her husband was murdered 
by Tarquinius Superbus, and public rites of sepulture 
were denied to his remains by the usurper, she, togeth¬ 
er with a few friends, conveyed away the corpse by 
night, and gave it a private burial. Tarquinia survived 
her consort only one day, having died either through 
grief, which caused her to commit suicide, or else hav¬ 
ing been put to death secretly by Tarquinius Superbus 
and his wife. (Dion. Hal., 4, 40.) 

Tarquinius, I. Priscus, the fifth king of Rome, 
According to the common account, as found in the 
Latin writers (for Niebuhr’s theory will be given at 
the end of this article), he was a noble and wealthy 
Tuscan, son of Demaratus, a native of Corinth, who 
had come from Greece and settled in Etruria. ( Vid. 
Demaratus II.) Demaratus having married an Etrus¬ 
can female of high rank, his son, whose original name 
was Lucumo, belonged, on the mother’s side, to the 
Lucumones, or ruling caste of Etruria. ( Vid. Lu¬ 
cumo.') But the pride of that caste would not permit 
them to suffer a person of mixed descent to participate 
in their hereditary honours. He married an Etruscan 
lady of the noblest birth, Tanaquil by name, who could 
not brook that her husband should be disparaged by 
her haughty kindred. They left Tarquinii and jour¬ 
neyed to Rome, in the hope of being received by 
Ancus in a manner more suited to their dignity. They 
had reached the brow of the Janiculum, and were in 
sight of Rome, when an eagle hovering over them, 
stooped, snatched his cap, and, after soaring aloft with 
it to a great height, again descended and placed it on 
his head. Tanaquil, versed in the lore of Tuscan au¬ 
gury, understood the omen, and embracing her hus¬ 
band, bade him proceed joyfully, for the loftiest for 
tunes awaited him. He was received as a Roman 
citizen, and assumed the name of Lucius Tarquinius. 
His courage, his wisdom, and his wealth, soon recom¬ 
mended him to the favourable notice of the king, and 
made him greatly esteemed also by the people gener 
ally. On the death of Ancus he was chosen king, and 
received from the assembly the customary sanction to 
his assumption of sovereignty. Scarcely wasTarquin 
seated on the throne, when the Latin states broke the 
treaty which they had made with Ancus, and began to 
make inroads upon the Roman territory. Tarquinius 
marched against them, defeated them in battle, and took 
and plundered Apiolae, where he obtained an immense 
booty. Prosecuting his victorious career, he made 
himself master of Cameria, Crustumerium. Medullia, 
Ameriola, Ficulnea, Corniculum, and Nomentum. The 
jEqui also felt the power of his arms, and were obliged 
to humble themselves before him. While he was en¬ 
gaged with the Latins, the Sabines availed themselves 

1289 



TARQUINIUS. 


TARQUINIUS. 


of his absence, mustered their forces, crossed the Anio, 
and ravaged the country up to the very walls of Rome. 
Tarquinius returned from his Latin wars, encountered 
the Sabines, and, after a desperate conflict, drove them 
firnn the Roman territories. Next year they again 
passed the Anio by a bridge of boats, and advanced 
towards Rome. Tarquinius met them in battle, and, 
by the superiority of hia cavalry, gained a complete 
victory. During the battle, a party of Romans, sent 
for that purpose, burned the bridge of boats, so that the 
routed Sabines were cut off from their retreat and 
driven into the river, where great numbers of them 
perished. Their bodies and arms, floating down the 
Tiber, brought the first intelligence of the victory to 
Rome. He then crossed the river, inflicted upon them 
a second defeat, and compelled them to surrender the 
town and lands of Collatia, which they had previously 
taken from the Latins. Tarquinius placed a strong 
garrison in the town, and assigned the capture to his 
brother’s son, who thence took the name of Collatinus. 
In this war, the king’s son, a youth of fourteen, slew a 
foe with his own hand, and received as a reward of 
honour a robe bordered with purple, and a hollow ball 
of gold to be suspended round his neck; and these 
continued to be the distinctive dress and ornament of 
Roman youth of patrician rank, till they assumed the 
toga virilis, or manly gown. Tarquinius is likewise 
said to have engaged in war with the Etruscan nations, 
to have taken several of their cities, and to have over¬ 
thrown them, notwithstanding a confederacy of all their 
twelve states against him. In token of their submis¬ 
sion to his power, the Etruscans at length sent him a 
golden crown, an ivory throne and sceptre, a purple 
tunic and robe figured with gold, and twelve axes 
bound up in bundles of rods, to be borne before him, 
such as they used when their twelve cities chose a 
common leader in war. These, by the permission of 
the people, Tarquinius adopted as the insignia of king¬ 
ly power; and, with the exception of the crown and 
of the embroidered robe, they remained as such both 
to his successors on the throne and to the consuls, un¬ 
less on the days when they went in public triumph to 
the Capitol. Such were the military exploits ascribed 
to Tarquinius ; and there is nothing so improbable in 
them as to startle our belief. It is, indeed, manifest 
from other indications, that about the period assumed 
as the reign of Tarquinius Priscus, as he is called for 
sake of distinction, the dominions of Rome must have 
comprised nearly all the territory which he is said 
to have conquered, and also that the city must have 
risen to great wealth and power. The latter point is 
proved by the great public works which all accounts 
agree in ascribing to him. He built the cloaca maxi¬ 
ma, or great sewers, to drain off the water from be¬ 
tween the Palatine and Capit'oline, and the Palatine 
and Aventine Hills. This vast drain was constructed 
of huge blocks of hewn stone, triply arched, and of 
such dimensions that a barge could float along in it 
beneath the very streets of the city. Earthquakes 
have shaken the city and the adjacent hills ; but the 
cloaca maxima remains to this day unimpaired, an en¬ 
during monument of the power and skill of the king 
and the people by whom it was constructed. The 
Circus Maximus, or great racecourse, was also a work 
of this monarch, intended for the display of what were 
called the great, or Roman games. The forum, with 
its rows of shops, was also the work of Tarquinius ; 
and he began to surround the city with a wall of 
massy hewn stones. He likewise made preparation 
to fulfil a vow to build a great temple on the Cap- 
itoline Hill to the chief deities of Rome. To con¬ 
clude the legendary history of Tarquinius, he is said 
to have been murdered by the treachery of the sons 
of his predecessor Ancus Marcius. They, perceiving 
the favour with which the king regarded Servius 
Tullius, and fearing an attempt to make him king, 
1290 


to the exclusion of their own pretensions an 3 hope#, 
hired two countrymen to pretend a quarrel, and to ap¬ 
pear before the king seeking redress. VV hile he was 
listening to the complaint of one, the other struck him 
on the head with an axe, and then they both made their 
escape. The conspirators did not, however, obtain 
the fruit of their treachery. Tanaquil gave out that 
the king was not dead, but only stunned by the blow, 
and had appointed Servius Tullius to rule in his name 
till he should recover. Servius immediately assumed 
the ensigns and exercised the powers of royalty. The 
murderers were seized and punished, and the March 
fled, disappointed, from the city. When the death of 
Tarquinius could no longer be concealed, the power 
of Servius was so well established, that the peopls 
were perfectly ready to grant him the usual confirma¬ 
tion in the powers of the sovereignty. ( Hethering - 
ton's Hist, of Rome , p. 19, seqq .)—Such is a sketch 
of the first Tarquin, as given by the ancient writers. 
Niebuhr, however, insists that the Grecian origin of 
the Tarquinian family is a mere and very clumsy in¬ 
vention of the Roman annalists, and utterly at variance 
with the received chronology. (Rom. Hist., vol. 1, p. 
319, seqq.) The notion that Tarquinius was an 
Etruscan, arose, as he conceives, from the circum¬ 
stance of his name having been deduced from that of 
the Etruscan city; so that he seemed, moreover, a 
suitable person for the Tuscan epoch of Rome to be 
referred to. “Far from regarding Tarquinii as the 
birthplace of his race, I hold that race,” observes Nie¬ 
buhr, “ of Latin origin. The account which makes 
him and Collatinus members of nothing more than a 
single family, is disproved by the fact that a whole 
Tarquinian house existed at Rome, which was banish¬ 
ed along with the last king. We also find mention ol 
Tarquins of Laurentum (Dion., Hal., 5, 54): these 
may be supposed to have been exiles of that house ; 
but, even assuming this, yet the legend or tradition 
must have made them turn their steps thither, as it 
made Collatinus settle at Lavinium. When such a 
belief was current, assuredly Tarquinii was not looked 
upon as their home. The Latin origin of the Tarquins 
is pointed out by the surname of the first king, in the 
same way in which the names of other patricians 
pointed out from what people they sprang. Thus we 
have Aurunculus, Siculus, Tuscus, Sabinus, &c. The 
name Priscus has the exact form and character of the 
national names, Tuscus, Cascus, Opscus. The same 
is the meaning of Priscus as a surname of the Servilii, 
and as the original one of the censor Marcus Porcius, 
who was born in the land of the Sabines, and descend¬ 
ed from Latin ancestors. (Plut., Vit. Cat., c. 1.) 
Supposing the house of Tarquinius to have sprung 
from one of the Tyrrhenian cities on the coast, this ac¬ 
counts for that worship of the Grecian gods at the Ro¬ 
man games, which in an Etruscan is quite incompre¬ 
hensible. Lucumo, too, would have been just such a 
name for an Etruscan, as Patricius for a Roman. That 
no such ever occurred among the Tuscans is a matter 
on which the gravestones, were it needed, might serve 
as witnesses. If the legends of the Romans give it to 
individuals, to the ally of Romulus, to the nobleman of 
Clusium (Dion. Hal.., 2, 37 — Liv., 5, 33), and to Tar¬ 
quinius, it is a proof how utterly uninformed they wer« 
on everything that concerned a nation so close to them • 
a natural consequence of their not understanding » 
word of its language.” ( Niebuhr , Rom. Hist., vol. 1, 
p. 323, seqq.) —II. Superbus, the seventh and last 
king of Rome. All the Roman annalists, with the 
exception of Piso, who adulterated what he found, 
followed Fabius in calling Tarquinius Superbus the 
son of Priscus; and this account was adopted by Ci¬ 
cero and Livy. On the other hand, Piso the annalist, 
and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, make Superbus the 
grandson of Priscus, a refinement which, according to 
Niebuhr, “ destroys all manner of connexion in the 





TARQUINIUS 


TARQUINIUS. 


«tory of the Tarquins, and necessitates still more fal¬ 
sifications than they themselves had any notion of, in 
order to restore even a scantling of sense and unity.” 
(Niebuhr , Rom. Hist., vol. 1 , p. 320. — Compare, in 
opposition to this, however, the dissertation of Valla, 
Prcef., not. in Liv.) —According to the ordinary ac¬ 
count, Servius Tullius had given his two daughters in 
marriage to Tarquinius and his brother Aruns. Now 
it happened that these daughters were of very unlike 
tempers, as were also their husbands. The elder 
Tullia was of a gentle disposition ; her younger sister 
fierce, imperious, and ambitious. Aruns Tarquinius 
was of a mild and quiet character ; his brother Lucius 
proud, restless, and domineering. To counteract these 
tempers, Servius had given the gentle princess to the 
ambitious prince, and made the haughty damsel wife 
to the mild husband. But this dissimilarity of temper 
did not produce the effect which he had expected. 
The fiery tempered of each couple became dissatisfied 
with the one of gentler nature ; the milder wife and 
husband perished by the crimes of their aspiring mates, 
who were speedily united in a second shameless mar¬ 
riage. Then did the aspiring temper of the one urge 
on the haughty and ambitious heart of the other, till 
they resolved to make way to the throne by the mur¬ 
der of the good old man, their king and father. To 
this attempt Lucius was encouraged by the unconceal¬ 
ed dissatisfaction of the patricians with the influence 
obtained by the plebeians in the new constitution. 
Their dissatisfaction was increased by a rumour that 
Servius intended to abolish the monarchical form alto¬ 
gether, and divide the sway between the two consuls, 
one to be chosen from the patrician, and one from the 
plebeian body. Having formed a strong faction among 
the patricians, Tarquinius went to the senate-house, 
seated himself in the royal chair, and summoned the 
senators to meet King Tarquinius. Servius, having 
heard the rumour, hastened to the senate-house, ac¬ 
cused Tarquinius of treason, and laid hold of him to 
remove him from the royal chair. The usurper in¬ 
stantly seized the old man, dragged him to the door, 
and threw him with great force down the steps. There 
he lay for a few moments, stunned and bleeding with 
the fall; then, rising slowly, staggered away towards 
his palace. Some ruffians employed by Tarquinius 
pursued, overtook, and killed him, leaving the body 
lying bleeding in the street. Meantime, tidings of 
what was going on had reached Tullia, who immedi¬ 
ately mounted her chariot, drove to the senate-house, 
and saluted Tarquinius as king. He bade her with¬ 
draw from such a tumult; and she, on her return, drove 
her chariot over the body of her newly-murdered fa¬ 
ther. (Vid. Tullia.1 Tarquinius, having thus obtain¬ 
ed the forcible possession of the throne, declined to 
submit to the form of an election, or to make the cus¬ 
tomary appeals to the comitia curiata for the ratifica¬ 
tion of his kingly power. He seized the crown as if 
it were hereditary, and seemed resolved to rule without 
the concurrence of any of the great assemblies. But 
as he had been raised to the throne by the aid of the 
patricians, his first act was to gratify them by repeal¬ 
ing the privileges which Servius had granted to the 
plebeians. He suppressed the institution of the comi¬ 
tia centuriata, and even prohibited the meetings of the 
country tribes at the paganalia. But this was only the 
beginning of his tyranny. He depressed the commons 
or plebeians ; but he had no intention to permit the 
power of the patricians to become too strong, espe¬ 
cially as he was himself but too well aware of their 
treachery to the former king. He therefore surround¬ 
ed himself with a body-guard, the ready instruments 
of his oppression, and, under colour of justice, banish¬ 
ed or put to death, on false accusations, all who were 
eittier too powerful or too wealthy to be trusted, or 
whom he suspected of disaffection to himself. In this 
manner he reduced the patricians into a state of sub¬ 


jection almost as deep as that into which they had 
assisted him to reduce the plebeians. Being now 
possessed of nearly despotic power, he turned his at¬ 
tention to the enlargement of his kingdom. He gave 
his daughter in marriage to Octavius Mamilius of 
Tusculum, the most powerful of the Latin chefs; 
and partly by intrigues, partly by force, he procured 
Rome to be acknowledged the head of the Latin con¬ 
federacy. Herdonius, the only man who dared to op¬ 
pose his proud demeanour, he caused to be put to 
death by false accusations, and completely incorpora¬ 
ted the Latin troops with those of Rome. The Her- 
nici were also included in this confederacy. One 
Latin city, Gabii, refused to join this league, and was 
assailed by Tarquinius. The struggle was long and 
severe, but at length he obtained possession of it by 
means of a stratagem, conducted by his son Sextus, 
similar to that by which Zopyrus gained the city or 
Babylon for Darius Hystaspis. (Vid. Tarquinius IV.) 
He next turned his arms against the Volsci, and took 
Suessa Pometia, where he obtained a very great booty, 
the tithe of which he retained for his own share. Thus 
powerful and enriched, he next proceeded to finish 
the great works left incomplete by his predecessors. 
He finished the cloaca maxima, and prepared to build 
the temple which Tarquinius Priscus, during the Sa¬ 
bine war, had vowed to the three great deities, Jupiter, 
Juno, and Minerva. This edifice is the famous Capito- 
lium. (Vid. Capitolium.) About this same time, too, 
the strange story of the Sibyl is told, which we have no¬ 
ticed under another article. (Vid. Sibyllas.)—The sway 
of Tarquinius, however, had now nearly reached its 
limits, and various portents foreshowed its approaching 
overthrow. According to the legend, the first indica¬ 
tions of the coming doom were seen in an unnatural vi¬ 
olation of the sacred rites. A huge snake crawled out 
from an altar in the court of the palace at the time 
of sacrifice ; the fire suddenly died out, and the snake 
devoured the victim. To ascertain what this prodigy 
portended, the king sent two of his sons to consult the 
oracle at Delphi, and the princes took with them their 
cousin Lucius Junius Brutus. (Vid. Brutus I.) The 
answer of the oracle was, that the king should fall 
when a dog should speak with human voice. This 
response was of course intended secretly to apply to 
Brutus, and his unexpected display of mental ability. 

( Vid. Brutus I.) The young princes also asked 
which of the king’s sons should succeed him ; and 
were answered in general terms, that the regal power 
should be enjoyed by the person who should first sa¬ 
lute his mother. Brutus, as they were departing, pur¬ 
posely stumbled and fell, and, kissing the earth, thus 
fulfilled, unobserved by his companions, the meaning 
of the oracle. Soon after this event, Tarquinius wa¬ 
ged war against Ardea, the capital of the Rutuli, a 
people on the coast of Latium ; and while his army 
lay encamped before the place, the affair of Lucretia 
occurred, which has been detailed under another arti¬ 
cle (vid. Lucretia), and which hurled him from his 
throne. In vain did the cities of Tarquinii and Veii 
take up arms to effect his restoration ; in vain, ac¬ 
cording to the common account, did Porsenna, the 
Lucumo of Clusium, endeavour to effect the same end 
(vid. Porsenna) ; in vain, too, did the Latins exert 
themselves in his behalf. In a bloody battle fought 
at the Lake Regillus, the two sons of Tarquinius wen 
slain ; and the father at length gave up the contest 
with his former subjects, and retired to Cumae, when 
he ended his days in 259 A.U.C., or 495 B.C. (Liv., 
1, 46, seqq. — Dion. Hal., 4, 41, seqq.—Hetherington , 
Hist. Rom., p. 26, seqq. —Compare Niebuhr , Rom. 
Hist., vol. 1, p. 448, seqq.) — For a very ingenious 
theory respecting the Tarquin dominion in Rome, dif¬ 
fering essentially from that of Niebuhr, and tracing it 
to Etruria, consult the remarks of Muller ( Etrusker, 
vol 1, p. 118, seqq.).— III. Collatinus, the husband of 

1291 




TAR 


TAR 


Lucretia. ( Vid . Collatinus.)—IV. Sextus, eldest son 
of Tarquinius Superbus according to Dionysius of 
Halicarnassus (4, 55), but, according to Livy (1, 53), 
the youngest. His name is celebrated in the old le¬ 
gend for the stratagem bv which he placed the city of 
Gabii in the power of his father. Having played the 
part of an insurgent against his parent, the king, for 
whose anger his wanton insolence afforded a specious 
provocation, condemned him to a disgraceful punish¬ 
ment, as if he had been the meanest of his subjects. 
Sextus thereupon came to the Gabines, to all appear¬ 
ance a fugitive : the bloody marks of his ill-treatment, 
and, above all, the infatuation which comes over such 
as are doomed to perish, gained him belief and good¬ 
will : at first he led volunteers, then troops were in¬ 
trusted to his charge ; every enterprise succeeded ; for 
booty and soldiers were thrown into his way at certain 
appointed places : the deluded citizens raised the man, 
under whose command they promised themselves the 
pleasures of a successful war, to the dictatorship. 
The last step of his treachery was yet to come : where 
the troops were not hirelings, it was a hazardous ven¬ 
ture to open a gate. Sextus sent a confidential slave 
to demand of his father in what way he should deliver 
up Gabii into his hands. Tarquinius was in his gar¬ 
den when he admitted the messenger into his presence: 
he walked along in silence, striking off the heads of 
the tallest poppies with his staff, and dismissed the man 
without an answer. On this hint Sextus put to death, 
or, by means of false charges, banished such of the Ga- 
b'ines as were able to oppose him: the distribution of 
their fortunes purchased him partisans among the low¬ 
est class ; and, possessing himself of the uncontested 
rule, he brought the city to acknowledge his father’s 
supremacy. ( Liv., 1, 53.— Dion. Hal., 4, 55.) This 
story, as Niebuhr well observes, is patched up from 
the well-known two in Herodotus (3, 154 ; 5, 93.— 
Vid Zopyrus, and Periander). Besides, it is quite 
Impossible that Gabii should have fallen into the hands 
of the Roman king by treachery : had such been the 
case, no one would have granted the Roman franchise 
to the Gabines, and have spared them all chastisement 
by the scourge of war, as Tarquinius is said to have 
done by Dionysius himself (4, 58.— Niebuhr, Rom. 
Hist., vol. 1, p. 450).—The violence which, some time 
after this, Sextus offered to Lucretia, was the cause 
of his father’s banishment, and the downfall of the 
whole line. He himself retired to Gabii, of which his 
father had before this made him king {Dion. Hal., 4, 
58), and was assassinated here by certain persons 
whom his acts of bloodshed and rapine had roused to 
vengeance. {Liv , 1, 60.)—V. Aruns, a brother of 
Tarquinius Superbus. {Vid. Aruns I.)—VI. Aruns, 
a son of Tarquinius Superbus. ( Vid. Aruns II.) 

Tarraco, now Tarragona, a town of the Cosetani 
in Hispania Citerior, on the coast of the Mediterrane¬ 
an, and northeast of the mouth of the Iberus. This 
was the first place where the Scipios landed in the 
second Punic war, and which, after having fortified it, 
they made their place of arms, and a Roman colony. 
{Plin., 3, 4. — Solin., c. 23, 26.) Tarraco, in conse¬ 
quence of this, soon rose to importance, and in time 
became the rival of Carthago Nova. It was the usual 
place of residence for the Roman prcetors. On the di¬ 
vision of Spain, which took place in the reign of Au¬ 
gustus {vid. Hispania), this city gave the name of Tar- 
raconensis to what had been previously called Hispania 
Citerior. {Plin.^l. c. — Mela, 2, 6.—Compare Ukert, 
Geogr., vol. 2, p. 420.) 

Tarsius, a river of Troas, near Zeleia, which, ac¬ 
cording to Strabo, had to be crossed, on account of its 
meandering route, twenty times by those who followed 
the road along its banks. Homer styles it Heptaporus, 
referring to its being crossed seven times. {Strabo, 
587.) 

Tarsus, a celebrated city of Cicilia Campestris, on 
1292 


the river Cydnus, not far from its mouth. Xenophon 
gives its name a plural form, T apaol {yhacE .... eiq 
Tapaovg, Anab., 1, 2, 23); later writers, however, adopt 
the singular, T apooq. This city was, from the earli¬ 
est authentic records that we have of it, the capital of 
Cilicia, and, during the Persian dominion, was the resi¬ 
dence of a dependant king. The people of Tarsus as¬ 
cribed the origin of their city to Sardanapalus, who is 
said to have built it, together with Anohiale, in one 
day. {Vid. Anchiale.) When, however, the Greeks 
established themselves here after the conquest of Al 
exander, they discarded the old account of the origit, 
of Tarsus, and in its stead adopted one of a more po 
etic cast. Tarsus (T apaoq) in their language signified 
a heel, and also a hoof. This name they connected 
with the old legend, that Bellerophon had been con¬ 
veyed, in the course of his wanderings, by the winged 
horse Pegasus to the country of Cilicia. Upon this 
they founded the fable that the horse Pegasus had 
stumbled here, and left behind a deep impression of 
one of his feet. According to another account, he lost 
a hoof in this quarter ; while a third made Bellerophon 
to have been unhorsed in this place, and, in falling, to 
have struck the earth violently with his heel. {Dionys. 
Perieg., v. 869. — Eustath. ad Dionys., 1. c. — Steph. 
Byz., s. v. Tapaog.) Strabo, however, makes the city 
to have been founded by Triptolemus and his Argive 
followers, who, in sending for information about the 
wandering Io, found here the traces of her hoofs. 
{Strab., 673.) The Greeks, upon their first coming 
hither, found Tarsus a large and flourishing city, trav¬ 
ersed by the Cydnus, a stream 200 feet broad. {Xen., 
Anab., 1, 2, 23.) It continued to flourish for a long 
period after, and became so celebrated for learning and 
refinement as to be the rival of Athens and Alexan- 
drea. Alexander nearly lost his life by bathing, when 
overheated, in the cold stream of the Cydnus, and it 
was here that Cleopatra paid her celebrated visit to An¬ 
tony in all the pomp and pageantry of Eastern luxury, 
herself attired like Venus, and her attendants like Cu¬ 
pids, in a galley covered with gold, whose sails were 
of purple, the oars of silver, and cordage of silk ; a 
fine description of which may be seen in Shakspeare’s 
play of Antony and Cleopatra {act 2, sc. 2). In the 
civil wars Tarsus sided with Caesar, and the inhabi¬ 
tants called their city, out of compliment to him, Juli- 
opolis. This, though it exposed them at first to many 
annoyances from the opposite party, secured for them, 
eventually, both freedom and exemption from tribute, 
after Caesar had become master of the Roman world. 
{Appian, B. C., 4, 64. — Id., 5, 7.) Tarsus was the 
birthplace of St. Paul. {Acts, 22, 3.) It still survives, 
but only as the shadow of its former self. It is now 
called Tarsous, and is in subjection to Adana, an ad¬ 
jacent city. {Pococke, vol. 2, p. 256 )—Julian the 
Apostate was buried in the suburbs of this city. {Am- 
mian. Marcell., 23, 3.— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 
2, p. 96, seqq.) 

Tartarus (in the plural -a, -orum), the fabled place 
of punishment in the lower world. According to the 
ideas of the Homeric and Hesiodic ages, it would 
seem that the World or Universe was a hollow globe, 
divided into two equal portions by the flat disk of the 
earth. {II., 8, 16.— -Hes., Theog., 720.) The exter¬ 
nal shell of this globe is called by the poets brazen 
and iron, probably only to express its solidity. The 
superior hemisphere was named Heaven, the inferior 
one Tartarus. The length of the diameter of the hol¬ 
low sphere is given thus by Hesiod. It would take, 
he says, nine days for an anvil to fall from Heaven to 
Earth ; and an equal space of time would be occupied 
by its fall from Earth to the bottom of Tartarus. ( The¬ 
og., 722.) The luminaries which gave light to gods and 
men shed their radiance through all the interior of the 
upper hemisphere ; while that of the inferior one waa 
filled with eternal gloom and darkness, and its still sir 




TAT 


T AU 


was unmoved by any wind. Tartarus was regarded, 
at this period, as the prison of the gods, and not as the 
place of torment for wicked men, being to the gods 
what Erebus was to men, the abode of those who were 
driven from the supernal world. The Titans, when 
conquered, were shut up in it, and in the Iliad (8, 13) 
Jupiter menaces the gods with banishment to its mur¬ 
ky regions. The Oceanus of Homer encompassed the 
whole earth, and beyond it was a region unvisited by 
the sun, and therefore shrouded in perpetual darkness, 
the abode of a people whom he names Cimmerians. 
Here the poet of the Odyssey also places Erebus, the 
vealm of Pluto and Proserpina, the final dwelling of all 
the race of men, a place which the poet of the Iliad 
describes as lying within the bosom of the earth. At 
a later period, the change of religious ideas gradually 
affected Erebus, the abode of the dead. Elysium was 
moved down to it, as the place of reward for the good ; 
and Tartarus was raised up to it, to form the prison in 
which the wicked suffered the punishment due to their 
crimes. (Keightley's Mythology, p. 32, 39, 43.) 

Tartessus, a town of Spain, situate, according to 
the most general, though not the most correct opinion, 
in an island of the same name at the mouth of the Baetis, 
formed by the two branches of the river. No traces of 
this island now remain, as one of the arms of the riv¬ 
er has disappeared. With regard to the actual position 
of the town itself, much difference of opinion exists 
both in ancient and modern writers. Mannert is in fa¬ 
vour of making Hispalis the Tartessus of Herodotus, 
and opposes the idea of its being the same either with 
Carteia or Gades, as many ancient writers maintain. 
It could not, according to him, correspond with Car¬ 
teia, since Tartessus lay without the Straits of Hercu¬ 
les ; nor could it be the same as Gades, since Herodo¬ 
tus speaks of both Gades and Tartessus by their re¬ 
spective names, and the latter was not subject to the 
Phoenicians, but had a king of its own. ( Mannert, 
Geogr., vol. 1, p. 294.) According to Strabo, the 
Baetis itself was anciently called Tartessus, and the ad¬ 
jacent country Tartessis. (Strabo, 148). Bochart,how¬ 
ever, makes Tartessus to have been the Tarshish of 
Scripture, and the same with Gades. (Geogr. Sacr., 
3, 7, coll 170.) 

Taruanna, a city of Gallia Belgica Secunda, in the 
territory of the Morini, now Terouenne. (Ptolemy .— 
Itin. Ant., 376.) 

Tarvisium, an ancient city of Venetia, on the river 
Silis. At a later period it became the seat of a bish¬ 
opric, and only a towm of note about the middle ages. 
It is now Treviso. (Procop., B. G., 3, 1. — Paul. 
Diac., 2,12.) 

Tatianus, a Syrian rhetorician, converted to Chris¬ 
tianity by Justin Martyr, whom he followed to Rome in 
the latter part of the second century. After the death 
of Justin, the opinions of his proselyte took a turn to¬ 
wards those of Marcion,'with whom he was contem¬ 
porary ; but, differing' frorrrthat heresiarch in some 
material points, he became the head of a sect of fol¬ 
lowers of his own, who acquired the appellation of Eu- 
cratitae and Hydroparastatse, from the abstinence which 
they enjoined from wine and animal food, and their 
substitution of water for the former in the administra¬ 
tion of the Eucharist. The editio princeps by Gesner, 
Tigur., 1546, fob, contains merely the Greek text. 
The best edition is that of Worth (Gr. et Lat), Oxon., 
1700, 8vo. Tatian’s work is sometimes appended to 
editions of Justin Martyr. (Clarke, Bibliograph. Diet., 
vol. 6, p. 150.) 

Tatienses or Titienses, the name of one of the 
three original Roman tribes. (Vid. Roma, p. 1173, 
col. 1.) 

Tatius, Titus, king of the Sabines, reigned con¬ 
jointly with Romulus. (Vid. Romulus.) 

Tatta, a salt lake in the northeastern part of Phry¬ 
gia, now Tuslag (i. e., “the Salt”)- According to 


Strabo, it produced salt in such abundance, that any 
substance immersed in it was very soon entirely cov¬ 
ered with the crystal; and birds were unable to fly if 
they once dipped their wings in it. (Strab., 568.) 
The lake still furnishes all the surrounding country 
with salt, and its produce is a valuable royal-farm in 
the hands of the Pacha of Kir-Shehr. In 1638, Sul¬ 
tan Murad IV. made a causeway across the lake, upon 
the occasion of his army marching to take Bagdad 
from the Persians. (Leake's Tour, p. 70.) 

Taunus, a mountain range of Germany, lying in a 
northwest direction from Frankfort on the Mayne, be¬ 
tween Wiesbaden and Hornberg. It is now called 
the Hohe or Heyrich. (Bischoff und Moller, W dr¬ 
ier b. der Geogr., p. 950.) 

Tauri, a people of European Sarmatia, who inhat) 
ited Taurica Chersonesus, and sacrificed all strangers 
to Diana. The statue of this goddess, which they be¬ 
lieved to have fallen down from heaven, was fabled to 
have been carried away to Sparta by Iphigenia and Ores¬ 
tes. (Herod., 4, 99.— Mela , 2, 1 . — Pausan., 3, 16. — 
Eurip., Iphig.) 

Taurica Chersonesus. Vid. Chersonesus III. 

Taurica, a surname of Diana, because worshipped 
by the inhabitants of Taurica Chersonesus. ( Vid. 
Tauri.) 

Taurini, a people of Liguria, occupying both banks 
of the Padus, in the earlier part of its course, but es¬ 
pecially the country situated between that river and 
the Alps. The river Orcus (now Orca) marked the 
extent of their territory towards the east. The Tau¬ 
rini are first mentioned in history as having opposed 
Hannibal soon after his descent from the Alps (Polyb., 
3, 60); and their capital, which Appian calls Taura- 
sia (Bell. Hann., c. 5), was taken and plundered by 
that general, after an ineffectual resistance of three 
days. As a Roman colony, it subsequently received 
the name of Augusta Taurinorum, now Tunno (Turin) 
in Piedmont. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 32.) 

Tauromenium, now Taormino, a town of Sicily, 
between Messana and Catana, but nearer the latter 
than the former. An ancient city named Naxos previ¬ 
ously occupied the site of Tauromenium. There were, 
in fact, two cities of the name of Naxos, both erected 
in succession on the same spot. The first was de¬ 
stroyed by Dionysius the tyrant, and the inhabitants 
scattered over Sicily. (Diod. Sic., 14, 15.) The 
Siculi, instigated by the Carthaginians, subsequently 
rebuilt the city, but Dionysius again reduced it. In¬ 
stead of destroying, however, he colonized it with a 
number of his mercenary soldiers. (Diod. Sic., 14, 
59 et 96.) In process of time Syracuse regained her 
freedom, and Andromachus, a rich inhabitant of Nax¬ 
os, having invited the old inhabitants of the latter city 
to return to their home, they accepted the offer. The 
city now changed its name to Tauromenium, from 
Taurus, the name of an adjacent mountain, and yovy, 
a place of abode, the appellation being selected as des¬ 
ignating more particularly their new place of residence. 
(Diod. Sic., 16, 7.) — The hills in the neighbourhood 
were famous for the fine grapes which they produced, 
and they surpassed almost the whole world for the ex¬ 
tent and beauty of their prospects. ( Mannert, Geogr., 
vol. 9, pt. 2, p. 282.) 

Taurus, I. the mountains of Taurus, according t« 
all the descriptions of the ancients, extended from the 
frontiers of India to the HSgean Sea. Their principal 
chain, as it shot out from Mount Imaus towards the 
sources of the Indus, wound, like an immense serpent 
between the Caspian Sea and the Euxine on the one 
side, and the sources of the Euphrates on the other 
Caucasus seems to have formed part of this line, ac¬ 
cording to Pliny ; but according to Strabo, who wat 
better informed, the principal chain of Taurus runs be¬ 
tween the basis of the Euphrates and the A raxes ; anc' 
the geographer observes that a detached chain of Can* 
S 1293 





TAURUS. 


TEA 


casus, that of the Moschian mountains, runs in a south¬ 
ern direction and joins the Taurus. Modern accounts 
represent this junction as not very marked. Strabo, 
who was born on the spot, and who had travelled as 
far as Armenia, considers the entire centre of Asia 
Minor, together with all Armenia, Media, and Gordy- 
ene, or Koordistan, as a very elevated country, crowned 
with several chains of mountains, all of which are so 
closely joined together that they may be regarded as one. 
“ Armenia and Media,” says he, “ are situated upon 
Taurus.” This plateau seems also to comprehend 
Koordistan, and the branches which it sends out ex¬ 
tend into Persia as far as the great desert of Kerman 
on one side, and towards the sources of the Gihon and 
the Indus on the other. By thus considering the vast 
Taurus of the ancients as an upland plain, and not as 
a chain, the testimonies of Strabo and Pliny may be 
reconciled with the accounts of modern travellers. 
Two chains of mountains are detached from the pla¬ 
teau of Armenia to enter the peninsula of Asia; the 
one first confines and then crosses the channel of the 
Euphrates near Sarnosata; the other borders the Pon- 
tus Euxinus, leaving only narrow plains between it and 
that sea. These two chains, one of which is in part 
the Anti-Taurus, and the other the Paryadres of the 
ancients, or the mountain Tcheldir or Keldir of the 
moderns, are united to the west of the Euphrates, be¬ 
tween the towns of Siwas , Tocas, and Kaisarieh, by 
means of the chain of Argseus, now named Argeh- 
Dag , whose summit is covered with perpetual snows, 
a circumstance which, under so low a latitude, shows 
an elevation of from 9 to 10,000 feet. The centre of 
Asia resembles a terrace supported on all sides by 
chains of mountains. The chain which, breaking off 
at once from Mount Argaeus and from Anti-Taurus, 
bounds the ancient Cilicia to the north, is more par¬ 
ticularly known by the name of Taurus, a name which 
in several languages appears to have one common root, 
and simply signifies mountain. The elevation of this 
chain must be considerable, since Cicero affirms that 
it was impassable to armies before the month of June, 
on account of the snow. Diodorus details the fright¬ 
ful ravines and precipices which it was necessary to 
cross in going from Cilicia into Cappadocia. Modern 
travellers, who have crossed more to the west of this 
chain, now called Alah-Dag, represent it as similar to 
that of the Apeninnes and Mount Haemus. It sends 
off to the west several branches, some of which termi¬ 
nate on the shores of the Mediterranean, as the Cra- 
gus, and the Masicystes of the ancients, in Lycia; 
the others, greatly inferior in elevation, extend to 
the coasts of the Archipelago opposite the islands of 
Cos and Rhodes. To the east, Mount Amanus, now 
the Alma-Dag , a detached branch of the Taurus, 
separates Cilicia from Syria, having only two nar¬ 
row passes, the one towards the Euphrates, the oth¬ 
er close by the sea ; the first answers to the Pylas 
Amanicaa of the ancients, the other to the Pylas Syriae. 
Two other chains of mountains are sent off from 
the western part of the central plateau. The one 
is the Baba-Dag of the moderns, which formed the 
Tmolus, the Messogis, and the SipyluS of the an¬ 
cients, and which terminates towards the islands of 
Samos and Chios ; the other, extending in a north¬ 
west direction, presents more elevated summits, among 
which are the celebrated Ida and the Mysian Olympus. 
Lastly, the northern side of the plateau is propelled 
towards the Euxine, and gives rise to the chain of the 
Olgassus, now Elkas-Dag , a chain which fills with its 
branches all the chain between the Sangarius and the 
Ha'vs. Throughout the range of mountains just 
described, limestone rocks appear to predominate. 
(Malte-Brun, Geogr., vol. 2, p. 64, seqq.) — II. A 
mountain and promontory on the eastern coast of Sici¬ 
ly, near which Tauromenium was built. It is now 
Capo di S. Cuce. (Vid . Tauromenium.)—III. Sta- 
J 294 


tilius Taurus, a friend of Agrippa’s, conquered Lepi- 
dus in Sicily, and gained also many victories in^ Afri¬ 
ca, for which he obtained triumphal honours (B.C. 26). 
He was twice consul; and is said also to have built 
the first durable amphitheatre ol stone, at the desire ol 
Augustus. — IV. Statilius Taurus, was proconsul ol 
Africa A.D. 53, in the reign of Claudius. On his re¬ 
turn, Agrippina, who was anxious to get possession of 
his fine gardens, induced Tarquitius, who had been his 
lieutenant in Africa, to accuse him of extortion, and 
also of having practised magic rites. Taurus, indig¬ 
nant at the charge, would not wait for the decision of 
the senate, but destroyed himself. 

Taygetus, or, in the plural form, Taygeta (- orum ), 
part of a lofty ridge of mountains, which, traversing 
the whole of Laconia from the Arcadian frontier, ter¬ 
minates in the sea at the Promontory of Tcenarus. 
Its elevation was said to be so great as to command 
a view of the whole Peloponnesus, as may be seen 
from a fragment of the Cyprian verses preserved by 
the scholiast on Pindar. ( Nem ., 10, 113.) This 
great mountain abounded with various kinds of beasts 
for the chase, and supplied also the celebrated race of 
hounds, so much valued by the ancients on account 
of their sagacity and keenness of scent. It also fur¬ 
nished a beautiful green marble much esteemed by the 
Romans. ( Strabo , 367.— Plin., 37, 18.) In the ter¬ 
rible earthquake which desolated Laconia before the 
Peloponnesian war, it is related that immense masses 
of rock, detaching themselves from the mountain, 
caused dreadful devastation in their fall, which is said 
to have been foretold by Anaximander of Miletus. 
(P/m., 2, 79.— Strabo , 367.) The principal summit 
of Taygetus, named Taletum, rose above Bryseae. It 
was dedicated to the sun, and sacrifices of horses 
were there offered to that planet. This point is prob¬ 
ably the same now called St. Elias. ( Cramer's Anc. 
Greece, vol. 3, p. 216.) “ From the western side of 

the plain,” observes Mr. Dodwell, “ rise the grand and 
abrupt precipices of Taygetus, which is broken into 
many summits. The bases also of the mountain are 
formed by several projections distinct from each oth¬ 
er, which branch into the plain, and hence produce 
that rich assemblage and luxuriant multiplicity of 
lines, and tints, and shades, which render it the finest 
locality in Greece. All the plains and mountains that 
I have seen are surpassed in the variety of their com¬ 
binations and in the beauty of their appearance by 
the plain of Lacedaemon and Mount Taygetus. The 
landscape may be exceeded in the dimensions of its 
objects, but what can exceed it in beauty of form and 
richness of colouring!—The mountain chain runs in 
a direction nearly north and south, uniting towards 
the north with the chain of Lycseon. Its western side 
rises from the Messenian Gulf, and its eastern foot 
bounds the level plain of Amyclse, from which it rises 
abruptly. It is visible from Zante, which, in a straight 
line, is distant from it at least eighty-four miles. The 
northern crevices are covered with snow during the 
whole of the year. Its outline, particularly as seen 
from the north, is of a more serrated form than the 
other Grecian mountains. It has five principal sum¬ 
mits, whence it derived the modern name of Pcnte- 
dactylus, as it was designated by Constantine Porp'ny- 
rogenitus. In winter it is covered with snow, which 
renders the vicinity extremely cold. In summer it 
reflects a powerful heat upon the Spartan plain, from 
which it keeps the salubrious visits of the western 
winds, and thus makes it one of the hottest places in 
Greece, and subjects the inhabitants to fevers.” (Dod- 
wclVs Tour , vol. 2, p. 410.)—Compare the account 
of Colonel Leake ( Travels in the Morea, vol. 1, p. 
84, 191, &c.). 

Teanum, I. Apulicum, a city of Apulia, on the right 
bank of the river Frento ( Fortore ). The appellation 
of Apulidum was added to diatinguish it from the 



TEG 


T E L 


town of the Sidicini. Strabo, speaking of the Apu¬ 
lian Teanum, says it was situate at some distance 
from the coast, and at the head of a lake formed by 
the sea, which here encroaches so considerably upon 
the land, that the breadth of Italy between this point 
and Puteoli did not exceed 1000 stadia. ( Strabo , 
285.) The ruins of this place are said to exist on the 
site of Civitate, about a mile from the right bank of 
the Fortore , and ten miles from the sea. ( Cramer's 
Anc. Italy , vol. 2, p. 272.) — II. Sidicinum, the only 
city ascribed to the Sidicini, a Campanian tribe. It 
is now Teano, and was distant about fifteen miles from 
Capua, in a northwest direction. Strabo informs us 
that it stood on the Latin Way, being the most con¬ 
siderable of all the towns so situated, and inferior to 
Capua only in extent and importance among the Cam¬ 
panian cities. ( Strab ., 237, 248.) This fact seems 
to derive additional confirmation from the numerous 
remains of walls and public buildings said to be still 
visible on its ancient site. Teanum became a Roman 
colony under Augustus. {Front., de Col.—Piin., 3, 
5.)—Some cold acidulous springs are noticed in its vi¬ 
cinity by Vitruvius : they are now called Acqua delle 
Caldarelle. {Pratilli, Via Appia, 2, 9. — Cramer's 
Anc. Italy , vol. 2, p. 194.) 

Tearus, a river of Thrace, rising in the same rock 
from 38 different sources, some of which are hot, and 
others cold. Its sources, according to Herodotus, 
were equidistant from Herseum, a city near Perin- 
thus, and from Apollonia on the Euxine, being two 
days’ journey from each. It emptied into the Conta- 
desdus, this last into the Agrianes, and the Agrianes 
into the Hebrus. Its waters were esteemed of ser¬ 
vice in curing cutaneous disorders. Darius raised a 
column there when he marched against the Scythians, 
to denote the sweetness and salubrity of the waters of 
that river. {Herod., 4, 90, &c.— Plin., 4, 11.) 

Tecmessa, the daughter of a Phrygian prince, call¬ 
ed by some Teuthras, and by Sophocles Teleutas. 
When her father was killed by Ajax, son of Telamon, 
at the time the Greeks sacked the towns in the neigh¬ 
bourhood of Troy, the young princess became the 
property of the conqueror, and by him she had a son 
called Eurysaces. Sophocles introduces her as one 
of the characters in his play of the Ajax. {Schol. ad 
Soph., Aj., 200.) 

Tectosages, a Gallic tribe, belonging to the stem 
of the Volcae, and whose territory lay between the 
Sinus Gallicus and the Ausci, and in the immediate 
vicinity of the Pyrenees. They appear to have been 
a numerous and powerful race. A part of them were 
led off by Sigovesus in quest of other settlements, and, 
passing through the Hercynian forest, spread them¬ 
selves over Pannonia and Illyricum, and subsequently 
made an inroad into Macedonia. From Europe a por¬ 
tion of them then passed into Asia Minor, and at last 
accupied the central portion of what was called, from 
lifs Gallic settlements, Gallatia. Their towns in this 
country were less numerous than those of their fel¬ 
low-tribes ; but, on the other hand, they could boast 
of having for their capital the largest and most cele¬ 
brated city of the whole province, namely, Ancyra. 
(Vid. Ancyra.— Thierry , Hist, des Gaulois, vol. 1, 
p. 131, seqq .— Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 91.) 

Tegea or Teg^ea, a city of Arcadia, next to Man- 
tinea, the most ancient and important in the country. 
It lay in an eastern direction from the southern part of 
the Msenalian ridge. This place was said to have 
been founded at a remote period by Tegeus, son of 
Lycaon. At this early period the republic consisted 
of several small townships, enumerated by Pausanias, 
which were probably all united by Aleus, an Arcadian 
chief, who was thus regarded as the real founder of 
die city. ( Pausan., 8,45.— Strabo, 337.) The Te- 
g>.atae were early distinguished for their bravery among 
th Peloponnesian states : they could boast that their 


king, Echemus/had engaged and slain in single combat 
Hyllus, chief of the Heraclidas {Herod., 9, 26), and 
also of many victories obtained over the warlike Spar¬ 
tans. {Herod., 1, 65.— Pausan., 3, 3.) It was not 
till the latter had, in compliance with the injunctions 
of an oracle, gained possession of the bones of Orestes, 
and conveyed them from the Arcadian territory, that 
they were enabled to vanquish their antagonists, and 
compel them to acknowledge their supremacy (1, 65). 
In the battle of Plataea, the Tegeatte furnished 3000 
soldiers, and disputed the post of honour with the 
Athenians, to whom it was, however, adjudged by the 
Lacedaemonians. In the Peloponnesian war they re¬ 
mained firm in their adherence to Sparta. After the 
battle of Leuctra, however, the Tegeatae united with 
the rest of the Arcadians in forming a league inde¬ 
pendent of Sparta, which involved them in hostilities 
with that power. {Xen., Hist. Gr., 6, 5, 16.) Tegea, 
having subsequently entered into the Achaean confed¬ 
eracy, was taken by Cleomenes, from whom it was re¬ 
captured by Antigonus Doson. {Polyb., 2, 46.) It 
successfully resisted, some time after, the attack of 
Lycurgus, tyrant of Sparta (5, 17, 1), but yielded to 
Machanidas ; after his defeat and death it was, how¬ 
ever, reconquered by Philopoemen (11, 18,7; 16,36). 
Tegea was the only town in Arcadia which in Strabo’s 
time preserved some degree of consequence and pros¬ 
perity ( Strabo, 388); and, if we may judge from the 
description of Pausanias, it still continued to flourish 
more than a century later. The vestiges of this an¬ 
cient city are to be seen on the site now called Piali, 
about an hour east of Tripolizza; but they consist 
only of scattered fragments, and broken tiles and stones, 
which cover the fields. Other ruins are to be seen on 
the site of Palaio Episkopi, some hundred yards from 
the village of Piali. {Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, 
p. 350, seqq.) 

Teios. Vid. Teos. 

Telamon, a king of the island of Salamis, son of 
^Eacus and Ende'is. He was brother to Peleus, and 
father to Teucer and Ajax, the latter of whom is, on 
that account, often called “ Telamonius heros." Tel¬ 
amon was banished, with Peleus, from his father’s 
court, for the accidental murder of their step-brother 
Phocus ; and, embarking on board a vessel, he was 
thrown upon the island of Salamis. Here be was not 
only hospitably entertained by its king Cychreus, but 
received from him his daughter Glauce in marriage, 
with the promise of succession to the throne. After 
the death of Glauce he married Periboea, the daughter 
of Alcathoiis ; and, on the conquest of Troy by Her¬ 
cules, whom he accompanied and aided, he received 
from that hero the hand of Hesione, daughter of La- 
omedon, and sister of Priam, from which last-men¬ 
tioned union sprang Teucer, who was, therefore, the 
half-brother of Ajax. Telamon distinguished himself 
at the Calydonian boar-hunt, and also in the Argo- 
nautic expedition ; and, when the Trojan war broke 
out, he despatched his sons xAjax and Teucer to sus¬ 
tain that glory, to which the feebleness of age preclu¬ 
ded him from any longer aspiring. Ajax slew himself 
in the course of the war, on account of the arms of 
Achilles, which had been awarded to Ulysses ; and 
the indignation of Telamon at the supineness of Teu¬ 
cer in not having avenged his brother’s death, caused 
him to banish the young prince from his native island. 

( Vid. Teucer.— Soph, Aj. — Apollod., 3, 12, 6, &c. 
—Hygin., fab., 97.) 

Telamoniades, a patronymic given to the descend¬ 
ants of Telamon. 

Telchtnes, an ancient race in the island of Rhodes, 
said to have been originally from Crete. They were 
the inventors of many useful arts, and, according to 
Diodorus, passed for the sons of the Sea. {Diod. S jc., 
5, 55.) Hence Simmias the Rhodian made Zaf (a 
word meaning “ sea") their mother. (Compare Bo* 

1295 




TEL 


TEL 


chart , Phal., p. 371, where the line from Clemens of 
Alexandrea, Strom., 5, p. 374, is corrected.) With 
respect to their names and number, the ancient writers 
differ. Nonnus applies to them the two Dactyli-names 
Kelmis and Danmameneus. (Dionys., 14,36.) Tzet- 
zes, on the other hand, names five Telchines, Aclceus, 
Megalesius, Ormenus, Nikon, and Simon. ( Chil.,7, 
125.) The Telchines are also represented as power¬ 
ful enchanters, who hold in control the elements, and 
could bring clouds, rain, hail, and snow at pleasure. 

[Hcsych., s. v. 0 eXylveg. — Suid., s. v. Te^lveq .— 
Zenobius, Proverb., 5, 131.— Hock, Kreta, vol. 1, p. 
345, seqq. — Id. ib., vol. 1, p. 354.—Consult remarks 
at the commencement of the article Rhodus.) 

Telebo^e or Teleboes, a people of ^Etolia, called 
also Taphians. (Vid. Taphiae.) 

TeleboIdes, islands between Leucadia and Acar- 
nania. (Vid. Taphiae.) 

Telegonus, a son of Ulysses and Circe, born in 
the island of iEaea, where he was educated. When 
arrived at the years of manhood, he went to Ithaca to 
make himself known to his father, but he was ship¬ 
wrecked on the coast, and, being destitute of provis¬ 
ions, he plundered some of the inhabitants of the isl¬ 
and. Ulysses and Telemachus came to defend the 
property of their subjects against this unknown inva¬ 
der; a quarrel arose, and Telegonus killed his father 
without knowing who he was. He afterward returned 
to his native country, and, according to Hyginus, he 
carried thither his father’s body, where it was buried. 
Telemachus and Penelope also accompanied him in 
his return, and soon after the nuptials of Telegonus 
with Penelope were celebrated by order of Miner¬ 
va. Penelope had by Telegonus a son called Italus. 
Telegonus was said to have founded Tusculum in 
Italy, and, according to some, he left one daughter 
called Mamilia, from whom the patrician family of the 
Mamilii at Rome were descended. (Horat., Od., 3, 
29, 8.— Ovid, Fast., 3, 4.— Trist., 1,1.— Hygin.,fab., 
127.) 

Telemachus, a son of Ulysses and Penelope. He 
was still in the cradle when his father went with the 
rest of the Greeks to the Trojan war. At the end of 
this celebrated contest, Telemachus, anxious to see 
his father, went in quest of him ; and, as the place of 
his residence and the cause of his long absence were 
then unknown, he visited the court of Menelaus and 
Nestor to obtain information. He afterward returned 
to Ithaca, where the suiters of his mother Penelope 
had conspired to destroy him ; but he avoided their 
snares, and by means of Minerva he discovered his 
father, who had arrived in the island two days before 
him, and was then in the house of Eumaeus. With 
this faithful servant and Ulysses, Telemachus con¬ 
certed how to deliver his mother from the importuni¬ 
ties of her suiters, and his efforts were crowned with 
success. After the death of his father, Telemachus 
is said to have gone to the island of yEsea, where he 
married Circe, or, according to others, Cassiphone, the 
daughter of Circe, by whom he had a son called La¬ 
tinos. (Horn., Od. — Hygin., fab., 95, 125.) 

Telephus, I. a king of Mysia, son of Hercules and 
Auge, the daughter of Aleus. He was exposed as 
soon as born on Mount Parthenius, on the confines of 
Argolis and Arcadia ; but the babe was protected by 
the care of the gods ; for a hind, which had just calved, 
came and suckled him ; and the shepherds, finding him, 
named him Telephus from that circumstance (T?)H- 
e<poq, from eAaipog, a hind.) Aleus gave his daughter 
Auge to Nauplius, the son of Neptune, to sell her out 
of the country ; and he disposed of her to Teuthras, 
king of Teuthrania, on the Cayster, in Mysia, who 
made her his wife. Telephus having, when grown up, 
onsulted the oracle respecting his parents, came to 
Mysia, where he was kindly received by Teuthras, 
whom he succeeded in his kingdom. Telephus, after 
1296 


this, married one of the daughters of King Priam, and, 
as the son-in-law of that monarch, prepared to assist 
Priam against the Greeks, and with heroic valour at¬ 
tacked them when they had landed on the Mysian 
coast. The carnage was great, and 1 elephus would 
have been victorious had not Bacchus, who protected 
the Greeks, suddenly raised a vine from the earth, 
which entangled the feet of the monarch, and laid him 
fiat on the ground. Achilles immediately rushed upon 
him, and wounded him so severely that he was car¬ 
ried away from the battle. The v\mund was mortal, 
and Telephus was informed by the oracle that he 
alone who had inflicted it could totally cure it. Upon 
this, application was made to Achilles, but in vain ; 
till Ulysses, who knew that Troy could not be taken 
without the assistance of one of the sons of Hercules, 
and who wished to make Telephus the friend of the 
Greeks, persuaded Achilles to obey the directions of the 
oracle. Achilles consented; and as the weapon which 
had given the wound could alone cure it, the hero 
scraped the rust from the point of his spear, and, by 
applying it to the sore, gave it immediate relief. It 
is said that Telephus showed himself so grateful to 
the Greeks, that he accompanied them to the Trojan 
war, and fought with them against his father-in-law. 
For other versions of the legend of Telephus, espe¬ 
cially his exposure in infancy, consult the remarks of 
Heyne (ad Apollod-., 3, 9, 1). Euripides, in his play 
entitled Telephus, adopted that form of the narrative 
which made Telephus and his mother to have been 
shut up in aii ark or coffer, and cast into the sea, the 
waves of which bore them to the mouth of the river 
Caicus. (Heyne, l. c.) The wanderings and pov¬ 
erty of Telephus, while in quest of his parents, are 
often alluded to by the poets. (Aristoph., Nub., 918. 
— Id., Ran., 866.— Horat., Epist. ad Pis., 96.— Hy¬ 
gin., fab., 101.) 

Tellus, the goddess of the Earth. ( Vid. Ops, 
and Terra.) 

Telmessus or Telmissus, I. the last city of Lycia 
towards the west, and at the head of the Glaucus Si¬ 
nus. It was famous for the skill possessed by its in¬ 
habitants in the art of divination (Arrian, Exp. Alex., 
2, 3), and they were consulted at an early period by 
Croesus, king of Lydia. (Herod., 1, 78 ) The ruins 
of Telmissus are found at Mei, the port of Makri. 
The theatre, and the porticoes and sepulchral chan?' 
hers excavated in the rocks at this place, are some 
the most remarkable remains of antiquity in Asia Mr 
nor. (Leake's Tour, p. 128.— Compare Clarke ’ 
Travels, vol. 3, p. 292, seqq., Lond. ed.; and Fellows, 
Excursion in Asia Minor, p. 244, seq.) —II. A city 
of Caria, about sixty stadia to the southeast of Hali¬ 
carnassus, and on the Sinus Ceramicus. (Suid., s. v. 
TeXpeaeiq. — Lurcher, Herod., Tail. Geogr., s. v .)— 
III A city of Pisidia, on the confines of the Solymi, 
southeast of Theinisonium. Its more usual name was 
Termissus. (Arrian, Exp. Alex., 1, 27.) 

Telo Mabtius, a city and harbour on the coast of 
Gallia Narbonensis Secunda, now Toulon. It ap¬ 
pears to have been an obscure place among the an¬ 
cients, and to have grown into a city from a large col¬ 
our establishment commenced here by the Romans in 
the fifth century. The Itin. Ant. (566) alone makes 
mention of it. (Bischoff und Moller, Worterb. der 
Geogr., p. 953.) 

Telphusa, a city of Arcadia, forty stadia from Caus, 
and in a northeastern direction from Hersea. Pausan- 
ias found it in ruins and nearly deserted ; but in 
earlier times it appears to have been a place of some 
note, and celebrated for the worship of the goddess 
Erinnys and Apollo Oncaeus,. whose temples were to 
be seen at a place called Oncseum, on the banks of 
the Ladon. (Pausan., 8, 25. — Steph. Byz., s. v 
’O ykelov.) The city derived its name from Telphusa, 
a daughter of the river Ladon. There was a fountai* 




TEN 


TEN 


here, the waters of which were so extremely cold, 
that Tiresias was fabled to have died of drinking of 
♦hem. The site of this place is supposed by Sir W. 
Gel! to correspond with the kalybea of Vanina (Itin¬ 
erary of the Morea, p. 120); but Muller is inclined to 
identify it with Katzioula, which is described by Gell 
as a miserable place in the neighbourhood of a large 
ruined city. ( Dorians , vol. 2, p. 448, Oxford transl. 
- — Cramer's Anc. Greece , vol. 3, p. 323.) 

Temenus, son of Aristomachus, and one of the Her- 
aclidaj. ( Vid. Heraclidce.) 

Temerinda, according to Pliny (6, 7), the Scythian 
name for the Palus Mseotis.—Compare the remarks of 
Ritter ( Vorhalle, p. 161, seqq.). 

Temksa, I. a town of the Bruttii, southwest of 
Terina, and near the coast. It was a place of great 
antiquity, and celebrated for its copper-mines, to which 
Homer is supposed to have referred in the Odyssey (1, 
182). This circumstance, however, is doubtful, as 
there was a town of the same name in Cyprus (Strabo, 
255); while others, again, considered the Homeric 
Temesa as identical with Brundisium. (Eustath. ad 
Horn., Od., 1. c.) In Strabo’s time these mines ap¬ 
pear to have been exhausted. The situation of Tem¬ 
esa is not fully ascertained. Opinions vary between 
Malvito, San Lucito, Torre Loppa, and Torre del pi¬ 
ano del Casale. (Cramer's Anc. Italy , vol. 2, p. 
118.)—II. According to some, the same with Brundis¬ 
ium. (Vid. preceding article.)—III. A place in the 
island of Cyprus. ( Vid. Temesa I.) 

Tempe (plur. ncut.), a valley in Thessaly, between 
Mount Olympus at the north and Ossa at the south, 
through which the river Peneus flowed into the JEge- 
an. The poets have described it as a most delightful 
spot, with cool shades and verdant walks, which the 
warbling of birds rendered more pleasing and attract¬ 
ive. Tempe extended about five miles in length, but 
varied in its breadth so as to be in some places only a 
plethrum (about 100 feet) or a little more.—./Elian has 
left a very animated and picturesque description of its 
scenery ( Var. Hist., 3, 1).—It appears to have been 
a generally received notion among the ancients, that 
the gorge of Tempe was caused by some great convul¬ 
sion in nature, which, bursting asunder the mountain- 
barrier by which the waters of Thessaly were pent up, 
afforded them an egress to the sea. Modern travel¬ 
lers differ in their accounts of this celebrated vale. 
Hawkins (Walpole's Collect., vol. 1, p. 517) states 
that “ the scenery by no means corresponds with the 
idea that has been generally conceived of it, and that 
the eloquence of JElian has given rise to expectations 
which the traveller will not find realized.” He would 
seem, however, to have confounded the Vale of Tempe 
with the narrow defile which the Peneus traverses be¬ 
tween Mount Olympus and Mount Ossa, near its en¬ 
trance into the sea. Professor Palmer, of Cambridge, 
appears to have been more successful in the search. 
“ After riding nearly an hour close to the bay in which, 
the Peneus discharges itself, we turned,” says this 
traveller, “south, through a delightful plain, which, af¬ 
ter a quarter of an hour, brought us to an opening be¬ 
tween Ossa and Olympus ; the entrance to a vale, that, 
in situation, extent, and beauty, amply satisfies what¬ 
ever the poets have said of Tempe.” ( Walpole's MS. 
Journal, Clarke's Travels, pt. 2, s. 3. p. 274.—Con¬ 
sult Cramer's Description of Ancient Greece , vol. 1, 
p. 378.) 

Tenchtheri, a nation of Germany, who, in con¬ 
junction with the Usipetes, crossed the Rhine, were 
defeated by the Romans, and found protection and 
new settlements among the Sicambri. In their most 
flourishing period, the Tenchtheri dwelt in the southern 
part of the Duchy of Clevc, and also in that of Berg; 
they also took part in the confederacy of the Cherusci. 
( Cces., B. G., 4, 1G .—Tac., Ann., 13, 56.— Id., Hist., 
4 . 21.— Id., Germ., 32.) 

8 B 


Tenedos, an island of the JEgean, off the coast oi 
Troas, about. 56 miles to the north of Lesbos, whithei 
the Greeks retired, as Virgil relates, in order to sur¬ 
prise the Trojans. (AEn., 2, 21.— Ib., 254.) This isl¬ 
and was at an earlier period called Leucophrys, from 
its white cliffs (Eustath. ad II., p. 33. — Lycophr., 
346); and it took the name of Tenedos from Tenes, 
son of Cycnus. (Vid. Tenes.) Tenedos received a 
colony of JEolians (Herod., 1, 149.— Thucyd., 7, 57), 
which flourished for many years, and became cele¬ 
brated for the wisdom of its laws and civil institutions. 
This we collect from an ode of Pindar, inscribed to 
Aristagoras, prytanis or chief magistrate of the island. 
(Nem., 11.) Aristotle is known to have written on 
the polity of Tenedos. (Steph. Byz., s. v. TevedofA 
Apollo was the principal deity worshipped in the isl¬ 
and, as we know from Homer (II., 1, 37). According 
to the same poet, Tenedos was taken by Achilles 
during the siege of Troy. (II , 11 , 624.) When the 
prosperity of Tenedos was on the decline, the inhab¬ 
itants placed themselves under the protection of the 
flourishing city of Alexandrea Troas. At a still later 
period, it derived again some importance from the 
granaries which Justinian caused to be erected there, 
for the purpose of housing the cargoes of corn brought 
from Egypt and intended for Constantinople, but 
which were frequently delayed by contrary winds blow¬ 
ing from the Hellespont. (Procop., AEd. Justin., 5, 1.) 
There were several proverbs connected with the his¬ 
tory of Tenedos, which may be found in Stephanus of 
Byzantium (s. v. T svedog). It may be worth while to 
remark, that Nymphiodorus, a geographical writer quo¬ 
ted by Athenseus, affirmed, that the women of Tene¬ 
dos were of surpassing beauty (13, p. 60). —When 
Chandler visited this island, which retains its ancient 
name, he found there “ but few remains of antiquity 
worthy of notice ; in the streets, the walls, and bury- 
ing-grounds were pieces of marble and fragments of pil¬ 
lars, with a few inscriptions.” (Travels in Asia Mi¬ 
nor, p. 22.) The position of Tenedos, so near the 
mouth of the Hellespont, has always rendered it a place 
of importance in both ancient and modern times. Bo- 
chart derives the name from the Phoenician word Tine- 
dum, red clay, which was found here and used for earth¬ 
enware. (Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. Ill, seqq.) 

Tenes (or, more correctly, Tennes), son of Cyc¬ 
nus, king of Colons, a town of Troas, and of Proclea 
the daughter of Clytius. After the death of Proclea, 
Cycnus married Philonome, daughter of Craugasus, 
who became enamoured of Tennes ; but, finding it im¬ 
possible to shake his principles of duty, she accused 
him to her husband of a dishonourable act of violence. 
The father believed the charge, and, confining Tennes 
and his sister in an ark or coffer (eg XdpvaKa), cast 
them into the sea. They both, however, came safe to 
Tenedos, then called Leucophrys, the name of which 
Tennes changed to Tenedos after himself, and became 
monarch of the island. Some time after, Cycnus dis 
covered the guilt of his wife Philonome, and, as he 
wished to be reconciled to his son, whom he had so 
grossly injured, he went to Tenedos ; but, when he 
had secured his ship to the shore, Tennes cut the fast¬ 
enings with a hatchet, and suffered his father’s ship 
to be tossed about in the sea. From this circum¬ 
stance, the hatchet of Tennes became proverbial to inti¬ 
mate a resentment that could not be pacified. Some, 
however, suppose that the proverb arose from the se¬ 
verity of a law made by a king of Tenedos against 
adultery, by which the guilty were both decapitated 
with a hatchet, and under which law his own son suf¬ 
fered death. (Suid., s. v. Tevedog Zvvyyopoq.) Ten¬ 
nes, as some suppose, was killed by Achi’lles as ha 
defended his island against the Greeks, a d he receiv. 
ed divine honours after death. (Pausan., 10, 4 — 
Heracl. Pont., Polit., p. 209.— Strabo, 380, 604 — 
Conon, Nan at., p. 24, 130.) 

129 -' 




TER 


TER 


Tends, a small island in the JEgean, near Andros, 
called also Hydrussa, from the number of its springs. 
It was very mountainous, but produced excellent 
wines, universally esteemed by the ancients. Tenos 
was about 15 miles in extent. The capital was also 
called Tenos. Near the town was situate a temple of 
Neptune, held in great veneration, and much frequent¬ 
ed by the inhabitants of the surrounding isles, who 
came thither to offer sacrifices to the god. ( Strabo , 
487.— Mela, 2, 7.—Ovid, Met., 7, 469.) 

Tentyra ( ptur .) and Tentyris, a city of Egypt in 
the Thebaid, situate on the Nile, to the northwest of 
Koptos. This city was at variance with Ombos, the 
former killing, the latter adoring, the crocodile ; a hor¬ 
rid instance of religious fury, which took place in con¬ 
sequence of this quarrel, forms the subject of the fif¬ 
teenth satire of Juvenal. About half a league from 
the ruins of this city stands the modern village of 
Denderah. Among the remains of Tentyra is a tem¬ 
ple of Isis, one of the largest structures in the The¬ 
baid, and by far the most beautiful, and in the best 
preservation. It contained, until lately, the famous zo¬ 
diac, which was framed in the ceiling of the temple. 
This interesting monument of former ages was taken 
down by a French traveller, M. Lelorrain, after the 
most persevering exertions for twenty days, and trans¬ 
ported down the Nile to Alexandrea, whence it was 
shipped to France. The King of France purchased it 
for 150,000 francs. The dimensions of the stone are 
twelve feet in length by eight in breadth, including 
some ornaments, which were two feet in length on each 
side. In thickness it is three feet. The planisphere 
and the square in which it was contained were alone 
removed, the side ornaments being allowed to remain. 
To obtain this relic of former ages proved a work of 
immense labour, as it had actually to be cut out of 
the ceiling and lowered to the ground. Many con¬ 
jectures have been advanced by the learned, especially 
of France, on the antiquity of this zodiac ; but recent 
discoveries have shown the folly of these speculations ; 
the temple having been, in fact, erected under the Ro¬ 
man sway, and the name of the Emperor Nero appear¬ 
ing upon it. (Am. Quarterly, vol. 4, p. 43.) 

Teos or Teios, a city on the east of Ionia, situated 
upon a peninsula southwest of Smyrna. It belonged 
to the Ionian confederacy, and had a harbour which 
Livy calls Gersesticus (37, 27). During the Persian 
sway we learn that the inhabitants, despairing of being 
able to resist the power of that great empire, aban¬ 
doned nearly all of them their native city, and retired 
to Abdera in Thrace. This colony became so flour¬ 
ishing in consequence, that it quite eclipsed the parent 
state. (Herod., 1, 168.— Strab., 633.) Teos is cel¬ 
ebrated in the literary history of Greece for having 
given birth to Anacreon, and also to Hecataaus the 
historian, though the latter is more frequently known 
by the surname of the Abderite. (Stro.b., 1. c .) This 
town produced also Protagoras the sophist, Scyth- 
mus an Iambic poet, Andron a geographical writer, 
and Apellicon the great book-collector, to whom liter¬ 
ature is indebted for the preservation of the works of 
Aristotle. Though deserted, as we have already re¬ 
marked, bv the greater part of its inhabitants, Teos 
still continued to exbt as an Ionian city, as may be 
seen from Thucydides (3, 32). The chief produce of 
the Teian territory was wine (Liv. 37, 27), and Bac¬ 
chus was the deity principally revered by the inhabi¬ 
tants. It is singular that Pliny (5, 38) should rank 
Teos among the islands of Ionia ; at most, it could 
only be reckoned as a peninsula. The site once occu¬ 
pied by this ancient city is now called Boudroun. 
(Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 353.) 

Terentia, I. .the wife of Cicero. She became 
mother of M. Cicero, and of a daughter called Tulli- 
ola. Cicero repudiated her, and she married Sallust, 
Cicero’s enemy, and afterward Messala Corvinus. 

1298 


She lived to her 103d, or, according to Pliny, to her 
117th year. (Plut., Vit. Cic .— Val. Max., 8, 13.—• 
Ep. ad Attic., 11, 16, &c.) # 

Terentianus, I. a Roman, to whom Longinus dedi¬ 
cated his treatise on the Sublime.—II. Maurua, a 
grammarian. (Vid. Maurus Terentianus.) 

Terentius PublIus, a Latin comic poet, a native 
of Carthage, born about the 560th year of Rome. In 
what manner he came or was brought to the latter city 
is uncertain. He was in his earliest youth the slave 
of one Terentius Lucanus at Rome, whose name ha? 
been perpetuated only by the glory of his slave. Hav 
ing obtained his freedom, he became the friend of Lae- 
lius and the younger Africanus, and it is both proba¬ 
ble in itself, and appears to have been credited as a 
fact by the ancients, that he was assisted in the com¬ 
position of his dramas by Lselius and Scipio, as ama¬ 
teur critics. After he had given six comedies to the 
stage, Terence left Rome for Greece, whence he never 
returned. According to one account he perished at 
sea while on his voyage from Greece to Italy, bring¬ 
ing with him a hundred and eight comedies, which he 
had translated from Menander. According to others 
he died in Arcadia for grief at the loss of those come¬ 
dies, which he had sent before him by sea to Rome. 
In whatever way it was occasioned, his death happen¬ 
ed at the early age of thirty-four, and A.TJ.C. 694.- 
The titles of his six plays are as follows : the Andria, 
Eunuchus, Heautontimoroumenos, Adelphi, Phormio, 
and Hecyra. —His Andria was not acted till the year 
587; two.years, according to the Eusebian Chronicle, 
after the death of Caecilius; which unfortunately 
throws some doubt on the agreeable anecdote record¬ 
ed by Donatus, of his introduction, in a wretched garb, 
into the house of Cascilius, in order to read his com¬ 
edy to that poet, by whom, as a mean person, he was 
seated on a low stool, till he astonished him with the 
matchless grace and elegance of the Andria, when he 
was placed on the couch, and invited to partake the 
supper of the veteran dramatist. Several writers have 
conjectured that it might be to some other than Ca3- 
cilius that Terence read his comedy; or, as it is not 
certain that the Andria was his first comedy, that it 
might be some of the others which he read to Csecili- 
us. Supposing the Eusebian Chronicle to be accurate 
in the date which it fixes for the death of Cascilius, it 
is just possible that Terence may have written and 
read to him his Andria, two years previous to its rep¬ 
resentation.—Most, if not all, of Terence’s plots were 
taken by him from the Greek stage. He has given 
proof, however, of his taste and judgment in the ad¬ 
ditions and alterations made on those borrowed sub¬ 
jects ; and, had he lived an age later, when all the arts 
were in full glory at Rome, and the empire at its height 
of power and splendour, he would have found domes¬ 
tic subjects sufficient to supply his scene with interest 
and variety, and would no longer have accounted it a 
greater merit “ Grcecas transferre quam proprias scri- 
bere." —Terence was a more rigid observer than hi3 
predecessors of the unities of time and place ; but in 
none of his dramas, with a single exception, has that 
of plot been adhered to. The simplicity, and exact 
unity of fable in the Greek comedies would have boen 
insipid to a people not thoroughly instructed in the 
genuine beauties of the drama. Such plays were of 
too thin contexture to satisfy the somewhat gross and 
lumpish taste of a Roman audience. The Latin po¬ 
ets, therefore, bethought themselves of combining two 
stories into one ; and this junction, which we call the 
double plot, affording the opportunity of more inci¬ 
dents, and a greater variety of action, was better suited 
to the tastes of those they had to please. Of all the 
Latin comedians, Terence appears to have practised 
this art the most assiduously. Plautus has very fre¬ 
quently single plots, which he was enabled to support 
by the force of drollery. Terence, whose genius led 





TERENTIUS. 


TER 


anotner way, or whose taste was abhorrent from all 
sort of buffoonery, had recourse to the other expedi¬ 
ent of double plots ; and this probably gained him the 
popular reputation of being the most artful writer for 
the stage. The Hecyra is the only one of his come¬ 
dies of the true ancient cast; hence the want of suc¬ 
cess with which it met on its first and second repre¬ 
sentations. When first brought forward, in 589, it 
was interrupted by the spectators leaving the theatre, 
attracted by the superior interest of a boxing-match 
and rope-dancers. A combat of gladiators had the 
like unfortunate effect when it was attempted to be 
again exhibited in 594. The celebrated actor, L. Am- 
bivius, encouraged by the success which he had expe¬ 
rienced in reviving the condemned plays of Caecilius, 
ventured to produce it a third time on the stage, when 
it recived a patient hearing, and was frequently repeat¬ 
ed. Still, however, most of the old critics and com¬ 
mentators speak of it as greatly inferior to the other 
plays of Terence. On the whole, however, the plots 
of Terence are, in most respects, judiciously laid : the 
incidents are selected with taste, arranged" and con¬ 
nected with inimitable art, and painted with exquisite 
grace and beauty.—In the representation of characters 
and manners, Terence was considered by the ancients 
as surpassing all their comic poets. In this depart¬ 
ment of his art, he shows that comprehensive knowl¬ 
edge of the humours and inclinations of mankind, 
which enabled him to delineate characters as well as 
manners with a genuine and apparently unstudied sim¬ 
plicity. All the inferior passions which form the 
range of comedy are so nicely observed and accurately 
expressed, that we nowhere find a truer or more lively 
representation of human nature.—Erasmus, one of the 
best judges of classical literature at the revival of 
learning, says that there is no author from whom we 
can better learn the pure Roman style than from the 
poet Terence. It has been farther remarked of him, 
that the Romans thought themselves in conversation 
when they heard his comedies. Terence, in fact, gave 
to the Roman tongue its highest perfection in point of 
elegance and grace. For this ineffabilis amanitas, as 
it is called by Heinsius, he was equally admired by his 
own contemporaries and the writers in the golden pe¬ 
riod of Roman literature. He is called by Caesar puri 
germonis amator, and Cicero characterizes him as 

“ Quicquid come loquens, ac omnia dulcia dicens .” 

Even in the last age of Latin poetry, and when his 
pure simplicity was so different from the style affected 
by the writers of the day, he continued to be regarded 
as the model of correct composition. Ausonius. in 
his beautiful poem addressed to his grandson, hails 
him, on account of his style, as the ornament of La- 
tium. Among all the Latin writers, indeed, from En¬ 
nius to Ausonius, we meet with nothing so simple, so 
full of grace and delicacy—in fine, nothing that can 
be compared to his comedies for elegance of dialogue, 
presenting a constant flow of easy, genteel, unaf¬ 
fected conversation, which never subsides into vulgar¬ 
ity or grossness, and never rises higher than the ordi¬ 
nary level of polite conversation. Of this, indeed, he 
was so careful, that when he employed any sentence 
which he had found in the tragic poets, he stripped it 
of that air of grandeur and majesty which rendered it 
unsuitable for common life and comedy. The narra¬ 
tives in particular possess a beautiful and picturesque 
simplicity. As to what may be called the poetical 
style of Terence, it has been generally allowed that 
he has used very great license in his versification. 
Politian is thought to have been the first who at all 
divided his plays into lines ; but a separation was af¬ 
terward more correctly executed by Erasmus. Pris- 
Gian says that Terence uses more licenses than any 
other writer. Bentley, after Priscian, adrfutVcu every 
variety of iambic and trochaic measure ; and such 


were the apparent number of licenses and mixture of 
different species of verse, that, according to Wester 
hovius, in order to reduce the lines to their original 
accuracy, it would be necessary to evoke Laelius and 
Scipio from the shades.—As regards the respective 
merits of Terence and Plautus, it mav be observed 
that the former was chiefly desirous of recommending 
himself to the approbation of a select few, who were 
possessed of true wit and judgment, and the dread of 
whose censure always kept him within the bounds of 
good taste, while the sole object of Plautus, on the 
other hand, was to excite the merriment of an audi¬ 
ence endued with little refinement. If, then, we 
merely consider the intrinsic merit of their produc¬ 
tions, without reference to the circumstances or situa¬ 
tion of the authors, still Plautus will be accounted su¬ 
perior in that vivacity of action and variety of inci¬ 
dent which inflame curiosity and hurry on the mind to 
the conclusion. We delight, on the contrary, to 
dwell on every scene, almost on every sentence of 
Terence. Sometimes there are chasms in Plautus’s 
fables, and the incidents do not properly adhere ; in 
Terence all the links of the action depend on each 
other. Plautus has more variety in his exhibition of 
characters and manners, and more art in working up 
materials from the different employments and pursuits 
of men ; but his pictures are often overcharged, 
while those of Terence are never more highly colour¬ 
ed than becomes the modesty of nature. The lan¬ 
guage of Plautus is more rich and luxuriant than that 
of Terence, but is far from being so equal, uniform, 
and chaste. It is often stained with vulgarity, and 
sometimes swells beyond the limits of comic dialogue, 
while that of Terence is puro simillimus amni. The 
verses of Plautus are, as he himself calls them, nu- 
meri innumeri ; and Hermann declares that, at least 
as now printed, they are full of every kind of error. 
Terence attends more to elegance and delicacy in the 
expression of passion, Plautus to comic expression. 
In fact, the great object of Plautus seems to have 
been to excite laughter among his audience, and in 
this object he completely succeeded ; but for its at¬ 
tainment he has sacrificed many graces and beauties 
of the drama. The humour of Plautus consists chief¬ 
ly in words and actions, that of Terence in matter. 
The pleasantries of Plautus, which were so often flat, 
low, or extravagant, finally drew down the censure of 
Horace, while Terence was extolled by that poetical 
critic as the most consummate master of dramatic art. 
In short, Plautus was more gay, Terence more chaste ; 
the first has more genius and fire, the latter more man¬ 
ner and solidity. Plautus excels in low comedy and 
ridicule, Terence in drawing just characters, and in 
maintaining them to the last. The plots of both are 
artful, but Terence’s are more apt to languish, while 
Plautus’s spirit maintains the action with vigour. 
His invention was greatest; Terence’s art and man¬ 
agement Plautus gives the stronger, Terence a 
more elegant delight. Plautus appears the better co¬ 
median of the two, Terence the better poet. Plautus 
shone most on the stage, Terence pleases best in the 
closet. ( Dunlop's Roman Literature, vol. 1, p. 279, 
seqq., Lond. ed. — Malkin's Classical Disquisitions, 
p. 5, seqq.) —The best editions of Terence are, that 
of Bentley, Cantab., 1726, and Amst., 1727, 4to 
(that of Amsterdam being the better of the two); 
that of Westerhovius, Hag. Com., 1726, 2 vols. 4to; 
and that of Zeune, Lips., 1774, 2 vols. 8vo ; beauti¬ 
fully, but not very accurately, reprinted at the London 
press in 1820, 2 vols. 8vo.—II. Varro. ( Vid . Varro I.) 

Tereus (two syllables), I. a king of Thrace. He 
married Progne, the daughter of Pandion, king of 
Athens, whom he had assisted in a war against Me- 
gara ; and he offered violence to his sister-in-law Phi¬ 
lomela, whom he was conducting to Thrace by desire 
of Progne. (Vid. Philomela, and Progne.) 

1299 



TER 


TER 


Tergeste, a city of Venetia, in the territory of the 
Carni, now Trieste. It was situate at the northeast¬ 
ern extremity of the Sinus Tergestinus. In Strabo 
we find it sometimes called Tergesta, or lergestas 
in the plural. ( Strab., 314.) The Greeks knew it 
by the name of Tergestrum. ( Artcmid., ap. Steph. 
Byz. — Dionus. Pcrieg., v. 384.) It suffered severe¬ 
ly, on one occasion, from a sudden incursion of the 
Iapydes. ( Appian, B. 111., 18.— Strabo, 2#7.) 

Terina, a town of the Bruttii, on the coast of the 
Mare Tyrrhenum. It is now St. Euphemia. The ad¬ 
jacent bay. was called Sinus Terinseus. The earliest 
writers who have noticed this place are Scylax ( Peri- 
plus, p. 5) and Lycophron. Strabo informs us that it 
was destroyed by Hannibal, when he found that he 
could no longer retain it. It was probably restored at 
a later period, as we find it named by Pliny and Ptol¬ 
emy. ( Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 416.) 

Termil^s. Vid. Lycia. 

Terminalia, an annual festival at Rome, observed 
in honour of the god Terminus, in the month of Feb¬ 
ruary. It was then usual for peasants to assemble near 
the principal landmarks which separated their fields, 
and, after they had crowned them with garlands and 
flowers, to make libations of milk and wine, and to 
sacrifice a lamb or a young pig. This festival was 
originally established by Numa; and though at first 
it was forbidden to shed the blood of victims, yet, in 
process of time, landmarks were plentifully sprinkled 
with it. (Ovid, Fast., 2, 641.) 

Terminus, a divinity at Rome, who was supposed 
to preside over boundaries. His worship was first in¬ 
troduced at Rome by Numa, who persuaded his sub¬ 
jects that the limits of their lands were under the im¬ 
mediate care and superintendence of Heaven. His 
temple was on the Tarpeian rock, and he was repre¬ 
sented with a human head, without feet or arms, to in¬ 
timate that he never moved, wherever he was. It is 
6aid that when Tarquin the Proud wished to build a 
temple on the Tarpeian rock to Jupiter, the god Ter¬ 
minus alone refused to give way. (Ovid, Fast., 2, 
641.— Pint., Vit. Num.) 

Terpander, a lyric poet and musician of Lesbos, 
670 B.C., whose date is determined by his appearance 
in the mother-country of Greece : of his early life in 
Lesbos nothing is known. The first account of him 
describes him in Peloponnesus, which at that time 
surpassed the rest of Greece in political power, in well- 
ordered governments, and probably also in mental cul¬ 
tivation. It is one of the most certain dates of an¬ 
cient chronology, that, in the 26th Olympiad(B.C. 676), 
musical contests were first introduced at the feast of 
Apollo Carneius, and at their first celebration Terpan- 
der was crowned victor. He was also victor four suc¬ 
cessive times in the musical contest at the Pythian 
temple of Delphi. In Lacedaemon, whose citizens, 
from the earliest times, had been distinguished for their 
love of music and dancing, the first scientific cultiva¬ 
tion of music was ascribed to Terpander (Plut., de 
Mus., c. 9) ; and a record of the precise time had been 
preserved, probably in the registers of public games. 
Hence it appears that Terpander was a younger con¬ 
temporary of Callinus and Archilochus ; so that the 
dispute among the ancients, whether Terpander or Ar¬ 
chilochus were the older, must probably be decided by 
supposing them to have lived about the same time. At 
the head of all the inventions of Terpander stands the 
seven-stringed cithara. The only accompaniment for 
the voice used by the early Greeks was a four-stringed 
cithara, the tetrachord ; and this instrument had been 
so generally used, and held in such repute, that the 
•whole system of music was founded upon the tetra- 
chbtd. Terpander was the first who added three 
strifigs louthis instrument, as: he, himself testifies in 
two sexfcantnv.eiTes.- •> (Eublid, - lntrod.l HaOn „ p.: 19, 
—For some jtemarlcs.on,Terfiander’sinVentioni arid 6n 
43Q0 


the Greek musical scale generally, consult MiiUer 
Hist. Gr. Lit., p. 151, seqq .) 

Terpsichore, one of the Muses, daughter of Jupi¬ 
ter and Mnemosyne. She presided over dancing, of 
which she was, reckoned the inventress, and in which, 
as her name intimates, she took delight (from Teprco), 
“ to delight ,” and x°pbg, a chorus or dance). To her 
was sometimes ascribed the invention of the cithara, 
and not to Mercury. She is represented like a you? g 
virgin crowned with laurel, and holding in her hand a 
musical instrument. (Juv., Sat., 7, 35.) 

Terra, one of the most ancient deities in classical 
mythology, wife of Uranus, and mother of Oceanus, 
the Titans, Cyclopes, Giants, Thea, Rhea, Themis, 
Phoebe, Tethys, and Mnemosyne. (Vid. Ops, and 
Tellus.) 

Terrackna, a city of Latium, called also Anxur, 
situate on the seacoast, in a northeastern direction from 
the Circeian Promontory. Anxur was probably its 
Volscian name. (Vid. Anxur.) We learn from Hor¬ 
ace (Sat., 1, 5, 25) that this city stood on the lofty 
rock at the foot of which the modern Terracina is sit¬ 
uated. According to Strabo (233), it was first named 
Trachina, a Greek appellation indicative of the rugged-' 
ness of its situation. Ovid calls it Trachas. (Met., 15, 
717.) In Dionysius it is written T appanyva. With 
the generality of Latin writers it is, however, called 
Tarracina (Mela, 2, 4), and sometimes, in the plural, 
Tarracinae. (Liv., 4, 59.) The Romans took this 
place after a siege of short duration, when it was given 
up to plunder. (Liv., 1. c .) It was, however, retaken 
by the Volsci, who surprised the garrison. (Liv., 5, 8.) 
It subsequently fell again into the hands of the Ro¬ 
mans, and became of consequence as a naval station. 
Its port is noticed by Livy (27, 4), and it is classed 
by that historian with those colonies which were re¬ 
quired to furnish sailors and stores for the Roman fleet 
(27, 38). It is styled splendidus locus" by Valerius 
Maximus, who relates a remarkable trial which took 
place there (8, 1, 13). From Tacitus we learn that it 
was a municipium (Hist., 4, 5); and the efforts made 
by the parties of Vitellius and Vespasian to obtain pos¬ 
session of this place, sufficiently prove that it was then 
looked upon as a very important post. (Hist., 3, 76, 
seqq.) The Emperor Galba was born at a village neai 
Terracina. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 100 ) 

Tertullianus. J. Septimius Florens, a celebra¬ 
ted Christian writer, born at Carthage about the mid¬ 
dle of the second century, and considered the most 
early Latin father extant. He was originally a pagan, 
but afterward embraced Christianity, of which he be¬ 
came an able advocate by his writings, which showed 
that he was possessed of a lively imagination, impet¬ 
uous eloquence, elevated style, and strength of rea¬ 
soning. It is not known at what period of life he be¬ 
came a Christian. He himself informs us that he was 
originally a pagan, and of corrupt morals ; but the lat¬ 
ter phrase must necessarily be taken in a mild sense, 
with reference to one who practised such rigid moral¬ 
ity as Tertullian subsequently did. It is probable 
that before his conversion he taught rhetoric, and fol¬ 
lowed the profession of an advocate ; at least, his 
works show a great acquaintance with the principles 
of law. He became priest at Carthage, or, accord¬ 
ing to the vulgar opinion, at Rome. He soon, how¬ 
ever, separated from the Catholic Church to throw 
himself into the errors of the Montanists, who, exag¬ 
gerating Christian purity, regarded as a sin all parti¬ 
cipation in the pleasures of the wore a]’ communi¬ 
cation with individuals attached to idolatry, and even 
the study of the sciences of the day. St. Jerome says 
that the envy and the calumnies of the Roman clergy 
against Tertullian was the occasion of this step on his 
part; and from this remark some have concluded, 
j though without sufficient grounds, that he was ex¬ 
celled from the Church of Rome bv the intolerant 



T EU 


TED 


spirit of his clerical brethren. However this may have 
been, a distinction is carefully observed between the 
works which Tertullian wrote previous to his separa¬ 
tion from the Catholic Church and those which he 
composed afterward, when he had ranged himself 
among the followers of Montanus. The former are 
four in number, his Apologeticus , and those which 
tree.t of baptism, of penitence , and prayer. The last 
Df these is regarded as his first production. Some 
authors add a work in two volumes, addressed to his 
wife, in which he gives h§r directions as to the course 
of conduct which she should pursue in the state of 
widowhood. Most critics consider this to have been 
composed by him at an advanced age. The works 
written by Tertullian after he had become a Monta- 
nist are, Apologies for Christianity, Treatises on Ec¬ 
clesiastical Discipline , and two species of polemical 
works, the one directed against heretics, and the other 
against Catholics. The latter are four in number, De 
Pudicitia, De Fuga. in Persecutions, De Jcjunio, De 
Monogamia. His principal work is the Apologeticus 
Adversus Gentes mentioned above. It is addressed 
to the governors of the provinces ; it refutes the cal¬ 
umnies which had been uttered against the religion of 
the gospel, and shows that its professors were faithful 
and obedient subjects. It is the best work written in 
favour of Christianity during the early ages of the 
Church. It contains a number of very curious histor¬ 
ical passages on the ceremonies of the Christian 
Church ; as, for example* a description of the agapce 
or love-feasts. Tertullian remoulded this work, and 
it appeared under the new title Ad Nationes. In its 
altered state it pbssesses more method, but less fire 
than the first. The writings of Tertullian show an 
ardent and impassioned spirit, a brilliant imagination, 
a high degree of natural talent and profound erudition. 
His style, however, is obscure, though animated, and 
betrays the foreign extraction of the writer. The pe¬ 
rusal of Tertullian is very important for the student of 
ecclesiastical history. He informs us, more correctly 
than any other writer, respecting the Christian doc¬ 
trines of his time, the constitution of the Church, its 
ceremonies, and the attacks of heretics against Chris¬ 
tianity. Tertullian was held in very high esteem by 
the subsequent fathers of the Church. St. Cyprian 
read his works incessantly, and used to call him, by 
way of eminence, The Master. Vincent of Lerins 
used to say “ that every word of Tertullian was a sen¬ 
tence, and every sentence a triumph over error.” 
The best edition of the entire works of Tertullian is 
that of Semler, 4 vols. 8vo, Hal., 1770 ; and of his 
Apology, that of Havercamp, 8vo, L. Bat., W18. 

Tethys, the wife of Oceanus, and daughter of Ura¬ 
nus and Terra. Their offspring were the rivers of 
the earth, and three thousand daughters, named Oce- 
anides or Ocean-nymphs. ( Hes., Theog., 337, seqq.) 
The name of Tethys (T yOvg) is thought to mean the 
Nurse, the Rearer. Hermann renders it Alumnia. 

(Keightley's Mythology, p. 51.) 

TetrapSeis, I. a name given to the city of Antioch, 
the capital of Syria, because divided, as it were, into 
four cities, each having its separate wall, besides a 
common one enclosing all. ( Vid. Antiochia I.)—II. 
A name applied to Doris, in Greece ( Dorica Tetrap- 
olis ), from its four cities. (Vid. Doris.) 

Teucer, I. a king of part of Troas, son of the Sca- 
rnander by Idsea. His subjects were called Teucri, 
from his name ; and his daughter Batea married Dar- 
danus, a Samothracian prince, who succeeded him in 
the government. Dardanus founded the city of the 
same name, and also gave to the whole adjacent coun¬ 
try the name of Dardania. ( Apollod., 3, 12,1.— Virg ., 
IEn., 3, 108.)—II. A son of Telamon, king of Sala- 
mis, by Hesione, the daughter of Laomedon. He 
was one of Helen’s suiters, and, accordingly, accom¬ 
panied the Greeks to the Trojan war, where he sig¬ 


nalized himself by his valour and intrepidity. It is 
said that his father refused to receive him into his 
kingdom, because he had left the death of his brother 
Ajax unavenged. This severity of the father did not 
dishearten the son ; he left Salamis and retired to Cy 
prus, where, with the assistance of Belus, king of Si- 
don, he built a town which he called Salamis, after 
his native country. 

Teucrt, a name given to the Trojans, from Teucer, 
their king. According to a passage in Virgil (jEn., 3, 

108), the Teucri were a colony from Crete, who settled 
in Troas previous to the founding of Troy, and were 
the founders of the Trojan race. Apollodorus, how¬ 
ever, following, probably, the current Grecian fables 
on this subject, makes the Teucri to have been de¬ 
scended from Teucris, a son of the Scamander. Heyne, 
in an excursus to the passage of Virgil mentioned 
above, gives the preference to the latter account. It 
is probable that the Teucri were only a branch of the 
inhabitants of Troas, and originally of Thracian de¬ 
scent. Such, at least, is the opinion of Mannert, and 
with him agrees Cramer (Asia Minor , vol. 1, p. 77, 
seqq.). 

Teuta, a queen of Illyricum B.C. 231, who ordered 
some Roman ambassadors to be put to death. This 
act of violence gave rise to a war, which ended in her 
overthrow. (Vid. Illyricum.) 

Tetjtas or Teutates, a name of Mercury among 
the Gauls, who offered human victims to this deity. 

—He was worshipped by the Britons also. Some de¬ 
rive the name from two British words, deu-tatt, whioh 
signify God, the parent or creator ; a name properly 
due only to the Supreme Being, who was originally 
intended by that name. (Lucan, 1, 445.) 

Teuthras, a king of Mysia, on the borders of the 
Ca’icus. (Vid. Telephus.) 

Teutoburgiensis Saltus, a forest of Germany, ly¬ 
ing in an eastern direction from Paderborn, and reach¬ 
ing as far as the territory of Osnabruck. It is famous 
for the slaughter of Varus and his three legions, by 
the Germans under Arminius. (Tac., Ann., 1, 60.) 

For a more particular idea of the locality, consult the 
remarks of Tappes (Die wq.hre Gegcnd und Linie * $ 

der Hermannusschlacht, Essen., 1820, 8vo). 

Teutoni and Teutones, a name given to several 
united tribes of Germany, who, together with the Cim 
bri, made a memorable inroad into southern Europe. 

The most erudite inquiries as to the origin and causes 
of this migration from the north have led to no defi¬ 
nite results, owing to the almost entire ignorance, on 
the part of the Greeks and Romans, of the nature of 
the northern population and languages. That the mi¬ 
gration was neither purely Scandinavian or German, 
nor purely Celtic or Gallic, clearly appears from the 
accounts of the order of march of the Cimbri and Teu¬ 
tones, as well as of their bodily stature and mode of 
fighting. The barbarian torrent seems to have origi¬ 
nally been loosed from the farther side of the Elbe ; 
whence a mongrel horde of Germans and Scandinavi 
ans, of gigantic stature, savage valour, and singular ac¬ 
coutrements, descended towards the south. On theii 
route, a number of Celtic tribes, of which the Tigu- 
rini and Tectosagae are distinguished by name above 
the others, joined them ; and, in conjunction with 
them, threatened to pour upon the Romans, who just 
then were pressing farther and farther on the side of 
what is now Carinthia towards modern Austria, and 
on the west from Provence towards Toulouse. On 
the side of Carinthia, the Romans took the whole of 
Noricum under their protection ; and Carbo was de¬ 
stroyed with his army in endeavouring to keep off the 
Teutones from that territory. On the other, they had 
extended their sway from the Alps to the Pyrenees, 
and had forced the native tribes as far as Lugdunum 
(Luo™^ to accept their protection. The barbarians, 
howev«. instead of pouring upon Italy after the do 

1301 



T H A 


T H A 


/eat of Carbo, turned back and spread desolation in 
Gaul; and the Romans despatched an army against 
them under Spurius Cassius. This army was annihi¬ 
lated by the Celtic hordes, who had associated them¬ 
selves with the Cimbri and Teutones. The barbarians 
terrified the Romans by their enormous stature, by 
their firmness in order of battle, and by their mode of 
fighting, of which the peculiarity consisted in extend¬ 
ing their lines so as to enclose large tracts of ground, 
and in forming barriers around them with tlieir wagons 
and chari its. The danger to the Romans from the 
combined German and Celtic populations seemed the 
greater, as the Jugurthine wars, in the beginning of 
the contest, engaged their best generals. They there¬ 
fore sent into Gaul L. Servilius Csepio, a consul, with 
a consular army. Caipio, quite in the spirit of the 
senatorial party of his times, plundered the Gauls, and 
seized their sacred treasures instead of preserving dis¬ 
cipline. This was in A.U.C. 647. The next year, 
Cajpio was declared proconsul of Gallia Narbonensis, 
and Cneius Manlius, the consul, was appointed his 
colleague. These two generals, neither of whom pos¬ 
sessed any merit, happening not to agree, separated 
their forces, but were both attacked at the same time, 
one by the Gauls, the other by the Cimbri, and their 
armies were cut to pieces. The consternation which 
this occasioned at Rome was increased by the spread¬ 
ing of a report that the enemy were preparing to pass 
the Alps. But the barbarians, instead of concentra¬ 
ting their force for a descent upon Italy, wasted Spain 
and scoured the Gallic territories. Marius was now 
chosen consul; and, while the foe were plundering 
Spain and Gaul, he was actively employed in exerci¬ 
sing and disciplining his army. At length, in the third 
year of his command in Gaul, in his fourth consulship, 
the Teutones and Ambrones made their appearance 
in the south of Gaul : while the Cimbri, and all the 
tribes united with them, attempted to break into Italy 
from the northeast. Marius defeated the Teutones 
and Ambrones near Aquae Sextise (now Aix), in Gaul ; 
and, in the following year, uniting his forces with 
those of Catulus, he entirely defeated the Cimbri in 
the plain of Vercellae, to the north of the Po, near the 
Sessites. In these two battles the Teutones and Am¬ 
brones are said to have lost the incredible number of 
290,000 men (200,000 slain, and 90,000 taken pris¬ 
oners), and the Cimbri 200,000 men (140,000 slain, 
and 60,000 taken prisoners.— Liv., Epit., 68.— Vid. 
Marius.) 

Thais, a celebrated Greek hetserist, who accom¬ 
panied Alexander on his expedition into Asia, and in¬ 
stigated him, while under the influence of wine, to set 
fire to the royal palace at Persepolis. (Vid. Persepo- 
lis.) After the death of Alexander she attached her¬ 
self to Ptolemy, son of Lagus, by whom she had two 
sons and a daughter. This daughter was named 
Irene, and became the wife of Ennostus, king of Soli, 
in the island of Cyprus. There is no good reason for 
the opinion that she lived with the poet Menander be¬ 
fore accompanying the army of Alexander. This sup¬ 
position arose from Menander’s having composed a 
piece entitled Thais. (Athenceus , 13, p. 576, D .— 
Bayle, Diet., s. v. — Michaud, Biogr. Univ., vol. 45, 
p. 230.) 

Thala, a city of Africa, in the dominions of Ju- 
gurtha. It is supposed by some to be the same with 
Telepte, now Ferreanach, though this seems doubtful. 
Mannert, however, inclines to this opinion. (Consult 
Shaw's Travels in Barbary, vol. 1, pt. 2, c. 5.) 

Thales, a celebrated philosopher, the founder of 
the Ionic sect, born at Miletus in the first year of the 
35th Olympiad. He was descended from Phoenician 
parents, who had left their country and settled at Mi- 
'etus. The wealth which he inherited, and his own 
superior abilities, raised him to distinction among his 
countrymen, so that he was early employed in public 
1302 


affairs. Like the rest of the ancients, he travelled w 
quest of knowledge, and for some time resided in 
Crete, Phoenicia, and Egypt. Under the priests of 
Memphis he is said to have been taught geometry, as¬ 
tronomy, and philosophy. It is probable, however, 
that he was more indebted to his own ingenuity than 
to their instructions ; for, while he was among them, 
he taught them, to their great astonishment, how to 
measure the height of their pyramids. It cannot be 
supposed that Thales could acquire much mathemati¬ 
cal knowledge from a people incapable of solving so 
easy a problem. The method pursued by Thales was 
this : at the termination of the shadow of the pyramid, 
he erected a staff perpendicular to the surface of the 
earth, and thus obtained two right-angled triangles, 
which enabled him to infer the ratio of the height of 
the pyramid to the length of its shadow, from the ratio 
of the height of the staff to the length of its shadow. 
In mathematics, Thales is said to have invented sev¬ 
eral fundamental propositions, which were afterward 
incorporated into the elements of Euclid, particularly 
the following theorems : that a circle is bisected by 
its diameter ; that the angles at the base of an isosce¬ 
les triangle are equal ; that the vertical angles of two 
intersecting lines are equal ; that if two angles and 
one side of one triangle be equal to two angles and 
one side of another triangle, the remaining angles and 
sides are respectively equal ; and that the angle in a 
semicircle is a right angle. Astronomical as well as 
mathematical science seems to have received consid¬ 
erable improvements from Thales. He was so well ac¬ 
quainted with the celestial motions as to be able to 
predict an eclipse, though probably with no great de¬ 
gree of accuracy as to time ; for Herodotus, who re¬ 
lates this fact, only says that he foretold the year in 
which it would happen. He taught the Greeks the 
division of the heaven into five zones, and the solsti¬ 
tial and equinoctial points, and approached so near to 
the knowledge of the true length of the solar revolu¬ 
tion, that he corrected their calendar, and made theii 
year contain 365 days.—Thales held that the first prin¬ 
ciple of natural bodies, or the first simple substance 
from which all things in the world are formed, is wa¬ 
ter. It is probable that by the term water, Thales 
meant to express the same idea which the cosmogonista 
expressed by the word chaos, the notion annexed to 
which was, a turbid and muddy mass, from which all 
things were produced. His most celebrated pupils 
and successors in the Ionic school were Anaximander, 
Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, and Archelaus, the master 
of Socrates. Thales died at the age of 90, in the 58th 
Olympiad. (Sosicr., ap. Diog. Laerk, 1 , 38. — Clin¬ 
ton, Fast. Hellen., vol. 1 , p. 3. — Enfield, Hist. Fhi- 
los., vol. 1, p. 149 , seqq.) 

Thalestris, otherwise called Mjnithya ( Justin, 2, 
4), a queen of the Amazons, who, accompanied by 
300 women, came 25 days’ journey, through the most 
hostile nations, to meet Alexander, in his Asiatic con¬ 
quests, and raise offspring by him. (Justin, 12, 3.— 
Quint. Curt., 6, 5.) 

Thalia (8d/Uia, “ the Blooming one ”), I. one of the 
Muses, generally regarded as the patroness of comedy. 
She was supposed by some, also, to preside over hus¬ 
bandry and planting.—II. One of the Graces. ( Vid. 
Gratis ) 

Thamyris, an early Thracian bard, son of Philam- 
mon and Argiope. He is said to have been remarka 
ble for beauty of person and skill on the lyre, and to 
have challenged the Muses to a contest of skill. He 
was conquered, and the Muses deprived him of sight 
for his presumption. (Apollod., 1,3, 3.)—Consult the 
remarks of Heyne (ad Apollod., 1. c.) on the nature of 
the stipulation between the contending parties. (Horn., 
II ., 2, 595, seqq. — Heyne, ad loc.) 

Thapsacus, a city and famous ford on the Euphra¬ 
tes. The city was situate on the western bank of 



T H A 


THE 


river, nearly opposite to the modern Racca. Geogra- 
pners are wrong in removing it to Ul-Deer (Wil¬ 
liams, Gsogr. of Asia, p. 129, seqq.) This ford was 
passed by Cyrus the Younger in his expedition against 
Artaxerxes; afterward by Darius after his defeat by 
Alexander at Issus ; and near three years after by Al¬ 
exander in pursuit of Darius, previous to the battle of 
Arbela. (Xen., Anab., 1, 4.— Plin., 5, W.—Steph. 
BljZ.y s. v.) 

Thapsus, I. now Demsas , a town of Africa Propria, 
on the coast, southeast of Hadrumetum, where Scipio 
and Juba were defeated by Caesar. It was otherwise 
a place of little consequence. ( Mannert, Geogr., vol. 
10, pt. 2, p. 241.)—II. A town of Sicily, on the east¬ 
ern coast, not far to the north of Syracuse. It was 
situate on a peninsula, which was sometimes called an 
island, and which now bears the name of Macronisi. 
I he place probably obtained its name from the penin¬ 
sula producing the a sort of plant or shrub 

used for dyeing yellow. ( Tkucyd., 6, 4.— Bloomfield, 
ad Tkucyd., 1. c.) 

Thasus, an island in the .<Egean, off the coast of 
Thrace, and opposite the mouth of the Nestus. It 
received, at a very remote period, a colony of Phoeni¬ 
cians, under the conduct of Thasus {Herod., 6, 47. 
•— Seyran., Ck v. 660), that enterprising people having 
already formed settlements in several islands of the 
./Egean. {Tkucyd., 1, 8.) They were induced to 
possess themselves of Thasus, from the valuable sil¬ 
ver-mines which it contained, and which, it appears, 
they afterward worked with unremitting assiduity. 
Herodotus, who visited this island, reports that a large 
mountain on the side of Samothrace had been turned 
upside down (uvearpayfievov) in search of the precious 
metal. Thasus, at a later period, was recolonized by 
a party of Parians, pursuant to the command of an or¬ 
acle to the father of the poet Archilochus. From this 
document, quoted by Stephanus, we learn that the 
ancient name of the island was JEria. {Pliny, 4, 
12.) It is said by others to have been also named 
Chryse. ( Eustath., ad Dion. Perieg., p. 97.) His- 
tiaeus the Milesian, during the disturbances occasioned 
by the Ionian revolt, fruitlessly endeavoured to make 
himself master of this island, which was subsequently 
conquered by Mardonius, when the Thasians were 
commanded to pull down their fortifications, and re¬ 
move their ships to Abdera. {Herod., 6,44.) On the 
expulsion of the Persians from Greece, Thasus, to¬ 
gether with the other islands on this coast, became 
tributary to Athens; disputes, however, having arisen 
between the islanders and that power on the subject of 
the mines on the Thracian coast, a war ensued, and 
the Thasians were besieged for three years. On their 
surrender their fortifications were destroyed, and their 
ships of war removed to Athens. {Tkucyd., 1, 101.) 
Thasus once more revolted, after the great failure of 
the Athenians in Sicily, at which time a change was 
effected in the government of the island from democ¬ 
racy to oligarchy. ( Tkucyd , 8, 64.) According to 
Herodotus, the revenues of Thasus amounted to two 
hundred, and sometimes three hundred, talents annu¬ 
ally. These funds were principally derived from the 
mines of Scapte-hyle, in Thrace (6, 48).—-The capital 
of the island was Thasus.—Thasus furnished, besides 
gold and silver, marbles and wine, which were much 
esteemed. {Plin., 35, 6. — Senec., Epist., 86.— 
Atken., 1,51.) The soil was excellent. (Dion. Pe¬ 
rieg., v. 523.) The modern name of the island is 
Tkaso or Tasso. (Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 
333.) 

Thaumaci, a city of Thessaly, in the district of 
Phthiotis, and in a northwest direction from the head 
waters of the Sinus Maliacus. It is said to have de¬ 
rived its name from the singularity of its situation, and 
the astonishment (davga) produced on the minds of 
travellers upon first reaching it. Livy, who describes 


it as placed on the great road leading from Thermopy* 
las by Lamia to the north of Thessaly, speaks of it in 
the following terms: “You arrive,” says the histori¬ 
an, “after a very difficult and rugged route over hill 
and dale, when you suddenly open on an immense 
plain like a vast sea, which stretches below as far as the 
eye can reach.” The town was situate on a very lofty 
and perpendicular rock, which rendered it a place of 
great strength. The modern name is Thaumacos. 
Dodwell describes the view from this place as the 
most wonderful and extensive he ever beheld. Sir 
W. Gell gives Thaumakon as the modern name. 
( Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 414.) 

Thaumantias, an appellation given to Iris, the god¬ 
dess of the rainbow, as the daughter of Thaumas 
(Wonder. — Hes., Theog., 265). 

Theano, I. daughter of Cisseus, and sister of Hec¬ 
uba. She married Antenor, and, being priestess also 
of Minerva, was prevailed upon by her husband to de¬ 
liver up to him the Palladium, which he treacherously 
gave into the hands of the Greeks. (Horn., 11., 6, 
298.— Pausan., 10, 27. — Diet. Cret., 5, 8 ) — II. 
The wife of Pythagoras. She was a native of Cro- 
tona, and the first female, it is said, that turned her 
attention to philosophy. She was also a poetess. 

( Suid., s. v. — Diog. Laert., 8, 42, seqq. — Menag., 
ad Diog., 1. c.) — III. A daughter of Pythagoras 
(Auct., Vit. Pytlw.g., ap. Pint. — Menag., ad Diod., 
8, 42.)—IY. The mother of Pausanias. She was the 
first, as it is reported, who brought a stone to the en¬ 
trance of Minerva’s temple to shut up her son, when 
she heard of his perfidy to his country. ( Vid . Pausa¬ 
nias I.) 

Theatuum : under this head it is proposed to give 
a brief sketch of the ancient drama, arranged under 
proper heads : 

I. History of Tragedy from its rise to the time of 
JEschylus. 

The drama owes its origin to that principle of imi¬ 
tation which is inherent in human nature. Hence its 
invention, like that of painting, sculpture, and the 
other imitative arts, cannot properly be restricted to 
any one specific age or people. In fact, scenical rep¬ 
resentations are found among nations so totally sep¬ 
arated by situation and circumstances, as to make it 
impossible for any one to have borrowed the idea from 
another. In Greece and Hindustan the drama was at 
the same period in high repute and perfection, while 
Arabia and Persia, the intervening countries, were 
utter strangers to this kind of entertainment. The 
Chinese, again, have from time immemorial possessed 
a regular theatre. The ancient Peruvians had their 
tragedies, comedies, and interludes ; and even among 
the savage and solitary islanders of the South Sea, a 
rude kind of play was observed by the navigators who 
discovered them. Each of these people must have in¬ 
vented the drama for themselves. The only point of 
connexion was the sameness of the cause which led 
to these several independent inventions ; the instinct¬ 
ive propensity to imitation, and the pleasure arising 
from it when successfully exerted.—The elements of 
the Grecian Drama are to be sought in an age far an¬ 
tecedent to all regular historic record. In those re¬ 
mote times, the several seasons of the year had among 
the Greeks their respective festivals. That religion, 
which peopled with divinities wood, and hill, and 
stream, and gave to every art and event of ordinary 
life its peculiar deity, entered largely into the feelings 
and customs of these annual festivities. Among an 
agricultural population like that of early Greece, Dio¬ 
nysus, at what time soever his name and worship had 
been introduced, as the inventor of wine and god of 
the vineyard, possessed, of necessity, a distinguished 
sacrifice and feast.—Music and poetry, wherever they 
exist are almost invariably employe l in the sei vices o 

1303 



THEATRUM. 


THEATRUM. 


divine worship. In Greece, pre-eminently the land of 
the song and the lyre, this practice prevailed from the 
most ancient times. At the periodic festivals of theii 
several deities, bands of choristers, accompanied by 
the pipe, the lute, or the harp, sang the general praises 
of the god, or episodic narrations ol his various achieve¬ 
ments. The feasts of Bacchus had, of course, their 
sacred choruses; and these choruses, from the cir¬ 
cumstances of the festival, naturally fell into two 
classes of very different character. The hymns ad¬ 
dressed immediately to the divinity, round the hal¬ 
lowed altar during the solemnity of the service, were 
grave, lofty, and restrained. The songs inspired by 
the carousals of the banquet, and uttered amid the rev¬ 
elries of the Phallic procession, were coarse, ludi¬ 
crous, and satirical, interspersed with mutual jest and 
gibe. The hymn which accompanied the opening sac¬ 
rifice was called c hOvpafiBog, a term of doubtful ety¬ 
mology and import. Perhaps, like the repulsive sym¬ 
bol of the Phallic rites, its origin must be referred to 
an Eastern clime.—Besides the chanters of the Dithy¬ 
ramb and the singers of the Phallic, there was, proba¬ 
bly from the first introduction of Bacchic worship, a 
third class of performers in these annual festivals. 
Fauns and Satyrs were, in popular belief, the regular 
attendants of the deity ; and the received character of 
these singular beings was in admirable harmony with 
the merry Dionysia. The goat, as an animal espe¬ 
cially injurious to the vines, and, therefore, peculiarly 
obnoxious to the god of the vineyard, was the appro¬ 
priate offering in the Bacchic sacrifices. In the horns 
and hide of the victim, all that was requisite to furnish 
satyric guise was at hand ; and thus a band of mum¬ 
mers was easily formed, whose wit, waggery, and gri¬ 
mace would prove no insignificant addition to the 
amusements of the village carnival.—In these rude 
festivities the splendid drama of the Greeks found its 
origin. The lofty poetry of the Dithyramb, combined 
with the lively exhibition of the Satyric chorus, was at 
length wrought out into the majestic tragedy of Soph¬ 
ocles. The Phallic song was expanded and improved 
into the wonderful comedy of Aristophanes.—In the 
first rise of the Bacchic festivals, the rustic singers 
used to pour forth their own unpolished and extempo¬ 
raneous strains. By degrees, these rude choruses as¬ 
sumed a more artificial form. Emulation was excited, 
and contests between neighbouring districts led to the 
successive introduction of such improvements as might 
tend to add interest and effect to the rival exhibitions. 
It was probably now that a distinction in prizes was 
made. Heretofore a goat appears to have been the 
ordinary reward of the victorious choristers ; and the 
term rpaycadia (rpuyov (p&fj), or goat-song , to have 
comprehended the several choral chantings in the Di¬ 
onysia. To the Dithyramb a bull was now assigned, 
as a nobler meed for its sacred ode ; the successful 
singers of the Phallic received a basket of figs and a 
vessel of wine ; while the goat was left to the Satyric 
chorus. Subsequently, when the Dithyramb and the 
drama had become established in all their perfection 
throughout the cities of Greece, the general prize was 
a tripod, which was commonly dedicated by the victor 
to Bacchus, with a tablet, bearing the names of the 
successful composer, choragus, and tribe.—The Dithy¬ 
ramb was at a very early period admitted into the 
Doric cities, and there cherished with peculiar atten¬ 
tion by a succession of poets ; among whom Archilo¬ 
chus of Paros, Arion of Methymne, Simonides of 
Ceos, and Lasus of Hermione were especially distin¬ 
guished. Under their hands the rude extemporaneous 
hymn of a peasant chorus was gradually refined into a 
laboured composition, lofty in sentiment, studied in dic¬ 
tion, and adorned with all the graces which music, 
rhythm, and the dance could supply. Thus fostered by 
the patronage of city communities, and so improved by 
the skill and talent of rival poets, the Ditljyrambic cho- 
1304 


rus, in the sublimity of its odes and splendour of the ac¬ 
companiments, became one of the most imposing shows 
among the public spectacles of Greece.—In the mean 
time, the representation of the laughter-loving Satyrs 
had been moulded into a more regular body, and contin¬ 
ued to delight the populace with their grotesque ap¬ 
pearance and merry pranks. It is here that we first 
discover something of a dramatic nature. The sing¬ 
ers of the Dithyramb were mere choristers ; they as¬ 
sumed no characters, and exhibited no imitation. The 
performers in the Satyric chorus had a part to sustain ; 
they were actors in the strictest sense of the word. 
Moreover, in their extemporaneous bursts of descrip¬ 
tion, remark, jest, and repartee, a kind of dialogue 
was introduced ; irregular, no doubt, and wild, yet 
still a dialogue. Here, then, in this acting and this 
dialogue, we have, at once, the elements and the es¬ 
sence of the drama.—The Satyric chorus, like the 
Dithyramb, had found an early entrance into the Do¬ 
rian cities, and was particularly cultivated at Phlius, 
a town of Sicyon. In Attica, the future scene of the 
perfected drama, there remains no direct record of 
these Dionysian representations until the middle of 
the sixth century before our era. At that time Thes¬ 
pis, a native of Icaria, an Athenian village, was 
struck with the possibility of introducing various im¬ 
provements into the Satyric chorus.—He saw that an 
incessant round of jest, and gambol, and grimace be¬ 
came, in the end, exhausting to the performers and 
wearisome even to the spectators. Accordingly, the. 
Icarian contrived a break in the representation ( Diog . 
Laert.,Plat., 66), by coming forward in person ( Pint ., 
Vit. Sol., c. 29), and, from an elevated stand, descri¬ 
bing in gesticulated narration some mythological story. 
When this was ended the chorus again commenced 
their peforinances. The next step was to add life and 
spirit to these monologues, by making the chorus take 
part in the narrative through an occasional exclama¬ 
tion, question, or remark. This was readily suggested 
by the practice of interchanging observations already 
established among the members of the chorus. And 
thus was the germe of the dialogue still farther de¬ 
veloped. In order to disguise his features, and so 
produce a certain degr.ee of histrionic illusion, Thes¬ 
pis is said first to have smeared his face with vermilion, 
then with a pigment prepared from the herb purslain, 
and lastly to have contrived a kind of rude mask made 
of linen. ( Suid , s. v. Qiamg .)—Besides the addition 
of the actor, Thespis did much for the improvement 
of the chorus itself. He invented dances, which 
were handed down through four generations to the 
time of Aristophanes. ( Vesp ., 1470.) They were, 
as might be expected from the chorus for which they 
were devised, of a nature more energetic than grace¬ 
ful. Yet their protracted existence proves them to 
have possessed popularity and comparative excellence. 
In these dances he assiduously trained his choristers. 
Whatever advantages could be derived from the sister 
art of music were no doubt added, and care extend¬ 
ed to the general organization and equipment of the 
chorus. The metre of his recitative was apparently 
trochaic ; the measure in which, amid frolic and dance, 
the Satyric chorus gave vent to its ebullitions of joke 
and merriment. {Aristot., Poet., 4, 17.) Indeed, 
from its formation, the trochee is peculiarly adapted to 
lively and sportive movements. {Aristot., Rhit., 3, 
7.) Thespis probably reduced the whole performance 
into some kind of unity, by causing this intermixture 
of song and recitative, as a whole, to tend, however 
loosely, to the setting forth of some one passage in 
Bacchic history. But the language of both actor and 
choristers was of a light and ludicrous cast; the sub 
jects of the short episodes were handled in a jocose 
and humorous manner ; and the whole performance, 
with its dance, song, story, and buffoonery, resembled 
a wild kind of ballet-farce.—The introduction of aa 





THEATRUM. 


THEATRUM. 


tctor with his episodic recitations was so important 
an advance, as leading directly to the formation of 
dramatic plot and dialogue ; and the other improve¬ 
ments, which imparted skill, regularity, and unity to 
the movements of the chorus, were of so influential a 
description, that Thespis is generally considered the 
inventor of the drama. Of tragedy, properly so call¬ 
ed, he does not appear to have had any idea. Stories, 
more or less ludicrous, generally turning upon Bac¬ 
chus and his followers, interwoven with the dance and 
the song of a well-trained chorus, formed the drama 
of Thespis.—The Satyric chorus had by this time 
been admitted into Athens; contests were set on foot; 
and the success which attended the novelties of Thes¬ 
pis sharpened, no doubt, the talents of his competi¬ 
tors. This emulation would naturally produce im¬ 
provement upon improvement : but we discover no 
leading change in the line of the incipient drama until 
the appearance of Phrynichus, the son of Polyphrad- 
mon and the pupil of Thespis. At the close of the 
sixth century before Christ, the elements of tragedy, 
though still in a separate state, were individually so 
fltted and prepared as to require nothing but a master 
hand to unite them into one whole of life and beauty. 
The Dithyramb presented in its solemn tone and lofty 
strains a rich mine of choral poetry ; the regular nar¬ 
rative and mimetic character of the Thespian chorus 
furnished the form and materials of dramatic exhibi¬ 
tion. To Phrynichus belongs the chief merit of this 
combination. Dropping the light and farcical cast of 
the Thespian drama, and dismissing altogether Bac¬ 
chus with his satyrs, he sought for the subjects of his 
pieces in the grave and striking events registered in the 
mythology or history of his country. This, however, 
was not a practice altogether original or unexampled. 
The fact, casually mentioned by Herodotus (5, 67), 
that the tragic choruses at Sicyon sung, not the adven¬ 
tures of Bacchus, but the woes of Adrastus, shows 
that, in the Cyclic chorus at least, melancholy incident 
and mortal personages had long before been intro¬ 
duced. There is. also some reason for supposing that 
the young tragedian was deeply indebted to Homer in 
the formation of his drama. Aristotle distinctly at¬ 
tributes to the author of the Iliad and Odyssey the 
primary suggestion of tragedy, as in his Margites was 
given the first idea of comedy. {Poet., 4, 12.) Now 
it is an historical fact, that, a few years before Phryn¬ 
ichus began to exhibit, the Homeric poems had been 
collected, revised, arranged, and published by the care 
of Pisistratus. {Cic., de Oral., 3, 34.) Such an 
event would naturally attract attention, and add a 
deeper interest to the study of this mighty master ; 
and it is easy to conceive how his luyriaeig dpayan- 
Kat, as Aristotle terms them, would strike and operate 
upon a mind acute, ready, and ingenious, as that of 
Phrvnichus must have been. At any rate, these two 
facts stand in close chronological connexion—the first 
edition of Homer, and the birth of tragedy properly so 
ca |l e d.—Taking, then, the ode and the tone of the 
Dithyramb, the mimetic personifications of Homer and 
the themes which additional tradition or even recent 
events supplied, Phrynichus combined these several 
materials together, and so brought them forward under 
the dramatic form of the Thespian exhibition. Thus, 
at length, does tragedy dawn upon us.—These changes 
in the character of the drama necessarily produced 
corresponding alterations in its form and manner. The 
recitative was no longer a set of disjointed, rambling 
episodes of humorous legend, separated by the wild 
dance and noisy song of a Satyr choir, but a connected 
succession of serious narrative or grave conversation, 
with a chorus composed of personages involved in the 
story, all relating to one subject, and all tending to 
one result. This recitative again alternated with a 
series of choral odes, composed in a spirit of deep 
thought and lofty poetry, themselves turning more or 

8 C 


less directly upon the theme of the interwoven dia 
logue. — In correspondence with these alterations h 
tone and composition, the actor and the choristerv 
must have assumed a different aspect. The perform 
ers were now the representatives, not of Silenus and 
the Satyrs, but of heroes, princes, and their attendants. 
The goatskin guise and obstreperous sportiveness 
were laid aside for the staid deportment of persons 
engaged in matters of serious business or deep afflic¬ 
tion, and a garb befitting the rank and state of the sev¬ 
eral individuals employed in the piece. Nor are we 
to suppose that, as the actor was still but one, so 
never more than one personage was introduced. For 
it is very probable that this one actor, changing his 
dress, appeared in different characters during the course 
of the play ; a device frequently employed in later 
times, when the increased number of actors made such 
a contrivance less necessary. This actor sometimes 
represented female personages ; for Phrynichus is sta¬ 
ted to have first brought a female character on the 
stage.—Thus, from the midst of the coarse buffooner¬ 
ies and rude imitations of the Satyric chorus, did trage¬ 
dy start up at once in her proper, though nj^t her per¬ 
fect, form. For, mighty as had been the stride to¬ 
wards the establishment of the Serious Drama, yet in 
the exhibitions of Phrynichus we find the infancy, not 
the maturity,of tragedy. There was still many an ex¬ 
crescence to be removed ; many a chasm to be filled 
up ; many a rugged point to be smoothed into regular¬ 
ity ; and many an embryo part to be expanded into 
its full and legitimate dimensions. The management 
of the piece was simple and inartificial even to rude¬ 
ness. The argument was some naked incident, my- 
thologic or historical, on which the chorus sang and 
the actor recit'ed in a connected but desultory succes¬ 
sion. There was no interweaving or development of 
plot; no studied arrangement of fact and catastrophe; 
no skilful contrivance to heighten the natural interest 
of the tale, and work up the feelings of the audience 
into a climax of terror or of pity. The odes ot the 
chorus were sweet and beautiful; the dances scien¬ 
tific and dexterously given; but then these odes and 
dances still composed the principal part of the perform¬ 
ance. {Aristot., Probl., 19, 31.) They contracted 
the episodes of the actor, and threw them into com¬ 
parative insignificance. Nay, not unfrequently, while 
the actor appeared in a posture of thought, wo, or con¬ 
sternation, the chorus would prolong its dance and chant- 
ings, and leave to the performer little more than the part 
of a speechless image. In short, the drama of Phryn¬ 
ichus was a serious opera of lyric song and skilful 
dance, and not a tragedy of artful plot and interesting 
dialogue.—Such was Phrynichus as an inventor. Still 
we must remember, in tracing the inventive improvers 
of tragedy, that the real claims of Phrynichus are not 
to be measured by what he finally achieved through 
imitation of others, but by the productions of his own 
unassisted ingenuity and talent. In this view, those 
claims must almost entirely be restricted to the com¬ 
bination of the poetry of the Cyclic with the acting ol 
the Thespian chorus ; the conversion of Satyric gaye- 
ty into the solemnity and pathos of what was thence¬ 
forth peculiarly styled Tragedy. In all succeeding 
alterations and additions, Phrynichus seems to have 
been simply the follower of ^Eschylus. — Between 
Phrynichus and vEschylus two other tragedians, Choeri- 
lus and Pratinas, intervened, of whom very little is 
known. The dramas of Choerilus appear originally to 
have been of a Satyric character, like those of Thespis. 
In his later days he naturally copied the improvements 
of Phrynichus; and we find him, accordingly, contend- 
inor for’the tragic prize against Phrynichus, Pratinas, and 
iEschylus, Olymp. 70, B.C. 499 ; the time when iEs- 
chylus first exhibited. His pieces are said to have 
amounted to a hundred and fifty (Suid , s. v.)\ not a 
fragment, however, remains; and, if we mav trust 

1305 





THEATRUM. 


THEATRUM. 


Hermeas and Proclus, the commentators on Plato, 
the loss is not very great. — Pratinas was a native of 
Phlius, and a poet of higher talent. He too attempt¬ 
ed the new style of dramatic composition, and once 
obtained a'tragic victory. But the manifest pre-emi¬ 
nence of the youthful iEschylus probably deterred the 
Phliasian from continuing to cultivate the graver form 
of the art, and led him to contrive a novel and mixed 
kind of play. Borrowing from tragedy its external 
form and mythological materials, Pratinas added a 
chorus of Satyrs, with their lively songs, gestures, and 
movements. This new composition was called the 
Satyric Drama. The novelty was exceedingly well- 
timed. The innovations of Thespis and Phrynichus 
had banished the Satyric chorus, with its wild pranks 
and merriment, to the great displeasure of the com¬ 
monalty, who retained a strong regret for their old 
amusement amid the new and more refined exhibitions. 
The Satyric drama gave them back, under an improved 
form, the favourite diversion of former times ; and was 
received with such universal applause, that the tragic 
poets, in compliance with the humour of their auditors, 
deemed it advisable to combine this ludicrous exhibi¬ 
tion with their graver pieces. One Satyric drama was 
added to each tragic trilogy, as long as the custom 
of contending with a series of plays, and not with sin¬ 
gle pieces, continued. JEschylus, Sophocles, and Eu¬ 
ripides were all distinguished Satyric composers ; and 
in the Cyclops of the latter we possess the only extant 
specimen of this singular composition. As regards 
the changes produced by JEschylus in the drama, vid. 
iEschylus. 

2. Dramatic Contests. 

The precise time at which the contests of the dra¬ 
ma commenced is uncertain. The Arundel Marble 
would make them coeval with the first inventions of 
Thespis. On the other hand, Plutarch assures us that 
no scenic contests were established until some years 
after the early Thespian exhibitions. ( Vit. Sol., 29.) 
The true account appears to be this : The contests of 
theDithyrambic and Satyric choruses were almost con¬ 
temporaneous with their origin. Those of the Dithy¬ 
ramb continued without interruption to the latest pe¬ 
riod of theatric spectacle in ancient Greece : and al¬ 
though the great improvements of Thespis might, for 
the moment, excite admiration rather than competi¬ 
tion, yet doubtless his distinguished success soon 
stimulated others to attempt this new and popular 
kind of entertainment, and rival the originator. Un¬ 
der iEschylus and his immediate successors the the¬ 
atrical contests advanced to a high degree of impor¬ 
tance. They were placed under the superintendence 
of the magistracy ; the representations were given 
with everv advantage of stage decoration, and the ex¬ 
penses defrayed as a public concern. These contests 
were maintained at Athens with more or less splen¬ 
dour and talent for several centuries, long surviving 
her independence and grandeur.—In accordance with 
the origin of the drama, its contests were confined to 
the Dionysia , or festivals of Bacchus, the patron deity 
of scenic entertainments. These festivals were four 
in number, and occurred in the 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th 
months respectively of the Attic year. ( Donaldson , 
Theatre of the Greeks , p. 132, and the authorities quo¬ 
ted by him, in notis.) —1. The “ Country-Dionysia ” 
(Tu Kar ’ aypovg A tovvata ) were held in all the coun¬ 
try towns and villages throughout Attica, in Posei- 
deon, the sixth Athenian month, corresponding to the 
latter part of December and the beginning of January. 
Aristophanes has left us a picture of this festival in 
the Acharnians (v. 235, &c.). About to offer a sac¬ 
rifice to Bacchus, Dicasapolis appears on the stage, 
with his household marshalled in regular procession. 
His young daughter carries the sacred basket ; a slave 
bears aloft the mystic symbol of the god; the honest 
1306 


old countryman himself comes last, chanting the Phat* 
lie song, while the wife, stationed upon the house-top, 
looks on as spectatress. The number of actors ie 
here, of course, limited to one family, as Dicaeapolia 
had purchased the truce for himself alone. In times 
of peace and quiet the whole population of the drjfio f 
joined in the solemnities.—2. The “ Festival of the 
wine-press ” (ra A yvala) was held in the month Ga- 
melion, which corresponded to the Ionian month Le- 
naeon, and to part of January and February. It was, 
like the rural Dionysia, a vintage-festival, but differed 
from it in being confined to a particular spot in the 
city of Athens, called the Lenaeon, where the first 
wine-press fkyvog) was erected.—3. The “ Anthes- 
teria' n (ru ’ Kvdeorripia, or rd h A ipvaig) were held 
on the 11th, 12th, and 13th days of the month Anthes- 
terion. This was not a vintage-festival like the other 
tw r o. The new wine was drawn from the cask on the 
first day of the feast, which was called Thdolyia, or 
“ the BroachingsT It was tasted on the second day, 
which was called Xoeg, or “ the drinking-cups while 
the third day was called Xvrpoi, on account of the 
banqueting which went on then. At the Cho'es, each 
of the citizens had a separate cup, a custom which 
arose, according to tradition, from the presence of 
Orestes at the feast before he had been duly purified 
( Muller's Eumeniden, § 50): it has been thought, 
however, to refer to a difference of castes among the 
worshippers at the time of the adoption of the Dionys¬ 
ian rites in the city.—4. The “ Great Dionysia ” (ra 
ev aam, rd tear’ darv, or rd darina) were celebrated 
between the 8th and 18th of Elaphebolion. ( dEschin ., 

7 xepl naparrpeaTT., p. 36.) This festival is always to 
be understood when the Dionysia are mentioned with¬ 
out any qualifying epithet.—At the first, second, and 
fourth of these festivals, it is known that theatrical ex 
hibitions took place. The exhibitions at the country 
Dionysia were generally of old pieces. Indeed, there 
is no instance of a play being acted on those occasions 
for the first time, at least after the Greek drama had 
arrived at perfection. At the Lenaea and the great 
Dionysia, both tragedies and comedies were perform¬ 
ed ; at the latter, the tragedies at least were always 
new pieces. — At the time of the greater Dionysia 
there was always a great concourse of strangers in 
Athens: deputations bringing the tribute from the 
several dependant states, visitants from the cities in 
alliance, and foreigners from all parts of the civilized 
world : for these A lovvaia were the dramatic Olympia 
of Greece. (Aristoph., Acharn., 474.)—We may es¬ 
timate the importance attached to these scenic exhi¬ 
bitions from the care manifested in providing by pub¬ 
lic enactment for their due regulation and support. 
They were placed under the immediate superintend¬ 
ence of the first magistrates in the state : the repre¬ 
sentations at the great Dionysia under that of the 
chief archon, those at the Lencea under that of him 
called the king-archon. ( Jul . Pollux, 8, 89, seqq.) 

To this presiding archon the candidates presented 
their pieces. He selected the most deserving compo¬ 
sitions, and assigned to every poet thus deemed wor¬ 
thy of admission to the contest three actors by lot, 
together with a chorus. The equipment of these cho¬ 
ruses was considered a public concern, and, as such, 
like the fitting out of triremes and the other lurovp- 
yiai, or stale duties, was imposed upon the wealthier 
members of the community. The entpelyrai of 
each tribe selected one of their body to bear the cost 
and superintend the training of a chorus. This in¬ 
dividual was termed Xopqyog, his office X.opyyia. 
The Choragus was considered as the religious repre¬ 
sentative of the whole people. Hence his person and 
the ornaments which he procured for the occasion 
were sacred. ( Demosth in Mid., p. 519.) He was 
said to do the state’s work for it (keirovpynv. —Con¬ 
sult Valckenaer ad Ammon., 2, 16. — Ruhnk., EpisU 





THEATRUM. 


THEATRUM. 


Lrit., 1, p. 54.) The Choragia, the Gymnasiarchy, 
the Feasting of t ie Tribes, and the Architheoria, be¬ 
longed to the class of regularly-recurring state burdens 
( hyuvK.'hioL leiTOvpyiai), to which all persons whose 
property exceeded three talents were liable. It was 
the business of the Choragus to provide the chorus in 
all plays, whether tragic or comic, and also for the 
lyric choruses of men and boys, Pyrrhichists, Cyclian 
dancers, and others. His first duty, after collecting 
his chorus, was to provide and pay a teacher (^opodi- 
tiucrualoc;), who instructed them in the songs and dan¬ 
ces which they had to perform ; and it appears that Cho- 
ragi drew lots for the first choice of teachers. The 
Choragus had also to pay the musicians and singers 
who composed the chorus, and was allowed to press 
children, if their parents did not give them up of their 
own accord. He was obliged to lodge and maintain 
the chorus till the time of performance, and to supply 
the singers with such aliments as conduce to strength¬ 
en the voice. In the laws of Solon, the age prescribed 
for the Choragus was forty years; but this law does 
not appear to have been long in force. The relative 
expense of the different choruses in the time of Lysias 
is given in a speech of that orator. (’AttoX. dcopod., 
p. 698.) We learn from this that the tragic chorus 
cost nearly twice as much as the comic, though nei¬ 
ther of the dramatic choruses was so expensive as the 
chorus of men or the chorus of flute-players. ( De- 
mosth. in Mid., p. 565.) No foreigner was allowed 
to dance in the choruses of the great Dionysia. ( Pe¬ 
tit, p. 353.) If any Choragus was convicted of em¬ 
ploying one in his chorus, he was liable to a fine of 
a thousand drachmae. This law did not extend to the 
Lencea (Petit, p. 353); there the M etolkol also might 
be Choragi. The rival Choragi were termed avrixopy- 
yoc ; the contending dramatic poets, and the compo¬ 
sers for the Cyclian or other choruses, dvrididdana/ioi; 
the performers, dvrtTsxvot,. ( Alciphron , 3, 48.)—Du¬ 
ring one period in the history of the Athenian stage, 
the tragic candidates were each to produce three seri¬ 
ous and one Satyric drama, together entitled a rerpa- 
Xoyla ; otherwise, omitting the Satyric drama, the three 
tragedies, taken by themselves, were called a rpiAoyia. 
The earliest Terpa^oyia on record is that one of jEs- 
chylus which contained the Persce, and was exhibited 
B.C. 472. ' From that date down to B.C. 415, a space 
of fifty-seven years, we have frequent notices of tetral¬ 
ogies. In B.C. 415, Euripides represented a tetralo¬ 
gy, one of the dramas in which was the Troades. Af¬ 
ter this time it does not appear from any ancient testi¬ 
mony whether the custom was continued or not. In¬ 
deed, it is matter of great doubt whether the practice 
was at any time regular and indispensable. Some¬ 
times, as in the Oresteiad of HSschylus, and the Pan- 
dionid of Philocles, the three tragedies were on a com¬ 
mon and connected subject; in general we find the 
case otherwise. (Aristoph., Ran., 1122.— Id., Av., 
280.)—The prize of tragedy was, as has already been 
noticed, originally a goat; of comedy, a jar of wine 
and a basket of figs : but of these we have no intima¬ 
tion after the first stage in the history of the drama. 
In later times the successful poet was simply reward¬ 
ed with a wreath of ivy. ( Athen ., 5, p. 217 ) His 
name was also proclaimed before the audience. His 
Choragus and performers were adorned in like manner. 
The poet used also, with his actors, to sacrifice the 
hnv'iKta, and provide an entertainment, to which his 
friends were invited. The victorious Choragus in a 
tragic contest dedicated a tablet to Bacchus, inscribed 
with the names of himself, his poet, and the archon. 
In comedy the Choragus likewise consecrated to the 
same god the dress and ornaments of his actors. The 
Choragus who had exhibited the best musical or the¬ 
atrical entertainment generally received a tripod as a 
revvard or prize. This he was at the expense of con¬ 
secrating; and in some cases he built the monument 


on which it was p.aced. ( Lysias , ub. supr., p. 202. 
— Wordsworth's Athens and Attica, p. 153, seqq. t 
Thus the beautiful choragic monument of Lysicrates, 
which is still standing at Athens, was undoubtedly sur¬ 
mounted by a tripod.—The merits of the candidates 
were decided by judges appointed by lot, and these 
were generally, but not always, five in number. The 
archon administered an oath to them, and in the case 
of the Cyclian choruses, any injustice or partiality was 
punishable by fine. No prize drama was allowed to 
be exhibited a second time ; but an unsuccessful piece, 
after being altered and retouched, might be again pre¬ 
sented. The plays of Htlschylus were exempted by a 
special decree from this regulation. Afterward ( Aul. 
Gell., 7, 5) the same privilege was extended to those 
of Sophocles and Euripides ; but as the superiority of 
these great masters was so decided, few candidates 
could be found to enter the lists against their produced 
tragedies. A law was consequently passed, forbidding 
the future exhibition of these three dramatists, and di¬ 
recting that they should be read in public every year. 
—The whole time of representation was portioned out 
in equal spaces to the several competitors by means of 
a clepsydra, and seems to have been dependant upon 
the number of pieces represented. (Aristot., Poet.., 
7.) It was the poet’s business, therefore, so to limit 
the length of his play as not to occupy in the acting 
more than the time allowed It is impossible now to 
ascertain the average number of pieces produced at one 
representation. Perhaps from ten to twelve dramas 
might be exhibited in the course of the day. ( Donald¬ 
son , Theatre of the Greeks, p. 138.) 

3. The Theatre. 

In the first stage of the art no building was required 
or provided for its representations. In the country, 
the Dionysian performances were generally held at 
some central point, where several roads met; as a 
rendezvous most easy of access, and convenient in 
distance to all the neighbourhood. ( Virg ., Georg., 
2, 382.) In the city the public place was the ordi¬ 
nary site of exhibition. But when, at Athens, tragedy 
began to assume her proper dignity, and dramatic 
contests were becoming matter of national pride and 
attention, the need of a suitable building was soon 
felt. A theatre of wood was erected. ( Photius , s. v. 
T npta.) Through the weakness of the material or 
some defect in the construction, this edifice fell be¬ 
neath the w T eight of the crowds assembled to witness 
a representation, in which iEschylus and Pratinas were 
rivals. ( Liban ., Arg. in Olynth., 1. — Suidas, s. v. 
n parivaq.) It was then that the noble theatre of 
stone was erected, within the A yvalov, or enclosure 
dedicated to Bacchus. The building was commenced 
in the year 500 B.C., but not finished till about 381 
B.C., when Lycurgus was manager of the treasury. 
The student who wishes to form an adequate notion 
of the Greek theatre must not forget that it was 
only an improvement upon the mode of representation 
adopted by Thespis, which it resembled in its general 
features. The two necessary parts were the Avyely, 
or altar of Bacchus, round which the Cyclian chorus 
danced, and the loyeiov, or stage, from which the ac¬ 
tor or exarchus spoke. It was the representative of 
the wooden table from which the earliest actor ad¬ 
dressed his chorus, and was also called onpitag. (Jul. 
Pollux, 4, 123.)—To form an accurate conception off 
the Athenian theatre in all its minutiae, as it stood in 
the days of Pericles, is now impracticable. The only 
detailed accounts left us on this subject are two, that 
of Vitruvius, the architect of Augustus, and that of 
Julius Pollux, his junior by two centuries. From the 
descriptions of these writers, aided and explained by in¬ 
cidental hints in other ancient authors, and a reference 
to the several theatric remains in Greece, Asia Minor, 
Sicily, ar.d Italy, Genelli, an able scholar and architec 

1307 





THEATRUM. 


THEATRUM. 


of Berlin, nas drawn up a statement, in the main satisfac¬ 
tory. (Genelli, Das Theater zu Athen, Berlin , 1818.) 
—The theatre of Bacchus at Athens stood on the south¬ 
eastern side of the eminence crowned by the noble 
buildings of the Acropolis. From the level of the plain 
a semicircular excavation gradually ascended up the 
slope of a hill to a considerable height. Round the 
concavity, seats for an audience of thirty thousand per¬ 
sons arose range above range ; and the whole was top¬ 
ped md enclosed by a lofty portico, adorned with stat¬ 
ues and surmounted by a balustraded terrace. The 
tieis of benches were divided into two or three broad 
belts, by passages termed dia^/aara (called in the 
Roman theatres prcecinctiones), and again transverse¬ 
ly into wedge-like masses, called KspuLdeg (in Latin 
cunei), by several flights of steps, radiating upward 
from the level below to the portico above. The lower 
seats, as being the better adapted for hearing and see¬ 
ing. were considered the most honourable, and there¬ 
fore appropriated to the high magistrates, the priests, 
and the senate. This space was named B ovTievtlkov. 
(Aristoph., Av., 294.— Eq., 669.) The body of the 
citizens were probably arranged according to their 
tribes. The young men sat apart in a division, en¬ 
titled ’Kudinov. The sojourners and strangers had 
also their places allotted them.—Twelve feet beneath 
the lowest range of seats lay a level space, partly en¬ 
closed by the sweep of the excavation, and partly ex¬ 
tending outward right and left in a long parallelo¬ 
gram. This was the *0 pxrjorpa. In the middle of 
this open flat stood a small platform, square and slightly 
elevated, called QvpeTir/, which served both as an altar 
for the sacrifices, that preceded the exhibition, and as 
the central point to which the choral movements were 
all referred. That part of the orchestra which lay 
without the concavity of the seats, and ran along on 
either hand to the boundary wall of the theatre, was 
called A po/wg (the Roman Iter). The wings, as they 
might be termed, of this Apo/aog, were named II apodoi, 
and the entrances which led into them through the 
boundary wall, were entitled E loodoi (the Roman 
Aditus ).—On the side of the orchestra opposite the 
amphitheatre of benches, and exactly on a level with 
the lowest range, stood the platform of the 2 ktjvtj or 
stage, in breadth nearly equal to the diameter of the 
semicircular part of the orchestra, and communicating 
with the A popog by a double flight of steps. The 
stage was cut breadthwise into two divisions. The 
one in front, called A oyelov (the Latin pulpitum ), was 
a narrow parallelogram projecting into the orchestra. 
This was generally the station of the actors when 
speaking, and therefore was constructed of wood, the 
better to reverberate the voice. The front and sides 
of the A oyelov, twelve feet in height, adorned with 
columns and statues between them, were called rd 
vnoanr/vLa .—The part of the platform behind the Ao- 
yelov was called the UpoGKrjviov, and was built of* 
stone, in order to support the heavy scenery and. dec¬ 
orations, which there were placed. The proscenium 
was backed and flanked by lofty buildings of stone¬ 
work, representing externally a palace-like mansion, 
and containing within, withdrawing-rooms for the ac¬ 
tors and receptacles for the stage machinery. In the 
central edifice were three entrances upon the prosceni¬ 
um, which, by established practice, were made to desig¬ 
nate the rank of the characters as they came on ; the 
highly ornamented portal in the middle, with the altar 
of Apollo on the right, being assigned to royalty, the 
two side entrances to inferior personages. ( Pollux , 
4, 9.) In a similar way, all the personages who made 
their appearance by the EZaodof on the right of the 
stage, were understood to come from the country ; 
while such as came in from the left were supposed to 
approach from the town.—On each side of the prosce¬ 
nium and its erections ran the Tlapa'jK.r/VLa, high lines 
of building with architectural front, which contained 
1308 


spacious passages into the theatre from without, com¬ 
municating on the one hand with the stage and its 
contiguous apartments; on the other, through two 
halls, with the Uapodot, of the orchestra, and with the 
portico which ran round the topmost range of the 
seats.—Behind the whole mass of stage buddings was 
an open space, covered with turf and planted with 
trees. Around this ran a portico, called the eumenic, 
which was the place of rehearsal for the chorus, and, 
with the upper portico, afforded a ready shelter to the 
audience during a sudden storm. There, too, the ser¬ 
vants of the wealthier spectators awaited the depart¬ 
ure of their masters.—Such was the construction and 
arrangement of the great Athenian theatre. Its di¬ 
mensions must have been immense. If, as we are as¬ 
sured, 30,000 persons could be seated on its benches, 
the length of the Apo/aog could not have been less than 
400 feet, and a spectator in the central point of the 
topmost range must have been 300 feet from the ac 
tor in the A oyelov. (Genelli , p. 52.)—The scenery 
of the Athenian stage was doubtless corresponding to 
the magnificence of the theatre. The catalogue which 
Julius Pollux has left us bespeaks great variety of de¬ 
vices and much ingenuity of contrivance, although we 
may not altogether be able to comprehend his obscure 
descriptions. We may, however, safely conclude that 
the age and city which witnessed the dramas of a 
Sophocles, the statues of a Phidias, and the paintings 
of a Zeuxis, possessed too much taste and too much 
talent to allow of aught mean and clumsy in the scen¬ 
ery of an exhibition, which national pride, individual 
wealth, and the sanctity of religion conspired to exalt 
into the most splendid of solemnities.—The massive 
buildings of the proscenium were well adapted for the 
generality of tragic dramas, where the chief charac¬ 
ters were usually princes, and the front of their palace 
the place of action. But not unfrequently the locality 
of the play was very different. Out of the seven ex¬ 
tant pieces of Sophocles, there are but four which 
could be performed without a change of prosce¬ 
nium. The CEdipus Coloneus requires a grove, the 
Ajax a camp, and the Philoctetes an island solitude 
In comedy, which was exhibited on the same stage, 
the necessity of alteration was still more common. 
To produce the requisite transformations various means 
were employed. Decorations were introduced before 
the proscenic buildings, which masked them from the 
view, and substituted a prospect suitable to the play. 
These decorations were formed of woodwork below ; 
above were paintings on canvass, resembling our 
scenes, and, like them, so arranged on perspective prin¬ 
ciples as to produce the proper illusion. ( Pollux , 4, 
19.) No expense or skill seems to have been spared 
in the preparation of these scenic representations; 
nay, it is not improbable that even living trees were 
occasionally introduced, to produce the better effect. 
The stage-machinery appears to have comprehended 
all that modern ingenuity has devised. As the inter¬ 
course between earth and heaven is very frequent in 
the mythologic dramas of the Greeks, the number of 
aerial contrivances was proportionably great. Were 
the deities to be shown in converse aloft 1 there was 
the Qeoloyelvo, a platform surrounded and concealed 
by clouds. Were gods or heroes to be seen passing 
through the void of the sky, there were the A lopai, a 
set of ropes, which, suspended from the upper part of 
the proscenic building, served to support and convey 
the celestial being along.—The M^yav/ 7 , again, was 
a sort of crane turning on a pivot, with a suspender at 
tached, placed on the right, or country side of the 
stage, and employed suddenly to dart out a god or hero 
before the eyes of the spectators, and there keep him 
hovering in air till his part was performed, and then as 
suddenly withdraw him. The Tepavog ( Pollux , 4, 
19) was something of the same scrt, with a grapple 
hanging from it, used to catch uj persons from tho 





THEATRUM. 


THEATRUM. 


earth, and rapidly whirl them within the circle of scen¬ 
ic clouds ; Aurora was thus made to carry off the 
dead body of her son Memnon.—There was, more¬ 
over, the B povreiov, a contrivance in the 'Y7r oonyviov, 
or room beneath the Aoyelov, where bladders full of 
pebbles were rolled over sheets of copper, to produce 
a noise like the rumbling of thunder. The K epavvo- 
ckokeiov was a place on the top of the stage buildings, 
whence the artificial lightning was made to play through 
the clouds, which concealed the operator.—When the 
action was simply on earth, there were certain pieces 
of framework, the 2/co7n), Tf-i^of, lit jpyog, and 4>pv/c- 
TC)pcov, representing, as their names import, a look¬ 
out, a fortress-wall, a tower, and a beacon. These 
were either set apart from the stationary erections of. 
the proscenium, or connected so as to give them, with 
the assistance of the canvass scene, the proper aspect. 
Here a sentinel was introduced, or a spectator, sup¬ 
posed to be viewing some distant object. The 'U/lu- 
kvkTiLov was a semicircular machine, placed, when 
wanted, on the country side of the stage, which en¬ 
closed a representation of the sea or a city in the dis¬ 
tance, towards which the eye looked through a pas¬ 
sage between cliffs or an opening among trees. What 
the hrpocpeiov and 'H pujTpocpelov were, it is difficult 
to make out. It would seem that they were con¬ 
structed something like the ’HfUKVK?uov, but moved 
on a pivot, so that, by a sudden whirl, the object they 
presented might be shown or withdrawn in an instant. 
They were employed to exhibit heroes transported to 
the company of deities, and men perishing in the waves 
of the sea or the tumult of battle.—In some cases one 
or more stories of the front wall in a temporary house 
were made to turn upon hinges, so that when this 
front was drawn back, the interior of a room could be 
wheeled out and exposed to view, as in the Acharni- 
ans, where Euripides is so brought forward. This 
contrivance was called ’F,KKVK?iypa. ( Pollux , 4, 19.) 
—Such were some of the devices for the scenes of 
heaven and earth ; but as the ancient dramatists fetch¬ 
ed their personages not unfrequently from Tartarus, 
other provisions were required for their due appear¬ 
ance.—Beneath the lowest range of seats, under the 
stairs, which led up to them from the orchestra, was 
fixed a door, which opened into the orchestra from a 
vault beneath it by a flight of steps called Xapuvioi 
KXcfcaKec- Through this passage entered and disap¬ 
peared the shades of the departed. Somewhat in 
front of this door and steps was another communica¬ 
tion by a trap-door with the vault below, called ’A va- 
meaua ; by means of which, any sudden appearance, 
like that of the Furies, was effected. A second ’A va- 
iritopa was contained in the floor of the A oyelov on 
the right or country side, whence particularly marine 
or river-gods ascended, when occasion required.—In 
tragedy the scene was rarely changed. In comedy, 
however, this was frequently done. To conceal the 
stao-e during this operation, a curtain, called civ“Xcnci , 
wound round a roller beneath the floor, was drawn up 
through a slit between the A oyelov and proscenium. 

4. Audience. 

Oricrinally no admission money was demanded. 
( lleysch ., Suid. et Harpocr., s v. Oeupka—Liban., 
Arg. in Olynth., 1.) The theatre was built at the 
public expense, and, therefore, w'as open to every in¬ 
dividual. The consequent crowding and quarrelling 
for places among so vast a multitude was the cause of 
a law being passed, which fixed the entrance price at 
one drachma each person. This regulation, debarring, 
as it did, the poorer classes from their favourite enter¬ 
tainment, was too unpopular to continue long unre¬ 
pealed. Pericles, anxious to ingratiate himself with 
the commonalty, brought in a decree which enacted 
that the price should be reduced to two oboli; and, 
farther, that one of the magistrates should furnish out 


of the public funds these two oboli to any ore who 
might choose to apply for it, provided his name was 
registered in the book of the citizens {Xy^iap^mov 
ypapparetov). The entrance-money was paid to the 
iessee of the theatre (■& earouvy dear pond) Ays, oi 
apXiTE/cruv), who paid the rent, and made the neces¬ 
sary repairs out of the proceeds. The sum obtain¬ 
ed for this purpose from the public funds was drawia 
from the contributions originally paid by the allies to¬ 
wards carrying on war against the Persians. By de¬ 
grees, the expenses of the festivals engrossed the 
whole of this fund ; and that money, which ought to 
have been employed in supporting a military force for 
the common defence of Greece, was scandalously lav¬ 
ished away upon the idle pleasure of the Athenian 
people. This measure proved most ruinous to the 
republic ; yet so jealous were the multitude of any in¬ 
fringement upon their theoric expenses, that, when an 
orator had ventured to propose the restoration of the 
sums then squandered upon spectacles foreign to their 
original purpose, a decree was instantly framed, ma¬ 
king it death to offer any such scheme to the general 
assembly. Demosthenes twice cautiously endeavour 
ed to convince the people of their folly and injustice ; 
but, finding his exhortations were ill-received, he was 
constrained reluctantly to acquiesce in the common 
resolution.—The lessee sometimes gave a gratu¬ 
itous exhibition, in which case tickets of admission 
were distributed. ( Theophrast ,, Charact., 11.) Any 
citizen might buy tickets for a stranger residing at 
Athens. ( Theophrast ., Charact., 9.) We have no 
doubt that women were admitted to the dramatic ex¬ 
hibitions. Julius Pollux uses the term xS-earpia (2, 
55; 4, 121), which is alone some evidence of the 
fact. It is stated, however, expressly by Plato ( Gor - 
gias, p. 502, D .— Leg., 2, p. 658, D. — lb., 7, p. 817, 
C.) and by Aristophanes ( Eccles., 21, seqq.). — The 
spectators hastened to the theatre at the dawn of day 
to secure the best places, as the performances com¬ 
menced very early. After the first exhibition was 
over, the audience retired for a while, until the second 
was about to commence. There were three or four 
such representations in the course of the day, thus 
separated by short intervals. During the performance 
the people regaled themselves with wine and sweet¬ 
meats. The number of spectators in the Athenian 
theatre amounted occasionally to thirty thousand. 
{Plato, Symp., p. 13.) This immense assembly were 
wont to express in no gentle terms their opinion of the 
piece and actors. Murmurs, jeers, hootings, and 
angry cries were directed in turn against the offending 
performer. They not unfrequently proceeded still far¬ 
ther ; sometimes compelling the unfortunate object of 
their dissatisfaction to pull off his mask and expose 
his face, that they might enjoy his disgrace ; some¬ 
times, assailing him with every species of missile at 
hand, they drove him from the stage, and ordered the 
herald to summon another actor to supply his place, 
who, if not in readiness, was liable to a fine. In the 
time of Machon it was even customary to pelt a bad 
performer with stones. {Athenceus, 6, p. 245.) On 
the other hand, where the impetuous spectators hap¬ 
pened to be gratified, the clapping of hands and shouts 
of applause were as loud as the expression of their 
displeasure. In much the same manner the dramatic 
candidates themselves were treated. 

5. Actors. 

In the origin of the drama the members of the cho¬ 
rus were the only performers. Thespis first introdu¬ 
ced an actor distinct from that body. iEschyltis add¬ 
ed a second, and Sophocles a third actor ; and this 
continued ever after to be the legitimate number. 
Hence, when three characters happened to be already 
on the stage, and a fourth was to come on, one cf the 
three was obliged to retire, change his dress, and sc 

1309 



THEATRUM. 


THEATRUM. 


etum as the fourth personage. The poet, however, 
might introduce any number of mutes , as guards, at¬ 
tendants, &c. The actors were called vnoaptrat or 
uyov carat. 'Tv:oK.pivcodai was originally to answer 
[Herodot., 1, 78, et passim) ; hence, when a locutor 
was introduced who answered the chorus, he was call¬ 
ed o vrroKpiTT/g, or the answerer; a name which de¬ 
scended to the more numerous and refined actors in 
after days. Subsequently vrroKpcrrjg, from its being 
the name of a performer assuming a feigned character 
on the stage, came to signify a man who assumes a 
feigned character in his intercourse with others, a 
hypocrite. —The three actors were termed Trporayov- 
caryg, devrepayuvcaryg, rpcrayuvcarrig, respectively, 
according as each performed the principal or one of 
the two inferior characters. They took every pains to 
attain perfection in their art: to acquire muscular en¬ 
ergy and pliancy they frequented the palaestra, and to 
give strength and clearness to their voice they ob¬ 
served a rigid diet. An eminent performer was ea¬ 
gerly sought after and liberally rewarded. The cele¬ 
brated Polus would sometimes gain a talent (or nearly 
$1060) in the course of two days. The other states 
of Greece were always anxious to secure the best At¬ 
tic performers for their own festivals. They engaged 
them long beforehand, and the agreement was gener¬ 
ally accompanied by a stipulation, that the actor, in 
case he failed to fulfil the contract, should pay a cer¬ 
tain sum. The Athenian government, on the other 
hand, punished their performers with a heavy fine if ' 
they absented themselves during the city’s festivals. 
Eminence in the histrionic profession seems to have 
been held in considerable estimation in Athens at 
least. Plavers were not unfrequently sent, as the 
representatives of the republic, on embassies and dep¬ 
utations. Hence they became in old, as not unfre¬ 
quently in modern times, self-conceited and domineer¬ 
ing, pet^ov dvvavrai , says Aristotle, ruv rtocyrCiv oi 
VKonptrac. (Rhet., 3,1.) They were, however, as a 
body, men of loose and dissipated character, and, as 
such, were regarded with an unfavourable eye by the 
moralists and philosophers of that age. 

6. Chorus. 

The chorus, once the sole matter of exhibition, 
though successively diminished by Thespis and H^s- 
chylus, was yet a very essential part of the drama du¬ 
ring the best days of the Greek theatre. The splen¬ 
dour of the dresses, the music, the dancing, combined 
with the loftiest poetry, formed a spectacle peculiarly 
gratifying to the eye, ear, and intellect of an Attic au¬ 
dience. The number of the tragic chorus for the 
whole trilogy appears to have been 50 ; the comic 
chorus consisted of 24. The chorus of the tetralogy 
was broken into four sub-choruses, two of 15, one of 
12, and a Satyric chorus of 8. When the chorus of 
15 entered in ranks three abreast, it was said to be 
divided Kara £vyd ; when it was distributed into three 
files of five, it was said to be rcard crocxovg. The 
situation assigned to the chorus was the orchestra, 
whence it always took a part in the action of the dra¬ 
ma. joining in the dialogue through the medium of 
its nopv(paiog, or leader. The choristers entered the 
orchestra preceded by a player on the flute, who reg¬ 
ulated their steps, sometimes in single file, more fre¬ 
quently three in front and five in depth (/card croc- 
°r vice versa (/card tgvyd), in tragedy ; and four 
in front by six in depth, or inversely, in comedy. Its 
first entrance was called ndpodog ; its occasional de¬ 
parture, ptravdaraatg : its return, emndpodog ; its 
final exit, dQoSog. ( Jul. Pol., 4, 15.) According 
to the rules of the drama, the chorus was to be con¬ 
sidered as one of the actors : Kat rov x°P° v ha 
del tTcoXaSelv ruv vnoKpirtiv teal popcov elvac' rov 
5Aov, /cat cvvayovi&odai. ( Aristotle . Poelica, 18, 
21.) Horace lays down the same law in describing 
1310 


the duties of the chorus (Ep. ad Pis., 193.) Some¬ 
times, again, the chorus was divided into two groups, 
each with a coryphaeus stationed in the centre, who 
narrated some event, or communicated their plan, 
their fears, or their hopes ; and sometimes, on critical 
occasions, several members, in short sentences, gave 
vent to their feelings. Between the acts, the chorus 
poured forth hymns of supplication or thanksgiving to 
the gods, didactic odes upon the mislortunes of life, 
the instability of human affairs, and the excellence of 
virtue, or dirges upon the unhappy fate of some un¬ 
fortunate personage; the whole more or less inter¬ 
woven with the course of action. While engaged in 
singing these choral strains to the accompaniment of 
flutes, the performers were also moving through dan¬ 
ces in accordance with the measure of the music ; 
passing, during the strophe , across the orchestra, from 
right To left; during the antislrophe, back, from left 
to right ; and stopping, at the epode, in front of the 
spectators. Each department of the drama had a pe¬ 
culiar style of dance suited to its character. That of 
tragedy was called eppeTieca ; that of comedy, /ropdaf; 
that of the Satyric drama, acKLvvcg .—The music of 
the chorus was of a varied kind, according to the na¬ 
ture of the occasion or the taste of the poet. The 
Doric mood seems to have been originally preferred 
for tragedy ( Athenceus , 14, p. 624); it was sometimes 
combined with the Mixo-Lydian ( Plut ., de Mus., p. 
1136), a pathetic mood, and therefore adapted to 
mournful subjects. The Ionic mood, also, was, from 
its austere and elevated character, well suited to tra¬ 
gedy. ( Athen ., 14, p. 625.) Sophocles was the first 
who set choral odes to the Phrygian mood. Euripi¬ 
des introduced the innovations of Timotheus, for 
which he is severely attacked by Aristophanes in the 
Ranee. —The choruses were all trained with the great¬ 
est care during a length of time before the day of 
contest arrived. Each tribe felt intensely interested 
in the success of the one furnished by its Choragus ; 
and the Choragi themselves, animated with all the en¬ 
ergies of rivalry, spared no expense in the instruction 
and equipment of their respective choruses. They 
engaged the most celebrated choral performers, em¬ 
ployed the ablest x°P°dc6daKa?iOL to perfect the chor¬ 
isters in their music and dancing, and provided sump¬ 
tuous dresses and ornaments for their decoration. 
The first tragic poets were their own ^opodtddovcaAoi 
iEschylus taught his chorus figure-dances. 

7. Scenic Dresses and Ornaments 

In the first age of the drama, the rude performers 
disguised their faces with wine-lees, or a species of 
pigment called \iarpaxecov. ( Schol. ad Aristoph., 
Eq., 320.) .dEschylus, among his many improve¬ 
ments, introduced the mask, first termed -Kpoaurcov, 
and subsequently TTpoaonelov. The mask was made 
of bronze or copper, and was so constructed as to 
give greater power to the voice, and enable the actor 
to make himself heard by the most distant spectators. 
This was effected by connecting it with a tire or peri¬ 
wig ( nrivLici], (pevcLKt]), which covered the head, and 
left only one passage for the voice, which was gen¬ 
erally circular, converging inward, and from its shape, 
and its being lined with brass, resembled the opening 
of a speaking trumpet. The voice, therefore, might 
be said to sound through this opening, and hence the 
Latin name for a mask, persona , apersonando. ( Aul 
Gell., 5, 7.) These masks were of various kinds, to 
express every age, sex, country, condition, and com¬ 
plexion ; to which they were assimilated with the 
greatest skill and nicety. {Jul. Poll., A, 133.) With 
equal care, the dresses of the actors were adapted to 
the characters represented. Gods, heroes, satyrs, 
kings, soothsayers, soldiers, hunters, peasants, slaves, 
pimps, and parasites, young and old, the prosperous 
and the unfortunate, were all arrayed in their approori- 




THEATRUM 


THE 


vestments ; each of which Julius Pollux has sep¬ 
arately and minutely described in a chapter devoted 
to the subject. This writer divides the tragic masks 
alone into twenty-six classes (4, 133, seqq.). The 
comic masks were much more numerous. He speci¬ 
fies only four or five kinds of Satyric masks. Most 
of the male wigs were collected into a foretop (oynog), 
which was an angular projection above the forehead, 
shaped like a A, and was probably borrowed from the 
upMTiov of the old Athenians. ( Jul. Poll., 4, 133. 
-— Thucycl., 1, 6.) The female masks, however, were 
often surmounted in a similar manner. The object 
of this projection was to give the actor a height pro¬ 
portioned to the size of the theatre, an object far which 
the cothurnus was also intended. It appears from 
Pollux (4, 141) that the masks were coloured ; and 
the art of enamelling or painting bronze seems to have 
been one of great esteem in the time of .Eschylus. 
(AEschyl., Agam., 623.— Welcker, Nachtrag., p. 42.) 
—Another peculiarity which distinguished the Greek 
manner of acting from our own, was the probable neg¬ 
lect of everything like by-play and making points, 
which are so effective on the modern stage. The 
distance at which the spectators were placed would 
prevent them from seeing those little movements, and 
hearing those low tones, which have made the fortune 
of many a modern actor. The mask, too, precluded 
all attempts at varied expression ; and it is probable 
that nothing more was expected from the performer 
than good recitation —The buskin, or cothurnus (ico- 
dopvoq), was the ancient Cretic hunting boot. For 
tragic use it was soled with several layers of cork, to 
the thickness of three inches. It was laced up in front 
as high as the calf, which kept the whole tight and 
firm, in spite of the enormous sole.—It was not worn 
by all tragic characters, nor on all occasions. Aga¬ 
memnon is introduced byAEschylus in sandals. The 
sandal raised by a cork sole was called egbaryp. The 
ladies and the chorus had also the buskin, but that of 
the latter had only an ordinary sole. These buskins 
were of various colours. White was commonly the 
colour for ladies, red for warriors. Those of Bacchus 
were purple. Slaves wore the low shoe called the 
sock, which was also the ordinary covering for the 
foot of the comic actor.—As the cork sole of the co¬ 
thurnus gave elevation to the stature, so the KoTnrupa, 
or stuffings, swelled out the person to heroic dimen¬ 
sions. Judiciously managed, it added expansion to the 
chest and shoulders, muscular fulness to arm and limb. 
—The dresses were very various. There was the 
Xtruv rroSypyp for gods, heroes, and old men. That 
for hunters, travellers, and young nobles and warriors 
when unarmed, was shorter, and sat close to the neck. 
The girdle for heroes was that called the Persian. It 
was very broad, made of scarlet stuff, and fringed at 
the lower edge. Goddesses and ladies wore one broad 
and plain, of purple and gold. The avppa was a long 
purple robe for queens and princesses, with a train 
which swept the ground. The lower part of the sleeve 
was broidered with white.—The Xvany was a short 
train with short sleeves drawn over the x iT ^ v vody- 
pyp. Slaves wore the Ipdriov, a kind of short shirt, 
or the tfayup, a shirt with only one sleeve for the right 
arm ; the left was bare to the shoulder. Herdsmen 
and shepherds were clad in the dccpdepa, a kind of goat¬ 
skin tunic without sleeves. Hunters had the Ipdnov, 
and a short horseman’s cloak of a dark colour. If 
they were great personages, they were dressed in a 
tunic of deep scarlet, with a rich and embroidered 
mantle. Warriors were arrayed in every variety of 
armour, with helmets adorned with plumes. The pal- 
la or mantle for heroes was ample enough to cover 
the whole person. So large, also, was the ladies’ Ile- 
rr/lov, of fine cloth, embroidered. Matrons wore this 
peplum fastened veil-like on the head ; virgins, clasped 
on the shoulder. The peplum of a queen was like 


that assigned to Juno, decked with golden stars and 
fastened behind the diadem. The dress of the gods 
| was particularly splendid. Bacchus, for instance, was 
represented in a saffron-coloured inner vest, rich with 
purple figures and glittering with golden stars, and 
falling in many folds to the ground. The vest was 
girt, female fashion, high up under the breast and 
shoulders, with a broad girdle of dark purple set with 
gold and jewels. Over this inner robe was thrown 
the pall a, of purple also, and such was the colour of 
his buskins. The comic dresses were, of course, 
chiefly those of ordinary life, except during an occa¬ 
sional burlesque upon the tragic equipment. (Thea¬ 
tre of the Greeks, p. 1 , seqq., 3 d ed — Donaldson, 
Theatre of the Greeks , p. 132, seqq.) 

T'heb.e (-arum.), I. (or, more correctly, Thebe, 
Qi)6y), a city of Mysia, north of Adrarnyttium, and call¬ 
ed, for distinction’ sake, Hypoplakia. This name it re¬ 
ceived from the adjacent district, which was styled 
Hypoplakia, because lying a£ the foot of Mount Plakos 
(vtco and TlTidnop). As regards the existence, how¬ 
ever, of such a mountain, some doubt exists. (Corn; 
pare Heyne, ad II., 6, 396.) Thebe is said to have 
derived its name from a daughter of Cilix. (Diod. 
Sic., 5, 49.) It was the native city of Andromache, 
and was taken and destroyed by Achilles during the 
Trojan war. It never rose from its ruins; but the 
name remained throughout antiquity attached to the 
surrounding plains, famed for their fertility, and often 
ravaged and plundered by the different armies whom 
the events of war brought into this part of Asia. 
(Xen., Anab., 7, 8, 4.— Polyb., 16, 1, 7.—Id., 21, 8, 
13. — Liv.,37, 19.— Pomp. Mel., 1, 18.) — II. (and 
Thebe, Qijbai and Qyby, more frequently the former), 
one of the most ancient and celebrated of the Grecian 
cities, the capital of Boeotia, situated near the river 
Ismenus, and in a northeastern direction from Pl^taaa. 
It was said to have been originally founded by Cad¬ 
mus, who gave it the name of.Cadmeia, which in after 
times was confined to the citadel only. Lycophron, 
however, who terms it the city of Calydmus, from one 
of its ancient kings, leads us to suppose that it already 
existed before the time of Cadmus (v. 1209). Non- 
nus affirms that Cadmus called this city Thebes, after 
the Egyptian one of the same name. (Dionys., 5, 85.) 
He also reports that it was at first destitute of walls 
and ramparts (5, 50), and this is in unison with the ac¬ 
counts transmitted to us by Homer and other writers, 
who all agree in ascribing the erection of the walls of 
the city to Amphion and Zethus. (Horn., Od., 11,262. 
— Eurip ., Phcen., 842.— Horn., Hymnin Apol., 225.)— 
Having already mentioned much of what is common to 
Thebes, in the general history of Boeotia, it will be here 
sufficient to notice briefly those events which have 
peculiar reference to that city.—Besieged by the Ar- 
give chiefs, the allies of Polynices, the Thebans sue 
cessfully resisted their attacks, and finally obtained a 
signal victory ; but the Epigoni, or descendants of the 
seven warriors, having raised an army to avenge the 
defeat and death of their fathers, the city was on this 
occasion taken by assault and sacked. (Pausan., 9, 
9.) It was invested a third time by the Grecian army 
under Pausanias, after the battle of Platsea; but, on 
the surrender of those who had proved themselves 
most zealous partisans of the Persians, the siege was 
raised, and the confederates withdrew from the The¬ 
ban territory. (Herod., 9,88.) Many years after, the 
Cadmeia was surprised, and held by a division of La¬ 
cedaemonian troops until they were compelled to evac¬ 
uate the place by Pelopidas and his associates.—Philip 
having defeated the Thebans at Chasronea, placed a 
garrison in their citadel ; but, on the accession of Al¬ 
exander, they revolted against that prince, who storm¬ 
ed their city, and razed it to the ground, B.C. 335. 
(Arrian, Exp. Alex., 1, 7, seqq. — Plut., Vit. Alex., 
5, 11.) Twenty years afterward it was restored by 

1311 





THEBJE. 


THEBJE. 


Cassander. when the Athenians are said to have gen¬ 
erously contributed their aid in rebuilding the walls, an 
example which was followed by other places. ( Pau- 
san., 9, 7. — Pint., Polit. Prcecep., p. 814, B.) Sub¬ 
sequently we find that Thebes was twice taken by 
Demetrius Poliorcetes. ( Plut.., Vit. Demetr., c. 39.) 
Dica 3 archus has given a very detailed and interesting 
account of this great city about this period. ( Stat., 
Gr., p. 14.) At a later period Thebes was greatly 
reduced and impoverished by the rapacious Sylla. 

( Pausan., 9, 7.) Strabo affirms, that in his time it 
was little more than a village. (Strab., 403.) Thebes, 
though nearly deserted towards the decline of the Ro¬ 
man empire, appears to have been of some note in the 
middle ages ( Nicet ., Ann., 2, p. 50.— Leunc., Ann., 
p. 267), and it is still one of the most populous towns 
of northern Greece. The natives call it Thiva. It 
retains, however, according to Dodwell, scarcely any 
traces of its former magnificence. Of the walls of the 
Cadtneia a few fragments remain, which are regularly 
constructed. These were probably erected by the 
Athenians when Cassander restored the town. ( Tour, 
vol. 1, p. 264.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, v ol. 2, p. 223, 
scqq.) —III. Phthioticas, a city of Thessaly, in the dis¬ 
trict of Phthiotis, situate, according to Polybius, about 
300 stadia from Larissa, and not far from the sea. In 
a military point of view its importance was great, as 
it commanded the avenues of Magnesia and Thessaly, 
from its vicinity to Demetrius, Pheras, and Pharsalus. 
Sir W. Cell describes some ruins between Armiro 
and Volo , which he suspects to be those of this town. 

(. Itin ., p. 258.— Cramer's Anc. Greece , vol. 1, p. 402.) 
—IV. A celebrated city of Upper Egypt, the capital 
of Theba'is. The name is corrupted from the Tape of 
the Coptic, which, in the Memphitic dialect of that 
language, is pronounced Theba. Pliny in one place 
writes the name of Thebes in the singular: “ Thebe 
fortarum centum nobilis fama ” (5, 9). The appella¬ 
tion of Diospolis, often applied to it by the Greeks, 
s a translation of Amunei, or “ the abode of Am¬ 
mon,” who represents the Egyptian Jupiter. Another 
name given to it by the Greeks was Hecatompylos, 
which will be considered below. The origin of this 
great city is lost amid the obscurity of (able. By 
some it was ascribed to Osiris, by others to one of 
the earliest of the Egyptian kings. The probability 
is, that it was at first a sacerdotal establishment, con¬ 
nected with commercial operations, like so many of 
the early cities of Egypt, and that it gradually attained 
to its vast dimensions in consequence of the additions 
made by successive monarchs. The Egyptians, how¬ 
ever, according to Diodorus (1, 50), believed Thebes 
to have been the first city founded upon the earth; 
and, in truth, we have no account at the present day 
of any of earlier origin. Its most flourishing period 
appears to have been prior to the building of Memphis, 
when Thebes was the capital of all Egypt, the royal 
residence, and abode of the highest sacerdotal college 
in the land. It must, from its very situation, have 
been the middle point for the caravan trade to the 
south, and through it passed, very probably, all the pro¬ 
ductions and wares of Asia. Homer, therefore, who 
describes it as a powerful city, containing a hundred 
gates, must have derived his information from the Phoe¬ 
nicians engaged in the overland trade. It is idle to 
suppose that the poet himself had been there in person, 
when of the rest of Egypt he knew nothing but the 
mere name, and had but a confused idea even of the 
Mediterranean coast. The poet informs us that out 
of each these 100 gates, Thebes could send forth 200 
chariots to oppose an enemy: an evident exaggera¬ 
tion, either originating in his own fancy, or received 
from, and characteristic of, the Phoenician traders. It 
is to its numerous portals that the epithet of Hecatom- 
jjylos (“ hundred-gated”) refers. As the city, how¬ 
ever, contrary to the usual belief, was never surrounded 
1312 


by walls, these gates or portals must either be those of 
its numerous palaces, or else, and what is more proba¬ 
ble, the openings in the great circus or hippodrome, 
that was in the neighbourhood of the city. This circus 
‘enclosed a space of 2000 metres in length and 1000 
in breadth, and was surrounded with triumphal struc¬ 
tures that gloriously announced the approach to the an¬ 
cient capital of Egypt. Thebes sank in importance 
when Lower Egypt began to be more thickly inhabited, 
and the new capital Memphis arose. A second and a 
third sacerdotal college were established in the same 
quarter ; hither, too, trade and commercial intercourse 
of all kinds directed their course, and Thebes, in conse¬ 
quence, became almost a deserted city compared with 
its former splendour. It still remained, however, the 
chief seat of the religion of Egypt; a circumstance 
which enabled it to retain a tolerable population, until 
the fury of Cambyses, or, more correctly speaking, 
his religious fanaticism, destroyed most of its priest¬ 
hood, and overthrew its proudest structures. From 
this period it rapidly declined. Herodotus visited the 
city during the Persian government of Egypt, and 
speaks of the temple of Zeus ; but his silence re¬ 
specting the condition of the rest of the city must al¬ 
ways remain an enigma. Diodorus, who speaks of 
Thebes as of a city already in ruins, takes particulai 
notice of four principal temples. He mentions sphinx¬ 
es, colossal figures decorating the entrances, porticoes, 
pyramidal gateways, and stones of astonishing mag¬ 
nitude which entered into their structure. In the de¬ 
scriptions given by modern travellers, these monu¬ 
ments are still recognised. Browne tells us that 
“ there remain four immense temples, yet not so mag¬ 
nificent nor in so good a state of preservation as 
those of Denderah.” Norden remarks, “ It is sur¬ 
prising how well the gilding, the ultra-marine, and va¬ 
rious other colours still preserve their brilliancy.” 
He speaks also of a colonnade, of which thirty-two c fi- 
umns are still standing; of platforms, preserved gal¬ 
leries, and other remains of antiquity, which he has 
represented in his plates, and which he thinks the 
more worthy of attention as they appear to be the 
same that are mentioned by Philostratus in his ac 
count of the temple of Memnon. No description can 
give an adequate idea of these wonders of antiquity, 
both in regard to their incredible number and their gi¬ 
gantic size. Their form, proportions, and construc¬ 
tion are almost as astonishing as their magnitude. 
The mind is lost in a mass of colossal objects, every 
one of which is more than sufficient to absorb its 
whole attention. On the western side of the river 
stood the famed Memnonium ; here also are number-* 
less tombs in the form of subterraneous excavations, 
and containing many human bodies in the state of 
mummies, sometimes accompanied with pieces of pa¬ 
pyrus and other ancient curiosities. These have been 
the subject of ardent research ; and the trade of dig¬ 
ging for tombs and mummies being found gainful, has 
been resorted to by numerous Arabs belonging to the 
place. With respect to the mummies, some are found 
in wooden cases shaped like the human body. These 
belonged to persons superior to the lower rank, but 
differing from one another in the quantity and quality 
of the linen in which the body had been wrapped. 
The mummies of the poorest classes are found with¬ 
out any wooden covering, and wrapped in the coarsest 
linen. These differ from the former also in being oft¬ 
en accompanied with pieces of papyrus, on which 
Belzoni supposes that an account of the lives of the 
deceased had been written, while a similar account 
was carved on the cases of the more opulent. These 
cases are generally of Egyptian sycamore, but very 
different from one another with respect to plainness or 
ornament. Sometimes there are one or two inner 
cases besides the outer one. Leaves and flowers of 
acacia are often found round the body, and sometimes 






1 ft h 


THE 


»umpS of asphaltum about two pounds in weight. 
The case is covered with a cement resembling plas¬ 
ter of Paris, in which various figures are cast. The 
whole is painted, generally with a yellow ground, on 
which are hieroglyphics and figures of green.—But to 
return to the ruin of Thebes : on the east side of the 
Nile, at Karnac and Luxor , amid a multitude of tem¬ 
ples, there are no tombs ; these are confined to the 
west bank. An iron sickle was lately found under 
one of the buried statues, nearly of the shape of those 
which are now in use, though thicker ; it is supposed 
to have lain there since the invasion of Cambyses, 
when the idols were concealed by the superstitious to 
save them from destruction. Belzoni and others un¬ 
covered and carried away many specimens of these 
antique remains, such as sphinxes, obelisks, and stat¬ 
ues. On this same side of the river, no palaces or 
traces of ancient human habitations are met with ; 
whereas, on the western side, at Medinet Abou , there 
are not only propylsea and temples highly valued by 
♦he antiquarian, but dwelling-houses, which seem to 
point out that place as having been once a royal resi¬ 
dence. ( Mannert , Geogr., vol. 10, pt. 1, p. 334, 
seqq. — Wilkinson, Topography of Thebes, London, 
1835, 8vo.) 

Thebais, I. the southernmost division of Egypt, of 
which Thebes was the capital. ( Vid. JEgyptus, page 
37, col. 1, $ 4.)—II. The title of a poem by Statius. 
Wid. Statius.) 

Thebe. Vid. Thebag. 

Thebe, the wife of Alexander, tyrant of Pherse. 
dhe assassinated him. (Vid. Alexander I., page 109, 
col. 2, § 6.) 

Themis, the goddess of Justice or Law. This 
deity appears in the Iliad among the inhabitants of 
Olympus (II., 15, 87.— lb., 20, 4); and in the Odys¬ 
sey (2, 68) she is named as presiding over the assem¬ 
blies of men, but nothing is said respecting her rank 
or origin. By Hesiod (Theog., 135, 901, seqq.), she 
is said to be a .Titaness, one of the daughters of 
Heaven and Earth, and to have borne to Jupiter the 
Fates, and the Seasons, Peace, Order, Justice, the 
natural progeny of Law (0 epic;), and all deities benefi¬ 
cial to mankind. In Pindar and the Homeridan 
hymns, Themis sits by Jupiter, on his throne, to give 
him counsel. 'Themis is said to have succeeded her 
mother Earth in the possession of the Delphic oracle, 
and to have voluntarily resigned it to her sister Phoebe, 
who gave it as a natal-gift unto Phoebus Apollo.— 
Welcker says that Themis is merely an epithet of 
Earth. (Tril., p. 39.) Hermann also makes Themis 
a physical being, rendering her name Stalina ; while 
Bottiger, with apparently more justice, says, “ She is 
the oldest purely allegorical personification of a vir¬ 
tue.” (Kunst-Mythol., 2, 110.— Keightlefs Mytholo¬ 
gy, p. 198.) 

Themiscyra, a city of Pontus, capital of a district 
of the same name. The town of Themiscyra appears 
to have been one of very early origin. Scylax men¬ 
tions it as a Grecian state, and Herodotus also speaks 
of it. (Scylax, p. 33.— Herod., 4, 86.) Both of 
these writers, however, place it at the mouth of the 
Thermodon ; whereas Ptolemy locates it in the centre 
of the district Themiscyra, that is, more inland. This 
place appears to have been destroyed in the course of 
the Mithradatic war. (Appian, B. Mithrad., c. 78.) 
Hence Strabo makes no mention of it ; and Mela 
merely states, that, in the territory around the Ther¬ 
modon, there orjce stood an ancient city named The¬ 
miscyra (1, 19). i’t is rather surprising that many of 
the ancient writers, and among them even ^Eschylus, 
never use the name Themiscyra as that of a city, but 
always as designating a plain. (JEsch., Prom. V., 
’'49. —Compare Steph. Byz., s. v. Xddtcua. — Apol- 
d., 2, 5.— Apoll. Rhod ., 2, 370.) Diodorus, how¬ 
ler, makes the founder of the Amazonian nation to 

8 D 


have built this city on the Thermodon (2, 44). In the 
plains of Themiscyra the Amazons were said to have 
founded a powerful kingdom. Here they were con¬ 
quered by Hercules, and many slain. The followers 
of Hercules, on retiring from their country, took with 
them on board their vessels as many Amazons as they 
could find alive ; these, however, when at sea, rose 
upon the Greeks, as is said, slew them to a man, and, 
being ignorant themselves of navigation, were carried 
by the winds and the waves to Cremni on the Palus 
Maeotis, and their name still lingered in fable for many 
ages, in connexion with the regions of Caucasus. 
(Herod., 4, 110.— Mannert, Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 2, p. 
443.) 

Themison, a celebrated physician, born at Laodi- 
cea, and the pupil of Asclepiades. He established 
himself at Rome about 90 B.C. Themison wished to 
find a middle course between the empiric system and 
dogmatism. This middle course, or method, he be¬ 
lieved he had discovered in the theory of his master. 
He became, therefore, the founder of the school of 
Methodists, which introduced a greater degree of pre¬ 
cision into the system of Asclepiades. Themison 
taught that there exists not only in the vessels, but, 
generally speaking, in all parts of the human frame, a 
disproportion which is the source of all maladies.—He 
was the first practitioner, also, that made use of leech¬ 
es, which he applied to the temples in disorders of the 
head. (Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 5, p. 338.— Spren - 
gel, Hist, de la Med., vol. 2, p. 20, seqq.) 

Themistius, a celebrated orator and philosopher in 
the fourth century of the Christian era. He was a na¬ 
tive of Paphlagonia, but passed the greater part of his 
days at Constantinople, where he enjoyed the highest 
favour with the Emperor Constantius, who elevated 
him to the rank of senator. He stood high also in the 
estimation of Julian, who made him prefect of Con¬ 
stantinople, and kept up an epistolary correspondence 
with him. He was highly regarded, too, by the suc¬ 
cessors of this prince down to Theodosius the Great, 
who confided to Themistius, although the latter was a 
pagan, the education of his son Arcadius. He was 
employed, also, in various public matters, and on sev¬ 
eral embassies. Themistius was the master of Liba- 
nius and St. Augustin, and, what was of rare occur¬ 
rence in his day, presented a model of religious toler¬ 
ation and forbearance: hence we find an intimate 
friendship subsisting between him and Gregory of 
Nazianzus, and the latter styling him the king of el¬ 
oquence” (Baculevg Hoyov). Themistius resided for 
some time also at Rome, and, both in this city as well 
as in Constantinople, he lectured on the systems of 
Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, but more particularly 
the latter. He received no fees from his auditors ; on 
the contrary, though not rich himself, he was liberal in 
ministering to the necessities of his less wealthy fol¬ 
lowers. The public discourses which remain to us of 
this orator, as well as his philosophical works, justify 
the high opinion which his contemporaries entertained 
of him. His style, formed by an attentive perusal of 
Plato, is marked by great perspicuity, elegance, and 
sweetness ; nor is it, at the same time, at all wanting 
in strength and energy. Although the greater part of 
his discourses have for their subject the praises tof era 
perors, and although this kind of writing is in itself 
both arid and devoid of interest, yet Themistius has 
succeeded in attracting the attention of his readers by 
the numerous allusions which he makes both to the 
mythology and the history of the Greeks, and by the 
instructive examples which he draws from the works 
of the ancient philosophers.—A memorable instance 
of the liberal spirit of Themistius is related by eccle¬ 
siastical historians. The Emperor Valens, who fa¬ 
voured the Arian party, inflicted many hardships and 
sufferings upon the Trinitarians, and daily threatened 
them with still greate- severities. Themistius, to 







THE 


THEMISTOCLES. 


wnom these measures were exceedingly displeasing, 
addressed the emperor upon the subject in an elo¬ 
quent speech, in which he represented the diversity of 
opinions among the Christians as inconsiderable com¬ 
pared with that of the pagan philosophers, and plead¬ 
ed that this diversity could not be displeasing to God, 
since it did not prevent men from worshipping him 
with true piety. By these and other arguments The- 
mistius prevailed upon the emperor to treat the Trin¬ 
itarians with greater lenity.—Themistius illustrated 
several of the works of Aristotle, particularly the Ana¬ 
lytics, the Physics, and the Book on the Soul.—Of 
his discourses Photius enumerates thirty-six : we have 
only, at the present day, thirty-three, and one other, the 
thirty-third, in a Latin translation. An edition of the 
entire remains of Themistius appeared from the Al- 
dine press in 1534, fol. Of the orations, the best edi¬ 
tion used to be that of Petavius (Petau), Paris, 1684, 
i'ol.; but now, for the text of Themistius, the best 
edition is that of Dindorf, Cnobloch, 1832, 8vo. 

Themistoci.es, a celebrated Athenian statesman 
and leader. His father Neocles was a man of high 
birth after the Athenian standard, but his mother was 
not a citizen, and, according to most accounts, not 
even a Greek. His patrimony seems to have been 
ample for a man of less aspiring temper. 4 he anec¬ 
dotes related of his youthful wilfulness and wayward¬ 
ness ; of his earnest application to the pursuit of use¬ 
ful knowledge ; of his neglect of the elegant arts, which . 
already formed part of the Athenian education ; of his 
profusion and his avarice ; of the sleepless nights in 
which he meditated on the trophies of Miltiades, all 
point, with more or less of particular truth, the same 
way; to a soul early bent on great objects, and form¬ 
ed to pursue them with steady resolution, incapable 
of being diverted by trifles, embarrassed by scruples, 
or deterred by difficulties. The end he aimed at 
was not merely the good of his country, still less 
was it any petty mark of selfish cupidity. The pur¬ 
pose of his life was to make Athens great and pow¬ 
erful, that he himself might move and command in a 
large sphere. The genius with which nature had en¬ 
dowed him warranted this noble ambition, and it was 
marvellously suited to the critical circumstances in 
which he was placed by fortune. The peculiar faculty 
of his mind, which Thucydides contemplated with ad¬ 
miration, was the quickness with which it seized every 
object that came in its way, perceived the course of 
action required by new situations and sudden junc¬ 
tures, and penetrated into remote consequences. 
Such were the abilities which, at the period when he 
came forward, were most needed for the service of 
Athens. At the time when Themistocles was be¬ 
ginning to rise into credit with his fellow-citizens, an¬ 
other man of very different character already possessed 
their respect and confidence. This was Aristides, son 
of Lysimachus. {Vid. Aristides.) Like Themisto¬ 
cles, he too had the welfare of Athens at heart, but 
simply and singly, not as an instrument, but as an 
end. ’ On this he kept his eye, without looking to any 
mark beyond it, or stooping to any private advantage 
that lay on his road. It is not surprising that a man 
of -such a mould should have come into frequent con¬ 
flict with a statesman like Themistocles, though their 
immediate object was the same, and though there was 
no great discordance between their general views of 
the public interest. When Aristides, without having 
incurred accusation or reproach, without being sus¬ 
pected of any ambitious designs, was sent by the os¬ 
tracism into honourable banishment, because he had 
no equal in the highest virtue, his removal left The¬ 
mistocles in almost undivided possession of the popu¬ 
lar favour. His thoughts had long been turned to¬ 
wards the struggle that was now approaching. He 
had seen that Athens could not remain stationary ; that 
■she must either cease to exist as an independent state, 
1314 


or else must take up a new position, and rise to a new 
rank in Greece : and this it was evident she could only 
do by cultivating the capacity she had received from 
nature, and of becoming a great maritime power. 
Early in the interval between the first and second 
Persian invasion, he had dexterously prevailed on the 
people to appropriate the profits of the silver-mines at 
Laurium (which they had hitherto shared among them¬ 
selves) to the enlargement of their navy. Yet it was 
not by holding out the danger of a new Persian inva¬ 
sion that he gained their consent, but by appealing to 
their hatred and jealousy of ^Egina, which was still at 
war with them, and was mistress of the sea. To be 
able to cope with this formidable rival, they built a 
hundred new galleys, and thus increased their naval 
force to two hundred ships ; and it was probably at 
the same time that they were persuaded to pass a de¬ 
cree, which directed twenty triremes to be built every 
year. ( Bdckh, Staalshaushalt. der Ath., 2, c. 19.) 
While the storm of the Persian invasion was slowly 
approaching, Themistocles was busied in allaying ani¬ 
mosity and silencing disputes among the Grecian cit¬ 
ies ; and when, not long after this, the Athenians, 
alarmed for their safety, had sent to Delphi for advice, 
he is supposed, on very good grounds, to have influ¬ 
enced the well-known answer of the oracle, “that Jove 
had granted the prayer of his daughter Minerva, and 
that, when all beside was lost, a wooden wall should 
still shelter the citizens of Athens.” This wooden wall, 
which was to afford the only refuge in the hour of 
danger, seemed best explained by the fleet, which, 
since it had been increased according to the advice of 
Themistocles, might well be deemed the surest bul¬ 
wark of Athens. The elder citizens, however, thought 
it incredible that Minerva should abandon her ancient 
citadel, and resign her charge to the rival deity, with 
whom she had anciently contended for the possession 
of Attica. To them it seemed clear that the oracle 
must have spoken of the hedge of thorns, which once 
fenced in the rock of Pallas, and that this, if repaired 
and strengthened with the same materials, would be 
an impregnable barrier against all assaults. The ex¬ 
istence of Athens hung on the issue of these delibera¬ 
tions. The people, in their uncertainty, looked to The¬ 
mistocles for advice. His keen eye had probably 
caught a prophetic glimpse of the event* that were to 
hallow the shores of Salamis ; and he now reminded 
his hearers that a Grecian oracle would not have called 
the island the divine (this term had been used in the 
response just alluded to) if it was to be afflicted with 
the triumph of the barbarians, and was not rather to 
be the scene of their destruction. He therefore ex¬ 
horted them, if all other safeguards should fail them, 
to commit their safety and their hopes of victory to 
their newly-strengthened navy. This counsel prevail¬ 
ed.—When intelligence of the capture of Athens was 
brought to the Greeks assembled with their vessels at 
Salamis, and, amid the consternation that ensued, it 
was resolved in council to retire from Salamis and 
give battle near the shore of the Isthmus, it was owing 
to the bold deportment of Themistocles alone that the 
allies were induced to change their determination and 
give battle in the straits. According to the accounts 
that have been given of this transaction, as Themisto¬ 
cles was returning to his ship from the council in 
which it had been resolved to sail away from Salamis, 
he was met by Mnesiphilus, an Athenian officer, who, 
on hearing the issue of the conference, exclaimed that 
Greece was lost if such a counsel were adopted ; for 
the allies, if now allowed to retreat, could no longer 
be kept together, but would be scattered to their sev¬ 
eral cities. This suggestion falling in with the opin¬ 
ion of Themistocles, induced him to return to the Spar¬ 
tan Eurybiades who commanded in chief, and pressing 
on him, with many additions, the arguments of Mne¬ 
siphilus, he persuaded him to reconvene the council. 


v 






THEMISTOCLES. 


THEMISTOCLES. 


Themistocles now urged the commanders to remain, 
both on account of the advantage which the narrow 
straits of Salamis gave to the Greeks, inferior as well 
in the speed as in the number of their ships, and also 
because, by so doing, they would preserve Megara, 
Salamis, and iEgina, with the Athenian women and 
children deposited in the latter places. When he 
found them still obstinate, he declared that the Athe¬ 
nians, if their feelings and interests, after all they had 
done, w'ere so little regarded, would abandon the arma¬ 
ment, and, taking on board their families, would seek 
a settlement elsewhere. This threat prevailed, and it 
was agreed to remain ; but at the approach of the en¬ 
emy the Peloponnesians again were eager to depart and 
provide for the defence of their own territories ; on 
which Themistocles, to prevent the mischiefs he fore¬ 
saw, and partly, also, with the double policy which 
marked his character, to secure to himself, in case of 
defeat, an interest with the conquerors, sent private 
information to the Persian admiral of the flight which 
was meditated by the Greeks, and advised him to 
guard against it by occupying both ends of the strait 
between Salamis and the main-land. After the glori¬ 
ous day of Salamis, when the remnant of the Persian 
fleet had been pursued as far as the island of Andros, 
Themistocles proposed to continue the chase, and then 
to sail to the Hellespont and break down the bridge. 
Eurybiades opposed him, on the ground that there was 
danger lest the Persians, being rendered desperate, 
might yet be successful; and the Peloponnesians gen¬ 
erally agreeing with Eurybiades, the proposal was re¬ 
jected. On this, Themistocles persuaded the Atheni¬ 
ans, who had been most eager for pursuit, to acqui¬ 
esce ; while, if w r e believe in the motives commonly 
ascribed to him, he took advantage of the incident to 
secure for himself, in case of banishment, a refuge in 
Persia, by sending a secret messenger to Xerxes, to 
inform him of the plan which had been proposed, and 
say that Themistocles, through friendship to him, had 
procured its rejection. This view of the case, howev¬ 
er, can hardly be the correct one. It may be easily 
conceived that a man like Themistocles loved the arts 
in which he excelled for their own sake, and might ex¬ 
ercise the faculties with which he w r as pre-eminently 
gifted upon very slight occasions. In devising a plan, 
conducting an intrigue, surmounting a difficulty, in 
leading men to his ends without their knowledge and 
against their will, he might find a delight which might 
often be in itself a sufficient motive of action. We 
should be led, therefore, to suppose that this was the 
inducement which caused him to send this other secret 
message to Xerxes. For that, in the very moment of 
victory, when he had just risen to the highest degree, 
of reputation and influence among his countrymen, he 
should have foreseen the changes which fortune had in 
store for him, and have conceived the thought of pro¬ 
viding a place of refuge among the barbarians, to which 
he might fly if he should be driven out of Greece, is a 
conjecture that might very naturally be formed after 
the event, but would scarcely have been thought prob¬ 
able before it.—All Greece now resounded with the 
fame of Themistocles. The deliverance just effected 
was universally ascribed, next to the favour of the 
gods, to his foresight and presence of mind; and when 
the Grecian commanders met in the temple of Neptune 
on the Isthmus*to award the palm of individual merit, 
no one was generous enough to resign the first place 
to another, but most were just enough to award the 
second to Themistocles. Still higher honours, how¬ 
ever, awaited him from Sparta, a severe judge of Athe¬ 
nian merit. He went thither, according to Plutarch, 
invited; wishing, Herodotus says, to be honoured. 
The Spartans gave him a chaplet of olive leaves : it 
was the reward they had bestowed on their own admi¬ 
ral Eurybiades. They added a chariot, the best the 
city possessed ; and, to distinguish him above ail other 


foreigners that had ever entered Sparta, they sent tne 
three hundred knights to escort him as far as the bor¬ 
ders of Tegea on his return. He himself subsequently 
dedicated a temple to Diana, as the goddess of good 
counsel.—Immediately after the battle of Plataea, the 
Athenian people had begun to bring back their fami¬ 
lies, and to rebuild their city and ramparts. But the 
jealousy excited in the Peloponnesians by the power 
and spirit which Athens had displayed was far stronger 
than their gratitude for what it had done and suffered 
in the common cause. An embassy arrived from Pe¬ 
loponnesus to urge the Athenians not to go on with 
their fortifications, but rather, as far as in them lay, to 
demolish the walls of all other cities out of the Pelopon¬ 
nesus, that the enemy, if he again returned, might have 
no strong place to fix his headquarters in, as recently 
in Thebes. If this demand had been complied with, 
Athens would have become entirely subject to Lace¬ 
daemon. At the same time, it was dangerous to refuse, 
since from the past conduct of Lacedaemon there was 
little ground to expect that gratitude would prevent it 
from any action prompted by jealousy or ambition ; 
while it was vain to hope, that the military force of 
Athens, weakened by the number of citizens absent 
with the fleet, would be able to maintain itself without 
the aid of walls against the united strength of Pelo¬ 
ponnesus. In this difficulty Themistocles advised 
them immediately to send away the Lacedaemonian 
ambassadors, to raise up the walls with the utmost 
possible celerity, men, women, and children joining in 
the work, and, choosing himself and some others as 
ambassadors to Sparta, to send him thither at once, but 
to detain his colleagues until the walls had attained a 
sufficient height for defence. He was accordingly 
sent to Lacedaemon, where he put off his audience 
from day to day, excusing himself by saying that he 
waited for his colleagues, who were daily expected, and 
wondered that they were not come. But when re¬ 
ports arrived that the walls were gaining height, he 
bade the magistrates not to trust to rumour, but to send 
some competent persons to examine for themselves. 
They sent accordingly, and, at the same time, Themis¬ 
tocles secretly directed the Athenians to detain the 
Lacedaemonian commissioners, but with the least pos¬ 
sible show of compulsion, till himself and his col¬ 
leagues should return. The latter were now arrived, 
and brought news that the walls had gained the height 
required : and Themistocles declared to the Lacedae¬ 
monians that Athens was already sufficiently fortified, 
and that henceforth, if the Lacedaemonians and their 
allies had anything to do, they must do it as to persons 
able to judge both of the common interest and their own. 
The Spartans were secretly mortified at their failure, 
and probably not the less so from the consciousness 
that the attempt had been an unhandsome one ; but 
their discontent did not break out openly, and the am¬ 
bassadors on each part went home unquestioned —No 
Greek had yet rendered services such as those of The¬ 
mistocles to the common cause ; no Athenian except 
Solon had conferred equal benefits upon Athens. 
Themistocles was not unconscious of his own merit, 
nor careful to suppress his sense of it. He was 
thought to indicate it too plainly when he dedicated 
his temple above mentioned to Diana, and the offence 
was aggravated if he himself placed his statue there, 
where it was still seen in the days of Plutarch, who 
pronounces the form no less heroic than the soul of the 
man. In the same spirit are several stories related by 
Plutarch, of the indiscretion with which he sometimes 
alluded to the magnitude of the debt which his coun¬ 
trymen owed him. He would seem, indeed, not to 
have discovered, till it was too late, that there are obli¬ 
gations which neither princes nor nations can endure, 
and which are forfeited if they are not discharged 
After the battle of Salamis, and while the teirors o 
the invasion were still fresh, his influence at Athe 

1315 



THEMISTOCLES. 


THEMISTOCLES. 


was predominant, and his power consequently great 
wherever the ascendancy of Athens was acknowledg¬ 
ed : and he did not always scruple to convert the glory 
with which he ought to have been satisfied into a 
source of petty profit. Immediately after the retreat 
of Xerxes, he exacted contributions from the islanders 
who had sided with the barbarians, as the price of di¬ 
verting from them the resentment of the Greeks. An¬ 
other opportunity for enriching himself he found in the 
factions by which many of the maritime states were 
divided. Almost everywhere there was a party or in¬ 
dividuals who needed the aid of his authority, and were 
willing to purchase his mediation. Themistocles, in 
short, accumulated extraordinary wealth on a less than 
moderate fortune. When his troubles had commen¬ 
ced, a great part of his property was secretly conveyed 
into Asia by his friends ; but that part which was dis¬ 
covered and confiscated is estimated by Theopompus 
at a hundred talents, by Theophrastus at eighty; 
though, before he engaged in public affairs, all he pos¬ 
sessed did not amount to so much as three talents. 

( Plut ., Vit. Themis!.., c. 25.)—But if he made some 
enemies by his selfishness, he provoked others, whose 
resentment proved more formidable, by his firm and 
enlightened patriotism. Sparta never forgave him the 
shame he brought upon her by thwarting her insidious 
attempt to suppress the independence of her rival, and 
he farther exasperated her animosity by detecting and 
baffling another stroke of her artful policy. The Spar¬ 
tans proposed to punish the states which had aided the 
barbarians, or had abandoned the cause of Greece, by 
depriving them of the right of being represented in the 
Amphictyonic congress. By this measure, Argos, 
Thebes, and the northern states, which had hitherto 
composed the majority in that assembly, would have 
been excluded from it, and the effect would probably 
have been that Spartan influence would have prepon¬ 
derated there. Themistocles frustrated this attempt 
by throwing the weight of Athens into the opposite 
scale, and by pointing out the danger of reducing the 
council to an instrument in the hands of two or three 
of its most powerful members. The enmity which he 
thus drew upon himself would have been less honour¬ 
able to him, if there had been any ground for a story, 
which apparently was never heard of till it became 
current among some late collectors of anecdotes, 
from whom Plutarch received it: it has been popular 
because it seemed to illustrate the contrast between 
the characters of Themistocles and Aristides, and to 
display the magnanimity of the Athenians. Themis¬ 
tocles is made to tell the Athenians that he has some¬ 
thing to propose which will be highly beneficial to the 
commonwealth, but which must not be divulged. The 
people depute Aristides to hear the secret, and to judge 
of the merit of the proposal. Themistocles discloses 
a plan for firing the allied fleet at Pagasae, or, accord¬ 
ing to another form of the story adopted by Cicero 
(Off., 3, 11), the Lacedaemonian fleet at Gythium. 
Upon this, Aristides reports to the assembled people 
that nothing could be more advantageous to Athens 
than the counsel of Themistocles, but nothing more 
dishonourable and unjust. The generous people re¬ 
ject the proffered advantage, without even being 
tempted to inquire in what it consisted.—Themisto¬ 
cles was gradually supplanted in public favour by men 
worthy indeed to be his rivals, but who owed their 
victory less to their own merit than to the towering 
pre-eminence of his deserts. He himself, as we have 
observed, seconded them by his indiscretion in their 
endeavours to persuade the people that he had risen 
too high above the common level to remain a harmless 
citizen in a free state : that his was a case which call¬ 
ed for the extraordinary remedy prescribed by the laws 
against the power and greatness of an individual which 
threatened to overlay the young democracy. He was 
condemned to temporary exile bv the same process of 
1316 


ostracism which he had himself before directed against 
Aristides He took up his abode at Argos, which he 
had served in his prosperity, and which welcomed, if 
not the saviour of Greece, at least the enemy of Spar¬ 
ta. Here he was still residing, though he occasionally 
visited other cities of the Peloponnesus, when Pausa- 
nias was convicted of his treason. In searching ior 
farther traces of his plot, the ephori found some parts 
of a correspondence between him and Themistocles, 
which appeared to afford sufficient ground for charging 
the Athenian with having shared his friend’s crime 
They immediately sent ambassadors to Athens to ac¬ 
cuse him, and to insist that he should be punished in 
like manner with the partner of his guilt. We have 
no reason to believe that there was any more solid 
foundation for the charge than what Plutarch relates ; 
that Pausanias, when he saw Themistocles banished, 
believing that he would embrace any opportunity of 
avenging himself on his ungrateful country, opened his 
project to him in a letter. Themistocles thought it 
the scheme of a madman, but one which he was not 
bound, and had no inducement, to reveal. He may 
have written, though his prudence renders it improba¬ 
ble, something that implied his knowledge of the se¬ 
cret. But his cause was never submitted to an impar¬ 
tial tribunal: his enemies were in possession of the 
public mind at Athens, and officers were sent with the 
Spartans, who tendered their assistance, to arrest him 
and bring him to Athens, where, in the prevailing dis¬ 
position of the people, almost inevitable death awaited 
him. This he foresaw, and determined to avoid. In 
the Peloponnesus he could no longer hope to find a safe 
refuge. He sought it first in Corcyra, which was in¬ 
debted to him for his friendly mediation in a dispute 
with Corinth about the Leucadian peninsula, and had, 
by his means, obtained the object it contended for. 
The Corcyreans, however willing, were unable to shel¬ 
ter him from the united power of Athens and Sparta, 
and he crossed over to the opposite coast of Epirus. 
The Molossians, the most powerful people of this coun¬ 
try, were now ruled by a king named Admelus, whom 
Themistocles, in the day of his power, had thwarted in 
a suit which he had occasion to make to the Atheni¬ 
ans, and had added insult to disappointment. The¬ 
mistocles adopted the desperate resolution of throwing 
himself upon the mercy of this his personal enemy. 
The king was fortunately absent from home when the 
stranger arrived at his gate, and his queen Phthia, in 
whom no vindictive feelings stifled her womanly com¬ 
passion, received him with kindness, and instructed 
him in the effectual manner of disarming her hus¬ 
band’s resentment and securing his protection. When 
Admetus returned, he found Themistocles seated at 
his hearth, holding the young prince whom Phthia had 
placed in his hands. This among the Molossians was 
the most solemn form of supplication, more powerful 
than the olive-branch among the Greeks. The king 
was touched ; he raised the suppliant with an assu¬ 
rance of protection, which he fulfilled, when the Athe¬ 
nian and Lacedaemonian commissioners dogged their 
prey to his mansion, by refusing to surrender his guest. 
Themistocles, however, would seem not to have in¬ 
tended to fix his abode among the Molossians, and he 
had probably very early conceived the design of seek¬ 
ing his fortune at the court of Persia. He is said to 
have consulted the oracle at Dodona, perhaps less for 
a direction than for a pretext: the answer seemed to 
point to the great king ; and Admetus, practising the 
hospitality of the heroic ages, supplied his guest with 
the means of crossing over to the coast of the ^Egean. 
At the Macedonian port of Pydna he found a mer¬ 
chant-ship bound for Ionia, and, after a narrow escape 
from the Athenian fleet, which was then besieging 
Naxos, and to the coast of which island he had been 
carried by a storm, Themistocles was safely landed in 
the harbour of Ephesus. It was by letter that he first 



THEMISTOCLES. 


T H E 


made himself known to Artaxerxes, who was then on 
the Persian throne. In his communication he ac¬ 
knowledged the evil he had inflicted on the royal house 
in the defence of his country, but claimed the merit of 
having sent the timely warning by which Xerxes was 
enabled to effect his retreat from Salamis in safety, 
and of having diverted the Greeks from the design of 
intercepting him. He ventured to add, that his perse¬ 
cution and exile were owing to his zeal for the inter¬ 
ests of the King of Persia, and that he had the power 
of proving his attachment by still greater services ; but 
he desired that a year might be allowed him to acquire 
the means of disclosing his plans in person. His re¬ 
quest was granted, and he assiduously applied himself 
to study the language and manners of the country, with 
which he became sufficiently familiar to conciliate the 
favour of Artaxerxes by his conversation and address, 
no less than by the promises which he held out, and 
the prudence of which he gave proofs. If we may be¬ 
lieve Plutarch, he even excited the jealousy of the 
Persian courtiers by the superior success with which 
he cultivated their arts; he was continually by the 
king’s side at the chase and in the palace, and was ad¬ 
mitted to the presence of the king’s mother, who hon¬ 
oured him with especial marks of condescension. He 
was at length sent down to the maritime provinces, 
perhaps to wait for an opportunity of striking the blow, 
by which he was to raise the power of Persia upon the 
ruin of his country. In the mean time, a pension was 
conferred upon him in the Oriental form ; three flour¬ 
ishing towns were assigned to him for his maintenance, 
of which Magnesia was to supply him with bread, Myus 
with viands, and Lampsacus with the growth of her 
celebrated vineyards. He fixed his residence at Mag¬ 
nesia, in the vale of the Masander, where the rojial 
grant invested him with a kind of princely rank. 
There death overtook him, hastened, as it was com¬ 
monly supposed, by his consciousness of being unable 
to perform the promises which he had made to the 
king. Thucydides, however, evidently did not believe 
the story that he put an end to his own life by poison. 
That fear of disappointing the Persian king should 
have urged him to such an act is indeed scarcely cred¬ 
ible. Yet we can easily conceive that the man who 
had been kept awake by the trophies of Miltiades, 
must have felt some bitter pangs when he heard of the 
rising glory of Cimon. Though his character was not 
so strong as his mind, it was great enough to be above 
the wretched satisfaction implied in one of Plutarch’s 
anecdotes : that, amid the splendour of his luxurious 
table, he one day exclaimed, “ How much we should 
have lost, my children, if we had not been ruined.” 
It must have been with a far different feeling that he 
desired his bones to be secretly conveyed to Attica, 
though the uncertainty which hangs over so many ac¬ 
tions of his life extends to the fate of his remains. A 
splendid monument was raised to him in the public 
place at Magnesia ; but a tomb was also pointed out 
by the seaside, within the port of Piraeus, which was 
generally believed to contain his bones. His descend¬ 
ants continued to enjoy some peculiar privileges at 
Magnesia in the time of Plutarch; but neither they 
no At is posterity at Athens ever revived the lustre of 
his name. Themistocles died in his 65th year, about 
449 B.C. ( Thirlwall's History of Greece, vol. 2, p. 
265, seqq )—There are certain letters which go under 
the name of Themistocles, and which have come down 
to our times. These letters have been ascribed to the 
Athenian commander of the same name, but without 
sufficient evidence. They are the production of some 
one who has amused himself with this species of lit¬ 
erary imposture, and has placed himself, in imagina¬ 
tion, in the position occupied by the conqueror of Sal- 
amis, after he had experienced the ingratitude of his 
countrymen. The deception is well kept up. The 
best, edition is that of Schoettgen, Lips., 1710, 8vo, 


republished in 1722. Bremer’s edition is little more 
than a reprint of this, Lerngov., 1776, 8vo. {Hoff¬ 
mann, Lex. Bibliograph., vol. 3, p. 661.) 

Theocritus, a celebrated Greek Bucolic poet, a 
native of Syracuse, who flourished under Ptolemy 
Philadelphus, king of Egypt, and Hiero II. of Syra¬ 
cuse, B.C. 270. He was instructed, in his earlier 
years, by Asclepiades of Samos, and Philetas of Cos; 
subsequently he became the friend of Aratus, and pass¬ 
ed a part of his days at Alexandrea, and the remain¬ 
der in Sicily. It has been supposed that he was stran¬ 
gled by order of Hiero, king of Sicily, in revenge for 
some satirical invectives ; but the passage of Ovid, on 
which the supposition rests, mentions only “ the Syra¬ 
cusan poet,” and it does not follow that this was our 
bard. {Ovid, lb., 561.) Theocritus distinguished 
himself by his poetical compositions, and has carried 
Bucolic verse to its highest perfection. No one of 
those who have endeavoured to surpass him, whether 
among the ancients or moderns, has been able to equal 
his simplicity, his naivete, and his grace. He is not, 
however, free from the faults of his age, in which the 
decline of pure taste had already become apparent. 
His Bucolics are written in the Doric dialect. They 
consist of thirty poems, which bear the title of Idyls 
(E idvXha), and twenty one other smaller pieces un¬ 
der the name of epigrams. The thirty Idyls, how¬ 
ever, are not all by Theocritus. It appears that they 
had been composed by different poets, and united into 
one body by some grammarians. These thirty pieces 
are not all, strictly speaking, of the Bucolic order ; 
some appear to be fragments of epic poems ; two of 
them would seem to resemble mimes ; several belong 
to lyric poetry.—Theocritus has sometimes been cen¬ 
sured for the rusticity, and even indelicacy, of some ol 
his expressions. The latter charge admits of no de¬ 
fence. With regard to the former, it must be observ¬ 
ed, that they who conceive that the manners and senti¬ 
ments of shepherds should always be represented, not 
as they are or have been in any age or country, but 
greatly embellished or refined, do not seem to have a 
just idea of the nature of pastoral poetry. The Idyls 
of Theocritus are, in general, faithful copies of nature, 
and his characters hold a proper medium between rude¬ 
ness and refinement.—The “ Epithalamium of Helen,” 
one of the thirty, has been supposed to bear a resem¬ 
blance to the Song of Solomon. Some have conclu¬ 
ded from this that Theocritus was acquainted with the 
latter piece. The discussion is a very interesting one 
for biblical critics ; since, if it can be shown that The¬ 
ocritus knew of the Song of Solomon, the commonly 
received opinion, according to which this poem did not 
exist in Greek at the time of Theocritus (Ptolemy 
Philadelphus having only caused the Pentateuch to be 
translated into Greek), is completely refuted. Our 
limits forbid any investigation of this subject. It is 
believed, however, that an examination of the point 
will end in the conviction that Theocritus never saw 
the composition in question.—“ The poetry of Theoc¬ 
ritus,” observes Elton, “is marked by the strength 
and vivacity of original genius. Everything is distinct 
and peculiar; everything is individualized; and is 
brought strongly and closely to the eye and under¬ 
standing of the reader, so as to stamp the impression 
of reality. His scenes of nature, and his men and 
women, are equally striking for circumstance and man¬ 
ners, and may equally be described by the epithet pic¬ 
turesque. His humour is chiefly shown in the por¬ 
traiture of middle-rank city-life, where it abounds with 
strokes of character that are not confined to ancient 
times or national peculiarities, but suit all ages and all 
climates. He is not limited to rustic or comic dia¬ 
logue or incident, but passes with equal facility to re¬ 
fined and elevated subjects ; and they who have heard 
only of the rusticity of Theocritus, will be unexpect¬ 
edly struck bv the delicacy of his thoughts, and trie 

1317 



rHE 


THE 


richness and eiegance of his fancy. While some have 
made coarseness an objection to Theocritus, others 
have affected to talk of his assigning to his goatherds 
sentiments above their station ; as if T. heocritus were 
not the best judge of the manners of his own country¬ 
men. If the allusion to tales of mythology be meant, 
these were doubtless familiar in the mouths, and cur¬ 
rent in the improvisi songs, of the peasants of Sicily. 
They who, in conformity with the mawkish modern 
theory of pastorals, sit in judgment to decide what idyls 
are, and what are not,legitimate pastorals, may be told, 
in the words of Pope on his own pastorals, while iron¬ 
ically depreciating them in comparison of those of 
Philips, to which they are, in fact, inferior, that if cer¬ 
tain idyls be not pastorals, they are something better. 
But the term idyl, among the Greeks, was miscella¬ 
neous and general. It designated what we call Fugi¬ 
tive Poetry : and such also among the Latins are the 
Eidyllia of Claudian and Ausonius. Thus, in Theocri¬ 
tus, besides the country eclogue, we find under the title 
of idyl the dramatic town-eclogue, the epithalami- 
um, the panegyric, and the tale of heroic mythology. 
The coarse indecency of allusion in some passages 
may be objected to with better reason ; not as unsuit¬ 
able to that innocence of an ideal golden age which 
has been foolishly thought essential to pastoral ; for 
the only pastoral that has either value or intelligible 
meaning is, properly, a representation of common life, 
rural manners, and rural scenes as they are; but these 
passages are objectionable in every sense. They show 
character, indeed ; but it is character that were better 
hidden : the depraved grossness of manners corrupted, 
and of human nature degenerated.” (Specimens of 
the Classic Poets, vol. 1, p. 241.) — The best editions 
of Theocritus are, that of Wharton, Oxon., 1770, 2 
vols. 4to; that of Valckenaer, L. Bat., 1773, &c., 8vo; 
that of Gaisford, in the Poetsa Minores (Oxon., 1816- 
20, 4 vols. 8vo), and that of Kiessling, Lips., 1819, 
8vo, republished, along with Heindorf’s Bionand Mos 
chus, by Valpy, Land., 1829, 2 vols. 8vo. — II. An 
epigrammatic poet, a native of Chios, who flourished 
in the time of Alexander. (Consult Alhtnce.us, 6, p. 
231, ed. Schweigh., vol. 2, p. 386, and Scholl, Hist. 
Lit. Gr ., vol. 3, p. 125.) 

Theodectes, I. a Greek orator and poet of Phase- 
lis in Pamphylia, son of Aristander, and disciple of 
Isocrates. He wrote 50 tragedies, besides other works, 
of which some fragments exist. He was one of those 
selected by Queen Artemisia to deliver funeral eulo¬ 
gies on her deceased husband Mausolus ; and, accord¬ 
ing to one account, he gained the prize in a dramatic 
contest connected with the funeral obsequies of the 
prince. He died at Athens, at the age of 41 (Suid., 
s. v. OeodeuTyg.) —II. A son of the preceding, and a 
rhetorician. He wrote a eulogy on Alexander of Epi¬ 
rus, and also historical commentaries, as well as other 
works. (Suid., s. v.) 

Theodora, wife of the Emperor Justinian. (Vid. 
Tustinianus.) 

Theodoretus, one of the Greek fathers, a native 
of Antioch, and a disciple of Chrysostom. He was 
made bishop of Cyrrhus, in Syria, A.D 420, and, after 
having favoured the opinions of Nestorius, he wrote 
against that heresiarch. His zeal for the Catholic faith 
rendered him obnoxious to the Eutychians, by whom 
he was deposed in the synod which they held at Ephe¬ 
sus ; but he was restored to his diocese by the council 
of Chalcedon, A.D. 421. Nothing is known of his 
farther history,except that he was alive till after A.D. 
460. He is the author of a history commencing A.D. 
324, where that of Eusebius ends, and continued down 
to A.D. 429. The best edition is that of Reading, 
Cant., 1720, fol. Theodoret bears a high rank among 
the commentators on the Scriptures for the purity of 
his style. Occasionally, however, he abounds too 
much with metaphors. His work is rather deficient | 
1318 


in chronological exactness, yet it contains many vatu- 
able documents, and some remarkable circumstances 
which other ecclesiastical historians have omitted. He 
wrote, besides his history, commentaries on the Scrip¬ 
tures, epistles, lives of famous anchorites, dialogues, 
books on heresy, and discourses on Providence and 
against the pagans.—His works have been edited by 
Sirmond and Gamier, Pans, 1642-84, 5 vols. fol., 
and also published at Halle, 1769-74, 5 vols. fol. 

Theodokus, I. a philosopher, disciple of Anicerris, 
and a native of Gyrene. For the freedom with which 
he spoke concerning the gods, he was stigmatized with 
the name of atheist, and banished from Gyrene. He 
look refuge in Athens; but his impiety would have 
proved fatal to him, had not Demetrius Phalereus in¬ 
terposed in his favour. Under his protection he gained 
access to the court of Ptolemy Lagi. Venturing, 
after a long interval, to return to Athens, it is related 
that he suffered death by hemlock; but whether his of¬ 
fence was, in reality, atheism, or whether it was mere¬ 
ly contempt for the Grecian superstitions, has been 
much disputed. (Enfield, Hist. Philos., vol. 1, p. 
196.)—II. A rhetorician of Gadara, or, as he is more 
commonly called, of Rhodes. He was the preceptor 
of Tiberius, who was afterward emperor, and hit off 
his character so well when he described him as a mix¬ 
ture of mud and blood (rryTiOv al/aaTi tt eipvpa/ahov). 
Suidas, however, ascribes these words to Alexander 
of iEgae when speaking of Nero (Suefon., Vil. Tib., 
c. 57.) According to Quintilian; Theodorus wrote 
several works (3, l, 18). His writings, which have 
perished, were recommended by Dio Cbrysostomus 
as models of style. (Dio Chrys., Trepi Tidy ugk .— 
Scholl, Gesch. Gr. Lit., vol. 2, p. 529.)—III. A wri¬ 
ter on architecture. (Consult the remarks of Pinder in 
Scholl, Gesch. Gr. Lit, vol. 3, p. 601.)—IV. A Greek 
monk, surnamed Prodromes, who lived in the early 
part of the 12th century. He has left various poems, 
only a part of which have been edited. He is the au¬ 
thor, also, of a very poor romance, entitled “The Loves 
of Rhodunthe and Dosicles.” There is only one edi¬ 
tion of this work, that of Gaulman, Paris, 1625, 8vo. 

Theodosia, a town on the southeast side of the 
Tauric Chersonese, called also Capha, now Cafja or 
Feodosia. (Mela, 2, 1.) 

Theodosiopolis, I a town of Armenia, built by 
Theodosius. It was situate east of Arze, on the riv¬ 
er Araxes, and was a frontier town of the lower em¬ 
pire. It is now called Hassan-Cala, and otherwise 
Cali cala , or the Beautiful Castle. (Procop , Pers., 
1, 10.— Id., de JEdif, 3, 5.)—II Another in Meso¬ 
potamia, on the river Chaboras. Its previous name 
was Resaina, and it was founded by a colony in the 
reign of Septimius Severus. Hence it was sometimes 
called Colonia Septimia Rcsainesiorum. The mod¬ 
ern name Ras ain is one of Arabic origin, and signi¬ 
fies the fountain of a river, in allusion to the numer¬ 
ous springs which are here. The ancient name Re¬ 
saina was in all probability of similar origin, and was 
merely retained when the Roman settlement was made 
here. (Amm. Mar cell., 23, 14 —Bischojf und Mbller , 
Worterb. der Geogr , p. 344.) 

Theodosius, I. a distinguished officer in the reign 
of Valentinian I., whose brave and skilful conduct 
preserved Britain and recovered Africa. He was un¬ 
justly put tv death by Gralian, shortly after the lat¬ 
ter’s accession to the throne —II. Flavius, surnamed 
“the Great,” a celebrated Roman emperor, son of the 
preceding. He was invested with the imperial purple 
by Gratian, who made him his colleague, and gave 
him the eastern empire, with the addition of Illyricum. 
Theodosius, thus raised to a share of the sovereign 
authority, speedily showed himself worthy of the high 
trust committed to him, that of restoring the fortune? 
of a falling empire. The courage of the Romans had 
I been so much shaken by a recent defeat near Adrian- 



THEODOSIUS. 


THEODOSIUS. 


opolis, in which the Emperor Valens and almost two 
thirds of his army were slain by the Goths, that The¬ 
odosias did not deem it prudent to hazard a general 
engagement with the same loe ; but, like another Fa- 
bius, he saved his own lorces, harassed the enemy, 
taught his men that the Goths were not invincible, and 
gradually restored to them their courage, perfected by 
unproved discipline and temperate caution. At length 
Fritigern, the hostile leader, died, and the Goths, hav¬ 
ing no longer a chief capable of controlling the haugh¬ 
ty subordinate leaders ot their ill-compacted confeder¬ 
acy, became disunited, and one by one submitted to 
the superior skill, policy, and authority of Theodosius. 
Great numbers of them received the pay and were in¬ 
corporated into the armies of that empire which they 
had recently been on the brink of destroying, and the 
remainder voluntarily engaged to defend the Danube 
against the Huns. Thus, in about four years, the 
Eastern Empire was rescued from the most formida¬ 
ble danger by which it had ever been assailed, and 
seemed once more m a state of security. While The¬ 
odosius was thus employed, another calamity befell the 
Western Empire. Maximus revolted against Gratian, 
and the latter, who was then in Gaul, having fled to¬ 
wards Italy, was overtaken and put death'at Lugdu- 
num. The death of this prince left his young brother, 
Valentinian II., nominal emperor of the West, though 
the usurper Maximus assumed that title. Theodosius 
was obliged to conceal his resentment against the 
murderer of his benefactor, not being yet in a condition 
to quit his own dominions; and he even entered into a 
treaty with him, leaving him in undisputed possession 
of Gaul and Britain. But Maximus, encouraged by 
the success with which his rebellion had been attended, 
resolved to deprive Valentinian of even the nominal 
power which he enjoyed in Italy. Unable to defend 
his territories, the latter fled to Theodosius and be¬ 
sought his aid. Theodosius, thereupon, having com¬ 
pleted the pacification of his own dominions, immedi¬ 
ately marched against the usurper, defeated him in two 
successive engagements, and, his own troops having 
yielded him up, put him to death. Valentinian II. 
was thus restored to the throne of the Western empire ; 
a throne which his weak character did not enable him 
to fill and to defend. Theodosius, after his triumph 
over Maximus, resolved to visit Rome, and aid his im¬ 
perial pupil in reforming the abuses prevalent in that 
city. This visit is mentioned on account of the de¬ 
crees published by Theodosius for the complete sup¬ 
pression of idolatrous worship at Rome. All sacrifices 
were prohibited under heavy penalties, the idols were 
defaced, and the temples of the gods were abandoned 
to ruin and contempt. These decrees met but a fee¬ 
ble resistance, and from that time may be dated the 
complete and final overthrow of pagan idolatry in 
Rome. Having thus completed the triumph of Chris¬ 
tianity over paganism, Theodosius returned to the 
East, and employed himself in the kindred task of put¬ 
ting an end to the heresies of the Church, and estab¬ 
lishing the predominance of the orthodox over the A rian 
party” Valentinian II. had but a short time recovered 
possession of the empire of the West, when he was 
murdered by Arbogastes, a Frank of a bold and war¬ 
like character, who had obtained a great ascendancy 
over him. Arbogastes did not himself assume the 
purple, but gave it to Eugenius, deeming it more^safe 
to possess the power than the name of emperor. 1 he- 
odosius once more prepared to avenge the murder of a 
colleague. He raised a powerful army, forced the 
passes”of the Alps, encountered the army of the usurp¬ 
er, and inflicted on him a decisive overthrow. Eu¬ 
genius was killed by his own defeated troops ; and Ar- 
bouastes, fearing the just resentment of the victor, died 
by his own hand. The whole Roman empire might 
have been once more reunited under one imperial 
sovereign, had Theodosius been ambitious of that 8ole 


dominion. But, being perfectly persuaded of the ne 
cessity of an emperor in each of the imperial cities, he 
assigned to his younger son Honorius the sceptre of 
the Western empire, and associated Arcadius the el¬ 
der with himselt in the East. Scarcely had he com 
pleted this arrangement, when his constitution, which 
had always been feeble, overtasked with the exertions 
of this campaign and the cares of state, yielded to the 
shock, and he expired, to the universal regret of the 
empire, which beheld the splendour of the Roman 
name passing away with him, its last great emperor. 
This event took place A.D. 395. Theodosius, at the 
lime of his death, was 60 years of age, and had reigned 
16 years. Few of the Roman emperors, indeed, died 
more lamented than Theodosius the Great. His sin¬ 
cere attachment to Christianity, and the efforts which 
he made to farther its progress, contributed, it is true, 
very materially to the advancement of his fame among 
a large and influential class of his subjects ; but his 
character, on other accounts, exhibited so many points 
deserving of applause, that even the most determined 
of his enemies among pagan writers are compelled to 
acknowledge his merits, and to praise the mild and im¬ 
partial spirit in which he conducted his government. 
The welfare of his people seems to have supplied the 
ruling motive of his policy in peace and in war ; and, 
although bred a soldier and desirous of military glory, 
he on all occasions appeared more willing to sacrifice 
his reputation for courage than to earn the renown of 
a hero at the expense of life and property. The great¬ 
est stain, perhaps, which attaches to his character, is 
the severity which he employed in punishing a popular 
insurrection which had taken place at Thessalonica. 
This event occurred A.D. 390. The origin of the ca¬ 
tastrophe was in itself very trivial, being simply the 
imprisonment of a favourite charioteer of the circus. 
This provocation, added to some former disputes, sa 
inflamed the populace, that they murdered their govern 
or and several of his officers, and dragged their man 
gled bodies through the mire. The resentment of 
Theodosius was natural and merited, but the mannei 
in which he displayed it was in the highest degree in¬ 
human. An invitation was given, in the emperor’i 
name, to the people of Thessalonica, to an exhibitioi 
at the circus; and, when a great concourse had assem¬ 
bled, they were massacred by a body of barbarian sol¬ 
diery, to the number, according to the lowest compu¬ 
tation, of 7000, and to the highest, of 15,000. Foi 
this atrocious proceeding, Ambrose, with great cour¬ 
age and propriety, refused him communion for eight 
months, a sentence to which the repentant emperor 
was compelled to submit. It ought, however, in jus¬ 
tice to be remembered, that the resentment of Theo¬ 
dosius was inflamed by the misrepresentations of his 
minister Rufinus ; and also that, after the first burst of 
passion which accompanied the fatal order had been al¬ 
lowed to subside, he sent a messenger to countermand 
it, who unfortunately did not arrive until the repentance 
of his master could be of no possible avail. ( Heth - 
cringtons History of Rome, p. 254, seqq. — Encyciop. 
Metropol., div. 3, vol. 3, p. 238.)—III. The second 
emperor of the name, was the son of Arcadius, emperor 
of the West, and grandson of the preceding. His fa¬ 
ther died when he was only eight years of age; but the 
minority of the prince was faithfully directed by the 
wisdom of Anthemius, the praefect, whose excellent 
abilities were not unequal to the arduous task commit¬ 
ted to his care. But he found it expedient, either 
with the view of removing jealousy, or of gratifying 
the ambition of Pulcheria, the sister of the young em¬ 
peror, to associate her in the management of affairs ; 
for, though she was only two years older than Theodo¬ 
sius, her mind was much more mature and vigorous, 
and in all respects better fitted to take a share in the 
duties of government. At the age of sixteen, accord¬ 
ingly, she was saluted with the title of Augusta. Pu 
h 1319 



THE 


THE 


cneria, in fact, though arrayed in female attire, was the 
only individual among the descendants of Theodosius 
who exhibited any tokens of his manly spirit. She su¬ 
perintended at the same time the education of her 
brother, whose mind she soon discovered to be inca¬ 
pable of rising above the mere forms of polished life ; 
and for this reason alone, it has been candidly supposed, 
she limited her instructions to those external observ¬ 
ances which might qualify him to represent the ma- 
|esty of the East, while the real authority and patron¬ 
age of office might still be retained in her own hands. 
She even chose a wife for him in the person of Eudo- 
cia, an Athenian maid, who first presented herself at 
court as a suppliant, and who, as the consort of The¬ 
odosius, was destined to experience a great variety of 
fortune. ( Vid. Eudocia I.) The reign of Theodo¬ 
sius, therefore, was virtually that of Anthemius and 
Pulcheria. The principal event during its continu¬ 
ance was the invasion of the Huns under the cele¬ 
brated Attila, who carried fire and sword to the very 
gates of Constantinople, and only granted peace on 
conditions most favourable to himself and humilia¬ 
ting to the empire.—Theodosius met his death by a 
fall from his horse in hunting, A.D. 450. In the 
reign of this emperor was compiled the Theodosian 
Code , consisting of all the constitutions of the Chris¬ 
tian emperors, from Constantine the Great to his own 
time. ( Heinecc ., Antiq. Rom., procem. 22.)—IV. A 
mathematician of Tripolis, in Lydia, who flourished 
probably under the Emperor Trajan, about A.D. 100. 
He wrote three books on the doctrine of the sphere, of 
which Ptolemy and succeeding writers availed them¬ 
selves. They were translated by the Arabians into 
their language from the Greek, and afterward trans¬ 
lated from the Arabic into Latin. The best edition is 
that of Hunt, Svo, Oxon., 1707. 

Theognis, a native of Megara, in Greece, born B.C. 
583, and who attained to the age of eighty-eight years. 
He is one of the Greek Gnomic poets. Theognis was 
exiled from Megara for his political sentiments, and re¬ 
tired in consequence to Thebes, where he took up his 
abode. He was a considerable traveller for those days, 
a warm politician, a man of the world, and, as it should 
seem, of pleasure too ; and his pithy maxims upon pub¬ 
lic factions and private quarrels, debtors and creditors, 
drinking, dressing, and spending, seem the fruits of per¬ 
sonal experience, the details of which other parts of his 
poetry very sufficiently celebrate. If we understand 
Suidas correctly, there existed in his time three col¬ 
lections of Theognidean verse : 1. Miscellaneous Gno¬ 
mic elegies, to the number of 2800 lines. 2. A Gno- 
mology of the same sort, addressed to Cyrnus. 3. 
Other didactic and admonitory poems. — The total 
number of lines constituting the mixed mass which 
we now have under the name of Theognis, inclusive of 
the 159 new verses discovered by Bekker, in 1815, in 
a Modena manuscript, amounts to 1392 or thereabout. 
They are all exclusively in elegiac metre, but are evi¬ 
dently a farrago huddled together from the voluminous 
originals anciently existing, and also, in numerous in¬ 
stances, ignorantly interpolated with passages from the 
elegies of Solon and Mimnermus. It must, indeed, 
be immediately obvious to the reader, that poems, or, 
rather, verses consisting of so many hundreds of gno¬ 
mic couplets like these, could no more be expected to 
go down the stream of time entire than a ship without 
bolts ; quotation alone would infallibly break the con¬ 
tinuity, or, rather, collocation of the lines ; and inten¬ 
tional compilations of passages, having a generally sim¬ 
ilar tendency, would almost ensure the loss of such 
parts as were not included in any of the larger selec¬ 
tions. In the now existing Theognis, Cyrnus is cer¬ 
tainly the person principally addressed ; but Polypas- 
des is also not unfrequently named, and Simonides, 
Onomacritus, Clearistus, Democles, Acadernus, and 
Timagoras are mentioned ; it is clear, therefore, that 
1320 


there has been an utter confusion, and we must now 
take it as it is, without vainly endeavouring to pick out 
and sort the different ingredients which enter into its 
composition. {Quarterly Review, No. 95, p. 89, seqq.) 
— Some ancient authors accuse Theognis of dissemi¬ 
nating immoral voluptuousness in the guise of moral 
precept. Nothing of this kind appears in those relics 
of his poetry which have reached us, though little car 
be said for many of his notions of morality. His ver¬ 
ses, indeed, like those of Hesiod, were learned by rote 
in the schools ; but with this application of them a 
modern moralist would readily dispense. The versi¬ 
fication of Theognis is marked in general by rhyth¬ 
mical fluency and metrical neatness. — The best edi 
tions of Theognis are, that of Brunck, in the Poetce 
Gnomici; that of Bekker, Lips., 1815, 8vo; and es¬ 
pecially that of Welcker, Francof., 1826, Svo. {Hoff 
mann , Lex. Bibliogr., vol. 3, p. 705.) 

Theon, I. a native of Smyrna, who probably lived 
about the commencement of the second century of our 
era. He was a Platonist in his tenets, and wrote a 
treatise on the works of Plato, so far as they related 
to four branches of mathematical science; namely, ge¬ 
ometry, arithmetic, music, and astronomy. We have 
only remaining the part that relates to arithmetic and 
music. It was first published in 1644, with notes by 
Bouillaud, Paris, 4to. Another edition appeared in 
1827, with annotations by De Gelder, Lugd. Bat., 
8vo. — II. A native of Alexandrea, contemporary with 
Pappus, taught mathematics in the capital of Egypt, 
and flourished towards the end of the fourth century of 
our era. Theon observed a solar and lunar eclipse 
A.D. 365. We have from his pen a “Commentary 
on the Elements of Euclid,” under the title of 2w- 
ovolcu {Conferences), unless, indeed, this work is by 
Euclid himself, in which case Theon will only have 
given a revised edition of it. He afterward composed 
Commentaries (’E ^rjyrianq) on the manual tables of 
Ptolemy, on the Almagest of the same writer, and on 
the poems of Aratus. As to the Commentary on 
the Almagest, it must be remarked that the labours of 
Theon do not extend farther than the first two books, 
on the fourth, on a part of the fifth, on books 6, 7, 8, 9, 
and 10, and on the 13th. The commentary on the third 
book is by Nilus Cabasilas ; the commencement of 
that on the fifth by Pappus. The commentary of The¬ 
on on Euclid is found in the editions of the latter. 
That on the Almagest has only been printed twice ; 
namely, in the edition of the latter work by Grynaeus 
and Camerarius, Basil., 1538, fob, and separately, 
with a French translation, by the Abbe Halma, Paris, 
1821, 4to. The scholia on Aratus, which have come 
down to us in a very interpolated state, are found in 
the editions of that poet. The commentary on the ta¬ 
bles of Ptolemy was first given entire by Halma, Paris, 
1821. Before this only two fragments had been pub¬ 
lished. {Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 7, p. 49.) 

Theophanes, I. a Greek historian, born at Myti- 
lene. He was very intimate with Pompey, and from 
his friendship with the Roman general his country¬ 
men derived many advantages. Theophanes wrote a 
“ History of the wars of the Romans in various coun 
tries, under the command of Pompey.” Of this work 
there remain only a few fragments, quoted by Strabo, 
Plutarch, and Stobaeus. Plutarch gives him a very un¬ 
favourable character for historic veracity. ( Plut., Vit. 
Pomp.) —II. A Byzantine historian. He was of a rich 
and noble family, and turned monk. When Nicepho- 
rus, patriarch of Constantinople, was exiled by the Em¬ 
peror Leo the Arminian, Theophanes paid him extraor¬ 
dinary honours, and was himself banished to the isle of 
Samothrace, where he died in 818. His Chronicle 
beginning where that of Syncellus terminated, was ex 
tended to the reign of Michael Curopalata. It is val¬ 
uable for its facts, but displays the credulity ana weak 
judgment of a superstitious mind It was printp-d 




THEOPHRASTUS. 


HF, 


Paris with a Latin version, and the notes of F Goar 
under the care of Cornbefis, in 1685, fol. 

Theophilus, I. the associate of Tribonian and Do- 
rotheus in compiling the Institutes, of which work he 
has left a Paraphrase in Greek, a production of great 
utility for the knowledge of Roman law. He also 
wrote a commentary, in the same language, on the 
Pandects, of which some fragments remain. The best 
edition of Theophilus is that of Reitz, Hag. Com., 
1751, 4to. —II. A physician who flourished under 
Heraclius about A.D. 630. He wrote a treatise nepi 
ovpuv ( De Urinis ), the best edition of which is that 
of Guidot, Lugd. Bat., 1703, 8vo, and 1731. The 
best edition of another work of his, on the Human 
Frame, is that of Morell, Paris, 1556, 8vo.—III. A 
bishop of Antioch, ordained to that see in 168 or 170 
A.D. In his zeal for orthodoxy, he wrote against 
Marcion, and also against Hermogenes, and he com¬ 
posed other tracts, some of which are preserved. 
We have extant also three books against Autolycus. 
These works display, it is said, the earliest example 
of the use of the term “ Trinity,” as applied to the 
three persons of the Godhead. His work against Au¬ 
tolycus was published by Conrad Gesner, at Zurich, 
in 1546. It was annexed, also, to the Supplement of 
the Bibliotheca Patrum in 1624. 

Theophrastus, a Greek philosopher, a native of 
Eresos in the island of Lesbos. He was born B.C. 
382, and received the first rudiments of education un¬ 
der Alcippus, in his own country, after which he was 
sent by his father, who was a wealthy man, to Athens, 
and there became a disciple of Plato, and, after his 
death, of Aristotle. Unc(pr these eminent masters, 
blessed by nature with a genius capable of excelling in 
every liberal accomplishment, he made great progress 
both in philosophy and eloquence. It was on account 
of his high attainments in the latter that, instead of 
Tyrtamus, his original name, he was called, as some 
say, by his master, but more probably by his own fol¬ 
lowers, Euphraslus (“ the fine speaker”), and subse¬ 
quently Theophrastus (“ the divine speaker”). When 
he undertook the charge of the Peripatetic school, he 
conducted it with such high reputation that he had 
about two thousand scholars ; among whom were 
Nicomachus, the son of Aristotle, whom his father had 
intrusted by will to his charge ; Erasistratus, a cele¬ 
brated physician ; and Demetrius Phalereus, who re¬ 
sided with him in the same house. His erudition and 
eloquence, united with engaging manners, recom¬ 
mended him to the notice of Cassander, and also of 
Ptolemy, who invited him to visit Egypt. So great a 
favourite was he among the Athenians, that, when one 
of his enemies accused him of teaching impious doc¬ 
trines, the accuser himself escaped with difficulty the 
punishment which he endeavoured to bring upon Theo¬ 
phrastus.—Under the archonship of Xenippus, B.C. 
305, Sophocles, the son of Amphiclides, obtained a 
decree (upon what grounds we are not informed), ma¬ 
king it a capital offence for any philosopher to open a 
public school without an express license from the sen¬ 
ate. Upon this all the philosophers left the city. But 
the next year, the person who had proposed the law 
was himself fined five talents, and the philosophers re¬ 
turned with great public applause to their respective 
schools. Theophrastus, who had suffered, with his 
brethren, the persecution inflicted by this oppressive 
decree, shared the honour of the restoration, and con¬ 
tinued his debates and instructions in the Lyceum.— 
Theophrastus is highly celebrated for his industry, 
learning, and eloquence, and for his generosity and 
public spirit. He is said twice to have freed his coun¬ 
try from the oppression of tyrants. He contributed 
liberally towards defraying the expenses attending the 
public meetings of the philosophers, which were held, 
not for the sake of show, but for learned and inge¬ 
nious conversation. In the public schools he common- 
8 E 


ly appeared, as Aristotle had done, in an elegant dre 9 i 
and was very attentive to the graces of elocution. 
He lived to the advanced age of eighty-five. To¬ 
wards the close of his life he grew exceedingly infirm, 
and was carried to the school on a couch. He ex¬ 
pressed great regret on account of the shortness of 
life ; and complained that nature had given long life to 
stags and crows, to whom it is of so little value, and 
had denied it to man, who, in a longer duration, might 
have been able to attain the summit of science ; but 
now, as soon as he arrives in sight of it, is taken 
away. —Theophrastus wrote many valuable works, 
some of which have come down to us. His principal 
work of a philosophical, or, rather, ethical character, is 
entitled ’H diuol Xapaurf/peg (“Moral Characters ”), 
in thirty chapters. We must take care not to be mis¬ 
led by this title ; no moral characters appear in the 
work, but the author merely traces such as are of a 
ridiculous stamp. Hence Schneider, one of the edi¬ 
tors of Theophrastus, has been led to the opinion, that 
the Characters of Theophrastus, as we now have them, 
are only extracts from different moral works published 
by the philosopher; extracts made at different times 
and by different persons. He founds this supposition 
on the unconnected style so prevalent in the “ Char¬ 
acters,” on the forms of expression which often occur 
there, and on the following inscription or title of a 
manuscript : ’E/c tcjv Oeotypuarov XapanT?)puv (“ Ex¬ 
tracts from the Characters of Theophrastus ”). This 
opinion, however, of Schneider has found many op¬ 
ponents. More unanimity prevails among critics rel¬ 
ative to the spuriousness of the preface. Its style, 
totally different from that of the rest of the work and 
of the other writings of Theophrastus; the errors in 
dates; the mention made of his children ; in fine, the 
passage where Theophrastus is made to say that, af¬ 
ter having carefully compared the good and the bad, 
he has believed it to be his duty to commit to writing 
an account of the mode of life accustomed to be 
pursued by each, and to arrange them into classes 
(whereas he merely gives ridiculous characters, and 
his portraits offer neither vices nor their opposite vir¬ 
tues), all these circumstances combined make a very 
strong case against the authenticity of the preface in 
question. The “ Characters” of Theophrastus stand 
very high as a classic work. This rank is due to them 
for the purity of the style and its great precision, as 
well as from the exactness and fidelity of the portraits. 
Theophrastus has sketched with admirable art the va¬ 
rious figures which he had proposed to represent on his 
moral canvass : his designs are executed with a per¬ 
fect finish; and his numerous imitators, among whom 
La Bruyere stands most conspicuous, will never con¬ 
ceal from view and produce a forgetfulness of the 
beauties of their original. We must not, however, 
bring to the perusal of this work that delicacy of taste, 
and that general tone of feeling which result from the 
present relations of society ; we must remember that 
Theophrastus selects his portraits from amid a licen¬ 
tious democracy.—We have also, under the name of 
Theophrastus, “A book or fragment of Metaphysics” 
(Twv fierd to, tyvouiu dTroonaopaTLOv rj fiPkiov a). —> 
Theophrastus is also regarded as the author of a trea¬ 
tise, Ilepi A lodrjcEtiq (“ On Perception ”), treating of 
the senses, the imagination, and the understanding. 
This work has come down to us, and also a commen¬ 
tary upon it, in the form of a paraphrase, by Priscian 
of Lydia, who lived in the sixth century.— Porphyry, 
in his commentary on the Harmonica of Ptolemy, has 
preserved for us an interesting fragment of the second 
book of Theophrastus’ treatise on Music. A loss 
which we have much to regret is that of three works 
of Theophrastus on Laws, which made a kind of 
appendage to Aristotle’s treatise on Politics. The 
first of those productions was entitled II epl N opov 
(“ Of Laws”); the second, N opuv Kara, croixelov nft 

1321 





THE 


THEOPOMPUS. 


(“ Twenty-four books of Laws, in Alphabetical or¬ 
der"); and the third, Uepl N opoOeruv (“ Of Legisla¬ 
tors"), in four books. Stobseus cites a fragment of 
the first work. Athenseus mentions other works also 
of Theophrastus, on Flattery, Pleasure, Happiness, 
&c., which are now lost.—Independently, however, 
of his metaphysical, ethical, and political speculations, 
Theophrastus also turned his attention to Mineralogy 
and Botany. As the philosopher of Stagira is the 
father of Zoology, so is Theophrastus to be regarded 
as the parent of Botany. His vegetable physiology 
contains some very just arrangements : he had even a 
glimpse of the sexual system in plants.—Of the nu¬ 
merous works on natural history written by Theophras¬ 
tus, the following alone remain : 1 . Uepl <j>vrtiv laro- 
plag (“ On the History of Plants"), in ten, or, rather, 
in nine books, for the ancients knew only nine, and the 
pretended fragment of a tenth book, as found in the 
manuscripts, is only a repetition of a passage in the 
ninth. This history of plants is a complete system of 
ancient botany.—2. nept <pxnucuv alritiv (“ Of the 
causes of Plants"), in ten books, of which only six 
have come down to us. It is a system of botanical 
physiology. — 3. Uepl A i6uv (“Of Slones"). This 
work proves that, after the time of Theophrastus, 
mineralogy retrograded.—We have also other treatises 
of his, on Odours, Winds, Prognostics of the Weather, 
&c., and various fragments of works in natural his¬ 
tory, on Animals that change Colour, on Bees, &c. 
All these fragments have been preserved for us by 
Photius.—The best edition of the works of Theo¬ 
phrastus is that of Schneider, Lips., 1818-1821, 5 
vols. 8vo. The treatise on Stones has been translated 
into English by Sir John Hill, and is accompanied by 
very useful notes, Lond., 1777, 8vo. The best edi¬ 
tions of the “Characters” are, that of Casaubon, L. 
Bat., 1592, 8vo ; that of Fischer, Coburg, 1763, 8vo ; 
and that of Ast, Lips., 1816, 8vo. This last, criti¬ 
cally speaking, is perhaps the best. 

Theophyl actus, I Simocatta, a Byzantine histo¬ 
rian. His history of the reign of the Emperor Mau¬ 
rice is comprehended in eight books, and terminates 
with the massacre of this prince and his children by 
Phocas. Casaubon considers this writer one of the 
best of the later Greek historians. He wrote also 
other works, some of which have reached us. The 
besr, edition of his history is that of Fabrotti, Paris, 
1648, fol. The best edition of his Physical Questions 
and Epistles is that of Boissonade, Paris, 1835, 8vo. 
—II. One of the Greek fathers, who flourished A.D. 
1070. Dupin observes that his Commentaries are 
very useful for the literal explanation of the Scrip¬ 
tures ; and Dr. Lardner remarks that he quotes no 
forged writings or apocryphal books of the New Tes¬ 
tament, many of which he excludes by his observa¬ 
tions on John, 1, 31-34, that Christ wrought no mira¬ 
cle in his infancy, or before the time of his public 
ministry. His works were edited at Venice, 4 vols., 
1754 to 1763. 

Theopolis, a name given to Antioch because the 
Christians first received their name there. 

Theopompus, I. a king of Sparta, of the family of the 
Proclidae, who distinguished himself by the many new 
regulations he introduced. He died after a long and 
peaceful reign, B.C. 723.—II. A Greek historian, a na¬ 
tive of Chios, born about B.C. 360. His father, Dam- 
asistratus, became an object of strong dislike to his fel¬ 
low-citizens on account of his attachment to Sparta, 
and was eventually exiled, together with his son. The 
latter came to Athens, and there had for an instructer 
the celebrated Isocrates. At the age of 45, Theo- 
pornpus returned to his native city, on the recommend¬ 
ation of Alexander th» Great; but after the death of 
that prince he was again driven out. He then retired 
.o Egypt, but was badly received by Ptolemy I., who 
regarded him as an intriguing and trouble-making man, 
1322 


and even wished to put him to death. It was in ac 
cordance with the advice of Isocrates that Theopom¬ 
pus undertook to write a continuation of the history of 
Thucydides. He added, in the first place, according 
to some, an eighth book to the work, which the histo¬ 
rian had left incomplete. After this he composed a 
History of Greece ('EA/l yviud) in eleven books, and 
an abridgment of Herodotus in two books. He. also 
wrote a history of Philip, father of Alexander the 
Great, in 58 books. Of these 58 there were still ex¬ 
isting 53 in the time of Photius. The patriarch, 
however, makes us acquainted with the contents mere¬ 
ly of the twelfth book, which embraced the history of 
Pacorus, king of Egypt. He informs us that the His¬ 
tory of Philip contained very many digressions, and that 
Philip, the king of Macedon, who was defeated by the 
Romans, having caused all that did not relate to the 
father of Alexander to be thrown out, there remained 
merely what would amount in the whole to 16 books. 
The ancient writers blame Theopompus for a certain 
harshness and illiberality in his remarks ; but Dionys¬ 
ius of Halicarnassus, on the other hand, praises the 
order and perspicuity that appeared in his works ; and 
he commends, too, the long preparatory toil through 
which he went before entering on the composition of 
his work, and the researches which he made, and the 
pains he took to confer with those who had been eye¬ 
witnesses of some of the events that he described.— 
In speaking afterward of the History of Philip, Dio¬ 
nysius also makes the following remarks in relation to 
his general manner, which may serve in some degree, 
perhaps, to explain the charge of harshness and of il¬ 
liberal feeling accustomed to be brought against this 
historian: “ Not content with relating whatever has 
passed before the eyes of the world, Theopompus pen¬ 
etrates to the inmost souls of his principal actors, scru¬ 
tinizes narrowly their most secret intentions, removes 
the mask from them, and brings forward into open day 
those vices which their hypocrisy had hoped to con¬ 
ceal. Hence some have charged him with calumnia¬ 
ting, because he has blamed boldly what deserved to 
be blamed, and has lessened the glory which sur 
rounded some individuals. In my opinion, however, 
he has merely done what physicians do, who apply the 
steel and the fire to those parts that are diseased and 
gangrenous, in order to save those that are healthy 
and sound.—As for his diction, it is altogether like 
that of Isocrates, pure, clear, noble, elevated, flowing, 
full of sweetness and harmony.” (Dion. Hal., Ep. 
ad Cn. Pomp. — Op., cd. Reiske, vol. 6, p. 783.)—It 
would be wrong in us to oppose to the latter part of 
this eulogium the criticism of Longinus (§ 42) on a 
passage of Theopompus, because there is a wide dif¬ 
ference between blaming an isolated phrase employed 
by a writer, and censuring his general style. The re¬ 
proach uttered by Longinus agrees rather with what 
the rhetorician Hermogenes also condemned, namely, 
too great a fondness for digressions, and a relating, 
sometimes, of things actually silly in their nature. 
(Dc Vet. Script. Censura, ed. Reiske, vol. 5, p. 429.) 
Cornelius Nepos has made much use of Theopompus, 
although he calls him and Timseus two of the most 
calumniating of men , u duo malcdicentissimi." (Vil. 
Alcib., 11, 1.) From an observation, moreover, made 
by Photius, he would appear to have been a very vain 
writer, and to have regarded those who had gone be¬ 
fore him as not worthy even of the second rank. 
(Phot., Cod., 176 ; vol. l,p. 121, ed. Bekk.) —In 1803, 
Koch announced a critical edition of the fragments of 
Theopompus as about to appear, in a dissertation en¬ 
titled “ Prolegomena ad Theopompum Chium," Stet- 
tini, 4to. The promised edition, however, has never 
appeared. Frommel subsequently reunited the frag¬ 
ments of the Abridgment of Herodotus in a disserta¬ 
tion bearing the title “ De Thcopompi Chii Epitome 
Herodotea." It is found in Creuzer’s Meletcmaia 




THE 


THE 


vol. 3, p. 135-170. In 1829, the first complete edi¬ 
tion of all the fragments appeared from the Leyden 
press, with notes, a life of Theopompus, &c., by 
Wichers, 8vo. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr ., vol. 2, p. 179. 
— Hoffmann , Lex. Bibliography vol. 3, p. 743.) 

Thera, the most celebrated of the Sporades, situ¬ 
ate, according to Strabo, about seven hundred stadia 
from the Cretan coast, in a northeast direction, and 
nearly two hundred stadia in circumference. ( Strab ., 
484.) The modern name is Santorin. This island 
was said by mythologists to have been formed in the 
sea by a clod of earth thrown from the ship Argo, and 
on its first appearance obtained the name of Calliste. 
{Pliny 4, 12 ) It was first occupied by some Phoeni¬ 
cians, but subsequently colonized by the Lacedemo¬ 
nians, who settled there the descendants of the Minyae, 
after they had been expelled from Lemnos by the Pe- 
lasgi. 1 he colony was headed by Theras, a descend¬ 
ant of Cadmus, and maternal uncle of Eurysthenes 
and Proclus; he gave his name to the island. {He¬ 
rod., 4, 147. — Pausan., 3, 1. — Callim., ap. Strab., 
347.) Several generations after this event, a colony 
was led into Africa by Battus, a descendant of the 
Minyae, who there founded the city of Cyrene. {He¬ 
rod., 4, 150. — Pind., Pyth., 4, 10.) Thera appears 
to have been produced by the action of submarine 
fires. {Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 412, scqq.) 
“Abundant proofs are not wanting,” observes Malte- 
Brun, “ as to the existence of an ancient volcano, the 
crater of which occupied all the basin between Santo¬ 
nin and the smaller islands of the group: the mouth 
of the crater has been partly overthrown, and the aper¬ 
ture enclosed by the accumulation of dust and ashes. 
The lava, the ashes, and pumice-stone discharged 
from that volcano have covered part of Thera {Mem. 
de Trevoux, 1715), but the greater portion, which con¬ 
sists of a large bed of fine marble, has never been in 
any way changed by the action of volcanic fire. ( Tour- 
nefort, vol. 1, p 321.) Thera is not now, however, 
covered with ashes and pumice-stones ; it is fertile in 
corn, and produces strong wine and cotton, the latter 
of which is not, as in the other islands, planted every 
year. The population ^mounts to about 10,000, and 
all the inhabitants are Greeks.” {Malte-Brun, Geogr., 
vol. 6, p. 169.) 

Theramenes, a pupil of Socrates, and afterward 
one of the Athenian generals along with Alcibiades 
and Thrasybulus. He was appointed by the Lacedae¬ 
monians one of the thirty tyrants ; but the moderation 
of his views giving offence to his colleagues, he was 
condemned to drink hemlock. From the readiness 
with which Theramenes attached himself to whatever 
party chanced to be uppermost, he was nicknamed 6 
KoOopvoq, this being an appellation for a sort of san¬ 
dal, not made right and left, as sandals usually were, 
but being equally adapted to both feet. {Suid., s. v. 
K odopvog. — Blomf. in Mus. Crit., vol. 2, p. 212.) 

TherapNaE, I. a town of Laconia, southeast of 
Sparta, and near the Eurotas. It received its name 
from Therapnas, daughter of Le'lex. Here were to be 
seen the temple of Menelaus, and his tomb, as well as 
that of Helen. Here also was the temple of Pollux, 
and both this deity and his brother were said to have 
been born here. Pindar has often connected Therap- 
nse with the mention of the Tyndaridae. {Pind., Isth., 
1, 42. — Id., Pyth., 11, 95. — Id., Nem., 10, 106.) 
Therapnae probably corresponds with the village of 
Chrysapha, about two miles to the southeast of the 
ruins of Sparta. {Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 
212.)—II. A town of Boeotia, between Thebes and 
the river Asopus, and in a line nearly with Potniae. 
{Strabo, 409.) 

Theras, a son of Autesion of Lacedaemon, who 
conducted a colony to Calliste, to which he gave the 
name of Thera. {Vid. Thera.) He received divine 
honours after death. {Pausan., 3, 1, 15.) 


Therasia, a small rocky island in the Egean. sep 
arated from the northwest coast of Thera by a narrow 
channel. According to Pliny (4, 12), it was detached 
from Thera by a convulsion of nature. Therasia still 
retains its name. ( Bondelmont, Ins. Archipel., p. 78, 
ed. De Sinner.) 

Therma, a town of Macedonia, afterward called 
Thessalonica, in honour of the wife of Cassander, and 
now Saloniki. {Vid. Thessalonica.) 

Thermaicus Sinus, a large bay setting up between 
the coast of Pieria and that of Chalcidice, and deriving 
its name from the city of Therma at its northeastern 
extremity. It was also called Macedonicus Sinus, 
from its advancing so far into the country of Macedo¬ 
nia. The modern name is the Gulf of Saloniki. 
{Vid. Thessalonica.) 

Thermo {warm baths). This term is frequently used 
in connexion with an adjective : thus, Thermae Seli- 
nuntiae are the warm baths adjacent to the ancient Se- 
linus, now Sciacca; Thermae Himerenses, those ad¬ 
jacent to Himera on the northern coast of Sicily, now 
Termini, which has also become the modern name for 
the remains of the ancient city. So, also, in speaking 
of the warm baths constructed at Rome by various 
emperors, we read of the Thermae of Dioclesian, &c. 

Thermodon, a river of Pontus, rising in the mount¬ 
ains on the confines of Armenia Minor, and pursuing 
a course nearly due west until it reaches the plain of 
Themiscyra, when it turns to the north and empties 
into the Sinus Amisenus. According to Strabo (548), 
it was formed by the junction of several minor streams. 
Apollonius Rhodius makes these rivulets not less than 
ninety-six in number. {Arg., 2, 972.) Xenophon 
also describes the Thermodon as a considerable river, 
not less than three plethra in width, and not easy for 
an enemy to cross. {Anab., 5, 6, 3.) Dionysius 
Periegetes affirms that crystal-and jasper were found 
on its banks (v. 773-182). This river, which retains 
the name of Thermeh, is frequently mentioned in the 
poets, from the circumstance of the Amazons having 
been fabled to have dwelt at one time on its banks. 
{Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 269, seqq. — He¬ 
rod., 9, 27.— Virg., En., 11, 659.— Property 3, 14. 
— Plin., 6, 3.) 

Thermopylae, a celebrated pass leading from Thes¬ 
saly into Locris and southern Greece. The word 
Thermopylae {Qeppal I Iv’kai, “ Warm Gates or Pass") 
denotes both the narrowness of the defile, which is 
formed by the sea on one side and the cliffs of Mount 
(Eta on the other, and also the vicinity of certain 
warm springs, still called Thermae, and which are seen 
to issue principally from two mouths at the foot of 
the precipices of (Eta. The following description of 
Thermopylae is given by Herodotus : “ On the west¬ 
ern side of the pass is a lofty mountain, so steep as 
to be inaccessible ; on the eastern side are the sea 
and some marshes. In this defile is a warm spring 
called Chytri {Xvrpoi) by the inhabitants, where stands 
an altar dedicated to Hercules. A wall has been con¬ 
structed by the Phocians to defend the pass against 
the Thessalians, who came from Thesprotia to take 
possession of Thessaly, then named Eolis. Near 
Trachis the defile is not broader than half a plethrum 
(50 feet); but it is narrower still both before and after 
Thermopylae, at the river Phoenix, near Anthele, and 
at the village of Alpeni.” {Herod,., 7, 176.) It was 
here that Leonidas and his band of heroes withstood 
the attack of the immense Persian host, and nobly 
died in defending the pass. Here, too, was fought, 
at a later day, a battle between the Roman army un¬ 
der Acilius Glabrio and the forces of Antiochus, in 
which the latter were entirely routed. {Vid. Calli- 
dromus.— Liv., 36, 15.— Plin , 4, 7.)—The history ol 
the affair at Thermopylae is as follows : At the time 
when the congress at the Isthmus resolved on defend¬ 
ing the pass in question, the Olympic festival was 

1323 




THERMOPYLAE. 


THERMOPYLAE. 


near at hand, and also one little less respected among 
many of the Dorian states, especially at Sparta, that 
of the Carnean Apollo, which lasted nine days. The 
danger of Greece did not seem so pressing as to re¬ 
quire that these sacred games, so intimately connect¬ 
ed with so many purposes of pleasure, business, and 
religion, should be suspended. And it was thought 
sufficient to send forward a small force, to bar the 
progress of the enemy until they should leave the Gre¬ 
cian world at leisure for action. That the northern 
Greeks might be assured that, notwithstanding this 
delay, Sparta did not mean to abandon them, the little 
band that was to precede the whole force of the con¬ 
federates was placed under the command of her king 
Leonidas. It was composed of only 300 Spartans, at¬ 
tended by a body of Helots whose numbers are not 
recorded, 500 men from Tegea, and as many from 
Mantinea, 120 from the Arcadian Orchomenus, and 
1000 from the rest of Arcadia. Corinth armed 400, 
Phlius 200, and Mycenae 80. Messengers were sent 
to summon Phocis and the Locrians, whose territory 
lay nearest to the post which was to be maintained, 
to raise their whole force. “They were reminded 
that the invader was not a god, but a mortal, liable, as 
all human greatness, to a fall: and they were bidden 
to take courage, for the sea was guarded by Athens 
and A®gina, and the other maritime states, and the 
troops now sent were only the forerunners of the 
Peloponnesian army, which would speedily follow.” 
Hearing this, the Phocians marched to Thermopylae 
with 1000 men, and the Locrians of Opus with all the 
force they could muster. On his arrival in Boeotia 
Leonidas was joined by 700 Thespians, who were 
zealous in the cause ; but the disposition of Thebes 
was strongly suspected ; her leading men were known 
to be friendly to the Persians ; and Leonidas probably 
oelieved that he should be counteracting their in¬ 
trigues if he engaged the Thebans to take part in the 
contest. He therefore called upon them for assist¬ 
ance, and they sent 400 men with him ; but, in the 
opinion of Herodotus, this was a forced compliance, 
which, if they had dared, they would willingly have 
refused. With this army Leonidas marched to defend 
Thermopylae against two millions of men. It was a 
prevailing belief in later ages—one, perhaps, that be¬ 
came current immediately after the death of Leonidas 
—that when he sat out on his expedition he distinctly 
foresaw its fatal issue. And Herodotus gives some 
colour to the opinion by recording -that he selected 
his Spartan followers from among those who had sons 
to leave behind them. But Plutarch imagined that, 
before his departure, he and his little band solemnized 
their own obsequies by funeral games in the presence 
of their parents, and that it was on this occasion he 
spoke of them as a small number to fight, but enough 
to die. One fact destroys this fiction. Before his 
arrival at Thermopylae he did not know of the path 
over the mountain by which he might be attacked in 
the rear: the only danger he had before his eyes was 
one which could not have shaken the courage of any 
brave warrior, that of making a stand for a few days 
against incessant attacks, but from small bodies, in a 
narrow space, where he would be favoured by the 
ground. The whole pass shut in between the east¬ 
ern promontory of CEta, called Callidromus, which 
towers above it in rugged precipices, and the shore 
of the Malian Gulf, is four or five miles in length ; it 
is narrowest at either end, where the mountain is 
said once to have left room only for a single carriage. 
But between these points the pass first widens and 
then is again contracted, though not into quite so nar¬ 
row a space, by the cliffs of Callidromus. At the foot 
of these rocks, as has already been remarked, a hot 
sulphureous spring gushes up in a copious stream, and 
other slenderer veins trickle across the road. This is 
the pass properly called Thermopylae. On the side of 
1324 


the sea it was once guarded no less securely than by the 
cliffs ; for it runs along the edge of a deep morass, 
which the mud, brought down by the rivers from the 
vale of the Sperchius, is now continually carrying for¬ 
ward into the gulf, while the part next the road grad¬ 
ually hardens into firm ground, and widens the pass. 
In very early times the Phocians were in possession of 
Thermopylae, and, to protect themselves from the in¬ 
roads of the Thessalians, had, as already stated, built 
a wall across the northern entrance, and had dis¬ 
charged the water of the springs to hollow out a nat¬ 
ural trench in the road. They were in safety behind 
this bulwark till the Thessalians discovered a path, 
which, beginning in a chasm through which a torrent, 
called the Asopus, descends on the north side of the 
mountain, winds up a laborious ascent to the summit 
of Callidromus, and then, by a shorter and steeper 
track, comes down near the southern end of the pass, 
where the village of Alpenus once stood. After this 
discovery the fortification became comparatively use¬ 
less, and was suffered to go to ruin. It seems won¬ 
derful, and would be scarcely credible, if it was not 
positively asserted by Herodotus, that when the con¬ 
gress at the Isthmus determined to defend Thermopy¬ 
lae there was not a man among them who knew of this 
circuitous track. They ordered the old wall to be 
repaired; but, when Leonidas arrived, he was informed 
of the danger which threatened him from the Anopaea, 
so the mountain pass was named, if it should come to 
the knowledge of the barbarians; and, on the arrival 
of the enemy, he posted the Phocians, by their own 
desire, on the summit of the ridge to guard against a 
surprise.—The first sight of the Persian host, cover¬ 
ing the Trachinian plains, is said to have struck some 
of the followers of Leonidas with no less terror than 
their brethren of Artemisium felt at the approach of 
the hostile armada: the Peloponnesians would havs 
retreated, and reserved their strength for the defence 
of their own isthmus. But the Phocians and Locri¬ 
ans, who were most interested in checking the prog¬ 
ress of the invader, were indignant at the proposal, 
and Leonidas prevailed on the other allies to stay, and 
soothed them by despatching messengers to the confed¬ 
erate cities to call for speedy re-enforcement. Xerxes 
had heard that a handful of men, under the command of 
a Spartan king, were stationed at this part of the road ; 
but he imagined, it is said, that his presence would have 
scared them away. He was surprised by the report, 
of a horseman whom he had sent forward to observe 
their motions, and who, on riding, up, perceived the 
Spartans before the wall, some quietly seated comb¬ 
ing their flowing hair, others at exercise. He could 
not believe Demaratus, who assured him that the Spar¬ 
tans, at least, were come to dispute the pass with him, 
and that it was their custom to trim their hair on the 
eve of a combat. Four days passed before he could 
be convinced that his army must do more than show 
itself to clear a way for him. On the fifth day he or¬ 
dered a bodv of Median and Cissian troops to fall 
upon the rash and insolent enemy, and to lead them 
captive into his presence. He was seated on a lofty 
throne, from which he could survey the narrow en¬ 
trance of the pass, which, in obedience to his com¬ 
mands, his warriors endeavoured to force. But they 
fought on ground where their numbers were of no 
avail, except to increase their confusion when their 
attack was repulsed: their short spears could not 
reach the foe: the foremost fell, the hinder advanced 
over their bodies to the charge : their repeated onsets 
broke upon the Greeks idly, as waves upon the rock. 
At length, as the day wore on, the Medians and Cis- 
sians, spent with their efforts, and greatly thinned in 
their ranks, were recalled from the contest, which the 
king now thought worthy of the superior prowess of 
his own guards, the ten thousand Immortals. They 
were led as to a certain and easy victory ; the Greeks, 




THERMOPYLAE. 


THERMOPYLAE. 


However, stood their ground as before, or, if ever they 
gave way and turned their backs, it was only to face 
suddenly about and deal tenfold destruction on their 
pursuers. Thrice during these fruitless assaults the 
king was seen to start up from his throne in a trans¬ 
port of fear or rage. The combat lasted the whole 
day ; the slaughter of the barbarians was great; on 
the side of the Greeks, a few Spartan lives were lost; 
as to the rest, nothing is said. The next day the 
attack was renewed with no better success : the bands 
of the several cities that made up the Grecian army, 
except the Phocians, who were employed as we have 
seen, relieved each other at the post of honour; all 
stood equally firm, and repelled the charge not less 
vigorously than before. The confidence of Xerxes 
was now changed to despondence and perplexity.— 
The secret of the Anopeea could not long remain con¬ 
cealed after it had become valuable. Many tongues, 
perhaps, would have revealed it : two Greeks, a Ca- 
rystian, and Corydallus of Anticyra, shared the re¬ 
proach of this foul treachery ; but, by the general opin¬ 
ion, confirmed by the solemn sentence of the Am- 
phictyonic council, which set a price upon his head, 
Ephialtes, a Malian, was branded with the infamy of 
having guided the barbarians round the fatal path. 
Xerxes, overjoyed at the discovery, ordered Hydarnes, 
.he commander of the Ten Thousand, with his troops, 
to follow the traitor. They set out at nightfall: as 
day was beginning to break, they gained the brow of 
Callidromus, where the Phocians were posted : the 
night was still, and the universal silence was first 
broken by the trampling of the invaders on the leaves 
with which the face of the woody mountain was 
thickly strewed. The Phocians started from their 
couches and ran to their arms. The Persians, who 
had not expected to find an enemy on their way, 
were equally surprised at the’ sight of an armed band, 
and feared lest they might be Spartans ; but when 
Ephialtes had informed them of the truth, they pre¬ 
pared to force a passage. Their arrows showered 
upon the Phocians, who, believing themselves the sole 
object of attack, retreated to the highest peak of the 
ridge, to sell their lives as dearly as they could. The 
Persians, without turning aside to pursue them, kept 
on their way, and descended towards Alpenus. Mean¬ 
while, deserters had brought intelligence of the ene¬ 
my’s motions to the Grecian camp during the night, 
and their report was confirmed at daybreak by the 
sentinels who had been stationed on the heights, and 
now came down with the news that the barbarians 
were crossing the ridge. Little time was left lor de¬ 
liberation: opinions were divided as to the course that 
prudence prescribed or honour permitted. Leonidas 
did not restrain, perhaps encouraged, those of the al¬ 
lies who wished to save themselves, from the impend¬ 
ing fate ; but for himself and his Spartans he declared 
his resolution of maintaining the post which Sparta 
had assigned them to the last. All withdrew except 
the Thespians and the Thebans. The 1 hespians re¬ 
mained from choice, bent on sharing his glory and his 
death. We should willingly believe the same of the 
Thebans, if the event did not seem to prove that their 
stay was the effect of compulsion. Herodotus says 
that Leonidas, though he dismissed the rest because 
their spirit shrank from danger, detained the Thebans 
as hostages, because he knew them to be disaffected 
to the cause of freedom; yet, as he was himself cer¬ 
tain of perishing, it is equally difficult to understand 
why and how he put this violence on them; and Plu¬ 
tarch, who observes the inconsistency of the reason 
assigned by Herodotus, would have triumphantly vin¬ 
dicated the honour of the Thebans, if he could have 
denied that they alone survived the day. Unless we 
suppose that their first choice was on the side of hon¬ 
our, their last, when death stared them in the face, on 
the side of prudence, we must give up their conduct 


and that of Leonidas as an inscrutable mystery.—Me* 
gistias, an Acarnanian soothsayer, who traced his lin 
eage to the ancient seer Melampus, is said to hav 
read the approaching fate of his companions in the er 
trails of the victims before any tidings had arrive 
of their danger. When the presage was confirmed 
Leonidas pressed him to retire: a proof, Herodotc 
thinks, that the Spartan king did not wish to keep an 
one who desired to go. Megistias, imitating the ex 
ample of the heroic prophet Theoclus, who, after pre 
dieting the fall of Ira to Aristomenes, refused to sur 
vive the ruin of his country, would not quit the sid 
of Leonidas ; but he sent away his son, an only one, 
who had accompanied him, that the line of Melampus 
might not end with him. Leonidas would also, it is 
said, have saved two of his kinsmen, by sending them 
with letters and messages to Sparta ; but the one said 
he had come to bear arms, not to carry letters; and the 
other, that his deeds would tell all that Sparta wished 
to know.—Before Hydarnes began his march, Ephi¬ 
altes had reckoned the time he would take to reach 
the southern foot of the mountain, and Xerxes had, 
accordingly, fixed the hour when he would attack 
the Greeks in front. It was early in the forenoon 
when the Ten Thousand had near finished their round, 
and the preconcerted onset began. Leonidas, now 
less careful to husband the lives of his men than tc 
make havoc among the barbarians, no longer confined 
himself, as before, within the pass, but, leaving a guard 
at the wall, sallied forth and charged the advancing 
enemy. His little band, reckless of everything but 
honour and vengeance, made deep and bloody breaches 
in the ranks of the Persians, who, according to an 
Oriental custom, were driven into the conflict by the 
lash of their commanders. Many perished in the sea, 
many were trampled under foot by the throng that 
pressed on them from behind : yet the Spartans too 
were thinned, and Leonidas himself died early. The 
fight was hottest over his body, which was rescued 
after a hard struggle, and the Greeks four times tinned 
the enemy. At length, when most of their spears 
were broken, and their swords blunted with slaughter, 
word came that the band of Hydarnes was about to 
enter the pass. Then they retreated to the wall, and 
pressed on to a knoll on the other side, where they 
took up their last stand. The Thebans, however, did 
not return with them, but threw down their arms and 
begged for quarter. This, it is said, the greater part 
obtained: Herodotus heard a story, about which Plu¬ 
tarch is, with good reason, incredulous, that they were 
afterward all branded like runaway slaves ; but it is 
not denied that they placed themselves at the mercy 
of the barbarians. The Persians rushed forward un¬ 
resisted, broke down the wall, and surrounded the hil¬ 
lock where the little remnant of the Greeks, armed 
only with a few swords, stood a butt for the arrows, 
the javelins, and the stones of the enemy, which at 
length overwhelmed them. Where they fell they 
were afterward buried ; their tomb, as Simonides sang, 
was an altar; a sanctuary, in which Greece revered 
the memory of her second founders. ( Biod. Sic., 11, 
11.) The inscription of the monument raised over 
the slain, who died from first to last in defence of the 
pass, recorded that four thousand men from Pelopon 
nesus had fought at Thermopylae with three hundred 
myriads. We ought not to expect accuracy in these 
numbers : the list in Herodotus, if the Locrian force 
is only supposed equal to the Phocian, exceeds six 
thousand men: the Phocians, it must be remembered, 
were not engaged. But it is not easy to reconcile 
either account with the historian’s statement, that the 
Grecian dead amounted to four thousand, unless we 
suppose that the Helots, though not numbered, formed 
a large part of the army of Leonidas. The lustre of 
his achievement is not diminished by their presence. 
He himself and his Spartans no doubt considered their 

1325 



THERMOPYLAE. 


THE 


persevering stand, in the post intrusted to them, not 
as an act of high and heroic devotion, but of simple 
and indispensable duty. Their spirit spoke in the lines 
inscribed upon their monument, which bade the passing 
traveller tell their countrymen that they had fallen in 
obedience to their laws. How their action was view¬ 
ed at Sparta may be collected from a story which can¬ 
not be separated from the recollection of this memora¬ 
ble day. When the band of Leonidas was nearly en¬ 
closed, two Spartans, Eurvtus and Aristodetnus, were 
staying at Alpenus, having been forced to quit their 
post by a disorder which nearly deprived them of sight. 
When they heard the tidings, the one called for his 
arms, and made his helot guide him to the place of 
combat, where he was left, and fell. But the other’s 
heart failed him, and he saved his life. When he re¬ 
turned to Sparta he was shunned like a pestilence : no 
man would share the fire of his hearth with him, or 
speak to him ; and he was branded with the name of 
“ the trembler Aristodemus" (o rpkoag ’Apiaro/Sr/pop). 
According to another account, both these Spartans had 
been despatched from the camp as messengers, and 
there being sufficient time for both to return, Eurytus 
did so, but Aristodemus lingered on the way.—The 
Persians are said to have lost at Thermopylae 20,000 
men : among them were several of royal blood. To 
console himself for this loss, and to reap the utmost 
advantage from his victory, Xerxes sent over to the 
fleet, which, having heard of the departure of the 
Greeks, was now stationed on the northern coast of 
Euboea, and by public notice invited all who were 
curious to see the chastisement he had inflicted on 
the men who had dared to defy his power. That he 
had previously buried the greater part of his own 
dead seems natural enough ; and such an artifice, so 
slightly differing from the universal practice of both 
ancient and modern belligerents, scarcely deserved 
the name of a stratagem. He is said also to have 
mutilated the body of Leonidas; and, as this was one 
of the foremost which he found on a field that had 
cost him so dear, we are not at liberty to reject the 
tradition, because such ferocity was not consistent 
with the respect usually paid by the Persians to a gal¬ 
lant enemy. To cut off the head and right arm of 
slain rebels was a Persian usage. ( Plut ., Vit. Artax., 
c. 13.— Strab ., 733.— Herod., 7, 206, seqq. — Thirl- 
walVs Hist, of Gr., vol. 2', p. 282, seqq.)— According 
to modern travellers, the warm springs at Thermopylae 
are about half way between Bodomtza and Zeitoun. 
They issue principally from two mouths at the foot of 
the limestone precipices of (Eta. The temperature, 
in the month of December, was found to be 111° of 
Fahrenheit. Dr. Holland found it to be 103° or 104° 
at the mouth of the fissures. The water is very transpa¬ 
rent, but deposites a calcareous concretion (carbonate 
of lime), which adheres to reeds and sticks, like the 
waters of the Anio at Tivoli, and the sulphureous lake 
between that place and Rome. A large extent of sur¬ 
face is covered with this deposite. It is impregnated 
with carbonic acid, lime, muriate of soda, and sulphur. 
The ground about the springs yields a hollow sound 
like that within the crater of the Solfaterra near Na¬ 
ples. In some places Dr. Clarke observed cracks and 
fissures filled with stagnant water, through which a 
gaseous fluid was rising in large bubbles to the sur¬ 
face, its foetid smell bespeaking it to be sulphureted 
hydrogen. The springs are very copious, and imme¬ 
diately form several rapid streams running into the 
sea, which is apparently about a mile from the pass. 
Baths were built here by Herodes Atticus. The de¬ 
file or strait continues for some distance beyond the 
hot springs, and then the road, which is still paved in 
many places, bears off all at once across the plain to 
Zeitoun, distant three hours from Thermopylae. Near 
the springs there are faint traces of a wall and circular 
»ower, composed of a thick mass of small stones, and 
1326 


apparen-tly not of high antiquity. The foot of the 
mountain, however, Mr. Dodwell says, is so cover 
ed with trees and impenetrable bushes as to hide ant 
vestiges which may exist of early fortifications. The 
wall, of which mention has more than once been made 
by us, was, at a later day, renewed and fortified by 
Antiochus when defending himself against the Ro¬ 
mans ; and was afterward restored by Justinian, when 
that monarch thought to secure the tottering empire 
by fortresses and walls : he is stated also to have con¬ 
structed cisterns here for the reception of rain-water. 
The question is, whether this be the site of the ancient 
wall, as Dr. Holland and Mr. Dodwell suppose, or 
whether the spring referred to by Herodotus be not 
the fountain mentioned by Dr. Clarke, who describes 
the wall, not as traversing the marsh, but as extending 
along the mountainous chain of GE>a from sea to sea. 
The cisterns built by Justinian would hardly be in the 
marshy plain, but must be looked for within the forti¬ 
fied pass. Formidable, however, as the defile of Ther¬ 
mopylae may seem, it has never opposed an effectual 
barrier to an invading army ; the strength of these 
gates of Greece being rendered vain by the other 
mountain routes which avoid them. “ The Persians,” 
says Procopius, “ found only one path over the mount¬ 
ains ; now there are many, and large enough to admit 
a cart or chariot.” A path was pointed out to Dr. 
Clarke to the north of the hot springs, which is still 
used by the inhabitants in journeying to Salona. After 
following this path to a certain distance, another road 
branches from it towards the southeast, according to 
the route pursued by the Persians. Dr. Holland as¬ 
cended Mount (Eta by “ a route equally singular and 
interesting, but difficult, and not free from danger.” 
When the Gauls under Brennus invaded Greece, the 
treacherous discovery made to him of a path through 
the mountains compelled the Greeks to retreat, to 
prevent their being taken in rear. Antiochus was in 
like manner forced to retreat with precipitation, on 
seeing the heights above the pass occupied by Roman 
soldiers, who, under the command of M. Porcius Cato, 
had been sent round to seize these positions. In the 
reign of Justinian the army of the Huns advanced to 
Thermopylae, and discovered the path over the mount¬ 
ains. When Bajazet entered Greece towards the 
close of the fourteenth century, there appears to have 
been little need of these artifices : a Greek bishop is 
stated to have conducted the Mohammedan conquerors 
through the pass to enslave his country. During the 
late revolution, Thermopylae never opposed any serious 
barrier against the Turkish forces. The passes of Cal- 
lidromus and Cnemis were disputed on one occasion 
with success by a body of Armatoles under Odyss¬ 
eus; but the foe were afterward repeatedly suffered to 
cross the ridges of Othrys and CEta without opposi¬ 
tion. 

Thermus or Thermum, an unwalled city of Eto- 
lia, northeast of Stratos, regarded as the capital of the 
country. It is supposed by Mannert to have derived 
its name from some warm springs in the neighbour¬ 
hood, and Polybius (5, 7) speaks of it as totcov kv tolq 
Aeppolg. Its situation among the mountains rendered 
it, notwithstanding the want of walls, a place very dif¬ 
ficult of access, and hence it was regarded as a kind 
of citadel for all Etolfa. It was here that the assem¬ 
blies for deciding the elections of magistrates were 
held, as well as the most splendid festival and com¬ 
mercial meetings. Hence the place was stored, not 
only with abundance of provisions and the necessaries 
of life, but with the most costly furniture, and with 
utensils of every kind adapted for entertainments. 
Philip III. of Macedon surprised the place by a rapid 
march, and obtained, great booty, although many of the 
more valuable articles were either carried off or de 
stroyed by the inhabitants. ( Polyb 5, 9.) In the 
pillage of the town, the Macedonians did not spare 



THE 


THESEUS. 


even ths temples ; but, in revenge for the excesses 
committed by the HEtolians at Dium and Dodona, de¬ 
faced the statues, which amounted to more than two 
thousand, set fire to the porches, and finally razed the 
buildings themselves to tne ground. They found also 
in Tnermus a quantity of arms, of which they selected 
the most costly to carry away, but the greater part they 
destroyed, to the number of 15,000 complete suits of 
armour. In like manner, whatever was not worthy of 
removal, was consumed in heaps before the camp. All 
these facts attest the size and opulence of the place ; 
of which, however, so little is known, that, with the 
exception of Strabo and Polybius, its name occurs in 
no ancient author. Philip subsequently made another 
attack upon the town, and destroyed all that had been 
spared before. ( Polyb ., de virt. et vit., c. 11.)—Un¬ 
der the Roman sway, when the national assemblies of 
the HEtolians had ceased to be held, Thermus became 
speedily forgotten in history. ( Mannert , Geogr., vol. 
8, p. Ill— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 2, p. 87.) 

Thersande*r, a son of Polynices and Argia. He was 
one of the Epigoni, and, after the capture of Thebes, 
received the city from the hands of his victorious fel¬ 
low-chieftains. ( Pausan., 9, 8.— Heyne, ad Apollod., 
3, 7, 4.) At a subsequent period, when already ad¬ 
vanced in years, he accompanied the Greeks to the 
Trojan war, but was slain on the shores of Mysia by 
Telephus. {Diet. Cret., 2, 2.— Heyne , ad Virg., JEn., 
2, 261.— Pind., 01., 2, 76.— Schol. ad Find., 1. c.) 

Thersites, one of the Greeks in the army before 
Troy. Homer describes him as equally deformed in 
person and in mind. Such was his propensity to in¬ 
dulge in contumelious language, that he could not ab- 
stain from directing it against not only the chiefs of 
the army, but even Agamemnon himself. He ulti¬ 
mately fell by the hand of Achilles, while he was ridi¬ 
culing the sorrow of that hero for the slain Penthesilea. 
{Horn., II., 2, 212, seqq.) 

Theseid^e, a patronymic given to the Athenians 
from Theseus, one of their kings. {Virg., G., 2, 383 ) 

Theseus (two syllables), king of Athens, and son 
of JEgeus by HEthra, the daughter of Pittheus, mon¬ 
arch of Troezene, was one of the most celebrated he¬ 
roes of antiquity. He was reared in the palace of his 
grandfather ; and, when grown to the proper age, his 
mother led him to the rock under which his father had 
deposited his sword and sandals, and he removed it 
with ease and took them out. He was now to pro¬ 
ceed to Athens, and present himself to HEgeus. As, 
however, the roads were infested by robbers, his grand¬ 
father Pittheus pressed him earnestly to take the 
shorter and safer way over the Saronic Gulf; but the 
youth, feeling in himself the spirit and the soul of a 
hero, resolved to signalize himself like Hercules, with 
whose fame all Greece now rang, by destroying the 
evil-doers and the monsters that oppressed and ravaged 
the country ; and he determined on the more perilous 
and adventurous journey by land. On his way to 
Athens he met with many adventures, and destroyed 
Periphates, Sinis, Seiron, Procrustes, and also the 
monstrous sow Phaaa, which ravaged the country in 
the neighbourhood of Crommyon. Having overcome 
all the°perils of the road, Theseus at length reached 
Athens, where new dangers awaited him. He found 
his father’s court all in confusion. The Pallantidae, or 
sons and grandsons of Pallas, the brother of HEgeus, 
had long seen with jealousy the sceptre in the hands 
of an old man, and now meditated wresting it from his 
feeble grasp. Thinking, however, that his death could 
not be very remote, they resolved to wait for that 
event; but they made no secret of their intentions. 
The arrival of Theseus threatened to disconcert their 
plan. They feared that if this young stranger should 
be received as a son of the old king, he might find in 
him a protector and avengei ; and they resolved to 
poison his mind against him. Their plot so far suc¬ 


ceeded that HEgeus was on the point of sacrificing his 
son, when he recognised him, and then acknowledged 
him in the presence of all the people. The Pallantidas 
had recourse to arms, but Theseus defeated and slew 
them. Medea, it. is also said, who was married to 
HEgeus, fearing the loss of her influence when The¬ 
seus should have been acknowledged by his father, re¬ 
solved to anticipate that event; and, moved by her 
calumnies, HEgeus was presenting a cup of poison to 
his son, when the sight of the sword left with HEthra 
discovered to him who he was. The bull which Her¬ 
cules had brought from Crete was now at Marathon, 
and the country was in terror of his ravages. Theseus 
went in quest of him, overcame, and exhibited him in 
chains to the astonished Athenians, and then sacrificed 
the animal to Apollo Delphinius. The Athenians were 
at this period in deep affliction on account of the trib¬ 
ute which they were forced to pay to Minos, king of 
Crete. ( Vid. Androgeus and MinotaurusA Theseus 
resolved to deliver them from this calamity, or die in 
the attempt. Accordingly, when the third time of 
sending off this tribute came, and the youths and 
maidens were, according to custom, drawn by lot to be 
sent, in spite of the entreaties of his father to the con¬ 
trary he voluntarily offered himself as one of the vic¬ 
tims. The ship departed, as usual, under black sails, 
which Theseus promised his father to change for white 
ones in case of his returning victorious. When they 
arrived in Crete, the youths and maidens were exhib¬ 
ited before Minos ; and Ariadne, the daughter of the 
king, who was present, became deeply enamoured of 
Theseus, by whom her love was speedily returned. 
She furnished him with a clew of thread, which en¬ 
abled him to penetrate in safety the windings of the 
labyrinth till he came to where the Minotaur lay, whom 
he caught by the hair and slew. He then got on board 
with his companions, and sailed for Athens. Ariadne 
accompanied his flight, but was abandoned by him on 
the isle of Dia or Naxos. {Vid. Ariadne.) Before 
Theseus returned to Athens, he sailed to Delos to pay 
his vow ; for, ere setting out on his perilous expedition, 
he had made a vow to send annually, if successful, to 
the sacred island a ship with gifts and sacrifices. 
{Vid. Delia II.) He also consecrated in Delos a 
statue of Venus, made by Daedalus, on account of tho 
aid she had given him. He, moreover, to commemo¬ 
rate his victory, established there a dance, the evolu¬ 
tions of which imitated the windings of the labyrinth. 
(Compare Horn., II, T8, 590, seqq.) On approaching 
the coast of Attica, Theseus forgot the signal ap¬ 
pointed by his father, and returned under the same 
sails with which he had departed ; and the old king, 
thinking he was deprived of his newly-found son, de¬ 
stroyed himself. ( Vid. HEgeus.) The hero now turn¬ 
ed his thoughts to legislation. The Attic territory 
had been divided by Cecrops into twelve derni or bor¬ 
oughs, each of which had its own government and 
chief magistrate, and was almost wholly independent. 
The consequence was, frequent and sanguinary wars 
arose among them. Nothing but pressing external 
danger forced them to union, which was again dissolv¬ 
ed as soon as the storm was over. Theseus there¬ 
fore invited not merely the people of Attica, but even 
strangers, to come and establish themselves at Athens, 
then nothing but a small settlement on a rock. By 
his prudence and his authority he induced the heads 
of boroughs to resign their independent power, and in¬ 
trust the administration of justice to a court, which 
should sit constantly at Athens, and exercise jurisdic¬ 
tion over all the inhabitants of Attica. He abolished 
the previous division of the people of Attica into four 
tribes, and substituted that of a distribution into 
three classes, the Nobles, the Husbandmen, and the 
Artisans (Eu 7 r arpidai, Teuyopot, and A yyiovpyol). 
This object he is said to have accomplished partly bv 
force, partly by persuasion. With the lower classes 
* 1327 




THESEUS. 


THE 


we read, he found no difficulty ; but the powerful men 
were only induced to comply'with his proposals by his 
promise that all should be admitted to an equal share 
of the government, and that he would resign all his 
royal prerogatives except those of commanding in war 
and of watching over the laws. To the nobles, there¬ 
fore, he reserved all the offices of state, with the privi¬ 
lege of ordering the affairs of religion, and of inter¬ 
preting the laws both human and divine. The result 
of these and other regulations was the increase of the 
city and of the population in general. Thucydides 
fixes on this as the epoch when the lower city was 
added to the ancient one, which had covered, as we 
have remarked, little more than the rock that afterward 
became the citadel. And hence there may seem to 
have been some foundation for Plutarch’s statement, 
that Theseus called the city Athens, if this name prop¬ 
erly signified the whole enclosure of the Old and New 
Town.—A:s a farther means of uniting the people, 
Theseus established numerous festivals, particularly 
the Panathensea, solemnized with great splendour ev¬ 
ery fifth year, in commemoration of this union of the 
inhabitants of Attica. Theseus firmly established the 
boundaries of the Attic territory, in which he inclu¬ 
ded Megaris, ana set up a pillar on the Isthmus of 
Corinth to mark the limits of Attica and the Pelopon¬ 
nesus. These civic cares did not prevent Theseus 
from taking part in military enterprises : he accompa¬ 
nied Hercules in his expedition against the Amazons, 
who then dwelt on the banks of the Thermodon ; and 
he distinguished himself so much in the conflict, that 
Hercules, after the victory, bestowed on him, as the 
reward of his valour, the hand of the vanquished queen. 
( Vid. Antiope.) When the Amazons afterward, in 
revenge, invaded the Attic territory, they met with a 
signal defeat from the Athenian prince. ( Vid. Ama- 
zones.) Theseus was also a sharer in the dangers of 
the Calydonian hunt; he was one of the adventurous 
hand who sailed in the Argo to Colchis ; and he aided 
his friend Pirithoiis and the Lapithae in their conflict 
with the Centaurs. The friendship between him and 
Pirithoiis was of a most intimate nature, yet it had ori¬ 
ginated in the midst of arms. ( Vid. Pirithoiis.) Like 
faithful comrades, they aided each other in every pro¬ 
ject. Each was ambitious in love, and would possess 
a daughter of the gods. Theseus, in whose favour 
the lot had fallen, carried off, with the assistance of 
his friend, the celebrated Helen, daughter of Leda, 
then a child of but nine years, though already of sur¬ 
passing loveliness, and placed her under the care of his 
mother iEthra, at Aphidnse, whence she was subse¬ 
quently rescued by her brothers Castor and Pollux. 
He then prepared to aid his friend in a bolder and more 
perilous attempt, the abduction of Proserpina from the 
palace of Pluto ; an attempt which resulted in the im¬ 
prisonment of both by the monarch of Hades. From 
this confinement Theseus was released by Hercules ; 
but Pirithoiis remained ever a captive. (Vid. Piri¬ 
thoiis.) After the death of Antiope, who had borne 
him a son named Hippolytus, Theseus married Phae¬ 
dra, the daughter of Minos, and sister of Ariadne. 
Hippolytus lost his life in consequence of a false charge 
preferred against him by his stepmother ; Phaedra end¬ 
ed her days by her own hand ; and Theseus, when too 
late, learned the innocence of his son. (Vid Hip¬ 
polytus.)—The invasion of Attica by Castor and Pol¬ 
lux, for the recovery of their sister Helen, and an in¬ 
surrection of the Pallantidae, brought on Theseus the 
usual fate of all great Athenians—exile. He volun¬ 
tarily retired to Lycomedes, king of the island of Scy- 
ros, and there he met with his death, either by acci¬ 
dent or by the treachery of his host; for, ascending, 
with Lycomedes, a lofty rock, to take a view of the isl¬ 
and, he fell or was pushed off by his companion, and lost 
his life by the fall. The Athenians honoured his mem¬ 
ory by feasts and temples, placed him among the gods, 
1328 


and at a later day obtained his bones from the island 
of Scyros, and interred them beneath the soil of Atti¬ 
ca. (Keightley's Mythology, p. 387, seqq. Pint.. 
Vit. Thes.) —Theseus, whose name signifies the Or- 
derer or Regulator (Qyaevg, from -r/cru, “ to place” 
or “ establish ”), seems rather to indicate a period than 
an individual, though it is very possible that the name 
may have been borne by one who contributed the lar¬ 
gest share, or put the finishing hand, to the change 
which is commonly considered as his work. Theseus, 
indeed, is represented by the ancients in quite an am¬ 
biguous light; as, on the one hand, the founder of a 
government which was, for many centuries after him, 
rigidly aristocratical; and, on the other hand, as the 
parent of the Athenian democracy. If we make due 
allowance for the exaggerations of poets or rhetori¬ 
cians, who adorn him with the latter of these titles in 
order to exalt the antiquity of the popular institu¬ 
tions of later times, we shall perhaps find that nei¬ 
ther description is entirely groundless, though the for¬ 
mer is more simply and evidently true. His insti¬ 
tutions were aristocratical, because none were then 
known of any other kind. The effect of the union 
would even be, in the first instance, to increase the 
influence of the noble class, by concentrating it in one 
spot; and hence it proved too powerful for both the king 
and the people. In this sense we may say with Plu¬ 
tarch, that Theseus gained the assent of the great men 
to his plan by surrendering his royal prerogatives, 
which they shared equally among them. The king 
was no more than the first of the nobles ; the four 
kings of the tribes (^uXobaciTielg. — Pollux, 8, 111), 
all chosen from the privileged class, were his constant 
assessors, and acted rather as colleagues than as coun¬ 
sellors. The principal difference between them and 
him appears to have consisted in the duration of their 
office, which was probably never long enough to leave 
them independent of the body from which they were 
taken and to which they returned.—But there was 
also a sense in which Theseus might, without impro¬ 
priety, be regarded as the founder of the Athenian de¬ 
mocracy, both with respect to the tendency and re¬ 
mote consequences, and to the immediate effect, of 
the institutions ascribed to him. The incorporation 
of several scattered townships in one city, such as 
took place in Attica, was in many, perhaps in most, 
parts of Greece the first stage in the growth of a free 
commonalty, which, thus enabled to feel its own 
strength, was gradually encouraged successfully to 
resist the authority of the nobles. And hence, in la¬ 
ter times, the dismemberment of a capital, and its re¬ 
partition into a number of rural communities, was es¬ 
teemed the surest expedient for establishing an aris¬ 
tocratical government. (Thirlwall's Hist, of Greece, 
vol. 2, p. 9, seqq.) —Regarded as the patron-hero of 
that people of Greece among whom literature flour¬ 
ished most, Theseus is presented to us under a more 
historic aspect than the other heroes of mythology. 
Though his adventures are evidently founded on those 
of Hercules, whom he is said to have emulated, we 
are struck by the absence of the marvellous in them : 
indeed, the exploits of Theseus are generally such ef¬ 
fects as would be produced in historical times by the 
course of events in the formation of a polity : such, 
at least, are his achievements in and about Attica. 
Theseus yielded few subjects, therefore, to the Attic 
dramatists. When they brought him on the stage, it 
was hardly ever as the principal character of the piece. 
He always, however, appears as the model of a just 
and moderate ruler, the example of a strict obedience 
to the dictates of law and equity, the protector of the 
suppliant, the scourge of the evil-doer, and the author 
of wise and good regulations. (Keightley, l. c.) 

Thesmothetve, a name given to the six remaining 
archons at Athens, after the chief archon, the Basileus 
or King-Archon, and the Polemarch. (Vid. Archontes. 




THE 


THE 


Thespia or Thespis, a town • Boeotia, for.y 
Btadia from Ascra, according to Strabo, and near the 
foot of Helicon, looking towards the south and the 
Crissoean Gulf. Its antiquity is attested by Homer, 
who names it in the catalogue of Boeotian towns. (II., 
2, 498.) The Thespians are worthy of a place in his¬ 
tory for their brave and generous conduct during the 
Persian war. When the rest of Bceotia basely sub¬ 
mitted to Xerxes, they alone refused to tender earth 
and water to his deputies. The troops also under Le¬ 
onidas, whom they sent to aid the Spartans at Ther¬ 
mopylae, chose rather to die at their posts than desert 
•heir commander and his heroic followers. (Herod., 
7, 132 et 222.) Their city was, in consequence, burn¬ 
ed by the Persians after it had been evacuated by the 
inhabitants, who retired to the Peloponnesus. (He¬ 
rod., 8, 50.) A small body of these, however, fought 
at Platasa under Pausanias. (Herod., 9, 31.) The 
Thespians distinguished themselves also in the battle 
of Delium against the Athenians, being nearly all slain 
at their post. (Thucyd., 4, 96.) The Thebans after¬ 
ward basely took advantage of this heavy loss to pull 
down the walls of their city and bring it under sub¬ 
jection, on pretext of their having favoured the Athe¬ 
nians. (Thucyd.,A, 133.) They subsequently made 
an attempt to recover their independence ; but, failing 
n this enterprise, many of them sought refuge at Ath¬ 
ens. (Thucyd., 6, 95.) Thespise was occupied by 
the Lacedsemonians at the same time that they seized 
upon the citadel of Thebes. (Xen., Hist. Gr., 5, 4, 
42.)—The celebrated courtesan Phryne was born at 
Thespiss. It is mentioned, that on her having received, 
as a present from Praxiteles, a beautiful statue of Cu¬ 
pid, she caused it to be erected in her native city, 
which added greatly to its prosperity, from the influx 
of strangers who came to view this masterpiece of 
art. (Strabo, 410.— Athen.,\3, 59.) Pausanias af¬ 
firms, that this celebrated statue was sent to Rome by 
Caligula, but was afterward restored to Thespias by 
Claudius. Nero again removed it to Rome, where it 
was destroyed by fire. (Pausan., 9, 26.) Pliny, how¬ 
ever, asserts that it still existed in his day in the 
schools of Octavia. (Plin., 36, 5.)—It is now pretty 
well ascertained, by the researches of recent travellers, 
that the ruins of Thespise are occupied by the modern 
Eremo Castro. Sir W. Gell remarks, that “the plan 
of the city is distinctly visible. It seems a regular 
hexagon, and the mound occasioned by the fall of the 
wall is perfect.” (Itin., p. 119. — Cramer's Ancient 
Greece, vol. 2, p. 208, seqq.) 

ThespiId^, the offspring of Hercules by the fifty 
daughters of Thespius. On attaining to manhood, 
some of them were sent, by their father’s directions, to 
Thebes in Boeotia, but the greater part as a colony to 
Sardinia. (Apollod., 2, 7, 6.— Heyne ad Apollod., 1. 
c. — Diod. Sic., 4, 29.— Pausan. 10, 17.) 

Thespiades, I. the fifty daughters of Thespius, 
mothers of the Thespiadte by Hercules. (Apollod., 2, 

io.)—II. An appellation given to the Muses from 
Thespiae, near which was Helicon, one of the mount¬ 
ains sacred to them. (Vid. Musse.) 

Thespis, an early Greek dramatic poet, generally 
regarded as the inventor of tragedy. He was born at 
Icaria, a Diacrian demus or borough, at the begin¬ 
ning of the sixth century 3.C. His birthplace de¬ 
rived its name, according to tradition, from the father 
of Erigone (Steph. Byz., s. v. ’luapla. Hygin., fab., 
130), and had always been a seat of the religion of 
Bacchus; and the origin of the Athenian tragedy and 
comedy has been confidently referred to the drunken 
festivals of the place (Athenceus, 2, p. 40): indeed, it 
is not improbable that the name itself may point to the 
old mimetic exhibitions which were common there. 

( Welcker, Nachtrag, p. 222.) An account of the im¬ 
provements introduced by Thespis will be found under 
mother article. (Vid. Theatrum.) i 

8 F 


Thespius, king of Thespiaa, and father of the Thes* 
piades. (Apollod., 2, 4, 10.) The name is sometimes 
erroneously written Thestius. (Consult the remarks 
of Heyne, not. crit., ad. Apollod., 2, 7, 8.) 

Thesprotia, a district of Epirus, along the coast 
opposite to Corcyra, and extending also some distance 
inland. Of all the Epirotic nations, the Thesproti 
may be considered as the most ancient. This is evi¬ 
dent from the circumstance of their being alone noticed 
by Homer, while he emits all mention of the Molos- 
sians and Chaonians. (Od., 14, 315.) Herodotus 
also affirms (7, 178) that they were the parent stock 
whence descended the Thessalians, who expelled the 
HColians from the country afterward known by the 
name of Thessaly. Thesprotia, indeed, appears to 
have been in remote times the great seat of the Pelas- 
gic nation, whence they disseminated themselves over 
several parts of Greece, and sent colonies to Italy. 
(Herod., 2, 56.— Strabo, 327.) .Even after the Pe- 
lasgic name had become extinct in these two coun¬ 
tries, the oracle and temple of Dodona, which they 
had established in Thesprotia, still remained to attest 
their former existence in that district.—We must infer 
from the passage of Homer which has been referred 
to, that the government of Thessaly was at first mon 
archical. How long this continued is not apparent 
Some change must have taken place prior to the time 
of Thucydides, who assures us that neither the Thes¬ 
proti nor Chaones were subject to kings. (Thucyd., 
2, 80.) Subsequently we may, however, suppose them 
to have been included under the dominion of the Mo- 
lossian princes. It were as needless to attempt to 
define the limits of ancient Thessaly as those of Cha- 
onia : we must therefore be content with ascertaining 
that it was mainly situated between the rivers Thya- 
mis ( Calama ) and Acheron (Souli), while it extended 
beyond the source of the former to the banks of the 
Aoiis. (Cramer's Anc. Greece , vol. 1, p. 107.) 

Thessalia, a country of Greece, bounded on the 
north by the Cambunian Mountains, extending from 
Pindus to Olympus, and separating it from Macedonia ; 
on the west by the chain of Pindus, dividing it from 
Epirus ; on the south by Mount CEta, and on the east 
by the HDgean Sea. It seems to have been the gen¬ 
eral opinion of antiquity, founded on very early tradi¬ 
tions, that the great basin of Thessaly formed by the 
mountains just specified was at some remote period 
covered by the waters of the Peneus and its tributary 
rivers, until some great revolution of nature had rent 
asunder the gorge of Tempe, and thus afforded a pas¬ 
sage to the pent-up streams. This opinion, which 
was first reported by Herodotus, in his account of the 
celebrated march of Xerxes (7, 129), is again repeated 
by Strabo, who observes, in confirmation of it, that the 
Peneus is still exposed to frequent inundations, and 
also that the land in Thessaly is higher towards the 
sea than towards the more central parts. (Strabo, 
430.)—According to the same geographer, this prov¬ 
ince was divided into four districts, distinguished by 
the name of Phthiotis, Estiaeotis, Thessaliotis, and 
Pelasgiotis. In his description, however, of these, he 
appears to have no room for Thessaliotis, which is, in 
fact, rarely acknowledged by the writers of antiquity ; 
though we cannot doubt the propriety of Strabo’s di¬ 
vision into tetrarchies, as it derives confirmation from 
Harpocration (s. v. T erpapx'ia) and the scholiast to 
Apollonius Rhodius. (Argon., 3, 1089.)—There is 
hardly any district in Greece for which nature seems 
to have done so much as for Thessaly. It may with 
justice be called the land of the Peneus, which, de¬ 
scending from Pindus, flowed through it from west to 
east. A multitude of tributary streams poured from 
the north and the south into this river. No other dis¬ 
trict had so extensive an internal navigation ; which, 
with a little assistance from art, might have been car- 
; ded to all its parts. Its fruitful soil was fitted alike 
‘ 1329 





THESSALIA. 


THESSALIA. 


for pasturing and the cultivation of corn; its coasts, 
especially the Sinus Pagasreus, afforded the best har¬ 
bours for shipping ; nature seemed hardly to have left 
a wish ungratified. It was in Thessaly that the tribe 
of the Hellenes, according to tradition, first appli¬ 
ed themselves to agriculture; and thence its several 
branches spread over the more southern lands. ( Vid. 
Hellas.) Almost all the names of its towns recall 
some association connected with the primitive history 
and heroic age of the nation.—Early traditions, pre¬ 
served by the Greek poets and other writers, ascribe 
to Thessaly the more ancient names of Pyrrha, yEmo- 
nia, and iEolis. ( Rhian ., ap. Schol. in Apoll. Rhod., 
3, 1089.— Steph. Byz., s. v. Alpovta. — Herod., 7, 
176.) Passing over the two former appellations, which 
belong rather to the age of mythology, the latter may 
afford us matter for historical reflections, as referring 
to that remote period when the plains of Thessaly 
were occupied by the .®olian Pelasgi, to whom Greece 
was probably indebted for the first dawnings of civili¬ 
zation, and the earliest cultivation of her language. 

(Strabo , 220.) This people originally came, as He¬ 
rodotus informs us, from Thesprotia {Herod., 7, 176. 
—’'Strab ., 444); but how long they remained in pos¬ 
session of the country, and at what precise period it 
assumed the name of Thessaly, cannot, perhaps, now 
be determined. In the poems of Homer it never oc¬ 
curs, although the several principalities and kingdoms 
of which it is composed are there distinctly enumera¬ 
ted and described, together with the different chiefs to 
whom they were subject: thus Hellas and Phthia are 
assigned to Achilles; the Melian and Pagasean terri¬ 
tories to Protesilaus and Eumelus ; Magnesia to Phi- 
loctetes and Eurypylus; Estiasotis and Pelasgia to 
Medon and the sons of ^Esculapius, with other petty 
leaders. It is from Homer, therefore, that we derive 
the earliest information relative to the history of this 
fairest portion of Greece. This state of things, how¬ 
ever, was not of long continuance ; and a new consti¬ 
tution, dating probably from the period of the Trojan 
expedition, seems to have been adopted by the common 
consent of the Thessalian states. They agreed to 
unite themselves into one confederate body, under the 
direction of one supreme magistrate or chief, distin¬ 
guished by the title of Tagus (Taydf), and elected by 
the consent of the whole republic. The details of this 
federal system are little known ; but Strabo assures us 
that the Thessalian confederacy was the most consider¬ 
able, as well as the earliest, society of the kind establish¬ 
ed in Greece. (Strab., 429.) How far its constitution 
was connected with the celebrated Amphictyonic coun¬ 
cil, it seems impossible to determine, since we are so 
little acquainted with the origin and history of that an¬ 
cient assembly. There can be little doubt, however, 
that this singular coalition, which embraced matters of 
a political as well as a religious nature, first rose 
among the states of Thessaly, as we find that the ma¬ 
jority of the nation who had votes in the council were 
either actually Thessalians, or connected in some way 
with that part of Greece. This mode of government, 
however, seems to have succeeded as little in Thessaly 
as in the other Hellenic republics where it was adopt¬ 
ed; and that province, which, from its local advanta¬ 
ges, ought to have ranked among the most powerful 
and leading states of Greece, w r e find, if we except a pe¬ 
riod of brilliant but momentary splendour, to have been 
one of the most weak and insignificant. We learn from 
Herodotus, that when Xerxes meditated the invasion of 
Greece, he was encouraged in the design by the Aleua- 
dae, whom the historian terms kings of Thessaly, but 
who, probably, like the Pisistratidae, had only usurped 
the regal power, and, upon being deprived of their au¬ 
thority, sought the aid of the Persian monarch to re¬ 
cover their lost dominion. (Herod., 7,6.) It is evident 
that the Thessalian nation did not concur in their pro¬ 
jects, as we find they applied for assistance in this 
1330 


emergency to the rest of Greece; but, as it was not 
deemed expedient to join forces against the common 
enemy, from the impossibility of making any effectual 
resistance to the north of Thermopylae, the Thessali¬ 
ans were left to their own resources, and consequently 
submitted to the Persian arms (Herod., 7, 172, seqq.\ 
which Herodotus insinuates they did the more read¬ 
ily, that they might thus profit by foreign aid in aven¬ 
ging themselves on the Phocians, with whom they had 
been engaged in frequent but unsuccessful hostilities. 
(Herod., 8, 27.)—Little notice is taken by the Greek 
historians of the affairs of Thessaly, from the Persian 
invasion to the battle of Leuctra, except the fact men¬ 
tioned by Thucydides of an expedition having been 
undertaken by the Athenians, under the command of 
Myronides, with a view of reinstating Orestes, son of 
Echecratidas, prince of Thessaly, who had been ban¬ 
ished from his country. The Athenian general, on 
that occasion, advanced as far as Pharsalus ; but his 
progress being checked by the superiority of the Thes¬ 
salian cavalry, he was forced to retire without having 
accomplished any of the objects of the expedition. 
(Thucyd., 1, 111.)—The Thessalians appear to have 
taken no.part in the Peloponnesian war, though they 
might naturally be inclined to favour the Athenian 
cause, from their early alliance with that state. Hence 
it was that Brasidas felt it necessary to use such se¬ 
crecy and despatch in traversing their territory on his 
march towards Thrace. (Thucyd., 4, 78.) Some 
troops, which were afterward sent by the Lacedaemo¬ 
nians in order to re-enforce their army in that quarter, 
met with a more determined opposition, and were 
compelled to retrace their steps. (Thucyd., 5, 13.) 
On another occasion we find the Thessalians in league 
with the Boeotians, endeavouring to harass and inter¬ 
cept the march of Agesilaus through their country, on 
his return from Asia Minor. This attempt, however, 
was rendered abortive by the skilful manoeuvres of the 
Spartan prince ; and the cavalry of Thessaly, notwith¬ 
standing its boasted superiority, met with a decided 
repulse from the Lacedsemonian horse. (Xen., Hist. 
Gr., 4, 3, 2.)—While Sparta, however, was struggling 
to make head against the formidable coalition, of which 
Boeotia had taken the lead, Thessaly was acquiring a 
degree of importance and weight among the states of 
Greece which it had never possessed in any former 
period of its history. This was effected, apparently, 
solely by the energy and ability of Jason, who, from 
being chief or tyrant of Pherae, had risen to the rank 
of Tagus, or commander of the Thessalian states. By 
his influence and talents, the confederacy received the 
accession of several important cities ; and an imposing 
military force, amounting to 8000 cavalry, more than 
20,000 heavy-armed infantry, and light troops suffi¬ 
cient to oppose the world, had been raised and fitted 
by him for the service of the commonwealth. (Xen., 
Hist. Gr., 6, 1, 6.) His other resources being equally 
effective, Thessaly seemed destined, under his direc¬ 
tion, to become the leading power in Greece. W~ 
may estimate the influence that he had already ac¬ 
quired, from the circumstance of his having been call¬ 
ed upon to act as mediator between the Boeotians and 
Spartans after the battle of Leuctra. (Xen., Hist. 
Gr., 6, 4, 22.)—This brilliant period of political influ¬ 
ence and power was, however, of short duration, as 
Jason not long after lost his life by the hand of an as¬ 
sassin, during the celebration of some games which he 
had instituted ; and Thessaly, on his death, relapsed 
into that state of weakness and insignificance from 
which it had so lately emerged. (Xen., Hist. Gr., 6, 
4, 32.) The Thessalians, finding themselves unable 
to defend their liberties, continuafiy threatened by the 
tyrants of Pherae, successors of Jason, first sought the 
protection of the Boeotians, who sent to their aid a 
body of troops commanded by the brave Pelopidas. 
They next applied for assistance to Philip of Macedon, 





THE 


TH E 


who succeeded in defeating, and finally expelling these 
oppressors of their country ; and, by the important 
services thus rendered to the Thessalians, secured 
their lasting attachment to his interests, and finally ob¬ 
tained the presidency of the Amphictyonic council. 
(Polyb ., Exc., 9, 28.) Under his skilful management, 
the troops of Thessaly became a most important addi¬ 
tion to the resources he already possessed ; and to this 
powerful re-enforcement may probably be attributed 
the success which attended his campaign against the 
Boeotians and Athenians. On the death of Philip, the 
states of Thessaly, in order to testify their veneration 
for his memory, issued a decree, by which they con¬ 
firmed to his son Alexander the supreme station which 
he had held in their councils ; and also signified their 
intention of supporting his claims to the title of com¬ 
mander-in-chief of the whole Grecian confederacy. 
The long absence of that enterprising prince, while 
engaged in distant conquests, subsequently afforded 
his enemies an opportunity of detaching the Thessa¬ 
lians from his interests ; and the Lamiac war, which 
was chiefly sustained by that people against his gener¬ 
als Antipater and Craterus, had nearly proved fatal to 
the Macedonian influence, not only in Thessaly, but 
over the whole continent of Greece. By the conduct 
and ability of Antipater, however, the contest was 
brought to a successful issue, and Thessaly was pre¬ 
served to the Macedonian crown ( Polyb ., 4, 76) un¬ 
til the reign of Philip, son of Demetrius, from whom 
it was wrested by the Romans after the victory of 
Cynoscephalaa. All Thessaly was then declared free 
by a decree of the senate and people ( Liv ., 33, 32), but 
from that time it may be fairly considered as having 
passed under the dominion of Rome, though its pos¬ 
session was still disputed by Antiochus ( Liv ., 36, 9, 
seqq.), and again by Perseus, the son of Philip. Thes¬ 
saly was already a Roman province, when the fate of 
the empire of the world was decided in the plains of 
Pharsalia.—With the exception, perhaps, of Bceotia, 
this seems to have been the most fertile and productive 
part of Greece, in wine, oil, and corn, but more espe¬ 
cially the latter, of which it exported a considerable 
quantity to foreign countries. {Xen., Hist. Gr., 6, 1, 
4.— Theophr., Hist. Plant., 8, 7, et 10.) Hence, as 
might be expected, the Thessalians were the wealthi¬ 
est people of Greece ; nor were they exempt from 
those vices which riches and luxury generally bring in 
their train. ( Athen., 12, 5, p. 624.— Theopomp., ap. 
eund., 6, 17, p. 260.— Plat., Grit., p. 50.)—Like the 
Lacedaemonians, they employed slaves, who were 
named Penestae ; these probably were a remnant of 
the first tribes that inhabited the country, and that had 
been reduced to a state of servitude by their invaders. 
The Penestae formed no inconsiderable part of the pop¬ 
ulation, and not unfrequently endeavoured to free 
themselves from the state of oppression under which 
they groaned. {Xen., Hist. Gr., 6, 1, 4.— Aristot., 
de * Repub., 2, 9.— Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 
343, seqq.) 

Thessaliotts, a part of Thessaly lying below the 
Peneus, and to the west of Magnesia and Phthiotis. 

( Vid. Thessalia, near the beginning of the article.) 

Thessalonica, I. a city of Macedonia, at the north¬ 
eastern extremity of the Sinus Therma'icus. It was 
at first an inconsiderable place, under the name of 
Therme, by which it was known in the times of Herod¬ 
otus, Thucydides, ^Hschines {Fals. Legal., 29), and 
Scylax. The latter speaks also of the Thermaean 
Gulf. Therme was occupied by the Athenians prior 
to the Peloponnesian war, but was restored by them 
to Perdiccas shortly after. (Tliucyd., 1, 51.— Id., 2, 
29.) We are informed by Strabo that Cassander 
changed the name of Therme to Thessalonica, in hon¬ 
our <?f his wife, who was daughter of Philip. ( Epit ., 
7, p. 330.— Scymn., Ch., v. 625.— Zonar., 12, 26.) 
Stephanus of Byzantium asserts that the former name 


of Thessalonica was Halia, and quotes a passage Irons 
a work written by Lucillus of Tarrha on this place, to 
account for the reason which induced Philip to call his 
daughter Thessalonica. Cassander is said to have 
collected together the inhabitants of several neighbour¬ 
ing towns for the aggrandizement of the new city, 
which thus became one of the most important and 
flourishing ports of northern Greece. It surrendered 
to the Romans after the battle of Pydna {Liv., 44, 10), 
and was made the capital of the second region of Mace¬ 
donia. {Id., 45, 29.) Situated on the great Egnatian 
Way, 227 miles from Dyrrhachium, and possessed of 
an excellent harbour, well placed for commercial inter¬ 
course with the Hellespont and Asia Minor, it could 
not fail of becoming a very populous and flourishing 
city. The Christian will dwell with peculiar interest 
on the circumstances that connect the name of St. 
Paul with the history of this place. It will be seen, 
from the epistles which he addressed to his converts 
here, how successful his exertions had been, notwith¬ 
standing the opposition and enmity he had to encoun¬ 
ter from his misguided countrymen.—Pliny (4, 10) 
decribes Thessalonica as a free city ; and Lucian as 
the largest of the Macedonian towns. {Asin., 46.— 
Compare Ptol., p. 84.— Hierocl., p. 638.) Later his¬ 
torians name it as the residence of the prefect, and the 
capital of Ulyricum. {Theodoret, Hist. Eccles., 5, 
17.— Socrat., Hist. Eccles., c. 11.) For an account 
of the dreadful massacre that once took place here, 
consult the article Theodosius II.—The modern name 
of the place is Salonika. {Cramer's Anc. Greece, 
vol. 1, p. 236, seqq. —Compare Clarke's Travels, vol. 
7, p 443, seqq.) —II. A daughter of Philip, married 
to Cassander, and from whom the city of Thessalonica 
is said to have received its name. ( Vid. preceding ar¬ 
ticle.) 

Thestor, a son of Idmon and Laothoe, father to 
Calchas. From him Calchas is often called Thestori- 
des. {Ovid, Met., 12, 19.—Stat., Ach., 1, 497.) 

Thetis, one of the sea-deities, daughter of Nereus 
and Doris. To reward the virtue of Peleus {vid. Pe- 
leus), the king of the gods resolved to give him a god 
dess in marriage. The spouse selected for him was 
Thetis, who had been wooed by Jupiter himself and his 
brother Neptune; but Themis having declared that the 
child of Thetis would be greater than his sire, the 
gods withdrew. [Find., Isthm., 8, 58, seqq.) Ac¬ 
cording to another account, she was courted by Jupitei 
alone till he was informed by Prometheus that her son 
would dethrone him. {Apollod., 3, 13, 1.— Schol. ad 
II., 1, 519.) Others, again, maintain that Thetis, who 
was reared by Juno, would not listen to the suit of Ju¬ 
piter, and that the god, in his anger, condemned her to 
espouse a mortal {Apollod., 1. c.), or that Juno herself 
selected Peleus for her spouse. {II., 24, 59.— Apoll 
Rhod., 4, 793, seq.) Chiron, being made aware of 
the will of the gods, advised Peleus to aspire to the 
hand of the nymph of the sea, and instructed him how 
to win her. Peleus therefore lay in wait, and held 
her fast, though she changed herself into every variety 
of form, becoming fire, water, a serpent, and a lion. 
The wedding was solemnized on Mount Pelion : all 
the gods, except Discord {vid. Discordia), were invited, 
and they all, with this single exception, honoured it 
with their presence {II, 24, 62), and bestowed armour 
on the bridegroom. {II, 17, 195.— lb., 18, 84.) 
Chiron gave him an ashen spear, and Neptune the im¬ 
mortal Harpy-born steeds Balius and Xanthus. The 
muses sang, the Nereides danced, to celebrate thf* 
wedding, and Ganymedes poured out nectar for the 
guests. {Eurip., Iph. in Aul., 1036, seqq.-—Catul¬ 
lus, Nuptice Pel. et Thct.) The offspring of this 
union was the celebrated Achilles. When the goddess 
wished to make this her child immortal, the indiscreet 
curiosity of Peleus frustrated her design, and, leaving 
ler babe, she abandoned for ever the mansion of her 

1331 




THK 


THRACIA. 


husband, and returned to her sister Nereides. ( Vid. 
Achilles, where a full account is given.) 

Thirmida, a town in the interior of Numidia, where 
Hiempsal was slain by the soldiers of Jugurtha. (Sail., 
Jug., c. 12, 41.) The site is unknown. ( Mannert, 
Geogr., vol. 10, pt. 2, p. 372.) 

Tiiisbe, I. a beautiful female of Babylon, between 
whom and a youth named Pyramus, a native of the 
same place, a strong attachment subsisted. Their pa¬ 
rents, however, being averse to their union, they adopt¬ 
ed the expedient of receiving each other’s addresses 
through the chink of a wall which separated their 
dwellings. In the sequel, they arranged a meeting at. 
the tomb of Ninus, under a white mulberry-tree. 
Thisbe, enveloped in a veil, arrived first at the appoint¬ 
ed place ; but, terrified at the appearance of a lioness, 
she fled precipitately, and in her flight dropped her 
veil, which, lying in the animal’s path, was rent by it, 
and smeared with the blood that stained the jaws of 
tne lioness from the recent destruction of some cattle. 
Pyramus, coming soon after to the appointed place, be¬ 
held the torn and bloody veil, and, concluding that 
Thisbe had been destroyed by some savage beast, 
slew himself in despair. Thisbe, returning after a 
short interval to the spot where she had encountered 
the lioness, beheld the bleeding form of Pyramus, and 
threw herself upon the fatal sword, still warm, as it 
was, with the blood of her lover. According to the 
poets, the mulberry that overhung the fatal scene 
changed the hue of its fruit from snow-white to a 
blood-red colour. (Ovid, Met., 4, 55, seqq.) —II. A 
town of Boeotia, northwest of Ascra, and near the 
confines of Phocis. It was famed for its abounding 
in wild pigeons. (Horn., II., 2, 502.— Strabo, 411.) 
Xenophon writes the name in the plural, Thisbae. 
(Hist. Gr., 6, 4, 3.) The modern Kakosia marks its 
site. Sir W. Gell remarks, that the place is remark¬ 
able for the immense number of rock-pigeons still 
found here. This circumstance, he observes, is the 
more striking, as neither the birds, nor rocks so full of 
perforations, in which they build their nests, are found 
in any other part of the country. (Itin., p. 115.) 

Thoas, I. a king of the Tauric Chersonese when 
Orestes and Pylades, in concert with Iphigenia, car¬ 
ried off from that country the statue of the Tauric 
Diana. ( Vid. Orestes and Iphigenia.)—II. King of 
Lemnos, and father of Hypsipyle. (Vid. Hypsipyle.) 

Thorax, I. a mountain near Magnesia ad Maean- 
drum, in Lydia, on which the poet Daphidas was cru¬ 
cified for having written some satirical lines against 
Attalus, king of Pergamus. Hence the proverb, (j>v- 
Xuttov tov {Fxpana, “ Take care of Thorax." (Strab., 
647.— Cic.,de Fat., c. 3.— Erasmus, Chil. 2, cent. 4, 
n. 52.) 

Thornax, a mountain of Laconia, north of Sparta, 
and forming part of the range called Menelaium. It 
is now Thornika. On this mountain was a temple of 
Apollo, with a statue of the god, to which a quantity 
of gold was presented by Croesus (Herod., 1,69); but 
the Lacedaemonians made use of it afterward to adorn 
the more revered image of the Amyciean Apollo. 
(Pausan., 3, 10. — Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 3, 
p. 219.) 

Thoth, an Egyptian deity, corresponding in some 
degree to the Grecian Hermes and the Latin Mercu- 
rius. (Vid. remarks under the article Mercurius.) 

Thracrs, the inhabitants of Thrace. (Vid. Thra¬ 
cia.) 

Thracia, I. a name of frequent occurrence in the 
earliest history of Greek civilization, and designating, 
in all probability, not the country called Thracia in a 
later age, but the district subsequently known by the 
appellation of Pieria.— By far the most remarkable 
circumstance in the accounts that have come down to 
us respecting the earliest minstrels of Greece is, that 
several of them are called Thracians. It is utterly 
133? 


inconceivable that, in the later historic times, when 
the Thracians were contemned as a barbarian race 
a notion should have sprung up that the first civiliza¬ 
tion of Greece was due to them ; consequently we 
cannot doubt that this was a tradition handed down 
from a very early period. Now if we are to under¬ 
stand it to mean that Eumolpus, Orpheus, Musa3us, 
and Thamyris were the fellow-countrymen of those 
Edonians, Odrysians, and Odomantians who, in the 
historical ages, occupied the Thracian territory, and 
who spoke a barbarian language, that is, one unintelli¬ 
gible to the Greeks, we must despair of being able to 
comprehend these accounts of the ancient Thracian 
minstrels, and of assigning them a place in the history 
of Grecian civilization ; since it is manifest that at 
this early period, when there was ecarcely any inter 
course between different nations, or knowledge of 
foreign tongues, poets who sang in ah unintelligible 
language could not hav-e had more influence on the 
mental development of the people than the twittering 
of birds. Nothing but the dumb language of mimicry 
and dancing, and musical strains independent of ar¬ 
ticulate speech, can at such a period pass from nation 
to nation, as, for example, the Phrygian music passed 
over to Greece; whereas the Thracian minstrels are 
constantly represented as the fathers of poetry, which, 
of course, is necessarily combined with language. 
When we come to trace more precisely the country 
of these Thracian bards, we find that the traditions 
refer to Pieria, the district to the east of the Olympus 
range, to the north of Thessaly, and the south of Ema- 
thia or Macedonia. In Pieria, likewise, was Libe 
thra, where the Muses are said to have sung the la 
ment over the tomb of Orpheus: the ancient poets 
moreover, always make Pieria, not Thrace, the nativt 
place of the Muses, which last Homer clearly distill 
guishes from Pieria. (II., 14, 226.) It was not un 
til the Pierians were pressed in their own territory b^ 
the early Macedonian princes, that some of them cross 
ed the Strymom into Thrace proper, where Herodo¬ 
tus mentions the castles of the Pierians in the expe¬ 
dition of Xerxes (7, 112). It is, however, quite con¬ 
ceivable that, in early times, either on account of their 
close vicinity or because all the north was compre¬ 
hended under one name, the Pierians might, in south¬ 
ern Greece, have been called Thracians. These Pi¬ 
erians, from the intellectual relations which they main¬ 
tained with the Greeks, appear to have been a Grecian 
race; which supposition is also confirmed by the 
Greek names of their places, rivers, fountains, &c., 
although it is probable that, situated on the limits of 
the Greek nation, they may have borrowed largely 
from neighbouring tribes. (Muller's Dorians, vol. 1, 
p. 472, 488, 501.) A branch of the Phrygian nation, 
so devoted to an enthusiastic worship, once dwelt 
close to Pieria, at the foot of Mount Bermius, where 
King Midas was said to have taken the drunken Sile- 
nus in his rose-gardens. In the whole of this region 
a wild and enthusiastic worship of Bacchus was dif¬ 
fused among both men' and women. It may be easily 
conceived, that the excitement which the mind thus re¬ 
ceived contributed to prepare it for poetic enthusiasm. 
These same Thracians or Pierians lived, up to the time 
of the Doric and /Eolic migrations, in certain districts 
of Bceotia and Phocis. That they had dwelt about 
the Boeotian mountain of Helicon, in the district of 
Thespia? and Acra, was evident to the ancient histo¬ 
rians, as well from the traditions of the cities as from 
the agreement of many names of places in the country 
near Olympus (Libethrion, Pimpleis, Helicon, &c.) 
At the foot of Parnassus, too, in Phocis, was said to 
have been situate the city of Daulis, the seat of the 
Thracian king Tereus, who is known by his connex¬ 
ion with the Athenian king Pandion, and by the fa¬ 
ble of the metamorphosis of his wife Procne into a 
nightingale.—From what has been said, it appears suf- 




THRACIA. 


T H R 


ficiently clear that these Pierians or Thracians, dwell¬ 
ing about Helicon and Parnassus, in the vicinity of 
Attica, are chiefly signified .when a Thracian origin is 
ascribed to the mythic bards of Attica. ( Midler, Hist. 
Gr. Lit., p. 26, seqq )—II. A large tract of country 
between the Strymon and the Euxine from west to 
east, and between the chain of Mount Haemus and the 
shores of the JEgean and Propontis from north to 
south Such, at least, are the limits assigned to it by 
Herodotus and Thucydides, though great changes took 
place in ages posterior to these historians. That the 
Thracians, however, were at one period much more 
widely disseminated than the confines here assigned 
them would lead us to infer, is evident from the facts 
recorded in the earliest annals of Grecian history rela¬ 
tive to their migrations to the southern provinces of 
that country. "We have the authority of Thucydides 
for their establishment in Phocis (2, 49). Strabo (p. 
401, 410) certifies their occupation of Boeotia. And 
numerous writers attest their settlement in Eleusis of 
Attica, under Eumolpus, whose early wars with Erech- 
theus are related by Thucydides (2, 15), Pausanias 
1. 38), and others. But these, in all probability, are 
the Thracians alluded to under No. I. Nor were 
their colonies confined to the European continent 
alone ; for, allured by the richness and beauty of the 
Asiatic soil and clime, they crossed in numerous bod¬ 
ies the narrow strait which parted them from Asia Mi¬ 
nor, and occupied the shores of Bithynia, and the fer¬ 
tile plains of Mysia and Phrygia. {Herod., 7, 73.— 
Strabo, 303.) On the other hand, a great revolution 
seems to have been subsequently effected in Thrace 
by a vast migration of the Teucri and Mysi, who, as 
Herodotus asserts, conquered the whole of Thrace, 
and penetrated as far as the Adriatic to the west, and 
to the river Peneus towards the south, before the Tro¬ 
jan war.—Whence and at what period the name of 
Thracians was first applied to the numerous hordes 
which inhabited this portion of the European continent, 
is left open to conjecture. Bochart and others have 
supposed that it was derived from Tiraz, the son of 
Japheth ; certain it is, we find the name already ex¬ 
isting in the time of Homer, who represents the Thra¬ 
cians as joining the forces of Priam in the siege of 
Troy, under the conduct of Rhesus, their chief {II., 10, 
435), said to be the son of the river Strymon. {Eurip , 
Rhes. Arg.) — Herodotus affirms that the Thracians 
were, next to the Indians, the most numerous and pow¬ 
erful people in the world ; and that, if all the tribes had 
been united under one monarch or under the same gov¬ 
ernment, they would have been invincible; but from 
their subdivision into petty clans, distinct from each 
other, they were rendered insignificant. {Herod., 5, 
3.) They are said by the same historian to have 
been first subjugated by Sesostris (2, 103), and, after 
the lapse of many centuries, they were reduced under 
the subjection of the Persian monarchy, by Megaba- 
zus, general of Darius. {Herod., 5, 2.) But, on the 
failure of the several expeditions undertaken by that 
sovereign and his son Xerxes against the Greeks, the 
Thracians apparently recovered their independence, 
and a new empire was formed in that extensive coun¬ 
try, under the dominion of Sitalces, king of the Odry- 
sse, one of the most numerous and warlike of their 
tribes. Thucydides, who has entered into considera¬ 
ble detail on this subject, observes, that of all the em¬ 
pires situated between the Ionian Gulf and the Eux¬ 
ine, this was the most considerable both in revenue 
and opulence : its military force was, however, very 
inferior to that of Scythia, both in strength and num¬ 
bers. The empire of Sitalces extended along the 
coast, from Abdera to the mouths of the Danube, a 
distance of four days’ and nights’ sail ; and in the in¬ 
terior, from the sources of the Strymon to Byzantium, 
a journey of thirteen days. The founder of this em¬ 
pire appears to have been Teres {Herod., 7, 137.— 


Thucyd., 2, 29), whose son Sitalces, at the instiga¬ 
tion of the Athenians, with whom he was allied, un¬ 
dertook an expedition into Macedonia, Having raised 
a powerful army of Thracians and Paeonians, the sov¬ 
ereign of the Odrysae penetrated into the territory of 
Perdiccas, who, unable to oppose in the field so formi¬ 
dable an antagonist, confined his resistance to the de¬ 
fence of the fortified towns ; and by this mode of war¬ 
fare he at length wearied out the Thracian prince, 
who was persuaded by his nephew Seuthes to abandon 
the expedition and return to his dominions. In re¬ 
turn for this service, Seuthes, we are told, received in 
marriage Stratonice, the sister of Perdiccas. {Thu¬ 
cyd., 2, 97, scqq.) Sitalces, some years after, having 
been defeated and slain in a battle with the Triballi, 
another considerable Thracian clan, was succeeded by 
Seuthes, who carried the power of the Odrysian em 
pire to its highest pitch. {Thucyd., 4, 101.— Id., 2, 
97.) The splendour of this monarchy was, however, 
of short duration, as on the death of Seuthes it began 
gradually to decline ; and we learn from Xenophon 
that, on the arrival of the ten thousand in Thrace, the 
power of Medocus, or Amadocus, the reigning prince 
of the Odrysas, was very inconsiderable. {Anab., 7, 
2, 17. — Id. ibid., 3, 7.) — When Philip, the son of 
Amyntas, ascended the throne of Macedon, the Thra¬ 
cians were governed by Cotys, a weak prince, whose 
territories became an easy prey to his artful and enter¬ 
prising neighbour. The whole of that part of Thrace 
situate between the Strymon and the Nestus was thus 
added to Macedonia, whence some geographical wri¬ 
ters term it Macedonia Adjecta. Cotys having been 
assassinated not long after, was succeeded by his son 
Chersobleptes, whose possessions were limited to the 
Thracian Chersonese ; and even of this he was event¬ 
ually stripped by the Athenians {Diod. Sic., 16, 34.— 
Demosth. in Aristocr., p. 678), while Philip seized on 
all the maritime towns between the Nestus and that 
peninsula. On Alexander’s accession to the throne, 
the Triballi were by far the most numerous and pow¬ 
erful people of Thrace ; and, as they bordered on the 
Paeonians and extended to the Danube, they were for¬ 
midable neighbours on this the most accessible fron¬ 
tier of Macedonia. Alexander commenced his reign 
by an invasion of their territory ; and, having defeated 
them in a general engagement, pursued them across 
the Danube, whither they had retreated, and compell¬ 
ed them to sue for peace. After his death, Thrace 
fell to the portion of Lysimachus, one of his generals, 
by whom it was erected into a monarchy. On his de¬ 
cease, however, it revolted to Macedonia, and remain¬ 
ed under the dominion of its sovereigns until the con¬ 
quest of that country by the Romans. The divisions 
of Thrace under the Roman sway were as follows : 1. 
Thracia, a name applied, in a limited sense, to the 
country around the Hebrus in the earlier part of its 
course : the capital was Philippopolis.—2. Hcemimon- 
tus or JEmimontus, including the country along the 
Hebrus in the eastern part of its course, and extend¬ 
ing northward to Haemus ; it stretched off also to the 
northeast until it struck the coast: the capital was Ha- 
drianopolis.—3. Europa, the coast along the Propon 
tis and Hellespont, including the Thracian Cherso¬ 
nese : the capital was Perinthus.—4. Rhodopa, the 
southern coast from the Sinus Melas to the mouth of 
the Nestus.—5. Moesia Secunda, north of Ha?mus.—6. 
Scythia, below the Danube, near its mouth. {Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 284.— Mannert, Geogr ., 
vol. 7, p. 69.) 

Thraseas, Paetus, a Roman senator in the reign ol 
Nero, distinguished for his integrity and patriotism. 
He was a native of Patavium, educated in stoical ten¬ 
ets, and a great admirer of Cato of Utica, whose life 
he wrote. His contempt of the base adulation of the 
senate, and his open and manly animadversions on the 
enormities of the emperor, were the occasion of his 

1333 





T H R 


THU 


Demg condemned to death. He died A.D. 66, in the 
13th year of Nero’s reign. Tacitus says that Nero 
endeavoured to extirpate virtue itself by the destruc¬ 
tion of Psetus and Soranus. ( Juv ., 5, 36.— Martial, 
1, 19.— Tac., Ann., 15, 16.) 

Thrasybulus, an Athenian general, one of the 
commanders in the naval battle of Arginusae. He 
subsequently headed the party from Phyla which 
overthrew the government of the thirty tyrants. Thras¬ 
ybulus was afterward sent with an Athenian fleet to 
the coast of Asia, where he gained some considerable 
advantages. Having, after this, proceeded to the col¬ 
lection of tribute from the towns, and having, in the 
course of this, come to the city of Aspendus, the in¬ 
habitants of this place were so exasperated by some 
irregularity of his soldiers, that they attacked his camp 
at night, and he was killed in his tent. Thrasybulus 
was a man of tried honesty and patriotism, and had 
shown uncommon ability in some very trying situa¬ 
tions. The only cloud that rests upon his memory is 
an appearance of having concurred with Theramenes 
in the accusation of their six colleagues at Arginusse, 
if not actively, at least by withholding the testimony 
that might have saved them : but the evidence which 
we have is not sufficient to warrant us in decidedly 
fixing so dark a stain on a character otherwise so 
pure. {Corn. Nep., Vit. Thrasyb. — Diod. Sic., 13, 98. 
— Id., 13, 101.— Id., 14, 33; 94, 99.) 

Thrasyllus, one of the Athenian commanders at 
the battle of Arginusse, condemned to death with his 
colleagues for omitting to collect and bury the dead 
after the action. {Vid. Arginusaa.) 

Thrasymenus Lacus. Vid. Trasymenus Lacus. 

Thriambus, one of the surnames of Bacchus. 

Thrinakia, an island mentioned in the Odyssey, on 
which the flocks and herds of the Sun-god fed, under 
the care of his daughters Phaethusa and Lampetia, 
and to which Ulysses came immediately after escaping 
Sylla and Charybdis. On reaching this sacred island, 
his companions, in defiance of the warning of Ulysses, 
slaughtered some of the oxen while he slept. The 
hero, on awaking, was filled with horror and despair at 
what they had done ; and the displeasure of the gods 
was manifested by prodigies ; for the hides crept along 
the ground, and the flesh lowed on the spits. They fed 
for six days on the sacred cattle ; on the seventh the 
storm which had driven them to Thrinakia fell, and they 
left the island ; but, as soon as they had lost sight of land, 
a terrible west wind, accompanied by thunder, light¬ 
ning, and pitchy darkness, came on. Jupiter struck the 
ship with a thunderbolt: it went to pieces, and all the 
sacrilegious crew were drowned.—The resemblance 
between Thrinakia and Trinaciia, a name of Sicily, 
has induced both ancients and moderns to acquiesce 
in the opinion of the two islands being identical. 
Against this opinion it has been observed, that Thri¬ 
nakia was a desert isle {vyaoq epygy. — Od., 12, 351), 
that is, an uninhabited isle ; and that, during the whole 
time that Ulysses and his men were in it, they did not 
meet with any one, and could procure no food but 
birds and fish ; that it is called “ the excellent isle of 
the God" {Odyss ., 12, 261), whose peculiar property 
it therefore must have been; that, according to the anal¬ 
ogy of the Odyssey, it must have been a small island, 
for such were .Eaea, Ogygia, and all we meet; not 
one of which circumstances agrees with Sicily. It 
seems, therefore, the more probable supposition, that 
hp poet regarded Thrinakia as an islet, about the 
same size as those of Circe and Calypso, belonging to 
the Sun-god, and tenanted only by his flocks and 
herds, and his two daughters their keepers. He must 
also have conceived it to lie much more to the west 
than Sicily, for it could not have been more than the 
third day after leaving HCaea that Ulysses arrived at 
it. (j Keightley's Mythology, p. 273, seq.) 

Thronium, I. a town of the Locri Epicnemidii, in 
1334 


Greece, noticed by Homer as being near the nver 
Boagrius. {II., 2, 533.) It was thirty stadia from 
Scarphea, and at some distance from the coast, as ap¬ 
pears from Strabo (426). Thronium was taken by tha 
Athenians during the Peloponnesian war {Thucyd , 2, 
26), and several years after it fell into the hands of 
Onomarchus, the Phocian general, who enslaved the 
inhabitants. {Diod. Sic., 12, 44.— xEsch., de Fals. 
Legat., p. 46.— Lzv , 32, 36.— Polyb., 17, 9, 3.) Dr. 
Clarke conjectured that Thronium was situated at 
Bodonitza, a small town on the chain of Mount (Eta; 
but Sir W. Gell is of opinion that this point is too far 
distant from the sea, and that it accords rather with an 
ancient ruin above Longachi {Itin., p. 235); and this 
is in unison also with the statement of Meletias the 
Greek geographer, who cites an inscription discovered 
there, in which the name of Thronium occurs (vol. 2, 
p. 323.— Cramer's Anc. Greece , vol. 2, p. 114).—II. 
A town of Illyricum, at some distance from the coast 
above Oricum, and near another place called Amantia. 
Both these places are said to have been founded here 
by the Abantes, in conjunction with the Locrians, they 
having been driven hither by adverse'winds on their 
return from Troy. {Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 
65.) 

Thucydides, I. a celebrated Greek historian, born 
in Attica, in the village of Halinusia, and in the tribe of 
Leontium, B.C. 471. His father’s name was Olorus, 
or, as some write the name, Orolus, and on the moth¬ 
er’s side he was descended from Cimon, son of Milti- 
ades. Of the boyhood and education of the historian 
we have little information. The first remarkable cir¬ 
cumstance of his early youth is one which the biogra¬ 
phers of Thucydides never fail to relate. It is stated, 
on the authority of Lucian {de conscnb. Hist., c. 16), 
Suidas, and Photius, that Thucydides, when a youth 
of fifteen, stood with his father near Herodotus when 
the latter was reciting his history at the Olympic festi¬ 
val ; and was so much interested with the work, and 
affected at the applause with which it was received, 
that he shed tears. On observing which, Herodotus 
exclaimed to his father, ’O pya y (pvaiq tov viov gov 
it pop ru padygara, “ Your son burns with ardour for 
learning.” This recitation is proved by Dodwell to 
have taken place at the 81st Olympiad, B.C. 456. 
Now, if what is said by Pamphila, a female author of the 
age of Nero, be true, the age of Thucydides at the peri¬ 
od of this recitation was fifteen. The grounds on which 
the whole account rests have been carefully examined 
by Poppo, Dahlmann, Goller, and other German critics, 
and the story has been pronounced fabulous. (Com¬ 
pare remarks under the article Herodotus.)—Marcelli- 
nus informs us that the preceptor of Thucydides, in 
oratory and rhetoric in general, was Antipho, on whom 
the historian has passed a short but significant enco¬ 
mium in a part of his work (8, 68). In philosophy, 
and the art of thinking and reasoning, he was instruct¬ 
ed by Anaxagoras. Of the manner in which he spent 
his early manhood we have no certain information. 
That he served the usual time in the rcepinoTiOL, or 
militia, we cannot doubt. How he spent the period 
from his militia-service to that of his appointment to 
command the fleet in Thrace we have no way of as¬ 
certaining. An ancient anonymous biographer of the 
historian says that he had participated in the Atheni¬ 
an colony sent to Thurium. But if he had by inherit- 
ance any considerable property in Thrace, which is 
highly probable, no reason can be imagined why he 
should have taken part in this polony. If, however, 
that statement be correct, Dodwell seems to have 
proved the circumstance must have taken place in his 
twenty-seventh year. Why he went, or how long 
he stayed, we are not informed. If he went at. all, he 
probably did not remain very long ; and there is no 
doubt that he had returned to his country long be¬ 
fore the commencement of the Peloponnesian war, 




THUCYDIDES. 


THUCYDIDES. 


otherwise it would make his marriage with the Thra¬ 
cian lady of Scaptesyle (by which he obtained rich 
property iii mines, &c.) an improbably late one. 
Whether he was employed in military service in the 
first seven years of the war is uncertain; it is prob¬ 
able, however, that he was. In the eighth year of the 
war and the forty-seventh of his age, B.C. 434, he was 
appointed to the command of the Athenian fleet off the 
coast of Thrace, which included the direction of affairs 
in the various Athenian colonies there. He occupied 
with his fleet a station at Thasus, and, being suddenly 
summoned to the defence of Amphipolis, ho hastened 
thither ; but, owing to unavoidable circumstances, was 
too late by only half a day. He, ho we vet, succeeded 
in saving Eion, though, had he not arrived at the time 
he did, the place would have been occupied by Brasi- 
das the very next morning. It is plain, that to save 
Amphipolis was a physical impossibility, and great ac¬ 
tivity was used in saving E'ion. He therefore merit¬ 
ed praise rather than censure. And yet the Athenian 
people, out of humour with the turn which things were 
taking in Thrace, condemned him to banishment; 
though, with a magnanimity scarcely paralleled, he 
makes no mention of it in his history of that period, 
and only touches upon it incidentally afterward, in or¬ 
der to show his advantages for arriving at the truth, 
and then without a word of complaint. Discharged 
from all duties, and freed from all public avocations, 
he was left without any attachments but to simple 
truth, and proceeded to qualify himself for commemo¬ 
rating exploits in which he could have no share. On 
his banishment he retired to Scaptesyle, the property 
of his wife, and thus dedicated his leisure to the for¬ 
mation of his great work, and (as Marcellinus, the an¬ 
cient biographer, says) employed his wealth liberally in 
procuring the best information of the events of the 
war, both from Athens and Lacedaamon. How he 
passed the period of his exile may, then, be very well 
imagined ; nor is it necessary to fill up that space, as 
Dodwell does, with such events as “ the death of Per- 
diccas, king of Macedon ; the accession of Archelaus, 
his successor; the end of the ifkuda GTparevoLyoq of 
Thucydidesfor his military life had virtually been 
defunct eighteen years before. As to the period of his 
exile, it was, as he himself tells us (5, 26), twenty 
years ; and his return is, by some, fixed at 403 B.C., 
at the time when an amnesty was passed for all offen¬ 
ces against the state ; by others, to the year before, 
when Athens was taken by Lysander, and the exiles 
mostly returned. The former opinion has been shown 
by Krueger to be alone the correct one ; “ for,” argues 
he, “ since Thucydides says that he was banished for 
twenty years in the eighth year of the war, which also, 
he affirms, lasted twenty-one years, it follows that his 
recall must have been in the year after Athens was ta¬ 
ken.” To which it may be added, that the high-mind¬ 
ed historian would have disdained to avail himself of 
such an unauthorized way of returning to his country 
as that eagerly snatched at by the bulk of the exiles, but 
would wait until the public amnesty should give him 
a full right to do so. Perhaps, however, the real truth 
of the matter is what Pausanias relates, who mentions 
among the antiquities a statue to the memory of one 
(Enobius, for being the mover of a separate decree of 
the assembly for the recall of Thucydides (1, 23) It 
is probable that, besides the general amnesty by which 
the former exiles were permitted to return, a particu¬ 
lar decree was made for Thucydides ; and, considering 
the gross injustice of his banishment, this was no more 
than he had a right to expect. It is not necessary to 
notice all those many improbable, and sometimes con¬ 
tradictory accounts concerning the life of Thucydides 
which are found in some oi the later Greek writers ; 
as, for instance, Pausanias, who, besides making Thu¬ 
cydides descended from Pisistratus (which is incon¬ 
sistent with plain facts, for the genealogies of Miltiades 


and Pisistratus show no sort of affinity), relates that 
Thucydides was assassinated immediately on his re¬ 
turn. And Zopyrus, referred to by Marcellinus. re¬ 
lates that such an event took place, but some years af¬ 
terward. Had, however, that really been the case, it 
would have been perfectly known, and could scarcely 
but have been alluded to by Cicero, or some other 
great writer of antiquity. Poppo, indeed, maintains 
that he lived many years after his return ; but his rea¬ 
son (namely, that after his return he digested his his¬ 
tory into order) is not convincing. For it surely would 
not require many years to do that, especially as the 
last book was, after all, left in a rough and undigested 
state. Besides, the probability is rather that a man of 
sixty-seven should not live many years. The strongest 
proof adduced is, that the historian (3, 116) makes 
mention of the third eruption of .Etna, which is said to 
have taken place B.C. 395. But this argument de¬ 
pends upon the interpretation of the words of that pas¬ 
sage, which probably gave a countenance to the above 
opinion. It seems, therefore, to be uncertain how 
many years he lived after his recall from banishment. 
The manner in which he speaks of the conclusion of 
the war, and his having lived throughout the whole 
of it in the full enjoyment of his faculties, strongly 
confirms the statement of Pamphila, from which it fol¬ 
lows that he was sixty-seven years old at its conclu¬ 
sion. And as it seems probable that he would not ar¬ 
range the work before the conclusion of the war, so the 
moulding of the whole into its present form might con¬ 
sume some years of the life of an aged man. Yet its 
being at last left incomplete is unfavourable to the opin¬ 
ion of Dodwell, that Thucydides lived beyond his 
eightieth year. ( Bloomfield's Thucydides, vol. 1, p. 
16, seqq .)—The title of the work is as follows : hvy- 
ypafy rrepl rov noTiepov tcjv TleTiOTcovvyaiov nai ’Ady- 
vetiuv (“History of the war between the Peloponne¬ 
sians and Athenians ”). It is in eight books, and ex¬ 
tends to near the close of the twenty-first year of the 
war ; but the eighth book is not so finished as the rest, 
and, indeed, there is a gradual decline of vigour and 
finished execution after the first five books. This fall¬ 
ing off and abrupt termination of his history may 
best be explained by a gradual deprivation of health, 
terminating in a sudden death. —With respect to the 
temper and disposition of Thucydides, it was grave, 
cool, and candid. “ He seems,” Smith observes, “ to 
have been all judgment and no passion.” He evident¬ 
ly had nothing choleric or resentful in his constitution. 
His notions in philosophy and religion being above the 
conception of the vulgar, procured him, as in the case 
of Anaxagoras, Socrates, Pericles, and others, the 
name of an atheist, “ which,” says Hobbes, they be¬ 
stowed upon all men that thought not as they did of 
their ridiculous religion.”—As regards the merits of 
Thucydides as an historian, we may copy the words 
of the same writer. “ For the faith of this history I 
shall have the less to say, in respect that no man hath 
ever yet called it into question. Nor, indeed, could 
any man justly doubt of the truth of that writer, in 
whom they had nothing at all to suspect of those things 
that could have caused him either voluntarily to lie or 
ignorantly to deliver an untruth. He overtasked not 
his strength by undertaking a history of things long be¬ 
fore his tune, and of which he was not able to inform 
himself. He was a man that had as much means, in 
regard both of his dignity and his wealth, to find the 
truth of what he relateth, as was needful for a man to 
have. He used as much diligence in search of the 
truth (noting everything while it was fresh in his mem¬ 
ory, and laying out his wealth upon intelligence) as was 
possible for a man to use.— He affected, least of any 
man, the acclamations of popular authorities, and wrote 
not his history to win applause, as was the use of that 
age, but for a monument to instruct the ages to come, 
which he professeth himself, and entitleth his beak 

1335 





THUCYDIDES. 


THU 


K.T7jfj,a eq a el, a possession for everlasting. He was 
far from the necessity of servile writers, either to fear 
or to flatter. In fine, if the truth of a history did ever 
appear by the manner of relating, it doth so in this his¬ 
tory.”—Smith also has a discourse on the qualifications 
of Thucydides as an historian which merits perusal. 
He therein shows him to have had all the qualifica¬ 
tions that can be thought necessary ; namely, “ to be 
abstracted from every kind of connexion with persons 
or things that are the subject matter ; to be of no coun¬ 
try, no party ; clear of all passion, independent in ev¬ 
ery light; entirely unconcerned who is pleased or dis¬ 
pleased with what he writes ; the servant only of rea¬ 
son and truth. He was wholly unconcerned about the 
opinion of the generation in which he lived. He wrote 
for posterity. He appealed to the future world for 
the value of the present he had made them. The 
judgment of succeeding ages has approved the com¬ 
pliment he thus made to their understandings. So 
long as there are truly great princes, able statesmen, 
sound politicians—politicians that do not rend asun¬ 
der politics from good order and the general happiness, 
he will meet with candid and grateful acknowledg¬ 
ments of his merits.”—Thucydides has been sometimes 
censured for the introduction of harangues into his his¬ 
tory, and this has been made an argument, by some, 
against his general veracity as an historian. The truth 
is, however, that the writer never meant them to be re¬ 
garded by the reader as having been actually pronoun¬ 
ced by the speakers in question : they serve merely 
as vehicles for conveying his own sentiments on pass¬ 
ing events, for painting more distinctly the characters 
of those whom he brings forward in the course of his 
narrative, and for relating circumstances to which he 
could not well refer in the main body of his history. 
The harangues of Thucydides impart frequently to 
his work a kind of dramatic character, and agreeably 
interrupt the monotony occasioned by his peculiar ar¬ 
rangement of events. Demosthenes was so ardent an 
admirer of them, that he is said to have copied them 
over ten times, in order to appropriate to himself the 
style of this great writer. The finest is the funeral 
oration of Pericles, in honour of those who had fallen 
in the service of their country.—Another charge made 
against Thucydides is the division of his work into 
years, and even into seasons, for he divides each year 
into two seasons, summer and winter. This arrange¬ 
ment, which Dionysius of Halicarnassus has severely 
blamed, imparts to the work a kind of monotonous 
character; and yet, on the other hand, it must be con¬ 
fessed, that if this plan be in some respects a defective 
one, it is less so for the history of a single war, which 
naturally divides itself into campaigns, than it would 
be for a work intended to embrace the history of a 
people, or of some extended period of time.—Thucyd¬ 
ides wrote in the Attic dialect : after him no histori¬ 
an ventured to employ any other, and his work is re¬ 
garded as the canon, or perfection of Atticism. His 
style, however, is not without its faults : his concise¬ 
ness sometimes degenerates into obscurity, particularly 
in his harangues ; nor does he seem to be always very 
solicitous about the elegance of his diction, but more 
ambitious to communicate information than to please 
the ear. Against these and similar charges, of care¬ 
less collocation, embarrassed periods, and solecistic 
phraseology, which Dionysius, in particular, is most 
active in adducing, the historian has been very suc¬ 
cessfully defended by one of his recent editors, Poppo. 
Two among the Roman writers have taken Thucyd¬ 
ides for their model, namely, Sallust and Tacitus ; 
but they have imitated him each in a different manner. 
Tacitus has appropriated to himself the general man¬ 
ner of the Greek historian, his conciseness, his depth 
of thought; Sallust has conformed to him in his sen¬ 
tences and phrases more than in his ideas.—The most 
celebrated parts of Thucydides are the oration of Per- 
1336 


icles, already referred to, and the description of the 
plague which ravaged Athens during the summer of 
01. 87.4, B.C. 429. The fearful picture which Thu¬ 
cydides here traces has been imitated by Lucretius and 
Virgil, particularly the former.—The best editions of 
Thucydides are, that of Hudson, Oxon., 1696, fol. ; 
that of Duker, Amst., 1731, 2 vols. fol.; that of Got- 
leber and Bauer, Lips., 1790-1804, 2 vols. 4to ; that 
of Haack, Stend., 1819, 2 vols. 8vo, reprinted by Val- 
py, Loncl., 1823, 3 vols. 8vo ; that of Bekker, Oxon., 
1821, 4 vols. 8vo ; that of Arnold, Oxford , 1830--5, 
3 vols. 8vo ; and especially that of Poppo, Lips., 
1821-37, 12 vols. 8vo. — Dr. Bloomfield, vicar cl 
Bisbrooke, Rutland, England, has published a small 
edition with English notes, in 3 vols. 12mo, and also 
a new English version of the historian, with copious 
and valuable notes, in 3 vols. 8vo, Lond., 1819.—II. 
A poet, mentioned by Marcellinus, the biographer of 
Thucydides. (Compare Poppo, Proleg., 1, p. 27.— 
Goeller, Vit. Thucyd.) 

Thule, an island in the most northern parts of the 
German Ocean, called ultima, “ farthest,” on account 
of its remote situation, and itts being regarded as the 
limit of geographical knowledge in this quarter. The 
Thule mentioned by Tacitus in his life of Agricola (c. 
10), and which that commander discovered in circum¬ 
navigating Britain, coincides with Mainland , one of 
the Shetland Isles. The Thule spoken of by Pytheas, 
the ancient Greek navigator, was different from this. 
The relation of Pytheas is rather romantic in some of 
its features; as, for example, when he states that its 
climate was neither earth, air, nor sea, but a chaotic 
confusion of these three elements : from other parts 
of his narrative, however, many have been led to sup¬ 
pose that this Thule was modern Iceland or Norway. 
Mannert declares himself in favour of the former ; 
D’Anville opposes it. Ptolemy places the middle of 
this Thule in 63° of latitude, and says that at the time 
of the equinoxes the days were twenty-four hours, 
which could not have been true at the equinoxes, but 
must have referred to the solstices, and therefore this 
island is supposed to have been in 66° 30' latitude, 
that is, under the polar circle. The Thule of which 
Procopius speaks, D’Anville makes to correspond with 
the modern canton of Tylemark, in Norway. The 
details of Procopius, however, seem to agree rather 
with the accounts that have been given of the state of 
ancient Lapland. Some modern geographers think 
that by Thule the ancients mean merely Scandinavia, 
of which their knowledge was very limited. ( Man¬ 
nert , Geogr., vol. 1, p. 78.) 

Thurii, a city of Lucania, in Lower Italy, n^ar the 
site of the more ancient Sybaris, and which was found¬ 
ed by a colony from Athens about fifty-five years after 
the overthrow of the latter city. Two celebrated 
characters are named among those who joined this ex¬ 
pedition, which wa3 collected from different parts of 
Greece; these were Herodotus, and Lysias the ora¬ 
tor. {Aristot., de Rhet., 3, 9.— Dion. Hal., de Lys., 
p. 452.— Suid., s. v. r H poSoroq et A vcnaq.) Diodorus 
gives us a very full account of the foundation of this 
town, the form and manner in which it was built, and 
the constitution it adopted: its laws were framed 
chiefly after the code of the celebrated legislators Za 
leucus and Charondas. ( Diod. Sic., 12, 10.) The 
government of Thurii seems to have excited the at¬ 
tention of Aristotle on more than one occasion. (Po 
lit., 5, 4, seqq.) This Athenian colony attained a 
considerable degree of prosperity and power: it en 
tered into an alliance with Crotona, and engaged ir 
hostilities with Tarentum, in order to obtain posses 
sion of the territory which formerly belonged to Siria 
( Strabo , 264.) In the Peloponnesian war, the Thu- 
rians are mentioned as allied to the Athenians, and as 
furnishing them with some few ships and men for thei; 
Sicilian expedition. {Thucyd., 7, 35.) Subsequent 




THY 


TIB 


ly, the attacks of the Lucani, from whom they sus¬ 
tained a severe defeat, and, at a still later period, the 
enmity of the Tarentines, so reduced the power and 
prosperity of the Thurians, that they were compelled 
to seek the aid of Rome, which was thus involved in 
a war with Tarentum. About eighty-eight years af¬ 
terward, Thurii, being nearly deserted, received a Ro¬ 
man colony, and took the name of Copia. ( Strab., 
263.— Liv., 35, 9.) Caesar, however, calls it Thurii, 
and designates it a municipal town. {Bell. Civ., 3, 
22.) The remains of ancient Thurii must be placed 
between the site of ancient Sybaris and Terra Nova. 
{Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol. 2, p. 359.) 

Thurinus, a name given to Augustus when he was 
young, either because some of his progenitors were 
natives of Thurii, or because his father Octavius had 
been successful in some military operations near Thu¬ 
rii a short time after the birth of Augustus. ( Sue - 
ton., Vit. Aug., 7. —Consult Oudendorp, ad loc.) 

Thyamis, I. a river of Epirus, anciently dividing 
Thresprotia from the district of Cestrine. {Thucyd., 
1, 46.) The historian Phylarchus, as Athenasus re¬ 
ports (3, 3), affirmed that the Egyptian bean was never 
known to grow out of Egypt except in a marsh close 
to this river, and then only for a short period.—It ap¬ 
pears from Cicero that Atticus had an estate on the 
banks of the Thyamis. {Ad. Att., 7, 7. — Compare 
Pausan , 1, 11.) The modern name of this stream is 
the Calama. {Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 108.) 
—II. A pro'motory of Epirus, near the river of the 
same name, now Cape Nissi. 

Thyatira (rd Qvarelpa), a city of Lydia, near the 
northern confines, situate on the small river Lycus, 
not far from its source. According to Pliny (5, 29), 
its original name was Pelopia; and Strabo (625) makes 
it to have been founded by a colony of Macedonians. 
It was enlarged by Seleucus Nicator, and was select¬ 
ed as a place of arms by Andronicus, who declared 
himself heir to the kingdom of Pergamus after the 
death of Attalus. Thyatira, according to Strabo, be¬ 
longed originally to Mysia ; from the time of Pliny, 
however, we find it ascribed to Lydia. Its ruins are 
now called Ak-Hisar, or the white castle. This was 
one of the churches mentioned in the Revelations.— 
For an interesting account of the church in Thyatira, 
consult Milner's History of the Seven Churches of 
Asia, p. 277, seqq , Land., 1832. 

Thyestes, a son of Pelops and Hippodamia, and 
grandson of Tantalus ; for the legend relating to whom, 
consult the article Atreus. 

Thymbra. a plain in Troas, through which a small 
river, called Thymbrius, flows in its course to the 
Scamander. According to some, the river Thymbrius 
is now the Kamar-sou. {Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 
1, p. 102.) Apollo had a temple here, whence he 
was surnamed Thymbrceus. (17., 10, 430. \irg., 
JEn., 3, 85.— Eurip., Rhes., 224.) It was in this 
temple that Achilles is said to have been mortally 
wounded by Paris. {Eustath. ad II., 10, 433. 
Serv. ad .En., 1. c.) 

Thymbrius, a surname of Apollo. {Vid. Thym¬ 
bra.) . 

Thymcetes, I. a. king of Athens, son of Oxinthas, 
the last of the descendants of Theseus who reigned 
at Athens. He was deposed because he refused to 
meet Xanthus, the Boeotian monarch, in single com¬ 
bat. Melanthus the Messenian accepted the challenge, 
slew Xanthus, and was rewarded with the kingdom of 
Attica. {Vid. Melanthus.)—II. A Trojan prince, 
whose wife and son were put to death by order of 
Priam. {Tzetz. ad Lycophr., WA.—Burmann, ad 
Virg., JEn., 2, 32.) He is said, on this account, to 
have used his best endeavours to persuade his coun¬ 
trymen to admit the wooden horse within their walls. 
(Virg., JEn., 2, 32 .—Servius ad JEn., 1. c.)— III. A 
son of Hicetaon, who accompanied lEneas into Italy, 

8 G 


and was killed by Turnus. {Virg., JEn., 10, 123.— 
Id. ib., 12, 364.) 

Thyni, a people of Bithynia. (Vid. Bithynia.) 

Thyone, a name given to Semele after she had 
been translated to the skies. The appellation comes 
either from i %io, to sacrifice, or “to rage, to be 

agitated." The latter is the more probable deriva¬ 
tion. {Apollod., 3, 5, 3.— Diod. Sic., 4,25.— Heyne 
ad Apollod., 1. c.) 

Thyoneus (three syllables), a surname of Bacchus, 
from his mother Semele, who was called Thyone., 
{Vid. Thyone.) 

Thyrea, the principal town of Cynuria, in Argolis, 
near which the celebrated battle was fought between 
the Spartans and an equal number of Argives. {Vid. 
Othryades.) It was probably situate not far from the 
modern town of Astro. {Herod., 1, 82.)—The Spar¬ 
tans established the ^Eginetre here upon the expulsion 
of that people from their island by the Athenians. 
{Thucyd., 2, 27.) During the Peloponnesian war, 
however, the latter, having landed on the Cynurian 
coast, captured the town, and, setting it on fire, carried 
off all the inhabitants. {Id., 4, 56.— Cramer's Anc. 
Greece, vol. 3, p. 235.) 

Thyrsaget^e, a people of Sarmatia, who lived by 
hunting. Herodotus makes the Tana'is rise in their 
territory.—II. or Thyssagetae, a nation of European 
Sarmatia, dwelling on the banks of the Tana'is, where 
the same river approaches nearest to the Wolga, and 
in the neighbourhood of the Iyrcae. {Hardouin ad 
Plin., 6, 7.) 

Tiberias, a town of Galilee, built by Herod Agrip- 
pa, and named in honour of the Emperor Tiberius. 
It was situate on the western shore, and near the 
southern extremity of the Sea of Tiberias. This piece 
of water or lake was previously called by the name of 
Gennesareth, from a pleasant district called Gennesar, 
at the northern extremity of the lake. Tiberias was 
taken and destroyed by Vespasian ; but, after the fall 
of Jerusalem, it gradually rose again into notice. It is 
often mentioned by the Jewish writers, because, after 
the taking of Jerusalem, there was at Tiberias a suc¬ 
cession of Hebrew judges and doctors till the fourth 
century. Epiphanius says that a Hebrew translation 
of St. John and the Acts of the Apostles was kept in 
this city. {Joseph., Ant. Jud., 18, 3. — Id, Bell. 
Jud., 2, 8.— Id. ibid., 3, 16.) The modern name is 
Tabaria. 

Tiberinus, son of Capetus and king of Alba, was 
drowned in the river Albula, which on that account 
assumed his name, and was called Tiberis. {Liv., 1, 
3 .— Cic., N. D., 2, 20.— Varro, de L. L., 4, 5, &c. 
— Ovid, Fast., 2, 389 ; 4, 47.) 

Tiberis, Tyberis, Tyber, or Tibris, a river of 
Italy, on whose banks the city of Rome was built. It 
is said to have been originally called Albula, from the 
whiteness of its waters, and afterward Tiberis when 
Tiberinus, king of Alba, had been drowned there; but 
it is probable that Albula was the Latin name of the 
river, and Tiberis or Tibris the Tuscan one. Varro 
informs us that a prince of the Veientes, named Dthe- 
bns, gave his name to the stream, and that out of this 
grew in time the appellations 1 iberis and T ibris. It 
is often called by the Greeks Thymbris {6 Qvybpig). 
—With respect to its source, Pliny informs us (3, 5) 
that it rises in the Apennines above Arretium, and 
that it is joined, during a course of nearly one hundred 
and fifty miles, by upward of forty tributary streams. 
The Tiber was capable of receiving vessels of consid¬ 
erable burden at Rome, and small boats to within a 
short distance of its source. {Dion. Hal, 3, 44.— 
Strab., 218.) Virgil is the only author who applies 
the epithet of ceerulean to the waters of the Tiber 
{JEn., 8, 62.) That of fiavus, “yellow,” is web 
known to be much more general. {Ovid, Trist., 5, 
1 — Horat., Od., 1, 2,13.) This stream is also called 

133^ 



T I B 


TIBERIUS. 


Tyrrkenus arr.nis, “ the Tuscan river,” from its wa¬ 
tering Etruria on one side in its course, and also Lyd- 
ius, “ the Lydian” stream or Tiber, on account of the 
popular tradition which traced the arts and civilization 
of Etruria to Lydia in Asia Minor. ( Vid . Hetruria.) 

Tiberius, Claudius Drusus Nero, a Roman em¬ 
peror, born B.C. 42. He was the son of a father of 
the same name, of the ancient Claudian family, and of 
Li via Drusilla, afterward the celebrated wife of Au¬ 
gustus. Rapidly raised to authority by the influence 
of his mother, he displayed no inconsiderable ability in 
an expedition against certain revolted Alpine tribes, in 
consequence of which he was raised to the consulship 
in his twenty-eighth year. On the death of Agrippa, 
the gravity and austerity of Tiberius having gained the 
emperor’s confidence, he chose him to supply the place 
of that minister, obliging him, at the same time, to di¬ 
vorce Vipsania, the daughter of Agrippa, and wed Ju¬ 
lia, the daughter of Augustus, whose flagitious conduct 
at length so disgusted him that he retired in a private 
capacity to the- isle of Rhodes. After experiencing 
much discountenance from Augustus, the deaths of 
the two Csesars, Caius and Lucius, induced the em¬ 
peror to take him again into favour and adopt him. 
During the remainder of the life of Augustus he be¬ 
haved with great prudence and ability, concluding a 
war with the Germans in such a manner as to merit a 
triumph. On the death of Augustus he succeeded 
without opposition to the empire.—The first act of the 
new reign was the murder of young Postumus Agrip¬ 
pa, the only surviving son of M. Vipsanius Agrippa, 
and whom Augustus had banished during his lifetime 
to the island of Planasia. From his bodily strength, 
although taken by surprise and defenceless, he was 
with difficulty overcome by the centurion employed. 
Like Elizabeth of England, Tiberius disavowed his 
own order. Surmise hesitated between himself and 
Livia; and an incredible pretext was set up of a com¬ 
mand of the late emperor to the tribune who had the 
custody of the youth, that he was not to be suffered to 
survive him. While Tiberius proceeded immediately 
to the actual exercise of several of the imperial func¬ 
tions, such as delivering their standard to the praeto¬ 
rian guard, having them in attendance on his person, 
and despatching letters to the armies to announce his 
accession, he affected to depend on the pleasure of 
the senate, and to consider himself unequal to the 
weight of the whole empire. In the confused, dila¬ 
tory, and ambiguous mode of his expressing, or rather 
hinting, his sentiments, which he often designed to 
be understood in a contrary sense to what they seemed 
to bear, he strongly resembled Cromwell.—The ser¬ 
vility of the senate ran before his ambition. They 
had afterward leisure for repentance. Tiberius soon 
began to practise the dark, crooked, and sanguinary 
policy which marks the jealousy, distrust, and terror 
of a conscious and suspicious tyrant. Those who had 
formerly offended him, as Asinius Gallus, who had 
married his divorced wife Vipsania, and even those 
who had been pointed out by Augustus as men likely, 
by their talents or aspiring minds, to supply princes to 
the empire, should the road be open to them, were 
watched, circumvented, immured, and destroyed. The 
law of high treason was made an instrument of pun¬ 
ishing, not actions merely, but looks, words, and ges¬ 
tures, which were construed as offences against the 
majesty of the prince. A spy-system was organized, 
which embraced informers and agitators of plots, who, 
while they enriched themselves, brought money to the 
treasury ; and as a man’s slaves, and the guests at his 
table, might themselves be secret pensioners of this 
new police of inspection, social confidence and domes¬ 
tic security were at once destroyed. Those who 
were suspected were presumed to be guilty ; judges 
were easily found to condemn them ; and confisca- 
ions and executions succeeded each other. — The 
1338 


share which the people had retained of the right of 
election was entirely taken from them; the nomina¬ 
tion of the consuls assumed by the emperor; and the 
choice of the other magistrates, though ostensibly re 
ferred to the senate, determined really by himself.— 
While Tiberius, by abolishing the comitia or assem¬ 
blies, swept away the last vestige of popular liberty, 
and while he weakened the internal strength of the 
empire by shedding the best blood of Rome, and cre¬ 
ating around him the solitude of death, he sacrificed 
her external glory to the same sleepless and devour¬ 
ing jealousy. This sentiment was not excited by 
those only who were aliens from his name, for those 
connected with him by the nearest ties were the 
objects of his most feverish dread and his most im¬ 
placable malice. His own mother, who had sullied 
herself with crime to secure his elevation, was the 
first to attract his gloomy envy’; which was awa 
kened by her having been named in the will of Au¬ 
gustus as co-heiress with himself, and adopted into 
the Julian family by the name of Julia Augusta ; and 
by the flatteries of the senate, who bestowed on 
Livia the surname of Mother of the Country, and 
who received from Tiberius the reproof, that “ mod¬ 
erate honours were suitable to women.” His forbid¬ 
ding her the state of a lictor to walk before her, and 
his irritation on her addressing the soldiery to animate 
their exertions in extinguishing a fire, may be traced 
to the same feeling. That another should divide with 
him the attributes of sovereignty was intolerable to his 
mind ; but he was equally unable to endure that an 
other should be popular in the city or successful in the 
field ; and in his son and his nephew he beheld only 
presumptuous rivals of his own past renown in arms, 
supplanters of his power, and pretenders to his throne. 
Weighed against this sentiment of egotism, the secu¬ 
rity of the empire and the glory of the Roman eagles 
were as dust in the balance. Resting on his former 
laurels, he no longer led the armies in person, but sub¬ 
stituted for open war the. cunning of a mean, perfid¬ 
ious policy. It was thus that he detained in his do¬ 
minions, after inviting them with the fair words of a 
specious hospitality, Marboduus, king of the Suevi, and 
Archelaus, king of Cappadocia, whose kingdom was 
reduced to a Roman province ; and in the latter part 
of his life he fell into a total apathy and indifference 
respecting the state of the legions or of the foreign 
departments : left Spain and Syria for several years 
without governors, and allowed Armenia to be overrun 
by the Dacians, and Gaul by the neighbouring Ger¬ 
mans. But the ancient fame of the Roman discipline 
and valour was supported in the beginning of his 
reign by the second Drusus and Germanic us, whom 
he therefore envied, detested, and destroyed.—By 
both the son and the nephew, the most essential and 
faithful services were rendered to Tiberius before his 
authority could well be said to be established. The 
Roman legions in Pannonia, either discontented with 
their stipend, or making that a pretence for expressing 
their dissatisfaction wfith the person of the new emper 
or, raised a mutiny, which Drusus suppressed. The 
same part was acted by the legions in Lower Germany, 
whom Germanicus harangued from the camp tribunal; 
and on their persisting to choose him emperor, pointed 
a sword at his breast, with the exclamation that “ he 
had rather die than forfeit his fidelity.” A soldier au¬ 
daciously offered him another sword, telling him that 
“ it was sharper his person was in danger, and he 
was carried to his tent by his friends ; but, determining 
on the expedient of awakening the shame of the 
troops by expressing his distrust of their attachment 
and honour, he sent his wife Agrippina, the grand¬ 
daughter of Augustus, from the camp, which she pass¬ 
ed through, accompanied by her infant son Caius, and 
a retinue of weeping ladies. The soldiers, struck with 
compunction, crowded around her, imploring her it> 



TIBERIUS. 


TIBERIUS 


turn, made their submission, and demanded to be led 
against the enemy. Germanicus carried devastation 
into the fields and cities of the Marsi, the Usipetes, 
and the Catti, whom he everywhere overthrew; re¬ 
covered the standard of Varus, and, coming to a spot 
in the woods where the mouldering trenches of his 
camp were still visible, and the ground strewn with 
the whitened bones of his followers, collected them 
with funeral honours. Arminius, however, at the head 
of the Cherusci, by retiring into the forests, posting 
ambuscades, and inveigling the Romans into woody 
and marshy defiles, gained some advantages over the 
Caesar himself, as well as his lieutenant Caecina, though 
they were retrieved by extraordinary efforts of cour¬ 
age. Agrippina displayed a high spirit, and the most 
active devotion to the service of the troops, not only 
tending the wounded, but preventing, by her intrepid¬ 
ity, the breaking of a bridge on the Rhine, on a ru¬ 
mour of the advance of the Germans. Her conduct 
in these circumstances, as well as her previous share 
in the suppression of the mutiny, and even the fondling 
name of Caligula , bestowed by the camp on her young 
son, from the circumstance of his wearing the nailed 
buskin of the legionary soldiers, were each a source of 
deep suspicion and long-concealed resentment in the 
breast of Tiberius, which were fostered by the arts of 
insinuation familiar to his worthless minister Sejanus. 
—The appearance of commotions in the East, where 
Vonones, the king set over Parthia by the Romans, 
had been expelled by Artabanus, and had taken refuge 
in Armenia, afforded a pretext to the emperor for the 
recall of the Caesar from the command of the legions in 
Germany. Obeying the mandate with dilatory haste, 
Germanicus signalized his departure by a final cam¬ 
paign with the Cherusci, whom he attacked on the 
Weser, and, surrounding their rear and flanks with his 
cavalry, defeated with prodigious slaughter (A.C. 16); 
Arminius himself owing his escape to the fleetness of 
his horse and the concealment of his visage, which 
was bathed in blood. After pushing his success as 
far as the Elbe, and sending to Rome the spoils and 
captives of his victories, and the painted representa¬ 
tions of the rivers, mountains, and battles, .Germani¬ 
cus, as a mark of dissembled favour, was chosen by 
Tiberius his colleague in the consulate ; and the prov¬ 
ince of Syria was assigned to him by a decree of the 
senate. But, previously to this appointment, his kins¬ 
man Silanus had been removed from the Syrian pre¬ 
fecture, and Cneus Piso, a man of a violent disposi¬ 
tion, substituted in his room.—After agreeing to a 
treaty with Artabanus, by virtue of which Vonones 
was made to retire into Cilicia, and after placing Zo- 
nones on the throne of Armenia, Germanicus set out 
on a tour of curiosity and science to Egypt, where he 
sailed up the Nile and inspected the ruins of Thebes, 
the Pyramids, and the statue of Memnon, which emit¬ 
ted a sound when touched by the rays of the rising 
sun. Returning from Egypt, and finding that Piso 
had reversed many of his orders, he issued a mandate 
for him to quit the province, and enforced it, on being 
detained at Antioch by an illness, which he suspected 
had been produced by poison. After urging on Agrip¬ 
pina resignation and an absence from Rome, an advice 
which her proud courage forbade her to follow, he ex¬ 
pired at a little more than thirty years of age (A.C. 

19 )._After his body had been burned in the forum of 

Antioch, Agrippina went on board a vessel and sailed 
for Italy. She landed at Brundisium amid the min¬ 
gled sobs and tears of women and men, and advanced 
slowly, with downcast eyes, attended by two of her 
children, and bearing in her arms the urn which con¬ 
tained the ashes of her husband. The praetorian 
bands sent to escort the remains were followed by the 
whole senate and innumerable people, who beset the 
roads, and with audible condolence and sympathy at- 
‘■‘uded her to the city. The emperor and Livia for¬ 


bore to show themselves in public. The people wrote 
on the walls of the palace, “Restore Germanicus.” 
Piso and his wife Plancina entered Rome amid the 
popular indignation, which was increased by the festiv¬ 
ity apparent in their house, which was situated near 
the forum. Piso, however, was accused of treason by 
Fulcinius; was neglected by Tiberius, who, affecting 
the coolest impartiality, referred the cause to the sen¬ 
ate; and stabbed himself in prison. His wife, who had 
also deserted him, enjoyed afterward the favour of Liv¬ 
ia and the emperor, to whom she was useful in calum¬ 
niating Agrippina ; but was at last herself exposed to 
criminal accusations, and died also by her own hand. 
—The widow of Germanicus remained at Rome, and 
persisted with a lofty determination to assert her 
rights. On her cousin Claudia Pulchra being accused 
of nuptial infidelity and treason, she sought an audi 
ence, and, finding the emperor sacrificing at the altar 
of Augustus, reproached him with the inconsistency 
of persecuting the Augustan posterity, to which he re¬ 
plied by catching her hand, and quoting a line from a 
Greek tragedy: 

“ Child ! if thou canst not reign , deem'st it a wrong?” 

He contrived an excuse for not inviting her to his ta 
ble by having it suggested that some apples were poi¬ 
soned, and then resenting her suspicions when she de¬ 
clined to accept them from his hand ; and at last, on 
the plea that she had threatened to appeal to the army, 
and to take sanctuary at the statue of Augustus, he 
banished her to the isle of Pandataria. On this, she 
addressed him with spirited reproaches, when the das¬ 
tardly tyrant had one of her eyes thrust out with rods 
by the hand of a centurion. Agrippina resolved to put 
an end to her life by abstinence /;om food (A.C. 26). 
Viands were forced into her mouth by the emperor’s 
order, but his fear or his malice was disappointed by 
her unconquerable resolution. In the senate he mag¬ 
nified his own clemency in not having sentenced the 
wife of Germanicus to be strangled in the dungeon, 
exposed like a felon on the. prison steps, and dragged 
by a hook into the Tiber. Drusus, the surviving heir, 
and the son of Tiberius by Agrippina Vipsania, who 
had been decreed a triumph for his services in Ulyri- 
cum and in Germany, and had been admitted to a 
share of the tribunician power, was poisoned by Seja¬ 
nus (A.C. 23), who had long cherished a sentiment of 
revenge for a blow received from Drusus, and had cor¬ 
rupted his wife Livia. The emperor entered the sen¬ 
ate-house with an air of indifference before the body 
was interred, and shortened the time of public mourn¬ 
ing, directing the shops to be opened as usual. His 
own mother, Livia Augusta, afforded him, by her death 
(A.C. 29), a similar occasion of evincing his superiority 
to the feelings of human nature ; as he not only ab¬ 
sented himself from her sick-bed, but, on a pretence 
of modesty, curtailed the funeral honours decreed to 
her by the senate.—The deadly favour of Tiberius was 
next extended to the eldest sons of Germanicus and 
Agrippina, who were adopted as heirs, as if in atone¬ 
ment for the savage injuries committed on their admi¬ 
rable parents. But, as adopted princes, vows for their 
health and safety were offered up by the pontiffs ; and 
this proved the signal of informations of treason, the 
usual prelude of the emperor’s judicial murders. They 
were accused of having aspersed his character, and the 
accusation was followed by the sentence and its exe¬ 
cution. Nero was starved to death in the isle of Pon- 
tia, and Drusus in a secret chamber of the palace.— 
The daughters of Germanicus were spared by the ty¬ 
rant, and disposed of in marriage : Agrippina to Cneus 
Domitius, the grandson of Octavia, sister of Augustus; 
Drusilla to Lucius Cassius ; and Julia to Marcus Vi- 
nicius.—The presumptive heirs of the imperial family 
being removed, Sejanus thought the empire within hit 
grasp. On pretence of discipline, he had removed the 

1339 




T I B 


TIB 


pnetorian bands, of which he was prefect, to a fortified 
camp without the city, between the Viminal and Es- 
quiline gates ; in the senate he secured to himself 
partisans by'the distribution of provinces and honours, 
and gained entire ascendancy over the emperor by re¬ 
lieving him of the labours of state as well as admin¬ 
istering to his luxury; by studying his humours, and 
breathing into his ear the whispers of a state informer. 
A dissembler to all others, Tiberius was open to Se- 
janus ; and easily yielding to him entire and unsuspi¬ 
cious confidence, was persuaded to withdraw from the 
cares of state. The plot was detected, and Antonia, 
the mother of Germanicus, was the accuser of Seja- 
nus. Impeached by letters from the emperor, con¬ 
demned by the senate, and deserted by the praetorian 
guards, he was strangled by the public executioner, 
and his body was torn piecemeal by the populace 
(A.D. 31). The vengeance of Tiberius pursued his 
friends and adherents, and even wreaked its rage on 
the innocent childhood of his son and his daughter. 
—Tiberius continued to hide himself from the gaze 
of Rome and from the light of day, among the groves 
and grottoes of the island of Capreae, which he peo¬ 
pled with the partners of his impure orgies, dress¬ 
ed in fantastic disguises of wood-nymphs and satyrs. 
But the time approached when the world was to be 
rid of this monster of his species. His sick-bed was 
attended by that Caligula, the only surviving son of 
Germanicus, whose cunning had baffled the insidi¬ 
ousness of his agitators of treason, and whose obse¬ 
quiousness imposed upon himself; but who had not 
been always able to elude his penetration, and of 
whom, when his life was begged, which had been 
three times threatened, he had predicted, with the tact 
of a connatural mind, that “ Caius would prove a ser¬ 
pent to swallow Rome, and a Phaethon to set the world 
on fire.” For the purpose of ascertaining whether the 
lethargy in which the emperor lay was actually death, 
Caius approached and attempted to draw the ring from 
his finger; it resisted; and on the bold suggestion of 
Macro, the new praetorian prefect, pillows were press¬ 
ed upon him, and the hand of her son avenged, though 
late, the manes of Agrippina (A.D 31, aged 78).— 
Tiberius was a crafty speaker, was literary, addicted 
to astrology, and, like Augustus, apprehensive of thun¬ 
der, as a preservative against which he wore a laurel 
crown. In his person he was tall and robust, broad in 
the shoulders, and so strong in the muscles that he 
could bore a hard apple with his finger, and wound the 
scalp of a boy with a fillip. His face was fair com- 
plexioned, and would have been handsome if it had 
not been disfigured by carbuncles, for which he used 
cosmetics. His eyes were prodigiously large, and 
could discern objects in the dark. He wore his hair 
long in the neck, contrary to the Roman usage ; walk¬ 
ed erect, with a stiff neck ; seldom accosted any one ; 
and, when he spoke, used a wave of the hand as in 
condescension.—The news of the tyrant’s death was 
received at Rome with popular cries of “ Tiberius to 
the Tiber!” His body was, however, borne to the 
city by the soldiers, and burned with funeral rites. In 
his will, Caius, and Tiberius the son of the younger 
Drusus, were named as his heirs, with a reversion to 
the surviver. ( Sueton ., Vit. Tib. — Tacit., Ann., lib. 
1, 2, 3, &c.— Elton's Roman Emperors, p. 47, seqq .) 

Tibiscus, now the Teisse, a river of Dacia, called 
also Pathyssus, falling into the Danube, and forming 
the western limit of Dacia. (Plin., 4, 12.— Ammian. 
Marcell., 17. 3.)—II. (or Tibiscum), a city of Dacia, 
on the river Temes, one of the tributaries of the Dan¬ 
ube, and near the junction of the Bistra with the for¬ 
mer stream. It is now the Cavaran. (Bischoff und Mol- 
ler, Worterb. der Geogr., p. 970.) 

Tibris. Vid. Tiberis. 

Tibula, a town of Sardinia, on the northern coast, 
and on the strait which separates that island from Cor- 

1340 


sica; hence it became a usual landing-place. It 38 
now Longo Sardo. ( Ptol.—I tin. Ant., 72.) 

Tibullus, Aui.us Albius, a Roman knight, cele¬ 
brated for his poetical compositions. There exists 
some doubt respecting the period of his birth. Petrus 
Crinitus and Lylius Gyraldus, the ancient but inac¬ 
curate biographers of the Roman poets, relying on two 
lines erroneously ascribed to Tibullus, and inserted 
in the fifth elegy of the third book, 

Natalem nostri primum videre parentes 

Qnum cecidit fato consul uterque pari, 

had maintained that he was born A.U.C. 711, in which 
year the two consuls Hirtius and Pansa were mortal¬ 
ly wounded at the battle of Mutina. Julius Scaliger 
was the first commentator who suspected that these 
verses were interpolated, and bis opinion has been 
confirmed by Janus Dousa, who has shown, at great 
length, that the chronology they would establish could 
by no means be reconciled with dates which must be 
assigned to various events in the life of the poet. He 
conjectures that the lines which had occasioned the 
common error with regard to the birth of 1 ibullus 
were interpolated in his elegies from the works of 
Ovid, in whose Tristia they occur (4, 10). Douss 
was followed by Broukhusius and Vulpius, who all 
seem right in placing the birth of Tibullus earlier than 
A.U.C. 711 ; but it would not appear that they had 
adduced sufficient authority for carrying it quite so far 
back as 690, which they have fixed on for the epoch 
of his birth. It appears from an epigram of Domitius 
Marsus, a contemporary of Tibullus, that he ceased 
to live about the same time with Virgil. But Virgil 
died in 734, and, had Tibullus been born so early as 
690, he must have reached the age of forty-four at the 
time of his decease, which is scarcely consistent with 
the premature death deplored by his contemporaries, 
or the epithet Juvenis applied to him in this very ep¬ 
igram of Domitius Marsus. On the whole, his birth 
may be safely conjectured to have occurred between 
A.U.C. 695 and 700. It has been remarked, that few 
of the great Latin poets, orators, or historians were 
born at Rome, and that, if the capital had always con¬ 
fined the distinction of Romans to the ancient families 
within the walls, her name would have been deprived 
of some of its noblest ornaments. Tibullus, however, 
is one of the exceptions, as his birth, in whatever year 
it may have happened, unquestionably took place in 
the capital. He was descended of an equestrian fam¬ 
ily of considerable wealth and possessions, though little 
known or mentioned in the history of their country. 
His father had been engaged on the side of Pompey 
in the civil wars, and died soon after Caesar had finally 
triumphed over the liberties of Rome. It is said, but 
without any sufficient authority, that Tibullus himself 
was present at Philippi, along with his friend Messala, 
in the ranks of the republican army. He retired in 
early life to his paternal villa near Pedum. In his 
/outh he had tasted the sweets of affluence and for¬ 
tune, but the ample patrimony he had inherited from 
his ancestors was greatly diminished by the partitions 
of land made to the soldiery of the triumvirs. Dacier 
and other French critics have alleged that he w : as 
ruined by his own dissipation and extravagance, which 
has been denied by Vulpius and Broukhusius, the 
learned editors and commentators of Tibullus, with 
the same eagerness as if their own fame and fortune 
depended upon the question. The partition of the 
lands in Italy was probably the chief cause of his in¬ 
digence ; but it is not unlikely that his own extrava¬ 
gance may have contributed to his early difficulties. 
He utters his complaints of the venality of his mis¬ 
tresses and favourites in terms which show that he 
had already suffered from their rapacity. Neverthe¬ 
less, he expresses himself as if prepared to part with 
everything to gratify their cupidity. It seems probabla 




TIBULLUS. 


TIBULLUS. 


hat nc part of the Jana of which Tibullus had been 
deprived was restored to him, as we hud not in his el¬ 
egies a single expression of gratitude or compliment, 
from which it might be conjectured that Augustus had 
atoned to him for the wrongs of Octavius. It is evi¬ 
dent, however, that he was not reduced to extreme 
want. It might even be inferred, from a distich in one 
of his elegies (2, 4), that his chief paternal seat had 
been preserved to him : 

“ Quinetiam sedes jubeat si vendere avitas 
Ite sub impenum , sub titulumque, Lares.” 

Horace, too, in a complimentary epistle (1,4), written 
long after the partition of the lands, says that the gods 
had bestowed on him wealth, and the art of enjoying 
it: 

il Di tibi divitias dederunt , artemque frucndi.” 

His own idea of the enjoyment of such wealth as he 
possessed seems to have been (judging, at least, from 
his poems) a rural life of tranquillity and repose, of 
which the sole employment should consist in the 
peaceful avocations of husbandry, and the leisure 
hours should be devoted to the Muses or to pleasure. 
His friendship, hiowever, for Messala, and, perhaps, 
some hope of improving his moderate and diminished 
fortune, induced him to attend that celebrated com¬ 
mander in various military expeditions. It would ap¬ 
pear that he had accompanied him in not less than 
three. But the precise periods at which they were 
undertaken, and the order in which they succeeded 
each other, are subjects involved in much uncertainty 
and contradiction. The first was commenced in 719, 
against the Sallassi, a fierce and warlike people, who 
inhabited the Pennine or Graian Alps, and from their 
fastnesses had long bid defiance to every effort made 
by a regular army for their subjugation.—His next ex¬ 
pedition with Messala was to Aquitanic Gaul. That 
province having revolted in 724, Messala was intrust¬ 
ed with the task of reducing it to obedience ; and he 
proceeded on this service immediately after the battle 
of Actium. Several sharp actions took place, in which 
Tibullus signalized his courage ; and the success of 
this campaign, if we may believe himself, was in no 
small degree attributable to his bravery and exertions. 
In the following season, Messala, being intrusted by the 
emperor with an extraordinary command in the East, 
requested Tibullus to accompany him ; and to this 
proposal our poet, though, it would appear, with some 
reluctance, at length consented. He had not, how¬ 
ever, been long at sea, when his health suffered so 
severely that he was obliged to be put on shore at an 
island, which Tibullus names by its poetical appella¬ 
tion of Phaeacia, but which was then commonly called 
Corcyra, now Corfu. He soon recovered from this 
dangerous sickness, and, as soon as he was able to 
renew his voyage, he joined Messala, and travelled 
with him through Syria, Cilicia, and Egypt. Having 
returned to Italy, he again retired to his farm at Pe¬ 
dum, where, though he occasionally visited the capi¬ 
tal, he chiefly resided for the remainder of his life.— 
Tibullus was endued with elegant manners and a 
handsome person, which involved him in many licen¬ 
tious connexions. But, though devoted to pleasure, 
he at the same time drew closer his connexion with 
the most learned and polished of his countrymen, as 
Valgius, Macer, and Horace. He continued, likewise, 
an uninterrupted friendship with Messala, who was now 
at the height of his reputation, his home being the re¬ 
sort of the learned, and his patronage the surest pass¬ 
port to the gates of fame. Tibullus’ enjoyment of this 
sort of life was considerably impaired by the state of his 
health, which had continued to be delicate ever since 
the illness with which he was attacked at Corcyra. His 
existence was protracted till 734, and his death, which 
happened in that year, was deplored by Ovid in a long 


elegiac poem.—The events and circumstances of the 
life of Tibullus have exercised a remarkable influence 
on his writings. Those occurrences to which he was 
exposed tended to give a peculiar turn to his thoughts, 
and a peculiar colouring to his language. The Ro¬ 
man fair of the highest rank had become alike licen¬ 
tious and venal ; and the property of those ancient 
possessors of the Italian soil, who had adhered to the 
republican party, was divided by unprincipled usurp¬ 
ers among their rapacious soldiery. Unhappy in love, 
and less prosperous in fortune than in early youth he 
had reason to anticipate, all that he utters on these 
topics is stamped with such reality, that no reader can 
suspect for a moment either that his complaints were 
borrowed from Greek sources, or were the mere crea¬ 
tions of fancy. His feelings seem to have been too 
acute to permit him the possession of that perfect re¬ 
pose and equanimity of spirit which he justly ac¬ 
counted the chief blessing of life. That indifference 
to eminence and wealth, which Horace perhaps en¬ 
joyed, and which seems to have been so earnestly de¬ 
sired by Tibullus, was rather pretended by him than 
actually felt; and his inability to procure either the 
advantages of fortune or delights of contentment is 
the source of constant struggle and disappointment. 
Hence the irritability, melancholy, and changeable¬ 
ness of his temper. Such circumstances in the life, 
and such features in the character of Tibullus, will be 
found explanatory and illustrative of much which we 
find in his elegies. These elegies have been divided 
by German writers into Erotic , Rural , Devotional , and 
Panegyrical. The chief ingredients in his poems are 
no doubt derived from such topics ; but many of his 
elegies partake of all these qualities, and there are 
few of them which can be accounted as purely belong¬ 
ing to any of the above classes. The elegies, how¬ 
ever, in which amatory sentiments predominate, are 
by far the most numerous.—One can scarcely be a 
poet and in love, it has been said, without also loving 
the country. Its scenes supply the sweetest images ; 
there the shepherds have their cool retreats, and love- 
songs have their echoes. Accordingly, the pastoral 
delineations which occur in the elegies of Tibullus are 
closely interwoven with the erotic sentiments; and 
there are few, indeed, of his amorous verses which are 
not beautified by that reference to rural feelings which 
forms the great and characteristic charm of the works 
of the Latin poets. Again, as rural pictures are inter¬ 
mixed, in the elegies of Tibullus, with amatory sen¬ 
timents and feelings, so his poems, which have been 
classed together as devotional, are closely connected 
with his pastoral verses. They are full of images of 
rural theology, and it is to the rustic and domestic 
gods that his devotion is chiefly paid. He renders 
thanks to these deities for the prosperity of his little 
farm, or piously prepares a festival to their honour.— 
His panegyrics on his friends form the least pleasing 
and least valuable part of the writings of Tibullus. 
This subject was not suited to the elegiac strain, or 
to the soft and tender genius of the poet. When 
he assumes the tone of familiar friendship, as in the 
poems on the birthdays of Messala and of his friend 
Cornutus, his compliments ar easy and graceful. 
But his long and laboured pr vric on Messala, in 
the fourth book, written on occasion of his patron ob¬ 
taining the consulship, shows how little he was quali¬ 
fied to excel in this species of composition. The 
compositions evidently most adapted to the genius of 
Tibullus are poems not merely written in elegiac 
verse, but which answer to our understanding of the 
word Elegy in the subject and sentiments. The 
tone of complaint best accords with his soul. He 
seems naturally to have been possessed of extreme 
sensibility ; and at that period of life when the mind 
lays in its store of ideas for the future voyage, he had 
been subjected to much suffering and disappointment. 

1341 




TIC 


TIG 


Hence, though his fortune afterward improved, he 
had acquired the habit of viewing obejcts as sur¬ 
rounded with a continual gloom; nor does any other 
poet so often introduce the dismal images of death. 
Even to the most joyous thoughts of Tibullus, some 
mournful or plaintive sentiment is generally united, 
and his most gay and smiling figures wear chaplets of 
cypress on their brows.—It has already been said, that 
Tibullus was no imitator of the Greeks, and he is 
certainly the most original of the Latin poets. His 
elegies were the overflowings of his sorrows, his mis¬ 
tress alone was the Muse that inspired him. In the 
few instances in which he has followed the Greeks, he 
has imitated them with much good taste, and some¬ 
times even with improvements on the original.—The 
elegies of Tibullus are divided into four books.— 
These poems are commonly printed along with those 
of Catullus and Propertius. Of the editions of Tibul¬ 
lus separately, the best are, that of Brouckhusius, 
Amstelod., 1708, 4to ; that of Vulpius, Patav., 1749, 
4to ; that of Heyne, Lips., 1755-77-98, 8vo ; that of 
Wunderlich, Lips., 1817, 8vo ; that of Lachmann, 
Berol., 1829, 8vo ; and that of Dissen, Gotting., 1835, 

2 vols. 8vo. ( Dunlop's Roman Lit., vol. 3, p. 283, 
seqq.) . 

Tibur, an ancient town of Latium, northeast of 
Rome, on the banks of the Anio. According to Dio¬ 
nysius of Halicarnassus, it was originally a town of the 
Siculi, the most ancient inhabitants of Latium; and, 
as a proof of this fact, he mentions that the name of 
Sicelion was still attached to a portion of the place. 
{Dion. Hal., 1, 16.) Tibur, however, lays claim to a 
more illustrious, though a later origin, having been 
founded, according to some authors, by Catillus, an 
officer of Evander, while others pretend that this Ca¬ 
tillus was a son of Amphiaraus, who, with his two 
brothers, migrated to Italy, and, having conquered the 
Siculi, gave to one of their towns the name of Tibur, 
from his brother Tiburtus. From this account of So- 
linus (c. 8), as well as that of Dionysius, we may col¬ 
lect that Catillus was one of the Pelasgic chiefs, who, 
with the assistance of the Aborigines, formed settle¬ 
ments in Italy.—Tibur is one of the places that ap¬ 
pear most frequently to have afforded an asylum to 
Roman fugitives. From what period it enjoyed the 
rights of a Roman city is not precisely known, but it 
was, in all probability, anterior to the civil wars of 
Marius and Sylla. The latter, indeed, is said to have 
deprived the Tiburtini of these privileges, but they 
regained them upon his abdication, and they were 
confirmed by the Emperor Claudius. Hercules was 
the deity held in the greatest veneration at Tibur ; 
and his temple, on the foundations of which the pres¬ 
ent cathedral is said to be built, was famous through¬ 
out Italy. ( Strabo , 238.) Hence the epithet of Her¬ 
culean given by the poets to this city. The modern 
name of Tibur is Tivoli. —As regards the Sibyl of Ti¬ 
bur, vid. Albunea. ( Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 
56.) 

Tiburtus, a brother of the founder of Tibur, which 
is hence often called Tilmrtia Moznia. {Vid. Tibur.) 
He was one of the sons of Amphiaraus. {Virg., JEn., 
7, 670.) 

Ticinum, a city of Cisalpine Gaul, situate on the 
river Ticinus, near its junction with the Padus. It 
was founded, according to Pliny (3, 17), by the Lsevi 
and Marici, but, being placed on the left bank of the 
Ticinus, it would, of course, belong to the Insubres ; 
and, in fact, Ptolemy (p. 64) ascribes it to that people. 
Tacitus is the first historian that makes mention of it. 
According to that historian {Ann., 3, 5), Augustus ad¬ 
vanced as far as Ticinum to meet the corpse of Dru- 
sus, the father of Germanicus, in the depth of winter, 
and from thence escorted it to Rome. It is also fre¬ 
quently noticed in his Histories. Ancient inscriptions 
give it the title of municipium. Under the Lombard 
1342 


kings, Ticinum assumed the name of Papia, which, in 
process of time, has been changed to Pavia. {Paul. 
Diacon., Rer. Lang., 2, 15.— Cramer's Anc. Italy, 
vol. 1, p. 53.) 

Ticinus, now the Tesino, a river of Gallia Cisalpi- 
na, rising in the Leopontine Alps, near the sources of 
the Rhodanus, and falling into the Po near licinum. 
It traversed in its course the Lacus Verbanus, or Lago 
Maggiore. At the mouth of this river, the Romans, 
under Cornelius Scipio, the father of Scipio Africanu3 
the Elder, were defeated by Hannibal.—Consult, in 
relation to this battle, the remarks of Cramer {Anc. 
Italy, vol. 1, p. 54, seqq.). 

Tifata, a mountain range of Campania, about a 
mile to the east of Capua. It was a branch of the 
Apennines, and now takes its name from the village 
of Maddaloni, near Caserta. The original significa¬ 
tion of the word Tifata, according to Festus, answered 
to that of the Latin iliceta. This ridge is often no¬ 
ticed by Livy as a favourite position of Hannibal 
when in the vicinity of Capua (23, 36 et 39; 26, 5). 
Here also were two celebrated temples consecrated 
to Diana and Jove. {Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 
205.) 

Tifernum, I. a town of Umbria, near the Metaurus, 
called hence, for distinction’ sake, Metaurense. It is 
now St. Angelo in Vado. {Pliny, 3, 18.) — II. A 
town of Umbria, towards the sources of the Tiber, 
and on the left bank of that river, distinguished from 
that circumstance by the epithet of Tiberinum. Its 
site is supposed to be occupied by the modern Citta 
di Castello. Tifernum is chiefly known to us from 
the circumstance of its having been situated near the 
villa of the younger Pliny. {Cramer's Anc. Italy, 
vol. 1, p. 263.)—III. A town of Samnium, supposed 
to have stood near the Ponte di Limosano, on the 
right bank of the river Tifernus (now Biferno). The 
Mons Tifernus was near the source of the same riv¬ 
er, above Boiano , and is now called Monte Matese . 
{Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 231.) 

Tifernus, a mountain of Campania. ( Vid. Tifer¬ 
num III.) 

Tigellinus, Sophonius, an infamous character in 
the reign of Nero, whose vices secured to him the fa¬ 
vour of that corrupt emperor. He was praefect of the 
praetorian guards when the conspiracy against Nero was 
discovered, and for his services on that occasion the 
emperor bestowed upon him triumphal honours. Hav¬ 
ing gained, according to Tacitus, an entire ascendant 
over the affections of Nero, he was, in some instances, 
the adviser of some of the worst acts of that prince, 
and in others the chief actor, without the knowledge 
of his master. He corrupted Nero at first, and then 
deserted him ; and at last, to the great joy of all, he 
was compelled to put an end to his existence by order 
of Otho. {Tacit., Ann., 14, 51, seqq. — Id. %b., 15, 
72.— Id., Hist., 1, 72.) 

Tigellius, M. Hermogenes, a singer and musician, 
who stood high in the favour of Julius Caesar, and af¬ 
terward in that of Augustus. He seems to have been 
indebted for his elevation to a fine voice, and a courtly 
and insinuating address. His moral character may oe 
inferred from those who are said in Horace {Sat., 1, 2, 
3) to have deplored his death, and on whom he would 
appear to have squandered much of his wealth. Ci¬ 
cero, in a letter to a friend, numbers Tigellius among 
the u familiarissimi" of Caesar, and describes him as 
“ hominem pestilentiorem patria sua," in allusion to 
the unwholesome atmosphere of Sardinia, of which 
island this individual was a native. {Cic., Ep. ad 
Fam., 7, 24 ) The scholiast informs us that Horace 
attacked Tigellius because the latter derided his ver 
ses. {Schol. ad Horat., 1. c.) 

Tigranes, king of Armenia, the son-in-law and 
ally of Mithradates. He rendered himself master of 
Armenia Minor, Cappadocia, and Syria, but lost all 






T I G 


TIM 


Jhese conquests after the defeat of Mithradates. Lu- 
eullus, the Roman commander, invaded Armenia, and 
defeated, near Tigranocerta, the mixed and numerous 
army of Tigranes. ( Vid. Lucullus.) The peace con¬ 
cluded in the year 63 B.C. left him only Armenia. 
K Vtd. Mithradates VII.) 

Tigranocerta, the capital of Armenia, built by 
Tigranes during the Mithradatic war. It was situate 
to the east of the T. igris, on the river Nicephorius, 
and, according to Tacitus, stood on a hill nearly sur¬ 
rounded by the latter river. It was a large, rich, and 
powerful city. It was inhabited not only by Orientals, 
but also by many Grecian colonists, and likewise by 
captives who had been carried off by Tigranes from 
some of the Greek cities of Syria which had been 
conquered by him from the Seleucid*. Lucullus, 
during the Mithradatic war, took it with difficulty, and 
found in it immense riches, and no less than 8,000 
talents in ready money. The Roman commander sent 
home the greater part of the foreign inhabitants, but 
still the city remained, after this, no unimportant place. 
The remains of Tigranocerta are at Seredonthe Bitlis- 
Soo. ( TacAnn., 12, 50.— Id. ibid., 14, 24 .—Plin., 
6, 9.) 

Tigris, a large river of Asia, rising in the mount¬ 
ains of Armenia Major, in the district of Sophene, and 
falling into the Euphrates. A rising ground prevents 
it from proceeding to the Euphrates in the early part 
of its course. A deep ravine in the mountains "above 
Amida, or Diarbekir, opens a passage for it, and it 
takes its speedy course across a territory which is very 
unequal, and has a powerful declivity. Its extreme 
rapidity, the natural effect of local circumstances, 
has procured for it the name of Tigr in the Median 
language, Diglito with the Syrians, Delkat or Didhi- 
lat in Arabic, and Hiddekel in Hebrew ; all which 
terms denote the flight of an arrow. ( Wahl, Vorder 
und Miltel Asien, 1, p. 710.—Compare Rosenmuller, 
ad Gen., 2, 14.) Besides this branch, which is best 
known to the moderns, Pliny has described to us, in 
detail, another, which issues from a chain of mount¬ 
ains, now the mountains of Kurdistan, to the west of 
the Arsissa Palus or Lake of Van. It passes by the 
Lake Arethusa. Its course being checked by a part 
of Mount Taurus, it falls into a subterranean cavern 
called Zoroander, and appears again at the bottom of 
the mountain. The identity of its waters is shown by 
the reappearance of light bodies at its issue that have 
been thrown up into it above the place where it en- 
*ers the mountains. It passes also by the Lake Thos 
pitis, near Arzanene or Erzen, buries itself again in 
subterranean caverns, and reappears at the distance- 
of twenty-five miles below, near Nymphseum. This 
branch joins the western Tigris. As the Tigris and 
Euphrates approach, the intermediate land loses its 
elevation, and is occupied by meadows and morasses. 
Several artificial communications, perhaps two or three 
of which are natural, form a prelude to the approach¬ 
ing junction of the rivers, which finally takes place 
near the modern Koma. The river formed by their 
junction was called Pasitigris, now Shat-el-Arab, or 
the river of Arabia. It has three principal mouths, 
besides a small outlet: these occupy a space of thirty- 
six miles. For farther particulars, vid. Euphrates. 
The Tigris, though a far less noble stream than the 
Euphrates, is one of the most celebrated rivers in his¬ 
tory, and many famous cities, at various periods, have 
decorated its banks : among these may be mentioned 
Nineveh, Seleucia, Ctesiphon, and, in modern times, 
Bagdad, Mousul, Diarbekr. The length of the Ti¬ 
gris is eight hundred miles. (Herod., 1, 89.— Id., 5, 
52.— Id., 6, 20.— Polyb., 5, 46.— Tac., Ann., 6, 37.— 
Id. ibid., 12, 13.— Mela, 1, 2.— Id., 3, 8. — Plin., 2, 
103.— Id., 6, Q.--Malte-Brun, Geogr., vol. 2, p. 191, 
Am. ed.) 

TigurIni, a warlike people among the Helvetii, 


whose territory is supposed to have answered to the 
modern Zurich. Considerable doubt, however, has 
been thrown upon the correctness of this opinion. 
(Consult Lemaire, Ind. Geogr. ad Coes., s. v. — Ober- 
hn. ad Coes., B. G., 1, 27.) 

Timacus, now the Timok, a river of Mcesia falling 
into the Danube. (Plin., 3, 26.) 

Timseus, I. a Pythagorean philosopher, a native of 
Locri, born about B.C. 380. He was a preceptor of 
Plato’s. We have remaining of his productions only 
a single work (if indeed this be his), written in the 
Doric dialect, and treating “ of the Soul of the World 
and of Nature' n (nepl i pv%dq Koa/uio ual <pvcuog). 
There exists, however, much uncertainty as to its 
being the work of Timseus or not. Tennemann (Syst. 
der Plat. Phil., vol. 1, p. 93) attempts to prove that 
it is merely an extract from the Timseus of Plato. 
Other critics, on the contrary, charge Plato with cop¬ 
ying from this work into his dialogue. We owe the 
preservation of this piece of Timseus’ to Proclus, who 
has placed it at the head of his commentary on Plato’s 
Timseus. (Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 2, p. 313.)— 
II. A native of Tauromenium, in Sicily, who flourish¬ 
ed about 260 B.C. Having been driven into exile 
by Agathocles, he repaired to Athens, where he occu¬ 
pied himself with the composition of a great historical 
work on the affairs of Greece, on those of Sicily, the 
wars of Pyrrhus, of Agathocles, &c. It bore the title 
of 'E/M ,yvmd Kal hKeAmd, or, rather, ’IraXiua ual 
2tKe?UKd, and was divided into more than 40 books. 
It appears, from a passage in Polybius (3, 32), tha* 
this work did not contain a synchronistic relation of 
events, but consisted rather of detached portions of 
history, in each of which the author treated separately 
of some important event. Cicero cites Timams as a 
model of what was called the “ Asiatic” style. ( Brut., 
c. 95 .—De Orat., 2,13.) Polybius, and, after him, Di¬ 
odorus Siculus, have charged Timams with credulity 
and unfairness. Naturally gloomy and morose, he was 
exasperated by the treatment which he had experienced 
from Agathocles. His ill-humour, however (if it may 
be so termed), never degenerated into misanthropy ; 
he was even open at times to kindly affections. Ti- 
moleon was the hero whom he admired ; and Cicero 
says that the former owed a part of his glory to the 
circumstance of his having had such an historian of 
his exploits as Timseus. (Ep. ad Fam., 4, 12.) The 
ancients praised his geographical knowledge, and his 
care in indicating the chronology of the events which 
he describes. He appears also to have composed an¬ 
other work, on the “ Olympiads,” and it is said he 
was the first historical writer that employed this era. 
Longinus, after speaking of Timseus as in general an 
able, well-informed, and sensible writer, charges him 
with frequent puerilities and frigid expressions, which 
he ascribes to an over-eagerness for novelty of ideas 
and language. (Long., <) 4.)—We have only some 
fragments remaining of the historical work. These 
have been collected by Goller, in his treatise “De 
Situ et Origine Syracusarum f p. 209, seqq. (Scholl, 
Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 3, p. 219, seqq.) —III. A sophist 
of the third century of our era, who wrote a book call¬ 
ed Lexicon vocum Platonicarum. It was edited with* 
great ability by Ruhnken, Lugd. Bat., 1754, 8vo.— 
A later edition of this same, containing all Ruhnken’s 
notes, appeared from the Leipsic press in 1828, 8vo, 
under the editorial care of Koch.—As regards the pe¬ 
riod when he is supposed to have flourished, consult 
the remarks of Ruhnken (Proof., p. xiv.). 

Timagenes, a native of Alexandrea, son of the bank¬ 
er of Ptolemy Auletes. Having been reduced to slave¬ 
ry when the city was taken by Gabinius (55 B.C.), he 
was brought to Rome, and sold to Faustus, the son of 
Sylla, who gave him his freedom. He exercised, afte* 
this, the profession of a cook, and then that of a litter- 
bearer (lecticarius). Abandoning, subsequently, this 

1?43 




T 1 M 


T I M 


humble employment, he set up as ?. teacher of rheto¬ 
ric, and met with brilliant success. His society was 
much sought after on account of his agreeable manners 
and intellectual qualities ; but his passion for uttering 
ioris mots ruined all his prospects. Augustus, it seems, 
had appointed him his historiographer, and extended 
his favour to him in a marked degree, until, offended 
by a witty speech of Timagenes, he forbade him his 
presence. In the resentment of the moment, Titnag- 
enes burned the history which he had composed of the 
reign of Augustus, and retired to Tusculurn, where he 
enjoyed the patronage and protection of Asinius Pol- 
lio. In this retreat he wrote a History of Alexander 
and his successors, entitled rcepl (SaoeTieaiv (“ Of 
Kings”). This work formed one of the principal 
sources whence Quintus Curtiu^ drew the materials 
of his historical romance. Timagenes, after this, fixed 
his residence at the very extremity of the empire, in 
Drapanum, a city of Osrhoene, where he ended his 
days. It is on account of his residence in this part of 
the East that some authors give him the epithet of 
“ the Syrian.” Besides his History of Alexander, 
Timagenes also published a work on the Gauls, which 
is cited by Ammianus Marcellinus and Plutarch. 

( Bonamy , Recherckes sur Vhistorien Timagene .— 
Mem. de VAcad. des Inscr., &c., vol. 13, p. 35.) 
Vossius distinguishes between Timagenes the Alexan- 
drean and Timagenes the Syrian, but in this he is 
wrong. ( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 4, p. 75.) 

Timanthes, I. a painter, said by Eustathius (ad 11., 
24, 163) to have been a native of Sicyon, but by Quin¬ 
tilian (2, 13), of Cythnus. He was a contemporary 
of Zeuxis and Parrhasius ( Plin ., 35, 9, 36), and must, 
consequently, have lived about Olymp. 96. The most 
important passage relating to him is in Pliny (35, 10, 
36).—Timanthes has not been so much brought for¬ 
ward in the annals of art as Zeuxis and Parrhasius; 
but, as far as we have means given us of judging, he 
was, at least, inferior to neither in genius. He seems 
to have thrown a large share of intellect and thought 
into his productions. He appears to have been une¬ 
qualled both in ingenuity and feeling, of which we 
have some remarkable examples. One of these was 
displayed in the picture on the noble subject of the 
sacrifice of Iphigenia, in which he represented the 
tender and beautiful virgin standing before the altar 
awaiting her doom, and surrounded by her afflicted 
relatives. All these last he depicted as moved by va¬ 
rious degrees of sorrow, and grief seemed to have 
reached its utmost expression in the face of Menelaus; 
out that of Agamemnon was left; and the painter, 
heightening the interest of the piece by a forbearance 
of judgment, often erroneously regarded as a confess¬ 
ion of the inadequacy of his art, covered the head of 
the father with his mantle, and left his agony to the 
imagination of the spectators.—In Fuseli’s Lecture on 
Ancient Art, this painting of Timanthes is made the 
subject of a full and very able criticism, in the course 
of which he dissents expressly from the opinion of Sir 
Joshua Reynolds, who agreed with M. Falconet in re¬ 
garding the circumstance of the mantle-enveloped face 
of Agamemnon as little better than a mere trick on 
the part of the artist. The remarks of Fuseli, in 
answer to this and similar animadversions, are worthy 
of being quoted : “ Neither the French nor the Eng¬ 
lish critic appears to me to have comprehended the 
real motive of Timanthes ; they ascribe to impotence 
what was the forbearance of judgment. Timanthes 
felt like a father ; he did not hide the face of Aga¬ 
memnon because it was beyond the power of his art, 
nor because it was beyond the 'possibility, but because 
it was beyond the dignity of expression ; because the 
inspiring feature of paternal affection at that moment, 
and the action which, of necessity, must have accom¬ 
panied it, would either have destroyed the grandeur of 
the character and the solemnity of the scene, or sub- 
1344 


jected the painter, with the majority of his judges, to 
the imputation of insensibility. He must either have 
represented him in tears, or convulsed at the flash of 
the uplifted steel, forgetting the chief in the father, and 
in that state of stupefaction which levels all feature? 
and deadens expression. He might, indeed, have 
chosen a fourth mode ; he might have exhibited him 
fainting and palsied in the arms of his attendants, 
and, by this confusion of male and female character, 
merited the applause of every theatre in Paris. But 
Timanthes had too true a sense of nature to expose a 
father’s feelings or to tear a passion to rags ; nor had 
the Greeks yet learned of Rome to steel the face. If 
he made Agamemnon bear his calamity as a man, be 
made him also feel it as a man. It became the leader 
of Greece to sanction the ceremony with his presence; 
it did not become the father to see the daughter be¬ 
neath the dagger’s point: the same nature that threw 
a real mantle over the face of Timoleon, when he as¬ 
sisted at the punishment of his brother, taught Timan¬ 
thes to throw an imaginary one over the face of Aga^ 
memnon ; neither height nor depth, but propriety o: 
expression, was his aim.” ( Fuseli , Lecture on Anc 
Art-Works , vol. 2, p. 49.)—This celebrated piece 
was painted, as Quintilian informs us, in contest with 
Colotes of Teos, a painter and sculptor from the school 
of Phidias, and it was crowned with victory at the 
rival exhibition. (Quintil., 2, 13. — Cic., Orat., 22, 

$ 74.— Eustath., 1. c .)—On another occasion, having 
painted a sleeping Cyclops in an exceedingly small 
compass, yet wishing to convey the idea of his gigan¬ 
tic size, he introduced a group of Satyrs, measuring 
his thumb with a thyrsus. A deep meaning was to 
be discovered in every work of his pencil: yet the 
tendency to expression and significant delineation did 
not detract from the beauty of the forms which he cre¬ 
ated ; for his figure of a prince was so perfect in its 
proportion and so majestic in its air, that it appears 
to have reached the utmost height of the ideal. T his 
picture was preserved in the temple of Peace at Rome. 
(Encyclop. Metropol., div. 2, vol. 1, p. 407.— Sillig , 
Diet. Art., s. v.) —II. A painter, who flourished in 
the age of Aratus, and made a picture representing 
the battle between this general and the JStolians, near 
Pellene. ( Plut., Vit. Arat., c. 32— Sillig, Diet. Art., 
s. v.) 

Timavus, a celebrated stream of Italy, in the terri¬ 
tory of Venetia, northeast of Aquileia, and falling into 
the Hadriatic. Few streams have been more celebra¬ 
ted in antiquity or more sung by the poets than the 
Timavus. Its numerous sources, its lake and subter¬ 
ranean passage, which have been the theme of the 
Latin muse from Virgil to Claudian and Ausonius, are 
now so little known, that their existence has even 
been questioned, and ascribed to poetical invention. 

It has, however, been well ascertained, that the name 
of Timao is still preserved by some springs which 
rise near S. Giovano di Carso and the castle of Duino, 
and form a river, which, after a course of little more # 
than a mile, falls into the Hadriatic. The number 
of these sources seems to vary according to the differ 
ence of the seasons, which circumstance will account 
for the various statements made by ancient writers re¬ 
specting them. Strabo, who appears to derive his in 
formation from Polybius, reckoned seven, all of which, 
with the exception of one, were salt. According to 
Posidonius, the river really rose in the mountains at 
some distance from the sea, and disappeared under 
ground for the space of fourteen miles, when it issued 
forth again near the sea at the springs above mention¬ 
ed. ( Strabo, 215. — Pliny , 2, 106.) This account 
seems also verified by actual observation. (Cramer's 
Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 130.) 

Timoleon, a Corinthian of noble birth and distin¬ 
guished ability as a warrior and statesman. His broth¬ 
er Timophanes having, partly by popularity and partb 









TIMOLEON 


TIM 


Dy the aid of a mercenary force, made himself tyrant of 
Corinth, Timoleon, after vain remonstrance, came to 
him with a kinsman of his, brother to the wife of Ti- 
mophanes, and a friend named Theopompus, and, cov¬ 
ering his own face, stood by while the others slew him 
When the Syracusan ambassadors arrived to seek aid 
from Corinth against their tyrants, the deed was recent, 
and all Corinth was in a ferment •, some extolling Ti- 
moleon as the most magnanimous of patriots, others 
execrating him as a fratricide. The request of the 
Syracusans offered to the Corinthians the means of 
calming their dissensions by the removal of the ob¬ 
noxious individual, and to Timoleon a field of honour- 
ible action, in which he might escape from the misgiv¬ 
ings of his own mind and the reproaches of his moth¬ 
er, who never forgave hirn. Timoleon proceeded to 
Sicily with a small band of mercenaries, principally 
raised by his own credit. On arriving he received 
considerable re-enforcements, and soon gained a foot¬ 
ing in Syracuse. The greater part of the city had al¬ 
ready been taken by Hicetes from Dionysius, and the 
whole was divided between three parties, each hostile 
to both the others. Timoleon was, in the end, success¬ 
ful. Hicetes withdrew to Leontini, and Dionysius 
surrendered, himself and his friends retiring to Cor¬ 
inth ; while two thousand mercenaries of the garrison 
engaged in the service of Timoleon. This final ex¬ 
pulsion of Dionysius took place fifty years after the rise 
of his father, and four years after the landing of Ti- 
moleon in Sicily (B.C. 343) Timoleon remained mas¬ 
ter of a city, the largest of all in the Grecian settle¬ 
ments ; but almost a desert, through the multitudes 
slain or driven into banishment in successive revolu¬ 
tions. So great, it is said, was the desolation, that 
the horses of the cavalry grazed in the market-place, 
while the grooms slept at their ease on the luxuriant 
herbage. The winter was passed in assigning desert¬ 
ed lands and houses ».s a provision to the few remain¬ 
ing Syracusans of the Corinthian party and to the mer¬ 
cenaries instead of pay, which the general had not to 
give. In winter, when Grecian warfare was slackened 
or interrupted, the possession of good houses would 
doubtless be gratifying ; but to men unused to peace¬ 
ful labour, lands without slaves and cattle were of lit¬ 
tle worth ; and it was necessary, in the spring, to find 
them some profitable employment. Unable sufficient¬ 
ly to supply the wants of his soldiers from any Gre¬ 
cian enemy, Timoleon sent one thousand rnen into the 
territory belonging to Carthage, and gathered thence 
abundance of spoil. The measure may seem rash, 
but he probably knew that an invasion was preparing, 
and that quiescence would not avert the storm, while 
a rich booty would make his soldiers meet it better. 
The Carthaginians landed in Sicily. Their force is 
stated at seventy thousand foot and ten thousand horse; 
while Timoleon could only muster three thousand 
Syracusans and nine thousand mercenaries. Never¬ 
theless, he advanced to meet them in their own pos¬ 
sessions ; and, by the union of admirable conduct with 
singular good fortune, won a glorious victory, which 
was soon followed by an honourable peace. Timoleon, 
professing to be the liberator of Sicily, next directed 
his arms against the various chiefs or tyrants who held 
dominion in the towns. In this he may probably have 
been actuated by a sincere hatred of such governments; 
out ne frequently seems to have little consulted the 
wianes of the people, whose deliverer he declared him¬ 
self. Most of the smaller chiefs withdrew; the more 
powerful, resisting, were conquered ; and, being given 
up to their political adversaries, were put to death—in 
some cases with studied cruelty. Among the victims 
was Hicetes, who was submitted, with his whole fam¬ 
ily, to the judgment of that mixed multitude now call¬ 
ed the Syracusan people, and all were put death. 
There is much appearance that Hicetes deserved his 
ite ; but wlat shall we say of the people which doom- 
8 H 


ed to death his unoffending wife and daughters! and 
what of the general, who, holding little less than abso¬ 
lute authority over his foll«wers, referred such a mat¬ 
ter to the decision of such a body 1 Having every¬ 
where established for Syracuse and for himself a su¬ 
perintending authority, which rested on the support of a 
prevailing party, like the control of Athens or Lace¬ 
daemon over their allies, Timoleon sought to restore 
good order, abundance, and population to the long-af¬ 
flicted island. Syracuse was still very thinly peopled, 
and it was torn by mutual jealousy between the rem¬ 
nant of the ancient Syracusans, and the numerous mer¬ 
cenaries and foreign adventurers who had been re¬ 
warded for their services with lands and houses, and ad¬ 
mission to all the rights of citizens. At one time the 
struggle ripened to a civil war, of which we know not 
the circumstances or the issue ; but probably it was 
suppressed without the ruin of either party. At once 
to supply the void in the city and to strengthen his gov¬ 
ernment by a body of adherents who owed their all to 
him, Timoleon invited colonists from Greece, and set¬ 
tled at one time four thousand families on the Syra¬ 
cusan territory, and on a neighbouring plain of great 
extent and fertility no less than ten thousand. Simi¬ 
lar measures were adopted in many of the other cities 
under his control. He revised the ancient laws of Syr¬ 
acuse, and restored them with amendments skilfully 
adapted to the altered state of the commonwealth. But 
to amalgamate into a united people so many bodies of 
men of various interests, and mostly trained to war 
and violence, was a work only to be accomplished by 
the energy of one able man ; and in accomplishing that 
work, Timoleon was both enabled and obliged, by the 
lawless habits of his followers, to exercise an authority 
not less arbitrary than that of any tyrant he had over¬ 
thrown. In one most important particular he is supe¬ 
rior, not only to those chiefs, to Gelon and Dionysius, 
and to all who ever held like power in Sicily, but per¬ 
haps to all, with the single exception of Washington, 
who have ever risen to the highest power in times of 
tumult; for he appears to have directed his efforts 
honestly and wisely to the object, not of establishing a 
dynasty of princes, but of so settling the government 
and training the people that they should be able, after 
his death, to govern themselves without an arbitrary 
leader. He died highly honoured and generally be¬ 
loved ; and, for many years after his death, the whole 
of Sicily continued in unusual quiet and growing pros¬ 
perity. Yet, in doing justice to the great qualities of 
Timoleon, and the sincerity of his zeal for the public 
good, we cannot but own that he was unscrupulous in 
the choice of means, even beyond the ordinary laxity of 
political morality in Greece, and that his fame is tar¬ 
nished by some acts of atrocious cruelty and of gross in¬ 
justice. {Corn. Nep., Vit. Timol. — Plut.,Vit. Timol. 
—History of Greece {Lib. Us. Knowl.), p. 119, scq.) 

Timomachus, a painter of Byzantium, who flourish¬ 
ed in the age of Caesar the Dictator, and executed for 
him pictures of Ajax and Medea, which were placed 
in the temple of Venus Genetrix. For these paintings 
the artist received 80 talents. {Plin., 35, 11, 40.-- 
Id ., 35, 4, 9.) The Medea is the subject of an epi¬ 
gram in the Anthology. {Anthol. Palat., P. 2, p. 667.) 
This epigram has been imitated by Ausonius, in the 
22d of his collection. For an account of other pieces 
of Timomachus, consult Sillig {Diet. Art., s. v.). 

Timon, I. a disciple of Pyrrho, who flourished in the 
time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and lived to the age of 
90 years. He first professed philosophy at Chalcedon, 
and afterward at Athens, where he remained till his 
death. He took little pains to invite disciples to his 
school, and seems to have treated the opinions and dis¬ 
putes of the philosophers with contempt; for he wrot« 
a poem called Silli, in which he inveighs with bitter 
f-arcasms against the whole body. He was addicted to 
ntemperance. With him terminated the succession 

1345 



TIMON. 


TIM 


of the public professors in the school of Pyrrho. The 
fragments of Timon were edited, in 1820, by Wolke, 
Varsav., 8vo, and in 1821, by Paul, Berol. , 8vo.—II. 
Surnamed the Misanthrope, was a native of the bor¬ 
ough of Colyttus in Attica, and remarkable for the 
whimsical severity of his temper, and his hatred of 
mankind. Born some time before the commencement 
of the Peloponnesian war, it is possible that the vices 
and crimes of which he was an eyewitness during this 
period of trouble may have contributed to the develop¬ 
ment of that morose spirit which procured for him the 
surname by which he is always known. It appears 
from the ancient writers, and indirectly from the testi¬ 
mony of Plato himself (Phaeton, p. 67, ed. 1602), that 
this hatred towards his fellow-men was originally exci¬ 
ted by the false and ungrateful conduct of others. He 
lavished upon those around him a large fortune in 
presents and in services of all kinds, and, when his 
wealth was all expended, he found that he had lost not 
only his property, but his friends. Misanthropy then 
succeeded to unbounded liberality ; and, shunning the 
society of his fellow-men, and retiring to a small spot 
of ground in the suburbs, he gave himself up to the 
workings of an irritated and deeply disappointed spirit; 
or, if ever he did mix on any occasion with the busy 
world at Athens, it was only to applaud, with cruel 
irony, the errors and follies of his fellow-citizens. 
Cold and repulsive to all others, he appeared to take 
a lively interest in the young Alcibiades ; but it was 
only because he saw in him the future author of evil 
to his country. He even publicly declared the mo¬ 
tives that prompted him to this singular attachment; 
for, happening one day to meet Alcibiades returning 
from the place of assembly, accompanied by a large 
concourse, in place of turning away and avoiding him 
as he avoided others, he came directly up, and, grasp¬ 
ing his hand, exclaimed, “ Go on, my son ; you do 
well to augment your own power, for you are only 
augmenting it to the lasting injury of these.” One 
account says that Timon, having subsequently become 
possessed of a new fortune, probably by agriculture, 
changed to a complete miser, and shut himself up, to¬ 
gether with his riches, in a kind of tower, which was 
called, for a long time afterward, the tower of Timon. 
This tradition is not, it is true, very consistent with the 
rank which Pliny ( 7, 19) assigns him among the “ auc- 
tores maxima sapiential' nor with the apophthegm 
ascribed to him by Stobaeus ( Serm ., 7, p. 107), that 
“ cupidity and avarice are the cause of all human ills 
but nothing ought to surprise us in so whimsical a 
character ; and besides, if in the folly of avarice we 
see nothing of the sage, we certainly see enough of 
the misanthrope. The end of Timon was worthy of 
his life. Having broken a limb by a fall, and having, 
in his aversion for his fellow-men, refused all assist¬ 
ance, a gangrene set in and he died. But this was 
not all. Nature herself seems to have seconded the 
intentions of Timon, by separating him, even after 
death, from the habitable world; for his tomb having 
been erected near the seashore, the ground around it 
was gradually covered by the water, and the spot thus 
rendered inaccessible. The character of Timon is 
made a frequent subject for epigrams in the Greek 
Anthology, and many sayings of his are quoted by the 
ancient writers. The two following are the best: 
Timon, after having renounced the society of his fel¬ 
low-men, still kept up a kind of intimacy with another 
misanthrope named Apimantus. During a repast in 
which they were celebrating the second day of the 
Anthesteria (^oecX Apimantus, charmed with the tete- 
4-tete, exclaimed, “ Oh, Timon ! what an agreeable 
supper!” “Ay,” replied the other, “were you only 
away !” On another occasion, the people of Athens 
were surprised to see him ascend the tribune, and 
waited in profound silence to hear what he would say. 

Athenians,” exclaimed the new rator, “ I have a 
1346 


small field, and in this field a fig-tree, on which many 
citizens have already hung themselves. I intend now 
to build a house on this spot, and wish to give you 
notice before I begin, in order that if there be any 
more of you who intend to hang yourselves, you may 
come before the fig-tree is cut down.” (Diog. Lacrt.. 

9, 112. — Suid., s. v. — Leclerc, in Biogr. Univ., vol 
46, p. 83, seqq.) 

Timophanes, a Corinthian, brother to limoleon 
He attempted to make himself tyrant of his country 
by means of the mercenary soldiers with whom he had 
fought against the Argives and Cleomenes. *1 imo- 
leon wished to convince him of the impropriety of his 
measures ; and, when he found him unmoved, he caus¬ 
ed him to be assassinated. ( Vid . Timoleon, at the 
commencement of the article.) 

Timotheus, I. a poet and musician of Miletus, born 
446 B.C. He was received with hisses the first time 
he exhibited in public at Athens, and farther applica¬ 
tions would have been totally abandoned, had not Eu¬ 
ripides discovered his abilities, and encouraged him 
to follow a profession in which he afterward gained so 
much applause. According to Pausanias, he perfect 
ed the cithara, by the addition of four new strings to 
the seven which it had before. Suidas, however, 
states that it had nine before, and that Timotheus 
only added two. The truth appears to be this : the 
lyre of Terpander had seven strings ; that of Phrynis, a 
musical opponent of Timotheus, nine strings ; and that 
of Timotheus, eleven. Hence, no doubt, the remark 
of Suidas, that thq last-mentioned individual added 
only two strings. As, however, the two strings added 
by Phrynis were ordered to be removed by a public 
decree, Pausanias might say, without impropriety, that 
Timotheus had added four strings. This innovation 
was not well received by the Lacedaemonians, and it 
was condemned by a decree, which has been preserved 
for us in Boethius ( dc Musica, 1, 1, p. 1372, ed. Ba¬ 
sil, 1570), and which furnishes, also, a good specimen 
of Doric prose. ( Maittaire, Dialectic., p. 385, ed. 
Sturz.) The decree concludes with ordering that the 
kings and the ephori do publicly reprimand Timotheus, 
and compel him to cut off the newly-added strings of 
his lyre, and come back to the old number of seven. 
Athenaeus relates, that when this decree was on the 
point of being carried into execution, Timotheus show¬ 
ed the Lacedaemonians that they had in their own city 
a small image of Apollo holding a lyre which had ex¬ 
actly the same number of strings as his own, and that, 
upon this, he was acquitted. (Atkenaus, 14, p. 636, 
e. f) His new system of music met with numerous 
adversaries throughout Greece ; and Plutarch and 
Athenaeus have preserved many of the sarcasms that 
were launched at him in consequence by the comic 
poets of the day. All these attacks, however, only 
served to confirm the reputation of the musician. Af¬ 
ter having distinguished himself in most of the Gre¬ 
cian cities, Timotheus retired to Macedonia, to the 
court of King Archelaiis, where he died at a very ad¬ 
vanced age, two years before the birth of Alexander 
the Great. Timotheus composed pieces in almost 
every department of poetry. A hymn in honour of 
Diana obtained for him a very large sum of money 
from the Ephesians, for whom he had composed it. 
The ancients cite his Nomes, his Proems or preludes, 
eighteen Dithyrambics, twenty -one Hymns, two Poems, 
entitled Danae and Semele ; four Tragedies, &c. We 
have merely a few fragments of his productions re 
maining. They are given by Grotius, in his Excerpt.: 
ex tragoediis et comadiis Grads, Sj-c., Paris, 1626, 
4to. (Recherches sur la Vie de TimotMe, par Bu¬ 
rette. — Mem. dc VAcad. des Inscr., vol. 10.— Weiss, 
Biogr. Univ., vol. 46, p. 92, seqq.) —II.-A celebrated 
musician, a native of Thebes in Bceotia. He was one 
of those who were invited to attend at the celebration 
of the nuptials of Alexander the Great. He excelled 



T I R 


TIR 


particularly in playing on the flute ; and his perform¬ 
ance is said to have animated the monarch in so pow¬ 
erful a degree, that he started up and seized his arms; 
an incident which Dryden has so beautifully intro¬ 
duced into English poetry. (Burette, Rechcrches, c 
— Wem, Biogr. Univ., vol. 46, p. 93.)—III. An Athe¬ 
nian commander, son of Conon, inherited the valour 
and abilities of his father. In 375 B.C. he gamed a 
signal victory over the Lacedaemonian fleet off Cor- 
c^ra, and made himself master of this island. Then 
directing his course towards Thrace, he took sevOral 
important cities in this quarter, and afterward deliv¬ 
ered Cyzicus from the foe. He subsequently shared 
the command of the fleet with Iphicrates.. The latter, 
having wished to attack the enemy during a violent 
tempest, and not obtaining the consent of Timotheus 
to so hazardous a step, caused him to be brought to 
trial at Athens. Timotheus was condemned to pay 
a fine of 100 talents ; but, being unable to raise so 
large a sum, he retired to Chalcis, where he ended his 
days. His disinterestedness equalled his courage and 
military talents. He never appropriated to himself 
any portion of the booty taken from the foe. On one 
occasion he paid into the public treasury 1200 talents. 
There existed a very close intimacy between Timo¬ 
theus and Plato. (Corn. Nep., in Vit. — JElian, V. 
H., 2, 10.— Mschin ., vol. 1, p. 247, -ed. Reiske. — Cic., 
Off., 1, 32.— Id., de Orat., 3,34.) 

Tingis, the capital of Mauritania Tingitana, on the 
northwestern coast of Africa, and a short distance to 
the east of the Ampelusian promontory. It was fa¬ 
bled to have been built by the giant Antaeus. Serto- 
rius took it; and as the tomb of the founder was near 
the place, he caused it to be opened, and found in it a 
skeleton six cubits long. Some editions of Plutarch 
read e^Kovra (60) instead of ef (6); the latter, how¬ 
ever, is decidedly the true reading. Plutarch copies 
here, according to Strabo, the fable of Gabinius re¬ 
specting the stature of Antaeus.—The modern name 
of the place is Tangier. (Mela, 1, 5.— Id., 2, 6.— 
Plin., 5, 1.) 

Tiphys, the pilot of the ship of the Argonauts, was 
son of Hagnius, or, according to some, of Phorbas. 
He died before the Argonauts reached Colchis, at the 
court of Lycus, in the Propontis, and Erginus was 
chosen in his place. (Apollod., 1, 9.— Hygin., fab., 
14, 18.) 

Tiresias, a celebrated prophet of Thebes, son of 
Eneres and the nymph Chariclo, of the race of Udaeus, 
one of the Sparti. (Vid. Sparti.) Various accounts 
are given as to the cause of his blindness : one as¬ 
cribes it to his having seen Minerva bathing (Phere- 
cyd., ap. Apollod., 3, 6, 7. — Callim., Lav. Pall., 75, 
seqq.) ; another to his having divulged to mankind the 
secrets of the gods. (Apollod., 1. c .) The Melam- 
podia related that Tiresias, happening to see two ser¬ 
pents together on Mount Cithasron, killed the female, 
and was suddenly changed into a woman. In this 
state he continued for seven years ; at the end of 
which period, observing two serpents similarly cir¬ 
cumstanced, he killed the male, and thus returned to 
his pristine state. On some occasion, Jupiter and Ju¬ 
no fell into a dispute as to which derived more pleas¬ 
ure from the conjugal state, the male or female. Un¬ 
able to settle it to their satisfaction, they agreed to 
refer the matter to Tiresias, who had known both 
states. His answer was, that of ten parts but one 
falls to man. Juno, incensed at this, deprived the 
guiltless arbitrator of the power of vision. Jupiter 
thereupon, as one god cannot undo the acts of another, 
gave him, in compensation, an extent of life for seven 
generations, and the power of foreseeing coming events. 
—Tiresias lived at Thebes, where he was contempo¬ 
rary with all the events of the times of Laius and 
CEdipus, and the two Theban wars. At the conclu¬ 
sion of the last he recommended the Thebans to aban¬ 


don their city, and he was the companion of theii 
flight. It was still night when they arrived at the 
fountain of Tilphussa. Tiresias, whose period of life 
was fated to be coextensive with that of the city of 
the Cadmeans, drank of its waters, and immediately 
died. The'wictorious Argives sent his daughter Man- 
to, along with a portion of the spoil, to Delphi, accord¬ 
ing to the vow which they had made. In obedience 
to the command of the oracle, Manto afterward went 
thence, and, marrying Rhakios of Mycenae or Crete, 
founded the town and oracle of Clarus. She bore to 
Rhakios (or, as others said, to Apollo) a son named 
Mopsus, a celebrated prophet. (Schol. ad Apollon. 
Rhod., 1, 308.— Pausan., 7, 3.— Tzelz. ad Lycopftr., 
980.)—The name Tiresias (T upeciaq) is apparently 
derived from repaq (old form relpaq), a prodigy, and 
that of his daughter from pdvnq. (Keightley's My 
thology, p. 344, seq.) 

Tiridates, a monarch of Parthia, raised to the 
throne after Phraates had been expelled for his cruel¬ 
ty and oppression. Tiridates, however, upon learning 
that Phraates was marching against him with a nu¬ 
merous army of Scythians, fled with the infant son of 
Phraates to Augustus. Augustus restored his son to 
Phraates, but refused to deliver up Tiridates. (Vid. 
Parthia.) 

Tiro, M. Tullius, a freedman of Cicero’s, held m 
high esteem by his master, and made eventually his 
private secretary and the superintendent of all his 
affairs. He performed many important services for 
Cicero, and received from the liberality of his grateful 
master a small rural domain, where he passed the rest 
of his days in retirement. Tiro wrote a Biography of 
Cicero, now lost ; and made a collection of his bons 
mots ( joci ) in three books. This has shared the fate 
of his other work. He was the author, likewise, of 
several other works ; and a passage in one of Cicero’s 
letters (Ep. ad. Fam., 16, 18) gives us reason to sup¬ 
pose that he had attempted, among other things, even 
tragic composition. It is to the care of Tiro that we 
are indebted for the preservation of the letters of Ci¬ 
cero. To him, likewise, is attributed the invention of 
stenography or short-hand writing. This is hardly cor¬ 
rect. He would merely seem to have reduced to a 
more perfect system an art which had existed long 
before. The poet Ennius was the first who used this 
manner of writing. Isidorus ascribes to him the in¬ 
vention of the art ; in all likelihood, however, he 
merely borrowed it from the Greeks. (Isid., Orig., 

1, 21, 1.— Weiss, in Biogr. JJniv., vol. 46, p. 12S, 
seq.) 

Tiryns or Tirynthus, a city of Argolis, northeast 
of Argos, and about twelve stadia from Nauplia. It 
was celebrated for its massive walls, and is said to have 
been founded by King Proetus, brother of Acrisius, 
who, as Strabo reports, employed for the construction 
of his citadel workmen from Lycia. These are the 
Cyclopes, or Chirogasteres as they are sometimes call¬ 
ed, who built the treasury of Atreus, and the great 
doorway, which is still to be seen at Mycenae. The 
poets have also ascribed to them the construction of 
the walls of Argos. (Strab., 373.— Apollod., 2, 2, 1. 
Eustalh. ad II., 2, p. 286.)—Proetus was succeeded 
by Perseus, who transmitted Tiryns to his descendant 
Electryon. Alcmena, the daughter of this prince, was 
married to Amphitryon, on whom the crown would 
have devolved had he not been expelled by Sthenelus 
of Argos. His son Hercules, however, afterward re¬ 
gained possession of his inheritance, whence he de¬ 
rived the name of Tirynthius. (Hcs., Here. Scut., 81. 
— Apollod., 2, 4, 5.— Find., OL, 10, 37.— Id., Isthrn., 
6, 39.) This hero, after the murder of Iphitus, fled 
from Tiryns, and retired into the Trachinian country. 
Homer represents the city of Tiryns as subject to the 
kings of Argos at the time of the Trojan war. (II., 

2, 559.) But it was afterward destroyed by the Ar 

1347 




T I T 


TIT 


gives, probably about the same time with the city of 
Mycenae. Strabo reports that, on abandoning their 
homes, the Tirynthians retired to the neighbouring 
town of Epidaurus. ( Strab ., 373.) But Pausanias 
affirms that the greater part were removed to Argos. 
The last-mentioned writer describes the remains of the 
walls of Tiryns as exhibiting a specimen of remarkably 
solid masonry. (Compare Dodwell, Tour , vol. 2, p. 
250.— Gell, Itin. of the Morea and Argolis.) —Sir W. 
Gell {Itin. of Argolis , p. 169) corrects an error of 
D’Anville with regard to this place. “ A mistake,” 
he observes, “ occurs on the subject of Tiryns, and a 
place named by him Vathia , but of which nothing can 
be understood. It is possible that Vathi, or the pro¬ 
found valley, may be a name sometimes used for the 
Valley of Barbitsa, and that the place named Claustra 
by D’Anville may be the outlet of that valley, called 
Kleisour, which has a corresponding signification.” 

Tirynthia, a name given to Alcmena, as being a 
native of Tiryns. {Vid. Tiryns.) 

Tisamenus, a son of Orestes and Hermione the 
daughter of Menelaus, who succeeded on the throne of 
Argos and Lacedaemon. The Heraclidse entered his 
kingdom in the third year of his reign, and he was 
obliged to retire with his family into Achaia. He was 
some time after killed in a battle against the Ionians 
near Helice. {Apollod., 2, 7.— Pates an., 3, 1.) 

Tisiph5ne, one of the Furies. {Vid. Furise.) 

Tissaphernes, a satrap of Persia, commander of 
part of the forces of Artaxerxes at the battle of Cu- 
naxa against Cyrus, and the one who first gave infor¬ 
mation to Artaxerxes of the designs of his brother. 
He afterward obtained a daughter of Artaxerxes in 
marriage, and all the provinces over which Cyrus had 
been governor. This was the same Tissaphernes who 
seized Alcibiades, and sent him prisoner to Sardis, af¬ 
ter the naval victory which the latter had gained over 
the Lacedaemonians. Tissaphernes was afterward de¬ 
feated by Agesilaus, upon which the King of Persia 
sent Tithraustes, another satrap, against him, who cut 
off his head. {Plut., Vit. Alcib.—Id ., Vit. Ages. — 
Xen., Anab., 1, 2.) 

Titan or Titanus, I. a son of Coelus (or Uranus) 
and Vesta (or Terra), brother to Saturn and Hyperion. 
He was the eldest of the children of Coelus ; but he 
gave his brother Saturn the kingdom of the world, pro¬ 
vided he raised no male children. When the births 
of Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto were concealed from 
him, Titan, on discovering the deception, made war 
against Saturn, and imprisoned him till he was replaced 
on his throne by his son Jupiter. ( Lactantius, de Fals. 
Rel., 1, 14.) This legend differs, it will be perceived, 
from the ordinary one, as given under the article Ti- 
tanes.—II. A name applied to the sun, as the offspring 
of Hyperion, one of the Titans. {Tiby.lL, 4, 1, 50.— 
Virg., JEn., 4, 118.)—III. An epithet sometimes ap¬ 
plied to Prometheus by the poets. {Soph., (Ed. Col., 
56.— Juvenal, 14, 34.— Vid. Prometheus.) 

Titanes, a name given to the sons of Coelus (or 
Uranus) and Terra. They were six males, Oceanus, 
Coios, Crios, Hyperion, Iapetus, and the youngest of 
them Cronus ; and six females, Theia, Rheia (or 
Rhea), Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, and Tethys. 
These children, according to the commonly-received 
legend, were hated by their father, who, as soon as 
they were born, thrust them out of sight into a cavern 
of Earth, who, grieved at his unnatural conduct, pro¬ 
duced the “ substance of hoary steel,” and, forming 
from it a sickle, roused her children, the Titans, to re¬ 
bellion against him ; but fear seized on them all ex¬ 
cept Saturn (Cronus), who, lying in wait with the sickle 
with which his mother had armed him, mutilated his 
unsuspecting sire. The drops which fell on the earth 
from the wound gave birth to the Erinnyes, the Giants, 
and the Melian nymphs : from what fell into the sea 
wrung Aphrodite or Venus, the goddess of love and 
1348 


beauty. When Saturn succeeded his father he mar¬ 
ried Rhea ; but he devoured all his male children, a» 
he had been informed by an oracle that he should be 
dethroned by them as a punishment for his cruelty to 
his father. The wars of the Titans against the goda 
are very celebrated in mythology. They are often 
confounded with that of the Giants ; but it is to be ob¬ 
served that the war of the Titans was against Saturn, 
and that of the Giants against Jupiter.—Pezron {Anti 
quite des Celtes ) indulges in some whimsical remark¬ 
on the subject, and makes the Celtse to be the samt 
with the Titans, and their princes the same with tht 
Giants in Scripture. According to him, the Titans 
were the descendants of Gomer, the son of Japhet. 
He adds that the word Titan is perfect Celtic, and he 
derives it from tit, earth, and den or ten, man ; and 
hence, he says, the reason of the Greek appellation ot 
•/rjyevelq, or earth-born , which was applied to them. 
The Titans, according to Bryant, were those Cushites, 
or sons of Chus, called Giants, who built the Tower of 
Babel, and were afterward dispersed.—Constant re 
gards the legend of the gods and the Titans as the 
tradition of a warfare between two rival religious sects, 
the Titans being considered by him as having wor¬ 
shipped the elements and stars. ( Constant , de la Re¬ 
ligion, vol. 2, p. 315.)—The best solution, however, 
appears to be that .which makes the Titans mere per¬ 
sonifications of the' elements, and their warfare with 
the gods an allegorical picture of the angry collisions 
of the elements in the earliest ages of the world. 
(Compare Hermann und Creuzer, Briefe, p. 158.) 

Titanides, the daughters of Coelus and Terra. 
{Vid. Titanes, where their names are given.) 

Titaresius, a river of Thessaly, called also Euro 
tas, flowing into the Peneus a little above the vale of 
Tempe. The waters of the two rivers did not, how¬ 
ever, mingle ; as those of the Peneus were clear and 
limpid, while those of the Titaresius were impregnated 
with a thick unctuous substance, which floated like oil 
upon the surface. ( Strabo , 441.) Hence the fabu¬ 
lous account of its being a branch of the infernal Styx. 
{Horn., II, 2, 751.— Lucan, 6, 375.) It is now the 
Saranta Poros. {Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 
369.) 

Tithonus, a son of Laomedon, king of Troy, by 
Strymo, the daughter of the Scamander. He was so 
beautiful that Aurora became enamoured of him and 
carried him away. She now besought Jove to bestow 
on him immortality. The sovereign of Olympus as¬ 
sented, and Tithonus became exempt from death ; but 
the love-sick goddess, having forgotten to have youth 
joined in the gift, began, with time, to discern old age 
creeping over the visage and limos of her beautiful 
consort. When she saw his hairs blanching, she ab¬ 
stained from his bed, but still kept him, and treated 
him with fond attention, in her palace on the eastern 
margin of the Ocean stream, “giving him ambrosial 
food and fair garments.” But when he was no longer 
able to move his limbs, she deemed it the wisest course 
to shut him up in his chamber, whence his feeble voice 
was incessantly heard. {Horn., Hymn, in Ven., 218, 
seqq.) Later poets say that, out of compassion, she 
turned him into a cicada (rrrrg). {Schol. ad II., 11, 
1.— Tzetz. ad Lycophr., 18.) Memnon and JEma- 
thion were the children whom Aurora bore to Titho¬ 
nus. {Keightley's Mythology, p. 63.) 

Tithorea, a city on Mount Parnassus, called also 
Neon, for the name of Tithorea was only properly ap¬ 
plied to one of the peaks of Parnassus. {Herod., 8, 
32.— Strabo, 439.) This place, as we learn from 
Herodotus, was taken and burned by the army of 
Xerxes (8, 33). In its vicinity, Philomelus, the Pho- 
cian general, was defeated and slain by the Thebans. 
{Pausan., 10, 2.)—Delphi and Tithorea, on different 
sides of the mountain, were the halting places of those 
passing over Parnassus, at the distance of 80 3tadia 





TIT 


TITUS. 


from each other ; being situate as the towns of Aoste 
in Piedmont, and Martinach in the Yallais, are with 
regard to Mort St. Bernard. The whole district on 
the southern side was the Delphic ; while all the coun¬ 
try on the northern side received its name from Titho- 
rea. The olives of this city were so highly esteemed 
that they were conveyed as presents to the Roman 
emperors ; they still maintain their ancient reputation, 
being sent as an acceptable offering to the pashas and 
other grandees of Turkey. The ruins of Tithorea 
were first observed by Dr. Clarke, near the modern 
village of Vilitza. “ We arrived,” says that traveller, 
“ at the walls of Tithorea, extending in a surprising 
manner up the prodigious precipice of Parnassus, 
which rises behind the village of Velitza. These re¬ 
mains are visible to a considerable height upon the 
rocks ” ( Travels , vol. 7, p. 274.—Compare Dodwell, 

Tour , vol. 2, p. 139. — GeWs I tin., p. 214.) 

Tithraustes, a Persian satrap, B.C. 395, ordered 
by Artaxerxes to put to death Tissaphernes. ( Vid. 
Tissaphernes.) 

Titianus, Julianus, a Latin geographical writer, 
who flourished about the commencement of the third 
century. Julius Capitolinus informs us that he was 
called “ the ape of his time,” from his possessing, in a 
high degree, the talent of imitation. From a passage 
in Sidonius Apollinaris (1, 1) we learn in what this 
imitation consisted. Titianus imitated the style of the 
writers of antiquity. Thus he took Cicero for his 
model in the letters which he published under the 
names of certain illustrious females. ( Scholl, Hist. 
Lit. Rom., vol. 3, p. 246.) 

Titokmus, a herdsman remarkable for his strength, 
in which he is said to have far surpassed even Milo. 
The latter having met him on one occasion, and having 
observed his great size of body, wished to make trial of 
his strength ; but Titormus declined at first, saying 
that he was not possessed of much power of body. At 
length, however, descending into the river Evenus, he 
selected a stone of enormous size, and for three or four 
times in succession drew it towards him and then 
pushed it back again. After this he raised it up as 
high as his knees, and finally took it up on his shoul¬ 
ders and carried it for some distance; at last he flung 
it from him. Milo, on the other hand, could with dif¬ 
ficulty even roll the same stone. Titormus gave a 
second proof of his vast strength by going to a herd 
of cattle, seizing a bull, the largest of the whole num¬ 
ber, and fierce withal, by the foot, and holding it so 
firmly that it could not escape. Having then grasped 
another one, while in the act of passing, with the other 
hand, he held it in a similar manner. Milo, on seeing 
this, raised his hands to the heavens and exclaimed, 
“ Oh, Jupiter! hast thou begotten in this man another 
Hercules for us 1” Hence, says ^Elian, came the 
common expression, “This is another Hercules.” 
( Mliun , Var. Hist., 23, 22.— Herod., 6, 127.—Lu- 
cian, de conscnb. Hist., p. 690.— Eustath. ad Horn., 
Od, 5, p 206.) 

Titus Flavius Vespasianus, son of Vespasian, 
succeeded his father on the imperial throne. Previous 
to his accession, his military talents had been proved 
by the successful issue to which he had brought the 
sanguinary and protracted war which was waged with 
the~Jews, and which ended in the destruction of Jeru¬ 
salem. At the close of the Jewish war he was re¬ 
ceived at Rome with the title of Caesar, and admitted 
to the honour of a joint triumph with his father the 
emperor. He soon became the depositary of all pow¬ 
er, and the source of the executive authority in all its 
branches ; discharging the office of censor, which Ves¬ 
pasian had assumed, and even watching over the du¬ 
ties of praetorian prefect, never betore administered 
but by a Roman knight. The only stain which was 
ever attached to the life of Titus belongs to this period 
of his history, before his accession to sovereign author¬ 


ity, when his situation drew down upon him all the in¬ 
vidiousness of power, without supplying him with the 
means of securing popular affection. He is accused 
of having acted in some cases hastily and severely; 
and even of having gratified his personal resentment 
by condemning officers of rank to an ignominious 
death. He is, moreover, charged with avarice and 
bribery on the authority of Suetonius, who asserts, 
that those who had causes before the emperor knew 
how to obtain a favourable hearing, by placing a sum 
of money in the hands of the Caesar. He had given 
offence, too, by an unwise attachment to Berenice, 
the sister of King Agrippa. ( Vid. Berenice VII.) In 
a word, so seriously did the people regard these frailties 
in the character of their prince, that they anticipated in 
his reign a renewal of the flagitious, tyrannical, and 
sanguinary deeds which had condemned to infamy the 
name and government of Nero. But from the hour 
that Titus ascended the throne of his father, a total 
change took place in all that was previously vicious 
and objectionable in his character. He discarded all 
the ministers of his loose days, and, being resolved to 
reform the state of public morals, began by reforming 
himself. Although still strongly attached to the beau¬ 
tiful Berenice, he dismissed her to her own country, 
because he knew that such a connexion was disa¬ 
greeable to the senate and people. He abolished 
also the law of treason, under the sanction of which 
so many acts of tyranny had been committed ; and 
he not only discountenanced, but severely punished, 
all spies and informers. His whole time was now 
devoted to the duties of his high station, and his 
chief pleasure consisted in rendering services and 
kindnesses to his friends and to his people. His be¬ 
nevolence and goodness of heart would doubtless find 
ample scope ; yet it is recorded of him, that one even¬ 
ing, recalling to mind the events of the day, and 
not finding that he had done anything during its 
course beneficial to mankind, he exclaimed in accents 
of regret, “ My friends, I have lost a day /” This 
well-known exclamation, and the course of benevolent 
deeds by which it was accredited, procured for him 
the truly glorious title of the “ Delight of the Human 
Race ” (Deliciae humani generis). — A fresh war which 
broke out in Britain was the occasion of drawing forth 
the extraordinary qualities of Cnaeus Julius Agricola, 
who pushed his conquests far into the country ; and 
from the circumstance of some soldiers, who had been 
worsted in a skirmish, taking to their bark, and being 
driven by the wind and tide to a Roman camp on a 
distant coast, he conceived the idea, and completed 
the discovery, that Britain was an island. But the 
public prosperity was clouded by a terrible convulsion 
of Nature—the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. After 
an interval of extreme heat and drought, the whole 
plain was shaken, as in an earthquake, with a sound 
of subterranean thunder, and a roaring agitation of the 
air and sea; at the same time, a torrent of smoke and 
flame, accompanied by showers of stones, bursting from 
the crater, darkened the sun like an eclipse. Sudden¬ 
ly a column of black ashes rose perpendicularly into 
the air, hovered like a cloud, and fell; and in its fall 
overwhelmed the towns of Herculaneum and Pompeii. 
This memorable event took place in A.D. 79, and 
serves to give a melancholy interest to the first year 
of Titus’s sovereignty. The dark cloud of smoke and 
dust carried dismay even to the walls of the capital. 
The darkness which sank down upon the city terri¬ 
fied the inhabitants of Rome to such a degree, that 
many of them threw themselves, with their families, 
into ships bound for Africa and Egypt; imagining that 
Italy was about to atone for its sins by enduring the 
uttermost wrath of the gods. A pestilence soon af¬ 
ter succeeded at Rome, of which it is said that not 
fewer than 10,000 persons died daily during a con¬ 
siderable period. This malady is ascribed by histori- 

1349 




TIT 


TO L 


ans to the pollution which was supposed to have in¬ 
fected the air in consequence of the eruption of the 
mountain ; but it is more probable that it originated 
in the poverty and filth occasioned by the sudden in¬ 
crease made to the population of the capital, when the 
fugitives from the ruined towns and villages of Cam- 
pania sought an asylum within its walls. Such mis¬ 
fortunes wounded deeply the compassionate heart of 
Titus. He felt, says Suetonius, not only like a prince, 
but as a father, for the sufferings of his people, and 
spared neither labour nor expense to relieve their dis¬ 
tress. Hastening in person to Campania for the pur¬ 
pose of assisting the sufferers in that quarter, Titus 
was recalled to his capital by another frightful calam¬ 
ity. A fire broke out at Rome, which raged three 
days and nights with the greatest violence, destroying 
an immense number of buildings both public and pri¬ 
vate. Among the former were the Pantheon, the Oc- 
tavian Library, and the Capitol, which last had been 
but recently rebuilt after the demolition which it had 
sustained at the hands of the infuriated Germans du¬ 
ring the reign of Vitellius. No sooner had this af¬ 
flicting event reached the ears of the emperor, than he 
made known his determination to indemnify, out of his 
own coffers, all the losses which had accrued either to 
the state or individuals. So unwilling, in fact, was 
he that any one besides himself should have a share in 
the honour of relieving the fortunes of Rome, that he 
is said to have refused the contributions which were 
offered by some of his royal allies, by other cities of 
the empire, and by certain of the richest among the 
nobility. Such was now the constitution of Roman 
society, that attention to the amusements of the lower 
class of citizens in time of peace had become no less 
essential to the tranquillity of the empire than military 
talents during the pressure of war. With this view 
Titus proceeded to finish the amphitheatre, of which 
his father had laid the foundation ; adding to it baths 
and other comforts for the gratification of the popu¬ 
lace. This was the famous Colosseum, or Flavian 
Amphitheatre, the remains of which, at the present 
day, still present so striking a feature among the an¬ 
tiquities of Rome. The dedication of this superb edi¬ 
fice was celebrated by games of the most magnificent 
character. The sports lasted a hundred days, during 
which invention was racked to discover new modes of 
pleasing the eye, and of stimulating the depraved fan¬ 
cy of the multitude. It was observed that, on the 
last day of the games, the emperor appeared greatly 
dejected, and even shed tears. Hoping that his nerves 
would be strengthened by the purer air of the country, 
he retired to the neighbourhood of Reate, whence his 
family originally sprang, and whither he was accom¬ 
panied by his brother Domitian. A fever with which 
he was seized was unduly checked by the use of the 
bath, to Which he had become much addicted ; and it 
is added by Suetonius, that the symptoms of the dis¬ 
ease were greatly aggravated by adopting a suggestion 
of Domitian’s, that the patient should be put into a 
tub filled with snow. Thus died, on the 13th day of 
September, A.D. 81, Titus, in the same house where 
his father had expired, after a pacific reign of two 
years and nearly three months. The character of this 
prince has been given in the history of his actions ; 
and his name, even at the present day, conveys to the 
reader all those ideas of justice, clemency, wisdom, 
and benevolence, which enter into the conception of a 
good sovereign ; and his virtues were prized still more 
highly when contrasted with the violent and ungovern¬ 
able temper of his brother, who succeeded him on the 
throne. ( Sueton., Vit. Tit.—Dio Cass., 66, 15, scqq. 
— Encyclop. Metropol., div. 3, vol. 2, p. 607, scqq.) 

Tityus, a celebrated giant, son of Terra; or, ac¬ 
cording to others, of Jupiter, by Elara, the daughter 
of Orchomenus. Tityus happened to see Latona, on 
one occasion, as she was going to Delphi. Inflamed 
1350 


with love, he attempted violence ; but the goddess 
called her children to her aid, and he soon lay slain by 
their arrows. His punishment, however, did not end 
with life. He lay extended in Erebus, covering with 
his vast frame nine entire jugcra, while a vulture kept 
feeding upon his liver and entrails, which were con¬ 
tinually reproduced. ( Od ., 11, 576, seqq. — Apollod ., 
1, 4, 1 . — Virg., JEn., 6, 595. — Schol. ad Apollon. 
Rhod., 1, 761.) Heyne makes Tityus to have been 
an ancient hero, and supposes that part of the fable 
which relates to the nine acres to have been founded 
on the circumstance of his having had, after death, a 
tumulus of vast size covering his remains. ( Antiqua - 
rischer Aufs'dtze, vol. 1, p. 56.) 

Tmolus, I. a broad and elevated mass of mount¬ 
ains in Lydia, which sends several tributary torrents 
into the Hermus on the one side, and into the Cays- 
ter on the other, and divides, in fact, the valleys 
through which those two rivers flow. It was said tc 
derive its name from Timolus or Tmolus, a Lydian 
king, having been previously called Carmanorius. 
(Auct. de Fluv. in Pactol.) This mountain was 
much celebrated for its wine. ( Plin ., 5, 29.— Virg., 
Georg., 2, 97.— Senec., Phcen., 602.) Hence the fre¬ 
quent reference to it in the Bacchse of Euripides (v. 
64, 55, &c.). It appears also to have abounded with 
shrubs and evergreens (Callim., fragrn., 93); nor was 
it less noted for its mineral productions. It yielded 
tin ; and the Pactolus washed from its cavities a rich 
supply of golden ore. ( Strab., 610, 625.) Strabo 
reports, that on the top of Tmolus there was a watch- 
tower erected by the Persians ; it was of white mar¬ 
ble, and commanded an extensive view of the sur¬ 
rounding country. Tmolus is now called Bouz Dagh 
by the Turks. (Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. i, p. 441, 
seqq. —Compare Arundell's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 25, 
34, 54.)—II. A city of Lydia, in the vicinity of Mount 
Tmolus. According to Tacitus, it was destroyed by 
an earthquake under Tiberius. (Ann., 2, 47.—Com¬ 
pare Niceph. Call, 1, 17.) 

Togata, an epithet applied to Cisalpine Gaul, where 
the inhabitants wore the Roman toga, i. e., enjoyed 
the rights of Roman citizenship. The cities of Cisal¬ 
pine Gaul obtained the privilege of Latin cities, and, 
consequently, the right of wearing the Roman toga, 
by a law of Pompeius Strabo, about A.U.C. 665. (As- 
con., Comm, in Pison., p. 490.— Vid. Gallia Cisal- 
pina.) 

Toletum, now Toledo, a town of Plispania Tarra- 
conensis, on the river Tagus, and the capital of the 
Carpetani. According to Sylva and other Spanish his¬ 
torians, this city was founded by a considerable body 
of Jews, who, on their emancipation from captivity 
540 years before the vulgar era, established them¬ 
selves here, and called the place Toledoth or Toledath , 
that is, mother of the people. This is all a mere fa 
ble. Ctesar made this city a place of arms, and Au¬ 
gustus rendered it one of the seats of justice in Spain 
Modern Toledo was formerly celebrated for the e« 
quisite temper of its sword-blades, for which, accord¬ 
ing to some of the ancient writers, Toletum was also 
famous. (Plin., 3, 4.— I tin. Ant., 438, 446— Grat 
Falisc., Cyneg., 351.) 

Tolistoboii, one of the Celtic tribes in Galatia, in 
Asia Minor. They occupied that, portion of the country 
which extended along the left bank of the Sangarius 
from its junction with the Thymbris to its source, and 
was separated from Bithynia by that river. The prin¬ 
cipal town of this tribe was Pessinus. (Cramer's Asia 
Minor , vol. 2, p. 85.) 

Tol6sa, now Toulouse, a town of Gallia NarDonen- 
sis, which became a Roman colony under Augustus. 
The situation of Tolosa was very favourable for trade, 
and under the Romans it became the centre of the 
traffic which was carried on between the Mediterrane¬ 
an and Atlantic coasts of this part of Gaul Minerva 




TOM 


TR A 


had a rich temple there, which Cisapio the consul plun¬ 
dered ; and as he was never after fortunate, the words 
aurum Tolosanum became proverbial. Caspio is said 
to have plundered 15,000 talents. This wealth seems 
to have belonged, for the most part, to private individ¬ 
uals, who had placed it in the temple for safe keep¬ 
ing. ( Mila , 2, 5. — Cic., N. D., 3, 20.— Gees., B. G., 
S, 20.) 

Tolumnius. Vid. Lars Tolumnius. 

Tomarus, a mountain of Epirus, on the declivity 
or at the foot of which stood the celebrated Dodo- 
na. Callimachus {Hymn, in Cer., 52) calls it Ttna- 
rus. Pliny (4, 1), on the authority of Theopompus, 
assigns it a hundred springs around its base. Cramer 
makes it the same with the modern Mount Ckamouri. 
(Consult remarks under the article Dodona, page 451, 
col. 1, and also Cramer 7 s Anc. Greece , vol. 1, p. 115, 
seqq.) 

Tomgs or Tomi, a town situate on the western shores 
of the Euxine Sea, about 36 miles below the mouths 
of the Danube. The name was fabled by the Greek 
mythologists to have been derived from ropog, “ a cut¬ 
ting ” or “ separation because Medea had here, as 
they maintained, cut to pieces her brother Absyrtus, 
and strewed his remains along the road in order to 
stop her father’s pursuit. {Vid. Ovidius, page 949, 
col. 2.) Tomi is still called Tomeswar, though some¬ 
times otherwise styled Baba. It is celebrated as be¬ 
ing the place where Ovid was banished by Augustus. 
( Vid. Ovidius, page 949, col. 1.) 

Tomyris, a queen of the Massagetae in the time of 
Cyrus the Great. The Persian monarch sent ambas¬ 
sadors to her, asking her hand in marriage ; but the 
Scythian queen, well aware that the king was more 
anxious for the crown of the Massagetae than the pos- 
j>ession of her own person, interdicted his entrance 
into her territories. Cyrus thereupon marched openly 
against the Massagetae, and began to construct a 
bridge over the river Araxes. While he was thus em¬ 
ployed, Tomyris sent an ambassador, recommending 
him to desist from his enterprise; but adding that, if 
he still persisted in his design, the Scythian forces 
would retire for three days’ march from the river, and 
would thus allow him an opportunity of crossing with¬ 
out the aid of a bridge : when once on the opposite side 
of the river, he could then try his strength with her 
subjects. Or, if he did not like this plan, he might 
withdraw his own army a similar distance from the 
river, and the Massagetae would then cross over into 
the Persian territories, and contend with him there. 
Cyrus, by the advice of Croesus, accepted the former 
part of the offer, and, having crossed the Araxes, plan¬ 
ned the following stratagem, suggested to him by Croe- 
sus. He advanced one day’s march into the territo¬ 
ries of the Massagetae, and then, leaving his camp full 
of provisions and wine, and his worst troops in charge 
of it, he returned with his best to the banks of the 
Araxes. What he .had foreseen took place. The 
Massagetae came with the third part of their entire 
force, under the command of Spargapises, the son of 
Tomyris, attacked the Persian camp, cut to pieces the 
troops stationed there, and then banqueted on the 
abundant stores which they found in the camp, and 
drank to excess of the wine. Cyrus, returning on a 
sudden, surprised the whole number, slew many, and 
took a much larger number prisoners; among the latter, 
the ^on of Tomyris himself. This prince, on recover¬ 
ing from the intoxication into which he had fallen, slew 
himself through a feeling of shame ; and Tomyris, 
soon after, assembling all her forces, engaged in battle 
with Cyrus, whom she totally defeated. The Persian 
monarch himself was numbered among the slain ; and 
the queen, having searched for and found his dead body, 
cut off the head, and plunged it into a skin-bag full of 
iiamm Mood, exclaiming at the same time, “ I will 
give thee thy fill of blood” {as alparoq Kopteo). 


{Herod., 1, 205 —Consult remarks under the article 
Cyrus.) 

Topazos, an island on the western side of the Sinus 
Arabicus, in what was called the Sinus Immundus, 
and not far to the south of Berenice. It was called 
also Ophiode's, from its containing many serpents. 
Ptolemy gives it the name of Agathonis Insula. The 
stone topazus was found here, whence the appellation 
given to the island. {Agatharch. in Huds. Geogr. 
Min., 1, 54.— Diod. Sic., 3, 40.— Plin., 37, 8.)—The 
topaz of the Romans was the modern chrysolite, a 
stone which has always an admixture of green with the 
yellow. This probably proceeds from particles of cop¬ 
per dissolved in an acid, and taken up with those of 
the lead into the matter of the gem at the time of its 
original concretion. {Hill's Theophrastus, p. 73.) 

Torone, I. a haven of Epirus, below the river Thy- 
amis, and opposite Corcyra. It appears to have been 
in the vicinity of the modern Parga. Ptolemy gives 
Torone as the form of the name (p. 85), but Plu¬ 
tarch calls it Toryne (T opvvy). This last writer re¬ 
ports that the fleet of Augustus was moored here for 
a short time previous to the battle of Actium. {Vit. 
Anton.) —II. A town of Macedonia, situate towards 
the southern extremity of the Sithonian peninsula, anc 
giving name to the Sinus Toronacius, or Gulf of Cas- 
sandria. The harbour of Torone was called Cophof. 
(K uipog, mute, silent), from the circumstance that the 
noise of the waves was never heard there ; hence the 
proverb Kotyorepog rov T opovvaiov Aipevog. ( Prov. 
Grace. Schott., p. 101.— Strabo, 330.— Cramer's Anc. 
Greece, vol. 1, p. 256.) 

Torquatos. Vid. Manlius II. 

Trabea, Q., a Roman comic poet, who flourished 
about A.U.C. 622, or 132 BO. {Gronov. ad Aid 
Gell., 15, 24.) Some of his verses are cited by Cicero 
{Tusc. Qucest., 4, 31.— Id., de Fin., 2, 4.) As re¬ 
gards the amusing deception played off on Joseph 
Scaliger by Muretus with some pretended lines of 
Trabea, consult Fabricius {Bibl. hat., 4, 1, 3.— Bayle, 
Diet., vol. 4, p. 392.— Scholl, Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 1, 
p. 139.) 

Trachis, or Trachin, a town of Thessaly, in the 
Melian district, and near the shore of the Sinus Ma- 
liacus. It was to this place that Hercules retired af¬ 
ter having committed an involuntary murder, as we 
learn from Sophocles, who has made it the scene of 
one of his deepest tragedies. {Track., 39.) Trachis.. 
so called, according to Herodotus, from the mountain¬ 
ous character of the country, forms the approach to 
Thermopylae on the side of Thessaly. {Herod., 7, 
176.) Thucydides states, that in the sixth year of the 
Peloponnesian war, B.C. 426, the Lacedaemonians, at 
the request of the Trachinians, who were harassed by 
the mountaineers of CEta, sent a colony into their 
country. These, jointly with the Trachinians, built a 
town, to which the name of Heraclea was given (77m- 
cyd., 3, 92), distant about sixty stadia from Thermop¬ 
ylae, and twenty from the sea. Its distance from Tra¬ 
chis was only six stadia. {Vid. Heraclea VI.)—II. 
A town of Phocis, east of Panopeus, and close to the 
Boeotian frontier. It was surnamed Phocica, for dis¬ 
tinction’ sake from the city of Thessaly. Pausanias, 
who calls it Thracis (QpaKig), speaks of it as having 
been destroyed in the Sacred war. ( Pausan ., 10, 3. 
— Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 2, p. 182.) 

TrachonItis, a part of Judaea, on the other side of 
the Jordan, on the northern confines of Palestine. Its 
name is derived from the Greek rpaxvg, rough, and 
has reference to its being a rugged and stony countr) 
{Plin., 5, 18.— Josephus, Ant., 15, 13.) 

Trajanopolis, I. a city of Cilicia, the same as Se- 
linus. {Vid. Selinus.)—II. A city of Thrace, on the 
Hebrus, below its confluence with the Zerna. It be¬ 
came the capital of the Roman province of Rhodope, 
and, according to Reichard, is now Arichoro. {Plot. 

1351 




TRAJANUS. 


T R A 

-Itin. Ant., 322 .— ltin. Hierosol., 602.— Hierocl., 
631.) 

TrajInus, M. Ulpius Crinitus, a Roman emper¬ 
or, the successor of Nerva. The latter, towards the 
close of his short reign, feeling his inability to control 
the seditious troops of the capital, resolved to adopt 
Trajan as his colleague and successor in the empire, by 
whose firmness and decision the praetorian bands might 
be kept in awe. The result proved the wisdom of his 
choice. So high was the character of Trajan, that no 
person could be named equally worthy of the empire ; 
and even the seditious soldiery of the praetorian camp 
submitted without a murmur. The selection of Tra¬ 
jan prevented any contests for imperial power at the 
death of Nerva ; so that the new emperor entered 
without the necessity of bloodshed upon the discharge 
of his high functions. He was by birth a Spaniard, 
having been born at Italica, but he was of Italian ex¬ 
traction, and had been early inured to the discipline of 
the army under his father, a commander of considera¬ 
ble reputation. When he himself became a general, 
he continued to practise the simple habits of a soldier, 
excelling his troops, not in personal indulgences, but in 
courage and virtue. On the throne he continued to 
exhibit the same excellences, only enhanced by the 
acquisition of a wider scope for their full develop¬ 
ment. Being superior to fear, it was natural that he 
should also be above harbouring suspicion. He there¬ 
fore abolished the law of treason (judicia majestatis ), 
which had been re-established by Domitian after hav¬ 
ing been abrogated by Titus, and prepared to restore 
as much of the free Roman constitution as was com¬ 
patible with the existence of a monarchy. He restored 
the elective power to the comitia, complete liberty of 
speech to the senate, and to the magistrates their former 
authority ; and yet he ruled the empire with unrivalled 
firmness, holding the reins of power with a strong and 
steady hand. Of him it has been said, not in the lan¬ 
guage of panegyric, but of simple sincerity, that he 
was equally great as a ruler, a general, and a man : 
and only such a man could with safety, as emperor, 
have used those remarkable words, when, giving a 
sword to the prefect of the prastorian guards, he said, 
“ Take this sword, and use it; if I have merit, for me ; 
if otherwise, against me.”—Soon after the accession 
of Trajan, the Dacian monarch, Decebalus, sent to de¬ 
mand the tribute with which Domitian had purchased 
a disgraceful peace. This Trajan indignantly refused ; 
and, levying an army, marched against the Dacians ; 
who had already resumed their predatory incursions. 
The hostile armies soon came to an engagement, for 
both were equally eager ; and, after a desperate strug¬ 
gle, the Dacians were routed with dreadful carnage. 
But so great was the loss of the Romans that for 
some time they were unable to follow up their victory. 
It was, however, decisive ; and the Dacians were com¬ 
pelled, not only to forego their demands, but even to 
become tributaries to Rome. But, unaccustomed to 
servitude, and led by their gallant King Decebalus, 
they mustered fresh forces as soon as they had some¬ 
what recovered from their overthrow, and prepared for 
another contest. The warlike emperor was equally 
ready for the shock of arms. Not satisfied with expell¬ 
ing the invaders, he now determined to carry the war 
into the countr v of the enemy. For this purpose he 
erected a stupendous bridge over the Danube, with a 
strong fortification at each end, defeated the Dacians 
in every battle, marched into the heart of their coun¬ 
try, ana made himself master of their chief town. De¬ 
cebalus, despairing of success, killed himself, and Da¬ 
cia was restored to a Roman province, and secured in 
subjection by colonies and standing camps. On his 
return from the Dacian war, Trajan gratified the peo¬ 
ple by rejoicings celebrated on the most magnificent 
scale; for, according to Dio Cassius, the different 
shows that were exhibited lasted for four months, in 
1352 


the course of which no fewer than 10,000 gladiator* 
are said to have fought for the amusement of the mul¬ 
titude. It was in commemoration, also, of the con¬ 
quest of Dacia, that the famous pillar in the forum of 
Trajan wa3 erected, although it was not completed 
till the seventeenth year of his reign.—The deepest 
stain which rests on the memory of Trajan is the 
sanction which he gave to the persecutions of the 
Christians. This persecution raged chiefly in the 
Asiatic provinces, where Christianity was most preva¬ 
lent ; and when Pliny the younger, at that time pro- 
consul of Bithynia, wrote to Trajan for instructions 
respecting a matter which was causing the death oi 
so many men, who could not be convicted of any pub¬ 
lic crimes, the emperor returned an ambiguous answer, 
the purport of which was, “ that the Christians should 
not be sought for, nor indicted on anonymous in¬ 
formation, but that, on conviction, they ought to be 
punished.” Such an answer was contrary to every 
principle of justice ; for, if criminal, they ought to 
have been sent for; if not criminal, they ought not to 
have been punished. The persecution, being some¬ 
what discouraged, was gradually suffered to abate.— 
Trajan’s passion for military fame had been but exci 
ted, not satiated, by his Dacian conquests. Hte next 
directed his attention to the East, and resolved to 
wrest from the Parthians, the most formidable foes of 
Rome, the empire of Central Asia. The first scene 
of his glory was Armenia, which he speedily reduced 
to a Roman province. Hence he advanced into Mes¬ 
opotamia, throwing across the rapid Tigris a bridge 
not less remarkable than that which spanned the Dan¬ 
ube. The greater part of what had been the Assyrian 
empire was overrun by his victorious arms. Seleucia 
yielded to his might; Ctesiphon, the capital of the 
Parthian kingdom, could not resist his prowess ; all 
opposition appeared fruitless, and victory seemed the 
companion of his march. Elated with these success¬ 
es, and emulating the glory of Alexander while he 
traversed the countries which had been the scene of 
his exploits, be descended the Tigris to behold the 
Persian Gulf; and it is said, that, seeing a vessel there 
ready to sail for India, he exclaimed, that if he were 
a younger man, he would carry his arms against the 
inhabitants of India. While he had been dreaming 
of the invasion of India, his conquests of the prece¬ 
ding year were vanishing from his grasp. As soon 
as the immediate terror of his army was withdrawn, 
the countries which he had overrun began to shake of! 
the yoke, and the emperor enjoyed the empty glory 
of giving away the crown of Parthia to a prince whom 
Dio Cassius calls Parthamaspates, and whose reign 
was likely to last no longer than while the Romans 
were at hand to protect him. Not long after this, 
Maximus, a man of consular rank, on whom Trajan 
had bestowed the command of a separate army, was 
defeated and slain in Mesopotamia; and Trajan, at the 
end of the season, fell back with his forces into Syria, 
with the hope of renewing the invasion in the follow¬ 
ing spring. But he was seized with a lingering ill¬ 
ness, which obliged him to resign all thoughts of ta¬ 
king the command in person ; and he wished, there¬ 
fore, to return himself to Rome, leaving the care of 
the army to Hadrian, who had married his niece. As 
Trajan bad no children, his wife Plotina is said to 
have used all her influence to persuade him to adwpi 
Hadrian ; but it was generally believed that she never 
could prevail upon her husband to take this step, and 
that the instrument which she produced, and sent 
to Hadrian at Antioch immediately before the death 
of Trajan, was, in reality, a forgery of her own. Tra¬ 
jan died at Selinus, in Cilicia, in A.D. 117, after a 
reign of nineteen years and a little more than six 
months.—In addition to what has already been said 
of his character, we may remark that Trajan was 
an affectionate husband and brother. As a sove*» 




T R E 


TRI 


<*ign, his popularity during his lifetime wa3 equalled 
by the regard entertained for his memory by posterity; 
and his claim to the title of Optimus, which the senate 
solemnly bestowed upon him, was fully confirmed by 
the voice of succeeding tunes ; inasmuch as for two 
hundred years after his death, the senate, in pouring 
forth their prayers for the happiness of a new emperor, 
were accustomed tc wish that he might surpass Au¬ 
gustus in prosperity and Trajan in goodness of charac¬ 
ter. ( Plin., Paneg. — Aurel. Victor., Vit. Traj. — 
Dio Cass., 68, 4, scqq. — Hetherington's History of 
Rome, p. 195, seqq. — Encyclop. Melropol., div. 3, 
vol. 2, p. 649, seqq.) 

Tkajectus, 1 . Rheni, now Utrecht. —II. Mos^i, 
now Mcestricht. 

Traules, a town of Lydia, a short distance north 
of Magnesia ad Maeandrum. In Strabo’s time it was 
one of the most flourishing cities of Asia Minor, and 
was noted for the opulence of its inhabitants. It was 
said to have been founded by some Argives, together 
with a body of Thracians, from whom it took the name 
of Tralles. ( Strab ., 649.— Hcsych ., s. v. TpdXheip. 
— Diod. Sic., 17, 65.) It had previously borne those 
of Anthea or Enanthea, Erymna, Charax, &c. The 
shape of the town was that of a trapezium, and it was 
defended by a citadel and other forts. The river Eu- 
don or Eudonus flowed near the walls. The citizens 
of Tralles, on account of their great wealth, were 
generally elected to the office of asiarchs, or presidents 
of the games celebrated in the province. The coun¬ 
try around Tralles was much subject to earthquakes. 
—Chandler mistook the ruins of Tralles for those of 
Magnesia, as M. Barbier du Bocage has well proved 
in his notes to the French translation of his work. 
They are situated above the modern Ghiuzel-hissars, 
in a position corresponding with Strabo’s description. 
(Cramer's Asia Minor , vol. 1 , p. 464, seqq. —Com¬ 
pare Fellows' Asia Minor, p. 276.) 

Trapezus, a city on the northeastern coast of Pon- 
tus, founded by a colony from Sinope. Its ancient 
name was derived from the square form in which the 
city was laid out, resembling a table (rpaizE^a). Tra- 
pezus is celebrated for the hospitable reception which 
its inhabitants gave to the ten thousand Greeks on 
their retreat, this being the first Greek colony which 
the latter had reached after the battle of Cunaxa. It 
fell subsequently into the hands of the Romans, and 
was embellished and improved by the Emperor Hadri¬ 
an. It was taken from the Romans, however, by the 
Scythians or Tartars in the reign of Valerian. The 
Greek emperors became afterward masters of it. A 
separate dynasty was here established, commencing 
with Alexis Comnenes, in 1204, which ended with 
the capture of the city by Mohammed II. in 1462. 
The princes who reigned in this city are the Greek 
emperors of whom so much mention is made in ro¬ 
mance and so little in history : they must not be con¬ 
founded with the imperial line at Constantinople. 
Trapezus is now called Trebisond, or, as the Turks 
pronounce it, Terabezoun. (Arrian , Peripl. Pont. 
Eux. in Huds. G. M., 1, 17.— Mela, 1, 19. Plin., 

4 )_II. A city of Arcadia, in the southwestern 

angle of the country, and between the Acheloiis and 
Alpheus. The inhabitants of this place, in conse¬ 
quence of having refused to join in the colonization 
of Megalopolis, were forced to quit the Peloponnesus, 
and retire to the city of Trapezus, on the Euxine, 
where they were received as a kindred people. ( Pau,- 

san., 8, 27, seqq.) . 

Tkasimenus Lacus, a lake of Etruria, a few miles 
to the south of Cortona, on whose shores Hannibal 
gained his third victory over the forces of the Romans. 
It is now Lago di Perugia. (Vid. Hannibal.) 

Treba, a town of the Sabines, near the source of 
the Anio, now Trevi. (Plin., 3, 12. Ptol., p-65.) 
This place appears to have been farther distinguished 
8 I 


by the name of Augusta; but after which emperor it 
was so called is uncertain. (Front., de Aqued., 2.) 

Trebatius Testa, C., a distinguished lawyer in 
the time of Julius Cassar and Augustus, and a man 
well known for his wit. Both Caesar and Augustus 
held him in high estimation, and Cicero, on one oc 
casion, eulogizes him highly when recommending him 
to the former of these, at that time proconsul in Gaul. 
The correspondence between Cicero and Trebatius 
himself occurs in the Ep. ad Fam., 7, 6 . Trebatius 
stood highly also as a poet. (Schol. ad Horat., Sat., 
2 , 1 , 4.—Compare the dissertation of Gundling: “ C. 
Trebatius Testa , ICtus, ab injuriis veterum et recen- 
tiorum liberatus," Hal. Sax., 1710, and Menage , 
Ameznit. Jur. Civ., c. 14.) 

Trebellius Pollio, one of the “Historiae Augustas 
Scriptores.” He lived under Constantine the Great, 
and, according to Vopiscus (Vit. Aurel.), wrote the 
lives of the Roman emperors from Philip to Claudius 
II. We have remaining, however, at the present day, 
merely a fragment of the life of Valerian I., the lives 
of the two Gallieni, and of the so-called thirty tyrants. 
It was Trebellius who first made use of this expres¬ 
sion “ thirty tyrants,” as applicable to a period when 
the empire was torn in pieces by competitors for the 
throne. Although the style of Trebellius Pollio is 
somewhat less vicious than that of the other writers of 
his time, still his cannot be ranked even among the 
ordinary class of historical writers. — The remains of 
Trebellius are given in the “ Historiae Augustce Scrip- 
tores." (Scholl, Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 3, p. 155.) 

TrebTa, a river of Gallia Cisalpina, which ran from 
south to north, commencing in Liguria, south of the 
valley inhabited by the Friniates, and falling, after a 
course of about fifty miles, into the Po near Placentia. 
At the mouth of this river Hannibal obtained a victory 
over the Romans, and defeated them with the loss of 
20,000 men. Both the consuls, Scipio and Sempro- 
nius, were present at the fight. This victory was 
preceded by that of the Ticinus, and followed by those 
of Trasymenus and Cannse. The early defeat of the 
Roman cavalry at the Trebia occasioned the loss of 
the day. (Polyb., 3, 66 .— Liv., 21 , 48, seqq.) 

Trebonia Lex, de Provinciis , by L. Trebonius, 
the tribune, A.U.C. 698. It assigned provinces to 
the consuls for five years : Spain to Pompey; Syria 
and the Parthian war to Crassus; and prolonging for 
a time the command in Gaul, which had been bestow¬ 
ed on Caesar by the Vatinian law. Cato, for opposing 
this law, was led to prison. According to Dio, how 
ever, he was only dragged from the assembly. 

Tres Tabern^e, a station on the Appian Way, 
about seven miles from Aricia, and where it was 
joined by a cross-road from Antium. It is mentioned 
by St. Paul in his journey to Rome (Acte, 28, 15), 
and likewise by Cicero when proceeding thither from 
Antium. (Ep. ad Att., 2, 12.) 

Treveri, a nation of Gallia Belgica, between the 
Mosella or Moselle, and Silva Arduenna. Their chief 
city, Augusta Treverorum. called afterward, from its 
inhabitants, Treveri, now Treves, stands on the east 
bank of the Moselle. (Cces., B. G., 5, 3. — Id. ibid., 
6, 2. — Tac., Ann., 1, 41. — Id. ibid., 3, 42. — Id., 
Germ., 28.— Mela, 3, 2.) 

Tkiballt, a Thracian people, by far the most nu¬ 
merous and powerful tribe in that country. As they 
bordered on the Paeonians, and extended to the Dan¬ 
ube, they were formidable neighbours on this the most 
accessible frontier of Macedonia. Alexander com¬ 
menced his reign by an invasion of their territory, and 
having defeated them in a general engagement, pur¬ 
sued them across the Danube, whither they had re¬ 
treated, and compelled them to sue for peace (77m- 
cyd., 2, 96.— Strabo, 318.) 

Tribocci, a German tribe on the left bank of the 
Rhine, and between that river and the Mediomatrici 

1353 



T R I 


TRIBONIANUS. 


and Leuci. Their chief city was Argentoratum, now 
Strasbourg. {Tacit., Germ., 28. — Cces., B. G., 1, 
51.— Plin., 4, 17.) 

Tribonianus, a celebrated jurist, who was mainly 
instrumental in the compilation of Justinian, was a 
native of Pamphylia, and his father was from Mace¬ 
donia. His learning was most extensive; he wrote 
upon a great variety of subjects, was well versed both 
in Latin and Greek literature, and had deeply studied 
the Roman civilians, of which he had a valuable col¬ 
lection in his library. He practised first at the bar of 
the praetorian prefects at Constantinople, became af¬ 
terward quaestor, master of the imperial household, 
and consul, and possessed for about twenty years the 
favour and confidence of Justinian. His manners are 
said to have been remarkably mild and conciliating; 
tie was a courtier, and fond of money, but in other re¬ 
spects he appears to have been calumniated by his en¬ 
emies. His death took place A.D. 545. He was a 
superior man, and most valuable to Justinian.—This ap¬ 
pears to be a proper place to give some account of Jus¬ 
tinian’s legislation. Soon after ascending the throne, 
this monarch gave orders (Feb., 528 A.D.) to a com¬ 
mission, consisting of Joannes and nine other persons, 
among whom were Tribonian or Tribunian and The- 
ophilus, to make a general compilation of the best and 
most useful laws or constitutions which had been 
promulgated by the emperors his predecessors, begin¬ 
ning from Hadrian’s perpetual edict down to his own 
time. Partial compilations had been made in the time 
of Constantine by private individuals, Gregory and 
Hermogenes, of which only fragments remain, and a 
more complete one was effected under Theodosius II. 
All these were now merged in the new Code of Justin¬ 
ian. A remarkable difference of style and manner is 
observable between the older constitutions issued be¬ 
fore Constantine and those promulgated afterward. 
The former, being issued at Rome, and framed upon 
the decisions or “responsa” of learned jurists, are 
clear, sententious, and elegant; the latter, which were 
promulgated chiefly at Constantinople, in the decay of 
the Roman language, are verbose and rhetorical. 
Joannes and his nine associates completed their task 
in fourteen months, and the new Code, having receiv¬ 
ed the imperial sanction, was published in April, A.D. 
529. A few years after, Justinian, by the advice of 
Tribonian, ordered a revision of his Code to be made 
by Tribonian and four others. These commissioners 
suppressed several laws as either useless or inconsist¬ 
ent with present usage, and added many constitutions 
which the emperor had been promulgating in the mean 
time, as well as fifty decisions on intricate points of 
jurisprudence. The Code, thus revised, was published 
in December of the year 534, under the title of “ Co¬ 
dex Justinianeus repetitaa praelectionis,” and thence¬ 
forth had the force of law. The Code is divided into 
twelve books ; every book is subdivided into titles, 
and each title into laws. The learned Gothofredus, in 
his prolegomena attached to his edition of the Theo- 
dosian Code, observes that Tribonian and his associ¬ 
ates have been guilty of several faults in the compila¬ 
tion of the Code ; that the order observed in the suc¬ 
cession of the titles is confused ; that some of the laws 
have been mutilated and have been rendered obscure ; 
that sometimes a law has been divided into two, and 
at other times two have been reduced into one ; that 
laws have been attributed to emperors who were not 
the authors of them, or who had given quite contrary 
decisions ; all which would be still more injurious to 
the study of the Roman law, if we had not the Theo- 
dosian Code, which is of great use towards rightly un¬ 
derstanding many laws in the Code of Justinian. In 
the year following the publication of his Code, Justin¬ 
ian undertook a much greater and more important 
work : to extract the spirit of jurisprudence from the 
decisions and conjectures, the questions and disputa- 
1354 


tions, of the Roman civilians. In the course of cen¬ 
turies, under the republic and the empire, many thou¬ 
sand volumes had accumulated, filled with the learned 
lucubrations of the jurisconsults, but which no fortune 
could purchase and no capacity could digest. The 
jurisconsults, ever since the time of Augustus, had been 
divided into opposite schools, and thus conflicting 
opinions were often produced, which only served to 
puzzle those who had to decide what was law. To 
put order into this chaos was the object of Justinian. 
In December, 530, he commissioned seventeen law¬ 
yers, with Tribonian at their head, with full authority 
to use their discretion as to the works of their prede¬ 
cessors, by making a choice of those whom they con¬ 
sidered as the best authorities. They chose about 
forty out of Tribonian’s library, most of them juris¬ 
consults who had lived during that period of the empire 
which has been sometimes called the age of the An- 
tonines, from Hadrian to the death of Alexander Se- 
verus. From the works of these writers, said to have 
amounted to two thousand treatises, the commission 
appointed by Justinian was to extract and compress 
all that was suited to form a methodical, complete, and 
never-failing book of reference for the student of law 
and the magistrate. Justinian gave Tribonian and his 
associates ten years’ time to perform their task ; but 
they completed it in three years. The work was 
styled “Digests,” and also “ Pandectae” {embracing 
all), and was published in December, 533. It was 
declared by the emperor that it should have the force 
of law all over the empire, and should supersede all 
the text-books of the old jurists, which, in future, were 
to be of no authority. If the whole “Digest” is di¬ 
vided into three equal parts, the contributions of Ulpi- 
an are somewhat more than one third. The “ Diges¬ 
ta” is divided into fifty books, each book being also 
divided into titles, and subdivided into sections. Of 
the merits and imperfections of the “ Digest,” Cujas, 
Hotomannus, Heineccius, Gravina, Schulting, Byn- 
kershoek, and many others, have amply spoken. With 
all its faults, it is a noble work, and much superior to 
the Code in its style, matter, and arrangement ; it has, 
in great measure,-imbodied the wisdom of the mosi 
learned men of the best age of the empire ; men who 
grounded their opinions on the principles of reason and 
equity, and who, for the most part, were personally un 
concerned and disinterested in the subjects on which 
they gave their responsa. Tribonian and his col 
leagues are charged with making many interpolations, 
with altering many passages in the writings of their 
predecessors, with substituting their own opinions, 
and passing them off to the world under the name of 
the ancient jurists. Justinian himself acknowledged 
that he was obliged to accommodate the old jurispru¬ 
dence to the altered state of the times, and to “ make 
the laws his own.” Another charge, which is, howev¬ 
er, unsupported bv evidence or probability, is, that Jus¬ 
tinian and his civilians purposely destroyed the old 
text-books that had served them for the compilation 
of the “Pandects.” Long, however, before Justin¬ 
ian’s time, the works of the ancient jurists were partly 
lost, and the vicissitudes of the ages that followed may 
easily have obliterated the rest. While the Digest 
was being compiled, Justinian commissioned Tribo¬ 
nian and two other civilians, Theophilus and Doro- 
theus, to make an abridgment of the first principles 
of the law, for the use of young students who should 
wish to apply themselves to that science. This 
new work, being completed, was published under the 
name of “ Institutiones,” about one month before 
the appearance of the Digest. The Institutiones 
were mainly based on an older work of the same de 
scription and title. They are arranged in four books 
and subdivided into titles. As the law has three ob^ 
jects, persons, filings, and actions, the first book treats 
of persons or status the second and third, and firs- 





TRI 


TRI 


ftve titles of the fourth, treat ol things; and the re¬ 
maining titles of the fourth book treat of actions. Be¬ 
sides these three compilations, the Code, the Insti¬ 
tutes, and the Digest, Justinian, after the publication 
of the second edition of his Code, continued to issue 
new laws or constitutions, chiefly in Greek, upon par¬ 
ticular occasions, which were collected and published 
together, after his death, under the name of N eapal 
Aiardt-eig, or Novae, or Constitutiones Novell*, or Au¬ 
thentic*. The Novelise are divided into nine Colla- 
tiones and 168 Constitutiones, or, as they are now of¬ 
ten called, Novels. The Novell*, together with the 
thirteen Edicts of Justinian, made up the fourth part 
of his legislation. There are four Latin translations 
of the Novelise, two of which were made soon after 
Justinian’s death ; the third is by Halvander, printed 
at Niirnberg in 1531 ; and the fourth was printed at 
Basle, by Hervagius, in 1561. This last translation is 
that which is printed in the editions of the Corpus Ju¬ 
ris opposite to the Greek text, and is very valuable, 
notwithstanding it has been stigmatized by some with 
the name “ barbarous it is sometimes called Au- 
thentica Interpretatio, or Vulgata. The version of Hal¬ 
vander is also printed in some editions of the Corpus 
Juris. The Novell* made many changes in the law 
as established by Justinian’s prior compilations, and 
are an evidence that the emperor was seized with a 
passion for legislating; a circumstance which enables 
us to form a more correct judgment of his real merits, 
and lowers his character as a philosophic jurist. Among 
the numerous editions of the Corpus Juris Civilis, the 
best is that of Gothofredus, Col. Munat., 1756, 2 vols. 
folio. Pothier’s edition of the Digest, reprinted at 
Paris, in 5 vols. 4to, 1818-1820, is a useful edition : 
there is a very cheap edition of the Corpus Juris re¬ 
cently published in Germany by Beck, 3 vols. small 
folio, Leipsig, 1829. ( Encycl. Us. Knowl. , vol. 13, 

163-5. — Ludewig, Vit. Justin. Mag. et Theod ., nee 
non Trebon., Halle, 1731.—Zimmern, Geschichte des 
Rom. Privatrechts bis Justinian , Heidelb., 1826.-— 
Hugo, Lehrbuch der Gesch. des Rom. Rechts, Beilin, 
1832.— History of the Roman or Civil Law, by Fer- 
riere, transl. by J. Beaver, London, 1724. Homme- 
lii, Palmgenesia. —Brinkmannus, Institutxones Juris 
Romani, Schleswig, 1822. — System des Pandekten- 
Rcchts, by Thibaut, 7th ed., Jena, 1828 .—Das Corpus 
Juris in's Deutsche ubersetztvon einem vereine Rechts- 
gelehrter und herausgegeben von Otto, Schilling, und 
Sin ten is, Leipzig, 1831. — Les cvnquantes livies du 
Digeste, Ac., traduits en Frangais par feu Henri Hes- 
lot, Paris, 1805 .—Pandectes de Justinien mises dans 
un nouvel ordre, Ac., par J. R- Pothier, traduites par 
Brdard Neuville, revues et corrigees par M. Moreau de 
Montalin, Avocat, Paris, 1810.) _ 

Tricala, a mountain fortress and town m Sicdy, 
near the lower coast, east of Selinus, and north of the 
mouth of the Crimisus. It was also called Triocala 
and Triocla. This place came into notice during the 
Servile war in Sicily, as being the residence of the 
slave-king Tryphon. Facellus places its site near the 
modern Calata Bellota , but Reichard by Colatrasi 
Gastello. ( Steph. Byz., s. v .— Ptol. Sil. Ital., 14, 
271) 

Tricasses, a people of Gaul, northeast of the Se- 
no les and through whose territories flows the Sequana 
or Seine, in the earlier part of its course. Their chief 
city was Augusta Bona, now Troyes ., ( Ptol.—Amm. 

Marc., 15, 11.— Id., 16, 2.) 

Tricca, a city of Thessaly, southeast of Gomphi, 
and near the junction of the Peneus and Lethaeus It 
is mentioned as early as the time of Homer, and placed 
by him under the dominion of the sons of Asculapius. 
(II., 2, 729; 4, 202.) Strabo informs us that lricca 
possessed a temple of ^Esculapius, which was held in 
great veneration. (Strabo, 437.) The modern Trie- 
ala appears to correspond to the site of the ancient 


city. From the Byzantine historians we see that *ne 
name had already been corrupted in their time to the 
present form of Tricala. (Procop., JEdif., 4, 3. — 
Hierocl., p. 643. — Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 
357, seqq.) 

Tricorii, a Gallic tribe in Gallia Narbonensis, ir 
the territory of Massilia and Aqu* Sexti*. (Livy 
21, 31.— Plin., 3, 4.— Amm. Marc., 15, 10, seqq.) 

Tridentum, now Trent (or, as the Italians write 
the name, Trento ), a city of Rh*tia, on the river A the¬ 
sis or Adige, and a short distance from the northern 
confines of Venetia. It was bu^lt by the Cenornani, 
who were dispossessed by the Romans. (Justin, 20, 

5 — I tin. Ant. — Paul Warnefr., de Gest. Long., 5, 
36, Ac.) Some authors affirm that the name Tri¬ 
dentum is derived from Neptune’s sceptre or trident, 
to which god they say the city was once consecrated , 
this opinion took its rise from an ancient marble being 
found there, on which was Neptune holding a trident. 
Others derive the name from three rivers that fall into 
the Adige near the city ; while others, again, ascribe 
the name to the circumstance of there being three 
high rocks in the neighbourhood which appear like 
three teeth (tres dentes). All these etymologies are 
false ; the name is most probably one of Celtic origin. 
—Trent is famous in modern history for the council ol 
ecclesiastics which sat there for the purpose of regu¬ 
lating the affairs of the church. It was assembled by 
Paul III. in 1545, and continued by twenty-five ses¬ 
sions till the year 1563, under Julius III. and Pius IV. 
It had been removed in 1547 to Bologna, in conse¬ 
quence of a false rumour of a pestilence in Trent, but 
was reassembled at the latter city in 1551. 

Trigaboli, a town of Italy, in the territory of Vene¬ 
tia, where the Padusa, or southern arm of the Po, sep 
arates itself from the main stream. Its site is near 
that of the modern Ferrara. (Polyb., 2, 16.) 

Trinacria, one of the ancient names of Sicily, from 
its three promontories (rpelg anpai). 

Trinobantes, a people of Britain, in modern Essex 
and Middlesex. (Tac., Ann., 14, 31.— Cces., B. G., 
5, 20.) 

Triopas or Triops, a son of Neptune by Canace 
the daughter of yEolus. He was father of Erisich- 
thon, who is called on that account Triopcius, and his 
daughter Triopeis. (Ovid, Met,., 8, 754.— Apollod ., 
1, 7, 4.— Hcyne, not. crit. ad Apollod., 1. c.) 

Triopium, a city of Caria, founded by Triopas, son 
of Erisichthon, and situate near the promontory of Tri¬ 
opium, at the extremity of Doris. On the promontory, 
which took its name from the city, was a temple of 
Apollo, known under the name of the Triop*an tem¬ 
ple. The Dorians here celebrated games in honour 
of Apollo ; here also was held a general assembly of 
the Dorians in Asia, upon the model of that of Ther- 
tnopyl*. (Vid. Doris.) 

Tripkylia, the southern portion of Elis. It too* 
its name, according to Strabo, from the union of three 
different tribes (rpelg <J>vlai), the Epei, or original in¬ 
habitants, the Miny*, who migrated thither, and the 
Elei. (Strabo, 337). Some authors, however, de¬ 
duce the appellation from Triphylus, an Arcadian 
prince. (Polyb., 4, 77, 8.) 

Tripolis, I. now Tarabolus, a city of Syria, on the 
seacoast below Aradus. The Greek name of this 
place, Tripolis, denoting three cities (rpelg tt o?,eig), is 
explained by Scylax (p. 42.—Compare Diod. Sic., 16, 
41.— Plin., 5, 20.— Strabo, 754). He states that the 
cities of Tyrus, Sidon, and Aradus sent each a col¬ 
ony to this place, who at first inhabited three separate 
cities, but in process of time became united into one. 
Diodorus Siculus, however, gives a somewhat different 
account. According to him, the three cities above 
mentioned, which were the parent states of all the 
other Phoenician cities, wishing to establish some 
nlace of general assembly, sent each a colony hither, 
1 ' 1355 






TRI 


T R I 


and founded this city (16, 41). It had a good har¬ 
bour and extensive commerce. (/. Phocas, c. 4.— 
Wesscling, Itin ., p. 149.) — The town was taken and 
destroyed in 1289 by the sultan of Egypt, but was af¬ 
terward rebuilt, though at some distance from the 
ancient site. ( Abulfeda , Tab. Syr., p. 101.) At the 
present day the sand has so accumulated that the city 
is separated from the sea by a small triangular plain, 
half a league in breadth, at the point of which is the 
village where the vessels land their goods. The com¬ 
merce of the place consists almost entirely of coarse 
silks.—II. A regionyaf Africa, on the coast of the Med¬ 
iterranean, between the two Syrtes. It received this 
name from its containing three principal cities ; Lep- 
tis Magna, CEa, and Sabrata. The second of these 
is the modern city of Tripoli.— III. A city of Pontus, 
on the coast, at the mouth of the river Tripolis, and 
northeast of Cerasus, now Triboli. ( Mannert, Geogr., 
vol. 6, pt. 2, p. 384.) — IV. A city of Lydia, on the 
western bank of the Maeander, northwest of Hierapo- 
lis, and near the confluence of the Maeander and Clu- 
drus. Ptolemy and Stephanus ascribe it to Caria, 
Pliny and Hierocles to Lydia. Mannert considers it 
to have been a Phrygian city. (Geogr., vol. 6, pt. 3, 
p. 137.) 1 

Triptolemus, son of Celeus, king of Eleusis, and 
the same with Demophoon. ( Vid. Ceres, page 330, 
col. 1.) The vanity of the people of Attica made them 
pretend that corn was first known and agriculture 
first practised in their country. Ceres, according to 
them, taught Triptolemus agriculture, and rendered 
him serviceable to mankind by instructing him how 
to sow corn and make bread. She also, it was fabled, 
gave him her chariot, which was drawn by two drag¬ 
ons, and in this celestial vehicle he travelled over the 
whole earth, and distributed corn to all the inhabitants 
of the world. At his return to Eleusis, Triptolemus 
restored Ceres her chariot, and is said to have estab¬ 
lished festivals and mysteries in honour of that deity. 
He reigned for some time, and after death received 
divine honours.—There seems to be an allusion in the 
name Triptolemus (derived probably from rpelg and 
noTieo) to an improvement introduced in early agri¬ 
culture by treble ploughing. (Hygin., fab., 147. — 
Pausan., 2, 14; 8, 4.— Justin, 2, 6 .—Apollod., I, 5. 
— Callim., H. in Cer., 22.— Ovid, Met., 5, 646.) 

Triquetra, a name given to Sicily by the Latins, 
from its triangular form. 

Trismegistus, a celebrated Egyptian priest and 
philosopher, of whom some mention has been already 
made in a previous article. ( Vid. Mercurius Trisme¬ 
gistus.) It remains but to give here a brief sketch 
of his works, or, rather, of the productions that have 
come down to us in his name.—1. The most cele¬ 
brated of these is entitled “ Poemander ,” TLoipdvdpyg 
(from ttol/uijv, “pastor”), and treating “of the nature 
of all things, and of the creation of the world.” It is 
in the form of a dialogue. This work is also some¬ 
times cited under the following title, “ Of the Divine 
Power and Wisdom.”—2. A second work is entitled 
’ AatcAymog, “ JEsculapius .” It is a dialogue between 
Hermes (Mercurius) Trismegistus and his disciple, 
and treats of God, man, and the universe. It bears 
also the name of A oyog rtTiecog, but it exists only in 
the shape of a Latin translation, which some critics 
ascribe to Apuleius.—3. The third work has the fol¬ 
lowing title: ’larpopadypaTLKa y irepl KaraKliaeug 
voaovvruv II poyvuuTLKa ha ryg padypaTLKyg kmory- 
pyg, irpog 'Appova AiyvrrTLOv, “ Iatromathematica, or 
the Art of presaging the Issue of Maladies by means 
of Mathematics (i. e., by the planets or astrology), a 
work addressed to Ammon the Egyptian .” As Julius 
Firmicus, a great admirer of Egyptian astrology, and 
who speaks of Hermes, makes no mention of this 
work, the probability is that it did not exist in the 
year 340 B.C., the period when Firmicus wrote.—4 
1356 


A treatise “ De Revolutionibus Nativitatum,” vshieft 
exists merely in a Latin translation. It is in two 
books, and treats of the mode of'drawing horoscopes. 
Some phrases in this work would seem to indicate 
that it is translated rather from the Arabic than the 
Greek.—5. The Aphorisms of Hermes or Mercurius, 
also in a Latin version. The work consists of astro¬ 
logical sentences or propositions, translated from the 
Arabian about the time of Manfred, king of Sicily. 
It is sometimes cited under the title of Centiloquium. 
—6. K vpavideg, “ Cyranides ,” a work, the title of 
which has given rise to much speculation. Some au¬ 
thors derive the term from the Arabic, and make it 
equivalent to the French expression melanges, while 
others pretend that it is Greek, and that it is used in 
astrology to denote the power of the stars (from kv- 
piog). Be this as it may, the Cyranides of Trisme¬ 
gistus treat of the magic powers and medical virtues 
of precious stones, of plants, and of animals. The 
Greek text of this work exists in manuscript in some 
of the European libraries, but it is only known, thus 
far, to the public through the medium of a Latin trans¬ 
lation.— Besides these astrological works, there are 
others connected with chemistry, or, more correctly 
speaking, alchemy, of which the following are the ti¬ 
tles: 1. A chemical treatise on the secret of pro¬ 
ducing the philosopher’s stone. This work is cited 
among adepts under the pompous appellation of “ the 
Seven Seals of Hermes Trismegistus.”—7. “ The Em¬ 
erald Tablet .” Under this title the receipt of Hermes 
for making gold is known. According to the adepts, 
Sara, the wife of Abraham, found this emerald tablet 
in the tomb of Hermes, on Mount Hebron.— The two 
works of which we have just spoken exist only in 
Latin. A third, entitled vatKal (3a<f>ai, “ Chemical 
Tinctures ,” exists, it is said, in manuscript in some 
libraries.—We have also a treatise of Hermes on 
“ Precious Stones” — Stobseus has also preserved 
fragments of the five following works of Trismegis¬ 
tus: 1. npdf vlov , or npof T dr, or npoc ’AcKky- 
tzlov, “ To his son,” or “ To Tat,” or “ To JEscula- 
pius. 2. n pog ’A ppovv 7r ept ryg oAyg O iKovopiyg, 

“ On the Economy of the Universe , a work addressed 
to Ammon”— 3. Kopy uoapov, “ The Virgin of the. 
World.” Isis is thus named. The work is a dialogue 
between Isis and her son Horus, on the Origin of the 
World.—4. ’Atypodiry, “ Venus,” a work on Genera¬ 
tion.—5. n ept E Ipappevyg, a hexameter poem “ on 
Destiny.” The latest edition of the Poemander is that 
of 1630, Col. Agripp., 6 vols. fol. — The JEsculapius is 

found united to most editions of the Poemander._ 

The Iatromathematica are found in the astronomical 
collection of Camerarius, and were also published sep¬ 
arately by Hoeschel, Argent., 1597, 8vo.—'The trea¬ 
tise de Revolutionibus Nativitatum was edited by 
Wolf, Basil, 1559, fol.—The Aphorisms were printed 
at Venice, 1493, fol., with the Tetrabiblon of Ptole¬ 
my, and at Ulm, in 1651 and 1674, in 12mo.—The 
Cyranides were edited by Rivinus (Bachmann), Lips , 
1638, 8vo, and Francof, 1681, 12mo. — The Chem¬ 
ical Treatise was printed at Leipsic, 1610, in 8vo. 
It is found, also, in the 4th volume of the Theatrum 
Chimicum, Argent., 1613, Svo. ( Scholl, Hist. Lit. 
Gr., vol. 5, p. 118.) 

Trit^sa, a city of Achaia, southwest of yEgium, 
and near the confines of Elis. It was said to have 
been founded by Callidas, who came from Cumae in. 
Italy, or, according to other accounts, by Menalippus, 
son of Mars and Tritaea. It was made dependant on 
Patrre by order of Augustus. Its remains are aener- 
ally supposed to correspond with those observed by 
modern travellers at Goumenitza. These ruins, which 
are very extensive, are sometimes called St. Andrea 
from a church dedicated to that apostle in the imme¬ 
diate vicinity. ( Gell, Itin. of the Morea, p. 135._ 

Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 3, p. 75.) 





T A 0 


TRO 


Tritogenia, i surname of Pallas. ( Vid. Minerva, 
page 849, col. 2.) 

Triton, I. a sea-deity, the son, according to He¬ 
siod, of Neptune and Amphitrite. ( Theog ., 930.) 
Later poets made him his father’s trumpeter. He was 
also multiplied, and we read of Tritons in the plural 
number. Like the Nereides, the Tritons were degra¬ 
ded to the nsh-form. Pausanias tells us, that the 
women of Tanagra, in Boeotia, going into the sea to 
purify themselves for the orgies of Bacchus, were, 
while there, assailed by Triton ; but, on praying to 
their god, he vanquished their persecutor. Others, 
he adds, said that Triton used to carry off the cattle 
which were driven down to the sea, and to seize all 
small vessels, till the Tanagrians placing bowls of 
wine on the shore, he drank of them, and, becoming 
intoxicated, threw himself down on the shore to sleep, 
where, as he lay, a Tanagrian cut off his head with an 
axe. He relates these legends to account for the 
statue of Triton at Tanagria being headless. He then 
subjoins : “ I have seen another Triton among the cu¬ 
riosities of the Romans, but it is not so large as this 
of the Tanagrians. The form of the Tritons is this : 
the hair of their head resembles the parsley that grows 
in marshes, both in colour and in the perfect likeness 
of one hair to another : the rest of their body is rough, 
with small scales, and is of about the same hardness as 
the skin of a fish : they have fish-gills under their 
ears ; their nostrils are those of a man, but their teeth 
are broader, and like those of a wild beast; their eyes 
seem to me azure, and their hands, fingers, and nails 
are of the form of the shells of shellfish ; they have, 
instead of feet, fins under their breasts and belly, like 
those of the porpoise.” ( Pausan ., 9, 20, 21.— Keight- 
1 ey's Mythology, p. 245, seq.) —II. A river of Africa, 
ising in Mount Usaleton, and, after forming in its 
course the two lakes of Tritonis and Libya, discharg¬ 
ing its waters into the Syrtis Minor, near Tacape. It 
is now the Gabs. 

Tritonis or Triton, a lake and river of Africa, in¬ 
land from the Syrtis Minor. Minerva is said to have 
been called Tritonia because she first revealed herself 
in the vicinity of this lake. (But consult remarks 
under the article Minerva, page 849, col. 2.) Near 
the Tritonis Palus was the Libya Palus. Modern 
travellers speak of a long and narrow lake in this quar¬ 
ter, divided in two by a ford ; D’Anville considers 
these to be the Tritonis and Libya Palus. The mod¬ 
ern name of the former is Faraun, and of the latter, 
El-Loudeath. (Herod., 4, 178.— Pausan., 9, 33.— 
Virg., JEn., 2, 171 . — Mela, 1, 7.)—II. An appella¬ 
tion given to Minerva by the poets. (Virg., AEn., 2, 
22 Q.—Ovid, Met., 3, 127.)—III. An epithet some¬ 
times given to the sacred olive at Athens. (Slat., 

Sylv., 2, 7, 28.) _ L 

Trivia, a surname given to Diana, because she pre¬ 
sided over places where three roads met. (Vid. Di¬ 
ana, and Hecate.) 

Trivicum, a place situate among the mountains 
that separate Samnium from Apulia. The little town 
of Trivico, which appears on a height above the course 
of the ancient Appian Way, indicates the site of this 
place. (Herat., Sat., 1, 5, 79.) 

Triumvirorum Insula, an island in the small river 
Rhenus, one of the tributaries of the Po, where the 
triumvirs Antony, Lepidus, and Augustus, met to di¬ 
vide the Roman empire after the battle of Mutina. 
(Dio Csss., 46, 55.) 

Troades, the inhabitants of Troas. 

Troas, a district on the ^Egean coast of Mysta, in 
Asia Minor, extending as far south as the promontory 
of Lectum, now Cape Baba , of which Troy was the 
capital. The kingdom of Priam, if we form our ideas 
of it from the poems of Homer, must have been of 
very limited extent. Strabo, indeed, through partiali¬ 
ty for his favourite poet, seeks to enlarge the limits of 


Priam’s kingdom, and makes it to have comprised the 
country on the coast of the Propontis as far as the 
river Hisepus, near Cyzicus. Homer, however, names 
many expressly as allies of the Trojans whom Strabo 
would wish to consider as the suJjects of Priam. The 
northern part of Troas was termed Dardania, from 
Dardanus, a city founded by Dardanus. one of the an¬ 
cestors of Priam The Trojans were very pruuably 
of Thracian origin. (Vid. Troja.) 

Trocmi, a people of Galatia, on the side of Cappa 
docia, and between the Halys and the last-mentioned 
country. (Polyb., 31, 13.— Lid., 38, 16.— Plin., 5, 
32.) 

Trcezene, a city of Argolis, situate on the Sinus 
Saronicus, near the southeastern extremity of that 
country, and northeast of Hermione. The Troezeni- 
ans prided themselves upon the great antiquity of theii 
city, which had borne the several names of Orea, Al- 
thepia, and Posidonia, before it received that of Troe- 
zene from Trcezen, the son of Pelops, one of the earli¬ 
est sovereigns of the country. He was succeeded by 
Pittheus, whose daughter, marrying .Egeus, became 
the mother of Theseus. This hero was born at Tree 
zene, where he long resided. Many of his adventures, 
as well as those of Phaedra and Hippolytus, are re 
ferred to this city by the tragic poets. The Trcezeni 
ans could also boast of having colonized Myndus and 
Halicarnassus in Caria, and likewise the borough ol 
Sphettus and Anaphlystus in Attica. (Herod., 7, 99. 
— Pausan., 2, 30.) On the arrival of the Heraclidae 
and Dorians, Troezene was occupied by their forces, 
and became a republic independent of Argos, to which 
it had been subject at the time of the Trojan expedi¬ 
tion. (Pausan., 1. c. — Herod., 8, 43.) In the Per¬ 
sian war, the Trcezenians received most of the Athe¬ 
nian families who were forced to abandon their city. 
(Herod., 8, 41.) They sent five ships to Artemisium 
and Salamis, and 1000 heavy-armed soldiers to Plataea 
(Herod., 8, 1 . — Id., 9, 28); they are also named 
among the confederates who fought at Mycale. (He¬ 
rod., 9, 102.)—The harbour of Troezene obtained the 
name of Pogon from its shape, being bounded by a 
curved strip of land which resembled a beard (ntjyuv). 
The ruins of this ancient city are to be seen near the 
village of Damala , in a plain situate at the foot of a 
lofty range of mountains, which runs from the Saronic 
Gulf to that of Hermione. (Cramer's Anc. Greece, 
vol. 3, p. 262, seqq.) “This place,” observes Sir 
Win. Gell, in speaking of Trcezene, “now represented 
by a mean village of only forty-five habitations, was 
anciently of considerable extent, the longest side of 
the city having been at least one mile in length. It 
was probably, like most of the Grecian cities, of a form 
approaching to a triangle, having a wall on the plain, 
from the extremities of which other fortifications ran 
up the mountain to the Acropolis, on a craggy and 
detached summit, now very prettily spotted with wild 
olives.” (Compare Leake's Morea, vol. 2, p. 442, 
seqq.) 

TrogilLe, three small islands near Samos, named 
Psilon, Argennon, and Sandalion. (Plin., 5, 31.) 
Strabo names only one, which he calls T rogilium, 
probably the same alluded to in the Acts of the Apos¬ 
tles (20, 15). 

Trogilium Promontorium, a bold promontory of 
Ionia, nearly opposite to Cape Posidiutn, in the island 
of Samos, and separated from it by a strait not more 
than seven stadia wide. (Strab., 636 ) The Trogil- 
ian promontory is mentioned in the Acts, in tht ac¬ 
count of St. Paul’s voyage from Troas to Miletus, by 
Mytilene, Chios, and Samos. From the latter island 
they crossed over to Trogilium, and after remaining 
there, it appears, one night, they reached Miletus the 
following day. (Acts, 20, 15.) The modern name 
of this promontory is Cape Santa Maria. (Cramer's 
Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 378.) 

1357 







TRO 


TROJA. 


Troglodyte, an appellation denoting a people who 
dwelt in caves (rpd)-yXjj, a cave , and dvvu, to enter). 
The ancients found Troglodytes in various parts of 
the world, but the name remained peculiarly appropri¬ 
ated to the inhabitants of the western coast of the Si¬ 
nus Arabicus in ^Ethiopia ; and from them the entire 
coast took, with the Greeks, the name of Troglodytice 
(Tpcryhodvrucrj). It commenced to the south of Ber¬ 
enice, and reached to the southernmost extremity of 
the gulf. ( Plin ., 6, 29.— Id., 2, 70.— Id., 6, 19.) 

Trogus Pompeius, a Latin historian, who flourished 
in the time of Augustus. He was descended from a 
Gallic family, to which Pompey the Great had extend¬ 
ed the rights of Roman citizenship, and from him, in 
all probability, the name Pompeius was derived, the 
family name having been Trogus. The father of the 
historian was secretary to Julius Caesar. ( Justin , 43, 
5, 11.) Trogus Pompeius wrote an historical work 
in forty-four books, compiled from some of the best 
of the ancient historical writers. An abridgment of 
this work was made by Justin, and has come down to 
us ; but the original work itself is lost. (Consult re¬ 
marks under the article Justinus I.) 

Troja, I. a celebrated city, the capital of Troas, which 
appears from Homer to have stood in the immediate 
vicinity of the sources of the Scamander, on a rising 
ground between that river and the Simo'is. The Tro¬ 
jans or Teucri appear to have been of Thracian origin, 
and their first monarch is said to have been Teucer. 
In the reign of this king Troy was not as yet built. 
Dardanus, probably a Pelasgic chief, came from the 
island of Samothrace to the Teucrian territory, re¬ 
ceived from Teucer his daughter Baticia in marriage, 
together with the cession of part of his kingdom, 
founded the city of Dardanus, and called the adjacent 
region Dardania. Dardanus had two sons, Ilus* and 
Erichthonius. IJus died without issue, and was suc¬ 
ceeded by Erichthonius, who married Asyoche, daugh¬ 
ter of the Simpis, and became by her the father of 
Tros. This last, on succeeding to the throne, called 
the country Troas or Troja, and had three sons, Ilus, 
Assaracus, and Ganymedes. Ilus, having come off 
victorious in certain games at the court of a neigh- 
Douring monarch of Phrygia, received from the latter, 
among other rewards, a dappled heifer, and permission 
to found a city wherever the heifer should lie down. 
The animal, having come to a place called the “ hill 
of Ate” ( y Ar? 7 f lotyog), lay down thereon, and here, 
accordingly, Ilus founded his city, which he called 
Ilium, and which afterward obtained also the name of 
Troy. ( Apollod ., 3, 12, 1, seqq.) This place, the 
citadel of which was called Pergamus, became now 
the capital of all Troas, and, during the reign of La- 
omedon, the successor of Ilus, was surrounded with 
walls, which the poets fabled were the work of Apollo 
and Neptune. ( Vid . Laomedon.) During the reign 
of this last-mentioned monarch, Troy was taken by 
Hercules, assisted by Telamon, son of yEacus, but 
was restored by the victor to Priam, the son of its 
conquered king. ( Vid. Laomedon, and Priamus.) 
Priam reigned here in peace and prosperity for many 
years, having a number of adjacent tribes under his 
sway, until .his son Paris, attracted to Laconia by the 
fame of Helen’s beauty, abused the hospitality of Men- 
elaus by carrying off his queen in his absence. All 
the chiefs of Greece, thereupon combined their forces, 
under the command of Agamemnon, to avenge this 
outrage, sailed with a great armament to Troy, and, 
after a siege of ten years, took and razed it to the 
ground (B.C. 1184). 

1. Legend of the Trojan War. 

Jupiter, seeing the earth overstocked with inhabi¬ 
tants, consulted with Themis how to remedy the evil. 
The best course seemed to be a war between Hellas 
and Troy; and Discord thereupon, by his direction, 
1358 


came to the banquet of the gods at the nuptials of 
Peleus and Thetis, and flung down a golden apple, in¬ 
scribed “ The Apple for the Fair One” (Tj? naly to 
fifjTiOv). Juno, Minerva, and Venus, claiming it, Ju¬ 
piter directed Mercury to conduct them to Mount Ida, 
for the question to be determined by Paris, the son of 
Priam. The prize was awarded to Venus, who had 
promised the judge the beautiful Helen in marriage. 
Venus then directed him to build a ship, and desired 
her son .Eneas to be the companion of his adventure. 
The soothsaying Helenus and Cassandra announced 
in vain the woes that were to follow ; the vessel put 
to sea, and Paris arrived at Lacedaemon, where he 
shared the hospitality of Menelaiis, the husband of 
Helen. The Trojan, at the banquet, bestowed gifts on 
his fair hostess, and shortly after Menelaiis sailed to 
Crete, directing his wife to entertain the guests while 
they stayed. But Venus caused Helen and Paris to 
become mutually enamoured ; and the guilty pair, fill¬ 
ing the ship with the property of Menelaiis, embark and 
depart, accompanied by the son of Anchises. Mene¬ 
laiis, returning to his home, consulted with his brother 
Agamemnon about an expedition against Troy. He 
then repaired to Nestor at Pylos, and, going through 
Hellas, they assembled chiefs for the war. The gen¬ 
eral place of rendezvous was Aulis in Boeotia. From 
this port the combined Grecian fleet proceeded to 
Troy ; but, reaching Teuthrania, in Mysia, on the coast 
of Asia, and taking it for the Trojan territory, they 
landed and ravaged the country. Telephus, the mon¬ 
arch of the land, came to oppose them, and killed 
Thersander, the son of Polynices, but was himself 
severely wounded by Achilles. As they were sailing 
thence, their fleet was dispersed by a storm. Tele¬ 
phus, after this, having, by direction of an oracle, come 
to Argos in search of a cure for his wound, is healed 
by Achilles, and undertakes to conduct the Greeks to 
Troy. The fleet, again assembled at Aulis, where the 
affair of Iphigenia occurred. ( Vid. Iphigenia.) The 
wind, after the anger of Diana had been appeased, no 
longer proving adverse, the fleet made sail, and reached 
the isle of Tenedos, where Philoctetes received a 
wound from a water-snake, and the smell from this 
proving very offensive, they carried him to the isle of 
Lemnos and left him there. ( Vid. Philoctetes.) When 
the Achaean host appeared off the coast of Troy, the 
Trojans came down to oppose their landing, and Pro- 
tesilaus fell by the hand of Hector ; but Achilles, hav¬ 
ing slain Cycnus, the son of Neptune, put the enemy 
to flight. An assault on the city having failed, the 
Greeks turned to ravaging the surrounding country, 
and took several towns. Then followed a war of ten 
long years, the principal events of which have been 
given elsewhere. (Vid. Achilles, Chryses, Briseis, 
Agamemnon, Penthesilea, Memnon, &c.) In the last 
year of the war, Ulysses took Helenus by stratagem, 
and, having learned from him how Troy might be 
captured, Diomede was sent to Lemnos to fetch Phi¬ 
loctetes, who, being cured by Machaon, killed Paris. 
Minerva then directed Epeus to construct a huge horse 
of wood ; and, the horse being completed, the bravesrt 
warriors conceal themselves in it, and the rest set fire 
to their tents and sail away to Tenedos. The Tro¬ 
jans, thinking their toils and dangers all over, break 
down a part of their walls, and, drawing the horse into 
the city, indulge in festivity. There was a debate 
what to do with the horse ; some were for throwing it 
from the rock, others for burning it, others for con¬ 
secrating it to Minerva. The last opinion prevailed, 
and the banquets were spread. Two vast serpents 
now appeared, and destroyed Laocoon and his sons ; 
dismayed by which prodigy, .Eneas forthwith retired 
to Mount Ida. Sinon, then, who had got into the 
city by means of a forged tale, raised torches as a 
signal to those at Tenedos. They return, the war¬ 
riors descend from the horse, and the city is taken. 




TROJA. 


TROJA. 


Such is the narrative of the Trojan war as it appeared 
in the Iliad of Homer, in the Little Iliad , and in the 
Destruction, of Troy, by the bard Arctinus. It was 
a subject, however, of all others open to variation and 
addition, as may be seen, in particular, from the JEneid 
of Virgil, and also in the other form of the story, which 
made ./Eneas and Antenor to have betrayed Troy to 
the Greeks. ( Keightley's Mythology , p. 485, seqq.) 

2, Hoxc far the story of the Trojan War is credible. 

The poems of Homer have made the story of the 
Trojan war familiar to most readers long before they 
are tempted to inquire into its historical basis. It is, 
consequently, difficult to enter upon the present inqui¬ 
ry without some prepossessions unfavourable to an 
impartial judgment. Here, however, we must not be 
deterred from stating our view of the subject, by the 
certainty that it will appear to some paradoxical, while 
others will think that it savours of excessive credulity. 
The reality of the siege of Troy has sometimes been 
questioned, we conceive, without sufficient ground, 
and against some strong evidence. According to the 
rules of sound criticism, very cogent arguments ought 
to be required to induce us to reject as a mere fiction 
a tradition so ancient, so universally received, so defi¬ 
nite, and so interwoven with the whole mass of the na¬ 
tional recollections as that of the Trojan war. Even 
if unfounded, it must still have had some adequate oc¬ 
casion and motive ; and it is difficult to imagine what 
this could have been, unless it arose out of the Greek 
colonies in Asia; and in this case, its universal recep¬ 
tion in Greece itself is not easily explained. The 
leaders of the earliest among these colonies, which 
were planted in the neighbourhood of Troy, claimed 
Agamemnon as their ancestor ; but if this had sug¬ 
gested the story of his victories in Asia, their scene 
would probably have been fixed in the very region oc¬ 
cupied by his descendants, not in an adjacent land. 
On the other hand, the course taken by this first (/Eo- 
lian) migration falls in naturally with a previous tradi¬ 
tion of a conquest achieved by Greeks in this part of 
Asia. We therefore conceive it necessary to admit the 
reality of the Trojan war as a general fact, but beyond 
this we scarcely venture to proceed a single step. Its 
cause and its issue, the manner in which it was con¬ 
ducted, and the parties engaged in it, are all involved 
in an obscurity which we cannot pretend to penetrate. 
We find it impossible to adopt the poetical story of 
Helen, partly on account of its inherent improbability, 
and partly because we are convinced that Helen is 
a merely mythological person. ( Vid. Helena.) The 
common account of the origin of the war has indeed 
been defended, on the ground that it is perfectly con¬ 
sistent with the manners of the age ; just as if a pop¬ 
ular tale, whether true or false, could be at variance 
with them. The feature in the narrative which ap¬ 
pears in the highest degree improbable, setting the 
character of the persons out of the question, is the in¬ 
tercourse implied in it between Troy and Sparta. As 
to the heroine, it would be sufficient to raise a strong 
suspicion of her fabulous nature to observe that she is 
classed by Herodotus with Io, and Europa, and Me¬ 
dea, all of them persons who, on distinct grounds, 
must clearly be referred to the domain of mythology. 
This suspicion is confirmed by all the particulars of her 
legend ; by her birth ; by her relation to the Divine 
Twins, whose worship seems to have been one of the 
most ancient forms of religion in Peloponnesus, and 
especially in Laconia ; and by the divine honours paid 
to her at Sparta and elsewhere. {Herod., 6, 61. 
Pausan., 3, 19, 10.— Id., 2, 22, 6.; Id., 2, 32, 7. 
Plut., Vit. Thes., c. 20, seq.) But a still stronger 
reason for doubting the reality of the motive assigned 
by Homer for the Trojan war is, that the same incident 
recurs in another circle of fictions, and that, in the ab- 
du'.tion of Helen, Paris only repeats an exploit also at¬ 


tributed to Theseus. This adventure of the Attic 
hero seems to have been known to Homer; for he in¬ 
troduces AEthra, the mother of Theseus, whom the 
Dioscuri were said to have carried off from Attica 
when they invaded it to recover their sister, in Helen’s 
company at Troy. Theseus, when he came to bear 
her away, is said to have found her dancing in. the 
temple of the goddess, whose image Iphigenia was be¬ 
lieved to have brought home subsequently from Scyth¬ 
ia ; a feature of the legend which perhaps marks the 
branch of the Lacedaemonian worship to which she be¬ 
longed. According to another tradition, Helen was 
carried off by Idas and Lynceus, the Messenian pair 
of heroes who answer to the Spartan twins ; varia¬ 
tions which seem to show that her abduction was a 
theme for poetry originally independent of the Trojan 
war, but which might easily and naturally be associa¬ 
ted with that event. {ThirlwaWs History of Greece, 
vol. 1, p. 151, seqq.) 

3. Connexion between the Trojan War and the Ai~ 
gonautic Expedition. 

If we reject the traditional occasion of the Trojan 
war, we are driven to conjecture in order to explain 
the real connexion of the events; yet not so as to 
be wholly w'ithout traces to direct us. It has been 
elsewhere observed {vid. Argonauts, p. 188, col. 2), 
that the Argonautic expedition was sometimes repre¬ 
sented as connected with the first conflict between 
Greece and Troy. This was according to the legend 
which numbered Hercules among the Argonauts, and 
supposed him, on the voyage, to have rendered a service 
to the Trojan king Laomedon, who afterward defrauded 
him of his recompense. The main fact, however, that 
Troy was taken and sacked by Hercules, is recognised 
by Homer ; and thus we see it already provoking the 
enmity, or tempting the cupidity of the Greeks in the 
generation before the celebrated war; and it may ea¬ 
sily be conceived, that if its power and opulence re¬ 
vived after this blow, it might again excite the same 
feelings. The expedition of Hercules may indeed 
suggest a doubt whether it was not an earlier and sim¬ 
pler form of the same tradition, which grew, at length, 
into the argument of the Iliad ; for there is a striking 
resemblance between the two wars, not only in the 
events, but in the principal actors. As the promi¬ 
nent figures in the second siege are Agamemnon and 
Achilles, who represent the royal house of Mycenae 
and that of the /Eacidaa, so, in the first, the Argive 
Hercules is accompanied by the ^Eacid Telamon ; 
and even the quarrel and reconciliation of the allied 
chiefs are features common to both traditions. Nor 
perhaps should it be overlooked, that, according to 
a legend which was early celebrated in the epic poetry 
of Greece, the Greek fleet sailed twice from Aulis to 
the coast of Asia. In the first voyage it reached the 
mouth of the Ca'icus, where the army landed, and 
gained a victory over Telephus, king of Mysia ; but, 
on leaving the Mysian coast, the fleet was dispersed 
by a storm, and compelled to reassemble at Aulis. 
There seems to be no reason for treating this either as 
a fictitious episode, or as a fact really belonging to the 
history of the Trojan war. It may have been origi¬ 
nally a distinct legend, grounded, like that of Hercu 
les, on a series of attacks made by the Greeks on the 
coast of Asia, whether merely for the sake of plunder, 
or with a view to permanent settlements. {Thirl- 
wall's History of Greece, vol. 1, p. 153, seq.) 

4 Historical View, and Consequences, of the Trojan 
War. 

As to the expedition which ended in the fall of 
Ilium, while the leading facts are so uncertain, it must 
clearly be hopeless to form any distinct conception ol 
its details. It seems scarcely necessary to observe, 
that no more reliance can be placed on the enumera- 

1359 




TROJA. 

tlon of the Greek forces in the Iliad, than on the other 
parts of the poem which have a more poetical aspect, 
especially as it appears to be a compilation adapted to 
a later state of things. That the numbers of the ar¬ 
mament are, as Thucydides observed, exaggerated by 
the poet, may easily be believed ; and perhaps we may 
very well dispense with the historian’s supposition, 
that a detachment was employed in the cultivation of 
the Thracian Chersonese. “My father,” says the 
son of Hercules, in the Iliad, “came hither with no 
more than six ships and a few men : yet he laid Ilium 
waste, and made her streets desolate.” A surprising 
contrast, indeed, to the efforts and success of Aga¬ 
memnon, who, with his 1200 ships and 100,000 men, 
headed by the flower of the Grecian chivalry, lay ten 
years before the town, often ready to abandon the en¬ 
terprise in despair, and who, at last, was indebted for 
victory to an unexpected favourable turn of affairs. 
It has been conjectured, that, after the first calamity, 
the city was more strongly fortified, and rose rapidly 
in power during the reign of Priam ; but this suppo¬ 
sition can hardly reconcile the imagination to the 
transition from the six ships of Hercules to the vast 
host of Agamemnon. On the other hand, there is no 
difficulty in believing that, whatever may have been 
the motives of the expedition, the spirit of adventure 
may have drawn warriors together from most parts of 
Greece, among whom the southern and northern Achge- 
ans, under Pelopid and iEacid princes, took the lead, 
and that it may thus have deserved the character, 
which is uniformly ascribed to it, of a national enter¬ 
prise. The presence of several distinguished chiefs, 
each attended by a small band, would be sufficient 
both to explain the celebrity of the achievement and 
to account for the event. If it were not trespassing 
too far on the domain of poetry, one might imagine 
that the plan of the Greeks was the same which we 
find frequently adopted in later times, by invaders 
whose force yvas comparatively w T eak : that they for¬ 
tified themselves in a post, from which they continued 
to annoy and distress the enemy till stratagem or 
treachery gave them possession of the town.—Though 
(here can be no doubt that the expedition accom¬ 
plished its immediate object, it seems to be also clear 
ihat a Trojan state survived for a time the fall of Ili- 
im ; for an historian of great antiquity on this subject, 
both from his age and his country, Xanthus the Lydi¬ 
an, related that such a state was finally destroyed by 
the invasion of the Phrygians, a Thracian tribe, which 
crossed over from Europe to Asia after the Trojan 
war. ( Strab ., 572, 680.) And this is indirectly con¬ 
firmed by the testimony of Plomer, who introduces 
Neptune predicting that the posterity of^Eneas should 
'ong continue to reign over the Trojans after the race 
if Priam should be extinct. To the conquerors the 
war is represented as no less disastrous in its remote 
tonsequences than it was glorious in its immediate 
issue. The returns of the heroes formed a distinct 
circle of epic poetry, of which the Odyssey included 
only a small part, and they were generally full of tragi¬ 
cal adventures. This calamitous result of a success¬ 
ful enterprise seems to have been an essential feature 
in the legend of Troy ; for Hercules also, on his re¬ 
turn, was persecuted by the wrath of Juno, and driven 
out of his course by a furious tempest. If, as many 
traces indicate, the legend of Troy grew up and spread 
among the Asiatic Greeks, when newly settled in the 
land where their forefathers, the heroes of a better 
generation, had won so many glorious fields, it would 
not be difficult to conceive how it might take this mel¬ 
ancholy turn. The siege of Troy was the last event 
to which the emigrants could look back with joy and 
pride. But it was a bright spot, seen through a long 
vista, checkered with manifold vicissitudes, laborious 
struggles, and fatal revolutions. They had come as 
exiles and outcasts to the shores which their ances- 
1360 


TROJA. 

tors had left as conquerors : it seemed as if the jeal* 
ousy of the gods had been roused by the greatest 
achievement of the Achaeans to afflict and humblf' 
them. The changes and sufferings of several genera¬ 
tions were naturally crowded into a short period fol¬ 
lowing the event which was viewed as their cause, 
and were represented in the adverse fortune of the 
principal chiefs of the nation. (Thirlwall's HisUrp 
of Greece, vol. 1, p. 154, seqq.) 

5. Topography of Ancient Troy. 

The topography of Troy, which will always be in* 
teresting to the classical reader, has been so much 
discussed and minutely inquired into by modern trav¬ 
ellers and antiquaries, that no additional light can be 
expected to be derived from subsequent researches. 
A brief summary of what has been collected from the 
different authors who have expressly written on the 
subject will be here presented to the reader, referring 
the student, who is desirous of investigating it more 
deeply, to the list of works at the end of this article. 
This, the most classical of all lands, has been so com¬ 
pletely trodden and examined, that it may be truly said 
that the ancient writers who wrote on the subject 
were much less acquainted with the actual topography 
of the Trojan plain than our best-informed modern 
travellers. The researches of these intelligent men 
have not only confirmed the great historical facts con¬ 
nected with the fate of Troy, which few persons, in¬ 
deed, either in ancient or modern times, have ventured 
to question, and those evidently for the purpose of 
maintaining a paradox ; but they have served beauti¬ 
fully to illustrate the noblest poem of antiquity, and 
to bear witness, with due allowance for poetical ex¬ 
aggeration, to the truth and accuracy of Homer’s local 
descriptions. They have proved, that as in every other 
point he was the most close and happy delineator of 
nature, so here he has still copied her most faithfully, 
and has taken his description from scenes actually ex¬ 
isting, and which must have been familiar to his eyes. 
In order that this may be proved to the reader’s satis¬ 
faction, as far as it is possible, without an actual in¬ 
spection of the country, we purpose first to lay before 
him all the general and most striking features in the 
Homeric chorography, and then to illustrate them by 
a continued reference to modern travellers and anti¬ 
quarians. It will be seen, then, from the Iliad, that the 
Greeks, having arrived on the coast of the Hellespont, 
and effected a landing, drew up their vessels in sev¬ 
eral rows on the shore of a small bay confined between 
two promontories. (II., 14, 30 ) Elsewhere he states 
that Achilles was posted at one extremity of the line, 
and Ajax at the other. (II, 8, 224 ; 11, 7.) He no¬ 
where names the two promontories which enclosed the 
bay and the armament of the Greeks ; but all writers, 
both ancient and modern, agree in the supposition that 
these are the capes Rhosteum and Sigeum, between 
which tradition attached to different spots the names 
of Naustathmus, the port of the Greeks, and the camp 
of the Greeks. (Strabo, 595.) According to Pliny, 
the distance from headland to headland was thirty sta¬ 
dia (5, 33). Strabo reckoned sixty stadia from Rhoe- 
teum to Sigeum, and the tomb of Achilles close tc 
the latter (l. c .); and these distances agree sufficiently 
well with actual measurements. (French Strabo, 4 
170, in not.) Considerable changes, however, have 
taken place during the lapse of so many ages in the 
appearance of the coast. The promontories remain, 
but the bay has been completely filled up by the de- 
posite of rivers and the accumulation of sand and soil, 
and the shore now presents scarcely any indenture be¬ 
tween the headlands ; but we are assured by Choiseul 
Gouffier, and others who have explored the ground, 
that there is satisfactory proof of the sea having ad¬ 
vanced formerly some way into the land in this direc¬ 
tion. (Voy. Pittoresque, 2, 216 . — Leake's Asia M*- 




TROJA. 


TROJA. 


nor, p. 273.) The next great feature to be examined 
in the Homeric chorography is the poet’s account of 
uhe rivers which flowed in the vicinity of Troy, and 
discharged their waters into the Hellespont. These 
are the Xanthus or Scamander, and the Simo'is, 
whose junction is especially alluded to. (II., 5,774.) 
And again (6, 2), where it is said that the conflict be¬ 
tween the Greeks and Trojans took place in the plain 
between the two rivers. One of the first questions, 
then, to be considered, in reconciling the topography 
of ancient Troy with the existing state of the country, 
is this : Are there two streams answering to Homer’s 
description, which unite in a plain at a short distance 
from the sea, and fall into it between the Rhoetean 
and Sigean promontories'? To this question it cer¬ 
tainly appears, from recent observations, that we must 
reply in the negative. There are two streams which 
water the plain, supposed to be that of Troy, but they 
do not meet, except in some marshes formed princi¬ 
pally by the Mendere, the larger of the two, which 
seems to have no exit into the Hellespont, while the 
smaller river partly flows into these stagnant pools, 
and partly into the sea near the Sigean cape. ( Choi - 
sev.l Gouffier.) It appears, however, from Strabo, or, 
rather, from Demetrius, whom he quotes, that when he 
wrote the junction did take place ; for he says, “ The 
Scamander and Simo'is advance, the one towards 
Sigeum, the other towards Rhoeteum, and, after uniting 
their streams a little above New Ilium, fall into the 
sea near Sigeum, where they form what is called the 
Stomalimne” (597.—Compare 595). Pliny, also, when 
he speaks of the Palaescamander, evidently leads to 
the notion that the channel of that river had under¬ 
gone a material alteration (5, 32). The observations 
of travellers afford likewise evidences of great changes 
having taken place in regard to the course of these 
streams ; and it is said that the ancient common chan¬ 
nel is vet to be traced, under the name of Mendere, 
near the point of Kum-Kale. The ancients them¬ 
selves were aware of considerable alteration having 
taken place along the whole line of coast; for His- 
tisea of Alexandrea Troas, a lady who had written 
much on the Iliad, affirmed that the whole distance be¬ 
tween New Ilium and the sea, which Strabo estimates 
at twelve stadia, had been formed by alluvial deposite 
(598); and recent researches prove that their distance 
is now nearly double. (Leake's Asia Minor, p. 295.) 
The great question, however, after all, respecting the 
two rivers alluded to, and on which the whole inquiry 
may be said to turn, is, Which is the Scamander, and 
which the Simois of Homer ? If we refer for the so¬ 
lution of this question to Demetrius of Scepsis, who, 
from his knowledge of the Trojan district, appears to 
have been best qualified to decide upon it, we shall 
find that he looked upon the river now called Mendere 
as corresponding with the Scamander of Homer, a 
supposition which certainly derives support from the 
similarity of names ; while he considered the Simo'is 
to be the stream now called Giumbrek-sou, which 
unites with the Mendere near the site of Paleo Aktshi, 
supposed to represent the Pagus Iliensium, and which 
Demetrius himself identified with ancient Troy. But 
it has been rightly observed by those modern writers 
who have bestowed their attention on the subject, that 
the similarity of names is not a convincing reason in 
itself, since they have often been known to vary ; and 
that, after all, we must refer to the original account, 
where we find the characteristics of the two rivers de¬ 
scribed in a manner which must eventually settle t.je 
whole question as far as regards their identity. 
reference to the Iliad itself is the more necessarj as 
Demetrius does not appear to have satisfactorily ex¬ 
plained, even to himself, certain doubts and difficulties 
which naturally arose from comparing his system of 
topography with that suggested by the perusal of the 
poet. Now it appears from more than one passage 

8 K 


that the Simois, according to Homer, had its source in 
Mount Ida (11., 4, 475 ; 12, 22); and though, in the 
latter passage, the same thing is affirmed of the Sca¬ 
mander, it will be seen elsewhere that the sources of 
that river are so plainly described as situated close to 
the city of Troy, that they never could be said to rise 
in the main chain, unless Troy itself was placed there 
likewise. When speaking of the pursuit of Hector 
by Achilles beneath its walls (II, 22, 143), he men¬ 
tions certain marks, which point out the double sources 
of the Scamander, in so peculiar and striking a man¬ 
ner, that the discovery of them would, it seems, be 
decisive of the question, not only as far as regards tho 
Trojan rivers, but also, in all probability, as to the sit¬ 
uation of Troy itself, which, according to the poet, 
must have stood in the immediate vicinity of tho 
sources. It is in tracing this remarkable and most dis¬ 
tinguishing feature of the Homeric description, that 
modern research and industry have been particularly 
conspicuous, and have enabled us to solve a question 
which the ancients, from the want of similar informa¬ 
tion, could never understand. It is to Monsieur Choi- 
seul Gouffier that the merit of first discovering the 
springs of the Scamander undoubtedly belongs ; and 
though the phenomena of heat and cold, described by 
Homer, have not been so convincingly observed by 
subsequent travellers as by himself, yet, by taking the 
positive testimony of the natives themselves, who re¬ 
peatedly corroborated the statement made by the poet, 
as well as the several experiments made by Choiseul 
Gouffier, and subsequently by Dubois ( Voy. Pitt., 
267-8.— Leake's Asia Minor, p. 283), we cannot re¬ 
fuse to acknowledge, at least, that there is very suffi¬ 
cient foundation for the poetical picture formed of the 
spot by Homer. M. Choiseul describes the hot source 
“ as one abundant stream, which gushes out from dif¬ 
ferent chinks and apertures formed in an ancient struc¬ 
ture of stonework. About 400 yards higher up are 
to be seen some more springs, which fall together into 
a square stone basin, supported by some long blocks 
of granite. These limpid rills, after traversing a 
charming little wood, unite with the first sources, and 
together form the Scamander.” (Voy. Pitt., 228.) 
The latter, which are the cold springs of Homer, are 
called Kirk Guezler, or the Forty Fountains, by the 
Turks. (Ibid.,2Q8.) If we, besides, look to the gen¬ 
eral features which ought to belong to the Scamander 
and the Simois of Homer, we shall find that the for¬ 
mer agrees remarkably with the beautiful little river of 
Bounarbachi, which is formed by the sources above men 
tioned, while the rapid Simo'is finds a fit representative 
in the impetuous Menderc-sou , which descends from 
the summits of Gargara, and fills its bed with trees torn 
from their roots, and huge fragments of rock. The for¬ 
mer is described as a copious, rapid, and clear stream, 
whose banks are spread with flowers and shaded with 
various sorts of trees. (II., 21,1.— lb., 124; 2,467 ; 
21, 350.) According to Mr. Chevalier, the river of Bou- 
narbacbi “ is never subject to any increase or diminu¬ 
tion ; its waters are as pure and pellucid as crystal; 
its,borders are covered with flowers ; the same sort of 
trees and plants which grew near it when it was at¬ 
tacked by Vulcan, grow there still; willows, lote-trees, 
ash-trees, and reeds are yet to be seen on its banks, 
and eels are still caught in it.” (Dcscr. of Plain of 
Troy, p. 83.—Compare Voy. Pitt., 2, p. 228.) It 
was doubtless on account of the beauty and copious¬ 
ness of its stream that divine honours were paid to the 
Scamander by the Trojans, (ll, 5, 77.—Compare 
jEsch., Epist., 10, p. 680.) The Simo'is, on the con¬ 
trary, bears all the marks of a mighty torrent rushing 
down from the mountains with furious haste and re¬ 
sistless force. This is evident from the address o( the 
Scamander to his brother god, invoking his aid against 
Achilles (11., 21, 308) ; and all modern travellers and 
topographers concur in allowing that this is precisely 

/ 1361 



TROJA. 


T R 0 


the character of the Mendere, which takes its rise in a 
deep cave below the highest summit of Mount Ida, 
and, after a tortuous course, between steep and craggy 
banks, of nearly thirty miles, in a rugged bed, which 
is nearly dry in summer, finds its way into the plain 
of Bounarbachi. It is true, that when Demetrius of 
Scepsis wrote, which is some years after the defeat of 
Antiochus by the Romans ( Strab., p. 593), the Men¬ 
dere certainly bore the name of Scamander, for h*e de¬ 
scribes the source of that river in Mount Ida very ac¬ 
curately ( ap. Strabo, p. 602). I should admit, also, 
that the Scamander, which, according to Herodotus, 
was drained by the army of Xerxes (42), is the Men¬ 
dere : Hellanicus likewise was of this opinion {ap. 
Schol. II., 21, 242); but this objection may be fairly 
disposed of by supposing that the name of Scamander, 
which is certainly much oftener mentioned in Homer, 
had, in process of time, been transferred to the river 
whose course was longer, and body of water more con¬ 
siderable ; whereas it is impossible, I conceive, to get 
over the difficulty presented by Homer’s description of 
the double sources of the Scamander. The question 
may be fairly summed up in this way : either we must 
allow that Homer drew his local descriptions from real 
scenes, or that he only applied historical names to fan¬ 
ciful and ideal localities ; in the latter case, all our in¬ 
terest in the comparative topography of Troy ceases, 
and it is a fruitless task to look for an application of 
the imagery traced by the poet to the actual face of 
things. But if a striking resemblance does present it¬ 
self, we are bound, in justice to the poet, to take our 
stand on that ground, and, without regarding any hy¬ 
pothesis or system which may have been advanced 
or framed in ancient times, to seek for an application 
of the remaining local features traced in the Iliad in 
the immediate vicinity of the sources of Bounarbachi. 
Here, then, travellers have observed, a little above 
these springs and the village of the same name, a hill 
rising from the plain, generally well calculated for the 
site of a large town, and, in particular, satisfying many 
of the local requisites which the Homeric Troy must 
have possessed ; such as a sufficient distance from the 
sea, and an elevated and commanding situation. This 
is evident from the epithets yvepbeoaa, aineivy, and 
btppvoecoa, which are so constantly applied to it. If 
we, besides, have a rock behind the town answering 
the purpose of such a citadel as the Pergamus of Troy 
is described to have been, “ TUpyayog dupr, rising 
precipitously above the city, and presenting a situation 
of great strength, we shall have all that the nature of 
the poem, even in its historical character, ought to lead 
us to expect. (Compare Voy. Pitt., 2, 238, and the 
plan there given.) With respect to minor objects al¬ 
luded to by Homer in the course of his poem, such as 
the tombs or mounds of Ilus, TEsyetes, and Myrina, 
the Scopie and Erineus, or grove of wild fig-trees, it 
is, perhaps, too much to seek to identify, as the French 
topographers have somewhat fancifully done, with pres¬ 
ent appearances. It is certain that such indications 
cannot be relied upon, since the inhabitants of New 
Ilium, who also pretended that their town stood on the 
site of ancient Troy, boasted that they could show, 
close to their walls, these dubious vestiges of antiqui¬ 
ty. ( Strabo , 599.) With respect to the objection 
which may be brought against the situation here as¬ 
signed to ancient Troy, that it would not have been 
possible for the flight of Hector to have taken place 
round the walls, as the poet has represented it, since 
the heights of Bounarbachi are skirted to the northeast 
by the deep and narrow gorge of the Mendere, which 
leaves no room even for a narrow footpath along its 
banks, the opinion is undoubtedly correct of those 
commentators and critics who think that we ought not 
to take the words of the poet in the sense which has 
commonly been assigned to them, but that it is better 
o suppose that Hector and Achilles ran only round 
1362 


that portion of the city which fronts the plain front 
the Scsean gates to the sources of the Scamander and 
back again. {Voy. Pitt., 2, p. 238-40. — Le Cheva¬ 
lier's Description of Plain of Troy, p. 135. — Leake's 
Asia Minor, p. 304.) The difficulty in that case wjII 
be satisfactorily removed/and there will then remain, 
we conceive, no valid objection to the system which 
recognises the hill of Bounarbachi as the representa¬ 
tive of the ancient city of Priam, and which has been 
almost universally embraced by modern travellers and 
scholars. {Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 1, p. 89, seqq.) 
—The student who is desirous of investigating the 
Trojan question more deeply, is referred to the follow¬ 
ing works on this subject : A comparative View of the 
ancient and present State of the Troad, by Robert 
Wood, subjoined to his essay on the Genius and Wri¬ 
tings of Homer.— Description of the Plain of Troy, 
by M. Chevalier, Edinburgh , 4to, 1791 (Dalzell’3 
translation).—The same work in German, by Heyne, 
with notes.— Le Chevalier, Voyage dans la Troadc, 
Paris, 8vo, 1802 — Observations on the Topography 
of the Plain of Troy, by James Rennell, London, 1814, 
4to. — Chandler's History of Ilium or Troy , London, 
1802, 4to. — Voyage Pittoresque de la Grece, par 
Choiseul Gouffier.--Gell's Topography of Troy, fol., 
London, 1804. — Clarke's Travels, vol. 3, p. 234 ,seqq , 
ed. London. — Leake's Geography of Asia Minor, ch. 
6.— Hobhouse's Journey, vol. 2, p. 128, seqq. — Edin¬ 
burgh Review, vol. 6, p. 257, seqq. — Quarterly Re¬ 
view, vol. 9, p. 170, seqq. — Maclaren's Dissertation 
on the Topography of the Plain of Troy, London, 
1822, 8vo— Turner's Tour to the Levant, vol. 3, p. 
222, seqq. — II. A small town, or rather village, in 
Egypt, to the east of, and near Memphis. The name 
probably owed its origin to a corruption, on the part 
of the Greeks, of some Egyptian appellation. The 
Greeks, however, had a fabulous tradition that it was 
founded by some Trojan captives, settled here by 
Menelaiis. ( Strabo , 808.) In its vicinity was the 
Mons Troicus, where were quarries whence the stones 
for the Pyramids were obtained. 

Troilus, a son of Priam and Hecuba, slain by 
Achilles during the Trojan war. According to another 
legend, he was the son of Apollo and Hecuba. {Tzetz. 
ad Lycophr., 307. — Eudocia, p. 404, in the latter of 
whom naidog must be supplied, and the arrangement of 
the text altered.) Troilus was remarkable for youth¬ 
ful beauty. The manner of his death is differently re 
lated by ancient writers. (Consult Diet. Cret., 4, 9. 
—Anna Fabr., ad loc. — Virg., JEn., 1, 478.) 

Trophonius, according to the common account, a 
celebrated architect, son of Erginus, king of Orchom- 
enus in Boeotia. The legend relating to him is as 
follows : When Erginus had been overcome by Her¬ 
cules, his affairs fell into so reduced a state, that, in or¬ 
der to retrieve them, he abstained from matrimony. 
As he grew rich and old, he wished to have a family ; 
and, going to Delphi, he consulted the god, who gave 
him, in oracular phrase, the prudent advice to marry a 
young wife. {Pausan., 9, 37, 3.) Erginus accord¬ 
ingly, following the counsel of the Pythia, married 
and had two sons, Trophonius and Agamedes, though 
some said Apollo was the father of the former. They 
became distinguished architects, and built the temple 
of Apollo at Delphi, and a treasury for King Hyrieus. 
{Horn., H. in Apollo , 118.) In the wall of this last 
they placed a stone in such a manner that it could be 
taken out; and they, by this means, from time to time 
purloined the treasure. This amazed Hyrieus : for his 
locks and seals were untouched, and yet his wealth 
continually diminished. At length he set a trap foi 
the thief, and Agamedes was caught. Trophonius, un¬ 
able to extricate him, and fearing that, when found, he 
would be compelled by torture to discover his accom 
plice, cut off his head and carried it off. Trophonius 
himself is said to have been shortly afterward swab 




TROPHONIUS 


TUB 


•owed up by the earth. ( Pausan ., 1. c.) According 
to Pindar, when they had finished the temple of Del¬ 
phi, they asked a reward of the god. He promised to 
give it on the seventh day, desiring them, meanwhile, 
to live cheerful and happy. On the seventh day they 
died in their sleep. ( Find ., ap. Plut ., de Cons. — Op., 
vol. 7, p. 335, ed. Hutten.) There was a celebrated 
oracle of Trophonius at Lebadea in Boeotia. During 
a great drought, the Boeotians were, it is said, directed 
by the god at Delphi to seek aid of Trophonius in Leb¬ 
adea. They came thither, but could find no oracle ; 
one of them, however, happening to see a swarm of 
bees, they followed them to a chasm in the earth, which 
proved to be the place sought. (Pausan., 9, 40.) 
The writer just quoted gives a detailed account of the 
mode of consulting this oracle, from his own personal 
observation (9, 39). After going through certain cere¬ 
monies, the individual who sought to inquire into fu¬ 
turity was conducted to a chasm in the earth resem¬ 
bling an oven, and a ladder was furnished him by which 
to descend. After reaching the bottom of the chasm, 
he lay down on the ground in a certain posture, and 
was immediately drawn within a cavern, as if hurried 
away by the vortex of a most rapid river. Then he ob¬ 
tained the knowledge of which he was in quest. In 
some cases this was given to the applicants through 
the medium of the sight; at others through the hear¬ 
ing ; but all returned through the same opening, and 
walked backward as they returned. It is a common 
notion, which we meet with in many modern works, 
that a visiter to the cave of Trophonius never smiled 
after his return. The language of Pausanias, however, 
expressly disproves this ; for he observes that after¬ 
ward the person recovers the use of his reason, and 
laughs just the same as before (ixyrcpov pkvroi ru re 
H.'kXa ovSkv tl (ppovynei pelov rj rcpdrepov, /cat yk?Mg 
indveiaiv o'l). It is probable that the gloom, the me¬ 
phitic vapours, and perhaps some violence from the 
priests, which the applicant encountered in his descent, 
might seriously affect his constitution, and render 
him melancholy ; and thus Aristophanes strongly ex¬ 
presses terror by an observation in the Clouds (v. 507), 
which became proverbial, cjg dedoi/c’ kyu 'Etcna uar- 
a6aiv(jv &OTcep kg T potpioviov. One man, indeed, is 
noticed by Athenaeus (14, p. 614, a), who did not re¬ 
cover his power of smiling until assisted by another 
oracle. Parmeniscus of Metaponturn, finding himself 
thus wofully dispirited, went to Delphi for a remedy, 
and Apollo answered that he would find a cure if he 
resorted to his (Apollo’s) mother. The hypochondriac 
interpreted this response as relating to his own native 
country ; but, on being disappointed in his hope there, 
he sought relief in travelling. Touching by accident at 
Delos, he entered a temple of Latona; and, unexpected¬ 
ly casting his eyes upon a statue of that goddess 
(Apollo’s mother) most grotesquely sculptured, he burst 
into an involuntary fit of laughter.—Of other recorded 
descents into the cave of Trophonius, that of Timar- 
chus, described by Plutarch (Be Socratis Genio .— 
Op., vol. 8, p. 332, ed. Reiske ), is dismissed by the 
writer himself as a mere fable (6 pev T ipdpxov pvdog 
otirog). That of Apollonius of Tyana ( Philoslrat., 
Vit. Apollon., 4, 8) was an irruption, not a legitimate 
visit. The impostor appears to have bullied the priests, 
and to have done exactly according to his pleasure both 
above and below ground. ( Encycl. Metropol., pt. 35, 
p. 664.)—Trophonius was named Zeus-Trophonius, 
that is, the Nourishing or Sustaining Zeus or Jupiter 
(from rpk(j)(i), “ to nourish"). He is probably a deity 
of the Pelasgian times, a giver of food from the bosom 
of the earth, and hence worshipped in a cavern. Ag- 
amedes (the Thoughtful or Provident) is, perhaps, 
only another title of the same being; and as corn was 
preserved in under-ground treasuries or granaries, the 
brothers may in one sense have been the builders, in 
another the plunderers of these receptacles. ( Muller, 


Orchom., p. 198, 150, seqq., 242. — Strabo, 421.- 
Liv., 45, 27.) — The same trick related above in the 
case of Hyrieus, is said to have been played oft' on 
Augeas, king of Elis, by Trophonius, the stepson of 
Agamedes, the Arcadian architect. ( Charax, ap. 
Schol. ad Aristoph., Nub., 509.) It also formed an 
episode in the Telegonia ; and there is likewise a very 
strong similarity between it and the legend related by 
Herodotus of the Egyptian king Rhampsinitus (2, 121). 
Valckenaer thinks that the story was of Egyptian origin, 
and that some Greek transferred it from the pages of 
Herodotus to Trophonius and Agamedes. ( Valck. ad 
Herod., 1. c.) Ugen adopts the same opinion (ad Horn., 
Hymn., p. 304). Bahr also coincides in this view of 
the subject, and refers the legend at once to early 
agriculture. (Bahr, Excurs., 7, ad Herod., 1. c., vol. 

1, p. 912.) On the other hand, Muller (Orchom., p. 
97) considers the fable as of Grecian origin, and makes 
it to have been borrowed by the priests of Egypt at a 
later day. (Compare Buttmann, Hie Minyce der al- 
testen Zeil. — Mylholog., vol. 2, p. 208, seqq.) The 
opinion of Valckenaer, however, is undoubtedly the 
true one. 

Tros, son of Erichthonius and grandson of Darda- 
nus. He married Callirhoe, daughter of the Scaman- 

der, by whom he had Ilus, Assaracus, and Ganyme- 

des. He gave the name of Troja to the adjacent coun¬ 
try. (Apollod., 3, 12, 2.— Vid. Troja.) 

Trossulum, a town of Etruria, to the west of Fe- 
rentinum, some remains of which have been discovered 
at a place which bears the name of Trosso. Pliny 
tells us that this town, having been taken by cavalry 
alone, the Roman horse or equites , obtained, from that 
circumstance, the name of Trossuli. (Plin , 33, 2.— 
Compare Festus, s. v. Trossuli.) 

Tryphiooorus, a Greek poet supposed to have 
flourished about the fifth century of our era. He was 
a native of Egypt, but of his history nothing is known. 
Tryphiodorus wrote a poem under the title of Mara- 
thoniaca (M apaOuviaicd), another styled k ad’ r l7T7ro(5d- 
peiav ; a Lipogrammalic Odyssey ; and a poem on 
the destruction of Troy, styled ’ITiiov uTiuxug. The 
last is the only one of his productions which has 
reached us. It is in 681 verses, and appears rather 
to be the argument of some larger poem, which the 
poet had perhaps intended at one time to write. The 
Lipogrammatic Odyssey had this name given to it 
from a peculiar piece of affectation by which it was 
marked. The poet, according to some, interdicted 
himself, in each of his twenty-four books, the use of 
a particular letter of the alphabet. Eustathius, how¬ 
ever, etates that the letter 2 was banished from the 
entire poem. The best edition of the poem on the 
destruction of Troy is perhaps that of Wernicke, 
Lips., 1819, 8vo. The edition of Northmore is also 
a good one, Cantab., 1791, 8vo, and Land., 1804, 8vo 
(Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 6, p. 112.) 

Trypho, a grammarian of Alexandrea in the age 
of Augustus. We have some works of his remaining, 
one entitled Uddy Kk^euv, and another Ilepl Tponiov. 
The best edition of these two is given in the Museum 
Criticum (vol. 1, p. 32, seqq.). 

Tubero, Q. ZElius, a Roman consul, son-in-law 
of Paulus, the conqueror of Perseus. He is celebrated 
for his integrity. Sixteen of the Tuberos, with their 
wives and children, lived in a small house, and main¬ 
tained themselves with the produce of a little field, 
which they cultivated with their own hands. The first 
piece of silver plate that entered the house of Tubero 
was a small cup which his father-in-law presented to 
him after he had conquered the king of Macedonia. 

Tuburbo, two towns of Africa, called Major and 
Minor. The first was situate directly to the south of 
Tunis, and appears to be now Tubcrnok; the latter 
was southwest of Carthage, on the Bagradas, and is 
said to retain the ancient name. (Plin., 5, 4.) 

1363 






TUL 


TUL 


Tucca, Plautius, a friend of Horace and Virgil. 
He and Varius were ordered by Augustus to revise 
the ffEneid after Virgil’s death. ( Vul. Virgilius.) 

Tuder, a town of Umbria, northwest of Spoletium, 
and near the Tiber. It was originally one of the most 
important cities of Umbria, and famous for its worship 
of Mars. Its situation on a lofty hill rendered it a 
place of great strength. It is now Todi. ( Sil. Ital., 
4, 222 .'—Id., 464. — Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol.U, p. 
273.) 

Tulingi, a people of Gaul, reckoned among the 
Helvetii by some, but more correctly their neigh¬ 
bours, and of Germanic origin. ( Cas., B. G., 1, 5.) 
The modern Stuhlingen is thought to preserve traces 
of their name. ( Oberlin. ad Cces., 1. c.) 

Tullia, I. a daughter of Servius Tullius, king of 
Rome. She married Tarquin the Proud after she had 
made away with her first husband, Aruns Tarquinius. 

( Vid. Servius Tullius.)—II. A daughter of Cicero by 
Terentia. She was three times married. Her first 
husband, Caius Piso, died a short time before Cicero’s 
return from exile. At the end of about a year, she 
was married to a second husband, Furius Crassipes, 
who appears to have been a patrician of rank and dig¬ 
nity. She was afterward divorced from this second 
husband, and united to P. Cornelius Dolabella. The 
life and character, however, of this last-mentioned in¬ 
dividual proved so contrary to the manners and tem¬ 
per both of Cicero and his daughter, that a divorce 
ensued in this case also. Cicero entertained the deep¬ 
est affection for this his favourite child, and her death, 
at the age of 32, proved to him a source of the bitter¬ 
est sorrow. (Vid. remarks under the article Cicero, 
page 345, column 2.)—Coslius Rhodiginus tells us, 
that in the time of Sixtus IV. there was found near 
Rome, on the Appian Way, over against the tomb of 
Cicero, the body of a woman whose hair was dressed 
up in network of gold, and which, from the inscrip¬ 
tion, was thought to be the body of Tullia. It was 
quite entire, and so well preserved by spices as to 
have suffered no injury from time ; yet, when it was 
removed into the city, it mouldered away in three days. 
But this was only the hasty conjecture of some learn¬ 
ed men of the time, which, for want of authority to 
support it, soon vanished of itself; for no inscription 
was ever produced to confirm it, nor has it been men¬ 
tioned by any other author that there was any sepul¬ 
chre of Cicero on the Appian Way. (Cod. Rhod., 
Led. Antiq., 3, 24.— Middleton's Life of Cicero, vol. 
2, p. 149, in not.) 

Tullia Lex, I. de Senatu, by M. Tullius Cicero, 
A.TJ.C. 690, enacted that those who had a libera le- 
gatio granted them by the senate should hold it no 
more than one year. Such senators as had a libera 
legalio travelled through the provinces without any 
expense, as if they were employed in the affairs of 
the state.—II. Another, de Arnbitu, by the same, the 
same year. It forbade any person, two years before 
he canvassed for an office, to exhibit a show of gladi¬ 
ators, unless that task had devolved upon him by will. 
Senators guilty of the crime of Ambitus were punished 
with the aqua et ignis interdictio for ten years, and 
the penalty inflicted on the commons was more severe 
than that of the Calpurnian law. (Dio Cass., 37, 29. 
— Cic., pro Mur., 32, seqq.) 

Tullianum, a name given to part of the public 
prison at Rome. The prison was originally built by 
Ancus Marcius, and was afterward enlarged by Servius 
Tullius, whence that part of it which was under 
ground, and built by him, received the name of Tul¬ 
lianum. The full expression is Tullianum robur, from 
its walls having been originally of oak ; afterward, 
lowever, they were built of stone. (Sail., Cat., 55.) 
This dungeon now serves as a subterranean chapel to 

small church built on the spot, called San Pietro in 
'Harcere , in commemoration of St. Peter, who is sup- 
1364 


posed to have been confined there. Its only entrance, 
when a dungeon, was through the arched roof; now, 
however, there is a door in the side wall. “ Notwith¬ 
standing the change,” observes Eustace, “ it has still 
a most appalling appearance.” (Class. Tour, vol. 1, 
p. 365, Land, ed.) 

Tullus Hostilius, the third king of Rome, and suc¬ 
cessor of Numa. An interregnum followed the death 
of the last-mentioned monarch. At length Tullus 
Hostilius, a man of Latin extraction, was chosen by 
the curia; and his election having been sanctioned by 
the auspices, he, like his predecessor, submitted to 
the comitia curiata the laws which conferred upon 
him full regal power. The new king was more desi¬ 
rous of military renown than of the less dazzling fame 
which may be gained by cultivating the arts of peace. 
An opportunity was soon offered for indulging his war¬ 
like disposition. Plundering incursions had been made 
into each other’s territories by the borderers of the 
two states of Rome and Alba. Both nations sent 
ambassadors at the same time to demand redress. 
The Roman ambassadors had private orders from Tul¬ 
lus to be peremptory in their demands, and to limit 
their stay within the stated period . of thirty days. 
They did so, and, receiving no immediate satisfaction, 
returned to Rome. In the mean time, Tullus amused 
the Alban embassy by shows and banquets, till, when 
they opened their commission, he had it in his power 
to answer that they had already in vain sought redress 
from Alba, and that now they must prepare for the 
events of a war, the blame of originating which was 
chargeable upon them. Under the command of Clu- 
ilius, the Albans sent a powerful army against Rome, 
and encamped about five miles from the city. There 
Cluilius died, and the Albans elected Mettius Fufetius 
in his stead. Tullus Hostilius, at the head of the Ro¬ 
mans, now drew near the Albans. But, when the two 
armies were ready for a general engagement, Mettius, 
the Alban general, proposed to save the effusion of 
blood by committing the fortune of the war to the 
valour of certain champions selected from either side. 
To this proposition Tullus agreed ; and the affair of 
the Horatii and Curiatii took place. (Vid. Horatius 
II.) After the termination of this memorable combat, 
notwithstanding the agreement which had been enter 
ed into between the Romans and Albans, the latter 
were unwilling to forfeit their national independence 
without an additional struggle. This, however, they 
were desirous to avoid provoking single-handed. They 
accordingly encouraged the people of Fidenaj to re¬ 
volt, by giving them secret promises of assistance. 
Tullus Hostilius immediately levied a Roman army, 
and summoned the Albans to his aid. A battle en¬ 
sued, in which Mettius Fufetius endeavoured to act a 
treacherous part, but wanted courage and decision to 
fulfil his own perfidious pledge, and, on the morrow, 
was put to a cruel death by the Roman king. ( Vid. 
Mettius Fufetius.) After the punishment of Mettius, 
it was decreed that Alba should be razed to the ground, 
and the whole Alban people removed to Rome, to pre¬ 
vent the possibility of future strife. Not only the 
walls of Alba, but every human habitation, was totally 
demolished, and the temples of the gods alone left 
standing in solitary majesty amid the ruins. But, 
though Tullus had thus put an end to the separate 
existence of Alba, he did not reduce its inhabitants to 
slavery. He assigned them habitations on the Caslian 
Hill, which had formerly, so said the legend, been 
possessed by the followers of Cseles Vibenna. Soon 
after these events, Tullus made war upon the Sabines, 
and in a bloody, and for some time doubtful encoun 
ter, again obtained the victory. Another war arose 
with the confederate towns of Latium, who began to 
dread the growing power of Rome after the destruc¬ 
tion of Alba. The Latin w r ar terminated without any 
decided reverses sustained by either party ; and an 





TUR 


T Y A 


alliance was formed between the Romans and the Lat¬ 
ins. Tullus had now leisure to direct his attention to 
the arts of peace, in which, however, he did not equal¬ 
ly excel. The only public works ascribed to him 
were the enclosing of a space for the Comitia, or as¬ 
sembly of the people, and the building of a Curia, or 
senate-house. Towards the end of his reign his mind 
was disturbed by prodigies, indicating the wrath of 
the gods for religion neglected and temples left des¬ 
olate. A shower ot stones fell from heaven on the 
Alban Mount, and the awful accents of a supernatu¬ 
ral voice were heard to issue from the consecrated 
summit of the hill. A plague swept ^way numbers 
of the Roman people. The king himself sickened ; 
and, from having been neglectful of religion, became 
the slave of superstitious terrors. In vain did he sup¬ 
plicate the gods. He had disregarded them in the 
days of his prosperity, and in his adversity no deity 
regarded his prayers or sent relief. In his despair he 
presumed to use the divinations of Numa, by the rites 
of Jupiter Elicius (vid. Elicius); but the only answer 
returned was the lightning of the offended gods, by 
which Tullus himself and his whole household were 
smitten and consumed. Another account, however, 
ascribed his death to an act of treachery and assassi¬ 
nation on the part of Ancus Marcius, who could not 
brook that he, a descendant of Numa, should be kept 
from the throne by a man of private origin. Such is 
the legend of Tullus Hostilius. This monarch is said 
to have reigned two-and-thirty years. ( Liv ., 1, 22, 
seqq. — Dion. Hal., 3, 1, seqq. — Hetherington's His¬ 
tory of Rome, p. 13, seqq.) —As the reigns of Romu¬ 
lus and Numa represent the establishment of two of 
the tribes or constituent elements of the Roman peo¬ 
ple,, so the reign of Tullus Hostilius seems to compre¬ 
hend the development of the third tribe, or Luceres. 
To him, as to Romulus and Numa, is ascribed a di¬ 
vision of lands, by which portions were assigned to 
the needy citizens, who, as yet, possessed no property 
in the soil. It has been conjectured that the Luceres 
had hitherto held their lands, not in absolute property, 
and not as common proprietors of the public domain, 
but as vassals or tenants of the state, which would 
be represented in the person of the king. That the 
distribution of Tullus Hostilius effected the third tribe 
is rendered probable by its being connected with the 
assignment of ground for building on the Crelian 
Mount, and the enclosure of that part of the city with¬ 
in one line of fortification with the older town, if 
there is any weight in the arguments that are adduced 
to show that the town on the Caelian was the settle¬ 
ment of the Luceres. From the circumstance that 
Hostilius himself dwelt there, and that he derived his 
oricun from the Latin town Medullia (Dion. Hal., 3, 
l), C it may be conjectured that he himself was consid¬ 
ered to belong to the Luceres, as Romulus to the 
Ramnes, and Numa to the Titienses. ( Malden's 
History of Rome, p. 127, seq.) 

Tunes (Tvvtjc, V™c), a city of Africa, southwest of 
and near to Carthage, being, according to Polybius 
(14, 10), only 120 stadia from the latter place. The 
Peutinger table, however, gives the distance more 
correctly at ten riffles. It first rose into consequence 
after the fall of Carthage. It is now Tunis. Diodo¬ 
rus Siculus calls it “ White Tunis,” perhaps from the 
chalky cliffs that lie around it when viewed from the 
*ea. ( Mannert, Geogr., vol. 10, pt. 2, p. 262.) 

Tungri, a German tribe, probably the same with 
the Aduatici of Cassar, and the first that crossed the 
Rhine. They became subsequently a powerful peo¬ 
ple in Germania Inferior. ( Tac., Germ., 2. Amm. 
Marc., 15, 11.) 0 . . 

Turdetani, a people of Bastica in Spam, in the 
southeastern part. They extended along the coast, 
from the Anas to the Bastuli Pceni, and their territory 
was famed for its beauty and fertility, and by some of 


the ancient writers was considered the most favoured 
spot on the whole earth. Here, too, Strabo places the 
Elysian fields of Homer. This district, besides being 
very productive, was enabled to carry on an extensive 
and lucrative commerce with the nations of the inte 
rior, by means of the Bastis, which traversed it 
(Polyb., 34, 9.— Liv., 21, 6.— Id., 24, 42.) 

Turduli, a people of Baetica in Spain, situate to 
the north and northeast of the Turdetani. (Mela, 3, 

1. — Plin., 3, 1.— Id. ibid., 4, 20.) 

Turias, a river of Spain, in the territory of the Ede- 
tani, near Valentia; now the Guadalaviar. (Mela, 

2, 16.— Plin., 3, 3.) 

Turnus, king of the Rutuli, son of Daunus, king 
of Apulia, and Venilia, a nymph who was sister to 
Amata, the wife of Latinus. Lavinia, the daughter of 
Latinus, was betrothed to him, but the arrival of MCne- 
as deprived him of his intended bride, and in the war 
which took place between the Latins and the Trojans 
Turnus was slain by .Eneas. (Virg., JEn., 7, 66, 
seqq.) 

Turones, I. a people in the interior of Gallia Lug- 
dunensis, whose territory answers to the modern Tou- 
raine. (Amm. Marc., 15, 11. — Tac., Ann., 3, 41.) 
— II. A German tribe, settled in what is now the 
southern part of Hesse, according to Mannert. 

Turris, I. Hannibalis, a small place on the coast 
of Africa, below Thapsus. From this Hannibal took 
his departure for Asia, when he was banished by his 
factious and ungrateful countrymen from Carthage. 
It is now J^Ialuha. —II. Stratonis, the previous name 
of Caesarea, on the coast of Palestine. (Vid. Caes¬ 
area.) 

Tusci, the inhabitants of Etruria. ( Vid. Hetruria.) 

Tusculanum, the name of Cicero’s villa near Tus 
culum, and where the scene of his Tusculan Disputa 
tions is laid. (Vid. Cicero, p. 347, col. 2.) 

Tusculum, a town of Latium, on the summit of 
the ridge of hills which forms the continuation of the 
Alban Mount, and above the modern town of Frascati. 
The numerous remains of the ancient place still bear 
the name of il Tosculo. According to Dionysius (10, 
20) and Josephus (Bell. Jud., 18, 8), it was distant 
about one hundred stadia from Rome, or twelve miles 
and a half. The foundation of Tusculum is ascribed 
to Telegonus, the son of Circe and Ulysses. (Ovid, 
Fast., 3, 91.— Id., 4, 91.— Propert., 2, 35.— Sil. Ital., 
7, 691.) It must have been one of the most consid¬ 
erable of the Latin cities in the time of the second 
Tarquin, since that prince is said to have sought the 
alliance of Octavius Manlius, chief of Tusculum, and 
to have given him his daughter in marriage. (Liv., 
1, 49.) By this measure Tarquin secured the co¬ 
operation of almost all the Latin cities in his subse¬ 
quent attempts to recover the throne he had lost.— 
In the second Punic war Tusculum successfully re¬ 
sisted the attack of Hannibal.—This place could boast 
of having given birth to M. Porcius Cato, several of 
the Fabii, &c. Its proximity to Rome, the beauty of 
its situation, as well as the salubrity of its climate 
made it a favourite summer residence with the wealthy 
Romans. Strabo, who has given us a very accurate 
description of its position, says that, on the side to¬ 
wards Rome, the hills of Tusculum were covered with 
plantations and palaces, the effect of which was most 
striking. (Scrub., 239.) Of these villas none can be 
more interesting to us than that of Cicero. ( Vid. 
Tusculanum.) Lucullus also had a celebrated villa 
and gardens at this place. Horace likewise alludes 
to a villa of Maecenas here. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, 
vol. 2, p. 47.) 

Tuscum Mare, a part of the Mediterranean, on the 
coast of Etruria, called also Tyrrhcnum Mare and 
Mare Inferum. 

Tyana, a city of Cappadocia, strongly fortified b> 
nature and art, lying on the main road to Cilicia and 

1365 



T Y N 


TYR 


fcyrta, and at the foot of Mount Taurus. Strabo says 
it was built on what was called the causeway of Semir- 
amis. ( Strabo , 537.) Cellarius is of opinion that 
the town called Dana by Xenophon, in the Anabasis 
(1, 2, 20), should be identified with Tyana ( Geogr. 
Antiq., vol. 2, p. 291), and this supposition has great 
probability to recommend it.—The Greeks, always led 
by a similarity of name to connect the origin of cities 
with their fables, pretended that it owed its foundation 
to Thoas, the king of the Tauric Chersonese, in his 
pursuit thither of Pylades and Orestes. ( Arrian, 
Peripl. Eux ., p. 6 ) From him it was called Thoana, 
and afterward Tuana. ( Steph. Byz., s. v. Tvava.) 
Tyana was the native city of the impostor Apollonius. 
At a later period it became the see of a Christian 
bishop, and the metropolis of Cappadocia Secunda. 
{Greg. Naz., Epist., 33.— Id., Oral., 20, p. 355.) 
This took place in the reign of Valens. Its capture 
by the Saracens is recorded by Cedrenus (p. 477). 
The modern Ketch-hissar, near the foot of the central 
chain of Taurus and the Cilician Pass, is thought to 
correspond to the ancient city. Captain Kinneir, in 
one of his journeys, found considerable ruins here. 

( Cramer's Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 128, seqq.) 

Tyanitis, a district in the southern part of Cappa¬ 
docia, near the range of Taurus. Its capital was 
Tyana, from which it derived its name. ( Vid. Tyana.) 

Tybris. Vid. Tiberis. 

Tyche, I. one of the Oceanides. (Hesiod, Th., 
360.)—II. A part of the town of Syracuse. It con¬ 
tained a temple of Fortune (Tu^?;), whence the name. 

(Cic , Verr., 4, 53.) 

Tydeus (two syllables), a son of CEneus, king of 
Calydon. He fled from his country after the accidental 
murder of one of his friends, and found a safe asylum in 
the court of Adrastus, king of Argos, whose daugh¬ 
ter, De'iphyle, he married. When Adrastus wished to 
place his son-in-law Polynices on the throne of Thebes, 
Tydeus undertook to announce the war to Eteocles, 
who usurped the crown. The reception he met with 
rovoked his resentment; he challenged Eteocles and 
is principal chieftains, and worsted them in conflict. 
On leaving Thebes and entering upon his way home, 
he fell into an ambuscade of fifty of the foe, purposely 
planted to destroy him, and he slew all but one, who 
was permitted to return to Thebes, to bear the tidings 
of the fate of his companions. He was one of the 
seven chiefs of the army of Adrastus, and during the 
Theban war he signalized his valour in a marked de¬ 
gree, and made great slaughter of the foe, till he was 
at last mortally wounded by Melanippus. As he lay 
expiring, Minerva hastened to him with a medicine 
which she had obtained from Jupiter, and which would 
make him immortal ( Bacchyl., ap. Schol. ad Aris- 
toph., Av., 1536); but Amphiaraus, who hated him as 
a chief cause of the war, perceiving what the goddess 
was about, cut off the head of Melanippus, whom Ty¬ 
deus, though wounded, had slain, and brought it to 
him. The savage warrior opened it and devoured the 
brain, and Minerva, in disgust, withheld her aid. His 
remains were interred at Arg’g, where a monument, 
said to be his, was still seen in the age of Pausanias. 
{Horn., II, 4, 365, seqq. — Apoliod., 1, 8, 3.— JEsch., 
Sept. C. Theb., 372, seqq., ed. Scholef. — Pausan., 
9, 18.) 

Tydides, a patronymic of Diomedes, as son of Ty¬ 
deus. {Virg., JEn., 1, 101. -*-Horat., Od., 1, 15, 20.) 

Tylos, an island in the Sinus Persicus, on the 
Arabian coast, the pearl fishery on whose coasts has 
rendered it famous in antiquity ; and the same circum¬ 
stance still contributes to its renown under the name 
of Bahraim, which in Arabic signifies two seas. (Plot. 
— Theophrast., Hist. Plant., 4, 9.— Id. ibid., 5, 6.) 

Tyndarid^, a patronymic of the children of Tyn- 
darus, as Castor, Pollux, Helen, &c. 

Tyndaris, I. a patronymic of Helen, as daughter 
1366 


ofTyndarus. ( Virg., JEn,, 2, 569.)—II. A town ol 
Sicily, on the northern coast, southwest of Messana. 
It was founded by the elder Dionysius, and became in 
time an important city. A part of the ancient site has 
been inundated by the sea. ( Liv ., 36, 2.) 

Tyndarus, a son of CEbalus and Gorgophone. He 
was king of Lacedaemon, and married the celebrated 
Leda, who bore him Timandra, Philonoe, &c., and 
who also became mother of Pollux and Helen by Ju¬ 
piter. ( Vid. Leda, Castor, Pollux, Clytemnestra, &c.) 

Typhoeus (three syllables), a monstrous giant, who 
warred against the gods. {Vid. Typhon.) 

Typhon or Typhaon, a monstrous giant, whom 
Earth, enraged at the destruction of her previous giant- 
progeny, brought forth to contend with the gods. The 
stature of this being reached the sky ; fire flashed from 
his eyes ; he hurled glowing rocks, with loud cries 
and hissing, against heaven, and flame and storm rush¬ 
ed from his mouth. The gods, in dismay, fled to 
Egypt, and concealed themselves under the form of 
different animals. Jupiter at last, after a severe con¬ 
flict, overcame him, and placed him beneath JEtna, or, 
as others said, in the Palus Serbonis, or “ Serbonian 
bog.” {Pind., Pyth., 1, 29, seq. — Id., fragm. Eyinik., 
5.— JEsch , Prom. V., 351, seqq. — Apoll. Rhod., 2, 
1215.)—Typhon is the same apparently with Typhoeus, 
though Hesiod makes a difference between them. Their 
names come from rvcpo), “ to smoke,'" and they are evi¬ 
dently personifications ofstorms and volcanic eruptions. 
Typhon is made the sire of the Chimaera, Echidna, and 
other monsters. The Greeks gave his name to the 
Egyptian demon Baby, the opponent of Osiris.—The 
flight of the gods into Egypt is a bungling attempt at 
connecting the Greek mythology with the animal wor¬ 
ship of that country. This change of form on theii 
part was related by Pindar. ( Porph., de Abst., 3, [a 
251.— Keightley's Mythology, p. 263.) 

Tyrannion, a grammarian of Pontus, intimate 
with Cicero. His original name was Theophrastus, 
and he received that of Tyrannion from his austerity to 
his pupils. He was taken by Lucullus, and restored 
to his liberty by Mursena. Tyrannion opened a school 
at Rome, and taught with considerable success. He 
had access to the library of Apellicon of Teos when 
brought to Rome, and from him copies of Aristotle’s 
works were obtained by Andronicus of Rhodes. ( Vid. 
Apellicon.) 

Tyras. Vid. Danastus. 

Tyros, a city of Phoenicia. ( Vid. Tyrus.) 

Tyrrhene Vid. Etruria. 

Tyrrhenum Mare, that part of the Mediterranean 
which lies on the coast of Etruria. It is also called 
Tnfervm, as washing the lower shore of the peninsula. 
{Vid. Italia.) 

Tyrt^eus, a celebrated poet of antiquity. His age 
is determined by the second Messenian war, in which 
he bore a part. If, with Pausanias, this war is placed 
between 685 and 668 B.C., Tyrtseus would fall at the 
same time as, or even earlier than, the circumstances 
of the Cimmerian invasion mentioned by Callinus ; 
and we should then expect to find that Tyrtseus, and 
not Callinus, was considered by the ancients as the 
originator of the elegy. As, however, the reverse is 
the fact, this reason may be added to others for think¬ 
ing that the second Messenian war did not take place 
till after 660 B.C., which must be considered as the 
period at which Callinus flourished. We certainly do 
not give implicit credit to the story of later writers, 
that Tyrtaeus was a lame schoolmaster at Athens, sent 
out of insolence by the Athenians to the Spartans, 
who at the command of an oracle had applied to them 
for a leader in the Messenian war. So much of this 
account, however, may be received as true, that Tyr¬ 
tseus came from Attica to the Lacedaemonians; the 
place of his abode being, according to a precise state¬ 
ment, Aphidnse, an Athenian town, which is placed b) 



T YR 


TYRUS. 


the legend? about the Dioscuri in very early connexion 
with Lae_.ua. In all probability, his lameness was 
only a satirical allusion to his use of the elegiac meas¬ 
ure, or alternating hexameter and pentameter, the lat¬ 
ter being shorter by a foot than the former.—Tyrtasus 
came to the Lacedaemonians at a time when they were 
not only brought into great straits from without by 
the boldness of Aristomenes and the desperate cour¬ 
age of the Messenians, but when the state was also 
rent with internal discord. In this condition of the 
Spartan commonwealth Tyrtseus composed the most 
celebrated of his elegies, which, from its subject, 
was called Etcnomia, that is, “ Justice” or “ Good 
Government” (also Politem, or “ the Constitution”). 
But the Eunomia was neither the only nor yet the first 
elegy in which Tyrtaaus stimulated the Lacedaemoni¬ 
ans to a bold defence against the Messenians. Ex¬ 
hortations to bravery was the theme which this poet 
took for many elegies, and wrote on it with unceasing 
spirit and ever new invention. Never was the duty 
and the honour of bravery impressed on the youth of 
a nation with so much beauty and force of language, 
by such natural and touching motives. That these 
poems breathed a truly Spartan spirit, and that the 
Spartans knew how to value them, is proved by the 
constant use made of them in the military expeditions. 
When the Spartans were on a campaign, it was their 
custom, after the evening meal, when the paaan had 
been sung in honour of the gods, to recite these ele¬ 
gies. On these occasions the whole mass did not join 
in the chant, but individuals vied with each other in 
repeating the verses in a manner worthy of their sub¬ 
ject. The successful competitor then received from 
the polemarch or commander a larger portion of meat 
than the others, a distinction suitable to the simple 
taste of the Spartans. This kind of recitation was so 
well adapted to the elegy, that it is highly probable that 
Tyrtseus himself first published his elegies in this man¬ 
ner. The elegies of Tyrtseus, however, were never 
sung on the march of the army, and in the battle itself; 
for these occasions a strain of another kind was com¬ 
posed by the same poet, namely, the anapaestic march¬ 
es. ( Muller, Hist. Gr. Lit., p. 110, seqq.) —We have 
several fragments remaining of the elegies of Tyrtaeus. 
They are written in the Ionic dialect, though address¬ 
ed to Dorians, and are full of enthusiastic and patriotic 
feeling. The anapaestic marches, on the other hand 
(fjLilri Kolsfiiarqpia), were written in Doric. Of these 
only a single fragment has come down to us.—The 
best editions of Tyrtseus are that of Klotz, Brem<z , 
1764, 8vo, and that contained in Gaisford’s Poetcc. Mi- 
nores Gr&ci , vol. 1, p. 429, seqq.) 

Tvrus or Tyros, a very ancient city of Phoenicia, 
built by the Sidonians. “ The strong city of Tzor” is 
mentioned in the book of Joshua(19, 29), and its situa¬ 
tion is specified as being between “ great Zidon’ and 
Achzib. Yet learned men have contended that in 
Joshua’s time Tyre was not built. Homer, it has been 
remarked, never speaks of Tyre, but only of Sidon ; 
and Josephus states that Tyre was built not above 240 
years before the temple of Solomon, which would be 
A M. 2760, two hundred years after Joshua. That 
there was such a city as Tyre, however, in the days 
of Homer, is quite certain, seeing that, in the reign of 
Salomon, there was a king of Tyre; and we appre¬ 
hend that the Scripture text will be held a sufficient 
proof of its having had an existence before the land of 
Canaan was conquered by the Israelites. Nor is Jo¬ 
sephus’s chronology so accurate as to render his au¬ 
thority on such a point very important. There was 
Insular Tyre, and Tyrus on the Continent, or Palce- 
Tyrus; and it is supposed by some learned writers 
that the island was not inhabited till after the invasion 
of Nebuchadnezzar. But this last supposition is not 
merely at variance with the doubtful authority of Jose¬ 
phus, but is scarcely reconcilable with the language of 


the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel, who both jcem to speaK 
of 1'yre as an isle. ( Isaiah , 23, 2, 6.— Ezck., 26, 17.— 
Id., 27, 3.— Id., 28, 2.) Nor is it probable that the ad¬ 
vantageous position of the isle would be altogether neg¬ 
lected by a maritime people. The coast would, in¬ 
deed, first be occupied, and the fortified city mention¬ 
ed in the book of Joshua was in all probability on the 
Continent; but, as the commercial importance and 
wealth of the port increased, the island would naturally 
be inhabited, and it must have been considered as the 
place of the greatest security. Volney supposes that 
the Tyrians retired to their isle when compelled to 
abandon the ancient city to Nebuchadnezzar, and that, 
till that time, the dearth of water had prevented its be¬ 
ing much built upon. Certain it is, that when, at 
length, Nebuchadnezzar took the city, he found it so 
impoverished as to afford him no compensation for his 
labour. ( Ezek ., 29, 18, seqq.) The chief edifices 
were at all events on the mainland, and to these the 
denunciations of total ruin strictly apply. Palse-Tyrus 
never rose from its overthrow by the Chaldean con¬ 
queror, and the Macedonian completed its destruc¬ 
tion ; at the same time, the wealth and commerce of 
Insular Tyre were for the time destroyed, though it 
afterward recovered from the effects of its invasion.— 
Ancient Tyre, then, probably consisted of the fortified 
city, which commanded a considerable territory on the 
coast, and of the port which was “strong in the sea.” 
On that side it had little to fear from invaders, as the 
Tyrians were lords of the sea; and, accordingly, it 
does not appear that its Chaldean conqueror ventured 
upon a maritime assault. Josephus, indeed, states 
that Salmaneser, king of Assyria, made war against 
the Tyrians with a fleet of sixty ships, manned by 800 
rowers. The Tyrians had but twelve ships, yet they 
obtained the victory, dispersing the Assyrian fleet, and 
taking 500 prisoners. Salmaneser then returned to 
Nineveh, leaving his land-forces before Tyre, where 
they remained for five years, but were unable to take 
the city. (Joseph., Ant., 9, 14.) This expedition is 
supposed to have taken place in the reign of Hezekiah, 
king of Judah, about A.M. 3287, or 717 B.C. It must 
have been about this period, or a few years earlier, that 
Isaiah delivered his oracle against Tyre, in which he 
specifically declared that it should be destroyed, not 
by the power which then threatened it, but by the Chal¬ 
deans, a people “formerly of no account.” ( Isaiah, 
23, 13.) The more detailed predictions of the prophet 
Ezekiel were delivered a hundred and twenty years 
after, B.C. 588, almost immediately before the Chal¬ 
dean invasion. The army of Nebuchadnezzar is said 
to have lain before Tyre thirteen years, and it was not 
taken till the fifteenth year after the captivity, B.C. 
573, more than seventeen hundred years, according 
to Josephus, after its foundation. Its destruction, 
then, must have been entire; all the inhabitants were 
put to the sword or led into captivity, the walls were 
razed to the ground, and it was made “ a terror” and 
a desolation. It is remarkable, that one reason as¬ 
signed by the prophet Ezekiel for the punishment of 
this proud city is its exultation at the destruction of 
Jerusalem: “I shall be replenished, now she is laid 
waste” (26, 2). This clearly indicates that its over¬ 
throw was posterior to that event; and if we take the 
seventy years during which it was predicted by Isaiah 
(23, 15) that Tyre should be forgotten, to denote a 
definite term (which seems the most natural sense), 
we rnay conclude that it was not rebuilt till the same 
number of years after the return of the Jews from 
Babylon. Old Tyre, the continental city, remained, 
however, in ruins up to the period of the Macedonian 
invasion. Insular Tyre had then risen to be a city of 
very considerable wealth and political importance; 
and by sea her fleets were triumphant. According to 
Pliny (9, 36), it was 19 miles in circumference, in¬ 
cluding Old Tyre, but without it about four. It was 

136~ 



VAC 


VAL 


the rubbish of Old Tyre, thirty furlongs off, that sup¬ 
plied materials for the gigantic mole constructed by 
Alexander, of 200 feet in breadth, extending all the 
way from the continent to the island, a distance of three 
quarters of a mile. The sea that formerly separated 
them was shallow near the shore, but towards the isl¬ 
and it is said to have been three fathoms in depth. 
The causeway has probably been enlarged by the sand 
thrown up by the sea, which now covers the surface 
of the isthmus. Tyre was taken by the Macedonian 
conqueror after a siege of eight months, B.C. 332, 
two hundred and forty-one years after its destruction 
by Nebuchadnezzar, and, consequently, about one hun¬ 
dred and seventy after it had been rebuilt. Though 
now subjugated, it was not, however, totally destroyed, 
since, only thirty years after, it was an object of con¬ 
tention to Alexander’s successors. The fleet of An- 
tigonus invested and blockaded it for thirteen months, 
at the expiration of which it was compelled to surren¬ 
der, and received a garrison of his troops for its de¬ 
fence. About three years after it was invested by 
Pompey in person, and, owing to a mutiny in the garri¬ 
son, fell into his hands. Its history is, after this period, 
identified with that of Syria. In the apostolic age it 
seems to have regained some measure of its ancient 
character as a trading town ; and St. Paul, in touching 
here on one occasion, in his way back from Macedonia, 
found a number of Christian'believers, with whom he 
spent a week ; so that the gospel must early have been 
preached to the Tyrians. (Acte, 21, 3.) Josephus, 
in speaking of the city of Zabulon as of admirable 
beauty, says that its houses were built like those in 
Tyre, and Sidon, and Berytus. Strabo also speaks of 
the loftiness and beauty of the buildings. In ecclesi¬ 
astical history it is distinguished as the first archbishop¬ 
ric under the patriarchate of Jerusalem. It shared the 
fate of the country in the Saracen invasion in the be¬ 
ginning of the seventh,century. It was reconquered 
by the crusaders in the twelfth, and formed a royal 
domain of the kingdom of Jerusalem, as well as an 
archiepiscopal see. William of Tyre, the well-known 
historian, an Englishman, was the first archbishop. 
In 1289 it was retaken by the Saracens, the Christians 
being permitted to remove with their effects. When 
the sultan Selim divided Syria into pachalics, Tyre, 
which had probably gone to decay with the depression 
af commerce, was merged in the territory of Sidon. 
In 1766 it was taken possession of by the Motoualies, 
who repaired the port, and enclosed it, on the land 
6ide, with a wall twenty feet high. The wall was 
standing, but the repairs had gone to ruin, at the time 
of Yolney’s visit (1784). He noticed, however, the 
choir of the ancient church mentioned by Maundrell, 
together with some columns of red granite, of a spe¬ 
cies unknown in Syria, which Djezzar Pacha wanted 
to remove to Acre, but could find no engineers able to 
accomplish it. It was at that time a miserable vil¬ 
lage : its exports consisted of a few sacks of corn and of 
cotton ; and the only merchant of which it could boast 
was a solitary Greek, in the service ot the French fac¬ 
tory at Sidon, who could hardly gain a livelihood. It 
is only within the past half" century that it has 
once more begun to lift up its head from the dust. 

(Modern Traveller , pt. 3, p. 46, seqq.) 

Tysdrus, a city of Africa Propria, not far from the 
coast, below Turris Hannibalis. It is supposed to 
coincide as to position with the modern el-Jem. (Ptol. 
— Auct., Hist. Bell. Afr , c. 36, 76.— Plin., 5, 4.) 

Y. 

Vacca. Vid. Vaga. 

Vaccj3i, a people at the north'of Spain, occupying, 
according to Mannert, what is now the greater part of 
Valladolid, Leon, Palencia, and the province of Toro. 

( Liv ., 21, 5.— Id., 35, 7.) 

1368 


Vacuna, a goddess worshipped principally by the 
Sabines, but also by the Latins. According to some 
authorities she was identical with Victoria, and the 
Lake Cutiliaj was sacred to her. ( Arnob ., 3, p. 112, 
cd. Stewech. — Spangenberg, De Vet. Lat. Pel l)o~ 
mcst., p. 47.) Others made her analogous to Diana, 
Ceres, or Minerva. This last was the opinion of 
Varro. ( Schol. ad Horat., Epist., 1, 10, 49.) Her 
name apparently comes from vaco, the reason of 
which etymology is given as follows by Varro : “ quod 
ea maxime hi gaudent qui sapientice vacant ..” ( Varro, 
up. Schol., 1. c.) 

Vadimonis Lacus, a lake of Etruria, whose water? 
were sulphureous. It formerly existed close to Bas- 
sano, but is now filled up with peat and rushes. (Sen¬ 
eca, Nat. Hist. Qucest., 3, 25. — Phn., 2, 95.) This 
lake is celebrated in the history of Rome for having 
witnessed the total defeat of the Etruscans by the Ro¬ 
mans, A.U.C. 444, a defeat so decisive that they never 
could recover from its effects. (Livy, 9, 39.) An¬ 
other battle was again fought here by the Etruscans, 
in conjunction with the Gauls, against the Romans, 
with the same ill success. (Polyb., 2, 20.— Flor., 1, 
12 .) 

Vaga, sometimes, but improperly, written Vacca, a 
town of Africa, west of Carthage, on the river Rubri- 
catus, and celebrated among the African and Numid- 
ian cities for its extensive traffic. D’Anville and 
Barbie du Bocage recognise traces of the ancient name 
in the modern Vegja or Beja, in the district of Tunis 
(Sail., Jug., 47.— Sil. Ital., 3, 259.) 

Vagenj, or, more correctly, Vagienni, a people of 
Liguria, in the interior of the country, and near the 
angle formed by the separation of the Apennines 
and Alps. Their name, as D’Anville observes, is still 
apparent in that of Viozena. Their capital was Au¬ 
gusta Vagiennorum, now Vico, according to D’An¬ 
ville, but more correctly Bene, according to Durandi. 
(Sil. Ital., 8, 607.— Plin., 3, 5. — Cramer's Ancient 
Italy, vol. 1, p. 27.) 

Vahalis, the western arm of the Rhine, now the 
Waal. (Cess., 4, 10.— Tac , Ann., 2, 6.) 

Valens, Flavius, an emperor of the East. His 
biography will be given in conjunction with that of his 
brother Valentinian I. ( Vid. Valentinianus I.) 

Valentia, I. a secret and hallowed name of Rome. 
(Plin., 3, 5.— Id. ibid., 28, 2. — Scrv. ad 2En., 1, 
280.)—II. A city of the Segovellauni or Segalauni, in 
Gallia Narbonensis, now Valence. (Plin., 3, 4.) It 
lay on the eastern side of the Rhodanus, above Alba 
Augusta.—III. A city of Mauritania Tingitana, north 
of Volubile Oppidum, and south of Lixum, situate on 
the river Subur. It was also called Banasa, and is 
now Mamora. (Plin., 5, 1.) — IV. A province of 
Britain, in what is now Scotland, conquered in the 
time of Valentinian from the Piets and Scots, and 
formed by Theodosius into a province. (Amm. Marc., 
28, 3.)—V. A city of the Edetani or Contestani, in 
Hispania Tarraconensis, near the mouth of the Tusia. 

It was taken and sacked by Pompey, but was after¬ 
ward colonized and became an important place. It is 
now Valentia .—VI. or Vibo Valentia. (Vid. Hippo- 
nium.) 

Valentinianus, I. the first of the name, a man of 
moderate rank, and born at Cibalae in Hungary, was 
made emperor by the army, being, at the time of Jovi¬ 
an’s death, the commander of the body-guard. He as¬ 
sociated with himself Valens, his brother, and, aftei 
some time, Gratian, his son, who, at eight years old 
was presented to the army wearing a purple robe* 
Valens fixing his court at Constantinople, Valentiniar 
himself repaired to Milan. Soon after the accession 
of these emperors, both the West and East were dis 
turbed nearly at the same time ; the former by ar 
irruption of the Alemanni into Gaul, the latter by the 
insurrection of Procopius, who, pretending a promise 



"V ALENTINIANUS. 


VALENTINIANUS. 


of Julian that he would leave him heir of the empire, 
was saluted Augustus by the multitude at Constanti¬ 
nople ; and, having been joined by the legions sent 
against him by Valens, reduced Thrace, Bithynia, and 
the Hellespont. Deserted by his followers in Phrygia, 
he fled into the mountains, was taken alive, brought 
bound before Valens, and, being sentenced to be tied 
by the legs to two trees that were forcibly bent to the 
ground, was torn asunder by their recoil (A.D. 366). 
The Alemanni defeated the Roman armies in Gaul, 
killing the commanders, the counts Charietto and Se- 
verian ; but were, in their turn, routed by Jovinus, the 
master of the horse, with the loss of six thousand slain 
and four thousand wounded. Valens marched against 
the Goths, who had assisted Procopius, and in three 
years reduced them to terms of peace. He also re¬ 
pressed the predatory incursions of the Isaurians, a 
sort of mountain robbers, and exacted hostages. The 
Piets and Scots, who had ravaged Britain, were de¬ 
feated by Count Theodosius, and their spoil retaken. 
Valentinian crossed the Rhine, gained a bloody vic¬ 
tory over the Alemanni, and fortified the Gallic fron¬ 
tier with camps and castles. The Saxons, who had 
burst into Gaul, were subdued by treachery. After 
their proposition of retiring from the country had been 
acceded to, they were set upon, while passing through 
a valley, by troops planted in ambuscade, and cut to 
pieces. A similar act of perfidy was committed against 
the Quadi, who had been irritated by the placing of an 
intrenched camp on their soil. Their king, Gabinius, 
who was invited by the Roman general Maximin to a 
banquet, was waylaid on his retiring, and murdered. 
The result was a general insurrection of the Quadi, 
who overran both Pannonias, and cut to pieces two 
entire legions. Valentinian crossing the Danube, and 
wasting the country of the Quadi with fire and sword, 
the latter sent ambassadors to sue for peace. Valen¬ 
tinian, preparing to answer their address, in a parox¬ 
ysm of rage burst a vessel, and expired of the effusion 
of blood (A.D. 375). The choleric and implacable 
temper of Valentinian, urging him frequently to acts 
of the most atrocious injustice, is singularly irrecon¬ 
cilable with his religious moderation. It is said that 
he was about to issue an order for the magistrates of 
three towns to be put to death, because one of the 
judges had directed the execution of a sentence legally- 
passed on a Hungarian, and only desisted from his 
purpose on the expostulation of his quaestor Euprax- 
ius, who reminded the “most pious of princes” that 
guiltless persons, if slain, would by Christians be wor¬ 
shipped as martyrs. It is also related, that, on a cer¬ 
tain count complaining to him of a civil action, he sent 
to execution not only the plaintiff, but the very clerks 
of the court who served the notice ; and that the 
Christians of Milan gave the place of their interment 
the name of the “ Tomb of the Innocents.” That he 
refused to admit the challenges of judges by defend¬ 
ants in a cause, when preferred on the ground of pri¬ 
vate enmity, and that he condemned insolvent debtors 
to death, are scarcely credible charges. Not destitute 
of ingenuity, he invented some new weapons, and had 
a turn for painting and modelling. Report describes 
him as tall and muscular, with a florid complexion, 
hair of a fiery colour, and gray eves, which had a pe¬ 
culiarly fierce expression from his always looking 
askance. The body of Valentinian was conveyed to 
Constantinople. In the East, another violation of that 
hospitality which among barbarians is held sacred, took 
place in the person of Para, king of Armenia. Invi¬ 
ted by Valens to Tarsus, and detained there specious¬ 
ly as a guest, he escaped on horseback by night to his 
own kingdom, but was then inveigled to an entertain¬ 
ment by Duke Trajan, and, in the midst of wine and 
music, stabbed by a hired barbarian as he reclined on 
the supper-couch. * Sapor, who had in vain endeavour¬ 
ed to bring Valens into his terms respecting Armenia, 

« L 


over which he desired to place a king of his own elec¬ 
tion, pressed forward with his army, but was repulsed 
by Trajan and Vadomair, the allied king of the Ale- 
manni. In the mean time, a plot, having for its object 
to place Theodorus, a secretary and an accomplished 
character, on the throne, was betrayed to Valens > and 
the conspirators, together with Theodorus, consigned 
to the executioner. The plot, it is said, originated in 
an oracle, divulged in Asia, which predicted that one 
whose name began with Theo should be emperor, and 
this was afterward interpreted to mean Theodosius. 
A new enemy had now rolled its congregated num¬ 
bers on the Roman world, with terror darkening in 
their van. The Goths were displaced by the Huns, 
and urged forward by the impulsion. They obtained 
permission of Valens to make a settlement in Thrace, 
and swore fealty to him, but afterward revolted under 
their general Fridigern. Surprised, as they were laden 
with spoil, by the Roman general Sebastian, they were 
routed, and the booty was retaken. Gratian, who had 
defeated another body of Goths by his general Friger- 
idus, near Strasburg, and permitted the remnant to 
settle on the Po, advanced to the assistance of Va¬ 
lens ; but the latter, eager to distinguish himself and 
jealous of his nephew, risked a battle with all the con¬ 
federated Goths, in which the Roman army, after a 
brave struggle, the band of lancers, in particular, stand¬ 
ing, firm to the last around their emperor, was put to 
total rout, and the field heaped with its dead. Valen3 
taking refuge in a country-house with only a few .fol¬ 
lowers, who resisted from the roof the attempt of the 
Goths to break the door, the latter set fire to the build¬ 
ing, and he perished with the rest in the flames (A.D. 
378). Valens was of a middle height, with legs rather 
bowed, somewhat corpulent, and of a high-coloured 
complexion. One of his eyes was obstructed by a 
cataract, but it was not discernible at a little distance. 
Ignorant of art and literature, he was but imperfectly 
versed in military tactics. With a sluggish and pro¬ 
crastinating habit of mind he united a dogmatical im¬ 
patience of temper, and in the courts of law, without 
caring for the merits of the case, was offended by any 
decision which counteracted his own wishes. Though 
bitter against those who withstood his will or differed 
from him in sentiment, he was not incapable of friend¬ 
ship.—II. Valentinian II. was proclaimed Augustus 
at four years old, as the colleague of Gratian, and re¬ 
sided with his mother, the Empress Justina, at the 
court of Milan. Maximus, having established himself 
in Britain and Gaul, drove Valentinian out of Italy. 
The youth stood as a suppliant before the throne of 
Constantinople with the empress-mother and his sis¬ 
ter Galla. The hand of the latter became a pledge of 
the hospitality and ain of the enamoured Theodosius. 
Valentinian was thus restored, through the aid of The¬ 
odosius, to the throne of the Western empire; a throne 
which his weak character did not enable him to fill and 
defend. The new reign of this young prince was not 
of long duration. He removed the seat of the court 
to Vienna (now Vienne), on the Rhone, where he was 
assassinated, A.D. 392, by order of Arbogastes, gen 
eral of the Franks, whose authority had long predom 
inated over that of his master. This prince was a 
vouth of excellent qualities, temperate, studious, and 
affectionate.—III. Valentinian III. was the son of 
Constantins and Placidia, daughter of Theodosius the 
Great. He was only six years of age when he was 
proclaimed Emperor of the West, A.D. 423; but he 
was not actually recognised as such until 425, after 
the defeat of John the Notary, who had seized upon 
the empire. Placidia, who possessed at first all the 
authority, governed with much wisdom. Aetius, wor¬ 
thy, by his valour and military talents, of the fairest 
period of the Roman republic, preserved for the em¬ 
pire the territory of Gaul, continually invaded by new 
ei emies, and forced the Franks, the Goths, the Bur 

1369 



V A L 


VALERIUS. 


gundians, and the Alani to sue for peace. Count Bon¬ 
iface, however, was less fortunate in Africa, and could 
not prevent Genseric, king of the Vandals, from found¬ 
ing an empire there in 442. Valentinian was by this 
time of an age to govern for himself; but the only use 
he made of his power was to commit crimes and to 
disgrace himself by acts of debauchery. Aetius sub¬ 
sequently (A.D. 451) gained a complete victory over 
Attila, in the plains of Duro-Catalaunum (Chalons), 
when Valentinian, jealous of his glory, had him sent 
for, and, on a sudden, stabbed him to the heart. He 
did not, however, long survive this cowardly act. 
The following year, having violated the wife of Petro- 
nius Maximus, a man of consular rank, the outraged 
husband slew him (A.D. 455), in the thirty-sixth year 
of his age and thirty-first of his reign, and then ascend¬ 
ed his throne. (Hethenngton's History of Rome, p. 
250, seqq. — Elton's Hist. Roman Emperors, p. 217, 
seqq .) 

Valeria Lex, I. de Provocatione, by P. Valerius 
Publicola. ( Vid. Valerius I.) It granted to every 
one the liberty of appealing from the consuls to the 
people, and that no magistrate should be permitted to 
punish a Roman citizen who thus appealed. This law 
was afterward once and again renewed, and always 
by persons of the Valerian family. (Liv., 2, 8.— Dion. 
Hal., 5, 19.— Heinecc., Rom. Ant., p. 246, seqq., ed. 
Hauboid.) —II. Another, de Debitoribus, by L. Valeri¬ 
us Flaccus, consul A.U.C. 667. It enacted that 
debtors should be discharged on paying one fourth of 
their debts. (Veil. Paterc., 2, 23.)—III. Another, 
by M. Valerius Corvinus, A.U.C. 453, which con¬ 
firmed the first Valerian law enacted by Publicola.— 
IV. Another, called also Horatia, by L. Valerius and 
M. Horatius, the consuls, A.U.C. 304. It revived 
the first Valerian law, which under the triumvirate had 
lost its force.—V. Another, de Magislratibus, by P. 
Valerius Publicola, A.U.C. 243. It created two 
qiuestors to take care of the public treasure, which 
was for the future to be kept in the temple of Saturn. 
(Pint., Vit. Publ.) 

Valerianus, Publius Licinius, a Roman, pro¬ 
claimed emperor by the army in Rhsetia, of which he 
was commander, xA.D. 254. He had been distinguish¬ 
ed by his virtues while in a private station, and great 
expectations were consequently formed of him when 
he ascended the throne. Having appointed his son 
Gallienus to be-his associate in the empire, he left him 
to defend it against the incursions of the Goths and 
Germans, and marched to the east to oppose the Per¬ 
sian king Sapor. Valerian was defeated and taken 
prisoner by the Persians, who treated him with great 
and contemptuous cruelty. His degenerate son Galli¬ 
enus made no effort to obtain his release, being appa¬ 
rently more satisfied to reign alone. For many years 
the Roman emperor bowed himself down, that his 
body might serve as a stepping-stone to the Persian 
king when he mounted on horseback: he was at last 
flayed alive, and his skin, stuffed in the form of a hu¬ 
man figure and dyed with scarlet, was preserved in a 
temple in Persia. (Treb. Poll., Valerian. Vit.) 

Valerius Publius, I. a celebrated Roman, sur- 
named Publicola (vid. Publicola), and who shared 
with Junius Brutus the glory of having driven out the 
Tarquins and of founding the Roman commonwealth, 
B.C. 569. Brutus having fallen on the field of bat¬ 
tle, and Collatinus, the colleague of the former, having 
been compelled eventually to retire from Rome in 
consequence of his relationship to the Tarquin family, 
Valerius was chosen consul along with Sp. Lucretius 
Tricipitinus. This last died during the earlier part of 
his year, and Valerius remained sole consul. As he 
appeared in no haste to have a new colleague, and 
was, at the same time, engaged in erecting a mansion 
on a lofty eminence, which, to the jealous vision of 
his countrymen, looked like a fortress against their 
1370 


liberties, he was suspected of a design to make himself 
absolute. On being informed, however, of the dissat 
isfaction felt on this subject by the people, he imme¬ 
diately caused the edifice to be razed to the ground, 
took from the fasces the axe, the emblem of capital 
punishment, caused the same fasces to be lowered be 
fore the people at their next general assembly, and al¬ 
ways afterward on similar occasions, and finally had 
the celebrated law of appeal (lex Provocationis) passed, 
which protected the rights and persons of Roman cit¬ 
izens against the tyranny of magistrates. ( Vid. Va¬ 
leria Lex I.) This conduct rendered Valerius the idol 
of the populace, and obtained for him the surname of 
Publicola, in allusion to his great popularity. ( Vid. 
Publicola.) He was also continued in the consulship 
for the two succeeding years, B.C. 508 and 507. He 
was chosen consul anew in 504. He appears to have 
died not long after. The disinterestedness of this il¬ 
lustrious citizen was so great, that, after having been 
four times consul, he died a poor man, and the expense 
of his funeral had to be borne by the state. The Ro¬ 
man matrons mourned for him a whole year. (Liv 
1, 58— Id., 2, 8.— Id., 3, 55. — Id., 10, 9 .—Dion 
Hal., 5, 19.— Flor., 1, 9.— Pint., Vit. Public. — Ho- 
rat.. Sat., 1, 6, 12.)—II. Corvus Corvinus, a tribune 
of the soldiers under Camillus. When the Roman 
army was challenged by one of the Senoncs, remark¬ 
able for his strength and stature, Valerius undertook 
to engage him, and obtained an easy victory by means 
of a crow or raven ( corvus ) that assisted him, and at¬ 
tacked the face of the Gaul, whence his surname of 
Corvus or Corvinus. Valerius triumphed over the 
Etrurians and the neighbouring states that made war 
against Rome, and was six times honoured with the 
consulship. He died in the 100th year of his age, ad¬ 
mired and regretted for many private and public vir¬ 
tues. (Val. Max., 8, 13 .—Liv , 7, 27.)—III. Anti- 
as, a Roman historian, who nourished about A.U.C. 
670, B.C. 84. Pliny often refers to him. Aulus 
Gellius quotes the 12th, 24th, 45th, and 75th books 
of his annals. (Aul. Gcll., 7, 9.— Id., 1,7, &c.)—IV. 
Messala. (Vid. Messala.)—V. Maximus, a Roman 
writer, born at Rome during the reign of Augustus, 
of a patrician family. According to his own account, 
he served in Asia under Sextus Pompey, who was 
consul the year that Augustus died (2, 6, 8). On his 
return to Rome he abstained entirely from public affairs, 
and lived until the time of the conspiracy of Sejanus, 
A.D. 31. We have no other particulars of his life. The 
anonymous but ancient author of his life makes him to 
have been descended from the Valerian family on the 
father’s side, and from the Fabian on the mother’s side. 
His surname Maximus indicates the latter part of his 
genealogy. In a work composed originally of ten books, 
but of which only nine remain, and entitled Dictorum , 
factorumque memorabilium libri, he has collected to¬ 
gether the sayings and actions of individuals of various 
eras and nations, which he found scattered over his¬ 
torical works, and deemed worthy of being transmitted 
to posterity. The collection is dedicated to Tiberius. 
He classifies the individuals of whom he treats, ac- 
cording*to some peculiar virtue or vice, of which they 
are cited as examples. He first confines himself to 
Romans, and then passes to other nations, especially 
the Greeks. The titles of his chapters are the work 
of the grammarians or copyists, as appears very clear¬ 
ly from the use of words which were unknown during 
the best age of Roman literature. Valerius displays 
neither judgment in his choice of anecdotes, nor skill 
in their arrangement, nor good taste in the use of ex¬ 
pressions, and in the transitions which he frequently 
makes from the natural order of things. No one ever 
carried flattery to a greater extent: his preface, ad¬ 
dressed to Tiberius., is perfectly disgusting. His man¬ 
ner of narrating is far from pleasing, and his style is 
cold, declamatory, and affected. Notwithstanding its 



V A L 


VAR 


faults, howsver, the work is interesting both for the 
history and the study of antiquity, and contains a num¬ 
ber of little facts taken from authors whose works 
have not reached us. Some critics believe, though on 
no very sure grounds, that the work in question is a 
compilation from a larger one by the same author, and 
was executed by C. Titus Probus or Julius Paris. 
Others, in like manner, ascribe it to Januarius Nepo- 
tianus. These three individuals are equally unknown. 
—The best editions of Valerius Maximus are, that of 
Vorstius, Berol. , 1672, 8vo ; that ofTorremus, Lugd. 
Bat., 1726, 4to ; that of Kappius, Lips., 1782, 8vo ; 
and that of Hase, Paris, 1822, 3 vols. 8vo (including 
Obsequens de Prod.igiis), which last forms part of the 
collection of Lemaire.—VI. Flaccus, a Latin poet 
who flourished under Vespasian. He wrote a poem in 
eight books on the Argonautic expedition, but it re¬ 
mained unfinished on account of his premature death. 
The manuscripts of this poem add to the name of Va¬ 
lerius Flaccus that of Setinus Balbus. It has been 
supposed by some critics that this last was the name 
of a grammarian who made a revision of the text, or 
who, perhaps, was the possessor of a remarkable man¬ 
uscript. The birthplace of the writer is also involved 
in some doubt. It is believed by many that his native 
place was Patavium, and this opinion is founded on 
various passages of Martial. Others suppose that he 
was born at Setia Campania, and allege the name Se¬ 
tinus in favour of this position. The latter name, how¬ 
ever, has been explained above. There has come 
down to us, among the epigrams of Martial, one ad¬ 
dressed to Valerius Flaccus, in which the former ad¬ 
vises him to renounce poetry, and apply himself to the 
studies of the bar, as affording a better means for ac¬ 
cumulating a fortune. From this some have been led 
to believe that his poetical talents were not held in 
very high esteem by his contemporaries. Quintilian, 
however, speaks of his death as a great loss to litera¬ 
ture. He died A.D. 88, in the reign of Domitian. 
The “ Argonautics” of Valerius Flaccus are in eight 
books, the last imperfect. Had the poem been com¬ 
pleted, it is thought that it would have occupied ten or 
twelve books. It is an imitation of the work of Apol¬ 
lonius of Rhodes on the same subject. The critics 
are far from being agreed as to its merits : some rank 
it next to the iEneid ; while others, who regard beauty 
of diction as less essential than invention, assign it a 
much lower rank, and give the preference to the po¬ 
ems of Statius, Lucan, and even Silius Italicus. In 
truth, the “ Argonautics” are clearly deficient in ori¬ 
ginality. The principal fault of the poem is, that the 
enterprise of the Argonauts, which forms the chief in¬ 
terest of the fable, is continually lost sight of amid nu¬ 
merous digressions and episodes. Hence the poem 
wears in general a cold and monotonous appearance. 
It is not, however, without beauties ; it contains de¬ 
scriptions highly poetical, and some very ingenious 
comparisons. It is remarkable that in the passages 
where Valerius does not imitate Apollonius, he is far 
more elegant than in those where he copies him. His 
6ty 1 e is concise and energetic, but oftentimes obscure 
end affected. Frequently, too, he sacrifices nature to 
art, and to an anxiety for displaying the stores of his 

erudition._The best editions of Valerius Flaccus are, 

that of Burmann, L. Bat., 1724, 4to ; that of Harles, 
Altcnb., 1781, 8vo ; that of Wagner, Lotting., 1805, 
8vo ; that of Weichert, Mis. ap. Goed., 1818, 8vo; 
and that of Lemaire (forming part of his collection), 
Pans, 1824-5, 2 vols. 8vo. ( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Rom., 
vol. 2, p. 294, seqq.) 

Valgius Rufus, a Roman poet in the Augustan age, 
on whom Tibullus (4, 1, 80) passes a high^eulogiurn 
(“ Valgius, (Eterno propior non alter Homero ), which, 
«n all probability, comes rather from the warm friend 
than the sober critic. Horace speaks of him as one of 
those by whom he would wish his productions to be 


commended. (Sat., 1,10, 82 ) Quintilian makes no 
mention of him. (Scholl, Hist. Lit. Rom.,v. 1, p. 227.) 

Vandalii, a people of Germany. The Vandals 
seem to have been of Gothic origin. Pliny and Pro¬ 
copius agree in making them such, and the latter wri¬ 
ter more especially affirms, in express terms, that the 
Goths and Vandals, though distinguished by name, 
were the same people, agreeing in their manners, and 
speaking the same language. They were called Van¬ 
dals from the Teutonic term wenden, which signifies 
to wander. They began to be troublesome to the 
Romans A.D. 160, in the reign of Aurelius and Verus: 
in the year 410 they made themselves masters of 
Spain, in conjunction with the Alani and Suevi, and 
received for their share what from them was termed 
Vandalitia, now Andalusia. In 429 they crossed into 
Africa under Genseric, who not only made himself 
master there of Byzacium, Gaetulia, and part of Nu- 
midia, but crossed over into Italy, A.D. 455, and 
plundered Rome. After the death of Genseric the 
Vandal power declined. (Dio Cass., 71, 12.— Eu- 
Irop., 8, 13.— Procop., B. G., 1 , 2.— Tac., Germ., 2. 
— Jornand., 22, 27.) 

Vangiones, a German tribe along the Rhine. Their 
capital was Augusta Vangionum, called also Borbeto- 
magus, now Worms. (Tac., Hist., 4,70.— Id., Germ., 
28.—P/m., 4, 17.) 

Vardanus or Vardanius, a river of Asia, called 
otherwise Hypanis, which rises in the central part of 
Caucasus, and falls into the Palus Mseotis by several 
mouths. It receives in its course all the water of the 
western branch of the Caucasian chain. The sandy 
plain, which extends to the north of this river, furnish¬ 
es it with more. Its two principal mouths embrace 
the island of Taman, in which the town of Fanegoria, 
the ancient Phanagoria, attracts a little trade. The 
modern name Kuban of the river Hypanis preserves 
traces of the ancient appellation, since, according to 
the pronunciaton of the dialects of the north of Asia, 
the h , uttered from the throat, becomes k. (Ptol. -• 
Malte-Brun, Geogr., vol. 2, p. 43, Am. ed.) 

Varius, L. a contemporary of Virgil and Horace, 
and one of the best tragic poets of his time. He com¬ 
posed a drama entitled Thyestes, which, in the judg¬ 
ment of Quintilian, deserved to be ranked with the 
finest chefs d'ceuvre of the Greeks. He also distin¬ 
guished himself in the department of epic verse, and 
Horace places him at the head of the epic poets of his 
time. The HDneid of Virgil, however, had not yet 
been published. Varius sung the exploits of Augus¬ 
tus and his son-in-law Agrippa, so that his poem ap¬ 
pears to have been rather historical than epic in its 
character. It is entirely lost. Macrobius, however, 
has preserved for us a few fine lines from another poem 
of Varius’, on Death. (Sat., 6, 1, 2.)—The scholiast 
on Horace, commonly known by the name of the 
Scholiast of Cruquius, accuses Varius of having sto¬ 
len the tragedy referred to above from Cassius Severus 
of Parma, a poet of the same period, mentioned with 
eulogium by Horace. (Epist., 1,4, 3.) This charge 
has been since reiterated by several of the learned, 
and, among others, by Vossius (de Poet. Lat., p. 23), 
by Gesner, and Baxter, in their respective editions ol 
Horace, and also by Burmann. Wieland, however, 
has shown the inaccuracy of the scholiast, who, in 
making his accusation, confounds Varius the poet with 
Quintus Atius Varus, who put Cassius to death at 
Athens. (Val. Max., 1 , 7,7.— Scholl,Hist. Lit. Rom., 
vol. 1, p. 211.) 

Varro, I. M. Terentius, a Roman consul of ig¬ 
noble origin, colleague with L. ^Emilius Paulus the 
year in which the battle of Canine was fought. His 
rashness and presumption hastened that memorable 
conflict. (Vid. Cannae, and Hannibal.) After the bat¬ 
tle he retreated to Venusia, and put himself in a pos¬ 
ture for resisting the enemy till he could receive in* 

1371 




VARRO. 


VARRO 


structions and re-enforcements from Rome. On his 
subsequent return to Rome he was honourably re¬ 
ceived, notwithstanding his defeat; and the senate re¬ 
turned him thanks for his undaunted aspect after de¬ 
feat, and for not having despaired of the common¬ 
wealth. (Liu., 22, 25, seqq. — Id., 22, 41, seqq .— 
Id., 22, 61, seqq.) He was afterward appointed, as 
proconsul, to defend Picenum, and raise levies there¬ 
in ; and his proconsular authority was continued to him 
year after year. He appears to have filled, at a later 
period, the office of ambassador to Philip, as well as 
other public employments. ( Liv., 23, 32. — Id., 25, 
6.— Id., 30, 26, &c.)—II. A Latin writer, celebrated 
for his great learning. He is said to have written no 
less than 500 different volumes, which are all now 
lost except a treatise de Re Rustica , and part of an¬ 
other de Lingua Latina, dedicated to the orator Ci¬ 
cero. He was born in the 637th year of Rome, and 
was descended of an ancient senatorial family. It 
is probable that his youth, and even the greater part 
of his manhood, were spent in literary pursuits, and in 
the acquisition of that stupendous knowledge which 
has procured him the appellation of “ the most learned 
of the Romans .” In A.U.C. 686 he served under 
Pompey in his war against the pirates, in which he 
commanded the Greek ships. To the fortunes of that 
commander he continued firmly attached, and was ap¬ 
pointed one of his lieutenants in Spain, along with 
Afranius and Petreius, at the commencement of the 
war with Caesar. Hispania Ulterior was especially 
confided to his protection, and two legions were placed 
under his command. After the surrender of his col¬ 
leagues in Hither Spain, Caesar proceeded in person 
against him. Varro appears to have been little quali¬ 
fied to cope with such an adversary. One of the le¬ 
gions deserted before his own eyes; and his retreat to 
Cadiz, where he had meant to retire, having been cut 
off, he surrendered at discretion with the other, in the 
vicinity of Corduba. From that period he despaired of 
the salvation of the republic, and, receiving his free¬ 
dom from Caesar, he proceeded to Dyrrhachium, to give 
Pompey a detail of what had passed. This latter 
place he left almost immediately thereafter for Rome. 
After his return to Italy, he withdrew from all politi¬ 
cal concerns, and indulged himself, during the remain¬ 
der of his life, in the enjoyment of literary leisure. 
The only service which he performed for Caesar was 
that of arranging the books which the dictator had 
himself procured, or which had been acquired by 
those who had preceded him in the management of 
public affairs. He lived, during the reign of Caesar, 
in habits of the closest intimacy with Cicero. The 
greater part of his time was passed at the various 
villas which he possessed in Italy. After the assassi¬ 
nation of Caesar, Varro’s principal villa, situate near the 
town of Casinum, in the territory of the Volsci, was 
forcibly seized by Marc Antony, along with almost all 
his wealth. Nor was this all. His name was also 
placed in the list of the proscribed, although he was at 
che advanced age of 70 years. His friends, however, 
secreted him, and he remained in a place of safety 
until a special edict was passed by the consul, M. Plan- 
cus, under the triumviral seal, excepting him and Mes- 
sala Corvinus from the general slaughter. But, though 
Varro thus escaped, he was unable to save his library, 
which was placed in the garden of one of his villas, 
and fell into the hands of an illiterate soldiery. After 
the battle of Actium, Varro resided at Rome until his 
decease, which happened A.U.C. 727, when he was 
90 years of age. His wealth was restored by Augus¬ 
tus, but his books could not be supplied. It is not 
improbable that the loss of his books, which impeded 
the prosecution of his studies, and prevented the com¬ 
position of such works as may have required reference 
and consultation, may have induced Varro to employ 
the remaining part of his life in delivering those pre- 
1372 


j cepts of agriculture which had been the result of long 
experience, and which need only reminiscence to in¬ 
culcate. It was some time after the loss of his books, 
and when he had nearly reached the age of eighty, that 
Varro composed the work on husbandry, as he himself 
testifies in the introduction. “ Varro,” observes Mar- 
tyn, “ writes more like a scholar than a man practical¬ 
ly acquainted with agricultural pursuits.” This work, 
together with that de Lingua Latina, are the only two 
of Varro’s productions that have reached us ; and the 
latter is incomplete. It is on account of this philolo¬ 
gical production that Aulus Gellius ranks him among 
the grammarians, who form a numerous and important 
class in the history of Latin literature. This work 
originally consisted oUtwenty-four books, and was di¬ 
vided into three great parts. The first six books were 
devoted to etymological researches. The second di¬ 
vision, which extended from the commencement of the 
seventh to the end of the twelfth book, comprehended 
the accidents of verbs, and the different changes which 
they undergo from declension, conjugation, and com¬ 
parison. The author admits of but two kinds of 
words, nouns and verbs, to which he refers all the other 
parts of speech. He distinguishes also two sorts of 
declension, of which he calls the one arbitrary, and 
the other natural or necessary. With the ninth book 
terminates the fragment we possess of Varro’s treatise. 
The third part of the work, which contained twelve 
books, treated of syntax. It also contained a sort of 
glossary, which explained the true meaning of Latin 
terms. This may be considered as one of the chief 
works of Varro, and was certainly a laborious and in¬ 
genious production ; but the author is evidently too 
fond of deriving words from the ancient dialects of 
Italy instead of recurring to the Greek, which, after 
the capture of Tarentum, became a great source of 
Latin terms. There was also a distinct treatise, de 
Sermone Latino, addressed to Marcellus, of which a 
very few fragments are preserved by Aulus Gellius. 
The critical works of Varro were also numerous, but 
almost nothing is known of their content®. His myth¬ 
ological or theological productions were much studied, 
and very frequently cited by the ancient fathers, par¬ 
ticularly by St. Augustine and Lactantius. This part 
of his works chiefly contributed to the splendid repu¬ 
tation of Varro, and was extant as late as the begin¬ 
ning of the 14th century. Petrarch had seen it in his 
youth. It subsequently, however, disappeared. In 
history Varro was also conspicuous, and Plutarch, in 
his life of Romulus, speaks of him as a man of all the 
Romans most versed in this department of knowledge. 
The philosophical writings of Varro are not numerous. 
His chief work of this description, entitled de Philo- 
sophia liber, appears to have been very comprehensive. 
St. Augustine informs us that Varro examined in it all 
the various sects of philosophers, of which he enumer¬ 
ated upward of 280. The sect of the Old Academy 
was that which he himself followed, and its tenets he 
maintained in opposition to all others. Varro derived 
much notoriety from his satirical compositions. His 
Tricarenus or Tricipitina was a satiric history of the 
triumvirate of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus. Much 
pleasantry and sarcasm were also interspersed in his 
books, entitled Legistorici ; but his most celebrated 
production in that line was the satire which he himself 
entitled Menippean. It was so called from the cynic 
Menippus of Gadara, who was in the habit of express¬ 
ing himself jocularly upon the most grave and impor¬ 
tant subjects. The appellation of Menippean was 
given to his satires by Varro, because he imitated the 
philosopher’s general style of humour. In its external 
form it appears to have been a sort of literary anomaly. 
Greek words and phrases were interspersed with Lat¬ 
in ; prose was mingled with verses of various meas¬ 
ures ; and pleasantry with serious remark. Many fracr- 
ments of this Menippean satire remain, but they ar»> 




VAR 


VAT 


much broken and corrupted.. The heads of the differ¬ 
ent subjects or chapters contained in it, amounting to 
nearly 150, have been given by Fabricius in alphabet¬ 
ical order. Some of them are in Latin, others in 
Greek. Many minor productions of Varro might be 
also mentioned did our limits permit. A sufficient 
number, however, have been cited to justify the pane¬ 
gyric of Cicero : “ His works brought us home, as it 
were, while we were foreigners in our own city, and 
wandering like strangers, so that we might know who 
and where we were ; for in them are laid open the 
chronology of his country, a description of the seasons, 
the laws of religion, the ordinances of the priests, do¬ 
mestic and military occurrences, the situations of 
countries and places, the names of all things, divine 
and human, the breed of animals, moral duties, and 
the origin of things.” {Dunlop's Roman Literature , 
vol. 2, p. 34, seqq.) —St. Augustine says that it cannot- 
but be wondered how Varro, who read such a number 
of books, could find time to compose so many volumes; 
and how he who composed so many volumes could 
be at leisure to peruse such a variety of books, and to 
gain so much literary information.—The best edition 
of the treatise de Re Rustica is that contained in the 
Scriptures Rei Rusticcz of Gesner, Lips ., 1735, 2 
vols. 4to ; or in the same edited by Schneider, Lips., 
1794-97, 7 vols. 8vo. The best editions of the treatise 
de Lingua Latina are the Bipont, 1788, 2 vols. 8vo, 
and that of Muller, Lips., 1833, 8vo.—III. Attacinus, 
a poet of Attace in Gallia Narbonensis, or, as some 
suppose, of Narbo itself He was born about 82 B.C., 
and died about 37 B.Q. Varro translated freely into 
Latin verse the Argonautics of Apollonius llhodius. 
He composed also an historical poem on Caesar’s war 
with the Sequani ( De Bello Sequanico). Varro like¬ 
wise appears as a writer of elegies. ( Wernsdorff, 
Poet. Lat. Min., vol. 5, pt. 3, p. 1394, seqq. — Id., 
Excurs. de Varrone Atacino , &c., p. 1385, seqq. — 
Ruhnken, Epist. Grit., 2, p. 199.) 

Varus, I. Quintilius, a Roman commander, be¬ 
longing to a family more illustrious for achievements 
than antiquity of origin. His father had fought under 
the standard of Brutus at Phdippi, and, not wishing to 
survive the destruction of liberty, had caused himself 
to be slain by one of his freedmen. The son, never¬ 
theless, gained the favour of Augustus, who named 
him consul along with Tiberius, B.C. 13. He was 
afterward appointed proconsul of Syria, and, on the 
death of Herod, supported the claim of Archelaiis, the 
son of that monarch, to the vacant throne, and chas¬ 
tised severely all who resisted the authority of this 
prince. ( Josephus , Ant. Jud., 17, 9, 3.— Flav. Jo¬ 
seph., Vit., p. 6, seqq., ed. Havercamp.) —According 
to Velleius Paterculus, a contemporary writer, Varus 
was a man of mild disposition and retiring manners 
'vir ingenio mitis, moribus quietus), but still very ra¬ 
pacious, who entered Syria a poor man and left it a 
rich one. ( Veil. Paterc., 2, 117.) Having been sub¬ 
sequently appointed commander of the forces in Ger¬ 
many, he employed himself not so much in watching 
the movements of warlike communities jealous of their 
freedom, as in the foolish attempt to bend them to new 
institutions, based upon those of the Romans. A 
strong feeling of discontent arose, of which Arminius, 
a German leader, secretly took advantage to free his 
c( untry from the yoke of the Romans. Varus was ap- 
piized by Segestes, king of the Catti, of the conspiracy 
that had been formed : “ Arrest me and Arminius, to¬ 
gether with the other leading chieftains,” said this 
faithful ally of the Romans ; “ the people will not ven¬ 
ture to attempt anything, and you yourself will have 
full time allowed you to distinguish between the in¬ 
nocent and guilty.” {Tacit., Ann., 1, 55.) The rash 
presumption of Varus led him to disregard this salu¬ 
tary advice. He advanced with his army into the in¬ 
ferior of the country, where he was surprised and sur¬ 


rounded by the foe, led on by Arminius. The Ilo» 
mans made a valiant resistance for three successive 
days, but were compelled at last to yield to numbers 
Three legions were cut to pieces; and Varus, severely 
wounded and unwilling to survive the ignominy of de¬ 
feat, slew himself. His example was followed by his 
principal officers : the tribunes and chief centurions 
were immolated as victims by the barbarians. {Tacit., 
Ann., 1, 61.) This disastrous event took place B.C. 

9.—The Romans had not experienced so severe a de¬ 
feat since the overthrow of Crassus by the Parthians. 
Augustus was in despair, and for several months al¬ 
lowed his beard and hair to remain neglected, and, 
striking his head against the door of his apartment, 
frequently exclaimed, “ Varus, give me back my le¬ 
gions." Great alarm, too, was felt by the emperor, 
lest the victorious Germans, uniting with other tribes 
on the frontiers, should make a descent upon Italy ; 
and an extraordinary levy was therefore made to meet 
the emergency. The scene of the defeat of Varus 
was the Teutobergiensis Saltus, lying in an eastern 
direction from the modern Paderborn, and reaching as 
far as the territory of Osnabruck. {Suet., Vit Aug., 
23, 49.— Id., Vit. Tib., 17, seq. — Tacit., Ann., 1, 3, 
&c.— Id., Hist., 4, 17.— Id. ib., 5, 9.— Dio Cass., 56, 
23.) The remains of the vanquished, that lay whiten¬ 
ing the ground, were interred six years after by the 
victorious Germanicus. {Tacit., Ann., 1, 61, seq ) — 
II. Quintilius, an acute and rigid critic, mentioned by 
Horace in his Epistle to the Pisos (v. 437), and whose 
death is mourned by the same poet in one of his odes 
(1, 24). St. Jerome calls him a native of Cremona 
{Chron. Euseb. —Olymp. 189.1, B.C. 24), Heyne, 
however, doubts the propriety of giving him the sur- 
name of Varus < Excurs , 2, ad Virg., Eclog.) —III. 
Lucius, an Epicurean, and a friend of Julius Caesar. 
He is mentioned by Quintilian (6, 3, 78).—IV. A 
tragic poet, mentioned by Ovid {Ep. ex. Pont., 4, 
16, 31).—V. Alfenus, a barber of Cremona, who, 
growing out of conceit with his profession, quitted it 
and came to Rome, where, attending the lectures of 
Servius Sulpicius, a celebrated lawyer, he made so 
great proficiency in his studies as to become eventu¬ 
ally the ablest lawyer of his time. His name often oc¬ 
curs in the Pandects. {Hor., Sat., 1, 3, 130.)—VI. 
A river which falls into the Mediterranean, to the west 
of Nicaea or Nice. The modern name of the Varus is 
the Var. At a somewhat late period it formed the 
western limit of Italy, which in the time of Augustus 
had been marked by the stone trophy of that emperor 
placed on the Maritime Alps. {Cramer's Anc. Italy , 
vol. 1, p. 2, not.) 

Vascones, a people of Spain, between the Iberus 
and the Pyrenees, in what is now the kingdom of Na¬ 
varre : their chief town was Pompelo, now Pampelu 
na. {Pliny, 3, 3.) 

Vaticanus, Mons, a hill at Rome, forming the pro¬ 
longation of the Janiculum towards the north, and sup¬ 
posed to derive its name from the Latin word rates 
(“a soothsayer”) or vaticinium (“ divination”), as it 
was once the seat of Etruscan divination. ( Festus, s. v. 
Vaticanus.) The Campus Vaticanus included all the 
space between the foot of this range and the Tiber. 
According to Tacitus, the air of this part of Romo 
was considered very unwholesome. {Hist.. 2, 93.) 
Here Caligula erected a Circus, in which he placed 
the great Egyptian obelisk that now stands in front of 
St. Peter’s. {Burton's Antiquities of Rome, p. 232.) 
The ground now covered by St. Peter’s, the papal 
palace, museum, and gardens, was anciently designated 
by Vaticani loci, “ places belonging to the Vatican 
Hill.” {Tacit., Hist., 1. c.—Martial, 2, 6$.—Bur¬ 
gess, Antiquities of Rome, vol. 2, p. 256.) 

Vatinia lex, de Provinciis, by the tribune P Vatin- 
ius, A.U.C. 694. It appointed Caesar governor ot 
Gallia Cisalpina and Illyricum for five years, with the 

1373 





V E.T 


VEL 


command of three legions. ( Vid . Cassar, page 282, 
towards the end of the first column.) 

Vatinius, I. a Roman of most impure life. Having 
been brought forward on one occasion as a witness 
against an individual whom Cicero was defending, the 
orator inveighed against him with so much bitterness 
of reproach, and excited so much odium against him 
by the picture which he drew of his vices, that odium 
Vutinianum became proverbial for bitter and implaca¬ 
ble hatred. (Compare Seneca, de Constant. Sap., 
17.)—II. A shoemaker of Beneventum, deformed in 
body, and addicted to scurrilous invective against the 
members of the higher class. He lived in the reign of 
Nero, and exhibited a show of gladiators when that 
emperor passed through Beneventum. He is said to 
have invented a peculiar species of cup, called after his 
name. {Tacit., Ann., 15, 34.— Martial, 14, 96.) 

Ubii, a people of Germany, near the Rhine, trans¬ 
ported across the river by Agrippa. Their chief town, 
Ubiorum oppidum, or Ara, called after this Agrippina 
Colonia, from the circumstance of Agrippina (the 
daughter of Germanicus, and mother of Nero) having 
been born there, is now Cologne or Koln. {Tacit., 
G., 28 ; Ann., 12, 27 .—Plm., 4, 17.— Cces., 4, 30.) 

Vectis Insula, the Isle of Wight, south of Britain. 
{Suet., Vit. Vesp., 4.— Plin., 3, 4.) 

Vegetius, a Latin writer, who flourished A.D. 386, 
in the reign of the Emperor Valentinian, to whom he 
dedicated his treatise de Re Militari. Although prob¬ 
ably a military man, his Latinity is pure for the age in 
which he lived. Modern critics distinguish between 
this writer and Vegetius who composed a treatise on 
the veterinary art. The best edition of Vegetius, de 
Re Militari, is that of Stewechius, Vesal, 1670, 12mo. 
The best edition of the work of the other Vegetius, on 
the veterinary art, is that by Gesner, in the writer’s de 
Re Rustica. 

Veientes, the inhabitants of Veii. {Vid. Veii.) 

Veii, a powerful city of Etruria, at the distance of 
nbout twelve miles from Rome. It sustained many 
long wars against the Romans, and was at last taken 
and destroyed by Camillus, after a siege of ten years. 
At the time of its destruction Veii was larger and far 
more magnificent than the city of Rome. Its situa¬ 
tion was so eligible that the Romans, after the burning 
of their own city by the Gauls, were inclined to mi¬ 
grate thither, and totally abandon their native home ; 
and this would have been carried into execution if not 
opposed by the authority and eloquence of Camillus. 
{Omd, Fast., 2, 195.— Cic.,de Div., 1, 44.— Horat.., 
Sat., 2, 3, 143.— Lit., 5, 21.) The site of ancient 
Veii answers to the spot known by the name of Pin- 
sola Farnese, and situated about a mile and a half to 
the northeast of the modern posthouse of la Storta. 
The numerous remains of antiquity found there very 
recently have placed this fact beyond dispute.—After 
the capture of Rome by the Gauls, and the attempt 
made to transfer the seat of Roman power to Veii, we 
scarcely hear of the latter city. We collect only 
from a passage in Frontinus {de Col.) that Veii be¬ 
came a Roman colony under Julius Caesar, who di¬ 
vided its lands among his soldiers, but in the civil wars 
which ensued after his death it was nearly destroyed, 
and left in a most desolate state, a fact which is con¬ 
firmed by Lucan (7, 392) and Propertius (4, 10, 27). 
It is certain, however, that Veii again rose from its 
ruins, and was raised to municipal rank, probably un¬ 
der Tiberius, whose statue, with several other monu¬ 
ments relating to his reign, were discovered on the site 
of the city. It existed in the time of Pliny (3, 5), and 
even much later, under the emperors Constantine and 
Theodosia. {Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 236, seq.) 

Vejovis or Vedius, an Etruscan divinity worship¬ 
ped at Rome. He was believed to cast lightnings, 
and these had the property of causing previous deaf¬ 
ness in those whom they were to strike. {Amm. 
1374 


Marcell, 17, 10, 2.) The temple of Vejovis at Rome 
stood in the hollow between the Arx and the Capitol 
(“inter duos lucos ."— Ovid, Fast., 3, 430). His stat¬ 
ue was that of a youth with darts in his hand ; a she- 
goat stood beside it, and a she-goat was the victim to 
him. {Ovid, l. c.—Aul. Gell, 5, 12.) Hence some 
viewed him as Young Jupiter, while others saw in him 
the avenging Apollo of the Greeks. {Ovid, l. c. — 
Aul. Gell, l c.) He was, however, certainly a god 
of the under-world. {Mart., Capell, 2, 9.— Id., 2, 7. 
— Macrob., Sat., 3, 9.) His name is said to have 
signified “ Injurious God." {Aul. Gell, 1 c. — Height- 
ley's Mythology, p. 531.) 

Velabrum, a name generally applied to all the 
ground lying on the left bank of the Tiber, between 
the base of the Capitol and the Aventine. According 
to Varro, the term was derived from the Latin verb ve- 
here, because this part was originally swampy and 
subject to floods, when it was necessary to employ 
boats to pass from one hill to the other {L. L., 4, 
4). We find the name subsequently restricted to two 
streets, distinguished from each other by the titles of 
Velabrum Majus and Minus. Nardini conceives that 
they ran parallel to each other from the Circus Maxi¬ 
mus to the foot of the Capitol, intersecting the Vicus 
Tuscus, the Vicus Jugarius, and the other streets 
which led from the forum to the Tiber. In this quar¬ 
ter were the shops of the oil-venders, &c. {Horat., 
Sat., 2, 3, 229.— Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 419, 
seqq.) 

Velia, a city of Lucania, on the coast of the Mare 
Tyrrhenum, between the promontories of Palinurum 
and Posidium, and situate about three miles from the 
left bank of the river Heles or Elees. It was founded 
by the Phocaeans after their abandonment of Alalia in 
Corsica. {Vid. Phocssa.) The Phocreans called the 
town Hyele ('Te/lry), which the Latins afterward chan¬ 
ged to Velia. Strabo asserts, that in his time the city 
was called Elea (’EAeo), and so Stephanus Byzantinus 
gives the form of the name. The more correct mode ol 
writing the word, however, is Helia, which the Latins, 
employing the JEolic digamma for the asperate, enun¬ 
ciated by Velia. (Compare Plin., 3, 5 : “ Oppidum 
Helia, qua nunc Velia.") —Strabo informs us, that 
from the constitution adopted by its founders being so 
excellent a one, the new colony was enabled to resist 
with success the aggressions both of the Posidoniatm 
and the Lucani, though very inferior to these adver¬ 
saries both in population and fertility of soil. {Strab., 
252.) Velia is particularly celebrated in the annals of 
Grecian science for the school of philosophy which 
was formed within its walls, under the auspices of 
Zeno and Parmenides, and which is commonly known 
by the name of the Eleatic sect. This sect was after¬ 
ward transplanted into Greece, where it degenerated 
into a school of sophistry and false dialectic. {Bruck- 
cr, Hist. Phil, vol. 1, p. 1142.)—Scylax leads us to 
infer that Velia afterward received a colony of Thu 
rians, an event which we may suppose t6 have occur¬ 
red about 440 A.C. {Scylax, Perigl. , p. 4.) When 
the Romans formed the design of erecting a temple to 
Ceres, they sought a priestess from Velia, where that 
goddess was held in great veneration, to instruct them 
in the rites and ceremonies to be observed in her wor¬ 
ship. {Cic., pro Balb., 24.— Val Max , 1, 1.)—This 
place became subsequently a Roman maritime colony, 
as may be inferred from Livy ; but the period at 
which this change in its condition took place is not 
mentioned ; it was probably not long after the colo¬ 
nization of Pcestum. Mention of Velia frequently oc¬ 
curs in the letters of Cicero, who occasionally resided 
there with his friends Trebatius and Talna. {Ep. ad 
Fam., 7, 20 ; ad Att., 16, 7.) The situation of the 
town seems to have been considered very healthy ; as 
Plutarch says that Paulus iEmilius was ordered there 
by his physicians, and that he derived considerable 





VEL 


VELLEIUS PATERCULUS. 


benefit from the air. Horace was also recommended 
to visit Velia for a disorder in his eyes. ( Ep., 1, 15.) 
In Strabo’s time this ancient town was greatly reduced, 
its inhabitants being forced, from the poorness of their 
soil, to betake themselves to fishing and other seafa¬ 
ring occupations.—The ruins of Velia stand about half 
a mile from the sea, on the site now called Castela- 
rnare deUa Bruca . ( Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, u 

370.) 

Velina, the name of one of the Roman tribes, de¬ 
riving its appellation, as is said, from the lake Velinus 
in the Sabine territory. It was added to the other 
tribes, together with the one termed Quirina, A.U.C. 
513.—The locality of this tribe was in the vicinity of 
Mount Palatine. ( Moral ., Ep., 1, 6, 52.) 

Velinus, a river in the Sabine territory, rising in 
the Apennines and falling into the Nar. It occasion¬ 
ally overflowed its banks, and formed some small lakes 
before it entered the Nar. One of the lakes, and the 
chief of the number, was called the Lacus Velinus, 
now Lago di Pie di Lugo. The drainage of the stag¬ 
nant waters produced by the occasional overflow of 
the lakes and of the river was first attempted by Cu- 
rius Dentatus, the conqueror of the Sabines. He 
caused a channel to be made for the Velinus, through 
which the waters of that river were carried into the 
Nar, over a precipice of several hundred feet. This 
is the celebrated fall of Terni, knowm in Italy by the 
name of Caduta delle Marmore. The Velinus is now 
the Vclino. ( Cramer's Anc. Italy , vol. 1, p. 316.) 

Velitr.*, an ancient town of Latium, southeast of 
Aricia, and on the road between Rome and Tarracina. 
It was always reckoned one of the most important and 
considerable cities of the Volsci. The inhabitants 
were engaged in frequent hostilities with the Romans, 
and revolted so often that it became necessary to pun¬ 
ish them with unusual severity. The walls of their 
town were razed, and its senators were removed to 
Rome, and compelled to reside in the Transtiberine 
part of the city ; a severe fine being imposed upon any 
individual of their number who should be found on the 
other side of the river. ( Liv ., 8, 14.) The colony, 
however, planted by the Romans at Velitroe still sub¬ 
sisted in the reign of Claudius, as mention is made of 
it at that period. (Front., de Col.) Its chief boast 
was the honour of having given birth to Augustus. 
Suetonius states, that the house in which he was said 
to have been bom was still shown in his time near 
Velitraa. ( Vit. Aug., 6.) The modern name of this 
place is Velletri. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 83.) 

Vellaunodunum, a city of the Senones, between 
Agendicum and Genabum. According to D’Anville, 
the modern Beaune (en Gatinois ) answers to the an¬ 
cient place. Lemaire, however, thinks the opinion of 
Goduin preferable, who makes Genabum to have been 
situate near Sceneviere, in the neighbourhood of which 
some traces of a ruined city still exist. (Cces., B. G., 
7, 11.— Lemaire, Index Geogr., ad Cces., p. 395.) 

Velleda, a female of ancient Germany, belonging 
to the tribe of the Bructeri. She was believed to be 
gifted with prophetic powers, and exercised, in conse¬ 
quence, very great influence over the minds of her 
countrymen, who ascribed to her a species of divine 
iharacter. Tacitus first makes mention of her in 
B.C. 71, the era of Vespasian. (Hist., 4, 61.—Com¬ 
pare Hist., 4, 65.— Germ., 8.) From Statius it ap¬ 
pears that she was subsequently made captive by the 
Romans. (Sylv., 1, 4, 89.) The more correct form 
of the name, and the one more nearly approaching the 
German, is Welda. (Lips., ad Tacit., Germ., 8. 
Oberlin., ad Joe .) Dio Cassius writes the name, in 
Greek, B eTiySa, which fixes the quantity of the penult. 
(Dio Cass., fragm., xlix., 67, 5.) 

Velleius Paterculus, a Roman historian, de¬ 
scended from an equestrian family of Campania. The 
year of his birth is commonly fixed at 19 B.C., the 


same year in which Virgil died. We have a ven 
few particulars respecting his life, and these we obtain 
from the writer himself; for, what is very singular, no 
other ancient author makes mention of him, except¬ 
ing perhaps Priscian, who cites a Marcus Velleius, and 
Tacitus (Ann., 3, 39), who speaks of Publius Velleius 
as commander of an army in Thrace. In his youth 
Paterculus traversed, along with Caius Cassar, a part 
of the East. Augustus named him, at the age of 
twenty years, a prefect of horse ; and in this capacity, 
and afterward as qusestor and lieutenant, he accom¬ 
panied Tiberius on his campaigns in Germany, Pan- 
nonia, and Dalmatia, and was thus, for the space of 
nineteen years, his companion in arms and the wit¬ 
ness of his exploits. He returned to Rome with Ti¬ 
berius, and held the office of praetor the year that Au¬ 
gustus died. Sixteen years after, during the consul¬ 
ship of M. Vincius, he composed or else completed 
his historical work. The following year, A.D. 31, 
he was involved in the disgrace of Sejanus, who had 
been his patron, a.nd was put to death along with the 
other friends of that aspiring minister.—The work 
of Paterculus is entitled Historia Romana, but it 
is possible that this appellation may be owing to the 
copyists. A single manuscript of the work was pre¬ 
served at the convent of Murbach in Alsace, where 
Beatus Rhenanus found it. This manuscript, which 
was in a very bad condition, was subsequently lost. 
Its place is supplied by the edition of Rhenanus, pub¬ 
lished in 1520, and by a collation of the manuscript, 
made by Burer before Rhenanus returned it to the con¬ 
vent from which he had borrowed it. This collation is 
added to the edition of 1546.—The beginning of the 
work is lost, so that we are ignorant of the plan which 
the author had proposed to himself to follow. It would 
seem, however, that he had intended to give a summa¬ 
ry of Universal History, containing, in particular, what 
might prove interesting to the Romans. In the first 
fragment he treats of Greece, the Assyrian empire, and 
the kingdom of Macedonia; after this there is a la¬ 
cuna, embracing the first 582 years of Rome. The 
remainder of the first book, and the second, which we 
have entire, or with the loss, perhaps, of only a few 
lines, give the history of Rome down to A.D. 30.— 
The history of Paterculus does not enter into details. 
It is a general picture of the times rather than a nar¬ 
rative of individual events. The historian states 
merely results, and is silent respecting the causes 
which combined to produce them. He loves, howev¬ 
er, to develop and draw the characters of the princi¬ 
pal actors, and his work is filled with delineations 
traced by the hand of a master. We find in him, also, 
a great many political and moral observations, the 
fruit of experience and foreign travel. In his style 
he imitates the concise and energetic manner of Sal¬ 
lust. His diction is pure and elegant, without, how¬ 
ever, being wholly free from affectation, which shows 
itself in the search for archaisms or antiquated forms 
of expression, and in the too irequent use of moral 
sentences and figures of rhetoric. Some Hellenisms 
are also found in him. The charge of adulation to 
his prince, which is so often brought against this his¬ 
torian, may find some palliation in the fact that it was 
not until after the death of Sejanus that the tyrannical 
spirit of Tiberius began openly and fully to develop 
itself; and of this, if Velleius were involved in the fate 
of Sejanus, he could not, of course, have been a wit¬ 
ness. Besides, Tiberius had been the military chief 
and the benefactor of Paterculus. The latter praises 
the good deeds he performed; he exaggerates his mer¬ 
it ; he treats with indulgence his faults; but he does 
not push flattery so far as blindly to alter the truth 
or assert things that are false. It is unjust, therefore, 
on account of this venial failing, to rank Paterculus 
amoncr historians who are undeserving of confidence. 
He is impartial in the recital of events of which ho 

1375 



V E N 


V E N 


was not himself a witness. As for those which pass¬ 
ed under his own eyes, where is the historian who, 
in writing the history of his own times, is wholly ex¬ 
empt from the charge of partiality 1 —The best edi¬ 
tions of Paterculus are, that of Burmann, Lugd. Bat., 
1744, 2 vols. 8vo , that of Ruhnken, 1779, L. Bat., 2 
vols. 8vo ; that of Krause, Lips., 1800, 8vo ; and that 
of Lemaire, Paris, 1822, 8vo, which last is, for the 
most part, a republication of Ruhnken’s. ( Scholl, 
Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 2, p. 357.) 

Velocasses or Belocasses, a people of Gallia Bel- 
gica, along the northern bank of the Sequana, west of 
the Bellovaci, and north of the Aulerci Eburovices. 
Their capital was Rotomagus, now Rouen. {Cces., 
B. G., 7, 7 5.—Plin., 4, 18.) 

Vf.nafrum, a city of Campania, in the northeast 
angle of the country, and near the river Yulturnus. 
(Strabo, 258.) It is much celebrated in antiquity for 
the excellence of the oil which its territory produced. 
(Horat., Od., 2, 6, 16. — Id., Sat., 2, 4, 68. — Mart., 
13, 98.— Cato, R. R., 135.— Plin., 16, 2.) 

Venedi or VENEDiE, a German tribe, on the eastern 
bank of the Vistula, near its mouth. They gave name 
to the Venedicus Sinus, off this coast, and to the 
Montes Venedici, or the low range of mountains be¬ 
tween East Prussia and Poland. {Tac., Germ., 49. 
— Plin., 4, 27.) 

Veneti, I. a people of Italy, in Cisalpine Gaul, near 
the mouths of the Po, fabled to have come from Paph- 
lagonia, under the guidance of Antenor, after the Tro¬ 
jan war. ( Vid. Heneti.) On the invasion of Italy 
in the fifth century by the Huns, under their king At- 
tila, and the general desolation that everywhere ap¬ 
peared, great numbers of the people who lived near 
the Adriatic took shelter in the islands in this quarter, 
where now stands the city of Venice. These islands 
had previously, in A.D. 421, been built upon by the 
inhabitants of Patavium for the purposes of commerce. 
The arrival of fresh hordes of barbarians in Italy in¬ 
creased their population, until a commercial state was 
formed, which gradually rose to power and opulence. 
—As regards the origin of the ancient Veneti, the 
tradition which makes them of Paphlagonian origin is, 
as we have already remarked, purely fabulous. Man¬ 
nert, on the other hand, has started a learned and 
plausible theory, in which he maintains, with great abil¬ 
ity, their Northern origin. According to this writer, 
they were a branch of the great Sclavonic race. His 
grounds for this opinion are, 1, the fact of the Veneti 
being not an aboriginal people of Italy ; 2, the anal¬ 
ogy of their name with that of the Vandals, both being 
derived from the old Teutonic word wenden, and de¬ 
noting a roving and unsteady mode of life ; and, 3, 
from the existence of the amber-trade among them, 
and the proof which this furnishes of a communica¬ 
tion by an overland trade between them and the na¬ 
tions inhabiting the shores of the Baltic and the coun¬ 
tries of the north. ( Mannert, Geogr., vol. 10, p. 54, 
seqq.) —The history of the Veneti contains little that 
is worthy of notice, if we except the remarkable fea¬ 
ture of their being the sole people of Italy who not 
only offered no resistance to the ambitious projects of 
Rome, but even, at a very early period, rendered that 
power an essential service ; if it be true, as Polybius 
reports, that the Gauls who had taken Rome were 
suddenly called away from that city by an irruption of 
the Veneti into their territory (2, 18). The same au¬ 
thor elsewhere expressly states that an alliance was 
afterward formed between the Romans and Veneti 
(2, 23), a fact which is confirmed by Strabo (216).— 
This state of security and peace would seem to have 
been very favourable to the prosperity of the Venetian 
nation. According to an old geographer, they count¬ 
ed within their territory fifty cities, and a population 
of a million and a half. The soil and climate were 
excellent, and their cattle were reported to breed twice 
1376 


in the year. Their horses were especially noted fo 
their fleetness, and are known to have often gained 
prizes in the games of Greece. ( Eurip., Hipp., v. 
231, et Schol., ad loc. — Hesych., s.v. 'E verities.) And 
Strabo affirms that Dionysius, tyrant of Sicily, kept a 
stud of race-horses in their country. ( Strab., 212.) 
The same writer asserts, that even in his day there 
was an annual sacrifice of a white horse to Dicmed. 
When the Gauls had been subjugated, and their coun¬ 
try had been reduced to a state of dependance, the 
Veneti do not appear to have manifested any unwill¬ 
ingness to constitute part of the new province, an 
event which we may suppose to have happened not 
long after the second Punic war. Their territory 
from that time was included under the general de¬ 
nomination of Cisalpine Gaul, and they were admitted 
to all the privileges which that province successively 
obtained. In the reign of Augustus Venetia was con¬ 
sidered as a separate district, constituting the tenth 
region in the division made by that emperor. {Plin., 
3, 18.) Its boundaries, if, for the sake of amplifica¬ 
tion, we include within them the Tridentini, Meduaci, 
Carni, and other smaller nations, may be considered 
to be the Athesis, and a line drawn from that river to 
the Padus, to the west; the Alps to the north ; the 
Adriatic, as far as the river Formio ( Risano ), to the 
east ; and the main branch of the Padus to the south. 
( Cramer’s Anc. Italy , vol. 1, p. 113.)—II. A nation 
of Gaul, at the south of Armorica, on the western 
coast, powerful by sea. Their chief city is now called 
Vannes. {Cces., B. G., 3, 8.) 

Venetia, the country of the Veneti, in Gallia Cis 
alpina. {Vid. remarks at the end of the article Ven 
eti I.) 

Venetus Lacus, the same with the Lacus Brigan 
tinus, or Lake of Constance. {Meta, 3, 2.) 

Venilia, a nymph, sister to Amata, and mother of 
Turnus by Daunus. {Virg., ASn., 10, 76. — Ovid, 
Met., 14, 334.— Varro, L. L., 4, 10.^ 

Venta, I. Belgarum, a town of Britain, nowWin- 
chester .—II. Silurum, a town of Britain, now Caer- 
went, in Monmouthshire.—III. Icenorum, now Caster, 
south of Norwich, according to Mannert; but Rei- 
chard is in favour of Lynn. 

Ventidius Bassos, a native of Picenum, was 
brought captive to Rome, while yet an infant, along 
with his mother. When he had grown up, he follow¬ 
ed for some time the humble employment of hiring out 
horses and mules. He afterward accompanied Cassar 
to Gaul, and, by his punctual discharge of the various 
tasks confided to him, rose so high in Caesar’s favour 
that the latter bestowed upon him several important 
stations. After Caesar’s death he attached himself to 
Antony, to whose aid he brought three legions at Mu- 
tina. He subsequently obtained the consulship, an el¬ 
evation which exposed him to many pasquinades. An¬ 
tony sent him afterward against the Parthians, whom 
he defeated in three battles, B.C. 39, and was the first 
Roman honoured with a triumph over this formidable 
enemy. {Appian, Bell. Civ , 3, 66, seqq. — Id., Bell 
Parth., 71, seqq.) 

Venus, a Roman or Latin deity, generally regarmd 
as identical with the Greek Aphrodite (’A <j>potiiTr/), 
though perhaps with but little correctness. The 
Aphrodite of the Iliad is the daughter of Jupiter and 
Dione, and by the Alexandrean and the Latin poets 
she is sometimes called by the same name as her moth¬ 
er. {Theocr., 7, 116.— Bion, 1, 93.— Ovid, A. A., 3, 
3, 769. — Id., Fast., 2, 461.— Slat., Sylv., 2, 7, 2.) 
Hesiod says that she sprang from the foam (d^pog) of 
the sea, into which the mutilated part of Uranus had 
been thrown by his san Saturn. She first, he adds, 
approached the .land at the island of Cythera, and 
thence proceeded to Cyprus, where grass grew beneath 
her feet, and Love and Desire attended her. ,IIcs , 
Theog., 188, seqq.) One of the Homeridae sings 



YEN 


Y E K 


{Hymn., 6), that the moist-blowing west-wind wafted 
her in soft foam along the waves of the sea, and that 
the gold-filleted Seasons received her on the shore of 
Cyprus, clothed her in immortal garments, placed a 
golden wreath on her head, rings of orichalcum and 
gold in her pierced ears, and golden chains about her 
neck, and then led her to the assembly of the immor¬ 
tals, every one of whom admired, saluted, and loved 
her, and each god desired her for his spouse. The 
husband assigned to this charming goddess is usually 
the lame artist Vulcan or Hephaestus, but her legend 
is also interwoven with those of Mars, Adonis, and 
Anchises.—According to Homer, Aphrodite had an 
embroidered, girdle (/ceorbf iydq), which possessed the 
power of inspiring love and desire for the person who 
wore it; and Juno, on one occasion, borrowed the 
magic girdle from the goddess, in order to try its in¬ 
fluence upon Jove. {II., 14, 214.)—The animals sa¬ 
cred to Aphrodite were swans, doves, and sparrows. 
Horace places her in a chariot drawn by swans (Od., 
3, 28, 15. — lb., 4, 1, 10), and Sappho in one whose 
team were sparrows. The bird called lynx or Fritil- 
lus, of which so much use was made in amatory magic, 
was also sacred to this goddess, as was likewise the 
swallow, the herald of spring. Her favourite plants 
were the rose and the myrtle. She was chiefly wor¬ 
shipped at Cythera and Cyprus, in which latter island 
Aer favourite places were Paphos, Golgi, Idalium, and 
Amathus ; and also at Cnidus, Miletus, Cos, Corinth, 
Athens, Sparta, &c. In the more ancient temples of 
this goddess in Cyprus, she was represented under the 
form of a rude conical stone. But the Grecian scuip- 
vors and painters, particularly Praxiteles and Apelles, 
vied with each other in forming her image the ideal of 
female beauty and attraction. She appears sometimes 
rising out of the sea and wringing her locks ; some¬ 
times drawn in a conch by Tritons, or riding on some 
marine animal. She is usually nude, or but slightly 
clad. The Venus de’ Medici remains to us a noble 
specimen of ancient ar* and perception of the beauti¬ 
ful.—There is none of tie Olympians of whom the 
foreign origin is so pm cable as this goddess, and she 
is generally regarded as being the same with the As- 
tarte of the Phoenicians : the tale of Adonis, indeed, 
sufficiently proves the identification of this last-men¬ 
tioned goddess with the Aphrodite of the Greeks ; and 
yet, at the same time, the name of the latter (if we re¬ 
ject the common Greek derivation) appears singularly 
connected with the mythology of Scandinavia; for 
there one of the names of the goddess of love is Frid-a, 
and we see the same root lurking in d-^pod-lrr]. (Com¬ 
pare the English name Friday, the “ dies Veneris.”) 

_When we turn to the Roman Venus, we find her so 

thoroughly confounded with the Grecian Aphrodite, 
that almost everything peculiar to her has disappeared. 
And yet Venus cannot have been one of the original 
deities of Rome, as her name did not occur in the Sa- 
lian hymns, and we are assured that she was unknown 
in the time of the kings. {Macrob., Sat., 1, 12.) She 
seems to have been a deity presiding over birth and 
growth in general, for, as Venus Hortensis,she was the 
goddess of gardens. She was held to be the same 
as Libitina, the goddess of funerals, because, says Plu¬ 
tarch {Qucest. Rom., 23), the one and the same god¬ 
dess superintends birth and death. — There was at 
Rome a temple of Venus Fruti {Festus, s.v. Frutinal ), 
which latter term seems to be merely a corruption of 
Aphrodite. It may, however, be connected with fruc- 
tus, and refer to her rural character. Perhaps it may 
form a presumption in favour of the original rural char¬ 
acter of Venus, that, like Pales, her name is of both 
genders. Thus we meet with Deus and Dea Venus ; 
and with Venus almus and Venus alma. {Keightley s 
Mythology, p. 515, seqq.) 

Venusia, a city of Apulia, on the great Appian 
Way, leading to Tarentum, and about fifteen miles to 
8 M 


the south of Aufidus. This place appears to have been 
a Roman colony of some importance before the wax 
against Pyrrhus. {Dion. Hal., Excerpt. Leg .— Veil. 
Paterc., 1, 14.) After the disaster at Cannae it af¬ 
forded a retreat to the consul Varro and the handful 
of men who escaped from that bloody field. The ser¬ 
vices rendered by the Venusini on that occasion ob¬ 
tained for them afterward the special thanks of tie 
Roman senate. {Liv., 22, 54.— Id., 27, 10.) Venu- 
sia deserves our attention still more, from the associa¬ 
tions which connect it with the name of Horace, who 
was born there A.U.C. 688. We may infer from 
Strabo (250), that this town was in a flourishing state 
in his day. Mention of it is also made by Cicero 
{Ep. ad Alt., 5, 5), Appian {Bell. Civ., 1, 39), Pliny 
(3, 11), and others. The modern Venosa occupies 
the ancient site. {Cramer's Ancient Italy, vol. 2, p. 
288, seqq.) 

Veragri, an Alpine tribe, living among the Graian 
and Pennine Alps. Cellarius, however, reckons them 
as belonging to Gallia Narbonensis. {Plin., 3, 20.) 

Verbanus Lacus, now Lago Maggiore, a lake of 
Gallia Cisalpina, through which flows the river Tici- 
nus. The Lago Maggiore lies partly in Switzerland, 
but principally in Italy. It is twenty-seven miles long, 
and, on an average, eight broad. It contains the Bor- 
romean islands, which are the admiration of every trav¬ 
eller. {Plin., 3, 19.— Strab., 209.) 

Vercell^e, a city of Gallia Cisalpina, to the north¬ 
west of Ticinum, and the capital of the Libicii. P 
was situate on the river Sessites, now la Sesia, and it* 
site corresponds with that of the modern Borgo Ver• 
celli. Tacitus styles this place a municipium {His¬ 
tory, 1, 70), and Strabo mentions some gold mines in 
the neighbourhood, near a place called Ictymulorum 
Vicus. {Strab., 218.) Ammianus Marcellinus writes 
the name Vercellum. {Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. I, 
p. 47.) 

Vercingetorix, a young nobleman of the Arverm, 
distinguished for his abilities, and for his enmity to the 
Romans. He was chosen commander-in-chief of the 
confederate army raised by the states of Gaul, when 
the great insurrection broke out in that country against 
the Roman power; and he used every endeavour to 
free his native land from the Roman yoke. His ef¬ 
forts, however, were unsuccessful; he was besieged 
in Alesia, compelled to surrender, and, after being 
led in triumph to Rome, was put to death in prison. 
{Cces., B. G., 7, 4, seqq. — Dio Cass., 40, 41.) The 
name Vercingetorix appears to be nothing more than 
a title of command. Ver-cinn-cedo-righ, “ great cap¬ 
tain” or “ generalissimo.” {Thierry, Hist, des Gau - 
lois, vol. 3, p. 97.) 

Vergellus, a small river near Cannae, falling into 
the Aufidus. It is said to have been choked with the 
dead bodies of the Romans on the day of their disas¬ 
trous overthrow. {Flor., 2, 6.— Val. Max., 9, 2.) 

VergilLe, a name given to the Pleiades from their 
rising in the spring {vere. — Vid. Pleiades). 

Vergobretus, a term used among the ancient Gauls 
as a judicial appellation, and a title of office, Ver-go- 
breith, “a man for judging,”'or “a judge.” {Cces., 
B. G., 1, 16.— Thierry, His\ des Gaulois, vol. 2, p. 
115.) 

Veromandui, a people of Gallia Belgica Secunda, 
below the Nervii and Atrebate*. Their capital was 
Augusta Veromanduorum, now St. Quentin. {Cces., 
B. G., 2, 4 .—Plin., 4, 17.) 

Verona, a city of Gallia Cisalpina, in the territory 
of the Cenomanni, and situate on the river Athesis, in 
an eastern direction from the southern extremity of the 
Lacus Benacus. The modern name is the same with, 
the ancient. The history of its foundation is some¬ 
what uncertain, for Pliny (3, 13) ascribes it to the 
Rhaeti and Euganei, while Livy as positively attrib¬ 
utes it to the Cenomanni (5, 35). It will be easy to 

1377 




V Eli 


V E » 


reconcile these two opinions by admitting that the 
Cenomanni made this settlement in the territory pre¬ 
viously possessed by the Rhceti and Euganei. Under 
the dominion of the Romans it soon became a large 
and flourishing city. ( Strab ., 212.) It is supposed 
to have been colonized by Pompeius Strabo. Tacitus 
speaks of it in later times as a most opulent and im¬ 
portant colony, the possession of which enabled Ves¬ 
pasian’s party to begin offensive operations against the 
forces of Vitellius, and to strike a decisive blow. 
{Tacit., Hist., 3, 8.) The celebrity of Verona is still 
farther established as being the birthplace of Catullus 
{Ov., Am., 3, 14. — Martial, 14, 193) and of Pliny 
the naturalist, who, in his preface, calls himself the 
countryman of Catullus. It was in the neighbour¬ 
hood of Verona that the famous Rhastic wine, so high¬ 
ly commended by Virgil, was grown. {Georg., 2, 
94.— Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 70.) 

Verres, C., a Roman who governed the province 
of Sicily as praetor. The oppression and rapine of 
which he was guilty while in office were of the most 
flagrant description, and he was accused by the Sicil¬ 
ians of extortion on the expiration of his office. Ci¬ 
cero managed the prosecution, Hortensius appeared 
for the defence. Of Cicero’s six orations against 
Verres that have come down to us, only one was pro¬ 
nounced. Driven to despair by the depositions of the 
witnesses after the first oration, he submitted, without 
awaiting his sentence, to a voluntary exile. The 
other five orations of Cicero, forming the series of 
harangues which he intended to deliver after the proof 
was completed, were subsequently published in the 
same shape as if Verres had actually stood his trial, 
and had made a regular defence. He perished af¬ 
terward in the proscription of Antony, whom he had 
offended by refusing to share with him his Corinthian 
Vases. Verres appears during his exile to have lived 
in great affluence on his ill-gotten gains. {Cic. in 
Verr .) 

Verrius Flaccus, a freedman and grammarian, 
famous for his powers in instructing. He was ap¬ 
pointed tutor to the grandchildren of Augustus, and 
also distinguished himself by his writings, which were 
historical and grammatical. Suetonius also informs 
us that he caused to be incrusted on a semicircular 
building at Prseneste twelve tablets of marble, on 
which was cut a Roman calendar, which Suetonius 
and Macrobius often cite. Four of these tablets, or, 
rather, fragments of them, were discovered in 1770, 
and published by Foggini in 1779. They contain the 
months of January, March, April, and December, and 
throw great light on the Fasti of Ovid. Verrius 
Flaccus was at the head of a celebrated school of 
grammarians. His principal work in this line was en¬ 
titled de Verborum Signijicatione. ■ It was abridged by 
Festus, a grammarian of the fourth century. The 
abridgment has reached us, but the original work is 
lost. ( Vid. Festus.— Aul. Gell., 4, 5.— Sueton., Il- 
lus tr. Gram., 17.) 

Vertumnus or Vortumnus, a deity among the Ro¬ 
mans. According to some, he was, like Mercury, a 
deity presiding over merchandise. {Ascon. ad Cic. 
in Verr., 2, 1, 59.— Schol. ad Horat., Epist., 1, 20, 
1.) Varro, in one place, says he was a Tuscan god, 
and that, therefore, his statue was in the Tuscan street 
at Rome {L L., 4, 4, p.14); in another, he sets him 
among the gods worshipped by the Sabine king Ta- 
tius. (L. L., p. 22.) Horace uses Vertumni in the 
plural number {Epist., 2, 7, 14), and the scholiast ob¬ 
serves that his statues were in almost all the munici¬ 
pal towns of Italy.—Vertumnus (from verto, “to 
turn” or “change”) is probably the translation of a 
Tuscan name ; and the most rational hypothesis re¬ 
specting this god is, that he was a deitv presiding over 
the seasons, and their manifold productions in the ve¬ 
getable world. {Propert., 4, 2.— Muller, Etiusk., vol. 

1378 


2, p. 51, seq.) Ceres and Pomona were associated 
with him. The Vortumnalia were in October. (Fiaj- 
ro, L. L., 5, p. 57.— Keightley's Mythology, p. 534.) 

Verus, L. iEuus, father of the Emperor Verus, 
was adopted by the Emperor Hadrian, and received 
from him the title of Caesar, A.D. 136. He died, how¬ 
ever, a few months before Hadrian. Verus appears to 
have been of but moderate abilities, and too much ad¬ 
dicted to the pleasures of the table, as well as othei 
indulgences. {Spartian., Vit. Ver .)— II. L. ^Elius, 
Aurelius, Ceionius, Commodus, son of the preceding, 
was adopted by Antoninus Pius, along with Marcus 
Aurelius, in accordance with the express wish of Ha¬ 
drian. At the time of his adoption he was only in the 
seventh year of his age, and he afterward married Lu- 
cilla, the daughter of his adoptive parent. After the 
death of Antoninus Pius, the senate declared Marcus 
Aurelius sole emperor; but this good prince hastened 
to share the throne with his adopted brother Verus. 
The dissimilarity between the characters of these two 
emperors, Aurelius all purity and excellence, and Ve¬ 
rus most profligate and licentious, was, perhaps, the 
cause of the cordial harmony which subsisted between 
them during the course of their common reign. Verus 
took the command of the army which was sent against 
the Parthians, over whom, by the skill and valour of 
his generals, he obtained several considerable victo¬ 
ries, and captured several towns, while he himself was 
revelling in debaucheries at Antioch. At the conclu¬ 
sion of this war, Verus returned to enjoy the honours 
of a triumph which he had no share in obtaining. 
Not long after this, when the war of the Marcomanni 
and other tribes of similar origin broke out, the two 
emperors left Rome to take the field in person against 
these dangerous antagonists. Verus died, however, 
of apoplexy soon after the commencement of the war, 
at the age of 39. In licentiousness and debauchery, 
Verus equalled the worst Roman emperors, but he was 
altogether free from the charge of cruel or tyrannical 
acts. {Capitol., Vit. Ver.) 

Vesevus. Vid. Vesuvius. 

Vespasianus, Titus Flavius, a Roman empercr, 
descended from an obscure family at Reate His val¬ 
our and prudence, but, above all, the influence of Nar¬ 
cissus, the freedman of Claudius, obtained him the con¬ 
sulship, A.D. 52, for the last three months of the year. 
Some years after this, during the reign of Nero, he fell 
into disgrace with that emperor for having suffered 
himself to be overcome by sleep during the reading of 
some of that prince’s poetry. The Jews having revolt¬ 
ed towards the close of the year 64, Nero, who did not 
wish to place at the head of his forces a man whose 
birth or talents might win the favour of the soldiery, 
gave the command to Vespasian. While the latter 
was prosecuting the war with great success, and was 
engaged in the siege of Jerusalem, Nero was cut off; 
Galba hardly reached the capital before he lost his 
crown and life ; Otho, his successor, slew himself af¬ 
ter the defeat at Bedriacum ; and, amid the ferment 
and agitation that everywhere prevailed, the ardour of 
his troops, and the wishes of a large portion of the 
East, induced Vespasian to contest the crown with 
Vitellius. He was proclaimed emperor by his legions, 
July 1st, A.D. 69, and on the 20th December of the 
same year, his general Antonius Primus made himself 
master of Rome. Vespasian obtained possession oj 
the throne in his fifty-ninth year, and became the found¬ 
er of a dynasty which gave three emperors to Rome. 
He was a man of rare and excellent virtues, thorough¬ 
ly matured by a life spent in the exercise of public du¬ 
ties, and with no object superior to that of promoting 
the public welfare. Being well aware of the glaring 
abuses which had long been perpetrated with impuni¬ 
ty in all branches of the administration, he set himself 
vigorously to the dangerous task of effecting a thor 
ough reform. He restored the privileges of the sei 



YESPASIANUh 


VE S 


ate, and gave it once more an actual power in the gov¬ 
ernment. Thi courts of law were also subjected to a 
most salutary reform, and rendered again, what they 
had long ceased to be, courts of justice. The insub¬ 
ordination of the army, which had been the cause of 
so many bloody revolutions, he repressed with a firm 
and steady hand ; and restored, in a great measure, 
the discipline which had made it so powerful in its bet¬ 
ter days. He directed his attention also to the treas¬ 
ury, which had been quite exhausted by the prodigal 
and corrupt expenditure of his predecessors ; and, 
in order to replenish its coffers, he regulated anew the 
tribute and custom-dues of the provinces, and imposed 
a number of taxes ; by which means, though he was 
accused of avarice, he placed once more the revenues 
of the empire on a stable basis, and restored them to a 
flourishing condition. The large sums thus raised 
Vespasian did not expend in revelry, neither did he 
hoard up in useless masses. He rebuilt the temple 
off Jupiter Capitolinus, which had been destroyed du¬ 
ring the tumults that accompanied the fall of Vitellius ; 
and adorned the city with many other public buildings 
of great elegance and splendour ; thus evincing, that, 
though rigorous and exact in his methods of amassing 
treasure, he knew, on proper occasions, how to use it 
with no parsimonious hand. Under him the empire 
began to breathe with fresh life, and to exhibit signs of 
prosperity and happiness, such as it had not known 
since the reign of Augustus. His son Titus being 
raised to the dignity of Caesar, by which name the suc¬ 
cessor to the throne was designated, the peace and 
welfare of the empire seemed secured on a stable ba¬ 
sis. During the reign of Vespasian, the arms of Rome 
were prosperous in various parts of the world. Sev¬ 
eral states bordering on the Roman dominions were 
reduced by his generals to the condition of provinces. 
But the most celebrated, though not the most formi¬ 
dable war which distinguished his reign, was that in 
which he was engaged when he was called to the 
throne, the war against the Jews. This was conduct¬ 
ed by his son Titus after his departure to Rome to 
enter on the possession of imperial power. The events 
of this memorable war are so well known that they 
need not here be detailed. Suffice it to state, that af¬ 
ter Jerusalem had been closely invested, the Jews re¬ 
fused all terms of capitulation, blindly trusted in some 
terrible interposition of divine power to save them and 
consume their enemies, butchered each other with in¬ 
conceivable barbarity during every temporary cessation 
of warfare, enduring the wildest extremes of famine, 
and, after suffering every form and kind of misery, to 
a degree unparalleled in the world’s history, their city 
was taken, and, together with their celebrated temple, 
was reduced to heaps of shapeless ruins; and such of 
them as survived these awful calamities were scatter¬ 
ed over the face of the earth, and rendered a mockery, 
a proverb, and a reproach among nations. In conse¬ 
quence of this victory over the Jews, Titus and the 
emperor enjoyed together the honours of a splendid 
triumph, while the rich vessels of the temple of Jeru¬ 
salem were in gorgeous procession borne in the train 
of the conquerors. 0 Soon after this trimph, the Bata¬ 
vian war broke out, caused by the civil wars for the 
empire, and threatening Rome with the loss of a prov¬ 
ince. It was at length brought to a propitious conclu¬ 
sion by Cerealis, after several sharp encounters, and 
by a treaty rather than a conquest. The Roman arms 
were more successful in Britain during the reign of 
Vespasian and his immediate successor than they had 
previously been. In his younger days, the emperor 
had himself been engaged in British wars; and, being 
desirous of reducing the island completely under the 
Roman yoke, he gave the command to Cneius Julius 
Agricola, a man of extraordinary merit, a general 
and a statesman worthy of the best days of Rome. 
Not only the southern division of the island was sub- 


' dued by this distinguished commander, but even trie 
more remote regions of Caledonia, hitherto impervious 
to the Roman legions, were laid open. The gallant 
resistance of the brave Caledonians, under their leader 
Galgacus, was ineffectual; their untaught valour could 
not withstand the steady discipline of the Roman army, 
and they sustained a severe overthrow at the base of 
the Grampians. The Roman fleet, coasting the shore, 
ascertained the insular character of Britain ; but so 
formidable were the mountain-fastnesses of Caledonia, 
that Agricola did not attempt to penetrate farther into 
the country, contenting himself with constructing a 
chain of forts between the Friths of Clyde and Forth, 
to defend the southern districts, and to restrain the re¬ 
coil and assaults of the unconquered Caledonians. 
Thus glorious abroad and beloved at home, Vespa¬ 
sian’s life began to draw near its termination. Feel¬ 
ing the effects of age and weakness, he retired to Cam¬ 
pania, to enjoy the benefits of a purer air than that of 
Rome, together with some relaxation from the cares 
of state. There he was seized with a malady which 
his own sensations told him would speedily prove mor¬ 
tal. His anticipations proved true; and he expired 
in the arms of his attendants, in the seventieth year of 
his age and the tenth of his reign. It is worthy of 
remark, that Vespasian was the second of the Roman 
emperors that died a natural death, and the first that 
was succeeded by his son. (Hethcringtori’s History 
of Rome , p. 187, seqq.) 

Vesta, a goddess among the Romans, the same 
with the Greek Hestia ('Eoria).. An idea of the sanc¬ 
tity of the domestic hearth {koria), the point of assem¬ 
bly of the family, and the symbol of the social union, 
gave the Greeks occasion to fancy it to be under the 
guardianship of a peculiar deity, whom they named, 
from it, IJestia. This goddess does not appear in the 
poems of Homer, though he had abundant opportuni¬ 
ties of noticing her. By Hesiod ( Theog ., 454) she is 
said to have been the daughter of Saturn and Rhea. 
The hymn to Venus relates that Hestia, Diana, and 
Minerva were the only goddesses that escaped the 
power of the queen of love. When wooed by Nep¬ 
tune and Apollo, Hestia, placing her hand on the head 
of Jupiter, vowed perpetual virginity. Jupiter, in place 
of marriage, gave her “ to sit in the middle of the man¬ 
sion, receiving the choicest portions of the sacrifice, 
and to be honoured in all the temples of the gods.” 
{Hymn, in Ven., 22, seqq.) In the Prytaneum of ev¬ 
ery Grecian city stood the hearth , on which the sacred 
fire flamed, and where the offerings were made to Hes¬ 
tia. {Pind., Nem., 11, 1, seqq ) In that of Athens 
there was a statue of the goddess.—The same obscu¬ 
rity involves the Vesta of the Romans as the corre¬ 
sponding Hestia of the Greeks, with whom she is iden¬ 
tical in name and office ('Ecm'a, Ytaria, Vesta). 
There is every reason to believe her worship to have 
formed part of the religion of the ancient Pelasgian 
population of Latium {Dion. Hal., 2, 66), as it is by 
all testimony carried back to the earliest days of the 
state, and its introduction is ascribed to Numa. {Liv., 
1, 20.— Plut., Vit. Num., 9, seqq.) Like Hestia, she 
was a deity presiding over the public and private hearth: 
a sacred fire, tended by six virgin-priestesses, called 
Vestals, flamed in her temple at Rome. As the safe¬ 
ty of the city was held to be connected with its con¬ 
servation, the neglect of the virgins, if they let it go 
out, was severely punished, and the fire was rekindled 
from the rays of the sun.—The temple of Vesta was 
round : it contained no statue of the goddess. {Ovid, 
Fast., 6, 295, seq.) Her festival, celebrated in June, 
was called Vestatia : plates of meat were sent to the 
Vestals to be offered up ; the millstones were wreathed 
with garlands of flowers, and the mill-asses, also crown¬ 
ed with violets, went about with cakes strung round 
their necks. {Ovid, Fast., 6, 311, seqq. — Propert. 
4, 1, 23.) In the forum at Rome there was a statu* 

1379 




YES 


V I B 


Bt the Stata Mater, placed there that she might pro¬ 
tect the pavement from the effect of the fires which 
used to be made on it in the nighttime. The people 
followed the example, and set up similar statues in 
several of the streets. Stata Mater is generally sup¬ 
posed to have been Vesta. (Keightlcy's Mythology , 
p. 95, 513, scq.) 

Vestales, priestesses among the Romans conse¬ 
crated to the service of Vesta. They are said to 
have been first established by Numa, who appointed 
four. Tarquinius Priscus added two more ; and the 
number continued to be six ever after. The Vestal 
virgins were bound to their ministry for thirty years. 
After thirty years’ service they might leave the temple 
and marry ; which, however, was seldom done, and 
was always reckoned ominous. (Dion. Hal., 2, 67.) 
These priestesses were bound to observe the strictest 
purity of morals. If any one of them violated her vow 
of chastity, she was buried alive in the Campus Scele- 
ratus, and her paramour was scourged to death in the 
Forum. ( Vid . Vesta.) 

Vestini, a mountaineer race of Italy, whose terri¬ 
tory was bounded on the south and southwest by the 
Peligni and Marsi, on the east by the Adriatic, and on 
the north and northwest by the Prastutii and Sabines. 
The history of the Vestini offers no circumstances of 
peculiar interest: they are first introduced to our no¬ 
tice in the Roman annals as allies of the Samnites, to 
whom they are said not to have been inferior in valour ; 
but, being separately attacked by the Romans, the 
Vestini, too weak to make any effectual resistance, 
vvere soon compelled to submit, A.U.C. 451. (Liv., 
8, 29.— Id,., 10, 3.) This people, however, were not 
behind-hand with their neighbours in taking up arms 
on the breaking out of the Social war. They bore ap 
active part in the exertions and perils of that fierce 
and sanguinary contest, and received their share of the 
rights and privileges which, on its termination, were 
granted to the confederates. Their chief city was Pin¬ 
na, now Chita di Penna. ( Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 
1, p. 335.) 

Vesvius. Vid. Vesuvius. 

Vesulus, now Monte Viso , a mountain at the ter¬ 
mination of the Maritime, and commencement of the 
Cottian, Alps. It is celebrated in antiquity as giving 
rise to the Padus or Po. Pliny (3, 16) mentions the 
source as being a remarkable sight. The Po flows 
from two small lakes, the one situate immediately be¬ 
low the highest peak of Monte Viso , the other still 
higher up, between that peak and the lesser one called 
Visoletto. The waters of this second lake find vent 
m a great cavern ; and this, probably, is the source to 
which Pliny alludes. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, 
p. 28.) 

Vesuvius, a mountain of Campania, about six miles 
southeast of Naples, celebrated for its volcano. It ap¬ 
pears to have been first known under the name of Ve- 
sevus ( Lucr ., 6, 747.— Vug., Georg., 2, 224.— Stat., 
Sylv., 4, 8, 4) ; but the appellations of Vesvius and 
Vesbius are no less frequently applied to it. (Sil. 
Ital., 17, 594. — Val. Flacc., 3, 208.— Mart., 4, 44.) 
Strabo describes this mountain as extremely fertile at 
its base, an account in which many ancient writers 
agree, but as entirely barren towards the summit, 
which was mostly level, and full of apertures and 
cracks, seemingly produced by the action of fire; 
whence Strabo was led to conclude that the volcano, 
though once in a state of activity, had been extin¬ 
guished from want of fuel. (Strabo, 246.) Diodorus 
Siculus (4, 21) represents it also as being in a quies¬ 
cent state, since he argues, from its appearance at the 
time he was writing, that it must have been on fire at 
some remote period. The volcano was likewise ap¬ 
parently extinct, when, as Plutarch and Florus relate, 
Spar‘ ;us, with some of his followers, sought refuge 
j: thj '€tvities of the mountain from the pursuit of 
1380 


their enemies, and succeeded in eluding their searen, 
(Pint., Vit. Crass —Flor., 3, 20.— Cramer's Ancient 
Italy, vol. 2, p. 176.)—The first great eruption on rec¬ 
ord took place on the 24th of August, A.D. 79, and 
on the same day the towns of Herculaneum, Pompeii, 
and Stabise were buried under showers of volcanic 
sand, stones, and scoriae. Such was the immense 
quantity of volcanic sand (called ashes) thrown out 
during this eruption, that the whole country was in¬ 
volved in pitchy darkness; and, according to Dun, 
the ashes fell in Egypt, Syria, and various parts of 
Asia Minor. This eruption proved fatal to the elder 
Pliny. He had the command of the Roman fleet on 
the coast of Campania, and, wishing to succour those 
persons who might want to escape by sea, and also to 
observe this grand phenomenon more nearly, he left 
the Cape of Misenurn, and approached the side of the 
bay nearest to Vesuvius. He landed, and advanced 
towards it, but was suffocated by the sulphureous va¬ 
pour.—After this, Vesuvius continued a burning 
mountain for nearly a thousand years, having eruptions 
at intervals. The fire then appeared to become nearly 
extinct, and continued so from the beginning of the 
12th to that of the 16th century. Since the eruption 
of 1506, it has remained burning to the present time, 
with eruptions of lava and ashes at intervals. Vesu¬ 
vius rises to the height of 3600 feet above the sea. 
It has two summits, the more northern one of which 
is called Somma, the other is properly called Vesuvius. 
Somma is supposed to have been part of the cone of a 
larger volcano, nearly concentric with its present cone, 
which, in some great eruption, has destroyed all but 
this fragment. 

VettOnes, a nation of Lusitania, lying along the 
eastern boundary. The city of Augusta Emerita (now 
Merida ) took from them the name of Vettoniana Co- 
lonia. (Cces., Bell. Civ., 1, 38.— Plin., 4, 20.) 

Vetulonii, one of the most powerful and distin 
guished of the twelve cities of Etruria, a few miles tt 
the southwest of Veterna. Its position was long a 
matter of uncertainty, until an Italian antiquary, Xi- 
menes, proved the ruins of the place to exist in a forest 
still called Selva di Vetleta. —If we may believe Silius 
Italicus (8, 488), it was Vetulonii that first used the 
insignia of magistracy common to the Etruscans, and 
with which Rome afterward decorated her consuls and 
dictators. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 187.) 

Veturia, the mother of Coriolanus. (Vid. Coriola- 
nus.) 

Ufens, I. the Aufente, a river of Latium, rising in the 
Volscian Mountains, above Setia and Privernum, and, 
in consequence of the want of a sufficient fall in the 
Pontine plains, through which it passed, contributing, 
with other streams, to form the Pontine marshes. It 
communicated its name, which was originally written 
Oufens, to the tribe Oufentina, according to Lucilius, 
as quoted by Festus (s. v. Oufens ). Virgil alludes to 
its sluggish character. (Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, 
p. 97.)—II. A prince who assisted Turnus against 
TEneas, and was slain by Gyas. He was leader of 
the Nursian forces. (Virg., JEn., 7, 745.— Id. ib., 
10, 518, &c.) 

Ufenttna, or, more correctly, Oufentina, a Roman 
tribe, first created A.U.C. 435, with the tribe Faleri- 
na, in consequence of the great increase of population 
at Rome. (Liv., 9, 20.— Festus, s. v. Oufens. — Vid. 
Ufens.) 

Via, I. .Emilia. (Vid. iEmilia V. and VI.)—II. 
Appia. (Vid. AppiaVia, &c.) 

Viadrus or Viadus, a river of Germany, generally 
regarded as answering to the modern Oder. Rei- 
chard, however, considers the Viadus as the same with 
the Wipper. (Bischoff und Moller, Worterb. dcr 
Geogr., p. 1005.) 

Vibius, I. Crispus, a Latin rhetorician, to whom 
some ascribe the declamation against Cicero which has 




V I 0 


V I N 


^ome down to us. ( Vid . Porcius.)—II. Sequester, a 
Latin writer, who has left a geographical work, con¬ 
taining a kind of nomenclature of rivers, fountains, 
lakes, forests, marshes, mountains, and nations men¬ 
tioned by the poets. The work was compiled for the 
use of Virgilianus, the author’s son. As no ancient 
writer makes mention of this writer, and as his pro¬ 
duction contains no account either of himself, his 
country, or the period when he wrote, his era can only 
be fixed by conjecture. Oberlinus believes that he 
lived after the fall of the Western empire, in the fifth, 
sixth, or seventh century. The same critic regards 
the work as a hasty performance, and as containing, 
besides numerous errors attributable to the copyists, 
some which must be ascribed to the author hirnself. 
Still the work is not without its value, from its con¬ 
taining several names nowhere else mentioned. The 
celebrated Boccacio compiled a production of a simi¬ 
lar nature in the fourteenth century, and made great 
use of the work of Sequester, without ever citing it. 
The best edition of Vibius Sequester is that of Ober¬ 
linus, Argent., 1778, 8 vo. 

V 1 bo, Valentia. Vid. Hipponium. 

Vica Pota, a goddess at Rome, who presided over 
victory (“ potis vincendi atque potiundi .”— Cic., de 
Leg., 2 , 11 .—Consult Goerenz, ad loc. — Senec., Apo- 
coloeynih. — Lin., 2 , 7.) 

Vicentia, a town of Gallia Cisalpina, in the terri¬ 
tory of Venetia, and situate between Patavium and 
Verona. The name is sometimes written Vicetia. 
(Slrab ., 214.— JElian, V. H., 14, 8 .) It is now Vi¬ 
cenza. 

Victor, Sext. Aurelius, I. a Latin historian, born 
in Africa of very humble parents, but who raised him¬ 
self by his merit to some of the highest offices in the 
state. The Emperor Julian, who became acquainted 
with him at Sirmium, A.D. 360, gave him the govern¬ 
ment of the second Pannonia, and erected in honour 
of him a statue of bronze. Ammianus Marcellinus, 
who states this fact, informs us also that AureliusVic- 
tor was conspicuous for the purity of his moral char¬ 
acter (21, 10 ). Sixteen years after this, Theodosius 
the Great appointed him prefect of Rome. The pe¬ 
riod of his death is not ascertained. The manner in 
which he speaks of the apotheosis of Antinoiis, the fa¬ 
vourite of Hadrian, shows that he was not a Christian. 
Three works are ascribed to this writer. The first 
bears the title of Ongo gentis Romance , to which a 
long additional title has been given by the copyists. 
What we have remaining of this work comprises only 
the first year of Rome : it contains extracts from works 
now lost, and makes us acquainted with several cir¬ 
cumstances of which no other writer speaks. The 
opinion which assigns this work to Aurelius Victor, 
however, has no historical fact whatever to serve as a 
basis; it is contrary, also, to the conviction of the gram¬ 
marians, to whom we owe the long additional title al¬ 
ready mentioned. These grammarians regard the 
work as subsequent to the time of Aurelius Victor — 
The second work is entitled “ De Viris illustribus 
Romce ,” and contains the lives of various illustrious 
Romans, commencing with the seven kings of Rome, 
and also biographies of some eminent foreigners, such 
as HannibaCAntiochus, and Mithradates. This work, 
inferior in style to the former, has been sometimes as¬ 
cribed to Cornelius Nepos, to Suetonius, or to Pliny 
the Younger. It is possible that it is an abridgment 
merely of Cornelius Nepos, whose w T ork bears a simi¬ 
lar title. The third work is entitled “ De Ccesaribus, 
sive historice abbreviatce pars altera, ab Augusto Oc- 
iaviano, id est, a fine Titi Livii usque ad Consulatum 
dccvmum Constantii Augusti et. Juliani Ccesaris tcr- 
tium .” This production is written in a concise and 
easy style, and the author has had access to good 
sources of information, of which he avails himself with 
impartiality.—The best editions of Aurelius Victor 


are that of Pitiscus, c. n. variorum , Traj. ad Rh., 
1696, 8 vo, and that of Arntzenius, Amst., 1733, 4to. 
—II. Surnamed, for distinction’ sake, the Younger, a 
contemporary of Orosius, who made an abridgment of 
one of the works of the elder Victor (the third above 
mentioned), which he entitled “ Epitome de Ccesari¬ 
bus or, according to others, “ De Vita et Moribus 
Imperatorurn Romanorum ,” and which he continued 
down to the death of Theodosius the Great. He 
made some changes also in the original work, and 
added some new facts and circumstances. ( Scholl, 
Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 3, p. 171.) 

Victoria, one of the deities of the Romans, called 
by the Greeks N//C 77 . The goddess of Victory was 
sister to Strength and Valour, and was one of the at¬ 
tendants of Jupiter. Sylla raised her a temple at 
Rome, and instituted festivals in her honour. She 
was represented with wings, crowned with laurel, and 
holding the branch of a palm-tree in her hand. A 
golden statue of this goddess, weighing 320 pounds, 
was presented to the Romans by Hiero, king of Syra¬ 
cuse, and deposited in the temple of Jupiter on the 
Capitoline Hill. ( Varro, de L. L. — Hygin., prcefi 
fab.) 

Victorinus, an African philosopher, who became a 
convert to Christianity, and flourished in the fourth 
century. He gained such a degree of reputation by 
teaching rhetoric at Rome, that a statue was erected 
to him in one of the public places. He was led to the 
perusal of the Scriptures by the study of Plato’s works. 
He was the author of several works of no great value 
contained in the Bibliotheca Patrum. 

V 1 ducasses, a people of Gallia Lugdunensis Se- 
cunda, on both sides of the river Olina or Orne. 
Their chief city was Araegenus, now Bayeux. ( Plin ., 
4, 18.) 

Vienna, a city of the Allobroges, in Gallia Trans- 
alpina, on the banks of the Rhone, famed for its wealth 
and the civilization of its inhabitants. At a later pe¬ 
riod it became the capital of the province of Vien- 
nesis, and in the fifth century the residence of the Bur¬ 
gundian kings. It is now Vienne. The classical name 
of this place must not be confounded with the modern 
appellation of the ancient Vindobona, on the Danube. 

( Cces ., B. G., 7, 9.— Tac., Ann., 11 , 1.— Mela, 2 , 5. 
—Pliny , 3, 4— Amm. Marc., 15, 11 .) 

Villia Lex, Annalis or Annaria, by L. Villius, the 
tribune, A.U.C. 574, defined the proper age required 
for holding offices. There seems, however, to have 
been some regulation of the kind even before this 
{Livy, 40, 43.— Id., 25, 2 ) 

Viminalis, one of the seven hills on which Rome 
was built, so called from the number of osiers ( vimina ) 
which grew there. Servius Tullius first made it part 
of the city. Jupiter had a temple there, whence he 
was called Viminalis. {Livy, 1 , 44.— Varro, L. L., 
4, 8 .— Festus, s. v. Viminal.) 

Vindelici, a people of Germany, whose territory, 
called Vindelicia, extended from the city of Brigantia, 
on the Lacus Brigantinus, or Lake of Constance, to 
the Danube ; while the lower part of the CEnus or 
Inn separated it from Noricum. Their country an¬ 
swered, therefore, to part of Wirtemberg and Bavaria. 
This nation derived their name from the two rivers 
which water their territory, viz., the Vindo and Licus, 
now the Wertach and the Lech. In the angle formed 
by the two rivers was situate their capital, Augusta 
Vindelicorum, now Augsburg. {Cluver., vol. 1 , p. 
412, seqq. — Mannert, Geogr., vol. 3, p. 518, seqq. — 
Horat., Od., 4, 4, 18.) 

Vindex, Julius, a governor of Gaul, who revolted 
against Nero, and determined to deliver the Roman 
empire from his tyranny. He wrote to Galba, then in 
Spain, to take the chief command, and aid him in ef. 
fecting his purpose ; but, before any junction could be 
effected, he was defeated by the forces of Virginius 

1381 



V I R 


VIRGILIUS. 


Rufus, and destroyed himself. ( Sueton., Vit. Galb., 
9. — Id. ib., 11. — Plut., Vit. Galb., 4. — Dio Cass., 
63, 23, seqq.) 

Vindioius, a slave who discovered the conspiracy to 
restore Tarquin to his throne. ( Vid . Brutus I.) 

Vinius, T., a friend of Galba’s, who, on the acces¬ 
sion of the latter to the imperial throne, became con¬ 
sul, commander of the praetorian guards, and principal 
minister of the new monarch. He employed his new¬ 
ly-acquired power, however, in criminal and oppress¬ 
ive acts, plundering others to enrich himself. Vin¬ 
ius advised Galba to adopt Otho for his successor ; 
but, Galba having nominated Piso, Otho revolted, de¬ 
throned Galba, and Vinius perished along with the 
latter, notwithstanding his vehement protestations to 
the soldiery that Otho had not ordered his death. It 
is probable that Vinius was implicated in the conspir¬ 
acy of Otho itself against his friend and protector. 
{Tacit., Hist., 1, 11, &c.) 

Virbius (qui vir bis fuit), a name given to Hippol- 
Vtus after he had been brought back to life by HCscu- 
lapius, at the instance of Diana, who pitied his unfor¬ 
tunate end. Virgil makes him son of Hippolytus. 
(JSn., 7, 762 .—Ovid, Met., 15, 544.) 

Virgilius, Maro Publius, a celebrated Latin poet, 
born at the village of Andes, a few miles distant from 
Mantua, about 70 B.C. It has been disputed whether 
his name should be Vergilius or Virgilius. “ De scrip- 
tura nominis, ” says Heyne, “ digladiati sunt inter se 
cum veteres turn recentiores grammatici .” The let¬ 
ters e and i were frequently convertible in the old Lat¬ 
in language ; and sanction may be found for either 
mode of spelling, both in MSS. and inscriptions. At 
the revival of letters, Politian contended strenuous¬ 
ly for Vergilius ; but even his authority was not suffi¬ 
cient to bring this orthography into general practice. 
There exist but few authentic materials from which 
we can collect any circumstances concerning the life 
of the poet. We possess only some scattered remarks 
of ancient commentators or grammarians, and a life 
by Donatus, of very dubious authority. It bears the 
name of Tiberius Claudius Donatus, who lived in the 
fifth century, some time after ^Elius Donatus, so well 
known as a commentator on Terence. Heyne thinks 
that the basis of the Life was laid by Donatus, but that 
it was altered and interpolated from time to time by 
the grammarians, and librarians of the convents. It 
is thus apparently written without any arrangement in 
the series of events, and many things are recorded 
which are manifestly fictitious. The monks, indeed, 
of the middle ages seem to have conspired to accumu¬ 
late fables concerning Virgil.—It appears that Virgil’s 
father was a man of low birth, and that, at one period 
of his life, he was engaged in the meanest employ¬ 
ments. According to some authorities he was a pot¬ 
ter or brickmaker ; and, according to others, the hire¬ 
ling of a travelling merchant, called Magus or Maius. 
He so ingratiated himself, however, with his master, 
that he received his daughter Maia in marriage, and 
was intrusted with the charge of a farm which his 
father-in-law had acquired in the vicinity of Mantua. 
Our poet was the offspring of these humble parents. 
The cradle of illustrious men, like the origin of cele¬ 
brated nations, has been frequently surrounded by the 
marvellous. Hence the dream of his mother Maia, 
that she had brought forth a branch of laurel, and the 
prodigy of the swarm of bees which lighted on the lips 
of the infant. The studies of Virgil commenced at 
Cremona, where he remained till he assumed the toga 
virilis ; and to this day the inhabitants of Cremona 
pretend to show a house, in the street of St. Barthol¬ 
omew, in which Virgil resided when a youth. {Cre¬ 
mona Literata , 2, p. 401, ap. Fabr., Bibl. Lat., lib. 1 , 
c. 12.) At the age of sixteen he removed to Medio¬ 
lanum, and shortly afterward to Neapolis, where he 
laid the foundation of that multifarious learning which 
1 382 


shines so conspicuously in the JE> neid, and which he 
employed with so much judgment as richly to meri 
the eulogy of Macrobius, “ Virgilius quern nullius un- 
quam disciplinae error involvit.” {In Somn., Scip., 2, 
8.) During his residence in this city he perused the 
most celebrated Greek writers, being instructed in 
their language and literature by Parthenius Nicenus 
{Macrob., Sat., 5, 17), well known as the author of a 
collection of amatory tales, which he wrote for the use 
of Cornelius Gallus, in order to furnish him with ma¬ 
terials for elegies and other poems. Virgil likewise 
carefully read the Greek historians, particularly Thu¬ 
cydides {Murcti Opera, vol. 2, p. 312, ed. Ruhnfc .), 
and he studied the Epicurean system of philosophy 
under Syro, a celebrated teacher of that sect. But 
medicine and mathematics were the sciences to which 
he was chiefly addicted ; and to this early tincture of 
geometrical knowledge may, perhaps, in some degree, 
be ascribed his ideas of luminous order and masterly 
arrangement, and that regularity of thought, as well 
as exactness of expression, by which all his writings 
were distinguished.—Virgil, it is well known, was re¬ 
garded as a wizard during the dark ages. His char¬ 
acter as an adept in magic probably originated in his 
knowledge of mathematics ; in the Pharmaceutria of 
his eighth eclogue ; in his revelation of the secrets of 
the unknown world in the sixth book of the ^Eneid ; 
and in the report that he had ordered his books to be 
burned, which naturally created a suspicion that he had 
disclosed in them the mysteries of the black art, In 
whatever way it may have originated, the belief in his 
magic powers appears to have prevailed as soon as man¬ 
kind lost the refinement of taste which enabled them 
to appreciate his exquisite productions. The current 
fictions concerning the magical operations of Virgil 
were first incorporated about the beginning of the thir¬ 
teenth century, in the “ Otia Imperialia" ot Gervase 
of Tilbury, chancellor of the Emperor Otho IV., to 
whom he presented his extravagant compilation. The 
fables of Gervase were transcribed by Helinandus the 
monk, in his “ Universal Chronicle and similar tales 
were related in the work of Neckham, “ De Naturis 
Rerum, ” and in “ The Seven Wise Masters .” Such 
books supplied materials for the old French romances 
of “ Vergilius,” and the English “ Lyfe of Vergilius ,” 
in which stories are told of miraculous palaces, won¬ 
derful lamps, and magical statues which he construct¬ 
ed. Vergilius, the sorcerer of the middle ages, is 
identified and connected with the author of the JEneid, 
from several circumstances being related of the for¬ 
mer in the romances which actually occurred in the 
life of the poet, particularly his residence at Naples, 
and the loss of his inheritance, which he recovered 
by the favour of the emperor of Rome. It was also 
a common opinion in the fourteenth and fifteenth cen¬ 
turies, as appears from the writings of that age, that 
the Mantuan bard and the sorcerer were one and 
the same person. It is somewhat in the same spir¬ 
it that a learned and ingenious writer of our own 
days seeks to convert the bard into a member of the 
Druid priesthood ! {Higgins' Celtic Druids , p. 32.) 
—Donatus affirms, that, after Virgil had finished his 
education at Naples, he went to Rome, where his 
skill in the diseases of all sorts of animals procured him 
an appointment in the stables of the emperor. Stories 
are related concerning his prediction as to the defects 
of a colt, which, to all the jockeys of the Augustan 
age, appeared to promise remarkable swiftness and 
spirit; and concerning a query propounded to him, as 
if he had been a sorcerer, with regard to the parentage 
of Augustus ; all which are evidently inventions of the 
middle ages, and bear, indeed, much resemblance to 
a tale in the Cento Novelle Antiche, as also to the 
stories of the “Three Sharpers,” and the “Sultan ol 
Yemen with his three Sons,” published some years 
ago in Mr. Scott’s additional volume to the Arabia! 




VIRGILIUS. 


VIRGILIUS. 


Pales.—It does not seem certain, or even probable, 
that Virgil went at all to Rome from Naples. It rath¬ 
er appears that he returned to his native country, and 
to the charge of his paternal farm ; and if, as is gen¬ 
erally supposed, he intended to describe his own life 
and character under the person of Tityrus, in the first 
eclogue, it is evident that he did not visit Rome until 
after the battle of Philippi, and consequent division of 
the lands among the soldiery. Some poems which 
are still extant, as the Culex and Ciris, were at one 
time believed to have been the fruits of his genius at 
this early period. We are also told, that, in the 
warmth of his earliest youth, he had formed the bold 
design of writing, in imitation of Ennius, a poem on the 
wars of Rome, but that he was deterred from proceeding 
by the ruggedness of the ancient Italian names, which 
wounded the delicacy of his ear. It seems certain, at 
east, that, previous to the composition of his Eclogues, 
he had made imperfect attempts in the higher depart¬ 
ments of heroic poetry. ( Eclog ., 6, 3.)—The battle 
of Mutina ( Modena) was fought in 711 A.U.C., and 
the triumvirate having been shortly afterward formed, 
Asinus Pollio was appointed, on the part of Antony, 
to the command of the district in which the farm of 
Virgil lay. Pollio, who was a noted extortioner, lev¬ 
ied enormous contributions from the inhabitants of the 
territory intrusted to his care ; and, in some install c.o, 
when the pecuniary supplies failed, he drove the an¬ 
cient colonists from their lands, and settled his veterans 
in their place. He was fond, however, of poetry, and 
was a generous protector of literary man. The rising 
genius of Virgil had now begun to manifest itself. His 
poetic talents and amiable manners recommended him 
to the favour of Pollio ; and, so long as that chief 
continued in command of the Mantuan district, he was 
relieved from all exaction, and protected in the peace¬ 
able possession of his property. Residing constantly 
in the country, and captivated with the rural beauties 
of the IdyIlia of Theocritus, Virgil early became ambi¬ 
tious of introducing this new species of poetry into his 
native land ; and, accordingly, he seems to have bent 
his chief endeavours at this time to imitate and rival 
the sweet Sicilian. The eclogue entitled 11 Alexis, 1 '' 
which is usually placed second in the editions of his 
works, is supposed to have been his first pastoral pro¬ 
duction, and to have been written in 711, the year in 
which Pollio came to assume the military command 
of the territory where our poet resided. It was quick¬ 
ly followed by the “ Daphnis" and “ Silenus,” as also 
by the “ Palcemon,” in which he boasts of the favour 
of Pollio, and expresses his gratitude for the favour 
that leader had extended to him. But the tranquillity 
he enjoyed under the protection of Pollio was of short 
duration. Previously to the battle of Philippi, the tri¬ 
umvirs had promised to their soldiers the lands be¬ 
longing to some of the richest towns in the empire. 
Augustus returned to Italy in 712, after his victory 
at Philippi, and found it necessary, in order to satisfy 
their claims, to commence a division of lands in Italy 
vn a more extensive scale even than he had intended. 
x n that country there were considerable territories 
which had been originally and legally the patrimony of 
the state. But extensive tracts of this species of pub¬ 
lic property had, from time to time, been appropriated 
by corporations and individuals, who were unwilling 
to be disturbed in their possessions. Julius Caesar 
had set the example of reclaiming these farms and 
colonizing them with his soldiers. His successor now 
undertook a similar but more extensive distribution. 
In the middle and south of Italy, however, the lands 
were chiefly private inheritance, or had been so long 
retained by individuals that a claim had been acquired 
to them by length of possession ; but in the north of 
Italy they were for the most part public property, on 
which colonists nad been more recently settled. 1 hese 
were the lands firs* assigned to the soldiers; and the 


district to the north of the Po was, in consequence 
chiefly affected by the partition. Cremona had, un 
fortunately, espoused the cause of Brutus, and thus 
peculiarly incurred the vengeance of the victorious 
party. But as its territory was not found adequate to 
contain the veteran soldiers of the triumvirs, among 
whom it had been divided, the deficiency was supplied 
from the neighbouring district of Mantua, in which the 
farm of Virgil lay. The discontent which this op¬ 
pressive measure created in Italy, being augmented 
by the artifices of Fulvia and Lucius Antony, the 
wife and brother of the triumvir, gave rise to the war 
which terminated favourably for Augustus with the 
capture of Perugia. Pollio, being a zealous partisan 
of Antony, and supporting the party of his brother 
and Fulvia, who unsuccessfully opposed the division 
of the lands, had it probably no longer in his pow- 
f*' to protect Virgil from the aggressions of the sol¬ 
diers. He was dispossessed under circumstances of 
peculiar violence, and which even threatened dan¬ 
ger to his personal safety ; being compelled on one 
occasion to escape the fury of the centurion Arrius 
by swimming over the Mincius. He had the good 
fortune, however, to obtain the favour of Alphenus 
Varus, with whom he had studied philosophy at Na 
pies, under Syro the Epicurean, and who now ei¬ 
ther succeeded Pollio in the command of the district, 
or was appointed by Augustus to superintend in that 
quarter the division of the lands. Under his protec¬ 
tion Virgil twice repaired to Rome, where he was 
received, not only by Maecenas, but by Augustus him¬ 
self, from whom he procured the restoration of the 
patrimony of which he had been deprived. This hap¬ 
pened in the commencement of the year 714; and du¬ 
ring the course of that season, in gratitude for the fa¬ 
vours he had received, he composed his eclogue enti¬ 
tled Tityrus, in which he introduces two shepherds, 
one of whom laments the distraction of the times, and 
complains of the aggressions of the soldiery, while 
the other rejoices over the recovery of his farm, and 
vows ever to honour as a god the youth who had re¬ 
stored it. The remaining eclogues, with the excep¬ 
tion, perhaps, of the tenth, called “ Gallics” were pro¬ 
duced in the course of this and the following year.— 
Virgil had now spent three years in the composition 
of pastoral poetry and in constant residence on his 
farm, except during the two journeys to Rome which 
he was compelled to undertake for its preservation. 
In his pastorals, however, though written in his native 
fields, we do not find many delineations of Mantuan 
scenery, or very frequent allusions to the Mincius and 
its borders. His great object was to enrich his na¬ 
tive language with a species of poetry unknown in 
Latium, and, to promote his success, he chose Theoc¬ 
ritus as his model. With few attempts at invention, 
he pretended to little more than the merit of being the 
first Roman who had imitated the Sicilian poet, and 
hence he did not hesitate to borrow, not only the sen¬ 
timents and images, but even the rural descriptions of 
his master.—The situation of Virgil’s residence was 
low and humid, and the climate chill at certain sea¬ 
sons of the year. His delicate constitution, and the 
pulmonary complaint with which he was affected, in¬ 
duced him, about the year 714 or 715, when he had 
reached the age of thirty, to seek a warmer sky. To 
this change, it may be conjectured, he was farther in¬ 
stigated by his increasing celebrity and the extension 
of his poetic fame. His countrymen were captivated 
by the perfect novelty of pastoral composition, and by 
the successful boldness with which Virgil had trans¬ 
ferred the sweet Sicilian strains to a language which, 
before his attempt, must have appeared, from its hard 
ness and severity, but little adapted to be a vehicle for 
the softness of rural description or the delicacy of am¬ 
orous sentiment, and which had scarcely yet been 
polished or refined to the susceptibility of such smooth 

1383 



VIRGILIUS. 


VIRGILIUS. 


numbers as the pastoral muse demanded. The Bu¬ 
colics accordingly were relished and admired by all 
classes of his contemporaries. So universal was their 
popularity, that the philosophic eclogue of Silenus, 
soon after its composition, was publicly recited in the 
theatre by Cytheris, a celebrated actress of mimes.— 
On quitting his paternal fields, Virgil first proceeded 
to the capital. Here his private fortune was consid¬ 
erably augmented by the liberality of Maecenas {Mar¬ 
tial, 8, 56) ; and such was the favour he possessed 
with his patron, that we find him, soon after his arri¬ 
val at Rome, introducing Horace to the notice of the 
minister ( Hor ., Sat., 1, 6), and attending him, along 
with that poet, on a political mission to Brundistum. 
Nor did Virgil enjoy less favour with the emperor him¬ 
self than with his minister. It is said that he never 
asked anything of Augustus that was refused ; and Do- 
natus even affirms, though, it must be confessed, with¬ 
out the least probability, that Augustus consulted him 
with regard to his resignation of the government, as a 
sort of umpire between Agrippa and Maecenas. It 
was probably during this period of favour with the 
emperor and his minister that Virgil contributed the 
verses in celebration of the deity who presided over 
the gardens of Maecenas ; and wrote, though without 
acknowledging it, that well-known distich in honour 
of Augustus, 

“ Node plait tota; redeunt spedacula mane; 

Divisum imperium cum, Jove Ccesar habet .” 

riie story goes on to relate, that Bathyllus, a con¬ 
temptible poet of the day, claimed these verses as his 
own, and was liberally rewarded. Vexed at the im¬ 
posture, Virgil again wrote the verses in question near 
the palace, and under them, 

“ Hos ego versiculos feci, tulit alter honores ; 
with the beginning of another line in these words, 

u Sic vos non vobis ,” 

four times repeated. Augustus wished the lines to be 
finished ; Bathyllus seemed unable ; and Virgil at last, 
by completing the stanza in the following order, 

“ Sic vos non vobis nidificatis aves ; 

Sic vos non vobis vellera fertis oves ; 

Sic vos non vobis mellificatis apes ; 

Sic vos non vobis fertis aratra loves,” 

proved hims ( elf to be the author of the distich, and the 
poetical usurper became the sport and ridicule of 
Rome. During his residence at Rome, Virgil inhab¬ 
ited a house on the Esquiline Hill, which was fur¬ 
nished with an excellent library, and was pleasantly 
situated near the gardens of Maecenas. The supposed 
site, and even ruins of this mansion, were long shown 
to modern travellers.—Yet, however enviable was 
Virgil’s present lot, the bustle and luxury of an im¬ 
mense capital were little suited to his taste, to his 
early habits, or to the delicacy of his constitution, 
while the observance and attention he met with were 
strongly repugnant to the retiring modesty of his dis¬ 
position. Such was the popularity which he derived 
from his general character and talents, that, on one 
occasion, when some of his verses were recited in the 
theatre, the whole audience rose to salute Virgil, who 
was present, with the same respect which they would 
nave paid to the emperor. ( I)e Cans. corr. eloq., c. 
13.) And so great was the annoyance which he felt 
on being gazed at and followed in the streets of Rome, 
that he sought shelter, it is said, in the nearest shops 
or alleys from public observation. — At the period 
when Virgil enjoyed so much honour and popularity 
in the cap'tal, Naples was a favourite retreat of illus- 
1384 


trious and literary men. Thither Virgil retired about 
A.U.C. 717, when in the thirty-third year of his age; 
and he continued, during the remainder of his life, to 
dwell chiefly in that city, or at a delightful villa which 
he possessed in the Campania Felix, in the neighbour¬ 
hood of Nola, ten miles east of Naples, leading a life 
which may be considered as happy when compared 
with the fate of the other great epic poets, Homer, 
Tasso, and Milton, in whom the mind or the vision 
was darkened. About the time when he first went to 
reside at Naples, he commenced his Georgies by or¬ 
der of Maecenas, and continued, for the seven follow¬ 
ing years, closely occupied with the composition of 
that inimitable poem. During this long period he was 
accustomed to dictate a number of verses in the morn¬ 
ing, and to spend the rest of the day in revising and 
correcting them, or reducing them to a smaller num¬ 
ber, comparing himself in this respect to a she-bear, 
which licks her misshapen offspring into proper form 
and proportion. ( Aul. Gcll., N. A., 17, 10.) Little 
is known concerning the other circumstances of Vir¬ 
gil’s life during the years in which he was employed in 
perfecting his Georgies. He had a dispute, it is said, 
with his neighbours, the inhabitants of Nola, from 
whom he requested permission to convey a small 
stream of water into his villa, which was adjacent to 
their town. The citizens would not grant the favour, 
and the offended poet expunged the name of Nola from 
the following lines of his Georgies, 

“ Talem dives arat Capua, et Vicina Vesevo 
Nola jugo —” 

and substitued the word ora instead of the obnoxious 
city. {Aul. Gell., N. A., 7, 20.) The story, howev¬ 
er, is entitled to no credit. {Vid. Nola.)—The genius 
of Virgil, being attended with some degree of diffi¬ 
dence, seems to have gained, by slow steps, the meas¬ 
ure of confidence which at length imboldened him to 
attempt epic poetry. He had begun his experience in 
verse with humble efforts in the pastoral line ; though 
even there we behold his ardent Muse frequently 
bursting the barriers by which she ought naturally to 
have been restrained. He next undertook the bolder 
and wider topic of husbandry ; and it was not till he 
had finished this subject with unrivalled success that 
he presumed to write the iEneid. This poem, which 
occupied him till his death, was commenced in 724, 
the same year in which he had completed his Geor¬ 
gies. After he had been engaged for some time in 
its composition, the greatest curiosity and interest 
concerning it began to be felt at Rome. A work, it 
was generally believed, was in progress, which would 
eclipse the fame of the Iliad {Propert., 2, 34, 66); 
and the passage which describes the shield of ^Eneas 
appears to have been seen by Propertius. Augustus 
himself at length became desirous of reading the 
poem so far as it had been carried ; and, in the year 
729, while absent from Rome on a military expedition 
against the Cantabrians, he wrote to the author from 
the extremity of his empire, entreating him to be al¬ 
lowed a perusal of it. Macrobius has preserved one 
of Virgil’s answers to Augustus: “I have of late re¬ 
ceived from you frequent letters. With regard to my 
^Eneas, if, by Hercules, it were worth your listening 
to, I would willingly send it. But so vast is the un¬ 
dertaking, that I almost appear to myself to have com¬ 
menced such a work from some defect in judgment or 
understanding ; especially since, as you know, other 
and far higher studies are required for such a perform¬ 
ance.” {Sat., 1, 24.)—Prevailed on, at length, by 
these importunities, Virgil, about a year after the re¬ 
turn of Augustus, recited to him the sixth book, in 
presence of his sister Octavia, who had recently lost 
her only son Marcellus, the darling of Rome, and the 
adopted child of Augustus. The poet, probably, ir 
the prospect of this recitation, had inserted the affect 




VIRGILIUS. 


VIRGILIUS. 


mg passage in which he alludes to the premature 
death of the beloved youth : 

“ 0 nate, ingentem luctum ne qucere tuorum ,” &c. 

But he had skilfully suppressed the name of Marcellus 
till he came to the line, 

“ Tu Marcellus eris—manibus date lilia plenis .” 

It may well be believed that the widowed mother 
of Marcellus swooned away at the pathos of these 
verses, which no one, even at this day, can read un¬ 
moved. Virgil is said to have received from the 
ai.iicted parent 10,000 sesterces ( dena sestertia) for 
e<»ch \ erse of this celebrated passage.—It was much 
the practice among the Roman poets to read their 
productions aloud ; and Virgil is said to have recited 
his verses with wonderful sweetness and propriety of 
articulation. During the composition of the Eneid, 
he occasionally repeated portions of it to those friends 
whose criticisms he thought might improve the pas¬ 
sage he rehearsed. Eros, his librarian and freedman, 
used to relate, when far advanced in life, that, in the 
course of his reciting, his master had extemporarily 
filled up two hemistichs; the one was “ Misenum 
jEohden ,” to which he immediately added, “ quo non 
prastantior alter," and the other the half verse fol¬ 
lowing, “ Jfirc ciere viros ,” to which, as if struck by 
poetic inspiration, he subjoined, “ Martemque accen- 
dere cantu ,* ’ and he immediately ordered his amanu¬ 
ensis to insert these additions in their proper places in 
the manuscript of his poem.—Having brought the 
^Eneid to a conclusion, but not the perfection which 
he wished to bestow upon it, Virgil, contrary to the 
advice and wish of his friends, resolved to travel into 
Greece, that he might correct and polish this great 
production at leisure in that land of poetic imagination. 
It was on undertaking this voyage that Horace ad¬ 
dressed to him the affectionate ode beginning, 

“ Sic te Diva potens Cypri ,” &c. (1, 3). 

Virgil proceeded directly to Athens, where he com¬ 
menced the revisal of his epic poem, and added the 
magnificent introduction to the third book of the 
Georgies. He had been thus engaged for some months 
at Athens, when Augustus arrived at that city, on his 
return to Italy, from a progress through his eastern do¬ 
minions. When he embarked for Greece, it had been 
the intention of Virgil to have spent three years in that 
country in the correction of his poem ; after which he 
proposed to pass his days in his native country of Man¬ 
tua, and devote the rest of his life to the study of philoso¬ 
phy, or to the composition of some great historical poem. 
The arrival of Augustus, however, induced him to short¬ 
en his stay, and to embrace the opportunity of returning 
to Italy in the retinue of the emperor. But the hand of 
death was already upon him. From his youth he had 
been of a delicate constitution ; and, as age advanced, 
he was afflicted with frequent headaches, asthma, and 
spitting of blood. Even the climate of Naples could 
not preserve him from frequent attacks of these mala¬ 
dies, and their worst symptoms had increased during 
his residence in Greece. The vessel in which he 
embarked with the emperor touched at Megara, where 
he was seized with great debility and languor. When 
he again went on board, his distemper was so increased 
by the motion and agitation of the vessel, that he ex¬ 
pired a few days after he had landed at Brundisium, 
on the southeastern coast of Italy. His death happen¬ 
ed A.U.C. 734, when he was in the 51st year of his 
age. When he felt its near approach, he ordered his 
friends Varius and Plotius Tucca, who were then with 
him, to burn the Eneid as an imperfect poem. The 
ancient classical authorities only say that Virgil com¬ 
manded the Eneid to be burned. ( Plin ., 7, 30.— 
Atxl. Cell., TV. A., 17, 10.— Macrob ., Sat., 1, 24.) 

8 N 


Donatus says that he had ordered it to be burned, but 
adds, that on Varius and Tucca representing to him 
that Augustus would not permit it to be destroyed, 
he committed it to them for revisal and correction 
Moreri relates the story as it is told by Macrobius, 
Aulus Gellius, and Pliny ; and Bayle, as usual, rep¬ 
rehends him because he has not given it accord¬ 
ing to the version of Donatus. Augustus, however, 
interposed to save a work which he no doubt saw 
would at once confer immortality on the poet and on 
the prince who patronised him. It was accordingly 
intrusted to Varius and Tucca, with a power to revise 
and retrench, but with a charge that they should make 
no additions ; a command which they so strictly ob¬ 
served as not to complete even the hemistichs which 
had been left imperfect. They are said, however, to 
have struck out twenty-two verses from the second 
book, where Eneas, perceiving Helen amid the smo¬ 
king ruins of Troy, intends to slay her, till his design 
is prevented by his goddess mother. (Consult Ca- 
trou , CEuvres de Virgile; Dissert, sur le 2d livre 
de 1'Eneide, note 10.) These lines, accordingly, were 
wanting in. many of the ancient manuscripts, but they 
have been subsequently restored to their place. There 
was also a report long current, that Varius had made 
a change, which still subsists, in the arrangement oi 
two of the books, by transposing the order of the sec¬ 
ond and third, the latter having stood first in the ori¬ 
ginal manuscript. According to some accounts, the 
four lines “ Illc ego quondam," &c., which are still 
prefixed to the .Eneid in many editions, were expun 
ged by Varius and Tucca ; but, according to others, 
they never were written by Virgil, and are no better 
than an interpolation of the middle ages.—Virgil be- 
qi:< Vffl the greater part of his wealth, which was dbn 
suit!.. <ie, to a brother. The remainder was divided 
among his patron Maecenas, and his friends Varius and 
Tucca. Before his death, he had also commanded 
that his bones should be carried to Naples, where he 
had lived so long and so happily. This order was ful¬ 
filled, under charge of Augustus himself. Accord¬ 
ing to the most ancient tradition and the most com¬ 
monly received opinion, the tomb of Virgil lies about 
two miles to the north of Naples, on the slope of the 
hill of Pausilippo, and over the entrance to the grotto 
or subterraneous passage which has been cut through 
its ridge, on the road leading from Naples to Puteoli. 
Cluverius and Addison, indeed, have placed the tomb 
on the other side of Naples, near the foot of Mount 
Vesuvius ; but the other opinion is based upon the 
common tradition of the country, and accords with the 
belief of Petrarch, Sannazarius, and Bembo: it may 
still be cherished, therefore, by the traveller who climbs 
the hill of Pausilippo, and he may still think that he 
hails the shade of Virgil on the spot where his ashes 
repose. Notwithstanding, however, the veneration 
which the Romans entertained for the works of Virgil, 
his sepulchre was neglected before the time of Martial, 
who declares that Silius Italicus first restored its long- 
forgotten honours. What is at present called the 
tomb, is in the form of a small, square, flat-roofed 
building, placed on a sort of platform, near the brow 
of a precipice, on one side, and on the other sheltered 
by a superincumbent rock. Half a century ago, when 
More travelled in Italy, an ancient laurel (a shoot, per¬ 
haps, of the same which Petrarch had planted) over¬ 
hung the simple edifice. ( More's Travels, Letter 65.) 
Within the low vaulted cell was once placed the urn 
supposed to contain the ashes of Virgil. Pietro Ste- 
fano, who lived in the thirteenth century, mentions 
that he had seen the urn, with the epitaph inscribed on 
it, which is said to have been written by the poet him 
self a few moments before his death : 

“ Mantua me genu it; Calabri rapuere, tenet nun-- 
Parthenope. Cecini pascua, rura, duces." 

1385 






VIRGILIUS. 


VIRGILIUS. 


It was a common practice among the Latin poets to 
write their own epitaphs ; and, if the above distich be 
the production of Virgil himself, it is eminently ex¬ 
pressive of that modesty which is universally allowed 
to have been one of the many amiable features of his 
character, and which is by no means observable in the 
epitaphs composed for themselves by Ennius and Nae- 
vius. The Italian writer just cited also remarks, 
that Robert of Anjou, apprehensive for the safety of 
such a relic during the civil wars, had the urn conveyed 
to Castel Nuovo. It seems that so much care was 
taken, that it was concealed too well to be ever after¬ 
ward discovered.—We have seen that, at Rome, Vir¬ 
gil avoided ail public honours, and was disconcerted 
by marks of general admiration. But, though he 
loved retirement and contemplation; though he was of 
a thoughtful and somewhat melancholy temper; and 
though he felt not that anxiety for paltry distinctions 
or trivial testimonies of honour which harassed the 
morbid mind of Tasso, it seems to be a mistaken idea 
that he was indifferent to glory, as Donatus and As- 
conius Pedianus have asserted. He was evidently 
fond of fame, and desirous to obtain the applause of 
his contemporaries. And while he shunned the vul¬ 
gar gaze and shrunk from the pressure of the multi¬ 
tude, he was not, in the hours of retirement, without 
that proud exultation of spirit, that consciousness of 
high intellectual endowments and strong imaginative 
powers, which announced to him that he was called 
to immortality, and destined to confer immortality on 
his country.—It has already been remarked, that, in 
his pastoral poetry, Virgil was the professed imitator 
of Theocritus : his images, indeed, are all Greek, and 
his scenery such as he found painted in the pages of 
the 1 Sicilian poet, and not what he had himself observ¬ 
ed on the banks of the Mincius. Yet, with all this im¬ 
itation and resemblance, the productions of the two 
poets are widely different. Thus, the delineations of 
character in Theocritus are more varied and lively. 
His Idyls exhibit a gallery of portraits which enter¬ 
tains by its variety or delights by its truth ; and in 
which every rural figure is so distinctly drawn, that it 
stands out, as it were, from the canvass, in a defined 
and certain form. But that want of discrimination of 
character, which has been so frequently remarked in 
the iEneid, is also observable in the pastorals of Vir¬ 
gil. His Thyrsis, Daphnis, and Menalcas resemble 
each other. No shepherd is distinguished by any pe¬ 
culiar disposition or humour; they all speak from the 
lips of the poet, and their dialogue is modelled by the 
standard of his own elegant mind. A difference is 
likewise observable in the scenes and descriptions. 
Those of Theocritus possess that minuteness and accu¬ 
racy so conducive to poetic truth and reality ; Virgil’s 
representations are more general, and bring only vague 
images before the fancy. In the Idyls of Theocritus 
we find a rural, romantic wildness of thought, and the 
most pleasing descriptions of simple, unadorned nature, 
heightened by the charm of the Doric dialect. But 
Virgil, in borrowing his images and sentiments, has 
seldom drawn an idea from his Sicilian master without 
beautifying it by the lustre of his language. The chief 
merit, however, of Virgil’s imitations lies in his judi¬ 
cious selections. Theocritus’s sketches of manners are 
often coarse and unpleasing ; and his most beautiful 
descriptions are almost always too crowded. But Vir¬ 
gil refined whatever was gross, and threw aside all that 
was overloaded or superfluous. He made his shep¬ 
herds more cultivated than even those of his own time. 
He represented them with some of the features which 
are supposed to have belonged to the swains in the 
early ages of the world, when they were possessed of 
great flocks and herds, and had acquired a knowledge 
of astronomy, cosmogony, and music ; when the pas¬ 
toral life, in short, appeared perfection, and nature 
had lavished all her stores to render the shepherd hap- 
1386 


[ py.—Thus much for the pastoral poetry of Virgil, 
We come next to the Georgies. This poem, which is 
in four books, derives its title from the Greek FeuoyL- 
ku, which last is compounded of yea (yy), “ the earth” 
and epyov, “ labour .” The subject is husbandry in 
general. The poem of the Georgies is as remarkable 
for majesty and magnificence of diction, as the Ec¬ 
logues are for sweetness and harmony of versification. 
It is the most complete, elaborate, and finished poem 
in the Latin, or perhaps in any language ; and, though 
the choice of subject and the situations afforded less 
expectation of success than the pastorals, so much has 
been achieved by art and genius, that the author has 
chiefly exhibited himself as a poet on topics where it 
was difficult to appear as such. Rome, from its local 
situation, was not well adapted for commerce ; and, 
from the time of Romulus to that of Csesar, agricul¬ 
ture had been the chief care of the Romans. Its op¬ 
erations were conducted by the greatest statesmen, 
and its precepts inculcated by the profoundest scholars. 
The long continuance, however, and fatal ravages of 
the civil wars, had now occasioned an almost general 
desolation. Italy was, in a great measure, depopula¬ 
ted of its husbandmen. The soldiers, by whom the 
lands were newly occupied, had too long ravished the 
fields to think of cultivating them ; and, in conse¬ 
quence of the farms lying waste, a famine and insur¬ 
rection had nearly ensued. (Georg., 1 , 505.) In these 
circumstances, Maecenas resolved, if possible, to revive 
the decayed spirit of agriculture, to recall the lost 
habits of peaceful industry, and to make rural improve¬ 
ment, as it had been in former times, the prevailing 
amusement among the great : and he wisely judged, 
that no method was so likely to contribute to these 
important objects as a recommendation of agriculture 
by all the insinuating charms of poetry. At his sug¬ 
gestion, accordingly, Virgil commenced his Georgies , 
which were thus, in some degree, undertaken from a 
political motive, and with a view to promote the wel¬ 
fare of his country ; and, as in the eclogue which an 
nounces the return of the golden age, he strove to 
render his woods worthy of a consul, so, in his Geor¬ 
gies, he studied to make his fields deserving of Mae¬ 
cenas and Augustus. But, though written with a pa¬ 
triotic object, by order of a Roman statesman, and on 
a subject peculiarly Roman, the imitative spirit of 
Latin poetry still prevailed, and the author could not 
avoid recurring, even in his Georgies, to a Grecian 
model. A few verses on the signs and prognostics oi 
the weather have been translated from the Phenomena 
of Aratus. But the Works and Days of Hesiod is the 
pattern which he has chiefly held in view. In refer¬ 
ence to his imitation of this model, he himself styles 
his Georgies an Ascraean poem ; and he appears, in¬ 
deed, to have been a sincere admirer of the ancient 
bard. In the Works and Days, Hesiod, after a de¬ 
scription of the successive ages of the world, points 
out the means for procuring an honest livelihood. Of 
these the proper exercise of agriculture is one of the 
principal. He accordingly gives directions for the la¬ 
bours of the field, and enumerates those days on which 
the various operations of husbandry ought to be per¬ 
formed. It is chiefly, then, in the first and second 
books of the Georgies (where Virgil discourses on til¬ 
lage and planting) that he has imitated the Works and 
Days. Hesiod has not treated of the breeding of cat¬ 
tle or care of bees, which form the subjects of the third 
and fourth books of the Roman poet. But in the for¬ 
mer books he has copied his predecessor in some of 
his most minute precepts of agriculture, as well as in 
his injunctions with regard to the superstitious observ¬ 
ance of days. Virgil’s arrangement of his topics is 
at once the most natural, and that which best carries 
his reader along with him. He begins with the prep¬ 
aration of the inert mass of earth and the sowing of 
grain, which form the most intractable part of his sub- 




VIRGILIUS. 


VIRGILIUS. 


ject. Then he discloses to our view a more open 
prospect and a wider horizon, leading us among the 
rich and diversified scenes of nature, the shades of 
vineyards, and blossoms of orchards. He next pre¬ 
sents us with pictures of joyous and animated exist¬ 
ence. The useful herds, the courageous horse, the 
Nomades of Africa and Scythia pass before us, and 
the fancy is excited by images of the whole moving 
creation. He at length concludes with those insects 
which have formed themselves into a well-ordered com- 
munitv, and which, in their nature, laws, and govern¬ 
ment, seem most nearly to approach the human spe¬ 
cies. Many of Virgil’s rules, particularly those con¬ 
cerning the care of cattle, have been taken from the 
works of the ancient agricultural writers of his own 
country. Seneca, indeed, talks lightly of the accuracy 
and value of his precepts. But Columella speaks of 
him as an agricultural oracle (“ verissimo Vati velut 
oraculo crediderimus”)', and all modern travellers, who 
have had occasion to examine the mode of agriculture 
even at this day practised in Italy, bear testimony to 
his exactness in the minutest particulars. His pre¬ 
cepts of the most sordid and trivial descriptions are de¬ 
livered with dignity, and the most common observa¬ 
tions have received novelty or importance by poetic 
embellishment. It is thus that he contrives, by con¬ 
verting rules into images, to give a picturesque col¬ 
ouring or illustration to the most unpromising topics, 
to scatter roses amid his fields, and to cover, as it 
were, with verdure the thorns and briers of agricultural 
discussion. THis talent of expressing with elegance 
what is trifling and in itself little attractive, is one of 
the most difficult arts of poetry, and no one was better 
acquainted with it than Virgil. But, though he has 
inculcated his precepts with as much clearness, ele¬ 
gance, and dignity as the nature of the subject admits, 
and even in this respect has greatly improved on He¬ 
siod, still it is not on these precepts that the chief beau¬ 
ty of the Georgies depends. With the various discus¬ 
sions on corn, vines, cattle, and bees, he has interwo¬ 
ven every philosophical, moral, or mythological episode 
on which he could with propriety seize. In all didac¬ 
tic poems the episodes are the chief embellishments. 
The noblest passages of Lucretius are those in which 
he so sincerely paints the charms of virtue, and the 
delights of moderation and contentment. In like man¬ 
ner, the finest verses of Virgil are his invocations to 
the gods, his addresses to Augustus, his account of the 
prodigies before the death of Caesar, and his descrip¬ 
tion of Italy. How beautiful and refreshing are his 
praises of a country life ! how solemn and majestic his 
encomiums on the sage who had triumphed, as it were, 
over the powers of destiny ; who had shut his ears to 
the murmurs of Acheron, and dispelled from his ima¬ 
gination those invisible and inaudible phantoms which 
wander on the other side of death ! In these and 
many other passages, it is evident that Virgil contends 
with Lucretius, and strives hard to surpass him. 
There is a close resemblance in the topics on which 
these two poets descant, but a wide difference between 
them in tone and manner. Lucretius is more bold and 
simple than his successor, and displays more of the 
vivida. vis animi ; but his outlines are harder, and we 
never find in Virgil any of those rugged verses or un¬ 
polished expressions which we so frequently encoun¬ 
ter in Lucretius. In the theological parts, and those 
which relate to a state of future existence, Lucretius 
assumes, as it were, a tone of defiance, while "V irgil 
is more calm, contemplative, and resigned. As the 
works of Virgil were never completely forgotten du- 
ring the dark ages, or, at all events, were the first 
classical productions which were brought to light or 
studied at the revival of literature, we find imitations 
of the Georgies in the earliest poets who appeared af¬ 
ter that period. The “ Rusticus” of Politian, “in 
Virgilii Georgicun enarratione pronunciata, ’ s an 


abridgment of the subject of that poem, and several 
passages are nearly copied from it. Of other mod¬ 
ern Latin poems which have been written in imi¬ 
tation of the Georgies, Vaniere’s Prcedium Rusticum 
approaches nearest to it in the subject; but it is a 
tedious and languid production. The Italian poem 
of Alamanni, in six books, entitled “ Della Coltivazi- 
one ,” enlarges on the various topics discussed in the 
first three books of Virgil; while Rucellai, the coun¬ 
tryman and contemporary of Alamanni, has, in his 
poem Le Api, nearly translated the fourth book, omit¬ 
ting, however, the fable of Aristaeus. Both these po¬ 
ems, in versi sciolti, are written with much elegance 
and purity of style, and contain many passages which 
might bear a comparison with the most celebrated parts 
of that immortal work on which they were modelled. 
A few lines in the fourth book have also given to Ra- 
pin the hint for his Latin poem, Horti ; but, as Addi¬ 
son has remarked, “ there is more pleasantness in the 
little platform of a garden which Virgil gives us, than 
in all the spacious walks and waterworks of Rapin.” 
The same subject has been enlarged on by Delille, 
who was a translator and enthusiastic admirer of Vir¬ 
gil, and has borrowed from him some of the finest 
passages, both in Les Jardins, and his other poem, 
L'Homme des Champs , which may be considered as 
a continuation of the Georgies, by adding a moral part 
to the Latin poem. St. Lambert, in his Saisons, and 
Roucher, in his Mois, have also frequently availed 
themselves of the Georgies. It is impossible here to 
point out particular imitations ; but it may be observed 
of these poems in general, that they are vague and 
diffuse, and never reach that pregnant brevity of style 
by which their great original is distinguished. It has 
been remarked by Wharton, that, of all our English 
poems, “ Philip’s Cider, which is a close imitation ol 
the Georgies, conveys to us the fullest idea of Virgil’a 
manner, whom he has exactly followed in conciseness 
of style, in throwing in frequent moral reflections, in 
varying the method of giving his precepts, in his di¬ 
gressions, and in his happy address in returning again 
to his subject; in his knowledge, and love of philoso¬ 
phy, medicine, agriculture, and antiquity, and in a cer¬ 
tain primeval simplicity of manners, which is so con¬ 
spicuous in both.” But no English poet has been so 
much indebted to Virgil for his fame as Thomson. 
In his Seasons he sometimes assembles together dif¬ 
ferent passages from the Georgies, and sometimes 
scatters verses belonging to the same passage through 
different parts of his own production, but at other 
times he translates straightforward. In his Spring , 
though Lucretius has contributed a share, he has closely 
imitated from Virgil the description of the golden age, 
and of the desires which the early season excites among 
the brute creation. From the same source he has bor¬ 
rowed, in his Summer, many circumstances of the thun¬ 
der-storm, and the panegyric on Great Britain, which is 
parodied from the praises of Italy. The eulogy which 
he introduces in his Autumn on a philosophical life 
may be cited as an example of the closeness with 
which, on some occasions, he imitates the Latin poet. 
—The iEne'is next claims our attention. It has for its 
subject the settlement of the Trojans in Italy. This 
production belongs to a nobler class of poetry than 
the Georgies, and is, perhaps, equally perfect in its 
kind. It ranks, indeed, in the very highest order, and 
it was in this exalted species that Virgil was most fit¬ 
ted to excel. Undisturbed by excess of passion, and 
never hurried away by the current of ideas, he calmly 
consigned to immortal verse the scenes which his 
fancy had first painted as lovely, and which his under¬ 
standing had afterward approved. The extent, too, 
and depth of the design proposed in the ^Eneid, ren¬ 
dered this subjection to the judgment indispensable. 
It would be absurd to suppose, with some critics, that 
1 Virgil intended to give instruction to princes in the art 

1387 


/ 






VIRGILIUS 


VIRGILIUS 


Oi settling colonies ( Calrou, CEuvres de Virgile, voL 
3, p. 486), or to supply Augustus with political rules 
for the government and legislation of a great empire ; 
but he evidently designed, not merely to deduce the 
descent of Augustus and the Romans from ^Eneas and 
his companions, but, by creating a perfect character in 
his hero, to shadow out the eminent qualities of his im¬ 
perial patron ; to recommend his virtues to his coun¬ 
trymen, who would readily apply to him the amiable 
portrait ; and perhaps to suggest, that he was the ru¬ 
ler of the world announced of old by the prophecies and 
oracles of the Saturnian land. ( JEn ., 6, 789, seqq.) 
No one who has read the iEneid, and studied the histor¬ 
ical character of Augustus, or the early events of his 
reign, can doubt that JEneas is an allegorical repre¬ 
sentation of that emperor.—The chief objection which 
critics in all ages have urged against the JSneid, or, at 
least, against the poetical character of its author, is the 
defect in what forms the most essential quality of a 
poet, originality and the power of invention.' It has 
never, indeed, been denied that he possessed a species 
of invention, if it may be so called, which consists in 
placing ideas that have been preoccupied in a new 
light, or presenting assemblages, which have been al¬ 
ready exhibited, in a new point of view. Nor has it 
been disputed that he often succeeds in bestowing on 
them the charm of novelty, by the power of more per¬ 
fect diction, and by that poetic touch which transmutes 
whatever it lights on into gold. But it is alleged that 
he has contrived few incidents, and opened up no 
new veins of thought. It is well known that the Ro¬ 
man dramatic writers, instead of contriving plots of 
their own, translated the master-pieces of Sophocles, 
Euripides, and Menander. The same imitative spirit 
naturally enough prevailed in the first attempts at Epic 
poetry. When any beautiful model exists in an art, 
it so engrosses and intimidates the mind, that we are 
apt to think that, in order to execute successfully any 
work of a similar description, the approved prototype 
must be imitated. It is supposed that what had pleas¬ 
ed once must please always ; and circumstances, in 
themselves unimportant, or perhaps accidental, are 
converted into gener ’ nd immutable rules. It was 
natural, then, for th- ms, struck with admiration 
at the sublime and ucaaaful productions of the epic 
muse of Greece, to follow her lee’-ons with servility. 
The mind of Virgil also led him to imitation. His 
excellence lay in the propriety, beauty, and majesty of 
his poetical character, in his judicious contrivance of 
composition, his correctness of drawing, his purity of 
taste, his artful adaptation of the conceptions of others 
to his own purposes, and his skill in the combination of 
materials. Accordingly, when Virgil first applied him¬ 
self to frame a poem, which might celebrate his im¬ 
perial master, and emulate the productions of Greece, 
in a department of poetry wherein she was as yet unri¬ 
valled, he first naturally bent a reverent eye on Ho¬ 
mer ; and, though he differed widely from his Grecian 
master in the qualities of his mind and genius, he be¬ 
came his most strict and devoted disciple. The Lat¬ 
in dramatists, in preparing their pieces for the stage, 
had frequently compounded them of the plots of two 
Greek plays, melted, as it were, into one ; and thus 
compensated for the want of invention and severe sim¬ 
plicity of composition by greater richness and variety 
of incident. From their example, Virgil comprehend¬ 
ed in his plan the arguments both of the Iliad and 
Odyssey ; the one serving him as a guide for the wan¬ 
derings and adventures of his hero previous to the land¬ 
ing in Latium, and the other as a model for the wars 
which he sustained in Italy, to gain his destined bride 
Lavinia. He had thus before him all the beauties and 
defects of Homer, as lights to gaze at and as rocks to 
be shunned, with the judgment of ages on both, as a 
chart which might conduct him to yet greater perfec¬ 
tion, In the Iliad, however, there was this superior- 
1388 


ity, that a sense of injury (easily communicated to th 
reader) existed among the Greeks ; and in the Odys¬ 
sey, we feel, as it were, the hero’s desire of returning 
to his native country. But both these ruling princi¬ 
ples of action are wanting in the /Eneid, where the 
Trojans rather inflict than sustain injury, and reluc¬ 
tantly seek a settlement in new and unknown lands. 
—Besides the well-known and authentic works of Vir¬ 
gil that have now been enumerated, several poems 
still exist which are very generally ascribed to him, 
but which, from their inferiority, are supposed to be 
the productions of his early youth. Of these, the long¬ 
est is the Culex , which has been translated by Spen¬ 
ser under the title of VirgiVs Gnat. There can be 
no doubt, from two epigrams of Martial (8, 56; 14, 
185), that there was a poem called Culex which had 
been written by Virgil. But it may be questioned if 
the Culex to which Martial alludes be the same with 
the poem under that name which we now possess. 
The Culex , which still appears in some of the editions 
of Virgil, is not without passages of considerable mer¬ 
it ; but it exhibits few marks of the taste and judgment 
of the Mantuan bard. A compressed and pregnant 
brevity is one of the chief characteristics of that great 
poet’s genuine works ; but the Culex , as we now have 
it, is overloaded and diffuse, every thought, and descrip¬ 
tion being spun out through as many lines as possible. 
Those critics who contend for the authenticity of the 
Culex, account for this redundancy by supposing that 
it was the first, and, indeed, a boyish production of its 
illustrious author. The Culex, however, which Virgil 
wrote, had no claim to such an excuse. For Statius 
mentions, in his Genethliacon of Lucan, that the Phar- 
salia of that poet had been completed by him before 
the age at which Virgil wrote the Culex. Now the 
Pharsalia was finished when Lucan was twenty-six; 
so that, according to Statius, the Culex could not 
have been written till after Virgil had attained that 
age, and ought, consequently, to have been as perfect 
in point of composition as his earliest eclogues. The 
probability therefore is, that the subject was of Vir¬ 
gil’s invention, and that some of the verses are truly 
Virgilian, but that the poem had been lengthened out 
and interpolated by the transcribers of the middle 
ages. The subject of the Culex may be considered 
as partly pastoral and partly mock-heroic ; but the 
mockery is of a gentle and delicate description, and 
much real beauty and tenderness break out amid the 
assumed solemnity. A goatherd leads out his flocks 
to feed upon the pastures near Mount Cithaeron. 
Having fallen asleep, he is suddenly roused from his 
slumbers by the bite of a gnat; and, while awakening, 
he crushes to death the insect which had inflicted the 
wound. He then perceives a huge serpent approach¬ 
ing, which, if his sleep had not been broken, would 
inevitably have destroyed him. The shade of the gnat 
appears to the shepherd on the following night, and 
reproaches him with having occasioned its death at the 
moment when it had saved his life. The insect de¬ 
scribes all that it had seen in the infernal regions during 
its wanderings, having as yet obtained no fixed habita¬ 
tion. Next day the shepherd prepares a tomb, in order 
to procure repose for the ghost of his benefactor, and 
celebrates in due form its funeral obsequies. By far 
the finest, and probably the most genuine, passage of the 
poem is that near the beginning, in which the author 
describes the goatherd leading out his flocks to their 
pasture, and in which he descants on the pleasures of a 
country life. As amended by Heyne, and cleared from 
the interpolations of the scholiasts, we may find in it the 
germe of those flowers of song which afterward expand¬ 
ed to such maturity and perfection in the Georgies.— 
The Ciris, a poem of the same doubtful authenticity 
with the Culex, and which some commentators have 
attributed to Cornelius Gall us, records the well-known 
mythological fable of Scylla, daughter of Nisus, and her 



VIR 


V I T 


transformation into the bird called Ciris, from which the 
poem derives its title. That part which is introductory 
to the complaint of Scylla is not very clear in language 
or lofty in point of conception. The lamentation it¬ 
self is as-good as might be expected, considering the 
position in which it was uttered, Minos having, on his 
voyage home, fastened her to the side of his vessel, 
and thus dragged her along through the sea. Some 
of the lines are palpable imitations of the soliloquy of 
Ariadne in Catullus. Perhaps the best passage is 
one in which that poet has also been closely imitated, 
describing the effects of ungovernable love in the 
breast of Scylla. From the Ciris, Spenser, who had 
translated the Culex, imitated a long passage, which 
constitutes part of the Legend of Britomart, in the 
third book of the Faery Queen. —The Moretum would 
certainly be a curious and interesting production, could 
it be authenticated as the work of Virgil or Septimius 
Serenus, to whom Wernsdorff has ascribed it, and who 
flourished at Rome during the reigns of the Flavian 
family. Its subject is one concerning which few rel¬ 
ics have descended to us from antiquity. It gives 
an account of the occupations and daily life of an Ital¬ 
ian peasant; and, so far as it goes, everything is re¬ 
lated with the greatest minuteness; but the employ¬ 
ments only of the mornjng are recorded. The peasant 
Simulus rises with the dawn. He gathers together 
the ashes of the yesterday’s fire. He then bakes some 
bread ; and, with the assistance of an African freed- 
woman named Cybale, he prepares a sort of food call¬ 
ed Moretum , which gives name to the poem, and was 
chiefly composed of herbs culled from his garden. 
This introduces a curious description of a peasant’s 
kitchen-garden, and the sort of plants which were rear¬ 
ed in it. The poem concludes with the peasant’s 
yoking his oxen, and beginning to plough his field. 
It is probable, however, that what is now extant is 
only a fragment at the commencement of the Moretum, 
or the first of a series of rustic eclogues, in which the 
avocations of a peasant were described in succession 
through the whole day.- The Copa merely contains 
an invitation from an hostess, who was a native of 
Syria, to pass the hours merrily in a place of enter¬ 
tainment which she kept beyond the gates of Rome; 
but a good-humoured drinking-song by the majestic 
author of the Georgies and Hineid is in itself a curi¬ 
osity.—The best edition of Virgil is that of Heyne, 
which first appeared from the Leipsic press in 1767- 
68, 4 vols. 8vo. It has been often reprinted : the most 
complete is that with the additions of Wagner, Lips., 
1831. The edition of Forbiger, Lips., 1826-9, 3 vols. 
8vo, is also a very useful one. ( Dunlop's Roman 
Literature , vol. 3, p. 68, seqq .) 

Virginia, a daughter of the centurion L. Virginius. 
The maiden had been betrothed to L. Icilius, one of the 
tribunes, and the author of the law known by his name. 
Her beauty, however, inflamed the passions of Appius 
Claudius, the decemvir, and he caused one of his cli¬ 
ents, M. Claudius, to seize her as his slave, intending 
in this manner to get the person of the damsel within 
his power. Intelligence was immediately sent to the 
camp to Virginius, who, obtaining leave of absence, 
hastened to Rome to protect his daughter. But in 
vain did he claim his child ; in vain appeal to the sym¬ 
pathy of the people j in vain address himself to the 
better mind of Appius. The decemvir, blind to ev¬ 
erything but the beauty of Virginia, and deaf to all but 
the impulse of his own passion, passed sentence, as¬ 
signing the maiden to Claudius. Upon this, Virginius, 
snatching up a butcher’s knife, exclaimed, “ This is 
the only way left, my child, to keep thee free and un¬ 
stained !” and plunged it into her heart; then, turning 
to Appius, he cried, « On thee and on thy head be the 
curse of this innocent blood!” Appius ordered him 
to be seized, but in vain. Waving aloft the bloody 
k»ife, he burst through the multitude, flew to the 


gates, mounted a horse, and spurred headlong to Ch* 
camp near Tusculum. The wild and frantic aspect 
of Virginius, his attire stained with blood, and the 
bloody knife still held convulsively in his grasp, in¬ 
stantly drew a crowd of the soldiery around him. In 
brief but burning terms he told his tale, and called 
aloud for vengeance. One thrilling sentiment of sym¬ 
pathizing indignation filled every bosom ; they called 
to arms, plucked up their standards, and, marching to 
Rome, seized upon the Aventine. The army near 
Fidenae caught a similar spirit, having received infor¬ 
mation of the bloody tragedy from Icilius. They, in 
like manner, threw off the authority of their command¬ 
ers, chose military tribunes to lead them, and, hasten¬ 
ing to Rome, joined their brethren on the Aventine 
Hill. In the city all was tumult and terror. The de¬ 
cemvirs were unable to make head against the excited 
multitude, and the senate itself felt its power ineffect¬ 
ual to allay the tempest. They began to treat with 
the people and the army, yet with dilatoriness, hoping 
the ferment would soon abate, and they might still re¬ 
tain their power. But the people were in earnest. 
Leaving a strong body to defend the Aventine for the 
present, they marched in military array through the 
city, and once more posted themselves on the sacred 
mount, followed by vast numbers of the plebeian party 
men, women, and children. Then were the patricians 
compelled to yield, and the decemvirs resigned. ( Vid . 
Appius, and Decemviri.) 

Virginius, the father of Virginia, made tribune of 
the people after the affair of his daughter. (Vid. 
Virginia.) 

V iriathus, a shepherd of Lusitania, a hunter, a 
robber, and finally a military hero, almost unrivalled in 
fertility of resources under defeat, skill in the conduct 
of his forces, and courage in the hour of battle. Like 
the guerilla leaders of modern times, he knew how to 
avail himself of the wild chivalry of his countrymen, 
and the almost impenetrable fastnesses of his coun¬ 
try ; but, superior to them, he was equally able to 
guide a troop and to marshal an army. Six years did 
he maintain the contest; and at length the consul 
Caepio, unable to subdue him in the field, procured his 
assassination. The Lusitanians, deprived of their 
brave leader, were s,)On afterward completely sub¬ 
dued, B.C. 40 (F'or., 2, 17.— Val. Max., 6, 4.) 

V isurgis, a river of Germany, now the Weser, and 
falling into the German Ocean. (Veil. Faterc., 2, 
105.— Tax., Ann., 1, 70.) 

Vistula, a river falling into the Baltic, die eastern 
boundary of ancient Germany, now the Vistula, or, as 
the Germans write the word, the Weichsel. (Mela, 
3, 4.— Plin., 4, 12.— Amm. Marc., 32, 8.) 

V itellius, I. Aulus, a Roman emperor, who came 
after Otho. He was descended from one of the most 
illustrious families of Rome, and, as such, he gained an 
easy admission to the palace of the emperors. The 
greatest part of his youth was spent at Capreae, where 
his willingness to gratify the most vicious propensities 
of Tiberius raised his father to the dignity of consuL 
and governor of Syria. The applause he gained in 
this school of debauchery was too great and flattering 
to induce Vitellius to alter his conduct, and. no longer 
to be one of the votaries of vice. Caligula was pleas¬ 
ed with his skill in driving a chariot; Claudius loved, 
him because he was a great gamester ; and he recom¬ 
mended himself to the favours of Nero by wishing him 
to sing publicly in the crowded theatre. With such 
an insinuating disposition, it is not to be wondered that 
Vitellius became so great. He did not fall with his 
patrons, like the other favourites ; but the death of an 
emperor seemed to raise him to greater honours, and 
to procure him fresh applause. He passed through all 
the offices of the state, and gained the soldiery by do¬ 
nations and liberal promises. He was at the head of 
the Roman legions in Germany when Otho was pro 

1389 


l 




V I T 


U L U 


claimed emperor, and the exaltation of his rival was 
no sooner heard in the camp, than he was likewise 
invested with the purple by his soldiers. He accept¬ 
ed with pleasure the dangerous office, and instantly 
marched against Otho. Three battles were fought, 
and in all Vitellius was conquered. A fourth, how¬ 
ever, in the plains between Mantua and Cremona, left 
him master of the field and of the Roman empire. 
Vitellius began his reign by endeavouring to concili¬ 
ate the favour of the populace and the troops by large 
donations and expensive amusements. He then gave 
a loose rein to his own debasing appetites, of which 
the chief was absolute gluttony of the very grossest 
kind. It is almost incredible, though stated by histo¬ 
rians, that in less than four months he expended on 
the mere luxuries of the table a sum equal to about 
seven millions sterling. This bloated and pampered 
ruler was soon regarded by all his subjects with con¬ 
tempt and disgust. The unrestrained licentiousness 
of the soldiery tended equally to make his reign hated 
and feared by all who were exposed to the insults and 
outrages in which they indulged. To supply the funds 
necessary for the maintenance of his excessive luxury, 
he resorted to the too prevalent custom of listening to 
the accusations of spies, and putting to death all such 
accused persons, that he might seize upon their prop¬ 
erty. While thus wallowing in the indulgence of the 
most debasing appetites, Vitellius was startled by ti¬ 
dings of a very alarming nature. Vespasian, who had 
been sent to take the command of the army in Syria 
in the Jewish war, and had been detained there by the 
desperate resistance of the Jews, had sent his own son 
Titus to offer his allegiance to Galba. But, before 
his arrival, Galba was dead, and Otho and Vitellius 
were contending for the empire. Titus returned to 
his father for instructions ; and, though Vespasian ap¬ 
peared ready to acknowledge Vitellius, his own troops 
were eager to raise him to the sovereignty. Being at 
length prevailed on to comply with the wishes of the 
army, he commenced his march towards Europe. The 
Illyrian and Pannonian armies immediately declared 
in his favour; and that of Illyricum, under the com¬ 
mand of Antonius Primus, crossed the Alps and 
marched towards Rome to dethrone Vitellius. The 
Vitellian army, commanded by Caecina, encountered 
that of Antonius near Cremona, but was defeated with 
great loss, and the city was taken. Antonius con¬ 
tinued to advance on Rome, and crossed the passes 
of the Apennines while the emperor was hastening to 
secure them. Vitellius fled to Rome, which was soon 
invested by the victorious army of Antonius. An in¬ 
surrectionary tumult arose in the city itself, during 
which the Capitol was burned to the ground, and Sa- 
binus, the brother of Vespasian, was killed. The 
troops of Antonius at length forced an entrance into 
the city, stormed the quarters of the praetorian guards, 
and put those turbulent bands to the sword. Vitel¬ 
lius endeavoured to conceal himself, but was discov¬ 
ered, dragged through the streets to the place of pun¬ 
ishment for common malefactors, put to death in the 
most ignominious manner, and his mangled carcass 
cast into the Tiber amid the execrations of the multi¬ 
tude. Right months and five days had this despica- 
Dle wretch seemed to sway the sceptre of supreme do¬ 
minion, when thus overtaken by the due reward of 
his debauchery and crimes, (fatherington's History 
of Rome, p. 185, seqq.) 

Vitruvius Pollio, M., a celebrated writer on ar¬ 
chitecture, born at Verona, and contemporary with Ju¬ 
lius Csesar and Augustus. Some, as, for example, 
Newton, his English translator, have placed him in the 
reign of Titus, but they have been refuted by Hirt, 
the author of an elaborate history of ancient architec¬ 
ture ( Geschichte der Baukunst bei den alten, Berlin, 
1822, 2 vols. 4to), at the end of his dissertation on 
’he Pantheon. (Compare Scholl, Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 

1390 


2, p. 189, seqq., in notis.) Under Augustus, who, du 
ring the civil contest, had employed him in the con¬ 
struction of military engines, he was appointed inspec¬ 
tor of public buildings ; and it was at the request of 
this prince, and availing himself as well of the Greek 
works already written on that subject, as of the re¬ 
sult of his own experience, that Vitruvius published 
his work on Architecture. It is in ten books. The 
first seven treat of architecture, in its proper sense ; 
the last three of hydraulic architecture, gnomonics, and 
mechanics. The style of Vitruvius is unostentatious, 
concise, and sometimes obscure. Its obscurity, how¬ 
ever, is owing to the fact of Vitruvius having been the 
first Roman who wrote on the subject of architecture, 
and his using, in consequence, new terms and forms of 
expression to convey the meaning which he intends. 
The best edition is that of Schneider, Lips., 1807, in 
3 vols. 8vo. It is to be regretted that the plans which 
originally accompanied the work of Vitruvius are lost 
to us. (The following works may be consulted with 
advantage in relation to Vitruvius : Hirt , Geschichte, 
&c., already referred to.— Stieglitz, Archceologie der 
Baukunst , Weimar, 1801.— Genelli, Briefe uber Vi- 
truv., Braunschw. und Berlin, 1802.— Rosch, Erlau- 
terungen zu Vitruv's Baukunst, Stuttg., 1802.— Stcig- 
litz archdolog. unterhalt., 1 Afth., Leipz., 1820.) 

Ulpia Trajana, a city of Dacia, the residence of 
Decebalus. It was taken by Trajan, and called by his 
name. Its previous appellation appears to have been 
Sarmizegetusa. The modern name is Varhely or 
Varhel. (Inscript., ap. Grut. — Inscript., ap. Zamos. 
Analect., 5.) 

Ulpianum, I. a town of upper Moesia, said by Pro¬ 
copius to have been repaired and embellished by Jus¬ 
tinian, and called Justiniana Secunda. It is now Gi• 
ustendil. (Procop., B. G., 4, 25.) — II. One of the 
principal towns of Dacia, now perhaps Kolsovar. 

Ulpianus Domitius, one of those who have con¬ 
ferred the greatest honour on Roman jurisprudence, 
was born at Tyre. Under Septimius Severus he be¬ 
came the colleague of Sextus Pomponius in the judi¬ 
cial stations which he filled. He continued to dis¬ 
charge these same official duties under Caracalla and 
Macrinus, but was sent into exile after the death of 
Heliogabalus. Alexander Severus recalled him, made 
him one of his council, and treated him with the great¬ 
est regard. He appointed him, also, praetorian pre¬ 
fect. In this post he rendered himself odious to the 
soldiery, who complained that he wished to abridge 
the privileges which they had enjoyed under Helio¬ 
gabalus. They frequently demanded his death; and 
on one occasion, the emperor, to save him, covered 
him with his purple. Ulpian, however, was at last 
massacred by them, almost in the very arms of the 
emperor, to whom he had fled for refuge. The peo¬ 
ple took up arms to defend him, and a violent contest 
arose, which lasted during three days. Ulpian wrote 
the most works of any Roman jurist: we have the 
titles of more than thirty of his productions, among 
which was a digest in forty-eight books ; a comment¬ 
ary on the Edictum Perpetuum, in eighty-three; and 
another on the Lex Julia Papia, in twenty. Of all 
these works there remain twenty-nine chapters of that 
entitled Regulce Juris , and which consisted of seven 
books. They were inserted in the abridgment of 
the Roman law made by order of Alaric. We have 
also his commentaries in Greek on Demosthenes. 
The heathen writers have concurred in their eulogy 
of Ulpian, but the Christians have reproached him foi 
inciting the emperor to a persecution of their sect 
(Scholl, Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 3, p. 286, seqq. — Bahr 
Gesch. der Rom. Lit., p. 560.) 

Ulubr^e, a small town of Latium, at no great dis 
tance, probably, from Velitras. Its marshy situation 
is plainly alluded to by Cicero, who calls the inhab¬ 
itants little frogs. (Ep. ad Fam., 7, 18.) Horace 



u l y 


UMB 


and Ju.venal give us but a wretched idea of the place. 
(Horat., Ep ., 1, 11, 30. — Juv ., 10, 101.— Cramer's 
Anc. Italy , vol. 2, p. 85.) 

Ulysses, a king of Ithaca, son of Anticlea and La¬ 
ertes, or, according to some, of Sisyphus. ( Vid. Sis¬ 
yphus, and Anticlea.) He became, like the other 
princes of Greece, one of the suiters of Helen ; but, 
as he despaired of success in his application on ac¬ 
count of the great number of his competitors, he so¬ 
licited the hand of Penelope, the daughter of Icarius. 
Tyndarus, the father of Helen, favoured the addresses 
of Ulysses, as by him he was directed to choose one 
of his daughter’s suiters without offending the others, 
and to bind them all by a solemn oath that they would 
unite together in protecting Helen if any violence were 
ever offered to her person. Ulysses had no sooner 
obtained the hand of Penelope than he returned to 
Ithaca, where his father resigned him the crown, and 
retired to peace and rural solitude. The abduction 
of Helen, however, by Paris, did not long permit him 
to remain in his kingdom ; and as he was bound, in 
common with the rest, to defend her against every in¬ 
truder, he was summoned to the war with the other 
princes of Greece. Pretending to be insane, not to 
leave his beloved Penelope, he yoked a horse and a 
bull together, and ploughed the seashore, where he 
sowed salt instead of grain. The artifice, however, 
was soon detected ; and Palamedes, by placing before 
the plough of Ulysses his infant son Telemachus, con¬ 
vinced the world that the father was not insane, who 
had the foresight to turn away the plough from the 
furrow, not to hurt his child. Ulysses was therefore 
obliged to go to the war; but he did not forget him 
who had exposed his pretended insanity. (Vid. Pala¬ 
medes ) During the Trojan war, the King of Ithaca 
listinguished himself by his prudence and sagacity 
as well as by his valour. By his means Achilles was 
discovered among the daughters of Lycomedes, king 
of Scyros (vid. Achilles); and Philoctetes was in¬ 
duced to abandon Lemnos,, and to come to the Tro¬ 
jan war with the arrows of Hercules. ( Vid. Philoc¬ 
tetes.) With the assistance of Diomedes he slew 
Rhesus, and destroyed many of the sleeping Thra¬ 
cians in the midst of their camp (vid. Rhesus, and 
Dolon) ; and, in conjunction with the same warrior, 
he carried off the Palladium of Troy. (Vid. Palla¬ 
dium, where, however, other accounts are given.) 
These, as well as other services, obtained for him the 
armour of Achilles, which Ajax had disputed with 
him. After the Trojan war Ulysses embarked on 
board his ships to return to Greece, but he was ex¬ 
posed to a number of misfortunes before he reached 
his native country : he was thrown by the winds upon 
the coasts of Africa, and visited the country of the 
Lotophagi (vid. Lotophagi), and afterward that of the 
Cyclopes, where his adventure in the cave of Poly¬ 
phemus occurred. ( Vid. Cyclopes, and Polyphemus.) 
He came next., in the course of his wanderings, to the 
island of iEolus, monarch of the winds, who gave 
him, tied up in a bag of ox-hide, all the winds which 
could obstruct his return to Ithaca ; but the curi¬ 
osity of his companions to know what the bag con¬ 
tained proved nearly fatal. The winds rushed out, 
and hurried them back to iEolia; the king of which, 
judging, from what had befallen them, that they were 
hated by the gods, drove them with reproaches from 
his isle. Thence he vvas carried to the land of the 
Lasstrygonians (vid. Lsestrygones), where he lost all 
his vessels except the one in which he himself was ; 
and, on escaping from this gigantic and cannibal race, 
he came to the island of IE sea, the abode of Circe. 
After dwelling here for an entire year, the warrior 
and his companions were anxious to depart; but the 
goddess told the hero that he must previously cross 
*he ocean, and enter the abode of Hades, to consult 
^he blind pronhet Tiresias. Accordingly, they left 


iEaea rather late in the day, as it would appear, and, 
impelled by a favouring north wind, their ship reached 
by sunset the opposite coast of ocean, the land of per¬ 
petual gloom. Ulysses obeyed the directions of the 
goddess in digging a small pit, into which he poured 
mulse, wine, water, flour, and the blood of the victims 
The dead came trooping out of the abode of Hades, 
and Ulysses there saw the heroines of former days, and 
conversed with the shades of Agamemnon and Achil¬ 
les. Terror at length came over him ; he hastened 
back to his ship ; the stream carried it along, and 
they reached ^Eaea while it was yet night. Leaving 
HCaea on their homeward voyage, Ulysses and his 
companions came to the islands of the Sirens (vid. 
Sirenes), and, after having escaped from these, and 
shunned the Wandering Rocks, they reached the 
terrific Scylla and Charybdis. (Vid. Scylla and Cha¬ 
rybdis.) As he sailed by Scylla, Ulysses saw six of 
his followers seized and devoured by the monster, 
after which he came to Thrinakia, the island of the 
sun-god. (Vid. Thrinakia.) Here his companions 
sacrilegiously fed upon the sacred herds, and were 
punished immediately after their departure. No soon¬ 
er had they lost sight of land than a violent storm 
arose ; their vessel was struck by a thunderbolt; it 
went to pieces, and all were drowned except Ulysses. 
When his ship had been thus destroyed, he fastened 
the mast and keel together, and placed himself upon 
them. The wind, changing to the south, carried him 
back to Scylla and Charybdis. As he came by the 
latter, she absorbed the mast and keel; but the hero 
caught hold of a wild fig-tree that grew on the rock 
above, and held by it till they were thrown out again. 
He then floated along for nine days, and on the tenth 
reached Ogygia, the isle of Calypso. After eight 
years’ residence with this ocean-nymph (vid. Calypso), 
Ulysses resumed his wanderings on a raft of his own 
construction ; and he had already come in sight of the 
island of the Phseacians (vid,. Phseacia), when Neptune, 
still mindful that his son Polyphemus had been deprived 
of sight by means of the King of Ithaca, raised a storm 
and sunk his raft. He was carried along, after this, as 
he swam, by a strong northerly wind for two days and 
nights, and on the third day landed on the island of 
Phaeacia, where he was kindly received by King Alci- 
noiis and his daughter Nausicaa. Here he recited the 
narrative of his adventures, and after this he was con¬ 
veyed in a Phseacian vessel to the shore of Ithaca. 
He had been absent twenty years, and he found, on 
his return, his palace beset by numerous suiters for the 
hand of Penelope, who were indulging day after day in 
riotous carousals, and wasting the resources of the mon¬ 
arch of Ithaca. Disguising himself as a beggar, Ulys¬ 
ses made himself known merely to his son Telema¬ 
chus and his faithful herdsman Eumaeus. With them 
he concerted measures to re-establish himself on his 
throne. These measures were crowned with success. 
The suiters were all slain, and Ulysses was restored 
to the bosom of his family. ( Vid. Laertes, Penelope, 
lelemachus, Eumseus.) He lived about sixteen years 
after his return, and was at last killed by his son Tel- 
egonus, who had landed in Ithaca with the hope of 
making himself known to his father. This unfortu¬ 
nate event had beer, foretold to him by Tiresias, who 
assured him that he should die by the violence of 
something that was to issue from the bosom of the 
sea. (Vid. Telegonus.) The adventures of Ulysses, 
on his return from the Trojan war, form the subject 
of Homer’s Odyssey. (Keightlcy's Mythology , p. 
259, seqq.) 

Umbria, a country of Italy, to the east of Etruria 
and north of the Sabine territory. The Latin writers 
were evidently acquainted with no people of Italy 
more ancient than the Umbri (compare Floras , 1, 17. 
— Plin., 3, 14), and Dionysius of Halicarnassus as¬ 
sures us that they were one of the oldest and most nu 

1391 






V o c 


VOL 


xierous nations of the land (1, 19). From his account, 
as well as from Herodotus (1, 94), it would appear 
that the Umbri were already settled in Italy long be¬ 
fore the arrival of the Tyrrhenian colony. To the 
Greeks they were known under the name of ’O pdpiuoi, 
a word which they supposed to be derived from oy- 
fipog, under the idea that they were a people saved 
from an unusual deluge. ( Plin., 1. c. — Solin., 5.) 
Dionysius has farther acquainted us with some partic¬ 
ulars respecting the Umbri, which he derived from 
Zenodotus, a Greek of Troezene, who had written a 
history of this people. This author appears to have 
considered the Umbri an indigenous race, whose pri¬ 
mary seat was the country around Reate, a district 
which, according to Dionysius, was formerly occupied 
by the Aborigines. Zenodotus was also of opinion 
that the Sabines were descended from the Umbri. 
Connected with the origin of the ancient Umbri, 
there is another question not unworthy our attention. 
It was confidently stated by Cornelius Bocchus, a Ro¬ 
man writer quoted by Solinus (c. 8.— Serv. ad 2En., 
12, 753) and Isidorus ( Orig ., 8, 2), that the Umbri 
were of the same race with the ancient Gauls. This 
opinion has been rejected, on the one band, by Cluveri- 
us and Maffei, while it has served, on the other, as a 
foundation for the systems of Freret and Bardetti, who 
contend for the Celtic origin of the Umbri.—On the 
rise of the Etrurian nation, the Umbrian name began 
to decline. They were forced to withdraw from the 
right bank of the Tiber, while nearly the whole of 
northern Italy fell under the power of their more en¬ 
terprising and warlike neighbours, though an ancient 
Greek historian makes honourable mention of the val¬ 
our of the Umbri. {Nic. Damasc., ap. Stob., 7, 89.) 
It was then, probably, that the Tuscans, as we are told, 
possessed themselves of three hundred towns previous¬ 
ly occupied by the Umbri. {Plin., 3, 5.) A spirit of ri¬ 
valry was still kept up, however, between the two na¬ 
tions ; as we are assured by Strabo that, when either 
made an expedition into a neighbouring district, the 
other immediately directed its efforts to the same 
quarter. {Strab., 226.) Both nations, however, had 
soon to contend with a formidable foe in the Gauls 
who invaded Italy ; and, after vanquishing and expell¬ 
ing the Tuscans from the Padus, penetrated still far¬ 
ther, and drove the Umbri from the shores of the 
Adriatic into the mountains. These were the Seno- 
nes, who afterward defeated the Romans on the banks 
of the Allia, and sacked their city. The Umbri, thus 
reduced, appear to have offered but little resistance to 
the Romans; nor is it improbable that this politic 
people took advantage of their differences with the 
Etruscans to induce them to remain neuter while 
they were contending with the latter power. The 
submission of Southern Umbria appears to have taken 
place A.U.C. 446 ( Liv ., 9, 41). The northern and 
maritime parts were reduced after the total extirpation 
of the Senones, about twenty-five years afterward. 
{Cramer's Anc. Italy , vol. 1, p. 251, seqq. —Compare 
Niebuhr's Roman History , vol. 1, p. 119, seqq., 
Cambridge transl.) 

Unelli, a people of Gallia Lugdunensis Secunda, 
whose country formed part of the Traetus Armoricus, 
rnd answers to that part of modern Normandy in which 
are Valognes , Coutanccs , and Cherbourg, in the de¬ 
partment de la Manchc. Their .capital, at first, was 
Crociatonum, answering to the modern Valognes. 
Afterward, however, their chief city was Constantini 
Castra, now Coutances. {Lemaire, Index Geogr. ad 
C<zs., p. 373.) 

Voconia Lex, de Testamentis, by Q. Voconius 
Saxa, the tribune, A.U.C. 584, enacted that no one 
should make a woman his heiress {Cic. in Verr., 1, 
12). nor leave to any one, by way of legacy, more than 
to his heir or heirs. This law is supposed to have re¬ 
ferred chiefly to thoss vho were rich, to prevent the 
1392 


extinction of opulent families. On account of its se 
verity, however, it fell into disuse. {Cic., de Fin., 2 
17.— Aul. Gell., 20, 1.) 

Vocontii, a people of Gallia Narbonensis, in the 
immediate vicinity of the Alps, on the banks of the 
Druma or Drome. Their principal cities were Vasio, 
now Vaison; Lucus Augusti, now Luc; and Dea 
Vocontiorum, now Die. {Ccbs., B. G., 1, 10. — Lc 
maire, Index Geogr. ad Cas., p. 401.) 

Vogesus, now la Vosge, a mountain of Belgic Gaui, 
a branch of the chain of Jura, stretching in a northern 
direction; and in which are the sources of the Aral 
(now Sadne), the Mosa (now Meuse), and theMosella 
(now Moselle). Its greatest height, Donnon, is about 
400 toises above the level of the sea, and its length 50 
leagues. {Lucan, 1, 397.— Coes., B. G., 4, 10.) 

V olaterr^e, a city of Etruria, northwest of Sena, 
and northeast of Vetulonii. It stood nearly fifteen 
miles inland, on the right bank of the river Caecina. 
The modern name is Volterra; its Etrurian appella¬ 
tion, as appears on numerous coins, was Velathri. 
Even if we had'not the express authority of Dionysius 
of Halicarnassus (3, 51) for assigning to Volaterrse a 
place among the twelve {fcincipal cities of ancient 
Etruria, the extent of its remains, its massive walls, 
vast sepulchral chambers, and numerous objects of 
Etruscan art, would alone suffice to show its antique 
splendour and impor ance, and claim for it that rank. 
From the monuments alone which have been discov¬ 
ered within its walls and in the immediate vicinity, 
no small idea is raised of the power, civilization, and 
taste of the ancient Etruscans. Its walls were form¬ 
ed, as may yet be seen, of huge massive stones, piled 
on each other without cement; and their circuit, which 
is still distinctly marked, embraced a circumference 
of between three and four miles. The citadel was 
built, as Strabo reports, on a hill, the ascent to which 
was fifteen stadia {Strab., 223); and it is supposed that 
the Tyrrhenian city of which Aristotle {De Mirab., p. 
1158) speaks, under the name of CEnarrea, as being 
built on a hill thirty stadia high, is Volaterrse. The 
first mention of Volaterrse in the Roman history occurs 
in Livy (10, 12), where an engagement of no great 
importance is stated to have taken place near this city, 
at the close of a war, in which the Etruscans were 
leagued with the Samnites against the Romans, A.U.C. 
454. In the second Punic war we find Volaterrse 
among the other cities of Etruria that were zealous m 
their offers of naval stores to the Romans. {Liv., 28. 
45.) Many years afterward Volaterrse sustained a 
siege, which lasted two years, against Sylla ; the be¬ 
sieged consisting principally of persons whom that dic¬ 
tator had proscribed. On its surrender Italy is said to 
have enjoyed peace for the first time after so much 
bloodshed. Finally, we hear of Volaterrse as a colony 
somewhat prior to the reign of Augustus. {Front., de 
Col. — Compare Plin., 3, 5.— Cramer's Anc. Italy, 
vol. 1, p. 186 ) 

Volaterrana Vada, a harbour on the coast of Etru¬ 
ria, deriving its name from the city of Volaterrse, 
which lay inland. It is still known by the name of 
Vada. {Cic., pro Quinct., 6.— Plin., 3, 5.— Rutil., 
Itin., 1, 453.) 

Volc^e, a numerous and powerful nation of southern 
Gaul, divided into two great branches, the Arecomici 
and Tectosages. I. The Volcae Arecomici occupied the 
southwestern angle of the Roman province in Gaul, 
and had for their chief city Nemausus, now Nismes. — 
II. The Volcae Tectosages lay without tie Roman 
province, in a southwest direction from the Arecomici. 
Their capital wasTolosa, now Toulouse. —The nation 
of the Volese would appear from their name to have 
been of German origin. Compare the German volk, 

“ people,” &c., whence comes the English “ folk.’ 
The Roman pronunciation of Vole®, moreover, wan 
Volkoe. {Coes., B. G., 7, 74, seqq.) 





U R A 


UTI 


Vologeses, a name common to many of the kings 
of Parthia, who made war against the Roman emper¬ 
ors. (Vid. Parthia.) 

Volsci, a people of Latium, along the coast below 
Antium. No notice appears to be taken by any Latin 
writer of the origin of this people. According to Ca¬ 
to, they occupied the country of the Aborigines ( ap. 
Priscian., 5), and were at one time subject to the 
Etruscans. (Id., ap. Serv., JEn., It, 567.) We 
learn from Titinnius, an old comic writer quoted by 
Festus (s. v. Oscum), that the Volsci had a peculiar 
idiom distinct from the Oscan and Latin dialects. 
They used the Latin characters, however, both in their 
inscriptions and on their coin. Notwithstanding the 
small extent of country which they occupied, reaching 
only fro\n Antium to Terracina, a line of coast of 
about fifty miles, and little more than half that dis¬ 
tance from the sea to the mountains, it swarmed with 
cities filled with a hardy race, destined, says the Ro¬ 
man historian, as it were by fortune, to train the Ro¬ 
man soldier to arms by their perpetual hostility. ( Liv., 
6, 21.) The Volsci were first attacked by the second 
Tarquin, and war was carried on afterward between 
the two nations, with short intervals, for upward of 
two hundred years (Liv., 1 , 53); and though this ac¬ 
count is no doubt greatly exaggerated by Livy, and 
the numbers much overrated, enough will remain to 
prove that this part of Italy was at that time far more 
populous and better cultivated than at present. (Cra¬ 
mer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 82.) 

Voltumn^e Fanum, a spot in Etruria where the 
general assembly of the Etrurians was held on solemn 
occasions. (Liv., 4, 23.— Id., 5, 17.) Some trace of 
the ancient name is preserved in that of a church 
called Santa Maria in Volturno. (Lanzi, vol. 2, p. 
107.— Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 223.) 

Volsinium. Vid. Vulsinii. 

Volubilis, a city in Mauritania Tingitana, between 
Tocolosida and Aquae Dacicae, in a fruitful part of the 
country. It is now Walili. (Itin. Ant., 23. — Mela, 
3, 10.) 

Volumnia, the wife of Coriolanus. (Liv., 2, 40.) 

Vopiscus, one of the writers of the Augustan His¬ 
tory. He was a native of Syracuse, and contemporary 
with Trebellius Pollio, having flourished towards the 
close of the third and in the early part of the fourth 
century. His father and grandfather lived on terms 
of intimacy with the Emperor Dioclesian. In the year 
291 or 292, the prefect of Rome, Junius Tiberianus, 
prevailed upon Vopiscus to write a life of Aurelian, 
wlfich no Latin historian had as yet taken up. He 
supplied him with various materials from the private 
papers of that prince, and also from the Ulpian library. 
Among the books consulted by him, Vopiscus names 
some Greek works. This biography was followed by 
the lives of Tacitus, Florian, Probus, Firmus, Satur- 
ninus, Proculus, Bonosus, Carus, Numerian, and Ca- 
rinus. Flavius Vopiscus is distinguished from his 
brethren in the Augustan collection by possessing more 
of order and method: the letters and official papers, 
moreover, which he has inserted in his history, impart 
a considerable value to the work. As to style, how¬ 
ever, he is on a level with the other writers in the Au¬ 
gustan History. He states, in his life of Aurelian, his 
intention of writing the life of Apollonius of Tyana, a 
project which he never executed. His works are giv¬ 
en in the Histories Augusta Scriptores. (Scholl, 
Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 3, p. 156.) 

Urania, the muse of Astronomy, usually represent¬ 
ed as holding in one hand a globe, in the other a rod, 
with which she is employed in tracing out some fig¬ 
ure. (Vid. Musae.) By some she was said to be the 
mother of Hymenaeus. ( Catullus, 61, 2. Nonnus, 

83, 67.) , 

UranopSlis, according to most geographers, a city 
an the peninsula of Athos, founded by Alexander, 
80 


brother of Cassander (Athen., 3, 54), and the site ol 
which is called Callitzi. (Cramer's Anc. Greece , 
vol. 1, p. 260.) Gail, however, maintains that no such 
city ever existed, and that the name was a general ap¬ 
pellation for the whole peninsula of Athos, with its five 
cities. (Gail, Atlas, p. 21.) 

Uranus (0 vpavog, “ Heaven" or “sky"), a deity, 
the same as Ccelus, the most ancient of all the gods. 
He married Terra, or the Earth, by whom he had the 
Titans. (Vid. Titanes.) 

Urcinium, a town on the western coast of Corsica, 
east of the Rhium Promontorium. It was fabled to 
have been founded by Eurysaces, the son of Ajax, 
arid is now Ajaccio. 

Uria (Ureium or Hyreium), a town on the coast of 
Apulia, giving name to the Sinus Urias, or Gulf of 
Manfredonia. The position of this town has never 
been very clearly ascertained, partly from the circum¬ 
stance of there being another town of the same name 
in Messapia, and partly from the situation assigned to 
it by Pliny, to the south of the promontory of Garga- 
nus, not agreeing with the topography of Strabo. 
(Plin., 3, 11. — Strabo, 284.) Hence Cluverius and 
Cellarius were led to imagine that there were two 
distinct towns named Uria and Hyrium ; the former 
situated to the south, the latter to the north of Garga- 
nus. (Ital. Antiq., vol. 2, p. 1212.— Geogr. Ant., lib. 
2, c. 9.) It must be observed, however, that Dionys¬ 
ius Periegetes and Ptolemy (p. 62) mention only 
Hyrium, and therefore it is probable that the error has 
originated with Pliny. At any rate, we may safely 
place the Hyreium of Strabo at Rodi. (Cramer's 
Anc. Italy, vol. 2, p. 273, seqq.) 

Usipetes or Usipii, a German tribe. Driven by the 
Suevi from the interior of Germany, the Usipetes pre¬ 
sented themselves on the banks of the Lower Rhine, 
crossed that stream, and passed through the territories 
of the Menapii into Gaul. Csesar defeated them and 
drove them back over the Rhine, and we then find 
them settling to the north of the. Luppia or Lippe, 
and reaching to the eastern mouth of the Rhine. At 
a subsequent period they had their settlement between 
the Sieg and Lahn, but gradually merged into the 
name of Allemanni. ( Mannert , Geogr., vol. 3, p. 
153, 239.) 

Ustica, a mountain and valley in the Sabine terri¬ 
tory, near Horace’s farm. (Horat., Od., 1 , 17, 11.) 

Utica, a city of Africa, on the seacoast, northwest 
of Carthage, and separated from its immediate district 
by the river Bagradas. The Greeks called the name 
Ityke (’Itvktj), probably by a corruption. Utica was 
the earliest, or one of the earliest colonies planted by 
Tyre on the African coast, and Bochart deduces the 
name from the Phoenician Atica, i. e., “ ancient.” 
(Geogr. Sacr., 1, 24, col. 474,1. 1.) Velleius Pa 
terculus makes it to have been founded about the time 
that Codrus was king at Athens, about 1150 B.C., 
consequently in the period when the Greeks were be¬ 
ginning to make their settlements along the coast of 
Asia Minor (1, 2). Justin asserts that Utica was 
more ancient than Carthage (18, 4, 5). It was origi¬ 
nally a free and independent city, like all the other 
large settlements of the Phosnicians, and had a senate 
and suffetes, or presiding magistrates, of its own. As 
Carthage, however, rose gradually into power, it as¬ 
sumed a kind of protection over Utica, as would ap¬ 
pear in particular from the language of the second 
treaty between Rome and Carthage, where the latter 
state speaks not only for itself, but also for the people 
of Utica. (Polyb., 3, 24.) At a subsequent period 
we find Utica, it is true, still with a separate constitu¬ 
tion of its own, but, in reality, more or less dependant 
upon the power of Carthage. Hence the disaffectior 
frequently shown by the inhabitants to the Carthagin 
ian cause, the ease with which Agathocles made him 
self master of the place, and its siding with the re- 

1393 



V U L 


VUL 


FOited mercenaries after the first Punic war. ( Diod. 
Sic.. 20, 54. — Polyb., 1, 82, 88.) The punishment 
inflicted by the Carthaginians on the people of Utica, 
on the quelling of this rebellion, probably drew more 
closely the connexion between the two cities ; at least 
Scipio besieged Utica in vain during the second Punic 
war. At the beginning of the third Punic contest, 
however, the inhabitants of Utica regarded it as the 
safer course to separate their interests from those of 
Carthage. They gave themselves up, therefore, vol¬ 
untarily to the power of Rome, and this latter state 
had now a firm foothold for the prosecution of all her 
ambitious plans in relation to Africa. {Polyb., 36, 1.) 
As some recompense to the Uticenses for the valuable 
aid they had afforded during the war, the Romans, at 
its close, bestowed upon them a large portion of the 
territory immediately adjacent to Carthage ( Appian, 
Bell. Pun., c. 135); and Utica was now, and remain¬ 
ed as long as Carthage continued in ruins, the first city 
of Africa in point of importance, and the seat of the 
proconsul. And yet it never became a very flourish¬ 
ing city, since in all the civil wars of the Romans de¬ 
tachments of one party or the other invariably landed 
near this place, and fought many of tl.eir battles here. 
Thus, it was near Utica that Pompey defeated the op¬ 
ponents of Sylla ( Orosius, 5, 21); here, too, Curio 
contended for Caesar, and, not long after, Caesar’s op¬ 
ponents selected Utica as the chief seat of the war. 
The issue was an unfortunate one for the republican 
party, and Cato (hence called Uticensis ) found here* a 
death by his own hand. Hitherto Utica had remained 
a free city, with its old constitution , and hence Hir- 
tius speaks of its senate. ( Auct., Bell. Afr., c. 87, 
90.) Augustus declared the place a Roman colony. 

( Dio Cass., 49, 16.— Plin., 5, 4.) It still, however, 
retained, in some measure, its early constitution, and 
hence is styled by Aulus Gellius a municipium (16,13). 
At a later period, Utica was regarded, after Carthage, 
the latter'having been rebuilt, as the second in Africa. 
Utica had no harbour, but safe roads in front of the 
town. Its ruins are to be seen at the present day near 
Porto Farina. {Mannert , Geogr., vol. 10, pt. 2, p. 
288, seqq.) 

V ulcanalia, festivals in honour of Vulcan, brought 
to Rome from Praeneste, and observed in the month of 
August. The streets were illuminated, fires kindled 
everywhere, and animals thrown into the flames, as a 
sacrifice to the deity. ( Varro , L. L., 5, 3.— Plin., 
18, 13.) 

Vulcani Insulae. Vid. ^Eoliaj (Insulae), and Li- 
para. 

Vulcanus, the god of fire, the same with the He¬ 
phaestus ("H (paiGTos) of the Greeks. Hephaestus, the 
Olympian artist, is in Homer the son of Jupiter and 
Juno. {IL, 1, 572, 578.) According to Hesiod, how¬ 
ever, he was the son of Juno alone, who was unwill¬ 
ing to be outdone by Jupiter when he had given birth 
to Minerva. {Theog., 927 ) He was born lame, and 
his mother was so shocked at ihe sight of him that 
she flung him from Olympus. The Ocean-nymph Eu- 
rynome and the Nereid Thetis saved and concealed 
him in a cavern beneath the Ocean, where, during 
nine years, he employed himself in manufacturing for 
them various ornaments and trinkets. {II., 18, 394, 
seqq.) We are not informed how his return to Olym¬ 
pus was effected ; but we find him, in the Iliad, firmly 
fixed there ; and all the mansions, furniture, ornaments, 
and arms of the Olympians were the work of his hands. 
It would be an almost endless task to enumerate all 
the articles formed by Hephaestus. Only the chief of 
them will here be noticed. One thing is remarkable 
concerning them, that they were all made of the vari¬ 
ous metals ; no wood, or stone, or any other substance 
entering into their composition : they were, moreover, 
frequently endowed with automatism. Hephaestus 
made armour for Achilles and other mortal heroes. 
1394 


{11, 8, 195.) The fatal collar of Harmonia was the 
work of his hands. {Apollod., 3, 4, 3.) ihe brass¬ 
footed, brass-throated, fire-breathing bulls of ^Eetes, 
king of Colchis, were the gift of Hephaestus to TEetes’ 
father Helius. {Apollon. Rhod., 3, 230.) He also 
made for Alcinoiis, king of the Phaeacians, the gold 
and silver dogs which guarded his house. {Od., 7, 
91.) For himself he formed the golden maidens, who 
waited on him, and whom he endowed with reason 
and speech. {II., 18,419.) He gave to Minos, king 
of Crete, the brazen man Talus, who each day com 
passed his island three times to guard it from the in¬ 
vasion of strangers. {Apollod., 1, 9, 26.) The bra¬ 
zen cup, in which the Sun-god and his horses and char¬ 
iot are carried round the earth every night, was also 
the work of this god. The only instances we meet 
of Hephaestus’ working in any other substance than 
metal are in Hesiod, where, at the command of Jupi¬ 
ter, he forms Pandora of earth and water {Op. et D., 
60), and where he uses gypsum and ivory in the for¬ 
mation of the shield which he makes for Hercules. 
{Scut., Here., 141.) That framed by him for Achilles 
in the Iliad is all of metal. — In the Iliad (18, 382), 
the wife of Hephaestus is named Charis ; in Hesiod 
{Theog., 945), Aglaia, the youngest of the Graces ; in 
the interpolated tale in the Odyssey (8, 266, seqq.), 
Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty.—The favourite haunt 
of Hephaestus on earth was the isle of Lemnos. It 
was here that he fell when flung from Heaven by Jupi¬ 
ter for attempting to aid his mother Juno, whom Ju¬ 
piter had suspended in the air with anvils fastened to 
her feet- As knowledge of the earth increased, TEtna 
and all other places where there was subterranean fire 
were regarded as the forges of Hephaestus ; and the 
Cyclopes were associated wilh him as his assistants. 
In Homer, when Thetis wants Hephaestian armour for 
her son, she seeks Olympus, and the armour is fash¬ 
ioned by the artist-god with his own hand. In the 
Augustan age Venus prevails on her husband, the 
master-smith, to furnish her son TEneas with arms; 
and he goes down from Heaven to Hiera (one of the 
Liparean isles), and directs his men, the Cyclopes, to 
execute the order. (AUn., 8, 407, seqq.) It is thus 
that mythology changes with modes of life. Hephaes¬ 
tus and Minerva are frequently joined together as the 
communicators unto men of the arts which embellish 
life and promote civilization. The philosophy of this 
view of the two deities is correct and elegant. {Od., 
6, 233. — lb., 23, 160. — Horn., Hymn., 20. — Plato, 
Polit., p. 177.— Volcker, Myth, der lap., p. 21, seq.) 
—The artist-god is usually represented as of ripe age, 
with a serious countenance and muscular form : his 
hair hangs in curls on his shoulders. He generally 
appears with hammer and tongs at his anvil, in a short 
tunic, and his right arm bare; sometimes with a point¬ 
ed cap on his head. The Cyclopes are occasionally 
placed with him.—Hephaestus must have been regard¬ 
ed originally as simply the fire-god, a view of his char¬ 
acter which we find even in the Iliad (20, 73 ; 21,330, 
seqq.). Fire being the great agent in reducing and 
working the metals, the fire-god naturally became an 
artist. The former was probably Hephaestus’ Pelasgi- 
an, the latter his Achaean character. — The Vulcan of 
the Latins was also, like Hephaestus, the god of fire, 
but he is not represented as an artist. He was said, in 
one legend, to be the father of Servius Tullius, whose 
wooden statue was, in consequence, spared by the 
flames when they consumed the temple of Fortune in 
which it stood. {Ovid, Fast., 6, 627.— Dion. Hal., 4, 
40.) He was also the reputed father of Caeculus, the 
founder of Praeneste, the legend of whose birth is nearly 
similar to that of Servius. {Virg., ASn., 7, 678, seqq. 
— Servius, ad loc.) Vulcan was united with a female 
power named Maia. {Keightley’s Mythology, p. 107, 
518.) 

Vulcatius, Gallicanus, one of the writers of the 




X AN 


X AN 


Augustan History. He has the title of Vir Clarissi- 
mus , which indicates that he was a senator. Vulca- 
tius lived under Dioclesian, and proposed to himself 
to write a history of all the Roman emperors ; we 
have from him, however, only the life of Avidius Cas¬ 
sius. Some manuscripts even assign this biography 
to Spartianus. 

Vulsinii or Volsinii, and also Vulsinium orVoL- 
sinium, a city of Etruria, situate on the northern shore 
of the Lacus Vulsiniensis. It is generally allowed to 
rank among the first cities of the country An account 
of its early contest with Rome is to be found in Livy 
(5, 31). About the time of the war against Pyrrhus, 
Vulsinii, which the Roman writers represent as a most 
opulent and flourishing place, becomes so enervated by 
its wealth and luxury as to allow its slaves to over¬ 
throw the constitution, and give way to the most un¬ 
bridled licentiousness and excess, till at last the citi¬ 
zens were forced to seek for that protection from Rome 
which they could not derive from their own resources. 
The rebels were speedily reduced, and brought to con¬ 
dign punishment. (F al. Max., 8, 1. — Flor., 1, 21. — 
Oros., 4, 5.) As a proof of the ancient prosperity of 
Vulsinii, it is stated by Pliny, on the authority of Me- 
trodorus Scepsius, that it possessed, when taken by 
the Romans, no less than 2000 statues. ( Plin ., 34, 
7.) From Livy we learn that the Etruscan goddess 
Nortia was worshipped there, and that it was custom¬ 
ary to mark the years by fixing nails in her temples 
(7,3). Vulsinii, at a later period, is noted as the 
birthplace of Sejanus. {Tac., Ann., 4,1.) It is now 
Bolsena. ( Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 221, seqq.) 

Vulturnum, a town of Campania, at the mouth of 
the river Vulturnus, and on the left bank. It is now 
Castel di Volturno. The origin of this city was prob¬ 
ably Etruscan, but we do not find it mentioned in his¬ 
tory until it became a Roman colony, A.U.C. 558. 

( Liv ., 34,45.) According to Frontinus, a second col¬ 
ony was sent thither by Cassar. Festus includes it 
among the praefecturae. ( Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 
2, p. 145.) ' 

Vulturnus, I. a river of Campania, now Volturno, 
rising among the Apennines, in the territory of Samni- 
um, and discharging its waters into the lower sea. 
At its mouth stood the town of Vulturnum. The 
modern name is the Volturno. A magnificent bridge, 
with a triumphal arch, was thrown over this river by 
Domitian when he caused a road to be constructed 
from Sinuessa to Puteoli; a work which Statius has 
undertaken to eulogize in some hundred lines of in¬ 
different poetry. ( Sylv ., 4, 3.— Cramer's Anc. Italy, 
vol. 2, p. 144.)—II. A name applied by the Latin 
writers to the southeast wind, and answering to the 
Greek E vpovorog. (Aul . Cell., 2, 22.— Vitruv , 1, 6.) 

Uxantis, an island off the coast of Gaul, now 
Ushant. {Itin. Hieros., 509.) 

Uxellodunum, a city in Aquitanic Gaul, in the ter¬ 
ritory of the Cadurci; now Pueche d'Issolon. {Cas., 
B. G., 8, 32.) 

Uxii, a mountaineer race occupying the ranges that 
run on each side of the river Orontes, and separate 
Persis from Susiana. They were predatory in their 
habits. ( Diod ., 27, 67.— Arrian, Ind., 3, 18 .—Plm., 

6 27.) 

X. 

Xanthippe {^avdirenr}), less correctly Xantippe, 
the wife of Socrates, represented by many of the an¬ 
cient writers as a perfect termagant. It is more than 
probable, however, that the infirmities of this good 
woman have been exaggerated, and that calumny has 
had some hand in finishing her picture ; for Socrates 
himself, in a dialogue with his son Lamprocles ( Mem ., 
2, 2), allows her many domestic virtues; and we find 
her afterward expressing great affection for her hus¬ 


band during his imprisonment. She must have been 
as deficient in understanding as she was froward in 
disposition if she had not profited by the daily lessons 
which, for twenty years, she received from such a 
master. ( Enfield's History of Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 
171.—Compare the remarks of Mendelsohn, in his 
life of Socrates, prefixed to his German version of 
Plato's Phaidon, p. 17, seqq.) 

Xanthippus, I. a Spartan leader, who fought on the 
side of the Carthaginians in the first Punic war, and 
defeated Regulus. He is said to tiave left Carthage 
soon after this success, apprehending evil consequences 
to himself from the jealousy of the inhabitants. ( Vid. 
Regalus.)—II. An Athenian commander, who led the 
forces of Athens at the battle of Mycale. He was fa¬ 
ther of the celebrated Pericles. ( Vid. Mycale.) 

Xanthus or Xanthos, I. a river of Troas in Asia 
Minor, the same as the Scamander, and, according tc 
Homer, called Xanthus by the gods and Scamander by 
men. ( Vid. remarks under the article Troja, “ Topog¬ 
raphy of Troy.”)—II. A river of Lycia, falling into 
the sea above Patara. It was the most considerable 
of the Lycian streams, and at an early period bore the 
name of Sirbes, as Strabo writes it, but Sibrus ac¬ 
cording to Panyasis ( ap. Steph. Byz., s. v. T 'pepiTiy). 
This stream was navigable for small vessels ; and at 
the distance of seventy stadia from its mouth was 
Xanthus, the principal city of the Lycians. ( Cramer's 
Asia Minor, vol. 2, p. 247.) Bochart, with great prob¬ 
ability on his side, regards the name Xanthus as a 
mere translation into Greek of the Oriental and earlier 
name, since the term Zirba, both in Arabic and Phoe¬ 
nician, is equivalent to the Greek ^avdop, “yellow.” 
(Geogr. Sacr., 1, 6, col. 363.)—III. The chief city 
of Lycia, situate on the river of the same name, at the 
distance of seventy stadia from its mouth. Pliny says 
it was fifteen miles from the sea ; but that distance is 
too considerable, there being no doubt that the Lycian 
capital occupied the site of Aksenidc, which occurs in 
the situation described by Strabo (666.—Compare 
Hecatceus, ap. Steph. Byz., s. v. Edvdoc). The Xan- 
thians have twice been recorded in history for the 
dauntless courage and perseverance with which they 
defended their city against a hostile army. The first 
occasion occurred in the invasion of Lycia by the army 
of Cyrus under Harpagus, after the conquest of 
Lydia, when they buried themselves under the ruins 
of their walls and houses. {Herod., 1, 176.) The 
second event here alluded to took place many centu¬ 
ries later, during the civil wars consequent on the 
death of Caasar. The Xanthians having refused to 
open their gates to the republican army commanded by 
Brutus, that general invested the town, and, after re¬ 
pelling every attempt made by the citizens to break 
through his lines, finally entered it by force. The 
Xanthians are said to have resisted still, and even to 
have perished in the flames, with their wives and chil¬ 
dren, rather than fall into the hands of the Roman gen¬ 
eral, who made many attempts to turn them away 
from their desperate purpose. {Pint., Vit. Brut. — 
Appian, Bell. Civ., 4, 18. —Dio Cass., 47, 34.)—Mr. 
Fellows describes the remains at Xanthus as all of the 
same date, and that a very early one. “ The walls are 
many of them Cyclopean. The language of the innu¬ 
merable and very perfect inscriptions is like the Phoe¬ 
nician or Etruscan ; and the beautiful tombs in the 
rocks are also of very early date. The city has not 
the appearance of having been very large, but its re¬ 
mains show that it was highly ornamented, particularly 
the tombs.” A detailed account of several of these 
tombs, and of the sculptures upon them, is also given 
by the same traveller. {Fellows’ Asia Minor, p. 
225, seqq.) —IV. An ancient historian of Lydia. We 
learn from Suidas {s. v. EavOoe;) that his father’s name 
was Candaules ; that he flourished at the time of the 
capture of Sardis by the Ionians (01. 69); and that he 

1395 




XE N 


XEN 


wrote a History of Lydia in four books. Suidas cites 
the second. Dionysius of Halicarnassus also quotes 
this work, and speaks of the author in terms of high 
commendation. {Ant. Rum., vol. 1, p. 22, ed Reiske.) 
The Lydiaca are quoted by Parthenius, in Stephanus 
of Byzantium, and probably by the scholiast on Apol¬ 
lonius Rhodius : by Hephaestion also (p. 14, ed. Gaisf.). 
The fragments of Xanthus are given by Creuzer in 
his “ Historicorum Groecorum Antiquiss. Fragmen- 
ta ,” Heidelb , 1806, 8vo, p. 148, scqq. {Mus. Cut., 
vol. 2, p. 109, seqq.) 

XenScles, an Athenian tragic poet, ridiculed by 
Aristophanes, and yet the conqueror of Euripides on 
one occasion (Olym. 91.2, B.C. 415). He w&s of 
dwarfish stature, and son of the tragic poet Carcinus. 
In the Fax , Aristophanes applies the term prjx avo ^^ ( l )a C 
to the family. From the scholiast it appears that Xen- 
ocles was celebrated for introducing machinery and 
stage-shows, especially in the ascent or descent.of his 
gods. {Theatre of the Greeks , 3d ed., p. 66.) 

Xenocrates, I. an ancient philosopher, born at 
Chalcedon in the 95th Olympiad, B.C. 400. H first 
attached himself to yEschines, but afterward became 
a disciple of Plato, who took much pains in cultivating 
his genius, which was naturally heavy. Plato, com¬ 
paring him with Aristotle, who was also one of his 
pupils, called the former a dull ass, who needed the 
spsr, and the latter a mettlesome horse, who required 
the curb. His temper was gloomy, his aspect severe, 
and his manners little.tinctured with urbanity. These 
material defects his master took great pains to cor¬ 
rect, frequently advising him to sacrifice to the Gra¬ 
ces ; and the pupil was patient of instruction, and 
knew how to value the kindness of his preceptor. He 
compared himself to a vessel with a narrow orifice, 
which receives with difficulty, but firmly retains what¬ 
ever is put into it. So affectionately was Xenocrates 
attached to his master, that when Dionysius, in a vio¬ 
lent fit of anger, threatened to find one who should cut 
off his head, he said, “ Not before he has cut off this,” 
pointing to his own. As long as Plato lived, Xenoc¬ 
rates was one of his most esteemed disciples; after 
his death he closely adhered to his doctrine ; and, in 
the second year of the hundred and tenth Olympiad, 
B.C. 339, he took the chair in the Academy as the 
successor of Speusippus. Aristotle, who, about this 
time, returned from Macedonia, in expectation, as it 
should seem, of filling the chair, was greatly disap¬ 
pointed and chagrined at this nomination, and imme¬ 
diately instituted a school in the Lyceum, in opposi¬ 
tion to that of the Academy where Xenocrates con¬ 
tinued to preside till his death. Xenocrates was cel¬ 
ebrated among the Athenians, not only for his wisdom, 
but also for his virtues. {Val. Max., 2, 10.— Cic., ad 
Att ., 2, 16. — Diog. Laert., 4, 7.) So eminent was 
his reputation for integrity, that when he was called 
upon to give evidence in a judicial transaction, in 
which an oath was usually required, the judges unan¬ 
imously agreed that his simple asseveration should be 
taken, as a public testimony to his merit. Even 
Philip of Macedon found it impossible to corrupt 
him. When he was sent, with several others, upon 
an embassy to that prince, he declined all private in¬ 
tercourse with him, that he might escape the tempta¬ 
tion of a bribe. Philip afterward said, that of all those 
who had come to him on embassies from foreign 
states, Xenocrates was the only one whose friendship 
he had not been able to purchase. {Diog. Laert.., 4, 
8.) During the time of the Lamiac war, being sent 
an ambassador to the court of Antipater for the re¬ 
demption of several Athenian captives, he was invited 
by the prince to sit down with him at supper, but de¬ 
clined the invitation in the words of Ulysses to Circe. 
{Odyss., 10, 383.) This pertinent and ingenious ap¬ 
plication of a passage in Homer, or, rather, the gen¬ 
erous and patriotic spirit which it expressed, was so 
1396 


pleasing to Antipater that he immediately released the 
prisoners. It may be mentioned as another example 
of moderation in Xenocrates, that when Alexander, to 
mortify Aristotle, against whom he had an accidental 
pique, sent Xenocrates a magnificent present of fifty 
talents, he accepted only thirty mince, returning the 
rest to Alexander with this message : that the large 
sum which Alexander had sent was more than he 
should have been able to spend during his whole life. 
So abstemious was he with respect to food, that his 
provision was frequently spoiled before it was con¬ 
sumed. His chastity was invincible. Lais, a cele¬ 
brated Athenian courtesan, attempted, without suc¬ 
cess, to seduce him. Of his humanity, no other proof 
can be necessary than the following pathetic incident. 
A sparrow, which was pursued by a hawk, flew into 
his bosom ; he afforded it shelter and protection till 
its enemy was out of sight, and then let it go, saying 
that he would never betray a suppliant. {xEl., V. H., 
13, 31.) He was fond of retirement, and was seldom 
seen in the city. He was discreet in the use of his 
time, and carefully allotted a certain portion of each 
day to its proper business. One of these he employ¬ 
ed in silent meditation. He was an admirer of the 
mathematical sciences, and was so fully convinced of 
their utility, that, when a young man who was unac¬ 
quainted with geometry and astronomy desired ad¬ 
mission, he refused his request, saying that he was 
not yet possessed of the handles of philosophy. In 
fine, Xenocrates was eminent both for the purity of 
his morals and for his acquaintance with science, and 
supported the credit of the Platonic school by his lec 
tures, his writings, and his conduct. {Plut., de Virt 
Mor., 2, p. 399.) He lived to the first year of the 
116th Olympiad, B.C. 316, or the 82d of his age, 
when he lost his life by accidentally falling, in the 
dark, into a reservoir of water. The philosophical 
tenets of Xenocrates were truly Platonic, but in his 
method of teaching he made use of the language of 
the Pythagoreans. He made Unity and Diversity prin¬ 
ciples in nature, or gods ; the former of whom he rep¬ 
resented as the father, and the latter as the mother 
of the universe. He taught that the heavens are di¬ 
vine, and the stars celestial gods ; and that, besides 
these divinities, there are terrestrial demons of a mid¬ 
dle order, betweeu the gods and man, which partake 
of the nature both of mind and body, and are there¬ 
fore, like human beings, capable of passions and liable 
to diversity of character. {Diog. Laert., 4, 9, 10.— 
Plut. in Alex., vol. 5, p. 551.— Val. Max., 4, 3.— 
Stob., Eel. Phys., 1, 3. — Plut., dels. et. Os., vol. 2, 
p. 157.— Enfield's Hist. Philos., vol. 1, p. 244, seqq.) 
—II. A Greek physician of Aphrodisias, a work of 
whose is still remaining, on the aliment afforded by 
fishes. The best edition is that published at Naples 
in 1794, 8vo, and which is based upon the edition of 
Franzius, which last appeared in 1774, Lips., 8vo. 
( Sprengel, Hist, de la Med., vol. 2, p. 57.) 

Xenophanes, the founder of the Eleatic sect, was 
a native of Colophon, and born, according to Eusebi¬ 
us, about B.C. 556. From some cause which is not 
related, Xenophanes early left his country and took 
refuge in Sicily, where he supported himself by re¬ 
citing, at the court of Hiero, elegiac and iambic ver¬ 
ses, which he had written in reprehension of the The- 
ogonies of Hesiod and Homer. From Sicily he pass¬ 
ed over into Magna Graecia, where he took up the 
profession of philosophy, and became a celebrated pre¬ 
ceptor in the Pythagorean school. Indulging, how¬ 
ever, a greater freedom of thought than was usual 
among the disciples of Pythagoras, he ventured to in¬ 
troduce new opinions of his own, and in many par¬ 
ticulars to oppose the doctrines of Epimenides, Tha¬ 
les, and Pythagoras. He possessed the Pythagorean 
chair of philosophy about 70 years, and lived to the 
extreme age of 100 years. In metaphysics, Xenoph- 





X E N 


XENOPHOJN. 


ines taught that if there ever had been a time when 
nothing existed, nothing ccMld ever have existed. 
That whatever is, always has been from eternity, with¬ 
out deriving its existence from any prior principle ; 
that nature is one and without limit; that what is one 
is similar in all its parts, else it would be many ; that 
the one infinite, eternal, and homogeneous universe 
is immutable and incapable of change; that God is 
one incorporeal eternal being, and, like the universe, 
spherical in form ; that he is of the same nature with 
the universe, comprehending all things within himself; 
is intelligent, and pervades all things, but bears no re¬ 
semblance to human nature either in body or mind. 

(. Enfield's History of Philosophy , vol. 1, p. 414.) 

Xenophon, I. a celebrated Athenian, son of Gryl- 
lus, distinguished as an historian, philosopher, and 
commander, born at Ercheia, a borough of the tribe 
JSgeis, B.C. 445. ( Letronne , Biogr. Umv., vol. 51, 

p. 370.) Xenophon was unquestionably one of the 
most respectable characters among the disciples of 
Socrates. He strictly adhered to the principles of his 
master in action as well as opinion, and employed phi¬ 
losophy, not to furnish him with the means of osten¬ 
tation, but to qualify him for the offices of public and 
private life. While he was a youth, Socrates, struck 
with the comeliness of his person (for he regarded a 
fair form as a probable indication of a well-propor¬ 
tioned mind), determined to admit him into the num¬ 
ber of his pupils. Meeting him by accident in a nar¬ 
row passage, the philosopher put forth his staff across 
the path, and, stopping him, asked where those things 
were to be purchased which are necessary to human 
life. Xenophon appearing at a loss for a reply this 
unexpected salutation, Socrates proceeded to ask him 
where honest and good men were to be found. Xen¬ 
ophon still hesitating, Socrates said to him, “Follow 
me, and learn.” From that time Xenophon became a 
disciple of Socrates, and made a rapid progress in that 
moral wisdom for which his master was so eminent. 
Xenophon accompanied Socrates in the Peloponnesian 
war, and fought courageously in defence of his coun¬ 
try. It was at the battle of Delium, in the early part 
of this war, that Socrates, according to some accounts, 
saved the life of his pupil. In another battle, also 
fought in Bosotia, but of which history has preserved 
no trace, Xenophon would seem to have been made 
prisoner by the enemy; for Philostratus {\it. Soph., 
1, 12) informs us that he attended the instructions of 
Prodicus of Ceos while he was a prisoner in Boeotia. 
How his time was employed during the period which 
preceded his serving in the army of Cyrus is not as¬ 
certained ; it is more than probable, however, that he 
was engaged during the interval in several campaigns, 
since the°skill and experience displayed in conducting 
the retreat of the Ten Thousand presuppose a familiar 
acquaintance with the art of war. At the age of forty- 
three or forty-four years, he was invited by Proxenus 
the Boeotian, formerly a disciple of Gorgias of Leon- 
tini, and one of Xenophon’s intimate friends, to en¬ 
ter into the service of Cyrus the younger, the brother 
of Artaxerxes Mnemon of Persia. Xenophon consult¬ 
ed Socrates in relation to this step, and the philoso¬ 
pher disapproved of it, being apprehensive lest his old 
pupil might incur the displeasure of the Athenians by 
joining a prince who had shown himself disposed to 
aid the Lacedaemonians in their war against Athens. 
He advised him, however, to visit Delphi, and consult 
the god about his intended scheme. Xenophon obey¬ 
ed, but merely asked the oracle to which one of the 
gods he ought to sacrifice and offer up vows in order 
to ensure the success of what he was then meditating. 
For this Socrates blamed him, but, nevertheless, ad¬ 
vised him to do what the god had enjoined, and then 
to take his departure. At Sardis, Xenophon met his 
friend Proxenus, and obtained, through him, an intro¬ 
duction to Cyrus, by whom he was well received. 


The prince promised, if he would enter into his set 
vice, to send him home in safety after his expedition 
against the Pisidians should have terminated. Xeno¬ 
phon, believing the intended expedition to have no 
other end than this, consented to take part in it, being 
equally deceived with Proxenus himself; for, of all 
the Greeks who accompanied Cyrus, Clearchus alone 
was from the beginning in the secret. The army of 
Cyrus marched from Sardis, through Lydia, Phrygia, 
Lycaonia, and Cappadocia, crossed the mountains of 
Cilicia, passed through Cilicia and Syria to the Eu¬ 
phrates, forded this river, passed through a part of 
Arabia and Babylonia, until they reached the plain of 
Cunaxa. After the fatal battle of Cunaxa and the 
fall of Cyrus, Xenophon advised his fellow-soldiers 
rather to trust to their own bravery than surrender 
themselves to the victor, and to attempt a retreat into 
their own country. They listened to his advice ; and, 
having had many proofs of his wisdom as well as cour¬ 
age, they elected him one of the five new commanders, 
chosen to supply the place of their former leaders, 
who had been entrapped and slain by Tissaphernes. 
Xenophon was appoi»*ed in the room of Proxenus, and 
soon became the soul of all the movements of the 
Greeks in their memorable retreat, acquiring great 
glory by the prudence and firmness with which he con¬ 
ducted them back, through the midst of innumerable 
dangers. The particulars of this memorable adven¬ 
ture are related by Xenophon himself, in his Anabasis , 
or Retreat of the Ten Thousand. In retreating, the 
object of the Greeks was to strike the Euxine ; but 
the error they committed was in making that sea ex¬ 
tend too far to the east. From Cunaxa they turned 
their course to the Tigris, crossed that river, marched 
through Media, northward, still following the course 
of the Tigris. They then crossed the mountains of 
the Carduchi, and, after great exertions, reached the 
sources of the river just mentioned. After this they 
traversed Armenia, crossed the Euphrates not far from 
its source, lost many of their number in the marshes 
through the cold and snow, and came to the Phasis. 
Leaving this stream, they passed through the countries 
of the Taochi, Chalybes, Macrones, Colchians, and at 
last reached the Greek colony of Trapezus on the 
coast of the Euxine Sea. As there were not ships 
enough there to receive them all, they determined to 
return home by land, and, marching along the coast of 
the Euxine, came to Chrysopolis opposite Byzantium. 
After having crossed over to the latter city, and been 
deceived by the promises of Anaxibius, the Spartan 
admiral, they entered into the service of Seuthes, king 
of Thrace, who had solicited their aid. This prince, 
however, proving faithless, and paying them only a 
part of their stipulated recompense, they finally en¬ 
tered into the service of Thymbron, who had been di¬ 
rected by the Spartans to raise an army and make war 
upon the satraps Pharnabazus and Tissaphernes. Ac¬ 
cording to Xenophon, the whole distance traversed by 
the Greeks, both in going and returning, was 1155 
parasangs, or 34,650 stadia. The whole time taken 
up was fifteen months, of which the retreat itself oc¬ 
cupied less than eight.—Having returned to Greece, 
Xenophon, after an interval of four or five years, joined 
Agesilaus, king of Sparta, and fought with him, not 
only in Asia, but also against the Thebans at home, 
in the battle of Coronea. The Athenians, displeased 
at this alliance, brought a public accusation against 
him for his former conduct in engaging in the service 
of Cyrus, and condemned him to exile. The Spar¬ 
tans, upon this, took Xenophon, as an injured man, un¬ 
der their protection, and provided him with a comfort¬ 
able retreat at Scilluns in Elis, making him a present 
of a dwelling there, with considerable land attached 
to it. According to Pausanias (5, 6), they gave him 
the entire town of Scilluns. Here he remained, if we 
believe the same Pausanias, for the remainder of his 

1397 





XENOPHON 


XENOPHON 


days, and in this retreat dedicated his time to literary 
pursuits. Xenophon himself has given us, in the Ana¬ 
basis (5, 3,7), an interesting account of his residence at 
Scilluns, where he erected a temple to the Ephesian Di¬ 
ana, in performance of a vow made during the famous 
retreat which he so ably conducted. In this place he 
died, in thj° 90th year of his age. Pausanias, who vis¬ 
ited the ruins of SciLluns, states that the tomb of Xen¬ 
ophon was pointed out to him, and over it his statue of 
Pentelic marble. He adds, that when the Eleans took 
Scilluns, they brought Xenophon to trial for having ac¬ 
cepted the estate at the hands of the Spartans, but that 
he was acquitted, and allowed to reside there without 
molestation. The common account, however, makes 
him to have retired to Corinth when a war had bro¬ 
ken out between the Spartans and Eleans, and to 
have ended his days there. The integrity, the piety, 
and the moderation of Xenophon rendered hirn an 
ornament to the Socratic School, and proved how 
much he had profited by the precepts of his master. 
His whole military conduct discovered an admirable 
union of wisdom and valour. And his writings, at the 
same time that they have afforded, to all succeed¬ 
ing ages, one of the most perfect models of purity, 
simplicity, and harmony of language, abound with sen¬ 
timents truly Socratic.—By his wife Phitosia Xeno¬ 
phon had two sons, Gryllus and Diodorus ; the for¬ 
mer of whom fell with glory in the battle of Manti- 
nea, after having inflicted a mortal wound on Epam- 
inondas, the Theban commander. ( Vid . Gryllus.) 
—The works of Xenophon, who has been styled, 
from the sweetness and graceful simplicity of his lan¬ 
guage, the “ Attic bee,” are as follows : 1. 'E XkyviKa 
(“ Grecian History ”), in seven books. In this work 
Xenophon gives a continuation of the history of Thu¬ 
cydides, down to the battle of Mantinea. It was un¬ 
dertaken at an advanced age, amid the retirement of 
Scillunc, and completed either there or at Corinth. 
The work is full of lacunae and falsified passages. 
The recital of the battle of Leuctra is not given with 
sufficient development, and it is evident that Xeno¬ 
phon relates with regret the victory of Epaminondas 
over his adopted country. Xenophon does not imitate 
in this production the manner of Thucydides. That 
of Herodotus accorded better with his general char¬ 
acter as a writer, and had more analogy to the style 
of eloquence that marked the school of Isocrates, 
of which Xenophon had been a disciple.—2. ’Avaba- 
oig (“ The Expedition into Upper Asia”), otherwise 
called “ the Retreat of the Ten Thousand.” Xeno¬ 
phon, as has already been remarked, bore a large share 
in this glorious expedition. His narrative, written 
with great clearness and singular modesty, forms one 
of the most interesting works bequeathed to us by an¬ 
tiquity.—3. K vpov n aideia (“ The Education of Cy¬ 
rus"). This work not only gives a view of the earlier 
years of Cyrus the Great, but also of his whole life, 
and of the laws, institutions, and government employ¬ 
ed by him at home and abroad, in peace and in war. 
Dionysius of Halicarnassus {Ep. ad Cn. Pomp. — 
Op-, vol. 6, p. 777, ed. Reiske) characterizes the work 
as the eiKova fiaoi'Xtug dyaQov kcu evdaipovog, and 
Cicero (Ep. ad Q. Fr., 1, 1, 8) warns us not to con¬ 
sider this treatise as constructed with historic faith, 
but as a mere pattern of just government. In fact, 
the Cyropaedia is less a history than a species of his¬ 
torical romance. Cyrus is represented to us as a wise 
and magnanimous, a just, generous, and patriotic king ; 
as a great and experienced, a prudent and invincible 
commander ; a bright exemplar to those who are called 
to wield the military energies of nations, to defend 
their father-land from hostile aggression, to conquer 
on a foreign soil the enemies of their country, to en¬ 
large the boundaries of their empire, and to diffuse 
over subject millions the blessings of civil order and 
peaceful industry, of extended manufactures, trade, 
1398 


and commerce. Plato (dc Leg., 3.— Op., vol. 8, p 
142, ed. Bip.) denies that Cyrus opdyg naideiag y(f>6ai, 
and this statement is considered by Valckenaer to have 
been directed against the representations of Xeno¬ 
phon ; and hence we need feel no surprise at the op¬ 
position between the Banquet of Xenophon and that 
written by Plato. From Aulus Gellius (N. A-, 14, 3) 
we discern some traces of this personal hostility be¬ 
tween these great philosophers. (Barker, de Xen ., 
Cyrop., 1, 1. — Compare remarks under the article 
Plato.)—As regards the more received accounts rela¬ 
tive to the elder Cyrus, the student is referred to that 
article itself.—Some modern critics have thought that 
Xenophon, in this work, is not as romantic in his de¬ 
tails as he is commonly supposed to be, but that he 
gives us the mode of education adopted in the case of 
the young Persians that belonged to a privileged caste, 
that of the warriors namely, and not the manner of 
rearing which was common to the people at large. 
One thing at least is certain, that nothing in the Cyro¬ 
paedia indicates the intention of its author to produce 
a work of the imagination. Others have supposed 
that Xenophon’s object in writing the treatise in ques¬ 
tion was to criticise the first two books of Plato's Re¬ 
public, and that the latter retaliated in his third book 
of laws by drawing a character of Cyrus quite different 
from that which Xenophon had depicted. (Consult 
Aul. Gell., l. c., and, in relation to the Cyropaedia gen¬ 
erally, the Dissertation of Fraguier, Mem. de l'Acad, 
des Inscr., &c., vol. 2, p. 48.— Sainte-Croix, Observa¬ 
tions, &c., ibid., vol. 46, p. 399.— Baden, Opuscula 
Latina, Havn., 1763, 8vo, n. 2.— Damm, Berliner 
Monatschrift, 1796, vol. 1, p. 69.) Though the Cyro¬ 
paedia be certainly the work of Xenophon, some doubts 
have nevertheless arisen with respect to the latter part 
of the history, and which Valckenaer, Schneider, F. 
A. Wolfe, and many other modern scholars regard aa 
the addition of some later writer, who wished to weak¬ 
en the favourable impression towards the Persians 
which the perusal of the main work could not fail to 
produce. (Compare Schulz, De Cyropadice epilogo, 
&c. Hal., 1806, 8vo.— Bornemann, Epilog, der Cyro- 
pcedie, &c., Leipz., 1819, 8vo.)—4. A oyog elg Ayyot- 
Xaov (“ Eloge on Agesilaus ”). Xenophon had fol¬ 
lowed this prince in his expedition into Asia, and had 
been an eyewitness of his victories in that country. 
He had accompanied him also in his Grecian cam¬ 
paigns, and his attachment to this eminent commande: 
was the secret cause of his banishment from Athens 
No one, therefore, was better qualified to write the bi¬ 
ography of this celebrated Spartan. Cicero, in speak 
ing of this work of Xenophon’s, says that it surpasses 
all the statues ever erected to the Lacedaemonian 
monarch (Ep. ad Fam., 5, 12); and yet some modern 
critics, with Valckenaer at their head, have regarded 
this piece of biography as below the standard of Xen¬ 
ophon’s acknowledged abilities as a writer, and the 
production of some sophist or rhetorician of a subse¬ 
quent age.—5. ’ Air opvypovevpar a ’ZoKparovg (“ Me¬ 
moirs of Socrates ”1, the best of Xenophon’s philo¬ 
sophical works. It gives, first, a justification of Soc¬ 
rates against the charge of having introduced strange 
deities instead of worshipping the national ones, and 
of having corrupted the young by his example and 
maxims. It then goes on to adduce various conver¬ 
sations between Socrates and his disciples on topics of 
a moral and religious nature. (Consult Dissen, De phi - 
losophia morali in Xenophontis de Soc v ate commenta- 
«iis tradita, Gott., 1812.) This work, written with 
singular grace and elegance, offends in many instances 
against the rules and the form of the dialogue, and be¬ 
comes, on these occasions, an actual monologue. It is 
divided into four books, but is thought to have been 
anciently more voluminous.—6. 2uKpaTovg ’AttoAo- 
yta. 7r pog rovg diKacrag (“ Defence of Socrates be¬ 
fore his Judges"). This piece is not, as the title 



XENOPHON. 


A E K 


mdicates, a pleading delivered in the presence of 
his judges; neither is it a defence of himself, on the 
part of Socrates, against the vices and crimes laid to 
his charge ; it is rather a development of the motives 
which induced the sage to prefer death to the humili¬ 
ation of addressing entreaties and supplications to 
prejudiced judges. Valckenaer and Schneider consider 
the work unworthy of Xenophon. The former of these 
critics sees in this the production of the same indi¬ 
vidual who fabricated the latter part of the Cyropsedia; 
while Schneider thinks that it once formed a portion 
of the Memoirs of Socrates, and that the grammari¬ 
ans, after detaching it from this work, falsified and 
corrupted it in many places.—7. HvyiroGtov (piXooo- 
<bw (“ Banquet of Philosophers"). The object which 
Xenophon had in view in writing this piece, which is 
a chef (Voeuvre in point of style, was to place in the 
clearest light the purity of his master’s principles rela¬ 
tive to friendship and love, and to render a just hom¬ 
age to the innocence of his moral character. Some of 
the ancients were persuaded that Xenophon had an¬ 
other and secondary object, that of opposing his “ Ban¬ 
quet” to Plato’s dialogue which bears the same title, 
and in which Socrates had not been depicted, as Xen¬ 
ophon thought, with all the simplicity that marked his 
character. Schneider and Weiske, two celebrated 
commentators on Xenophon, as well as an excellent 
iudge in matters of taste, the distinguished Wieland 
( Attische Museum, vol. 4, p. 76), have adopted this 
same opinion ; but it has been attacked by two other 
scholars, Boeckh and Ast. The former believes that 
Plato wrote his dialogue after having read the Banquet 
of Xenophon, and that, in place of Socrates as he real¬ 
ly was, the founder of the Academy wished to trace, 
under the name of this philosopher, the beau ideal of 
a true sage, such as he had conceived the character 
to be. ( Commentatio Academica de simultate quee 
Plaioni cum Xenophonte intercessisse fertur, Berol., 
1811, 4to.) Ast goes still farther, and pretends to 
find in the Banquet of Xenophon sure indications of 
its having been one of the works of his youth. {Ast, 
Platons Leben und Schriften, p. 314.)—8. 'Upuv r/ 
T vpavvog (“ Hiero"), a dialogue between the Syracu¬ 
san monarch and Simonides, in which Xenophon com¬ 
pares the troublesome life of a prince with the tran¬ 
quil existence of a private individual, intermingling 
from time to time observations on the art of govern¬ 
ing.—9. O iKovopuKog Xoyoq (“ Discourse on Econo¬ 
my ”). This piece is in the form of a dialogue between 
Socrates and Critobulus, son of Crito, and one of his 
disciples. Some critics have regarded it as the fifth 
book of the Memoirs. It is less a theory of, than a 
eulogium on, rural economy, or, in other words, a 
treatise on morality as applied to rural and domestic 
life. It contains also some interesting and instructive 
details relative to the state of agriculture among the 
Greeks : we find in it, likewise, some anecdotes re¬ 
specting the younger Cyrus. Cicero translated this 
work into Latin, and Virgil has drawn from it the ma¬ 
terials for some passages in his Georgies.—11. Ilepl 
i-mriKyq (“ On the Knowledge of Horses"). A very 
useful treatise, in which Xenophon makes known the 
marks bv which a good horse may be discovered. 
He cites^ abridges, and completes the work of a cer¬ 
tain Simon, who had written on this subject before him. 

_ 11 . 'iTTTrapx'-K-o? (“ Hipparchicus, or the duties of an 

officer of cavalry"). After having said something re¬ 
specting the knowledge of horses necessary for an of¬ 
ficer of cavalry to have, Xenophon lays down the 
rules that ought to guide in the selection of tne officer 
himself, and then traces the general duties appertain¬ 
ing to the station.— 12. Kw? pyennog (“ Of the 
chase"). A eulogium on the exercise of hunting, 
after which Xenophon unfolds the theory of the sport. 
—•13. Depot fj rrepi npooodov (“ On the revenues of 
Attica"). The object of this treatise is to show that 


the revenues of Attica, if well regulated, are suffi¬ 
cient for its population, without the need of the Athe¬ 
nians rendering themselves odious by exactions from 
their allies or subjects.—14. A aKedaipovluv ‘Ko’ktreia 
(“ Government of the Lacedcemonians > '). —15. AOyvai- 
uv TToXtrela (“ Government of the Athenians"). These 
two small works are very probably not Xenophon’s.— 
We have also seven letters of this sam#writer.—The 
best editions of the works of Xenophon are, that of 
Schneider, Lips., 1800, reprinted at Oxford, 1812, 6 
vols. 8vo, and that of Weiske, Lips., 1798-1802, 5 
vols. 8vo. There are numerous editions also of the 
separate works, some very useful.—II. A Greek ro¬ 
mance writer, a native of Ephesus, whose era and his¬ 
tory are equally unknown. With the exception of 
Suidas, no ancient writer makes any mention of him, 
not even Photius, who has recorded the names of so 
many writers of the middling class. The Baron di 
Lacella places him in the age of the Antonines, and 
others in the fourth and fifth centuries. Peerlkamp, 
on the other hand, one of his editors, considers him 
to be the earliest of the Greek romancers, and fancies 
that he is able to detect the imitations of the rest. 
The same author affirms that Xenophon is an assumed 
name, and, farther, that no Greek romancer, with the 
exception of Heliodorus, has written in his real name. 
Mr. Dunlop, in his History of Fiction, mentions three 
Xenophons, who lived about the time of Chariton ; 
but Chariton must have lived in or after the fifth cen¬ 
tury, at a distance of no less than 300 years from the 
time in which we have placed Xenophon, on the best 
authorities we can find. The three Xenophons, ac¬ 
cording to Mr. Dunlop, were Antiochus, Cyprius, and 
Ephesius, and their works, “ Babylonica,” “ Cypriaca,” 
and “ Ephesiaca.” Of these, only the last has been 
published. It is entitled ’E (pEruaua ra Kara ’Avdiav 
sal ’AGpoKogr/v (“ Ephesiacs, or the Loves of Abro- 
comes and Anthia"). The story is commonplace, 
and yet improbable ; but the style is simple, and the 
action busy without confusion. For a long time the 
existence of this work was denied. In the fifteenth 
century, Angelo Poliziano quoted a passage from this 
romance; but the incredulity of the learned was still 
manifested two centuries after. At length, in 1726, 
an Italian translation was published by Antonio Maria 
Salvini, and in the same year the Greek text appeared 
in print. Even this, however, was insufficient; for, 
eight years after, we find Lenglet du Fresnoy, in his 
pseudonymous work on the customs of the Romans, 
asserting that “ neither the original Greek, nor any 
other version,” was known. The best edition of 
Xenophon of Ephesus is that of Peerlkamp, Harlem , 
1818, 4to. There is also a good edition by Passow, 
Lips., 1833, 12mo. {Foreign Quarterly Review, vol. 
5, p. 124, seqq.) 

Xerxes, I. son and successor of Darius Hystaspis on 
the throne of Persia. He was, in fact, the second son 
of that monarch, but the first born unto him of Atossa, 
the daughter of Cyrus, whom Darius had married after 
he came to the throne. The elder son was Artabanus, 
born unto Darius while yet in a private station. The 
two princes contended for the empire, Artabanus 
grounding his claim on the common law of inheritance, 
Xerxes, the younger, on his descent from the founder 
of the monarchy. Demaratus, the exiled king of 
Sparta, aided Xerxes with his counsels, and suggest¬ 
ed to him another argument, drawn from the Spartan 
rule of succession, by which a son born after the ac¬ 
cession of a king was preferred to his elder orother. 
Darius decided in his favour, and declared him his 
heir; swayed, perhaps, much more by the influence of 
Atossa, which was always great with him, than by 
reason or usage. In the following year (B.C. 485), 
before he had ended his preparations against Egypt 
and Attica, he died, and Xerxes ascended the throne. 
Thus the Persian sceptre passed from the hands of a 

1399 




XERXES. 


XERXES. 


prince who had acquired it by his boldness and pru¬ 
dence, to one born in the palace, the favourite son of 
the favourite queen, who had been accustomed, from 
his infancy, to regard the kingdom as his inheritance, 
perhaps to think that the blood of Cyrus which flowed 
in his veins raised him above his father. Bred up in 
the pompous luxury of the Persian court, among slaves 
and women, a*mark for their flattery and intrigues, he 
had none of the experience which Darius had gained 
in that period of his life when Syloson’s cloak was a 
welcome present. He was probably inferior to his 
father in ability ; but the difference between them in 
fortune and education seems to have left more traces 
in their history than any disparity of nature. Ambi¬ 
tion was not the prominent feature in the character of 
Xerxes ; and, had he followed his unbiased inclina¬ 
tion, he would, perhaps, have been content to turn the 
preparations of Darius against the revolted Egyptians, 
and have abandoned the expedition against Greece, to 
which he was not spurred by any personal motives. 
But he was surrounded by men who were led by vari¬ 
ous passions and interests to desire that he should 
prosecute his father’s plans of conquest and revenge. 
Mardonius was eager to renew an enterprise in which 
he had been foiled through unavoidable mischance, not 
through his own incapacity. He had reputation to re¬ 
trieve, and might look forward to the possession of a 
great European satrapy, at such a distance from the 
court as would make him almost an absolute sover¬ 
eign. He was warmly seconded by the Greeks, who 
had been drawn to Susa by the report of the approach¬ 
ing invasion of their country, and who wanted foreign 
aid to accomplish their designs. The Thessalian 
house of the Aleuads, either because they thought 
their power insecure, or expected to increase it by be¬ 
coming vassals of the Persian king, sent their emissa¬ 
ries to invite him to the conquest of Greece. The ex¬ 
iled Pisistratids had no other chance for the recovery 
of Athens. They had brought a man named Onomac- 
ritus with them to court, who was one of the first 
among the Greeks to practise an art, afterward very 
common, that of forging prophecies and oracles. 
While their family ruled at Athens, he had been de¬ 
tected in fabricating verses, which he had interpolated 
in a work ascribed to the ancient seer Musaeus, and 
Hipparchus, before his patron, had banished him from 
the city. But the exiles saw the use they might make 
of his talents, and had taken him into their service. 
They now recommended him to Xerxes as a man who 
possessed a treasure of prophetical knowledge, and the 
young king listened with unsuspecting confidence to 
the encouraging predictions which Onomacritus drew 
from his inexhaustible stores. These various engines 
at length prevailed. The imagination of Xerxes was 
inflamed with the prospect of rivalling or surpassing the 
achievements of his glorious predecessors, and of ex¬ 
tending his dominion to the ends of the earth. {Herod., 
7,8.) He resolved on the invasion of Greece. First, 
however, in the second year of his reign, he led an army 
against Egypt, and brought it again under the Persian 
yoke, which was purposely made more burdensome and 
galling than before. He intrusted it to the care of his 
brother Achsemenes, and then returned to Persia, and 
bent all his thoughts towards the West. Only one of 
his counsellors, his uncle Artabanus, is said to have 
been wise and honest enough to endeavour to divert him 
from the enterprise, and especially to dissuade him from 
risking his own person in it. If any reliance could be 
placed on the story told by Herodotus about the de¬ 
liberations held on this question in the Persian cabinet, 
we might suspect that the influence and arts of the 
Magian priesthood, which we find in this reign risino- 
in credit, had been set at work by the adversaries of 
Artabanus to counteract his influence over the mind 
of his nephew, and to confirm Xerxes in his martial 
mood. The vast preparations were continued with re- 
1400 


doubled activity, to raise an armament worthy of the 
presence of the king. His aim was not merely to col¬ 
lect a force sufficient to ensure the success of his un¬ 
dertaking, and to scare away all opposition, but also, 
and perhaps principally, to set his whole enormous 
power in magnificent array, that he might enjoy the 
sight of it himself, and display it to the admiration of 
the world. For four years longer Asia was still kept in 
restless turmoil: no less time was needed to provide 
the means of subsistence for the countless host that 
was about to be poured out upon Europe. Beside* 
the stores that were to be carried in the fleet which 
was to accompany the army, it was necessary that 
magazines should be formed along the whole line of 
march as far as the confines of Greece. But, in addi¬ 
tion to these prudent precautions, two works were be¬ 
gun, which scarcely served any other purpose than that 
of showing the power and majesty of Xerxes, and pro¬ 
ving that he would suffer no obstacles to bar his prog¬ 
ress. It would have been easy to transport his troops 
in ships over the Hellespont ; but it was better suited 
to the dignity of the monarch, who was about to unite 
both continents under his dominion, to join them by a 
bridge laid upon the subject channel, and to march 
across as along a royal road. The storm that had de¬ 
stroyed the fleet which accompanied Mardonius in his 
unfortunate expedition, had made the coast of Athos 
terrible to the Persians. The simplest mode of avoid¬ 
ing this formidable cape would have been to draw 
their ships over the narrow, low neck that connects the 
mountain with the mainland. But Xerxes preferred 
to leave a monument of his greatness and of his en¬ 
terprise, in a canal cut through the isthmus, a distance 
of about a mile and a half. This work employed a 
multitude of men for three years. The construction 
of the two bridges which were thrown across the Hel¬ 
lespont was intrusted to the skill of the Phoenicians 
and Egyptians. When these preparations were draw¬ 
ing to a close, Xerxes set forth for Sardis, where ho 
designed to spend the following winter, and to receive 
the re-enforcements which he had appointed there to 
join the main army (B.C. 481). During his stay at 
Sardis, the Phoenician and Egyptian engineers com¬ 
pleted their bridges on the Hellespont; but the work 
was not strong enough to resist a violent storm, which 
broke it to pieces soon after it was finished. How far 
this disaster was owing to defects in its construction, 
which might have been avoided by ordinary skill and 
foresight, does not appear. But Xerxes is said to 
have been so much angered by the accident that he 
put the architects to death. Such a burst of passios* 
would be credible enough in itself, and is only render 
ed doubtful by the extravagant fables that gained cred 
it on the subject among the Greeks, who, in the bridg¬ 
ing of the sacred Hellespont, saw the beginning of 9 
long career of audacious impiety r and gradually trans¬ 
formed the fastenings with which the passage was final 
ly secured into fetters and scourges, with which thr 
barbarian, in his madness, had thought to chastise the 
aggression of the rebellious stream. The construc¬ 
tion of new bridges was committed to other engineers, 
perhaps to Greeks ; but their names have not passed 
down, like that of Mandrocles. By their art two firnc 
and broad causeways were made to stretch from the 
neighbourhood of Abydus to a projecting point in the 
opposite shore of the Chersonesus, resting each on a 
row of ships, which were stayed against the strong cur¬ 
rent that bore upon them from the north by anchors 
and by cables fastened to both sides of the channel; 
the length was not far short of a mile. When all was 
in readiness, the mighty armament was set in motion. 
Early in the spring (B.C. 480), Xerxes began his march 
from Sardis, in all the pomp of a royal progress. The 
baggage led the way : it was followed by the first di¬ 
vision of the armed crowd that had been brought to¬ 
gether from the tributary nations ; a motley throng, in 



XERXES. 


XERXES. 


eluding many strange varieties of complexion, dress, and 
language, commanded by Thessalian generals, but re¬ 
taining each tribe its national armour and mode of fight¬ 
ing. An interval was then left, after which came 1000 
picked Persian cavalry, followed by an equal number of 
spearmen, whose lances, which they carried with the 
points turned downward, ended in knobs of gold. 
Next, ten sacred horses, of the Nisaean breed, were led 
in gorgeous caparisons, preceding the chariot of the 
Persian Jove, drawn by eight white horses, the dri¬ 
ver following on fr> n t. Then came the royal chariot, 
also drawn by Nisaean horses, in which Xerxes sat in 
state; but from time to time he exchanged it for an 
easier carriage, which sheltered him from the sun and 
the changes of the weather. He was followed by two 
bands of horse and foot, like those which went imme¬ 
diately before him, and by a body of 10,000 Persian 
infantry, the flower of the whole army, who were called 
the Immortals, because their number was kept con¬ 
stantly full. A thousand of them, who occupied the 
outer ranks, bore lances knobbed with gold; those of 
the rest were similarly ornamented with silver. They 
were followed by an equal number of Persian cavalry. 
The remainder of the host brought up the rear. In 
this order the army reached Abydus, and Xerxes, from 
a lofty throne, surveyed the crowded sides and bosom 
of the Hellespont, and the image of a seafight; a 
spectacle which Herodotus might well think sufficient 
to have moved him with a touch of human sympathy. 
The passage did not begin before the king had prayed to 
the rising sun, and had tried to propitiate the Helles¬ 
pont itself by libations, and by casting into it golden 
vessels and a sword. After the bridges had been 
strewed with myrtle and purified with incense, the Ten 
Thousand Immortals, crowned with chaplets, led the 
way. The army crossed by one bridge, the baggage 
by the other; yet the living tide flowed without inter¬ 
mission for seven days and seven nights before the 
last man, as Herodotus heard, the king himself, the 
tallest and most majestic person in the host, had ar¬ 
rived on the European shore. In the great plain of 
Dorisous, on the banks of the Hebrus, an attempt was 
made to number the land force. A space was en¬ 
closed large enough to contain 10,000 men ; into 
this the myriads were successively poured and dis¬ 
charged, till the whole mass had been rudely counted. 
They were then drawn up according to their natural di¬ 
visions, and Xerxes rode in his chariot along the ranks, 
while the royal scribes recorded the names, and most 
likely the equipments, of the different races. It is an 
ingenious and probable conjecture of Heeren’s (Ideen, 
1, p. 137), that this authentic document was the ori¬ 
ginal source from which Herodotus drew his minute 
description of their dress and weapons. The real mil¬ 
itary strength of the armament was almost lost among 
the undisciplined herds which could only impede its 
movements as well as consume its stores. The Per¬ 
sians were the core of both the land and sea force; none 
of the other troops are said to have equalled them in dis¬ 
cipline or in courage ; and the four-and-twenty thous¬ 
and men who guarded the royal person were the flower 
of the whole nation. Yet these, as we see from their 
glittering armour, as well as from their performances, 
were much better fitted for show than for action; and 
of the rest, we hear that they were distinguished from 
the mass of the army, not only by their superior order 
and valour, but also by the abundance of gold they 
displayed, by the train of carriages, women, and ser¬ 
vants that followed them, and by the provisions set 
apart for their use. Though Xerxes himself was ela¬ 
ted by the spectacle he viewed on the plains and 
the shores of Doriscus, it must have filled the clear¬ 
sighted Greeks who accompanied him with misgivings 
as to the issue of the enterprise. The language of 
Demaratus, in the conversation which Herodotus sup¬ 
poses him to have had with Xerxes after the review, 
8 P 


though it was probably never uttered, expressed 
thoughts which could scarcely fail to occur to the 
Spartan. Poverty, he is made to observe, was the 
endowment which Greece had received from nature; 
but law and reason had armed her with instruments, 
with which she had cultivated her barren inheritance, 
and might still hope to repel the invasion even of 
Xerxes and his host. ( ThirlwaWs History of Greece > 
vol. 2, p. 249, seqq .)—Our limits will not allow us to 
enter here into a detail of the movements of Xerxes; 
and, besides, we have already given, under other arti¬ 
cles, a brief summary of the campaign. ( Vid . Arte- 
misium, Thermopylae, Salamis, &c.)—After the disas¬ 
trous defeat at Salamis, Xerxes felt desirous of es¬ 
caping from a state of things which was now becom¬ 
ing troublesome and dangerous, and Mardonius saw 
that he would gladly listen to any proposal that would 
facilitate his return. He was aware, that, without a 
fleet, the war might probably be tedious, in which case 
the immense bulk of the present army would be only 
an encumbrance, from the difficulty of subsisting it. 
Besides, the ambition of Mardonius was flattered with 
the idea of his becoming the conqueror of Greece, 
while he feared that, if he now returned, he might be 
made answerable for the ill success of the expedition 
which he had advised. He therefore proposed to 
Xerxes to return into Asia with the body of the army, 
leaving himself, with 300,000 of the best troops, to 
complete the conquest of Greece. Xerxes assented, 
and the army having retired into Boeotia, Mardonius 
made his selection, and then, accompanying the king 
into Thessaly, there parted from him, leaving him to pur¬ 
sue his march towards Asia, while he himself prepared 
to winter in Thessaly and Macedonia.—Widely differ¬ 
ent from the appearance of the glittering host, which a 
few months before had advanced over the plains of 
Macedonia and Thrace to the conquest of Greece, 
was the aspect of the crowd which was now hurrying 
back along the same road. The splendour, the pomp, 
the luxury, the waste, were exchanged for disaster 
and distress, want and disease. The magazines had 
been emptied by the careless profusion or peculation 
of those who had the charge of them; the granaries of 
the countries traversed by the retreating multitude were 
unable to supply its demands; ordinary food was of¬ 
ten not to be found; and it was compelled to draw a 
scanty and unwholesome nourishment from the herb¬ 
age of the plains, the bark and leaves of the trees. 
Sickness soon began to spread its ravages among 
them, and Xerxes was compelled to consign numbers 
to the care of the cities that lay on his road, already 
impoverished by the cost of his first visit, in the hope 
that they would tend their guests, and would not sell 
them into slavery if they recovered. The passage of 
the Strymon is said to have been peculiarly disastrous. 
The river had been frozen in the night hard enough 
to bear those who arrived first. But the ice suddenly 
gave way under the heat of the morning sun, and 
numbers perished in the waters. It is a little surpri¬ 
sing that Herodotus, when he is describing the mis¬ 
eries of the retreat, does not notice this disaster, 
which is so prominent in the narrative of the Persian 
messenger in ^Es^iylus. There can, however, be no 
doubt as to the fact; and perhaps it may furnish a 
useful warning not to lay too much stress on the si¬ 
lence of Herodotus, as a ground for rejecting even 
important and interesting facts which are only men¬ 
tioned by later writers, though such as he must have 
heard of, and might have been expected to relate. It 
seems possible that the story he mentions of Xerxes 
embarking at E'ion (8,118) may have arisen out of the 
tragical passage of the Strymon.—In forty-five days af¬ 
ter he had left Mardonius in Thessaly, he reached the 
Hellespont; the bridges had been broken up by foul 
weather, but the fleet was there to carry the army over 
to Abydus. Here it rested from its fatigues, and found 

1401 



Z A L 


ZE L 


plentiful quarters; but intemperate indulgence ren¬ 
dered the sudden change from scarcity to abundance 
almost as pernicious as the previous famine. The 
remnant that Xerxes brought back to Sardis was a 
wreck, a fragment, rather than a part of his huge host. 
■—The history of Xerxes, after the termination of his 
Grecian campaign, may be comprised in a brief com¬ 
pass. He gave himself up to a life of dissolute pleas¬ 
ure, and was slain by Artabanus, a captain of the royal 
guards, B.C. 464. ( Vid. Artabanus II.— ThirlwaWs 

History of Greece , vol. 2, p. 315, seq.) —II. A son of 
Artaxerxes Mnemon, who succeeded his father, but 
was slain, after a reign of forty-five days, by his broth¬ 
er Sogdianus. (Vid. Sogdianus.) 

Xois, a city of Egypt, situate on an island in the 
Phatnetic branch of the Nile, below Sebennytus. 
Mannert takes it to be the same with the Papremis of 
Herodotus (Geogr., vol. 10, p, 571). 

Xuthcjs, a son of Hellen, grandson of Deucalion, 
f Vid. Hellas, f) 1). 

Z. 

Zabatus, a river in the northern part of Assyria, 
rising in Mount Zagrus, and falling into the Tigris. 
It is called Zabatus by Xenophon, but otherwise Za- 
bus or Zerbis, and traverses a large portion of Assyria. 
This stream was also termed Lycus (Avaog), or “ the 
wolf,' 1 ' 1 by the Greeks ; but it has resumed its primitive 
denomination of Zab, or, according to some modern 
travellers, Zarb. (Polyb ., 5, 51.— Amm. Marc., 23, 
14. — Xen., Anab.,%, 5. — Plin., 6, 26.) Farther 
down, another river, named Zabus Minor, and called 
by the Macedonians Caprus (Kdrcpog), or “ the boar,” 
is also received by the Tigris, and is now called by 
the Turks Altonson, or the river of gold. (Polyb., 5, 
51.) 

Zabdicene, a district in Mesopotamia, in which was 
situated a city named Zabda or Bezabda. It was 
yielded to the Persians by Jovian. (Amm. Marc., 
25, 7.) 

Zabus, a river of Assyria, falling into the Tigris. 
(Vid. Zabatus.) 

Zacynthus ( Zdicvvdog ), an island in the Ionian Sea, 
to the west of the Peloponnesus, and below Cephalle- 
nia. Pliny affirms that it was once called Hyrie ; but 
this fact is not recorded by Homer, who constantly 
uses the former name (II. , 2, 634. — Od., 1, 246), 
which was said to be derived from Zacynthus, the son 
of Dardanus, an Arcadian chief. (Pausan., 8, 24.) 
A very ancient tradition ascribed to Zacynthus the 
foundation of Saguntum in Spain, in conjunction 
with the Rutuli of Ardea. (Liv., 21, 7.) Thucydi¬ 
des informs us that, at a later period, this island re¬ 
ceived a colony of Achaaans from Peloponnesus (2, 
66.) Not long before the Peloponnesian war, the isl¬ 
and was reduced by Tolmides, the Athenian general, 
from which period we find Zacynthus allied to, or, 
rather, dependant upon, Athens. It subsequently fell 
into the hands of Philip III., king of Macedon (Polyb., 
5, 4), and was afterward occupied by the Romans, 
under Val. Laevinus, during the second Punic war. 
On this occasion, the chief city of^he island, which 
bore the same name, was captured, with the exception 
of its citadel. (Liv., 26, 24). Zacynthus, however, 
was subsequently restored to Philip. It was afterward 
sold to the Achaeans, and given up by them to the 
Romans on its being claimed by the latter. The mod¬ 
ern name is Zante. (Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 2, 
p. 56, seqq.) 

Zaleucus, a lawgiver in Magna Graecia, and the 
founder of the Locrian state in that quarter of Italy. 
Eusebius places him in Olymp. 29, which is 40 years 
before Draco, and 60 before Pythagoras was born. 
(Bentley, on Phalaris, vol. 1, p. 380, ed. Dyce.) Ac¬ 
cording to the ordinary account, he was of obscure 
1402 


birth, and in his youth lived in servitude, in the capa¬ 
city of a shepherd. But his extraordinary abilities and 
merit obtained him his freedom, and at length raised 
him to the chief magistracy. The laws which he 
framed were severe ; but they were so well adapted 
to tbe situation and manners of the Locrians, that their 
constitution was, for several ages, highly celebrated. 
So vigorous was the discipline of Zaleucus, that he 
prohibited the use of wine except in cases where it 
was prescribed as a medicine ; and he ordained that 
adulterers should be punished with the loss of their 
eyes. When his own son had subjected himself to 
this penalty, Zaleucus, in order, at the same time, to 
preserve the authority of the laws, and show some de¬ 
gree of paternal lenity, shared the punishment with the 
offender, and, that he might only be deprived of one 
eye, submitted to lose one of his own. (Clem. Alex , 
Strom., 1 , p. 309.— Val. Max., 1 , 2, 4.— Id., 6, 5, 3 
— Diog. Laert., 8, 16. — Stob., Serm.,39 .)—Bentley 
throws doubt on the existence of such a person as 
Zaleucus, and regards his code of laws as the forgery 
of a sophist. (Diss. on Phalaris, vol. 1, p. 378, ed. 
Dyce.) Against this opinion, however, see Fabricius, 
Biblioth. Gr., lib. 2, c. 14, and Warburton, Div. Leg. 
of Moses, vol. 1, book, 2, § 3. (Dyce ad Bentl., 1. c.) 

Zamolxis, a celebrated personage among the Scyth 
ians, whom many represent not only as the father of 
wisdom with respect to the Scythians, but as the 
teacher of the doctrines of immortality and transmigra¬ 
tion to the Celtic Druids and to Pythagoras. (Origen., 
Philos., c. 25, p. 170.— Suid., s. v.) Others suppose 
him to have been a slave of Pythagoras, who, after 
having attended him into Egypt, obtained his manu¬ 
mission, and taught his master’s doctrine among the 
Getoe. But there can be no doubt that the doctrine of 
immortality was known to the northern nations long 
before the time of Pythagoras ; and Herodotus, men¬ 
tioning a common tradition, that Zamolxis was a Pyth¬ 
agorean, expressly says (4, 95), that he flourished at a 
much earlier period than Pythagoras. The whole 
story of the connexion of Zamolxis with Pythagoras 
seems to have been invented by the Pythagoreans, to 
advance the fame of their master. (Enfield, Hist. 
Philos., vol. 1, p. 118.) 

Zama, I. a city of Africa, called Zama Regia, and 
lying some distance to the southwest of Carthage, and 
to the northwest of Hadrumetum. Sallust describes 
it as a large place, and strongly fortified. It became 
the residence subsequently of Juba, and the deposite 
for his treasures. (Auct., Bell. Afr., 91.) Strabo 
speaks of it as being in his days a ruined city ; it prob¬ 
ably met with this fate during the civil wars. It ap¬ 
pears to have been afterward rebuilt, and to have be¬ 
come the seat of a bishopric. The modern Zowarin 
marks the ancient site. ( Mannert, vol. 10, pt. 2, p. 
355.)—II. A city of Numidia, five days’ journey west 
of Carthage, according to Polybius (15, 5). Near this 
place was fought the famous battle between the elder 
Africanus and Hannibal. (Mannert, Geogr., vol. 10, 
pt. 2, p. 366.) 

Zancle, the earlier name of Messana in Sicily. 
(Vid. Messana.) 

Zarang*i or Drang.*, a nation of Upper Asia, 
southeast of Aria, having for their capital Prophthasia, 
now Zarang. (Plin., 6, 23.— Arrian, Exp. Alex., 3, 
2.) Some authorities, however, make the Zarangaei 
only a part of the Drangae. (Bischojf und Moller, 
Worterb. der Geogr., p. 1013.) 

Zariaspa Bactra, the capital of Bactriana, on the 
river Bactrus, now Balkh. (Plin., 6, 16.) 

Zela, a city of Pontus, southeast of, and not far 
from, Amasea. It was originally a village, but Pom- 
pey increased it, and raised it to the rank of a city. 
Here Mithradates defeated the Romans under Triari- 
us ; and here, too, Caesar defeated Pharnaces. It was 
in writing home word of this victory that Caesar made 





ZEN 


ZENO. 


nse of the well-known expressions, “ Vcni , vidi, vici .” 
— The modern village of Zilc or Ziel occupies the 
*ite of the ancient city. {Pirn., 63.— Hirtiust , B. 
A 72.) 

Zeno, I. the founder of the sect of the Stoics, born 
at Citium, in the island of Cyprus. His father was by 
profession a merchant, but, discovering in his son a 
strong propensity towards learning, he early devoted 
him to the study of philosophy In his mercantile ca¬ 
pacity, the former had frequent occasions to visit Ath¬ 
ens, wheie he purchased for the young Zeno several of 
the writings of the most eminent Socratic philosophers. 
These he read with great avidity ; and, when he was 
about thirty years of age, he determined to take a voy¬ 
age to a city which was so celebrated both as a mart 
of trade and of science. Whether this voyage was in 
part mercantile, or wholly undertaken for the sake of 
conversing with those philosophers whose writings 
Zeno had long admired, is uncertain. If it be true, 
as some writers relate, that he brought with him a val¬ 
uable cargo of Phoenician purple, which was lost by 
shipwreck upon the coast of Attica, this circumstance 
will account for the facility with which he at first at¬ 
tached himself to a sect whose leading principle was 
contempt of riches. Upon his first arrival in Athens, 
going accidentally into tht shop of a bookseller, he took 
up a volume of the commentaries of Xenophon, and, 
after reading a few passages, was so much delighted 
with the work, and formed so high an idea of its author, 
that he asked the bookseller where he might meet with 
such men. Crates, the Cynic philosopher, happening 
at that instant to be passing by, the bookseller pointed 
to him, and said, “ Follow that man.” Zeno soon 
found an opportunity of attending upon the instruc¬ 
tions of Crates, and was so well pleased with his doc¬ 
trine that he became one of his disciples. But, though 
he highly admired the general principles and spirit of 
the Cynic school, he could not easily reconcile him¬ 
self to their peculiar manners. Besides, his inquisi¬ 
tive turn of mind would not allow him to adopt that 
indifference to every scientific inquiry which was one 
of the characteristic distinctions of the sect. He there¬ 
fore attended upon other masters, who professed to 
instruct their disciples in the nature and causes of 
things. When Crates, displeased at his following 
other philosophers, attempted to drag him by force 
out of the school of Stiipo, Zeno said to him, “You 
may seize my body, but Stiipo has laid hold of my 
mind.” After continuing to attend upon the lectures 
of Stiipo for several years, he passed over to other 
schools, particularly those of Xenocrates and Diodo¬ 
rus Chronus. By the latter he was instructed in dia¬ 
lectics. At last, after attending almost every other 
master, he offered himself as a disciple of Polemo. 
This philosopher appears to have been aware that Ze¬ 
no’s intention in thus removing from one school to 
another was to collect materials from various quarters 
for a new system of his own; for, when he came into 
Polemo’s school, the latter said to him, “I am no 
stranger to your Pncenician arts, Zeno , I perceive 
that your design is to creep slyly into my garden and 
steal away my fruit.” Polemo was not mistaken in 
his opinion. Having made himself master of the ten¬ 
ets of others, Zeno determined to become the found¬ 
er of a new sect. The place which he made choice 
of for his school was called the Pencils {YlouciXy 2rou), 
or Painted Porch; a public portico, so called from 
the pictures of Polygnotus, and other eminent mas¬ 
ters, with which it was adorned. This portico, being 
the most famous in Athens, was called, by way of dis¬ 
tinction, 2rod, the Porch . It was from this circum¬ 
stance that the followers of Zeno were called Stoics, 
i. e., the men of the Porch. Zeno excelled in that 
kind of subtle reasoning which was then popular. At 
the same time, he taught a strict system of moral doc- 
rine, and exhibited a pleasing picture of moral dis¬ 


cipline in his own life. The Stoic sect, in fact, was a 
branch of the Cynic, and, as far as respected morals, 
differed from it more in words than in reality. Its 
founder, while he avoided the singularities of the Cyn¬ 
ics, retained the spirit of their inoral doctrine : at the 
same time, from a diligent comparison of the tenets 
of other masters, he framed a new system of specula 
tive philosophy. It is not at all surprising, therefore 
that he obtained the applause and affection of numer 
ous followers, and even enjoyed the favour of the 
great. Antigonus Gonatas, king of Macedon, while 
he was resident at Athens, attended his lectures, and, 
upon his return, earnestly invited him to his court. 
He possessed so large a share of esteem among the 
Athenians, that, on account of his approved integrity, 
they deposited the keys of their citadel in his hands 
They also honoured him with a golden crown, and a 
statue of brass. Among his countrymen, the inhab¬ 
itants of Cyprus, and with the Sidonians, from whom 
his family was derived, he was likewise highly esteem¬ 
ed. In his person Zeno was tall and slender ; his 
aspect was severe, and his brow contracted. His con¬ 
stitution was feeble, but he preserved his health by 
great abstemiousness. The supplies of his table con¬ 
sisted of figs, bread, and honey; notwithstanding 
which, he was frequently honoured with the company 
of great men. He paid more attention to neatness 
and decorum in his personal appearance than the Cyn¬ 
ic philosophers. In his dress, indeed, he was plain, 
and in his expenses frugal; but this is not to be im¬ 
puted to avarice, but to a contempt of external mag¬ 
nificence. He showed as much respect to the poor 
as to the rich, and conversed freely with persons of 
the meanest occupations. He had only one servant, 
or, according to Seneca, none. Although Zeno’s so¬ 
briety and continence were even proverbial, he was 
not without enemies. Among his contemporaries, sev¬ 
eral philosophers of great ability and eloquence em¬ 
ployed their talents against him. Arcesilaus and Car- 
neades, the founders of the Middle Academy, were his 
professed opponents. Towards the close of his life 
he found another powerful antagonist in Epicurus, 
whose temper and doctrines were alike inimical to the 
severe gravity and philosophical pride of the Stoic 
sect. Hence mutual invectives passed between the 
Stoics and other sects, to which little credit is due. 

( Vid . remarks under the article Epicurus.) Zeno 
lived to the extreme age of 98, and at last, in conse¬ 
quence of an accident, put an end to his life. As he 
was walking out of his school, he fell down, and in 
the fall broke one of his fingers. He was so affected, 
upon this, with a consciousness of infirmity, that, 
striking the earth, he exclaimed,'E pxopat, tl p'aveig; 
“ I am coming, why callest thou meV and immedi¬ 
ately went home and strangled himself. He died B.C. 
264. The Athenians, at the request of Antigonus, 
erected a monument to his memory in the Ceramicus. 
From the particulars that have been related concern¬ 
ing Zeno, it will not be difficult to perceive what kind 
of influence his circumstances and character must 
have had upon his philosophical system. If his doc¬ 
trines be diligently compared with the history of his 
life, it will appear that, having attended upon many 
eminent preceptors, and been intimately conversant 
with their opinions, he compiled out of their various 
tenets a heterogeneous system, on the credit of which 
he assumed to himself the title of a founder of a new 
sect. When he resolved, for the sake of establishing 
a new school, to desert the philosophy of Pythagoras 
and Plato, in which he had been perfectly instructed 
by Xenocrates and Polemo, it became necessary ei¬ 
ther to invent opinions entirely new, or to give an air 
of novelty to old systems by the introduction of new 
terms and definitions. Of these two undertakings, 
Zeno prudently made choice of the easier. Cicero 
says concerning him, that he had little reason for de- 
7 1403 



ZENO. 


ZENO. 


serting his masters, especially those of the Platonic 
school, and that he was not so much an inventor of 
new opinions as of new terms. That this was the 
real character of the Porch will fully appear from an 
attentive perusal of the clear and accurate comparison 
which Cicero has drawn between the doctrines of the 
Old Academy and those of the Stoics, in his Academ¬ 
ic Questions. As to the moral doctrine of the Cynic 
sect, to which Zeno adhered to the last, there can be 
no doubt that he transferred it almost without alloy 
into his own school. In morals, the principal differ¬ 
ence between the Cynics and the Stoics was, that 
the former disdained the cultivation of nature, the 
latter affected to rise above it. On the subject of 
physics, Zeno received his doctrine from Pythagoras 
and Heraclitus through the channel of the Platonic 
school, as will fully appear from a careful compar¬ 
ison of their respective systems. The moral part of 
the Stoical philosophy partook of the defects of its 
origin. It may as justly be objected against the Sto¬ 
ics as the Cynics, that they assumed an artificial se¬ 
verity of manners and a tone of virtue above the 
condition of man. Their doctrine of moral wisdom 
was an ostentatious display of words, in which lit¬ 
tle regard was paid to nature and reason. It professed 
to raise human nature to a degree of perfection before 
unknown ; but its real effect was merely to amuse the 
ear and captivate the fancy with fictions that can never 
be realized. The Stoical doctrine concerning nature 
is as follows : according to Zeno and his followers, 
there existed from eternity a dark and confused chaos, 
in which were contained the first principles of all fu¬ 
ture beings. This chaos being at length arranged, 
and emerging into variable forms, became the world 
as it now subsists. The world, or nature, is that 
whole which comprehends all things, and of which all 
things are parts and members. The universe, though 
one whole, contains two principles, distinct from ele¬ 
ments, one passive and the other active. The passive 
principle is pure matter without qualities; the active 
principle is reason, or God. This is the fundamental 
doctrine of the Stoics concerning nature. If the doc¬ 
trine of Plato, which derives the human mind from the 
soul of the world, has a tendency towards enthusiasm, 
much more must this be the case with the Stoical doc¬ 
trine, which supposes that all human souls have im¬ 
mediately proceeded from, and will at last return into, 
the divine nature. As regards a divine providence, if 
we compare the popular language of the Stoics upon 
this head with their general system, and explain the 
former with the fundamental principles of the latter, 
we shall find that the agency of deity is, according to 
them, nothing more than the active motion of a celes¬ 
tial ether, or fire, possessed of intelligence, which at 
first gave form to the shapeless mass of gross matter, 
and being always essentially united to the visible world, 
by the same necessary agency, preserves its order and 
harmony. Providence, in the Stoic creed, is only an¬ 
other name for absolute necessity, or fate, to which 
God and matter, or the universe, which consists of 
both, is immutably subject. The Stoic doctrine of 
the resurrection of the body, upon which Seneca has 
written with so much elegance, must not be confound¬ 
ed with the Christian doctrine ; for, according to the 
Stoics, men return to life, not by the voluntary ap¬ 
pointment of a wise and merciful God, but by the law 
of fate; and are not renewed for the enjoyment of a 
better and happier condition, but drawn back into their 
former state of imperfection and misery. Accordingly, 
Seneca says, “This restoration many would reject, 
were it not that their renovated life is accompanied 
with a total oblivion of past events.” Upon the prin¬ 
ciples of physics depends the whole Stoic doctrine of 
morals. Conceiving God to be the principal part of 
nature, by whose energy all bodies are formed, moved, 
and arranged, and human reason to be a portion of the 
1404 


Divinity, it was their fundamental doctrine in ethics, 
that, in human life, one ultimate end ought for its own 
sake to be pursued ; and that this end is to live agree¬ 
ably to nature, that is, to be conformed to the law of 
fate by which the world is governed, and to the reason 
of that divine and celestial fire which animates all 
things. Since man is himself a microcosm, composed, 
like the world, of matter and a rational principle, it 
becomes him to live as a part of the great whole, and 
to accommodate all his desires and pursuits to the 
general arrangement of nature. Thus, to live accord¬ 
ing to nature, as the Stoics teach, is virtue, and virtue 
is itself happiness ; for the supreme good is to live 
according to a just conception of the real nature of 
things, choosing that which is itself eligible, and re¬ 
jecting the contrary. Every man, having within him¬ 
self a capacity of discerning and following the law of 
nature, has his happiness in his own power, and is a 
divinity to himself. Wisdom consists in distinguish¬ 
ing good from evil. Good is that which produces hap¬ 
piness according to the nature of a rational being. 
Since those things only are truly good which are be¬ 
coming and virtuous, and virtue, which is seated in 
the mind, is alone sufficient for happiness, external 
things contribute nothing |owards happiness, and, 
therefore, are not in themselves good. The wise man 
will only value riches, honour, beauty, and other ex¬ 
ternal enjoyments as means and instruments of vir¬ 
tue ; for, in every condition, he is happy in the pos¬ 
session of a mind accommodated to nature. Pain, 
which does not belong to the mind, is no evil. The 
wise man will be happy in the midst of torture. All 
external things are indifferent, since they cannot af¬ 
fect the happiness of man. Every virtue being a 
conformity to nature, and every vice a deviation from 
it, all virtues and vices are equal. One act of benefi¬ 
cence or justice is not more truly so than another ; one 
fraud is not more a fraud than another; therefore 
there is no difference in the essential nature of moral 
actions, except that some are vicious and others virtu¬ 
ous. This is the doctrine which Horace ridicules in 
the 4th satire, 1st book. The Stoics advanced many 
extravagant assertions concerning their wise man ; for 
example, that he feels neither pain nor pleasure ; that 
he exercises no pity ; that he is free from faults ; that 
he is divine ; that he does all things well ; that he 
alone is great, noble, ingenuous ; that he is a prophet, 
a priest, a king, and the like. These paradoxical vaunt- 
ings are humorously ridiculed by Horace. In order to 
understand all this, we must bear in mind that the Sto¬ 
ics did not suppose such a man actually to exist, but 
that they framed in their imagination an image of 
perfection, towards which every man should continu¬ 
ally aspire. All the extravagant notions which are to 
be found in their writings on this subject may be re¬ 
ferred to their general principle of the entire sufficiency 
of virtue to happiness, and the consequent indiffer 
ence of all external circumstances. The sum of 
man’s duty, according to the Stoics, with respect to 
himself, is to subdue his passions of joy and sorrow, 
hope and fear, and even pity. He who is, in this re¬ 
spect, perfectly master of himself, is a wise man; 
and, in proportion as we approach a state of apathy, 
we advance towards perfection. A wise man, more¬ 
over, may justly and reasonably withdraw from life 
whenever he finds it expedient ; not only because life 
and death are among those things which are in their na¬ 
ture indifferent, but also because life may be less con¬ 
sistent with virtue than death. Concerning the whole 
moral system of the Stoics, it must be remarked, that, 
although deserving of high encomium for the purity, 
extent, and variety of its doctrines, and although it 
must be confessed that, in many select passages of the 
Stoic writings, it appears exceedingly brilliant, it is 
nevertheless founded in false notions of nature and of 
man, and is raised to a degree of refinement which is 



ZEN 


ZEN 


extravagant and impracticable. The piety which it 
teaches is nothing more than a quiet submission to ir¬ 
resistible fate ; the self-command which it enjoins an¬ 
nihilates the best affections of the human heart; the 
indulgence which it grants to suicide is inconsistent, 
not only with the general principles of piety, but even 
with that constancy which was the height of Stoical 
nerfection ; and even its moral doctrine of benevolence 
is tinctured with the fanciful principle, which lay at the 
foundation of the whole Stoical system, that every 
being is a portion of one great whole, from which it 
would be unnatural and impious to attempt a separa¬ 
tion. {Enfield's History of Philosophy, \ ol. l,p. 315, 
seqq.) —II. A philosopher, a native of Tarsus, or, ac¬ 
cording to some, of Sidon, and the immediate succes¬ 
sor of Chrysippus in the Stoic school. He does not 
appear to have receded in any respect from the Stoic 
tenets, except that he withheld his assent to the doc¬ 
trine of the final conflagration. {Diog. Laert., 7, 38. 

■— Euseb., Prap. Ev., 15, 18.)—III. A philosopher of 
Elea, called the Eleatic, to distinguish him from Ze¬ 
no the Stoic. He flourished about 444 B.C. Zeno 
was a zealous friend of civil liberty, and is celebrated 
for his courageous and successful opposition to tyrants; 
but the inconsistency of the stories related by different 
writers concerning him in a great measure destroys 
their credit.—The invention of the dialectic art has 
been improperly ascribed to him ; but there can be no 
doubt that this philosopher, and other metaphysical 
disputants in the Eleatic seat, employed much inge¬ 
nuity and subtlety in exhibiting examples of most of 
the logical arts which were afterward reduced to rule 
by Aristotle and others. According to Aristotle, Ze¬ 
no of Elea taught that nothing can be produced either 
from that which is similar or dissimilar ; that there is 
only one being, and that is God ; that this being is 
eternal, homogeneous, and spherical, neither finite nor 
infinite, neither quiescent nor moveable ; that there 
are many worlds ; that there is in nature no vacuum, 
&c. If Seneca’s account of this philosopher deserves 
credit, he reached the highest point of scepticism, and 
denied the real existence of external objects. ( Sen¬ 
eca , Ep., 58. — Enfield, Hist. Philos., vol. 1, p. 419, 
seq.) 

Zenobia, a celebrated princess, wife of Odenatus, 
and after his death queen of Palmyra. {Vid. Odena¬ 
tus, and Palmyra.) With equal talents for jurispru¬ 
dence and finance, thoroughly skilled in the arts and 
duties of government, and adapting severity and clem¬ 
ency with nice discernment to the exigency of the 
circumstances, her agile and elastic frame enabled her 
to direct and share the labours and enterprises of war. 
Disdaining the female litter, she was continually on 
horseback, and could even keep pace on foot with the 
march of her soldiery. History has preserved some 
reminiscences of her personal appearance, her dress, 
and her habits, which represent this apparent amazon 
as a woman of the most engaging beauty, gifted with 
the versatile graces of a court, and accomplished in 
literary endowments. In complexion a brunette, her 
teeth were of a pearly whiteness, and her eyes black 
and sparkling; her mien was animated, and her voice 
clear and powerful. With a helmet on her head, and 
wearing a purple mantle frpged with gems and clasp¬ 
ed with a buckle at the waist, so as to leave one of her 
arms bare to the shoulder, she presented herself at the 
council of war; and affecting, from the policy of her 
country, a regal pomp, she was worshipped with Per¬ 
sian prostration. Pure in her manners to the utmost 
refinement of delicacy, and temperate in her habits, 
she would nevertheless challenge in their cups her 
Persian and Armenian guests, and retire the victor 
without ebriety. Chiefly versed in the languages of 
Syria and Egypt, her modesty restrained her from 
conversing freely in Latin ; but she had read the Ro¬ 
man history in Greek, was herself an elegant histori¬ 


an, and had compiled the Annals of Alexandrea and 
the East. Her authority was acknowledged by a large 
portion of Asia Minor when Aurelian succeeded to the 
empire. Envious of her power, and determined to 
dispossess her of some of the rich provinces compre¬ 
hended in her dominions, he marched at the head of a 
powerful army to Asia. Having defeated the queen’s 
general near Antioch, he compelled her to retreat to 
Emesa. Under the walls of this city another engage¬ 
ment was fought, in which the emperor was again vic¬ 
torious. The queen fled to Palmyra, determined to 
support a siege. Aurelian followed her, and, on ma¬ 
king his approaches to the walls, found them mounted 
in every part with mural engines, which plied the be¬ 
siegers with stones, darts, and missile fires. To the 
summons for a surrender of the city and kingdom, on 
the condition of her life being spared, Zenobia replied 
in a proud and spirited letter, written in Greek by her 
secretary, the celebrated Longinus. Her hopes of 
victory soon vanished ; and, though she harassed the 
Romans night and day by continual sallies from her 
walls and the working of her military engines, she de¬ 
spaired of success when she heard that the armies 
which were marching to her relief from Armenia, Per¬ 
sia, and the East had either been intercepted or gain¬ 
ed over by the foe. She fled from Palmyra in the 
night on her dromedaries, but was overtaken by the 
Roman horse while attempting to cross the Euphrates, 
and was brought into the presence of Aurelian, and 
tried before a tribunal at Emesa, Aurelian himself 
presiding. The soldiers were clamorous for her death; 
but she, in a manner unworthy of her former fame, 
saved her own life by throwing the blame on her 
counsellors, especially on Longinus, who was, in con¬ 
sequence, put to death. Zenobia was carried to Rome, 
to grace the emperor’s triumph, and was led along in 
chains of gold. She is said to have almost sunk be¬ 
neath the weight of jewels with which she was adorn 
ed on that occasion. She was treated with great hu¬ 
manity, and Aurelian gave her large possessions near 
Tibur, where she was permitted to pass the remain¬ 
der of her days. Her two sons afterward married into 
distinguished families at Rome. ( Flav . Vopisc., Vit. 
Aurel. — Treb. Pollio, Trigint. Tyrann .— Vit. He- 
rennian.) 

Zenodorus, a statuary, whose native country is un¬ 
certain. He exercised his art in Cisalpine Gaul, and 
also in Rome during the reign of Nero. Pliny speaks 
of a Mercury of his, and also of a colossal statue of 
Nero, afterward dedicated to the sun on the downfall 
of that emperor. {Thiersch, Epoch. 3, Adnot. 102. 
— Sillig , Diet. Art., s. v.) 

Zephyrium, I. a promontory of Magna Graecia, on 
the eastern coast of the lower extremity of Bruttium, 
whence the Locrians derived the appellation of Epi- 
zephyrii. It is now Capo di Bruzzano. {Strabo, 
259.)—II. A promontory on the western coast of the 
island of Cyprus, and closing the Bay of Bafio to the 
west. {Strab., 683.) 

Zephyrus, one of the winds, son of Astraeus and 
Aurora, the same as the Favonius of the Latins. He 
had a son named Carpus {Kapnoq, fruit) by one of 
the Seasons. {Serv. ad Virg., Eclog., 5, 48.) Zephy¬ 
rus is described by Homer as a strong-blowing wind; 
but he was afterward regarded as gentle and soft- 
breathing. In the days of Homer, the idea of darkness 
was also associated with the western regions of the 
world, and hence the wind Zephyrus derived its name 
from tftyog, “darkness,” “gloom.” In a succeeding 
age, when the west wind began to be regarded as 
genial in its influence both on man and all nature,^ the 
name was considered as synonymous with farityopoc 
life-bearing. {Hesiod, Theog., 377.— Virgil, JEn. t 
1, 135.— Ovid, Met., 1, 64; 15, 700.— Propertius, 1 
16, 34, &c.) 

Zetes, a son of Boreas, king of Thrace, and Orith 

1405 



Z E U 


ZEUXIS. 


yia, who accompanied the Argonauts to Colchis along 
with his brother Calais. In Bithvnia, the two broth¬ 
ers, who are represented with wings, delivered Phin- 
eus from the persecution of the Harpies, and drove 
these monsters as far as the islands called Strophades. 

Vid. Strophades, and Harpyiae.-— Apollod., 1, 9; 3, 15. 
—Hygin., fab., 14.— Ovid, Met., 8, 716.— Pausan., 
3, 16.) 

Zethus, a son of Jupiter and Antiope, brother to 
Amphion. ( Vid. Amphion.) 

Zeugis or Zeugitana, a district of Africa in which 
Carthage was situated. It extended from the river 
Tusca to the Hermsean promontory, and from the 
coast to the mountains that separated it from Byzaci- 
um. ( Isid., Hist., 14, 5.— Plin., 5, 4.) 

Zeugma, or the Bridge, the name of the principal 
passage of the river Euphrates, southwest of Edessa. 
An ancient fortress by which it was commanded is 
still called Roum-Cala, or the Roman Castle ; to 
which may be added, that on the opposite shore there 
is a place called Zeugme. {Plin., 5, 24.— Curt., 3, 
7.— Tacit., Ann., 12, 12.) 

Zeus, the name of Jupiter among the Greeks. 
{Vid. remarks under the article Jupiter.) 

Zeuxis, a celebrated painter, born at Heraclea, in 
Magna Gracia, and who flourished about B.C. 400. 
{Plin., 35, 9, 36.— JElian, V. H., 4, 12.— Hardouin, 
ad Plin., 1. c. — Sillig, Diet. Art., p. 130, not.) He 
studied under either Hemophilus or Neseas, artists re¬ 
specting whom nothing is known but that one of them 
was his master. Soon, however, he far outstripped 
his instructer, as Apollodorus intimated in verses ex¬ 
pressive of his indignation that Zeuxis should have 
moulded to his own use all previous inventions, and 
stolen the graces of the best masters ; thus paying a 
high though involuntary compliment to his gifted rival. 
Apollodorus having first practised chiaro-oscuro, could 
not endure that his glory should be eclipsed by a 
younger artist, who availed himself of his improve¬ 
ments to rise to a higher degree of excellence. Zeux- 
s seems to have rapidly risen to the highest distinc¬ 
tion in Greece, and acquired by the exercise of his 
irt, not only renown, but riches. Of the latter ad¬ 
vantage he was more vain than became a man of ex¬ 
ited genius. He appeared at the Olympic games 
attired in a mantle on which his name was embroidered 
in letters of gold, a piece of most absurd display in 
one whose name was deeply impressed on the hearts 
and imaginations of those by whom he was surrounded. 
He does not, however, seem to have been chargeable 
with avarice ; or, at least, this passion, if it existed, 
was subservient to his pride ; for, when he had attained 
the height of his fame, he refused any longer to re¬ 
ceive money for his pictures, but made presents of 
them, because he regarded them as above all pecuni¬ 
ary value. In the earlier part of his career he was 
accustomed, however, to exhibit his productions for 
money, especially his most celebrated painting of Hel¬ 
en. The truth seems to have been, that the ruling pas¬ 
sion of Zeuxis was the love of pomp, an ever-restless 
vanity, a constant desire and craving after every kind 
of distinction.—Very little is known respecting the 
events of the life of this celebrated painter. He was 
not only successful in securing wealth and the applause 
of the multitude, but was honoured with the friend¬ 
ship of Archelaiis, king of Macedon. For the palace 
of this monarch he executed numerous pictures. Ci¬ 
cero informs us, that the inhabitants of Crotona pre¬ 
vailed on Zeuxis to come to their city, and to paint 
there a number of pieces, which were intended to 
adorn the temple of Juno, for which he was to receive 
a large and stipulated sum. On his arrival, he in¬ 
formed them that he intended only to paint the picture 
of Helen, with which they were satisfied, because he 
was regarded as peculiarly excellent in the delineation 
ef women. He accordingly desired to see the most 
1406 


beautiful maidens in the city, and, having selected fire 
of the fairest, copied all that was most beautiful and 
perfect in the form of each, and thus completed his 
Helen. Pliny, in his relation of the same circum¬ 
stance, omits to give the particular subject of the 
painting, or the terms of the original contract, and 
states that the whole occurred, not among the people 
of Crotona, but those of Agrigentum, for whom, he 
says, the piece was executed, to fulfil a vow made by 
them to the goddess. This great artist, on several 
occasions, painted pictures for cities and states. He 
gave his Alcmena, representing Hercules strangling 
the serpents in his cradle, in the sight of his parents, 
to the Agrigentines, and a figure of Pan to his patron 
Archelaiis of Macedon. The most celebrated of the 
pictures of Zeuxis, besides the Helen and the Alcme¬ 
na, were, a Penelope, in which Pliny assures us that 
not only form, but character, was vividly expressed; a 
representation of Jupiter seated on his throne, with 
all the gods around doing him homage ; a Marsyas 
bound to a tree, which was preserved at Rome ; and 
a wrestler, beneath which was inscribed a verse, to the 
effect that it was easier to envy than to imitate its ex¬ 
cellence. Lucian has left us an admirable description 
of another painting of his, representing the Centaurs, 
in which he particularly applauds the delicacy of the 
drawing, the harmony of the colouring, the softness of 
the blending shades, and the excellence of the pro¬ 
portions. He left many draughts in a single colour 
on white. Pliny censures him for the too great size 
of the heads and joints, in comparison with the rest 
of the figures. Aristotle complains that he was a 
painter of forms rather than of manners, which seems 
contrary to the eulogium passed by Pliny on the 
representation of Penelope. — The story respecting 
the contest between Zeuxis and Parrhasius has been 
frequently related.. It is said that the former paint¬ 
ed a cluster of grapes with such perfect skill that 
the birds came and pecked at them. Elated with so 
unequivocal a testimony of his excellence, he called 
to his rival to draw back the curtain, which he sup¬ 
posed concealed his work, anticipating a certain tri¬ 
umph. Now, however, he found himself entrapped, 
for what he took for a curtain was only a painting of 
one by Parrhasius ; upon which he ingenuously con¬ 
fessed himself defeated, since he had only deceived 
birds, but his antagonist had beguiled the senses of an 
experienced artist. Another story is related of a simi¬ 
lar kind, in which he overcame himself, or, rather, one 
part of his work was shown to have excelled at the ex¬ 
pense of the other. He painted a boy with a basket of 
grapes, to which the birds as before resorted; on which 
he acknowledged that the boy could not be well painted, 
since, had the similitude been in both cases equal, the 
birds would have been deterred from approaching. 
From these stories, if they may be credited, it would 
appear that Zeuxis excelled more in depicting fruit than 
in painting the human form. If this were the case, it is 
strange that all his greater efforts, of which any ac¬ 
counts have reached us, were portraits, or groups of 
men or deities. The readiness which Zeuxis has, in 
these instances, been represented as manifesting to ac¬ 
knowledge his weakness, is scarcely consistent with the 
usual tenour of his spirit^ At all events, the victory 
of Parrhasius proved very little respecting the merit of 
the two artists. The man who could represent a cur¬ 
tain to perfection would not necessarily be the great¬ 
est painter in Greece. Even were exactness of imi¬ 
tation the sole excellence in the picture, regard must 
be had to the cast of the objects imitated, in reference 
to the skill of the artists by whom they were chosen. 
—Zeuxis is said to have taken a long time to finish his 
chief productions, observing, when reproached for his 
slowness, that he was painting for eternity.—Festus 
relates that Zeuxis died with laughter at the picture 
of an old woman which he himself had painted. So 




ZON 


Z 0 s 


extraordinary a circumstance, however, would surely 
nave been alluded to by some other writer, had it been 
true. There seems good reason, therefore, to believe 
it fictitious. ( Encyclop. Mctropol. , div. 2, vol. 1, p. 
405 , seqq.) 

Zoilus, a sophist and grammarian of Amphipolis, 
who rendered himself known by his severe criticisms 
on the poems of Homer, for which he received the 
name of Homeromastix, dr the chastiser of Homer, 
and also on the productions of Plato and other writers. 
/Elian (V. H., 11, 10) draws a very unfavourable pic¬ 
ture of both his character and personal appearance. 
In all this, however, there is very probably much of 
exaggeration. Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Ep. ad 
Pomp.) appears, on the other hand, to praise the man ; 
he ranks him, at least, among those who have censured 
Plato, not from a feeling of envy or enmity, but a de¬ 
sire for the truth. The age of Zoilus is uncertain. 
Vitruvius ( Prcefad lib. 7) refers him to the time of 
Ptolemy Philadelphus, and is followed by Vossius. 
Reinesius, however ( Var. Led., 3, 2), and Ionsius 
(de Script. Hist. Phil., c. 9) are opposed to this, be¬ 
cause Zoilus is said to have been a hearer of Polyc¬ 
rates, who lived in the time of Socrates. (Consult 
the remarks of Perizonius on this subject, ad JElian., 
V. H., 1. c .) Some say that Zoilus was stoned to 
death, or exposed on a cross, by order of Ptolemy, 
while others maintain that he was burned alive at 
Smyrna. According to another account, he recited 
his invectives against Homer at the Olympic games, 
and was thrown from a rock for his offence. ( JElian , 
V. H., 1. c. — Longin., 9, 4.) 

Zona or Zone, a city on the /Egean coast of 
Thrace, near the promontory of Serrhium. It is men¬ 
tioned by Herodotus (7, 59) and by Hecataeus ( ap. 
Steph. Byz.). Here Orpheus sang, and by his strains 
drew after him both the woods and the beasts that 
tenanted them. ( Apollon. Rhod., 1, 28.) 

Zonaras, a Byzantine historian, who flourished to¬ 
wards the close of the eleventh and the commence¬ 
ment of the twelfth centuries. He held the offices 
originally of Grand Dungarius (commander of the fleet) 
and chief secretary of the ^imperial cabinet; but he 
afterward became a monk, and attached himself to a 
religious house on Mount Athos, where he died sub¬ 
sequently to A.D. 1118. His Annals , or Chronicle, 
extend from the creation of the world down to 1118 
A.D., the period of the death of Alexis I. They pos¬ 
sess a double interest: for more ancient times, he has 
availed himself, independently of Eutropius and Dio 
Cassius, of other authors that are lost to us ; and at a 
later period he details events of which he himself was 
a witness. Though deficient in critical spirit, he has 
still displayed great good sense in adding nothing of 
his own to the extracts which he has inserted in his 
history, except what might serve to unite them to¬ 
gether in regular order. There results from this, it is 
true, a great variety of style in his work, but this is 
easily pardoned, and the only regret is, that Zonaras 
had not indicated with more exactness the authors 
whence he drew his materials. The impartiality of 
the writer is worthy of praise. This work is found in 
the collections of the Byzantine Plistorians.—Zonaras 
was the author also of a Glossary or Lexicon, in the 
manner of Hesychius and Suidas It was published 


by Tittman, in 1808, at the Leipzig press, along with 
the Lexicon of Photius, in 3 vols. 4to, the first two 
volumes being devoted to the Lexicon of Zonaras. 
( Scholl , Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 6, p. 288.) 

Zopyrus, a Persian, son of Megabyzus, who gained 
possession of Babylon for Darius Hystaspis by a strat¬ 
agem similar to that by which Sextus Tarquinius 
gained Gabii for his father. (Vid. Tarquinius III.— 
Herod., 3, 154, seqq.) 

Zoroaster, a celebrated reformer of the Magian 
religion, whose era is altogether uncertain. In what 
points his doctrines may have differed from those of 
the preceding period is an obscure and difficult ques¬ 
tion. It seems certain, however, that the code of sa¬ 
cred laws which he introduced, founded, or at least 
enlarged, the authority and influence of the Magian 
caste. Its members became the keepers and expound¬ 
ers of the holy books, the teachers and counsellors of 
the king, the oracles from whom he learned the Divine 
will and the secrets of futurity, the mediators who ob¬ 
tained for him the favour of Heaven, or propitiated its 
anger. According to Hyde, Prideaux, and many oth¬ 
ers of the learned, Zoroaster was the same with the 
Zerdusht of the Persians, who was a great patriarch of 
the Magi, and lived between the beginning of the reign 
of Cyrus and the latter end of that of Darius Hys¬ 
taspis. This, however, seems too late a date.—The 
so-called “ Oracles of Zoroaster ” have been frequently 
published. (Consult, on this whole subject, the very 
learned and able remarks of Parisot, Biogr. Univ., 
vol. 52, p. 434, seqq., and also Rhode, die heilige Sage, 
&c., der Baktrer, Meder, &c., p. 112, seqq.) 

Zosimus, I. a Greek historian, who appears to have 
flourished between A.D. 430 and 591. He was a pub¬ 
lic functionary at Constantinople. Zosimus wrote a 
history of the Roman emperors from the age of Au¬ 
gustus down to his own time. His object in writing 
this was to trace the causes which led to the downfall 
of the Roman empire, and among these he ranks the 
introduction of Christianity. There are many reasons 
which induce the belief that the work of Zosimus 
was not published in his lifetime, one of the strongest 
of which is the boldness with which he speaks of the 
Christian emperors. It is probable that he intended 
to continue the work to his own times, a design which 
his death prevented. A certain negligence of style, 
which indicates the absence of a revision on the part 
of the author, strongly countenances this supposition. 
The best editions of Zosimus have been that of Cel- 
larius, 8vo, Jence, 1728, and that of Reitemier, 8vo, 
Lips., 1784. The best edition now, however, is that 
by Bekker in the Corpus Byz. Hist., Bonn, 1837, 8vo. 
—II. A native of Panopolis, in Egypt, who wrote, ac¬ 
cording to Suidas, a work on Chemistry (Xv/uevriKa), 
in 28 books. The Paris and Vienna MSS. contain 
various detached treatises of this writer, which form 
ed part, in all likelihood, of this voluminous produc¬ 
tion ; such as a dissertation on the sacred and divine 
art of forming gold and silver, &c. There exist also 
five other works of this same writer, such as “ On the 
Art of making Beer ” (Kepi CfQw noiTjoeuq), &c. An 
edition of this last-mentioned work was published in 
1814, by Griiner, Solisbac., 8vo. (Hoffman, Lex. Bib 
liogr., vol. 3, p. 830.— Scholl , Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 7 











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SUPPLEMENT 


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Adas, III. the twelfth king of Argos. He was the 
Son of Lynceus and Hypermnestra, and grandson 
of Danaus. He married Ocaleia, who bore him 
twin sons, Acrisius and Prcetus. ( Apollod ., 2, 2, 
1. — Hygin., Fab., 170.) When he informed his 
father of the death of Danaus, he was rewarded 
with the shield of his grandfather, which was sa¬ 
cred to Juno. He is described as a successful con¬ 
queror, and as the founder of the town of Abae in 
Phoeis (Pans., 10, 35, 1), and of the Pelasgic Argos 
in Thessaly. ( Strab., 9, p. 431.) The fame of 
his warlike spirit was so great, that even after his 
death, when people revolted whom he had subdued, 
they were put to flight by the simple act of showing 
them his shield. ( Virg., IEn., 3, 286.— Scrv., ad loc.) 
It was from this Abas that the kings of Argos were 
called by the patronymic Abantiades. 

Abascantus (’ Adaonavrog), a physician ofLugdu- 
nura (Lyons), who probably lived in the second cen¬ 
tury after Christ. He is several times mentioned 
by Galen ( De Compos. Medicam. secund. Locos , 9, 
4, vol. 13, p. 278), who has also preserved an an¬ 
tidote invented by him against the bite of serpents. 
(De Antid., 2, 12, vol. 14, p. 177.) The name is 
to be met with in numerous Latin inscriptions in 
Grater’s collection, five of which refer to a freed- 
man of Augustus, who is supposed by Kuhn ( Addi- 
tarn, ad Elench Medic. Vet. a J. A. Fabricio in 
“ Bibl. Gr." Exhib.) to be the same person that is 
mentioned by Galen. This, however, is quite uncer¬ 
tain, as also whether Uapanhynog ’AbaoxavOog in 
Galen (De Compos. Medicam. secund. Locos., 7, 3, 
vol. 13, p. 71) refers to the subject of this article. 

Abdias (’A bdiag), the pretended author of an 
Apocryphal book, entitled The History of the Apos¬ 
tolical contest. This work claims to have been writ¬ 
ten in Hebrew, to have been translated into Greek 
by Eutropius, and thence into Latin by Julius Afri- 
''•anus. It was, however, originally written in Latin, 
about A.D. 910. It is printed in Fabricius, Codex 
Apocryphus Novi Test., p. 402, 8vo, Hamb., 1703. 
Abdias was called, too, the first Bishop of Babylon. 

Abeleio is the name of a divinity found in in¬ 
scriptions which were discovered at Comminges in 
France. (Gruter, Inscr., p. 37, 4.— J. Scaliger, Lec- 
tiones Ausoniance, 1, 9.) Buttmann (Mythologus, 1, 
p. 167, &c.) considers Abellio to be the same name 
as Apollo, who in Crete and elsewhere was called 
’A 6eAiog, and by the Italians and some Dorians 
Apello (Fest., s. v. Apellinem. — Eustath. ad II, 2, 
99), and that the deity is the same as the Gallic 
Apollo mentioned by Caesar (Bell. Gall., 6, 17), and 
also the same as Belis or Belenus mentioned by 
Tertullian (Apologet., 23) and Herodian (8, 3.— 
Comp. Capitol., Maximin., 22). As the root of the 
word he recognises the Spartan B ela, i. e., the sun 
(Hesych., s. v.), which appears in the Syriac and 
Chaldaic Belus or Baal. 

Abisares or Abissares (’A diaapyg), called Em- 
bisarus (’E pbiaapog) by Diodorus (17, 90), an In¬ 
dian king beyond the river Hydaspes, whose terri¬ 
tory lay in the mountains, sent embassies to Alex¬ 
ander the Great, both before and after the conquest 
of Porus, although inclined to espouse the side of 
the latter. Alexander not only allowed him to re¬ 
tain his kingdom, but increased it, and on his death 


appointed his son as his successor. (Arrian, Anao., 
5, 8, 20, 29 .—Curt., 8, 12, 13, 14; 9,1; 10,1.) 

Abitianus (’Afiir&avog), the author of a Greek 
treatise De Urinis inserted in the second volume 
of Ideler’s Physici et Medici Grceci Minores, Berol., 
8vo, 1842, with the title TLepl Ovpuv Tlpaygareia 
’Apiary rov So^wrarou napa pev T vdolg 'AWy “E/uttvi 
rov 2iva yrot 'Ahly vlov rov 2 iva, napa de T ralolg 
’Adir&avov. He is the same person as the celebra¬ 
ted Arabic physician Avicenna, whose real name 
was Abu ’All Ibn Sina, A. H. 370 or 375-428 
(A.D. 980 or 985-1038), and from whose great 
work Kelab al-Kanun fi ’ t-Tebb, Liber Canonis Medi¬ 
cine, this treatise is probably translated. 

Ablabius (’A6/1 uSiog), I. a physician on whose 
death there is an epigram by Theosebia in the 
Greek Anthology (7, 559,) in which he is consid¬ 
ered as inferior only to Hippocrates and Galen. 
With respect to his date, it is only known that he 
must have lived after Galen, that is, some time 
later than the second century after Christ.—II. The 
illustrious (’l/Ehovarpiog), the author of an epigram 
in the Greek Anthology (9, 762) “on the quoit ol 
Asclepiades.” Nothing more is known of him, un¬ 
less he be the same person as Ablabius, the Nova- 
tian bishop of Nicaea, who was a disciple of the 
rhetorician Troilus, and himself eminent in the 
same profession, and who lived under Honorius and 
Theodosius II., at the end of the fourth and the be 
ginning of the fifth centuries after Christ. (Socra¬ 
tes, Hist. Ecc., 7, 12.) 

Abrocomas (’A bpoaopag), II. one of the satraps 
of Artaxerxes Mnemon, was sent with an army of 
300,000 men to oppose Cyrus on his march intr 
Upper Asia. On the arrival of Cyrus at Tarsus. 
Abrocomas was said to be on the Euphrates; and 
at Issus four hundred heavy-armed Greeks, who had 
deserted Abrocomas, joined Cyrus. Abrocomas did 
not defend the Syrian passes, as was expected, but 
marched to join the king. He burned some boats to 
prevent Cyras from crossing the Euphrates, but did 
not arrive in time for the battle of Cunaxa. (Xen., 
Anab., 1, 3, 20; 4, <) 3, 5, 18 ; 7, <) 12.— Harpocrat. 

and Suidas, s. v.) 

Abron or Habron ( y A6puv or "A 6pav), I. son of 
the Atnc orator Lycurgus. (Plut., Vit. dec. Or at., 
p. 843.)—II. The son of Callias, of the deme of 
Bate in Attica, wrote on the festivals and sacri¬ 
fices of the Greeks. (Steph. Byz., s. v. Vary.) He 
also wrote a work rcepl TTapu)vvpuv,whic,h is frequent¬ 
ly referred to by Stephanus Byz. (5. v. ’AyaOy, “Apyog, 
&c.) and other writers.—III. A grammarian, a Phry¬ 
gian or Rhodian, a pupil of Tryphon, and originally 
a slave, taught at Rome under the first Caesars 
(Suidas, s.v. y A6puv.) —IV. A rich person at Argos, 
from whom the proverb x A6puvog (Log, which was 
applied to extravagant persons, is said to have been 
derived. (Suidas, s. v.) 

Abronychus (’A Spuwxog), the son of Lysicles, 
an Athenian, was stationed at Thermopylae with a 
vessel to communicate between Leonidas and the 
fleet at Artemisium. He was subsequently sent as 
ambassador to Sparta with Themistocles and Aris¬ 
tides respecting the fortifications of Athens after 
the Persian war. (Herod., 8, 21.— Thuc., 1, 91.) 

Abulites (’A (jovllryg), the satrap of Susiana, 

1409 




1410 


SUPPLEMENT. 


x 


surrendered Susa to Alexander when the latter ap¬ 
proached the city. The satrapy was restored to 
him by Alexander, but he and his son Oxyathres 
were afterward executed by Alexander for the 
crimes they had committed in the government of 
the satrapy. {Curt., 5, 2.— Arrian, Anab., 3, 16; 7, 
4 . — Diod., 17, 65.) 

Aburia Gens, plebeian. On the coins of this 
gens we find the cognomen Gem., which is perhaps 
an abbreviation of Geminus. The coins have no 
heads of persons on them. The most distinguished 
members of this gens were—I. C. Aburius, one of 
the ambassadors sent to Masinissa and the Cartha¬ 
ginians, B.C. 171. {Liv., 42, 35.)—II. M. Aburius, 
tribune of the plebs, B.C. 187, opposed M. Fulvius, 
the proconsul, in his petition for a triumph, but with¬ 
drew his opposition chiefly through the influence of 
his colleague Ti. Gracchus. {Liv., 39, 4, 5.) He 
was praetor peregrinus, B.C. 176. {Liv., 41, 18, 19.) 

Aburnus Valens, a Roman lawyer, probably the 
same with the Valens who formed one of the con¬ 
silium of the Emperor Antoninus Pius. {Capitoli- 
nus, Ant. Pius, 12.) We have, in the Pandects, 
selections from his seven books of “ Fideicommis - 
sa .” tZimmern, Gesch. d. Rom. Privatrechts, 1, l, 
334.) 

Acacaet.is (’A kclkciXIls), daughter of Minos, by 
whom, according to a Cretan tradition, Hermes 
begot Cydon ; while, according to a tradition of the 
Tegeatans, Cydon was a son of Tegeates, and im¬ 
migrated to Crete from Tegea. {Paus., 8, 53, § 2.) 
Apollo begot by her a son, Miletus, whom, for fear 
of her father, Acacallis exposed in a forest, where 
wolves watched and suckled the child until he was 
found by shepherds, who brought him up. {Antonin. 
Lib., 30.) Other sons of her and Apollo are Amphi- 
themis and Garamas. {Apollon., 4, 1490, &c.) Apol- 
lodorus (3, 1, § 2) calls this daughter of Minos Acalle 
{’Anally), but does not mention Miletus as her son. 
Acacallis was in Crete a common name for a nar¬ 
cissus. {Athen., 15, p. 681.— Hesych., s. v ) 

Acacus ( v A Kanog), a son of Lycaon and king of 
Acacesium in Acadia, of which he was believed to 
be the founder. {Paus., 8, 3, 1.— Steph. Byz., s. v. 
’A nanycnov.) 

Acarnan (’A Kapvdv), one of the Epigones, was 
a son of Alcmaeon and Calirrhoe, and brother of 
Amphoterus. Their father was murdered by Phe- 
geus when they were yet very young, and Calirrhoe 
prayed to Zeus to make her sons grow quickly, that 
they might be able to avenge the death of their fa¬ 
ther. The prayer was granted, and Acarnan, w ith his 
brother, slew Phegeus, his wife, and his two sons. 
The inhabitants of Psophis, where the sons had been 
slain, pursued the murderers as far as Tegea, where, 
however, they were received and rescued. At the 
request of Achelous, they carried the necklace and 
peplus of Harmonia to Delphi, and from thence they 
went to Epirus, where Acarnan founded the state 
called after him Acarnania. {Apollod., 3, 7, § 5-7. 
— Ov., Met., 9, 413, &c.— Thucyd., 2, 102.— Strab., 
10, p. 462.) 

Accius, I. or Attius, L., an early Roman tragic 
poet and the son of a freedman, was born, according 
to Jerome, B.C. 170, and was fifty years younger 
than Pacuvius. He lived to a great age ; Cicero, 
when a young man, frequently con- dised with him. 
{Brut., 28.) His tragedies were chiefly imitated 
from the Greeks, especially from R3schylus, but he 
also wrote some on Roman subjects ( Prcetextata ); 
one of which, entitled Brutus, was probably in hon¬ 
our of his patron D. Brutus. {JCic., De Leg., 2, 21; 
Pro Arch., 11.) We possess only fragments of his 
tragedies, of which the most important have been 
preserved by Cicero, but sufficient remains to justi¬ 
fy the terms of almiration in which he is spoken of 


by the ancient writers He is particularly praised 
for the strength and vigour of his language and the 
sublimity of his thoughts. {Cic., Pro Plane., 24; 
Pro Best., 56, &c.— Hor., Ep., 2, 1, 56.— Quintil., 
10,1, § 97.— Gell., 13, 2.) Besides these tragedies, 
he also wrote Annalcs in verse, containing the his¬ 
tory of Rome, like those of Ennius; and three prose 
works, “ Libri Didascalion,” which seems to have 
been a history of poetry, “ Libri Pragmaticon,” and 
“ Parerga of the two latter no fragments are pre¬ 
served. The fragments of his tragedies have been 
collected by Stephanus in “Frag. vet. Poet. Lat.,” 
Paris, 1564; Maittaire, “ Opera et Frag. vet. Poet. 
Lat.,” Lond., 1713 ; and Bothe, “Poet. Scenici Lat¬ 
in.,” vol. v., Lips., 1834; and the fragments of the 
Didascalia by Madvig, “ De L. Attii Didascaliis Com¬ 
ment.,” Hafnise, 1831. 

Acesander {’AnEoavdpog) wrote a history of Cy- 
rene. {Schol. ad Apoll., 4, 1561, 1750; ad Find., 
Pyth., 4, init., 57.) Plutarch {Symp., 5, 2, § 8) 
speaks of a work of his respecting Libya {nepl 
A ibvyq), which may, probably, be the same work as 
the history of Cyrene. The time at which he lived 
is unknown. 

Acesas {’Aneoaq), a native of Salamis in Cyprus, 
famed for his skill in weaving cloth with variegated 
patterns ( polymitarius ). He and his son Helicon, 
who distinguished himself in the same art, are men¬ 
tioned by Athenseus (2, p. 48, b.). Zenobius speaks 
of both artists, but says that Acesas (or, as he calls 
him, Aceseus, ’A neaevg) was a native of Patara, and 
Helicon of Carystus. He tells us, also, that they 
were the first who made a peplus for Athena Polias. 
When they lived, we are not informed ; but it must 
have been before the time of Euripides and Plato, 
who mention this peplus. {Eur., Hec., 468.— Plat., 
Eulhyphr., § 8. ) A specimen of the workmanship ol 
these two artists was preserved in the temple at 
Delphi, bearing an inscription to the effect that Pal¬ 
las had imparted marvellous skill to their hands. 

Acesias (’A KEGLaq,) an ancient Greek physician, 
whose age and country are both unknown. It is 
ascertained, however, that he lived at least foui 
hundred years before Christ, as the proverb ’A neciat, 
idoaro, Acesias cured him, is quoted on the author¬ 
ity of Aristophanes. This saying (by which only 
Acesias is known to us) was used when any per¬ 
son’s disease became worse instead of better undei 
medical treatment, and is mentioned by Suidas {s. v. 
’Anealag), Zenobius {Proverb., Cent., 1, § 52), Dioge- 
nianus {Proverb., 2, 3), Michael Apostolius {Proverb , 
2, 23), and Plutarch {Proverb, quibus Alexandr. t.st 
sunt, §98). See also Proverb, e Cod. Bodl., §82, in 
Gaisford’s Paroemiographi Grceci, 8vo, Oxon., 1836. 
It is possible that an author bearing this name, and 
mentioned by Athenams (12, p. 516, c.) as having 
written a treatise on the Art of Cooking {oipapw- 
tlku.), may be one and the same person, but of this 
we have no certain information. {J. J. Baier, Adaa-. 
Medic. Cent., 4to, Lips., 1718.) 

Acesius (’A KecLoq), II. a bishop of the Novatians 
in the reign of the Emperor Constantine, A.D. 325, 
who was present at the Council of Nice, and advo¬ 
cated the exclusion from the communion of those 
who were found guilty of gross sin after baptism. 
{Socrat., Hist., 1 , 10.— Sozom., 1 , 2.) 

Acestodorus {’AKecTodopoq), a Greek historical 
writer, who is cited by Plutarch {Them., 13), and 
whose work contained, as it appears, an account o 
the battle of Salamis among other things. The 
time at which he lived is unknown. Stephanus 
(5. v. M eydlr/ irolig) speaks of an Acestodorus of 
Megalopolis, who wrote a work on cities {nepl no- 
lew), but whether this is the same as the above 
mentioned w r riter is not clear. 

Acestor {’Aueorop), II. a surname of Apollo 




SUPPLEMENT. 


1411 


wmeh characterizes him as the god of the healing 
art, or, in general, as the averter of evil, like ’A nemos. 
( Eurip ., Androm ., 901.)—III. surnamed Sacas (2a- 
Kag), on account of his foreign origin, was a tragic 
poet at Athens, and a contemporary of Aristophanes. 
He seems to have been either of Thracian or Mys- 
ian origin. (Aristoph., Aves, 31.— Schol., ad loc .— 
VcspcE, 1216.— Schol., ad loc. — Phot, and Suid., s. v. 
2 unag. — Wticker. Die Griech. Tragdd ., p. 1032.) 

Ach^eus (’A^aiof), V. son of Andromachus, 
whose sister Laodice married Seleucus Oallinicus, 
the father of Antiochus the Great. Achaeus him¬ 
self married Laodice, the daughter of Mithradates, 
king of Pontus. ( Polyb., 4, 51, §4; 8, 22, <) 11.) 
He accompanied Seleucus Ceraunus, the son of 
Callinicus, in his expedition across Mount Taurus 
against Attalus, and after the assassination of Se¬ 
leucus, avenged his death; and though he might 
easily have assumed the royal power, he remained 
faithful to the family of Seleucus. Antiochus the 
Great, the successor of Seleucus, appointed him to 
the command of all Asia on this side of Mount Tau¬ 
rus, B.C. 223. Achaeus recovered for the Syrian 
empire all the districts which Attalus had gained; 
but having been falsely accused by Hermeias, the 
minister of Antiochus, of intending to revolt, he did 
so in self-defence, assumed the title of king, and 
ruled oyer the whole of Asia on this side of the 
Taurus. As long as Antiochus was engaged in the 
war with Ptolemy, he could not march against 
Achaeus; but after a peace had been concluded 
with Ptolemy, he crossed the Taurus, united his 
forces with Attalus, deprived Achaeus in one cam¬ 
paign of all his dominions, and took Sardis, with the 
exception of the citadel. Achaeus, after sustaining 
a siege of two years in the citadel, at last fell into 
the hands of Antiochus, B.C. 214, through the treach¬ 
ery of Bolis, who had been employed by Sosibius, 
the minister of Ptolemy, to deliver him from his 
danger, but betrayed him to Antiochus, who ordered 
him to be put to death immediately. (Polyb., 4, 2, 
$ 6 ; 4, 48 ; 5, 40, $ 7, 42, 57 ; 7, 15-18 ; 8, 17- 


23 ) 

Achillas (’A^tMaf), III. one of the guardians of 
the Egyptian king Ptolemy Dionysus, and command¬ 
er of the troops when Pompey fled to Egypt, B.C. 
48. He is called by Caesar a man of extraordinary 
daring, and it was he and L. Septimius who killed 
Pompey. (Cces., B. C., 3, 104.— Liv., Epit., 104. 
Dion Cass., 42, 4.) He subsequently joined the 
eunuch Pothinus in resisting Caesar, and having had 
the command of the whole army intrusted to him 
by Pothinus, he marched against Alexandrea with 
20,000 foot and 2000 horse. Caesar, who was at 
Alexandrea, had not sufficient forces to oppose him, 
and sent ambassadors to treat with him, but these 
Achillas murdered to remove all hopes of reconcil¬ 
iation. He then marched into Alexandrea, and ob¬ 
tained possession of the greatest part of the city. 
Meanwhile, however, Arsinoe, the younger sister of 
Ptolemy, escaped from Caesar and joined Achillas ; 
but dissensions breaking out between them, she had 
Achillas put to death by Ganymedes, a eunuch, B.C. 
47 to whom she then intrusted the command of 
the forces. (Cat,., B. C., 3 108-112 ; B Alex 4. 
-Dion Cass., 42, 36-40.— Lucan., 10,519-523.) 

Achlys (*A*Mf), according to some ancient cos¬ 
mogonies, the eternal night, and the first created 
being which existed even before Chaos. According 
to Hesiod, she was the personification of misery and 
sadness, and as such she was represented on the 
shield of Hercules (Scut., Here., 264, &c.): pale, 
emaciated, and weeping, with chattering teeth, swol¬ 
len knees, long nails on her fingers, bloody cheeks, 
and her shoulders thickly covered with dust 

Achmet, son of Seirim (’A^er vio£ 2 eipetp), me 


author of a work on the Interpretation of Dreams, 
’O veipoKpiTiicd, is probably the same person as Abu 
Bekr Mohammed Ben Sirin, whose work on the 
same subject is still extant in Arabic in the Royal 
Library at Paris (Catalog. Cod. Manuscr. Biblioth. 
Reg. Paris., vol. 1, p. 230, cod. mccx.), and who was 
born A.H. 33 (A.D. 653-4), and died A.H. 110 (A.D. 
728-9). (See Nicoll and Pusey, Catal. Cod. Manuscr. 
Arab. Biblioth. Bodl., p. 516.) This conjecture will 
seem the more probable when it is recollected that 
the two names Ahmed or Achmet and Mohammed, 
however unlike each other they may appear in Eng¬ 
lish, consist in Arabic of four letters each, and differ 
only in the first. There must, however, be some 
difference between Achmet’s work, in the form in 
which we have it, and that of Ibn Sirin, as the wri 
ter of the former (or the translator) appears from in¬ 
ternal evidence to have been certainly a Christian 
(c. 2, 150, &c.). It exists only in Greek, or, rather 
(if the above conjecture as to its author be correct), 
it has only been published in that language. It con¬ 
sists of three hundred and four chapters, and pro¬ 
fesses to be derivedfrom what has been written on 
the same subject by the Indians, Persians, and 
Egyptians. It was translated out of Greek into 
Latin about the year 1160, by Leo Tuscus, of which 
work two specimens are to be found in Casp. Bar- 
thii Adversaria (31, 14, ed. Francof., 1624, fol.). 
It was first published at Frankfort, 1577, 8vo, in a 
Latin translation, made by Leunclavius, from a very 
imperfect Greek manuscript, with the title “ Apom- 
asaris Apotelesmata, sive de Significatis et Eventis 
Insomniorum, ex Indorum, Persarum, iEgyptiorum- 
que Disciplina.” The word Apomasares is a cor¬ 
ruption of the name of the famous Albumasar, or 
Abu Ma’shar, and Leunclavius afterward acknowl¬ 
edged his mistake in attributing the work to him. 
It was published in Greek and Latin by Iligaltius, 
and appended to his edition of the Oneirocritica of 
Artemidorus, Lutet., Paris, 1603, 4to, and some 
Greek various readings are inserted by Jac. De 
Rhoer in his Otium Daventriense, p. 338, &c., Da- 
ventr., 1762, 8vo. It has also been translated into 
Italian, French, and German. 

Acholius held the office of Magister Admissio- 
num in the reign of Valerian (B.C. 253-260). One 
of his works was entitled Acta, and contained an 
account of the history of Aurelian. It was in nine 
books at least. . (Vopisc., Aurel., 12.) He also wrote 
the life of Alexander Severus. (Lamprid., Alex. Sev., 
14, 48, 68.) 

AcidLvus, a family name of the Manlia gens. 
Cicero speaks of the Acidini as among the first men 
of a former age. (De leg. agr., 2, 24.)—I. L. Man¬ 
lius, praetor urbanus in the year B.C. 210, was 
sent by the senate into Sicily to bring back the 
consul Valerius to Rome to hold the elections. 
(Liv., 26, 23; 27, 4.) In B.C. 207, he was with 
the troops stationed at Narnia to oppose Has 
drubal, and was the first to send to Rome intelli 
gence of the defeat of the latter. (Liv., 27, 50. 
In B.C. 206, he and L. Cornelius Lentulus had the 
province of Spain intrusted to them, with proconsu¬ 
lar power. In the following year he conquered the 
Ausetani and Ilergetes, who had rebelled against the 
Romans in consequence ol the absence of Scipio. 
He did not return to Rome till the year B.C. 199, 
but was prevented by the tribune P. Porcius Laeca 
from entering the city in an ovation, which the sen¬ 
ate had granted him. (Livy, 28, 38 ; 29, 1-3, 13 ; 
32, 7.)—II. L. Manlius Fulvianus, originally be¬ 
longed to the Fulvia gens, but was adopted into 
the Manlia gens, probably by the above-mentioned 
Acidinus. (Veil. Pat., 2,8.) He was praetor B.C 
188, and had the province of Hispania Citerior al¬ 
lotted to him, where he remained till B.C. 186. la 



1412 


SUPPLEMENT. 


the latter year he defeated the Celtiberi, and had it 
not been for the arrival of his successor, would have 
reduced the whole people to subjection. He applied 
for a triumph in consequence, but obtained only an 
ovation. {Liv., 38, 35 ; 39, 21, 29.) In B.C. 183, 
he was one of the ambassadors sent into Gallia 
Transalpina, and was also appointed one of the 
triumvirs for founding the Latin colony of Aqui- 
leia, which was, however, not founded till B.C. 181. 
{Liv., 39, 54, 55; 40, 34.) He was consul B.C. 
179 {Liv., 40, 43), with his own brother, Q. Fulvius 
Flaccus, which is the only instance of tw r o brothers 
holding the consulship at the same time. {Fast. 
Capitol. — Veil. Pat., 2, 8.) At the election of Acid- 
in us, M. Scipio declared him to be virum bonum, 
egregiumque civem. {Cic., De Or., 2, 64.)—III. L. 
Manlius, who was quaestor in B.C. 168 {Liv., 45, 
13), is probably one of the two Manlii Acidini, who 
are mentioned tw r o years before as illustrious youths, 
and of whom one was the son of M. Manlius, the 
other of L. Manlius. {Liv., 42, 49.) The latter is 
probably the same as the quaestor, and the son of No. 
II.—IY. A young man who was going to pursue his 
studies at Athens at the same time as young Cicero, 
B.C. 45. {Cic. ad Alt., 12, 32.) He is, perhaps, the 
same Acidinus who sent intelligence to Cicero re¬ 
specting the death of Marcelius. {Cic. ad Farn., 4, 
12) 

Acindynus, GregSrius {TpyyopLog ’A nlvSvvog), a 
Greek monk, A.D. 1341, distinguished in the con¬ 
troversy with the Hesychast or Quietist monks of 
Mount Athos. He supported and succeeded Bar- 
laam in his opposition to their notion that the light 
which appeared on the Mount of the Transfiguration 
was uncreated. The emperor, John Cantacuzenus, 
took part (A.D. 1347) with Palamas, the leader of 
the Quietists, and obtained the condemnation of 
Acindynus by several councils at Constantinople, at 
one especially in A.D. 1351. Remains of Acindy¬ 
nus are, De Essentia et Operatione Dei adversus im- 
peritiam Gregorii Palamce, SfC., in “ Variorum Pon- 
tificum ad Petrum Gnapheum Eutychianum Epis- 
tol.,” p. 77, Gretser., 4to, Ingolst., 1616, and Car¬ 
men Iambicum de Hczresibus Palamce, “ Gramiae Or¬ 
thodox* Scriptores,” by Leo. Allatius, p. 755, vol. 1, 
4to, Rom., 1652. 

Acoetes (’A Kolrpg), according to Ovid {Met., 3, 
582, &c\), the son of a poor fisherman in M*onia, 
who served as pilot in a ship. After landing at the 
island of Naxos, some of the sailors brought with 
them on board a beautiful sleeping boy, whom they 
had found in the island, and whom they wished to 
take with them ; but Acoetes, who recognised in the 
boy the god Bacchus, dissuaded them from it, but 
in vain. When the ship had reached the open sea, 
the boy awoke, and desired to be carried back to 
Naxos. The sailors promised to do so, but did not 
keep their word. Hereupon the god showed him¬ 
self to them in his own majesty: vines began to 
twine around the vessel, tigers appeared, and the 
sailors, seized with madness, jumped into the sea 
and perished. Acoetes alone was saved and con¬ 
veyed back to Naxos, where he was initiated in 
the Bacchic mysteries, and became a priest of the 
god. Hyginus {Fab., 134), whose story, on the 
whole, agrees with that of Ovid, and all the other 
writers who mention this adventure of Bacchus, 
call the crew T of the ship Tyrrhenian pirates, and 
derive the name of the Tyrrhenian Sea from them. 
(Comp. Horn., Hymn, in Bach. — Apollod., 3, 5, § 3.— 
Seneca, CEd., 449.) 

Acoris CAnopis), king of Egypt, entered into al¬ 
liance with Evagoras, king of Cyprus, against their 
common enemy Artaxerxes, king of Persia, about 
B.C. 385, and assisted Evagoras with ships and 
oaoney. On the cot.elusion of the war with Evago¬ 


ras, B.C. 376, the Persians directed their forces 
against Egypt. Acoris collected a large army tc 
oppose them, and engaged many Greek mercenaries 
of whom he appointed Chabrias general. Chabriaa 
however, was recalled by the Athenians on the corn 
plaint of Pharnabazus, who was appointed by Ar 
taxerxes to conduct the war. When the Persiai 
army entered Egypt, which was not till B.C. 373, 
Acoris was already dead. {Diod., Hi, 5-4, 8, 9, 29. 
41, 42.— Theopom. ap Phot., cod. l7d.) Syncellu? 
(p. 76, a., p. 257, a.) assigns Li rtoen years to his 
reign. 

Acr^sa (’ Aspaia ), I. a daughter of the river-god 
Asterion, near Mycen*, who, together with her 
sisters Euboea and Prosymna, acted as nurses to 
Juno. A hill, Acraea, opposite the temple of Juno, 
near Mycenae, derived u s name from her. {Paus., 
2, 17, § 2.)—II. Acraen and Acraeus are also attri¬ 
butes given to various goddesses and gods whose 
temples were situated upon hills, such as Jupiter, 
Juno, Venus, Minerva, Diana, and others. {Paus., 
1 , 1 , § 3 ; 2, 24, § 1 . — Apollod., 1 , 9, 28. — Vitruv., 

I, 7.— Spanheim, ad Callim., Hymn. inJov., 82.) 

Acropolita, Georgius {Teupyiog ’AupTroXlryc), 

the son of the great logotheta Constantinus Acropo¬ 
lita the elder, belonged to a noble Byzantine family 
which stood in relationship to the imperial family of 
the Ducas. ( Acropolita, 97.) He was born at Con¬ 
stantinople in 1220 (ib., 39), but accompanied his fa¬ 
ther in his sixteenth year to Nicsea, the residence 
of the Greek emperor John Vatatzes Ducas. There 
he continued and finished his studies under Theo¬ 
doras Exapterigus and Nicephorus Blemmida. {Ib., 
32.) The emperor employed him afterward in dip¬ 
lomatic affairs, and Acropolita showed himself a very 
discreet and skilful negotiator. In 1255 he com¬ 
manded the Niceean army in the war between Mi¬ 
chael, despot of Epirus, and the Emperor Theodore 

II. , the son and successor of John. But he was 
made prisoner, and was only delivered in .260 bj 
the mediation of Michael Palaeologus. Previous!} 
to this he had been appointed great logotheta, either 
by John or by Theodore, whom he had instructed 
in logic. Meanwhile, Michael Palaeologus was pro¬ 
claimed Emperor of Nicaea in 1260, and in 1261 he 
expelled the Latins from Constantinople, and be¬ 
came emperor of the whole East; and from this 
moment Georgius Acropolita becomes known in the 
history of the Eastern empire as one of the greatest 
diplomatists. After having discharged the function 
of ambassador at the court of Constantine, king of 
the Bulgarians, he retired for some years from pub¬ 
lic affairs, and made the instruction of youth his sole 
occupation. But he was soon employed in a very 
important negotiation. Michael, afraid of a new 
Latin invasion, proposed to Pope Clemens IV. to re¬ 
unite the Greek and the Latin churches ; and nego¬ 
tiations ensued, which were carried on during the 
reign of five popes, Clemens IV., Gregory X., John 
XXI., Nicolaus III., and Martin IV., and the happy 
result of which was almost entirely owing to the 
skill of Acropolita. As early as 1273, Acropolita 
was sent to Pope Gregory X., and in 1274, at the 
Council of Lyons, he confirmed, by an oath in the 
emperor’s name, that that confession of faith which 
had been previously sent to Constantinople by the 
pope had been adopted by the Greeks. The reunion 
of the two churches was afterward broken off, but 
not through the fault of Acropolita. In 1282, Acro¬ 
polita was once more sent to Bulgaria, and shortly 
after his return he died, in the month of December 
of the same year, in his 62d year. 

Acropolita is the author of several works : the 
most important of which is a history of the Byzan¬ 
tine Empire, under the title Xpovinov dkv mwoijn-t 
tljv kv vorepois, that is, from the taking of Coi stan 






SUPPLEMENT. 


1413 


tlnople by the Latins in 1204, down to the year 
1261, when Michael Palasologus delivered the city 
from the foreign yoke. The MS. of this work was 
found in the library of Georgius Cantacuzenus at 
Constantinople, and afterward brought to Europe. 
{Fairictus, Bibl. Grace., vol. 7, p. 768.) The first 
edition of this work, with a Latin translation and 
notes, was published by Theodorus Douza, Lugd. 
Batav., 1614, 8vo; but a more critical one by Leo 
Alla r .ius, who used a Vatican MS., and divided the 
text into chapters. It has the title Veopyiov tov 
’ A KpOKoXtTOV tov peyahov Xoyoderovxpovtuy ovyypafyy, 
Gcorgii Acropolilce, magni Logothetce, Historia, &c., 
Paris, 1651, fol. This edition is reprinted in the 
“ Corpus Byzantinorum Scriptorum,” Venice, 1729, 
vol. 12. This chronicle contains one of the most 
remarkable periods of Byzantine history, but it is 
so short that it seems to be only an abridgment of 
another work of the same author, which is lost. 
Acropolita perhaps composed it with the view of 
giving it as a compendium to those young men 
whose scientific education he superintended, after 
his return from his first embassy to Bulgaria. The 
history of Michael Palasologus by Pachymeres may 
be considered as a continuation of the work of Acro¬ 
polita. Besides this work, Acropolita wrote several 
orations, which he delivered in his capacity as great 
logotheta, and as director of the negotiations with 
the pope ; but these orations have not been publish¬ 
ed. Fabricius (vol. 7, p. 471) speaks of a MS. which 
has the title Ilept tuv and ktlgeuq noepov krejv nal 
nepi t Civ (dacthevoavTov pc-XP 1 dAwcrewp K uvoravTi- 
vovttoXeuc. Georgius, or Gregorius Cyprius, who 
has written a short encomium of Acropolita, calls 
him the Plato and the Aristotle of his time. This 
“encomium” is printed, with a Latin translation, at 
the head of the edition of Acropolita by Th. Douza : 
it contains useful information concerning Acropolita, 
although it is full of adulation. Farther information 
is contained in Acropolita’s history, especially in the 
latter part of it, and in Pachymeres, 4, 28 ; 6, 26, 34, 
seq. 

Actorius Naso, M., seems to have written a life 
of Julius Caesar, or a history of his times, which 
is quoted by Suetonius ( Jul. , 9, 52). The time at 
which he lived is uncertain, but from the way in 
which he is referred to by Suetonius, he would al¬ 
most seem to have been a contemporary of Caesar. 

Actuarius (’A KTovdptog), the surname by which 
an ancient Greek physician, whose real name was 
Joannes, is commonly known. His father’s name 
was Zacharias; he himself practised at Constan- 
inople, and, as it appears, with some degree of 
credit, as he was honoured with the title of Actu¬ 
arius, a dignity frequently conferred at that court 
upon physicians. (Diet, of Ant., p. 631, b.) Very 
little is known of the events of his life, and his date 
is rather uncertain, as some persons reckon him to 
have lived in the eleventh century, and others bring 
him down as low as the beginning of the fourteenth. 
He probably lived towards the end of the thirteenth 
century, as. one of his works is dedicated to his tu¬ 
tor, Joseph Racendytes, who lived in the reign of 
Andrf nicus II. Palaeologus, A.D. 1281-1328. One 
of his schoolfellows is supposed to have been Apo- 
cauchus, whom he describes (though without na¬ 
ming him) as going upon an embassy to the north. 
(De Meth. Med., Prccf. in 1, 2, p. 139, 169.) 

One of his works is entitled nepr ’E vepyeitiv teal 
Tladdrv tov T vxtnov n vevpaTOp, teal tt}ii kot’ avTO 
Atairpc, « De Actionibus et Affectibus Spiritus Ani- 
malis, ejusque Nutritione.” This is a psychological 
and physiological work in two books, in which all his 
reasoning, says Freind, seems to be founded upon 
the principles laid down by Aristotle, Galen, and 
others, with relation to the same subject. The style 


of this tract is by no means impure, and has a great 
mixture of the old Attic in it, which is very rarely 
to be met with in the later Greek writers. A toler 
ably full abstract of it is given by Barchusen, Hist. 
Medic., Dial. 14, p. 338, &c. It was first published, 
Venet., 1547, 8vo, in a Latin translation by Jul. 
Alexandrinus de Neustain. The first edition of the 
original was published, Paris, 1557, 8vo, edited, 
without notes or preface, by Jac. Goupyl. A second 
Greek edition appeared in 1774, 8vo, Lips., under 
the care of J. F. Fischer. Ideler has also inserted 
it in the first volume of his Physici et Medici Greed 
Minores, Berol., 8vo, 1841 ; and the first part of 
J. S. Bernardi Reliquiae Medico-Criticce, ed. Gruner, 
Jenag, 1795, 8vo, contains some Greek scholia on 
the work. 

Another of his extant works is entitled Qepa- 
nevTLKr] M edodog, “ De Methodo Medendi,” in six 
books, which have hitherto appeared complete only 
in a Latin translation, though Dietz had, before his 
death, collected materials for a Greek edition of 
this and his other works. (See his preface to Ga 
len, De Dissect. Muse.) In these books, says Freind, 
though he chiefly follows Galen, and very often 
Aetius and Paulus JEgineta without naming him, 
yet he makes use of whatever he finds to his pur¬ 
pose, both in the old and modern writers, as well 
barbarians as Greeks; and, indeed, we find in him 
several things that are not to be met with elsewhere. 
The work was written extempore, and designed for 
the use of Apocauchus during his embassy to the 
north. (Prccf, 1 , p. 139.) A Latin translation of 
this work by Corn. H. Mathisius was first published, 
Venet., 1554, 4to. The first four books appear some¬ 
times to have been considered to form a complete 
work, of which the first and second have been in¬ 
serted by Ideler in the second volume of his Phys. 
et Med. Gr. Min., Berol., 1842, under the title Ilepi 
A layvuaeug Uaduv, “ De Morborum Dignotione,” 
and from which the Greek extracts in H. Stephens’s 
Dictionarium Medicum, Par., 1564, 8vo, are probably 
taken. The fifth and sixth books have also been 
taken for a separate work, and were published by 
themselves, Par., 1539, 8vo, and Basil., 1540, 8vo, 
in a Latin translation by J. Ruellius, with the title 
“De Medicamentorum Compositione.” An extract 
from this work is inserted in Fernel’s collection of 
writers, De Febribus,Ve net., 1576, fol. 

His other extant work is Ilcpr Ovptiv, “ De Uri- 
nis,” in seven books. He has treated of this subject 
very fully and distinctly, and, though he goes upon 
the plan which Theophilus Protospatharius had 
marked out, yet he has added a great deal of origi¬ 
nal matter. It is the most complete and systematic 
work on the subject that remains from antiquity ; so 
much so that, till the chemical improvements of the 
last hundred years, he had left hardly anything new 
to be said by the moderns, many of whom, says 
Freind, transcribed it almost word for word. This 
work was first published in a Latin translation by 
Ambrose Leo, which appeared in 1519, Venet.., 4to, 
and has been several times reprinted; the Greek 
original has been published for the first time in the 
second volume of Ideler’s work quoted above. Two 
Latin editions of his collected works are said by 
Choulant (Handbuch der Bucherhunde fur die JEltere 
Medicin, Leipzig, 1841) to have been published in 
the same year, 1556, one at Paris, and the other at 
Lyons, both in 8vo. His three works are also in¬ 
serted in the Medicee Artis Principes of H. Stephens, 
Par., 1567, fol. (Freind's Hist, of Physic. — Sprsn- 
gel, Hist, de la Med. — Haller, Biblioth. Medic. Pract, 
— Barchusen, Hist. Medic.) 

Aculeo occurs as a surname of C. Furius, who 
was quaestor of L. Scipio, and was condemned of 
peculatus. (Liv., 38, 55.) Aculeo, however, seems 




1414 


SUPPLEMENT. 


not to have been a regular family-name of the Furia 
gens, but only a surname given to this person, of 
which a similar example occurs in the following 
article. 

C. Acueeo, a Roman knight, who married the 
sister of Helvia, the mother of Cicero. He was 
surpassed by no one in his day in his knowledge of 
the Roman law, and possessed great acuteness of 
mind, but was not distinguished for other attain¬ 
ments. He was a friend of L. Licinius Crassus, 
and was defended by him upon one occasion. The 
son of Aculeo was C. Yisellius Yarro; whence it 
would appear that Aculeo was only a surname given 
to the father from his acuteness, and that his full 
name was C. Visellius Varro Aculeo. (Cic., De Or., 
1, 43 ; 2, 1, 65 ; Brut., 76.) 

Acumenus (’A Kov/isvog), a physician of Athens, 
who lived in the fifth century before Christ, and is 
mentioned as the friend and companion of Socrates. 
(Plat., Phcedr., init.— Xen., Memor., 3, 13, § 2.) He 
was the father of Eryximachus, who was also a 
physician, and who is introduced as one of the 
speakers in Plato’s Symposium. (Plat., Protag., 
p. 315, c.; Symp., p. 176, c.) He is also mentioned 
in the collection of letters first published by Leo 
Allatius, Paris, 1637, 4to, with the title Epist. So- 
cratis et Socraticorum, and again by Orellius, Lips., 
1815, 8vo, ep. 14, p. 31. 

Adieus or Add^us (’Adcrof or ’A ddaiog), a Greek 
epigrammatic poet, a native, most probably, of Ma¬ 
cedonia. The epithet M anedovog is appended to 
his name before the third epigram in the Vat. MS. 
(Anth. Gr., 6, 228); and the subjects of the second, 
eighth, ninth, and tenth epigrams agree with this 
account of his origin. He lived in the time of Alex¬ 
ander the Great, to whose death he alludes. (Anth. 
Gr., 7, 240.) The fifth epigram (Anth. Gr., 7, 305) 
is inscribed ’A ddalov MiTvXyvaiov, and there was a 
Mitylenaean of this name, who wrote two prose 
works, Ilepr ’ AyaTiparoTroLuv, and I Icpl AiaOioewg. 
(Athen., 13, p. 606, A; 11, p. 471, F.) The time 
when he lived cannot be fixed with certainty. 
Reiske, though on insufficient grounds, believes 
these two to be the same person. (Anth. Grcec., 
6; 228, 258 ; 7, 51, 238, 240, 305 ; 10, 20 .—Brunck, 
Anal., 2, p. 224.— Jacobs, 13, p. 831.) 

Adamantius (’Adapuvriog), an ancient physician, 
bearing the title of Iatrosopliista (iarpuctiv loyuv 
cotyLOTrjQ: Socrates, Hist. Eccles., 7, 13), for the 
meaning of which see Diet, of Ant., p. 528. Little 
is known of his personal history, except that he 
was by birth a Jew, and that he was one of those 
who fled from Alexandrea at the time of the expul¬ 
sion of the Jews from that city by the Patriarch St. 
Cyril, A.D. 415. He went to Constantinople, was 
persuaded to embrace Christianity, apparently by 
Atticus, the patriarch of that city, and then return¬ 
ed to Alexandrea. (Socrates, l. c.) He is the au¬ 
thor of a Greek treatise on physiognomy, Qvcuoyvo- 
uovud, in two books, which is still extant, and 
which is borrowed, in a great measure (as he him¬ 
self confesses, 1, Procem., p. 314, ed. Franz.), from 
Polemo’s work on the same subject. It is dedi¬ 
cated to Constantius, who is supposed by Fabricius 
( Biblioth. Grceca, vol. 1, p. 171; 13, 34, ed. vet.) to 
fie the person who married Placidia, the daughter 
of Theodosius the Great, and who reigned for seven 
months in conjunction with the Emperor Honorius. 
It was first published in Greek at Paris, 1540, 8vo, 
then in Greek and Latin at Basle, 1544, 8vo, and 
afterward in Greek, together with iElian, Polemo, 
and some other writers, at Rome, 1545, 4to; the 
last and best edition is that by J. G. Franzius, who 
has inserted it in his collection of the Scriptores 
Physiognomies Vcteres, Gr. et Lat., Altenb., 1780, 
Svo. Another of his works, nepr ’Avepov, De Verdi s, 


is quoted by the scholiast to Hesiod, and an extract 
from it is given by Aelius (tetrab. 1, serrn. 3, c 
163); it is said to be still in existence in manu¬ 
script in the Royal Library at Paris. Several of 
his medical prescriptions are preserved by Oriba- 
sius and Aetius. 

Adiatorix (’A (haropi^), son of a tetrarch in Ga¬ 
latia, belonged to Antony’s party, who killed all the 
Romans in Heracleia shortly before the battle of 
Actium. After this battle he was led as prisoner in 
the triumph of Augustus, and put to death with his 
younger son. His elder son, Dyteutus, was subse¬ 
quently made priest of the celebrated goddess in 
Comana. (Strab., 12, p. 543, 558, 559.— Cic, ad 
Fam., 2, 12.) 

Adimantus (’A delgavTog), I. the son of Ocytus, 
the Corinthian commander in the invasion of Greece 
by Xerxes. Before the battle of Artemisium he 
threatened to sail away, but was bribed by Themis- 
tocles to remain. He opposed Themistocles with 
great insolence in the council which the command¬ 
ers held before the battle of Salamis. According 
to the Athenians, he took to flight at the very com¬ 
mencement of the battle, but this was denied by 
the Corinthians and the other Greeks. ( Herodotus , 
8, 5, 56, 61, 94.— Plutarch, Themistocles, 11.)—II. 
The son of Leucolophides, an Athenian, was one of 
the commanders with Alcibiades in the expedition 
against Andros, B.C. 407. (Xenophon, Hell, 1, 4, 
§ 21.) He was again appointed one of the Athe¬ 
nian generals after the battle of Arginusae, B.C. 
406, and continued in office till the battle of HJgos- 
potami, B.C. 405, where he was one of the com¬ 
manders, and was taken prisoner. He was the 
only one of the Athenian prisoners who was not 
put to death, because he had opposed the decree for 
cutting off the right hands of the Lacedaemonians 
who might be taken in the battle. He was accused 
by many of treachery in this battle, and was after¬ 
ward impeached by Conon. (Xen., Hell., 1, 7, § 1 ; 
2, 1, $ 30-32.— Pans., 4, 17, $ 2 ; 10, 9, $ 5 .—Dem., 
De fals. leg., p. 401.— Lys., c. Ale., p. 143, 21.) Aris¬ 
tophanes speaks of Adimantus in the “ Frogs” 
(1513), which was acted in the year of the battle, 
as one whose death was wished for; and he also 
calls him, apparently out of jest, the son of Leucol- 
ophus, that is, “ White Crest.” In the “ Protag¬ 
oras” of Plato, Adimantus is also spoken of as 
present on that occasion (p. 315, e).—III. The broth¬ 
er of Plato, who is frequently mentioned by the lat¬ 
ter. (Apol., Socr., p. 34, a; De Rep., 2, p. 367,e, p. 
548, d, e.) 

Admete (’A d/iyrrj), I. a daughter of Eurystheus 
and Antimache or Admete. Hercules was obliged 
by her father to fetch for her the girdle of Mars, 
which was worn by Hippolyte, queen of the Am 
azons. (Apollodorus, 2, 5, 9.) According toTzet- 

zes (ad Lycophron., 1327), she accompanied Her¬ 
cules on this expedition. There was a tradition 
(Athen., 15, p. 447), according to which Admete 
was originally a priestess of Juno at Argos, but fled 
with the image of the goddess to Samos. Pirates 
were engaged by the Argives to fetch the image 
back, but the enterprise did not succeed ; for the 
•ship, when laden with the image, could not be 
made to move. The men then took the image back 
to the coast of Samos and sailed away. When the 
Samians found it, they tied it to a tree, but Admete 
purified it and restored it to the temple of Samos. 
In commemoration of this event, the Samians cele¬ 
brated an annual festival called Tonea. This story 
seems to be an invention of the Argives, by which 
they intended to prove that the worship of Juno in 
their place was older than in Samos. 

Adrantus, Ardrantus or Adrastus, a contem 
porary of Athemeus, who wrote a commentary ii 





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9 


five books upon the work of Theophrastus, entitled 
Hepi ’H Qtiv, to which he added a sixth book upon the 
Nicomachian Ethics of Aristotle. {Athen., 15, p. 
673, e, with Schweighauser’s note.) 

Adranus (’Adpavdf), a Sicilian divinity who was 
worshipped in all the island, but especially at Adra¬ 
nus, a town near Mount .Etna. ( Plut ., Timol., 12. 
—Diodor., 14, 37.) Hesychius {s. v. DaXitcoi) rep¬ 
resents the god as the father of the Palici. Accord¬ 
ing to vElian {Hist. Anim.., 11, 20), about 1000 sa¬ 
cred dogs were kept near his temple. Some modern 
critics consider this divinity to be of Eastern origin,, 
and connect the name Adranus with the Persian 
Adar (fire,) and regard him as the same as the 
Phoenician Adramelech, and as a personification of 
the sun, or of fire in general. {Bochart, Geograph. 
Sacra, p. 530.) 

Adrastus ('A dpaoroc), I. a son of Talaus, king of 
Argos, and of Lysimache. {Apollod., 1, 9, § 13.) 
Pausanias (2, 6, § 3) calls his mother Lysianassa, 
and Iiyginus {Fab., 69) Eurynome. {Comp. Schol. ad 
Eurip., Phan., 423.) During a feud between the 
most powerful houses in Argos, Talaus was slain 
by Amphiaraus, and Adrastus, being expelled from 
his dominions, fled to Polybus, then king of Sicyon. 
When Polybus died, without heirs, Adrastus suc¬ 
ceeded him on the throne of Sicyon, and during his 
reign he is said to have instituted the Nemean 
games {Horn., E., 2, 572.— Find., Nem., 9, 30, &c. 

■— Herod., 5, 67. — Paus., 2, 6, § 3.) Afterward, 
however, Adrastus became reconciled to Amphiara¬ 
us, gave him his sister Eriphyle in marriage, and 
returned to his kingdom of Argos. During the time 
he reigned there, it happened that Tydeus of Caly- 
•don, and Polynices of Thebes, both fugitives from 
their native countries, met at Argos, near the pal¬ 
ace of Adrastus, and came to words, and from words 
to blows. On hearing the noise, Adrastus hastened 
to them and separated the combatants, in whom he 
immediately recognised the two men that had been 
promised to him by an oracle as the future husbands 
of two of his daughters ; for one bore on his shield 
the figure of a boar, and the other that of a lion, and 
the oracle was, that one of his daughters was to 
marry a boar, and the other a lion. Adrastus, 
therefore, gave his daughter Deipyle to Tydeus, and 
Argeia to Polynices, and at the same time promised 
to lead each of these princes back to his own coun¬ 
try. Adrastus now prepared for war against Thebes, 
although Amphiaraus foretold that all who should 
engage in it should perish, with the exception of 
Adrastus. ’ {Apollod., 3, 6, § 1, &e.— Hygin., Fab., 
69, 70.) 

Thus arose the celebrated war of the “ Seven 
against Thebes,” in which Adrastus was joined by 
six other heroes, viz., Polynices, Tydeus, Amphia¬ 
raus, Capaneus, Hippomedon, and Parthenopasus. 
Instead of Tydeus and Polynices, other legends 
mention Eteoclos and Mecisteus. This war ended 
as unfortunately as Amphiaraus had predicted, and 
Adrastus alone was saved by the swiftness of his 
horse Areion, the gift of Hercules. {Horn., E., 23, 
346, &c.— Pans., 8, 25, § 5.— Apollod., 3, 6.) Creon 
of Thebes refusing to allow the bodies of the six 
heroes to be buried, Adrastus went to Athens and 
implored the assistance of the Athenians. Theseus 
was persuaded to undertake an expedition against 
Thebes : he took the city, and delivered up the bod¬ 
ies of the fallen heroes to their friends for burial. 

IApollod., 3, 7, § I.— Paus., 9, 9, $ 1.) 

Ten years after this, Adrastus persuaded the sev¬ 
en sons of the heroes who had fallen in the war 
against Thebes, to make a new attack upon that 
city, and Amphiaraus now declared that the gods 
approved of the undertaking, and promised success. 
{Pans., 9, 9, $ 2.—. Apollod., 3, 7, $ 2.) This war is 


celebrated in ancient story as the war of the Epig 
oni ('E7r lyovot). Thebes was taken and razed to 
the ground, after the greater part of its inhabitants 
had left the city on the advice of Tiresias. {Apol¬ 
lod., 3, 7, 2-4.— Herod., 5, 61.— Strab., 7, p. 325.) 

The only Argive hero that fell in this war was TEgi- 
aleus, the son of Adrastus. After having built a 
temple of Nemesis, in the neighbourhood of Thebes 
{vid. Adrasteia), he set out on his return home. But, 
weighed down by old age and grief at the death of 
his son, he died at Megara, and was buried there. 
{Paus., 1, 43, § 1.) After his death he was worship¬ 
ped in several parts of Greece as at Megara {Paus., 
1. c.); at Sicyon, where his memory was celebrated 
in tragic choruses {Herod., 5, 67), and in Attica 
{Paus., 1, 30, 4). The legends about Adrastus 

and the two wars against Thebes have furnished 
most ample materials for the epic as well as tragic 
poets of Greece {Paus., 9, 9, § 3), and some works 
of art relating to the stories about Adrastus are 
mentioned in Pausanius (3, 18, 7 ; 10, 10, § 2). 

From Adrastus the female patronymic Adrastine 
was formed. {Horn., E., 5, 412.) 

Adrianus {’Adpcavoc), I. a Greek rhetorician, 
born at Tyre in Phoenicia, who flourished under the 
Emperors M. Antoninus and Commodus. He was 
the pupil of the celebrated Herodes Atticus, and ob¬ 
tained the chair of philosophy at Athens during the 
lifetime of his master. His advancement does not 
seem to have impaired their mutual regard : Hero¬ 
des declared that the unfinished speeches of his 
scholar were the “fragments of a colossus,” and 
Adrianus showed his gratitude by a funeral oration 
which he pronounced over the ashes of his master. 
Among a people who rivalled one another in their 
zeal to do him honour, Adrianus did not show much 
of the discretion of a philosopher. His first lecture 
commenced with the modest encomium on himself 
ttu?uv etc $oiv'uc7](; ■ypayyaTa, while, in the magnifi¬ 
cence of his dress and equipage, he affected the 
style of the hierophant of philosophy. A story may 
be seen in Philostratus of his trial and acquittal for 
the murder of a begging sophist who had insulted 
him : Adrianus had retorted by styling such insults 
dr/yfiara nopeov, but his pupils were not content 
with weapons of ridicule. The visit of M. Antoni¬ 
nus to Athens made him acquainted with Adrianus, 
whom he invited to Rome and honoured with his 
friendship: the emperor even condescended to set 
the thesis of a declamation for him. After the death 
of Antoninus, he became the private secretary of 
Commodus. His death took place at Rome in the 
eightieth year of his age, not later than A.D. 192, 
if it be true that Commodus (who was assassinated 
at the end of this year) sent him a letter on his 
deathbed, which he is represented as kissing with 
devout earnestness in his last moments. {Philostr., 
Vit. Adrian. — Suidas, s. v. ’ASpiavoe;.) Of the works 
attributed to him by Suidas, three declamations only 
are extant. These have been cited by Leo Allatius 
in the Excerpta Varia Gr acorn m Sophist arum ac 
Rhetoricorum, Romee, 1641, and by Walz in the 
first volume of the Rhetores Greed, 1832.—II. A 
Greek poet, who wrote an epic poem on the his¬ 
tory of Alexander the Great, which was called 
’Ale%av&piuQ. Of this poem the seventh book is 
mentioned ( Steph. Byz., s. v. 2 dvna), but we pos¬ 
sess only a fragment consisting of one line {Stepli. 
Byz., s.v. ’Aarpaia.) Suidas {s. v. 'A pptavo^) men¬ 
tions, among other poems of Arrianus, one called 
’Adrf ctvdpuiq, and there can be no doubt that this is 
the work of Adrianus, which he by mistake attributes 
to his Arrianus. {Meineke, in the Abhandl. der Ber- 
lin. Akademie, 1832, p. 124.) — III. Flourished, ac¬ 
cording to Archbishop Usher, A.D. 433. There is 
extant of his, in Greek, Isagoge Sacrarum Lit era- 




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« 


rum , recommended by Photius (No. 2.) to beginners, 
edited by Dav. Hoeschel, 4to, Aug. Vindel., 1602, 
and among the Critici Sacri, fob, Lond., 1660. 

Eacus (A lanog), a son of Jupiter and Egina, a 
daughter of the river-god Asopus. He was born in 
the island of CEnone or CEnopia, whither Egina 
had been carried by Jupiter to secure her from the 
anger of her parents, and whence this island was 
afterward called Egina. ( Apollod ., 3, 12, § 6.— 
Hygin., Fab., 52.— Paus., 2, 29, § 2.—Comp. Nonn. 
Dionys., 6, 212. — Ovid, Met., 6, 113; 7, 472, &c.) 
According to some accounts, Eacus was a son of 
Jupiter and Europa. Some traditions related that, 
at the time when Eacus was born, Egina was not 
yet inhabited, and that Jupiter changed the ants 
1/u.vpfirjKeg) of the island into men (Myrmidones), 
over whom Abacus ruled, or that he made men 
grow up out of the earth. {Hes., Fragm., 67, ed. 
Gottling. — Apollod., 3, 12, § 6.— Paus., 1. c.) Ovid 
{Met., 7, 520.—Comp. Hygin., Fab., 52.— Strab., 8, 
p. 375), on the other hand, supposes that the isl¬ 
and was not uninhabited at the time of the birth 
of Eacus, and states that, in the reign of Eacus, 
Juno, jealous of Egina, ravaged the island bearing 
the name of the latter, by sending a plague or a 
fearful dragon into it, by which nearly all its inhab¬ 
itants were carried off, and that Jupiter restored the 
population by changing the ants into men. These 
legends, as Muller justly remarks {Mginetica), are 
nothing but a mythical account of the colonization 
of Egina, which seems to have been originally in¬ 
habited by Pelasgians, and afterward received col¬ 
onists from Phthiotis, the seat of the Myrmidones, 
and from Phlius on the Asopus. Eacus, while he 
reigned in Egina, was renowned in all Greece for 
his justice and piety, and was frequently called upon 
to settle disputes, not only among men, but even 
among the gods themselves. {Pind., Hth., 8, 48, &c. 
— Pausan., i, 39, <) 5.) He was such a favourite 
with the latter, that, when Greece was visited by 
a drought, in consequence of a murder which had 
been committed ( Diod., 4, 60, 61.— Apollod, 3, 12, 
6), the oracle of Delphi declared that the calam¬ 
ity would not cease unless Eacus prayed to the 
gods that it might; which he accordingly did, and 
it ceased in consequence. Eacus himself showed 
his gratitude by erecting a temple to Zeus Panhel- 
lenius on Mount Panhellenion {Paus., 2, 30, <) 4), and 
the Eginetans afterward built a sanctuary in their 
island called Eaceum, which was a square place en¬ 
closed by walls of white marble. Eacus was be¬ 
lieved, in later times, to be buried under the altar in 
this sacred enclosure. {Paus., 2, 29, <) 6.) A legend 
preserved in Pindar ( Ol., 8,39,&c.) relates that Apollo 
and Neptune took Eacus as their assistant in build¬ 
ing the walls of Troy. When the work was comple¬ 
ted, three dragons rushed against the wall, and while 
the two of them which attacked those parts of the 
wall built by the gods fell down dead, the third 
forced its way into the city through the part built 
by Eacus. Hereupon Apollo prophesied that Troy 
would fall through the hands of the Eacids. Ea- 
eus was also believed by the Eginetans to have sur¬ 
rounded their island with high cliffs to protect it 
against pirates. {Paus., 2, 29, <$> 5.) Several other 
incidents connected with the story of Eacus are 
mentioned by Ovid {Metam., 7, 506, &c. ; 9, 435, 
&c.). By Endeis Eacus had two sons, Telamon 
and Peleus, and by Psamathe a son, Phocus, whom 
he preferred to the two others, who contrived to 
kill Phocus during a contest, and then fled from 
their native island. {Vid. Peleus, Telamon.) Af¬ 
ter his death Eacus became one of the three judges 
in Hades {Ov , Met., 13, 25.— Hor., Carm., 2, 13, 


for the shades of Europeans. In works ol art, 
he was represented bearing a sceptre and the keys 
of Hades. {Apollod., 3, 12, 6.— Pind., Isthm., 8, 

47, &c.) Eacus had sanctuaries both at Athens 
and in Egina {Paus., 2, 29, $ 9-— Hesych., s. v. — 
Schol. ad Pind., Nem., 13, 155), and the Eginetans 
regarded him as the tutelary deity of their island. 
{Pind., Nem., 8, 22.) 

Edesia (A Idecria), a female philosopher of the new 
Platonic school lived in the fifth century after Christ, 
at Alexandrea. She was a relative of Syrianus and 
the wife of Hermeias, and was equally celebrated 
for her beauty and her virtues. After the death of 
her husband, she devoted herself to relieving the 
wants of the distressed and the education of her 
children. She accompanied the latter to Athens, 
where they went to study philosophy, and was re¬ 
ceived with great distinction by all the philosophers 
there, and especially by Proclus, to whom she had 
been betrothed by Syrianus when she was quite 
young. She lived to a considerable age, and her 
funeral oration was pronounced by Damascius, who 
was then a young man, in hexameter verses. The 
names of her sons were Ammonius and Heliodorus. 
{Suidas, s. v. — Damascius, ap. Phot., cod. 242, p. 341, 
b, ed. Bekker .) 

Ega (A lyy), according to Hyginus {Poet. Astr., 
2, 13), a daughter of Olenus, who was a descendant 
of Hephaestus. Ega and her sister Helice nursed 
the infant Jupiter in Crete, and the former was after¬ 
ward changed by the god into the constellation call¬ 
ed Capella. According to other traditions mention¬ 
ed by Hyginus, Ega was a daughter of Melisseus, 
king of Crete, and was chosen to suckle the infant 
Jupiter; but, as she was found unable to do it, the* 
service was performed by the goat Amalthea. Ac¬ 
cording to others, again, Ega was a daughter of 
Helios, and of such dazzling brightness, that the 
Titans, in their attack on Olympus, became fright¬ 
ened, and requested their mother Geea to conceal 
her in the earth. She was accordingly confined in 
a cave in Crete, where she became the nurse of Ju¬ 
piter. In the fight with the Titans, Jupiter was com¬ 
manded by an oracle to cover himself with her skin 
{cegis). He obeyed the command, and raised Ega 
among the stars. Similar, though somewhat differ¬ 
ent accounts, were given by Euemerus and others. 
{Eratosth., Catast., 13.— Antonin. Lib., 36.— Lac- 
tant., Instit., 1, 22, § 19.) It is clear that in some of 
these stories Ega is regarded as a nymph, and in 
others as a goat, though the two ideas are not kept 
clearly distinct from each other. Her name is either 
connected with all;, which signifies goat, or with ai!-, 
a gale of wind ; and this circumstance has led some 
critics to consider the myth about her as made up of 
two distinct ones, one being of an astronomical na¬ 
ture, and derived from the constellation Capella, the 
rise of which brings storms and tempests {Aral., 
Phcen., 150), and the other referring to the goat 
which was believed to have suckled the infant Jupi¬ 
ter in Crete. (Com. Bultmann in IdelePs JJrsprung 
und Bedeutung der Sternnamen, p. 309.— Bdttigcr , 
Amalthea, 1, p. 16, &c.— Creuzer, Symbol., 4, p. 458, 
&c.) 

Egaeon II. (A lyaitdv), a son of Uranus by Gaea. 
Egaeon, and his brothers Gyges and Cottus, arc 
known under the name of the Uranids {Hes., Thcog., 
502, &c.), and are described as huge monsters, with 
a hundred arms {cKaroyx^^^) und fifty heads. {Apol¬ 
lod., 1, 1-6 1.— Hes., Theog., 149, &c.) Most wri¬ 
ters mention the third Uranid under the name of 
Briareus instead of Egaeon, which is explained in 
a passage of Homer {II., 1, 403, &c.), who says that 
men called him Egaeon, but the gods Briareus. On 
_ one occasion, when the Olympian gods were about to 
j put Jupiter in chains, Thetis called in the assistance 


22), and, according to Plato {Gorg., p. 523.—Com¬ 
pare Apolog ., p. 41.— Isocrat., Evag., 5), especially 







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141 ? 


ol ..Egseon, who compelled the gods to desist from 
their iniention. (Horn., II, 1, 398, &c.) Accord¬ 
ing to Hesiod ( Theog., 154, &c., 617, &c.), TEgseon 
and his brothers were hated by Uranus from the 
time of their birth, in consequence of which they 
were concealed in the depth of the earth, where they 
remained until the Titans began their war against 
Jupiter. On the advice of Gaea, Jupiter delivered 
the Uranids from their prison, that they might assist 
him. The hundred-armed giants conquered the Ti¬ 
tans by hurling at them three hundred rocks at once, 
and secured the victory to Jupiter, who thrust the Ti¬ 
tans into Tartarus, and placed the Hecatoncheires 
at its gates, or, according to others, in the depth of 
the ocean, to guard them. (Hes., Theog., 616, &c., 
815, &c.) According to a legend in Pausanius (2, 
1, § 6 ; 2, 4, § 7), Briareus was chosen as arbitra¬ 
tor in the dispute between Neptune and Helios, and 
adjudged the Isthmus to the former, and the Acro- 
corinthus to the latter. The scholiast on Apollo¬ 
nius Rhodius (1, 1165) represents iEgseon as a son 
of Gaea and Pontus, and as living as a marine god 
in the yEgean Sea. Ovid (Met., 2, 10) and Philos- 
tratus ( Vit. Apollon., 4, 6j likewise regard him as 
a marine god, while Virgil (Mn., 10, 565) reckons 
him among the giants who stormed Olympus, and 
Callimachus (Hymn, in Del, 141, &c.), regarding him 
in the same light, places him under Mount H2tna. 
The scholiast on Theocritus (Idyll., 1, 65) calls Bri¬ 
areus one of the Cyclopes. The opinion which re¬ 
gards TEgaeon and his brothers as only personifica¬ 
tions of the extraordinary powers of nature, such as 
are manifested in the violent commotions of the 
earth, as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and the 
like, seems to explain best the various accounts 
about them. 

JEgeus II. (A lyevg), the eponymic hero of the phyle 
called the iEgeidas at Sparta, w r as a son of CEolycus, 
and grandson of Theras, the founder of the colony in 
Thera. (Herod., 4, 149.) All the iEgeids were be¬ 
lieved to be Cadmeans, who formed a settlement at 
Sparta previous to the Dorian conquest. There is 
only this difference in the accounts, that, according 
to some, Hiigeus was the leader of the Cadmean 
colonists at Sparta, while, according to Herodotus, 
they received their name of iEge'ids from the later 
TEgeus, the son of CEolycus. ( Pind., Pyth., 5, 101; 
Isth., 7, 18, &c., with the schol.) There was at 
Sparta a heroum of TEgeus. (Paus., 3, 15, § 6.— 
Compare 4, 7, § 3.) 

TEgimus or AEgimius (A lytpog or A lyiuiog), one 
of the most ancient of the Greek physicians, who is 
said by Galen (De Differ. Puls., 1, 2; 4, 2, 11 ; vol. 

8, p. 498, 716, 752) to have been the first person 
who wrote a treatise on the pulse. He was a na¬ 
tive of Velia in Lucania, and is supposed to have 
lived before the time of Hippocrates, that is, in the 
fifth century before Christ. His work was entitled 
Tiepl Ualptiv, De Palpitationibus (a name which 
alone sufficiently indicates its antiquity), and is not 
now in existence. Callimachus (ap. Athen., 14, p. 
643, e) mentions an author named ^Egimius, who 
wrote a work on the art of making cheesecakes 
(TrXaicovvTOTcouiibv ovyypappa), and Pliny mentions a 
person of the same name (H. N., 7, 49), who was 
said to have lived two hundred years; but whether 
these are the same or different individuals is quite 
uncertain. 

JFjGle (AI* tti6 most beautiful of the INai- 
ads, daughter of Jupiter and Neaera (Virg., Eclog., 
G, 20), by whom Helios begot the Charites. (Paus., 

9, 35, § 1.)—II. A sister of Phaethon, and daughter of 
Helios and Clymene. (Hygin., Fab., 154, 156.) In 
her grief at the death of her brother she and her sis¬ 
ters were changed into poplars—Ilf One ofJ.be 
Hesneri les. (Apollad., 2, 5, § 11-— Serv. ad 2En., 

8 R 


4, 484.—Comp. Herperides.) —IV. A nymph, daugh¬ 
ter of Panopeus, who was beloved by Theseus, and 
for whom he forsook Ariadne. (Plut., Thes., 20.— 
Athen., 13, p. 557).—V One of the daughters of TEs- 
culapius (Plin., H. N., 35, 40, §31) by Lampetia, the 
daughter of the Sun, according to Hermippus (ap. 
schol. in Aristoph., Plut., 701), or by Epione, accord¬ 
ing to Suidas (s. v. ’Hmovy). She is said to have 
derived her name HCgle, “Brightness,” or “Splen¬ 
dour,” either from the beauty of the human body 
when in good health, or from the honour paid to the 
medical profession. (J. H. Meibom., Comment, in 
Hippocr., “Jusjur .,” Lugd. Bat., 1643, 4to, c. G, § 7, 
p. 55.) 

TEgleis (Aiylylg) a daughter of Hyacinthus who 
had emigrated from Lacedaemon to Athens. During 
the siege of Athens by Minos, in the reign of HCg- 
eus, she, together with her sisters Antheis, Lytaea, 
and Orthaea, were sacrificed on the tomb of Geraes- 
tus the Cyclops, for the purpose of averting a pesti¬ 
lence then raging at Athens. (Apollod., 3, 15, § 8.) 

iEulNus, III. Lucius, one of the thirty tyrants 
(A.D. 259-268) under the Roman Empire.- He as¬ 
sumed the purple in Gaul after the death of Postu- 
mus, and was killed by his own soldiers, because 
he would not allow them to plunder Moguntiacum. 
Trebellius Pollio and others call him Lollianus ; Eck 
hel (Doctr. Num., 7, p. 448) thinks that his true name 
was Lselianus; but there seems most authority in 
favour of L. HUianus. (Eutrop., 9,7.— Trebell. Poll., 
Trig. Tyr , 4.— Aurel. Viet., De Cars., 33; Epit. 
32.)—IV. Meccius (AlTuavog M eiaao'g), an ancient 
physician, who must have lived in the second centu¬ 
ry after Christ, as he is mentioned by Galen (De 
Theriaca ad Pamphil., init., vol. 14, p. 299) as the 
oldest of his tutors. His father is supposed to have 
also been a physician, as iElianus is said by Galen 
(De Dissect. Muscul., c. 1, p. 2, ed. Dietz) to have 
made an epitome of his father’s anatomical writings. 
Galen speaks of that part of his work which treat¬ 
ed of the Dissection of the Muscles as being held in 
some repute in his time (ibid.), and he always men- 
tions*his tutor with respect. (Ibid., c. 7, 22, p. 11, 
57.) During the prevalence of an epidemic in Italy, 
TElianus is said by Galen (De Theriaca ad Pamphil., 
ibid.) to have used the Theriaca (Diet, of Ant., art. 
Theriaca) with great success, both as a means ol 
cure, and aiso as a preservative against the disease. 
He must have been a person of some celebrity, as 
this same anecdote is mentioned by the Arabic his¬ 
torian Abu ’1-Faraj (Histor. Compcnd. Dynast., p. 
77) with exactly the same circumstances, except 
that he makes the epidemic to have broken out at 
Antioch instead of in Italy. None of his works (as 
far as the writer is aware) are now extant. 

HClius, VIII. PromGtus (A lliog IT poptirog), an an¬ 
cient physician of Alexandrea, of whose personal his¬ 
tory no particulars are known, and whose date is un¬ 
certain. He is supposed by Villoison (Anccd. Grcec., 
vol. 2, p. 179, note 1) to have lived after the time of 
Pompey the Great, that is, in the first century be¬ 
fore Christ; by others he is considered to be much 
more ancient; and by Choulant (Handbuch der Bii,- 
cherkunde fur die Mltere Median, ed. 2, Leipzig , 
1840, 8vo), on the other hand, he is placed as late 
as the second half of the first century after Christ. 
He is most probably the same person who is quoteil 
by Galen (De Compos. Medicam. secund. Locos, 4, 
7, vol. 12, p. 730) simply by the name of AHius. 
He wrote several Greek medical works, which are 
still to be found in manuscript in different libraries 
in Europe, but of which none (as far as the writer is 
aware) have ever been published, though Kuhn in¬ 
tended his works to have been included in his col¬ 
lection of Greek medical writers. Some extracts 
from one of his works entitled Awapepov, Media- 




1418 


SUPPLEMENT. 


nalium Formularum Collectio, are inserted by C. G. 
Kiihn in his Additam. ad Flench. Med. Vet. a J. A. 
Fabricio in “ Bibl. GrExhib., and by Bona in his 
Tractatus de Scorbuto, Verona, 1781, 4to. A vvaye- 
pov is a word used by the later Greek writers, and 
is explained by Dn Cange (Gloss. Med. et hifim. Grae- 
cit.) to mean vis, virtus. It is, however, frequently 
used in the sense given to it above. See Leo, 
Con sped. Medic., 4, 1, 11, ap. Ermerin., Anecd. Med. 
Grcsc., p. 153, 157. Two other of his works are 
quoted or mentioned by Hieron. Mercurialis in his 
Varies Lectiones, 3, 4; and his work De Venenis et 
Morbis Venenosis, 1, 16; 2, 2 ; and also by Schnei¬ 
der in his Prefaces to Nicander’s Thenaca, p. 11, and 
Alexipharmaca, p. 19. 

Emilia Gens, originally written Aimilia, one of 
the most ancient patrician houses at Rome. Its 
origin is referred to the time of Numa, and it is 
said to have been descended from Mamercus, who 
received the name of Emilius on account of the 
persuasiveness of his language '(6d aiyvliav loyov). 
This Mamercus is represented by some as the son 
of Pythagoras, and by others as the son of Numa, 
while a third account traces his origin to Ascanius, 
who had two sons, Julius and Emylos. (Plut-., 
2Em.il., 2 ; Num., 8. 21.— Festus, s. v. JEmil.) Amu- 
lius is also mentioned as one of the ancestors of the 
Emilii. (Sil. Ital., 8,297.) It seems pretty clear 
that the Emilii were of Sabine origin ; and Festus 
derives the name Mamercus from the Oscan, Ma- 
mers in that language being the same as Mars. 
The Sabines spoke Oscan. Since, then, the Emilii 
were supposed to have come to Rome in the time 
of Numa, and Numa was said to have been intimate 
with Pythagoras-, we can see the origin of the le¬ 
gend which makes the ancestor of the house the 
son of Pythagoras. The first member of the house 
who obtained the consulship was L. Emilius Ma¬ 
mercus, in B.C. 484. 

The family names of this gens are: Barbula, 
Buca, Lepibus, Mamercus or Mamercinus, Papus, 
Paullus, Regillus, Scaurus. Of these names, 
Buca, Lepidus, Paullus, and Scaurus are the only 
ones that occur on coins. 

Emilianus, IV. (who is also called 2Emilius) 
lived in the fifth century after Christ, and is known 
as a physician, confessor, and martyr. In the reign 
of the Vandal King Hunneric (A.D. 477-484), du¬ 
ring the Arian persecution in Africa, he was most 
cruelly put to death. The Romish Church cele¬ 
brates his memory on the sixth of December ; the 
.Greek Church on the seventh. (Martyrol. Rom., ed. 
Baron. — Victor Vitensis, De Persecut. Vandal., 5, 1, 
with Ruinart's notes, Paris, 8vo, 1694.— Bzovius, 
Numenclator Sanctorum Professione Medicorum.) 

Esara (A loapa) of Lucania, a female Pythago¬ 
rean philosopher, said to be a daughter of Pythago¬ 
ras. She wrote a work “ about Human Nature,” 
of which a fragment is preserved by Stobaeus. 
Some editors attribute this fragment to Aresas, one 
of the successors of Pythagoras ; but Bentley pre¬ 
fers reading Esara. She is also mentioned in 
the life of Pythagoras (ap. Phot., cod. 249, p. 438, 
h , ed. Bekker), where Bentley reads A lerupa instead 
of hdpa (Dissertation upon Phalaris , p. 277). 

Eschrion, III. a native of Pergamus, and a phy¬ 
sician in the second century after Christ. He was 
one of Galen’s tutors, who says that he belonged to 
the sect of the Empirici, and that he had a great 
knowledge of Pharmacy and Materia Medica. Es- 
chrion was the inventor of a celebrated supersti¬ 
tious remedy for the bite of a mad dog, which is 
mentioned with approbation by Galen and Oriba- 
sius (Synops., 3, p. 55), and of which the most im¬ 
portant ingredient was powdered crawfish. These 
lie directed to be caught at a time when the sun and 


moon were in a particular relative position, and to 
be baked alive. (Gal., De Simpl. Medic. Faculty 
11,34, vol. 12, p. 356.— C. G.Kuhn, addit. ad Elench. 
Med. Vet. a J. A. Fabric, in Bibl. Gr. Exhibit.) 

Eschylus, II. an epic poet, a native of Alexan- 
drea, who must have lived previous to the end o i 
the second century of our era, and whom Athenams 
calls a well-informed man. One of his poems bore 
the title of “Amphitryon,” and another that of 
“ Messeniaca.” A fragment of the former is pro- 
served in Athenaeus (12, p. 599). According to 
Zenobius (5, 85), he had also written a work on 
Proverbs (ITepf Ylapoipitiv : compare Schneidcwin, 
Prcefat. Parcemiogr., p. 11).—III. A native of Rhodes, 
appointed by Alexander the Great one of the inspect¬ 
ors of the governors of that country, after its con¬ 
quest, in B.C. 332. He is next mentioned, B.C. 319, 
as conveying, in four ships, 600 talents of silver from 
Cilicia to Macedonia, which were detained at Ephe¬ 
sus by Antigonus, to pay his foreign mercenaries. 

Esion, an Athenian orator, was a contemporary 
of Demosthenes, with whom he was educated. (Sui- 
das, s. v. Ayyocr.) To what party he belonged du¬ 
ring the Macedonian time is uncertain. When he 
was asked what he thought of the orators of his 
time, he said that, when he heard the other orators, 
he admired their beautiful and sublime conversa¬ 
tions with the people, but the speeches of Demos¬ 
thenes, when read, excelled all others by their skil¬ 
ful construction and their power. Aristotle (Rhet., 
3, 10) mentions a beautiful expression of Esion. 

Esopus, IV. a Greek historian, who wrote a life of 
Alexander the Great. The original is lost, but there 
is a Latin translation of it by Julius Valerius, of 
which Franciscus Juretus had, he says (ad Sym- 
mach., Ep., 10, 54), a manuscript. It was first pub¬ 
lished, however, by Mai from a manuscript in the 
Ambrosian Library, Milan, 1817, 4to; reprinted, 
Frank., 1818, 8vo. The title is “ Itinerarium ad 
Constantinum Angus turn, etc., accedunt Julii Valerii 
Res Gestae Alexand.ri Macedonis, etc.” The time 
when Esopus lived is uncertain, and even his ex¬ 
istence has been doubted. (Barth., Adversar., 2, 
10.) Mai, in the preface to his edition, contended 
that the work was written before 389 A.D., be¬ 
cause the temple of Serapis at Alexandrea, which 
was destroyed by order of Theodosius, is spoken of 
in the translation as still standing. But serious ob¬ 
jections to this inference have been raised by Le- 
tronne ( Journ. des Savans, 1818, p. 617), who refers 
it to the seventh or eighth century, which the weight 
of internal evidence would rather point to. The 
book is full of the most extravagant stories and 
glaring mistakes, and is a work of no credit. 

Esymnetes (Aiavpvhryp), a surname of Bacchus, 
which signifies the Lord, or Ruler, and under which 
he was worshipped at Aroe in Achaia. The story 
about the introduction of his worship there is as 
follows: There was at Troy an ancient image of 
Bacchus, the work of Vulcan, which Jupiter 
had once given as a present to Dardanus. It was 
kept in a chest, and Cassandra, or, according to 
others, Eneas, left this chest behind when she 
quitted the city, because she knew that it would do 
injury to him who possessed it. When the Greeks 
divided the spoils of Troy among themselves, this 
chest fell to the share of the Thessalian Eurypylus, 
who, on opening it, suddenly fell into a state of mad¬ 
ness. The oracle of Delphi, when consulted about 
his recovery, answered, “Where thou shalt see 
men performing a strange sacrifice, there shalt thou 
dedicate the chest, and there shalt thou settle.” 
When Eurypylus came to Aroe in Achaia, it was 
just the season at which its inhabitants offered 
every year to Artemis Triclaria a human sacrifice, 
consisting of the fairest youth and the fairest maid 



SUPPLEMENT. 


1419 


en of the place. This sacrifice was offered as an 
atonement for a crime which had once been com¬ 
mitted in the temple of the goddess. But an oracle 
had declared to them that they should be released 
from the necessity of making this sacrifice, if a 
foreign divinity should be brought to them by a 
foreign king. This oracle was now fulfilled. Eu- 
rypylus, on seeing the victims led to the altar, was 
cured of his madness, and perceived that this was 
the place pointed out to him by the oracle ; and the 
Aroeans also, on seeing the god in the chest, re¬ 
membered the old prophecy, stopped the sacrifice, 
and instituted a festival of Dionysus JEsymnetes, 
for this was the name of the god in the chest. 
Nine men and nine women were appointed to at¬ 
tend to his worship. During one night of this fes¬ 
tival a priest carried the chest outside the town, 
and all the children of the place, adorned, as for¬ 
merly the victims used to be, with garlands of corn- 
ears, went down to the banks of the river Meilichius, 
which had before been called Ameilichius, hung up 
their garlands, purified themselves, and then put on 
other garlands of ivy, after which they returned to 
the sanctuary of Dionysus JEsymnetes. (Pans., 7, 
19 and 20.) This tradition, though otherwise very 
obscure, evidently points to a time when human 
sacrifices were abolished at Aroe by the introduc¬ 
tion of a new worship. At Patree, in Achaia, there 
was likewise a temple dedicated to Dionysus .Esym- 
netes. (Pans., 7, 21, 12.) 

^Ether (A idrjp), a personified idea of the mythical 
cosmogonies. According to that of Hyginus (Fab. 
Pref., p. 1, ed. Staveren), he was, together with 
Night, Day, and Erebus, begotten by Chaos and 
Caligo (Darkness). According to that of Hesiod 
(Theog., 124), .Ether was the son of Erebus and 
his sister Night, and a brother of Day. (Comp. 
Phornut., De Nat. Deor., 16.) The children of 
.Ether and Day were Land, Heaven, and Sea, and 
from his connexion with the Earth there sprang all 
the vices which destroy the human race, and also 
the Giants and Titans. ( Hygin., Fab. Pref., p. 2, 
&c.) These accounts show that, in the Greek cos¬ 
mogonies, .Ether was considered as one of the ele¬ 
mentary substances out of which the Universe was 
formed. In the Orphic Hymns (4), JEther appears 
as the soul of the world, from which all life ema¬ 
nates: an idea which was also adopted by some of the 
early philosophers of Greece. In later times, .Ether 
was regarded as the wide space of Heaven, the resi¬ 
dence of the gods, and Jupiter as the Lord of the 
Ether, or Ether itself personified. (Pacuv., ap. Cic., 
De Nat. Deor., 2, 36, 40 .—Lucret., 5, 499.— Virg., 
Mn., 12, 140.— Georg., 2, 325.) 

Ethicus, Hister or Ister, a Roman writer of 
the fourth century, a native of Istria according to 
his surname, or, according to Rabanus Maurus, of 
Scythia, the author of a geographical work called 
Ethici Cosmographia. We learn, from the preface, 
that a measurement of the whole Roman world was 
ordered by Julius Caesar to be made by the most 
able men ; that this measurement was begun in the 
consulship of Julius Caesar and M. Antonius, i. e., 
B.C. 44; that three Greeks were appointed for the 
purpose, Zenodoxus, Theodotus, and Polyclitus; 
that Zenodoxus measured all the eastern part, 
which occupied him twenty-one years, five months, 
and nine days, on to the third consulship of Augus¬ 
tus and Crassus; that Theodotus measured the 
northern part, which occupied him twenty-nine 
years, eight months, and ten days, on to the tenth 
consulship of Augustus; and that Polyclitus meas¬ 
ured the southern part, which occupied him thirty- 
two years, one month, and ten days ; that thus the 
whole (Roman) world was gone over by the meas¬ 
urers within thirty-two (1) years' and that a re¬ 


port of all it contained was laid before the senate. 
So it stands in the edd., but the numbers are evi¬ 
dently much corrupted : the contradictoriness of 
Polyclitus’s share taking more than 32 years, and 
the whole measurement being made in less than 
(intra) 32 years, is obvious. 

It is to be observed that, in this introductory 
statement, no mention is made of the western part 
(which in the work itself comes next to the east¬ 
ern), except in the Vatican MS., where the eastern 
part is given to Nicodomus, and the western to 
Didymus. 

A census of all the people in the Roman subjection 
was held under Augustus. ( Saidas , s. v. Avyovcroq.) 
By two late writers ( Cassiodorus , Var., 3, 52, by an 
emendation of Huschke, p. 6, uber den zur Zeit der 
Geburt Jesu Christi gehaltenen Census, Breslau, 
1840; and Isidorus, Orig ., 5, 36, § 4), this number¬ 
ing of the people is spoken of as connected with 
the measurement of the land. This work, in fact, 
consists of two separate pieces. The first begins 
with a short introduction, the substance of which 
has been given, and then proceeds with an account 
of the measurement of the Roman world under four 
heads, Orientalis, Occidentalis, Septentrionalis, Me- 
ridiana pars. Then come series of lists of names, 
arranged under heads, Maria, Insulse, Montes, Pro- 
vinciae, Oppida, Flumina, and Gentes. These are 
bare lists, excepting that the rivers have an account 
of their rise, course, and length annexed. This is 
the end of the first part, the Expositio. The second 
part is called Alia totius orbis Descriptio, and con¬ 
sists of four divisions: (1.) Asias Provincial situs 
cum limitibus et populis suis; (2.) Europae situs, 
&c.; (3.) Africae situs, &c.; (4.) Insulae Nostri 
Maris. This part, the Descriptio, occurs, with 
slight variations, in Orosius, 1,2. In Ethicus, what 
looks like the original commencement, Majores nos¬ 
tri, &c., is tacked on to the preceding part, the Ex¬ 
positio, by the words Plane quadripartitam totius ter¬ 
ra continentiam hi qui dimensi sunt. From this it 
would appear that Ethicus borrowed it from Oro¬ 
sius. 

The work abounds in errors. Sometimes the 
same name occurs in different lists; as, for exam¬ 
ple, Cyprus and Rhodes both in the north and in 
the east; Corsica both in the west and in the 
south; or a country is put as a town, as Arabia; 
Noricum is put among the islands. Mistakes of 
this kind would easily be made in copying lists, 
especially if in double columns. But from other 
reasons, and from quotations given by Dicuil, a 
writer of the 9th century, from the Cosmographia, 
differing from the text as we have it, the whole 
appears to be very corrupt. The work is a very 
meager production, but presents a few valuable 
points. Many successful emendations have been 
made by Salmasius in his Exercitationes Philolo¬ 
gies, and there is a very valuable essay on the 
whole subject by Ritschl in the Rheinisches Museum 
(1842), 1, 4. 

The sources of the Cosmographia appear to have 
been the measurements above described, other 
official lists and documents, and also, in all proba¬ 
bility, Agrippa’s Commentarii, which are cor stantly 
referred to by Pliny (Hist. Nat., 3, 4, 5, 6) as an 
authority, and his Chart of the World, which was 
founded on his Commentarii. (Plin., Hist. Nat., 3, 
2 .) 

Cassiodorus (De Instit. Divin., 25) describes a 
cosmographical work by Julius Honorius Crator in 
terms which suit exactly the work of Ethicus; 
and Salmasius regards Julius Honorius as the real 
author of this work, to which opinion Ritschl seems 
to lean, reading Ethnicus instead of Ethicus, and 
considering it as a mere appellative. In some MSS. 



1420 


SUPPLEMENT. 


he appellatives Sophista and Philosophus are found. 

One of the oldest MSS., if not the oldest, is the 
Vatican one. This is the only one which speaks of 
the west in the introduction. But it is carelessly 
written: consulibus ( e. g.) is several times put for 
consulatum. Suis is found as a contraction (1) for 
suprascriptis. The introduction is very different in 
this and in the other MSS. 

The first edition of the Cosmographia was by 
Binder, Basel, 1575, together with the Itinerarium 
Antonini. There is an edition by Henry Stephens, 
1577, with Simler’s notes, which also contains Dio¬ 
nysius, Pomponius Mela, and Solinus The last 
edition is by Gronovius, in his edition of Pomponius 
Mela, Leyden, 1722. 

Aethlius (’A (OTaoq), the author of a work entitled 
“ Samian Annals” (' 'tipoc ’Ldp.Loi), the fifth book of 
which is quoted by Athenasus, although he expresses 
a doubt about the genuineness of the work (14, p. 
650, d, 653, f). JEthlius is also referred to by 
Clemens Alexandrinus ( Protr ., p. 30, a), Eusta¬ 
thius (ad Od., 7, 120, p. 1573), and in the Etymo- 
logicum Magnum (s. v. viviorai), where the name 
is written Athlius. 

Afrania, Caia or Gaia, the wife of the senator 
Licinius Buccio, a very litigious woman, who al¬ 
ways pleaded her own causes before the praetor, 
and thus gave occasion to the publishing of the 
edict which forbade all women to postulate. She 
was, perhaps, the sister of L. Afranius, consul in 
B.C 60. She died B.C. 48. (Val. Max., 8,3, $ 1.— 
Dig., 3, tit. 1 , s. 1 , § 5. 

Afrania Gens, plebeian, is first mentioned in the 
second century B.C. The only cognomen of this 
gens, which occurs under the republic, is Stellio : 
those names which have no cognomen are given 
under Afranius. Some persons of this name ev¬ 
idently did not belong to the Afrania gens. On 
coins we find only S. Afranius and M. Afranius, 
of whom nothing is known. ( Eckhel , 5, p. 132, &c.) 

Africanus (’A (ppiKavog), TIL a writer on veteri¬ 
nary surgery, whose date is not certainly known, 
but who may, very probably, be the same person as 
Sex. Julius Africanus, whose work entitled K ectol 
contained information upon medical subjects. ( Vid 
Africanus, Sex. Julius.) His remains were publish¬ 
ed in the Collection of Writers on Veterinary Medi¬ 
cine, first in a Latin translation by J. Ruellius, Par., 
1530, fol., and afterward in Greek, Bas., 1537, 4to, 
edited by Grynseus.—IV. Sex. C^cilius, a classi¬ 
cal Roman jurisconsult, who lived under Antoninus 
Pius. He was probably a pupil of Salvius Julianus, 
the celebrated reformer of the Edict under Hadrian. 
He consulted Julian on legal subjects (Dig., 25, tit. 
3, s 3, § 4), and there is a controverted passage in 
the Digest ( Africanus libro vicesimo Epistolarum apud 
Julianum quant, &c. : Dig., 30, tit. 1, s. 39), which 
has been explained in various ways ; either that he 
published a legal correspondence which passed be¬ 
tween him and Julianus, or that he commented 
upon the epistolary opinions given by Julianus in 
answer to the letters of clients, or that he wrote a 
commentary upon Julianus in the form of letters. 
On the other hand, Julianus “ ex Sexto” is quoted 
by Gaius (2, 218), which shows that Julianus an¬ 
notated Sextus, the formula “ ex Sexto” being sy¬ 
nonymous with “ ad Sextum.” ( Neuber, Die Jurist. 
Klassiker, 8, 9.) Who was Sextus but Africanus 1 
Africanus was the author of “ Libri IX. Quaestio- 
num,” from which many pure extracts are made in 
the Digest, as may be seen in Hommel’s “ Palinge- 
nesia Pandectarum,” where the extracts from each 
jurist are brought together, and those that are 
taken from Africanus occupy 26 out of about 1800 
pages. 

From his remains, thus preserved in the Digest, 


it is evident that he was intimately acquainted witf 
the opinions of Julianus, who is the person alluded 
to when, without any expressed nominative, he 
uses the words ait, existimavit, ncgavit,, putavit, in¬ 
quit, respondit, placet, notat. This is proved by Cu- 
jas, from a comparison of some Greek scholia on the 
Basilica with parallel extracts from Africanus in 
the Digest. Paullus and Ulpian have done Africa¬ 
nus the honour of citing his authority. Pie was 
fond of antiquarian lore (Dig., 7, tit. 7, s. 1, pr., 
where the true reading is S. Cacilius, not S. JEhus), 
and his “Libri IX. Qusestionum,” from the concise¬ 
ness of the style, the great subtlety of the reason¬ 
ing, and the knottiness of the points discussed, so 
puzzled the old glossators, that, when they came to 
an extract from Africanus, they were wont to ex¬ 
claim Africani lex, id est dijfcilis. (Hcinecc., Hist., 
Jur. Rom., § 306, n.) Mascovius (De Seclis Jur., 4, 
<$> 3) supposes that Africanus belonged to the legal 
sect of the Sabiniani, and as our author was a 
steady follower of Salvius Julianus, who was a Sa- 
binian (Caius, 2, 217, 218,) this supposition maybe 
regarded as established. In the time of Antoninus 
Pius, the distinction of schools or sects had not yet 
worn out. 

Among the writers of the lives of ancient law¬ 
yers (Pancirollus, Jo. Bertrandus, Grotius, &c.), 
much dispute has arisen as to the time when Africa¬ 
nus wrote, in consequence of a corrupt or erroneous 
passage in Lampridius (Lamp., Alex. Sev., 68), which 
would make him a friend of Severus Alexander and 
a disciple of Papinian. Cujas ingeniously and sat¬ 
isfactorily disposes of this anachronism by referring 
to the internal evidence of an extract from Africa¬ 
nus (Dig., 30, tit. 1, s. 109), which assumes the va¬ 
lidity of a legal maxim that was no longer in force 
when Papinian wrote. 

For reasons which it would be tedious to detail, 
we hold, contrary to the opinion of Menage (Amazn. 
Jur., c. 23), that our Sextus Caecilius Africanus is 
identical with the jurist sometimes mentioned in 
the Digest by the name Caecilius or S. Caecilius, 
and also with that S. Caecilius whose dispute with 
Favorinus forms an amusing and interesting chap¬ 
ter in the Noctes Atticae. ( Gell ., 20, 1.) Gellius, 
perhaps, draws to some extent upon his own inven¬ 
tion, but, at all events, the lawyer’s defence of the 
XII. Tables against the attacks oTthe philosopher is 
“ ben trovato.” There is something humorously 
cruel in the concluding stroke of the conversation, 
in the pedantic way in which our jurisconsult vin 
dicates the decemviral law against debtors— panis 
secanto, &c.—by the example of Metius Fuletius. 
and the harsh sentiment of Virgil: 

“ At tu dictis, Albane, maneres .” 

The remains of Africanus have been admirably 
expounded by Cujas (ad Africanum tractatus IX., in 
Cujac., Opp., vol. 1), and have also been annotated 
by Scipio Gentili. (Scip. Gentilis, Diss. I.-IX. ad 
Africanum, 4to, Altdorf 1602-7. — Strauchius, Vi¬ 
ta aliquot veterum jurisconsultorum, 8vo, Jen., 1723. 
— I. Zimmern , Rom. Rechtsgeschichte, 94.)-—V. 
Julius, a celebrated orator in the reign of Nero, 
seems to have been the son of Julius Africanus, of 
the Gallic state of the Santoni, who was condemn¬ 
ed by Tiberius, A.D. 32. (Tac., Ann., 6, 7.) Quin¬ 
tilian, who had heard Julius Africanus, speaks of 
him and Domitius Afer as the best orators of their 
time. The eloquence of Africanus was chiefly 
characterized by vehemence and energy. (Quintil., 
10, 1, § 118 ; 12, 10, <5 11 : comp, 8, 5, § 15. — Dial, 
de Orat., 15.) Pliny mentions a grandson of this 
Julius Africanus, who was also an advocate, and 
was opposed to him upon one occasion. (Ep., 7. 6.) 
He was consul suffectus in A.D 108 




SUPPLEMENT. 


Vgaolyyu^ (’A yaicfoiTog), the author of a work 
Rl/out Olympia (Ilep2 ’O Ivpmag), which is referred 
to by Suidas and Photius (s. v. KvfePudtiv). 

Ag allis (’A yalXtq), of Corcyra,' a female gram- 
marian. who wrote upon Homer. ( Athen., 1, p. 14, 
d.) Some have supposed, from two passages in 
Suidas (s. v. ’Avdyahhig and v O pxycng), that we 
ought to read Anagallis in this passage of Athense- 
us. The scholiast upon Homer and Eustathius (ad 
ft-, 18, 491) mention a grammarian of the name of 
Agulhas, a pupil of Aristophanes the grammarian, 
also a Corcyrasan and a commentator upon Ho¬ 
mer, who may be the same as Agallis, or, perhaps, 
her father. 

Agamede (A yayydy), I. a daughter of Augeias 
and wife of Mulius, who, according to Homer (II., 
11, 739), was acquainted with the healing powers 
of all the plants that grow upon the earth. Hygi- 
nus (Fab., 157) makes her the mother of Belus, 
Actor, and Dictys, by Poseidon.—II. A daughter of 
Macaria, from whom Agamede, a place in Lesbos, 
was believed to have derived its name. (Steph. 
Byz., s. v. ’ Ayapydy.) 

Agapetus (’Ayanyrog), I. Metropolitan Bishop 
of Rhodes, A.D. 457. When the Emperor Leo 
wrote to him for- the opinion of his suffragans and 
himself on the council of Chalcedon, he defended it 
against Timotheus HSlurus, in a letter still extant in 
a Latin translation, Concihorum Nova Collectio h 
Mansi, vol. 7, p. 580.—II. St., born at Rome, was 
archdeacon, and raised to the Holy See, A.D. 535. 
He was no sooner consecrated than he took off the 
anathemas pronounced by Pope Boniface II. against 
his deceased rival Dioscorus on a false charge of 
simony. He received an appeal from the Catholics 
of Constantinople, when Anthimus, the Monophy- 
site, was made their bishop by Theodora. The fear 
of an invasion of Italy by Justinian led the Goth 
Theodatus to oblige St. Agapetus to go himself to 
Constantinople, in hope that Justinian might be di¬ 
verted from his purpose. ( Vid. Breviarium S. Libe- 
rati, ap. Mansi, Concilia, vol. 9, p. 695.) As to this 
last object, he could make no impression on the em¬ 
peror, but he succeeded in persuading him to depose 
Anthimus; and when Mennas was chosen to suc¬ 
ceed him, Agapetus laid his own hands upon him. 
The council and the Synodal (interpreted into Greek) 
sent by Agapetus relating to these affairs may be 
found ap. Mansi, vol. 8, p. 869, 921. Complaints 
were sent him from various quarters against the 
Monophysite Acephali; but he died suddenly, A.D. 
536, April 22, and they were read in a council held 
on 2d May, by Mennas. (Mansi, ibid., p. 874.) 
There are two letters from St. Agapetus to Justin¬ 
ian in reply to a letter from the emperor, in the 
latter of which he refuses to acknowledge the Or¬ 
ders of the Arians ; and there are two others: 1. 
To the bishops of Africa, on the same subject; 2. 
To Reparatus, bishop of Carthage, in answer to a 
letter of congratulation on his elevation to the pon¬ 
tificate. (Mansi, Concilia, 8, p. 846-850.) — III. 
Deacon of the Church of St. Sophia, A.D. 527. 
There are two other Agapeti mentioned in a coun¬ 
cil held by Mennas at this time at Constantinople, 
who were archimandrites, or abbots. Agapetus 
was tutor to Justinian, and, on the accession of the 
latter to the empire, addressed to him Admonitions 
on the duty of a Prince, in 72 sections, the initial 
ietters of which form the dedication (esdeaig K£(j)- 
ahaiov tv apaiveriKCJV axediaadelaa). The repute in 
which this work was held appears from its common 
title, viz., the Royal Sections (cr^ech/ (dacnltud). It 
was published, with a Latin version, by Zach. Cal- 
lierg., 8vo, Yen., 1509, afterward by J. Brunon, 8vo, 
Lips., 1669 ; Grdbel, 8vo, Lips., 1733, and in Gal- 
landi’s Bibliotheca, vol. 11, p. 255, &c., Yen., 1676, 


142! 

after the edition of Bandurius (Benedictine). It was 
translated into French by Louis XIII., 8vo, Par., 
1612, and by Th. Paynell into English, 12mo, Lond., 
1550. — IV. An ancient Greek physician, ivhose 
remedy for the gout is mentioned with approbation 
by Alexander Trallianus (11, p. 303) and Paulus 
HEgineta (3, 78, p. 497; 7, 11, p. 661). He prob¬ 
ably lived between the third and sixth centuries af¬ 
ter Christ, or certainly not later, as Alexander Tral¬ 
lianus, by whom he is quoted, is supposed to have 
flourished about the beginning of the sixth century, 

Agapius (^Aydmog), an ancient physician of Al¬ 
exandra, who taught and practised medicine at 
Byzantium with great success and reputation, and 
acquired immense riches. Of his date it can only 
be determined, that he must have lived before the 
end of the fifth century after Christ, as Damascius 
(from whom Photius, Biblioth., cod. 242, and Sui¬ 
das have taken their account of him) lived about 
that time. 

Agarista (’ Ayaptcry ,) II. the daughter of Cleis- 
thenes, tyrant of Sicyon, whom her father promised 
to give in marriage to the best of the Greeks. Suit¬ 
ers came to Sicyon from all parts of Greece, and 
among others Megacles, the son of Alcmceon, from 
Athens. After they had been detained at Sicyon 
for a whole year, during which time Cleisthenes 
made trial of them in various ways, he gave Aga¬ 
rista to Alcmceon. From this marriage came the 
Cleisthenes who divided the Athenians into ten 
tribes, and Hippocrates. (Herodotus, 6, 126-130. 
—Compare Athenceus, 6, p. 273, b, c ; 12, 541, b, 
c.) 

x4gathemerus, II. Claudius (K havdiog ’Ayadype- 
pog), an ancient Greek physician, who lived in the 
first century after Christ. He was born at Lacedas- 
mon, and was a pupil of the philosopher Cornutus, 
in whose house he became acquainted with the poet 
Persius, about A.D. 50. (Pseudo-Sueton., vita Pcr- 
sii .) In the old editions of Suetonius he is called 
Agaternus, a mistake which was first corrected by 
Reinesius (Syntagma Inscript. Antiq., p. 610), from 
the epitaph upon him and his wife, Myrtale, which 
is preserved in the Marmora Oxoniensia and the 
Greek Anthology, vol. 3, p. 381, <) 224, ed. Tauchn. 
The apparent anomaly of a Roman prsenomen being 
given to a Greek, may be accounted for by the fact, 
which we learn from Suetonius (Tiber., 6), that the 
Spartans were the hereditary clients of the Claudia 
gens. (C. G. Kuhn, Additam. ad Blench. Medic. Vet. 
a J. A. Fabricio, in “ Biblioth. Grceca ,” exhibit.) 

AgatjiInus (’A yddiv'oc), an eminent ancient Greek 
physician, the founder of a new medical sect, to 
which he gave the name of Episynthetici. (Diet, of 
Ant., s. v. Episynthetici.) He was born at Sparta, 
and must have lived in the first century after Christ, 
as he was the pupil of Athenceus, and the tutor of 
Archigenes. (Galen, Definit. Med., c. 14, vol. 19, 
p. 353.— Suidas, s. v. ’Apxiyevyg. — Eudoc., Violar., 
ap. Villoison, Anecd. Gr., vol. 1, p. 65.) He is said 
to have been once seized with an attack of delirium, 
brought on by want of sleep, from which he was de¬ 
livered by his pupil Archigenes, who ordered his 
head to be fomented with a great quantity of warm 
oil. (Aetius, tetr. 1, serm. 3,172, p. 156.) He is fre¬ 
quently quoted by Galen, who mentions him among 
the Pneumatici. (Be Dignosc. Puls., 1, 3, vol. 8, p. 
787.) None of his writings are now extant, but a 
few fragments are contained in Matthcei’s Collection, 
entitled XXI. Veterum ct Clarorum Medicorum Grce- 
corum Varia Opuscula, Mosqua, 1808,4to. See, also, 
Palladius, Comment, in Hippocr., 11 De Morb. Popul., 
lib. 6,” ap. Dietz, Scholia in Hippocr. et Galen., vol, 
2, p. 56. The particular opinions of his sect are not 
exactly known, but they were probably nearly the 
same as those of the Eclectici. (Diet, of Ant., s. v. 





1422 


SUPPLEMENT. 


Eclectici.- -Vid. J. C. Osterhausen, Histor. Sector 
Pneumatic. Med., Altorf., 1791, 8vo.— C. G. Kuhn, 
Additam. ad Elench. Medic. Vet. a J. A. Fabricio, in 
“ Bibliolh. Graeca ,” exhibit.) 

Agathoclea (’A yadoaXeia), a mistress of the prof¬ 
ligate Ptolemy Philopator, king of Egypt, and sis¬ 
ter of his no less profligate minister Agathocles. 
She and her brother, who both exercised the most 
unbounded influence over the king, were introduced 
to him by their ambitious and avaricious mother, 
(Enanthe. After Ptolemy had put to death his wife 
and sister Eurydice, Agathoclea became his fa¬ 
vourite. On the death of Ptolemy (B.C. 205), Agath¬ 
oclea and her friends kept the event secret, that 
they might have an opportunity of plundering the 
royal treasury. They also formed a conspiracy for 
setting Agathocles on the throne. He managed for 
some time, in conjunction with Sosibius, to act as 
guardian to the young king Ptolemy Epiphanes. At 
last, the Egyptians and the Macedonians of Alexan- 
drea, exasperated at his outrages, rose against him, 
and Tlepolemus placed himself at their head. They 
surrounded the palace in the night, and forced their 
way in. Agathocles and his sister implored in the 
most abject manner that their lives might be spared, 
but in vain. The former was killed by his friends, 
that he might not be exposed to a more cruel fate. 
Agathoclea, with her sisters, and (Enanthe, who 
had taken refuge in a temple, were dragged forth, 
and in a state of nakedness exposed to the fury of 
the multitude, who literally tore them limb from 
limb. All their relatives, and those who had any 
share in the murder of Eurydice, were likewise put 
to death. (Polyb., 5,63; 14, 11; 15, 25-34.— Justin., 
30,1, 2.— Athen., 6, p. 251; 13, p. 576.— Pint., Cleom., 
33.) There was another Agathoclea, the daughter 
of a man named Aristomenes, who was by birth an 
Acarnanian, and rose to great power in Egypt. 
( Polyb., 1. c.) 

Agathocles (’A yadonJ-yq), VI. a Greek historian, 
who wrote the history of Cyzicus (nepl Kv&/cov). He 
is called by Athenasus both a Babylonian (1, p. 30, 
a; 9, p. 375, a) and a Cyzican (14, p. 649, f). He 
may originally have come from Babylon, and have 
settled at Cyzicus. The first and third books are 
referred to by Athenaeus (9, p. 375, f; 12, p. 515, 
a). The time at which Agathocles lived is un¬ 
known, and his work is now lost; but it seems to 
have been extensively read in antiquity, as it is re¬ 
ferred to by Cicero ( De Div., 1, 24), Pliny (Hist Nat., 
Elenchus of books 4, 5, 6), and other ancient wri¬ 
ters. Agathocles also spoke of the origin of Rome. 
( Festus, s. v. Romam. — Solinus, Polyh., 1.) The 
scholiast on Apollonius (4, 761) cites Memoirs (vno- 
uvrjfiaTa ) by an Agathocles, who is usually supposed 
to be the same as the above-mentioned one. (Com¬ 
pare Schol. ad Hes., Theog., 485.— Steph. Byz., s. v. 
B eabmoq. — Etymol. M., s. v. A ikttj.) 

There are several other writers of the same 
name. I. Agathocles of Atrax, who wrote a work 
on Fishing (akievrind : Suidas, s. v.KucDiog). —II. Of 
Chios, who wrote a work on Agriculture. ( Varro 
and Colum., De Re Rust., 1, 1.— Plin., H. N., 22, 
44.)—III. Of Miletus, who wrote a work on Rivers. 
(Plut., De Fluv., p. 1153, c.)—IV. Of Samos, who 
wrote a w T ork on the Constitution of Pessinus. 
(Plat., ibid., p. 1159, a.) 

Agathod^emon (’A yaOoda'ifiuv), III. a native of Alex¬ 
andra. All that is known of him is, that he was 
the designer of some maps to accompany Ptolemy’s 
Geography. Copies of these maps are found ap¬ 
pended to several MSS. of Ptolemy. One of these 
is at Vienna, another at Venice. At the end of 
each of these MSS. is the following notice : ’E/c rtiv 
K XavSlov Ylro'keuaiov TeoypacfuKuv f3i6X'uov oktu ryv 
AKovpevTjv naeav ’Ayadofialyuv ’A }.r^ovdpevg vtcetv- 


nuae (Agathodsemon of Alexandrea delineated tne 
whole inhabited world according to the eight books 
on Geography of Cl. Ptolemaeus). The Vienna MS. 
of Ptolemy is one of the most beautiful extant. The 
maps attached to it, 27 in number, comprising 1 gen¬ 
eral map, 10 maps of Europe, 4 of Africa, and 12 ol 
Asia, are coloured, the water being green, the mount¬ 
ains red or dark yellow, and the land white. The 
climates, parallels, and the hours of the longest day, 
are marked on the east margin of the maps, and the 
meridians on the north and south. We have no 
evidence as to when Agathodsemon lived, as the 
only notice preserved respecting him is that quoted 
above. There was a grammarian of the same name, 
to whom some extant letters of Isidore of Pelusium 
are addressed. Some have thought him to be the 
Agathodsemon in question. Heeren, however, con¬ 
siders the delineator of the maps to have been a con¬ 
temporary of Ptolemy, who (8,1, 2) mentions certain 
maps or tables, ('.nivaae<;), which agree in number 
and arrangement with those of Agathodsemon in the 
MSS. 

Various errors having, in the course of time, crept 
into the copies of the maps of Agathodsemon, Nico¬ 
laus Donis, a Benedictine monk, w T ho flourished 
about A.D. 1470, restored and corrected them, sub¬ 
stituting Latin for Greek names. His maps are ap¬ 
pended to the Ebnerian MS. of Ptolemy. They are 
the same in number and nearly the same in order 
with those of Agathodsemon. ( Heeren, Commentatio 
de Fontibus Geograph. Ptolemcei Tabularumque iis 
annexarum. — Raidel, Commentatio critico-literaria dc 
Cl. Ptolemcei Geographia ejusque codicibus, p. 7.) 

Agathon CAydduv), II. the son of the Macedo¬ 
nian Philotas, and the brother of Parmenion and 
Asander, was given as a hostage to Antigonus, in 
B.C. 313, by his brother Asander, who was satrap 
of Caria, but was taken back again by Asander in a 
fewdays. (Diod., 19, 75.) Agathon had a son named 
Asander, who is mentioned in a Greek inscription. 
( Bockh, Corp. Inscrip., 105.) — III. Of Samos, wdio 
wrote a work upon Scythia and another upon Rivers. 
(Plutarch, De Fluv., p. 1156, e, 1159, a.— Stoboeus, 
Serm., tit. 100, 10, ed. Gaisford.) 

Agathotychus (’AyadoTvxoq), an ancient veteri¬ 
nary surgeon, whose date and history are unknown, 
but who probably lived in the fourth or fifth century 
after Christ. Some fragments of his writings are 
to be found in the collection of works on this sub¬ 
ject first published in a Latin translation by Jo. 
Ruellius, Veterinarice Medicince Libri duo, Paris, 
1530, fol., and afterward in Greek by Grynaeus, 
Basil., 1537, 4to. 

Agraulos, II. a daughter of Cecrops and Agrau 
los, and mother of Alcippe by Mars. This Agrau¬ 
los is an important personage in the stories of At¬ 
tica, and there were three different legends about 
her. 1. According to Pausanias (1, 18, § 2) and 
Hyginus (Fab., 166), Athena gave to her and her 
sisters Erichthonius in a chest, with the express 
command not to open it. But Agraulos and Herse 
could not control their curiosity, and opened it; 
whereupon they were seized with madness at the 
sight of Erichthonius, and threw themselves from 
the steep rock of the Acropolis, or, according to Hy¬ 
ginus, into the sea. 2. According to Ovid (Met., 2, 
710, &c ), Agraulos and her sister survived their 
opening the chest, and the former, who had insti¬ 
gated her sister to open it, was punished in this 
manner. Hermes came to Athens during the cel¬ 
ebration of the Panathenaea, and fell in love with 
Herse. Athena made Agraulos so jealous of her 
sister, that she even attempted to prevent the god 
entering the house of Herse. But, indignant at 
such presumption, he changed Agraulos into a 
stone. 3. The third legend represents Agraulos in 



1423 


SUPPLEMENT. 


a totally different light. Athens was at one time 
involved in a long-protracted war, and an oracle de¬ 
clared that it would cease if some one would sac¬ 
rifice himself for the good of his country. Agraulos 
came forward and threw herself down the Acropo¬ 
lis. The Athenians, in gratitude for this, built her 
a temple on the Acropolis, in which it subsequently 
became customary for the young Athenians, on re¬ 
ceiving their first suit of armour, to take an oath 
that they would always defend their country to the 
last. ( Said . and Hesych , s. v. "AypavXog. — Ulpian, 
ad Demosth., Defals. leg. — Herod., 8, 53.— Pint., Al- 
cib ., 15. — Philochorus, Fragm., p. 18, ed. Siebelis.) 
One of the Attic bfiyoi (Agraule) derived its name 
from this heroine, and a festival and mysteries were 
celebrated at Athens in honour of her. ( Steph. 
Byzant., s. v. ’ Aypav?f .— Lobeck, Aglaoph., p. 89.— 
Diet, of Ant., s. v. Agraulia ) According to Porphyry 
(De Ahstin. ab animal., 1, 2), she was also worship¬ 
ped in Cyprus, where human sacrifices were offer¬ 
ed to her down to a very late time. 

Agyrrhius (’A yvpfiiog), a native of Collytus in 
Attica, whom Andocides ironically calls tov Ka?„ov 
KayaOov (De Myst., p. 65, ed. Reiske ), after being 
in prison many years for embezzlement of public 
money, obtained, about B.C. 395, the restoration of 
the Theoricon, and also tripled the pay for attend¬ 
ing the assembly, though he reduced the allowance 
previously given to the comic writers. (Harpocrat., 
s. v. Qeupucd, ’Ayvp^iop. — Suidas, s. v. eKnTiyaiacTL- 
kov. — Schol. ad Aristoph., Fed., 102.— Dem., c. Ti- 
mocr., p. 742.) By this expenditure of the public 
revenue Agyrrhius became so popular, that he was 
appointed general in B.C. 389. (Xen., Hell., 4, 8. 
§ 31.— Diod., 14, 99.— Bockh, Publ. Econ. of Athens, 
p. 223, 224, 316, &.C., 2d ed., Engl, transl. — Schd- 
mann, De Comitiis , p. 65, &c.) 

Ahala, the name of a patrician family of the 
Servilia gens. There were also several persons of 
this gens with the name of Structus Ahala, who 
may have formed a different family from the Aha- 
lae ; but as the Ahalae and Structi Ahalaj are fre¬ 
quently confounded, all the persons of these names 
are given here.—I. C. Servilius Structus, consul 
B.C. 478, died in his year of office, as appears from 
the Fasti. (. Liv., 2,49.)—II. C. Servilius Structus, 
magister equitum B.C. 439, when L. Cincinnatus 
was appointed dictator on the pretence that Sp. 
Maelius was plotting against the state. In the night 
in which the dictator was appointed, the Capitol and 
all the strong posts were garrisoned by the parti¬ 
sans of the patricians. In the morning, when the 
people assembled in the forum, and Sp. Maelius 
among them, Ahala summoned the latter to appear 
before the dictator; and upon Maelius disobeying 
and taking refuge in the crowd, Ahala rushed into 
the throng and killed him. (Liv., 4, 13, 14.— Zona- 
ras, 7, 20. — Dionys., Exc. Alai, 1, p. 3.) This act 
is mentioned by later writers as an example of an¬ 
cient heroism, and is frequently referred to by Ci¬ 
cero in terms of the highest admiration (in Catil., 
1,1; Pro Mil., 3 ; Cato, 16) ; but it was, in reality, 
a case of murder, and was so regarded at the time. 
Ahala was brought to trial, and only escaped con¬ 
demnation by a voluntary exile. ( Val. Max., 5, 3, 
$ 2 .—Cic., De Rep., 1, 3 ; Pro Dom., 32.) Livy pass¬ 
es over this, and only mentions (4, 21) that a bill 
was brought in three years afterward, B.C. 436, by 
another Sp. Maelius, a tribune, for confiscating the 
property of Ahala, but that it failed. 

A representation of Ahala is given on a coin of 
M. Brutus, the murderer of Caesar, but we cannot 
suppose it to be anything more than an imaginary 
likeness. M. Brutus pretended that he was de¬ 
scended from L. Brutus, the first consul, on his 
fathei’s side, and from C. Ahala on his mother’s, 


and thus was sprung from two tyrannicides. (Comp. 
Cic. ad Att., 13, 40.)—III. C. Servilius Q. f. C n. 
Structus, consul B.C. 427. (Liv., 4, 30.)—IV. C. 
Servilius P. f. Q. n. Structus, consular tribune 
B.C. 408, and magister equitum in the same year ; 
which latter dignity he obtained in consequence of 
supporting the senate against his colleagues, who 
did not wish a dictator to be appointed. For the 
same reason, he was elected consular tribune a sec¬ 
ond time in the following year, 407. He was a 
consular tribune a third time in 402, when he assist 
ed the senate in compelling his colleagues to resign, 
who had been defeated by the enemy. (Liv., 4, 56, 
57 ; 5, 8, 9.)—V. C. Servilius, magister equitum 
B.C. 389, when Camillus was appointed dictator a 
third time. (Liv., 6, 2.) Ahala is spoken of as 
magister equitum in 385, on occasion of the trial of 
Manlius. Manlius summoned him to bear witness 
in his favour, as one of those whose lives he had 
saved in battle, but Ahala did not appear. (4, 20.) 
Pliny, who mentions this circumstance, calls Ahala 

P. Servilius. (H. N., 7, 39.) —VI. Q. Servilius 

Q. f. Q. n., consul B.C. 365, and again B.C. 362, in 
the latter of which years he appointed Ap. Claudius 
dictator, after his plebeian colleague L. Genucius 
had been slain in battle. In 360 he was himself ap¬ 
pointed dictator in consequence of a Gallic tumultus, 
and defeated the Gauls near the Colline Gate. He 
held the comitia as interrex in 355. (Liv., 7, 1,4. 
6, 11, 17.) — VII. Q. Servilius Q. f. Q. n., magistei 
equitum B.C. 351, when M. Fabius was appointed 
dictator to frustrate the Licinian law, and consul 
B.C. 342, at the beginning of the first Samnite war. 
He remained in the city ; his colleague had the 
charge of the war. (Liv., 7, 22, 38.) 

Ahenobarbus, I. Cn. Domitius L. f. L. n., ple¬ 
beian aedile B.C. 196, prosecuted, in conjunction 
with his colleague C. Curio, many pecuarii, and 
with the fines raised therefrom built a temple of 
Faunus in the island of the Tiber, which he dedi¬ 
cated in his prsetorship, B.C. 194. (Liv., 33, 42; 
34, 42, 43, 53.) He was consul in 192, and was 
sent against the Boii, who submitted to him ; 
but he remained in their country till the following 
year, when he was succeeded by the Consul Scipio 
Nasica. (Liv., 35, 10, 20, 22, 40 ; 36, 37.) In 190, 
he was legate of the Consul L. Scipio, in the war 
against Antiochus the Great. (Liv., 37,39.— Plut., 
Apophth. Rom. Cn. Domit.) In his consulship one 
of his oxen is said to have uttered the warning 
“ Roma, cave tibi.” (Liv., 35, 21.— Val. Max., 1, 6, 
<) 5, who falsely says, Bello Punico secundo.) —II. 
Cn. Domitius Cn. f. L. n., son %f the preceding, 
was chosen pontifex in B.C. 172, when a young 
man (Livy, 42, 28), and in 169 was sent with 
two others as commissioner into Macedonia (44, 
18). In 167 he was one of the ten commission¬ 
ers for arranging the affairs of Macedonia in con¬ 
junction with HUmilius Paullus (45, 17); and when 
the consuls of 162 abdicated on account of some 
fault in the auspices in their election, he and 
Cornelius Lentulus were chosen consuls in their 
stead. (Cic., De Nat. Deor., 2, 4 ; De Div., 2, 35.— 
Val. Max., 1, 1, § 3.) — III. Cn. Domitius Cn. f. Cn. 
n., son of the preceding, was sent in his consulship, 
B.C. 122, against the Allobroges in Gaul, because 
they had received Teutomalius, the king of the Sal* 
luvii and the enemy of the Romans, and had laid 
waste the territory of the iEdui, the friends of the 
Romans. In 121 he conquered the Allobroges and 
their ally Vituitus, king of the Arverni, near Vinda- 
lium, at the confluence of the Sulga and the Rho- 
danus ; and he gained the battle mainly through 
the terror caused by his elephants. He commem¬ 
orated his victory by the erection of trophies, and 
went in procession through the province, carried by 



1424 


SUPPLEMENT. 


an elephant. He triumphed in 120. ( Liv ., E-pit., 

61. — Floras, 3, 2. — Strab., 4, p. 191. — Cic., Pro 
Font., 12 ; Brut., 26.— Vellei., 2, 10, 39.— Oros., 5, 
13.— Suet, Ner., 2, who confounds him with his 
son.) He was censor in 115 with Csecilius Metel- 
lus, and expelled twenty-two persons from the sen¬ 
ate. (Liv., Epit., 62.— Cic., Pro Cluent., 42.) He 
was also pontifex. (Suet., 1. c.) The Via Domitia 
in Gaul was made by him. (Cic., Pro Font., 8.)— 
IV. Cn. Domitius Cn. f. Cn. n., son of the prece¬ 
ding, was tribune of the plebs B.C. 104, in the sec¬ 
ond consulship of Marius. (Ascon., in Cornel., p. 
81, cd. Orelli .) When the college of pontiffs did 
not elect him in place of his father, he brought for¬ 
ward the law (Lex Domitia), by which the right of 
election was transferred from the priestly colleges 
to the people. ( Diet, of Ant., p. 790, b ; 791, a.) 
The people afterward elected him Pontifex Maxi¬ 
mus out of gratitude. (Liv., Epit., 67.— Cic., Pro 
Deiot., 11.— Val. Max., 6, 5, § 5.) He prosecuted, 
in his tribunate and afterward, several of his pri¬ 
vate enemies, as iEmilius Scaurus and Junius Sila- 
nus. (Val. Max., 1. c. — Dion Cass., Fr., 100.— Cic., 
Div. in Ca.cil., 20 ; Verr., 2, 47; Cornel., 2 ; Pro 
Scaur., 1.) He was consul B.C. 96 with C. Cas¬ 
sius, and censor B.C. 92 with Licinius Crassus, the 
orator. In his censorship he and his colleague shut 
up the schools of the Latin rhetoricians (Cic., De 
Orat., 3, 24. — Gell., 15, 11), but this was the only 
thing in which they acted in concert. Their cen¬ 
sorship was long celebrated for their disputes. Do¬ 
mitius was of a violent temper, and was, moreover, 
in favour of the ancient simplicity of living, while 
Crassus loved luxury and encouraged art. Among 
the many sayings recorded of both, we are told that 
Crassus observed, “ that it was no wonder that a 
man had a beard of brass, who had a mouth of iron 
and a heart of lead.” (Plin., H. N., 18, 1.— Suet., 

1. c. — Val. Max., 9, 1, §4.— Macrob., Sat., 2, 11.) 
Cicero says that Domitius was not to be reckoned 
among the orators, but that he spoke well enough, 
and had sufficient talent to maintain his high rank. 
(Cic., Brut.,44:.)— V. L. Domitius Cn. f. Cn. n., son 
of No. III. and brother of No. IV., was praetor in 
Sicily, probably in B.C. 96, shortly after the Ser¬ 
vile w r ar, when slaves had been forbidden to carry 
arms. He ordered a slave to be crucified for kill¬ 
ing a wild boar with a hunting-spear. (Cic., Verr., 
5, 3.— Val. Max., 6, 3, t) 5.) He was consul in 94. 
In the civil war between Marius and Sulla, he es¬ 
poused the side of the latter, and was murdered at 
Rome, by order of the younger Marius, by the prae¬ 
tor Damasippus* (Appian, B. C., 1, 88.— Vellei., 2, 
26.— Oros., 5, 20.—VI. Cn. Domitius Cn. f. Cn. n., 
apparently a son of No. IV., married Cornelia, daugh¬ 
ter of L. Cornelius Cinna, consul in B.C. 87, and in 
the civil war between Marius and Sulla espoused 
the side of the former. When Sulla obtained the 
supreme power in 82, Ahenobarbus was proscribed, 
and fled to Africa, where he was joined by many 
who were in the same condition as himself. With 
the assistance of the Numidian king, Hiarbas, he 
collected an army, but was defeated near Utica by 
Cn. Pompeius, whom Sulla had sent against him, 
and was afterward killed in the storming of his 
camp, B.C. 81. According to some accounts, he 
was killed after the battle by command of Pompey. 
(Liv., Epit., 89.— Pint., Pomp., 10, 12.— Zonaras, 10, 

2. — Pros., 5, 2i.— Va.l. Max., 6, 2, § 8.)—VII. L. 
Domitius Cn. f. Cn. n., son of No. IV., is first men¬ 
tioned in B.C. 70 by Cicero, as a witness against 
Verres. In 61 he was curule asdile, when he ex¬ 
hibited a hundred Numidian lions, and continued 
the games so long, that the people were obliged to 
leave the circus before the exhibition was over in 
order to take food, which was the first time they 


had done so. (Dion Cass., 37, 46.— Plin. H. IS., 8 , 
54 : this pause in the games was called diludium, 
Hor., Ep., 1, 19, 47.) He married Porcia, the sis¬ 
ter of M. Cato, and in his aedileship supported the 
latter in his proposals against bribery at elections, 
which were directed against Pompey, who was pur¬ 
chasing votes for Afranius. The political opinions 
of Ahenobarbus coincided with those of Cato ; he 
was, throughout his life, one of the strongest sup¬ 
porters of the aristocratical party. He took an ac¬ 
tive part in opposing the measures of Caesar and 
Pompey after their coalition, and in 59 was accused 
by Vettius, at the instigation of Caesar, of being an 
accomplice to the pretended conspiracy against the 
life of Pompey. 

Ahenobarbus was praetor in B.C. 58, and proposed 
an investigation into the validity of the Julian laws 
of the preceding year, but the senate dared not en¬ 
tertain his propositions. He was candidate for the 
consulship of 55, and threatened that he would, in 
his consulship, carry into execution the measures he 
had proposed in his praetorship, and deprive Caesar 
of his province. He was defeated, however, by 
Pompey and Crassus, who also became candidates, 
and was driven from the Campus Martins, on the 
day of election, by force of arms. He became a 
candidate again in the following year, and Caesar 
and Pompey, whose power was firmly established, 
did not oppose him. He was, accordingly, elected 
consul for 54 with Ap. Claudius Pulcher, a relative 
of Pompey, but was not able to effect anything 
against Caesar and Pompey. He did not go to a 
province at the expiration of his consulship; and 
as the friendship between Caesar and Pompey cool¬ 
ed, he became closely allied with the latter. In 
B.C. 52, he was chosen by Pompey to preside, as 
quaesitor, in the court for the trial of Clodius. For 
the next two or three years, during Cicero’s ab¬ 
sence in Cilicia, our information about Ahenobarbus 
is principally derived from the letters of his enemy 
Ccelius to Cicero. In B.O. 50, he M as a candidate 
for the place in the college of augurs, vacant by the 
death of Hortensius, but was defeated by Antony 
through the influence of Caesar. 

The senate appointed him to succeed Caesar in 
the province of farther Gaul, and on the march of 
the latter into Italy (49), he was the only one of the 
aristocratical party who showed any energy or cour¬ 
age. He threw himself into Corfinium with about 
twenty cohorts, expecting to be supported by Pom¬ 
pey ; but as the latter did nothing to assist him, he 
was compelled by bis own troops to surrender to 
Caesar. His own soldiers were incorporated into 
Caesar’s army, but Ahenobarbus was dismissed by 
Caesar uninjured : an act of clemency which he did 
not expect, and which he would certainly not have 
showed if he had been the conqueror. Despairing* 
of life, he had ordered his physician to administer 
to him poison, but the latter gave him only a sleep 
ing draught. Ahenobarbus’s feelings against Caesar 
remained unaltered, but he was too deeply offended 
by the conduct of Pompey to join him immediately. 
He retired for a short time to Cosa in Etruria, and 
afterward sailed to Massilia, of which the inhabi¬ 
tants appointed him governor. He prosecuted the 
war vigorously against Caesar; but the town was 
eventually taken, and Ahenobarbus escaped in a 
vessel, which was the only one that got off. 

Ahenobarbus now went to Pompey in Thessaly, 
and proposed that after the war all senators should 
be brought to trial who had remained neutral in it. 
Cicero, whom he branded as a coward, was not a 
little afraid of him. Fie fell in the battle of Phar- 
salia (48), where he commanded the left wing, and, 
according to Cicero’s assertion in the second Philip¬ 
pic, by the hand of Antony. Ahenobarbus vras'a 



SUPPLEMENT. 


142ft 


mun of great energy of character; he remained firm 
to his political principles, but was little scrupulous 
in the means he employed to maintain them. (The 
passages of Cicero in which Ahenobarbus is men¬ 
tioned are given in Orelli's Onomasticon Tullianum. 
— Suetonius, Ner., 2.— Dion Cassius, lib. 39, 41. 
•— Ccesar, Bell. Civ.) — VIII. Cn. Domitius L. p. 
Cn. n., son of the preceding, was taken with his 
father at Corfinium (B.C. 49), and was present at 
the battle of Pharsalia (48), but did not take any 
farther part in the war. He did not, however, return 
to Italy till 46, when he was pardoned by Caesar. 
He probably had no share in the murder of Caesar 
(44), though some writers expressly assert that he 
was one of the conspirators ; but he followed Bru¬ 
tus into Macedonia after Caesar’s death, and was 
condemned by the Lex Pedia, in 43, as one of the 
murderers of Caesar. In 42 he commanded a fleet 
of fifty ships in the Ionian Sea, and completely de¬ 
feated Domitius Calvinus on the day of the first 
battle of Philippi, as the latter attempted to sail out 
of Brundisium. He was saluted imperator in con¬ 
sequence, and a record of this victory is preserved 
in a coin, which represents a trophy placed upon the 
prow of a vessel. The head on the other side of 
the coin has a beard, in reference to the reputed 
origin of the family. 

After the battle of Philippi (42), Ahenobarbus 
conducted the war independently of Sex. Pompeius, 
and with a fleet of seventy ships and two legions 
plundered the coasts of the Ionian Sea. 

In 40, Ahenobarbus became reconciled to Antony, 
which gave great offence to Octavianus, and was 
placed over Bithynia by Antony. In the peace con¬ 
cluded with Sex. Pompeius in 39, Antony provided 
for the safety of Ahenobarbus, and obtained for him 
the promise of the consulship for 32. Ahenobarbus 
remained a considerable time in Asia, and accom¬ 
panied Antony in his unfortunate campaign against 
the Parthians in 36. He became consul, according 
to agreement, in 32, in which year the open rupture 
took place between Antony and Augustus. Aheno- 
oarbus fled from Rome to Antony at Ephesus, where 
he found Cleopatra with him, and endeavoured, in 
vain, to obtain her removal from the army. Many 
of the soldiers, disgusted with the conduct of An¬ 
tony, offered the command to him ; but he preferred 
deserting the party altogether, and accordingly went 
over to Augustus, shortly before the battle of Acti- 
um. He was not, however, present at the battle, 
as he died a few days after joining Augustus. Sue¬ 
tonius says that he was the best of his family. ( Cic., 
Phil., 2, 11; 10, 6; Brut., 25; ad Fam., 6, 22- 
Appian, B. C., 5, 55, 63, 65 .—Pint., Anton., 70, 71. 
— Dion Cassius, lib. 47, 1.— Velleius, 2, 76, 84.— 
Suetonius, Ner., 3.— Tacitus, Ann., 4, 44.)—IX. L. 
Domitius Cn. f. L. n., son of the preceding, was 
betrothed in B.C. 39, at the meeting of Octavianus 
and Antony at Tarentum, to Antonia, the daughter 
of the latter by Octavia. He was sedile in B.C. 22, 
and consul in B.C. 16. After his consulship, and 
probably as the successor of Tiberius, he command¬ 
ed the Roman army in Germany, crossed the Elbe, 
and penetrated farther into the country than any of 
his predecessors had done. He received, in conse¬ 
quence, the insignia of a triumph. He died A.D. 25. 
Suetonius describes him as haughty, prodigal, and 
cruel, and relates that in his aedileship he com¬ 
manded the censor L. Plancus to make way for 
him; and that in his praetorship and consulship he 
brought Roman knights and matrons on the stage. 
He exhibited shows of wild beasts in every quarter 
of the city, and his gladiatorial combats were con¬ 
ducted with so much bloodshed, that Augustus was 
obliged to put some restraint upon them. ( Su¬ 
etonius. Ner., 4.— Tacitus, Ann., 4, 44. Dion Cas- 
8 S 


sius, 54, 59.— Velleius, 2, 72.)—X. Cn. Domitius 
L. f. Cn. n., son of the preceding, and father of 
the Emperor Nero. He married Agrippina, the 
daughter of Germanicus. He was consul A.D. 32, 
and afterward proconsul in Sicily. He died at 
Pyrgi, in Etruria, of dropsy. His life was stained 
with crimes of every kind. He was accused, as 
the accomplice of Albucilla, of the crimes of adul¬ 
tery and murder, and also of incest with his sistei 
Domitia Lepida, and only escaped execution by the 
death of Tiberius. When congratulated on the 
birth of his son, afterward Nero, he replied that 
whatever was sprung from him and Agrippina 
could only bring ruin to the state. ( Suetonius, Ne¬ 
ro, 5, 6.— Tacitus, Ann., 4, 75 ; 6, 1, 47; 12, 64. 
— Velleius, 2, 72. —Dion Cassius, 58, 17.)—XI. Cn. 
Domitius, praetor in the year B.C. 54, presided at 
the second trial of M. Ccelius. ( Cicero, ad Quin. 
Fr., 2, 13.) He may have been the son of No. V.— 
XII. L. Domitius, praetor B.C. 80, commanded the 
province of nearer Spain, with the title of procon¬ 
sul. In 79, he was summoned into farther Spain 
by Q. Metellus Pius, who was in want of assistance 
against Sertorius, but he was defeated and killed bv 
Hirtuleius, quaestor of Sertorius, near the Anas 
(Pint., Sert., 12.— Liv., Epit., 90.— Eutrop., 6, l. 
Florus, 3, 22.— Oros., 5, 23.) 

Alalcomenia (’A ’ka7iK.ofj.evia), one of the daughters 
of Ogyges, who, as well as her two sisters, Thelxio- 
ncea and Aulis, were regarded as supernatural be¬ 
ings, who watched over oaths and saw that they 
were not taken rashly or thoughtlessly. Their 
name was Dpat-idiuai, and they had a temple in 
common at the foot of the Telphusian Mount in 
Boeotia. The representations of these divinities 
consisted of mere heads, and no parts of animals 
were sacrificed to them except heads. ( Paus .. 9 
33, § 2, 4. — Panyasis, ap. Steph. Byz., s. v. Tpeyi’Ar, 
— Suid., s. v. Dp at; id i icy. — Muller, Orckom., p. 128, 
&c.) 

Albinovanus, III. P. Tullius, belonged to the party 
of Marius in the first civil war, and was one of the 
twelve who were declared enemies of the state in 
B.C. 87. He thereupon fled to Hiempsal in Nu- 
midia. After the defeat of Carbo and Norbanus in 
B.C. 81, he obtained the pardon of Sulla by treach¬ 
erously putting to death many of the principal offi¬ 
cers of Norbanus, whom he had invited to a ban¬ 
quet. Ariminium, in consequence, revolted to Sulla, 
whence the Pseudo-Asconms (in Cic., Verr., p. 168, 
ed. Orelli) speaks of Albinovanus betraying it. ( Ap - 
pian, B. C., 1, 60, 62, 91.— Florus, 3, 21, § 7.) 

Albinus or Albus, the name of the principal fam 
ily of the patrician Postumia gens. The original 
name was Albus, as appears from the Fasti, which 
was afterward lengthened into Albinus. We find, 
in proper names in Latin, derivatives in anus, enus, 
and inus, used, without any additional meaning, in 
the same sense as the simple forms. (Comp. Nie¬ 
buhr, Hist, of Rome, 1, n, 219.)—I. A. Postumius P. 
f. Albus Regillensis, was, according to Livy, dic¬ 
tator B.C. 498, when he conquered the Latins in 
the great battle near Lake Regillus. Roman story- 
related that Castor and Pollux were seen fighting in 
this battle on the side of the Romans, whence the 
dictator afterward dedicated a temple to Castor and 
Pollux in the forum. He was consul B.C. 496, in 
which year some of the annals, according to Livy 
placed the battle of the Lake Regillus ; and it is tc 
this year that Dionysius assigns it. (Liv., 2, 19, 20, 
21.— Dionys., 6, 2, &c.— Val. Max., 1, 8, 1.— Cic., 

De Nat. Deor.,2, 2 ; 3, 5.) The surname Regillensis 
is usually supposed to have been derived from this 
battle ; but Niebuhr thinks that it was taken from & 
place of residence, just as the Claudii bore the same 
name, and that the later annalists only spoke of 



1426 


SUPPLEMENT. 


Postumius as commander in consequence of the 
name. Livy (30, 45) states expressly, that Scipio 
Africanus was the first Roman who obtained a sur¬ 
name from his conquests. ( Niebuhr, Hist, of Rome, 
1, p. 556.)—II. Sp. Postumius A. f. P. n. Albus Re¬ 
gillensis, apparently, according to the Fasti, the 
son of the preceding (though it must be observed, 
that in these early times no dependance can be pla¬ 
ced upon these genealogies), was consul B.C. 466. 

( Liv., 3, 2.— Dionys., 9, 60.) He was one of the 
three commissioners sent into Greece to collect in¬ 
formation about the laws of that country, and was 
a member of the first decemvirate in 451. (Liv., 3, 
31, 33. — Dionys., 10, 52, 56.) He commanded, as 
legatus, the centre of the Roman army in the battle 
in which theHSquians and Yolscians were defeated 
in 446. (Liv., 3, 70.)—III. A. Postumius A. f. P. n. 
Albus Regillensis, apparently son of No. I., was 
consul B.C. 464, and carried on war against the 
iEquians. He was sent as ambassador to the 
iEquians in 458, on which occasion he was insulted 
by their commander. (Liv., 3, 4, 5, 25.— Dionys., 
9, 62, 65.)—IY. Sp. Postumius Sp. f. A. n. Albus 
Regillensis, apparently son of No. II., was consu¬ 
lar tribune B.C. 432, and served as legatus in the 
war in the following year. (Liv., 4, 25, 27.)—V. P. 
Postumius A. f. A. n. Albinus Regillensis, whom 
Livy calls Marcus, was consular tribune B.C. 414, 
and was killed in an insurrection of the soldiers, 
whom he had deprived of the plunder of the iEqui- 
an town of Boise, which he had promised them. 
(Liv., 4, 49, 50.)—VI. M. Postumius A. f. A. n. 
Albinus Regillensis, is mentioned by Livy (5, 1) 
as consular tribune in B.C. 403, but was, in reality, 
censor in that year with M. Furius Camillas. (Fasti 
Capitol.) In their censorship a fine was imposed 
upon all men who remained single up to old age. 
(Val. Max., 2, 9, 1.— Pint., Cam., 5.— Did. of Ant., 

s. v. Uxorium.) —VII. A. Postumius Albinus Regil¬ 
lensis, consular tribune B.C. 397, collected, with 
his colleague L. Julius, an army of volunteers, since 
the tribunes prevented them from making a regular 
levy, and cut off a body of Tarquinienses, who were 
returning home after plundering the Roman territo¬ 
ry. (Liv., 5, 16.)—VIII. Sp. Postumius Albinus 
Regillensis, consular tribune B.C. 394, carried on 
the war against the iEquians; he at first suffered 
a defeat, but afterward conquered them complete¬ 
ly. (Liv., 5, 26, 28.)—IX. Sp. Postumius, was con¬ 
sul B.C. 334, and invaded, with his colleague T. 
Veturius Calvinus, the country of the Sidicini; but, 
on account of the great forces which the enemy had 
collected, and the report that the Samnites were 
coming to their assistance, a dictator was appoint¬ 
ed. (Liv., 8, 16, 17.) He was censor in 332 and 
magister equitum in 327, when M. Claudius Marcel- 
lus was appointed dictator to hold the comitia (8, 
17, 23). In 321, he was consul a second time with 
T. Veturius Calvinus, and marched against the 
Samnites, but was defeated near Caudium, and obli¬ 
ged to surrender with his whole army, who were 
sent under the yoke. As the price of his deliver¬ 
ance and that of the army, he and his colleague and 
the other commanders swore, in the name of the 
Republic, to a humiliating peace. The consuls, on 
their return to Rome, laid down their office after 
appointing a dictator; and the senate, on the ad¬ 
vice of Postumius, resolved that all persons who 
had sworn to the peace should be given up to the 
Samnites. Postumius, with the other prisoners, 
accordingly went to the Samnites, but they refused 
to accept them. (Liv., 9, 1-10.— Appian, De Reb. 
Samn., 2-6.— Cic., De Off., 3, 30; Cato, 12.)—X. 
A. Postumius A. ?. L. n., was consul B.C. 242 with 
Lutatius Catulus, who defeated the Carthaginians off 
the iEgates, and thus brought the first Punic war 


to an end. Albinus was kept in the city, against 
his will, by the Pontifex Maximus, because he was 
Flamen Martialis. (Liv , Epit., 19; 23, 13. — Eu- 
trop , 2, 27.— Val. Max., 1, 1, $ 2.) He was censor 
in 234. (Fasti Capitol.)— XL L. Postumius A. f. 
A. n., apparently a son of the preceding, was con¬ 
sul B.C. 234, and again in 229. In his second con¬ 
sulship he made war upon the Illyrians. (Eutrop., 
3, 4.— Oros., 4, 13.— Dion Cass., Frag., 151.— Pc- 
lyb., 2, 11, &c., who erroneously calls him Aulus 
instead of Lucius.) In 216, the third year of the 
second Punic war, he was made praetor, and sent 
into Cisalpine Gaul, and while absent was elected 
consul the third time for the following year, 215. 
But he did not live to enter upon his consulship; 
for he and his army were destroyed by the Boii, in 
the wood Litana, in Cisalpine Gaul. His head was 
cut off, and, after being lined with gold, was dedicated 
to the gods by the Boii, and used as a sacred drink¬ 
ing-vessel. (Liv., 22, 35 ; 23, 24.— Polyb., 3, 106. 
118.— Cic., Tusc., 1, 37.)—XII. Sp. Postumius L. 
f. A. n., was praetor peregrinus in B.C. 189 (Liv. 
37, 47, 50), and consul in 186. In his consulship 
the senatus consultum was passed, which is still ex¬ 
tant, suppressing the worship of Bacchus in Rome, 
in consequence of the abominable crimes which 
were committed in connexion with it. (Liv., 39, 6, 
11, &c.— Val. Max., 6, 3, $ l.—Phn., H. N., 33, 
10.— Did. of Ant., p. 366.) He was also augur, and 
died in 179, at an advanced age. (Liv., 40, 42.— 
Cic., Cato, 3 )—XIII. A. Postumius A. f. A. n., 
was curule aedile B.C. 187, when he exhibited the 
Great Games, praetor 185, and consul 180. (Liv., 
39, 7, 23 ; 40, 35.) In his consulship he conducted 
the war against the Ligurians (40, 41). He w T as 
censor in 174 with Q. Fulvius. Their censorship 
was a severe one : they expelled nine members from 
the senate, and degraded many of equestrian rank. 
They executed, however, many public works. (Liv., 

41, 32; 42, 10.—Comp. Cic., Verr., 1, 41.) He was 
elected, in his censorship, one of the decemviri sa- 
crorum, in the place of L. Cornelius Lentulus. (Liv. r 

42, 10.) Albinus was engaged in many public mis¬ 
sions. In 175, he was sent into Northern Greece to 
inquire into the truth of the representations of the 
Dardanians and Thessalians about the Bastarnse and 
Perseus. (Polyb., 26, 9.) In 171, he was sent as 
one of the ambassadors to Crete (Liv., 42, 35); and 
after the conquest of Macedonia in 168, he was one 
of the ten commissioners appointed to settle the af¬ 
fairs of the country with iEmilius Paullus (45, 17). 
Livy not unfrequently calls him Luscus, from which 
it would seem that he was blind of one eye.—XIV. 
Sp. Postumius A. f. A. n. Albinus Paullulus, prob¬ 
ably a brother of Nos. XIII. and XV., perhaps obtain¬ 
ed the surname of Paullulus, as being small of stat¬ 
ure, to distinguish him more accurately from his two 
brothers. He was praetor in Sicily B.C. 183, and con¬ 
sul 174. (Liv., 39,45 ; 41, 26 ; 43, 2.)—XV. L. Post¬ 
umius A. f. A. n., probably a brother of Nos. XIII. 
and XIV., was praetor B.C. 180, and obtained the 
province of farther Spain. His command was pro¬ 
longed in the following year. After conquering the 
Vaccaei and Lusitani, he returned to Rome in 178, 
and obtained a triumph on account of his victories. 
(Liv., 40, 35, 44, 47, 48, 50; 41, 3, 11.) He was 
consul in 173, with M. Popillius Laenas; and the 
war in Liguria was assigned to both consuls. Al¬ 
binus, however, was first sent into Campania to 
separate the land of the state from that of private 
persons; and this business occupied him all the 
summer, so that he was unable to go into his prov¬ 
ince. He was the first Roman magistrate who put 
the allies to any expense in travelling through their 
territories. (Liv., 41, 33; 42, 1, 9.) The festiva’ 
of the Floralia, which had been discontinued, wa 



SUPPLEMENT. 


1 2? 


lestored in his consulship. ( Ov ., Fast., 5, 329.) In 
£71, he was one of the ambassadors sent to Masi- 
nissa and the Carthaginians in order to raise troops 
for the war against Perseus. ( Liv., 42, 35.) In 169, 
he was an unsuccessful candidate for the censor¬ 
ship (43, 16). He served under iEmilius Paullus in 
Macedonia in 168, and commanded the second le¬ 
gion in the battle with Perseus (45, 41). The last 
time he is mentioned is in this war, when he was 
sent to plunder the town of the iEnii (45,27).—XVI. 
A. Postumius, one of the officers in the army of 
AEmilius Paullus in Macedonia, B.C. 168. He was 
sent by Paullus to treat with Perseus ; and after¬ 
ward Perseus and his son Philip were committed 
to bis care by Paullus. (Liv., 45, 4, 28.)—XVII. 
L. Postumius Sp. f. L. n., apparently son of No. XII., 
was curule aedile B.C. 161, and exhibited the Ludi 
Megalenses, at which the Eunuch of Terence was 
acted. He was consul in 154, and died seven days 
after he had set out from Rome in order to go to his 
province. It was supposed* that he was poisoned by 
his wife. ( Obseq ., 76.— Val. Max., 6, 3, <) 8.)— 
XVIII. A. Postumius A. f. A. n., apparently son of 
No. XIII., was praetor B.C. 155 (Cic., Acad., 2, 45.— 
Polyb., 33, 1), and consul in 151 with L. Licinius 
Lucullus. He and his colleague were thrown into 
prison by the tribunes for conducting the levies with 
tpo much severity. (Liv., Epit., 48.— Polyb., 35, 
&. — Oros., 4, 21.) He was one of the ambassadors 
sent in 153 to make peace between Attalus and Pru- 
sias (Polyb., 33, 11), and accompanied L. Mummius 
Achaicus into Greece, in 146, as one of his legates. 
There was a statue erected to his honour on the 
Isthmus. (Cic. ad Att., 13, 30, 32.) Albinus was 
well acquainted with Greek literature, and wrote in 
that language a poem and a Roman history, the lat¬ 
ter of which is mentioned by several ancient wri¬ 
ters. Polybius (40, 6) speaks of him as a vain and 
lightheaded man, who disparaged his own people, 
and was sillily devoted to the study of Greek litera¬ 
ture. He relates a ta.le of him and the elder Cato, 
j/vho reproved Albinus sharply because, in the pref¬ 
ace to his history, he begged the pardon of his read¬ 
ers if he should make any mistakes in writing in a 
foreign language; Cato reminded him that he was 
not compelled to write at all, but that, if he chose to 
write, he had no business to ask for the indulgence 
of his readers. This tale is also related by Gellius 
(11, 8), Macrobius (Preface to Saturn.), Plutarch 
(Cato, 12), and Suidas (5. v. A vlog IlocTofuog). 
Polybius also says that Albinus imitated the worst 
parts of the Greek character, that he was entirely 
devoted to pleasure, and shirked all labour and dan¬ 
ger. He relates that he retired to Thebes, when 
the battle was fought at Phocis, on the plea of in¬ 
disposition, but afterward wrote an account of it 
to the senate as if he had been present. Cicero 
speaks with rather more respect of his literary mer¬ 
its : he calls him doctus homo and liiteratus et diser- 
tus. (Cic., Acad., 2, 45 ; Brut., 21.) Macrobius 
(2, 16) quotes a passage from the first book of the 
Annals of Albinus respecting Brutus, and as he uses 
the words of Albinus, it has been supposed that the 
Greek history may have been translated into Latin. 
A work of Albinus, on the arrival of ^Eneas in Italy, 
is referred toffiy Servius (ad Virg., JEn., 9, 710), and 
the author of the work “ De Origine Gentis Ro¬ 
mans,” c. 15. ( Krause, Vitcc et Fragm . Veterum His- 
toricorum Romanorum,]). 127, &c.)—XIX. Sp. Postu¬ 
mius Albinus Magnus, was consul B.C. 148, in 
which year a great fire happened at Rome. (Obseq., 
78.) It is this Sp. Albinus of whom Cicero speaks 
in the Brutus (c. 25), and says that there were many 
orations of his.—XX. Sp. Postumius Sp. f. Sp. n., 
probably son of No. XIX., was consul B.C. 110, and 
obtained the province of Numidia to carry on the 


war against Jugurtha. He made vigorous prepar¬ 
ations for war, but when he reached the province, 
he did’not adopt any active measures, but allowed 
himself to be deceived by the artifices of Jugurtha, 
who constantly promised to surrender. Many per¬ 
sons supposed that his inactivity was intentional, 
and that Jugurtha had bought him over. When Al¬ 
binus departed from Africa, he left his brother Aulus 
in command. (Vid. No. XXI.) After the defeat of 
the latter he returned to Numidia, but, in conse¬ 
quence of the disorganized state of his army, he did 
not prosecute the war, and handed over the army in 
this condition, in the following year, to the Consul 
Metellus. (Sail., Jug., 35, 36, 39, 44.—Oros., 4, 
15.— Eutrop., 4, 26.) He was condemned by the 
Mamilia Lex, which was passed to punish all those 
who had been guilty of treasonable practices with 
Jugurtha. (Cic., Brut., 34.—Comp. Sail., Jug., 40.) 
—XXI. A. Postumius, brother of No. XX., and 
probably son of No. XIX., was left by his brother 
as pro-praetor, in command of the army in Africa, in 
B.C. 110. (Vid. No. XX.) He marched to besiege 
Suthul, where the treasures of Jugurtha were de¬ 
posited ; but Jugurtha, under the promise of giving 
him a large sum of money, induced him to lead his 
army into a retired place, where he was suddenly 
attacked by the Numidian king, and only saved his 
troops from total destruction by allowing them to 
pass under the yoke, and undertaking to leave Nu¬ 
midia in ten days. (Sail., Jug., 36-38.)—XXII. A. 
Postumius A. f. Sp. n., grandson of No. XIX., and 
probably son of No. XXI., was consul B.C. 99, with 
M. Antonius. (Plin., H. N., 8, 7.— Obseq., 106.) 
Gellius (4, 6) quotes the words of a senatus consul- 
turn passed in their consulship in consequence of 
the spears of Mars having moved. Cicero says that 
he was a good speaker. (Brut., 35 ; post Red. ad 
Quir., 5.)—XXIII. A. Postumius, a person of prae¬ 
torian rank, commanded the fleet, B.C. 89, in the 
Marsic war, and was killed by his own soldiers un¬ 
der the plea that he meditated treachery, but, in re¬ 
ality, on account of his cruelty. Sulla, who was 
then a legate of the Consul Porcius Cato, incorpora¬ 
ted his troops with his own, but did not punish the 
offenders. (Liv., Epit., 75.— Plut., Sulla, 6.)— 
XXIV. A. Postumius, was placed by Caesar over 
Sicily, B.C. 48. (Appian, B. C., 2, 48.)—XXV. D. » 
Junius Brutus, adopted by No. XXII. — XXVI. 
Procurator of Judaea in the reign of Nero, about 
A.D. 63 and 64, succeeded Festus, and was guilty 
of almost every kind of crime in his government. 
He pardoned the vilest criminals for money, and 
shamelessly plundered the provincials. He was 
succeeded by Florus. (Joseph., Ant. Jud., 20, 8, 

§ 1; Bell. Jud., 2, 14, § 1.) The Luceius Albinus 
mentioned below may possibly have been the same 
person.—XXVII. Luceius, was made by Nero pro¬ 
curator of Mauretania Caesariensis, to which Galba 
added the province of Tingitana. After the death 
of Galba, A.D. 69, he espoused the side of Otho, and 
prepared to invade Spain. Cluvius Rufus, who com¬ 
manded in Spain, being alarmed at this, sent centu 
rions into Mauretania to induce the Mauri to revolt 
against Albinus. They accomplished this without 
much difficulty, and Albinus was murdered, with 
his wife. (Tac., Hist., 2, 58, 59.) 

Albutius or Albucius, IV. a physician at Rome, 
who lived, probably, about the beginning or middle 
of the first century after Christ, and who is men¬ 
tioned by Pliny (H. N., 29, 5) as having gained by 
his practice the annual income of two hundred and 
fifty thousand sesterces (about £1953 2s. 6 d.). This 
is considered by Pliny to be a very large sum, and 
may, therefore, give us some notion of the fortunes 
made by physicians at Rome ‘about the beginning 
of the Empire. 



1428 


SUPPLEMENT. 


Atc-ffius (’A knalog), II. of Messene, the author of 
a number of epigrams in the Greek Anthology, from 
some of which his date may be easily fixed. He 
was contemporary with Philip III., king of Mace¬ 
donia, and son of Demetrius, against whom several 
of his epigrams are pointed, apparently from patri¬ 
otic feelings. One of these epigrams, however, 
gave even more offence to the Roman general, 
Flamininus, than to Philip, on account of the author’s 
ascribing the victory of Cynoscephalae to the yEtoli- 
ans as much as to the Romans. Philip contented 
himself with writing an epigram in reply to that of 
Alcaeus, in which he gave the Messenian a very 
broad hint of the fate he might expect if he fell into 
his hands. ( Plut., Flamin., 9.) This reply has 
singularly enough led Salmasius (Be Cruce, p. 449, 
ap. Fabric., Biblioth. Grcec., 2, p. 88) to suppose that 
Alcaeus was actually crucified. In another epigram, 
in praise of Flamininus, the mention of the Roman 
general’s name, Titus, led Tzetzes ( Proleg \ in Lyco- 
phron.) into the error of imagining the existence of 
an epigrammatist named Alcaeus under the Emperor 
Titus. Those epigrams of Alcaeus which bear in¬ 
ternal evidence of their date, were written between 
the years 219 and 196 B.C. 

Of the twenty-two epigrams in the Greek An¬ 
thology which bear the name of “Alcaeus,” two 
have the word “ Mytilenaeus” added to it; but 
Jacobs seems to be perfectly right in taking this to 
be the addition of some ignorant copyist. Others 
bear the name “ Alcaeus Messenius,” and some of 
Alcaeus alone. But in the last class there are 
several which must, from internal evidence, have 
been written by Alcaeus of Messene; and, in fact, 
there seems no reason to doubt his being the author 
of the whole twenty-two. 

There are mentioned, as contemporaries of Al¬ 
caeus, two other persons of the same name, one of 
them an Epicurean philosopher, who was expelled 
from Rome by a decree of the senate about 173 or 
154 B.C. ( Perizon. ad Milan., V. H., 9, 22.— Athen., 
12, p. 547, a.— Suidas, s. v. ’E muovpog): the other is 
incidentally spoken of by Polybius as being accus¬ 
tomed to ridicule the grammarian Isocrates. ( Po- 
lyb., 32, 6, B.C. 160.) It is just possible that these 
two persons, of whom nothing farther is known, 
may have been identical with each other, and with 
the epigrammatist. ( Jacobs , Anthol. Gr<zc., 13, p. 
836-838 : there is a reference to Alcaeus of Messene 
in Eusebius, Prcepar. Evang ., 10, 2.)—III. The son 
of Miccus, was a native of Mytilene, according to 
Suidas, who may, however, have confounded him 
in this point with the lyric poet. He is found ex¬ 
hibiting at Athens as a poet of the old comedy, or, 
rather, of that mixed comedy which formed the 
transition between the old and the middle. In B.C. 
388, he brought forward a play entitled UaaKpdy, in 
the same contest in which Aristophanes exhibited 
his second Plutus ; but, if the meaning of Suidas is 
rightly understood, he obtained only the fifth place. 
He left ten plays, of which some fragments remain, 
and the following titles are known : ’A 6ek<pal poixev- 
opivai, Tavv/uydyg, Evdvplov, 'lepdg yduog, KalhorC), 
Kuycpdorpayudia, II alalarpa. Alcasus, a tragic poet, 
mentioned by Fabricius {Biblioth. Grcec.,2, 282), does 
not appear to be a different person from Alceeus the 
comedian. The mistake of calling him a tragic poet 
arose simply from an erroneous reading of the title 
of his “ Comcedo-tragcedia.” (The Greek Argument 
to the Plutus. — Suidas, sub voce. — Pollux, 10, 1.— 
Casaubon on Athen., 3, p. 206.— Meineke, Fragm. 
Comic. Grcec., p. 1, 244; 2, p. 824. — Bode, Ge- 
schichte der Dramatischen Dichtkunst der Hellenen, 2, 
p. 386.) 

Alcidamas (’A ktuddyag), a Greek rhetorician, was 
a native of Elaea in iEolis, in Asia Minor. ( Quintil., 


3, 1, § 10, with Spalding’s note.) He was a pupil 
of Gorgias, and resided at Athens between the 
years B.C. 432 and 411. ttere he gave instruc¬ 
tions in eloquence, according to Eudocia (p. 100), 
as the successor of his master, and was the last of 
that sophistical school, with which the only object 
of eloquence was to please the hearers by the pomp 
and brilliancy of words. That the works of Alcid¬ 
amas bore the strongest marks of this character 
of his school, is stated by Aristotle ( Rhet., 3, 0 8), 
who censures his pompous diction and extravagant 
use of poetical epithets and phrases, and by Dionys¬ 
ius ( De Isoeo, 19), who calls his style vulgar and 
inflated. He is said to have been an opponent of 
Isocrates (Tzetz., Chil., 11, 672), but whether this 
statement refers to real personal enmity, or whether 
it is merely an inference, from the fact that Alcid¬ 
amas condemned the practice of writing orations for 
the purpose of delivering them, is uncertain. 

The ancients mention several works of Alcid¬ 
amas, such as a Eulogy on Death, in which he 
enumerated the evils of human life, and of which 
Cicero seems to speak with great praise ( Tusc., 1, 
48) ; a show-speech, called A oyog M eaayviaK.bg {Ar- 
istot., Rhet., 1 , 13, (> 5); a work on music ( Suidas , 
s. v. ’Akiuddyag) ; and some scientific works, viz., 
one on rhetoric (Texvy ^yropiKy: Plut., Demosth., 
5), and another called koyog tyvcnuog {Diog. La'ert., 8, 
56); but all of them are now lost. Tzetzes {Chil., 
11, 752) had still before him several orations of A1 
cidamas, but we now possess only two declama¬ 
tions which go under his name. 1. ’Odvaaevg, y Kara 
Uakafiydovg npodoclag, in which Ulysses is made 
to accuse Palamedes of treachery to the cause of 
the Greeks during the siege of Troy. 2. nw; ro 
( pLartiv, in which the author sets forth the advan¬ 
tages of delivering extempore speeches over those 
which have been previously written out. These 
two orations, the second of which is the better one, 
both in form and thought, bear scarcely any traces 
of the faults which Aristotle and Dionysius censure 
in the works of Alcidamas ; their fault is rather be¬ 
ing frigid and insipid. It has, therefore, been main¬ 
tained by several critics, that these orations are 
not the works of Alcidamas ; and, with regard to 
the first of them, the supposition is supported by 
strong probability ; the second may have been writ¬ 
ten by Alcidamas, with a view to counteract the in¬ 
fluence of Isocrates. The first edition of them is 
that in the collection of Greek orators published by 
Aldus, Venice, 1513, fol. The best modern editions 
are those in Reiske’s Oratores Greed, vol. 8, p. 64, 
&c.; and in Bekker’s Oratores Attici, vol. 7 (Ox¬ 
ford). 

Alcimachus, a painter mentioned by Pliny {H. 
N., 35,11, s. 40). He is not spoken of by any other 
writer, and all that is known about him is, that he 
painted a picture of Dioxippus, a victor in the pan¬ 
cratium at Olympia. Dioxippus lived in the time 
of Alexander the Great. {JElian, V. H., 10, 22.— 
Diod., 17, 100.— Athen., 6, p. 251, a.) Alcimachus, 
therefore, probably lived about the same time. 

Alcimedon (’AA uipedov), I. an Arcadian hero, from 
whom the Arcadian plain Alcimedon derived its 
name. He was the father of Phillo, by whom Her¬ 
cules begat a son, .Echmagoras, whofn Alcimedon 
exposed, but Hercules saved. ( Pausanias ., 8, 12, 
$2). 

Alcimenes (’AA/c ifievyg), I. a son of Glaucus, who 
was unintentionally killed by his brother Bellero- 
phon. According to some traditions, this brother ot 
Bellerophon was called Deliades, or Peiren. {Apol- 
lod., 2, 3, t) 1.)—II. One of the sons of Jason and 
Medeia. When Jason subsequently wanted to mar¬ 
ry Glauce, his sons Alcimenes and Tisander were 
murdered by Medeia, and were afterward buried by 




SUPPLEMENT. 


1429 


Jason in the sanctuary of Juno, at Corinth. ( Diod., 
4, 54, 55.)—III. An Athenian comic poet, apparent¬ 
ly a contemporary of iEschylus. One of his pieces 
is supposed to have been the Kokvybtioai (the Fe¬ 
male Swimmers). His works were greatly admired 
by Tynnichus, a younger contemporary of vEschy- 
lus. There was a tragic w r riter of the same name, 
a native of Megara, mentioned by Suidas. (Mei- 
neke, Hist. Crit. Comicorum Grcec., p. 481. — Suid., 
s. r. ’Akiayevyq and ’AkKgav.) 

Alcimus fA ktapiog), I. also called Jacimus, or Jo¬ 
achim {’IdKeiyoq), one of the Jewish priests who es¬ 
poused the Syrian cause. He was made high-priest 
by Demetrius, about B.C. 161, and was installed in 
his office by the help of a Syrian army. In conse¬ 
quence of his cruelties he was expelled by the Jews, 
and obliged to fly to Antioch, but was restored by 
the help of another Syrian army. He continued in 
his office, under the protection of the Syrians, till 
his death, which happened suddenly (B.C. 159), while 
he was pulling down the wall of the temple that 
divided the court of the Gentiles from that of the 
Israelites. ( Joseph., Ant. Jud., 12, 9, § 7.—1 Mac- 
cab., 7, 9.)—II. A Greek rhetorician, whom Diogenes 
Laertius (2, 114) calls the most distinguished of all 
Greek rhetoricians, flourished about B.C. 300. It 
is not certain whether he is the same as the Alci¬ 
mus to whom Diogenes, in another passage (3, 9), 
ascribes a work tt poq ’A pvvrav. Athenasus in several 
places speaks of a Sicilian Alcimus, who appears 
to have been the author of a great historical work, 
parts of which are referred to under the names of 
’IrakiKa and 'Linekina. But whether he was the same 
as the rhetorician Alcimus, cannot be determined. 
{Athen., 10, p. 441 ; 12, p. 519; 7, p. 322.)—III. (Avi- 
tus) Alethius, the writer of seven short poems in 
the Latin Anthology, whom Wernsdorf has shown 
{Poet. Lat. Min., vol. 6, p. 26, &c.) to be the same 
person as Alcimus, the rhetorician in Aquitania in 
Gaul, who is spoken of in terms of high praise by 
Sidonius Apollinaris {Epist., 8, 11; 5, 10) and A.u- 
sonius ( Profess. Burdigal., 2). His date is determin¬ 
ed by Hieronymus in his Chronicon, who says that 
Alcimus and Delphidius taught in Aquitania in A.D. 
360. His poems are superior to most of his time. 
They are printed by Meier in his “ Anthologia Lat¬ 
ina,” ep. 254-260, and by Wernsdorf, vol. 6, p. 194, 
(Ssc 

Alcinous {'Akic'ivovq), II. a Platonic philosopher, 
who probably lived under the Caesars. Nothing is 
known of his personal history, but a work entitled 
’E 7 TLToprj tljv Jlkdruvoq doyparuv, containing an 
analysis of the Platonic philosophy, as it was set 
forth by late writers, has been preserved. The 
treatise is written rather in the manner of Aristo¬ 
tle than of Plato, and the author has not hesitated 
to introduce any of the views of other philosophers 
which seemed to add to the completeness of the 
system. Thus the parts of the syllogism (c. 6), the 
doctrine of the mean and of the eljeig and evepyeiai 
(c. 2, 8), are attributed to Plato, as well as the 
division of philosophy which was common to the 
Peripatetics and Stoics. It was impossible from 
the writings of Plato to get a system complete in 
its parts, and hence the temptation of later writers, 
who sought for system, to join Plato and Aristotle, 
without perceiving the inconsistency of the union, 
while everything which suited their purpose was 
fearlessly ascribed to the founder of their own sect. 
In the treatise of Alcinous, however, there are still 
traces of the spirit of Plato, however low an idea 
he gives of his own philosophical talent. He held 
the world and its animating soul to be eternal. This 
soul of the universe {fj ipvxv tov Koapov) was not 
created by God, but, to use the image of Alcinous, 
it was awakened by him as from a profound sleep, 


and turned towards himself, “ that it might look out 
upon intellectual things (c. 14), and receive forms 
and ideas from the divine mind.” It was the first 
of a succession of intermediate beings between God 
and man. The ideal proceeded immediately from 
the mind of God, and were the highest object of our 
intellect ; the “form” of matter, the types of sensi¬ 
ble things, having a real being in themselves (c. 9,. 
He differed from the earlier Platonists in confining 
the ideal to general laws : it seemed an unworthy 
notion that God could conceive an idea of things ar¬ 
tificial or unnatural, or of individuals or particulars, 
or of anything relative. He seems to have aimed 
at harmonizing the views of Plato and Aristotle on 
the ideal, as he distinguished them from the eldy, 
forms of things which, he allowed, were insepar¬ 
able : a view which seems necessarily connected 
with the doctrine of the eternity and self-existence 
of matter. God, the first founder of the ideal, could 
not be known as he is : it is but a faint notion of 
him we obtain from negations and analogies : his 
nature is equally beyond our power of expression or 
conception. Below him are a series of beings ( dai - 
poveq), who superintend the production of all living 
things, and hold intercourse with men. The human 
soul passes through various transmigrations, thus 
connecting the series with the lower classes of be¬ 
ing, until it is finally purified and rendered accept¬ 
able to God. It will be seen that his system was 
a compound of Plato and Aristotle, with some parts 
borrowed from the East, and perhaps derived from 
a study of the Pythagorean system. ( Ritter, Ge- 
schichte dcr Philosophic, 4, p. 243.) Alcinous first 
appeared in the Latin version of Pietro Balbi, which 
was published at Rome, with Apuleius, 1469, fol. 
The Greek text was printed in the Aldine edition of 
Apuleius, 1521, 8vo. Another edition is that of 
Fell, Oxford, 1667. The best, however, is that of 
J. H. Fischer, Leipzig, 1783, 8vo. It was transla¬ 
ted into French by J. J. Combes-Dounous, Paris, 
1800, 8vo, and into English by Stanley, in his His¬ 
tory of Philosophy. 

Alois ('A kkiq), that is, the Strong, I. a surname 
of Athena, under which she was worshipped in 
Macedonia. ( Liv., 42, 51.)—II. A deity among the 
Naharvali, an ancient German tribe. {Tacit., Germ., 
43.) Grimm {Deutsche Mythol., p. 39) considers Al¬ 
ois in the passage of Tacitus to be the genitive of 
Alx, which, according to him, signifies a sacred 
grove, and is connected with the Greek dkaoq. 
Another Alcis occurs in Apollodorus, 2, 1, § 5. 

Alcm^eon {’ Aknpaiov) V. one of the most emi¬ 
nent natural philosophers of antiquity, was a native 
of Crotona, in Magna Gnecia. His father’s name 
was Pirithus, and he is said to have been a pupil 
of Pythagoras, and must, therefore, have lived in the 
latter half of the sixth century before Christ. {Diog. 
Laert., 8,83.) Nothing more is known of the events 
of his life. His most celebrated anatomical discov¬ 
ery has been noticed in the Diet, of Ant., p. -772, a; 
but whether his knowledge in this branch of science 
was derived from the dissection of animals or of hu¬ 
man bodies is a disputed question, which it is diffi¬ 
cult to decide. Chalcidius, on whose authority the 
fact rests, merely says {Comment, in Plat., “ Tim.,” 
p. 368, ed. Fabr.), “qui primus exsectionem aggredi 
est ausus,” and the word exsectio would apply 
equally well to either case. He is said also ( Diog. 
Laert., 1. c.—Clemens Alsxandr., Strom., 1, p. 308) to 
have been the first person who wrote on natural 
philosophy (< pvcuKov koyov ), and to have invented fa¬ 
bles {fahulas: Isid., Orig., 1, 39). He also wrote 
several other medical and philosophical works, of 
which nothing but the titles and a few fragments 
have been preserved by Stobaeus {Eclog. Plays.), 
Plutarch {De Phys. Philos. Deer.), and Galen {His* 



1430 


SUPPLEMENT. 


tor. PhUosoph.) A farther account of his philosoph¬ 
ical opinions may be found in Menage’s Notes to 
Diogenes Laertius, 8, 83, p. 387.— Lc Clerc, Hist, de 
la Med. — Alfons. Ciacconius, ap. Fabric., Biblioth. 
Grcec., vol. 13, p. 48, ed. vet. — Sprengel, Hist, de la 
Mtd., vol. 1, p. 239.— C. G. De Philosoph. 

ante Hippocr. Medicince Cultor., Lips., 1781, 4to, 
reprinted in Ackermann's Opusc. ad Histor. Medic. 
Pertinentia, Norimb., 1797, 8vo, and in Kuhn's 
Opusc. Acad. Med. et Philol., Lips., 1827-8, 2 vols. 
8vo.— Isensee, Gesch. der Medtcin. 

Although Alcmaeon is termed a pupil of Pythag¬ 
oras, there is great reason to doubt whether he was 
a Pythagorean at all; his name seems to have crept 
into the lists of supposititious Pythagoreans given us 
by later writers. ( Brandis, Geschichte der Philoso¬ 
phic, vol. 1, p. 507.) Aristotle {Metaphys., a., 5) 
mentions him as nearly contemporary with Pythag¬ 
oras, but distinguishes between the aroixela of op¬ 
posites, under which the Pythagoreans included all 
things, and the double principle of Alcmaeon, ac¬ 
cording to Aristotle, less extended, although he 
does not explain the precise difference. Other doc¬ 
trines of Alcmaeon have been preserved to us. He 
said that the human soul was immortal, and partook 
of the divine nature, because, like the heavenly bod¬ 
ies, it contained in itself a principle of motion. 
(Arist., De Anima, 1, 2, p. 405.— Cic., De Nat. 
Deor., 1, 11.) The eclipse of the moon, which was 
also eternal, he supposed to arise from its shape, 
which, he said, was like a boat. All his doctrines 
which have come down to us relate to physics or 
medicine, and seem to have arisen partly out of the 
speculations of the Ionian school, with which, rather 
than the Pythagorean, Aristotle appears to connect 
Alcmaeon, partly from the traditionary lore of the 
earliest medical science. ( Brandis, vol. 1, p. 508.) 

Alcman (’AXupav), called by the Attic and later 
Greek writers Alcmaeon (’A?,Kjuaiov), the chief lyric 
poet of Sparta, was by birth a Lydian of Sardis. 
His father’s name was Damas or Titarus. He was 
brought into Laconia as a slave, evidently when 
very young. His master, whose name was Agesi- 
das, discovered his genius, and emancipated him ; 
and he then began to distinguish himself as a lyric 
poet. ( Suidas , s. v. — Heraclid. Pont., Polit., p. 206. 
— Veil. Pat., 1, 18.— Alcman , fr. 11, Welcker. — Epi¬ 
grams by Alexander Mtolus, Leonidas, and Antipater 
Thess., in Jacobs's Anthol. Grcec., 1, p. 207, No. 3 ; 
p. 175, No. 80; 2, p. 110, No. 56; in the Anthol. 
Palat., 7, 709, 19, 18.) In the epigram last cited it 
is said that the two continents strove for the hon¬ 
our of his birth; and Suidas (/. c.) calls him a La¬ 
conian of Messoa, which may mean, however, that 
he was enrolled as a citizen of Messoa after his 
emancipation. The above statements seem to be 
more in accordance with the authorities than the 
opinion of Bode, that Aleman’s father was brought 
from Sardis to Sparta as a slave, and that Alcman 
himself was born at Messoa. It is not known to 
what extent he obtained the rights of citizenship. 

The time at which Alcman lived is rendered 
somewhat doubtful by the different statements of 
the Greek and Armenian copies of Eusebius, and 
of the chronographers who followed him. On the 
whole, however, the Greek copy of Eusebius ap¬ 
pears to be right in placing him at the second year 
of the twenty-seventh Olympiad (B.C. 671). He 
was so*.temporary with Ardys, king of Lydia, who 
reigned rom 678 to 629 B.C., with Lesches, the 
author of the “Little Iliad,” and with Terpander, 
during the later years of these two poets; he was 
older than Stesichorus, and he is said to have been 
the teacher of Arion. From these circumstances, 
and from the fact which we learn from himself 
{Fr , 29), that he lived to a great age, we may con¬ 


clude, with Clinton, that he flourished from auou 
671 to about 631 B.C. ( Clinton, Fast., 1, p, 189, 
191, 365.— Hermann, Antiq. Lacon., p. 76, 77.) He 
is said to have died, like Sulla, of the morbus pediew- 
laris. ( Aristot., Hist. Anim., 5, 31 or 25.— Plut 
Sulla, 36 .—Plin., H. N., 11, 33, $ 39.) 

The period during which most of Aleman’s poems 
were composed was that which followed the ton- 
elusion of the second Messenian war. During this 
period of quiet, the Spartans began to cherish that 
taste for the spiritual enjoyments of poetry which, 
though felt by them long before, had never attained 
to a high state of cultivation while their attention 
was absorbed in war. In this process of improve¬ 
ment Alcman was immediately preceded by Ter¬ 
pander, an HUolian poet, who, before the year 676 
B.C., had removed from Lesbos to the mainland of 
Greece, and had introduced the iEolian lyric into 
the Peloponnesus. This new style of poetry was 
speedily adapted to the choral form, in which the 
Doric poetry had hitherto been cast, and gradually 
supplanted that earlier style which was nearer t,o 
the epic. In the 33d or 34th Olympiad, Terpandei 
made his great improvements in music. ( Vid. 
Terpander.) Hence arose the peculiar character 
of the poetry of his younger contemporary, Alcman, 
which presented the choral lyric in the highest ex¬ 
cellence which the music of Terpander enabled it 
to reach. But Alcman had also an intimate ac¬ 
quaintance with the Phrygian and Lydian styles of 
music, and he was himself the inventor of new 
forms of rhythm, some of which bore his name. 

A large portion of Aleman’s poetry was erotic. 
In fact, he is said by some ancient writers to have 
been the inventor of erotic poetry. ( Athen ., 13, p. 
600.— Suidas, s. v.) From his poems of this class, 
which are marked by a freedom bordering on licen¬ 
tiousness, he obtained the epithets of M sweet” and 
“ pleasant” (ylvKVQ, x^p^k). Among these poems 
were many hymeneal pieces. But the Parlhenia, 
which form a branch of Aleman’s poems, must not 
be confounded with the erotic. They were so called 
because they were composed for the purpose of be¬ 
ing sung by choruses of virgins, and not on account 
of their subjects, which were very various: some¬ 
times, indeed, erotic, but often religious. Aleman’s 
other poems embrace hymns to the gods, Paeans ^ 
Prosodia, songs adapted to different religious festi 
vals, and short ethical or philosophical pieces. If 
is disputed whether he wrote any of those anapaes. 
tic war-songs, or marches, which were called kp6a 
rripta ; but it seems very unlikely that he should 
have neglected a kind of composition which had 
been rendered so popular by Tyrtaeus. 

His metres are very various. He is said by Suidas 
to have been the first poet who composed any verses 
but dactylic hexameters. This statement is incor¬ 
rect ; but Suidas seems to refer to the shorter dac • 
tylic lines into which Alcman broke up the Homeric 
hexameter. In this practice, however, he had been 
preceded by Archilochus, from whom he borrowed 
several others of his peculiar metres: others he in¬ 
vented himself. Among his metres we find various 
forms of the dactylic, anapaestic, trochaic, and iam¬ 
bic, as well as lines composed of different metres. 
for example, iambic and anapaestic. The Cretic 
hexameter was named Alcmanic, from his being its 
inventor. The poems of Alcman were chiefly in 
strophes, composed of lines sometimes of the same 
metre throughout the strophe, sometimes of differ¬ 
ent metres. From their choral character, we might 
conclude that they sometimes had an antistrophic 
form ; and this seems to be confirmed by the state¬ 
ment of Hephaestion (p. 134, Gaisf.), that he com 
posed odes of fourteen strophes, in which there 
was a change of metre after the seventh strophe. 





SUPPLEMENT. 


1431 


There is no trace of an epode following the strophe 
And antistrophe in his poems. 

The dialect of Aleman was the Spartan Doric, 
with an intermixture of the iEolic. The popular 
idioms of Laconia appear most frequently in his 
more familiar poems. 

The Alexandrean grammarians placed Aleman at 
the head of their canon of the nine lyric poets. 
Among the proofs of his popularity may be men¬ 
tioned the tradition that his songs were sung, with 
those of Terpander, at the first performance of the 
gymnopaedia at Sparta (B.C. 665 : Allan, V. H., 12, 
50), and the ascertained fact, that they were fre¬ 
quently afterward used at that festival. (Athen., 
15, p. 678.) The few fragments which remain 
scarcely allow us to judge how far he deserved his 
reputation, but some of them display a true poetical 
spirit. 

Aleman’s poems comprised six books, the extant 
fragments of which are included in the collections 
of Neander, H. Stephens, and Fulvius Ursinus. The 
latest and best edition is that of Welcker, Giessen, 
1815. 

Alcon, II. a surgeon (vulnerum medicus) at Rome 
in the reign of Claudius, A.D. 41-54, who is said 
by Pliny { H. N., 29, 8) to have been banished to 
Gaul, and to have been fined ten millions of sester¬ 
ces: H. S. centies cent, mill . (about £78,125). Af¬ 
ter his return from banishment, he is said to have 
gained by his practice an equal sum within a few 
years, which, however, seems so enormous (com¬ 
pare Albutius and Arruntius), that there must 
probably be some mistake in the text. A surgeon 
of the same name, who is mentioned by Martial 
(Epigr., 11, 84) as a contemporary, may possibly be 
the same person. 

Alector (’A AeKTejp), I. the father of Leitus, the 
Argonaut. (Apollod., 1, 9, § 16.) Homer (II ., 17, 
602) calls him Alectryon.—If. A son of Anaxago- 
jas, and father of Iphis, king of Argos. He was con¬ 
sulted by Polyneices as to the manner in which 
Amphiaraus might be compelled to take part in the 
expedition against Thebes. ( Apollod ., 3, 6, § 2.— 
Paus., 2, 18, $ 4.) Two others of the same name 
ire mentioned in Homer. ( Od ., 4, 10.— Eustath. ad 
Horn., p. 303 and 1598.) 

Aleuabve and Aleuas (X2,evd6at and ’Mevaq.) 
Aleuas is the ancestorial hero of the Thessalian, or, 
more particularly, of the Larissaean family of the 
Aleuadae. ( Pind ., Pyth., 10, 8, with the Schol.) 
The Aleuadae were the noblest and most powerful 
among all the families of Thessaly, whence Herodo¬ 
tus (7, 6) calls its members fiacuheic. (Comp. Diod., 
15, 61 ; 16, 14.) The first Aleuas, who bore the 
surname of II vpfioc;, that is, the red-haired, is called 
king (here synonymous with Tagus: vid. Diet, of 
Ant. , p. 945) of Thessaly, and a descendant of Her¬ 
cules through Thessalus, one of the many sons of 
Hercules. (Saidas, s. v. ’A/t evddai. — Ulpian ad 
Dem., Olyntk., I.— Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod., 3, 1090. 
— Vellei., I, 3.) Plutarch ( De Am. Frat., in Jin.) 
states that he was hated by his father, on account 
of his haughty and savage character; but his uncle, 
nevertheless, contrived to get him elected king and 
sanctioned by the god of Delphi. His reign was 
snore glorious than that of any of his ancestors, and 
the nation rose in power and importance. This 
Aleuas, who belongs to the mythical period of Greek 
history, is in all probability the same as the one 
who, according to Hegemon ( ap. Ail., Anim., 8, 11), 
was beloved by a dragon. According to Aristotle 
(ap. Harpocrat., s. v. Terpapxia), the division of 
Thessaly into four parts, of which traces remained 
down to the latest times, took place in the reign of 
the first Aleuas. Buttmann places this hero in the 
period between the so-called return of the Heraclids 


and the age of Pisistratus. But even earlier than 
the time of Pisistratus the family of the Aleuadae 
appears to have become divided into two branches, 
the Aleuadae and the Scopadae, called after Scopas, 
probably a son of Aleuas. ( Ov., Ibis , 512.) The 
Scopadae inhabited Crannon, and perhaps Pharsalus 
also, while the main branch, the Aleuadae, remained 
at Larissa. The influence of ihe families, however, 
was not confined to these tov ns, but extended more 
or less over the greater pa rt of Thessaly. They 
formed, in reality, a powerfu’ aristocratic party ((Saci- 
thelg) in opposition to the g» eat body of the Thessa¬ 
lians. (Herod., 7, 172.) 

The earliest historical person who probably be¬ 
longs to the Aleuadae is Hurylochus, who termina¬ 
ted the war of Cirrha about B.C. 590. (Strabo, 9, 
p. 418.— Vid. Eurvlochcs.) In the time of the poet 
Simonides we find a second Aleuas, who was a 
friend of the poet. He is called a son of Echecra- 
tides and Syris (Schol. ad Theocrit., 16, 34); but, be¬ 
sides the suggestion of Ovid (Ibis, 225) that he had 
a tragic end, nothing is known about him. At the 
time when Xerxes invaded Greece, three sons of 
this Aleuas, Thorax, Eurypylus, and Thrasydaeus, 
came to him as ambassadors, to request him to go 
on with the war, and to promise him their assist¬ 
ance. (Herod., 7, 6. — Vid. Thorax.) When, after 
the Persian war, Leotychides was sent to Thessaly 
to chastise those who had acted as traitors to their 
country, he allowed himself to be bribed by the 
Aleuadae, although he might have subdued all Thes¬ 
saly. (Herod., 6, 72.— Paus., 3, 7, § 8.) This fact 
shows that the power of the Aieuadse was then still 
as great as before. About the year B.C. 460, we 
find an Aleuad Orestes, son of Echecratides, who 
came to Athens as a fugitive, and persuaded the 
Athenians to exert themselves for his restoration 
(Thuc., 1, 111.) He had been expelled either by 
the Thessalians, or, more probably, by a faction of 
bis own family, who wished to exclude him from the 
dignity of (Saaihevq (i. e., probably Tagus), for such 
feuds among the Aieuadse themselves are frequent¬ 
ly mentioned. (Xen., Anab., 1, 1, § 10.) 

After the end of the Peloponnesian war, another 
Thessalian family, the dynasts of Pherae, gradually 
rose to power and influence, and gave a great shock 
to the power of the Aleuadae. As early as B.C. 
375, Jason of Pherae, after various struggles, suc¬ 
ceeded in raising himself to the dignity of Tagus. 
(Xen., Hellen., 2, 3, $ 4 .—Diod., 14, 82 ; 15, 60.) 
When the dynasts of Pherae became tyrannical, 
some of the Larissaean Aleuadae conspired to put 
an end to their rule, and for this purpose they invi¬ 
ted Alexander, king of Macedonia, the son of Amyn- 
tas. (Diod. 15, 61.) Alexander took Larissa and 
Crannon, but kept them to himself. Afterward, 
Pelopidas restored the original state of things in 
Thessaly ; but the dynasts of Pherae soon recover¬ 
ed their power, and the Aleuadae again solicited the 
assistance of Macedonia against them. Phillip will¬ 
ingly complied with the request, broke the power 
of the tyrants of Pherae, restored the towns to an 
appearance of freedom, and made the Aleuadae his 
faithful friends and allies. (Diod., 16, 14.) In what 
manner Philip used them for his purposes, and how 
little he spared them when it was his interest to do 
so, is sufficiently attested. (Dem., De Cor., p. 241. 
—Poly an., 4, 2, § 11.— Ulpian, l. c.) Among the 
tetrarchs whom he intrusted with the administra¬ 
tion of Thessaly, there is one Thrasydaeus (Theo- 
pomp. ap. Athen., 6, p. 249), who undoubtedly be¬ 
longed to the Aleuadae, just as the Thessalian Medi- 
us, who is mentioned as one of the companions of 
Alexander the Great. (Plut., De Tranquil., 13.— 
Comp. Strab., 11, p. 530.) The family now fell into 
insignificance, and the last certain trace of an Aleu* 




1432 


SUPPLEMENT 


ad is Thorax, a friend of Antigonus. ( Pint., Demctr., 
29.) Whether the sculptors Aleuas, mentioned by 
Pliny ( H . N., 34, 8), and Scopas of Paros, were in 
any way connected with the Aleuadas, cannot be 
ascertained. See Boeckh’s Commentary on Pind., 


Pyth., 10; Schneider on Aristot., Polit., 5,5,9; hut 
more particularly Buttmann, Von dem Gcschlccht der 
Aleuaden , in his Mythol ., 2, p. 246, &c., who ha? 
made out the following genealogical table of ti 
Aleuadae. 


V 


Aleuas Tlvpfjoc, 

King, or Tagus, of Thessaly. 

Mother Archedice. 


01. 40. 
“ 45. 
'* 50. 

“ 55. 

«* 70. 


“ 80. 
“ 85. 

“ 90. 
95. 


Echecratides. 


Eui yloclms. 


Scopas I. 

_A . .. 


Echecratides. 

wife Dyseris. 

Antiochus, Tagus. 
Orestes. 


Simus. 


Aleuas If. 

_A_ 


Creon. Diactorides 
Scopas II. 




Medius. 


Eurylochus. 


Thorax, Eurypylus, Thrasydasus. 


Aristippus. 


“ 100 . 
“ 105. 
“ 110 . 
“ 115. 


Scopas III., Tagusi 


Medius. 


Hellanocrates. 

Eurylochus. Eudicus. Simus. Thrasydseus. 


AlexamenusI. {'AXe^apevog), of Teos, was, accord¬ 
ing to Aristotle, in his work upon poets (Kepi not- 
tjtuv), the first person who wrote dialogues in the 
Socratic style before the time of Plato ( Athen ., 11, 
d 505, b, c.— Diog. Lacrt., 3, 48.) 

Alexander, IV. {’AXe^avdpog), the Paphlagonian, 
a celebrated impostor, who flourished about the be¬ 
ginning of the second century ( Lucian, Alex., 6), a 
native of Abonoteichos on the Euxine, and the pupil 
of a friend of Apollonius Tyanaeus. His history, 
which is told by Lucian with great naivete, is chiefly 
an account of the various contrivances by which he 
established and maintained the credit of an oracle. 
Being, according to Lucian’s account, at his wit’s 
end for the means of life, with many natural ad¬ 
vantages of manner and person, he determined on 
the following imposture. After raising the expecta¬ 
tions of the Paphlagonians with a reported visit of 
the god Aesculapius, and giving himself out, under 
the sanction of an oracle, as a descendant of Per¬ 
seus, he gratified the expectation which he had 
himself raised, by finding a serpent, which he jug¬ 
gled out of an egg, in the foundations of the new 
temple of Aesculapius. A larger serpent, which 
he brought with him from Pella, was disguised with 
a human head, until the dull Paphlagonians really 
believed that a new god Glycon had appeared among 
them, and gave oracles in the likeness of a serpent. 
Dark and crowded rooms, juggling tricks, and the 
other arts of more vulgar magicians, were the chief 
means used to impose on a credulous populace, 
which Lucian detects with as much zest as any 
modern skeptic in the marvels of animal magnet¬ 
ism. Every one who attempted to expose the im¬ 
postor was accused of being a Christian or Epicu¬ 
rean ; and even Lucian, who amused himself with 
his contradictory oracles, hardly escaped the effects 
of his malignity. He had his spies at Rome, and 
busied himself with the affairs of the whole’world : 
at the time when a pestilence was raging, many 
were executed at his instigation, as the authors of 
this calamity. He said that the soul of Pythagoras 
had migrated into his body, and pr^hesied that he I 


should live a hundred and fifty years, and then die 
from the fall of a thunderbolt: unfortunately, an 
ulcer in the leg put an end to his imposture in the 
seventieth year of his age, just as he was in the 
height of his glory, and had requested the emperor 
to have a medal struck in honour of himself and the 
new god. The influence he attained over the popu¬ 
lace seems incredible ; indeed, the narrative of Lu¬ 
cian would appear to be a mere romance, were it 
not confirmed by some medals of Antoninus and M. 
Aurelius.—VII. An Acarnanian, who had once been 
a friend of Philip III. of Macedonia, but forsook him, 
and insinuated himself so much into the favour of 
Antiochus the Great, that he was admitted to his 
most secret deliberations. He advised the king to 
invade Greece, holding out to him the most brilliant 
prospects of victory over the Romans, B.C. 192. 
(Liv., 35, 18.) Antiochus followed his advice. In 
the battle of Cynoscephalae, in which Antiochus was 
defeated by the Romans, Alexander was covered 
with wounds, and in this state he carried the news 
of the defeat to his king, who was staying at Thro- 
nium, on the Maliac Gulf. When the king, on his 
retreat from Greece, had reached Cenaeum in Eu¬ 
boea, Alexander died and was buried there, B.C. 
191. {Liv., 36, 20.)—VIII. AItolus (’A/l e^avdpog 6 
Airolog), a Greek poet and grammarian, who lived 
in the reign of Ptolemams Philadelphus. He was 
the son of Satyrus and Stratocleia, and a native of 
Pleuron in ACtolia, but spent the greater part of his 
life at Alexandrea, where he was reckoned one of 
the seven tragic poets who constituted the tragic 
pleiad. ( Suid ., s. v. — Eudoc., p. 62 .—Pans., 2, 22, 
§ 7.— Schol. ad Horn., 11, 16, 233.) He had an 
office in the library at Alexandrea, ar.d was commis¬ 
sioned by the king to make a collection of all the 
tragedies and satyric dramas that were extant. He 
spent some time, together with Antagoras and Ara- 
tus, at the court of Antigonas Gonatas. ( Aratus , 
Phcenomena et Diosem., 2, p. 431, 443, &c., 446, ed. 
Buhle.) Notwithstanding the distinction he enjoyed 
as a tragic poet, he appears to have had greater 
merit as a writer of epic poems, elegies, epigrams 




















SUPPLEMENT. 


1433 


And cynaedi. Among his epic poems, we possess 
the titles and some fragments of three pieces: the 
Fisherman {akievg : Athen., 7, p. 296), Kirka or 
Krika ( Athen., 7, p. 283), which, however, is desig¬ 
nated by Athenaeus as doubtful, and Helena. (Bek- 
kcr , Anecd., p 96.) Of his elegies, some beautiful 
fragments are still extant. {Athen., 4, p. 170; 11, 
p. 496; 15, p. 899.— Strab., 12, p. 556; 14, p. 681. 
— Parthen., Erot., 4.— Tzctz. ad Lycophr., 266.— 
Schol. and Eustath. ad II ., 3, 314.) His Cynaedi, or 
'I wind TToirjfiara, are mentioned by Strabo (14, p. 
648) and Athenaeus (14, p. 620). Some anapaes¬ 
tic verses in praise of Euripides are preserved in 
Gellius (15, 20). All the fragments of Alexander 
H2tolus are collected in “Alexandri JEtoli frag- 
menta coll, et ill. A. Capcllmann,' 1 ' 1 Bonn, 1829, 8vo. 
—Comp. Welcker, Die Griech. Tragbdien, p. 1263, 
&c.— Duntzer, Die Fragm. der Episch. Poesie der 
Griechen, von Alexand. dern Grossen, &c., p. 7, 
&c.—IX. Commander of the horse in the army of 
Antigonus Doson during the war against Cleome- 
nes III., of Sparta. {Polyb., 2, 66.) He fought 
against Philopoemen, then a young man, whose pru¬ 
dence and valour forced him to a disadvantageous 
engagement at Sellasia (2, 68). This Alexander is 
probably the same person as the one whom Antig¬ 
onus, as the guardian of Philip, had appointed com¬ 
mander of Philip’s body-guard, and who was calum¬ 
niated by Apelles (4, 87). Subsequently he was sent 
by Philip as ambassador to Thebes, to persecute 
Megaleas (5, 28). Polybius states, that at all times 
he manifested a most extraordinary attachment to 
his king (7,12).—X. Son of Antonius, the triumvir, 
and Cleopatra, queen of Egypt. He and his twin- 
sister Cleopatra were born B.C. 40. Antonius be¬ 
stowed on him the titles of “ Helios” and “ King 
of Kings,” and called his sister “ Selene.” He also 
destined for him, as an independent kingdom, Ar¬ 
menia, and such countries as might yet be conquer¬ 
ed between the Euphrates and Indus, and wrote to 
the senate to have his grants confirmed ; but his let¬ 
ter was not suffered to be read in public (B.C. 34). 
After the conquest of Armenia, Antonius betrothed 
Jotape, the daughter of the Median king Artavasdes, 
to his son Alexander. When Octavianus made him¬ 
self master of Alexandrea, he spared Alexander, but 
took him and his sister to Rome, to adorn his tri¬ 
umph. They were generously received by Octavia, 
the wife of Antonius, who educated them with her 
own children. {Dion Cassius , 49, 32, 40, 41,44; 
50, 25; 51, 21. — Plutarch, Antonius, 36, 54, 87. 
— Livy, Epit., 131, 132.) — XI. Brother of Molo. 
On the accession of Antiochus III., afterward call¬ 
ed the Great, in B.C. 224, he intrusted Alexan¬ 
der with the government of the satrapy of Persis, 
and Molo received Media. Antiochus was then 
only fifteen years of age ; and this circumstance, 
together with the fact that Hermeias, a base flat¬ 
terer and crafty intriguer, whom every one had to 
fear, was all-powerful at his court, induced the two 
brothers to form the plan of causing the upper sat¬ 
rapies of the kingdom to revolt. It was the secret 
wish of Hermeias to see the king involved in as 
many difficulties as possible, and it was on his ad¬ 
vice that the war against the rebels was intrusted 
to men without courage and ability. In B.C. 220, 
however, Antiochus himself undertook the com¬ 
mand. Molo was deserted by his troops, and to 
avoid falling into the hands of the king, put an end 
to his own life. All the leaders of the rebellion fol¬ 
lowed his example, and one of them, who escaped 
to Persis, killed Molo’s mother and children, per¬ 
suaded Alexander to put an end to his life, and at 
last .killed himself upon the bodies of his friends. 
{Polyb., 5, 40, 41,43, 54.)—XIV. Aphrodisiensis. 
Besides the works universally attributed to Alex- 
8 T 


ander Aphrodisiensis, there are extant two others 
of which the author is not certainly known, b 
which are by some persons supposed to belong tr 
him, and which commonly go under his name. Tin 
first of these is entitled ’ larpuid ’ Airopy/uara ua 
$voiko. UpodTir/fiara, “ Quostio?ies Medico, et Prob • 
lemata Physical which there are strong reasons foi 
believing to be the work of some other writer. In 
the first place, it is not mentioned in the list of his 
works given by the Arabic author quoted by Casiri 
{Biblioth. Arabico-Hisp. Escurial., vol. 1, p. 243); 
secondly, it appears to have been written by a per¬ 
son who belonged to the medical profession (2, prof, 
et $ 11), which was not the case with Alexander 
Aphrodisiensis ; thirdly, the writer refers (1, 87) tc 
a work by himself, entitled ’ kXkyyopial tuv el c Geouf 
’kvarclaTToyevuv Hidavuv 'loropitiv, “ Allcgorio His- 
toriarum Credibilium de Diis Fabricatarum,” which 
we do not find mentioned among Alexander’s works; 
fourthly, he more than once speaks of the soul as 
immortal (2, prof, et § 63, 67), which doctrine Alex¬ 
ander Aphrodisiensis denied ; and, fifthly, the style 
and language of the work seem to belong to a later 
age. Several eminent critics suppose it to belong 
to Alexander Trallianus, but it does not seem likely 
that a Christian writer would have composed the 
mythological work mentioned above. It consists 
of two books, and contains several interesting med¬ 
ical observations, along with much that is frivolous 
and trifling. It was first published in a Latin trans¬ 
lation by George Valla, Venet., 1488, fol. The 
Greek text is to be found in the Aldine edition of 
Aristotle’s works, Venet., fol., 1495, and in that by 
Sylburgius, Francofi, 1585, 8vo; it was published 
with a Latin translation by J. Davion, Paris, 1540 
1541, 16mo; and it is inserted in the first volumt 
of Ideler’s Physici et Medici Groci Minores, Berol., 
1841, 8vo. The other work is a short treatise, 
Ilepi UvpeTcjv, De Febribus , which is addressed to a 
medical pupil whom the author offers to instruct in 
any other branch of medicine ; it also is omitted in 
the Arabic list of Alexander’s works mentioned 
above. For these reasons it does not seem likely 
to be the work of Alexander Aphrodisiensis, while 
the whole of the twelfth book of the great medical 
work of Alexander Trallianus (to whom it has also 
been attributed) is taken up with the subject of 
Fever, and he would hardly have written two trea 
tises on the same disease without making in either 
the slightest allusion to the other. It may possibly 
belong to one of the other numerous physicians 
of the name of Alexander. It was first published 
in a Latin translation by George Valla, Venet., 
1498, fol., which was several times reprinted. The 
Greek text first appeared in the Cambridge Mu¬ 
seum Criticum, vol. 2, p. 359-389, transcribed by De¬ 
metrius Schinas, from a manuscript at Florence; it 
was published, together with Valla’s translation, by 
Franz Passow, Vratislav., 1822, 4to, and also in 
Passow’s Opusc. Academ., Lips., 1835, 8vo, p. 521. 
The Greek text alone is contained in the first vol¬ 
ume of Ideler’s Phys. el Med. Groci Minor es, Berol., 
1841, 8vo.—XVII. Surnamed Isius, the chief com¬ 
mander of the iEtolians, was a man of considerable 
ability and eloquence for an JEtolian. {Liv., 32, 33. 
—Polyb., 17, 3, &c.) In B.C. 198, he was present 
at a colloquy held at Nicaea on the Maliac Gulf, and 
spoke against Philip III., of Macedonia, saying that 
the king ought to be compelled to quit Greece, and 
to restore to the ^Etolians the towns which had 
formerly been subject to them. Philip, indignant at 
such a demand being made by an iEtolian, answer¬ 
ed him in a speech from his ship. {Liv., 32, 34.) 
Soon after this meeting, he was sent as ambassador 
of the ^Etolians to Rome, where, together with other 
envoys, he was to treat with the senate about peace. 



1434 


SUPPLEMENT. 


but at the same time to bring accusations against 
Philip. ( Polyb ., 17, 10.) In B.C. 197, Alexander 
again took part in a meeting, at which T. Quinctius 
Flamininus, with his allies, and King Philip were 
present, and at which peace with Philip was discuss¬ 
ed. Alexander dissuaded his friends from any peace¬ 
ful arrangement with Philip. ( Polyb ., 18, 19, &c.— 
Appian, Maced., 7, 1.) In B.C. 195, when a con¬ 
gress of all the Greek states that were allied with 
Rome was convoked by T. Quinctius Flamininus at 
Corinth, for the purpose of considering the war that 
was to be undertaken against Nabis, Alexander 
spoke against the Athenians, and also insinuated 
that the Romans were acting fraudulently towards 
Greece. ( Liv ., 34, 23.) When, in B.C. 189, M. Ful- 
vius Nobilior, after his victory over Antiochus, was 
expected to march into iEtolia, the JEtolians sent 
envoys to Athens and Rhodes; and Alexander Isius, 
together with Phaneas and Lycopus, were sent to 
Rome to sue for peace. Alexander, now an old 
man, was at the head of the embassy ; but he and 
his colleagues were made prisoners in Cephalenia 
by the Epirots, for the purpose of extorting a heavy 
ransom. Alexander, however, although he was 
very wealthy, refused to pay it, and was, according¬ 
ly, kept in captivity for some days, after which he 
was liberated, at the command of the Romans, with¬ 
out any ransom. ( Polybius, 22, 9.)—XVIII. Sur- 
named Lychnus (Avxvog), a Greek rhetorician and 
poet. He was a native of Ephesus, whence he is 
sometimes called Alexander Ephesius, and must 
have lived shortly before the time of Strabo (14, p. 
642), who mentions him among the more recent 
Ephesian authors, and also states that he took a 
part in the political affairs of his native city. Strabo 
ascribes to him a history, and poems of a didactic 
kind, viz., one on astronomy and another on geogra¬ 
phy, in which he describes the great continents of 
the world, treating of each in a separate work or 
book, which, as we learn from other sources, bore the 
name of the continent of which it contained an ac¬ 
count. What kind of history it was that Strabo 
alludes to is uncertain. The so-called Aurelius Vic¬ 
tor (De Orig. Gent. Rom., 9) quotes, it is true, the 
first book of a history of the Marsic war by Alexan¬ 
der the Ephesian, but this authority is more than 
doubtful. Some writers have supposed that this 
Alexander is the author of the history of the suc¬ 
cession of Greek philosophers (ai w (j>tloao(jHJv 
diadoxa'i) which is so often referred to by Diogenes 
Laertius (1, 116; 2,19,106; 3,4,5; 4,62; 7,179; 
8, 24; 9, 61), but this work belonged, probably, to 
Alexander Polyhistor. His geographical poem, of 
which several fragments are still extant, is frequent¬ 
ly referred to by Stephanus Byzantius and others. 
( Steph. Byz., s. vv. AcnryOog, TairpoSavy, Atipoq/Yp- 
icavot, M ekiraia, &c.—Comp. Eustath. ad Dionys. 
Perieg., 388, 591.) Of his astronomical poem a 
fragment is still extant, which has been erroneously 
attributed by Gale ( Addend. ad Par then., p. 49) and 
Schneider (ad Vitruv., 2, p. 23, &c.) to Alexander 
iEtolus. ( Vid. Nteke, Schedce Criticoe, p. 7, &c.) It 
is highly probable that Cicero (ad Att ., 2, 20, 22) 
is speaking of Alexander Lychnus when he says 
that Alexander is not a good poet, a careless wri¬ 
ter, but yet possesses some information.—XIX. Of 
M stndus in Caria, a Greek writer on zoology, of 
uncertain date. His works, which are now lost, 
must have been considered very valuable by the an¬ 
cients, since they refer to them very frequently. 
Tile titles of his works are, KryvAv ’I droplet, a long 
fragment of which, belonging to the second book, is 
quoted by Athenseus (5, p. 221 ; comp. 2, p. 65.— 
/Elian, Hist. An., 3, 23 ; 4, 33; 5, 27 ; 10, 34). 
This work is probably the same as that which in 
other passages is simply called Uepi Zuuv, and of 


which Athenseus (9, p. 392) likewise quotes the 
second book. The work on Birds (nepi Jlryvuv: 
Plut., Mar., 17 .—Athen., 9, p. 387, 388, 390, &c.) 
was a separate work, and the second book of it is 
quoted by Athenseus. Diogenes Laertius (1, 29) 
mentions one Alexon of Myndus as the author of a 
work on myths, of which he quotes the ninth book. 
This author being otherwise unknown, Menage pro¬ 
posed to read ’A/if avdpog 6 M vvdiog instead of 'A/U£ 
iov. But everything is uncertain, and the conjee 
ture, at least, is not very probable. — XX. Numenius 
(’A/l egavdpog N ovpqvtog or o ISovpyviov, as Suidas 
calls him), a Greek rhetorician, who lived in the 
reign of Hadrian or that of the Antonines. Aboqt his 
life nothing is known. We possess two works 
which are ascribed to him. The one which cer¬ 
tainly is his work bears the title nepi tuv tjiq Aiav - 
oiaq Kal Aefrioc 2 xvpdrov, i. e., “ De Figuris Senten- 
tiarum et Elocutionis.” J. Rufinianus, in his work 
on the same subject (p. 195, ed. Ruhnken), expressly 
states that Aquila Romanus, in his treatise “De 
Figuris Sententiarum et Elocutionis,” took his ma 
terials from Alexander Nurnenius’s work mentioned 
above. The second work bearing the name of Alex¬ 
ander Numenius, entitled llepi ’EmdEUtTinuv, i. e ., 
“ On Show-speeches,” is admitted on all hands not 
to be his work, but of a later grammarian of the 
name of Alexander; it is, to speak more correctly, 
made up very clumsily from two distinct ones, one 
of which was written by one Alexander, and the 
other by Menander. (Vales, ad Euseb., Hist. Ec- 
cles., p. 28.) The first edition of these two works is 
that of Aldus, in his collection of the Rhetores Grceci, 
Venice, 1508, fol., vol. 1, p. 574, &c. They are 
also contained in Walz’s Rhetores Grceci, vol. 8. 
The genuine work of Alexander Numenius has also 
been edited, together with Minucianus and Phcebam- 
mon, by L. Normann, with a Latin translation and 
useful notes, Upsala, 1690, 8vo. (Vid. Ruhnken , 
ad Aquil., Rom., p. 139, &c.—■ Westermann, Gesch. 
der Griech. Beredtsamkeit, § 95, n. 13, § 104, n. 7.)— 
XXI. Surnamed Peloplaton (HyTiOTrlaTov), a Greek 
rhetorician of the age of the Antonines, was a son 
of Alexander of Seleucia, in Cilicia, and of Seleucis. 
(Philostr., Vit. Soph., 2, 5, § 1, compared with Epist. 
Apollon. Tyan., 13, where the father of Alexander 
Peloplaton is called Straton, which, however, may 
be a mere surname.) His father was distinguished 
as a pleader in the courts of justice, by which he 
acquired considerable property, but he died at an 
age when his son yet wanted the care of a father. 
His place, however, was supplied by his friends,, 
especially by Apollonius of Tyana, who is said tc 
have been in love with Seleucis on account of her 
extraordinary beauty, in which she was equalled by 
her son. His education was intrusted, at first, to 
Phavorinus, and afterward to Dionysius. He spent 
the property which his father had left him upon 
pleasures, but, says Philostratus, not contemptible 
pleasures. When he had attained the age of man¬ 
hood, the town of Seleucia, for some reason now 
unknown, sent Alexander as ambassador to the Em¬ 
peror Antoninus Pius, who is said to have ridiculed 
the young man for the extravagant care he bestow¬ 
ed on his outward appearance. He spent the great¬ 
er part of his life away from his native place, at 
Antiochia, Rome, Tarsus, and travelled through all 
Egypt, as far as the country of the Tvpvoi (Ethiopi¬ 
ans). It seems to have been during his stay at An¬ 
tiochia that he was appointed Greek secretary to 
the Emperor M. Antoninus, who was carrying on a 
war in Pannonia, about A.D. 174. On his journey 
to the emperor he made a short stay at Athens, 
where he met the celebrated rhetorician Herodes 
Atticus. He had a rhetorical contest with him, in 
which he not only conquered his famous adversary. 



SUPPLEMENT. 


1435 


but. gained his esteem and admiration to such a de¬ 
gree, that llerodes honoured him with a munificent 
present. One Corinthian, however, of the name of 
Sceptes, when asked what he thought of Alexander, 
expressed his disappointment by saying that he had 
found “ the clay (II^oc), but not Plato.” This say¬ 
ing is a pun on the surname of Peloplaton. The 
place and time of his death are not known. . Philos- 
tratus gives the various statements which he found 
about these points. Alexander was one of the great¬ 
est rhetoricians of his age, and he is especially 
praised for the sublimity of his style and the bold¬ 
ness of his thoughts ; but he is not known to have 
written anything. An account of his life is given by 
Philostratus ( Vit. Soph., 2, 5), who has also pre¬ 
served some of his sayings, and some of the sub¬ 
jects on which he made speeches. (Comp. Suidas, 
s. v. 'A/l etjavdpoc kiyalog, in jin. — Eudoc., p. 52.)— 
XXII. Philalethes (’A hegavdpog $Llalr]0r)g), an an¬ 
cient Greek physician, who is called by Octavius 
Horatianus (4, p. 102, d, ed. Argent., 1532), Alexan¬ 
der Amator Veri, and who is probably the same per¬ 
son who is quoted by Caelius Aurelianus {De Morh. 
Acut., 2, 1, p. 74) under the name of Alexander La- 
odicensis. He lived, probably, towards the end of 
the first century before Christ, as Strabo speaks of 
him (12, p. 580) as a contemporary; he was a pu¬ 
pil of Asclepiades ( Octav. Horat., 1. c.), succeeded 
Zeuxis as head of a celebrated Herophilean school 
of medicine, established in Phrygia between Laodi- 
ceaand Carura ( Strab., 1. c.), and was tutor to Aris- 
toxenus and Demosthenes Philalethes. {Galen, De 
Differ. Puls., 4, 4, 10, vol. 8, p. 727, 746.) He is 
several times mentioned by Galen, and also by So- 
ranus ( De Arte Obstetr., c. 93, p. 210), and appears 
to have written some medical works, which are no 
longer extant.—XXIII. Assumed the title of Em¬ 
peror of Rome in A.D. 311; he was, according to 
some accounts, a Phrygian, and according to others 
a Pannonian. He was appointed by Maxentius gov¬ 
ernor of Africa, but discovering that Maxentius was 
plotting against his life, he assumed the purple, 
though he was of an advanced age and a timid na¬ 
ture. Maxentius sent some troops against him un¬ 
der Rufius Volusianus, who put down the insurrec¬ 
tion without difficulty. Alexander was taken and 


strangled. ( Zosimus , 2, 12, 14.— Aur. Viet., D% 
Caes., 40 ; Epit., 40.)—XXIV. Tiberius {Tt,6epiog 
’A 7ie%avdpog), was born at Alexandrea, of Jewish pa¬ 
rents. His father held the office of Alabarch in 
Alexandrea, and his uncle was Philo, the well- 
known writer. Alexander, however, did not con¬ 
tinue in the faith of his ancestors, and was reward¬ 
ed for his apostacy by various public appointments. 
In the reign of Claudius he succeeded Fadius as 
procurator of Judsea, about A.D. 46, and was pro¬ 
moted to the equestrian order. He was subse¬ 
quently appointed by Nero procurator of Egypt; 
and by his orders 50,000 Jews were slain on one 
occasion at Alexandrea, in a tumult in the city. It 
was apparently during his government in Egypt that 
he accompanied Corbulo in his expedition into Ar¬ 
menia, A.D. 64; and he was, in this campaign, 
given as one of the hostages to secure the safety of 
Tiridates, when the latter visited the Roman camp. 
Alexander was the first Roman governor who de¬ 
clared in favour of Vespasian ; and the day on which 
he administered the oath to the legions in the name 
of Vespasian, the Kalends of July, A.D. 69, is re¬ 
garded as the beginning of that emperor’s reign. 
Alexander afterward accompanied Titus in the wai 
against Judaea, and was present at the taking of 
Jerusalem. {Joseph., Ant. Jud., 20, 4, § 2; Bell. 
Jud., 2, 11, $ 6 ; 15, $ 1; 18, $ 7, 8; 4, 10, $ 6 ; 6, 
4, $ 3.— Tac., Ann., 15, 28; Hist. 1, 11; 2, 74, 79. 
— Suet., Vesp., 6.) 

Alexarchus (’A hegapxog), a Greek historian, who 
wrote a work on the history of Italy (’ Halim ), of 
which Plutarch {Parallel., 7) quotes the third book. 
Servius {ad JEn., 3, 334) mentions an opinion ol 
his respecting the origin of the names Epirus and 
Campania, which unquestionably belonged to his 
work on Italy. The writer of this name whom 
Plutarch mentions in another passage {De Is. et 
Os., p. 365), is probably a different person. 

Alexias (’A/l etjlag), an ancient Greek physician, 
who was a pupil of Thrasyas of Mantinea, and lived, 
probably, about the middle of the fourth century be¬ 
fore Christ. Theophrastus mentions him as having 
lived shortly before his time {Hist. Plant., 9, 16, $ 
8), and speaks highly of his abilities and acquire¬ 
ments. 


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A N 


ESSAY 


ON THE 


MEASURES, WEIGHTS, AND MONEYS 


OP THE 


GREEKS AND ROMANS. 








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f. 





THE 


MEASURES, WEIGHTS, AND MONEYS 

OF THE 

GREEKS AND ROMANS. 


The metrological systems of the Greeks and Ro¬ 
mans, and the methods pursued in the determination 
of their standards, have been regarded with interest 
by those curious in antiquarian researches. While 
the relations of the various parts of each system have 
been satisfactorily ascertained, the values which have 
been assigned to their units, whether of length, capa¬ 
city, or weight, when referred to those of modern 
times, exhibit considerable discrepance. This may not 
excite surprise when it is considered that these values 
have been deduced from observations, made with differ¬ 
ent degrees of nicety, upon models possessing conflict¬ 
ing claims to perfection. A learned professor of Stut- 
gard* has reviewed the labours of his predecessors in 
these inquiries with masterly skill, and has imparted 
to his investigations a precision which entitles them to 
reliance. His results have been adopted, and his mode 
of procedure exhibited in the following pages. In 
conformity with his plan, and for the reason that we 
possess more numerous specimens of the Roman 
standards than of those of the Greeks, which furnish 
more accurate data for the estimate of both, the former 
will be first treated of. 

§ 1. ROMAN MEASURES OF LENGTH. 

The Romans, like other nations of antiquity, derived 
their measures of length from the different members 
of the human body, the unit of which was the foot. 
Their Pes was divided both into 12 undo: and 16 di- 
giti. The first division, by which it was recognised 
as the t As or unit, and its parts expressed by uncice, 
was generally adopted. Thus, when authors make 
mention of jpes uncialis, they understand the yg- of pes; 
thus, also, pes dodrantalis means f, bessalis f , quin- 
cunqualis j%, trientalis J, quadrantalis {, and semiun- 
cialis -~ T of pes. The second division, into 16 digiti, 
is the more natural, and was principally used by archi¬ 
tects and land surveyors ; and, though it latterly came 
into more general use, is seldom found in the speci¬ 
mens of the pes, unaccompanied by the first. Palmus, 
the palm, or the width of the hand, is the nalatarri of 
the Greeks, and was invariably received by the Ro¬ 
mans as the fourth of pes ; but St. Jerome, in his com¬ 
ments on Ezechiel (cap. 40), has assumed it as the 
three fourths, by which admeasurement it nearly an¬ 
swers to the Greek amdapn, and the modern Italian 
Palm. Cubitus is sesquipes or 1^ pedes, and is sel¬ 
dom met with except when it is used in translating 


♦ J. F. Wurm. His determinations are given in the old 
French measures, weights, <fcc., and have been reduced to the 
English and American standards by a comparison of the “ Man¬ 
ual des Poids et Mesures” of M. Tarbe, and Mr. Hassler’s able 
report to the Treasury Department in 1832. Other works have 
been consulted, of which may be mentioned those of Greaves, 
Hooper, and Arbuthnot, the papers of Raper in the Philosophi¬ 
cal Transactions of the Royal Society of London for the years 
1760 and 1771, and the profound report of President Adams to 
the Senate of the United States in 1821. 
t See the section on Roman Weights. 


the Greek iryx v C- It is*" sometimes improperly con¬ 
founded with Ulna. Ulna is the Greek opyvia (“ dic¬ 
ta ulna and tuv w/l evuv,id est a brachiis; proprie est 
spatium in quantum, utraque extenditur manus .”— Ser- 
vius ad Virg., Eel., 3, 105.) Pes sestertius— 2^ ped. 
is rendered by Boethius and Frontinus gradus or 
“ step,” a term, however, not found in any classical 
writer. Passus (“ a passispedibus”) was a pace, equai 
to five pedes. Decempeda or Pertica (modern Perch) 
was employed in measuring roads, buildings, land, &c. 
Actus is the length of a furrow, or the distance a plough 
is sped before it turns, and corresponds to our Furlong : 
it equalled 120 ped. The Itinerary unit, by which the 
Romans assigned the length of their own roads, was 
milliare (mille passuum)= 5000 ped.; that by which 
they expressed the valuation of maritime distance, or 
that between places situated in Greece, was the stadi- 
um=\25 passus=125 ped. ; and that employed in 
measuring the roads of the Gauls was the leuca or 
leuga (whence our League is derived, though more than 
double in value)=l^ milliaria. 

§ 2. ROMAN MEASURES OF EXTENT. 

The unit of extent was Jugerum (nearly of oui 
acre), which was also distributed into uncice: Colu¬ 
mella describes it as being 240 pedes in length and 
120 in breadth=28,800 pedes quadrati; and, conse¬ 
quently, wncm=2400, Siciliquus=-6 00, Sextula— 400, 
and Scrupulum— 100 ped. quad.; which last is evi¬ 
dently a decempeda quadrata. These were used by 
surveyors ; but those more commonly mentioned by 
writers on husbandry were Clima, Actus, Jugerum , 
Heredium, Centuria, and Saltus. Clima is a square 
whose side is 60 ped. (Columella, 5, 1.) Actus 
quadratus (“in quo boxes agerentur cum aratro, cum 
impetu justo.” — Plin., 18, 3) is thus explained by Col¬ 
umella : “ Actus quadratus undique Jinitur pedibus 
120, et hoc duplicatum facit jugerum, et ab eo, quod 
erat junctum, nomen jugeri usurpavit .” (Colum., 1. 
c.) Actus minimus or simplex was 120 ped. in length 
and four in breadth. Varro (R. R., 1, 10) thus de¬ 
scribes the Heredium, Centuria, and Saltus : “ Bina 
Jugera, quee a Romulo primum divisa dicebantur viri- 
tim , quod heredem sequerentur, heredium appellarunt. 
Heredia centum centuria dicta. Hce porro quatuor 
centurice conjunctce, ut sint in utramque partem bina? 
appellatur in agris viritim divisis publice saltus .” 
yers?fs=l0,000 ped. quad, answers to the Greek 
pov. 

§ 3. ROMAN MEASURES OF CAPACITY. 

I. For liquids. The standard measure of capacity 
was the Quadrantal or Amphora (derived from the 
Greek aptyopevg), being a cubic vessel each of whose 
sides was a Roman foot; and, according to an old de¬ 
cree of the people preserved by Festus, it contained 
80 hbra (Roman pounds) of wine. Columella fre- 
1 1439 






1440 


MEASURES, WEIGHTS, AND MONEYS 


quently makes cadus synonymous with it, and by the 
Greeks it was called uepapiov, aptyoptvg, and perpyryg 
’IraXiKOf. The greatest liquid measure was the Cu- 
leus oi Culleus—20 amphora. The divisions of the 
amphorae are easily inferred from the plebiscitum just 
mentioned, and from the following passage of Yolusius 
Maecianus: “ Quadrantal , quod, nunc plerique ampho- 
ram vocant, habet urnas 2, rnodios 3, semimodios 6, 
congios 8, sextarios 48, heminas 96, quartarios 192, 
cyathos 576.” The Urna was so called, according 
to Varro, “ah urinando , quod in aqua haurienda, uri¬ 
nal, hoc est mcrgitur, ut urinator .” Congius was the 
cube of half a pes ; one of Vespasian’s is still extant, 
narked with the letters P. X., which denote pondo 
decern, ten being the number of pounds it contained by 
law. Congii of wine or oil were given to the people by 
the emperors and chief magistrates on holydays, which 
gifts were hence called congiarii, and persons frequent¬ 
ly derived surnames from the number of congii of wine 
they were in the habit of drinking at a draught; hence 
Cicero’s son was called Bicongius, and Novellus Tor- 
quatus, a Milanese, Tricongius. (Plin ., 14, 22.) 

Sextarius was ^ of the congius=2 hemina—k quar- 
tarii=l'2, cyathi; hence the sextarius, from the fact 
of its containing 12 cyathi, was regarded as the as or 
unit of liquid measures, and its uncice or cyathi were 
denominated, according to their numbers, sextans, 
quadrans, &c. It may be remarked that the ancients, 
at their entertainments, were in the habit of drinking 
as manv cyathi as there were letters in the names of 
their mistresses. ( Martial , Epig., 9, 93; 1, 72.) 
There were two kinds of sextarii, the castrensis and 
urbicus, the former being double of the latter, or com¬ 
mon sextarius. Acetabulum was half the quartarius, 
and was so called, in imitation of the Greeks (to whose 
bijvdafpov it corresponded), from acetum , since it was 
first used for holding sauce for meat. Ligula or lin¬ 
gula at first simply signified a spoon, but was after¬ 
ward regarded by the Latin physicians as a fourth of 
the cyathus ; Pliny and Columella make cochlear or 
cochleare synonymous with it. 

2. For things dry. The unit of this measure was 
the modius, which contained two semimodii, and was 
$ of the amphora, as is apparent from the passage of 
Volusius Maecianus above quoted. The remaining 
measures, sextarius, hemina, &c., bear the same re¬ 
lation to the amphora in the dry as in the liquid 
measure. 

§ 4. DETERMINATION OF THE ROMAN MEASURES. 

The measures of Length, Extent, and Capacity are 
so intimately connected that the determination of their 
values will easily be deduced from that of the pes. 
Various measurements have been made, and various 
modes of investigation been pursued, for the purpose 
of assigning the value of the Roman foot, which, from 
the imperfection of instruments, the want of accuracy 
of observation, and of attention paid to the degree of 
injury which the specimens examined may have suf¬ 
fered, differ considerably in their results. We shall 
give a brief account of most of these observations, and, 
as far as possible, assign to each its proper degree of 
credence. All that has served as a means of calcula¬ 
ting the value of the Roman foot may be arranged un¬ 
der the following classes : (a) Specimens of the pes 
found on tombstones. ( b ) Foot-rules, (c) Milestones. 
(d) Distances of places. ( e ) Congii. (/) Dimensions 
of ancient buildings at Rome. 

(a) There remain four celebrated specimens of the 
Roman foot represented on tombstones, which have 
been respectively named the Statilian, Cossutian, iEbu- 
tian, and Capponian feet. 1. The Statilian foot was 
discovered in the 16th eentury in the Vatican Gar¬ 
dens at Rome, on the tombstone of a certain Statilius: 
though in a state of good preservation, it is of clumsy 
workmanship, and carelessly subdivided. Greaves 


found it .972 feet, which measurement, however accu¬ 
rately it may have been determined, can now be of 
little use, inasmuch as the present standard foot ia 
greater than that employed by him, by an excess net 
easily ascertained, though it has been estimated by 
Raper at which, applied ars a correction, would 
give the Statilian foot .970056 ft. Auzout, accordirg 
to Raper, found it .96996 ft., and Revillas .96979 ft. 
The mean value of the Statilian foot deduced from 
these observations is then 11.639224 inch.—2. The 
Cossutian foot was found on the tombstone of Cn. 
Cossutius (probably the same with a celebrated archi¬ 
tect mentioned by Vitruvius), and dug up about the 
same time with the Statilian, in the gardens of Angelo 
Colozzi, from whom it has taken the name of Colotian; 
the divisions are scarcely perceptible ; Greaves found 
it .967 ft., which, corrected, is .965066 ft. — 3. The 
/Ebutian foot was discovered on the monument of M. 
^Ebutius, in the Villa Mattrei ; it is but rudely divided 
into palmi, and its mean length is 11.6483 inch.—4. 
The Capponian foot was found on a marble without 
inscription in the Via Aurelia, and presented by the 
Marquis Capponi to the Capitoline Museum, where it 
is preserved with the three others. Revillas found it 
11.625 inch. The value of the pes, if considered as 
the mean of these four feet, is 11.623326 inch. 

( b ) From the foot-rules we might expect to derive a 
result more worthy of reliance, since they were con¬ 
structed for the direct purpose of measurement, those 
on the marble being probably intended to explain the 
profession of the individuals to whose memory they 
were erected. The foot-rules were bars of iron or 
brass, of the length of a pes. Those most celebrated 
are the three discovered by Poetus, equal in length, of 
which a model, cut in marble, was placed by him in 
the Capitol, whence the foot has been styled the Cap¬ 
itoline, and has been generally considered as the true 
Roman foot. From the numerous measurements it 
has undergone, it has sensibly increased, so that its 
value must be assumed=128.695 Par. lin., its origi¬ 
nal determination by Pcetns, reduced to the French 
standard by Wurm. Now the Paris line being (ac¬ 
cording to the mean value of the toises of Canivet and 
Lenoir, as given by Mr. Hassler) equal to .007401829 
English feet, the Capitoline foot equalled .95258 feet. 
Besides the Pastian, other foot-rules remain, not, how¬ 
ever, celebrated; their values are mostly between .967 
and .97 ft. 

(c) The distances between the milestones might fur¬ 
nish a correct determination of the Roman foot, were 
it not that none are now standing within 30 miles of 
Rome, and, therefore, none to be much relied on as 
having been originally measured off with accuracy. 
Bianchinus, however, a celebrated Italian philosopher 
and mathematician of the 17th century, from the dis¬ 
tances of the milestones on the Appian road, deduced 
the Roman foot=130.6 Par. lin.=11.60015 inch. 

( d ) The measures of the public roads recorded in 
the Itinerary of Antoninus and in the Peutinger Table, 
can be of little assistance in our inquiry, since those 
records not only omit fractions, which must hare ex¬ 
isted, but are frequently at variance with each other. 
Besides, it is not known whether the distances are 
reckoned from the market-places or from the gates ; 
and an error of half a mile in sixty, being equivalent 
to an error of the tenth part of an inch in a foot, no 
exact value of the Roman foot could be hence derived, 
even though the mensurations of Cassini, Riccioli, and 
others were totally unexceptionable. 

(e) In the description of the measures of capacity, 
it was stated that the congius, in accordance with a 
plebiscitum (the Silian law), contained ten Roman 
pounds of wine or water. By the determination ol 
the libra, which is given in section v., the congiua 
weighed 50495.3064 grs. ; now as a cubic inch of 
distilled water, at maximum density, weighs 252.632 




OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS. 


1441 


grs., the congius contains 199.876921 cubic inches, 
and, consequently, its side is 5.8468 inch. But the 
aide of the congius was half the Roman foot; hence 
the value of the Roman foot, as deduced from the con¬ 
gius, is 11.6936 inch. Though this result is very 
near the correct one, much reliance cannot be placed 
on this mode of arriving at it, in consequence of the 
weight of the ancient wine (80 librae of which were 
contained in the congius) being unknown. But, as 
Rhemnius Fannius informs us that the ancients ac¬ 
counted no difference to exist in the specific gravities 
of wine and water, we have considered them equal, and 
supposed distilled water of maximum density to be of 
the same specific gravity with that employed by them, 
which was very probably pure rain-water. There re¬ 
main two congii, of which the most celebrated was 
placed by Vespasian in the Capitol, as its inscription 
imports, and is commonly called the Farnesian ; the 
other is preserved at Paris. These have been filled 
with water and weighed by Pastus, Villalpandus, Au- 
zout, and others, who have hence sought to determine 
the libra and pes ; but the results of their experiments 
are so much at variance as to render any inferences 
drawn from them objectionable. 

(/) The last method we shall notice, and which 
leads to the most satisfactory conclusion, consists in 
the measurement of the ancient buildings now stand¬ 
ing at Rome ; and though many have ascertained the 
length of some single parts of them, yet no one has 
compared the measures of the principal parts with so 
much assiduity and success as Mr. Raper. Having 
carefully examined the work entitled “ Les Edifices 
antiques de Rome," by M. Desgodetz, he very inge¬ 
niously deduced the value of the Roman foot from 
65 dimensions^.97075 ft. From this value of the 
pes, which is the one now generally adopted in Ger¬ 
many and France, are easily deduced all the measures 
of length. (See Tables I. and II.) The jugerum 
being 28800 ped. quad., equals 27139 sq. ft.=2 roods, 
19 poles, and 187 ft. ; whence the superficial measures 
in Tables III., IV., and V. have been calculated. The 
amphora being the cube of the pes, equals 1580.75 
cub. inch. ; but as a cubic inch of distilled water at 
maximum density weighs 252.632 grs., and a gallon 
10 lbs. avoirdupoise or 70,000 grs., the amphora equals 
5 galls., 2 qts., 1.64 pts. ; whence the Capacious meas¬ 
ures in Tables VI. and VII. have been computed. 

§ 5. ROMAN WEIGHTS. 

The unit of weight was originally denominated As, 
and subsequently Libra or As Libralis. It correspond¬ 
ed nearly with our Troy pound. Its multiples were 
Dupondius (2 pondo or librae). Sestertius (2£ asses), 
Tressis (3 asses), Quatrussis, Quinquessis, and so 
on till Centussis. The term as, though properly ap¬ 
plied to a piece of copper of the weight of a Roman 
pound, was extended not only to all the Roman meas¬ 
ures expressing their units, but also denoted the entire 
amount of inheritances, interest, houses, farms, and all 
things which it was customary to divide ; and refer¬ 
ence being constantly made by authors to it and its 
subdivisions, it is important that they should be thor¬ 
oughly understood. The following table exhibits the 
relations subsisting between the as and its several 
parts. 



Uncis 

As 


Unciae 

As 


Unci® 

As 

12 

l 

Semis 

6 

1 

9 

Semiuncia 

1 

2 

Decunx 

11 

11 

i •>, 

Quincunx 

5 

5 

1 2 

Duella 

i 

3 

Dextans 

10 

5 

¥ 

Triens 

4 

1 

3 

Sicilicus 

X 

4 

Dodrans 

9 

3 

4 

Quadrans 

3 

1 

4 

Sextula 

X 

¥ 

Bes 

8 

2 

3 

Sextans 

2 

1 

IT 

Scrupulum 

X 

24 

Septunx 

7 

7 

1 2 

Sescunx 

H 

l 

Obolus 

1 

47 




Uncia 

l 

1 

1 2 

Siliqua 

1 

144 


8 T 


The Romans made their weights of marble, iron, oi 
brass. A few specimens of these are now extant, and 
have been weighed by Rome de l’Isle and Eisen- 
schmid, whose results vary from 4900 to 5100 grs, 
Others have attempted the determination of the libra 
from the relation existing between it and the congius, 
the latter having been determined to contain 197.6 
cub. inch, nearly. If we assume the weight of a cubic 
inch ol water=253 grs., a congius of water would 
weigh 49992 grs., and the libra would equal 4999.2 
grs. ; but if we suppose a cubic inch of the Roman 
wine, which was employed in the adjustment of the 
libra and congius with regard to one another, to weigh 
256 grs., the value of the libra would be 5058.5 grs. 
It is then evident that, from our ignorance of the spe¬ 
cific gravity of the ancient wine, we can arrive at no 
more accurate conclusion with regard to the value of 
the libra from a knowledge of the exact dimensions 
of the congius, than from the weight of those rough 
specimens just noticed. This assertion may be sub¬ 
stantiated by mentioning the valuations given by dif¬ 
ferent metrologists, who have employed either the 
congius or the specimens as the basis of their calcu¬ 
lations. Budasus makes the libra=5904 grs., Rome 
de l’lsle 4958, Auzout 5105, Eisenschmid 5097 
Paucton 5175, and Arbuthnot 5245^ grs. The mode 
of investigation founded on the hypothesis that the 
ancients exercised at least a tolerable degree of nicety 
in standarding their moneys, has been justly recom¬ 
mended as the most perfect we can employ. It con¬ 
sists in ascertaining the value of the scrupulum, and 
hence that of the libra, from certain aurei which are 
extant, and which were coined of the weight of a cer¬ 
tain number of scrupula, indicated by the stamp they 
bear. Letronne, whose accurate and laborious exper¬ 
iments on the ancient coins have entitled him to impli¬ 
cit reliance, from the weight of 54 aurei deduced 
the scrupulum=21.4 Par. grs.; hence 288 scrupula or 
the libra=6l63.2 Par. grs. We may safely put 
the Roman pound, as Letronne advises, —6160 Par. 
grs., since an error of the hundredth part of a grain ;si 
the value of the scrupulum just assigned would pro¬ 
duce one of 2.88 grs. in that of the libra. The li¬ 
bra then equals 6160 Par. grs.=5049.53 mint-pound 
grs.,* and the remaining weights are hence easily cal¬ 
culated. (See Tables VIII. and IX.) 

§ 6. ROMAN MONEYS. 

Festus informs us that the Romans during the roijrn 
of Romulus had not established coined money as a 
medium of exchange, but used for this purpose leather, 
painted wood, and pieces of metal, the values of which 
were determined by weight. That Numa caused cop¬ 
per to be cut into rough pieces (cera rudia) of the 
weight of a libia, is asserted by some authors, while 
others are of opinion that leather, &c., were still used 
in the time of Numa, and that Servius Tullius first 
ordered round pieces of copper to be made, of a pound 
weight, called asses librales, with the images of cattle 
(pecudes ) rudely sketched on them, and that hence the 
term pecunia was applied to money. Copper contin¬ 
ued to be in general circulation till A.U.C. 485, when 
silver was first coined at Rome, though foreign coins 
of this metal had been previously introduced; the 
coinage of gold followed 62 years after. The temple 
of Juno Moneta was appropriated as the general depos¬ 
itory of standards, and the coins were issued from it. 
having been previously inspected by Nummularii or 

* The Paris grain equals .819729 mint-pound grs , or .820072 
Troughton’s grs.; since the French Kilogram equals 18827.15 
Par. grs., 15433.159 mint-pound grs., or 15439.619 Trough- 
ton’s grs. It may be here remarked, that we have employed the 
mint-pound grs. of Philadelphia, of which the mint-pound con¬ 
tains 7000, in assigning the values of the Greek and Roman 
weights, and those who wish to obtain them in Troughton’s grs. 
can effect their object by multiplying those we have given by 
1.0004184. (See Mr. Hassler’s Report.) 














1442 


MEASURES, WEIGHTS, AND MONEYS 




assaymasters. The entire mint was under the general 
superintendence of three men, appointed by the people 
at the Comitia Tributa, denominated Triumviri Mon- 
etales. The Romans counted by asses, sestertii , 
denarii, and aurei. The as (originally assis, from 
aes), or assipondium, was at first libralis, and bore 
the impression of Janus geminus, or bifrons, on one 
side ; on the reverse, the rostrum of a ship, and was at 
first, as we have noticed, libralis ; but in the first Punic 

war, in consequence of the scarcity of money, the re¬ 
public ordered asses to be struck weighing 2 unci®, 
by which, as Pliny informs us, it gained and dis¬ 
charged its debt; it was subsequently reduced, when 
Hannibal invaded Italy, to the weight of an uncia, and 
lastly by the Papirian law to that of a semiuncia ; and 
though this rapid diminution of its weight was required 
by the necessities of the commonwealth, it would 
eventually have been accomplished by the increasing 
abundance of silver and gold. The as thus reduced 

was, in reference to its original weight, denominated 
libella , and the older coins are distinguished from it 
by later writers when they speak of aes grave. Be¬ 
sides the as, its subdivisions, viz., semisses , trientes, 
quadrantes, sextantes, stipes unciales, semiuncice, and 
sextulce (the smallest of the Roman coins according to 
Yarro), and its multiples, dupondii, quatrusses, and 
decusses, were coined ; specimens of which remain at 
the present day, and are to be found in the most valu¬ 
able collections of ancient coins. But those pieces 
less than the as which were most frequently coined, 
were the semissis and quadrans, bearing the impress 
of a boat instead of the rostrum of a ship ; the former 
was til so named sembella (quasi semilibella ), the lat¬ 
ter tr.runcius. The sestertius, quinarius, and dena¬ 
rius were silver coins, and called bigati or quad- 
rigati, from the impression of a chariot drawn by two 
or foar horses, which they bore on one side, that on 
the leverse being the head of Roma'with a helmet. 
The sestertius (or scmistertius) was so called by a 
figure borrowed from the Greeks, and equalled 2£ 
asses; its symbol is H. S., abbreviated from L. L. S., 
the initials of libra, libra, semis. The sestertium, 

or 1000 sestertii, was expressed by the symbol HS ; 
it was not a coin, but was employed by the Romans, 
together with the sestertius, in computing large sums 
of money. Their method of notation was effected by 
combining the symbols with their numeral characters ; 
thus HS. MC. indicates 1100 sestertii; but if the 
numerals have a line over them, centena millia or 


100,000 is understood; thus HS. MC. means 110 
millions of sestertii. When the numerals are separ¬ 
ated by points into two or three orders, the 1st on 
the right hand denotes units, the 2d, thousands, the 
3d, hundred thousands ; thus, III. XII. DC. HS. de¬ 
notes 300,000-|-12,000-f600=312600 sestertii. The 
following illustration may be also added. Pliny says, 
that seven years before the first Punic war there were 
in the Roman Treasury “ auri pondo XVI. DCCCX.; 
argenti pondo XXII. LXX.; et in numerato LXII. 
LXXV. CCCC.” (33, 3); that is, 16,810 pounds 
of gold, 22,070 pounds of silver, and 6,275,400 ses¬ 
tertii of ready money. The quinarius was equal to 5 
asses, and marked V; by the Clodian law it was im¬ 
pressed with the figure of Victory, and hence called 
Victoriatus. The denarius, at its first institution, 
equalled 10 asses, and was stamped with the numeral 

X or V But when the Romans were pressed by Han¬ 
nibal, A.U.C. 537, the as having been made uncialis , 
he denarius passed for 16 asses, the quinarius for 
and the sestertius for 4 ; and when the as was 
^e semiuncialis the same proportion was retained, 
^pt in the payment of the soldiers, with whom the 
Z‘"ius preserved its original value. The denarius 
s ot used as a weight until the Greek physicians 
1716 ) Rome, who, finding it nearly equal to their 


drachm, prescribed by it; it was then considered, as 
we are informed by Corn. Celsus, as the of an uncia. 
But it gradually diminished in weight under the Caesars 
(see Table XII.); and having subsequently regained 
its original weight, though with a considerable abase¬ 
ment of its purity, it continued to be the current silver 
money of the empire till Constantine substituted the 
miliarensis in its stead. Letronne having carefully 
weighed 1350 consular denarii, deduced the weight 
of the denarius= 73 Par. grs.=59.84 mint-pound 
grs. Now its purity being .97, its value is easily 
calculated =8d. 2.17 far.=15 cts., 4.7 mills. (See 
Tables X. and XI.) 

The golden coins of Aurei were issued A.U.C. 
546, weighing 1 or more scrupula, the scrupulum of 
gold passing for 20 sestertii. Some few remain with 
the numerals XX. and XXXX., which indicate their 
values to be respectively 20 and 40 sesterces. They 
have the head of Mars and the numerals denoting 
their value on one side, and on the reverse an eagle 
standing on a thunderbolt. Afterward it was thought 
proper to coin 40 aurei out of the pound, each valued 
at 25 denarii; their mean weight is 125.62 grs. The 
aureus gradually diminished in weight during the time 
of the emperors (see Tab. XII.), till in Pliny’s time 45 
were struck out of the pound. The Emperor Severus 
coined semisses and tremisses of gold, whence the 
aureus, being considered the integer, was denominated 
Solidus. Soon after, the coinage, becoming irregular, 
was entirely remodelled by Constantine, who coined 
72 solidi out of the pound, each weighing then 4 
scrupula or 70.13 grs., and made the pound of gold 
equal to 1000 miliarenses; so that the solidus equal¬ 
led 131 miliarenses, though it passed for 14. 

The ratio of gold to silver during the republic and 
the twelve Caesars is given in Tab. XII. 


The Grecian measures, weights, and coins, being 
well known to the Romans, were mostly determined 
by them to have some definite relation to their own ; 
so that they will oppose less difficulties in assigning 
their values. 

§ 7. GRECIAN MEASURES OP LENGTH. 

The unit of linear measure adopted by the Greeks 
was the foot (Houf), of which the d&KTv'Xog, or finger’s 
breadth, was and the nalaLCTrj, or palm, The 
latter was also understood by doxpy, from dexopat, “ to 
receive ,” by the compound term daKTvlodoxpv, and by 
dtipov, which properly signifies & gift ; the application 
of the latter term to this measure is commonly ex¬ 
plained by the fact, that the palm of the hand is natu¬ 
rally extended in receiving a gift. 'Zrudapn, or span, 
equals 12 datcTvXoi, and is defined by Hesychius to 
be the distance from the extremity of the thumb to 
that of the little finger, when the hand is opened with 
a view of grasping or measuring any object. The di 
visions of the irovg, more rarely employed, are kovSv- 
Aof, and opOodopov ; the first being 2 

SaKTvXoi, and the second £ rrovg, hence entitled by 
Theophrastus rjpnroSiov. The Tuxuq was 10 Suktv- 
7iol, and the opdodupov, being the length of the hand 
from the wrist to the extremity of the middle finger, 
equalled 11 d&KTvhoi. Pollux (lib. 2), from whom th® 
previous definitions have been derived, informs us that 
nvypr ]—18 da/cruAoi, was the distance from the elbow 
to the extremity of the .metacarpal bone of the middle 
finger, while that reckoned to the extremity of its first 
phalanx was 7rvyd)v—20 SuktvIol, and that 7r^uf=24 
daKTv?ioi, was the cubit, or the distance from the el¬ 
bow to the extremity of the middle finger. The rrpxvc 
then contained 1 n odef. The (3fjpa was 2 \ no5eg, and 
thus corresponded to the pes sestertius of the Romans. 
It was employed by the people at large as the unit 
of distance, whence (drjpanoTai mean measurers of 




OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS. 


1443 


©ads. *0 pyma, or fathom, from opeyio, “ to extend,” 
is the distance from the hands, when the arms are 
raised and extended, measured along the breast, anc 
equals 6 node ?; hence it has received from Herodo¬ 
tus the epithets rerpanrjx V( l and k^anodyg. The 
measure from which the Romans probably borrowed 
their decempeda was anaiva or ndXapog —10 nodes ; 
six of these constituted the "Appa, which, together 
with the nXedpov^lOO nodes, and the naXapog, was 
used principally in the measurement of lands. The 
most ancient itinerary measure of the Greeks was the 
arddiov, which appears to have had a very rude ori¬ 
gin. It is said to have been the invention of Hercu¬ 
les, whose athletic exertion it exhibited, since it com¬ 
prehended the distance which he was able to run with¬ 
out taking breath. Isidorus informs us that it took 
its name from larypi, “ to stand,” and assigns as a 
reason, “quod in fine respirasset simulque stetisset.” 
It was established as the measure of the length of the 
avXog, or foot-course, at the Olympic games; and from 
the respect in which these exercises were held, it be¬ 
came an itinerary measure. This distance, the hero 
who instituted it measured by the length of his foot, 
which he found equal to one six hundredth part of the 
course Censorinus and M. Gossellin have endeav¬ 
oured to show that there were different stadia em¬ 
ployed among the Greeks, but their remarks have 
been completely refuted by Wurm. 'Inninov, or the 
distance a horse could run, “ sub un'o spiritu ,” equals 4 
aradia, and A oXixog has been variously assumed as 6, 
7, 8, and even 24 aradia, but more correctly as 12. 
Those linear measures which were known to the 
Greeks by their intercourse with other nations, were 
MiXiov, or the Roman mile=8 aradia \ TLapaaay- 
yyg —30 aradia, according to Herodotus (2, 6) and 
Xenophon ( Anab ., 5, 7), though Strabo makes it, in 
different places, 40 and 60 aradia ; and an 

Egyptian measure, whose value is differently assigned 
to be 60, 40, and 32 aradia. 

§ 8. DETERMINATION OF THE GREEK FOOT. 

There are two methods of investigating the value of 
the novg proposed to us : the first consists in its de¬ 
termination by its ratio to the Roman foot; the sec¬ 
ond, by means of the public edifices of the Greeks 
which are yet standing. 

1. All authors agree that the ratio subsisting be¬ 
tween the Roman and Greek foot is 24 : 25, as might 
also be inferred from the value the Greeks assigned 
to piXiov, which we have mentioned was 8 arddia= 
4800 nodeg=5000 pedes. Now the Roman foot hav¬ 
ing been determined^.97075 ft., the value of the 
Greek foot hence deduced is 1.0111812 ft. 

2. Mr. Stuart, who examined the temples remain¬ 

ing at Athens, found the average ratio of the Greek 
to the Roman foot to be 25.04 : 24. ( Quarterly Re¬ 

view, No. 10, p. 280.) The Greek foot would hence 
=1.0128168 ft. 

The mean of these two values is 1.011999 ft. We 
prefer, however, adopting Wurm’s determination, who 
has examined Mr. Stuart’s measurements with great 
accuracy, and has equalled the Greek foot to 136.65 
Par. lin.=1.01146 ft. (See Tab. XIII. and XIV.) 

§ 9 GRECIAN MEASURES OF EXTENT. 

The unit of extent was “Apovpa, being a square 
whose side is 50 nodes , it was divided into sixths and 
twelfths, respectively called tnroi and ypienroi. The 
nXedpov contained 4 apovpai, and is the measure 
most frequently mentioned in the superficial measure¬ 
ments of lands. The values and relations of the oth¬ 
ers are exhibited in Table XV. 

§ 10. GRECIAN MEASURES OF CAPACITY. 

1. For Liquids. —The greatest liquid measure was 
Merpyrrjg, which was also called nddog , from 
“to contain ;” nepdpiov, probably from its being made 


of horn ; and dptpopetq, from aptyityopevg, receiving its 
name from the two handles by which it was carried. 
Another synonymewas arapviov (“ nepdpiov rov oivov 
fj vdarog arapviov,” Hesychius.) From the verses of 
Rhemnius Fannius, 

“ Attica praterea dicenda est amphora nobis 

Seu cadus; hunc facies, si nostra, addideris urnam,” 

it appears that the perpyryg— 1£ amphora— 8 galls., 2 
qts., 0.46 pts. It contained 12^oi)f, 72 %iarai, and 144 
norvXai ; and, by comparing the Roman and Greek ca¬ 
pacious measures, we will perceive that th e xovg corre¬ 
sponded in value to the congius, £carps to sextarius, and 
noriiXy to hemina. Certain festivals at Athens were 
called because, according to Suidas, every man had 
a^ouf of wine given him, and, as Athenaeus declares, 
because Demophoon, king of Athens, offered a sweet- 
cake, and Dionysius the tyrant a crown of gold, as a prize 
to the first person who drank a x°v£ of wine. K orvXy 
derived its name from its cavity, and Galen mentions, 
that the norvly and hemina were applied by the ancient 
physicians to the same use with the modern graduated 
glasses of our apothecaries, being vessels of horn, of 
rectangular or cylindrical shape, divided on the out¬ 
side, by means of lines, into 12 parts, which they 
called ounces of measure ( ovyyiai perpiKai), and cor¬ 
responded to a certain number of ounces by weight 
( ovyyiai cradpinai). Now the hemina, being of 
the amphora, weighed, when filled with wine, 10 un- 
cia, so that the account of Galen is involved in doubt, 
inasmuch as the ounce by measure was hence of 
that by weight. T eraprov, oi;v6a<j)ov, and nvadog were 
respectively equal to the quartarius, acetabulum, and 
cyathus of the Romans. The remaining measures are 
Koyxy, pvarpov, xWVi and noxXidpiov, concerning 
which authors are slightly at variance. Cleopatra 
makes a greater and less noyxv, the greater being the 
same with the o^vdaipov, the less nvadog ; while Pliny 
(12, 25) makes the noyxv a determinate measure. 
Mvarpov or pvarpov was borrowed, as its name im¬ 
ports, from the shell of the sea-mouse, and was of two 
kinds : the less and more common being ^ nvadog, the 
greater j*g of the norv'/\y. XrjpT], derived also from 
some shellfish, was divided into the greater or rustic, 
=Vo- KorvXrj ; and the less, or that used by physi¬ 
cians, norvXrj. Kox^idpiov was equal to i 

XWV- 

2. For things dry. —The largest measure employed 
in the measurement of grain was M edipvog=6 modii. 

Its divisions were rpirog, 'dnrog, and ypienrov ; and 
it contained 48 x oiVLKt S 5 s0 that the x°~ iVL % equalled 
4 norvXai. The remaining measures were the same 
with the liquid measures. (See Tab. XVI. and XVII.) 

§11. GRECIAN WEIGHTS. 

The unit of weight was dpaxpv or drachm=6 66o- 
Xoi. ’OBoXog equalled, according to Pollux, 8 xa^noi, 
and the x a ^n6g, on the authority of Suidas =7 Xenra ; 
though Pliny makes the bboXog—10, and Suidas =6 
XaXnoi. The Romans translated x a ^bg areolus, and 
Xlnrov minuta or minutia. Though Rhemnius Fan¬ 
nius asserts that the Greeks used no weights less than 
the o6o?i6g, the physicians employed some smaller, 
viz., nepdriov, equal to the siliqua of the Romans, 
=y^ T uncia, and airdpiov, or grain, =| siliqua. 
The multiples of the ponderal unit, or the weights 
greater than the dpaxpy, were the pvd or mina=rl00, 
and raXavrov =6000 dpaxpai. From libra, the later 
Greeks derived their Xirpa, which, in imitation of the 
Romans, they divided into 12 ovyyiai ; the rdXavrov 
being, according to Livy (38, 38), 80 librae, the li- 
bra=75 dpaxpai, and the dpaxpy=f-Q libra=67.327 
grs. ; which result differs very little from that assigned 
by Wurm. Considering that a more correct value of 
the dpaxpy might be obtained from the coins extant, 
ie has followed the determinextte of Leironne, and 



1444 MEASURES, WEIGHTS, AND MONEYS OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS. 


assumed it=82JL Par. grs.=67.3349 grs. The values 
of the remaining weights are easily calculated, and 
may be seen in Tables XVIII. and XIX. 

§ 12. GRECIAN COINS. 

It is a matter of doubt when the Greeks commenced 
the coinage of metallic ores. The Oxonian marbles 
render it apparent that Phido, king of the Argives, 
about 700 B.C. struck some silver pieces, and there 
yet remain many Macedonian coins purporting to be 
struck five centuries B.C. Of all the Greek cities, 
Athens was most celebrated for the fineness of her sil¬ 
ver, and the justness of its weight; and Xenophon 
mentions, that wherever Attic silver was carried, it 
sold to advantage. Indeed, their money deserves our 
particular attention, since we have unexceptionable 
evidence of its standard weight, and since it furnishes 
us with the knowledge we possess of the moneys of 
the other Greek cities. Copper was not coined till 
the 26th year of the Peloponnesian war, when Callias 
was a second time archon. It was soon after publicly 
cried down by a proclamation, which declared silver 
the lawful money of Athens ; it, however, was shortly 
after again introduced. The common opinion, that 
the Athenians coined gold, is considered by some to 
be without sufficient authority. That they had no 
gold coin at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, 
appears from the account given by Pliny of the treas¬ 
ure amassed in the Acropolis, which consisted of sil¬ 
ver in coin, and gold and silver in bullion. Athenseus 
tells us that gold was very sparingly circulated in 
Greece, until the Phocians despoiled and plundered 
the temple at Delphi. But the gold-mines in the 
neighbourhood of Philippi were so improved by Philip 
of Macedon as to yield 1000 talents yearly, from 
which were struck the Philippics. When Greece be¬ 
came subject to the Romans, the standard of the con¬ 
querors was introduced, and there remain some gold 
coins which were struck subsequently to this event, 
of the weight of the aureus ; one of these is preserved 
in the British Museum, which, though a little worn, 
bears the evidence of elegant workmanship : its im¬ 
press on one side is the head of Minerva, and on the 
other an owl and oil-bottle, with the inscription A0H, 
NH, the last two letters being placed under the oil- 
bottle. The Persian daric seems to have been the 
gold coin best known at Athens when in her lofty state 
of independence, and was called GTarf/p , probably be¬ 
cause it was originally the standard by which the 
dpaxprj was adjusted ; and subsequently the Philippics 
were standarded by means of the daric or the drachma. 
The Greeks counted by means of rdkavra, pval, tet- 
padpaxpa, and dpaxpai , and their method of standard- 
ing excelled the Roman in point of ease and conve¬ 
nience, since their coins were weights also. 

The brazen coins were Xaknovg=l oSokog ; and 
7A'ktov~\ Xaknovg. The bbokog was so called, be¬ 
cause, previously to the introduction of coined mon¬ 
ey, it was in the form of a small spit. The silver 
coins referring to the obokog are, TErpoSokov, rpio 6 o- 
kov, dioSokov, 7 ][Uo 66 kLov, and dlxaknov ; but those 
are most celebrated which refer to the dpaxprj, viz., 
didpaxpov, Tpibpaxpov, rerpadpaxpov. Rome de l’lsle 
mentions a Greek coin of silver, =11 dpaxpai, and 
Plato and Julius Pollux speak of the TtEvrrjuovTdbpax- 


pov, which, were it a coin, must have been very largo. 
Apaxprj quasi dpayprj, is interpreted a handful of I 
o6okol, which were equal to it in value ; it was em¬ 
ployed in the computations of the Greeks, as the ses¬ 
tertius was by the Romans, Plutarch affording us 
many examples. The dpaxprj varied in different coun¬ 
tries determining the rdkavrov of corresponding vari 
ation; that of ^Egina was called 7nz££ta, since it 
equalled If Attic drachms, in contradistinction to the 
Attic, called ksTiTr/. 

There is mention made of the /3ovg, a coin so called 
from the stamp of an ox with which it was impressed, 
reputed equal to the didpaxpov, and coined of gold 
and silver. This was perhaps one of the most ancient 
Greek coins, being known to Homer, if we credit the 
testimony of Julius Pollux, and to it that immortal 
bard is supposed to allude when he sings of Glaucus 
changing his golden armour, worth 100 fiosg, for the 
brazen one of Diomede. The rerpadpaxpov, or silver 
crarijp, appears to have been the coin most generally 
in use among the Greeks. Livy informs us, that be¬ 
tween the years 564 and 566 A.U.C. there were 
brought to Rome by M. Fulvius 118,000, by M. Acil- 
ius 113,000, by L. A. Regillus 34,700, and by Scipio 
Asiaticus 22,400 rerpadpaxpa. So many specimens 
of them remain, that they are to be found at the pres¬ 
ent day in almost every collection. Letronne having 
accurately examined 500 of them, and arranged them 
according to the centuries in which they were struck, 
deduced the mean weight of the old Attic dpaxpy, 
coined two centuries and more B.C., =82^ Par. 
grs.=67.3349 grs. ; and its purity being .97, its value 
is 9d. 2.85 far., or 17 cts. 5.93 mills Federal curren¬ 
cy. The latter Attic dpaxprj was also found=77-| 
Par. grs.=63.236 grs. ; and its value thereby deter¬ 
mined is 9d. 0.487 far., or 16 cts. 5.22 mills. The 
Xpvaovg, or golden oTarr/p, weighed 2, end was val¬ 
ued at 20 dpaxpai ; golden pieces were coined of 
double and half its weight; and though no Attic staters 
remain at the present day, there have been preserved 
some darics and Philippics, whose purity is very re¬ 
markable, being .979. The ratio of gold and silver 
varied at different periods. Herodotus estimates it as 
13 to 1 ; in the dialogue of Hipparchus, commonly as¬ 
cribed to Plato, it is 12 to 1; and Lysias, the orator, 
assumes it as 10 to 1, which last ratio was preserved 
without alteration. 

The Mina (Mva), according to Plutarch, equalled 75 
dpaxpai , till the time of Solon, who made it contain 
100. The Attic talent of silver equalled 60 mime ; 
that of JEgina, which was current at Corinth, was 
100 ; and the Attic talent of gold was 600 minse, ac¬ 
cording to the proportion of gold and silver just pre¬ 
mised. For the values of the different coins, see Ta¬ 
bles XX. and XXI. 


Note. —The method of calculating the value of the old Attic 
drachm is as follows : Its weight being 67.3349 mint-pound grs., 
or 67.3631 Troughton’s grs., and its purity being .97, it contains 
65.3148 mt. pd. grs., or 65.3422 Tr. grs. of pure silver. Now 
371.25 mt. pd. grs. of pure silver being coined into 100 cts., and 
5328 Tr. grs. of pure silver being coined into 792d. (see Pre3 
Adams’s Report), the value of the old Attic drachm is hence de 
termined in the Federal and Sterling currencies. In a similai 
manner, the values of the less Attic drachm and of the denariut 
have been calculated 






ROMAN MEASURES OF LENGTH AND EXTENT. 


1445 


Sextul 

TABLE I. 

I. ROMAN MEASURES OF LENGTH. 

1. Measures below the foot. (Unit: Pes= ll£ inch.) 

Feet. Inches. 

Siciliquus... .24 

3 

2 

Semiuncia..... .48 

41 

3 

H 

Digitus...... .73 

6 

4 ' 

2 

11 

Uncia 

. * .97 

18 

12 

6 

4 

3 

Palmus... ‘3.91 

72 

48 

24 

16 

12 

4 Pes. 11.65 

10. 9 8.49 

100. 97 0.9 

1000. 970 9. 


Pes.. 

TABLE II. 

I. ROMAN MEASURES OF LENGTH. 

2. Measures above the foot. (Unit: Milliare—\\ mile.) 

Miles. Yds. Feet. 

.97 

H 

Palmipes_______ 1*21 

11 

H 

Cubitus. 1-46 

21 

2 

1! 

Pes Sestertius.. 2.43 

5 

4 

CO 

2 

Passus....... 1 1.85 

10 

8 

61 

4 

2 

Decempeda.._____ 3 0.71 

120 

96 

80 

48 

24 

12 

Actus 

38 2.49 


5000 

4000 

3333^ 

2000 

1000 

500 

41| 

Milliare. 1617 2.75 

7500 

6000 

5000 

13000 

1500 

750 

62i 

11 Leuga. 1 666 2.62 

10 Milliaria.- . 9 339 0.5 

1000 do. 9i9 476 2 - 























































































































































*446 ROMAN MEASURES OF EXTENT AND CAPACITY. 


TABLE IV. 

II. ROMAN MEASURES OF EXTENT. 

2. Uncial Subdivisions of the Jugerum. 

TT n • - . Roods. Perches. Sq. Ft. 

2 


3 

1* 


— 

4 

2 

1* 


5 

2i 

1§ 

n 


6 

3 

2 

ii- 


Semi 



7 

3* 

2J 

i! 

if 

If 

Se P l unx. i 18 41 07 

8 

4 


2 

if. 

11 

m 

Bes. 


9 

4* 

3 

2i 

if 

H 

if 

11 

Dodrans.... i 34 208.388 

10 

5 

3* 

2i 

2 

if 

if 

u 

if 

Dextans. 2 3 19.78 

11 

5* 

3§ 

2j 

n 

if 

if 

11 

If 

IrV 

Decunx. 2 11 103.44* 

12 

6 

4 

3 

02 

"3 

2 

if 

li 

.n 

If 

lyy Jugerum 2 19 187.09 






TABLE V. 








II. ROMAN MEASURES OF EXTENT. 




Jugerum.... 



3. Measures above the Jugerum. 

Acres. Roods. 
0 

Perches. 

1 Q 

Sq. Ft I 

1 Qrr B 







1 a 

187 R 

2 

Heredium.. 



1 0 

39 

1 AO 




' ~ - - * - 

- - * • .. .. * .<• „ . 1 


200 

100 

Centuria,.. 


124 2 

17 

110 

800 

400 

4 

Saltus. 


498 1 

29 

167 


{ 


TABLE VI. 

III. ROMAN measures of capacity. 

I. For Liquids. {Unit: Amphora=5 yJ, gallons.) 


Lisrula*. 








Cub. inch. 

Gall. qts. pts. 

A Ao 

4 


A AO 

6 

H 

Acetabulum. 






U. Uo 

0.12 

12 

3 

2 

Quartarius. 






0.24 

24 

6 

4 

2 

Hemina... 





0.48 

48 

12 

8* 

4 

2 

Sextarius_ 




0.95 

288 

72 

48 

24 

12 

6 

Congius_ 



2 1.70 

1152 

288 

192 

96 

48 

24 

4 

Urna 



2 3 0.82 

2304 

576 

384 

192 

96 

48 

8 

2 

Amphora. 1580.75 

5 2 1.64 

46080 

11520 

7680 

3840 

1920 

960 

160 

40 

20 

Culeus. 31615.01 

114 0 0.80 


* Jy a comparison of the Congius with the Libra, the Ligula will be found to correspond very nearly with three drachms ( 3 in') 
Jsquid measure of the apothecaries. 















































































































































ROMAN MEASURES OF CAPACITY.—ROMAN WEIGHTS. 


1447 



Siliqua 

3 

6 

TABLE VIII.—IV. ROMAN WEIGHTS. 

1. {Unit: Libra— 10 oz. } 10 dwts., 9.5 grs. Troy Weight.) 

Troy Weight. 

lbs. oz. dwts. grs. 

... . __ _ 2 Q 

Avoirdnpoise Wt. 

lbs. oz. drs. 

0.11 

0.32 

0.64 

1.28 

2.56 

3.85 

5.13 

7.69 

15.39 

11 8.67 

72 2 2.85 

Oboli 

2 

Scrupulum. 17.5 

12 

4 

2 

Semisextula. 1 11.1 

24 

8 

4 

2 

Sextula.... 2 22.1 

36 

12 

6 

3 

H 

Siciliquus.-. 4 9.2 

48 

18 

8 

4 

2 

n 

Duella. 5 20.3 

72 

24 

12 

6 

3 

2 

li 

Semiuncia. 8 18.4 

144 

48 

24 

12 

6 

4 

3 

2 

Uncia... 17 12.8 

1728 

576 

288 

144 

72 

48 

36 

24 

12 

Libra. 10 10 9.5 

172800 

57600 

28800 

14400 

7200 

4800 

3600 

2400 

1200 

100 Cent. pod. 87 7 19 17.1 


Uncia 

2 

3 

TABLE IX.—IV. ROMAN WEIGHTS. 

2. Subdivisions of the Libra. 

Troy Weight. 

/- A ---* 

oz. dwts. grs. 

. 17 12.8 

Avoirdupoise Wt. 

oz. drs. 

15.39 

1 14.78 

2 14.17 

3 13.56 

4 12.95 

5 12.33 

6 11.72 

7 11.11 

8 10.50 

9 9.89 

10 9.28 

11 8.67 

Sextar 

H 

18 . 1 15 1.6 

Quadrans .-.. 2 12 14.4 

4 

5 

6 

2 

n 

Trier 

is . 3 10 32 

n 

i§ 

H 

Quincunx .... —. 4 7 16.0 

3 

2 

H 

if 

Semis 

. 5 5 4.8 


7 

3£ 

n 

if 

If 

If 

Septt 


8 

9 

10 

4 

2§ 

2 

If 

H 

If 

Bes. 

. 7 0 6.4 

4* 

3 

n 

If 

H 

If 

n 

Dodri 

ins . 7 17 19.1 

5 

^3 

21 

2 

if 

i3 

H 

If 

Dexta 

ns . 8 15 7.9 

Decunx ' 9 12 20.7 

11 


3! 

2f 

2f 

% 

1 A 

1 1 

1« 

If 


Lf„ 

6 j 4 

.s r.’T .wagaa 

3 

2f 

2 

l 1 

1 7 

H 

H 


ljy j Libra 10 10 9.5 































































































































































































1448 


ROMAN MONEYS. 


TABLE X.—V. ROMAN MONEYS. 

Unit: Denarius— 15£ cents. 

1. The moneys referred to the value which the As and Sestertius had before A.U.C. 536 


t 4 


8 


10 


20 


40 


1000 


Teruncius__ 

Sembella.. 

As, Libella, Assipondium. 
Dupondius. 


d. 


far. 

.5 


2 


10 


20 


500 


10 


250 


n 


125 


Sestertius____ 

Quinarius, or Victoriatus__ 

Denarius__ 

Aureus, or Solidus 


100 


50 


25 


17 


1.1 

2.1 

1 2.8 
2 0.5 
4 1.1 
8 2.2 
9 2.3 


cts. mills 
2.4 


4.8 

9.7 
0.9 

8.7 
7.4 


15 4.7 
86 8.5 








10. 8 

100. 88 

1000. 889 

17 

19 

17 

11 

9 

9 

2.9 

1.3 

1.2 

38 

386 

3868 

68 

84 

46 

4.6 

6.2 S 
2. I 

• 





TABLE XI.—V. ROMAN MONEYS. 









2. The moneys referred to the value which the As and Sestertius had 536-720 

A.U.C. 










£ 

s. 

d. 

far. 

a 

eta. 

mills. 

Teruncius_ 








0.9 



3.9 

2 

Sembella_ 







1.7 



7.7 

4 

2 

As, Libella, Assipondium. 




3.4 


1 

5.5 

12f 

6 ! 


Dupondius. 




1 

2.8 


3 

0.9 

16 

8 

4 

H 

Sestei 

tius .. 



2 

0.5 


3 

8.7 

32 

16 

8 


2 

Quinarius, or Victoriatus_ 


4 

1.1 


7 

7.4 

64 

32 

16 

5 

4 

2 

Denarius. 


8 

2.2 


15 

4.7 

1600 

800 

400 

125 

100 

50 

25 | Aureus, or Solidus 

17 

9 

2.3 

3 

86 

8.5 







10 Denarii. 

7 

1 

1.7 

1 

54 

7.4 







100 do. . 3 

11 

2 

1.2 

15 

47 

3.8 







1000 do. 35 

11 

10 

3.7 

154 

73 

8.5 


TABLE XII.—VI. THE MEAN WEIGHTS AND VALUES OF THE DENARIUS AND AU¬ 
REUS, AND THE RATIO OF GOLD TO SILVER, UNDER THE TWELVE CJESARS. 



DENARIUS. 


AUREUS. 


RATIO OF GOLD 


WEIGHT. 

VALUE . ^ 

WEIGHT. 

VALUE. 

TO SILVER, 

Julius Caesar. 

grs. 

59.84 

d. far. 

8 2.17 

cts. mills. 

15 4.7 

grs. 

125.62 

8. d. far. 

17 9 2.29 

dol. cts. m. 

3 86 8.4 

11.9086 : 1 

Augustus___ 

58.36 

8 1.33 

15 0.9 

121.90 

17 4 1.23 

3 77 3.1 

11.9697 : 1 

Tiberius... 

57.22 

8 0.67 

14 8.0 

119.43 

17 0 0.85 

3 69 8.9 

11.9766 : 1 

Caligula_ 

57.71 

8 0.95 

14 9.2 

118.45 

17 1 3.87 

3 73 0.7 

12.1799 : 1 

Claudius ...._ 

56.77 

8 0.41 

14 6.8 

118.53 

16 10 2.41 

3 66 9.7 

11.9726 : 1 

Nero__ 

53.98 

7 2.82 

13 9.6 

114.43 

16 0 2.62 

3 48 9.6 

11.8727 : 1 

Galb-a.. 

52.30 

7 1.87 

13 5.2 

112.88 

15 6 2.63 

3 38 0.9 

11.5824 ; 1 

Otho... 

51.48 

7 1.40 

13 3.1 

112.14 

15 3 2.93 

3 32 7.9 

11.5497 : 1 

Vitellius. 

51.97 

7 1.68 

13 4.4 

112.67 

15 5 1.95 

3 35 9.7 

11.5314 • l 

Vespasian. 

52.01 

7 1.70 

13 4.5 

112.66 

15 5 2.53 

3 36 2.4 

11.6133 • l 

Titus... 

*51.72 

7 1.54 

13 3.8 

112.55 

15 4 2.44 

3 34 3.9 

11.4967 : 1 

Domitian. 

52.30 

7 1.87 

13 5.2 

112.75 

15 6 2.63 

3 38 0.9 

1 11.3015 : 1 


/ 

































































































































GRECIAN MEASURES OF LENGTH AND EXTENT. 


1449 


TABLE XIII. 

I. GRECIAN MEASURES OF LENGTH. 
1. Small Measures. (Unit: Uovg=l.0l feet.) 


A a KTVAog. 


Feet. 


Inches 


1 2 

KovSvXog ___ . 

4 # 

2 

UaXauTT/f, ancient A tipov... m g 03 

8 

4 

2 

A^af, or 'H/utto&ov. 6 07 

10 

5 

24 

n 


11 

5* 

2f 

1« 

iiV 

'OpOoSupov ..... . 8 34 

12 

6 

3 

14 

H 

lyr 

ZTndafXT/ . 9.10 

16 

8 

4 

2 

if 

1A 

H 




18 

9 

44 

24 

if 

1t 7 t 

14 

14 

n vyfiTt . 1 1.65 

20 

10 

5 

24 

2 

1^ 

11 

14 

4 

II vyuv ___.... 1 3.17 

24 

12 

6 

3 

2f 

2-2- 

*11 

2 

14 

14 

l£ IUjxvc . 1 6.21 


IIoi)f .. 

TABLE XIV. 

I. GRECIAN MEASURES OF LENGTH. 

2. Great Measures. (Unit: 2radtov=607 feet.) 

Miles. Yds Feet. 

.. 101 

24 

Bij/aa_. 

. 2.53 

6 

2f 

*Opyvea 

. 2 6.07 

10 

4 

1! 

AetcaTtovg, ’Aicaiva, Kdlapog ____ 3 1.11 

60 

24 

10 

6 

"Ap/ia 

. 20 0.69 


100 

40 

16f 

10 

n 

medpov _...___........- 34 2.15 

600 

240 

100 

60 

10 

6 

Eradcov _................._ 202 0.88 

1200 

480 

200 

120 

20 

12 

2 

A lav? 

log . 404 0.75 

'Ittkikov _ 809 0.50 

2400 

960 

400 

240 

40 

24 

4 

2 

7200 

2880 

1200 

720 

120 

72 

12 

6 

3 A 6"kix°Q _ I 667 1.51 


TABLE XV. 

II. GRECIAN MEASURES OF EXTENT. 
(Unit: II lcdpov—\ acre.) 


Hour. 


36 


'EZanodvc... 


100 

n 

'Aval 

O 1 

*TT nfpi 


8334 

23A 

83 



1666| 

46#r 

16! 

2 

-“1 

2500 

69f 

25 

3 

14 

'A povp 


10000 

277^ 

100 

12 

6 

4 




23 


Peiches. 

Sq. Ft. 
1.02 


36.83 


102.31 

3 

35.79 

6 

71.59 

9 

107.38 

37 

157.26 

15 

37 

17 

211.38 

208.08 

175.07 




























































































































/450 


GRECIAN MEASURES OF CAPACITY.—GRECIAN WEIGHTS. 


K ox^c 

2 

2\ 

apiov. 

Xripri 

n 

TABLE XVI.—III. GRECIAN MEASURES OF CAPACITY. 

1. For Liquids. {Unit: MerpTjTyg—8^ gallons.) 

cub. ft. cub. in. 

[gall. qts. pts. 

e.008 

0.016 

0.02 

0.04 

0.08 

0.12 

0.24 

0.48 

0.95 

2 1.70 

4 1 0.23 

8 2 0.46 

85 2 0.60 
855 2 1.97 
8557 1 1.70 

M varpov . 069 

5 


2 

Koyxv 



10 

5 

4 

2 

K vaQog .. 2 74 

15 

n 

6 

3 

H 

’0 <;v6a(j)OP .. 4.12 

30 

15 

12 

6 

3 

2 

T eraprov . 8.23 

60 

30 

24 

12 

6 

4 

2 

Korvb] . 16.47 

120 

60 

48 

24 

12 

8 

4 

2 

%egttiq . 32.93 

720 

360 

288 

144 

72 

48 

24 

12 

6 

Xovc .. 197.59 

4320 

2160 

1728 

864 

432 

288 

144 

72 

36 

6 

A l6t7j . 1185.56 

8640 

4320 

3456 

1728 

864 

576 

288 

144 

72 

12 

2 |m ETprjTrjg 1 643.13 

10.. 13 1247.26 

100.. 137 375.60 

1000.. 1372 310. 


TABLE XVII.—III. GRECIAN MEASURES OF CAPACITY. 

2. For things dry. {Unit: MidLpvoq—l^ bushels.) 

cub. ft. cub.in. 

K ox^tdpiov .-.-. 0.22 

bush. pks. qts. pte 
.008 

.079 

.12 

.48 

95 

1.90 

3 1.61 

7 1.21 

1 7 0.43 

1 1 5 1.28 

14 1 0 0.8 

142 2 3 2. 

1426 0 7 2. 

10 

Kvadoc . 2.74 

15 

H 

’O §v6 


60 

6 

4 

KorvTiy ... 16.47 

120 

12 

8 

2 

.... 32.93 

240 

24 

16 

4 

2 

XoZviZ . . 65.86 

960 

96 

64 

16 

8 

4 

r H [ilektov . 263.46 

1920 

192 

128 

32 

16 

8 

2 

'E uroq . 526.92 

3840- 

384 

256 

64 

32 

16 

4 

2 

Tpiroq . 1053.83 

11520 

1152 

768 

192 

96 

48 

12 

6 

3 mdipvoq. 1 1433.5 

10... 18 511. 

100... 182 1654. 

1000... 1829 989. 






TABLE XVIII.—IV. GRECIAN WEIGHTS. 






1. 

Weights below the Drachm. {Unit: hpaxprj—81 grs.) 








Troy Weight 

Avoirdupoise Wt. 

Lepton ( Aetttov ).. 



dwts. 

grs. 

0.2 

drs. 

0.007 

7 

Chalcus {XaXKovq) 



1.4 

0.05 

28 

4 

Half Obolus {'Htuo66?uov) .. 

5.6 

0.21 

56 

8 

2 

Obolus (’06o?i6q) . 

11.2 

0.41 

112 

16 

v 4 

2 

Diobolus (A LoSohov) ... 

22.4 

0.82 

336 

48 

12 

6 

3 

Drachm (A pax/iy) . 2 

19.3 

2.46 


























































































































































GRECIAN WEIGHTS AND MONEYS 1451 


f 

TABLE NIX. 

IV. GRECIAN WEIGHTS. 

2. Weights above the Drachm. 

Troy Weight. 

Avoirdupoise Wt. 

Drachm (A paxpv) . 

ibs. oz. dwts. grs. 

> ^ 1 " A 

lbs. os. drs. 

2.46 

4.93 

15 6.25 

57 11 7.18 

96 3 1.3 

2 

Didrachm (A'idpaxpov) . * 14 7 

100 

50 

Mina 


5000 

3000 

60 

Attic Talent (Tdhavrov) . 70 1 13 17 3 

10000 

5000 

100 

11 

Talent of ACgina.:. 116 10 16 4.8 





1 . Moneys 

TABLE XX. 

V. GRECIAN MONEYS. 
below the Drachm. ( Unit: Apaxprj— 

=17£ cents.) 

d. 

far. 

cts. 

mills. 

Lepton (Aenrov ).. 





0.1 

0.5 

7 

Chalcus ( XaTiKOvg ) 




0.8 


3.7 

14 

2 

Dichalcon (Af^a/l/cov)... 


1.6 


7.3 

28 

4 

2 

Half Obolus ('Hfuo6o?uov) .... 

* 

3.2 

1 

4.7 

56 

8 

4 

2 

Obolu 

s (’OboTioc) ........... 


2.5 

2 

9.3 

112 

16 

8 

4 

2 

Diobolon (A lodohov) .. 

.... 8 

1 . 

5 

8.6 

224 

32 

16 

8 

4 

2 Tetrobolon (Terpo6o2,ov) .. 

.... 6 

1.9 

11 

7.3 

336 

48 

24 

12 

6 

3 H Drachm (A paxpv) . 

.... 9 

2.8 

17 

5.9 


TABLE XXL 

V. GRECIAN MONEYS. 

2. Moneys above the Drachm. 

£ s. d. far. 

Drachm (A paxpv) . 9 2.9 

$ cts. m. 
17 5.9 

35 1.9 

70 3.7 

3 51 8.6 

17 59 3 2 

1055 59 . 

1759 32 . 

10555 93 . 

2 

Didrachm (AiSpaxpov) .-. 1 7 1.7 

4 

2 

Tetradrachm (T erpadpaxpov), or Silver 'Lraryp . 3 2 3.4 

20 

10 

5 

Chrysus (Xpvoovc;), Daric (Aapeucog), Stater of Gold 16 2 1. 

100 

50 

25 

5 

Mina (M-m)..... 4 0 11 1.2 

6000 

3000 

1500 

300 

60 

Attic Talent of Silver (TuTiavrov) . 242 16 6 . 

10000 

5000 

2500 

500 

100 

If 

Talent of JEgina. 404 14 2 . 

60000 

30000 

15000 

3000 

600 

10 

6 Attic Talent of Gold. 2428 5 1 


THE END. 























































































































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